Part 11 (2/2)

In 1981, when Ian and a couple of other friends co-founded Anthrax, he envisioned the group as drawing from metal's style but punk's spirit At first not roup were happy to stick with metal's familiar styles and fans But on Sundays, when the band wasn't playing or rehearsing, Ian and Anthrax druendary punk club, CBGBs, andfriends with members of the local hardcore scene For a brief while, they even forarded by roup In ti to Anthrax's shows, and they brought with the and sla of the two audiences ht the metalheads had wretched fashi+on sense and bad politics, and the headbangers didn't dig the punks' violence But by the mid-1980s, the punk scene had lost most of its stylistic inventiveness and so thrash and speed-metal bands simply appropriated punk's rhythmic intensity and its radical zeal as well

These days, Anthrax can pretty much be exactly what it wants to be-a heavy metal band with a punk-inforroup's last four albuly politically savvy and activist-s about the social and emotional conditions of modern-day youth culture that rock & roll has produced in the last decade But soressivism hasn't set ith parts of its audience In 1989, when the azine RIP with their friends in Living Colour, a black ly responses fro of black youth Yusef Hawkins in New York's Bensonhurst area, Ian wrote ”Keep It in the Fas about race hatred that appeared on Persistence of Tie of our audience-you knohite middle-to-lower-class kids-that hates black music and probably hates blacks as well Why they hate blacks, they probably don't know; it's a prejudice that they've never questioned I' a Public Eneer music?' I can't really talk to soht every one of our albu to so to condone their attitude just because they're an Anthrax fan They can like us or not, but I still think they're an asshole”

Ian pauses for a moment and shakes his head ”I wish there were a way to reach those people,” he says after a bit ”Maybe for some of the like ”H8Red' and understand that it's a song about being hated just because of the way you look-whether it's because you have long hair or you're a skinhead or you're black

”I mean, I think for a lot of our fans who are into thisjobs they can't stand, and they aren't sure who to bla drunk all the tis I think e try to say to theh some of the same shi+t, but, you know, you can find a place in your life where you can make it You know, you may hate your parents and hate your job and hate your life, but it's your life, and you just got to fucking do what you got to do to make yourself and your world better' I think if Anthrax has any e, that's it: Make yourself and your world better”

A short while later, Scott Ian and the other er Joe Belladonna, druuitarist Dan Spitz-are onstage in Houston, spreading thatbrilliant and enlivening rock & roll It's debatable, of course, whether the audience co in its music; maybe for many of those here the sheer visceral i thatJoe Belladonna deliver a song like ”Keep It in the Family”-which admonishes the band's fans not to fall into the easy traps of their parents' legacies of racis to the words, as if this were a declaration worth raising a ruckus over

A little later, though, when the band gets around to ”Antisocial,” there's no question that everybody knohat is being talked about On record, the song is a rousing attack on a man who uses law and order and wealth to beat down the people he doesn't understand But in concert, it beco else ”You're anti, you're antisocial, yowls the band, pointing its fingers at the audience, and the audience stands up on its chairs and roars back the sa back at the band Finally the band and the audience are yelling the same refrain to each other at the same moment, over and over, until the voices rise into the thousands In thata ter people as outcasts and they turn that epithet into both aone another that they know exactly how the world views them, and that they are proud to be known by those ter a bond of community that, quite likely, they rarely find outside the society of heavy : ”We are here for each other Whatever the rest of the world ht say about us, we are here for each other”

In the world that heavy ned to live in, that isn't such a bad promise

PART 5

lone voices

randy new over the pass, you can see the whole valley spread below On a clear , when it lies broad and colored under a white sky, with the ine it's the promised land

ROSS MACDONALD

THE WYCHERLY WOMAN

Trouble in Paradise, Randy Newain, is perhaps the eles that popular ards the city's infaloss with humor, affection, fury, and bite-and he affires (and even worthier ends) for a city with an incurable fixation on surface appearances Newes that beneath such surfaces (and perhaps because of the broken confidence and swift hatred that those surfaces can also breed-particularly for those buried under those surfaces) there lurks an inevitable undertow of disillusionment and fear Disillusionment that can turn quick fun into quicker ence become common ways to attain pleasure

Trouble in Paradise is only partly about Los Angeles, but it's those parts that give the record such resonance and depth And by and large, it's the city's sheen and exuberance that co, boastful, ”I Love LA,” New nasty redhead” beside him, and calls out the names of the city's , challenging voice he shouts: ”Century Boulevard!” And a boisterous chorus roars back: ”We love it!” ”Victory Boulevard!” ”We love it!” ”Santa Monica Boulevard!” ”We LOVE it!” ”Sixth Street!” ”WE LOVE IT!”

Soard ”I Love LA” as an ironic pose rather than a heartfelt anthe is that this city is all quick surfaces and i that, but if you think he says it with cynicisain Newman means what he purports here: He does love LA-in no small part because it's the place he calls his home, but also because he's fascinated by its knack for pro veneer as its own distinction Which isn't to say Newman is oblivious to the empty-headedness the city cultivates In ”My Life Is Good,” an obnoxious nouveau riche songwriter declares to his son's schoolteacher that wealth and position guarantee a clai's end, Newe that hts At the same time, Newman isn't so sure that the shallowness LA fosters belies its claim as the last Aood as a land of last hope And when last hopes are gone, what often ees is a place whose people are resentful of its culture and of one another, and who verge on ethical (not to mention aesthetic) desperation The displacement born of this desperation is what has alwaysplace to write about-and an increasingly risky place to live

New position for anyone to stake out in early-1980s pop music Since the pop explosion of the 1960s (when Phil Spector, the Beach Boys, Lou Adler, and the Byrds created versions of LA sound that set new standards in rock fun and studio art), and throughout the 1970s (when such artists as the Eagles and Jackson Browne forced those conceptions of fun to accoeles has stood for acertain romanticized truths The city'saccessibility) to assure its validity

But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, LA becah the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Toto, and other well-bred LA acts continued to comroundbands like X, the Gerive as much definition to the sound and ideals of modern LA as any of the bands that came before them There's a part of me that would like to think Newman's Trouble in Paradise is a record that's sh to contain both versions of LA (Warren Zevon's records, too, h Zevon perhaps too strongly represents personal concerns as an exemplar of cultural style) Certainly at its best, Randy Newman's lyricism is as acerbic as that of, say, X, and obviously a lot wittier and more adept at parody than the tiresohtest of today's punk-derived artists could learn an invaluable lesson from the way Neields point of view, and the way he inhabits and ani The character in ”There's a Party at My House,” inds up what began as an innocent saturnalia with an implied vision of rape (nant erous impulses, but because he speaks to us in a way that can arouse our own desire to join the party As a result, the song isof Four, or for that ynist rock of Fear

Yet what clearly separates Newence or viewpoint as it is his particular allegiance to sound To be sure, Paradise is, in places, an assaultive, even bo rock & roll since ”Gone Dead Train” on 1970's Performance soundtrack But it is also a meticulously crafted, professionally realized work-a work that asserts precision and control as clear-cut aesthetic choices ”I Love LA” may roar and careen like a fine, fast, heady ride down the Ihway, but there isn't a reckless turn or offhand moment on the whole track, or anywhere else on the album

In effect, New of a recasting of his forraced the s, Sail Away, and Good Old Boys, they almost never determined the actual forwriting But on Paradise, the arranges-are often as s as the characters and wordplay that make up their textual detail Thisthat he stands for (and stands up for) that exacting refinement which so many critics identify with the LA sound Newood values, he asserts, are not the guileful intelligence that a songwriter like Elvis Costello employs, or the social-minded bravura of the Clash, but rather the stylish dourness of Don Henley and the fastidious musicianshi+p of Toto To underscore his point, Newnature perfor Henley, Rickie Lee Jones, Christine McVie, and Linda Ronstadt) as a way of reaffir that, at its best, the LA sound was always more the result of shared community than cliquishness

Which allof that sound is much like his backhanded advocacy of LA as a culture of veneer: Either one can accept the city (and its music) for its surfaces, or one can accept it for the variety of truths those surfaces conceal, even nurture

In soreatest literary effect Both the sound and the s contain a vision of fun that does not end in ive in to rote notions of LA as a vast, sprawling network of desperation According to Newman, desperation alone isn't any more notable as a version of truth than fun is In a sense, such recent LA bands as the Go-Go's and X approach a siles Each band represents a contrary truth about this city-quick fun, or desperate action But neither can fully convey the idea that to find the truth of this city, you must first penetrate those poses of fun and trouble and examine the way the search for fun (and the inability to capture it for very long) creates trouble and despair (Neither do X or the Go-Go's reveal enough about how trouble can enrich the idea of fun, or at least make its invention necessary) So what does Randy New down the fabled mean streets that have fed the dark ruerald, Nathanael West, Charles Bukowski, and Joan Didion? He says: ”Roll down the /Put down the top/Crank up the Beach Boys, baby/Don't let the music stop”

Trouble in Paradise so often weaves fun with darkness and gentleness with eable, and then they seem inseparable It tells us that hard truths wouldn't matter hhere the wind can cleanse us of thoughts and the radio can fill the gaps in our feeling the way it fills the shi+ny, dirty sky around us

It's the e've learned to ride out hell, in the City of Angels

al green: sensuality in the service of the lord

When Al Green takes a stage, both miracle and s heartfelt, revealing praises to his idea of God, in a wonder-working voice Mystery, because the man has willfully-pointedly-abdicated the massive pop audience he could so easily command (and still activelytalents to new pinnacles Quite sireatest living soul singer-witnessing him stare down the vista of a self-willed, co at the promise of boundless riches at the end

But whether Green commands a substantial audience is beside the point, at least in his own ust 1983, where he played to a perhaps half-capacity crowd, he dis the crowd, ”Clap your hands and give the praise to God That's a fittingly deferential gesture for a perforh I can hardly picture Bob Dylan or Jerry Lee Lewis offering similar directives), but the piety of it is also beside the point This is a knotty issue, but it's only fair to offer ious perforospel vocalists, but also sufferin' rockers like Van Morrison and Pete Townshend) for ry eccentrics like Bob Dylan and Johnny Rotten: because the conceit of their convictionconception of modern life as a loathsoives order and purpose to the unruly limits of their pain It doesn't matter, in terms of their art, whether their beliefs amount to ”truth” or not; it suffices that theirs is a self-sustaining vision that inforeneration

In the same respect, the fact that Al Green promotes God as the raison d'etre of his art doesn't particularly secure or sanctify Green's music It's fine, I suppose, to limit music's purpose to a celebration of God, butfor salvation-which is whatnotion Or at least it's self-centered reat-hearted or altruistic: The supplicant is concerned with proclai himself as a model for deliverance by virtue of personal faith and received grace, which is a lot like the sexual boasting Green used to sing about, but not at all like true outgoing, reciprocal rority in Albert Caious insurrectionists (or resisters) who reject the certainty of salvation for thealitarian conditions Of course, the day I hear a pop (or gospel) song about that view, I'll figure real miracles are afoot It's just that a hardbitten look at real life see than a blithe contemplation of a distant afterlife; real life is where spiritual hope is tested and tempered-and remeasured

In any event, Al Green clearly feels that today's pop world is anatheiven his talents, I wouldn't slight his current repertoire ”The Lord taught ,” Green explained to his audience at the Greek, ”but I rewarded hiether' ” The audience roared hungrily at the s ”And people ask”Call Me” or ”For the Good Tiht h 'How Can You Mend a Broken Heart' and 'I'ood times, but I want you to know I found the Rock, and with that, GreenGrace,” and it seeh all his previous greatness, because his new greatness is so sweetly convincing

Ah, but what greatness it once was Green, who possesses as well-mannered a drawl as R & B has ever yielded, was prettyan even h-art hits than Stevie Wonder or Elton John Between 1971 and 1976, he slotted thirteen Top 40 singles, including the aforeether,” ”Call Me (Come Back Home),” and ”I'm Still in Love with You,” as well as ”Sha-La-La (Makes Me Happy),” and ”L-O-V-E (Love)” Produced by Willie Mitchell for Memphis' Hi Records, Green's records were exeeile crooning They were records that also bespoke unfathoe as a ladies'live act in which his lithe yet unrestrained presence gave new depth to sexual euphoria

Apparently, the ie also carried over to his personal life In 1974, a woman who loved Green and had tried to fasten hireild at his rejection E grits before killing herself Green's career fell into quick disarray, and he never recorded another major hit after the incident When he recouped in 1977, producing himself for the first ties, but also reanimated by a new spiritual awareness ”It's you that I want but it's His, ”Belle” (from The Belle Albu to shut out the hope of pop heroisood Whatever conflict remained, Green resolved it fairly quickly: All of his albuher Plane, The Lord Will Make a Way, Precious Lord, and I'll Rise Again-have been gospel affairs, so, so

Perhaps gospel is Green's way ofup for the implicit excesses of his previous sex style, but that sexiness-that revelry in loss of inhibition, that surrender to sensual movement-is still very much a part of Green's live act At the end of a lovely and rousing version of ”People Get Ready,” he tossed off his beige, double-breasted jacket and prowled the stage like a fierce, balletic wolf, as ravenous and alluring as his for, too: When, early in the show, he stripped off his black bow-tie, one wo ”Hallelujah” only moments earlier, suddenly shrieked, ”Take it all off, Al! Revelations indeed

But Green didn't see one point when he attempted to venture into the audience and was rushed by woed, ”Shake ious fervor is asfor past fears as it is a way of expressing necessary worshi+p, and in those moments, Green looked like a haunted, fearful man

But the fear and the correlated joy he has found in his supplication has reater artist That last trait is what is central here, for what is truly transcendent about Green isn't the spirituality of his songs so ion, for Green is still theliterally Indeed, he's as riveting a live vocalist as Frank Sinatra or Dylan His reading of Curtis Mayfield's ”People Get Ready” was the ideal exa's i his pinched, high breathiness with the saance

It was a lot like hearing religion, and also a lot like hearing sex, but nothing like the playful ht h the fire of the latter, and the fiery balht or trendily shocking in juxtaposing the two But I doubt that I'll hear anythingthan that vocal on ”People Get Ready”-a physical expression of spiritual longing that ood all over, and also made me feel sort of transported I could listen to Al Green froment Day and it would seeh for this hell on earth

jerry lee lewis: the killer

Look, we've only got one life to live We don't have the promise of the next breath I knohat I am I'm a rompin', stompin', piano-playin' sonofabitch A ood person Never hurt nobody unless they got in otta lay it open sometimes

JERRY LEE LEWIS, 1977

Jerry Lee Lewis-the Louisiana-born, wild-haired piano player-had as much assaultive impact on rock & roll culture as any artist prior to the sex Pistols: He lived out rock & roll's sexual and impulsive audacity with such hauteur and flamboyance as to be deemed a perilous talent in the late-1950s For that distinction-as well as for the startling depth and display of his talent-there are ard Lewis as the exemplary performer of his era: more unrepressed than Elvis Presley, more forcible than Chuck Berry, more insolent than Little Richard

Of course, it is not only for his er that Lewis seemed preeminent, but also for the manner in which he has consistently embodied-that is, lived out-the promise of rock & roll's threat Rock & roll ismusic, he has said many times, and to perform that music, Lewis has forsaken many hopes and a few beliefs Indeed, he lives and speaks as a man who has lost his soul-and knows exactly what that loss means For this act, existentialists would have nah his friends and fans sih moniker, but Lewis has been tempered by the times In mid-1958-at the peak of a career that looked to overtake Presley's-he married Myra Gail Brown, his thirteen-year-old third cousin (it was his thirdscandal reduced him to a career of secondary concert dates and record deals that he never quite overcame In subsequent years, Leould bury two sons, lose Myra and other wives to divorce, hatred