Easy to Play
My favorite piece of spraypaint art by Slim and Lulu
Punky
Punky Meadows, lead guitarist for Angel
Marvin asked me if Scott every showed me any of his pictures. The answer to that is a little weird. Yes and no. He showed me some work he did for local music rags, but he didn’t really show me much more than that. I asked, but he was fairly dismissive of his photographic past.
Pondering that question, and the huge amount of time we spent looking at pictures and talking about them, I was suddenly reminded of another great influence on Scott that hasn’t been mentioned before. The rock band Angel, which featured the infamous Punky Meadows on guitar. Scott spent some time with them in Hollywood. Punky (and his pout) were immortalized by Frank Zappa:
In today's rapidly changing world
Rock groups appear every fifteen minutes,
Utilizing some new promotional device.
Some of these devices have been known
To leave irreparable scars
On the minds of foolish young consumers.
One such case is seated before you:
Little skinny Terry 'Ted' Bozzio,
That cute little drummer!
That's right!
Terry recently fell in love
With a publicity-photo of a boy named Punky Meadows...
(Oh Punky!)...
Lead guitar player from a group called Angel.
In the photograph,
Punky was seen with a beautiful shiny hairdo
In a semi-profile which emphasized the pootched out succulence Of his insolent pouting rictus,
The sight of which drove the helpless young drummer mad with desire!
The influence wasn’t musical, of course—it was Scott’s big lesson in the power of the camera. The story goes something like this:
13 Photographs
My camera wasn't the only thing out of sync that night
I like my town with a little drop of poison
Nobody knows they're lining up to go insane
I'm all alone, I smoke my friends down to the filter
But I feel much cleaner after it rains
And she left in the fall, that's her picture on the wall
She always had that little drop of poison
“Little Drop Of Poison”
(Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan 1997)
When Scott called me in February of 1997 and told me that he was ready to get out of Bakersfield and try a new start, I knew that things probably weren’t that cut and dried. It wasn’t the first, nor the last, time he tried to put it behind him. When he went to Los Angeles (multiple times, in multiple years), as he told the tale, “He told them he was from Bakersfield a couple of hundred times.” It is hard for anyone who has done time in the place to put it aside; the dirt doesn’t wash off in the rain. And by 1997, he had certainly smoked most of his friends down to the filter. Even Falling James had cut him loose.
There was a girl (isn’t there always?) after Mary who lived somewhere near Shafter or McFarland who had broken Scott’s heart, and he’d decided that he just had to get out of town. My ex-wife and I had split up and left California, just before Scott and Mary split up. Our break was amicable, and we both offered to give Scott a place to stay if he came our way.
An open letter to N.L. Belardes.
I was pleased to stumble on your web site when my friend Scott died. Rex left me a message here to let me know while I was out on the road earlier in the summer, and when I got home I was really happy that you were instrumental in putting together the tribute show (which I hear went really well). Through your past writing, I also found out about the death of Pete Williams, another Bakersfield musician I knew. Though I might not have said so at the time, I also enjoyed your podcast using Pete’s music—some of which I had not heard before. I left Bakersfield over a decade ago, and it’s been useful to find out more about my old friends. I’m glad you cared.
I’m glad you put out the effort to try to bring people together. Death can do that—it can forge a community when there are too many complications to get across when people are alive. Bakersfield has always had some identity problems that way. People tend their own gardens and defend them against all incursions. I’m glad that you are trying to promote the place and its music in a variety of venues. I know a lot of the people you write about. It is nice to see them get some attention.
I would have preferred to talk to you by phone. Since you hung up on me when I tried to talk to you, I have no alternative. There’s no venom or ill-will, just frustration. I don’t really know much about you, other than the fact that you identify yourself as a novelist. The most salient facts about me are: I am a writing teacher who specializes in nonfiction and technical writing (for the last eight years or so) and a documentary photographer (for about thirty years). I was a friend of Scott Sturtevant, and was chosen by him to document several phases of his life. He taught me more than I can really describe. You seem to believe that I’m upset with you personally. I’m not. I’m upset with you professionally. There’s a big difference. I tend to be quite direct in my speech and writing. I regret that you took it personally.
Tourist Trap
Mena, Arkansas, c. 1986
Over the years, most of my prints have been given away or destroyed. I’ve got all the exhibition prints from shows, but other work mostly hangs out in my memory. Most of the people I’ve shot pictures of have more intact copies than mine; I was always too busy working to archive much of anything in accessible form. I left California with thousands of prints, but a series of water-park type disasters have ruined them all. Besides that, all the really good prints were given away to the people who could use them most (like Slim).
It didn’t surprise me that much that when Slim came to Arkansas in 1997, he brought with him a box of my prints (all he had left, I suspect). When his attempt at “a new start” failed and he returned to California, it also didn’t surprise me that he gave them back to me. He also left a four-track master tape labeled “Gospel Album,” his car, and some trinkets. There is a lot I’d like to say about the last time I saw him; but it pales in the light of the memory of that first phone-call after he got back to California that told me he’d been in the hospital due to overdoses three times in the space of a week.
It’s hard to think about this stuff. So I’ve been digging out some other lost memories, such as the farm I grew up on. There’s too much to say about everything. I really need to say something regarding the bastard copies of some of my photographs that popped up. It isn’t being displayed that bothers me; it’s that anyone would have the gall to claim the crap copy as their own. There are fresher, better versions on the way soon as I can bear to look at those negatives again. Perhaps I’m overly sensitive about it, but grief is a difficult thing, especially when it is stretched out over decades.
