‘The Dog Stars’ novelist Peter Heller / Remembering rock critic Dave Marsh

This week on Consider This, we connect the dots between the national debt and your car payment, your mortgage, your small business loan, and so much more. Listen to Consider This, the Daily afternoon news podcast from NPR. This is Fresh Air, I'm Dave Davies. The dog stars, a new film from Ridley Scott starring Jacob Alorty and Josh Brolin, is an apocalyptic drama about two men struggling to survive after a virus has wiped out much of the world's population.

Here's a scene from the movie, Alorty is speaking to Brolin's character.

“This world fits you, Benny. Wake up, defend and survive. I think you're ready for ten years before I hit.”

Huh? You like this? I was a f***ing tannick. My f***ing, what I wasn't doing that, I was kissing my wife. I was playing with my dog, you know, wondering every day how I got so f***ing. The dog stars, which opens in theaters next week, is adapted from a novel of the same name by Peter Heller. Heller knows something about survival himself. He's an experienced outdoorsman and adventure writer who's gone to some pretty remote places and done some pretty dangerous things.

He wrote Heller High Water about an expedition to an unfathomably deep river gorge into bed.

The dog stars was his first novel and became the best seller. His other novels include the river, Celine, the painter, and his latest, the orchard.

Peter Heller holds an MFA from the Iowa writer's workshop in both fiction and poetry. Let's listen to some of the interview I recorded with Heller in 2012 when the dog stars was first published. Well, Peter Heller, welcome to fresh air. Thank you for having me. Now, this is your first novel. You've written a lot of nonfiction. Why a novel set in a post-apocalyptic world where civilization is collapsed?

Yeah, I'm not sure why. I know why I wanted to write a novel. I've been writing nonfiction for many years.

And, you know, when you write a nonfiction book, you know, of course, I always know what's going to happen next.

I know what the ending is going to be. And I just didn't want to know what was going to happen next. And so I went to the coffee shop where I write and I sat down and I began with a first line. So I didn't even to tell you the truth, know that it was going to be a post-apocalyptic story when I started.

“Well, the first line is I keep the beast running. The beast refers to an old Cessna aircraft. That's how you started?”

Yeah, and I mean, I know that this stuff about the unraveling of the Ecosphere and the apocalypse is something that I've been thinking about a lot. I write a lot about environmental issues and I have a dear friend. He's a paleo botanist. And what he does is look at 70 million-year-old fossil leaves. And his specialty is the KT boundary. That's the geologic layer that represents the time between when there were a lot of dinosaurs. And then when there weren't any. So this guy Kirk is an efficient out-of-extinction you might say.

And we, he breakfast now and then and we always talk about this six great mass extinction that we're in the middle of right now that scientists are talking about a lot.

And we always end up imagining what it'll be like when that apocalypse, this unraveling begins to affect human society and what it'll look like. And so, you know, those themes have been on my mind. And so when I sat down to write, I think, you know, they had to be central to the book. You know, I had my own notion about this, which is that, you know, as I read about what you've done, I mean, you've been quite an outdoorsman. You've been, you know, an expedition kayak or you've gone to some incredibly remote and sometimes dangerous places.

And I wondered if you were at times in places where it might have felt like you were one of the last people on earth.

“Oh, yeah, you know, that's, that's what I hadn't thought of it that way.”

But I was thinking this morning about, sometimes I just, the wonderful thing about, you know, traveling to these places and taking these expeditions. And you, as you have these memories and these images that sort of, you know, they form your interior landscape and you can come back to them. And this morning, I was thinking about the San Poe Gorge and Eastern Tibet. And he notes like the deepest gorge in the world, it's right in the middle of the High Himalayas and it's so deep that it's subtropical and there are tigers in there.

You know, I was on this expedition that went through there and it did, you know, it felt like the end of the world or maybe like some sort of Shangrelas, some sort of, you know, imagined a place on earth that, that no one had ever been to before. And, you know, on some of these trips, actually, you know, when you get into the kayak, you don't even know, you stretch the spray-skirt on over the cockpit and you don't know if that's the last time you'll be ever be doing that.

“And, and he sort of pray that it's not. And so, I think that that might even form some of it for sure.”

Right. You know, one of the things that I thought, and I just, I really enjoyed reading this.

It's told in the first person, your character, "Hig," is this guy who was a pilot.

And he's at an airport with another guy who's very different from him. Let's talk about these two characters. First, your character, "Hig," the one who tells the story. Tell us about him. Well, he's, he was a contractor. He was married, very happily married to his wife named Alyssa. She was seven months pregnant when this superfluid hit and hit, you know, across as a pandemic, world pandemic.

And so, that was their first child. So, in this flu pandemic, he lost his wife. He lost his unborn child. He lost everything. And in his previous life, before that, he had wanted to be a writer. He was, he had written a bunch of poetry and it was kind of a failed poet. And, you know, had to go to work. And so, he, you know, he did this job building houses. And he's a big guy. He's a very tough and formidable dude.

But, you know, he still has that sensibility. You know, he just loves to repotry more than anything. And he has a sensitivity towards beauty and nature and he loves to fly fish.

“That's what he loves to do more than anything.”

And, you know, in this situation, in this post-apocalyptic time that he finds himself in, and he'll still a great risk to himself. He and his dog Jasper will head into the mountains just to go fishing. Right. Now, they, they end up at this little rural airport called Erries. Is it a real place? Yeah. It's where I keep my plane, the old 56.

A 56-sessna, an old plane. And because of the circumstances, there are fuel tanks that are solar powered. There's enough fuel that he continued, can continue to fly. The other guy at the airport is the one he's destined to perhaps spend eternity with this character bangley. Tell us about bangley. Bangley is an enigma. You know, he shows up a few months after everything hit the fan with a trailer full of guns and ammo. And he's just a really mean gun nut. You get the sense that he's been waiting for this, his whole life, this sort of survival situation.

And, you know, throughout the whole beginning of the book, you know, and as I was writing it, I mean, I was discovering these characters that I was writing it just as he was. And so it was really fun. You know, bangley is a tough nut to crack. He doesn't give away much.

And his whole deal is about survival. It is about dotting your eyes and crossing every tee and about redundancy and about never slipping up and never making the stake.

And never letting some situation get out of hand or letting the other guy win. And treating every other human being you may encounter as a threat. Yeah, definitely. He's a crusty dude.

“Yeah, sure. So tell us what's the symbiotic relationship. Why does Bangley accept your character, hit again to his little world?”

Well, you know, I think on the surface, you know, explicitly, it's because he has this airplane. He knows how to fly it. And every day after, you know, there's, there's a lot of action in the book. And one of these sort of attacks that nearly cleans their clock, you know, bangley sort of realizes that It's Higgs daily patrols in his old plane. You know, he circles out towards the mountain front, which is eight miles away. And then he circles around and he does a Out to the south and then the east and to the north. He has a 30 mile radius. And it's sort of a days walk for an intruder.

So after his patrol, he knows that they're safe for probably a debt for 24 hours. And it's that, that patrol, that perimeter that Higgs maintains that, you know, keeps him alive, you know, in bangley's book. He's useful then.

And your character, Higgs, is not happy just to stay alive, right? He's always kind of reaching for something else.

Yeah, I mean, Higgs challenges to find a reason to stay alive and to stay connected with the things he loves.

And every night, Higgs names the constellations. And he used to have a book of stars, but now he doesn't.

And so he remembers some of the constellations, you know, Orion and the big dipper and the chariot, but a lot of them, he doesn't. So he makes them up and they're usually animals. And he makes one up for his wife and for the little angel, he calls it, which is, was his child. And he makes one up for Jasper, his dog. And it's his way of reinventing the world and also staying connected to the things he loves. So that's his challenge every day is to find a reason to live, to find joy, to find some richness.

“And I think that's what makes him so interesting. It's not just about, you know, finding the calories to stay alive.”

And bangles reaction to every move is that's too risky. Make sure you're protected, get the right angles on an intruder, that kind of a thing.

Exactly. Yeah, they're, they're working, you know, they have two different tracks. They're working on every day. So their relationships are very interesting and he doesn't like to kill. And, you know, in a lot of ways, I'm like taking that way. I mean, I love to fly fish, almost more than anything, and I hunt elk, and I just can't stand killing things. I mean, I'll, I'll, if I see a spider, you know, flailing on the surface of the water, I'll go to great effort to save them sometimes. Don't tell my buddies. But he goes like that, too. You know, he just, he's in a situation where they do get attacked, and he does some times have to step up.

“And he, he just can't stand it. We're as bangles, you know, he relishes that. And, you know, he thinks he lives in the past too much. You know, a lot of the book is Higgs interior monologue.”

His memories of the past. There's a lot. There's layering of his memories of his marriage of, you know, things he used to love to do and his impressions.

And so he's in his head a lot. And to bangles, you know, this is just cross purposes to what they want to do. You know, he's always telling him to wake up, you know, stop.

You know, he's going to be trying to think about the past and get blindsided by something. But you grew up in New York. What kind of neighborhood were you on? What kind of what kind of kid were you on? So I grew up in Brooklyn Heights, which is, you know, it's a Gentile neighborhood above the peers right across from the financial district in Brooklyn. And it was a quiet neighborhood. I spent all my time like in the bushes when I was a really around the playground. My friends were in the playground. I was like in the bushes.

“I don't know. I just as a kid. I just wanted to be out of the city so bad. I couldn't stand the city.”

You know, I went to school. And I liked school a lot. I liked reading. But I couldn't wait until I got out of there. And so I begged my parents when I was 15 to send me to a school and and study them from on. I have a lot of cousins and uncle and and put me from on. And so I went to a school there for high school. And you know, it's just like, oh my god. And it's great. It was great. And I love it so much. I built a teepee and I lived in it, you know, through the Vermont winter when I was a teenager and kept my firewood and all that stuff. It's just I was so happy in the country.

So I went to college in New England in the country. Right. And you became an expedition kayaker. Right. I mean, you would you would take groups of people into these remote settings and with tough rapids and. Yeah, I bring everybody back alive. Most of the time on the big expeditions, I was on assignment. So I was like the kayak. I was the writer in the kayak and I didn't lead the trip. But I did a lot of them guiding and I did a lot of kayak construction on the way. Well, I mean, I guess the best known is the trip that led to your book, Hell or High Water. And that's this remarkable river gorge in eastern Tibet.

You want to you want to describe the setting here and what this explanation was about. I mean, this thing is like mythic. This the Sanpo River runs west east across Tibet. It drains the entire north slope of the Himalayas. So it's it's a big river. And then in eastern Tibet, at about 10,000 foot elevation, it just drops off the edge of the earth and flows between two mountains, a 25,000 footer and a and a and a 23,000 foot peak. The peaks are very close together and the river just drops off between them. And then a 150 river miles later, it flows out into the hills of Assam, India at an altitude of 500 feet.

So if you think it drops off the edge of 10,000 feet and a 150 river miles later comes out at 500 foot elevation. Think of the the relief in there, the steepness of this river and it's a big river. So these guys, an expedition led by Scott Lindgren and a few of his his kayak buddies decide that they wanted to try and kayak this river and these are the best expedition kayakers in the world. They decide they wanted to kayak it.

But when it's very very cold, right? If it's cold and at some point, you know, how many river miles it's something like 20 river miles in the river gets to a precipitous waterfall that hadn't been described that was, you know, sort of imagined but hadn't been described until 1998 by National Geographic. I mean, that's how remote this place was. So you get to a place where you can't paddle anymore, and then you have to climb up over a high snow pass, but the thing about it is is that those passes aren't even, you know, the locals don't go anywhere near them after November. So here we are in February.

“And these guys are carrying their kayaks up, you know, these 60 degrees slopes, a guy's cutting steps with an ice axe and these guys are kind of carrying their kayaks up these, you know, just open snow slopes.”

When they came up over a high pass it was, it was epic. And I was just, I was on the ground team and, you know, as we were 37 days in the garage. So, so did you have a kayak yourself for you? No, no, no, no, no, no, I was pet way, I was 40 something, these guys were all like in their 20s, you know, nobody really older than 30. They kayacked, you know, 350 days a year, top of their form. And so I was on assignment, I just, I just was on the ground team and I, and I wrote about the story, but, you know, it was challenging enough just trying to get through there, not only two expeditions in history had ever done it.

So what does it mean to be on the ground team? It means that you're with five Nepali sherpas, like every sherpas who are there for mountaineering and stuff, and 60 porters, and then this international team of like mountaineers and you are trying to keep pace with the kayakers, you know, along the side of this precipitous gorge. And so, yeah, it's just, it's a lot of walking, a lot of scrambling and some praying.

“Your character in the dog stars, Hague is a pilot, and his Cessna aircraft is an important part of the story, and you know, there's some really evocative scenes where he writes about flying.”

You're a pilot yourself, right? I came to it in a funny way. I was doing a kayak trip in northern Montana. We had to fly into the river to do it. This is a few years ago, and I found that my favorite part of the whole trip was the flight in. You know, it was just so cool to be flying through these mountains, close enough, with a wing tips or close enough to the mountains. You could see, you know, the tracks of elk, you know, going up along a ridge, and the landing and this little grass strips surrounded by mountains was, I just thought it was cool. So I asked the, I got an assignment from Men's Journal.

It was sort of like, how to be a bush pilot in three weeks.

And I, you know, they gave me this time, and I went up there to Calsville, Montana, and I got my license in 20 days with these, with these incredible backcountry pilots.

The assignment was to learn to fly and write a story. Yeah, it was like, could you, could you, like, in three weeks, like learn to fly, get your license, and then land on a backcountry strip. And so the guy I learned from Dave Horner is one of the truly great backcountry pilots in the world. He has 30,000 hours flying in the mountains of glacier national park and around there. Tracking wolves and grizzly bears, radio collard tracking. So he's always flying low and slow with the, you know, the mountain peaks all around him and above him. It's very dangerous flying and he's, he's still alive after 30,000 hours. He's extraordinary.

It was sort of like learning to play tennis from, you know, Roger Federer. It should never happen.

And he was so fun to learn from because he was, he had been a logger, and, you know, I was not a natural guy, but I think it was like day three, landing it like pulsing on a southern end of flathead lake. And we came in because he was, you drive a truck, I'm like, yes, yes, sir. He's like, you drive a motorcycle and I'm like, yeah, he goes, this isn't the either one. It's a bird damning, you know, little adjustments, little adjustments. And then when we landed he turned because that was atrocious. He said, you landed, it looked like a sick goose and, you know, for a, for a logger to pull out the word atrocious. I mean, it was a special circumstance. I felt very honored.

Anyway, I fell in love with flying and, and Dave actually emailed me, you know, a couple of years ago, a little bit after the assignment said, hey, buddy of mine, who used this plane to track wolves.

“This 50 success, no, it's a beautiful plane. He's selling a cheap, you should buy it and I did.”

Peter Heller, it's been great. Thanks so much for speaking with us. Ah, thanks for having me, it's fun.

Writer Peter Heller recorded in 2012. His first novel, the dog stars has been adapted into a film by director Ridley Scott. It opens in theaters next week.

Heller's latest novel is The Orchard. After a break, we remember rock critic Dave Marsh, who died a week ago.

This week on the MPR Politics podcast, the Trump administration is taking credit for a major drop in violent crime.

“Murder, robbery, assault, all down in big cities and small towns.”

We're going to dig into the numbers and unpack whether this is really as simple as the President claims it is on the MPR Politics podcast. Listen on the MPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so you're driving to work or you're on a walk or you're at the gym or whatever, and you just need to clear your head. That's the perfect time to hit the play button on NPR's all songs considered. It's not the news, it's not work or whatever else is weighing you down.

It's just a good time with good friends and great tunes. Listen to all songs considered every Tuesday in the NPR Music podcast. History is intriguing, but unlike the President, it can feel far off. On NPR's through line, we bring it back to life and put you in the middle of it. Go inside the stories from then that shape the world we live in now. Find NPR's through line wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Fresh Air, I'm Dave Davies.

“We're going to remember the influential rock critic Dave Marsh who died a week ago. He was 76.”

He could be a tough critic who didn't mince words, but he was also known for his enthusiasm and for giving voice to the emotional connection many fans had to music. Marsh dropped out of Wayne State University in Detroit to help launch the rock magazine cream before winding up at Rolling Stone.

He became an early champion of Bruce Springsteen and wrote the Rolling Stone's first cover story about him in 1978.

Marsh went on to write three biographies of Springsteen and became a close friend. The first book born to run was published in 1979 and became a best seller. Upon learning of Marsh's death, Springsteen wrote on social media, he was soulful, intelligent, heartfelt, opinionated, bruising, and often fantastically argumentative. He deeply believed in what I was trying to accomplish and his lifetime of support meant the world to me. Marsh also wrote books about the who, Elvis, Michael Jackson, and Sly in the Family Stone.

In his book The Heart of Rock and Soul, he rated what he considered the thousand and one greatest singles ever made. His number one choice, Marvin Gaze, I heard it through the grave vine. Marsh also wrote a book about the Kingsman's 1963 hit Louis Louis. He won a Grammy in 1993 for best album notes for his work on a Ritha Franklin's Queen of Soul, The Atlantic Recordings. And as a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominating committee, Marsh blocked the band kiss from entering the hall, though they eventually were inducted.

In his monthly newsletter Rock and Roll Confidential, later titled Rock and Rap Confidential, Marsh examined the political, social, and economic implications of popular music. He helped create the East Street Radio Channel on Sirius XM and was host of Kickout the Jams for Sirius XM for 19 years.

We're going to listen to Terry's 1987 interview with Dave Marsh just after he published Glory Days, the second volume of his biography of Bruce Springsteen.

Dave Marsh, welcome to Fresh Air. Nice to be here. You seem to see Springsteen not only as a great performer, but as almost a savior of rock music.

“What do you think rock music needs to be saved from?”

Well, you know, one of the things I tried to do in this new book is the Glory Days is back off a little bit from the idea of the Messianic part of Savior. And just to get into the idea that what we're all trying to do is bail ourselves out of the deepest crises of our lives. Rock and Roll gets trapped in a bunch of trash, in being a vehicle just for selling beer or something. What I think Bruce tried to do was prevent himself, save himself from that anguish of having his best ideas and thoughts, convert into the songs that were then converted into beer commercials.

And what I think rock and Roll needs is more of that kind of conversion.

And for myself, I guess the fear has always been, what would you do without it and what are you going to do with it?

Well, it's a double edged sword. Because to me, it was like my culture. Let me quote something that you say in your first book. You wrote rock saved my life, it also broke my heart. Well, it seemed like a pure thing to me.

And I guess I was naive, but it did seem like a pure thing to me. It seemed like they were these singers. They got in the studio, they sang these songs and they spoke from the bottom of their heart. And I'm thinking about songs like, I guess the great example for right now because it was a hit again,

Yeah.

You know, when the night is dark, you know, and just that whole idea of like when you're most alone,

something that will come and stand by your side and not let you down. For bruise, it was a song like Roy Orbison's only the lonely, no the way I feel tonight. And I think Bruce Springsteen is a person who writes of songs. But at a certain point rock and roll did break my heart because it became clear that it was a business. And it was a business in the most kind of cynical way.

“And like I said, that's my fault as much as it's it's it's fault. And I guess the best way to protect yourself and save yourself from that is to grow up and adopt a more mature attitude about it.”

But until born in the USA, I really don't think that any pop star had done a very complete job of that. John Lennon tried and came close.

Elvis failed miserably and Elvis was everybody's icon.

You know, Mick Jagger just got a golden cynical by doing kind of walked a neat path and then got lost on it. Bruce Springsteen made it to the highest heights that I think any serious rock performer has made. And at the very moment of his greatest success reached down and touched a community that that he was supposed to be completely isolated from. One of the great things when we were doing the the last interview we did for the book was in January. One of the great things was he explained all this to me and not in terms of what he was able to do for other people.

But what that connection had done to rescue him from the fate of isolation that that somebody like Elvis had had to experience. He's very aware of the traps that Megastars fall into and you make a lot of comparisons between him and Elvis and fame more or less killed Elvis Presley.

“I think it did, you know, not only because I mean there are people who make an argument that may have some legitimacy that Elvis is over medication was a result of him being quite sick.”

But if that was the case and somebody wasn't communicating very well with somebody else about what his physical condition was. The one way or the other the isolation, the being placed on a pedestal is what made him no longer alive at 43. And that's, and I don't know if people out who aren't big rock and roll fans really would understand what a tragedy that is. What it means for a sharecropper son from Tupolo, Mississippi to have reached some into so many lives. And maybe somebody's not a rock fan doesn't believe well, I know that from the cut of my hair.

To the mere fact that I can stand in front of a microphone and speak. I owe Elvis Presley, I owe them. And I know that Bruce Springsteen feels that and I know that there are enormous numbers of people who feel that. And that somehow behind all that there was a bigger idea of blossoming than just the thing cattle act that he's saying about. Even though Springsteen has been aware of the, you know, the price of fame.

Didn't, didn't hype and publicity almost kill his career on the beginning of the universe. At 1975 there were the simultaneous covers of time and age week.

In 1972, he made his first record and he'd been discovered by John Hammond, who discovered everybody from Bessie Smith through a Reath of Franklin Bob Dylan, Billy Holliday, Benny Goodman.

And so, and John Hammond had discovered Bob Dylan. And so they promoted Springsteen as the new Dylan. Now there have been 50 people I bet you, hyped as the new Dylan. Since the old Dylan became successful. I should say the real Dylan became successful.

Bruce Springsteen's the only person who's curious about it. And then in 1975 he made the album Born to Run. And that is a classic rock and roll riff. It's a classic rock and roll song from the lyric, the music, the whole business. On the other hand, that doesn't necessarily mean that it was going to be a mega-selling record.

It was not trendy in any necessarily in any way. And when that hype didn't work a lot of people figured he was finished again.

“And one of the things that my first book Born to Run was about was how does someone solve this problem?”

And why didn't he fade away in this appear? And answer the steep more qualitative than the quantitative. In fact, his next album, sold measurably less than Born to Run hit, darkness on the edge of town. And the album after that was called The River, sold only a little more than Born to Run. But what was really going on then was that Bruce had forced the marketing mechanisms of his record company to pull back.

And because he was afraid of another bow to this old exposure, which probably would have killed him. And it wound up with him being the most idolized rock star with a big concert audience. And that's so much awareness outside of the narrow world of the rock concert cult. Dave Marsh spoke to Terry Gross in 1987.

This is for a share.

Fall is right around the corner.

That means the midterms. Hey, it's Miles Parks from the Empire Politics podcast. Now is the perfect time to calibrate your news diet for the fall.

“Follow our show for short daily episodes that will help you stay ahead of the most important midterm storylines that you need to follow.”

Find the Empire Politics podcast on the Empire App or wherever you get your podcasts. It's hard to refine your taste when everything in your algorithm is buying for your attention. Is that influenced or you follow giving you the right advice? Which should we actually pay attention to in our social media feeds? This weekend it's been a minute culture critic and host of the new podcast feedback.

Iron Madison III takes our hand and shows us the way. Watch the full it's been a minute episode on YouTube or listen in the Empire App or wherever you get your podcasts. This is fresh air. We're listening to portions of our interviews with rock critic Dave Marsh. He died a week ago at the age of 76.

In 1993 Marsh wrote a book about the song he said tells the story of rock and roll. That song is Louis Louis. [Music] That's considered rock's most recorded song covered by everyone from punk bands to Otis Redding to high school marching bands. Louis Louis was written in 1955 by a black rhythm in blue singer and songwriter named Richard Barry who recorded it in 56.

Seven years later, a Portland Oregon band, the Kingsman recorded their version of it with garbled lyrics. It became a hit. In 1993 Dave Marsh told Terry Pout for years much of America came to believe that the lyrics in the song were obscene. A bunch of fraternity boys decided in 1963 when the Kingsman, this high school band from Portland, Oregon, had decided to record the record, which was a sensation that the song was a sensation in the Pacific Northwest.

And when their record came out for unknown reasons to anybody, I guess some college kids as a fraternity prank told the governor of Indiana that the song had dirty words. And a rumor like a urban legend went around high schools in junior highs all across America,

that if you played the 45 of the Kingsman at 33 and a third RPM, you would hear dirty words about sex.

And so the governor of Indiana immediately banned it in the state of Indiana. And I mean he says he didn't, but he did. He called the broadcasters association and told them that if it was dirty, they should get it off the air and if they couldn't prove it, they should think twice. So not being able to prove it, they got rid of it. And then the FBI got their hooks into it and they kept their hooks into it until the middle of 1966 when they started going after the Beatles or something.

I don't know why they gave up.

“What would the song have been violating if the lyrics were dirty?”

Oh, several laws. Primarily a law called the Interstate Transportation of Scene Materials Law. The FBI, when they talked to Richard Barry in 1965, told him he was going to jail. Flat out, they said Richard you're going to go to jail. And Richard said, "For what?"

And they said, "We wrote a dirty song," he said, "No, here's the sheet music." And the sheet music contains a story which in fact is what Richard's saying and what the King's been saying and what everybody pretty much sings, which is a story of a Jamaican sailor sitting at a bar pouring his heart out to a bartender named Louis. Saying, "Louie, Louis, me got to go back to Jamaica to see this fine little girl who's waiting for me." And that's it.

But the FBI could not be persuaded of this, at least for the first two and a half years.

They finally concluded that it was unintelligible at any speed. Let's run through some of the versions of Louis Louis and do a little capsule history.

“Why don't we start with Richard Barry's recording recorded in 1956?”

Seven. In 1957. As a matter of fact, you're playing that from the Rhino anthology, right? Yeah. Now, that is not the original version, but it's so close to the original version that you practically need a meter to tell it.

And Max Fire Tech, who's the guy who owns the original version, had refused, was mad at Richard and refused to license it to Rhino. So Richard Foods at Rhino simply took Richard and some other singers in and did an exact duplicate of the record.

So these are all like dummy singers and these people are not Richard Barry? Well, Richard Barry is Richard Barry, but the other people who were with him and not the people who were on the original record, nor was the record cut in 1957. It was cut about 1980 or '81. So what's the lyric that he used? He used the standard, a fine little girl. She's waiting for me.

I catch a ship across the sea. I sail that ship all alone.

I never think I make it home. Louis Louis, me got to go. That's Richard's version.

“That's what everybody sings pretty much.”

Okay, let's hear the Richard Barry recording of Louis Louis. ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫

♫ ♫ That sounds kind of too off. Yeah, yeah. So moving along here after he records it nothing happens, right?

It's played on some West Coast stations. There's a guy up in Seattle and then Ron Holden who had a big record with I love you. Who picks it up and just dances around the Chalipso. He uses it in battles of the bands because the kids would get up and dance the Chalipso. And he would win the battle of bands if he played Louis Louis.

And so from him, all these, there was an amazing rock scene in Seattle at the time.

And one of the neat things about doing the book is I sort of got to do the background for everybody's Nirvana and Pearl Jam book to come later. But the bands call the Whaleers, the Frantic's, the Sonics, all these wild cat bands that were up there.

“Kind of the dinosaurs of Grunge, I think of them as.”

They all did Louis Louis, Louis Louis, we came the anthem of the Pacific Northwest. And they played this, they played this place called the haunted castle, which was this, which actually Jimmy Hendrix song because Jimmy was from Seattle. Spanish Castle magic is about what went on in that place. And mainly what went on in that place was version to Louis Louis, taking to the anthem degree of just craziness. And that was where the song got speeded up.

There have been dozens and dozens of cover recordings of these. Some of them, just incredibly ludicrous, why in the world would peat fountain do a middle of the road cover of Louis Louis. I mean, what, what was his producer thinking, why bother?

Well, first of all, you gotta remember, Louis Louis was one of the 10 or 12 biggest records of 1963.

And in 1963 and '64, if you were making a middle of the road record, they gave you a checklist. Here were the big records I asked you, do them. And Louis, Louis would work as an instrumental. Louis Louis, in terms of just being three chords in music is okay, you know, you can play it on clarinet. You know, why someone decided Julie London had to sing it.

Now that's an interesting question. And then after that, it became a standard. It became part of the rock and roll repertoire. And so Tina Turner sort of needed a version to put into her club show. And so she did this wonderful version in which she makes Louis a guy.

And says to him, basically, you think you're getting me without a yacht. Forget about your little ship, you sail all alone. I want a yacht or get out of here, which is probably my favorite, uh, lyrical change that anybody ever made in a straight version of the song anyway. Terry spoke with Dave Marsh in 1993.

He died a week ago at the age of 76.

“If you want to hear an extended version of this interview and other conversations with him, visit the fresh air archive.”

Let's listen to the recording Dave Marsh considered the number one rock single of all time. [Music] I bet you want to know how I do. I'm chosen as to make it new. With some of the guy who grew before, he came to two of us guys.

You know I love him more. It took me by surprise. [Music]

This is fresh air.

“This week on sources and methods 260 days at sea.”

We're learning more about the conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, which President Trump says hasn't been deployed long enough.

I was talking to one retired animal who said, you know the problem is they didn't plan this.

That and more of the week's big national security news on sources and methods, you can listen on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts. Hey, it's Mike Danforth, executive producer of Weight Weight Don't Tell Me. Here's a great way to get the perks of being an NPR producer without doing any of the work. Join NPR Plus. With NPR Plus, you get extended interviews inside looks at your favorite shows and more.

All while supporting NPR and never having to pull an all nighter. Or if you work on one of the new shows and all morninger. Sign up at plus.npr.org. This is fresh air. In the new film Dreams in Nightmares, three friends go on a cross country road trip and search of a fourth friend they haven't seen in some time.

It's the latest independent feature from writer and director Shotara Michelle Ford after they're award-winning drama Test Pattern. Dreams in Nightmares opens in select theaters today, our film critic Justin Chang has this review.

“In 2021, I saw a quietly shattering debut feature called Test Pattern from the writer and director Shotara Michelle Ford.”

Set mostly in the hours following a sexual assault. The movie was full of sharp, damning insights into how America's health care and law enforcement systems routinely fail black women.

In their second feature, Dreams in Nightmares, Ford has lightened the mood and loosened the tension.

This is a warm, sprawling, sweetly bickerson comedy drama, about a group of close friends who had a turning point in their lives, decide to hit the road together. But Ford remains focused on the physical and emotional well-being of their characters. In this case, four queer black friends in their mid-thirties. The one we get to know best is Z, a Los Angeles based writer, played by Dene Benton from the Guild of Age, who's just been laid off from her job as a professor. By unhappy coincidence, Z's Brooklyn-based friend Tasha, played by Sasha Comparer, loses her consulting gig around the same time.

On a whim, Z flies to New York to hang with Tasha and their friend Lauren, played by Desi Bing. From there, the three hop in a car and drive west to Iowa City to visit their friend Kel, who's an artist. Kel hasn't returned the group's texts and calls in a while, and they want to make sure that they're okay. Despite the last minute decision, Lauren Tasha and Z embark on their trip with a sense of purpose and a measure of caution. They know they'll have to be on alert, especially when traveling outside major cities.

Early on, too, Lauren insists that whenever possible, the three of them will eat only at black owned restaurants. At one such eatery, they sit down at a table and find a cup filled with strips of paper. Each one printed with a conversation starting question. Should we answer a little question together? It's fun.

Yeah. Oh, no.

“Is your favorite attribute about yourself, physical or non-physical?”

Physical. Come on, T.T. What? Answer. Physical or non-physical.

Your favorite attribute. What kind of question is this guy? It'll matter. I like how I live my life. Okay.

Very depthful. Depthful. What? Depthful. Doesn't like full of depth.

Professor Z. No. No. Whatever. Mine is probably my mind.

So, non-physical. I guess? Let's probably my favorite thing about E.T. Well, what about it? Just, you know, say more.

It's a wonder up there. Peace and company. Z and Lauren are both pursuing their artistic dreams. Lauren is a poet. As we hear firsthand, when they perform at a queer poetry slam,

during a quick stop over in Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, Z wonders if her layoff is the motivation she needs

to finally write that book she's been planning.

Tasha, by contrast, is the practical-minded, no-nonsense member of the group. And she sometimes finds herself at odds with her more free-spirited friends. We learned that at one point Tasha wanted to become an actor. A dream she gave up for what she thought would be a steadier career in business.

On paper, that might sound too obvious. The Bohemian artists versus the high-strong corporate sellout. But the actors, especially Sasha Compar as Tasha,

And there's more joy and solidarity in the character's dynamic,

than there is resentment or tension.

“As in many road movies, the journey has its share of twists and turns.”

We learned that Kel left Iowa City some time ago, and so the friends have to spend a stormy night, in every sense, with Kel's annoying ex-girlfriend. She's played in a scene-stealing comic-turn by Jasmine Savoy Brown. From there they head south to Kansas City,

and have an awkward visit with Kel's estranged and very conservative parents, who clearly have yet to accept their child's queer identity. Without revealing exactly where the story goes, we do eventually meet Kel, who, as warmly played by Mars, Storm Rucker, makes it easy to see, why Z and Lauren care about them so deeply.

We also see why Tasha feels resentful of, and perhaps even threatened by Kel's sense of freedom.

And freedom is ultimately what dreams in nightmares is all about.

“The hope that these four characters, and many others like them,”

might be able to live life on their own terms. Throughout this intimate and gorgeously shot film, Ford shows us glimpses of that freedom, like when Tasha enjoys a rare moment of release at a Brooklyn nightclub, or when Z checks in with her boyfriend in LA,

with whom she enjoys a mutually supportive polyamorous relationship. Most of all, there's freedom in Z's lyrical visions of a mysterious desert landscape, which appear throughout the film, calling her towards some unknown yet promising destination. In a way, this is what Ford longs to give all their characters,

the time, space, and imagination, to dream of a future that still has yet to be written. Justin Chang is a film critic for the New Yorker. He reviewed dreams and nightmares. On Monday's show, Blissa Kudro,

she's up for two Emmys for the final season of the comeback, playing Valerie Cherish, an actress who will endure almost anything to keep working. We'll talk about saying goodbye to her character she's played over the span of 21 years,

and why she recently benched the series "Friends" for the first time.

I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show, and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/this is Fresh Air.

We're rolling out new videos with in-studio guests behind the scenes shorts and iconic interviews from the archive. Fresh Air's Executive Producer is Sam Briger, our senior producer today is Roberta Chorock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham,

with additional engineering support from Julian Herzfeld, and Adam Stanachewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonato, Lauren Crenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Teyia Challener, Susan Yacundi,

Ann Abelman and Nico Gonzalez-Blisler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Our social media video producer is Hillary Kissinger. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies. How will a historically unpopular president navigate a mid-term

“election season that may leave him with a lot less power?”

Stay caught up with the latest news with Trump's terms, the podcast where we curate NPR's coverage of President Trump and short episodes focused on a single story. Follow Trump's terms on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. When life gives you lemons, what do you get?

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