BTO: BAND FOR A BLAND NEW WORLD

I was on my way to interview Robbie Bachman and Blair Thornton at the St. Moritz when I came upon Martin standing in the rain outside the Doubleday Bookstore on Fifth Avenue, with his Teflon skateboard under one arm and a copy of Pride and Prejudice under the other. Needless to say, I was surprised to see him out in the rain, for, although Martin is only sixteen, he is the author of a much-praised epic poem called Iggy Goes Hawaiian and world's most au courant teenager. As I approached him, he grabbed my arm conspiratorially, and said, "Actually, I've already done it, you know. This second run is just for confirmation."

"Done what?" I asked.

"Last week," he said, "same M.O., I participated in the world's most unfashionable drug transaction. I bought a lid of Nebraska red from this girl at Hunter College. She gave me an ETA and this place as an RDV. I carried this copy of Pride and Prejudice in my right hand, which was the 'all-clear' signal, and upon making 'contact' we retired around the corner to the Museum of Modern Aft and, in our respective restrooms, puffed a stick apiece in preparation for our conversation in the sculpture garden, which as you probably could guess, was principally concerned with Bruce Springsteen."

"Martin," I said, "You've seen it all."

"I know," he said, with wisdom beyond his years. "And what foolish errand brings you out in the weather?"

When I told him I was going to interview half of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, he brightened immediately and (allowing that Nebraska Red only gave him an insatiable craving to run a stopand-go fly pattern on the left corner back) asked himself along.

"You said half of BTO," Martin said, as we walked, "I trust that this is the half without hair on its chin."

"Right," I said. "The rookies."

"Good." Martin said. "Show me a man who grows a beard and I'll show you a man who would appear in public wearing a T-shirt with the name of something on it. It's a virus, you know, this creeping nouveau beatnikism. It starts off simply enough with something like an interracial friendship, then before you know it you're wearing a beret, drinking expresso and listening

"Your Bruce Springsteen beatnik hustle: deliver an electric amphetamine West Side Story and make a lot of rock critics street wise. People who live in tenements don't call them tenements."

to poetry and jazz at some party with Bob Dylan and Ken Nordine and Mickey Dolenz."

"I don't think Randy Bachman and Fred Turner have that sort of beard," I said.

"Not consciously, of course, but that's how it starts..." He would have continued but a derelict approached him for money, Martin gave him his copy of Pride and Prejudice. "I'm too young to have known beatnikism first hand, of course. But I've seen enough Dobie Gillis re-runs to know what we're up against."

By way of reassuring Martin, I showed him the press release from Mercury which pointed out that after a hard day of riffing Blair and Robbie like to sit around with a Coke or Fresca and just shoot the breeze.

"There!" he said. "That's the sort of thing that makes you love BTO! Coke or Fresca. It's so specific, and it's true. You know it's true. It's so fucking dumb it's got to be true. Doesn't that scare you? Huh, Mr. Rock and Roll Critic? I mean these guys like to sit around and shoot the breeze, drink Coke and Fresca and play rock and roll. They're so fucking obvious you'd be better off analyzing a stop sign."

"Well..." I said.

"I mean, what can you do to them? They sell more records than the Stones and don't even want to meet them." "Well..."

"You see, they're the most convincing band in the world. You can't help but believe they are as they appear, that there's nothing hidden. No poetry. No con. And that's all rock critics are interested in. Unfortunately in popular music they are always the same thing. You know that song of "Sure," I said, "A rock monument to the blatant. I like it, though. There's a kind of dumb majesty about it, like Mount Rushmore."

Kandy Bachman's, 'Rock Is My Life And This Is My Song'?"

"See!" Martin said triumphantly, "You do believe it! 'You know I was born standing up with a guitar in my hand/I ain't trying to come on like Hollywood, but Hollywood is what I am.' But if Neil Young or some other Malibu Mea Culpa Merchant had written the same song, why it would be a 'masterpiece of dramatic irony,' a 'scathing indictment,' 'pain etched in every line.'"

"Shut up, Martin," I said.

"They're just so American," Martin said.

"Canadian," I said.

"Canadians are more American than Americans. What about Guy Lombardo? Neil Young?"

"Shut up, Martin," I said again, but we were turning into the St. Moritz lobby.

"And isn't this lobby perfect? Doesn't it make you feel like you're seventy years old and just got off a tour bus?"

In the elevator Martin said, "Who else, what other band would get Little Richard to play on an album and then bury him in the mix?"

"So much for interracial friendship," I said.

Blair Thornton answered the door. He and Robbie had just finished breakfast in their room and after we had searched around to find me an ashtray and sent out for Cokes and Frescas we got down to the problems at hand.

"Well what do you want to know?" Robbie said.

"Well, what we need to do," I said, "is put our heads together and figure out how I can make a story out of a perfectly pleasant interview with two goodnatured young professional musicians who sell millions of records?

"You need a hook," Thornton said.

"Yes!"

"We'll think of one. It shouldn't be hard. At least you aren't restricted to three chords."

"You could write about how our favorite band other than ourselves is Aerosmith even though we had a slight altercation with them," Robbie said, and for a second my heart leapt as I thought I detected a note of irony, but one look

into that open, sincere face and I knew it was true. Aerosmith was their favorite band.

"Yeah," Thornton said, "that sounds like the sort of thing that would go in a magazine article. They're a bunch of spoiled suburban turkeys, of course, but you don't have to be nice to play rock and roll. What magazine did you say you were from?"

"CREEM."

"Oh, yeah," he said with a grin, "FOUR SLABS OF HAPPY FAT! This chick hung around for three or four days and what did she get?"

Thornton and Bachman in unison: "FOUR SLABS OF HAPPY FAT!!"

"You don't think that angle will work again?" I said.

"Maybe, Two slabs of happy fat and two bronzed Apollos?" Robbie said.

"Aren't you getting a lot better on the drums, Bachman?" I said.

"This chick hung around for three or four days and what did she get? FOUR SLABS OF HAPPYFAT!"

"Yeah," he said, brightening, "Can you tell?"

"Sure."

"I don't guess it would be too good, though, to write about how little I knew on those first gold records."

"Are you getting better, Blair?"

"I'm getting more professional, you know—slicker. With thesongwriting particularly."

"Do you write words or music?"

"Mostly music for BTO stuff. I write lyrics too, but they always come out kind of obscure and personal. Not the kind of thing a BTO fan would be interested in, or anyone for that matter, who doesn't share my devout interest in me."

"Hey!" Robbie said suddenly, "You could write about toys!"

"Toys in the Attic?" Martin said, making his sole contribution to the conversation .

"No, things," Robbie said, "You know, equipment. That's what we're really into, like guns and cars and electronic stuff. Blair and me, we're really into that stuff. I mean, Randy and Fred, well they have wives and children and they're working for a living. Doing what they like, but still it's business, you

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know. But, hell, me and Thornton, we haven't seen any of the bad times Fred and Randy have. We just got on the elevator and it went to the top. I mean, I should be pumping gas somewhere, but here I am. Right, Blair?" "Right."

"So we buy toys, things. I know that must sound kind of crass, but I like things, stuff that's well made and works right and doesn't have to be fiddled with. When I was a kid I never really had much money and, you know, things were always broken, or out of fuel, or you were always gerryrigging everything. Hell, any kid knows what that's about. Throwing a rod in your Chevy on the night of the dance.. .that sort of thing. But now, everything works, and for a person like me, that's a big deal. You can write about that can't you?"

"Sure," I said.

Martin was pensive when we finally left the St. Moritz to make room for the next reporter. He didn't speak until we were leaning against the counter of the Orange Julius stand on Times Square.

"It's the coming thing," he said, "I should have known when I threw out my platform shoes and started collecting complimentary ball-point pens engraved with the names of hardware stores. I should have trusted my instincts."

"About what?"

"Fashionable normality; but it's hard to pin down, it doesn't mean average and it doesn't mean mediocre."

"All right, damn it," I said, "What does it mean?"

"It means not abnormal; it's negative and hard to see, but it doesn't hurt and it's the coming thing. I mean, a Holiday Inn is fairly normal, right? But each individual Holiday Inn is abnormal in some particular way. In Kansas City they have pictures of cows in the rooms; in Hollywood there is only diet cola in the vending machines. So where is that one Holiday Inn we all have in our mind, the perfectly normal one?" Martin looked transfixed, as if he had a vision of the grail. He sucked at his Orange Julius and clutched his skateboard to his side. A six foot pimp standing beside him obviously thought he was about to freak, and began to edge his leopard plaid toward the sidewalk. Finally, Martin looked up at me and said, "What did you like best?"

"Two things," I said. "First, the detail, it's all perfect. Any rock and roller can tell a story about being harrassed for autographs in a movie house, but what's usually playing? Jules and Jim? Deep Throat? Z? No sale. Too East

Village. What is Robbie Bachman watching in Vancouver? The Wind and The Lion! Perfect! Any rock and roller can say he listens to classical music, but what kind? Usually a list of wops you never heard of. What kind of classical music do Blair and Robbie listen to? Anything that's thirty minutes long because that's how long it takes to drive from the farm into the city every day, and it's nice to fill the drive up economically!

"Secondly, I come from West Texas which must be a lot like Western Canada because the industrial revolution is still a source of wonder there, too. If you want to love a machine, grow up where the weather's bad and the land's poor, where it's too far to walk and costs too much to ride. Then, you learn to love equipment. Things."

" Velueeta chicl" Martin said suddenly with a beatific smile, "Radical bland! Not fragile. No con; no art, riffs for the rockers and poetry for the poets."

"You're trying to say that BTO is to rock and roll what that normal Holiday Inn is to motels?"

"Something, like that," Martin said. "As L see it there are three alternative approaches to the rock and roll audience. First: You may pretend to be making art for the critics, when what you are really doing is making your audience think they're getting something profound. This is your Moody Blues, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath approach. (Note the color scheme. Colors are symbolic.) Secondly you can pretend to be making rock and roll for your street buddies, when what you are really making is local color for the critics whose idea of Philly is a seminar at Haverford. The critics will then adopt you as a street-poet and sell your records to a lot of other riph kids who don't know from Philly. This is your Bruce Springsteen beatnik hustle. You deliver an electric ampthetamine version of West Side Story and make a lot of rock critics feel street wise."

"Now, how do you know that, Martin?" I said. Not Bruce! I thought.

"Because people who live in tenements don't call them tenements," Martin said, "You use description to write about people, not for them."

"But what's the third alternative?" I asked, feeling myself being crowded out of a lot of assignments by this wimpy little teenager.

"It's no alternative. You have to be just like your audience only richer. Then you make songs for them, and they buy your records; critics don't enter in."

"What does enter in?" I ask.

"Three chords, a love of things, and the absence of abnormality."

"It's a brave new world," I said.

"There's a thousand years of good

poetry," Martin said, "and not even a thousand hours of good boogie. Besides, it's what's happening."

"Velveeta chicF"

"See, you've heard about it too." Martin's straw rattled at the bottom of his cup. "Blue Oyster Cult," he said, "Black Oak Arkansas, why not Orange Julius?" m