Wherever Johnny Cash is Right Now, I Hope He's Teaching Kurt Cobain How to Play "Hurt"

A slightly edited version of an email exchange with Toland

***

Toland:

I recently finished reading a book on the New York Dolls, as well as watching a documentary on Johnny Thunders called Born to Lose: The Last Rock 'N' Roll
Movie. I've always thought of Thunders as a professional junkie who happened to also play music, occasionally coming up with moments of inspiration. However, as is often the case with these things, the situation was a bit more complicated than that.

According to both the Dolls book and the movie, Thunders genuinely loved rock & roll - when he was younger, at any rate - which is why he picked up a guitar in the first place. He drank a lot of beer and whiskey and did the usual speed in the early days of the Dolls, but he didn't start seriously doing smack until the Dolls were already on their first tour after the first album came out. Even then it didn't really become his life until after the Dolls were over. (No coincidence, I suspect, though that's not made explicit.)

So he stumbled through the rest of his life and career playing sloppy, stoned shows that often consisted of him hitting the stage, berating the audience for a few
minutes, then either leaving or passing out. He pimped his talent so he could get high. (A familiar story, I'm sure.) And a lot of fans loved him for this. He became a romantic figure not because he was a gifted rock & roll musician struggling with junk, but because he was a junkie who struggled to get money for smack by just also happening to be a gifted rock & roll musician.

I do NOT get this attitude. I never have. I don't understand the veneration of Sid Vicious, who didn't even have the excuse of being talented to warrant his idol worship. I understand the, for lack of a better word, attraction to a potentially brilliant artist who is genuinely trying to stop using but usually loses
out to the addiction. (See: Elliott Smith, Layne Staley.) At least he or she is attempting to get well. But loving folks like Thunders, who never really tried
to kick, because of his habit, rather than in spite of it, is something I just. Do. Not. Understand.

There's a scene in the documentary in a junkie apartment. Two guys, who may be black or may be Latino (it's hard to tell because of the crappy film stock, but they're definitely not white), are cooking up a batch. One of them ties off, fills up a syringe and shoots up. Just as I was wondering why we're watching this, both men look away in the same direction. The camera turns toward the door. One of the men gets up to open it, and it's Thunders. He walks in, exchanges pleasantries (the film is silent) and waits patiently for the guy who didn't jack up to give him some drugs.
Thunders gives him some bills, tastes the drug and gets ready to use. Thankfully, we don't get to see that. Which is doubly fortunate, because the guy who answered the door STILL HAD THE NEEDLE HANGING OFF HIS VEIN AS HE OPENED THE DOOR. Jesus. I could've gone my whole life without seeing that.

The film is very careful to not overtly pass judgment on Thunders for his behavior, though I would argue that the scene I just described says more than any speech ever could.

I've been listening to some of my Thunders records in light of this viewing experience. The So Alone album has some damn good songs on it. The Que Sera Sera album - essentially his last studio record - is also quite good, with Thunders sounding more lucid than he had since the days of the Dolls. Both records have some sexist raunch, but both also have tunes that show a genuine sensitivity and others that boast a wicked sense of humor. And the Dolls records are both classic
rock & roll albums, worth every bit of praise heaped upon them over the years. (Too bad Thunders was never a good singer.)

Yet I hesitate to endorse anything he did, because he was such a wasted, unrepentant bastard. It's not like buying his records will go to feed his junk habit, since he's been dead for 14 years, but still. (A quick side note: according to the Dolls book, Thunders died of undiagnosed leukemia, rather than an overdose. This is the only source I've ever come across that's claimed that.)

I've never been one to judge an artist of any type by his or her personal behavior. I don't tolerate domestic violence, but that doesn't mean I don't think James Brown is a genius. I just wouldn't be able to hang with the guy. So I'm going to continue to enjoy Thunders' music. But I think I'm going to avoid further biographical information, unless I'm feeling particularly masochistic.

By the way, Nina Antonia, the author of the Dolls book, is very loving and forgiving toward Thunders, the junkie who never lived up to his potential because he'd rather get high than write a song, and fairly harsh toward David Johansen, who kicked his addictions early on and went on to a long and solid career of making the kind of music he wanted to make the way he wanted to make it. Seems a bit bass-ackwards.

Musical trivia: on Thunders' solo album So Alone,there's a cover of Otis Blackwell's "Daddy Rollin'Stone." Most of the music on the song was performed by
Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols. Thunders trades verses with Phil Lynott from Thin Lizzy and Steve Marriott from the Small Faces. It's several
generations of guitar-based rock on one song. That's the respect Thunders commanded for his musical vision. Though it's possible the fact that everyone I just mentioned had substance abuse problems (except Cook, I think) might have contributed as well.

Anyway, the point of this diatribe is this. You've studied addictive personalities, etc. for a while now. I know you're hardly an expert, but do you have any idea what the attraction is to junkies from non-junkies? Why do folks romanticize these people? I can understand romanticizing people like Steve Earle or Wayne Kramer, who hit bottom, realized the problem and changed their lives, going on to be stronger and
more productive than ever. But the ones that never even try to change...maybe you can't write off the work, but why worship the personality?

Of course, all this also makes me think of the late Elliott Smith, but that's another story.

***

Me:

Dude... dude! (My new/old word)

You like to poke a hornet's nest, don't ya? I mean... I'll bet there are people among my friends and family who by now have a policy of avoiding the substance
abuse topic with me. And I wouldn't blame them! Shiiiit. Not at all.

You and Henley, I swear...

Okay okay... glad to apply what I've learned, speculated about, etc. during these earliest stages of my education:

What do you get when you cross an elephant and a rhino?

Yes--elephino!

Okay, serious, Brisc, serious...

But... I don't know. Addicts we've certainly covered in my classes, but not the people who idolize the famous ones. I could speculate, which I think I can back up with some okay logic. But the bottom line is that I don't KNOW, and in fact, I've wondered too. Why are so many of my heroes junkies/drunks? Buk, Staley, Larry Brown (though I had no idea he was that bad until he passed), Billie Holiday.

Staley, by the way, is a guy I'd argue never intended to get clean. I'm at utter burnout on my beloved AIC stuff, but Launch is dragging out songs from the box
set to string me along. And really, the guy was in love with death from way back. Necrophilous personality, as they'd say in one of my highfalutin texts.

And as Kelli and I talked about this tonight, she picked up the book she's reading for a class, The Confessions of Saint Augustine. Fourth and fifth century stuff, and he's going on about how people love to watch tragedies (on stage, that is), and that if they're not moved to tears they're pissed off about it.

He's right.

We do love tragedy. We love a wreck, love to know that this artistic genius is actually pouring it all out, putting it all on the line because of the very junk in his/her veins. This is sacrifice of the highest order in the name of art, right?

I'm guilty of it, so guilty. Would I love Billie Holiday as much if she'd been a teetotaler? I'd like to think I would. I mean, she WAS tremendously talented. And hell, the album on which her habit affected her the most, Lady in Satin, is painful to listen to. Her gifts had been eaten away, and no amount of romantic sympathy on my part can get me past the fact that she could no longer hit the notes.

On a similar note, I can't stand to hear Stevie Ray Vaughan's CD Live Alive, because I know he was coming apart at the seams from drugs when he was recording and mixing/posting it.

So I guess there's a balance at work. Get junked out or drunk, punch your own ticket slowly but surely, but hell, we'll be glad to hear how beautifully you sing about it.

In the case of Johnny Thunders, though... well, the guy apparently became a freakshow live. Folks really showed up, paid their money to get berated by a guy
out of his mind or strung out?

There's another angle that resonates a bit with me, but I'm not sure it holds much water. We're taught in my classes from the get-go that addicts lie, period. To themselves, to everyone. It's no secret, of course.

And in the case of Johnny Thunders, I imagine there's some appeal in seeing someone so unrepentant, someone so utterly willing to be an honest junkie. The fans weren't there to pull for him or to quote Narc-Anon tenets at meet & greets. They were there for the macabre thrill of witnessing the downard spiral. Hell, you remember that Replacements song "Johnny's Gonna Die." It was no secret what was happening. There was no subterfuge.

Maybe all of this is just an overlong way of saying it's the same thing that makes us watch car wrecks.

Really, I'd like some answers on this too.


***

Toland:

Thunders was as much a liar as any other junkie, for the most part. You should check out the message board on the Thunders unofficially official website sometime. There's lots of "we love you Johnny!" posts, but every once in a while, someone who actually knew him back in the day will post about being ripped off, lied to and generally fucked over by Johnny in his quest to get money for drugs. Hell, in the doc, Wayne Kramer (who had a notorious train wreck of a band with Thunders called Gang War about 1980) tells a story about the band playing an unusually high-paying gig in the Midwest, and what does Johnny do? He steals the money from the promoter. Before the show, no less. And hides the money on Wayne's girlfriend. Thanks, dude!
They managed to escape with their lives and without getting arrested, but it totally fucked up what could have been a good gig. Wayne had the grace not to be bitter about it.


***

"Daddy Rollin'Stone" sounds great.