“Any career disappointment I had didn’t center around the cliché
of being the ‘New Bob Dylan’” Steve Forbert writes in his new book, BIG CITY
CAT. “…In my case, my illusions were shattered when I didn’t manage to follow
the success of “Romeo’s Tune.” I had been under the impression that I could
accomplish pretty much anything I wanted to do. For a while I could. And then,
lo and behold, I couldn’t.”
To the extent there’s blame to go around, Forbert confesses his
part. He badly wanted success but was uncomfortable having attained it, and the
same hard-headedness that allowed him to cut a path as a folksinger in New York’s
punk-driven downtown of the 1970s played out in some bad decisions in the
studio and in his personal life that eventually had professional repercussions.
Just as ALIVE ON ARRIVAL captured the energy of a wide-eyed Mississippi
kid’s happy ambition to make it, BIG CITY CAT provides honest and at times
funny perspective on that magical ascent, and then on a career once its
trajectory had changed for good. Along the way Forbert conveys an underlying appreciation
for music itself that has kept him going 40 years later.
The popular story Forbert fans (like me) knew until now was
that he blew into New York from Mississippi with a denim jacket and acoustic
guitar, but Forbert reveals that came only after years of trying to make it as
a rocker down South. And New York was actually the second city he’d tried to
establish himself, recounting a brief but futile trek to Atlanta with a
bandmate.
Forbert was always absorbing a scene, listening and learning.
“I began to see that one member with a discerning approach to material and some
sort of original overall vision is worth at least three hot-shot guitar
players,” he notes. Widening tastes lead him away from British-Invasion influences
to Americana, he starts writing and playing more acoustic guitar, and departs for
New York alone when he realizes his bandmates aren’t feeling it quite the way he
is.
Forbert would render his struggle to make it in the city
musically in ALIVE ON ARRIVAL, while the book provides the details including
excerpts from a diary he kept then that are every bit as charming. He played
anywhere he could, for anything he could earn, while holding down a day job as
a messenger. He cracked the punk scene at CBGB’s on his personal appeal to
owner Hilly Kristal, who fancied himself a country singer. Forbert soon picked
up the same managers as the Ramones, who never got over the young singer
beating them to a hit. A rave review of one of his performances in the New York
Times – “Mr. Forbert is the kind of performer who makes you realize his worth
the minute he begins to sing,” John Rockwell wrote – starts a label bidding war.
Forbert’s idealism could be his enemy. As a rookie recording
artist, he brazenly overrules top-notch session sax player David Sanborn by
keeping what Sanborn considered a goofed solo, and nearly sentences ALIVE ON
ARRIVAL to death on arrival on an insistence that it not include reverb—only
the opinion of Bonnie Raitt can convince him otherwise. He followed it up with the
rockier JACKRABBIT SLIM (1979), containing his signature hit, “Romeo’s Tune” recorded
with the same musicians he’d been touring with.
Back on the road as a solo performer Forbert has continued
to release albums independently ever since, describing writing a new “manifesto”
every couple of years. He describes raising a family—including twin sons who
interestingly enough toured for a time in a death-metal outfit—in Nashville, a
divorce, rehab for a drinking problem, a subsequent marriage to a Jersey girl, a budding photography hobby, and passing time between gigs listening to CDs in his car. “When you’re on top, the job—although stressful—is
made as comfortable as possible for you, and it pays incredibly well,” he
observes. “On less successful levels you do a lot of work all over the place
but can soon wind up wondering if it’s all worth it.”
