‘The Dog Stars’ novelist Peter Heller / Remembering rock critic Dave Marsh

This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. The Dog Stars, a new film from Ridley Scott starring Jacob Elordi and Josh Brolin, is an apocalyptic drama about two men struggling to survive after a virus has wiped out much of the world's population. Here's a scene from the movie. Elordi is speaking to Brolin's character. This world fits you, Bing. Wake up. Defend. Survive. I think you were ready for it ten years before it hit. Right? You liked this s***. I was a f***ing canic. No, I f***ed s***. When I wasn't doing that, I was kissing my wife and playing with my dog. You know, wondering every day how I got so f***ing lucky. The Dog Stars, which opens in theaters next week, is adapted from a novel of the same name by Peter Heller. Heller knows something about survival himself. He's an experienced outdoorsman and adventure writer who's gone to some pretty remote places and done some pretty dangerous things. He wrote Hell or High Water, about an expedition to an unfathomably deep river gorge in Tibet. The Dog Stars is a film by Peter Heller, which opens in theaters next week. The Dog Stars was his first novel and became a bestseller. His other novels include The River, Celine, The Painter, and his latest, The Orchard. Peter Heller holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop in both fiction and poetry. Let's listen to some of the interview I recorded with Heller in 2012, when The Dog Stars was first published. Well, Peter Heller, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you for having me. Now, this is your first novel. You've written a lot of nonfiction. Why a novel? Why a novel set in a post-apocalyptic world where civilization has collapsed? Yeah, I'm not sure why. I know why I wanted to write a novel. I've been writing nonfiction for many years. And, you know, when you write a nonfiction book, you know, of course, I always know what's going to happen next. And I know what the ending is going to be. And I just didn't want to know what was going to happen next. And so I went to the coffee shop where I write, and I sat down, and I began with the first line. So I didn't even. I didn't even, to tell you the truth, know that it was going to be a post-apocalyptic story when I started. Wow. The first line is, I keep the beast running. The beast refers to an old Cessna aircraft. That's how you started? Yeah. And, I mean, I know that this stuff about the unraveling of the ecosphere and the apocalypse is something that I've been thinking about a lot. I write a lot about environmental issues. And I have a dear friend. He's a paleobotanist. And his. What he does is look at 70 million-year-old fossil leaves. And his specialty is the K-T boundary. That's the geologic layer that represents the time between when there were a lot of dinosaurs and then when there weren't any. So this guy, Kirk, is an aficionado of extinction, you might say. And we eat breakfast now and then. And we always talk about, you know, this sixth great mass extinction that we're in the middle of right now. That scientists, you know, are talking about a lot. And we always end up imagining what it'll be like when that apocalypse, this unraveling, you know, begins to affect human society and what it'll look like. And so, you know, those themes have been on my mind. And so when I sat down to write, I think, you know, they had to be central to the book. You know, I had my own thought notion about this, which is that, you know, as I read about what you've done, I mean, you've been quite an outdoorsman. You've been, you know, an expedition kayaker. You've gone to some incredibly remote and sometimes dangerous places. And I wondered if you were at times in places where it might have felt like you were one of the last people on Earth. Oh, yeah. You know, that's a wonder. I hadn't thought of it that way. But I was thinking this morning about sometimes I just – the wonderful thing about, you know, traveling to these places and taking these expeditions is you have these memories and these images that sort of, you know, they form your interior landscape. And you can come back. And this morning I was thinking about the Tsangpo Gorge in eastern Tibet. And, you know, it's like the deepest gorge in the world. It's right in the middle of the high Himalayas. And it's so deep that it's subtropical and there are tigers in there and, you know, four species of leopards and 200 species and counting of rhododendrons. You know, I was on this expedition that went through there and it did. You know, it felt like the end of the world or maybe like some sort of Shangri-La, some sort of, you know, imagined place on Earth. But no one had ever been to before. And, you know, on some of these trips, actually, you know, when you get into the kayak, you don't even know. You stretch the spray skirt on over the cockpit and you don't know if that's the last time you'll ever be doing that. And you sort of pray that it's not. And so I think that that might have informed some of it for sure. You know, one of the things that I thought – I just – I really enjoyed reading this. It's told in the first person. Your character, Hig, is this guy who was a pilot. And he's – At an airport with another guy who's very different from him. Let's talk about these two characters. First, your character, Hig, the one who tells the story. Tell us about him. Well, he's – he was a contractor. He was married, very happily married, to his wife named Melissa. She was seven months pregnant when this super flu hit and hit, you know, across – it was a pandemic, world pandemic. And so that was their first child. So in this flu. In this flu pandemic, he lost his wife. He lost his unborn child. He lost everything. And in his previous life, before that, he had wanted to be a writer. He was – he had written a bunch of poetry and was kind of a failed poet and, you know, had to go to work. And so, you know, he did this job building houses. And he's a big guy. He's a very tough and formidable dude. But, you know, he still has that sensibility of, you know, he's a great writer. He just loves to read poetry more than anything. And he has a sensitivity towards beauty and nature. And he loves to fly fish. That's what he loves to do more than anything. And, you know, in this situation, in this post-apocalyptic time that he finds himself in, he'll still, at great risk to himself, he and his dog Jasper will head into the mountains just to go fishing. Right. Now, they end up at this little rural airport called Erie. Is it a real place? Yeah. It's – it's – Where I keep my plane, the old 56. A 56 Cessna, an old plane. And because of the circumstances, there are fuel tanks that are solar-powered so he can – there's enough fuel that he can continue to fly. The other guy at the airport is the one he's destined to perhaps spend eternity with, this character Bangley. Tell us about Bangley. Bangley's an enigma, you know. He shows up a few months after everything hit the fan with a trailer full of guns. Guns and ammo. And he's – he's just a really mean gun nut. And you get the sense that he's been waiting for this his whole life, this sort of survival situation. And, you know, throughout the whole beginning of the book, you know, and as I was writing it, I mean, I was – you know, I was discovering these characters as I was writing it just as Hig was. And so it was really fun. You know, Bangley is a tough nut to crack. He doesn't give away much. And his whole deal is about survival. It is about dotting your I's and crowing. It's about crossing every T and about redundancy and about never slipping up and never making a mistake and never letting some situation get out of hand or letting the other guy win. And treating every other human being you may encounter as a threat. Yeah, definitely. He's a crusty dude for sure. So tell us what's the symbiotic relationship? Why does Bangley accept your character Hig into his little world? Well, you know, I think on the surface, you know, explicitly, it's because Hig has this – he has this airplane and he knows how to fly it. And every day after, you know, there's a lot of action in the book. And in one of these sort of attacks that nearly cleans their clock, you know, Bangley sort of realizes that it's Hig's daily patrols in his old plane. You know, he circles out towards the mountain front, which is eight miles away, and then he circles around. He does a – out to the south and then the east and to the north. He has a 30-mile radius. And it's sort of a day's walk for an intruder. So after his patrol, he knows that they're safe for probably – for 24 hours. And it's that patrol, that perimeter that Hig maintains that, you know, keeps him alive, you know, in Bangley's book. He's useful then. And your character, Hig, is not happy just to stay alive, right? He's always kind of reaching for something else. Yeah, I mean, Hig's challenge is to find a reason to stay alive and to stay connected with the things he loves. And I think that's why I named the book The Dog Stars because Hig sleeps out every night with his dog Jasper. They huddle up and sleep out under the stars. And every night, Hig names the constellations. And he used to have a book of stars, but now he doesn't. And so – He remembers, some of the constellations, you know, Orion and the Big Dipper and the chariot, but a lot of them he doesn't. So he makes them up and they're usually animals. And he makes one up for his wife and for the little angel, he calls it, which was his child. And he makes one up for Jasper, his dog. And it's his way of reinventing the world and also staying connected to the things he loves. So that's his challenge every day is to find a reason to live, to find joy, to find some richness. And I think that's what makes him so interesting. It's not just about, you know, finding the calories to stay alive. And Bangley's reaction to every move is, that's too risky, make sure you're protected, get the right angles on an intruder, that kind of a thing. Exactly. Yeah, they're working, you know, they have two different tracks they're working on every day. And so their relationship is very interesting. And Higg doesn't like to kill. And, you know, in a lot of ways, I'm like Higg in that way. I mean, I love to fly fish almost more than anything. I hunt elk and, and I just can't stand killing things. I mean, I'll, I'll, if I see a spider, you know, flailing on the surface of the water, I'll go to great effort to, to, to save him sometimes. Don't tell my buddies. But Higg is like that too. You know, he just, he's in this situation where they do get attacked and he does sometimes have to step up and he, he just can't stand it. Whereas Bangley, you know, he, he relishes that. And, you know, he thinks Higg lives in the past too much. You know, a lot of the book is Higg's interior monologue, his memories of the past. There's a lot, there's layering of his memories of his marriage, of, you know, things he used to love to do and his impressions. And so he's in his head a lot. And to Bangley, you know, this is just cross purposes to what they want to do. You know, he's always telling Higg to wake up, you know, stop, you know, he's going to be trying to think about the past and get blindsided by some. Now, you grew up in New York. What kind of neighborhood were you in? What kind of, what kind of kid were you? So I grew up in Brooklyn Heights, which is, you know, it's a genteel neighborhood above the piers, right across from the financial district in Brooklyn. And it was, it was a quiet neighborhood. I spent all my time like in the bushes when I was really around the playground. My friends were in the playground. I was like in the bushes. I don't know. Just as a kid, I just wanted to be out of the city. So bad. I couldn't, I couldn't stand the city. You know, I went to school and I like school a lot. I like, I liked reading, but I couldn't wait until I got out of there. And so I begged my parents when I was 15 to send me to a school in Southern Vermont. I have, I have a lot of cousins and uncle and aunt in Putney, Vermont. And so I, I went to a school there for high school and I, you know, it's just like, oh my God, hills and rivers. And it was great. It was great. And I loved it so much. I built a teepee and I lived in it, you know, through the Vermont winter when I was a teenager and cut my firewood and all that stuff. It was just, I was so happy in the country. So I went to college in New England and the country and. Right. And you became an expedition kayaker, right? I mean, you would, you would take groups of people into these remote settings and with tough rapids and bring everybody back alive, huh? Most of the time on the big expeditions, I was on assignment. So I was like the kayak. I was the writer in the kayak and I didn't lead the trip, but I did a lot of guiding and I did a lot of kayak construction along the way. Well, I mean, I guess the best known is the trip that led to your book, Hell or High Water. And that's this, this remarkable river gorge in Eastern Tibet. You want to, you want to describe the setting here and what this expedition was about? Oh gosh. I mean, this thing is like mythic. This, the Sangpo River runs west to east across Tibet. It drains the entire north slope of the Himalayas. So it's, it's a big river. And then in Eastern Tibet at about 10,000 foot elevation, it just drops off the edge of the earth and flows between two mountains, a 25,000 footer and a, and a, and a 23,000 foot peak. The peaks are very close together and the river just drops off between them. And then 150 river miles later, it flows out into the hills. India at an altitude of 500 feet. So if you think it drops off the edge of 10,000 feet and 150 river miles later, it comes out at 500 foot elevation. Think of the, the, the, the relief in there, the steepness of this river, and it's a big river. So these guys, an expedition led by Scott Lindgren and a few of his, his kayak buddies decided that they wanted to try and kayak this river. And these are the best expedition kayakers in the world. And they're, they're, they're, they're they decided they wanted to kayak it in the middle of the winter when the river was at its lowest level, which is, which was a good idea. But when it's very, very cold, right? It's cold. And, uh, at some point, you know, uh, how many river miles? It's something like 20 river miles in, uh, the river gets to a precipitous waterfall that hadn't been described that was, you know, sort of imagined, but hadn't been described until 1998 by National Geographic. I mean, that's how remarkable it is. Um, so you get to a place where you can't paddle anymore, and then you have to climb up over a high snow pass. But the thing about it is, is that those passes aren't even, you know, the locals don't go anywhere near them after November. So here we are in February and these guys are carrying their kayaks up, you know, these 60 degree slopes, guys cutting steps with an ice ax. And these guys are carrying their kayaks up these, you know, just open snow slopes, um, way up over a high pass. It was, it was epic. And I w I was just, I was on the ground team and, uh, you know, it was, we were 37 days in the gorge. So, so did you have a kayak yourself or you were? No, no, no, no, no. I was pet weight. I was 40 something. These guys were all like in their twenties, you know, no, nobody really older than 30. Um, they kayaked, you know, 350 days a year, um, top of their form. And, uh, so I was on assignment. I just, I just was on the ground team and I, and I wrote about the story, but you know, it was, um, challenging enough just trying to get, get through there. No, only two expeditions in history had ever done it. So what does it mean to be on the ground team? It means that you're with, uh, five Nepali Sherpas, like Everest Sherpas who were there for mountaineering and stuff and 60 porters. And then this, um, international team of like mountaineers. And you are, uh, trying to keep pace with the kayakers, you know, along the, side of this precipitous gorge. And, uh, so yeah, it's just, it's a lot of walking, a lot of scrambling and, um, some praying. Your character in the dog stars, Higg is a pilot and his Cessna aircraft is, is an important part of the story. And he, you know, there's some really evocative scenes where he writes about flying. You're a pilot yourself, right? Yeah. I came to it in a, in a funny way. I was, I was doing a kayak trip in Northern Montana. We had to fly into the river to do it. Um, this is a few years ago. And I found that my favorite part of the whole trip was the flight in, you know, it was just so cool to, uh, be flying through these mountains close enough with a wing tip, sort of close enough to the mountain slopes that you could see, you know, the tracks of elk, you know, going up along a ridge. And I, and the landing in this little grass strip surrounded by, by mountains was, it was, I just thought it was cool. So I asked the, I got an assignment from men's journal. Um, it was sort of like how to be a bush pilot in three weeks. Um, and I, you know, they, they gave me the assignment. I went up there to Kalispell, Montana, and, um, I got my license in 20 days with these, with these incredible back country pilots. The assignment was to learn to fly and write a story. Yeah. It was like, could you, could you like in, in three weeks, like learn to fly, get your license and then land on a back country strip. And so, um, the guy I learned from Dave Horner is one of the truly great back country pilots in the world. He has 30,000 hours flying in the mountains of glacier national park and around there, um, tracking wolves and, and grizzly bears radio collar tracking. So he's always flying low and slow with the, you know, the mountain peaks all around him and above him. It's very dangerous flying and he's, he's still alive after 30,000 hours. So he's extraordinary. It was sort of like learning to play tennis from, you know, Roger Federer. It should never happen. And he was so fun to learn, because he was, he had been a logger and, uh, you know, I was not a natural. I mean, I think it was like day three, we were landing at like Poulsen on the Southern end of Flathead Lake. And we came in, he goes, he goes, you drive a truck. I'm like, yes, yes, sir. He's like, you drive a motorcycle. And I'm like, yeah, he goes, this isn't either one. It's a bird. Damn it. You know, little adjustments, little adjustments. And then when we landed, he turned and he goes, that was atrocious. He said, you land, it looked like a sick goose. And, uh, you know, for a, for a logger to pull out the word atrocious, I mean, it was a special circumstances. I felt very honored. Anyway, I fell in love with flying and, um, and Dave actually emailed me, you know, a couple of years ago, a little bit after the assignment said, Hey, a buddy of mine who used this plane to track wolves, um, this 56 Cessna, it's a beautiful plane. He's selling it cheap. You should buy it. And I did. Peter Heller. It's been great. Thanks. Thanks so much for speaking with us. Uh, thanks for having me. It's fun. Writer Peter Heller recorded in 2012. His first novel, the dog stars has been adapted into a film by director Ridley Scott. It opens in theaters next week. Heller's latest novel is the orchard. After a break, we remember rock critic, Dave Marsh, who died a week ago and Justin Chang reviews the new film Dreams and Nightmares. I'm Dave Davies, and this is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. We're going to remember the influential rock critic Dave Marsh, who died a week ago. He was 76. He could be a tough critic who didn't mince words, but he was also known for his enthusiasm and for giving voice to the emotional connection many fans had to music. Marsh dropped out of Wayne State University in Detroit to help launch the rock magazine Cream before winding up at Rolling Stone. He became an early champion of Bruce Springsteen and wrote the Rolling Stone's first cover story about him in 1978. Marsh went on to write three biographies of Springsteen and became a close friend. The first book, Born to Run, was published in 1979 and became a best seller. Upon learning of Marsh's death, Springsteen wrote on social media, he was sold. He was soulful, intelligent, heartfelt, opinionated, bruising, and often fantastically argumentative. He deeply believed in what I was trying to accomplish, and his lifetime of support meant the world to me. Marsh also wrote books about The Who, Elvis, Michael Jackson, and Sly and the Family Stone. In his book, The Heart of Rock and Soul, he rated what he considered the 1001 greatest singles ever made. His number one choice? Marvin Gaye's I Heard It Through the Grapevine. Marsh also wrote a book about The Kingsman's 1963 hit, Louie Louie. He won a Grammy in 1993 for Best Album Notes for his work on Aretha Franklin's Queen of Soul, The Atlantic Recordings. And as a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominating committee, Marsh blocked the band Kiss from entering the hall, though they eventually were inducted. In his monthly newsletter, Rock and Roll Confidential, later titled Rock and Rap Confidential, Marsh examined the political, social, and economic implications of popular music. He helped create the E Street Radio channel on Sirius XM and was host of Kick Out the Jams for Sirius XM for 19 years. We're going to listen to Terry's 1987 interview with Dave Marsh just after he published Glory Days, the second volume of his biography of Bruce Springsteen. Dave Marsh, welcome to Fresh Air. Nice to be here. You seem to see Springsteen not only as a great performer, but as almost a savior of rock music. What do you think about that? I think he's a great performer. I think he's a great musician. What do you think rock music needs to be saved from? Well, you know, one of the things I try to do in this new book is Glory Days is back off a little bit from the idea of the messianic part of savior. And just to get into the idea that what we're all trying to do is bail ourselves out of the deepest crises of our lives. Rock and roll gets trapped in a bunch of trash, in being a vehicle just for selling beer or something. What I think Bruce tried to do was prevent himself, save himself from that anguish of having his best ideas and thoughts converted into songs that were then converted into beer commercials. And what I think rock and roll needs is more of that kind of conversion. And for myself, I guess the fear has always been, what would you do without it? And what are you going to do with it? It's a double-edged sword. Because to me, it was like my culture. Well, let me quote something that you say in your first book. You wrote, rock saved my life. It also broke my heart. Well, it seemed like a pure thing to me. And I guess I was naive, but it did seem like a pure thing to me. It seemed like there were these singers. They got in the studio, they sang these songs, and they spoke from the bottom of their heart. And I'm thinking about songs like, I guess the great example for right now, because it was a hit again last year, is that Benny King song, Stand By Me, when the night is dark and you know, and just that whole idea of like, when you're most alone, something that will come and stand by your side and not let you down. For Bruce, it was a song like Roy Orbison's Only the Lonely Know the Way I Feel Tonight. And I think Bruce Springsteen is a person who writes those songs. But at a certain point, rock and roll did break my heart because it became clear that it was a business, and it was a business in the most kind of cynical way. Now, like I said, that's my fault as much as it is its fault. And I guess the best way to protect yourself and save yourself from that is to grow up and adopt a more mature attitude about it. But until Born in the USA, I really don't think that any pop star had done a very complete job of that. John Lennon tried and came close. Elvis failed miserably, and Elvis was everybody's icon. You know, Mick Jagger just got old and cynical. Bob Dylan kind of walked a neat path and then got lost. On it, Bruce Springsteen made it to the highest heights that I think any serious rock performer has made, and at the very moment of his greatest success, reached down and touched a community that he was supposed to be completely isolated from. And one of the great things when we were doing the last interview we did for the book was in January, one of the great things was he explained all this to me, not in terms of what he was able to do for other people, but what that can do for other people. What that connection had done to rescue him from the fate of isolation that somebody like Elvis had had to experience. He's very aware of the traps that megastars fall into, and you make a lot of comparisons between him and Elvis, and fame more or less killed Elvis Presley. I think it did, you know, not only because, I mean, there are people who make an argument and they may have some legitimacy that Elvis' over-medication was a result of him being quite sick, but if that was the case and somebody wasn't communicating with him, then it would very well with somebody else about what his physical condition was. So one way or the other, the isolation, the being placed on a pedestal, is what made him no longer alive at 43. And that's, I don't know if people out who aren't big rock and roll fans really would understand what a tragedy that is. What it means for a sharecropper's son from Tupelo, Mississippi, to have reached into so many lives, and maybe somebody who's not a rock fan doesn't believe. Well, I know that from the cut of my hair to the mere fact that I can stand in front of a microphone and speak, I owe Elvis Presley. I owed him. And I know that Bruce Springsteen feels that, and I know that there are enormous numbers of people who feel that. And that somehow behind all that, there was a bigger idea blossoming than just the pink Cadillac that he sang about. Even though Springsteen has been aware of the, you know, the price of fame, didn't hype and publicity almost kill his career in the beginning? Twice. Yeah, in 1975, there were the simultaneous covers of Time and Newsweek. In 1972, when he made his first record, and he'd been discovered by John Hammond, who discovered everybody from Bessie Smith to Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Billy Holiday, Benny Goodman, and John Hammond had discovered Bob Dylan. And so they promoted Springsteen as the new Dylan. Now, there have been 50 people, I bet you, hyped as the new Dylan since the old Dylan became successful. I should say the real Dylan became successful. Bruce Springsteen is the only person whose career survived it. And then in 1975, he made the album Born to Run. And that is a classic rock and roll riff. It's a classic rock and roll song from the lyric, the music, the whole business. On the other hand, that doesn't necessarily mean that it was going to be a mega-selling record. It was not trendy necessarily in any way. And when that hype didn't work, a lot of people figured he was finished. And one of the things that my first book, Born to Run, was about was how does someone solve this problem? And why didn't he fade away and disappear? Which, an answer that steeped more in the qualitative than the quantitative. In fact, his next album sold measurably less than Born to Run had, Darkness on the Edge of Town. And the album after that, it was called The River, sold only a little more than Born to Run. But what was really going on then was that Bruce had forced the marketing mechanisms of his record company to pull back. And because he was afraid of another bout of this overexposure, which probably would have killed him. And it wound up with him being the most idolized rock star with a big concert audience and not so much awareness outside of the narrow world of the rock concert cult. Dave Marsh spoke to Terry Gross in 1987. We'll hear a portion of his 1987 album. 1993 interview after a break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. We're listening to portions of our interviews with rock critic Dave Marsh. He died a week ago at the age of 76. In 1993, Marsh wrote a book about the song he said tells the story of rock and roll. That song is Louie Louie. Louie Louie. Oh, no. Baby, we got gold. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Louie Louie. Oh, baby. We got gold. My little girl. Wait for me. Get your gym. All about to play. Well, I drink up my heart. Oh, no. That's considered rock's most recorded record. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. That's considered rock's most recorded song. Covered by everyone from punk bands to Otis Redding to high school marching bands. Louie Louie was written in 1955. by a black rhythm and blues singer and songwriter named Richard Berry, who recorded it in 1956. Seven years later, a Portland, Oregon band, the Kingsmen, recorded their version of it with garbled lyrics. It became a hit. In 1993, Dave Marsh told Terry how, for years, much of America came to believe that the lyrics in the song were obscene. A bunch of fraternity boys decided in 1963, when the Kingsmen, this high school band from Portland, Oregon, had decided to record the record, which was a sensation, and that song was a sensation in the Pacific Northwest. And when their record came out, for unknown reasons to anybody, I guess some college kids, as a fraternity prank, told the governor of Indiana that the song had dirty words. And a rumor, like an urban legend, went around high schools and junior highs all across America that if you played the 45 of the Kingsmen at 33 and 33, you would hear dirty words about sex. And so the governor of Indiana immediately banned it in the state of Indiana. And, I mean, he says he didn't, but he did. He called the Broadcasters Association and told them that if it was dirty, they should get it off the air, and if they couldn't prove it, they should think twice. So, not being able to prove it, they got rid of it. And then the FBI got their hooks into it, and they kept their hooks into it until the middle of 1966, when they started going after the band. I don't know why they gave up. What would the song have been violating if the lyrics were dirty? Oh, several laws. Primarily a law called the Interstate Transportation of Obscene Materials Law. The FBI, when they talked to Richard Berry in 1965, told him he was going to jail. Flat out. They said, Richard, you're going to go to jail. And Richard said, for what? And they said, well, you wrote a dirty song. He said, no, here's the sheet music. And the sheet music contains a story, which, in fact, is what Richard sang, and what the candidates wrote. And what Kingsman sang, and what everybody pretty much sings, which is a story of a Jamaican sailor sitting at a bar, pouring his heart out to a bartender named Louie, saying, Louie, Louie, me gotta go back to Jamaica to see this fine little girl who's waiting for me. And that's it. But the FBI could not be persuaded of this, at least for the first two and a half years. They finally concluded that it was unintelligible at any speed. Let's run through some of the versions of Louie Louie and do a little capsule history. Why don't we start with Richard Berry's recording, recorded in 1956? Seven. Fifty-seven. In 1957. As a matter of fact, you're playing that from the Rhino Anthology, right? Yeah. Now, that is not the original version, but it's so close to the original version that you practically need a meter to tell it. And Max Feiertag, who's the guy who owns the original version, had refused, was mad at Richard and refused to license it to Rhino. So Richard Foos at Rhino simply took Richard. And some other singers did, and did an exact duplicate of the record. And it was so close that Feiertag called up and said, I'm going to sue you. I told you you couldn't use that. So these are all like dummy singers? These people are not Richard Berry? Well, Richard Berry is Richard Berry, but the other people who are with him are not the people who are on the original record, nor was the record cut in 1957. It was cut about 1980 or 81. What's the lyric that he used? He used the standard, a fine little girl, she's waiting for me. I catch a ship across. I sail that ship all alone. I never think I make it home. Louie, Louie, me gotta go. That's Richard's version. That's what everybody sings pretty much. Okay, let's hear the Richard Berry recording of Louie, Louie. Louie, Louie. Me gotta go. Louie, Louie. Louie, Louie. Me gotta go. Fine little girl, she's waiting for me. Me catch the ship across the sea. Louie, Louie. Well, me gotta go. Louie, Louie. Louie, Louie. Da, da, da, da, da. That sounds kind of doo-wop. Yeah. Yeah. So, moving along here, after he records it, nothing happens, right? It's played on some West Coast stations. There's a guy up in Seattle named Ron Holden who had a big record with I Love You So, who picks it up and this dance that's around the Chalipso, he uses it in battles of the bands because the kids would get up and dance the Chalipso and he would win the battle of the bands if he played Louie, Louie. And so, from him, all these, there was an amazing rock scene in Seattle at the time. And one of the neat things about doing the book is I sort of got to do the background for everybody's Nirvana and Pearl Jam book to come later. But the bands called the Wailers, the Frantics, the Sonics, all these wild cat bands that were up there, kind of the dinosaurs of grunge, I think of them as. They all did Louie, Louie. Louie, Louie became the anthem of the Pacific Northwest. And they played this place called the Haunted Castle, which was this, which actually Jimi Hendrix's song, because Jimi was from Seattle, Spanish Castle Magic is about what went on in that place. And mainly what went on in that place was versions of Louie, Louie, taken to the nth degree of just craziness. And that was where the song got speeded up. There have been dozens and dozens of cover recordings of these. Some of them just incredibly ludicrous. Why in the world would, Pete Fountain do a middle-of-the-road cover of Louie, Louie? I mean, what was his producer thinking? Why bother? Well, first of all, you got to remember, Louie, Louie was one of the 10 or 12 biggest records of 1963. And in 1963 and 64, if you were making a middle-of-the-road record, they gave you a checklist. Here were the big records last year. Do them. And Louie, Louie would work as an instrumental. Louie, Louie, in terms of just being three chords of music, is okay. You know, you can play it on clarinet. You know, why someone decided Julie London had to sing it. Now, that's an interesting question, you know. And then after that, it became a standard. It became part of the rock and roll repertoire. And so Tina Turner sort of needed a version to put into her club show. And so she did this wonderful version in which she makes Louie a guy and says to him, basically, you think you're getting me without a yacht? Forget about your little ship you sail all alone. I want a yacht or get out of here, which is probably my favorite lyrical change that anybody ever made in a straight version of the song anyway. Terry spoke with Dave Marsh in 1993. If you want to hear an extended version of this interview and other conversations with him, visit the Fresh Air Archive. Let's listen to the recording. Dave Marsh considered the number one rock single of all time. I bet you're wondering how I knew I chose lands to make me blue With some other guy you knew before Between the two of us, guys, you know I love you more It took me by surprise, I must say When I found out yesterday Don't you know that I heard it through the grief of mine Not much longer would you be mine Oh, I heard it through the grief of mine Oh, I'm just about to lose my mind Honey, honey, well Coming up, Justin Chang reviews the new film Dreams in Nightmares. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. In the new film Dreams in Nightmares, three friends go on a cross country road trip in search of a fourth friend they haven't seen in some time. It's the latest independent feature from writer and director Shatara Michelle Ford after their award winning drama Test Pattern. Dreams in Nightmares opens in select theaters today. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review. In 2021, I saw a quietly shattering debut feature called Test Pattern from the writer and director Shatara Michelle Ford, set mostly in the hours following a sexual assault. The movie was full of sharp, damning insights into how America's health care and law enforcement systems routinely fail black women. In their second feature, Dreams in Nightmares, Ford has lightened the mood and loosened the tension. This is a warm, sprawling, sweetly bickersome comedy drama about a group of close friends who, at a turning point in their lives, decide to hit the road together. But Ford remains focused on the physical and emotional well-being of their characters, in this case, four queer black friends in their mid-30s. The one we get to know best is Zee, a Los Angeles-based writer played by Danae Benton from the Gilded Age, who's just been laid off from her job as a professor. By unhappy coincidence, Zee's Brooklyn-based friend Tasha, played by Sacha Compaire, loses her consulting gig around the same time. On a whim, Zee flies to New York to hang with Tasha and their friend Lauren, played by Desi Bing. From there, the three of them hop in a car and drive west to Iowa City to visit their friend Kel, who's an artist. Kel hasn't returned the group's texts and calls in a while, and they want to make sure that they're okay. Despite the last-minute decision, Lauren, Tasha, and Zee embark on their trip with a sense of purpose and a measure of caution. They know they'll have to be on alert, especially when traveling outside major cities. Early on, too, Lauren insists that whenever possible, the three of them will eat only at Black-owned restaurants. At one such eatery, they sit down at a table and find a cup filled with strips of paper, each one printed with a conversation-starting question. Should we answer a little question together? It's fun. Yeah? Oh, no. Is your favorite attribute about yourself physical or non-physical? Physical. Come on, Titi. What? Answer. Physical or non-physical, your favorite attribute. What kind of question is that? It's just a game. It don't matter. Just. I. I like how I live my life. I. Aw. Okay. Okay. Very depthful. Depthful. What? Depthful. As in, like, full of depth? Professor Zee. No. No. Whatever. Mine is. Probably, uh. my mind. So, non-physical, I guess. That's probably my favorite thing about you two. Well, what about it? Just, you know, say more. It's a wonder up there. Peace and company. Zee and Lauren are both pursuing their artistic dreams. Lauren is a poet, as we hear firsthand when they perform at a queer poetry slam during a quick stopover in Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, Zee wonders. Zee wonders if her layoff is the motivation she needs to finally write that book she's been planning. Tasha, by contrast, is the practical-minded, no-nonsense member of the group. And she sometimes finds herself at odds with her more free-spirited friends. We learn that at one point, Tasha wanted to become an actor. A dream she gave up for what she thought would be a steadier career in business. On paper, that might sound too obvious. The bohemian artistes versus the high-strung corporate sellout. But the actors, especially Sasha Comper as Tasha, are too vivid to be reduced to mere types. And there's more joy and solidarity in the character's dynamic than there is resentment or tension. As in many road movies, the journey has its share of twists and turns. We learn that Kel left Iowa City some time ago, and so the friends have to spend a stormy night, in every sense, with Kel's annoying ex-girlfriend. She's played in a scene-stealing comic turn, by Jasmine Savoy Brown. From there, they head south to Kansas City and have an awkward visit with Kel's estranged and very conservative parents, who clearly have yet to accept their child's queer identity. Without revealing exactly where the story goes, we do eventually meet Kel, who, as warmly played by Mars Storm Rucker, makes it easy to see why Zee and Lauren care about them so deeply. We also see why Tasha feels resentful of, and perhaps even thinks, threatened by, Kel's sense of freedom. And freedom is ultimately what Dreams in Nightmares is all about. The hope that these four characters, and many others like them, might be able to live life on their own terms. Throughout this intimate and gorgeously shot film, Ford shows us glimpses of that freedom, like when Tasha enjoys a rare moment of release at a Brooklyn nightclub, or when Zee checks in with her boyfriend in LA, with whom she enjoys a mutually supportive polyamorous relationship. Most of all, there's freedom in Zee's lyrical visions of a mysterious desert landscape, which appear throughout the film, calling her towards some unknown yet promising destination. In a way, this is what Ford longs to give all their characters, the time, space, and imagination, to dream of a future that still has yet to be written. Justin Chang is a filmmaker, and he's been working on the film for a long time. He's been working on the film for a long time. He's been working on the film for a long time.