Everything Is an Afterthought

It recently came to my attention that, back in July of 2008, former rock critic Deborah Frost was a contestant on the roving NYC game show Cash Cab. Lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist for the heavy metal band the Brain Surgeons since 1994, she used to write for The Village Voice, Creem, The Boston Review, and Rolling Stone, where she wrote for Paul Nelson. "The first review he assigned me was Journey," Frost told me when I interviewed her for Everything Is an Afterthought. "It was no big deal or torturous editing session. When it appeared in Rolling Stone, I saw that he had changed just one word, like a magician who knows just how and when to deftly pass the wand. It was brilliant."

Shortly after Paul's death in 2006, Frost penned a remembrance of him, "Another World," for RockCritics.com.

Copyright 2009 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

I've been thinking some more about what I posted last time, about the various reasons why Paul Nelson stopped writing and faded from view, and remembered something his friend and fellow critic Billy Altman had told me when I interviewed him for Everything Is an Afterthought. "In some respects he was just such an idealist," Altman said about Paul. "It was I think one of the things on which he made his friendship with Lester [Bangs]. I mean, these were people who on the surface seemed really, really cynical about the world at large, but in their heart of hearts were incredible romantics and incredible idealists. [Paul] was so upset about being disappointed. Then it was always a combination of having invested all of this in these artists and then feeling disappointed, and then coming to the realization that, well, everything in life ultimately disappoints."

Copyright 2009 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

My appearance with Jonathan Lethem on WNYC's Soundcheck last week (which you can listen to here) was pure pleasure. I only have one regret. When host John Schaefer equated the mystery that was Paul Nelson's life to Rashomon, "where some people knew this part of Paul Nelson, some people knew that part of Paul Nelson," my response suggested that Paul's departure from society at large was due to his disillusionment with the state of rock & roll in the early Eighties and, in particular, with some of the artists whose work he'd championed. That was only part of Paul's (to employ Jonathan's well-chosen words) "slow fade." The reasons were many.

In the course of writing Everything Is an Afterthought, I several times discovered that some of the legendary tales of Paul's life (why he left his wife and child, why he resigned from Sing Out! in the Sixties and Rolling Stone in the Eighties, why he stopped writing, etc.) were ultimately much more complex than they initially seemed. "When the legend becomes fact," a character says in the 1962 John Ford film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, "print the legend"; but the facts are often much more interesting.

That is perhaps the greatest achievement of Jonathan's novel Chronic City (recently chosen as one of the ten best books of 2009 by The New York Times): the character of Perkus Tooth, Jonathan's Paul Nelson simulacrum, doesn't so much embody Paul as it accurately portrays his complexity and the intensity of his obsessions, and especially the different lives he led with his different friends.

Copyright 2009 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

Tomorrow afternoon—Monday, November 30th, at 2 o'clock (EST)—I'll be joining Jonathan Lethem to discuss Paul Nelson, his life, and his career on WNYC Radio's Soundcheck. If you're in the New York area, you can hear the show, which is hosted by John Schaefer, on 93.9 FM. Or you can listen live regardless of where you are via the WNYC website. The program also repeats tomorrow night at 10 o'clock (EST).

Copyright 2009 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

One of the bonuses that came from working on Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson—along with the immense aesthetic pleasure—was that, in addition to getting to meet and interview a boatload of people whose work I'd admired for years, I also formed some new friendships. On top of his sage wisdom when it came to movies and music and books, Paul Nelson also collected some pretty fascinating friends.

One of them is Michael Seidenberg, Paul's closest confidant in the last few chapters of his life. In the last year or so, Michael himself has been the subject of a profile in The New Yorker and, more recently, the mouthpiece for his three-legged dog Ava in an interview in The Faster Times. In between these two articles, Ava served as the inspiration for the title character in Jonathan Lethem's short story "Ava's Apartment," which also appeared in The New Yorker. Eva's apartment is really Michael's apartment, which Paul frequently visited. Bringing this all around full circle, an expanded version of "Ava's Apartment" appears in Lethem's new novel, Chronic City, whose character Perkus Tooth is heavily based on Paul.


It was Michael who, back in July of 2006, called to tell me that Paul Nelson had died and, without that call or his friendship, the book I wrote would have been decidedly different.

Copyright 2009 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

Yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, in Alexandra Alter's Q&A with writer Jonathan Lethem ("Just Asking... Jonathan Lethem"), the author confirms what many of us already knew: that the reclusive rock critic who inhabits Lethem's new novel, Chronic City, is partly based on his old friend Paul Nelson. Back in May, The New Yorker ran an excerpt from the novel as "Ava's Apartment," a short story about a washed-up rock critic named Perkus Tooth who is made temporarily homeless by a blizzard and winds up squatting in an apartment with a three-legged pit bull.

If the reference to Tooth's "Jackson Hole burger mecca" weren't enough, (Paul Nelson haunted Jackson Hole, a burger joint near his apartment on the Upper East Side), Lethem confirmed the connection in his interview with Alter, telling about when he came back to the city in the mid-Eighties: "I think of that period because I formed this very important friendship, that informs the book very strongly, with this kind of legendary semi-reclusive rock critic named Paul Nelson…"


Lethem was working at an early incarnation of Michael Seidenberg's Brazen Head Books when he first met Paul, who frequented the shop. When I visited with Lethem in 2006, he told me: "There was an unsentimental and disconnected part of Paul where I think he didn't feel that his earlier life was his present life anymore. And all those great stories that Michael and I would have to work so hard to get out him about being an A&R man and putting together that live Velvets record or signing the Dolls or his connection to Dylan—he wasn't feeling close to those experiences anymore. They were just stories that he would half-willingly tell."

Copyright 2009 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

Since I began working on Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson a little over three years ago, four people who played key roles in various stages of Paul Nelson's life have passed away. I've already written about two of them here: photographer Dave Gahr last year and, a couple of months ago, musician Mike Seeger.

Last night I learned about the passing of Bill "Cupid" Bartolin, lead guitarist and co-songwriter for Paul's beloved band from Youngstown, Ohio, Blue Ash. Paul signed the group to their first recording contract when he was in A&R at Mercury Records in the early Seventies. Bartolin had been diagnosed with cancer early last month and died yesterday morning due to complications.


When we spoke a couple of months after Paul's passing in 2006, she told me that, though she always thought that he should've followed his dream and written novels, one of her favorite pieces of Paul's music criticism was his review of Bob Dylan and the Band's The Basement Tapes. (A greatly expanded version of the piece, considering Dylan's career as a whole, will appear in the book when it's published in the fall of next year.) It is indeed some of Paul's best and writing and, not coincidentally, provides evidence as to the fine fiction writer he might have become.

Copyright 2009 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

I'm late in posting this, but Bruce Springsteen turned sixty one week ago today. Over at Mental Floss, Matt Soniak posted the very entertaining "60 Springsteen Facts for Bruce's 60th Birthday." 

Regarding Number 17 on his list—
—I was reminded of a passage from the "Two Jewish Mothers Pose as Rock Critics" chapter of Paul Nelson and Lester Bangs's Rod Stewart book wherein, during a give-and-take between the two critics about the nature of fame and what it can do to an artist, this same story about Springsteen came up. Paul said: 

I asked Bruce if any of this were true when I interviewed him in 2007.

"Oh yeah," he said, "oh yeah. I think it was St. Louis, though, or St. Paul. I forget where. I was by myself. I sort of enjoyed the license that that strange part of my job, where people recognize you, allowed me to kind of step into people’s lives, and it was just a night where I wasn’t doing anything and it just sounded like a good idea. The kid ran into his room and came out with an album cover and held it up next to me [laughs] after we came in the door.”

Springsteen volunteered that he does still see the kid's mother occasionally when he's in town (whichever town it may be), though it sounded as if such meetings were in the nature of a before- or after-concert encounters, not a visit on his own part.

Copyright 2009 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

During Paul Nelson's five-year tenure at Mercury Records, when he wasn't busy trying to sign the New York Dolls, he was responsible for the release of two solo, traditional folk albums by Mike Seeger: Music from True Vine (1972) and The Second Annual Farewell Reunion (1973). Seeger, founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers, passed away last Friday.

Paul and Seeger had known each since 1960 or so when the Ramblers, who were fans of The Little Sandy Review, had visited Paul and Jon Pankake in Minneapolis. When LSR was sold to Barry Hansen in 1964 and the focus of the journal shifted from folk to rock, it was Seeger who wrote a letter objecting to the change.

When I spoke with him in 2007, Seeger wanted to make sure that I understood that he wasn’t anti-rock & roll. "I want people to understand, for instance, when Bob Dylan went electric at Newport, that was the best music I thought I'd ever heard him play and I loved it. I can understand the connection." What he objected to "was the abandonment of everything that went on during the first three or four years for popular music."

Mike Seeger in 2003

Seeger was saddened to hear of Paul's death. "I've seen Jon down through the years, and I'd always ask, 'Well, how's Paul?' and there just didn't seem to be any Paul." He said, "He gave us a lot while he was here."

So did Seeger.

Copyright 2009 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

Over at The New Vulgate (Issue No. 4), the first part of Dave Lightbourne's "The Little Sandy Review and the Birth of Rock Criticism" is now online. Beginning in Minneapolis in 1960, Paul Nelson and his University of Minnesota pal Jon Pankake began publishing The Little Sandy Review, the first magazine devoted to traditional folk music.

Lightbourne, a Wyoming-based musician who was friends with Paul, does a fine job placing the elegant Little Sandy into historical context and makes a good case for it being the first music fanzine. His piece is actually the introduction to a work-in-progress—a book chronicling the entire history of The Little Sandy Review.

Speaking of works in progress—or rather, works no longer in progress—good news: after nearly three years of research and more than 100 interviews, the manuscript for Everything Is an Afterthought is in the publisher's hands. Again, my apologies for neglecting this journal these last several months, but the time away from here was well spent wrapping up the book.

More to follow . . .

Copyright 2009 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

I've been terribly remiss in keeping this journal current. Long story short, most of my time is occupied either in the PR arena or finishing the book. Regardless, I'll do my best to post here more regularly.

I remain committed to telling Paul Nelson's story. Right now I'm in the midst of editing and shaping the book (rewriting, basically—my favorite kind of writing). In addition to using, as much as possible, Paul's own writings, I'm including comments from those who knew him best: his friends, family, colleagues, and several of the artists whose work he wrote about and whose friendship and admiration he earned. The list of interviewees is close to 100.


In the course of neglecting this journal, I also failed to note the release last October of Greg Copeland's sophomore album, Diana and James. Twenty-six years earlier, Copeland had released Revenge Will Come, an album that Paul greatly admired but about which he never wrote (you can read more about Paul's interview with Copeland here).

The new album, which sounds so completely different from its predecessor that one might easily mistake the works as being by two different artists, possesses the kind of timelessness that Dylan sometimes captures, or Neil Young, or the music of the Band. It at once sounds old and new.

Every time I listen to Diana and James, I'm earstruck by its beauty.

Copyright 2009 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

In the latest issue of Rolling Stone, David Browne reports that in 1979 Paul Nelson was recruited as an advisor to a commission headed by legendary producer John Hammond to update the official White House Record Library. As a result of the commission's efforts, President Obama can enjoy vinyl versions of Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Springsteen's Born to Run, Randy Newman's Good Old Boys, Led Zeppelin IV, the Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed, the Ramones' Rocket to Russia, the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, the Flying Burrito Brothers' The Gilded Palace of Sin, as well as records by Santana, Neil Young, Talking Heads, Isaac Hayes, Elton John, the Cars, and Barry Manilow.

It's not difficult to surmise which selections were high on Paul's list of suggestions.

The entire article, "Obama's Secret Record Collection," can be found here.

Copyright 2009 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved. 

Last week, William Zantzinger, the murderer made famous not by his heinous act but by Bob Dylan having written a song about him, passed away. Michael Yockel's excellent article, "Willian Zantzinger's Lonesome Death," examines not only the man who inspired Dylan's classic "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," but also the truth behind the song. In doing so, he wraps up his article by quoting Paul Nelson.

The trouble is, as fitting as the quote may be in the context of Yockel's article, the words—critical of Dylan's having played fast and loose with the truth—do not belong to Paul. To the contrary, Paul had called the tune "Dylan's best protest song." 

The quote actually belongs to another fine writer, Clinton Heylin, from his 2001 book Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited. Circa 1999, he interviewed Paul and, in the book, writes about Paul's Dylan connection.

Copyright 2009 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

Writer Nick Tosches first met Paul Nelson in 1972, when Paul was working in publicity at Mercury Records. "A couple of times a month, if not once a week at times," Tosches remembers, "he would take me and my friend Richard Meltzer to lunch because we didn't have any money." Tosches wrote for Rolling Stone in the late Seventies when Paul was record reviews editor there—where Paul also rave-reviewed Tosches' Jerry Lee Lewis biography, Hellfire, in 1982. In Paul's later years, Tosches would often visit Paul at Evergreen Video. "And then I went off to Paris. I was looking forward to seeing him again after I came back. And then I heard that he died."


While the news out of Hollywood last week that Johnny Depp's production company has acquired the rights to film Nick Tosches' novel In the Hand of Dante (with Depp playing Tosches) is indeed big, I'm even more pleased that Nick has agreed to write the foreword to Everything Is an Afterthought.

I think his old friend Paul would be, too.

Copyright 2008 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

In 1972, Paul Nelson was promoted from publicity to East Coast head of A&R at Mercury Records. His first real signing was Blue Ash, a band from Youngstown, Ohio. The group's 1973 debut album, No More, No Less, earned a place on several critics' best-of-the-year lists but, as these things often go, didn't make a connection in the marketplace. Blue Ash's MySpace page remembers it this way:

Thirty-four years later, No More, No Less has finally been released on CD. As Blue Ash's bassist and vocalist, Frank Secich (now of the Deadbeat Poets), recalls in the CD's liner notes, "In June of 1974, Blue Ash was dropped by Mercury Records (under heated protest from Paul Nelson) for lack of sales. Paul was subsequently sacked from the label, too, in large part for signing Blue Ash and the New York Dolls."

While that has indeed been the legend of Paul's departure from Mercury, it's not quite that simple. Reasons for leaving seldom are.

Copyright 2008 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved. 

August of 1974 was a memorable month for singer/songwriter David Forman. A few days after being involved in the most benign and fanciful takeover ever of the World Trade Center—high-wire artist Philippe Petit's 45-minute walk back and forth on a steel cable strung between the Twin Towers—Forman penned his amazing song "Dream of a Child" and somehow, in some way now lost to memory and time, came to the attention of Paul Nelson at Mercury Records.

While Paul was unsuccessful convincing his higher-ups to offer a recording contract to the artist (Forman says, "They looked at him like he was out of his mind"), Forman ultimately was signed by Clive Davis to Arista, where he recorded one classic, self-titled, and now very collectible album (there's a used CD on Amazon right now going for $109.99).

Forman, who went on to forge a musical career and an alter-ego with Little Isidore and the Inquisitors, can currently be seen on the big screen in James Marsh's brilliant documentary about Philippe Petit, Man on Wire, where he even performs "Dream of a Child."

Copyright 2008 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved. 

In January of 1973, a few weeks after Elliott Murphy first played his demos for Paul Nelson, then an A&R guy at Mercury Records, Paul presented him the recently released debut album of another songsmith: Bruce Springsteen's Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. Later that same month, Paul invited Murphy to join him at Max's Kansas City, where Springsteen was playing with a very early incarnation of the E Street Band.

This week over at Wolfgang's Vault—which features free streaming of vintage live concert performances—the featured concert is, with relative certainty, the show in question. Recorded January 31, 1973, after the show Paul introduced Elliott to Bruce, thereby launching a friendship that continues to this day.

Copyright 2008 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

A few weeks ago, Paul Nelson's good friend and fellow critic Bud Scoppa, who worked with him at Mercury Records in the early Seventies, was going through a trunk in his garage when he came across a photocopy of Paul's list of the top ten albums of 1972. Scoppa posted the list yesterday on his blog.

At the risk of sounding like everybody's father, the ten LPs (as they were called back then) in question prove that, while we still continue to live in interesting times, the music was definitely better back then:

The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street
Jackson Browne, Jackson Browne
Rod Stewart, Never a Dull Moment
Mott The Hoople, All the Young Dudes
Randy Newman, Sail Away
Steve Young, Seven Bridges Road
John Fahey, Of Rivers and Religion
David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
The Kinks, Everybody’s in Showbiz
Wilderness Road, Wilderness Road

Paul, an inveterate list-maker on his own, compiled his list for Fusion, a Boston-based rock magazine. It's interesting to note that, because Paul's critical output was minimized during his Mercury years, he only wrote a full-fledged review for one of these albums: Wilderness Road. Paul loved the band and more than once flew from New York to Chicago, where they were based, on his own dime. His Rolling Stone review of the album reveals Paul at his most ardent and least trendy.

Copyright 2008 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.
 

Rock journalist. PR guy for Led Zeppelin. Nirvana's manager. Good friend to Kurt and Courtney. Record company executive. These are but a few of the descriptions you might apply to Danny Goldberg, whose latest book, Bumping into Geniuses: My Life Inside the Rock and Roll Business, hits the bookstores next month. In addition to the appellations I've already dropped, among the many behind-the-scenes tales Goldberg tells are how he covered Woodstock when nobody else wanted to, when he talked Kiss into taking it all off (makeup-wise), and how he launched Stevie Nicks' solo career. What emerges is the profile of someone savvy enough to know that doing business is all about relationships—and that you can't succeed at either one at the expense of the other.


For our purposes here, Goldberg also writes about such Paul Nelson favorites as Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Ian Hunter (whom Goldberg now manages), and Neil Young. Most importantly, he writes about Paul.

Touching on Paul's five years at Mercury Records, when Goldberg was writing for Circus magazine, he also acknowledges Paul's role in the Warren Zevon saga in a lengthy and loving chapter about the singer/songwriter's final years (Goldberg was head of Artemis Records and released not only Zevon's last three studio albums but also the fine tribute album, Enjoy Every Sandwich: The Songs of Warren Zevon). He also reflects on Paul's memorial service at St. Mark's Church on September 7, 2006.

What emerges is Goldberg's admiration for both Paul the man and Paul the writer. As he wrote for RockCritics.com shortly after Paul's death:

Towards the end of Bumping into Geniuses, Goldberg realizes that "People like me were only valuable to record companies to the extent we could identify and sign commercial talent. And the way that the business world judged your talent for picking and signing and working with artists was not how smart you were, how much you loved music, how hard you worked, what skills you had, or what critics thought of your taste. To be taken seriously by the grown-ups you had to be associated with big hits. That was the coin of the realm."

Which pretty much sums up why Paul Nelson's record company career ended in 1975.

Copyright 2008 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

Paul Nelson wrote: "It is hard to claim too much for the man who in every sense revolutionized modern poetry, American folk music, popular music, and the whole of modern-day thought; even the strongest praise seems finally inadequate. Not many contemporary artists have the power to actually change our lives, but surely Dylan does—and has."

Paul wrote this in 1966, the year after Dylan "went electric" at the Newport Folk Festival and left behind a heretofore devoted audience of dyed-in-the-wool folk-music enthusiasts (an event that also contributed to Paul resigning his post as managing editor of Sing Out! magazine—but that's another story). 

Performing Tuesday night at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Dylan remained just as artistically unyielding. 
 
The last time I saw Dylan live was 20 years ago and also outdoors, near Park City, Utah. His face was puffy and he was slightly hunched forward, as if he were being crushed by the weight of his own reputation. One of his surlier periods, he would just blast through song after song, each one almost indiscernible from the next. This wasn't Dylan gone electric—it was Dylan gone electrically bombastic.

But I was not surprised. I knew from recordings that Dylan performing live was a chameleonic chimera. There was the bellowing Dylan (with the Band) from 1974's Before the Flood; and two years later there was the punk-rock Dylan spewing fiery deliveries on Hard Rain. What we got at Prospect Park this week was a defiantly elegant Dylan, his voice at once ravaged and ravishing, as thin as a whip and just as dangerous. His band was sharp and exact—like a surgeon's knife, or Jack the Ripper's blade. He played his music the way he wanted to play it, everybody else be damned.

So it was with some amusement that, on our way out of the park after the concert, we heard grumblings to the effect that Dylan "didn't even know the words to his own songs," which "didn't sound the same," and (my favorite) "He didn't even play 'Mr. Tambourine Man'!" 

Forty-three years after Newport, he's still got it. And 42 years after Paul's words, even the strongest praise still seems inadequate.

Copyright 2008 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.