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They Can't Believe He's Risen Again

Gary Lucas — Tue, 28 Jun 2022 14:56:30 +0000

They Can't Believe He's Risen Again Gary Lucas June 28, 2022 - 10:56

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THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE GRAVEYARD, NEW HAVEN CONN. 1973

Right we're gonna go back…to the dim recesses of Yale University circa the early '70s. Where as an undergrad I'd founded a Tuesday midnight horror movie society known as Things That Go Bump in the Night.

An institution which since folding its tent in the mid-'70s has taken on the mantle of legendary primarily through word of mouth -- twice-told tales handed down from generation to generation by those who were there...also helped along by a glowing write-up of our various shenanigans in noted humorist Christopher Buckley's book Thank You For Smoking.

Things That Go Bump in the Night was a pact signed in blood with a kindred spirit I'd met one spring evening in ’71, holding court in the kingdom of shadows of somebody's Yale dorm room -- a preternaturally handsome and spooky preppy from Barrington Illinois who loved old horror films just as much as I did.

I dunno who arranged this sit down…a mutual friend I guess…who’d raved:

"You just have to meet Bill -- this guy is really weird!"

A guy who is now a horror actor of worldwide ill repute, the one and only Bill Moseley.

Never heard of old Bill? Come on!

Bill made his skull and bones playing Choptop, the deranged Viet Vet sporting a '60’s tie-dyed shirt and a steel plate in his ugly bald head -- topped off with a Sonny Bono fright-wig -- in Tobe Hooper's remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (TTCMII).

Bill was outstanding as Otis Driftwood in Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects -- a spurious movie title if ever there was one, which I never quite got, frankly. I mean, if you were actually rejected by the Devil, wouldn't that indicate an overwhelming surfeit of sheer Christian Godliness bubbling up from your innermost core?

Bill has to date appeared in about 133 horror films of various quality according to my last check-in with IMDB. But one thing is for certain: he's always essentially BILL in whatever role he essays, Sonny Bono fright wig not withstanding.

You can put him in anything from the umpteenth remake of White Fang to HBO's Carnivale series to the aforementioned Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses. Any old vehicle with the necessary arterial spray / joie de mort-vivant, and he'll always be (and evermore shall remain) essentially: OUR BILL. Meaning what you see is what you get. Bill is reliably camera-ready and rarin' to ghoul.

Talk about irreducible essences.

But you don't need me to vouch for Bill's bona fides.

Suffice to say when I arrived at the Glasgow Film Festival a few years ago to perform my live score accompanying the legendary 1931 Spanish-language Dracula, I casually mentioned my longstanding friendship with Bill to the guy who picked me up at the airport.

"You know BILL MOSELEY??"

This guy was literally gob-smacked by our long and intimate association.

Anywho, Bill is a True Blue Old Blue. And after graduation, when Bill lit out for the territories to seek fame and fortune as a horror movie star, we made a little pact: namely, that Bill would give me an on-screen shout-out only I would recognize in his films.

Now what was that based on exactly?

Flashback to 1973...a couple years into our running the successful Things That Go Bump franchise at Linsley-Chittenden 101 -- an ugly large lecture classroom housed in a non-descript Yale faculty building on the Old Campus by day. By night, if you squinted your eyes real hard -- a shrine to cinematic dreams courtesy of the Yale Film Society, of which I was a Director.

The YFS ran 3 different classic / important films a night at LC101, 7 days a week! The entire history of cinema as we then knew it (well, a good chunk of it) could be yours for the price of regular admission (75 cents a throw) -- with Cahiers du Cinema, Sight and Sound, and Andrew Sarris’s essential The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 our programming Bibles.

Linsley-Chit as it was known (our Palace of Dreams) was kitted out by a projection booth in the back housing two 16mm projectors and editing equipment which included a hot splicer for emergency breakage of celluloid. At the front of the room was a raised dais / mini-stage flanked by two standing lecterns on either side of the platform, where various professors, some of them famous (Harold Bloom), or soon-to-be-famous (J. Hillis Miller), or destined to languish in obscurity (names are being held here to protect the guilty) gave it their best shot during class hours. Suspended over the rear wall hung a cylindrical pipe-shaped tube housing a rolled-up electric movie screen, which could be raised and lowered to taste at the flick of a switch.

OUR LOGO: illustration by Harry Clarke, illuminator of the macabre taken from the 1919 UK edition of Edgar Allan Poe

Once we got Things That Go Bump up and running in the late spring of '71, we screened dozens of primo horror, sci-fi, and fantasy films every Tuesday and sometimes Wednesday's at midnight to a coterie of delighted lunatic fringe Yalies sick of the Sterling Memorial Library grind, who would come to scream and shout and let off steam and cannabis smoke during our sacred witching hour ritual. We had our own display case inside Yale Station which featured the actual original posters, lobby cards and stills for each week's film, courtesy of annual field trips to Mark Ricci’s East Village temple of cinema The Memory Shop. (Mark actually played one of the zombies in Night of the Living Dead.) We also had the best, most provocatively lurid posters made up just for us by our mad printer friend Alex which we festooned all over Yale, which helped drive the whole thing and usually put asses in seats, as they say. We also printed up brochures which included a menu of all our upcoming films and featured our colorful rodomontade-like blurbs describing each film as the ne plus ultra of…what exactly? Our weekly seances became quite an event on campus -- and Bill and I became notorious as the lunatic hosts. We would strut and fret our 5 minutes on the stage before the films decked to the nines in assorted thrift store glam rubbish, occasional rubber masks -- kind of an early John Waters look -- introduce the films with a little show and tell, and then take our reserved seats in the front row center.

The lights would come down…and Let the Games Begin!!

One night we had booked a real campy stinker of a horror film, Universal’s outlandish 1956 sci-fi opus The Mole People directed by Virgil Vogel and starring iconic B-movie actor John Agar -- a close personal friend of John Wayne's, and Shirley Temple's first husband.

The real stars of the film are of course The Mole People, with veteran makeup artist Bud Westmore's rubber prosthetic Mole Men get-up (no Mole Women visible in the film, unfortunately) delivering the frissons -- if not laffs a’plenty. Our screening of this enjoyably ludicrous film brought out a mere handful of Yalie hard-core slackers such as ourselves, sad to say, plus one certifiably insane nutter flying on God knows what who consistently echoed the on-screen dialogue in a high-pitched double-speed Polly Parrot voice a mere millisecond after each line of dialogue was uttered onscreen.

F'rinstance when the expeditionary crew is first being lowered into the bowels of the Hollow Earth, the foreman of the winch crew yells out in a rough, manly voice:

"GOIN' DOWN NOW!"

"Goin' down now! Goin' down now!” gibbered the human psittacine in falsetto --resembling nothing so much as a squawking parrot on a hideous jag.

This phrase, we later agreed, would be the secret words uttered by Bill on screen once he hit the Big Time as acknowledgement of our long friendship and association.

And Bill kept his word, for awhile anyway, in Texas Chainsaw 2 and White Fang.

But let's cut to the chase here—

Amongst the numerous success d’estimes of our couple years Run—nothing—but nothing—will ever measure up to the horror…the horror on display the night we invited The Poet onstage to consecrate the evening’s entertainment:

a screening of the sublime 1945 back and white Ealing Studios British horror anthology Dead of Night.

Now who was this infernal Poet anyway?

Damned if I know or can recall exactly. Somebody’s friend, I guess, a transient literati visiting the Yale campus, kitted out in all the accouterments of someone’s romantic ideal of a Poet circa the Beat Generation (you could do worse than watch this opening scene of Roger Corman's Bucket of Blood to get a flavor).

Anyway this unknown dude walked up to me 5 minutes before showtime, and respectfully asked me if he could get up and read one of his poems before the film?

Being a charitable, Big Tent sort of guy then (still am), I whole-heartedly went along with his request after running it by my partner in crime Bill, who agreed that we should give the guy a shot to read.

I mean, the vetting process was nil. I just thought we should take a flyer on this. Even today I'm more or less of the same mind when a young unknown singer asks to step up to the plate and try and sing one of the Jeff Buckley / Gary Lucas opuses.

I give 'em a shot.

Why not?? I think one should encourage fledgling creatives, I know this is the opposite of how so many smug "professionals" operate, but in their case, it's merely bad karma.

Anyhow, Bill and I got up onstage first, did our typical introductory schtick, and then by way of nothing in particular I announced:

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have a guest Poet in the house with us tonight who asked if he could read one of his poems before we begin our film. Let's give him a big Yale welcome!!"

So this hirsute, bearded guy dressed in faded Army-Navy olive-drab shuffles forward out of the darkness sloshing cheap white wine out a plastic see-through cup -- the cliched epitome of an Artiste -- climbs up on to the stage, takes his place at one of the lecterns, brandishes his foolscap containing the text of his poem, and announces over the mic:

"This is called EASTER."

Bill and I move to the back of the stage a bit...and the guy begins to declaim in a loud, measured, stentorian voice:

"THEY CAN'T BELIEVE HE'S RISEN AGAIN!"

A mighty hoot and holler issues forth en masse as if one gigantic Voice from the unbelieving Crowd. A tidal wave of derisive, corrosive Laughter breaks over the lectern. The affronted, indignant Poet is literally stopped in his tracks reeling from this onslaught. He lets the wave cascade over him for a full minute, and then finally, mind at the end of his tether, shrieks Jim Morrison-like at the top of his voice:

"SHUDDUP!!!"

There is a moment's stunned silence as the crowd staggers from The Poet's blow-back. And then the audience re-doubles their efforts, cat-calling and booing the guy at double the previous volume with curses, shouts and imprecations to vacate the stage pronto.

He starts all over gamely…repeating:

"THEY CAN’T BELIEVE HE'S RISEN AGAIN!!"

And once again, he is shouting into the Void -- if not into a veritable and very vocal Sea of Troubles.

Time is suspended as this eternal Ping-Pong match goes on and on and on. The guy never gets past reciting the first line of his poem! And every single time he repeats the opening line...all Hell breaks loose!

The audience, thinking the whole thing is some kind of infinite jest courtesy Lucas and Moseley, continue their boorish jeering.

The Poet, "baited with the rabble's curse" (The Tragedy of Macbeth, Act V Scene VI), unable to make any headway at all beyond repeating the poem's opening line...finally, tragically, visibly breaks down in front of everyone, and suddenly makes a violent gesture.

He attempts to bodily shove his heavy wooden lectern clear off the lip of the stage and topple it Quasimodo-like down on the heads of the front row of spectators!

One of our regular customers in the front leaps to his feet in defense of the front row redoubt, and another regular jumps up and cold-cocks this guy with a right to the jaw!

OY!

At that precise moment, Bill leaps out of the shadows, reaches under the lectern and grabs hold of a box full of Blue Books -- a Blue Book being a lined blue-covered booklet used to inscribe examination answers during Big Tests (ie, not porno) -- and shouts "START THE FILM!" to our faithful projectionist back in the booth, Doug McKinney.

And as the film's first images start unspooling on the screen -- an Eternal Ricorso as it were, if you know the film -- a sequence that gets repeated verbatim at the end of the film, creating an infinite dream-loop…Bill hurls the box of Blue Books high into the air, where, caught in the glare of the projected beam of light, they come fluttering down like the flying pillow feathers in Jean Vigo's Zero de Conduite.

The shunned and disgraced Poet screams and runs off the stage into the outer hallway, his face a rictus of thwarted creative agony.

Bill and I take our seats in the front row in stony silence and are forced as les directeurs to sit through our film du jour--a cavalcade of classic British horror stories by H.G. Wells and others that is Dead of Night.

But I’d seen this movie before. And sitting there, I cannot really enjoy the film, as great as it is. All I can think about was how a kind gesture on my part -- providing a public platform to a fellow artist as a favor, on a whim, on an impulse -- had literally exploded in my face and rapidly devolved into some kind of fracas.

I am nauseated by how cruel and insensitive the audience had been. How quickly they'd shed their veneer of Yale politesse and devolved into beastly bear-baiting swine, shitting and pissing all over another artist's creative attempt like that.

When the film is finally over and the lights come up, a couple of very disgruntled, unsettled Things That Go Bump regulars accost me and Bill -- accusing us of setting the whole incident up as some kind of monstrous prank.

"How could you guys DO that??

That wasn’t funny at all, Lucas!!"

Rumors swirled in the wake of this incident that The Poet had run out of there and attempted suicide that night, but was dissuaded by a friend -- who turned out to be the same guy who had jumped up and socked the dude who'd tried to fend off the incoming lectern after The Poet's threatened revenge on the audience.

Talk about a shock to the system. The whole thing literally sickened me.

The very next day I was admitted to Yale's Department of University Health inpatient clinic with a fever, where I holed up for a couple weeks with what turned out to be mononucleosis. I lay there for a very long time not allowing visitors in to see me...licking my wounds, psychic and otherwise.

This indelible incident -- a high-water mark of malevolence erupting out of nowhere, Jaws of Hell Opening Up Before You stylee -- almost but not quite mirrors Peter Geyer's extraordinary documentary of Klaus Kinski trying to deliver his one-man show Jesus Christ Saviour in front of an extremely hostile audience in 1971 Berlin.

But Kinksi was certifiably a genius (well, certifiable).

Was The Poet actually any good though?

We’ll never know…

I have no further details to share other than leaving you with that all too familiar saying:

NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED.

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Ecce Glenn!

Gary Lucas — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 16:42:13 +0000

Ecce Glenn! Gary Lucas June 15, 2022 - 12:42

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"It would be argument for a week, laughter for a month, and a good jest for ever." -- William Shakespeare, Henry the 4th Part 1, Act 2 Scene 2

Behold the late Glenn Leslie. A rock 'n' roll Falstaff for the Ages in the tradition (sort of) of Peter Grant, both of them formerly professional wrestlers, but Glenn without the latter's ruthless, going-for-the-jugular instincts.

Neigh, there was a sweet, dreamy, somewhat clownish side to the late Mr. Leslie, whose main gig was as an Art Carney-esque sanitation engineer in the sewers of Long Island which he would occasionally forsake for the greener, more fragrant pastures of the Music Biz. Where he mixed it up with the likes of Lou Reed, King Crimson, Kevin Coyne, and innumerable avant-garde rock and free jazz ensembles of the Downtown Persuasion, in all sorts of capacities:

Founder and CEO of his one-man operation Art Rock Management (pronounced by Glenn as "Ahht Rawk Management"), a street worker, a hustler, a roadie, a driver, a cartage specialist (Man with a Van), a body guard, bagman, fixer, pot purveyor, a tummler, a rager, and a larger than life Character for the Ages.

Physically, a muscular, heavy set (250 pounds at least) Man Mountain. A Big Hearted lug in other words with a soupçon of bluster and bullshit that, in recalling his antics, never fails to make me smile, if not laugh uproariously, some ten or so years on since he shuffled off this mortal coil -- that was our Glenn.

I first met the guy when he turned up at my third ever solo show at the original Knitting Factory, back when it was situated on the corner of East Houston and Mulberry Streets. You walked down a flight of stairs from the sidewalk out front and traversed a darkened bar…and then walked straight up the back stairs into this longish loft-like room, with a little stage at the end of it set against a curtained picture window overlooking Houston Street.

After the triumph of my debut show and standout appearance a month or so earlier at the What is Jazz? Festival, this one took place a Sunday night -- never a great night to play, anywhere -- especially in late August of 1988. But play I did to a smallish crowd…and this imposing beefy feller comes up to me at the end and in a thick Queens accent says:

"YOU'RE FUCKING EXCELLENT!! LOVE THAT SYD BARRETT STUFF!"

(I was covering Pink Floyd's "Astronomy Domine" on solo electric guitar.)

We chatted. Turned out that like me, he adored late '60s music, especially English psychedelia. He'd roadied for King Crimson! He'd roadied for Lou Reed!!! He told me about his company of one, Art Rock Management, and since there was no one in place at that moment to rep me for bookings at venues and festivals, I told him he was IT, for the time being anyway.

And the guy came up with a few great gigs for me. Admittedly over many years…still...Glenn got me to Israel for the first time performing my original live soundtrack for The Golem silent German expressionist film at the Next Festival in Tel Aviv, playing alongside John Cale and Daevid Allen.

Then after my concert (sponsored by Häagen-Dazs ice cream -- cups of which were distributed to any and all), he had the festival guys set up a merch table out on the street. He then sat behind the table and in a loud voice began hawking my wares to anyone within ear-shot:

"Eric Clapton...Jeff Beck..and GARY LUCAS! Pete-uh Green…Mike Bloomfield…and GARY LUCAS!"

A street worker, like I said. With a totally original "fame by association" approach to branding me on the cheap, in a country where few knew my name at that point unless they were stone music lovers. (Hey, it was my first time playing In Israel...subsequently I've been on national tv there--and later sold-out the Jerusalem Film Festival with my Spanish Dracula live music and film project. Abi gezunt!).

Glenn also arranged for me to be interviewed and play live on John Schaefer's important New Sounds show on WNYC for the very first time in the early '90s, back when John's show went out nationwide on NPR. John and I bonded -- thanks to Big Glenn -- and I went on to return to play live on John's program both in the studio and from Merkin Concert Hall at least 15-20 times over the years in various iterations (even during the pandemic over Zoom).

Glenn also hooked me up to fly to Dusseldorf to collaborate with legendary UK singer/songwriter Kevin Coyne -- John Peel's favorite artist after Don Van Vliet, and Peel's first ever signing to his own Dandelion Records label, with Kevin's band Siren. As I liked to work, I brought finished guitar instrumentals with me and gave them to Kevin, and we wrote and recorded two amazing songs right on the spot in the studio there in a whirlwind of activity. Here's one: "English Rose"

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Several years after my initial encounter with Glenn on my fateful third ever show at the Knit, I went with Jeff Buckley in the Fall of '91 up to the sumptuous Society for Ethical Culture Hall on West 64th Street in Manhattan, where Lou Reed was giving a spoken-word concert. A book of Lou's lyrics and poetry had just come out, and Lou was going to be reading and reciting selections from that.

Neither of us had yet been introduced to Lou. Jeff and I took our seats.

The lights came down...and out from behind the curtain emerged none other than BIG GLENN, who strode centerstage, crossed his powerful arms over his barrel chest, and proceeded to glare and glower menacingly at the audience in the packed theater for five fucking minutes without uttering a single word, before Lou strolled out to relieve him.

Later, a Melody Maker writer wrote in his review of this concert:

"Lou Reed’s revenge on the audience began with him sending out a huge, B-movie bruiser of a minder, who silently stared down the crowd arms akimbo before Lou came out to read…"

Among my other favorite Glenn Leslie moments: I'm home alone one summer day in my West Village apartment working on guitar music, when the door bell rings and it's Glenn downstairs, relating a sad story over the intercom. Turns out that the engine of his van -- that same van that carried many a musician and their gear from rehearsal space to venue and back at 100 bucks a pop -- is overheated and the radiator is low on water.

"I gotta come up and get some wawtuh for my van, man. The radiator is boilin'! Please can I come up there? I'll just be a few."

"Sure." I buzz him up.

Two minutes later (a slow elevator) and he's at my door, sweating profusely.

"Man, it's hot out there."

I give him some cool water in a thermos for his radiator.

Then:

"Hey buddy, got anything to smoke?"

I do indeed. An on and off pot head since the age of 16, I'm back at it again at this point (although hey, it's been fifteen years since my last puff -- and I ain't resuming). So without further adieu I bust out my bong and we go at it.

Now Glenn had left his van parked in a no-parking zone on leafy, cobblestoned Perry Street, which abuts our apartment building on one side. And every so often, after inhaling copious amounts of smoke from my hubble-bubble, he glances out the window to check on the status of his temporarily and illegally parked van, looking for cops and the dreaded tow-truck.

Time drifts by timelessly, we're feeling no pain, when all of a sudden Glenn looks out the window and yells:

"Holy Shit! They're clamping my van!! THEY'RE GONNA TOW ME!!"

Glenn immediately dashes out of the apartment with the thermos of water to try and fix things, and I climb up on a chair under the window to crane my neck to get a better view of the street scene about to unfold below me.

Within two minutes (darn slow elevator), Glenn rounds the corner of my building into my line of sight -- a Man Mountain bearing down fiercely on the tumultuous scene, hauling ass towards his van, and panting and hollering at the tow truck:

"STOP!! That's MY VAN!! THAT'S MY VAN !!"

It's no use. His words are falling on deaf ears. He tries to explain the circumstances.

"I was gettin' wawtuh!"

A note of righteous anger mixed with desperation creeps into his voice.

"I was gettin' WAWTUH!!"

His van has been clamped and the tow truck operator is about to pull out with it tethered to the back of his truck.

In desperation Glenn bellows:

"WORK with me!!"

This prelude to a bribe has no discernible effect on the stony-faced tow-truck operator, and shaking his head, he putts off down the street towing Glenn's van behind him.

"DOH!!"

Glenn slaps his head Homer Simpson-style and collapses on a nearby tenement stoop, flummoxed, absolutely pole-axed by the merciless roving Manhattan traffic police, who hunt down scofflaws and tow away illegally parked vehicles all over Fun City.

It's gonna cost Glenn at least 250 bucks and countless hours to get his van out of the bureaucratic Twilight Zone that is the Midtown Lot where illegally parked vehicles are towed and stowed until necessary fines are paid.

My heart goes out to Glenn.

He comes back upstairs for a farewell toke, and much commiseration on my part. He then actually tries to get me to cover some of his (sure to be sizable) impending fine.

"If you hadn't way-laid me with this killuh pot, Gary, I woulda been outa there much earlier and on my way right now!"

But what can a poor boy do?

"Take another hit…of fresh air!"

Big Glenn whips Sigmund Freud in Gary's "Skin the Rabbit" video

Glenn also had occasional fallings out with some (well, many) of the Downtown Musicians he tried to represent and book. Me included.

Glenn was on my ass for several years about a fictitious commission I owed him for my live score accompanying The Golem at the Silent Movie Theater in Hollywood, a gig he claimed he'd once pitched me for. A gig I'd set up up myself in fact many years later through Victoria Larrimore. I had to fast forward through many rambling phone messages on my machine from Glenn threatening me with God knows what, usually with him concluding with:

"You can run, but you can't hide!"

Another case in point: my Gods and Monsters drummer for many a year, Benjamin Shane, who well before we began to play together in the mid-'90s had once booked Glenn to cart his drum kit back to his Manhattan rehearsal space, after a gig at BAM (the Brooklyn Academy of Music). A gloomy caged warren of a space in a dilapidated 19th century tenement on the Lower East Side that had been parceled up as rehearsal rooms for many a group, in a spectral crumbling brownstone originally used during the Civil War as an infirmary and temporary morgue for fallen Union soldiers.

Glenn is somehow missing in action after Ben's Brooklyn gig. Glenn is a no-show!

So my drummer grabs another ride back to Manhattan with his drums, and makes it back to this haunted rehearsal space. He's just re-setting up his drums in the little room he occupied when a furious Glenn busts in.

Glenn, who'd showed up late on the pickup, became incensed upon realizing that Ben had swooped the BAM scene courtesy somebody else's ride, and had driven his van at a furious pace back to Manhattan in hot pursuit of my friend, with the aim of collaring Benjamin for not waiting for Glenn to show up, resulting in a non-payment of their agreed upon fee (although, hey, to be fair to Benjamin Glenn hadn't done the work he'd contracted for).

Now my drummer was a big, strapping 6-footer himself, but Glenn had him flat on the floor in no time with one of his patented wrestling take-down moves.

"And he sits on me with his Big Stinky Ass," Benjamin shuddered in retrospect, relating this traumatic scene to me a few years later.

"And he says: 'No scumbag musician is gonna beat me out of my fee!'"

So there's my guy, pinned to the ground in his own rehearsal room, and he reluctantly agrees to pay up, and only then does Glenn release him from his deadly buttocks-hold.

But ever since that encounter, Benjamin bore a smoldering enmity, a fine curdled hatred for Big Glenn.

Anyway, I on and off continued checking in with Mister Ahht Rawk Management. Mainly, off, as like many agents, the guy was flaky and unreliable as to the volume of work he might generate for you in any given period. Finally, Glenn comes up with a good paying gig for me solo, and with Gods & Monsters; a Gary Lucas Double Header up in Hartford, Connecticut at Real Art Ways a/k/a RAW.

I make the fatal mistake of informing my drummer at rehearsal that this is a Glenn-booked gig, and he hits the roof:

"That fucking guy! Just keep him away from me, okay?!"

And then scoffing, says:

"Really, he should call his agency Bluto Management."

In truth, Glenn looked alot like Bluto, EC Segar / Max Fleischer's lovable lug who is the bane of Popeye's existence.

Although in pointing this out once to Big Glenn, he replied to me with great insight into the characters:

"Awww, Popeye always really loves Bluto, and vice versa."

The pair complete each other, really, like Lucky and Pozzo, Frank 'n' Don, Laurel and Hardy, you name 'em.

(FYI: Glenn once worked as a bouncer at a party given by my friend Bill Dube, and he worked the door wearing a Bluto t-shirt).

So we get up to Hartford, the theater is full, we play the gig, and the audience loves us!

When we're done and packing up, here comes Glenn dressed to the nines, like I'd never ever seen him before -- clean shaven, all duded-up in suit and tie, and reeking of heavy men's cologne.

I'd warned Glenn how my drummer had reacted about having to play a gig booked by his bad self, and Glenn now wants to make amends. He thrusts out his hand towards my drummer and says:

"No hard feelings, Benjamin!"

My drummer snatches his hand away from Glenn's as fast as he can, outraged by Glenn's friendly demeanor, and snaps:

"I'm not gonna shake hands with you, Glenn! You threw me on the goddamn floor! And then you sat on me with your Big…Stinky...Ass!"

Glenn's eyes narrow, his voice drops to a low sinister level, and without missing a beat he switches over to wrestling mag-speak:

"No. That's not true…I never laid a glove on you!"

Then he goes for broke:

"You fell to your knees out of Fear!!"

"Just stay away from me, you lowlife prick! I'm not gonna shake hands with you!"

Glenn tries another tack:

"Wait a minute! I never touched you!"

And continues helpfully:

"Our legs happened to get entangled."

"Fuck you, Glenn!"

Benjamin shoots me an enraged look.

"Gary, if you want to continue dealing with this guy in the future, be my guest. I'm outta here!"

He turns his back on a chastened Glenn, and walks away, fast...

Last Glenn story as told to me by Glenn himself.

Couple years later, Lou Reed hires Glenn to roadie, drive, bodyguard, and tour manager him on a few West Coast dates, which eventually takes them down to Mexico City. They check into their hotel in separate rooms at 6pm.

At 6:30pm Lou calls Glenn and summons him to his room, where he interrogates Glenn calmly and deliberately:

"Glenn. We checked in at 6pm. At 6:15pm I called your room, and you didn't answer."

He leans in:

"Where'd you go??"

In point of fact, Glenn had availed himself of a rather short window of opportunity post hotel check-in, and had scurried down to the hotel lobby, where he left a stack of Art Rock Management flyers on the front desk promoting the immediate availability for booking of his entire Art Rock Management roster of avant-jazz, rock and New Music artists (myself included).

Glenn doesn't mention this to Lou, of course. But the evidence is there, a ticking time-bomb hiding in plain sight for Lou to discover if he perchance chooses to stroll through the lobby again, where he might just get a gander of Glenn's entrepreneurial handiwork rendered during his employ.

Lou surmises as much though -- and draws himself up to his full height (5' 10"). And then he gets deadly serious with Glenn, who is currently on his payroll:

"In case you don't realize it, Glenn -- I am FUCKING LOU REED!!"

LOU! Who was at that precise moment addressing BIG GLENN LESLIE.

Having gravitated into the orbit of many colorful characters with a capital C during my 40-plus years in music, (let me recount the names -- oh hell, just check my bio at http://www.garylucas.com/biog.shtml )

Glenn Leslie, for better or worse, holds a lovable rapscallion-like rock 'n' roll place in my heart, still.

I miss you, Big Guy.

"That trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly, that reverend Vice, that grey Iniquity, that father Ruffian, that Vanity in years?" --William Shakespeare, Henry the 4th Part 1, Act 2 Scene 4

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Depp for Men/Scene and Not Heard

Gary Lucas — Fri, 06 May 2022 01:09:05 +0000

Depp for Men/Scene and Not Heard Gary Lucas May 5, 2022 - 21:09

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"As a punishment of myself and as a lesson to others," wrote Ivan Turgenev after witnessing a public execution in Paris, "I should now like to tell everything I saw."

Well, now, I haven't been nearly as obsessed as the countless number of gawkers worldwide absolutely transfixed; nay, glued to the media coverage surrounding this rather sordid saga of Johnny Depp's attempt to clear his good name from his rather recent public execution by a UK court in support of Amber Heard's, shall we say, gratuitously nasty and ambitious smackdown.

I could care less about this stuff, frankly—I mean, don't people have better things to do with their lives than speculate on the lives of others?—and am amazed how so many friends have recently plied me for my opinion as to Johnny Depp or Amber Heard's relative guilt or innocence. But hey, I was a Watergate junkie, and later an O.J. Simpson Trial Addict ("If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit"—less true words were never spoken), so I've been there…I get it.

But this trial so far has generated not very much real heat and light (to date), considering the amount of media coverage and frenzied nonstop speculation from a panoply of pop psychologists, certified clinically insane mental health professionals, and the usual poindexter lawyers—a whole cottage industry of village explainers.

Why this rather toxic miasma about nuthin' has encircled the globe when there's a SO much more important and worthy of your attention sideshow going down in Eastern Ukraine right now speaks volumes about our rather infantile and retarded decadent culture o' celebrity, Here at the Western World (good title for a Steely Dan song…hey, it is the title of a great Steely Dan song, an out-take all about, what else, ex-Nazis—real ones, too, unlike phantom Russian-labelled Ukrainian supposed Nazis—a Dan song about actual German Nazis on the loose and resettled in Latin America via various rat-lines, now enjoying the high life in Bolivian brothels. You can find this catchy tune on YouTube without too much difficulty; here ya go:

So JD vs. AH, to me, is a puppet show about Nothing.

But as I do have a sweet spot for Mr. Depp—and no other dog in this fight, shall we say—I thought to recount a little story for you:

About ten years ago, I was hanging out at Matty Umanov's Guitar Store on Bleecker Street between 6th and 7th Avenues. I'd gone in there for some new strings—I favor the Ernie Ball regular slinky electric guitar variety—which is about all I ever spent my money on there once I'd acquired my 1941 Gibson J-45 acoustic from them in 1989.

I always preferred Gibson acoustics for playing da blooze since I was a little shaver. This beauty was sold to me by the late John Campbell as a 1946 J-45, but some years later a scholarly book came out asserting that the banner headstock, which it boasted emblazoned with their then motto "Only a Gibson is Good Enough," was discontinued after 1941…so it was back-dated to 1941, fine by me. In any case, I have no plans to sell it. It will be buried with me. Or immolated along with my cadaver.

Zeke’s photo of Robert Johnson with Johnny Shines

Anyway, I was in Matt Umanov's shooting the shit with Zeke Schein—a nice guy and a good acoustic blues guitarist and Robert Johnson scholar who came up with the second or third only extant photograph of the mysterious RJ for a pittance at some auction, a photo which is still being contested as "real" by the Johnson Estate—when in strolled this tall mustachioed guy all duded up in a fine suit and sporting a big floppy hat, accompanied by a couple of hard men who I took to be his bodyguards.

Instantly, a hush came over the store as this dude was warmly greeted like an old friend by various employees—including store owner legendary Matt U.

They sat the guy down in the front of the store on a stool surrounded by his minders and a few casually browsing onlookers, and a couple of the store sales guys proceeded to run up and down the stairs to the cellar, retrieving one incredible vintage guitar after another for this mystery dude to play. And play he did—and he was no slouch on acoustic bottleneck blues either, let me tell ya.

"Who the fuck IS this guy?" I thought to myself, observing this spectacle from my all-seeing vantage point in the back of the store. I mean, he LOOKED like Johnny Depp…but then again, he also looked like Kid Rock circa the same era.

Zeke drifted by, and I asked him the same question in a low voice.

His eyes bugged out of his head at my impertinent question, and then he looked daggers at me, like: "Shut the fuck up! Voices carry…"

I mean, he didn't want to embarrass this be-seated celebrity git-picker with the fact that there might be someone in his hallowed vicinity who did not recognize him!!

Then Matt himself came by and whispered to me: "Gary, stick around, and I'll introduce you."

To WHO?? I couldn't make a final judgment call here—it might have been Johnny Depp (who I like) or Kid Rock (who I do not)—but the fact remains that these fellers kind of had the same look going on at the same time.

Kinda like Snoopy's brother Spike.

Anyway, after about 20 minutes of watching the employees toady around Johnny with various expensive vintage guitars for him to try out, I got bored with this scene, grabbed my coat, and made to leave.

Matt stopped me at the door:

"Gary, let me introduce you."

I wheel around and there is this tall dude reeking of expensive men's cologne standing a'fore me and smiling expectantly.

"This is GARY LUCAS. Great guitarist, played with Captain Beefheart and Jeff Buckley."

The guy thrusts his right hand out towards me, waiting for a clasp and a shake.

As I still wasn't positive who it was, I tentatively stuck my right hand out about 3/4's of the way only, without actually grabbing his mitt to shake it, and said:

"And YOU are…?"

The guy's eyes bugged out at me like Zeke's had when I asked him who it was.

I could hear his internal mental machinery (Pride Sector) clicking away like crazy:

"Goddammit! I'm one of the most famous people on the fucking planet!! And this guy doesn't know who I am??”

I repeated:

"And YOU are…??"

He swallowed hard, looked imploringly at me, and managed to get out:

"It's... JAH—"

That's as far as he got before I cut him off and jumped right in:

"Oh!! Johnny!! JOHNNY DEPP!! Sorry man, I wasn't totally sure it was you, and I didn't want to be an asshole in case it wasn't you! I love your work man!! I loved you in PIRATES…and I really loved you in THE NINTH GATE!"

He relaxed, smiled broadly, and looked dreamily off in the distance:

"Ahhhhhhh….POLANSKI!!"

The ice had been broken.

He went on:

"Hey, speaking of Beefheart! My buddy Tom Waits and I really dig him—and we wanted to know how you guys got that sound!"

Now, it was my turn to relax.

“Well, the truth is Johnny, he hollered at us. A lot. Especially right before a show or a recording session. He wanted to instill what he called 'that tension' in our playing. He wanted us to be alert and on our toes! That accounts for some of the manic, herky-jerky quality of the Beefheart Sound."

I segued then right into:

"Hey, come over here and let me show you something from my younger days…"

I brought him over to one of Matt's glass showcases, which housed various vintage guitars as well as autographed photos of some of the store's regular customers, most recognizable to most guitar lovers passing through and also some of the casual passersby who drifted in and out of the shop—a good place to be showcased, in other words.

I showed him an autographed photo of me playing in the Mojave Desert with Beefheart and company taken on location during the 1982 "Ice Cream for Crow" video shoot and framed by Matt for this display case.

Photo by Ken Schreiber

He beamed at me:

"That's really cool!"

I liked this guy. We kind of took a shine to each other and bonded, to tell you the truth. I then told him I'd spotted him "doing" Keith Richards's act within seven seconds of his first appearance onscreen in the original PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN.

"Yeah, fucking Keith!" he chortled.

Keith was my first major guitar hero! What a cool catch for Johnny.

I asked him what he was in town for, and he told me it was to go on David Letterman to promote his new film about AI, Transcendence, which was just opening up. (It tanked. Never saw it myself.)

It was time for both of us to leave, and as I walked out of the store with him, I gave him my card, with an "If you ever need any guitar…"

That was it.

I walked out of there with a warm glow. I dug Johnny. He was super-friendly, intelligent, and sensitive, plus he could play a mean guitar.

For weeks after this encounter, though, every time I walked into Matt Umanov's, one of the deadbeat guitar salesmen who worked there would razz me mercilessly:

"Oh, you did so too, know that that was Johnny Depp, Gary! You just wanted to bust his balls!"

No, I protested; I really wasn't sure who it was… I knew it was somebody…but I didn't want to be a jerk by getting it wrong.

Anyway, it's not my style to lead with snide, cutting remarks—for dumbshow gestures like pretending I don't know who somebody is when I do know.

I think it was Norman Mailer who once said apropos of his unscripted battle royale / old fashioned wrasslin' match with Rip Torn at the end of Maidstone:

"Everybody knows that the guy leading with the insults is the guy eating the shit."

Agreed.

So, I like to take the high road…and am generally (usually) (sometimes) very nice and polite to everyone I meet for the first time—and I let the other person make the first move and show their true colors of nastiness first before I lash out in kind.

But back to my original topic, vis a vis Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard?

Well, having met Johnny, who was a total mensch to me in our one encounter and to whom I give very high marks indeed… and having paid just a little bit of attention to Amber Heard's sob story…

THEY BOTH DESERVE EACH OTHER!!