R.I.P. 2013

During the final two decades of her life, my mother’s favorite expression was “I’m glad I’m on my way out.” She would usually utter the remark after hearing of some horrific incident on the news. If it involved cruelty to animals, the more emphatically it was stated. I don’t know how long I have left to tread upon the earth, but if I reach the current life expectancy for males, I should be out of here in another two decades. That’ll be fine with me. I dread the day when drones deliver mail and possibly descend from the sky to snatch me away because Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), now in development by the Department of Homeland Security, suspects me of having “mal-intent.”

The very worst of science fiction is now coming to pass, and I was never a fan of the best.

What’s the deal with “downloading” music? I never liked the compact disc with its cold metallic shine and miniscule covers that all but killed album art, but I could at least hold the thing in my hand. These days, the movie I’m watching in a theater is on a disc or being downloaded from a satellite in space rather than printed on film and threaded through a 35mm projector. I don’t read literature on a Nook or Kindle, but so many people do that real books with paper pages will one day be as exotic as cursive writing which today’s students are not being taught.

I don’t like smart phones.

I don’t like the Kardashian sisters.

I don’t like Molly Cyrus.

I do not like Justin Bieber.

Most of what I’d miss in this world is already gone, so now my late mama’s favorite phrase has become my own: “I’m glad I’m on my way out.”

Some people I did like made their way out this year. I don’t know how they felt about life in the 21st century, but they made their mark in the 20th and left before the drones could get them.

Nelson Mandela died in 2013, and so did Margaret Thatcher. You can read about them in the history books, but not here. I am distrustful of all politicians and of what the media tells us about them. Mandela may have been as warm and cuddly as his obits claim, and Thatcher was instrumental in ending the Cold War, but neither brought me comfort, joy, or inspiration. Political figures rarely do.

Lou Reed was another matter. His voice - flat, whiny, and possessing no range whatsoever - would have gotten him booted from the first audition for American Idol, but his imperfections worked to his advantage. He was called the Godfather of Punk and a lot of other things, but like any great artist, labels just won’t do.

Reed came to prominence as the principle creative force in The Velvet Underground whose debut album in 1967 had that now iconic cover image of a banana by Andy Warhol. I first heard it when I was 15 or so, and my ears, initially appalled by the screeching guitars and coarse sound, grew to love it.

His voice was frequently drained of all enthusiasm. When he sang, "And me, I just don't care at all" in "Men of Good Fortune" from 1973’s Berlin, you did not doubt his sincerity. As Stephen Holden wrote in Rolling Stone, "It is a voice so incapable of bullshit that it makes even an artsy arrangement work by turning the whole thing into a joyous travesty." Listen to “Sad Song,” the epic finale of Berlin, in which his cynical vocal and hard-bitten lyrics (“Somebody else would have broken both of her arms”) prevent the strings and synthesizers from turning it into the inspirational “You’ll Never Walk Alone” moment that Reed seems to be mocking.

Reed also wrote some more traditional ballads. “Perfect Day” was even covered by Susan Boyle who may not have heard that the lover who made Reed “feel like someone else, someone good” was rumored to be heroin. That sounds as credible as the hypothesis that “Mother Mary” in the Beatles’ “Let It Be” was really marijuana. I don’t believe it, but to each his own.

George Jones was described by critic Jon Pareles as “the definitive country singer of the last half century.” The late Waylon Jennings was speaking for all country singers when he said, “If we could all sound like we wanted to, we’d all sound like George Jones.” To Leonard Cohen, the man nicknamed the Possum had “the best voice in America.” What accounted for such praise? Jones attributed it to “being myself and singing from the heart.”

Peter O' Toole got his break playing Lawrence of Arabia to perfection in David Lean’s 1962 epic. He never quite equaled that achievement, but who could? That illustrious credit more than compensated for What’s New, Pussycat, Man of La Mancha, and Caligula, the kind of movies he might have been anticipating in 1963 when he told Gay Talese, “Oh, it’s painful seeing it all there on the screen, solidified, embalmed.” Thankfully, there’s also The Lion in Winter, The Ruling Class, The Stuntman, My Favorite Year, and a couple of well-written memoirs.

When making something called The Delinquents, Tom Laughlin was directed by Robert Altman who called him “an unbelievable pain in the ass.” He wasn’t much of an actor. He wasn’t much of a director either, but, like Altman, he was a true maverick. No survey of 1970’s cinema could ignore Billy Jack, the 1971 film he co-wrote, directed and starred in. Unhappy with the way that Warner Bros. dumped it into theaters he sued to regain control of its distribution. Re-released in 1973, it was a box-office sensation that helped propel an interest in martial arts and gave a boost to TV’s Kung Fu and all those Bruce Lee movies that filled screens in the same decade. Billy Jack was full of New Age style hippie philosophizing and characters who expressed a desire for peace, but one could argue that it did not practice what it preached. The real draw for its mostly teenaged audience were those moments when Billy Jack frowned and thoughtfully stroked his chin before exploding in a rage, his foot violently striking someone’s face or crotch. Roger Ebert felt that the film’s message was that “a gun is better than a constitution in the enforcement of justice.”

Ebert and I once exchanged a series of emails about a negative review of his Movie Home Companion that I posted at Amazon.com. It all ended amicably, and I wish I still had our correspondence. As film critic for The Chicago Sun-Times, he won a Pulitzer Prize while moonlighting as the screenwriter for Russ Meyers’ bosom-heavy adult films. In the late ‘70s, he was partnered with Gene Siskel, his rival at The Chicago Tribune, to debate the current movies on a local public TV station. Once Sneak Previews moved to PBS, the pair became household names and soon moved on to the more lucrative field of syndication. They may have been discussing movies, but their debates sometimes got personal and nasty. Once Siskel passed on in 1999, the show never regained that original spark, and it struggled with a variety of co-hosts until illness forced Ebert to relinquish his seat in the balcony and limit his reviews to print.

Jean Stapleton was Edith, the heart and soul of the Bunker clan on TV’s All in the Family. When Norman Lear’s landmark sitcom premiered on CBS in January 1971, it was a bust in the ratings. By the time repeats began airing in summer, it was the talk of the country and the number one show on television. In that pre-VCR and TiVo era, some 60 million people stayed home on Saturday nights to watch Archie chomp on his cigar and clash with his liberal minded daughter and son-in-law on women, gays, guns, and, in my favorite episode, a couple of refrigerator repairmen. To Archie, his wife was a “Dingbat,” but Edith was the only member of that family who could think clearly without prejudice (Archie) or pomposity (Mike, the college educated “Meathead”). Edith’s kindness and compassion made her appear naïve, but she was wiser than both of them combined.

Dynamation, the stop-motion animation technique employed by Ray Harryhausen, reaped more impressive results than the computer generated effects of today. Those sword-brandishing skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts had real personality, often more than the flesh and blood actors that populated his films. Harryhausen jokingly agreed during a night in his honor at the Cleveland Cinematheque in 1993 where he autographed my lobby card from the film and I shook his gifted hand.

“When she’s by herself, Julie’s almost transparent, almost nonexistent,” playwright John van Druten said of Julie Harris. He might just as well have called her a ghost. In 1963’s The Haunting, Harris was surrounded by poltergeists, but you have to wonder whether the title referred to them or to the sensitive Eleanor whom Harris vividly brought to life. In addition to starring in what may be the most frightening movie ever made, Harris was a legend of the stage who reprised her first Broadway triumph, that of the lonely tomboy in Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding, in her 1952 film debut.

I was never a fan of Annette Funicello, but like Popeye, dungarees, and Keds, she was part of the landscape of my childhood. I remember the ads for her movies better than the actual films, only one of which I ventured into a theater to see. What I remember most about 1963’s Beach Party was Vincent Price’s brief appearance at the end to plug The Haunted Palace, one of American International’s less memorable horror movies. Two of the best, House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum, were written by Richard Matheson who also passed on in 2013.

In later years, Matheson expressed disapproval of the genre for which he was best-known. “I think that when people are exposed to it, it gets in their brain and stays there,” he told William P. Simmons. “I think it roots itself in their psyches.” That was certainly true of “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” Matheson’s classic Twilight Zone in which William Shatner’s nervous airline passenger has an unforgettable encounter with a gremlin. Some other Matheson stories to root themselves in the psyches of all who saw them were 1971’s Duel, the “Movie of the Week” that put Steven Spielberg on the map, and 1972’s The Night Stalker with Darren McGavin as a reporter on the trail of a vampire in modern day Las Vegas.

Elmore Leonard was the modern king of crime fiction. Before writing bestsellers like Get Shorty, Freaky Deaky, and Killshot, he penned dozens of westerns, many of them adapted to film including 3:10 to Yuma (Glenn Ford and later Russell Crowe), Hombre (Paul Newman), Hondo (John Wayne), Valdez Is Coming (Burt Lancaster), and Joe Kidd (Clint Eastwood). One of Leonard’s 10 Rules for Writing was to “leave out the parts that readers tend to skip.” His spare style was born of practicality. “When you write to make the rent or send your kids to school,” he told NPR, “you learn how to write without a lot of nonsense.”

And . . . Dennis Farina, the hat wearing detective on Crime Story, one of the few bright lights of 1980’s prime-time; Ed Lauter was a dependable villain in scores of movies, including Hitchcock’s last, Family Plot; Jonathan Winters inspired Robin Williams, but was funnier and never got on my nerves; David Frost was rather smarmy on the talk show he hosted in the early ‘70s, but he toughened up for his one-on-one with big, bad Richard Nixon in 1977; Eydie Gorme and her surviving husband, Steve Lawrence, were unavoidable on TV in the days when Johnny Carson hosted The Tonight Show; Marcia Wallace was the snippy receptionist to Bob Newhart’s befuddled psychologist on his popular ‘70’s sitcom; Steve Forrest played Elvis’ big brother in Flaming Star; Joan Fontaine won an Oscar for Hitchcock’s Suspicion, but was even better in his Rebecca; Bonnie Franklin was a sexy single mother to two teenage daughters on One Day at a Time; Conrad Bain’s biggest success was in the hideously awful Different Strokes, one of Norman Lear’s worst sitcoms, but he was also Arthur, a nemesis for Beatrice Arthur’s Maude, on one of the best; Karen Black was in a lot of movies in the ‘70s, the best of which was Five Easy Pieces with Jack Nicholson; Dale Robertson was made for westerns like TV’s Tales of Wells Fargo; John Kerr was the sensitive youth in the movie version of Tea and Sympathy, but I’ll remember how he was nearly sliced in half in The Pit and the Pendulum; Directors Michael Winner and Hal Needham were to Charles Bronson and Burt Reynolds, respectively, what John Ford and John Huston had been to John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart decades earlier; Colin Wilson wrote The Outsider, a fascinating study of art and existentialism; and Patti Page topped the charts in the pre-rock ‘n’ roll era.

I never read The Hunt for Red October or watched The Sopranos or saw those Fast and Furious movies, but adios to author Tom Clancy and actors James Gandolfini and Paul Walker.

Rest in peace, and congratulations to all. The grave got you before the drones.

Brian W. Fairbanks
December 23, 2013

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Music for a Desert Island

A cynic is nothing but a bruised romantic. I remember Kris Kristofferson making that observation once, but it sounds like the kind of remark quoted without attribution by those attempting to sound wise.

But I digress.

I am a cynic, as cynical as they come, yet I must be a romantic, bruised beyond healing but a romantic nonetheless. It is why of the ten tracks on the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers album, I listen only to “Wild Horses,” the most gorgeous of the rock and roll band’s many ballads (and there are many lovely Stones ballads, including “As Tears Go By” and “Ruby Tuesday”). “Wild Horses” is not mentioned in Nick Tosches’ essay (cumbersomely titled “The Sea’s Endless, Awful Rhythm, and Me Without Even a Dirty Picture”) in which he considers the album he would take with him to a desert island. Tosches picks Sticky Fingers, but admits he is bothered by the “dullness of my choice.”

Tosches’ musings inspired some musings of my own. Of course, the question was always hypothetical, and in the age of so many high-tech gizmos, it’s downright silly. Why take an album when you can fit a dozen or more on an MP3 player or some other device? How the hell would I end up on a desert island, anyway? The question is still fun to ponder.

I wouldn’t take Sticky Fingers no matter how much I love “Wild Horses,” and I wouldn’t take anything else by the Rolling Stones. I like them, but I don’t love them. Therefore, I’ll leave them.

Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack to Once Upon a Time in the West may very well be the disc that I listen to the most, at least at the time that I’m writing this, and its melancholic mood would be an appropriate companion for my own melancholy. But except for the whistling in the “Cheyenne” theme and that operatic ooohing on the title track, there are no human voices to be heard on Morricone’s masterpiece. Misanthropic though I am, I would probably want to hear a human voice.

Of all the great film composers, Morricone’s only competition for my admiration is the late John Barry whose scores for the early (I prefer to say “classic”) James Bond films have been imitated but never duplicated or improved upon by 007’s composers in the Pierce Brosnan/Daniel Craig era. You Only Live Twice and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service are Barry’s masterpieces. Still, even something as haunting and evocative as the latter’s “Journey to Blofeld’s Hideaway” is still James Bond music, and not really appropriate for the solitary journey on which I am embarking.

The score for Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon was adapted by the late Leonard Rosenman who won an Oscar for his efforts, but except for a few tracks by the Chieftans, the music is the work of Handel, Mozart, and other long embalmed classical composers. It’s as magnificent as the film itself, but, again, it’s purely instrumental. I would want to hear a voice. I would want to hear some words.

Would I want to listen to Christmas music? I doubt it, but the Rotary Connection’s Peace would be the album I’d take even if it doesn’t include a version of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” my favorite Christmas carol.

Gospel music? Something by the Clark Sisters might make the grade. The members of the Rotary Connection were black, and the Clark Sisters are black women, so their inclusion, though not an intentional nod to political correctness, prevents this list from being exclusively white and male.

Getting back to the white guys . . .

I’ve always loved Elvis, and of his many albums my favorite is his second RCA Victor release, the rather unimaginatively titled Elvis. Other than “Love Me” (“Treat me like a fool, treat me mean and cruel”), it doesn’t include any of his famous hits, but this eclectic mix of rock and country is my choice as his best collection. “How Do You Think I Feel” and “How’s the World Treating You?” are exquisitely performed country ballads, and on the other side (you remember album sides, don’t you?), the King rocks at his 1950’s best with a version of “Long Tall Sally” that sounds like it was recorded on a sweltering night in Hell.

There was a time in the mid-1970s when I, like many others, was a fan of Elton John. I remember he once described “pop” music, including his own, as “disposable.” Wading through his album catalog, I’d have to agree. His best album remains his first U.S. release from 1970. The somber cover photograph captures the mood of the music which, for Elton, is uncharacteristically downbeat. There’s a classical atmosphere throughout with the harpsichord-dominated “I Need You to Turn To” and the cinematic “First Episode at Hienten” the highlights. With each progressive album, John’s music became lighter just as his persona changed from serious singer/songwriter to glitter-drenched clown.

Another glitter queen was David Bowie whose albums from 1971-1980 are among my favorites, but the best, 1977’s Low, might wear out its welcome on a desert island. It has a distinctly chilly, even cold atmosphere, perfect for hearing on a bleak winter’s day, but like a bleak winter’s day, its cumulative effect is depressing. Lou Reed’s 1973 album, Berlin, is the best thing that the Godfather of Punk has ever done and I rank it as the greatest concept album ever, but its songs detailing a dysfunctional love affair are even bleaker than Bowie’s album and might make me want to drown myself.

Who doesn’t like the Beatles?

Well, Nick Tosches, the man who inspired these musings, claims to be immune to their charms (“with those silly little suits and silly little haircuts and silly little songs”), but he’s as rare in that respect as he is in many others. Despite recording for only seven years (their first British album, With the Beatles, was released in 1963, and though Let It Be hit the shelves in 1970, it was recorded before 1969’s Abbey Road), the Fab Four’s output is unrivaled for its diversity. It’s hard to believe the group that recorded “Tomorrow Never Knows” in 1966 had been singing “She Loves You” only three years earlier. Choosing a best from their discography is a daunting task.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is generally regarded as the Beatles’ masterpiece, but there are plenty of listeners who would reserve that honor for Revolver or Abbey Road, or the two-disc set from 1968 that everyone, even Paul McCartney, calls The White Album (but whose official title is The Beatles). Certainly, no other album in history, by the Beatles or anyone else, was an event the way that Sgt. Pepper was, but as a collection of songs it falls short in my opinion to the American version of 1965’s Rubber Soul (which replaced some of the UK version’s tracks and added some others). But Rubber Soul is altogether too upbeat for a solitary desert island experience. Sgt. Pepper has its share of good vibrations (“With a Little Help from My Friends,” “Lovely Rita”), but you know that it ends in despair. “A Day in the Life,” the album’s brilliant climax, though my single favorite Beatles recording, casts a gloomy pall over the proceedings. I’m a serious guy, but “A Day in the Life” is somewhat sinister, eerie, and, when heard in the dark at a high volume, even a little frightening.

If the Beatles are out, that leaves Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, lone men with guitars which automatically increases their appeal to me, a loner who shuns groups and prefers to go his own way.

I maintain that 1966’s Blonde on Blonde, rock music’s first two-record set, is Dylan’s greatest album, but other than “I Want You,” I don’t really listen to it all that much. I prefer 1976’s Desire with Scarlet Rivera’s somber violin and those duets with Emmylou Harris, especially the long ballad about Joey Gallo that moves me in spite of the fact that I know the song is one of the most dishonest that Dylan ever wrote (in collaboration with Jacques Levy). I probably listen to 1981’s Shot of Love even more, but of its 10 songs, only the hymn-like “Every Grain of Sand” seems to possess desert island durability.

Like Dylan, Leonard Cohen originally reached listeners through other artists. Judy Collins was the first singer of note to record his songs, but no one ever covered Cohen as superbly as Jennifer Warnes whose 1986 album, Famous Blue Raincoat: The Songs of Leonard Cohen, is the only collection of Cohen covers equal to the man’s own discography.

Cohen was once described as “the poet laureate of pessimism” whose songs were “music to slit your wrists by.” His third album, 1971’s Songs of Love and Hate, is as dark and gloomy as it gets, but songs like “Avalanche” and “Joan of Arc,” though ineffably sad, have a comforting quality, as does most of Cohen’s work. I love it, but I think I would take Cohen Live, his 1993 concert album. Cohen’s voice may be the most human of all. This is a man who understands all there is to know about heartbreak and solitude, and communicates his knowledge better than anyone ever has. “Sisters of Mercy,” the live version (not the callow-voiced studio cut from 1967), could help me survive innumerable lonely nights, and “Suzanne,” with its lyrics about “Jesus was a sailor,” would be perfect when surrounded by a vast body of water.

Leonard Cohen’s Cohen Live it would be.

© 2013 Brian W. Fairbanks

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