Ask Greil: April 17, 2023

Dear Mr. Marcus,
Your mentions of Steve Erickson in the Days Between Stations column "The summer-of-love generation" [link] reminded me of a long-held connection I have made between you and Mr. Erickson. "Treasure Island", your epilogue to Stranded is a tour-de-force of short form/capsule record reviewing. I think Mr. Erickson's "LA's Top 100" (included in Da Capo Best Music Writing 2002), belongs in that pantheon. (No ranking!) The writing is excellent, the reviews compelling, and the selections are eclectic in the best way. You may have done it already but I would be most interested to know how you feel about the article in general, and with any specific references and comments that you might care to share. (Oh, and thanks for all your great writing that I have been privileged to read since 1969.) Best wishes —MICHAEL BIGGS

Steve Erickson’s “LA’s Top 100” was a revelation to me in a lot of ways. First, simply finding and presenting all the songs and people on the list—Who knew? Them? Him? Her? Such a true repopulating of the city itself. Whether taking those who merely recorded there, who were born in LA, grew up there, arrived to make it and did, he remapped the city as if the music version had roots as deep as Hollywood, back into Kenneth Anger’s Babylon.

And then there is the writing: lyrical, elliptical, direct, moral, forgiving, attuned to guilt, both the musician’s and the listeners. Very few novelists can write convincingly about music, how it enters people’s lives, how it makes demands on people—get it on the page, so that while you’re reading you’re also listening. Pynchon can’t (except for the early short story “Entropy”), or Rick Moody, Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Franzen, T.C. Boyle. Not even Hari Kunzru, Richard Powers, Denis Johnson (though he can get the ambiance), and Hanif Kureishi. Jayne Anne Philips, Peter Handke, Roddy Doyle, sometimes. Walter Mosley only in RL’s Dream, and in that book only in the negative, with his summoning of the music the old blues guitarist has heard but cannot make. The only novelists I know for whom pop music is a language as accessible to them as English—a double first language—are Jonathan Lethem (especially in You Don’t Love Me Yet), Mary Gaitskill (anywhere, most naturally in Veronica), and Steve Erickson. And for him as myth, fable, the return of the repressed, generational joke, and, you know, that supposedly dead language, and for most it is, rock criticism. As a novelist Steve Erickson is Warren Zevon, as Warren Zevon as a rock critic was Steve Erickson.

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I just read for the first time The Plot Against America which was funny and terrifying. One element I found less than plausible in Roth's all-too-plausible alternate history, though, was the idea that Canada, with its infamous "none is too many" policy toward European Jewish refugees would so readily grant asylum to American Jews fleeing the Lindbergh regime. A possible clue near the end of the book: Bess and Philip look at "a foldout map of the forty-eight states and the ten Canadian provinces".  In 1942, of course, Canada had only nine provinces. 

What, do you think, was Roth's tenth province and how did that province entering Confederation change Canada's anti-Semetic policies (even while, per Roth, Mackenzie King, whose government entrenched those policies, remained prime minister)? —STEVE O’NEILL

I wouldn’t read much if anything into the Canadian question in The Plot Against America, though I wish PR were around so we could ask him. There is some sloppiness in the book, especially at the end , when FDR leads the cavalry over the hill and saves the country and history goes into a reset so complete that Robert Kennedy is still assassinated in the Ambassador Hotel in 1968—I mean, you don’t have to believe in the Butterfly Effect to know that Lindbergh as president would have switched the tracks of history enough to have that come out differently. It could be be Roth was planting an alternate-historical seed with a tenth province; he could also just not have known the when and the where.

Be that as it may, the notion of Walter Winchell, who in real life was not assassinated but became an inveterate McCarthyite, as the only person willing to stand against a Nazi president will echo for a long time. It’s as daring as John Irving in The World According to Garp making the transsexual Roberta Muldoon the former Robert Muldoon, “vicious tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles.”

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I recently read the book Levon's Man by Joe Forno, Jr., who managed The Band during their mid-‘80s/early-‘90s incarnation. That time, of course, covers the tragic suicide of Richard Manuel and the book provides some insight as to Manuel's behavior and life in the days and hours preceding his death in March 1986. Forno was close to Levon Helm and is not always objective in his remembrances of a talented, but stubborn individual who remained bitter toward Robbie Robertson to the end of his life. It came as an enormous surprise, more like shock to me, that in early 1994, Robbie had agreed in principle to re-join the Garth/Rick/Levon version of The Band for 20 concerts booked at a relatively modest, even for the time, $3 million payday with an open mind to continuing to work with his old bandmates after years of estrangement. This entry in the book is brief and does not explain how this fell through, but leaves the reader to assume that Levon did not want to work with Robbie again, not even appearing at The Band's induction ceremony into the Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame that year. It's hard to imagine that reunion working and how would Robbie have walked back all he said from The Last Waltz on about quitting the road, etc. I know he wanted The Band to continue to record new music and his 1991 Storyville album would have worked great as a Band record. But with Levon's main complaint being the alleged inequity in songwriting royalties and Robbie being the main/only songwriter, I don't see how they could have made peace and worked together again. Are we better off not knowing how a full Band reunion, sadly without Richard, might have worked in the ‘90s? —JAMES STACHO

I found the book more than interesting and, day to day, extremely convincing.  I mentioned the reunion story to Robbie Robertson, who dismissed it as a fantasy by "Levon's drug dealer." That let the air out of the book for me, and when I looked at it again, it read differently—a less honest version of John Niven's novel Music from Big Pink in the 33 1/3 series—where the narrator is the then-unnamed Band's drug dealer in Woodstock in 1967 and '68; well, given libel laws, for Rick Danko and Richard Manuel, who were already dead when it came out and couldn't sue. The book is tremendously well done and unpleasantly believable; what doesn't make sense is that people so puerile could produce anything like Music from Big Pink.

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What are your views on Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and how would you tie his re-recording of The Dark Side Of The Moon into them? —BEN MERLISS

I liked “See Emily Play,” which he had nothing to do with, and “Wish You Were Here,” which he did. Dark Side of the Moon was always on the dark side of the moon for me. I don’t like anti-Semites. As they said in The Sopranos, he’s dead to me, but even when he wasn’t he was barely there.

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Does the tune of the Police’s “Every Breath You Take” remind you of Bobby Vee’s “More Than I Can Say”? And have you heard the Di Maggio Brothers cover of the Police song? Their lead guitar player has a new take on the rockabilly sound, and I’m enjoying their Elvis covers. —ROBERT MITCHELL

Well!  I didn't know the Bobby Vee song (unlike Simon Frith I was not a card carrying member of his fan club). You couldn't be more right—and I'll bet Gordon Sumner had his card too. What a lovely convergence. I hope Bob was able to take it in. I didn't know the Di Maggio Brothers either (though as a San Francisco-born person I remember the real DiMaggio Brothers, i.e., Joe, Dom, and Vince). "Walk of Life" is a great choice—but they play everything too fast.

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I'm not sure if you're still listening to Elvis Costello's Hey Clockface, but since you missed out on his recent touring, I thought I'd pass this along [“Hetty O’Hara Confidential”]. I think the song works a lot better with the Imposters and Charlie Sexton.

My condolences regarding your daughter. By all accounts, she grew up to be a wonderful human being and I hope you can take solace in knowing that. —JACOB R

The last time I saw Elvis Costello the sound was such pure mud that everything sounded bad, and I got the feeling it sounded the same to EC and the band and so they just gave up. This is the Elvis Costello I love—that clean beat, the clear syncopation, the talking over the song with complete command and a great sense of fun in saying whatever seems right in the moment. Thanks so much for this breath of fresh air. I'm looking forward to his tour with Nick Lowe.

When our older daughter was maybe six, seven she knew all of EC’s songs. When she was a teenager during EC’s Big Wheel tour she was pulled out of the audience to go-go to the big spin. For her funeral soundtrack? “Accidents Will Happen.”

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What is your view on Bill Wyman's role in the Rolling Stones and his decision to ultimately leave the band? —BEN MERLISS

He had a great look. I liked his Edwardian clothes and the way he held the neck of his bass straight up. But given that he married his former mother in law’s daughter, or whatever it was, he got out at the right time. And the band saved money by not replacing him.

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Hi Greil. Hope you’re feeling better. To paraphrase Peter Wolf, my brain is “the College of Musical Knowledge”—thinking about Del Shannon led me to thinking about Eddie Cochran, which led me to thinking about Wim Wenders’ homage to American road movies, Kings of the Road, and the scene where one character plays a 45 on a portable player. The song, “Just Like Eddie” was by Heinz, the German Heinz Burt who was the bass player with the Tornadoes, ("Telstar") until he went solo in 1963. The producer Joe Meek launched him as "the biggest name in the Pop world," but this was his only UK Top 20 hit and he failed to break through in the US. In 1967 Meek killed himself with Heinz's shotgun, simultaneously finishing both careers. The other great music on the Kings soundtrack is by Improved Sound Limited, a German progressive band formed in 1961 and still going strong. Their instrumental sounds like Ry Cooder playing over The Byrds’ mournful version of “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue,” a tribute to American music by a band that recorded a song called “Doctor Bob Dylan.” To paraphrase Neil Young on Year of the Horse, it really “is all one song.” Enjoy and feel better. Cheers. —JEFF MAKOS

The name Heinz instantly brings his white-haired head out of my memory, but no sound, maybe because as a singer he was really bland: unhappily, not just like Eddie. But no one else was just like Eddie either, especially Sid Vicious, Robert Gordon, Marshall Crenshaw, and so many more who tried.

As for Joe Meek, one of the most complex and mad characters to ever pass through the rock ‘n’ roll mirror.

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Greil: Some years ago, you wrote Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan At The Crossroads where you listened to every single recording session as Bob tried to capture "Like A Rolling Stone." What was amazing to me—and I gather to you—was that they only got the complete song once; Take Four, Day Two. After careful listening to the many and varied outtakes on Fragments, is it your impression that the 2022 remix (which screws up "Cold Irons Bound" if you ask me) was ordered by Bob, even after all the acclaim, winning the Grammy, etc.? Did the remix work for you? Thanks! —JOHN NOGOWSKI

I wrote about this in a Substack Real Life Rock Top 10 devoted to the Fragments set.  But given what's there it only scratched the surface and what I did address in some detail ("Red River Shore") I don't think I really got—a lot more listening and writing to do.

There's a great different between listening to the entire session or sessions devoted to a song, as with "Like a Rolling Stone," and one or two outakes or alternate versions out of a total of who knows how many botches, finished or even superior takes, false starts, performances with great heart and no structure and vice versa. The performances on—I think "in" says it better—Fragments where a song's structure and attack remains the same as released versions of songs and the words are completely different are both wonderful and bizarre: that is, they work just as well. The words are different, but they are different ways of saying the same thing, so the feeling they bring out in the singer and the musicians is not different. Dylan has said "Like a Rolling Stone" was originally "twenty pages of vomit" (well, he said later, maybe ten) but he boiled it down and that's what he took into the studio, four verses, not fourteen. What will we be hearing if some day a tape of his rehearsals with Mike Bloomfield surfaces and all the talismans and symbols and metaphors and portraits we know are completely replaced?

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