Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
That must've took some doing.
  

    
Gee, thanks! For your information, I stopped eating babies *years*
ago! 
  

    

Oh, right... like you don't still *snack* every now and then!
  

    
      I spoke to Stevie once myself, when he played New Haven sometime
in the mid-80s. He was a lot more eloquent on guitar. That's why he's
not in the book. 
      Even worse was Ace Frehley. After I asked him how his guitar
style evolved and he said "It just evolved," I knew I was going to be
in for a long night (and a short interview). 
      That's why it's good to stay away from general questions.
  

    

I interviewed Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley in the early '80s.  They were
plenty forthcoming, especially Gene!
  

    
Those guys don't lack for brains.

Too bad about the Sam Bush interview.  That would make some great
reading.  Anybody else interesting not make the cut?
  

    
     Lots of stuff didn't make the cut, but that was because it wasn't
interesting enough. Two more pieces didn't get in because I couldn't
get the signed release: one was from a guy named Joe Henry, who wrote
about 17 songs with John Denver. He told a fantastic story about how
they originally met. Then he said he didn't want me to run it. 
   The other was from Frank Black of the Pixies, who kept saying he
was going to send the release, but never did. 
   Of course, the best story that didn't make it would have been the
one from Paul Shaffer.  
  

    

> Joe Henry, who wrote about 17 songs with John Denver. He told a fantastic
> story about how they originally met. Then he said he didn't want me to run
> it.

Can you give us the gist of it?
  

    
The Paul Shaffer or the Joe Henry?
   Actually, Joe Henry's story was mostly in the telling.
   Paul Shaffer wound up giving me a blurb for Working Musicians in
which he said, "How come I'm not in the book."  
   The simple answer to that is that I met him after the deadline.
However, the book took so long to get printed, I think I could easily
have included him. 
    How did I get Paul Shaffer to give me a blurb, you ask?
    I had met him a few months before, during the taping of a show on
VH-1 called Cover Wars, where he was the host and I was the control
room judge. Once the show was over I sent him a galley and wrote him a
letter reminding him of our great friendship and listing the Top Ten
reasons why he should give me a blurb.
    I think I promised to get him a record deal, among other things.
    I signed the letter with words to the effect "Since you're the
world's ultimate working musician, you should definitely give me a
blurb for this book."
   He wrote back: "Bruce, if I'm the world's ultimate working
musician, how come I'm not in the book."
    I thought it would have made a great bit for the Letterman show,
on the date of publication, for Dave to hold up a copy and say to Paul,
in the back and forth way they always banter, "Hey, Paul, there's a
new book about working musicians...how come you're not in it?" 
   Later I wrote Paul another letter, listing the Top Ten reasons why
he wasn't in the book, and offering to go to great lengths to rearrange
my schedule so that I could be in the Letterman audience when they had
this terrific banter about my book, and Paul could say, "Gee Dave, I
don't know. Why don't we ask the author!"
    But he never got back to me on that one.
  

    

> Once the show was over I sent him a galley and wrote him a letter reminding
> him of our great friendship and listing the Top Ten reasons why he should
> give me a blurb.

Heh.  Perfect.
  

    
Too bad it didn't work out.  It seems Letterman loves that kind of
stuff.  It would have been a great bit.

Maybe you can still do it.
  

    
It was just one of my many doomed efforts and self-promotion. How do
you guys go about this odious task, since self-promotion is probably
the essence of getting ahead in any of the arts? For me, it's like
pushing a potato up a wall of ice with my eyelid.
  

    
oh now, THAT'S a tempting pseud!
  

    
What is a pseud?
    re#5: I'd love to see some of those pullout quotes!
  

    

A "pseud" is what you can plug in instead of your real name, either on a post-
by-post basis or conference-wide.

Right above the text box where you compose (or paste in) your response,
there's a field titled "Your pseudonym for this response is..."  It's an op-
portunity to be creative, to add soome additional meaning to your post, or
get random.
  

    
(When logged-in, use of the pseud space as a virtual tee-shirt slogan,
scrapbook or nickname does not make the poster anonymous, because you can
always look up the real name of the poster via their login name.  Just 
saying to anticipate confusion about just how this is a non-anon system.)
  

    
She's right, you know.
  

    
I like Get Random myself.
  

    
You can use the spot to carry on a separate line of commentary.
  

    

What he said.
  

    
Who, me?
  

    

It's the Well's version of banner ads.
  

    

Another Well tradition is the blank post, a virtual moment of silence.
  

    

I marked so many great lines and paragraphs.  Here are a few, more or less at
random:


> Everyone in life needs a break.  We also need a friend, a mentor, someone
> who believes in us more than we might believe in ourselves.  Though many
> years and gigs have passed, I can still remember the feeling of standing on
> that stage and looking out past the footlights into the audience that
> looked like a thousand stars.  And then I remember that it was Milt
> [Hinton] who put me there. - Brian Q. Torff


> I had the money.  At the same time, by giving the money away, I thought I
> was returning something to the community.  I didn't see myself as apologiz-
> ing, which is how I see myself now.  Buut I had all this money and I tried
> to make amends to the world by throwing it at people, and essentially what
> that did was to isolate me all the more. - Peter Tork


> Some saw Jewel when I played for them.  Some saw Alanis Morissette.  You
> can tell the labels that see you as another artist.  It's as clear as day.
> They don't really look you in the eye. - Julia Darling


> I picked Muddy Waters up one time at the airport in Lubbbock, Texas.  He
> pretty much summed up his whole life as twenty-two hours of misery and two
> hours of ecstasy. - Joe Ely