Tom Waits chronicler: ‘Radiohead is the last band that’s going to mean something’

Beyond the rock crit-Rushmore of Greil Marcus, Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer and Robert Christgau, few music journalists ever achieve name recognition. But if fame followed facility, Barney Hoskyns wouldn’t need an introduction.

The former U.S. editor of venerable British rock magazine Mojo, and a longtime contributor to British Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Rolling Stone and veritably every British publication available for purchase at steep import rates, Hoskyns’ taut and elegant prose transcends genre limitations.

A longtime L.A. resident (since re-located back to his native London), Hoskyns is one of its preeminent chroniclers, penning several music histories revolving around the City of Angels. His recently reissued “Waiting for the Sun” ranks among the most comprehensive and compelling tomes ever penned about the metropolis.

A meticulous sonic survey from Charlie Parker to Cypress Hill, “Waiting” navigates the stark dichotomy between the town’s noirish underbelly and its sunshine-and-surf sales pitch, ultimately allowing for a greater understanding of both local history and the city, writ large.

Currently the editor of invaluable Internet rock writing archive, Rock’s Backpages, Hoskyns is in town this weekend to read from both “Waiting for the Sun” and his most recent effort, “Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits.” He talks to Pop & Hiss below.

Was there a particular band or singer who first galvanized you toward writing about music?

My progression wasn’t entirely untypical of British youth of my generation. My pop baptism was founded on Marc Bolan and David Bowie -- I quickly gravitated towards American music after seeing it in movies and hearing certain American records. Everything from Phil Spector to The Band. Elvis Costello once said the band’s second album was a series of postcards from the backwoods, the lost hidden America. And that’s how it was for me -- it was a window into a place I’d never been to.

I first came to Los Angeles in 1978, and also lived there for much of the early '90s. But there were so many bands that I’ve loved. I was obsessed with Joy Division, and that didn’t have anything to do with the others. I also love soul music. My first book involved me spending four months on the road in the South, talking to the people who made the classic soul records in Memphis and Muscle Shoals.

What was it that attracted you to Los Angeles? 

There was always the idea of Hollywood, and the movies being there. There was something about what it meant to be living in a city at the edge of the Western world. From the cranky, eccentric, posh British actors that moved here in the 1930s, to Christopher Isherwood and Aldous Huxley, Brits have always been drawn to Southern California -- I think it’s because it’s the polar cultural and environmental opposite of back home.

I was just another Brit following in their footsteps, and I loved so much of the music that came from here, whether it was the Flying Burrito Brothers or The Doors or Randy Newman. What’s interesting to me about writing a book about Tom Waits is that I first moved to L.A. in the summer of 1978, the same exact week he started working on “Blue Valentine." He really started writing about contemporary Los Angeles at that point, and a song like “A Sweet Little Bullet from a Pretty Little Gun,” that’s Waits grabbing at the dark side of the Hollywood Babylon.

Having lived here on and off and visited regularly for the last 30 years, how would you say Los Angeles' music scene has evolved over the last three decades? 

What’s happened in Los Angeles is sort of a microcosm for what’s happened everywhere -- namely, that the whole idea of local scenes seems almost gone. Not to say local scenes don’t exist -- they do. But we’re living in a different and completely interconnected digital world. Where you’re from seems less relevant and that’s a great shame. There are lots of bands in the world, whom you don’t even know where they’re from.

Once upon a time, their identity would coexist with the environment, and of course, this isn’t someone completely unique to music. There’s a level of homogeneity that’s hard to fathom, and makes me nostalgic even for for something like the hair metal scene. As completely bogus as some of it was, it was a distinct scene that had parameters.

When I lived in L.A. in the early 1980s, the hair metal thing was just getting started, and I remember seeing bands like Quiet Riot. Simultaneously, you had the Paisley Underground, which was the closest thing to an indie scene that existed. It was a fun time -- the bands were looking out for each other. Was it any less bogus than hair metal? At the end of the day, probably not. It was just different clothes and different riffs.

Do you think it’s the result of a lack of originality on the part of the bands, or the atomization brought about by the Internet?

No, it’s not a judgment on this band or that band. I’m simply saying that the shock value, the countercultural impact, the feeling of being electrified by pop music isn’t what it was. It’s been incorporated into mainstream popular culture and lifestyle to the point of where it’s not even that relevant anymore. There’s no way you’ll ever have a band like Led Zeppelin or the Sex Pistols -- bands just won’t attain that level of infamy or impact.

When the big dinosaur bands are dead and buried, I doubt any more giant world-beating bands will arise. I’m not being nostalgic, it’s just how it is. We’re coming to the end of an era -- if we aren’t already there. Cobain was the last rock star. Radiohead is the last band that’s going to mean something. Not to say that there won’t be good music, there will. But it will be consumed differently, and play to a different dimension.

One of the things that struck me about “Waiting for the Sun” was how adroitly it illustrated the sunshine vs. noir dialectic. Do you still feel that such a dichotomy exists today?

It’s hard to say how relevant that notion is today. It certainly makes sense to me when you review the last 40 or 50 years. Ultimately, it’s inevitable that the place would act as a magnet for millions of fantasists, aspirants, and some deluded people who think that this is the ‘place to be.’ With that, you’re going to have a massive mount of dysfunction and damage, because that’s the L.A. story. What’s funny is the way that L.A. becomes its own subject.

I love L.A., and I love movies about L.A. and Hollywood. It’s the most self-referential place on Earth — a paradise for those who succeed, and a bright glaring hell for those who don’t.

-- Jeff Weiss

Barney Hoskyns on Friday at Mr. Music Head Gallery, 

7511 Sunset Blvd. 7 p.m. 

Free. 

Barney Hoskyns on Saturday at Book Soup 

8818 Sunset Blvd.  5 p.m. 

Free.

Photo: Mark Pringle

Comments

[Kendall Phillips]

When the focus of delivering an album is money, you can't ever make a good record. Artists who aren't "real" and don't put themselves in their music will never mean anything. There will always be good music and "bands that mean something", but you're just going to have to look a little harder to find it.

[Sean K]

Wow. I like a lot of Tom Waits stuff, but I had no idea he was so clueless when it came to contemporary music. Radio head? Seriously? The last important band? And yes, I know exactly what he's saying, not that they're super great of meaningful, but that they'll be the last huge rock band of any far reaching or long-lasting importance. If anything, I think people are one day going to see them as horribly overrated. And more to the point, apparently he's never heard of the White Stripes. And I'm not being facetious. I wouldn't be surprised if he hadn't . The guy once said he never heard of Captain Beefheart at the same time that he was obviously being enormously influenced by him. And he doesn't even make any sense. Why does something have to have been heard by people who don't even matter in order to 'mean something'. I know a lot of Godspeed You Black Emperor fans who would laugh at the notion. They're GLAD the music they love isn't being sold like potato chips. Basically, reading this article made me feel like Iggy Pop in "Coffee and Cigarettes".

[Sean K]

Oh yeah, but I guess the point was to showcase the interviewer not the interviewee, so I should mention that Mr. Hoskins conducted an excellent interview and asked relevant questions about current issues in music that provided a new insight to the artist that I was not aware of. Namely, that Tom Waits, despite his talent, is a clueless old fart. Thank you Mr. Hoskins.

[Decline to State]

Perhaps a "great band" or "meaningful band" discussion has to be qualified by the influence of technology in having dispersed the agenda setting power that was once monopolized in the hands of a few musical conglomerates, that had all capacity to create a great meaningful band and suppress the competition. I know its relative but...

Would've loved to hear Mr. Hoskyns expound on this issue. What i mean is, we adore Radiohead, the Bends and OK Comp will always remain favs on our playlists. But do you wonder if such a band could ever rise to such prominence in today's musical world, where the gate keeper is no longer 5 major Labels but rather, a small devoted following of myspace fans? I posit that in todays musical power vacuum there will certainly never be another great band, but instead a million little meaningful bands.

[Jason]

Uh, did you actually read the article, or even the headline? Tom Waits didn't say "Radiohead is the last band that's going to mean something," Barney Hoskins did. Barney Hoskins was the subject of this article, not Tom Waits. Pay attention, folks.

[Warren]

I think what he meant by "Radiohead is the last band that’s going to mean something" is that bands are getting smaller, less far-reaching. As record labels are removed from the equation, bands no longer have a huge marketing department to help them find their audience, no matter how great their music is. It's more about business models than talent.

[GEAH]

"Cobain was the last rock star. Radiohead is the last band that’s going to mean something."

Well, you're certainly irrelevant, Mr. Waits.

[SFF]

"Well, you're certainly irrelevant, Mr. Waits."
You do realize that Tom Waits is a (very influential) musician, and this guy is a journalist who wrote about him, right?
Talk about being irrelevant.