Five Things I Saw & Heard This Week
Transcripts from the everyday world of music by Martin Colyer
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Currently, of course, everyone is home, but here’s the story of Charlie and Peter, in Peter’s words:
“I met Charlie out at the Vapors Club, in Memphis, back in 1970. He was fairly obscure. So I go out there and I met Charlie and his wife, Margaret Ann, and I just never met anybody who I liked more on first acquaintance. I just loved them both — one of those things where you feel like you’ve really connected. Between sets, Charlie would tell me about growing up outside of Forrest City and growing up in the church; the guilt he felt and the depression he suffered, his drinking. Charlie was not an “up” person. He once said, “I don’t know what it is, I just don’t dig happy songs.” And Margaret Ann, during the sets, would tell me the same stories but in a more rounded, expressive way. She was a brilliant woman as well.
Then I wrote it up for “Feel Like Going Home,” and nobody had done any interviews with Charlie at that point. And as I wrote it, I had the terrible feeling that these two people who I’d really liked so much, that I was never going to see them again. The chapter seems mild by today’s standards, but I had to tell the truth, and it was terrible. Shortly after it was published, the secretary of the publisher called me up and said Charlie Rich just called and ordered 35 copies, one for everyone in his family. Not long after, Charlie told me, “The thing about it was, it was the truth. It hurt, it really hurt, but it was the truth.”
A couple of years later he invited me to New York. I hadn’t seen him in a while and he was playing at Max’s Kansas City. “Behind Closed Doors” had just come out and he was on a publicity tour. And he says, “I got a surprise for you, man.” And I said, “Great, I love surprises.” Which is not at all the case, but what are you gonna say? And so he played the song “Feel Like Going Home” for the first time. And he told me, “I wrote this out of the feeling I got from reading the book.”
And a few years later, he sent me a 7-inch reel-to-reel of the piano demo. And as far as I know, that’s the only copy. Roland Janes later told me, “That’s such a great song, Peter, is the book anywhere near as good?” And I said, “Nope.” It’s no big deal, really, but I mean can you imagine a greater thrill?”
a fascinating post. you’ve been busy this week.
Thanks, Alex! What I need is a good editor, just to keep 5 Things weekly and not this jumbled ”every three weeks thing” that it’s become!
Thanks for another great post – about Bob’s troubled relationship with graphic design and Magnum. There’s another connection. When Bob exhibited The Asia Series at the Gagosian Gallery in 2011, fans quickly noticed that three paintings bore a strong resemblance to works by Magnum photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dmitri Kessel and Jacob Aue Sobol. As the controversy heated up, Magnum declared that Dylan had paid to license these images for his paintings. [https://web.archive.org/web/20111007073205/http://blogs.artinfo.com/artintheair/2011/10/01/bob-dylan-paid-to-license-asia-series-photos-magnum-says/]
Like everyone else, I’ve been listening to Bob’s last three releases and trying to make sense of my response. I read something last night that illuminated me. New Yorker journalist Hua Hsu, in a profile of Maxine Hong Kingston, wrote: “When the scholar Edward Said was nearing the end of his life, he explored the idea of ‘late style,’ how artists’ work accommodates the awareness that their days are numbered. He describes them engaging in works full of formal complexity, experimentation, and contradiction, all of it meant as some kind of final statement of what art can be.” That’s it! I thought. Though I must say False Prophet is by far my favourite. I just love that blues-driven voice-of-doom sound.
Your comments are always so thoughtful, Mick, you need a blog of your own…!
I still have all my Hot House memorabilia, including the posters that have always moved with me, well kept and I still treasure it with the same passion I felt the first time I listened to Don’t Come to Stay. I often listen to the records and I still think they shouldn’t be overlooked and let me assure you it has nothing to do with personal nostalgia or how attached I feel to those records because of what they mean to me.
For reasons I cannot fathom, I can’t ‘like’ this. WordPress just doesn’t let me do that anymore. But I can submit a comment and my comment is: ‘Like’.