David Blue: A Natural Progression

By David Rensin

(Originally Published: 06/01/1973, Music World)

There is something about David Blue that screams "Handle With Care." Perhaps a quality attributable to a glass figurine that you hold up to the light, turn around and try to see into. Blue flutters between opaqueness and transparency, but no matter how far your gaze extends, you feel as though haven't seen deep enough--but have only had glimpses of the real person.

A friend of Blue's says this: "A lot of people think David walks around with a black leather chip on his shoulder and that he's hard and coarse. But when you get to know him you find he's a sensitive and feeling person--it's just that he doesn't let many people close to him."

Tall and stoically handsome, Blue considers himself "some kind of loner," and doesn't particularly like it. "It's part of my personality though", he admits. "I find it hard to commit myself totally to any attitude, group or school of thought."

Blue expressed these qualities in abundance on his first Asylum album, Stories. It was poetic and sullen and created almost bottomless moods to trap the listener and pull him down.

"It was about smack and loneliness and suicide and pain,'' said Blue as we relaxed opposite one another early in the afternoon. He stirred a cup of coffee and shielded his eyes from the sunlight streaming in the window, "I really wasn't as I sounded on the album. It was a reflection of the years before and I guess my only happy thought about it now, in that respect, is that all the experiences are in the past." Blue liked Stories, thought it was a good and even optimistic album at times, but he knew afterwards that a lot of people couldn't listen to it because of the mood created and the feelings revealed.

"Stories was a highly introspective and personal piece," recalls Blue, taking another sip of coffee. "I didn't feel any discomfort about confessing so publicly, but I wouldn't do it again. I don't have the same things to say and besides it doesn't do anybody any good. It was therapeutic at the time."

Stories sold only about 3000 copies, a fact Blue views with mixed emotions. "Did it bring you down? Hah! Well, I didn't dig it. I can't let record sales be the root of my happiness, that's got to come from within, but I was really involved with the album and wanted to see it sell--not only for the obvious reasons. I don't make records to store away, to lie around and gather dust. They are a means of acceptance to me, but thankfully the poor showing of Stories didn't take me back to the state I was in prior to making the album."

Emotional postures have played a big part in Blue's life and his struggle to "attain stability" is as much a part of his story as is his music--which reflects that struggle. If his recent appearance at the Troubadour and new album, Nice Baby and the Angel are any indication, then the tide is turning for Blue, His outlook has changed and roots are taking hold. But why the sudden brightening?

"Actually was a natural progression. One of the motivating factors is that I never went out and performed much before I made Stories. When I did a show, I sang the songs on Stories and created that down mood, live. After about six months of doing it, I began to apologize. In a funny way I would sing the songs but in between I would laugh and tell jokes, I didn't feel the songs anymore and I would have to reach back inside myself to dig up the emotions. I just ended up cheating myself."

The tone of Nice Baby and the Angel is more lively and more accessible than Stories, hence more solid evidence that Blue is gaining the stability he has labored so long to attain.

David Blue was born David Cohen thirty years ago in Rhode Island. He had artistic tendencies and ambitions at an early age. "I wanted to be a painter for a while and then an actor. I'm very theatrical and the first thing I can remember wanting to do is be a soft shoe dancer and sing 'Me and My Shadow' on the Ted Lewis show." He smiles. "I was really into it and charmed by it--in fact, I used to do the soft shoe with a broom."

Blue left home at 18 and headed for Greenwich Village where he was introduced to the folk scene and met Dylan, Fred Neil and others. But most of the folkies were already into their second albums, according to Blue, so at 20 he hitchhiked across the country a few times with no particular direction. "I was just looking for whatever was going on, so I hung out at different scenes and picked up influences."

Since Blue had started writing poetry at 13, when he learned how to play guitar the poems turned into songs and the songs soon became a record contract with Elektra. "I thought it was pretty funny because I wasn't professional at all but my logic was to take the contract anyway since it was very flattering and all of a sudden it was fun." Looking back, Blue considers it somewhat embarrassing and claims "I didn't really know what I was doing."

From Elektra, Blue drifted to Warner-Reprise for two more albums. Although one, Twenty Three Days, sold 20,000 copies in "isolated areas like Boston, after the band had played there," Blue was going downhill in terms of both his ability to cope with life and his career. He was constantly plagued by comparisons to Dylan.

"Dylan was a really big influence on me for a while but he isn't anymore. He came to see me at the Troubadour when I played, but I didn't feel singled out. I mean, he goes to see a lot of people, so what does it mean? He's a highly respected figure and somewhat of a mythological one too, but my relationship with him is nil--you know, hardly at all. That's great if people think his visiting me meant something, but I don't think it does. My association with Dylan has always hurt me and never done me any good at all. On a personal level, I enjoy his company, but it's never done me any good in business terms.

"The image hurt me in the beginning because everyone would always say 'hey, he looks like Dylan, he has curly hair, he sings like Dylan.' Always Dylan. He was so big and always there and people put me in the shadow of Dylan. Well I don't think I'm in his shadow! My bio says I have a Dylanish stance. I didn't say it!"

Blue's forward progress was also impeded by drugs. Looking back, he remembers: "There was a time in my where I was into drugs, and it was, in fact, the low point--about 3-4 years ago. I just totally wanted to get off this planet and not have to face anything. It was after I left Warner Bros. and it was a time full of the things so evident in Stories. I never took drugs to heighten my awareness but rather to cut it off completely and obliterate reality."

But Blue snapped back. "I wanted to live and get more out of life and enjoy it. I hit my bottom and had to make a decision to either live or die--I decided to live. I had already made a decision to die when I started all the drugs, but I was singularly unsuccessful. So when I hit bottom it was like a second chance. I was into smack for a couple of months and that was the absolute bottom because it's like a total anti-life drug. It was just like death and that's where I wanted to be. Luckily, I found out I was wrong."

Blue also thinks of Asylum as a second chance and claims it's the closest he's come to joining any group. "I didn't have a record contract and I came to Los Angeles to get one after a year and a half of not doing anything more than singing in between shows for the Committee in San Francisco -- trying to face the audience alone.

"Elliot Roberts started managing me about a month before he and David Geffen started Asylum. I was talking to Columbia and A&M and already had an offer from Capitol when they asked me if I wanted to go with them. I did it immediately and haven't had any second thoughts. I knew David and Elliot and trusted them and preferred their company. Now I have relationships with a lot of the artists here and the music just goes back and forth. It's real good, in fact [laughter] it might even be replacing some of the things I was lacking in my home life years ago. It is like a family."

Blue feels that had he signed with any other label, he would never have had the opportunity to make Nice Baby and the Angel after the showing of Stories. "I might have drifted off and started the cycle again. But I've gotten more support from David and Elliot than from anybody else."

Nice Baby and the Angel was produced by Graham Nash and recorded at his house-studio in San Francisco. According to Blue, it was enlightening, interesting and educational experience. "Graham is really different from me musically. He's from a whole other place. I learned a lot from him about singing because I've never sung with other people before. But Graham and Dave Mason and Jennifer all sang with me and it was a real trip--like making a movie.

"I really got off on the work involved too. We'd just go downstairs and record, sometimes for 18 hours straight. Graham was really into producing which was good because it's a very hard thing to do since you're taking someone else's whole trip into your hands. I'm very satisfied."

With a potentially "heavy" release and a career on the verge of finally breaking open wide, Blue has had to forsake other important things in his life. "I believe I have to shun heavy personal, romantic involvements while I'm getting my career together. Now a personal involvement is what I want more than anything--it's really important to me --but it's impossible because it would blow everything. I just couldn't do both at the same time, and I don't even know if I can get involved.

"I live a really unstable life, at least that's the way it seems to me. I don't live anywhere in particular, I'm always taking apartments or houses for 3-4 months and then leaving. But I'm more stable now than before, and it affects the way I think and the things I do. I really want to be stable emotionally and physically--that is, I want to have roots. I don't enjoy this constant moving around and not knowing where I belong."

So now Blue lives a day at a time, trying to establish himself in the music world. He understands his strengths ("I'm alive") and his weaknesses ("I've got lots of them but I'm not going to tell you, ha"). Actually, they come out in his music, but even in that context be exposes himself less blatantly now than before. Instead he sees himself as some sort of outlaw. "Not a popular or romantic one--not that many people know who I am or come to see me yet--but an outlaw just because of being involved in the rock and roll business for so long. It's a certain kind of lifestyle that's different from the rest of "normal" society. My life certainly isn't one of an accountant."

Untypically, Blue admits he's desirous of being a star, as long as "star" means having an audience that comes to hear him, not the "ooh, girls, look, there's David Blue" type syndrome which be calls "scary." "I just want people to play for. I want the audience to like me and I want to like them. I want it to be a mutual moment where we'll get each other off, like making love. Nobody's hot on my tail yet--nobody's calling me up and so I'm still knocking on the door. But I enjoy being up there, I love to play, and after all, it is what I do."