by KUBOA
CM: Why does rock and roll mean so much to so many people?
BG: The beat, I think, first and foremost. The beat is the heart, the human heart, it gets right inside. I mean, you had it before, it was there in humans, back and back. Listen to “Sing Sing Sing” and see if it doesn’t get inside you. Then, what rock did, after Rickie and Buddy and those guys, rock got a conscience. Partly Dylan’s doing, but it was inevitable, it was headed that way, the power of it, the communicative power. Man, I sound like Rolling Stone. What I mean is that rock wouldn’t have held it’s place if it hadn’t shifted, if the words didn’t start to mean something. It was time. It was time for music to mean something. Dylan, The Beatles, they led the way. They said, you know, show us the plan, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. And the kids sat up and listened. It was coming, this revolution of meaning, this concentration on the word. And, all along, behind it like a dark river, ran the beat, the melody, a sort of communication device that was both insidious and right out there in the open. See, rock wasn’t subversive to the people who wanted to know. It didn’t trick anybody. It’s the most godawful honest music on the planet. In the end, I think that’s what has kept it so powerful, its honesty, its lack of guile.
CM: Tell me more about what changed your direction. Who are you listening to now, maybe, that you didn’t listen to before.
BG: You mean I went from my Gibson SG to my Martin? Listen: rock and roll will kill you, ok? If you take it to the edge, which you have to do to play rock and roll, every fucking time, eventually, well, you’re gonna pitch over, dig? You’re gonna go over that edge because that’s why you’re doing it—to get closer and closer. Playing electric, like the blues, like the devil music from which it came, you just gotta give it the juice, you gotta play for all the money. Man, I did that, I could feel it. Feel the devil chasing me down. But, it’s a high, right? Like all good highs there are consequences. But, I’ve never changed direction, man. I’m going in a straight line. When it’s all over you’ll see the line. My footprints all headed in one direction—you’ll see it, eventually. Everybody will. Everything will be true of everybody. In the end.
CM: So, since you moved to the West Coast, are there people out here, musicians out here---
BG: Did I say Fever Tree? You hear Fever Tree, man?
CM: Fever Tree. No, I don’t—
BG: There are some cats I play with out here. They play with me. In the studio it’s all just overlaying now, you know, so some of these cats, I don’t even know their names. I hate that. I hate that I sing a song and then they come in and lay some harpsichord or Jew’s harp or whatever behind it. But, that’s the times, man, I gotta go with the times. Still, I insist on a certain honesty, a certain interplay in the studio, and this places me solidly on the outside. A pain in the ass, that’s what these label guys think I am. Like I give a shit. What’s a fight with an engineer compared with the song itself, right? I gotta be true to the song. But, some of the musicians, uh…
CM: Jim Keltner.
BG: Well, Keltner, sure. When he’s ok. Yeah, when he’s ok, we’ve played together.
CM: Is the whole California, laid-back ethos part of where you’re at now?
BG: Ethos? Where djew get a word like that, Creole? (laughs) Shit, man. Who you been talking to? The California thing. Yeah, sure, write that, if you want. It’s as true as anything else. Write that Buddy Gardner moved to California and became one of the Beach Boys, or Sweet Baby Buddy. Write whatever the fuck you want, man. (laughs)
LE: Tell him about Dennis Wilson.
BG: Aw, no, man. I don’t want to talk about Dennis. He’s been raked over the coals enough. Let’s talk about something else. Let’s keep this on a higher plane.
CM: Um.
BG: Hey, man, it’s ok. You look like you’re gonna throw up or die. Relax, Creole. We’re all friends here.
CM: You, uh, you said you were recording with session men, I think you said, and that you didn’t know some of them—
BG: Well, so much of this shit they do now, man, you don’t even have to be in the same city. You gotta realize multi-tracking was relatively new, and, man we were babes in the wood, naives, we didn’t know how to play without someone playing with us. We started out on 4 tracks, remember that. So all this gimmickry, this Sgt. Pepper’s stuff that everybody has to do now, it’s going the other direction, isn’t it? Started with John Wesley Harding, man. And has anyone really even listened to that yet? I mean, really heard it? It’s a fucking beautiful record, man. And, we’re going that way. Bob’s out front, as usual, but, I think the movement is going to be toward simpler things. I mean, we’ve been there, right? We’ve been to Strawberry Fields. We’ve seen the Walrus. I’ve got a new song—you haven’t heard it, yet—it’s called, uh, “Bookstore Blues”—
LE: “Burke’s Book Store Blues.”
BG: Right. Anyway, it’s just me and Lor.
CM: After the store back in Memphis.
BG: If you like.
CM: The bookstore.
BG: Yes, yes. But, the point is, I’ve stripped the sound back, it’s me, my National, a bow bass and Lor.
CM: I didn’t know Lorelei was a musician.
BG: Well, no one wants to give her any credit and all that bullshit, you know, so we’re not going to—Lor doesn’t want us to, like, make a big deal out of it. It’ll be on the next album, though. Lorelei just lays down this beautiful rill, man, running like a crystal stream behind me…it’s fucking beautiful.
CM: Can you sing any of it?
BG: Uh. (hums a bit). Naw. I don’t remember it. The lyrics, though, they’re the best I’ve written. The tops.
CM: Let’s talk for a minute about the songs you wrote for other artists. A lot of people don’t know that you did that, that your songs are all over the place.
BG: Yeah.
CM: Can you tell me a bit about them, those other songs?
BG: Sure.
CM: Who all recorded stuff by you? It’s been a matter of some speculation for years—that you wrote a lot of stuff using pseudonyms—that we’ll never really know how much of your stuff is out there.
BG: There was a period—an era, really—where I was bleeding songs, where they were just flowing out of me. There was too much stuff for Black Lung. And some of it didn’t fit the power trio thing, you know? Some of it was purposely for others, friends, fellow seekers. I can’t even tell you all of them—partly because I don’t remember and partly because, I think, there are legal complications.
CM: What were some of those pseudonyms? Band Drudgery?
BG: (laughs) Yeah, that was me. That was on a Cream album, right?
CM: Drab Eddy Rung?
BG: Um, on Carole King’s third LP, I think. “Thunder over Scenic Hills.”
CM: Randy Grubb?
CM: Yeah, yeah. I used a hundred different names for a hundred different songs. There’s no way I can remember them all.
BG: Tell me some of the artists who recorded your songs?
CM: Oh, hell. Um, the Airplane, Solomon Burke, The Remains, Judy Collins, Ginsberg---
BG: Allen Ginsberg. The poet.
CM: Sure. He did some recording too. He did, let’s see, “Blues for Sandra Leathers” on his “Cannabis” LP, a sort of raga rendition of it, much changed from the bluesy take on that one that Canned Heat did.
BG: I didn’t know you wrote that one.
CM: Yeah. And, “The Rules for Hide and Seek, “ which also showed up on a Canned Heat album, as well as on Judy Collins’ Rainy Somethingorother album. Uh, Moby Grape did “They Bribe the Lazy Quadling” and “Y Teen Love.” Skip was a friend for a while, till, you know. The demons. He started calling in the middle of the night and reading to me from The Egyptian Book of The Dead and The Prophet. Poor Skip.
BG: Skip Spence, from
Moby Grape.
CM: That’s right, yes.
BG: Who else?
BG: Jesus. Uh, Timmy Hardin used to do “Ms. Denmark and the One Way Ticket” in his concerts. I don’t think he ever recorded it. Richie Havens, of course, had a hit with “The Shell When I Knew It.” Joan did “Buttermilk Thighs.” Oh! (laughs) Crafty recorded “All the Shit that’s Fit to Print.” (laughs) I gave him that one. Of course, he sounded constipated. He can’t sing to save his life, you know, and his band was, well, second-raters at best. I think he cut that for Pepper and they sort of threw it away as a single that went nowhere. The flip side, lemme think, the flip side was…
LE: “Macarthur Park.”
BG: (laughs) Right, right. Hilarious, man. Fucking hilarious. He actually sang it like he meant it. (laughs) Of course, Skippy played drums for him, so I shouldn’t laugh. God love ‘em, they had no idea, just no idea.
CM: So you wrote a lot of songs…
BG: Oh, yeah. There was a period there where I thought every drop of sweat from my brow was a pearl. Some of them were. Some of them, I’m still proud of. I still love “Sandra Leathers.” And I like Cocker’s version of “Sins of Monk Casaba.” “Satori at the Bitter Lemon,” “Call it the End of Enchantment,” “ Drudge’s Questions,” “The Dotage of a Fairy Tale Hero”…
LE: It was Cassava, dear.
BG: Yeah, right. I don’t remember them all. For obvious reasons. I still like “Overton Park Picnic” especially Soft Machine’s version. “Peace is Declared,” “We Bombed in New Haven,” “Wear your Nehru,” “Iris,” “Art Kane’s Jazz Photograph,” uh, “Chloe’s Ancient Face,” “Jack and Neal and Martin Milner”—(laughs), that one for Tiny Tim. That still makes me laugh. You want me to keep going. “Frank Comma Hesitates.”
CM: Sure. There are a lot---
BG: “Surfing the Big Muddy,” of course. Jan and Dean tried to make a comeback with that one. Sorry that didn’t work. Lor, was it Jan or Dean visited us here?
LE: Jan. I think.
BG: Right. “Turn that Damn Stereo Down” by Moving Sidewalks. The Bugs did “For Kim, Because it All Went by So Fast.”
CM: The Bugs?
BG: Memphis group. Did some great stuff and then—poof!—they pulled a Pynchon. Whereabouts unknown, you know? I think I was credited there as Dead Byrd Rung.
CM: Are there more?
BG: Reams, googobs, myriad, sundry, lots and lots and lots. But, it’s getting boring. Your readers, you know…
CM: We can come back to it.
BG: Well, we can….
CM: Quickly…
BG: I played on one of The Byrds albums, played an upright bass and sang background. It’s the, what did they call it? Five D album? Anyway, that‘s me in the credits, Gary Buddrend.
CM: Quickly, let’s run through some of your contemporaries—just gimme the first thing that comes to your mind.
BG: Word association.
CM: Sort of.
BG: Am I being tested? (laughs)
CM: Well…
BG: It’s ok, we’re all being tested, right? Shoot. Association.
CM: Association.
BG: (laughs) Oh. Um…
CM: First thing you think of.
BG: Could have been better. Had the smarts.
CM: Beatles.
BG: Well, separately four talented guys. Together, gestaltwise, the Tetragrammaton.
CM: The Stones.
BG: Big. Blues fakers. Great blues fakers. Camp followers
CM: Dylan.
BG: God.
CM: Joni Mitchell.
BG: Naked butt. Great lyrics. Billion year old carbon.
CM: Simon and Garfunkel.
BG: Sweet.
CM: Four Seasons.
BG: Shit.
CM: Aretha Franklin.
BG: That was a strange segue. You’re gonna give me the bends. Christ, Aretha. I don’t know, man, the voice of our times. As Billie Holliday was for the rest of the century.
CM: The Beach Boys.
BG: I can’t get with that surfing crap. Don’t know. Pass.
CM: Hendrix.
BG: Oh, you know, man. Too personal. He was beyond all of us.
CM: Mungo Jerry?.
BG: Who?
CM: Bonzo Dog Band.
BG: Great stuff. Underrated.
CM: Iron Butterfly.
BG: Great chops.
CM: 1910 Fruitgum Company.
BG: (laughs) I don’t know. C’mon.
CM: The Monkees.
BG: Better than they should be. Better than we know.
CM: Bobby Darin.
BG: Cool cat. Met him once. Cool cat.
CM: Ray Charles.
BG: Oh, daddy. Uh, well, he’s just The Man, isn’t he? I can’t even talk about him.
CM: Leonard Cohen.
BG: Poet. Ladies man. Last romantic, probably won’t live out the 70s. If there’s a better song than “Joan of Arc” I haven’t heard it.
CM: Cream.
BG: Tired of being compared to them.
CM: Fred Neil.
BG: Jerk, but should be better known. Great songwriter.
CM: Phil Ochs.
BG: Troubled guy but great pipes and great songwriter. Man who cares, really cares. Put his ass on the front lines. I wish I wrote like him.
CM: Laura Nyro.
BG: Fine. She’s fine. Smooth lady. “Sweet Blindness”
CM: Melanie.
BG: Great ass, great in bed. (laughs) No, shit, cut that out, Creole. Don’t get me in trouble, man.
CM: Roy Orbison.
BG: When he sings “Only the Lonely” the angels weep.
CM: The Leaves.