The Oxford American Book of Great Music Writing

Iris DeMent: TANGLED IN MY LIFE

Ithoughtaboutit.ItseemedtomethatDocembodiedthekindofvaluesthat are going out of style and don’t mean as much as they used to: self-respect and a respect for others, the stoic forbearance that Walker Evans photographed and James Agee wrote poems about. Something inside that was as immutable and unchanging as stone, that after a lifetime in show business still endured, still believed in the sanctity of womanhood, family, property lines, the church in the wildwood, the ultimate redeemability of humankind itself. Life sometimes seems choreographed from the stage of a talk show, where barbaric guests haul forth dirty linen and a barbaric audience applauds, where presidents disassemble themselves before a voyeuristic media, where folks sell their souls to the highest bidder and then welsh on the deal. It was nice that Doc was still just being Doc, just being a hell of a nice guy. ButDoc’sgettingold,andthosevaluesaregettingold,too.Maybethey’redying out.Maybeintheendtherewilljustbethemusic.Fortherewillalwaysbethemusic. ItiswhatDoclovesaboveallthings—fromshowtuneslike“Summertime”tomusic leakedupthroughtimefromold,worn78sbyMississippistringbands,fromthehollow , ghostly banjo of Dock Boggs to the contemporary folk of writers like Tom PaxtonandBobDylan. All kinds of music that will endure and help us endure. The music will never let you down. 132 THE OXFORD AMERICAN 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08 10:43 AM Page 132 Fred Neil WHO WAS FRED? FRED WAS FRED WAS FRED by Mike Powell In 1969 Fred Neil had a hit song and what was probably a lot of money. Fred Neil did not, however, have a telephone. The hit was called “Everybody’s Talkin’,” whichhe’drecordedforhis1967album,FredNeil;itwascoveredbyHarryNilsson andusedasthethemeforMidnightCowboyin1969.Andthen,youknow,indrifted theroyaltychecks,milkofHollywoodkindness,andFredspenttheremainderof his life singing to dolphins and dying slowly. “One morning, we were sitting and havingbreakfastinCoconutGrove,”VinceMartin,Fred’sonlyrealcollaborator, recalls. “Joe Bike—he ran the bike shop in town, he was the man—Joe Bike came running over and said ‘Freddie, Harry Nilsson’s on the phone!’” Fred Neil looked up from his breakfast and said, “Fuck ’im.” Fred Neil, like a lot of human beings, wanted to be left alone. He never smiled, backlit, in front of a pile of screaming fans. He wrote a famous song but most people couldn’t pick his face from a crowd. Fred Neil probably drank too much, and like anyone who drinks too much, his mood was erratic and temperament incompatible. But he never made theater of his disintegration. His excesses, if you’d even use such a sensationalterm,wereprivate.Hekepthurtbetweenfamilywalls.Hebrokeaguitar string and walked offstage. Sometimes, he didn’t show up for gigs, but when hedidn’t,nobodyknowswherehewent.FredNeil,who,inphotographs,looksby turns plaintive, stoned, disaffected, yearning, and lots of other nebulous synonyms for melancholy—serene, maybe, but never happy—was, at best, an antihero , and at worst the kind of story people don’t bother to tell. Supposedly,theoriginalthemeforMidnightCowboy wasgoingtobeDylan’s 133 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08 10:43 AM Page 133 “Lay, Lady, Lay.” This is hilarious for at least one reason, namely that Midnight Cowboy is an emotionally torturous movie about broken dreams and the frailty of human psychology, and “Lay, Lady, Lay” is about the sex act. Which, sure, figuresintothemovie :There’sthepartwhereJonVoighthasthathorrificflashback ofhisgirlfriendbeinggang-raped.Orthere’sthatpartwhere,desperateandpoor, he lets a nerd give him oral in a crummy movie theater. Plenty of sex in Midnight Cowboy.Legendhasitthatonestudioexecutivewaskeenonshearingsomeofthe racier stuff and propping up Elvis, just entering his pants-splitting phase, for Voight’s part. “Everybody’sTalkin’,”though,wasanevenmorepointedproposition.Now, it’subiquitous.It’sastapleofliteradio;it’sbeenviolatedbybadkeyboardpresets foranonymousreproduction.Forgettheclichéofhearingasongbrowsingcereal at the grocery store, I’ve heard “Everybody’s Talkin’” buying tripe in a Polish butcher shop. The context of hearing it has become so mundane that the meaning has become invisible. Just how we don’t think too much about people who planpublictransportationortheimportantrelationshipbetweenthedwindling bee population and the future of almonds, we probably don’t think too much about “Everybody’s Talkin’,” which is, essentially, an easily hummed song about being totally alienated from humanity. This took me a while to realize. I was in an open-air market in Mexico City. Tableaftertableofplasticirrelevance.Thesescenarioscomewithabuilt-insense ofdisplacementandanonymity—itcould’vebeeninNewYorkorNairobiorOslo, aslongasitwasn’thome.Youwalkaroundandfeigninterestinpoorlymadegoods andletyourmindunravelonnewground.Youletyoursurroundingsswallowyou. AgiganticspeakerblaredNilsson’sversionof“Everybody’sTalkin’”through the dust—“Everybody’s talkin’ at me, I don’t hear a word they’re saying, only the echoes of my mind”—and for the first time, I stopped to think about it: This song is sort of, in some minor but definite way, about what I’m doing right now, except what they’redoingismorelikeyelling,andI’mnotreallyallthatgoodatSpanishtobeginwith. When Harry sang, “I won’t let...