Live Fast, Die Young

by Chris Price

  In short, I failed. I did not feel good about this. Quite apart from the personal disappointment, there was the professional embarrassment. That a man paid by MTV to programme music for an audience of millions was apparently unable to cater adequately for an audience of two, was ever so slightly shameful.

  Rewind to Denver, ten days and six states earlier, where we had stopped at Radio Shack to buy a new wireless card for the laptop. Joe had suggested we pick up some new tunes for the car.

  'It's weird isn't it,' he said, picking a CD from the rack, 'how some American artists translate in the UK and some don't? Phish are massive here.'

  'Never heard of them.'

  'Exactly. Hardly anyone in the UK has. They're a jam band.'

  'God I hate jam bands. There's nothing more depressing than a bunch of bearded goons noodling on guitars for four hours while a crowd of stoners try to convince themselves they're having a good time.'

  Joe returned the CD to the rack and moved along the aisle to M. 'And Dave Matthews couldn't get arrested in London.'

  Dave Matthews, American readers will not need telling, is the purveyor of the dreariest, most soulless adult oriented rock ever committed to tape. He's huge in America.

  In the autumn of 2001 Dave, his manager or his record label decided it was time the UK knew about him. They lined up a series of TV performances too lowly for consideration in the States, as well as a 'teaser' campaign around London and other major cities. Huge posters all over town, in bold black type on a white background, asked one simple question: 'Who is Dave Matthews?' The answer would be revealed when his newest album, The Space Between, topped the December charts. Eye-watering amounts of money, time and effort were expended by the label's marketing and promotions departments to make sure this happened.

  Sure enough, in December The Space Between ripped a hole on the Top 40, roaring in at… 35. On the morning the chart position came in, the poster outside Radio 1, which for a fortnight had been demanding to know just who Dave Matthews was, finally bore the answer, handwritten in thick black marker pen underneath: 'That's showbiz.'

  Joe moved along the racks, reaching J. 'Billy Joel's done well though, for a man with unfortunate initials and dubious taste in wives.'

  More invective began to form in my head, then stopped when it reached my mouth. 'Er, I quite like Billy Joel.'

  Joe flashed a look at me, eyes wide and ears unbelieving. Then his face dropped, and with a sideways glance to make sure no one was listening, he said, 'Actually, so do I.'

  'Shall we?'

  'We can't. Can we?'

  I shrugged a conciliatory shrug. 'Who's gonna know?'

  'OK, but don't breathe a word about this to anyone.'

  We skulked to the counter, an illicit double CD hidden under computer accessories like a copy of Razzle between the pages of The Sunday Times.

  And that's how two men, one responsible for filling ten channels of music television every day with the coolest new videos, the other for specialist programmes on the UK's hippest national radio station, came to be cruising south along the east coast of America between Charleston and Savannah, harmonising to Billy Joel's 'She's Always a Woman', in what has since become known as 'the least heterosexual moment of the trip by a Kansas mile'. Picture Thelma and Louise doing Max and Paddy doing the Minder theme on Phoenix Nights, with added camp. Between the Rockies and the eastern seaboard the performance had been fine tuned, lyrics learned and harmonies honed. Joe would solo in the bridge when my baritone wouldn't reach the high notes – 'Oh, she takes care of her-say-ee-yelf' – then I would join in again on the hummed refrains. Occasionally a piano trill would be tapped out with fingers on the dashboard.

  It's also how the signature album of the 'Live Fast, Die Young Tour' – the one record which most readily evokes the spirit of a journey to the heart of rock and roll America – came disturbingly and harmoniously to be Billy Joel: The Ultimate Collection.

  Say what you like about Billy – and I'm sure you will – his strike rate is impressive. Yes, he's written some howlers, but for every 'Uptown Girl' there's an 'Allentown', a 'Movin' Out', an 'Honesty' and fourteen more at least as good. He has released whole albums of howlers in fact. But for every River of Dreams there's a 52nd Street, a Turnstiles and a Piano Man. (My favourite, The Stranger, doesn't make it onto that list, perfect but for final track 'Everybody Has a Dream', apparently rescued from Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'too schmaltzy for Broadway' rejects pile.)

  Perhaps when you're looking for music that two people can agree on, somewhere around the bottom of the barrel you hit Billy Joel. Maybe he's lowest common denominator, or maybe he has an everyman quality we can all identify with. Maybe we leapt on him because he was something – anything – we could agree on when we really, really needed to agree on something. (Even down to which songs to skip on the CD and which ones to turn up. All of CD one – the seventies – got the thumbs up. But in 1983 Billy Joel went spectacularly off the boil with An Innocent Man, which Sony had conveniently lumped in with Storm Front and River of Dreams-era dross, meaning we could skip straight to 'Allentown' when the CD reverted inexplicably to the early eighties.)

  Or maybe Billy Joel is just great road music. He certainly isn't 'Live Fast, Die Young' music, as so far he has done neither. All I know is that joining in with the steel mill noises in the intro of 'Allentown' – ooh, sssh, aah! – at full volume whilst cruising at 70 mph in an open-top car is about as much fun as a man can have behind the wheel with a clean licence and a clear conscience.

  A blue sign passing on our right welcomed us to Georgia: 'We're Glad Georgia's On Your Mind.' That's nice, isn't it? Makes British road signs seem so perfunctory and impersonal by comparison. A sign announcing that you are entering Yorkshire or Wales or Little Guffing might give you a stiff welcome before demanding that you drive carefully, respect your elders or stop biting your nails. American road signs, like Americans themselves I suppose, are a good deal more chatty and voluble. There are very few countries I can think of where you're welcomed across borders by Ray Charles. (I hope his estate gets royalties.) With miles of straight roads and endless rows of pine trees ahead, we fought the boredom by looking out for the Georgia state bird (brown thrasher), state reptile (gopher tortoise) and state shell (knobbed whelk).

  Driving in convoy along the Georgia coastline, Courtney led the way to Waycross – her home town and Gram's – oblivious to our ooshing, aahing and air-drumming behind. We broke the journey in charming Savannah, whose pretty shaded squares under oak trees hung with Spanish moss offered the perfect spot for lunch. One square in particular was on Joe's list of must-sees – Chippewa Square, where the opening sequence of Forrest Gump was filmed. Evidently there was a certain bench which needed sitting on, but frankly I was irked by the intrusion of such family-friendly references onto our outlaw itinerary.

  Sitting on a bench in the square – not the bench, which we later learned was a fibreglass prop since relocated to the Savannah Visitors' Centre – I suggested to Joe that this was about as far away from misadventure as it was possible to get.

  'I suppose,' he said, 'but Nic and Noah would never forgive me if I came to Savannah and didn't get a snap of Daddy on the Forrest bench.'

  'Fair enough. Hardly rock and roll America though, is it?'

  'Well if it helps, John Lennon's in the movie.'

  'Thanks, it does. Lennon's the ultimate rock death, isn't he? Assassination in America scores double points.'

  Courtney changed the subject to more pressing matters. 'Who's hungry?'

  'Starving,' I said.

  'Famished,' said Joe.

  Courtney stood up. 'Great. I'll get us some lunch.' We watched as she crossed the square and disappeared into a coffee house.

  'What's the catch?' said Joe after a few minutes.

  'How do you mean?'

  'With Courtney. There must be a catch. She's hot, hospitable and not mental.'

  'I know. Regular little Southern belle, ain't she?' I said, reviewin
g the photos on my camera.

  'I'd almost say Scarlett O'Hara, but she's far too nice.'

  I turned the camera off. 'Yep. We've definitely lucked out there.'

  Courtney strode back across the square with armfuls of sandwiches and canned drinks. 'I just bought a random selection. Hope that's OK.'

  I shuffled along the bench to make space. 'More than OK. What have we done to deserve this? You've been so kind to us the past few days Courtney. I hope we can pay you back some time.'

  'No need,' she said, sitting down. 'You're in the South, don't forget. It's what we do.'

  'Well I'm very glad we are,' said Joe.

  'Me too,' I said.

  Courtney smiled. 'I'm glad you're here too. Now, we've got a BLT, a Reuben and a turkey club. Who wants what?'

  Joe beat me to it. 'Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.'

  Back on I95, we continued south for another fifty miles to Brunswick and then west again, inland on Highway 82 towards Waycross.

  We cruised along pale tarmac, the wooded roadsides interrupted only by firebreaks offering brief glimpses deep into the forests, and by weather-worn hoardings offering local produce far up ahead. Maybe as a Brit I am too used to living in a country where you're never more than ninety miles from the sea, but marketing local honey to passing trade from a hundred miles out seemed, well, optimistic.

  Woods turned to fields, which turned to farms, which turned to occasional houses. The red lights on the first traffic signal we'd encountered in two hundred miles told us that we were somewhere: Waycross. Chris and I turned to each other with a single eyebrow raised in the internationally accepted facial expression of 'Is this it?'

  We had known in advance that the town wasn't what you'd call remarkable. It had no monuments of renown, no intriguing history in which to immerse ourselves, no cinematic landmarks at which to gawp. No battles were fought there nor agreements signed. What we hadn't bargained for was Waycross being so fantastically not-remarkable that it had a pretty good claim on the title of 'Most Unremarkable Place on Earth'. There were the requisite US town features like fast food outlets squaring off across road junctions, gas stations doing likewise, a church here, a motel there.

  But like the city in which our trip had started – Los Angeles – it appeared to have no discernible centre; just an enormous, sprawling suburb with no obvious beginning or end. Also like LA, we appeared to be in a land where you build out, not up. If I stood on tiptoe I could see Florida.

  Would anyone care to guess how Waycross got its name? Yes madam, you at the back in the red shirt. No, good guess, but it's not because the town planner had a short temper. You sir? Correct! There are two huge railways in Ware County, Georgia, and the centre of the town is where they cross, hence Way-cross. Which is the third most interesting thing about Waycross after its famous sons Burt Reynolds and Gram Parsons. It's a pretty steep drop-off on the interesting scale after Burt to be fair.

  It was in this town that one John A. Snively founded a crate manufacturing plant supplying his citrus company in neighbouring Florida, a business so successful that at its peak it was responsible for a third of all citrus grown there. He later fathered Avis, who married a man called Cecil, who in turn fathered a boy called Ingram, later known as Gram, the town's second most famous resident.

  For the Gram Parsons fan there is just about enough of interest to keep you in town for an hour or two. I was ready to keep on driving. Chris, however, had other plans. Between him, Courtney and her mum they had booked us in for a Gram Parsons tour the following morning. Which meant an evening in the town that never wakes.

  If you've ever wondered where the phrase 'up the Suwannee' comes from (meaning 'gone wrong', 'broken' or 'knackered'), then wonder no more. The Suwannee River rises in the Okefenokee Swamp just outside Waycross. It is probably, if you're looking for one, the closest thing there is to a real-world location for Shit Creek, and we had just arrived.

  4 NOVEMBER

  A HOSTEL ENVIRONMENT

  In November 2003 Emmylou Harris played a string of dates at Hammersmith Apollo in London. Her record label, knowing I was a Gram devotee and correctly assuming I was similarly in thrall to the lady whose career he kick started, invited me to see the show. (Gram is generally acknowledged as having discovered Emmylou: he hired her as an unknown to sing harmony on solo albums GP and Grievous Angel, and she regularly credits her success to him even today.) After the gig, which included Gram songs and a dedication to her road manager – one Phil Kaufman – Emmylou's radio plugger asked if I would like to come backstage and meet her. I thought about it for a moment – wow, a private audience with the high queen of Cosmic American Music, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of rubbing shoulders with a bona fide music legend, and one with a direct line to Gram to boot – and then politely declined.

  You see, they say you should never meet your heroes. Many people sensibly follow this advice out of a genuine and understandable fear that they will be disappointed. For me it's down to the very strong likelihood I will perform a special party trick which I apparently reserve for the people I admire most. That is, stand mute and immobile for upwards of thirty seconds before finally blurting out something simultaneously so banal and creepy it renders the hero in question utterly speechless themselves. This had last happened upon meeting Stephen Malkmus of legendary lo-fi indie rockers Pavement when, despite best efforts to find an intelligent conversation-starter – the fantastic show they had just played perhaps, the beautiful venue – I heard myself complimenting him on his trousers. If I did meet Emmylou, there existed the very real possibility I would embarrass both her and me by admiring her teeth or trying to touch her hair.

  But even supposing I had met Emmylou and managed by some miracle not to make a tit of myself, the short distance from front of house to dressing room would have brought me no closer to Gram's music. To do that – to find his Wichita County line, his 'Our House', his Tupelo – had necessitated a journey of several thousand miles to a one-horse town in southern Georgia called Waycross.

  More than any of the songwriters on our itinerary, Gram wrote about home – getting away from it, missing it, coming back to it. But it was a concept he had a complicated relationship with; it represented everything he loved and despised about his southern roots – family, security and integrity on the one hand, racism, religious fervour and small-town values on the other. And while Waycross was the setting for a happy, comfortable childhood, it also held painful memories, not least the suicide of his father in 1958.

  The Georgia sun glinted on the puddles in the car park of the Pinecrest Motel as grumpy grey clouds blew eastwards. Courtney had arrived early and explained what was in store. I could only work out that it involved two fellas named Billy Ray Herrin and Dave Griffin, a van and a long list of places I had neither heard of nor cared about.

  A splash of tyres announced the arrival of our tour guides. Judging by their wheels, we were about to be shown around Waycross by the A-Team, which frankly was at least as diverting as the prospect of touristing in a one-horse town. The doors swung open, but sadly no Hannibal or Face.

  'Hi guys, I'm Billy Ray,' said Billy Ray.

  'And I'm Dave,' said Dave. 'Good to meet y'all.'

  Dave was tall and slim with thinning grey hair to his shoulders and a neatly trimmed beard. Wearing cowboy boots, jeans, a smart jacket and round, Lennon-style sunglasses, he had the look of a retired rock star. Billy Ray was also grey of beard, but shorter and more solidly built, sporting a beaten-up baseball cap and mirrored sports sunglasses. We shook hands and exchanged smiles.

  'Thanks for showing us around,' enthused Chris, 'do you do this often?'

  'Seems like we do it more now than ever,' said Billy Ray, his melodic, Southern drawl by far the most pronounced of any we had encountered so far. With an impressive economy of lip movement, he swished rounded vowels and retroflexed Rs around his palate like mouthwash. 'New folks are discoverin' Gram all the time. The BBC made a documentary a while back, wh
ich Dave and me helped on, and there are four biographies out, so there's always folks comin' through. If someone's in town and wants to know about Gram, then we try to show 'em around if we can find the time.'

  'And how much time do you have today?' I wondered, nervously.

  'Oh, we got plenty.'

  Dave jumped in the driver's seat while Billy Ray slid open the side door of the van to reveal a plush, carpeted interior with coach-style seating and a bewildering array of cup-holders. We climbed in.

  'We'll drive around town some,' said Dave, 'take y'all to some of the hot spots, then finish up at Gram's house on Suwannee Drive.'

  'So how are you guys connected to Gram?' asked Chris.

  'Well I first started gettin' into Gram's music just before he died,' said Billy Ray, 'then in '74 I opened a record store named Sin City Records, after the song on Gilded Palace of Sin. I had to change the name because the nice folks of Waycross objected. I been spreadin' the word about Gram's music pretty much ever since.'