Graves Louise Brooks, Frank Zappa, & Other Charmers & Dreamers

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-942531-07-4
Verlag: Devault-Graves Digital Editions
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 415 Seiten

Award-winning author and journalist Tom Graves in 'Louise Brooks, Frank Zappa, & Other Charmers & Dreamers' collects the best of his long-form journalism articles and profiles as well as his in-depth interviews with a variety of curious personalities. The lead piece is 'My Afternoon with Louise Brooks' about Graves's encounter in 1982 with the reclusive silent film legend Louise Brooks. He was the last journalist ever to sit bedside with Miss Brooks, who allowed very few people into her life. Also included are Graves's 1979 sit down with the king of Southern grit lit, Harry Crews, his discovery of the first Elvis impersonator, his search with the help of Quentin Tarantino to find actress Linda Haynes, who had vanished from Hollywood. Included are also Graves's in-depth question and answer interviews with: Frank Zappa, Mick Taylor of the Rolling Stones, Lee Mavers of the cult band the La's, Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders, and rock critic Dave Marsh. Some of Graves's best essays are also part of this anthology: his piece on the Sex Pistols in Memphis, an apology for biographer Albert Goldman, a revisit of Woodstock, interviews with CD remastering gurus, and more.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Graves, Tom

Leseproben

Chapter Four -- Rochester ROCHESTER, NEW YORK was stark, gray, and whipped by bitter cold that November day. The taxi cab windows were tinged with frost. I asked the cab driver to stop at a liquor store and went inside to buy a gift bottle of wine. When I told the clerk on duty the wine was to be a gift he slapped on a tiny red bow. Set and on the way, we drove by several bruised automobiles parked on the street that seemed to have the same dead pallor as the row upon row of apartment buildings we passed. The city was disturbingly quiet. The cab stopped at a grim, slate-colored apartment building barely distinguishable from the others. I could see no movement behind the rows of small, begrimed windows that stared out like so many clouded eyes. After paying my fare, I stood for a moment taking stock of myself. I could see the faint reflection of myself in the apartment building’s outer glass door. I thought I looked like one of the explorers in Peary’s expedition to the North Pole. At six feet four inches and 250 pounds, covered thigh to jowl in a screaming blue down coat, I wondered if I might look a little, well, intimidating to a 75-year-old recluse. Nah, I thought to myself, Louise Brooks has handled a lot worse than me. I entered the cramped vestibule and found the address tag that said L. BROOKS. With a ball of snakes twisting in my stomach I found the buzzer and pressed twice. There was a moment’s hesitation, then I heard the unmistakable voice. “Yes? Who’s there?” In one rush the words came spilling out. “Miss Brooks, it’s Tom Graves from Memphis. I’m on my way to the George Eastman Awards tonight and I brought you a gift bottle of wine. I also have some photographs of your childhood friends. I thought you might like to take a look.” For the longest few seconds of my life I heard only dry, dead, cold air. “Well, come on up then,” she finally answered in a surprisingly loud and clear voice. She activated the buzzer to the security door and I went through it to the elevator. I heard her shout into the intercom again, “I said come on up! Did you hear me? COME ON UP!” When I stepped off the balky elevator at the third floor, I noticed a door directly across the hall cracked open about six inches with two hard, round eyes staring needles through me. “Miss Brooks?” I said. “Tom?” she said. She smiled the thinnest of Mona Lisa smiles. “Well, don’t just stand there.” The door slowly opened and a reed, a mere quill of an old woman, a woman who looked well into her nineties but in fact was twenty years younger, ushered me in. Her skin wasn’t merely white, it was translucent, and a roadmap of tiny blue veins sketched her face like fine marble. She could not have weighed over eighty pounds. The room we entered, a combination kitchen and living room, was as simple and orderly as an army foot locker. There wasn’t an errant dish, spoon, or sponge in sight. She had me take off my coat and lay it across one of the matching chairs of her aluminum dinette. I noticed a couple of bookshelves filled mostly with film books (no Proust) such as Ephraim Katz’s Film Encyclopedia, David Thomson’s A Biographical Dictionary of Film, and a European edition of Hollywood Babylon. Paperclips marked each book, at the precise spots where I estimated there were references to Louise Brooks. On the wall was a gaily-colored painting of a tropical bird which reminded me of the crushed velvet paintings found in Mexican border towns. The painting was signed Luisa. I asked, “By any chance did you paint this?” “Uh-huh, I used to paint, but I don’t anymore now that I’m old. I’ll have to show you the painting I did of St. Therese. It’s in the bedroom.” “Oh, before I forget, I brought a gift for you.” I held out the bottle of wine. “I don’t drink!” Louise’s eyebrows clamped together and her pupils narrowed to two pencil leads. “Well, what kind of wine is it?” she asked irritably. I looked at the gift bottle I held in my hands and stammered, “It’s a red wine, actually.” “No!” she snapped. “What kind of wine is it?” “Oh, a Bordeaux,” I answered flushing, and read a few lines from the label. Louise’s scowl softened. “A Bordeaux…hmmm.” The words floated, carrying her to some other time, some other place. I wasn’t by any means the first young man to bring the former screen siren a bottle of wine. What I couldn’t know at the time, in 1982, was that I would be the last. “I can’t drink anymore,” she said abruptly. “My doctors won’t let me touch a drop. Take the bottle back home with you and enjoy it yourself. I can’t smoke anymore either, you know. Emphysema. I’m dying from it. Sylvia Sidney was in here the other day with that agent, John Springer, and they both smoked like chimneys. I thought I was going to choke to death. I almost had to throw the two of them out. “Well, I can’t stand here all day. My hip’s killing me. We can talk in the bedroom.” She slowly felt her way towards the bedroom with the help of a heavy four-pronged orthopedic cane. Stopping at a closet, she motioned me to help her remove her bed jacket. As I placed the bed jacket on a hanger in her closet, I could not help but notice her nakedness beneath the thin veneer of a nightgown she kept on. Here was the naked flesh for which, half a century before, men had fought, swooned, and paid dearly. Where I come from, a man, if he has any manners, doesn’t stare, and so I averted my eyes. What I had seen out of the corner of my eye was enough. Once she had settled into bed, it became even more apparent she was highly suspicious of my visit. Her fixed stare further unnerved me. No one ever stared down an unwelcome man harder than Louise Brooks. To break the ice I asked her about the awards ceremony that night and if she had reconsidered attending. “Hell no!” she fired back, her long, gray ponytail doing a crazy jig around her pipe cleaner of a neck. She pulled a tattered electric blanket tighter around her waist. “I hated all that Hollywood bullshit. I see no reason to get mixed up with that mob again. That’s why I left Hollywood, you know. It was all so stupid and phony, and most of what they were turning out was such crap. I still can’t stand to see myself in those Hollywood movies. When I went to Europe and worked under G.W. Pabst, it was so different. He was an artist. I never knew anyone in Hollywood who ever read a book. The whole town was stupid.” I asked her if, by chance, she knew the actor Brian Aherne, who was to be master of ceremonies at the awards presentation. “I know of him,” she said. “Remind me what he has done.” I ran down a list of films that I remembered. “I hope to meet him tonight,” I said. “I just bought a book he wrote about his friend, the actor George Sanders, and it’s actually quite well-written.” “Isn’t George Sanders dead?” she asked. “Yes, he killed himself a few years back.” “How?” she asked. “Pills, I believe.” “What kind?” I took Aherne’s book from my briefcase and found the passage. Louise sat poised with a pen and writing pad. “Five bottle of Nembutal,” I read. “Spell that.” “N-e-m-b-u-t-a-l.” She wrote it down in a jagged scrawl. “How many bottles?” “Five,” I answered as the hairs on my neck began to stand. “What kind of drug is Nembutal anyway?” “A barbiturate, I’m pretty sure. A heavy downer.” “I wonder if it’s a painless way to kill yourself. For your information, Tom, I plan to kill myself and I’m trying to figure out the best way to do it. “I’m sick of living like this. My hip’s killing me all the time and I’m dying of emphysema. I refuse to let them put me on oxygen to prolong the agony. I’m in pain all the time now and can’t do a damn thing anymore. See this pad? I have to write down everything or I’ll forget it. I can’t remember anything anybody tells me. As long as I have this,” she pointed to the pad, “I can get along. But what if I get worse? I’ve begged some of my friends to bring me a gun, but dammit, I guess they love me too much. They won’t do it.” I excused myself to go to the bathroom and as soon as I closed the bathroom door I heard Louise pick up the phone and peck frantically at the dial pad. “Tom Graves is here. What am I supposed to do?” (Pause) “Well, yes, he seems nice enough I suppose. He’s not trying to interview me or anything and he has been polite. He brought me a bottle of Bordeaux.” (Pause) “No, you’re right. I can’t very well just throw him out on the street. Wait, I hear him coming…” She hung up the phone and smiled coyly as I entered the room. Hoping to get the visit on a better track, I offered to show her the photos I had brought. As I passed them to her, she studied each one minutely, frowning at some, laughing at others. At one point she paused long enough to ask, “Tom, just what is it you plan to do with all these photographs and this research on me?” “I had hoped to write a biography,” I explained. “Of me?” “Yes ma’am.” “Well, I’m flattered, but I’ve already authorized Jack Garner, the film critic here in Rochester, to do it.” I had spoken...