Warren Zanes - Dusty in Memphis

Dusty in Memphis

Also available in this series:

Dusty in Memphis by Warren Zanes

Forever Changes by Andrew Hultkrans

Harvest by Sam Inglis

The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society by Andy Miller

Meat Is Murder by Joe Pernice

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by John Cavanagh

Abba Gold by Elisabeth Vincentelli

Electric Ladyland by John Perry

Unknown Pleasures by Chris O tt

Sign O the Times by Michaelangelo Matos

The Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe Harvard

Let It Be by Steve Matteo

Live at the Apollo by Douglas Wolk

Aqualung by Allan Moore

OK Computer by Dai Griffiths

Let It Be by Colin Meloy

Led Zeppelin IV by Erik Davis

Armed Forces by Franklin Bruno

Exile on Main Street by Bill Janovitz

Grace by Daphne Brooks

Murmur by J. Niimi

Pet Sounds by Jim Fusilli

Ramones by Nicholas Rombes

Endtroducing... by Eliot Wilder

Kick Out the Jams by Don McLeese

Low by Hugo Wilcken

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Kim Cooper

Music from Big Pink by John Niven

Pauls Boutique by Dan LeRoy

Doolittle by Ben Sisario

Theres a Riot Goin On by Miles Marshall Lewis

Stone Roses by Alex Green

Bee Thousand by Marc Woodworm

The Who Sell Out by John Dougan

Highway 61 Revisited by Mark Polizzotti

Loveless by Mike McGonigal

The Notorious Byrd Brothers by Ric Menck

Court and Spark by Sean Nelson

69 Love Songs by LD Beghtol

Songs in the Key of Life by Zeth Lundy

Use Your Illusion I and II by Eric Weisbard

Daydream Nation by Matthew Steams

Trout Mask Replica by Kevin Courrier

Double Nickels on the Dime by Michael T. Fournier

Peoples Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm by Shawn Taylor

Aja by Don Breithaupt

Rid of Me by Kate Schatz

Achtung Baby by Stephen Catanzarite

Forthcoming in this series:

Pretty Hate Machine by Daphne Carr

Lets Talk About Love by Carl Wilson and many more

Warren Zanes

2007

The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc
80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038

The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX

www.continuumbooks.com

Copyright 2003 by Warren Zanes

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers.

Printed in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zanes, Warren.
Dusty in Memphis / Warren Zanes.
p. cm. (33 1/3)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
1. Springfield, Dusty. Dusty in Memphis. I. Title. II. Series.
ML420.S765Z25 2003
782.42164092dc21
2003011464

eISBN-13: 978-1-4411-9420-6

This is for Elinor and Lucian.

Id like to thank my good friend Joe Pernice for bringing me into this project and David Barker, the editor of the series, for keeping me there. Two gentlemen. I hope to see more of them.

WZ: You have one tattoo that says Memphis on it.
What were you thinking when you got it?

Chips Moman: I was a kid. I wasnt thinking much of anything (laughs).

This is not a book about a record. Sorry. I hope no one has been misled. This is something else altogether. As I was writing it, I conceptualized my agenda in this way: as an attempt to understand why a particular long-playing phonograph, Dusty in Memphis, pulled me into its world and what I did there. Which is to say, this book is about an experience with a record more than it is about a record. Its both a chronicle and an analysis of what happened when a particular person met up with a particular piece of vinyl at a particular time and the unfolding of that relationship.

I was a teenager playing guitar in a rock and roll band called the Del Fuegos. Without suitable preparation for any such possibility, we were getting a moderate taste of success, were out on the road promoting a record that would take us to some unexpected places. A babe born under the jurisdiction of a punk ethos, I had yet to learn how to play my instrument with any real skill, a fact that somehow added to the bands credibility. On tour, with accumulated per diem warm in hand, I picked up a copy of Dusty in Memphis.

Thus a particular piece of vinyl was purchased by a particular person at a particular time. So, while theres plenty in these pages about Dusty in Memphis, about the cast of characters responsible for its beauty, much of what is written here is refracted (remember, this is a distorting effect) through the lens of the personal. Records that last, those special few that refuse dust and return to the player again and again even as the world around them changes, finally become, in some odd way, collaborations between the listener and the listened to. One might say that to understand, to really understand, my Dusty in Memphis, I had to consult both parties.

As is abundantly clear to any record lover, certain albums come to be attached to distinct periods in ones life, inadvertently becoming emblems of happy, desperate, or even notably dull life phases, in this way assuming a sometimes surprising associational power. They can take us back to a time and give us a strong whiff of whatever was in the air. How often have we seen another person disappear into memorys deeper recesses when a particular long player comes on? That person has gone somewhere. If as humans we can access only a fraction of all that is stored in memorys vaults, sometimes a single song will give us quick access to those vaults, and in a manner that could only be described as uncanny. Some albums cant be listened to for just this reason. Others might recall a perfect day and be loved for just such an ability to transport us. For me, Richard Manuels haunting In a Station owns one such day.

But there is a class of recordings that belong to a still more elevated category. When, above, I refer to albums that return to the player even as the world around them changes, I am referring to just such a class. The relevance of these albums transcends the one-to-one correspondence whereby, for instance, the Gun Clubs Fire of Love, through some curious shape-shifting capacity, comes to embody the spring of 1982 (which, for me, it did). The recordings that go beyond that level of correspondence become emblems of more than just one passage in our lives, they becomeand I hate to make it all too lofty, but here it cant be helpedemblems of us, artifacts of selfdefinition. Such special albums rattle our cages again and again (and sometimes we use them, with limited success, to rattle the cages of others). Its hard to say why. But thats what they do.