Dresden Calling: 10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (The Liner Notes)
Before There Was Iraq, There Was Rock. Before There Was Gitmo, There Was Guitar. And Before He Was the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld Was the Secretary of Rocking Your Fucking World!
by John Taraborelli
If chaos and aggression are the roots of great rock 'n' roll, then the album you're currently holding in your hands must be the greatest of all time. The energy, the passion and the senseless mass extermination that went into these ten songs are what make Dresden Calling so transcendent. Rock operas are always a hard sell to both fans and critics alike, let alone rock operas made by two warmongering Republican bureaucrats. That these two men would make rock 'n' roll history is the kind of legend that makes the music so vital.After years of serving in various Republican administrations and the defense industry, current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld decided to revisit his lifelong dream of fronting a rock band. Rummy and His Bundle of Rods began as a San Diego based punk band playing loud, fast and hard-mostly NWA covers mixed in with a couple of originals like "Shock and Awe" (which would years later provide the mantra for an invasion of Iraq), and "More Blood for Oil." The songs were short and sloppy, the band largely inept, but it was obvious from the very beginning that Rummy was an explosive guitarist and had the potential to be a topnotch songwriter-if only he had the right producer to lend a guiding hand.
After two critically acclaimed albums in 1992 and 1993, both of which failed to make a dent commercially, Bundle of Rods would find the man to help them paint their masterpiece, but not before much turmoil, infighting and mysterious violent death.
The right man for the job would turn out to be none other than notorious statesman/war criminal Henry Kissinger. Though Kissinger was known more for incinerating Cambodian peasants than studio wizardry, he did not come to Rumsfeld without credentials. During the Carter administration, when Kissinger's statecraft was not in heavy demand, he cut some disco sides with legendary Paramount studio chief Bob Evans under the name Kokaine Kiss. Though they were never huge crossover hits, several of the singles developed a cult following among the gay Latino underground. One record specifically-"Rice Paddy Inferno"-became a staple at Larry Levan's famed Paradise Garage. Kissinger had also helped Idi Amin cut some demos which were largely derivative of Grand Funk Railroad and failed to generate the kind of major label buzz for which the Ugandan dictator had hoped.
By the time Rummy and His Bundle of Rods came calling, Kissinger had settled into the rather low-profile life of a pimp in New Orleans' French Quarter. While this trade earned the former Secretary of State a handsome payday with a minimum of effort, it lacked the zest of international aggression; he longed for a new challenge.
Around the same time, Rumsfeld was preparing his band for their major label debut. The troubles began when the front man had to fire his drummer just days before studio sessions began, a harbinger of much worse trouble ahead.
Unfortunately, the two principal players never got to enjoy the success as a team; by the time the album was released, the Rumsfeld/Kissinger partnership was beyond repair. Even their assassination attempts against each other were only halfhearted cries for help.
"I found out the sumbitch was working for Al Qaeda. At the time I figured he was drumming for another band and I wouldn't accept anything less than his undivided attention. It wasn't until much later I found out Al Qaeda wasn't a band," Rumsfeld shockingly admits. "If I'd have known I woulda kept him. Helluva drummer. Never did keep track of him after that. Hope he stayed out of trouble."
The band had a new drummer in a matter of weeks. "Session hacks are crawling all over L.A.," recalls the Secretary. "In the right neighborhood you can get a bass player free with a full tank of premium unleaded."
Finding the right producer proved to be a more arduous task. Rumsfeld's label, Interscope, first paired the band with Steve Albini, the notoriously difficult producer behind Nirvana's In Utero and The Pixies' Surfer Rosa, which quickly proved disastrous. After just two weeks, Albini quit, declaring that he was unwilling to work with "a bunch of pseudo-fascist shit mongers ham-fistedly aping second rate Dead Kennedys songs." He proceeded to bad mouth the band, the project and the label in any music publication willing to listen for the next several months, at one point going so far as to impugn the honor of Interscope head Jimmy Iovine's mother.
The band burned though producers at an alarming rate, including some failed sessions with legendary Beach Boys recluse Brian Wilson which dissolved when the eccentric mastermind demanded that the band play "silent music for the dolphins so that they can soar among the eagles."
Finally, Rumsfeld arrived at the conclusion that his old friend Henry Kissinger was the only man fit to sit behind the boards on this project. He told MTV's Kurt Loder, "I couldn't imagine any one else giving me the sound I wanted. I heard that stuff he did with Idi Amin and it was amazing-like Thin Lizzy meets Surrealistic Pillow era Jefferson Airplane."
Iovine protested at first, but then, frustrated by a lack of progress and finding it difficult to state his case with the barrel of a Kalashnikov assault rifle in his mouth, relented. Kissinger would prove harder to convince.
"I was sulking over a drink in my favorite Vieux Carre dive," the cold, inhuman former diplomat recalled, "when I heard gunshots and screaming outside. Everybody hit the deck, but I didn't move; I'd recognize that warning shot any where. I had an appletini waiting for Ol' Rummy before he even got in the door."
Despite his desire to leave the flesh trade behind, Kissinger was hesitant to get back into the music business: "It's a tough racket, you know. Compared to your average major label A&R department, the White House situation room is like a Zen monastery. I once saw (Mountain bassist and producer for Cream) Felix Pappalardi make Zbigniew Brzeweski cry like a little girl whose goldfish died."
"I knew he'd be a natch," Rumsfeld told a shoeless vagrant in 1996, "but the seedy side of the Big Easy had sucked the life right outta Kiss. When I looked in his eyes I couldn't find the old Napalm Hank. At first I didn't think I was gonna be able to snap him out of it, but then I put my hand on his shoulder, stared at him straight on and said, ‘I wanna do to rock 'n' roll what you did to Cambodia.' Boy, I tell ya. The fire in his eyes when I said that coulda scorched a thousand of them commie slants."
"I found out the sumbitch was working for Al Qaeda...It wasn't until much later I found out Al Qaeda wasn't a band," Rumsfeld shockingly admits. "If I'd have known I woulda kept him."
From the beginning, the Rumsfeld/Kissinger sessions were fraught with the kind of destructive energy that can create a truly great work of art only once before it causes a total disintegration; the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks is perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon. Rumsfeld came in with two guitar-only demos for an album tentatively titled Death by Shred. The first, "Early Morning Napalm," was scrapped early on. The other, the title track, was later expanded into a three-part suite for the final cut of the album; Death by Shred would not, however, remain the album's title for long.
After two new demos were laid down-"$600 Hammer of the Gods," a charging, fuzz-toned blast about Rumsfeld's days as a defense contractor, and "Mujahadeen Motherfucker!", which resurrected the bridge from "Early Morning Napalm"-the working project title became Egyptology, which both men later concluded was "a bit too Sun Ra."
The first sign of the partnership's eventual unraveling came during the session for "Contra-Dick-Shun," which would later be cut down for a single release. An explosive argument erupted when Kissinger instructed the bass player to back Rumsfeld's vocals on the chorus with a "sha-la-la" even though the demo clearly employed a "sha-na-na." The band shambled through half the song before Rummy stopped and strangled the bass player with his own instrument cable, not so much to punish the portly musician for his insolence as to spite the producer.
Kissinger responded in kind. Just to let the band know he meant business, the producer, now inexplicably sporting a monocle at all times, had a CIA-trained military junta overthrow the government of a small banana republic and install a reactionary puppet regime whose first act was to order the seizure and subsequent destruction of all Bundle of Rods albums. This was all accomplished with one phone call before the band returned from a lunch break/cocaine run. The song eventually appeared on the album with the "sha-la-la" vocal intact.
No one can say for sure when this modest little punk album became a full blown rock opera, or whose idea it was, because everyone who can either died of "natural causes" or "complications during surgery." (It was a root canal.) Both Rumsfeld and Kissinger would later claim credit for the concept. At that point the working title became Sha-Na-Na (Nanny Nanny Boo Boo)-an obvious taunt to the increasingly controlling producer; the release date was pushed back six months.
Kissinger demanded that a mandolin player brought in to play three notes on the bridge of one song be recorded in the bilge of a Russian merchant ship anchored in a Norwegian fjord, the raid and seizure of which sparked tensions on the floor of the U.N. Security Council.
The label wasn't sure if it was creating a monster hit, or simply a monster. The behavior of the two principal creative forces was growing more erratic, irrational and appallingly violent by the day. As Kissinger's megalomania spiraled out of control he began keeping a 48-piece string section on call 24 hours a day and would only drink Polish-made potato vodka from the ass-crack of a thirteen-year-old French girl. In an incident typical of their tempestuous relationship, Rumsfeld had the girl kidnapped and drugged so that her ass could be surgically removed and sold as food to pirates. Kissinger, in a rare moment of charity, bought the girl a prosthetic ass, but the vodka never tasted the same.
As production grew more disastrous personally and financially, the chaos seemed to be a boon to creativity. With Kissinger growing ever more tyrannical in his role of visionary producer, Rumsfeld responded by acting out the spoiled rock star role-showing up late for studio sessions, if at all. One day, the singer showed up at 10 p.m. for a noon session only to find the studio deserted except for his band mates, all of whom had been shot in the back of the head. He flipped on the master reel playback to discover that Kissinger had overdubbed theremin on every take of the newest song, a minimal punk-funk number tentatively titled "Bongo Bombin'." (Eventually the song was retitled "Dance to the Drums of War (Parts I-IV)" and included on the album with the theremin left intact on the breakdown.)
Meanwhile, rumors were running rampant that the two madmen in the studio were going to bankrupt the label. They were told to have a finished track list and demos within a month or the money would be shut off. Rumsfeld called the label's bluff and production was shut down-for only two days. In a rare instance of harmony between artist and producer, they quickly replaced the label's money and then some, with funds funneled through a CIA front business in Miami-a laundromat that served as a weapons supermarket for Latin American military dictators.
The unlimited funding only encouraged Kissinger and Rumsfeld to indulge their worst impulses. Kissinger demanded that a mandolin player brought in to play three notes on the bridge of one song be recorded in the bilge of a Russian merchant ship anchored in a Norwegian fjord, the raid and seizure of which sparked tensions on the floor of the U.N. Security Council. The poor mandolin player was callously left behind on the boat to be tortured and executed by Russian intelligence.
Rumsfeld: "I couldn't imagine any one else giving me the sound I wanted. I heard that stuff [Kissinger] did with Idi Amin and it was amazing-like Thin Lizzy meets Surrealistic Pillow era Jefferson Airplane."
For his part, Rumsfeld refused to continue recording until a Chechen warlord was smuggled into the country to play harpsichord, which could only be arranged through a deal involving the sale of shoulder mounted rocket launchers to the Taliban, which were later used to attack a U.S. embassy. Rumsfeld fired the warlord after one take and demanded to know "who the hell came up with the idea of a harpsichord in the first fuckin' place?"
Worse yet, the conflict was not limited to heated personal exchanges and collateral executions; both men resorted to eviscerating public outbursts. In an interview with Spin's Chuck Klosterman, Rumsfeld claimed to have pictures of Kissinger being tag-team sodomized by former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and Rush bassist Geddy Lee (not true), that the whole album was going to be scrapped because Kissinger's production was "razor-thin, second-rate Bowie hack work" (true, except that there were actually only two complete songs at the time), that he was working on a note-for-note cover of "Stairway to Heaven"-"only better" (mostly true-it wasn't better), and that his records were "bigger in the Middle East than Muhammed" (patently untrue). The version of the feature that went to publication included a lengthy diatribe by Klosterman making the case that Rumsfeld's forthcoming record would make the perfect companion soundtrack to Point Break, "the absolute greatest Keanu Reeves/Patrick Swayze movie ever made."
For his part, Kissinger, in an interview with NME, claimed to have come up with the rock opera concept, written all the songs, and played every instrument (save for the ill-fated mandolin), adding that he had invented the sock and "it was only those damned heathen Indians" who expanded the concept to two socks "as tribute to Vishnu." He concluded the interview with a candid confession that he had murdered legendary producer Phil Spector, cremated his body, and snorted the ashes so that he "might embody the essence of the Wall of Sound." When an obviously coke-addled Kissinger was reminded that Spector was indeed alive and well, he made the bold accusation that Brian Wilson had paid the interviewer to say that.
Finally, the album was released in April of 1996 to much fanfare-over a year late, millions over budget and with a body count rumored to be anywhere between 500 and 15,000, depending on the definition of a "death related to the album." No one could have anticipated the stratospheric success, which came almost instantly: debut at number one on the billboard chart, gold in a month, platinum in three. Dresden Calling was the most successful rock album since Nirvana's seminal Nevermind five years prior, and certainly made more of a cultural impact.
The final product was a sprawling, grandiose rock opera loosely based around the shadowy links between the construction of the pyramids, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Elvis Presley's much revered 1968 comeback special. Ten tracks, the shortest clocking in at just over six minutes, the longest running over twenty-eight, were strung together seamlessly over two discs. Rumor had it that when both discs were played simultaneously, with the second one playing backwards, that the instructions for constructing a low grade, backpack sized nuclear weapon could be discerned along with the name and number of a good plutonium supplier. The FBI investigated and congressional subcommittee hearings were held, but nothing came of the controversy, which was compounded by further rumors that the whole affair was simply a publicity stunt engineered by CIA black ops; if so, it worked swimmingly.
When all was said and done, Dresden Calling sold over 8 million copies, topped countless year end critics lists, and was nominated for seven Grammys, including the coveted Album of the Year. Unfortunately, the two principal players never got to enjoy the success as a team; by the time the album was released, the Rumsfeld/Kissinger partnership was beyond repair. Even their assassination attempts against each other were only halfhearted cries for help.
The runaway success of Dresden Calling culminated on Grammy night in 1997. Rumsfeld arrived in a gold-plated hovercraft, crushing several bystanders to death, including Joan Rivers. On his way into the auditorium, a cadre of heavily armed Playboy Bunnies dropped rose petals in Rumsfeld's path. He wore a sequined red bow tie, a faded Black Flag t-shirt, and assless leather chaps. When he won the first of four awards that night, the newly minted King of Rock strode triumphantly to the stage and declared, "I smell Third World cooter." He concluded his acceptance by informing presenter Alanis Morrisette that he would "mouth fuck [her] 'til [her] ears bled."
Kissinger meanwhile, had made plans to attend the ceremony arm-in-arm with old friend Bob Evans, but in the end was too crestfallen over the disintegration of his friendship with Rumsfeld; he canceled at the last minute, saddling Evans with a rather sizable prostitute bill. In the end, the studio mastermind watched the telecast from the sad comfort of his favorite French Quarter haunt accompanied by then-girlfriend Courtney Love. Even when accepting the final award of the night for Album of the Year, Rumsfeld failed to thank the producer who made it all possible. Legend has it that Kissinger watched steely-eyed and emotionless from a corner booth, speaking only once to inquire, "Who gives a fuck about a god damn Grammy?"