There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll

by Robinson, Lisa

  I asked Gaga if she was, as had been reported in some tabloids, bulimic. If she threw up to stay thin. “Sometimes,” she said. But she was very clear that that, along with her smoking cigarettes, was not something she was in a big rush to encourage her fans to do. I asked about the fake English accent I’d heard her put on in some televised interviews. She told me that she sometimes got nervous. She got panic attacks. I told her that once, when she was on Saturday Night Live, at the end of the show when they all lined up to say goodnight, I noticed that she was standing by herself. She looked alone and vulnerable. All the guys were hugging each other, but no one was hugging her. For just a few seconds I could see a glimmer of the girl who felt unpopular. She thought about this, then said, “Well, I think maybe people are afraid of me.” I asked if she’d ever been in therapy. “Anytime I ever tried anything like that,” she said, “they always wanted to talk to ‘the real me.’ And I thought, fuck off. What do you know about me? Just because I have a wig on my head doesn’t mean that I’m not a real fuckin’ person.”

  It was starting to get dark. We hadn’t put on any lights, and our talk was winding down. She said, “I’m in a state of genuine gratitude and I have a sense of humility about my work and about the love being channeled back into me. What I often see occur in the world of music is that people smell the money. They don’t smell the love. It’s that thing that’s invisible.”

  • • •

  A few weeks after I’d spent time with Gaga in New York, she was on Staten Island, directing and starring in an “autobiographical” video for her song “Marry the Night.” It was an elaborate shoot with many different scenes: a dance class, a re-creation of the stairs in her Stanton Street apartment where she lugged a keyboard up and down, “neighbors” coming out to look at her. Then, I found out what had happened on “the worst day of her life.” In one scene, she was wheeled on a table into a women’s clinic. She was seen in a hospital bed. That was followed by a scene where an actress who played her best friend Bo took Gaga back to her (re-created) one-room apartment. Gaga got into bed and then, got a phone call with the news that she was dropped from her record label. In her trailer before she was about to shoot this scene, there was some discussion about how far she should go with all of this. “I want it to be humiliating,” she said. “It can’t be safe.” She sent someone to a local mini-mart to purchase a sanitary napkin or a diaper. And while she never actually came out and said specifically what had happened, it seemed to me that this could have been a miscarriage, or an abortion. Followed, on the same delightful day, by being dropped from her first record label. As we discussed the various possible undergarments she could wear, she joked: “People will probably think I had my dick cut off.” (In the finished video, what actually happened is still left to the imagination. Some people think it was a suicide attempt. For all I know, it might have been.) As she prepared to film that scene, she took a swig out of a bottle of Jameson’s, turned to her choreographer Richie Jackson and me, and started to cry. “I’m re-living the worst day of my life,” she said. “We’re already walking on thin ice with this video. It’s chaotic and sad. We could fake it and be safe, but I don’t want it to be safe. I can’t do anything halfway.”

  *

  When we talked at the Mandarin Oriental on September 11th, Gaga told me she was already planning her “Born This Way” world tour. She said she wanted to perform in China. Are you nuts? I asked. They’ll put you in jail. “I would go to prison for my music,” she said. I said that it was all well and good to say this in such a cavalier fashion while sitting in a luxury hotel. The reality of a Chinese prison would not be the fantasy prison in her “Telephone” video, with her wearing stiletto heels and sunglasses made of cigarettes. Of course, I said, she probably wouldn’t even be allowed into China. But, she said, “I say this cavalierly and with tons of commitment and focus: I would consider it an artistic moment of love and commitment if I was to be jailed for my work. You can’t write a song called ‘Born This Way’ and then just promote and perform it in places with more hospitable environments. The point of the song is to make a statement and enforce change.” I told her that it was impossible, at age twenty-six, for her to know how she would feel about what lay ahead. I reminded her how, when we first talked, I asked her what would happen if she wound up another burnout, a crazy casualty. At that time, she said, “If I wind up a crazy casualty, then that’s my destiny.” This time, she said, “I’ll say it again. Everyone takes me way too seriously. And not seriously enough.”

  Ten

  In 1988 I took a trip down South. The purpose—ostensibly—was to find musicians for a little record label that Richard and I had at Sony Records. Walter Yetnikoff was the head of Sony Records at that time and a friend. He thought that since I went out every night to clubs, and Richard had produced albums, we could find bands and bring them to Sony. The venture was pretty much a non-starter from the beginning. No one at the label listened to our warnings that “alternative rock” was about to happen—especially with some little bands out of the Pacific Northwest, namely Mudhoney, Green River (an early incarnation of Pearl Jam) and Nirvana. But Robinson Records really began to unravel, and eventually folded, when Walter was fired in 1990. We had no “godfather” to protect us and had signed only a few commercially unsuccessful baby bands. Ahmet Ertegun had offered me a label a year or so earlier, but stupidly, I turned him down. Clearly, I bet on the wrong horse. And no, there was no “conflict of interest” concern—I never wrote about any of the bands we were involved with, and the music business was a business where the most powerful lawyers routinely represented all sides in most deals.

  But in 1988, I still thought this was a going concern, and I decided to travel as a combination tourist and talent scout, to see what was going on outside of New York City. I started out in Nashville, where I met up with the British engineer and producer Glyn Johns—who was there to check out some local group. Glyn was a friend who had worked on Led Zeppelin’s first album, the Stones’ Exile on Main Street and various albums for the Who and the Eagles. He also engineered The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions album in 1970. That featured the blues giant Howlin’ Wolf with British musicians Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Ian Stewart, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman. I wanted Glyn to produce a re-make of that album with some old blues musicians and the young guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimmie Vaughan, Joe Perry, Eddie Van Halen and Slash. Walter Yetnikoff said he’d put up the money for the project.

  At that time, I wasn’t familiar with Nashville. I didn’t know about the famed Ryman Auditorium, which was the original home of the Grand Ole Opry shows. I didn’t know about the Hatch Show Print poster shop on Broadway with the old printing presses in the back of the store. Or the historic dive bar, Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge—and its walls covered with photos of the great country singers who had performed in the place. All of this would come much, much later. As I’ve said, I grew up thinking the South was full of hillbillies and bigots. Images of the Klu Klux Klan and civil rights marches were imprinted on my brain. I thought most Southerners were Jesus freaks who didn’t have a full set of teeth. The few times I’d been to New Orleans or Atlanta in the 1970s and ’80s were with Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones. When traveling with those bigtime bands, my experiences were mostly high-end. Or, we flew in, they did the show, we flew out. Before this 1988 trip, my travels had been specific: I “covered” a concert, or a tour. I did interviews. There was a story, a deadline. This trip was different.

  I had a few vague plans. In Nashville, in addition to seeing Glyn, I arranged to meet up with Duck Dunn, the bass player for Booker T. and the MG’s. Duck played on many of the great records that came out of Stax Records in Memphis—among them “Hold On, I’m Comin’” and “I Can’t Turn You Loose.” He also played bass for Isaac Hayes, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, and Bob Dylan. Most notably, he had created the bass line for Otis Redding’s “Dock of the Bay.” And Duck made no secret, especially after a few
alcoholic beverages, that he considered that bass line the melody of the song—for which he never got the credit; but Duck had finally achieved some well-deserved worldwide acclaim with The Blues Brothers movie. Duck and his wife June visited me at the Vanderbilt Plaza Hotel. We stayed up until three a.m., drinking and watching TV. I made some Video 8 tapes of that night: Duck wore white shoes and noodled around on his bass guitar. We watched Chrissie Hynde on TV sing the great Lorna Bennett tune “Breakfast in Bed.” I talked about Chrissie and Ray Davies and how badly that had worked out. Duck talked about Otis Redding and the Staple Singers.

  Following my brief two-day stay in Nashville, I went to Memphis to see Jim Dickinson. Jim was the musician who brought the great bluesman Furry Lewis to meet the Rolling Stones’ plane when we landed in Memphis on July 3, 1975. Jim had played piano on the Stones’ “Wild Horses” track, and on a Flamin’ Groovies album Richard produced in 1969. Jim played on Stax sessions, had been a member of the band the Dixie Flyers, and was a walking blues encyclopedia. When I got to Memphis, I made the obligatory trips to Sun Studios and Graceland, then I met Jim at Ardent Studios. He talked to me about the local blues legends R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. He talked about Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Keith Richards. He described all of them as soul musicians. Then, he told me I should drive down Highway 61 from Memphis to New Orleans. Jim said it would be a heavy, haunting, transformative trip.

  *

  Other than part of a title of a 1965 Bob Dylan album, I truly had no idea what Highway 61 was, where it was, or why it mattered. I didn’t know that it was called the Blues Highway. Or that it had been the road taken by Delta blues musicians from the cotton plantations up to Memphis. And so I drove, or rather, since I was from New York City and had never learned to drive a car, I was driven, down Highway 61 from Memphis—through Clarksdale, Leland, Robinsonville, Greenwood, Vicksburg and Baton Rouge—to New Orleans. In the car, I listened to tapes of Southern field recordings made in the 1950s by Alan Lomax. Lomax had recorded Negro spirituals, white church music, and chain gang chants. One gospel song in particular—“Why I Like Roosevelt,” by the Soul Stirrers—moved me to tears. I played it over and over again. That music had an eerie, emotional pull. I think even if I hadn’t been playing the tapes in the car, I would have heard that music. It was in the air. As foreign as that church music and those Southern field chants were to someone from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, it all hit me in the heart. Then, in the ears. It was primal, familiar. It was like hearing a train whistle in the middle of the night. Something from your childhood that you didn’t really remember where it came from but somehow, it connected.

  *

  The highway was flat. The soil alongside it was dark. There were signs for crossroads—like the one where Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil. (This was the same absurd myth that had been attributed to Jimmy Page—only Jimmy supposedly made his deal with Aleister Crowley). There were shacks. I saw one with a hand-painted sign that said “School.” In 1988. I was stunned. This was not the same as driving in the Northeast. It felt like another planet. I couldn’t help but think that only thirty years earlier there were chain gangs and signs at gas station rest rooms that said “White Only.” I did not drink on this drive. I was not on drugs. I did not go to juke joints. I don’t remember a lot of it. I videotaped much of the trip but many of those Video 8 tapes are unmarked or lost. But I do, however, remember thinking that Jim Dickinson had been right: it was an almost hallucinatory experience. It was hypnotic, mesmerizing. I felt the intense, almost physical presence of the blues.

  I had heard there was a blues museum in Clarksdale. At that time, it was on the second floor of the local library. This was years before Clarksdale had a proper Blues Museum—thanks to help from actor Morgan Freeman, who also opened his Ground Zero blues club in Clarksdale. A woman who worked at the library got a key to let me in to the large, dusty, second-floor room. Various historical blues artifacts were on display. I thought about the extravagant I. M. Pei building in Cleveland that housed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This blues museum was shameful. I was angry. Then, sad.

  • • •

  Road trips in a car, or in a van with a band, are romantic only in memory. I am always amused when I hear bands affectionately reminisce about the early days before their careers took off. When they played small clubs and could see the faces in the audience. When they shared a close camaraderie during years of struggle. It is absolutely true that massive success brings out the worst in some people. But there is nothing charming about arriving at a budget motel on a highway in the middle of the night. Lugging a suitcase up a flight of stairs into a room that has roaches crawling up the walls. There is little pleasure in driving through the Florida Everglades with signs that warn “Beware of Alligators.” For me, such travel was eye-opening. It was, as Keith Richards has always said about a variety of things, “The price of an education.”

  *

  Driving with bands in vans across America, I often wound up in motels that provided you with one small “bath” towel. The phone and TV barely worked. The vending machines by the stairs were empty. There were lines of scary-looking trucks parked right outside the room. But to me, coming from New York City, from a family that had never owned a car or never took a cross-country road trip (our biggest foray was from the Upper West Side every summer to Fire Island), I found the whole thing exotic. Especially the open-all-night truck stops. These massive complexes actually had showers, although I can’t imagine ever using one. The huge diners served breakfast all night long. It took me awhile to realize what was going on with those truckers parked at the side of the road—the hookers and whatnot. But the best feature of these establishments were the gift shops. All those Harley-Davidson t-shirts, trucker’s hats, chrome-plated medallions of silhouetted naked girls, and little license plates on key chains. There was an abundance of novelty items. For me, this was an exciting retail experience.

  *

  In New Orleans I checked into the Royal Orleans Hotel in the French Quarter where I had stayed with Zeppelin in 1973 and the Stones in 1975. The second time I heard Led Zeppelin sing “It’s been a long time since I rock and rolled” was onstage in New Orleans. And it was rock and roll. Not rock ’n’ roll, the way newspapers and copy editors have butchered the phrase over the years. You need the “and” in there as much as you need the “roll.” Because there’s been way too much rock, and not enough roll. “Rock” is up and down. “Roll” is side to side. It has to be slinky. In New Orleans, I walked around the French Quarter and ate at tourist traps like Antoine’s and Galatoire’s. I didn’t go to any dives. I remembered the first time I was there, in 1973, with Zeppelin. Then, I wandered around the Quarter and heard songs like “Iko Iko” blaring from jukeboxes in bars. I visited clubs like the Gateway and the Nite Cap—where Frankie (“Sea Cruise”) Ford and Ernie (“Mother In Law”) K. Doe performed. In 1988, it wasn’t the same. Ahmet Ertegun wasn’t there to take me to Cosimo’s studios to see Professor Longhair play piano. I only saw Professor Longhair once. Still, I never forgot it. I thought about Ian Stewart, who had died in 1985. I remembered one night in the summer of 1975, when Stu sat in the lobby of the 1776 Inn in Hampton Roads, Virginia. He was alone, at the piano, playing Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill.” I had talked to Led Zeppelin a lot about Stu, who had played piano on “Boogie with Stu,” on Zeppelin’s 1975 Physical Graffiti album. I am in no way a musicologist. I was a fan who felt connected to the music. And somehow, through a series of what Keith Richards would call lucky accidents, I got connected to all the music that was connected. In the South, and in New Orleans especially, there were ghosts everywhere.

  *

  After New Orleans, I went to Austin, Texas, to visit the songwriter and guitarist Stephen Bruton. For me, Stephen Bruton was the only reason to ever go to Texas. I had met Bruton through Earl McGrath in the 1970s. Bruton had played guitar with Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dyla
n, Willie Nelson, and was Kris Kristofferson’s best friend. He was close with Bobby Neuwirth and T Bone Burnett. He was the inspiration for the character Jeff Bridges played in the 2010 movie Crazy Heart. Bruton was handsome, elegant. He wrote songs about drowning beneath bridges burned and learning to live with what you need to live without. He had lived through heartbreak and hard times. Originally from Fort Worth, he had a distinctive Texas twang. I spent an afternoon at his house and taped him singing his songs and playing with his beloved dog Greta. That Video 8 tape has survived.

  *

  Bruton took me to Antone’s—a small blues club which was, at that time, on 5th Street. At Antone’s I met Hubert Sumlin—who had played guitar in Howlin’ Wolf’s band. Hubert was fifty-seven years old. He wore a suit and tie, a fedora hat, and had a twinkle in his eye. He was missing some teeth. He always had a drink in his hand. He was adorable. The seventy-five-year-old piano player Pinetop Perkins was there too. Pinetop had been born on a cotton plantation. In 1942, when he was stabbed in the arm in a bar fight and couldn’t play guitar anymore, he started playing barrelhouse piano, and replaced Otis Spann in Muddy Waters’ band. Pinetop was another one of those old bluesmen who wore a suit and tie, hat, and always had a drink at the ready. I met the guitarist Matt Murphy and saw the very young Charlie Sexton play guitar—years before he joined Bob Dylan’s band. I thought about what Keith Richards said to me in 1975 and repeated constantly over the years: no guitar player ever picked up a guitar thinking they’d get rich. It was a calling.