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......It is true you can't judge a book by its cover but you can make a better judgment if you read the first four chapters. Here you have the opportunity to do just that......
Because this site may be accessed by children strong language has been edited out. In the actual book the manuscript has been left as it was intended for adult reading.
I looked at the young man sitting opposite; I decided I didn’t like him. This troubled me. I saw myself as a decent person and it was my philosophy in life to be nonjudgmental. And here I didn’t like someone I had met not five minutes ago when he knocked on the door of my hotel room.
I had spoken to him on the phone several times and we had set up the appointment, but this seemed a different person. I pictured him older, only to find he was in his mid-twenties. How can someone who has lived so little be objective about my life? Twelve, thirteen years ago as he was reaching puberty I had already had three successful careers and was considering another.
He opened a backpack and took out a tape recorder. What is it with this generation and their backpacks? Doesn’t anyone carry a briefcase anymore? Here I was, being judgmental again; maybe here in New York City it’s safer to have your personal belongings strapped to your back.
My guest sat the tape recorder in the center of the table and looked across at me. "I like to tape my interviews rather than take notes." He quickly added, "We can turn it off and take a break at any time—just let me know."
Maybe he sensed my uneasiness. It was not so much I didn’t like him, I just didn’t want to be doing this. A few years ago when I was an unknown songwriter I’d have given my left nut for an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, but now it was happening I didn’t want to do it. To turn it down didn’t make sense either. I was angry with myself for feeling this way.
My album had gone platinum, and I was getting air play nationwide. I was on a roll and it was obviously a good career move to do this interview. So what was the problem? I didn’t know, just a gut feeling that I didn’t need to put my life out there for the whole world to read about.
The young man pushed the record button and spoke. "Kevin Robinson, interviewing Eddie Conner for Rolling Stone magazine, New York City, July 16, 1994."
He leaned back in his chair and started the interview with, "Do you mind telling me how old you are?"
His question struck a nerve like a dentist drill hitting the bottom of a cavity.
"Jesus, what is this f--king preoccupation journalists have with people’s age. Is this the most important thing about me, that it’s the first thing you ask me? Let me ask how old are you? Twenty-five, twenty-six? Sh-t, I’ve got clothes in my closet older than you."
There was no reply; he sat there wide-eyed in stunned silence at my outburst. He reached over and turned off the tape recorder. I got up and walked to the window.
We were on the sixth floor overlooking Central Park. I looked at the people below enjoying this beautiful summer day and wished I were there with them. I knew I either had to end this interview right now or get my sh-t together and go through with it. I walked back to the table and sat down. It was Kevin who spoke first.
"I’m sorry, Mr. Conner. I meant no disrespect. I usually ask that question first just to get the ball rolling."
"You mean the stone rolling." I tried to inject a little humor to diffuse the situation, because now I was embarrassed. My effort either went completely over his head or he was afraid to laugh, so I continued. "No, I’m sorry, Kevin. It’s just the whole age thing is a touchy subject with me; I quit celebrating birthdays a long time ago. I find to be constantly talking about one’s age is to keep it in mind. That’s how people become old by constantly thinking about it. Can we start again?"
Kevin smiled uneasily, reached over, and pressed the record button. Before he could speak I added, "I won’t tell you exactly how old I am, but I will tell you this. I’m from that same f--ked-up generation that gave you the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. I’m about the same age as those guys." Actually I was two or three years older than most of those guys, but I wasn’t about to admit it here.
"But I’m younger than Willie Nelson," I added.
"Well, sh-t, everyone’s younger than Willie." Kevin had relaxed some since my outburst. "So, Mr. Conner—"
"Call me Eddie, please."
"Eddie, here you are seemingly an overnight success and, by your own admission, from the sixties generation. I can’t believe it’s taken you this long to get where you are today. What’s the story behind that?"
"I had some success in the music scene in London around the late 1950s and early1960s before bands like the Stones even started. Maybe my timing was off, but instead of sticking with it I dropped out to pursue other things. By 1963 and 1964 when I see all these bands making it I felt I had missed the boat, so to speak. Years later I realized it’s never too late and reentered the music scene."
Kevin commented, "But the Beatles and the Stones were only the first wave of the British Invasion. There were others that followed—like The Who and Led Zeppelin. You could have come back in at any time."
"Yes, in retrospect I could have done just that but who knew back then, we all thought it wouldn’t last. If you watch those old interviews from the sixties with Paul McCartney and the other Beatles for example, none of them could imagine performing rock-n-roll at forty years old and beyond."
"So what happened? Why did you drop out from the music scene?"
"I didn’t apply myself. I didn’t take the music seriously at that time."
I was lying. I took the music very seriously but from 1960 to 1964 when my career should have been developing I was behind bars as a guest in one of Her Majesty’s prisons in England. But I wasn’t about to reveal that here for publication in Rolling Stone. I knew this was why I didn’t want to do this interview. I had to lie, or at least gloss over the truth. I had agonized over this. Should I come clean and reveal my past?
Merle Haggard revealed he had been in prison as a young guy in his teens and twenties and it probably even helped his career, it certainly didn’t harm it. With me it was different. I was a Brit, an alien with a Green Card, and to reveal a criminal past at this time might have repercussions that I would not want. Merle got a pardon from the Governor of California. The only way the Queen would utter the word "pardon" would be on burping after cucumber sandwiches at a Buckingham Palace Garden Party.
Kevin continued. "So when did you get back into music?"
"I started to write songs again in the eighties, but did nothing with them until friends encouraged me to start performing my own stuff. This started me thinking that I didn’t fail because I had no talent, I just never applied it, and if there ever was any talent in me then it was still there. By the eighties, rock musicians like the Stones and singer-songwriters had gotten older, and all those other bands were still around so it was okay for someone like myself to be performing. Not that it mattered, this was what I wanted to do."
Kevin nodded. "So you were around the music scene in London when the Stones got their start? Did you know any of those guys?"
"No I was from Stepney, a working-class neighborhood in the East End of London. The Stones got their start in Richmond, which was an upper-class neighborhood in West London. And I had quit the music scene by 1961, when the Stones were only just starting."
Kevin asked, "Did the music you were doing in the East End of London differ from what bands like the Stones were doing in West London?"
"Yes, very much so. In England in the mid-fifties there was still somewhat of a class system in effect. Working-class kids generally didn’t hang out with middle-class kids, and vice versa. When rock-n-roll burst on the scene in 1956 with Bill Hayley and the Comets and Elvis, it was like a breath of fresh air to us working-class kids. It was raw, it was primitive, and you could dance to it. The middle-class kids who considered themselves more sophisticated were into modern jazz and while some of them probably listened to rock-n-roll, if you were middle class, to admit you liked rock was not considered cool. I’ve read where Keith Richards was snubbed by some of his peers early on because he liked Chuck Berry."
"So when did this change?"
"Not until the Beatles. They were a rock-n-roll band pure and simple, and they were so good they couldn’t be ignored. John Lennon was working class, so all of a sudden it was okay to be working class. But before that—around 1958—the middle-class kids had switched their allegiance from modern jazz to traditional jazz, New Orleans, and Dixieland style. Music that had been popular in America in the 1920s and 1930s. Like rock-n-roll, it was raw, primitive, and you could dance to it. An offshoot of this was that some middle-class kids got interested in the blues and were influenced by people like Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters."
"Who were your influences?"
"Elvis, of course. Gene Vincent, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry, who themselves had been influenced by Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters so we all ended up at the same place. The Rolling Stones started out as a blues band and became a rock band. I was into rock-n-roll as early as 1957 when there were few British rock bands."
Kevin nodded his understanding. "Earlier you referred to your generation as that ‘f--ked-up generation.’ Why do you say this, and was your generation any more f--ked up than the generations that followed?"
"Probably not, but we were f--ked up for different reasons, mainly because our childhood was spent during World War II. It affected our parents so it affected us. I believe the reason all the great music that emerged from the UK in the sixties was because we spent our childhood during the war years."
"Why do you say that?"
"When you f--k with a child’s mind, they often turn inward and use their imagination to escape. This imagination becomes creativity. The child may become a great artist or he may become a criminal. I see a thin line between the criminal, the insane mind, and the creative mind. Criminal activity can be creative, albeit negative creativity."
"Were you abused as a child?"
"Yes."
"By whom?"
"My father, but not just him, the British school system did its share also. They didn’t call it abuse then; it was called corporal punishment. But legal or not the effect was the same. "
I was being pushed into revealing things I didn’t even discuss with those closest to me, let alone a complete stranger, and a young stranger at that. I was feeling very uncomfortable. "I’d rather stay away from all the negative stuff. Can we talk about the music?"
Kevin nodded. "Of course. You had a number-one hit in Britain first, which got you noticed in the U.S. Tell me about that."
"Yes, I’d lived in the U.S. since the seventies and always wanted go back and tour England. It was like a healing thing."
"In what way?" Kevin asked.
Immediately I knew I had said the wrong thing. The truth was for years I had felt somewhat bitter toward my own country. Not the people, but the establishment. I felt I had been robbed of my chance of success in the early sixties, and not entirely through my own fault.
"Can we take a break?" I asked. "I need to take a leak."
Kevin stopped the tape. I went inside the bathroom and closed the door. I stood leaning on the vanity top, my arms spread. Head down, staring into the empty bowl, I talked to myself under my breath. "Damn, how can I make this story interesting and not tell the truth?"
That was the key—I had to make it interesting. The truth was interesting but I didn’t want to reveal it. I looked up and studied my face in the mirror. This was like trying to peek at a snake in a pool cue case. "F--k it. If the snake gets out there’s not much I can do but hope the bastard doesn’t turn around and bite me."
I didn’t need to take a leak but I flushed the toilet for effect and returned to the table. "Now where were we?"
Kevin rewound the tape and the words "It was like a healing thing" came back to haunt me.
"That was not a good choice of words. What I meant to say was it was good to perform to the home crowd. I had had a little taste of the glory in the early sixties and wanted to relive that. An old friend in London had a recording studio and I went back there to record an independent album. To promote it we played around the London pubs and clubs.
"I was fortunate enough to get some press coverage, you know, ‘exiled Brit comes home’ type of thing and the name of our band Prodigal Child played right into that angle. Before I knew it the BBC wanted to do a TV special. After that the band took off and we went on a nationwide tour. A song called "When I Hear My Little Girl Cry," which I wrote about my daughter, went to number one."
I paused briefly, then Kevin and I spoke at the same time. He apologized and said, "Go on."
"I was just going to say that in England they don’t have the country charts and so on, that are predominately made up of what adults are listening to. They basically have one top ten chart and you sometimes get this strange phenomenon called ‘the Mom and Pop factor.’ The British top ten reflects mostly what the kids are listening to, but sometimes you can get a song like mine, and the older generation will buy it and send it to number one. That’s pretty much what happed here. The British top ten is published in the U.S. so people started to ask ‘Who is this guy?’ And the rest is history, as they say."
The interview went on into the late afternoon, and we mostly talked about the years from the 1980s on, which suited me. I had managed to peek at the snake without letting it out.