The Talking T-Bone

The Talking T-Bone

by

Sharon Liveten

It’s another sickeningly beautiful day in Los Angeles: the sun is shining, the smog level is down and there hasn’t been an earthquake in at least a week. Even rarer, T-Bone Burnett, popular music’s bestkept secret, is folding all six-foot-Godknows-what of himself into a coffeeshop banquette to talk to CREEM.

Like any normal person, he’s somewhat suspicious. “Why would CREEM be interested in me, anyway?” he asks, his gentle Texas accent and natty suit immediately giving him away as a non-resident.

Why indeed. Silly question. His history as a producer should be enough. (Burnett’s been at the board for Elvis Costello, John Hiatt, Tonio K. and more. While we scarf down lunch, the legendary Roy Orbison is cooling his heels at a local studio.) Or the fact that he’s at the center of rock ’n’ roll’s own Cool Clique. (The man is known and respected by just about everyone who counts, which, we should note, is not the same as people who are famous. But they like him, too.) Or even that he seems to be the only living creature to come out of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate with dignity, charm, and sense of compassion unscathed. But the reason we’re here is that T-Bone (there are a number of stories behind the moniker.. .lies, all lies) has just released a nifty album, The Talking Animals. So, like it or not, the time has come to talk to CREEM. Hey, everybody’s gotta pay some dues in life.

“Life,” he says, possibly trying to*explain his view of the tortuous interview process, one worthy of Amnesty International’s attention, “is mostly tedious. So you have to have a certain amount of humor. And mercy.”

He seems to possess both. Which doesn’t mean he isn’t a realist. Some might even call him a cynic. I do and he denies it.

“I don’t think I’m a cynic at all,” he insists. “What I think is cynical is when people say,-‘Just give the people what they want. This is what they want, so it’s what they deserve’—when the only choices you’re given are terrible. What’s happening in music was the idea of some people in marketing. Fragmentation,” he laughs, “that’s a concept that may soon become an idea. It’s a great idea for making money, but I don’t think it’s a very healthy thing for music.”

Particularly in his case. And if, as some believe, current radio aims for the lowest common denominator, T-Bone may be in big trouble. The Talking Animals is probably too smart for the average programming geek. The songs cover a spectrum of emotions from the raw (“Purple Heart”) to the surreal (“The Strange Case Of Frank Cash And The Morning Paper”). There’s even, maybe, a hit (“Dance, Dance, Dance”).

But T-Bone’s biggest problem—though only his record company views it as such—is that he isn’t easily categorized. His early material had new wave leanings; his last was a country record. The Talking Animals is, well, eclectic. The album falls between the cracks of modern marketing slots. However, “Dance, Dance, Dance” is quirky enough to make it on Top 40 radio, threatening that pesky artistic credibility—the kind that makes an artist a critical favorite and a commercial flop. This is not news to him. Nor is he concerned.

T-Bone notes: “The big joke in the record business today is, ‘Oh, it’s a hit song? Well then, just do it with acoustic guitars.’ So it won’t be a hit. If something on the record sounds like a hit, I couldn’t be happier. I was trying to write a pop record which has nothing to do with pop music today. If the songs actually sound like Top 40, terrific. I actually think that ‘Dance Dance Dance’ is a really good song; it sounds to me like if we made it twice as long, it could be a dance record.

“I was watching a movie on TV about two in the morning,” he recalls. “It was such a hilarious movie—I never saw the name, it was on so late they never showed the credits—but I pretty much wrote down the movie. It’s sort of a cracked view, but... it gave people in the ’50s a chance to dress up a few movie hopefuls in skimpy outfits and take pictures of them,” he chortles. “A lot of those old horror movies have fiber in them.”

Burnett’s music tends to have more heft than fluff. Like “Images.” At first listen, it sounds a little like every college music student’s nightmare—Wagner’s Ring Cycle—but take a deep breath and listen again. This is not opera, just people singing in a different language. Alright, several different languages.

Says Burnett, “It’s the same verse, sung once in English, another in Spanish, and Arabic and Russian. I liked the idea of a man singing to a woman and ending with a Russian singing to an American. The same sentiment is true, from a very personal level to an international level. While we were making the record, I went to see Tango In Argentino, and ended up using their orchestra. A lot of people may think that’s really pretentious or something, but I don’t care. I liked the band— they were just a bunch of old men that had been playing forever in Argentina. They don’t play slick and smooth. They play to their own time and beat.”

Being a tad off-center himself, this is clearly a sentiment Burnett understands. Of all the characters in his songs, Burnett feels closest to the hero of the album’s closing tune, "The Strange Case Of Frank Cash And The Morning Paper,” which is frightening: the song is practically an episode of The Twilight Zone set to music with Frank Cash, a major-league scum, in the starring role.

Burnett explains, “I’ve always liked the idea of a shift in reality. Like the Woody Allen movie, Purple Rose Of Cairo, where the characters come off the screen. I also enjoyed creating a totally unredeemable character. He’s a murderer, thief, gambler and a whoremonger. He does all these despicable things and in the end gets completely cut loose. What I think this album is about more than anything, is mercy. I wrote that song toward the end of the record, and I wanted to be totally merciful to this character, who is not unlike myself. He’s kind of living the new American dream. You know, in the past the American dream was to work really hard and get ahead. Now it’s winning the lottery.”

T-Bone professes no great desire to win the lottery. (Though he is curious about where the people that populate the zillion-dollar homes that stretch from San Diego to Big Sur get their capital.) He has loftier goals.

“I am ambitious. Not necessarily to make a lot of money, or be a member of the right club, but I do want to make a great record. I don’t think I’ve gotten there—and I don’t know how I’m going to get there. I know,” he laughs, “that I’m not going to write any rock symphonies. I think that does get silly and pretentious I think the whole word rock ’n’ roll is pretentious. Rock ’n’ roll. Rock operas. I want to do something that’s worthy of Jimmy Reed. That’s ambitious..

He stops mid-sentence. “Why do you think I’m cynical?” The song “Monkey Dance” comes to mind. He nods. “Have you seen those Thurber cartoons, The Battle Of The Sexes? Men and women are really tricky with each other. So the best way to look at it is to laugh at it, not to take it all that seriously. Especially today, when there is a really deep understanding about what goes into making two people able to live and love together. And it’s probably more misunderstood than any other time in history. That’s what I was trying to do.”

Now that’s ambitious.