by John Lurie
If Robert, who had very little respect for almost anyone, trusted this guy’s ability as a director, then this guy was okay with me. But Robert was dying of AIDS. He was very ill, and I wasn’t about to call him and find out if he’d really vouched for this young director who had been brought in.
The band was on fire throughout the entire tour. We were getting better and better each night.
We were well oiled and it sounded amazing.
We had four nights to play in Berlin at the Quartier Latin.
Nothing could possibly go wrong.
On the way to the first concert, I looked up to the sky and said, “Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity.”
But the equipment was a disaster. We’d had decent equipment every night previously on the tour, but now, because the record company was arranging and paying for it, of course it sucked.
The marimba was tuned to 440 hertz and the vibes to 444. The horns and guitar and cello could decide to be in tune with one or the other, but not both, and thus we were all struggling to stay in tune with one another the entire night.
During the first song, the two-hundred-year-old timpani collapsed. Rolled off its stand toward the audience and then died.
During the next song, I noticed that Bryan Carrott, the vibes player, was not playing in a place he really needed to be playing. I looked over and Bryan was standing there holding the metal strand of silver vibe keys in his hands with a puzzled look on his face about how to put this thing back together. What he was wrestling with was so unwieldy, it looked like a baby metal boa constrictor.
This was all in the first ten minutes of the concert.
We kind of lost our balance after that.
Often, actually pretty much always, when a concert started badly, usually because of the sound of the room or the shitty equipment or some horror the promoter had put us through, we would rally, as one, as warriors, and overcome whatever was holding us back. We would conquer the sound of the room. But on the first of these four nights of concerts, we became discombobulated and did not recover.
But we had three more nights to get this right.
After the show, Michael Blake, the other saxophone player, came to me and complained about the hotel the band was in. Michael could be staying in the fanciest hotel in Berlin and still come to me and whine that the toilet made a squeaking noise when it was flushed and I would have to fix it. But in this case, it was fair.
They had the band two people to a room, and it was already in the contract that this could not be done. For years this could not be done. But they had me, the movie star, in a suite in a different, very beautiful hotel and had the musicians in a shitty hotel, two to a room, and the bathroom was a communal bathroom in the hallway. The bathroom had a smashed window, inviting cold fresh air in during your shower.
So after finishing the concert at two a.m., getting something to eat, and getting back to the room around four, I got up at seven a.m., hopped into a cab, and started looking for a hotel to move the band to. The reason I had to go out into Berlin to look for the hotel was that I sort of remembered the whereabouts of the last hotel we’d stayed in in Berlin but couldn’t remember the name. I found the hotel and put my credit card down for eleven rooms for all the musicians and sound people.
Then I had to find instruments that worked. I went back to my room to call the promoters in Zurich and Munich to see if we could get the timpani, vibes, marimba, and drums from their gigs and have them brought in by that night. Their equipment had been fine.
I had been told by the German record company woman that the terrible instruments we had played the first night were the only possibilities in all of Berlin. Though, as I write this, I realize it cannot possibly have been true. And you’d think I would have known enough by this stage in my life not to trust what the record company was telling me.
I get the band moved over to the new hotel. And when the equipment arrives from Munich, I have to set up another, unplanned sound check, to work things out with the new equipment.
The woman from the record company stops by and sees that I am in a frenzy setting up things in the sound check and says that she has just the thing for me. She will set up a massage to make sure I am relaxed before the concert that night.
An hour before leaving for the club, there is a knock on my hotel room door.
It is this overly muscled guy with long hair down to his waist, wearing a bright, maroon-colored robe garment.
He does that bizarre eye contact thing, which I suppose he thinks makes him seem sincere, but it seems more like he is attempting to emit radiation from his skull and into mine.
He smells.
He has that horrible, hippie-smelling oil stuff that is supposed to mask his body odor, but it does not, and that hippie smell—what is that called? Patchouli? Whatever it is, I can’t stand it.
He puts a mat down on the floor and tells me to undress. I strip down to my underwear, but he says, “No, no, you must take off everything!”
I hesitate for a moment but then go ahead and take off my boxers.
He takes off his shirt and he is repulsively hairy.
Then he takes off his pants, leaving only this loincloth underwear garment.
And this is just really fucking weird.
I go along with it. I do not have any idea why I go along with it. I think I am just too exhausted to fight against his insistence.
But when he starts to dig his knuckles into the small of my back, I feel his hair, his creepy fucking hair, on my back.
I say in a voice that would stop a bull in its tracks, “Stop. Stop right now and get out.”
Now I fucking smell like patchouli. I take another shower. I still smell like patchouli. I throw on my suit.
When I am out in the hallway of the hotel, Tom Lazarus, the engineer who has been brought over to do the recording, looks at my body, which is being contorted by nerves, with my shoulders creeping up around my ears, and says, “Wow, John. What the hell happened to you?”
Damn, I am doing it. Getting into the minutiae of this. I will try to put it down more simply.
The overall story of this segment of the nightmare is that the woman from the German record company already owes me money on royalties for distributing Voice of Chunk in some territories in Europe.
There has been some confusion about whether or not Live in Berlin will be one or two records. I send her the first record when it is done but hold back the second record until she has paid me what I’m owed, which turns out to be a substantial amount of money.
For reasons I will get to shortly, I am forced to fire, with extreme prejudice, both my assistant and my lawyer. So I am in the dark about a lot of what has transpired.
But I have not been reimbursed for the flights bringing nine musicians and two sound engineers to Europe. I have not been reimbursed for the eleven hotel rooms in Berlin. I have not been paid the advance for close to the entirety of the first live record, and I have been paid nothing for the second.
When we finish the four nights, the German record company woman suggests that I go to her friend’s studio in Málaga, Spain. She says it’s beautiful there. It’s a brand new, state-of-the-art studio. There is a special apartment for the artist.
I am picked up, at the airport, by a young man named Harley. He explains in great detail how his name is Harley because he loves Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
He hands me a key and drops me at the apartment.
It is no wonder that he did not want to come in. It is filthy. A level of filthy I have never really seen before, and if you have made it this far in the book, you must realize that I have encountered a great deal of filthy.
The worst part is that the mattress on the floor stinks and is covered in this long hair that seems to have been pressed into the sheets.
There is no one to call and nowhere to
walk. No food.
The next day, Harley stops by, all smiles.
I am not any amount of smiles.
About an hour later, Harley and another guy arrive with a new mattress, still wrapped in plastic. They make it very clear that delivering this mattress is below their station in life.
I tell Harley that I must speak to whoever is in charge here.
Harley explains that they will be ready for me late that afternoon.
I ask where the studio is and he points up the hill but says that I cannot go there now.
“Why can’t I go there now?”
Harley shrugs. “You can’t.”
So I walk up the hill and walk into the studio, which is nowhere near a finished studio. The consoles are on the floor. There are unconnected wires everywhere. But the thing that makes it most suspicious is that when I surprise them as I walk in, the owner and engineer and studio manager try to hide whatever machinery they have been working on behind their backs with an Oh no, we’ve been caught look on their faces.
Now I am freaking out. I try to reach my assistant, who is in Paris. I finally get hold of her, but she clearly doesn’t want to speak to me or want to help me get out of this mess.
When I call back the next day, I hear the voice of the young weasel who directed the concert film. What is he doing there? Are they sleeping together? Has she been hiding this all along?
Has she brought in this kid, who, it already has been made clear, doesn’t know what he is doing, to direct the concert film because they are secretly together?
And did she say he was approved by Robert Burden because she knew I wouldn’t call Robert Burden about this while he was so sick?
So I go to mix the first record in Paris. Go back to New York and find out that there are all kinds of problems with The Lounge Lizards movie, and my assistant and, I assume, her secret boyfriend have to go to Paris again to fix some technical film problems that can only be fixed at a lab in Paris.
Sometime later, I learn that my money has been used to fly them to Paris and pay for their hotel.
I find out all kinds of things like that. And when I meet with the district attorney of New York, a year and a half later, I will find out really a lot of things like that.
The Japanese company who is paying for the concert film and Fishing with John is going bankrupt. They owe me a lot of money on Fishing with John for directing, producing, doing the music, etc.
When I go to collect it, their New York representative produces a one-page contract that says that I will be responsible for all overspending on the concert film. I know nothing about this paper. It is from my lawyer and signed by my assistant, who is listed on the contract as my manager. But because the concert film is being made by this guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing, it has gone more than double over budget.
So now instead of their owing me quite a bit of money, what was going to be my first really big payday in this life, they believe that I owe them something like $200,000.
And now they are bankrupt and have no money to finish Fishing with John.
They agree to funnel more money into the concert film because they have just saved the money they would have paid me, and on top of that, I, theoretically, am responsible for the overspending on the film.
People start telling me that they have seen my lawyer and my assistant around town together, late at night. This is just weird.
And it turns out that they, along with the Japanese representative in New York, have sold Fishing with John to distributors in Europe, without my knowledge or consent. And there is no money to finish it.
This is such a complicated story, to explain it in its entirety simply isn’t worth it.
How it all lines up is, it’s a perfect storm of disaster for me.
There is nothing in the contract with the German record company that says I owe them a second record. But they claim I owe them one. There is certainly enough material, but I don’t want to give them anything else until they pay the owed royalties on Voice of Chunk, reimburse me for the several thousand dollars that I am out of pocket on the live record, and give me some kind of advance on the second record. We are at an impasse.
Next thing I learn is that my lawyer, my assistant, and the New York rep for the Japanese company, without my knowledge, have negotiated a deal for the concert film, as well, to be released in Europe with a German distributor.
In the contract, it says that I, John Lurie, who have no idea that any of this is happening, am responsible for any claims against the distributor by third parties.
Also in the addendum to the contract for the concert film between me and the Japanese company, which I was also unaware of, it says that I indemnify the Japanese company against third-party claims.
What this means is that there will most likely be a legal battle between the German record company and myself. They want their second record and I want the money that they owe me.
Because I do not own the copyright for the recordings, the German film distributor, who is releasing the movie in a few months, has no right to use the music without the record company’s permission.
In the worst case scenario, and I can see all this happening a mile away, I will be sued by the German distributor when the record company gets an injunction on the film. In the contract that I knew nothing about, it says that I have indemnified them against third-party claims and they will lose a fortune on theater rentals and advertising. Isn’t this fun?
So I fly over and talk to the head of the distribution company and ask him to please hold off until I can fix this legal mess before releasing the movie. He says of course, they can wait.
But then two months later, with no warning, the film is coming out in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
The record company gets an injunction against the film, so not only will I be sued by the film distributor and the record company, I will also be sued by the Japanese company, because my representatives have signed an addendum, again without my knowledge, indemnifying them against third-party claims.
Baskets of fun!
For the first time in my life, I have some money, and I am now headed to complete financial disaster.
On top of this, Fishing with John, which I think is going to be pretty great, will never be seen.
And! This beautiful, powerful, unique music was finally going to be heard outside of a couple thousand people a night in concert halls.
This was as good as it could have gotten and nothing could go wrong. I did the work. It was all there.
And now, I am out close to a million dollars. And I am about to be sued by three companies. It is a mess. I fight like mad.
I hire lawyers. I lose thirty pounds.
The lawyers end up bilking me for my remaining money without getting any resolution whatsoever.
I do finally, in the end, after almost two years of legal battles and doing almost nothing else but fight legal battles, get my royalties from the record company. Which come close to covering only my legal fees.
Also, I learn that I am broke. My assistant could sign checks on my corporate account, but I discover that she made friends with people at the bank, then moved money from my personal account to my corporate account by forging checks. She did this to the tune of $110,000.
I learn that one has only ninety days to challenge this with the bank.
* * *
—
After ages, I finally got to meet with the assistant district attorney in New York and learned that my assistant had $460,000 in the bank the week I fired her, when she was making $600 a week working for me.
On top of that, I had the $110,000 worth of canceled forged checks with a report from a signature expert claiming it was the assistant who had made these forgeries.
The ADA said, “We can see that she is doing incredibly fishy, dishonest things,
but it is not a good case for us.” And said he would turn down the case.
I was baffled. How was that not a good case? They had it all there on paper, but the district attorney would not budge and I walked out of his office wondering what kind of a world this was.
Whew…that is one. I’m afraid there is more.
* * *
—
Ideas come to you in different ways. Something stirs your brain, you let it sit there, another piece of the puzzle comes in. But with some ideas, they come as gifts. With music in particular, there will be an idea, usually something quite simple, that floats in, and you really have to pay attention to it. You have to protect it when you build things around it.
In 1989, I was staying in Grottaglie with Antonio, who had done the set design for Il Piccolo Diavolo, when the idea for You Stink Mister came to me.
I was napping in the afternoon for an hour and woke up with this image just stuck in my head. It was one of those gifts. The stone bedroom and living in Antonio’s monk world added to the sanctity of the idea.
It was a movie with Roberto Benigni playing a cowboy who travels across a surreal landscape with a Native American.
A few weeks later I was staying with Sandro Veronesi in Grosseto, Italy, who told me a true story about an Italian cowboy who had challenged Buffalo Bill Cody to a cowboy contest and won. This certainly seemed like a piece to the puzzle.
I wrote it so that Roberto was a championship-caliber cowboy, but everything he had learned and mastered he had done in his mother’s home, either in his bedroom or in the backyard, where he had built a makeshift horse out of broken furniture.
After he wins a ranch in America by beating Buffalo Bill in a cowboy contest, he travels to this bizarre new country. Inexplicably, frogs with fur fly around all the time. I wanted to shoot it in Kenya, which would make it much more expensive, but I was determined to do this. It needed that landscape.
