Guest Howard
GuestForum Replies Created
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Nice pick Angelo. And an interesting background story. A great pity the world lost such a Rock and Roll talent just a year after losing Buddy Holly. Eddie Cochran was only 21 when he died in a car crash in England in 1960.
The car and other items from the crash were impounded at the local police station until a coroner’s inquest could be held. David Harman, a police cadet at the station, who would later become known as Dave Dee of the band Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, is said to have played on Cochran’s Gretsch guitar whilst it was held at the station.
He performed the song “Twenty Flight Rock” in the film The Girl Can’t Help It, starring Jayne Mansfield. Soon afterwards, he signed a recording contract with Liberty Records. Is that a Gretsch he’s playing?
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Hi Mike. You may consider yourself old, but I’m older. Nice to see you on the MLT magical mystery tour too. There’s a bunch of us here who share your views on music.
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I see Mona and Lisa have a lot in common with John Lennon. Following a comment on their first live concert performance about their pronunciation of a particular word, they indicated they were amused by their performance and thought they may have been trying for an American accent. While I could only marvel at the beautiful performance, all they could see were the flaws.
When John Lennon told interviewers he wished he could go back and re-do most Beatles tunes because he didn’t like them, might he have been goofing with the reporters?
By Connor Wielgoss
“I doubt it.
When most artists listen to their own work, they notice the flaws in them. Lennon said in his famous 1980 Playboy interview that he can barely listen to any Beatles song without thinking about the people and sessions behind it.He continued to notice the flaws years later because he spent more time with the songs than nearly anyone. A general listener listens to the song and takes it at face value. A creator can easily pick out everything wrong with their work. That’s not just true for Lennon and The Beatles, but for nearly all writers, musicians, painters, etc.
There’s a point in time with all work when it’s just the author and their creation. They tirelessly work to get it right before release, but eventually they can grow to feel regret about it, like they could’ve done better.
For example, Leo Tolstoy ended up dismissing War and Peace. He was embarrassed by it and resented it later in his life. The same goes for Anthony Burgess and A Clockwork Orange. Burgess wrote of his own book:
the book does also have a moral lesson, and it is the weary traditional one of the fundamental importance of moral choice. It is because this lesson sticks out like a sore thumb that I tend to disparage A Clockwork Orange as a work too didactic to be artistic. It is not the novelist’s job to preach; it is his duty to show. I have shown enough, though the curtain of an invented lingo gets in the way—another aspect of my cowardice.
When Lennon would hear a Beatle song, he would only hear the flaws and the potential for what could’ve been. He always thought he could’ve done better with them. The same goes for most creators. Authors will be the only ones to vigorously hate their own ending decades after release. Painters will always be the ones to recognize a spot that could’ve use more detail. Musicians, like Lennon, will always think of the string arrangement they could’ve added, the lyrics they could’ve changed, and the riff they could’ve amplified.I don’t think Lennon was kidding. I genuinely believe that he was unable to enjoy The Beatles like we can, because he was one of the creators.”
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Good answer Michael. Too many to pick just ten. The usual magazine picks don’t normally match up with mine either, but I think the RS mag reviewers did a reasonable job. The Stones best live years were the Mick Taylor years, but their best albums were from ‘Beggars Banquet’ to ‘Goats Head Soup’, and I’m a fan of their ‘Aftermath’ and ‘Between the Buttons’ albums.
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Nice version and nice video Tomás. I well remember Rod Stewart’s version that got lots of airplay in the seventies. His single was sold cheaply as a double “A” side, with “The First Cut is the Deepest” on the flip side, for an interesting reason. The following is from the web.
“I Don’t Want to Talk About It” is a song written by Danny Whitten. It was first recorded by Crazy Horse and issued as the final track on side one of their 1971 eponymous album. It was Whitten’s signature tune, but gained more fame via its numerous cover versions, especially that by Rod Stewart.
In 1975, Rod Stewart recorded the song at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Sheffield, Alabama, for his album Atlantic Crossing. This became successful when it was released as a single. In the United States, it became a top fifty hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1980 (#46 pop and #44 adult contemporary). In New Zealand, it peaked at #2, In the United Kingdom, it topped the UK Singles Chart as a double A-side with “The First Cut Is the Deepest” in 1977. The song is widely believed to have benefitted from being deliberately released as a budget single in order to keep the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save The Queen’ off the top of the UK Singles Chart.”
Other notable artists who have recorded versions of this song include Blue, Rita Coolidge, Billie Jo Spears, Ian Matthews, A-Mei, Pegi Young, D’ZRT, Nils Lofgren, Dina Carroll, Joe McElderry, Geoff Muldaur, Llama Farmers, Alex Parks, Indigo Girls (on the Philadelphia soundtrack) and Andy Williams.“
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Is Paul McCartney’s drumming better than Ringo Starr?
I think this question is best answered by Sir Paul McCartney.
In 2015, Paul gave the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction speech for Ringo Starr. Here is an excerpt about the moment the Beatles were formed:
“One night our drummer then, Pete Best, wasn’t available, so Ringo sat in. And I remember the moment. I mean, Pete was great, and we had a good time with him. But me, John and George, God bless ’em, were on the front line singing, and now behind us we had this guy we’d never played with before, and I remember the moment when he started to play – I think it was Ray Charles, “What’d I Say,” and most of the drummers couldn’t nail the drum part, it’s a little bit [sings a bit of it]. It was a little difficult to do, but Ringo nailed it. Yeah — Ringo nailed it! And I remember the moment, standing there and looking at John and then looking at George, and the look on our faces was like, fuck you. What is this? And that was the moment, that was the beginning, really, of the Beatles.”
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The “Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock” is a classic moment in rock history and hard to beat. And yes, hard to define “A Day in the Life“ as rock, but the same can be said for many of the Beatles best. They did quite a few ballads.
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Yes Jung, this would have to be the greatest song ever written imho! Yoko Ono gets some bad press, and maybe some of it at least is warranted, but I think we need to give her some credit for this song. John Lennon has stated that if he hadn’t met her, “Imagine” would never have been written. She was the inspiration for much of what he achieved post Beatles, including their bed-in that gave worldwide publicity to their pleas for peace and love.
I don’t know if we can say his vision was ahead of it’s time though as through much of the sixties there were anti-war movements and peace movements, initially expressed through folk music. However, no one had put the message as succinctly and beautifully as John Lennon.
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Well done with the Blog Jacki. Especially for someone who doesn’t consider them self to be particularly tech gifted.
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Nat King Cole – “Rambling Rose”
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Thank you Jacki. The same to you!
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Why did the Beatles’ ‘White Album’ have a blank cover?
By John Donfrancesco
Before the Beatles “white album” was released, Paul had a discussion with Richard Hamilton, the artist who designed the now-famous poster that would be included with this album. Hamilton talked about the great importance of the white spaces in between the individual photos that made up the poster, impressing on Paul how white space took as much thought and consideration as the position of the individual photos themselves. Paul was so intrigued with this idea of white space that he came up with the idea that the album cover should be ALL white space and NO photos, giving it an air of significant importance. When he took the idea to John (Lennon) he actually agreed with Paul, saying “Brilliant, it’s the last thing they’d expect from us”.
In my humble opinion, I believe that the idea of an all-white album cover went towards the promotion of The Beatles as four individual artists, as opposed to being a cohesive band. This theory is endorsed by the fact that there were four individual headshots – one of each Beatle – that came inside the album, where one would normally expect a photo of the four lads together as a band. In fact, there were NO photos of the four Beatles together as band mates found anywhere in the entire album and poster. The all white cover gave rise to the idea that The Beatles began thinking of themselves as individual musicians – with their own musical ideas and offerings – rather than continuing on as that crazy one-headed monster.
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We can select a list of the greatest songs based on a predetermined criteria or we can create a list based on what we prefer to listen to. Our favourite may be the greatest while the greatest may not necessarily be a favourite. I can except it when a large number of successful musicians vote that “Like a Rolling Stone” is the greatest rock song ever. While agreeing it is a great song for many reasons, it is not my favourite however. My favourite may still be in their top ten though. Just the same as your favourite top ten may be Beatles and Beach Boys heavy, mine would be Rolling Stones heavy. However, this isn’t sufficient reason for us to call them the greatest songs ever.
If you were to poll the MLT Club to determine what they considered to be the greatest top ten songs ever, you’d expect it to be Beatles heavy. However, you must agree this is neither representative of all music fans or based on any criteria rather than what they prefer to listen to.
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A very English Christmas in the Seventies
