Suck and Blow

by John Popper

  My own earlier stuff was a lot more naïve because my love experiences were from my perceptions of heartbreak—I would hide from that without having tried it. When you’re hiding, love can be this very sacred thing. You can build it into this shrine, and it’s a very beautiful shrine, but it’s not a real answer; it’s not a real response. It doesn’t love you back. You’re just endlessly struggling to express this. There was a naiveté to my earlier stuff that people enjoyed because I was willing to run head on into the fan blades.

  But really being in love demands being there when they suck, and contentment is a fleeting emotion between vomit or poop or bad breath. The reality of a relationship is that it is never going to be this Cinderella story because where does that exist other than in a Disney premise?

  Disney premises are great. We’ve all lived for Disney premises, but you have to know the difference. I was so naïve and unpracticed that I couldn’t see the difference, and that kept me alone and, therefore, writing more of these songs. I kept making that tradeoff: my solitude is my gift. And that’s dumb, something a young guy does.

  But if you manage to get in the experience that other people have, which is the experience of life and settling down and having a real love relationship, then whatever observations you make are going to be more real.

  To be a songwriter, you have to live in the real world and pony up your naïve enthusiasm. But to hide and then pony up your naïve enthusiasm is kind of cheating; you’re not really earning it. If you earn it, I think it’ll resonate better.

  I think an earned naïve enthusiasm, one that has survived reality, is one that strikes a deeper chord. At least hopefully. I suppose that’s my naive enthusiasm talking.

  What I have learned for sure through my relationships is that it becomes a problem when people think a song is the definition of a relationship. You have to remember that a song is just a snapshot of a moment you’re feeling, that it’s not the sum total. A song is like a sitcom with a happy ending that only lasts a half hour.

  28

  SHOWING MY RANGE

  I made VH1’s 100 Most Shocking Moments for sitting next to my friend and smoking some weed while he drove my car. People often think that’s a gun story, but it really isn’t.

  Before I explain what happened, though, I will share another gun story that’s actually about guns. I’m not so proud of it, but it actually happened and caused Dickey Betts to run away from me, which was a shocking moment in its own right.

  When you have friends in your crew rather than professionals, as we did in the early days, you really do whatever you can to motivate them, especially when you’re not paying them anything.

  There was a point when I happened to be the only sober guy in my band, and I’m including my crew, so I became accustomed to a certain level of physical intimidation to get things going.

  We were at a show opening for the Allman Brothers Band in 1992, and I couldn’t hear anything again. I figured I had to try something extreme, because in those days I needed to throw a new kind of temper tantrum every day to get my crew’s attention; otherwise, they’d just nod and smile and wouldn’t do a damn thing. I once threw harps at my monitor guy in order to make my point.

  But this time I brought a derringer with me onto the stage. I had taken the bullets out of it, but looking back, this is still something I regret deeply. As a gun guy, this was the most abhorrent thing I have ever done. I motioned to Grant in my crew to come over, stuck this unloaded derringer in his ribs, and growled, “It’s loaded. Give me more fucking monitors or I’ll kill you.”

  Looking back in amazement, he went and gave me more monitors.

  As it happened, Dickey had done something with a live gun a few years earlier. I found out about this because there was this rumbling within the Allman Brothers tour, within his crew—“He did what?!”—and I had to go and apologize to a whole lot of people, and rightly so. I remember telling Dickey Betts, “Did you hear what I did yesterday?” He responded, “I can’t talk about it” and ran away.

  Grant should have said, “okay” to me and then turned and walked out of the building and maybe called the cops or something. But, amazingly, he gave me more monitors.

  These days I consider myself a responsible gun owner and would never pull that kind of stunt. Without acknowledging guilt, let’s say it’s possible that I once smuggled a gun into Canada, but if so, even that was a relatively minor offense and was overshadowed by a drug bust, which is the exact opposite of what would land me on VH1.

  When we opened the stadium dates for the Stones in 1997, the tour included two shows in Canada, which meant a border crossing on September 30. The previous time we had played in Canada, about a year and half earlier, they confiscated my crossbow and gave me a $60 fine.

  So this time I (hypothetically) decided I would have my vengeance by smuggling a handgun into Canada. It was barely a gun; it was a pen gun. For about two weeks people were allowed to buy one from American Derringer. It’s a single-shot .25 caliber pistol that looks like a tire gauge. You unscrew the barrel and put a round in it, and then you screw the top back on. It’s a half-inch barrel and is built for spies; it’s supposed to be a last-ditch weapon, but if a spy pulled it out, he’d probably be killed because it’s not going to hurt anybody.

  So (perhaps) I put the barrel in my shoe and the rest of it in my stuff and smuggled it into Canada. I really just wanted to be able to say I did that (if indeed I did do it, no need to rankle our friends to the north—did I mention that my tour manager was turned away at the border because he failed to acknowledge he had been arrested for setting off illegal fireworks . . . in the fourth grade!). It was (theoretically) a little secret for myself to say I did something bad, but then lo and behold, a short while later, I discovered that Bobby was busted for cocaine at the Winnipeg airport. Of course the press had a field day because we were opening for the Rolling Stones tour and twenty years earlier the Toronto police found heroin in Keith Richards’s hotel room, confiscated his passport, and detained him for over a month. In Bobby’s case he eventually pled guilty to possession and received two years of probation. As I told him, though, “Remember, drugs are felonious, guns are not.”

  I suppose that point was reinforced in some fashion on March 8, 2007, when I was returning home to Washington from Texas. It was moving day, and I was legally transporting fourteen guns in my car. That’s what made the news, and what’s funny is that everyone thinks I broke the law because I had guns in my car. When I explain, “No, it was for weed,” they usually respond, “Oh that doesn’t really matter.”

  My friend was doing 111 miles an hour, and as soon as we saw the cop running to his car, we pulled over. We felt bad because we knew what must have been going through the officer’s head when he pulled over the car: “Will I ever see my family again?”

  I had the guns, along with a Taser, a switchblade, night-vision goggles, a public address system, and a siren. My car also has a secret compartment, and I had put the weed there. But once you put the weed in the secret compartment that you have constructed, you are officially smuggling drugs. I didn’t know that, so they seized the car, and many thousands of dollars later, I got it back.

  When they brought me to the station, they wanted to know why I had a police siren. What I told them was “in case of a national disaster because I didn’t want to be left behind.” The real answer is if there’s an earthquake, people are getting the fuck out of my way. That’s why I have a police siren in my car. The night-vision goggles are just cool and happened to be in my car.

  But for that I made VH1’s 100 Most Shocking Moments. I beat Elvis meeting Nixon—and he was packing two guns in the White House. I beat Leif Garrett running over his friend and crippling him for life. I was just sitting next to my friend in a car, smoking some weed.

  The next day I was about to go the airport when I received a call from the ATF. I had a stalker, and she called the ATF after it was reported that I had been arrested. She told them that she
was afraid for her life. So they wanted to come over and see what I was doing. I told the agent I needed to get to the airport but showed them the police reports we had on her—it’s always wise to document your stalkings—and they let me go. Funny side note: she ended up stalking the ATF guy for a while.

  When I first got into the limo there was a .44 magnum sitting there. Apparently the owner of the limo company wanted to sell it to me because he heard that I liked them. So while I was playing with this cool .44 magnum (it has interchangeable barrels), all over the radio I heard “Our top story: He didn’t want to be left behind!” The quote was blaring up and down the dial. After I arrived at the airport my phone rang, and it was Ted Nugent—“It’s a travesty, man. They’re trying to railroad you.” He invited me down to his machine gun ranch in Texas—I hadn’t realized that machine guns are raised on ranches—apparently they milk them or something. But I guarantee you it’s free range.

  Anyhow, I was at the airport and everyone was looking at me like they caught me masturbating. It’s weird being known for something you weren’t trying to be known for. The kicker is that when I went through the metal detector, I forgot that I had a metal container full of weed in my coat. But it didn’t set the thing off. It was as if God said, “You’ve had enough, son,” patted me on the head, and sent me on my way. I’ve always heard the Lord protects the stupid.

  Oh yes and the drug charge—it was actually just a misdemeanor for possession—was dismissed after a year passed without an arrest.

  I suppose I should acknowledge that I did go to jail once for holding a gun, but it was actually a cap pistol. This was back when I was nineteen and was home from the New School. My friends Dave Wilder and Crugie Riccio who were in the band the Disturbed (not the Chicago heavy metal band, the Princeton punk band) were making an album in Philly, and I had nothing to do, so I went with them in Crugie’s van. He had a mohawk and leather jacket, and Dave was a thin little kid with frizzly hair. I, of course, looked like a maniac with my sideburns from that era. Crugie had a cap pistol in his glove compartment, and as we were talking, I’d twirl the cap pistol on my finger. Occasionally I’d point it at Crugie’s head and demand that he take me to Cuba, and over the course of the drive I’d wave it out the window, not thinking because it was a cap pistol. I had long since put it on the dashboard when we hit a pothole, and all of a sudden we see the lights of a police car. We figured he was pulling us over because we had a flat tire, but suddenly three cop cars surrounded us and we heard, “Get out of the car now and go on your knees!” Then I saw the cap pistol on the dashboard and realized what had happened. I forgot I was nineteen and not nine, and the police had received reports that someone was waving a gun out the window. They arrested us for terrorism, and we sat in a jail cell for three hours and then let us go because we had no priors.

  I also was arrested once with a wooden samurai sword. Back in high school we broke into the Princeton reunions, which is what you had to do when you were a high school kid because they were all gated off. So one time I was at a friend’s house with a practice samurai sword, and I hung onto it when we decided to break into the reunion because I liked the way it felt. So when they caught us for breaking in, I had the fake samurai sword, which in retrospect may not have been the best decision and could have made the situation appear more alarming than it actually was. I eventually explained myself, and there was no major fallout from that incident, but sometimes I just don’t know why I do the things I do.

  But as for the incident in 2007, what really what came out of it was that people were treated to a photo of my guns lined up on a card table in some conference room. Ever since then, people will sometimes come up to me and ask me how many guns I own. A gentleman never discloses exactly how many weapons he has, but I am certainly aware of the number.

  My friends say they never worry about me because I don’t have a million rounds of ammunition. I’m not really bunkered in. I think guns fascinate me the way shoes or golf clubs fascinate people who are into shoes or golf clubs.

  A really cool gun you can trick out is a 1911, the .45 automatic World Wars I and II sidearm. You can polish the barrel so it cycles better and makes the trigger like butter. It’s the same way that somebody cuts an angle on a skateboard’s axle if they’re into boarding. It’s that kind of a hobby to me.

  I don’t hunt because I go to the supermarket, so I find that hypocritical. As a kid I went with my dad to New York on a pheasant hunt. I shot a pheasant and was so proud that we were going to eat it, like my older brothers did. But my dad was too sleepy to help me clean it, and I ruined the meat. I ruptured the shit sack and then cried because I just murdered a bird.

  A few years later my dad took me on a deer hunt. You sit behind a stone wall, freezing, and you’re not allowed to shiver because the deer will notice you shivering, and you can’t give your position away. Deer in the woods sound like squirrels dropping acorns, and for eight hours there were a shit-ton of squirrels dropping acorns but no deer. I wanted to do two things when I was done: shoot every squirrel I saw and buy a deer, tie it to the ground, and shoot it. I realized that wasn’t a good hunter’s spirit, so that was when I stopped hunting. But I do respect people who are really into it.

  I’ve let people hunt on my property who feed their family through it. The key to a hunt is that you actually have to use the meat; you can’t just kill something for no reason. If you are using the meat, then there’s a sacredness to it.

  I was talking to Alicia Silverstone and got her to admit that if I harvested an elk in that fashion and substituted it for beef, and used every bone, sinew, and hide, I’d be more humane as a meat eater and as a user of animal products. It is the one way in my heart I would acceptably take an animal. Every knife and gun would have a bone handle and all of the hides and antlers would be used—that’s the only way to do it.

  But I love weapons of all kinds, including swords, spears, atlatls—any kind of weapon has an aesthetic that is superbly efficient. It has to be because it’s designed to take a life as if your life depended on it. So there’s a beauty to the curve of a saber, which had to work as well as it could because the other guy was trying to build a saber that was better than yours.

  I own a Civil War–era cannon that can shoot cans of dog food a thousand yards. I only have six acres of land, so I haven’t fired it since I moved to my current house. You can see my cannon on Google Earth, though. I feel like Fidel Castro: you can see my artillery from space.

  It’s a rough-barrel cannon so you can’t put real munitions in there. The balls would rattle around and explode. It’s good for tin cans, though. I could have spent another $15,000 for the rifled barrel that would shoot projectiles a mile away, but I don’t need anything shelled that badly. Of course, that would give me a much more active role in the PTA. If you’re a member of a local community and you have an artillery, they have to listen to you just a little bit more. It’s called gun-boat diplomacy, and it’ll work in your neighborhood.

  There’s something about tracing the evolution of firearms that fascinates me, but I also like to have some form of a modern version. So I have a few assault rifles, and they are the niftiest, coolest weapons that I can get my hands on, with all the doodads and bells and whistles. They’re locked up and everything, but they’re also ready if shit goes down, although I’m not really planning for shit to go down.

  I’d say in an apocalypse I’d last about two weeks because I’m not the healthiest dude in the world and I don’t know how far I could run. I suppose my best bet would be to load up my car, drive to a convenience store, take that over, map out the location of the next convenience store, and just convenience store my way to the wilderness. I am basically part of a grid, and eventually someone bigger and tougher would come and take all my guns.

  My attitude is that I’d have to make friends with people who know how to chop wood and catch rabbits because all I can bring is a lot of firearms and a fast car. What else am I offering other than a unique
psychological perspective? I could play songs, but the most valuable person in our society is still a plumber because everybody shits. You need a plumber, and then when the apocalypse hits, you don’t even need that guy—you need a hunter or maybe an electrician. Sometimes people sing, sometimes people listen to other people singing, but you can’t guarantee a meal if you’re going to live by performance.

  So by and large my guns end up collecting dust in my attic because I’m on the road so much. I used to bring all of my gun-hating friends to my house to shoot because they all secretly love to shoot guns, even if they don’t want to have one—“I still want them illegal, but that was fun.” And then I had ten guns I had to clean, they’d spent all this ammo, and it was annoying.

  At this point I’m not just indiscriminately buying guns. It’s a treat to buy a gun. I think at one point my accountant made me sell a gun before I bought a new one, but eventually that got swept under the rug. I sold the accountant and got a new accountant.

  One of my biggest challenges is keeping all of my gun licenses up to date. When I got into carrying, people told me, “You don’t want to do that; it’s a lot of paperwork.” And my answer was “If that’s what it is, if it’s a matter of paperwork, I’ll take that challenge. I’ll jump though the hoops.” I’d rather have a gun permit and not need it than need a gun permit and not have it.

  I just need to be reminded when it’s time to renew and what that requires. The states won’t send you notification if a permit is up—that’s your obligation. So I have somebody in management whose job is to keep me legal. If I didn’t have management doing it, I’d hire a lawyer to babysit all of my permits and see where I’m at.