Omaha Rainbow : Issue 19

Tom De Lisle : Is it on?

Lomax Gold : Yes, I think so.  Let me see the needle - yes, it's recording.  Where should we start?

I suppose you want to ask about my sex life.

No, actually, we don't.  Why do you mention it?

Don't try to fool me, I know you always try to get around to sex in the Playboy interview.

We're not from Playboy.  It's the Omaha Rainbow.

Oh. so you're not going to ask me about my sex life?

Well, if you're so insistent.....how's your sex life?

I don't want to talk about it.

Then let's get to the subject of John Stewart.  What is your relationship with John?

Well, it's hard to define.  I have a shirt that says 'Bystander to the Stars,' and that's kind of the service I perform for John. Somebody once referred to me as his 'alter ego,' and for a while I was thinking of changing my name to Walter Ego.

Did you?

No.

Why not?

It sounded too Polish.

Could you give us more background?

Well, for one, I'm John's neighbour in Malibu.  For another, I'm the custodian of the John Stewart Tape Library.  I undoubtedly have the most extensive recording file of John's performances, far exceeding Andy Fergus in Scotland or that mad dog Peter O'Brien.

How did you come into possession of the tapes?

Mostly by attending concerts.  I think I've attended more John Stewart shows than anyone, including John.  I have extensive recordings going back to 1973 and I've obtained tapes from gigs and sessions before that.  I should point out that '73 was when I met John.  However, I have good tapes from John's "California Bloodlines" promotion tour, others from 1970-71, pre "Lonesome Picker Rides Again" stuff too.  A lot of it is fantastic.  Something your readers probably don't know is that volumes of John's material - much of it among his best stuff - have never been recorded.  In fact, a lot of it has been lost by John, and fortunately I have most of it on tape.  Sometimes he even has to ask me for the words to one of his forgotten songs.

Certainly he must have all those songs and recordings somewhere?

Do you have "Sunstorm," "Cannons in the Rain" and more than two Kingston Trio albums?

Yes.

Then you have more John Stewart material than John does.

That seems hard to believe.

It's true.  Once I went to John's house and his dog had peed on the floor and he was swatting him with a piece of paper that turned out to be the only existing copy of one of his classic unrecorded songs, 'Lilly and Joe.'

How unusual.

Not really.  He never did housebreak that dog.

THE PHONE RINGS

Keep the reoorder going. I'll be right back.  (Hello... oh, hi John...well, I'm busy right now...I can't talk, okay ?..do you have that five bucks you owe me ?... well, I'd appreciate it, ya know ?...yeah, call me later, okay ?)

HE RETURNS

Where were we?

Why don't you tell us about firstmeeting John?

Well, actually I should tell you about the first time I saw him perform.  It was July, 1962, at theMichigan State Fair in Detroit.  I was a real Kingston Trio freak and I couldn't believe they were coming to town.  I was 15 and had never been to a concert in my life.  I went to the stadium about two hours before the show and sat right up front for $2.  The Trio had just released the "College Concert" album, which is a classic of its kind.  When John and Nick and Shane came out I was just paralysed.  Here were my heroes in person.  And I have to tell you, that to this day it remains the most impressive concert I have ever seen.  The energy, the sound, the professionaliam...they were fantastic.  They literally did sound as good or better than their records in person.  I was floored.  It was magic.

Did you get to meet John?

It's funny.  After the show, I wandered backstage to their dressing room, and there were a lot of fans there, mostly girls.  And who should emerge from the room but Stewart, and he started signing autographs.  I wanted to ask for one, but I was 15 and I figured it wasn't cool, so I just stood there in awe.  And at one point, I remember, John looked over at me like my fly was open.  So I got self-conscious and left.

Why did you leave?

My fly was open!

It's open now, you know?

Oh, excuse me. I hadn't noticed.

So when did you finally meet John?

Well, first I should add a postscript to that story.  After I did meet John years later, I mentioned the story to him and told him how in awe I had been of the Trio that night.  At the time I told him we were in Lansing, Michigan- which is upstate - and it was around 1974.  We were back at the motel after a gig and he had just come out of the shower, and he said, "De Lisle, way back in 1962 did you ever dream you'd be hanging around a Holiday Inn in Lansing, Michigan with one of your heroes?"

What did you say?

I said no.  I'd never dreamed that, but what I didn't add was that if I had dreamed it I would have wished I had been with Nick.

NickReynolds.

Right.  Actually, being serious for a minute, let me tell you something about Nick that says a lot about the Trio, and about Nick, too.  Nick is a semi-recluse, the Howard Hughes of music is what John calls him.  But he's a fabulous, neat guy.  I had the opportunity to meet him out here in Malibu when he stayed with John a few times.  We would stay up till dawn sometimes talking about the old Trio days.  And one night he told me, "I never did a performance with the Trio that there wasn't at least one moment in the show that felt like pure magic to me.  Even on a bad night.  I would get a rush at least once that would make it all worthwhile."  And I'll tell you, that says alot about the Trio - they transferred the joy and excitement to the audience. Anything you hear about the Trio now, from revisionists, that the Trio was too 'commercial' or too slick is pure bullshit.  Oddly, I know that Nick, and John too, have quietly suffered from those kinds of attacks, and it pisses me off.  At times they sound almost apologetic about having been with the Trio, and I say, "come on, get off it!. You guys were the best.  I don't give a goddam what Rolling Stone says."  By the way, I'd rather read Omaha Rainbow and Roxy Gordon than Rolling Stone and their hipper-than thou bullshit.  And it is bullshit - they've got some thieves working there, but that's another story.  Where was I?

Talking about Nick.

Oh yeah, here's another story for my fellow Trio freaks.  One night we were drinking brandy up at John's house - this is before it fell in the ocean during the storm - and John picked up his guitar and started fooling around.  Which is fairly rare, although I've secretly taped some singing sessions with John and Buffy at their home which are incredible.  Anyway, he got Nick to join him with another guitar, and here are these two greats, my heroes, sitting on the rug and doing old Trio songs.  I was flipping. Finally, I had enough brandy to grab a third guitar and climb down with them.

What happened?

It was like a dream.  The three of us sang til about 5am...all the old great songs.  The stunner was that I was the only one of us who knew all the words to the old Trio songs!  Here I was singing lead on 'Mark Twain' and 'Stay Awhile' and 'Long Black Veil' with John and Nick.  It was a real time warp experience.  Nick couldn't believe I knew all those words.  It sounded damn good, too.

It must have been quite a thrill.

Yeah, it was.  Oh, let me tell you one more thing about Nick, then I have to say a few things about John.  Sometimes Nick will come down here from Oregon and perform with John at local gigs like The Palomino.  He'll just play congas and sing background, but I'll tell you, if you look up on that stage you know why the Trio had that appeal.  Nick's face onstage just lights up, it's impossible not to pick up on his exuberance.  He has a tremendous quality, he's like a magnet up there.  Buffy, by the way, has that same quality onstage, a real radiance.

What does John have onstage?

Usually his guitars and sometimes the banjo.  I saw him onstage once with a bad cold.

What was it you wanted to tell us about him?

Well first, he is the greatest.  It doesn't matter if he never sells a billion or show up in magazines with Don Kirshner and Clive Davis - he genuinely has produced more consistently excellent and singular music than any composer/singer I know of.  And remember, he has done it without the boost of fantastic commercial success or help from record companies or his contemporaries.  The guy is an artist out there all by himself, and I know it gets pretty lonely sometimes for him.  There are writers who have had their asses kicked repeatedly in this town and they fold up.  I have been one of them.  John's reaction is to write a song like 'The Runner'.  All I can say to the people who really dig him is to treasure the records you've got and keep hoping they'll let him make more.  With even the slightest support from the industry or a commercial boost the guy would be recording stuff that would blow the top of your head off.  As it is, he's still in there punching, still writing great stuff despite a lot of pressures pushing him into less pure areas.  But he's a tough nut, a very hard-headed guy.  He works his ass off, and you look at him and you know he has years of fabulous stuff yet to write.  Let's cross our fingers and hope they let him run.  That song ('Big Horse') is about him, by the way.  He doesn't know it, but it is.

What are your favourite Stewart songs?

God, there's so many.  But certainly 'Lilly and Joe;' 'Big Horse;' 'Spirit' - listen to that again some night on the headphones after a few scotches; 'The Runner'; 'Friend of Jesus;' 'Just anOld Love Song;' 'Kansas;' 'Kansas Rain;' 'Wind Dies Down;' 'All-Time Woman;' 'Old Rivers and Slow Moving Trains;' everything on "California Bloodlines;" and some new stuff that I hope will get out like 'Lost Her in the Sun, 'Gold' and 'Midnight Wind.'  But there's so many.  I mean, what a collection.  It's incredible.

When did you first hear "California Bloodlines?"

Well, it's a weird story.  I was a newspaper reporter covering a series of maniacal homicides - as opposed to sensible ones - that happened in Ann Arbor, Michigan when I saw this album, "Bloodlines," on the wall of a record shop.  It was autographed, "Peace, John."  He had been in Ann Arbor just a few days before I was there, and while I was working on the case he was appearing back in Detroit, so I missed him both ways.  The homicides stopped, by the way, after he left the area.  Anyway, I bought the album and couldn't play it til I returned home the following week.  I listened to it once, twice.....and then it floored me.  What a piece of Americana.  There is nothing quite like it anywhere.

So howdid you finally meet him?

It was Lansing in 1973, early May.  A place called The Stables.  It's a nice-enough place, a good funky campus joint, but I remember thinking, 'God, this guy should be playing the 50,000 seat football stadium.  There were guys in the club in soft ball uniforms talking during the first show my wife and I attended.  I was thinking, 'You jerks, you're in the presence of a genius here and you're discussing a double play.'  I finally got fed up and told them that if they didn't shut up my wife would go over and knock the crap out of all of them.

What memorable John Stewart shows have you seen?

Many, many.  There were the Phoenix Concerts (for the album) that were better in person.  I didn't like the album mix because it didn't capture the magic of that night.  The audience was berserk, especially on the 'Nashville' finale.  Everyone was up, dancing, clapping.  I wrote about it for an American music mag, Zoo World, and they used the story for the intro to The Phoenix Concerts Songbook.  Let's see, there was the night John debuted 'Big Horse' in Lansing and it floored me.  I have that on tape.  By the way, the owner of the club made 3 hours of reel to reel tapes of John's shows there to give to John.  It was about sixty songs.  John, naturally, said he didn't want it.  Guess who ended up with it?  Aha.

What other shows stick in your memory?

Well, his all-acoustic shows at McCabe's in Los Angeles are fantastic, maybe the best shows of all.  Some great tapes from those.  There was a 1975 show at Los Angeles' Roxy that was a barn-burner, he knocked the place on its ass.  Some Palomino shows with triple encores, the shows there with no encores, the shows there with Nick, a night in a huge tent in Aspen, Colorado, one night at The Boarding House in 'Frisco, John and Marc Ford, his brother-in law, dragged my ass on stage and I played guitar with the band.  I tried to hide behind the band.  I tried to hide behind Buffy.  I was drunk and had no idea what I was doing.

What did you do?

I kept unplugging my guitar from the amp when I thought the 750 people in the audience weren't noticing.  Buffy kept plugging it back in.  On one song, 'Mazatlan' or something, I had unplugged and was silently strumming along with my capo on the second fret.  Joey Harris, John's lead guitar player, turned around and in the middle of the song told me to move the capo up to the fourth fret.  I'd be damned if I'd let the audience know I was totally lost in the middle of the song, so I said, "Boy, turn your honky ass around and leave me alone."  One thing I remember was John, looking over and leering at me throughout the entire set, knowing I was dying up there.  It's one of the few things I'm really indebted to him for.

THE PHONE RINGS

Wait, I'll be right back.  (Yeah...I told you, I'm busy ...have you come up with the five?...I mean, it's been three weeks...don't give me that eccentric artist bullshit, I want the five...look, call me back... later, okay?)

HB RETURNS

Let me add a few more things.  One is about Andy Fergus.

A fan of John's from Scotland.

Right, and he comes over to the United States a lot and tries to hang out, and I know he reads this magazine, so I' d like to send him amessage.  Andy, stay home.

Well, let us ask you something - what do you do for a living?

I'm unemployed.

Don't you write for American television?

Well.....sometimes.

But that is how you make your living, isn't it?

Yeah, but if you wrote for American television, would you admit it?  Actually, Tom De Lisle is just a pen name of mine.  I have a real name that I don't use too often.

What is it?

PeterO'Brien.
 

The interview was concluded at this point.  However, De Lisle indicated that if the Editor of Omaha Rainbow was interested he would continue the interview at a later date, detailing A Bizarre Meeting with Bob Shane; Tom Waits And The Snake; John's Pet Alligator Bites The Hand That Feeds Him; The Missing 1976 Album; The 1970 John And Linda Ronstadt Tape; Two Johns - Stewart And Denver, In Search Of Something, Stewart And Lindsey Buckingham, Trio Meets Mac; Fergus Gets Hit with A Firecracker; John's Mother And The Sacred Heart; The Trio Fails To Reunite; The Mysterious John Stewart/Al Stewart Link; Joey Forgets His Guitar, and much, much more.

Do you recall John Stewart at The Roundhouse in 1974 telling how The Monkees cut 'Daydream Believer', and immediately split-up?  And how The Lovin' Spoonful did the same following their recording of 'Never Going Back'?  Mike Popham sent me this interview which appeared in the Los Angeles Free Press of April 3, 1978.  The final issue before the paper went out of business.  The headline caption was 'John Stewart : The Clint Eastwood of Rock 'n Roll.'  Under the circumstances, this is probably more appropriate......