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

[William Swiggard]

  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_greatest_hits/
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