I THINK HE WOULD HAVE BEEN HAPPY

On Tuesday night, at 11:00 PM (Eastern), MSNBC called the Presidential election in favor of Barack Obama. At that moment, a wave of emotion came over me. Of course, if you've looked over at my other blog, you know that I have supported Obama for a while and I was happy over the victory.

But, at that moment, I found myself reaching for the phone. Instinctively, I was going to call Bill because I wanted to hear what he had to say about the election. It had been a while since I had done that and as always, tears came to my eyes.

So, what would he have thought? Well, I think part of him would have felt vindicated by the fact that a Republican who supported Bush's wars was not going to lead this county. The fact that he wasn't a fan of McCain's would have made it even sweeter.

I think he also would have felt a little proud that his anti-Vietnam War stance was supported by the rejection of a Vietnam Veteran that still believed that it was a righteous war. Again, take that John McCain.

I also think he would have had a lot to say - not very much of it good - about Sarah Palin. And, he would have been delighted that she was going back to Alaska.

Finally, having lived through and been old enough to witness and understand the civil rights struggles, I think he would have been proud of our country. Yeah, he would probably have had some jokes about Obama that would have not been of the most PC variety, but deep down, I believe his hope in America would have been renewed.

For now, it's just a guess and it's another thing to add to the list of things I'll want to talk to him about when I see him again.

BILL MUSIC TV

PAUL NEWMAN 1925-2008

As you probably already know, Paul Newman passed away this weekend. I would have to think that Bill would have been saddened by his death. While Newman was best known for his acting, his "Newman's Own" products have generated more than 250 million dollars in charitable contributions.

The New York Times posted a wonderful interactive tribute that you can watch here:

Paul Newman: The New York Times Interactive Tribute


Here is the obituary as it appeared in the New York Times on September 28:

Paul Newman, a Magnetic Titan of Hollywood, Is Dead at 83
By ALJEAN HARMETZ

Paul Newman, one of the last of the great 20th-century movie stars, died Friday at his home in Westport, Conn. He was 83.

The cause was cancer, said Jeff Sanderson of Chasen & Company, Mr. Newman’s publicists.

If Marlon Brando and James Dean defined the defiant American male as a sullen rebel, Paul Newman recreated him as a likable renegade, a strikingly handsome figure of animal high spirits and blue-eyed candor whose magnetism was almost impossible to resist, whether the character was Hud, Cool Hand Luke or Butch Cassidy.

He acted in more than 65 movies over more than 50 years, drawing on a physical grace, unassuming intelligence and good humor that made it all seem effortless.

Yet he was also an ambitious, intellectual actor and a passionate student of his craft, and he achieved what most of his peers find impossible: remaining a major star into a craggy, charismatic old age even as he redefined himself as more than Hollywood star. He raced cars, opened summer camps for ailing children and became a nonprofit entrepreneur with a line of foods that put his picture on supermarket shelves around the world.

Mr. Newman made his Hollywood debut in the 1954 costume film “The Silver Chalice.” Stardom arrived a year and a half later, when he inherited from James Dean the role of the boxer Rocky Graziano in “Somebody Up There Likes Me.” Mr. Dean had been killed in a car crash before the screenplay was finished.

It was a rapid rise for Mr. Newman, but being taken seriously as an actor took longer. He was almost undone by his star power, his classic good looks and, most of all, his brilliant blue eyes. “I picture my epitaph,” he once said. “Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown.”

Mr. Newman’s filmography was a cavalcade of flawed heroes and winning antiheroes stretching over decades. In 1958 he was a drifting confidence man determined to marry a Southern belle in an adaptation of “The Long, Hot Summer.” In 1982, in “The Verdict,” he was a washed-up alcoholic lawyer who finds a chance to redeem himself in a medical malpractice case.

And in 2002, at 77, having lost none of his charm, he was affably deadly as Tom Hanks’s gangster boss in “Road to Perdition.” It was his last onscreen role in a major theatrical release. (He supplied the voice of the veteran race car Doc in the Pixar animated film “Cars” in 2006.)

Few major American stars have chosen to play so many imperfect men.

As Hud Bannon in “Hud” (1963) Mr. Newman was a heel on the Texas range who wanted the good life and was willing to sell diseased cattle to get it. The character was intended to make the audience feel “loathing and disgust,” Mr. Newman told a reporter. Instead, he said, “we created a folk hero.”

As the self-destructive convict in “Cool Hand Luke” (1967) Mr. Newman was too rebellious to be broken by a brutal prison system. As Butch Cassidy in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969) he was the most amiable and antic of bank robbers, memorably paired with Robert Redford. And in “The Hustler” (1961) he was the small-time pool shark Fast Eddie, a role he recreated 25 years later, now as a well-heeled middle-aged liquor salesman, in “The Color of Money” (1986).

That performance, alongside Tom Cruise, brought Mr. Newman his sole Academy Award, for best actor, after he had been nominated for that prize six times. In all he received eight Oscar nominations for best actor and one for best supporting actor, in “Road to Perdition.” “Rachel, Rachel,” which he directed, was nominated for best picture.

“When a role is right for him, he’s peerless,” the film critic Pauline Kael wrote in 1977. “Newman is most comfortable in a role when it isn’t scaled heroically; even when he plays a bastard, he’s not a big bastard — only a callow, selfish one, like Hud. He can play what he’s not — a dumb lout. But you don’t believe it when he plays someone perverse or vicious, and the older he gets and the better you know him, the less you believe it. His likableness is infectious; nobody should ever be asked not to like Paul Newman.”

But the movies and the occasional stage role were never enough for him. He became a successful racecar driver, winning several Sports Car Club of America national driving titles. He even competed at Daytona in 1995 as a 70th birthday present to himself. In 1982, as a lark, he decided to sell a salad dressing he had created and bottled for friends at Christmas. Thus was born the Newman’s Own brand, an enterprise he started with his friend A. E. Hotchner, the writer. More than 25 years later the brand has expanded to include, among other foods, lemonade, popcorn, spaghetti sauce, pretzels, organic Fig Newmans and wine. (His daughter Nell Newman runs the company’s organic arm.) All its profits, of more than $200 million, have been donated to charity, the company says.

Much of the money was used to create a string of Hole in the Wall Gang Camps, named for the outlaw gang in “Butch Cassidy.” The camps provide free summer recreation for children with cancer and other serious illnesses. Mr. Newman was actively involved in the project, even choosing cowboy hats as gear so that children who had lost their hair because of chemotherapy could disguise their baldness.

Several years before the establishment of Newman’s Own, on Nov. 28, 1978, Scott Newman, the oldest of Mr. Newman’s six children and his only son, died at 28 of an overdose of alcohol and pills. His father’s monument to him was the Scott Newman Center, created to publicize the dangers of drugs and alcohol. It is headed by Susan Newman, the oldest of his five daughters.

Mr. Newman’s three younger daughters are the children of his 50-year second marriage, to the actress Joanne Woodward. Mr. Newman and Ms. Woodward both were cast — she as an understudy — in the Broadway play “Picnic” in 1953. Starting with “The Long, Hot Summer” in 1958, they co-starred in 10 movies, including “From the Terrace” (1960), based on a John O’Hara novel about a driven executive and his unfaithful wife; “Harry & Son” (1984), which Mr. Newman also directed, produced and helped write; and “Mr. & Mrs. Bridge” (1990), James Ivory’s version of a pair of Evan S. Connell novels, in which Mr. Newman and Ms. Woodward played a conservative Midwestern couple coping with life’s changes.

When good roles for Ms. Woodward dwindled, Mr. Newman produced and directed “Rachel, Rachel” for her in 1968. Nominated for the best-picture Oscar, the film, a delicate story of a spinster schoolteacher tentatively hoping for love, brought Ms. Woodward her second of four best-actress Oscar nominations. (She won the award on her first nomination, for the 1957 film “The Three Faces of Eve,” and was nominated again for her roles in “Mr. & Mrs. Bridge” and the 1973 movie “Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams.”)

Mr. Newman also directed his wife in “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds” (1972), “The Glass Menagerie” (1987) and the television movie “The Shadow Box” (1980). As a director his most ambitious film was “Sometimes a Great Notion” (1971), based on the Ken Kesey novel.

In an industry in which long marriages might be defined as those that last beyond the first year and the first infidelity, Mr. Newman and Ms. Woodward’s was striking for its endurance. But they admitted that it was often turbulent. She loved opera and ballet. He liked playing practical jokes and racing cars. But as Mr. Newman told Playboy magazine, in an often-repeated quotation about marital fidelity, “I have steak at home; why go out for hamburger?”

Beginnings in Cleveland

Paul Leonard Newman was born on Jan. 26, 1925, in Cleveland. His mother, the former Teresa Fetzer, was a Roman Catholic who turned to Christian Science. His father, Arthur, who was Jewish, owned a thriving sporting goods store that enabled the family to settle in affluent Shaker Heights, Ohio, where Paul and his older brother, Arthur, grew up.

Teresa Newman, an avid theatergoer, steered her son toward acting as a child. In high school, besides playing football, he acted in school plays, graduating in 1943. After less than a year at Ohio University at Athens, he joined the Navy Air Corps to be a pilot. When a test showed he was colorblind, he was made an aircraft radio operator.

After the war Mr. Newman entered Kenyon College in Ohio on an athletic scholarship. He played football and acted in a dozen plays before graduating in 1949.

Arthur Newman, a strict and distant man, thought acting an impractical occupation, but, perhaps persuaded by his wife, he agreed to support his son for a year while Paul acted in small theater companies.

In May 1950 his father died, and Mr. Newman returned to Cleveland to run the sporting goods store. He brought with him a wife, Jacqueline Witte, an actress he had met in summer stock. But after 18 months Paul asked his brother to take over the business while he, his wife and their year-old son, Scott, headed for Yale University, where Mr. Newman intended to concentrate on directing.

He left Yale in the summer of 1952, perhaps because the money had run out and his wife was pregnant again. But almost immediately, the director Josh Logan and the playwright William Inge gave him a small role in “Picnic,” a play that was to run 14 months on Broadway. Soon he was playing the second male lead and understudying Ralph Meeker as the sexy drifter who roils the women in a Kansas town.

Mr. Newman and Ms. Woodward were attracted to each other in rehearsals of “Picnic.” But he was a married man, and Ms. Woodward has insisted that they spent the next several years running away from each other.

In the early 1950s roles in live television came easily to both of them. Mr. Newman starred in segments of “You Are There,” “Goodyear Television Playhouse” and other shows.

He was also accepted as a student at the Actors Studio in New York, where he took lessons alongside James Dean, Geraldine Page, Marlon Brando and, eventually, Ms. Woodward.

Then Hollywood knocked. In 1954 Warner Brothers offered Mr. Newman $1,000 a week to star in “The Silver Chalice” as the Greek slave who creates the silver cup used at the Last Supper. Mr. Newman, who rarely watched his own films, once gave out pots, wooden spoons and whistles to a roomful of guests and forced them to sit through “The Silver Chalice,” which he called the worst movie ever made.

His antidote for that early Hollywood experience was to hurry back to Broadway. In Joseph Hayes’s play “The Desperate Hours,” he starred as an escaped convict who holds a family hostage. The play was a hit, and during its run, Jacqueline Newman gave birth to their third child.

On his nights off Mr. Newman acted on live television. In one production he had the title role in “The Death of Billy the Kid,” a psychological study of the outlaw written by Gore Vidal and directed by Robert Mulligan for “Philco Playhouse”; in another, an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Battler,” he took over the lead role after James Dean, who had been scheduled to star, was killed on Sept. 30, 1955.

Mr. Penn, who directed “The Battler,” was later sure that Mr. Newman’s performance in that drama, as a disfigured prizefighter, won him the lead role in “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” again replacing Dean. When Mr. Penn adapted the Billy the Kid teleplay for his first Hollywood film, “The Left Handed Gun,” in 1958, he again cast Mr. Newman in the lead.

Even so, Mr. Newman was saddled for years with an image of being a “pretty boy” lightweight.

“Paul suffered a little bit from being so handsome — people doubted just how well he could act,” Mr. Penn told the authors of the 1988 book “Paul and Joanne.”

By 1957 Mr. Newman and Ms. Woodward were discreetly living together in Hollywood; his wife had initially refused to give him a divorce. He later admitted that his drinking was out of control during this period.

With his divorce granted, Mr. Newman and Ms. Woodward were married on Jan. 29, 1958, and went on to rear their three daughters far from Hollywood, in a farmhouse on 15 acres in Westport, Conn.

That same year Mr. Newman played Brick, the reluctant husband of Maggie the Cat, in the film version of Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” earning his first Academy Award nomination, for best actor. In 1961, with “The Hustler,” he earned his second best-actor Oscar nomination. He had become more than a matinee idol.

Directed by Martin Ritt

Many of his meaty performances during the early ’60s came in movies directed by Martin Ritt, who had been a teaching assistant to Elia Kazan at the Actors Studio when Mr. Newman was a student. After directing “The Long, Hot Summer,” Mr. Ritt directed Mr. Newman in “Paris Blues” (1961), a story of expatriate musicians; “Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man” (1962); “Hud” (1963), which brought Mr. Newman a third Oscar nomination; “The Outrage” (1964), with Mr. Newman as the bandit in a western based on Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon”; and “Hombre” (1967), in which Mr. Newman played a white man, reared by Indians, struggling to live in a white world.

Among his other important films were Otto Preminger’s “Exodus” (1960), Alfred Hitchcock’s “Torn Curtain” (1966) and Jack Smight’s “Harper” (1966), in which he played Ross Macdonald’s private detective Lew Archer.

In 1968 — after he was cast as an ice-cold racecar driver in “Winning,” with Ms. Woodward playing his frustrated wife — Mr. Newman was sent to a racing school. In midlife racing became his obsession. A Web site — newman-haas.com — details his racing career, including his first race in 1972; his first professional victory, in 1982; and his co-ownership of the Newman/Haas Indy racing team, which won eight series championships.

A politically active liberal Democrat, Mr. Newman was a Eugene McCarthy delegate to the 1968 Democratic convention and appointed by President Jimmy Carter to a United Nations General Assembly session on disarmament. He expressed pride at being on President Richard M. Nixon’s enemies list.

When Mr. Newman turned 50, he settled into a new career as a character actor, playing the title role — “with just the right blend of craftiness and stupidity,” Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times — of Robert Altman’s “Buffalo Bill and the Indians” (1976); an unscrupulous hockey coach in George Roy Hill’s “Slap Shot” (1977); and the disintegrating lawyer in Sidney Lumet’s “Verdict.”

Most of Mr. Newman’s films were commercial hits, probably none more so than “The Sting” (1973), in which he teamed with Mr. Redford again to play a couple of con men, and “The Towering Inferno” (1974), in which he played an architect in an all-star cast that included Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway.

After his fifth best-actor Oscar nomination, for his portrait of an innocent man discredited by the press in Sydney Pollack’s “Absence of Malice” (1981), and his sixth a year later, for “The Verdict,” the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1986 gave Mr. Newman the consolation prize of an honorary award. In a videotaped acceptance speech he said, “I am especially grateful that this did not come wrapped in a gift certificate to Forest Lawn.”

His best-actor Oscar, for “The Color of Money,” came the next year, and at the 1994 Oscars ceremony he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. The year after that he earned his eighth nomination as best actor, for his curmudgeonly construction worker trying to come to terms with his failures in “Nobody’s Fool” (1994). In 2003 he was nominated as best supporting actor for his work in “Road to Perdition.” And in 2006 he took home both a Golden Globe and an Emmy for playing another rough-hewn old-timer, this one in the HBO mini-series “Empire Falls.”

Besides Ms. Woodward and his daughters Susan and Nell, he is survived by three other daughters, Stephanie, Melissa and Clea; two grandchildren; and his brother.

Mr. Newman returned to Broadway for the last time in 2002, as the Stage Manager in a lucrative revival of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” The performance was nominated for a Tony Award, though critics tended to find it modest. When the play was broadcast on PBS in 2003, he won an Emmy.

This year he had planned to direct “Of Mice and Men,” based on the John Steinbeck novel, in October at the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut. But in May he announced that he was stepping aside, citing his health.

Mr. Newman’s last screen credit was as the narrator of Bill Haney’s documentary “The Price of Sugar,” released this year. By then he had all but announced that he was through with acting.

“I’m not able to work anymore as an actor at the level I would want to,” Mr. Newman said last year on the ABC program “Good Morning America.” “You start to lose your memory, your confidence, your invention. So that’s pretty much a closed book for me.”

But he remained fulfilled by his charitable work, saying it was his greatest legacy, particularly in giving ailing children a camp at which to play.

“We are such spendthrifts with our lives,” Mr. Newman once told a reporter. “The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.”

NEW FEATURE ADDED

As you can see, I have added a new feature: Bill Music TV. Whenever you open the blog you will be able to watch videos of some of Bill's favorite artists or songs. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. The playlist should change at least once a week.

DONNA FROM NYU REMEMBERS BILL

If you read through the entire blog, you will probably see the following message as a comment to one of the entries. I thought that it worthy of a post of its own. Thanks for your memory Donna and please send and email or make a comment if any other memories come to mind. It is always so nice to get another person's perspective on who Bill was.

I went to NYU w/ Billy & I've never forgotten him. I just found out yesterday through another alum that he had died & I've been terribly sad ever since.

Billy & I worked at the NYU radio station together & went to parties together, where at one I met & briefly dated his friend, Lanny Meyers, also a musician.

But the most fun was being in Billy's movies. I remember going to lots of parks to do the filming - My part was always that of the young girl walking through the park, smelling flowers & leaning against trees. This was 1969-70, a very cool time to be young & to know someone like Billy, who was really fun, very cute, hip, talented...and to me, always very sweet. The sweetness is what I remember most - In fact, when I learned of Billy's death, I immediately said "He was such a sweet boy."

You know how so often it's the simplest moments that will stay w/ you? Well, for the last 39 years I've been flashing on this moment: I'm sitting on the grass in Washington Square Park. It's a beautiful day, I'm listening to "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart, & waiting for Billy to meet me to shoot a park scene. That's all - so simple, so carefree, but so impactful for me that every time I hear that song, I feel that moment...and think of Billy. I know now that I'll continue to do so for the rest of my life, but now the memory will be bittersweet.

My beloved brother, Larry, died on 8/28/04. He was 50. I miss him every day. I was moved when you wrote "...if you pray, remember Bill when you do" because I ask people to to the same thing for my brother. I will now always pray for both of them.

Rest in peace, Billy...

A RETURN

Yesterday marked my return to blogging after a little vacation. You can expect to see new entries on a more frequent basis. Of course, your comments/posts are always welcome.

RICHARD WRIGHT DIES

One of Bill's favorite bands was Pink Floyd, so I know that today he would have been saddened by the passing of keyboardist, Richard Wright. Here is a story from the Los Angeles Times, followed by a tribute by David Gilmour. The photo that appears below is the homepage from Roger Waters' website.


Though he lacked the high profile of bandmates Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and David Gilmour, the keyboardist shaped the British psychedelic group's sound.

By Randy Lewis
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Richard Wright, the founding member of Pink Floyd whose piano and synthesizer work played a critical part in the pioneering British psychedelic rock band's ethereal sound, died Monday after a short battle with cancer, his spokesman said. He was 65.

Doug Wright, who is not a relative, said Wright died at his home in England and that his family did not wish to release any more information, the Associated Press reported.

Wright never achieved the high public profile of the group's three key figures -- founding singer-guitarist Syd Barrett and the often-feuding co-leaders, singer-bassist Roger Waters and singer-guitarist David Gilmour, who joined shortly before Barrett left in 1968.

But he wrote or co-wrote many of the band's songs, and frequently provided a crucial component of the Pink Floyd sound. On the group's landmark "Dark Side of the Moon" album, Wright was responsible for the thick electric piano chording on the 1973 hit "Money" as well as the swirling organ lines and classically inspired grand piano on "Us and Them," a song he wrote with Waters.

He also co-wrote “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” one of the group's signature songs from "Wish You Were Here," the second of five Floyd albums to reach No. 1. The nine-part epic song is a salute to Barrett, who, after leaving the group, retreated into mental illness, often attributed to his drug use. He died in 2006.

Wright had no explanation for the astonishing longevity of the "Dark Side" album -- it spent more time, 741 weeks, on the Billboard album chart than any other in history -- or the extraordinary following the band inspired. The 1979 album "The Wall" spent 15 weeks at No. 1 and has been certified for worldwide sales of 23 million copies by the Recording Industry Assn. of America, putting it third on the list of all-time best sellers, behind "The Eagles: Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975" and Michael Jackson's "Thriller."

"I know we've made some great songs and great music," Wright told Billboard last year, "but I can't tell you why we're so popular."

He quit the band in 1980 following their tour supporting the double album "The Wall" because of increasing tensions within the group.

He rejoined the band a few years later, and, without Waters, the group put out "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" in 1987 and "The Division Bell" seven years later.

In recent years Waters has been playing "Dark Side of the Moon" in concert under his own name without any of the other original band members. Waters, Gilmour, Wright and drummer Nick Mason performed live together for the first time in 24 years at the 2005 Live 8 benefit concert in London.

Wright released two solo albums, "Wet Dreams" in 1978 and "Broken China" in 1996, but neither made Billboard's Top 200 albums chart.

In a 2006 interview with the Independent newspaper in London discussing the DVD release of Pink Floyd's 1994 concert tour, Wright talked about the group's celebrated concerts, which helped expand the boundaries of what rock was capable of in a live setting through elaborate lighting and staging effects.

"One of the things I always regret about being in Pink Floyd is that you can never go to see the show. I have no idea what it looks like. We know it's pretty powerful, but when you're on stage you have no clear idea of it."

Richard William Wright was born July 28, 1943, in Hatch End, in northwest London.

Early on he demonstrated an interest in classical and jazz piano, and his parents sent him to the exclusive Haberdasher's Aske's School as a boy and then, when he was 17, to the Regent Street School of Architecture, where he met Waters and Mason.

About six months after they started playing together, they met Barrett.

"It was great when Syd joined," Wright once said. "Before him, we'd play the R & B classics, because that's what all groups were supposed to then. But I never liked R & B very much. I was actually more of a jazz fan.

"With Syd, the direction changed, it became more improvised around the guitar and keyboards.

"Roger started playing the bass as a lead instrument, and I started to introduce more of my classical feel."

Barrett's tenure with the group was as profound as it was short-lived. They recorded a couple of singles that were hits in England, "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play," and their 1967 debut album, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn," shortly after which the others essentially kicked Barrett out because of his increasingly erratic behavior.

Wright is survived by sons Ben and Jamie, daughter Gala and a grandson, according to Britain's Guardian newspaper.


DAVID GILMOUR REMEMBERS RICHARD WRIGHT

No one can replace Richard Wright. He was my musical partner and my friend.

In the welter of arguments about who or what was Pink Floyd, Rick's enormous input was frequently forgotten.

He was gentle, unassuming and private but his soulful voice and playing were vital, magical components of our most recognised Pink Floyd sound.

I have never played with anyone quite like him. The blend of his and my voices and our musical telepathy reached their first major flowering in 1971 on 'Echoes'. In my view all the greatest PF moments are the ones where he is in full flow. After all, without 'Us and Them' and 'The Great Gig In The Sky', both of which he wrote, what would 'The Dark Side Of The Moon' have been? Without his quiet touch the Album 'Wish You Were Here' would not quite have worked.

In our middle years, for many reasons he lost his way for a while, but in the early Nineties, with 'The Division Bell', his vitality, spark and humour returned to him and then the audience reaction to his appearances on my tour in 2006 was hugely uplifting and it's a mark of his modesty that those standing ovations came as a huge surprise to him, (though not to the rest of us).

Like Rick, I don't find it easy to express my feelings in words, but I loved him and will miss him enormously.

David Gilmour
Monday 15th September 2008

IT ALL STARTED ON HIS BIRTHDAY

As I sat watching the news coverage of Barack Obama becoming the first African-American to be a major party nominee for president, I heard Tim Russert say that this all started with the Obama victory on January 3. I chuckled to myself and thought, "I knew Bill had to have a hand in this."

Based on many political conversations I had with my brother, I can easily see how he would be excited about the Obama victory. Like him or not, you know Obama represents a chance for a new beginning - which after 8 years of Bush & Dick, is a welcome change.

Rather than go into what I thought Bill might say about the Obama nomination, I'll let you think for yourself. Like with the nomination, the possibilities are endless!

KEITH RICHARDS INTERVIEW

I found this interview from GQ online and know that Bill would have enjoyed it. (The illustration was not part of the GQ piece.)


THE GQ&A: KEITH RICHARDS

Warning: Fifty years of smoking, boozing, snorting, touring, and screwing will kill you. Unless you are Keith Richards

I meet Keith Richards at his office. Yes, the guy has an office.

You don’t picture Keef having an office, like the kind of place with a receptionist and FedEx supplies and an intercom. But he does. Probably for tax reasons or something. It’s on the eleventh floor of an old building in SoHo, in New York City, overlooking Broadway and guys cooking food on the street.

I was told to show up at four in the afternoon. I ended up sitting for an hour in the waiting room, which looked sweetly tacky—less like Keith Richards’s waiting room and more like some suburban dude’s rec-room Stones shrine. There were some tattered old People mags on a black metal TV-less TV stand, an empty pair of Moroccan candleholders, and a bunch of framed album covers (Steel Wheels, Voodoo Lounge) and photos. One wall had a poster for the movie Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll. (Tagline: “The whole world knows the music. Nobody knows the man.”) There was even a dusty Ronnie Wood bobblehead doll. It all felt very eBay-ready.

At one point an employee, a little fluffy white dog trailing at her heels, walked through and headed into the kitchen that was next to the waiting room. She apologized—not for my having to wait but for interrupting my waiting—and explained, “I need to prepare something for Mr. Richards.”

She opened the freezer, cracked some ice cubes into one of those red plastic Solo cups, and filled it to the brim with Ketel One.

More minutes went by. Maybe fifteen. At which point, the employee returned and told me Keith was ready. I was led back to his office. Keith was standing there, holding that red Solo cup, a cigarette dangling from his lips like only Keith Richards can make a cigarette dangle from his lips. He was wearing a green leather motorcycle jacket over a green velvet vest over a green T-shirt. He had on black jeans. And on his feet, purple Uggs.

“Howya doin’, mate? Sorry I’m late,” he said. And then he plopped onto the green velvet love seat and kind of folded in on himself, like an unstaked scarecrow. He patted the cushion next to him. “Have a seat, mate.”

*****

How long have you had this place?
I have no idea. [laughs] We were up in Broadway by Carnegie Hall for many, many years, and then the lease ran out.

And you couldn’t afford it, right?
[laughs] I very rarely come to the office.

That’s a shocker.
Yeah, that’s me. A real nine-to-fiver.

(Excuse me, reader, but I’d be remiss if I did not interrupt here to tell you briefly about how Keith speaks. It’s not speaking, actually. Or at least not what you think of as speaking. It’s more of a slur-mumble. Words run together and then get coated in cigarette smoke and that thick accent. It makes you wish he provided his own subtitles. I mean, when I transcribed the tapes from this interview, I had to listen to each sentence maybe three times to decode it. Further complicating matters was the incessant ambient noise: the clatter of the ice cubes as he swirled his drink between sips. And then there’s the way he loops out his answers in, well, let’s say a uniquely…Keith way. You’ll see what I mean.)

So, I just saw the new movie—the concert movie by Scorsese. And it got me thinking about the Stones’ history with documentary-film makers.
…You’re talking Robert Frank here. Cocksucker Blues—

Yeah.
[big laugh]

After that movie—and all the controversy with it and everything it caught on film, the groupies, the drugs—I’m surprised you ever let another filmmaker in. Was there trepidation about letting Scorsese in?
I think it was the fact that it was Martin. We’ve got enough on our hands. We’ve got a show to do. And usually when he’s filming, you look around on the stage and think, Who of us is aware he’s making a movie and who of us just wants to put on a good show for people? But you’ve got, you know, Mick, the prima donna: “Oh no, we shouldn’t do it.” [laughs] I have to tell him, “Get that outta your head, boy! We’re just gonna do a show, and Martin’s gonna capture it.” And that’s the whole point. I just wanted to see what Martin Scorsese could make out of the Stones. I really didn’t want to interfere. I said, “I’m gonna do my bit, Martin. You do yours.” The first time we met, he was like: [affects Scorsese’s hurried voice] “I just wanna shoot a show.” [laughs] Charlie Watts is brilliant [makes praying sign with his hands and looks toward heaven] as usual for just going on and playing. He’s like, “If he can make a movie out of that, good luck!”

Between Martin and Mick, you have to deal with two control freaks.
Exactly. Which is why I was not gonna put my aura in. I was just gonna give Martin what it was he wanted, which is a damned good Rolling Stones film. That’s the gig.
When was the last time you watched one of the old Stones documentaries?
Not very often, I must say. When Cocksucker Blues turns up, I do.

You don’t own a copy?
No, I don’t. I mean, I guess I do, but it’s probably buried. Hell, I’m not a big one for watching myself.

What are your memories of working with Jean-Luc Godard on Sympathy for the Devil?
[conspiratorially] Like working with a French bank clerk. [laughs] I mean, he was out of his depth in England. Just like William the Conqueror! He might’ve taken the place over, but he was out of his depth. I mean, I knew Godard’s movies from before, and I was like, “Oh, Jean-Luc Godard!” And I realized he must have hit a middle-aged crisis or… What he was trying to make of England, in England, was, uh… Did you ever get the drift of that movie? It’s like some Marxist students got ahold of him. And this is a guy who’s made some incredible movies. And you wonder, you know, where the stupidity creeps in. He should have stayed with French novels.

Could the Rolling Stones of the ’60s have survived this paparazzi tabloid culture? Or would you have been crushed by it?
It’s very interesting, because the Stones, along with [Stones manager] Andrew Oldham, that demon, we went out in order to manipulate the press. You know, “Would you let your daughter marry a Stone?” Andrew realized that perception is more important than what actually is. I mean, all you really have is two guitar players, a bass player, and a singer. And they’re quite normal chaps. But…I will say this about the Stones, just as an aside: Given the circumstances, we’re probably four of the most straight-up, moral guys you could actually meet.

How do you mean that?
We’re guys who’ve not really taken advantage of what we could have. Or what we could have done. It’s always been that it’s just too obvious. [laughs] I mean, the odd groupie here and there. Which we actually used to look upon as, uh, gas stations.… “Uh, we’re in Cincinnati, so…we need to fill ’er up a little.” And the other thing about groupies, it wasn’t just boinky-boinky. They used to take care of you. They used to rub Vicks on your chest if you had a cold. Sometimes you’d never do anything. Sometimes they were just…nasty. [laughs] Get my drift? [laughs]

Do you miss them?
I don’t miss them.

Everyone has their fiction of what it was like, is like, to be a Stone, and…This is one of those things I’ll never know, which is other people’s perceptions of it. But it depends on who you are talking to when you ask, “What does the Stones mean?” I mean, you could ask a bunch of 12-year-old guitar players, and they’d say one thing. And then there’s the aura, the rock ’n’ roll sexual aura. And also, it just keeps changing. I mean, the weird thing is—is that holding a band this long together… Actually, they won’t leave me. [laughs] But what I’m trying to say about this is, this band, man…it’s nonsensical, in a way. Because now I realize this band is what I always thought it was. This is Count Basie. This is Duke Ellington. I mean, guys that keep bands together that long, there’s a meaning. I’m just looking for the meaning.

Let’s talk about women. Specifically, you and Brian and Anita Pallenberg in Morocco, when you stole her from Brian.
I had no intention of stealing his woman. I was trying to heal certain things that had been going on, on the road with Brian. To me, somebody in the band needed to deck him. But, um, that whole area gets into… I’m hanging with Brian and Anita and having a good time, and then I thought, Eventually, I’ve got to get her out of here before she kills him. I’m trying to save my band here, and she’s so much tougher than him. And he’s asking for trouble. Look, every time they had a fight, I called up for bandages, and it turns out I’d have to send them round to Brian. [laughs] Actually, what I guess I’m saying is that there was a conflict there that had to be broken. And I broke it. I said, “C’mon, girl, get out of here. This is no fun.” Now, that didn’t help my chances with making up with Brian.

Yet you did make up.
Yes, in a way. The real break came because Brian just insisted on keeping on being Brian. You feel it when you’re out in the middle of the Midwest, playing Tulsa or somewhere, and your other guitar player ain’t there. He’s sacked out in a hospital in Chicago because he got too stoned. When you’ve been on the road for 350 days a year—it might seem like a minor thing now, as I speak to it—but when you’ve been on the road and you’ve got to cover for him, things get a little antsy, you knowwwww? [growls]

Where do you think Mick Jagger would be if he’d never met you?
Nowhere! [big laugh] He’d be just another wannabe. And so would I. There is an incredible chemistry with the Stones. I don’t want to analyze it. I don’t want to dickle in it. To me, Charlie Watts is the foundation of it all, because that’s what I work off of, and we’ve been doing it all our lives. [Rolling Stones founder] Ian Stewart—I must give my man Ian, and I think Charlie would agree, on a good day—it’s Ian Stewart’s band. We’re just keeping it together for him. It was his vision. It all comes from purity, you know? Which sounds really weird coming from me, right?
You mention morality. Let’s talk about you as family men. The image of you guys in the South of France in a château, doing drugs, guzzling wine, creating Exile—and yet the whole family is there. Wives. Kids. It wasn’t exactly Parenting 101.
I suppose my kids will tell you they were raised by a father who was a bit of a nomad, and there were times when we’d all be together, and there are times when you aren’t. It’s a bit of Herman Melville, you know. “Off to whaling. See you in three years!” Or not. And I don’t think any of us have found it that difficult. If you check out the record of the Stones’ kids—my kids, Mick’s kids—they’re pretty stable cats.

What advice have you given them?
None at all. If they’ve got problems, get in touch with me. Or if not, just come and see me anytime. If I’m in Australia and you’re having a problem, come on over. I mean, I’ve never gone that far.… My kids came to me when I bashed my head stupidly in Fiji, and it’s the worst place in the world to have brain damage. And almost before I was transferred to New Zealand, my kids were there. Because there’s love. And that’s what I teach. Love. You know, you can fuck up and…well, look at Dad! [laughs]

Obviously, your daughters have brought guys home to meet you.
I know loads of their ex-boyfriends.

I’d think a guy would get pretty psyched out, having to come and meet you.
I’d hope so!

Do you go out of your way to break their balls?
I always threaten to chop ’em off! [laughs] But what dad doesn’t, eh? “You want to keep that, kid?” Whack!

Didn’t Mick screw around with Anita?
Possibly yes. Probably during the making of that movie [Performance].

How did you and Mick get past that?
At the time, I didn’t know and I didn’t really care.

You didn’t?
No. I mean, Anita and I, it was never like we were ever married. And, uh, you don’t try and ride a bitch like that, baby, without thinking that they’re not gonna—you know. Had it. Been there. It’s a load of crap, you know? I mean, I’ve done Mick’s chicks, too.

How many chicks do you think you guys have in common?
After Marianne [Faithfull], it’s a stable. [laughs]

More than five?
No. I don’t want to mention other bitches’ names, because I’ve stolen quite a few off of him and, uh, he’s nudged his way into my lot, but not significantly. After the Anita thing, I made a point of stealing every bitch he had. [laughs]

But not his current one?
[whispers] I wouldn’t take that one on!

At Mick’s gayest, how gay was he?
It was camp.

Camp?
Yeah. It was all… I really have no idea if anyone ever shoved it up the shitter.

Not even Bowie?
No. I mean, dickering and dangling… I’m not there watching it every day. You know what I mean, mate? But there was, at the time, a load of excruciatingly painful campness that went on.

Did you want to smack him?
No. I mean, it was limp-wristed sort of… [affects Truman Capote–ish mumbling] But I mean, how does a bunch of guys stay together this long without letting certain things just wash over? We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t doin’ what we gotta do. Which is having to come up with great records and songs and play to people. The reason you’re here is because, above and beyond anything, you want to get out there and turn people on. Including yourself, of course. [laughs]

Most guys I know consider you the soul of the band. And you talk about a moral center—
Well, I have one! [laughs]

But everyone thinks you’re the dark, tortured soul.
There’s a lotta soul in the band. I mean, it’s a matter of how much you wanna bury it. I guess that’s my declension. I’m—

[At this point, Richards, as he is talking, absentmindedly reaches his hand to his side and draws his shirt and jacket back to scratch himself near his hip bone. It’s then that I notice that wedged against his hip and the top of his trousers is something that looks like the handle of a revolver. “That’s not a gun you’re carrying, is it?” I ask. Keith pauses. “This?” he says, reaching for the handle. “Nah, this is a knife.” At which point he pulls it from his waistband, flips it open, and reveals a shiny blade five inches long. Richards considers the blade for a moment, in silence, then snaps the knife closed and tucks it back into his waistband and explains, “I use it to keep me pants up, because I’ve been losing weight, baby.” Richards has also had a few health problems over the past couple of years, most notably when he fell off a tree branch while vacationing in Fiji in April 2007 and hit his head on the root of the tree, which was incorrectly reported as falling out of a coconut tree. Richards suffered swelling, and fluid built up in his skull, requiring surgery.]

Let’s talk about Fiji. You had to be trepanned—you had a hole drilled into your skull.
Yeah, yeah.

So what was that like?
It was a trifle weird, lying on a gurney on Vicodin, and I’d been there like ten days by then, and they were going through the motions, and by this time I’d got to know this doctor pretty well. He said, “Now you’re stabilized; you can now fly to Manhattan or London, because you’re gonna need an operation. That stuff needs to be drained out of your head.” And I said, “I ain’t goin’ nowhere! We’re doing it now! Here. I ain’t goin’ through all of that and traveling and flying.” But I said to the anesthetist, “Listen, it’s pretty hard to put me out.” [laughs]

Did you have strange dreams after?
The first six months, I was a little off-balance…a little less patience with some of my friends. [laughs] But basically, no. It was like going in for a broken rib. I’ve done all the ribs. I’ve done the head. There’s nothing else left to break. [laughs] Doctors all over the world want my body when it finally goes.

You should sell your body on eBay.
Yeah, I think so. Apparently, I do have an incredible immune system. I had hepatitis C and cured it by myself.

How?
Just by being me.

The legendary blood transfusions?
That’s all bullshit. Bullshit. I put that out because I was gonna have to clean up from all the dope. There’s nothing like legend.

Like your immune system—legendary.
It’s above average, yes.

That’s a fact of medical science?
Yes. They want it so they can study it and figure out how to make other people much better. [laughs] I mean, I eat everything wrong. I shove terrible things inside me.

Yet you won’t eat cheese.
No! Cheese is very wrong.

Why’s that?
Look at everybody. [makes bloated face]

Do you have any other phobias?
As far as bodily, no. Cheese is a no-no for me. Everybody else, go eat it. Just take a look at yourself. Fermented milk is not the ideal choice for everyday eating, that’s all. [laughs]

Is there one moment in your life that you will always remember above all others?
The Marlborough Street thing, when the judge’s gavel hit the table and “Ten pounds for the charge!” [In 1973 he and Anita Pallenberg were busted at their London home for drug possession.] That was a seminal moment when I thought I was going to jail. You try saying “Guilty” twenty-five times. I could get very spiritual here, but I’ll never forget walking out for lunch that day.

Where’d you go?
Somewhere where the cops weren’t going. I never saw myself being a target for the system. And suddenly you realize you are. It never occurred to me that just because I did a little of this [he pretends he’s injecting his arm] or took a little of that [he mimes a toke], that I was gonna get this heat, you know? And then I realized I’d been targeted. And then your mind takes on other things. I still look out the window to see if there are any unmarked cars. [laughs] It puts fear in you. Suddenly, you feel like a criminal.

Did you ever talk with John Lennon about that?
Yes. He felt he was hunted. That it was high-profile hunting. And then you realize that it doesn’t really matter if you’re doing it or not. They’ll shove it in your pocket. And you think, It’s not a game now. This isn’t just rock ’n’ roll. They’re afraid of you. And that was the thing that intrigued me. They’re actually frightened. I mean, I grew up in the British Empire and bop-bop-bop God Save the Queen, and you realize this whole edifice actually thinks you’re a threat to it? And you realize how paranoid they must be that if they get rid of a guitar player or two, everything’s gonna be cool in the empire? All they did was illustrate their fragility.

Did you ever steal any fashion tips from your wife, Patti?
I steal women’s clothes. Charlie Watts got really pissed at me a few years ago. There was some page in Vogue, and I was a fashion icon. I was actually wearing Anita’s clothes. And Charlie, who spends half his time on Savile Row, said, “You? A fashion icon?” I’m the kind of guy, when I wake up I’m not aware of anything for half an hour. I pick up whatever’s around and put it on. I don’t think about it. I mean, I said to Charlie, “Look at that picture in Vogue and you’ll see the buttons are on the wrong side of the shirt. All I did was put on Anita’s clothes.”

Do you regret not moisturizing your face?
No. I leave that up to other people.

Ever think about getting Botox?
No one’s ever talked me into doing that. You’re lucky if you walk out of there alive. God bless you.

Are you still cutting your own hair? You’ve done that all your life, right?
Yes. I did this bit here yesterday. [holds up a few strands on the side of his head] Also, I’m letting the dye grow out, since I’m not on the road. If the wife likes it, I’ll keep it.

She has to like everything, huh?
Yeah.

What’s the key to a good marriage?
Depends on the woman. Given that, I think children. I mean, outside of getting enormously successful…to watch the kids grow is the greatest pleasure. Grandkids are even a better thing, because you can hand them back! It’s a continuity of life. When I was younger, I said, “If I live to 30, I’ll shoot myself.” You reach 30 and put the gun away. It’s a fascinating process, just growing up. And it doesn’t matter—anyone who’s 15 today, in thirty, forty years…it’s gonna take ’em a bit of luck to hit 65. It’s how you deal with that process. Unfortunately, our lives are sometimes bombarded with, you know, decay…and what it comes down to is, it just depends on your relationship with other people, including your own family. Hey, you can screw up. I have. Life doesn’t get any easier as you get older. It just becomes more complex. At the same time, one starts to discern certain threads which are important to follow.

Which threads did you discern as you got older? I mean, you’re speaking of wisdom, right?
I’m not calling myself wise. I refuse to grow up. But there are certain threads. Whether you connect the threads together, well… And really, there’s nothing quite like having your kids or your grandkids or the people you know and love still say you’re okay, because quite honestly I don’t know if I am or not. I mean, I’m just gonna do what I’ve got to do, and I’ve gotta live with the consequences, which I have quite often—including, you know, people like Brian dying—and thinking, you know, Did I cause that? Because I’ve never killed a man. Yet. Knowingly. And I don’t wanna… I mean, I’m getting to retirement, whether I want it or not. Do you know that I actually have a bus pass? In England? I’ve reached the age where I am given a free bus pass. [laughs] I feel like going to England right now and riding every bus I can get! [pause] There’s a certain thing about growing old, which is I’m still getting used to it. It’s a whole new experience.

How do you feel you’re growing old?
Because you are. I mean, it’s like how to deal with it. You know, you say to yourself, do you want to do this in private or do you want to do it in public?

And what do you think?
[pause] I’ll do it in public. What I do, I’m nowhere without a crowd. And every crowd has a silver lining. [laughs]

Is there anything you’d tell your grandkids about growing old?
Yeah. Go for it. Yeah. Don’t try and stay young. Don’t try and rush it. I was there. I mean, I still remember the idea of being 25 was horrendous.

You were never an angry young man, were you?
Yeah, I was, but I had no target. If I was, I think, coming from my generation, I was angry that things were still the same in the late ’50s. When I was growing up and 13, 14 years old and nothing changed. Especially in postwar Britain. They didn’t clear the rubble for a long time. And you got used to growing up in this kind of moonscape. What I gotta do right now is take a pee.

[Richards gets up from the love seat and shuffles to the corner of the room, where a large white wee-wee pad is laid out for the little fluffy dog that roams the office. Richards stares at it for a moment, then mutters, “I could just do it there, I suppose.” He laughs and leaves. I sit alone in the room, staring at the walls, just about every inch of which is covered with more memorabilia: a photo of him with Lennon, a photo of the Beatles circa 1965, a photo of Muddy Waters. Tucked into a corner is an unboxed Wii Guitar Hero. After maybe five minutes, Richards wanders back into the room, laughing. “Sorry, mate,” he says. “I got lost. I don’t come here often!”]

Why do you think some people live and some die?
Lack of breath?

But there’s that line between recklessness and stupidity, and you—No, you bring up a good point, which is very hard for me to answer, because I’ve probably crossed that line more times than most. Um, I’d say you have to know yourself. To yourself, you’re not crossing the line. Anybody else? Whoa, you gone way over the top, boy. If you don’t know yourself, then you get into this terrible position of “Well, I made it over there,” and now you’re expecting to—you know, you think you’re Evel Knievel. And that’s not what it’s about. I think it’s about a little bit of introspection and having a sort of physical contact with the mind and the brain. Having some connection. And not one running things or the other running things. I don’t know what you’d call it. Call it religion? [laughs] Or just call it lucky?

You seem like a man with incredible self-knowledge.
Yeah.

So you’d admit that?
Yeah.

Despite your persona.
Yeah. I think most people should check in with what’s in here [points to heart] and then see how you can deal with what’s out there [points outward]. If I’ve come to any conclusion after many, many years of not knowing what the hell I’m doing, it’s to just do it. You know, people say, “What the hell are you doing here?” because I’ve done everything that should have had you in an early grave. But—not to me. What dangers I thought I was in…how much I was pushing things to the edge…see, to me the edge was always a little further. I mean, if I was wrong, bollocks, right? Fine. I’ve never had inner turmoil about all this. I’m not some sort of Kurt Cobain. [Richards leans back and sticks an imaginary shotgun barrel in his mouth and pulls the trigger.] Boom. I’ve never had death wishes. I do feel wished to death, at times. [laughs] I was number one on the list for years, of people who were supposed to die. But, um, I didn’t really take any notice of it. I didn’t say, “Oh, I’m wished to death, therefore I will not die.” Because it’s not in your hands. I do think a certain amount of self-knowledge would help people, rather than being always distracted by exteriors. You find a lot of people these days who cannot stand to be alone. And boredom? To me, that’s an illness. You could lock me up in solitary for weeks on end and I’d keep myself amused. All these gadgets now—it’s all about anything to defy the interior, to defy dealing with yourself. I’ve had to deal with it so much I hate his guts. [laughs]

In those moments when you’ve gone up to the edge, what do you remember being in your mind?
It’s kind of like something that isn’t an edge.

But does your life really flash before your eyes?
Oh, I’ve been there a few times. No, my life—at least for me—didn’t flash before my eyes. It was more like what could’ve been. At the same time, I had this weird perception that—I mean, I don’t know if it’s sheer cowardice or not, but you leave the body. And you think, Oh, my God, I’m dead. And suddenly you can watch it quite dispassionately and objectively from twelve, fifteen feet above. And I once crashed a car, a convertible. Anita was with me. No seat belts—she was seven months pregnant. Three tons of car. A convertible. Rolled over three times. After the first roll, I was out of the car, watching. My only recollection of the whole thing is looking down very cold-bloodedly.

Do you think the Beatles are overrated?
Oh, definitely. So are we.

Why?
In that moment, the Beatles… But how can you—I mean yes. I’ll say yes. As a musician, yes. As a breath of fresh air and an injection of life into society, no, they were certainly not. They were exactly what was needed. It was a great enema.

What does that make you guys?
A great toilet bowl. [laughs]

Any secrets you will take to the grave?
I’ll let you know. You need to be there on the deathbed! I’m not looking forward to dying, but I’m not really looking forward to living. [laughs]

Why? You’re not gonna die soon.
Well, I feel like I have to defy it now. There were plenty of times I could’ve given up the ghost. But it just seemed such a cheap way out.

What does? OD’ing or something?
Yeah. Just kind of that “Fuck it, don’t do anything about it.… I don’t want to go through it, the shit of building me back again.” But at the same time, I tried my best to test this thing, and it still beats me. It says, “No! You’re around for a little bit longer, boy.” And I say, “Oh shit. I mean, okay.”

In moments like that—moments when you are in a dark place, moments when you are at the edge—who is your one phone call? Who do you call in that moment?
I’d say Patti. Yeah. [pause] I mean, I woulda said me mum until last year, but dammit, she croaked on me.

You—Keith Richards—would call your mother in those dark moments?
If it was bad, I would, yeah. Just to let her know. But unfortunately she didn’t live. [pause] Me mum, that’s another thing, man. [Gets choked up] I went… I went… We knew me mum was going, and so my daughter Angela says, “Dad, take the guitar out. Play to her. Go into her room.” So I went up there and sat on the hospital bed and played my best. And she’s out on morphine, anyway, unconscious. And I played the old songs, the old dance-hall songs. The next morning, she came out of her sleep for a moment, and my daughter was there and asked her, “Did you hear Daddy play for you last night?” And me mum says, “Yeah, he was out of tune.” [laughs] So let’s put it that way—my family is… There’s never a giving moment.

Always taking the piss out.
Yeah, all the way. Yeah. The last thing I said to me pa was “Save a seat for me at the bar, mate.” I had to see him off, too. [sighs] It’s rough. But then, it’s normal. I mean, the last thing my dad said to me before he went was “At least things are going in their natural order.”

Of course. It’s terrible to bury a child.
Yeah, I’ve done that. [sighs…silence] The things they throw at you. [Pallenberg and Richards lost their third child weeks after he was born, in 1976.]

What’s been the hardest thing they throw at you?
Tomorrow. [laughs]

What’s your best love song?
I haven’t written it yet.

Which one do you play for the ladies? I mean, since so many guys have scored to Stones songs, what do you score to?
You can say “Angie,” but that’s kind of… “Sleep Tonight.” That’s one. Oh, “Thief in the Night.”

“Wild Horses”?
I would go there, too.

Is there a Stones song you feel is the best articulation of your philosophy?
It’s hard to put it into a two-and-a-half-minute song. But I think “Tumbling Dice.”

Will you have them play that at your funeral?
I hope so. Just as long as I’m not there. [laughs]

FATHER OF LSD DIES

I think Bill would have found the passing of Albert Hofmann interesting. I am pretty sure he would have shared his experiences with Hofmann's discovery. Here is the Associated Press story of Hofmann's passing:


Albert Hofmann, Father Of Drug LSD, Dies In Switzerland
by Frank Jordans

Albert Hofmann, the father of the mind-altering drug LSD whose medical discovery inspired — and arguably corrupted — millions in the 1960s hippie generation, has died. He was 102.

Hofmann died Tuesday at his home in Burg im Leimental, said Doris Stuker, a municipal clerk in the village near Basel where Hofmann moved following his retirement in 1971.

For decades after LSD was banned in the late 1960s, Hofmann defended his invention.

"I produced the substance as a medicine. ... It's not my fault if people abused it," he once said.

The Swiss chemist discovered lysergic acid diethylamide-25 in 1938 while studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm in Basel.

He became the first human guinea pig of the drug when a tiny amount of the substance seeped onto his finger during a laboratory experiment on April 16, 1943.

"I had to leave work for home because I was suddenly hit by a sudden feeling of unease and mild dizziness," he subsequently wrote in a memo to company bosses.

He said his initial experience resulted in "wonderful visions."

"What I was thinking appeared in colors and in pictures," he told a Swiss television network for a program marking his 100th birthday two years ago. "It lasted for a couple of hours and then it disappeared."

Three days later, Hofmann experimented with a larger dose. The result was a horror trip.

"Everything I saw was distorted as in a warped mirror," he said, describing his bicycle ride home. "I had the impression I was rooted to the spot. But my assistant told me we were actually going very fast."

"The substance which I wanted to experiment with took over me. I was filled with an overwhelming fear that I would go crazy. I was transported to a different world, a different time," Hofmann wrote.

Hofmann and his scientific colleagues hoped that LSD would make an important contribution to psychiatric research. The drug exaggerated inner problems and conflicts and thus it was hoped that it might be used to recognize and treat mental illnesses like schizophrenia.

For a time, Sandoz sold LSD 25 under the name Delysid, encouraging doctors to try it themselves. It was one of the strongest drugs in medicine — with just one gram enough to drug an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people for 12 hours.

LSD was elevated to international fame in the late 1950s and 1960s thanks to Harvard professor Timothy Leary who embraced the drug under the slogan "turn on, tune in, drop out."

But away from the psychedelic trips, horror stories emerged about people going on murder sprees or jumping out of windows while hallucinating. Heavy users suffered permanent psychological damage.

The U.S. government banned LSD in 1966 and other countries followed suit.

Hofmann maintained this was unfair, arguing that the drug was not addictive. He repeatedly argued for the ban to be lifted to allow LSD to be used in medical research.

Peter Oehen, a psychiatrist in the Swiss town of Biberist, says substances such as LSD and MDMA — also known as ecstasy — can produce results where conventional psychotherapies fail.

"They help overcome the wall of denial that some patients build up," said Oehen, who met Hofmann and has studied his work.

Hofmann welcomed a decision by Swiss authorities last December to allow LSD to be used in a psychotherapy research project.

"For me, this is a very big wish come true. I always wanted to see LSD get its proper place in medicine," he told Swiss TV at the time.

Hofmann took the drug — purportedly on an occasional basis and out of scientific interest — for several decades.

"LSD can help open your eyes," he once said. "But there are other ways — meditation, dance, music, fasting."

Even so, the self described "father" of LSD readily agreed that the drug was dangerous if in the wrong hands. This was reflected by the title of his 1979 book: "LSD - my problem child."

In it he wrote that, "The history of LSD to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken for a pleasure drug."

Hofmann retired from Sandoz in 1971 and devoted his time to travel, writing and lectures.

"This is really a high point in my advanced age," Hofmann said at a ceremony in Basel honoring him on his 100th birthday. "You could say it is a consciousness-raising experience without LSD."

Funeral arrangements were not immediately available.

THE FINAL TIES BROKEN

On Tuesday, April 8, 2008, my parents signed a contract to sell their house in Floral Park. This sets into motion the final steps that will break our immediate family ties to New York. Bill was the first to leave, then me (to California), followed by my sister to Delaware, me again (to Florida).


Fred and Louise will be moving to Delray Beach, Florida (about a mile from my home), where they recently purchased a house. They expect to complete their move by June 10.

Congradulations Mom & Dad!!!

Here are some photos of the Floral Park residence.

Living Room





Dining Area




Master Bedroom





Den / TV Room




Guest Room 1 (Second Floor)





Guest Room 2 (Second Floor)





Entertainment Room (Basement)





Dining Room (Basement) [with boxes for the move]

SMOKE, LIES AND THE NANNY STATE

Bill was a fan of Joe Jackson's music. As a matter of fact, when we discussed the CDs he might want me to send in what was the last shipment of music I sent him, he said that he lost track of Jackson's career and he wanted to catch up. So, I sent him all of Jackson's releases from the previous 10-12 years.


That's why I think he would have found the e-booklet - Smoke, Lies And The Nanny State - available on joejackson.com to be very interesting. The booklet is actually is a pro-smoking essay. You can get your copy by clicking here.


You can also catch up on Joe Jackson's career by getting a Joe Jackson Press Kit or by watching some videos on the Joe Jackson Channel on YouTube.


Joe Jackson's latest release is Rain. It's classic Joe - a cross between Night And Day and Look Sharp. You can get it here.

Finally, here are few free MP3s, courtesy of joejackson.com:

20-0-3:
In 2003 Mayor Michael Bloomberg, claiming that secondhand smoke' was killing 1,000 New Yorkers per year, banned smoking in every bar and club in the city. This song is for him.



Take It Like A Man:
Taken from The Joe Jackson Band's album Volume 4


Different For Girls (Live):
Taken from Joe Jackson/Graham Maby/Gary Burke Live in New York ("Volume 4" Bonus Disc)

SHINE A LIGHT

On Friday, April 4, 2008, the latest Martin Scorsese film, a concert/documentary film starring The Rolling Stones will open in theaters. Guess who would have been there?

Check the left column for more info on the release and where you can see it.

BIG BUKOWSKI JUKEBOX

If your speakers are on you are probably listening to "Angie" by The Rolling Stones. I have now added the Big Bukowski Jukebox to the blog (it is viewable by scrolling to the bottom of the blog). The jukebox will hold 20 tracks and be updated weekly.

So, when you come, you can linger and listen to some music that was part of Bill's collection. Enjoy!

MAGIC AND LOSS

Back in 1992, Lou Reed released "Magic And Loss". It was a CD that Bill and I both bought during the first week it was released. It was a collection dealing with death and tragedy - not a light listen. Here are some excerpts from the songs that I would like to share. I think you'll find Bill in these.





Life's Good


Life's like a mayonnaise soda
And life's like space without room
And life's like bacon and ice cream
That's what life's like without you

Life's like forever becoming
But life's forever dealing in hurt
Now life's like death without living
That's what life's like without you

What's good is life without living
What good's this lion that barks
You loved a life others throw away nightly
It's not fair, not fair at all

What's good ?
Life's good -
But not fair at all



Power And Glory


I was visited by The Power and The Glory
I was visited by a majestic hymn
Great bolts of lightening
lighting up the sky
Electricity flowing through my veins

I was captured by a larger moment
I was seized by divinity's hot breath
Gorged like a lion on experience
Powerful from life

I wanted all of it--
Not some of it

And I was struck by The Power and The Glory
I was visited by a majestic Him
Great bolts of lightening lighting up the sky
as the radiation flowed through him
He wanted all of it
Not some of it



Magician


Somebody ... please hear me
my hand can't hold a cup of coffee
My fingers are weak - things just fall away
Inside I'm young and pretty
Too many things unfinished
My very breath taken away

I want some magic to sweep me away
Visit on this starlit night
replace the stars the moon the light - the sun's gone
Fly me through this storm
and wake up in the calm ...
I fly right through this storm
and ... I ... Wake ... Up ... In ... The ... Calm



Sword Of Damocles


It seems everything's done that must be done
from over here though things don't seem fair
But there are things that we can't know
maybe there's something over there
Some other world that we don't know about
I know you hate that mystic shit
It's just another way of seeing
The Sword of Damocles above your head



Goodby Mass


Sitting on a hard chair try to sit straight
Sitting on a hard chair this moment won't wait
Listening to the speakers they're talking about you
Look at all the people all the people you know

Sitting with my back straight it becomes hard to hear
Some people are crying it becomes hard to hear
I don't think you'd have liked it you would have made a joke
You would have made it easier you'd say "tomorrow I'm smoke"

Sitting on a hard chair how far we have come
Trying hard to listen to your friends who have come
Some of them are famous and some are just like me
Trying hard to listen trying hard to see

Sitting in a hard chair it's over time to stand
Some people are crying
You, you would have made a joke
"Isn't this something," you say, "tomorrow I'm smoke"



Cremation


There are ashes spilt through collective guilt
People rest at sea forever
Since they burnt you up
Collect you in a cup
For you the coal black sea has no terror

Will the Atlantic Coast
have its final boast
Nothing else contained you ever

Now the coal black sea waits for me me me
The coal black sea waits forever
When I leave this joint
at some further point
The same coal black sea will it be waiting



Dreamin'


If I close my eyes I see your face and I'm not without you
If I trying hard and concentrate I can still hear you speak
I picture myself in your room by the chair
you're smoking a cigarette
If I close my eyes I can see your face you're saying, "I missed you"
Dreamin' - I'm always dreamin'

They say in the end the pain was so bad that you were screaming
Now you were no saint but you deserved better than that
If I close my eyes I see your face and I'm not without you

If I close my eyes I can't believe that I'm here without you
Dreamin', I'm always dreamin'



No Chance


There are things we say we wish we knew and in fact we never do
But I'd wish I'd known that you were going to die
Then I wouldn't feel so stupid, such a fool that I didn't call
And I didn't get a chance to say goodbye
I didn't get a chance to say goodbye

No there's no logic to this - who's picked to stay or go
If you think too hard it only makes you mad
I didn't get a chance to say goodbye



Gassed And Stoked


Well, you covered your tracks
and now I can't see you
There's no record no tape no book no movie
Some photographs and some memories

Now I may not remember everything that you said
But I remember all the things you've done
And not a day goes by not an hour
when I don't try to be like you

You were gassed, stoked and rarin' to go
and you were that way all the time