Cigar Box Banjo (20 page)
As for Joe Hall and the Continental Drift, we began to suspect there was something within Joe that simply didn’t want commercial success. Here’s the kind of thing that raised such suspicions. We were in Vancouver, playing a very nice club, the name of which escapes me, and someone had managed to convince a group of musical muck-mucks to come. There were a couple of A&R guys from major labels, big booking agents, a journalist from a reputable magazine, and they all sat together at a big table right in front of the stage.
The show began. Joe was filled with more manic energy than usual, and that was going some. He blistered through a couple of songs, and then he leapt off the stage, bent over, and grabbed the tablecloth on the big table with his teeth. He straightened out, spreading his arms as though inviting crucifixion. Most of the muck-mucks ended up with high-priced liquor pooling in their laps, except for the A&R guys. A&R guys are almost always former musicians, so they had plucked their drinks out of mid-air.
“Well,” we thought, “this is going well.”
Martin and I had drinks the following day at Hotel Europa, an establishment shaped like a big wedge of cheese. It was near where we were staying, the Dominion, in Gas-town. These days Hotel Europa is a heritage building, and Gastown is “historic.” Even the Dominion is “historic.” When we stayed there, it was just one of many cheap hotels. We used to refer to its “rooms designed with the smoker in mind,” because the most prominent furnishing, beyond the bed and an ancient night table, was an ashtray. It was in these cheap hotel rooms that I began writing my novels. I performed a little trick Joe Hall had showed me, taking out the night table’s top drawer, overturning it, and shoving it partially back onto the runners so that it functioned as a crude desk. I would then take my typewriter out of its case and set it down. It was a sturdy machine rendered from gun metal, and looked as if it had been taken behind enemy lines many times by its former owner, an alcoholic war correspondent. I would bang on the keys quickly, desperately; I could almost hear bullets and buzz-bombs slicing through the air above me.
So Martin and I had drinks at the Hotel Europa, and we chatted for a while and discussed the travails of the Toronto Maple Leafs. (Which, as I’ve said, were much fewer back then.)
“Know what?” I asked. “I’ve had it.”
Martin nodded. “Me too.”
1
It’s difficult to find a four-string bass these days. They have at least five strings, sometimes six, and I am baffled by them. I was never much of a bass player anyway, forever unable to slap and pluck in a soulful, funky manner.
2
I knew you’d be looking down here. Kirby was a television co-host, mostly, back in the fifties and sixties. He was on
The Garry Moore Show
, and I believe he also sat beside Allen Funt on
Candid Camera
.
3
But we don’t care. We started a bar tab!
S
O THEN,” as I put it later in my song “Gotta Love a Train,” “my life had to happen.”
“ I’m talking about the part of my life that happened well away from music, years spent pretty happily banging away at the writer’s trade. I wrote novels, books of non-fiction. For a few years, my living was made mostly by writing screenplays— some of which were produced. If I’d been playing closer attention, it might have occurred to me that I was causing many fine actors to take up musical instruments. Bridget Fonda spent hours strumming a guitar, Jessica Tandy bowed a violin, Billy Dee Williams learned to play jazzy intervals on the piano. A young actor named Michael Mahonen became quite a fine trumpet player. What I’m getting at is, my thoughts were never all that far away from music, although I wrote no songs. I had plenty to occupy myself, I guess, what with my daughters, Carson and Flannery. I did make up a little ditty, “The Red Balloon,” which I sang to lull Carson off to sleep, until such time as she forbade me, with a great and petulant adamancy, from singing that song anymore.
It falls far outside the themes of this particular book, but I don’t think I’ll have another chance to tell the following story, so if you’ll indulge me: I was involved with a movie entitled
Camilla
, written by me (based on a story by my friend Alison Jennings) and directed by Deepa Mehta. One of the film’s stars was Hume Cronyn. Actually, the film didn’t exactly
star
Mr. Cronyn, he had a smaller part, so he spent most of the day in his trailer, and I used to visit. I was eager to hear stories about Tennessee Williams. (Cronyn had started a theatrical troupe in order to perform the one-acts of the then-unknown writer.) It was necessary for me to introduce myself every day. “Hello, I’m Paul, I’m the writer,” I would announce, and Hume would shake my hand and allow as it was nice to meet me.
Just prior to the first day of principal photography, when all the actors had gathered in Toronto, there was a “table read.” Everyone clustered around a big table with scripts in their hands, saying the words I’d written, and this particular big table was in a fancy hotel downtown. Anyway—I’ll switch to the historical present now, the tense of many a fine anecdote— I’m walking across the lobby when I spot Gordie Howe sitting on one of the sofas. Mr. Hockey, alone and unattended. I approach him to say hello, and we chat briefly. “I’m waiting for Beliveau,” he tells me. “We’re going to make a commercial together.” I am tempted to join Howe in his waiting for Beliveau, but I really should get upstairs for the table read, plus, I am a Maple Leafs fan, and Jean Beliveau is the Dark Overlord of the Montreal Canadiens–style iniquity. So I offer my copy of the shooting script and ask for an autograph. In a schoolboyish hand, he writes, “Best wishes, Gordon Howe.” I am tempted to ask him to have another bash at it. He is not “Gordon” Howe. But I am late, so I rush upstairs and see the table read is in progress. I wonder who might be interested in my new treasure, Gordon Howe’s autograph. I look at Bridget Fonda, wonder if she might be interested. Of course, I know she wouldn’t be, but I like looking at her. Likewise with Ms. Tandy, whose skin has a luminous quality, like oyster shell. I consider a couple of other actors. There is Elias Koteas, who is brilliant and therefore a wee bit scary. There is Maury Chaykin, who is a friend of mine, as he portrayed Desmond Howl in the film version of my novel
Whale Music.
But I do not think hockey is played on whatever planet Maury is from. So my eyes light on Hume Cronyn, and I think, “Hmm. He’s Canadian.” (Mr. Cronyn was born in London, Ontario. His father was a Member of Parliament and his mother was née Labatt, an heiress to the brewing fortune.) So I sidle in beside him, and at an appropriate pause in the proceedings (perhaps at a moment when everybody should be laughing at the witty dialogue, only nobody is), I shove the script and autograph toward him. He reads the inscription, and his eyebrows ascend his brow. “Hmm. Gordie Howe, eh?” Then the eyebrows descend quickly, with much consternation. “He’s not still playing, is he?”
All right—back to where I left off a few paragraphs above. In 1996, my wife gave me a CD entitled
Ten Easy Pieces
, songs written and performed by Jimmy Webb. I received it on Christmas morning, nodded appreciatively, and thanked Dorothy.
“I remember you said you liked that guy,” she said.
“Yeah, I do.”
I’d had another of Webb’s recordings—an LP, a flat plate in a cardboard cover, entitled
El Mirage
—years before. I’d enjoyed some of the songs, in particular “If You See Me Getting Smaller I’m Leaving” and the haunting “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.” But I think that album,
El Mirage
, appealed to me for two main reasons. One was the hauteur of the lyrics, which maintained a poetic opacity; when Webb was straightforward, I tended to skip the needle across the grooves. Also, the record was produced by George Martin, the elegant and refined Britishman who steered the Beatles to dizzying heights. George Martin is a great genius, although I’m not convinced it’s a good thing he ever existed. Bear with me here. Granted, Martin had done many fine things at EMI’s little Parlophone label—the label they used to release stuff they didn’t know what else to do with—such as guide Flanders and Swann (“At the Drop of a Hat”) and the lads from Beyond the Fringe (Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller, and Alan Bennett) to the outer reaches of fine comedy. Indeed, were it not for this penchant for humour, Martin might never have signed the Beatles. Listening to their audition tape, he declared their original songs “simply not good enough.” Then, being a tit-for-tat sort of fellow, he asked if there was anything about him
they
didn’t like. “Well, there’s your tie for a start,” came a comment delivered in a Liverpudlian accent. After that, everyone got along much better. But I sometimes wonder what would have happened had the Beatles been allowed to develop without guidance from a tweedy oboist. What I’m getting at is: can we be sure that Martin really enhanced what was startling and original about the Beatles? Isn’t there a chance he squashed some of that out of them? I’m certain he was fair and democratic in the studio. Still . . .
Nonetheless, that Sir George Martin was capable of great feats of musical thaumaturgy (the piccolo trumpet solo in “Penny Lane,” the Bernard Herrmann–inspired string arrangement for “Eleanor Rigby”) is not in doubt, and he performs them aplenty on Jimmy Webb’s
El Mirage
. My favourite moment occurs in “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress,” named for a story by science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein. Just before the line “I fell out of her eyes,” there is a huge gushing of melodic sentiment, as though Jimmy Webb can stand on the manhole cover of his emotions no longer, nope, the sewers are backing up.
Later that Christmas Day, stuffed with turkey and trimmings, I sat down in the kitchen and listened to my new CD. And I was gobsmacked.
Let me back away from that statement for just one moment to render a more sober-sided assessment of
Ten Easy Pieces
. The production was sparse and understated. For the most part, the recording features Webb playing the piano, singing in a particularly baleful way. Webb struggles with the high notes; often his purchase on the precise pitch is weak. But he sings with gusto, and his self-accompaniment is juicy, the chords creeping with clustered menace underneath his voice. The producer had seen fit to colour each track, perhaps adding a guest vocalist—Shawn Colvin, Marc Cohn, Michael McDonald—or some tiny bit of instrumentation. I checked the credits on the CD jewel box—fifteen years ago, I could still make out the occasional line of print—and saw with some surprise that the producer was Fred Mollin, one half—with Matthew McCauley—of the production team that had contributed to Dan Hill’s great success.
What most appealed to me about the album was something that had been missing in Webb previously, or something that I had had no eyes to see or ears to hear: his honesty. On
Ten Easy Pieces
, he presented an unflinching survey of his heart, as though it were a transparency projected at the front of a lecture hall, Webb standing there with a laser pointer, indicating all the lesions and swellings. “The Moon’s a Harsh Mistress,” in this version naked and unadorned, was no longer opaque, despite the high dudgeon and language. Other songs, clearly not autobiographical—“Wichita Lineman” is about, well, a telephone lineman in Kansas—were forthright and unflinching on other people’s behalfs. It struck me that many of the finest songs do this; they give voice to those who lack one.
LISTENING TO
Ten Easy Pieces
got me thinking, and something else fortuitous occurred around the same time. To tell you about it, I must revisit an event described earlier in this narrative, the Butterfield Band concert at the Rock Pile I attended as a teenager. You may recall I mentioned three older boys who were also at that concert, unbeknownst to me. Martin Worthy you know quite well by now, and Chas Elliott and Stuart Laughton are about to join us.
By this juncture in the story, the four of us were entrenched in adulthood. Firmly entrenched, in fact. The last vestiges of youth had long ago been torn away by mortgages and marriages. Chas and Stuart had become professional musicians, and as such, found themselves at some point on tour in—I believe—Spain. Spain or France or some such European place with beaches, and during a period of respite from their orchestral duties, the boys were wandering along a beach discussing blues music. Now, I have never understood why they were discussing the blues under such circumstances (said circumstances would have included, would they not, bared breasts?), but they were. Chas and Stuart were bemoaning the fact that they no longer played the blues, that there was no outlet for this proclivity. Orchestral bass players like nothing better than slapping away on a electric bass—which, if nothing else, is a lot less physical labour—and Stuart, in addition to his accomplishments on the trumpet, had taught himself to play the guitar (like Mike Bloomfield) and the harmonica (like the great Bunky Butterfield himself). The two decided they would get together and “jam,” a word I have put in poncey quotation marks so that I can discuss it for a little bit.
“Jamming” is what occurs when a bunch of musicians get together to play. It is not a rehearsal for an upcoming gig, and rarely is it a performance. (One could argue that most performances of jazz music are jam sessions, but, um, why not wait until I’m finished explaining before putting forth that argument?) In its truest sense, we’re discussing a one-off. The personnel are random, dictated by the Fates and the Muses acting in consort. There may be something resembling a standard line-up (bass, drums, keys, guitar), but nothing would prevent five tuba players from getting together to jam. (Nothing at the moment, that is; you might want to lobby your local Member of Parliament to see if he/she can’t introduce some sort of law.) Anyway, the line-up is assembled, or assembles itself, and then, usually, a song is played. Occasionally everyone just has at it. Purely improvised music does have a place in the world; it’s just that everyone hopes that place is far, far away from themselves. More often than not a song is suggested, so that the participants have a place to begin, a framework upon which to hang their ideas and inventions. Jazz musicians often look to the Great American Song Book, those classics that first saw the light of day on the Broadway stage or the Hollywood screen. “How about,” someone might suggest, “‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’?” And the others will nod, because the changes are well known. The song typically begins with a flat four minor seventh flattened fifth—oops, maybe the changes aren’t all that well known. They are, like those weird Beatles songs I could never figure out, sophisticated. (Now that I think of it, jazz ensembles often play Beatles tunes. Rarely do you hear them jamming on “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” although I’m sure it has happened.) My point is, it’s part of a jazz guy’s job to know changes, the chords to all the classics and standards and a few hundred esoteric tunes.