Once in L.A. I fell heavily into a stressed-out gloom. To be so near Madame X but not to have contact! T Bone noticed it and wondered what was wrong, but having promised her I would say nothing, I said nothing. The work proceeded apace, and the results were good. Joe Schiff, who had engineered the album, produced a finished set of mixes, which were dry and raw and true to the spirit of our original plan to use Exile on Main Street as a template. The folks at Columbia didn’t like it. Bernie wasn’t impressed either. T Bone had adopted a laissez-faire attitude during this phase of the work. It seemed like he had lost interest and wanted to get on to the next thing.
By that time it had become fashionable to mix your album, and then have it remixed, not by a star DJ, as later became the trend, but by some famous producer. The corporate end of the record industry is very much influenced by what is in fashion. If an important radio consultant directs his client stations to play a remixed record, then all records shall be remixed until the fad is over. Columbia insisted that the album be mixed again. Everybody but Joe Schiff, who was quite proud of what he had done, said, “Oh, what the hell, why not?” T Bone suggested we try British producer Glyn Johns, who was known for his idiosyncratic approach to album making. He’d had great success with albums by Joan Armatrading, the Rolling Stones, the Eagles, Eric Clapton, Linda Ronstadt, the Who, and many others. Glyn was both interested and available. Suddenly I was off to the south of England with massive reels of two-inch Ampex tape that held a couple of years’ worth of writing and recording, and a desperate sense that the wretched album might never be done.
Glyn housed his studio in an outbuilding on a farm he owned an hour south of London, where he and his synchronistically named wife, Glynis, received me with warmth. I was shown to a room and given a towel, and then we went to work. Glyn Johns’s way of mixing was less technological and more physical than anything I had seen before. His custom-made mixing console, with its array of faders, knobs, meters, blinking lights, and patch bays, curved around him like the dashboard of a starship. Various functions were controlled by means of foot switches. He played the thing as if he were the Phantom of the Opera at the pipe organ, all expressive body language and hands sweeping over the controls. Occasionally his son Ethan and I were enlisted to press a button or move a fader. Each pass through a song was fresh, spontaneous, and creative. Although Glyn appeared to like the record we had made, he could be a crusty character, and some of his judgments were harsh, to the point where on at least one occasion I was reduced to tears when he declared that the sound of the bass on a certain song was unworkable and he couldn’t possibly mix it. Later he relented, and it all came out fine. Glyn was eccentric and intense, but he was very musical, and his sensitive touch with the songs was a gift.
There were more tears to come. After we wrapped the album, I went to dinner in L.A. with T Bone and Sam. The evening began cordially enough, with pleasantries all around. But the tension that had been with us through the whole making of the record hung like an aerosol around our table. When I went to pick up the tab, it exploded. T Bone boiled over. The money issue, whatever it was, had been eating at him the whole time.
“You fucking hypocrite, Cockburn!” he shouted at me in front of a sparse weeknight population of diners. Heads turned, then quickly turned away. His face reddened. Sam shrank back. The blast came out of nowhere. We all have our rage; here was T Bone’s. The shock wave of his pent-up anger blew the wires that held my own mask of joviality in place. I had been feeling close to these people and hoped to remain friends with them, a hope dashed on the stones of human discourse. I was heart-scraped and vulnerable, and I burst out crying like a baby. Maybe it was about the money, or maybe too it was a vent for T Bone’s other stresses.
It’s not the laughter of rain in the drain
It’s not the laughter of a man in pain
It’s not the laughter you can hide behind
It’s not the laughter of a frightened mind
Balanced on the brink only waiting for a shove
You better listen for the laugh of love
It’s not the laughter of the gloating rich
It’s not the laughter of the sacred bitch
It’s not the laughter of the macho fool
It’s not the laughter that obeys the rules
More of a chain saw in a velvet glove
You better listen for the laugh of love
It’s not the laughter of a child with toys
It’s not the laughter of the president’s boys
It’s not the laughter of the media king
This laughter doesn’t sell you anything
It’s the wind in the wings of a diving dove
You better listen for the laugh of love
Whatever else you might be thinking of
You better listen for the laugh of love
“LISTEN FOR THE LAUGH,” 1992
To listen to a sample of this song visit b.hc.com/s/79.
I wrote “Listen For The Laugh” a week to the day before the 1992 American presidential election, which saw George H. W. Bush, former head of the secret police, ousted from office by Southern smoothie Bill Clinton. I considered the outcome of the election an improvement, though not much of one, but the liberals I knew, most of my U.S. acquaintances, were so excited and hopeful that I seldom voiced my skepticism. It seemed to me that their expectations for a major change in the nation’s direction were unduly high. Nevertheless, I tried to embrace their enthusiasm, at least when I was with them. When Grammy-winning bass player Rob Wasserman asked if I would be interested in performing at one of Clinton’s inaugural balls, it was easy to accept.
I’d been working with Wasserman occasionally for more than a year, and our relationship became important to some of my upcoming music. In the summer of 1991 I was booked to tour across the United States with him and the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, playing moderately large outdoor venues, or “sheds,” as they are known in the trade. Wasserman and Weir would tour as a duo, with singer Michelle Shocked and me as opening acts. She and I would take turns going onstage first, while the audience was still coming in, which made us cannon fodder; and second, which offered us a chance of actually being listened to. Bob and Rob were friendly and hospitable, not always what you get in the world of rock and roll, and they turned in beautiful performances throughout the tour. I was especially taken with Wasserman’s muscular approach to the bass as a lead instrument. He played fluidly, churning out a big sound on an upright electric.
Later that year I received an invitation from Weir to hang out and write songs with him and Wasserman the following January in Hawaii. It was Bob’s idea and invitation, and he paid for Sue and me to fly out, providing us with a rented townhouse we shared with Rob and his girlfriend. The setting was glorious, a welcome break from the Ontario deep freeze. I’d never spent any time on the islands other than what it took to refuel an airplane for a continuing journey to the Southern Hemisphere. Maui was moist and warm, the surf pleasant, and we did some enjoyable jamming. The writing didn’t produce much, though, except a stronger relationship with the talented and dynamic musical duo.
In December 1992 Rob and I played together in front of an audience for the first time, albeit an invisible one over the airwaves. It was the second in a series of live radio shows called Christmas with Cockburn, a brainchild of the head of radio promotion at Columbia Records, Paul Rappaport. The original show had wrapped up the first leg of the Nothing but a Burning Light tour, in the closing weeks of 1991, with a morning performance at the Bearsville Theater, behind which Albert Grossman is buried, just down the road from the studio where we would record the next album. Sam Phillips and T Bone Burnett appeared as guests, along with violinist David Mansfield. I was into the idea of doing a Christmas show, but I insisted that it reflect the spiritual aspect of the season—no “Jingle Bell Rock” or “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.” There being no objections, the show went on, apparently to Columbia’s satisfaction, as it served as a test ru
n for the launch of the Columbia Records Radio Hour series, which for five years included an annual Christmas with Cockburn.
Bob Weir and I attempting to create, Maui, 1992
photo credit: SUE FRANKLIN
When it came time for show number two, there was no tour in progress, so we had to gather guests from the world at large. I sought out Rosanne Cash (I had recently appeared with her and Lucinda Williams on an installment of the Austin City Limits TV show, and contributed a harmony vocal to her album The Wheel) and Rob Wasserman. Both said yes. I knew that Rob had played with Lou Reed for many years, so I asked if he could get Lou to join us. A week or so later, I was on the phone listening to the unmistakable voice of Mr. Reed. I explained what the show was all about, and he said, “Well, I’d have to do a Jewish song.”
With Rosanne Cash (left) and Lucinda Williams in the dressing
room of Austin City Limits.
John Leventhal is in the background.
“No problem,” I said, “if you can think of anything but ‘Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel.’”
“Sure,” said Lou. “I’ll find something else.”
He came off terse, somewhat gruff, gravel in the throat, though civil and less intimidating than I had feared.
Some days later he called and announced, “I’m going to have to do ‘Dreidel’—there are no other Hanukkah songs—but I’m gonna do a rock-and-roll version of it.” Okay, fine. What could I say? A few days after that, though, he called again and said, “You know, ‘Dreidel’ doesn’t work as a rock-and-roll song, so I can’t do it. I’ll do something else. We don’t have to do a Jewish song.”
“I have no problem with Jewish songs,” I told him, “but I’m glad you’re not doing ‘Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel.’” In the end, Lou brightened things up with a song called “Xmas in February,” about homeless and addicted Vietnam veterans.
As a climax to the show, we performed a collective rendition of “Cry of a Tiny Babe,” trading verses. It fell to Lou to do the second verse, about King Herod, which, with his sardonic tone and a twinkle in his eye, he pronounced “He-rod.” He talked it more than he sang it: “The governing body of this holy land / Is that of He-rod, a paranoid man.” I got so convulsed trying to keep from laughing, I could barely play.
We were a great team for that event, inspiring Rob to reconvene us for one of the Clinton inaugural parties, Al Gore’s Tennessee Ball. Rob had connections with the Gore family, and the incoming Clinton administration was pretty hip, so they let him put the concert cast together. Rob called Rosanne Cash and Lou Reed and me, plus he brought in Bob Weir. (Later Rob and Bob would form RatDog.) Rosanne came with a band, including John Leventhal, the talented guitarist and producer she would marry three years later. Rob and I played as a duo, then Rob played with Lou as part of his band.
While Rob and I were onstage, halfway through “Lord of the Starfields,” I heard, “Psst, psst, psst!” I ignored it. Suddenly there was a stern-faced suit with an earpiece at the rear of the stage, his mouth opening and closing, shaping the words “Get off! Get off!” and making little arm signals. Then Rob began to mutter nervously about stopping. During the instrumental break between verses, I said, “Screw that. We’re finishing the song,” which we did. This was God I was singing to here! There was only about a minute left to go. Whatever it was could wait.
Ah, the president! That’s what it was. We got to the end and everyone was angry at us, glaring blackly as they shouldered us into the wings. Rob and I were held there while the Clintons came out to talk at the crowd. That was all the contact I had with the brand-new president and his shining first lady. They acknowledged us, but just barely. They didn’t hang out. He spoke for three minutes and then they left. After that, the show continued like a huge bar mitzvah, revelers on the downside of the rush, itchy in evening clothes, gaping dumbly from the dance floor as if wondering, “Why are we here?” They were there to hear Clinton or Al Gore speak. We all performed pretty well, but they weren’t there for us. A few of them engaged in a feeble, constricted sort of dance. There was a brief stir of excitement when Paul Simon, who was playing some other ball across the hall, dropped by and sat in for the big encore wank at the end, all of us onstage together, but otherwise the crowd might have been happier with a DJ.
For me, the most exciting moment of the night (other than when the Secret Service agent guarding us in the green room caught the grip of his holstered pistol on the back of a folding chair, causing the gun to clatter to the floor) came at the end of the concert. Rosanne’s folks were there to hear her play, proud as could be that their daughter had been asked to be part of the show. They made their way to the side of the stage as we packed up. Rosanne introduced us: Johnny and June Carter Cash, he in trademark black and she tastefully glamorous in a blue-patterned evening gown. I was a couple of years shy of fifty. Johnny was as old as the Appalachians. He shook my hand and said, “Nice playin’, son.”
With Bruce Hornsby and Jackson Browne, at a benefit in the early nineties
photo credit: PAUL LYDEN
By way of thanks, the administration gave us each a nice leather pilot’s jacket with the presidential seal embroidered on the inside pocket. I think mine was the only one that actually fit.
The cast for the 1993 Christmas with Cockburn was just Jackson Browne and me. These later shows were broadcast from Columbia’s own studio in New York, where they’d taken over the old Universal Film building. Under the gymnasium-like floor of the main room, Esther Williams’s swimming pool conjured dreams of toothpaste smiles and wet and glistening bodies.
Not being inclined toward religion, Jackson chose to read the meaning of Christmas in political terms. He sang his song “The Rebel Jesus,” accompanying himself on piano, and “All I Want for Christmas (Is World Peace)” by Pat MacDonald of Timbuk3, which features the lines:
Rock Lord masters of disaster
Detonate the ghetto blaster
And little black Rambo metal choir
Sings deck the halls with great balls of fire
Jackson made the kind of slip we all dread and sang “Sambo” instead of “Rambo.” He was embarrassed about it afterward, but there was no going back because half of the stations that carried these shows ran them live. Which led to the next slip, this one much bigger and all mine.
A little more than a year earlier, PEN (Poets, Essayists, Novelists) Canada had held a benefit at the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto. I was the token musical act amid a collection of writers that included John Irving, Canadian novelist and poet Margaret Atwood, and my friend Michael Ondaatje, who won the Booker Prize that year for his acclaimed novel The English Patient. What nobody expected, and what drew a collective gasp from the audience, was seeing the novelist Salman Rushdie sauntering out onstage. By that time Rushdie was into his third year of living under a fatwa death sentence handed down by His Pomposity the Iranian Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. This was Rushdie’s first public appearance since the fatwa, issued for his “blasphemous” satirical novel The Satanic Verses. He’d been living on a kind of international Death Row for three years, and the price on his head had recently risen to $10 million.
Rushdie knew that, just for the sake of sanity, he had to appear in public at some point. (In a charming sort of irony, local neo-Nazis were picketing outside because PEN wouldn’t support one of their revisionist, Holocaust-denying writers, who was facing some sort of censure for a recent work of pseudo-historical propaganda.) Only Ondaatje, who was hosting Rushdie at his home, and the organizers knew in advance the identity of a “mystery guest” we had been told would join us onstage. During the afternoon, bomb-sniffing dogs had given the place a good going-over, so we figured it would be someone interesting, but when Rushdie came out, everyone was stunned. He was humble, humourous, and engaging, contemplating censorship and his clandestine life. Later the premier of Ontario, Bob Rae, came out onstage and embraced Rushdie, becoming the first head of state anywhere in the world to be seen in public with the w
riter, who had won the Booker Prize in 1981, since the ayatollah had issued his fatwa.
Salman Rushdie and me
photo credit: JEAN MARC DESROCHERS
A year later, there I was with Jackson on live radio. We’d just finished performing “The Rebel Jesus,” which, as it sounds, is a Christmas protest song, a political take on Jesus’s message:
We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why they are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus
After singing the song, Jackson said something like “You know, there are a lot of people from the Christian side of things who might not appreciate that song, but it’s great to be able to play it in here and share that message.” I said, “Yeah, I know what you mean. Last year I did a gig with Salman Rushdie. Talk about not being appreciated.” I paused, then said, “But you know what? Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”
In an instant, the faces of the Columbia people became cartoon masks of consternation. There was much buzzing about the hive. The ghost of Esther Williams shook the water from her hair and guffawed. Came the cries from every quarter: “FCC! FCC!” Seems you can’t say “fuck” on American airwaves. Nobody paid any attention at all to the content of what I had said. You can host hate radio that worms into the warped minds of people like Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, so long as you don’t say “fuck.” What was of more immediate importance to me was that I had probably just offended the entire Muslim community, a group not widely known for possessing a sense of humour about their faith.
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