"If we could, we'd all sing like George Jones" - Waylon Jennings
Truth be told, it's been awhile since I just sat down and banged one of these here drivel-spews out.
But...
George Jones died Friday.
I was 15. I'd been playing guitar for a whole 4 years. I knew Keith Richards was the greatest guitar player on the planet. I'd enjoyed Laugh-In as much as half the world did. That made me tune into Hee Haw its first season. Heck, why not!
What I collided with head-on was a new musical reality.
During the first two season, at least, Hee Haw's musical guests performed live backed by a live band. Compared to how bad some rock bands had sounded on the air, the sound quality and what I'd later know as 'the mix' was always dead perfect.
But, two really important things shown through to this rock 'n' roll brat... "Nashville Cats" by The Lovin' Spoonful didn't even nick the surface of what country guitar players were doing. Don Rich, Buck Owens' head Buckaroo, simply blazed on his Telecaster at least 3 times a show. He never looked at his fingers. He looked into the camera and smiled while he played shit I STILL can't play over 45 years later. This grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and said PAY ATTENTION.
Now, I was listening to the singers. As a rock freak I was well used to lip-syncing. I practically accepted it. Here were singers who were singing the way you'd expect a lip-sync-er to sound. It was not eerie but it shook my musical equilibrium. A lot of what these people were doing and singing was corny to a Brooklyn boy, but, what the fuck, these people were inhumanly good. Slick as snot, as the poet once gobbed.
Two singers stood out to me from the start. George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Both of them had these wild voices. She had this huskiness and this crack and this raw emotion and he had this keening whine and this dark dark rumble on the bottom and this weird strangled delivery. No, no, no, I wasn't this hip, please. They fell off my radar almost instantly back then. It was a brief moment of recognition but the revelation would come years later... I was too young and green to get it as I would soon enough.
I slowly, painfully, became a hotshot guitarist. I have never before nor since ever felt a compulsion like that. Playing like Jimmy Page and Pete Townshend wasn't a goal. It was... WHAT... I... HAD... TO... DO...
By the age of 21, I had me a hotshot band of sorts to accoutrement me.
An actual friend, Bob Merlis, in the actual music business offered to manage us.
He soon invited A&R people to our lunatic rehearsal loft, literally the vault they'd kept the secrets, formulas, blueprints for the Manhattan Project in Prentis Hall on W 125th St.
One night, he brought a woman instead of a guy. She walked in, I was already strapped and plugged up. I turned and looked and was blindsided. Oh my God, a blonde Vampira! Oh my God, Mary Travers meets Morticia Addams. She had GOLD irises, the color of her hair. She was pock-marked across her beyond-perfect cheekbones. This made her real. She cracked very very wise and the whole band kinda went Whoa, who is this?, in a very enamored way. She knew how to be The Only Woman In The Room.
Bob had us play the 5 song set he and I had worked out. He and Vampira cheered. We took off our guitars. She and Bob stood up. I don't recall how she conveyed it, because she didn't come out and say it, A&Rs back then rarely did, but, I knew she was impressed, maybe Bob shot me a thumbs up or something. We packed up and all left together. We got downstairs and somehow I wound up the only Planet to get a ride from Bob. Vampira was riding shotgun. I was behind driver Bob in his orange BMW. Ms. V. was on a roll, regaling us with recent exploits with bands and lawyers. Her wit was lethal. Virtually every sentence was a line. In the night light of driving down the Westside Highway, she was stunning. I was completely dazzled, could you tell?
Within weeks, Spring of 1973, she'd booked us into her label's studio, RCA's largest room in New York. A room that Elvis and Bowie used. We did 3 songs in 3 hours. One track was our Slade-like cover of "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'".
Less than 10 days later, V called Bob to say that RCA wanted to do a singles deal for our "Boots" cover. They'd rush release it. As crazed to get signed as we were, even as a 21 year old, I knew that a one song deal, a cover at that, was pretty much bullshit. We passed. Idiots.
Here's the deal... Vampira wound up my older woman/younger guy fling a year later. During our third time in bed together, she announced that she was managing my band. Ummmmm, yeah,,, uh, sure... Oh... Oh...
As I have described in my Rhino book, My Life In the Ghost of Planets - The Story of a CBGB Almost-Was, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HIq4DQ2uDg this whole deal with Vampira running my band's business ended in fiasco.
My love affair with Vampira fell apart before her relationship with my band did. She had become the American tour manager for The Kinks, which gave her huge cred in our eyes, and at least twice a year, she was out of town for weeks on end. And it was becoming more and more obvious that she was being very bad on the road.
Looking back, a country song called "I Was Turning Down Groupies, She Was Doing The Roadies" would've been autobiographical.
V was a stone cold Southern Belle Florida gal. Consequently, her album collection boasted a hefty utterly non-ironic Country selection. In my yearning for the way things were the first few weeks of our fling, I discovered Tammy Wynette again after all those years of her Hee Haw appearances. Alone in Vamp's Murray Hill apartment, I found myself putting on side one and then side two and then side one of at least 4 of her albums. My very heart and soul bathing in Tammy's intense empathy.
"Oh my God, Tammy, you understand."
To blast through a decade, I found myself in the same emotional break-up horrorshow the Summer of 1986 with the wonderful woman who followed V. Nine years and dumped and dumped hard. This time, it was George Jones who pulled me through. I'd play "If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will)" and "She Thinks I Still Care" 5 and 6 times in a row. I wasn't a drinker. I was a stoner. But, I'd decided I needed to live this with George and started keeping a quart of Stoli in my freezer. I'd put on "He Stopped Loving Her Today" and slam down a double shot straight from the frozen bottle.
"Oh my God, George, you understand."
But, back to 1977, the summer I broke up with Vampira. I'd moved out as she'd asked me to. I was sleeping on my band's drummer's couch. I was on unemployment. I was going to bed at 5am, ripped on reefer, waking up at 2pm. It was great and it sucked. I was living on $73 a week. How is that even possible?! Anyway, one week, I did a devil-may-care thing. I bought a $5 ticket to see Tammy Wynette at the Schaefer Festival. Every summer for several years, the Schaefer Brewing Company had sponsored a highly eclectic music festival using the Wollman Rink in Central Park as the venue.
Being a wily New York guy, knowing the show was first come, first served, as opposed to the dopey middle-aged suburbanites who made up the great majority of this particular show's audience, I'd gotten there early enough to score something like 4th row center on an aisle.
Tammy and her band came on, looking like nothing I'd seen at the Fillmore East or CBGB, that's for damn sure! Everyone was in powder blue with Tammy in something closer to royal blue.
She was breathtaking. I was shocked. I'd thought she was very good looking but photos hadn't come close. Then, she opened her mouth and that voice came out. I was actually there, in her presence, and that voice was real. It wasn't some studio trick. Her sound man was clearly ultra-pro. The sonic quality of her voice through the PA sounded like she was singing softly a foot from your ear.
To wax manly-piggish, she was wearing a strapless gown, very clearly no bra. I was absolutely punch-drunk with yearning lust by the fourth song.
She did an acoustic set 2/3s through the show. They brought out a stool and gut-string guitar and Tammy, all alone, naked as it were, sang us either two or three songs, including one of her own masterpieces, "That's The Way It Could've Been", yes, Tammy was a songwriter. It was Ms. Wynette who came up with the immortal hook line, "If you don't like what you're becoming, you could be coming to me."
She was ultra-natural, cracked self-deprecating jokes along the lines of Dolly Parton's "It takes a ton of time and money to look this cheap". And, yes, she made jokes about George, their The Couple of Country status shattered years before. George was ummmmmmmm not husband material.
A few songs later with the full band, Tammy announced that this was gonna be the last number, but, that we should all stick around because she was gonna change into something more comfortable "My girdle is just about killin' me...and then I'll come down and sign all your autographs and take pictures and whatever y'all wanna do, okay."
Uhhh, Jimmy Page had never said that at a Led Zep show. This NYC kid was just knocked over.
It got better.
She left the stage, the guys in the band put down their instruments, each one grabbed a stack of color 8x10s of Tammy and started hawking' 'em from the stage...
"Don't worry, folks, Tammy'll sign anything you give her, but, why not have her sign a truly beautiful fill color portrait of Tammy... Only one dollar! One dollar!"
I bought mine from the bassist.
It took Tammy about 15 minutes to appear at folding card table set up at the far end of stage right. There were at least 80 people in line ahead of me. I was patient. The whole deal was flat-out surreal entertainment for me. As I got closer to Tammy, I could see that by now, she wasn't even looking up at who was thrusting whatever in her face to sign. She was a machine. It was finally my turn.
Up close, she was impossibly good looking. Her skin was flawless, her hair was flawless, her powder blue pantsuit fit her flawlessly. She was distinctly smaller than I expected, maybe 5' 4". I slid my 8x10 towards her, as she waited, bent forward, poised with Sharpie in hand. As she scrawled, "Just - Tammy", I leaned forward and said... and hell yes, this is verbatim...
"Tammy, as a fellow singer, songwriter, guitarist, I can appreciate your art on that level, but what you do to me as a human being is devastating."
She snapped upright so fast, she actually startled me.
She threw her Sharpie to the ground with real vehemence.
She grabbed my hands with both her hands.
She turned to the young brunette to her immediate left, clearly her main assistant, and almost yelled, "Did you hear what he just said to me?!"
Her assistant with a lovely smile, nodded, Yes, Tammy I did.
Tammy now turned her fiercely piercing eyes directly on me, "Oh my Lord, that's a kind a thing as anyone's ever said to me. Bless your heart. Thank you so very much." Through this whole little speech she was still vigorously shaking both my hands with both her hands, all the while her ample and undulating cleavage furiously mocking me, Hahahaha, you can't look, not even a peek, peripheral vision only, ass.
Yeah, well, this is my eulogy to George Jones.
I will leave you with this...
Tammy's songs didn't mess around. This video clip is her singing her ode to lots and lots of sex being the thing that keeps a marriage together, "Good Lovin' Makes It Right".
Dig the look Tammy shoots the off-camera George on the key line of the bridge... @ 1:25 - 1:30. Their relationship encapsulated in 5 seconds.
Then, dig his PERFECT hair when he comes out at the end to deliver his deeply ironic (and amusing) compliment.
Oh, man, this truly was The Couple!
RIP, Tammy!
RIP, Possum!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MybADdg8AFk