Rule Forty Two: The Self-Aggrandizing Website of Gavin Edwards

As promised a couple of weeks ago, I’ve added my 1996 profile of Oasis to the archives.

I did most of the interviews for the article in London (I met up with the band again a few weeks later in Boston). I went to the UK on a redeye flight; because I was young and stupid, I stayed up all night on the plane, listening to the advance tape of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? over and over, prepping all my questions. I staggered through Heathrow, made it to my London hotel room, and promptly fell asleep on the couch for an unscheduled nap. I awoke with a violent start a couple of hours later, and discovered that I had just enough time to make it to my scheduled interview.

I was pretty groggy the whole day, but maybe that just put me more in Liam’s state of mind.

posted 21 May 2008 in Archives, Articles. no comments yet

Stiletto boots decorated with silver chains, a dramatically swelling synthesizer, scarves tied to the microphone stand, lots of makeup and hairspray–this must be a hair-metal band!

In the case of Vixen, the musicians slathering on the cosmetics were all women. I suppose this qualified as a twist, given that the Sunset Strip metal scene was populated by men who were responsible for fully 18% of L’Oreal’s bottom line in 1988, but it doesn’t feel especially transgressive.

The video for “Edge of a Broken Heart” starts off with dramatic backlighting behind the band–or three of its four members, anyway. Was the director looking for an iconic Charlie’s Angels silhouette? Was the bassist hungover and late for the shoot? After that initial band-winnowing shot, it’s a straight-up performance video: Vixen (returned to full strength once they escape from the backlighting) strut around the stage while the camera stays in constant motion, panning around the musicians. There’s no crowd, but there is a full-scale lighting rig, with lots of spotlights in hyper-swivel mode. Bleached-blond hair, enhanced with extra AquaNet volume and combined with bright klieg lights, produce the video’s visual motif: the way a radioactive comic-book glow appears to be emanating from the performers’ scalps.

Like all right-thinking people, I root for female rock bands, but this clip just isn’t very good. Part of the problem is that Vixen don’t have much in the way of moves. They seem awkward and stiff as they execute the standard rock poses (e.g., singer leans against guitarist while they share a mike), either because it’s the largest stage they’ve ever played on, or because their stiletto heels are taller than usual. (Singer/guitarist Janet Gardner does a particularly ineffectual thing where she waves her hands around, which I think is meant to pump viewers up, but makes her look like a kindergarten teacher trying to get the attention of her class.) The happy exception is drummer Roxy Petrucci, who’s twirling her drumsticks, flailing around, and generally rocking the (nonexistent) crowd.

The song was written, arranged, and produced by Richard Marx (who, I suspect, we will be hearing from again later in this countdown), and is a competent piece of pop hackwork. The opening line–”I can’t believe I could’ve been so blind, but love is strange”–sets the cliché meter pretty high, but Marx, never one to shy away from a challenge, matches it later in the same verse with “I don’t need another lonely night to dry my tears.”

“Edge of a Broken Heart” reached #26 on the Billboard pop charts. You can watch the video here.

posted 20 May 2008 in 1988. 2 comments

As you may have heard, this is Robert Downey Jr.’s summer. He’s currently ruling the box office in the hugely entertaining Iron Man, and he’s even better in the upcoming Tropic Thunder (written and directed by Ben Stiller), in which he plays an over-the-top Australian actor who dyes his skin black for a role in a war movie.

It marks the culmination of a long-running comeback (it’s been a while since Downey accidentally fell asleep in somebody else’s bedroom). I interviewed him two and a half years ago, when he was excellent in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and Good Night, and Good Luck–I’ve just added the resulting Q&A to the archives.

Sure, you could read an up-to-date cover story on him somewhere else–but where else will he be so snarky about George Clooney, David Fincher, and Val Kilmer? (“Val was still a little bit in fat-king mode from Alexander, but he was dressed English preppie, so he looked like the middle of Act I of The Legend of Greystoke.”)

posted 19 May 2008 in Archives, Articles. no comments yet

Beck’s got a new album coming out soon, produced by the mighty Danger Mouse. I wrote a news story about it, which is in the new issue of Rolling Stone.

The album’s probably called Modern Guilt; when I spoke with Beck, he kept changing his mind and was trying to make a final decision.

“Chinese Democracy is still available,” I pointed out.

Beck laughed. “That has actually been on the list,” he said. He’s not the only artist to consider bogarting Axl’s title. “Everybody’s been waiting for somebody else to do it,” he told me.

posted 16 May 2008 in Articles, Outside. 3 comments

And we go to a commercial break!

First, there’s an MTV promo touting their dedication to new music. “Every major band was a new name at one time,” says a bass voice (moderately portentous, but without enough presence to get movie-trailer work). Then they flash the names of these brand-new bands that they’re backing with the full weight of the network, hoping that they’ll last for many years:

Escape Club.
Edie Brickell & New Bohemians.
Information Society.
Living Colour.
Siouxsie & the Banshees.
White Lion.

Wait, back up–Siouxsie and the Banshees??!? When this ad aired in 1988, they had been around long enough that founding member Sid Vicious had been dead for almost exactly ten years. Their first album came out in 1978. Some of those other acts had been knocking around for a few years before they put out a major-label album, but isn’t this a bit like touting Courtney Love as the fresh new face of the twenty-first century?

“Catch tomorrow’s stars today on MTV,” says the bass voice. And apparently, yesterday’s stars, too.

Spots follow for Michelob Dry, the movie The January Man (more on this later, because even twenty years after the last time I watched this countdown, I remember that they showed this ad incessantly), the Conductor (a battery allegedly optimized for “high-drain music machines”–the commercial features a spiky-haired kid in a lecture hall blocking out a droning professor with his Walkman).

Then a cool MTV promo, featuring 20 seconds or so of jazzy animation at some speakeasy: quick cuts of a cartoony jazz band and a hep cocktail waitress, while music skronks atonally behind them.

Back to the countdown, with “Welcome to the Jungle” as the bumper music. Kevin Seal is our host. Kevin was the host of 120 Minutes (which played what people still called “college rock” at that point, before “alternative” became the preferred branding term), and seemed to have more of an ironic sheen about him than the other VJs. “The top 100!” Kevin shouts and jumps over the counter, screaming. Twice. Twenty years later, Kevin’s still charming, but much squintier than I remember.

posted 15 May 2008 in 1988. 2 comments

YouTube being what it is, I don’t expect these clips to stay up indefinitely, but I’ll post links to the videos I write about in the 1988 countdown when they’re available.

(I tried embedding them, with nasty results–when I’m feeling more industrious, I might try downloading the plugin that allegedly solves the problem. For now, you’ll just have to click over.)

Catching up on the last couple:

#100, Keith Richards, “Take It So Hard.”

#99, Crowded House, “Better Be Home Soon.”

Thanks to Tom for the suggestion.

posted 14 May 2008 in 1988, Links. no comments yet

My favorite unpublished piece ever might be this profile I wrote of the late, lamented Darkness. It got spiked for wholly unremarkable reasons: two issues in a row it got bumped because pages were tight in the magazine, then One Way Ticket to Hell… and Back (the band’s second album) came out and did a big belly-flop on the American charts, which reduced the RS editors’ enthusiasm for a big article on the group. I salvaged some of my favorite bits from the interview in a chapter introduction to Tiny Dancer, but now you can enjoy the whole thing.

Words to live by from frontman Justin Hawkins: “If you’re going to be subtle, you should really fucking be subtle.”

posted 14 May 2008 in Archives, Articles, Unpublished. no comments yet

The lower reaches of this countdown seem to be filled with tracks that weren’t actually hits, but were presumably beloved of somebody in the MTV programming department. (Or maybe some favors were owed to record companies.) Take, for example, the non-hit “Better Be Home Soon,” from Crowded House’s second album Temple of Low Men. My mighty Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop informs me that when Neil Finn was putting together Crowded House after the demise of Split Enz, he went straight to American record companies, skipping their Australian imprints, and that it took most of a year for the band’s debut album to break down under. The followup, in contrast, flopped everywhere except Australia.

(Before we continue, a paragraph devoted to the next entry alphabetically in the aforementioned Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop, since at this writing, “magician/illusionist/actor/musician” Jeffrey Crozier lacks a Wikipedia page. Crozier, 1948-1981, “reputedly died while rehearsing the illusion of self-hanging.” He was billed as the “voodoo psychedelic magician.” Crozier appears to have done better abroad, leaving Australia with an act called The Moon Rock Circus, which he followed up with The Kongress, an act in the Alice Cooper idiom, “replete with electric chairs, smoke bombs and anarchic rock music.” In 1978, Crozier returned to Australia, “where he continued to be ignored by all but a dedicated few. He was even voted Australia’s top magician at the twelfth Annual Wizards Convention.” It is unknown whether Michael Hutchence was among those select fans.)

At any rate, “Better Be Home Soon” is a pleasant lovelorn ballad, saddled with a hopelessly twee video. Large sums of money were spent on creating the image of a low-rent theatrical production. Finn stands on the stage of an empty vaudeville theater. A crescent moon lights up the scenery. Stagehands drag large piles of chairs across the background. The rest of the band join Finn onstage. Cheap clouds dangle from ropes, knocking over some of those piles of chairs. More and more chairs appear on the scene. The propsmaster appears to have cut a deal with a local furniture warehouse, or maybe the stage is being set up for a production of Chair: The Australian Tribal Furniture-Love Musical. Finally, a red velvet curtain comes down, protecting humanity from all those chairs.

Advice for musicians: No matter how persuasive directors are, there are some things you should never let them talk you into doing for a video shoot. Among them are (1) sitting on an oversized chair with your legs dangling like a four-year-old (2) wearing what appears to be a red sweater-vest along with a suit and polka-dot tie.

posted 13 May 2008 in 1988. 1 comment

Last month, The New Yorker published a fine profile of George Clooney by Ian Parker, which quoted from my 2005 Rolling Stone conversation with Clooney on the subject of suicide bombers and the afterlife: “But really, who wants seventy virgins? I want eight pros.”

So I’ve put my interview with Clooney up in the archives. Unsurprisingly, Clooney turned out to be prescient on the subject of Lindsay Lohan.

This piece is one of two I’ve done only a few hours after getting off an international plane flight, almost blind with jetlagged exhaustion–in this case, I was returning to New York City from New Zealand, where I had been talking with Peter Jackson and his associates. The first was many years earlier, with Oasis–I’ll post that one sometime soon.

posted 12 May 2008 in Archives, Articles. 4 comments

With the encouragement of the mighty Bill Tipper, I’ve been doing some book reviews for the Barnes & Noble Review (which hasn’t gotten a lot of attention, but is worth your time–there’s some real good stuff in there).

Last year I reviewed Clapton: The Autobiography (who knew he had slept with Yvonne Elliman?); last week I tackled Pope Brock’s book Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flim-Flam (who knew the role goat testicles would play in Johnny Cash’s love life?). Go check it out.

posted 9 May 2008 in Outside, Reviews. no comments yet