Simple Dreams ~ A Musical Memoir (9 page)

I went out the door and downstairs to sit in the tiny Ramada Inn lobby, where I felt bored, annoyed, and sleepy. After about an hour, I went back, found my room empty, and put the chain on the door. I called Herb and told him what had happened. He was furious at the guy from his office for leaving me alone in Nashville. He decided that it would stir up trouble if we complained about the producer, and I was likely to be dropped from the show. Herb felt the best way to handle it was to act like it didn’t happen, and he sent another person to help me for the rest of the time that I had to be there. The next morning at the read-through, the man who had been in my room turned to me and said for everyone to hear, “I left my watch in your room last night. Could you get it for me later?” I don’t remember his name, only that he was soon to be married. I felt sorry for his bride-to-be.

The next few years were difficult. I felt I was floundering as a singer and my style hadn’t jelled. In 1969 I opened for Jerry Jeff Walker at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village. Jerry Jeff, probably best known for writing the classic “Mr. Bojangles,” a song about an old street dancer he’d met in a New Orleans jail, was accompanied by one other guitar player, David Bromberg, a musician of eclectic brilliance and great sensitivity. I continue to revere David as a songwriter, provocative performer, and cherished friend. In those days, I was much taken by his youthful, earnest sincerity. He came to me one night after the show and said I must go with him to the nearby Cafe Au Go-Go to hear his friend Gary White. He said White had written some
good songs, and there was one in particular that he felt would be perfect for me. I was prepared to be disappointed. I thought it difficult for someone else to know what I looked for in a song.

At the Cafe Au Go-Go, Gary was playing backup guitar for songwriter Paul Siebel. We saw the last part of his very impressive show made rich with his cowboy falsetto and a song about a poignant, sad girl of a certain reputation named Louise, and then went backstage to meet Gary. He had already packed up his guitar, so he took it back out of its case, sat down, and began to sing a song called “Long Long Time.” I told Gary I wanted to record it immediately.

At that time, my producer was Elliot Mazer, who eventually produced albums by Neil Young, and had already recorded with Jerry Jeff Walker, Gordon Lightfoot, Richie Havens, and Ian and Sylvia. He worked closely with a group of studio musicians from Nashville called Area Code 615. Weldon Myrick, the pedal steel player, had an electronic device on his instrument that generated a sound he called the Goodlettsville String Quartet. When combined with Buddy Spicher’s violin playing the top note of the chord, it sounded like a gritty orchestra string section. It was an unusual sound for the time, with a touching emotional quality. Norbert Putnam, the bass player, quickly organized the arrangement. I thought the musicians played it beautifully. I never liked my performance on the record. It was recorded at ten in the morning, somewhat early for a singer, and we used the live vocal. I learned to sing it better later. It was a big hit for me in 1970, and it bought me time to learn.

I went back to New York to reconnect with David, Gary, and Jerry Jeff, and find some more songs. I was introduced to Eric Kaz, who taught me a song he wrote with Libby Titus called “Love Has No Pride.” We made the rounds of the then current hangouts in Greenwich Village: the Dugout, Nobody’s, the Tin
Angel. We saw Paul Siebel perform again at the Cafe Au Go-Go. We took Paul with us and spent the rest of the night at Gary’s little apartment in the Village playing music. He taught me how to play the song about the ill-fated Louise: “Well, they all said Louise was not half bad / It was written on the walls and windowpanes.”

At dawn, Jerry Jeff and I shared a cab back uptown. Jerry Jeff’s face was barely visible in the gray light when he turned to me and said, “I heard these two sisters from Canada sing at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. They wrote a beautiful song you should hear.” He bent his head low, closed his eyes, and softly sang for me all he could remember of the song:

Some say a heart is just like a wheel

When you bend it

You can’t mend it

And my love for you is like a sinking ship

And my heart is on that ship out in mid-ocean

I felt like a bomb had exploded in my head. Even in those few lines I could tell that the song, both plainspoken and delicate, had a highly original approach to describing the deadly peril of romantic love. I begged him to ask them to send me a recording of it. It arrived in my mailbox a few weeks later on a reel-to-reel tape. Titled “Heart Like a Wheel,” it was written by Anna McGarrigle, and she sang it with her sister Kate. It rearranged my entire musical landscape.

The McGarrigles defied categorization and were not understood by all. Not exactly pop music composers, they sprang more from the artistic bloodline of American composer John Jacob Niles, and, along with fellow Canadian Leonard Cohen, have made a significant contribution to the world of American art song. They soldiered on amidst a pop music world devoted to exploring the concepts of bigger and louder, tougher and more
disaffected, and planted their musical flag in an emotional realm of unabashed sentiment and artless candor. A line from “The Work Song,” one of my favorites of their early compositions, says, “Label it garbage, label it art. / You couldn’t call it soul, you had to call it heart.”

They wrote heart music, indeed.

Onstage, their sibling dynamic made one think of unseparated littermates. In the audience, it felt like we had entered their living room unannounced and discovered them squabbling, working out harmonies, or sweeping up after a boisterous party. They wore odd clothing, even by show business standards. Canadians are quite different from Americans and I have always thought that, where clothing is concerned, they are more invested in quality, while we are more invested in glamour. This can make their tweeds and hand-knitted sweaters (things I adore) seem stodgy.

The two of them onstage pressed whatever musical agenda they pleased and seemed completely unconcerned about the framework of a professional show. They never failed to move people, and profoundly. I remember sitting next to my pal John Rockwell at a club in New York City listening to them sing their devastating song “Talk to Me of Mendocino.” I was already blubbering into my root beer float and looked sideways at John. What I saw was a seasoned and highly discriminating music critic from
The New York Times
with two large tears rolling down his face.

Their children continue what they started. The most notable among them are Martha and Rufus Wainwright, two singers who, like their mother, Kate, and their Aunt Anna, never fail to make me cry. When the extended families of McGarrigles and Wainwrights give a concert, which they will do occasionally, it is like being caught in a genetic whirlwind of talent and inspiration.

Kate and Anna opened a door for me, and I scooted through it as fast as I could.

4

California Country Rock

Playing the Palomino Club in Los Angeles: Ed Black on guitar, Mickey McGhee on drums.

B
ACK IN
L
OS
A
NGELES
, I continued to look for musicians who would be sympathetic to the new songs I was finding. I put together a band with Bernie Leadon and Jeff Hanna, who was on hiatus from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. They called themselves the Corvettes. We played some shows around the country, but eventually Jeff went back to the Dirt Band and Bernie joined the Flying Burrito Brothers. Jeff, one of the friendliest, sweetest guys in the music business, introduced me to Steve Martin, who had the same manager as the Dirt Band, Bill McEuen. He was
the brother of the band’s dazzling multi-instrumentalist, John McEuen. We all wound up playing various shows together, some at the Troubadour, and some at the Boarding House in San Francisco. When we weren’t onstage we would watch Steve perform his brilliant early material: Balloon Animals, The Great Flydini, The Cruel Shoes, Arrow Through the Head. No one had achieved any great success in those days. Steve was just our pal, and we thought he was hilarious.

Bernie and I both lived north of Los Angeles in Topanga Canyon, so I spent a lot of time hanging out with him. I watched him hone his country rock guitar style by going to school on Merle Haggard. Every morning, Bernie would put on a pot of coffee, plug in his red Gibson ES-335 semi-hollow-body guitar, and drop the needle on the latest Haggard record. It was a double album called
Same Train, A Different Time
, and it was a tribute to Jimmie Rodgers. He learned all the guitar parts, and I learned the harmonies sung by Merle’s wife, Bonnie Owens. We learned all the other Merle Haggard records too, plus George Jones and Tammy Wynette.

Bernie still played in my band when he had time off from the Burrito Brothers, and one night we performed on a TV show called
Playboy After Dark
. After we finished the show, we went to the Troubadour to see what was going on at the bar. We ran into Bernie’s Burrito bandmate Gram Parsons. He said he was going to the Chateau Marmont, a Hollywood hotel where he was in residence, to play some music. He wanted us to come along. We got in Bernie’s car, and Gram directed us up a winding road in the Hollywood Hills to a large modern house that was definitely not the Chateau Marmont. When we went inside, we were introduced to Keith Richards. The Rolling Stones were in town putting the finishing touches on
Let It Bleed
, and Keith and Mick Jagger had rented a house for the time they would be working in Los Angeles.

Gram and Keith had struck up a friendship over Keith’s interest in learning about country music. We got down to business immediately and sang all the Merle Haggard songs we knew. Gram was singing lead, and Bernie and I added the harmony parts. Keith was playing guitar and soaking up everything Gram had to show him. All good musicians learn from one another this way. After a few hours, Bernie noticed it was two in the morning and said he needed to make the long drive back to Topanga Canyon. I had moved to Hollywood by then, and he said he would drop me off. Gram twisted his choirboy face into a pout and asked if I would stay and go through the George Jones repertoire. Jones’s material was based on duets with Tammy Wynette, so we could sing them without Bernie supplying the third part. Gram assured me that he could take me home because my house was close to the Chateau Marmont. I stayed. We went through George Jones, and then Keith played “Wild Horses,” a new song that he and Mick had just written.

Gram was salivating over this song and begged Keith to let him record it before the Rolling Stones did. This was a bold request, as writers who record don’t usually give up a song before they release it themselves. I was surprised when they allowed him to use it on the next Flying Burrito Brothers record, a year before they would include their own version on the album
Sticky Fingers
. I wanted the song too but knew I wasn’t going to have it.

It was about five in the morning, so I asked Gram if he could take me home as promised. He knit up his brow. “You see, dearie,” he said (Gram called people dearie, maybe because he was condescending to me, maybe because he grew up in the South, or maybe a little of both), “I only have my motorcycle up here, and I’d have to take you home on it.” I blanched. I wasn’t about to climb on a motorcycle with Gram in any condition, and his had deteriorated considerably after Bernie left. I hadn’t been
smoking the joint they were passing back and forth. I had tried marijuana several times, but in the words of my friend and longtime assistant Janet Stark, “When I smoke pot, it makes me want to hide under the bed with a box of graham crackers and
not
share.” I didn’t have any objections to them smoking but knew it didn’t get you as loaded as Gram seemed to be when he came back from one of his little excursions out of the room.