Life on Planet Rock Page 10

  “Keith taught Zak to play,” said Simon Daltrey, son of Roger, who was seated directly next to me in the Portsmouth theater. Don’t ask me how the lead singer’s flesh-and-blood offspring got planted right where the wandering journalist on no particular assignment could bend his ear. Must have been my rock karma. Simon was, of course, referring to Zak Starkey, Ringo Starr’s son, the latest in a long line of Who drummers going back to the departed Moon. “When he was a kid, Keith and Ringo were best mates. I watched it. Zak and me are the same age—thirty-six. Keith was always showing Zak how to hit the kit.”

  It was during Entwistle’s mind-boggling bass solo for the sleazy epic “5:15” from Quadrophenia that the teacher-student dynamic truly revealed itself. John danced off a series of notes with ageless perfection, and Zak answered, confident, concise, and cool.

  Here, so long since the amazing journey began, Pete Townshend proved again why his rebellious imprint is as indelible as the scarred stages that played victim to a thousand shattered guitars, slammed home at the close of every show in a climactic clank of revolutionary theater that sent parents and principals racing for the exits. But the violence was merely a manifestation of the intensity boiling within the artist, played out for a post-’60s civilization that was in the throes of metamorphosis.

  In late 1967, Townshend was introduced to the teachings of Hindu avatar Meher Baba. “One minute, I was freaked out on acid,” he further confessed in the Who Came First liner notes, “and the next minute, I was into Baba.” At age twenty-two, Townshend began to write music that lifted the spirit while rocking our world, constantly reminding us that love, surrender, devotion, and sacrifice were what life was all about.

  Pete Townshend pushed the mod-music envelope by daring to compose what no other had ever attempted: rock symphonies. He was the genre’s first Beethoven, a visionary rebel who led us by moped and magic bus to the outer reaches of modern musical theater. He literally bled mind, body, and spirit for rock ‘n’ roll, touring with scraped, scarred, bandaged fingers from 1967 to 1980. The whirling arm of twang whipped the strings with the precise fury of a fencer or bullfighter.

  Still floating from the two-hour dream sequence, Elaine, Jamie, and I drifted around to the back door of the venue, where a small gathering of fans waited for the band to exit the building. A time-machine scene, twenty-five years past, the rock stars in early development, signing a ticket stub for the locals. They were so friendly, chatty warm with the kids, who were no longer kids, but still very much all right.

  I stood quietly as Roger and John made their way to the respective cars that would drive them, not to some five-star hotel, but home. This was their home. Those of us who’d walked the Sunset Strip had encountered Entwistle at the Rainbow, where one of his guitars hangs proudly from the ceiling. He and Roger both loved L.A., but the Who was born here, in these woods, by this Channel. This was a world away from my home, but this was still my generation.

  Townshend was the last to exit. As he gently traversed the small crowd, I waited for the perfect moment to make contact. His back was to me, six inches away, as he signed the last photograph placed in his hands by a fan. The car door was open, awaiting his arrival. Townshend the magnificent, a breath away, in a brick alley in Portsmouth, England, on a cold, damp night in January. “Pete,” I said softly, “I came from Los Angeles.” He stopped, turned around, and caught my glance. “Well, you came farther for this gig than I did, mate,” he grinned. Then he took my hand, shook it, and I felt the calloused strength of a million windmills.

  A few weeks later, I was in the kitchen of Anthrax’s Scott Ian and his girlfriend, Pearl. Scott’s far better half is the child of Mr. and Mrs. Meat Loaf. “I’ve been writing about the Who, Scott,” I said, launching into a recap of my trip to Portsmouth.

  “Really?” he replied. “Pearl’s mom just had dinner with Roger last night. They’re best friends. He’s in town for a couple weeks. You might be able to meet him.”

  Five days later, there was a message on my voicemail. “Lonn, it’s Scott. Listen, Saturday night, me, Pearl, and Leslie [Pearl’s mom] are going to dinner with Roger. We want you to come. Call me back.”

  My fingers danced on the keypad like an Entwistle bass fill as I dialed Scott’s number.

  I picked up the couple a half hour early. Live at Leeds was cranking in the car. We arrived at the Chadwick Restaurant in Beverly Hills—owned by my friend Benjamin Ford, a brilliant chef and eldest son of Harrison “Indiana Jones” Ford. Leslie was fetching Roger in the San Fernando Valley.

  With the cosmos in control, the lead singer of the Who found himself seated directly to my right. Same place as his son was in Portsmouth. “What’s going on here, Lord?” I asked myself. I was no stranger to celebrity I never consciously changed my demeanor, not anymore. I was a fan of rock, and the rockers that made the rock roll. I also knew that, basically, they were no different than you or me. Whether they’re heroes like Townshend and Daltrey or the kid in the apartment upstairs who keeps you awake playing his Gibson at 2 A.M., they breathe the same air and suffer the same slings and arrows as the rest of us.

  When the scandal broke about Townshend’s alleged downloading of underage Internet porn, I tossed it out with the rest of the gutter press news o’ the day. I had fielded from the inside enough scandalous rumors about Guns N’ Roses and Mötley Crüe during the RIP days to fill a tabloid tabernacle. Hey, were you there in the room when so-and-so was beating his wife? You weren’t? Well shut the fuck up then!

  Townshend was eventually absolved of all charges, but that incident illustrated that the greatest pratfall of fame is maintaining the public perception of purity, which by its own definition is problematic. Even at the peak of my career, I never had much stomach for the superstar mystique.

  After an hour consuming California cuisine with Mr. Daltrey—where I related sitting next to his son in Portsmouth, soliciting a “he’s a good kid” from Dad—I began to feel quite comfortable, enough so to don the journalist’s hat, unofficially of course. Roger was so likeable, I figured what the hell? “Pete’s songs would never have acquired the immortality if it weren’t for the presentation,” I said. “He didn’t sing ‘Love, Reign O’er Me’ [the closing anthemic ballad off Quadrophenia], you did. No one else could have. He must have known that deep inside.”

  Part of my comment was ego stroking, part was true personal belief that the Windmill without the Pipes would have had very different results, different history. Roger nodded, obviously pondering three decades of a relationship of unspeakable chemistry, good and bad. Then someone cracked a joke, probably Scott, and everyone laughed. Roger never really answered my question because I hadn’t really asked one. I was just paying homage to one of my heroes who happened to be enjoying a slice of pâté.

  Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend affirm the great balance of vocal undulation and instrumental dementia. Pete wrote the songs and played the riffs, and Roger stood up front and swallowed the white-hot spotlight, interpreting the message, delivering the goods, track after track, night after night. It could not have happened any other way.

  Dessert was approaching, so I reared back for a proper volley. I figured I would never get a chance to interview a member of the Who again, so I’d better get at least one exclusive fly-on-the-wall tidbit for the archives. “Roger,” I said, “I just got the remastered Who’s Next rereleased from ‘95 with an alternative mix of ‘Behind Blue Eyes.’ It’s fucking unbelievable. The track bleeds with more soul than the original. Can you tell me about the recording?”

  “Okay, Lonn, I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone,” he said. His eyes were glassy, possessing a warmth unbecoming a legend in social conversation. “The day we cut that track, my dog died,” he said with an almost bittersweet grin. “That dog was my best friend in the world. I loved him more than anything. He got killed, hit by a car. And I had to go to the studio and lay down that vocal.”

  “But why didn’t you call Pete or [produc
er] Glyn Johns and say, ‘I can’t track today, my dog died’?” I asked, giddy at this tender revelation.

  He shook his head. “We never stopped working, not for anything. That was not an option back then. There’s a lot of pain in that vocal. My pain.”

  We returned to small talk. “You know I really love Southern California,” Roger said.

  “I grew up here,” I replied.

  “Really?” he said. “Whereabouts?”

  “Sherman Oaks, in the San Fernando Valley.”

  His eyes widened, his smile returned full force, and the mouth that wailed the immortal “yeahhhhhhhhh!” before the final verse of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” proclaimed, “That’s where I bought my house! Sherman Oaks!”

  When he told me the name of the street where his new L.A. retreat was, I almost lost my chocolate mousse. Roger Daltrey was living five minutes from where Ron Meyers and I first listened to Tommy and a rolling stone’s throw from my high school. Or to put it more eloquently, a healthy jog from the suburban flat where a nearsighted student once sat in awe of a deaf, dumb, and blind boy.

  6

  That ‘70s Chapter

  COME, SAID THE MUSE,

  SING ME A SONG NO POET YET HAS CHANTED.

  SING ME THE UNIVERSAL.

  —Walt Whitman

  I had an odd, impish friend in high school named Van Alpert who had a colossal album collection and the most expensive stereo system in the San Fernando Valley, accentuated by a pair of towering, ear-shattering speakers. Van came up to about woofer height, and when his folks weren’t home, we cranked those babies for all they were worth. It was in his room after class every day from the winter of 1973 to the summer of 1974 that I flew at warp speed into the stargate of progressive (“prog” as it came to be known) rock.

  Van, my brother Rick, and I were getting into futuristic groups like Pink Floyd, Strawbs, Curved Air, Roxy Music, Barclay James Harvest, Supertramp, the Moody Blues, Camel, Caravan, Yes, Van Der Graaf Generator, Jethro Tull, Triumvirat, Nektar, Blue Oyster Cult, Kansas, Kayak, Can, Renaissance, PFM, Hawkwind, and Be Bop Deluxe. Another friend, Mark Henteleff, was tripping out over a renegade outfit from San Francisco called the Grateful Dead. The air-guitar sessions at his house after school, rockin’ out to the live double-LP Europe ‘72, went on for hours. The Dead led Mark to fusion—Chick Corea’s Return to Forever and John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra—and Mark led them to me.

  Music was flying at me from all quadrants of the galaxy, and it was always playing. At home while doing my homework, in the car while cruising around the Valley, at night before finally falling asleep, usually after reading a short story by fantastical author Ray Bradbury, whose freaked-out fable collection R is for Rocket whisked me as far away as Yes’s Close to the Edge LP. Also on my nightstand were Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.

  Grant High is where I had my first close encounter with real live musicians. They were called Still Life and played regularly in the school gymnasium. I hung out after their sets and got to know their guitarist, who was in my geometry class. His name was Steve Lukather, an axe prodigy who had lightning fingers, like Be Bop’s Bill Nelson. After he graduated, the group changed their name to Toto and went on to sell millions of records. Luke and I have known each other since 1974. He was the first rock star I ever called my friend.

  I wasn’t quite ready to leave home after Grant, so my education continued in September 1974 at the junior college across the street. Los Angeles Valley College had a bad rap. Kids called it UFO—University of Fulton at Oxnard (the two streets that bordered the campus)—or worse, Grant with Ashtrays. But truth be told, I grew enormously at Valley, thanks in large part to three professors: Tom McGuire, Bob Barlow, and Dick Raskoff

  McGuire had greasy gray hair, wore shabby clothes, and spoke in jagged, succinct sentences, often shoving his index finger in the face of students seated up front. He officially taught English, but unofficially, he was drilling into us what it meant to be an artist. His lectures were long, drawn-out anecdotes about magnificent figures in history whose sense of expression was never co-opted.

  The chain-smoking, dry-witted Bob Barlow taught astronomy in the campus planetarium and gave us essay tests. Answering these long-form cosmic questions about the makeup of the universe is where I cut my compositional teeth.

  Barlow had the wicked personality and detached demeanor of a rock star. He would tease us relentlessly, crack jokes incessantly, and conduct his lessons without notes, virtually from memory. He had a bohemian, Bukowski brilliance about him. Mark and I were infatuated with Barlow and thought he was probably more twisted than he let on to his students. One night after class, we stayed around, like a pair of fans by the backstage door. Barlow affirmed our suspicions by kicking our ass with a ribald tale about the time he had wild sex in an abandoned lumberyard. We marched home about midnight, our guts aching from the scurrilous postshow soliloquy.

  Raskoff taught an enhanced geography course that ventured into geology, the study of the earth. In other words, rocks! He was “bent” like Barlow but in a different way. A music freak who made cassette tapes with songs ranging from Zeppelin’s “Your Time Is Gonna Come” to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” he wore a close-cropped goatee and spoke in a very slow and succinct cadence. One might have thought he was dropped on his head when he was child. Maybe he was. I connected with him big time. He took us on a field trip to a ghost town and hiking in local canyons. I got to know Raskoff, baby-sat his kids once. He also gave essay tests—and a term project.

  Our assignment was to create something experimental using music. It had nothing specifically to do with geography, but Raskoff didn’t care. He wanted us to be creative. There were no rules. I went out with my reel-to-reel tape recorder and collected sound bites of the city. Strangers’ voices, traffic noise, things like that. Then I recorded at various tape speeds a bizarre poem I’d written called “I Scream with Nuts,” splicing in sound clips from Gentle Giant’s In a Glass House record. At the end of the term, I presented my audio experiment to the class in the planetarium, using the starry dome overhead and big-ass speakers for ultimate effect. I got an A, but my untrained manipulation of the dome’s night-sky dials threw the star positions off by three hundred years!

  The inventive music of the day was feeding my own creative spirit and keeping me busy to boot. My social calendar wasn’t exactly sizzling. Lanky, four-eyed prog rockers didn’t get a lot of dates. Girls were more into muscular jocks that drove red Ca-maros and listened to Led Zeppelin. I had a 1961 Mercury Comet that couldn’t break fifty-five if Sammy Hagar were behind the wheel.

  On January 24, 1975, the skies were azure blue over Van Nuys. I woke up and turned on the radio to find my senses stimulated by the most wondrous aural textures. The rock opus ebbed and flowed for almost half an hour. I didn’t move from my speakers. I didn’t care if I was late to class. This was far more important.

  John Clark was on the air, the whisper-throated jock for the tiny progressive rock station KNAC-FM 105.5. The airwave enclave would a decade later change its format to metal and become a close ally in my career media endeavors. “That was ‘Supper’s Ready,’ ” he said. “Genesis, from the LP Foxtrot, in its entirety this morning to honor the band’s show tonight at the Shrine Auditorium in support of their new LP, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Don’t miss our exclusive interview with Peter Gabriel this afternoon at five.”

  I didn’t walk to class that morning, I hovered, with no other purpose but to find Peter Weiss, the only son of a rabbi whom I’d just met and bonded with over our mutual love of—you guessed it—rock bands. I couldn’t wait to tell him about my morning’s musical baptism. “Dude,” I buzzed, “I heard Genesis this morning! ‘Supper’s Ready’! I can’t believe I hadn’t gotten into them yet. It was amazing. Like nothing I’d ever heard. And they’re playing tonight at the Shrine Auditorium.”

  But Peter was ahead of me. “I know, dude,” he said
. “I’m going! They’re playing the entire new album.”

  I got the blow-by-blow report on the show from Peter the next morning, a visual feast that included a thousand slides and a dozen costume changes. Within days, I had the entire Genesis catalog. They were waiting for me in the used bins at Moby Disc. The Lamb carried me through the summer of 1975. I bought a Genesis shirt at Moby Disc Records and had “Imperial Aerosol Kid” printed on the back, a lyric recalling the LP’s protagonist from the album’s title track.

  Gabriel became my mentor, compatriot, chief storyteller, and most mystical of all rock heroes to date. And then, at the peak of their chemical majesty, without a warning shot across the bow, Peter Gabriel and Genesis bid each other adieu and went their separate artistic ways.

  In the spring of 1976, the stripped-down Genesis released A Trick of the Tail, having converted their drummer and former background singer, Phil Collins, into a front man. I bought the record the day it went on sale, took it home, but didn’t listen to it immediately. That evening, I was getting together with a new kid I’d just met named Barney. He was elfin, like Van, and dug the same music as me. We met in the library at Valley, where Peter and I first hooked up. “Come on over and hang out tonight,” he said.

  “Sure! I’ll bring the new Genesis!” I fired back.

  Barney didn’t have a lot of friends. In addition to being short, he had kinky black hair and bad skin. He did have one thing, however, that elevated his cool factor—something I’d heard about but as of yet had never experienced firsthand. Barney had pot. An hour after I arrived at his dreary Victory Boulevard apartment, he pulled out a joint and I pulled out A Trick of the Tail.

  “You wanna smoke?” he said.

  I paused for moment. I knew that Peter and Mark had tried marijuana, and as for Van, well, he’d already eaten mushrooms and dropped acid. I didn’t like to drink because the hangover sucked. But I was curious about pot. An altered state with few side effects. Everything happens when it happens, right? “Fire it up!” I said.