sparquelito

"Talk Talk" by Alice Cooper

Same with John Lennon, apparently. If you believe Cynthia Lennon, that is.

I had a conversation with Jim Morrison years ago in Paris. Maybe I can shed some light on this subject: It was a chance meeting down in a cafe off the Rue de L’Unbathed, late summer 1970 I think. I was sitting at a small table by myself, smoking Gauloises and trying to drink-off a small hangover I had going with a glass of Cabernet Swinevienon. It wasn’t helping, as I recalled, so I began working on the whole bottle. (Nothing rinses those rough little sweaters off your teeth like a dry French red wine.) I was just picking a fleck of cork off of my tongue when a deep voice rumbled off to my left. “Don’t you hate it when that happens?” I turned and peered into the shade of the cafe awning. Seated at a table next to the brick wall was a long haired fellow with a substantial beard and aviator sunglasses. I recognized him instantly, even with the facial hair and shades. “Not really,” I responded as I contemplated the bit of cork under the morning sun, “Sometimes this is the only roughage I get all day.” The fellow invited me over to his table, so I grabbed the bottle and vaulted the iron rail to join him. He shook my hand and introduced himself as Jimmy. “You’re American, right?”, he inquired politely. I replied that I was, and we sat in silence for a moment. I had recently affected a beret, and was failing in my attempt to grow a small goatee. I explained that I was on a long sabbatical from school, and was summering in Paris. I just wanted to blend-in, I guess. “Well, Maurice Chevalier you ain’t,” my new breakfast companion offered. “Look, just because you’re living in Paris doesn’t mean you’ve got to try and be un bon Parisian. Look at me, I’m just a redneck, and I never try to pretend otherwise. These Frog’s will respect you more if you’ll just relax and be yourself.” I thanked him for his advice, and poured us both a glass of the red. “Say, Jimmy, you are Jim Morrison, aren’t you?”, I ventured. “I don’t want to be rude, but I thought Jim Morrison was a sophisticated, eclectic San Francisco poet. Not a redneck by any means.” He raised his sunglasses for a moment and peered at me with his eyes, and then looked left and right before he responded. “Alright, you got me there. I WAS Jim Morrison the singer/poet for awhile, but not anymore. I got tired of living a lie.” Jimmy topped off his glass and continued, “See, the popular music industry, and even the Haight Ashbury phonies wouldn’t have come to see Jimmy Don Morrison from Melbourne, Florida. I was a Navy brat, and grew up mainly on coastal Florida bases. I only moved to California when I started college.” Jimmy paused to take a sip of wine. “ You wanna know where I first met Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead? We were butchering hogs on the same crew at a slaughterhouse outside of Modesto! How do you think he lost that finger? Jerry’s was playing weekends with the Black Mountain Boys at the time, and needed the extra money to get thru the week. I tell you, he’s just a country boy at heart, but that kinda thing isn’t in vogue right now.” He reflected on that memory for a moment or two and then spoke again. “I am ashamed to admit it, but I was trying to be somebody I wasn’t, kinda like you there Maurice, in order to sell records. But not anymore!” With that, he leaned over, removed my beret, and chucked-it away, and burst into a hearty laugh. Quite by accident, the offending headgear landed on a nearby table, and knocked a cup of coffee onto the lap of a beautiful young French lady. She stumbled up out of her seat and stormed past our table on her way out. “Le PIG!!”, she spat at Jimmy, and then dismissed me with a, “Le Enfante Terrible‘!!!” Jimmy Don leaned over and admired her form as she departed. “Quite a handsome toilette‘ on that little Fifi.” He smiled and leaned back in chair. “She’ll be back, though. I’ve noticed her scoping me out for days now. I’m going to have her in the sack by lunchtime, or my name is not The Formerly Great Lizard King!” “Wow, I’ve got to confess, this is all quite a revelation to me. Country boy, skirt-chaser.....” I took a breath to form my next sentence correctly, “I was under the impression that you were a bit of a San Francisco poofter.” The wine was not only curing my hangover, but had made me a little bold and overly-familiar. “I know, I know, I get that all the time,” he said. “You heard a story about that night in Max’s Kansas City, me going down on Jimi Hendrix, right?” I confessed that he had hit the nail on the head, although the pun was lost on me at the time. “Well, here’s how that story got started; I had been on a bourbon and barbiturate bender all day. Jimi rang me up at my hotel about an hour before the gig at Max’s was to begin, so we didn’t have enough time to go get some sit-down food. Jimi knew a great Barbeque place right around the corner, so we went in there and got some ribs to go.” The bearded fellow topped-off his glass and poured the dregs of the wine into my glass before he continued the story, “He and I scarf-down the vittles back stage, and then before you know it, it’s time for him to go on. Jimi straps-on his Stratocaster, wipes his mouth-off with his sleeve, and goes out there and starts to play. I head over to the bar and resume my whiskey drinking, and sit back to enjoy the show.” He stopped for a second. “You want to split another bottle? I can order us something better than this paint thinner here.” A proper bottle of Bordeaux shows up, and we enjoy a swallow or two of that before Morrison resumes his story. “So I’m sitting there watching Hendrix play, and as he gyrates and wails on it, something on his guitar keeps catching my eye. I lean forward and try to focus, which isn’t easy because of all the alcohol and pills in my system, and sure enough, there is a hunk of pork rib clinging to Jimi’s volume knob. He’s up there playing his *** off, and the crowd is grooving on it, but he never washed his hands you see, and his doggone supper is smeared all over his guitar!!” Jimmy drums his fingers on the table and fumes for a moment. “I hate that kind of stuff, man. It’s so unprofessional! Jimi picked up a lot of bad habits while playing the Chitlin’ Circuit after his stint in the Army, and that was one of them. He never washed his hands after eating, and his axe was always messy as a result! People are always talking about how ‘fluid and effortless’ Jimi Hendrix’s playing is....., SHOOT! That ain’t fluid, it’s BARBEQUE SAUCE!!” I interject, “So, you weren’t going up there to, um, blow him or anything, you were just trying to...” Morrison exploded, “I crawled up there to get that messy piece of pork rib off his guitar! I figured if snuck up there quietly, and licked the barbeque off the damn thing real quick, nobody’d hardly notice. I was just trying to do him a favor.” He grinned sheepishly and reflected, “I know it sounds stupid, but heck, you do stupid stuff when you’re under the influence. Look at what happened to me in Miami!!” “Anyway, after that, the word got out that I got down in front of Jimi Hendrix onstage, and pretty soon the whole world thinks I’m a damned switch-hitter. Why do you think I’m living over here in Paris, for God’s sake. These people don’t care what you do, you can walk around in mime paint and hold up a sign declaring you’re the Queen of Normandy, they don’t give a s#$t.” Jimmy Don seemed to lose his steam and sat there swirling his wine glass around for a bit. “You know why I left the Doors?”, he suddenly offered, lowering his voice. “Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger were even bigger pigs than Jimi was.” This bit of gossip seemed to be a vindication for him. “Ray was always spilling his lunch on his keyboard, and then trying to play the damn thing with coleslaw all over the keys. And Robby always had Twinkie filling and stuff stuck on his strings. What slobs! Unprofessional slobs, I tell you, I just couldn’t stand it.” He glanced up toward the cafe entrance and suddenly smiled. Standing there was the previously-angry coffee-stained girl. She fidgeted by the awning and stared at him with a meaningful look in her eye. “Alright, boy, looks like I’ve got a date.” He threw a few bills down on the table. “Thanks for the wine and the company, and um, everything.” He paused and put his hand on my shoulder. “Look, why don’t you consider going back to school? I don’t think this is the place for you. I’ve got an old friend who dropped out for awhile, but he went back and finished and even got his teaching certificate. Fella by the name of Leonard Skinner. Teaches and coaches boys athletics down in Florida now. He used to say, ‘Big wheels keep on turnin’. I think that meant, ‘Get on the train, boy, or it’s going to leave you behind’. Or something to that effect. Anyway, think about it. Nice meeting you, Maurice.” Morrison walked away, put his arm around the girl, and strolled off down the avenue. I never saw him again. A year later he was dead, as was Hendrix. I guess the train left both of them behind. Anyway, I went back to the States, finished elementary school, and went on to have a pretty good life. I’ve never looked at popular music quite the same way again. To this day, I can never hear a Hendrix song or a Doors tune without getting a little melancholy, and more than a little hungry for some barbequed ribs.

Black Betty by Ram Jam. The guitar player (Bill Bartlett) was formerly with The Lemonpipers, the one-hit wonder band who played 'Green Tambourine' in the 1960's. Check out the excellent Les Paul that Bill plays in the video. It is super interesting, especially with the Gibson logos stamped into the humbucker covers. Great old guitar!!