[Mb-hair] Fw: [Mb-civic] A Rock Critic's Greatest Hits - Steve Morse - Boston Globe Sunday Magazine

[Michael Butler]

Super, Barbara I am certain Bill doesn't mind.
XO M

> I am forwarding this from Civic cause I thought HAiR folks would enjoy it as
> well, Hopefully you do NOT mind Bill..
> 
> peace,
> barbara
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: William Swiggard
> Sent: Sun, 9 Apr 2006 06:58:12 -0700
> To: mb-civic
> Subject: [Mb-civic] A Rock Critic's Greatest Hits - Steve Morse - Boston Globe
> Sunday Magazine
> 
> 
> A Rock Critic's Greatest Hits
> 
> 
>   I shared bourbon with Keith Richards, followed my nose to track down
>   Bob Marley, and had Bruce Springsteen practically drip sweat on me.
>   In 30 years of covering rock for the Globe, I collected enough
>   stories to last a lifetime. These are a few of my favorites.
> 
> By Steve Morse  |  April 9, 2006  |  The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine
> 
> MY LIFELONG OBSESSION with rock music began as a teenager, when I went
> to see the Rolling Stones at the Manning Bowl in Lynn in 1966. It was a
> short-lived gig that featured a mini-riot, when fans rushed a small
> stage and police repelled them with tear gas as Mick Jagger, Keith
> Richards, and company piled into cars and left. Amid that brief flurry
> of sound and insanity, my appetite was whetted.
> 
> Lured deeper, I caught Janis Joplin at Harvard Stadium (her last live
> performance), Jimi Hendrix at the now-defunct Carousel Theatre in
> Framingham, the Byrds at the Boston Tea Party in the South End, and
> Fleetwood Mac, the Grateful Dead, and Jethro Tull at Boston's Ark, where
> Avalon now stands. I slapped high-fives with crazed rock poet Jim
> Morrison of The Doors as he zigzagged through a crowd at the Crosstown
> Bus in Brighton, where hippie girls danced in go-go cages and tinfoil
> adorned the walls for a psychedelic ambience.
> 
> During the summer of 1969, I caught the Stones again, this time with
> 400,000 fans in London's Hyde Park, just days after their guitarist,
> Brian Jones, was found dead in his swimming pool. Jagger read parts of
> Adonais by Percy Bysshe Shelley and released thousands of butterflies in
> Jones's honor. I also saw Led Zeppelin in England twice that summer.
> First I hitchhiked to the Bath Festival of Blues and pushed through the
> hordes until I was 20 feet from Zeppelin's onstage mania. Then I took a
> 4:15 a.m. train back to London to see them again at Royal Albert Hall.
> They were the best live band I had heard back then, though Hendrix was
> the best individual talent. His guitar solos were intoxicating, and it
> was all true about how he rubbed up against his microphone stand and
> sent women into hysterics.
> 
> In 30 years of covering rock music for the Boston Globe, I attended
> about 250 shows annually. I traveled, covering tour openings for Michael
> Jackson in Kansas City, Pink Floyd in Miami, Prince in Detroit, and U2
> in Las Vegas. And even if I'd never left town, I still could say that I
> saw Peter Wolf, Steven Tyler, Brad Delp, Aimee Mann, and Ric Ocasek lift
> the Boston rock scene to its greatest heights. It was a dream ride
> through a golden age of rock 'n' roll, from AC/DC to Phish, from James
> Brown to Eminem, from Live Aid to FarmAid, and the last two Woodstock
> festivals.
> 
> I get goose bumps looking back on it all, but the way I see it, I was
> just in the right place at the right time. And you can't ask for more
> than that.
> 
> I GREW UP IN THE BOSTON AREA in the 1950s and '60s, living in Beacon
> Hill, Brighton, Weymouth, and finally Wellesley, where my self-made
> businessman father eventually brought us. He was a wool buyer who was
> gone for long stretches in Montana, Wyoming, and other Western states.
> After attending Wellesley High School, I went off to Brown University,
> graduating in 1970, and then landed a job teaching social studies at
> Barrington High School in Rhode Island. My career as a high school
> teacher was short-lived (I was far too lax to control the kids), and my
> love of music was too strong to ignore. So I tried my hand at freelance
> writing, starting with country music for a long-gone publication called
> Pop Top.
> 
> My first Boston Globe review appeared on December 20, 1975. I went to
> hear country fiddler Vassar Clements at Club Passim in Harvard Square. I
> was hooked even more when, the day after the show, I accompanied
> Clements to the Berklee College of Music, where he wowed an audience of
> students with his unschooled style. "Anything you hear in your head is
> on this here fiddle," he said. "Any sound at all."
> 
> When my Globe predecessor, Ernie Santosuosso, decided to focus on jazz,
> he ceded me the rock beat. The timing was ideal. Arena concerts were
> booming, and rock was taking off. Predictably, ticket prices took off,
> too. It used to cost maybe $2.50 to see the average show at the Boston
> Tea Party (fans were outraged when The Who charged $4), but now the
> Stones can throw a show with $453 seats - and still sell out in hours.
> 
> In the '70s and '80s, I covered all the giants at their Boston Garden
> shows, including Queen, Yes, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, Jethro Tull,
> Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Van Halen, and that Texas power trio ZZ Top, who
> shocked their fans by stationing a live buffalo on one side of the
> stage, a longhorn steer on the other, a rattlesnake in front, and a
> black vulture in the rear. ZZ Top even brought a veterinarian on tour to
> care for this peculiar menagerie.
> 
> My early years as a rock critic were an education in how music changes
> through generations. In the New Wave era, I vividly recall seeing the
> Talking Heads at the Rat in Kenmore Square and interviewing eccentric
> lead singer David Byrne at a pizza parlor next door. "We've been
> described as neurotic and cathartic by some people and catatonic by
> others," Byrne said wryly. It was an era of colorful characters, like
> the bluesy anti-hero Tom Waits, who snappily described his band after a
> Sanders Theatre show in Cambridge: "We've got an Italian-American, a
> Cherokee-Afro-American, and a black, so we can play any damned
> neighborhood we want."
> 
> The punk movement reached its zenith with the Clash, a cocky British
> group that made its American debut at the Harvard Square Theatre in
> 1979. The Clash opened with the caustic anthem "I'm So Bored With the
> USA." I had never experienced such musical aggression before, but I
> became a Clash defender for years and was shattered when
> self-destructive singer Joe Strummer died of a heart attack at age 50 in
> 2002.
> 
> The key to my job was trying to see bands just as their careers were
> beginning. If you back a group with your reviews early on, it's more
> likely they'll remember it and continue to grant you interviews as they
> rise to stardom. Catching Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers at the Jazz
> Workshop in 1976 (in front of about eight people) solidified my bond
> with them. A night of revelry with beach-boy minstrel Jimmy Buffett,
> whom I accidentally met in a Springfield bar after he opened for the
> Eagles in the late 1970s, was the beginning of a rapport that led to
> some wonderful, exclusive interviews in recent years. And when I retired
> from the Globe last year, Bono showed up at my going-away party at J.J.
> Foley's on Kingston Street downtown, just hours after U2 played the TD
> Banknorth Garden.
> 
> I had covered U2 from the time they played the Paradise. Not every
> review was favorable (the night of my retirement bash, Bono told the
> crowd that I wasn't afraid to "kick them in the arse" once in a while),
> but I always called a show like I saw it. The band's Fleet-Center show
> in 2001 didn't sustain its usual peaks, and Bono wasn't attacking the
> songs. So I wrote that. Sometimes an artist might not talk to you for a
> few years after a bad review, but my paycheck didn't come from the
> record industry. It came from the Boston Globe, and I always cherished
> that independence.
> 
> Right up there with U2 was Bruce Springsteen. I first saw him at the
> Music Hall (now the Wang Theatre), and he was a force of nature. I
> caught his Boston Garden engagements (once he raced down the center
> aisle and stood on a seat next to mine, sweat pouring down his face as
> he shouted out to the rafters), as well as his tour openings in his
> native New Jersey, a special Amnesty International benefit in Toronto,
> and - the single best show I saw him do - at the Saratoga Performing
> Arts Center as part of the "Born in the U.S.A." tour. I also interviewed
> him a half-dozen times, talking about everything from his idols Chuck
> Berry and Hank Williams, to his working-class politics, to his fondness
> for his friend, Lenny Zakim, for whom Boston's iconic new downtown
> bridge is named. When Springsteen came to sing "Thunder Road" at the
> bridge's dedication ceremonies, I was hardly surprised. That's who he is.
> 
> The Grateful Dead were another love of mine. Who can forget their
> six-night runs at the Garden, when the scents of patchouli and ganja
> transformed the scene into an interplanetary journey? Jerry Garcia was
> like an alien spirit. When I interviewed him, it was in his customized
> private dressing room at the back of the Dead's towering stage set,
> where he had a sanctuary for reading and meditating. He avoided the
> crowds in the regular backstage area, which included then-Governor Bill
> Weld and US Senator John Kerry. Everyone back then, it seemed, was a
> Deadhead.
> 
> AS MUCH AS ROCK was in my blood, I had cut my teeth on country music,
> and I enjoyed other musical genres, too. I was drawn to folk music,
> including the Chieftains, Tom Rush, Joan Baez, and Boston's bluegrass
> pioneers the Lilly Brothers, who played the much-missed Hillbilly Ranch
> in Park Square.
> 
> I was willing to see any act at least once. I wound up hearing Liberace,
> Eddy Arnold, and Sergio Franchi at the South Shore Music Circus in
> Cohasset, Greek star Nana Mouskouri at Mechanics Hall in Worcester,
> bluegrass avatar Bill Monroe at the Berkshire Mountains Bluegrass
> Festival, and honky-tonker Merle Haggard in Lowell.
> 
> I supported the other end of the musical spectrum - heavy metal - as
> well. I enjoyed covering the fiendish 13-hour Ozzfests led by metal
> legend Ozzy Osbourne, though I got a flat tire after last summer's
> Ozzfest and had to write the review on the back of a flatbed truck. I
> loved the crunch of a good ear-shredding metal/hard-rock show, from the
> bruising side of AC/DC and Metallica, to the elemental power of Pearl
> Jam, to the "nu metal" of Korn and Rage Against the Machine, and the
> punk-metal of Iggy Pop. And I almost never wore earplugs. Call me
> stupid, but that's the truth.
> 
> I also fell hard for reggae, going to Jamaica a couple of times and
> interviewing reggae patriarch Bob Marley at the Essex House hotel in
> Manhattan. That was a chaotic experience. I arrived at 11 a.m. and
> couldn't find his room. I asked a cleaning attendant, and she said with
> a smile, "Just follow your nose." The scent of marijuana led me to a
> room where several members of Marley's entourage were sharing two
> king-size joints while kicking a soccer ball and bumping into a picture
> window overlooking Central Park. Marley sat on a couch, reading aloud
> from the Bible's Book of Revelation (with its "lion of the tribe of
> Judah" reference so important to Marley's Rastafarian religion). He
> ignored me and kept reading for about 10 minutes, until I finally dared
> to say, "Bob, I appreciate the reading, but the Globe sent me down to
> talk about your music." Suddenly, the soccer playing stopped. Everyone
> looked at me as though I had interrupted God himself. But after a
> moment, Marley said, "You're right, mon. Come over and let's talk." He
> closed the Bible and gave me his attention as we discussed his theme of
> world brotherhood. As soon as the interview was finished, the soccer
> playing resumed, the Bible was reopened, and I was ushered out the door.
> 
> Marley was a brilliant performer, and I reviewed his memorable Amandla
> peace concert at Harvard Stadium. It was the only time I saw bongs being
> sold inside the stadium. You'd see clusters of fans puffing on the bongs
> in the bleachers as puzzled security guards left them alone.
> 
> I traveled a lot in those days, trying to catch as many musical pioneers
> as I could. I remember having breakfast with bluesman Muddy Waters in
> Montreal, where he described his frustration at how African-Americans
> were growing away from the blues. "Young black kids," he said, "think my
> kind of blues is a slavery-time kind of music."
> 
> A sunnier moment was interviewing soul star Al Green at his compound in
> Memphis. It included a recording studio, a tour bus in the driveway, and
> a beauty parlor called Al Green International Hair. The studio had a
> large bumper sticker on the wall ("Tried everything else? Why not try
> Jesus?") and an isolation booth where Green cut his vocals. It was
> covered with wooden shingles, corn husks, deer antlers, and cotton
> stalks, with a microphone hanging from the ceiling. "I love the rustic
> quality of it," Green said, laughing. "You wouldn't want it to be nice
> and crystal clean, would you? You at least need some cotton stalks and
> bell peppers on the wall."
> 
> The most bizarre interview had to be in 1979 with a Macon,
> Georgia-raised singer named Richard Wayne Penniman. He was on one of his
> periodical sabbaticals from rock 'n' roll (he first left the scene in
> the middle of a tour in 1957) and was working as a fundamentalist
> preacher and traveling salesman for Memorial Bibles International in
> Nashville. I met him there and hopped into a yellow Eldorado that his
> friend drove at 80 miles an hour to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where
> Penniman preached in a field house to 200 people, ranging from Army
> brass to drug offenders from the base's halfway house. It was a
> fire-and-brimstone sermon ("Don't you know the world is going to end
> very soon, and you're drinking and smoking and using everything in your
> bodies?"). The believers hung on his every word, but some of the drug
> offenders snoozed in the bleachers. Afterward, Penniman - better known
> as Little Richard - went back to his hotel to read the Book of Job.
> 
> THE ROCK BEAT has to be one of the most physical beats a critic can
> have. I wasn't a movie reviewer sitting in air-conditioned screenings or
> an art critic contemplating paintings in a quiet museum. I had to fight
> the same traffic jams as everyone else to get to concerts. And more than
> a few times, I'd have screaming fans behind me and next to me, or maybe
> even vomiting in their seats from too much imbibing (thankfully, this
> isn't as big a problem now as it was back at the old Boston Garden,
> which could be a true zoo).
> 
> It's a late-night job, to be sure, but I thrived in those hours. I loved
> the 2 a.m. interview with Springsteen in person at the Providence Civic
> Center; the 3:30 a.m. phone call with Stevie Wonder; and talking with
> Pink Floyd's David Gilmour at 5 a.m. (10 a.m. in London, where he was).
> We joked that he was having his morning tea while I was about to have my
> nighttime beer.
> 
> Nor was I afraid to be a road warrior late at night. I'd think nothing
> of driving to and from New York the same day. I did it to cover the
> Grammys there, plus the post-9/11 Concert for New York City, the return
> of Phish at Madison Square Garden, and to interview Pearl Jam on a hotel
> roof deck in SoHo, among other trips.
> 
> My worst night had to be getting mugged at a Parliament-Funkadelic show
> at the Twin Rinks arena in Danvers, where I was gang-tackled and had my
> pants torn apart in the melee. Minutes later, I confronted the promoter,
> Frank Russo, who was talking to a female reporter, and he said, with
> some embarrassment, "Steve, tidy up." Needless to say, I stayed, I got
> my story (crowded conditions had caused other incidents and arrests that
> night), and afterward my editor told me to make sure I put the cost of a
> new pair of pants on my expense account.
> 
> "WHO WERE YOUR FAVORITE INTERVIEWS?" That's the question I hear the
> most. I've already mentioned some of them, but joining the list are Neil
> Diamond (on his porch in Los Angeles), Celine Dion (at a video studio in
> LA), Bonnie Raitt (back in her drinking days, she had two Bloody Marys
> during a noontime chat at a Newton hotel and wound up misty-eyed as I
> drove her around her old digs in Cambridge), Carly Simon (sitting by her
> pool on Martha's Vineyard - yes, this can be a rough job), Phish's Trey
> Anastasio at the band's barn studio in Vermont, the Pretenders' Chrissie
> Hynde in Philadelphia (where she shooed away a couple of intrusive
> fans), Sting at his Manhattan town house, David Bowie at a New York
> hotel (probably the most articulate rock star I have ever met), James
> Taylor at his home next to conservation land in the Berkshires (he
> complained that a bear had broken into his garbage can), and Art
> Garfunkel, who drove me to Staten Island and pointed out imagery from
> Simon & Garfunkel songs.
> 
> One of my funniest interviews was with Mick Jagger in 1980 during the
> release of the Rolling Stones' Emotional Rescue album. I told him I
> wanted to talk about the band's music and not about his sex life, which
> was filling gossip magazines at the time. It was my first meeting with
> him, and I was trying to prove that I was a "serious" critic, but Jagger
> couldn't resist bringing up the taboo topics. So I asked him if he ever
> put Stones music on to set the mood. "No, no. I never play music!" he
> exclaimed. "I coo and sing in the girl's ear. That's the music."
> 
> If Jagger is the prankster of the Stones, Keith Richards is the soul.
> One of my most challenging days was when I interviewed Richards at his
> manager Jane Rose's office in Manhattan, sucked down a hit of his Rebel
> Yell bourbon, then wobbled onto a plane to Roanoke, Virginia, to
> interview ZZ Top that night. ZZ Top singer Billy Gibbons had me up late
> listening to obscure rock and R&B records that he had brought on the
> road. I finally crashed in a groggy heap, but it was well worth it.
> 
> The longest days, though, were spent covering the last two Woodstock
> festivals. (I missed the original Woodstock, because I was in England
> the summer of '69.) During the rain-soaked Woodstock '94 in Saugerties,
> New York, I heard 15 hours of music in one day - ending with a
> blitz-krieg of Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, and Aerosmith, who played
> until 3 a.m., when fireworks went off. I think it was the best show
> Aerosmith ever played. They held nothing back.
> 
> Woodstock '99 was another marathon, this time at a steamy Air Force base
> in Rome, New York. It was the peak of the nu metal era, with Rage
> Against the Machine, Limp Bizkit, and Godsmack, but it ended
> horrendously with fires and vandalism after the final set by the Red Hot
> Chili Peppers. There hasn't been another Woodstock, and the cost of
> liability insurance may preclude any more. Goodbye to another cultural icon.
> 
> If I have one regret, it's not getting to interview John Lennon. I still
> wonder what rock 'n' roll would be like if he were alive today. I was
> due to meet him in New York a month after he was murdered. Lennon was my
> idol, and I admired his music right through his gut-wrenching solo
> period of "Working Class Hero" and "Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)."
> The night he died, I went to the Globe to write his obituary with fellow
> music critic Jim Sullivan. We cried as we wrote, but somehow finished
> for the paper's late edition.
> 
> EVEN WITH AS MUCH TIME as I spent on the road, it was the Boston club
> scene I know the best. It's not as good as it was, but it remains
> strong, with venues like the Paradise, the Middle East, and T.T. the
> Bear's Place. As for the music, it has always been potent, dating to the
> '60s with Barry & the Remains, then the '70s with Aerosmith, the J.
> Geils Band, the Cars, Boston, and Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band.
> 
> The group I miss the most is J. Geils. It's hard to pinpoint how big
> Geils became after "Centerfold" and "Freeze-Frame" in the early '80s,
> followed by three sold-out shows at the Garden before breaking up.
> High-octane singer Peter Wolf, alias the Woofa Goofa in his stage
> persona, ignited audiences with his song-and-dance routines.
> 
> Any city that can produce bands like these is diverse. And even though
> Boston has been known more for rock than for pop, the variety to come
> out of this region has been astonishing, from the raging Godsmack to Top
> 40 stars New Edition and New Kids on the Block, plus folkie Tracy
> Chapman, funk-jazz players Morphine, and cabaret-rockers the Dresden Dolls.
> 
> The music scene has changed over the years on a national level as well.
> There are ridiculous expectations for stardom on a first album. If it
> flops, or it just doesn't sell as well as hoped, the band is fired.
> R.E.M. needed four albums before they landed their first hit single,
> but, sadly, such patience would be unheard of today. Complicating things
> even more has been the sheer number of bands and niche radio stations,
> making it harder to score the across-the-dial success that creates
> superstars. Too many acts only get played on one format (modern rock,
> classic rock, Top 40, etc.), and they lose out on a larger audience. The
> Internet and satellite radio are creating fresh ways for new artists to
> reach listeners and avoid the record business entirely, but the process
> still often falls short of paying the rent.
> 
> But hope is never lost; integrity still matters. And nationally, though
> the record industry is in disarray from file sharing and corporate
> mergers, every so often a Radiohead, System of a Down, or Beck takes us
> all to a new place.
> 
> Living on the run and battling late-night deadlines was my career, but I
> loved it. As Willie Nelson sang, "The night life ain't no good life, but
> it's my life." I know what he means. I'll miss the adrenaline rushes,
> but maybe now I'll finally get some sleep.
> 
> Steve Morse covered pop music for the Globe from 1975-2005. E-mail him a
> spmorse at gmail.com <mailto:spmorse at gmail.com>. Go to boston.com/magazine
> <http://boston.com/magazine> to hear Morse talk about his favorite
> concerts in a slideshow with music.
> 
> 
> http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2006/04/09/a_rock_critics_g
> reatest_hits/
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Mb-civic mailing list
> Mb-civic at islandlists.com
> http://www.islandlists.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mb-civic
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Mb-hair mailing list
> Mb-hair at islandlists.com
> http://www.islandlists.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mb-hair
>