The Colonel's Half

When I grumble about Dick Clark and Clive Davis, keep in mind that there are crooks and hacks going back to way before my time. I don't much like them, either. Yeah, I'm very much aware that we might never have known about Elvis if the Colonel hadn't worked his magic, but 50%? If we're going to give awards for prescience here, shouldn't it go to Sam Phillips or Bob Neal or Dewey Phillips?

Young Mr. Presley and Bob Neal, His First Manager

By the time of Brian Epstein's death, the Beatles, as we were told, were bigger than Jesus Christ. He had done a fine job of putting the fab four in front of us. His real job was over by then. The lads really just needed to agree to a battery of attorneys and accountants by that time.

Sometimes it can be difficult putting up with a diva's attitude. We shouldn't have to suffer the manager's or the producer's or the publicist's as well. There's a reason that we call Ray Charles The Genius, not Ahmet Ertegun.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm a big fan of Leiber and Stoller's. I love almost everything that Huey Meaux recorded. Phil Spector made some masterpieces, as he will tell you. Jack Nitzsche claimed that he was responsible. Heck, even the hacks need hacks.

This land is, indeed, your land. This rock'n'roll is ours, too.

Popcorn and Brandy

So what am I doing at 5:30 in the morning looking for clues in some drama that seems to be a mystery only to me? I can tell you this, the brandy won't keep the kernels out of your teeth but it will make you forget that they're there.

Why do I get the Karl Malden role? I don't want Marlon's, either. I seem to be assigned a number on a very long list. I accept the position, I suppose, because another person's drama is appealing when held up to the bleak nothingness. 

Yeah, I've got my own list. Number one hung herself. Thirty something years had bleached the innocence of pure love but her mother blamed me. I guess I do, too.

What am I supposed to do with this magic orange stone now?

Are you ready for the holidays?

Under The Covers

Well, it occurs to me that the term, cover band, has become something of a derisive description of any band that plays mostly music from sources outside the group. It wasn't always the case. In fact, pre- Zimmerman, going back to big band and jazz, it was the standard. Oh, sure, Ellington was a magnificent composer and he had the added weapon of Billy Strayhorn after awhile. He took material from all over the map, though. Elvis never really wrote anything. His name shows up on credits because Colonel Parker got it there. Playing six and seven hours a night in Hamburg, the Beatles relied on Larry Williams and Arthur Alexander and Carl Perkins for songs that made drunks dance. Yeah, they began writing because they could.

My good fortune was to start right off playing music with an artist. A lunatic. A writer.

Don Smith was bagging groceries with me after high school and had bought a set of tangerine sparkle Gretsch drums. He knew that I was sitting home on nights off learning to play bass. When he asked me to start a band with him I declined. I didn't have the confidence that I was ready to play. I had been onstage just once, filling in for my pal Charlie Suza, with the Tropics.

Don convinced me to go with him to meet Warren Novak who was the guitar player that he was beginning to work with. Well, I rode with him to the Dog & Suds and we walked across the parking lot. A young man with hair half way to his shoulders crawled out of a maroon '57 Thunderbird and stuck out his hand. I had trouble looking into his magic eyes because I was staring down at his candy apple red, patent leather shoes, with brass zippers. I know rock'n'roll when I see it! Warren was rock'n'roll.

At an early practice I stopped to advise Warren that Buddy Holly had, in fact, put a turnaround after the verse that we just breezed through. Without one. Those crazy eyes fixed me and he drawled, "So what?"

Doesn't sound like any big deal, I know, but it changed everything, on the spot, for me. Still one of my grandest lessons. I still don't know whether to file it under Zen 101 or Rock'n'Roll For Dummies.

Oh, and Warren wrote. They were all terrible but they dripped passion. Yeah, we played Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. Gene Vincent and Little Junior Parker. We weren't a cover band. We were a rock'n'roll band.

The Raveons

Ronny Elliott, Warren Novak, Don Smith and Steve Newman

How Do You Make The Love Stay?

"Go ahead, write your sad little songs," the taunt went. Well, the truth is, I don't have any. Seems I've always worried about making the love stay. She told me once that she worried that I had fallen out of love. I hadn't. I haven't. It has taken me a very long time to feel like I have any kind of handle at all on the nature of romance, at least from my perspective.

Someone once wrote, "If you don't want your life written about, don't love a writer."

If I don't write about my life, I don't work. Oh, I make up murders and wild times every now and then. I might make up something so that a line will rhyme or change a story to amuse myself. For the most part, though, I just jot down ramblings from the front of my mind.

Over a lifetime I now see that some form of conflict was necessary to end a love affair. Anger or jealousy or some form of hostility had to wash away the passion. Blame is always handy.

Finally, finally, I see that falling in love is like falling anywhere else. You may get up and dust yourself off. You may climb out of the hole. Nothing changes about your fall, though. The love, if it is love, stays. That's not sad.

Slow, The Boy's Slow

Maybe the subtle lessons are the hardest. Dynamics. Spencer always preached dynamics. That's where the soul lies. It sank in but it took thirty or forty years.

It was a proud day for me when Steve told me that I had taught him his most difficult lesson: "when not to play." Boy, did he master that one!

Love hard without trying to get anything back. Find the beauty. Make the peace. Become the love.

A Rock By Any Other Name

I suppose that I was always something of an Elvis snob. Oh, I was always glad that the multitudes worshipped at the right altar. It's just that I thought of myself as one of the ones who got onboard on time. You know, that special bunch who knew before Ed Sullivan. The ones who treasured the 45's before the first LP. It wasn't until I saw some of that early footage that I realized that he was already the first "Elvis impersonator" by the time that I saw him. Awareness that you're separate from the rest of the race changes everything, I guess.

Sometimes I wonder how it must feel to be old Bob Dylan.

Cheese

Well, gotta get my hair washed and it's off to my modeling job. What are you laughing at? It's true.