Diamonds in the Mine #2: The Days Of Wine and Roses

How to meet your heroes without completely embarrassing yourself

Steve Wynn’s excellent new memoir, I Wouldn’t Say It If it Wasn’t True, focuses on the 1980s, when his band The Dream Syndicate had its initial run. The narrative begins with his upbringing as a budding music obsessive in Los Angeles, his new wave cover band at college at UC Davis, culminating with a poignant recounting a solo cross-country Greyhound trip at age 20 with a very specific mission: To meet his musical hero, Alex Chilton.

Wynn arrived unannounced at an address he cribbed from a Panther Burns album, which turns out to be the home of Chilton’s bandmate, Tav Falco. He discovered his hero at his nightly perch in a near-empty dive bar. Chilton wasn’t exactly warm and welcoming at first, but he warms up when Wynn offers to buy him beer and cigarettes. He even invites Wynn to sleep in a guest bedroom at his parents’ house, where he lives.

Alex let him hang around for a few days, while the beer and cig money lasted. He flatly refused to discuss his musical legacy, particularly his time in Big Star (which is all Wynn is interested in). He continues his bus trip to New York, disappointed by the meeting with Alex. Wynn concludes that, as the saying goes, never meet your heroes.

I’ve had some great and some not-so-great experiences meeting my heroes. My band opened for Alex Chilton in 1989, and I’d been warned not to bring up Big Star. He asked me my sign, which by most accounts (including Wynn’s book) is par for the course. I’ve learned to keep it low-key when I have these opportunities. It’s a skill I’ve learned since a notably awkward first meeting encounter with one of my musical heroes, Steve Wynn.

I wonder if he’d remember. Probably not. It was in Birmingham in the late 90s. I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but he was hanging around in the parking lot at the legendary dive bar and music venue, The Nick. The Nick has had its share of big moments, but it can be a bleak place for a touring musician. I can’t remember the show, but I assume he was playing. I walked right up to him on my way in the door.

I introduced myself, briefly told him the bands I’d played in. He said oh, nice to meet you. I immediately launched into a booze-fueled rant about how much The Dream Syndicate’s first album, The Days of Wine and Roses, meant to me. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I quickly felt the vibe shift. He quickly excused himself; I’d crossed a line.

I love that Wynn addressed the topic of whether to meet your heroes, considering that he’s the hero of my most painful meeting your heroes story, the one that made me rethink my approach. I know from his book that he’s proud of the album, is isn’t one of those deeply uncomfortable subjects, like Big Star must have been for Alex Chilton in 1980 (just a couple years after Sister Lovers). He’s probably just tired of people talking to him about that album. I spend enough time around bands to know they are all completely sick of the things fans want to talk about. I was guilty of being an annoying fan, how humiliating.

You see, that album is just really special to me. It’s a huge landmark in my musical development. In 1983, the summer after my sophomore year in high school, I was getting in a musical rut. I’d been very into hardcore punk since starting high school, but I was getting fatigued by all that brutal music. That summer I joined an experimental punk band with some older guys who had real connections to the local Bloomington music scene. My bandmates collected imported albums, mostly from England, and we spent a lot of our rehearsal time getting buzzed and listening to records. Sometimes we’d get inspired and decide to learn a song. That’s how I learned about Pere Ubu, Joy Division, Wire, The Cure…that’s how I heard the first Dream Syndicate EP.

We decided to learn When You Smile. We all listened to the track a few times, each focusing on picking out our own part. I remember the guitarist trying to match the feedback sounds by holding his guitar in front of the speaker on his Peavy amp. We ran through it until it started to sound reasonably close to the record.

I’d been so focused on learning the song’s structure and drum part that I hadn’t paid much attention to the lyrics or vocal melody. Around the third run-through I realized the song was incredible, so mysterious and cool. After band practice I couldn’t get it out of my mind. That weekend I went to the best record store in town, Duroc Records, and asked for the EP. They told me the EPs were impossible to find anymore, but they’d just released a new album on Slash Records that had When You Smile. I knew Slash from X, The Misfits, and The Germs. Interesting. I got home and put it right on the turntable.

My dad came home in the middle of side 2, asked what I was listening to. I showed him the cover, then he went over to his record collection and pulled out an album with a big yellow banana on the cover. I must have listened to The Velvet Underground and Nico at some point because I listened to every record in the collection. Somehow it hadn’t made an impression, not like Trout Mask Replica or America Eats its Young. I thought I had a line on all the weird shit in the old man’s collection. He told me he’d thought that’s what I was listening to. He said if I liked this stuff, I should give The Velvet Underground another listen. Listen to the real stuff, he seemed to be saying.

It took a week or so before I could allow Wine and Roses off the turntable, but once I did, I gave The Velvet Underground a listen. Incredible. I listened to both albums many more times. It’s like a door opened when I made that connection. I didn’t lose interest in hardcore, but I started listening with very different ears. I followed different paths to sounds that brought me closer to whatever it was The Velvet Underground was doing. It gave me a different perspective on bands that were on my radar or soon to be, like X, R.E.M., Husker Du, and The Violent Femmes. It helped me to listen to classic rock with different ears, too. I wasn’t interested in aggression for aggression’s sake; now it was about melody, gritty street poetry, brutal noise, and hypnotic groove - the basic architecture of so much of my favorite music over the years. The Dream Syndicate helped me understand the music I wanted to make.

I was just learning guitar, and I went so deep into that music. I would sit for hours and learn the parts in all the songs. All the parts, guitars, bass, drums. I thought I could tell which one was Steve and which one was Karl by the photos on the back of the jacket. Precoda seemed more angular, the squalls of feedback. Steve was holding it down. The feel of the rhythm section is so distinctive, the way Dennis is on top of the beat and Kendra’s right there, so locked in. That album came at the right time and lit the way. I wanted to be in a band exactly like that.

johnpstrohm

A post shared by @johnpstrohm

The first time I played guitar and sang on a microphone, at a downtown Bloomington, Indiana loft party in 1984, I sang When You Smile. I still play that song. I’ve posted a Reel from early 2023 of me messing around with a mini-Martin I borrowed from my daughter. I’m sure I played it wrong in 1984. I probably play it wrong today, but it’s close enough for the porch. I’ve covered Halloween in three different bands. The most mind-blowing fact in the book is that Wynn played the guitar solo in Halloween. I’d always assumed it was Precoda, but a closer listen made it so obvious. That is absolutely one of the most influential guitar solos on my playing.

I’ll confess that I didn’t really hang in there with The Dream Syndicate. During my active obsession, I read all the articles I could find. I learned about other bands from their Paisley Underground scene, The Rain Parade, The Three O’Clock, The Bangles, Green On Red, Rainy Day, Opal. Then in 1984 The Dream Syndicate released their follow-up, The Medicine Show. I bought the album, listened a few times, then shelved it with a shrug. It didn’t hit me like the first album. The guitars didn’t have the same kind of chaos, and all that fancy-pants piano. I missed the pulse of Kendra’s bass; the feel wasn’t there.

In fact, I felt disappointed by sophomore albums by most of the so-called Paisley Underground bands. I noticed a pattern because I noticed labels. Bands would released their debut album on a cool independent label, do genius work, then lose it when they signed to a major label. That’s how it went for The Rain Parade, who signed with Island for their disappointing follow-up to their magical debut. It’s also true of The Three O’Clock, who seemed to completely lose the plot after signing to Prince’s Paisley Park label. Despite their massive success, The Bangles went a different direction when they signed to Columbia and worked with a pop producer.¹

I concluded, based on these perceptions and many others, that major labels messed with bands and caused them to make worse records. Not entirely untrue, but that isn’t what happened to The Dream Syndicate. They signed with A&M because it was known as an artist-friendly label, and A&M lived up to its reputation. Mark Williams, who appears in the book, is my former Concord colleague who signed the band to A&M. I know Mark as a true artist advocate; and according to Wynn’s account, A&M gave the band enormous freedom and a wildly generous budget to make the album they wanted to make. You could say A&M gave The Dream Syndicate enough rope to hang themselves.

They hired Blue Oyster Cult founder and producer Sandy Pearlman, who had recently produced Give ‘Em Enough Rope by The Clash. A&M left the band alone as they traveled to San Francisco to record in a studio Pearlman co-owned. They spent 5 months and a quarter million dollars, which would be nearly $800,000 today - a truly insane budget for a trad-rock record. Wynn doesn’t outright accuse Pearlman of grift, but it’s easy to make assumptions when he held the power not only to send the bills, but also to say when a take was good enough. And, apparently, it was never good enough for Sandy.

The experience drove a wedge between Wynn and guitarist Karl Precoda, which led to Precoda’s firing following the touring behind The Medicine Show.² I suspect they could’ve just gone back in the studio with Chris D and cut a better and MUCH cheaper album in just a few days. Five months in the studio will ruin any band, and it’s an egregious example of excess from a producer. I empathize because it is so hard to see the path in the fog of war, when your band has money and resources and could easily be the next breakout. you’ve been touring and hanging out with R.E.M. and U2 on the cusp, you don’t know what to think. They’d probably convinced themselves that the Wine and Roses production was half-assed and imperfect. If only they had real production they could get to the next level. Playing it safe might cost them that opportunity.

I loved the book, I relate with so much of Wynn’s story and inner life. I enjoyed it enough to take a deep dive into all his music I’ve more or less ignored for 35 years. You know how I feel about the first album, which will probably always live in my top 25 albums. The rest of Wynn’s enormous output is consistently strong and enjoyable. Some of the 80s and early 90s titles - including Medicine Show - suffer from some manner of dated production - which is true of practically everything from the era. Wynn’s songwriting is always thoughtful with compelling riffs and melodies, his voice and guitar playing have improved over the years and bring a consistency across the work. The style and approach will change from time to time, but the core of Wynn’s sound - guitar, voice and songwriting - remains remarkably consistent. With the Dream Syndicate reunion of the past decade, he seems to be doing whatever the heck he wants: full-on Kraut Rock, hard psych, Crazy Horse - they are clearly having a blast.

I’ve been to some shows, said hi a few times, and exchanged brief notes on social posts. It’s always very cordial. Maybe the awkwardness of our encounter was mostly in my head. I realize it’s insensitive to start a conversation with an artist you’ve never met by telling them how much you love their work from the very beginning of their career, before they’d honed their craft. I assume it’s frustrating to hit a grand slam home run on your first at bat, then struggle to follow it up with diminishing returns. Maybe it just isn’t the best time to meet a hero, in the parking lot of an Alabama dive bar after a half-dozen strong drinks at the bar. Regardless, I strongly believe anyone who has made even a single album as brilliant as Wine and Roses deserves a career for life.

I love that Wynn has kept going so consistently all these years, by all appearances is not only making a nice living, finding joy. I’ve seen the joy, on stage. He collaborates with his longtime pals such as Peter Buck and Mike Mills of R.E.M., makes music with his brilliant drummer wife Linda Pitmon, makes records and tours when he feels like it. Looking at his career from a distance, it makes me wonder what my life would be like had I channeled my entrepreneurship into my own professional music rather than supporting other people’s projects. Could I have built something like that? Would I have lived a happier life if I’d made 30 more albums? I’ll never know.

It doesn’t matter - I wouldn’t trade with anyone. I love my life, and I make music for joy and joy alone. When I do meet my heroes I simply tell them that I admire their work. I say it, just like that: “I admire your work.” Nobody has ever been put off or offended by this statement. Sometimes they smile and say thank you, sometimes it leads to a conversation about their work. After all, there’s hardly an artist alive that doesn’t enjoy talking about their work. If I were to meet Steve Wynn for the first time and tell him that I admire his work, I’d look for a spark of interest, maybe even wait for an actual question before launching into some unhinged narrative about how he saved the life of an kid in Indiana. Having read his book, knowing how much he loved music from day 1, knowing he was such an obsessive music fan he’d just show up at the home of a guy whose name he read on the back of a record - I know he would understand.³

1. Said producer is David Kahne, who cut demos for Blake Babies in trying to sign us - or more accurately sign Juliana, because he wasn’t really interested in our band. We heard a lot of stories about The Bangles.

2. Wynn didn’t exactly fire Precoda. Instead, he broke up the band and reformed with everyone BUT Precoda. Oldest trick in the book!

3. By the way, I had my own version of Wynn’s intrusion on Chilton. One time in the early 90s I had a leftover keg from a party in my apartment, and during a day-drinking session I decided I needed to speak with Townes Van Zandt. I got his number from information, called him, and told him much more than I admired his work. He took it well.