Joe Strummer was playing the piano on a London Calling track and Guy Stevens decided he didn’t like the way the piano sounded, so he rushed out of the control room and poured red wine all over Strummer’s hands and into the piano. This is bullshit. The band didn’t hire Guy Stevens; they enabled him. The problem with people like Stevens is that while they are off on their paths of destruction, someone has to mop up the wine. Someone has to mop up the blood. And someone has to actually record the music. That job fell mainly to London Calling’s engineer and unsung hero, Bill Price, who meticulously and brilliantly oversaw the tedious process of overdubbing and mixing while Stevens went about the business of being a “vibe merchant,” which mainly meant breaking furniture and falling down stairs. But even still, no one disputes Stevens’s contributions to the finished product. He was not facilitator, he was obstacle. He was a duende.
What’s a duede, you ask?
The Spanish poet, playwright, and revolutionary Federico García Lorca believed that the muse was all fine and well, but for an artist to achieve something greater they needed to engage with their duende. A duende is a demon that exists within us, that sleeps in our bones and feeds on our marrow. When the artist awakens their duende, it is at their own peril and is seriously risky business, because the duende will battle them at every turn and challenge them to be transcendent. And this is often a fight to the end, because by its very nature the duende embraces and seeks out death.
I’ve been reading stories and entire books about what a lunatic Stevens was and that’s about as spot-on as I can imagine.
But it sure as hell worked!
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