With each new release I made the rounds of whichever radio station would have me. The easiest station to call on was WILT (see chapter 6) because they let nearly anybody on their shows. I had become a regular guest on Rockin’ Rickey’s Rock&Roll Rumble and I also appeared on Blunder Bus; WILT’s local music program. Eddie Hass, one of the Blunder Bus DJs, mentioned another show on their schedule that I should try to contact. It was a very eclectic program called Let Me Live which featured everything from experimental Prog Rock and Doo-wop to Delta Blues. The show’s host was a man named Nelson Slater.
Eddie gave me Nelson’s phone number and, a few days later, I called him. We talked for a while on the phone. He said he knew me and that we had met several times in the past. I had no memory of this. When mentioning the possibility of appearing on his radio show, he was very open to the idea and we immediately decided on a date. The calm tone in his voice was offset by an unrelenting inability to focus. He wandered from subject to subject in a directionless manner. Every time I thought he was coming to some kind of conclusion, the conversation went in an entirely different direction. After a while, the aimless stream-of-consciousness ramblings became almost endearing.
Arriving at the radio station on the day of the show, I immediately recognized him upon entering the studio. We were never introduced but I had seen him hanging around the local music scene for years. He was an older man, perhaps in his late 50s; gaunt and good looking in a kind of Germanic way. There was a woman with him in the studio who was also gaunt and good looking in a Germanic way. She was in charge of arranging the records he played. They were both graciously unassuming and my appearance went fairly well. Nelson seemed to genuinely enjoy my then newly released Grandview CD and the songs I performed on his show. The eccentric quality I had heard over the phone was still there as was the neurotic charm.
Driving home, I suddenly remembered my first encounter with Nelson. Back when I was shooting pictures of social galas I went to a party at a trendy new photography studio in town. The event drew a lot people from the visual arts and music community. As I wandered through the party, I bumped into a man who was dancing by himself. He turned around and, seeing my camera, asked me what I was doing. When I explained, he began to relate his own experiences with photography. He then told me a story about one of his daughters: how, only a few weeks prior, she had been kidnapped by several friends. He got a call from her but she was not permitted to reveal her whereabouts. Leaving immediately to search for her, he used the moon and a host of mystical channels as guides along the way. Reading messages in the star constellations, he eventually tracked her down at a truck stop outside of Birmingham, Alabama. When I asked about the mystical channels, he implied that they had something to do with alien contacts and a government plot to undermine the thought patterns of the electorate. The conversation continued and became more and more irrational with each new revelation. He never told me his name at the time but, after appearing on his radio show, I knew this was the same person.
Sometime after this, I learned that Nelson once had a recording contract in the 1970s and released an LP called Wild Angel. It was produced by Lou Reed, who also played guitar and keyboards on the album. Nelson and Lou were roommates in college. Nelson credits himself for helping Lou’s musical career because it was his guitar and amp that Lou used when they were in school together. In 1979, Lou released an album called The Bells, the opening track of which is reputed to be about Nelson. The song, entitled Stupid Man, contains this regrettable couplet:
Stupid man
Hitch-hiking out of a good life in Saskatchewan
Wild Angel LP by Nelson Slater
Years after my appearance on Let Me Live, a friend of mine named James Miller showed me a picture he found at a flea market. It was a weathered, old promotional shot of a Rockabilly band from the ’50s called the Jeepers. They were dressed in leather jackets, T-shirts and roughed-up jeans. The photograph was taken in what appeared to be a dilapidated Southern juke joint. As I glanced at the image, James pointed to one of the members of the band and told me to look closely. I immediately recognized what appeared to be the distinctive face of a very young Nelson Slater. Doubting my eyes, James explained that he had asked him about the shot. It took a while before Nelson said anything but, after some prodding, he told James about his years with the Jeepers. As a teenager, traveling the South and Midwest, playing Rock & Roll along side the likes of Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and Elvis. James then said that he paused for a moment in his recollection, looked skyward, and inexplicably started a long monolog about the value of practicing Buddhism in the Modern world.
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© 2014 by Maurice Mattei
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