Where musical talent comes from is anybody’s guess. “Practice, practice, practice” is the way to get to Carnegie Hall for sure, but there are prodigies and savants who don’t follow that rule. A lot of musicians begin really young, but the only true prodigy that I know of who made it big in the rock world is North Carolina’s own Tori Amos, who could play the piano before she could speak. The fans of her excruciatingly personal songs are among the most devoted on earth; and, long before Google came along, there were dozens of websites honoring her.
Adversity in life seems to be one of the sparks that have ignited many a talented musician over the years. The idea that being blind aids hearing and, thus, musical talent is nearly a cliché. Two of the greatest R&B artists of all time are blind: Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles; other notable blind musicians include José Feliciano, Clarence Carter, Terri Gibbs, Ronnie Millsap, and Doc Watson. There are many others who are less well known, such as Blind Lemon Jefferson (apparently the source of the name of the 1990’s band Blind Melon), Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, and (from the world of gospel music) the Blind Boys of Alabama and the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi (also called the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, the Original Five Blind Boys of Alabama and the Original Five Blind Boys of Mississippi). Frontman John Kay of Steppenwolf didn’t just wear sunglasses to look cool; he has a degenerative eye disease. There is no telling how many better known blind artists I am inadvertently omitting, there are so many.
Conversely, one might think that deafness and music would not mix at all; but I trust that we have all by now seen the terrific Richard Dreyfuss movie Mr. Holland’s Opus that puts the lie to that notion. (For what it’s worth, I have had several people tell me that I bear a certain resemblance to Dreyfuss – particularly from the back I would say). The best known example is that of Ludwig van Beethoven (as long as I have mentioned Blind Melon, I might as well bring up the quirky 1990’s band Camper Van Beethoven, who dedicated one of their albums to Patty Hearst). Beethoven grew increasingly deaf as he got older; and by the time his Ninth Symphony was finished, he was profoundly deaf. Considering that this is one of the most beloved musical compositions of all time, his lack of hearing was certainly not a problem for this musical giant.
Bobby Darin had health problems all of his life that were exacerbated by having several bouts of rheumatic fever beginning at age 8, though the general public was completely unaware. He still had a colorful musical career that is entertaining just to read about. As an example, he wrote his first hit song “Splish Splash” on a bet (via the mother of a musician friend of his – they both made the songwriting credits) that he couldn.’t write a song that started out, “Splish, splash, I was taking a bath”. He had a generous spirit to match his outsized talent; he passed along “Danke Schoen” to his friend Wayne Newton, when it was really sent for him to record. Bobby Darin also served as a mentor to Jim McGuinn (later known as Roger McGuinn) prior to his founding the Byrds. Following his huge hit songs “Mack the Knife” and “Beyond the Sea”, Darin had record-breaking appearances at the Copacabana and was starting to give Frank Sinatra a run for his money as America’s favorite song stylist. As shown in Beyond the Sea (masterminded by and starring Kevin Spacey, and one of the best musical biopics I have seen), Bobby Darin fought a losing battle to record and perform as much music as he possibly could before his inevitable death at age 37 in 1973.
One of the great guitarists from the golden age of rock instrumentals in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Link Wray (another North Carolinian) contracted tuberculosis while serving in the Korean War and lost a lung in the process. Though he actually had a good singing voice and even had a brief stint as a teen idol under the name Ray Vernon, Wray mostly let his guitar do the talking. He is credited with inventing the power chord (part of the basic language of modern rock guitar); and, together with his band the Ray Men, Link Wray scored hit songs like “Rumble”, “Rawhide” and “Jack the Ripper” (which was given new life when it made the soundtrack for the remake of Breathless that starred Richard Gere). His early albums and recordings are tough to locate, but I was able to order a reissue of his first album, Link Wray & His Wraymen and later found the two LP’s that he made with the self-styled bad boy of rockabilly Robert Gordon, whom he backed in the late 1970’s. More recently, I bought a 1979 solo album by Link Wray called Bullshot that features a wonderful cover of Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”.
Ian Dury had polio at the age of 7 and was handicapped for the rest of his life as a result; that was the reason for his somewhat crumpled appearance, but it never seemed to get him down. He was the leader of a highly regarded pub rock band called Kilburn and the High Roads, but I know him from his later and somewhat tamer band Ian Dury and the Blockheads. Ian Dury was signed early on with Stiff Records (I have always gotten good music on Stiff) and was the unexpected star on a tour of the label’s bands that was documented on an album that I bought called Live Stiffs. He has a flair for story telling with his songs and a real sense of fun that was sadly lacking after a while in the punk rock scene, which eventually began being too serioius about it all – much as what happened with the progressive rock scene that punk had replaced. Ian Dury’s thick Cockney accent made some of his songs almost unintelligible, but that just made him that much more lovable.
The founder of THE UNKNOWNS, Bruce Joyner had trouble of a different kind. Not long after starting the Stroke Band to show his fellow classmates at Valdosta State how Georgians do punk rock, Joyner was involved in an awful auto accident that broke both arms and both legs and crushed his chest. He was confined to a wheelchair for a time but willed himself to walk again; and his love of music was intact. Bruce Joyner began hearing about the growing punk rock scene in Los Angeles – the Dils, X, the Blasters, the Weirdos and the Zeros are bands that he cites – and he quickly put together a band called the Unknowns. His band was named one of the four best bands in Los Angeles in 1981, and they got a record deal with Bomp! Records (later picked up by Sire Records) when Bruce Joyner was only 18. Though the resulting 1981 EP, Dream Sequence didn’t really show the band at their best, the Unknowns’ live performances won them numerous fans among established musicians in the LA area.
Bruce Joyner connected with keyboardist Ray Manzarek (formerly of the Doors) and helped out on the recording sessions for the X album Under the Big Black Sun. The Unknowns were not a mere thrash band but had multiple influences from surf to reggae to country to new wave that surfaced at different points in their songs. The article on the band in Allmusic mentions Chris Isaak as a kindred spirit, and I would not have made that connection on my own, but it fits.
Bruce Joyner left the Unknowns in 1983; when he began recording the full-length album Swimming with Friends with his new band the Plantations in 1986, both Ray Manzarek and X guitarist John Doe lent a hand.
I first encountered the Unknowns on the eccentric Los Angeles punk rock showcase New Wave Theatre on late night TV in the early 1980’s, and I saw them perform on the show at least twice. At one of them, NWT host Peter Ivers stuck a mike in front of a little girl who was maybe six years old, and he asked her if she knew who the next band was. She said, “I don’t know”; and Ivers responded, “Neither do we: the Unknowns!” (If I remember correctly, that’s three months in a row where I have referenced New Wave Theatre – actually only twice).
The song I remember best is “The Streets”, filled with idiosyncratic whirs and whoops and odd lyrics about the Shadow and the CIA, all performed against the backdrop of a swooping melody. Peter Ivers would interview the bands after their performances in a most bothersome way, often closing with the question, “What is the meaning of life?” I remember Bruce Joyner giving a short rant in response to one of his questions about how “the world would be a helluva lot better place if people only worried about theirselves and not so much about other people”. The Unknowns are perhaps best known for the sexually charged “Pull My Train”, which has a relentless, pounding beat that even most punk bands couldn't muster.
The Unknowns played a gig once with Tom Petty and rock legend Del Shannon; and Bruce Joyner became good friends with Shannon as a result. Del Shannon had two fabulous hits in the early 1960’s, “Runaway” and “Hats Off to Larry” (often misheard as “Hats Off to Mary”) and later had joint concerts with the Beatles while on a European tour in 1963. He was the first American artist to cover a Beatles song, “From Me to You”. Joyner recalls that Shannon was scheduled to play on one of his records the week after he killed himself. I think of Del Shannon as being one of the Prozac suicide casualties: someone who committed suicide out of the blue that seemed somehow connected to his taking that once ubiquitous drug (1960’s radical Abbie Hoffman was another).
The suicide of his friend Del Shannon prompted Bruce Joyner to return to the South; he also lived in France for a while. He is still active in music and has started several more bands over the years; I picked up a great album last year called Way Down South (1983) by the Plantations in his inimitable style – his first album after leaving the Unknowns.
The entire recorded output of the Unknowns was released on a Marilyn Records CD in 1994 called Bruce Joyner and the Unknowns (though I was able to order it much more recently). It consists I suppose of the cuts on the EP and LP plus an equal number of demos (mostly but not entirely of different songs) – 24 tracks in all that are a revelation to anyone who thinks that punk rock is one-dimensional. Bruce Joyner’s own reminiscence of the band in the liner notes begins: “The Unknowns were underrated, and our place among our peers seems to have been forgotten”. Hopefully I have done my part to put an end to that.
