Photo by Jessica Turner.
Bucks Burnett walked me to the back of 14 Records. The shop was the size of a closet, I was seeing the only part of it that was hidden from the average customer. He pulled back a tapestry to reveal a toilet, surrounded by clutter, with a framed golden record resting on top of it.
The record was The Who’s 2019 release, Who, gifted personally to Burnett by the band’s frontman, Pete Townshend. It was framed beautifully, and surely worth thousands of dollars just from Townshend’s association with it.
Burnett seemed to delight in the juxtaposition created by such a valuable item being haphazardly laid over a toilet, especially in a place that could only be appreciated by him.
“That’s rock ‘n’ roll baby,” Burnett said, gesturing to the record with a smirk.
I felt clarity. The restroom record had just given me the solution to the Bucks Burnett enigma that I’d been trying to solve since my first meeting with him when I was 16.
Burnett told me to meet him at the record store at midnight, “no earlier, no later.”
Preparing for my first interview as a journalist, I arrived at the store on the dot. My car and his were the only two on the strip. When the door of 14 Records opened it was a haze of cigarette smoke scored by a Kate Bush song spinning on Burnett’s turntable in the back. He rolled an office chair over to me, and I sat with him until 4 in the morning.
He riffed on his life, sharing stories about his rock star run-ins like it was folklore around a campfire.
Like the time that Burnett was attacked by Vanilla Ice at a club because he referred to the “Ice Ice Baby” star as his “nilla wafer.” Or when he was Jimmy Page’s special guest backstage at the historic Led Zeppelin reunion show.
I never quite figured out how to weave a lifetime of epic stories into a bite-sized article, but Burnett remained a friend. I’d stop by to see him whenever I drove past the store. At any hour I knew he’d be in there, and that I’d leave with a good story.
On Oct. 2, Bucks Burnett died at 64. He was a friend to many, and sported an effortless charisma to anyone who would listen.
Willy Landers was among those who listened. He works at the Dallas Hemp Company, which shares a wall with 14 Records.
“He would always come in for coffee and try to pay, but we wouldn’t let him,” Landers says. “Despite my efforts, he would put cash in the tip jar, hang out for a minute, say something weird and leave. He was always in a goofy, good mood. His presence really lit up the room.”
In 2011, an Advocate article dubbed Burnett as the “king of kitsch” and “champion of the chucked,” referencing his numerous offbeat projects that seemed doomed from the start.
Just how Burnett liked it.
He started a museum dedicated to 8 tracks and organized a music festival called Edstock, dedicated to TV horse Mr. Ed. And he managed oddball talent Tiny Tim in the 1980s until his death in 1996.
His sideshows became the subject of heavy coverage from other local publications, even landing him a syndicated column at the Dallas Observer.
One time, he used his platform to jeer at a customer who broke an unwritten, unspoken 14 Records rule.
That customer was Tami Thomsen, manager for the Toadies. She’d purchased a Sex Pistols 8 track which had been stored in a locked cabinet in the store with a $100 price tag.
“I bought it in cash. A few days later, I got a call from an irate Bucks. He was mad because the tape sold and (he) was told by his store employee that ‘some girl with a pink mohawk’ bought it,” Thomsen says. “That was me. Only Bucks would be mad that an item sold at its asking price. Bucks told me he put the $100 price tag on it because he knew no one would be stupid enough to pay that.”
Burnett took the incident to Goldmine Magazine, calling the Sex Pistols 8 track the “Holy Grail” that he “looked high and low for.” He claimed that he put the price so high as a joke to “ward off potential customers.”
It wasn’t the only tightrope Burnett walked. He was bombastic, yet tranquil. He was predictably unpredictable.
Who would toss Pete Townshend’s record over the toilet, so nobody could see it? Who would organize a music festival in honor of Mr. Ed? Who would go from there to orient his entire career around managing Tiny Tim?
The same person who gave me the only interview in history that was too good to use.
That’s who.
That was Bucks Burnett, and that’s rock ‘n’ roll, baby.
