Richard Meltzer, part 2
By Scott Woods
Scott: Is it anywhere near the
mark to say that your own history with rock is
a pre-and-post Sgt. Pepper thing?
Richard: No, I wouldn't say
that Sgt. Pepper was… it seemed like a high-water
mark at the time, but I don't think it was really -- in
terms of my own consciousness of it, I would say that
Revolver and especially "Strawberry Fields" were
far more important.
Scott: But I guess I'm thinking of
it in terms of, is that where it all starts to fall
apart?
Richard: What it did to the
commercial aspect -- yeah. I mean, it made the industry
realize there was something out there they could
exploit that they hadn't thought about before, and bands
like -- one of the great bands that nobody ever heard of,
Moby Grape, were done in by two factors: one was their
misfortune in signing with Columbia Records at a time
when all Columbia really had was the Byrds, and Simon
& Garfunkel. They didn't know what to do with a real
band. A real band coming out of the Bay area. So they
put out five singles simultaneously; that was their
idea of groovy promotion. All five singles stiffed, and
the album stiffed -- the first album. And the SECOND
album… Sgt. Pepper comes out, and suddenly
everybody's gotta do this over-production -- too big a
budget, too many months to kill, too many remixes, and
they didn't know how to DO it, they didn't really have
their hearts in it, and they were just turned to
nothing.
Scott: You had a funny putdown --
I think it's in your new book; it might have been in
"Vinyl Reckoning" -- about Richard Goldstein's pan
of Sgt. Pepper, and you had a funny thing about
him. I've never seen the review, but was he essentially
RIGHT?
Richard: NO! My beef with
[Sgt. Pepper] is it upped the production
stakes beyond what bands could do. I don't like -- again,
Paul McCartney, let's get rid of "She's Leaving Home."
But I don't mind most of the stuff on there, but I think
that Goldstein's beef with it was, "Well it really isn't
NEW, is it? It seems like they got it all from the Who!
They got it from -- what was it? -- Pet Sounds."
And I think Pet Sounds is a little overrated. On
a production level it's a good Brian Wilson record, but
I don't think a Beach Boy wrote a single lyric for
that -- some guy named Asher [Tony]. But I just think
that Goldstein was a rather inept outsider. He had a
column called "Pop Eye," and it was just always too
CUTE. And I think what I say in "Vinyl Reckoning" is
the review that REALLY showed him to be a bozo was the
second Doors album, he says, "Oh, what's missing here?
Guitars. What do we think of when we think Doors? We
think guitars." Excuse me?! I just had no idea what he
was talking about. But, you know, he edited me, and he
was sort of a fool. He used to get SCARED by bands like
the Stones. It was too sexual for him, too macho for
him. I actually went to a football game with him once,
I went to see the New York Jets play Miami, and he
couldn't DEAL with how big they were; they seemed larger
than life. He was just a bozo.
Scott: In the intro to the "Punk"
section of your book, you wrote, "I really did want
rock to DIE."
Richard: At that time, yeah.
Scott: I think the interesting word
there is "want," 'cause to me that kind of implies that
you didn't think it necessarily WAS already dead. So if
it wasn't already...
Richard: Oh, I wanted the ashes
to be burnt; I wanted it to be, uh -- I wanted it to
GO AWAY.
Scott: How come?
Richard: At the time?
Scott: Yeah.
Richard: It was so on an
employment level, it was like, uh, let's talk about
capitalism. I mean, once it got set up that writers
were there to be shills and FLAKS -- I mean, every
review was HYPE, it was quotable in an ad. I did a
review of a movie about Hendrix called A Film About
Jimi Hendrix, that I actually thought was pretty
good, but they took a piece of my review that they used
very out of context to hype this movie. And I objected
to being used as hype.
Scott: They quoted you in the ad?
Richard: They quoted me in the
ad, but the piece of it they used didn't make sense.
But whatever it was, my feeling was simply that my
exposure to what you might call the blast furnace,
working in the fucking blast furnace of the back rooms
of rock promotion, just very much -- just MEETING BANDS,
I mean by then it was like, you go to a show, and hang
out backstage, and every single fucking member of every
band was an ASShole. I mean, who really had it in them
to tour forty weeks a year or whatever bands did? And
it would turn them into BEASTS. It would make the music
completely digital -- it was like MACHINES playing
these same songs you were sick of. Blue Oyster Cult,
who were my friends, I couldn't stand to see them play
anymore. But it really was, it was something
absolutely -- from whatever level, I mean, I didn't
sit in Madison Square Gardens, I didn't go to arena
rock shows too often, but I imagine there are social
reasons to go to those things that have very little
to do with the music, which is fine. But to be backstage
at some of these shows, to have ANY connection to these
musicians, by then, these musicians were LOATHsome, and
yes, there are exceptions. I never minded Iggy Pop as a
person. Todd Rundgren wasn't too much of an asshole. And
for a while Patti Smith, but by the time Patti Smith was
a celebrity, she was a PIG. She was one of the nastiest,
treacherous, you know, what's the word? BETRAYING former
friends, that I'd ever known. And everybody I know who
knew her then feels about the same. And it just seemed
to be this kind of -- the whole rock MONSTER was just
so unsavoury, it was just so… I think all the time about
where do I want to put dates, when does it go to hell?
I'd say the EAGLES was a good moment when it goes to
hell. And in England, Led Zeppelin.
Scott: I was going to ask you
about Led Zeppelin, actually.
Richard: I mean, Led Zeppelin
were a band -- before Led Zeppelin and the Eagles, even
though they were about three years apart -- it wasn't
cool for bands -- if you wanted to use the adjective
"greedy," it would be applied to record companies.
Starting with Led Zeppelin and such bands -- the BANDS
are greedy. The bands are just, like, exploiting the
world.
Scott: I just don't see how that
addresses the music itself…
Richard: The sound of the
chords?
Scott: Maybe that's not the point,
I don't know.
Richard: Led Zeppelin was a band
that, before that there were a lot of British bands who
had their roots in the blues. And many of them would
refuse to credit the sources. The Stones had to be
shamed into giving money to Robert Wilkins for "Prodigal
Son." But with Led Zeppelin, the whole PRINCIPLE of the
damn thing is plagiarism -- nothing but. Willie
Dixon -- it took Willie Dixon YEARS to get them to
acknowledge that "Whole Lotta Love" was his song.
Scott: But does that make their
version of "Whole Lotta Love" not a good song?
Richard: NO, but what I'm saying
is there was NOTHING original about them. I mean, the
thing about the British Invasion as such is that EVERY
album was like a strip-mine of a new continent. And so,
I guess what I'm saying is that with bands from about
'69 on -- there was nothing NEW. And it was simply about
finding more material from before their audiences were
born and pretending it was theirs. And to me that reaches
the flash point of cynicism with Bruce Springsteen, who
pretends that the '50s ARE the '60s -- let's do 'em
both, 'cause these kids are too young to remember either.
And I just -- to me it was all… I mean, STING, what the
fuck is he except a sponge? But what happened with punk,
punk was just something completely else, and I didn't
even feel that it was rock 'n' roll. I mean, what were
the bands you had up at that moment? Cheap Trick? They
were just some cute one-trick pony of a band, I mean,
I don't know, I could listen to that stuff -- AC/DC --
like some sort of user-friendly version of metal. I
never minded metal. For one thing, uh, the official --
even something like the Penguin Encyclopedia of
Twentieth Century Music wants to say that Led
Zeppelin invented heavy metal. I mean, three years
before Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix did "Purple Haze."
Hendrix was essentially the source of a lot of great
music, and I think he did it better than most of his
acolytes. But the point is that once you get into --
I mean, I've always liked anonymous metal bands who
were the equivalent of Spinal Tap, but I never liked
the glory boys, the front-runners of metal, 'cause I
don't see them as different from the Eagles, I don't
know why. I mean, the sonic FACT of what they do, is
just, how to put it, it doesn't shake me on any level,
it doesn't seem to function anymore except as VOLUME.
I mean, I remember seeing, there was this band the
Dictators, who were managed by the same guy, Sandy
Pearlman, who had Blue Oyster Cult, and they were a
kind of half-decent, not-quite-a-punk band, they were kind of a Commie/wrestling-based New York band,
they were the band in New York between the New York
Dolls and Television, say; it was a brief moment. And
then Blue Oyster Cult turned up the volume, and so the
Dictators had to do the same thing to show their manager
they could do it, and everything they did that had any
charm to it just became unlistenable volume. And to me,
PUNK had so much more -- the kernel of sound from
punk -- had SO much more definition, had so much more,
y'know, interesting sonic atoms. The unit cry of punk
to me was so much more interesting than even the best
metal. And it reminded me VERY much of '60s cacophonous,
blow-your-brains-out jazz: Albert Ayler, Art Ensemble of
Chicago. I saw that stuff in, you know, like, uh, bands
like the Fall, or whatever.
Scott: Okay, go back a bit again,
though. One period I haven't seen you write too much
about is even stuff like early '70s soul music:
Sly & the Family Stone, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield.
Does that have any impact on you?
Richard: I loved Al Green. I even
saw -- London Records took a bus load of writers up to
the Apollo to see Al Green the first time he played the
Apollo, and he was great! I didn't WRITE about him,
but one of the things about -- unless you're Lester
Bangs and lucky enough to edit a paper in which you
write yourself, you don't get to pick what you write
about. And a lot of the things that I probably would've
liked to have written about at least once I never did.
Scott: Can you think of some other
stuff...
Richard: Instead of being
assigned an Al Green album I was assigned a band called
Ned, you know, or -- there's a section in my book called
"Prime Wallow," and those are the things I got assigned.
I got assigned really shitty stuff because, what's the
word -- maybe I didn't demand anything else.
Scott: Well I was going to say,
being Richard Meltzer -- and you did have a reputation...
Richard: Yeah…
Scott: Could you not have just
asked for the better stuff?
Richard: Well, I mean, I don't
know. How to put it? I couldn't even tell you what year
Al Green was -- '72, '73, '74 -- I don't even remember.
But the thing is, I never wrote about reggae, and I
very much like reggae. And to like something doesn't
mean you must write about it.
Scott: Yeah. And you hated glam
rock?
Richard: Yes.
Scott: Despised it?
Richard: Yeah. I mean, to me,
David Bowie was one of the people responsible for the
return to mass conformity as such. It was like, let's go
back to being well-dressed teenagers again, folks, let's
wear expensive pants. There was no more… The '60s were --
whatever there was of the come-as-you-are casualness of
the '60s, Bowie ended that.
Scott: But weren't the Beatles
mass conformity?
Richard: You could say Brian
Epstein, you know, forced them to be a prototype of
MTV, I mean, YES, they played the Cavern Club and they
wore leather pants like Gene Vincent. And yes, there
were aspects of them that, in some ways, the Monkees
flow from the Beatles. YES! Absolutely. But they did
SO much more -- who's perfect, you know? Yes, there
was a style sheet for their shows, and all that, but --
whatever. I just think there was something -- I never
cared for "Carnaby Street or Bust," the whole, uh, the
notion of STYLE sheets for any of that stuff. But the
style sheet was so IMMENSE in the '60s, and by the
early '70s there were a few different style sheets but
they were all very limiting.
Scott: So the stuff that you were
assigned to write about in that period -- the "Prime
Wallow" period -- you obviously didn't really write
about it, you wrote around it, or you wrote about it
as asides...
Richard: Well, the way to put it
is essentially the only time I would say that it mattered
a lot to me -- like I DID, to some extent, try to write,
try to get opportunities to review things I cared about
before Rolling Stone kicked me out. I reviewed
L.A. Woman for them, and I tried to review
Sticky Fingers, and they rejected it. But
basically I would say, from a certain point on, there
weren't really class venues. I wrote for 30, 40 papers,
and they were all just a joke: Zoo World, and,
uh, there was a paper from Staten Island called
Raunchy Rock. And it was much more important
to me to be just doing my strut, my dance, wherever
I was given the opportunity, and it wasn't so crucial
to me to be writing about the A bands anymore. I mean,
I would say with a thing like the Stooges -- I LOVED
the Stooges, but I didn't like Raw Power,
people think I'm nuts. I thought Raw Power
was where it went wrong, it was Columbia Records, I
didn't like the production sound -- it had the stink
of Bowie on it, whatever. The only Bowie thing I ever
liked was the song "Heroes," which was Brian Eno. But
basically I was waiting for punk to happen, from about
'73 on; I thought it would happen sooner, but it didn't.
Scott: What were you trying to do
with the writing that you were assigned to do?
Richard: What was I trying to do?
I was trying to make a mess! I tried to spill the beans,
I tried to undermine levels and degrees of reality.
Scott: Robert Christgau says your
loss of interest in music was "spiritual."
Richard: I never lost any
interest in music. The point is, I lost interest in
the mainstream offerings of product by major record
companies. And I never stopped from a certain point
on, uh -- before the British Invasion, I momentarily
stopped listening to jazz, but from a certain point on
in the '70s, I've never stopped listening to jazz since.
It's always been near, to, y'know, as nurture. I
basically stopped depending on rock 'n' roll as FOOD.
Scott: Okay, talk about Christgau's
word choice of "spiritual" -- does that make any sense?
Richard: Uh, no. I mean,
basically, that whole piece I find very, uh -- I
was sort of pleased with that because it seemed to me
that -- my real feeling is he doesn't even like the
book, but he feels he needs to say that he does. (laughs)
Scott: Really?
Richard: Yeah.
Scott: How do you gather that?
Richard: Oh, you know, I call him
a PIGFUCKER in the book, you know. I mean, literally,
I use that term: pigfucker. (laughs) And I say all
these things about him, and ALL he responds to in his
piece is, "Well, technically I wasn't the editor of
the Voice from '67 to '74; oh well, I guess I
could have passed his name along, like I did with my
dear friend Tom SMUCKER, whose work I loved! But it
really wasn't until '74 that I was in a position..."
you know -- and so he picks that, that's like the
easiest thing he can refute, that he can even MENTION.
I mean, he doesn't talk about -- I call him a SCHOOL
MARM. He doesn't deal with any of that stuff. He doesn't
deal with the fact that Lester, Lester -- he told
Lester, you know, "I went to Dartmouth, you didn't
graduate from college -- you're not as SMART as I am."
I mean, he says a lot of things. He's quoted being an
asshole by many people, and yet, he just talks about a
little technicality. I mean, truly, I used to ask him,
I'd go to press parties and I'd say, "When can I write
for the Voice, Bob?" "I'll TELL you when you're
ready." He literally did. And I talk about how I remember
the day he turned 30, I ran into him on 14th Street in
New York, and he was just, he was like, DESTROYED,
y'know. I was probably 27, 28, he was 30, and he was
very upset about it. And that was when Chuck Berry had
a hit with "My Ding-a-Ling," and it was like he had to,
from that moment on -- and the Dolls were happening --
he had to champion the music of KIDS, because otherwise
he was an old man.
Scott: I can't argue with what
you're saying, but I think in his piece -- I just find
it hard to believe you still think he doesn't actually
like your book, or like your writing.
Richard: Uh, well, I imagine,
yes, he likes some pieces, but as far as the entirety
of the book, I think the book, if anything, is an INSULT
to him.
Scott: Yeah.
Richard: (laughs) So why would
he like it?
Scott: Well, you can be insulted
(laughs) and still like it as writing, I mean...
Richard: Right...
Scott: If someone wrote...
Richard: He mentions one piece
there in particular, he's talking about how, uh, "Oh,
look, do I really want to TRUST what this guy has to
say if he was wrong about those seven years?" And he
just lists a few things, he doesn't really SAY anything
about them, and he mentions my Eric Dolphy piece, and he
says (in parentheses) "I'll grant you half on that." And
that was the piece where he and Gary Giddins ganged up
on me (laughs), and so I imagine what he means by that
is he'll grant me the half that is Gary Giddins, you
know, like let's blame Giddins. But that was really
incredibly traumatic for me at the time. I mean it really
was, I had to SUCK up to Gary Giddins or never write
for the paper again. I mean, Christgau -- I didn't even
mention that once upon a time I wanted to review a
Jackson Browne album. The last thing I wrote for
Rolling Stone, I did a feature on Jackson
Browne at the time that his first album came out,
because I knew him in '67 in New York -- he was
living with Nico, and he was playing at this Warhol
club, the Dom, and he was something of a PUNK. And so
I did this piece about that, and Jackson hated the piece,
and not only did he hate the piece, but David Geffen,
who had Asylum Records at the time, hated the piece,
and basically they had me kicked out of Rolling
Stone. Landau kicked me out of the Reviews section,
and from that point on I couldn't write for the paper.
And so, years went by -- that was, like, '72 --
somewhere about '77, '78, for some reason I was gonna
review a Jackson Browne album, and he finds out the
whole cast and crew has changed, I mean, Geffen is
long gone -- it was Atlantic Asylum, now it's Elektra
Asylum -- and somewhere on a computer somewhere it
says "Meltzer is not to write about Jackson." And
Christgau told me, "We can't have you review this or
we will lose ads." You know? Mr. Integrity. I didn't
even put that in the book, but he was essentially a
corporate -- a cog in the wheel of, uh -- he was always
as big a shill and a -- what is the word? -- a LACKEY.
And I don't even use those words in the book for him,
but basically I COULD have. And so it seems to me that
his applauding my book is just because he sees it as:
rock 'n' roll goes on.
Part 3 of Richard Meltzer interview
