Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You: A Memoir

by Lucinda Williams

I wrote that song thinking about Neil Young’s record Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, which is one of my all-time favorite records. So much of Neil’s stuff feels like the ocean to me, the sound of waves, and it’s haunting. There’s also a sort of aloneness to his sound and his music on that record. I wanted to get at something like that.

I wrote “Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings” after spending time with Paul Westerberg, lead singer of the Replacements. It was another short-lived liaison. He had apparently been admiring me from a distance for years. Sometimes when I was playing shows at joints like Al’s Bar or Raji’s or the Troubadour in my early days in L.A., the Replacements would be on the same weekend bill as me. I remember going to see them play at the Palace in L.A. and they were loud and drunk and awesome. Then, a few years later, somebody gave me Paul’s solo album 14 Songs and I absolutely fell in love with that record and his other solo recordings.

Somehow or another Paul and I managed to connect and I saw him a few times when he came to L.A. We talked on the phone and I went to his shows. He got shit-faced drunk at one of his shows and he wanted me to sit in with him on one of his songs. He was always so fucked up. I heard he went into recovery later. Spending time with him, I got a little peek behind the scenes of the drunk rock star guy. I remember sitting in his hotel room one time and there was a knock on the door and there were two giggly girls outside expecting to come in. Paul must have given them his room number backstage after the show. I thought, “Wow, this is going to be one of those kinds of things. Here I am in my late forties and well established and this kind of thing is going on right in front of me.”

My relationship with Paul didn’t last very long, because he was so inconsistent, so much of a hound dog. He was a mess. But he had those same qualities that always attract me—intelligence and talent. At one point he was telling me about what was going on with his wife and their son and I told him, “Look, you need to go see a therapist to sort all this...

When Bruce came over to me and said, “Hey, Lu, how ya doin’?” I was kind of overwhelmed and had trouble getting the words out, but I guess I managed to say something decent, because a few minutes later, after the crowd thinned out, Bruce came over to me and Tom and invited us to dinner. We went to Kate Mantilini’s well-known West Hollywood restaurant. It was Bruce, T-Bone and Callie, Jesse, the Edge from U2 and his wife, and me and Tom, a man I’d known for only a couple of weeks. It was exciting but also sort of stunning and otherworldly. Bruce kept trying to strike up a conversation with me and I struggled at first, but I eventually got there. Going through my head all night were questions like do you call the Edge “the Edge” in person or just “Edge,” or does he have a street name? What does his wife call him? The fact is that they were lovely people and I shouldn’t have been so nervous. Eventually, Bruce got up and said he had to leave but everybody was welcome to stay and the bill was covered. When he walked up to me and Tom to say goodbye, Tom told Bruce, “I saw an interview with you several years ago where you said that rock and roll reached down into your house and pulled you out, and I just want to tell you that you did that for me. I wouldn’t be sitting here right now if it weren’t for you.” Bruce leaned over and gave Tom a big bear hug and he said, “Thanks, man, that really means a lot.”