A Word on Words; 0879; Ellis Auburn

and word on words the program building tonight and i was the reuter ordered mr johnson in an editorial director of usa today ladies and gentlemen once again welcome to word on words singing we're gonna be talking about a new book a new book about a dark star as matter of fact that's the title dark star that haydn speaking at you from behind that bargain collapses the ioc when the great musical talents of this country's know royal reason and the authors are samberg welcome alice to work on we're thank you john's could be with the last game of the tight oil reason was a dynamic dynamite personnel are really explosive in terms of his impact on people and yet his own hometown it was virtually unknown

many places in the world where music or country music a song that he was not alone an arresting that he's a rock star and that despite all its fame all is success all the wealth that flowed his way he was indeed in every sense the word a dark store talk about that time well you know roy armisen was kind of an ordinary man with this extraordinary gift and he had a substantial dark side to his nature he was very scarred growing up there and when texas where you're just lower the bird if you're not a football star neary was this almost albino looking creature with a cotton headed an eyeglasses as thick as a coke bottle and they calling faced us which means your face and how are you my rear end is the same and that stuck he

accepted the world's verdict that he was ugly and thats sad in a way because actually it should matter to us of all what the world thinks of us but he carried he was very uncomfortable that he was so shy he was standoff ish and at the same time he had just drive he had this fantastic talent and it created kind of a paradox there and he sort of was in hiding even though he was an ally of the us that that job picture in the book as two sections of which i'm a rare photos but that high school graduation picture i guess from the album so something like the star is his wish also larry edition that's paraphrasing boats boats boats and rusting out came out faintly it was successful long on both on both counts he was in the music very early string band of course but the team games were

different pretty good at the wooded area that's right that was his first hit record them his first man was the wing questioners when he was thirteen years old he was saying in those honky tonks rather in west texas and he couldn't so he could get a girl friday said want and even if i had enough money to hire a girl to go out with me she would do it then the teen kings a second then he started touring and rock n roll was beginning and we have the phenomenon of the groupies and suddenly girls were throwing themselves at arms and this beautiful cheerleader in odessa fourteen year old claudette friday fell off with them you point out that young women have great appeal for listening child in terms of a fan of fake it that she was attractive and the analysts and seductive

event fourteen when you talk about his dark a dark side of him part of it is that that shyness helen back and at the same time again and again their anecdotes and vote demonstrates that despite that china's there was a normal fist of thirst for the limelight curious when he was down out of them he was restless you the exhibitionist to get attention no then he was a he was a haunted man by tragedy by bad luck unlucky in love what what led you into this project i mean you've

written about celebrities or four hours but what was about or most of that do you write like a magnitude larger self and in this like when and where the book start and how well as you say had written about rock n roll before the rolling stones and elvis presley and but i didn't really relate to them roy were both from texas a little place i grew up as new real madrid for a month where he was born and both of us had rough childhoods both of us accepted the whorls verdict that we were strange and weird and so i really could walk in his shoes and done when he died i was in key west and i was in a group therapy session and was a drummer from boston in there and he told us that roy died and he said i'm in here because i want about fifty two so i looked at israel provocative i thought

is that he's a mild manner of rock n roll in that that sounds like there's quite a story there so i got my car and i drove to win texas and i started talking to those people who'd gone to school with him and see and what all you've been through and the you know the deck of cards he was dealt a life which was a rough one and i was just obsessed with that story also i couldn't find anything about lawyers i wanted to read about doing that now look to live or in there was very little to be found so i thought well i get to ride it here and there well a store there is a night there's one place where the hall says he was not armed now the place where his son wesley says that was never not on drugs will problem what's the

truth of that doesn't really matter well there's a lot of contradictory evidence there roy himself on his insurance policy said he had a mild use of alcohol and in an interview one time he said that his daddy had given him a shot of booze when he was sixteen and he will say and the members of his band told me that term members of various bands really said that roy had an addiction to diet pills a call when we're just be undone wesley of course said that he had some treatment for attendance on sleeping pills and the friday family and roy's in laws of his first wife said the court acted often complained about his dependence on diet pills let's talk about the magnitude of his daughter so much of it

it's skyrocketed into flame of our main i think in him and london for example there were times when he was as hot as any other person out it maybe accent many except maybe except the beatles was phenomenally successful and in europe the times he was dying the known unknown the fire that's right they just loved a man the european sometimes what does stick with the american rock pioneers such as buddy holly in royalties and even one would forgotten when the british invasion had over here we gave up power rubber farms but roy always had a good following in england had to work over there with the beatles when they were run now they were just beginning to emerge when he toured with him in nineteen sixty three and they were very worried about roy are present in the eye the motive him from the top of the bill because they had

this powerful manager brian epstein and when everybody was screaming for roy to go out there and take his encore of the beatles held in backstage and set yankee go home say well the number of hits was to me just looking at those titles of songs i'd forgotten songs sung were smyth it's i really there a caption night tension enough for me to remember until i so i read that this car ruffian they have extensive as carvin about those hit after hit i think that i think it means that's right he was the first great singer songwriter he established that tradition with blew by you and only the lonely running scared momma oh pretty woman mean woman blues dream baby that all happened between nineteen sixty and nineteen sixty five twenty

two straight hit singles and his influence was incredibly annoying also toured with rolling stone's an accident for years makes the connection between roy is a rolling stones with mick jagger says roy taught him how to write rock ballads and how to sign up and you listen to a stone song like ruby tuesday or wild horses and you can hear why let's another thing that turned the beginning of the book and it is you have people who define his influence on them on their music and the island and then you see that he is it this great crest of the flood tide of wealth popularity and successful in some way it plummets to obscurity for a period our courses personal

tragedies dispersal drive is not think that emotionally he was down quite often mean let's talk about about them just briefly any plot at first all was unfaithful to i guess the fact that it was a person he had employed to build his house quite creative person must but that must village shop in the way he found out about it is the other man's wife sending a message through anonymously films as a fan that show and arresting think calling the identity ahead he threw his farm in the lake before i confronted was that they not i'm awfully smart he was a guy just react and blow the man's head of he was going to disarm

himself before he confronted i at that point in the book and felt sorry for gillette point in the book there's early dawn hearing that i learned about him but his having to confront the reality of those polled ugly it's a must have come back to him all of his fears about well ariel be able elevate his home like most of st catherine that's right because that marriage with a teenager had been a dance of death for years roy had to earn faithful to her with heroes and in retaliation and you could hear some of the heroic talk about that some of the songs like crawling back

right and she worries saying i know you're in faithful but i don't want you to know that i know because i'm afraid i might lose you if there were some confrontation and so that's really quite a dance of death their relationship that's just talk workout and i guess it's one of her roth won a phrase maybe her mother or somebody who says no he expected her to be faithful despite the fact that he wasn't lately unfaithful notoriously and publicly unfaithful to her the surface of double standard of a wife should stay in that home barefoot and pregnant a man could go out of the water and in this case it was not it is a cliche and i had three children for well i make it out of the soul of the other remarried and then the dance of death ends that while motorcycle i'd

be in front of her and that terrible collision on highway own mentality i thought his comment about prosecutor charges against the proper touching unexpected compassion most apps and bitterness know where that come from i guess it's i guess it's another way of throwing you're gonna light and destroy said i guess that man suffered enough roy himself well went to a castle warriors and got involved with a prostitute they were sitting in listen to your tail moment maria maria great song suicide of a pretty woman and

roy told his friend bobby black mesa don't tell her who i am i would be incognito but the cricket playing it over and over so fine you're so that's me sing in that so she played something else within city and thats me singing in sheboygan other adventures and that's a bartender saying into a well this book is soulful love and obama says going to know what was fact you wonder why not fiction she dies and two years later that's real voice your home without his parent's this massive all let his wife's lover ago living there most of all of them the kid is a player out there playing blue and

there's an ignition fire to all boys he at that time i guess with bobby watson is in prison long line that another teenager that's right they were having a great time over there you know roid body blackburn said that i tasted everything before the king would taste or so he would get the girl's first pass muster that really would get when they don't have a schedule up on the wall of snake sure the girls and overlap they had the cube guard flying they fan out in italy a motel and get to the hotel and get it you tell the story of that tragedy in the home in graphic detail you put me that i mean it does as good job both charlie's that i read in a book a long long

time i take it that you must have interviewed one pulses both his parents is in la claudet plans and of course the apprentice their wesley wesley young mostly veteran it was an implosion as you describe it would suck the two boys in as it blew wesley in his grandparents' house that's right they were at the door or in roy's father had a hold of wesley and maybe they were blown into your of the two old boys were coming up from downstairs and they were sucked back into this awful mall and then there is the speaking of that dark starlet continues to turn out there is that

telling paragraph in which you say no use of two boys he also lot of wesley because wesley the signs those grandparents and roy was never again that's ripe wesley was just a little boy but he decided to stay with made a minority his grandparents and for the next eighteen or twenty years was was twenty five and it says that he saw as betty three to five times a year and they live and practical street from each well this time he now has as you say as a young woman at his age maybe she's german them are now is it's as i read it you say her father was a german industrial a surge and an unlikely diplomat that is accurate and we know i mean

somebody somebody said that's according to the associated press but it was it was just it was a story as i recall in the ap reflecting an interview with you mr about who her parents were dry and then nine she turns into bees she turned out to be a quite a person out in her own right in terms of their relationship ended her relationship with some of his old friends at the time of his death just leap ahead for a moment the time of his death and fascinated by this term i mean he was almost the islands almost memorial services and syria we had one nashville because know we have one here in some of music people one that one ear is judy shepard's of put that together in the same town barber is why it was that one in los angeles and and from those people from

nashville to go out to los angeles we have the distinct impression that are restoring the song for herself at least that's their view of it more than she is for roy and then of course a couple thousand taxes have to lay their claim that too and salute while the ceremony is memorialized in him i found that whole the whole thing some would say it is id id id read it reduced his death almost a tree out now about that well it seems to me that the beautiful memorial was the one that jean shepherd had so much to do with the college heights baptist church where the musicians who'd worked with roy interest in the band was out there in the bus and to as jane said we needed so that looked like a wannabe anything she said we needed a place to go and grieve our friend and the one i know i was called a celebration of life well but roy

died and it's really funerals are about death alice said tragic life to celibate i mean success was there the power that attends stardom and then and the massive celebrity status he achieved was there and suppose that's perhaps something to celebrate but but again and again you still celebrating that dark star and i have an idea that one because he lacked intelligence you probably wouldn't go on to the memorial a genie sheppard did you like church much either and i know we would live on the celebration of high volume of the virus well you know the irony of a comeback interrupted by death is what the last five years are about really the fact that the whole rock world could get together everyone he had influence stephen paul hewson in you to play

that they could get together and he could have those two hit albums at the end of his life is really extraordinary history a mystery woman it's called the street girl mystery girl and i am traveling but traveling world rules which rolling stone gave the award show's best lp of the year in this trigger was a fantastic album and it's so touching because it shows that roy had grown from the self pity of only the lonely it's beautiful but basically it in your beer to the maturity of some of those songs and traveling wilbur is that says hey you don't have to be loved to be happy you just have to enjoy one day at a time and you don't have to be young to be happy it's ok to be old either such acceptance of that song and the line that i'm very glad that roy armisen experience that personal growth and the city got out very got clean and sober he died in a state of grace i genes that shepard said that he had been going up there the college writes baptist church so he was in touch with his spirit

at the end there and as george harrison says roy is still with us because life moves in us and without us and you're last year last word on him is that you are that fit you think that his wish understated was running for a major immortality only god that's right you know i always like to come on as very humble but he was little he says when somebody asked him how he will be remembered he said i'd just like to be remembered will is not just about it because that's a mortality elias has already gotten only did he shared it but i i'm fascinated by this man who's guess it's a gentle music relates to different generations and different ways and somehow you know what i knew about and i don't know you know i knew because of the

tragedy the full measure of his daughter maya never bothered to investigate that startle actors that and reading your book was the leisure wonderful if say head and adoption to a man who enjoyed a great deal of who suffered so much i frequently suffer and because he forced himself to you you then have to understand that beyond the music there was a deputy us official prison and he's reading habits me and strike me as surprising look what he was reading when bobby blackmon canada telling that lost two of his three asylum as winston churchill that's right that his dream was visiting the state now where that come from world

many people say lawyers who was the genius that he designed this house is he loved to read shakespeare and that he was just a man of many facets he was tortured he had an ulcer by the time he was twenty that's on his insurance policy chewed his fingernails the quake he was a workaholic and he could seal success and happiness like for one minute at a time and then he did feel like well now i've got to have another one and that's basically a compulsive addictive personality and claudet of course at first why she didn't know what to make of it because she thought she was gonna get a man to take care of or as ted roy was up there in a study reading these weighty tomes writing these songs worrying about his hits and basically isolate he was a very a standoff ish uncomfortable

kind of person well he had he does leave you have three children three or worsened children two others died as we said and tragedy he left i guess music and that's going to be a legacy yes in some of our greatest popular songs and you know we all or where the hits but those songs that roy cut for mgm from nineteen sixty five to nineteen seventy five when he wasn't selling any rigs have all these are the real masterpiece is crawling back she walk on the hank williams album arroyo of the senate is the greatest country singer wheeler when you hear him saying that it's difficult start the rowing more recent

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