"ROLLING STONE," BOB DYLAN, TIMOTHY LEARY AND WHAT THE HECK WAS GOING ON IN MUSKOKA, IN 1971
LIFE IN THE PEACE LOVING HINTERLAND
There was a time, when I was working on editorial copy for several local publications, from my home office, at Birch Hollow, when I had to shut off my source of music, because I found, that by the happenstance of exposure, it was heavily influencing the way I was writing, and the whole theme of the finished product. I would rise to what the music dictated, and react emotionally, when a piece would come on the radio, that inspired an uncertain melancholy or sadness. The bright, lively pieces made me too happy for my own editorial good. I was allowing the influence to push and shove me around editorially, and when I'd re-read the copy, prior to sending it off to the editor, for approval, gads, the obvious moodiness of the work, was like riding waves on the ocean. I could recall the musical companionship I had been exposed to, for every four or five paragraphs, and found that it was entirely reflective of its imbedded low-key but for-real message. I was trusting the music to get me through an editorial job, and it became increasingly evident, I was bowing to its commands. So I had to turn the radio and phonograph off, when I was writing-up interviews and related research-based pieces, in order to avoid the bias the music seemed to bring into the mix. If I happened to be working on an open-ended jag of creative writing, I was only too glad to crank it up again, and enjoy its influences. I wasn't aware just how adverse it was to the mission of unbiased reporting, and unfettered editorial content, to have music resonating in your ear, and massaging your emotions at the same time. I could work in a busy news room, with farting, yelling, arguing colleagues, all day long, and be able to compose emotion-free editorial copy; as long as no one turned on the radio, to infuse some joyful, thought-provoking music into the dank inner sanctum we benefitted from, because of what it didn't have as resident comforts and kind therapy. Sort of like a dungeon but not as clean.
I have been listening to son Robert, fine tuning a recording he did, (most recently) for a local group, and I asked him, as a laymen of such things, why he had to listen, and re-listen a hundred times or more, to the same music passages. He took some time to explain the process of what he does to polish a recording, that will one day be mastered into a "for sale" CD, but all I really garnered, through the fog of techno-speak, was that he is persnickety about even the most minute detail of sound, its inherent perfection, or not to his liking, and quality of the finished product to the trained ear (of which his could do a hundred push-ups in sixty seconds). He was always a detail oriented little chap, especially as a guitarist, and now he has parlayed his overly fit musical ear, smack dab into the middle of the recording industry, where he has been a sort of small town rising star recently, with some plumes cast in his direction, by folks who have been imbedded in the industry for decades. Anyway, it's a privilege to be working alongside the studio wizard, who allows me, at the same time, (as long as I don't ask too many questions), to sit here and go through these back copies of Rolling Stone, for the purposes of my daily blog. When pages of the magazine slip onto the floor accidentally, the good son, will stop what he's doing, and help his old pop, gather up the scattered archives material. I just hope he's not sacrificing too much, in order to keep his fumbling old father, from screwing up his studio, trying to keep his crap together. I'm proud of the lad, and it's a real privilege for me, to sit in the studio and see how he puts it all together; to finish up with something that sounds so fantastic. I mean, if you're going to write about music, it can't hurt to be immersed in the culture as deeply as this armchair affords, even when the recording is over for the day, and a jam session breaks out in front. I love it!
1971. I remember the long, hot, smelly days, working at Clark's Produce, up on Bracebridge's Toronto Street. I learned how to spot a rotten patch on a burlap bag of potatoes, before it, the putrid white ooze, connected with any part of my body. The owner, my boss, would come over, on first whiff, and turn the subject bag until the smell intensified, and he could see a wet spot on the burlap. He'd whip out a small pocket knife and cut out the bad spud. The smell of a rotten potato on a hot, humid day, can make someone with the strongest constitution wretch like a first time scotch drinker. Jimmy Clark, the proprietor of the produce wholesaler, with a huge array of camp and resort customers all over the Muskoka Lakes, liked to have his little portable radio playing in his office, which also had the only fan in the building, but it wasn't on any channel that would play top ten songs. It would have made carrying huge bags of onions and carrots on our shoulders, slightly more palatable, (but just as stinky) because it really was a horrible job, feeding the masses in the context of our grunt work. We might have been considered strapping young men, by initial appearance when we entered the warehouse, but by time we were dispatched, after loading all the deliveries for the coming morning, we looked like diminished coal miners needing retirement, or else. I worked back then for the going kid-labour rate; which for Jimmy C., was to pay us a less than generous buck an hour; and I had to petition Jimmy on many occasions, when he would cut me short, because I hadn't worked the full hour. If I was off by even ten minutes, he'd find it hard to justify full pay for time not worked. I wouldn't even get partial compensation, for the fifty or so minutes invested. I wouldn't get a thin dime. Until of course, the young man with rotten potato smeared on his shirt, protested, and threatened to miss morning deliveries altogether.
The next morning, I had to get up at about five in the morning, still hurting from the night before, which could have gone from three in the afternoon, until ten or so. It may not seem like a long haul for young bucks, but for some of us slighter lads, the bags were just shy of our own height, and our body weight. It was everything we could do, to throw these bags over our shoulders as Jimmy insisted we handle them, over to the truck at the loading dock. We had a lift-cart but you couldn't use it efficiently for a few bags. It was for shifting skids back and forth in the warehouse, and to unload the truck when it came in full. He used to smoke a cigar in the cab of the truck he drove, in the morning, and he wasn't big on having the passenger side window down, because it blew his paperwork around, and sent ash flying from the tray. Hey, it was a job, at a time when many of my contemporaries were hanging around Bass Rock, swimming most of the day, and pondering where to get some spending money. I did hate the job, but it was one hell of a learning experience. It made me aspire to bigger and better things, and I can honestly say, Jimmy Clark helped me focus on the future. 1971 was a pivotal year of attitude adjustment. I will never forget the aroma of a mushy rotten potato on a shirt in ninety degree heat and humidity. I reiterate. Music, my music of choice, was re-playing in my head, and thank God for that!
On the back cover of the March 4, 1971 issue of "Rolling Stone" magazine, is a picture of Bob Dylan, with the caption, "Bringing It All Back Home - Bob Dylan in the Alley, plus True Revolutionary Tales." On the front cover, beneath a large portrait of Steve Stills, the headline above the editorial copy reads, "Dylan Film, Opening Night: Fast On The Eve." The story, written by Jonathon Cott, reports from New York, with the following overview: "It was an early evening rain, night comin' in a fallin', and merely on the basis of short advance announcements in Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, and on Howard Smith's FM Radio show, a couple of thousand persons showed up at the Academy of Music on February 8th, to catch Dylan's one-hour color film 'Eat The Document,' shown twice at 7:00 and 9:00 with proceeds going to a Pike County citizen's group, which has been set up to stop strip-mining in the South."
The article also reports, "Jerry Rubin and Gordon Lightfoot were there." Yup, our very own Gordon Lightfoot. We just don't think about these kind of things happening; Gordon Lightfoot hanging with folks like Bob Dylan, to companion a protest. It took a refresher from the Rolling Stone to upgrade myself to the incredible lives these performers have experienced, and the company they kept.
On page 10, this is a small article with a big impact, entitled "Bennett's Canned," and comes from New York. "WMCA-AM commentator / disc jockey Alex Bennett, who aired a live interview with Tim Leary, from Algiers a month ago, has been fired. Peter Straus, station owner and general manager, admitted that a request for a tape of the Leary interview, had been received from the FCC complaints department, following the program. But he said Bennett's dismissal had nothing to do with this. 'His contract is not being renewed because his evening show would clash with sports events during the summer months,' Straus said. Bennett's program has had a high popularity rating, and he was the only commentator on AM radio, in New York, sympathetic to an FM oriented audience. His shows in the past two years, have featured interviews with virtually all leading rock musicians as well as politicos, such as Abbie Hoffman and the Last Poets. Bennett claimed that recently some major advertisers had boycotted his show. WMCA denied this."
On page 16, an article mid-page, reports the big entertainment news of the month, as being "Tom Fogerty Leaves Creedence." "BERKELEY - When the members of Creedence Clearwater Revival threw a mammoth press party last December, they took pains to convince the assembled guests, that the band would be seeking new directions. The gist of the message was that John Fogarty would be stepping back a bit to let brother Tom Fogerty, bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford, take a more active role in composing and playing, both on record and in concert. The changes had been brewing within the group for some time, but they apparently weren't happening fast enough for rhythm guitarist Tom, who decided sometime in January, to split after being with the band almost 11 years years. 'It was sort of dawning on me,' he said, 'that I hadn't been doing everything I could have been doing'."
The article continues, "Creedence had been doing plenty, what with more than $30 million in record sales over the past two years, and a string of hits unmatched by any other American group, but when Tom began to explore his new creative role, he found that he didn't fit in the Creedence context any more - and there were other pressures. "Here I was, John's older brother (Tom's 29), yet not really leading and taking the thing anywhere, and I was just sort of frustrated by it,' he said, adding quickly that he has never minded working with John, and that his decision to leave is far more complex, than simply not being able to lead the group. And that there's no hostility involved."
On page 18, there is a full page article, written by John Lombardi, beneath the black and white portrait of John Lee Hooker, that is entitled, "John Lee Bad Like Jesse James." "OAKLAND - Hands slap knees; glass clinks. A couple of thousand miles from his last ghetto, John Lee Hooker has re-established himself, family and entourage. The house is on 13th Street, but it is comfortable this time. The fact that Oakland is as much a ghetto as Detroit is beside the point. 'My mind still be back there,' John Lee croaks, and then his dark, Bantu face, uncut by the faintest trace of miscegenation, and solid as stone, cracks into one of the smallish grins he allows himself, when being interviewed by white writers, 'but the weather better here.' The people in the comfortable room guffaw. 'We gonna move to the country, anyway,' John Lee drawls, his voice dropping a whole key. Everyone roars. 'Tell it'!"
"John Lee is 52, 55, 57, depending on who you ask. That, of course, is beside the point too. He is an old man now, and he has - in the limited sense that it can happen to blues singers - made it. Recently. In the last five years, his records have been selling well to a young, longhaired audience. (He has just cut a double album with Canned Heat, a project which should do him some good with the same market). It's to the point now where Tex Coleman, his old Detroit pal, and new personal manager, can afford to tell a higher-priced version of the old racial shuffle story: 'Yea, I wuz up in Santa Rosa lookin' over some propritty - we thinkin' of openin' a club. This po-leese come up an' ask me if I thinkin' about movin' in. Then he ask who I gonna put in the club. I tell him John Lee Hooker. 'Oh yea?' he say. 'You know him?' I told him I did, an' I knew a captain on the highway patrol, too. He stop lookin' fishy, escort me 'round the town'. The property, Tex adds, is worth $59,000."
"Jim Morrison's Got the Blues," appears on page 22, beside the portrait of a bearded Jim Morrison, the Lizzard King, as written by Rolling Stone senior editor, Ben Fong-Torres, in "LOS ANGELES". He writes, "Jim Morrison and the Doors are back home in Hollywood and at work on an album - this time without producer Paul Rothchild, and this time featuring 'blues" Morrison says, 'Original blues, if there's such a thing'. Morrison, the ex-sex symbol of West Coast rock; the poet who called himself 'Lizard King,' is a convicted man, following a two-month trial in Florida, for his alleged organ recital at a March, 1969 concert Miami. He was found guilty of misdemeanors - indecent exposure and open profanity, and his case is on appeal - probably for an indefinite time. He's out on bail."
The article by Fong-Torres reports, "Jim Morrison, all of the above, is still a Door. He continues the transition from rock 'n roll to poetry and films. And he has aged. His face is still jungular, but now more lion-like than Tarzanic, outline as it is by comfortably long dark hair, and full, dark beard. And he's got the beginning of a beer belly. Quiet about his Miami case in the Rolling Stone interview, he did in July, 1969, and silent, still, during the trial, Morrison seemed eager to talk a bit when we ran into each other in Hollywood - to put the old days in proper perspective, to discuss the Doors, and to assess the whole Miami thing, in his own words."
On the right hand page, and beside the story, entitled "The Carpenters And the Creeps," there is an article headed, "Maybe What They Want is a Pig." The piece is written by Jerry Hopkins and is set in Beverly Hills. "The California cop largely responsible for the hang-loose law enforcement policies, introduced at the Woodstock pop festival, has been fired from his job, as Beverly Hills police chief, for the second time in under a year. Put another way by his attorney, the chief 'may be the only cop in the country the kids respect, and as thanks for his contribution, the city shoves a broom handle up his ass'. It was in August, 1969, after serving as security chief at Woodstock, that Joe Kimble told a newspaper reporter, hippies couldn't be stereotyped and that he had a 'strong conviction traditional police methods are not necessarily the best methods.' Since then, he's been in trouble back home, where according to local politicos, he has failed to project a Beverly Hills image."
As for the "Carpenters" story, by Lester Bangs, reporting from San Diego, it begins, "Where there's lots of money being made, as any hack journalist will tell you, there's probably some kind of story; and when a once-floundering group has two giant hits in a row, some psychological transaction must be taking place between them and the public. Success stories like Melanie and Grand Funk are obvious; but what about a group like the Carpenters, who are at present riding high, even though they didn't seem to have any particular image, concept, much material, or anything definite except a pleasant-voiced girl, and a facile arranger? Is there some subtle catalytic ingredient hiding somewhere beneath that too-clear surface? Or is their whole phenomenon just blind coincidence?"
"Thus it was that I took my musical sensibilities in my hands and attended a Carpenter's concert. Oh, I had really liked 'We've Only Just Begun,' - in fact, the reason why I'd just re-fallen in love with a childhood sweetheart, at the time it was riding the radio, and it was, well, it was Our Song. Even if it did originate in a bank commercial. Karen Carpenter had a full, warm voice, and her brother Richard's musical settings, were deft and to the point. The LP cover and promo pix, showed 'em side by side, identical, interchangeable boy-girl faces, grinning out at you with all the cheery innocence of some years-past dream of California youth. Almost like a better-scrubbed reincarnation of Sonny & Cher. What also sparked your curiosity was the question of audience; who pays five bucks for a Carpenter's Concert? Somehow you couldn't see the usual rock show crowd, of army-fatigued truckers and seconded stooges. But they must have found a major following somewhere, because, in San Diego at least, the show was totally sold out."
On page 28 and 29, a Canadian music lover like me, is hit in the face by the double spread headlined, "Joni Takes A Break," about Joni Mitchell's early retirement from the wild ride of the music scene, as it ate-up performers in the late 1960's and early 70's. The well written article, by Larry LeBlanc, in Toronto, begins, "Canadians are stunned by the vague, awesome level that Joni Mitchell has reached. She was the least-known of the Toronto group of folksingers of the sixties. Joni returned to Toronto, this summer, to appear at the annual Mariposa Folk Festival on Toronto Island - her first public performance in more than six months. She has an undisputible genuine affection for the Mariposa event. One reason, is it is possible to find a degree of privacy here among old friends. In the afternoon workshop she freely doodled a dulcimer, smiled, and hummed in rhythm with her hands."
LeBlanc writes, "She appeared shortly before eight, backstage, dressed in a short robe, belted loosely around the middle which clung without tightness to all of her. In the shelter of the trees along the lagoon we talked. The sun was gone, there was a shadow all across the grassy prairie-like opening, and a small cloud of insects hovered overhead. A few feet away, Gordon Lightfoot sat on a park bench, and said how great it was to be a spectator for a change. David Rae, who at last is emerging from the relative obscurity of guitarist for Lightfoot, Ian and Sylvia, and Joni, were there, cheerier than ever. Jack Elliott, with significantly smiling eyes, pulled his broad-brimmed cowboy hat over his forehead, put his thumbs in his pockets, and waited his turn at the bottle being shared by Mississippi Fred McDowell, J.B. Hutto and Lightfoot. Joni sat watching, curiously and quiet, nodding hello now and then. With her chin resting on her crossed legs, she seemed just a little self-conscious, but most inwardly serene. So perfect with high soft cheekbones, great bright blue eyes, bittersweet blond hair, dribbing down past her shoulders, she has a broad smile worth waiting for and a tremendous vanilla grin, which makes here always magical. Carefully, almost cautiously, she picked the words to describe self-exile from the pop scene."
The writer, Larry LeBlanc, quotes Mitchel as saying, "In January, I did my last concert. I played in London and I came home. In February I finished up my record. I gave my last concert with the idea I'd take this year off, because I need new material. I need new things to say, in order to perform, so there's something in it for me. You can't sing the same songs.' She adds, 'I was being isolated, starting to feel like a bird in a gilded cage. I wasn't getting a chance to meet people. A certain amount of success cuts you off in a lot of ways. You can't move freely. I like to live, be on the streets, to be in a crowd and moving freely.' She confirmed that she was still uneasy of the great army of photographers scrambling around her, of the crowds fawning on her at every turn, wanting something, wanting to touch her. In the center she worked hard to smile constantly, answer the seemingly endless questions, and made that magic."
"It's a weird thing,' she said solemnly. 'You lose all your peripheral view of things. It has its rewards but I don't know what the balance is - how much good and how much damage there is in my position. From where I stand, it sometimes gets absurd, and yet, I must remain smiles, come out of a mood where maybe I don't feel very pleasant and 'smile'. Inside, I'm thinking; 'You're being phony, you're smiling phony. You're being a star."
Well, with great interviews like this, from the vintage of the early 1970's, I could now very easily, and comfortably, spend my days, buried in these back issues of the Rolling Stone, acquired by son Andrew recently, with a collection of other vintage magazines. Here I am, in my element, reliving the music heritage I was influenced by, even if it was along the outside edge, experienced here in the hinterland of Ontario. Jimmy Clark wouldn't let us play-it in the warehouse of his produce company, or have it blaring through the truck radio, and the haze of his cigar exhaust, on those morning deliveries but it was playing in my head none the less, on all those hundred-plus mile romps around the lake, delivering lettuce, cabbages, cantaloupes, strawberries and, oh yes, potatoes and onions by the fifty pound bags full. When I got home, and cleansed away the mix of putrid juices and raunchy smells, associated with moist cigar smoke, and the plethora of aromas of the industry, I'd sit outside our apartment, in a nice shady spot, by the crabapple tree, and listen to my little portable radio; the one I got for Christmas, one year, with the cracked plastic case, and wonky dial. And inevitably, over an hour or so, of hearing my favorite songs, feel better about my lot in life; that was yet to be determined. I did know for sure, that I didn't want a career in vegetable or fruit distribution, (just from my own bad experiences, not that I begrudge anyone else from this enterprise) or to ever work for a guy who would blow cigar smoke in my face, to make a point about who was boss. Son Robert's only vice, other than liking his music loud, very loud,is strong coffee three times a day. I will re-evaluate if and when the little fellow starts buying cigars.
Please join me again tomorrow, for another look at music from a bygone era. I'll have some more insights, from the Rolling Stone, regarding the death of "Pearl," Janis Joplin.
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