Posted on 09/09/2002 6:48:34 AM PDT by adam stevens
Ballad of Johnny Taliban: Steve Earle Picks Another Dumb Fight He was the barely known opener at a six-act country concert in the sticks south of San Diego. I can't remember exactly how he insulted that afternoon crowd of cowboy hats -- maybe it was just his long greasy hair and lack of Nashville sparkle -- but it was interesting enough to lure me behind the outdoor stage to his ugly tour bus. Waylon Jennings was singing while somebody on Steve Earle's payroll told me to get lost. Finally Earle stepped down and I asked for a quick interview. He grumbled until he heard "college paper," and then he was Mr. Friendly.
That was 1986, when college radio was going to save rock n' roll from itself. Earle was climbing the Billboard country charts with his debut, "Guitar Town," but he really wanted to be on the playlist with Hüsker Dü and the Replacements. So we sat in the bus for an hour, talking about everything but the popular Nashville music of the day. After a decade of chasing country stardom, it was pretty clear he already despised the prize.
A few nights later, Earle played a cowboy club on the other side of the county. He wouldn't let the promoters or deejays on the bus, but I found the Beat Farmers' Country Dick Montana inside. Narcotics were in evidence. Earle and his band, the Dukes, played a fine show that night -- including a long, weird version of Bruce Springsteen's "State Trooper." The crowd didn't much like it, but Springsteen had been spotted at Tower Records on Sunset Strip forcing copies of Earle's LP on strangers. Now that was important.
That's how Earle's brain works. By the late 1980s, he hated Nashville so much that he started to dress and act like Axl Rose ... or Rose's gun-nut cousin back in Tennessee. He lost his record contract, a couple more wives, and all of his teeth. The judges finally tired of his dope-sick face and tossed him in prison.
This week's trouble is vintage Earle. For his new album, "Jerusa lem," Earle wrote and recorded a new song from the imagined point of view of American Taliban John Walker Lindh. Even though the criminal-narrator formula has long been used by the likes of Merle Haggard, Woody Guthrie, Johnny Cash, Springsteen, Nick Cave, Eminem and another thousand songwriters, Earle told a Canadian crowd his latest contribution to the genre "just may get me fuckin' deported."
(On his own Web site, Earle contradicts this claim by saying, "I'm not trying to get myself deported or something" and calls the new CD " the most pro-American record I've ever made.")
It's vintage Earle, both the song and the melodrama. Since getting out of jail and kicking his chemical habits, Earle has painstakingly rebuilt his career with a string of excellent, thoughtful albums. He's become an ace producer and godfather to the alt-country scene. But he still can't get along with people, as proven by his late 1990s' immersion in bluegrass: he worked hard with the Del McCoury Band for "The Mountain," then turned mean when the Christian bluegrass boys got sick of his foul mouth.
The latest outrage was all over FoxNews and talk radio. While his loyal fans will brush it off as another chapter in Earle's endless effort to pick a fight, those who don't appreciate his music see it as a George Michael-esque attempt to "rebuild his faltering career," as Nashville deejay Phil Valentine told the New York Post. Who cares what some Nashville deejay says? It's not like you hear Steve Earle on Hot Country 107.5.
His career seems just fine. He's got plenty of money and makes the music he wants. His last six records have all done well on the Americana, AAA and Billboard country charts -- pretty good considering commercial radio doesn't play such music outside of Texas. And he's been nominated for eight Grammy awards while routinely topping the critics' lists.
While the New York Post might not think much of Earle, the New Yorker and New York Times can't seem to get enough of him. He even got a publisher to put out a collection of his short stories last year.
And there's the danger. That fancy Manhattan attention got to Earle's already big head and convinced him he wasn't just a talented Texas songwriter, but a Serious Writer addressing Serious Issues. And serious writers type dull short stories for other serious writers to praise. Last time I saw him on Letterman, he was wearing eyeglasses, for God's sake.
It's one thing to annoy conservative Nashville with coffeehouse claims of Marxism and stands against the death penalty and land mines, as Earle has done for years. His fans can take or leave this stuff, as long as the music's good. And it's fine to write a song about Johnny Taliban, because who hasn't wondered what goes on inside that kid's head?
The trouble comes when you let the ruckus kill the art, when you claim oppression before the record is even released. Unless this country magically became Iran yesterday, performing a controversial song is still punished by a lot of free publicity. I'm hoping Earle won't will leave the phony martyr routine to Susan Sontag. It's a tired, dull act.
* * *
Earle has used the Holy Land/Jeebus/Devil/backwards guitar thing pretty often. Anybody surprised by an Earle album called "Jerusalem" hasn't been paying attention.
He's also written songs with characters endorsing ar son, ps ycho stalking, assault with various deadly weapons, the consumption of coke and heroin, and executing people for a government paycheck.
So, all of y'all want to scream and whine about the same guy writing a song from the viewpoint of some dipshit Marin County boy who couldn't pull off hip-hop and became one of those head-bobbing Madrassa fruits instead, go right ahead. I'll still be poor and Steve Earle will still be rich. But I've never been bothered by Earle having money. Crazy Chomsky-reading nut that he is, he at least deserves some coin for 30 years of honky-tonk labor. At least he doesn't have a university degree. Hell, he doesn't have a high school diploma.
Posted by Ken Layne on August 12, 2002 11:23 PM
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