Gardner Remembers: the lost tapes

by KUBOA

CM: But, you did write a lot from your life, yes?

  BG: Shit, man, who doesn’t? Where else does it come from? You read books and then you write about what you’ve read? Naw, man. It all comes from the road you walk, right? It all comes from heartache and passion and hard-won honesty. At least, I hope so. The artists I care about, that’s what I’m talking about.

  CM: So, what was school like, while you were getting this reputation outside of that environment? Was it hard to balance both?

  BG: Well, hell, I was never a student, you know? I never believed anyone except myself. I was a stubborn, self-satisfied little son-of-a-bitch. I know that sounds egotistical, but there it is. I was driven, though I didn’t know it. I was only interested in writing songs, in playing my Gibson. And girls, man, lots of girls. I had a lot of sex in high school. It was everywhere, I mean, I grew up in a golden time. It’s still like that out there, isn’t it? Creole?

  CM: (laughs) Well…

  BG: Yeah, yeah, Writers, too, right? I mean you get a lot of pussy, right?

  CM: Sure. Memphis, you know, it’s the river, the humidity, the duende that floats up from New Orleans. It’s where writing comes from, too, that fecundity, that sexual energy.

  BG: You’re married now, right? You married, uh, Candy Marcrum.

  CM: Yeah, happily married. Got a little one: Grace.

  BG: Life is good, man.

  CM: Sure. It is.

  BG: So back to me, right? (laughs)

  CM: Right.

  BG: High school was a strange trip. I found myself popular after years of feeling like my nose was pressed against the glass. And I got myself a girlfriend for the first time. A cheerleader! (laughs) She thought my music was from the angels, man. And we went at it, you know, it was a real relationship, even that young. Hell, we were kids. But, when I wasn’t writing, playing, I was with her—let’s call her Debbie because every girl back then was named Debbie—in front of her house, practicing our manumission, handjobs and fingerings and oral sex. In the car, on the front porch, in the backyard. Hell, still, that was some of the best sex I ever had—Lor understands, don’t sweat that, man—but, you know, that first flush of what you, at least at the time, call love, and access to another person’s body, the most personal parts of their body—what a joy! What undiluted joy! So, we went at it, like I say, like a couple of hamsters in heat. That was freshman year. That was while I was starting to play everywhere around town—I was like almost famous, you know. Locally. Dickinson was there for me, and the gigs started happening and, I had this cheerleader girlfriend, with thighs like hell-roosters, hard, and a great little butt. Life was good. Classes, shit man, how could anyone concentrate on classes with that going on? Most of my teachers hated me anyway, you know, rock and roll, devil’s music, my hair was longer than most of my classmates, I insisted on wearing these combat boots, even in summer when sweating in them was like wearing a swamp on each foot, and I had attitude, of course. Rock and roll attitude. I was unassailable, untouchable. Of course the teachers hated me. One in particular, tried to get me expelled, suspended, something, because I wore an American Flag on my butt. (laughs) It sounds funny now. I had this peace symbol, you know, the two finger symbol made of stars and stripes, and, Jesus, my mother sewed it on the back pocket of my jeans. This teacher—what was her name? was it freshman year, sophomore? Mrs. McGonnigle. I think that’s right. Funny thing is, you know, she was kind of a fox. Too foxy to try and control a roomful of libidos. She dressed like a stewardess, I remember. Anyway, she took one look at this patch on my ass and drew in her breath as if I had a picture of a couple fucking on my jeans—she literally turned white. And sent me to the office, with a note recommending my suspension. I laugh now, but, hell, I was a little frightened. I mean, I hated school, right? but I didn’t want to be kicked out of it.

  CM: What happened?

  BG: Tempest in a teapot. They called my mother. My mother apologized. I went home and changed my jeans. Case closed. And Mrs. McGonnigle—McCormack?—McGregor?, or was that the farmer in Peter Rabbit?--bless her heart, forgot about it. Let it drop. I was reinstated, so to speak. Still, I did wear a Che Guevara t-shirt as often as it was clean enough. (laughs) Or my Lenin/Lennon. That went over well in suburban Central. Had to get my licks in, you know?

  CM: Can we return to this first sexual relationship? Is that alright? It seems to inform much of your music, especially your early music—well, all of rock, I guess. Is that alright, Lorelei? Sex as art, as energy?

  LE: Bud’s always been a sexual creature, and that’s a turn-on to women. He’s always loved women. Let me tell you something, women love men who love women. And, let’s be honest here. I never want less than 100% honesty, from Buddy, from his music. From this, whatever this turns out to be. Ok?

  BG: Lor knows me better than I know myself. It’s so good she’s here. What do you want to know?

  CM: This relationship with—um---

  BG: We’re gonna call her Debbie.

  CM: Debbie. What was it like, physically for you, and how did that relate to the creative outburst in your music?

  BG: Well, I think they’re the same thing, right? I mean, coming into humanity, opening the door that we all have to open, and then making something of your feelings, your flow, well, that’s what was going on with me at 14. And Debbie, well, she was just so young and lovely. The first time she took my cock out was in her backyard, leaning against her house, her mother moving around in the kitchen right over our heads—this is what you did back then. Were parents oblivious? I don’t know. Anyway, she takes it out---and this is like the first time either of us has bared anything except our souls and she was just fascinated with it. And I don’t know where this knowledge comes from but she knew immediately how to do what needed to be done. She was jerking on me so expertly—well, hell, maybe anything feels right the first time—and, very quickly—I was young---I squirted all over both of us. It was a surprise. I don’t know what she expected to happen but there was this like fountain, as if I had stored it up for a decade, and there was some on her hand, her forearm, her shirt. And the look on her face (laughs) well, let’s just say, it was obvious that it was not what she expected. But, she liked it. And, so we continued our experiments.

  Now, how this impacted my music, which was also coming, so to speak, is, on the simplest level, obvious. I wrote a sex song right away, of course. Uh, “Fountain for my First Love.” Ugh. Bad song with some good stuff in it. And then, on a deeper level, I think I began to understand the whole underpinnings of the music that held me in thrall—you know, the whole name—rock and roll—is sexual. And, of course, all the blues stuff from which rock sprang. It’s all sex, right? And now I felt like part of the brotherhood. I wanted to write more songs—that’s the best part—I wanted to create. And I wanted more orgasms. (laughs)

  That was freshman year—Debbie, she was freshman year. And my gigs with my new band. Man, everything was happening. I started to lose myself when I played, you know, and it was kind of frightening, where I’d go when I played. I wasn’t even aware of Skippy and Crafty, except as background thunder, a wall I was bouncing off of. And, like sex, I was gone, man. At first I almost blacked out, it was so intense, but you learn to control it, right? I mean, I learned to let myself soar, to let myself fall into it, to not be afraid. You step up to the edge of the cliff and you think—you think—you can fly, but you’re really not sure. It’s that first jump that’s scary. After that, it’s all magic—after that I knew who I was.

  CM: Black Lung was born when you were only 14?

  BG: Yeah, that’s right. Wild, huh?

  CM: Hm.

  BG: And then, summer came. The summer between freshman and sophomore years. I really started to make my mark. My first good song—I wrote it then: “All Roads Lead to Roaming.”

  CM: That’s not on any album, is it?


  BG: No. I’m thinking about reviving it. Because it was never really a Black Lung song. It was more personal, a statement of a kind. See, I was already moving away from the group before the group ever really got started. People have to understand. I’ve always been a solo artist. I was held back by Black Lung. All that shit about he left his roots behind, he broke up a great band, etc. I mean, fuck that. It’s like Lennon, you know—he was always a solo artist. That’s what I think anyway. I mean, in the middle of Beatlemania, when he had the fucking world by the tail, we thought, he’s singing “Help me if you can.” And nobody was listening man. He was a squonk crying in the wilderness. God love him. I think he’s happier now, doing his own shit, not having to answer to anybody except John Lennon. That’s the way I am. I mean, I’m not claiming to be Lennon—Jesus, no—but, I was always a solo artist and in the straightjacket of a group I was itching to get to the good stuff, the stuff I cared about. It’s not worth grousing about, I mean, I had a good run in that group, but my solo albums are the only ones I care about.

  So, sophomore year, Debby is gone—well, I cut her loose, I’m not proud of it. There was this freshman chick with big tits who just threw herself in my way. I mean, she was just there one day, in hotpants, and this tight, satin shirt, and I thought, “Man, I want to suck those.” Men. You know, like I say, I’m not proud of my younger self, but, as Lor says, it’s all real, it’s all honest. We are what we are, what we were. So, sophomore year was Birdie Burton. Shit. Should we use real names here? I guess, it’s ok. I don’t want Debby’s name here, that’s all—her real name, just because. Just out of respect for my first love, you know, and the first heart I broke. I broke her heart. And with Birdie I lost my virginity. On her parents’ bed, in the afternoon, with the door locked and people milling about outside. (laughs) Jesus. When you’re young, you know?

  I wrote “Tunc” and “Birdie Sings” for her, of course. Early stuff. Unrecorded, but always in our sets back then. I still like “Tunc.” Hm. Maybe it’ll re-emerge as an acoustic ballad. I’ll have to think about it.

  And it was during my sophomore year that I met Tennessee Larry Dorich.

  CM: The bluesman?

  BG: No, the TV evangelist. Of course, the bluesman. The bluesman’s bluesman. Never recorded one single song, never traveled outside the Mid-South, yet his influence is everywhere, is legendary. Everyone from Jagger—who copped his singing style—to The Animals to Jimmy Page have accorded him a special place in their learning. And I knew him, man. Knew him as teacher/mentor/friend. It was as if I’d been sanctified. Another father. He taught me “Don’t Let the Sun Pull Your Pants Down,” “Piggly Wiggly Blues,” “She Caught the Katy,” “Her Ass Moves I Moan.” Underground stuff, stuff from the adult’s table, from the back room. And I lapped it up. And Tennessee paid me the high compliment, man. He told me nobody played like me except Riley.

  CM: Riley?

  BG: B. B. King, man. He was comparing me to blues royalty. It made me dizzy, I’ll tell you. I mean I was in high school. I think that’s when I started leaving Memphis. In a way. That’s when I got kind of a big head and dreamt of things beyond. I certainly had left Central High School, left my friends, my girlfriends. Even before we cut the album. Tennessee planted that seed, man. I mean, I loved the guy, but I saw where he was, where he’d always been, how he’d been treated like a second class citizen his whole life—I mean, we couldn’t even go into some restaurants together, still, at that late date. And, metaphorically, I started packing my bags.

  CM: Yet you stayed in school, didn’t you?

  BG: Yeah. Well, sort of. I mean, I went. Most days.

  CM: And you graduated.

  BG: (pause) Naw, man. I never graduated high school.

  CM: Really?

  BG: Don’t gimme that really shit, Creole? What difference, right? I mean, they weren’t teachin’ me “Frogleg Blues.” Right? They weren’t teachin’ me Skip James, Robert Johnson, Fred McDowell.

  CM: So, what happened next?

  BG: Well, high school went on, keeping me in one place, while my mind was traveling. I wanted so bad to make music, and when we got Black Lung together, I thought, this is it, this is my gateway, my way in. We played larger and larger gigs. We got a reputation. I started writing songs at an astonishing clip, words and chords and melodies colliding in me like some kind of atomic reaction. And we started hanging out with the Mudboy guys, with Alex Chilton, the whole scene. Memphis hasn’t been given enough credit for its 60s influence, man, you know. I mean, the soul stuff, yeah, Sun and Stax. Great, great things there, but there was also this underground thing going on. With Mudboy and The Neutrons and Alex and The Manor and The Bitter Lemon. There was a scene. And, of course, we were too young, but we managed to hang out on the fringes for a while, until we became accepted, through the music, through the music. And about the time I would have graduated from high school we got the chance to make that album, what we thought was our big break, our rocket to stardom. So, while my girlfriend and my friends and ex-friends were preparing for baccalaureate, we were rehearsing songs in that old gas station for Turntable Poison. It was a heady time.

  CM: You had a girlfriend at that time?

  BG: Of course, I mean, yeah. Sure, a high school girlfriend. The kind doomed to fail as soon as you taste the world outside of that brick building where they’d been holding you prisoner. I had a great girlfriend, a young woman of soul and beauty.

  CM: Uh..

  BG: Carol Warner. Ok? Carol, wherever you are today, I wish you well. You were lovely but, of course, the timing was atrocious. I was an asshole. It was my asshole period. One of them. (laughs) One of them. Sorry, baby.

  Carol Warner, I met at a school dance, where Black Lung played. It was in the school cafeteria—Jesus, those gigs, you gotta love ‘em, right? I mean, looking back, you gotta love that shit. Girls and boys rubbing against each other, hormones exploding all over the room, while we grind away at some awful cover song like “One is the Loneliest Number.” Occasionally slipping in one of our originals which is met with a silence like we farted in church. (laughs) It was a kick. I mean, these couples using the opportunity to practically hump on the dance floor, hands all over asses, the chaperons looking bored over in the corner, old Ricky Glass, the mechanical drawing teacher, toking up. What a time that was.

  Anyway, Carol was suddenly there. When I stepped off the stage between gigs there was Debbie with this blond young woman I’d never even noticed in the halls of Central High, so tuned out I was, so really out of the swim as far as high school was concerned. I mean, if I’d been paying attention I would never have missed Carol Warner. We even had a class together. (laughs) Here’s this blond chick, in a loose shirt that I couldn’t help but look down at two lovely mounds of white white flesh, and a little jean skirt that showed off legs as thick as bedposts, strong, muscular legs—she was on the track team, imagine that—and sweet Debbie, my first love, didn’t know what she was doing, introducing us. I mean she put the match to the fireworks and I think regretted it immediately. Apparently, Carol asked to meet me. Like a fan thing. But, man, it was love, lust, whatever, at first sight. We locked eyes. She left with me that night when the dance was over. And we fucked that first night in my little Toyota. What a body she had, has, lovely lovely woman. God, I still could get horny for her. Fucking in a Toyota—(laughs) I don’t recommend it, but we pulled it off. And she was, well, kind of big, not like over weight, but like, those legs, hard as timber, and her big ass—I really don’t know how we did it.

  I’m off on a toot here. Sorry. Lor, sorry.

  LE: It’s alright, Love.

  BG: We were together about a year, I think. It lasted about a year. She was there when we recorded some of our first songs, I remember that. She loved, uh, “Hayley Mill’s Underpants.” For some reason, she thought that was her song.
Maybe because Carol was a young woman who loved lingerie. And, as a young man, who appreciated a young woman who loved lingerie, well, we had some fiery times. Hot as monkeys. She had these little white things…I don’t know where she got ‘em.

  Let’s move onto a higher plane.

  I guess you want to hear about the recording of Turntable Poison.

  CM: Yes. How did that start?

  BG: Dickinson. Jim, he got us a recording studio at Ardent. Got us some studio time. He’d been to numerous practices, knew our stuff. And he agreed to produce, under the name Euphonious Moniker. Of course, now, everyone knows he did it, but back then, I don’t know, there were legal complications or something. Anyway, with Jim there, well, he gave us the confidence to do it. So we started laying down tracks. Now, the story that’s told is that I hated recording, that I was, I don’t know, juvenile, about doing numerous takes. I probably did say, “That was good enough,” a couple times. But, man, Jim is such a gentle man, he just took it all in stride. He knew when it was done, man, when it was complete. If not for him, we never would have gotten “Mr. Handy” down, I know. And he encouraged that drum solo, man, not like the myth that’s grown up around it, that we, what—perversely tried to kill the album’s potential. It was a time of excess, for one thing, and for another, man, listen to that cut. It smokes. It cooks like little else on vinyl at that time, except for maybe some Cream, some Who. Maybe “Train Time,” maybe that incredible mélange Townshend put together for Live at Leeds. And, let me add here, that I got a call from Pete, it was in, oh, 1969 or so, and he’d gotten a copy of the album—God knows where—and he was agog at that cut, he asked me how I got the distort sound on my guitar. Pete Fucking Townshend, man.

  CM: Wow. How did you get that sound?

  BG: Jim’s idea. From “Rocket 88” of course, everyone knows that story. Jim kicked in my amp. I was dumbfounded—he was like some shaman so I didn’t protest—and that hole in the amp is what gives my guitar such a weird sound on that cut. I had a fuzz pedal too—a Pep box, and an Astrotone, but, Jim wanted that Memphis thing, you know, he wanted to tie us into the whole mojo, from Sun, from Ike Turner, through Keith Richards on “Satisfaction”—which is a cop from Sam, don’t let anyone tell you different, through the swamp music of Mudboy—up to us. At this time, remember, I was like attached to the guitar, man. I could make an electric guitar sing, talk, chant, name your baby. It was just natural. So, yeah, I got a reputation—they started mentioning my name alongside Beck and Page and you know the list. I was airborne, man.

  CM: Just for the record here, no pun intended, lemme run down the listings on Turntable Poison. Side One: “Blues for Wendy Ward,” “Mr. Handy and Hakel-Bärend.” Side Two: “In Real Time Nothing Happens,” “A Marriage of Rue,” “Hayley Mills’ Underpants,” “For Kim Because it Went by so Fast,”

  BG: Had one more song we cut—remember we did this whole thing in, what, 3 days, non-stop, popping uppers, getting patty melts at 3 a.m. from Steak and Egg, so it was kind of a blur. And Jim could work like that—he was amazing, a guru, a conductor, a lightning rod. But, in that session, we cut “Gogy Goodfriend,” which never ended up on any of our records.

  CM: But, Melanie covered it, right? That’s the same song.

  BG: Right, right. We sent her a demo. After she came to Memphis and we, well, let’s just say we hit it off. She was a dreamsicle, man. (laughs) A fine-looking woman.

  CM: Did you decide the order of the songs?

  BG: And the hidden nocturne.

  CM: Pardon?

  BG: At the end of Turntable, there’s a bit of tape loop, a witch’s prayer, backwards with oud added. It’s about 16 seconds.

  CM: I didn’t know that.

  BG: It’s there. Like on Sergeant Pepper’s. Everyone wanted to do Sergeant Pepper’s back then. It was actually Skippy’s idea—he’d been reading some voodoo book, and found these words. That’s his voice, though you can’t tell. Jim did the oud bit.

  CM: Hm. So, the order…

  BG: I don’t think anyone decided it. Here’s the thing, Dad.. That’s the order we recorded them in. See, we were naives, kids. We just did what was natural, we didn’t know from creating a suite, or anything pretentious like that. Man, we just wanted to get our chops in, create a little noise. That’s raw sound on that record, see, that’s live. None of it was fiddled with, enhanced, whatever. Except that playful tape loop, and that fade-out on “For Kim,” that’s just us, beating our brains out in that little studio, high on bennies.

  “For Kim, Because it Went by So Fast”---we worked our asses off to get that one right. I don’t know what was wrong really. It was a song I’d written right before we went into the studio, so we’d never done it live—maybe that was the reason we struggled with it. But, the lyrics, you know, they’re a little complex: “I took my Melville out into the sun, what else could I do, I was in my twenties” it begins. Not exactly pop schmaltz, you know, ABAB. It was a more complex rhythm to the whole speaking—and I did just sort of speak the lyrics—that was Jim. At first I wanted to sing it—you know, I’d worked out a melody, a weird melody. And he said, on, I don’t know, the like 16th try, Jim said, shit, let’s not sing this one. Gimme a Lou Reed kind of thing. Half talk the damn story. I’m gonna use that melody behind you. And he did, man, he played what I was singing on a plastic tonette—no shit, that’s that weird, unearthly descant in the background, Jim on this little toy. It’s not in the credits, so you’re getting it first, right? And I just did my best Lou Reed impersonation, intoning,

  Her glances could break arms.

  Her hair was a nimbus

  of tangled nestings,

  life surrounded her like a cloak.

  When I went too deep

  she was quick to pull the plug.

  I still stay awake nights

  reliving the ignominy, forgetting

  to celebrate how we came

  together briefly, fiery angels.

  I think I was riffing, partly, adding to what I’d written, making it up as I went along. By that 16th run-through, my voice was tired anyway, and the guys were playing like they were drugged, and the song sounds like that. I love that cut, man. We hit some other place with that one. You wanna know about the ending—that last bit before the hidden loop? Jim and I had been talking about Sergeant Pepper’s and we wanted some kind of, what they call, lamination on the end, something like what the Beatles did with “Strawberry Fields,” you know, sort of incorporating found sounds, etc. So at the end of “Kim” we let Dickinson play with the limited equipment he had, and here’s some of the stuff that’s in that final few seconds of concrete dada: a piece of the Treasure House theme song (backwards), Crafty reading “The Crucible” from our school textbook, a piece of Schoenberg, a piece from The Ventures played through some car speakers, and then some street sounds Jim got by simply walking out onto Madison Avenue with a microphone. It’s all silly, of course, but that’s what everyone was doing. Psychedelia, you know. Silly shit. But, liberating in a way. I wish I could get that world-weary sound into every one of my songs. Well, maybe not now, you know, not with something like “Rain and Other Distractions,” I mean, I’m in a different place. A better place.

  (long silence---distorted sound)

  CM:..and, that was, what, 3 a.m.?

  BG: Yeah, something like that. You know, Dylan wrote much of Blonde on Blonde right there in the studio, on speed or something. Or so the story goes. Our one recording has some of that flavor to it. I’m proud of that album, don’t think otherwise. Am I contradicting myself? You’ll edit this down, right? You’ll make me sound consistent. (laughs) Shit. I don’t care. Write this: he never got Memphis out of his blood, though his work now is more mature. That’s it. Nutshelled.

  CM: So, tell---

  BG: You want lunch. You want to stop and make some sandwiches. Or we can walk down to the deli.


  CM: Sure, sure.

  BG: Lor?

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