HOUDINI IN DREADLOCKS

Think about it—Garland Jeffreys is out on the road with the Rumour. The Rumour need no introduction, much of America having lengthily admired the five good-timing Anglos who�d helped Graham Parker achieve solid liftoff. Jeffreys, however, is quite another matter. We New Yorkers have been carrying on about Garland for so many years that we tend to forget he�s pretty much a cipher once you hit Jersey. And for a mixed-lineage black/white/Hispanic fireball of a performer to have stepped in where Graham pulled out, and changed all the rules—well, that takes getting used to. But if Garland Jeffreys, after experiencing more than a decade of musical twists, turns and knives in the back, is willing to strut it across America like some fresh kid off the banana boat, and says he�s loving every mipute, then so should you.

Jeffreys� enthusiasm stems from several roots, one being his compatibility with the Rumour, another factor his affiliation with CBS, his fourth label since the early �/O�s. If Escape Artist gets its unrestrained message across instead of being buried in favor of less controversial product, that�s enough to satisfy him. �Wild in the Streets,� an anthem of volatile youth he cut in 1973, should have been chanted as often as �Street Fighting Man,� but is notable primarily for how much it influenced other writers. He made a wretched mistake by briefly signing with Arista, who had him release a disco single. Then, according to Jeffreys, A&M had tons of trouble relating to the three LPs he cut for them.

�They never understood the Ghost Writer album until everybody said it was great. The American Boy and Girl album, that also took a stand on some issues, and they didn�t really like it. They didn�t like the cover (a stark portrait of two troubled �ethnic� adolescents). Maybe I was a little naive, because when it was done, I didn�t bother getting anybody�s opinion about what 1 was doing, I just went ahead and did it. I thought people would reaily support this issue of children in need, because it�s something natural. I didn�t think of the business aspects,� he says, showing no regret for his actions.

■ B I've always had a European sensibility...my home life, my conflicts among different kinds of nationalities In Brooklyn...

Jeffreys now has people to look after those factors for him, but they stay in the background, and he�s still wide-eyed to the world. Until the deal with Epic came through, he organized a no-frills tour, and his band crossed the U.S. with a truck for their hotel room. Partially because of the lack of finances, he was inspired to write the songs that appear on Escape Artist. The band played �96 Tears� at American colleges and in Europe�s big cities, where Garland�s final A&M album was actually selling a lot of records.

Some people turn to drugs or booze when the pressure gets too heavy. Jeffreys turns to Europe, a frequent refuge for self-categorized American misfits. �Remember, I went to school in Florence,� he reminds me, recalling a year he spent studying art. �I�ve always had a European sensibility. Always. Not to get too literal, but even when I was a kid in the fifth grade, I knew it. My home life, my conflict among different kinds of nationalities in Brooklyn, and me being in the middle of all this stuff, and being very alienated, uncomfortable, hot having any particular root to associate with. Not that I wanted to be different, but ° that was a fact of life—look!�

£ He presents himself for all to see in the 2 lobby of the Gramercy Park Hotel—a �neighborhood hangout—a diminutive £ figure swathed in khaki, coffee-toned skin 2 topped with free-flying dreadlocks and «intent blue-green eyes. Jeffreys has changed his image often since I met him eight years ago, through stages of cream suits and panama hats, T-shirts and jeans, popping up at concerts by Joni Mitchell or hard-core punksters, and, despite being surrounded by well-wishers, has always occupied his own unfathomable space.

�I was obviously a person who was precocious. Even at that young age, the intellectual environment around me was not very appealling. I was well-rounded in the sense that I was very gritty, I was interested in sports, in dancing, in rock �n� roll. But in terms of being sensitive, it was very difficult to have that part of me rewarded, cared for, stroked. Of course, that was the age of not showing your feelings. Better to be a young boy who was part of the peer group. Being an artist in Brooklyn—you cart imagine!

�One of the things I wanted to do at that time was to find a different place. The poem on the back of the album is literally, �Escape from fear/Escape from rape/Escape from confinement/Escape if you�re hooked on drugs/Escape from refinement/Escape from thieves and thugs/Escape from your loneliness/Escape from Brooklyn/Escape at last/Escape Artist.� It has a lot of levels. I spent last year in Europe and that is, for me, the great escape. Escape, to me, is never running away from what you have to deal with, but it�s in fact not necessarily dwelling on what keeps you back. It also means you have to move on.��

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If Jeffreys ever decides to start a movement, he�d easily, get converts. His speech is hypnotic and filled with the fervor of a true believer. Fortunately, he�s never insisted on anyone behaving a certain way, except to chastise those who don�t care, the multitudes in his business who choose not to look past the next arena, the newest excess. Garland Jeffreys� world is dedicated tp personal growth, which sounds very hokey, but iq his honest way, he makes optimism valid.

�I played my first performance in Paris to non-English speaking people. I remember having the distinct feeling that these people couldn�t understand what I�m singing about, and within a minute, I knew that didn�t matter, and what did matter was to make contact. A lot of what I�ve always felt was there for me was made very clear. I felt that after all these years, I was recognized. In the States, I�ve always gotten really good critical acclaim, but this was different. It was tremendously healing, tremendously renewing.

�I�ve never been-a bitter person. I�ve been angry. I will still retain my dissatisfaction about things in the world and myself as long as I live and will always try to work towards improving them. But as they say, this has been a peak experience for me. The most important thing to me is personal development. That�s what all my songs are about—where is Garland Jeffreys this year? Where has he gone to, where has he moved to? My work is always a record of what I�m thinking about, dealing with in my life.�

If Escape Artist is an accurate measure of Jeffreys� life in the. 80�s, the year has given, him the best and worst of times. He writes of love and friendship in �Christine� and �Modern Lovers,� bad breaks in �Graveyard Rock� and �Mystery Kids,� and the American beast of racial strife in �Miami Beach,� the latter one of two tracks recorded in Dennid Bovell�s reggae Studio 80 in London. The album features a diversity of players, ranging from guitarist G.E. Smith and Adrian Belew, to the Rumour rhythm section of Bodnar and Goulding, to an expansion of Jeffreys� long-standing use of reggae with Big Youth and Linton Kwesi Johnson. A few old friends, including David Johansen and Garland�s college chum, Lou Reed, throw in bits. Jeffreys decided to aim for a sound as chunky and spontaneous as his live performances, rather than settle for another record too easily dismissed as the crusade of one more clever singer/songwriter. Escape Artist is not easy to ignore.

While in Europe, Jeffreys experienced the unsettling distortion of time and place that happens to Americans who feel like catching up on hometown news. I remember hearing about the mid-60�s race riots from the tranquility of a London bed�n�breakfast, and wondering . if my apartment would be cinders .at teatime. Similarly as Jeffreys was discovering artistic satisfaction in Europe, he was also learning about the blood in the streets of Miami.

�It was just like �City Kids�; that didn�t come out of some kinda comic book, it came out of personal experience. I remember reading about this 12-year-old kid blowing a cab driver�s head off. And I was in Europe at the time of the Miami riots, reading the Herald Tribune, and I couldn�t believe it.

�Actually, the whole idea of racism has been affecting me over the past year and a half. I�ve been feeling it more anywhere I go. Everywhere and anywhere. I think some of it has to do with my hair style, which has nothing to do with any kind of Rasta belief, �cause it�s not my belief, but it�s more like a stylish kind of thing. It suits me. Being a light-skinned black person, 1 don�t go through a lot of stuff that real dark people go through. I can, as they quote, I can pass. People never know what I am, which is a real asset in terms of survival in this world.

�But I�ve been experiencing so much shit with this hair style it�s amazing. Airport stuff.

I have been stripped ip England, in the States coming back from Amsterdam. This year I have on innumerable occasions gone through stuff I hadn�t gone through any other time ip my life. This has obviously affected me. I think �Miami Beach� is the son of �Why-0,� which took place around the busing riots in Boston.

�Often writers choose a song for a lot of reasons. Not just to express a topic, it�s an arena to write a story about, that you know is gonna have an affect on people, and that was one of the reasons I chose Linton to work on this. I thought, with him being in this song with me, it really gives it power. It�s a bit calculated in the sense that writers will write about it, but the result is that people are gonna know about this song.

�One thing that�s good about this country is that you do have a range of opinions. There are factions that come out of negative situations which have strength, that have a voice and speak. My hope for the song is that it gets to as many people as possible. �Why-O� on Ghost Writer, I feel, got lost. I believe this is stronger, and that with the re-entrance of reggae in a much more powerful way, it can really get out there.�

Jeffreys� adaptation of reggae rhythms are as natural as his huge outpourings of words. He grew up equally soothed by island melodies as jump-started by the vitality of Jackie Wilson and Little Richard. Being an American urban microcosm isn�t enough anymore—-Jeffreys aims to minimize communication breakdowns on a worldwide scale, either by the weight of his language or the force of its delivery. By touring Europe and America with the Rumour, he�s surer of a wide audience, at least enough to subsidize the next recording. But if those crowds come away with some inner kind of Truth and Justice, despite the American Way, and sit down to plan their Escapes, his real purpose will be fulfilled.