Complete Control
Let's go out to the movies!
Two recent rock-related films deserve extra special mention here--
Firstly, Anton Corbijn's "Control", could be just about the best rock biopic to date, maybe even the best film of the year (confession: I'm more than slightly biased: Anton's an old friend since the Beefheart days, he shot some memorable photos of Don Van Vliet in the Mojave Desert, one of which is on the cover of the final Beefheart album "Ice Cream for Crow", Don looking sorrowful and soulful in front of a Joshua tree, which might well have been the inspiration for Anton's buddies' U2 and their album of the same name)...
...right after Caroline and I got married in 1984 we began to hang and visit Anton frequently in his various London studios and apartments, bombing around London in his little sports car in the middle of the night... he took us once to the fabled Windmill Restaurant, a second story walkup on Oxford Street, alas no more, eventually falling afoul of the wrecking ball a few years ago like so much of the world, a 30's architectural marvel sporting a fantastic roccoco-a-go-go design by famed Scottish surrealist photographer Angus McBean...later Anton gave me a print of an actual portrait he made of the mad bearded wandering Angus--also a shot of a nude Ari Up (from the Slits) and a very pregnant (with Herman Brood's brood) Nina Hagen, taken on a beach somewhere in Spain...many years later Anton took a photo of me on the old Christopher Street docks, which I used for the cover of my 1992 "Gods and Monsters" album, you can view it on my home page and in the discography section of my website--soon come, too, online, as about 10 of my catalog albums are about to be re-released digitally...
Besides his incredible photos, I've loved much of Anton's actual film work since Paul Morley got him to direct some of the early videos for Propaganda...he also made an excellent short film entitled "Some Yo-Yo Stuff" about Don Van Vliet which brought tears to my eyes upon viewing in the late 90's...his lighting and composition sensibility is masterful, his ability to make familiar faces and subjects strange and dislocated is artful and miraculous--but who could guess that he would turn out to be so adept and accomplished a director of actors?
The performances he pulls out of Sam Riley as Joy Division's doomed singer Ian Curtis and Samantha Morton as his long-suffering wife are revelatory, and ever so true to life (and death)... you kind of forget these are actors up there on the screen after awhile, the scenes of the band's formation/gestation and the low level Mancunian pop 'n pub life in general have the ring 'o truth/right shade of grim about them...I was never a huge Joy Division fan back in the day quite honestly, although the late lamented Lou Stathis (the erudite cultural critic whose music writing in the pages of "Heavy Metal" and other publications was quite prescient/on the money) kept pressing their records on me, and entreating me to listen to them more closely--good on ye, Lou... over the years my appreciation of the band increased, quite a bit...and Anton's film captures their moment and momentum and ultimate tragedy superbly--Bravo, Anton!
(Addendum: there was a witty play/japerie about the life and death of Ian Curtis that was performed at the New York Performance Works in Tribeca about 10 years ago, written by "Spin" scribe Marc Spitz, entitled "I Wanna Be Adored"--very entertaining in its black humorous, droll-ish way, opening scene was Ian Curtis waking up in limbo with a noose around his neck, marveling "I've finally done it! I've topped meself!"... the play boasted cameos by slinky and tres erotique Annie Parisse ( "Law and Order"'s Alexandra Borgia) as Ian Curtis's Belgian Other Woman, and Peter Dinklage (of "Station Agent" fame, currently knocking 'em dead on screen as the dwarf hustler in Frank Oz's "Death at a Funeral") as a devilish imp who comes to close the proceedings and ring down the curtain at the end)...
The other really good film in a musical vein out there currently that I've seen recently is Julien Temple's excellent documentary about Joe Strummer, "The Future is Unwritten".
Now I have more than a glancing acquaintance with the subject at hand, as once upon a time I worked on the advertising supporting the first US releases from The Clash as a writer in CBS Records' Creative Services Dept., authoring the line "The Only Group That Matters" which was used on various Clash posters and print ad campaigns, and which seems to have stuck in the public consciousness to this day/entered the pop vernacular (probably my most famous ad line--it was quoted by the nerdy brain police/techies in Michel Gondry's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"--but not nearly as fun as authoring "Can You Take 12 Inches of 'British Steel'?", for Judas Priest's eponymous album of the same name; or dressing Rob Halford, the group's lead singer, as a school safety patrolman for some MTV promo clips we shot in Hollywood for JP's "Turbo" album--breaking the law, breaking the law!). Both A.O. Scott and Owen Gleiberman referred to this line in their review of the Strummer documentary in the NY Times and Entertainment Weekly, respectively, Scott referring to it as "record company hype"--hype it might have smacked of, coming from a monolithic record company..
But let me assure you dear reader, that personally, corporate tool/wage slave though I might have been, there was usually more than a touch of the subversive about a good deal of my efforts (yes); indeed, on the days when I wasn't feeling like a total whore, I felt like a complete mole in the decaying corpus of the corporation (the group's name is Nature's Divine? Okay--how 'bout an ad with the headline: "People Everywhere are Answering the Call of Nature!" No problemo.) (And they bought it, too...)
But vis a a vis The Clash--in that particular time and space, 1978-79--I honestly did believe, fervently, that they were, for sure--The Only Group That Mattered.
Which I continued to believe--up to the point when I joined Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band, in 1980--
After which I believed that WE were the only group that mattered :-)
But hey, let's return now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, as the Clash's manager Bernie Rhodes comes a'calling in the fall of '77 to the lucky 13th floor of Black Rock, 51 West 52nd Street, home of Epic Records, a division of CBS Records (before it was gutted and sold to Sony), having come for a sniff 'round the premises where his charges are due soon to be unleashed on the world, Epic Records having the honor of releasing their work in America due to an actual random A&R toss of the coin at the 1977 CBS Records Convention in London--which resulted in The Vibrators (!) being assigned to Columbia Records (they were on Epic in the UK), and The Clash assigned to the (to quote Jeff Beck in Rolling Stone): "lesser of the two labels" (this is not necessarily my opinion: indeed, I had many friends working at Epic when I did my time at Black Rock, many competent people worked there...but it is true to say that, within the corporate culture itself, Epic was not considered the front-line label)...
In any case, just about the only people in the whole company directly after the CBS convention who had actually listened to the Clash on import, and honestly, really gave more than a tinker's damn about them, were me and my pal Marilyn "MT" Laverty (pre-Alan Betrock, living in a residential hotel in the east 20's, at the time a secretary for Columbia Records' publicity department....also, a real cutting-edge music enthusiast, and a gifted freelance writer for "Trouser Press" magazine, author of the classic "Devo--Threat or Menace?" article)...to us, in the summer of '77, that first Clash album sounded as good as music gets.
Somehow or other shortly thereafter Marilyn and I hooked up with Mr. Rhodes (who had grown weary of correcting the record company local girls--who mercilessly razzed this be-leathered munchkin as 'Bernie'-- with a pained: "It's BerNARD!")--I guess in his eyes Marilyn and I were the only record company employees who mattered, or at least, gave him the respectful time of day...
and so we took him out of the building one afternoon and headed Downtown, to scout suitable venues for The Clash's first NYC appearance, which was still about a year away (at the Academy of Music on 14th Street)...I remember we went for a look-see to Irving Plaza, also CBGB's, of course, and--I found I really liked the guy--he was a wind-up artist, sure--annoying, cryptic, evasive, haughty, and sly--and yet, essentially benign, dedicated thoroughly to his boys/instilling in them his left-socialist anti-authoritarian worldview/agenda, and very down to earth (his Eastern European Jewish prole roots kept showing)--sharp as a needle, in other words (he made a pun at one point about "bringing home the (Francis) bacon"), a good kick up the ass/rallying point/father figure for wayward British yout'--another yiddishe upsetter of apple carts--originally Malcolm McLaren's shop assistant (Julie Burchill used to refer to him as "the assistant haberdasher"), he'd broken away, found his own band, and helped mold them into the magnificent Clash (a controversial subject at best in the ranks of Clash fans--really, the guy probably doesn't get enough credit for this--it's an old story)...anyway he left Marilyn and I at the end of our evening out with him drinking in a bar with a promise to come back to town with his boys and "give you all a good thumping!" Which they did, in spades...
And--what else is there to say, really, but that Joe Strummer was, is, and remains, an absolute Giant, a Hero, a fantastic songwriter/rebel rouser/frontman and foil to great-in-their-own right) Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Topper Headon (and don't forget Terry Chimes)--ironically, the last to join after Mick and Paul, Joe was the heart and soul of that band, it was always his show, from the get-go, in the total service of You, the audience...and this film captures Joe and The Clash's essence pretty damn well, though some may quibble with its overly schematic format--I didn't mind in the slightest...
shortly after Joe died, Bruce Springsteen and Little Steven did a fantastic version of "London Calling" at the Grammies--and truth to tell it was the best live number I'd ever seen performed on that show...like Bruce, Joe had the total power of conviction as a performer and writer, and the skills to back it up...
Yep, I was honored to work on behalf of The Clash, I was a Believer (and truth to tell, there were a few others at Black Rock--among them Felice Rosser, Robert Smith, Arthur Levy, Susan Blond, Ira Sherman, Bruce Harris--who brought in Sandy Pearlman to produce their great second album)...and I hung in there as a Believer, to the bitter end, I actually enjoyed much of their last Bernie Rhodes--or was it Jose Unidos?-- produced album "Cut the Crap"..."This is England" is one of the great singles of all time, I played it over and over and over in my annus horribilis of 1985, while recuperating from hospital....that, and The Smiths' "The Boy With the Thorn in His Side" (which I literally could relate to)...and also, the first Big Audio Dynamite album...
Played them over and over and over...
Doin' It to Death...
xxLove
Gary
ps One final film note: Michele Ohayon's "Save a Pencil for Me" is one of the finest documentaries ever--a Holocaust-themed memoir about a Dutch couple whose love endured the death camps and flourished and ripened into splendid old age (they're both still alive, mirabile dictu)... a documentary that transcends its dark numbing context... it lifts one up soaring at the end into the realm of the best of human possibility...please see this film if you get the chance.
Two recent rock-related films deserve extra special mention here--
Firstly, Anton Corbijn's "Control", could be just about the best rock biopic to date, maybe even the best film of the year (confession: I'm more than slightly biased: Anton's an old friend since the Beefheart days, he shot some memorable photos of Don Van Vliet in the Mojave Desert, one of which is on the cover of the final Beefheart album "Ice Cream for Crow", Don looking sorrowful and soulful in front of a Joshua tree, which might well have been the inspiration for Anton's buddies' U2 and their album of the same name)...
...right after Caroline and I got married in 1984 we began to hang and visit Anton frequently in his various London studios and apartments, bombing around London in his little sports car in the middle of the night... he took us once to the fabled Windmill Restaurant, a second story walkup on Oxford Street, alas no more, eventually falling afoul of the wrecking ball a few years ago like so much of the world, a 30's architectural marvel sporting a fantastic roccoco-a-go-go design by famed Scottish surrealist photographer Angus McBean...later Anton gave me a print of an actual portrait he made of the mad bearded wandering Angus--also a shot of a nude Ari Up (from the Slits) and a very pregnant (with Herman Brood's brood) Nina Hagen, taken on a beach somewhere in Spain...many years later Anton took a photo of me on the old Christopher Street docks, which I used for the cover of my 1992 "Gods and Monsters" album, you can view it on my home page and in the discography section of my website--soon come, too, online, as about 10 of my catalog albums are about to be re-released digitally...
Besides his incredible photos, I've loved much of Anton's actual film work since Paul Morley got him to direct some of the early videos for Propaganda...he also made an excellent short film entitled "Some Yo-Yo Stuff" about Don Van Vliet which brought tears to my eyes upon viewing in the late 90's...his lighting and composition sensibility is masterful, his ability to make familiar faces and subjects strange and dislocated is artful and miraculous--but who could guess that he would turn out to be so adept and accomplished a director of actors?
The performances he pulls out of Sam Riley as Joy Division's doomed singer Ian Curtis and Samantha Morton as his long-suffering wife are revelatory, and ever so true to life (and death)... you kind of forget these are actors up there on the screen after awhile, the scenes of the band's formation/gestation and the low level Mancunian pop 'n pub life in general have the ring 'o truth/right shade of grim about them...I was never a huge Joy Division fan back in the day quite honestly, although the late lamented Lou Stathis (the erudite cultural critic whose music writing in the pages of "Heavy Metal" and other publications was quite prescient/on the money) kept pressing their records on me, and entreating me to listen to them more closely--good on ye, Lou... over the years my appreciation of the band increased, quite a bit...and Anton's film captures their moment and momentum and ultimate tragedy superbly--Bravo, Anton!
(Addendum: there was a witty play/japerie about the life and death of Ian Curtis that was performed at the New York Performance Works in Tribeca about 10 years ago, written by "Spin" scribe Marc Spitz, entitled "I Wanna Be Adored"--very entertaining in its black humorous, droll-ish way, opening scene was Ian Curtis waking up in limbo with a noose around his neck, marveling "I've finally done it! I've topped meself!"... the play boasted cameos by slinky and tres erotique Annie Parisse ( "Law and Order"'s Alexandra Borgia) as Ian Curtis's Belgian Other Woman, and Peter Dinklage (of "Station Agent" fame, currently knocking 'em dead on screen as the dwarf hustler in Frank Oz's "Death at a Funeral") as a devilish imp who comes to close the proceedings and ring down the curtain at the end)...
The other really good film in a musical vein out there currently that I've seen recently is Julien Temple's excellent documentary about Joe Strummer, "The Future is Unwritten".
Now I have more than a glancing acquaintance with the subject at hand, as once upon a time I worked on the advertising supporting the first US releases from The Clash as a writer in CBS Records' Creative Services Dept., authoring the line "The Only Group That Matters" which was used on various Clash posters and print ad campaigns, and which seems to have stuck in the public consciousness to this day/entered the pop vernacular (probably my most famous ad line--it was quoted by the nerdy brain police/techies in Michel Gondry's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"--but not nearly as fun as authoring "Can You Take 12 Inches of 'British Steel'?", for Judas Priest's eponymous album of the same name; or dressing Rob Halford, the group's lead singer, as a school safety patrolman for some MTV promo clips we shot in Hollywood for JP's "Turbo" album--breaking the law, breaking the law!). Both A.O. Scott and Owen Gleiberman referred to this line in their review of the Strummer documentary in the NY Times and Entertainment Weekly, respectively, Scott referring to it as "record company hype"--hype it might have smacked of, coming from a monolithic record company..
But let me assure you dear reader, that personally, corporate tool/wage slave though I might have been, there was usually more than a touch of the subversive about a good deal of my efforts (yes); indeed, on the days when I wasn't feeling like a total whore, I felt like a complete mole in the decaying corpus of the corporation (the group's name is Nature's Divine? Okay--how 'bout an ad with the headline: "People Everywhere are Answering the Call of Nature!" No problemo.) (And they bought it, too...)
But vis a a vis The Clash--in that particular time and space, 1978-79--I honestly did believe, fervently, that they were, for sure--The Only Group That Mattered.
Which I continued to believe--up to the point when I joined Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band, in 1980--
After which I believed that WE were the only group that mattered :-)
But hey, let's return now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, as the Clash's manager Bernie Rhodes comes a'calling in the fall of '77 to the lucky 13th floor of Black Rock, 51 West 52nd Street, home of Epic Records, a division of CBS Records (before it was gutted and sold to Sony), having come for a sniff 'round the premises where his charges are due soon to be unleashed on the world, Epic Records having the honor of releasing their work in America due to an actual random A&R toss of the coin at the 1977 CBS Records Convention in London--which resulted in The Vibrators (!) being assigned to Columbia Records (they were on Epic in the UK), and The Clash assigned to the (to quote Jeff Beck in Rolling Stone): "lesser of the two labels" (this is not necessarily my opinion: indeed, I had many friends working at Epic when I did my time at Black Rock, many competent people worked there...but it is true to say that, within the corporate culture itself, Epic was not considered the front-line label)...
In any case, just about the only people in the whole company directly after the CBS convention who had actually listened to the Clash on import, and honestly, really gave more than a tinker's damn about them, were me and my pal Marilyn "MT" Laverty (pre-Alan Betrock, living in a residential hotel in the east 20's, at the time a secretary for Columbia Records' publicity department....also, a real cutting-edge music enthusiast, and a gifted freelance writer for "Trouser Press" magazine, author of the classic "Devo--Threat or Menace?" article)...to us, in the summer of '77, that first Clash album sounded as good as music gets.
Somehow or other shortly thereafter Marilyn and I hooked up with Mr. Rhodes (who had grown weary of correcting the record company local girls--who mercilessly razzed this be-leathered munchkin as 'Bernie'-- with a pained: "It's BerNARD!")--I guess in his eyes Marilyn and I were the only record company employees who mattered, or at least, gave him the respectful time of day...
and so we took him out of the building one afternoon and headed Downtown, to scout suitable venues for The Clash's first NYC appearance, which was still about a year away (at the Academy of Music on 14th Street)...I remember we went for a look-see to Irving Plaza, also CBGB's, of course, and--I found I really liked the guy--he was a wind-up artist, sure--annoying, cryptic, evasive, haughty, and sly--and yet, essentially benign, dedicated thoroughly to his boys/instilling in them his left-socialist anti-authoritarian worldview/agenda, and very down to earth (his Eastern European Jewish prole roots kept showing)--sharp as a needle, in other words (he made a pun at one point about "bringing home the (Francis) bacon"), a good kick up the ass/rallying point/father figure for wayward British yout'--another yiddishe upsetter of apple carts--originally Malcolm McLaren's shop assistant (Julie Burchill used to refer to him as "the assistant haberdasher"), he'd broken away, found his own band, and helped mold them into the magnificent Clash (a controversial subject at best in the ranks of Clash fans--really, the guy probably doesn't get enough credit for this--it's an old story)...anyway he left Marilyn and I at the end of our evening out with him drinking in a bar with a promise to come back to town with his boys and "give you all a good thumping!" Which they did, in spades...
And--what else is there to say, really, but that Joe Strummer was, is, and remains, an absolute Giant, a Hero, a fantastic songwriter/rebel rouser/frontman and foil to great-in-their-own right) Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Topper Headon (and don't forget Terry Chimes)--ironically, the last to join after Mick and Paul, Joe was the heart and soul of that band, it was always his show, from the get-go, in the total service of You, the audience...and this film captures Joe and The Clash's essence pretty damn well, though some may quibble with its overly schematic format--I didn't mind in the slightest...
shortly after Joe died, Bruce Springsteen and Little Steven did a fantastic version of "London Calling" at the Grammies--and truth to tell it was the best live number I'd ever seen performed on that show...like Bruce, Joe had the total power of conviction as a performer and writer, and the skills to back it up...
Yep, I was honored to work on behalf of The Clash, I was a Believer (and truth to tell, there were a few others at Black Rock--among them Felice Rosser, Robert Smith, Arthur Levy, Susan Blond, Ira Sherman, Bruce Harris--who brought in Sandy Pearlman to produce their great second album)...and I hung in there as a Believer, to the bitter end, I actually enjoyed much of their last Bernie Rhodes--or was it Jose Unidos?-- produced album "Cut the Crap"..."This is England" is one of the great singles of all time, I played it over and over and over in my annus horribilis of 1985, while recuperating from hospital....that, and The Smiths' "The Boy With the Thorn in His Side" (which I literally could relate to)...and also, the first Big Audio Dynamite album...
Played them over and over and over...
Doin' It to Death...
xxLove
Gary
ps One final film note: Michele Ohayon's "Save a Pencil for Me" is one of the finest documentaries ever--a Holocaust-themed memoir about a Dutch couple whose love endured the death camps and flourished and ripened into splendid old age (they're both still alive, mirabile dictu)... a documentary that transcends its dark numbing context... it lifts one up soaring at the end into the realm of the best of human possibility...please see this film if you get the chance.
posted by Gary Lucas at 5:21 PM
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