The Communication Blog

Unlike many musicians since 1981 who had a couple of decades of MTV music videos to influence what and ‘how’ they played (and stood, and snarled, and vamped…), many blossoming young guitarists like myself in the sixties absorbed shows like the Monkees, and Where the Action Is, and Shindig, like parched earth sucks up rain. We were too young to go to clubs (hell, we were barely old enough to stay up past nine o’clock), spent hours by ourselves practicing, and then voila, there were people on TV being what (we thought) we wanted to be, and, because there weren’t no such thing as a VCR, every photon from that big ol’ tube that showed the fingering patterns of ‘real’ guitarists was sucked into our collective musician consciousness.

Everything a young musician listens to becomes part of their foundation, and as a sixth grader I was already listening to everything from the Ventures to Henry Mancini (the Peter Gunn riff may be the greatest riff of all time), and my second thought upon hearing of Davy’s death, right after saying a brief Buddhist prayer, was that If I had a guitar in my hand at that moment I could have played Last Train to Clarksville without hesitation.

Life is trippy, sad, and wonderful.

Thanks to author-illustrator Brian Fies for alerting me to what I already should have had on my calendar (because I am a Canook): it’s Canada Day (before or after you watch the William Shatner thing, with a tissue close at hand, do check out Brian Fies’ blog, because he’s not just an award-winning graphic novelist, he’s a helluva nice guy).

Canadian and thespian

Brian posted a video of Shatner doing a very patriotic, tears-welling-up version of O Canada. Since this is a blog about — sometimes loosely about — communications, I think that William Shatner’s interpretation of the anthem is, gosh, so moving it deserves inclusion here as a wonderful way to communicate one’s love of country…please go experience it yourself, you won’t be disappointed.

Don’t you (us?) Yanks have a holiday coming up? Have a great holiday, ‘a?

Toronto, 1984

Sure wish this wasn’t a commentary on another person I know who’s not with us anymore, but the timing of these things is beyond our control…

Clarence, gone.  I worked with him on tour and he was our neighbor for several years in Sausalito. I liked Clarence, as a guy to hang with, talk with, not just to to hang with because he was a ranking member of the music industry elite. Funny guy, not close to perfect, just like the rest of us, and one of those massive guys who moved gently through the world when he wasn’t on stage.

Over the years I’ve quoted something to many friends that he said when we talked about the death of Bill Graham, original king of concert promoters back when (it’s also included in my annual post about being on the road when John Lennon died). I was in Clarence’s condo, literally just down the slope from our backyard, and we were talking about Graham, and Clarence shook his head and said “Now what? What do we do now?”

He was lamenting that there would be no replacement. Yes, there were and will always be people who do whatever needs to be done, whether it’s concert promotion, champion quarterbacks, courageous cops, whatever, but there are a handful of people who aren’t replaceable, a package put together that can’t ever, ever be replicated.

I don’t like that we can now apply Clarence’s perspective to himself. It’s disheartening. Jesus, I’m so fortunate to have worked for and known, for a short time, the Big Man. My condolences to his family, Bruce, and especially the E Street Band.

Big Man gone.

Sucks.

Here’s a clip from YouTube that I was looking forward to including in my coming-soon web stories on my decade on the road. I never would have thought that twenty-five years ‘down the road’, I’d be able to point to my concert video work on the web. I’m certainly thankful for it now, even as I’m saddened by why I’m doing it.

This is from Toronto, 1984. I’m on the front-of-the-house camera.

Blow, Big Man, blow.

Pinetop Perkins is gone.

He passed a couple of days ago. I’m very lucky not just for being able to say I met a blues legend, and not just because I heard him play live, but because both of those occurred in a very special way.

I met him in Chicago when Journey did Soundstage, a program created by WTTW, Chicago’s PBS station. I’m bettin’ more than few people who watch Soundstage now have no idea the show was created almost forty years ago.

It happened during what I call the Journey-in-transition phase. Infinity is released, Steve Perry is new, Greg Rollie and Aynsley Dunbar are still in the band. For as tight with the band and with Bubba (road manager) as Gonzo and I were, it’s not as if we knew how things worked across the full, inner Journey spectrum (although I’d come to know more as the years went along and my friendships grew deeper on both sides, business and band), we were, simply, roadies, so I can’t give you any background on or insights as to how they scored the gig. It’s certainly a safe assumption that the CBS/Columbia push behind the release of Infinity was huge, and no high-profile, high-visibility opportunity would be overlooked.

Soundstage occupied a very cool place on TV — good bands performing live in a studio with an audience — and it originated in Chicago, where Journey was at least as and maybe more popular than in SF. I have some very specific memories of the day:

- Walking into the studio at load-in. It’s the first time I’ve ever walked into a ‘real’ TV studio, and it’s in my hometown. The stage is up, and around the studio are set pieces that replicate the supporting structure of the “L” (“El” is probably more accurate), the elevated trains that encircle the city, so it kind of looks like the street view under the tracks. I thought it was a nice touch.

- It’s not a big space, which surprises me then, as I think it does anyone who’s never been in a studio before.

- In quick succession: Bubba walks in, he and director Ken Ehrlich meet, and Bubba, indicating the stage, says something like, “This isn’t going to work.” I know what’s happening here, because I know the band’s show, and while it may not need as sophisticated a staging as a Broadway musical, there are certainly issues about how the band sets up, the gear, stuff like that, and this is an important gig, which always means there’s a lot of time and money invested in it. Now a few of the studio crew, Ehrlich, and Bubba are huddling at the edge of the stage as Bubba’s going into what had been specifically described, and Ehrlich cuts in with something like, “Well, this is what we have, so let’s work with it,” conveying in a pretty direct fashion that things ain’t going to change. We move on.

- The studio helpers — I can’t think of any other way to describe them — are a few young men and women, freshly scrubbed, probably college educated and, looking back, most certainly very nice people with jobs they love. But, as they introduce themselves and say “and just let us know what we can do for you,” Gonzo and I look at each other and roll our eyes, because we’re roadies and they’re not, and, therefore, they get an eye roll. Hey, we weren’t assholes, we were good guys, but we were young, road-hard and close to full of ourselves…and obviously wouldn’t know how overly attitudinal we were for a couple of decades.

- Allow me to time shift: when the station’s execs and their guests arrived for the show, their attempt to appear ‘cool’ was close to laughable: blazers, open-collar dress shirts, and awesomely huge, um, I don’t know, ‘things’, medallions, I guess you can call it late ’70s bling, hanging around their neck. Again, to a roadie, well…

So, later, everything’s ready for sound check, the band comes in, and the guest musicians arrive: Albert King, Luther Allison (a great, great Chicago blues guitarist), Jerry Portnoy, and Pinetop Perkins.

Every creative profession and many professions linked to or supporting creative professions have unique, varying bonus benefits that are hard to objectively quantify, but are subjectively priceless. Most people with any level of interest in popular music have some ideas about the kind of cool things only a roadie might experience, and those things would come under descriptions of experiences shared with stagehands, film crews, and alike endeavors; you get to occasionally meet actors, or you get to travel and visit places or go on specially arranged excursions, and, of course, you get to see or experience things that only a small group of people can appreciate.

Many roadies are, like me, musicians. For us, the bonus benefits are legion. Personally, many of my greatest experiences are wrapped around sound checks. Examples (obviously I can only include a few, and with the exception of the Nils Lofgren memory I’ll throw in, these aren’t necessarily the ‘best’): meeting Journey for the first time in 1976, and watching, from only  a few feet away, as barely-out-of-his-teens Neal Schon plays his guitar in a manner I had never, ever seen or experienced before; watching Journey develop and write Separate Ways during sound checks over course of several weeks; watching Steve Smith do a call and response with a drummer from the opening band, and actually hearing Smith do patterns that couldn’t be played by any other drummer; seeing that when a band ‘works’ that things don’t always go well, and that regardless of album sales, ego, and ethics, musicians are human, just like the rest of us.

One of the great memories I have is standing on stage during sound check on the Springsteen Born in the USA tour, an arm’s length away from Nils Lofgren as he played around on his guitar, and then sat down at Roy Bittan’s grand piano and played the keys off it non-stop for ten minutes.

And then there was the sound check for Soundstage.

There’s plenty of direct experience available, from reactions of the fans to show reviews,supporting the notion that whenever you get too many extraordinary rock musicians playing live on one stage the results can be a train wreck.

Not this time. During the show itself there would be a bit of just-not-right licks during one of the jams, a teeny flaw in an otherwise great performance (nope, no need to go into the specifics of that), but the sound check was fuckin’ great. Truly. Afterwards, as I always did, if I hadn’t met some guest musician or celebrity already, I’d always introduced myself and tell them how much I admired their work. We sat around that afternoon and talked for awhile, and the guys were way, way cool. Luther was a living smile, Albert was physically huge but had a gentle vibe, and Pinetop was warm and appreciative, just the nicest guy, and happy to be playing; not just playing Soundstage, but to be playing at all, something I’ve heard from many of the greatest musicians around. Steve Smith once said to me, “I’d be happy playing in a polka band,” and he meant it.

When I read that Pinetop had died, these memories flooded my head. Amazingly, with the assistance of YouTube, I can provide you more than just the words, though: Ladies and gents, I give you a snippet of what was a great night. And aside from the music, you can dig (or wonder about) the youth and the wardrobe of the band.

Play on, Pinetop, play on.

Steve Jobs revealed the iPad (it’s still happening as I write this), the world’s worst-kept secret.

I’m watching live picts and comments via Endgadget.

Bottom line: it is waaaaayyyy cool.

A man of peace, killed by a gun

I was on the road when John Lennon died. I was in Ohio. Gonzo and I were on tour with The Babys, a band with a brief career, some good tunes, that had been the opening act for Journey’s tour (who within a year would snag Jonathan Cain from The Babies to replace Greg Rollie, keyboardist and vocalist) earlier that year.

I don’t remember specifics about exactly what I was doing when I heard the news. That’s one of the downsides of actually being part of the music and concert industry way back when, at least for some of us. I’m pretty sure we were watching Monday Night Football, and we heard Howard Cosell make the announcement.

I remember being stunned.

It just wasn’t what you’d expect. It was a foreign concept, that John Lennon would be shot and killed. It made no sense. Then again, with a few exceptions, it never makes sense whenever someone is shot.

But, John Lennon?

It hurt all of us, sure, but, me and Gonzo, we were in it, y’know? We weren’t rock stars, but we worked for a rock band. We didn’t hear our music on the radio, but we heard the music of the guys that we hung out with every night. We were getting good paychecks and having a great time because we were in the industry. Little tiny specks in the industry, certainly, but, in it, nonetheless.

We were in it, really, because of the Beatles. We were in it for the same reason young guys formed bands and played music and held on to a dream of some day doing nothing but playing music for a living, and living the music. We had those notions, for good or for bad, because we had been brought to the dream by the Beatles. I’m pretty freaking old in a lot of people’s eyes now days (I’m fifty-six), old enough to have gone to the Marquette Theatre on the corner of 59th and Kedzie to see a Hard Days Night (it’s where I also saw Ferry Cross the Mersey, with Jerry and the Pacemakers) the day it was released. I was already interested in the guitar before the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan, but me and thousands of other kids ramped up our dreams by learning how to play Day Tripper and every other Beatles tune we could figure out.

Hard to imagine that anyone else will come along in my lifetime and make a global, cultural change like the Beatles did.

And so there I was, in Ohio, having achieved some tiny level of satisfaction as a roadie, for bands that got airplay, that played concerts in small halls and big stadiums, and I was just doing it, living it, feeling it…

And John Lennon was dead.

Allow me to digress briefly: Years after Lennon’s death, the industry lost another great, influential soul when Bill Graham was killed in a helicopter accident. He didn’t have the stature of Lennon, but he was a major force in live music. Shit, he was THE force. Clarence Clemons — yep, that Clarence Clemons — had a condo just beyond my backyard in Sausalito, and we’d see each other, shoot the shit every now and then (I was on the video crew for some of the Born in the USA tour), and we saw each other the day after Bill’s accident.

Clarence looked at me and asked, “Now what?”

He was asking how on earth do we fill that void? Who would we turn to now, who would keep things happening, who would put on shows that people would remember their entire lives, who could musicians and artists and managers and fans rely on to make the impossible possible, how would we ever find our way to nirvana without the guru?

That night in Ohio was a “Now what?” moment.

Everything would be the same after that, because everything keeps going no matter who lives and who dies, just as everything would be the same after Graham, but, just like it is for all our tragedies, personal and distant, nothing would ever be the same.

As I get older, I realize how powerful the “Now What?” moments are in our lives, and I grudgingly accept, with sadness, that the “Now what?” moments must occur, and all I can do is carry them with me, remember them, and use them to guide me, to remind me of how I should treat people, and make the most of every moment, because the next moment isn’t promised to anyone. Not to me. Not to you. Not to John Lennon.

Lennon and millions of other souls are gone, and I can ask “”Now what?”, but, more importantly, I think John Lennon would say it’s okay to ask the question, as long as I move my ass down the road to look for the answer. It’s the moving that’s the answer; the journey is the answer; the knowing that life is full of “Now what?”, and you may never know why, but the only way you’ll ever a chance in hell of figuring out anything is to keep moving…

On the road.

And, as a musician, any story about Les Paul sets me to shakin’; I acquired my ’69 Les Paul Custom over thirty years ago, and those early models still reign as the Stradavarius of electric guitars.

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Les Paul died last week.  I am sending this out to honor a man who not only made huge contributions to my profession but also made an impact on me personally.  I shot Les Paul in the early 90′s for a show about home recording studios.  He had the original home recording studio – because he invented the idea – and was a true original in so many ways. 

Les invented the electric guitar and multi-track recording.  He also enabled singers to sing into microphones from inches away (which greatly increased vocal clarity) and he had many other inventions.  Before digital processing he created a small box into which he plugged his guitar and made it sound like 100 guitars playing simultaneously.  When Les Paul was making records, all other recording artists showed up at recording studios when the label told them to and didn’t hear the finished piece until they heard their own record.  Les would deliver finished tapes to his record label and confound them on how he was achieving such clear and clean sound.

Although Les Paul was an accomplished musician and a brilliant innovator I’ll remember him more because he was so genuine, engaging and funny.  We shot him at his house in New Jersey just after noon on a fall day.  His agent was very strict about our allotted time and told us that we only had him for two hours.  At 2pm we packed up, sent our NY crew home and thanked him for his time but Les wasn’t ready to let us leave.  Apparently he liked us so he asked (in his way) “Are you boys hungry?”  We said sure and soon we were all sitting in a New Jersey diner listening to his stories.  The one I remember best was this:

One night after a gig Les was driving home.  It was around 3am and it was snowing really hard.  He was on an unfamiliar road trying to see just what that sign up ahead said.  Which way was that arrow pointing?  Right or left?  When he got too close he realized that it was pointing in both directions.  He slammed on the brakes and slid across the road and up onto someone’s lawn.  He was sitting in his car, bleary-eyed trying to figure out what to do.  Close behind him was a cop car who pulled up on the lawn behind Les, lights flashing.  The cop comes up to the window and asks “Sir, have you been drinking?”  Les responds “Well I sure as hell ain’t no Goddamn stunt driver!” 

The cop laughs.  When Les hands him his drivers license the cop recognizes his name.  Luckily the cop was taking guitar lessons and tells him that he’s having trouble making some chords.  Les sees an opportunity and gets out of his car, pops open the trunk and hands the cop his guitar.  He tells the cop to show him what’s bothering him.  Illuminated by the headlights of the cop car as the snow continues to fall the cop puts one foot up on Les Paul’s rear bumper and tries to make a difficult chord.  At that point Les tells us “Just then I look back at the cop car and see his partner in the front seat leaning way forward and looking through the windshield trying to figure out what the hell’s going on…  I got out of that ticket.”

After the diner we went back to his house to drop him off.  Again we said goodbye but Les said “You boys want a beer?”  We went inside and sat around his kitchen table drinking beers until 1am.  This is one of the most memorable days I’ve had in the business.  I’ve shot a fair number of celebrities but very few of those experiences come close to my day with Les Paul.  This extraordinary man was such a regular guy.  I’m very lucky to have been able to spend a day with him. 

The world is a better place because there was a Les Paul. 

JIM IACONA
Director of Photography
San Francisco Bay Area
510-749-0055

www.jimiacona.com

cool video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP7qI5RVtxw