Everyone Loves You When You're Dead. Neil StraussЧитать онлайн книгу.
want to go on the road. When we first looked at it, it was a little scary and disappointing. But Brian Wilson does a similar sort of thing with the Beach Boys.
How much of your past do you remember? Are there periods that are clear and periods that are darker?
BRIAN WILSON: My darkest memories are from Malibu. I was in a program, a doctor’s program.
MELINDA WILSON: Honey, that’s something we don’t need to go into. And I’ll tell you why: We’ve got a lot of legal issues.
BRIAN: Forget it. Skip the question and go to another question.
MELINDA: Just skip the Landy time, Brian.
BRIAN: Okay.
Are there other parts of your background you remember very well?
BRIAN: When the Beach Boys and I used to record in my house in Bel Air, that was a good vibe. I had a good time then.
MELINDA: I’m curious, what do you mean by dark periods or cloudy periods?
Of memory.
MELINDA: You mean because of the drug thing? Why not address it? Yeah, Brian did drugs, but I don’t think he did anywhere near the amount of drugs that people think he did. We know people in the music industry who did far more than he ever did. The parts that you’re talking about are probably the medical problems that he had instead of drug or alcohol problems.
BRIAN: Yeah, drug-related problems. Yeah, I think she’s right. Yeah.
MELINDA (sighing): But people kind of get all that mixed together.
Everybody experiments. Especially in LA.
BRIAN: Do you live in LA?
I just moved out there—to West Hollywood.
BRIAN: What street do you live on in West Hollywood?
I actually live off Gardner.
BRIAN: You live on Gardner. What address?
Right around Beverly.
BRIAN: I lived down toward Santa Monica. I’ll be darned. I used to live on that same street. In an apartment?
A Spanish-style apartment.
MELINDA: Knowing him, I can’t even imagine him living there. I can’t imagine him in that Hollywood scene.
BRIAN: What’s your address?
It’s 366 North Sierra Bonita, actually.
BRIAN: I was on 1047 North Gardner. Near—not Clinton, Santa Monica.
It’s amazing you remember that. That was over thirty years ago.
MELINDA: See, now do you think he remembers the past? We’ve had so many lawsuits, and he’s constantly going through depositions and these attorneys come in thinking he probably won’t remember anything, and he just blows them away. What was your batting average in high school, Brian?
BRIAN: About .169.
MELINDA: How do you remember some of that stuff? It’s amazing.
[ Continued . . .]
A marriage between two people is difficult enough, but a band, where four or five people are in a relationship, can be a minefield of ego, miscommunication, resentment, and control issues—especially when the artistic, financial, and personal stakes are so high. Though time supposedly heals all wounds, in the case of the Who, that didn’t seem to be the case when singer Roger Daltrey, unable to get a Who reunion going, tried another approach—and paid the price for it.
In a rehearsal studio a week before his sold-out Daltrey Sings Townshend concerts at Carnegie Hall, Daltrey had put together a sixty-five-piece orchestra from Juilliard and a hundred-person crew to help him pay tribute to the songs he’d sung by Who guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend. But his tributee didn’t appear to be as honored and grateful as he’d hoped. Shaking his curly blond hair in disbelief, Daltrey complained about Townshend to orchestra conductor Michael Kamen.
ROGER DALTREY: Has Pete decided what he’s doing yet? I think he may be a very big down point in the show.
MICHAEL KAMEN: He’s giving me another song called “The Shout.” Do you know that song?
DALTREY: What do you mean he’s decided to perform “The Shout”? I don’t even know that song. I just think that to do something that obscure at that point in the show is suicide.
KAMEN: I tried very hard to get him to do something else.
DALTREY: I should show you the letter he wrote: “I’ll do anything you want.” He doesn’t even want to play with the orchestra now. He changes his mind every day.
KAMEN: It’ll be all right on the night of the show.
DALTREY: Yeah, I know, but you just don’t do that to friends, do you? He’s mad, isn’t he? The man’s obscene. I’m really up to here in it. (Flushed, Daltrey walks with his manager to a dressing room, where there’s a couch with a large white sheet over it, and says to him:) Was she that bad you had to put a sheet over her?
He sits on the sheet.
So what made you decide to do this tribute?
DALTREY: Quite simply, I wanted to do it for my fiftieth birthday. I know this is going to sound clichéd, but it is the truth: I was the guy who sang, “I hope I die before I get old.” And I’ve survived, much to my surprise—with a lot of luck, too, I should add. I wanted to celebrate my fiftieth birthday in a grand way with music, because without rock and roll in particular, I would have been a factory worker. I was an uneducated yob. Still am in some ways.
Was it hard to get Pete to agree to do the show?
DALTREY: Initially, no (laughs heartily). He’s still changing his mind as usual. But Pete’s Pete and he’ll never change.
How do you feel now when you perform material from over thirty years ago?
DALTREY: I can’t sing the early songs like “Pictures of Lily” and “I Can’t Explain.” I mean, I can sing them, but I can’t get the sound right. There was something about the way I used to sing them because I was squeezing myself into them—putting a suit on if you like—that I can’t re-create now. I’ve worn the suit for too long.
Do you find it funny to be paying tribute to someone who has frustrated you in so many ways on this project?
DALTREY: I used to get incredibly angry because I didn’t know you can’t out-articulate Pete. Pete by his own admission is a compulsive liar, and a lot of those lies have been aimed at me in the past and they still are. But to answer those lies would be just joining the same camp. I try to do it sarcastically sometimes, but I try not to be bitchy because I don’t feel bitchy about it. I get incredibly angry sometimes because it makes me feel like everybody . . . But take Pete’s interviews and look