Electrocution

"At least you didn't die in Italy" - Juno, the case worker in the movie Beetlejuice.

"I don't want to play electric guitar. I might get electrocuted." - my son, age 6.

Florence, Italy, December 1985: Another stop on The Long Ryders second European tour. We'd been on the road since October, traveled thousands of miles, slept little, and were nearly delirious. Greg came onstage with the words "Eat Me" written on his forehead. Since I was the designated setlist creator, I used the loopy vibe to completely skew our set for the evening. Out went quite a few of the usual song we played, and in went Danny & Dusty covers and other unusual songs. Some local guy, drunk in his black leather jacket and doing his best Jim Morrison jumped onstage as we started playing Gloria, and had his sloppy 200 seconds of fame.

Italy was beautiful beyond words, and always very kind to us. The food was an art form. Driving through Italian countrysides revealed small towns with winding paths and centuries-old small shops and restaurants. The men and women aged beautifully, with grace and style. The fans at the gigs were warm and passionate, although sometimes their passion went to an extreme. Once we were recognized, some fans would not leave us alone, no matter what we were doing. One price of fame, I thought. At the Italian concert halls, the promoters would set up in front of the stage what resembled a reversed baseball backstop with wire mesh. It was their attempt to keep fans off the stage. The first time I saw this backstop, I figured that it was pure over-reaction. We'd seen some wild crowds in the UK and elsewhere, but never was wire mesh needed to separate our fans from us. I always loved shaking hands with the crowd and getting warm hugs from exuberant female fans. But our first gig in Italy demonstrated why those backstops were needed. The crowd pushed violently forward all night, and there were fans in front with their faces pressed against the wire mesh as we played. Watching them, I imagined them examining the waffle-like imprints on their faces in their bathroom mirrors the morning after. Further back in the crowd, I caught glimpses of smiling fans jumping up and down, holding their tape recorders overhead. They'd tape our set, then try to interview us on the remaining tape after the show. We didn't mind. It was flattery.

We saw other unusual things at gigs in Italy. One of our first there was at the Communist headquarters in, I think, Rimini (road haze sets in). The building included a radio station and concert hall, "The fascists hate rock and roll," it was explained to us, and they showed us the bullet holes in their building from frequent fascisto drive-bys.

Tonight in Florence, the weirdness continued. Upon our arrival at the hall, I noticed that our amps were set up on a pure metal stage.

Playing an electric guitar in the old garage days meant you got shocked. A lot. If your amp's polarity (the direction of AC, alternating current) was different from the polarity of the PA that your mike was plugged into, a jolt would be felt when you touched the microphone and the strings of your guitar at the same time. I never liked getting shocked, although I think some of my fellow band members did. One guy even volunteered to test the strength of 9V batteries with his tongue.

This also brings to mind when, as a school kid in about 1973, I saw a band called Uriah Heep at Notre Dame University. Their bassist Gary Thain had been badly shocked days earlier in Dallas under similar circumstances: an electrified microphone. During their show, I'll never forget seeing Gary suddenly fall backward into a wall of Marshall amplifier stacks, which came tumbling down on him like building blocks. Not long after I witnessed this, he died.

Meanwhile, back the Florence soundcheck, our excellent British crew were setting everything up for our show. Three months on the road had not dulled their ability to get everything right. This type of expert care was a form of heaven for weary traveling musicians. I tuned my bass and plugged it into my amplifier as usual, then cautiously stepped across the metal stage to the microphone. To test for shock potential, I had a trick that drove sound crews nuts. I held the back of the wooden bass neck and slowly brought the metal bass strings to my microphone without touching the mic with my hands. Damn good thing I did this. An ugly orange curve of electricity went from microphone to string, Bride of Frankenstein-style. For the rest of the night I could still see the temporary burn superimposed on my retinas, like a flashbulb from hell.

It seems that the town factory had shut down for the night, and about 700 volts of electricity was going through our amps and PA.

Rather than canceling the show, our road crew, deep into their show-must-go-on work ethic, ran a long cable from the PA to outside the hall, and literally buried the cable into the ground. This "grounded" the PA (or "earthed" as my Brit friends would say) to prevent those stage shocks. I later found out that our local promoters grabbed a guy representing the venue, and under fear of violent death (this was Italy, and those promoters did not mess around), they made the venue guy stand guard over that buried cable during the entire gig. Our show went on, the crowd loved it, tapes were made, autographs were signed, and back into the van we went. Yet another London show was coming soon with a live recording planned, and then home to L.A. for the holidays. I couldn't wait to see my baby daughter Sarah and my amazing, beautiful wife Elaine, who was now seven months pregnant.

The Alarm/Long Ryders Tour 1986

The Long Ryders were in the midst of their lengthy Fall 1985 tour of the UK and Europe. We were supporting our new State of Our Union LP and hit single Looking for Lewis and Clark, playing live on BBC-TV's Whistle Test with Andy Kershaw, when the word came. We were asked to go on tour with The Alarm in the new year, playing dates at U.S. colleges during spring break. Those Alarm guys were already our pub pals, and plenty of pints and laughs were had at the Hotel Columbia bar with Mike, Eddie, Dave and Twist when The Long Ryders were calling London our second home.

Although the 1986 Alarm-Long Ryders tour mainly centered around colleges in New England, it was slated to begin in Stockton, CA on April 9. Upon our arrival in at the venue in Stockton, we noticed that our backstage door was adorned with a sign that the Alarm guys had scribbled and posted to welcome us: "Finally, a GREAT opening band!" We were backstage later that evening when, unexpectedly, the entire show was suddenly canceled. Mike Peters was very ill. Immediately I flashed fearfully on the UCLA show looming in three days. It was to be a major event, complete with an MTV live broadcast. We wondered if Mike would recover in time.

Fears were dashed when we did our first successful show of the tour at The Fillmore in San Francisco a mere two days later. Mike's earlier illness was not evident at this show. I recall the Fillmore's Gestapo-like ushers and Alarm fans in the crowd with simpatico hairspray. Immediately after the gig, we began the six hour haul down I-5 to our homes in L.A.

Sleep came and went, and Saturday, April 12, 1986 dawned. My parents were in Los Angeles from Elkhart, Indiana to see the concert, our family, and especially their new grandson. During the concert they got the VIP treatment, watching their son play in front of 12,000 people on TV while enjoying the amenities of an on-site hospitality room, My father couldn't stop talking to his friends about what he experienced that day, his friends later told me.

Stage lighting in indoor venues usually prevents the performer from gauging the size of the crowd beyond the first few rows. At UCLA in broad daylight, the 12,000-strong masses were in plain, awesome view. It was dizzying, by far our largest crowd to date. MTV did not broadcast The Long Ryders' set, and it was clearly The Alarm's day to shine. For us, the hometown opening act, the crowd did show respect and some enthusiasm. For The Alarm, they went absolutely bonkers.

The rest of the tour was great fun. Greg Sowders and I were the party hounds in The Long Ryders at that time, with Stephen and Sid being the reserved ones. The Alarm had a similar two-for-two split with Dave and Twist the party guys. Dave, Twist, Greg and myself often embarked on some wild adventures throughout the tour.

The Long Ryders already had two 1984 U.S. club tours under our belts, but we spend 1985 almost exclusively on tour in the UK and Europe. The Alarm tour allowed us to resume playing the States, this time in larger halls. My favorites were to mid-size Palace-era theaters like the Orpheum in Boston, the Beacon in NYC, and the Tower in Philadelphia. Besides playing for more people at once, playing bigger venues gave us a feeling that we were at last starting to get real traction in the United States.

The Alarm's kindness was constant. They let us ride in their tour bus during a particularly long haul from Corpus Christi to San Francisco. Their crew (no doubt helped by our bribes of fifths of whiskey and cartons of cigarettes, added to our rider for this purpose) gave us full lights and sound. This was fairly unheard of in a world where jaded, grizzled headliners often do their worst to sabotage wide-eyed opening acts. Instead, The Alarm were then a youthful, high-energy, hard-working band riding high on the charts and loving every minute of it with quiet intensity, all the while keeping to an all-must-share philosophy with their opening acts.

During the last show of the tour, at Irvine Meadows near L.A., we had an on-stage shaving cream battle, and joined them during their encore to play a Maggie Mae/Stand Down Margaret medley. My sister-in-law was caught up in the vibe (and a few drinks) and begged me to introduce her to Mike Peters, which I did. Ah, starstruck kids.

Ending the tour was nearly tearful. We said our goodbyes. As we promised, we did see each other again soon, on their side of the pond.

Mike, Dave, Eddie and Twist: wherever you are now, a million thanks for the respect, the fun, and... everything. Your kindness will never be forgotten.

Gene Clark

Tom Stevens, Carla Olson, Gene Clark - on stage in Santa Monica, 1986

I was probably only eight years old, but very aware, when I first heard that song blasting out of my dad's car radio. Under one of those loud-mouthed 60s DJs I could hear in rapid succession:

that guitar riff,
the 12-string doubling it,
and that voice singing The reason why...

That song was "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better," written and sung by Gene Clark, and recorded by The Byrds. It changed me.

After quickly finding the 45 at the local department store for $.78, I wore it out on my little red record player, while figuring out how to bounce my finger up and down on the guitar fingerboard to play that riff.

Fast-forward to 1984: It's August and I'm at A&M Studios in Hollywood on the old Charlie Chaplin lot with The Long Ryders, recording our first album. I'm a long way from my boyhood home in Elkhart, Indiana. My wife of eight months is very pregnant 60 miles away in Ventura, where her brother is taking his last breaths due to liver failure, having drank himself into an early grave at age 33.

The studio door opens and in walks the man, Gene Clark. Hungover, smiling, gracious, tall, sculpted like a cigar store Indian, carrying quiet dignity through it all.

Gene was to sing on "Ivory Tower," a song on The Long Ryders' first LP Native Sons. Even though I'd joined the band mere months ago, a day like this may not have seemed unusual, but for all of my memories of my younger self sitting by my record player listening to Byrds records.

We all gathered in the control booth with our producer Henry Lewy, listening to Gene sing. There was that beautiful voice I heard so many years ago. But now it was tired and damaged by too much that still rode with him, whether he wanted it to or not. Somebody compared his earliest attempts at getting a take to the vocalisms of Wild Man Fischer. Gene's vocal, doubling a previously-recorded one by Stephen McCarthy, had to be recorded over and over again, but finally we got something that truly added to the song. That quality I recognized years ago was still intact.

That same month, The Long Ryders were opening for Roger McGuinn, playing two acoustic sets at McCabe's in Santa Monica. Still being part star-struck kid and part archivist, I brought my trusty tape recorder, and sat out in the audience after our first set to hear and record Roger. Sitting directly in front of me in the audience were Gene with Carla Olson, a true and dear woman I'd already known for many years from my days working at Tower Records on the Sunset Strip. On that tape you can hear Gene and Carla singing along from their chairs, and later in the set Gene got up on stage and sang "Chimes of Freedom" and "Bells of Rhymney" with Roger. Gene also joined us backstage before one of our sets, and the picture above shows us on that hot California August evening, all smiles, setlists in hand.

A little later, The Long Ryders were booked to open for Gene's electric band Firebyrd at the Country Club in Reseda, CA. We arrived early in order to do our soundcheck. It is customary for an opening band to wait until the headliner is done with their soundcheck before setting up their equipment for theirs. Gene hadn't arrived, so wait we did. Minutes became hours. Drummer Greg Sowders and I became dutifully impatient and decided to look for Gene. Instinct told us to check the bar across the street. Sure enough, there was Gene with Michael Clarke, his current and past drummer from The Byrds, laughing, drinking, lit up like Christmas trees. Gene greeted us warmly when he saw us. We immediately forgot about trying to hurry him to the soundcheck. Instead, we joined Gene and Michael at the bar for quite a while, until the other two Long Ryders caught up with all of us, on a similar "where are those guys" mission. In good time, we had many laughs, soundcheck was done, and the show went on.

Two and a half years passed. The Long Ryders toured Europe and the States extensively, got signed to Island Records, had a top 40 hit in the UK, saw the press love us, hate us and love us again, and my beautiful baby daughter soon had a handsome baby brother to play with. Everything seemed on its way straight up, and nearly every day continued to be an amazing time in my life. I was home in Burbank in early 1987 between tours when I got a call: "Gene and Carla are doing a show at a venue called At My Place in Santa Monica in March, would you like to play standup bass for them?" The gig was great, doing material from Gene and Carla's new LP So Rebellious a Lover, with Skip Edwards from Desert Rose Band and Dwight Yoakam on piano and Michael Huey from The Classics IV on drums. Before the gig, Gene and I spent some time talking. I told him how "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better" had such an impact on me, and he related the story of him hearing The Beatles' "She Loves You" on a jukebox in the basement of a gig he was playing with The New Christy Minstrels, and how it changed him forever.

Not so good for me was the rest of 1987. The Long Ryders were suffering from, among other things, a lack of support by our management and out-and-out sabotage by our record label, resulting in our brotherhood showing intense strain in some very uncomfortable ways. The spring 1987 tour of Europe was a nightmare. Despite a major label "deal," we were broke, and I found myself having to find another source of income so that my growing family could eat and have a roof over their heads. In June of 1987, when the other Long Ryders insisted upon doing a U.S. tour that was expected to lose five figures, I announced that I was leaving the band. I recorded and proudly shopped my new material to the sound of crickets. 1988 came, and early that year, I got a call to do another gig with Gene and Carla at Club Lingerie in Hollywood.

We rehearsed before the gig at Gene's house in Sherman Oaks. His old red Firebird was parked out front, and remnants of recent faux Byrds reunion roadwork were scattered about the house: hotel soaps in the bathroom, rock magazines in various languages. For a guy with more than one hit still in heavy rotation on oldies radio, I was struck by how modestly he lived. Gene had once told me, point blank, that he had put at least one million dollars of coke up his nose. He also made it clear that at the present time in his life, he was looking for a way out of all of that.

The rest of the band gathered in his living room, talking about recent gigs. Gene sat back on his couch, strumming his guitar. Someone asked him about a new song, and he started playing one. There was that big, spooky voice on top of his acoustic guitar. Those demons, some of which we'll never know, came out of Gene like a musical Rembrandt, fully formed and made incredibly beautiful. All this was further intensified by the fact that I was hearing it all unfold within the confines of his living room. Was he improvising? It all struck me as tragic that Gene, still prolific in potential, was able to release so few of his songs in his later years, and that the recordings that did surface tended to sound more like squeaky-clean studio projects rather than the enormously arresting sounds that were now filling the room.

Sometime during the course of those rehearsals, I told Gene I'd left The Long Ryders. Rather than the curious or shocked reaction shots I usually got from that announcement, a great sadness immediately filled his face. At once I realized that this brought back the pain of Gene's ill-fated early exit from The Byrds. He had high hopes of realizing new success with new projects, but sadly, that success eluded him, and Hollywood has never treated perceived has-beens with kindness or sympathy. His look made me sad, too. For both of us.

The Club Lingerie gig was short and to the point, and well received. Talking after the show with Gene and his manager Saul Davis, Gene expressed disappointment that David Crosby had not come to the gig, despite him telling Gene that he would be there. It was during that conversation that I learned that Gene was about to have stomach surgery for some lingering problems that were getting worse. He was trying to get clean then. I knew it was going to be rough, having lost my brother-in-law during those first sessions to similar circumstances. Gene was only 43 at the time, but several lifetimes of hard living and pain showed more and more in his tired eyes and walk. He was tired of the politics of the business he had helped define many years ago with the early success of his music, tired of both substances and sobriety, and tired of the fight.

I never saw Gene again after that night. The summer of 1988 came, and I moved my family to my old home in Indiana to seek an easier, calmer, better life. A year later, Tom Petty's version of "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better" was released. Since Petty was a still a hit machine then, I was happy thinking that Gene could again enjoy some well-deserved extra revenue. I also hoped that he could stay clean enough to use that money for something other than powder and parties, as he had done in years past.

On Bob Dylan's birthday in 1991, they found him. My mother saw the notice in the newspaper, and asked me if the Gene Clark that died was the same Gene Clark that I had worked with. He was only 46, two years younger than I am now. I wasn't surprised, but the sadness is still there.

I've seen a lot written about him, but here's what I can tell you from knowing him personally:
He had a natural gift for creating a song, and a voice that was as distinct as it was deeply moving. Gene stayed honest as a man, sometimes to the point that others would actually try to censor him. In a just world, his castaway songs would've found their full depth on recordings that would live past the expiration date on his tired body.

But he did leave behind a very nice catalog of work, both with The Byrds and solo, and I have my memories of a guy that always treated my band, and me personally, as an equal and a friend. Rest easy, Gene.

My ride with Danny & Dusty

My ride with Danny & Dusty

A few months ago, Steve Wynn had posted on his blog the possibility that he and Dan Stuart writing songs together.

It has happened. Danny & Dusty ride again. But without me, and two of the other guys - Sid Griffin and Dennis Duck.

Yes, I played bass for the original crazed mass that was Danny & Dusty -- in 1985-1986. There were three live shows, one LP on A&M, and a bottled fifth of memories during our brief time as the first incarnation of that band. Gather around kids, and I'll tell you my story of how I saw it all happen, way back when.

It was early 1985. I was smiling through the fabulous roller coaster ride that was The Long Ryders. Our Native Sons LP was released in the Fall of 1984 on Frontier Records and was taking us to new heights. On the strength of that record and the tremendous press response we'd received in the UK and the Continent, we were about to leave on our first tour across the pond, where many good things were waiting for The Long Ryders.

We'd already played shows with Green on Red while we both crisscrossed the U.S. on tour in the Spring of 1984. The camaraderie was magical. We'd toss a coin to see who would go on first and last. Dan and Chris would come up on stage during our set for various songs, and we'd do the same during their set. Friendships were formed that continue to this day.

I think I first met Steve Wynn when he and Russ Tolman from True West jumped on stage during one of the first gigs I played with The Long Ryders in the Bay area, and did a frightening version of Green River. Weeks later, Steve and I had a chance to have our first good conversation at Folk City in NYC, again the occasion was a Long Ryders gig.

I recently found a tape of a Steve Wynn solo show at McCabe's in August of 1984 where Dan gets up and sings a heartfelt "Bend in the Road" with Steve. This gig seems to signal the beginning of what would become Danny & Dusty.

Steve Wynn's band Dream Syndicate was already signed to A&M, but was going through some serious changes with the not-so-amicable departure of Karl Precoda. Is there ever such a thing as an amicable split? Anyway, changes we looming.

In January or February of 1985, we got a call. Danny and Steve had written a song and wanted to record it for a compilation, then titled "Little Sisters." This LP was to be a compilation of L.A. bands doing country-tinged songs. Later I received an early tape of proposed tracks for the LP, including songs by The Bangles (under the pseudonym Donna and Phyllis Everly), Michael Stipe/Matthew Sweet duet on "Tainted Obligations," and in the studio I heard stuff like Jeffrey Lee Pierce doing Bad Moon Rising. The LP did come out later, under the title Don't Shoot, with far fewer tracks than I heard initially, and the songs I just mentioned left out.

Seven guys entered The Control Center studio in Hollywood that evening for the session that turned out to be the beginning of the first Danny & Dusty LP. It was Sid Griffin, Stephen McCarthy and myself from The Long Ryders, Dennis Duck from Dream Syndicate and Chris Cacavas from Green on Red, along with Dan Stuart and Steve Wynn.

We got to work almost immediately. We first stood around Danny, who was seated with an acoustic guitar, and he played us Bend in the Road, the song we were to record that night. The tape soon rolled and we nailed it with little effort, and unexpectedly, Steve introduced a new song called The Word is Out, which we also finished that night.

It then became clear that we needed to finish an album. Those two songs were killer and the band instinctively knew their way around the mood and material. We had rehearsals, but not many. It was all happening fast. It was from listening to a rehearsal tape that I realized how good the material really was.

We recorded the rest of the LP on a Saturday and Sunday, again at Control Center. At one point Danny wanted to play Phil Spector and sit in the control booth and listen while we churned out instrumental tracks, but it soon became obvious that his spirit was needed in the studio. Whenever he was there singing, twirling, and antagonizing Steve Wynn, the band was at its wildest and best as a result.

There were modifications to the original LP. It was decided by someone (Wynn?) that Bend in the Road should be left off, so that the Little Sisters LP would have an exclusive track. Also gone was the brief, impromptu version of Green on Red's Gas Food Lodging that once was sequenced between Miracle Mile and Baby We All Gotta Go Down. The Little Sisters LP, after going through a series of changes, came out years later as Don't Shoot, with Bend in the Road intact.

Danny and Dusty had no label deal before we started recording, but Steve assured us that his label, Down There, would release it if no other came forward. Both The Long Ryders and Green on Red were on independent labels and not bound to exclusive label restrictions, but Dream Syndicate was at that time signed to A&M Records. As a result, Steve had to give submit the LP to A&M, and submitted the finished LP to them.

Someone from A&M loved it, and they picked it up.

Despite rave reviews, sales of the LP were not spectacular. Radio in 1985 was much more geared toward Madonna and Tears for Fears rather than a rootsy, rollicking band whose lyrics reflected the damaged underbelly of modern American culture. A&M never knew what to do with us, so they did next to nothing. Across the Atlantic, reaction was much more friendly. Tour offers were made but never happened. We played our last gig at the Music Machine on February 1st, 1986. Danny & Dusty never officially broke up, but we were all bound to our individual projects, and eventually we all were scattered to different parts of the globe. Ten years ago, Sid tried to launch a Danny & Dusty reunion in London, with all of us but Danny agreeing. Danny was retired for showbiz at the time, for personal reasons.

I'll let you in on a little secret: Sid and I have been working on a Danny & Dusty - The Lost Weekend CD, slated for release on Universal UK, with two extra tracks: the deleted Gas Food Lodging mentioned above, and a live Down to the Bone from Club Lingerie in Hollywood in 1985.

Fast-forwarding to today, you can bet that any new collaboration between Steve Wynn and Dan Stuart will contain great songwriting, and sound as good 20 years from now as today. Steve Wynn's last three releases (...Tick...Tick...Tick, Static Transmission and Here Come the Miracles) have been superb, and required listening and ownership by those of us who care. Dan surprised everyone by emerging last year with a reformed, original-lineup version of Green on Red, who played many beautifully honest and devastating gigs this summer.

Here's what I recently wrote to Dan and Steve. Obviously, this was before I knew that Chris was joining the fold as well.

Dan,

My thoughts of the prospect of you and Wynn writing new material together trump any narcissistic feelings that I may have over me not being a part of it.

I know that every note that I improvise, every lyric or chord change that I write, is strongly influenced by every band or musician with whom I've ever played music. It's inescapable. That extends to the dodgy bands that I've slaved alongside here in Indiana just to keep my stage chops sharp, and into the truly great bands I've lucked into. Danny & Dusty was one of those truly great bands, one of those rare far-greater-than-the-sum partnerships. Best of all, the material was strong enough to fuel the band into giving beyond their best, and inspire on a lasting level. I know that the lasting effect for me being a part of Danny & Dusty will affect me in a very tangibly positive way for the rest of my life.

Am I disappointed? Hell, yeah! But getting guys spread around three continents to back two guys whose potentially fragile reunion could explode at any time under the weight of their very own idiosyncronicities could indeed be ruled a form of insanity. Case closed.

I understand totally why you guys are doing what you're doing in converting to Danny & Dustyball. The show must go on. But, in a non-linear way, Chris, Dennis, Sid and myself will always be a part of Danny & Dusty through how it enriched all of us, even those that cannot remember as well as I do. Again, it's inescapable.

Thus, the brotherhood is not broken. It's expanding.

Tom Stevens

Tower Records going out of business

I started writing this as soon as I heard that Tower was going out of business for good, forever. I was an employee of Tower Records on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood for four years, from 1979 until 1983. I wrote this to celebrate what was.

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Wow, was I green.

It was April 1979. Magi, the band I was in at the time, got fed up with the Midwest and decided to move to Hollywood to Make It Big. We found a condo on Silver Lake Blvd., across from what is now Spaceland.

Never being independently wealthy, my arrival in Hollywood meant that I could only watch in horror as all of my savings were flying out of my wallet, with no source of replenishment in site. Hollywood has ingenious ways of separating people from their money. Time to get a job.

Since a great record store has always been heaven on earth to me, I applied to them all over Hollywood: Wherehouse, Licorice Pizza, Music Plus, Aron's, Rene's All Ears, Peaches, Tower, and probably more.

The first serious interview I had was with Wherehouse. The guy enthusiastically suggeted moving me directly into an assistant manager position. I was honored, until hearing that they say that to all of their prospective employees. They never called me back.

Lack of food money became a concern. The band was no help, and it was already showing signs that the end was near.

I found myself returning to Tower Records on the Sunset Strip via the RTD bus, to just hang and soak in the amazing collection of music and the Sunset Strip vibe. An employee there told me that they were about to do an inventory, and they always needed extra people for that. Sure enough, I soon landed a two-day inventory job with Tower.

Almost immediately after the inventory, I was hired full-time by Bob Delanoy. My hiring was probably due to my little notes on the inventory sheet - for example, under the record bins I found and noted several carrying cases for 45s with psychedelic designs. "You're hired," enthused Bob, "we can always use someone sharp like you." Wow, it was that easy? So began the next four years of my daily existence.

During that inventory, I met a devastatingly attractive young woman in the back parking lot of Tower while pizza was being served for lunch. She smiled and it was obvious. Her name was Elaine. It was a slow build, but I've now been married to her for nearly 23 years.

I can say that the rumors and stories you're heard about Tower Records on the Sunset Strip are all true, at least when I was there. There were indeed celebrities there: truly great stars, stars as normal people, stars as derelicts, along with everyone else, all the time. My mother would always ask what stars had visited lately, and I could never remember half of them. There were those who embraced modern times and those that seemed perfectly preserved from another era. All were welcome.

There was always a buzz of excitement, creativity, struggle and success bouncing off every wall, customer and employee. Industry and customers alike looked after us. Record companies would send graphic artists, who would paint the latest album covers on the large boards that draped the outside of the building. Clerks were sent by the industry to inventory their own stock. Tower's fly-off-the-shelf factor was famous, so there was big return in making sure that one's product was well-stocked at all times. Those labels reps would also give us promos of any new LP we asked them for, along with comp and drink tickets to shows at the nearby Whiskey or Roxy, and larger venues like the L.A. Forum.

My fellow employees were a motley collection of unique characters, often refined with Hollywood precision to make their familiar-to-me Midwestern equivalents seem still-in-development. Some would stay at Tower for years, some would disappear without a trace weeks later. Some were losers, some were destined for far better. The amazing networking potential was fed by the diversity of co-workers and clientele. At any moment one's life could change drastically if one could just see the door opening for that split-second.

Tower Sunset employees came from all over the world, often going on to musical, acting, film, writing careers, or just going back home. There'd be the world-wise-but-damaged California-bred perennials, East Coast transplants, Vietnam vets, oil-rich kid good guy Kaz from Iran, and naive people from who-knows-where, all successfully escaping their nowheresville hometowns, if only for a while. Just like me.

The diverse music played constantly, and it was all chosen by the employees. Everyone got their pick of one side of an LP, pulled off the shelves. We wrote our names on the shrink wrap, and placed the LP under the to-be-played stack next to the turntable behind the register. Joy Division followed by Tito Puente followed by the Sweeney Todd soundtrack followed by the latest disco mix followed by Miles Davis follwed by The Kinks. Each selection was chosen by the employee, either to hear and share music they loved, or to be used as a weapon to piss off those too narrow to appreciate the full sweep of the collection of music we sold and soaked in daily.

It's a wonder I made any money there at all. Freebies aside, we always swooped down upon new arrivals of independent and import 45s and LPs, devouring them. Great bands that I'd only read about in mags like Creem and Who Put the Bomp were in stock en masse, begging me to take them home. A little short on cash? No problem! Just sign that little charge slip and a Tower employee's records, tapes, magazines, and maybe even a salary advance for lunch money would come out of the next check. Did your piece of crap car break down again? See Bob for a small loan! Must've been an accounting nightmare, but it worked for us.

The phone rang constantly. Tower Sunset employees were regarded as musical experts, so we were often called to settle arguments and even bets. Once when I explained that it was Them featuring Van Morrison and NOT The Shadows of Knight that recorded the original version of Gloria, the caller groaned and a whoop of triumph came from the background. No telling how much money traded hands as a result.

There were in-store appearances and parking lot concerts. One of my first was The Pretenders, looking tired and edgy, signing their brand new first LP while guzzling Heinekins at ten in the morning. One could always tell what Elvis Costello's next LP would be like by the type of records he bought before. Robert Fripp sitting with his guitar performing Frippertronics, so close to me that I could kick him. While I was working the cash register one morning, there was a grumbling in line that Richard Dreyfuss, also in line with purchases, had refused to sign an autograph for a customer. I rang his purchases up, he signed his credit card slip and handed it to me. I waved that slip over my head to the people in line, declaring, "I've got it!" to applause. A diminutive Bruce Springsteen was spotted hiding in the tape department, but he still signed my copy of Born to Run with gratitude. James Brown signing customers' aging King label 45s during an in-store, always with a gracious smile. Robin Williams, worse for wear but still razor-sharp that late Sunday, giving me a hiliarious, obviously improvised routine at the info booth. Brian Wilson's, er, morning episode, with 45s having to be removed from the ceiling afterward, all with a white-coated Dr. Landy standing guard at the endcap. Why did Rick James always want to use our bathroom? Rodney Dangerfield doing an in-store, then walking to the Tower back room, firing one up and passing it around. Helping a cool and cordial Tom Waits find the first Hollywood Fats LP, misfiled in the oldies section. Father Guido Sarduci signing Devo records. An alluring Lauren Hutton bumming cigarettes off me. Rickie Lee Jones and I just hanging out early on a Saturday morning, shooting the breeze like old high school buds. David Lee Roth wishing me a Merry Christmas. Slowly I adjusted and the unexpected became routine, but never, never dull.

Larry from Magi remained in Hollywood, eventually running Music Plus on Vine Street, across town from Tower. While working the info booth I was thinking about how we hadn't chatted for a while. As if on cue, up comes a harmless but very obnoxious customer, who started asking for an album in an accent that I could not decipher. I stopped his rant and calmly wrote down Larry's name and the Music Plus address, assuring the looney that Larry could help him. Half an hour later, Larry was on the phone, livid. This began our series of "good will customer exchanges." I think the topper was when he sent Wild Man Fischer looking for me.

Remember that TV commercial about ten years ago with Daffy Duck being turned down for a purchase because he didn't have ID?

That really happened at Tower Sunset in the late 70s. To one of The Beatles.

Stars and record company folks would often bring purchases to the info booth to use a company charge. Store policy had recently changed, and anyone requesting a company charge had to show ID first.

One day, up to the info booth comes Ringo Starr, a stack of records in hand, to charge them to the Capitol Records account.

"Hi, Ringo. Can I see some ID?"

Silence. If this was a joke, Ringo was not at all amused. "You're kidding?"

"No, Ringo, I have to see some ID."

The sound of commotion filled the store. I do not know exactly what Ringo said, but the words were not pretty. He left the store, vowing, "I'll never come back here!" He never did. Said employee was reamed sideways by Delanoy, and was gone not long after.

A few years later, Harry Nilsson, a frequent flyer at Tower, bought a bunch of LPs for Ringo and wanted them delivered. My friend Regina and I gladly volunteered, and made the drive to the Beverly Hills Hotel, where Ringo lived at the time. Regina and I were major Beatles fans, so we could barely contain our excitement on the way over.

But the hotel desk clerk would not let us see Ringo, only allowing us to leave the records for him at the desk. This was early 1981, paranoia was running high among a lot of celebrities after John Lennon's killing, and who could blame Ringo? We left the records with the desk clerk and went back to Tower.

I never did get to meet Ringo, or any Beatle for that matter.

Meanwhile, full-tilt life went on at Tower. For sanity's sake, I'd have to detach myself from the swirling, intoxicating chaos every once in a while, just to observe rather than being caught up in the movement of the herds of people from everywhere passing through the Tower doors with dizzying relentlessness. They'd line up outside for our opening early in the morning, and we'd be throwing them out of the doors after midnight. Stars mingled with street people, Broadway lovers lined up with punks. To see it through the eyes of a cashier, Tower and the music business brought everyone together, and was an unstoppable money machine. There was no end in sight, or so it seemed at the time.

Then trouble started in 1983. Business suits from the outside somehow came into control of Tower and started making jarring changes. The first thing they did was to freeze our salaries. More changes loomed, and none for the better. It was a clampdown. What were they thinking? These guys were proudly out of touch with what made Tower great. Knowing how quickly things can fall apart, I immediately started searching for a new job, as others did at the same time. I soon found one at an import LP distributor in Santa Monica. That business got red hot when we started selling imported compact discs. The hype for CDs was devastating in early 1983. None were being made in the U.S., but compact disc players were arriving with much fanfare at U.S. hi-fi dealers. Those dealers were starving for compact discs of any type. Having shelves of CDs to sell and a major untapped market at the waiting, I bought stacks of metro yellow pages, made cold calls and got orders for thousands of compact discs within days. Of course, that boomtime had a built-in poison pill as labels soon cracked down on such imports. I was safely in The Long Ryders by the time that business died, and you may well know the rest of my story with The Long Ryders.

Why is Tower no more? I've heard the long debate. The emergence of the compact disc and forced demise of the LP from music retail was the most obvious "beginning of the end" marker. Strange coincidence that the suits at Tower had come into the picture just months before. Compact discs were expensive from the start, and promises of cheaper CDs in the future were never fulfilled. The labels kept quietly increasing the wholesale price of a compact disc to stores, forcing retail to take the bullet. Also, a CD will never have the soul of a record album. Relative to an LP, everything on CD is miniaturized and squeaky-sounding. Forcing customers to re-buy their music in an inferior package for twice the price resulted in old-time customers not going along for the ride. Many loyal customers never returned to their former buying habits, including me.

Slowly but inevitably, karma happened. The next generation of music lovers emerged. Those music lovers never knew the joys of buying cheap LPs by the dozen. As prices went up on music CDs, prices went down on CD burners and blanks. This little thing called high-speed Internet allowed music downloads to flourish. Internet music downloading was going to happen with or without the record labels, and the labels showed no leadership in propelling this emerging music delivery system. As a result of that lack of leadership, it was left to the public to perfect the system, and perfect it they did, throwing music downloads into a weird de facto public domain state. Instead of embracing music downloads, the industry response was raising compact disc prices yet again, whining to legislators, signing even fewer new artists and offering us even less in terms of excitement, innovation or diversity in new music. Artists found it harder to survive on their label deals and were often forced into bankruptcy. Then the record industry started suing their own customers via their pitbull, the RIAA. Nice PR move. The implosion of the music business has been the saddest, slowest suicide that I have ever witnessed in my years on the planet. And the downward spiral is still in full horrifying slo-mo descent.

There are glimmers of hope today for music fans. MySpace is one, despite of all its flaws. You can hear new music from brilliant artists like The Last, who have not yet been able to secure a traditional record deal, but three of their new tracks are here. Steve Wynn has released three killer albums in a row, and you can hear songs from them here. How else would I hear Jenny & The Belmont Boys? The list goes on...

As for the future of music and music distribution, I truly believe that there are huge things on the horizon that haven't emerged yet. iTunes is a start, but that's not it, mainly because DRM is yet another way to make war on paying customers and restrct the free use of paid-for music. Despite the hostile tactics from the old guard, there will always be ways to get our favorite tunes and support artists. All ways are welcome, but any music distribution system that expects to survive must exist to the benefit of artists, industry and customers alike. When all three aren't synchronized, we lose wonderful institutions like Tower Records as a result.

There are so many lessons to be learned with Tower's demise, but I'm done philosophizing. Mostly, I'm more than a bit sad right now, and the full impact hasn't hit me yet. I do know that my world without Tower, particularly Tower Sunset, will be a lesser one.

Home, What Was, and the Brave New World

 

"The CD as it is right now is dead" EMI Music Chairman and Chief Executive Alain Levy, to an audience at the London Business School in October.

Home, my new release, is now available as of November 6 on iTunes.

But, there's more to the story...

If you live long enough and are as obsessed with music as I have been throughout my life, you will see formats change again and again.

I learned to read while playing 45s on my little red record player and staring at those labels, probably trying to put the words together with the songs I heard.

I started going to nursery school when I was four, in 1961. I found the games played by my peers boring and unnecessarily emotionally involving, so I avoided them like an incurable disease. Instead, as my teachers complained in my permanent record, I tended to go off by myself, picking out tunes on their piano or playing records. "He needs to work on his social skills," they insisted.

My favorite record at that school was a Bozo the Clown album. It was a multiple set of 78rpm records in a fold-out cover, brightly illustrated, like a photo album, hence the name album. All was well in my 78-spinning young world until one day I dropped and broke one of the 78s. I cried and was guilt-ridden, and later talked my Dad into checking into a replacement for Bozo at Jack's Record Shop in downtown Elkhart, which was patterned after Wallach's Music City in Hollywood, with listening booths and everything at list price.

My Father returned with the news: they didn't make 78s anymore, only LPs and 45s. I never owned a 78, so it made sense.

So was the first change noted in my young mind: 78s were dead, replaced by the 45 and the LP.

Sometime in the late 60s, cassettes emerged, and I got a Norelco cassette player for Christmas. It was fun and portable, but nowhere near as nice and hi-fi as LPs or even 45s. Eight-track cartridges were also popular, and I actually bought a home 8-track player which I sold later. I did love sticking my head between the speakers and turning up the volume, and this was the first really identifiable stereo music player I'd ever possessed.

There were also 4-track cartridges, similar to 8-track cartridges, but they died a fairly quick death.

Eight-track cartridges were cool since they were the first portable media to catch on, so you could listen to something other than the radio in your car. Dealers had trade-in programs for eight-tracks. Pirate eight-tracks meant that you could often find well-compiled tapes full of the hits of the day, before big copyright changes came in 1972. But they were fragile, and their design flaw of unspooling the tape from the center meant that the lifespan of an eight-track cartridge was short. They also didn't sound as good as LPs.

For those of you who read my Tower blogs, you'll know I got a job there in 1979, and there were still eight-track cartridges on the shelves, but not for long. Only the cassette survived in the realm of tapes as the 70s drew to a close. Vinyl still thrived, until the mid-80s, when compact discs emerged. Suddenly, vinyl was disappearing as compact discs took over the shops. What the hell was going on?

Overnight, prices for recorded music doubled. CDs had a heyday when labels began to reissue long-out-of-print albums, and add bonus tracks to CDs. Still, something was wrong, consumers knew it, and slowly people stopped buying CDs.

So, here we are. My daughter and her friends think that iTunes is totally legit, in fact, preferred. Why buy a CD for nearly $20 when you can download it to your iPod for $9.99?

As you know if you were listening to Ghost Train, Flying out of London and Belladonna on MySpace, I have a new release that kept nagging at me: "When am I coming out Dad? Don't people like me as they did my older brothers and sisters?". To stop that nagging, I've made my usual rounds to CD labels old and new, and I heard:

1) CDs are really hard to sell nowadays.

2) I'm going through a divorce, and the label had to go as part of the settlement.

3) We folded about a year ago, despite our best efforts. It just wasn't profitable.

4) I can't see this type of music on my label. (Label goes bankrupt weeks later)

5) You want an advance??? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

6) Mastering? Sure, I've got software that came free in a box of Wheaties.

7) (the sound of crickets)

Meanwhile, thanks to my old friend Gary Stewart, once bigwig at Rhino and current Chief Music Officer (CMO) at iTunes, I inked a swell deal with AWAL UK. Home, my new release, will be available November 6 via iTunes. I'll be writing more in the coming days about this release, but for now, keep watching, because it's coming soon.

Already I've fielded weird looks. Among those that remember the bygone eras above, iTunes is simply not a substitute for a real LP/CD/8-track that you can hold in your hands, study the liners and gape at the pictures. It's a brave new world.

The Garfield Ghost

Around 1977, I lived briefly with a young woman best described as a rebounder. My psycho high school sweetie had ungraciously smashed my heart like a bottle of cheap beer against a wall. To try to heal (foolish me) I took up for a while with another on the rebound. We had a old house near the one I grew up in, on Benham and Garfield in South Central Elkhart. It was a beautiful two-story duplex, with lots of natural woodworking, a mail slot that led to a glass, metal and mahogany mailbox inside the house, wooden swinging doors to the kitchen, and creaky steps that led to the upstairs bedrooms.

One night we were slightly, er, imbibed and laughing, when suddenly we felt a breeze and noticed the kitchen doors swinging. We were alone and the house was shut tight. My girlfriend, out of the blue and in her infinite (lack of) wisdom, made a derogatory crack about a damned ghost in the house. As if on cue, a coin that had rested on the top of the TV came spinning violently down onto the floor in front of us.

Uh-oh.

For the next few months, we'd wake to unexpected sounds, mostly of the kitchen doors swinging or the steps creaking. Things placed on tables at night would be found on the floor in the morning. If at night I had heard the sound of an actual burglar stealing all of our belongings, I would've just chalked it up to yet another ghosting episode and went back to sleep.

My relationship with the rebounder just wasn't working out at all. She wanted marriage and children pretty much immediately, while I was looking to exit the sheer misery of punching a factory clock for a living. Deep scars within me began to form from her games and deception that my wife Elaine is still helping to fully heal, bless her.

Then opportunity knocked. Girlfriend had located her long-lost father in Florida, visited him there and loved everything about her trip. I seized the opportunity and began coaxing her to move there. She did so not long after, and got married six weeks later, arranged by her father. Suddenly I was free, coincidentally started doing much more life-affirming band roadwork, and suffered few pains of withdrawal.

I returned from taking her to the airport for the last time to what was now my own home. On the way I stopped at the store to change the brand of cigarettes I smoked. As I laid alone in bed that night, *creak* *creak* went the stairs. By now, this was far from being a scary experience for me. Instead, it bordered on obnoxious. Still, if this was a genuine ghost, and I could think of no other logical explanation, I took pity. They went to church faithfully in their living state, my young mind pondered freely, believing all the while in the promise of Heaven with its wings and harps. Instead they found themselves in a dull purgatory of walking this old house, and out of spite or boredom doing their best to terrorize its inhabitants du jour. Too sad. So, I got up out of bed only partially clothed, came down the stairs, and began to speak to the ghost, explaining:

1) My girlfriend has moved out permanently and I'm the only one here now.
2) I apologize for any disrespect shown to you.
3) Your noises are unnecessary, they don't frighten me and must require some futile effort on your part.
4) We're both stuck here in this house for now, I'm only renting it, will be on the road with my band and thus gone a lot, and probably won't even live here for long.
5) I can't stop you from cavorting around the house, but I really wish that you'd come to rest and find some peace for both of us.

I never heard the ghost again after that, not even when I had overnight guests. This was the house I stayed in during the Blizzard of 1978. I was returning from a 6-night gig in Rockford, IL, where every female I met there proudly claimed that they "knew" Rick Nielsen, with the same star-struck tone as those women I met during the early Long Ryders U.S. tours that proudly proclaimed that they "knew" Paul Westerberg. I drove a woman's Vega all the way from Rockford to Elkhart, and the normal four hour drive took more like nine to ten hours. They'd just opened I-80/90 and there were still ice craters all over the road. I got back and marveled how the old house felt just like home. It was warm and loving with my writings, records and guitars. After my travel companion Vega-ed slowly back to Rockford, I worked on a new song that I was writing on a Sony 2-track reel-to-reel tape recorder that I owned since I was a kid. I then paused to look out the window at the 12-foot drifts still covering most of the neighborhood, and pondered the ghost once more. Did it leave the house, venturing into the unknown, or was it merely quietly observing my lifestyle without a sound? I'll never know, but one thing struck me as ironic.

I, too, was looking for a way out.