The Ryan Adams Dilemma

I’ve never been a big fan of R Kelly.
I can’t name two of his songs.

Michael Jackson? I’m more of a Jackson Five guy.
Sure, I like “Man in the Mirror”. And “Black or White” was pretty cool.
But I never learned the “Thriller” dance. I didn’t go crazy over “Beat It”.
I didn’t care if the kid in “Billie Jean” was his or not.

Even though I’m of the “classic rock” generation, Eric Clapton never captivated me.
For whatever reason.

When the stories came out – about R Kelly holding young girls captive in his house, or about Michael hosting sleepovers with young boys at Neverland, or Clapton’s anti-vax rants – I cringed.
I shuddered in pain for the people they hurt. The stories were hard to listen to.
But ultimately, it didn’t change my listening habits any.

I’ve never had to decide whether or not to support an artist, after some abhorrent behavior.

Until now.

*          *          *

On June 11 Ryan Adams released Big Colors, the 18^th album of his career.

I wanted, so much, to like it.
I wanted, so much, for him to use this as an occasion to apologize – genuinely – for what he’d done.
I wanted, so much, for him to come out of this a better person.

This clip is why I so badly want him to succeed, to stay with us, to keep contributing to our musical landscape.

It’s from the BBC’s “Songwriter’s Series,” where they showcase three singer-songwriters, letting them trade off songs and stories. 
Ryan is matched up with Janis Ian and Neil Finn.
Janis wrote the iconic songs “At Seventeen” and “Society’s Child”.
Neil forged a glorious legacy of pop masterpieces with Crowded House.

Watch Janis and Neil in this clip, how they gaze in shock and amazement as Ryan sings “Come Pick Me Up” (from his first album, Heartbreaker).
They sit in rapt attention, sneaking glances at each other, then mouth the words silently as Ryan sings, his face hidden behind his hair.
They are two of the finest songwriters of their generation, in awe of the finest songwriter of the next generation.

*          *          *

The New York Times story exploded in February 2019:
“Ryan Adams Dangled Success. Women Say They Paid a Price.”
It was heartbreaking.

Mostly, it’s heartbreaking for the stories of the young women whose musical careers Ryan Adams hijacked, as they describe it.

You listen to his former wife, Mandy Moore (yes, the star of popular TV series “This is Us”) tell how he promised to record songs that they wrote together – but never did.
How he mocked her, “You’re not a real musician, because you don’t play an instrument.”

After six albums as a teen pop sensation, Mandy had hoped that Ryan would help her find her way to the next level as a musician.
She never released an album in the seven years they were married. (She finally did in 2020, four years after their divorce.)

You listen to Phoebe Bridgers, a rising star in the folk-indie realm.
She tells how Ryan convinced her to let him produce her debut album. She was 20 – he was 33.
His offer soon led to a short, torrid affair, during which she says Ryan became strangely possessive, and obsessive, wanting to know her whereabouts at all times, and threatening suicide if she didn’t respond to him immediately.
When she broke it off, she says, he broke off his commitment to her music.
After reaching what she thought was an understanding, she went on tour, opening for him. He asked her to bring something to his room – when Phoebe entered, Ryan was waiting for her, naked.

You listen to Courtney Jaye, another talented young singer, tell of a similar experience, and how it squashed her soul.
“It made me just not want to make music.”

You listen to the story of an unnamed 14-year-old girl – yes, a girl – who played bass, and whom Ryan befriended over social media, for several years.
How he begged her for proof of an older age, as he started sexualizing their conversations.
You see the texts he sent her, cautioning her, “If people knew they would say I was like R Kelley lol.”
That’s what got the FBI involved.
(There have been reports that the FBI has since dropped the investigation.)

Just as heartbreaking was the reaction from Ryan’s female fans.
There were plenty of women, of different ages, who told stories of how Ryan’s music helped them through a tough time, or helped give them hope.
Now, they didn’t know what to think.

Tamara Lindeman, singer for the Canadian band The Weather Station, put it succinctly after she heard the story: “Having to perpetually question if a potential collaborator is interested in you musically or personally is an enormous and unspoken barrier for women in music.”

When I hear these stories about Ryan, it’s horrifying – but not entirely shocking.
It’s like getting a call from the police when your reckless kid brother ends up in jail.
You love him – but you knew the call was coming, someday.
With Ryan, it just seemed like a matter of time.
But it still broke your heart.

*          *          *

I can be guilty of hyperbole – but I don’t think I was overstating things earlier.
I’d put Ryan Adams up against any singer-songwriter of the last 40 years.
For my money, only Steve Earle and Jason Isbell approach him, in the Americana world.

But don’t take my word for it.

Ask Elton John.
Sir Elton called Ryan’s debut solo album, Heartbreaker, “The most beautiful album of 2000,” and used it as inspiration for his album, Songs from the West Coast.
The two of them became friends and performed together on CMT Networks “Crossroads”, burning up versions of Ryan’s “Answering Bell” and “Firecracker“.

Ask Tim McGraw, who covered “When the Star Go Blue,” or U2’s Bono, who covered that same song with The Corrs.

Ask all the alt-country kids who raised themselves on Adams and his early band, Whiskeytown, and still pull out their album, Stranger’s Almanac, like a birth certificate.
Listen to Whiskeytown’s “16 Days,” and tell me it’s not a masterpiece, as it climbs from quiet introspection to country-rock rave-up.

Better yet, listen to his first two solo albums, Heartbreaker and Gold.
See if you don’t fall in love, like I did.

Heartbreaker is the critics’ favorite. Ryan has called it his “Dylan album,” half tongue-in-cheek.
It’s not a bad comparison, actually.
Right from the start, he rips into “To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, To Be High)”, like a cocaine-fueled update of Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” driven by David Rawlings’ skittering guitar and backing vocals.
(Almost as much fun is the short argument that precedes the song, where Adams and Rawlings have an inane debate over whether a certain Morrissey song is on the Viva Hate album or not.)

No matter what you’re doing, “Winding Wheel” will stop you in your tracks, with its beautiful, simple guitar picking and yearning melody.
Like so many of Ryan’s songs, its lyrics have a childlike playfulness, combined with harsh self-evaluation.

“I feel just like a map/Without a single place to go of interest
And I’m further North than South/ And if I could shut my mouth, she’d probably like it.”

As with Dylan, you aren’t always sure what he’s saying – but you get what he’s talking about.

Listen to the opening strains of “Damn, Sam”.
The whirr that you hear at the beginning of the song is the tape starting up, as legendary producer Ethan Johns frantically reaches over to turn on the tape, after Ryan announces, “Hey Eth… I think I got something here.”
And Ethan decided to go with that original take on the album.

That’s just what Ryan did. Popped out masterpieces on the spot.
He was just unbelievably, prolifically gifted.

So prolific, in fact, that by the time he was recording his second album, Gold, he had more songs than could fit on an album. So he figured on a double album.
His record company disagreed, and stuffed 16 of the songs on one disc, and then released a “bonus CD”.
He growled at his record company for “fucking my fans over and making them pay extra for a record that I wanted to be on a double album.”

Gold is how I discovered him.
“New York, New York,” was the first song of his I heard.
Inadvertently, it was the closest thing to a hymn after the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center with its refrain, “I’ll always love you, New York.”
(The video was filmed in front of the twin towers, four days before they disappeared from the landscape forever.)

Even at 21 songs, Gold still holds up well.
The first seven songs are a top-down convertible ride through Americana, veering from ’70s-style rockers like “Firecracker” and “Rescue Blues” to quiet meditations like “La Cienega Just Smiled” and “When the Stars Go Blue”.
I’d put those first seven songs up against anything.

The critics were less enthusiastic about his second album.
One review pointed out, “Ryan Adams is so uniquely talented – why does he try to be so many other people on Gold?”
To a certain extent, they were right – the chorus of “Answering Bell” uses a pretty straight take on the familiar walk-down riff from The Band’s “The Weight.”
You can go through the album, cherry-picking homages to ’70s singers: Van Morrison, Paul Simon, even Glen Campbell.
But I always felt, Ryan did it so well, and brought so much of his own heart to it, that he pulled it off.

It was a criticism that has followed Ryan throughout – he is a master chameleon.
He often sets about mimicking bands, or albums, and is quite open about it.

In 2015, he dropped all pretense, and covered Taylor Swift’s hit album, 1989.
Song for song.

After he and Mandy Moore divorced, he put together his Prisoner album, listening to Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love repeatedly, and openly emulating it.
You can’t blame him. Tunnel of Love is one of the best breakup albums ever, along with Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks.
But it was too referential, too Springsteeny. I mean, he’s got a song called “Outbound Train,” for Christ’s sake.

*          *          *

There are ways to recover from something like this. (Ask Hugh Grant.)
Most of the ways out start with a sincere, genuine apology – an “Oprah moment,” if you will.
And that comes with the honest realization that you have to change.
To become a different, better person.

It usually includes some sincere contrition, some real empathy for those that you’ve hurt.
Then, if you’re really good, you dig down deep and create some new artistry, where you wrestle with your demons and come out a better person in the end.

Heck, Jason Isbell has pretty much made a career out of atonement.
Better than anybody.

Unfortunately, Ryan Adams has taken the exact opposite approach.

He issued the standard “I’m sorry if I made anybody feel uncomfortable” quasi-apology, denied the accusations through his lawyer, and then tried to get right back to work.

Finally, his new manager, Ty Stiklorius, got so frustrated that she released a series of texts from Ryan.
Joe Coscarelli, co-author of the New York Times piece, Tweeted them out.
(As you can gather from the last line of the exchange, Ms. Stiklorius is no longer Ryan’s manager.)

It’s hard to know what to hate most in that rant.
His blaming his manager for “the failed interventions.”
The “I’m not interested in this healing crap.”
Or the whiney, “I want to work – that’s it” mantra.
Ugh.

*          *          *

As I wrote when John Prine died last year, I was struck by the number of heartfelt, genuine testimonials to him.
For a lot of people, he was their favorite person in the business.

And it occurred to me, a lot of my favorite artists wouldn’t elicit those intensely personal, grateful eulogies.
(I’m not sure what that says about me…)

Steve Earle, Todd Snider, Jack White, Warren Zevon, Dylan, Van Morrison… they’re all incredible artists, and they all have armies of admirers, and loyal friends.
But they’ve all left behind a trail of tears. Even their staunchest supporters would have to admit that they’re “difficult,” even on their best days.

Paul Simon is as great a songwriter as we have.
But the members of Los Lobos will tell you, he stole one of their songs.
Simon called them in to work on his Graceland album. For the most part, he was unimpressed, and he sent them away.
But when Graceland came out, it contained a song they had played for him, “The Myth of Fingerprints”. Words and music by Paul Simon.
When they questioned him, he just said, “Hey, you don’t like it, sue me. See what happens.”
(It’s all in Chris Morris’ wonderful Los Lobos biography, Dream in Blue.)

We hold up these artists like dazzling icons – for good reason, sometimes.
But, really – how much do we ever know about them?

Of course, critics are now searching through Ryan’s lyrics, looking for prior signs of his bad behavior, as in this Rolling Stone piece.
To me, that’s a dangerous game.
(I mean, there was this beloved little band of English moptops who sang, “I’d rather see you dead, little girl, than to see you with another man.”)

I tend to agree with InsideHook writer Tim Sommers’ approach, in this article.
Ryan is a big part of The Problem, a problem propagated by legions of iconic male rock stars.
The answer: More women in music – at every level.

As Mr. Sommers writes, “Only when an asshole musician thinks twice about whose daughter they could be sexting can this thing actually change. When someone like Ryan Adams stands onstage at a club, looks left, and sees a woman running the monitors, they might actually think twice about how they behave.”

*          *          *

Sometimes, these moral dilemmas have a way of sorting themselves out.

I won’t be supporting Ryan by buying his new album.
As it turns out, Bright Colors is nothing close to what I had hoped for.

It’s actually the second of three albums he intended to release in 2019.
He announced their intended release in January, 2019. A month later, the New York Times story broke.
(He released Wednesdays, one of the other albums in December of 2020. The third, unnamed album, hasn’t been released.)

It has a nice enough start – a harmless, soft rock tune, the title track.
But then the album meanders through synth songs, ’80s Brit-pop homages (“Manchester”), and attempts at power pop.

The only thing that sounds close to his classic sound is “Fuck the Rain,” with its two acoustic guitar chords echoing off each other to start the song off.
But it’s only for a moment, and the melody just wanders off nowhere.

Sorry, Ryan. It just doesn’t stand up to your best stuff.
It’s nothing near what you can do.

Listening to him imitating some of his favorite musical styles, injecting so little of himself into it, I have to wonder, as other have: Why can’t Ryan just be himself?

Why can’t he stop trying to be other people?
Why can’t he figure out who he is?
Why can’t he address the demons that he is fighting, and tackle them head on?

Dolly Parton, noted philosopher and vaccine developer, is known to have said:
“Find out who you are and then be that on purpose.”

Like all of us, Ryan Adams could stand to listen to Dolly Parton.
If he ever did, he might actually find that he is a unique talent, and one of the most important American songwriters.