Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
Of all the guests I had on my morning show at Indie 1031, the biggest deal for me was Dennis Hopper. I don't know how it happened. I didn't think I deserved it at that stage of my career but what a thrill. Easy Rider was just one of the many R rated films my dad took me too as a 6 year old as he rolled the dice on how these films would later affect me. I think I benefitted. I fell in love with the characters' quest for freedom and I'm still in love with it. I had to pin one of the stars & stripes peace sign fingers over the poster I had of him in my Orange County bedroom so my parents would let me keep it up. (They weren't crazy.)
Eventually I saw what the hippies were really all about and these fears were galvanized by a healthy punk rock movement that was in its infancy quite anti-hippie. Eventually it was more or less co-opted by the hippie movement as well but, hey, I could go to law school and make the ultimate anti-hippie statement!
The death of Dennis Hopper is the ultimate end of an era in my eyes for one reason. The guy told James Dean stories! He was friends with James Dean for pete's sake. They were friends. He had plenty of stories about Dean and he told some of them on my radio show and I was beside myself. He didn't know I was conservative, and at that time I didn't know he ran away from the hippie culture in the same way I did, but he really opened up and told us all about what it was like to make Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet (well, David Lynch was my weatherman), and Easy Rider.
He was a pure gentleman. He was there to promote his wonderful Cinevegas Film Festival, but he knew we would love all his personal stories so he was great about it and answered all my fanboy questions. I should have known right then that he was a bit to polite to be a lefty. And he showed up on time in a suit and tie, at 7:00 in the morning! It was almost Reaganesque.
Later, I worked with him a few more times in Vegas and Venice helping promote the festival and he was always the same. Cool, polite, and very smart. And he coughed up James Dean stories! Who's going to do that for us now? No one. It's the end of that era. Will people tell Dennis Hopper stories? Yes, because they're actually better. Just ask me.
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May '10
Re: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
Dennis Hopper always struck me as a guy who didn't take himself too seriously. I skipped Easy Rider, having grown up too late to ever love the hippie movement. Maybe it's worth a look, afterall.
I believe heavy metal also arose as an anti-hippie movement. When young men were being told they should be more like women, some songwriters inevitably embraced and glorified the male instincts. Of course, metal and punk rock both have been taken into altogether unhealthy directions, musically and lyrically. But there have always been metal bands who celebrate the soldier's steel and inspire pursuit of justice.
Years ago, I started to write an article titled "Heavy Metal for God", a logical defense of heavy metal as a medium for conservative values. Perhaps I'll finish it. :)
Re: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
I easily moved from hippies to punks. Punks were always much more my speed. Oh, yes, Wendy O at Club Lingerie, Pilon at Cathay De Grande, Red Hot Chili Peppers at some Mexican restaurant God knows where.... X!!!
I love finding out that I wasn't the lone right winger staring at mohawk boys and ska monkeys in the mosh pit. (I was always too short and never quite drunk enough to join them).
And R.I.P. Dennis Hopper. Thanks for the piece, Joe.
Re: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
One night on Sunset at the end of 2001 or the start of 2002 I walked into the Cat Club for a low-key drink. There was a guy in there playing. No riser, he was just playing on the floor -- a guitar, a cord, and an amp. But it was packed (the Cat Club is not cavernous) and wedged between the walk path to the bar and a glut of cigarette-stinky music fans, a beer in my hand, I thought, hmm. Until...I realized. It was Dee Dee Ramone. Can't remember which one of these shows it was, but there he was, three feet away. And when he was done and went to get a beer of his own, I socked him on the shoulder and choked out one or 1.5 words of praise. "Rock and roll," he said, and disappeared into the crowd. Punk rock and roll.
Keep them stories coming, Melanie & Joe.
Edited on May 31, 2010 at 6:39pmRe: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
I wanna be sedated was the song I played more or less in an endless loop while studying for finals in medical school. I was motivated. And our favorite club in those days was Spit on Landsdowne Street just next to Fenway Park.
Re: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
My ears still hurt from the Plazmatics at the Whiskey Melanie. Regarding metal, there's too much overlap in the metal / Renaissance faire worlds for them not to be grouped with hippies. If these young men didn't want to be mistaken for women, they should have cut their hair. hahahaha
Re: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
The one concert I thought I might not make it out alive from was The Dead Kennedys. I walked into the Whiskey, straight off the bus from Virginia. My punk garb was not yet evolved, and these crazy punkers were heading out at the same time, faces bloodied, noses broken... I was so high, it didn't occur to me that this was a bad place to be. Somehow, I must have seemed so out of place that the whirling brawl swept past me and I was able to enjoy Holiday in Cambodia amidst the chaos.
Now I'm old. The End.
May '10
Re: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
ha! Joe, I think you have a point. But I was thinking less of academic metal (Dream Theater, Iced Earth) and more of the mainstream Romantics (Metallica, Pantera, Anthrax). Come to think of it, many of the latter bands cite punk influences and roots.
And yes, y'all are old. ;) You had The Misfits. I had Danzig.
Re: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
Here's a true story Melanie. I made a "Kill The Poor" shirt and wore it to a Dead Kennedys show at the Whiskey. A big poor person grabbed it and ripped it out of protest. Then his friends told him I was merely celebrating the D.K. song "Kill The Poor" and that this was actually a protest song against genocidal government policies aimed at the lower classes. I was like, "really?" Oh ya, of course. My first social justice encounter beyond the Orange Curtain.
May '10
Re: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
I am an old 80s metalhead myself. It was/is powerful music. Great for releasing teenage rage as well as being a relatively benign form of rebellion against my parents. It was a musical form very much in line with the 80s. Sex, partying, over the top excess, general wildness. But when it got political, it was pretty generic anti-establishment stick-it-to-the-Man cliches of war is bad, conservatives (i.e. your dad) are bad, freedom is good. It was definitely considered subversive music behind the Iron Curtain. I still love my metal to this day. I am glad it is enjoying a comeback. Much better than the Clinton-era 90s grunge with it's whiny, self-absorbed, pissing and moaning about life. Plus, nearly everyone forgot how to play guitar in the 90s. Not a guitar god in the whole decade except maybe Dimebag Darrell of Pantera. Thanks to games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, punishing riffs and shredding guitar has come back to the fore.
\m/ Jason the metalheaddoc \m/
Re: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
One of the reasons, Jason, why Alice in Chains was the best of the grunge bands. Yes, Layne's lyrics were pretty brutally self-absorbed. But taken together, Chains at its best was like metal at its best -- crushingly heavy and hugely tuneful, with themes that make you relate to them.
Re: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
That's hilarious, Joe. In general, I prefer my musicians to be commies and my politicians to be anti-commies. Unless it's George Jones.
May '10
Re: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
Uh, Pavarotti, anyone?
Re: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
He is the Jackie Gleason of opera singers.
Edited on Jun 2, 2010 at 3:24pmRe: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
And oh, I don't mean that and I have no idea what I'm talking about. I need coffee.
Edited on Jun 2, 2010 at 3:22pmRe: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
I'm with you on #11 Melanie. Well said.
May '10
Re: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
Agreed. But don't count out Gruntruck, a love only grungers seem to share. The lyrics are by turns brilliant and incomprehensible... which probably describes most early 90s rockers.
And yet it's only now, years after Rock Band 2's release, that they've finally added Pantera tunes. Those games can act as a good intro to guitar, I think. But I'm not sure how many make the leap to the real deal.
Dave Matthews and a few others did their share of promoting guitar skills in the 90s.
Re: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
Aaron Miller: Agreed. But don't count out Gruntruck, a love only grungers seem to share. The lyrics are by turns brilliant and incomprehensible... which probably describes most early 90s rockers. [...]
And yet it's only now, years after Rock Band 2's release, that they've finally added Pantera tunes. Those games can act as a good intro to guitar, I think. But I'm not sure how many make the leap to the real deal.
Dave Matthews and a few others did their share of promoting guitar skills in the 90s.
I'll not touch Dave with a ten foot pole, Aaron, but Gruntruck sounds worth a listen. I take it you've heard your fair share of Clutch? As for 'the leap'...yeah. I came to Rock Band as a guitar player of many years, and it's just a different 'instrument'. So I can only fear how foreign and useless a real guitar looks to someone who's grown up playing the fake thing. (I say this in the absence of any anecdotal or empirical data from youngins.)
May '10
Re: Dennis Hopper: We both discovered the same thing, hippies have cooties.
I played guitar long before trying Rock Band. They're certainly a world apart, but I bet those games help to develop the necessary coordination... like getting the picking hand to work in time with the fingering hand, and doing anything at all with the pinky. I think they also train players' rhythmic attention. But those games are probably more of a crutch past a certain point.
I also played drums before Rock Band, and the game's much closer to the real thing there.
Clutch sounds great. Thanks! The Push album is the only Gruntruck I care for, but it has an inexplicable power over me.
Like Joe, I'm a songwriter (non-professional). I make all kinds of music, but most of it falls somewhere between early 90s metal/grunge and Southern rock (ala Lynyrd Skynyrd). When I post some songs on YouTube later this month, I'll be sure to send Ricochet a message on Twitter or Facebook.