Info from Robyn posted on Facebook on 4/26/22.
Boston Flashback: April 26, 1989
One of the paradoxes of being a performing artist is that the artist part of you dwells deep inside, while the performer capers around on the surface for all to see. So you’re in two very different places at once.
I was at Boston Airport on this day in 1989 when I saw in the newspaper headlines that Lucille Ball had died. I had always loved watching The Lucy Show on TV as a small boy; her black & white version of suburban America was one of my first glimpses of a land that has shaped my life in so many ways. I was sad to see that the effervescent Lucy was no more. So whenever I land in Boston my memory is catapulted back to that day.
What was I doing in Boston in April 1989? The me inside was working on songs for what became the EYE album, and also adjusting to my new life: I’d broken into America, and was finding my way around using only my ego for a flashlight. After spending the first 7 years of my career in the shadows in Britain, come the mid 1980s I felt like I had finally blundered into the spotlight. College radio and MTV’s 120 Minutes had made me into an ‘Alternative’ pin-up; most hipster kids between 16 and 26 knew who I was, or at least what I looked like.
Did I enjoy this exposure? Knowing me, I found plenty to complain about. Looking back, it was great to be acknowledged. But if fame gets you a table at any restaurant, it also gets you stared at. It all wore off soon enough, anyway; and I was back to being a folksinger.
Did it go to my head? Oh yes! The extrovert side of me was in Boston as part of a promotional tour paid for by A&M Records (thank you to whatever ghostly echoes of that remain in the æther), booked in to visit radio stations, give press interviews and do in-stores at record shops.
The past is another country, they do things differently there, as LP Hartley observed some years ago. Back in 1989, as the first brick-like cellphones appeared in the briefcases of business people, and the first emails began to appear on the sullen grey citadels of desktop computers, there was a chain of stores called Tower Records. Perhaps you used to shop there? I certainly did. There you could find REM, The Replacements, The Psychedelic Furs, 10,000 Maniacs, The Bangles, Camper Van Beethoven and records by myself and the Egyptians too. CDs were coming in, LPs hadn’t begun to go out yet, and cassettes were holding steady. All was blooming in the garden of physical product.
Like all labels, A&M knew that putting their artists in a hip, high-profile chain store such as Tower, and having them autograph their latest product, would sell a lot of records. The stores would order in more copies if the artist was going to help sell them, and the record stood a better chance of charting - which would then encourage the store to order more copies. Thus my promotional tour - with nice hotels and my hangover on the company tab - took in New York, LA, DC and quite a few places besides.
So one drizzly afternoon I was ushered into a small cell of the Tower monolith in Boston. This was the green room, where we visiting rock luminaries waited before being escorted by the Tower staff to autograph our latest releases or our images on shiny black & white photos. On the green room wall were signed posters of Bryan Ferry, Peter Gabriel and Eric Clapton.
Did I have an exaggerated sense of my own importance? I have it still! My band and I had just been on tour with REM, whose career was going into supernova. This had not been an exercise in humility. Every time I walked into a room it seemed like people applauded. And in this little green grotto there were a bevy of Tower staff who looked ready to shower me with petals just for breathing.
So I picked up a Sharpie from the table in front of me, leaned over to the nearest wall, and wrote, in black letters about one inch high ‘Eeek - my hero!’ on the Bryan Ferry poster. Ferry is one of my musical heroes so I was telling the truth, although admittedly the poster wasn’t mine to deface. People seemed amused. So I then signed “Bryan Ferry” beneath Peter Gabriel. This got a laugh, so, ever the applause junkie, I daubed “Peter Gabriel” under the image of Eric Clapton. Three distinguished British rockers, customized by an up-and-coming one; or so it felt to me.
Then it was time to go and sign my own product. Outside in the store was a long line of music lovers, extending into the drizzle outside. Eager faces turned up to me as they filed past with their shrink-wrapped copies of QUEEN ELVIS or whatever else they wanted me to sign. A young fellow who brought me his guitar to sign turned out, years later, to be David Rawlings, then 19 years old; he was at Berklee college of music and waiting to run into Gillian Welch. Years later I recorded an album with them at their studio in Nashville. Eventually we even became neighbours.
It was a demanding couple of hours. About half way through a pair of witchy troll people came by with two 10 X 8 black & white promo photos that they wanted me to sign. Being signature-crazed at that point I scrawled ‘Robyn’ on one and ‘Hitchcock’ on the other. Half an hour later they came back, having re-joined the line. The alpha troll glared at me. “Sign these properly!” they growled, slamming the photos down in front of me. I spook easily, so I obliged.
As the length of the crowd drained away. I felt like I’d done pretty well, though the intensity of all those questing psyches left me a little drained too - yet somehow overstimulated. The Tower staff steered me back into the Green Room, where I failed to notice that the three posters were no longer on the wall. At this point the store manager - I’ll just call him Exhibit A - entered the room with one hand behind his back. A few of his hierophants lingered in the doorway.
“Hello Robyn. I’d like to thank you for all your hard work signing here this afternoon. We’ve sold a ton of records…”
“Oh, you’re welcome,” I muttered.
“…and you may as well keep these” - whereupon he flung the rolled up posters of Ferry, Gabriel and Clapton at at my feet: “They’re worthless now.”
Exhibit A stomped out of the room, and out of his brief cameo in my life. A few of the Tower people remained, shaking their heads and rolling their eyes. They vibed sympathetic, but he was their boss…
I left the posters where they were on the floor: they carried too much venom with them. I was shaking: after an afternoon fielding the flock of strangers (however benign) the store manager’s tantrum just capsized me. I genuinely hadn’t thought I was damaging the posters’ resale value - merely adding a little personal graffiti. Well, I hadn’t really thought at all, if I’m honest - I was just showing off. At that time my star was rising: who knows but Exhibit A, if he’d taken a more philosophical approach, might have left the posters on the wall and wryly dropped my name along with the others: “Oh, yes - these were customized by Robyn Hitchcock, no less.”
Yes, I had been a little out of order signing them, but I’d just added my small imprimatur. However, Exhibit A had overreacted in a double-edged, aggressive way that made me not at all remorseful, and got my hackles up.
Later that year, I was playing a show in Boston and I dedicated a negative song to him (I can’t remember which one). Needless to say, when Exhibit A heard of this, he took all my records out of the store and flung them, personally, in the dumpster. Cassettes included.
“Aren’t I the asshole!” exclaims Jack Nicholson’s character sarcastically in the movie “A Few Good Men’”. Exhibit A and myself were both in that category. To him, I was probably a jumped-up, entitled, arrogant little Napoleon, drunk on my own glory (which I was); to me he seemed like an uptight, controlling, humorless little Hitler (though at least neither of us invaded Russia).
Who wants to win the battle of the obnoxious? As Paul McCartney recently observed about the Beatles’ dysfunctional latter days: “It’s all testosterone is what it is.”
So - sayonara, Exhibit A. Pax vobiscum - go in peace. Boston airport will always remind me of you, but in my heart, it still belongs to Lucille Ball…