by John Lurie
A giant man with a club comes running out of the men’s shelter and chases them off. I’m woozy. I start screaming at them. “What the fuck? I was just walking down the street!”
They stare at me blankly. Nothing. I couldn’t possibly know the rules.
I get to my house and the police show up. Someone has called them. They insist I go to the emergency room. The police ask if they can call anyone for me.
“Rockets Redglare.”
“That’s a person? Rockets Redglare?”
“Yeah.”
The policeman makes a face, like he doesn’t really want to call anyone named Rockets, and says, “I don’t want to call anyone named Rockets Redglare. Anyone else?”
“No, I’m fine.”
When I get home, my jacket and the book are drenched in blood. The jacket becomes so stiff that it is like cardboard and I have to throw it away. I take the book and separate the pages, and when Scorsese finally makes the film some eight years later, that’s the copy that I read, the one completely stained with my blood.
* * *
—
The band was booked to go to Japan. First we were going to stop and play one show in L.A. There wasn’t much money for the L.A. gig and they weren’t paying for the hotel. I put half of the band up in a pretty bad hotel on Sunset, and Dougie and Evan stayed at María’s with me.
Tony couldn’t make it, so we replaced him with Fred Hopkins, who was a well-known upright bass player from the serious avant-garde jazz world.
After I’d gotten hit on the head, I’d moved up to my uncle Jerry’s place and slept on the fold-out bed in his spare room. I couldn’t go back to Third Street.
In Uncle Jerry’s medicine cabinet was a big bottle filled with codeine. Every time I was a little dope sick, I would take a few. Now the bottle looked suspiciously low. I couldn’t take any more and get away with it. Before the trip I just said fuck it and threw the whole bottle into my carry-on bag. I figured maybe Jerry would be less likely to notice that the bottle was gone than how few were left. The codeine got me through the first few days pretty well.
Jerry had always been so sweet to me. He had loaned me the money to buy my beautiful Balanced Action Selmer alto from 1949. He always helped me every time I was in trouble, and he used to handle my legal stuff for free. I felt really guilty coming back to his place high, and stealing his codeine was even worse. I felt low.
We played an awful club in L.A. on the corner of Pico and Bundy. I think it was called the Music Machine. The first couple of times we played in L.A., it was at the Whisky a Go Go, and that had been pretty good. But after that, almost every L.A. gig, except that one we did in ’98 at the El Rey, was a nightmare. This place felt like it was a Texas bar in Vietnam. Nuts, violent, and stupid. Not a place for music.
You just walked in there for sound check and the smell alone told you that it was going to be a disaster. That horrible stale beer smell that had never been ventilated. The sound guy was a psychopath. We couldn’t hear ourselves onstage and waved wildly trying to get his attention during the show. He obviously had more important things on his mind. After the show, he flexed on Dougie for trying to get his attention. Dougie was waving desperately at him because he couldn’t hear the bass, and the sound guy felt that he had been disrespected, like Dougie was showing the audience that he didn’t know what he was doing.
I really do remember every bad gig we ever did, and nine out of ten times it was caused by not being able to hear ourselves onstage. This was a bad gig.
The next morning a guy knocks on the door of María’s house. It’s the driving instructor. María doesn’t want me to drive her car anymore without a license and she has booked an appointment for me. I vaguely remember her saying something about it on the phone before I came out. I am drinking a beer at eleven in the morning when the guy walks up to the screen door. I invite him in and offer him a beer. Dougie can’t stop laughing, thinks my offering him a beer at eleven a.m. is the funniest thing he has ever seen, but I pass the test.
* * *
—
Fred Hopkins was snorting coke the whole fourteen-hour flight to Japan. How is that even possible? I cannot do coke without dope. It just makes me too wired. I gnash my teeth and waves of weirdness go surging through my body. So to take it in a confined space like an airplane? That is just insane. Fred offered me his package when I was on the way back to the bathroom, but I refused. I think this is the first time in my life I ever refused a drug, but it seemed clear to me that if I took it, fifteen minutes later, I would be trying to pry open the airplane door to get outside. The plane landed and we all had a hot dog and a beer at the airport. This is now a mandatory custom for all members of The Lounge Lizards, a hot dog and beer upon arrival in Tokyo. The strong beer just knocks you into a coma after the flight. The hot dogs are inexplicably delicious.
Jerry’s codeine got me through the beginning of the Japan tour, and when it was gone I was fine. We were all drinking a lot. Japan just seems to be set up like that. But I was shocked when I came down to the hotel breakfast area in the morning and saw Fred sitting there, pretty as you please, reading the paper with a big glass of Jack Daniel’s at ten in the morning. My having a beer at eleven in the morning at María’s was a rare event, but the somewhat disconcerting thing was that this appeared to be Fred’s usual breakfast.
Tokyo was a blast. There was a crazy band that opened for us called The Trombones. They were just so nice and they had tons of girls with them who immediately jumped ship. I was actually pissed at Dougie for sleeping with this girl who was clearly the girlfriend of one of The Trombones.
I met this lovely creature named Mamiko. The Japanese promoter wanted me to stay away from her because he was grooming her for stardom. He didn’t want her defiled by the Gaijin Sex Monster. Maybe he had a crush on her himself. But for a minute there I really thought that I was in love.
We were lying in bed in the morning and Dougie walked into the room.
“So, John, is this your first trip into the Orient?”
The band played pretty well. Fred Hopkins didn’t take it seriously and never learned the music. There was a section during one song where we had an up-tempo duet and Fred just left the stage, leaving me to play all alone with nothing to play to. I confronted him later and he said that he had to take a piss. I was furious. I had given him a lot of leeway because he was older and well respected. But to leave the stage like that, right before we had a duet, was so disrespectful that I was furious and knew I would never hire Fred again.
The band went home and I went back to L.A. to stay with María.
After about a month in L.A., the coke and heroin really left my system. I took out the horn and started to write some stuff: the melody for “Big Heart” and then the melody for “The Blow Job,” the name of which Island Records made me change, so on the CD it’s called “It Could Have Been Very Very Beautiful.”
The thing is, the drugs were gone and beautiful things were starting to emerge.
16
Hung There Against the Sky and Floated
I was sitting on María’s couch looking out the back window at Grandma Walton’s lemon tree when the phone rang. It was Evan. That’s odd, we can’t afford long-distance calls. There was a pause and then he said, “John, Theda’s dead.”
We used to call our parents Theda and David, even when we were little. I don’t know why. It was something my parents decided.
I could tell by the awkward pause that he had thought for a long time about how he was going to say this to me and then it just came out like he was saying, “Today is Friday,” but with a little wrenchiness in his throat that made the words go up.
I didn’t feel anything. I was in a haze and just thought, So this is what it is.
I have to tell Aaron Lipstadt immediately.
This made no sense. It could have been, “It’s ti
me to set the towels on fire right now.” It’s some kind of weird wall the mind puts up to keep from dealing with the onslaught of grief.
Aaron Lipstadt was making a movie that he thought maybe I could score. They hadn’t even started shooting yet, but I thought I should tell him that I had to leave. His office was right up on Sunset near María’s place on Hammond, and I just had to walk up the hill.
Right outside María’s house, which is no longer standing, there is a block of pavement. About ten feet up the hill, toward Sunset, I looked down and had one of those moments. Hazier than the other moments, but still one of those bubbles. I looked down at the sidewalk and it burned a frame in my memory, like when Ev told me he was gay, or on Second Avenue when my saxophone was stolen, or when my mom came into my room and said, “It was all over at seven o’clock this morning,” or the metal pole on Pleasant Street in Worcester.
An exact frame of existence.
A block of pavement.
My mom is gone.
I was completely numb and not really there. I walked into Aaron’s office and told him that I had to go and he said, “Of course.” He looked at me like he didn’t know what else to say.
María tried to comfort me, but I wasn’t having it. If someone wants to comfort me, they have to really bring it. It takes a big soul. You have to bring it big and real. Even if you are as sincere as possible, if you do not have the stuff to back it, I can’t have any and I can get pretty mean if you try.
I had a ticket back to New York, a cheap ticket. I called the airline and asked if I could take a flight a few days earlier than my scheduled departure. They said yes. When I got to the airport they told me that I had the wrong kind of ticket and it couldn’t be changed. I would have to wait to use it on Friday, my scheduled date of return.
I told them that my mom had died.
It is very strange to tell someone that you need something because your mom just died and have them think you are lying to them. You start to think maybe you are lying.
I got back to New York and went straight to Fabian’s and got fucked up. Anna Taylor was with me. She wasn’t into going to Fabian’s, she was just being supportive, and this is where I wanted to go. I had been straight, and in honor of my mom, I thought that I shouldn’t get fucked up, but I did. I just went and took heroin and smoked coke all night. It was not to ease the pain of my mom. I didn’t really feel anything.
Me, Ev, and Liz all went to Wales. I wasn’t so close with Liz then. The whole thing just felt cold. We had to deal with the house and my mom’s stuff and the funeral and Ivy, my grandma, who was in a nursing home and fairly loopy.
As the three of us stood around her bed, Ivy kept saying, “Well, I don’t know who you are, but you’re all very nice.”
Liz would say, “Ivy, we’re Theda’s children.”
And Grandma would say, “Oh yes, Theda. Well, you are very nice.” And then shake her head and smile. “But, I have no idea who you are.”
My sister had brought her her slippers. “Here, Ivy, I brought you your slippers.”
Ivy took her slipper in her hand, opened her mouth as wide as it would go, and then chomped down on it like it was an éclair that might try to get away from her. She looked confused and disappointed with the slipper and then bit into it again. It was so sad and tragic and funny.
Liz couldn’t stop laughing. She tried but she just couldn’t help it. It was all so awful. It was slowly dawning on all three of us that we were going to have to leave Grandma in this place until she just wasn’t here anymore.
We, especially me and Liz, would crack up in a way that we couldn’t stop laughing. I think it upset Evan, but he didn’t say anything. My mom had a sort of a boyfriend who lived in London. They had been friends when they were younger and I think this guy, Ken, introduced my mother and father, thirty-five years earlier.
Ken was married. I didn’t have any compassion for this married guy who was sleeping with my mom, but Liz or Evan said that we had to call him.
I wasn’t going to do it. Evan said he would. Evan calls Ken, and Liz and I are in the next room listening, sort of crouching down, like we’re hiding.
We hear Evan telling this poor guy that Theda is dead and we cannot stop laughing. We are laughing so hard that I am on my knees gasping for air, drooling, and Liz wets her pants. Poor Evan is in the other room, talking in this serious voice, and we can’t stand it. I think Ken must have heard us laughing in hysterics in the background. He couldn’t not have heard. I wonder what the hell he thought. Ev was really pissed that we did this. Fair enough.
The neighbor had convinced us that my uncle Mosten was not to be trusted, that my mom had told her that if anything happened to her, not to let Uncle Mosten in the house. We hardly trusted anyone already. We were being eyed by everyone in the little Welsh village and we were also going around to shops and antique stores trying to get anything that wasn’t dear to us valued to sell. We were getting ripped off right and left but we didn’t care.
I had loved my uncle Mosten, actually my grandmother’s brother, when I was little. He was enormous, six foot seven, with a handlebar mustache. When we heard his car drive up and heard him come up the side of the house to knock on the door, we hid. All three of us—I have no idea why—hid behind furniture from Uncle Mosten. Even Evan laughed. Then we heard his footsteps walking away and that horrible ill feeling came back.
My mom had grown very bitter with her lot in life. She had met my father, this charming American man, during the war and had come to the wonderful land of possibilities and futures, the United States of America. But my dad couldn’t get work, as he had been a communist, so there was trouble with that.
Then he got sick, so the whole thing just wasn’t what had been promised. And she was talented. I had never thought much about it, but when we looked through her stuff and I saw her paintings, it was shocking to see how good she was.
I resented her bitterness. She was always sick with this or that, and as much zest and curiosity as she had for lots of things, she just seemed to never really get past the bitterness.
Every night when we lived in Worcester, my mom and dad would have a martini or Manhattan before dinner. Just one, which they seemed to enjoy. But there wasn’t any problem. After my dad died she started drinking more. We even got her to try marijuana a couple of times. She didn’t feel a thing, but I got high as a kite. I tried to explain why Jaws was a great movie. She didn’t think anything that popular could be any good.
I went into this long thing about fear of the unknown. The monster under the water that you could just barely see. Then I digressed into making my left hand the girl in the beginning of the movie. My hand, with fingers for legs, ran across the arm of the couch and yelled, “Swimming!” only to be devoured by my other hand, the ferocious shark.
“Oh, you are daft!” she said, with her Welsh accent, which had completely returned.
I knew something was strange. Our last tour she was supposed to come and meet us in Paris and she just didn’t show. I called her and got no answer. If you plan to have your mom meet you in Paris and she doesn’t show, that is unusual. I didn’t think that much about it, being embroiled in the tour. Evan’s theory, later, was that she must have been drinking too much and was afraid that she would embarrass herself. I asked Ev why she just couldn’t drink less when she was in Paris, but he explained that with alcoholics, sometimes a couple of sips makes them instantly drunk.
From what we could piece together, I guess she was alone in the house, upstairs. And Miffanwy, who was kind of a simple woman who wandered around in the village, came into the house and went upstairs. My mom was in bed.
“Miffanwy, something’s wrong, it’s time to go to the hospital.”
Miffanwy just said, “Okay,” and left. Not quite understanding.
I don’t know how long she lay there by herself before she died.
>
* * *
—
At the funeral, almost the whole village was there. The priest was in the middle of his bit when he leaned over and put his hand on the coffin. He looked puzzled. Liz thought he was leaning over to say goodbye, but I didn’t think that was it. He looked kind of panicked and was squinting down at the coffin, craning his neck. He was in mid-deal and he started to walk out toward us. This seemed very fucking weird. Why was he walking out here?
He leaned over to my sister and said, “What was your mother’s name?”
“Theda.” My brother answered for her.
“Freda?”
And then Evan practically spit at him as he hissed slowly, “Theeeeda.”
Great. I love a well-prepared funeral.
They sang hymns. Those Welsh can really sing, boy, they just raised their voices to the sky and filled the church, in this strong way. I don’t know how many people knew my mom or even if they liked her. Maybe it is just custom in the village. My mom was contentious and could be a real rascal. I know that she had had a problem with someone in her bridge club. She called me once to tell me, with great pride, that she had spray-painted “Gwyneth Cheats!” on the stone wall outside the house of her nemesis.
When I was sixteen and we were in Worcester, she washed my pants twice with my driver’s license still in the pocket. The second time I went down to the Registry of Motor Vehicles, the little chubby man behind the desk said, “This is your third license.”
“Yes.”
“That is a problem.”
“What do you mean?”