Nick Waterhouse
Time's All Gone

After a long time, I finally decided to read "Life," the autobiography that Keith Richards published two or three years ago. It's not that I was previously reluctant or uninterested in reading it, I just hadn't had the opportunity until now. Essentially, I'd find myself in a bookstore and always say to myself, "Ah, damn, I need to get Keith Richards' autobiography." Then, every time, I'd forget about it. Probably because this autobiography has about five hundred pages and, as of late, I've become too unfocused a reader, and such bulky texts have started to intimidate me. To be honest, I've realized that I'm frightened by all objects. All the material things surrounding me scare me and at the same time, they seem to suffocate me. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night all sweaty with the feeling that the walls of my room and all the objects in it are closing in on me, in a suffocating grip that takes my breath away. Objects crush me; I think I would not want to own anything and live outdoors, completely naked, like our most primitive ancestors did. One of these days, I believe I will go out into the garden and set fire to all the things I own and then dance naked around a big bonfire; dance around this giant fire with the background notes of something strong like "Sympathy For The Devil" by the Stones. However, to do it: a. I should own a house with a garden; b. I would have to save at least the turntable and a vinyl of the Stones from the flames. Anyway, I should own a house, I should own. The fact is that to "own" something we are obliged, forced to be someone, we should/must exist and sometimes I feel like I don't exist at all. As if I were a damn ghost. Rather, I am thin, more than transparent, so that all of existence, rather than passing through me, ends up crushing me, trampling me. Suffocating me. So it is the things, the objects, consequently, that own me—rather than the other way around. This, I think, happens because I have a weak personality or maybe because I suffer too much. I don't know. Anyway, I feel like I've never reached a tangible balance in my existence, assuming it's possible to reach a balance, achieve a balance. I mean, this story of reaching one's own "definitive" balance indeed makes no sense. Definitively, in a certain sense, there is only death, and I think I still have enough desire to live, despite everything. So, to free oneself from the sense of oppression of all these things, perhaps the only way is to self-determine, to discover oneself. In every sense. Both in the sense of showing others who we really are, ideally stripping off all these damn masks we wear every day; and in the sense of finally revealing to ourselves, first and foremost, what our true priorities are, our true interests, who we really are. Anyway, Keef's autobiography, in addition to bringing me some nightmares like finding myself squished in a tome as large as a gigantic Melvillian white whale, is giving me some good moments of literary entertainment. I find it very spontaneous, written in a lively and direct way, as if it were a text by a Beat Generation author or more simply the autobiography of a damn rockstar, and its contents, as is inevitable given the subject of the autobiography, are indeed engaging but also at the same time authentic and full of different points for reflection and consideration. Meanwhile, Keef, in writing, doesn't worry at all about being politically correct, as usual, which as far as I'm concerned is just fine. Generally, we can note how the Stones, today, are practically disliked by everyone. The real big crime of the Stones, in fact, according to many, seems to be precisely that they did not all die overdosed on drugs and somehow, thus, survived a whole mythology that they surely helped to create. This probably is a crime for many, just like it should be a crime that they're old fogeys and continue to do concerts in front of thousands of people and, probably, to mess around with chicks before and after the concerts; take some more or less heavy drugs; earn millions of dollars for playing music and saying things they perhaps do not believe in at all. The fact is that it's difficult to think of the Stones, these damn rock'n'roll rebels, as having become rich and indifferent old men. But, damn, they are rockstars. How should they be? They have never led, since they became successful, a life comparable to that of us ordinary mortals, and in a certain sense, people pay them precisely because they are like that. They pay them to be everything they would like to be. And they hate them for exactly the same reason. Anyway, let's forget what people think, at least I don't give a damn. As far as I'm concerned, for example, okay, if the Stones are the quintessential rock'n'roll band—and that is clear—my favorite of the bunch has always been Brian Jones, the blond guitarist (and multi-instrumentalist) founder, along with Jagger and Richards, of the band, and prematurely deceased at the age of 27 (yes, him too) under circumstances still not entirely clear. Jones, it is known, was indeed found dead in the pool of his house in Hartfield, Sussex, England. It was said to be an accidental death, a theory supported at the time also by the fact that Jones practically had his liver (and brain?) crushed by drug and alcohol excesses. Then in the early years of the new millennium, such Frank Thorogood, a construction worker who at the time was conducting work in Jones's house, seems to have confessed to having killed him. Confession made on the deathbed to the Stones' driver: a version therefore, according to many, Richards included, quite questionable. At any rate, not wanting to digress into the merits, upon Jones, I would refer you to watching Stoned (2005) by Stephen Woolley and listening to all the things he played and recorded with and without the Stones. So if you really become passionate, also to listening to the entire discography of the Brian Jonestown Massacre by Anton Newcombe.

The portrayal of Brian Jones that emerges from Richards' autobiography, however, is quite questionable, certainly negative. Despite the thirty years between Jones's death (July 3, 1969) and the publication of "Life" (2010), Richards shows he still harbors some kind of resentment towards Jones, nor does he spare him criticism and notes of blame. Which is an attitude preferable to a hypocritical and not-at-all heartfelt commemoration. Essentially, Keef describes Jones as a man afflicted with a whole series of inferiority complexes, an absolutely unstable person, totally adrift when the band had reached success and consequently incapable of keeping up with it. An unreliable guy, so much so that a month before his death, Jones was removed from the Stones and replaced by Mick Taylor. The fact remains, however, that the relations between the two guitarists had practically reached the limit, broken and definitively compromised, also because Richards had "stolen" a great chick like Anita Pallenberg from him. In short, there are, therefore, not many kind words spent by Keef on Jones. Even if in essence he acknowledged to him the great merit of having introduced him to Robert Johnson for the first time (not a trivial thing, considering that listening to Johnson is something that still today manages to "open the eyes and mind" of many musicians or mere music enthusiasts); of being a guitarist and a musician all in all genius, although absolutely inconsistent. When they had met, moreover, he says that Jones called himself Elmo Lewis and that, at the time, would have loved to become the famous blues guitarist Elmore James. Practically, like Jagger and Richards for that matter and as the famous song by Nino Ferrer said, Brian Jones would have loved to become, would have loved to be black.

The fact is, beyond purely chromatic questions that might interest only fans of racial themes or some fanatics like Michael Jackson, that "black music" at the time in England, as in the USA and the rest of the world, was surely the music that most embodied that desire for rebellion and breaking out of the mold typical of the generation of which Richards and the Stones would later be the manifesto. Black music was the sound from which rock'n'roll would actually be born in those years, and so it was. Besides, apart from Robert Johnson, Richards himself claims to have gorged on records by people like Jimmy Reed, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, the well-known Chuck Berry. And that these were the ones who influenced him, that these were the models he looked up to, more than a "white giant" like Elvis Presley. Like the Stones, also Nick Waterhouse, in this album titled "Time's All Gone", openly draws inspiration from "black music". Not only that, this album, which I immediately found very enjoyable and also easy to listen to (whether you are or aren't a rhythm & blues enthusiast), is effectively an album of black music. Only, Nick Waterhouse is 25 years old, comes from California, and above all, as depicted on the album cover, is a white guy with a rather pale and "sickly" complexion. He also wears a pair of big glasses that hark back directly to Buddy Holly; a pair of glasses that were worn in the fifties or sixties that my mother hated greatly because practically, since her old man had no money, he could only buy those kinds and at the time, these glasses weren't particularly fashionable models—in comparison to now in truth, as it seems this type of glasses is particularly in fashion. I even know people who see perfectly well and wear these glasses by choice, a choice that as far as I'm concerned makes no sense: it would be like having full control of one's lower limbs and walking on a wheelchair or, more simply, on your hands. However, these glasses were as characteristic and distinctive of the era as they were indestructible. My old lady tells me that once, in the grip of a typically adolescent crying crisis, she threw the glasses out of her room window. Well, there was no way out. I mean, grandpa patiently went downstairs, retrieved the glasses from the street and when he came back up, returned them to my mother that they were practically new, intact, as if nothing had happened. I wouldn't invite you to do the same with your glasses, given I doubt they could survive the impact, a test of this kind. Without wanting to be nostalgic for an era that never belonged to me, we can surely assert that, unlike today, things were made to last back then. Probably too much. Returning to "Time's All Gone", however, the album, recorded at the Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, California (practically strong stuff) thus exactly reproduces that kind of sound that was in vogue in the fifties and which the young Nick seems to know and have studied perfectly. More: Nick Waterhouse's is a true emulation operation of the protagonists of that musical season. Besides the glasses, he does practically everything to make his look, his appearance, his figure completely in line with the standards of the time. Initially inspired by the Blues Brothers, then he claims to have borrowed his look from Dick Van Dyke; he quotes Ray Charles from memory; plays a Martin from '63 and uses amplifiers of the time. Nevertheless, Waterhouse still claims not to want to do any work of recovery and simple replica of stuff that was played years and years ago, not wanting to simply do "archaeology" therefore, but rather wanting to reinterpret the sound of the era in his own way, so as to revive today what he considers two sacred monsters, like John Lee Hooker and Etta James. A praiseworthy operation too, okay, from a certain point of view and largely successful too, if I've been listening to this album for a few days now and, honestly, without finding any weak spot or particular flaw. Rather, the guy seems to have perfectly achieved his goal: that is, masquerading as a black man from the sixties. The album is well-recorded, boasts top-notch production and is played by a band of musicians, The Tarots, of great respect. Certainly, the recording quality is high and the sound really too little dusty—despite the drum rolls, in particular, being precisely typical of that sound—but honestly, it could quite easily be mistaken for an album from those years. In short, it seems to me that this Nick guy is also quite sincere: you can hear that he truly believes in what he's playing, that he's a passionate type and that he really likes this stuff. However, the fact is that Waterhouse is good at masquerading as "black," but practically incapable, in the context, of communicating who he really is. This album is nice, buy it, download it, listen to it, but in essence it doesn't say and will never say anything about who Nick Waterhouse really is. Nor, at the same time, can it consequently be defined as effectively a black music album in terms of content and true force in communication. This album is as if the Stones never existed. To the Stones, like to Muddy Waters or Robert Johnson, to John Lee Hooker, it never mattered to replicate, to play things that were played fifty years ago. To live fifty years back in time. Personally, I often find myself discussing music with my peers, old friends since high school; it mostly concerns people who, on a listening level, have given up. All these, but this is surely a widely spread vice, remain, are still anchored to the listens of the years when they were young, as if these things, as if the records by bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam or Alice In Chains were the only possible truth and everything that has come after is practically crap or a rehashing of things already done. As if no one today has anything to say anymore, as if none of us have anything to say and everything is over. "Damn, guys, rock died with Kurt Cobain!" All nonsense, obviously. Saying that rock is dead is equivalent to saying that literature, politics, the human race itself is fucking dead. But that's impossible. It's impossible to assert that rock is dead when, luckily, there's still people around who want and enjoy playing their own music and, above all, many other people who want to listen, to compare. It's impossible that we're dead, if we still want to feel alive. However, Nick Waterhouse belongs to yet another category. In fact, he has no nostalgia for the years when he was young but lives, wants to live in a past that has never belonged to him. I don't feel his presence in this album: it's as if he is elsewhere, indeed, and lost in a time reality that, inevitably, doesn't belong to him and never did. Only he knows why. I'm not saying Nick Waterhouse has nothing to say. However, in essence, he tells us nothing about himself, nothing about us and who we are. So, it becomes difficult to at this point speak of "black music". The Stones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wanted to play black people's music, wanted to be black because they wanted to break from everything that had happened in the past—more, they wanted to break from the present, they had that desire to break the world, which then means the desire to live, which is typical, which should be typical of all young people. Brian Jones also wanted to be black and probably didn't succeed: he didn't manage to truly be himself, because he got crushed by all the things he had, that surrounded him and, when these started to increase, he probably began to suffer even more. "Time's All Gone," okay, but where the hell are you hiding, Nick, who are you really?