John Lennon, 1965. © Corbis
Today John lennon would have turned 69 years old, had he not been so brutally taken away back in 1980. It doesn’t seem possible that he’s been gone nearly 30 years, anymore than it seems possible that, had he lived, the Beatles’ founding member would be flirting with 70. I put it down to the timelessness of the music and the message—the music only gets younger the more years fly by (if you’ve heard the remasters you’ll know what I mean) and the message only becomes more relevant (if you’ve read the news today oh boy, you’ll definitely know what I mean).
The LA Times former rock music critic, Rob Hilbrun, has a book coming out next week called Corn Flakes with John Lennon (and Other Tales From a Rock ‘n’ Roll Life). Fittingly, today the Times published an excerpt from the book online providing an intriguing glimpse at the man that Hilbrun came to know as his friend, John Lennon:
“As soon as I started working at the Los Angeles Times, people warned me not to get too close to artists because it could make it difficult to review their work and you can never really tell if the “friendship” is genuine. Even so, I felt there was much value in getting to know some of the most important artists beyond what you can glean in the hour or so you have to interview them. The relationship with Lennon — and it never approached anything like a daily or even weekly tie — came about naturally. I liked him and enjoyed his company.
John at the Peppermint Lounge, 1964, with Ringo and wife Cynthia. © Corbis
John came to town in late 1973 to record an oldies album with Phil Spector and to promote his new solo album, “Mind Games,” which he had produced himself. I interviewed him at the Bel-Air home of record producer Lou Adler, a chief force behind the Monterey Pop festival. May Pang, who introduced herself as John’s personal assistant, answered the door and took me to the patio where John was waiting. He was wearing jeans and a sweater vest over his shirt and he walked toward me enthusiastically. “Well, hello at last,” he said with a warm smile.
“Phil tells me you’re a big Elvis fan,” he said.
We ended up spending so much time talking about Elvis and other favorites from the 1950s that I was afraid we weren’t going to get to the Beatles and his solo career. I was particularly interested in his thoughts on his “Plastic Ono Band” album (from 1970); the songs struck me as being so personal.
“I always took the songs personally, whether it was ‘In My Life’ or ‘Help,’ ” he said. “To me, I always wrote about myself. Very few of the completely Lennon songs weren’t in the first person. I’m a first-person journalist. I find it hard, though I occasionally do it, to write about, you know, ‘Freddie went up the mountain and Freddie came back.’ And even that is really about you.”
John said he actually preferred “Plastic Ono Band” to its follow-up, “Imagine,” even though the latter sold more copies and got generally better reviews. “I was a bit surprised by the reaction to ‘Mother,’ ” he said, referring to “Plastic Ono Band” by his own title for it. “I thought, ‘Can’t they see how nice it is?’ ” So, John said, he went back into the studio and wrote new songs about many of the same themes, only this time he put on some strings and other production touches that made the message more accessible. That’s why, he said, he privately called the “Imagine” album “Mother With Chocolate.”
John and his Epiphone casino, 1965
The interview didn’t run in The Times until the album “Mind Games” was actually in the stores several weeks later. In the meantime, Phil invited me to one of the sessions for the oldies project. They had been going on for some weeks and the word was that they were pretty raucous, even drunken affairs. On the night I stopped by the studio, the liquor flowed freely. John, a gob of cake in his hand, chased Phil around the control booth while those around them danced to John’s just-recorded version of an early Elvis recording, “Just Because.”
But John wasn’t all playfulness. He had sharp words for one of the studio employees and insulted a record company guest. This wild John was a lot different from the charming guy I had met at Adler’s house, and I hoped the rude, drunken behavior was an aberration. But I kept hearing reports, including one about Phil firing a pistol one night and others about a tipsy John out on the town with his buddies and how he sometimes drank as much as a bottle of vodka a day. The first time I saw him this way away from the studio was at the Troubadour, where I was reviewing the opening of R&B singer Ann Peebles, who had a hit single, “I Can’t Stand the Rain.”
I didn’t know John was in the club until he was in the middle of a big commotion. He was so drunk that he had wrapped a Kotex sanitary napkin around his head. When one of the waitresses tried to quiet him, he shouted, “Don’t you know who I am?” Her answer was repeated the next day in all the record company offices and later in lots of magazine articles: “To me, you’re just some ass — with a Kotex on his head.” A bouncer escorted John and his party out onto Santa Monica Boulevard.
Eventually, John returned to New York with May and spent weeks trying unsuccessfully to get Phil to give him the sessions’ master tapes so he could finish the album himself. By then, I was beginning to hear reports about a strain between John and Yoko Ono and the suggestion that his relationship with May was more than simply professional. John was in a terrific mood when he returned from New York a few months later. He was only supposed to be in town for a few days, but the trip was extended and May phoned one day to say that John would like me to join him for dinner. When I got to the hotel, I figured he’d have a limo waiting downstairs. But John, wearing blue jeans and a black T-shirt, suggested that I drive, and we were soon off to a nearby Chinese restaurant, where we spent a couple of hours talking about Elvis, naturally.
Back at the hotel, Around 11:30, John turned on Johnny Carson’s TV show and ordered corn flakes and cream from room service. He turned the sound down on the TV and stirred the corn flakes and cream with his spoon in an almost ritualistic fashion before taking a bite.
In the studio during Sgt. Pepper, 1967
I didn’t think much of it until the same thing happened the next time we returned to the hotel after dinner. This time I asked what was up with the corn flakes.
He smiled.
As a child in Liverpool during World War II, he explained, you could never get cream, so it was a special treat. He took another bite and gave an exaggerated sigh to underscore just how sweet it tasted.
The mention of Liverpool made John nostalgic. I already knew a little about John’s early days, but it was fascinating hearing him tell the story. John was born in 1940 — a year after me — and he was raised by his Aunt Mimi after his parents broke up when he was about 5. His mother, Julia, started seeing another man who had children of his own and didn’t want another one around. John loved Mimi dearly, but he also longed for his mother, who lived only a few miles away.
During his teens, just around the time he had formed the Quarrymen skiffle group, he said he had begun seeing more of his mother and had gotten the feeling she was trying to make up for all the years of her absence from his life. She was especially excited about the band, and John treasured their time together. But his mother was hit and killed by a motorist while walking to a bus stop. His mother had been taken from him twice. He was 17.
John in 1964-- a prisoner of his own fame.
John had thought that rock ‘n’ roll fame would make everything right in his life, but even after his success he continued to search for someone or something to make his world seem complete. That was the theme of the “Plastic Ono Band” album. The very first song, “Mother,” started with him screaming, “Mother, you had me, but I never had you / I wanted you, but you didn’t want me.” It continued, “Father, you left me, but I never left you / I needed you, but you didn’t need me.”
He found that missing foundation in Yoko, which is why she became more important to him than even the Beatles. In “God,” a later song on the record, he again screams, “I don’t believe in Elvis. I don’t believe in Zimmerman [ Bob Dylan]. I don’t believe in Beatles. I just believe in me. Yoko and me. That’s reality.”
As he spoke, I could understand why John felt so adrift. Until that night, I had assumed he had separated from Yoko and was involved in a new relationship with May, but he said that Yoko had pretty much demanded a break in their relationship. He was clearly still in love with her. Without her, he had no shield against the pressures of the rock ‘n’ roll world and his own depression.
::
John & Yoko
In the fall of 1980, John and Yoko were finishing up their new album, “Double Fantasy,” and I headed to New York for John’s first newspaper interview in five years. This was when John raced into Yoko’s office at the Dakota with a copy of Donna Summer’s “The Wanderer.”
He had returned to New York after the “lost weekend” period and spent the next five years rebuilding his life with Yoko and helping to raise their son, Sean. On this day, he looked nice and trim in jeans, a jean jacket and a white T-shirt. He was maybe 25 pounds slimmer than the last time I’d seen him. “It’s Mother’s macrobiotic diet,” he said later about his weight, employing his nickname for Yoko. “She makes sure I stay on it.”
By the time we headed to the recording studio, it was nearly dark. As the limo pulled up to the studio’s dimly lit entrance, I could see the outlines of a couple dozen fans in the shadows. They raced toward the car as soon as the driver opened John’s door. Flashbulbs went off with blinding speed. Without a bodyguard, John was helpless, and I later asked if he didn’t worry about his safety. “They don’t mean any harm,” he replied. “Besides, what can you do? You can’t spend all your life hiding from people. You’ve got to get out and live some, don’t you?”
….
Filed under: music | Tags: 09.09.09, digital remasters, george harrison, john lennon, paul mccartney, ringo starr, rock band, the beatles
The Beatles in 1968
Today being a hell of a big deal to Beatles fans like myself (the release of Rock Band, digital remasters et all), I interrupt the Pictorial’s regularly scheduled programming for a bit of shameless rhapsodizing.
The thing you have to understand is that I was thirteen years old when I fell in love with the Beatles.
Granted, 13 is a simply wonderful age to fall in love with anything, true, but when the stars happen to be aligned in the most beautiful of formations, well, you’ve really got it made.
In November of 1995, a chubby, frizzy haired thirteen-year-old average girl happened to tune into a special documentary on TV that would change every single thing about her life.
The Beatles Anthology aired on a night much like every other night in our household: Dad worked the graveyard shift then, since he did anything and everything to keep food on the table, and my mother was spending the customary two and a half hours on the phone with her mother who had been recently diagnosed with breast cancer. (She would fight it for three valiant years before succumbing to the fatigue that would, eventually, claim most of my mother’s side of the family.)
Dad left for work around 6:00 each night and, this particularly warm November evening, he’d told me to, please, remember to set the VCR for him. It had been in all the newspapers, and even a stupid seventh grader with bad grades knew that something, something, special was going on.
So I set the VCR for dad, quietly intrigued by the constant conversations between he and my mother and my grandmother and granddad about things like ‘I remember the Ed Sullivan Show’ and ‘I remember where I was when he died’ and ‘That was the first album I ever bought’ and a slew of other personal memories that the talked so very openly about. And my family did not, as a rule, talk openly about anything.
Of course I knew who they were. Who didn’t? Who doesn’t? I knew I Want To Hold Your Hand and Let it Be and all those other songs that trafficked up the oldies radio station all the time.
But that night … November 19th it was … It shaped my life.
Because if I’d not pressed “record” on the VCR player that night on the otherwise quiet and unaffected Tamarisk Street in the hopeless suburban doldrums, I would simply not be the person I am today.
I pressed “record” on the VCR and decided to sit out at least a couple of minutes to see what had my Dad so excited. Mom popped in and out during her lively, animated conversations with Grandmother, but it was mainly me … alone … in the dark … with four figures the like of which I’d never seen, and the music … the like of which I had never heard.
I’m sure a lot of it was down to timing. My sister, all of sixteen, had decided she was leaving home (a Beatles song my parents still can’t listen to without crying) and left me, at twelve, all alone. It was for her own good, and nothing personal, I’ve since learned, but at the time I felt abandoned. And … Social skills not being my particular forte, I closed myself off. Mom and Dad communicated by shrieks and screams. And I looked, in vain, for something to understand.
On that November night, what I understood more than anything, was the melodious riff in Paul’s bass, the aching reach in John’s harmony, George’s dependable solo and, bless him, Ringo’s tirelessly optimistic beat. By the time the first episode of the Anthology ended, and the TV ran a banner counting down the seconds to the “new Beatles song” I was bouncing up and down like one my squealing black and white counterparts at the Ed Sullivan show. I’d never known such a feeling … I’d never known such music …
My need to know their music reached ridiculous heights. In the age before iTunes, and in a household where money was tight, I was relegated to listen to their wondrous sounds on a badly received station in the city, every Sunday morning from 7:00 am to 9:00, the necessity of which had me fashioning tin foil on my radio antenna and standing in just the right position, like a game of Twister, to get the correct frequency to indulge in that beautiful music that I’d come to live for.
It was there, in those uncomfortable yet necessary Sunday mornings, that I’d first heard Dear Prudence (right arm raised like an Egyptian, left leg hoisted like a Satyr) and I’ve Got A Feeling (crouched like a lioness in the middle of my room, not daring to breathe at the risk of upsetting the reception) and scores of others. And I relished every second of it.
Going to bed that night, nearly fifteen years ago, I knew that my life would never be the same.
And it hasn’t been.
Tempered, admittedly, by adulthood, my love for those scruffy cuss’ from Liverpool has never been brighter and …today, 09.09.09, I remember that rapturous optimism … the beauty of discovery … the ecstasy of true love, the memory of finding oneself after years of desperate searching— in the form of criminally simple two and a half minute songs …
So I blow my kisses to you, my dearest lovely lads for the Pool, and thank you for everything you’ve given me, and hope that during this latest wave of your irrepressible mania, countless more awaken to the marvel that is … The Beatles.
Forever and Always.
Eternally,
Yours
Filed under: 1920s, MP3, arts, culture, entertainment, history, music, vintage | Tags: 1920s jazz; hot jazz; Louis Armstrong; Duke Ellington; Paul Whiteman; Jean Goldkette; Fletcher Henderson; Joe Venuti; Eddie Lange; King Oliver; King Oliver Creole Jazz Band; Cotton Club; syncopation;
Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five
If Italy has art, England has literature, and France has fashion, then America’ s cultural offering in the history of mankind is jazz. Its’ history as the one truly organic art form to emerge from America has been well chronicled and you needn’t look hard for an education on the subject. But harder to find are the lesser-known recordings—from the end of World War One through the prosperity of the 1920s. The music that America listened to before the movies learned how to talk –jazz that was dizzyingly fast and fun and syncopated–the soundtrack to the Jazz Age. Whether it be the ‘white’ jazz of Paul Whiteman and Jean Goldkette or the blazing, rule-breaking brilliance of Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson, the music holds up remarkably well—if you know where to find it.
So the Kitty Packard Pictorial’s website of the week is the long-running, exhaustive jazz resource, The Red Hot Jazz Archive. Scott Alexander’s site is dedicated, not simply to the music, but the lives of the musicians who made them. His essays are peerless—an outstanding scholarly effort—and then there’s the music. Full-length recordings (you’ll need to download Real Player to enjoy them) abound in impressive numbers, pristine in quality and complete with recording date, locations and back story.
Red Hot Jazz is a veritable treasure trove of forgotten gems, where one find leads to countless others. Even if vintage music isn’t your particular cup of tea, the site is worth a visit if for no other reason than to see what passion for a subject really looks like.
Since it might be overwhelming to newcomers, here are some great artists to explore:
Louis Armstrong & his Hot Five
Duke Ellington & his Cotton Club Orchestra
Paul Whiteman & his Orchestra
Coon Sanders Nighthawks Orchestra
Jean Goldkette & his Orchestra
The Fletcher Henderson Orchestra
Joe Venuti & Eddie Lang
King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band
(The Pictorial did a post a while back about some of the greatest names in jazz appearing onscreen for a fun-filled jam session– take a look at ‘em in action)
Filed under: culture, music | Tags: The Beatles; Apple records; digital remaster; John Lennon; Paul McCartney; George Harrison; Ringo Starr; George Martin; Capitol; EMI
We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to completely REVEL in the news that Apple has announced the release of the complete Beatles catalog digitally remastered. There are some big Beatles fans here at the Pictorial, so we are obligated (and delighted) to have Apple’s press release do all the talking:
“The albums have been re-mastered by a dedicated team of engineers at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London over a four year period utilising state of the art recording technology alongside vintage studio equipment, carefully maintaining the authenticity and integrity of the original analogue recordings. The result of this painstaking process is the highest fidelity the catalogue has seen since its original release.
The collection comprises all 12 Beatles albums in stereo, with track listings and artwork as originally released in the UK, and ‘Magical Mystery Tour,’ which became part of The Beatles’ core catalogue when the CDs were first released in 1987. In addition, the collections ‘Past Masters Vol. I and II’ are now combined as one title, for a total of 14 titles over 16 discs. This will mark the first time that the first four Beatles albums will be available in stereo in their entirety on compact disc. These 14 albums, along with a DVD collection of the documentaries, will also be available for purchase together in a stereo boxed set.
Within each CD’s new packaging, booklets include detailed historical notes along with informative recording notes. With the exception of the ‘Past Masters’ set, newly produced mini-documentaries on the making of each album, directed by Bob Smeaton, are included as QuickTime files on each album. The documentaries contain archival footage, rare photographs and never-before-heard studio chat from The Beatles, offering a unique and very personal insight into the studio atmosphere.
A second boxed set has been created with the collector in mind. ‘The Beatles in Mono’ gathers together, in one place, all of the Beatles recordings that were mixed for a mono release. It will contain 10 of the albums with their original mono mixes, plus two further discs of mono masters (covering similar ground to the stereo tracks on ‘Past Masters’). As an added bonus, the mono “Help!” and “Rubber Soul” discs also include the original 1965 stereo mixes, which have not been previously released on CD. These albums will be packaged in mini-vinyl CD replicas of the original sleeves with all original inserts and label designs retained.
Discussions regarding the digital distribution of the catalogue will continue. There is no further information available at this time.”
The new packaging for the digitally remastered Beatles albums.
Filed under: 1920s, arts, film, music | Tags: annette henshaw; sita sings the blues; nina paley; 1920s music; PBS; animation
Back in January, we featured a post on the status of Nina Paley’s animated musical Sita Sing the Blues which was facing serious copyright issues over its unlicensed use of Annette Henshaw music from the 1920s. Apparently the Gods have looked kindly upon Miss Paley, and Sita will air March 7th on PBS (WNET) in New York. Congrats Nina–and thanks to BoingBoing for the heads up!
Filed under: cinema, classic movies, history, hollywood, movies, music, nostalgia, vintage | Tags: swing music; swing; 1940s; danny kaye; howard hawks; virginia mayo; lionel hampton; louis armstrong; benny goodman; tommy dorsey; jazz music
Hi all!
Kitty Packard has been having something of an extended sojourn as of late and I felt it necessary to implore your forgiveness with this post. A personal favorite from 1948, A Song is Born is the Howard Hawks‘ remake of his beloved 1941 screwball Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper starrer, Ball of Fire.
In my opinion, this particular segment of celluloid is living history in its most impressively organic form. Here we have the unprecedented (and arguably unmatched) interracial jazz ensemble of Tommy Dorsey, Lionel Hampton, Mel Powell, Benny Goodman, Charlie Barnett (WOW) and Pops himself, Louis Armstrong, jamming together in the film’s titular ‘A Song is Born.’ The rehashed plot with Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo may lack Hawk’s original, shall we say, oomph, but the music makes the film positively priceless. (And in my opinion, the Kaye-Mayo combo is amongst the most underrated screen successes.)
Watch here as some of the very greatest jazz greats get their groove on.
Filed under: MP3, music, pop music, rock music | Tags: MP3 downloads; beatles; iTunes; copyright; our daily beatles;, NRK
It was, of course, too good to be true.
Yesterday we were thrilled with the exciting news that Norwegian broadcaster NRK had legally released Beatles songs for download. Today our shoulders are shrugged and all we can say is, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.
NRK has had to pull its archive of 212 legal MP3s from their site. From BoingBoing, the reason is as follows:
“Our new agreement with rights holder TONO gives us rights to publish radio and TV shows we aired a long time ago. But the agreement NRK has with rights holders IFPI and FONO only allows us to publish shows that has been aired the last four weeks. And since “Our daily Beatles” was aired in 2007, we have to pull it from the podcast .”
FOILED yet again!
Filed under: music, pop music, rock music | Tags: the beatles; the white album; paul mccartney; blackbird;
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of The Beatles’ legendary White Album, I’ve decided to post a vid from the recording sessions. As you know, the White Album has become synonymous with explosive creativity (nevermind the “self indulgent filler” as Rolling Stone calls its many transitional pieces) and has remained fresh to this day because of it’s violent refusal to be pigeonholed. (How do you classify an album that smacks of Tin Pan Alley, country-western, heavy metal, folk, nursery rhyme, blues and electronica?)
Here, Paul goes through a demo of ‘Blackbird,’ which would become one of the album’s crowning acheievements. (I say “one of” because there are indeed many with this extraodinary piece of work.)
By the way … great shoes, Macca. 
Filed under: MP3, music, pop music, rock music | Tags: Bob Dylan; Johnny Cash; bootlegs; rare; music; folk; rock; country; MP3; aquarium drunkard
How’s this for iconic?
The unreleased tracks from Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash’s recording sessions in 1968 are now avilable for download on the internet courtesy of the uber cool Aquarium Drunkard website.
This really needs no introduction, so stop reading this blog and START DOWNLOADING NOW.
(The site also has MP3’s for Neil Young’s Chrome Dreams in celebration of the upcoming release of Young’s archives boxed set! Gotta love these guys!)
Filed under: arts, music, vintage | Tags: carnival of light, experimental, music, paul mccartney, the beatles
There may be two surviving Beatles left, but there is only one founding member still dwelling amongst us mortals. Think what ye may 
of Sir Paul McCartney, and say what ye may of his post-Wings portfolio, but the fact is that Macca is what few human beings have dared achieved: Billionaire. Rock singer. Guitarist. Classical composer. Producer. Animal rights activist. Song writer. And, of course, Beatle. His resume may pale next to his immortal partner-in-crime John Lennon, but his longevity is truly a testament to what rock music can mean. (all those young whippersnappers riding high on the coattails of genius would do well to take note of, I hasten to add.)
In case you’ve not noticed, I’m a Beatles fan and, though John is my undying favorite, I am a dedicated McCartney defender. (Anyone who pens a tune like Yesterday is allowed to have misfires like, oh, say, The Frog Chorus.) His judgment may not be what it was (um, Heather Mills, anyone?) but dammit, he’s still Paul McCartney. It’s a carte blanche to do whatever the hell he wants, and he knows it, as evidenced by decades of dabbling in ‘experimental’ endeavors. (John would probably have opted for the word ‘soft.’) And so, with this (well-deserved) carte blanche of his, Macca has recently announced that it is time the world hear a long forgotten 14-minute experimental track recorded in 1967 called Carnival of Light.
According to Time Magazine, “McCartney said during a recording session at Abbey Road studios he asked the other members of the band to ‘just wander all of the stuff and bang it, shout it, play it. It doesn’t need to make any sense. I like it because it’s The Beatles free, going off piste.” Sounds like something the Plastic Ono Band would have masterminded, and while John was the definitive experimental artist, Paul has been somewhat brushed under the rug as the melodically-inclined traditionalist. But Carnival of Light was 1967. The year of the Summer of Love, and the year Paul and the lads were not only privy to pot and LSD, but Macca in particular was a willing experimenter with cocaine.
(He even beat John to the stuff.) He was a scenseter in London’s arty underworld, being good mates with Barry Miles of London’s famous Avant Garde Indica Gallery, was deeply intrigued with Metaphysics, Nietzsche, Dali and Magritte (the posthumous Apple Records muse) and experimental musicians like Karlheinz Stockhausen.
And this is why Carnival of Light makes me a lot of people nervous.
And while personally I would rather like to hear the Beatles muck about and experiment and simply set themselves free–I understand the unease. Carnival of Light was recorded for an electronic music festival in London (yes, that’s right, electronic music—it’s not just a 21st century phenom) and it does make one inclined to conclude that since it was not included in Sgt. Pepper (or any subsequent album) or was even mentioned in the Beatles Anthology, it probably … well … just isn’t any bloody good. There are a lot of grumbles by even the most passionate Beatles fans that Paul is rather beating a dead horse by releasing this track, and although I disagree with their sentiments, Hecklerspray had the following analysis of the situation:
We’ve decoded that last sentence in the hecklerspray labs, and we’ve figured out that it actually means “Heather Mills took so much of my money that I’m prepared to release anything, even a drug-blattered tuneless dirge from 41 years ago that lasts for half an episode of EastEnders, so long as I can get some of my beautiful, beautiful money back.”
Macca’s recent desire to rename certain Lennon/McCarney songs (ie, Yesterday) as McCartney/Lennon songs surely leads to Hecklerspray’s following conclusion:
“will it be renamed See John Lennon? See? I Came Up With This A Year Before Revolution 9 And You Still Get Called The Arty One! I’m The Arty Beatle! This Is So Arty That Nobody Will Ever Listen To It All The Way Through More Than Once. So Shove That Up Your Arse You Dead Idiot? Nobody can really say for sure.”
Um … perhaps a tad harsh, you guys. But really, Macca, if the reasoning behind your rhyme is down to a need to assert yourself as a serious revolutionary figure in modern music, you needn’t worry my dearie.
You are Paul McCartney. ‘Nuff said.
