Who is Ratso? Why is Nick Cave on his debut album? Ratso is the nickname for author, journalist, screenwriter, songwriter, New York persona, and septuagenarian Larry Sloman. He earned his bones penning On the Road with Bob Dylan, which documented the Rolling Thunder tour (where Joni Mitchell nicknamed him). A close friend of Leonard Cohen, Dylan, and many other songwriters, he co-wrote Howard Stern's two best-selling memoirs, Private Parts and Miss America, Mike Tyson's Undisputed Truth, and the memoirs of Peter Criss, Anthony Kiedis, and Abbie Hoffman. He served as an editor for High Times and National Lampoon, and wrote songs with John Cale, penned a history of pot use in the U.S. and, with William Kalush, co-wrote a biography of Harry Houdini that's been made into a film. He's a fictional character, too: a sidekick to the hero of friend Kinky Friedman's detective novels.
Most of Stubborn Heart's songs were penned when Sloman was writing with Cale in the mid-'80s, and he is not a
a skilled singer, though his voice is likable enough (when he's not imitating Cohen or Dylan). Produced by multi-instrumentalist Vincent Cacchione, Stubborn Heart is at once deadly serious and engagingly humorous. Sloman's persona is filled with a lifetime of outsized desire, somewhat tempered by perspective then framed in clever, sometimes profound lyrics. Ratso's manifesto, "I Want Everything" is delivered like a Cohen spoken word tome amid nocturnal guitars, wafting synths, glockenspiel, and backing vocals from Yasmine Hamdan. "Our Lady of Light," with Cave, is the set's finest moment, with pillowy guitars in a vintage rock & roll waltz; it could be a companion to one of Cohen's own songs of unattainable amorousness (think "Suzanne"). Alternating with Sloman's reedy nasal instrument, Cave's croon adds balance, poignancy, and emotional heft. Of three numbers penned with Cale, "Caribbean Sunset" (with Imani Coppola on vocals and Shilpa Ray on harmonium) and "Dying on the Vine" are wonderful. The latter is delivered as a lost, haunted reverie. While Cale's version is a desperate anthem, Sloman's is a paean to memory, loss, and survival. "Matching Scars" is a country song, a barroom weeper that sums up Sloman's inner life, while the title cut is an organ-drenched drift with Sloman's croak offering regrets and reflections on love lost. The closer is an 11-minute cover of Dylan's "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands." Unfortunately it feels contrived, with Sloman's Dylan impersonation front and center amid a chorus of female vocalists (including Cohen's writing partner Sharon Robinson) as well as violin and alto flute from Warren Ellis. It simply collapses under the weight of its artifice. There is no way to know if Sloman is trying his hand at a new career or just wrapping up loose ends with Stubborn Heart. Either way, he needed to make it and that's what counts. Most of this is engaging, warm, funny, and insightful. The rest is a maddening headscratcher, and that's just as it should be.