Baby with a Machine Gun, in which he can be heard explaining to a colleague how much he hates his own voice, but also saying he's glad the audience in the theatre where it was being performed couldn't hear it and it was too loud. He later wrote a musical in which each of the characters spoke in a different language. In that same show, a critic told him he'd put a knife through his eye. He said he never wanted to do the stage again, or use a different vocal range, and wanted to try singing in the style of Bob Dylan or Ray Charles. He said that they were not so much singers as instruments. Another side to the man was revealed when I interviewed him in 1991. By that time, I was living in a small apartment in Venice Beach. It was about five in the morning and I had just finished interviewing him. We had just spent about half an hour talking about why he did not care for being recognized on the streets. When I gave him back his signed copy of The Man Who Fell to Earth, he hugged me and held me for a moment, then said, "Okay, I'll see you later." He said the last line of every interview, for which he would get an autographed book as a thank you, but I think he knew I was touched and didn't want him to get away. We were in the parking lot of the hotel, having a smoke and talking about some plans he had for a new project. He had come in through the kitchen because the maid, to whom he had once given a tape of his record, knew him well enough to never try to give it back. He asked me what I was doing, and if I had any plans for the evening. He said he had a date. He paused for a moment, and looked at me again. "It's not that I'm a bad boy," he said. "It's just that I like being alone. When it's good it's really, really good." His eyes turned serious. "There are different ways of being cool. Some people have to do things that are not good for them. Then, when they get caught, they get caught." He smiled a little, and I thought I should say something. "It's not like I'm an alcoholic. I'm just the opposite. I just want to be left alone," he said. # 8 MELTING THE EARTH In a small, dark, smoky bar near a disused airport in a suburb of New Orleans, he sits looking at a computer screen. On it, he's working through a set of songs in a loop. He's writing new lyrics and working on some ideas, but he doesn't need to look at them. He plays all day and does what he likes, but then he sometimes goes back to things to fix them or refine them or add ideas. That's what he's doing now, on the screen. He's sitting in a dark and deserted bar at about 11 p.m., doing what he has done for years, and probably will do until he dies, but this time with a different set of ears. He is in constant contact with his band, who are somewhere around the world, and has for several years. With Skype, and its ability to create a real-time connection, you can be in the same room, looking at the same screen, as someone halfway around the world. It would be the same as sitting in the room with him. He sometimes refers to the "virtual studio," a phrase used by Bob Dylan to explain his working technique. However, he's never used the term before. I was sitting at the table next to his. I can't see him through the window, but I can hear him on the phone. It's his voice that lets me know that I'm sitting at the same table as the man himself, and not someone who has done something that I wish I had done. He's writing on a computer, and I'm right next to him. As he finishes writing a lyric, he'll tap it into the computer, pause, then say to whoever is on the phone, "Is that OK?" I ask him to repeat the sentence so I can make sure I understand it right. He says, "So your father just went out of town and left you home and now you feel like you wanna blow up the kitchen?" I'm not sure what he means at first. Then I realise he was writing "you got to admit it's a drag." I remember asking my father to help me move, and he said it was a big task. I was thirteen and the sofa had slid along the concrete floor, leaving a three-foot pile. I wasn't supposed to move the sofa, but I was. He said it would be easy and it would take two people. I couldn't find a pal, so I just got a friend to help me lift it up by the arms and drag it through the door. We did the job in under half an hour. My father had taken his car into town and was only gone a couple of hours. Now he says that he wishes he'd stayed home. He'd brought the tape of the new album I had sent him into the bar to play for his friends. "I know, but maybe if you'd been home we could have done it together," I say. "I just went there to do a favour for a friend. We're a hundred yards away from them and she was a good friend of my wife. It's not like she was a stranger. She's been in the house on her own a thousand times before. Anyway, thanks." He says, "I just got back from New Orleans. It's cool, baby. I could move here tomorrow and stay in a cheap hotel. It's all there. New Orleans is one of the greatest cities in the world." The bar in New Orleans is a dark room with a countertop covered in beer rings. A few people are at the counter, but most of the people in the bar are drinking and talking at their tables. Occasionally, one of them says something, but mostly they're just there. They don't really communicate. A young woman is playing records on a jukebox. She changes between Led Zeppelin and the Doors. The doors are unlocked and the people come and go. Some people have brought their dogs, others do not. On a dark street away from the town, there are several bars, some closed, others open. As I've said, this is the bar where I am waiting for him. The night is hot, and I'm drinking a Coke and wishing it was something stronger. The man who walked into the bar about forty-five minutes before I did asks if he can take a photo of me. I tell him no, but he asks me why. I say it's because I don't know who you are. "But that's why you should have come in with me," he says. He hands me a copy of a newspaper and tells me to look at the photo. The headline on the front page of the paper says: "No News Today." The story is about the economy and how the unemployment figures are falling. I'm not really sure what it's saying, but I do understand the headline and the photo he gives me: a photo of myself sitting in a bar. It's a photo from an interview I did with him in a bar in Los Angeles two years ago. I think he liked it because it was a joke about fame and the kind of fame he really wanted. Most journalists write about fame and success, but he's one of the few who do not. A lot of people in this part of the world don't like him very much, but they're not jealous of him. They like him because he's nice and he is one of theirs. They know that he loves the town they live in, that they all think he's important, and that he's been around the most. He's never in the same place for too long. He makes it a little difficult for people to hold grudges against him. That's why, in a world where people are prone to hate on a daily basis, you'll see him sitting at the table next to the one where I'm sitting. But he's never there for long. He goes back to where he lives now, and leaves everyone alone. He's been in New Orleans for less than ten days, but he's not there for the music or the jazz or even the food or the coffee. This city, like most other places, has restaurants and pubs and coffee shops that specialize in different things. The best coffee in the world is made by a man in a bar in New Orleans. He makes it in his garage and puts beans into a small machine he designed and built. He makes his own sugar, and grinds it into powder, before putting the powder in a device he also invented, that's about the size of a large loaf of bread. He says that it's like a big vacuum cleaner that sucks the powder through. He says he's always looking for different ways of taking the taste out of beans. I'm with a group of journalists who come to the bar to watch the man make coffee. We're invited to his home and take part in one of his rituals. He has some beans and water that he has ground that day, some sugar and a machine that he designed. He talks to the machine and then says he's ready to make a cup. I like the machine, and not just because it gives me an excuse to ask for coffee. It reminds me of