In honor of the late Lee Hazlewood, here is Edward E. Crouse’s unfiltered conversation with the great singer-songwriter, from the Guardian in 1998:
Love Lee
A duet over the phone with Mr. Hazlewood.
By Edward E. Crouse
LEE HAZLEWOOD writes, produces, and sings ambrosial pop songs. Ambrosial in both senses: the Greek (what the gods ingest) and the American (that picnic mystery made of canned fruits in heavy syrup and whipped cream). Hazlewood claims never to have met Serge Gainsbourg — a Gallic strategist with a similar dark, drunken heart and thick basso profundo–bizarro pipes who shares his knack for perverse idioms and knocking out hits with boy-girl, Beauty-Beast arrangements. Hazlewood is by no means as fashion-ready as Gainsbourg, which means that clubs won’t charge a premium for lacquered and booted neo-modistes to frug on his birthday, and the prospect of cats aping Hazlewood’s trademark stealth fighter–shaped mustache is doubtful.
