Some highlights from Backstage & Beyond Volume 1:
Jerry Lee Lewis threatened to kill me. I don’t flatter myself to think I’m unique in this regard.
I am on the phone with David Bowie in the summer of 1990 when I pose a question you’d think he would expect, so I am a bit surprised when he pauses and says, “Hmm ...” before formulating a response. But then, when he does answer, it is quite a discourse.
Lou Reed and I got on pretty well. Once, we had a phone interview scheduled at the same time as a televised New York-New England football game. We were both watching the game (him in New York, me in Massachusetts) and Lou, a New York Jets fan, rang up and suggested we do the yak at half-time. I’d been thinking the same thing but would never have broached it. But we did. He called promptly when the first-half clock went to 0:00, and we concluded 20 minutes later when the game resumed.
Nico didn't do many interviews. I'd called before a concert and asked if we could meet after the show. Hesitatingly, she consented. When I went backstage, however, I met a closed dressing room door and word that Nico was doing an interview and didn't want to be disturbed. When she emerged 20 minutes later, I introduced myself. An expression of alarm spread over her face. “You're Jim ... I thought ... he was!” she said, gesturing to her unknown interviewer. “Then who is he!?”
In 1989, Warren Zevon and I had lunch at Musso & Frank, the hip Hollywood eatery where he was a regular. We ordered beverages, a beer for me, a Diet Coke for him. After a beat or two, semi-alarmed, I blurted out, “Oh shit, I’m sorry. Should I not have done that?” You know, maybe it’s not good form to have an alcoholic drink in front of a recovering alcoholic. Zevon paused for a few moments. Not unusual: he often took time to process before responding. It could be unnerving if you didn’t know him well. He fixed me with a squinty, wry look. “Yeah, Jim,” he growled. “A decade of sobriety out the window because you’re having a beer.”
“It's like death in here,” said Ray Davies, inauspiciously welcoming me into his Minneapolis hotel room. The shades were drawn, no lights were on. Davies had been ill, running a temperature of 102 before the previous night's concert at the Metropolitan Sports Center. The interview had been scheduled and rescheduled several times. “I'm really not trying to avoid you.”
Ginger Baker was contractually obligated to do X amount of press to promote an upcoming Boston gig. I was one of those Xs. We had a half-hour blocked out. A painful half-hour for both of us, though I think his pain was more like indifference with a soupçon of annoyance, while mine was a churning pit-of-the-stomach feeling of failure to communicate.
Leonard Cohen: “I hasten to say that the fact that I had to break my gonads over it doesn't mean that it's good. The fact that it takes so long is no guarantee of excellence. It just happens to be the way I work. I'm not smirking about it. I don't feel reproachful toward people who have the very good luck and great genius to do it faster. Hank Williams could do it in 20 minutes and so can Bob Dylan. It just happens to take me a long time.”
Between sets by Larry Wallis at Dingwalls in 1985, I was at a pinball machine when I was chatted up by a leather-clad, mutton-chopped fella with a couple of prominent moles. He wanted to play, too, but was skint (apparently) and barked, “You got 10 pence?” Of course I did, offering a pocketful of coins I couldn’t readily identify. I knew Lemmy from various encounters in Boston, but I’m sure he had no idea who I was specifically, me showing up at his local in London. So, I reintroduced myself and we hung out together, drinking, laughing, pinballing and watching Wallis tear it up. One of the great nights of my life.