04/20/2012
Levon Helm died today
Bill Clinton might not have been standing in the wings backstage at
Little Rock’s Robinson Auditorium with Levon Helm if he hadn’t tried
to raise the price of license plates during his first term as governor
and some biscuit-shaped Republican made him the nation’s youngest
ex-governor.
When the Comeback Kid moved back into public housing at the state
mansion, he celebrated by booking the capitol city’s most august hall
for Diamonds and Denim, an economically diverse gumbo of the
fabulously wealthy, the brilliantly creative and the weirdly talented.
Arkies like Levon and Bill lined up to perform on the Auditorium’s
enormous stage for the most diverse audience that columned limestone
edifice ever admitted.
Greasy Greens found out early that when politicians and show
business mix, you might as well let Hunter Thompson write the script.
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Or more appropriately
(and stolen from Samuel Johnson) “He who makes a beast of himself gets
rid of the pain of being a man.”
Acts from all over the state took turns in the limelight until a
single spot followed legendary political cartoonist George Fisher to
center stage to dash off a quick character of Bill on an oversized
sketch pad lowered on two cables by stagehands from the catwalks and
girders lurking above the stage.
With his first stroke, the pad flew backward away from Fisher. He
telegraphed his trouble to the hushed audience when he tried
unsuccessfully to hold the paper with one hand and draw with the
other.
A biting awareness arced through the seasoned performers in the
wings. Their worst nightmare was unfolding in slow motion right in
front of them. The guy was dying out there.
The only person in the Auditorium who knew what the f**k he was
doing was a Greens roadie named Bill. He walked quickly behind the
stage’s backdrop of two-storey red velvet curtains to the seam where
they met and invisibly reached on stage to stabilize the swinging pad.
Fisher saw the pad stop swaying and threw himself into the
larger-than-life portrait of Arkansas’ boy governor. Standing behind
Levon, I didn’t realize Clinton would go on to 10 more years as
governor and eventually two stints as the nation’s 42nd president, but
I wouldn’t have bet against it.
That night I was more focused on Bill the roadie. Although I didn’t
know his last name, I knew, as roadies go, he was challenged by his
inability to carry anything heavier than a guitar. He’d been blown off
the deck of a U.S. Navy carrier while bombing Vietnam back into the
stone age. His severance package as a vet included a twisted spine so
f**ked up it sometimes threatened to eclipse his perpetual smile.
Sweating 50-caliber bullets, he held the weight of the night’s
political spectacle in his burning arms. Back bowed in excruciating
pain, the crippled vet pushed back invisibly as the cartoon of Bill
Clinton’s familiar face flowed from Fisher’s hand. The circus rolled
on; the patrons were entertained; the entertainers were patronized.
Watching that roadie bear the load of a political event like
Diamonds and Denim reminded me of sitting on the front porch of the
Art Farm where the Greens lived and rehearsed across the freeway from
the state capitol building. One day it occurred to me that the
building’s massive stone architecture mirrors the basic operating
principle of government. The building was erected by placing one stone
on the ground and then piling as many as possible on top of it without
pulverizing the one on the bottom.
As Fisher presented the completed drawing to Gov. Clinton, the
shriveled roadie limped off stage and disappeared while Arkansas’
glitterati applauded the cartoonist and the politician.
As Clinton’s turn to toodle through Summertime drew near, Levon
asked him where his sax was. The Governor turned to a state trooper
and asked for his axe. Levon stared as a state policeman tilted his
Smokie-the-Bear hat and spoke into the mic on his shoulder. “Get the
governor’s saxophone.” The static-filled message was acknowledged by a
second trooper, standing next to the first, and relayed to a third
trooper, “Get the governor’s saxophone,” standing next to the second
trooper. The message rippled through the shoulder-to-shoulder ranks
and out finally to a trooper inside the governor’s limousine.
“Governor’s saxophone is coming in,” was relayed over and over from
one officer to another until the head trooper handed the battered
instrument to Clinton. “Where’s the mouthpiece?” Clinton asked. “Get
the governor’s saxophone mouthpiece,” was passed down the line ad
nauseum until (“The governor’s saxophone mouthpiece is coming in,”)
the missing piece arrived. Levon, who had about 10-minutes invested in
digging this surreal parody of state-of-the-ark government/show biz
communication slapped his pal on the back as Clinton gathered himself
for a stage-right entrance, and said, “Well, Bill. It must be nice to
know you can always get a gig at the Holiday Inn if politics goes to
sh*t!”
-- Vernon Tucker
