The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [194]
No, not until I fucking met you! He loved a row. Christmas Day at our house was just one long argument. We were shouting all the time—my brother, me and then my uncles and aunts. He had a sense of moral indignation, that attitude of “You don’t have to put up with this shit.” He was very wise politically. He was from the left, but you know, he praised the guy on the right.
The more you talk about it, the more it sounds like you’re describing yourself.
That is a very interesting way of looking at it, and I think there’ll be a lot of people who might agree with you. I loved my dad. But we were combatants. Right until the end. Actually, his last words were an expletive. I was sleeping on a little mattress right beside him in the hospital. I woke up, and he made this big sound, this kind of roar, it woke me up. The nurse comes in and says, “You okay, Bob?” He kind of looks at her and whispers, “Would you fuck off and get me out of here? This place is like a prison. I want to go home.” Last words: “Fuck off.”
What were the first rock & roll records that you heard?
Age four. The Beatles—“I Want to Hold Your Hand.” I guess that’s 1964. I remember watching the Beatles with my brother on St. Stephen’s Day, the day after Christmas. The sense of a gang that they had about them, from just what I’ve been saying, you can tell that they’re connected, as well as the melodic power, the haircuts and the sexuality. Which I was just probably processing.
Then performers like Tom Jones. I’d see Tom Jones on Saturday night on a variety show—I must have been, like, eight years old—and he’s sweating, and he’s an animal, and he’s unrestrained. He’s singing with abandon. He has a big black voice, in a white guy. And then, of course, Elvis.
I’m thinking, what is this? Because this is changing the temperature of the room. And people stopped talking.
When did you run across Elvis?
I might have heard the songs, but it was the Comeback Special, when he was standing up—because he couldn’t sit down to play. The thing was: He’s not in control of this—this is in control of him. The abandon was really attractive.
Who else had a big impact on you, musically, when you were that age?
Before I got to the Who, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, and those kinds of things—I really remember John Lennon’s Imagine. I guess I’m twelve; that’s one of my first albums. That really set fire to me. It was like he was whispering in your ear—his ideas of what’s possible.
Different ways of seeing the world. When I was fourteen and lost my mother, I went back to Plastic Ono Band.
Bob Dylan at the same time. Listened to his acoustic albums. Then starting to think about playing those acoustic songs. My brother had a Beatles songbook—so trying to teach myself guitar, and him sort of helping.
And that song—which is actually such a genius song, now that I think about it, you’re embarrassed the day after you learned it—“If I Had a Hammer.” That’s a tattoo, that song.
That was the first song you learned how to play?
“If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning/I’d hammer in the evening/All over this land/I’d hammer out justice/I’d hammer out freedom/Love between my brothers and my sisters/All over this land.” Fantastic. A manifesto, right there.
You’re still doing the same song.
[Laughs] Right.
And so all that stuff was going on in London in the Sixties: the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, the Kinks. What kind of influence was that on you?
The Who: About age fifteen, that starts really connecting. In amongst the din and the noise, the power chords and the rage, there’s another voice. “Nobody knows what it’s like behind blue eyes . . .” And the beginnings of what I would discover is one of the essential aspects for me—and why I’m drawn to a piece of music—which has something to do with the quest. The sense that there’s another world to be explored. I got that from Pete