Hit and Myth: Searching for Steve Forbert

A YEAR AGO Steve Forbert gave his first concert in Atlanta as opening act for Nicolette Larson. Tonight he’s headlining at the 875-seat Agora Ballroom, and his single, “Romeo’s Tune,” is all over Atlanta radio and bulleting into the Top Twenty on the national charts, with his second album, Jackrabbit Slim, not far behind. Still, the local CBS records representative has been gripped with mild hysteria all morning. Last year he took Forbert for a radio interview at powerful WKLS-FM, and the lanky young singer/songwriter from Meridian, Mississippi, proved to have almost nothing to say. Fortunately, he’d brought a guitar along, and when the interview bombed, he played and sang a couple of his tunes live on the air. It was a nice touch. But despite the CBS man’s earnest pleas, it won’t happen again. “Steve does not play live when he visits radio stations,” says Danny Fields, his co-manager, with finality. “He’s learned to do interviews.”

In the limo on the way over to KLS, this earlier exchange seems to have been forgotten. The young, bushy-haired, pleasantly garrulous CBS representative is pointing out local landmarks. Fields, who was an official “company freak” for several record labels during the halcyon Sixties and, more recently, a friend and manager of the Ramones, is slumped in the back. Just off a plane, his metabolism is still attuned to New York City. Fields wears his world-weariness like a badge of honor, unlike the twenty-five-year-old Forbert, who’s being so enthusiastically upbeat, he seems even younger than he is. We’ve been chatting amiably, during lunch and on the drive over, about Howlin’ Wolf, David Bowie, obscure rockabilly singles and Apocalypse Now.

WKLS is perched high atop a spotless glass building that’s been planted, like a tube rose, in a landscaped office park. Forbert, whose faded Levi jacket, corduroy shirt and jeans stand out like a sore thumb in these New South surroundings, betrays no nervousness. The same can’t be said for the disc jockey, Bob Bailey, who’s taping the interview for later editing and airing but still can’t seem to get beyond a rehash of Forbert’s storybook success. Maybe you can’t blame him; the Steve Forbert saga is irresistible. At age twenty-one, this son of the deepest South, heir to the tradition of the great songster and fellow Meridian native Jimmie Rodgers, chucks his dead-end truck-driving job and heads for Greenwich Village. Armed with an acoustic guitar, a harmonica in a rack and a rapidly expanding sheaf of original songs, he gets his start singing for spare change in Grand Central Station. After working his way up to the folk clubs, he’s discovered and makes a debut album that wins lavish critical praise. His second album becomes a best seller. Country boy hits big city, makes good.

It’s a terrific American myth, and like most myths, it contains no more than a grain or two of truth. Steve Forbert is no country boy. Meridian is the second-largest city in Mississippi, and though he knows the countryside, Forbert’s natural habitat is manicured lawns, modest, single-family houses and shopping-center malls. He came to Greenwich Village with his acoustic guitar and harp, not because he was a folk poet but because he was sick and tired of playing cover versions of the latest hits in Meridian rock & roll bands. One of those bands included a bassist whose grandfather was Jimmie Rodgers’ brother-in-law, but the Singing Brakeman wasn’t exactly a guiding light for Meridian’s young rockers. “We never talked about him,” Forbert admits with disarming candor. “We would talk about, say, the Monkees.” In New York, Forbert was discovered not by folk scene habitués but by punk aficionado Danny Fields; he was performing at the punk-rock mecca CBGB’s, where his driving rhythms and sheer energy helped compensate for his lack of decibels. And as soon as he finished his first album, he set about putting together an electric backup band.

Nevertheless, that first album, Alive on Arrival, perpetuated the myth, and Steve Burgh’s spare production put Forbert right up front. He attacked his acoustic guitar fiercely, took raw, careening harmonica solos, and sang in a manner nobody had heard before — hoarse, almost whispering at times, but with a sure command of texture and nuance and a sense of high drama. The songs seemed to be autobiographical. In “Goin’ Down to Laurel” and “Steve Forbert’s Midsummer Night’s Toast,” he celebrated himself and his South while thumbing his nose at the dead-end jobs and insensitive people who’d impelled him to leave. On the second side of the album he chronicled his early adventures in the big city. Alive on Arrival was so convincing, many fans were shocked when Jackrabbit Slim appeared, with its full band sound, gospelish backup vocals, and straightforward love lyrics and third-person domestic sketches.