I recently interviewed Gregg Allman for the second time; the first time was back in 1999, when I trailed him around the United States and wrote an epic history of the Allman Brothers Band. This time was just a phone conversation, but Allman was in good spirits (and recovering nicely from his liver transplant). “When I went down for the transplant,” he told me, “I didn’t take my computer down there with me. When I got back, I had 1,118 emails. I just leaned on the old barrel button, and they went in the barrel. But you never know when there’s gonna be a message from some great babe that you haven’t heard from in years, right?

The resulting Q&A is another in my series of “Icon” interviews for Maxim; here’s a link to the article on the magazine’s website (or you can pick up the January 2011 issue, with Katy Perry on the cover). My favorite line that didn’t make it in, on the topic of Allman’s excessive consumption of drugs: “I was doing everything there was to be done. I would have eaten a button off your shirt if I thought it was a pill.”

posted 20 December 2010 in Articles, Outside. 1 comment

(New to the countdown? Catch up here.)

We come back from the commercial break to an interview clip of Mr. Edward Mahoney, better known to you and me as Eddie Money. “I like making videos,” he says, “because it’s an extension of the artist’s personality and, you know, like, on the radio, you don’t really get to see what the artist is going through.” Money is wearing a black-and-white button-down shirt and a digital watch. “You know, if you want to, you know, put a little direction into what you’re doing, I mean, it’s great for people to see what you do and it’s a lot of fun, videos. Videos have always been good for me–” Money keeps talking, possibly even saying “you know” again, but the volume gets turned down abruptly on him and we cut to Adam Curry in the MTV studio.

Curry touts Money’s Nothing to Lose album and says “A big cleanup year for him. He’s off the booze, off drugs–these are his own words, by the way. And he’s just settling down, getting to know his wife better than he’s ever known her before.” Curry seems pleased by this, even though it evokes the newly sober Money waking up one morning and saying to his wife, “What was your name again, darlin’?”

The “Walk on Water” video begins with a beautiful brunette model slowly walking towards the camera, running her hands through her hair like she’s worried it might not be there. At first glance, she appears to be soaking wet, but it’s a carefully constructed illusion: she’s in a flimsy top that looks moist on-camera, plus she’s in front of a stone wall that’s got water running down it. The model, deciding that her hair is still attached to her scalp, crosses her arms and looks off into the distance, wondering when her next cigarette break is.

The synth-heavy intro concludes: the song begins to “rock out” and we cut to Eddie Money’s drummer, who is obscured behind a black scarf, suggesting that he’s unbelievably ugly. We pan left, and discover that he’s a good-looking guy–much more attractive than Money, actually. Oh, right, that’s the other reason he’d be hidden.

There’s a funky strobe effect: in a quick cut, we learn that this is because there’s a welder plying his trade right next to the band, throwing off sparks. Really? The director, whoever he was, wins the countdown’s prize for “most random way to add gratuitious visual excitement to a video.”

Cut to Money, pumping his fist. He’s wearing a striped black-on-black t-shirt underneath a suit jacket. He’s carrying some extra pounds, a surprising percentage of them in his mullet. I once described him in print as “a likeable meathead of a rock star,” and there’s nothing going on here to make me reconsider that.

Money’s got six other white-bread guys in his band; they’re performing in a faux warehouse underneath an array of aluminum girders. The director frantically pans around the band, trying to goose the energy. The welder keeps on welding, earning union rates. The director falls back on the traditional method of distracting from musicians without visual appeal: the pretty girl. In three quick cuts, we see the model check her hair again (it’s still there), crouch down, and whip her hair around.

“Well, I’m no angel now, I’ll admit,” Money sings, showing a shaky grasp on Christian theology; it was Jesus Christ who walked on water, not the angels. “I made a few bad moves I’ll soon regret,” Money continues, pointing to himself on “I’ll,” which is an odd emphasis, whether you’re judging by rhythm or meaning. I guess he couldn’t figure out a hand gesture for “regret.”

Back to the model: in closeup, she’s talking, and then she’s crying, not profusely but believably enough that whatever acting classes she was taking were worth the money. Then we see her outside wearing a bikini top, a short skirt, and a flimsy shawl. Unfortunately, the location is an industrial pier, which makes the outfit more redolent of prostitution than I think was intended. It’s a sad thing when love for Eddie Money makes a girl work the docks.

We hit the chorus, which Money sings while balancing on the balls of his feet. This is a competent chugging midtempo rock song, clearly designed as a follow-up to his biggest hit, 1986’s “Take Me Home Tonight”–but without Ronnie Spector adding some juice, it’s all very generic. Money has terrible posture; I get the impression he’s over six feet tall and is slouching into his microphone. I think he’s also chewing gum.

The director keeps cutting between Money and his unthreatening band (look, one guy has a ripped knee in his jeans!) and the model: lying on a bunk in the warehouse, standing in front of the wet wall, posing outside in a flowing polka-dotted outfit. She’s pissed, shouting at someone behind the camera (the gaffer, maybe?). We’re treated to more shots of her looking annoyed, in different revealing outfits. In the one with the white shorts that look unfortunately diaperish, she executes a high kick that destroys a fluorescent light, glass shattering everywhere. She then shouts at the gaffer like it’s his fault.

Money keeps on rocking, with the equanimity that comes from being a former New York City cop–he’s seen crazier girls on the city’s docks than this. He clenches his fists a lot. The welder, of course, keeps on welding. He’s getting time and a half now.

The model, outside again, pouts and walks around the pier with a sheepskin jacket over her shoulder. Money swings the microphone like a very short baseball bat. The drummer spins his sticks. The model, back in polka dots, grins. The video is telling the story of a tempestuous relationship: the viewer meets a pretty girl; that girl turns out to be crazy and has a fight with the viewer for no apparent reason; but then she smiles and makes nice. To represent hot makeup sex, she changes into a red polka-dot swimsuit and pirouettes. Money, meanwhile, does a lot of emphatic pointing, which apparently is what he meant by, you know, putting a little direction into his videos.

“Walk on Water” hit #9 on the singles chart. You can watch the video here.

posted 17 December 2010 in 1988. 4 comments

With the recent release of I Love You Philip Morris, it seemed like a propitious moment to add my Details cover story on Ewan McGregor to the archives. It dates from 1997, when he was filming the Star Wars prequels and starring in A Life Less Ordinary (an off-kilter romantic comedy that I thoroughly enjoyed, although it was roundly panned).

In the article, McGregor loudly proclaims his distaste for Hollywood blockbusters; although his ideological purity has slipped a bit since then (e.g., The Island and Angels and Demons), his career choices still skew towards unusual, independent, and/or British movies.

Words of wisdom on not discussing the unwieldy dialogue in Star Wars with its author: “What am I gonna say? ‘George, your dialogue’s crap’?”

posted 14 December 2010 in Archives, Articles. no comments yet

(New to the countdown? Catch up here.)

Robert Plant’s exploding lightbulb segues elegantly into a clip of a rocket taking off, heralding the sixth appearance of the promo spot for MTV’s “Big Bang ’89.” This time through, I’m admiring the work of the network’s graphics department: crosshairs moving across maps, an animated explosives detonator, grids of spinning clocks.

A spot for Michelob Dry. It turns out that “dry” beer (“dry” meaning “less sweet”) was a Japanese mania–in 1987, the dry share of the Japanese beer market had rocketed from zero to 39 percent. (Obviously, it never really took off in the States.) I’ve written before about the setup of these ads: “What Dry Was” has images like dusty construction workers, a policeman in a small southwestern town during a dust storm, and a tumbleweed blowing across the desert, while “What Dry Is” has spurting water, a kayak in the ocean, and a guy soaking his hair before whipping it back and forth. What makes it work is the soundtrack backing up the announcer: a single drummer, pounding out a relentless beat, faster and faster.

For the eleventh time, the commercial for The January Man, chockablock with artifacts of a New York City that doesn’t quite exist anymore, including outdated police cars and Kevin Kline’s mustache.

A spot for the Willow VHS tape, with swordsmen, fantasy armies, and little people. It all lasts as long as it takes for the announcer to say, “Heroes come in all sizes, but adventure doesn’t come any bigger than this. Willow. Available now on videocassette.”

Again, the first ad ever for the Energizer Bunny. Since the soundtrack comes from battery-powered rabbits playing the drums, this marks the second percussion-heavy ad in this commercial break.

Then we get the omnipresent cable-company spots for the WWF Royal Rumble (logo presented against a purple background to give it that regal feeling) and “Season’s Greetings from the Staff at UA-Columbia.”

For the MTV bumper, a cartoon red car lurches its way down a city street while a woman sings “get on up” and a DJ scratches. Letters in the left margin spell out “MORN,” then “NOON,” then “NITE.” It’s a prime example of the “random animation sliced up to a hip-hop beat” genre that the MTV promo department liked–much more than the programming department liked actual hip-hop videos.

posted 9 December 2010 in 1988. 1 comment

Two excerpts from The Andy Warhol Diaries: one about Elaine Kaufman, who died a few days ago, and one about John Lennon, who died thirty years ago.

Sunday, April 10, 1977

Andrea [Portago] said she was out with Dennis Hopper and they went up to Elaine’s and she started playing backgammon with Elaine and she won one and Elaine won one, and then they started a third game and Andrea was losing and then she won, and Elaine got mad and called her a “rich bitch” and told her not to come in there again. Elaine doesn’t like to lose.

Friday, February 17, 1978

John Lennon came by [the office] and that was exciting. He’s lost weight. Rupert’s working on some art thing with him. And he was sweet. He’d refused Catherine the autograph in the restaurant the other week, but Paul McCartney’s picture was in the paper the other day, and when she asked him again he drew a mustache on Paul and signed it.

posted 8 December 2010 in Excerpts. no comments yet

One of the pleasures of shuffle-play on an iPod is learning new things about old songs through your headphones. This happened to me recently with two songs:

1. Billy Joel, “Big Shot.” I had forgotten Billy Joel’s vocals in the first five seconds of “Big Shot,” which I would transcribe as, “Sssssshmt. Oooh.” It sounds like the obvious precursor to Puffy Combs’ backup encouragement two decades later, lacking only Joel announcing “Bad Boy for life.”

2. Led Zeppelin, “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You.” Between 1:40 and 1:43, there’s an odd squalling sound in the background, as if somebody brought an infant into the studio. It’s particularly jarring given how pristine Jimmy Page’s production usually is. Closer listening reveals that it’s a distorted Robert Plant singing “I can hear it calling me,” anticipating the line he’s about to croon in the song. Some research revealed the explanation: the whole band was playing when they recorded John Bonham’s drum track, and Plant’s vocal (which he did with a different cadence on that take) leaked through.

posted 7 December 2010 in Tasty Bits. 2 comments

I’m basically out of the mondegreen business these days, but I still file away misheard lyrics, and recently had two that you may find interesting.

The first was from Jay-Z on his “Empire State of Mind” single with Alicia Keys. I thought he was rapping “Long live the World Trade / Long live the Kingdome,” which bothered me because the Kingdome is in Seattle, and that seemed like the sort of thing he should know. The actual lyric, it turns out, is “Long live the king, yo.”

The second is from “Because the Night.” Not until I heard Bruce Springsteen’s version on The Promise did I realize the first two lines of the chorus were “Because the night belongs to lovers / Because the night belongs to lust.” (Followed by “Because the night belongs to lovers / Because the night belongs to us.”) “Lust” and “us” is an interesting near-rhyme, but I had always assumed Patti Smith was singing “love.” Going back and listening to it, she’s pretty consistently singing “Because the night belongs to looauooast.”

posted 2 December 2010 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

Another excerpt from the Andy Warhol Diaries. 

Friday, June 2, 1978

Robert Kennedy, Jr. was on TV for the tenth anniversary of when his father was shot, so it’s ten years since I was shot, too–he was the day after me.

posted 1 December 2010 in Excerpts. no comments yet

(New to the countdown? Catch up here.)

Forget “He’s hot, he’s sexy, he’s dead”–my favorite rock ’n’ roll coverline of all time came from the perpetually underrated Musician magazine, circa 1988. To the best of my memory, Robert Plant appeared on the cover wrapped in what appeared to be an exotic blanket. In very small type (except for his name) appeared the message: “I’m not a burrito! I’m ROBERT PLANT.” I find this to be a surprisingly useful mantra with which to approach life, even if for most people it is only fifty percent true.

The video for “Tall Cool One” opens with silhouetted audience members looking at some white lights. Presumably, one of them is saying, “Have you ever really looked at the lights, man?” Then a black curtain opens to reveal a burrito! No, wait, it’s Robert Plant, his back to the camera, snapping his fingers.

The camera wheels around: we’re in a dimly lit warehouse studio that’s been tricked out to look like a nightclub, with strands of blinking lights and a hundred or so fans who have been encouraged to look vacant. The guitar makes big swooping sounds, like a plane coming in for a landing.

Plant finally turns around. He’s in a sleeveless leather vest. His hair is curly, blond, and fulsome. In 1988, he was forty years old, and charismatic as hell. “I’m like a strange cat running in the heat of the night,” he sings. “I’ve got a fire in my eyes, got a date with delight.” Plant’s pouting, crouching, making incoherent hand gestures in front of his face. He seems goofier and twitchier than in his Zeppelin days, but he gets away with it. (Other over-handsy lead singers we’ve seen in this countdown: Huey Lewis (of the News) and Joey Tempest (of Europe).)

There’s a large video screen behind Plant and his band: sometimes it shows a black logo on a red background (presumably a sigil left over from the cover of Led Zeppelin IV). Other times it has footage of Plant: not duplicating his performance in the foreground, but an alternate runthrough of the song with different hand gestures.

Plant’s band look like they got pulled in from other videos that were shooting in the same studio. The guitarist is working an indie Minneapolis vibe with a plaid shirt and a mullet. The bassist has a ponytail, a tanktop, and the desire to fling his bass around in figure-eight patterns: I’m pegging him as part of a Bay Area thrash band that just signed a major-label deal. The keyboardist is rocking a new-wave synth that has flipped the colors of the black and white keys; he presumably grabbed it on his way out of the Thompson Twins shoot. The drummer looks happy to have drumsticks and a leather jacket.

Plant shimmies, raises both clenched fists in the air, points at the camera, and flaps his right hand around like it’s a fish gasping for air. Then he decides that his right hand is getting lonely, so his left hand flaps around with it to keep it company.

There are three female backup singers in black dresses, tasked with repeatedly singing “Lighten up, baby, I’m in love with you.” Two of them are beautiful brunette rock chicks with big manes of black hair. But behind them there is a singer with short bleached hair who appears to be higher in the pecking order. She gets to stand with her hands on her hips while the other two have to clap and gesticulate. Maybe she’s Plant’s girlfriend?

The singers sway their arms in time with the bridge; Plant joins in the same rhythm, and crosses his arms across his chest before opening his palms out to the audience in a gesture of supplication. The crowd is doing synchronized hand gestures that borrow equally from David Byrne performing “Once in a Lifetime” and Cy Curnin singing “One Thing Leads to Another.”

“You stroll, you jump, you’re hot and you tease,” raps keyboardist/producer Phil Johnstone. (Although I always thought that line began “you smoke, you joke.”) “Tall Cool One” is a hard-driving rock song, but you can tell Plant’s been listening to contemporary R&B, from that rap to the sound of the keyboard riff to the samples that show up at the end. Despite those AOR allergens, the song spent four weeks on top of the “Mainstream Rock” Billboard chart. And as a result of that cross-pollination, the song still sounds really good today.

Plant continues his master class in rock-star posing; presumably, he invented most of these postures. He swings his hips from side to side, pumps his arms like he’s rowing a boat, throws some punches, and acts as if he’s trying to stumble through some invisible curtains. The drummer–who appears to be the MVP of this band, strong with both stuttering rhythms and full-force doomsday pounding–keeps lifting his sticks above his head. The editor throws in short clips of black-and-white footage and film that appears to have slipped a sprocket, trying to give an artistic veneer to the enterprise, or at least let us know that it was made in 1988.

A brief interlude: Plant and the bleached alpha backup singer stand very close together. She’s in profile. She lifts an éclair to her mouth and takes a large, sensual bite. Plant’s eyes widen–and then he reveals that he is also holding an éclair, of which he takes a (smaller) bite. The psychosexual implications of this four-second vignette are left as an exercise for the reader, but at the very least, it shows that Plant has a sense of humor.

The song rolls out a cascade of cheeky Led Zeppelin samples; Plant is quoting the Beastie Boys as much as his previous band. At 40, Plant was around the age when many rock stars make one last craven bid for a hit single. As it happens, this was his last American pop hit, but part of what made him awesome was that he gave the impression of not caring .

The camera wheels through the crowd. Plant hops up and down, and pounds his index finger on his own chest. The alpha backup singer gives him a dismissive sideways look. We hear bits of “Whole Lotta Love” and see a DJ scratching a vinyl record. Plant sings directly to the alpha; she coolly ignores him. The band starts rocking out harder, judging by the intensity of their head-bobbing and hair-shaking. We end with the image of an exploding light bulb.

While this song still sounds excellent and shockingly modern, this video is not much more than a collection of artistic tics and mannerisms that carbon-date it with uncanny precision. But it doesn’t matter. Robert Anthony Plant is performing in it, and he’s riveting. Also, he’s not a burrito.

“Tall Cool One” hit #25 on the singles chart. You can watch the video here. Or if you’d prefer Plant performing a rockabilly version on tour with the Band of Joy this past summer, try here.

posted 24 November 2010 in 1988. 13 comments

In concert at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, this past August.

If you prefer, you can see her rendered in chalk.

I just finished up a big work project, so the 1988 countdown should resume next week. In the meantime, if you haven’t read the comments on “Faith,” you’re missing a lot of excellent stuff, including extended analysis of the shortest #1 singles and the merits of Ron Guidry versus George Michael. The best comments thread on Rule Forty-Two since Chicago!

posted 19 November 2010 in Photos. no comments yet