Stan Ridgway

Stan Ridgway is at once one of the greatest and one of the most underrated songwriters in rock history. His music, poised at the crossroads of Ennio Morricone's film scores and Jim Thompson's writing, is undoubtedly one of the highest and most significant achievements of the '80s. Crafting a kind of "emotional" synthesis between roots echoes, synthesizers, so-called "noble" instruments (violin, cello, trombone, banjo, mandolin) and the sheer electricity of rock, he gave the world an absolute masterpiece in "The Big Heat", destined perhaps forever to remain a "cult" work. And that's precisely because he's a prickly character, lost in the folds of his own soul, forever searching for the right words and the right melody to reconcile heart and mind, soul and body.

Born in the Californian desert, in Barstow, nearly half a century ago, Ridgway later moved to the far more chaotic and vital Los Angeles, where he developed a visceral passion for folk music, badgering his parents into buying him a banjo. He was just 14. Meanwhile, Johnny Cash became the idol to emulate, leaving a deep mark on his songwriting method, though the influence of Peter Gabriel and Kurt Weill, as he himself would admit, shouldn't be underestimated either. 1977 is bearing down. Punk is a bomb impossible to defuse. New wave is already lurking around the corner, ready to pounce... Yet, true to his musical background, Ridgway decides that isn't the road for him. Sure, like so many at the time, he puts together a band, Wall Of Voodoo, but he tends to see it more as a collective of composers than an actual rock band. The aim is to play music along the lines of soundtracks for shoestring-budget movies. But the socio-cultural climate is what it is: hard not to be at least partly infected by it. And so, in the sound of Wall Of Voodoo, a reinterpretation of American roots music, the restless drive of new wave (paired with rhythms often bordering on disco), and the new possibilities opened up by electronic developments all end up coexisting flawlessly. Ridgway will remember this when, after recording at least one excellent record ("Call Of The West", 1982, featuring the hit "Mexican Radio"), he decides to put an end to the Wall Of Voodoo story and go solo.

Amid minor collaborations and stretches of pure idleness, the masterpiece in question comes together. It's 1986. Ridgway is 32, though on the cover he looks considerably older, steeped as he is in a typical film-noir atmosphere. He presents himself as an epic bard of industrial society. All his failures and losers (madmen, war veterans, junkies, criminals) are perhaps the clearest result of an era's decline. Elevating them to the status of heroes, granting them symbolic weight, is a sign of an extremely contrarian sensibility, especially in an age of conservative backlash like the Reagan years. The "daydream nation" (to borrow the title of one of Sonic Youth's most famous records) is revealed naked, fallible, built on sand, if only for a little over forty-two minutes. That's how long "The Big Heat" lasts: but it's enough to cast a spell, making us witnesses to the genius of a unique artist, almost a modernist version of a medieval troubadour. Beyond any musicological classification, though, Ridgway is above all a friend; the sincere kind. Whatever he's singing about, you can be sure he's telling the truth. Not just "his" truth. Because only someone who has looked life in the face, without ever looking away, can lay claim to profound flavors that necessarily lie beyond every appearance.

Every one of his lyrics is a small stage set. His voice is the eye that guides us through the reverse shots, the long takes, the parallel edits. The music paints the scenery, hinting at the threshold between life and fiction, and vice versa; always composed, refined, elegant, even when the rhythmic pulse is infectious, irreverent. Like that of the opening title track, pierced by eccentric electronic outbursts and a metaphysical harmonica, before soaring into a chorus that I'd dare call perfect, amid melancholy piano chords, static violin notes and enveloping synth pads. "And everybody wants another piece of pie today," he sings, and everything feels so damn true.

"Pick It Up" actually recalls the intricate arrangements of Peter Gabriel's solo work, but with an unprecedented "fourth-world" flavor, thanks to the skillful interplay of polyrhythms and exotic violins (Richard Greene) on one side, and the psychedelic keyboard effects of Mitchell Froom on the other. The following "Can't Stop The Show", with its panting rhythm and another of his unforgettable choruses, is more intimate, while "Pile Driver" unfurls a schizophrenic strain of country, propped up by the usual synthetic quirks. It's clear how Ridgway always strives to keep a steady balance between melancholy and joy. Sometimes, though, it's impossible not to be swept away by the current. And sometimes that's exactly how you end up writing songs like "Walkin' Home Alone", so moving that you feel you ought to shake Ridgway's hand just to clear your conscience. Sublime pop-jazz: that's "Walkin' Home Alone". Steeped entirely in a "nocturnal" atmosphere, amid desolate streets where the dull lights of streetlamps flicker and shards of a lost love scar the skin. A visceral melancholy, made even more tragic as the words push toward despair, yet almost tenderly, staggering like a drunken tramp, while the trombone howls its claustrophobia at an invisible moon. Hence: "So put another quarter in the jukebox Pete, but don't play that one with the sad trombone 'cause tonight I'll be walkin' home alone."

Seemingly of a different emotional register is the jittery synth-pop of "Drive, She Said", followed by "Salesman", still riding a lolloping rhythm and haunted by Eric Williams's feedback guitar and Richard Gibbs's emulator. "Twisted" seems to return to the Peter Gabriel playbook, but with less rhythmic emphasis. The western epic sweep of "Camouflage" (amid nostalgic keyboard figures and banjo and mandolin embroidery) is made strange by a war narrative told by Ridgway in the guise of a Vietnam veteran. Here more than anywhere else, the Morricone-esque component has been dissected down to its core elements, then reworked into a new context. Surprisingly, this track will crack the UK Top Five. The task of bringing down the curtain falls to the buoyant sway of "Rio Greyhound" (at the time included only on the CD version), an instrumental for drum machine and keyboards that takes on the job of easing the tension built up so far with a generally carefree atmosphere, tinged with choral inflections.

"The Big Heat" remains, to this day, the record of a career. After this extraordinary triumph, in fact, Ridgway would never again recapture the inspiration of that moment, ending up recording only records that were, at best, pleasant, but lacking dazzling gems like "Walkin' Home Alone", "Camouflage" or the title track itself, among the masterpiece songs of the '80s. Just like this wonderful gift from Ridgway.

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08/11/2006