Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All
Page 8
You look for such encouragement as Elvis. Well. Not if you’re the real Elvis. The real Elvis, I imagine, didn’t need his drummer’s approval to undress. But when you are the designated cartoon figure in a band that already borders on the cartoonish, anything that makes you feel less than a total idiot is appreciated.
So I went into that night’s performance brimming with confidence. It’s a funny thing, doing Elvis. You wear a big wig and sunglasses and a gold lamé jacket, and when you walk out onstage, there is always some kind of screaming (happily, from a stage, all screaming sounds alike, so I try to imagine it’s young women screaming, “Oh my God, he’s so gorgeous!” when in fact, it is more likely middle-aged women cackling, “Oh my God, this band is so desperate!”)
Still, you shake your hips and you sneer your lip, and for a brief moment you can feel the power, the energy, the raw, oozing sexuality that the King commanded by simply reaching for the microphone.
And then you open your mouth.
***
I am not the world’s greatest singer. I know great singers. I am married to a great singer. Me? I’m just okay. I can carry a tune. Nothing special, much to my dismay. But I have been warbling Elvis since I was a kid. It’s not that hard. You dip into your lower range, you pull a sound up from your diaphragm, and you take it no further than the back of your throat. Then you expel it. If done correctly, it comes out a cross between a shiver and a moan. “Uh-uh-huhhhhhhh…”
And then you sneer.
That’ll get you a good reaction at a dinner party. And at a dinner party, you don’t have to do any more. You just go, “Elvis? You mean, “Uh-uh-huhhhhhhhh?” Everyone laughs. Boom. It’s over.
Onstage, you actually have to follow that with some singing. And this is where, as they say in hockey, you must put the biscuit in the basket.
Or take your clothes off.
***
Given my limited singing, I opted for the latter. It’s like that moment in Dreamgirls where Jimmy, once a huge star but now fading behind upcoming talent, decides, in desperation, to show the audience his privates. It was pretty much the end of his career.
I figured mine was already history.
But if you join the Remainders, you park your ego at the door, along with your reputation, and if people were going to whisper, “Is that really the Tuesdays with Morrie guy?” I figured I’d give them their money’s worth. Over the years, I did my Elvis outdoors (at an LA book fair), indoors (at a Seattle nightclub), at altitude (in Colorado), and at sea level (in Miami). I went through three different wigs, the last of which looked like a dead possum with the sideburns of a Hasidic Jew. I kept it on with carpet tape. My sunglasses were secured with Croakies. It was all part of Being Elvis.
And now, finally, my pants would come off.
I approached the show eagerly. I counted through the numbers while playing piano. When the time came to slip offstage and change into my outfit, I bounded up the backstage steps. I did the wig. I donned the golden jacket. And then, over my prison pants, I snapped on the tearaway pants, a perfect black material. The audience would never know. When the first notes of “Jailhouse Rock” would sound (bum-bummmm on the bass, followed by two cracks of the snare drum), I would begin my seductive dance. I’d wiggle my rump, hook my hands behind my neck, give them a few pelvic thrusts, then lose the jacket.
A few more gyrations and off with the shirt.
And then, the coup de grace, two hands on the side of the pants and…there she goes!
And that is exactly what happened. The crowd roared, squeals rose with each Presley shake. I grabbed the pants. I counted to three. I yanked forward and ripped the sweats from my legs. They flew out of my grasp, up, up, up into the blinding lights…
…and landed on Josh’s head.
We were useless after that. Dave cracked up. Ridley cracked up. I cracked up. And Josh couldn’t see.
We somehow did the tune, but my warble was way off (it’s hard to sing when you are laughing), and to be honest, I don’t remember if the crowd went wild, since I was trying to figure out how a drummer can keep playing when his face is covered in 32-waist Nike sweats.
Still, today, as I write this, I look back on that as one of my funniest memories of a truly funny band. And I console myself with the knowledge that, despite the embarrassment, I experienced that rarest of things in an Elvis impersonator’s life; a moment when you do something even the King never did.
It was never repeated, no matter how I tried. The pants went right or left, but never hit the drummer. No matter. I had my gold medal. I had my story. And years from now, I will be able to tell my grandchildren, or somebody else’s grandchildren, about the perfect parabola, my ass to Josh’s head.
And they will no doubt turn to me, look into my eyes, and say:
“Uh-uh-huhhhhhhhh….”
Ted’s Management Lesson #4:
Contracts
Halfway through our concert at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, management approached me with the signed copy of our twenty-plus page contract, opened to a clause that I kind of definitely maybe read but intentionally forgot about: NO Elvis impersonators. Completely coincidentally, Mitch had just performed his Elvis medley. But it’s not like we were expecting to be invited back…
GOLD BROCADE ELVIS PLAYS WORDSTOCK,
Photo by Mike Medeiros
Dave on Mitch Joining the Band
In 1994, Mitch and I met when we were both in Norway for the Lillehammer Winter Olympics (aka the Tonya Harding Games). One night after we were both done working, we went to the press-center bar, where there was a piano, and Mitch started playing old rock tunes—he knows all of them—and we both started singing. There were hardly any other reporters there, so the staff gathered around to listen and…they LOVED us. We were a big hit, in the press center. It turns out that Norwegians, although they excel at winter sports, have no taste whatsoever in music.
The song I best remember singing with Mitch in Lillehammer was “Land of 1000 Dances.” I was singing into a banana, microphone-style, and we were bellowing the always-moving lyrics to that song: “Na, na na na na, na na na na, na na na, na na na, na na na na.” Then we’d shout, “COME ON, NORWEGIANS! JOIN IN!” And the Norwegians would dutifully sing “Na, na na na na…”
Anyway, not long after that, the Remainders had a gig—I think it was in LA—and Barbara couldn’t make it. So I asked Mitch if he’d fill in on keyboards, and he said yes, and the rest is history. Okay, maybe not history, exactly—more like a series of Elvis impersonations. Also, without Mitch we would never have had Janine, who is such a good singer that she was able to make the band sometimes rise to the level of not terrible.
PS: I probably should mention that there was beer for sale in the press center.
INBOX > Subject: Roy Blount Intro
From: Greg Iles
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 8:55 a.m.
By some strange inversion of the laws of the universe, I have been asked to introduce Roy Blount at a literary festival rather than be introduced by him. I fear the magnetic poles of the earth may invert, due to the ironic overpressure. Consequently, I now open my mailbox to any and all anecdotes, one-liners, or “Roy-isms” that I could shamelessly plunder this Saturday night. I’m praying that Dave, especially, will come through for me, but I invite all to try to outdo our fearless leader. This is urgent since, as we all know, I am not funny.
Thanks in advance,
Greg
PS: I only wish I had Roy’s Uncle Sam top hat. I can’t find one big enough to fit my big head.
From: Dave Barry
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 9:25 a.m.
I know for a fact that in the early days of the Rock Bottom Remainders, Roy urinated out of a moving recreational vehicle on I-95. Speaking of urinating: Roy once, while using a urinal in the men’s room of a hotel bar in Anaheim, delivered a commentary on the automatic flush valve that was so funny, I fell down and had to crawl out of the restroom on hand
s and knees. Yes, I may have had a few drinks beforehand. But still. For the record, Roy can be very funny even when he is not urinating. I’m just hitting the highlights here.
From: Ridley Pearson
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 9:32 a.m.
I witnessed the retelling of the former and the crawling of the latter.
Roy has also been known to drop his drawers onstage—if Matt encourages him.
But the really annoying thing about Roy is that his Southern-gentleman charm makes him a favorite of all the women, including, I assume, Joan. I attended a graduation ceremony where Roy was awarded an honorary doctorate degree—and they were SERIOUS.
Wait…wait…don’t tell me…
From: Sam Barry
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 9:48 a.m.
There’s just something about Roy that moooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooves me.
-Sam
From: Ted Habte-Gabr
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 2:15 p.m.
I still laugh when I remember that night at the W Hotel restaurant/bar when Roy and Dave had us in stitches and I recall it somehow involved Scott’s pancreas or kidney. But Roy ended tossing the ice out of his 5th or 6th cocktail behind him over the guests at another table…someone better with words can recall that night…
From: Scott Turow
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 12:20 p.m.
As we all know, I am not funny either. I will say, however, that I have heard Dave, drunk and sober, say that Roy is the funniest person he knows.
From: Dave Barry
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 12:42 p.m.
It was a spleen, and it was Scott’s, except he doesn’t have it. Or so he says.
From: Scott Turow
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 2:14 p.m.
Typical Ted. He can’t remember a spleen from a kidney, but he knows which bar we were at.
From: Ridley Pearson
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 2:31 p.m.
I thought you said you weren’t funny.
From: Amy Tan
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 4:41 p.m.
On our Aretha Franklin Bus Tour, whatever year that was, Roy had to attend his Vanderbilt University 30th reunion, and we happened to be in Nashville when that was going to happen. He was the oldest Remainder and still younger than we are now. (The former is still true but not the latter.) I think Roy dreaded going, but at the same time, here he was, the guy who graduated magna cum loud, and Phi Beta Yadda, author, actor, radio show smart aleck, and thus was far more successful than most and having more fun than most, so he had nothing to be ashamed of. He would be the buzz. That evening, Kathi, Lorraine Battle, and I were wearing Remainders clothes, i.e., slut fashion. It must have been that we were doing our gig afterward. Roy put on pressed khakis and a crisp white shirt, plus loafers. He did not wear his baseball cap. He looked very preppy and sweaty around the collar. It was warmish mosquito weather. We asked if we could go to his reunion, and I can’t remember if he was happy that we would accompany him to this excruciating event, or if he was aghast. If it was the latter, he did not say, because he is a Georgia gentleman. So we crammed into the same taxi and went to a place with a lot of lawn. Every guy was dressed in Khaki and the women had on southern society sheaths with pearls. And they were all white, not the clothes, but the people. Among the three Remainderettes, we were a Jew, a Chinese, and an African-American. I said to Roy, “So these are your people.” And Roy looked genuinely ashamed, and said, “Yeah.” Later, we decided to shake things up and we acted like we were Roy’s groupies and he was our sex god. We sang a cappella, and maybe it was “Chapel of Love,” the song in which Roy plays the bigamist. I think that pleased Roy. And after we made everyone envy Roy even more, we piled into a taxi to go to the gig, and in that taxi, we found a diamond ring on the seat. So it was an omen. I don’t know what it was an omen for, but the whole evening seemed like the diamond ring would have been an omen, if it had been in the taxi on the way over.
Roy enjoys humiliation. He steps up to the plate for any song that requires abuse and belittling or bolstering of his manhood, e.g., as mentioned, being married at the chapel to two sluts at the same time, or wearing ridiculous hats and looking baffled while lip-syncing clapping, or crawling over to light the cigarette of Mistress Boots and having that cigarette burned into his forehead. He really enjoys that and has practiced the part many times to get it right. He also takes his share of whupping, as the Southern guys say it.
Because Roy has good Southern manners and is our Gen’leman Remainder, it makes humiliating him all the more fun. I know people keep talking about the thing about peeing out the bus. That was aberrant and what boys think about. To us girls, he is a gentleman and offers to get us drinks, offers us a seat, and mumbles something we can’t understand, but it sounds like he’s saying we look great.
One other thing about Roy: he has the deepest voice of all the Remainders. It’s like God’s.
From: Kathi Kamen Goldmark
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 7:29 p.m.
On our first RBR tour Roy had us wet-your-pants laughing when he said “You gotta leave some kibble where the slow dogs can get it.” But I don’t remember the context.
Roy and I once wrote a song together called the “Twelve Bar Twelve Bar Blues.”
Roy contributed the best verse:
In bar number eight I threw up in my hat
In bar number eight I threw up in my hat
I sat there thinking, “Now why did I do that?”
From: Dave Barry
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 5:05 p.m.
I forgot about Roy being the Lighter Man on Boots. Can’t believe he was never even *nominated* for a Grammy. Not to mention his seminal vocal work on “Wild Thing.” (I’m using “seminal” in the sense of “involving semen.”)
From: Kathi Kamen Goldmark
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 5:12 p.m.
At that Vanderbilt reunion, I remember four of us women—Amy, Lorraine, Carole, and I—each introducing ourselves to all of his classmates as “Hi, I’m Roy’s wife.”
This Is Not About Me
by Roy Blount Jr.
It's about the band. Of which I am the least musical member. Can you imagine what a burden that puts on me? Compared to me, you see, the rest of the band doesn't sound all that bad. Not really good, maybe, but with me in the band, listeners can gain perspective: “Oh, okay, I guess this soup isn't supposed to be really good, since it has a turd in it. This must be some kind of comical soup. I get it, hahaha!”
People in the audience may be on the verge of shouting, “Yow! Ungh! This band is way bad off-key.” But then—you can just tell by looking at me how rotten I sing. Because I sell it. And people in the audience nudge one another, and smile, and whisper to one another, “Awww. What a sweet-natured band that is, to allow this clod, this doody-head, this personification of a clinkeroony, to join in with them for all the world as if he belongs in a band!”
I'd like to say what a challenge it’s been for me to sustain the requisite level of unmusicality. To be the least musical member of, say, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir would be a lot easier—you wouldn't even have to be what most people would recognize as all that unmusical. But the Rock Bottom Remainders have never been the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Imagine having to be—consistently—the least constructive member of Congress, or the least wholesome-looking inmate on Death Row. For twenty years. That's how long I have been the least musical member of a famously not-any-too-musical band.
Well, for most people that would be a challenge. But I can't honestly take any credit, because here’s the truth: My voice stinks through no effort of my own. I just get out there and cut loose, and when enough of my fellow Remainders have cringed and shuddered and edged away, I figure my job is done. For the rest of the evening I just grin, die inside, and move my lips. (And do the moonwalk, of course, and the splits, and that bent-legge
d kicking Cossack thing. No one who has seen a Remainders concert needs to be told how much I contribute via the light fantastic.)
So let me take this occasion to express my humble appreciation and gratitude for the extraordinary forbearance and tolerance that my long-suffering fellow band members have…
ENOUGH!
ROY’S MAD HATTERY,
Photo by Mike Medeiros
I can no longer live this lie. The plain truth is, by God, I can sing like a greased nightingale, and if Al Kooper had signed off on renting me a sousaphone, as I asked him to in the beginning, I could have tossed in some mean boopty-boomps. Do you know how hard it is for a stone music natural like me to fake utter ungiftedness? Very hard. That’s how hard.
So you may well be wondering: How did I get to where I found myself taking a bullet to my talent for the good of the Rock Bottom Remainders? Let me take you through my life in music.
I was born Twoboy Huskins in the small town of Drainage, Louisiana. My older brother, Youboy, and our twin sisters Pea and Pea (the second one pronounced like “Pia”) all drooled too much to make any kind of music, and my parents were nothing to write home about either: They drank for a living. A more positive early influence, and a constant protector, was the family's three-legged speckledy pup, Trey, who could whistle. And I was a tuneful little scooter from the get-go. Sing? Brother, I chirruped so sweet in the crib that bluebirds flocked to the windowsill to harmonize. By the time I was three, I even had patter.