Suck and Blow

by John Popper

  33

  SHRIVERIANS AND LIBERTARIANS

  I met Bill Clinton twice when he was president. The first time was on December 17, 1998. It was the night before the House of Representatives began their formal debate over his impeachment and the day after he ordered air strikes against Iraq, purportedly because Saddam Hussein had defied UN weapons inspectors. Some people thought that the reason he had done this was to provide a distraction from the impeachment proceedings. I remember driving there with my manager saying, “To the White House!” as if we were going to get to the bottom of it, as if I was Bruce Wayne and Dave Frey was Dick Grayson.

  I was there to perform as part of the A Very Special Christmas concert to benefit the Special Olympics. It was preceded by an event hosted by Eunice and Sarge Shriver to promote the concert and the organization, which she founded. I have to admit that I did not know this or quite know who she was when I first met her.

  We were at a photo shoot for the event. Gwen Stefani was there, and Sting was there. I was following Gwen Stefani around, and Gwen Stefani was following Sting, around and Sting was kind of following me around because he wanted to tell me that “Dustin Hoffman works out to your music.” I said, “No freaking way!” He said, “Yes, I was on his yacht and asked him, ‘What’s this horrible shit?’ and he said, ‘Blues Traveler.’” And I was like, Wow, Sting just abused me in a joke! I was the butt of a Sting joke, and I loved that.

  Sheryl Crow was talking to Eunice, and I remember saying to myself, She was opening for me, and now she’s at the White House again—how do I do that?

  Then Eunice came over to me and was very sweet in a way that was clear she didn’t know who I was and I didn’t know who she was. I thought she was Sting’s mom. When we took a picture, I tried to get her to wear an elf hat. She said in a very classy way, “I don’t think so.”

  And later they told me that she was JFK’s sister and that not only was she running this event but that she also started the entire concept of the Special Olympics.

  Afterward she wrote a letter to each person, but she wrote mine to my manager, Dave Frey, thinking he was the entertainer, thanking him for his talent and artistic creativity. And then Sarge, who himself was the founding director of the Peace Corps under JFK and served as George McGovern’s running mate in the 1972 election, added a note at the end, talking about me and my harmonica. You could see the save. It was the most adorable thing, and I had the letter to Dave Frey framed.

  From there I would go to other events of hers, and she was so sweet to me. The next time Eunice referred to me as John, and it was clear she knew who I was. We had a really great time together, and anyone who knew her knows what a huge heart she had. She was one of the genuine articles. You hear about noblesse oblige, and she’s from that school—they really are, that whole family. They genuinely feel a dedicated obligation to better the situation of the entire world around them, and that indeed is a rare thing. Eunice and I met on such equivalent terms—neither knew who the other was—and we became really good friends.

  I would say to them I’m not a Democrat or a Republican; I’m a Shriverian because they really cared so much about doing things for other people. It’s one thing to say it, but to see it in action really blew me away. They would do nothing but stuff for other people, and in the process they had a ball in the form of bringing people together and having a party. I’ve seen their sons Bobby and Mark do it too, and they remain dear friends.

  It was during this reception that I approached Eric Clapton and asked him whether he would sit in with me during the concert. I couldn’t believe I asked him, but I figured I had to. The fact that I was there at the White House already placed me in that situation of improbability, so why not?

  He said yes, and then other people started to ask him. I wound up making a lot of work for him, but he didn’t mind. He told me later, “It’s like I’m running the show,” and he liked that at the White House—that’s a fun place to be a musical mainstay. I think he had a ball doing that.

  That night, when I did my song with Clapton, a version of Canned Heat’s “Christmas Blues,” I had been told in no uncertain terms that the president would not sit in with me, that at no point would he be playing saxophone, and we were not to ask.

  When I met Bill, I wanted to look into the eyes that were the center of all this controversy and scandal. I wanted to see what kind of person lay behind those eyes, and he just seemed exhausted. He seemed almost asleep at the wheel, just happy to be alive. But I was blown away—he was the president, after all. Hillary, however, seemed wide awake and very aware of what was happening. There was an intensity to her. The contrast was quite stark.

  The night ended in style, though, when I picked Bill Clinton up off the ground in front of the Secret Service and nobody shot me. The music was over, people were all hugging, so I figured I’d pick up the president and see what he weighed. I did, and he giggled like Barney Rubble.

  I guess by that point the Secret Service knew who I was. I’m a gun guy, so I had been talking shop with them all day. They taught me how to do things Secret Service style, where they hold their pistols close to the body and then push forward into an isosceles stance. Good stuff to learn.

  One time my bus driver was driving a gospel group to the White House. A few days earlier he had taken a gun from a meth head who was trying to sell it to him at a truck stop for twenty bucks. He did the right thing, which was to give the guy twenty dollars, then take the gun and throw it under his bus. He forgot about it, as his intent was to disarm a meth head, but during the security check they found it. He got detained, and they asked him what other bands he had driven. He said the word Blues, and before he could say Traveler they said, “John Popper.” So the Secret Service knows very well about me. It’s nice they’re aware of me.

  The second time I met President Clinton was two years later at the same event. That time I would play with B. B. King, Stevie Wonder, and many others. I arrived on December 13, 2000, the day before the Very Special Christmas event, and that turned out to be the day Al Gore made his concession speech to George W. Bush. A number of the musicians went over to the vice president’s mansion for an impromptu performance, and I joined them. Al’s daughters were so kind. I felt bad because I had voted Republican, but they said, “We know. That’s why we’re glad you’re here.” I never forgot that, and it moved me. I think that’s important, because it’s easy to preach to your choir. It’s the people who preach to the other choir who are the badasses. That evening the Gores decided to let it go and have a celebration for the campaign they had run, the people who supported them, and the country as a whole. I played with Tom Petty and Jon Bon Jovi, and Tipper Gore was on the congas with me. It was an amazing night.

  That evening was also the first time I played with Stevie Wonder. He was up there at the end of the night and called out, “Hey Blues Traveler guy!” The problem was I didn’t have my harmonicas.

  Earlier in the day Susan Bank, my illustrious manager, was sight-seeing, having her Jackie O moment. In doing that, she left my harmonicas in the broom closet, wherever the freaking broom closet was. They were the only set of harmonicas I had. The opening band had a few harmonicas, so I borrowed theirs—they only had three or four of them and they were all gross with spit all over them, but that’s what you do if you’re a harp player—they should have a T-shirt that reads, “Harp players will put anything in their mouths.”

  So Stevie Wonder called me up, and they’re doing a vamp in the key of F, for which I would need a B-flat harmonica, but I didn’t have that key. So I had to climb on stage, tap him on the shoulder while this big jam was going on, and say, “Hey Stevie, it’s me, the Blues Traveler guy—I don’t have that key.” And he called out, “Wait a minute,” and he stopped the whole thing. “What key do you have?” I said, “Well, I guess I could do it in E,” so he yelled, “E!” I was livid. I went up to Susan afterward: “Did you see what you did? You stopped Stevie from getting his funk on.” I felt terri
ble.

  Then the next evening I performed with B. B. King. I had met him on Letterman a couple of years earlier when we played “The Thrill Is Gone.” B. B. was great because he always made people feel welcome, and he was of a generation who shouldn’t have anything to do with me. After we did the song on Letterman he asked me, “How come I haven’t played with you before?” And in my mind I thought, I did it again. I fooled another blues musician.

  So they teamed us up again for “Back Door Santa,” which we both thought was a wildly inappropriate song to do for a president. Who was vetting the material? We both thought that was a strange and pervy song to do in front of any president, let alone Bubba.

  But the two of us took the stage, the curtain opened, and nothing was happening. So I looked out there, and the big chair was empty. Then he came running out of the bathroom with the Secret Service following him, so I took my chance and said, “Mr. President, you don’t have to run. We’ll wait for you—you’re the president.” He responded, “I was just going to get my harmonica.” At that point I knew I was officially Americana because the most powerful man in the world knew what I did for a living.

  When I spoke with the president that night I was trying to think of something clever to say, like, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass,” without getting kicked out by the Secret Service. If you go too far, someone will eject you bodily into a prison cell or the street, at least. But I still I needed to say something cute and partisan in a friendly kind of way.

  So I walked up to him and said, “I want you to know, you’ve humanized the presidency, and I think people will look back at you very fondly.” And in my head I was asking myself, What the fuck just happened? But when you meet the most powerful man in the world, you want him to like you. And he’d been nothing but nice to me. They are very charming people, all of them.

  It’s like when I later met George W. Bush with my fiancée at the time, Delana, who hated him. Bush said to me, “You better marry this girl before she changes her mind.” And then she got all gooey: “Ohh, Mr. President.”

  But Bill was moved by what I said. He gave me the double handshake and the lower-lip bite. It was really cool.

  What I didn’t expect was that Hillary would be moved. That was the scariest part—her concrete smile, that face sort of cracking. To see her get moved was a very strange sight.

  Later on, after the night was over, I was riding up on the elevator, and it was just Jon Bon Jovi and me. He turned to me and grumbled, “F’ing bastards stole the election from us.” I had three or four floors left and thought, Do I tell him I’m a Republican, or do I just humor him for a few more floors? So I looked at him, shook my head, and muttered, “F’ing bastards.”

  The truth is, though, that my experiences have really made me a centrist. I very much believe the Clintons and the Bushes are really trying to do the same thing as the Shrivers, which is to find solutions to help people.

  In October 2014 I was at an event for Chelsea. Hillary was there and was really nice. Brendan brought his daughter, who was about seven, and she saw the guy from Grey’s Anatomy, McDreamy, Patrick Dempsey. I had worked with him on something, so we were talking, but she was too afraid to ask him for an autograph, and then he walked away. But Hillary Clinton got him out of the audience and made him take a picture with Brendan’s daughter. That was pretty cool, and she seemed to know all about Princeton and our lives and really identified with me, and I have to say she did show her political stuff. Unlike Nancy Pelosi, I feel like I could have a discussion with Hillary Clinton where there would be some middle ground.

  I feel that way about the Clintons. You can’t hate them, because I think that to be president, on some level you have to understand people. I think even Richard Nixon knew how to relate to somebody. Certainly Hillary’s got those chops—I think she knows how to relate to people on some level, and that’s what a president does. When I met George W. Bush and George Bush Sr. I felt the same way. You’ve got to love them all because they’re your president.

  We’re always going to be smarmy because we’re the first world and we’re idiots and we waste things. We’re a dreadful nation built by pirates who stole other people’s land. There’s no justifying us, save the fact that our country belongs to everyone in the world. That to me is our saving grace.

  This is why we can’t stop allowing immigrants into the United States because that’s what we’re made of. The one redemption we have is that this country belongs to everybody because we stole it and the only way to make that right is have it be for everybody. This nation, above all other nations, has to do that.

  The game of politics can be confusing. I think that’s the problem with our system. Everybody wants to have a sound bite and a nutshell, and when you try to be a true-blue Democrat or Republican, you miss out on being a human unless you’re just trying to get your brand of cereal across. I think neither side has it figured out.

  I’m liberal on social issues, but I also see gun rights as a social issue, and I think you should be free to do whatever you want. I still lean Republican on monetary and military ideas. I guess that makes me something of a libertarian, although libertarians tend to be isolationist and utopian, which makes me not quite a libertarian either. Still, I figure libertarians are open-minded; they’re the Unitarians of politics. Usually when something has “arian” in a suffix, that means they’re open-minded—Unitarians, Libertarians, librarians. But oddly Aryans don’t, and the only difference with them is sometimes a Y.

  The problem for me is that Libertarians right now under Ron Paul are pro-life.

  I went to a Libertarian rally, and there was one pro-choice Libertarian who spoke. He said, “You could say that being Libertarian was a pro-choice thing if you look at a mother’s womb as a property rights issue.” And he was booed. It was terrible—they were booing a fellow Libertarian who was merely suggesting another way to look at something that really is kind of unknown. It just showed me that the group is a cult of personality that turns on whatever Ron Paul says is the definition of Libertarian.

  At one point I got to have a meal with Ron Paul and asked him some questions about isolationism, which he seemed to support. I asked, “How can you do that? How can you just leave Israel to its fate?” And he said, “If we take the cuffs off Israel, you’d be amazed how well Israel handles its own job. Israel will wreak hell when it needs to.” That’s more reasonable than I thought, but it’s still just a little naïve for me.

  There isn’t a party that defines everyone, and I think everyone’s catching on to that. I think that before, people were uniformly one thing or the other. But something that can’t be denied lately is the way Republicans have been tearing themselves apart. It’s a sad thing to see, but I’m hoping it’s one of these replenishing things, where what will emerge is a valid conservative argument.

  Can the Republicans modify their agenda? They’ve got to let go of the gay marriage thing and the abortion thing. You’re interfering with someone else’s lifestyle. Abortion may be debatable, but gay marriage—really? Marriage is a ceremony that was invented in the Middle Ages to make sure everyone knows this is who I’m screwing and I own her.

  I think the abortion thing is a problem for Republicans because the church is in on that one too deeply. I think there’s a real dilemma with the social issues, and that loses it for them. At the end of the day, do you vote more for social issues or for money? I think you try to vote on money, but the act of voting itself implies some sort of idealism.

  At times it all comes down to us vs. them, and we’re clearly right and they clearly aren’t. I thought I had outgrown that in elementary school. It’s the first rule of living on a playground—you realize, Wow, maybe they’re people too. Maybe they have a good idea. So then you deprive yourself of half of the good ideas out there. This is where somebody funny would come in and say, “More than half.”

  I suppose I’ll go back to Winston Churchill who said the only thing worse than the democratic proce
ss is everything else. If we can come up with a better form of democracy, I’m interested, but I kind of like the arguing. Even when I’m losing the argument, I feel the most comfortable.

  That’s what struck me about Occupy—once they started requiring hand gestures, they became elitists because you needed to know their vernacular. So then it became how hip you were and how much you knew on the inside before you could communicate with them.

  While I was growing up my dad was Republican, my mom was Democrat, all the girls were Democrats, and all the boys except one were Republicans. But then there was some fluctuation of issues: a sister might be more conservative on something, a brother might be more liberal, and every Thanksgiving there would be this huge debate that would go around and around. I think that was a good way to grow up because nobody seemed right.

  That’s how a society should function: where nobody is completely happy because that’s life. That’s why we have teeth and nails—we have to chew and tear things. If everything went our way, it all would be applesauce.

  I’ve always held that the answer’s in the center. Even my band agrees they might be Democrats, but they’ve become conservative Democrats. And if I’m a Republican, then I’ve become one of the most liberal Republicans I know, and that’s because we know we need the other side.

  It’s a very hard place to be when you don’t know which party you belong to, but I think that’s the reality of things: we want it to be us-them, Army/Navy, Yale/Harvard, crips/bloods—pick your team and have it be that simple. But nothing is that simple, the answer is always in the murky middle, and that isn’t a fun story—people want Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker.

  I sometimes think that if after Return of the Jedi, when they’ve destroyed the Death Star and Darth Vader and the Emperor are dead, that Han, Leia, and Luke Skywalker will initiate a totalitarian regime that’s just as bad. They’ll call it the Helping Republic, but it’ll be just as brutal—they’ll make Ewok hunting legal with no rights for Hutts. Maybe Jabba the Hutt is the most noble of Hutts and we just don’t understand the Hutt mentality, but they’re slimy, they have horrible tongues, and they’re fat, so kill ’em all.