When Musicians Write Back

I get such joy out of reading back issues of old magazines.

This isn’t just exclusive to music magazines. I love digging through Starlog magazines to read on-set reports from movies and discovering science fiction or horror, and I occasionally enjoy combing through old sports magazines and game programs to get more historical context about various team and league achievements and events. Comic books, too, can provide some interesting insight to the events of the times in which they were published as well. Specific to the topic of today, many such publications contain some form of letters page in which readers can either write to the editor or talk openly about anything with some connection to the publication itself, be it a subject from a previous article or a response to a previously published letter.

Have you ever perused a letters section, and noticed a name that sounded familiar to you? I’m certain you have, because these portions weren’t limited to folks like you or me. Rather noteworthy individuals, including those with world-wide celebrity status, could chip in their two cents and earn some column space. For me, it was quite an exciting moment when I spotted that someone fairly famous had taken the time from their presumably-packed schedule to submit their thoughts. Not quite as exciting as seeing a letter you wrote yourself getting published, such as my experience when spotting my own words in an issue of Canadian Sportscard Collector back in the late-’90s, but exciting nonetheless.

I’ll give you a brief taste of what I’ve spotted in old magazines with samples from five different musicians, cramming the first two of them together since they were found in the same magazine.

Steve Lukather and Adrian Belew

Magazine: Guitar Player – February 1990

I’ve been reading this magazine since it first came out, and words cannot explain how surprised I am to win any poll, let alone the Guitar Player Readers Poll for Best Studio Guitarist. This is the fifth year in a row that you, the readers, have voted for me. This is an honor I do not deserve, but will cherish forever. Thank you for all the years of support.

– Steve Lukather

I wouldn’t at all doubt that Steve was a loyal reader from the very beginning of the magazine. Guitar Player was first issued in 1967 (unfortunately, it’s no longer in print-form today), making Lukather around thirteen at the time. To be guitarist of what is considered a ‘musician’s pop-band’ (Toto), I’d imagine he consumed music knowledge wherever he could obtain it. This run of awards from the magazine gets a prominent mention on Lukather’s official website, with that win streak having qualified him for the publication’s exclusive Gallery of the Greats. I’ll go on record saying that he did deserve the honour despite his display of humbleness in what would not at all be considered a “hot take”, as the kids say these days.

To the voters of Guitar Player, my sincere thanks.

– Adrian Belew

Short and sweet from Adrian here. I’m not particularly surprised. Despite being an excellent on-stage showman, in interviews he is more soft-spoken and at ease, as if he’s talking with a good friend rather than putting on a rock star act. And with a resume like his (Frank Zappa, Talking Heads, David Bowie, King Crimson), you’d think he’d get a swell head. Though the saying goes something like “never meet your heroes”, the odds seem favourable that he’d be one of the good ones. Unfortunately, I haven’t see the reader’s poll from the January 1990 issue to confirm exactly what category Belew either won or was nominated in, but I can’t own every magazine out there.

What had these two guitarists been up to in the previous year (1989) to put themselves in the voters’ minds? Both Lukather and Belew were both in positions where their regular gigs (Toto and King Crimson, respectively) were either not recording or releasing new material or were on indefinite hiatus. Regardless, both men had a great deal else going on.

Steve had his debut solo album Lukather, did an album called Los Lobotomy with Toto band mate Jeff Porcaro and David “Creachy” Garfield, covered “I Can’t Turn You Loose” for the Tribute to Otis Redding album, performed on Alice Cooper’s “Hell Is Living Without You” from Trash, appeared on a pair of songs off Michael Bolton’s Soul Provider album (“It’s Only My Heart” and “Forever Eyes”), “Tomorrow (A Better You, Better Me)” from Quincy Jones’ star-packed album Back on the Block, and then there’s his most-widely heard song of the year with his guitar work on Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time”. It was too busy a year for him to not get recognition, as I’m leaving off several appearances here. What else would you expect from a musician with well over a thousand recording credits to his name?

It was not quite as busy a year quantitatively for Belew on the recording front, but he nonetheless had a full calendar. Adrian was onto the fourth solo album of his career with Mr. Music Head, which is where the lion’s share of his efforts were at the time. It paid off, with the album’s opening track “Oh Daddy” getting some strong attention at No. 5 on the Billboard US Modern Rock and No. 58 on the Billboard US Hot 100 charts. He also appeared on Mike Oldfield’s Earth Moving album, contributing vocals to “Holy” and a guitar solo in “Far Country”. The year of 1990 would continue a significant commercial trajectory for him. He would hook up with David Bowie for a second time in his career, this time as musical director of the Sound + Vision tour, and the pair would also duet on the Bowie-penned track “Pretty Pink Rose” for Belew’s Young Lions album.

Jack DeJohnette

Magazine: Modern Drummer – April 1983

One of the founding fathers of modern jazz drumming, whose creative abilities have not yet been surpassed, Papa Jo Jones, Sr., is in need of help! He has recovered from a very serious illness and needs support, both financially and morally, so that he can regain his strength and come back to inspire us all, as only he can. Whatever we may contribute to his well being could never be as great as he has given to the world of creative music.

– Jack DeJohnette

Would you look at that! It’s highlighted in yellowish-green, a rarity for letters within the Reader’s Platform section of the magazine. Done for good reason, as it tells a story of importance, a fellow drummer in need of assistance.

I’m sharing this one as a reminder of how far technology has come. A GoFundMe in support of Papa Jo Jones would garner significant distribution these days, but you had significantly less options forty-two years ago. One factor that worked in Jack DeJohnette’s favour was that he just so happened to be the cover story of the very issue of Modern Drummer that printed this letter. That a lot of pull, right there! I’d imagine some readers of the magazine who weren’t well-versed in jazz might note the name, flip back to the cover, and gain a such a positive impression that they’d gain extra motivation to check out some of DeJohnette’s work (and Papa Jo’s, by extension). Not that he wrote the letter for further self-promotion at all. Far from it! It wouldn’t surprise me if Jack went to other music and jazz publications of the time such as DownBeat, JazzTimes, or The Wire to spread the word as far as he could, but I’ll focus on the one magazine for now.

Jack followed up on Papa Jo’s progress in the August issue.

To the MD Readers: On behalf of Papa Jo Jones, I would like to thank all of those who responded to our call for help in the April issue of Modern Drummer. Through your generosity, Papa Jo was able to pay his back rent, and get the food and medicine he needed. In addition, I read the letters of encouragement to him, and he was deeply touched by the many kind words.

Papa Jo is still very week, but the continued support of the entire music community will surely help him regain his strength.

– Jack DeJohnette

Willow, NY

Papa Jo Jones even got a January 1984 cover story to help cement his accomplishments into the minds of younger drummers influenced by those that were influenced by him, possibly serving as some people’s first thorough introduction to the former Count Basie and Coleman Hawkins time-keeper. Papa Jo comes across in the article as a man extremely confident in his abilities and in himself even at the relatively old age of 73. He also mentions, among his whirlwind of personal hurdles, a bout with cancer after the deaths of his two best friends (Frank Ippolito and Milt Buckner), and a house fire in 1982. The support from his friend group that included Max Roach, Sam Ulano, as well as DeJohnette and the fan base he directed toward Jones’ plight, willed him through tough times where even the doctors were apparently questioning his ability to recover.

Jones would ultimately pass away on September 3, 1985 after a bout with pneumonia, but fortunately received some love and positive attention in the drum community during his final years.

Joni Mitchell

Magazine: Musician – June 1985

When I was a kid there was a time when Geraldine Campbell chased me with a wood hatchet whenever I passed her house. “This is my sidewalk – this is my sidewalk!” she would chant, brandishing the hatchet and glowering and pouting ferociously. Rickie Lee – jazz, too, is a public sidewalk – no matter how near you live to it, it belongs to the city and anyone it pleases – it was there before you were born and it will be there long after you move away. “It’s a free world – Geraldine!” – I used to say – tipping my beret.

– Joni Mitchell

Los Angeles, CA

A tiff between two beret-wearing blondes? Say it ain’t so!

Well, the good news is that it’s not all that bad. Basically, Rickie Lee Jones made a comment that Joni Mitchell took issue with. Even with only Joni’s letter to go by, one can get an impression on what she means in her little story. Jazz, or any genre of music, is suitable for use by anyone that wants to partake in its creation or enjoyment. The only thing missing is what precisely sparked the penning of the letter in the first place.

The clarity would come in the form of a December 1985 cover story interview that Mitchell would participate in, done in promotion of her Dog Eat Dog album. In the discussion about Rickie Lee in that issue, the interviewer references a comment Rickie Lee made about “Linda Ronstadt trying to sing jazz”. To this, Joni clarified “She said that Peter Asher (Ronstadt’s manager/producer) had appeared at a concert of hers, and she knew for sure that he would go and tell Linda to do a jazz album because jazz was now hip. What she didn’t know was that Linda had this idea to do those albums with Nelson Riddle on her own, she had no support.”

Joni runs a solid defense for Linda Ronstadt here. Apparently, the lack of support from Linda’s management and label did have issue with her creative shift, so Joni’s right in that regard. Peter Asher, in particular, has been quoted as saying “I had mixed feelings about how the record would sell, but not about whether she would do it well.” To be honest, I only have a vague familiarity with Linda Ronstadt’s music. The fact she’s being used as a topic of discussion made me curious enough to do a deeper look into some of her albums, a positive I can gladly take from all of this. I wonder if Ronstadt was ever asked about being the centre of this little debate, and if she ever cared. I’m sure she had bigger and better things to concern herself with.

Anyway, Joni’s original implication in her letter was that Rickie Lee was acting as gatekeeper to the jazz genre, so it’s important to look back further for some more context. The comments that drove Joni’s ire were from Jones’ interview in Musician’s February 1985 issue. I don’t own that one, but it can be found online if you look in the right places. This passage is of particular interest:

“…When I came out with the very first record in 1979 and was doing that jazz stuff, nobody was doing it. I turn around two or three years later and all the girl singers had recorded their jazz albums, and I was pissed off. I remember Peter Asher sitting backstage at Carnegie Hall when I was there, and I thought, ‘Ronstadt’s gonna come out with a jazz record, you watch. She’ll do any damned thing that she thinks will sell a record.’ And they worked on this record of hers (What’s New) for three or four years, and threw one pass at it away!”

Maybe some exaggeration regarding the prevalence of jazz vocal albums, but in any interest, I would love to know whom she’s referring to aside from Ronstadt. The album of discussion, 1983’s What’s New, would be the first of three that explored this musical direction, with 1984’s Lush Life (named after the Billy Strayhorn-penned jazz standard which Rickie Lee had also covered) and 1986’s For Sentimental Reasons to follow. Collaborator Nelson Riddle would pass away due to cirrhosis complications during the creation of that third album, which may have been what caused Linda to explore other musical territory after its release.

Also, we can see there was a bit of paraphrasing by Joni of this quote. For all we know, in Rickie Lee’s imagination regarding Asher’s appearance, it could have been Linda that spurred him to check out her show. To provide a scouting report, of sorts. Those that have a good awareness of Joni Mitchell’s career would know that she developed some strong ties to jazz music during the 1970s and was definitely cemented in the latter-half of the decade, such as on the Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter and Mingus albums. I’d imagine Rickie Lee was aware of that portion of Joni’s career, at the very least, so I’m not sure where the “nobody was doing it” comments came from.

Rickie Lee walked back some of the perceived cattiness immediately afterwards in that February 1985 interview, saying “…I don’t want to be judgmental and I’m really trying to change; I don’t like that in me, I’m not proud of that tendency. I think it’s very negative and you only use it out of a misguided desire to try to make yourself feel better. Ego generally gets in the way of being a good person.”

Does this balance things out? Possibly not, depending on your opinion, but at least she seems to be pretty self-critical.

Of interest, Rickie Lee was often compared to Joni. It’s not hard to spot such efforts, with a quick search yielding an example of one David Bertrand Wilson calling Rickie Lee a “self-conscious Joni imitator.” Some instances of likening the two are likely fair, with others being significantly less than that. In a 1979 interview with Record World, she addressed comparisons of her to Mitchell, stating that they have nothing in common “except that we both have big mouths and long, blond hair. She writes introspective diaries and puts them to music. I write songs. And vocally I’m a jazz singer and Joni Mitchell’s a folk singer.”

You could make the argument that even back then, Rickie Lee was being protective of her jazz roots. She was young at the time, and I’d think that some attempts of Rickie Lee trying to draw a large gulf between their two styles could be rooted in frustration, perhaps from it being a common reference by members of the press. I’ve only just got into Jones’ music within the past few years, and never really thought of her and Mitchell as being terribly similar. For the record, in the December 1985 Musician issue, Joni doesn’t go as far as saying that Rickie Lee ripped her off, but does say “I can feel she’s influenced by me, but she’s made it her own,” going on to note Tom Waits (Jones’ ex-boyfriend) and Laura Nyro as other influences she hears.

This exchange took virtually a year, which is a long time for correspondence through the music media. Nowadays, such a thing would be handled in the stretch of a few weeks. I don’t wish to labour on too long about this letter, but this sort of disagreement is something an in-person conversation could easily smooth over. At a certain point in their respective careers, I’d like to think that these two met. Being brought together in a joint Musician interview, as the magazine would frequently do, would have been an interesting way of doing so.

Of interest, a 2022 interview with The Believer features a very complementary quote about Mitchell, where Rickie Lee states regarding Joni’s shift into jazz “She was forging the way in whatever genre she chose. She’s the first bright star across the sky. And she forges the way for women to age in rock or pop or anything. Because she didn’t die [laughs], and she kept recording.”

That doesn’t sound like a woman that thinks long and hard about feuds that may or may not have ever existed several decades ago, does it?

Joey DeMaio (Manowar)

Magazine: Guitar World – July 1983

Who the hell does Benjamin Nead, a so-called guitar player, think he is bad-mouthing Manowar’s Ross the Boss in your March ‘83 Sounding Board section? In the genre of heavy metal, Ross has been hailed as a virtuoso, so he is perfectly qualified to speak out concerning heavy metal guitar. In the Tuneups article [Jan ‘83 issue] Ross expressed his views on effects clearly incorporating the Manowar viewpoint, an attitude shared by many professionals in the industry, one of the greatest being the legendary Les Paul, who recently said in Guitar World: “Anyone who is a guitar player well knows they don’t need all those gadgets.” Well Benjamin, effects aren’t absolutely necessary, and if Ross doesn’t want to use them, that’s his prerogative. The next time you question your own virility, perhaps you should also question your technique, narrow-minded thinking and experience (we looked all over for Benjamin Nead records, but were unable to find any).

– Joey DeMaio

(bassist, Manowar)

New York, NY

Yikes! When I first read this letter in my brother’s copy of the magazine, I thought that Manowar bassist Joey DeMaio came off as somewhat of a bully. While it may have seemed somewhat petty to get argumentative over one person’s complaints, I began to realize a few things:

1. DeMaio is writing in defense of his guitar player, Ross Friedman. If he was complaining over comments someone wrote about himself, it would look worse.
2. I didn’t even read what he was reacting to.

After first looking up the January ‘83 issue that Benjamin Nead was reacting to, I imagined the line of offense to have been “I just plug my guitar into the amp – that’s the way a real man should play”. The March ‘83 letter confirmed I was right, pointing out that line, then referring to the Manowar guitarist as a “neanderthal” and saying having such a purist mindset should cause Ross The Boss to “sell his electric and start playing the lute”. The entirety of Mr. Nead’s response I’ve shared in the image below.

Yikes again!! While I assumed that Joey’s letter may have been beyond what was called for, it really does seem that if Benjamin dished it out in the manner he did, he should be able to take it back.

Joey’s letter is actually a rather well-written and thoughtful statement at its core, albeit with one potential exaggeration that stuck with me, which is the part about the guitarist being hailed as a “virtuoso”. In retrospect, I’ve seen Ross The Boss’ name along with Manowar in some lists of top heavy metal albums and even a few fan-made top metal guitarist lists (43^rd on this one from DigitalDreamDoor.com). Back in 1983, however? I had my doubts.

At the time that the issue with the Ross The Boss feature was released, Manowar would have only one album under their belt, 1982’s Battle Hymns. It should be noted that this is an impressively early point in a band’s career to have gain mention in a nationally-distributed guitar magazine! As the genre of heavy metal alone is mentioned rather than punk rock (Friedman was previously in punk band The Dictators), I’m focusing solely on Manowar for this. A brief dive into the debut album revealed a bit of a mixed bag of a reception. Issue 24 (September 9-22 1982) of Kerrang! featured an extensive review largely based on their barbarian-like imagery, but reviewer Dave Dickson admits “the music is strong enough to stand head and shoulders above the butch image” despite also noting of some over-indulgence. There was also an unfortunate inclusion on the ‘Not’ list of the October 1982 Playboy’s “Trust Us” section that evaluates what is hot and not in music. It should be noted that Jerry Goldsmith’s score to Poltergeist was also in the ‘Not’ category, which also may have ruffled the feathers of the few that read Playboy for the articles.

I had only ever listened to Triumph of Steel at any good length, which featured a different guitarist (David Shankle), so I gave Battle Hymns a spin because, while I wasn’t even born in 1983, you should never just take someone’s word as gospel. Based off my initial listen, I think this would fit very well into the metal scene of the time. The de-facto title track has a good gallop not unlike Iron Maiden, some good-old chugging rock and roll for “Death Tone” and “Shell Shock”, rather impressive bass presence on “Fast Talker” as well as their eponymous anthem, and a song like “Dark Avenger” is the epic, barbarian-themed track I’d come to expect most of them that no doubt helped them to stand out from the pack. That final song may be polarizing with lyrics that talk of “raping their daughters and wives”, but sung words don’t always equal to-the-letter endorsements of those words. Besides, it’s got Orson Welles guesting on it! You may get some vocals with occasionally-jarring high-pitched wails, overly-enthusiastic drum fills, and some of the guitar soloing has excessively fast picking or whammy bar extravagances, but their stylings weren’t far-removed from what metal bands were doing at the time. I can definitely have a fun time listening to Manowar, especially now as I’ve has a resurgence in appreciation of the so-called ‘power-metal’ sub-genre that followed bands like them.

Would I conclude that Ross The Boss is a virtuoso from my listen? He’s definitely good, but virtuoso is not a word I throw around lightly. However, it pays off to read Wikipedia every now and then because they do point out someone that came to that conclusion Creem writer John Kordosh refers to both Manowar’s bassist and guitarist as virtuosos in the December 1982 issue, so this must have been what Joey was referring to without directly saying it.

In Benjamin Nead’s defense, at least he put his name on the comment, as far as I know. A fascinating development on this story would be if there were actual Benjamin Nead records out there, as DeMaio claimed to have searched for and fail to locate one, or if he recorded anything at all. I did locate a Ben Nead, who was a recording engineer on the Tim Berne and Michael Formanek album Ornery People. It could be him, as the style of music does align with his tastes that included Bern Nix, Fred Frith, and Derek Bailey. I once again have my doubts, rationalizing that he would have thought better of it and worked under an alias to avoid DeMaio’s criticism.

Then again, I could be one of a rare breed that still cares about letters from forty-plus year old magazines.