Sorry, Lyle- It was me, not you

The 1995 concert review I wish I could take back

Can Substack be an alternative to A.A.?

I’m not talking about American Airlines, whose random flight cancellations and delays have caused many a sober traveler to sag at the airport bar. Talking about the program, which I’ve tried three or four times, but didn’t last more than a couple months because I peeked ahead in the Big Book and saw that somewhere down the road I’d have to make amends to Lyle Lovett.

Not counting SXSW, I’ve reviewed only three shows in my life when I’ve had to type with one hand because the other is clamped over an eye. One of those was a Lyle Lovett concert in Dallas- and I was brutal. (“Bad Hair Day,” Dallas Morning News, Feb. 1995).

Daily newspaper music critic is the dream job of the functioning alcoholic. You just have to stay sober 10 hours a day, and keep your objectivity when you’ve had a few. But I was a dysfunctional drunk when I “wrote” such clever lines as, “That Lyle Lovett is so full of himself” and referred to his big band as His Large Crutch. (OK, that one was pretty good.) I was first incensed because in the intimate Majestic Theater, Lovett positioned himself onstage as far away from the audience as possible. But what put me over the edge was when his band played the opening bars of Roy Orbison’s “Oh Pretty Woman,” a reference to his celebrity marriage. In February 1993, I married a woman far too attractive for me, and four months later Lyle copied me by getting hitched to Julia Roberts. My wife had left the trophy case a few days before the Majestic show, so “Pretty Woman” was jalapeno juice in the cut.

To help cheer me up, the writer Robert Wilonsky took me out for drinks before the concert. I’m not a hard liquor guy, but I was downing Maker’s Mark like it was ice tea and Martin Scorsese kept yelling “cut.” I continued drinking at the Majestic, but about 30 minutes into the show, they closed the bar. I was next in line.

The review was for the Overnight section, with an 11 p.m. deadline, so I filed from the upstairs office at the Majestic, where I overheard the bar manager complain that Lovett himself ordered the bar closed because he was tired of watching fans leave their seats during his set. Well, that set something off in me.

I had all this courage that night, but the next morning I was afraid to get the paper, which sat in the driveway for hours. Oh, God, what did I say? Word hangovers are the worst!

When I came into the office the next day, my co-workers averted their eyes. “What happened last night?” my editor Lisa asked. I don’t know, I said, blaming the tired Large Band format. “It was kinda cool at first, but after the sixth or seventh time of Francine Reed saying ‘You ugly, too!,’ I finally had enough of that.”

It took years before I realized that on that night in Dallas I had finally had enough of me. I should’ve written that review in the projection booth. My life had gone to shit and I just wanted to wipe that smirk off Lyle’s face.

Drinking affects people differently. Some folks get drunk and drive their cars fast and recklessly. They’re the ones that get DWIs. A few beers and I’m in the right lane three miles under the speed limit, signaling every turn fifty yards ahead. The way that excess alcohol fucks me up is that I become abrasively opinionated: Barstool Corky. My review was personal, it crossed the line.

Somehow, Lovett recovered, and he’s never been anything but a gentleman to me on the two occasions I failed in avoiding him.

We go back to 1985, when I saw him opening for John Prine at the Paramount. During Lovett’s set, my girlfriend, who didn’t know much about music, kept whispering how great he was. “Yeah,” I whispered back, “but wait until John Prine comes on.” But Lovett’s set was the highlight. Instead of me turning her onto Prine, she got Lyle before I did. Prine called Lovett up to sing on “Angel From Montgomery,” and they traded verses like a passing torch.

They look like Yankees and then they open their mouths and out rolls Texas, porch Texas, where the mailman sits fanning himself with the Pritchard's Montgomery Ward catalog and curses the bumpy roads.- Spin magazine Feb. 1988.

On the late ‘87 release of Pontiac, still my favorite Lovett LP, I wrote a couple national magazine pieces on the big-haired Texan, including a 1988 Spin combo with Nanci Griffith, which she hated so bad she wrote a letter to the editor in protest. I liked her music, but took her down for dressing her band in matching suits like Nashville hacks. (Turned out one of those “hacks” wrote “Tulsa Time.”)

But I stayed tight with “my discovery” Lyle for a few years. My biggest piece was a feature in advance of Lovett’s March ‘89 concert at the Vic Theater show for the Chicago Sun-Times (“Though Lovett may look like a serial killer, he's actually one of the nicest people you could meet in his profession. He's the kind of guy who calls his parents on Arbor Day to ask how the old oak tree in the backyard is doing.”) It was especially gratifying when Lovett and His Large Band reduced the Vic crowd to body parts. It was total destruction of their minds, one of the best concerts I’d ever seen. The backstage scene was jubilant, but then it got dark.

At midnight, the Theater changed over to Clubland, a dance club, and in a room backstage, some Puerto Rican go-go dancers were smoking weed before they went on. Totally understandable, except when the smoke wafted into Lovett’s nostrils down the hall, he went kinda crazy. “You know what that smoke does to me!” he yelled at his manager, grabbing his lapels. “I’m allergic!” As the future ex-manager scurried down the hall to slam the dancers’ door shut, I asked Lyle what he’d do if he smelled marijuana during a concert. “I’d walk right off the stage.”

Lovett apparently got severe headaches from second-hand pot smoke, but my thought was “uncool, dude.” Bad enough he was an Aggie, but an anti-marijuana musician? That’s like a fisherman who hates earthworms.

Lovett remained in a foul mood all the way back to the Days Inn on Diversey- glaring at my beer- then bolted out of the bus the second the door opened. So much for a great night.

He’d pay for it six years later, a weight under which I hope to finally unburden myself. I’m very sorry, Lyle. I was unprofessional and remain deeply embarrassed about that RWI incident. But you should’ve seen what I wrote about Mary Chapin-Carpenter (“Mary Blatant-Carpetbagger”), my other blind-drunk review as country music criticism’s ugly duckling.

When liquor clouds objectivity you’re no longer functional. But three times in 40 years (not counting SXSW) isn’t too bad.

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