A rather bizarre story appeared in this weekends Mail On Sunday. It's not unusual anything other than bizarre stories appear in Sunday tabloids but why on earth the wife of John Lennon's killer should be talking to the Mail you can only speculate.
It seems the good woman of the deranged maniac who 34 years ago this December decided the world would be a far better place without the songwriter has spoken for the first time about the husband she married 18 months before the shooting. Gloria Hiroko Chapman said her hubby hoped to meet Lennon in heaven and he would say "I'm sorry I caused so much pain" and that the couple had also written to Yoko seeking forgiveness. Gloria also confided "John was a nice person but Mark wasn't thinking about that, that day, and put himself first. That was his mistake".
And 3 years ago one solid gold mad molar of a dentist by the name of Micheal Zuk pays 33,000 dollars for a tooth of John Lennon's.
Totally mad? Yes.
His aim. To sequence the DNA from the tooth to make a clone of Lennon which he would then raise as his son.
Unhinged? It doesn't end there.
On top of owning Lennon's DNA which by the way he thinks will be worth a fortune... (ah yes, the reason is quite clear Zuk baby), this fortune hunting piece of decay is also quite willing to clone Lennon more than once.
How very decent of him. No doubt even a whole band of Lennon's. Ringo Lennon etc etc.
Not only is this fuk Zuk going to mess with Lennon's DNA but he cheerily declares he'll clone other famous humans like “JFK, Martin Luther King, Marilyn.”
Dear god.. WHY?
Seems no one has made him aware the Lennon clone already exists.
Sorry Sean that was obviously uncalled for. But sort of irresistible.
And here's Sean Lennon's recent band Ghostt and new single and video "Animal"
(The Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger (AKA the GOASTT) consists of Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl.)
“It’s a loving spoof of the Source Family, that infamous ’60s cult of polygamous vegetarian hippies. We shot it on 35 millimeter and were inspired by the surrealist aesthetics of Jowdorowsky and Kenneth Anger,” Kemp Muhl tells us. That explanation doesn’t even seem necessary once you see how much the video embraces the playfully strange style of a film like Jowdorowsky’s Holy Mountain (which, incidentally, came to fruition thanks to the support of Lennon’s parents). The whole clip is framed around a massive, cultish sing-along and filled to the brim with surreal special effects, spaceships, and nudity.
It's also Sean joining in with the psychedelic experience.
Boy is that some fine display of hair. Last time we saw him in the UK it wasn't quite that resplendent. Is somebody wigging us here?
As the decades have rolled by and the players of those eras have gradually exited their stages we have relied on CD's, DVDs, and since the turn of this century YouTube, now the home of much of rocks archive. The amateur video posted alongside pro footage has shown us events that have become legend to many of us having only dreamed of being at the venue where the magic occurred. Until the last decade or so the journo reviewers point of view was the best option, and then not always the whole story. Even now after edited video is released it may not have captured the moment best remembered by those actually there at the time.
One such moment was John Lennon onstage at the The Mothers of Invention concert at the Fillmore East, June 4, 1971. The actual footage of Lennon and Yoko with Zappa's band is documented well enough and there is some pretty raw video of those two loose cannons jamming with Zappa's highly drilled outfit. Various opinions and stories have followed over the years.
But one story which hadn't been common knowledge and certainly not captured on film, was told this week, well we hadn't heard of it before. It was supplied by commenter 'Mr Bennett Fischer' who was part of that audience and passes on a brilliant description and fascinating insight of that night 43 years ago at the Fillmore.
"Wow. I was at that show, and the coolest part of Lennon's appearance isn't captured on the video. The Mothers, after a
fantastic set, left the stage to the audience's ubiquitous cries fore "More!" as the Fillmore's curtain closed.
The encore entreaties went on for a very long time without any response. Finally, a spotlight appeared on the closed curtain to the left of the stage. The audience settled down for the Mothers return, but instead heard a jagged Chuck Berry riff rip through the auditorium from off-stage. Then, into the spotlight stepped John Lennon, guitar in hand. He strutted in front of the curtain, playing (I can't remember which) Chuck Berry tune, completely solo, clearly loving it, and the audience going wild, loving it back. It was an electrifying three or four minutes.
I'm not up on my Lennon history, but as far as I know it was the first time Lennon had made a concert appearance since the breakup of the Beatles. The audience was really in shock and awe. Anyway, after Lennon's solo turn the curtain opened to reveal the Mothers at their instruments, and the rest of the encore set is captured on the video. I remember that watching Zappa lead the Mothers with his hand movements, trying to keep up with Yoko's screeches, was interesting and fun, but the real gem was Lennon's solo".
Monday morning Gary Grimshaw passed away (February 25, 1946 – January 13, 2014).
He was one of America's leading graphic artists of the 60's and designed many of the infamous and famous posters of the era.
He was also a part of the revolutionary poet John Sinclair’s Rainbow People’s Party and the “Trans-Love Energies” artistic movement, and member of the White Panther movement.
He remained working in art all through his life with many artists over the years benefiting from his talent, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, Canned Heat, The Who, The Grateful Dead and many more in later years.
The above Free John Sinclair poster is a classic and highly collectable (as is all Grimshaw's work) as it included one of the very rare post 60's Beatles performances by John Lennon in his activist years of the early 70's.
Lennon was to never do a full tour, just a few one off concerts so a poster of any type with Lennon's name attached is high on the collectors list.
In this instance the prison sentence of 10 years handed out to John Sinclair for possession of two joints had outraged the counter culture and most liberal minded onlookers. As Sinclair himself said the absurd sentence was "for giving two joints to an undercover police woman". The then Nixon led State reacted by making a ridiculously over blown example of Sinclair to all his anti-war activist buddies and sympathisers.
Grimshaw had been indicted himself on a marijuana charge in 1968 and with John Sinclair a political mentor of his the Freedom Rally and benefit concert was the natural
answer to that judgement.
Once Lennon had agreed to perform and his name added to the bill the concert was a complete sell out. America was now taking notice of Sinclair's case, it was all the organisers had hoped for regardless of the performances, the concert publicity guaranteed success. The Rally was held at Ann Arbor, Michigan on December 10 1971.
Ironically after all the anticpation of Lennon's appearance it was Stevie Wonder who stole the show that day. After a wait of some 8 hours Lennon did eventually appear at 3am obliging the crowd with a 15 minute acoustic set and no Beatles songs. Somewhat of an anti climax. But you can be sure Lennon wouldn't have seen his appearance as any more relevant than the the cause he was supporting and for that involvement John Sinclair's case was blazened before the American public which in turn led to his release. And in retrospect to Lennon's appearance the audience actually did see something quite unique, the only time he played slide on a national steel guitar in a typically quirky and driven song dedicated to Sinclair.
It was a time when the artist and a cause could become inseparable, and there on this bill political activists stood with performers from different worlds. Folk traditionalist and protest singer Bob Seger, the jazz saxophone colossus Archie Shepp who on all accounts played a blinding set, beat poet Allen Ginsberg, Black Panther figurehead Bobby Seale and of course Gary Grimshaw.
These were revolutionary times for society and the artist alike. Gary Grimshaw had been at the centre of such times. His work is the tribute.
Here's a short extract from a film of the concert with Lennon's Free Sinclair song and John Sinclair speaking in more modern times.
Words that would have consistently rang out during the year of 1955 if you were one of the then unfortunates to be stuck in class with the distracting and disrupting influence of one 'John Lennon' at the Quarry Bank High School for Boys, in Liverpool. Learning? no chance.
At the age of 15, John Lennon had obviously reached a zenith of his dissatisfaction of being still stuck in school and along with being renowned as a "class clown" he obviously offered little hope of conforming to the school regime, from the "bad behaviour" to the laughable disruption of "silly noises in an examination" (in an exam mind you... ha ha ha) to the curious entry of "sabotage", (wouldn't you just love to know what that was about) and to the exasperated teacher note "just no interest whatsoever" he collected a string of detentions as he ended the school term as a 3rd year student and moved to 4th from September 55.
Parents warned their offspring that "you could end up like that Lennon".
Oh the irony. The irony.
It should always be remembered though despite his absolute non interest in the academic he loved art class and went on to art school (see post) after Quarry Bank.
Here is the full list of Lennon's misdeamours.
Detention Sheet. May June 1955
John Lennon Class 3b
12 May : Nuisance
16 May : Very bad behaviour
23 May : Chewing in Class
25 May : Misbehaviour again
6 June : Talking in class
8 June : Talking class
15 June Repeated misconduct
16 June : Silly noises in examination
15 June : Very bad conduct
16 June : Sabotage
20 June : Just no interest whatsoever
Detention Sheet. November 1955 Class 4c
25 Nov : Talking in class
2 Dec : Nuisance
6 Dec : SHoving
9 Jan: Misconduct
16 Jan : Silliness
9 Feb : Impudent answer to question
10 Feb : Late for lesson
10 Feb : Nuisance
The prized documents go for auction on November 22 via TracksAuction.com at an estimate of 2000 and 3000 (UK pounds). It's a good bet they'll go higher.
Warning: This is a bit of a music nerd post... but fun if you're a recording geek.
To end the week where the resurfacing of the 60's generation featured, quite unintentionally it should be said but just occurred through the current and planned releases for September 2013. This Friday's post looks at the growing enthusiasm on YouTube for the posting of 'isolated' tracks from top artists. It's always intriguing to find out just what they were up to back then, and in most cases it's pretty damn amazing.
So what was once the hallowed knowledge of only those involved in making the music, their techniques are being now laid open to us all by various methods.
Sometimes original tapes are accessed and broken down channel by channel,
or to varying levels of success by software such as Audacity being able to separate the sounds from one another,
or as in the case of The Beatles, the job's been made considerably easier by accessing the left or right channels of the remastered original stereo recordings.
Anyone who has the stereo recordings of their albums will immediately notice how the 1960's stereo was created by separating certain instruments to the left or right hand channels of the playback, although with Beatles albums it was only ever 'Abbey Rd' originally made in stereo.
The Beatles had always been a Mono recording band but the remastering of their recordings by George Martin and team were to place the instruments of these once mono recordings into a stereo path just as they would have been done by the late 60's.
Consequently this has made the job of isolating the vocals and instruments a lot less complicated task for anyone with some smarts.. and the software.
So lets go back nearly half a century to the grandfather of all psychedelic recordings "Tomorrow Never Knows" and hear some of these isolated tracks. (There is some bleed from the backing on the tracks.)
First off just the vocals by Lennon. This is referred to as 'Take 1' and wasn't used as the final version but it's so near to the original it matters little.
Now here's part of the track with just Ringo's superb drum beat and McCartney's pulsing bass line, this would have been constant throughout the 3 minutes or so.
Now the Tape Loops which you may be surprised to hear runs nearly all the way through the recording. It's said these were constructed by McCartney, and with his interest in John Cage and other avante garde composers of the time it would seem most likely.
To put all that in context John, Paul, George and George Martin talk about the making of the piece.
And finally for those who have to hear the full recording after all that, here is what is said to be a "Lost Music Video from 1967" to go with the final track.
It's doubtful this was actually recorded as a promotion or planned to be used but does have some authentic shots of Lennon and McCartney around 1967 (although used before) and it does have that 60's avante garde/abstract feel about it. It's likely this was put together some time after the making of "Tomorrow Never Knows" which was for the 1966 'Revolver' album.
Just when you thought that everything that could be said that was new, fresh, or unusual about The Beatles' later history was already out there, along comes 'The Beatles: Unplugged', a bootleg CD so good that the folks at Apple and EMI ought to be kicking themselves for not thinking of it first. This disc (which is sort-of subtitled "The Kinfaun-Session," referring to George Harrison's Esher home) pulls together the 23 songs that Harrison, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney recorded as works-in-progress at Harrison's home in May of 1968. Most of the songs from the session were eventually heard either on The Beatles [White Album surfacing with new lyrics as "A Jealous Guy," etc.) or B-sides ("What's the New Mary Jane"), and on various bootlegs.
uploader GeoBeatles
Despite the groups internal bickering throughout the album ending with them virtually recording their own tracks in isolation like a series of solo recordings, there's no sign of the temperamental behavior during this embryonic session. It's a fascinating insight into part of the process that made one of the 20th Century's iconic albums and of the songwriter.
Here's Lennon's 'Yer Blues' stripped back to it's vocal and acoustic guitars (with Harrison) sounding less aggressive than it's final cut for the album with it's caustic lead guitar later added along with the rest of the groups parts.
The complete 'White Album; Unplugged' can be heard > here
On the 44th anniversary (March 20) of her marriage to John Lennon, Yoko Ono tweeted this powerful photo of her late husband’s blood-splattered glasses, the ones he wore the night he was murdered
"31,537 people are killed by guns in the USA every year. We are turning this beautiful country into a war zone.
Together, let’s bring back America, the green land of peace.
The death of a loved one is a hollowing experience. After 33 years our son Sean and I still miss him.” Yoko Ono Lennon
Instant Karma's gonna get you,
Gonna knock you right on the head,
You better get yourself together,
Pretty soon you're gonna be dead,
What in the world you thinking of,
Laughing in the face of love,
What on earth you tryin' to do,
It's up to you, yeah you.
While the press find new ways not to describe what David Bowie's new album is all about yet still appear to actually like it, the rest of us will have to wait until it makes national release not being privileged to the advance copy club.
One thing is for certain though, Earl Slick is back on board for the new Bowie release and which can only mean there's going to be some very fine shards of guitar to be heard. Slick who put most of the guitar diesel into one of Bowie's finest albums 'Station to Station' has been in and about the DB inner circle for 30 years.
Here's the man talking about the time with him and also being in the studio with John Lennon working on his final album 'Double Fantasy'. The video's possibly from around 2010 which is just about the same time the latest Bowie album would have been started.
And below that a live 2000 version of Bowie's 'Stay'. Another of the 'Station To Station' tracks with Earl Slick rendering a viscous reading and Bowie in sublime form. It's a high quality recording so can take some volume. Play it loud would be the only conclusion.
So how do the great hit songs actually get written ?
If the answer was just a matter of following a set of procedures then we'd all be songwriters right? But anyone that's taken pen to paper or written a tune and starts the business of what to write about knows it's far from straightforward.
It can be said for many it's maybe part inspiration, part perspiration but it's also probably fare to say the great songwriters are born and not manufactured, although that's not to say any songwriter can't improve the skill over time.
Some writers will begin with the tune and work the words around it, some will start with the words and the tune is already in their head.
Young songwriters in a band can have their ideas during jamming sessions or as they're practicing their instruments, a tune is sometimes stumbled upon and it leads to the lyric by almost an instinctive reaction and without much thought, it just seems to inspire.
This makes for a thrilling moment for the young songwriter and as much as a whole album can pour out in relatively short time with maybe one or two of the other band members chipping in with ideas. This is a common method for young bands who've maybe grown up or known each other since school days and they go on to produce very successful debut albums. But, then comes the difficult second album we've all heard about. You've had an entire life to draw inspiration for the first album and then about 12 months, if you're lucky, to produce the second and now highly anticipated second hit album. A very different and more disciplined procedure altogether, and in many cases not that successful. And then there's the third album.. and on, if you get the chance that is. These days most recording contracts evaporate after one fail.
So further down the album line a songwriter may have to engage new conscious techniques.
David Bowie for instance once used a cut-up technique for his lyrics originally invented by William Burroughs when writing his beat books. Lines or phrases were written out and then later physically cut into strips and reassembled in a random order providing new unconscious ways of seeing the lyrics juxtaposed.
Some writers assemble quite abstract ideas from unlikely sources and do a sort of mental cut up until it feels right, like Captain Beefheart. They tend not to be the main stream hit writers but sure leave a fascinating and colourful record of their psyche.
Frank Zappa was a shrewd politician, humorist and sharp satirist, his subjects were as likely drawn by news events and archetypes of people that he viewed in the times he lived. He was always slightly detached from the personal, like an onlooker or commentator.
Bob Dylan, another of the great songwriters of the 20th century and still going strong, is more an orator of American history and culture but has also woven sequences of coded images and personal motifs into his songs that have set people discussing and arguing over them since his early days.
Few folk artists, if that's what Dylan was at one time, have dealt with the lyrics in this way preferring to use traditional themes or embellish them adding their own interpretation on a song sometimes hundreds of years old.
Completely alternative to all of the above are the heavy metal songwriters, who shape their lyrics on fantasy or effect that will exaggerate and enlarge the musical content as if each song was a chapter in a graphic novel or horror film. The subject rarely has any personal attachment to the songwriter but more like a vision of how the listener might perceive the overall effect with the power of the heavy metal music. Black Sabbath were no more satanists than William Friedkin was in directing the Exorcist.
Then lastly come the song-smiths. That rare breed of writer that just have the gift. Anyone who struggles to tear a song from themselves find them really annoying because the song-smiths just do it naturally. They seem like no subject is out of bounds for them to write a lyric or tune around. Whether the tune comes first or the words they just don't care. They are able to produce the genius in one song and the near trite in another with equal pleasure. The skill is usually prodigious.
Paul McCartney would probably be the best example. The man has written some of the most uplifting rock and roll as in 'Drive My Car', to the shear intensity of 'Helter Skelter', the most abstract rock of 'Why Don't We Do it In The Road' and then completely belies all that and thinks nothing of writing 'The Frog Song' for kids or 'The Mull Of Kyntire' for your granny.
The song-smiths are a law unto themselves.
It's known that Paul McCartney had the tune for his hit, and one of the most covered tunes of all times 'Yesterday', well in-advance of the words and was singing "bacon and egg's" to it before he wrote the final lyrics. That's only the one song though and as everyone knows his hundreds of songs would definitely make him an obvious choice as one of the 20th century's relentless song-smiths, and born with it.
He once claimed he could write a song about anything and who'd disbelieve him, that's what a song-smith can do. Hardly surprising he could sometimes drive Lennon to distraction.
So let's now take John Lennon, who as we all know has also individually written some of the worlds biggest hit records. How does he do it ?
By the nature of Lennon's music you tend to feel his lyrics are maybe more organic. He covers subjects nearest and more personal to him and if it doesn't mean something personally he doesn't do it. Well maybe in the early days he did a little of the Boy Girl Love You, You Don't Love Me songs but it wasn't long before he had his mind on his own personal experiences in a song.
Lennon's lyrics came out like pages of a diary and he never changed from that approach which is often the most difficult method of writing because the individual is likely to tell all good or bad. It's a risk that can work but not always.
Although it would be no exaggeration to say his 'Strawberry Fields' is one the cleverest and most memorable songs of the last 60 years and this video of the making of Strawberry Fields is a fascinating insight into how Lennon's song and song writing develops throughout 1966 to it's eventual release in 1967.
How the chords to the tune develop, how the lyrics slowly change, how Lennon experiments with the tune on a Melatron (in it's infancy in '66), how the group begin to construct and learn the song, how George Martin, who really was The Beatles secret weapon and who no other group of the time had the equivalent of, took the tune and orchestrated it with Lennon, to the final mix of the orchestra with the group.
How George Martin worked out the arrangement of the orchestra at a faster pace so it could then be slowed down on tape to work with the final mix is mind boggling.
Here then is 26 minutes of the evolution and making of Strawberry Fields. It should inspire many a songwriter.
Now here's a thing. A genuine piece of rock and roll archaeology.
Obviously one look at the photo above and you can see with the image of the Beatles
painted on the sign board it has a link to the fab four, but more accurately it is a link with the pre-fab four and it's not the Sgt Pepper period which the frontage sign depicts.
The Jacaranda Club, a name by the way of an exotic fruit and sounds rather a little ironic
with the actual street name and it's location of Slater St, Liverpool. In 1958 it was a
meeting place for local musicians and a general hang out for art students and assorted
bohemians and immigrants probably mostly West Indian who had frequented and lived
in that area of Liverpool during the 1950's.
Upstairs the club served coffee and food, and downstairs in the basement it was the
place to dance the night out to a local band. In the day it probably had all the
atmosphere and aromas of the coffee bar culture of the late 1950's and at night the hot
and smoke filled dance floor of any similar basement club.
One of the local groups who frequented the Jacaranda in 1958 were the Quarry Men.
The pre-Beatle group with John, George, and Paul who were later joined by Lennon's friend and fellow art student Stuart Sutcliffe changing the name of the group to The Silver Beetles in 1960 before eventually changing it again to The Beatles before performing in Hamburg. The musical history of that little collective needs no telling here. "The Silver Beetles performed around a dozen times at manager Allan William's cafe in Liverpool's city centre.
Alan Williams asked them to play (The Jacaranda) on Monday nights when the normal house band, The Royal Caribbean Steel Band, had a night off. The Silver Beetles were paid with beans on toast and Coca-Cola." Paul McCartney. Anthology.
This new photo and never before published shows The Jacaranda or 'The Jac' in the
early 1980's and as can be seen it's in a pretty poor state of repair. The clubs original
owner had pulled out of the business around 1970 and the club was then said to have
then been taken over by a succession of owners until it was left closed and empty in the
dilapidated state pictured. Windows now collapsing, empty inside rooms with what looks
like shelving stacked against them, the outside wall half painted in an obvious attempt to
improve the appearance but then abandoned.
You can still see the Membership boards in the window, on the left one declaring the
admission prices to the club
Monday - Wednesday 50p
Thursday - Saturday £1
A hand written Members notice on the white board on the right now faded and illegible.
The building's appearance declined even further in the following years with graffitti
appearing on the outside walls, the inside in a poor condition with the basement in
possibly the worst condition with damage to something that really should amount to a
cultural treasure of Liverpool and those early rock and roll days at the Jacaranda.
There on the plaster walls were hand painted murals created by the 18 year old John
Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe.
They depict taut mask like faces painted in a limited palette of colours reminiscent of
Paul Gaugin paintings and Polynesian art with the sculptural shapes and style of African
tribal masks. Although the main face portraits are not African in appearance but look like
young white people.
Could the main mural painted as a backdrop for the stage been the imagined faces of
the audience?
Or could they even be the stylised self portraits of Lennon and Sutcliffe themselves?
It makes for irresistible conjecture.
The painting style itself is not immediately reflective of either Lennon's later published
fine lined pen and ink cartoon drawings or the later fine art painting style we see of Stuart Sutcliffe's.
At the time these young men were painting the walls of the Jacaranda basement
they were at or had just left the Liverpool College of Art and the murals have a distinctive experimental feel that is often encouraged in such colleges.
Certainly in 1950's art education they were quite likely to have been aware of both Gaugin and African art. Whatever, they are a fascinating and thought provoking insight of their
artistic ideas at the time.
One thing can be certain though, Sutcliffe himself was a serious artist and Lennon
would always be attracted to the people who were similarly artistic, inevitably it would be an artist who would become the perfect partner for him.
You can just imagine Sutcliffe and Lennon talking the idea over of the murals in the
basement and one of them making some bold sketches on the plaster wall and the other
making alterations, reshaping or filling in the colour of the faces with paint quite likely bought from a local shop.
It's a scenario that's been enacted by many an art student with a desire to produce a
show of some nature.
Fortunately in 1995 the Jacaranda and the murals were saved from complete
devastation when the club was taken over once more, this time with a new building
facade and interior renovated it did lose the look of it's original appearance, but part of that renovation was the Sutcliffe and Lennon murals that were carefully repainted by
local art students bringing there badly faded colours to life once more.
The Jacaranda's more recent years saw it become more of a tourist attraction and they
held what seems like 'open mike nights' where a few young musicians made a sort of
personal pilgrimage to the club from overseas. Their own particular tentative moments
were filmed at the club by their friends and posted on YouTube where you can see and
hear they battled to be heard against the background of a constantly chattering audience.
It's rather poignant that no matter how simple these videos are they now represent the
last views of the inside of The Jacaranda Club. The club was to close again in 2011,
and there must be some doubt as to whether it will ever be in business in the future.
So now John Lennon's and Stuart Sutcliffe's 55 year old (in 2013) mural paintings are once more in the dark and may fade from view for good this time.
Here is the large mural created in the stage area followed by one of The Quarry Men's very first recordings in 1958 and a song they would no doubt have played in the Jacaranda basement with it's hand painted mural as the backdrop.
Julien's Auctions 2009. Estimate $1000 - $2000
Previously unreleased audio recording of John Lennon being interviewed by Howard Smith. Housed in a cardboard box with label that reads, “WABC Radio Recording lennon foner 2.” Box 5 1/4 by 5 1/4
Lot 157 closed - Winning bid:$781.25
January 1972, writer and broadcaster Howard Smith asked John Lennon and Yoko Ono about the Beatles break-up. Lennon as ever gave a direct answer.
In December 1970, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner interviewed John Lennon in New York City.
It's Lennon (with Yoko) shortly after the Beatles breakup and still a bit sore from it, and just after he'd just finished his first solo album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.
Lennon later repudiated some of his more venomous statements in the interview and always decried the fact that Wenner published it (cashed in) in book form.
But Lennon is relaxed and in great form - direct, honest, and humourous.
A set of 6 podcasts have been released on itunes and can be downloaded for free here.
The interviews have also been uploaded to You Tube. Below is part one.
The other parts are here - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5
August 5th 1964 and the Beatles recorded a song that was intended but never released on their upcoming album Beatles For Sale.
"Leave My Kitten Alone" was first recorded by Little Willie John in 1959 and Lennon with his instinct for good rock and roll sang the lead on the song that eventually came to light in 1985 when it was remixed for the Anthology 1 compilation.
Why it was never included on the 'For Sale' album is a bit of a mystery, maybe it threw the balance out with who took the lead. 'For Sale' had 4 to Lennon, 3 McCartney, 1 each for George Harrison and Ringo Starr, the other songs had the group backing or sharing vocals. One more lead by Lennon meant someone would not be included.
Maybe it was decided not to include another song written by someone other than Lennon and McCartney. There were already 5 by other writers on 'For Sale' including Carl Perkins and Chuck Berry.
Whatever the reason it's a shame more fans never got to hear this version at the time with Lennon producing a full throat rock and roll vocal at his best.
This is the unreleased original rough mix from 1964.
The same day just two years later life was to change for Lennon. And big. He was quoted as saying "The Beatles are more popular than Jesus" in a newspaper article some months earlier and had gone completely unnoticed in England. But in the USA it was dragged out as front page news to Lennon's and the groups dismay as they toured the country. Wrong time, wrong place.
Thousands if not millions in the States burnt the records and Lennon spent the rest of the tour apologising and for years ahead looking over his shoulder.
Now if only he'd said "In Britain, The Beatles were more popular with teenagers than the church" which is what he meant in the first place and was probably true anyway, things would have been very different for him then and in the future.
Sometimes you just need to Leave That Kitten Alone.
Which is what happened on Friday night when the world gathered at the opening of the Olympic Games in London. Film maker Danny Boyle's production was as crazy as it was spectacular included the unlikely appearance of UK's Arctic Monkeys in the middle of it all with a gutsy performance raising the spectre of John Lennon with a convincing work out of his Abbey Road album classic "Come Together".
The band's lead singer and guitarist Alex Turner nicely judged the moment and turned out in leather jacket, jeans and DA haircut as if the clock had stood still in rock and roll circa 1960 and ripped through their own "You Look Good On The Dance Floor" followed by a convincing and close cover of "Come Together" that Lennon would surely have approved.
Later comments from global twitter commentators like "Who the fuck are the Arctic Monkeys?" only went to prove it was well worth while having them turn up.
So "stick it in your ear" to the clueless, this is just the sort of thing that happens in Danny Boyle's vision of the UK and more than likely quite a few others, us included.
And as there's copyright restrictions on most 'Anything Olympic' which includes their performance here's the original and a clever bit of virtual Beatles live.
Recorded at the Hilton Hotel in New York on April 18th 1975 it wasn't broadcast until 13th June for the 'Sir Lew Grade's 70th Birthday Celebrations'.
Grade had secretly sold his music publishing catalogue after promising to sell the Beatles catalogue back to the group. As a tribute to this double talking betrayal Lennon instructed the band to wear 'two face' masks, the band suitably renamed to BOMF (Band Of Mother Fuckers). Performing "Slippin And Slidin", (plus "Stand By Me" and "Imagine") the band mimed to a prerecording with Lennon's vocals live. This last live performance was a return to his Rock And Roll roots with two of the songs performed by The Beatles in the very early days. The titles of these two songs also made it quite clear what Lennon thought of Lou Grade and his business conduct. You can imagine Lennon seizing the opportunity to express his opinion at Grade's very own "celebrations"
Punk attitude a year before punk came along.
"He blew his mind out in car,
he didn’t notice that the lights had changed."
"Lennon and McCartney lyrics from The Beatles 'A Day in the Life' (Sgt Pepper LP), which immortalised the death of sixties socialite Tara Browne. On the night of December 18th 1966, Browne, together with his girlfriend, Suki Potier, drove through the streets of South Kensington in his Lotus Elan. At 1am in the morning Browne sped through a red light at the corner of Redcliffe Square and Redcliffe Gardens. As he swerved to avoid an oncoming vehicle, Browne crashed his car into a parked van. His last minute actions saved Potier from certain death, but left Browne fatally injured, and he died in hospital the following day." Browne was 21-years-of-age, a member of the Irish aristocratic family Oranmore and Browne, and heir to the Guinness fortune. He was said to be barely literate - having walked out of a dozen schools, lived with his mother Oonagh Guinness and her boyfriend “show designer” Miguel Ferreras, drank Bloody Marys for breakfast, smoked Menthol cigarettes, and according to his friend Hugo Williams lived the life of a “Little Lord Fauntleroy, Beau Brummell, Peter Pan, Terence Stamp in the film 'Billy Budd' or David Hemmings in 'Blow-Up'.” via Dangerous Minds.
Here's rare 1966 film footage of this near mythical character seen driving around the city and generally hanging out. With shots of Paul McCartney, Marianne Faithfull, the Marquee Club with pop hopeful Gary Farr & the T-bones on stage (they folded in 1967), gallery owner Robert Fraser, and the Carnaby Street in-crowd. Browne drones on in Francais (obviously filmed for french TV) and although there's no English subtitles you'll get the idea.
It captures London at it's swinging 60's peak and how it not just set the trends of the time but attracted the wealthy and privileged with plenty of doe and time to spare. The London fashion/music scene was never so gregarious or as fashionable to the likes again. Within a few months of the film the young Browne was gone.
December 28th 1968, and The Beatles had gone to No.1 on the US album chart again with the 'White Album'. It was the group's 12th US No.1 album.
This time the group had recorded much more as individuals and their own separate compositions had produced some unexpected results.
McCartney's 'Why Don't We Do It In The Road', Harrison's 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' etc. etc. but Lennon's 'Revolution No.9', assisted and encouraged by Harrison, was something no one had been prepared for.
The sound collage effects in two previous Lennon songs, 'Tomorrow Never Knows' and 'I Am The Walrus' (see all posts for 'Lennon's sound collages') had reached it's zenith when the entire side 4 of the White Album was included (apart from one short track 'Goodnight' at the end of the side).
Now the sound collage had become not just an integral part of the song it was now a piece in itself and replaced the song. A daring and controversial statement in itself.
Lennon having been an art student in his early days and now with the influence of Yoko Ono, an avant garde New York artist in her own right, he must have been reveling in the opportunity to express himself in sound just as an abstract painter or sculpture would. He'd even been seen on the fringes of free jazz in a very small London venue experimenting with the guitar.
Revolution No.9, recorded in Abbey Road, June 1968, had been prepared with a mix of loops and tape edits arranged in random or intentional order as writer William Burroughs had previously done with words, and if works like Stockhausen and John Cage were familiar to the classical listener of the day it certainly wasn't the case for a young audience and pop music. This was a complete shock of the new into their ears.
No other mainstream pop artist has attempted anything as avant garde or commercially suicidal before or since. It was abused by some and still is, but also understood and appreciated by many others.
Over the years of rock and roll and pop, Lennon had found himself in a new world of sound. 'Revolution No.9' was the last of his experiments and use of the sound collage.
It stands today just as convincing and carefully prepared as any of the songs he'd written. It's as much a challenge to the listener and musician as ever it was.
For Lennon there was no where else to go except back to the songs.
Every Christmas during the sixties, The Beatles were astutely releasing songs and albums into the market place like no other group. No one could compete. Their No 1 hits were relentless.
In 1967 after the death of manager Brian Epstein it was decided, mainly by McCartney, to release another film. The Magical Mystery Tour was broadcast in the UK on Boxing Day of that year. It was savagely panned by press and critics who until then had seen no wrong in any Beatle product. Even the American release of the film was cancelled on the basis of the press venom.
It would be fair to say the film content had virtually no plot and few songs... but it did have one extraordinary moment from Lennon.
'I Am The Walrus'. A psychedelic rock drone with Edward Lear nonsense poem like lyrics climaxing in an overlay of atonal sound and textures that had never been heard in a pop record before. Although Lennon had a similar feel previously on the 1965 Revolver album track 'Tomorrow Never Knows" (see post). He finally completed the sound collage experiment a year after 'Walrus' on an entire side of the double 'White Album' with the infamous 'Revolution No.9' (1968).
This period had produced a side of rock and pop where it seemed just about anything was possible, and even maybe the first sounds of what would be later called progressive rock.
The Magical Mystery tour was released as an album in the States which included singles previously never issued in the USA, but only as a 4 song EP in the UK.
Lennon later said "It was one of my favourite albums (Magical Mystery Tour) because it was so weird.. it also had 'I Am The Walrus' which is also one of my favourite tracks.. because I did it of course (laughs), but also because it's got enough little bitties going on to keep me going a hundred years later."
Which is what it must have seemed like to him since the days of the first Beatles record.
Although some 30 years after the original release of 'Walrus' the young Oasis were besotted by it and released their Manc Indie rock version. Without the sound collage it has to be said.
'I Am The Walrus' is still a compelling track and video. Unpredictable, experimental, surreal, and at least a hundred years away from pop records today.
December 8th. The day two rock musicians were murdered. John Lennon in 1980, "Dimebag" Darrell Abbot in 2004. Another further parallel finds the two murders committed by crazed fans. Both committed in America, New York and Ohio respectively.
So how many other musicians died at the hands of someone else was a question that begged answering. And although the following is no way a definitive list (there's bound to be someone missing) these are the most well known. More than expected you might think.
who - name of band (when applicable) - date of death - age - how died
John Lennon - Beatles - 1980-12-08 - 40 - shot
Dimebag Darrell - Damageplan - 2004-12-08 - 38 - shot
King Curtis - 71-08-13 - 37 - stabbed
Rhett Forrester - Riot - 94-01-22 - 37 - shot
Al Jackson - Booker T. and the MGs - 75-10-01 - 39 - shot
Don Myrick - Earth, Wind & Fire - 93-07-30 - 53 - shot
Felix Pappalardi - Mountain - 83-04-17 - 43 - shot
Bobby Ramirez - Edgar Winter's White Trash - 72-07-24 - 23 - beaten
Selena - 95-03-31 - 23 - shot
Tupac Shakur - 96-09-13 - 25 - shot
James Sheppard - Shep & the Limelights - 70-01-24 - 24 - beaten
Peter Tosh - 87-09-11 - 42 - shot
Mia Zapata - Gits - 93-07-07 - strangled
Carlton Barrett - Wailers - 87-04-17 - 37 - shot
Sam Cooke - 64-12-11 - 33 - shot
December 8th is also the birth date of Jim Morrison of The Doors. Who although not coming to an end at the hands of someone else, died somewhat tragically in Paris, July 3rd 1971 aged 27.
Part of the lyrics for his song "Riders On The Storm" providing a rather chilling synchronicity to end December 8th.
There's a killer on the road
His brain is squirmin' like a toad
Take a long holiday
Let your children play
If ya give this man a ride
Sweet family will die
Killer on the road, yeah
