The History of Bones

by John Lurie

Kazu would call me “Dude” because I hated it. “Stinky Dude” when I farted. The morning after I had brought home a very young Uma Thurman, who must have been twenty then, Kazu came into my room and kept calling me “Illegal Dude.”

  “Want some breakfast, Illegal Dude?”

  * * *

  —

  Island is not being nice about anything. They won’t do anything to promote the album. It is like No Pain for Cakes never existed. Chris Blackwell won’t take my calls. He seems to be a very charming rich kid who kind of plays with people’s lives, work, and careers, like it is some kind of hobby. Once something is not new and exciting to him, he just gets bored and finds a new toy to play with for a moment, then that toy will be found broken in the yard later in the day. Except these aren’t toys, these are people’s lives.

  Also, my acting agent is making me audition for these movies that I do not want to do. I don’t know how they manipulate me into auditioning, but they are geniuses at it. They have managed to convince me that no one knows who I am. I do not audition well and it is constantly embarrassing.

  I am on my way uptown in a cab. I have been bummed out for a few days. Then I see from the cab window DOWN BY LAW Tom Waits John Lurie Roberto Benigni on the movie marquee. What an odd thing it is, just when it feels like you are disappearing into psychic oblivion, to see your name up in lights, like it means something. Later that day, The New Yorker dubs me the “Humphrey Bogart of the Eighties.”

  I have to go to England and France to do press for Down by Law and the new album.

  After that I have to go to Japan to do an advertisement. I decide to go back via Hawaii and take a few days off by myself.

  I fly to Honolulu and book an expensive hotel. This is a mistake. The beach is horrible and the people staying there are horrible. I wake up feeling awful. At first I think that it’s jet lag but I remember looking in the mirror in the room and thinking, This isn’t jet lag, this is something else.

  I can’t face going through the expensive, shiny lobby, so I head outside via the back entrance. I come out onto a dusty alley with garbage from the hotel overflowing from trash cans, flies everywhere.

  I start to walk down the alley to see where it leads and there is this guy up ahead coming toward me. He is limping really badly and his hair is all patchy and stringy. It looks like he must have mange.

  Just as I get close enough to this guy to see that he has unbelievably bad acne, painful-looking boils all over his face, he smiles a rotten-toothed grin and says, “Have a nice day in paradise.”

  * * *

  —

  If the fire department asks for your address, don’t tell them. They will only show up with axes to break everything and spray water on all your worldly possessions.

  I get back to New York, and that bad feeling I had in Hawaii keeps coming back on me. I think that maybe it’s the apartment. It seems like every time somebody comes over, they fall asleep, and Kazu and I are always feeling achy and tired.

  We think that maybe it’s carbon monoxide and start calling different people from the phone book. I try the EPA, and they say, “If you think there is carbon monoxide in your apartment, call the fire department.”

  I think, That’s weird, the fire department?

  I call the fire department and tell them that I think maybe there is carbon monoxide in my apartment.

  “What’s your address, sir?”

  I tell them.

  “We’ll report it.”

  I presume that they are going to call me back and don’t think about it further.

  Kazu is cooking in the enormous kitchen. I am on the phone with Val, and there’s a lot of activity outside of the first floor window, but it doesn’t really register. Out of the corner of my eye I notice a large red blur and then another. And there are sirens, but when you live in New York City, there are sirens all the time and one just doesn’t notice them. They become part of your day. But when the big red machines start stopping outside my house, the flashing lights make me go to the window to see what’s happening.

  “Oh no.”

  Fire trucks line the block.

  Firemen bang on the door. They all have hatchets. They want to come in and start smashing stuff up. They really like to come into people’s apartments and start smashing stuff. Almost as much as they like their sirens and flashing lights.

  I never found out if there was a carbon monoxide leak or not.

  * * *

  —

  I am not feeling great and spend a couple of months mostly in bed. Kazu looks after me. Cooks wonderful things.

  “What do you want for dinner?”

  “Splobs.”

  “What’s sprobs?”

  “Bob.”

  I have started calling her “Kabuki Bob” for no reason. The song “Bob the Bob” on the Voice of Chunk record is for her. I love Kazu. I really love her. In the purest way.

  “Bob, say ‘All the Puerto Ricans are parading at the Palladium.’ ”

  “No, what are sprobs?”

  “They are fried, fried, fried pieces of potato, then you boil them and then fry them again.”

  “What are sprobs, rearly?”

  “Say ‘All the Puerto Ricans are cabbing to the Palladium.’ ”

  “No.”

  The amazing thing to me about the Japanese is that the pronunciations of “L” and “R” and “B” and “V” is not an oral problem, like how Americans can’t roll their R’s. It is an aural problem. They do not hear the difference. If I say “John Lurie” and then “John Roolie,” it sounds exactly the same to them. I believe this to be true. At least that’s how it was explained to me by more than one Japanese person.

  I call her from my bed but she doesn’t answer. I get up to go downstairs and I see her huddled over, next to the speakers of the stereo.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  I can just faintly hear Billie Holiday floating past her.

  Kazu has been hiding it from me, but she is practicing singing. Round the clock, she is listening to Billie Holiday and practicing. Two months later she can sing exactly like Billie Holiday, but with a slight Japanese accent. It is absolutely remarkable. No one can sing like Billie Holiday. Kazu can sing, exactly, like Billie Holiday with a Japanese accent.

  What an extraordinary thing she is.

  * * *

  —

  We went back to Japan. Kazu came with us to translate and to be generally fun to be around. She had a bottle of expensive moisturizer that I bought her. After the long flight, we were waiting for our ton of luggage to come off the conveyor belt. Every particle of hydration had been taken out of me from the flight. I asked Kazu for the moisturizer but she said that I had to wash my face first, otherwise I’d be wasting it. She was hoarding the moisturizer and we actually had a fight about it.

  I wasn’t well at all. I collapsed after the first show. At the end of the tour, I decided to stay in Japan with Kazu, to try to recover before flying to Europe to meet the band. She took me to this beautifully exotic hotel in Kyoto. The bathtub was made of wood.

  Let me repeat until you grasp the beauty of this: The bathtub was made of wood.

  The food was otherworldly. The woman who ran the place had an elegant, strong face. She would bring in the amazing food for dinner and bow. I bowed back to her and she bowed so low that she almost scrunched to the floor. Kazu told me later not to bow to her because she was in a position of service and was compelled to bow lower than me. The idea that this lady, with so much class, had to bow lower than me made me feel all confused. Clearly, in the pecking order of the universe, I should not have been allowed to grovel in the mud this woman walked on.

  Then we went to a place where the whole town was dedicated to onsen, Japanese baths. The water has curative powers. You take these hot b
aths in all kinds of different waters. It completely wipes you out and then you sleep. Everyone who was there was there for the baths. The whole town was walking around in robes. Seemed like some low rent sci-fi movie. I asked Kazu where the town was where everyone brushed their teeth.

  We went to some marine show and they had the dolphins in such tiny cages in the water that they couldn’t even turn around. Kazu and I were horrified. We tried to free them. There was only a tiny padlock with a thin chain that held them in their prison. The ocean was right behind the cages. But we couldn’t do it. We couldn’t get the thing open.

  When I had met her the first time, a year earlier, Kazu and a lot of really lovely new friends that we had met had come to the hotel to see the band off before we went to the airport. They all stood outside the hotel waving. Kazu was standing next to this wonderful, soulful woman named Kimea. As the van pulled off I could see Kimea hugging Kazu because Kazu was going to cry.

  I ordered harshly, from the window, “Don’t you cry.” I was trying to make a joke.

  Dougie said, “You really have a way with women.”

  This time, one year later, saying goodbye to Kazu at the airport, tears welled up in my eyes.

  As I went down the escalator, she stood on the level above, smiling down at me. I could barely hold it together.

  When I got to New York, I called her. Kazu said with glee, “I didn’t cry! You cried! I didn’t cry! Ha ha!”

  31

  I’ve Run Out of Madeleines

  It is impossible to remember what happened on which tour. Two incidents I think are connected by a week could actually be years apart. A lot of the book I’ve figured out what happened when by using dwellings, projects, or girlfriends as demarcations of time. But on tour it is a blur of mayhem. Sound checks, sex, fire extinguisher battles, trains, double-decker sleeper buses, a glimpse of ecstasy on a musician’s face during a heightened moment, more trains, more sex, trying to pack everything after two hours of sleep—it really is just a blur and I can’t remember and I’ve run out of madeleines.

  The first time we played in Sicily, it was an outdoor concert on a hill, in the middle of nowhere. We played for eight people and six sheep.

  Joe Zawinul was scheduled to play solo before us, but things he needed for his elaborate setup had not arrived. He stood onstage holding a confusing mess of cables.

  The smattering of people sat out there in the nice summer night air, waiting. They didn’t seem to mind. There was nowhere better to be.

  We went for a walk and came back just as Joe had given up trying to make anything work and played “Everything Happens to Me” on the piano. And then walked off.

  The next time we played Sicily, it was a free concert in Catania, in a big dusty field. The Sicilians were there for the free concert and mostly had no idea who we were. This is the night the promoter rented us the Jolly Drums. A toy drum set with “JOLLY DRUMS” written in big letters across the bass drum.

  When we arrive at sound check and the equipment is wrong, the band is all always calling me over.

  I see Dougie with a wrench trying to fix his snare drum and he calls me over. “John.” But I see the big JOLLY written on the front of his bass drum and shake my head. “Dougie, there’s nothing I can do.”

  We wrote different tunes for the end of the show, when I would introduce the band. Usually some kind of blues or one-chord vamp. I never, or rarely, introduced the guys by their real names. I would make them the 1961 New York Yankees:

  “On drums—Tony Kubek!! On bass—Bobby Richardson!! On piano—Elston Howard!! I’m your center fielder—Mickey Mantle!! Thank you very much! Thank you very much! Thank you very much!”

  Because Ribot would look so insane when he played, and because he really looked a bit like him, I sometimes introduced him: “On guitar, the man who shot Robert Kennedy, Sirhan Sirhan!!”

  Usually I was yelling so hard that the audience didn’t have a clue what I was saying.

  That night in Catania I introduce Marc as Sirhan Sirhan and don’t think much about it. I introduce Marc fourth, and then move on to the horns, as usual. I’m introducing Curtis on the trombone and I see these Neanderthal guys pushing their way to the front of the crowd. They are all wearing white T-shirts with muscles built on top of other muscles. And they are all frothing at the mouth and pointing at me. About ten of them. They are trying to get over the chain-link fence that separates us from the crowd. They try to tear it down. They are pointing at me and screaming and what is even stranger is that they appear to be yelling in English.

  After the show I ask the people backstage what was going on. I find out that they are drunk U.S. Marines and they want to kill me because of the Sirhan Sirhan comment, and I have to be hidden in the basement and snuck out, hours after the concert is finished.

  We play in London, and I remember that we were great that night. After the show two well-dressed Arab men come up to me and say that the ambassador to Beirut would like to speak to me, and lead me out of the dressing room to meet him.

  The ambassador loved the show and wants us to come to Beirut to play. I think it is a fantastic idea and we are exchanging addresses. Roy is standing behind him, wringing his hands and shaking his head no, no, no, no.

  When I am talking to the ambassador, we speak eye to eye. He appears to be my height. When the conversation is over, he suddenly drops down and is a foot and a half shorter than he had been a moment ago. Then the two well-dressed bodyguards pick up the fancy box the ambassador had been standing on. The three of them walk off, with Roy still wringing his hands like I am about to force him onto a plane to Beirut that night.

  We play these towns and at the beginning of the show, there is often a sea of local photographers standing at the front of the stage. All shooting upwards. This is the least flattering angle possible, straight up, underneath the face, shooting up the nose. It is worse if you are playing the saxophone and your neck and cheeks are puffed out with air or contorted in a straining exhale. When we arrive in a town there are usually two or three photos of me in the local daily paper, by their in-house photographer, from last year, that make me look something like an angry giant hamster with a double goiter.

  We are playing in Poland and they have allowed fifty photographers to shoot the first few minutes of the show. They’re right in front of the stage, fighting each other for position. They are actually fighting to be in position to get an even worse shot, right in the middle to shoot right up my nose.

  I try to explain to them that if they went all the way stage left or stage right, it might make a better shot. They don’t seem to understand. They don’t seem to want to understand, since they are all fighting to get closer, no matter how ridiculous the shot. “Closer! Closer better!”

  I hop down off the stage and try to get one or two of the photographers to get up on the stage so I can take their picture from below. When they develop the film they will see and stop this horrible practice of turning me into Mr. Goiter Hamster. I am not sure if they understand me or not but no one will give up their camera and now I am surrounded by photographers taking my picture while the band plays up on the stage.

  The stage is actually kind of high, about five feet off the ground. The audience watches my initial awkward failure to climb back up onto the stage. I am thinking that the show is only five minutes old and this is going very badly, when someone grabs me from behind.

  It is a girl who has rushed forward to show her love for me by frenetically throwing her arms around my neck. But I don’t know that.

  I have my horn, I have a deeply innate sense about protecting my horn at all costs. I protect it as one would protect one’s child. The girl has come at me from behind, so I don’t see her or know her intentions. I feel someone assailing me, and I put my elbow out, hard, to ward off an attack, but mostly the reflex was to protect my horn.

  This poor girl goes
flying. She lands askew on top of the people in the front row. So for the audience, it looks as though a fan has come running up to hug me and I’ve decked her.

  In 2015, I had a show of my paintings at the Zachęta National Gallery in Warsaw. Several journalists asked why I had hit the woman during The Lounge Lizards concert years earlier.

  * * *

  —

  Even though it said in the contract that my name could not be singled out on posters, that the band was called “The Lounge Lizards” and not “John Lurie and The Lounge Lizards,” every time we arrived anywhere, the posters were huge pictures of me and said things like, “From Down by Law and Stranger Than Paradise, John Lurie with his band The Lounge Lizards.” I couldn’t control it. The band understood what was happening, but still, it created a wedge between me and them. It was harder and harder to hold it together like it was a tribe performing a shamanic ritual, which was the only thing that mattered to me. Somehow show business, just like the Catholic Church, was taking something magical and making it earthbound and creepy.

  When the band was finally great, we would be on tour, and after we ripped the roof off the place somewhere in Europe, the press would come into the dressing room after the show and just want to talk about Stranger Than Paradise and Down by Law. It was exasperating.

  Actually, it was heartbreaking. How could they not understand what they had just witnessed?

  “Why did you shoot Stranger Than Paradise in black and white?”

  “Jim was given the film by Wim Wenders, so that is what we used and it worked.”

  “Are you going to make another movie with Jim Jarmusch?”

  “I don’t know. Did you see the concert?”

  “Yes, I was there. Very nice. What is Jim Jarmusch doing now? Is he writing?”

  “Look, motherfucker, Jim Jarmusch had one good idea and it was mine. Now get the fuck out.”

  Poor Jim. I have a lot of warmth toward him in a way.