Ups and downs of rock ’n’ roll
It’s June of 1991 and guitarist Slash of rock group Guns N’ Roses, a.k.a. The Most Dangerous Band in the World, is on the line to me from a hotel tour stop in Ohio.
Somebody else is on top of him, in a most intimate manner.
“I’m sitting here, um, lying in bed with a girlfriend of mine. And you, uh, called at a really inopportune time,” the top-hatted axeman says.
He begins moaning: “Oh, oh, oh, oh …!”
I can hear what sounds like a carnal act in progress, one that also begins with “O.”
“Slash, you called me!” I reply. “But I’d better let you get to it, then.”
“It’s okay,” he says, stifling another moan. “Take care.”
Just another day on the Toronto Star’s rock music beat. I was the paper’s rock critic for six glorious years from 1991-97, overlapping for a few months with the job of movie critic, which I switched to in the fall of ’96 and, at this writing, still hold.
The great thing about the rock gig was that my editors didn’t really care who I talked to or what we talked about, as long as I didn’t miss reviewing mellow Baby Boomer favourites like Elton John and Billy Joel. I pretty much had free rein to write what I wanted, and man, did I reign!
People often ask me what the difference is between rock stars and movie stars. The answer is easy: rock stars generally don’t care if you interview them while they’re getting a blow job or doing blow. They expect you to be cool about it, man.
Movie stars certainly do care. They’re surrounded by publicists who are determined to keep them in line and on message, whatever marketing message the studio happens to be peddling. You’re not likely to catch George Clooney moaning at the other end of a telephone, especially these days when any unguarded moment could lead to social-media shaming.
Nobody should really be surprised if a rock star acts like, well, a rock star. It’s actually an endearing trait because it means you’re getting an interview experience that’s fresh and raw, not freeze-dried and air-brushed by some Hollywood handler.
I once interviewed Keith Richards in a Queen St. bar. The Rolling Stones guitarist sat and chain-smoked while a waiter brought him a tray loaded with vodka screwdrivers mixed with godawful Tang powder rather than orange juice.
“I drink ’em dirty, because then I don’t drink ’em as fast,” Keef explained.
I always enjoy talking to Keef, because he couldn’t care less what you say about him as long as you aren’t mean. Remember he told a British music magazine a few years back that he mixed a few of the ashes of his late father into some cocaine and snorted it? It was Keef’s way of saying goodbye and staying close to his beloved dad.
He was later obliged to deny it after social-media grannies relentlessly tut-tutted him. But I totally believed the story.
Keef loves to talk and he’s more fun to interview than Stones frontman Mick Jagger, who is all business. Mick is unfailingly polite but he never lets you forget that the meter is running: “How we doin’ for time, Peter?” he’ll ask, five minutes into a scheduled 15-minute interview.
Mick also has a habit of never quite finishing his sentences. He’s been interviewed so many times over the past half century, he already knows what question you’re going to ask and you already know what he’s going to answer. His quotes become a form of shorthand or code: “So then we played Altamont and blah, blah, blah …”
But even Jagger can let his guard down, if only a bit. I interviewed him in New York in the summer of 1995 for a story about an acoustic album called Stripped that the Stones had put out to capitalize on the popularity of MTV’s Unplugged show.
The LP included an ancient Richards/Jagger number called “The Spider and the Fly,” an ode to the temptation to consort with groupies on the road: “I would have run away, but I was on my own / She told me later she’s a machine operator.”
“I guess groupies are a thing of the past with the Stones, eh?” I cheekily said to Mick, who was then 52 and married with children to model Jerry Hall.
Mick cocked an eyebrow and grinned: “Oh, you’d be surprised …”
I guess I wasn’t so surprised a few years later when Mick got a Brazilian model pregnant and subsequently divorced Hall.
One time I found myself playing matchmaker for a rock star. I interviewed Iggy Pop in Toronto for a new album called Naughty Little Doggie. It included a ballad called “Shoeshine Girl,” with lyrics about “a comely goth girl, with tattoos on her form” who had enraptured Pop while buffing his Doc Martens: “She shined my shoes and then I knew / That I would spellbound be.”
“This sounds like it’s about a real person,” I told Pop.
“It is, and she’s cool,” he said. “She’s a real woman and she doesn’t know she has a song about her yet. She’s at the Phoenix airport. Her name is Angie and she shines shoes there. I’ve seen her on two different occasions nearly a year apart, both times professionally, as it were.
“One of my ambitions is to go to that airport and hand her a CD, and say, ‘This one is for you, because you’re a cool chick.’”
This was pre-Google, when you had to actually do some work to track people down. I called the Phoenix airport and after following numerous false leads finally reached Angie.
She was surprised and flattered to learn of Pop’s interest in her and expressed interest in seeing him again, even though he was a good 25 years older than her.
“He’s a beautiful man,” she said. “He’s like a historical figure walking around.”
I’m not sure how Iggy, then a mere 48, would have taken that “historical figure” remark.
I never did find out if Iggy and Angie ever went out together, but I often think about them and smile. I don’t think I’ve had similar thoughts about a couple on the movies beat, say Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who are now an ex-couple.
Rock stars just seem all that more human and approachable than movie stars. Even a guy like David Bowie, who performed as the non-human space alien Ziggy Stardust (and his crazier cousin Aladdin Sane) in his early career days.
By the time I got a chance to talk to Bowie, in the fall of 1991, he was reinventing himself yet again, as leader of a touring rock ‘n’ roll band called Tin Machine. A telephone call from him on the road to my desk at the Toronto Star had been booked for the decidedly un-rock-star hour of 9 a.m., which meant I had just enough time to drop my middle son Jake, then two years old, off at daycare and make it to the paper in time.
Except Jake chose that morning to have a tantrum. I had to bribe him with the promise of a candy bar to get him to join his daycare buddies. This delay plus traffic meant I made it to my desk just as the phone was ringing. It was Bowie, and I caught the phone as it was about to go to voicemail.
“Peter, why do you sound out of breath?” Bowie asked.
I explained what happened and he laughed.
“I’m a father, too, so I totally get your predicament. I’ve been there!”
We then chatted about Tin Machine, a difficult topic since the band wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire, to put it mildly. But Bowie, ever restless, was just delighted to be doing something different. He joked about living “parallel lives” with a figure of public fascination named David Bowie whom he barely recognized.
“He’s apparently a lot richer than I am, he’s a real bastard, nobody gets on with him, and he’s a real prima donna,” Bowie said. “I read about this other guy and we write often to each other to see how we’re getting on. But we lead very different lives.”
I miss Bowie, who died of cancer in January, 2016. And I miss interviews like this one.
PETER HOWELL is movie critic for the Toronto Star. He is also president of the Toronto Film Critics Association. In another life, he was the Star’s rock critic. Favourite film: 2001: A Space Odyssey. Favourite album: Exile on Main Street.