Part 13 (1/2)

Later, though, back in her hotel roole in Areets the question seriously ”I don't feel like it's row up, watching 'Top of the Pops' or being interested in music, you alonder what it would be like

”I rateful that it's happened, but it really doesn't change what I said before I don't want to be a rock star, I don't want to be treated like one, and I don't want any of the associations that go with it I just want to be treated like an ordinary person, and I want people to res inaround the world on tour Theis my fas, I wouldn't be inspired to do anything”

O'Connor pauses, and then blushes ”I just re,” she says ”My publicist tellsas Madonna It surprises , foolish, I suppose Well, I'm a very different person now”

O'Connor seems utterly sincere and assured in her co trenchant about her capacity for success: ”I think she has a fire in her to be the biggest In fact, she once told est star there's ever been' And I think she certainly likes the faive any more than she needs to, and where she'll say, 'fuck it, I' any more than this; the rest of my life is mine' She could actually do that next week She could turn around and say, 'This is as big as I want to be; beyond here I don't like it'

”But at the moment,” Hill continued, ”there is a more important question that confronts Sinead: Does her art always have to come from pain? And it is an important question Irecord worth thruppence in the last ten years, and the reason is, he's happy It's also the reason why Keith Richards actually er, because Keith is relatively fucked up, coer

”With Sinead, on't know for years, because she's still a child coh extremes of happiness and unhappiness in the next few years, unless she is in control of the unhappiness so ain has to suffer froreat records when she's happy-not for our sake, because all we have to do is sell them It's for her sake No one should be sentenced to the unhappiness of a Van Gogh just because that's the only way they can work”

Watching O'Connor, as she calls friends and relatives and, with a sweet one to nu anyone would wish on her would be ful and captivating as I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got Indeed, if the depths of the heart and ettable losses, or unattainable longings, then O'Connor has paid for her depths She has learned some bitter truths-that life and love will break your heart, that success and fa victories, and that nocan undo the scars of past experiences, or undo their h she has found a way to accept those truths, she has also found a way to rage back at the about all the newfound peace in her life, and a tortured look will suddenly cross her face Maybe in those moments she fears the happiness as s hurt oes the way of all evanescent dreams Or ht: that maybe pain is the source of her art, and that she may have little choice but to serve that particularin crowded roohts on, Sinead O'Connor may not be all that distant froh eable or companionable place

Whatever the sources of that look, O'Connor wears it with a brave face ”Every experience I've had,” she says, ”is a good experience, even the bad ones An understanding of sorrow and pain is an iives you an appreciation for happiness People who've been brought up happy and norht be like for other people Whereas people who have had an unhappy life have that understanding In the kind of work that I do, it's important to understand pain and what life is like for other people-and I never take that knowledge for granted

”I realize,” she says, offering a shy s I pass along in ht be able to help somebody else But that couldn't happen if I didn't have the experiences I've had”

david baerwald's songs of secrets and sins

David Baerwald sits at an upright piano in the den of his eles' well-heeled Brentwood district, and plays a private recital of a song called ”Secret Silken World” It is a darkly hu about a man who is lured into a world of power and sex and seduction-it is, in fact, about the bond that exists between the seducer and those who Joni Mitchell-were so disturbed by the song's lee that they persuaded Baerwald to leave the tune off his fine 1990 album, Bedtialing the occasional visitor with the song in its full, uncensored fors, glancing over his shoulder with a smile ”They made me think about all those places I've been/They made s would go better if you would be my friend/You don't have to like me but I can be a means to an end/It's a secret silken world/Of sex and submission/Of money and violence and acts of contrition/Where your enemies succu's end, Baerwald studies his thin hands resting on the keyboard, then laughs ”You knohat I think after singing so like that?” he asks He strides over to the far side of the den, gesturing at sos on a wall around the corner It is a hand-tinted picture of Baerwald hie fifteen His hair is browner and his face is fuller than noith none of the lines, scars, and sunken pockets that currentlyand sweet face that looks out fro lopsided and sly in its sards the photo ”Look at that face,” he says, gazing at his former self ”Whatever happened to that kid? He looks so innocent-at least co about sex and violence”

Baerwald studies the picture for a ly far away ”What happened to that kid?” he says one h

IN ONE WAY there's an easy answer to that question: What happened to David Baeras that he becawriter That is, he took the experiences and perspectives of a life lived hard, and fashi+oned them into a part-hard-boiled, part-es with the much-acclaimed LA duo, David + David, as well as his own solo work-rivals the best s of such similar-minded Southern California pop artisans as Warren Zevon, Randy Newen But whereas Zevon and New deeply personal about Baerwald's scenarios It's as if the voice singing about those who are living existences of ruin and longing has also known that existence himself

The catch is, while Baerwald likes to joke about his own dissipated i the details of what shaped that sensibility Indeed, Baerwald can prove a bit of a perplexity: He can speak endlessly and coe of matters-from his favorite American authors (which include Raymond Chandler, Paul Bowles, Raymond Carver, and Andre Dubus) to his political passions (which lean toward unsentimental leftism), and he can tell hilarious off-the-record tales about some of his ence and wit, there is an unequivocal streetwise quality about Baerwald-an edginess that colare can cross his face, as a warning against delving too deeply into certain private concerns In other ue For example, a few minutes later, as he sits on the veranda of his ey when the question is put to hi kid in that class photo? What is it about his past that turned him into such a keen profiler of bad-news souls?

Baerwald regards the question quietly for several long seconds, staring at the sharp points of his faded brown boots ”U softly, ”and, uh, strength and, uh, knowledge And I think I lost unquestioning good faith and innocence and, uh, you know, the youthful optimism that is untes to lose But what I' his visitor with an utterly sincere look, ”is uish sh that echoes off the nearby hills

Over the next hour or two, a slightly es Baeras born in 1960 in Oxford, Ohio His father was a respected political-science professor and his lish and music When Baeras five, his father accepted a position as Dean of Students at an English university in japan, and moved the family to just outside Tokyo Baerwald is sketchy about what the family life was like There were two older sisters-both wereunhappy periods-and his parents' e, he indicates, was strained and would eventually co,” Baerwald says ”My father's a very austere, aristocratic German intellectual, and my mother's a warm midwestern woman from a family of farist], and I have a very, uh, cordial relationshi+p with my father The two of us are definitely cut fro to ad abroad America was involved in Vietnam, and there were riots and military actions at the university where Baerwald's parents taught As a young American, Baerwald shared sympathies with those who protested the war, but he was also drawn to soot interested in the way the japanese cultural aesthetic can combine serenity with sudden violence,” he says ”It's a trait I find I have an affinity toward, that warrior-poet ideal” In tier affinity for the rock & roll revolution that was taking place back in America and in Britain-especially theStones, Jimi Hendrix, and the Band To his parents' distaste, Baerwald began playing his own rock & roll, and shortly began writing sos

When he elve, the family moved to the Brentwood district around UCLA, but Baerwald found Los Angeles' air of cultural languor disorienting ”Ihills around hi with beautiful hoe ”It just see out of a very vibrant scene It's like, what's really going on here? You see nice houses, and nice people in nice cars with nice clothes, and you can't believe it's as idyllic as it looks

”Anyway,” Baerwald continues, ”I started getting ejected froh schools I had a terrible temper, and I felt that the educational systeround, there was nothing of interest to ious sy to get anything e fourteen So I became a problem student It started out with a war because I refused to wear shoes And it deteriorated frorie years were filled with violent explorations Which I still draw on”

So the line, Baerwald fell into trouble with the law, and ended up on probation When this subject coer leans forith a dour look on his face and o into the details of this,” he says flatly ”Suffice to say that I survived it And let eredon that level It was people, you know? People were dangerous to s weren't”

Baerwald realizes he has tensed up, and leans back in his chair, offering an appeasing chuckle ”I' I can not to talk about that stuff, because it would end up becoh, and it's over” He pauses His eyes flicker warily behind his sunglasses, and for the hts seem to scan distant memories ”The people I knew then,” he says after a bit, ”the experiences I was involved in, the things I did” He lets out a long sigh ”Those are things that I will probably continue using as details or colors for the characters inas I write” Baerwald fixes his visitor with a level gaze and crosses his arnals, is closed

In general, the late 1970s was a restive time for Baerwald He recorded with one LA punk band, the Spastics, then spent three years playing bass, singing lead, and writing for another, the Sensible Shoes ”There was a part of ed,” he says ”It seemed to me that punk had just become a cartoon of itself, and I didn't want to be in any htclubs That life was too stupid and pathetic”

IN 1984, BAERWALD began collaborating with an old acquaintance, David Ricketts, awho had played in the Philadelphia club scene in the 1970s, and who hadfilm scores The two Davids were markedly different people-Baerwald held bedrock ressive musical forms; Baeras impulsive and moody, Ricketts, methodical and introspective-but soed into each other at exactly the right ti rote was an abrasive punkish piece, and the second song was this sweet piano-and-string ballad We did both in the same day, and we looked at each other and said: 'There's no li up Basically, I backed off from the music part, and Ricketts had no lyrical input or sense of what the lyrics were So it was extreether”

Als about desperate dreamers, wounded lovers, and corrupt visionaries ”I could sense that I had a good well to draw fro in a story-oriented environ my experiences of the past, and I felt I had a lot to say about it all I re, 'Let's write the archetypal record about LA as metaphor' I actually said that to hi records So we approached it as if it were a first novel, setting the groundwork for everything else to coive us a deep oeuvre to work in”

In 1985, Baerwald and Ricketts signed a deal with A & M Records as David + David, and shortly teaerson Within a few sessions, the crew had fashi+oned Boo Baerwald's highfalutin literary ambitions Indeed, like the LA literature of Raymond Chandler, John Fante, Diane Johnson, and Ja stories about the hopeful and the hopeless interconnecting in a desperate and morally polluted cityscape Some of these characters come to the city with excited, even virtuous dreams of love, luxury, and salvation Others-like the chronic, pathetic wife-beater of ”Ain't So Easy” or the drifters and grifters of ”Sed by the Cracks”-have darker needs, like uncaring sex and obliterating drugs, and as their owndoith theerson: ”Baerrote about some typically romanticized rock & roll characters-the down-and-outers-in a way that was unmawkish and that sees that Ricketts ca those stories We always had this picture of the rip on life in theof an anomaly in LA's mid-1980s rock scene Like Dream Syndicate, Green on Red, Concrete Blonde, the Minutemen, X, the Blasters, and other local bands, David + David were serving up abrasive truths, though in a musical manner that was more conventionally accessible, and that sensibility, with its Steely Dan-derived blend of pop melodies and jazz rhythms, ell suited to the mainstream aesthetic This approach earned the pair soid postpunk ideologues, but it also won David + David a fast-rising Top 40 single (”Welcome to the Boomtown”), and soh, David + David began to pull apart ”We got a lot of attention quickly,” says Baerwald ”Too quickly We began by pursuing this thing as a hobby, and sixan Italian TV shoeen two dog acts When things happen that fast-when you're touring constantly, cooped up in hotel roo the sa et s the other person says and does It had always been soh mainly in a pleasant way Now, it was volatile in an unpleasant way”

In addition, the follow-up to Boomtown had to be delayed Ricketts had becoer Toni Childs, and started to arrange and produce her debut effort for A & M Baerwald found Childs' posthippieand hu fun at her manner, it led to tensions all around Meanti prolifically on his own, but A & M discouraged a solo venture so soon

It was quickly turning into one of those bitter scenarios fros: A pair of dreah hopes, only to crisscross one another and lose their dream in the process In 1988, David + David entered the studio to record their long overdue second LP, but the strain was too erson, ”it was the fact that they barely fit that made it all brilliant By the time of the second one, Ricketts hadworked with Toni Childs, but Baerwald, who is explosive to begin with, had had a cork jarowing as a writer-he had developed a better eye for characters-but it was hard for the two of theet the keyboard sound right, and Baerwald-the K-et stuck in the schtick of his characters-would say, 'fuck the sound; let's do the song' But when you say fuck the keyboard sound, you're also kind of saying, 'fuck you and what you do'-or at least that's how Ricketts heard it In the end, the vibe was erson continues, ”Baerwald's kind of like a cocker pup He's char If you treasure cocker pups, it's great If you have a proble experience”

Baerwald concurs with Sigerson's assessuy,” he says, ”as sos that were hurtful, and in ti wound He felt his music as deeply as I felt mine And the truth is, what a lot of people liked about David + David was not ”David Baerwald's streetwise, world-weary personification of the gritty realities of ood, and Ricketts is the one who deserves credit for that”

Baerwald pauses to light up a cigarette He looks suddenly weary and a little doleful ”When people think of David + David,” he says, ”the word innocence doesn't co our ot taken out of our hands It was corrupted very quickly, and we didn't have the eeared for fauess it was over long before we realized it”

BAERWALD MADE UP for the disintegration of David + David with soh a few love affairs, and started running with a faster, flashi+er crowd-including several pop stars and actors, including Sean Penn, hom Baerwald roomed for a time, and hom he wrote an as-yet-unproduced screenplay loosely based on Boomtown's theh much of it amounted to frenzied behavior-not unlike the lives led by the characters of his songs ”That world of stardoar, secret, sickened world”

As Baerwald speaks, it is a few days after our firstroom, in the bottoa Canyon The place is a bit of a uitars, exotic stringed instru has a makeshi+ft feel about it, as if the person who lives here clearly lives on his own, and hasn't yet found a place he would describe as ho that whole scene,” says Baerwald about his fast-and-hard Hollywood life ”I was like a guy who's addicted to galy and wrong, but he keeps on doing it Then you wake up one , that you lost perspective on what it is that you do I could say, 'Hey, I' so horrible out of my heart or psyche-which on a certain level was true But as a person, I wasn't okay at all I was a schmuck I enty-six and I had a chip on s, and validation from some strata of society meant a lot to me at that moan to see his own dissolution reflected in the world around hi close by the Chinese Theater, in Hollywood By day, it is a tourist district By night, it is a tense, restless co prostitutes, bikers, skinheads, drug dealers, and occasional gang members: all those castoffs bred-and then discarded and conde to examine the causes of its own ruin Baerwald already knehat life on the fringe was like-he had lived it at times, and had chronicled it in Boomtown Now, he wanted to see how the deterioration looked fro of Sean Penn, who had been acting in Dennis Hopper's Colours, about LA's gang life, Baerwald began hanging out with cops, and interviewed them about the death and futility they faced every day

”It was really a disturbing experience,” he says, ”and it entered into radation that these cops saw all the time, and I'd askyour oicked soul, you know?”

Baerwald gets up, rabs a beer froerator and settles back into the sofa ”I started seeing all these connections,” he says, unscrewing the cap on the beer bottle and taking a sip ”Connections between gangs and drugs and cops and the govern about what itvery dark thoughts about our civilization and everything ere doing, and I got a feeling of total impotence in the face of such insanity and such stupid violence

”I saas as much a criminal as anybody,” Baerwald continues, ”because I was a part of thefascination with violence And I understood better how violence breeds violence and becoer of the kind of environment we live in is that our own failures can breed a desire for violence-or at least we start using that as an excuse for our violence But if you start thinking in social teret very bitter and veryto achieve in our lives,so s, because I didn't want s I wanted to relate them to the specifics of my own life”

From this mix of personal disappoints In June 1989, Baerwald did some initial solo sessions with producer Steve Berlin (of Los Lobos), then a few months later, hooked up with bassist and producer Larry Klein (married at the ti album, Bedtime Stories, is superior to Boo work, rife with finely observed vignettes about a city and nation disintegrating fro portrayals of people trying to make love work, despite the pain of their pasts and the hopelessness of their futures

In the albus his young beautiful wife to LA He works hard to support her-so hard, she feels abandoned by him, and takes to bed with another ets involved in illegal activities; he loses his wife and his hope; she loses her lover; and the lover-who had been a friend of the husband-loses some of his honor There are no heroes in the tale, and no villains Just real people, trying to find love and connection andAnd the adulterer, the lover who helped end his friend'sto be more honest and intimate and specific about individuals this time,” he says, ”in the hopes that those individuals will illuer whole The idea was that I wanted these characters to e intact-their hu, in and of itself, isn't necessarily a heroic act It's easy to survive if you're a killer-especially if what you've killed is so inside yourself It's easy to live if you're dead But surviving with your humanity intact, I think, is always heroic”

Across the roos Baerwald's machine picks up the call, and the caller-whoever he is-plays a wild Hendrix-like guitar solo, then hangs up Baerwald shakes his head bemused ”Sounds like Ricketts to ood friends, still get drunk together, but there is clearly a distance between the about that relationshi+p that just won't quit,” says Baerwald ”Ricketts was like a terrific big brother, but I had to find out what I could do onthat out”

Baerwald takes another sip of beer and begins to explain that one of the harder-hitting songs on Bedtime Stories, ”Dance,” ritten about the experience he had shared with Ricketts in the music industry ”I adapted 'Dance,' ” he says, ”froe student who goes to Morocco to find a tribe that speaks this dialogue he's studying He goes to the chieftain and says, 'I ae' And the chieftain says, 'Oh, are you?' And the tribe grabs the student and they tear his clothes off and they castrate hiue out They feed his and they pierce his flesh with needles and dangle bells from him And they make him dance for their entertainhs uproariously at the story he has just told ”That story,” he says, ”reminded me of my experience with the record business I came into this scene, and I said, 'I just want to learn to ht, fine But you've got to dance, you know'

” 'But I don't kno to dance,' I said And they said, 'Well, you will' ”