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Costello, band regroup for good cause
Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Austin de Lone came up with the idea of Elvis Costello playing his first album live, 30 years later, with a reunited Clover, the long defunct Marin County rock group who backed him all those years ago on "My Aim Is True." This is an unlikely event that will actually take place in two sold out benefit performances Thursday at the Great American Music Hall.
"I'm not nostalgically inclined," says Costello over the phone. "I still play songs from the record, but I'm always thinking about the songs in the moment."
But Costello, a long-time friend and admirer of de Lone, had agreed to do something to help raise money to battle the incurable condition from which de Lone's 9-year-old son, Richard, suffers, the little-known Prader-Willi syndrome, a chromosome disorder that affects 1 in 15,000 births and leaves its victims perpetually starving. "It's got to be one of the most difficult things any parent could have to deal with," says Costello.
De Lone, 61, would be the guy to pull off an impossible reunion like this because there is nobody more universally liked in Marin County music circles. A utility keyboard player who has led many of his own bands - including the pioneering '70s band, Eggs Over Easy, whose 1971 stint in London is credited with starting that country's pub rock movement - de Lone has long been known as one of the nicest guys anyone could want on the bandstand. Those who have wanted him include Bonnie Raitt, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Commander Cody, Boz Scaggs, Lightnin' Hopkins and countless others.
"It takes a special kind of talent to be yourself and lend something to somebody else at the same time," says Costello, who has played extensively with de Lone and called him "not a modest talent, but a talent who's modest."
Clover broke up long ago. The Marin County hippies went to England in 1977 where they ran head first into the blooming New Wave scene. The group recorded two albums with then-unknown producer Mutt Lange (long before he found AC/DC, Bryan Adams or his wife, Shania Twain) and backed up a neophyte recording artist on his first album. He called himself Elvis Costello, and it's doubtful Clover thought he'd amount to anything.
"We haven't all played together in the same room since then," says Costello.
Clover splintered on the band's return to the states the following year, and the harmonica player/vocalist went on to form Huey Lewis and the News with Clover keyboardist Sean Hopper. Guitarist John McFee has played for the last 20 years or so with the Doobie Brothers, but bassist John Ciambotti long ago gave up the music business to work as a chiropractor in Southern California. ("For sure, he's got strong hands," says Costello.)
The personnel guarantee that Thursday's show will be one for the annals, but de Lone hopes it will be more than just another one-off benefit. De Lone would like to see the event be the beginning of a drive to raise the millions of dollars necessary to build the Richard de Lone Special Housing Project for Prader-Willi patients. The small, unremodeled house in the Mill Valley cul de sac that de Lone and his wife, Lesley, have rented since 1976 looks well loved. Amid the happy clutter of the front porch, a child's handwriting on the wall reads "the de lones live here." Inside, the air is scented Italian thanks to by Lesley de Lone, a private chef for romance author Catherine Coulter. Lesley de Lone is cooking her famous spaghetti bolognese for a neighborhood party. Caroline de Lone, a junior at Tamalpais High, is flopped on her bed, clicking away at a laptop.
A Steinway that belonged to Austin de Lone's great-great grandmothe and rolled off the production line before the First World War, fills the spare bedroom. There is enough room to walk around one side of the piano. On the opposite side, de Lone just throws piles of sheet music and other detritus pertinent to making music. The ivories are well worn; on one key, the tip is missing. An electric keyboard is perched precariously on a nearby shelf.
Although he began taking piano lessons at age 12 while growing up in suburban Philadelphia, de Lone didn't start to pursue musical ambitions in earnest until after he dropped out of Harvard. His rootsy, countryish trio Eggs Over Easy went to England to record with Jimi Hendrix's producer Chas Chandler and wound up working one night a week at a jazz club in London's Kentish Town called the Tally Ho. The band caught on.
"By the end of the year, I think there was one night of jazz left," de Lone says, "not that we ruined jazz in England or anything."
The Tally Ho - and the 1971 Eggs Over Easy residency - served as ground zero for an important subterranean movement in British rock called pub rock. People who five years later would be producing and making the initial breakthrough punk and new wave records were taking their cues from the three Americans who were packing the Kentish Town pub five nights a week by the time they went back to the states.
"They gave confidence to groups like Nick Lowe's Brinsley Schwartz to be more themselves," says Costello, who saw Eggs Over Easy before he met de Lone in Mill Valley in 1977 while the Brit rocker was on his first tour behind "My Aim Is True."
Back in the states, Eggs Over Easy's one album fizzled. The band retreated to Mill Valley and kicked around for years before finally disbanding in the early '80s. De Lone took a lot of freelance work, including playing in a red-hot Marin County roadhouse band called the Moonlighters.
He sent the Moonlighters' demo tapes to producer Lowe, who was becoming a force in the new wave movement. The letter de Lone received back began "Dear Hero of Mine ... " Lowe produced an album withthe band that was only released in England, but he has worked a lot with de Lone over the years.
Who hasn't de Lone worked with over the years? That's the shorter list. He served 12 years as musical director of the Bammies (the Bay Area Music Awards), and he directed the house band at all the legendary Village Music parties at the Sweetwater. De Lone, who used to work the room when it was a neighborhood bar called the Office, recently presided over the final rites of Mill Valley's venerated club. "I closed that place down," he says.
He never made a killing in the music business, but was always happy doing the work, getting by, raising his family. But with the birth of their second child, says Lesley de Lone, "we entered the world of the disabled overnight."
Richard, almost 10, has been living at a group home for the handicapped since June, returning home on weekends. His visits are first respite from 24-hour care and vigilance the de Lones have experienced since he was born. The locks dangling on the refrigerator and food cabinets are not something seen in many people's kitchens.
"My son's a pixie. He's the sweetest boy in the world, but he's naughty," says his mother.
Richard was born with Prader-Willi, a syndrome first described in 1956 by Swiss doctors. Not only do the patients never lose their cravings for food, their metabolisms demand they actually eat less than the average person, about 40 percent less. Many unsupervised Prader-Willi patients die from morbid obesity.
His mother describes a young boy who, if he goes out and smells cooking, bursts into tears and can't stop thinking about food. Richard is a low-functioning case and spends a lot of time compulsively winding his belt around his hands. He can take hours picking out videos to rent. But he never stops thinking about food.
"It's like they have piranhas in their stomachs," says his mother.
Richard's birth was traumatic, but it was several days before the doctors gave them the big picture. "Basically, you've lost your child," says his father. "You have all these hopes and dreams for your child. We cried buckets of tears for six months, at least."
"You know when people say, 'God only gives you what you can handle'?" his wife says. "That's when I want to punch someone's lights out."
With Richard in full-time care during the week, signs of life are blooming at the de Lone home. Austin de Lone recently released a solo album, years in the works, "Soul Blues," that he recorded at the Site, the high-priced hideaway studio in the Marin woods where Keith Richards, Pearl Jam and others have made albums. Costello, Lowe and dieselbilly guitar king Billy Kirchen of the Moonlighters make guest appearances, but de Lone did most of the keyboards, guitars and vocals. He is also producing an album with longtime blues singer Lisa Kindred, a Mill Valley neighbor who was one of Richard's main babysitters and, many years ago, used to work the same Greenwich Village folk clubs as Bob Dylan.
"We've been in a cloud for years," says de Lone. "The fact that the little guy is gone has lifted it a little bit. It's hard to get used to."
Costello knows the situation first-hand. He has sat with his tea at the de Lone's kitchen table, while Richard crawled all over him. He is also the father of twins, now almost a year old. "People like this tend to stay behind closed doors," he says, "and stay out of the public eye."
And while Lesley de Lone remembers the shock of entering the world of the disabled, as she says, she now sees the whole world quite differently, as do all such parents.
"You meet the most remarkable people," she says. "You bow down to these people. So many people who have such great hearts, who do so much work. When a mother spends years getting their child to speak, when doctors said they never would, it may be a small thing compared to what we take for granted, but it takes so much heart and soul."
As for the world of the disabled, the de Lones are firmly on the other side. "Now we feel privileged to be in it," says Lesley.
To learn more about the Richard de Lone Special Housing Project, visit http://www.rdshp.org. For more information on Prader-Willi syndrome, visit http://www.pwsausa.org.
My Aim Is True Benefit: Elvis Costello with Clover (John McFee, John Ciambotti, Sean Hopper, Pete Thomas). Austin de Lone and Bill Kirchen open. 7 and 10 p.m. Thursday at the Great American Music Hall, 850 O'Farrell St. Both shows sold out. For more information, visit http://www.gamh.com.
To hear "Little Lost Lamb" by Austin de Lone, visit sfgate/eguide.
E-mail Joel Selvin at jselvin@sfchronicle.com.
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