Three years later few things were more utterly vanished than that summer of 1967. Sebring had died at the hands of Manson’s murderers in 1969. Morrison’s drinking, which nobody was yet characterizing as an illness, had become at least a distraction for the band. This unfortunate state of affairs had had its most public airing at a concert that took place at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami on 1 March 1969. By this point Morrison was operating at arm’s length from the rest of the band. He would fly to the city where they were due to play, rent a car at the airport, buy a case of beer and then just drive around until it was time for the show. His flight to Miami that day had been diverted and he had passed the time in various airport bars. By the time he got on stage at the auditorium, which was over-filled and inadequately air-conditioned, he was in no fit state to perform. The performance he did deliver combined rock-star petulance with avant-garde pretension and would have been wholly unmemorable had he not threatened to take out his penis.
The police, who seemed always to be there when the Doors played, drew proceedings to a premature end. Following the show Morrison was charged with two counts of indecent exposure, two of public profanity and one of public drunkenness, but the real capper was ‘lewd and lascivious behaviour in public by exposing his private parts and by simulating masturbation and oral copulation’. These charges, theoretically at least, carried a penalty of three years and 150 days in an exceptionally unpleasant jail – a prospect that would have been worrying enough for a rock star who didn’t look, as Rolling Stone had said of Morrison, ‘as if he was made up over the phone by two fags’. Following the charges the band were said by Rolling Stone to be vacationing on the Bahamas. Each member was said to be on his own island.
In 1970 rock music was increasingly focused on the crotch. Naturally exhibitionist lead singers were leading with this area. They had been courting trouser catastrophes and the headlines that tended to follow ever since P. J. Proby split his pants on every stop of his 1965 tour. Now that the music was louder and the lyrics more overt, and the lemons openly advertised their need for squeezing, it seemed only logical that some of the clothes should begin to tumble off. From Mick Jagger’s coy ‘You don’t want my trousers to fall down, now do you?’ at Madison Square Garden, captured on the live album Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!, to Robert Plant’s apparently overstocked loons, the new generation of lead-singer princelings dressed like Cavaliers from the waist up and rent boys from the waist down. This was the most body-conscious of times. Even Rod Stewart wore blouses. Roger Daltrey’s chest was as integral to the Who’s act as Pete Townshend’s assault on his amplifier. A large part of the appeal of Free was down to the fact that Paul Rodgers was the college girl’s preferred bit of rough.
Morrison wasn’t as easy with the call for bump and grind to enliven the performance as the Brits. His threat to produce his member from the dark recesses of his leather trousers was rooted more in his desire to provoke the baser instincts of the crowd in the confrontational spirit of Julian Beck’s Living Theatre than it was to show them what Elvis Presley had only hinted at. When he gave evidence he had to endure the shrivelling indignity of describing his underwear. They were boxers, he said, which was unusual, he added, because usually he didn’t bother with any. This particular pair were unusually large, which necessitated rolling them over the belt of his pants to keep them up.
There were seven thousand in the Dinner Key Auditorium that night. Nothing speaks more eloquently of the dehumanizing effect of the increased scale of the rock spectacular than the fact that people in the audience couldn’t agree whether Morrison had actually taken his penis out or not. Clearly a penis large enough to impress itself on spectators in the far reaches of a cavernous auditorium would have already found its way into medical textbooks. Flashing is traditionally a close-quarters activity for good reason. It has never become part of the standard repertoire of the rock performer. The court case, which took place in Miami in September 1970, hinged on whether Morrison had done so or merely threatened to do so. When a love god goes to the trouble of taking it out he likes to feel that at the very least everyone will agree that it is out. In this case they never quite did.
While waiting for the trial Morrison did his best to reposition himself as a man whose motivations were artistic rather than base. There’s a filmed interview around this time of the four Doors talking to early rock journalist Richard Goldstein in which they talk about shamanism, the role of the artist and the sense of community at a rock show. They speak like men who have already learned that the filmed rock interview is a new medium in which it is possible to embark on a sentence without the slightest idea where that same sentence might end up. Here they are pioneering the monotonous, affectless ribbon of musing that became the standard way in which alternative rock acts communicated with their fans and absolutely nobody else at all. At one stage Morrison launches into a poem and then retreats, worried about the absence of the backbeat.
During this time Lillian Roxon was putting the finishing touches to her Rock Encyclopedia, the pioneer of a whole new genre. Her entry on the Doors finished: ‘Things are looking up for the Doors. One more bust and they’ll be back in favour with the underground.’ Roxon was recognizing the fact that somebody like Morrison was playing to two crowds. One was the public. The other was the community of taste-makers who liked to feel that they controlled admission to the pantheon of real stars.
When the jury returned its verdicts on 20 September Morrison was given a pass on the most serious charge of ‘lewd and lascivious behaviour’ and convicted on the public drunkenness and indecent exposure charges. It didn’t really add up, but that didn’t matter, because the law had flexed its muscles by forcing the Doors to abandon plans for a European tour, the elected officials had been seen to be holding back the tsunami of permissiveness which threatened to debauch Florida’s sons and daughters, and Morrison was relatively free to resume his life and profession. By then Kennealy had joined his retinue in Florida and was claiming to be pregnant with Jim’s baby. She said that she and Jim had been married at a Wiccan ceremony back in June. This came as a complete surprise to the band. It was also a bit of a turn-up for Pamela Courson, who liked to announce herself as Morrison’s wife.
Two days before the verdict was delivered Jimi Hendrix died in London at the age of twenty-seven. Al Wilson of Canned Heat had died just two weeks earlier. He was also twenty-seven. Two weeks later Janis Joplin was to die. She too was twenty-seven. All were the result of accidents with drink and drugs. It was a dangerous time to be a rock star. Clearly nobody was going to protect them from themselves. In an interview in the New York Times in October Eric Clapton said that every time he stepped on stage he was terrified. Talking of Hendrix and Joplin, both of whom had ‘phased themselves out of a situation that became intolerable’, he said, ‘All we want to do is be left alone to make music, but because we are called “rock stars” a whole different set of expectancies are thrust upon us – that we have instant opinions about everything, that we should set an example to the youth of today by making public statements about drugs, that we should dress and behave like the freaks we’re supposed to be. I just wish 1970 would hurry up and go away. It’s all been a disaster.’ Clapton had just discovered that the woman he thought was his sister was actually his mother. He was in the grip of heroin addiction. Some devotees wanted him to be God. He was finding being a man quite difficult enough.
Morrison was to die the following year. He was twenty-seven.
1970 PLAYLIST
Simon & Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water
Led Zeppelin, ‘Whole Lotta Love’
Free, ‘All Right Now’
The Doors, Morrison Hotel
James Taylor, Sweet Baby James
Elton John, Elton John
Todd Rundgren, Runt
The Stooges, Fun House
George Harrison, All Things Must Pass
Derek and the Dominos, ‘Layla’
16 MAY 1971
NE
W YORK CITY
The comeback
WHEN LOU REED left the Velvet Underground on 23 August 1970 his parents had driven into the city of New York to collect him from his last gig and taken him back to their home in Freeport, Long Island. This seemed a reversal of the natural order of things. Normally rock stars left home once and for all in their teens and after that they discouraged any speculation about their home life, preferring to leave the impression they had been raised by wolves. This was particularly the case for the generation born, as Lewis Reed had been, during the war. His parents could have been forgiven for thinking that at the age of twenty-eight their son might have finally given up on his dreams of making it as a rock star. Rock star was plainly a young man’s occupation. Experience was not any kind of advantage. Certainly his erstwhile group seemed to be getting on without him. Loaded, the last album he had made with them, had come out in late 1970. On the back it had a picture of bass player Doug Yule at the piano, giving the impression that it had been mainly his work, which it wasn’t. Lou’s songs, such as ‘Sweet Jane’, were credited to the entire band, which was equally incorrect.
That appeared to be behind him now. Lou’s father gave his son some work as a typist in his accountancy business. Lou’s downtown friends back in the city were amazed that he seemed happy to do this, at least for a while. Nonetheless they continued to circle Lou as though he were an IED.
Lou had had an unhappy childhood. His misguided but loving parents thought electric shock treatment might snap him out of his adolescent unhappiness. Throughout his life it was difficult to know where his psychiatric problems ended and his overbearing personality began. Almost all the professional relationships Reed had in his career involved at least the threat of physical violence. This was the case in some of his personal relationships as well. Glenn O’Brien, who edited Warhol’s magazine Interview, knew him at this time and commented that ‘he was brilliant, but had a lot of bitterness in him that fed a mean streak. A mean mean streak that alternated with empathy and great humour.’ He remembers him ordering double Bloody Marys before noon and pills ‘that pushed him in different directions, up and down’.
He had met a girl, a pretty undergraduate at Columbia University called Bettye Kronstad. His downtown friends called her ‘the cocktail waitress’ or ‘the stewardess’ behind her back. They did standard boyfriend and girlfriend stuff together. They spent the day in the park, drinking sangria, and then going to a movie. Lou related the details of the time they spent together in the song ‘Perfect Day’ in the same matter-of-fact way he had described the life of a junkie in ‘I’m Waiting For The Man’. Bettye had no interest in his old dark life; she didn’t do drugs and her priority was to keep Lou away from strong drink. For Lou she was the latest in a long line of surrogate mother/nurse/secretary figures who would deal with all the aspects of the world that were beneath his dignity and also be on hand to admire him when he was temporarily removed from the sunshine of his admirers’ acclaim.
The Velvet Underground had originally been put before the public in the middle of the previous decade via the patronage of Andy Warhol. For every potential record buyer excited by the idea that they were an art project as much as a band there were many more people who were put off by just the same thing. Their admirers were well-placed rather than numerous. If all the journalists who liked them were gathered in one place then they could fill a small venue. If it were left to the wider public they were a failure. The standard Velvet Underground review recounted their latest misadventure with the music business, described the state of the tensions within the band and ended by being slightly disappointed with how unadventurous record buyers were not supporting them as they had supported Led Zeppelin or the Doors. The Velvet Underground seemed to have missed the bus. The one after that as well.
Nonetheless they had admirers overseas. On 27 January 1971 one of their biggest fans from London was in New York as the Doug Yule-led version of Velvet Underground played the Electric Circus. After the show this long-haired Limey talked to Yule for fifteen minutes, enthusing about how inspirational he found the band and how distinctive their sound was. Puzzled as to why the visitor kept calling him Lou, Yule felt he ought to make it clear that he wasn’t Lou Reed. He was Doug Yule. The visitor from Britain withdrew, faintly embarrassed. He would be back later in the year. His name was David Bowie.
Having apparently failed to make it as a rock star Reed was attempting to reposition himself as a man of letters. He published poems as Lewis Reed. On 10 March he took part in a poetry reading with Jim Carroll at St Mark’s. He wrote a piece for Crawdaddy magazine. In this he seemed to be taking advantage of the unique vantage point of the retired rock star. The piece was headlined ‘Why I Wouldn’t Want My Son to be a Rock Star or a Dog Even’. Like many pieces of prose penned by musicians it had clearly not been edited, either by its author or anyone else, and was consequently near unreadable. The central thrust seemed to be that only a person with no proper sense of self would ever wish to be a rock and roll star. ‘But a real star can go in Max’s and have everybody say hello and live in the Castle in Los Angeles and know the right people and be interviewed in Rolling Stone, perhaps even the cover, bitch and yell in public, discuss politics, ride in limousines, have styled hair and perhaps a private make-up man, smoke the best dope, be arrested and make headlines, be featured in the very best gossip columns, and be a candidate for the Plaster Casters.’
The tone of this passage suggested that Lou considered the life of the rock star beneath his dignity. At the same time the close attention to detail in that list suggested that there wasn’t a single facet of the rock-star life he didn’t ache to experience. He also wrote a piece for a book called No One Waved Good-bye, which had been inspired by the recent deaths of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, where he observed, perceptively, ‘It simply requires a very secure ego to allow yourself to be loved for what you do rather than what you are, and an even larger one to realize you are what you do. The singer has a soul but realizes he isn’t loved off stage. Or perhaps, he feels he only shines on stage … but we are all as common as snowflakes, aren’t we?’
Lou could no more renounce the life he had left than fly to the moon. He had a need for the spotlight that could only be satisfied by living out the rock star’s life. He might have been enjoying the short holiday from the bohemian limelight back in his parents’ home in the suburbs but the rage for repute was building inside. His contradictory nature cried out for expression. His need for attention meant that he could never pass up the opportunity to extemporize into a reporter’s tape machine. The more he derided journalists the more he sought their company. This applied throughout his life. And the more he insisted that what he was doing was art, the more he desperately sought the approbation of the market in the only kind of coin he truly understood. This was the same one he had been chasing since starting as a jobbing songwriter of dumb ditties back in the sixties – chart success. Lou Reed wouldn’t admit it but he wanted a hit record every bit as badly as Marc Bolan or Three Dog Night wanted a hit record. His first record had been a celebration of a non-existent dance craze called ‘Do The Ostrich’. He never lost his belief in the power and beauty of near-moronic simplicity and the monetary rewards it could bring.
On 16 May 1971 he was at the New York City apartment of Richard and Lisa Robinson. She was a journalist and friend of the stars; he had recently signed on as an A&R man with RCA Records. Bettye Kronstad, who was included in these evenings, told author Howard Sounes ‘all these people in the music business would hang out and all sit around in a circle and listen to Lou pontificate. We just all sat around and gazed adoringly at Lou.’ There are no recorded instances of this state of affairs ever bothering Lou. On this occasion he played them a number of songs he had been working on, including a new one called ‘Walk On The Wild Side’. This had been inspired by Nelson Algren’s novel of the same name, but had grown into an unblinking account of the back stories of the key people in Andy Warhol
’s Factory. Without the girlie backing vocals and the swooning string bass ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ didn’t yet have the qualities that might make it a hit. Nonetheless there was enough there for Richard to suggest to Lou that he should put his poetry career on hold and have another tilt at making a record, this time with RCA. The same record company, which hadn’t made any significant signings in the last few years, had just done a deal with the manager of that English guy David Bowie who was, interestingly, a big admirer of Lou’s, and indeed was said to include some of his songs in his stage act. Robinson might even be able to arrange for Reed to have artistic control and to make the record in London, far away from his bad experiences in New York. Lewis Reed didn’t need any second bidding.
Over the summer, as Robinson sold the deal to his masters at RCA and Reed took steps to assert his right to be credited as the composer of the songs on the Velvet Underground’s Loaded, the second coming of Lou Reed took shape. It was to have one crowning moment of coming-out. On 9 September David Bowie was in New York to officially sign his deal with RCA, who would release his new album Hunky Dory before Christmas. Flushed with the rare experience of being the centre of attention, RCA threw a party for their new signing at a club called The Ginger Man. Among the guests were Lou Reed and Bettye Kronstad, who appeared in the midst of Bowie’s carefully cultivated fabulousness like the suburban figures they had become. Assured this time that he was talking to the right person, Bowie allowed the older man to take the limelight. It was a curious meeting. Neither was anything like as big a noise as the people around them fervently hoped they could become. Reed was the elder statesman nobody had heard of. Bowie was the hot young thing nobody knew from Adam. They performed the familiar courtly dance of rock luminaries seeking to avoid at all costs deferring to each other. At the end of the evening Bowie’s party went on to another venue where they were introduced to another of the American performers Bowie liked to advertise his approval of, Iggy Pop.
Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars 1955-1994 Page 15
