by John Lurie
Liz and I are straight. We’re a little wobbly and insecure but basically okay. She is pretty fucking bored stuck out in Westwood without a car, but things to me seem kind of like they could work out. Things are okay, except we’re in L.A. and I am working day and night with L.A. music people. Jim Price, the engineers, the musicians, the editor—they are all from L.A. and I just can’t get next to it. Liz has made some friends who say that they will come and pick her up to do stuff, and then stand her up over and over again.
I take a day off, and Liz and I go for a drive out by the ocean. We head up into the hills in Malibu and get to a dead end with a roundabout. I glide the car in a circle. The windows are open, cool air flows through the car from the ocean stretching out below. This is how I know that a breeze can make you fall in love. I look at Liz and my heart opens.
Scoring a film is so much work, and Jim Price, in a way, is running the show. I have written this nice stuff for orchestra and it sounds pretty great. There are some sections for bass, drum, and guitar.
I want to find some guys who can play for these parts, so that Jim Price can’t hire these rhythmically correct session guys, and I try to think who will know musicians in L.A. Matt Dike, who later founded the record label Delicious Vinyl, was a DJ who had a hip-hop club that moved from place to place. He was the first person to put on a Lounge Lizards record in a crowded public place when I was there. He put on “Harlem Nocturne”; I felt a little nervous. All the L.A. hip-hop kids looked bored. Then a young Max Perlich smashed into the DJ booth on his skateboard, scratching the record to a stop.
“Matt, I need a funky bass player for a film score. Who can I get out here?”
“You gotta get this guy, they call him The Flea! He’s got a band called the Red Hot Chili Peppers. They’re crazy! You gotta use The Flea!”
There are some things in 5/4 and 7/8, so I can’t just hire some funk bass player without knowing if he can play in odd times. I schedule a meeting with this guy, The Flea.
The Flea is not The Flea but just Flea. He is short with an impish face and an L.A. punk feel. He can play the bass like a motherfucker. I play him stuff on the piano and he just shrugs, like, No big deal, and then nails it on the bass. He wants to bring the other guys from his band and I say sure. I’m excited to get some players in there with some gomph because Jim Price is hiring all these L.A. session guys who make everything I write sound like it is supposed to be music for Starsky and Hutch.
Flea sees some of the wardrobe from the futuristic motorcycle movie hanging in the office and says, “Hey, can I have this?”
He picks up a leather jacket with metal cups attached all over it. I tell him, “Yes, you can have it. You look stunning.” I’m actually impressed that this kid just takes this ridiculous thing and wears it right out onto Sunset Boulevard.
For the band stuff, we have a smaller studio booked than the one we used for the orchestra. We’re supposed to start at two in the afternoon. At two-thirty Jim Price is rapping his fingers on the mixing board. You can see smoke. “This is not how one does a session. One should get there a half hour early, set up, and be ready at the start time.” I actually have to agree with him.
“The musician’s dog comes in late, fucks the other two dogs, and leaves.”
Flea, Cliff Martinez, and Hillel Slovak show up at three p.m. Flea is slouching. Like he knows he’s done something wrong, but his posture also has that I don’t care thing. Jim Price tells him that we don’t need them.
They say, “Okay!,” all chipper, and leave.
I am out at Jim Price’s place a bunch, and then in the studio, and Liz is completely stir-crazy. Maybe my feeling for her isn’t reciprocated. Liz wants to go back to New York, so I get her a ticket to go back a couple of weeks before I do.
I’m in this apartment in Westwood and the place just goes to hell. I guess I’m depressed. Don’t wash the dishes for a week. The trash is piling up. I can’t get myself to take it out and I have no energy.
From the couch I can see roaches traveling over the tops of the garbage bags.
21
Fifty Million Junkies Are Probably Wrong
I get back to New York and Liz is getting high every day. I go back to my struggle. Try to do it only once or twice a week. But now that I have been really strung out, I get sick every time after I get high once or twice. I am determined not to fall back into taking it every day, so I am kicking all the time.
When we were trying to quit, sometimes, on Fridays, I would go with Liz and wait on Third Avenue in the East Twenties, while she would go and buy Herbert Huncke’s methadone. I didn’t really know who he was at the time, but I did know he was a respected beat poet. Liz might have been in and out of there in ten minutes, but it seemed like hours. I would stand on the corner, shivering and looking into the coffee shop window. The people looking out at me knew that I was a shameful and terrible person.
Anyone who glanced at me knew in an instant that I was a loathsome creature to be avoided at any cost.
The methadone worked in a way. I didn’t like it, but it worked. It made me incredibly hyper. I would become Mr. Gregarious. I noticed that people would back away from me while I was talking.
Liz had a truly inspired suggestion, that we take LSD to kick. That would help us transcend the addiction. She claimed that she had done it before. It seemed like a brilliant idea.
We were back living on Third Street and I had mice. For a little while we used normal traps using peanut butter as bait. You’d be sleeping and hear this sklakity racket. A mouse in the trap but not dead. Sputtering and twisting like mad. I’d jump out of bed and throw the trap out the window.
This was too gruesome and cruel. If the trap killed them straight out, I was okay with it. But this maiming was unacceptable. We tried balancing a ruler on the edge of the bathtub, with a bit of peanut butter on the end. The mouse was supposed to travel out on the ruler and then when it got past the middle, the mouse’s weight would make it, and the ruler, fall into the tub. The mouse would be trapped and I presume then I would catch it in a towel or something and let it go outside. Every morning we’d find the ruler in the bathtub with no peanut butter on it.
So fuck it, we’ll live with the mice because I can’t maim them in these traps. But the thing is that the mice get braver. They start doing outlandish things. Running across the bed while you’re still awake. Walk out into the middle of the floor and just plunk down like your dog would and then rest there for a spell. Just stare at you like it was their place and you were only a bit of a nuisance.
So Liz has bought some LSD. I’m already dope sick. Liz should be sick, too, but I never know with her because she’s always getting high on the sly. I’ve got the bulk of what’s left of the fifteen thousand from the film score in hundred dollar bills hidden in my coat, and I am in denial as to the reason it is inexplicably short every time I count it.
As I start to feel the acid coming on, it seems like there are mice everywhere. I’m not hallucinating mice. They are everywhere, and they are watching me. I get a chair and put it in the middle of the kitchen and sit there naked with a broom. I’m going to sit there, patiently, the kind of patience that only comes with religious insight or when you’re high as a fucking kite. As soon as a mouse gets close enough I’m going to smash it with the broom. I don’t mind killing them because now they have disrespected me.
The mice are very smart. The mice are really smart. They are toying with me. They stay just out of reach and stare into my soul. They calculate my striking distance at five feet and are hanging out five and a half feet in all directions. They stare at me and then ignore me. I am not a threat. I sit there for—an hour? I don’t know how long. I’m tripping my fucking brains out, how can I know?
As I am sitting there naked with the broom cocked over my head, I suddenly realize that I don’t feel so good. In fact, I feel horrible. PANIC. This is abso
lutely not good. We have to get heroin immediately. I’m racked with pain. My nerves are shredding. LSD and dope sickness is the worst of all possible combinations.
It’s late but Liz calls this creepy, yuppie dope dealer who lives in a high rise. He wears designer tinted eyeglasses. I’ve never been to this guy’s place and I’m not supposed to go up. He’s already pissed that Liz called him so late, but there is no fucking way that I’m waiting out on the street, tripping and dope sick.
I just remember the really bright fluorescent lights in the elevator and that the elevator had this loud, piercing ring as it registered going past each floor. Each horrifying beep shattering my neurological core.
He begrudgingly sold us a package of heroin and we snorted it in the elevator, on the ride down.
The world seemed relatively safe again.
22
Werner Herzog in Lederhosen
It’s so weird how it went. I wasn’t prepared for it.
Stranger Than Paradise wins the Caméra d’Or at Cannes. Paris, Texas wins the Palme d’Or.
I am suddenly the hot new independent film star.
This is very strange. Do I want this? One is supposed to want this.
Jim is declared a genius. And the genius that is Jim explains to the world that I am not an actor but an odd person he has discovered and coaxed into a wonderful performance.
I do not want to be an actor. I am a musician and composer. But I would rather be an actor than an odd character Jim Jarmusch has coaxed into a wonderful performance. Does he keep me in a box and let me out once in a while? If I am not acting, then that nitwit in Stranger Than Paradise is me.
Stop the presses! Stop Jim!
I had done the music for Variety and another movie that was at Cannes that year. And another movie had used a bunch of Lounge Lizards songs. I’ve got five movies at Cannes and I cannot afford to buy the plane ticket. I can barely afford to do my laundry.
Jim was supposed to take me to Cannes and then took Sara Driver instead. At least if I were there, maybe I could stop this insane arc that is twisting my fate through the press in such a horribly wrong way.
It’s kind of hard on Liz, who wants to act and takes it seriously. I don’t give a shit about acting and suddenly I’m on the cover of all these magazines.
All I care about is the music. And the band is now finally starting to be something great.
* * *
—
The Lounge Lizards had a couple of gigs in New York when there wasn’t really a band. For Bette Gordon on the Variety music score I had used Tony Garnier, Dougie Bowne, Evan, and a bunch of added horns. Most of the guys I used were street musicians. This great blues alto player who called himself Mr. Thing, from the South somewhere. Really irritating guy, but he could play the shit out of the alto in a way I never could. Tight, hard blues sound with facility. The lead alto on “Million Dollar Walk” is him.
There was a tall, oafish Nordic guy named Anders who could also play like mad on tenor or baritone.
There was one cue in the movie that was just an up-tempo thing in G. Someone had to play the solo. Mr. Thing kept saying, “Let Anders do it! Let Anders do it!” I looked at this six-foot-four guy standing there with the heavy accent and quiet little voice and thought, Nah.
But motherfucking Anders kills it. Kills it. Tony starts a fast walk and Dougie is with him and then Anders comes in and I get goose-bumps. Ended up calling the cue “Anders Leaps In.”
The budget for Variety is next to nothing. Bette Gordon is sweet and I manage to give her a nice score for about $1,000, paying all the guys $75 for the day.
The Lizards have a couple of nonserious gigs in New York and I just throw this thing together with like ten horns, Dougie, Tony, and Evan. And there is Roy Nathanson on soprano, alto, and tenor.
I had known Roy ever since I moved to Second Avenue, five years earlier. Roy was friends with Jon Ende, and he had keys to La MaMa theater, on Fourth Street. We would go there late at night to practice and play together.
Roy was supposed to be gay. For years he lived with his boyfriend, Ray. In fact, Roy was a closet heterosexual, he’s now married with a kid. Roy’s boyfriend, Ray, had taken the photos for the first Lounge Lizards poster, and then again took a picture of me for a solo thing I did at Max’s Kansas City.
These guys were the messiest people I ever met in my life. I thought that gay guys were supposed to be neat and have nice apartments. They had an awful, stinking dog, Garbo. Their apartment and their car were so unhygienic it went to a level that was scary.
Roy was always worried about his body. Sometimes his body was legitimately breaking down, but usually it was solely his obsession with himself.
His jalopy of a car, an orange Nova, smelled terribly of Garbo and was always strewn with fast food wrappers.
Roy, the hypochondriac, had a dream. A vision, really. He was about to make a bunch of money, $5,000, for acting in a Chantal Akerman film. This money was unexpected. What he wanted to do when he got the money was to pay a doctor $5,000 to drive his stinking orange Nova around Manhattan, while Roy sat in the backseat complaining to the doctor about all his ailments.
Roy brings in Curtis Fowlkes on trombone. Big, gentle black guy who is just as sweet and timid as can be. Curtis “Boner” Fowlkes could play that Fred Wesley/James Brown stuff if he wanted to, and that kind of soul is in his sound.
Tony leaves, to play with Bob Dylan, and now he’s actually going to make a living. Dougie is playing in one of the rehearsal rooms at WestBeth Theatre. I stop by to practice because Evan has his piano in Paul Bley’s room for a time. There’s a kid down there with him playing, just the two of them, bass and drums. They stop playing when I come in.
This kid, there is just something about him. He’s wearing these weird shoes. He’s shy and he is not going to play while I am there. He doesn’t say anything.
I just have a feeling about him and I call Dougie later to ask him.
“Who was that kid?”
“Who, Erik?”
“The bass player, the kid, whatever his name is. With the elf shoes.”
“Yeah, Erik. Erik Sanko.”
“Can he play?”
Dougie is a little hesitant. He’s worried that if he recommends this guy and it doesn’t work out, I will blame him.
But he steps up and says, “Yeah, he can play.”
“How old is he?”
“Nineteen.”
Without ever hearing Erik play, I hire him for the tour.
Roy also brings in Marc Ribot. Marc used to say about Ralph Carney, who played in Tom Waits’s band when Marc did, that Ralph had the left brain of the smartest man in the world. It was true about Ralph, but in a large sense this was also true about Ribot.
Marc is a musical genius. So many ideas are coming out of that guy that it is actually often a problem. It takes him a while to figure out his spot in The Lounge Lizards. It is hard to know, especially for the guitar in the Lizards, how dissonant to be. Where to play with the music and when to go against it. I am constantly giving Marc instructions, at rehearsal, before the gig, after the gig, but it just never seems to sink in.
But really, Marc is right about this. He has to find the place for the guitar in this music himself, and no amount of advice from me is going to do it.
By design, the guitar often is used to foil the music when it gets too jazzlike. When Arto was in the band it was perfect, because he has a great textural sense. It was just that Arto legitimately never knew anything about music.
But Marc puts a good deal of time into just figuring out the color the guitar should have in the band. The role of that chair.
So it’s Roy, Curtis, Ribot, Erik, Dougie, me, and Evan. Soon Dougie brings in E. J. Rodriguez on percussion. That is a crazy good band.
Each one of these guys is aware of all differe
nt kinds of music. I am drawing from everywhere, from James Brown to Balinese music, from Varèse to Coltrane, and they are helping me do it. And they all have that special thing where they can play their instrument as though they just found it on the street. They all have a certain naïve thing that allows them to play broken. This is an enormous problem with well-trained musicians: No matter what they play, you can hear the school in it. It can never get to that place of mayhem that we used to create, or to the other end of that spectrum, the place of the childlike dream.
* * *
—
Jim’s friend Louis Sarno lived with the pygmies. Married a pygmy woman. He would record them. Their music. And Jim had lots of tapes. This music was so organically part of the pygmy life, and it was immensely complicated rhythmically in a way I am sure they were not aware of. This is what I wanted from my band. This organic rhythm. The idea that this song is in 11/8 or 4/4 is thrown out the window. “We are just all talking here, we are aware of Stravinsky and can play Stravinsky, but this is where we live.”
In rehearsal the band got good really fast. I would come in with a melody and snippets of bass lines or horn parts, and we would work it out vocally in rehearsal.
These guys were all smart, funny, and musical. We loved one another. It was just like it is supposed to be.
I suppose this is why I resent the movies in a way, as the music was starting to become this really beautiful, powerful thing that was like nothing that had come before, and people only wanted to know about the movies.
There is a problem, though. Erik is a minor and it looks like he can’t go on the tour. I have to sign all these official documents, like I am his legal guardian, saying that I will be responsible for him on the road.
Erik will say later that it was like giving an egg to a gorilla for safekeeping. But it’s okay, because the gorilla signed for it.