David Berman

David Berman is the author of the poetry collection Actual Air.

PUNK PANTHER

That bit about Clark is brilliant. Can I make up a question so we can include it?

Why not let’s break any of the interview rules we feel like. In fact interview etiquette may be the last slightly unfucked with procedure in the arts. I'll do the answers first, and then you do the questions just for fun. For instance here's one:

Answer b/f question:

I just read Johnny Rotten's autobio, No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish. You know what. I think the Sex Pistols really are/were the first punk band. Spare me your objections for a sec. I know the Ramones recorded earlier but the Ramones were essentially lovable dummies. Not based on, but not so different from the Troggs.

The Ramones could not have existed without Ringo Starr or the lummox from Of Mice and Men.

Now John Lydon, what can I say? He sprung fully formed out of John Bull's (UK's counterpart to Uncle Sam) forehead.

His libel/cant/tantrums/appeals were shockingly intelligent and eloquent for rock music up to then.

I think Johnny Rotten (and Bobby Pyn to a degree) yoked a killerly critically merciless mind to the hostile romp that Paul Cook/Don Bolles) laid down. His yeller teabag piehole slayed God, church, school and government,

like Evelyn Waugh and Philip Larkin with born poor, vindictive and determined to make Bowie unthought of for a while.

Lydon, he's so uncharming for the last eighteen years or so. Since the album that had "Rise" ("Anger is an Energy" on it) I’ve stopped caring. I remember in the early and mid-80's people used to wear black PIL T-shirts at every show.

You never see them anymore.

Poptones. Religion I and II.

Furthermore Neil Young is not as important as Neil Young. I love Neil Young way more than Johnny Rotten.

But if God made me choose which one to remove from history retroactively I’d have to extinguish Neil.

It would be hard to lose Neil. But The Band, Byrds Tim Hardin would be around. We'd piece a Neil together. But Johnny Rotten?

He is as unforgettable and as important to how we think today as John Lennon, John Adams, and Johnny Carson ever were.

Lists of three, what would I do without thee. I mean rhetoric-wise. Another time without the rhyme:

The Sex Pistols really did change the world. More than Nirvana, Dan Quayle, and Roseanne Barr combined. Sure the Ramones stumbled into an influential speed/rhythm thing but what made punk punk for me (I know this is where I'd lose Greg Ginn if he was reading this somehow) for me was largely a visuals thing. How Sid Vicious looked on Walter Cronkite in '79.

The Day-Glo album art, safety pins, sloganeering and don't forget the gobbing (in the beginning, '76-'77) British punk bands were literally (now think about this) drenched in spit by the third song. I mean soaked.

The ransom note lettering, Pogo dancing, old men's clothes re-configured, the harsh but somehow inevitable seeming intelligence of John Rotten (and his American shadow-annoyer) J. Biafra and how exhilarating it was to discover that scorn was a duty when Reagan/Thatcher/REO Speedwagon were in power. I actually think I got a hard-on the first time I heard "Anarchy in the U.K." I didn't but I thought I did before I remembered I didn't. Steve Jones guitar solo (well, four scrunched notes played over and over again) in that song is like stabbing a stepmother or screaming "Hinckley had a vision" outside the 1984 Republican convention at Reunion Arena in Dallas. (Mighty Sphincter and JFA playing tonight. Don Bolles moved to L.A. You hadn’t heard?

Yeah. They’re called the Germs.)

(Four years later: You hadn't heard? He's in 45 grave now.)

1993 (Hadn't you heard? Pat Ruthensmear is in Nirvana now.)

1994 (Cobain's dead now. But he wrote five really great songs.)

1995 (I know but all the British magazines are putting him up there with Lennon and Hendrix on their greatest albums of all time list.)

1996 (Yeah, that's an overcorrection. He never came close to achieving "You're Living All Over Me" or even "Hairway to Steven" as far as I’m concerned.)

1997 (Well sure but his voice was stunning.)

1998 (Agreed, so why did in every song he keep repeating the same line over and over?)

1999 (For drama, you know repetition, crank the tension.)

2000 (Maybe he didn't have a lot to say lyrically.)

2001 (I suspect that's true. Moreover, if I remember the time leading up to his suicide, his second album wasn't quite as popular as was expected.)

2002 (So what are you saying? That he killed himself because he knew he was out of zeitgeist/gas?

That seems facile since he had a long history of psychological distress, had a damaged childhood, and was trapped in a marriage with a women potentially more evil than Ono or Gacy. He had every reason.)

2003 (Why the shotgun then? Why not take an irrevocable hot shot of dope and go out "floating on a cloud of titties" like Darby did.)

2004 (It's obvious. He knew his rock history. All men who find success in music (and many who don't) find counsel in rock bios. He knew how all his predecessors had killed themselves. Ham sandwiches, pills, plane crashes and assassinations. Ever the artist, striving for primacy, even in the end he sought an original method of evacuating this shithole.

Thus the shotgun. That's hardcore.)

2005 (I’ve never heard you pay Kurt so much respect.)

2006 (Yeah, well he's been on my mind because, until recently, I owned his first seven-inch: "Lovebuzz/Big Cheese" Subpop 1988. I just sold it to a Japanese collector for $800.)

2007 (And?)

2008 (I’m thankful for the windfall but I still wish Kurt had been more... something. He's not quite top tier.)

2009 (That’s what they used to say about Zeppelin and now no one doubts their killerness.)

2010 (I know, I know, time will tell, but for now, when I think about that poor sap, I think...I think I would be embarrassed to be so well understood.)

2011 (But it is a blessing to be so well understood.)