In Heaven Everything is Fine

I had almost forgotten Peter Ivers. In Los Angeles, and in our industry in particular, people come, some stay, some leave and some fade away. Very few like Peter are killed in a murder unsolved after 25 years. Los Angeles adopts and cultivates people, sometimes a person like Lucy Fisher who worked her way up the corporate chain to be now near the top of Sony Pictures, but in those days she was Peter’s girlfriend, working at something or other while Peter was the center of a rising set of talent and on a track to what passes for greatness here.

I am reminded of Peter by a new book In Heaven Everything is Fine by Josh Frank. Frank is something of a punk rock cultist, and in his writings about punk rock disparate threads led back to Peter Ivers, including the song written by Peter which is the book title, performed variously in the 80's by The Pixies, Devo, and the Radiator Lady in “Eraserhead”. Frank followed the threads, and his book brings back memories of a unique personality and the sometimes tragedies all around us.

Muddy Waters once said that Peter Ivers was the world’s greatest living harmonica player, the bluesman not without irony bestowing that crown on a white Classics major from Harvard. When I told Peter that I had seen Paul Butterfield perform, to let him know that I was a harmonica aficionado, he pulled a harp out of his pocket and played me a riff, and he was way beyond Butterfield. In 1980 his LP “Terminal Love” sounded to me only cacophonous, but when I listened to “Alpha Centauri” again this week it is haunting and nothing but way, way ahead of its time. Peter’s music made it to movies from “Grand Theft Auto” to “Airplane” and he was the face of punk rock on late night cable TV before anyone had heard of either punk rock or cable TV.

Frank’s book has the panache of name-dropping, an Olympic sport in Los Angeles which may sell copies. A who’s who of Hollywood, the merging of film and music in pre-MTV days, Peter’s enormous and multi-faceted talent bumping along for years without commercial success, leading to hard times and then murdered in his downtown loft by an unknown assailant. But for the first few years here Peter was ambivalent about commercial success. With one chance in hand he threw it away, opening for Fleetwood Mac and wearing only a diaper, the audience booed him off the stage. He did not have to do that, and it cost him dearly.

I can only say what I know. Peter Ivers was a joy. With a wry but genuine smile he never had an unkind word for anyone, and he bridged the chasms between the most different kinds of people - artists, nerds, jocks, straights, gays, suits, black, white, whoever. He had the quality often attributed to President Clinton that when Peter spoke to you he made you feel that you were the only person in the world. I knew more of his personal qualities than his art, and thinking of the loss to us all has been a little difficult.

In Heaven Everything is Fine is not memorable as literature. Peter Ivers was memorable, and I thank Josh Frank for assembling the material and helping us to remember. www.peterivers.com