THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

DAVID WERNER: The Prima Donna Grows Up

“Regrets, I’ve had a few. But then again, too few to mention.”

—Frank Sinatra

[Lights up on a trendy Birmingham, Michigan, cafe which is high on price but rather low on other essentials (good taste, good food, good service, etc.). Camera zooms in on a young man carefully dressed in “modern” though not too punkish clothing, sitting in a rattan-look chair at a pseudo-marble table.] “Hi. Do you know me? Probably not. That’s why I carry the American Express card. Don’t leave home without it.”

You get the idea. That name. That face. That air of je ne sais quoi which tells you that you should know this guy...

Until recently, only a small group of select music buffs had ever heard of David Werner. And even those few quickly allowed the name to slide back into obscurity. Why? Because despite two critically acclaimed LPs, Whizz Kid in ’74 and 1975’s follow-up, Imagination Quota, David Werner sensed a lack of label support and refused to tour. Instead, he schlepped his painfully thin 21-year-old frame out of the public eye and back to Pennsylvania. He still had some growing up to do.

“Sure,” he recalls, “RCA said ‘David, we’d love to see you tour. ’ And even in the early days I would have worked with the finest players I could find, and you don’t subject those people to a tour when you know the label support is going to be token. Because when you’re down'in Texas somewhere, and they need a hand and money is tight, you don’t want to find you’ve been sold down the river. RCA never came to me with a clear cut package... So I didn’t tour.”

He also didn’t work. Thanks to a modest family fortune accumulated through the efforts of his late father’s trucking company, Werner simply went home to think. His studio band went their own ways until that time when David decided to rejoin the real world. Even though his original intention was to be a songwriter, period, Werner eventually realized that if he was to put together another LP, he would have to tour in order to survive the rigors of the business. So. with the help of two veterans of his first albums, former Jukin’ Bone guitarist Mark Doyle and exNazz drummer Thom Mooney,, David put together a third LP and presented it to Epic, with whom he signed, and plans for a four were finalized.

“The reason that I decided to tour this time was to put an end to all the rumors that I was frightened of touring or that I couldn’t handle touring or that I just wouldn’t tour because I was a prima donna. I did it for myself.”

Although his earlier works drew critical comparisons to David Bowie, in retrospect the similarities were as much physical as musical: The same thin, gaunt frame, a similar pre-punk razor-cut hairstyle and the identical creamy-pale complexion sported by the Thin White Duke. Musically, he’s just David Werner, a combination of various forms and styles injected with his own thing. But despite all this, the comparisons remain. Does it bother him?

“Well, as far as I’m concerned, I would much rather bb compared to someone like Bowie rather than other artists I can think of. So, to a degree, it’s a compliment. I don’t like the comparisons because it’s just tired.

“As far as my reviews go, they don’t affect me because I am so non-media oriented. If I had to strive to find an image of myself by the reflection of me via the media, it would be a whole different story.”

When we met, Werner was preparing for the last date of his very first tour. And although he’s been in the business since the age of 18, his naivete in the area of live performances was incredible.

“My first show ever as a solo performer since I was about 16 was in front of 3,000 people in Seattle. I’m one of the people who’s always forcing himself to meet the occasion. By holding off on doing a tour until I had an album I felt comfortable with and a label I had confidence in, I was really forced to be better than my experience would allow me. Because I had no experience. We would have been happy to sell half of the house for mat first show. But we filled the place. We came out on stage and they had banners, they ALL knew the Whizz Kid material, screamed out titles for stuff that was five years old... So it was like the Frankie Avalon Story. I walked out there, and I purposely didn’t want to see the house beforehand because I didn’t want it to throw me. I rarely experience nerves, but you walk out there and there’s 3,000 of them. Now to some acts, that’s small. But for us the first time out, at least for me, it was massive. And I must tell you, the water’s very deep. It was nothing I could shrug off. I was really fighting with myself to maintain as much poise as I wanted to maintain because it was DEVASTATING!”

BLONDE ORGAN-GRINDER RING UNCOVERED 11

"Sure we like ploying with the guys,” admits Christine McVie, “but sometimes, well...it’s just not enough!" Chris and new pal Debbie "Monkey-in-the-Middle” Harry have filled those dateless weekend nights with a new kick, returning them to their street-corner origins in style. While Chris pumps out favorites like “Beer Barrel Polka” and “Do You Like My Funny Hat, Big Boy,” the well-trained Debbie extends her metal cup, collecting spare change from nearby pedestrians. “Plnocchio may have started this way,” a chained-but-smiling Debbie jokes, "but at least my nose isn’t growing. At least not all of it.” Look for a 2-LP live set from the innovative pair next August. “It's our kind of music and we’re proud of it,” Chris added. "Now give Debbie that quarter.”

For David Werner, that all seems like centuries ago. He has finally grown up, a true rock ’n’ roll veteran at the age of 25. His music has matured since those embryonic first albums, but the challenge of gaining respect he feels he deserves still remains. “What worries me is to find that it takes so much to convince people the worth of an act and record. Good work doesn’t assure you success or even the proper amount of attention. And that is why I stopped working originally. If you make a good album and people who know good music compliment you on that record, you still find out there are a million other nonsense mechanisms that keep it from getting to a mass audience. You begin to say, ‘What are we doing? Are we making records or are we selling silverware?’ And you all too often find out that you’re not making music at all. You’re in the business of selling things that just happen to be black and round and make noise.

“Even though.L’m much happier with thy record label this time out, the game doesn’t change, f it’s disillusioning, but the fact is that I have no alternative . I can’t back off the way I did before because to do that means that I accept the worst of the alternatives, which is not to be productive. I’m a writer and I really have the desire to do that. And now I’ve found that I enjoy the live performances too much not to do it again.”

But one question remained. Now that he has conquered the world of touring, is there anything he can foresee that would make him give it all up, for good?

“Oh, sure. If someone says, ‘David, you have to follow up quickly, so make a bad album in three months or don’t work anymore,’ I would say goodbye. What’s my alternative? I refuse to let myself feel that kind of pressure. As an artist, I just want to be as consistent as I can be. But that doesn’t come from outside. That comes from inside.”

And by the looks of it, there’s much more there than meets the eye\

Cathy Gisi

Gang War Runs Rampant

DETROIT—The Motor City’s favorite Guitar Hero and all around production whiz-kid, Wayne Kramer, may be pulling his special force Gang War out of the quagmired trenches of the Midwest to the Eastern Front of New York in April, if their tour of

England in mid-February followed by a recon mission of Hollywood go as planned.

Gang War blitzkrieged the East Coast recently, winding up their tour at the Heat club in NYC where 1500 people gathered each night to watch the boys (Wayne, Johnny Thunders, Ron Cook, and John Morgan) sonically decimate the Big Apple’s core. The audience included such luminaries as David Johansen, Cheetah Chrome (hubba hubba), Lenny Kaye and “A fat and disgusting Anita Pallenberg, and you can quote me on that.”—Wayne Kramer.

Another Motor City Wonder was there to catch the show, a modern guy by the name of Iggy Pop, who jumped on stage to lead the band through a smoking rendition of “Around And Around.” He did not, however, uh, “hang ten” as he did in Detroit and elsewhere. Both nights were recorded for a possible live single, and videotaped as well for future reference.

Aside from gigging and recording with Gang War and getting his Stratocaster, a Martin acoustic" and a custom-made Pyramid guitar as well as all of his stereo equipment stolen from his Detroit apartment, Wayne has been spending his spare time recording afid producing local groups. He has produced the Cadillac Kidz, has just finished doing two sides for the Cubes, and is just starting production chores and guitar work with local underground legend Mark Norton (formerly of the 27), who is recording for the Tremor Records compilation alburrt due to be out in the stores by late March. How do you spell busy? W-A-Y-N-E K-R-A-M-E-R.

Claire Hussy

MOTHER THERESA'S REVENGE I

Longtime Sally Field fan and Boners front man Jerry Vile confesses! “I may be a publicity parasite," says the Flying Sickboy, “but I just can’t kick the habit!" After stunning renditions or “Dominique" and "Agnus Dei,” Sister Nun-for-me-thanks made her first confession in years, afterward admitting, "I’m going to hell for sure now. Yupl You bet!I” A tremendous fan of both Vile and Pope John Paul II, God was not amused.

5 YEARS AGO

"Dead Babies" Revenge!

A co-defendant in a Canadian murder trial is said by her mother to have been driven to the deed by Alice Cooper. “She became depressed and took to remaining in her own room playing terrible Alice Cooper records. They were records from the devil. They would have made anyone depressed.”

Ian Gomm: Reasons To Be Cheerful

“Bloody hell, ” says a smiling Ian Gomm, “the Hermits?!”

DETROIT—This is backstage at Detroit’s Bookie’s Club 870, not yet an hour after Gomm and his band have completed their performance here. Backstage is actually two tiny rooms up the back stairs and around to the left, barely enough room to stand with barfd members, local photographers, fanzine publishers and other hangers-on all squeezed inside. There’s food and drinks aplenty, however, and the climate is friendly with no one showing noticable discomfort with the limited amount of air to breathe.

Gomm himself is in conversation with the fanzine publisher, a local rock historical whirlwind who has just informed him that Detroit has been blessed in recent months with visits by “vintage” British performers such as the aforementioned Herman’s Hermits.

The look on Gomm’s face is priceless. He appears genuinely surprised at the remark: “I haven’t heard of the Hermits in 10 years!” he snaps, but with a gentleman’s incredulity.

It is a charming insult, but the publisher, undaunted, is already off on another tangent. Now he’s going on about how Gomm is the “spittin’ image of Dean Torrence” right down to the shape of the forehead.

Well, this is success isn’t it? And through it all Gomm holds up remarkably well, drinking bottles of Heineken one after another (his only show of anxiety), answering all manner of questions, relevant or not.

Here is a nice guy, America, and he wants to be your pop star.

These recent days leave lan Gomm reason to be happy. The American public, finally offering an ear to anglo-interpreters of R&B and C&W—Lowe, Edmunds, Elvis—has warmed to him; his single, “Hold On,” became an unexpected hit and “Cruel To Be Kind,” written alongside Nick Lowe (who recorded it), had a run up near the top of the national charts.

His album, Gomm With The Wind, sold well (whipped Wreckless Eric’s) and critics raved about his live show when he toured cross-country supporting Dire Straits. At the time of this Detroit stop he was headlining a series of nightclub dates while working his way back to the East Coast. Then, soon home. West London to be exact.

“The rock ’n’ roll capital of the world!” beams Gomm, entitled to his chauvinism. Nevertheless it is there—the London pub scene in the early 70’s, out of which many of these recent pop contenders have emerged— that this story has its beginning.

Gomm was there toiling with the long-suffering Brinsley Schwarz, with the likes of Bob Andrews and Schwarz himself, (both currently employed with Graham Parker), as well as the ubiquitous Lowe who, among other talents, has extraordinary nose for where the action is.

It was American music neatly woven into an English package. A nice affair: Rhythm & Blues, country swing, small clubs, drinking, dancing, fighting. Romantic days. But records didn’t sell very well—Brinsley Schwarz made five highly collectable though commercially inauspicious albums—because, as the old story goes, you cannot transfer atmosphere on to vinyl.

So the band split, its members off to their various stories of success, and Gomm to a life of comparative inactivity. He continued to write songs, however, and in 1978 released Summer Holiday, his first album, on England’s Albion records (reissued in the States as GWTW). It is slick product, lavishly produced by Martin Rushent (Buzzcocks, Stranglers) who has added horns and layers of vocal tracks to what otherwise compares stylisticly to the classic pub rock formula—melody-oriented, lean, boozy R&B with a country twist. It sold, well and good, but it is live that Gomm preserves the reputation of his aggressive progenitors. And it is in the intimate club atmosphere that he thrives.

And so it is that on first impression Ian Gomm strikes me as something less than an extraordinary figure onstage. Sporting a thin blond hairline with longish sideburns, he wears a red shirt that partially obscures his belly—a most prominent feature—black slacks and shoes with a grip (as one wears who is used to cold winters).

His pronouncement that “.. .We’ve driven in from Chicago through the rain and ice to play you some pop songs,” is tantalizingly innocent, and in his tone I detect an air of humility and restraint, qualities which I decide later are the foundation for a considerable gift for understatement (the principal ingredient in his recorded versions of both “Come On,” and “You Can’t Do That” for instance).

Once Gomm and his band are on there is no deception, this is business; straight, hard R&B, nothing fanciful or sophisticated, its effect purely physical, instantaneously catchy. (Pop?!)

songs are neatly comthe band—which includes bassist Rod Demick and drummer Alan Coulter both formerly of Bees Make Honey, another seminal pub rock group, and excellent guitarist Taff Williams—is a tight, no frills bunch, and Gomm, stripped of the heavy reverb that marks his album vocal, is a singer with guts. The old (32 years) London blues man.

Most of the songs from Gomm With The Wind are played and .“24 Hour Service” and “Hooked On Love” are my favorites, something about the pace and the hooks that get to me. The band finishes with a great version of Tommy Roe’s “Everybody” and the pop concert is over.

I judge him as being less spectacular than Lowe, though his singing—particularly his phrasing—is certainly as good; not as dynamic or possessed of genuine soul as is Graham Parker, but what Gomm does have is a precious ability to communicate directly. He’s making friends; a lovely approach. , | /

INCREDIBLE FOWLEY LP GIVEAWAY 1

“Look, buster," confides an anonymous Orchid, “let's face facts. Kim Fowley has been puttin' records out for years and no one's ever bought 'em I Here's his new one. Just look at this dopey cover I Snake Document Masquerade—sounds like a Captain Beefheart title to me I Who's kidding who? I" As part of Fowley's innovative new promotional scheme, actual Orchid members will be given away with each LP sold. "Yep,” says this broken blossom, “looksTike it's the end of the line for one of us...”

Back at the dressing room it’s getting late. Only the band, and a few others remain. I’m here looking for my story.

Someone has brought an old Brinsleys album (Nervous On The Road) and it is being passed around.

“Look at Nick!” points a laughing Rod Demick, “he’s wasted!”

He looks it. Hair and shadow surrounding his face, it does not obscure his smirk—and you can almost see the moisture on his lips. Nearly smell it, too.

Demick talks on about his visit to California and, while playing at the Whiskey in Los Angeles, he recalls “falling down the tall stairs they have there, tumbling down all the way ’til I hit the bottom.”

Were you badly hurt?

“Didn’t feel a thing,” he grins, “ah was so drunk. ”

Meanwhile, Gomm is here and there, walking from the one little room that has the drinks to the other with the food. He answers a local college reporter’s question about his age:

“26 in New York, 27 in Boston...”

He appears very relaxed, his round face glowing brightly. Ian, whose mother only months before had told him to get a job and stop this rock ’n’ roll nonsense, is happy.

It is a fitting time to disappear.

Walter Wasacz

GET DOWN, GET FUNKY, GET ON THE GOOD FOOT: Rolling Stone publisher/aging wunderkind /Caroline Kennedy pal Jann Wenner raises money for the new typesetting machine by moonlighting as Styx's lead singer /guitarist. When Dennis De Young can't quite make the low notes, the gregarious . Wenner fills in with his manly tenor pipes... "Sometimes we even let him play 'You'veGot To Serve Somebody'," said a disgusted roadie. Keep at it, Jann, and you can get that copy editor for the next Marsh/Swenson book. Hey—we have this guy who can help you tell Rabbit Bundrlck and the South African band Rabbltt apart so it doesn't look so dumb in Crint—all you have to do is feed im pizza every three hours and don't tell any Italian jokes. Let us know, OK?

The Daze Of Peroxide And Razor Blades

DETROIT—Do you ever wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and say “Holy Khomeini! My hair looks like shit!” Well that’s probably what you are.

“The hairdo you wear tells everybody what the real you is like, and it’s even possible to tell how you feel about yourself,” says James McLernon of the salon of Roger Thompson and Associates in New York. If this is indeed true, then there is an untold story to be written, another chapter in the Fall of the Empire, rock ’n’ roll style. After months of extensive research by CREEM’s Society of the Wayward Follicle, we submit to you this report.

Mick Jagger: Widely known for his boyish mop, Mick has decL ded to shave himself bald,' but complains of the taste of his Trac it razor. “I’d use an electric razor,” said the aging limey, “but I like a close shave on me gums.”

Rick Nielsen: Ever notice you never see him without one of those silly caps on? We found out after a year and a half of surveillance that Rick has a family of midget albino armadillos nesting on his head, thus the cap, to ensure their privacy. And you thought it was because he was going bald...

Bee Gees: Wondering why they are balding but their hair has no gray streaks in it? For precisely the same reason they have brown rings around their necks...

David Bowie: Ever notice how much Dave looks like Carol Burnett? Dave’s hair changes as fast as his sexuality and music. Lately we’ve observed, he’s been coordinating colors— brown hair, brown eye. It seems his carrot fixation has run its course—but beware of Greeks bearing olive oil. •

The Knack: These puds sport simple power pop coiffures, at home on Armenians as well as Americans. But what we want to know is, where do they go for electrolysis on their palms? Does Sharona give ’em pubic shags, too?

John Cale: John’s a fun-loving type of guy, the quiet family man who reads Mercenary Monthly and takes six-hour sound checks at dumpy clubs whose F.A. systems are notoriously poor. John gets a special mention here for pruning his back-up vocalist, Deer France’s hair late one night after a show until she vaguely resembled Phyllis Diller. Always a nonconformist, John also refuses to clip the hair hanging from his nostrils saying, “It’s the rage in New York,1’ Tres chic!

Les Chappell: Les is > Lene Lovich’s bald-headed guitarist, and is considered a gentleman beyond reproach. But behind his cultured facade, he is the re&l Colonel Walter E. Kurtz,' programmed to kill without passion. His mission—to destroy redundant rock ’n’ roll with extreme prejudice.

Debbie Harry: Yeah, I know Blondie is A Group, but Debbie Is A Dye-Job. Hey Deb, haven’t any hairdressers recommended a toner? Oh, I get it! You’re a natural blonde; you just dye your roots black, right?

Ian Hunter:After almost four years of exhausting reseatch by CREEM’s Society of the Wayward Follicle, we have discovered that Ian Hunter is really Shirley Temple! And you thought he was Bob Dylan with a speech impediment.

Stevie Nicks: May actually be bald! Though our reports are unconfirmed, it is widely rumored that Stevie “I’ll ;sit on your face” Nicks has wigs designed for her from the shavings of llamas, which Lou Reed collects for her from his frequent trips to Peru where he dives off the coast for rare shellfish and engages in violent and dangerous sex acts with the aforementioned mammal.

Todd Rundgrem Through an incoming late newsflash, we hear that Todd, famous for dying his short and curlies blue, has denuded his pubic pelt to become the Kojak of the crotch set. Reportedly, he couldn’t get an appointment with Sharona. Lou Reed: Last and least, we have observed with perverse pleasure the development of completely avant-garde do’s by Robert Christgau’s biggest fan. . We’ve seen the “Coy juicer,” “Insect paranoia,” “Sweater cool” and the “Bubble gum Kenneth Anger” style. Lou will appear in the 80’s in many styles, notably bringing into fashion braided armpit hair. If you don’t believe me, take another look at the cover of Rock ’n\RoU Animal with Lou checking the growth of his soft tangles, or maybe he’s just checking out a group from Iran he wants to produce, called ‘ “The Fleas of a Thousand Camels.”

Mark J. Norton

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SAMUEL BECKETT

Carlene Carter awaits Nick Lowe's arrival. Nick arrives.