Lee, Myself & I: Inside the Very Special World of Lee Hazlewood
Wyndham Wallace
Jawbone, Dh77
“Never try to meet your heroes. It always ends in tears.”
Such is the sage and prophetic advice that Wyndham Wallace is offered by a university chum. As one reads this improbable tale of how Wallace became friend, confidant and manager to cult US songwriter Lee Hazlewood – the man who wrote Nancy Sinatra's perennial pop gem These Boots Are Made for Walkin' – another adage seems apt: be careful what you wish for – you just might get it.
When Wallace first "encounters" Hazlewood in 1993, it's via a black-and-white illustration of the great man adorning the sleeve of A Marriage Made in Heaven, a 7-inch single by the UK band Tindersticks. Wallace, at the time a music-biz newbie, is about to become a London-based PR for obscure US post-rock bands. He can't yet put a name to Hazlewood's face, but fate has a spell to cast and introductions to make.
In time, Wallace will be party to Hazlewood's impressive stash of showbiz anecdotes; to his amusingly-bilious faxes, his eccentricities and demands, his fine company and his customised cigarettes. In time, Lee Hazlewood will affectionately rechristen Wallace "Bubba" and refer to him as his "fourth child". Wallace will even read the eulogy at Hazlewood's funeral (he died of renal cancer in 2007, age 78). Not for nothing is Lee, Myself & I described as an account of what it's like to "befriend your hero, then watch him die".
These days, Wallace is a Berlin-based music journalist. This is his first book. In a typically arch foreword, left-wing British comedian Stuart Lee cranks up the disparity between the author – “Wallace is a virtual aristocrat ... born and bred to rule alongside Cameron and Osborne ...” – and his infinitely cooler, much more roguish subject. But Lee is also grateful to Wallace for his sizeable part in the “critical rehabilitation” of Hazlewood, something that has led to the wider availability of his deliciously idiosyncratic back catalogue, a diamond seam tapped by everyone from Elvis Presley to Beck to Primal Scream to Lana Del Rey.
Wallace is in on Stuart Lee’s gag. Early on, he jokes that his highfalutin-sounding moniker came “courtesy of parents who’d plausibly named me during a high-scoring game of Scrabble”. Imagine the public schoolboy’s delight, then, when having finally dared to contact Hazlewood directly, he receives a faxed reply that begins thus: “Dear Wyndham Wallace, If I had a name like Wyndham Wallace I would not associate with anyone with a simple name like mine. However, since you have lowered your self to such depths, how can my old Indian heart (west not east) not respond favourably.”
Wallace’s route to Hazlewood came via Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, who, in 1998, employed him to handle UK PR for reissues of some of Hazlewood’s albums. We learn of this – and of Wallace’s earlier, whirlwind romance with Hazlewood’s music – via flashbacks. When the book opens it’s 1999 and the author is in New York to meet his hero for the first time. His nervousness about what Hazlewood will think of him is played as a comic set-piece, but the pair get on swimmingly.
Up until then, speculation about the whereabouts of the Oklahoma-born, Texas-raised record producer and songwriter had been rife. Some said Hazlewood had become a monk. Others claimed he had long since fled to Sweden to escape Frank Sinatra, who had allegedly gone on the warpath after hearing rumours of shenanigans between Hazlewood and his daughter, Nancy.
Wallace learns that talk of Hazlewood's asceticism is ill founded. Now 69, he is living with his much younger partner Jeanne in Kissimmee, Florida, "where an alligator eyes him every day as he drinks Chivas Regal by his pool". In the ensuing chapters, Lee, Myself & I drip-feeds further choice details, Hazlewood emerging as the bon vivant and loveable bar-fly we'd like him to be, yet freighted with a darkness than can prompt destructive mood swings. "[The Korean War] taught me two things", Hazlewood tells Wallace at one point: "How to run and how to cry." Only after Hazlewood's death does the author learn that he was prescribed lithium for depression.
The real-life events of the book give it a natural and compelling structure. Having met his hero, Wallace immediately ups the ante by inviting Hazlewood to play a comeback show at London’s Royal Festival Hall. He is to be part of the 1999 Meltdown festival, which is being curated by a life-long Hazlewood fan, Nick Cave.
Hazlewood drives a hard bargain re his appearance fee. He wants to be paid in advance, and has Wallace collect him from the airport in his dilapidated Volkswagen. He also endures an ominously poor rehearsal with his chosen musicians, but cometh the hour, cometh the man. All the same, Wallace is mortified when Hazlewood – synonymous with cool before his re-appearance – takes the stage in a vulgar gift-shop sweatshirt bearing the slogan “Movie Facts”.
Wallace’s affectionate, yet warts-and-all portrayal of his hero also gains traction from reproductions of Hazlewood’s fax messages, wherein his boss’s opinion of the press is plain. “These unimportant 2nd year journalism students I’ve given many, many hours to are not only brain dead ...” runs one communiqué, “... they are assassins!”
As the author spends more time with Hazlewood, he assembles the jigsaw of a life less ordinary. We learn that the famed record producer Phil Spector’s trademark Wall of Sound might owe something to his apprenticeship with Hazlewood. There are tales of nights out with tennis ace Björn Borg and James Bond actor Roger Moore, of the hobo who cured Hazlewood’s childhood stutter, and of the itinerant lifestyle that took the singer-songwriter to Germany, southern Spain and, yes, Gotland, Sweden.
Along the way, Wallace dispenses acute metaphors and similes: "The place is as silent as a run-out groove"; "My thoughts like balls in a bingo machine", and he proves an indispensable guide to Hazlewood's music. Who knew his 1964 album The N.S.V.I.P.'s had songs about an alcoholic dragon and a man who thinks he's a goose? Or that a UK critic had reviewed Hazlewood's 1973 album Poet, Fool or Bum with just one word: "Bum"?
The gags are plentiful and nicely told. It seems fitting, somehow, that having contracted cancer, Hazlewood opted to call his final album Cake or Death, lifting the name from a sketch by one of his favourite comedians, Eddie Izzard.
But the story can end only one way and there is an affecting poignancy to the final third of the book, even if, in the face of death, Hazlewood’s knack for a wry turn of phrase doesn’t desert him. “Lee doesn’t buy green bananas,” he tells Wallace, self-referentially. What a great euphemism for The Reaper’s proximity.
Hazlewood's final birthday party, where he briefly dances with Nancy Sinatra, is beautifully sketched. Similarly, when Wallace tells of sitting with a rapidly declining Hazlewood while they listen to his version of A Very Good Year, Ervin Drake's beguiling 1961 song about an old man's wistful gaze in the rear-view, it's hugely touching.
Before they take their leave of one another Hazlewood will bestow a final gift: the chance for Wallace to collaborate with him on a song. But first he must dupe Wallace into penning a lyric inspired by “an old Finnish fairy tale he’d once heard about an island where the snow tasted of sugar”.
"The man himself [has] finally emerged from the cloud of unknowing, a ludicrous, absurd, brilliant Tin Pan Alley genius," Stuart Lee suggests of Lee Hazlewood, and as Hazlewood himself would doubtless acknowledge, Wyndham Wallace – or Bubba, as he now probably prefers to be known – has helped facilitate that. The pleasingly unconventional Lee, Myself & I might in fact be two life stories for the price of one, but it dusts down the Hazlewood legend and makes it shine.
James McNair writes for Mojo magazine and The Independent.
Disclaimer
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Stars: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Lesley Manville
Rating: 4/5
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
Banned items
Dubai Police has also issued a list of banned items at the ground on Sunday. These include:
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Political flags or banners
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Bikes, skateboards or scooters
TUESDAY'S ORDER OF PLAY
Centre Court
Starting at 2pm:
Elina Svitolina (UKR) [3] v Jennifer Brady (USA)
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (RUS) v Belinda Bencic (SUI [4]
Not before 7pm:
Sofia Kenin (USA) [5] v Elena Rybakina (KAZ)
Maria Sakkari (GRE) v Aryna Sabalenka (BLR) [7]
Court One
Starting at midday:
Karolina Muchova (CZE) v Katerina Siniakova (CZE)
Kristina Mladenovic (FRA) v Aliaksandra Sasnovich (BLR)
Veronika Kudermetova (RUS) v Dayana Yastermska (UKR)
Petra Martic (CRO) [8] v Su-Wei Hsieh (TPE)
Sorana Cirstea (ROU) v Anett Kontaveit (EST)
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Five famous companies founded by teens
There are numerous success stories of teen businesses that were created in college dorm rooms and other modest circumstances. Below are some of the most recognisable names in the industry:
- Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg and his friends started Facebook when he was a 19-year-old Harvard undergraduate.
- Dell: When Michael Dell was an undergraduate student at Texas University in 1984, he started upgrading computers for profit. He starting working full-time on his business when he was 19. Eventually, his company became the Dell Computer Corporation and then Dell Inc.
- Subway: Fred DeLuca opened the first Subway restaurant when he was 17. In 1965, Mr DeLuca needed extra money for college, so he decided to open his own business. Peter Buck, a family friend, lent him $1,000 and together, they opened Pete’s Super Submarines. A few years later, the company was rebranded and called Subway.
- Mashable: In 2005, Pete Cashmore created Mashable in Scotland when he was a teenager. The site was then a technology blog. Over the next few decades, Mr Cashmore has turned Mashable into a global media company.
- Oculus VR: Palmer Luckey founded Oculus VR in June 2012, when he was 19. In August that year, Oculus launched its Kickstarter campaign and raised more than $1 million in three days. Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion two years later.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, Leon.
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
LIVERPOOL SQUAD
Alisson Becker, Virgil van Dijk, Georginio Wijnaldum, James Milner, Naby Keita, Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah, Joe Gomez, Adrian, Jordan Henderson, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Adam Lallana, Andy Lonergan, Xherdan Shaqiri, Andy Robertson, Divock Origi, Curtis Jones, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Neco Williams
Squid Game season two
Director: Hwang Dong-hyuk
Stars: Lee Jung-jae, Wi Ha-joon and Lee Byung-hun
Rating: 4.5/5
The Brutalist
Director: Brady Corbet
Stars: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn
Rating: 3.5/5
MATCH INFO
Tottenham Hotspur 1
Kane (50')
Newcastle United 0
The specs
AT4 Ultimate, as tested
Engine: 6.2-litre V8
Power: 420hp
Torque: 623Nm
Transmission: 10-speed automatic
Price: From Dh330,800 (Elevation: Dh236,400; AT4: Dh286,800; Denali: Dh345,800)
On sale: Now
Shubh Mangal Saavdhan
Directed by: RS Prasanna
Starring: Ayushmann Khurrana, Bhumi Pednekar
Europe’s rearming plan
- Suspend strict budget rules to allow member countries to step up defence spending
- Create new "instrument" providing €150 billion of loans to member countries for defence investment
- Use the existing EU budget to direct more funds towards defence-related investment
- Engage the bloc's European Investment Bank to drop limits on lending to defence firms
- Create a savings and investments union to help companies access capital
'Hocus%20Pocus%202'
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Crazy Rich Asians
Director: Jon M Chu
Starring: Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeon, Gemma Chan
Four stars
COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Revibe%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202022%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Hamza%20Iraqui%20and%20Abdessamad%20Ben%20Zakour%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20UAE%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EIndustry%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Refurbished%20electronics%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFunds%20raised%20so%20far%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20%2410m%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EFlat6Labs%2C%20Resonance%20and%20various%20others%0D%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
The Buckingham Murders
Starring: Kareena Kapoor Khan, Ash Tandon, Prabhleen Sandhu
Director: Hansal Mehta
Rating: 4 / 5
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The National Archives, Abu Dhabi
Founded over 50 years ago, the National Archives collects valuable historical material relating to the UAE, and is the oldest and richest archive relating to the Arabian Gulf.
Much of the material can be viewed on line at the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive - https://www.agda.ae/en
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
Ms Yang's top tips for parents new to the UAE
- Join parent networks
- Look beyond school fees
- Keep an open mind
The five pillars of Islam
Business Insights
- As per the document, there are six filing options, including choosing to report on a realisation basis and transitional rules for pre-tax period gains or losses.
- SMEs with revenue below Dh3 million per annum can opt for transitional relief until 2026, treating them as having no taxable income.
- Larger entities have specific provisions for asset and liability movements, business restructuring, and handling foreign permanent establishments.
THE SPECS
Engine: 1.5-litre, four-cylinder turbo
Transmission: seven-speed dual clutch automatic
Power: 169bhp
Torque: 250Nm
Price: Dh54,500
On sale: now
The%20specs
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Day 3 stumps
New Zealand 153 & 249
Pakistan 227 & 37-0 (target 176)
Pakistan require another 139 runs with 10 wickets remaining
Dubai Bling season three
Cast: Loujain Adada, Zeina Khoury, Farhana Bodi, Ebraheem Al Samadi, Mona Kattan, and couples Safa & Fahad Siddiqui and DJ Bliss & Danya Mohammed
Rating: 1/5
Checks continue
A High Court judge issued an interim order on Friday suspending a decision by Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots to direct a stop to Brexit agri-food checks at Northern Ireland ports.
Mr Justice Colton said he was making the temporary direction until a judicial review of the minister's unilateral action this week to order a halt to port checks that are required under the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Civil servants have yet to implement the instruction, pending legal clarity on their obligations, and checks are continuing.
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
The%20specs
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