Springsteen Cases The Promised Land (Part One)

by Bart Bull (published in Sounds, 1975)

It's Wednesday,  no show tonight, and Bruce and his guitar player, a guy called Miami Steve Van Zandt, and another guy, remarkably and conveniently named R.M, who turns out to be road manager for something called Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, are all wandering around the Arizona State Fair, looking for something to do in Phoenix F. Arizona on their night off. Bruce was more than a little disappointed at only getting two encores at last night's show, and now . . . now there's this Hollywood business. It's getting to be a real drag. 

 "They got me going to California on Thursday after the show," he's grumbling, "to talk to some guy."    It sounds especially ominous the way he delivers it. " . . . some guy . . . " And then, even worse, to actually have to talk to him. Striding down the midway with his tough guy punk walk, the tough punk walk that fits him right in with every other tough guy punk who's cruising past the corn-dogs, sauntering beyond the all the flashing bulbs on all the Tilt-A-Whirls and the Swedish Bobsleds and the Haunted Houses of Horror, and Bruce is mostly and mainly distinguished by his distracted thoughtful look, and by the fact that there's a red-headed photographer scrambling over all kinds of obstacles to grab just the exact right perfect shot off this one particular tough-walking punk at the State Fair. 

 It's real late on a real slow week-night in those last final days when the State Fair has pretty much shot its wad (they've got to be losing money just by being open) and the carneys aren't hustling like they would if there was anything that vaguely resembled a crowd. It's empty, pretty much, and pretty much dead. Besides, Springsteen and R.M. and Miami Steve (Bruce never calls him Steve, and never even just shorthands it down to "Miami," it's always "MYYY-AMI-STE-Eee-EVE!") are spectacularly easy marks. You'd never guess they grew up within stumbling distance of the Asbury Park, New Jersey boardwalk. Matter of fact, Miami Steve even falls for that one where you try to toss ping-pong balls into glass ashtrays, with the ashtrays floating and spinning as they swirl around a blue-green plastic wading pool. A genuine sucker's shot, one that nobody ever wins, nobody ever, except maybe that long and lean lantern-jawed cowboy over there, the one with larceny in mind, that Cottonwood cowpoke who's looking surreptitiously side to side, waiting ultra-obviously until the carneys allegedly aren't looking — because, you know, they've never ever had any local Wednesday night cowboy attempt to put one over one 'em before — and then, leaning way, way, wa-a-ay over, and ever . . . so . . . gently . . . and — Da-amn! But eventually he somehow finally manages to actually slip one in, and then the carneys grab up a big giant stuffed St. Bernard and toss it back and forth among themselves, semi-bored, chanting "Anothah winnah! Anoth-ah win-nah!!" and big Tex is grinning his jaw so hard it looks like he actually believes he won a stuffed dog on the up-and-up square and so, to properly focus her attentions, he keeps a steady pumping motion of his elbow right directly into his cowgirl companion's ribs all the while.

Miami Steve catches all the hoopla and decides, the perfect victim of the shill, that this has got to be his game. He plunks down his buck, gets his dozen ping-pong balls and commences tossing. The astonishing experience of watching ball after ball hit dead center and then bounce blithely right back out again begins to get to him, so he sort of sidles over to the blond kid in the ponytail and gets him to secretly slip him some of the balls that have rolled under the counter. It's a ploy that nets him maybe a couple of extra balls, but to no avail whatsoever.  He strikes out. Daunted but entirely undaunted, only just slightly dejected, he rushes and hustles to catch up with Bruce over at the video machines. The two of them start out with a duck hunting game, then they move over to "Anti-Aircraft," shooting down fighter planes as they jet across the screen to the sound of engines roaring and calamitous explosions. "We got it! This is our machine," chortles Miami Steve, a winner at last, yanking at his artillery controls. "This is our machine, Boss!" The Boss is leaning back grim-lipped and silent, trying to gun down the jet that just shot past Miami Steve. The game trailer attendant is eyeballing them impatiently —as soon as their last plane goes down with a sputtering spluttering buzz, he reaches up to lower the trailer's siding, which has been propped up to create a roof. Bruce and Miami Steve are searching their pockets for more quarters, entirely oblivious, but when the carney starts to lower the siding right down on top of them, Miami Steve stage-whispers, "I think they're trying to give us a message..." 

 Looking for a way out, winding around the fairgrounds, they break into two bunches. Miami Steve and the redheaded photographer are profoundly engaged in a philosophical discussion at a volume level right on the borderline between debate and armed combat. Springsteen, R.M., and the blond kid are lagging. "I kinda O.D.'ed on interviews," Springsteen says, scuffing his boot at an empty popcorn box. Within the week, he'll be on the cover of both Time and Newsweek simultaneously. "Everybody wants to spend all their time talkin' about what we're doin'.  All I want to do is do it, but it's gettin' harder and harder." His speaking voice is surprisingly identical to the pained Brando-esque voice on his recordings. It would sound affected if it didn't come so easily. Maybe it was an affectation back in some dim and obscure adolescence, when some skinny kid first tried it on in front of his friends, like a too-new leather jacket, unworn, unstained, with not a rip or a scratch. Now, nicely broken-in, nothing could fit more naturally. 

Both the two small groups pass by the flag-draped stage only just vacated by "Poncie Ponce — TV's Favorite Hawaiian cabdriver!" and "his Royal Hawaiian Revue." (Poncie Ponce was once a sort of sub-sidekick on "Surfside Six;" with a billing like that, you can't help but wonder who works out to be TV's least favorite Hawaiian cabdriver.) Outside the Exhibition Hall, where prize cattle and sheep are settling in for the night, there is a wooden box, painted as if to resemble an old fashioned red barn, but with a glass showcase in front. On the other side of the glass resides a chicken, a white hen who will, if a dime is shoved into the slot, begin to tap-dance. 

Miami Steve sees the sign over the miniature barn, "Dancing Chicken," and hollers back over his shoulder to Springsteen: "Hey, here's one of them chickens!" There is a metal floor beneath the bird, and when the dime drops, electricity is conducted, and the chicken hops and skips and jumps and does its best to keep from touching the hot-wired floor it must necessarily touch. And it dances.  

Springsteen swings his hands-in-pocket shuffling to steer by the chicken's cage, staring in silently. Concerned, perhaps, or maybe just reconciled, the bird stares back. No wisdom is exchanged. "Those poor chickens. In Jersey, it's against the law to do that." This, however, is Arizona; not every state is so enlightened. He jams his hands into his pockets even more fiercely, then begins to mumble to himself. Looking up at R.M., he says, "I don't think I wanna go. Mike keeps tellin' me I gotta go, but I'll just get on some plane and go there and meet this guy and then get back on some other plane. I don't think I'm gonna go." His boot heels are dragging hard against the fairgrounds. The chicken is still staring as he goes. Maybe it's waiting for the next dime to drop. "Okay with me," says R.M. "You're the Boss." (follow this link for more)

Aphorism Number Fourteen; (One of a Series; Collect 'em All

There's one universal, undeniable truth: We're all going out the same door.

Tracey Ullman: Just Being Herselves

by Bart Bull
(published in Vogue)

To get to Tracey Ullman's closet, you need to go through the bathroom. You don't really need to go through there, but she wants you to; it makes for a more colorful tour. The color is purplish, in fact, or lilac, sort of, or actually a turbo-charged neon mauve. "The man who lived here before was a Czechoslovakian plastic surgeon," she says, delivering the next line in the cigar-chewing gurgle of an elderly Las Vegas lounge comic, complete with perfectly-timed pause for the drummer's rim shot: "And if he does this to his house, what does he do to your body?" Ullman plans to have his remarkable upholstered toilet seat enshrined in a clear Lucite case and mounted on the wall.

She has fewer shoes than Imelda Marcos but they make a far more interesting mess at the bottom of her closet. She's down there now, flinging out Tony Lama cowboy boots and alarming French wedgies with rock star photo patches sewn to the heels and then this . . . this fairly restrained bustier. "Every girl has one of these Madonna bodice-type tops, these slaggy Stevie Nicks-type things. Though they look terribly sad on someone like me, who breast-fed a nine pound infant." She sweeps an unmatched pair of her daughter Mabel's Barbie dolls off the dressing table to clear more room and discovers a complicated sweater by her idol, her all-time absolute favorite, Jean Paul Gaultier. "My friend last night said it falls into every cardigan category. He said, 'You like it because you're not wearing one cardigan, you're wearing every cardigan.' But I do love it, because you wear it and people get frightened."

When it comes to Gaultier, it's impossible for her to keep from rhapsodizing, and she readily admits it. "He's the king for me. I just think he's brilliant, I really do. He still has an element of street about him as well. I went to his shop in Paris last summer — I'd never done any shopping in Paris until last year. I told my husband, 'Go bog off — I'm going shopping in Paris.' First time I'd ever had the money, I'm in Paris, and it was a truly debilitating experience. They were so rude to me. [Smarmy French accent, wreathed in Gauloise smoke]: 'What do you want, stupid British girl?'

"They were so rude — the only people who were nice were a couple of Japanese people who had just opened a shop and were desperate to sell gear. It was horrible. At one boutique, they practically spat at me. Until I got my Platinum American Express card out and said, 'Look! Look!'" She laughs uproariously at the sheer folly of it. "They didn't give a damn.

"It wasn't good fun at all shopping there. Then again, in Beverly Hills, the people who work for the top places are all like [pursed lips, dysfunctional adenoids]: 'Millie, seventy-two, I've worked in sales a long, long time . . . Oh, this is just beau-ti-ful! The colors this season are so gwargeous!'"

"Here's a bit of Christian Lacroix," and she yanks free a finely detailed glass-beaded top. "Had a skirt that went with it — it's here somewhere. I wore this to an awards show and the zipper burst as I went onstage.

"I love clothes," she declares from deep inside the closet, where the hangers are all clumped together. "I love fashion. I used to work in shops on the King's Road when I was sixteen. I was always one who saved up weeks for a decent skirt." Her head is buried deep in the closet again. "And always somewhere I have a leather miniskirt. I just bought another one, and I know it will be the last one of my life, 'cause I know I'm getting too ridiculously old to wear leather miniskirts. I put it on and I do look a bit tragic.

"I mean, I don't even keep my clothes in a very nice state or anything. I'm like a magpie; I'll wear anything unusual or bright. But when yousee these Beverly Hills women who pay twelve thousand dollars and they're sitting at one of those functions with their big freckly armpits hanging over the edge of their bustier— I'd like to bring Christian Lacroix to a Beverly Hills function. 'Don't look now, Christian, but there's a fat tart in one of your frocks.' 'Merde! '

"The Japanese gear, I haven't really gotten into that — the black, baggy, shapeless trousers with the big sort of platform shoes. I mean, some people spend like four thousand dollars they look like a bag of spanners. So they have to keep reminding you who designed it. [Voice of a schlumpf]: 'Djya like the jacket? It's by, uh, Matsudo, ya know?'"

She's back in the closet. "This is the first piece of Gaultier I ever bought," she says, cradling a charcoal shirt in both hands. [Elaborate stage whisper] "Cost me three hundred pounds. I couldn't believe i had a Gaultier shirt. It was like a dream. Always looked a bit strange on me, though.

"Here's my Tracey Ullman Show jacket." It's a perfect example of what fashionable Hollywood cameramen can be seen wearing in supermarkets. "Can you imagine if I wore that? [Dopey TV star]: 'Hey, that's ME! It's MY SHOW!'"

Her own closets revealed, Ullman can't resist invading her husband's. "these are the suits he buys now he's got a bit of money. These over here are the ones he used to buy off the back of the lorry. All men in England have to buy stolen suits. They can't bear to pay the retail price. And these" — she laughs even as she touches them — are his trendy shirts."

Mabel's closets are next. Ullman sweeps up a blue wool coat with wooden toggle buttons down the front. "I love this, her little Paddington Bear coat — so very British. She wore it once and threw up all down the front. You can still smell the vomit on it." She acquires a thoughtful, puzzled look. "So hard to remove the smell from designer wear, you know."

Aphorism Number Fifteen; (one of a series; collect 'em all)

Love the sinner; like the sin.
—Bart Bull

Nina Hagen — That kooky krautzer babe with the New Wave hooker wardrobe cranks up your chakras

by Bart Bull
(Published in SPIN)

You only get one guess who Nina Hagen's favorite star is. This is her loft (if the pot on the stove is any indication, we're all going to be having boiled potatoes a little later), and the walls are covered with souvenirs from the brilliant international career of someone truly special to Nina. You know — posters and photos and paintings of the really special people, icons of inspirational heroes, photos of lovers near the bed, pictures of dear friends taped to the refrigerator next to the kids' current fingerpainting triumphs. And here at Nina's place – her space – right in the heart of downtown Los Angeles' struggling but brave post-industrial art-loft district, the walls are plastered with posters and paintings and photos of Nina Hagen.

Here's a poster from a concert last summer in Germany – Nina as a pink-haired Jayne Mansfield in bazooming flashbulb ecstasy, from the cover of her latest album, Nina Hagen in Ekstasy. Up by the stairway is one from another show a few years back — Nina as Batgirl, pointed ears and all. Over there, an earlier shot, from the cover of her first American record — Nina in a black leather jacket with "Mein Kampf" stenciled over the pocket, a gilded coronet atop her head, and her lips painted into the elaborate exaggerated cupid's-bow kissyface of a Hamburg whore.

Up there, near where she's sitting meditating, the cover of her 1983 album Fearless is pinned — Nina hieroglyphing her limbs in danceclub semaphores, a gold tinsel Cleopatra wig, a black bra set strikingly against skin white and pasty enough to do the Pillsbury Doughboy proud, with a couple of graphic-arts arrows aimed at her image just so nobody misses the point. The other side of the album shows her as an ectoplasmic TV vision — Botticelli's Venus with bad reception — being sucked up into a flying saucer, but the biggest picture of Nina Hagen in the whole joint is a six-by-six-foot painting modeled after the cover of her Nunsexmonkrock album. It may be the single most restrained picture on any of her records, or on any of her walls. It may well be the most restrained Nina Hagen picture in existence. No startled eyebrows akimbo, no Little Egypt eyeliner, no Catwoman cape'n'cowl ensemble, no Mata Hari harem pants, no stiletto heels — just a humble woman in a Virgin Mary veil, her lips a little less bee-stung than usual, her look calm and placid, her baby Cosma Shiva in her arms. Madonna (not that one) und child. Except that in the painting's version of the record cover, Cosma Shiva is no longer the sweetly bewildered babe in arms with a built-on halo. Instead, the artist has transformed the swaddled infant into a maniacal Mad magazine cartoon baby with bulging eyeballs and dangerous grinning teeth. Halo's still there though.

Nina doesn't want anyone shooting photos of Cosma Shiva — it's OK if they take pictures of Nina herself up on the meditation pad but she's — Wait! Hold it! We're all going outside, all of us, up to the roof. All 25 or 30 of us, we're going to file through the kitchen, past the potatoes, up the stairs and out onto the rooftop. But she wants us all to be careful going out there, because we're each going to have to scrunch past the building's main electrical panel box to get out the door to the roof and she'd hate to have any of her flock get sent heavenward with a crisp crackle and a slender puff of smoke, hapless insects gotcha-ed by a bug-zapper. "There is this force," she explains, queen bee addressing a small troop of dim but willing drones, "EEE-lek-TRRI-I-I-zity! Do not touch it! So don't die and be very concentrating when you are crossing the exit of that roof." She'll join us there once she's checked the potatoes.

The Finish Line; The Death of Ascot Park Raceway

by Bart Bull

(published in Details)

Ever since the hot rodders of the 1930s began raising dust on the dry lakes of the Mojave Desert, Southern California has been the place where motors and Manifest Destiny meet. Ever since Clark Gable commissioned a custom rod that could smoke Gary Cooper's damn Duesenberg, ever since Big Daddy Roth and George Barris and Darryl Starbird created blown-and-injected objets d'art, ever since Mickey Thompson invented the slingshot dragster, Southern California has been home to more rodding and racing than anywhere else. And through it all, Ascot Park, a half-mile oval near Long Beach, has been the hub of dirt-track racing for the entire Southwest.

In the last few years, insurance costs have killed off most of the drag strips and soaring land values have finished off the speedways. When the sprint-car season ends this fall, and when the last trophy dash winner flings the final mud clod through the chicken wire into the grandstand as he power-drifts through Turn Four, it won't be just the usual acrid smell of racing fuel that makes race fans wipe their eyes. Ascot Park is going condo. Gentlemen, stop your engines.

The World Beyond Barbie; New York's Toy Fair

By Bart Bull
From the Washington Post

NEW YORK—It’s only appropriate and ever-so-cute that the little darlings from “Children’s Express” will ask the first official question to be entertained at the opening press conference of the 1987 American International Toy Fair. “Children’s Express” is that TV show where kids hold microphones in front of a video camera and ask questions just as dopey as real reporters’ questions, and little Albert Lin stands right up and asks, "What’s the current trend in war toys?”

Since his company manufactures GI Joe ("A Real American Hero"), Alan Hassenfeld of Hasbro is selected to handle this hot potato. (Hasbro also produces Mr. Potato Head, incidentally, and in the wake of the Cabbage Patch proliferation, Potato Head Kids.) “We do not consider GI Joe a war toy,” Hassenfeld announced. “GI Joe as a product has been a defender of peace.” Since he is, after all, impersonating a TV news person, Albert doesn’t bother to question this, or even burst into hearty guffaws.

Besides, toys are too big not to be taken seriously. The stats stack up like so many cubic tons of Silly Putty. Nearly 450 million Barbie dolls have been sold since 1959. The toy industry produces more than 150 million cars per year. Thirty-five million Cabbage Patch adoption papers have been signed since June 1983. If all the Golden Classic dominoes sold in 1984 were laid end to end, it would take nearly seven hours to drive by them at 55 mph. If the 6 billion Lego bricks produced each year were snapped end to end (the publicity handouts never mention how many billions of man-hours all of this laying and snapping is going to take), they would stretch around the Earth almost five times. More than I billion feet of Golden Books Video has been sold since 1985, equaling 50,000 full-length film versions of ‘Gone With the Wind.” Put together all the rolling stock Lionel produces in one year and you’d get a toy train 150 miles long. More than half a billion Duncan yo-yos have been sold in the United States since 1929. With 20 million fashion items sold annually, Mattel Toys is the largest manufacturer in the world of petite women’s wear. Parker Bros., having constructed more than 2.5 billion little green Monopoly houses since 1935, is the largest housing developer in the world.

You get the picture. Toys are big.

And not just big, but expensive. And not just expensive, but obnoxious. Consider, moms and dads, the advent of roller skates in the shape of pickup trucks and Corvettes that roar when they roll and make horrific brake screeches when they stop. Consider, dear parents, purple and orange rock star wigs, ectoplasm in cans, Laser Erector sets, Furrever Friends and Fluppy Dogs and Michael’s Pets (“They’re the only animals on the shelf/ Cool enough for Michael Jackson himself!") and WingDings and Softies and BabyTalk and Razzcals. Consider, dear bags of loose loot, My Little Pony’s pink plastic Pleasure Estate.

And not just big and expensive and obnoxious, hut cynical. “Are you going to see Mr. Gameshow and Janice Pennington?” asked one of the lovely hostesses who escort lonely buyers from installation—display is too modest a word—to installation. Janice Pennington is one of the Vanna-ettes from “The Price Is Right,” and Mr. Gameshow is Galoob’s animatronic quiz master. “They make a perfect pair,” the hostess says venomously, “they’re both plastic.” Mr. Gameshow’s real name is Gus Glitz, and he has severe Max Headroom damage. “I just had my teeth capped,” he Sajaks. “How do you like ‘em?” He has his own commercials, his own nasty patter and his own theme song: ‘Let’s all play the game/Gameshow from Galoob/Don't be such a rube..."

Cynicism sells this season, but the big buzzwords are “pets” and “power” and “price points” and “interactive.” Mattel is banking big on Captain Power And the Soldiers of the Future, and hedging its bets by syndicating a live- action television series (guess the title) to be distributed by the industry leader’s new TV syndication division. Beverly Cannady, manager of Mattel’s licensing division, told one of the trade magazines she’s confident that ‘Power On!” will be next season’s prepubescent battle cry, but failed to mention whether parents will be charged each time little Jimmy uses it.

Force III, Tech Force, Centurions with Power XTreme—it’s a rough universe out there and it calls for power, force, and more power. ‘Now more power for the Centurions heros.” “Now more power for the villains!” ‘But wait! Here’s even more power for the Centurions!”
As Axion’s Tech Force characters battle evildoers in a television show, the idea goes, their toy counterparts will charge around the living room floor firing laser lights, in response to inaudible signals sent via the cartoon’s sound track. Nolan Bushnell, creator of Tech Force, envisions moving the vidoo game off the screen and making it three-dimensional. “3-D is not when you put silly glasses on,” he said, “it’s when something runs over your left foot.”

Action for Children’s Television, a TV watchdog group based in Cambridge, Mass., filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission, asking the agency to stop the development of television-interactive toys, or to at least launch a public inquiry into the matter. Outside the Toy Fair, the War Resisters League waged a Stop War Toys Campaign, charging that such toys “desensitize” children to the “horrors” of war.

Frankly, it’s the male action figures who are responsible for the big power grab in today’s toy world (She-Ra, Princess of Power notwithstanding) and as little boys’ toys have gotten power hungry, little girls’ toys have achieved ur-wimpiness. The age of nonsexist toys is dead and buried. In booth after booth, sales reps can be heard assuring buyers, “Little girls love to comb and brush.”

If My Little Pony set standards for insipidity that made Care Bears seem profound, the cuddle-horses with silky plastic manes have just been left at the starting gate. The Fluppy Puppies have long hair, the Shimmers have long hair, the Fairy Tails have long hair, the Furrever Friends have long hair and Tail Topper attachable tail pieces. “I only hope I have a little boy,” said one nervous buyer.

Barbie has long hair too, of course, and so does her archrival, Jem. They’re both rockin’ like crazy these days, but Hasbro’s Jem has at least one innovative edge on her longer-lived nemesis: She has her own guitar. Her illustrations show her with microphone in hand just like Barbie the rocker. Each the very picture of the chick singer, just one step removed from retiring to the lounges of Las Vegas. But among the accessories to Jem's available accessories is the KJEM Rock On Guitar. Full-size, with built-in microphone and no strings at all, it’s actually an air guitar meant for posing in front of mirrors, but it’s a step. She-Ra would be proud, sort of.

Inadvertent or not, the grander installations seem perversely naive, It’s unnerving to come upon one designed to resemble some little tyke’s comfy, cozy bedroom and discover a full-scale adult woman model in jammies and booties cuddling Dozzzy, an interactive little nipper who’s murmuring “being in bed with you is better than having a birthday party.” Worse yet, a lot of spokesmodels who’ve been given interactive infants of one brand or another, and instructed to cuddle the dickens out of them, seem to have already moved past that stage and developed what can only be called an unhealthy affection.

In fact, so many toys on display can make any affection seem unhealthy. The hourly shows for Kenner’s Amazing Friends feature sweet, sweet little child actresses with pink ribbons in their hair who chat right along with toys Tricia & Tooner. “You’re my best friends,” they bubble. “I love you! Both of you!” And then they simulate a giggle.

Big Bird is chattering away with actual moving beak, and nearby a group of buyers and reps are settling down to debate the price of birdseed. ‘$49.99 for this item—this is ridiculous.” “Don’t matter,” the rep tells him. “You got no choice. You want the item, you got to pay the price.”
And behind him, soft and fuzzy and yellow and kind, Big Bird says, “I give the order and you do what I say.”

Aphorism Number Thirteen (One of a series; collect 'em all)

Nothing, but nothing, is as washed up as a rock star past her prime.

The Runaways (their first record reviewed)

published in Sounds

Rock'n'roll has always been the domain of the ignorant, the immature, the idiot. It's not, let's face it, the most advanced musical form around in terms of cerebral stimulation, but there's a certain undeniable satisfaction to be derived from a particularly brash bass line, a sudden Chuck Berry lick, from those damn dumb drums. Intellectuals can't rock. Or, as The Runaways might put it: Brains suck!

Noted Hollywood hypester Kim Fowley has gathered together these nubile young females, each absolutely guaranteed to be sixteen (one exception: the lead guitarist is an old maid of seventeen), each absolutely guaranteed to play her own instrument. He's been flooding the pop journals with juicy little tidbits, assembling an image for The Runaways as the girls in your history class who could never stay awake because they'd been out until three the night before. Sex! Drugs! Beer!

Fowley's publicity overkill is almost certain to result in the type of backlash that nearly swamped the careers of both Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith last year, with program directors, rock critics, radio deejays and the public lining up arm-in-arm cha-cha-chanting "Hype!" Which is kind of unfortunate because when all considerations of package and product and pimp are over, this is great strong rock'n'roll. Ok, so the album does sound like it was recorded in a galvanized garbage can (Fowley produced) and the playing is unspectacular but it works nevertheless. It takes a certain degree of naivetee to make rock'n'roll and The Runaways are nothing if not genuinely enthusiastically naive. The Who may have a hard time keeping a straight face while doing "My Generation" these days but when Cherie Currie shrieks "Her life was saved by rock'n'roll," (from Lou Reed's "Rock And Roll"), there's no doubt she believes it. It may be dumb, but so what?

Most of the album consists of single-sized punchers with titles like "Cherry Bomb," (the band's logo carries a cherry, just in case you missed the point), "Thunder," and "You Drive Me Wild," most of them underscored with orgasmic moans. The album's capper though, is a seven minute rock epic entitled "Dead End Justice" that, if nothing else, will put Springsteen's more dramatic yarns in a new light:
"Where am I?"
"You're in a cheap, rundown teenage jail, that's where!"
"Oh my God!"

Tom Waits — After A One Night Stand

"Tom may be a bit. . . ." and there were many long moments before he finished the sentence. The road manager — his name was John — had a molded golden eighth-note on a chain around his neck.

".... A bit cranky...." he said at last.

Out of the elevator, take a left, first door on the right. John held the door open. Tom Waits was piled up on the chair next to the bathroom door and a couple of the guys in the band were on the couch. It was sometime after one in the morning. Waits had just played two shows in front of two half-empty houses, and he had to pull his fingers out of the ropy lengths of his hair to shake hands. Then he headed for the bathroom.

While Waits was out of the room, I took inventory of the pile of stuff dumped in front of his chair. There were matchbooks and a couple of packs of cigarettes, an obscure brand, smaller than most, called Delicados. Phone numbers with and without names scrawled on scraps of paper. A torn-off piece of the Greater New Orleans Yellow Pages. Half-buried beneath was a silver-scaled hip-flask, the kind with curved sides to hide the bulge. It was all great material to toss in to a story about Tom Waits, and listing it helped keep me from dozing off to the lull of the musicians' voices from the couch. I hadn't been getting all that much sleep lately myself, and it was beginning to tell. I felt slow.

Earlier that day, I'd gotten a message from a woman, a photographer who wanted to do some photos of Tom Waits.. "I'm not into taking pictures of rock stars or anything," she told me. "it's just that Tom Waits . . . he seems different." So okay, I can understand that, but I had a photographer already. I told her I'd see how Waits was, and if he really wanted his picture taken, I'd give her a call back.

Waits came back into the room, sat down and pulled off his shirt. His face was younger than any of his photos seemed to reveal; he was obviously tired and restless and none too thrilled with the prospect of answering some guy's questions while another guy stared at him through a camera lens. You could feel it — anybody could have.

My first thought was to call it, call a halt to the whole thing right there, get the hell out, get gone, go home. Can't do that, though. You've hung on this long, gone this far, so you might as well try to get him to open up, give you enough quotes to throw a story together, and get out of here. Try and start a conversation with him.

Except the answers came back in words of one syllable or less. I was trying to draw him out somehow, trying to get him to say things I could quote him on but no dice. Time to try a new tack. "I'd like to talk about Kerouac," I told him. Obviously Waits had been influenced by Jack Kerouac, and one of the songs on his latest album, "Jack & Neal" was loosely biographical. Besides, Kerouac is about as close as I come to having a hero.

"Okay, so you wanna talk about Kerouac." He'd pulled a deeply worn brown leather jacket from the floor onto his lap and was lost in contemplation of its every wrinkle.

Dead end. Things were beginning to look a little grim. "Anything at all you want to talk about?"

Waits jumped all over that one. "No. No! That's your job. You're the journalist. I've just gotta stay here and answer the questions but you're the one that's gotta ask the questions."

I was tired. My feelings were hurt and I had no more use for this guy, no desire whatsoever to pull an interview out of the shambles. "Look, if you don't wanna do it, let's not do it." I slapped my notebook shut and stood up.

"Well, I don't want you to ask me what I want to be asked — I can do that all by myself." He pointed to my notebook. "You obviously came prepared with some questions but . . ."

"I came prepared with some questions but man, you know -- I'm not gonna. . . I don't want to sit here and beat my head against the wall." I don't know which one of us was glaring harder.

"Well, I'll . . . y'know, I'll answer your questions."

It got no better. I asked a long and vague and rambling question about his stage persona as opposed to her personal identity, the image of Tom Waits as a late night bar-crawler, and how it related to his actual life — something like that, probably even less coherent -— and now he thought I was calling him a drunk.

"I'm not a drunk," he said, sucking hard on his Delicado, then shooting smoke out the corner of his mouth. "I'm not a lush. I work real hard all year. If I was a drunk I don't think I'd have five albums out, I don't think I'd be able to stay on the road eight months out of the year." He was pissed.

"No, what I mean is—" I was trying to get things back on track. " .—do people expect you to be Tom Waits the hard-living bar room character, do they meet you and immediately try and drink you under the table?"

He waved his cigarette in the air, a little streak of smoke in the room. "That's a line in a song. What does—"

"And it's an old phrase. What I'm saying is do people expect you to be just like the characters you write about, do they react to you or do they react to your image?"

"I don't know. Are you reacting to me or are you reacting to my image?"

"Hey, I don't know — that's why I'm asking?"

"Do I look like a drunk?""

I nearly hesitated too long. It would have been so easy to say yes, to say yes and piss him off good and well and just get the hell out of there. With his hanked-off hair, his pale drawn face, his ragged black slacks and his battered black shoes, he could have blended right into the scenery on the corner of any metropolitan Tailspin Alley . . . but the clothes and the hair were matters of choice and the paleness of the face was plainly exhaustion, not alcohol. I hedged. "How should I know? What's a drunk look like?"

Waits dumped back in his chair." Look, why don't you ask me something about what I do, about writing songs or traveling on the road eight months out of the year. I've written a lot of songs." His voice was tight and pinched now, the coarse threads of his usual growl stretched taut. "Do you know anything about the tunes I've written, the . . ."

Up yours, Jack. "Yeah.. . ."

"They're not just about drunks. They're about murder and car wrecks and love and. . . and. . ." He sucked at his cigarette. "I write about a lotta different things."

Okay, all right, let's talk about the songs. That's only fair. "Okay, it seems as though your songs are all very American, very American subjects . . ."
"Which one?" he snarled. "Which song?"

"Your songs in general, your songwriting . . ."

"Which one?" We were glaring again. "Do you know 'em?"

"Yeah, I know 'em. It doesn't matter whether it's 'The Heart of Saturday Night' or 'Ol' '55' or . . ."

"That's two . . ."

". . . or 'Pasties And A G-String. -- look," I yelled. "What do you want? You want me to list all the titles."

He was memorizing the ceiling. "Yeah."

I shut the notebook again and reached down to pick up my tape recorder.

"I can do it." he said in a low voice, just less than a whisper.

"Yeah, well, you know, that's great. . . that's swell. . ."

"And if you can do it, we all have to do it." It was John, the road manager. He'd come back into the room without me noticing it, and now he was making a valiant effort to josh Tom along, to lighten things up. "We will all write the Tom Waits songbook on the blackboard." Then he left us.

"Listen," I said, "let's just call it."

Waits pushed his hand through his hair. "Look, I don't know what you want from me. I'm not a geek, I'm not a drunk, I'm a regular guy —"

"Hey, wait a minute, wait a—"

".—I take shits, I've got a girlfriend, I live in a hotel—"

" —minute, wait a minute. You know, I don't . . . Either I . . . Either I did a really poor job of explaining myself or you took it the wrong way. I don't know which but I wasn't saying any of that shit. I was just trying to find out if the whole thing about Tom Waits being certain things, being a person who spends all his time in bars and stuff, if that really fits."

"I go to bars, I do all kinds of things. I do everything that you do. Except maybe a little more. And a little more often." He rubbed at his nose. "I travel a great deal, all over the United States and, uh, I'm in a nightclub every night. I play bars, mainly, still play bars. And it's got its moments, you know, and then again, you know . . . some nights, it's a pain in the ass. I get pissed off, I get tired, I get . . . y'know. . ." His voice dropped off, still high-pitched and tight, just above a whisper. "Just a regular guy. . . Right now I'm pissed-off, I'm tired. . . We had two half-houses out there, with a lame promoter who's obviously—" here he pointed to his forehead "—operating with an unfurnished apartment. I mean, the guy seems like he must be about a quart low to me," he said bitterly. "He had a very lame sound department and a real antiseptic little environment here . . .

"You know, I'm tired. I been on the bus. I don't sleep. I just got up. I haven't had a night off in three weeks. I've been entertaining and talking to journalists and getting my picture taken and playing in nightclubs and it gets to be a little too much." His voice was beginning to sound like a record being played while someone slowed it down with their thumb.

"I'm on my way home. I can't wait to get home and just get twelve hours of sleep . . . some twelve-year-old scotch and a twelve-year-old girl. That's what I want."

I wasn't so pissed off any more. He was so obviously exhausted,. "Well, let's do one of two things then: Let's either start all over again and if I've been antagonistic, I'll cool out, or else let's just, you know, maybe we're better off just letting you get your sleep, whatever you prefer — but be honest."

"Alright . . . why'ntchya go out and come back in, and we'll start all over again. We'll shake hands, you can introduce yourself, tell me who you write for and all that." He looked over at the photographer. "You can just turn your back."

So I went out the door, shut it. There was reason to listen for the sound of the lock clicking but I opened the door again. Waits had his head turned away. "For Christssake what a fuckin' damn — " [big jolly fake voice] "— Oh, hel-lo....."

Things loosened considerably. Tom started unreeling tales about buying hundred-dollar cars and testing them out by driving them to Arizona. "I've broke down in Gila Bend, Buckeye, Tucson . . . uh. . . Camp Verde -- know that joint? Spent a night in Stanfield. On New Year's Eve. New Year's Eve. I went to a church, Pentecostal church, you know, holy rollers? And this old lady, Mrs. Anderson, put me up. I was in the back of this church -- it was real cold and, uh, my car was busted and I had it at the gas station and she had me come to this four-hour marathon New Year's Eve church service, so I could stay inside. And afterwards they took up a collection -- the whole church took up a collection and gave me all the money to get my car fixed so I could get out of town. About fifty bucks -- I got a new water pump."

"Yeah, I used to come here a lot -- but I haven't been here for a while. I think the last time I was here was two albums ago. That's why I was really disappointed that nobody showed up." He was scratching under his chin with a matchbook.

It wasn't twenty minutes later that we wrapped it up. We made our goodbyes, apologized back and forth for our initial fracas and then the phnotographer and I headed for the door. "Okay, you take it easy now," said Tom.

But as it turned out Waits and John the road manager came around the corner while Tim and I were still waiting for the elevator. "Looks like we're all going up together," said John nervously. I think he was concerned that Waits and I might start screaming at each other again.

No one said much as the elevator went down. No one says much in elevators anyway. I took one last look at Waits as he slumped back in the corner. He had his leather jacket on now and he'd acquired a matchstick between his teeth. It took us a moment to re-establish where we were when we got to the ground level but then we were all walking the same direction — me and the photographer to my car and Tom and John to the highway cruiser bus that was dieseling at the curb.

It was cold. I stuffed my hand into my pocket for my keys and pulled them out with a piece of paper that fell to the ground. As I bent to get it, I knew what it was, it was the phone number of the photographer who'd wanted me to ask permission so she could take pictures of Tom Waits too. I'd forgotten all about that.

"Later," called Waits, and the bus door closed.

Aphorism Number Twelve: On Technological Innovations (One of a Series; Collect 'em All)

Just because an engineer can build it doesn't mean he should.
And just because he built it doesn't mean you've got to use it.
And just because you used it doesn't mean all the rest of us ought to admire you.

Aphorism Number Eleven; Pickle Packing (One of a series; Collect 'em all)

The pickle packing game is no place for a lady.

Bat Masterson: They Called Him Bat

by Bart Bull
(published in SPIN)

Bat Masterson, gunslinger, gambler, buffalo hunter, Army scout, sheriff of Dodge City, murderer, card dealer, boxing promoter, brawler, finished his life in deep disgrace as a New York City sportswriter. Discovered slumped over dead at his desk, the sheet of paper in his typewriter read: "There are many in this old world of ours who hold that things break about even for all of us. I have observed for example that we all get the same amount of ice. The rich get it in the summertime and the poor get it in the winter."

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]

William Burroughs; Old Bull Hubbard Meets The Mild Boys

by Bart Bull
(excerpt)

There had been copies of William Burroughs' most recent book, Armies of the Red Night, in the window of Moe's Books and piled on the display table downstairs, all marked down to the remaindered-by-the-pound price of three bucks a pop. Now, today, under the circumstances, they were $14.95 first editions, two stacks of them just within the reach of Burroughs' left hand, the one with the little finger that ends just past the first joint. Both of his hands were red with the declining circulation of age, and the right one held a Bic, one of the real cheap clear ones with a black cap.

"Look," said a guy waiting in line with books to be signed, "he uses a Bic."

The guy with him looked to confirm it and half of the rest of the line did too. Burroughs put his Bic down for a moment between customers and turned to steal a sip from his cafe au lait. The coffee had spilled from the cup into the saucer, and from the saucer onto the table, where it had gathered into a series of puddles precisely the color of Burroughs' shirt and tie. He hunched to sip his coffee without dripping it onto his pants and then he turned back to face the next in line. Two dozen sets of eyes followed every move.

The next fellow in line presented Burroughs with a collection of hardbacks and paperbacks and chapbooks that stacked a foot-and-a-half high. "I feel like a total ass," he said. Burroughs withheld comment. He signed methodically, metronomically, the tip of his Bic enunciating each letter in William S. Burroughs. The head of the fellow with the stack of books bobbed in time with Burroughs' pen. So did the head of the guy behind him, and the girl behind him, the one with the braces and the Elvis Costello glasses and the plaid skirt and the little skulls stencil-painted onto her stockings.

The line moved to the beat of Burroughs' Bic, slowly, steadily, with pauses from book to book, from customer to customer. Most of them were pretty young, sophomores or thereabouts. You should be able to pick up autographed copies of Burroughs' work at used bookstores all over Berkeley at the end of the spring quarter. One of them got up the nerve to address Burroughs directly. "Did you really marry a White Russian countess?"

"She wasn't a White Russian countess," he said. "And I never had a trust fund, and Kerouac was writing fiction." He had the voice of a bank branch manager, preoccupied with his sinuses, who has been asked to explain Federal Deposit Insurance at three minutes to six on a Friday.

"What do you think his most under-rated text was?"

"Huh?" Burroughs' voice suggested that it was now two minutes to six.

"What do you think Kerouac's most under-rated text was?" The kid actually said "text." "Tristessa?"

"Vanity of Duluoz," he says.

"Which?"

"Vanity of Duluoz." Burroughs is prominently featured in it.