Everything Is an Afterthought

Relocation

2011-05-22T03:23:48Z

Now that my new website, www.kevinavery.com, is up and running, I'll be doing all my blogging over there--or, more specifically, here.

Farewell, LiveJournal. It's not you, it's me.

Fantagraphics Books

2011-04-12T19:04:32Z

My terrific publisher, Fantagraphics, has established an official page on its site for Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson. Check it out here.

Along with that, you can also see the official press release.

This Time It's for Real

2011-03-24T21:27:15Z

Almost a year ago, I was pleased to announce that Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson was up on Amazon. Then, as often happens in life (but even more so in publishing), things didn't quite go as planned. But now we're back on track with a new publisher, Fantagraphics Books, and an even bigger book, with more material about Paul and more of his writings.

The book is available for pre-order on Amazon by clicking here.

To quote Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes: This time it's for real.

Copyright 2011 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

Everyone Loves You When You're Dead

2011-03-06T18:18:57Z

Late in August of 2006, almost two months after Paul Nelson's death, I met with Robert Christgau. It was one of my earliest interviews for a book that, at the time, still didn't have a name or a publisher. What I did know, however, was this: the project was mine, it was something I had to do. In a sense, I'd grown up with Paul Nelson's writing and, somehow, I was going to do right by him by bringing his largely forgotten but much-deserving work to the attention of others.

So imagine my reaction when Christgau, walking me out of his East Village apartment to the elevator and pushing the first-floor button for me, happened to mention, "I hear that Neil Strauss is doing a big piece on Paul Nelson for Rolling Stone." The elevator ride down duplicated my sinking feeling inside. I felt as if I were being scooped.

Soon after, Neil Strauss called me and we compared notes. He turned out to be a good guy. Within days, we met in person, immediately following Paul's memorial service at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery. By the time his fine piece, "The Man Who Disappeared," came out in Rolling Stone at the end of the year, he'd shared some valuable information with me, and I'd like to think I shared some valuable information with him.

Now, over four years later, with Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson finally coming out in November, Neil Strauss has kinda sorta scooped me once again, this time with his new book, Everyone Loves You When You're Dead.

Conducted for articles he's written, Neil has revisited the source materials--tapes, notes, and transcripts--of over 3,000 interviews, culling from them 228 "moment[s] of truth or authenticity. After all, you can tell a lot about a person or a situation in a minute," he writes. "But only if you choose the right minute." In doing so, he analyzes fame, notoriety, success, and their meaning in our pop culture-obsessed society. Among his cast of characters in what is organized as a ten-act play are Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga, Courtney Love, Britney Spears, Madonna, Johnny Cash, Neil Young, Tom Cruise, Marilyn Manson, Hugh Laurie, Trent Reznor, Prince, and... Paul Nelson.

Though Paul is not among the interviewees and, like the great white whale in Moby-Dick, doesn't surface until very near the end of the book, his presence in Everyone Loves You When You're Dead is deeply felt. Neil uses Paul's lifelong obsession with movies, books, and music as a barometer by which to measure whether it's all worth it.

Included in what also serves as a tribute to Paul ("Nelson's influence on rock criticism and rock itself is extraordinary," he writes) are snippets of interviews with several people who knew him: his son Mark Nelson, Kit Rachlis, David Bowie, Dave Marsh, Greil Marcus, Tom Pacheco, and Paul's good friends Michael Seidenberg and Steve Feltes.

Everyone Loves You When You're Dead is a terrific book. In selecting the aforementioned "moments of truth," Neil Strauss knew the importance of paying attention to the stammers and the stutters and the discontinued sentences--because often what isn't said is as telling as what is. It's especially important when it comes to understanding Paul Nelson, whose life was often characterized by meaningful silences.

Copyright 2011 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

Happy 75th, Paul

2011-01-24T15:53:11Z

Last Friday, January 21, would have been Paul Nelson's 75th birthday. British author Michael Gray, who has written several books about Bob Dylan (including The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia), noted the date in his blog.

Copyright 2010 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

Elliott Street Radio

2010-12-21T22:07:01Z

A couple of Saturdays ago, Elliott Murphy played an amazing show at the Rockwood Music Hall on the Lower East Side. Featuring a mix of old and new (he just released his thirty-first album, Elliott Murphy), the singer-songwriter played to a standing-room-only house. Many of the members of the audience used to regularly come to his shows around the city back in the Seventies and Eighties, before he moved to Paris, France.

Elliott Murphy performing at the Rockwood Music Hall,
December 11, 2010. Photo by Kevin Avery.

Earlier this week, he was the featured DJ on Sirius XM Radio's E Street Radio channel. Spending an hour spinning a mixture of his own songs and his friend Bruce Springsteen's, Murphy kicked off the show by quipping that he'd always thought E Street Radio "stood for Elliott Street Radio."

After playing his favorite Springsteen song, "Downbound Train" (because of the line "Now I work down at the carwash/Where all it ever does is rain"), Elliott said: "I just thought I'd mention a very mythical figure who appears both in my own story and that of Bruce's, as well. It was a rock critic by the name of Paul Nelson. Paul came from Minnesota, went to college with Bob Dylan, and is credited with turning on Bob to Woody Guthrie albums, which Bob 'borrowed' from Paul's dormitory room (and that's a whole other story).

"But Paul Nelson was the first man who ever mentioned Bruce Springsteen to me. Paul was working in A&R at Mercury Records and I was down in the streets looking for a record deal. I just happened to get an appointment with him and he gave me a copy of Bruce's first record, Greetings from Asbury Park, which I just thought was amazing. Here was a guy who kind of was thinking the same way I was, I thought. Paul took me to see Bruce at Max's Kansas City on Park Avenue South. It was an amazing show. And that's how Bruce and I first met. That was 1973, in January. A long time ago. The friendship has continued all these years.

"Paul sadly passed away a couple of years ago," Elliott said, "and they found some notes." He didn't go into the details, but he was referring to a Post-it note that I'd found in Paul's apartment after his death. Paul used to make tons of CDs for himself of his favorite songs. He often put Post-it notes on his CDs to remind him of which ones he liked. The note in question listed three songs off of Murphy's Soul Surfing album from 2002: "Come on Louann," "Fix Me a Coffee," and "Nothing Can Take the Place of You." Sharing space on the same note was the version of "Romance in Durango" from Bob Dylan's Live '75 album.

Which is why this week, on Elliott Street Radio, Elliott Murphy dedicated "Come on Louann" to Paul Nelson.

Copyright 2010 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

Captain Beefheart (1941-2010)

2010-12-20T17:09:55Z

Don Van Vliet, better known in the music world as Captain Beefheart, died on Friday (you can read The New York Times obituary here).

In the very early 1970s, shortly after Paul Nelson accepted a job in publicity at Mercury Records, he worked closely with Beefheart. In Paul's memoirs, which are included in Everything Is an Afterthought, he detailed "two great memories" he had of Beefheart.

And, as mentioned here a couple of years ago, Paul played a part in making sure that Beefheart's classic Trout Mask Replica became part of the White House Record Library back in 1979.

Copyright 2010 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

Classic Nelson

2010-12-08T14:05:28Z

Reviewing the Ramones' first album for Rolling Stone, Paul Nelson borrowed from Andrew Sarris writing about Samuel Fuller. Click on the image below to read the complete review.

Irwin Silber (1925-2010)

2010-09-16T01:20:59Z

Irwin Silber, Paul Nelson's editor and ofttimes nemesis at Sing Out! magazine, passed away one week ago today. He was eighty-four.

Irwin Silber in 1991

Before Paul resigned from the magazine, he wrote his now legendary defense of Bob Dylan going electric. In that same November 1965 issue of Sing Out!, Silber countered with his own piece, "An Open Letter to Bob Dylan," stating, in part: "I saw at Newport how you had somehow lost contact with people. It seemed to me that some of the paraphernalia of fame were getting in your way."

While Paul always claimed that his resignation from Sing Out! was fueled by the old folk guard's violent reaction to Dylan at Newport, his leaving, as with all of Paul's departures, was much more complicated than that. Still, Paul always maintained that he'd had to sneak his pro-electric Dylan into print. When Richie Unterberger asked Silber about this in a 2002 interview, Silber replied: "I don't recall exactly, but I was the editor. And I knew his opinion. And I think I asked him to write it. I wrote one piece, and he wrote another. And it wouldn't have gone in if I didn't say okay [chuckles]. I think Paul said he wanted to write an alternate opinion. I was always for controversy, and it didn't make any difference if it was directed against me or not. So I can't swear that that's exactly the way it happened, but he didn't have a problem getting it into Sing Out!"

William MacAdams, who co-wrote 701 Toughest Movie Trivia Questions with Paul, remembers going to a film screening with him one afternoon in the early Seventies, when Paul was working in A&R at Mercury Records. When they came out of the theater, Paul spotted Irwin Silber, who'd also been in attendance. "Mercury had sent two limos to pick up some talent that didn't show, so we were going to go off somewhere to eat in one of the limos. Paul, however, knowing Silber was standing behind us watching, told me to take one of the limos while he got in the other alone."

Copyright 2010 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

Conversations with Clint

2010-06-17T03:15:50Z

I'm pleased to announce that Continuum Books will be publishing my second book, Conversations with Clint – 1979 to 1983: Paul Nelson’s Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood.

A little background:

In 1979, Paul Nelson convinced his higher-ups at Rolling Stone that a cover story about Clint Eastwood was in order. A devout genre film and literature fan, Paul idolized Eastwood, who for him was, among other things, a handy and accurate cultural reference point. Reviewing a live performance by rock & roller Warren Zevon in 1976, Paul had written that “seeing the man onstage was like experiencing... Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry... at a very impressionable age. Rightly or wrongly, your life got changed.”

Paul embarked on what at the time, according to critic Dave Marsh, was “probably the longest series of interviews Clint Eastwood's ever done with anyone,” occurring off and on until 1983. Much to Paul's pleasure, he and Eastwood hit it off. The actor-director seemed to trust him and enjoyed spending time with him, and provided him with a wealth of material.

Still acting in other people’s films, the most bankable star in the world was honing his directorial craft on a series of inexpensive films that, without fail, he brought in under-budget and ahead of schedule. Operating largely beneath the critical radar (he took the critics even less seriously than they took him), he made his movies swiftly and inexpensively. Few of his critics then could have predicted—nor would they most likely have gone on record if they had—that Eastwood the actor and director would ever be taken as seriously as he is today.

But Paul Nelson did.

Unfortunately, for reasons explored in the chapter of Everything Is an Afterthought that is devoted to his relationship with Eastwood, Paul—despite the almost twenty-two hours he'd recorded with Eastwood and another ten with his friends and associates—was unable to get beyond page four of the article he'd set out to write.

For over twenty years, the whereabouts of Paul Nelson’s legendary “lost” interviews with Clint Eastwood have been talked about by Eastwood and Nelson fans alike with the same holy-grail hopefulness that cinephiles used to invest in the directors’ cuts of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil or Sam Fuller’s The Big Red One. The tapes were discovered in Paul's apartment following his death in 2006.

The recordings reveal that Eastwood was indeed relaxed and confidential with Paul, speaking openly and without illusions about his influences, his strengths, and his public persona. Aside from their obvious value as a window into the life of one of our major actors and directors at a specific time and place in his career, they reveal a man who’d found a friend in his interviewer and who gave him the benefit of the doubt again and again over a four-year period because he liked him and believed in him.

The publication of Conversations with Clint – 1979 to 1983: Paul Nelson’s Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood will finally bear out that belief.

Copyright 2010 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

The Finish Line

2010-05-17T02:12:37Z

You know what it feels like? It feels as if I'm almost finished running a marathon—the marathon in this case being the three years I spent researching and writing Everything Is an Afterthought, interviewing a hundred or so of Paul Nelson's friends, family, associates, and several of the artists about whose work he wrote (including Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Elliott Murphy, Rod Stewart, Suzanne Vega, Freedy Johnston, and Bruce Hornsby)—and just when that symbolic satin ribbon comes into sight, it suddenly moves farther away.

The finish line becomes a moving target.

No sooner had I announced the publication date of the book than I received word that the publisher has rescheduled its release to Spring 2011 in order to give us a few more months to solicit advance blurbs.

Sure, I'm disappointed; but if this strategy results in more people buying and/or reading the book, then I'm all for it. My goal for this project remains the same as when I began: to not only collect Paul Nelson's best writing into book form so that it can be rediscovered by his original audience, but to introduce his work to a new generation of readers and establish him as one of our finest writers.

In the meantime, I'll continue posting updates here, as well as material that didn't make its way into the book. And maybe some interview transcripts. And next spring will be here before we know it.

Copyright 2010 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

David Lightbourne (1942-2010)

2010-05-03T15:07:05Z

I just received an e-mail from Joe Carducci:

Musician, critic, polymath, holy smoker David Lightbourne passed in his sleep early last Friday. He wrote important pieces for TNV (Elvis' first concert up north, 1957; the birth of the rock press at Little Sandy Review, 1960), and he was a friend of mine since 1977. The boomer bohemia had become mass culture, and as the punk underground recharged itself I saw in Dave some kind of eternal bohemia that pre-dated the Summer of Love, the British Invasion, and Elvis, and would outlast them. I didn't follow everywhere David went but he shaped alot of my approach thereafter. He and we are lucky he lived to age 67.

I wrote about Dave Lightbourne last year ("The Little Sandy Review") when he contributed his article "The Little Sandy Review and the Birth of Rock Criticism" to Carducci's The New Vulgate. I had first interviewed Lightbourne, a Wyoming-based musician, in January of 2007. We spoke several times after that. Whenever he'd journey to New York for a gig, he always gave me a call.

In 1999, during one of those trips to NYC, Lightbourne had paid a visit to Evergreen Video and introduced himself to Paul Nelson. A long-time fan of The Little Sandy Review, he knew Paul not only through his work but through his heritage: "He reminded me of all my Norwegian and Swedish relatives in Minnesota who grew up in a town of 2,500 people. He was a very recognizable character to me." He fondly remembered rummaging through the movies that Evergreen had to offer: "We looked at some of these strange reissues on DVD that were in a dump bin on one of the tables in the middle of the store, and it was obscure popular culture of the Forties.... I said, 'Jesus, Paul, look what you guys've got in here.'"

The latest issue of The New Vulgate features a tribute to Dave Lightbourne. There you will find Lightbourne's take on Paul Nelson's appearance in the Dylan documentary No Direction Home:

My immediate reaction was, “Well, that’s just the nicest little gift anybody could give anybody. Scorsese has now made it possible to feel like you are sitting across the room from Paul Nelson.” Because that was exactly what it was like being in the room with him. I could have been the camera in those scenes. That’s exactly what he looked like, that’s exactly how he talked, that’s exactly what he talked about.

The Book Cover Revealed

2010-04-10T16:58:23Z

Though the publication date of the book isn't until September 1st, the appearance this week on Amazon of Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson finally makes it possible for me to reveal illustrator Jeff Wong's magnificent cover.

Jeff, who was good friends with Paul in the late Eighties/early Nineties, has truly captured the essence of the man behind the shades and honored his old pal with this cover (to say nothing of all his hard work on the book's interior design).

Copyright 2010 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

Rod Stewart

2010-03-25T14:32:53Z

Back in November, Minneapolis, Minnesota's own Bill Tuomala posted a review of Paul Nelson and Lester Bangs's 1981 book Rod Stewart (which I've written about previously here). Writing at Rocks Off: The Exiled on Main Street Weblog, Tuomala ranked Rod Stewart as number fourteen in "The Top 30 Rock Books I Own."

And if you click on the little black-and-white image of Paul and Lester that Bill has provided, it will lead you to a larger (albeit blurry) version of the photo.

Copyright 2010 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

The Doors Redux

2010-03-14T19:09:47Z

I've addressed Paul Nelson's writings about the Doors before, back in June of 2008 ("Perceiving the Doors"). In that same entry, I mentioned that award-winning director Tom DiCillo was at work on a Doors documentary. Now that DiCillo's movie, When You're Strange: A Film About the Doors, is preparing for its U.S. premiere (in select theaters on April 9) and the Internet is abuzz with anticipation, it seems like a good time to post this ad from July 1967, which incorporated part of Paul's Hullabaloo review about the band's first album. Just click on the image to enlarge it.

And, while we're on the subject, here's a link to the trailer to DiCillo's film, which is artfully composed entirely of period footage, much of it previously unreleased. Should you miss DiCillo's film in the theater, fear not: it's also scheduled to appear on PBS's American Masters series on May 26.

Copyright 2010 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

"Mel Lyman's America"

2010-02-01T01:43:57Z

Though I finished writing Everything Is an Afterthought over five months ago, hardly a week goes by when I don't receive an e-mail or a phone call that is in some way connected to Paul Nelson. (Thankfully, with publication imminent this fall, the Stewie Griffin-inspired "How you comin' on that book you're workin' on?" inquiries have pretty much subsided.) Recently, I heard from William MacAdams, author of Ben Hecht: The Man Behind the Legend. In addition to being a longtime friend of Paul's, in 1995 William coauthored a book with him: 701 Toughest Movie Trivia Questions of All Time.

Kevin,

You probably know that at one time (and perhaps to the end of his life?) one of Paul's favorite albums was Jim Kweskin's America. To Paul the creative force behind the music was Mel Lyman, thus he referred to the record as "Mel Lyman's America." He introduced me to it sometime in the early '70s, before I moved to Europe. I had a vinyl copy, which disappeared a long time ago. Just the other day, don't know why, I thought of Lyman and checked to see if someone on Facebook had a Mel Lyman page (there isn't one), which led me to search for a CD. There is a double Kweskin set including America. I bought it, wondering if it held up. Got it yesterday and couldn't stop playing it.

When Paul died I was saddened but didn't grieve (we had been out of contact for several years, as you know, Paul shutting me out, a deeply hurtful mystery that will never be explained). The music brought Paul back so vividly I broke down in tears, especially upon once again hearing "Amelia Earhart's Last Flight," "The Old Rugged Cross," and "Old Black Joe," Paul's favorites.

I thought you might be unaware of Paul's fondness for Lyman's music. If so, the whole saga of Lyman's remarkable life is worth reading about, the Rolling Stone hatchet job/exposé, et al.

William

I'd never heard of Jim Kweskin or Mel Lyman, let alone the album in question. Nor could I find where Paul had ever made mention of them in any of his writings. But, trusting William's judgment (he'd proved himself an invaluable resource regarding All Things Paul Nelson), I downloaded the album posthaste from iTunes. I wasn't disappointed. While I was familiar with many of the tunes by way of other artists' versions, there's something deeply felt and unique about Jim Kweskin's America. It reminds me of something Paul wrote about Jackson Browne's Running on Empty (and which was quoted in the program at Paul's memorial service):

It's simple enough to talk about lyrics, aims, structure, and all the critical etceteras, but it's very difficult to pinpoint what it is that's actually moved you. It has to do with essences, I think, and all those corny virtues like truth, courage, conviction, kindness, and the rest of them.

Jim Kweskin's America has all those corny virtues, I think, as did Paul.

Copyright 2010 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

On Paul Nelson's Shelf

2010-01-19T01:19:01Z

Not far into Jonathan Lethem’s novel Chronic City, Perkus Tooth mentions that he's procured a videotape of director Gillo Pontecorvo’s film Burn! Tooth is the walleyed rock critic who most resembles Paul Nelson, Lethem's real-life friend and mentor, in his obsessive dedication to the music, books, and movies he loves. And Burn! is an obscure movie that its star, Marlon Brando, purportedly liked more than any of his other films.

The mention of Burn! in Chronic City set off a small explosion in my head, and I immediately went to my computer to find a photo I'd taken in Paul's apartment three years ago next week, shortly after the medical examiner had finally unsealed the premises. There, on Paul’s shelf, amongst his hundreds if not thousands of videotapes, turned outward and on display as only certain tapes were, was Burn!, just as I'd remembered it.

Jonathan was truly amazed when he saw the photo. "I honestly had ZERO way of knowing Paul even knew of Burn!, let alone cared for it, when I placed it in that prominent place in Perkus Tooth's obsessions."

Copyright 2010 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

Andy Zwerling

2010-01-15T00:31:44Z

Andy Zwerling was probably the youngest of the many young musicians whom Paul Nelson backed and/or befriended during his A&R years. Zwerling was only eighteen or nineteen when he first met Paul in 1973. One half of a brother-and-sister act that included his younger sister Leslie (who was still in junior high), Zwerling cherishes his memories of his friendship with Paul, which lasted well beyond their first meeting.

"A lot of people told me that I should contact Paul Nelson at Mercury," Zwerling e-mailed me before we spoke. "I tried calling Paul for a few weeks, but couldn't reach him. When I got him on the phone, he told me that he'd heard that my songs were good, but that he wouldn't be able to do anything for us at Mercury. I asked if we could come play him some songs. He repeated that it wouldn't do any good, but graciously told us to come in anyway.

"I knew that he had signed the New York Dolls. I halfway expected to meet some wild man instead of the quiet, soft-spoken guy Paul was. He immediately told us that since the New York Dolls weren't selling well, it would be impossible for him to do anything for us." [As a point of clarification, by the end of 1973 New York Dolls sold 110,000 copies—not bad for a first album. The problem was that the band was spending money faster than it was coming in, and that financial fact, along with their now legendary antics, was poisoning their relationship with Mercury management. Paul was stuck in the middle with the Mercury blues again.]

"I asked if we could play a few songs, and he gave a bemused smile," Zwerling continued. "We jumped up and started playing. He kept smiling, and we kept playing. Every few songs he'd say that 'I can't do anything for you.' He kept smiling. After a while, he picked up the phone and called a recording studio. He set up a session for us in a beautiful sixteen-track studio. That was a huge deal for us. We recorded two songs ten days later. We all had a great time in the studio. Those two songs are on our retrospective, Somewhere Near Pop Heaven." [In 2003, the album became an unexpected hit in Croatia.] "Paul was always soft-spoken, but he was very animated, encouraging, and enthusiastic during the whole day.

"I don't know how much longer he stayed at Mercury, but he continued to try to sign us. When he left Mercury he sent us to someone he knew at CBS, and we recorded a demo there, which would not have happened without Paul's recommendation. We didn't play live in the city very often, but Paul not only saw us four or five times, but he went out of his way to bring other writers with him [including Dave Marsh]. In 1980 we recorded a demo. It was cheaper to press it as an LP than to make cassettes. Paul sent a copy to Ken Tucker, who gave us a great review in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. I'm sure he sent it to other people, including a writer named Leslie Berman. Paul was then then the review editor at Rolling Stone, and he ran her very favorable review of us.

"His support was always incredible. No matter how much Paul Nelson told us he couldn't do anything for us, he spent decades doing everything he could for us.

"I lost touch with Paul during the 1990s. I knew he'd gone through a very tough time after his mother's death, but I didn't know where he was. One of the last times I saw him was in the middle of the winter sometime in the Eighties. It was about twelve degrees and very windy. I had on a down jacket. Paul had on a very light jacket. I asked 'Aren't you cold?' 'Cold?' He literally laughed. 'I'm from Minnesota, this isn't cold. It gets cold in Minnesota.'

In 2001, "Ed Ward wrote a New York Times story about us. He wanted to talk to Paul about us. I e-mailed a bunch of people, and I was directed to Evergreen Video. I got hold of Paul, and I spoke to him regularly until a year ago. His only regret about the Times story was that he wished more of the compliments he'd given us had made it to the final story. That made three decades of 100 percent support."

Paul would have no doubt been pleased, then, in 2008 when Zwerling—a one-time rock critic himself (with a handful of Rolling Stone reviews to his credit) and now a practicing attorney—released Hold Up the Sky, his first solo album in 37 years. The CD is a joy, and Ken Tucker, now editor-at-large at Entertainment Weekly, featured it on NPR's Fresh Air, where he named it one of the best albums of 2008.

It's not difficult to imagine that Paul Nelson would've agreed.

Copyright 2010 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

Lou Reed

2010-01-09T19:34:34Z

One of the more frustrating aspects of selecting which of Paul Nelson's writings to include in Everything Is an Afterthought was deciding which works not to include. For a guy who's famous for his struggles with getting the word onto the page, he wrote a hell of a lot. As much as I hated to, one of the last chapters I deleted from the manuscript was devoted to Lou Reed. Reed was a frequent touchstone and reference point for Paul, but he wrote about the singer-songwriter-founding Velvet Underground member surprisingly few times. Fortunately, two of his best pieces about Reed are available online.

When Paul was still in A&R at Mercury Records, he seized the opportunity to acquire some previously unreleased tapes of the Velvets performing live in Texas, less than a year before Reed departed the band. When the album (a double) was finally released in 1974 as 1969 Velvet Underground Live, Paul penned the liner notes that appeared on the back of the LP’s gatefold cover. (For the inside, he invited singer-songwriter Elliott Murphy, whom he was still trying to sign to Mercury, to compose some liner notes of his own. Murphy writes about the experience here and, although he misremembers the year—it was 1973, not 1972—offers a download of his original handwritten notes.)

In 1975, a few months after Paul left Mercury Records and returned to criticism, he wrote about Reed again, reviewing Lou Reed Live, the artist's follow-up to his classic Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal. “Had he accomplished nothing else,” Paul wrote, “his work with the Velvet Underground in the late Sixties would assure him a place in anyone's rock & roll pantheon; those remarkable songs still serve as an articulate aural nightmare of men and women caught in the beauty and terror of sexual, street and drug paranoia, unwilling or unable to move. The message is that urban life is tough stuff—it will kill you; Reed, the poet of destruction, knows it but never looks away and somehow finds holiness as well as perversity in both his sinners and his quest.”

Paul ended his critique of Lou Reed Live on an optimistic note and, as his review the following year of Coney Island Baby attests, his faith in Reed was rewarded. The review contains some of Paul’s best writing, his usual well-chosen words expressing not only his aesthetic admiration for Reed’s new work but also the sheer pleasure he derived from listening to it. The review—one of the rare times that his writing reflected his love of sports—also boasts one of my favorite Paul Nelson last lines.

Which makes me want to enjoy the entire piece over again.

Copyright 2010 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

Deborah Frost

2009-12-26T19:02:49Z

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.

Disappointment

2009-12-12T20:32:38Z

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.

Rashomon

2009-12-10T02:00:46Z

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.

Soundcheck

2009-11-30T01:45:37Z

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.

Michael Seidenberg

2009-11-15T17:10:25Z

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.

Meet Perkus Tooth

2009-10-09T21:11:51Z

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.