The turning point of my solo career may have come with the very first show.
It was October 16, 1982, on a live TV broadcast called Rockpalast in Germany, which went live to something like seventeen countries, was on all night, and was watched by everybody at a time when there were only three channels.
The creator, Peter Rüchel, who would become a lifelong friend, was such a big fan of Men Without Women that we headlined the show.
Gianna Nannini, described to me as the Italian Patti Smith, opened, then Kid Creole and the Coconuts, then us.
We were a little concerned because we had just found out our record had come out in Germany that day.
We went on and the crowd went crazy. By the end of the show it was bedlam. Our local record company guy, a delightful wild man named Lothar Meinerzhagen (picture Werner Klemperer as Colonel Klink without the uniform), who was one of our true believers, called LA and begged them to support a European tour immediately. He told them the reaction was extraordinary, and the broadcast had gone out to all of Europe.
They turned it down. A life-changing moment. We could have broken all of Europe right then and there. If I’d had a Manager, it would have gotten done.
Kid Creole—who, with all due respect, put the audience to sleep—stayed, toured, broke Europe wide open, and never left.
Meanwhile, I was thinking a lot about that kid in Germany who’d gotten me hooked on politics in the first place. I wanted to find him. And beat the shit out of him.
The tour established the pattern of my entire performance life: having to win people over song by song, since very few songs I’ve written would ever become even remotely familiar.
The other pattern I would establish was starting to write the next album a few months into the tour. I was so excited about one new song that I took the band into a studio in Belgium on a day off and cut it.
“RocknRoll Rebel,” which was going to be the title and lead track of my second album, referred to an incident from earlier that year when my friends and I got kicked out of Disneyland because of how I was dressed. My friends being Maureen, my assistant Obie, and Bruce.
It was my comic version of the Stones’ “Street Fighting Man,” and the main joke was that my rebellion was about dressing funny and not doing drugs. When I sang about being “straight” in the chorus, that’s what it was about, not my heterosexuality, which isn’t particularly rebellious.
Although, at one point in the early British Rock scene it would have been a rebellious act!
I did a radio essay on it, the substance of which was my sincere belief that the day the gay culture abandoned Rock and went to Disco was the day fashion left with them. Glam would be the gay culture’s final endorsement of Rock. Before that, the industry was completely dominated by a culture so gay that the Stones’ Manager Andrew Oldham told me he had to pretend to be gay just to have a seat at the table!
It began with the London Promoter and Manager Larry Parnes, who discovered talented and attractive young men, changed their names, seduced them (if possible), and tried to make them famous. His stable included Tommy Steele (originally Tommy Hicks), Marty Wilde (Reg Smith), Billy Fury (Ron Wycherley), Vince Eager (Roy Taylor), Dickie Pride (Richard Knellar), Lance Fortune (Chris Morris), Duffy Power, (Ray Howard), Johnny Gentle (John Askew), Terry Dene (Terence Williams), Nelson Keene (Malcolm Holland), and Georgie Fame (Clive Powell), among others.
Then there was the influential Pop and theater songwriter Lionel Bart. Not to mention virtually all of the early Rock Managers, including Brian Epstein (the Beatles), Kit Lambert (the Who), Robert Stigwood (Cream, the BeeGees), Simon Napier-Bell (Yardbirds, Marc Bolan), Billy Gaff (Rod Stewart), Ken Pitt (David Bowie), Barry Krost (Cat Stevens), John Reid (Elton John), among others.
The point being that I believe it was the gay influence that made fashion such an integral part of the Rock music scene, and I miss it.
Am I digressing enough?
After sitting with “RocknRoll Rebel” for a while, I reconsidered making it the title song, or even putting it on my second album. It was going to be the beginning of my completely political phase, and I felt it needed a harder edge musically than my typical Rock or Soul, so I decided to let the horns go. Plus the song had a lot of humor in it, and I felt I also had to let that side of me go for a while. Thirty-six years, to be exact. RocknRoll Rebel finally emerged as the title of my box set of early work in 2019.
Part of the rationalization and satisfaction of being a boss working for another boss was the ability to offer suggestions and advice.
I liked being the underboss in the E Street Band. The consigliere. It kept me out of the spotlight but allowed me to make a significant enough contribution to justify my own existence in my own mind. And there was a balance between me, Bruce, and Jon. We had artistic theory and artistic practice covered.
But somewhere in ’83, it started to feel like Bruce had stopped listening. He had always been the most single-minded individual, with a natural extreme monogamy of focus in all things—in relationships, in songwriting, in guitar playing, in friends. Was that impulse now going to apply to his advisers?
At the time, I was hurt by the thought that maybe Jon resented my complete direct access to Bruce. I liked Jon a lot and thought he felt the same about me. If anything, I should have been the resentful one, but I wasn’t. In the end, I don’t think Jon had anything to do with the way things changed. There comes a time when people want to evolve without any baggage. To become something new and different without having to stay connected to the past. This was, I think, one of those moments.
Occasionally you need to be untethered.
Without all this retrospective wisdom, though, Bruce and I had our first fight, one of only three we would have in our lives.
I felt I had been giving him nothing but good advice and had dedicated my whole life and career to him without asking for a thing.
I felt I’d earned an official position in the decision-making process. He disagreed. So I quit.
Fifteen years.
We finally made it.
And I quit.
The night before payday.
It was fucking with Destiny big-time.
Or was it fulfilling it?
Briefly, let’s leave emotion out of it and examine the balance sheet of this rather… incredible move.
On the positive side, I would write the music that would make up the bulk of my life’s work. Had I stayed, in between tours I probably would have produced other Artists. Or continued writing for others. Or both. But I probably would never have written for myself.
I very possibly wouldn’t have gotten into politics. Would Mandela have gotten out of jail? Would the South African government have fallen? Probably. But we took years off both of those things.
I got to be in The Sopranos and Lilyhammer. They probably never would have happened.
I would create two radio formats, a syndicated radio show, two channels of original content for Sirius (which has introduced over a thousand new bands that have nowhere else to go), a record company, and a music history curriculum. Would any of that exist?
It would change Bruce’s personal life for the better; that’s indisputable.
He would have been on the road for two years. Would he have had the time to hook up with Patti if she hadn’t been on the road with him? Would their three wonderful kids exist if I hadn’t left?
Patti Scialfa would find the love of her life, a mixed bag for her well-deserved career—a more visible shortcut but forever in his shadow (welcome to the club)—and most importantly, again, would those same three amazing kids exist if she hadn’t joined the band to sing my vocal parts?
Nils Lofgren, hired to do my guitar parts, got a very rewarding second career, or third career if you count Crazy Horse, which he well deserved.
So some good things happened.
The negatives?
I lost my juice.
As Chadwick Boseman, playing James Brown, says in the
excellent biopic Get on Up after he fires his band, “Five minutes ago you were the baddest band in the land; now you’re nobody.”
Let that be a lesson, kids. And believe me, I am nothing if not the cautionary tale.
Never, ever leave your power base.
Not until you have secured a new one.
I not only lost most of my friends and the respect of several different industries, I blew any chance of living a life without ever again having to worry about money.
Who knows what could have been created if I’d had the backing of the masters of the universe, who are nothing but thrilled to invest in the ideas of happy, successful Rock stars?
I might even have been financially secure enough to have kids of my own.
Next life.
Upon leaving the band, I became persona totally non grata. We didn’t publicize any bad blood. Not one negative word from either of us. We just said that I had left to pursue my own career, but I was seen as a traitor by virtually everybody. People felt they had to choose sides. Guess whose side they chose?
I didn’t think I had much in common with Trotsky, but we were both temporarily written out of history.
seventeen
The Killing Floor
(1983–1984)
I should have listened,
When my friend said come to Mexico with me,
I should have listened,
When my friend said come to Mexico with me,
I wouldn’t be here now children,
Down on the killing floor.
—HOWLIN’ WOLF
Politics in Pop music began with an innocent enough couplet from Bob Dylan.
It was the first two lines of his fifth album, Bringing It All Back Home, and it would change the world forever.
The song, “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” nodded to Jack Kerouac in its title and made liberal use of the symbolist poetry of Arthur Rimbaud and Allen Ginsberg. It was also the first time Dylan ever recorded with a band that anybody had heard. (He had played with a band a few years before on a B-side.)
He’d been to England and had seen the future of Rock and Roll, and at that stage of the game, its name was the Beatles.
That led him to accept an invitation from Jim Dickson to come see a group he was managing that would soon be called the Byrds. They were already being touted as the American Beatles, and Dylan didn’t miss much. He was also aware that the most money he’d ever made was from the publishing royalty from Peter, Paul, and Mary’s version of “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
The Byrds didn’t like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and didn’t want to do it, so Dickson very cleverly invited Dylan to their rehearsal, forcing them to learn it to avoid being embarrassed. They played him their now-classic electric version of his “Mr. Tambourine Man.” As the story goes, after Dylan heard the Bach-meets-Beatles version, he said, “Hey, man! You can dance to that!” And history was made.
It would be released five months after his acoustic version and would establish the Byrds as one of the most important bands of the Renaissance, single-handedly create the Folk Rock genre, and put America back on the charts after a year of British Invasion domination.
And by the way, it would be Dylan’s only song to reach number one until “Murder Most Foul” fifty-five years later!
“Subterranean Homesick Blues” ushered in Dylan’s electric future.
Johnny’s in the basement mixing up the medicine,
I’m on the pavement thinking about the government…
I consider those the two most important sentences in the history of Rock.
The first line typified Dylan’s unique way of having fun with the language, and no one since Allen Ginsberg has loved the English language as much as Bob. It’s clever, secretive, metaphorical, streetwise, and hilarious, all at the same time.
What is Johnny doing in the basement?
Is he rolling a joint? Making a batch of grappa? Planning a revolution? Contemplating a paradox? Writing philosophy? Having sex? Denying he’s an existentialist?
Bob leaves that up to you.
But the second line changed everything forever:
I’m on the pavement thinking about the government…
What?
Thinking about what?
What the fuck does that mean?
All we thought about was sex.
All we knew was love songs.
That’s all there was.
That line is the politics-meets-Pop shot heard round the world.
We were kids. We didn’t know Folk music, or Country Blues, where ideas like this were commonplace.
Since when were we supposed to be thinking about the government?
Nobody ever thought about the government.
Not in my neighborhood.
Not in my family.
Not in my generation.
Not anybody in my parents’ generation either.
So that was it. The Big Bang of political consciousness in Pop.
Bob Dylan had already taken Woody Guthrie’s Folkie, Activist agenda to the highest-possible level on his second and third albums with songs like “Masters of War,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” and “Only a Pawn in Their Game.” But ideas like these were completely alien to Pop music.
So alien, in fact, that Dylan’s words would combine with other ingredients—the Beatles’ melodies, the Rolling Stones’ sexuality, the Byrds’ artistic breadth, the Beach Boys’ blissful harmony, the Kinks’ eccentricities, and the Who’s operatic apotheosis—to create the new Artform of Rock beginning that summer of ’65.
Over the years, other Rock songs with political consciousness popped up now and then.
Stephen Stills’s “For What It’s Worth” with Buffalo Springfield, Janis Ian’s “Society’s Child,” Marty Balin and Paul Kantner’s “Volunteers” with Jefferson Airplane, John Fogerty’s “Fortunate Son” with Creedence Clearwater Revival, and the ultimate example, Neil Young’s “Ohio” with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.
In 1971 Marvin Gaye would make history by being the first mainstream major Soul Artist to do not just a song, but an entirely politically themed album, What’s Going On.
Gil Scott-Heron could get away with it, and the Last Poets, but showbiz conventional wisdom declared politics and religion out of bounds for big stars.
Gaye had to fight Motown’s founder and big daddy Berry Gordy all the way to the finish line. In the end, Gordy recognized that Gaye’s passion for what his brother was going through in Vietnam and the daily uprisings in every Black neighborhood was not to be denied. Gordy surrendered with a speech that included “One of us will learn something from this.” Gordy would be the one learning. The album was a huge hit.
Marvin would contribute to the writing of the record, his gift was his vocal genius. He belonged to that small club of singers that could completely make a song his own whether he wrote it or not. Only a few—Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Elvis Presley come to mind-—share that gift.
His unique combination of Doo-Wop, Blues, Gospel, Soul, and Jazz was on full display in the title track, mostly written by Obie Benson from the Four Tops (they rejected it!) and Motown staff writer Al Cleveland, and continued to be impressive throughout the incredible album.
What would become his signature style of singing background with himself supposedly came from an engineer mistakenly playing back two different takes of a lead vocal at the same time. Marvin loved the accidental interplay and would use it to great effect on what would be his first (brilliant) Production.
In 1971, at the urging of Ravi Shankar, George Harrison organized the Concert for Bangladesh, which combined the consciousness of Dylan with the new political power of the Rock music generation revealed by Woodstock.
But these were one-offs. It wouldn’t have made sense at that stage to practice politics full-time. And then came the 1980s.
We had gone from the Nixon era to the Reagan era, with only a brief, failed respite from the neofascism from Jimmy Carter. I
t seemed like the right time for an entirely political Rock artist.
In the wake of my first album, I put out a single, “Solidarity,” to bring attention to the Polish trade union movement of Lech Wałesa, which was struggling to survive at the time. I kept the lyrics universal, referencing the movement only in the title and in a bit of the Polish national anthem I played in the guitar solo.
Horns were gone by then. I had decided to let the subject matter determine the music, which made for a more satisfying artistic marriage—every record would become the soundtrack to a different movie—but was not a good way to build an audience. As if I didn’t have enough challenges already with my name change.
But I was possessed. I was on an obsessive unstoppable artistic adventure, no matter how irrational. There was an indescribable rush of adrenaline that came from feeling like I had found a purpose. A justification for my existence.
Surprise juiced the adrenaline considerably. This was not what I’d had in mind for my life. I wanted to be Diaghilev! Irving Thalberg! Orson Welles! Or at least Bob Fosse!
I wanted to Produce Big Things! I was on the path to doing just that. I had produced a massive hit record, and life is all about the parlay. I could have followed that success with producing other major acts or getting any project I could dream up financed for the rest of my life. Now, my significant contribution would be diminished to irrelevancy.
The adrenaline rush of feeling like I was doing the right thing, of having a purpose, fulfilling some sort of unclear but consequential destiny, had a big empty space to fill. And it did. It would get me through the ’80s.
Voice of America, the second in my five-album arc, would be about how government affected the family and society in general.
The title track returned to the theme of an earlier song, “Lyin’ in a Bed of Fire,” but this time I was more aggressively pissed off, demanding action as opposed to merely observing the state of affairs. Talking to myself really, as much as anyone.
Unrequited Infatuations Page 17