TWILIGHT IN THE LIVES OF ROCK STARS
Kyle Hemmings
Fuck Off
Benny Alonzo Cates, guitarist and singer of Quack Nation. Started as an underground FM group that eventually went mainstream. Biggest hit single, "Sabotaged Love."(b. 1956--1998).
So my agent is sitting behind this big-assed desk like you think it belongs to some Pentagon Dick and he's smoking a cigar, cheap like his fake alligator shoes, and he says, Benjamin, close the door and sit down. So I says, I don't need to sit down, man, just deliver what you got to deliver straight and fast. Okay, he says, and takes another puff like he's enjoying the suspense and this crack down my spirit. The truth is Benjamin, nobody cares that you're gay or that you dress like a rainbow, in fact, in this business, being different is what it's all about. So, like I'm waitin' for this big fat punch line, like maybe the girlies don't find me cute or maybe they're too young to remember Sal Mineo, or maybe my tight red pants is getting them too hot and their mamas have to slap them when they get home. It's like this, Benjamin. Bill doesn't want you playing at the Fillmore. He says It's nothing personal, NOTHING PERSONAL, but he doesn't think the music you play is music. Call it metal-against-metal, call it angry robot chicken fallout, call it gonzo post teen-age angst falsetto, call it Oliver Twist on Dexedrine, call it retro-beta-wave-neo-post-modern slice of life in E Flat with some angry theatrics thrown in, call it whatever you want. But he doesn't want you playing The Fillmore.
So I'm thinking hard about this. Who the fuck is Bill, anyway. Does he own me or something? In ten years, he'll be nursing warm milk with a straw. He'll be so demented he'll keep calling my name at night and scream what a mistake he made. So I says to myself, Benny, you gotta start over, man, and come clean. And when you start over, you must start at the bottom. So I go out, full blaze of summer day, bodies, nobodies, somebodies, drifting nowhere, anywhere, uptown, lowdown, East of Columbus. So I'm bopping along the sidewalk with my seersucker threads and I station myself, MYSELF, in front of these three black gents, all sitting against the wall of a bank, not doing much of anything. So I start tap dancing for them. A one and a two and a buckle my shoe. And so one takes out a harmonica and he starts playing. And another starts marking time, fingers tapping a garbage can lid. And the other starts singing Eartha Kitt's "Mink, Schmink," and a crowd begins to gather, little kids trying to copy my moves, leather soles flapping, and the mothers are tossing coins into the hat belonging to harmonica man. And I'm thinking, Fuck Bill. I don't need him. I'm starting from the bottom. Gonna tap my way to heaven. I’m gonna be cleansed, Mr. Cool.
Jeesus, Sugar! I never heard of Bill.
Soul Singer
Jesse Ingrim Smith, pop songwriter and ex-keyboardist of the post-punk band, June Cleaver's Mistake. (B. Toledo, Ohio, 1968-)
Three women almost gave me a voice
one thumb picked me on cherry summer days
but being so much younger I was out of reach
never recovered from a single wound.
The second was all fluttered notes
and glissando dives while the boys
from Ann Arbor Bay floated face up,
their hammer-on lives could not stay
nailed to the bone. By the time,
I met the third one, a girl who could
see that I was nothing but a switch,
a tremolo, and an empty cigar box
left around my parents' home,
I became the virtuoso of silence.
Cool White Fender
Wendell Wasermann, rhythm guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. Played in many 60s Garage and 70s Pre-punk bands. Most famous hit was the instrumental "Yo-Yo Girl," on which he experimented with electric sitar simulation,(actually before The Yardbirds did this). Some recorded jams with Jimmy Page and Peter Frampton, then, of Humble Pie. His fame faded in the 80s, but a 1996 reunion with some members of No Time for Charles, won back some of his old fan base as well as making new friends. (B. Dixel, North Carolina, 1946-2009).
In the 60s, you left wolves under the beds of women who couldn't quite howl as loudly as your first hooker when you were 13 and some small change. On stage, you smashed your guitar, a white Fender, into the amps, to impress an Italian film director you knew was in the audience. Instead, he casted The Yardbirds and from then on, you had to beg for a cameo appearance in any glitter girl's life. They say Ali McGraw turned you down. You were about to give up the guitar, actually, any electric instrument that could mimic the bottomless wail of the human voice.
In the 70s, you balled soul-eyed chicks, soft, ironic pout, for whom the world was a camera. One of them spread a rumor that Twiggy had gotten fat. You informed them that Twiggy went bankrupt.
And the only girl who ever loved you refused your offer of portable love. She said she wanted someone more stable, someone whose life she could have partial control over. Like a volume knob, you said, and walked out.
This woman, married with two distant children, a younger husband who grew up on smooth peanut butter and Mork and Mindy reruns, still keeps tabs on you. She watched you, looking so silly at your age in pumps and Elvis-tight pants, croon along with a nervous contestant-- an old Beatles tune in a surprise visit on Idol. The song was Nowhere Man. The audience loved you, applauded you for giving that girl, barely out of her braces, some very strong support.
And that night, the woman who would never live with you, quietly informs her husband that she will not shave her legs. "Pagan," her husband mutters, as if the correct answer to a Jeopardy question: Name a five-letter word beginning with P and meaning to have no religion.
Bridge of Sighs
Martha Taylor-Graves, former member of the Motown vocal trio, Tall, Dark, and Girl. (B. Detroit, MI. 1944).
At age 56, dropped by Motown, spurned as a solo act, the big shots, the club owners, said a carbon copy of three singers, all named Diana. A disastrous duet with Brian Wilson. "I never was a surfer chick," she will later say in interview. Sitting in a club with some new polished guy, she's recognized and asked, "Oh, are those real eyelashes, darling?"
So she's standing on the footbridge arching over the river that separates her old school from her old house. She didn't ring her momma that she was coming over for a visit. Imagine if mama looks out her window, even with one bad eye, and sees her child staring back at her. But Martha didn't come here today to look through windows or to apologize for marrying a white man who turned out to be like any other man or at her mama's request will sing 1964's smash hit, "I Never Want What's Good for Me." No. She came here today to throw her life over a bridge.
But for now, she's rehearsing the fall, head first, the ripples radiating towards the edge of all runny desire, the reflections of children playing hopscotch, running with Paper Mache airplanes, a man in tuxedo presenting her and the other two Tall, Dark and Girl members, the Best Music Award of the Year, then the plaque falling from her hands, sinking underwater. She wants this question answered: Can I start over? Can I come back as someone of my own choosing, a singer of sultry man-eating lyrics? Can I be reborn as someone better? Yes, what a condescending way to put it. Tell me this isn't all there is.
Martha Taylor-Graves, who once had a voice of capable of spilling honey and weaving silk, a body lithe and affectionate and breakable, who once had the ear of the most thin-skinned and ethereal virgin from slum-slutted streets, this Martha Taylor-Graves, who was told by so many people on the way up that she would never make it if she didn't sleep with the right people and didn't take the dressing room at the far end of the hall, the one reserved for starlets on the rise, but always second bill to groups like Kissing Cousins or to comeback divas like Amanda "Baby Face" Drake, Martha Taylor-Graves can't swim, she can't swim to save her life, and whatever lies at the bottom of Iron-Bound River is something that hopefully will help make her rise with grace and float and float, higher than the stained glass windows of Jesus and His sheep, higher than her momma's ricocheting Sunday School hymns, those long days of sticky fingers behind robes, bird-like voices that will later sing for sweet Mary Janes.
Fuck Off
Benny Alonzo Cates, guitarist and singer of Quack Nation. Started as an underground FM group that eventually went mainstream. Biggest hit single, "Sabotaged Love."(b. 1956--1998).
So my agent is sitting behind this big-assed desk like you think it belongs to some Pentagon Dick and he's smoking a cigar, cheap like his fake alligator shoes, and he says, Benjamin, close the door and sit down. So I says, I don't need to sit down, man, just deliver what you got to deliver straight and fast. Okay, he says, and takes another puff like he's enjoying the suspense and this crack down my spirit. The truth is Benjamin, nobody cares that you're gay or that you dress like a rainbow, in fact, in this business, being different is what it's all about. So, like I'm waitin' for this big fat punch line, like maybe the girlies don't find me cute or maybe they're too young to remember Sal Mineo, or maybe my tight red pants is getting them too hot and their mamas have to slap them when they get home. It's like this, Benjamin. Bill doesn't want you playing at the Fillmore. He says It's nothing personal, NOTHING PERSONAL, but he doesn't think the music you play is music. Call it metal-against-metal, call it angry robot chicken fallout, call it gonzo post teen-age angst falsetto, call it Oliver Twist on Dexedrine, call it retro-beta-wave-neo-post-modern slice of life in E Flat with some angry theatrics thrown in, call it whatever you want. But he doesn't want you playing The Fillmore.
So I'm thinking hard about this. Who the fuck is Bill, anyway. Does he own me or something? In ten years, he'll be nursing warm milk with a straw. He'll be so demented he'll keep calling my name at night and scream what a mistake he made. So I says to myself, Benny, you gotta start over, man, and come clean. And when you start over, you must start at the bottom. So I go out, full blaze of summer day, bodies, nobodies, somebodies, drifting nowhere, anywhere, uptown, lowdown, East of Columbus. So I'm bopping along the sidewalk with my seersucker threads and I station myself, MYSELF, in front of these three black gents, all sitting against the wall of a bank, not doing much of anything. So I start tap dancing for them. A one and a two and a buckle my shoe. And so one takes out a harmonica and he starts playing. And another starts marking time, fingers tapping a garbage can lid. And the other starts singing Eartha Kitt's "Mink, Schmink," and a crowd begins to gather, little kids trying to copy my moves, leather soles flapping, and the mothers are tossing coins into the hat belonging to harmonica man. And I'm thinking, Fuck Bill. I don't need him. I'm starting from the bottom. Gonna tap my way to heaven. I’m gonna be cleansed, Mr. Cool.
Jeesus, Sugar! I never heard of Bill.
Soul Singer
Jesse Ingrim Smith, pop songwriter and ex-keyboardist of the post-punk band, June Cleaver's Mistake. (B. Toledo, Ohio, 1968-)
Three women almost gave me a voice
one thumb picked me on cherry summer days
but being so much younger I was out of reach
never recovered from a single wound.
The second was all fluttered notes
and glissando dives while the boys
from Ann Arbor Bay floated face up,
their hammer-on lives could not stay
nailed to the bone. By the time,
I met the third one, a girl who could
see that I was nothing but a switch,
a tremolo, and an empty cigar box
left around my parents' home,
I became the virtuoso of silence.
Cool White Fender
Wendell Wasermann, rhythm guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. Played in many 60s Garage and 70s Pre-punk bands. Most famous hit was the instrumental "Yo-Yo Girl," on which he experimented with electric sitar simulation,(actually before The Yardbirds did this). Some recorded jams with Jimmy Page and Peter Frampton, then, of Humble Pie. His fame faded in the 80s, but a 1996 reunion with some members of No Time for Charles, won back some of his old fan base as well as making new friends. (B. Dixel, North Carolina, 1946-2009).
In the 60s, you left wolves under the beds of women who couldn't quite howl as loudly as your first hooker when you were 13 and some small change. On stage, you smashed your guitar, a white Fender, into the amps, to impress an Italian film director you knew was in the audience. Instead, he casted The Yardbirds and from then on, you had to beg for a cameo appearance in any glitter girl's life. They say Ali McGraw turned you down. You were about to give up the guitar, actually, any electric instrument that could mimic the bottomless wail of the human voice.
In the 70s, you balled soul-eyed chicks, soft, ironic pout, for whom the world was a camera. One of them spread a rumor that Twiggy had gotten fat. You informed them that Twiggy went bankrupt.
And the only girl who ever loved you refused your offer of portable love. She said she wanted someone more stable, someone whose life she could have partial control over. Like a volume knob, you said, and walked out.
This woman, married with two distant children, a younger husband who grew up on smooth peanut butter and Mork and Mindy reruns, still keeps tabs on you. She watched you, looking so silly at your age in pumps and Elvis-tight pants, croon along with a nervous contestant-- an old Beatles tune in a surprise visit on Idol. The song was Nowhere Man. The audience loved you, applauded you for giving that girl, barely out of her braces, some very strong support.
And that night, the woman who would never live with you, quietly informs her husband that she will not shave her legs. "Pagan," her husband mutters, as if the correct answer to a Jeopardy question: Name a five-letter word beginning with P and meaning to have no religion.
Bridge of Sighs
Martha Taylor-Graves, former member of the Motown vocal trio, Tall, Dark, and Girl. (B. Detroit, MI. 1944).
At age 56, dropped by Motown, spurned as a solo act, the big shots, the club owners, said a carbon copy of three singers, all named Diana. A disastrous duet with Brian Wilson. "I never was a surfer chick," she will later say in interview. Sitting in a club with some new polished guy, she's recognized and asked, "Oh, are those real eyelashes, darling?"
So she's standing on the footbridge arching over the river that separates her old school from her old house. She didn't ring her momma that she was coming over for a visit. Imagine if mama looks out her window, even with one bad eye, and sees her child staring back at her. But Martha didn't come here today to look through windows or to apologize for marrying a white man who turned out to be like any other man or at her mama's request will sing 1964's smash hit, "I Never Want What's Good for Me." No. She came here today to throw her life over a bridge.
But for now, she's rehearsing the fall, head first, the ripples radiating towards the edge of all runny desire, the reflections of children playing hopscotch, running with Paper Mache airplanes, a man in tuxedo presenting her and the other two Tall, Dark and Girl members, the Best Music Award of the Year, then the plaque falling from her hands, sinking underwater. She wants this question answered: Can I start over? Can I come back as someone of my own choosing, a singer of sultry man-eating lyrics? Can I be reborn as someone better? Yes, what a condescending way to put it. Tell me this isn't all there is.
Martha Taylor-Graves, who once had a voice of capable of spilling honey and weaving silk, a body lithe and affectionate and breakable, who once had the ear of the most thin-skinned and ethereal virgin from slum-slutted streets, this Martha Taylor-Graves, who was told by so many people on the way up that she would never make it if she didn't sleep with the right people and didn't take the dressing room at the far end of the hall, the one reserved for starlets on the rise, but always second bill to groups like Kissing Cousins or to comeback divas like Amanda "Baby Face" Drake, Martha Taylor-Graves can't swim, she can't swim to save her life, and whatever lies at the bottom of Iron-Bound River is something that hopefully will help make her rise with grace and float and float, higher than the stained glass windows of Jesus and His sheep, higher than her momma's ricocheting Sunday School hymns, those long days of sticky fingers behind robes, bird-like voices that will later sing for sweet Mary Janes.