The History of Bones

by John Lurie

  * * *

  —

  Only one more, and this is going to upset some people. It is not pleasant. But it is true and it is what happened. It is what happens.

  This one involves the beloved David Byrne. And I just put down the beloved Paul Auster, who is less beloved than David Byrne but still beloved. This is the first time beloved has been used three times in a sentence.

  When The Lounge Lizards would play, you could look out at the crowd and anyone you could think of could be there. John Lennon, Bob Dylan, and David Bowie all have come to see the band play, Bowie several times. That should give you the sense that this was music worthy of a record deal.

  I was heading toward going broke. I was holding it all together with string.

  We couldn’t get a record deal.

  We were playing in New York, maybe at the Knitting Factory or the Bottom Line, not sure, but it wasn’t a big place. And it was mobbed. This was 1995 or ’96.

  The band had just gotten back from a tour and we were hovering off the ground.

  We finished a song to ear-shattering applause and when it died down, I said, “And this from a band that cannot get a record deal.”

  We would easily sell out two shows a night for a week at the Knitting Factory, but Europe was where the real fan base was. We had played a big theater in Milan with lines of people outside who couldn’t get in, and a block away on the same night, Wynton Marsalis was playing to a half-full house. Patti Smith, too, was playing that night and not sold out.

  But for years we couldn’t get a record company to record us. I spoke to one guy from a record label who said that they very much wanted to sign us but couldn’t figure out where in the store we should go. Under what category. So that posed a big problem for their marketing department. Isn’t that kind of the idea? To make something original?

  The next day there is a message at my office from Yale Evelev, who runs David Byrne’s label, saying David was at the concert last night and wants to sign The Lounge Lizards to do a record.

  When I call him back, he explains that Byrne’s label is doing the CD for Blue in the Face and then, almost immediately, turns the conversation to the fact that they want to do a record deal but he has spoken to the Blue in the Face people and understands that I am a difficult person to deal with.

  If someone is a difficult person, this is perhaps not the best way to begin a conversation. If someone is not a difficult person, this is perhaps not the best way to begin a conversation.

  I ask where they got this, that I am difficult.

  He says, “Oh, everybody knows this.”

  “Yes, but specifically, what have you heard?”

  I never really get an answer but after pressuring Yale Evelev a bit, he tells me that it has something to do with Blue in the Face and they have been warned about me.

  We start to do the record, with Yale Evelev giving helpful advice like, “The piano solo is too long and boring.”

  “The cello solo is too long and boring.”

  “You should consider covering a song. Maybe ‘Riders on the Storm’ by the Doors.”

  I love helpful advice about my music. It is very helpful.

  Amid this helpful advice I am also told that their label, Luaka Bop, is having a cash flow problem. If we want to make the record, I have to put up the money myself and they will reimburse me.

  I am so anxious to get this done and out, and I know David Byrne well enough to know he isn’t the kind of person who is going to screw me on this, so I agree.

  But it gets to the point where—I can’t remember the exact figures, but I think the overall budget for the record was $110,000 and I put up $85,000 of that.

  Yale Evelev keeps telling me that I am only known for my acting. But now, finally, I will be known for my music, which is how it should be. That the label will get behind this record in such a way that everyone will know about it.

  We finally get the record done. It is called Queen of All Ears.

  I am having trouble with the mastering and making the CDs sound anywhere near as good as the DAT recordings I have, but the record is good. It may even be a masterpiece.

  This is around the same time as the movie Get Shorty, which I did the music for. The head of the marketing department in L.A. for Warner Bros. is…I forget her name. What I do remember about her is that she had blue hair and was twenty-three years old.

  It turns out David Byrne’s label doesn’t get to decide how many records they are going to print. It’s up to Warner Bros., because Luaka Bop is their subsidiary. That Warner Bros. will be deciding the print run is something nobody told me about. In fact, it was implied that it was completely up to Luaka Bop.

  The blue-haired twenty-three-year-old goes to see Get Shorty, and when my name comes up on the screen, she says to her friend that they are doing an album with me.

  Her friend—I don’t know what color her hair is—doesn’t know who I am. On the basis of this in-depth marketing research, it is decided that Warner Bros. will only let Luaka Bop print three thousand CDs.

  Three thousand CDs is nothing. If they were actually getting behind the record, they would be sending out three thousand CDs for free, for promotion. We are about to go on tour to support the record and there aren’t going to be any CDs anywhere.

  I call my lawyer, Peter Shukat, to tell him what is going on.

  Peter is a tough, smart guy, and I really like him, but he doesn’t excel in tact. He gets David Byrne on the phone and screams at him.

  David hates conflict.

  I imagine him, after Peter yells at him, going to hide under the couch.

  But what happens next is that they pull the plug on the record.

  I get a letter from David saying, “Oh well, at least we tried.”

  But as it stands, I am out $85,000, the very last of the money I made from Get Shorty, and they have Queen of All Ears and won’t release it or give it back.

  This goes on for months and months. I don’t know what to do. My lawyer and Luaka Bop’s lawyers argue back and forth about how to resolve this, me paying my lawyer all the while.

  Finally, against my lawyer’s advice, I write David a letter myself, laying out the whole thing and showing how shitty this story makes his label look. The thing finally gets resolved, like a year later. I was really worried that the record would never see the light of day.

  I have lost a shitload of money. The $85,000 I invested, plus I paid Luaka Bop whatever they had put in. But at least I got the record back.

  And here, I suppose, is as good a place as any to apologize to David Tronzo for not giving him a solo on the record Queen of All Ears.

  Tronzo is a phenomenal slide guitar player. I actually think his level of playing—his soulfulness on his instrument and his level of innovation—surpasses Marc Ribot, but Tronzo never gets credit.

  He was supposed to have an enormous solo on the song “Happy Old Yoy,” which was supposed to be the featured song on the album, but we never got the tempo right and I had to scrap the song, leaving Tronzo without a solo on the record. And I feel bad about it to this day.

  * * *

  —

  So this shit happens to me. One after the other. Also somewhere in that time is the debacle with the film score for The Crew and Michael Dinner and the Amazing Barrys but I put that in another chapter to show mercy on the reader, as well as myself.

  I look at it and think, It has to be you, John. You are the common denominator here. It has to be you. You are doing something wrong that leads to these disasters. You think your heart and your motives are so pure, but maybe they aren’t. Maybe there is some fucked up thing about you that is making these things happen.

  Of course, after a couple of these horror stories, most people would have given up. Especially if they could just act in some terrible Hollywood movie and go home with a
suitcase full of money.

  When life punches you in the face, you have to stand back up.

  How else can life punch you in the face again?

  * * *

  —

  So I decide to see a therapist and find out what I am doing that makes this shit happen to me over and over again.

  I will be as honest as I possibly can be. I will hide nothing, no matter how embarrassing. I will tell the therapist everything in the hope of fixing this problem that I must be creating.

  My friend Sheryl is all about therapists and constantly telling me I should see one. So I call her for a recommendation. She suggests Dr. Robert Valentine.

  So I go see him and it is kind of helping in a way. I see a couple of things that I would not have seen otherwise, particularly about my father’s being ill most of my childhood and the effect that had on me.

  But it is a little strange. The guy wants to go and have a beer after one of the sessions and a couple of other things like that that I find odd. He comes back from vacation, somewhere in the jungle, and is adamant that it was more wild and dangerous than any trip I have ever taken. And I have taken some wild trips but never thought about its being an area of competition.

  But he keeps bringing up this idea that there’s no reason we can’t be personal friends and hang out outside of our sessions.

  About two months in, I am telling him about the fight that Tom Waits and I had during Fishing with John, and he is sitting on the edge of his chair.

  I stop and say, “You seem inordinately interested in this.”

  He says, “That is because you are talking about a conflict you had with an equal. It isn’t you fighting with someone you hire to be in your band or you fighting with the immensely powerful Warner Bros. or Harvey Weinstein. It is an equal.”

  I think, Okay, that makes sense, but then a moment later it dawns on me in a horrifying pulling back of the veil.

  I ask—almost exclaim—“Have we ever met before?”

  He goes, “Unh-huh.”

  “Are you Doc?”

  “Unh-huh.”

  “And you didn’t tell me that we had met before?”

  I really can’t believe this. This is the guy who tried to become my friend by telling me Tom Waits’s deepest psychic secret, and I have spent two months revealing myself to the bone.

  He says, “I thought if I told you, you would have discontinued treatment.”

  I just get up and walk out. I am in shock. My mouth has fallen so far open that I have to carry my lower jaw in my hands.

  I get home and call Tom Waits.

  “Do you know Dr. Robert Valentine?”

  Imagine Tom Waits’s voice in complete and utter disbelief: “Robert Valentine? He’s a doctor now? Did he get his license in Mexico?”

  Then a long pause, and Tom shrieks, “He’s a stalker!”

  30

  Splobs

  I go to L.A. to do promotion for Down by Law. This is when Roberto was driving me nuts, in the cab, reading all the signs, in a yell, coming in from the airport.

  “Stop!”

  “Pooch Pawler! Dog Grooming!”

  “Carpet Cleaning! Benny’s!”

  “Bail Bondsman!”

  “Coffee!”

  “Speed Limit Thirty-five!”

  I get to my room and can’t get my horn and little keyboard out fast enough.

  I almost always travel with this little keyboard that I bought in the Tokyo airport when I went to Bali by myself, right after Liz and I broke up. This keyboard cost me $88, this little Casio thing. I still have this little Casio and have written an awful lot of music on this little thing.

  So I get to my room in L.A. and I am writing music like mad. Write almost all of the song “No Pain for Cakes” and some other stuff. It’s odd that I spent a month in the country with Evan not writing a note and now it is coming out of me like a tsunami, faster than I can get a handle on it.

  We go out to a studio in Astoria, Queens, and record our second album for Island Records. I have the engineer Seigen Ono flown over to record it. Every time he writes the word album he writes almub instead. I love it and want to call the record Almub but then decide on No Pain for Cakes. They use my Uncle Wiggly as the Devil painting for the front and Kazu does the photos for the back.

  I’ve got a budget for three days of recording and it’s a mad dash to get everything done. The last night I am there until ten a.m. and then Val, Seigen, and I go out to breakfast. We’re giddy—not Seigen so much, but me and Val are loopy from lack of sleep.

  Val tells me that I have to name all of the cues for Down by Law because they need them, immediately, for the record. Val is writing them on a napkin. I’m yelling out non sequiturs:

  “ ‘A Hundred Miles from Harry.’ ”

  “ ‘Are You Warm Enough?’ ”

  “ ‘The King of Thailand,’ ‘The Queen of Stairs.’ ”

  And for Naná Vasconcelos, who said this to every attractive woman who passed him on the street, “ ‘Please Come to My House.’ ”

  Naná was funny like that. There was a very long period where, when he was on the streets of Manhattan, he refused to talk and would walk only looking up at the sky. After that period of silence, every time he saw a woman who was even remotely attractive, he would gloriously smile, bow, and then look in her eyes and say with his most elegant Brazilian accent, “Please come to my house.” It was fucking adorable.

  I think that those men who tell random women on the street that they should smile more or that they are prettier when they smile should get a mandatory jail sentence of six months or beaten up fairly badly. But this was not that. At least from where I stand, this was not that at all.

  Later that night I go to this debauched club called Milk Bar. There is coke everywhere at this place, always. This guy with a magician’s beard, who I have never seen before, says, “Here, John,” and gives me a gram of great coke.

  I am walking through the club drinking vodka and cranberry juices, one after the other. I just finished the recording and have a few days off before the mix. This is my night off.

  This girl cuts me off in the crowd and bumps her award-winning butt up into my crotch. I think it’s an accident and move through the crowd, but she finds me and does it twice more, boomba boomba. This is an interesting way to say hello.

  So we go back to my place at around four a.m. and the door to the pink room comes slamming shut. I think, Wow, Val is sleeping with Seigen. Something about the way the door slammed just told me it was Val. There was no way that Seigen would ever slam a door like that. He would have done it quickly, but it wouldn’t have made a sound.

  This girl is from Kansas. We have sex two or three times. I am wired from the coke. She keeps saying, “You have really good energy.” But when I turn her over to go at it a fourth time, she looks at me and says, “You’re scaring me!” and grabs her stuff and runs out.

  * * *

  —

  Kazu is not doing so great over on Third Street. She sounds very stressed. It is dangerous there and I don’t think she is really safe being there by herself.

  We have started to become friends.

  After she lived on Third Street for a while, she got a place for free in the East Village, but when that came to an end, she went back to Third Street. Because Val’s apartment has now become my office, I agree to give Val the Third Street apartment, where she can make phone calls and my mail can go, but she has to wait until Kazu moves out. But then Val splits from her husband, and she forces Kazu out so her ex can live there. I didn’t find out until years later that Val had forced her out.

  There is the big pink bedroom with only the basketball hoop on Eleventh Street, so I let Kazu move in with me.

  Kazu and I become best friends.

  It is wonderful living with
Kazu. She takes care of me and we play like kids. We hide from each other in the enormous apartment and then jump out and smash each other with a little orange ball. Kazu’s laugh is like a little kid’s. It opens my heart the way a kid’s laugh does. I do anything to make her laugh.

  There is love in the house.

  One of the oddest moments in my life was watching Naná Vasconcelos and Calvin Klein standing elbow to elbow in my apartment, both looking up at the ceiling, but for different reasons. Calvin Klein because he was bored, and Naná because he always did, as though he was expecting God to swoop down through the sky or the ceiling and say, “Hello, Naná!”

  They were both standing next to the counter, looking up and oblivious to each other. I thought, How odd. They each have no idea who the other is and they are both in my apartment staring at the ceiling.

  I had had a party to show off my new place. Calvin Klein had come in with Bianca Jagger. I must have met her at the Jean-Michel dinner at Mr. Chow. Bianca came in and displayed her fur coat to me. I said, “The coats go upstairs on the bed.” She said, “Oh,” like, How gauche, and dropped her fur coat on the dirty floor.

  There was a woman named Miki that I liked. Mostly because she looked a lot like Liz. I had used her in the Sion video to get to know her. Gy could tell I liked her, and hated her immediately. At around four a.m., when the party was dying down, Miki hurried upstairs and hopped into my bed. Gy, thinking she would be spending the night, went upstairs and saw Miki as she was just getting into the bed and said, “Well, I didn’t know it was a race.”

  Kazu would get a little jealous and tease me after a girl had spent the night. Miki had brought this very sweet smelling body oil. After Miki left, Kazu came into my room and said, “You smell like a bee. Buzzy bee.” She kept running around my bedroom, shuffling the big alligator-head slippers that I’d bought her, singing, “Buzzy bee, buzzy bee, buzzy bee.”