Gardner Remembers: the lost tapes Read online

The veracity of the following has been called into question. That the people who would know, the people who were actually there, all three voices heard here, are all dead makes proving it somewhat difficult. Buddy Gardner died, famously, of a heroin/pill/alcohol overdose; Lorelei Enos died only a few years ago by her own hand, after an incident, which was kept out of the papers because of the famous talk show host involved. And, Creole Myers, the interviewer, died just last year of cancer.

  But, if you listen, that is, if you can read between the lines here, you’ll find, not only an extraordinary document, but one that could only come from the personalities involved. The voices are theirs. The story is theirs, even as it belongs to a generation.

  Let us hearken back, briefly, to those days when music was being made because it was important, because genius finds its own level, because people needed godhead, if that’s not overstating it. Before the drugs, the recriminations, the lawsuits, the doubting of the very fiber of what the 60s meant to Memphis, to these sweet souls herein, and to the world at large. Let us reimagine it, if we can, in all its efflorescence. In all its pied beauty. Let’s hear again, “Turntable Poison” as if for the first time and marvel at the voice that said, “We are all naked.” That said, “Love me for my limo but love me all the way.” And, that said, presciently, “Death is only a way station, between West Memphis and the coast.”

  These interviews were done in three sessions in early 1973, in San Francisco, by Creole Myers, at Buddy Gardner’s home. Lorelei Enos was in and out. One of the startling revelations found in these tapes is that Lorelei was with Buddy until the end. Rumors had her abandoning him after they had left Memphis for Los Angeles. Stories circulated back home about her, unflattering stories all, about her working in the pornographic film industry, about her fixing Buddy that final fix, about her leaving him for a slick-talking Hollywood casting agent. What is made clear here is her devotion to him and his to her. In this way they resemble John Lennon and Yoko Ono, another vastly misunderstood couple. The tapes are in remarkably good shape, with only a few elisions, a few minutes of silence.

  I knew Buddy Gardner and I was still startled by much that is found here. It’s his voice alright, but there’s an anger there, a tension, that surprised me. Buddy Gardner, when I knew him was a sweet, soft-spoken man, a man driven by ambition, sure, but, underneath that, there was a humility and a human heart .

  It’s all here in these tapes, so enough said. Three weeks after these interviews were concluded, Buddy Gardner was found dead in his home, with a needle in his arm. Lorelei had disappeared. These tapes somehow also disappeared until 1999, when they were found in a stockroom in an abandoned studio in Los Angeles by a technician there who, with some heaven-sent Extra Sensitive Perception, sent them to Camel Jeremy Eros, c/o City Lights Bookstore, where for a while I was taking my mail, while recovering from a broken relationship, one that emasculated me, silenced me, did me up a treat. These tapes were a godsend—they took me out of myself, out of the self-pity I was wallowing in. Many thanks to John Wender, editor extraordinaire, who recognized what we had here and ran them in his celebrated periodical. Hence, they ran first, almost in the form represented here, in three installments in Big City Magazine.