Professional Journalism
(and not just a lame attempt to get free Eagles tickets)

You can probably tell that sometimes I have to force myself to do this. It's the last thing on earth I feel like doing. You can also probably tell that's when I often do my best work, when I don't want to do it. 

Conventional wisdom tells the journalist that he shouldn't be writing in the first person because, after all, we're supposed to be covering an event and the event isn't us. That sentence should have read "The writer often does their best work when they're forced to do it," or more confrontationally, "You often do your best work when it's the last thing on earth you feel like doing." Anything but "I," which makes you an egotist, not a journalist.

Sometimes I'm in "pure writer" mode where I'm free to simply improvise, treating my computer keyboard with the same reverence I pay and play to a Steinway keyboard, crank it up and see what this baby can do. But sometimes I need to get into "professional journalist" mode, so I picture Leonard Maltin's Film Guide. If you were looking up, oh, say Field of Dreams, would you want to read "This film reminds me of my fucked up childhood and how my dad forced me to go to Dodger Stadium and sit through baseball games where we always had to leave during the eighth inning to beat the parking lot traffic." I don't think so. You're probably trying to decide what to watch tonight, seeking simple information concerning how good a film is, how many stars does it get, and the last thing you need to know is how fucked up was the childhood of the writer.

It's perhaps in reaction to decades of dealing with professional newspaper and magazine editors that I now find myself on the internet randomly inserting myself into every news item I find, covering the inside world with the same scalpel I use on the outside world. That'll show 'em. 

I would hope I haven't grown beyond the realm of mere enterprise and still contain the skills to do the job. Maybe not. Here I present a recent discussion I had with the entertainment editor of a major daily who prefers to remain anonymous, so let's call him Sam.

Sam, 

It was August 11, 1973, when I went to The Corral, a tiny little place in Topanga Canyon, maybe room for 300, to see Joni Mitchell opening for Neil Young and the Santa Monica Flyers. Joni was good, Neil was excellent, and at the end of his set said "some friends of mine have formed a new band and they've been rehearsing for a few weeks. They've never performed in public before, so if you want to stick around, you're welcome to check them out." Half the place split, the rest of us stuck around to be blown away by the very first public appearance of The Eagles, who did their whole first album. How about a piece on The Eagles last concert by someone who was there at their first? 
MD 

Michael, That sounds great to me. Will you take $75 for it? Can you provide the context about how long they had been backing up Linda Ronstadt and any other bands, say Rick Nelson? How they recruited guys from Poco and the Burrito Brothers, etc? And would you know if there were any photos taken of that night? When can you have the story ready? I look forward to it.
- Sam

 Sam,

$75's fine. I would tell their whole story, focusing on the difference between the band I saw then and what they are now. Even people who currently hate the Eagles because they're so slick would have liked the band I saw then. 

As far as pictures are concerned, I didn't take any and there's no one to contact at the Corral since it burned down, but there are Topanga blogs of aging hippies where I've seen postings from people who remember the night. I can post a request for pictures and who knows what will turn up. 

Of course the big issue is that I haven't seen their farewell tour yet and don't have tickets. I was thinking of going on 11/12 to the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, but if you want the piece before they appear here, then I've got to see them at Staples or Arrowhead or Glendale. Either way, I would need a letter from you to get a press pass. I can probably handle contacting the Eagles press office myself, but if you've already got contacts that would be great. Any way you want to work it. 
MD 

Michael, I appreciate your desire to get tickets to see the Eagles before the story, but I wouldn't want the scope of the story to be so big that you would need to compare the Eagles then with the Eagles now. I see this as a little story of how they started and how they sounded before they became huge. You should keep it to 700 words (no more than 800) and end it with just a reference to the corporate monstrosity they are now. - Sam

Evolve Like an Eagle 
by Michael Dare

     On August 11, 1973, I went to The Corral, a tiny place in Topanga Canyon, to see Joni Mitchell opening for Neil Young and the Santa Monica Flyers. Joni was good, but no one was paying attention, so she left in a huff after only a few songs. Neil Young was excellent and tore the house down. At the end of his set, he said "some friends of mine have formed a new band and they've been rehearsing for a few weeks. They've never performed in public before, so if you want to stick around, you're welcome to check them out."
    Half the place split, the rest of us stuck around to be blown away by the very first public appearance of The Eagles, who did their whole first album.
    It was the ideal circumstance to be introduced to any band. Years later, when I had a weekly column in Billboard, publicists with press kits for new acts would inevitably lead me to expect something far superior to what I got. This was the opposite. Within five minutes The Eagles ranked with the best bands I'd ever seen, and that particular concert was certainly the most pleasurable.
    When I eventually went to see Springsteen or the Stones or dozens others, I expected them to be good and they were. They each lived up to my extraordinarily high expectations. But nothing is quite as satisfying as music that vastly exceeds your expectations. In the case of the Eagles, I literally expected nothing. It was just a bunch of guys who'd put some songs together who I happened to catch and who happened to be VERY good.
    Glenn Frey was on guitar and keyboards, Don Henley on drums, Bernie Leadon on guitar, and Randy Meisner on bass, with all singing spectacular four-part harmonies worthy of The Beach Boys. They were far from a garage band, having backed Linda Rondstadt for a year. These guys hadn't just "put some songs together," they had rehearsed the hell out of them, and each song was a perfect little gem, polished to perfection, every strum, every drum lick and vocal harmony in place. Improvisation was not their thing. Everything was smooth as silk, precise, calculated, utterly professional, not a missed note or haphazard piece of phrasing.
    And the songs themselves, Jackson Brown and Glen Frey's Take it Easy, Tom Waits' Ol' 55, Jack Tempshin's Peaceful Easy Feeling, Henley and Leadon's own Witchy Woman, were all classics with killer hooks. They were part Flying Burrito Brothers, part Poco, part Crosby, Stills, Nash, and for one full hour, I was convinced they were the best band on earth - a little bit bluegrass, a little bit country, playing music Glenn Frey later described as "Mexican Surf Rock."
    For months I got to feel hip, saying to people, "Hey man, ever heard of The Eagles? They're really great. Neil Young turned me on to them." A year later, it was a line I could never use again. Of course they had heard of The Eagles. Who hadn't heard of The Eagles? Hits just poured right out of them, Best of My Love, Desperado, Lyin' Eyes, Take it to the Limit, Tequila Sunrise, The Long Run, Life in the Fast Lane, Heartache Tonight, Victim of Love, the list goes on and on, proving my initial take was correct, and I was the luckiest concert-goer on earth to have been there when it started. Their Greatest Hits album, which doesn't even have anything on it from Hotel California, has sold 28 million copies and is currently the biggest seller of all time.
    In the years since my spectacular introduction to The Eagles, I always ended up defending them against rockers who thought they were too smooth and calculated, without a hint of raunch, which is considered an essential ingredient in the heart of rock 'n' roll. It was a position I could understand if you had been introduced to them as the AM hit machine that everyone knew. I always knew that if I could just grab somebody and take them in a time machine, back to 1973 at the Corral, even the most severe Eagles critic would have become a convert.
    For a while, I gave up defending them because there's a bell curve with hit songs. I liked Hotel California the first 20 times I heard it, but once it wouldn't go away, I started hating it. The Eagles were so smooth and ubiquitous that I could do nothing but satirize them, and KROQ in the 80s was happy to oblige, broadcasting Welcome to the Hotel Bhagwan Rajneesh and Leonard Maltin (why don't you come to your senses?) as performed by the Three Guys from Hollywood Musical News Team, of which I was one. Then, thank god, the song wasn't played for a while, and each time it showed up on an oldies hit station, it would evoke fond memories of the time thirty years ago when it felt like The Eagles were my own little secret and not the mammoth corporate music machine they've evolved into today. 

And that's it unless I can get tickets and compare their first to their latest.
MD 

Michael:
    I'm still interested in your story after reading that submission, but it reads more like a column than a feature story. I couldn't use that as a first-person piece since we don't use guest columnists. I also said I wanted to put your observations of that first Eagles concert in context, which you didn't do. Would you like to try it again in the third person with context?
    I see this story going outside of your experience to tell how the Eagles formed. How did Henley and Frey meet and get hired as part of Ronstadt's backing band? Why did they hire Randy Meisner from Poco and Bernie Leadon from the Flying Burrito Brothers instead of other members of Ronstadt's backing band? What was the scene like in Laurel Canyon that enabled them to be introduced by Neil Young on a bill with Joni Mitchell? Did they hang with those people and get influenced by CSN&Y? Did Rick Nelson and/or Gram Parsons also influence them? How did they hook up with Jackson Browne on their first hit, "Take It Easy"? Did they know the Beach Boys? Where did the "Mexican surf" sound come from?
    I'd like to see you start the story with something like how most people gathered in a tiny club in Topanga Canyon couldn't have dreamed they were seeing the start of a band that would become one of the best-selling recording acts of all time. Or that (nut graph) on Nov. 12 that unknown band would start the first of two (or three) concerts at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden that would make them the biggest single concert attraction in the history of the Coachella Valley (since Frank Sinatra never gave a stadium concert down here). Then tell briefly if they provided any hints at that at the Corral and go backwards to how they began. I think it should build it to a climax with how they sounded at the Corral -- keeping it all in the third person.
    If you could do that, I'd still be very interested in this story.
- Sam

Sam, 
Sorry to hear the first person is verboten at the Desert Sun. That means you wouldn't print Patrick F. McManus, Art Buchwald, Garrison Keillor, Hunter S. Thompson, or even Mark Twain, all people I occasionally emulate, so I guess I'm in good company. 

The only reason I didn't include any of the facts you list here about the Eagles is that I didn't know them. Beware working for someone who knows more than you do. The article included absolutely everything I knew about the Eagles, and I still thought it was entertaining and informative. 

It's perfectly understandable that you would want your readers to get all the facts, even the ones I don't know, and I'm willing to do the research, but it'll take at least a couple days. I actually have three other deadlines today and the storm knocked my phone lines out. I'm writing this at 6AM but God knows when you're getting it. 

I certainly don't blame you for the Sun's editorial policies but damn, they are a bit archaic. My own personal editorial policy is if it's good reading, run it. 
MD 

Michael,
    I didn't say first person is verboten. I just said I wanted a third-person feature story, not a column. When a person doesn't need to be in a story, but places himself in a story, it just comes off as egocentric. And I'm sure you wouldn't want to be accused of that.
    I'm still interested in using your anecdote as a brief or notebook item, but I was wondering if you wanted to rethink your dates. The Eagles had some big hits in 1972, and the band members have told me, through an intermediary, that their first public performance was for the Westlake School for Girls in L.A. So, do you think it might have been August 1971 that you saw them? Can I just used about 6 lines of what remains of your memory of seeing the early Eagles? And, are you going to the concert?
- Sam

Sam, 
I wasn't taking notes at the time. All I actually remember is that it was the early 70s. Before writing the piece, I searched and searched. There was no mention of the concert in The Corral archives, the Eagles archives, or the Neil Young archives, but someone at a Joni Mitchell fansite had taken it upon themselves to create the definitive list of absolutely every time Miss Mitchell had ever appeared anywhere. There it was, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young (no mention of the Eagles), appearing at the Corral together on August 11, 1973. I was so happy to have my memory validated that I took the listing at its word. It was, in fact, the only evidence I could find whatsoever that the concert wasn't just a random hallucination from a decade we're not supposed to remember. 

Just to be sure, I made a posting to a Topanga Canyon website asking if anyone had been there, and I heard from two people who had only HEARD of the concert, and had heard the place was so packed that part of the roof caved in from fans trying to get in. 

This was news to me, but between Young and the Eagles, I was never outside, so I have no way of knowing how many rabid fans of the laid-back Eagles were attempting to fly like one through the skylight of the Corral. 

So there are many possibilities... 

1. I was at some earlier concert that hasn't made the history books. 
2. The Joni Mitchell fanatic got the date wrong and I somehow missed the roof caving in. 
3. Neil Young lied to me, and the performance I saw was, in fact, actually their second. 
4. A piece of the roof of The Corral hit me on the head and I just woke up. 
5. I was once a little girl who attended the Westlake School for girls. 

In any case, the piece I handed in to you has been printed in the second issue of the newly revitalized LA Free Press and is currently in newsstands across Los Angeles, where there is every possibility it will fall into the hands of someone who knows more than me. 

I'm one of the majority who found it impossible to get tickets to The Eagles this week, and even armed with an article in print and an assignment to cover the event, my plaintive pleas to publicists fell upon deaf ears. 

In any case, you are welcome to plunderize and extract any portions of my Eagles article you may find useful, and if a publicist with a heart larger than a flea's naval shows a speck of human decency and gets me in, I'll send you a further report. 
MD 

Michael,
Thanks anyway, but I think we can finally stop assigning stories about the Eagles. Just a couple more in the can left to get in the paper.
-Sam

The Opposite of Journalism

Tom Robbins has a new book out, Wild Ducks Flying Backward. It is simultaneously the worst and best book ever, and I cannot recommend it more highly. It is his only book that is not a novel but merely a collection of his short writing, his liner notes, his articles, and his journalism - spanning 30 years. If you ever wondered why Tom Robbins stopped being a journalist and devoted his entire writing time to novels, this book will answer that question with a resounding crack to your cerebellum. Outside of his novels, Tom's writing is still Tom's writing, and it is precisely the sort that drives newspaper editors crazy. 

Imagine for the moment that you have asked Tom Robbins to write the liner notes to the new Leonard Cohen album, and what you get back contains this: "There is evidence that the honoree might be privy to the secret of the universe, which, in case you're wondering, is simply this: everything is connected. Everything. Many, if not most, of the links are difficult to determine. The instrument, the apparatus, the focused ray that can uncover and illuminate those connections is language. And just as a sudden infatuation often will light up a person's biochemical sky more pyrotechnically than any deep abiding attachment, so an unlikely, unexpected burst of linguistic imagination will usually reveal greater truths than the most exacting scholarship. In fact, the poetic image may be the only device remotely capable of dissecting romantic desire, let alone disclosing the hidden mystical essence of the material world."

Not a word about Leonard Cohen except for the fact it's about absolutely everything, including the nature of the universe and the struggle to express it in words, just like Leonard Cohen, just like all writers, me and you, people whose passion to express ourselves is constantly pressing against the boundaries of our talent to do so. A writer cannot read this without thinking my God, I should be writing like this, how does he do it?

Even when he's on topic he's a singular master of metaphor. How would you describe Leonard Cohen's voice? Deep, monotonous, flat, unemotional, and gravelly are words that spring to mind, but they're not good enough for Tom Robbins, who does it like this: "It is a voice raked by the claws of Cupid, a voice rubbed raw by the philosopher's stone. A voice marinated in kirschwasser, sulfur, deer musk, and snow; bandaged with sackcloth from a ruined monastery; warmed by the embers left down near the river after the gypsies have gone. It is a penitent's voice, a rabbinical voice, a crust of unleavened vocal toast - spread with smoke and subversive wit. He has a voice like a carpet in an old hotel, like a bad itch on the hunchback of love. It is a voice meant for pronouncing the names of women - and cataloguing their sometimes hazardous charms."

Knowing how he works, I would venture to say that Tom spent the better part of a day working on that paragraph.

I can only describe Tom Robbins' voice as one to aspire to. He teaches us that as long as you're going to write, you might as well put some thought into it and say something that, beyond the slightest shred of any doubt, has never been said the way you're going to say it.

It's the opposite of journalism and screenwriting, making this book the absolute worst possible role model for a writer trying to work at a newspaper or for a writer of screenplays where florid descriptions are verboten. My story of the Eagles concert above is a perfect example of "being yourself" getting in the way of making 75 bucks.

It seems to be that you can only write like Robbins if you're working for yourself. Robbins' novelistic approach to journalism might be an acquired taste, one you can't bite into like an apple but must consume as delicately as a pomegranate, piece by piece, savoring each morsel or you'll get it all over yourself, and you should get over yourself. Nobody's going to ask you to write like this, except possibly me.

How would you describe the Bush administration? Corrupt, arrogant, fascist, warmongering, intolerant, and brutal are words that spring to mind, but they wouldn't be good enough for Tom Robbins, who never writes about politics. But if he did, what would he say?

Send your answers to: How Tom Robbins would write about the Bush Administration.

First Jobs

Warren Beatty - Rat catcher
Bruce Willis - Truck driver
Steve McQueen - Towel boy in a house of ill repute
Paul McCartney - Electric coil winder
Madonna - Waitress at a burger bar
Sylvester Stallone - Beautician
Rod Stewart - Gravedigger
Dean Martin - Bootleg whiskey runner
Walt Disney - Apple masher in jelly factory
Princess Diana - Children's nanny
Mick Jagger - Porter in a mental hospital
Raquel Welch - Secretary to a bishop
Marilyn Monroe - Aircraft factory worker
Sean Connery - Milkman
Mussolini - Chocolate factory worker
Abraham Lincoln - Doorman
Tchaikovsky - Office clerk
Charles Dickens - Shoe polish factory worker
Socrates - Stone worker
Hitler - Designer of advertising posters for deodorants

- Planet Proctor -

Answers to Last Week's Stupid Question

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it." 
- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam -

    "The ceramic model of the universe is based on the book of Genesis, from which Judaism, Islam, and Christianity derive their basic picture of the world. And the image of the world in the book of Genesis is that the world is an artifact. It is made, as a potter takes clay and forms pots out of it, or as a carpenter takes wood and makes tables and chairs out of it. Don't forget Jesus is the son of a carpenter. And also the son of God. So the image of God and of the world is based on the idea of God as a technician, potter, carpenter, architect, who has in mind a plan, and who fashions the universe in accordance with that plan.
    "So basic to this image of the world is the notion, you see, that the world consists of stuff, basically. Primordial matter, substance, stuff. As parts are made of clay. Now clay by itself has no intelligence. Clay does not of itself become a pot, although a good potter may think otherwise. Because if you were a really good potter, you don't impose your will on the clay, you ask any given lump of clay what it wants to become, and you help it to do that. And then you become a genius. But the ordinary idea I'm talking about is that simply clay is unintelligent; it's just stuff, and the potter imposes his will on it, and makes it become whatever he wants.
    "And so in the book of Genesis, the lord God creates Adam out of the dust of the Earth. In other words, he makes a clay figurine, and then he breathes into it, and it becomes alive. By itself it is formless, it has no intelligence, and therefore it requires an external intelligence and an external energy to bring it to life and to bring some sense to it. And so in this way, we inherit a conception of ourselves as being artifacts, as being made, and it is perfectly natural in our culture for a child to ask its mother 'How was I made?' or 'Who made me?' And this is a very, very powerful idea, but for example, it is not shared by the Chinese, or by the Hindus. A Chinese child would not ask its mother 'How was I made?' A Chinese child might ask its mother 'How did I grow?' which is an entirely different procedure from making. You see, when you make something, you put it together, you arrange parts, or you work from the outside in, as a sculpture works on stone, or as a potter works on clay. But when you watch something growing, it works in exactly the opposite direction. It works from the inside to the outside. It expands. It burgeons. It blossoms. And it happens all of itself at once. In other words, the original simple form, say of a living cell in the womb, progressively complicates itself, and that's the growing process, and it's quite different from the making process."
- Alan Watts -

"Pray for the ongoing efforts in the war on terror, that the President and all his intelligence sources will obtain the most helpful information in safeguarding America. Pray for them to have godly wisdom in the manner in which they handle each bit of information. Pray for the effectiveness of a new fingerprinting initiative that will screen foreign travelers visiting America. Pray for the strong relationship between Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair. Pray that the President will continue to be guided by the Lord in his deliberations with the U.K."
- Presidential Prayer Team -

"Focus, 
not on the rudenesses of others,
not on what they've done
or left undone,
but on what you
have & haven't done
yourself."
- Dhammapada, 4 -

"The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear."
- Herbert Agar -

"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite."
- Paul Dirac -

"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it."
- Ellen Goodman -

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."
- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180AD) Roman Emperor -

"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty."
- Sacha Guitry -

"When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty."
- George Bernard Shaw: Caesar and Cleopatra -