This is nowhere
When it comes to California, it's the myth that matters,
not the music.
By J.H. Tompkins
LAST YEAR I had
a brief e-mail correspondence with a youngish man named Clem from
Cherry Valley, N.Y., concerning Gram Parsons and the origins of
Los Angeles-style country rock back in the day. My capital in the
conversation came from a frog-in-the-well first-person perspective
("Well, I saw Poco right after Timmy Schmidt joined the band,
at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach in July 1969, and they ...").
But Clem knew his stuff. He'd read, he'd listened, and he'd thought,
and what he sent me was a long, eloquent tribute to the contributions
Parsons made to the American musical landscape.
My reply was snide, shallow,
and reactive. I pointed to Parsons as an example of image trumping
music, saying something to the effect that Rick Nelson – when
he was still Ricky and later with his Stone Canyon Band – had
as much impact on the face of music at the turn of the decade
as Parsons did. In my defense, I'll say this: there was some truth
in my message. Beyond that, well, I was, like, really fucking tired
when I pressed the send button – I'd been up all night trying,
unsuccessfully, to meet a deadline. More to the point, I was giving
in to the kind of knee-jerk backlash that impels critics, crate
diggers, and front-runners to feed a voraciously hungry popular
culture with myths built on foundations of sand. One recent version:
If you liked (as I did) the Brothers Johnson's funk classic "Strawberry
Letter 23," wait until you hear Shuggie Otis, the guy who wrote
it. Hmmmm. Another: I mentioned the Buffalo Springfield's
solid 2001 compilation, Box Set, to a visiting freelancer,
who smirked and – in a conspiratorial whisper – said,
"Look, what you've really got to hear is 'White Cliffs of Dover,'
by Sir Walter Raleigh and the Coupons – 1964, it's the shit."
The truth is – please
don't spread this around – that I am one of perhaps six people
in the universe who have heard the song in question. Because you
could say, if you are given to massive understatement, that I was
a Buffalo Springfield fan once upon a time. And if you were to ask
who the drummer was for the Seattle-based Coupons – who were
named after a cigarette whose manufacturer (based in Raleigh, N.C.)
included coupons in each pack in a lame attempt to cash in on America's
fascination with the Beatle-inspired British invasion – the
answer would be none other than Dewey Martin, who in two years would
be the drummer for the Buffalo Springfield. Martin's singular contribution
to that band – beyond attempting to hijack its name after the
group disintegrated by putting together, briefly, the Buffalo Springfield
Again (not coincidentally, the title of the group's second album)
– was to develop a widespread reputation as the one
consistently weak link in an otherwise outstanding lineup. But when
it comes to California music, facts matter to fans about as much
as apologies matter to a band screwed by a record label. California's
place in the imagination is more important than its dry-land self;
America needs the Golden State as a kind of coast of last resorts,
a place that, should you move there, your bad luck would turn. At
one time Hollywood cowboys recorded songs that took America back
to a mythic past. But when the Beach Boys dropped "Surfin',"
and then "Surfin' Safari," and then "409," "Shutdown,"
"In My Room," "Fun, Fun, Fun," "I Get Around,"
"California Girls," "Good Vibrations," and dozens
of other odes to life in the Golden State, popular culture served
up a here-and-now California that America grabbed like a
winning Lotto ticket.
I was once honor-bound
to stack up reality against myth, to point out the many things known
only to a person who used to buy records at the Wherehouse in Hawthorne,
where the Wilson family lived; a person who, after being arrested
for possession of refined opium, found himself sharing a holding
cell with a famous studio drummer who claimed to play in the studio
what the Eagle's Don Henley could not; a person who late at night
when the temperature finally dropped below 90 degrees would drive
the 7 from Southgate to the 10 to the Hollywood freeway with the
windows down and the volume up so that the bass line created by
Joe Walsh on "One of These Nights" made screws pop loose
in the dashboard; a person who thought that maybe time would, in
his extremely special case, make an exception and stand still forever.
That was a mistake. Nearly
40 years after I learned from studying liner notes on the back of
record albums that "14-year-old David Marks played the toes-on-the-nose
rhythm guitar" for the Beach Boys and that the Byrds' Jim McGuinn
had trust in the fact that "everything would turn out alright,"
it could be said that my version was as suspect as any. Besides,
as the years went by, I came to realize I was just waiting for Andre
Young to grow up enough to become Dr. Dre and deliver the music
that got me through the '90s and into the next century. But that's
another story.
There is this, however.
As we were putting this issue to bed, Victor Krummenacher, Bay
Guardian art director, bassist for Camper Van Beethoven, and
writer of "The Canyon Was on Fire," on page 48, told a
story that certainly has mythic dimension: "In 1990 I flew
into Los Angeles with two guitars and a suitcase to pay a quick
visit to my boyfriend before going out on what turned out to be
Camper's final tour. I was standing curbside, when an older guy
came up to me and explained that he had a van and would take me
anywhere I wanted to go, cheaper than anyone else – adding
that what he was doing was kind of illegal, so we had to make it
quick. He looked OK, and I figured, whatever, and so I said sure.
In a minute we were in his van and headed off toward Hollywood.
After a couple of minutes, he asked if I was in a band, and I told
him about Camper Van Beethoven. He hadn't heard of us but said that
he used to be in a band, too. I asked him the name, and he said,
'It was called the Buffalo Springfield.' The ride to Hollywood ended
up lasting several hours, because we got to talking, and he gave
me a tour of the places where his band had played and partied over
the years. It was Dewey Martin. He was a great guy, and what I remember
more than anything was that he said over and over, when it came
to being in a band, Stills and Young could be real assholes."
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