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Imagine getting sent to Hollywood, USA to cover a star-infested movie premiere, seeing lots of incredible sights, meeting lots of famous people... and staying in a posh Beverly Hills hotel.
Imagine a friend asking you when you arrived back home in Richmond, USA what the most exciting thing you encountered in Hollywood, USA was.
Imagine telling them it was interviewing T Bone Burnett.
I first heard about T Bone Burnett in the record review section of Musician magazine, oh, about 1983. The critic gave Burnett's Trap Door EP (Warner Bros.) an unqualified "yes" vote, and talked at length about his intriguing semi-religious lyrics. The guy was supposedly like a hip, fast-talking Robert Schuller who could really deliver a melodic hook. Needless to say, I was interested in the odd combination immediately and bought the disc, which eventually stiffed on the charts but ended up topping every rock critic's poll in the hemisphere.
I didn't find Burnett's ambitious wordplay obvious enough to bother my deism, and I gathered he was more a moralist than a Bible-thumper. In addition, the music was jangly, catchy pop that stuck to your brain like Krazy Glue.
Like everyone else who took the chance on Trap Door, I ended up hiring private detectives to help me search out the whole T Bone Burnett catalog, both solo and as 1/3 of the Alpha Band. None of it disappointed.
A record producer of some reknown (he co-produced. Marshall Crenshaw's Downtown, as well as both of Los Lobos' LPs and Elvis Costello's upcoming King of America); a solo artist whose got his act together (in addition to Trap Door, there's Truth Decay and Proof Through the Night); the leader of one of rock's great unsung groups (the Alpha Band, with whom he made three spotty-but-enjoyable albums); and legendary sideman (he was one of Bob Dylan's chess pawns on the historic Rolling Thunder Revue). T Bone Burnett is a rock music renaissance man, for sure.
Well, there was the renaissance man himself, waiting for the elevator in the lobby of my hotel (where, it turns out, he was staying too). All six-foot-plus of him was decked out in rumpled sweatpants and Blues Brothers shades, clutching a drawing pad. I approached him, and he seemed surprised and almost embarrassed that someone had recognized him amidst all the tinsel-by-numbers of the city. Interview? "Sure, call me tomorrow at two."
The next day I talked to Burnett over Coca-Colas in his hotel room.
So, are you on a record label right now?
No, I'm not. I could do that.
What about a new solo record?
That's what I mean. I'm writing a bunch of songs and if I think they're good enough to record, if there's such a thing as good enough to record (laughs), I'll do it.
What are the rewards of producing other artists?
There's various rewards. The money's good, you don't have to worry about getting a band together and keeping it. I mean, if you go out on the road for six weeks, you can be expected to spend around $100,000.
I guess the real reward to producing is helping someone realize their ideal.
I thought Crenshaw's Downtown was superb. What was your role on that record?
With Marshall it was just a question of my helping him. He has real specific ideas of what he wants to do. So I basically just tried to help him get sounds out of instruments. He does his own demos and then he tries to repeat them in the studio and I think that's very difficult to do. I mean, it's hard to do something even once, much less twice. To me, if you get it right the first time, great.
Like his B-side, "You're My Favorite Waste of Time." That's great, and he produced it himself.
Yeah, there's a charm to those (self-produced) songs. I don't think they'd have a good shot at getting on the radio or anything like that, but he's not getting on the radio that much anyway, so why not?
My recommendation to (Marshall) is rather than do demos at home, he should go into a decent studio and do them and then put those out.
I thought Downtown sounded a lot like your first album, Truth Decay. I guess it's because they're both very rockabilly. Truth Decay is hard to find, but definitely worth it.
I like that record too. I think that's a real honest record.
You're very respected by rock critics. Do you like being known as a "critics' favorite"?
I'm not wild about that. I mean, the people that record my songs are usually all writers, for instance. I was watching Dick Cavett last night and James Garner said, "People really don't care what kind of actor you are, they just care if they like you." I think that's a very astute remark. It's difficult to come to that point, I think. I mean, I've always liked James Garner, no matter who he played. He was always a really nice guy.
That's a real big part of show business (being liked) that I've never tried to address. What you have to do as an artist is to go in and reveal yourself, and if the people like you... I mean, it really doesn't matter whether people like you or not because people like a lot of stuff that I don't like at all, and I like stuff that people, in general, don't like. All you can do is put your cards on the table, be as generous as you can and let the chips fall as they may.
You just produced Elvis Costello's new record due out soon. What is that going to sound like?
Yeah, here's the single (gets the 45 out). It's funny. We did this (a remake of the Animals' "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood") sort of as an afterthought. The album is really brilliant, really beautiful. The British critics tore the single up, calling Elvis old and washed-up. I can't wait for the album to come out and completely take them by surprise.
Is King of America softer, like Imperial Bedroom?
Yeah. You wanna hear some of it?
He ended up playing me most of King of America, leaving it going as he packed up for a flight back to his home in Texas. Indeed, the songs sound brilliant, maybe Elvis' finest work yet. Like Downtown and Proof Through the Night, it has an eerie sound, as well as a deep underlying melancholy (owing probably as much to co-producers Burnett and Larry Hirsch's echo-y bottom as to Costello's much-publicized marital problems). One song in particular, "I'll Wear It Proudly," stands out; it is a Costello ballad to end all Costello ballads. Looking at T Bone's face as it played, I could tell he was thrilled to have been in on its creation. "Isn't that beautiful," he uttered as it faded out.
For T Bone Burnett fans, production efforts like the Costello record (and ex-Plimsoul Peter Case's upcoming solo effort) will have to do until the man settles his disputes with record company honchos (he was dropped by Warner Bros. a year ago because of poor sales, and I got the feeling he was fed up with the solo-artist numbers game) and releases his fourth solo disc.
Songwriter, moralist, producer, bandleader... one thing's for sure: Whatever hat T Bone Burnett chooses to wear, he'll wear it proudly.
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