You Gotta have a Hook

Craig Drives a '62 Volvo with rust-pitted chrome, a Bic pen stabbed into the padded dash for easy note taking, windows that won't roll down, a heater that won't turn off and wipers that haven't wiped in three winters. In the back's a pile of newspapers (including Red Flag, Creem and Swing), three books (Tales of Power, 1984 and The Inner Game of Tennis), five baldy Dunlops ... and, on top of the whole pile, a Martin acoustic and a Les Paul electric. He's headed for a session. Thirty-three dollars an hour. Three hours' guarantee for just showing. But it ain't all nirvana in musician heaven. Last night, his percussionist, Sodie, and he split a bottle--of Nyquil.

He pumps down another Valium and they light a joint of Thai stick. A pound goes for $2000, so, by extrapolation, cubing for every middleman (or whatever dealers do to come up with those outrageous prices) this joint cost them about five bucks. Ah, yes, but it's sweet and resiny. They make a left off Highland onto Sunset and they're on the Strip. Liquor stores that sell only twist-top wine and the Daily Racing Form, tilts, pencil salesmen and junkies, guys from Marshall, Texas, Enterprise, Alabama, and Yazoo, Mississippi, struttin' in their first pair of three-inch platforms. Yeeee, God! Craig's giggling, Sodie's giggling.

"Decadence, man, decadence." Three Dog Night's blarin' on the radio now:

"I'll throw away the cars and the bombs and the bars and make sweet love into you."

"Hey, get this. I hear Ford tried to have that line cut when the Dog was on a Midnight Special they sponsored."

"Hey, you can't throw away the cars!"

A few more miles over the hill into North Hollywood and they're there--Joe Gottfried's Sound City, home of the reigning satrap of jive music, Barry White.

Craig's kinda laid back--hair down to his butthole, velveteen Zories and a Rams T-shirt--but the others who show up at those sessions are ... whew! There's the turquoise, glitter, eye liner and cudgel, unisex, rock-idol hopefuls who eat 'ludes and guzzle Chivas. And there's the liberals in permanent-press bell-bottoms, wop boots and Renaissance-print shirts. Drugs: Mouton Cadet, Peruvian flake, Alka-Selt-zer Gold and Charge-o-plates. And Topanga Canyon hippies, who dress like Arlo Guthrie (now doing Rolling Stone ads with his Mercedes). Macrobiotic neurotics who drive up in Ferraris, diesel Mercedes and (Krishna, forgive them) Rolls-Royces, with bumper stickers like Boycott Grapes, Tm in the pm and Freedom is a right. And lastly, there's the brothers who get down of whatever there is: blow, jack, commersh, Kona, Key Largo, crosstops, Ten High, angel dust, Pam Dry Fry, Rainier, orange sunshine and magic mushrooms from Safeway soaked in LSD and water. Their dress is the usual--ghetto deck.

First thing Craig's gotta do is unload his Fender SuperReverb, which ain't a big amp (four ten-inch speakers), but it weighs a kiloton and it's awkward. Every struggling session man's dream is to have a cartage service schlep his shit to the next gig. Every time they unload, Sodie says the same thing about Hal Blaine, the big-time session man. Craig himself has heard it at least ten times.

"They're unloading his fucking tubs, man, and he's got Hal Blaine--Set #9 stenciled on his fucking cases. The fucker's got at least nine sets." Pause. "The fucker's gotta be a billionaire."

Sodie's been wearing a neck brace from when an old lady sideswiped his Pinto in La Jolla. Between the three doctors he's seeing, he gets all the muscle relaxants he and Craig and ten others can use. And don't forget the Green, jack. Every little scheme helps. Sodie's goal is to make $10,000,000. "Then, I'll be free, man." To have somebody schlep his tubs, I guess.

So now they're hauling equipment, banging and grunting past Studio A (which can hold a 50-piece orchestra) over to the smaller Studio B. They're gonna lay a rhythm track today. They throw their shit down by their stools and the first thing they see propped up there on their music stands--the apotheosis of where this whole trip is at, the reason they're all here making these jive sounds--the W-2 form, money. Fill it out, hand it to the contractor for this date and next week you pick up your check at the union--minus its cut. Everybody gets his cut. Like our Government, the recording business is run by hoodlums.

Now, set up. And all during the hour or so it takes (baffling, patching--the heads and carriage on the 24-track have to be cleaned and demagnetized--isolate inputs and separate mikes) is the presession bullshit. Women, of course, and drugs--the toot from Bogotá, the smoke from Oaxaca--only the top shit for the elite of rock. Although Cagey Austin (from Austin, Texas), who claims he knows everybody, but nobody has ever heard of him, is content to gobble Black Sundays (eat one on Friday night and by Sunday you're blind). Cagey lives down the hall from Craig at the Cadillac Hotel in Venice. His band, Mercury Zipgun, is supposedly "on tour," but as near as Craig can figure it, Cagey's only gig was at the Elbow Room in Santa Monica. But mostly the jive while setting up is who you played with lately, who you're gonna play for, who you might play for or who you even attempted to play for. All are mentioned: Kool & the Gang, Honk and the Hot Chocolate, Chocolate Milk, Sugar Billy, Raspberries, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Mahogany Rush, Redbone, Wishbone Ash, Badfinger, Starry Eyed & Laughing, Steeleye Span, Medicine Head, Dr. John, Ballin' Jack, Babe Ruth, Olympic Runners, Ohio Players, New York Dolls, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Four Wheel Drive, Bachman--Turner Overdrive, R.E.O. Speedwagon, B.S.&T., P.G.&E., M.F.S.B., B. B. King, Freddie King, Carole King, Queen, Amboy Dukes, Bazuka, Silk Torpedo, War, Baker-Gurvitz Army, Batdorf & Rodney, Spooky Lady's Sideshow, Spooky Tooth, Cosmic Echoes, UFO, Jefferson Starship, Roger Moon, Keith Moon, Edward Bear, Eddie Rabbit, Percy Sledge, Uriah Heep, The Tubes. And, of course, everyone claims to at least have jammed with the Beatles. But there's some gigs Craig's ashamed of and he won't mention, like the transvestite, S/M, cock-rock session for Lou Reed and the heavy-metal bit for Blue Oyster Cult.

A Barry White session has no fewer than four rhythm guitarists, including David T. Walker and--can you dig it?--"Wah Wah" Watson (who pumps that "wah-wah" pedal with epileptic fury), three percussionists, two keyboard players, a spiritual advisor (Larry Nunes), electric bass, drums, horns, violins. Overjive production, otherwise known as the Barry White sound. (He just can't get enough.)

Gene Page, Barry's arranger, is there (on the tilt and into his image) to conduct the session. They run through the song a few times so the engineer can make sure all equipment is operating, set levels and generally to see if what's supposed to be clean and clear is clean and clear and what's supposed to be distorted is distorted, because distortion, you see, is part of rock 'n' roll.

Finally, two hours after they arrived, Page gives the downbeat and they go through the song the first time. After several measures, they get a "Hold it" from the engineer. He's losing the bass track. Downbeat. Hit it again. Sounds pretty good, until they play it back. Mike distortion. This is where the producer comes in. A jive producer ain't worth his weight in hype unless he can say to a session man who's just heard his ballsyest riffs destroyed by mike distortion, "Don't worry about it, we'll take care of it when we mix down." This always fries a good musician, because he knows it can't be done. Downbeat. Hit it a third time. Hey, it don't feel too bad. Everybody's cookin' good. They all read well except for Wah Wah and Craig, but Craig can fake it, because if you know anything at all about music after you go through this garbage the first time, it's as predictable as Curt Gowdy. And Wah Wah, well, he just wah-wah's, anyway. Yeah, yeah, it's working, except all of a sudden the producer yells, "Cut! Hey, man, like you ain't in the groove, get it in the groove." It's been grooved for a half hour, so where's he been. They can play this shit in their fuckin' sleep, but he is one of those producers who arrange as they go. He stands in front of Craig with a funky-down grimace while he mimics playing a guitar and says, "Hey, man, can you play something like chickawalka, chickawalka, boomawalka, chickawalka." And that's supposed to mean something to Craig, who's played guitar longer than he's masturbated. Craig's pissed now and that makes Sodie nervous, because Craig keeps blowing gigs by telling off club owners and producers. Usually the musicians can jive the producer, "OK, yeah, man, right on, right on," and then play what they were gonna in the first place, but this producer, well, he thinks he's got soul. So far, he's used 13 reels of 30-ips master tape to produce 36 minutes of music. They're now on take number 17.

Finally, after another hour, they've got a tight, well-played rhythm track, but it's lacking something--namely, music. They're playing it back and the producer's tapping his foot, smiling, winking, saying, "Yeah, yeaaahh!" at what he considers the really hot shit and, meanwhile, Craig's slamming his cases shut, ripping the plugs from his amp, cussing, snorting, fuming and, before Sodie can get over there to calm him down--Ka-boom!

"What a bunch of shit, man, what a bunch of shit. I wouldn't play these chords at a junior high recital. Why's it always the same shitty rhythms, the same shitty base line, the same shitty chords?"

Craig doesn't wait around for an answer anymore. It's always the same shitty answer. Money. The record-company honchos decide which sound is commercial and that's all they'll promote. He kicks his way out the door with his amp in one hand and both of his guitars in the other. This mother is physically strong, which is reason numero uno why the producer hasn't spoken for the first time in three hours. Sodie finally catches Craig, just as he gets to the car.

"What the fuck did you say that for?"

"Because it's the truth."

"What's your fuckin' fetish with the truth, man. The truth ain't buyin' our Thai stick."

"Fuck you!"

•

Back at the Cadillac Hotel, Cagey's throwing a party.

"Are you a musician?"

"Yes."

"Oh, far out! What do you play?"

"Contra bassoon."

"Oh ... ah ... well ... do you have a gig or something?"

"I play for the L.A. Philharmonic."

"Oh."

"The producer tells Mac Davis, 'Look, you gotta have a hook. That's what sells records....'"

"He ate fifteen reds and drank two bottles of Boone's Farm and choked to death."

"Hell, take any tight night-club band, dress 'em on a concert stage with big time promo pushin' 'em and, whammo!, you get peach-fuzz cunts at the stage door instead of plastered beauticians, burnedout sexetaries and horny housewives."

"So Mac gets pissed, goes downstairs and writes, 'Baby, baby, don't get hooked on me.'"

"Yeah, we ate some buttons."

"This is my friend, Frank."

"Are you a musician?"

"No."

"You mean you hang out with someone who isn't a musician?"

"Jerry Lee's got a turkey neck now. One up-tempo tune and he looks like he's ready to go backstage and pop a heart pill."

"Wanna snort some ammie?"

"So he brings the song back upstairs and throws it on the producer's desk. He takes one look at it and screams, 'That's it! That's it!' The fuckin' thing was a million seller."

"I was at a Midnight Special taping and they tell you to clap over your head, because it looks better."

"Are you a musician?"

"Yeah, my band's Mercury Zipgun. You probably heard of 'em."

"Oh, sure."

"Yeah, we've been all over. Even jammed with the Beatles once."

"Far out! Far out! They call me the acid queen of Venice."

"Far out!"

"You gotta give 'em the hook."

"It's kinda weird to see a guy who had hair down to here, now combing it to the side to cover his bald spot."

"Shit, all he ate were a few sopers."

"... He's got Hal Blaine--Set #9 Stenciled on his cases. He's got at least nine sets." Pause. "The fucker's gotta be a billionaire."