Begin the Begin - Robert Dean Lurie

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with the Tet Offensive. He was, in other words, a bona fide badass. He also happened to be more passionate about new and interesting music than just about anyone Berry had ever met. This last detail must have seemed surprising given that Ian was a decade older than Berry and, with his long hair and shaggy beard, appeared an otherwise perfect addition to the hirsute, Southern boogie–loving Paragon staff.

      Ian took an immediate liking to his new chauffeur. He later characterized the young Berry as a “compulsive talker” who “probably knew more about Paragon than anyone else on the payroll.”

      [He] explained that he was not only Paragon’s chauffeur, but also the gofer, mail clerk, tea boy, messenger, and odd-jobs man. He gave me a full run-down on all of the people who worked there . . . Before long I knew the whole company’s chain of command and all of the players.

      Additionally, Bill—himself a transplant from another region—was perhaps the ideal person to ease Copeland through the culture shock he was about to experience. Despite looking the part, and even though his father hailed from this part of the country, Copeland had little familiarity with the people and history of the American South and knew next to nothing about Southern rock. Berry helped fill in the blanks.

      It’s a toss-up as to which of the following factors was more transformative in the lives of Mike Mills and Bill Berry: their newfound friendship with the well-connected Ian Copeland or the record collection he had brought with him. It’s probably not true that Ian single-handedly introduced the city of Macon to punk rock, but he does seem to have been the first person to turn Bill and Mike on to the new sound, exposing them to such bands as the Damned, the Ramones, the Dead Boys, Chelsea, and the Sex Pistols. Mills credits this adrenaline shot of raw rock ’n’ roll with inspiring in him a renewed interest in playing. “We would play along to the Ramones’ first record,” he recalled later. “And the first Police single, which was ‘Fall Out’ and ‘Nothing Achieving’: That was huge. That was the sort of stuff that got us playing again.”

      Bill and Mike were essentially hearing this stuff in a vacuum. Outside of Ian’s apartment, there was no punk subculture in Macon. There were no clubs where the music could be heard live. And any fashion aesthetic had to be gleaned solely from the album covers. Thus they missed out on much of UK punk’s Cultural Revolution–style emphasis on demolishing the past and rebuilding from scratch. They either missed or disregarded the Clash’s declaration of “No Elvis, Beatles, or the Rolling Stones in 1977!” For these two, the lean, hard-charging sound of this first wave of punk was simply an exciting new chapter in the ongoing narrative of popular music. Mike still loved Harry Nilsson and Bill still loved Motown. Punk for them functioned as a renewal rather than any kind of ground zero.

      Ian’s attitude was much the same, even though he had been to the punk clubs in London and had spent time with the progenitors of the movement. A ’60s kid at heart, he retained his earlier love of classic and progressive rock and very quickly grew to appreciate the Southern rock bands he was initially tasked with booking. Still, this new music invigorated him with its leanness and ferocity, and he longed to bring it to the United States.

      The Squeeze tour turned out to be a major game-changer, not just for Copeland and Paragon but for the music industry as a whole. Circumventing A&M’s lack of financial support for their own band, Ian lined up a series of dates at small clubs mostly off the beaten path and booked the musicians into the cheapest motels possible—the whole band often had to cram into a single room.

      Bill Berry and Mike Mills were heavily involved in Ian’s guerrilla promotional tactics for Squeeze’s Macon show. As Ian wrote:

      The combination of such “outside the box” marketing techniques with Ian’s many cost-cutting measures enabled Squeeze to turn a decent profit at the conclusion of the tour. Perhaps even more significantly for posterity, ­Copeland had single-handedly cobbled together a club circuit that could be utilized and adapted by subsequent under-the-radar bands. Ian himself reused this template when booking the first American tour for his brother Stewart’s band, the Police, in October–November 1978. This was an even more audacious endeavor, given that the band had decided to tour prior to the release of their debut album. But the Police’s incendiary live performances created a word-of-mouth buzz that preceded them wherever they went. Bill Berry was on hand throughout the planning and execution of this tour and, perhaps unbeknown to Ian, absorbed all its details and lessons.

      Bill put in only two years at Paragon, though he might have remained in Macon had it not been for an eventful phone call between Mike Mills and his father in the fall of 1978, during which the elder Mills berated his son for squandering his excellent SAT score by hanging around Macon and working at Sears. This prompted Mike to talk with Bill about pulling up stakes and enrolling at the University of Georgia together. Bill didn’t need much of a push; he continued to nurse dreams of working on the management side of the entertainment industry, or as an agent or manager for professional athletes. In either case, he would need some type of higher degree, an MBA perhaps. His departure from Paragon turned out to be well timed; the company, along with Capricorn Records, collapsed into bankruptcy shortly thereafter.

      The two friends arrived in Athens in January 1979. The town was not altogether different from Macon in appearance, but its massive preponderance of young people gave it a different temperament. Athens is often described as a sleepy little college town, which does it a disservice. Yes, it has always been a college town: it was actually willed into being by the Georgia State Legislature for the express purpose of hosting a “college or seminary of learning”—what became UGA. And yes, relative to Atlanta, New Orleans, Birmingham, and the large cities of the South, it is small, even little. But sleepy? As far back as anyone can remember, the place has had a reputation for hedonism and alcoholic excess.

      Perhaps the “sleepy” label is due to the impression the town gives of being enclosed; long branches of Darlington oaks and other towering trees arch over many of the streets. Back in the 1970s, the only way to get to Athens from Atlanta was via a two-lane road, the “Atlanta Highway” later immortalized in the B-52’s’ hit “Love Shack.” For long stretches a driver could feel like Moses parting a sea of Georgia pine. After miles and miles of this, Athens would appear seemingly out of nowhere—an oasis of buildings and street lamps at the end of a long, lonely road. Yet the impression of a great canopy of vegetation—a second sky of branches and leaves—persisted throughout the town. This was by no means unique to Athens; many Georgia towns, including Macon, had nearly identical blueprints: the central courthouse, the post office, and streets lined with sturdy old trees. But downtown Athens was certainly different from downtown Atlanta, which was dominated by large, modern, impersonal buildings and obsessively manicured tracts of “green space” that seemed soulless and antiseptic.

      Some residents of Athens, particularly the art school students who harbored (usually New York–centric) dreams of recognition and success in the big city, felt hemmed in and stifled by the

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