The History of Bones

by John Lurie

  I call Barry Josephson’s house several times. Each time he is said to not be there but will call me when he gets back.

  He doesn’t call.

  I am getting furious. I call my lawyer, who is little help, and my agent, who is clearly not going to back me.

  Then at about ten o’clock on Friday night, I get a call. It is another one of the producers, but I have never heard of this guy.

  He explains that he is one of the producers and that I have to stop being so difficult.

  I ask how I am being difficult.

  I explain that I have written the music per Michael Dinner’s instructions and rewrote it on the spot to his tastes, and now I am finding out that people I have never spoken to don’t like it. But I don’t know what is wrong with the music or what cues they want changed, and no one will tell me. I also don’t know who I am answering to on this.

  Then he says, “I’m from Philadelphia, if you know what that means.”

  I explain, again, that I am willing to work on three or four of the cues, if I understand the problems and if he and the other producers are all on the same page about what the problems are, so I don’t have to record the music into infinity.

  He says with the voice of an actor in a bad Mafia movie, “John, I am from Philadelphia. Do you understand what that means? It means I am not one of these lightweight L.A. guys. We handle things very differently in Philadelphia.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “I am telling you that I am from Philadelphia and you do not mess around with people like us.”

  “All I want is for you and the other producers to be happy with the music and be done with this, but someone has to tell me what is wrong.”

  “We don’t like it. Listen, I am from Philadelphia, if you know what that means.”

  “Holy shit, I am from New York City, motherfucker. You want to try to fix this problem like this, then bring it. Asshole.”

  And I hang up the phone.

  The report card says: Doesn’t play well with others.

  Oh, okay, I suppose that is true, and I am certain there isn’t another film score composer in the world who would have handled it like this. But fuck these people, calling my home to threaten me. Makes me fucking furious just to write this. And how was I being difficult?

  Monday morning comes. I have not heard back from Barry Josephson, though I have called several times. I have not been to look after Jon Ende and I have not booked a studio.

  My agent calls and asks if I have spoken to Josephson. I explain that I have called several times and a woman keeps telling me that he is not there and he will call me, but he never does.

  The agent says that he is home now, she just spoke to him. I have to call right away.

  So I do.

  I get the same woman on the phone, and though every bit of intuition in my being says that he is sitting right there, she tells me that he is not home.

  I say, “Do you mind telling me who I am speaking to?”

  She says, “I am his fiancée.”

  I say in mock excitement, “Well! You know, he is really dishonest. You should get out of there immediately!”

  That wisecrack ends up costing me $170,000, and do you know what? I am not sorry I said it.

  Ten seconds after I hang up, the phone rings and it’s my agent.

  She screams, “What did you do? He says that you threatened his family.”

  Fuck these people. All the way around. They aren’t in this world for the same reason I am. I guess it is as simple as that.

  That was my last film score.

  * * *

  —

  The band is on the plane to Japan. Fourteen hours. I drink five of those miniature bottles of Jack Daniel’s. The stewardess’s jacket is hanging on a peg near the cockpit, unattended. I sneak out of my seat and go up and take it down without being seen. I put it on. The sleeves hardly go past my elbows. Then I take one small Jack Daniel’s bottle in each hand and walk down the aisle, toward the band, yelling, “I’m a giant! I’m a giant!”

  We are playing three nights at a club called Cay Bar, then in two different spaces that are in giant conglomerate buildings. These places have completely different functions during the day.

  I didn’t realize that Cay Bar was actually a posh restaurant. I tell Hiroshi, the tour promoter, that there is no way that we are going to play for people while they are eating, that we don’t do that.

  No problem, the owner is such a fan that food service is shut down while we are onstage.

  After sound check, there is an English guy who wants to film us in Super 8. I wouldn’t ever ordinarily allow this, but behind him, staring at me, is this very tall, exotic Japanese girl. This is his assistant, and if I say no, I might not ever see her again. She is wearing an absurd Audrey Hepburn hat with an enormous brim, and her gaze is otherworldly. Her name is Kazu.

  All through the show, she is crawling around in her skintight outfit, down on the floor, right in front of the stage. Lying on her stomach, shooting upside down, and her unconscious gyrations are almost obscene. I play with my eyes closed, but I know the straight guys in the band can’t take their eyes off her. She is exquisitely ethereal.

  After the show, I invite her to Ink Stick, which is a bar/restaurant that we always go to.

  She comes but won’t come back to my room with me.

  Dougie walks into Ink Stick just as I am saying to her, “I’m really mad at you.”

  Dougie knows I tend to go too far and says, “John, how can you be mad at this really beautiful girl? She seems so sweet.”

  “She won’t come back to my room and I’m really mad at her.”

  Dougie does his little Dougie laugh and hugs me. Dougie is always hugging people. It is one of the great advantages of his size and cuteness. He can hug anyone at any time.

  The guys go out sightseeing and shopping and come back with plastic samurai wigs. They’re hysterical. You put it on and it looks so ridiculous. I wish I had a photo, because there is no way to explain how hilarious The Lounge Lizards looked wearing these wigs.

  Before Roberto Benigni and Nicoletta Braschi left New York, I wrote a Nino Rota–like song for them called “Bob and Nico.” Much slower and more quaint than our normal stuff. It had a nice, lopsided cadence. Wrote it for them and to record it, but we never did it live, it wasn’t fierce enough. We play it that night at the Cay Bar, and at a point in the song where it breaks down to just the piano, we all put on the plastic samurai wigs, which are hidden around the stage. Roy looks over at me, sees me in the wig, and slumps to the floor laughing. We can’t continue without Roy playing his part, so the band just hovers there for a second waiting for Roy to compose himself and play his part. He stands up, plays two notes, and looks out of the corner of his eye at me and just slumps back onto the floor. We can’t finish the song.

  After the encore we do this one-chord blues thing. Like an up-tempo New Orleans funeral march. Dougie wears the snare drum secured around his waist, by Marc’s guitar strap. Ba da, da da dat, ba da, dattle dat dat. E.J. plays shakers; Marc plays trumpet, which he can really play but doesn’t often do; Curtis is on trombone; and Roy and I are on sopranos. Erik was supposed to get a tuba but never did, and Evan just walks around yelling. We’ll later record it and call it “Carry Me Out,” but at this point we just walk through the crowd playing at the end of the night.

  The Japanese girls are so cute and so shy. They cover their mouths when they laugh and they bow when they talk to you. But this is somewhat contrary to the notion of shyness: When we are walking out in the crowd, we’re swarmed by them. They’re screaming. I must have had my ass pinched thirty times.

  Every time we’re in Japan we drink enormous amounts. E.J. has never had so much fun in his life, he can’t believe it. I walk out of a club, pass out, and fall flat on my face. Then ge
t up, proclaim myself a genius, and get into a cab. Kazu tells me later—but I do not remember it like this—that I was vomiting all the time.

  We are so out of control that the hotel moves the band all to one floor and puts no Japanese guests on the floor with us. The hallway is strewn with stuff.

  When the Neville Brothers come to Tokyo, they are put on the same floor.

  Someone knocks on my door. I go to answer it and no one is there. I’m sure it’s Dougie who did it. I step out into the hallway and yell, “Dougie!” The door slams behind me.

  And I’m not wearing any clothes.

  I go down the hall and knock on Dougie’s door. I am sure he’s in there, but he won’t answer. So I sit down in the hallway, naked, outside his room.

  The elevator opens, and I am not so worried because the only people on the floor are us. And oh, I forgot, the Neville Brothers. At worst it would be a maid. I could cover myself up and she would let me back in my room.

  Out of the elevator come several of the guys from the Neville Brothers. I am sitting on the floor naked.

  One of them says, “Hey.” Like this is nothing unusual.

  I say, “Hey,” back, as they walk on down the hall.

  I have lunch with Hiroshi. He wants me to do interviews, and I don’t want to do them but agree to a few. The Japanese photographers really seem like they want to turn you into Godzilla. They want to shoot you while you’re talking, and at that moment that your face gets scrunched up or overly animated they start shooting like mad, or they invite you to eat and as soon as a little piece of sushi is hanging from the corner of your mouth, they start clicking away. Anything, as long as your face is contorted and you look like a monster. I am already hungover, so trying to make me look beastly is not really a problem.

  There is also so much money there that the guys are all making a fortune. It seems like every time you open the door to the hotel room, you have to shut it really fast because so much money is blowing in. They are recording on records and all kinds of things.

  Hiroshi wants me to wear these suits for a magazine article and they will pay me $10,000.

  “What about a live record? Could we make a live record?”

  “How much do you want?”

  “For us? I don’t know. Ten thousand for the band.”

  It is all set up immediately. Day after tomorrow we will record when we play at Space Harajuku. Easy as that. This is 1986, when America and New York are marvelous places and anyone from there is fascinating and wonderful to people in other parts of the world.

  Space Harajuku is actually a car showroom on the first floor of a mall-like area. We soundcheck early. There is a recording truck parked out on the street. The engineer is Seigen Ono.

  We do sound check and go into the dressing room to eat. We’re in there maybe fifteen minutes eating, and when we come back out onto the stage, everything is gone. Where the audience will be is now a car showroom, with shiny, fancy automobiles lined up for sale. The Japanese are amazing like this, and what is even more amazing is that there was a cigarette butt on the top of Ribot’s amp during sound check. When we go out to play the gig, he calls me over to his amp and shows me that they have saved the cigarette butt and placed it back in the exact same place as it was this morning, thinking that perhaps there was a reason for it. Ribot doesn’t even smoke.

  We do two shows and record both. First one is a little stiff, but the second one goes great and we use most of the songs from the second set for the album.

  We have two days to mix. Seigen Ono is unbelievable and mixes the whole thing on the fly, and it comes out better than I ever would have expected. I walk back to the hotel listening to “Big Heart” blaring in my headphones.

  It is one of the happiest moments of my life.

  It becomes a soundtrack for the bustling insanity of Tokyo that turns it into something else entirely. Tokyo is re-created for “Big Heart”: The man pushing a vegetable cart, the cab door opening, and the giant neon signs are all a real-life video engulfed in the song. Everything has a new life.

  The band goes back before me and I stay to do the album cover. I am trying to learn Japanese. I go out with Kazu to buy art supplies for the cover. There are stink pockets in Tokyo, a spot on the street where it just suddenly smells of egg farts.

  “How do you say stink?”

  “Kusai.”

  “Kusai koko des. Kazu kusai.”

  We go to the art store and then back to the room. I am trying to write “Big Heart” in Japanese characters. Kazu informs me that “Big Heart” doesn’t translate to the same meaning exactly.

  “It is like saying big liver or big spleen.”

  “Great!”

  I am working like mad on the cover. Almost get it and then fuck it up. There is paper everywhere. I can’t quite get it. Hiroshi comes by my room and asks about the cover. I say that I will get it eventually. On his way out, he reaches down into the trash and pulls out two different drawings that I have torn in half. He puts them together, side by side, on the table.

  “How about this?”

  “Can they put them together?”

  “Sure.”

  Cover is beautiful.

  * * *

  —

  I go back to New York. Lisa Krueger seems to be in love with me. I am going out every night and she is disappointed in me. I am very excited about the record but she says it’s sloppy. Maybe it is sloppy.

  Lisa Krueger is the kind of girl one should marry. I think I said that before. She is smart, kind, and pretty, and no bullshit, no games. She is wonderful. But I am burning myself up much too fast to even notice.

  She sees clearly that I am not the boy for her, it will only lead to heartache. She wants a chance to get over me. I am just not ready for the kind of relationship Lisa wants. It isn’t like she even complained about it, she just wanted something serious.

  I certainly do not want to lose Lisa Krueger, so for her birthday I take her to the Cayman Islands. We have a fairly nice time, except I can’t sleep at night, because I never sleep at night and spend most of my time reading a book about Zelda Fitzgerald.

  I’m back living at my place on Third Street, and when we get back to New York, we go there. I turn on the answering machine as I am unpacking my bag. The last message is from Kazu. She is at the airport in New York and coming to my house. Right now. She says it like this has been the plan all along. But it wasn’t the plan. Lisa doesn’t believe me and gets up and leaves.

  I watched Kazu in Japan. She would show her emotions so openly that it freaked out the Japanese. She would see someone she liked and fly across the room, arms waving, and hug them. This is just not done in Japan. Plus, she was a giant compared to other Japanese women. I was at a bar with her and saw her throw her head back and roar with laughter. The other Japanese people around her at the bar looked horrified. When Kazu realized that what she had done was meeting such strong disapproval, I saw her shrink into herself. All that beauty squashed by misguided public opinion.

  I saw it and said, “You have to move to New York.”

  It was the only place for her, they would devour her soul there in Japan. I guess Kazu decided to take this as an invitation, so two weeks later she is about to arrive at my doorstep.

  She arrives and looks all wild-eyed and frightened. My friend Boris Policeband says that she has the face of a five-year-old child who knows too much about death. And it is kind of like that, that look in her face that is lost and wise at the same time, and beautiful.

  I think that this is bizarrely presumptuous of her and I am upset about Lisa.

  I’m not going to throw Kazu out, but I did not sign on for this at all. I tell her she can sleep on the foam pad and go out to Area.

  * * *

  —

  I don’t think that Third Street is going to be safe for Kazu, and we
move into Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell’s new hotel, Morgans, on Thirty-seventh and Madison. I have been living there on and off for a while.

  I go to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers at a club called the Saint. It was the Fillmore in the sixties, then a bank, then a gay club. Now it is hardly ever open, but the Chili Peppers are playing there. I’m backstage and Chris Blackwell comes into the dressing room. Chris Blackwell’s company, Island Records, produced or is distributing Down by Law in the States. He sees me and says, “You’re going to be a movie star.”

  “Fuck that. Are you Chris Blackwell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you sign my band? You can put out the record we just made in Japan.”

  Blackwell gives me his number and tells me to come by tomorrow.

  I go to meet Blackwell, and in the middle of the meeting, he gets a call. Gets off the phone and says, “Do you know Joel Webber?”

  Joel Webber was supposed to manage The Lounge Lizards, or at least we talked about it. He was supposed to find the Lizards a deal, which of course he has never done. I haven’t talked to him in months. Joel is very tall and very skinny. The only time he has been to a Lounge Lizards show was at Irving Plaza, the gig we did right before I went down to do Down by Law. Joel, who is easily six foot six, got into an argument with a short Puerto Rican guy from the club, who had reached up as high as he could and popped Joel Webber in the nose. Joel went home before the show started, holding his head backward to try to stop the blood from his nose from getting on his shirt. That’s pretty much the extent of my involvement with Joel Webber.

  “Is he your manager?”

  “No! Why?”

  “That was him on the phone, he says he’s your manager.”

  Joel Webber runs the New Music Seminar. At this time it’s a fairly important thing in the music business. For that reason, Blackwell says, “This might be awkward for me.”