Muddy Waters — Sons And Fathers

by Bart Bull
published in Sounds,August, 1977(excerpt)

There isn’t anybody in the room that he doesn’t outweigh by 40 years. What album? somebody wants to know. Muddy rears back and shouts it —"Hard Again!” — his voice cuts through the cigarette smoke like an electric fan. One of the more truly drunken musicians wants to know if the title means what it says. Muddy rolls off another big laugh, a boomer. “Hell, I look like it, don’t I? Sometime it do and sometime it don’t!”

Another one of the acolytes crouching at his feet asks “You’re a grandfather now, right?”

“I’m a great-grandfather now. I got two great-grandchi’ren. I got one of my big grandsons here with me -- where is he? Six foot somethin’ . . . I got four grandchi’ren and two great grandchi’ren . . . and a young wife! Woooooooo-oooooooo! Gahdamn right! I got a young woman! “

Muddy’s rollin’ now. He’s got the whole room entranced. “See, my wife passed in ‘73 and I got a young woman! Gotta keep playin’, boy! ‘She got ways like a baby child! Sleep with her hand open, not her fist doubled up!' Yessir! Ahh, boy . . . so young she still have milk on her breath! At’s a young baby! And I like her, too! I run home every time I get a chance, I’m on my way. Three days there, and that seem like a month! Ready to play again!”

Muddy’s son, who serves as his father’s road manager, has been moving in and out of the room through all this. A slender, dapper little man, he stops to watch the last few moments of his father’s impromptu performance, then turns away. In the grand tradition of sons and fathers everywhere he’s a little embarassed by the old man and his hi-jinks.

Springsteen Cases the Promised Land

by Bart Bull
published in Sounds, 1975 (excerpt)

[Scene: Arizona State Fair, middle of the week, late]

Springsteen is brooding still, walking, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, only slowing his pace to look sideways at a big heifer. The heifer grunts as he goes by. Leaving the barn, a security guard lets them out a gate and they converge on the now-empty lot where the car is parked. Somebody put the homemade cardboard parking sign on the windshield. Miami Steve's discussion with the photographer is getting more and more, uhm, involved, and R.M. the road manager has gone over to supply reinforcements to Van Zandt, who's punctuating a very important point by prodding the photographer with his stuffed snake. The kid and Springsteen are standing off together, over to the side, and the the kid is saying something about a hype. "Like I said, I ODed on publicity," Springsteen mutters. "I mean, I like it, I like to talk to people about my music, but it's gettin' to be so much, ya know? I mean the only people who read what a writer's got to say is other writers."

But aren't you a writer?, the kid asks.

"Yeah, but what I'm doin' . . . it's like I'm here, and that's all you can say. I'm doin' what I want. I mean, all I ever wanted to do was make records, have a band like this . . . " His hands, which had been pulled out of his pockets to illustrate his intentions, get jammed back in, and he rocks back and forth on the heels of his boots. "I don't want all this other stuff, ya know?"

[More excerpts will appear until this story is complete and entire]