Everyone Loves You When You're Dead. Neil Strauss
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on doing a new record with Ry Cooder?
TOURÉ: No.
How about a record of your own?
TOURÉ: Oh no. I mean, yes, I have started my own recording already.
Are you collaborating with anyone on it?
TOURÉ: Hey, hey, that’s enough of that. No more elaboration.17
Were you disappointed that you had to cancel your American tour?
TOURÉ: Not at all, at all, at all. But in all sincerity, what really pissed me off was the guy who we were working with was a real asshole.
Are you playing any other shows in the U.S.?
TOURÉ: No!
Are you touring anywhere else?
TOURÉ: In Africa. I’ve almost done all of Africa. I’m very proud of this. My favorite place is Mali.
Do you think that the spirit of the blues is stronger there?
TOURÉ: That’s very true. Where you are, you may call it the blues, but here, where I live, it’s much purer than that. It’s the African tradition.
Were you influenced at all by American blues?
TOURÉ: It was only from Africa, but why does one need to be influenced? Should you not be able to understand who you are by yourself, first?
Do you know yourself?
TOURÉ: Yeah!
When did you find out who you were?
TOURÉ: I was born in it. I grew up with it, and I evolved in it. My music is pure tradition. It’s what I know. I don’t know American music or French music or other music.18 I know only my art, the geography, the sources, and the roots of my country. And I know them perfectly.
If it’s traditional, then it must have influences in the past.
TOURÉ: Well, listen, what influences my personality or my music is really only my own business. I’m not forced to reveal it.
Do you consider yourself more a farmer than a musician?
TOURÉ: That is a hundred percent the truth. Agriculture is much more important than music. Why? Because if you can make music, it is a given that you have a full stomach. The one who doesn’t have a full stomach can not even make music.
Some say you have the power to see into the future. What do you think?
TOURÉ: It’s certain that if I do have the power to see in the future, it is a secret, which I will hold and nurture inside myself.
In 2004, Ali Farka Touré was elected mayor of Niafunké, his hometown in Mali. He died two years later of bone cancer. He was sixty-six.
On November 27, 1981, after playing a concert at Max’s Kansas City, the no-wave guitarist and singer Von Lmo disappeared. In his wake, he left behind countless stories (like the time he challenged Keith Moon to a drum battle backstage at a Who concert), legendary shows (his group Kongress, fronted by a magician, was banned from CBGB after nearly setting the club on fire), and a noisy style of guitar playing that inspired bands like Sonic Youth. His Future Language album soon became a collector’s item, due not just to its seminal avant-garde pop metal but also to its cover, which featured five grown men wearing moon boots and cheap silver spacesuits.
Almost ten years after Von Lmo’s disappearance, one of his former bandmates spotted him driving a gold Cadillac down a one-way street in the wrong direction. Von Lmo was officially back.
Where have you been the past ten years?
VON LMO: I was in a transition period. Everyone thought that I was dead, but I was just in suspended animation. Being in suspended animation, I gained a lot of incredible knowledge and lost twenty years off my life. I rejuvenated myself while I was gone. I’m in the body of a teenager now. If you look at pictures of me from 1980 and if you look at me now, you can see the enormous change.19
Is there any truth to the rumor that you’re a vampire?
VON LMO: I used to be into vampirism. I still am, sort of. I’m a member of the Z/n Society, which is goddesses and vampires. However, whether I’m a vampire or not, it’s nobody’s business.
You also claim to be a psychic?
VON LMO: I do have extrasensory perception. I’ve always been psychic since I can remember. I do believe that this year will hold true to the new sound. That new sound is going to come forth and generate throughout millions of people. What Hendrix was to the sixties, I can be to the nineties. If not this year, it will be the tip of next year. People are ready for a change, and I have that facility. I have the setup and the technology. The Von Lmo band is here to give people the opportunity to make that change, to open up the mind and step into the next dimension.
You always tell your audience to enter the blacklight dimension. What or where is it?
VON LMO: I believe strongly in psychedelia. I’m into the psychedelic form of life, which is the blacklight dimension. When people ask me where I was born, I tell them I was born in the blacklight dimension, which is a dimension other than what most people are used to. It’s very colorful, it has many interchangeable parts, it’s flexible, and it can enhance your mind way beyond any other dimension. [. . .] Without my music, you can’t get to these other dimensions. Music is everything. Music is life. Without music, there is only one thing and it’s called death.
It’s like your song “Leave Your Body.”
VON LMO: It’s the same idea, but “Leave Your Body” was written for a friend of mine, a girl who was actually a groupie of the band, who was going to commit suicide in 1979. I tried to help her by telling her that she’s going to have to leave her body, get out of that present state, and just find herself. That’s how I derived the lyrics to the song and helped her not to commit suicide, and it worked. I’m not saying that it can work for everyone. I’m not saying you can just pop in this song and it’s going to help, but it can’t hurt to try.
I actually first saw your Future Language album in a record bin with a sticker that said “Worst Record of the Decade” on the cover. . . .
VON LMO: Sometimes people just aren’t advanced enough for my music.
In 2007, Von Lmo disappeared again: According to his former collaborators, he didn’t go into suspended animation but to prison. A search of inmate records at the time revealed a prisoner in Sing Sing with his given name.
Lyn Buchanan is a genial, easygoing man with prematurely gray hair, a George Lucas beard, and a well-established paunch. He has spent most of his life working on guided-missile and computer systems for the military, and nothing seems to surprise or unsettle him. That’s why, when he was assigned to work in a special army unit at Fort Meade in Maryland, it took him years to realize that something was unusual about his job. This revelation occurred en route to Russell Targ’s research laboratory at Stanford University.
LYN BUCHANAN: