Rock and Hard Places (49 page)

Fortunately, however, I do really want to go to Branson, and the billboards lining Route 65 from Springfield do nothing to temper my anticipation. Most of these advertise live performances by people I’d have assumed, had I given them any thought in the last three or four decades, were long dead: Roy Clark, Bill Medley, Paul Revere and the Raiders. Others boast truly treasurably crass copywriting and/or inadvertent prompts to ponder such interesting questions as why some disasters become entertainment, and others do not: Branson’s
Titanic
museum is touted as “a family experience,” which is not a billing anybody would bestow upon a memorial to the Hindenburg or the Lusitania.

My lodgings in Branson are in the Hilton situated in the new Branson Landing shopping complex by Lake Taneycomo. Branson Landing is an attempt to combine the facilities of a modern shopping mall with the folksy charm of a small country town. Which is to say that Branson Landing is a reasonable approximation of hell. In a thoughtfully diabolical touch, muzak is broadcast through speakers mounted outside the shops—a looping selection of Yuletide standards punctuated, bafflingly, by Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Up Around The Bend,” possibly a wry reference to where this soundtrack will swiftly drive a sane person. The racket is still audible in my hotel suite above the arcade, even after I’ve closed all the windows. It feels a bit like suffering the onset of a delusional psychosis in which one is convinced that one is receiving secret instructions from Mariah Carey, with specific reference to what she wants for Christmas.

In the middle of Branson Landing, an American flag flies above a fountain fitted with a battery of ten flamethrowers. At sunset, the festive hits are mercifully, if temporarily, silenced and the speakers bellow “The Star Spangled Banner” as jets of water and eruptions of flame roar towards the pinking sky. And all the shoppers shuffle to a stop, and hold their baseball caps over their hearts.

 

ALMOST EVERYTHING IN Branson is arranged along one road, a highway called Route 76, known locally as The Strip. A drive along The Strip offers sights including—but by no means limited to—a museum in the shape of the
Titanic
, a motel resembling a riverboat, a souvenir barn painted in the black and white patchwork of a Friesian cow, a
replica of Mount Rushmore featuring the heads of John Wayne, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin, a Veterans’ Memorial Garden festooned with yellow ribbons, a statue of a horse draped in the Confederate flag, and one theatre (specifically, the Dolly Partonowned Dixie Stampede) whose digital billboard promises a dinner show including ostrich-and pig-racing (to my sorrow, if not surprise, tickets are sold out).

Two things are essential to the proper enjoyment of these and other attractions. One is resolve to appreciate Branson on its own merits—Branson is so disarmingly guileless that adopting any attitude of lofty aesthetic superiority, though the material to encourage same is abundant, would be as hollow a triumph as riffing wittily on the sandiness of the Sahara. The other is someone else: a course of three of Branson’s Christmas shows in one day is not something that can or should be undertaken without moral support. I am joined in this enterprise by a friend of mine who lives in Missouri, knows Branson well and indeed goaded me into pitching it to the
Financial Times
‘ travel section in the first place, so it seems like the least she can do.

There’s a third, though obviously optional, item of psychological equipment which feels necessary to us: that somewhat dazed, dulled, impenetrably bemused mindset that one can only bring to bear on a day’s outing when one has prepared oneself carefully the night before by sleeping far too little and drinking far too much. Suitably fortified, which is to say burdened by hangovers which are a hazard to overflying birdlife, we report to the Branson Variety Theatre for the 10:00 AM performance of the
Spirit of Christmas
show (Branson theatres keep weird hours, to accommodate the schedules of tourist buses and the bedtimes of the city’s mostly pensionable visitors—not much happens after 10:00 PM, and many venues stage three shows every day). From the carpark behind the Branson Variety Theatre, I can see another venue, a gleaming leviathan called the White House Theatre, upon which is painted, in immense blue letters, the definitive, reductive Branson enticement: “SHOWS & FOOD.”

The reasons we have settled upon the
Spirit of Christmas
show to the exclusion of everything else on offer—Branson, population 7,435, has 53 theatres, 207 hotels and 458 restaurants—are the guest stars: Wayne, Jay and Jimmy Osmond. The latter still enjoys a certain infamy
back in Britain, thanks to his vexingly unforgettable 1972 hit “Long-Haired Lover From Liverpool.” Released when Little Jimmy Osmond, as he was then known, was just nine years old, it remains plausibly the worst UK Number One single ever: the sort of thing only grandmothers liked. It is a demographic that has remained loyal: an aerial shot of the pre-show throng in the lobby would resemble a crocheted quilt cover of blue and silver. It is doubtless in acknowledgement of the audience’s age, and the bodily aches that time engenders, that the concession stand sells aspirin along with popcorn and ice cream, but all things—and by “all things,” I mean temples throbbing like the bass guitar part in The Osmonds’ “Crazy Horses”—considered, I am not ungrateful.

Most of the
Spirit of Christmas
show consists of a chorus line capering to numbingly predictable Christmas favourites in exactly the costumes you’d expect them to wear. The dancers are competent at best, but their rather overlong routines at least allow plenty of time for whispered-behind-programme speculations about the cast—which backing hoofer is conspiring to overthrow the female lead, which is the impressionable sidekick abetting her in this treachery, which male dancer has most often prompted his father to declare that “the boy ain’t right,” etcetera.

The Osmonds appear in intermittent cameos, and are great. They’d be even better if “Crazy” Wayne Osmond desisted with his jokes, several of which might even be older than most of the audience, but they seem to amuse him, if nobody else. When the three of them sing together they do so beautifully, especially on a medley of hits by other brothers (Mills Brothers, Everly Brothers, Doobie Brothers, Blues Brothers—though my prayers for something off The Louvin Brothers’ 1950s gothic gospel classic
Satan Is Real
languish regrettably unanswered). Jimmy is an effortlessly charming host, his exhortation to “Keep this party going”—to a theatre largely populated by a pre-lunchtime crowd of grandparents—conspicuously lacking the laboured, mordant self-mockery of celebrities starring in British pantomimes. He is a man utterly at peace with his place in the world, even if that place is a remote Ozark town where he sells memories at inconvenient hours.

The same cannot quite be said of the next act we see—Roy Rogers Jr., at the Roy Rogers Museum theatre—but it is a nevertheless
compelling spectacle. Roy Rogers Sr. was, during the 1940s and ’50s, perhaps the most famous man in America, the occupants of the White House not excepted. He made movies, television shows and records (most of the latter are interesting only as period kitsch, but a couple, notably the early 70s albums
A Man from Duck Run
and
The Country Side of
, aren’t bad at all, the latter featuring jarringly sincere versions of the semi-ironic Merle Haggard redneck anthems “Okie From Muskogee” and “The Fightin’ Side Of Me,” which manage to sound both amiable and belligerent: listening to them is like being threatened by your uncle). He lent his image to uncountable items of merchandise, many of which are exhibited in the museum: comic books, toys, breakfast cereals, board games. Also enshrined are Rogers’ clothes, cars and guns. Roy Rogers died in 1998, aged eighty-six. He left his son these display cases of mementoes, his name and some awesomely big—and audaciously embroidered—boots to fill.

Rogers Jr. does this with a grace, humility and reverence that verges on the weird. The show Rogers Jr. performs is, substantially, a memorial service to his legendary father, to his mother (Grace Arlene Wilkins), and to Rogers Sr.’s second wife and co-star (Dale Evans). In a half-filled, semi-circular theatre adjoining the museum, Rogers Jr. croons cowboy ballads while his backing band make the quietest amplified music I’ve ever heard. In between tunes, he tells stories of his upbringing, which was both blessed by the fortune and fame of his father, and plagued by the death and misfortune that insistently stalked the family. Rogers Jr.’s mother died of an embolism days after he was born. Rogers Sr. and Evans’ first daughter was born with Down’s Syndrome and died in infancy. Two of the children Rogers and Evans subsequently adopted also died young. One, a Korean war orphan, was killed in a road crash at age twelve, when her church bus collided with a car. Another choked to death while serving with the US army in Germany.

Rogers Jr. discusses these tragedies from the stage in detail that feels all at once forensic and dispassionate, and which leaves us altogether unsure how we’re supposed to react. It’s all rather odd. Rogers owns a pleasant, Jim Reeves-ish baritone, and his a capella version of the ancient spiritual “Wayfaring Stranger” is terrific. But it’s hard to separate from the knowledge that it was, as he has explained at some length, the last thing he sang to Dale Evans before she died in 2001—and that he’s
still singing it twice a day, five days a week, in what is essentially his family mausoleum. He wishes his audience a “happy Branson cowboy Christmas” as artificial snow descends from the ceiling, and we leave thinking Jimmy Osmond should take him for a drink.

Neither the Osmonds nor Rogers would deny that we saved the best for last: indefatigable crooner Andy Williams, at his own Moon River theatre. His timing in comic set-pieces is faultless, his supporting cast brilliant, especially the astonishing mimic Bob Anderson, whose singular genius is for channeling the voices and mannerisms of lounge singers, including Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tom Jones, Ray Charles—and, for one memorably surreal duet, Andy Williams. Williams looks, sounds and seems five decades short of the eighty years he racked up the previous birthday. When he signs off with a sumptuous “Moon River,” the few hairs remaining on the heads of his audience are thrilled upright, quite rightly.

 

WE SPEND SATURDAY at Silver Dollar City theme park, whose attractions include the opportunity to pose for sepia portraits in antique costume (the woman running this operation agrees when I observe that they have a wider range of Confederate costumes than Union uniforms, and confesses that when people ask to dress as Yankees “they tend to kinda whisper”). That night, we attend a show by Kirby VanBurch, a magician with a Dutch pop star’s accent and haircut. VanBurch is a Branson veteran. This theatre is, he notes, with perhaps understandable weariness, the ninth Branson venue he has played in. “I’m the only performer in Branson,” he announces, “who is actually touring Branson.”

It’s the rest of the world’s loss. VanBurch is fantastic. He produces bottles from empty tubes, cavorts with tigers, teleports a motorcycle and causes a helicopter to appear from thin air. His performance is also noteworthy for two defining moments, one very Branson, one not. The extremely Branson act is VanBurch’s solemn presentation of one young assistant from the crowd with a dogtag inscribed with Isaiah 54:17 (“No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgement thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord”—which is at least more rarefied than “My grandmother went to Branson and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”).

The jarringly un-Branson thing, which sums Branson up by being everything Branson is not, is a reflexive mis-step into sarcasm. Introducing an escape trick, VanBurch mentions Houdini. The crowd applaud. “Clap all you want, he’s not coming out,” smiles Kirby. “Not at these prices.”

It’s a good joke, but it dies, crushed by the truth it is bearing: that maybe we’d all rather be in Vegas, but realise that Sin City is just too brash, too cynical, too much, for any of us.

 

 

 

W
HICH IS, IF you’ve been reading this book sequentially, where we came in, more or less. By accident and by design, my path crossed with U2’s
PopMart
tour of 1997-98 fairly frequently. What follows is
—
if you will
—
kind of a director’s cut of a sequence of articles written about the tour, largely for
The Independent
and
The Independent on Sunday
.

The
PopMart
tour was entirely preposterous—which was, of course, at least half the point. There was no doubt that U2 were in on the joke they were playing on themselves, their heritage and their reputation, even from the off. Their road crew certainly bought into the spirit of things early on. The afternoon before opening night, at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas, a few of us journalists covering the show had wandered down to the venue to watch the final pieces of the immense and ludicrous set being erected. As we arrived, some or other prop was being gently lowered on cables from the rigging overhanging the stage. The roadie on the mixing desk beat us all to the punchline. “HEWN!” boomed a voice through the bank of bright orange speakers. “FROM THE LIVING ROCK! OF . . . STONE’ENGE!”

A few months later, in an irony too perfect to contrive, U2 ended up wearing their most ironic guise as they played what was—at least, perhaps, until their three-night stand at Madison Square Garden in October 2001—their least ironic concert. Their show at Sarajevo’s Kosevo Stadium, on September 23, 1997,
remains an absolute highlight of your correspondent’s gig-going experience. On its own merits, it wasn’t a great show, for the fairly fundamental reason that Bono’s voice deserted him more or less completely (at time of writing, a YouTube clip of U2’s performance of “Pride” captures his struggle acutely). But it was a resonant example of what U2 do—and what rock’n’roll does—best: elevates naivete into an inspirational, if wretchedly temporary, reality.