Heaven Stood Still: Willy DeVille Doc Explores the Space Where Passion Met Cool
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B
Do people still remember Willy DeVille?
The singer-songwriter, who died in 2009 of pancreatic cancer at the age of 58, tried hard to make himself difficult to forget. A lanky theatrical performer, with a pompadour hairstyle, a pencil moustache, and candy-coloured suits, he affected the pachucho Hispanic zoot suit style of the 1930s.
He sang, sometimes in character voices, with soulful conviction. He was Rolling Stone’s top male vocalist of 1980, and he wrote songs in the spirit of gritty urban romanticism that echo the song stories of Bruce Springsteen or Tom Waits.
Now there’s a documentary, Heaven Stood Still: The Incarnations of Willy DeVille — directed by Larry Locke and co-produced by De Ville’s former sax player, Crispin Cioe — which makes the case for illuminating and elevating his legacy.
It’s sincere but basic. There’s an assemblage of archival clips tracking the chronology of a three-decade career, bolstered by the testimony of his musical colleagues. They say that he was unappreciated as a songwriter, a versatile musical stylist who moved confidently from Brill Building teen pop, rural blues, French cabaret and New Orleans rhythm and blues.
His legacy is also, somewhat incongruously, tied to that of the New York punk avant-garde. His first successful band, Mink DeVille (1974-1986), was a house band at New York club CBGB, the womb of punk rock, along with Television, Talking Heads, and Blondie.
Speaking of Talking Heads, there are lots of them here, including Chris Frantz, who knew DeVille in his mid-seventies Bowery days. There’s also the late Ben E. King who DeVille idolized, producers including as Hal Willner and Jack Nietzsche, both of whom are gone now, and musicians Peter Wolf and Mark Knopfler, who were evangelical about DeVille’s talent.
Knopfler produced the soundtrack for the film The Princess Bride, which included DeVille’s Oscar-nominated song, “Storybook Love,” which DeVille performed on the 1987 Oscars telecast.
Although he was successful in Europe, DeVille never cracked into the big time in North America, which is not in itself a tragedy or injustice. Musical talent and success don’t always go in tandem. There are various reasons why he didn’t break through.
The genre-hopping and his eclectic interests made it hard for record companies to market him. Also, that fatalistic romanticism seems to have been less an artistic pose than a character dysfunction. DeVille used heroin, on and off, for years. He had chaotic romantic life and a habitual restlessness that took him from San Francisco, New York, Paris, and New Orleans.
The romanticism was an escape from humdrum working-class small-town beginnings. He was born plain old William Borsey in 1950, in the town of Stamford, Connecticut, about 30 miles outside of New York City. His influences included not just the The Drifters and blues music, but the musical West Side Story.
He was 17 when he married his first wife, Susan Berk a.k.a. Toots DeVille, a wild character in her own right. Fashion-wise, she bridged the gap between The Ronettes and Amy Winehouse, with beehive hairdos, kabuki make-up, and big false eyelashes.
According to lore, she carried a knife to scare away women who wanted Willy’s attention. They fought ferociously and he eventually ran out on her. His second wife Lisa Leggett helped advance his career, and then took her life in 2001. His third wife, Nina Lagerwall, who is interviewed in the film, survived him.
It is a melancholy biography, mostly because he didn’t live long enough to enjoy the calmer years. The reward in the film is the music, which is lively and emotionally tangled and worth further exploration, and a chance to jog some old memories.
I interviewed DeVille once by phone, back in the Reagan era. He was friendly, preached about the unity of passion and cool, and didn’t even mind talking about a spat, carried on via the English music press, he had with Elvis Costello. (“The simple thing is, the guy is not a nice cat,” DeVille explained, blaming Costello for listening to his manager Jake Riviera.)
Costello, in his memoir published six years after DeVille’s death, dismisses the “cartoon junkie melodrama of Mink DeVille” which is something a nice guy wouldn’t write.
That interview, many years ago, ended on an enthusiastic note and hope for the future: “A lot of kids are into suffering and being artists in their basements but just watch it. It’s all going to go boom again, and the whole thing will blow wide open again. This is a very romantic period.”
Heaven Stood Still: The Incarnations of Willy DeVille. Directed by Larry Locke. Screens July 27, 7 pm, at Toronto’s Paradise Theatre on Bloor, featuring a Q & A with Toronto musician Paul James and director Larry Locke. Advance tickets at ticketweb.