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| Nellcote |
Legendary Boston Globe music critic shares his 30 years of
covering concerts in Boston. This was in the Boston Globe Magazine section Sunday 04/09/06...He has an hour long music show on WBOS in Boston Thursdays
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
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 [email protected]. Go to boston.com/magazine to hear Morse talk about his favorite concerts in a slideshow with music.
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| Break The Spell |
Always liked Steve Morse, the Dixie Dregs was where his best work was done, but his current role as Deep Pueple's guitar player has brought forth some great stuff too. Their last four albums have been stellar, due in no small part to Steve. |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Sounds like the guy has good taste.....for a critic. |
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| Nellcote |
Steve Morse was one of the originals, told it like it is.
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
quote:
Nellcote wrote:
Steve Morse was one of the originals, told it like it is.
Being at the right place at the right time helped. |
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| Nellcote |
Whenever a big act would come to town, he would reel out articles about the ten times he'd seen them, with terrific detail.
When the Boss played, what nine nights @ The Meadowlands
in '99 (I caught the 2nd night) ,Morse was right there at the opener. He caught the Stones with a passion, I used to see him at Boston Stones shows frequently, he was at the Rio movie I caught in February. He had a Rock Notes column on Fridays in the Globe, which was the gospel about what was coming into town for acts, where groups have played in town recently, etc. Back before the Internet, this was THE column for annoucements of big rock shows, Morse had all the scoops. He was unbridled for heaping both praise and criticism on a band, more-so, he was a fan. Good to see he's still writing, and now on radio.
[Edited by Nellcote] |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
>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.<
I can agree with him about J Geils. That band deserves alot more respect than they're getting. |
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