

Gardner Remembers: The Lost Tapes

an interview with Creole Myers

(PLUS: Memphis musicologist, Linda Israel's

mini-biography of the man, "The Growth and Death

of Buddy Gardner"

Corey Mesler

Copyright © 2011 by Corey Mesler

Pocketful of Scoundrel/SmashWords Edition

www.pocketofscoundrel.wordpress.com

www.kuboapress.wordpress.com

In thinking about the past, it's important to decide how noisy it was.

Todd McEwen

she needs a shot of a very bored God.

Bob Dylan

# The Growth and Death of Buddy Gardner

by Dana Illsire © 1975

You know Buddy "Slipshod" Gardner from his later solo work, the early seventies stuff when he latched onto the singer/songwriter craze begun probably by Sweet Baby James. You know him for his albums "Rain and Other Distractions" or "I Was a Child When Smaller." But this is the story of headier days, days when the Overton Park Shell was a magical place, the later rainbow implied. When Buddy played lead guitar and sang for Black Lung, a blues rock band with a loyal Memphis following. The late Lee Baker, a guitar god himself then, said about Buddy, "He was the best of us. He was a seer, a prophet. That later acoustic stuff is crap, of course, but with Black Lung, Buddy was tapped into something other."

Back then, Black Lung played the Shell regularly, maybe opening for Johnny Winter, or teaming up with Mudboy and The Expanding Head Band for a mini-festival that would start at dusk and stumble into the early morning hours like a dreamer looking for paradise. Lot of medicine passed about in those days. Lot of prescriptions from the hoodoo man. It was the sixties, people, and in Memphis that meant The Strip, The Shell, The Bitter Lemon. Buddy was known all those places. Hell, Buddy was known everywhere in the River City.

This is the story of Buddy's taint, the story of Buddy and his pact with the devil. But Buddy had in him a black spot, fed by his desire to make it big, fed by ambition and greed and the sort of misdirected thinking which took Rolling Stone from the hands of the movement and placed it in the hands of the oppressors. The commodifying of the sixties, if you will, as embodied by the soul of Buddy Gardner. Buddy "Slipshod" Gardner, Memphis' answer to Jerry Garcia, Memphis gift to the world, from integrity and precocity to sell-out.

So much is lost now, so little written down, so little recorded. For those with the stamina to search it out, Black Lung made one album, released on the Pepper label, a little Memphis soul mixed in with their own acid-blues. It was called Turntable Poison. Some say it sounded like The Rascals crossed with Hot Tuna. One cut comes to mind, a piece they played in every set at The Shell, the ballad, "Mr. Handy and Hakel-Bärend." On the LP they insisted on the extended version with Buddy's long, side-handed solos, slick as molten lead and the twelve minute drum solo by Skippy Quetzalcoatl, effectively killing the album's potential sales but insuring the group a spot in infamy alongside the lost tapes of Mudboy and the Neutrons and the missing five hours of von Stroheim's Greed.

There was also the shorter, "Blues for Wendy Ward," with its plaintive chorus, "Thank you for at least that sweet ache," a phrase Buddy made sound like a supplication to the gods. "Wendy Ward" got some air play around the country, on the late night FM stations, a minor flickering fame which only whet Buddy's appetite for more, for larger radio audiences, larger followings, more groupies, better food backstage. He wanted it all, Buddy did. No one asked him, What is all? If they had he might be here today. Who can say? Pigpen's gone. Jim, Abbie, sweet Timmy Hardin. Was it the same spirit in the night that whisked away all these mortal souls? I don't know. I only tell stories.

Buddy got his first musicmaker, a ukulele, when he was a sapling, six years old, a first-grader at Idlewild Elementary. He hung onto that uke as if it was his lifeline, time and time again having it taken from him on the playground where he would serenade a few curious classmates with his bewailing renditions of old Hank Williams songs. The end of most schooldays found little Buddy in the principal's office explaining why he should get his instrument back and vowing never to bring it again. Until tomorrow.

At twelve Buddy had graduated to electric guitar, a gift from his father, Al Gardner, who had played clarinet with a dance band called Dick Delisi and the Syncopators, at the Vapors Supper Club in his own mis-spent youth. Buddy's mother, Elise, could only pull at her hair and clap dishpan hands over her ears when the noise emanating from Buddy's room began. To her it sounded like the can-opener on warp speed.

Buddy drew from everywhere, listening with equal fervor to Woody Guthrie, Odetta, Hoagy Carmichael, Django Reinhardt, Coleman Hawkins, Bill Haley, Lonnie Donegan, Howlin Wolf, Eric Dolphy, Skip James, Shostakovich. Music fed Buddy the way most of us grew up on oatmeal and peanut butter. And he absorbed it all, filtering it through his sensitive system to come out his delicate fingertips as liquid electricity, a sound even today many guitarists cannot duplicate and few can even explain.

By thirteen he had his own band, made up of less-skilled classmates at Snowden Elementary. They called themselves Regulation Footwear and soon were playing gigs at high school dances and other social occasions, at Clearpool, even at an end-of-school year rally at the Overton Park Shell, foreshadowing later triumphs. Clearly, it was Buddy people came to see, Buddy who garnered them engagements with older audiences. Regulation's drummer, poor Gyp Leach, could barely keep time on his Sears drumset, taking lessons after school at Guitar & Drum City, just progressing past a four-four beat. But word was spreading about this precocious guitarist who sounded like a coup de foudre, this scrawny, pimply 8th grader with licks like a junkyard dog. Buddy Gardner.

It was Jim Dickinson who dubbed Buddy "Slipshod," not because Buddy was a sloppy player but because he put together such sloppy groups around him. It mattered not to Buddy who was playing behind him. He was lost in the ether, playing for his own private gods, letting the Lydian reverberation carry him away, the sound coming from his own self, you see. Oh, of course, he knew when the bassist was faking it, or the drummer tripping over himself to keep up, or the rhythm guitarist playing the same three chords over and over, hoping his stroking would be lost in the thunder. Buddy knew it, but he didn't care. He was soaring. He was making music, Memphis music, as sacred a calling as one could imagine.

Eventually, Buddy found his grounding, a group almost as flexuous and capable as Buddy, though few could approach Buddy's genius for the ineffable, that secret other place he could go with his music. Black Lung was born in the mid-sixties in an abandoned gas station when a bass player named Crafty Connor was introduced to Buddy through the coagulant Sid Selvidge. Memphis music bred Memphis music, is how Sid describes it today.

Crafty, who had a face like moits in wool, attended East High where he had picked up the bass guitar (and put down his flugel horn much to his parents' disfavor) when he first heard Jack Bruce play. He wanted to be part of a power trio. He wanted to be part of the best power trio Memphis could build and he wanted to build it. He called Sid who said, "Well, you could do a lot worse than hooking up with this young guitar kraken, Buddy Gardner." Crafty called Buddy. Buddy called Skippy Quetzalcoatl, who had a drumming lineage like no one else's. His father had been a drummer and his father before him and back and back. Beale Street whispers the name Quetzalcoatl, late nights when the horns have died down and the wind sloughs around shop corners and up alleyways. It whispers the name like a mojo, a bit of song never transcribed, a bit of the old magic.

The abandoned gas station stood on a corner in midtown Memphis like a sepulcher, but it was soon to be transmogrified into a holy place, a place where anything could happen so beware. A place as bright as Sun, as holy as Stax. It is where Black Lung was born. Today it is a Taco Bell. But some know. Some still pass it by and cross themselves, hearken back to the days of divination, the days when music could save a dying nation, a nation bent on its own self-immolation.

That was the sixties. Even in Memphis, an outpost planet. A tributary, if you will.

That first session, so it is told, was as if energy itself had been created in that concrete empty shell, where grass pushed through the floor, straining to catch these new vibes, this new electrical Jubal. Buddy cut loose as if he had been formerly playing in a straightjacket. And Skippy and Crafty—later re-christened Castor and Pollux—created a bottom like a sheol torture chamber, like Thor and Loki at war. The crash and thunder coming out of that old Sinclair station was music from the beginning of time, the music the apes heard which made them men. Music, soul-deep. Collective unconscious-deep. They cohered, they veered away and came back, like the trajectory of stars. Buddy's solos were like fluid silver; he was re-inventing the electric guitar.

It was around this time that Buddy began writing songs. He was shy about it. No one knows how many he wrote before he brought the first one to the group, the one that would later be their most requested song, "I Love my Aunt Jemima." Soon, though, he was bringing in songs in coacervations, as if he had eons of them bubbling up. That first acceptance by the group opened the floodgates and Buddy Gardner became something of a songwriting machine. Other artists recorded many of his best things, a blessing, and he became a regular at Hi Studios, at Sun and later at Ardent. He was covered by many of the Mid-South's biggest stars. And later by some of the country's: Elvis Costello did "Lemmy Caution's Incubus." Van Morrison made "Blues for Sid and Shirley" a staple of his live performances. Led Zeppelin, for God's sake, did "Procapé All Night," Jimmy Page being an early fan, as is written.

Just for the record Buddy wrote these hits for other stars: "Buttermilk Thighs," "Blues for Sandra Leathers," "Wrong for the Right of Way," "Arcade Late-Night Blues," "Open Channel D," "The Sins of Monk Cassava," "They Bribe the Lazy Quadling," "Patience Hell, I'm Gonna Kill Something," "The Nice and the Good," "Strawberry Fields for Only a Little While," "Take me for Granted, Please," "Surfing the Big Muddy," "The Rules for Hide and Seek," "Young Avenue Blues," "Picnic in Overton Park," "Chin-Chin in Eden," "Turn on Your Love Lights but Turn that Damn Stereo Down," and on and on.

Buddy and the boys were off and running. Soon they were one of the most sought after acts, playing gigs everywhere the area offered, in clubs, at outdoor festivals (happenings), and, of course, their famous half-aborted rooftop gig on top of the Sterick Building downtown. Officer Mike "Mooncalf" Milton, one of the arresting officers, recalls to this day how polite Buddy and the band were as they were being ushered into police cars while the mob roared. "Buddy Gardner was a gentleman in a jerk business," Officer Milton remembers.

This mildness, this Southern gentleman perception, follows Buddy to this day. It's hard to find someone to speak ill of him, even those he later abandoned or stepped on on his way to the top. He is often compared to courtly though dipsomaniacal photographer Bill Eggleston, a friend of Buddy's from those acme days. The cover photograph of Black Lung's Pepper Records album, Turntable Poison, is an unaccredited Eggleston photograph. (It is, of course, a weathered Sinclair sign, imbued with the enchantment Mr. Eggleston brought to all his work, a divergence quite inexplicable.) Buddy was loved, revered. He was not held to the same rules as everyone else. So it goes with the great. And when Buddy started using drugs, mixing bennies, reds and laxatives in dangerous quantities, no one was there to question him.

Of course, drugs were part of the scene then. They were everywhere. In the back of every minibus, in the bathroom of every nightclub, at practice sessions, in the homes of every groupie.

And Buddy had his groupies. The twins used to joke that Buddy played for scrimption and blow jobs. This has some truth to it—the money wasn't great in those days, asking for more money seen as bourgeois or worse—but the women were wonderful. Buddy, though, let it be said, played for one pure reason in those halcyon days. He played for the rush, for the approach to the godhead. It was religion to Buddy. He sought the perfect note, the one that would bring about rapture.

One night, after a triple billing at the Shell (Black Lung was the middle act that night, sandwiched between the lesser talents of Rubdown and Barry and the White Panthers), Buddy wandered backstage after his set, still in that trance he seemed to enter when he played, and was greeted by a statuesque blond with eyes the color of the Wolf River at Sunset. She stepped into his path like a gunfighter.

Buddy looked deeply into her. She was an equation he could not quite decipher. Her eyes stayed on his. She was bewitching him and even Buddy, already high from making music, was not immune.

Today people still talk about Lorelei Enos with a wary reticence. "Not much is known about her," you hear people say. "She came in on a bad wind and left on another," one roadie told me. "Lori was beautiful, a beautiful person, a beautiful body, but she was half siren. She couldn't help it," another groupie remembers. "She was Satan's mistress," a musician, who wishes to remain anonymous, summed her up.

That first night Buddy went home with her. What happened there is shrouded in mystery, except Skippy recalls Buddy saying, "She had the most beautiful sex I've ever seen. It tasted like mushrooms and ginger ale. And its musk stayed on me for days, like it had gone subcutaneous, like it had replaced my own body odor."

Perhaps this was her hex: Ruthah: The perfume of Immortality.

Others talk about the size and welcoming essence of Lorelei's breasts. Buddy was mothered; he fed there like a suckling, like a child. It wasn't love but it was something between the sacred and the profane.

Some say Lorelei was responsible for the beginning of the slide downward for Buddy, filling his head with ideas of stardom, of leaving the backwash of Memphis and making it in a real town like L.A. or Boston. Buddy listened to Lorelei, we know that, for better or worse.

Let's hearken back to a happier image. A small recording studio. A three-piece band, occasionally four when Jim Dickinson stops by and plays a little keyboards. A 20X20 room covered in egg-cartons. The preternatural silence beforehand. The prelude. The creation of something new. From where there was nothing something now exists: songs, recordings, an album.

The making of Turntable Poison was a liminal time, a time of congruity, or grand passion. The melding of the three (sometimes four) musicians was a Synchronicity. It can happen more than once but it happened at least once for Black Lung. It's there on that vinyl circle, waiting for the needle like a junkie.

And for anyone lucky enough to find that masterpiece in someone's garage sale, in some second-hand record shop (where I hear it can go for upwards of a hundred dollars or more), at some friend's apartment, there is knowledge passed. Because anyone who hears Turntable Poison hears right away what could have been, what should have been. What was. The album smokes. It tears down ceiling tiles. It disrupts fish in their blue aquarium lives. It calls like a squonk in the wee hours, in the time between sleep and dawn. It disrupts phone lines, calls old girlfriends and makes them want you again. It stirs mud and makes bouillabaisse. Black Lung fashioned alchemy, friends, at least once, in that small studio, over a period of 72 straight hours without sleep, so the story goes. They laid down 43 minutes of catalytic reverb love. Some of you understand.

(And, an aside: they did not feel it necessary to include that one song on the LP by the drummer. An uncommon display of wisdom for the times but a good thing. Skippy could no more sing or write a song than fly.)

Listen to "Blues for Wendy Ward." Listen to "In Real Time Nothing Happens." Listen to "A Marriage of Rue" or "Hayley Mills' Underpants." It's there. Under the surface like a chthonic river. Memphis Mojo. The only kind of magic that matters.

So, why would Buddy turn his back on the band after that triumph?

There are as many theories as theorists. Buddy wanted success, bigger success. He tasted perfection with Turntable Poison but it was local perfection. The album, though notorious today, an insider's treasure trove, a collector's grail, did not sell outside of Memphis. No major label bought the rights to it. Still, even this late, one wishes, with the advent of the compact disc revolution, that it would be reissued.

But now, Buddy wanted to be Hendrix, Clapton, Erik Brann, Zappa. That he settled for being Livingston Taylor is the story's twist, what gives it verisimilitude. Life is unpredictable, like a chemistry experiment. Like The River.

Skippy and Crafty were not even angry with Buddy, to hear them tell it today. Skippy works at Ardent and Crafty is a driver for UPS, but they recall those grand days with Buddy with something like ardor. "He was way ahead of all of us," Skippy says. "His energy came from someplace else."

At any rate in early 1970, having witnessed the death of some of the gods, Buddy Gardner turned his back on Memphis, moved to L.A. with Lorelei, who then just as suddenly disappeared. Like a genii whose work is done. Some say she turned to making porno films. Some say she works in television. Some say she went back to perdition from whence she came.

But it was in L.A. that Buddy transformed himself into a folk artist, a singer/songwriter with a heart on his sleeve and an ace up it. He was as mellow as yellow, as smooth as California sunshine. And as empty as a bird's nest in December.

His two albums, "I Was a Child When Smaller," and "Rain and other Distractions," were mega-sellers. Buddy made it. He made it big.

For a price, yes.

Those last songs, dripping with feigned self-pity, seem apocalyptic in retrospect. "Allison All Gone" and "Goodbye to the Shell" especially appear to comment on Buddy's desire to burn his bridges, leave his Memphis past behind, forget his roots. And, of course, then there's "Burn my Bridges" and "Forget my Roots" off the second album. Even Buddy's skillful acoustic playing can't save those albums from their own wallowing, from their stooping to the lowest common denominator.

Of course they sold. They were huge. Buddy played with Carole King, with the L.A. Session, with Linda Rondstadt. He was revered, honored (Grammy for "Song for L. Enos," 1971), patted on his self-satisfied back.

But it was all so vacuous. And, what for a Memphis musician is worse, so soulless. Buddy had gone to hell, many in Memphis thought, though no one said so. There was, for a homegrown prodigy, still respect, pride, a sort of sweetly sad valediction.

When Buddy was buried in L.A. that was the final blow. His parents flew out for the interment but no one else from Memphis went. It is said there were many celebrities there. I hope so. I hope he drew a crowd at the end, a healthy gate-count.

Jack Nicholson was there. Debbie Anspach, Donald Sutherland, Larry Hagman, Candice Bergen, Dennis Hopper, Jagger, Ringo. Some said Dylan was there, in disguise. It was Dylan who was later quoted widely as saying, "Buddy could have been bigger than me. He had Old Harry on his side."

With bigger success came more drugs, more women, more more. Death.

The official ruling was death by asphyxiation, choking on his own vomitus. It began to seem coroners handed this out to rock stars by rote. Janis and Jimi set the standard; anything less would be unseemly, not up to snuff. Next to his naked body were the cliché syringe, bottle of Jack Daniels and a sheet of lyrics, a half-finished song to be called, apparently, "Wendy Ward Redux," as if at the end he tried to return to past glories and died trying. The penultimate line read, "You left your coppery skin behind." The final line, though difficult to decipher, seems to say, "Come back to me—" and the last word is either "you" or "youth."

Either way a sad epitaph.

But Buddy's gone gone. It's a sure thing. He burned brightly once but then seemed to just peter out like the Sixties itself, like a wind-up thing of wonder, a mechanical play-pretty. He ran down. Signposts to Gehenna: Altamount, the violent deaths of Jimi, Janis, Reverend King and Bobby Kennedy. Nixon.

Ironically, Buddy "Slipshod" Gardner died on the same day, January 27, 1973, that Nixon officially ended the war in Southeast Asia.

I miss Buddy.

So much is gone, so many rainbows have faded away, and so many brightly painted faces now show the skull beneath. As John said, "The dream is over."

But he (who is gone gone, too) also said "Love is all you need."

Both are true. And, dreamers, lovers, children, both are lies.

***

Author's hedge: Now, friends, the following work, while incorporating much history and Memphis mythology into its olio, is, as they say, a work of fiction. If there are names of actual people herein, those people are not to be held responsible for the author's prevarications, and the use of their names was done with necromancy and love. So, all is not what it seems and all that seems to not be what it seems may be what it seems. In short, the author is a confused and deeply troubled person. Nevertheless, this is a jape. Nevertheless, this is fiction fiction fiction.

***

Introduction by Camel Jeremy Eros

The veracity of the following has been called into question. That the people who would know, the people who were actually there, all three voices heard here, are all dead makes proving it somewhat difficult. Buddy Gardner died, famously, of a heroin/pill/alcohol overdose; Lorelei Enos died only a few years ago by her own hand, after an incident, which was kept out of the papers because of the famous talk show host involved. And, Creole Myers, the interviewer, died just last year of cancer.

But, if you listen, that is, if you can read between the lines here, you'll find, not only an extraordinary document, but one that could only come from the personalities involved. The voices are theirs. The story is theirs, even as it belongs to a generation.

Let us hearken back, briefly, to those days when music was being made because it was important, because genius finds its own level, because people needed godhead, if that's not overstating it. Before the drugs, the recriminations, the lawsuits, the doubting of the very fiber of what the 60s meant to Memphis, to these sweet souls herein, and to the world at large. Let us reimagine it, if we can, in all its efflorescence. In all its pied beauty. Let's hear again, "Turntable Poison" as if for the first time and marvel at the voice that said, "We are all naked." That said, "Love me for my limo but love me all the way." And, that said, presciently, "Death is only a way station, between West Memphis and the coast."

These interviews were done in three sessions in early 1973, in San Francisco, by Creole Myers, at Buddy Gardner's home. Lorelei Enos was in and out. One of the startling revelations found in these tapes is that Lorelei was with Buddy until the end. Rumors had her abandoning him after they had left Memphis for Los Angeles. Stories circulated back home about her, unflattering stories all, about her working in the pornographic film industry, about her fixing Buddy that final fix, about her leaving him for a slick-talking Hollywood casting agent. What is made clear here is her devotion to him and his to her. In this way they resemble John Lennon and Yoko Ono, another vastly misunderstood couple. The tapes are in remarkably good shape, with only a few elisions, a few minutes of silence.

I knew Buddy Gardner and I was still startled by much that is found here. It's his voice alright, but there's an anger there, a tension, that surprised me. Buddy Gardner, when I knew him was a sweet, soft-spoken man, a man driven by ambition, sure, but, underneath that, there was a humility and a human heart .

It's all here in these tapes, so enough said. Three weeks after these interviews were concluded, Buddy Gardner was found dead in his home, with a needle in his arm. Lorelei had disappeared. These tapes somehow also disappeared until 1999, when they were found in a stockroom in an abandoned studio in Los Angeles by a technician there who, with some heaven-sent Extra Sensitive Perception, sent them to Camel Jeremy Eros, c/o City Lights Bookstore, where for a while I was taking my mail, while recovering from a broken relationship, one that emasculated me, silenced me, did me up a treat. These tapes were a godsend—they took me out of myself, out of the self-pity I was wallowing in. Many thanks to John Wender, editor extraordinaire, who recognized what we had here and ran them in his celebrated periodical. Hence, they ran first, almost in the form represented here, in three installments in Big City Magazine.

***

Buddy Gardner died young, tragically, just weeks after these interviews were concluded. It lends a poignancy to what follows here, but is not the only reason to read, of course. There is Buddy's stature as one of the truly original artists of his time. There is his infamous love affair with Lorelei who many blame for his death, like poor Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. And there is the music, discussed here for the first time, how it was made, why it was made, for whom it was made. Buddy is caught at a crucial moment, when he had left his psychedelic/blues/rock behind for California living and worldwide acclaim. And he has been caught, naked, funny, combative, contradictive, hopeful, full of possibility, honest, bitter, loving, and, finally, with his brilliance still intact, after many had written him off. This is Buddy Gardner, the man and the musician, raw and exposed. Read these words for their history. Read them for what they say about all of us.

Camel Jeremy Eros, Big Sur, 2001

***

If I seem free, it's because I'm always running.

Jimi Hendrix

The finest sensibilities of the age are convulsed with pain. That means a change is at hand.

Leonard Cohen

A lot of people remember hating President Lyndon Baines Johnson and loving Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, depending on the point of view. God rest their souls.

Richard Brautigan

Rock & roll is only rock & roll if it's not safe.

Mick Jagger

Nobody influenced us more than Buddy Gardner.

Chuck Kom, of Jism

DAY ONE

Creole Myers: Would you take it all back?

Buddy Gardner: I would take it all back. I take it back now. I take it back just because you asked. Take it back? What do you mean fucking take it back? I don't have anything. Anything I have I have because of Lorelei, because of me. I don't owe the past anything, Memphis anything, music, rock and roll, the fans, those idjits with their t-shirts and lunch boxes and designer drugs or whatever. I owe Buddy Gardner. I owe him everything. What I have I earned and I don't care what anyone else says, what Hudson says, or any of that shit, I just care about Lorelei, about me. I'm not Buddy Black Lung. I'm not Buddy Zimmerman. I'm Buddy Gardner. What was the question?

CM: Black Lung. Tell us about that, do you still listen to "Turntable Poison?'

BG: I don't know. Don't trust me on that shit. I hate that album. There's some good stuff on it. I wrote some good stuff back then, that's evident, you know? But, I'm moving in a totally different direction now. I don't even understand that album, to be honest. Have you listened to I Was a Child When Smaller? That's some of my best stuff and what are people saying? That it's self-indulgent. That it's shit. Fucking hell, what is art? It's self indulgence, man. I put myself out there with my veins exposed and I say, you know, fuck it, this is me, man.

CM: Do you ever hear from the other members of Black Lung? Anyone from Memphis?

BG: Lemme tell you how I answer that question. I ain't the past. I am the future.

CM: Ok. So, you hear from the other members---

BG: I talk to Skippy once in a while. He and his wife were here just a couple of months ago. He seems happy. His wife is a peach.

Lorelei Enos: Helen. Helen Holland.

BG: Right. She took to Lorelei right away. For this I liked her. After all the shit Lor has had to put up with, from Memphis, from Crafty, from that fuck, Hudson.

CM: Did you talk music? You and Skippy?

BG: Music. Love. Death. We talked, you know? It was good.

CM: But, Crafty---

BG: Fuck him, you know? He's—what?—involved in other things, things that preclude me, including still living in that fucking group, still living in Black Lung, you know? He doesn't want to grow up. He doesn't want me to grow up.

LE: He doesn't accept that you've changed. That you're not a Guitar God. That you're God yourself.

BG: In a manner of speaking. Yeah. Lorelei is always there to keep me straight. God is me, in me, you know? That's what she's saying. That's what she's always been saying, but people couldn't hear her, for whatever reason. They wouldn't listen. Just like I say in "Burn my Bridge", you know? "There's a black and white photograph/On my finger is a tiny bird." You know? It's like they can't hear me now, after they all were so intent on being Black Lung acolytes, or whatever. Now, these same cats, these same sycophants and hangers-on, they're up there, pronouncing on me, on Lor, on my new stuff as if I'm not a human being, too. As if I can't be hurt, am impregnable, a force instead of a feeling, bleeding child, you know? Like we all are. We're all children, man.

CM: You're hurt by your reviews?

BG: Fucking hell, of course, I'm hurt. You know, when I was young, when I was in Black Lung, I mean, it went so fast, everything was happening so fast, them calling me the next Clapton and shit like that. I was locked out of my feelings—they could have said anything about me back then. I didn't care. Plus I was high half the time, all the time. People giving me poppers to take I didn't even know what it was. I didn't give a shit about anything. Just show me the way to the next whiskey bar, you know? Just show me the way to the next little girl. Now, with Lorelei, with what I'm saying now, it's more personal, it's what I care about. I'm hurt. Yes.

CM: You say you can't listen to the old Black Lung stuff...

BG: Not can't. Don't. I mean, why? I'm moving. I'm shadow.

CM: Who do you listen to?

BG: Man, I'm not in with anyone who is in. I know that sounds funny to you, but I just don't listen to anything you would know, man, or that your readers are gonna know. Or expect I would listen to. Old Beatles, Old Stones...no, I don't know. I been listening to this guy plays the pan flute. I can't remember his name. There's this group out here, West Coast Pop Art Group or something like that. No one's ever heard of them. No one listens to them except the few hundred souls who go to their shows, but their stuff intrigues me. Terry Riley. There's this cat, Wild Man Fisher, you might know, who plays on street corners, someone Zappa found. I like his stuff. I still like Roky Erickson's stuff, even if he's a child of the devil. Lulu—she's cool. Brotherhood of Breath. I'm all over the place. Uh, jazz guys. Ornette. Old black jazz guys who nobody recorded. There's some German stuff I like. Some Eastern European stuff...John's Children.

CM: Lennon, John Lennon...

BG: Naw, man, that's their name. The group, the guys that did "Desdemona," man, you heard that? Great song.

CM: Yeah, I know that song.

BG: Ok.

CM: Rock and roll?

BG: It's labels, man. That's the trouble I have. What is rock and roll? Can you describe it for me?

CM: You said jazz—

BG: Right, right. Some old jazz. Lor turned me on to it.

CM: Back to Black Lung, if we can. You say you talk to Skippy but there are hard feelings still with Crafty. Is this still part of the legal fallout?

BG: I don't know. I don't know much about that legal stuff. I can't follow it. Why I have a lawyer. But, yeah, Crafty wanted to go on as Black Lung. I mean, fuck, without me, he wanted to tour as Black Lung, play those old songs like they were his. I said, fuck you, man. That's when the lawyers came in. And let me go on record right now as saying that he brought the lawyers in. I mean, he told me he was going on tour—told me, not asked me, and I said, great, what are you gonna fucking play? You know? Like, I mean, I was being blunt, but for his good, because like he's written, what 2, 3 songs. And he's like, I'm playing all the old stuff, off "Turntable.' And I said, I'll be fucked if you are. I was Black Lung, man. I wrote the shit. That's my guitar—the whole sound of the group was the guitar, man. Those are my songs, whether I want them or not.

CM: And has this been settled?

BG: I don't even know. Ask Pete. Pete Holder. He's the lawyer. Is Crafty touring?

CM: Um...

BG: Don't even fucking tell me if he's touring. If he's playing even the fucking Shell man. I don't want to know.

CM: Back to your songwriting. You wrote some of the best songs from that time period--

BG: Me, Dylan, Lennon, Lou Reed, Joni, Leonard, maybe Ochs—

CM: They call you a genius. A guitar god.

BG: They can say what they want, you know? Does it matter what they say? Does it matter to you?

CM: My question is, are you a genius?

BG: I'm a genius, sure. What does it mean?

CM: How would you rate your guitar playing?

BG: Back then or now?

CM: Um, back then.

BG: I was the best, one of the best. Clapton, Hendrix...uh, B.B.

CM: You hung out with Hendrix for a while, right? Tell me what that was like.

BG: Hendrix was a cool cat, man. He was just cool. He sweated it. He fucking slept with his guitar, you know?

CM: Slept with it?

BG: Literally. Fucking literally slept with it. He said it made it more a part of him, made him more in tune with it. I believe him, man, because nobody, I mean nobody could get the sounds out of a guitar that Hendrix did. Nobody can now. In one way he was just so far above all of us—even Clapton. I mean, he was untouchable. But, yeah, we hung out for a while. This would have been, uh, early 69, I think. He slept on my couch for a while. We'd get stoned, sit up all night talking, blues, soul—he knew it all, man. The cat lived music. And, you know, he was bleeding, that's the sad truth, man, he was bleeding and no one could see. I didn't know it. He was just full of pain, man. He had to do drugs. The rest of us, we were like just blowing our minds, you know, but Jimi, he needed it. Just to get through a day, just to keep down the demon that made him play like that. A cold wind blew through Jimi, yet he was the sweetest cat. Sad death, man. He died for all of us. You know? So we could go on.

LE: He showed us the way through death.

BG: That's right man. Jimi and Janis, they did it early so we could keep playing. Why I left the electric stuff behind partly.

CM: Really. Why?

BG: Well, I mean, he did it all, he took it to the edge and then when the edge laughed at him he laughed back, man, and he went over. And he fucking took it with him. It's disrespectful in a way to continue in that vein.

CM: So you went softer, acoustic?

BG: Careful saying "softer," man. To players it sounds too much like "weaker," you dig? Like tea. Like wimpy. Well, anyway, not totally. Not just. I don't know. Don't write this down, man. It's just talking about Jimi makes me feel, I don't know, useless somehow. Vulnerable. You dig?

CM: Did you go to the funeral?

BG: Naw. I didn't, man. We were playing that weekend, I think. But, it was like, he's dead, you know? He's dead forever. What does one day have to say about forever? You follow me? But, he was the best of us. Write that. He was the best of us.

(garbled here...low sound quality, it appears that a few moments are lost)

CM: On the new album, you've got a little instrumental piece, right before "Song for L. Enos," it sounds like "Third Stone from the Sun."

BG: That's good, man. You're listening. See, no one got that. Yeah, that was actually Lorelei's idea, that we should include this little hidden tribute to Jimi in the song for her. She was like all humble about the song being named for her.

LE: I'm not sure it was my idea.

BG: It was. It fucking was. You said, play that beautiful part of Jimi's song. This was on my twelve-string. And I said, hell, I'm putting that in there, that's beautiful, man. That's just so right.

CM: Would you say Hendrix influenced you then?

BG: No.

CM: You didn't—

BG: Influenced me? No. He didn't influence me. I loved the cat, man. That's enough isn't it? I mean I learned from him, he learned from me, I'm still learning from Lor, you know, that's the world, man. If you ain't learning you're dead. So, I'm still trying to absorb some things, follow some things that I thought of maybe back then and Jimi was there, he was undeniably there, like the monolith from 2001, you know? So, there were a lot of us cats playing the guitar, and...uh, I've lost the thread of what I was saying.

CM: What about Dylan?

BG: I have confused recollections of my first awareness of Bob Dylan. I have a vague memory of hearing "Song for Woody" on FM 100, back in Memphis, which at that time was an album-oriented station, not limited to a ludicrous playlist like it is today. It was a source back then, a touchstone. You could hear music unavailable elsewhere. The music of the planets. I listened to it alone in my parent's living room, hearing sounds that transformed me as surely as did Lorelei, the finding of my own voice. "Talkin World War III Blues" was beyond my ken. I thought, perhaps, my head would explode. I didn't understand.

In my reptile brain I have also the memory of my friend Ricky Adams' big brother having "folk" albums, some by a handsome, young, angular-faced singer named Bob Dylan, whose songs were meant as social anthems, wrong-righters. I didn't know what to make of these threnodies. They were so stark, so naked. It was just a man's voice, crying in the wilderness. This must have been shit, what? 1962? Earlier? I can't do a timeline, man, not even of my own life—some of it is such a blur. Is it like that for everyone?

I have a memory of our family kitchen before school, oatmeal warming in a pan on the stove, my father dunking his folded toast into his coffee, and the plastic radio tuned to some "hits" station, probably WHBQ. This was the same radio from which I would later hear about deaths: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Martin Luther King. Shit, I still have that little radio—I kept it because it seemed important. (laughs) It was my mother's kitchen radio—it's still around here somewhere. And, on this particular morning of oatmeal and familial familiarities, a song emanated from that plastic box, bellowing something about a "black branch with blood that kept dripping." You know? And, "a white ladder all covered with water." I thought, holy hell. Of course, by this time, I was making my own music, fixing to go out on my own, and, in a way, I saw Dylan as a map, as a way out into the world. What more can we ask of art, right? Later, when I met him, I talked to him about this and he was, well, flattered, I guess, and he talked about how Guthrie and Leadbelly were like that for him.

All these memories collide in my head to form a capharnaum around what I want to know more concretely: how did Bob Dylan become important to me? And the process must have been gradual, an accretion, Bob Dylan never became, for me, what James Joyce was for Richard Ellmann, or to use a less pretentious comparison, what hamburgers were for Wimpy. A centering object, a holy thing. But he became a dream-figure, a part of my unconscious, as I understand the term.

Is Bob Dylan more than a man? Is he more than a man with an extraordinary gift? Is he really something holy? Of course not. He is just an exceptional artist, a poet, a singer of peculiar power and persuasion and grace. So, what happened? What happens to any of us who find a particular artist who speaks to our very hearts? Is it right, just, meet? What's the difference? At some point, at some fulcrum point, I understood.

Today, Bob Dylan remains a force in my life, though now, he's also a pal. And I can go to him—to his songs--when I am blue, when I am feeling that the world is a place of malefaction and discommoded energy, when I am feeling that there is nothing to be said for the human race, and I can be readjusted. How this happens, why this happens, is secondary to the fact that it does. I can listen to "Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" or "Visions of Johanna" or "On the Road Again" or "Clothesline Saga" or "Watching the River Flow" and feel that there are angels within humankind. I can feel that we are not all lost in the caliginous wastes of our hopelessly chaotic lives. Art redeems us. This is the seed I'm seeking, the truth I'm trying in my clumsy way to impart. Dylan is art, for us anyway, for what we're talking about. Now, knowing Bob, I have to say, he's a humble prophet, you know?

But I still wish I had a clearer picture of how it all happened, to me, Dylanwise. Perhaps the mystery is more apropos. Perhaps mysteries always are.

CM: Wow. Ok. I didn't know Dylan was that...

BG: Man, he was That, for all of us. He was that for you, even you, Creole (laughs)—he just is, like the moon. Like political chicanery. Like the Illuminati conspiracy. Man, he's in our consciousness. The Beatles, too, of course.

CM: Why does rock and roll mean so much to so many people?

BG: The beat, I think, first and foremost. The beat is the heart, the human heart, it gets right inside. I mean, you had it before, it was there in humans, back and back. Listen to "Sing Sing Sing" and see if it doesn't get inside you. Then, what rock did, after Rickie and Buddy and those guys, rock got a conscience. Partly Dylan's doing, but it was inevitable, it was headed that way, the power of it, the communicative power. Man, I sound like Rolling Stone. What I mean is that rock wouldn't have held it's place if it hadn't shifted, if the words didn't start to mean something. It was time. It was time for music to mean something. Dylan, The Beatles, they led the way. They said, you know, show us the plan, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. And the kids sat up and listened. It was coming, this revolution of meaning, this concentration on the word. And, all along, behind it like a dark river, ran the beat, the melody, a sort of communication device that was both insidious and right out there in the open. See, rock wasn't subversive to the people who wanted to know. It didn't trick anybody. It's the most godawful honest music on the planet. In the end, I think that's what has kept it so powerful, its honesty, its lack of guile.

CM: Tell me more about what changed your direction. Who are you listening to now, maybe, that you didn't listen to before.

BG: You mean I went from my Gibson SG to my Martin? Listen: rock and roll will kill you, ok? If you take it to the edge, which you have to do to play rock and roll, every fucking time, eventually, well, you're gonna pitch over, dig? You're gonna go over that edge because that's why you're doing it—to get closer and closer. Playing electric, like the blues, like the devil music from which it came, you just gotta give it the juice, you gotta play for all the money. Man, I did that, I could feel it. Feel the devil chasing me down. But, it's a high, right? Like all good highs there are consequences. But, I've never changed direction, man. I'm going in a straight line. When it's all over you'll see the line. My footprints all headed in one direction—you'll see it, eventually. Everybody will. Everything will be true of everybody. In the end.

CM: So, since you moved to the West Coast, are there people out here, musicians out here---

BG: Did I say Fever Tree? You hear Fever Tree, man?

CM: Fever Tree. No, I don't—

BG: There are some cats I play with out here. They play with me. In the studio it's all just overlaying now, you know, so some of these cats, I don't even know their names. I hate that. I hate that I sing a song and then they come in and lay some harpsichord or Jew's harp or whatever behind it. But, that's the times, man, I gotta go with the times. Still, I insist on a certain honesty, a certain interplay in the studio, and this places me solidly on the outside. A pain in the ass, that's what these label guys think I am. Like I give a shit. What's a fight with an engineer compared with the song itself, right? I gotta be true to the song. But, some of the musicians, uh...

CM: Jim Keltner.

BG: Well, Keltner, sure. When he's ok. Yeah, when he's ok, we've played together.

CM: Is the whole California, laid-back ethos part of where you're at now?

BG: Ethos? Where djew get a word like that, Creole? (laughs) Shit, man. Who you been talking to? The California thing. Yeah, sure, write that, if you want. It's as true as anything else. Write that Buddy Gardner moved to California and became one of the Beach Boys, or Sweet Baby Buddy. Write whatever the fuck you want, man. (laughs)

LE: Tell him about Dennis Wilson.

BG: Aw, no, man. I don't want to talk about Dennis. He's been raked over the coals enough. Let's talk about something else. Let's keep this on a higher plane.

CM: Um.

BG: Hey, man, it's ok. You look like you're gonna throw up or die. Relax, Creole. We're all friends here.

CM: You, uh, you said you were recording with session men, I think you said, and that you didn't know some of them—

BG: Well, so much of this shit they do now, man, you don't even have to be in the same city. You gotta realize multi-tracking was relatively new, and, man we were babes in the wood, naives, we didn't know how to play without someone playing with us. We started out on 4 tracks, remember that. So all this gimmickry, this Sgt. Pepper's stuff that everybody has to do now, it's going the other direction, isn't it? Started with John Wesley Harding, man. And has anyone really even listened to that yet? I mean, really heard it? It's a fucking beautiful record, man. And, we're going that way. Bob's out front, as usual, but, I think the movement is going to be toward simpler things. I mean, we've been there, right? We've been to Strawberry Fields. We've seen the Walrus. I've got a new song—you haven't heard it, yet—it's called, uh, "Bookstore Blues"—

LE: "Burke's Book Store Blues."

BG: Right. Anyway, it's just me and Lor.

CM: After the store back in Memphis.

BG: If you like.

CM: The bookstore.

BG: Yes, yes. But, the point is, I've stripped the sound back, it's me, my National, a bow bass and Lor.

CM: I didn't know Lorelei was a musician.

BG: Well, no one wants to give her any credit and all that bullshit, you know, so we're not going to—Lor doesn't want us to, like, make a big deal out of it. It'll be on the next album, though. Lorelei just lays down this beautiful rill, man, running like a crystal stream behind me...it's fucking beautiful.

CM: Can you sing any of it?

BG: Uh. (hums a bit). Naw. I don't remember it. The lyrics, though, they're the best I've written. The tops.

CM: Let's talk for a minute about the songs you wrote for other artists. A lot of people don't know that you did that, that your songs are all over the place.

BG: Yeah.

CM: Can you tell me a bit about them, those other songs?

BG: Sure.

CM: Who all recorded stuff by you? It's been a matter of some speculation for years—that you wrote a lot of stuff using pseudonyms—that we'll never really know how much of your stuff is out there.

BG: There was a period—an era, really—where I was bleeding songs, where they were just flowing out of me. There was too much stuff for Black Lung. And some of it didn't fit the power trio thing, you know? Some of it was purposely for others, friends, fellow seekers. I can't even tell you all of them—partly because I don't remember and partly because, I think, there are legal complications.

CM: What were some of those pseudonyms? Band Drudgery?

BG: (laughs) Yeah, that was me. That was on a Cream album, right?

CM: Drab Eddy Rung?

BG: Um, on Carole King's third LP, I think. "Thunder over Scenic Hills."

CM: Randy Grubb?

CM: Yeah, yeah. I used a hundred different names for a hundred different songs. There's no way I can remember them all.

BG: Tell me some of the artists who recorded your songs?

CM: Oh, hell. Um, the Airplane, Solomon Burke, The Remains, Judy Collins, Ginsberg---

BG: Allen Ginsberg. The poet.

CM: Sure. He did some recording too. He did, let's see, "Blues for Sandra Leathers" on his "Cannabis" LP, a sort of raga rendition of it, much changed from the bluesy take on that one that Canned Heat did.

BG: I didn't know you wrote that one.

CM: Yeah. And, "The Rules for Hide and Seek, " which also showed up on a Canned Heat album, as well as on Judy Collins' Rainy Somethingorother album. Uh, Moby Grape did "They Bribe the Lazy Quadling" and "Y Teen Love." Skip was a friend for a while, till, you know. The demons. He started calling in the middle of the night and reading to me from The Egyptian Book of The Dead and The Prophet. Poor Skip.

BG: Skip Spence, from Moby Grape.

CM: That's right, yes.

BG: Who else?

BG: Jesus. Uh, Timmy Hardin used to do "Ms. Denmark and the One Way Ticket" in his concerts. I don't think he ever recorded it. Richie Havens, of course, had a hit with "The Shell When I Knew It." Joan did "Buttermilk Thighs." Oh! (laughs) Crafty recorded "All the Shit that's Fit to Print." (laughs) I gave him that one. Of course, he sounded constipated. He can't sing to save his life, you know, and his band was, well, second-raters at best. I think he cut that for Pepper and they sort of threw it away as a single that went nowhere. The flip side, lemme think, the flip side was...

LE: "Macarthur Park."

BG: (laughs) Right, right. Hilarious, man. Fucking hilarious. He actually sang it like he meant it. (laughs) Of course, Skippy played drums for him, so I shouldn't laugh. God love 'em, they had no idea, just no idea.

CM: So you wrote a lot of songs...

BG: Oh, yeah. There was a period there where I thought every drop of sweat from my brow was a pearl. Some of them were. Some of them, I'm still proud of. I still love "Sandra Leathers." And I like Cocker's version of "Sins of Monk Casaba." "Satori at the Bitter Lemon," "Call it the End of Enchantment," " Drudge's Questions," "The Dotage of a Fairy Tale Hero"...

LE: It was Cassava, dear.

BG: Yeah, right. I don't remember them all. For obvious reasons. I still like "Overton Park Picnic" especially Soft Machine's version. "Peace is Declared," "We Bombed in New Haven," "Wear your Nehru," "Iris," "Art Kane's Jazz Photograph," uh, "Chloe's Ancient Face," "Jack and Neal and Martin Milner"—(laughs), that one for Tiny Tim. That still makes me laugh. You want me to keep going. "Frank Comma Hesitates."

CM: Sure. There are a lot---

BG: "Surfing the Big Muddy," of course. Jan and Dean tried to make a comeback with that one. Sorry that didn't work. Lor, was it Jan or Dean visited us here?

LE: Jan. I think.

BG: Right. "Turn that Damn Stereo Down" by Moving Sidewalks. The Bugs did "For Kim, Because it All Went by So Fast."

CM: The Bugs?

BG: Memphis group. Did some great stuff and then—poof!—they pulled a Pynchon. Whereabouts unknown, you know? I think I was credited there as Dead Byrd Rung.

CM: Are there more?

BG: Reams, googobs, myriad, sundry, lots and lots and lots. But, it's getting boring. Your readers, you know...

CM: We can come back to it.

BG: Well, we can....

CM: Quickly...

BG: I played on one of The Byrds albums, played an upright bass and sang background. It's the, what did they call it? Five D album? Anyway, that's me in the credits, Gary Buddrend.

CM: Quickly, let's run through some of your contemporaries—just gimme the first thing that comes to your mind.

BG: Word association.

CM: Sort of.

BG: Am I being tested? (laughs)

CM: Well...

BG: It's ok, we're all being tested, right? Shoot. Association.

CM: Association.

BG: (laughs) Oh. Um...

CM: First thing you think of.

BG: Could have been better. Had the smarts.

CM: Beatles.

BG: Well, separately four talented guys. Together, gestaltwise, the Tetragrammaton.

CM: The Stones.

BG: Big. Blues fakers. Great blues fakers. Camp followers

CM: Dylan.

BG: God.

CM: Joni Mitchell.

BG: Naked butt. Great lyrics. Billion year old carbon.

CM: Simon and Garfunkel.

BG: Sweet.

CM: Four Seasons.

BG: Shit.

CM: Aretha Franklin.

BG: That was a strange segue. You're gonna give me the bends. Christ, Aretha. I don't know, man, the voice of our times. As Billie Holliday was for the rest of the century.

CM: The Beach Boys.

BG: I can't get with that surfing crap. Don't know. Pass.

CM: Hendrix.

BG: Oh, you know, man. Too personal. He was beyond all of us.

CM: Mungo Jerry?.

BG: Who?

CM: Bonzo Dog Band.

BG: Great stuff. Underrated.

CM: Iron Butterfly.

BG: Great chops.

CM: 1910 Fruitgum Company.

BG: (laughs) I don't know. C'mon.

CM: The Monkees.

BG: Better than they should be. Better than we know.

CM: Bobby Darin.

BG: Cool cat. Met him once. Cool cat.

CM: Ray Charles.

BG: Oh, daddy. Uh, well, he's just The Man, isn't he? I can't even talk about him.

CM: Leonard Cohen.

BG: Poet. Ladies man. Last romantic, probably won't live out the 70s. If there's a better song than "Joan of Arc" I haven't heard it.

CM: Cream.

BG: Tired of being compared to them.

CM: Fred Neil.

BG: Jerk, but should be better known. Great songwriter.

CM: Phil Ochs.

BG: Troubled guy but great pipes and great songwriter. Man who cares, really cares. Put his ass on the front lines. I wish I wrote like him.

CM: Laura Nyro.

BG: Fine. She's fine. Smooth lady. "Sweet Blindness"

CM: Melanie.

BG: Great ass, great in bed. (laughs) No, shit, cut that out, Creole. Don't get me in trouble, man.

CM: Roy Orbison.

BG: When he sings "Only the Lonely" the angels weep.

CM: The Leaves.

BG: Yeah, yeah. They've got it all. They're gonna be huge.

CM: Carole King.

BG: Sweet chick. Great songs.

CM: King Crimson.

BG: Don't know 'em.

CM: Chet Atkins.

BG: Great guitarist. Wish he wasn't country.

CM: Baez.

BG: Heroic. Great chick. We all owe her.

CM: The Fugs.

BG: Love 'em. I know Tuli, you know, so, we're tight. So...

CM: Johnny Rivers.

BG: If only for "Secret Agent Man" a master. Probably will be underrated forever.

CM: Velvet Underground.

BG: Second only to The Beatles. Yeah, I believe that. Not for the weak of heart.

CM: The Who.

BG: Ok, I get you. Yeah, maybe second only to the Beatles. Who wants rankings? The Who are musical dynamite, man.

CM: Creedence.

BG: You're hitting the groove now, man. Oh, baby, where'd they get that sound? They're from fucking California. Swamp rock.

CM: The Holy Modal Rounders.

BG: Yeah, they're cool. I haven't heard all their stuff. I like what I've heard.

CM: Joplin.

BG: Sweet baby. What pipes, man, and sweet, sweet baby. Miss her every day.

CM: Herman's Hermits.

BG: (laughs) Well, I don't really want this published, I don't think. I think they're fucking wonderful.

CM: Tim Hardin.

BG: Friend.

CM: Dick Dale.

BG: Well, you gotta love his axe, right? Duane Eddy, same thing.

CM: Donovan.

BG: Hippie stuff but great hippie stuff.

CM: Chad and Jeremy.

BG: Peter and Gordon.

CM: Uh, the Farinas.

BG: Oh, what a loss. Sad, sad. Man. Keep moving.

CM: Marianne Faithfull.

BG: Dead, too, right? Didn't she die?

CM: Um, no, no...

BG: Jagger's chick. Sweet voice. I thought she was dead.

CM: Wild Man Fisher.

BG: Hey, daddy, how do you know Wild Man? Oh, wait, I mentioned him. Are you diddling me? He's Zappa's Frankenstein monster. (laughs) Crazy guy, street corner singer.

CM: Fleetwood Mac.

BG: Peter Green's group, right? They're hip. Green's great.

CM: Buddy Holly.

BG: All rise. Hats off.

CM: Buffalo Springfield.

BG: Oh, man, good stuff. Stills, Young. "Flying on the Ground," yeah.

CM: Sam the Sham.

BG: He's my neighbor, man. Was. In Memphis, my neighbor. Great cat, spiritual cat.

CM: Miles Davis.

BG: Way ahead of us, man. Not even in the same business. He's out there. We're, what, we're playing checkers, he's playing 3D chess.

CM: Howlin' Wolf.

BG: The Bellwether. Man, the consummate bluesman. Y'know, we played this gig with him, and this would have been, like right after Turntable hit, and we were headlining. Can you dig that? On the posters, we were put above him, man. I was sick about it. So, when time came, we just told him, look, you're going on last. We warm up for you. This was toward the end for him, but it was right, you know. You do what's right.

CM: Gary Lewis and the Playboys.

BG: Gimme a break. Hey, Dad, can I have a rock group and go on Ed? Shit.

CM: Neil Diamond.

BG: You're trying to elicit some kind of crap response, but, I'll tell you, man. If I had written "Solitary Man," anything near as good as "Solitary Man," I'd die happy. "I'm a Believer." Good stuff. Brill Building, say what you will.

CM: Brenda Lee.

BG: Yeah, nice. I don't know.

CM: Phil Spector.

BG: Love the Christmas album.

CM: The Doors.

BG: Well, to be honest, I think this thing of Morrison being a poet is a load of rubbish. He's a poser. The Doors, however, still cook. One wonders if Morrison even knows that. that his guys cook.

CM: Woody Guthrie.

BG: The Grant Wood of music, and I mean that in a nice way.

CM: The Byrds.

BG: Cool group. Where would they be without Dylan? Maybe just another covers band doing "Hey Joe." But, they're cool guys, smart guys.

CM: The Animals.

BG: British band stealing American blues. No, wait, don't print that. Uh, Burdon—he's got some of the best pipes in the business. A voice made to sing rock and roll. And, hey, they helped Jimi, so...

CM: Dusty Springfield.

BG: Funny, she's British, isn't it? She could be from my home town, wants to be. Sings funky like Carla Thomas, not a small feat for a white woman.

CM: Ornette Coleman.

BG: He gave us all permission to break the rules.

CM: Sandy Denny.

BG: Oh, sweet voice, that opaque alto. Yeah, I dig her.

CM: James Brown.

BG: Well, I wouldn't want to cross him. (laughs) Naw, man, he's a pal, a Tennessee guy, and enough funk for ten men.

CM: Tiny Tim.

BG: I don't get it. I like fun as much as the next guy, but I don't get it. I wrote that song for him, just for a lark, you know, but, really. Zappa thinks he's hilarious.

CM: Johnny Cash.

BG: Authority.

CM: The Guess Who.

BG: Great hits band.

CM: It's a Beautiful Day.

BG: You know, I don't know much about them, but Skip Spence gave me an album. Great chick singer, right? And, uh, violin? Is that right?

CM: The Kinks.

BG: Power chords. Fat guitar. I dig that stuff.

CM: Led Zeppelin.

BG: Great first album. Promising, yeah, they're good. Lousy lyrics, but who cares, right?

CM: Mississippi Fred McDowell.

BG: Well, he's a mentor, taught me stuff when I was a pup. Great man.

CM: The Hollies.

BG: They're alright. Graham came from them, so that's nice. He's a quality human being, you know?.

CM: Charlie Christian.

BG: Oh, beautiful stuff. Listen to that guitar, baby. The first lead guitar, you know what I mean? He was, the first lead.

CM: Jethro Tull.

BG: Just catching them, man, but that singer has it all. Great stage show, plays the hell out of that fucking flute. Who'd've thought of the flute for rock and roll, you know?

CM: Gene Pitney.

BG: "Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." I don't care what else he did.

CM: Lee Michaels.

BG: I don't—

CM: Had the big hit, "Do You Know What I Mean?'

BG: Yeah, yeah, pumping organ, man. Probably a one hitter, but, still, nice voice.

CM: The Pretty Things.

BG: How many more of these you got, man?

CM: We can pretty much go on all afternoon. Or stop. Your choice.

BG: Gimme a few more. I don't want to sound like a blowhard. Do I sound like a blowhard? Like I know more than anyone else? Man, the thirteen year old kid buying his LPs at Corondolet, knows as much as me, you know? It's all subjective. Or is that objective? Subjective. I don't have any insider knowledge, you know, it's just what I think, what I see from here.

CM: The Pretty Things.

BG: I've listened to their stuff. Heavy into psychedelia, which is fine, fine.

CM: Fever Tree.

BG: Very funny. I told you about Fever Tree.

CM: Memphis Minnie.

BG: Dirty blues, between-the-legs blues. Where I'm from she's sacred, you know, Church music.

CM: Leslie Gore.

BG: Get over it, sweetheart.

CM: Iron Butterfly.

BG: Did them. You've left a lot of people out, too, of course.

CM: Your influences go so far back, hither and yon. In this way, you've been compared to Presley, Dylan, as a conduit of disparate inspiration. You seem to take musical stimulation from so many, so many different artists.

BG: If you say so.

CM: Sorry...um, Jerry Lee Lewis.

BG: Well, the Killer, you know, Memphis guy, so, yeah. He scares me a little (laughs)—inferiority complex about Elvis, probably, but great on the 88s, right?

CM: Taj Mahal.

BG: Oh, man. If there was justice he'd be as big as the Stones.

CM: Uh—

BG: That's enough. Right? Gimme one more.

CM: Van Morrison.

BG: Soul poet. Good, huh? Soul poet?

CM: Yeah.

BG: Alright.

CM: Tell me how you and Lorelei met.

BG: Hoo. Was that a smooth transition? Did I miss something? From Van Morrison to Lorelei. That's a story, isn't it, sweet? Um. It was at the Shell. Black Lung was playing, one of our first headlining gigs, I think. I came off stage after the encore, after we'd done a cooking version of "I Love my Aunt Jemima," Skippy going wild like a man possessed, and maybe he was, man, maybe he was. This was Memphis, those things are real, man. No one looks askance at a little theurgy, you know, a little of that Memphis Mojo, that hoodoo that brought us everything from W. C. to Isaac to Booker to Big Star to Jism. I been playing rock, blues, jazz, ruckus, fife-and-drum, what have you, all my life. Call it what you want. Good music, man, always out of that town on the river. You think that's just coincidence. Naw, man, that' hoodoo. What was I saying?

CM: You—

BG: Yeah, yeah, Lor and me. So, I come offstage. I'm sweating, I'm tripping, I'm like zoned out. I always felt that way after soaring, you know? I fly when I play. I mean this literally. You read Castaneda? Anyway, there standing in my way, like fucking Lot's wife, was this raven-haired beauty, and I had this strange idea, man, that we had conjured her, that the music had brought her into being. You can't understand. Or maybe you can. You know Memphis. I really felt like here was a woman made of soul and blood and electricity and philharmonic, eldritch diablerie, you know? I thought she was fucking Terpsichore, man. And she was so beautiful—she IS so beautiful—that I was stopped like a clock. I was a man hit in the heart with a sledgehammer. She just reached out and took my hand. It was that simple, that profound. She was looking right into me, like I was a sideshow mirror, and maybe I was, man. Distorting images, throwing off suncats. She saw it all, clear as crystal. We went to her place that afternoon. She had this Midtown apartment—I don't know if I can do it justice. It was the most filled room I'd ever seen. Clutter, but, taken as a whole, it all made sense. She called it Plat-Eye Manor, after her dog, Plat-Eye. Her three-headed dog. (laughs) That was some dog, used to sit next to me and fix me with its glassy eye, just sit there for hours, man, and I'd end up thinking we were talking. I can still remember some of the conversations I had with that damned dog. It was black and tan, mostly black—what was it, a mix, part Rottweiler and part hellhound. There was no place for the eye to rest, no blank walls, no white spaces. And this is like Lorelei herself, really, she is made up of so many parts, she's a Steppenwolf, in the best sense of that word, a house of mirrors, each part of her reflects a different part of yourself once you get to know her or her you, you dig? Anyway, I spent a good half-hour just looking around, while she stood aside and observed me. I was spellbound, pixilated. It was a ramshackle, poor man's Kubla Kahn. I walked slowly around her little apartment, which was like some chthonic art gallery, lit by phosphorous. She had art reproductions by Klee, Gironella, Motherwell, Picabia, Bacon, this weird Malcolm Morley yellow pages thing, Ensor, on and on. Twombly. There was a mandala on the ceiling, a pentangle on the floor, what you could see, through the album covers and splayed paperbacks and drawings. It was strange stuff to me, eye-opening, shocking in a way. That shock that comes from knowing something is important but not knowing exactly why. And she had in between all these great prints, torn newspapers, headlines juxtaposed against this great art, you know? And her own drawings, little line drawings of dwarves and headless figures and skulls and djinns. And poems, typed and tacked to the wall. I remember one, in particular, an Aztec poem, and it began, "Rejoice, rejoice, my flower king, you own many jewels—" and I thought, wow, that's for me, man. It was an egotistical reaction, I know. Where "Flower King" comes from. And there were these little altars she had constructed, with tiny clay figures and candles.

And the floor—what there was of it (laughs)—like I say, was awash in album covers and books. Books stacked in these tottering towers. Names I'd never heard of, at that time: Kis, Malcolm Lowry, Svevo, Madame Blavatsky, Fludd, Dee, Goncharov, Bruno Schulz, Philip Wylie, Whatsername Yates, Blake, Maturin, Borges, Marie-Louise von Franz, a book called History of Secret Societies, one, I think called On the conjuring of angels. It was mind-boggling. The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. I felt like I was in a secret underground lab, a lab for the soul. It was trippy, a mindfuck, you know, but beautiful. And this woman, this witchy, beautiful woman embodied all this stuff, she was her surroundings, her home, her personal halidom. And she stood there, as silent as the grave, watching me, and, finally—I was dizzy—I turned back to her. And she looked like the answer to every question I'd ever had. Her breasts seemed, particularly, to invite me, to suckle there, to be born again.

Do you want me to continue? You want the rest here? Lor?

LE: Tell the truth, sweet.

CM: Sure. Um, yes, continue. If it's too private—you decide. We can always edit later. I'm, uh, intrigued.

BG: Well, obviously, we ended up in the bedroom that first evening. I think she walked over to me and simply whispered, fuck me. I think it was that straightforward. There was no bullshit about Lor—there still isn't. We ended up on her bed, which is a story in itself. Sixteenth century bed, bedclothes like in a harem...I felt like I was returning to the womb—the bed was that enveloping, that warm. Oh, man. I don't know if I can tell this. When we were naked—she was like some preternatural creature, her body's every curve fit me like a new skin. When she pressed her breasts against me I was gone, man. And I had this erection, it was beyond human somehow, hard as anthracite—you could hang your coat on it (laughs) and she worked her hand around me like a necromancer casting a spell. Just her fingers over me were like cool water. Jesus. I can't. Let's just say, that after the preliminaries, which took hours, days maybe, she sat on me, and I entered her, and she was hot like sulfur, like a volcano. Tophet. Her cunt was hot, and I fell so deeply into her that I haven't come out yet. Can you dig that? I haven't come out yet. In a way, we are still in that first fuck, that first joining. Lorelei was my salvation. All that stuff about me going awry is such bullshit, if you could see it the way I see it. So much nasty stuff has been written and said about Lor—Crafty, shit I can't forgive him—and she's handled it all with such grace. But, in a very profound way, I am still inside her. My dick, my soul. I don't know. Maybe we should erase all this. What do you think?

LE: It's beautiful, Bud. Let it lie. Let it be.

CM: Your song, "The Ballad of Buddy and Lor"—is that a parody of Lennon's "The Ballad of John and Yoko?"

BG: An homage. While at the same time being the true story.

CM: You begin that song, "Standing on the dock of the bay..."

BG: For Otis, yes.

CM: Did you ever meet Otis Redding?

BG: Briefly. I was a kid. He wouldn't remember.

CM: And he's dead.

BG: Even worse.

CM: "The Ballad of Buddy and Lor" was released as a single but never appeared on an LP, am I right?

BG: Partly. It appeared on an Atlantic LP of uncollected gems, along with some of Felix Cavaliere's solo stuff, an Aretha demo, stuff like that.

CM: What was it called?

BG: Uncollected Gems.

CM: Worth seeking out, for collectors, for completists.

BG: If you say so. My song was a gift to Atlantic because Ahmet and I were friends. Much of what's on there was crap.

CM: Yet, you never recorded on Atlantic.

BG: Well, that's all that business bullshit again. Ask Crafty, ask fucking Tony Hudson, he's a lawyer. They screwed me, plain and simple. Well, plain and simple, except I don't understand it all. All I know is that all that old Black Lung stuff—the stuff they know is mine (laughs)—that's all tied up somehow. Ask Pete, my lawyer. He's working on it, as we speak. While we sleep. Pete is tireless, a true mensch, a force. He'll straighten out those fuckers. Meanwhile, I'm on Hounddog Records, ironically, an L.A. outfit. I guess the name drew me or was created for me. Lorelei would say the label was there for me when I came out here, that it appeared when I appeared. Literally, I think there was some stuff they did before my two LPs, but, you get the idea, right? Hounddog's done alright. Hell, we had a #1 with I Was a Child and then, the Grammy, of course. Can't take that away from me. It's done, you know, for all time. I won that damn Grammy. Still the best song I've written, for Lor, she's the muse. Maybe she really is Terpsichore. Maybe she is.

CM: Do you have any regrets about leaving Memphis?

BG: Well, I guess I knew you were gonna ask me that. It's a bullshit question. Sorry, Creole, but, damn man. Regrets? Look at what I've done out here. Have you listened to the fucking albums?

CM: Still, many say, it isn't Black Lung.

BG: (long pause) Creole, you're a friend, man. We go way back. Be careful, ok? Saying it isn't Black Lung, you might as well say, it isn't Rubber Soul, it isn't Sinatra. It isn't what it isn't. That's true. I'm not what I was. Are you? Is anybody? Does anybody need another "Turntable Poison?" I don't. I fucking don't. What I need is to keep moving—I'm repeating myself—but all this nostalgia shit, man, it's for people who are dead. What did Dylan say? "Something's going on here but you don't know what it is." That's it, man. When he plugged in he changed music, but he can't plug in again, you know? And he went backwards after that, because he's the jester, man, and by going backwards, like Merlin, he was going forward. Dylan's always been a bellwether, though he hates that thought. I don't want to be anyone's bellwether, either. Bob told me once, he said, "You never play your old stuff. Man, I wish I could get away with that." See, he's sick of "Like a Rolling Stone." He's trapped, he feels trapped. In a way, in one way. In another it's part of him so he can't deny it, like you can't deny your arm, or your soul. No, I'll never play, "Young Avenue Blues" again, though it's a great song. And I won't let anyone else play it like it's theirs. Fucking hell. That's why I got Pete around. He's a demon man, he's a fucking Cannibal Spirit. (laughs) Stay out of courts, man, that's my motto. Better stay away from those that carry round a firehose. (laughs) Keep a clean nose.

(garbled)

CM: Um. Pete is Pete Holder, your lawyer. And Hudson is Tony Hudson. Tell the readers who he is.

BG: Shit. Think Boogie Man. Think Pazuza. He's the antichrist. He broke up Black Lung, not Lorelei, not me. The minute that raincloud in a suit walked into our studio—our fucking studio, where we made magic, man, where it all happened—the minute he walked in, in his appropriate sharkskin suit, we were fucked. Crafty brought him in, of course. He was Kim's father, as you know. Crafty's fiancé, since wife, since ex-wife. Kim was alright—you know, she had that mane of golden-white hair, she was beautiful, goddamn beautiful. We all wanted her. That's ok to say, Lor? We all wanted her because, hell, she had that skin, you know, translucent and freckled and white like yonder waning moon. But, she was Crafty's, sort of. It's funny. Everywhere they went men hit on Kim, no one could help it, and Crafty was so insecure, you know? He hated it. He hated going out with her. Maybe it led to the divorce, I don't know the details. But, Kim we loved. Back then. It was her father, man. He was a cunt. And he started manipulating Crafty and then us, through Crafty. And he would have these fits, like epileptic fits, like anger that couldn't be dammed. He was out of control. I think he's still trying to worm his way into the music business—I don't really know. But he didn't know a fucking thing about music or the business and he wanted a part of Black Lung, because it looked like we were the next Cream, the next Experience, the next Mountain. Whatever. He just wanted a slice of the pie, man. And I was like, I throw my hands up, just let me record and keep me away from the jackals, you know? But, well, eventually, I had to get Pete. Pete was Jim Dickinson's friend. Jim's a pure soul, a force for good, the Wise Man of the Forest, you know? He told me once, "Watch out for that shithead, Hudson. Just be careful." And then he said (laughs), "But, damn, isn't that Kim a piece of work?" (laughs)

CM: You describe Dickinson as the Wise Old Man, what do you mean by that?

BG: You know, Creole, you know the man. Wise One, in, I think it's Navajo—no Apache culture, maybe it's Navajo, too--he was the younger brother of Killer-of-enemies, part of a holy pair. That's Sid and Jim. (laughs)

CM: And you ever hear from Tony Hudson?

BG: Naw, fuck man, that's Pete's gig. I know sometimes Pete talks to him—I can tell from some things I hear—but he's so sweet to me, he keeps me out of it. Tony Hudson—he screwed The Airplane, too, from the story that I got—that's part of the West Coast myth of the guy—he thinks part of his cachet, you know? But Pete's—

LE: He's family.

BG: Exactly. He's my brother.

LE: And your father.

BG: True. I have many fathers. Including my real father, who has left the earthly plane, as they say. Yet, he's with me every day. Every day.

CM: And your mother, she's still alive?

BG: Still living in Memphis. Well, Bartlett.

CM: Do you talk to her often?

BG: Often, no.

CM: Why is that?

BG: Nothing Freudian, Creole. You know, we live in circles, they keep turning, sometimes the circle includes someone and sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes it turns back around and involves that person, you know? Right now, my circle is me and Lorelei. And my music, which is a manifestation of us. A reflection.

CM: You mention mirrors often, are you aware of that?

BG: Do I?

CM: Do you know why that could be?

BG: No.

CM: It seems that Black Lung was breaking up from the very beginning. In its beginnings is its end.

BG: Everything perishes from an excess of its first principle. I forget who said that. But, that's right. We were dead the day we formed. But that's right, that's process, that's life. Read The Upanishads. But, see, I was Black Lung. Black Lung was me. I could have had Bozo the Clown and My Favorite Martian backing me, it didn't matter. I wrote the songs, I played those hot licks, I sang the fucking songs, right? You can dig that. It's not ego, man, it's just what was. That's what's so sad about Crafty—I mean, what would he be doing if I hadn't formed Black Lung? He'd be fucking pumping gas, man, he'd be dealing. He'd be selling Krystals. Because he ain't that smart. But, yeah, we were cracking up even as we rose. Maybe rising causes dissolution, right, you can dig that. Like Icarus. Or, it's like Adam and Eve, you know, paradise is full of apples, full of snakes. We were in paradise briefly, as we cut that album, made those songs happen, we had it all, chicks, drugs, some money—though they screwed us of course. We should have been bigger, gotten better contracts. I don't care about that. But, I do care about my songs, man, my damn songs. I wrote 'em and they're mine and no one can ever take that away, turn the clock back, rewrite history. I was Black Lung. I was "Blues for Wendy Ward," "In Real Time Nothing Happens." And, you know, in the end, it's as a songwriter that I will be remembered.

CM: Really, rather than a guitar wiz?

BG: Yeah, yeah, the songs. That's what I care about. That's why my new stuff is so important to me. Lor, is that right?

LE: Yeah, the songs are immortal. They are footprints on the moon. You understand?

BG: Exactly, they're the marks I've made against the creeping of the reaper. Kill me now, but forever, they'll hear my voice, forever those words will be out there, battling against philistinism, against commercialism, against Moloch. Ok?

CM: Um, drugs. Did drugs play a large part of your creative process?

BG: No. Well, I mean, it was the sixties. Drugs were everywhere. In the air. When the Beatles dropped acid, when Leary made his famous pronouncement, I mean it was so public. Blame it, LSD, on Cary Grant. (laughs) At first legal—when I started, Dad, though soon illegal, which is weird. I think acid was illegal. Is it legal now? No, no, it's not. LSD-25, specifically, you know, I mean, everyone had it—it came to Memphis from Frisco on sugar cubes, I think. It was at the Bitter Lemon, you know, and I'd go there—I was, shit, I don't know, 16 or something. Man. Anyway, did I use it to write? Some, I guess. It opens doors, if you want to do that. Huxley, you know. If you want to do that, you have to be prepared. It's not for everyone—I think Zappa insists on being straight, which is his record label. And which is weird cuz he's so weird, at least, in his vision. "Brown Shoes," that's a great song. "Monster Magnet." Um, what was I saying? Yeah, acid, sure I used it some. And Coltrane—everyone wanted to play like Coltrane, who credited acid with some of his wilder stuff—the stuff that was so influential. Pretty soon it was right there on albums, you know—psychedelia, via the laboratory. Psychedelic rock was just acid put to music, you know. Suddenly there were drug songs. "White Rabbit." "Amphetamine Annie." "She Said She Said," supposedly. Everyone thinks "Open Channel D" is about turning on, man, but, no, no, you get the reference. I mean, sure, open your mind, yeah, that's psychedelia's code-word. I wrote "Strawberry Fields for a While" on acid, appropriately. I mean, I did it on purpose. I wanted to answer John, send him a valentine as it was, and I thought, well, I should be tripping because that's such a trippy song, you know? So, I did that. I used grass a lot, still do. Can you print that? (laughs) Can they arrest me if you print that? When I was with other musicians, I mean, it was something you just did. At the bed-in, I mean everyone was tripping.

CM: John and Yoko's Bed-in for Peace?

BG: Do you know another Bed-in? Yeah, there. Tommy and Lennon and I, I don't remember, someone had some sugar cubes. It might have been Donovan. Was he there? I can't remember. (laughs) Yeah, I did drugs. Ok, I wrote "Burn my Bridges" on speed, which is an angry drug, and it's such an angry song. I don't know, it's not one of my favorites now, even though it's newish. I wrote it one night—I think Lor and I had had a fight, a rare fight, and she had gone to a girlfriend's house and I just thought, fuck it, I'm gonna do speed and stay up all night. I didn't plan on writing. I thought, I'll just speed and watch late night TV—there was some John Agar movie on—You dig John Agar? No? Don't know him? Anyway, I was sitting there and there was a legal pad on the coffee table because earlier in the day I had tried writing a song about my mother—don't ask—and it was sitting there like an invitation and I was speeding like a hell-rooster, man, and I just picked up the pad and this big fat marker, I mean I was writing these huge thick letters on the page (laughs) and I just started, "You were mean to me/Leave me alone, let me sit in my tree/You were a snake, I needed you then/you were like bad heroin." And I ripped the whole thing off in about an hour. And I recorded it that night in my living room, fingers tearing over my strings till they bled, I was playing so hard, like Richie, and that song, that was recorded in my home—it sounds like it. But it was born of anger, and so, well, it's not one of my faves. Lor came back about dawn and I was still up and I was crying, just sitting there crying with the guitar in my lap, and she put her arms around me, and that's the story of that song. Last time I took speed.

LE: "Strawberry Fields for Only a Little While."

BG: What?

LE: The full title. And you re-recorded "Burn my Bridges" in the studio, which is why it sounds sweeter than you think it does.

BG: Right. (laughs) She knows better than I do, I swear she does. She's my historian. Here's let's switch places, Lor, You sit here.

(garbled)

CM: You said somewhere that you could make your guitar speak. Explain that.

BG: Well, yeah, I can make my guitar speak, it's secondary if I can sing lyrics or write lyrics, you know. My guitar does a lot of talking. Like Zappa's "My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama." (laughs) But, sure, I've made it talk, talk for me, if you want that spin on it.

CM: Like on what songs?

BG: Well, shit, all the Black Lung stuff. That's what those ridiculous solos are about. I love 'em man, but, I wanted more than that. You understand. That guitar bit on "Mr. Handy and Hakel-Bärend," it's great, I mean, it's fucking soaring, isn't it? I was talking then, telling my audience things that maybe only other musicians, artists, painters understand. I was talking through my sweat, man, through my blood. You dig? But, I can't play that anymore. I can't talk with an electric guitar anymore, man. It's dishonest, somehow. I want more direct contact. I wanna sit down with you and talk about life, man, because it's hard, you know? In the dark, in our closed rooms, it's hard. That's what I'm saying. Lonely's ok when you're seventeen, but, man, we're not seventeen anymore. I wanna talk about that. I mean, I love performing, but I also gotta spend time just playing for me, just me and the guitar, so I learn the message, so I understand.

CM: Let's backtrack a little. I wanna talk about "Turntable Poison," in particular some of the things that have been written about it. Some analysts of the record see things in it, which I've heard you deny, yet, there does seem to be something underneath the surface of these songs, something darker. Dave Marsh described it as "Mansonish deviltry mixed with Buffalo Springfield lyrics and Cream jams." It's this Charlie Manson element that I'd like to hear you talk about, this school of thought that the record is some sort of coded message, a hint of what was to come, a gateway to the Apocalypse, according to Crawdaddy.

BG: Is that a question?

CM: It's a whole area of question. It's a school of thought—surely you've heard or read some of this. But I've never heard you talk about it.

BG: I dropped out of school, especially schools of thought.

CM: Um--

BG: You got kids playing records backwards, you got kids hearing drug references in everything, from "Lucy in the Sky" to "In Real Time". You got academics plumbing rock music now for the kind of meanings they dug out of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Everyone's in there digging around, rooting around. Man, all you gotta do to be plumbed is write gibberish, this is proven, these guys they love obscure. You know? They live on obscure. I don't want any part of it. Why I stripped back, not just my instrumentation but my lyrics. I got simpler. Some people, some back-biting curs, I might say, said I got stupider, that my two "California" LPs represent some kind of nadir for rock music, right up there with Self Portrait and "My Love" and Satanic Majesties Royal Request or whatever the hell that thing is called. I'm here to tell you, you got one person, man. When you're a writer, you got one person. As close as I am to Lorelei, when I'm in there, when I'm at the typewriter or guitar or keyboard, I'm all alone, man, a chilling kind of alone, and I'm conscienceless, ruthless. You write because you've got to man, because it's your guts that are hurting, your guts that are in need of something. And you're gonna find that thing, even as it keeps receding from view, even as the more you go forward the farther away it gets. You ever been to the beach man? Seen those little clams, tiny little fuckers, that dive as you dig around them. They just keep burrowing downward, and the faster you dig the deeper they go (is that a Beatle's line? something like that) (laughs). Anyway, those little fuckers defy your best efforts, they're almost always gonna be quicker than you. That's what writing is, man, it just keeps going farther into the sand, the thing you're looking for, the thing that'll make it all alright. It just stays beyond you, just out of your grasp. And that's how it should be, man, because otherwise why would you keep digging? Why keep looking if it's easy to find? What were we talking about?

CM: Uh...some people see in your "California" LPs a kind of return to innocence, a willful perspective that is more Edenic, or childlike. Would you say that you are seeking innocence with your recent work, that you are moving toward artlessness?

BG: You would say that. I think you just did say that. Artlessness? Hm. I wouldn't have used that word, but I like it. Yes, strip off the artifice, cut off the fat. Too many rock lyricists—you can think of them as well as I can, say, that guy with Procol Harum, or that Emerson Lake and Palmer shit, or some of Jim's stuff, which, to be honest, I can't stomach, all that lizard king shit—they're purposely making with the lit-rock attitude, you know? They want you to study their lyrics. I mean, "An idiot reigns in the ancient trees of the night," or whatever the hell he says. Shit. What I'm saying, in a song like "Love for Lorelei" or "The Golden Apples of the Song"—new stuff, you haven't heard it yet-- is that, here are my words, man, here's my life in words. What I'm saying is what I mean. If I sing "I love you" over and over, that's truth, man, that's where I'm coming from, because I mean it, because I'm singing to Lor, and I love her, there's no secret to it, there's no murkiness, no florid touches, it's just raw, like art should be, raw, simple, full of emotion. "I Want to Hold Your Ass While You Move"—I wrote that after a particularly beautiful night of lovemaking. I don't care, you know. I don't care if people think it's too personal, too open, too—what?—minimal or plain and straightforward. I mean, some people don't like that in their art, they can't take that. It's like Pop Art, which Lor turned me on to. What these guys are saying is, it's simple, man, art is all around you. It's soup cans, it's goats, it's flags. Take another look. Look around real good, man, because the world is full of beauty and it doesn't have to be heavy and obscure and arty. You can just say what you mean. So, yeah, in that way, artlessness was what I was going for. Which, in the end, is the ultimate art. It's a paradox, in a way, isn't it? Ask Lorelei.

LE: Art is good, simple, pure. Like Rain and Other Distractions.

BG: Thank you, sweet.

LE: That's what you've been saying. Some people listen. Others don't.

BG: Right.

CM: Or "Train Tracks and Junk Tracks."

BG: Well, yeah, ok. That's actually a re-working of an old Skip James song, but, yeah, I was talking about junk, about some of those we've lost. Myself. I'll say it here. I was talking about that road, which is so easy, so out there for the asking. And I took it, because, at the time, it seemed another way to go. I'm off the junk now. Off it for good. Or, Lor would kill me. (laughs)

CM: We've been over the drug thing...

BG: Right, right. Let's leave it. It's done to death, so to speak.

CM: (laughs)

(garbled)

CM:...and the hometown thing. Memphis still counts you as one of its own, yet you don't talk about it much.

BG: Creole, you know Memphis. It's like this great soup of soul and funk and blues and rock'n'roll and you never get it out of your blood. A gumbo, an olio. It's fucking invasive. I didn't leave Memphis behind. I've never said that. That cool, brown water is still in my veins, that under-the-surface groove that only that city knows. You know it. You've got it, too, right? the Memphis Jones? Yeah, yeah. It's just a city, in some ways, just another stop, but, in other, more profound ways, it's like a spell, a magical place that conjures music and feeling and, oh, what? a sort of inbred homegrown soul. But, its' the inbred that's dangerous, right? Like a cancer, or like unrequited love. All angels are dangerous, Rilke said. Memphis is an angel, a city of angels. I miss it.

CM: It surprises me to hear you say that.

BG: I don't know why it should. I was raised there, man. I played my first notes there. I imbibed that Southern funk as if it were honeyed air. You can take the South—wait, shit, how does that go?

CM: You can take the boy out of the South...

BG: Ok. Yeah. Am I being inconsistent? You left Memphis.

CM: I still have an apartment there.

BG: (laughs) Shit. Right. I still have an apartment there. Me, too. Only it's not real. You know? Besides, Lor wasn't from there, you know? So, she doesn't get all that mojo shit. All that groove. She comes from the Midwest. She comes from nowhere. That's what she says. I don't know where she went or she'd tell you, but it was her idea to come out here and it's worked out great, man. I mean, look at this. Look at the work I'm doing. I've never been so content.

CM: Contentment is good.

BG: That's a question?

CM: Uh...

BG: Listen, contentment, after the tumultuary lifestyle rock'n'roll throws at you, is bliss, man. It's the fucking pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Not stagnation, if that's what you're implying---

CM: I was—

BG: I haven't been stagnant because I've been still. It's Buddhist, isn't it? I mean, sitting still while the winds blow. Winds of change, winds of creativity. Lorelei has taught me much, man, many things I can't even tell you. You'll get it—you'll see where it's all been heading. Anyway, Memphis, yeah, it's still part of that—the signpost on the road. Memphis still burbles up through even my most contented piece of songwriting, still smolders underneath it all. So many musicians came through Memphis, man, came through, came from. Some never got any recognition, yet they fed the stream, they kept the mojo alive. Bluesmen who played because playing was what they did. Making ruckus. They didn't have record contracts, they never made money. They played for fifty bucks a night, some beer, a little pussy. Early, early. There are names that aren't even on the list, yet they made it all happen, for later cats, for B. B., for Furry, for Gatemouth. There's this cat, Beaureguard somebody, played his whole life, man, his whole fucking life, lived in Midtown Memphis, played all the gigs there were back then—and we're talking back in the Ur days, the days before electricity. And he lived to be, oh I don't know, 117 or something ridiculous. Never made it, you know, never cut a record for Chess or whoever. But the music was important, it flowed through him, this cat. I saw him once, in a tent show—Furry was there—and he just blew everybody away, played with a broken bottle for a slide, old shitbox guitar—and he just blew everybody away. He's in here man, in me, in all the cats who came after. That's Memphis. That's what I'm talking about. You wanna talk heritage, Memphis is lousy with heritage, with a lineage like no place else. And it's so pure, man. It runs like a crystal stream, or like Big Muddy, runs through all of us. I'm proud to be from Memphis, man. Don't write nothing else. Don't write that shit about Buddy Gardner sold his soul for California gold. That's shit, man. And it makes me mad. Who wrote that? Some fucker in Crawdaddy or Creem. I don't believe the amount of manure that's been written about me since I left Memphis. You set the record straight, Creole. I'm counting on you, man.

CM: Uh, so you discount all the stuff about you going, uh, soft, cutting your roots---

BG: Naw, naw. It's all alright. I got no axes to grind. It'll all be clear in the end. You'll see. It's part of a larger thing, you know? Part of a grander scale, if you will. I'm writing like a madman, now, it's all good, it's gonna come out alright.

CM: Uh, let's see. When you write do you just sit down with the guitar? Or do the lyrics come first?

BG: Have we already talked about this? Why does this sound familiar? Maybe I'm deja vuing. Anyway, I do it both ways. Sometimes the lyrics come out, you know, like a poem, when I'm shaving or in the bath. Or first thing in the morning, you have to jump from bed and scribble them down. Like the phrase "Her glances could break arms." I just woke up with that, you know. Those are gifts. I don't know where they come from. It's that old question, whether, you know, writing comes from experience or from, like, some deeper place that you tap into, something mythical, the collective Jung-thing. So, yeah, lyrics sometimes just happen and I have to wrap them up in melody. Other times I just sit and strum, wool-gathering, you know, and strumming and a tune will develop or maybe words with a tune. I like to have my guitars in my hand. A lot of creativity happens because I like to have my guitars in my hand.

CM: You play a number of different guitars---How many do you have?

BG: Oh. Uh, I think fifty-five.

CM: Really?

BG: I have this thing for stringed instruments—I can just about play any of them.

CM: Really?

BG: Sure. Bass, viol, banjo (4 or 5 string), mandolin, even the fucking harp. Though I'm not Harpo I can wring some pretty stuff from it. Dulcimer, of course. Violoncello. Got a beautiful 18th century, Italian one that Lor got me for my birthday. Incredible sound. Got this Jaura Baryton that's just exquisite. Museum piece really, so I only use it here. Uh...

CM: Don't you use some dobro on the newer LPs?

BG: Very little. The dobro is like an occupation. I'm still learning. It's like yoga—you're always seeking a perfection that stays just beyond your reach, because it's supposed to. You never conquer it. The dobro is holy. I have a teacher, a guy out here, you've never heard of him—he's done some studio stuff, but mostly he just plays for himself and his students. He lives up in the hills, inherited money from, what was it, adding machines or some office supply. He's an office supply heir. Anyway, he's teaching me dobro. It's a discipline, like any other. I love the dobro but, never, never would I claim to be master of it.

CM: I've got a review here of Rain and Other Distractions.

BG: ( laughs, garbled comment)

CM: "Gardner seems content," it says, "to wallow in the worst kind of self-pitying schmaltz, the kind of thing that Lennon kept McCartney away from, or Simon from Garfunkel. This album represents something sad about 60s rock—the road we thought led to the New Eden, instead led us back to Vegas, with a fat Elvis and a Rat Pack of self-congratulating back-slappers. This is James Taylor instead of St. James Infirmary. James Taylor, as if he'd forgotten how to play "Steamroller." It's lounge rock"

BG: Who wrote that crap? Where was that?

CM: In Sum Times. Memphis reviewer.

BG: He should know better.

CM: She.

BG: That's worse, somehow. Shit. Nah. It's all good. In the end, it's all good.

LE: You're still growing instead of settling, that's what's so hard for them to understand. America doesn't want its artists to grow. We resist change even if it's leading somewhere positive. Look at Dylan, look at Larry Rivers. Orson Welles..

BG: Lor knows. In the end, Lor knows. It's all good. What's this chick's name?

CM: Well...

BG: Right, right. Forget it. Who needs it? I don't read that shit anyway, you know? If I wrote what people told me to write I'd still be doing "Open Channel D."

CM: Great song.

BG: It's a fucking great song. Of course, it is. But, still, do you say to Larry Rivers, do that Washington thing again? Do you tell Jasper Johns to stop painting flags, or keep painting flags, or whatever? Tell Dylan, write another "Rolling Stone." I mean, hell, that's why artists are artists, they're going places, traveling, leaving the cave to seek the truth, man, not to join other seekers. Like Townshend said. I don't care, man. I don't care. Just gimme my money and let me get into the studio with my guitar and let me sing the songs that I sing. Anything else is lagniappe, unnecessary, maya.

CM: Money, you said...

BG: Yeah, fucking money. What do you think, we live on air out here, man? Gimme my money, I've earned it. I've been doing this my whole fucking life. Yeah, I deserve some money for that.

CM: And these last two albums have been your biggest sellers.

BG: That's right. I made money—take away my Hippie merit badge, send me to hell. I know you're not implying there's something insidious about that, that they sold because I was dumbing down or whatever. But, dig. They reached hundreds of thousands of people, man. That's the bottom line. Hundreds of thousands of good folks out there thinking about "Burn my Bridges."

CM: You're satisfied with the new work.

BG: Better than satisfied, man. I'm ecstatic. It's heart-music.

CM: It's what?

LE: It's honest. There's no bullshit.

BG: No psychedelic lyrics, no "newspaper taxis" as Lennon said. No "In Real Time Nothing Happens." It's just me. Take it or leave it. It's just me and my life.

CM: And you made more money...

BG: That's right. I made more money. Shoot me.

CM: There's a rumor that there's a bootleg album out there, a Black Lung bootleg, purportedly entitled Timetable Poison.

BG: Or Turntable Paisan, depending on who you're talking to. Sometimes called The Great Black Wonder, after you-know-what.

CM: You know about it.

BG: You're being coy. It's more than a rumor.

CM: Yes, ok. I've seen a copy.

BG: Me, too. As you know, I've gone out of my way to squelch such things—any artist would. Except maybe Zappa who seems to embrace the concept of bootleg albums. Pete has gone after a few people, but these succubi who produce such things are like mercury. You think you have them pinned down and they squirt away.

CM: What's on it, and how did these recordings get circulated?

BG: Well, the how is easy. Tapes get stolen, recorders are snuck into concerts. From what I've seen this puppy is about half live and half rejected studio takes. The key word here is rejected—and rejected for a reason. They are of inferior quality.

CM: Tell us what you know about them.

BG: (sighs) Ok. Let's see. From the taping session there's a version of "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone," which we used to use to warm up. It's raw—actually not bad for all its rawness. Sometimes overcooking leads to worse performances. There's a live version of "A Marriage of Rue," which is just horrendous. I'm not sure which concert it comes from but I'm guessing an early one. It doesn't sound like we're even playing the same song. And Skippy sounds like he's off in Oz—he was often a lost mook.

CM: What else?

BG: Have you heard this thing or not?

CM: No, I haven't heard it. It was being circulated in Memphis right before I came out here. There's a renewed interest in the band, as you know.

BG: Yeah. There's a run-through version of "Wendy Ward." An a cappella version of "Yummy Yummy Yummy." (laughs) I don't know where the hell that came from. Or what possible interest there would be in including it. We must have been high. There's a live version of "A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes." The Leonard Cohen song. We used to play it live in a revved up version that I re-arranged. That's pretty cool. Reason enough probably to buy the whole record. Uh, "Strictly Blowjob." That's a song I wrote, Jesus, I think I was about 15. About a girl in high school who shall, naturally, remain nameless. Girl could, well, you know. Lousy song, but it brings back memories, and how they got a hold of it, I can't imagine.

A really, rough, live "The Sun Also Rises."

CM: I don't—

BG: Fever Tree. I'll educate you, yet. We used to try to work up a version of "The Sun Also Rises" because I could make my voice sound like his raspy delivery—likewise Sky Saxon of The Seeds. Which is why "Can't Seem to Make Her Mine" shows up on the bootleg, also. A better version of it, than "Sun"—actually part studio, part live, if you can dig that. At least, whoever put the fucker together had some chops, knew a thing or two—it's a fairly seamless melding of two different versions of the song, incorporating a blistering solo I did on it live with a somewhat coherent rendering we put down at Ardent. "Can't Seem to Make Her Mine" should have been huge for The Seeds, yet it only charted, barely. I think. So, most people think they only did "Pushin' Too Hard." Their first album is actually really kick-ass, better than the Stones, if you ask me, better than 12 X 5, better than Out of Our Heads. Inexplicable, really, who makes it and who doesn't. Best not even ponder it. I mean, if Black Lung had charted nationally, higher, well, who knows, you know? History re-written. Shit, who cares? I mean, I wouldn't be here then. I wouldn't be the working man you see before you. (laughs)

CM: Isn't "Secret Agent Man" on the bootleg?

BG: No. Well, sort of. It's an aborted, what?, 30 seconds maybe. I started it in concert once, just you know, did that opening riff, and Skippy jumped in. Hell, Crafty wasn't even on stage. It's stupid to include that, but, yeah, they did.

CM: And one or two others. I should have better notes here.

BG: That's ok. I remember. I wish I didn't but I do. Really, it's in Pete's hands, like I said. I'm not sure I'm even supposed to be talking about it. Have they ever convicted a bootlegger? I don't think so. Fruitless, really, to pursue it. But, you know, Dylan sort of talked me into it. He hates the bootlegs, for good reason. If he'd wanted The Basement stuff out there, you know. But, I did get involved. At least it gives Pete something to do. There's nothing more dangerous than a lawyer with time on his hands.

Lessee, the other two cuts, are "Laurie Had Thighs Like Opinici" and "Melody Came as a Lichtenstein Painting." Two originals that I've never used. "Laurie" is a blues—a beat I stole from Fred McDowell—that almost makes it. The lyrics didn't gel, I don't think. Written from pain, written in dread—so, well, it ain't exactly art. "Melody" is something altogether different. An early composition that is still pretty pretty. I've tried over the years to work it into something passable, something acoustic for a new album, but, well, I'm still trying. Its appearance on this Great Black Wonder especially rankles, because it's a song I want to get right.

CM: It really angers you, that this stuff is out there.

BG: Sure. Does that make me a control freak?

CM: No, no.

BG: It's just that, you know, we're toiling here in a medium which few accept as art, few accept as anything but stuff for teenagers to fuck by. Right? So, to try and instill in it some of the eternal verities, well, it seems pretentious. But it also seems meet and right that one should try. Lennon said something about nothing being new in rock after "Great Balls of Fire." In a sense, he's right. I mean, I'd never question his authority. But, we still try, right? He still tries, God bless him. Is "Like a Rolling Stone" better than "Great Balls of Fire?" Is "Working Class Hero?" If so, why? The lyrics. That's what you really have to talk about, the lyrics. I don't think anyone would claim any rock song is today's "The Second Coming," –except, maybe some critics who want to call Dylan our Dante. But, the words are what's become important. I mean, the beat, the beat gets the thing listened to, and the words keep it being sung. In a sense it's a con game—suck them in with the beat and make them listen. Right? What was I saying?

CM: The bootleg—

BG: Right. Anyway, that's a long-winded way of saying, you try to get your stuff right, you try to make it matter. So to have any dreck released before you have the say-so, well, yeah, it rankles. It ain't right.

CM: Ok. So, you would say, there are no poets in rock and roll?

BG: Poets? No, no, man. Morrison, c'mon. Someone needs to pull him aside and say, "Jim, you're just a rock star." I mean, he's great, right? But to act like Verlaine is sacrilegious.

CM: Morrison's dead of course.

BG: That's what they want you to believe.

CM: Ah—

BG: But, he ain't Verlaine, he ain't Baudelaire. But he's got some great rock pipes. And his lyrics are—well, interesting. They're singable. That's the end of it.

CM: Dylan?

BG: The question always comes back to Bob, doesn't it? Dylan is Dylan, immutable, untouchable. But, I think, if you asked him if he was T. S. Eliot, he would only laugh. What was that funny thing he said? "I'm only a song and dance man." (laughs) That's right. That's what he should say.

CM: Someone called "A Day in the Life" a miniature "Waste Land."

BG: That's caca, isn't it? I mean, c'mon. Have you read "The Waste Land?" Jesus. You know, I love "Day in the Life." Shit. It doesn't get much better than that, pop music-wise. "I read the news today oh boy" is just about the finest first line I've ever heard. I'd kill to have written that one line. But, does it compare to "April is the cruelest month?" Or "Turning and turning in the widening gyre?" Or even, "Something there is that does not love a wall?" No, of course not. And John would tell you the same thing. I'm not putting down The Beatles, hell, McCartney and Lennon are the greatest songwriting team of all time. No question. But, poets, naw, they ain't that. Not in the strict meaning of the word.

CM: It sounds like you've read a lot of poetry.

BG: Sure.

CM: That's great, that's, uh, inordinate for a pop star, wouldn't you say?

BG: Shit, I don't know. Dylan, man, he reads all the fucking time. He gave me The White Goddess. No, there are a lot of well-read pop stars. Ask them. Don't ask me about anyone else.

CM: Why do they call you the Pasternak of Pop?

BG: (long laughter)

Day Two

Creole Myers: In looking back at what we've covered before, what we discussed yesterday, it seems scattered. What I'd like to do is take a more systematic approach today. Try to get a coherence, a sense of narrative out of your story. So, I'd like you to start at the beginning. Talk as long as you want, divert as often as you'd like, but let's go from Idlewild to L.A., if you can, from Uke to Martin, so to speak.

Buddy Gardner: Ok, man. I'm game.

CM: So, um, go ahead.

BG: Oh, just tell my story, is that it? Are you going to interject?

CM: Yeah, yeah. I'll keep us going. Lorelei, jump in anywhere you can to help us go in a straight line, anywhere you can help us illuminate a particular passage. I mean, in the end, I'll distill however many hours of tape we collect down to a precious storyline, something concrete. So, riff, give me your best tale.

BG: I started out as a child. (laughs)

CM: What?

BG: Bill Cosby. Never mind.

Like Richard Nixon, I was born in a house my father built, a basement he poured. A sandlot diamond behind the house where I got a splinter once in my rear. The bigger boys laughed. A street of gravel with ditches for drainage: Eighth Street. And a cocker spaniel bitch named Cyrano.

Born with eyes the color of the sea, green and mud, a dull roiling behind a semitranslucent screen. Born in a matter of minutes, so fast the nurses were dubious, the doctor almost late.

The town was Lewiston, New York, a carbuncle on the gritty side of gritty Niagara Falls, New York, the former honeymoon capital of the United States, a country which, like Niagara Falls in microcosm, had lately fallen into disrepair. Now, Niagara Falls, Ontario, just over the national border, where my mother's incredibly large family hailed from, was bright and brisk and clean and gardeny, the shiny flipside of its American counterpart.

I've seen the great falls frozen; I've seen it turned off as if there were a giant tap. I've stood on a rocking boat deck beneath its monstrous incontestableness. Where I was born is a grey little town, a pustule on the side of grey little Niagara New York. The Canadian side had the greener grass, we all knew, even as late at night, in our trundle beds, we felt the thrum in our veins of a power larger than kings, a warbling of just what the earth has in mind, though it stayed, of course, just beyond us.

I longed to be from the Canadian side; I longed to be Canadian. I thought my mother's family was just about the most exotic thing I could imagine (and later in school I used her heritage as if it were some bizarre ethnic upbringing, as if one side of my family tree was hung with Hottentots, or Eskimos), and my Canuck uncles, who were all big, strapping, lumberjack men, who could hold seven or eight nieces and nephews on their backs, were the ideal of manhood with which I constantly compared my scrawny, allergic, weak wristed self (No upper body strength, my tennis coach would later tell me).

Actually I have few memories from Lewiston. We left there when I was four, to Memphis, Tennessee.. What memories I do possess are clouded as if suspended in aspic, dream recollections, impressionistic and shadowy. I remember Cyrano. (He got hit by a car? He died of old age? At any rate he was gone before our move south). I vaguely remember the baseball diamond. I remember comparing peepees with the girl down the street; I even remember her name (well, of course I do, my first sex) which was Sandy. I remember, as if from a bad dream, a life lesson dream) getting a hellacious shock from our electric football game. This was a flat metal gameboard which you plugged into the wall and it vibrated and your defensive and offensive formations danced together (or apart) in random, chaotic tremblings, until the player with the ball (a small plastic chip) was shaken off the playing field. I think I piled rubber bricks on the game (although rubber shouldn't give you a shock, should it?) and was jolted into an acute awareness, which obviously left its impression. I believe this is my clearest memory of Lewiston: a healthy dose of 120 volts.

Is this what you want? (laughs) Does anyone care?

Moved to a city beside a great rolling river, the color of my eyes at dusk, mud flecked with green. A city of irony and pity, a Bluff City.

Actually, at first we lived in Raleigh, which is kind of like to Memphis what Lewiston was to Niagara Falls, except, at that time, Raleigh was an emerald isle, a rolling, green neighborhood, with lots of kids and bikes and vacant lots to collect pop bottles from, pop bottles that could be turned into cash. I lived in Raleigh till 2nd grade. We then moved to what we call the cool zip code, 38104. Midtown Memphis.

CM: I thought you went to Idlewild in 1st grade. It's been written you went to Idlewild.

BG: It must be true then. Who's writing my story? (laughs)

Ok. As has been documented my first musical instrument was a ukulele. My dad bought it for me, I think at Guitar and Drum City, which used to be on Summer Avenue in Memphis. I was, I don't know, seven, eight.. I didn't take any lessons or anything—I'm not sure my folks could have afforded them. But, when I picked up that little stringed toy, really, it was as if I knew it already, as if I'd been there before, in a dream, in a previous incarnation, Lor might say.

Lorelei Enos: Your soul, your old soul.

BG: Right. It taught me to play, whatever came to me from the ozone of the past. I think the first thing I picked out on it was "Feelin' Alright." Can that be right, timewise? I don't know. Maybe it was "Baby Let's Play House." I remember doing "Baby Let's Play House" at school, on the blacktop playground of Idlewild Elementary, for Mike and Mark and little Patty Grabenhorst, on whom I had the worst kind of crush. I think I wanted to play music, initially, to please her, to catch her attention. Isn't that always the way, man, we fucking men, looking for female approval? Patty Grabenhorst. Just saying the name is like a spell to me. Man, I wonder where that chick is today—she must have grown up to be something. She moved away before high school, but, already you could see the beauty there. She was, um, saucy. Saucy at ten. Hey, that's a great song title. Wait a minute.

Ok, yeah, so I was playing this Elvis song for my friends and some teacher heard it and blew a gasket. (laughs) I mean, I guess "Baby, let's play house," is not something you expect a little boy to sing to a little girl. And I got my uke taken from me and a call was made to my parents. My mom hit the roof—she was the kind that got embarrassed by such things and that, to her, was the ultimate disgrace, to be shown up in front of other grownups. My mom threatened to smash my uke and Dad had to cool her down and, I think, it was later that night I got it back. I started right in, learning new songs. Thinking up new songs. I had this record player, you know, with the lid and the swivel arm made of plastic, and a stack of 45s, some I bought at Corondolet in a sealed stack—you know? Five 45s for $1, and you could only see the top one. And it would be something halfway tempting, some Jerry Lee or The Cascades. But the others were groups you'd never heard of. But, that didn't matter to me. I listened to everything. At that time everything was equal—my taste was still developing. So I was indiscriminately borrowing from everywhere, from any 45 that came across my little portable spinner, it was all equal, you know, it was all music, Lee Hazlewood or Howlin' Wolf or Roy Orbison or Serge Gainsbourg. I remember I had this Terry Callier 45, "Look at me Now," and I thought it was every bit as good as "Rock Around the Clock" or the Sun stuff or "Lemon Tree"—(laughs)—I didn't know, man, I mean it all seemed good to me. And I taught myself to play it all.

CM: This was what year?

BG: Lessee, I was nine or ten so...

CM: And that's your earliest musical memory?

BG: Yeah. Oh, naw, no. I mean, I was about five and my parents had this set of records, this Reader's Digest set, and there was this one song that I fell in love with on it, used to go around the house, scatting it, at five. It was "I Can't Get Started" by Bunny Berigan. I don't know. I can still play that one.

CM: So, you grew up in a musical house? Music was part of your everyday life?

BG: (laughs) Shit, no. Why would that follow? I mean, we had this console thing, whatever the hell they called them, big as a basilisk, a monstrous thing that had a radio and record player. I used to lie on the couch in the dark and listen to FM 100 on that thing—my parents, well, if they thought about what I was doing at all, probably thought it was better than TV. Better than My Mother the Car, or whatever. I mean (laughs), c'mon, look at all the space that fucker took up and all it did was play the radio or your LPs. Funny, looking back on it. I only remember my mother playing Englebert Humperdink. I still love "Please Release Me," man, that song makes me cry. And those old big band records. Shit, I like that old stuff, Glenn Miller, the Dorseys. Later, I got into FM 100, when it was a force, when it played stuff that inspired. They played us, I think the first place to play us. Anyway, ha, that stereo. Naw, my parents didn't play much music. My dad, of course...

CM: Tell me about your dad.

BG: Well, you know he played clarinet with a supper-club band called Dick Delisi and the Syncopaters. They were fine, really fine. And Mr. Delisi came over to the house sometimes to dinner. A nice man, even a talented man. Could blow a barrelful of sax. But, they never talked music, never. I would question them about the band, what it was like performing, what particular songs they played. They would keep switching the conversation, keep it moving away from music and onto neutral topics like TV shows or the church. And, it took me years to figure out what was going on. It was my mother, see. She thought music was not the kind of career a really useful cog in society's machine should pursue. And she would be damned if her child was going to follow in his father's footsteps. Why I never heard my dad practice at the house. Why, even his record collection of big band and swing music stayed dusty. My mother squelched my father, I think. Held him back. I think my father was a man with a lot of soul, a lot of creativity that just festered, just rotted inside him like cancer, until, well, it turned to cancer and that killed him.

CM: But, he was a lifelong smoker.

BG: Yeah, yeah. People die from cigarettes. But more die from fettered ambition. I heard my dad's band exactly once. I don't remember why. We had to go to The Vapors for something and mom plunked me down in a chair and said, just stay here, I'll be back. Well, it was like the music held me there—she could have been gone for hours. I was riveted. And there was my dad, looking cool, and blowing beautiful, liquid melodies out of that licorice stick. Sweet stuff. "Canadian Sunset," "Old Brown Jug," "St. Louis Blues," "Blues for Allen Felix." It was a revelation. But, never to be repeated. I think I was about 6 at the time, but that hour in front of Dick Delisi and the Syncopators is as fresh in my mind as if it happened yesterday. Man, my dad. What could he have been? Given different times, a different circumstance. He said something odd to me one time, he said: "Bud, music is a bad demon to have. Like hooch. If I could have done anything else I would have." And, of course, he did, I mean playing at the Vapors wasn't bringing in enough money to support his small family, so he did books for a paint store. He had a business degree, was something of a math whiz, I think, and he worked in the back room of this paint store in a strip shopping center, most days. Sometimes my friends and I would walk up there and visit him. He looked sad, sitting at this shitty little desk, with a calculator and a pencil in his hand, and bad lighting. It was like the stage set for some damn O'Neill play, you know, all whites and grays and shadows. But, he greeted us like we were the best thing he'd seen all day. And his boss, Mr. Waddell, was a nice guy, a heavy set, crew-cut, ex-Marine, with a face like a catcher's mitt, and he'd always give us this big, fake hello and hand us all bubble gum. Where I first saw Bazooka Joe. In Mr. Waddell's paint store. And when dad said goodbye to us, he put a hand tentatively on my shoulder, before letting me go. It was the most he ever touched me, you know, that generation, those dads, not the down-on-the-carpet kind of parents. But that crappy paint store. Man. It was killing him, boring him silly. But, he came home every night with a grin on his face. Ate dinner with us, spot on 4:45, like you could set your fucking watch by it, and then, evenings when he played, he'd sheepishly pick up his little case, which usually sat in the back closet next to his shoe tree, and he would toss off a sad smile and go play till God knows what hour. And Mom would sit and stew. That was her métier. Stewing. Sad stuff, really. Don't want to think about it.

CM: Your mother disapproved of music? Was it a religious thing?

BG: No, no, I don't think so. I think she just hated anything that took attention away from her. Shit. Let's move on. I still talk to her, you know, she's still with us, and things are fine now. We talk. She actually asks me about my music, what kind of songs I'm writing, that kind of stuff, though she doesn't understand one bit of it. I don't think she ever listened to music—certainly not sixties stuff—but I don't think she ever even listened to music from her time. I don't get that. I really don't. People who aren't turned on by music, any music. Man, that's weird. Anyway. Back to me, please.

CM: Right. Um, when did you get your first real guitar?

BG: That was—oh, when I was eleven, I think. I had played around on an old box guitar Dad brought home—I think it was a gift from Mr. Delisi actually. We had to sort of sneak it into the house (laughs) but it was old and didn't sound very good, though I had fun trying to pick out Carter Family or Pete Seeger songs on it. Or blues chords. And, of course, I had a Mel Bay instructional book. I think Dad heard me, saw that I was progressing beyond his wildest dreams and bought me that electric guitar, without asking Mom, without thinking it was her business, you know? He saw that I was really good, that I could be something special. So he bought me this electric—it was a Hofner Futurama, if you can believe it. My old man...I don't know what happened to that guitar. Shit. That was a beauty. And, damn, I just took off. Suddenly, I was Clapton, man, I was B. B. King. That guitar fit my hands like a woman would later. Better. And I immediately started playing all the Delta blues I could think of. I learned them all. I mean, Memphis had all these great blues musicians, up from Mississippi many of them, and they're playing at Overton Park, at the Fair. It was easy to follow them around and learn from them. Mississippi Fred McDowell. Tom "Rooster" Thompson. These guys were great about showing you the chords, showing you how to use your tuning to get a personal sound out of your instrument. I advanced rapidly. Soon, I was sitting in with some of them, just playing rhythm, mostly, though sometimes Rooster was so generous he'd introduce me, as his "pro-to-jay" and I would do a brief solo. I mean, I was 12, 13. And I was playing the blues, A better education I cannot imagine.

I started buying all the blues records I could find. There were great outlets for records back then. Even the flea market at the Fairgrounds had bins of old LPs cheap. I started listening hard, man, every night. I never did homework. My mother thought the devil had me for sure. I'd be in my room, playing "Heartbroken Man" or "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues" or "A Ship Called Father House" on this shitty little amp and I knew my mother was roiling. But, to her credit, Dad, she had given up trying to stop me. It would have been fruitless, of course, I was off and running. It would have been like putting your finger in a dike, with the Great Mississippi behind it. And I even wrote a couple numbers, crude things, but I still remember 'em, I can still play 'em. "Caterpillar Blues." "The Bookseller's Beautiful Daughter." "Idlewild Playground Blues." (laughs) It was all a gas. In a way, man, that was my best period as a musician, when I was a sprout, playing my little man blues, all alone, without a care in the world except to make music. And have it remake me.

CM: What do you mean?

BG: Well, I was a weeny kid, you know? There was only one thing you could be when a boy in that decade and that was tough. Everything else was weeny. I wasn't tough. I was wispy and blond and too pretty. And I got bullied relentlessly. Pushed to the ground, laughed at when I tried to join in during P.E.. I started dreading recess, you know. I just wanted to stay inside and read or write songs in my looseleaf notebook.

I hated school, hated those bullies—hell, I still do, I hate bullying—but music was my out, or, I guess my in. When I started playing guitar at the school, on the playground, at the talent shows—where I always won, man, every fucking time—I was something else. I was no longer a weeny. I was talented. I found one other thing you could be and get some attention, the kind of attention you wanted, from girls, from the popular set. I mean, I could say I didn't give a fuck what anyone thought, but you do when you're becoming pubic, right. When your little dickie starts talking to you. So, I would do a knockoff of some song on the radio and the girls started following me around. And the first thing you know I'm getting handjobs in the girl's bathroom. Cute girls, too, not just the trashy ones. The cheerleader types. I think my first blowjob was on the school playground, off in a corner, where there was this big bush. Cathy Ceccerelli. Man, she was hot, I mean for a thirteen year old. Great braids that hung on either side of her face. And the first girl in our class to get tits. She was something else—she let me touch her naked ass, showed me it right before she unzipped me and took me into her mouth. (laughs) I didn't even know what was happening. I kept thinking, is this right? Is this something humans are supposed to do? And should I come? Will it poison her? I didn't know man. (laughs) When she did swallow my come, with a big smile on her face, I was amazed, you know? I was like zombied. I had no idea that boys and girls did such things. I immediately went home and wrote her a song.

CM: You remember it?

BG: Ha. Well, yeah, some of it. "Cathy took me/out of the cold/Cathy took me/she was so bold." (laughs) Shit. Ok, it was awful, but what other tribute could I give to such a fine gift? I wonder where she is now. Probably married some tax accountant or corporate lawyer. She was our class valedictorian in high school. When she gave her speech I wanted to stand up and say, "I love her. She gave me my first head." (laughs) And I was voted, of course, "most talented." But, I've skipped ahead. We should spend more time in high school, if you know what I mean. It's when I cut my teeth, honed my personality, became, for better or worse, what I became. Do you wanna start back in ninth grade now?

CM: Sure. Yes. Exactly. I think when you were in ninth grade you were already something of a legend in Memphis Music circles. You'd already been sanctified by Jim Dickinson himself. Am I right?

BG: Yeah, yeah. That's right. I started playing around town, in clubs I wasn't old enough to even enter. We formed Black Lung around this time, with Dickinson's help—the godfather really of Memphis Music, an angel, if you wanna know the truth—and with Sid Selvidge's. We were doing covers mostly, blues stuff, the kind of thing Cream started with, Canned Heat, Graham Bond. Some pop. We did Boyce and Hart stuff, "She's Not There," "Locomotion." "Roadrunner" Hell, everyone did "Roadrunner." At least we never covered "Hey Joe." I'd say Hendrix and The Leaves version of that chestnut are enough---yet there are, what, twenty or fifty or so versions. Anyway. We started to gel quickly, like within months. We were good, given the times, the distractions, the limitations. We were pretty good right away. Dickinson played with us sometimes, as did Sid. A great compliment. And I started adding some originals. Skippy loved it when I'd bring a new song in—we practiced at his house—he had this garage and we covered the old sticky walls with egg cartons. Our own little studio. Skippy was beautiful, man. Full of praise for whatever I wanted to do with the band. Not like a sycophant, you know, a toady. He just was enthusiastic and every artist needs someone like that. I know I do, even today, even now, and it's Lor, of course. She's my star.

LE: You'd do alright on your own, you know.

BG: I don't think so. What's the word—amanuensis, I think. I've always needed one. Skippy was my sounding board. When I first played him "Blues for Wendy Ward," he cried. I mean, he was great. Is great. I love him, you know.

CM: Is there a Wendy Ward?

BG: Uh, that's not for public consumption. The public, you know, is barely able to sit up and eat solid food. They don't need truth.

CM: But, you did write a lot from your life, yes?

BG: Shit, man, who doesn't? Where else does it come from? You read books and then you write about what you've read? Naw, man. It all comes from the road you walk, right? It all comes from heartache and passion and hard-won honesty. At least, I hope so. The artists I care about, that's what I'm talking about.

CM: So, what was school like, while you were getting this reputation outside of that environment? Was it hard to balance both?

BG: Well, hell, I was never a student, you know? I never believed anyone except myself. I was a stubborn, self-satisfied little son-of-a-bitch. I know that sounds egotistical, but there it is. I was driven, though I didn't know it. I was only interested in writing songs, in playing my Gibson. And girls, man, lots of girls. I had a lot of sex in high school. It was everywhere, I mean, I grew up in a golden time. It's still like that out there, isn't it? Creole?

CM: (laughs) Well...

BG: Yeah, yeah, Writers, too, right? I mean you get a lot of pussy, right?

CM: Sure. Memphis, you know, it's the river, the humidity, the duende that floats up from New Orleans. It's where writing comes from, too, that fecundity, that sexual energy.

BG: You're married now, right? You married, uh, Candy Marcrum.

CM: Yeah, happily married. Got a little one: Grace.

BG: Life is good, man.

CM: Sure. It is.

BG: So back to me, right? (laughs)

CM: Right.

BG: High school was a strange trip. I found myself popular after years of feeling like my nose was pressed against the glass. And I got myself a girlfriend for the first time. A cheerleader! (laughs) She thought my music was from the angels, man. And we went at it, you know, it was a real relationship, even that young. Hell, we were kids. But, when I wasn't writing, playing, I was with her—let's call her Debbie because every girl back then was named Debbie—in front of her house, practicing our manumission, handjobs and fingerings and oral sex. In the car, on the front porch, in the backyard. Hell, still, that was some of the best sex I ever had—Lor understands, don't sweat that, man—but, you know, that first flush of what you, at least at the time, call love, and access to another person's body, the most personal parts of their body—what a joy! What undiluted joy! So, we went at it, like I say, like a couple of hamsters in heat. That was freshman year. That was while I was starting to play everywhere around town—I was like almost famous, you know. Locally. Dickinson was there for me, and the gigs started happening and, I had this cheerleader girlfriend, with thighs like hell-roosters, hard, and a great little butt. Life was good. Classes, shit man, how could anyone concentrate on classes with that going on? Most of my teachers hated me anyway, you know, rock and roll, devil's music, my hair was longer than most of my classmates, I insisted on wearing these combat boots, even in summer when sweating in them was like wearing a swamp on each foot, and I had attitude, of course. Rock and roll attitude. I was unassailable, untouchable. Of course the teachers hated me. One in particular, tried to get me expelled, suspended, something, because I wore an American Flag on my butt. (laughs) It sounds funny now. I had this peace symbol, you know, the two finger symbol made of stars and stripes, and, Jesus, my mother sewed it on the back pocket of my jeans. This teacher—what was her name? was it freshman year, sophomore? Mrs. McGonnigle. I think that's right. Funny thing is, you know, she was kind of a fox. Too foxy to try and control a roomful of libidos. She dressed like a stewardess, I remember. Anyway, she took one look at this patch on my ass and drew in her breath as if I had a picture of a couple fucking on my jeans—she literally turned white. And sent me to the office, with a note recommending my suspension. I laugh now, but, hell, I was a little frightened. I mean, I hated school, right? but I didn't want to be kicked out of it.

CM: What happened?

BG: Tempest in a teapot. They called my mother. My mother apologized. I went home and changed my jeans. Case closed. And Mrs. McGonnigle—McCormack?—McGregor?, or was that the farmer in Peter Rabbit?--bless her heart, forgot about it. Let it drop. I was reinstated, so to speak. Still, I did wear a Che Guevara t-shirt as often as it was clean enough. (laughs) Or my Lenin/Lennon. That went over well in suburban Central. Had to get my licks in, you know?

CM: Can we return to this first sexual relationship? Is that alright? It seems to inform much of your music, especially your early music—well, all of rock, I guess. Is that alright, Lorelei? Sex as art, as energy?

LE: Bud's always been a sexual creature, and that's a turn-on to women. He's always loved women. Let me tell you something, women love men who love women. And, let's be honest here. I never want less than 100% honesty, from Buddy, from his music. From this, whatever this turns out to be. Ok?

BG: Lor knows me better than I know myself. It's so good she's here. What do you want to know?

CM: This relationship with—um---

BG: We're gonna call her Debbie.

CM: Debbie. What was it like, physically for you, and how did that relate to the creative outburst in your music?

BG: Well, I think they're the same thing, right? I mean, coming into humanity, opening the door that we all have to open, and then making something of your feelings, your flow, well, that's what was going on with me at 14. And Debbie, well, she was just so young and lovely. The first time she took my cock out was in her backyard, leaning against her house, her mother moving around in the kitchen right over our heads—this is what you did back then. Were parents oblivious? I don't know. Anyway, she takes it out---and this is like the first time either of us has bared anything except our souls and she was just fascinated with it. And I don't know where this knowledge comes from but she knew immediately how to do what needed to be done. She was jerking on me so expertly—well, hell, maybe anything feels right the first time—and, very quickly—I was young---I squirted all over both of us. It was a surprise. I don't know what she expected to happen but there was this like fountain, as if I had stored it up for a decade, and there was some on her hand, her forearm, her shirt. And the look on her face (laughs) well, let's just say, it was obvious that it was not what she expected. But, she liked it. And, so we continued our experiments.

Now, how this impacted my music, which was also coming, so to speak, is, on the simplest level, obvious. I wrote a sex song right away, of course. Uh, "Fountain for my First Love." Ugh. Bad song with some good stuff in it. And then, on a deeper level, I think I began to understand the whole underpinnings of the music that held me in thrall—you know, the whole name—rock and roll—is sexual. And, of course, all the blues stuff from which rock sprang. It's all sex, right? And now I felt like part of the brotherhood. I wanted to write more songs—that's the best part—I wanted to create. And I wanted more orgasms. (laughs)

That was freshman year—Debbie, she was freshman year. And my gigs with my new band. Man, everything was happening. I started to lose myself when I played, you know, and it was kind of frightening, where I'd go when I played. I wasn't even aware of Skippy and Crafty, except as background thunder, a wall I was bouncing off of. And, like sex, I was gone, man. At first I almost blacked out, it was so intense, but you learn to control it, right? I mean, I learned to let myself soar, to let myself fall into it, to not be afraid. You step up to the edge of the cliff and you think—you think—you can fly, but you're really not sure. It's that first jump that's scary. After that, it's all magic—after that I knew who I was.

CM: Black Lung was born when you were only 14?

BG: Yeah, that's right. Wild, huh?

CM: Hm.

BG: And then, summer came. The summer between freshman and sophomore years. I really started to make my mark. My first good song—I wrote it then: "All Roads Lead to Roaming."

CM: That's not on any album, is it?

BG: No. I'm thinking about reviving it. Because it was never really a Black Lung song. It was more personal, a statement of a kind. See, I was already moving away from the group before the group ever really got started. People have to understand. I've always been a solo artist. I was held back by Black Lung. All that shit about he left his roots behind, he broke up a great band, etc. I mean, fuck that. It's like Lennon, you know—he was always a solo artist. That's what I think anyway. I mean, in the middle of Beatlemania, when he had the fucking world by the tail, we thought, he's singing "Help me if you can." And nobody was listening man. He was a squonk crying in the wilderness. God love him. I think he's happier now, doing his own shit, not having to answer to anybody except John Lennon. That's the way I am. I mean, I'm not claiming to be Lennon—Jesus, no—but, I was always a solo artist and in the straightjacket of a group I was itching to get to the good stuff, the stuff I cared about. It's not worth grousing about, I mean, I had a good run in that group, but my solo albums are the only ones I care about.

So, sophomore year, Debby is gone—well, I cut her loose, I'm not proud of it. There was this freshman chick with big tits who just threw herself in my way. I mean, she was just there one day, in hotpants, and this tight, satin shirt, and I thought, "Man, I want to suck those." Men. You know, like I say, I'm not proud of my younger self, but, as Lor says, it's all real, it's all honest. We are what we are, what we were. So, sophomore year was Birdie Burton. Shit. Should we use real names here? I guess, it's ok. I don't want Debby's name here, that's all—her real name, just because. Just out of respect for my first love, you know, and the first heart I broke. I broke her heart. And with Birdie I lost my virginity. On her parents' bed, in the afternoon, with the door locked and people milling about outside. (laughs) Jesus. When you're young, you know?

I wrote "Tunc" and "Birdie Sings" for her, of course. Early stuff. Unrecorded, but always in our sets back then. I still like "Tunc." Hm. Maybe it'll re-emerge as an acoustic ballad. I'll have to think about it.

And it was during my sophomore year that I met Tennessee Larry Dorich.

CM: The bluesman?

BG: No, the TV evangelist. Of course, the bluesman. The bluesman's bluesman. Never recorded one single song, never traveled outside the Mid-South, yet his influence is everywhere, is legendary. Everyone from Jagger—who copped his singing style—to The Animals to Jimmy Page have accorded him a special place in their learning. And I knew him, man. Knew him as teacher/mentor/friend. It was as if I'd been sanctified. Another father. He taught me "Don't Let the Sun Pull Your Pants Down," "Piggly Wiggly Blues," "She Caught the Katy," "Her Ass Moves I Moan." Underground stuff, stuff from the adult's table, from the back room. And I lapped it up. And Tennessee paid me the high compliment, man. He told me nobody played like me except Riley.

CM: Riley?

BG: B. B. King, man. He was comparing me to blues royalty. It made me dizzy, I'll tell you. I mean I was in high school. I think that's when I started leaving Memphis. In a way. That's when I got kind of a big head and dreamt of things beyond. I certainly had left Central High School, left my friends, my girlfriends. Even before we cut the album. Tennessee planted that seed, man. I mean, I loved the guy, but I saw where he was, where he'd always been, how he'd been treated like a second class citizen his whole life—I mean, we couldn't even go into some restaurants together, still, at that late date. And, metaphorically, I started packing my bags.

CM: Yet you stayed in school, didn't you?

BG: Yeah. Well, sort of. I mean, I went. Most days.

CM: And you graduated.

BG: (pause) Naw, man. I never graduated high school.

CM: Really?

BG: Don't gimme that really shit, Creole? What difference, right? I mean, they weren't teachin' me "Frogleg Blues." Right? They weren't teachin' me Skip James, Robert Johnson, Fred McDowell.

CM: So, what happened next?

BG: Well, high school went on, keeping me in one place, while my mind was traveling. I wanted so bad to make music, and when we got Black Lung together, I thought, this is it, this is my gateway, my way in. We played larger and larger gigs. We got a reputation. I started writing songs at an astonishing clip, words and chords and melodies colliding in me like some kind of atomic reaction. And we started hanging out with the Mudboy guys, with Alex Chilton, the whole scene. Memphis hasn't been given enough credit for its 60s influence, man, you know. I mean, the soul stuff, yeah, Sun and Stax. Great, great things there, but there was also this underground thing going on. With Mudboy and The Neutrons and Alex and The Manor and The Bitter Lemon. There was a scene. And, of course, we were too young, but we managed to hang out on the fringes for a while, until we became accepted, through the music, through the music. And about the time I would have graduated from high school we got the chance to make that album, what we thought was our big break, our rocket to stardom. So, while my girlfriend and my friends and ex-friends were preparing for baccalaureate, we were rehearsing songs in that old gas station for Turntable Poison. It was a heady time.

CM: You had a girlfriend at that time?

BG: Of course, I mean, yeah. Sure, a high school girlfriend. The kind doomed to fail as soon as you taste the world outside of that brick building where they'd been holding you prisoner. I had a great girlfriend, a young woman of soul and beauty.

CM: Uh..

BG: Carol Warner. Ok? Carol, wherever you are today, I wish you well. You were lovely but, of course, the timing was atrocious. I was an asshole. It was my asshole period. One of them. (laughs) One of them. Sorry, baby.

Carol Warner, I met at a school dance, where Black Lung played. It was in the school cafeteria—Jesus, those gigs, you gotta love 'em, right? I mean, looking back, you gotta love that shit. Girls and boys rubbing against each other, hormones exploding all over the room, while we grind away at some awful cover song like "One is the Loneliest Number." Occasionally slipping in one of our originals which is met with a silence like we farted in church. (laughs) It was a kick. I mean, these couples using the opportunity to practically hump on the dance floor, hands all over asses, the chaperons looking bored over in the corner, old Ricky Glass, the mechanical drawing teacher, toking up. What a time that was.

Anyway, Carol was suddenly there. When I stepped off the stage between gigs there was Debbie with this blond young woman I'd never even noticed in the halls of Central High, so tuned out I was, so really out of the swim as far as high school was concerned. I mean, if I'd been paying attention I would never have missed Carol Warner. We even had a class together. (laughs) Here's this blond chick, in a loose shirt that I couldn't help but look down at two lovely mounds of white white flesh, and a little jean skirt that showed off legs as thick as bedposts, strong, muscular legs—she was on the track team, imagine that—and sweet Debbie, my first love, didn't know what she was doing, introducing us. I mean she put the match to the fireworks and I think regretted it immediately. Apparently, Carol asked to meet me. Like a fan thing. But, man, it was love, lust, whatever, at first sight. We locked eyes. She left with me that night when the dance was over. And we fucked that first night in my little Toyota. What a body she had, has, lovely lovely woman. God, I still could get horny for her. Fucking in a Toyota—(laughs) I don't recommend it, but we pulled it off. And she was, well, kind of big, not like over weight, but like, those legs, hard as timber, and her big ass—I really don't know how we did it.

I'm off on a toot here. Sorry. Lor, sorry.

LE: It's alright, Love.

BG: We were together about a year, I think. It lasted about a year. She was there when we recorded some of our first songs, I remember that. She loved, uh, "Hayley Mill's Underpants." For some reason, she thought that was her song. Maybe because Carol was a young woman who loved lingerie. And, as a young man, who appreciated a young woman who loved lingerie, well, we had some fiery times. Hot as monkeys. She had these little white things...I don't know where she got 'em.

Let's move onto a higher plane.

I guess you want to hear about the recording of Turntable Poison.

CM: Yes. How did that start?

BG: Dickinson. Jim, he got us a recording studio at Ardent. Got us some studio time. He'd been to numerous practices, knew our stuff. And he agreed to produce, under the name Euphonious Moniker. Of course, now, everyone knows he did it, but back then, I don't know, there were legal complications or something. Anyway, with Jim there, well, he gave us the confidence to do it. So we started laying down tracks. Now, the story that's told is that I hated recording, that I was, I don't know, juvenile, about doing numerous takes. I probably did say, "That was good enough," a couple times. But, man, Jim is such a gentle man, he just took it all in stride. He knew when it was done, man, when it was complete. If not for him, we never would have gotten "Mr. Handy" down, I know. And he encouraged that drum solo, man, not like the myth that's grown up around it, that we, what—perversely tried to kill the album's potential. It was a time of excess, for one thing, and for another, man, listen to that cut. It smokes. It cooks like little else on vinyl at that time, except for maybe some Cream, some Who. Maybe "Train Time," maybe that incredible mélange Townshend put together for Live at Leeds. And, let me add here, that I got a call from Pete, it was in, oh, 1969 or so, and he'd gotten a copy of the album—God knows where—and he was agog at that cut, he asked me how I got the distort sound on my guitar. Pete Fucking Townshend, man.

CM: Wow. How did you get that sound?

BG: Jim's idea. From "Rocket 88" of course, everyone knows that story. Jim kicked in my amp. I was dumbfounded—he was like some shaman so I didn't protest—and that hole in the amp is what gives my guitar such a weird sound on that cut. I had a fuzz pedal too—a Pep box, and an Astrotone, but, Jim wanted that Memphis thing, you know, he wanted to tie us into the whole mojo, from Sun, from Ike Turner, through Keith Richards on "Satisfaction"—which is a cop from Sam, don't let anyone tell you different, through the swamp music of Mudboy—up to us. At this time, remember, I was like attached to the guitar, man. I could make an electric guitar sing, talk, chant, name your baby. It was just natural. So, yeah, I got a reputation—they started mentioning my name alongside Beck and Page and you know the list. I was airborne, man.

CM: Just for the record here, no pun intended, lemme run down the listings on Turntable Poison. Side One: "Blues for Wendy Ward," "Mr. Handy and Hakel-Bärend." Side Two: "In Real Time Nothing Happens," "A Marriage of Rue," "Hayley Mills' Underpants," "For Kim Because it Went by so Fast,"

BG: Had one more song we cut—remember we did this whole thing in, what, 3 days, non-stop, popping uppers, getting patty melts at 3 a.m. from Steak and Egg, so it was kind of a blur. And Jim could work like that—he was amazing, a guru, a conductor, a lightning rod. But, in that session, we cut "Gogy Goodfriend," which never ended up on any of our records.

CM: But, Melanie covered it, right? That's the same song.

BG: Right, right. We sent her a demo. After she came to Memphis and we, well, let's just say we hit it off. She was a dreamsicle, man. (laughs) A fine-looking woman.

CM: Did you decide the order of the songs?

BG: And the hidden nocturne.

CM: Pardon?

BG: At the end of Turntable, there's a bit of tape loop, a witch's prayer, backwards with oud added. It's about 16 seconds.

CM: I didn't know that.

BG: It's there. Like on Sergeant Pepper's. Everyone wanted to do Sergeant Pepper's back then. It was actually Skippy's idea—he'd been reading some voodoo book, and found these words. That's his voice, though you can't tell. Jim did the oud bit.

CM: Hm. So, the order...

BG: I don't think anyone decided it. Here's the thing, Dad.. That's the order we recorded them in. See, we were naives, kids. We just did what was natural, we didn't know from creating a suite, or anything pretentious like that. Man, we just wanted to get our chops in, create a little noise. That's raw sound on that record, see, that's live. None of it was fiddled with, enhanced, whatever. Except that playful tape loop, and that fade-out on "For Kim," that's just us, beating our brains out in that little studio, high on bennies.

"For Kim, Because it Went by So Fast"---we worked our asses off to get that one right. I don't know what was wrong really. It was a song I'd written right before we went into the studio, so we'd never done it live—maybe that was the reason we struggled with it. But, the lyrics, you know, they're a little complex: "I took my Melville out into the sun, what else could I do, I was in my twenties" it begins. Not exactly pop schmaltz, you know, ABAB. It was a more complex rhythm to the whole speaking—and I did just sort of speak the lyrics—that was Jim. At first I wanted to sing it—you know, I'd worked out a melody, a weird melody. And he said, on, I don't know, the like 16th try, Jim said, shit, let's not sing this one. Gimme a Lou Reed kind of thing. Half talk the damn story. I'm gonna use that melody behind you. And he did, man, he played what I was singing on a plastic tonette—no shit, that's that weird, unearthly descant in the background, Jim on this little toy. It's not in the credits, so you're getting it first, right? And I just did my best Lou Reed impersonation, intoning,

Her glances could break arms.

Her hair was a nimbus

of tangled nestings,

life surrounded her like a cloak.

When I went too deep

she was quick to pull the plug.

I still stay awake nights

reliving the ignominy, forgetting

to celebrate how we came

together briefly, fiery angels.

I think I was riffing, partly, adding to what I'd written, making it up as I went along. By that 16th run-through, my voice was tired anyway, and the guys were playing like they were drugged, and the song sounds like that. I love that cut, man. We hit some other place with that one. You wanna know about the ending—that last bit before the hidden loop? Jim and I had been talking about Sergeant Pepper's and we wanted some kind of, what they call, lamination on the end, something like what the Beatles did with "Strawberry Fields," you know, sort of incorporating found sounds, etc. So at the end of "Kim" we let Dickinson play with the limited equipment he had, and here's some of the stuff that's in that final few seconds of concrete dada: a piece of the Treasure House theme song (backwards), Crafty reading "The Crucible" from our school textbook, a piece of Schoenberg, a piece from The Ventures played through some car speakers, and then some street sounds Jim got by simply walking out onto Madison Avenue with a microphone. It's all silly, of course, but that's what everyone was doing. Psychedelia, you know. Silly shit. But, liberating in a way. I wish I could get that world-weary sound into every one of my songs. Well, maybe not now, you know, not with something like "Rain and Other Distractions," I mean, I'm in a different place. A better place.

(long silence---distorted sound)

CM:.. and, that was, what, 3 a.m.?

BG: Yeah, something like that. You know, Dylan wrote much of Blonde on Blonde right there in the studio, on speed or something. Or so the story goes. Our one recording has some of that flavor to it. I'm proud of that album, don't think otherwise. Am I contradicting myself? You'll edit this down, right? You'll make me sound consistent. (laughs) Shit. I don't care. Write this: he never got Memphis out of his blood, though his work now is more mature. That's it. Nutshelled.

CM: So, tell---

BG: You want lunch. You want to stop and make some sandwiches. Or we can walk down to the deli.

CM: Sure, sure.

BG: Lor?

***

CM: So, tell me a little bit about life after the album. Life in Memphis.

BG: Not much to tell, really. I mean it made a splash, but briefly. And we were asked to play everywhere. Suddenly, like we woke up with extra cachet. We did the John's Shell, I don't know how many times. Used to be we'd open for everybody, Mudboy, Expanding Head Band—whatever happened to those guys? Who were those guys? (laughs) Uh, Edgar Winter, we opened for once. James Gang. Pacific Gas and Electric, Tony Joe White. Then, after Turntable Poison, we were headliners. It was great, a heady period, sure, especially for Skippy and Crafty, Castor and Pollux as I called them. They thought they'd landed in pigshit heaven, man. And we had all these other bands opening for us—man. And looking up to us. We were teenagers and we had these other guys, girls, coming up to us, asking about Dickinson and what I meant by "hoodoo on the bloody muddy" or some shit, something they heard on the album. It was weird. But, you know, I was kind of lost at that time—this was right before Lor came into my life—and I had all these groupies, all these chicks, and I'd ball them, right?, but really I'd be thinking about the music, about what's next, musically, about soloing, about getting my axe to sound like a sax. I was way gone on the music, man, and it just shoved everything out of me, everything else. I didn't know then, that I was unraveling, like an old sweater. I mean, I loved the chicks, you know, I loved them. But, they knew I was nowhere man, after we'd do it and I'd be lying there, I'd be a million miles away and they'd get this sad look. In the morning they'd be all like, let's go to Barksdale's for breakfast, and, well, I was using some speed at the time and my appetite was nil. So, they'd go off and I'd pick up the guitar. That's just the way I was then. All music all the time. (laughs)

CM: Who played with you around this time?

BG: No one played with us, man. I mean, aside from Jim or Sid sitting in.

CM: I meant, who opened for you, at the Shell, etc.

BG: Oh, yeah. Well, there were a lot of groups around Memphis then. None of them went anywhere, but that was ok. They were making music, they were happy. Kids, most of them. Some were good, some were real good, you know? Well, the Hombres, of course. They had that hit. Um...

CM: "Let it all Hang Out."

BG: Right, right. They opened for us. Good guys. And that song went some place. They were cool. Don't know why they didn't get any higher. Uh, The Gentrys were around, but, I can't remember playing with them. They might have preceded us. This is all such ancient history, you know. I don't recall it all. Who else, who played with us at the Shell, Lor?

LE: Randy and the Radiants.

BG: Did they? Ok. Oh, you know, there were all these groups back then with psychedelic names, uh, Raspberry Batman—they were funny, Jack and the Beanstalks, The House of Dr. Dee, The Savage God, The Seven Madmen—

LE: Without Feathers.

BG: Right, they were good actually. Almost had a hit—what was that sucker—oh! "You're Standing on my Train." Nice little number. Running Dog, Peabody and Sherman—that's a funny story, really. They started at Peabody School, so that's where the Peabody comes in, and the lead singer's name was really Sherman. When they opened for us—I remember it was really fucking hot that night, one of those Memphis nights where the humidity feels like urine in the air—and they were talking to us backstage. And I said, I like your name—I'm a big Bulwinkle fan. They had no fucking idea what I was talking about. (laughs) They really named themselves that with no knowledge of the cartoon at all.

LE: Lovelights.

BG: They sucked. Just some guys with cheap instruments doing jams because they didn't really know how to play, you know, so they thought it was avant garde or something to do these instrumentals, like it was jazz. Horrible. Oh, Baudelaire and the Hashish Assassins. Funny guys. Sort of Memphis' answer to the Bonzo Dog Band. They were just goofing. Doing dope and making up this funny shit on stage, half monologue and half folk music. Had a song called "Abbie Hoffman meets the Roy Cohn Zombies." (laughs) They were too much for Memphis. I don't know where they went. Their leader was a cat named, uh, Shlomo Stern. Writer, really. Did he ever publish? Does anyone know? Who else, Creole, you were there?

CM: Uh, Consenting Adults. Tommy Staley—he was good.

BG: Yeah, I knew those cats.

CM: The Moviegoers. Wandering Dog. That was Toby's group---kid could play a 12-string. The Saints. Jeff's Collie.

BG: Shit, yeah. I remember all those guys. Toby—yeah, I loved that cat. Chick sang with Jeff's Collie, what was her name? Hayley? Something beautiful like that. And she could sing, Big Mama Thornton kind of voice out of this little wispy Southern gal. She sang, "Ball and Chain" just like Janis. And, they had an original, called "What Passes Here for Heaven." They were alright.

LE: You had a thing with her, right?

BG: Oh, jeez, yeah, I did. It was all during that time, you know. She was great though. Little dark haired pixie, great jugs. She was a little Jewish gal, I think. Or Mediterranean, uh, what was that that Danny Thomas was? Lebanese? Maybe she was that. Anyway, doesn't matter, she was a beautiful chick. I could have loved her. Maybe I did, I don't remember. That's horrible isn't it? Jeff's Collie, I thought they would have made it, out of all of them, cuz of her, man, she had some pipes. Like that teenage chick singer for Fantasy, anybody remember her? And their big hit was an instrumental—figure that out. Where is she now, you have to wonder? Why me and not her? It's enough to make you question the whole machinery, you know?

CM: So, between Turntable Poison and your California period, lies a great gulf that not a whole lot of people know about. I think we should try to understand what led you to this change, a real sea change in the eyes of the public. Can you talk a bit about that time?

BG: First, as we've discussed, I don't see that big a change between Memphis and L.A. I mean, geographically, yes, Big City vs. hometown, sure. But, as for my art, there's a direct line from Turntable Poison to Rain and Other Distractions. There's a road if you wanna delineate it.

CM: Really? That's what I want to hear about. Not just the line between the works but what was going on in your life. I mean, stylistically, you did go from blues/psychedelic rock, in the British invasion vein, to soft rock...

BG: Fuck that distinction. It's really the lyrics that matter, isn't it? I mean, lyrically, compare the two. I see only maturity. A man growing older and coming to terms with that, what that means, at this time, in this place. And then Lorelei. Of course. Of paramount consideration. My prime focus, the biggest change to happen in my life since Mel Bay (laughs).

CM: Well, run us through the specifics. What happened after the album?

BG: Ok, so we got a local reputation, a sort of groundswell, that started small and then ran along the faultline that runs under the Bluff City. We were what they call an underground success, what Memphis specializes in. We were talked about but you had to be part of the cognoscenti, the insiders. I hated this, if I was aware of it—I really don't remember. Keep in mind, all I wanted to do was play my guitar and write songs. And I was writing at an astonishing clip and artists were picking up on it, and, well, the money started coming in. See, in a way, I was fortunate. I never had to sack groceries at Piggly Wiggly or teach school, or cut lawns. Writing songs, I learned early, brought in the bucks. And a lot of the talent coming out of Nashville, well, a lot of those guys were singing my stuff. See, at that time, everyone wanted to play and sing, but not everyone could write. So I wrote. And, even if we never performed any of it, which we didn't, they were my songs, and they were popping up on the radio. Sebastian did, "Lemmy Caution's Incubus," and I think that was really the start of it. That was big for him—he has that voice, you know, like he's sitting next to you, and it perfectly fit the song. God bless him—no slouch at writing songs himself, he really took me under his wing, sort of. Not much has been made of that connection, but John, early on, taught me the logistics of writing for money, of getting my stuff with one of the music publishers. A lot of artists did this, you know, kind of like what Dylan was doing with The Basement Tapes, except that took on a whole life of its own, because it was Bob. So, I did some demos, at Ardent with Jim's help, and others, I just wrote, you know, just committed them to paper and John helped me get them disseminated. It worked well then to do that. I don't know if it still does. Probably, though I don't do that anymore. I'm writing, obviously, for myself more these days. So, money was coming in, we were playing regionally. We opened for The Airplane at the Coliseum. For Canned Heat in Little Rock. We were part of a triple bill with The James Gang and Rare Earth in Nashville. In Nashville, we were hanging out with Dylan and Johnny Cash, you know, Dylan introduced us, calling us, "the best blues group since Graham Bond." Bob, he gets this reputation for being aloof, but, man, that is one generous cat, you gotta know him. Who else did we play with at that time—such a bombastic time—right before the implosion, you know? It was all so ripe, so ready to burst. What's that word for a plant that explodes outward, sends its seeds out—dehiscence. That was 1968-69. No one could see the end from there, no one knew. It was all still beautiful, it was all Itchycoo Park, you dig? Let's see. We played with Carlos.

CM: Santana.

BG: Right, right. We gigged with them. Well, opened for them, and then Carlos joined us for our encore, joined us for our, Jesus, what? a 42 minute live version of "Blues for Wendy Ward." Played some stinging guitar man. He and I went at it, riffing, playing off each other, swapping leads. And, damnation, that kid he's got drumming for him---he's fucking Buddy Rich reincarnated. Wait, is Buddy Rich dead? (laughs) I guess he can't be reincarnated unless he's dead.

Creole, you do the research, man, find out if Buddy's still with us (laughs) and make me sound sensible here, dig? I want this to have some semblance of significance Some sense of time. If I've got stuff out of sequence, put in stuff that I couldn't have known at that time, you straighten it out, right? You make it into the story of my life. You're the man, you're the storyteller. I leave it all in your capable hands. This is just a collection of ramblings, right? Hey, man, what are you gonna do with this shit? It suddenly occurred to me, what if this doesn't make sense? But, you'll do it, right? You'll be my legacy. This conversation—this is like, what, novel length, right? Already longer than The Crying of Lot 49. So, when this comes out, I'll be vindicated, right, I'll be made sense of. More than any man deserves, I guess. But, hell, why else are we doing this? It's gotta be a story or people aren't gonna read it, aren't gonna care. It's gotta have an arc and that arc has to end with some kind of positive energy, some chi. You know how to do this, right? I'm counting on this being my record, what's gonna make sense out of something that really doesn't. A man's life. An artist's life, if I can speak in such terminology. Is that what we're after? Ok. Hell, where was I?

CM: Carlos Santana.

BG: Right. A fine guy, a good guy. He's such a gentle man, you know? Gentleman and gentle man. He's probably the most centered cat I know. And, music, well, he just drips music. It comes out of his fingertips like liquid electricity, I've never played with anyone better. It's all so effortless for him. And he lives it, music and spirituality, what we're all really looking for, what we all really want our lives to be. He's really a template for the rest of us. Anyone starting out, you could do a lot worse than following what he does. And I think we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg with him. I think Santana may change the way we listen to music. If I had to pick two groups to watch in the 70s, two that are gonna set the pace for the rest of us, it would be Carlos and the boys, and The Band. The Band—I don't know them very well, Bob introduced us once, but they were kind of into their own thing and didn't really hang with us, you know? Levon's from Arkansas, you know? Everyone thinks all those cats are from Canada, but Levon's one of us, man. He's a good guy, a talented guy, with a roomful of voice.

We played with Sha Na Na. (laughs) We did one of our stranger things, at the Auditorium North Hall with The Nice and The Flock and Henry Cow. That was a weird night, because, well, we didn't really fit it. This was the beginning of prog rock—sort of, it wasn't really time, yet--and these guys, they were out there, I mean, beautiful cats, and Henry Cow had that guy--Frith—what was his name?—weird cat, and, well, they were all Moog Synths and Synclaviers and violins and even marimbas, and, hell, we were just this heavy guitar oriented trio, you know? It was an odd marriage that didn't really work. And I think the crowd was there to see us, because, you know, who the hell were these foreigners with their off-the-wall songs and instrumentation? And even though a lot was tolerated back then—I mean, Jesus, everyone had to have their 15 minute drum solo—every fucking concert, every fucking group—the crowd didn't warm to Gentle Giant—which was (is) a really tight combo, playing some farout stuff. I think later, they returned to Memphis and played the Coliseum in front of Tull, and went down a lot better. Anyway, we started hearing this, you blew them off the stage and shit like that. But, you know, all that competitive stuff, that's just for the media. The groups don't do that shit. You know, you don't go out on stage and say, I'm gonna make their guitarist look silly. There's a lot more fellow-feeling among musicians. So, Christ, what was my point? We were playing these gigs, getting bigger, getting a rep. This was the end of the sixties. There was talk of a concert in upstate New York that was gonna blow everybody away. And we had just signed on with Pete Holder, who was both lawyer and agent.

Well, Pete said, he thought he could get us in on this New York concert. He was talking to Bill Graham, who was bringing in some new acts, one of which, I remember was Cocker, who nobody knew. And Graham was kind of holding the proceedings hostage, making demands, etc. And Lennon was going to play, they said, but Hoover, that bastard, was keeping him out of the states, and, anyway there was all this legal maneuvering going on, and, somehow, it just never happened. You know, if Black Lung had played Woodstock it would have been a different history, right? We'd be talking about a different story right now. Hell, we'd probably still be together.

So, we didn't do that.

And we didn't do Wattstax, either. (laughs) It's funny now, but, at the time, it seemed to sound some kind of death knell to us. Or maybe just to me. I felt marginalized, like we were from this backwater town and everything was happening elsewhere, like you know, how everybody in Memphis feels about New York, or it was San Francisco for a while. That inferiority thing. Of course, it's only in retrospect that you see what Memphis had, what we had going on there, right around the corner. I mean, everybody wants to know if I know Elvis, you know. Everybody asks me that, everybody even in the business. He's revered, and that's right, that's right. But, I mean, even McCartney wanted to know if I'd ever met Elvis once he heard I was from Memphis. I wanted to say, man, Memphis is more than Elvis, as great as he was. Of course, the truth is, I did meet him. Once. It was at a benefit show and it was backstage. I was roadying for Ike Turner—briefly, yeah, I did that. Just to get in, you know. I was, what, 16 or something. 15. I don't remember. And Elvis came backstage—I think he was mostly staying in Hollywood, then, making all those execrable movies--and I was like right there next to him and he had just done this kickass set and the crowd was eating him like pep-pills. And he sat down next to me and turned over and said, you're in Black Lung, right? I mean, this guy was fucking huge but he knew his home stuff. He knew what was going on. I was impressed—hell, I was blown away. So, yeah, I've got my Elvis story. I'm from Memphis, I met Elvis. It's not much of a story, really is it? I mean, I know people who know Elvis, right? Dig? But, man, lemme tell you. From where we were there was Ike and Isaac and Carla and that whole Stax group. Cropper, man. They were gods. They were like the best thing we'd ever seen or heard. Just to have sat in with Cropper makes my whole career worth while—I mean it, man, Cropper and the Horns. I played with them. When they were at their peak, too. That's what I want people to ask me. What about fucking Booker T.? Did you know him? Did you ever get to sit in with the Hi Rhythm Section? These are the questions I wanna answer. So, like, I remember the whole Wattstax thing—it was all so casual in Memphis. It was like, you wanna go, you wanna play with us this weekend? No one understood what it all was gonna mean. How could they, right? How could they? Of course, this was while it was spinning out of control for me. Slowly spinning out of control, like I could chart it. Like I could write it out on a graph—the Venn diagram of how to have a nervous breakdown.

And the sixties were winding down like a colorful toy that was starting to show its cracks and whose motor was creaky with rust. Altamount followed. Manson. Things were getting grim. More and more people in the street but it didn't look like those fuckers in Washington were gonna do a damn thing different—the war, shit, look at it, it's just deeper and deeper shit. And they were turning hoses on kids. Chicago happened, Abbie was arrested and tried. They tied a man to a chair—this was 1968, man, not 1868. I was aghast, the whole country was aghast, I mean, those who cared. It seemed the vultures had descended and taken over. They were picking the bones of America, licking their slathering jaws and, well, it all was just so bleak bleak bleak. When they shot the kids at Kent, I went into a tailspin. I wish I had Neil's presence of mind—I mean, he picks up his guitar and writes, "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming," man, and just put it all out there, naked, true. It was like Lennon blasting us with "Revolution." And, man, I was just so out of it, I was just so fucking passive. I was inert, man. I couldn't feel. You gotta understand, I wanted to be on the front lines, but I was so far away, I was in fucking Nether World, you know?

Dylan asking, "How does it feel to be on your own like a complete unknown?" and I kept thinking about that and I was one gone gommie. I was feckless. I couldn't see myself in the mirror.

There was still hope but, damn, it was spinning too fast. It seemed like every fucking day something was happening that you had to respond to, you know? To not respond was to be dead, to be irrelevant. "Won't you please come to Chicago just to sing?" you know? I thought, yeah, I could, I could. But, in the end, I didn't, I didn't do a fucking thing. I couldn't. I Salingered myself, dad, I put myself away for my own good. And music, how did music get so tangled in with politics? I don't know—but suddenly it was like, hey, we matter, we're a voice. And, I don't know—were we geared up for that? In Memphis? I don't think so.

Then you know the worst thing happened.

CM: What was that?

BG: Well, Reverend King getting shot in Memphis.

CM: That was before Woodstock.

BG: I know, I know. I'm not making a timeline here, man, I'm riffing on what went wrong, trying to tell you what it felt like. There we were on the world stage suddenly. And Memphis became the face of deadly racism. It was all too much. It was blowing my mind, I admit it. I was feeling wrung out. I had written "Blues for Sandra Leathers," "Open Channel D," "Young Avenue Blues," "The Sins of Monk Cassava," "Chin-Chin in Eden," "They Bribe the Lazy Quadling," " "Take me for Granted, Please," "Surfing the Big Muddy," "If it Wasn't Televised, It didn't Happen," "The Rules for Hide and Seek," "Picnic in Overton Park," you know? Stuff like that. And it all seemed so paltry suddenly. So outside of things. I was floundering. I was lost. Only Lor knows this. I went into seclusion, I hid from the world, man. And, really, I think, that was the end of Black Lung. My black period, my darkest days. Lor and I rented a cabin up on the White River and we just hid away. I didn't write a fucking thing, didn't even read the newspapers.

I don't mean to imply that I could have done something, that I had any more power than the Pope or The Beatles or, you know, fucking McNamara. I mean, though, that I wanted to know, I wanted to understand. I wanted the information that Walter Cronkite or Eric Sevareid had, the insider stuff, so that I wasn't just up there entertaining the fuel for the fire, you know, like the orchestras that played as the Jews were led into the ovens. I started to feel like that, that I was a chimp, a dancing fool. This was like before The Moratorium, right? Before we really all felt the power. The War was just this endless one-note playing over and over and driving us insane—me insane, sorry, driving me insane. And, like, I know that a song is just a song—yet, I have to believe there is something there, an element, a catalytically charged element. I didn't want religion—who listens to priests, clergymen, even those who take to the streets? Ali has more power. Ali reaches more people. But a song, you know, a good song, well, it does tunnel deep into the consciousness. Did I think I could do anything with the right words, well-placed, well-played? No. No, I knew better. But, I did think—I do think—that we had to stand for something other than pop ditties, you dig? The people who needed help—well, it was all so fucking clear then—AIM and the draft dodgers and the blacks and, Jesus, I mean, if you couldn't see the problem you really were part of the problem. So, seeing it, what does one do? What could one do? Power, in the end, is just another word, too, but the power is gonna belong to someone, so, in the end, who decides? Who decides Nixon has more power than Mao, or John Lennon has more power than Roy Cohn? You dig? I was wrestling with these things, absurd things, but I couldn't see clearly. All I saw was blackness, the blackness of dried blood.

I don't know what Crafty and Skippy thought—I didn't even leave them a note. I feel bad about it now—and this, finally, I think, was what pissed Crafty off and led him to hire a lawyer for himself, to try and, you know, basically, steal my material. It was like, if you're not gonna represent yourself well, we're gonna take away your soul, all your work, all your history. Shit. That shark he hired---what a bastard. But, I was oblivious at the time. God bless Pete. He handled it all. While I was gone. Only he knew I was gone although we were incommunicado, no phone even. I think I called him once from town and said something like, "Don't tell me about any of the shit that's going down. Don't tell me there are more kids dead at more universities. Don't tell me about Nixon, Crafty or his reptilian lawyer. Just send me my guitar. I did--after a while I wanted it---get my guitar up there, up in my White River seclusion, but I only wanted it to serenade Lorelei. I played on the porch of our cabin, didn't sing—couldn't sing—just strummed and hummed to her. And, you know, we didn't wear any clothes—this was summer and it was beautiful out on that porch—and we became known as the naked hippie couple—among the other cabins spread out along the river. Not that we talked to anyone, but they were aware of us, apparently. And, of course, there were binoculars trained on Lor, as she walked around in the nude. (laughs) But, man, that was my only comfort, my woman, her body, her sweet, enveloping body. She suckled me like I was a child—she has these breasts, well, sorry—anyway, we did a lot of fucking, you know, the kind you do until you cry yourself to sleep. We fucked in the cold water of the river which ran right below the cabin, standing up, man, cold as hell, I held her up and entered her right there, in front of God and everybody. It was heaven. It was hell. I was empty man, as empty as a skull.

And Lor brought me back. Love. That's what saved me, moved me on down the road. That lost time in Arkansas, that was the crux, the fulcrum that my life turned on. That was the deciding time, the time I became something different. Something better. I believe that, dad, I was reborn in that cabin. I was reborn at my woman's breast. Can you dig that? Probably not, right, I mean, it's private and honored so, you can't dig, am I right?

CM: I follow you. I know, man. I've had my dark days of the soul, too.

BG: Have you, Creole? Have you, man? I didn't know. I'm sorry. Let's talk about you.

(garbled)

CM: So, it's ok to say that you had a complete nervous breakdown at this time?

BG: Yeah, sure. That's what it was. I found myself with existential nausea, the kind you wake up with in the morning and it's all over you like an animal and there's nowhere to go because the beast is you. I often backed myself into a corner and curled there like a fetus, as if covering my balls and stomach were protection, as if I feared some attack of a physical nature. This is what the fear does to you. It's totally debilitating, man. Nausea can unseat you, can defeat the strongest man. And it's a nausea that is in your blood—your whole body is sick. And, you know, looking at it now, I think I was sick like the country was sick. I was nauseated for the USA, you dig? I took those deaths, that ignominious war, the whole queasy zeitgeist of the times and internalized them. And I couldn't get away, not in a cabin, not in my music, not anywhere, man, because the enemy was me.

And, dad, anyone who's ever had that kind of stomach failure, where you feel like your whole system is shutting down on you, knows how bone-deep that kind of pain and fear is. This is when I started shooting horse. I'm not proud of it. You know, I'd always used drugs, to perform, to get up for a performance, to come down afterwards—there were always pills around. But I had stayed away from the hard stuff until my GI went bad. I couldn't take it—I admit it, I couldn't take it, man. I started using heroin. It was there for me and no one else was helping with the pain, and I thought, shit, man, I'll medicate myself. Well, I wasn't clear enough to be thinking that concretely, but, you dig, I had to do something. I was sneaking the shit, too. Sneaking it behind Lor's back, which is disgraceful, sad. I'm sorry, Lor. Hell, I'm still sorry.

CM: But you got off the junk.

BG: I—(garbled)—yeah, I mean, yeah.

CM: Did you come back from Arkansas revitalized, renewed?

BG: Naw, it wasn't that simple. I mean, Lorelei reached down into the cosmic soup and pulled me out. But I was still a mess, you know? I was wrung out, without hope or talent or release. I was limp, like a rope, see, like a rope that formerly held such tension, then snapped—I was that rope. I was weak as a bled calf. I ended up at the funny farm.

CM: The—

BG: The funny farm, the sanitarium, the nut house, the 13th floor. Funny, eh? It really was on the 13th floor of the hospital—I thought they didn't mark the 13th floor, out of some ancient Masonic superstition among builders and steamfitters. This is what I told the doctors—no wonder they kept me, right? I mean, I got off that elevator on the 13th floor—Lor was literally holding me up—and I freaked out just because of the number. That was just the beginning of my wondrous captivity, my imprisonment in the tower. I had to stay there until the angels came to get me.

CM: How long were you, um, kept?

BG: Shit, what was it, Lor? Three weeks, a month.

LE: About 9 weeks, dear.

BG: Yeah, yeah.

CM: What was the diagnosis?

BG: Well, I mean, shit, it was that I was crazy, right? I thought I was carrying the country's disease in me, this is what I said. They called it a sort of God complex. What was the word, dysphoria? Something like that. I was joyless—I was beyond joy. I think I presented them with a real interesting case, you know? I mean, one of the doctor's I know, a young guy, a pretty hip cat, he knew my stuff. He wanted to talk about the music, nothing but the music. I mean, he was disguising it as a mental exam, but it was mostly curiosity, you know, I was the closest thing to a celebrity he'd ever treated. We talked about The Highsteppers, Sam the Sham, I mean, he knew them all, all the old blues guys even. He wanted stories. I don't think he was speeding my recovery. (laughs)

CM: Nine weeks—that's a pretty long stay, isn't it? This was in Memphis?

BG: Yeah, nine weeks, that's fairly serious to be locked up. Well, sort of locked up. I mean, I could have left. There were no bars or anything. But, I had no will, I had no good reason to do anything. Lorelei would just sit with me and we'd talk about small things, you know, what it was like outside, what she was reading, some painting she was doing. Almost anything but me getting back to the music. See, Lor, instinctively knew that was the sticking point, that me making music again was the key, but, also my deepest fear—that I'd lost it all. That I'd never write another meaningful song. I'd rather not say which hospital this was. Just because of, you know, the privacy thing. I think I'm supposed to be discrete about that.

CM: What turned it around?

BG: I don't know really. I don't know if it really got turned around. One day I woke up and I felt pretty good, you know. The sun was coming in the window there and I was digging the way the dust motes floated in it, as if they were little living things, and I thought, I've had enough of this shit. And I got dressed. Lor came in that morning and I was sitting there in my clothes waiting for her. We checked me out. We went down to the nurse's station and said, room 1324 checking out. (laughs) It's funny now. But, then, it was like we were doing something extraordinary and perhaps not entirely wholesome. We drove home in compete silence. And when we got home, we undressed as if it were all scripted, as if this was the end of that chapter. And when we were both naked, we fell together into the bed. And we fucked and cried and cried and fucked and it was all ok. If only for a little while.

It was shortly after this that I left Memphis for good.

CM: You went to L.A.?

BG: Yeah, shortly after that.

CM: Did you talk to Crafty and Skippy?

BG: Castor and Pollux, sure, I called 'em up. I said, I'm back from the dead, man.

CM: What was their reaction?

BG: Oh, they were cool, you know. Skippy, God love him. What I didn't know was that Crafty was already scheming against me, working on getting the rights to the Black Lung stuff reverted entirely to him, since I was non campo mentis. That's what his lawyer said.

CM: But, for the record here, how did you decide to go to L.A.?

BG: One day, it was, oh about a month after the hospital. I'd been at home just sitting there, you know, letting my mind rot. Lorelei was doing a lot of painting and she left me to myself as much as I needed it. But, I was doing nothing. I was mindless. I was watching soaps, for Christ's sake. Hooked on soaps and dopes.

CM: You weren't still using...

BG: Well, no, uh...

CM: What pulled you out?

BG: I was watching late night TV. That Don Kirschner thing, what was it called? I don't know. But Creedence came on. And there was fucking Fogerty singing "Wrote a Song for Everyone" and I just snapped back. It was like a puzzle piece popping into place. I thought, man, here's a guy, been through the mill, right? and he's singing about singing for everyone and, man, I saw that it was all so selfish, this exile, this block. I thought, it's ego, is what it is. How dare I not write songs? How dare I? So, I picked up my guitar and wrote, "Alison All Gone." Lorelei heard me and didn't come into the room right away. She's very intuitive that way. But she knew. She heard the words, heard the pain in my voice. She knew I was alive again. Pain is alive, right? A man obsessed is a man alive.

And when she did come into my little home studio there I had finished the fucking song and I sang it to her and she just sat there and cried, man. Just wept. And I did, too. And I sang it again. It was just heart wrenching, man, I mean, we were just like two kids given a new lease on life. I wrote a song, I kept, thinking. I wrote a damn good song. I was back, you know, back, but different. Different but the same. This is what I want everyone to understand. What I want to say—the difference is not a drama, the difference is a poem, a song, a way of looking at life, that's slightly atilt, slightly askew, perhaps, but it's all me, you know? It's what I am.

I am a songwriter. That was finding my soul.

(garbled)

BG: Yeah, I'm ok. Ok.

LE: It's late.

CM: Yeah, it's actually dark outside, I think. You want dinner? I'll buy dinner.

BG: No, no, thanks.

CM: Beautiful, the light there against that white wall, against the sash. It's like a ruddle...

BG: Blood. It's the color of blood.

CM: Which is life, right?

BG: Yes.

LE: Maybe just—

CM: Yeah, tomorrow, right? Is that alright?

BG: I'm tired.

Day Three

Creole Myers: Whose paintings in the room off the den? Lorelei's?

Buddy Gardner: Lor's. Lor's the painter.

CM: They're good.

BG: Oh, they're better than good. They're remarkable. I keep telling her to use the contacts she's made in the art community, but she thinks she'll be trading on my name. Different worlds, really, but that's Lorelei. I'm not sure she's knows how good she is. How good she can be.

CM: The tall one, the figure.

BG: Yeah, that's the newest. With all the floating objects around it?

CM: Yeah.

BG: That's new. You know, Lor studied with this old artist in New York, this Brazilian named Oyvind Fahlstrőm. Really, that was his name. I think he's still alive. Lor, have you heard from him, from Oy? She took a lot from him. Though I think she's gone off in her own direction. There's a cartoonist's simplicity there, those lines, that is both childlike and very sophisticated.

CM: Does she show her stuff?

BG: Shit, I'm lucky if she shows me. Once I told her she was like Twombly but with a better sense of humor. She sulked for a week. Don't really know why. So, I just tell her, man, I love this. You know, artists—

CM: Here she is now. Good morning.

Lorelei Enos: Good morning. Did you make coffee?

BG: It's on the sideboard.

CM: Join us?

LE: Be right there.

CM: Should I compliment her work?

BG: Take a shot. It's your ass. (laughs)

CM: Uh, gimme your three top influences.

BG: We did that, didn't we? Influences? Uh, Hoagy Carmichael, Tristan Tzara and Soupy Sales.

CM: Um.

BG: Print that.

CM: Ok. So, there's a rumor that you're working on an album of covers. Want to give us a hint of what we can expect?

BG: Yeah, I am doing that. Giving a nod to my influences, to use your word, to make you happy, Creole, though some of the stuff, you know, will be fairly obscure. Will seem new. You grok? Let's see, I've already cut "Your Mama's on the Bottom, Papa's on Top, Sister's in the Kitchen Hollerin' When They Goin' to Stop" with the L. A. Session. That cooks. "Flying Saucer Rock and Roll." "Shimmy She Wobble." "Diddly Bow Blues," the Seven Finger Tucker standard. Um, I cover Neil's "Last Train to Tulsa." That's probably the most recent thing on there. Miles' "Birth of the Cool Theme."

CM: An instrumental?

BG: Yeah, I pick it out on the Gibson. It's sweet, man. Dylan's "Get Your Rocks Off." Memphis Minnie's "Bumble Bee." I've got more stuff than I can fit on an LP. Maybe it'll be a double. Nice gatefold with a picture of Sadie's Garden. "Vertiginous Waves of Murmuring Need." "Negro Thursdays." "Bad Eye," with John Sebastian's band. "Pachuko Hop." The Airplane's "Plastic Fantastic Lover." "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria." (laughs) I'm doing "Elusive Butterfly" with the Stone Canyon Band. Um, a Mike Nesmith song—I can't remember the name of it. Maybe "To Sir with Love." "Bearcat."

CM: You do "Bearcat?"

BG: Just me and the National. Sounds pretty good. Lor likes it.

LE: His voice. He really reached down for some voice on that one.

BG: (singing)

"Shake it to the east

Shake it to the west

Shake it to the one that you love the best..."

CM: That's not "Bearcat."

BG: No shit.

LE: The song by Mike is "Tengo Amore."

CM: Right, right. Great song. Have you heard his version? He's a kickass songwriter, if people were really paying attention. His Monkees stuff is first class. I mean, even on the first album, "Sweet Young Thing"—that's a kicking song. I dig that song. Maybe I should cover that—show everyone I can still rock out. (laughs)

CM: Do you have a name for this project yet?

BG: I'm thinking of calling it In Cold Blood. Or maybe Sadie's Garden.

CM: Uh..

BG: "Where Do I Go" from Hair.

CM: Have you seen Hair?

BG: No, well, sort of. Keith Kennedy, in the theater department at Memphis State is a friend of mine, and Keith was mounting the show, as I was, well, breaking down. We had talked about my playing Berger. But, it didn't happen, so...

CM: You were gonna be in Hair?

BG: Well, I don't know, we were just talking. I don't think he'd quite settled yet, on his approach, the whole tribal thing. I mean, it was a student thing, mostly, and he did these intense tribal unity things before he ever started rehearsing the play. It was beautiful. I was part of some of the early planning. Mostly it was just talk. I'd sit in, we'd all be in a room and we'd just chant for an hour or so. It was ritualistic. But, those songs...beautiful stuff. Be interesting to see what Rado and Ragni and whatever the hell the other guy's name is, do next. It'll blow our minds, I'm betting.

CM: Hm. Hair. Ok.

BG: (sings)

"We starve look at one another..."

CM: Yeah.

BG: "Facing a dying nation..." Funny, now, eh? Dying nation. What almost killed me. What did Hemingway say, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger?

CM: I don't think that was Hemingway.

BG: I think it was.

CM: Ok.

BG: Right.

CM: What about the road? Are you going back out? Do you enjoy touring?

BG: Touring is the dark outside the circle of the light of creativity. You dig? I mean, it's corrupt. If I didn't have to do it, I wouldn't. Not anymore. I mean, I did it, you know. Five nights a week, 300 gigs a year. I did it. It'll kill you. Look who it killed. But, yeah, I mean, when the new LP comes out they've got me touring. Shit. I'll do it. I mean, I love the fans, ok? But, I'd rather be here with Lorelei, that seems fairly obvious right? I'll probably agree to the big ten tour. That's what they give the aging guys like me.

CM: You're only---

BG: Yeah, yeah, but I'll do the top ten, you know. I mean, I'd rather do Little Rock. I'd rather do Wichita Falls. But, if you're gonna only do a handful, they insist on Boston, New York, L. A., etc. Big venues, maybe two, three nights. I'd rather do clubs, truth be told. McCartney told me he was gonna do that. Sneak into clubs, unannounced, and do quick gigs with a pickup band. That sounds cool, man. I could do that. That I could do. But, I'll do the top ten and be done with it, Do the interviews, the meet and greet afterwards, the back stage shit where they set you up with local celebs and the press and, you know, the auditorium owner's daughter. Guy could laid every night on the road. Partly, that's why it's not for me anymore, you know. Got my woman, got my nest. Rather bed down and just write. The business stuff, well, it's shit, isn't it?

CM: Um--

BG: What's next, Creole, my old friend?

CM: Maybe we should talk about who's producing your newer stuff? In Memphis you had these gurus, these guys to sort of steer your stuff—

BG: That's a pretty good metaphor, yeah. Jim, kept the Black Lung stuff from becoming just this hopelessly over-the-top crap, these pointless solos—well, for the time, really, they're pretty restrained. But, out here, well, it's me. I've been producing. Or I give Lor credit. She helps sometimes. Which, I know, leads to more of the self-indulgent slams—I've heard it said that I need someone to keep me from the sideroads of self-pity, self-consciousness. Listen, they're saying the same things about McCartney, about Paul Simon.

CM: Well, but—

BG: I don't wanna hear it, man. I liked McCartney. I liked Ram, ok? And my new stuff, I like it, I like it done my way, I don't need some label hack in there telling me, uh, we need an oboe here, dig? It'll be like Blue, right? Amazing piece of work that Joni just bled onto tape—and it's so simple, so austere. Sure, she credits someone with producing—who was it? Crosby? It didn't matter—that's Joni, raw, honest, real. That's the sound I want.

CM: Let's do something hip here. Let's go song by song.

BG: Song by...

CM: Through your catalog.

BG: Shee. Fun. If you call 'em out, I'll try to comment. Don't expect me to remember everything..

CM: Let's do Rain and Other Distractions first.

BG: Right.

CM: "Train Tracks and Other Tracks."

BG: We've done this one. Let's skip ahead. I don't want to do the drug talk again. I'm clean, that's all we need to know right now.

CM: "Aphids on the Heliotrope."

BG: That was for Lor's mom. She's a big gardener, got this incredible spread of flowers in her back yard. She's taught me a lot about simple pleasures, flowers, feathers, sun. She's practically a Native American shaman—she, oh, never mind....

CM: "Nature breathing heavy/trying to keep up with her.'

BG: Yeah, yeah, that's Lor's mom, Sadie. She's remarkable, really, a sort of Zen master just in her daily life. I mean, plant a seed, watch it grow, you know, that whole Lennon/Ono message. I love that. And it's a rhythm guitar song, mostly, right? I wrote it with this rhythm guitar sound in mind, simple, a song any bar singer can play.

CM: The title song.

BG: That's a California song, the first one I wrote out here. You know, it rains a lot here—well, yeah it does. And at first, I thought, it's such a distraction, you know, you want to just sit and watch it. In Memphis, when it rained it was either these pissy little showers that barely dampened the dust or drain-clogging downpours. Out here the rain takes on other qualities. Biblical, almost. It rains Dostoyevsky novels.

CM: Which is a line from the song.

BG: "It rains Dostoyevsky novels" (sings)

"It rains streets of crocodiles/It rains the end of innocence/it rains murder trials."

CM: The first line is "The rain, the park and other things..." Isn't that a Cowsills song?

BG: (laughs) Yeah. I was looking for a way in, I was looking for something Californiaesque to start with. (laughs) I thought the Cowsills—well, I didn't think Cowsills because I couldn't actually remember who sang the damn song, but I thought that song was quintessentially California. It was just a key to the door.

CM: Anything else you want to say about that song?

BG: Uh, just that the line "It's raining in my heart" is, of course, an homage to Buddy. And the line "It's raining Grabenhorst" is about an old school friend.

CM: We've already discussed her, I believe.

BG: Did we? Good. It's got that "Green River" riff to it, a chugging thing, even though it's acoustic, it sounds like a freight train, don't you think?

CM: Ok, uh, "If You Push Your Belly Button your Legs Fall Off." Many critics said this was like a children's song. Like "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Consciously so?

BG: A children's song? Shit. No. It's about being in bed with a new woman. It's about that moment of intimacy after you've spent each other, that time when you're running your fingers over each other's bodies, asking about little nooks and crannies, scars and tattoos. I said this to a woman—the "white swan woman" in the song—after our first intercourse. I said to her, "If you push your belly button..." and she laughed long and hard. It became code between us, code for post-coital pleasures. By the way, the song makes reference to an actual quote. When they asked Casanova what made him such a great lover, he said, "The tenderness afterwards." So, the line "the tenderness afterwards" comes from the Seducer, gambler, necromancer and spy, Giovanni Giacomo Casanova.

CM: Ok, um, "Hell in Denmark."

BG: Well, you know, Lennon's "Norwegian Wood?" Yeah, man, that's about some affair he had, right? But, he couldn't talk about it because of Cynthia. So, he writes this piece of surrealistic poetry and he sings it, man, in this voice as old as the shepherds. Well, "Hell in Denmark" started that way. It's code, man. But, you know, I don't hide anything from my Love. I don't know, I started out writing this song because I had fucked this chick, see, when I was on tour, when Lor was back here. And she sort of followed me around for a couple of gigs, and it was like a lost week, there, I was all screwed up. I wasn't thinking about Lorelei or what this would mean to her, if anything. I just wanted to keep balling this chick, right? She was blond and willowy and looked like a pixie and I just couldn't get enough of her. Some of my roadies, and Pete, man, God bless him, he was like 'Buddy, drop this chick, she's trouble, man.' He was thinking of Lor. So, anyway, this beautiful woman followed me from city to city—she was a gypsy—and she dressed like a gypsy—I can't tell you her name cuz you'd know it, man. Her heart is a legend. But, I didn't know who she was until I was inside her and she was moving like God's immaculate machine. Damn, she could ball. And, I was, I thought, in love, for only the really second time in my life. I wasn't thinking, like, I gotta leave Lor, it's gonna be painful, I want to be with this woman, this white light. I wasn't thinking, period. Anyway, Lor knows all this—it's cool, it's cool. Lorelei, you gotta understand, is amazing, she's like so together, and she understands human nature and sees it for the shoddy stuff that it is, and she accepts everything, man, like all human interaction is innocent, you dig? I mean, it hurt her, yeah, she's human. But, she knew I wouldn't do anything like this lightly. She knew it must have been some kind of deep cut for me to persist in it for, what, a couple weeks, a little longer. It took a while to get this angel out of my blood—it was like going for detox, you know? Shit. (laughs)

What were we talking about? Oh—the song, yeah, anyway, that's what the song is about, that lost time, that time I went away and came back. I still like the lyrics:

I still

imagine a face white like

faith's hue

and a dimple carved

there and a disdain for any

attention. How attractive

these qualities are.

How they still reverberate

across the gulf of time.

It really is a gulf,

deep like an ode, and

dark as if dipped in death-shadow.

CM: Damn. It's a beautiful melody, too.

BG: Yeah it is. And that's sitar on it—though we miked it so it sounds sort of like a harp.

CM: Ok. "Building Cla-Le-Clare?"

BG: You know, Larry co-wrote that.

CM: Larry?

BG: Raspberry. As in the Highsteppers. We wrote that when I was back in Memphis because my mother was in the hospital. Larry came and sat with me in her room—he's a bloke, man, a true spirit. He would come and sit with me, and, while we were watching over her—it was horrible, stomach cancer, and her heart was weak, I thought, shit, we're losing her—anyway, Larry was there. And we wrote that song next to my mother's hospital bed. Strange. It has nothing to do with the surroundings. It's about, you know, having a dream, and building something, only to have it come to naught. It's like "Castles in the Sand." It's sort of a cop off that idea. I don't know—Larry, he's got this mind, it's really a musician's mind, you know, songwriting for him is a calling—I don't think I have his dedication to it. Why I was so happy to work with him. And we've made plans to work together again. He's coming out here—when was it again, Lor?

LE: June, I think. His wife called just a couple days ago.

BG: Larry's into something or other. But, he promised he'd be here. I'm ready to see what we can do together again.

CM: "Necronomicon Blues?"

BG: Whimsy. Just fooling around.

CM: Don't know anything about the Black Arts, about..

BG: Naw. Cept what's written there, most of which I made up. Satan is a cruel master. (laughs) Shit, I'm not Alice Cooper, you know. I'm not a reincarnated witch. (laughs) Really.

CM: The music sounds a little calypso.

BG: It does, doesn't it?

CM: "When the Henbane Blooms"?

BG: Drug song, right? You can dig that. Even you, Creole, Family Man. You can dig where that's coming from? Naw, shit, I'm goofing on you. It's not a drug song. It's about Lor's brother-in-law, who is a werewolf. No shit. He's really a werewolf.

CM: Um...

BG: Hey, here's something I can tell you now, something that'll blow your mind, ok?

CM: Sure.

BG: I mean, it sounds perverse, but, well, everyone who wrote me off as this junkie-folkie like JT, here's another clue for you all. I did a song called, "Don't Ever Antagonize the Horn," based on a Coltrane melody. A real, guitar heavy piece with some of Zappa's band. I released it under the name "Jimi Mumu."

CM: I know the song, great song. That's you.

BG: Well, shit, I can say it now. Let 'em sue. Yeah, it's just a single right. At first we were gonna do it on Frank's Straight label but he was going through some business hassles at the time. So it came out on Laughing Buddha Jesus Phallus, this really underground Frisco label, started, I think, by Dino Valenti. Maybe not. Anyway, we did this heavy piece as a kind of lark—I was pissed, I admit by all the dismissals I was getting in the rock press, all the accusations of sell-out. So I did this little 45, this really wild piece of music—that's a Stratocaster I'm playing but filtered through this mini-moog that Underwood brought with him. And damned if it wasn't a hit. We didn't even have a back for it, you know, a flipside. So I quickly wrote "Stately Plump Buck Mulligan" as a 12-bar blues, and we sort of adlibbed it in the studio. One take. Anyway, you heard it here first. That's me, man, Jimi Mumu. I love that little 45. If you can find one, Dad, it's worth some money, I hear. After Laughing Buddha folded, you know. Hey, I got some here—Lor, get a copy of "Don't Ever Antagonize the Horn" for Creole. A little something for your reading public, man, for the fans. I can still cook, Daddy, believe it. Check out that bridge—that "rave up." I was really playing that instrumental part like it's a jazz chart, see, stretching it out—that's psychedelia, I guess. Shit, that was fun.

CM: Huh. I thought that was, like, a one-hit wonder thing.

BG: Yeah, yeah. That's the story. I remember Rolling Stone sent someone out here to get the story behind the song, but, by that time Laughing Buddha Jesus Phallus Records has closed up its offices. No one home. They had one other chart hit. What was it called? Uh. "Fainting Spell, A Bagatelle." That was it. By The Holly and IV. I can't tell you who that really is.

CM: Ok, um, the next song on Rain and Other Distractions, the penultimate song, before the finisher, "Goodbye to the Shell," is this odd little folk song, "Right on Poplar Avenue."

BG: Yeah, that's Lor's song, actually. Well, I mean, she didn't write it, except in the sense that she's inside my head like no one else. That song stems from a conversation we were having about the past, about the future. You know, it's so damn hard to live in the moment, isn't it? I mean, it's that Zen thing, you know? You wanna stay present, but the past keeps intruding. "Right on Poplar Avenue," pun intended, is about this girlfriend I use to have—well, she wasn't really a girlfriend, I guess—she was one of those people you come up against in your life where you're just beating your head against a wall. For whatever reason you just aren't connecting. This woman, beautiful woman, was a flirt, no kidding, I mean, she made eyes at me across this restaurant, this vegetarian restaurant, and I couldn't figure out what she was doing. I was a little dense—this was, oh, I don't know, before Lorelei, before we really hit big. And, then afterwards, one of those driving home epiphanies, I figured out who she was, and that she was looking at me because she recognized me and expected me to recognize her. So, I was a bit embarrassed and when I got home, I called her. I said, hey, it's Buddy. I know, she said. I said, well, shit, you know, in the restaurant, I'm sorry, I didn't remember who you were, and I thought, damn, this is embarrassing, but, I thought you were staring at me, you know, to get my attention, to get my heterosexual attention. And, well, then I remembered, of course, that I knew you through the Tickles. And she said, I wasn't just looking at you because I expected you to remember me. You know, you're not bad to look at. I could have looked all night, she said.

Well, shit, I thought, ok, yeah. I can dig this chick, because I mean, she had this body, well, the kind you dream about. And she was this novelist's daughter and so she was cool and kind of bohemian and had this apartment in Midtown, upper floor, with a nice view of Poplar. So, I just showed up there one evening. And, you won't believe this, but she was just out of the shower and was wearing nothing but a bathrobe. And her skin was glistening with dampness. I thought I had stumbled into heaven, man. I thought, nothing is gonna be easier than falling into bed with this beautiful woman. So, after some awkward small talk—and keep in mind, she didn't go get dressed—I made a move. I think I just sort of leaned in to kiss her. And she let me kiss her, but, man, nothing back. I mean, fuck, she didn't even open her mouth. Don't you hate that shit? So, I'm standing there, I might as well have had my dick out, and she looked at me like I was a piece of modern art that she couldn't figure out. And, finally, after I had already turned back into an awkward 12 year old, she said, sorry, I can't be doing that. That was it. That was her explanation. I never saw that chick again, I can tell you. I mean, I got out of there fast and tried to restabilize my pride, and I just thought, well, fuck it, I don't know what that was all about, I don't pretend to understand what that was all about. So, anyway, that inspired this song—actually, Lor and I talking about that incident inspired that song. The line "she was going through her midtown period/there was blood in the air" is mostly Lor's.

CM: That's quite a story. Ok, that leaves "Goodbye to the Shell," maybe one of your most controversial songs, one that some folks back in Memphis didn't take too kindly to, one that is perhaps misunderstood. Can you clear it up any?

BG: I'm not even sure what the fuck you're talking about? It's about leaving Memphis, yeah, so what? What's not to like? Who didn't like it?

CM: Um, well, let's see, in Sum Times, the review said, "'Goodbye to the Shell' is the kind of self-satisfied soft-rock that John Denver would be proud of. If Gardner hates his past so much why can't he leave it behind? Why does he write, 'Adult us, be real, don't frighten or gull us, Honest Merchant, Home, Bluff City.'? Buddy Gardner, Memphis don't need you around no more."

BG: (laughs) What horseshit. Who wrote that? That same dame that wrote that other fucking review, right? What's she got up her ass? "Goodbye to the Shell" is a love song, ok? It's about my hometown, the only hometown I'll ever have. The only one I could leave. I love and hate Memphis, man. You understand. I love and hate a lot of things—they're twin emotions. Especially, when you're dealing with the past. Fuck her. She doesn't understand anything. Whoever gave her the job of writing reviews should be shot. Next question.

CM: Sorry, Buddy.

BG: Fuck it. Move on.

CM: Uh, that brings us to your most recent release, the almost entirely acoustic, "I Was a Child When Smaller."

BG: Right.

CM: First song, the painful, "Allison All Gone."

BG: Right. Nothing to say there. Next.

CM: Uh...

BG: What? It's all in the song, man. Broken heart. Big fucking deal. Everyone's had 'em.

LE: "O Allison, between your legs was a kitchen of delight" is still a lovely line.

BG: Yeah, yeah. Ok, Creole.

CM: Next cut is "Burn my Bridges."

BG: Same thing, right? One has to grow up, you know? One has to destroy one's parents. Metaphorically. I can write about that—that's viable stuff, right?

CM: One critic wrote, "Gardner seems content to wallow in his own past as if anyone else cared about it."

BG: Yeah, it's a personal song. It's personal. I write personal songs now. Dismiss me but leave me alone.

CM: And the next cut is "Forget my Roots.'

BG: It's the same thing, ok? Same fucking thing. You think I don't know that. It's a companion piece. It's meant to be ironic—you think I'm stupid and don't see that they're the same song. See, "Forget my Roots" is an inversion of "Burn my Bridges." You gotta compare the lyrics. I'm not gonna connect the dots for you, man, I'm the artist. You gotta meet me halfway. Ok? You dig?

CM: Yet, the next song is definitely a more mellow, more, can we say California song?

BG: "At City Lights I was Saved.' Yeah. An homage to Ferlinghetti, his whole ethos, his whole mystique. He's the patron saint of boho out here, you know? I wrote that song after an afternoon I spent with him and Michael McClure and Dylan at McClure's place. We all had come from the bookstore—I was looking for, what was it, Lor?

LE: Rexroth's Chinese translations, I think.

BG: Exactly. Yeah, so I had that in my hand. And there was Dylan with a copy of Teeth Mother Naked at Last. And we hugged and, man, it was like, I was set loose. I was exonerated for all past sins. Dylan knew the writers, you know, he and Ginsberg and the rest of them. He was meeting Ferlinghetti there at City Lights and Larry brought Michael and we all just kind of hit it off—you gotta know these guys, I mean, this is what's real, you know, this, what you can hold in your hand, that's the kind of guys these guys are. You take a book, you can hold it in your hand, and it's like, it's already communicating with you, before you even open it. And these guys, these poets, man, they are just so honorable. And City Lights is a halidom, right? You've been there? Ok, it's ground zero, as far as I'm concerned. I'm just a student of that place, of Larry, right? I'm still learning. Anyway, we all went to McClure's for coffee and sat around the whole fucking afternoon talking about anything and everything. Dylan, you know, he was in, what they were calling a down phase—like they fucking know—and we talked about that, and about how I was being called a sell-out. And, I remember, Ferlinghetti said this wonderful thing, he said, "You know what Durrell says, Buddy? 'In the end everything will be true of everybody.' And, man, I thought, yeah, that's salvation, that's true. I tried to capture that in the song. I probably missed the mark—you had to be there (laughs)—but I tried, you know? I wanted to say something about being an artist, a struggling artist, how it's hard to even say what you mean, half the time. I don't know. Some of that is in that song. The line about the maple tree is McClure's.

I don't really like the arrangement we came up with for this song. I don't think the backup guys were up to it. I should have played everything—I almost went back in and re-cut it, but, hell, it's ok the way it is. But, it could have been better. Thicker.

CM: "It's Not True Unless it Makes You Laugh."

BG: Right. That's actually a really old song—that almost made it onto Turntable. I wrote that in Memphis, in Lorelei's bedroom, right after we had made love. There was candlelight dancing on the walls, and outside one of those Memphis thunderstorms that seem like the end of the world, beautiful like the end of the world should be, and Lorelei was lying there naked, a vision out of Titian, and I just started singing those lyrics. Those were given to me, you know? Like they always existed but I was the one that plucked them from the ether. It's weird, that's the most Memphis song on the LP, though it really is about, what's inside us, you know? What keeps us going, keeps us growing. And, it's not true unless it makes you laugh. That's what I want to say to my critics, you know, lighten up, irony isn't dead yet. Well, I don't really want to say it to them, I mean, they've got their lives, their maggoty little lives, and they've got these things they want to say and I say, god bless them. But, in the end, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. But, back to the song, here are the elements present in between the lines: candlelight, a picture of Tristan Tzara that was on Lor's wall, post-orgasmic lassitude, the sound a needle makes stuck in the endgrooves of an LP, and, finally and most importunately, the sight of my woman's incredible ass, naked beside me. That's that song. I wanted a starker arrangement but Pete talked me into the chick singers and the spoon harp. It's ok, at least it was subtle. Quiet chick singers, ha. Naw, they were great, really. Jimmy Keltner brought me them.

CM: "Song for L. Enos."

BG: Kind of self-explanatory, right? I mean, here she is. My be-all and end-all. I realize outsiders can't understand—they see, what, witchcraft or some kind of nefarious necromancy at work. Shit, man, it's love. You know, LOVE? I wrote that song because Lorelei changed my life. It's like "Julia", you know, the Lennon song? Julia as all-women. That's Lor. She's the feminine principle, the earth-mother, female rain, Moon Goddess. It's in the song. Between the lines, it's all there. And dig that 12-string playing, man. That's near perfect.

CM: Only near?

BG: Yeah, it's all any of us get. Near perfect. That day I was riding God's tail. I was playing like Robert Johnson ensorcelled. You dig that? I made up that little middle bit, and, then, as discussed—I think we talked about this—a little piece of Jimi's "Third Stone from the Sun," thrown in at the beginning, as a tribute, because he had just died and I was in mourning when I wrote that.

CM: "Squonk?"

BG: Yeah, dig. You know what a squonk is, right? It's like, what's that song Cocker did so well, "I'm Gonna Drown in my Own Tears," right? Squonks cry themselves to death, dissolve in their own tears. That's what I mean by the ironic twists to I Was A Child. This charge of self-pity, yeah, man, I'm on it, I dig. It's right there on the album, if you really listened to it, if you listened with more than your ears, man. The repetition of "I'm crying"—almost three minutes of it, I know—it goes back to "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry Over You" and Lennon's "I Want You." You know, you strip it down, you get right to the core phrase, the essential thing you wanna say—that's what I'm getting at. I'm crying, yeah. My woman done gone. You get it? By the way, that's Sebastian on the autoharp.

CM: "Kill the Wabbit."

BG: (laughs)

CM: One critic suggested that this was infantile and on a par with McCartney's love song to his dog.

BG: Infantile? Ok. Shit, it's only a minute twenty four seconds. I was just goofing around. And, hey, I like McCartney's love song to his dog. You mean Martha, right? You ever loved a dog, man?

CM: "Flower King" we did.

BG: Right.

CM: "Beverly's Box?"

BG: Sex song.

CM: Really? Because it never mentions sex.

BG: Like the best sex songs.

CM: About...

BG: You do pry, don't you, Creole? Beverly. Ok?

CM: Another...

BG: She was this beautiful woman, large breasts, great body, lived in Jackson, Mississippi, with whom I had a torrid, sporadic affair. Sitting on me, oh my goodness, she... Beverly, Beverly. Beverly from Jackson, like the song says. Is this gentlemanly? No, no, edit this out...

CM: Funny line about her being hotter than a pepper sprout. Now, I guess, I see the smoldering sexuality of the song.

BG: Thanks. A lot of folks didn't get that line. Short memories.

CM: Lost love—would you say that's one of your themes, especially as it is related to physical love?

BG: Shit. Sure. Yeah, lost pussy. I'm the poet of lost pussy.

CM: (laughs)

BG: (laughs) Shit. I got you to laugh, Creole. Now, we can start. Now it begins.

CM: One more, the seven plus minute, "Weanling of the Great Waters."

BG: It's about the river, obviously.

CM: The river, back home...

BG: Ok, yes. Caught. Another Memphis song. Yeah, it's about growing up next to that river, Big Muddy in my veins, also about being born just a few miles from Niagara Falls, and, briefly it makes mention of the Pacific. I've always been near water. What does this mean? Nothing. But it made for interesting song material. I like some of the lyrics, which are a little plain, despite the ornate title of the song.

CM: And, that's just you and your guitar.

BG: Right. Actually, recorded here at home, right over there, in the corner by the bookcases. I set up a mike in the corner, turned my back to the room, and used the wall of books as organic echo, a trick, I'm sure you know, that Robert Johnson employed to get his idiosyncratic vocal style.

CM: No, I didn't know that.

BG: Oh, yeah. That's the story, anyway, He turned away from the engineer in the studio there and faced the corner, like Little Jack Horner—as a matter of fact, I almost called this "Little Jack Horner," but it didn't make much sense. Anyway, everyone thought the poor guy was just shy, or hiding his idiosyncratic playing style—which may be partly true—but the real reason, so I've read, is that he could get an interesting "bounce" from the corner, sort of double-tracking his voice before that was ever heard of. So, I laid it down first just on this cassette player—really—and then dumped it to a 16-track, played through a little reverb amp I had at the house. Stayed up all night doing that fucker. It was a full moon, I remember. It was beautiful. And at dawn, I brought it to Lorelei and said, baby, this is as good as Buddy gets. Is this interesting?

CM: Sure. What's that percussive sound—it's very interesting.

BG: (laughs) That's my guitar hitting my shirt buttons.

CM: Oh. How--

BG: The genesis of a song, I don't know. I'd rather you just listen to the song. But this is your interview.

CM: It's yours, also. Don't you feel that?

BG: I don't know. Perhaps. Do I have a need to get my thoughts out, to let the public in on my life, my style, my method, my oeuvre? Nah. It's all bullshit, isn't it? I mean, ten minutes after I say something I don't mean it anymore. It's ephemeral, this trying to grasp what sparks art, like trying to catch soap bubbles. Just listen to the music, man. That's what I want to say. Can we erase everything else and just have me say, just listen to the music? (laughs) I didn't think so. Jesus, how we've gone on here. Who's gonna read this?

CM: Can you foresee a time when you won't write songs anymore? When you'll retire?

BG: (long silence) No. I'll always write songs. I've got a lot to say. I'm just tapping into it, you know. Everything that has come before is only prelude. I believe that. I believe I'm on the cusp of a breakthrough, creatively. I think my best stuff is ahead of me. As far as retiring, I don't know what you mean by that. I can see me just staying home, writing, being with Lor, house-husband, you know, and just writing, and saying let someone else record the stuff. But, I'll always write.

CM: Anything besides songs?

BG: I, uh, I really don't want to talk about it too much.

CM: Something in the works.

LE: He's writing a novel.

CM: Really?

BG: Well, hell, yeah, I am. But, you know, I don't want that out there yet. Look what it did to Dylan. He didn't want to finish Tarantula, but, there was so much pressure on him and then someone circulated bootleg versions and the whole thing became uncontrollable. I can't have that. I'd rather keep my plans private for now, dig? Can you keep that under your hat, Creole man?

CM: Got a title?

BG: Right now I'm callin' it Great Expectations.

CM: Uh—

BG: Move on, man.

CM: At this point in your life, Buddy, are you a religious man? Some of your work hints at it—but it's subtext, it's buried.

BG: Lately, for whatever reasons, I have been thinking more about the spiritual side of the human animal than ever I have in my previous twenty-some year tenure on Spaceship Earth. It probably has to do with getting older, finding my stability in Lor. Time at least to take a peak into the spiritual caldron. There are miracles, it might cause one to whisper, alone in the dark.

I'm not comfortable, really, man, talking about my numinous side, as interesting as I think that is. I want to ask a lot of questions, without presuming there are always answers. Like, where do lares and penates, where does religion, fit in with this cynical lifestyle we've adopted, or that we've carefully constructed? As The Lovin' Spoonful asked, "Do you believe in magic?"

I mean, I don't know what has caused me to cogitate about the underlying premise of life, you know?. I mean, fuck, are we really that far removed from our supranatural sides that any discussion or mention of it is inordinate, is worth commentary? Or are we only embarrassed by discussions of spirituality? If so, why? This interests me, I guess.

When I told my shrink I didn't use to be a spiritual person, his answer was, "You were not aware of being a spiritual person." I didn't like his correction and insisted that, no, I embraced atheism briefly, then settled into a kind of solid-artifact agnosticism, i.e., I didn't believe in anything I couldn't put in my mouth and suck on. This is a line of thinking invented by my friend, Eddie, who named his belief system, Oralism. It made perfect sense to me at the time. Eddie has since become the father of two beautiful little girls and I don't know where that leaves him, belief-wise. We haven't talked about it. Which is maybe part of what I'm digging at here. My therapist reiterated, "Denying you are a spiritual being is like denying you have a left arm." I've come around more to his way of thinking, though I hate to lose any argument. Man, I'm a believer, just like Mickey Dolenz. (laughs)

So, I believe now that we are spiritual beings. I believe in a First Cause. I believe in an afterlife, a kindliness underlying the universe, an Attendance behind the growth of an acorn into an oak. A Man behind the Curtain. I deplore the Religious Right (which, as the bumper sticker says is neither) and I'm uncomfortable with the entry of religion into politics. I even dislike the "In God We Trust" on our currency. But I am, for want of a better word, religious. That's me.

Is this the norm and people find it better to simply not talk about it? I'll tell you where my cogitation has led me. I'll keep you in suspense no longer about my conclusion. It is this: we are not cynical. We do not deny our left arms, our spiritual sides. I mean, the universe is vast and mysterious and difficult and harmful and loving and full of the kind of wonder that makes simple men sit on their porches at night and look at the stars. I believe this: there is more star-gazer to most of us than cynic.

But I'm still left with an uneasy feeling about spirituality, religion, personal theism, ibada, vespers—call it what you will—entering our workaday lives. I'm not sure I want it there, in the marketplace, in the bars, in the music. Perhaps, dad, it should all remain private.

And maybe all this religiosity can be refuted by Hemingway's wonderful closing line to The Sun Also Rises, "Isn't it pretty to think so?" But here, in middle age, with my old friends settling down, with children growing up around me like burning bushes, I say to Papa: Yes, it is. It is pretty to think there are things we don't understand.

CM: We're nearing the end here. Anything else to add?

BG: I'll drop a bombshell on you, Creole. Only you will know this until you print it, dig?

CM: Alright.

BG: You know, I got a lot of big plans. I've got the LP of covers coming out. I got the novel, though that's hush-hush. I'm working on some new material for a song-cycle LP, to be called The Agoraphobe's Pandiculations. I might be scoring a movie for Robert Altman. I might even play a small part in it—he's cool, Altman. He likes my new stuff, you know, he's championing my newer stuff. But, friend, I have bigger news than all of this—all my considerable stratagems pale in comparison—I give you the most hopeful news on the planet.

CM: Buddy, I--

BG: Lor is pregnant. That's right, man. We're gonna be parents. And, you know, I'm ready for it. This is gonna be one far-out kid. And I think, I really believe, I'm gonna be one helluva father. It's my focus now. There is hopefulness in parenting, dig?, like nothing else—it's like saying, yes, I believe in the future. Man, I'm so in love with this kid already, though right now, he's a brine shrimp, right? He's a curled up question mark, a little bit of flesh and sortilege. And, the music, well, it will only enrich it. You'll see. Everyone'll comprehend. "In the end everything will be true of everybody." Wait, till you see what I do next.

***

Since this interview Turntable Poison has been reissued on cd (Sundazed, 2000) with all songs in their original order plus these bonus cuts:

"Thunder Over Scenic Hills'

"Blues for Sandra Leathers"

"Hayley Mill's Underpants" (live)

"Can't You Hear My Heartbeat" (live)

"Blues for Wendy Ward" (alternate version)

"Hiroshima, Mon Amour"

"It's Not True Unless it Makes You Laugh"

and a strange, concrete sound collage, called "Resolution #666", which consists of tape loops, radio noise, car horns, snips of classical music, a piece of "Sugar, Sugar," and, apparently, Crafty intoning, over and over, in a funereal tone, the phrase, "Fleming Fine Furniture."

***

Post script: All efforts to contact, or even find, Buddy and Lorelei's child, purportedly a daughter, proved fruitless. As a mystery, it becomes another part of the myth of Buddy Gardner's life, and death.

***

COREY MESLER has published in numerous journals and anthologies. He has authored four novels: Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002), We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006), The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores (2010), and Following Richard Brautigan (2010); two full-length poetry collections: Some Identity Problems (2008) and Before the Great Troubling (2011); and three books of short stories: Listen: 29 Short Conversations (2009), Notes Toward the Story and Other Stories (2011), and I'll Give You Something to Cry About (2011). He has also published a dozen chapbooks of both poetry and prose. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times, and two of his poems have been selected for Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac. He also claims to have written "Rock and Roll Heaven." With his wife, he runs Burke's Book Store, one of the country's oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He can be found at www.coreymesler.com.

