The 'Days Between Stations' columns, Interview magazine 1992-2008: Thirty years of raging, rocking, and shocking
October 1999
Strange but true: If you were born in 1930, you would be sixty-nine this year. But if you were born in 1969, you would be thirty!
Born by 1930: Bill Haley (1925), Roy Brown (1925), Chuck Berry (1926), Fats Domino (1928). Not born by 1930: Little Richard (1932), Clyde McPhatter (1932), Pat Boone (1934), Elvis Presley (1935), Jerry Lee Lewis (1935), Ray Manzarek (1939), Bill Wyman (1936), Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople (1939).
30 Something, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, 1991: "When you're younger you can eat what you like, drink what you like, and still climb into your twenty-six-inchwaist trousers and zip them closed," says a voice before the music starts. "Then you reach that age" (ominous synthesizer music comes in) "twenty-four, twenty-five, your muscles give up, wave a little white flag, and without any warning at all you're suddenly a fat bastard." "YOU FAT BASTARD!" chants what sounds like an entire football team. “YOU FAT BASTARD!" Carter USM goes on to explore a dimension of "thirty something" ignored by the 1987-91 TV show of the same name: social reality, as dramatized by desperate and distracted high pomp in sound and references to plagues (alcoholism, war as shopping, staggering home drunk, homelessness, drunks set on fire) you vaguely remember and events so unlikely ("the great cucumber robberies of 1989") you're half convinced you've forgotten them. Voice before music ends: Michael Caine as Alfie, figuring if they don't get you one way, they get you the other.
Still—for all the passion, pathos, fervor, and sardonicism of this portrait of the world as totally fucked, with decency a joke and money the only measure of value, Carter USM doesn't match the pull of thirtysomething the TV show: the warmth and certainty of a tiny, self-enclosed world where the First Amendment allows anyone to complain endlessly about the smallest things without the slightest fear of being accused of selfishness. The show featured the most irritating characters in the history of the medium, yet it was possible to tune in every week with empathy and fascination, wondering if the junior adman could make even more of an ass of himself (yes), if his wife could be more superior (to be sure), if the permanently untenured professor could be more self-ennobling (is the Pope, etc.?), if there would ever be, like, humor (are you kidding?)—hoping deep in one's soul that there wouldn't be, that whining would remain a sign of authenticity, thus allowing viewers to see themselves as heroes. Hey, I never missed it. Where are they now? Ken Olin (Michael Steadman): wasted along with Sheryl Lee on L.A. Doctors. Melanie Mayron (Melissa Steadman): fictional loser become real life director. Peter Horton (Prof. Gary Shepherd): as first TV character to perfect the too-cool-to-shave look of exactly the same amount of stubble every day, went on to successful career as Charlie on Party of Five.
Singer of the '70s: Rod Stewart. For "Every Picture Tells a Story," the loudest, happiest, most unapologetic song of young manhood ever put together with nothing more than acoustic guitar, piano, bass, and drums; he later proved that if disco corrupts, a little disco corrupts absolutely. 1969: Rod the Mod. Released first solo album, covering the Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man," "so people can understand the words." 1999: fifty-four. On 1993's "Unplugged" show on MTV he joked to guitarist Ron Wood that their songs were older than their wives. They were, too.
Band of the '80s: The Mekons, forever wandering in the desert of Thatcherism—boiling life down to Fear and Whiskey, one step away from falling off The Edge of the World, somehow maintaining the faith that they could wait Madame Medusa out. 1999: Over thirty, under fifty. Still working day jobs. Still scheming.
Artist of the '90s: Polly Jean Harvey. Kurt Cobain and Nirvana may have said more with "Smells Like Teen Spirit" than Harvey has in her whole career—the song is so scary, and so exalting, the title itself seems to complete the work—but Harvey's career isn't finished. She pumps the bellows of unpredictability, then rides the wind of her own making. 1999: Under thirty, old enough to be written off in The New York Times.
Linda Tripp, 1969: twenty-nine. Woodstock Festival, 1969: Jimi Hendrix forever alters American iconography with version of "Star-Spangled Banner."
Mick Jagger, 1969: With the Rolling Stones releases Let It Bleed, apparent then and now as the greatest rock 'n' roll album ever made, though with the concept itself now in doubt, the category has thus been revised to "postwar popular music," even if current familiarity with history among those under thirty probably renders the category doubly redundant. (A recent unscientific survey conducted by the San Francisco Examiner regarding teenagers' knowledge of Independence Day suggested that a response indicating that the Revolutionary War was fought before World War II, though not necessarily before the Civil War, must be considered well-informed.) The album leads with "Gimmie Shelter," a prophecy of bad news and bad times so strong that after thirty years of coming true it has its future ahead of it.
Linda Tripp. 1999: Named Man of the Year in Esquire's Dubious Achievements issue.
Woodstock Festival, 1999: Wyclef Jean forever exits American iconography with attempted version of Jimi Hendrix's version of "Star-Spangled Banner."
Mick Jagger, 1999: fifty-six. Admits paternity again. However, unlike Woody Allen or Michael Jackson, has not been accused of attempting to father his own sex partners, "just forgot, you know, you get to my age, you can damn near forget your own name."
Originally published as part of the 30th annuversary edition of Interview Magazine, October 1999
Melanie Mayron was marvelous; I remember her on "Rhoda." This is an interesting article to me because I graduated from a nice co-ed boarding school in 1969 — my class was allowed to wear sweatshirts & T-shirts with our grad year on them and no one else in the school was. Ya know, ’cause it's 69. I am now old but will always rely on rock n roll to keep going (if you don't run you rust). I'm told I look younger than 72 and I tell them it's because of rock n roll. I saw The Beatles in D.C. in 1964. These things stay with you. As for Rod Stewart: he ends a song (I think on Gasoline Alley or Every Picture) with the immortal words "Thank you for your time and your money." I loved that. Your attitude/outlook/involvement in music is a bit more in keeping with mine, as opposed to how many people seem to consider popular music. They can take it or leave it. Impossible. It's everything. Thank you!