The 1980s – Page 3 – Ash Clifton, Writer

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Welcome to the Boomtown”

If you took the entire West-Coast noir mystery genre and made it into a great 1980s song, “Welcome to the Boomtown” by David and David would be the result. When I first heard it on the radio in 1986, I went straight out and bought the album. It’s one of the most haunting rock songs ever made, right up there with “Hotel California” (another song about California’s own particular kind of purgatory).

I love the way David Baerwald’s dark, ravaged voice seems to meld with David Rickett’s equally dark, slightly atonal guitar playing. And the lyrics sound like something Ross Macdonald might have written. “Welcome to the Boomtown” is a minor classic.

Enjoy, and rock on…

R.I.P. Gene Hackman

My parents divorced when I was a little kid. My mom was struggling with mental illness (undiagnosed, at the time) and so I went to live with my father and his new wife, my step-mother Eileen. I saw my mom mostly on the weekends, and we would invariably go to the movies. I probably saw over fifty movies in the theater per year, all with my mom.

I seldom went to the movies with my father, and even more seldomly when it was just the two of us. The last time I remember was in 1992. Eileen was out-of-town with my brother and sister, so Dad and I went to see Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. It’s a great movie, and both my father and I loved it. We especially admired Gene Hackman’s performance as the villainous sheriff Little Bill Daggett, who, as Hackman himself revealed, is a kind of precursor to the modern right-wing movement.

My dad and I went out to dinner after the movie, and we shared our favorite moments from the film. It’s one of my fondest memories. I thought of it this morning when I read that Hackman had died. And I thought of something else, too. It occurred to me that the last movie I saw alone with my mother was also a Gene Hackman film, 1985’s Twice in a Lifetime. It’s about as different a film from Unforgiven as one can possibly imagine, with Hackman playing a completely different kind of character. And yet, it was still Hackman. Still low-key. Still forceful. Still brilliant.

What are the odds that the two last movies I saw with each of my parents alone were both Hackman films? Pretty good, actually. He was in a lot of movies. In fact, you could argue that he was the most versatile, compelling, and attractive character actor in Hollywood history. He played villains and heroes, and everything in between, across genres from action to mystery to sci-fi. In Twice in a Lifetime, he played an unassuming everyman who, on the tail-end of middle-age, leaves his wife to make a new start. He was also Lex Luthor in Superman. And Pop-eye Doyle in The French Connection. And the blind guy in Young Frankenstein.

Being a writer of mysteries, I’m particularly fond of Authur Penn’s 1975 film Night Moves, in which Hackman played a world-weary P.I. searching for a missing girl. It’s one of trademark, understated performances, and yet it crackles with energy. That was his gift.

Godspeed, Mr. Hackman…!!!

Classic Sci-Fi Book Cover: “Lord of Light”

I’ve read a lot of trippy science books in my time, but Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light is probably the trippiest. The only one that sort of comes close is Frank Herbert’s Dune, which makes a lot of sense considering both were written in the 1960s by two extremely smart and talented writers. (One of Zelazny’s other books, This Immortal, actually shared the Hugo Award with Dune in 1967.)

In fact, there’s not really a name for what Lord of Light is. Technically, it’s science fiction fantasy (a sub-genre I’ve written about before). That is, it looks and feels like a fantasy novel (as does Dune) until you realize that the plot has a sci-fi underpinning. Lord of Light is set on an alien world in which the population is stuck in a pre-industrial state, ruled over by gods of the Hindu pantheon. These gods interact with mortal humans on a daily basis, using magical powers and objects to control their destiny. Throughout the novel, however, Zelazny drops carefully crafted clues that the “gods” are actually the crew of a starship called The Star of India, which crash-landed on the planet centuries before.

These faux-deities use high-technology to set themselves up as gods, complete with a kind of immortality (they can transfer their consciousness to new, young bodies when the old ones wear out). They rule over the common people (who are revealed to be the descendants of the passengers of the ship) with an iron fist, doling out justice and retrobution from a floating, anti-gravity city (“heaven”). This reign is, ostensibly, for the people’s own good (tyrants always say this, right?). But when one of the last democratically-minded crew members, Sam, takes on the role of Siddhartha, he poses a threat to the status quo, which has kept humanity stagnant for generations.

This 1987 edition from Avon was the one I read in college, and I still own it. Its cover was done by an English illustrator named Tim White. I really like it because it captures that essential trippiness. At first, it looks like a pop-religion book, depicting figures dressed like Hindu gods. But what’s with the blue electric bolts? Or the floating city? And why is one of the Hindu “goddesses” blonde?

Ahhh, it’s really a sci-fi novel.

Yes, it is.

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Can’t Stand Losing You”

If you’re old enough to remember the early 1980s, you probably know that there was a time when Sting was more than just a meme, and The Police were the greatest rock band in the world. When I say greatest, I mean by almost any measurable component—records sold, concerts sold out, number of MTV plays in any given week, number of magazine articles written about them, etc.—they were at number one. (The only artists who could really give them a run for their money were Michael Jackson and Madonna, and I don’t count either of them as rock artists, though I love them both, especially Madonna.)

Heck, I’m old enough to remember when The Police, themselves, weren’t a rock band, either. They were more of a punk, reggae-adjacent garage band. And that period was, imho, their peak. Yes, “Every Breath You Take” is a classic—arguable the most successful rock song of the 20^th Century—but it came out on what was, in some ways, The Police’s least interesting album, Synchronicity. Their very best songs, I think, come from earlier albums, including this one about a guy who, well, can’t stand losing…you.

Rock on…

R.I.P. David Lynch

It has been a week since David Lynch passed away, and many great tributes have already been written about him. I’m tempted to say that I needed a week to process his passing and figure out what I wanted to say about him, but the truth is I was just too damned busy to write anything. In fact, I knew instantly what I wanted to say—simply, that Lynch was a very important person in my life, and in the lives of many of my friends.

I was a college English major in 1986 when Blue Velvet came out, and it hit me and my circle of arty friends like an atomic blast. I already knew of Lynch’s work (I was one of the few kids to see The Elephant Man, and in an actual movie theater, no less), and I knew that he was a director of enormous visual and thematic power. But even I was unprepared for Blue Velvet. On the one hand, it’s a murder mystery, an homage to the noir films of the 1950s in which an unsuspecting suburban kid discovers a hidden world of violence, evil, and, (of course) depraved sexuality. On the other hand, it’s a surrealist vision of the inner world of a modern young man (and, probably, many young women). I was roughly the same age as the main character, Jeffrey Beaumont, in 1986, and so the film had special resonance. I felt like the landscape of my own imagination was a strange blend of the beautiful and the grotesque—often in the same image. And that’s exactly what the film captures, somehow.

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Authority Song”

There is a great documentary on Netflix about the legendary record producer Clive Davis. One of the more interesting moments in the film is when Davis describes some of the fine artists he didn’t sign to his label, either because someone else beat him to punch or because he thought the artist in question just didn’t fit in with his catalog.

One example he gives of the latter is John Mellencamp, who, despite being saddled with the dumb, management-invented stage-name of John Cougar, hit the airwaves like a thunderbolt in the early 1980s. Mellencamp, Davis lamented, seemed too similar to another of Davis’s great artists, Bruce Springsteen, in that they both played soaring, electrified dirges about working class America (i.e., so-called “Heartland Rock,” even though Springsteen is famously from New Jersey). So, to his later regret, Davis passed.

Too bad for him. Mellencamp sold a bazillion records over the years, while gradually ditching the John Couger moniker and returning to his own, real name. As he did so, I gradually came to like him more and more. His early hits like “Jack and Diane” didn’t speak to me, perhaps because I was in high school at the time (just like Jack and Diane), and while the song was a paeon to lost youth and spirit, I was miserable in high school. (Later, I would realize that I probably would have liked high school a lot better if I had gone to Mellencamp’s, nestled somewhere in small-town America, full of cool, down-to-earth, nice kids instead of the jocks and preppies I was used to. And, yes, I eventually fell in love with and married a girl named Diane.)

But my opinion of Mellencamp’s music changed when his “Authority Song” came out. Not only is it one of the most danceable songs of the 80’s, it’s also one of rock music’s most defiant and rebellious rejections of… well…authority.

I’ve liked Mellencamp ever since. In fact, I think he’s a bit of genius.

Rock on…

Friday-Night Rock Out: “Any Way You Want It”

E.L. Doctorow once said that Edgar Allen Poe was the best bad writer in American history. I would suggest that Journey was the best bad band in rock history. Blessed with a classic rock pairing of a great singer and a great lead guitarist—Steve Perry and Neil Schon, respectively—Journey was a hit-machine all through the 1980s. In a sea of turgid, flat corporate rock, Journey’s unusual combination of Perry’s crooning lyrics and Schon’s clean-yet-virtuosic guitar licks was a winner. It stood out a mile on F.M. radio. Also, the band had a great work ethic. They played out-of-the-way venues in the midwest and the deep south that many other bands shunned, which won the band the eternal devotion of countless rural and working-class kids, to whom Journey’s sentimental and often maudlin songs appealed.

It was this sentimental and overblown quality that made Journey a bit of a drag. There was something cloying and yet self-aggrandizing about much of their work. Every other song sounded like an “anthem.” One was always tempted to flick a lighter and wave it in the air whenever one of them came on the radio.

Still, when Journey was on its game and at its most pure, they could create a really great, down-and-dirty rock song. My favorite of theirs—the only one that truly feels like a rock song, to me—is their unapologetic ode to sex, “Any Way You Want It”.

Rock on…

Classic Sci-Fi Book Cover: “The Martian Chronicles” – Michael Whelan

When I was a public school kid back in the 1980s, I used to spend hours at the bookstore, mostly looking at science fiction books. It wasn’t just the stories themselves that interested me, but the cover art. Back then, before the internet gave one an endless supply of great sci-fi concept art of any kind, the only way to get one’s imagination going was to head to the bookstore.

So, it’s probably inevitable that I would regard that time as a golden age of sci-fi cover art. And I do. When I look at sci-fi books today, there is usually no cover art to speak of, but just an exercise in graphic design. The title goes in this font 38 point; the author’s name goes in this font at 28 point; etc.; with some blurry, abstract notion of an alien planet or a futuristic city. Back in the pre-digital days, sci-fi cover art consisted mainly of actual paintings, made by actual painters.

One of the best actual painters was (and is) Michael Whelan. His work has that perfect blend of realism, action, and whimsy that I always looked for in a good sci-fi cover. For five decades, he created some of the best covers ever made, and they earned him a place in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

One of my favorites is the one above, his cover for the 1990 Bantam/Spectra edition of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. If you haven’t read it (and you should), it’s an allegory about the loss of ancient wisdom, the horrors of capitalism, and even the conquest of the American West. Haunting the work are the ghosts of the Martians themselves, who once-great civilization is helpless in the face of the invading Earth-men, with their guns and disease and endless greed. I love this cover because it gives you a sense of that lost majesty, but it also makes you curious about the story.

In other words, it kindles the imagination.

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Kiss them for Me”

Was there ever a band more influential than Siouxie and the Banshees? Bands as diverse as Depeche Mode and Jane’s Addiction have expressed their admiration. And no less an iconic figure than Billy Idol has written about how awestruck he was the first time he saw the Banshees play live.

Not only were they one of the most important bands of the 1980s, they were one of the hardest to pigeonhole. Post-punk. Alt-rock. Alt-pop. Glam-rock. Goth-rock. All these labels have been applied to them.

All I know is that I always loved them, and still do.

Oh, and they’re really good to dance to.

Rock on…

The Enduring Genius of Richard Pryor

When I was teenager (ahem, some years ago) I had the good fortune to see Robin Williams perform. He was the lead entertainment for that year’s Gator Growl, the annual pep rally thrown by the University of Florida. At the time, Williams was mainly known as the odd but extremely funny star of TV’s Mork & Mindy. Few were aware that he was first and foremost a stand-up comedian, and even fewer knew just how brilliant—not to mention obscene—his style of comedy could be. So, you can imagine the surprise (and shock) that ensued when he walked out on stage and did his first joke, miming the cocking action of a shotgun as well as the sound: KA-CHICK. “Down here in the South,” he said, “if you hear that sound, you’d better be one fast motherfucker!”

The ensuing performance became a local legend. I remember it as being as incredibly manic and astoundingly creative. William’s comedy was like nothing else around at that time. It wasn’t long before he emerged as the premier comedian of his generation. And, since his suicide in 2014, he has become firmly embedded in our national consciousness as the Greatest Comedian of All Time.

This is a justifiable opinion. For my money, though, there was one comic who surpassed even Williams in his intellect, inventiveness, and sheer genius. This was Richard Pryor.