Part 12 (1/2)
These are questions that each of us can answer only for ourselves and I ht reveal Like ry, violent impulses of rock & roll, because, in part, such ih also, I should adry, violent side of rock can be fun (If you doubt me, listen to the Who or the sex Pistols, or see The Wild One, Rebel Without a Cause, The Blackboard Jungle, The Harder They Coh School Confidential-the latter featuring Jerry Lee Lewis on the title song) But it is also true that fans and critics have often roree-until a roughhouse aesthetic and mean-eyed stance seem to take on matchless and inevitable value By exa posture of punk was so widely reported and lionized that violence appeared as a genuine and off-putting trait of the h in fact it was always more stylized than it was necessary or actual Of course, that didn't stop so up to an acquired style: When Sid Vicious was arrested for the en in 1978, and then died by heroin overdose later, toof idyllic, inescapable pop history about them And yet the critics and fans who venerated ”punk violence,” and who memorialized Vicious' pathetic end, didn't have to live with the consequences of his life It was as if the rise and fall of the sex Pistols, Spungen's eant lived out for our dark enjoyment
But then that's the ireat entertainreat mystique, and as a fan of hard-boiled crime novels (the best of which inquire after the impulse to murder), I am hardly one to moralize The problem develops when an art form's stylized violence becomes so idealized to its critics and audience that its real-life performances seein regarding real-life victims as less consequential than the music or mystique of their victimizers
How all this relates to the troubles of Jerry Lee Lewis is a tricky question Certainly, to read Nick Tosches' fine biography of Lewis, hellfire, or Myra Lewis' equally adept account of her e to the pianist, Great balls of Fire, is to co story of a wild, mean, and unequaled pop star-a lory and so irrecoverably confounded in spirit that his aence, wit and pride proin' the audience to hell with , and while thatstateer fearful of death, but feels certain only of daer fear the consequence nor the conceit of any deeds If that is so, Jerry Lee Lewis h about himself to inspire our distance
miles davis: the lion in winter
Face-to-face, Miles Davis seeht expect hiendary Dark Prince of post-bop, one of the last great icons and agitators of jazz He greets uest house, leads me into the lower den streith his raciously offerson the stove But quick as a blink (and it is startling how fast this abiding fifty-nine-year-old man can will moods and wits), the amiability can disappear At one point he asks me what I think of a particular track on his soon-to-be-released You're Under Arrest, and I tell him I haven't heard the track because it isn't on the advance copy of the album that I received Davis' eyes flicker behind his tinted, thick glasses and his notorious wrath flares ”shi+t, you're trying to talk to ive a listen to o out to my car, fetch the advance tape that Columbia Records had sent me, and hand it over to Davis He studies the tape and sees that, indeed, the track under discussion had been orier
”Man, they fucked up the way you're supposed to hear this transition,” he says in his raw, irascible voice, then pulls out his own master cassette of the album, slaps it into the Naka throughout the visit Occasionally he will call attention to specific passages-pointing out the album's constant counterplay between the forcible rhythements and the cool, playful, mellifluent, often introspective tone of his trumpet lines As he talks, the , then inified features may seem drawn these days, but they also ripple with the creases of experience, and the wear ofas Davis' bearing and te that inspires awe soan idle point in our conversation, he picks up the tru nearby, places it in his lap, and begins stroking it, in an offhand way This particular horn is princely looking-black, with curled, gold gilt that spells Miles around its edge, and a weatherworn le most famous, best played instrument in all America And at that ently into its looped tube as he fingers its valves, filling his corner of the room with a tone so subdued it seems almost private-well, the distinctions between Davis and his instruesture that fuses the end with his art It is also an instant that drives home the fact that one is in the presence of perhaps themusical hero in America-the essential (and solitary) link between the music of Charlie Parker and Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane and Michael Jackson
Indeed, since his first recordings with Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, and Max Roach in the late 1940s, Miles Davis has been involved in and has nurtured more diverse jazz forms (from be-bop to cool to neo-bop, froure in the music's history-and has also connected those traditions to rock and funk style and pop aspiration with bold, controversial, and liberating effect Of course, in e into electronic texture, his ed, R & B-derived tempos, that spawned the dread specter of fusion jazz in the 1970s In the end, the movement itself proved merely crass and for a generation of technique-obsessed instruinal vision The style even seeroundbreaking excursions like In a Silent Way, bitches Brew, and Jack Johnson had been seen as iettable tone poeus were seen as furious, pain-ridden, self-destroying exercises-work so forbidding, chaotic, and frustrating, soned to keep an audience at bay (though fors)
Those records were also his final spurt of recording for years Beset with crippling health proble injuries and a bone erosion in his hip that has left hihtly stooped), Davis retired into a six-year period of reclusion rumored to be so dark and narcotic, e When he did-in 1981 with Man with the Horn-several ungracious critics beain move jazz in new directions, and even proclai Yet every subsequent work (the live and good-humored We Want Miles, the blues-steeped Star People, and the protean Decoy) has drawn the intriguing portrait of a resourceful artist who is ent and autumnal periods in the same motion-a er; who has discovered that he can unite and reconcile classical repertoire, blues sensibility, and modern texture with a naked and deep-felt expressiveness True, Davisharmonic and melodic parlance that James Blood Ul in the inspiring blend of traditionalisardisill, and Haht-ahead yet visionary brand of htfully sly
But if much of what Davis has recorded since his return has sounded like ato find a fulfilling context in which to apply his regained strength-the 1985 You're Under Arrest is the place where this artist again makes a stand, one as vital to his own aesthetic as the stands he took with Kind of Blue and bitches Brew It's likely, of course, that with its lovingly straightforward and exacting covers of pop material by Michael Jackson (”Human Nature”), Cyndi Lauper (”Ti on Your Mind”), the albu co of what is actually a stirring and complicated work: perhaps Davis' most cohesive co form and improvisation, between tone and melodic statement, between cool and hot style, as well as his ly worked-over music since his landmark orchestral sessions with Gil Evans in the 1950s It is also sis the heart out of ”Tirace, then turns around and blares into ”You're Under Arrest” (the opening version of which features Sting in a caht to Jack Johnson
Asked whether he is concerned how this recordwith jazz purists, Davis appears to ignore the question, preferring instead to concentrate on the bowl of steaumbo before him We are seated on the sofa in his den-the only spot of furniture not occupied with the trus or scholarly tomes on modern art ”I don't put out records just to satisfy jazz buffs,” he rasps after a while He nods toward the TV set that isout on television-these commercials and some of the music on MTV: That stuff sounds better than the jazz artists I'uys, too many of them are so unsure of their own sound that somehow pop music scares them They miss the point that that's where a lot of the real innovation-in both songs and rhyth from
”Anyhy should some jazz fan be upset that I recorded 'Ti different than what I've always done I y and Bess,' when I did 'Green Dolphin Street,' when I did 'Bye-bye Blackbird,' when I did 'My Funny Valentine'-pop songs, all of them They also liked it when I did bitches Brew and Jack Johnson Nohy can't they like a record that puts all that together, h the old styles, then there's no advances; it's no different with today's pop, as far as drawing on it for interpretation”
Still, I note, in the jazz-rock fury of fifteen years earlier, nobody expected to hear Davis ever play a straight-ahead ballad again-particularly with such restrained tone and without melodic variation What persuaded him to render Lauper's hit in such a plain-spoken fashi+on?
Davis' features soften and his scowl transforms into a faint smile ”Oh et that thing up here”-he taps the area between his throat and heart-”that thing you get when you see sohs wickedly ”You know, soot that when I first heard it, because she had the sound for thethe way it should be interpreted: your way and hers I just love how Cyndi Lauper sings it I ht-the only one who really knohat itis part of her-it's written for her heart, for her height, for the way she looks, the way she sht so kind of sanctified and churchly to it Why distract fro around with a lot of variations and stuff?
”So I don't do nothing to it: It's just the sound of ether in their own right Still, when I like soive it to you rin ”Give it to you with a little black on it Nohen I play it live, everybody seems to like it that way I also think people knohen they like a roove, like a tribe”
Miles says he would talk more but he has a rehearsal to catch Before we break off, he speaks briefly about his planned next album: a live retrospective of his career, recorded with a twenty-piece orchestra, rhythhlin, at his acceptance of the Soning Award in Copenhagen-an honor bestowed previously only on Leonard Bernstein, Isaac Stern, and Igor Stravinsky We also discuss that this will be his last album for Colu about switching labels ”Man, they never knohat to do with me You know, they'd rather lean toward Wynton Marsalis or somebody like that Well, let 'e so different”
Which, of course, is an understateer seems to prompt jazz styles or sire new dynasties, it is also clear he no longer needs to Instead, he has learned to move coentle introspection with the same eloquence and savvy hich he expresses his casualthat it is the breadth of expression at this late stage in his career that best defines how he cares to be seen In other words, end simply wants to be accepted now as a player and not a leader-a man who can imbue modern styles with a venerable, unadorned technique True, that may make him too irreverent for jazz and too seasoned for pop, but inal who, at fifty-nine, is still too young to be denied his vision
feargal sharkey: songs of hearts and thieves
”A Good Heart,” written by Los Angeles' Maria McKee, of Lone Justice alal Sharkey, was played repeatedly on US radio in the spring of 1986 (in England, in fact, it became a number 1 hit), and for fair reason ”A Good Heart” is an irresistibly crafted dance track about roood-natured hope, and a great depth of petrified fear The song is also the opening track for the eponymous solo debut album by Sharkey (once the lead vocalist for Northern Ireland'slate-1970s pop-punk band, the Undertones), and with the singer's wavery voice intoning the heartening chorus, ”A Good Heart” opens the album in the manner of a tremulous invocation: ”I know that a real love is quite a price/And a good heart these days is hard to find/So please be gentle with this heart of mine”
But if ”A Good Heart” is a lover's prayer, the song that immediately follows it, ”You Little Thief” (written by Tom Petty's keyboardist, Benmont Tench), is as bitter a curse as I've ever heard in pop-a nificent statement of pain so wrathful, so intense, so true, chances are you will never hear it on radio ”You little THIEF,” rails Sharkey, ”you let , you saw /But there's no hard feelings/There's no feelings/At ALL”
Of course, that last claim isn't exactly true: There's so , and in Sharkey's vocal delivery of it, that it is al to hear Instantly, you are reminded of the most deep-felt ers who, like Sharkey, once sang so forcefully, so nakedly, that they could redeem any conceit or frivolity-and instantly you realize just how inadequately their best es to achieve here, by only half-trying In part, that's because Sharkey isn't weighed down by any of the self-defeating irony or preening hubris that have always been part and parcel of Stewart's and Ferry's acts Instead, Sharkey just sings as if the art of these songs resides in theof their words, and not in the histrionics of the perforenuinely e vocal triumphs of 1986
marianne faithfull: trouble inin the manner of ”Trouble in Mind,” the performance that opens the soundtrack to the 1986of the blues-or some kind of stripped-down study of the music's elements-than a true enactment of the forht do in theseopens with an ethereal, harplike synthesizer sweep-not er Mark Isham Then Ishaestive of Miles Davis' on In a Silent Way), a few ether at a snail's pace, congealing into a cool-to-the-touch, high-tech consonance Then a voice enters, stating its lament as directly, as simply, as brokenly as possible: ”Trouble in MIND, that's true/I have AL-MOST lost my mind/Life ain't worth livin'/Sos to Marianne Faithfull, and she imparts immediately, in her frayed matter-of-fact manner, that she understands firsthand the experience behind the words: She lifts the song froh, is how she does this without indulging for a ers pass off for feeling In fact, Faithfull does it si of blues s inform her tone-they even inform the silences between notes-and that tone alone nails the listener, holding one's ear to an extraordinary perfor, but not much more needs to The directness of the vocal and the stillness of the arrangement virtually sound like a portrait of emotional inertia-and of course, that's the way they're supposed to sound
Before Trouble in Mind's soundtrack ends, there is one ettable moment: Faithfull and Isham's rendition of Kris Kristofferson's ”The Hawk (El Gavilan)” At the outset, a lone synthesizer delineates a melodic motif, a trumpet dips between the spaces of the strain, and Faithfull takes on the lyric in the sa ”Got to s, ”Got to break your own chains/The dreams that possess you/Can blossom and bless you/Or run you insane” The textures radual undertow to the arrangeentle and sure as the momentum that carries life to death Couple the es of loss and flight and yearning, and you have a perfor at once Which is to say, Kristofferson-Ishah-tech pop, but at the recording's heart, it is a spawn of the blues Its resonance is beyond trend: It is ageless
stan ridgway's wrong people
As leader of the Wall of Voodoo, Stan Ridgas nearly despicable: He didn't so much reduce hard-boiled cynicis inflection-which ht have been a kick if the attacks hadn't all been delivered in a slurring ambit was a way realized this, for just as the band reached an audience large enough worth insulting, the singer ”fired himself” from the enterprise The joke, it seeun In 1986, two years after checking out, Stan Ridgway checked back in with The Big Heat (IRS), and da the best LA-founded albu Heat work so well is that, instead of viewing his characters fro at their uneasiness and their seeway noled inside their skin-and discovered that it's actually kind of an intriguing place to be, a place that lends itself to hauntingly, rollickingly effective storytelling In any event, instead of sneering, Ridgway now shudders a bit as he relates the accounts of people in flight-people running fro after murder and deception, people who seem horrified and enthralled by their own adotten but sure won't leave life that way They are, in fact, California characters like those in the works of James M Cain and Jim Thompson (mean and daed and redee to-and as a result, The Big Heat also de Heat, the wrong people-hateful, bored, lost, hurting, dangerous people-not only are given a voice, but, here and there, are given a shot at victory Sootta watch the ones who keep their hands clean,” sings Stan Ridgway in the title song On The Big Heat, the artist gets his hands dirtier than ever Hence, he's 's for certain: There are few artists who can be so scary and unaffected at the sas of experience
”Can we shut out the lights?” asks Sinead O'Connor, in a soft voice
It is a cold and blustery late February 1990 night in the center of London, and O'Connor-a twenty-three-year-old, bantam-sized Irish-born woman, with round, doleful eyes and a quarter-inch crewcut-is perched on a stool in a BBC Radio sound studio, holding an acoustic guitar, and looking a little uneasy She has cos from her newly released second album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got And for reasons of her own, she feels like singing these songs in the dark tonight After the lights di the hushed opening chords to ”The Last Day of Our Acquaintance”-the account of a young woe of her deepest-held hopes and dreams, and then deserted by the one person she needed and trusted s, and for good reason: Not so long ago, sheabout, and it transfor as if she were co its painful recollections and caustic indictments on the spot In a voice that veers between hesitation and accusation, O'Connor sings with a biting precision about the er cared for her need or faith in hier hold on to her hand as a plane would lift off-and she rues all the abandonment and betrayal that her expectation has left her with And then, just when theyowls that fra's bitter kiss-off, O'Connor halts the perfor seconds, there is only silence from the dark booth ”I need to practice that one a bit,” she says finally, in a shaky tone ”I need to cal, and this time she leans harder into the perfor to witness So woman with an al, shock, and sorrow, all in the sa chased by, some difficult private memories, and it seems less like a pop performance than an act of necessary release It is also a tiers have been sitting in darkened recording booths turning private pains into public divulgence for generations now But ers-from Billie Holiday to John Lennon-were, in one way or another, ravaged by that darkness If Sinead O'Connor has her way, she is going to howl at that darkness until there are no more bitter truths that it can hold
MAYBE IT'S HER startling looks that first catch you-that soft black bristle that barely covers her naked head or those soulful hazel eyes that can fix you with a stare that is hungry, vulnerable, and piercing in the sah, it is Sinead O'Connor's voice-and its harsh beauty-that you will have to reckon with According to her father, it is a voice that she inherited from herto Nigel Grainge, the president of her record coe of her strife-torn and heartbroken ho, like Van Morrison,” he says ”That is, real soul singing” O'Connor herself says she never really thought ed fron of deep fains, O'Connor's voice is a remarkable and forceful instrument, and it has quickly established her as one of the e in years This is a heartening developiven the sort of music that O'Connor makes-a completely unlikely one On the basis of her 1987 debut work, The Lion and the Cobra-a brilliant album about sexual fury and spiritual passion-O'Connor seemed fated for a career like that of Van Morrison, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, or reat truth-tellers: namely, a career of essential artistry, on the border of mainstream affection But with her current work, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, Sinead O'Connor has achieved both widespread success and flat-out greatness Furious and lovely, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got is the work of a young wo losses, and who sets out to rebuild her faith By the album's end, she has won a certainpain, and by leveling an excoriating rage at those who have betrayed her In an era when even ly subservient to the dominance of style and beat, Sinead O'Connor has fashi+oned a full-length work that takes uncommon thematic risks, and that makes style entirely subservient to emotional expression Like Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band, O'Connor's I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got is an intensely introspective work that is so affecting and farsighted, it see the mood or experience of an entire audience
Which is exactly what it appears to be doing In the United Kingdon, where it was released in late February 1990, the album bulleted to the top of the charts in its first week of release In America, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got vaulted to number 1 on Billboard's Top 100 album chart within a month of its release-an almost unprecedented feat for a relatively unknown fe in O'Connor's fierce and rapturous er herself believes that it is the video version of the albu Compares 2 U”-that has paved the way for the albu performance: For five minutes, O'Connor holds the caaze, and tries to make sense of how she lost the one love that she could never afford to lose One instant she tosses out sass, the next, utter desolation, until by the song's end, the singer's grief has become too much for her, and she cries a solitary tear of inconsolable loss
”I didn't intend for that ht, ”I should let this happen' I think it shocks people Some people, I know, really hate it-maybe because it's so honest, or maybe because they're embarrassed by displays of e proof of the danger of not expressing your feelings For years I couldn't express how I felt I think that's how music helped me I also think that's why it's the most powerful s that they can't express, but that need to be expressed If you don't express those feelings-whether they're aggressive or loving or whatever-they will fucking blow you up one day”
SPEND MUCH TIME around O'Connor, and you'll find that she's a lot like her music-that is, she is smart and complex, and she can effortlessly tap into deep wells of sadness and anger But as often as not, she can also prove sweet and goofy, and can seem truly bewildered by the rituals and expectations that accompany fame For exa the photo session for this story, O'Connor takes the occasion as an opportunity for listening to soae oldies and recent hip-hop faves like Queen Latifah and NWA (Hip-hop, says O'Connor, is the one pop form that she feels has the closest spiritual kinshi+p to her own iggle fits and hilarious private asides with her longtime friend, personal assistant, and constant co a serious pose, Sinead will roll her eyes and crack up, as if she's both tickled and embarrassed by the notion of her own celebrity
At other ti The afternoon following the photo shoot, O'Connor is walking down a hallway at the offices of her London record colasses and a black leather jacket She has the hood of a white jersey pulled over her head, and see down at her feet At first, she doesn't respond to hearing her na a blistering article about her in the latest issue of the pop music neeekly New Musical Express, and it has left her near tears
In England, O'Connor has becoure with both the music and iven to uttering often acerbic views about politics, the music business, and sex-and came across, in NME's estist-ridden young woman who shocked established society with her looks and views”
Recently, O'Connor has done her best to undo this ih the British press has been reluctant to let her outdistance or ards her as an enfant terrible In this 's article, the newspaper takes several of the more controversial statee of topics-including her views about U2, the Irish political situation, and her forh-and contrasts them with her recent state and intentionally mean-witted piece of journalisene Masterson asks: ”Does a leopard change its spots so quickly or is Sinead a chaes her views to suit her moods?” NME's implication couldn't be clearer: O'Connor is a fickle opportunist and htness at the first blush of success
”When the press looked at me,” she says, ”they saoman with a shaved head and a pair of Doc Marten boots, and they assuh The truth is, I's” As she talks, O'Connor is tucked into the backseat of a taxi, en route to her home in the Golder's Green area of North London She stares out theas the car h the rain-drenched maze of British urban sprawl, and she talks in a low but intense voice ”Just because I's and doesn't behave like soressive It really hurts me when people think that-when they make me out to be soood person It can hurt so ”
O'Connor pauses and pulls absently at the hint of forelock at the front of her hair ”They don't care that if they say, 'Sinead O'Connor's a coht and think, 'I a down the street, I'll be thinking, 'Everyone's looking atwhat a complete bastard I a like 'The Last Day of Our Acquaintance'-they would realize that I couldn't possibly be as secure and strong as they would expect me to be Obviously there's a lot of insecurity in there
”But they don't care about what a person has been through”
A FEW MINUTES later, O'Connor arrives at her hoe-style house, nestled into a side street of si graveyard ”I like dead people,” says O'Connor, when asked if she everto have them close by”