Rock and Hard Places

by Andrew Mueller

  This, I take it, is not the wake-up call I’ve ordered.

  “Sir, I have a man here who claims you can vouch for him.”

  This guy really must have the wrong number. I can barely vouch for myself most of the time. I wonder what . . .

  “Mr. Mueller?”

  Mmm? Vancouver, that’s it. I’m in Vancouver. This whole American-Canadian thing is making a bit more sense, now. Some coffee would be nice.

  “Hello?”

  Right. The customs officer gives me the name of the person he’s detaining, which, as it turns out, I do recognise. We are going to do a story together. I’m pretty sure that was the idea. He’s taking the pictures. It’s all coming back to me now. Bit cloudy outside.

  “I’ll send him on his way then, sir.”

  You do that.

  Only after I’ve put the phone down do I think to wonder why he’s calling an Australian representative of a British magazine to ask if it’s okay for a Canadian-born American photographer to drive from Seattle to Vancouver. A slow morning, I guess.

  WE’RE LATE. SO late, in fact, that we have missed Lush and Pearl Jam, the two bands I was most looking forward to seeing. We park behind the stage in a vacant lot, which is, in traditional rock festival fashion, rapidly liquefying beneath a steady patter of rain.

  Bearded genius photographer Kevin Westenberg and I have come to cover the third and fourth shows of the 1992 incarnation of Lollapalooza. Lollapalooza started life in 1991, as travelling farewell party for the mighty Jane’s Addiction, and had been so rousing a success that Jane’s Addiction singer and Lollapalooza organiser Perry Farrell had decided to turn it into an annual event. This year’s lineup—Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ministry, Ice Cube, Soundgarden, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Pearl Jam and Lush—will play thirty dates in outdoor arenas across the United States and, today, Canada.

  The festival has become an immense commercial success, a major talking point and possibly even an election issue. Last year, the Rock the Vote booths that form part of Lollapalooza’s accompanying ideological freakshow registered more than 100,000 new voters from one of America’s most disenchanted electorates: the young. This year, Lollapalooza is taking place at the same time as a presidential election campaign which, for the most part, is of a sufficient banality to make the custard pie scene of any Keystone Kops film look like the zenith of scalpel-sharp rhetoric. Come polling day, voter turnout is anticipated to be the lowest ever recorded. Rock the Vote will be looking to register another 100,000 this year, and then some. This may not make much difference to either of the chaps after the top job, but it could make a hell of a difference to would-be mayors, judges, sheriffs and dog-catchers all over the country, wherever Farrell’s circus wanders.

  Watching CNN over the past few days, four sequences of images recur. One, George Bush and Bill Clinton—reverse faces of the same wooden nickel. Two, Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman, who still appear sadly unlikely to be chained together and pitched off a high bridge anytime soon. Three, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, who seem determined that every television viewer on earth is going to hear about what private and retiring people they are. Four, Ice-T.

  Ice-T was part of the lineup of last year’s inaugural Lollapalooza, and was this year’s opening night compere. He is now America’s favourite scapegoat, since some or other meddlesome wowser noticed that he’d written a song called “Cop Killer” and recorded it with a band called Body Count. There are few things, if I’m to believe half of what I hear and read, that are not currently his fault. Every time I turn on a television, a concerned news programme is parading one of an astonishing assortment of mendacious buffoons and blithering jackasses suggesting, in all seriousness, that Ice-T’s faintly amusing but rather silly record is directly responsible for crime, drugs, teenage pregnancy, the fact that kids today don’t got no respect, etcetera.

  It’d be funny if it wasn’t so serious—across America, state congresses are trying to turn themselves into everyone’s babysitter. A law recently passed in Washington State makes it illegal to sell recordings containing “erotic content” to minors. It is just about likely that this will apply more to the works of Nine Inch Nails and 2 Live Crew than it will to those of Giuseppe Verdi. One of the agitators behind this and similarly dimwitted legislation passed elsewhere in the United States is the Parents’ Music Resource Centre (the PMRC is also responsible for those cute little stickers that now festoon CD cases in American stores: “Warning: Adult Content,” and so forth, though the irony inherent in accusing an Aerosmith album of containing any such thing seems to have eluded them).

  One of the PMRC’s founders, and its major driving force, is one Tipper Gore, a woman who gives every impression of being so comprehensively repressed that it can be imagined she eats bananas sideways. Her husband is a certain Al Gore. So if America goes out and votes for cool, hip, draft-dodging, dope-smoking, saxophone-playing Bill Clinton, the country will be one lucky shot away from having, effectively, Mary Whitehouse in the White House.

  If Lollapalooza this year feels less like a rock’n’roll tour than it does a crusade, it may have its reasons. And astonishingly, though I’ve listened to the entire Body Count album at least twice and own several other recordings by Ice-T, I haven’t killed a single policeman yet. All that crack must be keeping me calm.

  LOLLAPALOOZA’S HEADLINE ACTS play on a large stage in front of the main arena. A smaller stage in a tent just out of earshot of the large stage hosts useless local rock groups from whichever region Lollapalooza finds itself in, and The Jim Rose Circus Sideshow. The Jim Rose Circus Sideshow are already getting more press than any other act on the tour, and it isn’t surprising. The troupe’s performers include Mr. Lifto, who lifts heavy objects with the portions of his anatomy that the rest of us would be least likely to use for the purpose; Matt “The Tube” Crowley, who pumps ingredients into his own stomach down a nasal feedline and then retrieves the result to be poured into glasses and served to the audience; and The Torture King, who walks on swords and sticks skewers through his face. Though this is only what any sane person would rather do than listen to any of the bands on the second stage, it is undeniably fascinating. At frequent intervals, gaps appear in the standing crowd where someone has fainted.

  Lollapalooza’s spirit seeks to manifest itself on the concourse area between the two stages. This concourse, squelchy and slippery underfoot, but just about navigable, recalls Glastonbury’s bubbling bazaar of ideas idiotic and intriguing, of merchandise erratic and essential. There’s a large metal sculpture that people are invited to hit with sticks. There’s a cage in which people are encouraged to take sledgehammers to television sets—sadly, it isn’t possible to tune them to MTV first. There’s also a gyroscope, in which people can be spun through all sorts of angles and contortions, and food stalls peddling the usual festival fare, in case anyone feels like being ill and queasy but doesn’t want to stand in line for the gyroscope.

  At a raffle wheel, punters can donate a dollar to AIDS charities in return for a chance to win a backstage pass—though, having sampled the food in the artists’ catering tent, I feel this is no bargain. Other things to spend money on include paintings and sculptures that look like they’ve either been backed over by a tractor or ought to be, and stickers and badges from the barely countable stalls which are here representing almost every cause on earth. With an admirable sense of fair play, Lollapalooza’s organisers invited various anti-abortion groups and the National Rifle Association to come along and set up shop, but none appear to have taken up the offer. Lightweights. At least the NRA could have defended themselves.

  I’m back in the main arena in time to see The Jesus & Mary Chain, and the weird thing is that I can actually see The Jesus & Mary Chain. After years of watching the perpetually scowling Reid brothers in dismal, dank clubs where they were barely visible through the billowing fogs of dry ice and iridescent crosshatches of laser, this afternoon matinee appearance takes some getting used to. It’s not like I
seriously suspected that Jim and William usually spent their daylight hours hanging upside down in caves, but the outdoor life really doesn’t suit them. All things considered, they’re on good form: “Head On” is emphatically reclaimed from The Pixies, and “Happy When It Rains” is, as usual, life-affirmingly upbeat yet ineffably melancholy, which is something of an ironic double-bluff with a one-and-a-half twist, given the conditions (pissing down, by now).

  Soundgarden have tattoos, and guitars that go, “Skreee! Widdly widdly widdly!” Not a problem if you like that kind of thing, and most people here seem to. The enormous, threshing moshpit in front of the stage is by now giving rise to impenetrable clouds of steam, as the cold rain fizzes against acres of hot skin. Ice Cube gets everyone to shout “Yo-oo” and “Motherfucker,” which is quite good fun the first half dozen times, but eventually starts to sound like bingo evening down the Tourette’s Syndrome support group. I’ve got no problem with swearing loudly in public, but I prefer to do it as and when I see fit, rather than on demand. Ice Cube asks that everyone “Wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care.” I don’t get involved with this, because I don’t really understand the request. I don’t understand the request because I am not normally given to expressing indifference by waving my hands in the air. I reach a compromise, and wander off to pay attention to something more interesting like I just don’t care.

  Backstage, a harassed-looking little chap is scuttling about muttering in some species of euro-accent. He looks as haunted as the Somme, and almost as muddy, though by this stage the latter is something we have in common. He recognises me from somewhere, though I don’t recall where.

  “I am tour managing Ministry,” he says, as if that explains his panic, and it probably does.

  “Alain Jourgensen is saying he will not play the show unless I get him a limousine to take him from the tour bus to the stage.”

  Well, it is all of forty yards.

  “He wants one with horns on the front.”

  I don’t imagine anyone’s going to get in his way.

  “No, like a cow’s.”

  He drifts off, carrying my sympathy with him. The job of the rock’n’roll tour manager combines all the least savoury aspects of baby-sitting and zoo-keeping, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. While I sit in the catering tent nursing a coffee, Ice Cube walks in, entourage in tow. He’s finished his set and is after some water to take back to his bus. If I were a proper journalist, I’d go over and pester him. But I don’t have to. Because somebody who clearly is a proper journalist does go over and pester him.

  “Hey, Ice . . . “

  The reporter is wearing a khaki overcoat and a red woollen bobble hat and is carrying a radio microphone.

  “Could you tell me who your favourite homeboys are?”

  He is not, after all, a proper journalist. He is either the bravest man in the world, or a moron with a fanzine and a death wish. So far, my money’s on the latter.

  “Are you missing your ’hood?”

  This really is sensational stuff, though, as breathtakingly tactless as heckling at a funeral. There’s surely nowhere further this bloke can take this, unless he’s going to black himself up with boot polish, get down on one knee and start doing “Swanee River.” Ice Cube regards his interrogator with the bemused contempt of a rhinoceros who has just been witlessly satirised by a ferret.

  “Get a job, asshole,” he grunts, and stalks past.

  A tough act to follow, but Ministry manage. Jourgensen is delivered to the stage by the requested limousine, and leads Ministry’s set of deranged electronic rockabilly from behind a microphone stand festooned with the skulls, spines and other skeletal remains of goats, rodents and sundry roadkill. Ministry, uniquely in rock’n’roll history, have a full-time bone roadie on tour with them, whose sole job is the augmentation and maintenance of this grisly prop. From where I’m standing, next to the stage by the entrance to the photo pit, I can see the medics under the stage dealing with the evening’s first casualties. They wheel one kid past me on a stretcher, unconscious and covered in blood—there have been actual riots less worthy of the description “riotous” than what’s going on in the arena now, although, the steady stream of wounded aside, it all looks bizarrely amiable. Red Hot Chili Peppers are fantastic for about the first fifteen minutes, which is as long as it takes for them to demonstrate that they are yet to have the second idea of their career.

  There’s not much going on after the show, as most of the tour buses have long since started hauling their star cargo south to the border. Westenberg and I determine to suck the very marrow from the nightlife of Vancouver, and are back at the hotel by eleven.

  “I’M AFRAID WE can’t offer you gentlemen a full menu this morning.”

  We left Vancouver earlier than we probably needed to, and got across the border with no trouble, mostly because, when the guard asked if we were carrying any concealed weapons, we resisted the temptation to ask, “Why, what do you need?”

  “The chef is late, you see.”

  We’ve stopped for breakfast somewhere just inside Washington State.

  “But I can cook eggs, hash browns, sausages, that kind of thing.”

  Whatever.

  She brings the food, and it smells great, and we eat it, and it tastes better. When we go to pay for it, one of those things happens that only happens in America.

  “Oh no,” she says, waving our money away. “The chef will be buying your breakfasts when he gets here.”

  We don’t want to cause any trouble. Maybe the guy’s car broke down. Perhaps he’s ill. The food was delicious anyway. We’re on expenses. It doesn’t matter.

  “Look,” she says. “It’s the only way he’ll learn. You fellers have a good day.”

  True to our established form, Westenberg and I are late for the festival again. While the pine trees around the Washington State town of Bremerton are lovely, Kitsap County Fairground seems an otherwise uninspired choice of venue. Access to the site involves negotiating erratic ferries from Seattle, useless access roads, endless traffic jams and utterly incomprehensible road signs. After hours of blundering about what we believe to be the general vicinity of the venue, we find an important-looking gate.

  “Artists only,” says the guard.

  Well, it’s all a question of perspective. We wave every item of Lollapalooza accreditation we can find and affect the most convincing English accents an Australian and an American can muster. Amazingly, we are ushered through. We have managed to park ourselves directly backstage. We have missed Lush, again.

  “Just make it up,” says Emma Anderson, one of Lush’s singer-guitarists. “You usually do.”

  Trying to gain journalistic access to bands who are not Lush at an American festival is not easy. At British festivals, it is perfectly possible, once you’ve got backstage, to find yourself queueing for lentil stew alongside Tom Jones and Blur. American bands, in contrast, surround themselves with people whose job consists largely of stopping other people from doing theirs. They say things like “We cannot comply with your request for an interview at this time” and have lots of keys hanging off their belts.

  I ask someone with lots of keys hanging off his belt about the possibility of speaking to one or more members of Pearl Jam. “We cannot comply with your request for an interview at this time,” he says. We are arguing next to Pearl Jam’s astonishing tour bus, which is painted from front to rear in a mural replicating the cover art for The Eagles’ Hotel California album. “It used to belong to Gene Simmons from Kiss,” explains Mr. Keys, sounding suddenly less commanding. On cue, Eddie Vedder climbs off the bus. To the evident irritation of Mr Keys, Eddie recognises me and gives every indication of remembering me fondly.

  Eddie looks a wreck even by his standards, but we have a bit of a chat about what we’ve both been up to since I’d accompanied Pearl Jam on a memorably mayhemic Scandinavian tour six months previously (me: editing a music paper reviews section; him: rapidly becoming one of the
most famous rock stars on earth). He says he hadn’t realised till he’d read my piece that he’d had the same surname as me at one point in his multi-family childhood, and we agree that it’s nonetheless unlikely that we’re related. This is as far as we get, before Mr. Keys comes back with someone with even more keys, who hustles Eddie back onto the bus and gives me a look that could curdle milk.

  “I’ll talk to you later, when everyone’s gone home,” says Eddie. “Nice to see you, anyway.”

  There are, of course, official channels through which all media requests for access should be directed. Lollapalooza includes in its retinue a Minister for Information, whose job includes deciding who can talk to who, and when, and for how long. Happily, this almighty personage was, until a few months ago, a colleague at Melody Maker.

  “Have you seen my golfcart?” asks Ted.

  The production office have brought along a fleet of these nippy little vehicles for getting around Lollapalooza’s vast venues. They are already proving an irresistible temptation to bored musicians. Last time I saw Ted’s, Emma was chasing a cow in it.

  “Fuck.”

  I was wondering if there was any chance of talking to the Mary Chain.

  “What? Oh, yeah, they’re in that dressing room over there, just go and knock, though I think they’re in a bit of a strop. Did you see which way she went?”

  It’s not been the best of days to be in The Jesus & Mary Chain. At what is effectively the Seattle date on the tour, they’ve been little more than a convenient portaloo break between local heroes Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. I knock on the door just as Soundgarden are starting. Jim answers, lets me in, and apologises for the mess.

  “Um . . . yeah. William knocked a few things over and then went off somewhere. I’m a bit pissed, Andrew. Actually, I’m quite a lot pissed. You’d better have a beer as well.”