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Home , Peter Guralnick, Queer as Folk (season 3), Sam Phillips

IN THIS SECTION New work from painter Peri The Worlds Schwartz We Make Creatives Peter Paige, cocreator of ABC Family’s The Fosters

The real people behind the ! lm Spotlight

“The hall of fame should’ve been in Mem- phis. More than that, the ranking of people in this manner doesn’t do justice to the achievements of those who are honored.”

Alumni Books Writing from the Inside Out charts the life of the man who invented rock ’n’ roll | !" #$#%& #'()*#+&

%&'&( )*(+,-./0 1+2 3+4& + 1.)1,5 (&2%&/'&4 -+3& of Memphis, Revolutionized the World! (Little, for himself documenting the 6 owering of American , Brown, 2015). From Phillips’ tiny Memphis studio, which rock ’n’ roll, and root music, writing meticulously re- Guralnick helped bail out after a 6 ood before their 7 rst of- searched, absorbing biographies of Presley and Sam 7 cial interview, came a sound that married black and white Cooke and collections of portraits of legends like James voices and traditions, a sound, revolutionary in its time, that Brown, Aretha Franklin, and . His new book is we take for granted today. titled, perhaps for the bene7 t those who never heard of him, Earning widespread praise in the literary world, Gural- : The Man Who Invented Rock ’n’ Roll; How One nick (CAS’67, GRS’68) is also a favorite among musicians. Man Discovered Howlin’ Wolf, , , Lucinda Williams says he “tells it like it was.” Last Train to

Johnny Cash, and , and How His Tiny Label, Memphis, the 7 rst book of Guralnick’s acclaimed two-volume GAHR " ; DAVID SJODIN ! TOP ENTERPRISES/CRAIG DISNEY

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52-59_Bostonia_WS16.indd 52 1/28/16 12:38 PM Elvis Presley biography, moved to comment that of person, from old black men from the Delta to young hep- “Elvis steps from the pages, you can feel him breathe.” An cats. embodied freedom to Sam, and he decided inductee into Chicago’s , Guralnick won then and there that he wanted to live in Memphis some day. a Grammy Award for his liner notes for Live at After several years in radio, at the age of 22, he got a job at the Harlem Square Club and was a scriptwriter for Martin WREC, a great Memphis radio station, but that was not the Scorsese’s blues documentary, Feel Like Going Home. Sam whole reason he wanted to be there. Phillips was named one of the best books of 2015 by New York Times critic Dwight Garner, who called it vital Ameri- Does any of that Beale Street survive today? can history, smartly and warmly told. Beale Street doesn’t survive at all, except as a kind of enter- Bostonia asked Guralnick, a writer-in-residence at Vander- tainment district, like Bourbon Street in New Orleans. bilt University, about the biographer’s craft, and his long association with the mercurial, obsessive, brilliant Phillips Phillips and many others were stunned and disappointed that (1923–2003), whom he describes as the most unforgettable the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame ended up in Cleveland. person he ever met. The hall of fame should’ve been in Memphis, certainly. But more than that, I feel like the ranking of people in this Bostonia: How did you get into this specialty? manner, whatever hall of fame it is, doesn’t do justice to the Guralnick: I didn’t set out to become a professional biogra- striving and the aspirations and the achievements of those pher. I didn’t set out to be a professional anything, except— honored by these places. in my dreams—maybe a professional baseball player. The Elvis biography was How many years did it take to complete the book? prompted by the research I did for a doc- It took me 10 years to get that & rst interview because Sam umentary that I eventually took my name didn’t do interviews. Sam’s son Knox, a great friend over o% . My goal in both the biographies and the years, was the one who got me the interview. Knox per- the pro& les has been to write the story, suaded him that he needed to tell the story himself if he ever as much as possible, from the inside out. expected it to be heard. That & rst interview was the shortest I only wanted to write about people who interview I ever did with Sam, after a whole day of helping to interested me, and I’ve never written bail out the radio studio, carrying buckets of water, moving anything about someone whose music or tape boxes, etc., because it had ' ooded the night before. work I wasn’t passionate about. Based on your account of his 1986 David Letterman appear- Do you think many young people are aware of popular music’s ance alone, in which Phillips refuses to sit, turns his back to debt to Sam Phillips? the audience, and asks the host if he plans on having his teeth I don’t think it matters. But you can hear the in' uence of fixed, it seem as if Phillips could try people’s patience. in the music of Prince or Michael Jackson. That’s the persona that he embraced in later years, and that Whether or not people see that doesn’t make any di% erence. persona debuted on the Letterman show. Some might call it I guess I think as long as people listen to music, one way or boastful. Some people took exception to it, and some were another the in' uences will enter their consciousness. charmed. But that persona was quite di% erent from the reserved person I originally met, who remained deeply Can you talk about the influence of radio in the fifties, committed to a highly original view of the world. especially for black musicians? Radio was totally segregated in the forties and early & fties. How much time did you end up spending with him? But Sam Phillips’ aim in opening the studio was to break I knew him for a long time—at times I traveled with him down the walls of segregation, record some of those great to di% erent places, like England and Seattle, for di% erent Negro artists in the South—that was the term of respect that events. I made a documentary with him in 1999, which was was used then—who had no place else to go. Long before he three months of solid work, after six years trying to persuade opened the studio, his concept was that this would happen him. (I think Sam knew how much work it was going to be, once people heard and recognized the beauty, depth, and and he did not stint on his commitments.) During that time eloquence of African American music. While it didn’t hap- of trying to persuade him to do something Knox and I knew pen in quite that way with artists like Ike Turner, Howlin’ he wanted to do, we had dinner after dinner, with my wife, Wolf, he really believed it would. And then it did happen with Alexandra, and Knox and his wife, Diane, and Sam and Sally the movement that Elvis helped usher in, which came to be Wilbourn. I suppose that was when I really got to know him. known as rock ‘n’ roll. The doors opened wide and through Every time was di% erent. Sometimes he would have a glass those doors came , , , of red wine in one hand, white in the other, and by the time and Bo Diddley. the food arrived, forget it. But they were all great evenings, no matter how they turned out. Sam always had so much to Tell me about Phillips’ love affair with Memphis. communicate. It was all about Beale Street. On his & rst visit there as a high school student, Sam was inspired. On what is known as Black What was your arrangement about what was fair game during America’s main street he saw the kind of aliveness James the years of research? Baldwin described in The Fire Next Time. He saw every type Sam always liked to establish the terms in a broad sense—a

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52-59_Bostonia_WS16.indd 53 1/28/16 12:38 PM Guralnick From previous page TV

lot of times there might be an hour preamble, which was always fascinating, in which Expanding TV’s Idea of Family he kind of mapped out the From to The Fosters, Peter Paige philosophical territory. But is making prime time more inclusive | !" #$%& !'$() everything was fair game.

Did you ever stop being the reporter or would you call &' ()' ( *+,-'./ +0- ABC Family’s The Fosters, an people occasionally showed your relationship with Phillips sessed with our own re1 ec- award-winning series about up on talk shows like Ricki a true friendship? tion, says Peter Paige, “only an interracial lesbian couple Lake and Donahue, gay As Sam said to me more than the mirror we are looking in and their blended family. characters on scripted series once, “My son Knox loved is the 42-inch plasma in our “As a kid I was so desper- tended to serve as either you from the time he % rst living rooms. We all want to ate to be a part of some- comic relief with obvious— met you. But I didn’t.” His be re1 ected there, and when thing, to feel validated by but unacknowledged—sex- view was, don’t let people get we don’t see ourselves, we companionship,” says Paige uality (Paul Lynde, Dom too close. Sometimes people feel invisible.” (CFA’91). “I was an only DeLuise) or as guest stars portray this as a 24-year For much of his Hollywood child and we moved a lot, so in “message episodes,” friendship, but it wasn’t. career, the actor, writer, and I never had that sort of privi- such as Archie Bunker’s Basically I came originally to director has striven to make lege of regional or ethnic linebacker friend Steve talk to him about the music, gay people more visible on identity that a lot of people on All in the Family. but Sam laid out a vision of television. He played Em- cling to. Being gay gave me a Paige knew he was part of freedom and nonconformity mett Honeycutt on Show- little bit of that, but it wasn’t a paradigm shift when, as a and individualism in the time’s groundbreaking Queer something I saw re1 ected young actor in Hollywood, extreme—I’m sure he would as Folk and is now a creator in the world.” he auditioned for the out, be saying it even more loudly and executive producer of Or on TV. Although gay proud, and often sexually today. This book is not a record of friendship, though over the years I would say our friendship grew. But it was a wonderful opportunity to observe and portray this person who had not only ac- complished so much but was a truly remarkable man in his own right. He might tell you about the eight electro- shock treatments he had in 1951, because he thought mental illness was nothing Peter Paige to be ashamed of. And yet he (far left) is the was the most positive person cocreator and I ever met. I’ve never inter- executive producer of the ABC Family viewed anyone with the idea drama The Fosters, of getting something out which follows an interracial lesbian of them they didn’t want to couple as they raise tell. And I try never to forget their family. that I’m there for subjects, they’re not there for me.

Do you think Phillips would like the book? I think he’d love the book. I don’t mean that immod- estly. I tried to write a book that was sort of like a great epic novel—intimate, comic, and tragic.

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