by John Popper
So I asked him, “So are you through with us? Is this over?” Because we weren’t going to get rid of Precheur. And Bill wouldn’t answer the question; he wouldn’t say yes. He had been trying to scare us with the threat that he was done with us, but he still wouldn’t answer. In that moment I felt I had turned what was a complete barrage into a deflection.
A short while later I was over at Bill’s apartment in New York with his son Dave, and Bill wanted to sit me down. He said, “We have to do something with Precheur and Dave.” He was trying to talk with me and not the band, and he said, “Come on tell me the truth—you know Dave Precheur wants to run the world.”
I said, “Look, Dave Precheur wants to run the world, Dave Graham wants to run the world, John Popper wants to run the world, Chan Kinchla wants to run the world . . .”
Bill responded, “Not me.”
I answered, “Well, you do run the world!” He laughed, and at that point he became conciliatory. Bill was the kind of guy who responded to a funny moment. He was all about the drama of the moment.
And as I walked out, I was in daze—Did I just do that? Did I win?
What was really great was that the next time we were San Francisco in his office, he said, “Wait for a second,” and then Morty Wiggins and Arnie Pustilnik marched into the office as if directed by God. Each of them individually came in and said in his own way, “I want you to know I really believe in the band, and that includes Chan and Bobby and Brendan. I’m really behind you guys.” I got a new taste of what was the industry standard.
I got the greatest ass kissing from these guys who, before then, had referred to us as Dave Graham’s pet project, Dave Graham’s little toy. I think a lot of people at BGP resented that Dave Graham, just out of college, gets his band, so we met a lot of resistance from them. It was tough-going initially. A little while later they started coming to us for favors, and I was very resentful; it was stupid politics, and I was happy to keep score.
Of course, David Graham was a friend of ours, and he’s still a good friend, among my best. One day he invited us to a party at his father’s place, Masada. We’d been there before, but this time Dave was throwing a party. It became apparent pretty quickly that everybody was starting to get naked and make out with each other. It was really groovy, and I felt like, I’m in the hippie capital. I can’t really object to this, but I’m sorry—I’m from New York, I’m neurotic. What can I can tell you?
I think women were running a train on my guitarist.
Masada had several houses, so I was in one of those houses, in somebody’s room, and I was talking to this nude woman. I think she was married to this guy who was in there while we were talking. So she and I started making out, and I felt the husband’s hand caressing her shoulder. Well, that’s alright. But then he reached over to my arm and placed it there, romantically. So I left, and basically I was hanging out while everyone else was fucking.
The thing was, everyone who was there was incredibly good looking. I don’t think ugly people show up to orgies, except that ugly guy in the raincoat who doesn’t know he’s the ugly one. And that was the concern I was having: Am I that guy? There were a couple of other people there like me—Let’s just party with the drugs and pretend we took part in the orgy.
A similar situation took place years later when I was a judge at Nudes-A-Poppin’, which is a pageant held at a nudist colony. Both men and women participate, so the key for me was to go to the bathroom when the male strippers came out so I didn’t have to do any of that judging. I also learned that when a naked man sits in plastic chair you have to towel it off after he leaves, but when a woman sits in a plastic chair naked it’s perfectly fine. I was a judge twice, and the first time I ended up making out with the only person there wearing a shirt who, it turned out, was the date of porn star Ron Jeremy.
A few years after, I returned, met someone else, and we started to fool around in the same room (the couches were exactly the same and had the crunchiest fabric I’ve ever encountered, which may be why I haven’t been back). Well, lo and behold, Ron Jeremy walked in and clearly wasn’t going to make the same mistake this time, so he said, “Room for one more?” and started to get undressed. I was trying to be cool, because I was in the presence of porn people, but when I saw the thing he pulled out, I was traumatized. I lost my erection for the next month.
But back in those early days at Masada, we all were relatively innocent. The funny part was watching Bill Graham come back after his son threw a party. Occasionally we’d get some of that rap. We were his son’s friends and his house was trashed and Bill was walking around cleaning shit up.
Around this time Bill got us a gig opening for the Jerry Garcia Band at the Warfield. And after our set Dave said, “The B-52s are playing—do you want to go see them?” I said, “Sure,” and Bill stared at us like, What the fuck? We don’t know why he was staring at us—he wouldn’t tell us—and when we came back we learned that Carlos Santana had come to meet our band. I missed the whole thing and was so mad. I would have been able to sit in with him if I had just stayed where I was at the Warfield and not gone to see the frigging B-52s.
I did luck out, though. When I came back to the Warfield and heard this, I ran out after him, and there he was. I said, “Oh my God, you’re amazing.” And he said, “Hey, we’re all part of the same thing.”
People treated us differently because of Bill. When we recorded our first album, A& M Records wanted the song “Slow Change” to be our single. When we’d do it live, it was eight minutes long and in a 7/4 time signature, but A&M wanted us to cut it down to three and half or four minutes. It was Bill who said, “The single should be ‘But Anyway,’” and then they immediately said, “Of course, ‘But Anyway.’” He had that impact right away.
The last time I saw Bill alive we finally got Carlos Santana to sit in with our band, and Bill had no small part in it. It was at Golden Gate Park during Ben & Jerry’s One World, One Heart Festival, shortly after the media reported that Miles Davis had died. We did a “Mountain Cry” that was twenty minutes long and felt like our high school graduation. I was dueling with him and Chan was dueling with him and he traded with each of us. We were all keeping up with him, and it was a really long, cool thing. We felt like men after that.
Carlos described the way I play—and I think it’s the way that Blues Traveler plays—as like a salmon fighting its way up a waterfall. I was very happy when he said that because it meant he was paying attention to us. I remember telling Bill how blown away I was. He told me that was how he felt after he met Muddy Waters.
Bill died less than a month later. It was just so unexpected. He loved that helicopter, and the crash also took the life of Bill’s beloved pilot, Steve “Killer” Kahn.
We were at a gig, and I was one who heard about it first, so I called the band members to get on the bus and tell them that he’d been in a helicopter crash. We were all freaking out because we had such plans with Bill. It was a big deal.
My reaction to his death was to punch Bobby in the face.
Whenever we were under stress, a pattern would unfold in which Bobby would be in bad mood and act like a bully. He had this great, infuriating snort, like he couldn’t believe what you just said, and he’d give you the middle finger—put it right in your face and violate your personal boundaries.
So the next day we were at the Pancake House. This was the first meeting where we were talking about what we’re going to do now that Bill’s died—who would be our manger and where we were going.
I think Bobby was getting up to leave to go to the bathroom dismissively when I said, “You can’t leave.” So he snorted and stuck his finger in my face. I stood up and threw a chair across the room. This was in Winooksi, Vermont, and there were all these old people—it was the senior brunch special. I always forget how large I am, and when I threw the chair, I scared the shit out of the entire place.
I went to leave, but before I did, I just turned around and cranked him one, right o
n the nose. Then we went out and had a big talk about what was really bothering us.
We were freaking out, but by the time we got to the memorial, it was clear that Dave Graham was really going through a lot: not only his grief over the loss of his father, but, as all things are when a powerful man dies, it was a clusterfuck. He and his aunts were dealing with various issues from the inheritance, and there were all sorts of questions about who would get what and who would run the company.
I remember River Phoenix was there comforting Dave. I’m not sure where they met, but I remember River looking at me and saying, “I’m so glad I get to be useful today.” And that really struck me because that was exactly what he was being.
We were comforting him as best we could, and then we’d see someone from Bill Graham Presents and it would take on the aura of a soap opera. There was all this tension because there were a lot of unresolved issues about what was going to happen next. It was a little bit like being in a Mario Puzo book. I think that was how Bill Graham ran his outfit—he was the head and he had a family.
The last time I saw Bill alive was the day I got to play with Carlos Santana at Golden Gate Park. The next time I was at Golden Gate Park, Bill had died and I was playing with the Grateful Dead.
Before the show I was in Jerry Garcia’s tent and he was eating a cheeseburger. All he wanted to do was eat his cheeseburger, and there were all these people fussing and not talking to him. I was just staring at the floor. I had my ridiculous harmonica belt with the telescope, and I was playing with telescope. I could see him watching me, and he sort of laughed a little. I could tell he was trying to put me at ease.
Then the room cleared out, and it was just Jerry Garcia and me in this little tent fortification. I heard him sigh, so now I had to say something. This was my moment to talk with Moses, and Moses really just wanted to sit there and eat his cheeseburger. It was a sad day, but I was also very excited to be playing “Wang Dang Doodle” with the Dead. So I meekly offered up, “I’m a flurry of emotions.” There was a long pause, then he sighed again and said, “Me too.” That was the extent of our conversation.
I remembered Carlos Santana doing a song with the Dead, and it seemed like he was trying to overpower them. They would sort of implode over him, so I was very careful to be humble. I didn’t want to impose myself because when you try to establish an ego in a jam with the Grateful Dead, they’ll dissolve the ground beneath you and grow over you like vines. So I got my rocks off and put my chops in, but I didn’t get greedy and try to outdo them or anything. Afterward I said, “That was pretty good,” and David Graham responded, “Man, you should have gone for it.” But there was no way I was going to go up there and try to push Garcia around. It just seemed to me to be the biggest mistake I could make, so I did my humble thing.
Every now and then you see the picture of Garcia and me playing. He’s fat but I’m even fatter, so it looks like the lunar eclipse of the sun where you can see me behind him. A Russian doll of fat musicians.
Although that was the only time I played with Jerry Garcia, in the years since I’ve played with the other members of the Dead, and what I’ve come to appreciate is how they use music like it’s magic. It’s not a big thing to them—it’s just how they hear it.
When it came time to figure out what would happen next for Blues Traveler, we weren’t asking for much; we just wanted to be managed by someone who believed in us. Bill believed in us and Dave believed in us, but the people at Bill Graham Presents never took Dave seriously because he was fresh out of college and hadn’t done anything yet.
Greg Perloff was as good to us as he could be, but he was running BGP, so it needed to be somebody from their ranks. That’s how Dave Frey became our manager. At first he was working for Dave Graham officially, but it wasn’t long before Dave Graham was having problems and couldn’t really manage us. We tried to have an intervention of sorts, but the interventions we had weren’t by-the-book interventions; it was basically me threatening him with an axe handle, screaming that he had to get his shit together or else I would beat his brains out.
Meanwhile, Dave Frey was able to keep things running by dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s. Eventually it became clear that he was the one who knew us best. We’d always had someone who cared, but they had to rely on someone else who was delineating the logistics. This was the first time we had a logistics guy who was managing us. From 1992 to 1993 Dave Frey was becoming the guy, although Dave Graham was still in there. By early 1994 Dave Frey had become our manager and would stick with us through 2000.
It was a tough year or two for Dave after Bill passed, but then he started to become the adult he is now. He’s still one of my best friends. Bill wanted to make him into another business, guy but Dave’s more of a poet. He just didn’t have that lethal bastard gene.
10
A&M BLUES
Back when we were just getting looked at by A&M Records, we were scheduled to play a showcase at Wetlands. We had exactly forty-five minutes to play a carefully composed set of all our various strengths and utilities as a band. This was a real challenge for us, but we were told the reason we only had forty-five minutes was because these record people would come to see a whole bunch of bands, and each had the same amount of time.
But before we got on to play our carefully crafted set, meticulously timed down to forty-five minutes, someone came running up to us and said, “Buddy Miles is here! Buddy is here! And he wants to sit in with you guys!”
This is the guy who did Band of Gypsys. How was I going to say no to Buddy Miles? So he proceeded to kick Chan off of guitar and do a fifteen-minute guitar solo, then kicked Bobby off bass to do a fifteen-minute bass solo, then did a twenty-minute drum opera, and finally he grabbed my acoustic guitar, sang a song, and cried out, “Buddy’s back!” We were supposed to have forty-five minutes for our entire set, and he took more than that in solos alone.
It was horrifying at first, but it just got so funny at that point. Our entire carefully crafted plan to get signed was ruined. But A&M signed us anyhow because they said they liked the way we handled it.
When it came time to record our first album, however, they made it clear that they wanted it to be a documentation of our song catalog. So for us, the big question was: Who would be the producer?
In January 1990 Bill Graham got us into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. There I ran into George Drakoulias, who had produced the first Black Crowes record. I knew he would be perfect for Blues Traveler, so we cornered him: “We’ve got to get you for our record.” He said, “Don’t you understand? I’m over already.” He was about twenty-four years old at the time, so I took that as a blow-off. Maybe he was talking about trends in the music industry, but I still thought it would have been a good album. If Drakoulias had done for us what he’d done for the Black Crowes, that would have been killer. Instead we got Justin Niebank. Poor Justin Niebank. Or maybe that should be poor Blues Traveler.
Justin Niebank had just worked with Jason and the Scorchers as the engineer on their album. That’s mostly what he had done at that point for artists like Albert Collins and Johnny Winter.
A&M’s approach to this album was, “You have thirty songs, so let’s just take the ten best and put them out there.” Justin Niebank’s attitude was, “You might think you have ideas, but you’ve never done this before. I’ve done this before, so listen to me—I’m making sense.” We weren’t angry at him because this was the most attention we’d ever gotten, and he did make sense about a lot of it. But what came out of that was a milquetoast record.
Justin Niebank was so antipot that he didn’t want us smoking before we’d play, which, by the way, is all we’d ever done. Then we went to do “Sweet Talking Hippie” and had to be stoned to play that song. It’s a big stoned jam in one key. So we snuck a joint and, big idiot that I am, just before the take I taunted him: “Justin, we’re all high.”
He stopped the take and proceeded
to yell at us for a good forty minutes—“You’ve let your parents down, you’ve let the label down, you’ve let yourselves down . . .” Then he gave us this born-again lecture about being stoned before saying, “Roll ’em.”
So what you can hear is the most timid “Sweet Talking Hippie” we’ve ever done because it was four boys having just been lectured by some sort of schoolmarm. No, if you’re a producer, you get the take first and then you yell at them. The more I look back at that, the more I’m confounded by his behavior.
Basically what we did with our first record was just do as we were told and shut the fuck up. And it shows. We felt lucky to be anywhere and assumed that the way A&M was treating us was normal. Then we saw our friends the Spin Doctors, who fought hard and whose attitude was, “This could be our one and only album.” And that’s really the way you should look at it. In retrospect I think we should have behaved more like that; we should have made desperate stands.
It was a really bumpy ride getting our album thing going. Our live-show instincts were great, but our recording instincts took a while. We knew how to sell a show, but we didn’t know how to make a record. And, truthfully, the Spin Doctors didn’t either, but they were convinced they did, and that made all the difference.
They fired their first producer in the middle of their first album. That, to me, takes serious balls. I came in and Eric Schenkman was sitting there with half a bottle of whiskey and asked me, “Is this what it all is, John? Is this what we work for?” They wanted me to sing the harmony on “Two Princes.” They were asking for ideas, and this producer was looking at me like, “Help me.” You could tell it was not a coast of a session; they were battling forces I wouldn’t battle. They fired that producer and got another guy, and then they fought that guy.
Pocket Full of Kryptonite is an incredibly concise, brilliantly executed first album. And that’s because they fought for it. Our first album is very confused and a little devoid of purpose. Up until four, we’d say we were all about the live gig, that you can’t capture us on a record. And we had the comfort that people also said that about the Grateful Dead, so we figured it was a thing.
