Man Who Rediscovered Paul Nelson

 

https://rockcritics.com/2023/06/19/turning-the-tables-interview-with-rockcritics-coms-very-own-steven-ward/

New Book in the Offing

Received word from my publisher that my next book, I Like People That Can't Sing, will be published in the summer of 2024. The book covers the time in 1991 when Paul Nelson traveled from New York to Los Angeles to interview Leonard Cohen and Lucinda Williams.

Suzanne Vega has written a terrific foreword to the book, sharing her heartfelt memories of both Leonard and Paul. 

Ask Eddie

On the June 28, 2022, episode of Ask Eddie (at the 1:02:20 mark), author and esteemed Turner Classic Movie host of "Noir Alley, Eddie Muller had some kind words to say about Ross Macdonald, Paul Nelson, and It's All One Case.

 

Taxi Driver

Among the thousands of books surrounding Paul Nelson in his Upper East Side apartment when he died there in 2006 was this one: the published screenplay, its pages jaundiced by time, of Paul Schrader's Taxi Driver. Both Pauls were smarter, nonviolent versions of Travis Bickle. 

Accidentally Like a Martyr - The Book

While the back cover of Accidentally Like a Martyr: The Tortured Art of Warren Zevon only promises "twelve essays on seminal Zevon songs and albums," music journalist James Campion delivers a baker's dozen, and in doing so manages to tell the late singer/songwriter's often sad, sometimes heroic story. Campion has written a book that only a Warren Zevon fan could write. Who but a fan would devote fourteen pages to "Studebaker," a song that was never recorded to Zevon's own satisfaction and therefore doesn't appear on any of his official albums? Campion's challenge is to make such minutiae compelling enough that readers unfamiliar with Zevon and his unique and impressive musical canon want to come along for the ride. For the most part, he succeeds.

The book really hits its stride with the final four essays: about the songs "Searching for a Heart" (expressing Zevon's undying capacity for love); "The Indifference of Heaven" (whose protagonist, like Paul Muni's character in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, finally crosses the line from desperation to criminality); "My Ride's Here" (Zevon's most perfect song--among his many--about death; and the album The Wind (detailing what went into its recording and completion before the songwriter's death on September 7, 2003).

If the book accomplishes nothing else (and it does), it gives due credit to musician Jorge Calderón for how important he was to Zevon's songwriting process. The information Campion gleaned from his interviews with Calderón are enlightening, as are the comments and insights of several of the other interviewees, especially guitarist Waddy Wachtel and poet Paul Muldoon.

Full disclosure: Campion generously mentions my Paul Nelson bio-anthology when writing about Nelson's magnificent Rolling Stone cover story, "The Crack-Up and Resurrection of Warren Zevon: How He Saved Himself from a Coward's Death," and how the magazine brutally mangled it in publication. Campion writes: "Up until his death in 2006, Nelson was haunted by the full piece having never been given a proper presentation. Ultimately, it would appear years later in its entirety in the posthumous collection Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson."

Clint: 60 Years in Film

To commemorate "Clint Eastwood: 60 years in Film," Friday's Telegraph in the UK quoted Eastwood from Conversations with Clint.

Charles M. Young (1951 - 2014)

                                                                                                  Photo by Hilary Johnson

In 2007, when I interviewed Charles M. Young, who passed away this week from a brain tumor, one of the things we discussed was the imposition of the star rating system in the record-review section at Rolling Stone. It was one of the reasons that had caused his friend Paul Nelson to leave the magazine in 1982. Chuck remembered how he'd given one of his own reviews, of a George Winston album, a five-star rating, but when it was published it only had three stars. The reason? Because there were supposedly already too many five-star reviews in that issue.

"I'd never tell Christgau not to use grades, but I wouldn't tell anybody else who didn't want to use grades that they had to. I wouldn't even give grades in school. Grades are a disaster in education, grades are a disaster in rock & roll. You don't listen to music for a grade, you listen to music for its own sake. The point of a review, you describe what's there and then you convey your enthusiasm or distaste after in some way having an accurate description in there of what the album is, to be fair to the artist, and then you say 'it works' or 'it doesn't work,' you convey your enthusiasm or distaste, and that's what a review needs to do...

"When you're teaching kids to read and you give them a gold star for knowing some big word in the story or something, you're just sucking the joy out of learning from the kid. You're teaching them that what you do is work for the gold star, you work for the money. You don't do something because it's inherently worth doing. I mean, the only reason to read a book is because you love the book. The only reason to listen to music is because you love the music. This grade thing destroys that. It's one  manifestation of this horrible sickness in American society, which Paul would not participate in, to his great credit. Art was not about grades, it was not about money, it was something that you believed in, that you were committed to with an almost religious passion. And that was Paul."

And that was Chuck.

E Street Shuffle

You might not agree with some of my friend Clinton Heylin's reassessments of the first fifteen or so years of songs and LPs by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band (I certainly didn't), but you have to give him his due when it comes to documenting Bruce's musical evolution up through the mid- to late Eighties: album by album, song by song, sometimes line by line. The amount of research that must have gone into E Street Shuffle: The Glory Days of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band boggles the mind. The chapters dealing with The River and Nebraska and the mysterious gravity that kept pulling Bruce and his subject matter further into the dark are absolutely compelling. And throughout, Clinton respectfully references the writings of "the late, great Paul Nelson," to whom Springsteen owes so much of his early critical credibility and identity.

Caveat emptor: the US version of the book is missing 100 or so pages of song-by-song commentary, as well as a color photo section, that appears in the UK version. More importantly, last week it came to my attention that the website www.backstreets.com is offering the UK version with an exclusive limited edition bonus interview CD: a previously unreleased early interview with Springsteen by Paul Nelson. The interview, just shy of an hour, was conducted in December 1972, making it presumably Bruce's first interview with a national rock critic. The CD is being made available thanks to a deal struck by Clinton with Paul Nelson's son Mark. I've heard the interview and it's well worth adding to your collection.

The above photo of Elliott Murphy and Bruce Springsteen was taken in early 1973, shortly after Paul Nelson introduced the two men to one another. 

Where It All Began

Back in 2006 when I first began work on Everything Is an Afterthought, I began blogging about the project at LiveJournal. All that material, years' worth, is still there if you'd like to check it out: kevin-avery.livejournal.com.

What's there? My review of Neil Strauss's Everyone Loves You When You're Dead, pieces about Bruce Springsteen, Warren Zevon, Lou Reed and Andy Zwerling, Michael Seidenberg and Jonathan Lethem, Mike Seeger, David Forman, Bob Dylan (of course), Paul Nelson's White House Connection, Rod Stewart, my obituary of David Gahr, and at least one piece about  the New York Dolls. And much, much more.

Artist/Thief

Writing about "Dylan's Latest Brush with Plagiarism" in this article from the Boston Examiner, William Routhier opens with the legendary story about the young singer-songwriter swiping Paul Nelson and Jon Pankake's choice folk records.

Elvis Mitchell

This just in from film critic Elvis Mitchell, host of KCRW's The Treatment:

“I found that Conversations with Clint is invaluable reading, not just because it’s a uniquely in-depth series of interviews with someone who always had a sense of himself as an enduring figure. It also takes us inside the head of Paul Nelson—the interviewer himself—whose states of mind complete the story. The best interviews have always been two-sided—a conversation—and Conversations is just that: a compelling look at an extended eyeball-to-eyeball encounter, complete with blinks and flinches.”

History of New York

Paul Nelson is significantly mentioned in this entry of Patell and Waterman's History of New York--as are my two upcoming books. Thanks to John Mark Boling at Continuum Books for making this happen.

Blurbs

Arguably one of the most enjoyable parts of the publishing process is receiving blurbs for your book. Aside from the contract with the publisher and notes from the editor, these mini-reviews are the first real responses you receive regarding your book's worthiness. And because blurbs (usually) come from individuals whose work you admire, they carry a lot of weight, both emotionally and intellectually.

Beginning with Neil Strauss, Everything Is an Afterthought's blurbers have been very kind. Though they're not all posted yet, you can check them out by clicking first on the book cover at kevinavery.com and then on the "More Praise" link. Conversations with Clint has only one posted blurb thus far, from the great critic Andrew Sarris. To read it, simply click on the book cover and follow the "Praise for Clint" link.

Yesterday we received the book's second blurb. This one came from Paul Nelson's old friend, the singer-songwriter Elliott Murphy, who resides in Paris, France.

It's fitting that this book's first two blurbs should come from Sarris and Murphy. Paul idolized Sarris and often referred to his criticism (especially the book The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929 - 1968) in his own work. And in 1973, Paul discovered Murphy and tried to sign him to Mercury Records. His Rolling Stone reviews of Murphy's first two albums are the most glowing notices an artist could ever hope to receive.

Here's what Elliott had to say about Conversations with Clint:

"Paul Nelson was the first serious film aficionado who, way back in the early 70s, turned me on to the importance of Clint Eastwood as an actor, filmmaker and American icon. He showed me the S&W Magnum .44 he kept under a pile of sweaters in his closet. ‘Same as Dirty Harry,’ he said, explaining that if he was going to write about men with guns he had to know how it felt in his hand. We were both devoted to F. Scott Fitzgerald and hoping that Clint Eastwood would play Gatsby in the upcoming film, which, of course, he didn't.

"The repartee between these two straight shooters is more revealing of the inner workings of Hollywood and the creative process of Clint Eastwood than anything I've ever read before."

Pop Culture Vultures

This Malaysian review of Neil Strauss's Everyone Loves You When You're Dead ties the book's significance and sincerity to--you guessed it--Paul Nelson:

Whatever doubts one has in the author’s motives for the book is dispelled by his piece on a predecessor: former Rolling Stone record reviews editor Paul Nelson (1936–2006). Strauss admits that it was hard to pen, and not just because of his respect for the late Nelson and the people who would read it. “Every word brought me closer to my own cautionary tale – or that of any writer, creative person, or dedicated follower of art, entertainment, or culture. Because it makes you ask: In the end, is it worth it?”

Probably not for Nelson. The man who’d done so much for the likes of Bob Dylan and Rod Stewart died alone and broke. A pair of baby shoes that belonged to Nelson’s son, found hanging near his bed, still haunts Strauss: “... because as someone who’s sacrificed personal relationships for the pursuit of culture and career, I know what (those shoes) symbolize: the regret of someone who has spent his entire life with his priorities wrong.” I could say the same about many of today’s pop culture vultures.

It's totally wrongheaded to compare Paul (who, as an aside, was not broke when he passed away) to "many of today's pop culture vultures." He never wrote about something simply because it was popular; it had to have some meaning--or some significant lack of meaning--for him to subject himself to the often painful process required to write about it.

PN Quoted in UK's Daily Record

"In The Rolling Stone Illustrated History Of Rock & Roll, Paul Nelson wrote: 'In the mid-60s, Dylan's talent evoked such an intense degree of personal participation from admirers and detractors that he could not be permitted so much as a random action.

"'The world used to follow him around, just waiting for him to drop a cigarette butt. When he did, they'd sift through the remains, looking for significance. The scary part is they'd find it - and it really would be significant.'"

Click here to read the entire article.

Paul's entire piece appears in Everything Is an Afterthought, being published this November.

Happy Birthday, Bob

What better way to celebrate Bob Dylan's seventieth birthday than to go back and read three of Paul Nelson's writings about his old pal's work? Simply click on the title beneath each album cover to access the reviews.

Nashville Skyline, 1969

"That smiling face on the cover tells all—and isn't it wonderful?"

The Basement Tapes, 1975
Paul's review basically served as a rough draft for his classic 

6,400-word essay "Bob Dylan," which appears in 
Everything Is an Afterthought.

Shot of Love, 1981

"To know him is to love him, as they say, 
and it's pretty difficult to do either these days."

Cap off your Bob Dylan-Paul Nelson  experience with this great little ditty that Loudon Wainwright III performed on NPR twenty years ago today—on the occasion of Dylan's fiftieth birthday.

"Talking New Bob Dylan"

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

Late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning, Deb and I returned home from almost a week in Asheville, North Carolina. For most of the trip we stayed at the Grove Park Inn, a retreat for F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1935 and 1936, and not far from the sanatorium where, in 1948, Zelda Fitzgerald perished in a fire. All of which, of course, reminded me of Paul Nelson, who adored The Great Gatsby.

Anyway, when I finally crawled into bed at around 2:30 or so, I turned on Turner Classic Movies and discovered that Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid was about halfway over. And of course, what with Dylan playing a role in the film and providing the soundtrack, thoughts once again turned to Paul.

The next day, I pulled out his notes from 1973 for (to the best of my knowledge) an unfinished review of the film. He had a particular fascination with the Pat and Billy mythology and often referred to it in his writings.

Later in his notes, he wrote: "James Dean is Billy: Marlon Brando, Garrett. When James Dean died, I resolved to take his place (as in Jackson Browne's song). Now I don't want to be James Dean anymore, but I don't want to be Marlon Brando, either."

Welcome to kevinavery.com

In the coming months, this site will count down the publication of my first two books, Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson and Conversations with Clint: Paul Nelson's Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood. The first book took me four years to research and write, whereas the second one took a little less than a year. Thanks to the vagaries of publishing, it appears that the second book is going to be published before the first.

Because the fine writer Paul Nelson is at the heart of both of them, he'll undoubtedly be a frequent topic of conversation here. Over thirty-five years have passed since I first read his work, and my goal remains the same as it did from the inception of book one: to reintroduce his writing to the culture and make sure it stays there.

"You can't research to get a book," Robert Penn Warren wrote. "You stumble on it, or hope to. Maybe you will, if you live right."

I must live right because it's happened twice in a row.