I’ve had the same struggle over the years trying to preserve and protect my concept of the late Lester Bangs’s importance as a writer, rather than his too-frequent media appropriation as some sort of “gonzo” effigy.  Yes, Lester did take drugs, but any fool could do that; not everybody, not even a lot of his fellow rockwriters, could create the kind of (Kerouacian-inspired) prose Lester did.  And Almost Famous to the contrary, Lester was not some reclusive crank, but an imposing intellect who was writing and publishing constantly, someone who inspired many others to essay rock criticism of their own and then brought them into the field through his always open and generous personality.  I know, because I’m one of that latter group.   

But I also know that Jack Kerouac and Lester Bangs are such huge icons by now that it’s ridiculous for me to think I could possibly maintain “exclusives” on their images.  As their earthly lives continue to fade into the lost past, new times and generational contexts will likely work their personas over in major ways.

Which brings me to the current film of Kerouac’s landmark novel On the Road, which hit the theatres in 2012, “only” 55 years after the book’s publication.  Yes, I know of all the problems Francis Ford Coppola and others ran into over the years, trying to make the novel into a movie (a book that may have been relatively unfilmable right from the start), and yes, I’m glad the movie is finally out, but it’s definitely a mixed blessing.  The late-’40s cosmetics — the clothes, the jazz, the famous ’49 Hudson — are nice, but the plot is so jump-cut chaotic and episodic that many viewers will have no idea what’s going on.  For someone like me, who’s read Kerouac’s books and studied his life for nearly 50 years, the movie’s comprehensible, if a sped-up technicolor gloss of all that reading.  But if you don’t know that “Old Bull Lee” = William Burroughs, then Sal’s and Dean’s excursions through Louisiana to see him and get his blessing don’t make much sense.

Of course, the real-life Neal Cassady’s continual hyperactivity produced a lot of such semmingly-unmotivated ramming-around from coast to coast, but at least in the novel of On the Road, you always have Kerouac’s reflections upon and explanations of Dean Moriarty’s manic odysseys to carry you between the actual rammings.  The movie seems like a reality-TV version of On the Road,  what with the constant jump cuts and the frequently orgiastic sex.  I don’t recall the book as being that sexually graphic, but wikipedia says the script was taken more from Kerouac’s original manuscript than from the version Viking published, so that could account for the difference in tone. 

Garrett Hedlund is good as the ADHD-as-a-sacrament Dean Moriarty, but Sam Riley as Kerouac-equivalent Sal Paradise disappoints me.  He’s a faithful follower and observer, just as Kerouac was of Cassady, but somehow Riley is too passive, and doesn’t convey the presence I imagine Kerouac would have had in those scenes.  It doesn’t help that I’ve watched the Joy Division biopic Control on Sundance several times recently, and that Riley is thus permanently imprinted on my brain as Ian Curtis, quite a different kettle of angst than Kerouac was.  If I ruled the world, On the Road would have been made into a movie as early as the late ’60s, when the book’s rebellion-against-the-’50s context was still fresh, when Jack himself could have collected some royalties, and when (my casting choice), another Brit actor, the late Alan Bates, would have played Sal Paradise.  Bates had Kerouac’s black hair and blue eyes, his somewhat-chunky fullback’s body, and a magnetic screen presence at all times; I can see it now. 

But, as I’ve already noted, Kerouac belongs to the ages, and even if the current film of On the Road isn’t quite what I wanted, I remain glad it’s out there at last.  In the meantime, I’ll return to my endless Kerouacian Studies, at the moment deep into my second or third reading of his Doctor Sax, where I’ve just found this fine, fine line on p. 113: “When W.C. Fields has boarded the destiny train, for sooty miles to Cincinnati, my father hurries in the B.F. Keith alley opens the door, goes in on lost endeavors wined from the Canal of sperms and oil that flows between the mills, under the bridge – “  Yes!       

JOHN COUGAR
CINCINNATI, OH, September 1980

Original Story: John Cougar XR-7’s Entire Midwest Metropolis, CREEM, December 1980

Back Story: Though it may be hard to imagine by now, Mr. Mellencamp’s future in pop music was highly tenuous at the time I first met him. He’d survived and moved on from Tony DeFries’s nutty “Johnny Cougar” promotional scenario, but he wasn’t yet doing a whole lot better with the more organic “John Cougar” identity. The critics were universally savaging him as a Bruce Springsteen clone, and it was obvious to me that John had borrowed much of Springsteen’s bluecollar-bard persona, but I perversely thought John’s version sounded better than The Boss’s.  If Pat Benatar hadn’t made hits out of first her cover and then by association John’s original of “I Need A Lover” right around that time, he might have lost his shaky foothold on a major label. I really liked the little bastard from the moment I met him, so I purposely withheld a few of the more impulsive and mouthy Cougar actions I observed from my initial story, as the guy was already poised just above the skids. By now, of course, John Mellencamp is established as one of the biggest pop stars of the last two decades of the 20th Century, and could easily afford to buy my whole body to use as spare parts (we have the same color eyes), if he so desired. So it shouldn’t hurt him now if I fill in some gaps in my original piece.

As noted in my story, John Cougar & The Zone (as his band was briefly known in those new wave days) were touring in a “hefty RV/camper.” When I told John that I’d gone to college in Richmond, Indiana, that got him started on the RV, which he’d recently purchased from Richmond megadealer Tom Raper (I am not making up the name), even then a bane of Cincinnati TV with his constant commercials yapping about “5th Wheels & Tent Campers!” John told me that the band had had numerous mechanical problems with the RV when it was new, and that the Raper dealership hadn’t seemed to care about making it right. John fussed to me about Mr. Raper, and then huffed (in that twang voice we’ve since grown to love), “And he calls himself a Christian!!!” Twenty years on, Tom Raper’s RV theme lot is still camped out all over Cincinnati’s airwaves, but now with a series of subtler spots featuring the comely-country Louise Mandrell cooing about her “good friend Tom Raper!” Yeh, Louise, tell it to John Mellencamp . . .

A bit further on in my story, I unleashed much accumulated sarcasm on Cincinnati’s phony-hip WEBN-FM, but what I left out was my huge pleasure at watching John Mellencamp graphically act out my feelings of repulsion for the station. As noted in the story, John and the Phonogram reps did their best to sell John’s music to WEBN deejay Curt Geary, who went on “nodding and shuffling in place” in synch to some internal, numbing rhythm we couldn’t quite fathom. Geary didn’t seem to dislike John’s record, but then he didn‘t express enthusiasm either — he was never quite there, at any point of the proceedings. We resignedly left the WEBN studio, then located on Hyde Park Square, one of Cincinnati’s hoity-toityest shopping areas, with its fountain- and trees-anchored island in the middle of Erie Avenue. As we were crossing the quaint traffic island to go back to Don George’s car, with all the blue-haired Hyde Park matrons cruising by in their Cadillac and Mercedes sedans, John suddenly snarled out, “What the hell was the matter with that guy, just sitting there doing like this?!?!?”, and he pranced out a little dance right there, shaking his trim ass as the traffic whooshed by. I hope all those matrons got as good a look as I did that afternoon, for not more than a couple of years later, it started costing lots more to see John Mellencamp shake his ass in public.

When we returned to the motel after our tour of the radio stations, I got to meet John’s girlfriend-and-soon-to-be-wife Vicky Granucci (as later featured in the “Jack And Diane” video.) John wanted to sit down in his room and talk music biz with me, so he told Vicky to go down to the lobby and to get cans of pop for him and me from the machine there. She didn’t seem eager to jump and fetch the moment The Men got back from their promo hunting and gathering, and I told John I didn’t really want a pop (have rarely drunk the stuff, then or now), but he firmly ordered Vicky to get going. She returned with a Coke for John and a Sprite for me. I drank it.

Later that evening, at the concert, out of the blue John Cougar dedicated a song to “Richard Riegel, the rockwriter!” I was a bit anxious that the Payola Police would emerge from the dark and nab me, but no one in the hall seemed to know who John was saluting, so I kept my privacy. I’m still embarrassed enough by John’s dedication that I can’t remember which tune he sent my way.

PAT BENATAR
COLUMBIA, MD, August 1981

Original Story: Hot L Baltimore’s (Not Just) For Children, CREEM, November 1981

Back Story: Not long before I jetted to Baltimore on Chrysalis’s tab to do this story, Teresa and I had driven to Macomb, IL one day, to meet CREEM’s de facto post-Bangsian genius, the reclusive Rick Johnson. We found The Reek at home and quite friendly. When I told him that I would soon be interviewing Pat Benatar, he shuffled through the little slips of metaphor-inscribed paper in his teeming brain, and advised me that I should be sure to inform Ms. Benatar that she looked like an ant. This from the shy Swede who didn’t want to get any closer to the rockstars than their promo glossies . . . I told Rick that his pert simile might work better in another context, but I see that I sneaked it into my published story nonetheless, with my positive-spin comment about Pat’s “ant-sized waist.” Reek, we are here!

Pat Benatar charmed me during my brief time with her, as she was genuinely kind and concerned toward everyone around her, something of a suburban earth mother beneath the imaginary tough-punkette persona that had brought her so much notice in these new-wave-mutating-into-MTV times. Pat’s charm made me gush about her music maybe more than I had meant to do in my feature, which worried me a bit when she emoted her way through stridently melodramatic songs like “We Belong To The Night” later in the ‘80s, but what the heck — I regret nothing.

After all, Pat Benatar gave me one of the premier compliments of my life during this encounter, when we were making small talk around the table in the pizzeria in the Columbia mall. Chrysalis’s Toby Lubov asked me what my situation was back in Cincinnati, and I responded that I was married to Teresa, and that we had an eight-year-old daughter, Sarah. “Oh,” said Pat knowingly, “That’s why you’re not an asshole!” She went on to explain that a number of the male journalists she’d met on this tour had seemed threatened by her ostensible tough-girl pose, and had kept trying to challenge and dominate her during their interviews. Per Pat, I didn’t seem to have any problem with her being the star, and she appreciated that. Not to mention how much I’ve appreciated her comment over the years. I can see it now, put to good use into perpetuity on my headstone:

RICHARD M. RIEGEL
1946-20XX
“Not An Asshole”
– P. Benatar, 1981

Thanks, Pat.

E L E G O N Z O

by Sleaza Robbinslum * * * * * *

DON’T SKOOSH THAT BUG — HE MAY MAKE YOU A STAR!

With all due respect, glitter did not start with Porter Wagoner. If you peasants have been paying any attention at all to this column, you should already know that the divine Sleaza herself invented glitter, way back in 1964, when  all of the other girls were still dressing like Patty Duke’s retarded English cousin. However, if you missed today’s pop-glitterquiz, dears, may all your jeans come from K-Mart henceforth, and may they fall apart after two washings.

So what are they wearing in New York these days? Well, Alice Cooper and his boa constrictor boa have nothing on the delectable young foxes of the Big Apple any longer, as a charmingly decadent fashion fad of the early sixties has been revived by David JoHansen of the delightful N.Y.Dolls. Yes, David appeared at Lou Reed’s Alice Tully Hall concert in his usual skintight jumpsuit, but with the most enormous live cockroach tied to a pin on his shoulder by a gleaming silver chain. The roach had scores of rhinestones embedded in his back, and roamed devilishly around David’s chest and biceps all evening, occasionally partaking morsels of David’s hors d’oeuvres or sipping at his drink. Several members of the Fusion reporting team fainted dead away (Boston has never tolerated vermin of any sort), but your own glamorous Sleaza knew that she’d finally found the perfect oneupmanship glitter item to outdo twelve-inch platforms.

The next morning I rushed over to Saks’ Fifth Avenue, and bought the most magnificent big beetle, complete with rubies, sapphires, and gold chain ($129.95, including A.I.C. papers.) That evening, at David Bowie’s farewell concert at Max’s Kansas City, yours truly was the smash of the affair with her jewel-encrusted scarab scampering all over the shoulder of her darling little blouse (which I had just discovered in a delicious little shop in Paris.) Of course, the naughty little insect had the chutzpah to shit on my shoulder, but it was such divine little ka-ka, almost like particles of glitter, that I was generous and forgiving (for Sleaza has an extravagantly large soul beneath all her beautiful clothes.)

In the ensuing weeks, New York’s better rock & cheap thrills emporiums were overrun by a veritable plague of jeweled bugs luxuriating on the beautiful bodies of their masters. Todd Rundgren was seen with a spider dyed the same spiffy shade of turquoise as his hair, although, as Todd confided to me later, the little ingrate of a spider, not impressed at getting to ride around on a wizard & true star, was taking periodic nips out of Todd’s neck and slowly draining his blood, thus accounting for Todd’s sallow appearance in recent photos.

Ms. and Mr. Carly Simon showed up at several galas in matching white linen suits with similarly matching ladybugs (decorated with 100% organic, non-toxic colors) perched on their shoulders. Elton John created a singularly outrageous sensation by pouring Mrs. Butterworth’s Syrup on his bare chest and arm and then letting a swarm of ants run greedily through it. “Nobody can say I’m not a dadaist now!” Elton triumphantly confided to me later.

For a while it even looked as though noted rock critic X. Belcher would join in the new fashion, as he was spotted at several press parties with houseflies buzzing around his mouth and beard. However, as X. explained to me later, this was merely found art, as the flies had been following him ever since he had fallen (or was pushed) through the show window of a liquor store on Queens Blvd. some weeks before.

By now, of course, every brazen little tushie from Levittown to Des Moines is adding a jeweled bug to her glittery eyeshadow, black lipstick, and Baker’s (ugh!) platforms, and the whole fashion doesn’t have the requisite exclusivity any longer. Some little trollops have even dared to attempt to gild water bugs caught in their own apartments for jewelry, instead of purchasing glitter-insects through reputable outlets! Sorry, my dears, there is trash, and there is trash. Noblesse oblige and all that, but only beautiful people like David and Mick and Sleaza may belong to the latter class!

One day in November of 1973, I received the following memo from Lester Bangs, then at the reviews editor helm of my favorite rockzine, CREEM. I’ve retyped the memo below, as the original is growing faint, but I’ve retained Lester’s layout, spelling, capitalization, etc., and added some bracketed clarifications. Here goes:

MEMO TO: b[arry]k[ramer] b[en]e[dmonds] j[aan]u[helszki]

FROM: LB

RE: LAMPOON

Okay, let’s get the fucking thing together. Now the main obstacle to this project aside from getting around to it has always been that it’s easy to lampoon the N[ational] L[ampoon]’s garnish, but how do you lampoon the meat when the meat itself’s a lampoon? So the solution we came up with a long time ago was make that a lampoon of CREM[sic]. Okay fine. Here’s how we do it and what we need and who coordinates the blowjobs.

COVER: I dunno, why doncha give me some suggestions. Since we’re lampooning CREEM inside the lampoon’s cover probly oughta have some thing to do with rock ‘n’ roll, maybe a picture of some incinerated ashes with headline “Jim Croche[sic] was really paying some rock’n’ dues the last time I saw him.”

Inside:

1. Cornelia Wallace’s Diary–already done by [Chet] Flippo.

2. Foto Funnies–as in orig memo–Bolecki[John Belicki]?

3. Back of the NatLamp cartoons, that lame shit they always print, already done by Jay Kinney.

4. MORE STUFF SPECIFICALLY PARODYING ITEMS IN LAMPOON. WHAT SHOULD THIS BE? WHAT OTHER ITEMS RUN IN EVERY ISSUE AND WILL BE IMMEDIATELY RECOGNIZABLE TO READERS OF THAT RAG? (I HAVE”NT” SEEN ONE IN ABOUT A YEAR MYSELF.)

5. Lampoon mail–got some already from Waybe Ronins [i.e., Wayne Robins] and Wackers.’

Now comes the hard part. Doing the stuff we don’t already have and haven’t already thunk up. I.e., the CREEM parody. Or maybe this is the fun part. Anyway,

1. Cover of SCREEM magazine is a picture of Anne Murray dressed up as David Bowie with Lou Reed giving head to her massive dildo strapon. We’ve done plenty for their careers so they oughta do us this one favor.

2. Table of contents lists nothing but articles about the NY Dolls and other queers. For the pictures at the sides we have read [sic -- real?] porn shots of hum jobs and stuff. [Handwritten:] — I will write.

3. Letters are totally incoherent, maybe even subverbal garble like [Richard A.] Pinkston’s old Ram review, a reductio ad absurdam of our readers’ literary predilections and our tendency to print the sort we do. (Group project)

4. Rock ‘n’ roll news? Well maybe–but should all be totally idiotic of course, you know completely unbelieveable off the wall incongruities like Elton John producing the Stooges, etc. (Group project).

5. B[eat]G[oes]O[n]–no.

6. FEATURES

A. Pussi Smith on how she likes to rub a pic of Brine Jones on her twat–already written.

B. Lezbo Wangs overamped beyond all recognition, spewing out uncontrollable pollysyllabic[sic] garble on the absolute worst heavy metal band we can think of, somebody on Jukin’ Bone level. (This goes to whoever thinks they can pull it off best.)

C. [Dave] Marsh Dylan article parody, all about how the ghost of Zapata’s horse lives on in George Jackson’s car. (Maybe I should write this one.)

D. ANdrogeny[sic] Hall of Fame parody: Except this time we’ll have famous underground satyricon characters from C&W music, Porter Wagoner is a fag–no we’d get our asses sued off…well, we’ll think of something…

7. Record review section: I already have a whole sheaf of reviews of such albums as Bad Boys Have Hangups Too by the Rolling Stones, Lou Reed Sings Gilbert O’Sullivan, etc. But we should also have parodies of specific reviewers’ styles, esp Robot [A. Hull], Marsh, GREIL MARCUS, which also reminds me I forgot

8. The Crossgoo Consumer Guide, and oh man am I gonna have fun with this.

9. Fuck the books and movies sections, unless we wanna really get Robbie [Cruger], but I really don’t think it’s worth it.

10. COLUMNS:

You bet. At least

A. Elogonzo, a parody of the most divinely FABULOUS writing ever written. Maybe Jaan and I should collaborate on this.

B. Rechord Your Loud or Extension Mung, the most obfuscating clot of technical-talk gobbledegook we can get–yhuh, most probably Craig Karpel to cook up.

C. Dust My Pud, by X. Belcher. (Maybe we could get Lillian Roxon to do this one. Which reminds me, we should put a big pic of Lillian dressed as a man on the cover of SCREEM.)

I need lots more suggestions for this. Also be sure and read all the original letters in the file which I’ve now xeroxed [not enclosed to me], they’re full of good suggestions. I think we might even be able to complete this thing without taking the rest of the necessary writing at least out of this office. Only one problem remains: HOW DO WE MAKE IT AS COMPLETE A LAMPOON OF THE LAMPOON AS IT IS A LAMPOON OF CREEM WHEN IT LOOKS LIKE 75% OF THE COPY’S GONNA BE SCREEM? HOW, AS I SAID BEFORE, DO WE CONVEY LAMPOON WITH JUST THE GARNISH? HUH? HUH?

L. BANGS

I originally published the piece above in my Loose Palace (hardcopy-only) fanzine of 2000, but I thought I’d like to share it with a wider audience now, as a kind of introduction, as I may be posting some of the parodies I wrote for the abortive SCREEM on this blog from time to time.  I apologize in advance to any of the many sensibilities who may be offended by Lester’s rough language and concepts (which many of the resulting parodies also contain), but this is how bitter things could really seem to us in the early ’70s, when we were trying to find some creative way to deal with all the hopes we’d had dashed when the ’60s crashed.  Reading these pieces again always reminds me why punk HAD to happen.  

KRLA Beat started out as a radio-station promo giveaway, and as such, projected a more gushingly fannish style than the serious-cum-heavy Crawdaddy! that would follow in 1966, but I think that a fusion of both approaches was crucial to the development of rockwriting in its later zenith.  Louise Criscione’s pieces so far revealed on RBP show her writing as much more “girly” than Crawdaddy! founder Paul Williams could ever allow himself to essay, and I mean that as a total compliment.  You can see Louise exploring this new world and more or less making up rockwriting as she goes along; there are rough spots, and the quotes she extracts from the musicians are sometimes random and incidental, and yet she always manages to write herself out of any corner, and to capture a rather incisive portrait of the artist, by throwing in so many telling details, just what a visually-attuned long-haired bird of the ’60s would notice.  Yes, Louise does gush sometimes, as I promised above, but if you’d been 18 years old in 1965 (ahem!), and had just had your life liberated from adolescent angst by the British Invasion/Motown/etc.etc., you’d gush too.  I know I would have, if I’d suddenly been thrown into meeting my idols at that age, the way Louise got to do. 

In fact, just in the selection of articles already posted on RBP, Ms. Criscione interviews several of my own very favorite artists, including the Young Rascals, Lou Christie, and (very early on, when they were still the “Red Roosters”) Spirit.  Louise could get thoughtful on us too, as in her prescient April 1966 piece on the Vietnam War and how its military draft could affect the musicians of our generation.  She’s not exactly a protester here, but not waving the flag either  She covers the Remains and Captain Beefheart(!) in the same piece, because they both had covers of “Diddy Wah Diddy” out then.  Sounds like The Captain & Denial misled her a bit about who was actually who in their band, but the basic concept of the comparison is worthy of the Creem of the near future.  And special bonus points to Louise Criscione from this vet crit, as her profile photo on RBP shows her interviewing Dusty Springfield with a pen and notebook, as God intended.  If you’re a writer, then you write – always.  

Jeez, Louise, you left us (not to mention rockwriting) much too soon.  We certainly could’ve used your smarts at Creem in the ’70s and ’80s, especially as your post-rockwriting experience as a paralegal would have perfectly equipped you to deal with the r’n'r paranormals that were our stock-in-trade.  Pardon my posthumous crush on you and your writing, Louise, but fellow born-in-1946 visionaries are getting rarer by the day around the rockwrite zoo.  I’ll continue to follow your groovy reports from that happening scene here on RBP, and thanks always for doing it when you did.

Barney Hoskyns’ praise of Robert Greenfield’s The Last Sultan: The Life and Times of Ahmet Ertegun, which ran on this blog back on 6 April, inspired me to read it too.  I don’t know that Ahmet Ertegun was ever my “hero,” but as the principal auteur of Atlantic Records, my favorite label of all time, he was someone I really hoped I’d come to admire.  Despite my dedication to Atlantic, I’d never known much about Ertegun himself, other than the two legendary bookends of his life & career: how his love of jazz and African-American music began when he was overwhelmed by the experience of seeing Duke Ellington’s band play in London in 1933, when Ahmet was only nine or ten, and then his death in 2006 after suffering a fall and head injury backstage at a Rolling Stones event.  I loved the image of Ertegun being precociously inspired by the great Duke, but I worried myself with cynical fantasies of him having taken his fatal tumble while kneeling to kiss the ring on some Rolling Crone’s claw.

The truth, as always, was much more complex than that, as Greenfield’s bio reveals.  Ertegun’s Ellingtonian awakening took place essentialy as the legend’s always had it, but his fall was more prosaic and tragic.  It happened when he went to the restroom in the theatre where the Stones were appearing, the light inside was burned out, he butted the door open with his back to leave, then fell and hit his head on the hard floor — all of which he actually survived, but complications from a past stroke etc. did him in during surgery.  As an old guy myself now, I can certainly relate to all of that.   

In between those two portals, Ahmet Ertegun’s and Atlantic Records’ amazing careers took place.  I need to warn potential readers of this bio now that Robert Greenfield hasn’t been a company man for Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner for forty years for nothing, and that his book is far more concerned with Power and Personality than with Atlantic’s music as such, though of course the inner workings of the company, as fully detailed here, determined what got recorded and released.  A book with far more pages devoted to Steve Ross, the late top dog at the Warner-Elektra-Atlantic conglomerate, than to the (Young) Rascals, the first white r’n'r group to appear on Atlantic itself, rather than Atco, and who sold a lot of records in the process, is not MY vision of Atlantic, but then I’m odd.

Another fantasy Greenfield’s bio has disabused me of (in this case helpfully), was my idea that Atlantic’s gradual loss of a distinctly jazz/r&b identity from the ’70s onward was due to Ahmet Ertegun’s surrender of influence to the corporate suits after the WEA & Kinney mergers in the late ’60s.  In reality (per Greenfield), it was the other way around; after Ertegun could spend the corporation’s money rather than his own, he went after all the big names he wanted on his label, from the Rolling Stones on down.  Ertegun was actually enthusiastic about the Bee Gees and other bands I would never have allowed on Atlantic if I ran the show.  But I must say I really enjoyed Greenfield’s anecdotes of Ertegun (a master at it) manipulating fellow music moguls Clive Davis and David Geffen into doing what he wanted, in order to enhance his own company. 

In my earlier comment on Barney’s posting, I’d expressed the hope that Jerry Wexler might turn out to be the true “Soul Man behind the throne” at Atlantic, and Greenfield’s book gives some credence to that: Wexler came from a working-class Jewish family, some of whom were actual Communists, as opposed to Ertegun’s wealthy-and-privileged-son-of-a-Turkish-diplomat background.  According to Greenfield, there were a few class-based frictions between Wexler and Ertegun, but they always worked together well.  Wexler’s left-wing origins had prepared him to be a Soul Man of sorts, but he was also thus somewhat doctrinaire about R&B, and was less open to the scene’s increasingly pop orientation in the ’60s.  He may have missed out on getting the Beatles for Atlantic, but he did sign Led Zeppelin to the label, for better or worse.  (Better them than Firefall or Hootie & the Blowfish, even in my book.)

What I love most of all about Atlantic is their imprint on the 1960′s: starting the decade with the holy trinity of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Charles Mingus all signed to the label; the ongoing R&B masterpieces from Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, and the Stax artists; and the greatest run of album-cover art ever, per this critic.  Atlantic album jackets of the ’60s always had completely detailed credits on their backs, not just full composer & publisher info for each cut, but all the incidental contributors to the package.  That’s how graphic artsists Loring Eutemey, Marvin Israel, and Haig Adishian, who designed so many of Atlantic’s ’60s jackets, have become my (largely unsung) heroes over the years. 

Which in turn brings me to the surprise hero of my personal Atlantic myth: neither Ahmet Ertegun nor Jerry Wexler (for all I admire them), but big brother Nesuhi Ertegun(!)  Or, as Greenfield has it on p. 106: “Nesuhi took over production of Atlantic’s jazz records [in the late '50s] . . . With an eye for packaging and design second to none, Nesuhi personally approved all the artwork that appeared on Atlantic’s covers while also signing and/or producing the Modern Jazz Quartet, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and Keith Jarrett.”  Yes!  Now we’re talking, now it all fits together!  This is more than enough for me to know about Nesuhi Ertegun for now — I don’t really want a full bio of him yet, don’t want to find out if he became a shameless fan of Reaganomics and/or MTV bobblehead Phil Collins like his little bro’ did.  Though nothing could ever take away what Atlantic gave me in its halcyon 1960s. 

Ahmet, sorry to hijack this review of your bio with this last-minute deus ex machina from your brother, but that’s how it worked out.  Obviously I continue to admire you for making the whole thing happen, even if Nesuhi was the sib on my wavelength.  And that photo of you guys with Duke Ellington in 1941, in Greenfield’s book, with you looking like the classic record-collector nerd of all time, Nesuhi meanwhile already the cool hipster, is just too perfect for words.  That’s my myth, and I’m sticking to it.

Chuck insists that he thoroughly evaluates and criticizes each piece of pop, and that his wide-ranging tastes can merely make him seem contrarian, that he’s just as likely to agree with some consensus or other if the track in question does (or doesn’t) have the chops he’s looking for, and I think Chuck’s right about that.  But I also think he may be something of a “contrarian” in another sense, in that he’s often seemed to like the idea of a latest-thing artist/song/genre/whatever overthrowing the old — in other words, the eternal churn I cited above.  “Forever changes,” as the great Arthur Lee put it.

In some ways I envy Chuck his open-ended and catholic pop curiosity, as possesing that attitude might have extended my own rockcritical career, especially when Chuck became music review editor at the Voice in early 1999, and invited me to contribute.  Which I did — he was a great editor, and the review fee was fab in those now-lost days, but I ended up not writing for Chuck as much as I could’ve, as I just wasn’t interested in the current pop scene any longer.  Most of my reviews from that era were of the latter-day releases of artists I’d already known and written about in my Creem youth.  My pop curiosity started to fade around 1985 (the year of the first Creem bankruptcy), and pretty much vanished after the original Creem bought the Walled Lake farm in the sky in ’88. 

See, I got into rockwriting for the maybe-perverse reason of doing the writing itself, after I’d been inspired, especially by reading Lester Bangs, that here was a way we born-in-the’40s (then-)youngsters could chime in with a neobeatnik lit slant-descended from the great chain of being set out by our heroes Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Corso.  After I got a toehold in rockcrit, I almost had to be forced (by Lester and others) to demand promo records and junkets from the companies, as I was still thinking in terms of pure writing.  Though obviously the promos were great fun when I started receiving them, especially as they inevitably led to more writing opportunities, theoretically the reason I was now being showered with such goodies. 

But I hedged my bet right from the beginning too, and kept my day job at the welfare department all the way through, as I was a family man and it provided regular income and medical coverage, etc..  That job also gave me another kind of coverage, as a rock critic, as since my writing didn’t furnish my primary income, I could be very choosy who I wrote about.  When Creem offered me (among many others) Journey’s management’s junket-to-San-Fran to featureize Steve Perry & co., I could stop believin’ right away and say “NO!”  It was fine with me if Journey got written up in Creem, but I didn’t want my byline on the piece.  I reserved that for say, a $5. Rock-a-Rama (capsule review) of Nina Hagen, one of my heroine-addictions of the time. 

Yet I’ve often wondered if I’d pursued rockwriting full-time and been forced to write about Journey and every other release under the sun, whether I might have achieved a much weightier bibliography, rather than just letting myself drift away from it all when my beloved Lester and then Creem were gone.  I dunno.  I like what I did write, and I’m glad that some of it lives on here on RBP now.  Chuck Eddy did all those radio-on hours I didn’t, and lived to tell about it with flair, so I salute him now.  Even if I still think that L’Trimm (whom Chuck notes approvingly in his book) possess one of THE dumbest group names in all of pop history.  Sorry — that’s the Creem in me, still rising to the top. 

Despite my advanced age (I’m scheduled to double Lester’s final lifespan later this year), I still love music, and find that it makes my whole mind glow neon when it’s right.  Late encounters with a couple of my absolutely alltime critical idols: Human Switchboard’s Who’s Landing in My Hangar? at-long-last CD compilation, which I’ve been listening to and digging for several months now, and then (a miracle a minute!) Graham Parker played right in my own neighborhood (three blocks from my house!), at the 20th Century Theater here in Cincinnati, last Thursday evening.  It was only the second time I’d ever seen him live, and he’s still got that sardonic edge I love so much, sort of Dylan without (the mindgame) tears.  Yes! 

In the meantime, I’m an Old Guy (and thus entitled to be eccentric, as my Grandfather Riegel certainly was), and I keep sending off to Daedalus Music for more bargain cutout CD’s, almost all of them jazz (faves John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins) or classical (faves Beethoven, Mozart, Dvorak) (with Wagner snorting on the horizon, yet another Nina Hagenesque Krazy Kraut worthy of my own ethnic-identity explorations.)  So maybe my path’s diverged a bit more from Chuck Eddy’s by now — maybe I’m a recovering catholic when it comes to pop music’s eternal churn.

Some pieces in these photos have already sold, which will give me an opportunity for making more new rhythms of color with my stuff.  Looking like Andy Warhol has given me a new creative direction.  And the music’s always still out there to be savored.

Back around 1969, when I was fresh out of college, and employed as a caseworker at the Hamilton County Welfare Department here in Cincinnati, one day one of my assistance clients reported to me that she’d been hired by the Cincinnati Association for the Blind. Thus I followed our standard practice of contacting the employer, to verify the woman’s start date and anticipated earnings, so we could determine how the job would affect her welfare eligibility. I phoned the Association for the Blind, and was referred to a woman on their staff who could provide the needed information.

She asked me if my client was entering one of their workshops, and I said, “No, she’s not blind, she’s going to be doing janitorial . . . “  “Mr. Riegel!” the frosty voice on the other end cut me off, “We do not say ‘blind’; we say ‘sightless’!”  Suitably chastened, I observed her reprimand in order to make the verification I needed, though I also reflected that the receptionist had just answered my call with the B-word, and that it was emblazoned in huge letters on the side of that agency’s building.  Oh well, times were changing rapidly, I guessed that it would be “sightless” from now on. 

Only it wasn’t.  My bus ride downtown to the welfare office took me by the agency for the sightless every day, and the building continued to proclaim itself “Cincinnati Association for the Blind” for years afterward.  I wondered whether it was going to be like the controversial N-word, they could say the B-word but we couldn’t.  Actually I’d never wanted to say the N-word in any context anyway, but the B-word would have been useful from time to time.  Fortunately I didn’t encounter that many bl . . . er, sightless clients in my years of welfare work, and in my simultaneous career as a rock critic, I was never assigned to review albums by B____ Faith, or (even worse — two suspect terms in the the same name!), the Five B____ Boys of Alabama. 

I was recently reminded of my long-ago dressing-down by the officious woman at the agency for the sightless, as that organization was in the news for the celebration of its 100th anniversary this fall. I wish the agency continued good works. But guess what — it still says “Cincinnati Association for the Blind” [now with the added "and Visually Impaired"] in huge letters on the building. It’s prominent on Gilbert Avenue, right across from Eden Park, and there’s not a “Sightless” in sight, so to speak. Somehow that prescribed term never made the cut after all.  I assume I can start saying “blind” again. And, notwithstanding the good report I got from my latest eye exam, should I ever heaven forbid go blind, feel free to call me that. As a writer, I like words that convey their meaning simply and directly. Otherwise, we could all end up with the sightless leading the sightless.