A few weeks ago we were filming a scene for the new Charlotte Gainsbourg video. In the last shot of the day I noticed a familiar face standing next to her. It appeared to be Will Ferrell, though it was unclear what he would be doing in a house in Canoga Park on a hot summer's night standing in the back ground of a music video. The look-a-like turned out to be Shannon Thule, an extra working on the video. Coincidentally, I was planning to speak to Will in a few days time for the website. I took the opportunity to also speak with Shannon about his experiences living life as Will Ferrell's doppelganger and growing up around the world. Here is the conversation.
Beck Hansen: When were you first aware of Will Ferrell?
Shannon Theule: Actually not until I first moved here about a year ago.
BH: Had you seen his movies?
ST: I had, but it really didn’t dawn on me who Will Ferrell was. Somebody said at Applebee’s, “There’s Will Ferrell.” I moved here about a year ago and now I can’t go through the mall without people following me.
BH: At first did you think they were following you for no reason?
ST: I didn’t understand at first. When I first moved here a friend of mine had told me, “You know what? Just go to central casting and just sign up, because I was looking for some work. So I’m sitting at central casting and I walk in there and sit down and everyone in there is looking at me, driving me nuts, making me feel really weird and eerie. I stand up and I look up and there’s this poster of Will Ferrell sitting right above me where I was sitting. And I look at it and am like “Oh my god.”
BH: When you saw one of his movies did you think, “He really looks like me.”
ST: Yeah, Semi-Pro. Talledega Nights was the first one I think. It just kind of hit me.
BH: Has he since then become a kind of unspoken, invisible presence in your life?
ST: Maybe a little bit. I’m not called Shannon anymore. I’m called Will.
BH: Do your friends call you Will now?
ST: Sometimes they do.
BH: I was reading about doppelgangers and it’s originally a German word. In some cultures it’s a harbinger of bad luck. They say that if doppelgangers meet face to face it will result in “immediate death.” I mean, how does that manifest? Does it involve some cataclysm of nature: lightning, avalanches, flooding or just some sort of metaphysical explosion?
ST: I guess we’ll have to meet and find out.
BH: You might want to use caution. Have you ever thought of changing your looks in some way?
ST: I tried one time cutting my hair because everyone seemed to place it with Semi-Pro.
BH: Right, because you have the curly hair.
ST: Yeah, the Afro-kind of shag. And sure enough that didn’t really work. My wife, she goes, “Man, you look just like Will Ferrell, even with short hair.” So, that doesn’t work either.
BH: I wonder what hairstyle could help you disassociate from the likeness.
ST: Maybe flat and greased back.
BH: I think he did that. He’s covered a lot of ground. He’s had a mullet. I think he’s had long hair. He’s had short hair.
ST: He’s done it all on Saturday Night Live. He’s done every character.
BH: A faux-hawk maybe? That might be a little too 2002 though.
ST: My wife would kill me.
BH: You could shave your head, grow a big moustache and shave your eyebrows.
ST: It’s really the nose and the eyes that kind of stand out. Overall, I’m pretty honored. Ever since all this started I’ve been thinking about sending in a script where Will Ferrell is the obnoxious father. Sassy and cocky. And I’ll be the good son. He will try to influence me and I’ll try to influence him.
BH: I guess part of the comedy would be hinged on the fact that you guys aren’t that much different in age. I think there’s something there though. An allegory about people’s relationships with themselves? The double goes back to Shakespeare, right? A Comedy of Errors? You and Will could do a remake.
ST: That’d be cool.
BH: Or you could just do a remake of Face/Off.
ST: (laughing) That’d be funny.
BH: Or you could just have a face off.
ST: Like a stare down?
BH: Whoever loses the staring contest has to abdicate ownership of the face.
ST: (laughs)
BH: In a stare off who do you think would win?
ST: Oh, definitely me man.
BH: You’ve got an iron gaze?
ST: Yeah.
BH: Is it like an ocular headlock?
ST: Exactly, it pins you down.
BH: What about an arm wrestling match?
ST: He would win on that one.
BH: Right.
ST: He’s a little bigger than I am.
BH: How about interpretive dancing? Have you ever worn a unitard?
ST: I took ballet for 6 months.
BH: So you would probably do well in a full body unitard against Will in his full body unitard from Capezio because you have studied ballet and learned the art of graceful body language..
ST: (laughs) Yeah, maybe. How about swimming?
BH: Pole vault. Who would win?
ST: I don’t know! I did some of that in track in high school.
BH: I’m going to give that one to you. Hundred yard dash?
ST: The discus. I’ll take him on that one.
BH: You think you could take him?
ST: I actually don’t know.
BH: He’s got that wild arm.
ST: Sure.
BH: So have you been cast in things?
ST: I’ve been doing a lot of extra work. Bar customers. Angry, psycho, real goofy. I get a lot of goofy calls.
BH: Where are you from?
ST: Me? I was born in Nigeria. I grew up with a habit of chasing baboons. And then Liberia. Then Japan. Then Costa Rica. Now here.
BH: Were you a military kid?
ST: Missionary kid. My parents were missionaries.
BH: When did you end up in America?
ST: I graduated high school in Costa Rica and then I came over here to the States. I’ve been going throughout the States. I’ve only been in California for about a year now.
BH: So you’ve been all over the world already.
ST: Like I said before, I grew up chasing baboons. That was my habit-- chasing baboons.
BH: So you actually had baboons in your yard?
ST: Oh yeah, they would come sit on our windows. I mean, we lived in a hut with no windows. It was just open. When we’d take showers earthworms would fall through the faucets. So, I was chasing baboons for a while until they started chasing me one day. And then Dad said no more of that (laughing).
BH: They can be dangerous, huh?
ST: They can kill you. They can rip you apart.
BH: Meanwhile, your doppelganger was...
ST: (laughing) Drinking a smoothie.
BH: Watching Love Boat.
ST: And I’m being run down by baboons. I’ve been to 56 countries. That’s just normal to me. Cultures and people and all sorts of foods. When I was born in Nigeria, midwives birthed me. When my mother woke up she couldn’t find me. So she’s going around and she found me just leaning against the fridge on the floor in the corner, collecting cobwebs.
BH: You were by the fridge?
ST: Yes, a newborn! Because I wouldn’t shut up! I was crying and the hum of the fridge put me to sleep so they put me there.
BH: When a child is born they do that bonding thing with the mother where they put them on the mother’s chest. But your bonding moment was with a refrigerator.
ST: Yeah.
BH: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
ST: There were five of us actually. 3 boys and 2 girls.
BH: And do the boys or girls look anything like Will Ferrell?
ST: No, I do have a younger brother who might. He looks pretty much like me. He might have a resemblance also.
BH: So you guys could do a triple doppelganger. Or if you get the drummer from the Chili Peppers you can have a Quadrupleganger. I don’t know if that’s a word though...
ST: You gotta ask the Germans.
BH: You spent a big part of your childhood in Japan?
ST: Yeah, a lot of time there.
BH: I’ve been to Japan a few times.
ST: Where in Japan did you go?
BH: I’ve been all over. Mainly the major cities. Kyoto is one of my favorites.
ST: I love Kyoto, yup.
BH: It has many temples, it’s a very calming place. Also, there are geishas who walk around on the streets.
ST: Yes!
BH: I was there this year and I noticed a new phenomenon where normal young girls have themselves made up like geishas to be able to walk around and get attention from tourists who want to have their picture taken with them. I guess they were sort of like doppelgangers in a way. They were impostor geishas. The way you know is that the make-up is little bit off. You know how precise the geisha make-up is? I mean, it’s almost inhumanly precise. And usually geishas won’t talk to tourists because they’re busy. But these geishas were just standing around. What ultimately gave them away though was when we took a picture they started flashing the peace sign.
ST: No, they won’t do that.
BH: And where did you end up after that? Costa Rica?
ST: Yeah, I graduated high school there. We went to a little school on an active volcano.
BH: So, the school was on a volcano?
ST: Yeah. A few years ago actually it blew up!
BH: So, around the time you were under threat of having a volcano erupt on your school, I think your doppelganger was working as a security guard at a Bon Jovi concert. But I guess that’s sort of a different threat of eruption, more in a symbolic way. It’s interesting to track the parallel trajectories of your lives. Not a lot in your life mirrors Will’s life?
ST: Just the looks.
BH: It’s interesting what different lives you’ve lived in such different cultures, with different influences and yet you end up looking so similar.
BH: Do you remember that TV show, or was it a TV movie about a bus? It was the longest bus ever made and it drives across the country?
WF: Oh yeah! Umm, Superbus.
BH: Was it called Superbus [The Big Bus; 1976]?
WF: I think it was. It had a bowling alley and a pool.
BH: And somehow a washing machine went berserk and made soap bubbles, and it got flooded with the soap bubbles.
WF: It was a comedy right? I should look into the rights of remaking Superbus.
BH: I know. You might want to keep that one to yourself. How long was that bus?
WF: (laughing) I don’t know but it had so many cool things on it.
BH: I actually haven’t seen it since it originally aired. I might need to see it again, because it might have some other things to teach me now that I’ve lived and experienced life (laughs), all the subtext that was lost on an 8-year-old.
WF: Now you’ll be like “I was so foolish. Look at what they were trying to teach us.”
BH: What they were trying to say to me is...
WF: That all men are equal.
BH: And I didn’t realize that that was what they were trying to tell me until now when you said it! Who is the person who you looked up to at that age?
WF: In the Superbus era?
BH: Yeah. Six Million Dollar Man, maybe?
WF: Oh, I love Six Million Dollar Man. Yeah. Huge.
BH: Fonzie?
WF: Fonzie. He was pretty great. Even though it’s kind of insane that a character’s big move was to go “Eyyyyyyyyy.” And that that elicited shrieks from the studio audience, but I was right there with them. We keep talking a lot about TV, but that was my favorite night of TV right there because it was Tuesday nights: Happy Days/Laverne and Shirley. Followed by Saturday night which was...
BH&WF: Love Boat/Fantasy Island.
WF: And then Battle of the Network Stars whenever that was on. I almost got nervous watching it because it was so exciting.
BH: (laughing)
WF: I mean, Lou Ferrigno on the CBS team and the tug-of-war?
BH: That was stressful.
WF: (laughing) Yeah! And I swear, I do have a memory of like David Letterman running the mile run. I swear. But I don’t know, I could be making that up.
BH: I remember going to my grandmother’s house in the summer at that time and David Letterman was on in the morning. I used to beg her to let me watch.
WF: Oh! He had the morning show. I was heavily influenced by the afternoon talk show as well: Mike Douglas, Dinah Shore, all that stuff. And Merv Griffin. So, there. I’m not finding anything for Superbus.
BH: Was it a figment of our imaginations?
WF: (laughing)
BH: Was it a mass hallucination?
WF: Was it a government conspiracy thing? Did they knock everyone out for a day and implant the memory of Superbus?
BH: It was a Fata Morgana of 70's TV. So you grew up in Orange County for most of your childhood?
WF: Yeah, the whole enchilada. I was born in Newport Beach, and we lived in Corona del Mar until I think I was five. Then we moved inland to Irvine. The mean streets of Irvine. Which I don’t know if you’ve ever ventured down there...
BH: I have. I have played down there actually.
WF: Look out. Did you play at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre? I don’t think that’s what it’s called anymore. I think its called Verizon or something.
BH: Yeah, it’s called the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre.
WF: Yeah, we snuck into a lot of concerts down there.
BH: Oh yeah? There’s access? We would sneak into concerts at the Greek Theater. We wouldn’t sneak in but you could hike up into the surrounding park and sort of watch from the bushes. Later when I got to play there I said “Hello” to the people in the bushes and you could hear them yelling back.
WF: You’re like, “People in the bushes, I know, I used to be one of you!.”
BH: I got the people to shout back things and suddenly you’d hear this massive response from the bushes.
WF: (laughing) Was there a scramble of security up there? To cuff ’em?
BH: I don’t think so cause I think they would need climbing equipment. I mean, it was a serious investment of time to get up there and once you got up there, there was some questionable activity happening. There was a whole other milieu of concert going tomfoolery happening. Security wasn’t getting paid enough to risk their necks.
WF: For Verizon Amphitheatre, previously Irvine Meadows, you had to go through what was the old shutdown Lion Country Safari [wild animal park]. You had to do commando style. They had teams of security on fire roads on ATVs patrolling with big flood lights, so it was like a real...
BH: And you have to watch out for that kind of security because they’re even more committed to their job than any border patrol.
WF: Anyone! You put a yellow jacket on a part time police officer, look out! They’re ready to go. But here’s the irony, we used to sneak in and then I found myself years later during college being one of those yellow jacketed security people.
BH: Really? And did you feel a....
WF: I was not very effective.
BH: Did you feel empowered?
WF: I did a little bit because you just had the jacket and a little flashlight. They had no idea that I was a previous renegade. And I worked a Bon Jovi concert and my job was to keep like the center aisle of the orchestra clear of people just sitting or hanging out and it was pretty easy, you’d just flash your light and they’d get back in the row, until...Who’s the guitarist of Bon Jovi?
BH: Uh, Richie Sambora.
WF: Richie Sambora on that song Wanted Dead or Alive, he flew out on his guitar solo on a wire and everyone just ran into the center of my aisle. I was like “Back in your seats! Back in your...” and it was like 1,000 people and I just realized that I couldn’t do anything. So I just let ‘em do that.
BH: Yeah, the flashlight was...
WF: The flashlight was NOT EFFECTIVE at that point, yeah, when they’re trying to reach for Sambora as he flies above them.
BH: (laughing) Some Peter Pan maneuver...
WF: (laughing) Even I got wrapped up in it! I didn’t realize it was going to happen, but...
BH: But it stirred something.
WF: It did!
BH: See that’s the thing when you’re playing a show. As a performer, if you connect with the security guards, you know you’re playing the show of your life, cause it’s very difficult to move the security guards.
WF: Yeah, they cut through that night. Bon Jovi cut through to me.
BH: And was that mid-80’s Bon Jovi period?
WF: That would have been late '80s.
BH: Have you seen Heavy Metal Parking Lot?
WF: No, I didn’t see that.
BH: Oh, you haven’t seen that!?! It was a Judas Priest show somewhere on the east coast, I’m gonna say Maryland? Somebody went with a video camera and documented the people in the parking lot before the concert. It documents what they’re wearing, what they’re saying, what they’re doing, how they’re feeling...
WF: And does it follow one person’s journey?
BH: No, it just goes to a whole bunch of different people hanging out by their cars. It’s a document of a specific time, which, if you were in junior high at the time you appreciate because that was what most people looked like at school.
WF: I went to a Dead show in college in Carson once. That was kind of the closest thing to a festival type crowd and I remember I was just extremely hot and I had to kind of lie down near these tennis courts and I must have had 20 people come up and be like, “You okay man? You having a bad trip?” and I’m like “Oh, no no no! I’m just tired. And I think a little dehydrated.” “Alright.” Then, “You okay man? You’re gonna be okay. I’m right here.” I’m like, “Oh no no. I’m just...” Once again. And then I just anticipated people as I saw them come up.
BH: Yeah, I think it’s nice when there’s a support group built into a concert going experience.
WF: (laughing) Remember Cal Jam?
BH: I didn’t go to Cal Jam.
WF: There was Cal Jam and then there was Cal Jam 2.
BH: (laughing) I know somebody that went to Cal Jam 2.
WF: (laughing) Let’s organize Cal Jam 3-- 25 years in the making. And we announce all these acts and basically go on stage and say. “No one could make it. We’re sorry. But here’s, ladies and gentlemen, Kudos.”
BH: (laughing) “And special guest...” Wait, what was the name of your Cirque du Soleil act?
WF: Simpatico.
BH: Simpatico, yes!
WF: We were a performance art troupe from Winnipeg, Canada. So we would have people come up and go, “Alright! Winnipeg!”
BH: My dad’s family is all from Winnipeg.
WF: Well we kind of felt bad because we got people really excited to like “Great to see fellow Canadians!” and we’re like, “Oh, no no. We’re just kidding.” But what can you do?
BH: Yeah that’s why I think I was connecting with it on a certain level because I have that Winnipeg connection somewhere down the line.
WF: (laughing) Did you spend summers going to Winnipeg?
BH: No, I’ve never been there. What’s your background?
WF: I don’t really know, we’re kind of all over the place. Ferrell’s an Irish last name so we’ve been to Ireland a fair amount of time. I think we like to pretend we’re more Irish than we are, so there’s some Irish in there. We were there a year ago. Me, my dad, and my brother. And my dad had researched, I think its County Longford ,where the Ferrell’s are supposed to be from even though almost every Irish Farrell is spelled F-A and we’re F-E. So we pulled into this town and we were gonna, I forget, he had a name of someone that we were gonna try to find, I forget the guy's name, John Ferrell’s Pub or something. And we almost didn’t go. We were like, “Yeah maybe we’ll stop by there tonight, go for a beer” and by the time we got there, there was over 1,000 people waiting to meet us.
BH: (laughing) Really? Your family tree to welcome you back!
WF: (laughing) Yeah. So we just sat there and never bought a beer the entire night. It was kind of fun though. And then we ended up in some people’s houses that we barely knew who invited us for a nightcap. Which was, uh, we should’ve shut it down at that point.
BH: Anything happen?
WF: No, it was just, we were REALLY hung over the next day. But everyone had a good time! I couldn’t find my brother for a second when we got back to the hotel and the night porter was like, “Is he a big guy?” and I go, “Yeah, yeah! About 6’5.” And he goes, “Yeah, you might wanna keep an eye on him.” And I looked across the street there and there was a 24 hour burger joint with all these college kids in it and I just see my brother sitting there talking to strangers, but wildly gesticulating with his hands. And I’m like “Ah, he’s fine!” (laughing) So, he was just holding court with the youth of County Longford.
BH: I was thinking about Ferrell’s, the children’s theme restaurant.
WF: Oh the ice cream! Yeah...
BH: Was that a favorite place? Did it have any feeling of pride?
WF: No, I should’ve probably had more. I only went to it a couple of times. But it was pretty magical. And when you had your birthday there they would hang this drum. I actually went there for the, I think it was homecoming dance, my sophomore year of high school, with my date and the other couple we were going with. We went to Ferrell’s all dressed up. It was a little bizarre.
BH: It had old time décor.
WF: Yeah, old timey, right.
BH: Old time America.
WF: Did they wear boater hats? Straw boater hats? Like a barber shop quartet type look?
BH: Yeah, I remember amusement parks during that time had a lot of that going on. There was this real fascination with the early 1900’s. There was a real nostalgia during that period for that time. I remember, what was the amusement park? Magic Mountain? They had an area called Spillikin Corners which is where you could go to make your own candles and learn the ways of our American Heritage.
WF: You could actually shear sheep there, I believe.
BH: Really, you could shear live game?
WF: And do animal husbandry. I remember helping to give birth at Spillikin Corners.
BH: Really? To a sheep? Or to a horse?
WF: I think it was both. Yeah. You really got your money’s worth. “I gave birth to a horse! Can we go back again? I love it!”
BH: Spillikin Corners.
WF: Great name!
BH: Yeah, like “What should we call it?”
WF: Yeah, in the marketing meeting, “How about Spillikin Corners?”
BH: “How about Dangleberrys...”
WF: “No, our market research has shown that the name Spillikin people like. It feels down home.”
BH: Yeah, it evokes that era. And I remember also Disneyland was running rife with old time brass bands and that kind of old timey thing.
WF: A lot of Americana.
BH: Hey, when we did that benefit for the Tsunami Relief, I saw you and Sacha Baron Cohen doing a secret hand shake which I always wondered about.
WF: Was it our thing? No, obviously not. I don’t even remember what it was.
BH: I remember there was a lot of hand interaction. And then elbows. And then I think shoulders got into it. And at one point I believe he tried to bring the pelvis's into it. Or is it pelvi for the plural? Anyway it was a sort of a pelvis to pelvis move. And I think you blocked that. You were saying you don’t do that.
WF: Obviously it was never to be repeated again.
BH: Oh, okay. I thought that that was maybe the way it goes on a regular basis and I wanted to be privy to the inner workings-- And then later I think Chris Rock and Jack Black were huddled with you both and there was a quadruple force there. I wasn’t sure if that was a formation you guys were making that was sort of a “Wonder Twins activate” formation. Maybe you could form into animals or something? Like a giant ice porpoise?
WF: No, the only thing I remember was Rock was like, “Look, you’re famous. People like you. You don’t have to work this hard.” Pertaining to my full body unitard. He was like, “You can just go out there and say a few things, you don’t have to work this hard.” And I was like, “It’s the only way I know.” (laughing)
BH: It’s the Simpatico way. Yeah that was a good night.
WF: I was about to say I hope another Tsunami happens where we could do that again, but that’s a terrible joke, yeah.
BH: I wanted to talk to you about SNL a little bit because I did SNL a number of times when you were on there.
WF: I remember when you came on. Didn’t we do a sketch together in a medical room? Examining room?
BH: Oh yeah, right! It was for medical marijuana and I was a delivery boy or something. I was very nervous. It was the first time I had been on the show and I was already trying to deal with the fact of...
WF: (laughing) Of performing on the show, mixed with, now you’re on a sketch...
BH: I enjoyed it though.
WF: And I remember we did the “Bobby and Marty” sketch where one of our songs was “Devil’s Haircut.”
BH: That’s right! That was a good night. The host was Kevin Spacey.
WF: Oh! That was a really good one!
BH: It’s funny. When I first went there I was struck by how small it was: the studio and the dressing rooms in comparison to the amount of activity that was happening. It’s heightened that way.
WF: It’s a tight little fit. You get in there and its less than 300 people in the audience.
BH: I didn’t even think it was that many. It felt like 75. It was surreal. I got the feeling that I was inside the TV. You know, when you’re a kid you have this weird concept of the people that are inside the TV, they’re in a different world from the rest of us? That was the closest that I’ve ever had to experiencing actually being in the TV, because it was so enclosed and hermetic.
WF: Yeah, it’s pretty intimate.
BH: I think one of my favorite things on the show was where you play this family man and you’re yelling at your daughter during dinner, you’re trying to reprimand her in some way. But you’re also trying to illustrate your altitude by yelling that you drive a Dodge Stratus.
WF: A Dodge Stratus, yes.
BH: How did you come up with, of all car makes, a Dodge Stratus? Its a small detail but it made the whole scene.
WF: (laughing) I just stumbled across that somewhere. In like an ad, like a really puffed up ad for a car dealership and they were just really trumpeting the new Dodge Stratus and when I was writing that sketch it was just an ultimate symbol of, “Listen to me! Do you know I drive...” It was just a perfect symbol of the lamest kind of car you could think of and that this guy just struggling for control, tries to throw that out and its like, “What are you talking about?” And it sounded funny. Dodge Stratus.
BH: It almost sounds like Status.
WF: I wish I could say that I thought of that as well. I did not even think of that. It was just one of the lamest car names. Plus a Dodge is just a completely unsexy car make. They I’m glad you like that one! That was one of my favorite ones because I kept drawing out the moments of silence with the silverware clanging against the plates. I just kept drawing it out because there was always such a kneejerk reaction on that show to make sketches louder and fast and just energy driven. I think a lot of people in comedy are afraid of the silence. I kind of love it because it puts the audience on the hook and creates kind of a tension. When we did the actual live show I’d drag it on as long as I could (laughs). But yeah, Dodge Stratus.
BH: Dodge Stratus, it’s from the same era as the Aspire. They were these cars that weren’t quite the real status cars. They were the step along the way up the ladder of success, you know? “You don’t have to wait. You can have it now. You can have what you want now.” It’s not quite the apex, but it's something in the meantime.
WF: Dodge has another one out on the road now called the Dodge Magnum, which is pretty good, too.
BH: (laughing) There’s a lot of masculine power in that name.
WF: A lot of stuff going on with that one.
BH: A lot of undercurrents. Because it’s a gun, right? But its also...
WF: It’s a magnum of champagne. It’s excellence.
BH: Its protein and indefatigable.
Will Ferrell x Beck Hansen : Pt. 1
Irrelevant Topics continues with a conversation featuring Actor/Comedian Will Ferrell. I met Will in 1997 when he was a new cast member on SNL and I was a musical guest. Somehow during rehearsals I got asked to participate in a skit with him. Over the years I got to watch him work several more times during his tenure as a cast member, undeniably a comic genius. We got to perform together once again at a benefit for Tsunami Relief in 2005. Here we got to catch up and talk about unitards, cirque du soliel and local 70's TV commercials. Here is Pt. 1 of the conversation.
W: You should think about it. Give it a little test drive and see if you like it.
B: Yeah... Do you have any other good ones for me?
W: Umm... I, well, I'm tapering back fantastic cause I think I overused it too much.
B: Yeah.
W: "I'm Fantastic."
B: (laughs)
W: And then later I realized, "No, I'm not. I'm not bad, but I don't know if I'm fantastic."
B: It loses its luster if you overuse it.
W: Yeah, it's like too many exclamation points in emails. I do that a lot too.
B: A word struck me the other day that made me laugh. It's the word "kudos".
W: Kudos. I wonder where that's even derived from? Kudos? In context it's supposed to be, "kudos to you." Like, "great job?"
B: I know, somebody came up with it and it just perpetuated somehow. Unless it was master minded in a meeting--- a kudos meeting.
W: Well, there's also Kudos milk chocolate granola bars.
B: (Laughing) See I was thinking of starting a jazz-fusion ensemble called Kudos.
W: (laughs)
B: And maybe tying in a sponsorship.
W: From the bars?
B: Yeah.
W: Oh, that's a great idea. And would you wear t-shirts that say "Kudos"? Or do you just come out in kimonos? For some reason that's kind of a---- "the guys in Kudos wear kimonos." I don't know? That could be kind of fun... You know I was driving home in anticipation of this phone call thinking about when we did the benefit for the Tsunami Relief (benefit at the Wiltern Theater in 2004), and I came out in the middle of your song, gyrating against a---- what's that instrument?
B: The harmonium?
W: The harmonium. Yeah. And that might be, our little exchange, might be one of the highlights of my career right there.
B: I was definitely impressed by the pneumatic motion of your lower extremities towards my harmonium.
W: (laughing) Right, but you---
B: And your pelvic thrust ability...
W: Right. But your delivery was perfect as to how, kind of, slightly annoyed you were with me but yet you still committed to the song.
B: (laughing)
W: What's the song again? Because it's such a beautiful song. (humming the song) It's one of your more heartfelt songs.
B: It was, "Lonesome Tears" maybe?
W: That's it. Yup. You were performing it very earnestly. It was the perfect setup.
B: You know, I think I retired the song after that.
W: Oh no! (laughing) I kind of ruined it for you...
B: No, actually it was missing something after that, because you were dressed in that red spandex unitard. I've seen unitards but I've never seen one that actually goes over your head as well.
W: Well that's because you've gotta get the special skull cap edition. They make them for speed skaters and stuff.
B: And where did you come upon a speed skating uniform?
W: Capezio.
B: Capezio?
W: Capezio dance stores. Yeah.
B: It was an especially good color.
W: The red. Yeah. It's a speedo. I still hold onto it because you never know when you might need a red unitard with matching cap. It was from an act we used to do, me and two buddies of mine, called Simpatico, where we were like a bad Cirque du Soleil group. And we came out with a lot of presentation, but our tricks were unremarkable. That's where I got it originally.
B: There's a lot you can do, I think, with a unitard. Well shit, I mean, if you ever get that back together I think Kudos could provide some music.
W: (laughing) Or we could open for Kudos.
B: That's right. What is it about the aesthetic of that whole Cirque du Soleil thing? It just sort of sprung up and it was so completely evolved as a strange manifestation of entertainment. And I think the '80s had some molding factor to its character.
W: (laughs) I think so too. And it was such a special experience and now there's like 10 of them. They're in Vegas. I love that there's like 20 traveling versions of Cirque du Soleil.
B: You know, to me it's almost like the avant-garde for Vegas, when it's your moment to step out into the avant-garde. Then you end up getting those blown glass unicorns from the gift shop. Not to diminish their value. I'm talking more of the aesthetic of the presentation----which is great in its way---
W: Umm... I'm going to be honest with you, I will have to mention this in my blog, this little blog that I run, that you were kind of disparaging. 'The Cirqus', we call ourselves.
B: I was trying to, I don't know, ascertain an obvious truth. But then it veered off into a kind of disparaging direction.
W: Right, and then you checked yourself.
B: Then I checked myself and you put up a little traffic cone for me, because I didn't realize I was going onto the other side of the road there. So thank you for that.
W: Well, You could give me kudos for it if you wanted to.
B: I could. Or I could just give you a back rub.
W: I actually auditioned for Cirque du Soleil at one point.
B: You did?
W: I'm just having a memory. Because they were doing the current version of whatever the current traveling show is down at the South Coast Plaza in Orange County and that's when I was living back at home in Irvine post-college days and they had an open call for clowns and mimes (laughs) which I had no experience in but I thought "Let's just get in there and see what happens" and they already had the big tent set up and then I can't even remember what? They had people go up in groups and pretend to kind of do whatever they thought they should do but I never got a callback so... oh well.
B: What did you do? Did you have to dress up?
W: No, no, no. I think that they were just trying to teach you some basic Commedia kind of moves and...
B: Dell'Arte?
W: Yeah. But I never got a follow up call so I guess I did not have what they were looking for. (laughing) That certain unspoken European, French-Canadian...
B: Pizzazz?
W: Yeah, yeah.
B: Pizzazz. See. That's another word that I would put into the category with kudos.
B: Oh, Can you hold on one second? I have a technical...
W: Glitch? You have an old cassette recorder don't you?
B: Yes. Radio Shack.
W: Did you have that phase as a kid? "Uh, let's tape record ourselves."
B: (laughs) I had an entire era of my childhood where I was obsessed with cassette tape recorders.
W: Yeah we did too. Because you have the microphone and then you do fake shows. You do funny voices. You'd also just log hours of strange conversation as a kid and just play it back. But I remember that was a common theme: "I know, let's tape record ourselves." "Great!" But what a simple joy! (laughing) It's like what, exactly? Why was it so fun?
B: I know. And there are probably many, many kids that were doing the same thing. Whoever invented the cassette technology was not developing it for the purpose of 9 year-olds to create their own imaginary radio stations, which is what we did. Me and my friends were obsessed with the Muzak station. They don't really have Muzak stations anymore and I was mourning the loss of that recently. I was remembering that when I was a kid they had these Muzak stations which were straight orchestral instrumental arrangements of pop hits of the day. There were no vocals, it was all instrumental. But they did have a DJ and we thought the DJ's were great because they were really mellow. They were really, really sedated, really relaxed. And there would be Muzak covers of the most inappropriate songs too.
W: (Laughing) Like "Hot Child in the City".
B: And "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" but it would be an oboe doing (both simultaneously make sound of oboe playing "Hit me with your best shot") And then all the typical power ballads...
W: (laughing) A little Pat Benetar.
B: Some Juice Newton. We used to use the songs as a little musical bed for us to sing over.
W: That's a great idea.
B: And our station was called "K-Mellow".
W: (laughing) And you'd sing the lyrics?
B: We would make up lyrics over the music, which, unfortunately, I don't have any tapes of. But there were some good lyrics. You know, gratuitously obscene and mostly pretty random, but I think that was probably the founding of a lot of my songwriting right there. Did you guys do any radio station kind of thing?
W: I'm trying to think. I think we did more like "This is the Jerry Davis Show" and "Hi, I'm Jerry Davis and my guest here...". We would just do, I guess, radio plays in a sense. I guess they were shows that were supposed to be, in our minds, be on the radio. But we wouldn't say "Hi, I'm a DJ, yeah." So yeah, we would just go right into the show that we assumed people would want to listen to. But yeah, we missed out on the radio thing.
B: We did a thing where we would do the back announcement, "This is K-Mellow. This is Todd Thompson here with guest..."
W: You were really committed to that format.
B: Oh yeah. "We have in-studio guest..." What was that magician's name?
W: Doug Henning?
B: Yeah. "We've got in-studio guest Doug Henning. Where did you get those suspenders Doug?"
W: "Well thanks for asking. Uh, just picked 'em up the other day..."
B: (laughing) "Can I see if that moustache is real? I love the way it tapers by the way." (Both laughing) So you grew up in Southern California right?
W: Yeah.
B: Do you remember the TV commercials for, I think, it was a place called Schick Shadel? I don't know why they were always playing them during the afternoon cartoons and during all the kids shows, but it was a treatment center for, I think, addiction and they would electrocute you as a cure. I seem to recall that was part of the thing.
W: Oh wow, I don't remember that at all.
B: "Come to Schick Shadel..." We were terrified, because some day, if you got a beer or something you might end up at Schick Shadel and you would have to get the treatment. We used to do commercials on our fake radio show where you would get 'the treatment.' "Hey, step right in here. Put this thing on your head. Okay, we're going to press the button now."
W: (laughing) Yeah. The commercials that come to mind for me as a kid were Wilson's House of Suede and Leather, I don't know if you remember that? It was up on Wilshire, or in Beverly Hills somewhere. I was an Orange County kid so I would never go to LA other than like an occasional field trip to the La Brea Tar Pits or Natural History Museum so Wilson's House of Suede and Leather just looked amazing. And also Zachary All clothing.
B: Zachary All! I remember that.
W: Yeah, where they would go through the list of all the suit sizes? "We've got portly short, portly tall, full breasted, double breasted, triple breasted. Like racks and racks of suits. So Zachary All and Carpeteria...
B: Oh Carpeteria! I remember that!
W: (Singing the jingle) CarpeteriAAA...
B: (Joining in) CarpetiriaAAA...
W: Like a big genie with his hands on his waist.
B: And they used to roll out the carpets really violently on the commercials.
W: (laughing) And then, of course, there was Toyota of Orange and they had a jingle "Well you won't get a lemon..."
W: (singing together) "At Toyota of Orange!"
B: I remember that one. And of course Cal Worthington. That's just a given.
W: Almost not even worth mentioning.
B: "This is Cal Worthington!" I don't even know where he was from? He had a really specific accent and a great cowboy hat.
W: I think he was from somewhere like Texas or the Midwest.
B: Yeah, Texas probably. And he would just list off the cars endlessly. "We got a '73 Ford $1479.99 and we can get you..." He'd list a hundred cars and you'd just be waiting for the show to come back because the commercial would go on forever. It's funny about California, maybe more so during that time, since there was such a great influx in the '30s and '40s of people from Texas, Oklahoma, that whole dustbowl influx, that it really left a mark. I remember a lot of Western type people being around then. I think unconsciously we grew up with a little of that that western accent. There's a little twang that got passed on.
W: I think even a little bit through the '60s, because my folks are both from North Carolina and they came out here in 1964.
B: I don't know if its been ironed out by now.
W: It might have.
B: I think it has been.
W: Thank god!
B: (laughing) Hopefully my kids...
W: How many do you have?
B: I have two. How about you?
W: Yeah, we have two.
B: You have two as well?
W: We've two, and uh... I don't like it.
B: You don't like it?
W: I don't like it one bit. It's too much time to have to deal with them. With just their needs, you know?
B: (laughing) They're needful.
W: They're completely needful.
B: I think that's the one thing they should tell you about parenthood beforehand.
W: That you're gonna have to carry a lot of stuff.
B: And you're gonna have to go into training. You're gonna need to train as if you're going into elite...
W: Elite Special Forces.
B: Elite Special Forces. Special Ops. Cause that's the level of rigor invovled.
W: They also don't tell you, I mean, it's obvious on the one hand but you kind of don't believe the accumulation of stuff you're gonna take on between toys and supplies. No exaggeration it's easily triple what we probably had. So we're in the process of planning...
B: An intervention?
Pt. 2 continued next week.
Tom Waits x Beck Hansen : Pt. 2
Last week we launched the new section, Irrelevant Topics, with Pt. 1 of a conversation with Tom Waits, which can be found below. Here is Pt. 2 of that conversation.
TW: Oh god, 20 years ago. I haven’t been there in a long time. Like I was telling you my dad taught school at Belmont. We lived on Union Ave.
BH: Oh, that’s down in McArthur Park. Pico Union?
TW: Yeah this was Union between Temple and Beverly. Like, seven churches on this street. Parades.
BH: What kind of neighborhood was it then?
TW: Well, split. Latino, Central American, Korean and…
BH: Yeah I was born near Union, couple blocks from Union. Near 8th or 9th street down on Burlington.
TW: Yeah, I remember Burlington. Yeah, well you’re still there. You must be getting something out of being there. It’s a tremendous amount of energy. It’s like a battery. It’s always plugged in. When you move away, when you go to a small town, the first thing you experience is being an unplugged appliance. You think of the town, you know. I used to go back to LA just to get a charge, but after a while…It’s an exciting place for me to go now, just because its so alive. In your windshield, everywhere you look there’s a word. At all times, in every direction. Advertising is everywhere. Everywhere you would think to look, someone would put “Buy This!”
BH: Yeah, they turned them into TV’s now. Don’t know if you’ve seen that? The billboards are TV’s.
TW: No I haven’t.
BH: Yeah. So you’re looking up and it’s a billboard and about 3 seconds later it’s a different billboard. So you’re driving down the street and all these billboards are changing.
TW: Oh, I'm out of it.
BH: Yeah they just started doing that in the last year or two. I was wondering when you come back now, is it more dramatic, the change? Or does it seem the same old place?
TW: In some ways. 'Cause you see the stuff you remember. But it feels like a hundred cups of coffee. You look for certain landmarks and you say stuff like “Hey! That used to be a barber shop, and before that it was a coffee shop and before that it was a bank.” You remember everything the way it used to be.
BH: Yeah, someone gave me a book Ed Ruscha did in the 60's where he drove down Hollywood Boulevard and took pictures of the entire street and connected them. And then he did it again a few years ago. The pictures were side by side.
TW: What streets?
BH: It’s all Hollywood Blvd. I think it was from Silver Lake up through Beverly Hills.
TW: You know Western Ave is one of the longest streets in the world?
BH: I’ve always heard that. I’ve wanted to take a trip from one end to the other, see what’s on the other side.
TW: Yeah, I never did that, but I’ve seen pictures of Western Ave when it was just a dirt street. Looked like a street out of an old western town. With horses, a delivery stable, a saloon. A guy standing around on a wooden sidewalk.
BH: Yeah I have a few books with pictures. There’s no trees. Very few Trees. Just all flat. Just dirt.
TW: Yeah, all dirt. You must get charged being there as far as song ideas. Driving around, do you get stimulated by the environment.?
BH: I do. I guess there’s always been a plastic quality to LA. But it’s always had something underneath it. I find myself writing songs questioning where this is all going? Songs about everything turning into the 'faux Mediterranean stucco retail living unit.'
TW: Yeah, it’s amazing we’re all responsible for its being built. The whole town is kind of like a folk song. It’s like public domain. You do have a hand in the building of it. It didn’t get built by one guy. This is what I envisioned, we all work together. Even in your house, the things you do to your house, well, someone will be living in it, and its what you did to it. And someone after them will be living in it. I get bothered by all the people you see every day that I’ll never see again. We’re surrounded by strangers. Millions and millions of people you see every day that are just like fish. They’re just extras in the movie starring you and you’re an extra in the movie starring them. It’s just peculiar. Then you’re really aware of it in a city 'cause there’s so many people and you’re just pushing through. You’re just like a sperm flipping your flagellum around, you know, trying to make your way through the city.
BH: Who you know and whatever situations you find yourself in with whatever people—it’s all sort of arbitrary. There are an infinite amount of doors you could’ve opened.
TW: And walk right out and walk right into another door and start another life six blocks away.
BH: I wonder if you could really do that anymore? I just went to Japan and they scan your eyes when you come into the country now. They have a computer that reads your finger print.
TW: At the airport?
BH: Yeah, when you’re going through customs.
TW: They read your eye? Oh, man!
BH: Yeah they read your eyeball.
TW: Japan is the home of the $700 orange.
BH: It’s the best orange you’ve ever had. It’s gonna be a religious orange experience. (Laughs)
TW: It’s supposed to be. Yeah, you...you’d want a room. Just with you and the orange, I think. (laughs) They take all the blossoms off the tree except for one, and that’s the one that becomes the orange. All the nutrients are going to one orange. And they have a square watermelon, you know? It matures inside a wooden box, then they cut the wood off and they have this square fruit. Slice it like bread and stack it in a warehouse.
BH: Have you been to Japan many times?
TW: I haven’t been there in a long time. I remember being able to buy underwear in a vending machine. That was pretty exciting.
BH: When they name their cars, they have names like the Toyota President or the Nissan Cedric.
TW: Oh, I like that.
BH: I don’t know if when you were there – all the taxis have doilies. The doily industry dried up out here probably a good 70-80 years ago, but it’s still alive there.
TW: Where have all the doilies gone, long time passing.
BH: They’re all in Japan. And the taxi doors open by themselves.
TW: You’re joking? Yeah, in Mexico they found out the only Chevy that was doing the worst business was the Nova. In Spanish Nova means it doesn’t go. So they weren’t buying it. No one wants a car that doesn’t go.
BH: But I thought maybe there was some reverse psychology they could do, you know? Like use some different car names, like the Dodge Apocalypse or the…
TW: The Sleep Walker. The Viking, or The Zipper. I don’t know. Yeah, Dodge Neon. I couldn’t drive the Neon.
BH: The Aspire, the Aspire is another one. You’re not quite there... You’re making the effort. (laughs)
TW: The Aspire! Yeah. It’s better than No Va.
BH: When I first got my license, you could get a car second hand from an ad in the Recycler [classified ads]. Nobody wanted them; maybe because it was in the early 80’s. You could get a car from the 50’s or 60’s for $200 - $250.
TW: It’s still a new car. They don’t say 'used,' they say 'previously owned.' I can’t remember when I last saw a car pulled over on the side of the road with the hood up and a guy with his head under there. You just don’t see it any more. It was very common. Underneath, you know, with a wrench. Now it’s all computers. People don’t know what to do when their car stops.
BH: I bought a car once-- I didn’t know the battery was under the driver's seat. I had taken it in to get an oil change. When I showed up, the mechanic...his pants were burned off. The metal in the seat, it hit the battery and it went up in flames.
TW: Burnt his pants off?
BH: Yeah. He had been a master mechanic in Germany. But when he came to America he didn’t have the same credentials and was working out of a Salvadorian tire shop. He was a genius mechanic. I showed up one time and said I only had $15 and the car was on its last leg. We had become friends, so he said he would see what he could do. I came back later and he had taken a piece of string and a matchstick and re-rigged the stick shift. It would have another good month in it. But when it burned his pants that was the end, he wasn’t having it. I called the car Jaws because the front of the hood had been smashed in so the hood was slightly open. It was a station wagon so it kind of looked like a shark. I painted some teeth on it at one point.
TW: That could catch on…that’s what Einstein said, if it has a flaw and its irreparable turn it into a feature. If you’re always burning the pancakes, put it on the marquee. Burnt Pancakes, 99 Cents. People who can fix anything with string are disappearing. I think most things can be fixed with string, but we need to be reminded of that. Except if you pour a fresca into your computer, I don’t think that will work. Or if you pour a coke in the back of your television the string won’t work. It’ll turn into a coffee table immediately.
BH: There is a photographer, Chris Jordan, I did a video with. He takes pictures of landfills. One that has tires valves, one that’s just plastic bottles, one that’s just cell phones. He some how figured out how to take the picture and alter it to where it’s the same exact number of that object that’s being thrown out every day. They’re beautiful photos. Gigantic. When you stand back you don’t know what it is, it’s kind of abstract. When you get closer you see what it is. I don’t remember the numbers. 350,000 soda cans a minute. This was just in America, too. One that was amazing was like 400,000 cell phones thrown out a day.
TW: Well you know space is already getting crowded. They’re planning on blasting up all the trash up in space. There’s things in contracts about that already. Disposing of certain materials. You have to promise, in order to get rid of it, you’ll put it on a rocket and blast it into space.
BH: Won’t it be more expensive to put it in space than what it costs originally? I guess you’ll have to buy space on the rocket for the thing you buy. It’ll be in the cost of the microwave.
TW: It’ll be on the spaceship…
BH: Space cartage fee… So how long have you been doing photographs?
TW: Oh, a couple of years. Some of them are pretty wild. I don’t know if anyone is as interested in them as I am. The shapes are just bizarre. [Photos of oil stains found on the ground]. I don’t think they’re going to be the next big thing. “Look Honey, Look, there’s Jackie Gleason; he’s got a Horse coming out of his head. It looks like a bird is eating his chin. There’s a camel, see the camel? The camel is disappearing into the pond right here and now there’s a fountain coming and Richard Benjamin is launching.” I see stuff that nobody else sees. I think they’re just for the home. Just for my own peculiar amusement.
BH: Thank you for doing this. It was a good excuse to call you up and bug you, pull your ear for a while
TW: You only live once, this is good. I would like to continue this. This is very interesting to me. Maybe I’ll make some notes next time. You know, the yo-yo is a sixteenth century Philippine weapon. It weighed 4 pounds and had twenty feet of cord and only came to the US in 1929.
BH: I'm wondering what’s going to show up in 2029 from the fourteenth century? Maybe there are other possibilities in the wings.
Irrelevant Topics in a new section featuring conversations between musicians, artists, writers, etc. on various subjects, without promotional pretext or editorial direction. For the first in this series of conversations, the legendary musician and performer, Tom Waits agreed lend an hour of his time to talk about anything and nothing in particular. Here is Pt. 1 of that conversation.
BH: Yeah I think so. Hey, I wanted to ask you about being from Los Angeles. You grew up there...
TW: Yeah, Whittier, La Habra, Downey, that whole area. Yeah, Los Lobos, they're from Whittier.
So is Nixon. I remember Nixon's market. He had his own family market.
BH: He was? For some reason I thought he was from the Midwest.
TW: No, California, and we used to get a visit every year from the Oscar Meyer wiener mobile, which was an enormous vehicle shaped like a hot dog. The driver was a Dwarf, and the wiener mobile would broadcast music while he sang the song "I wish I was an Oscar Meyer wiener."
He drew quite a crowd. Pretty exciting for a shopping center.
BH: That car is still driving around. I see it from time to time.
TW: You see the Oscar Meyer wiener mobile?
BH: I've seen it parked.
TW: They used to pass out little whistles that were about two inches long and it had three notes available. (Laughs.) Whittier lore.
BH: I was born in the McArthur park area.
TW: You remember when they drained McArthur Park, the lake?
BH: I do, yeah...
TW: They found unbelievable things: Cars, human bones, weaponry.
BH: They should have done an exhibit.
TW: I don't know why they didn't. I thought that's why they drained it.
BH: I'd always heard that when they drained the Echo Park Lake they found an amateur submarine.
TW: Oh, my God.
BH: I don't know if that was lore.
TW: You mean a homemade submarine?
BH: Yeah, I think it was older too, from the early days of "home submarine building." I don't know if that subculture still exists?
TW: That was the East Kids.
BH: There's so many different versions of the city.
TW: It is pretty international. Drive over here and you're in Russia. Here, Indonesia, the Philippines, Central America. It's pretty wild that way.
BH: I think of the city as a sort of mirage. If you look at pictures of the city a hundred years ago it's just a bunch of weeds and desert dust. Its not really supposed to be here. I was always fascinated by the city it was meant to be. I guess it was a place created by developers. It's not really like a city where some people roam around and then they find a good piece of land, and then they test it out for a while and make sure there is water so they don't die, and then they decide to make a city. I started looking at some pictures...Beverly Hills was originally supposed to be called Morocco Junction. I started thinking, if they'd gone with that name we'd be in a whole other situation. I was wondering if there were any things that you remember? It seems like it's shed its skin so many times.
TW: Well, cars choked everything. I know originally there was a red line that ran from
San Bernardino all the way to the ocean and for 35 Cents you could ride a streetcar you know from...
BH: Yeah I heard you'd get there in 20 minutes.
TW: And in one of those red car buildings, dispatch is right there where Epitaph records is right around Sunset and Silver Lake. You remember the Continental Club in Silver Lake? That big Latin Club in Silver Lake. Burned down.
BH: Yeah I remember that.
TW: It was lightning.
BH: Lighting?
TW: Yeah, a form of lightning.
BH: I played at this benefit concert where I was about to go on stage in 45 minutes. It was a clear blue sky and a bolt of lightning came out of nowhere. I don't know if you heard about that? It was about twelve years ago.
TW: You got struck by lightning?
BH: No, I didn't. I was inside, but someone in the audience did. I heard this crash, and looked outside and the whole venue was streaming out with people.
TW: You lost your crowd.
BH: Yeah, they had to cancel the whole thing.
TW: That's what I hate about playing outdoors.
BH: Yeah right? I've had more outdoor shows canceled from natural disasters. I was playing in Mexico once and some kind of hurricane came. Turned into chaos. One time I was in Japan. I was going to play on Mt. Fuji and a typhoon hit.
TW: A typhoon hit? Wow. I haven't really played outdoors much. I played in Japan once; I played in an abandoned temple. The roof had been torn off. They thought it would be a cool place for a concert but it was 30 below. All I remember was my sax player making a fire out of chop sticks and holding his horn over the flame to warm it up before we went on. Everyone was dressed up in moon gear. It was pretty cold out there. It's hard to compete with the natural elements. It's captured better in a theater. I'm probably a little old fashioned and a little backward.
BH: I'm always interested in how the whole festival thing evolved. Those pictures from the 50's, the early rock 'n' roll people playing at the state fair.
TW: Opening for super markets.
BH: Yeah, exactly.
TW: Stages that were built in a few hours out of scrap wood.
BH: I'm always curious what it sounded like?
TW: My bass player Larry Taylor toured with Jerry Lee Lewis in the 50's. They toured all over the US in a Cadillac and all their gear was in the trunk. The amps, the bass... the speakers in the hall they played at were no bigger than an encyclopedia. But there was still wild enthusiasm and energy created out of the performances and the crowds went out of their minds. But it wasn't done with volume. It was the odd sight of a man possessed at a keyboard, with hair hanging down. The other thing: the mics for the piano - they just used a violin pick up wrapped in a hanky and stuffed it in the hole of a baby grand. Standards were lower.
BH: But it does make you play a different way. We did this thing a couple years back, we were on a tour in the South. After the show we'd find a bar and we'd play there with little practice amps. Maybe the bar might have a PA with two little speakers. Usually we were singing through a guitar amp. I remember one time we were in El Paso. We had the day off and we were just going through town, and we found a coffee house. They didn't have any equipment. We just had a couple of those little 15-watt practice amps. I think my guitar player found a dorm or something down the street and started knocking on the doors and people lent us the equipment. You know, when we got in there and started playing, probably 100 people crammed into this café that didn't even have a stage; you couldn't hear anything. So the performance had to rely on whatever kind of feeling you could put out.
TW: People had to be quiet so you could be heard then. That's just a basic human thing I guess, right?
BH: There's something about that awkwardness of being bereft of a sound system and that volume you're used to. You're stripped of that and suddenly you have to make due with almost nothing. And the people were crowded in there. They were about two inches from your face. That's another thing. You're singing right into people's faces, which is another interesting thing. (Laughs.)
TW: You'd like to be raised up a little bit. I played the Roxy with Jimmy Witherspoon a long time ago, and somebody hit the telephone pole in front on Saturday. Knocked out all the power - this was like 5minutes before we went on. Place was in total darkness. People were lighting candles. Jimmy Witherspoon went and did a killer show. He just put his organist on a piano, and he has this big big, huge voice any way. Got right on the lip of this thing. I was freaked out. I didn't know what to do. He killed. I guess you have to get reduced to that to find out the origin and basic building blocks of what you do are still in tact. Look under the building, make sure the supports are still there and haven't been eaten through. (Laughs.) But, yeah, you can do a lot with a bullet mic and a wah-wah pedal. But before that there was changing your voice and raising your volume. I guess we've all gotten very lazy with all the toys that are available.
BH: I wonder, in a way, if it's good to put yourself in those positions where you don't have the equipment, you don't have those crutches. But I think we're so attuned to hearing it at that volume and having to feel that impact? There's something maybe uncomfortable now to just hearing somebody's voice in a room singing.
TW: I guess it's like when you make dinner at home. You shove the bowl across the table and you throw a fork and you drop the napkin.(Laughs.) You make due. I don't know if it's all cosmetic. I guess you can tell when something is primarily cosmetic and lacks the structural integrity. I think we all have an instinct about that. Where does this "Best" thing come from? Is that human? Is that American? Is it all over the world? Everyone wants the best eye surgeon, the best babysitter, the best vehicle, the best prosthetic arm, and the best hat. There's also the worst of all those things available and they're doing rather well. (Laughs.) Denny's is doing great. It's always crowded. You have to wait for a table.
BH: Also this obsession with ranking. All the "Best of" lists. I get asked to write "Best of" lists occasionally. An emphasis on ranking things. Having a hierarchy and having it be written in granite, written in stone.
TW: It's economic. So you can charge more.
BH: Yeah, it must be. But maybe it's just a need to have some order that's been established, and that everybody has been notified. I don't know.
TW: There's too much of everything.
BH: Maybe it's a millennial thing. It started around the millennium. "What are the best movies? What are the best songs?"
TW: Well, then there's the pressure of feeling that you need to have what has been already rated the best. A lot of people are afraid to explore their own peculiar taste for fear - that it would be uncool. Just like when you're a teenager you don't want to be caught with the wrong sports shirt, the wrong socks.
BH: I think there's a bit of that. Certain things haven't made it to the "List," so then they go into the category of guilty pleasure or something.
TW: My theory is that the innovators are the ones that open the door to things, and then behind them there's a huge crowd and they are trampled by the crowd behind them. And then you have to peel the innovators off the ground like in the movie, The Mask. Like a Colorform.
BH: I was thinking about influences and people who jump on a train or a trend, follow something. I was reading about the Greek playwright, Euripides, and a few others. He had written 105 plays and two of the plays survived from antiquity. I was thinking, "Can you imagine writing 105 plays, and you had to write 105 for one or two of them to survive?" I was thinking maybe in a way that the people who were influenced by the lost plays are the ones who are going to help them survive in some way. It's not really about what you're doing originally, it's about the transmitting of the thing to the next person. It mutates along the way and turns into other things.
TW: You leave a little map for somebody. Maybe the others were lesser works. Or maybe the two that survived were lesser works.
BH: Maybe they were the throwaways? You never know. Maybe there's things in there that were lost that would've changed everything?
TW: That's very possible.
BH: The throwaway ones that he wrote to make the deadline are the ones we have.
TW: It's like they found one of those van Gogh's at a garage sale. This woman bought it and she was using it to block out the sun in her kitchen. She was using it as a window shade, so it was getting all faded from the sun. And she cut it because it didn't fit the window. When they finally discovered she had a van Gogh as a window shade, they brought in all these experts from the museum and they were all filling in her living room and they said, "How can you cut off the top off this painting?" And she said, "It was just a little piece of the sky." Sometimes it's the value you attach to things. It's subjective. And we record on stuff that's going to disintegrate. Just like films are made on celluloid that's going to vanish, it's going to be gone. It's like drawing on wax paper or something.
BH: Yeah, I think I read that only twenty percent of the films made before 1930 have survived.
TW: It's the way of all flesh. Even in the world we're down to the last of 20 percent of all animals that were originally here on earth are left. There were millions of other species that vanished. You really have to fight. Only the strong survive. Whose song was that? "Only the Strong Survive"? Your songs have to wind up being used as soundtracks to jump rope. Tapes will go, but people will still be jumping rope. They'll need tunes for jump rope.
BH: It's true. I think the last song standing will probably be "Happy Birthday."
TW: I'm sure it will be. It's terrible, but I guess songs are just interesting things to do with the air.
BH: There's sort of a planned obsolescence or something. That's just part of it.
TW: Yeah and we have every generation making a whole bunch of new ones. Even though the generation before says, "What's wrong with these tunes? We've got plenty of good tunes lying around here. What are you making new songs for? We've got cool songs about everything you're writing about. We've got plenty of songs about girls." "No, no. That's all right, Dad. We're doing something else, something cooler over here. You go ahead." And the dad says, "Do you know Jimmy DURANTE? Have you ever heard of Jimmy Durante?"
BH: I think its gold panning. You know? They're just holding out. They're just gonna get some little piece of something. Some little piece, even if it's just a crumb.
TW: Yeah, that's what every body does. That's what Alfred Hitchcock said when he saw Ginger Rogers in a gold lame dress at a movie opening on Hollywood Boulevard: "There are hills in them gold."(Laughs).
BH: There is probably an alternate endeavor that can be engaged in and everyone can take a hiatus from "The Song."
TW: Look. There were heavy metal bands whose music was being used to torture prisoners in Iraq. They played it real loud to get information. Well, they deprive you of sleep and they play these bands. And that's all you get to listen to. It's one particular song from this band. In the same way that they use it now in the parking lot of 7-11 when they play classical music. It keeps all the hoods away. They blast Beethoven. No one hangs out now, drinks beer in the parking lot. Changed everything.
BH: Yeah, so you may be an unwitting instrument.
TW: You don't know how you're going to be used. You could be a doorstop or paperweight or maybe a national anthem. There's no way of telling. Once we're gone, the whole promotion thing is over. Now we'll see if it can fly on its own now. Like some tunes do, you know?
BH: I think they are also some kind of ephemera or reminder to give some impression of what it was like. You know, if we just had pictures of the 1920's, 1930's and 1940's; it would be one thing. But some how, when you can hear the music?
TW: Yeah, people really did listen to the song and it really captured their imagination. You could hear a song about "California, Here I Come" and you would actually decide based on that song to move to California. That's what people did to San Francisco.
BH: There weren't really many songs about moving to Northern Finland.
TW: Yeah, or even Needles or look at Lodi. Not a good advertisement for Lodi, 'cause you say, "Stuck in Lodi Again." Who's gonna move to a place that this guy told the whole world he felt "stuck in"? Not every town gets their song. Actually, Sinatra tried to do a song about Los Angeles. It was really lame. Really lame. It embarrassed the shit out of me.
BH: That was in the 80's right?
TW: "LA, You're a Lady." It was one of those lame, awful... Maybe it's the rhyme or the rhythm of the name Los Angeles.
BH: Yeah I don't think anyone has written a definitive LA song.
TW: Maybe it's the rhyme or the rhythm of the name Los Angeles.
BH: Yeah, I don't think you can...
TW: But Chicago or St Louis, such cool sounding names. New Orleans. So many songs about New Orleans.
BH: I'm trying to think, I don't know if I've written any place-name songs? Oh no, that's not true. I wrote one called "Modesto".
TW: The city itself was named because the two guys who founded the town didn't let them use their names in the name of the town. They were too modest and they didn't let them use their names, so they called the town Modesto.
