Ry Cooder

2006-05-15

A few months ago, I was at a benefit fund-raiser for an artist whose studio had burned down. The place was packed and the cocktails were sloshing when the excellent D.J. (Eddie Ruscha—if you live in L.A. and need a D.J., he's the guy) cranked up "Memo to Turner," the fantastic Stones song featured in the 1970 Nicholas Roeg/ Donald Cammell film Performance. The thing that makes this diabolically hip song (originally recorded by the Stones, though credited to Mick Jagger alone on the soundtrack) such a killer is the slide guitar hook provided by Ry Cooder—this song is all about that sharp, sleek slide guitar sound, and I've loved it for decades.<

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Column Archives

Q&A With Steve Jones
04 11 2006

Something to Say: Arthur's Jay Babcock
03 06 2006

Kate Bush's Aerial
02 06 2006

Beth Orton's Comfort Of Strangers
01 13 2006

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12 09 2005

Dick Cavett's Rock Icons
11 07 2005

Tomorrow Knows: Nothing New in Oldies
09 12 2005

Ed Ruscha's Then And Now
08 09 2005

Interview With David Lynch
07 08 2005

Give a Damn, Take a Damn: MLK vs. Enron
05 05 2005

Madeleine Peyroux Carries the Torch
03 06 2005

Why I Move Records
02 11 2005

The Counsel of Elders
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Dan Hicks: Frowning Down the Silly Songs
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Genius Gets Weird: Bob Dylan's Chronicle
11 10 2004

Lightning Love: Remembering James Baldwin
10 05 2004

No Shrink Wrap: Lenny Bruce's Let The Buyer Beware
09 02 2004

Never Mind the Bollocks
08 09 2004

Interview With Exene Cervenka
07 12 2004

Kristine McKenna’s work as a journalist began in the late ’70s, when she covered the Los Angeles punk scene for various domestic and international publications. During the ’80s and ’90s she wrote art, film, and music criticism, and profiled directors, musicians, and visual artists for a variety of publications, including New York Rocker, Artforum, Rolling Stone, and the Los Angeles Times. She lives in Los Angeles and is presently working on a biography of the artist Wallace Berman. She wrote the liner notes to Rhino’s expanded X releases Los Angeles, Wild Gift, Under The Big Black Sun, More Fun In The New World, Ain’t Love Grand, and See How We Are. In 2001 a collection of her interviews, Book Of Changes, was published by Fantagraphics, who will release a second volume of interviews, Talk To Her, this fall. She is presently co-curating Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & his Circle, an exhibition that begins a tour of six U.S. museums in September of 2005. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by D.A.P.