THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

Blackfoot’s Pick-Up On Platinum Street

GARDEN CITY, MI—It was a warm, sunny spring day in Detroit—the kind you don’t get a lot of, so when you do, you better make the best of it. No girl-watching for me, though: I was expected at CREEM.

I pulled the Volare into the law offices next to the CREEM Building. It’s a great place to park because it’s free and there’s plenty of room. A scrawny steno looked over the Volare, which needed to be washed, and then me, and said, “You can’t park here. This is for the law office. ”

“Sue me,” I said, giving her my best hangover grin.

Inside the CREEM Building, I punched the tenth floor and watched the ash on my cigarette grow steadily. So did the doorman, who once threw me out for dropping ashes on the white carpet in the lobby. As the door opened, I stepped inside, flicked my ash into the lobby and gave the doorman the high sign.

On ten, I walked past the imperturbable secretary, gave her a wink, and said “Kordosh for the Assistant Editor.” She hasn’t winked back yet, but I wouldn’t know since I’ve never waited to be waved in. The Assistant Editor’s office is the last on the left; I went in without knocking.

He didn’t look up as I closed the door behind me. He looked like he was busy editing or something, but he never really tells me much about that end of things. “Sit down, J.” he said, fishing for a smoke. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Somebody find out that Rick Johnson’s a penname for Andy Griffith’s ex-wife?” I asked, pulling out another smoke.

“No, not that bad,” he said. “We’ve got a band that’s not getting any press. Hey, watch the carpet, will you?”

“Sorry. So what about this band? What’s the scam?”

“Well, they’re selling a lot of records, that’s what.”

“Talk to me,” I said, watching the carpet.

“Southern rock group; Blackfoot’s the name. No chumps, either. Their product s going gold. Maybe even platinum. But they aren’t getting any press. ” “We are the press, you jerk. Jesus, you hung over again?” I gave him the grin. He looked a little exasperated; he crushed out his half-smoked Camel.

“Look, you think you can talk to Blackfoot? They’re holed up in Ann Arbor somewhere. The guys down in rock surveillance can give you the dope.”

“I don’t know.-. .Ann Arbor’s a helluva ride.”

He pushed one of the strange buttons on his phone. “All right, double the usual rate.”

“Plus...” I encouraged him.

“Yeah, plus expense?. You still got that Volare?”

“Yeah. OK, it’s jake. When do you want it?”

“Oh, anytime you just happen to feel like dropping in to chat and mess up the landscape and leer at the secretaries. Did you manage to drink your ideas of Kordosh-as-a-stylist out of your head?”

“Sure did. Anything for my bosses, that’s what I say.”

☆ ☆

Out in Ann Arbor, Blackfoot was in a recording studio in the dingy part of town. I’d checked them out with rock surveillance and found out that their last album, Tomcattin’—and the one before,Strikes—had sold a ton. Their honcho, Rick Medlocke, used to play in Lynyrd Skynyrd before the plane crash. Medlocke played a lotta guitar—the right kind, too—the guys. said. I said I’d make up my mind on that one, which annoyed the guys in surveillance. They figured everybody knows about the rock they get their scoop from.

In the studio, Medlocke had pulled a Judge Crater, so I went down to the corner for a couple of beers. When I got back, he was handy, so we sat down to work up a breeze. He gave me the lowdown on their new album, which they were recording in the dingy studio.

“I think there’s probably gonna be nine songs on the album,” he said. “Which are nine out of the 20 that we did. It’s been a long haul.”

I asked him if they’d figured out what to call the thing.

“Well, we kicked it around—we figured we might go straight Blackfoot, y’know?” I knew. Medlocke was playing ball; I always like it better that way. Besides, he didn’t look like the kind of guy you could muscle if you wanted to keep your mirrors looking right. He told me how he and his boys like to do a lotta live performing; I said I couldn’t see it and cracked wise that they ought to just record.

“I just couldn’t do that,” he said. “I’ve always been like that. If I can’t be playing I don’t think I could even survive. How old you think I am?”

Surveillance says the stock answer is “late 20’s, early 30’s,” so that’s what I say, too. Medlocke said he was 31. “I’ve been around for a long time. So far, no wrinkles,” he laughed.

I wondered if he had problems with the new acts. “Believe it or not, for somebody with my background and where I’m from—there are certain bands that mean certain things to me. New bands that are coming up—newer bands like the Police, I think, have a big meaning right now in rock music because they are an entity. They are here. They do have some good stuff. Very sharp; very sharp.”

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Medlocke jawed some about growing up in Florida, where he was playing while other kids were collecting baseball cards. He got Blackfoot going, then skipped over to Skynyrd for awhile, while his bid pals stuck it out. When he came back, they started getting some breaks. “They knew I’d be back,” he said.

He asked me if I wanted to hear some rough cuts off the new album and maybe find some bourbon, which both sounded like the right idea. Downstairs in the studio, the cuts I heard were pure ace. On “Dry County,” Medlocke sounds a lot like Seger only better, warning “run for your life out of here,” Damned good advice for a rock song. The other cuts sounded as smooth as the bourbon, too. One rocker, “Rattlesnake, ” had a piano track open that Medlocke was hoping Jerry Lee would fill...he’d seen the Killer a couple of nights earlier. The best cut was something called “Diary Of A Working Man,” which is about as level as you can get in \this business.

Meanwhile, out in the studio, Medlocke , fiddled with some bottleneck and old blues Stuff just for the hell of it. “What do you think?” he asked me. I said I figured on platinum for sure; what’s more, I figured it deserves platinum. It wasn’t the bourbon talking, either. These southern cats can really p/ay like people aren’t going to figure out in ten or twenty years. Their promo rep asked me why they aren’t getting any press.

“Beats the hell out of me,” I said. “Why do they want any press? They’re as good as anybody I’ve heard and they’re selling. Fuck the press.” Maybe that was the bourbon talking.

I went home to my apartment and thought about it for awhile over a pipe. There’s a lot of pre-' judice against Southern bands in general, I guess. Maybe they’re just too good.

I poured myself a shot and called the Assistant Editor. “I got it,” I said.

“Good deal. Any problems?”'

“Naw. They’re a damned good band and Medlocke’s the genuine article.”

“How do you figure this ‘no press’ angle, anyway?”

“Fuck the press. They don’t need it.”

“We are the press, you jerk.”

J. Kordosh

A Bitter PiL To Swallow

NEW’ YbRK—“If this is so ridiculous, just leave. You don’t have to be here. Who are you, anyway?” Keith Levene was definitely not rehearsing for a guest spot on Meet The Press as he confronted New York’s journalistic multitudes in a Warner Bros, conference room. Instead, he turned the occasion into a continuation of the confrontatory situation PiL had offered their $12-a-pop audience at the Ritz the previous weekend—in other words, a near riot.

When PiL had first arrived in town to chat about their new Flowers Of Romance album and Levene’s video mania, Bow Wow Wow, the latest group managed by Malcolm McLaren, were booked for a weekend at the Ritz. Two days before the shows, Bow Wow Wow’s 15year-old singer had a “nervous collapse” in London. End of U.S. tour. In went PiL, having been paid an undisclosed sum and given an irresistible opportunity to use the Ritz’s lavish video system, “which is so misused,” in Keith’s opinion. They hired a 60-ish, pick-up drummer they’d met in a music store, and in 24 hours, rigged up a wide white screen and several TV sets on the stage. PiL would “perform” behind the screen. Do you smell trouble?

5 Years Ago

Sweet Melissa versus Sweet Janel

Rock ’n’ roll derelict Lou Reed and Pickie Betts of the Allman Brothers Band had a little tiff while both were crashing at the home of manager Johnny Podell. Dickie had no idea who Lou was, but—having a bit of a short fuse—took it with somewhat less than equanimity when Lou asserted that the Allman Brothers were (in the Reed opine) a bucket of shit. A rumble ensued, but fortunately for Lou’s fans around the world, no one was injured.

A packed Friday night audience,\ many of whom remembered the 1980 PiL shows as joyous personal experiences shared with Johnny Lydon & Co., were not amused to see the band meandering around behind a shield while a recording of “Flowers Of Romance” played as the audio track. They grew restless and surly. John started calling them “boring” and asking them, “are you getting your money’s worth?” He challenged them to tpar apart the screen too many times, and down it went, along with considerable numbers of the audience at the hands of security.

Naturally, the video Keith had recorded of the “concert” was shot from PiL’s side of the screen, with only an occasional bump in the white fabric hinting at the audience’s fury. In their sheltered environment, the band was enjoying themselves. “Did you have a good time at the show, John?” “Of course,” responded Lydon, when he was finally persuaded to come out of ;the company kitchen and join the conference, j

No one expected a conventional press match with Public Image Ltd., but few reporters anticipated Levene’s tightvoiced defense of the event. “You’ve got a chip on your shoulder,” said one. “Yeah, I’ve got a fuckin’ microchip on my shoulder,” replied Keith. That got a laugh. “We didn’t want a negative result. We didn’t want a bottling. We didn’t want kids to have their noses cut open.” “Then why do you say you were satisfied with the performance,” he was challenged. “Because the impact was immaculate.” That drew more than a few disbelieving glances.

I reminded Levene that, unlike his claims to have “been bottled” at every PiL show, both of the band’s previous New York dates had been very peaceful affairs. “Therefore, aren’t you contradicting yourself?” “So what.” I knew it was time to leave. The Sex Pistols had never had any problems confusing art with politics, and they had a lot more reason to be paranoid. The conference became doubly ironic when, two weeks later, the Clash averted a potentially riotous situation of ticket overselling fit Bond’s by offering to play an additional week, so as not to turn away any of their followers. When Johnny Rotten sang “and we don’t care” four years ago, Td never have assumed he was referring to the way he felt about his fans and his friends.

Toby Goldstein

SIMONON ON TV GAME SHOW! I

That's right! Super Clash bassist Paul Simonbn loves America, but he loves American TV best I That's why he's seen here on the new syndicated game show You Must Knew Something with host Dennis James! "My name?" answers panelist Paul, "It's, umm...ummm ...PAULII" That's right, Paul, and you win a new refrigeratorI All good things must end, though, and contestant Simonon lost his chance for future riches when asked how old he was! "C'mon man,” explained the destitute Simonon later, “pass that thing over here."

G.E. s Not Just Another Smith, Brother

NEW YORK—“If I actually get to do another album, I want to name it after an old blues lyric— one joker got lucky. That’s my life. I figure I just happened,to be standing around one day with a good haircut and I happened to play a certain style that I’ve played my whole life, and which, all of a sudden around 1976-77, started to bethe hip way to play. The times came around to me.” G.E. Smith smiles apologetically, realizing that several thousand starving guitarists, (and that’s just in New York) would sell their souls and ' right arms to be in his shoes. G.E. Smith is a session guitarist who is called up to come to the studio, please, and contribute several minutes of perfect notes for Garland Jeffreys or David Bowie. Or, he is invited to go on the road with Hall & Oates, during which time he picks up critical raves that occasionally outshadow the stars.

So maybe one can accept G.E.’s success as a sideman, but somewhere down the line, teeth have to clench in envy. Is it when he gets surrounded by A&R scouts, all looking to do a deal—and turns them down? Or when Jerry Greenberg, former Atlantic Records executive, eventually convinces G.E. to become an early signing to his custom label, Mirage? Perhaps it’s at the moment when he describes how Cars guitarist Elliot Easton wouldn’t do his encore at Madison Square Garden until he went over to G.E. and exchanged “how ya doin’s.” Or when Cars drummer David Robinson offers to design G.E.’s .alburn cover. Instead of slogging around the clubs for a hundred years, the G.E. Smith Band is invited to open Squeeze’s early summer tour, a guarantee of choice venues and maximum exposure. I think that if his album, In The World, had entered the charts with a bullet, I’d have slit my throat. Or his. But to date, an instant hit is the only goodie to have excluded the unassuming 28-year-old. By the way, did I mention he was Gilda Radner’s hubby? And they’re happy?

Bohemian Rhapsody Theory Proven!!

MINNEAPOLIS, MN-A direct link between bedspins and Kenny Rogers has finally been established.

After studying scores of drinkers in local bars, anthropologist James H. Schaefer found that, when country artists like Rogers, Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams are playing on the jukebox, “The tempo of drinking speeds up.”

The key to this phenomenon, as most, is The Beat. “The slower the beat,” Scahefer belched, “the faster the drinking.” Wheee!

Plans to establish an experimental pub stocked only with records by Nico, Pink Floyd, Roger Whittaker and any old Black Sabbath laying around have been rejected by local authorities as cruel and unusual barkeeping.

Rick Johnson

Smith reflects on his good fortune while wedged into a publicist’s chair in Atlantic’s offices. He is frequently stopped in mid-sentence by passing employees, and greets them with the pleasure of a kid in a toy shop. Though G.E. has been playing guitar professionally since he was 12, and has been writing songs for years, he still exhibits a pleasing gee-goshness about the breaks that have literally fallen into his lap.

“I don’t think I have a lot of technique,” he admits, after 'haming Ry Cooder, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck as among his favorite players. “I don’t think I’m even a good guitar player. I’m someone who has so much fum with it I think that comes across when you listen.” His songs are similarly exuberant—no deathless prose here, but lots of arching harmonies on “Heart Frozen up” and “Real Love” that point to his well worn copy of the Hollies’ Greatest Hits.

Smith easily recalls the blinding flash which transformed him from an acoustic country-style finger picker into a rocker

“I was 12. I was riding along with my parents and they had a ’62 Falcon station wagon, y’know, with the speakers right in the middle of the dashboard. And I’m leanin’ against the dash listening to WABC and ‘You Really Got Me’ comes on the radio.'I went waauugh—that’s it!”

Instead of becoming a high school teacher after college, Smith moved to Connecticut, joined a locally prominent group called the t Scratch Band, and caught the attention.' of a neighbor, Dan Hartman. Hartman invited G.E. to do what he calls a “gourmet tour” of Europe promoting his massive hit “Instant Replay.” “We played all over Europe, just lip-synching the record on TV. We never had to learn to do it; we just had to learn to look good! I played bass in the VideOS.

When Smith returned to America, after three workless months, he started receiving those impossible phone calls, like the one that started, “hello, G.E., this is David.” Bowie took Smith to play “Ashes to Ashes’^ and “Life On Mars” on the Johnny Carson show, and used him on the “Fashion” video.

“After I got those record offers, I went home and ignored them all through fear. I was this kid living in this funky little place in Connecticut and was real happy with it and I didn’t really aspire toq much beyond that. I loved being on the road, but I didn’t have any of the headaches Daryl and John had. They had to be nice to everybody. I only had to play for an hour and a half and I got all the benefits.

“Maybe I don’t care if nothing happens with the record. I’ll still get to play with Daryl and John and David and other good people I haven’t worked with yet. Aside from everything else, the last few years I’ve made good money. So I’ve nothin’ to lose by putting out this record. Now I can walk into the music stores on 48th Street and they treat me good, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

Toby Goldstein

STING: THE NEW KARL MALDEN?

Seen here clutching an Emmy for The Streets Of San Francisco is—surprise I—Police bassist ana singer Sting I Why him? "You figure it out," explains the not-particularly-nosey good time boy, "Enough people have beenkidding me about losing tholr traveller’s checks that I thought it was time to strike back I" And the reason for this confusion? "Who knows?" asks Sting, wiping his nose with a handkerchief. "Hey, does that band Rhinoceros still make records?"