August 21, 2010

That’s my personal copy of the Who’s classic 1971 hard rock album, “Who’s Next.” Although it’s difficult to see in this photo, written on the cover in silver Sharpie are the words, “To Paul— Thanx for your help, Roger Daltrey.”

Yes, the inscription is authentic, and I really did help Roger Daltrey. But he rejected my help at the last minute…on stage at Carnegie Hall no less. He signed the cd a couple days before that, though, and it wasn’t that big a deal to me that he ended up dumping on me. So, since I once had a cool little sojourn with the lead singer of the Who, let’s talk about that before I tell you in an upcoming Download It piece that “Who’s Next” is easily the greatest album the Who ever made, with “Quadrophenia” coming in a rather distant second, and everything else, outside of arguably “The Who Sell Out,” tied for last.

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Back in February of 1994, when I was working at HMV Records on E. 86th St., my agent called to say that Daltrey was putting on a benefit show at Carnegie Hall in which he would sing the songs of his long-time co-worker, Pete Townshend…as if such a thing was a stunning new concept in popular music. The Who’s former manager and road-toughened friend, Chris Stamp, was looking for a writer who knew a lot about rock & roll and could whip up introductions to the sundry acts that would be performing with Daltrey at the concert. Everyone involved would be rehearsing Who tunes with a full orchestra at SIR studios, so the chosen writer could hang around throughout the week and talk to anybody who wanted to talk to him.

My boss just about yelped - we were working at a record store, after all - and gave me instant approval to go kick back with Daltrey, John Entwistle, and the rest of the Who’s extended family. I didn’t realize it yet, but I was about to experience a genuinely surreal week. When I think back on it now, it doesn’t even seem like I actually did this.

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The show, which would be broadcast live on pay-per-view, was being directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the guy behind a couple of groundbreaking promotional films for the Beatles, as well as the Fab Four’s brutal, death-throes documentary, “Let It Be.” Bob Ezrin, who most famously produced several KISS records and Pink Floyd’s mega-selling “The Wall,” was producing the music, and the orchestra was being conducted by the Academy Award-winning composer, Michael Kamen. I, on the other hand, was an inveterate wise-ass who knew more than he needed to about rock & roll history, so I felt I could hold my own. And I did.

The musicians who’d be performing with Daltrey ranged from big names like Lou Reed and Sinead O’Connor to inexplicably popular (at the time) types like the Spin Doctors and the chick who sang that supremely annoying “hey-hey-hey-whoa-whoa-whoa” song by 4 Non-Blondes. A rotating series of performers showed up each day, minus Reed, for some reason, to run through their numbers while Kamen and Ezrin fine-tuned the arrangements. Townshend himself was also supposed to be involved, but didn’t show up until the last minute, for apparently manipulative, shitty reasons.

Truth be told, I had very little to do but eat free food, gaze upon an assortment of sleek music industry females, and, you know, sit on a stool next to John Entwistle, pausing and re-starting the song “5:15”while he played along on his bass. This was never really a dream of mine, but it sure as hell seemed like a dream while I was doing it.

Since I sort of bounced around the studio like a sarcastic ping-pong ball for five solid days, I suppose I’ll just give you some choice anecdotes involving me and several Famous People.

* Sinead O’Connor wasn’t even asked to appear in the show; she just happened to be in town recording with the traditional Celtic band, the Chieftains, and Daltrey asked them to perform. So one day, O’Connor came creeping in with the Chieftains, sort of crashing the party, and she looked like she was terrified that somebody would toss her out. But everybody was thrilled to see her. This was a very genial group of laid-back professionals. I’d imagine many of these guys hadn’t been to a proper drug-fueled orgy for at least 15 years.

I eventually brought O’Connor a cup of tea, she thanked me, and we crouched against a wall, sipping silently while an arrangement was rehearsed by the orchestra. I happened to really like the music O’Connor released in the early ‘90s, although the Joan of Arc routine was a bit much, and it was a blast to share a moment with her at a time when she was - appreciatively or not - one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. Luckily, I managed to refrain from saying, “You know, I was at that Dylan tribute, and had you just started singing instead of standing there and bawling like a baby, the crowd would have quit booing. Bozo.”

* Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who was as busy as anybody in the studio, had never spoken to me, but suddenly pulled me aside one day and asked if I was British (Sir Lindsay-Hogg very much is British.) I told him I wasn’t, and he said the introductions I wrote for Daltrey were wonderful, and that they sounded utterly British in their cadence. I told him that was my aim, that I generated a “Monty Python voice” in my head and tailored the intros so that Michael Palin or John Cleese would sound right saying them. I figured that would also suit Daltrey.

Lindsay-Hogg asked me if Daltrey was learning the introductions, and I told him I hadn’t seen him doing anything remotely like that. He stressed again that he was delighted with them, and hoped Roger was on the case. This pleased me to no end, because it made me feel like I was genuinely contributing something to the proceedings. But more on that later.

* I was standing there chatting with the very droll Entwistle one day when he glanced over my shoulder and muttered, “Oh, fuck.” I turned around to see, striding excitedly toward us, none other than Alice Cooper. I would have said, “Oh, fuck,” too, had I seen Cooper coming, because I strongly feel he’s ridiculous. But it took about two sentences out of Cooper’s mouth to illuminate Entwistle’s quiet anguish for me— Alice Cooper, ladies and gentlemen, is a complete and total doofus.

Alice (shown here holding a skull that he picked up at Woolworth’s one October) pretended to be really impressed with the big ol’ orchestra, even though, surely to God, he’d recorded with one many times before. Then he started talking about going down to St. Marks Place to shop for a Who t-shirt that he could wear during the show. This was about as interesting as you might imagine it to be, which is to say not even remotely interesting, so Entwistle pretended he had something important he had to do and left me there with Alice, who immediately segued into a monologue about golf, which I had to listen to even though I’ve never played a round of golf in my life.

Once again, I found myself inhabiting some sort of bizarre dream. How the fuck else could Alice Cooper be seriously talking to me about a nine iron?

* Bob Ezrin, the producer, was responsible for the lush, overblown sound of many top-selling 1970s albums - including several by Alice Cooper - that I find absolutely useless. But I’ve always been interested, to varying degrees, in Lou Reed, and knew Ezrin was behind the controls for Reed’s mortifyingly dour song cycle, “Berlin.”

At the end of one of “Berlin”’s more gruesome tracks, “The Kids,” there’s an extended passage in which a couple of children are crying and screaming for their drug addicted mommy while the authorities are physically dragging them away from her. I told Ezrin the screams are so hard to take I once instinctively whipped off the headphones when I was listening to the album and tossed them on the floor. It wasn’t a conscious decision— my reflexes actually took over.

Ezrin grinned broadly, and said, “You like that?” I said I guessed I did, sort of. But what I wanted to know, even though I wasn’t sure I'd like the answer, was how on earth he got a couple of children to behave like that on cue.

He told me he felt the track was missing something when he and Reed listened to it in the studio. One night, his kids were going ape-shit while his wife tried to get them into bed, and inspiration hit. Without telling anyone, he quickly placed a tape recorder in the hallway, and his children ended up contributing to the single most depressing record ever made by a major rock star. Anything for art, I guess.

* I don’t have a story to tell about my face-to-face interaction with Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, even though he performed in the show, because Eddie Vedder is a big fucking asshole who refused to enter the studio while a crowd was there. So, if you weren’t a musician who was playing with him, you were politely asked to not show up during his rehearsal. Later, Vedder’s record company wouldn’t let Vedder appear on a recording of the performance, and Daltrey occasionally ripped him a new one during interviews, for which I now give him a belated thumbs-up. Oh yeah— Vedder also trashed his dressing room at Carnegie Hall, because he’s a deep, dark, troubled Rock Star. The dick.

* Daltrey actually turned out to be one of the more fascinating people I encountered in all of this, because he was so surprisingly unsure of himself. Really, it was almost comical, and sort of sad. I once wrote that he was a bit “dim,” but that probably isn’t fair. He just seemed to be sort of flummoxed by the theme of the show, and he was constantly looking for approval.

He sat down and talked to me far more often than I ever would have expected him to, and that was nice of him. When he found out I was a screenwriter, he implored me to go see “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?,” then sang the praises of the film’s young co-star, Leonardo DiCaprio. Once, I was just sitting there drinking a can of Coke, when he plopped down and asked me if I liked his vocal on “My Generation.”

I felt like this was a trick question, since it’s pretty much a consensus that “My Generation” is one of the great recordings of the British Invasion, and that’s exactly what I told Daltrey. He seemed happy to hear it, then got up and left to, for all I know, ask somebody if they think he screams loud enough at the end of “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

(A funny thing that happened one day: When I was getting Daltrey to sign a copy of "Tommy" for my older sister, Dianne - she played the vinyl to death when it first came out - he accidentally signed it while holding the cover upside down. I told him that was okay, though, because he was deaf, dumb, and blind. We chuckled.)

It didn’t take much to realize that Daltrey had a bit of an inferiority complex when it came to Townshend. I thought he’d have a heart attack when he first received word that Pete called to say he wouldn’t be coming to the show. Here’s the gist of an actual conversation I had with Daltrey:

Daltrey: “Paul. Pete says he’s not showing up.”
Me: “Whatta ya mean, ‘He’s not showing up?’
Daltrey: “He’s not showing up.”
Me: “Here at the studio?”
Daltrey: “Well, here, yeah. But he won’t be in the show.”
Me: “He’s not coming to the concert you’re putting on in his honor?!”
Daltrey: “That’s what he says.”

I paused to ponder this, as well as Townshend’s legendarily adversarial relationship with his old buddy, Roger.

Me: “But doesn’t he always pull shit like that with you?”
Daltrey: “Yeah. But I think he really means it.”
Me: “I can’t believe he won’t show. He’s gonna look like an asshole if he doesn’t.”

Daltrey just gave me a nervous smile, while undoubtedly thinking that pointless assholery would be par for the course for Pete. Townshend finally did appear at the show and even performed a tune, as I was certain he would, although his performance was so forgettable, he could have been singing fucking “Sister Disco” for all I know. I have absolutely no memory of what he played, and I’m not inclined to look it up.

All’s well that ends well, I guess…except that Entwistle eventually died of a cocaine overdose, and now Daltrey and Townshend haul their asses around the globe, pretending to be the Who when in fact they’re two old guys who used to be in the Who. I mean, come on. Brooks Robinson and Jim Palmer don’t walk around saying they’re the Baltimore Orioles.

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As for Roger’s betrayal of yours truly— when he first stepped on the stage at the beginning of the concert, he was gripping the introductions I wrote for him in his right hand. When the applause died down, he glanced at the notes, then said, “There’s no place for notes in rock & roll,” and set them on the ground...at which point I slapped my palm to my forehead.

A person I knew from the film crew said Lindsay-Hogg was going apoplectic up in the booth, because they were broadcasting live, and my introductions were designed to kill time while drum kits and such were set up for each new act. Instead, Daltrey stood there saying things like, “It’s taking a lot longer to do that than I thought it would.”

So let that be a lesson for all you fledgling rock legends out there. There may be no place for notes in rock & roll, but if you don’t memorize the introductions, you should at least rely on notes between the rock & roll.

Paul Tatara

August 25, 2010

Every time I see a round loaf of sourdough bread, I think of this brilliant, yet completely idiotic sight gag from Woody Allen’s 1969 picture, “Take the Money and Run,” a fake documentary-genre film pastiche in which Allen plays an inept bank robber named Virgil Starkwell. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.

That’s so courageously stupid, Allen must have fallen out of his chair when he first thought of it, and it’s certainly not the only gag of that ilk in “Take the Money and Run.” The movie is pretty much comprised of them, from beginning to end.

The first picture that then-comedian Woody directed - technically speaking, he gets a co-director credit on “What’s Up Tiger Lilly?,” but that shouldn’t count - “Take the Money and Run” is really just a filmed version of an Allen standup routine. There’s virtually no “plot” to get in the way of the often Freudian one-liners, the framing of the images is abysmal, there’s little concern for continuity, many of the actors appear to be amateurs, and the score, by Marvin Hamlisch, sometimes works just fine, but more often sounds like it’s incidental music left over from a first attempt at “A Chorus Line.”

“Take the Money and Run” is a mess, but it’s also funny as hell. Outside of “Match Point,” I’d watch it in a second over any one of Allen’s last 10 0r 12 pictures…and, even then, “Match Point”’s trump card is Scarlett Johansson repeatedly getting hot-and-bothered, which has very little to do with making motion pictures and everything to do with Scarlett Johansson’s DNA.

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Actually, I’m more familiar with the internal rhythms of “Take the Money and Run” than I am with much better films that I watch far more often, because, when I was about 14 years-old, my brother, Jim, and I listened to “Take the Money and Run” repeatedly without looking at it. If you’re too young to remember a world without video tape, this will sound insane. But if you’re the right age, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

We don’t watch movies nowadays with the sense of urgency that we used to, and I really think our connections to them have dimmed in the process. Jim and I first saw “Take the Money and Run” on a Friday night, when it was broadcast on one of the three national TV networks. That’s three channels, folks, with the only other options being PBS and reading a book.

There weren’t any cable networks cranking out shifting streams of Hollywood garbage and gold back then, and there certainly wasn’t any Tivo. If you wanted to see a movie on TV, you had to be sitting in front of the television at the exact moment it was being broadcast. And if you couldn’t be there, tough luck. You’d have to wait to see if the network repeated the picture the next year.

You had about as much chance of making your television show you exactly what you wanted to watch as you did of making your oven cook your favorite dinner without your input. That just wasn’t how it worked, and there was nothing you could do about it.

Unless, of course, like me, you flipped on an audio cassette recorder and just taped the soundtrack. That’s right, the second time I ever watched “Take the Money and Run,” because it was so hilarious the previous year, I decided to get the words down on tape so I could listen to them in the morning when I was getting ready for school, or when Jim drove us to the Piggly Wiggly in his orange Opel Kadet station wagon.

We played the cassette over and over again, until we could practically recite it, and a lot of the jokes have remained with me into middle age, especially this nugget from Allen's oh-so-serious narrator: “Food on a chain gang is scarce and not very nourishing. The men get one hot meal a day— a bowl of steam.”

During the sight gags, you could hear us sniffling and snorting in the background, trying to stifle our laughter so we wouldn’t ruin the recording. But I had to sit there and try to reconstruct the visuals from memory while I listened to the tape. We used to do the same thing with early episodes of “Saturday Night Live”— Steve Martin as “Theodoric of York” and all that.

It didn’t seem pathetic at the time, but a lot of things we do don’t seem pathetic until we look back on them 35 years later. Again, if you’re not old enough to have experienced this yet, get ready. Your turn is coming, and, given the endless torrents of digitized stupidity that you have to choose from at this point, you’ll be rolling your eyes a hell of a lot more than I do when you finally start reflecting.

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Anyway, as long as I have it in my head now, here’s another killer moment from “Take Money and Run.” (Note that Janet Margolin, the actress who plays Virgil's girlfriend, is about 50 times hotter than any woman in her right mind who would touch Woody Allen, a theme that ran throughout Allen's pictures until relatively recently.)

That used to fill the Opel Kadet with gales of laughter.

Paul Tatara

August 20, 2010

"If the oil is still in the Gulf when I grow up and become a mad scientist, I'm going to build a black hole suction-powered vacuum and suck up all the oil."

Paul Tatara

August 20, 2010

Before we begin our discussion I submit to you this trailer for the upcoming Drew Barrymore “romantic comedy” - and we all know either one of those words could be AWOL from the final product - “Going the Distance.”

Wow. That looks different. Never seen anything like that before…except for the warm water title, the indie guitar music (with a special bonus live appearance by the actual indie band), the ticking-clock set-up, the cute scene(s) at the restaurant, the amusing slacker roommate, the guy literally running desperately after the girl, the best friends who break down the “rules” of modern love for the flummoxed lead characters, and the sweet, sweet kissin’ scenes that just makes you wanna cry.

Can’t wait to see it!

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Drew Barrymore, or at least the pivotal version of Drew Barrymore that gets pressed on the American movie-going public every five or six months, irritates me to no end, and has irritated me for about as long as I can remember. In fact, I think the last time I fully enjoyed a movie featuring Drew Barrymore, it was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred a pre-fabricated little green man who looked like latter-day Miles Davis after a 6-month crack binge.

I don’t mean, of course, “Boys on the Side” or “Mad Love” or “Wishful Thinking” or “Best Men” or “Home Fries” or “Never Been Kissed” or “Music with Lyrics” or “Riding in Cars with Boys” or “Fever Pitch” or “Lucky You” or “He’s Just Not That Into You.” I’m talking about “E fuckin’ T: The Extraterrestrial.” From that point onward, it’s been a lot easier to glance at Barrymore than to actually focus on her while she bats her big ol’ eyes and talks out of the side of her mouth while yet another cheese-puff movie evaporates around her.

I’ll admit, Barrymore has shown some legitimate acting chops in a couple of TV movies. Her take on “Long Island Lolita” Amy Fisher was dead-on; if you closed your eyes and listened to her, you’d swear that thumping accent was emanating from the actual item. And she recently won an Emmy for playing one of Jackie Onassis’ irritatingly unhinged cousins in “Grey Gardens,” where, once again, she nailed the accent perfectly. But those two performances and appearing in the bizarre cult favorite, “Donnie Darko,” are slim accomplishments for a person who’s been a presence on the pre-digested American pop landscape for three solid decades.

Whether it’s talk show appearances, strolls down the red carpet, makeup commercials, magazine covers, or 40-foot billboards, Barrymore is the very picture of all-American everywhere-ness. She’s cute, in her way, and is ready to laugh at herself when need be. But I’ve known lots of self-deprecating, attractive women in my time, and it’s never occurred to me that they missed their callings and should appear in a string of 25 or 30 utterly phony, cookie-cutter motion pictures, then start producing the goddamned things once the prefabricated gestures have been permanently stamped on their cerebellums.

By now, Barrymore must hear possible soundtrack cuts in her head every time she tries on an endearingly floppy hat at a second-hand clothing store.

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So why single out poor Drew Barrymore for this type of essay? Surely, you’re thinking, there are just as worthy targets for such Hollywood-centric disdain. Well, I reached the genuine point of no return with Barrymore a few years back, when she produced and starred in that much beloved masterpiece of dignity and understatement known as “Charlie’s Angels,” then started making the rounds on talk shows declaring how “empowering” the movie is for women, and how she really wants to do what she can to make them feel better about themselves.

Apparently, then, and this would never have occurred to me without Barrymore’s help, the best way for a woman to empower herself is to flash her tits and ass and kick some guy’s teeth out of his mouth while wearing candy-colored wet dream skintight clothing. Real self-actualization, in other words, is becoming a ferocious pinup.

It’s bad enough when you’re selling straight-up horse shit and nobody calls you on it, even though that transaction is virtually the defining act of modern American existence. But to pretend that the horse shit is somehow going to improve your audience’s sagging self-image, that it’ll help even the playing field and make the world a better place, is either a case of hardcore self-delusion or a sign of, well, someone who simply isn’t very smart…and isn’t getting called on it.

So now, to answer the titular question— Drew Barrymore is 35 years-old. Click on the “Going the Distance” trailer again and consider that. The woman playing that confused, whiney bundle of clichés isn’t 21 or 22 or 27. She’s approaching 40.

Imagine how dumb Madonna will look humorlessly aerobicizing in front of a zillion-dollar light show and a bunch of Chippendale’s chorus boys when she’s 60…and don’t you worry, she won’t know what else to do with herself, so we’re bound to see it. Now think how ridiculous Barrymore will look in a mere five years if she doesn’t begin to wait for decent roles to come along and opts instead to keep doing the same-old same-old in the East Village, kissing in the rain and lisping out her exasperated love for that cute guy who can’t comb his hair or tuck in his wrinkled shirt.

I think she needs to get ET’s agent on the phone.

Paul Tatara