Man in the radiator
Reappraising the smart, ironic ‘70s pop of David Lynch collaborator Peter Ivers
“He was deconstructing the pop song’s boundaries, as opposed to discarding them” STEVEN MARTIN
WHEN David Lynch met Devo in 1977 at the director’s favourite LA diner Bob’s Big Boy, they were all there for the most experienced artist present, Peter Ivers. Devo had loved his Eraserhead song “In Heaven” and wished to cover it. Apparently crooned eerily by the film’s Radiator Lady, her androgynously high voice is in fact Ivers’ own, as he sings, with deadpan naivety: “In heaven, everything is fine/you’ve got your good thing, and I’ve got mine.”
Ivers was a part-time martial artist, apocalypse-fixated yogi and industrious singer-songwriter, whose fourth and final flop album had been released in 1976, when he was 30. Though signed to Warner by Van Dyke Parks and dubbed “the finest blues harp player alive” by Muddy Waters, he’s remembered today for two things: “In Heaven”, and being mysteriously bludgeoned to death in his apartment on March 3, 1983 (the murder remains unsolved). However, a new compilation, Becoming Peter Ivers, makes a persuasive case for a dryly witty songwriter able to translate the traditions of Stephen Foster and Irving Berlin to his semi-camp, ’70s Laurel Canyon milieu.
It’s fitting that Parks gave him a shot. “Van Dyke and Pete were both exploring true Americana with irony but not sarcasm, that the public wasn’t ready for,” say Ivers’ friend Steven Martin. “They were erudite and literary. Pete’s background had been in theatre at Harvard, and he approached rock’n’roll from a different direction. He was deconstructing the pop song’s boundaries, as opposed to discarding them.”
Lynch planned to combine with Ivers again on his next (unmade) film. “David had more of a sense of twisted innocence, Pete a greater sense of irony,” Martin reflects. “But they were on a common path. Pete was the originally intended lead actor and inspiration for Ronnie Rocket, which David and I worked on after Eraserhead.” Meanwhile, his prescient “Ivers Plan”, in which music would be released as “folk video”, was presented to Warner in 1979; a rejection letter from the nascent MTV is included in the new release. But Ivers’ murder has reduced him to an LA noir tale, as if he were a Lynch character, not collaborator. Martin hopes Becoming Peter Ivers will redirect interest to his songs. “When you’re listening to music through Peter Ivers’ filter,” he reflects, “it’s a comfortable place to be. It’s pretty intimate. There’s humour along with heartbreak. He always makes himself the butt of the joke. He’s the one that’s losing, but he’s not complaining. And his combination of jazz, theatre and rock is unique. Kids now can appreciate the craftsmanship and beauty of his work, without being hindered by the memory of his end.”