That time I almost interviewed Bonnie Raitt 

(Part II)

 

While the manager was talking to us, Bonnie Raitt came out of the inner room and approached us herself. “I just don’t think I can do it anymore. Answering the same questions, I’m starting to feel like a Chatty Cathy,” she said, referring to a toy doll, popular in the 1960s, that “talked” when you pulled the string on her back. She relented, agreeing to let us both interview her at the same time. Since Larry LeBlanc’s interview was for radio, he would take the lead, asking the first questions, but I could cut in later with a question or two of my own. We retreated to the inner room, LeBlanc and me on one side of a low coffee table, and Raitt on the other. 

 

LeBlanc had a professional, portable reel-to-reel tape recorder with a broadcast-style ball microphone. I had one of those boxy plastic cassette recorders of the time. Somebody offered Raitt a beer. She asked for a soda, and her manager brought her a can of Orange Crush and a plastic cup.

LeBlanc asked her about the tour, her latest album, “Streetlights,” and something about her relationship with her record label. On the topic of her background, she volunteered that as a child she was used to falling asleep amid a hep of fur coats piled on a bed at late-night show-business parties, as the daughter of Broadway star John Raitt. 

A woman entered the room (the door to the outer room was open) carrying a bouquet of flowers. “From Mary Martin,” the woman announced. “I’ll put them in water.” (Mary Martin was a Broadway star of the 1950s and ’60s who had co-starred with Raitt’s father in "Annie get Your Gun.") 

By now, Raitt had relaxed a bit and the exchange felt more like a conversation than an interview. McLaughlin came in hoisting a bottle of Champagne, possibly part of Mary Martin’s gift. The cork popped like a gunshot, interrupting the conversation. Without hesitation, LeBlanc said into the microphone, with an official, “announcer” voice: “And that, ladies and gentlemen, was Murray McLaughlin opening a bottle of Champagne.”

McLaughlin took a big swig of the bubbly, straight from the bottle, then handed it to me. I held the bottle up to Raitt, silently offering it to her, as she was talking. She tapped the rim of her soda cup and I poured some Dom Perignon into her Orange Crush before taking a pull from the bottle myself. Not entirely sanitary, but McLaughlin had started it. Music from the Jackson Browne concert still hummed through the walls. Rock Me On the Water.

I intervened with a few questions of my own, about Raitt’s band, about song selection and blues guitar styles. She answered thoughtfully. I was flattered. After LeBlanc wrapped up, I reached for my tape recorder to switch it off and realized to my horror that I hadn’t turned it on. I hadn’t made any notes. All the words spoken were gone (unless I tried to record the interview from the radio when the CBC aired LeBlanc’s interview). I didn’t dare ask Larry to let me borrow his tape. (In the end, I wrote a rave review of her set, with a few quotes from the interview.)

After we’d packed up, as I followed the route of stairways and hallways on the way toward the public theatre seating, the music of Jackson Browne’s band got louder, closer. My Redneck Friend. I realized I was passing the backstage area, and from where I was standing, I could look onstage: I had a side view of the concert. The promoter Richard Flohill was there, holding hands with his girlfriend, bouncing up and down like teenagers. LeBlanc and the stage manager were there, all of us forming a small, sparse group, taking a privileged, insider’s peek at the show. "This is the best spot to watch a show from," the Moustache said to me. "It's like the band's-eye view. And you're hearing the music through the monitors rather than the concert sound system." Just like that, we were allies.

Browne stepped quickly toward us from centre stage, grabbed a lit king-size cigarette from an ash tray sitting on an amp, took a drag, and returned to his position as the audience cheered from the shadows. The opening chords of “Take it Easy” swelled to life. This was the last of the encore medley. The tail end of the show I’d missed in order to almost interview Bonnie Raitt.