A TWO-PARTER!
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Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: Doobie Brothers
You look like Chico Marx.
“Shut up, putz. This is how you open up the conversation? With insults and little jokes? I’ll throw your ass out of here, buster.”
I’m in my own house.
“You think this matters to Bill Graham? I’ve thrown people out of their own houses before. I knew they would cause trouble at the show that night, so I swung by their pads in the afternoon and 86’ed ’em. Never saw it coming. Most thanked me for the professional manner in which I tossed them out a window.”
Why would they thank you?
“I opened the window first. Most promoters wouldn’t do that. John Scher used to buy orphans just so he could hurl them through plate-glass. A real schmendrick, that guy. Not Bill Graham. I go the extra mile The crowd needs? I provide. The artist wants? I get. Carlos Santana needs cocaine in Moscow during the Cold War? I get.
“Phone rings. This is ’86. That schmuck with the splotch, whatshisname, he’s in charge over there. Gorbachev! Gorby, right, Gorby. This guy’s no Kruschev. Wants to open up the Soviet Union a little bit. Not too much. Just a bit. Economy’s terrible and the kids are getting ansty. Figures a rock concert might mellow them out. There’s no bread in the country, so he’ll import a circus.
“I pick up. It’s Gorby. I scream at him in Yiddish for ten minutes and hang up.
“Phone rings again. Gorby again. Now I got him on the ropes! Little nudnik thought he was talking to some moron like Reagan, may he rot in Hell that bastard. Who’s this asshole ever negotiated with? I could get 80% of the door and all the tee-shirt revenue from him with my dick tied behind my back, never mind broadcast fees. Putz.
“At this point, I still do not know why he’s calling.
“He tells me about his idea. Rock concert in Moscow. My mind starts racing. Bill Graham presents The Wall behind the Iron Curtain! Bill Graham presents Bruce Springsteen in Red Square! The Stones. Baruch hashem, the Stones. I might just end the Cold War myself through the power of my promoting.
“Then he tells me about his budget. I end up begging Steve Wozniak for half-a-mil and hiring the Doobie Brothers, Santana, Bonnie Raitt, and Jackson Browne. I didn’t have to pay Jackson because of a favor he owed me about a thing I didn’t tell anyone about.
“We fly in. I got 40, 50 people with me. Lights, production, lawyers, a couple CIA guys I knew through the Dead. Every one of us is wearing at least a dozen pairs of Levi’s, and we peel them off throughout the day in exchange for drinks and Communist blowjobs. Go to the stadium. Dynamo, it’s called. DEE-nah-mo. Place looks like if concrete could take a shit. Gloomiest fuckin’ stadium you’ve ever seen. We ask to see the power supply: it’s a babushka holding an extension cord. We’re gonna have to bring in everything.
“When I get back, I ask Steve Wozniak for another half-a-mil.
“He says yes, but only under one condition.
“What, Steve? Anything, I say.
“I wanna meet the Doobie Brothers, he tells me.
“So I stare at the phone for about a minute wondering if I’m being fucked with. I’ve met the Doobie Brothers a million times. Never that fun. Who am I to judge? Woz wants an audience with the Doobies, then he gets one.
“The show! We’re going to Moscow! I got two passenger planes and a cargo plane for the equipment. Carlos Santana talks to a stewardess about Jesus for the entire flight. The Doobies are drunk and crawling under seats to bite ankles. That one with the hair like a girl and a mustache does it hard, too. Bonnie Raitt has talked one of the pilots into letting her fly. Jackson Browne has accidentally been loaded into the cargo plane. Rock and roll, baby.
“Upon landing, all of the equipment and Jackson Browne are confiscated by the Red Army and held for ransom. I call Woz and ask him if he’d like to meet Santana. He wires me another half-a-mil.
“You thought the stadium was bad before; it’s worse now. Soldiers everywhere, but they’re not in uniform. Track suits and army boots and AK47’s. I start to wonder if maybe a week before I had a psychotic break. Maybe I’m in the booby hatch imagining all this. Because it can’t be happening. It can’t be real. The one thing–the ONE THING–Bill Graham had INSISTED on was that there be no soldiers. How can the kids groove and get loose with all that heat? I’m screaming at the top of my lungs.
“I want to see Fedesov. He’s the big megilla. He’s the macher. Supreme Soviet, this guy. It’s July, and he’s wearing a giant overcoat. I never saw a hat this fuzzy. He’s not used to being yelled at. Well, they called me, motherfucker. ‘Please, Bill Graham, come help our shitty country with no lettuce.’ I didn’t call them.
“I’m serious about that. Didn’t see a piece of lettuce the entire trip.
“So I’m screaming at Fedesov really letting him have it, and the translator’s frozen in fear. You don’t talk to a Supreme Soviet like this!
“But this guy’s tough. He smiles. Says in English,
“Is no soldiers. Is security.
“I start screaming again. Ten full minutes. I WILL PUT MY ACTS BACK ON MY PLANES AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF YOUR NO-LETTUCE-HAVING SHITHOLE, that sort of thing. I’m giving him the full shpritz.
“He says, no can do. Is security.
“This is gonna kill my show. Guys with rifles all around. Something bad’s gonna happen. What if the kids get rambunctious? The Doobies get the party started. Drunken anklebiters that they are, they can turn any floor into a dance floor. It’s a dangerous situation. I play my hole card, which was seeing if Steve Wozniak wanted to meet Bonnie Raitt.
“It turns out he did, and I bribed Fedesov with half of the half-million. I kept the rest in overhead and assorted fees.
“The soldiers marched out of the stadium, and the kids came in. Jackson Browne, who had been bought back from the Russians, played his songs about California. Bonnie Raitt came out and did her thing in a pair of remarkable trousers. These little Commies had never seen pants like this before. Everybody danced to the Doobies, and then Santana closed. There was no politics, no mishegos, nothing. These kids lost their mind for Santana. Rapture. That’s what it was. The whole place was in rapture. This was something new. They’d never heard anything like it, and Santana felt it and so did the band and everyone backstage. It was a magical moment.
“Santana came offstage, demanded cocaine, and threw his sweaty do-rag at me. The magical moment was over.
“Shocking as this may sound, it wasn’t easy to find rock star-grade cocaine in Moscow in 1986. The Doobies and I had to break into a hospital. I got the cocaine for Santana, but all the Doobies were arrested.
“I call Steve Wozniak and ask him if he wants to meet the Grateful Dead.
“He tells me that he’s met them.
“I ask if he wants to meet them again.
“He sends me a half-million dollars, I get the Doobies out of jail, and we fly home. Three years later, the Soviet Union would collapse. Funny story: Fedesov was executed.”
For what?
“Caught him taking bribes.”
Sure.
Fuck Hot Tuna. First of all, their name is just gross. Few foods become less appetizing than tuna at temperature; second, they’re like a side project/all-star jam thing? Kind of? I don’t know what they are: last I checked , the membership was part of the Airplane, two-fifths of the Quicksilver’s road crew, a hobo calling himself Haile Selassie, the actual Haile Selassie, and a volunteer horn section that missed the last gig to go hunting for ‘squatch, which everybody else is pretty sure means running around the woods getting fucked up and no-eye contact gay stuff.
Hot Tuna is to rock and roll supergroups what the West Coast Avengers were to superhero groups.
Fuck the Dead Kennedys. They’re the Bay Area version of the Germs: interesting in theory and tale and legend, but unable to play their instruments or sing.
Fuck the Doobie Brothers. Those guys weren’t related at all. Can’t stand a liar.
Fuck Sly and the Family Stone for precisely the same duplicity.
Fuck the Metallicas. Has any band cruised into their legend status on less? Their first record sounds like cardboard having a seizure. Now their second and (especially) third albums were monsters that would do donuts in the parking lot no matter what that fucking cop says. Master of Puppets just openly stares at the boobies of the girl you like–the girl that EVERYBODY LIKES–and she is digging it.
That’s how good that record was. But then Cliff died, horribly, and the two of them–James and Lars–got someone to bully. You couldn’t push Cliff around (well, they couldn’t) and it was no fun to kick Kirk: he just wanted to play his guitar and watch horror movies and have a questionable hair thing going on. But Jason took it for while, and in a spite of–pique? hazing? tribute?–the two idiots wiped the bass clean off Jason’s first album with them, which was shitty 10-minute-prog rock, anyway.
Deliberately sabotaging your own product out of sheer dickishness: that’s Lou Reed territory. Shocking they ended up producing unlistenable music together.
But Master was good, man.
Fuck Primus. I’m not saying that in the ironic way that their fans do: it’s simply terrible, terrible music. Astonishingly good musicians, but who cares.
Fuck Blackalickious. Kiss my ass: that’s not a word.
Fuck Creedence. The jagoff and the jagoff’s brother and the other two whom I wouldn’t recognize of I were them. I understand that sometimes the action has shifted to Vietnam and it is required by federal law to play CCR, but there’s not much to it. It’s not even equivalent to log cabin: building one is intricate work–no, Fogerty’s songs are more like sod houses: they are durable, livable, even pleasing. But that’s all there is.
Fuck Linda Ronstadt. Okay, no: she’s outta sight.
Fuck Rancid, even though their lead singer had a killer giant Welcome to London mohawk. They played Boston in the early ’90’s and the guy across the hall protested the chow because they weren’t really punk. I’m sure the argument was more subtle at the time, but that’s what it boiled down to. I’m sticking with my neighbor: fuck Rancid.
Fuck the Hot Licks. Not Dan Hicks: he’s all right, just the Licks. They know why. Conversely…
Fuck Greg Kihn, but not his band.
Fuck Tony, not Toni, OMIGOD FUCK Toné! Mostly for making me find that special fancy ‘e’ for your name. Other stuff, like the ecological horrors you’ve loosed upon an unsuspecting valley! Who will save the innocent landowners and burghers of Nojack’s Wing Pines!
Fuck Journey: I never started to believe. All I can think of is keyboard scarves and wharves and adenoids. And then that replacement singer thing: everything’s outsourced to Asia now.
Fuck Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Crosby, Stills and Nah. Zing, motherfuckers. The ony thing worse would be a Nocal/Socal All-Star Super-Jam with the Eagles because that would be like matter touching antimatter in the Awful White People universe and PBS would still be playing that shit during pledge week. “Ooh, look: George Harrison showed up. Yipee.”
Fuck the Faming Groovies. Seriously: fuck you, Flaming Groovies. Fuck you so much, Flaming Groovies.
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