Fito Páez Started His Album ‘Novela' in 1988. 37 Years Later, He's Finally Sharing It With the World
'I don't really believe in the concept of creative genius and things like that,' the Argentine artist Fito Páez says from his home in Buenos Aires. 'I'm more of a believer in the will and desire to express myself — that's the heart of the matter.'
At 62, the legendary Argentine rocker has just released one of the most ambitious albums of his career: Novela, an opera that he started developing in 1988, and finally reworked and finished last year during a lengthy — and furious — creative spell in Madrid. The album, which Páez plans to turn into a film, has divided fans. Some online critics called it convoluted and unlistenable, while the Argentine edition of Rolling Stone hailed it as 'a titanic tour de force.'
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The plot, which takes place in Páez's native province of Santa Fe, involves a witchcraft university, an itinerant circus, and the fateful meeting of two teenagers. The presence of an oddly ceremonial female narrator in between songs doesn't help the cause, but some of the tracks boast the same kind of surreal, nostalgic beauty that was already present in 1992's El Amor Después del Amor, a record that transformed Latin rock with its euphoric spirit and Beatles-esque melodies. A complex work made up of 25 tracks, Novela will definitely be remembered as one of the singer's most fascinating albums.
Páez spoke with Rolling Stone about the madness of contemporary pop culture — and his desire to create a musical narrative that could be both personal and universal.
Is meant to be an antidote to the music of the streaming era?Not really, considering that it simmered in low heat for so many years. It certainly could function as an antidote now that this kind of format has become a rara avis.
You started working on this project in 1988. Did anything happen last year that inspired you to reach the finish line?Let's be a bit Lacanian, and pragmatic, too. My girlfriend, Eugenia Kolosziej, decided to study in Madrid. I had just finished a tour and wanted to join her. But what was I to do? I couldn't just spend my days reading… Novela had been developing in fits and starts. In fact, I finished the screenplay for the movie adaptation before completing the album.
I called Sony and asked for the impossible: a studio in Madrid, available at all hours of the day. In the process, I wrote 17 tracks, with an additional eight rescued from the original version. The nature of this project may be somewhat controversial, but the original incentive was simply to accompany Eugenia and find something to do. I spent a month and a half locked in the recording studio. It was a beautiful process.
A couple of years ago, I asked you if reggaeton was the new rock & roll, and your terse reply still cracks me up: 'Clearly not, Ernesto.' Do you still believe that?I don't have much to say on the subject — it doesn't interest me in the least. I wrote an essay titled 'Music in a Time of Massive Madness' and previewed it at Berkeley. I will read a few more chapters soon at the University of Buenos Aires, and the entire book will come out before the end of the year.
I guess what I'm trying to ask is, does the state of contemporary pop angers you?I'm a creator. Anger materializes in people who are toxic and ignorant. There's no space for anger when you're busy creating; only beauty and joy.
But the very ontology of your album is a slap in the face to the two-minute pop song. is the antithesis of that.It's up to journalists like you to formulate those concepts. The fact that Novela exists gives us the opportunity to ponder. I started writing my essay three years ago, because I noticed the absence of dissident voices. Everything was about the looming threat of cancellation, or being too old to speak up about these matters. Well, I have my story to tell, and I will not be swept away by the herd. You asked me why Novela is seeing the light of day now. There isn't a controversial reason for that. It's my nature, and it will not be tamed. There will always be a fault in the matrix. I'm one of the faults.
Ideologically speaking, it makes me happy that a record like exists. I will defend with my life your right as an artist to make that kind of a statement…During the 1970s, a great Italian philosopher named Bifo Berardi spoke of the phenomenon that he described as 'massive madness.' It's certainly time to ponder what is the meaning of music today — what it signifies, how we relate to it. When something appears that stems from a pure love of music, inevitably, the existing structures begin to crumble.
It's gonna take me a long time to fully digest and comprehend as a whole. That said, songs such as 'Cruces de Gin en Sal' and 'El Vuelo' are gorgeous — even if it's hard to understand what came before or after them.I take that as a lovely compliment. Yesterday I wrote a poem about [Mexican painter José Clemente] Orozco painting a mural at Dartmouth College in Vermont. The concept of a mural is so beautiful, because you never get tired of looking at it. I also think of [James] Joyce's introduction to his Ulysses, where he appears to relish the fact that critics will never be able to fully decipher its contents. I just read Jorge Luis Borges' [classic short story] 'El Aleph' once again, and I found stuff that I didn't notice on the previous reads.
The tension between the personal and the universal is palpable in the plot of .There's something luminous about painting the mural of the village where you grew up. Villa Constitución [in the province of Santa Fe] was a small city. The imaginary elements of the story — the witches, and the university — stem from growing up with my father, and reading novels by Julio Verne and Emilio Salgari. But it's also the story of the boy who grew up in that world, who later became a man and in his 60s created a fantasy around it. It's all very personal, but also universal. This could have happened in any village, anywhere in the world.
Once again, the Beatles inform your musical world in such an organic, loving way…I once told [producer] Phil Ramone, this track sounds a bit too much like Steely Dan, and he replied, 'Why do you care about that? If you're doing it, and it works perfectly, why does it matter?' His advice was valuable, and made me consider the hybrid as a noble art form. We listened to the Beatles in Villa Constitución when I was 15, at birthdays and dance parties. Novela touches on the hallucinogenic universe of 'Strawberry Fields Forever.'
'El Vuelo' is so cinematic, with those spiraling orchestral flourishes.It's a pivotal moment in the story, when the protagonists levitate and the entire town takes off flying. But it happens with that musical backdrop, so slow and elegant, like in slow motion.
When you released in 2020, I noticed how sumptuous your sonic universe can be when backed by orchestral arrangements. Was that album a before-and-after for you?It's been a long process that began in 1990, when I asked Carlos Villavicencio to do the brass and string arrangements for Tercer Mundo. We did several albums together, and our collaboration was always passionate. Then I met Gerardo Gandini, who was my last great teacher. Eventually, I started doing my own orchestral arrangements. But this is an incredible moment for me, because as soon as I finish my next tour, I will begin academic studies in composition and arranging. I want to drive the Ferrari on my own.
An unfair question, I know: Would you say is still your ultimate masterpiece?You know what I think? We always discuss artists such as Beethoven and Haydn, or [filmmakers] such as Cassavetes and Fellini, and we pick a specific movie or record that we think is the best. But today I may favor a particular Fellini movie, and that may change tomorrow. What's my favorite Charly García record? There are so many.
I think music gave me the opportunity to express myself and experience happiness, to liberate personal ghosts and make up imaginary worlds, to enjoy a life that became more lucid and fun. Music transports you to unknown territory. As long as you continue expressing yourself through art, life will continue to lighten up.
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It's difficult to explain why Blue Smiley became popular years after playing their final show or releasing any music. But the people interviewed for this story float several theories. First, the band was unknowingly ahead of its time by making all of their songs under three minutes, perfect for easy streaming and short attention spans. There's also the morbid curiosity about Brian's death. However, many fans are still unaware of the band's backstory. Just as you can go on YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit and find people describing Brian as 'an icon,' 'a genius,' 'a legend,' you can find plenty of people with no clue about Brian's death, wondering when Blue Smiley will make more music. There's also a shoegaze revival happening, thanks in part to TikTok. Aided by algorithms, young fans are discovering music from the 90s, 2000s, and 2010s, some of which never attained a mass audience until now. But the truth behind Blue Smiley's seemingly random success may be simple: They're good. 'I think they had a really cool sound,' says Bissie Loux, a Philly-based digital artist who knew many members of the band. 'When there's death, that just draws a ton of attention to a project because it makes it more special, but they're just a really good band. I think it ultimately came down to that.' Still, the world is full of great bands who never attain this kind of following, let alone spawn acts who call themselves 'a Blue Smiley worship band' (as the buzzy Philadelphia band They Are Gutting a Body of Water, often known as TAGABOW, does). Molly Moltzen, an Austin-based writer and friend of Slavin's, spent roughly a decade managing bands in Boston, a job she now compares to being 'a glorified babysitter.' When Slavin told her about Blue Smiley's streaming numbers, she made sure to remind him, again and again, how lucky he is. 'You're really the exception,' she told him. 'It almost never works out this way.' 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Blue Smiley relied on cassette tapes (which they mostly gave away for free) and Bandcamp to publish their music, making them, as Slavin jokingly says, 'independent to a fault.' That said, Brian had also uploaded their music to Spotify via a British distribution service called RouteNote. Ken remembers his son getting $40 or so a month while he was alive. ('Just enough for a tank of gas every now and then,' he says.) Since Brian's PayPal account was eventually deactivated due to inactivity, RouteNote had no way of paying the thousands of dollars Blue Smiley started accruing as streams accumulated. So, for the first of many times, the band presented their frontman's death certificate to access money that eventually came in fits and starts. 'They took several months to get caught up with us, only depositing about six months' worth at a time, then four months, then two months as the monthly payments got larger,' recalls Ken. (RouteNote did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) Though Slavin hated the red tape and the cold formality of submitting his friend's death certificate — a step he says 'retraumatized' him — seeing that certificate also brought him some small measure of clarity. 'To be totally honest, for years, I was really mad at Brian for dying,' he says. 'That was a lot of what my grief felt like, and so it was really hard for me to approach the music or even the conversation with a lot of people.' Old Philly friends would tell him 'Blue Smiley was the best,' and inside, he'd think, 'Well, it's fucking bullshit. It's worthless now.' Then, when he saw the certificate, it confirmed Brian's death was an accidental overdose. The anger melted away, eventually giving way to a dogged passion for getting the music in front of more listeners. The band formed an LLC, signed up with a record label for the first time, and released some merch and vinyl. As they saw it, the final hurdle was the MLC — and they thought it'd be an easy one. One day, during a lull in his nine-to-five job last year, Slavin created an MLC account and tried to register Blue Smiley's songs. He discovered that someone else had already done so, back in 2021. It wasn't their publisher or anyone else affiliated with the band. Apparently, it was an impostor. This isn't the first time a bad actor has used the MLC to claim work that's not their own. Stephen Carlisle, a copyright attorney, told Rolling Stone someone claimed credit for music belonging to his client, who, like Brian, had passed away. In Carlisle's case, when the impostor was called out, they 'rolled over' and relinquished the claim right away. For Blue Smiley, it was much more complex. The band engaged in a monthslong dispute with Simon, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Rolling Stone. It wasn't until February of this year that the MLC shared in writing that Simon hadn't, in fact, collected any royalties. (The MLC told Rolling Stone it had already flagged irregularities and suspended the royalties before Blue Smiley reached out, though the band says they were never made aware of that action.) That hasn't stopped Simon from claiming credit for other artists' music. Via the MLC's database, Simon has claimed credit for 33 other tracks by multiple artists, including a song by the Orlando-based artist Suissidee. 'They had no part in working on that song,' Suissidee tells Rolling Stone. 'It was just me and my friend.' Simon has also claimed credit for many songs by the artist Nuvfr, who told Rolling Stone, 'I don't know who Eldde Simon is.' This apparent imposter isn't the first person to try to game the music industry. Last year, the U.S. Justice Department indicted a North Carolina man named Michael Smith for using AI to create hundreds of thousands of songs, then employing bots to stream the songs billions of times. This scheme netted Smith over $10 million in royalties before he was caught. While these stories underscore how the music industry is ripe for fraud, experts say the bigger issue is the extreme level of difficulty facing indie musicians. Without lawyers, managers or in-depth technical knowledge, indie artists must navigate labyrinthine processes to claim their music and hope they can get some money in a timely fashion. 'In our case, the choice is either pay a lot out of pocket to collect an undetermined amount, or give someone who has nothing to do with the music partial ownership over a percentage of our music,' Slavin says. 'To me, this is the crux of the problem. The goal is to keep full ownership for the integrity of the work and memory of Brian and not bankrupt ourselves in the process.' Jeff Price, a music industry veteran who has worked with Metallica, Bob Dylan, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and many others, put a finer point on it. 'The whole system is set up to require an intense knowledge of copyright law in the United States, along with technical capabilities and an ungodly amount of persistence with constant auditing,' he says. Price argues that the issue facing Blue Smiley and an untold number of other musicians dates back to before the creation of the MLC, when Spotify 'flipped the business model' by launching its platform without licenses in place for every song. At the time, songs were streamed without the proper mechanical licenses, which was especially harmful for independent artists. Then the same law that led to the formation of the MLC gave Spotify and other services a blanket license to stream music. As Price puts it, this method is akin to starting a streaming service that's home to every movie in the world, then only paying Disney if they ask for their money. He's had clients with much larger followings than Blue Smiley who wait months, even years, to receive the money they're owed. Other experts and attorneys defend the MLC, citing the hundreds of educational webinars they've offered to reach artists, as well as the fact that royalties — and the music business at large — were set up to benefit the biggest players long before the MLC came around. In fact, the MLC is trying to stand up for artists, they say. One example: The MLC recently sued Spotify, alleging that the streaming service is attempting to reduce mechanical royalty payments by using 'premium' plans to bundle audiobooks and music. When the lawsuit was announced, MLC CEO Kris Ahrend noted that the MLC, 'is the only entity with the statutory mandate to collect and distribute blanket license royalties and take legal action to enforce royalty payment obligations.' In late January, a judge ruled in favor of Spotify. To Slavin, it's clear indie or self-published musicians are simply not valued within the current ecosystem. 'It feels like they want you to have a publisher that you have to pay your own money to,' he says. 'They really don't want you to be fully independent, even though there's all these claims that they do.' Corso, meanwhile, doesn't want people to read this and think he and his friends are about to get a windfall. (It's not 'quit-your-job money,' Slavin says.) Rather, he sees this as an opportunity to reclaim a bit of their friend's legacy. Brian wouldn't have cared about the money, Corso points out. But he wouldn't have wanted someone else to be credited for him and his friends' work, and he'd want more people to discover what they did together. 'I feel antiquated,' says the 37-year-old Corso. 'I feel past the expiration date in many ways. I'm not connected to this anymore, you know? This is the past. When we were a band, we were just a small-time band. I don't understand the modern era.' For him, the music can sometimes feel like a relic from a lost era: a time when Philly was both vibrant and affordable. Rent was well under $1,000; you could make a living as an artist. Royalties didn't matter, because gigs were enough. Now he's living in Connecticut, not far from Torrington. He's started playing more classical guitar, and he finds himself 'playing around with Brian's style: 'His right-hand picking was relentless, and he had a unique vocabulary of chords in the left hand.' 'I'm trying to sort it out,' Corso adds. 'I still have a shred of hope.' Ken agrees with his son's former bandmates that Brian wouldn't have cared all that much about the money. But he's glad they're pursuing the royalties, and once they finally get paid (which they hope happens soon, now that the dispute is resolved), Ken says they'll be donating some of the money to arts nonprofits in Philly and New Haven, as well as homelessness outreach organizations (another passionate cause of Brian's). Ken explains all of this while cycling through Spotify numbers in his office, though he eventually moves over to one of many Reddit threads discussing Blue Smiley. Someone commented, 'Who?'; Ken downvotes the comment. 'This guy says 'Awesome sauce,'' he says, pointing out another comment. He upvotes that one, along with another that begins, 'One of my favorite bands of all time.' Then he keeps scrolling, while Blue Smiley plays in the background. Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
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Garland Jeffreys Was One of Rock's Most Essential Voices. Where Did He Go?
In the late 1970s, many of music's top tastemakers felt sure Garland Jeffreys would become the next big thing. Rolling Stone named him the 'most promising artist' of 1977. The prestigious PBS program Soundstage predicted he would become 'the next performer to lay claim to superstardom.' And powerful radio stations like New York's WNEW-FM kept his songs '35 Millimeter Dreams' and 'Wild in the Streets' in heavy rotation. The sound that drew all this praise was marked by vocals that recalled the sardonic cadence of Jeffreys' close friend Lou Reed, matched to a theatrical blast of rock that brought to mind the work of another friend, Bruce Springsteen, had he grown up in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, rather than his old stomping grounds in New Jersey. So deep was the belief in Jeffreys' talent in those days that, two decades later, he was still famous enough for the massively popular TV show Jeopardy to feature the title of one of his most acclaimed songs as the answer to a question. Unfortunately, the reaction of the show's three contestants in 2000 revealed a sad disconnect: None of them showed any sign of recognition when his song was mentioned. 'That tells you everything,' says the singer's wife of more than 30 years and manager, Claire Jeffreys. 'Garland was hot enough to have his song mentioned by Jeopardy's writers, but not known by enough of the general public to get a single response.' More from Rolling Stone Rob Reiner: 'Bruce Springsteen Is 100 Percent Right' About Trump Hear Bruce Springsteen's Lost Nineties Mariachi Song 'Adelita' Bruce Springsteen Is Under Attack by Trump. These Are All the Artists Supporting Him That sense of missed opportunity forms the emotional core of a new documentary about the star titled Garland Jeffreys: The King of In Between. The title refers both to Jeffreys' musical style — an uncategorizable mix of rock, reggae, and soul — and to his identity as the mixed-race son of a Black father and a Puerto Rican mother who struggled to find his place in the overwhelmingly white world of '70s and '80s rock. That struggle became his most sustained subject, forming the basis of many of his most powerful songs. 'I don't know of anybody who has written about race as directly as Garland has,' Springsteen says in the documentary, which premieres at New York's IFC Center on Friday before arriving in select other theaters in the coming weeks. (The film will stream on Amazon Prime, iTunes, Google Play, and Tubi starting in August.) Striking as the story of Jeffreys' career may be, it's been dwarfed in some ways by the dramatic events that have taken place in his life in the nine years since his wife began making the documentary. In 2018, the now 81-year-old musician began showing signs of dementia, a condition that has progressed to the point where he is now unable to care for himself and barely able to communicate. The daunting task of his care at their Manhattan apartment has fallen to his wife, with assistance from a home aide. Despite that, she chose to leave his dementia out of the film she made. 'I felt it would overwhelm the music and everything else about his life,' she says. Ultimately, she adds, she chose to talk about this with Rolling Stone to give full context to a tale that already touches on a host of hot-button topics. Even today, years later, Jeffreys' autobiographical style of songwriting remains remarkable. 'Garland has been incredibly courageous in the particular way he has written about race,' says guitarist Vernon Reid, who played on one of Jeffreys' albums in the Nineties. 'He writes about it in a very intimate way so that what you hear in his songs isn't like the work of anyone else.' Jeffreys introduced his approach in the very first track off his self-titled debut album in 1973. In the 'Ballad of Me,' he described himself as 'Black and white as can be … a freak in the family/Like a newborn child/With a frozen smile.' As his lyrics suggest, Jeffreys' family life was fraught from the start. His birth father left the family when he was just two. His mother, whom his wife describes as 'high maintenance,' remarried a few years later to a man who beat Garland on a fairly regular basis for the smallest infractions. 'His mother would tattle on him, saying 'Garland didn't sweep the stoop,' and then his father would wallop him,' Claire says. 'That his mother, the person who's supposed to protect him, would tell on him created in him a deep psychological distrust of people.' She adds, 'It made Garland into someone with a huge chip on his shoulder, both personally and professionally.' Despite that, she says her husband's childhood in Sheepshead Bay had many bright spots, some involving the family, others involving neighbors whom he would entertain by singing doo-wop on street corners in the style of his idol, Frankie Lymon. At seven, Garland started coming into the city for piano lessons. By his early teens, he sneaked into jazz clubs in Greenwich Village to hear singer Carmen McRae (a distant relative) and sax work from Sonny Rollins (who later played with him in his PBS Soundstage performance). A few years later, his father made sure to send Garland to Syracuse University, no small feat for a man who made his main living waiting tables. At Syracuse in the early 1960s, Garland met and quickly befriended Lou Reed, a fellow student there. The fact that Reed already wrote songs despite his limited vocal range inspired the more vocally adept Jeffreys to perform himself. Part of their bond came from their mutual ability to reflect the character of their birth city in their music. 'You can hear New York talking in both of those guys,' says Laurie Anderson, who married Reed in 2008. 'They're both connected to the language of the streets. When they hung out, they would always riff on it and turn it into a song.' After college, Jeffreys attended the Institute of Fine Arts in New York but dropped out to pursue music. In 1969, he played guitar on John Cale's debut solo album, Vintage Violence, and, that same year, formed a band named Grinder's Switch that was signed to Vanguard Records and performed at the Fillmore East. Their debut album was produced by Lewis Merenstein, who had recently overseen Van Morrison's classic Astral Weeks. Though the Grinder's Switch album flopped, Jeffreys managed to get a solo contract with Atlantic. And while his sole release for the label — that 1973 self-titled debut featuring 'Ballad of Me' — was another bomb, it got good reviews for a sound that favored folk rock, blues, and reggae, a style that was just beginning to make an impact in the U.S. at the time. In an attempt to get attention for himself in that period, Jeffreys told some media outlets he was Jamaican. The lie revealed a flair for self-mythologizing already evident in his choice of a stage name: Born William Jeffreys, the singer chose to use his middle name, Garland, to sound more exotic. Four long years passed before he got another record contract, this time with A&M. His 1977 debut for the label, titled Ghost Writer, featured a song called 'Wild in the Streets' that was inspired by a horrific incident in the Bronx in which two teenage boys raped and murdered a nine-year-old girl. 'He was deeply affected by that story because it happened to children,' Claire says. 'He always felt like a wounded child himself.' 'Wild in the Streets' earned lots of FM radio play and was later covered by the Circle Jerks in what became such a signature piece for the California hardcore punks that few of their fans know Jeffreys actually wrote it. It didn't help that their version inverted its meaning entirely, turning it from a tragedy into an expression of joyous freedom. 'Garland didn't mind,' says Claire, who would go on to marry him in 1989. 'No matter how someone interprets your song, it's still an honor when someone covers it.' Given all the hype behind Ghost Writer, including RS' 'most promising artist' rave, Jeffreys took it hard when the album failed to sell. It didn't help his cause, his wife says, that he frequently fought with his label. 'He never felt like the label was doing right by him, even if they technically were,' she says. 'He always came from a place of insecurity and distrust.' Despite all the setbacks, Jeffreys continued to soar creatively, releasing notable albums like 1979's American Boy & Girl, whose cover featured an image of an interracial couple, and which generated a huge hit in Europe with the song 'Matador.' Stateside, Jeffreys continued to burn through labels, issuing albums on Epic and RCA. His first effort for the latter label channeled all of his frustrations into a stirring 1992 concept album about race called Don't Call Me Buckwheat. Its confrontational title was inspired by an ugly incident in the early '90s at a Mets game when someone in the crowd yelled at Jeffreys, 'Hey Buckwheat, get the fuck out of here,' making reference to the Black character from the 1930s series Our Gang. To drive home the pain and poignancy of that, the album cover featured a photo of Jeffreys as a child dressed in his baseball uniform to attend the historic game in which Jackie Robinson broke the color line. One song on the album was titled 'Color Line,' while another, named 'Racial Repertoire,' discussed what's known today as code-switching. 'The way you speak in the neighborhood is different from the way you speak on the job,' Reid explains. 'Garland wrote about that situation better than anyone.' More daringly, Jeffreys wrote about his own internalized racial shame in 'I Was Afraid of Malcolm,' with lyrics that found him struggling to accept Malcolm X's message. 'Malcolm was demanding an accounting, and Garland was terrified of what that would mean,' Reid says. 'To face the truth of racism is a monstrous thing.' While the album resonated in Europe, aided by strong support by a German record executive, it was buried in the U.S., once again reinforcing issues the singer had long faced as a Black rocker. In an interview I did with Garland in 2011, he talked about that. 'I'm too Black to be white, and too white to be Black,' he said then. 'We faced the same issue in my band,' Reid says of his pioneering group Living Colour. 'Black artists are not considered in the rock field.' At his most frustrated, Jeffreys resorted to painting his face Black, while also creating blackface masks to wear onstage. 'He knew that could be controversial,' his wife says. 'But he felt he had to do something.' Reid considers Jeffreys' blackface move to be an 'act of self-lacerating performance art. He was forcing the issue while also forcing the audience to face their own complicity in the situation.' Jeffreys' lack of success in the States ultimately left him without a recording contract in his home country for nearly 20 years. When he finally returned to recording with The King of In Between in 2011, the album appeared on his own label, Luna Park. Critics raved. Again, audiences remained aloof. Undaunted, Jeffreys continued issuing new work through 2017 with 14 Steps to Harlem. Two years later, he announced his retirement, though his wife thinks he should have stepped back sooner. 'He had been faltering in live performances for quite a while, forgetting lyrics or telling a story that was meandering,' she says. Her initial suggestion to stop didn't go over well. 'It was definitely a case of killing the messenger,' she says. 'It was really rough because performing was so important to him — way more important than success.' Eventually, however, not only did Jeffreys come to accept retirement, he began to appreciate the level of success he had achieved by re-centering his focus on the quality of the work itself. For the documentary, Springsteen offered the most laudatory summation of Jeffreys' talents. 'He's in the great singer-songwriter tradition of Dylan and Neil Young,' Springsteen said, 'one of the American greats.' Spreading the word on that was the main impetus behind Claire Jeffreys making the documentary, but it took some persuading to get her husband to go along. 'At first, he was ambivalent because it brought back all of those hard feelings,' she says. Despite his declining health, Jeffreys was able to appear during much of the filming. Eventually, though, his wife had to jump onscreen to speak for him. Relieved as she is to finally get the film out, it pains her to know that her husband may be unaware of either its release or its reception. Regardless, she believes his story has a silver lining. 'Ultimately, this is a story about perseverance,' she says. 'When each of us gets older, we realize that certain dreams of ours haven't been fulfilled. I hope this film helps people to accept what they have achieved, as Garland eventually did. Despite all that he faced, his has been a life well lived.' 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