Last year we lost our own Dad to cancer. Born in 1928 he was roughly the same age as Mr Hazelwood but sadly never achieved the same cult status. Jarvis Cocker never cited my Dad as an influence and artists like Primal Scream, Nick Cave, Lambchop and Lydia Lunch never covered any of his songs. When he did die, it wasn’t after some prolonged, heroic struggle lasting years; it was because we pulled the plug on his life-support machine after the old fella had succumbed to a post-op infection. The actual operation to remove the cancer had been successful – so perhaps it was just the old man’s way of saying it was time to go. Strangely enough, the last time I saw him conscious, he was sitting up in his hospital bed, dodging the occasional vagaries of the morphine and eating a well-earned slice of cake. And I dare say, that given the choice between pulling the life-support that day and another Bakewell Slice, I dare say he’d have chosen Mr Kipling. Irony can be a vicious sod. Nobody escapes it for long. Not even Mr. Hazelwood.
Heir to a family of successful oil producers and lawyers and brought up in the fairly solid Southern ‘Red States’ of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and Louisiana, Hazelwood was always going to be something of an eccentric; a Southern-Liberal in a staunchly Republican state singing Country and Western songs in a distinctly un-cowboy like fashion; his rankled, curmudgeonly baritone a bizarre addition to the wagon-trail of friendly, mainstream cowpokes like Patsy Cline and Jim Reeves. For every swing to the right, a swing to the left, a flexibility that granted him musically at least, both the popular vote with songs like ‘These Boots Were Made For Walkin’ and ‘Some Velvet Morning’ (both recorded by Nancy Sinatra) and a certain degree of musical dissonance with projects like 1967’s ‘Safe At Home’ by the The International Submarine Band – a band consisting of Gram Parsons (guitar and vocal), John Nuese (guitar), Bob Buchanan (guitar and vocals), John Corneal (drums), plus session men Glen Campbell, Chris Ethridge, Earl Ball (piano) and J.D. Maness (pedal steel guitar). Produced by Suzi Jane Hokom, for Lee’s ‘LHI’ label, ‘Safe At Home’ is widely credited as being the first ‘Country Rock’ album in history and a natural extension of the ‘Cowboy Psychedelia’ or ‘Saccharine Underground’ sound that Hazlewood traded in; and when supplemented by his surreal experiments with Ann Margret on ‘The Cowboy & The Lady’ you get a picture of someone teetering on the peripheries of public consciousness with a cynical disregard for balancing-methods. He was both in it, and outside the thing. A poet, a fool, a bum, a maverick, a man about to fall.
But this was never really meant to be an obituary. Lee Hazelwood isn’t dead yet. Cancer has him in its sights, but the wily old fox has yet to concede its terminal grip. Instead he has been dragged kicking and complaining from the shadows following his rediscovery by an astonishing range of artists; Beck, Pulp, Sonic Youth, Nick Cave – all have cited him recently one way or another. And ever wondered where Richard Hawley sourced his own curmudgeonly melancholy? That’s right – the thoroughly cantankerous Mr.Hazlewood.
‘Cake or Death’ – a reference to Hazlewood’s comic hero Eddie Izzard – is the title of what Hazlewood has declared will be his swan song, thirteen songs that he wishes to bequeath to the world before he returns to the shadows out of which he was wrested. And as the title suggests, it’s a complex, multi-sided affair, frivolous and blithe (‘Nothing’, She’s Gonna Break Some Heart Tonight’), gentle as springtime (‘Please Come To Boston’), pragmatic and resourceful (‘Sacrifice’, ‘It’s Nothing To Me’), acerbic (‘Fred Freud’, ‘White People Thing’) and touching (Lee’s tribute to granddaughter, Phaedra – a reprise of ‘Some Velvet Morning’). As always Lee’s talent lies in wrestling a handful of romantic misshapes from the coarse, leathery grip of human experience; the ability to prise something from the ashes. And unlike his sentimental contemporaries whose fingers seldom seemed harmed after reaching into the fire, Lee’s always looked burnt.
And yet for me, the album’s finest moment isn’t the blistering surf retro of übercool chick-trick, ‘The First Song Of The Day’ (which would be close) or the devilishly dark and twangy retelling of ‘Boots’ (with long time collaborator, Duane Eddy), it’s the strangely unmawkish yet beautifully pragmatic farewell, ‘The Old Man’, in which Hazlewood reassures us of life’s diversity against a backdrop of fondness and experience and lavishly imagined strings that illustrate the constant and the transitory both and the natural confluence of each. Hazelwood may not have asked to enter the departure lounge, but since he’s there, he’s now looking at his watch and preparing to fly; his autumn, indeed, finally done come.
And for the first time since my own father passed away last summer I’ve been able to accept with some degree of confidence at least, that if asked to choose again between ‘Cake or Death’ – he’s more likely to have shouted ‘both’.
We love you Grandpa. Peace out.