Lee Hazlewood (terminal renal cancer)
Ed Varner
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Make cake, not war
Lynsey Hanley
Sunday December 10, 2006
The Observer
Lee Hazlewood
Cake or Death
In a recent Observer interview with his great fan Richard Hawley, Lee
Hazlewood commented that he's not as bothered about his diagnosis of
terminal renal cancer as he might have been, because he's had '77 years
of fun'. There aren't many people capable of facing up to their
imminent mortality with such good humour, but Hazlewood - who has lived
the full, inquisitive life of the itinerant musician - is one of them.
Cake or Death is, he insists, his final album, and there's no sign that
his spirit flagged for a moment while making it.
Hazlewood has acquired an audience half his age in recent years,
ranging from Hawley and his fellow Sheffielder Jarvis Cocker to Kate
Moss: his newer fans seem to respond not so much to the poppiness of
the hits he wrote and produced for Nancy Sinatra but to the fact that
he's written such popular music while remaining a sort of outlaw. He
doesn't care if people scorn him for writing melodies you can hum and
words that scan; he doesn't care if people think he's a cowboy ruffian.
Not caring about what people think is different from not caring about
other people, however. This is where Cake or Death comes into its own.
It's sharp and witty, but also fierce in its support of the human right
to be free. On the swinging 'Baghdad Knights', he hates the war but
gives props to the troops. On 'White People Thing', a rueful commentary
on the paranoia that fuels 'white flight' from cities to suburbs, he
observes that hypocrisy is the flesh-eating gremlin at the heart of
social respectability.
His outlaw pride extends to filling this album with the sort of
overwrought country and western ballads that will make his more
self-consciously cool fans wonder whether they can enjoy them without
irony. 'Please Come to Boston', a duet with the mighty-lunged Swedish
jazz singer Ann Kristin Hedmark, can't be listened to without miming
clenched fists and collapsing in a puddle of your own tears at the end.
Including a brace of self-covers - the 'original melody' of 'These
Boots Were Made For Walking' sounds remarkably like the melody that he
and Sinatra made famous - adds to a sense that Hazlewood is wrapping
things up by reminding us of all the things there'll be to miss about
him when he's gone. Thankfully, we'll have this.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1967884,00.html
Ed Varner
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Lee Hazlewood:76, Los Angeles, CA
By A. D. Amorosi
Lee Hazlewood may be America's greatest fatalist romantic. Or its
most romantic fatalist. Either way, when Hazelwood wasn't busy
throughout the '60s producing and writing holy, hollow-bodied hits
for twang bar king Duane Eddy, whipped kitten Nancy Sinatra (for whom
he wrote kinky classics like "These Boots are Made for Walking" and
"Some Velvet Morning"), Dean Martin and Waylon Jennings, Hazlewood
maintained a career as a wry songwriter and whiskey-voiced singer whose
often self-released existentialist screeds and baroque pop cowboy
landscapes sold little. But they figure heavily into the forlorn ennui
of artists like Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker, Beck and Damon Albarn. And
now, with Hazlewood at age 76 suffering from renal cancer and peering
into his own mortality, what does that fatalism feel like? What does
true mortality look like as one enters life's final stage? Hazlewood
makes it sound like another assignment. "I didn't get all that I
heard in my head onto the damn records." From the breadth and depth
of classics, old (Poet, Fool or Bum) and new (his just finished swan
song, Cake or Death), you can't help but think he's being falsely
modest. Until you find out that there 's nothing false about him at
all.
You don't feel good with this type of cancer. Bad stuff. So we can
talk about the past. As long as you don't stay there very long.
I may be sentimental. But not about my work. It's lasted 45 years.
It's over with. Like a friend of mine said: You already spent that
money. Concentrate on today.
"White People Thing" [from the new album]- it's partly a
reminiscence of a time when people of color couldn't live in the
suburbs. But now that they can, they still can't. And that bugs me.
If you got the money to buy the house and the education to maintain
that house you should be able to have that damned house. We're not
free, yet. That's a goddamn lie. It surprised me when I was a kid and
it shocks me now. When we are free, I'll write a different song.
Hate the war. Respect the warriors.
Oh God did I grow up Democrat in Texas. But liberal Democrats, like we
were, were harder to find than black people to live next door to in
that age. There were no prejudices allowed in our house. You couldn't
even think them. But dad was a big man. He would've tore me up if I
had even thought one-which I didn't.
Working with people just gets in my way.
I loved producing and writing. Releasing records? I only did that for
the publishing. And then because of a silly thing that happened with
Nancy (Sinatra) I had to start singing. I didn't want to. But I
taught singers what I wanted - with my bad guitar playing and my bad
singing. What happened with Nancy came from absolute greed. We put out
a new record with her every three months. There were enough hits to go
around. But I really wanted to do boy/girl records with her. Now
Reprise had plenty of guys. She said "I don't like them." She
liked me, my old scratched-up whiskey voice. So I told her (adopting a
fatherly tone), "OK, we'll do one with me each album." That was
the start of my gigantic singing career. She knew what she wanted.
She's smart.
I don't know why the kids who like my old garbage like those songs.
The lost romanticism, the fatalism? No idea. If I knew, I'da done
more of it. I only wrote those songs for me. All I know is most of them
are in bands. And they like those songs more than they like "Sugar
Town."
I don't even have all my albums. I got a great story of how that came
to pass. When I lived in Stockholm there was no crime at that time.
Yet, my apartment got robbed. Now, I didn't have a lot of stuff. But
there was this long coat that I loved and my whole album
collection-my stuff included. They only took my records. The cops
didn't speak English so I had to have a friend of mine translate the
fact that only the albums I had made were stolen. Suddenly everyone in
the room breaks up laughing. Then my friend translates into English
what the cop said: "At least we know he wasn't a music critic."
With this sickness-it's kidneys, you know, and I've lost
one-one day you feel good, one day you feel bad. On the days I feel
good-how much television can you watch or news can you read? My lady
tells me I'm writing in my head-she can see my lips moving-why
don't you put it on paper. So I'm doing that. How long can I do it?
How long can I last? For a man who led my lifestyle, I think I've
done alright.
First printed in Jan/Feb 2007
Ed Varner
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>From the New York Times:
One Last Walk for the Man Behind 'These Boots'
By SIA MICHEL
Published: January 28, 2007
HENDERSON, Nev.
LEE HAZLEWOOD is ready to die. Suffering excruciating pain from renal
cancer, Mr. Hazlewood, the reclusive singer, songwriter and producer
doesn't have much time left, maybe a year if he's lucky. So he has
been preparing for what he calls his impending "dirt nap."
He has decided he wants to be cremated, and to have his ashes strewn
on a Swedish island where he composed some of his favorite songs. He
has chosen his epitaph: "Didn't he ramble," referring to his loner-
drifter nature. He has already given away most of his gold and
platinum records, which he earned making hits for Duane Eddy, Dean
Martin and Nancy Sinatra, including "These Boots Are Made for
Walkin'," one of the most famous pop songs of all time. He has
released his swan song, the quirky album "Cake or Death," which hit
stores last week. And he married his longtime girlfriend, Jeane
Kelley, in a drive-through ceremony in Las Vegas.
"It was like going to McDonald's," Mr. Hazlewood said of their
November wedding, sitting in his living room in a small, tidy house.
"You stay in the car and go up to the window. The preacher was a
Frenchman. Afterwards my granddaughter threw rose petals on the
hood."
Mrs. Hazlewood, smiling, said: "He just wanted to make me a legal
woman. After 15 years together."
Mr. Hazlewood, who was married twice before, kept cracking dark jokes
about his health ("Dying really drives your price up"), though he
stressed that being "ready to go doesn't mean you're through with your
life." He dotes on his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, whose
pictures adorn a wall in the TV room, next to a huge portrait of
himself, wearing shades. But, he said: "I'm 77. I've been around long
enough now. I've lived a pretty interesting life - not too much
sadness, a lot of happiness, lots of fun. And I didn't do much of
anything I didn't want to do."
True, he is one of the more iconoclastic figures of 20th-century pop,
a cantankerous, hard-living innovator who walked away from fame and
fortune whenever he felt like it. One of the major hitmakers of the
'50s and '60s, he helped Duane Eddy shape twang-rock, transformed
Nancy Sinatra into a megastar and, on his LHI label, released what is
widely considered the first country-rock record, by Gram Parsons's
International Submarine Band. And he made a series of beautifully
oddball solo albums that were mostly unheard in America, until a
member of Sonic Youth reissued them in the '90s.
Today Mr. Hazlewood is sadly unsung, which is partly his own fault. He
spent decades trying to disappear, flitting between Europe and the
United States - particularly those states with no personal income tax.
"I'm kind of a bum," he said.
His quirky genius stems from a desire to make sounds he never heard
before; he summed it up as "not normal" music. In the '50s he was
inspired to stick a microphone and an amp in a grain elevator, to
capture the spooky reverb effect heard on Mr. Eddy's classics. Some
conspiracy theorists think he inspired Phil Spector's "wall of
sound" (the two men briefly worked together), or that Mr. Spector even
stole the production technique from him.
"Phil was not influenced by me at all," Mr. Hazlewood said
emphatically. "His records were just genius, and if you think I would
have come up with the wall of sound and given it to Phil Spector,
you're out of your mind."
Mr. Hazlewood's own music grew increasingly experimental over the
years. Born in the tiny town of Mannford, Okla., he favors vaguely
country-western pop with sweet melodies and symphonic orchestration,
sung in a stunning baritone as deep and sticky as a tar pit. "I think
his voice has the kind of stature that Johnny Cash's had," Beck said.
"It has a gravity that allows him to be sincere and tongue-in-cheek at
the same time. It's that immense voice of experience, not expecting
any kindness from humanity other than a spare cigarette."
Mr. Hazlewood's wry tales feature boozers and misfits, stooges and
undertakers, summer wine and dames on death row. There are O. Henry
endings, cheesy voice-overs and concept albums about Loserville
("Trouble Is a Lonesome Town," 1963) and bad breakups ("Requiem for an
Almost Lady," 1971). Today his sound is often called cowboy
psychedelia, best represented by the trippy "Some Velvet Morning." But
it's a genre of one: no one else has ever sounded quite like him.
He had a knack for mainstream pop too. Dean Martin interpreted his
jaunty wandering-man lark "Houston," a huge hit in the mid-'60s. They
bonded over a love of scotch: Mr. Martin was a J&B man, Mr. Hazlewood
drank Chivas Regal. "Here's Dean Martin drinking J&B and I'm drinking
something which is twice as much money and twice as good," he said,
shaking his head with mild disgust. "I didn't drink to get drunk. I
drank as a reward, and I only drank the good stuff."
Soon Frank Sinatra wanted him to fix the floundering career of his
daughter Nancy. Despite a decade-plus age difference, Mr. Hazlewood
and Ms. Sinatra hit it off; they remain close friends. He thought that
she was too cutesy, that she needed to seem more like truck-driver-
dating jailbait. "He was part Henry Higgins and part Sigmund Freud,"
Ms. Sinatra said by telephone. "He was far from the country bumpkin
people considered him at the time. I had a horrible crush on him, but
he was married then."
Romance rumors swirled, but they never had an affair, Mr. Hazlewood
said, "and now we're old enough to tell you if we did."
When he played her "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," a song he'd
written in 1963, she knew it could be huge as soon as she heard the
descending, quarter-tone bass line. By 1966 it was a No. 1 hit, and
she was known as a sassy go-go-boot-wearing sexpot who doesn't let any
man push her around. She and Mr. Hazlewood recorded a long string of
chart-hogging duets - "Sundown, Sundown," "Jackson" - transforming a
short 30-something with a bushy mustache into an unlikely pop star.
"He called us the beauty and the beast," Ms. Sinatra said.
She hated being alone, so they shared a dressing room during tours.
The problem was, Mr. Hazlewood walked around naked, which was fine
with her but didn't sit well with visiting journalists. She begged him
to put on some underwear.
"In those days I didn't wear shorts, ever," Mr. Hazlewood recalled.
"Showing my butt is not any big thing with me, never has been."
Ms. Sinatra said: "Nature boy. He was proud of his assets."
Luckily her father didn't mind. "We got along great," Mr. Hazlewood
said. "Frank thought I was about two-thirds funny, and I thought he
was about 90 percent clever. He had names for everyone. He called me
Country. But I could never get used to hearing someone call Frank
Sinatra Daddy." The two men worked together on "This Town" and
"Somethin' Stupid," a hit duet with Nancy.
In 1969 Mr. Hazlewood was asked to work his magic on the bombshell
actress-singer Ann-Margret. They posed naked for the artwork of the
album "The Cowboy & the Lady." Well, almost: she's wearing a
strategically placed umbrella, and he's wearing a gun.
"We were extremely cold," Ann-Margret said in a telephone interview,
"but we had such fun. He had that darling, aw-shucks demeanor, but he
was sharp - and a bad, bad boy." (No affair, Mr. Hazlewood said: she
was married.)
Then, at the height of his success, Mr. Hazlewood shocked everyone in
1970 by suddenly moving to Sweden, where he lived for much of the
following decade. He recorded some of his finest solo work there (like
the gorgeous "Cowboy in Sweden") but his career never regained
momentum.
"It was crazy," Ms. Sinatra said. "And he really left me in the lurch.
He kept shooting himself in the foot all the time, and I never knew
why. He was always his own worst enemy."
MR. HAZLEWOOD could barely sleep the night before his interview,
wracked with organ-deep aches that even "doping up" didn't ease. He
was told he had cancer about a year and a half ago, and has since lost
a kidney. The operation left him with a large, unsightly bump on his
side. "If you're going to die of cancer, you might as well have a
hump," he said.
Nonetheless he looked and sounded surprisingly good, dressed like a
young rocker in baggy black pants, tinted shades and a baseball cap
with an embroidered dragon. He seemed much younger than 77, given his
sarcastic asides and tales of Viking skeletons and fights at Hollywood
restaurants. Far from prickly, he was charismatic and self-
deprecating, asking his wife to finish some stories because "she tells
'em much better."
He doesn't listen to much music anymore, though he said he loved Beck
"before I even knew that he was a fan." Beck was turned on to his
music by Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth, who gave him a tape in the
early '90s. Meanwhile rockers like Pulp's Jarvis Cocker were saluting
his music as forgotten art, not kitsch. A few years later Mr. Shelley
got permission to reissue some of Mr. Hazlewood's out-of-print albums
on Smells Like Records, his indie label; they sell about 5,000 to
10,000 copies each per year, according to the label.
"This all surprised the hell out of me," Mr. Hazlewood recalled. In
1999 he released a comeback record with a self-sabotaging title:
"Farmisht, Flatulence, Origami, ARF!!! and Me."
"I don't know if I was born to be in this business or not," he said.
He originally wanted to be a doctor. He was raised "like a Gypsy," as
his father was an oil wildcatter and the family followed him around
Arkansas, Kansas and Texas, settling in Port Neches, Tex., during Mr.
Hazlewood's high school years. One grandfather was a judge, married to
a teacher who was half American Indian; the other was a rancher who
taught him how to ride horses and herd cows.
"I had the happiest childhood on record," Mr. Hazlewood said. "People
tell me I'd have been a much better songwriter if I had a sad one."
Mr. Hazlewood studied medicine, but left school to serve in the Korean
War. Later a stint at broadcasting school led to a songwriting hobby
and a radio D.J. gig in Arizona. By the mid-'50s he was championing an
unknown guitar virtuoso named Duane Eddy.
Mr. Eddy appears on "Cake or Death," reinterpreting the original, pre-
Nancy version of "These Boots," which has a ghostlier melody few have
heard before. An eccentric collection of new songs, covers and
reworkings of Hazlewood classics, the album is far from a soft-focus,
navel-gazing meditation on death. Mr. Hazlewood is going out the way
he lived, fearless and cranky: he slams the Iraq war on "Baghdad
Nights," mocks gated-community types in "White People Thing" and
proudly salutes his liberal beliefs - "I never did vote Republican" -
in the bluesy "Anthem." "Fred Freud" imagines Sigmund Freud's down-
home American brother and features Mr. Hazlewood's favorite lyric: "No
kisses or posies can kill your neuroses."
But at the end he suddenly grabs for the heart: the melancholy, string-
driven ballad "T.O.M. (The Old Man)" presents a dying singer who
accepts that the world will be just as beautiful without him. He wrote
it for his new wife, the only woman he said he was ever in "real love"
with. A former military police officer, she is no-nonsense and
extremely kind. "I kept waiting for love to get boring, and it never
did," he said.
In the song he wonders "what forever will be like." And he's still not
sure. "I think that any part of you that's good or interesting might
go back to this collective something that started it all off," he
said. "And that's as deep of an explanation as I can give you."
Suddenly he shouted out to Mark Hazlewood, his son: "Are you up there
eavesdropping? Well, you should be, because you're going to have to do
this for me when I'm dead."
Everyone started laughing. Black humor is the family's coping
mechanism. "We all joke about my death in this house," Mr. Hazlewood
said. "Even the grandkids."
But later, as Mrs. Hazlewood drove a reporter to a taxi stand at a
nearby casino, she confessed: "This is so hard on all of us. I really
don't want to lose him. I can't even imagine living without him."
"I've been thinking of getting a glass vial of his blood," she added.
"So I can clone him when the time and technology is right." One day
21st-century pop could get a lot stranger.