There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll

by Robinson, Lisa

  It was relatively easy to meet these guys at Antone’s who were, essentially, blues legends. The dressing rooms were like those at CBGB’s, albeit slightly cleaner. Dressing room protocol has changed so much over the years, but at that time, in this blues club, it was loose. There was an easy access. Usually, unless you’re family, a close friend, management or a major celebrity, you don’t go into the dressing room to see musicians before the show. (Except that way too often, a loved one picks a fight right before the show and throws the whole show off.) The only sensible reason some people drop by (or barge into) the dressing room before a show is to let the band know you were there. Record company executives are expert at this move. A pre-show appearance insures that you can flee during, or even before, the show. A quickly muttered explanation, or excuse—“I know it’s going to be mobbed afterwards, so I wanted to say hi now”—doesn’t fool anyone.

  At Antone’s, it was fun to hang out in the dressing rooms late into the night with a beer, or a glass of whiskey, and listen to these guys talk. They all loved women. They all had stories, many of which involved a jealous husband and a gun. The entire area around 6th Street in Austin was full of bars and live music. One night I was walking around 6th Street when I heard a band playing Johnny Thunders’ “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory.” I couldn’t believe that anyone in Texas would know one of my favorite songs, written by the former guitarist of the New York Dolls. It was played by Javier Escovedo who, along with his brother Alejandro, had been in the band True Believers. It was a hot night. I was in Texas. But just hearing that song, I felt like I was home.

  • • •

  In the mid-1960s, I met Ramblin’ Jack Elliott in Greenwich Village. I have absolutely no memory of how I met him. I was young and had not been hanging out in folk clubs on Bleecker Street. I had been sneaking into jazz clubs to see Thelonious Monk and Stan Getz. Nevertheless, I met Jack Elliott. I remember his cowboy hat and his rasping voice. I remember sitting with him at a party, or in a deserted bar on MacDougal Street—or both—while he played acoustic guitar. Hence, I was somewhat shocked when I first heard Bob Dylan doing Ramblin’ Jack’s act. Of course in the end, it didn’t matter if Dylan ripped Jack Elliott off or if they both stole from Woody Guthrie. It was osmosis. Everyone was feeling the same thing at the exact same time. Dylan was just so good. Unlike those purists who were enraged, I welcomed it in 1965 when he “went electric” at Newport. It was the late-1960s Dylan that I liked; the one with the black and white clothes and the sunglasses and the cigarette and the attitude on television talk shows. I practically memorized his 1965 Highway 61 Revisited album.

  Somewhere along the way I stopped following Dylan’s recorded work. But in 1994, when he got onstage at the Woodstock 25th anniversary festival, he was on fire. He seemed to have something to prove. He had been fat. His son Jakob had had a big hit with his band, the Wallflowers. Now, Dylan the elder was slim. He wore a western-style suit and a cowboy hat. He played great. He totally reconstructed his early songs—to the point where they were virtually unrecognizable. It was like watching a great artist re-paint his paintings right in front of you. I met Dylan a few times—once with Walter Yetnikoff and another time backstage in his dressing room at Madison Square Garden. You never knew which Bob Dylan you were going to get. He could give you a limp handshake or a flirtatious grin. He could look right through you or have a spark of recognition in his eyes. For years, he was one of the few I never really wanted to interview. He jerks journalists around. Whether it’s for his own amusement, or he’s bored with the questions, or it perpetuates the “enigma,” it doesn’t matter. For me, it was preferable to remain a fan from afar.

  In 1998, Bob Dylan won the Grammy for Album of the Year for Time Out of Mind. That night, I stood backstage with photographer Kevin Mazur and Dylan’s publicist Larry Jenkins. Dylan and Daniel Lanois (who co-produced the album with Dylan and quickly jumped onstage with Bob to get the award) waited for Sheryl Crow (who had presented him the award). Dylan knew that a girl in the photograph would make for a better photograph. He was, and still is, one of the few of his generation who had grown old but had not grown old and irrelevant. He was then, as he is now, a combination of Muddy Waters and Hank Williams, Little Richard and Johnny Cash. Highway 61 revisited.

  *

  As a passionate sports fan, I am mindful of what Yogi Berra once said: nothing slows a game down like speed. It is the same with music. Count Basie and Keith Richards both have said that the most important notes are the ones you don’t play. There needs to be space. And nowhere was this more evident than in the recording studio, watching what used to be called records being made. In the 1990s, I spent a lot of time in recording studios. Because of Richard’s experiences with the Flamin’ Groovies, Lou Reed and David Johansen, I was familiar with the recording process. But until you’ve spent hours, days—or rather nights—in studios, you can’t possibly know how tedious it can be. How it can destroy the soul. Now musicians make music anywhere with a laptop and Pro Tools (although, of course, with vinyl making such a comeback, it wouldn’t be a surprise if musicians—other than Jack White and Neil Young—bring analog back). But then, it was a coup to secure a big budget from a record company to book studio time at one of the “elite” studios like New York City’s Record Plant or Hit Factory, Woodstock’s Bearsville, or Los Angeles’ Ocean Way. The whole recording thing was ego driven. Some of the most amazing music ever recorded was done quickly. Or with inferior sound equipment. Alan Lomax in the field. Led Zeppelin in two days. But in the 1990s, at a time of fiduciary excess in the recording industry, bands took months futzing around in the studio. Some still do. Some take years.

  With some of the bands I’ve witnessed, a typical recording session might start at six p.m. For nocturnal types, nighttime was more desirable. It also was cheaper. Musicians could work all night, sleep all day, and not have to show up at the studio again until eight p.m. And yet, there still was always someone in the band who wouldn’t show up on time. Jimmy Iovine once told me that the reason he quit producing records and became a record executive was because he got tired of waiting around in the studio for the guitar player to show up. Rhythm tracks—drums and bass—were usually the first to be recorded. Sometimes the band would play live in the studio, all together. Then the guitar parts would be re-recorded later. Presumably—although not always—those guitar parts would be “better.” Rick Rubin has said that guitars can be recorded anywhere, but drums change from room to room. Producers often hate drummers. Funnily enough, they prefer a drummer who can keep time, as opposed to someone who has the right “feel,” or had been in the band since the band formed in college. Or was the “live” drummer. (This was something that had never been a problem in Muddy Waters’ band. Or at Motown or Stax. Or with the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin.) If the band’s own drummer wasn’t good enough to keep time in the studio, or refused to play with a click track (a sort of metronome), the drummer was replaced by a session guy—like perennial studio favorite Jim Keltner. Or a drum machine. A well-known heavy metal guitarist once told me that he, personally, had to re-do all of his drummer’s parts in the studio. Microphones were placed in front of each piece of the drum kit with a precision that would not have been unfamiliar at NASA. I remember many nights of arguments in various studios about whether the hi-hat was too loud. Or the bass drum had the right “roundness.” I remember one band that “needed” a special drum “tuner” who they flew across the country at great (and recoupable back to the record company) expense. All this stuff could, and often did, drive people insane.

  For the uninitiated, should there be such a thing anymore, “tracks” are like little lanes on a highway, all next to each other. Even with 48-track consoles that resemble something out of science fiction, the drum tracks alone—the hi-hat, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals—could use a dozen tracks. The lead guitar part had its own “lane.” The rhythm guitars had their own lanes for overdubs. There could be ten m
ore tracks for guitar overdubs. And it still wouldn’t be enough. Tracks were left open for keyboards, percussion (tambourine, maracas, cowbells) and such. And then, of course, there were the vocals. This usually came last. In the case of singers like Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler or U2’s Bono, it really was last. Often, the lyrics weren’t even written. I remember being in the studio with Audioslave when Chris Cornell hadn’t finished lyrics and he just sang gibberish. Sometimes, gibberish remained. I don’t care what anyone says, I personally think that “Stairway to Heaven” is just such an example. Certainly the lyric “I’m just trying to find the bridge” in Zeppelin’s “The Crunge” must have been Robert Plant imploring the band to get him out of the verse.

  After lead vocals, the band listened back. With rock bands, and certainly in the days before Auto-Tune could electronically “correct” out-of-tune notes (and give some people a career), the singer “punched in” words or lines that had melodically misfired. Then, there were vocal overdubs and harmonies. The final step is mixing. This is a process so byzantine, so fraught with drama, that it is a miracle any of these records ever got made. Mixing means putting all the recorded tracks together and getting the balance right. I’ve been in studios when bands have stormed out, had fistfights, or broken up over mixes. This, of course, was before computers and digital, but the process is still the same. I’ve been there when some bands have listened to fifty or sixty mixes of the same song until you just want to scream that no one could possibly hear the difference. Except that someone always does. If a single part is one decibel too loud or soft, it can throw the whole thing off. Or so the musicians think. The bass player wants his part louder so there’s enough “bottom.” The drummer thinks the cymbals can’t be heard. The guitarist thinks the vocals are too loud in the mix. Depending on the band’s budget, this undertaking could, often did, and still can take months. And none of this makes the actual songs any better.

  Being in the studio, at night, secluded, cossetted, with food, drinks, or drugs, was at first, and for many still is a sexy, romantic experience. Not for me. Not anymore. I’ve seen hours wasted because friends drop by. Or parents want to visit. People outside the band think it’s a party. I’ve seen producers lock bands in the studio and won’t let them out until mixes are done. I’ve been there when a musician sneaks in to remix what someone else did the night before. I’ve seen people sit at a mixing board for so long they won’t even get up to go to the bathroom; they literally pee in a jar.

  And yet, in 1990, when I asked Glyn Johns to re-record The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions with young guitarists, I was excited. When Glyn wanted more money to do this than Sony was prepared to pay for a small blues project, I called Tom Dowd. Tom was an engineer and producer who had worked with Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Booker T. and the MG’s, Rod Stewart and many others. In 1974, I had visited him in Miami while he recorded 461 Ocean Boulevard with Eric Clapton. Tom Dowd was happy to go to Chicago to produce an album that we decided would be a tribute to Muddy Waters. I tracked down musicians who had played with Muddy Waters: Pinetop Perkins, drummer Willie Smith and bassist Calvin Jones. We also asked Hubert Sumlin—who had been in Howlin’ Wolf’s band—to play guitar.

  On June 17, 1991, we assembled at the old Chess Studios in Chicago. It took only two days with these guys to record the backing tracks for most of the songs in the Muddy Waters catalogue. Chess Studios, which had originally been at 2120 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, was Muddy Waters’ first recording label. Howlin’ Wolf, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Ernie K. Doe and others had all made records for Chess too. The Rolling Stones recorded an instrumental track, “2120 South Michigan Avenue,” on their 1964 12×5 album. Sometime in the mid-1960s Chess moved to 320 East 21st Street. I don’t remember where we recorded the tracks with Tom, Pinetop, Hubert, Calvin and Willie. But it was a recording session unlike any I’d seen with rock bands. The very early blues recordings were often done in a few hours. So were the Sun Studios records made by Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. Our plan was to take the approximately twenty songs these guys did in just two days and have guitarists Slash, Eddie Van Halen and others overdub solos and vocals. Somehow, nothing ever came of this and the project was shelved. And for once in my life I, a collector to the point where my storage spaces and my apartment look like something from the TV show Hoarders, walked out of that studio without the tapes. They still cannot be found.

  • • •

  When I first went to Austin in the summer of 1988, I met James Cotton at Antone’s. James Cotton is considered the best living blues harmonica player. According to Keith Richards, Mick Jagger is also a great harmonica player. Keith has often said that Mick’s soul shines through when he plays blues harmonica. And the Stones are at heart, a blues band. In 1981, when the Stones played with Muddy Waters at the Checkerboard Lounge in Chicago, Ian Stewart sat in on piano. I remember how Stu took a drink out of a bottle of whiskey, passed it around, then carefully put the top back on the bottle so nothing would spill when he placed it back on the piano. Such was his respect for the piano. And for the music. And for Muddy Waters, who shared vocals with Mick that night. They were on a tiny stage. Mick held back a bit. He took the lead vocal only when Muddy told him to do so. Mick was thirty-eight years old. Muddy was sixty-eight. The Stones took their name from a Muddy Waters song. You certainly could have enjoyed the Rolling Stones without ever having heard Muddy Waters. Or Robert Johnson or Chuck Berry. Most of the Stones fans weren’t familiar with the music that had inspired the band. But knowing what comes before enriches the experience.

  *

  Ian Stewart talked to me once about how bizarre he thought it was that, in the 1960s, the English white guys came to America and played American black music to American white people. After Stu died in 1985, Keith Richards talked to me for hours about Stu. For many years after the 1975 Stones tour, and many times, I talked to both Mick and Keith. I worked as a consultant with the band on their 1981 Hal Ashby–directed live concert movie Let’s Spend the Night Together. I worked with Mick on his first solo album, She’s the Boss. We spent a lot of time together. I did a lot of interviews with him. He picked my brain. I made a lot of suggestions. He ignored most of them.

  During the 1980s, and well into the 1990s, the Stones were still active. They recorded new albums, went on tour, and talked to the press to promote those endeavors. Yet, after having spent hours and hours interviewing Mick, when people ask me what he’s really like, it’s still hard to explain. Keith always says that Mick is a “great bunch of guys.” And it’s true; one never knows which Mick is going to show up. He doesn’t really let people in. And while I know he’s been as candid with me throughout the years as he’s been with any journalist, he doesn’t really consider journalists “people.” He often used words like “the gutter press.” Of course, coming from England, and having been a victim of Fleet Street, this is understandable. Mick can be wildly entertaining and funny and smart. He can still light up a room. But also, he’s insecure. Wary. He can’t ever really get away from being MICK JAGGER. Add to that the androgynous beauty of his youth, and well, it can’t be easy growing old. The press constantly writes about his lips—which are not what they once were. No one’s are. Still, I always felt that Mick never acknowledges or relishes what he does best—which is sing the blues. He wanted, and still might want, pop hits. He wanted, and still might want, to compete with current bands. For someone who wound up sounding as good as the men he started out imitating in 1962, I find it sad.

  Keith could talk—and has—for hours about music, about the blues. Despite the fact that Mick soaked up all of this as a young man too, he is flippant, offhand. He never wanted to appear as though he thought rock and roll was any kind of art form. He made jokes. He once told me that rock and roll lyrics “weren’t exactly flowing Renaissance poetry.” Another time, I asked him about the music the band made, and he replied that it wasn’t really music. To him, he
said, it sounded like a “racket.” Sometime in the 1970s he said, “I started playing blues when I was eighteen, or before, really. It’s very mature music compared to ‘Venus in Blue Jeans,’ [which was] the hit [when] I started. I never wanted to be a rock and roll star or a pop star. I was never into teenage lyrics. We were doing blues written by forty . . . fifty . . . sixty-year-old men. ‘You Got to Move’ was written by a seventy-year-old man. I wanted to be a blues singer.”

  One of the more memorable times I spent with the Stones was in 1978 at the Toronto Four Seasons Hotel. Margaret Trudeau, the wife of the then Prime Minister of Canada, wandered in and out of the band’s rooms wearing only a terrycloth bathrobe. The rumors were that she was involved with Ron Wood. Or Mick Jagger. Or both. I came back to New York, wrote a piece about Mme. Trudeau and the Rolling Stones for the New York Post. All hell broke loose. I had to hide from the Canadian press. I fled to the Ritz-Carlton in Boston and registered under the name of the blonde, B-movie actress Beverly Michaels. Another time, in 1984, I went to Mick’s townhouse on the Upper West Side to do an interview. Jerry Hall, who had been living with Mick for seven years and was the mother of their newborn daughter Elizabeth, pulled me into the vestibule. She wanted me to ask Mick: since they’d been living together for seven years and had a child, wasn’t it just like being married? And if so, why didn’t they get married? I said I’d try to get that in. During our talk, I asked Mick if he always needed to be attached to somebody. That English thing of having the little woman at home, waiting, cooking. “Oh, give me a break,” he said. “Really, this propaganda about women that’s been done against me. I can’t bear it. I can cook perfectly well myself and I don’t need to go home, I can go out and eat somewhere around the corner, probably better than I can eat at home.”