Obama’s Victory: A Socialist Perspective

[2 articles + lots of links]

Great expectations

http://socialistworker.org/2008/11/19/great-expectations

Barack Obama's election isn't the end of the process, but the start
of the possibility of bringing about real change.

November 19, 2008 | Issue 685

FOUR YEARS ago, a shroud of despair and fear descended after George
W. Bush's re-election.

Bush's victory--legitimate this time, as opposed to the stolen
election of 2000--was seen by many as a popular endorsement of his
administration's right-wing agenda at home and abroad, and
confirmation that the U.S. had become "red-state America," with
Republicans looking forward to a "permanent majority" in government.

Four years later, the mood could not be more different.

Obviously, reason number one is that the other side won. Barack Obama
beat John McCain by twice the margin that Bush managed over John
Kerry in 2004, and the Democrats added to their majorities in both
houses of Congress.

But it's how Obama and the Democrats won that has greater meaning now.

A country founded on slavery and maintained through systematic racism
elected its first African American president. Even McCain and the
Republicans were forced to recognize the historic meaning of the
victory of a man they reviled for "palling around with terrorists."

In this sense, the celebration of Obama's win isn't just of one side
beating the other, but of history being made. A generation ago--maybe
even a few years ago--it would have been impossible to imagine an
African American winning the presidency. Two generations ago, Blacks
across the U.S. South couldn't vote for president, much less hope to
become one.

But on November 4, that accepted truism of American politics was
upended, along with any number of others. Case in point: the idea
flogged in the media throughout Election 2008 that working class
whites wouldn't vote for a Black candidate. Instead, Obama won a
higher percentage of the white vote than any Democratic candidate
since the 1970s.

"Almost every assumption about America that was taken as a given by
our political culture on Tuesday morning was proved wrong by Tuesday
night," wrote New York Times columnist Frank Rich.

This larger political shift away from an era of conservative
dominance was as much a part of the Election Night celebrations as
Obama himself. "The festive scenes of liberation that Dick Cheney had
once imagined for Iraq were finally taking place--in cities all over
America," Rich wrote.

The hopeful enthusiasm has continued into the transition period
before Obama takes office. As USA Today summarized the results of its poll:

Expectations for Obama are high across the board. Eight in 10 said he
will improve conditions for minorities and the poor, and 76 percent
said he'll increase respect for the United States abroad.

About seven in 10 said he'll be able to improve education and the
environment. More than 60 percent said he will reduce unemployment,
bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, improve the health care system,
create a strong economic recovery and keep the U.S. safe from terrorism.

More than half said he will be able to bring troops home from
Afghanistan, reduce U.S. oil dependence, heal political divisions and
control federal spending.

Some of these conclusions are far ahead of what Obama has actually
said--he is, for example, on the record as favoring an increase of
U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

This is a critical development for anyone who hopes to see the
promise of change raised during the campaign become a reality. The
most important starting point of any struggle is the belief that
something different is possible--and that it matters what we do to
bring that about.

There's no better example of the new mood than the reaction to one of
the only bitter notes from the election--the passage of Proposition 8
in California, which strips same-sex couples of the right to marry
that they won earlier this year through a California Supreme Court decision.

Angry supporters of equal marriage rights--central among them, many
of the 18,000 gay and lesbian couples who married after court
ruling--took to the streets starting the night after the election and
continuing every day for the rest of the week. On November 15, a call
for a national day of action on a newly created Web site led to
demonstrations in 300 cities across California and spreading around the U.S.

The contrast with 2004 couldn't be starker. Then, the right wing was
able to push through ballot measures to ban same-sex marriage in nine
states, as the leading edge of their agenda of social conservatism.
The gay marriage movement went into retreat, accepting the
conventional wisdom that by being too radical, it had given the right
wing an advantage to exploit.

This time, however, supporters of marriage equality are on the
offensive. One constantly repeated slogan on the demonstrations is
"Yes, we can"--a reference to the Obama campaign's message of hope,
an echo of the "Sí se puede" chants from the May Day mega-marches for
immigrant rights, and a symbol of the sentiment among supporters of
same-sex marriage rights that they will overcome this defeat because
they're on the right side of history.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

OBAMA AND the Democrats recognize this mood of raised expectations.
But they regard it with a sense of concern. "It's important that
everybody understands that this is not going to happen overnight,"
said Robert Gibbs, a campaign strategist for Obama and soon-to-be
White House press secretary. "There has to be a realistic expectation
of what can happen and how quickly."

Why the nervousness? Because Obama's powerful message of hope and
rhetoric about change was never matched by a commitment to radical
policies and political positions.

Obama comes out of the political mainstream of the Democratic Party
leadership--so it's no surprise that he is staffing his White House
with veterans of the last Democratic administration of Bill Clinton.

Leading the way is Obama's choice for a chief of staff: Rahm Emanuel,
notorious as one of Clinton's political enforcers, particularly when
it came to whipping into line organized labor and liberal
organizations disgruntled with the administration's embrace of
center-right policies.

There will be plenty of other blasts from the Clinton past in the
weeks to come--including, according to rumors as this article was
being written, Hillary Clinton taking over as secretary of state.

But that doesn't mean we should expect a repeat of the triangulated
policies of the Clinton era. The difference is that Obama has become
president after the discrediting of the right-wing agenda that
dominated U.S. politics for the last three decades, including the
Clinton years.

On the economy especially, Obama faces a severe crisis that won't
respond to the tame government measures popular with policymakers in
the neoliberal era.

Even during the campaign, Obama had to shift from his cautious
response to the mortgage crisis, when he refused to call for a
moratorium on home foreclosures like Democratic rivals Hillary
Clinton and John Edwards.

Obama has said he wants Congress pass a further stimulus package, but
the price tag has risen continually--currently, his advisers suggest
a proposal that could add up to $600 billion. Plus, Obama has put his
stamp of approval on an attempt by congressional Democratic leaders
to give the ailing Big Three automakers access to funds from the $700
billion bailout bill for Wall Street.

In short, the scale of the problems and questions the U.S. faces--not
just economically, but in the areas of foreign policy and more--is
driving Obama toward a different agenda.

But the exact shape of that agenda will be determined by how much
pressure he feels from below.

Obama is certain to enact some changes right away, but others won't
go through without a fight. Thus, he will almost certainly extend
unemployment benefits. But will Obama take on the looming corporate
opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act that would dismantle
anti-labor laws and make joining unions easier?

Obama said he will close the Guantánamo Bay prison camp set up by the
Bush administration to evade rules and laws against torture. But will
he close the Guantánamo base altogether--and change the U.S.
government's hostile attitude toward the Cuban and Venezuelan governments?

Will his economic team at first fall back on familiar neoliberal
prescriptions, or will they turn to a more dramatic intervention?
Obama has said he will have a program for infrastructure
improvements, but will his proposal put a priority on creating
good-paying union jobs?

How those questions are answered will depend in important measure on
how our side organizes to make its hopes felt in Washington.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

OBAMA'S ELECTION represents a historic change in U.S. politics. But
that change is just the beginning.

The dam on expectations erected through 30 years of conservative
dominance has broken. But this is only the first stage of the
struggle. The election of the candidate who promised change wasn't
the end of the process, but only the beginning of the possibility for
bringing about that change.

As the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass famously said:

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to
favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops
without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and
lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its mighty
waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one,
and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.

There are significant challenges ahead in mobilizing that struggle.
Conditions for working people have worsened steadily over the past
several decades, and unions and social movement organizations have
declined, both in numbers and influence, and in their political visions.

But that situation can shift rapidly, as we have already seen around
the issue of same-sex marriage in just the few weeks since the election.

The central importance of Obama's victory is that it has broken
through the bitter prejudice that nothing much can change in society.
If those committed to organizing for a different vision of society
can relate to the hopes that this has inspired--and the newfound
confidence that justice is on our side--then we can make the Obama
years an era of struggle and political progress.

--------

Obama's Victory: A Socialist Perspective

http://www.socialistaction.org/editors12.htm

A Socialist Action Editorial
November 2008

Barack Obama, a Black man, has been elected President of the United
States. Few, if any, thought his victory was even a remote
possibility in racist America when capitalism's two-party
multi-billion dollar electoral charade began twenty-one months ago.

When Obama's win was projected early on as a certainty by television
stations across the country Black America took to the streets in
jubilant celebration. Ninety-six percent had voted for Obama, the
highest percentage ever. In 2004 George W. Bush received 11 percent
of the Black vote. McCain in 2008, four!

Sixty-seven percent of Latino voters joined the Obama landslide,
which saw the nation's 44th and first Black president winning the
Electoral College by a margin of better than two to one and the
popular vote by an overall margin of 53 to 46 percent.

Sixty-two percent of the electorate cast 135 million votes,
surpassing the 2004 total by 13 million. By European standards voter
turnout, 62 percent, was low, but it was a significant increase from
the usual 50 percent or less that has been the U.S. norm in recent
decades. Indeed the turnout would have been higher, along with an
even wider margin for Obama, were it not for the racist voting laws,
procedures and practices that are kept in place to disenfranchise
oppressed nationalities and the poor.

The exuberant outpourings in cities and towns across the country
hailing the Obama victory were multi-racial and youthful, although
broad swaths of the general population joined in the celebrations. A
majority of white voters under 30 voted for Obama. They too
enthusiastically joined in the spontaneous mobilizations to register
their contempt for Bush-era politics. And they were one with Black
America in believing that Obama's promised "Change" was on the order
of the day.

While not receiving a majority of white voters, Obama surpassed the
41 percent totals of John Kerry's 2004 campaign by three percentage
points, the highest white vote for a Democrat since the 1964 election
of Lyndon Johnson.

Obama's victory was at least in part a product of what might be
called a perfect political storm ­ the simultaneous combination of
massive attacks on working people as whole and Blacks in particular,
a capitalist economy in the early stages of a meltdown not seen since
the Great Depression of 1929, a war in Iraq and threats of war
elsewhere pursued with murderous vigor in the face of the majority
opposition, a looming environmental catastrophe and a Republican
Administration that appeared helpless in the face of all of it.

Never in memory has the contradiction been greater between the
illusions of the masses that change was possible with an Obama
victory and the reality of capitalist politics and prospects today.
Obama took great care during his Grant Park, Chicago victory rally of
120,000 to dampen hopes that change would come quickly, referring
vaguely to his next term as a possible timeline for significant
results. Illusions and great hopes aside, Black America understands
full well that racist inequality will not be erased from the American
scene without continued struggle.

he warmongering and racist Democratic Party will in the not to
distant future destroy whatever illusions remain as they once again
demonstrate that they are equally the party of the tiny ruling class
minority whose very existence depends on the exploitation and
oppression of the great majority.

Barak Obama can represent the interests of this vast majority no more
than capitalism can be transformed into anything other than the
predatory, racist instrument of the corporate ruling elite who run
this country.

Obama missed no opportunity to make this clear. He promised more
spending on war, "national security" repression and the military, not
less. He supported every measure proposed by the Bush Administration
to bailout the rich to the tune of unprecedented trillions of
dollars. He offered no let up in the racist ICE raids aimed at
terrorizing immigrant communities.

His initial appointments are creatures of the Clinton Administration,
which eliminated more social programs than the combined presidencies
of the three previous Republican Administrations.

Following talks with Obama's team, reports from top Iraqi officials
indicate that there will be "no fundamental change" in U.S. Iraq
policy and no firm timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops,
Obama's vague election promises notwithstanding. Whatever
"timetables" that are "negotiated" with the U.S. puppet government
will be subject to the interpretation of the occupiers.

The November 7 New York Times noted with some accuracy, "Mr. Obama
has said that a contingent of American troops would probably stay for
a more extended period ­ to train Iraqi forces, to protect the
American Embassy and to root out terrorists." In combination with
the largest "privatized" or mercenary army ever deploy, U.S. forces
will insure that American capitalist interests are defended with
whatever force and violence is necessary. Like President Bush,
President Obama will not leave Iraq in other than total colonial
subjugation, no matter how long it takes or how many lives are taken.

His chosen Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, is an ardent cold warrior
hawk and an unqualified Zionist defender bent on backing Israeli's
every move toward the obliteration of the Palestinian people.

The $640 million Obama spent on his campaign exceeded any other in
history. Obama was the favored candidate of corporate America,
military-industrial complex America and the America of
institutionalized racism, sexism and homophobia.

Were this not the case, his carefully-orchestrated candidacy would
have been relegated by the corporate media and the billionaires
behind it to insignificance. Instead, the Democratic Party, the
historic graveyard of all progressive social movements, mobilized its
corporate sponsors to place in a timely manner a Black man of great
personal achievement in the office of the presidency.

Indeed, the ruling class has chosen a brilliant Black man to cover
the face of a cruel capitalism in crisis that has nothing in store
for working people other than more of the same and worse, much worse.
They have calculated that they can proceed with this task with the
least opposition and the longest possible "honeymoon" with a Black
Democrat holding the position of capitalism's chief executive officer.

Ralph Nader was off the mark when he stated on Fox TV following
Obama's victory:

"As the first African-American president we wish him well. The
question is, will he be Uncle Sam for the people or Uncle Tom for the
giant corporations which are driving America into the ground?"

Socialist Action has another view. We see Obama as the chief
representative of the Democratic Party wing of capitalist America's
bi-partisan attacks on all working people. We do not wish him well.
We stand in solidarity with the oppressed and exploited of this
nation who voted for Obama in the vain hope that his promise of
change would be fulfilled. But we did not join them at the voting
booth or lend credence to their illusions. Truth, however unpopular
at times, is essential in revolutionary politics. Socialists will
have their day when the masses are won to their liberatory cause and
prepared to fight for it. Lesser evilism, whether in the direct form
of the Democrats and Obama or the reformist politics of the Greens
and Ralph Nader, serve to disorient and mis-educate those social
forces who are essential for a real challenge to the capitalist order.

We fully understand that millions of Blacks, Latinos and others
believe that Obama's victory is an important blow against the racist
prejudice that permeates every aspect of American life. The fact that
unexpected millions of whites voted for Obama is an indication that
racism is on the decline and that working class unity has better
prospects in future struggles. But we do not share in the view that
prospects for Black and white America will be advanced by Barack Obama.

We disagree with Ralph Nader on a more fundamental question. In our
view, there is no "question" about what Obama can or will do. As with
all capitalist candidates before him, he will be the chief
representative of the ruling rich and not the people. There is no
"choice" in the matter of Obama's options.

Nader believes that Obama does have such a choice. He believes that
capitalism, can be reformed if only the right Democrats are in office
and if they return to the mythical values that he falsely believes a
kinder the gentler capitalism of the past once embodied. His has
always been the path of "third party" lesser evilism, crystallized in
his past two campaigns where he urged a vote for the Democrat in
close races and a vote for himself when it didn't make a difference.

Socialist Action, despite many important differences, supported the
presidential candidacies of three small socialist parties that posed
a working class and socialist alternative in the 2008 elections. We
urged a vote for Gloria LaRiva of the Party for Socialism and
Liberation, Roger Callero/John Harris of the Socialist Workers Party
and Brian Moore of the Socialist Party. The SWP received some 9800
votes, the PSL, 7400 and the SP 6600, all miniscule votes but
nevertheless votes of working class principle won in the full vortex
of an election whose outcome was made to appear as a historic turning
point in American politics.

Victories for working people of all races have never been the product
of the election of any ruling class candidate or party. They have
been and will continue to be the outcome of the independent and
massive mobilization of capitalism's victims on the field of struggle.

Socialist Action is an unswerving advocate of working people building
their own political party to defend and advance their own class
interests, a mass Labor Party based on a reinvigorated, democratic
and fighting trade union movement in alliance with the oppressed and
exploited everywhere. Karl Marx was on the mark when he wrote 160
years ago, "Capitalism creates it's own gravediggers." With no
solutions to the mounting and multiple crises before it other than
repression and deeper inroads into the quality of life of U.S.
workers, revolutionary socialists intent on mounting a fundamental
challenge to the capitalist order will find common ground with the
millions of fighters who will inevitably take the field and bring
about a new social order where capitalist plunder and barbarity will
become distant memory.

--------

Also, see:

Is Obama Killing his Honeymoon?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,592260-2,00.html

The Third Clinton Administration [by Ralph Nader]
http://www.counterpunch.org/nader11212008.html

Some Cyanide to Go With That Whine? Obama's Victory and the Rage of
the Barbiturate Left
http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/some-cyanide-go-with-that-whine-obamas-victory-and-rage-barbiturate-left
[by Tim Wise]

This is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in
Obama's White House
http://www.alternet.org/story/107666/ [by Jeremy Scahill]

Liberals Conned Again: Obama picks foxes to guard henhouse [by Robert Scheer]
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/26/ED8114C8PU.DTL

Obama's "seamless transition" to endless war
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/nov2008/pers-n18.shtml

Obama's transition: A who's who of imperialist policy
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/nov2008/pers-n19.shtml

Obama appointees signal continuing aggression and war
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/nov2008/pers-n26.shtml

The Gates appointment: Obama slaps antiwar voters in the face
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/nov2008/pers-n28.shtml

Obama's victory and the inevitable struggle ahead
http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=10315

Green Party Presidential Candidate Cynthia McKinney Responds to Obama Win
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/5/green_party_presidential_candidate_cynthia_mckinney

An Open Letter to Barack Obama [by Ralph Nader]
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21143.htm

The Obama '08 Phenomenon: What Have We Learned?
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=873&Itemid=1

Can We Talk About the Real Obama Now?
http://prorev.com/2008/11/can-we-talk-about-real-obama-now.html

The Climate for Change [by Al Gore]
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/opinion/09gore.html

Obama's Victory [by Institute for Policy Studies]
http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/886

Barack Obama: The Empire's New Clothes
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=879&Itemid=1

Obama answers liberal critics on personnel choices
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/11/obama_answers_l.html

Obama: Change 'comes from me,' not his appointees
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/56578.html

The 2008 Election [by Michael Lerner]
http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0811/frontpage/ml

.

Folk Legend Pete Seeger sings out for justice

If I Had a Song

http://www.utne.com/2001-11-01/IfIHadaSong.aspx

Folk Legend Pete Seeger sings out for justice

November/December 2001
Craig Cox Utne Reader

Like Woody Guthrie before him, Pete Seeger has long been synonymous
with social justice and song. With such classic songs as 'If I Had a
Hammer,' 'Turn, Turn, Turn,' and 'Where Have All the Flowers Gone?'
to his credit, the 82-year-old folksinger has inspired generations of
people struggling for social change. Seeger, whose father was a
famous musicologist and conscientious objector, developed his
political views at an early age and aspired to a career in
journalism, inspired by radical writers Lincoln Steffens, Mike Gold,
and other contributors to his favorite magazine, New Masses. Mountain
music grabbed him when he heard a five-string banjo at a North
Carolina folk festival in 1936.

A few years later, he was singing union songs in a group called the
Almanac Singers that he'd formed with Woody Guthrie and others. In
the '50s, Seeger enjoyed commercial success with the Weavers, then
collided with the House Un-American Activities Committee, which
subpoenaed him in 1955 as part of its campaign to rid the country of
communists. He refused to cooperate (citing his rights under the
First Amendment, not the Fifth), and a federal court in 1961
sentenced him to a year in prison for contempt. His conviction was
overturned on appeal the next year.

A veteran of most every major social movement in 20th-century
America, Seeger today lives with his wife, Toshi, in the Hudson River
valley and devotes most of his time to environmental and peace
issues. But he's still singing, as he proves with the recent release
of a new album, If I Had a Song. He's not sure how much longer he'll
be performing. 'My memory isn't very good anymore,' he says. 'I
forget the words to the songs.' Nevertheless, he was back on stage
two days after the World Trade Center catastrophe trying to lift the
spirits of a college crowd. The next morning, he spoke by phone with
executive editor Craig Cox from his home near Beacon, New York.

What have you been reading these days?

I read Granny D's book, Walking Across America in My Ninetieth Year,
not once, but twice. It's a very important book. I've also read
Seedfolks, a short but very good book by Paul Fleischman about a
community garden in downtown Cleveland, and Barbara Ehrenreich's
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.

What magazines and newspapers do you read regularly?

I look at several dozen. When I'm in an airport, I skim Forbes and
Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and many others. The
publications I'm not likely to find there are the ones I get at home:
Utne Reader, In These Times, UU the Unitarian magazine, and
Fellowship, the Fellowship of Reconciliation magazine.

You were involved in the launch of the folk music magazine Sing Out!,
weren't you?

Sing Out! started 51 years ago. Paul Robeson showed up to celebrate
with us that day. A little magazine that I helped to edit, People's
Songs, had gone bankrupt about a year and a half earlier, and Sing
Out! started up with a similar staff. The magazine slowly grew
through the '50s, and in 1964, during what's known as the Great Folk
Scare, they printed all of 20,000 copies for several issues, but I
don't think we sold more than 10,000. In the '70s the circulation
sagged, and in 1982 they too were about to go bankrupt. But this time
a batch of volunteers got together and saved it.

Do you look at TV news?

Hardly ever. In the last few days I've been looking at it, but I
mainly look at television in winter to see what the weather is going
to be to see if I can go skating. And in the summer, I'll see whether
it's going to rain or not. But I really don't bother looking at TV
for the news or for other things.

Does your town have a local newspaper?

Not anymore. There is a weekly free paper, mainly advertisements,
church notices, and a few other things, and I do read it every few
weeks or so. They have a rather lovely historical column, and the
woman who writes it asked me to read the Declaration of Independence
two or three years ago to mark the Fourth of July. Every year for 200
years, someone has read the Declaration of Independence on the main
street of nearby Fishkill. Four hundred people turned out. One person
elbowed his way up to the front and read a statement: 'It is
outrageous that this man, who is an enemy of the United States, is
being allowed to recite this year.' But he was booed. I wrote him a
letter and said, 'I'm sorry they booed you; you had a right to speak.'

A friend of mine told me he wrote to you years ago after seeing you
perform and was astonished to get a reply. Do you correspond with a
lot of people?

I write very short letters that I often put on postcards. I write
mostly with a pen. I don't know how to use a typewriter well anymore,
and I don't have a secretary. But if I read something that I'm
enthusiastic about­something good or bad­I try to respond.

Your new album, If I Had a Song, brings together some marvelous
talent, from Steve Earle and Joan Baez to Billy Bragg and Dar
Williams. It must be gratifying to see younger folks committed to
carrying on the work you've nurtured over the years.

There are some extraordinary young people writing songs­of course, I
say anyone under 50 is young­like John McCutcheon, Greg Brown,
Stephan Smith, and Pat Humphries. And there's Holly Near out on the
West Coast. After the murder of Harvey Milk in San Francisco about 20
years ago, she wrote an extraordinary song she sang at the funeral,
'We Are a Gentle and Angry People and We Are Singing, Singing for Our
Lives.' That song will go down in history.

.

Is it OK to be liberal again, instead of progressive?

Is it OK to be liberal again, instead of progressive?

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/11/21/liberals/index.html?source=newsletter

Come out of the closet, liberals. Stop using the fashionable
euphemism "progressive" and relaunch the old, tarnished L-word.

By Michael Lind
Nov. 21, 2008

If the conservative era is over, can liberals come out of their
defensive crouch and call themselves liberals again, instead of progressives?

In the last two decades, Democratic politicians, including Barack
Obama, have abandoned the term "liberal" for "progressive." The
theory was that Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush --
and Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Pat Buchanan -- had succeeded in
equating "liberal" in the public mind with weakness on defense,
softness on crime, and "redistribution" of Joe the Plumber's
hard-earned money to the collective bogey evoked by a former Texas
rock band's clever name: Teenage Immigrant Welfare Mothers on Dope.

I've always been uncomfortable with this rather soulless and
manipulative exercise in rebranding, for a number of reasons.

Objection No. 1. Futility. It's not the name of the center-left that
the right objects to, but the policies and values. Suppose the
defeated Republican minority decided that it needed to rebrand itself
by replacing "conservatism" with "traditionalism." Would anybody on
the left or center be fooled, if traditionalism was defined by
exactly the same synthesis of free-market radicalism, anti-Darwinism
and support for a neoconservative foreign policy?

The center-left is going to be trashed by the right, whether the
right adopts one term or another. If conservatives continue to call
the new progressives "liberals," then the right wins, by implying,
correctly, that progressives are liberals who are ashamed to admit
what they really are. If, on the other hand, "liberal" becomes as
extinct as "Whig" and conservatives agree to use the term
"progressive," then what has the center-left gained? Nothing. The
same conservatives who formerly denounced liberals as tax-and-spend
appeasers would now denounce progressives as tax-and-spend appeasers.
What then? Would wimpy progressives then abandon progressivism and
hope to avoid the wrath of Limbaugh by disguising themselves with a
new alias -- reformists, or pragmatists? Your enemies will caricature
you, no matter what you call yourself.

Objection No. 2. Progressivism as neoliberalism. Some have sought to
distinguish progressivism from liberalism in content. This was the
project of the disproportionately Southern "neoliberals" like Bill
Clinton and Al Gore and Dave McCurdy and the Democratic Leadership
Council and Progressive Policy Institute in the 1980s and 1990s.
Instead of using the obvious term, "moderate" or "centrist," they
sought to co-opt the term "progressive," even though they weren't
very. In their analysis, liberalism was too identified in the public
mind with organized labor and big-city machine bosses like the first
Mayor Daley. They struggled and largely succeeded in creating a new
Democratic Party based among upscale suburban whites and financed by
the Industry Formerly Known as Wall Street rather than private-sector
labor unions.

Fine by me. While the New Democrats were too conservative for my
taste in some ways, a majority party has multiple factions or wings,
and in the late 20th century the only way that the Democratic Party
could grow was by appealing to centrists as well as liberals. If the
DLC had been granted exclusive franchising rights for the term
"progressive," then it would have meant simply the pro-corporate
right wing of the Democratic Party, whose left wing was pro-labor and
populist. We would then be speaking of conflict and also
collaboration within the Democratic coalition between liberals on the
left and progressives on the right.

Unfortunately, Democrats on the left insisted on calling themselves
progressive too. Instead of meaning a moderate Democrat, progressive
came to refer to any Democrat. So by the 1990s anti-labor, pro-NAFTA
progressives were battling pro-labor, anti-NAFTA progressives. Fiscal
conservatives who wanted to invade Iraq were progressives -- and so
were democratic socialists. The left, center and right of the
Democratic Party simultaneously gave up the name of the tradition of
FDR, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and Humphrey, all because Ronald Reagan
and Rush Limbaugh denounced liberals.

Objection No. 3. Progressivism as the radical left. What made all of
this even more confusing was the fact that the term "progressive,"
which center-right Democrats like Will Marshall of the Progressive
Policy Institute sought to capture, had been identified with Marxists
and other groups on the extreme left during the previous
half-century. If you were a progressive in the '30s and '40s, like
many supporters of Henry Wallace's Progressive Party, you were likely
to find redeeming qualities in the Soviet Union's social experiment
and to think that FDR was a pawn of the capitalists. If you were a
progressive in the '60s and '70s, you were likely to think that
Truman and Johnson were warmongering "corporate liberals" under the
control of the "military-industrial complex" and that the Democrats
and Republicans were indistinguishable. For the moderate and
conservative Democrats of the DLC to call themselves the new
progressives was the equivalent of moderate, secular Republicans
calling themselves the new fundamentalists.

At least the far-left progressives were honest. They genuinely
despised the mid-century American liberals, whom they viewed simply
as another species of bourgeois imperialists. This is another one of
the reasons I dislike the term "progressive." Why should I call
myself by the name preferred by deluded radicals who despised the New
Deal and the Great Society liberals I admire? Why share a label with
anyone who romanticized Ho Chi Minh or Fidel Castro?

Objection No. 4. The early 20th century progressives. Now that
"progressive" is widely used as a euphemism for "liberal," there is a
natural tendency to link the progressives of the early 2000s with the
Progressives of the early 1900s, like Woodrow Wilson and John Dewey.
The problem is that while the modern center-left is the child of
mid-century Roosevelt-Truman-Kennedy-Johnson liberalism, it is only
the grandchild -- or perhaps grand-nephew or grand-niece, twice
removed -- of the Progressives of the 1900s.

Hubert Humphrey, liberal, championed integration and federal
enforcement of civil rights. Woodrow Wilson, Progressive,
resegregated Washington, D.C. The Warren Court liberalized abortion
and censorship laws. The early 20th century Progressives campaigned
to outlaw alcohol and outlaw abortion and many of them favored
eugenic sterilization of the "feeble-minded." New Deal liberals
celebrated Americans of immigrant stock. Progressives like Woodrow
Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt were horrified by "hyphenated
Americans." Roosevelt and Truman inherited a disturbing progressive
fondness for executive prerogative but by the 1960s and 1970s civil
libertarianism and a renewed interest in checks on the imperial
presidency became part of the liberal tradition.

Today's center-left Americans can find a usable past in the liberals
of the New Deal and Civil Rights eras. They will search in vain for
philosophical ancestors among the snobbish, nativist, technocratic,
authoritarian, segregationist Progressives of the early 20th century.
Which leads me to:

Objection No. 5. It's too German. The term "progressive" entered
English from 19th century German politics. The first progressive
party in the world was the Deutsche Fortschrittspartei, founded in
Prussia in 1861 ("Fortschritt" means "progress"). The American
Progressives like Woodrow Wilson who translated the term into English
believed that Bismarck's Imperial Germany was superior in many ways
to the United States and Britain. They sought to graft German-style
bureaucracy onto what they considered to be an antiquated political
system crippled by 18th century Enlightenment notions of local
government and civil rights. In other words, they saw statist,
technocratic German progressivism as an advance beyond Anglo-American
liberalism.

The older Anglo-American tradition of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick
Douglass, of the Founders and John Locke, is called "liberal" with
good reason. "Liberal" comes from the Latin word for "free." The
antithesis to liberalism is servility. A liberal society is one in
which everyone is free and nobody is a serf or slave. In the late
19th and 20th centuries, the New Liberals in Britain and the New Deal
liberals in the U.S. saw the need for social insurance and national
regulation of business. But social welfare programs were added to
civil liberties, which are what define liberalism. The radical left
in the old days could excuse Fidel Castro's tyranny because of his
free hospitals, but no genuine American liberal believes in a
tradeoff between civil liberties and social welfare. You can have
universal healthcare and personal liberty, but if you have to choose,
personal liberty is more important. On that point, liberals of the
left, who don't think you have to choose, agree with libertarians.

In his book "Freedom's Power," Paul Starr says that he prefers the
term "liberal" to "progressive" because modern liberals are the
heirs, not just of 20th century welfare state liberalism, but of
centuries of Anglo-American liberalism, going back before the
American Founding to Britain's Glorious Revolution of 1689. He is
right, I think, to insist that the history of evolving personal and
political freedom should not be ceded to libertarians, who represent
the extreme right wing of liberalism. American liberals, it might be
said, are Lockean libertarians who recognize the need for social
insurance and regulation; they have never had anything
philosophically in common with Marxists or post-Marxist social
democrats in Europe, support for universal healthcare and various
public services notwithstanding.

Objection No. 6. "Progressive" implies progress. Like "conservative,"
"progressive" is a term associated with a particular view of history.
The conservative wants to stand still or go back; the progressive
wants to move forward. Progressivism implies a view of history as
perpetual progress; conservatism, a view of history as decline from a
better world in the past. Needless to say, nobody who actually thinks
this way could function. In the real world, self-described
progressives aren't mindlessly in favor of everything new, just as
self-described conservatives aren't indiscriminately in favor of
everything that's old.

Unlike progressivism and conservatism, liberalism is not a name that
implies a view that things are either getting better or getting
worse. Liberalism is a theory of a social order based on individual
civil liberties, private property, popular sovereignty and democratic
republican government. Liberals believe that liberal society is the
best kind, but they are not committed to believing in universal
progress toward liberalism, much less universal progress in general.
Many liberals have been skeptical about the idea of unlimited
progress and have believed that a liberal society is difficult to
establish and easily changed into a nonliberal society.

Because liberalism refers to a particular kind of social order, and
does not depend on any implied relationship of the present to the
past or future, liberals can be either progressive or conservative,
depending on whether they seek to move toward a more liberal system
or to maintain a liberal system that already exists. For that matter,
liberals can be revolutionary, if creating or establishing a liberal
society requires a violent revolution. Liberals can even be
counterrevolutionary, if they are defending a liberal society from
revolutionary radicals, including anti-liberal revolutionaries of the
radical right like Timothy McVeigh or Muslim jihadists.

Those, then, are six arguments in favor of using liberalism to
describe the center-left. I've reserved the seventh for last. The
word "liberal" is a badge of pride. What is more embarrassing in
2008, to be associated with self-described liberals like Roosevelt
and Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr. and Barbara Jordan, or with
conservatives like Reagan and George W. Bush and Tom DeLay? I much
prefer the public philosophy of the mid-century liberals, for all
their blunders and shortcomings, to that of the three movements in
American history that have called themselves progressive: the
moderate-to-conservative progressives of the Democratic Leadership
Council in the 1980s and 1990s; the deluded pro-Soviet progressives
of the mid-20th century; and the Anglo-Protestant elite progressives
of the 1900s, who admired Bismarck's Germany and wanted to keep out
immigrants and sterilize the native poor.

But don't listen to me. Listen to John F. Kennedy, accepting the
endorsement of his presidential candidacy by New York's Liberal Party
on Sept. 14, 1960:

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?"
If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone
who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government,
and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of
this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of
"Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead
and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid
reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their
health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights,
and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break
through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies
abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to
say I'm a "Liberal."

--

Michael Lind is the Whitehead senior fellow at the New America
Foundation and the author of The American Way of Strategy: U.S.
Foreign Policy and the American Way of Life.

.

Remembering the Sixties

Remembering the Sixties

http://www.bangornews.com/detail/93375.html

11/17/08

It was truly a revolutionary era, and the University of Maine at
Presque Isle has done an outstanding service in conducting a six-day
"1968 Retrospective" for the benefit of the many who are too young to
recall it.

For many who lived through it, the Sixties were a disaster. Drugs,
profanity, resistance to any authority, and random, indiscriminate
sex seemed to be everywhere. Kids seemed to be taking over the
schools, the colleges and the streets. Blacks joined black power groups.

For others, the era was a long-overdue revolt against the Vietnam
war, against oppressive government and institutions, against
meaningless rules, against arrogant authority, against inhibitions
about language and action and sex, and against nicey-nice habits of
dress and behavior.

It is credited, perhaps too much, with forcing an end to a seemingly
endless war. But, much as most young people hated to admit it,
President Nixon's halting of the military draft took some of the fire
out of the anti-war movement.

While it did bring a new freedom and independence of mind to young
men and particularly young women and to African Americans, it also
brought a resentful backlash among many rural residents and
blue-collar workers. Many of them gravitated to political
conservatism and became part of the coalition that twice elected
Ronald Reagan president.

More directly, the anti-war activities of the era spurred President
Nixon to create the "Plumbers," a secret corps of spies and
enforcers, whose crimes led direction to Mr. Nixon's near impeachment
and resignation.

In a far longer range sense, the Sixties revolution may have laid the
groundwork for the unprecedented election this year of a black
president. The scenes at Chicago's Grant Park were far different. In
1968 there were riotous demonstrators, club-wielding police, fumes of
teargas, along with thousands of wildly enthusiastic supporters of
Eugene McCarthy.

This year, there was none of the violence or repression but a
similarly wild enthusiasm over the Obama victory. But the opening of
minds in that Sixties revolution must certainly have helped lead the
way toward this year's clean break with past politics.

Has this year's political revolution hastened the end of the current
seemingly-endless war in Iraq? And has it brought an end to a period
of secretive and intrusive government that spied on its own citizens
and repeatedly violated the guarantees of the Constitution? Or, like
that other revolution, will it bring a political backlash?

Much depends on one man, Barack Obama. The Sixties produced three
possible national leaders, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin
Luther King, but all three were assassinated and, therefore, unable
to see their visions become reality.

Barack Obama, who remains determined to change Washington after a
long, tiring and sometimes bitter campaign soon will begin a new
presidency. He has brought fresh hope to a nation that needed it.

How that hope is translated into policy will help define this era.

.

Utah Phillips, security risk

Utah Phillips, security risk

http://www.newsreview.com/chico/Content?oid=882550

FBI documents show agency spied on famous folksinger for most of the 1960s

By Robert Speer
roberts@newsreview.com
[27 Nov 2008]

In his remembrance of U. Utah Phillips, the folksinger and songwriter
who died at the age of 73 on May 23 ("U. Utah Phillips leaves the
stage," CN&R, May 29), Alan Sheckter writes about the "ill will"
Phillips' leftist political leanings created in his adopted state of Utah.

In a 2005 interview with Sheckter, Phillips had described how he was
working as a state archivist in 1968 when he ran for the U.S. Senate
in Utah on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. "I took a leave of
absence from the state and took 6,000 votes," he said. "The upshot
was my job was no longer there. I was blackballed."

Actually, it turned out to be "a godsend," Phillips said. He followed
friends' advice and hit the road as a "traveling troubadour,"
becoming an almost legendary figure among American folksingers. He
finally settled in Nevada City.

Interested in learning more about Phillips' early years in Utah, and
particularly about the political animosity toward him, the CN&R
submitted a Freedom of Information Act request seeking Phillips' FBI records.

Several months later, in mid-November, a packet arrived containing
more than 40 pages of material, all of it going back to Phillips'
Utah days. Phillips, it turned out, was under intense surveillance
for several years.

Bruce Duncan Phillips, as he was then named, first came to the FBI's
attention in 1961, when he was part of the group "Life for Garcia"
calling for the commutation of the death sentence of a convicted
murder (it eventually was commuted). By the mid-1960s, Phillips was
showing up at anti-Vietnam War rallies, where he often participated
by singing union and anti-war songs.

The FBI duly noted his attendance, as well as the sponsoring groups'
relationship, always highly tangential, with the Communist Party of Utah.

Meanwhile, the FBI was interviewing Phillips' co-workers at the Utah
Historical Society, in Salt Lake City, where he was an archivist. One
informant said he considered Phillips "self-centered; that his peace
and related ideas have the basic purpose of attracting attention to
himself, and that he does not think through his activities and attitudes."

Another noted that Phillips was "an adequate employee but [was] a
problem to the state because of his interest in peace activities and
anti-capital-punishment activities."

Under the heading "Miscellaneous Subversive Activities," the dossier
noted Phillips' attendance at meetings of the Utah Council for
Constitutional Liberties and the Public Affairs Forum of Utah County,
two groups focused largely on anti-war activities. He also attended
meetings of the April Committee, a student anti-war group, and other,
similar groups. The FBI apparently had informants at all of them.

In February 1968, Phillips organized the People's Party and became
its chairman. Soon renamed the Poor People's Party, it had a goal of
getting candidates on the November ballot. By July, it had merged
with the Peace and Freedom Party of California.

At a state convention held Aug. 24, Phillips was selected to run for
the U.S. Senate. He did so only after party members agreed to come up
with the $480 a month in lost income when he took a leave of absence
from his archivist job.

Phillips traveled the state campaigning, with the FBI dogging his
trail much of the time. After the election, in which he got just
under 2 percent of the vote, he was out of a job.

During the years when it had Phillips under surveillance, the FBI
talked with him twice. On Aug. 2, 1967, he told agents he was engaged
in civil-rights, anti-Vietnam and related activities and that he
"deplore[d] any resort to extremism which could involve violation of
law or violence," according to FBI documents. And on Jan. 2, 1968, he
described his anti-war goals, adding that he was "personally opposed
to communists, as are most of the peace people."

What's clear from the FBI reports is that the agency had an almost
pathological obsession about the doings of the Communist Party of the
USA, a group that by 1968 had little influence and dwindling numbers.
Clearly, though, it served as a raison d'être­a kind of
full-employment act, so to speak­for the FBI, which spent vast sums
of money chasing down what amounted to ephemera.

Certainly it never had reason to scrutinize Utah Phillips. Finally,
in February 1969, after Phillips had left Utah and embarked on his
full-time music career, the bureau acknowledged as much. That's when
it decided he no longer met the criteria for the Security Index­the
list of people the FBI monitored as possible security risks­and
stopped spying on him.

.

Cheech & Chong back on the road

Cheech & Chong back on the road

http://www.straight.com/article-172352/smoke-new-fire?rotator=1

By Guy MacPherson
November 27, 2008

After more than two decades apart, legendary stoner-comedy
trailblazers Cheech & Chong are seeing double once again
--

When a mixed-race Calgary R & B band took a floater out of town in
the early 1960s­run out by the mayor, no less, because of an overly
rambunctious show at a local legion hall­it wound up in Vancouver,
leaving this city with sole claim to the biggest stoner comedy act in
show-business history.

By all accounts, the Calgary Shades were a tight band. "It was one of
the best bands around," says Tommy Chong, the half-Chinese,
half-Scottish guitarist for the Shades. Chong would spend the next 10
years in the Lower Mainland, and would eventually meet Cheech Marin,
the yang to his comedic yin. "The only trouble was we were limited.
And we never had proper management.…We were the Stones without an
education, you know?"

Chong was a decent musician, though. In Vancouver he met a
16-year-old kid, Henry Young, who had recently been given the boot
from high school for riding his mufflerless Harley down the hall.
Young, who was just learning guitar, had a job at a garage, where
he'd park his hog. Chong would walk by and admire it, and the two
became friends.

"I used to fix his car for him, and he showed me some hot guitar
licks and that kind of stuff," Young says on the phone from his home
in North Van. "As I plodded along, he gave me the odd gig here and
there, subbing for him." He must have been a decent teacher, because
Young became a full-time musician and went on to play with jazz great
Nina Simone on and off for 25 years.

Young, who eventually lived with Chong for a time, remembers Chong as
more of a Casanova than a court jester in the early days. "You know
something? To tell you the truth, he never was really that funny," he
says. "Tommy was more or less a lady's man. He was very good-looking,
very charming.…I guess when he smoked dope, he was like a total
different person. And I guess he'd seen his calling, which was to do
the comedy thing."

Chong's wife, Shelby, a standup comic in her own right, is not as
charitable in her description of the young musician. Ten years his
junior, the teenaged Shelby Fiddis lived next door to Chong and his
first wife on East 15th Avenue. "He was married and bought a house
with his wife," she says on the phone from Nevada the day Cheech and
Chong were to be roasted at the Las Vegas Comedy Festival. "That's
how I met him. It's kind of a sick story. Actually, Tommy was an old
pervert in those days. There you go. He was very cool and wore suits,
kept his hair back, wore tons of cologne. He owned a club. For him,
it was love at first sight. For me, it was like, 'You know what?
You're married. I'll be your friend.' All my friends were little East
15th girls. He'd get us in the club for free. So that's how it all started."

His Lothario reputation and musicianship notwithstanding, there was a
hint about his future forte. When Young was living with the Chong
family, Chong would dictate what was on the tube.

"He used to say, 'Oh, no, you can't watch wrestling. You gotta watch
Dick Van Dyke,' " Young remembers. "He was a fan of Dick Van Dyke. He
loved, loved Dick Van Dyke and that kind of stuff."

Chong went on to play in Big Daddy and the Bachelors, which morphed
into Four Niggers and a Chink (under pressure, the band was renamed
Four Ns and a C.) In the mid-60s, Chong became part of the legendary
Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers­house band at the Elegant Parlour, an
after-hours bistro run by Chong­which eventually signed with Motown
Records. In 1968, he got into the comedy game by way of a topless
improv troupe, City Works, that he formed at the Shanghai Junk, a
Main and Pender strip joint managed by his brother.

Chong and first comedy partner David Graham, both longhaired hippies,
were looking for a shorthaired straight man. Enter Rich "Cheech"
Marin, an American who was both writing for a Vancouver rock 'n' roll
magazine called Poppin and delivering carpets. The pair immediately
hit it off and Marin was hired to join City Works. Comedy and
strippers? What could be better?

"Oh, man, it was so much fun you couldn't believe it!" Marin recalls.
"We didn't get discovered by anything other than perverts, but it was
unbelievable."

When the troupe broke up, Chong and Marin stayed together. Chong
loved Marin's attitude more than anything else. It was, for lack of a
better description, American. Chong always had a big dream of making
it in show business. He got a taste of it when Bobby Taylor and the
Vancouvers reached number 29 on the U.S. pop charts with a tune
cowritten by Chong called "Does Your Mama Know About Me" (which could
easily have been about his relationship with Fiddis, because, she
says, "My mom did not have a clue, until he got famous, then she was
like, 'I like him now' "). But by then the band was no longer in
business. Comedy­not to mention THC­was in his blood now.

"Canadians are weird," Chong says, talking to the Straight while
driving with Marin from Portland to Eugene, Oregon, as part of their
Cheech & Chong Light Up America and Canada tour, which hits the Queen
Elizabeth Theatre on December 5. "Canadians, they get too
comfortable. They don't want to move. That's why bands break
up­because you get good enough but no one wants to go down to the
States; no one wants to cut the record. They're just content where
they're at. Cheech was from the States. And I had a big urge to make
it big time. And I knew if you were going to make it big time, you
had to go down to the States.…Cheech was the only one who still
wanted to do it."

Chong thought music still might be his ticket to fame. He and Marin
put a band together, "but our comedy was so strong that we never got
around to playing any music," he says.

So after all of two shows as a duo in Vancouver, Cheech and Chong
headed south with "stars in our eyes and holes in our pockets",
according to Marin.

It was a bold move, to be sure. In 1969, comedy wasn't yet booming,
and drug humour certainly wasn't in the mainstream.

As big a fan as Shelby was, she couldn't see the success coming. "A
Mexican and a hippie?" she asks. "Who'd ever think? That's incredible
when you think about it."

But it makes perfect sense in hindsight. Although hip and sick comedy
had taken hold through the old-school masters, there had yet to be
comics speaking to the stoned generation. The comedy team was
embraced by their fans, grateful to see anyone reflecting their own lifestyles.

"The audience said, 'Hey, we got our own culture; now we have our own
comedians­our very own,'" Chong says. "We weren't comedians doing
stoner material; we were stoners being comedians."

While Vancouver supplied the drug references, Los Angeles allowed
them to develop the other key aspect of their act.

"We had pot material," Marin explains. "We didn't have that whole
Chicano element, because up in Vancouver there weren't any Chicanos.
So in L.A. we started incorporating that into it, and it was great.
And all of a sudden the pot element really caught on."

But Cheech & Chong didn't abandon its home town. According to Chong,
the duo developed some memorable bits at Oil Can Harry's, the Thurlow
Street club that ran from 1966 to 1977. And at the peak of their
career, when films came calling in 1978, they made their celluloid
arch nemesis an incompetent boob of a cop by the name of Sgt.
Stedenko, a nod to Abe Snidanko, the legendary Vancouver RCMP narc.

"Vancouver was very racist, very, very racist," Chong says. "And they
had these cops imported from Ireland and Scotland.…They had a
right-wing approach to everything. Like, I had friends do time­a year
in jail­for selling a dime bag of weed. That kind of thing. And
Snidanko, the guy that's in Up In Smoke, he was head of the narcs in
Vancouver and he was always trying to bust us for smoking pot or
anything. That's why I made him famous."

But fame had its drawbacks. "When he got famous, he got shipped off
to Turkey for 17 years. Then he came back and he was on the force for
a while, and then they finally retired him. The narcs here called me
down in L.A. and had me autograph a poster and send it up for his
retirement present," Chong says with a laugh.

Cheech & Chong broke up in 1985. Like an old married couple, they
eventually wore each other down. In interviews they gave
individually, it seemed like they might never get back together. In
2006, Marin told the Straight: "It's two real strong personalities
that clash. If we ever want to do anything else, we have to figure
out a way around that clash. But at some point, it's just not worth
the trouble."

Today Chong says, "We were working too hard. That's a catch-22, you
know? You've got a lot of money but you got no time to enjoy it. And
so you have to break up the band or break up the comedy team or
whatever. Then you have too much time and not enough money."

Now, thanks to a whole bunch of money and some nifty shenanigans from
Shelby and their son Paris, Cheech & Chong are back. There had been
plans to reunite in the past few years, but the two would always
start bickering and nothing would happen.

"We sort of took over Tommy's e-mails and I had my son answer [Marin]
without him knowing it," Shelby explains. "Tommy had written this
kinda not really nasty e-mail, but saying some things that if you
were the least bit sensitive, you'd get upset. So I said, 'Paris,
forget it. Erase it.' He said, 'You're kidding, Mom.' I said, 'Yes!
Just do it.' So we did it. And the next thing you know, Cheech wrote
him a nice e-mail back."

And, of course, the money eased any potential conflict. "It's twice
the fun for half the work. I love it," Chong says. "We spread out the
work and we get paid a lot of money. It's great; it's win-win all the way."

They also reached deep to find what drew them together in the first
place. "We decided not to argue any more," Marin says. "Things that
went on, went on, and let's see what we can do in the future. And
there was enough money there." He laughs. "We both realized that we
each had half of a treasure map and we could not access the treasure
without putting those two halves together."

So on September 5, Cheech & Chong made their triumphant return, after
more than two decades apart. According to Marin, the first time back
on-stage, in Ottawa, was incredible. "It was great! It was like we
had never left. Like we'd been off weeks, not 30 years."

The tour, which Marin wanted to call Catch Them Before They Croak,
keeps on rolling until March. A movie is also in the works. But will
they be at each other's throats before then?

"No, not at all," Shelby insists. "They love each other and they're so happy."

And she is taking no credit for getting the act back together.

"It was meant to happen," Shelby says. "They both wanted to. They
just needed a little nudging here and there. You know how that
happens. They have that magic. And who knows what that is? Who knows?
When they get together, it's just magic."

.

Students of color converge

Students of color converge

http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/2008/nov/21/students-color-converge/

Elaiza Torralba (Contact)
Published: Friday, November 21, 2008

UCLA will host the 20th annual Student of Color Conference this
weekend, a conference which aims to increase the number of students
involved in on- and off-campus community work and organization and
emphasizes diversity on campus.

"Call to ACTION: Educate, Empower & Implement!" is this year's theme.

Sponsored by the University of California Student Association, the
conference is expected to be "the biggest SOCC thus far," SOCC
Committee Chair Stephanie Roberts said.

"We are expecting 1,030 students and are really looking to mobilize
students around important issues that we face everyday on the
statewide and national level," Roberts said.

The conference, which lasts three days, consists of a film screening,
club night, workshops, caucus spaces and cultural performances, she added.

The conference will begin tonight with a screening of the film "41st
and Central," a documentary about the Black Panther Party movement in
Los Angeles that addresses the role that the Black Panther Party
played at UCLA during the 1960s.

The opening ceremony on Saturday will be followed by performances,
caucuses and three workshop sessions on race and equality. Titles of
some of the caucuses are, "Differently Abled," "Working Class" and
"Gender Nonconforming/Transgender," said Dina Mahmood, SOCC committee co-chair.

Various ethnic caucuses will be held as well, including the
African/Black Coalition, Latin@/Chican@/Raz@, Asian/Pacific Islander
Unity and Middle Eastern caucuses. These will be held in various
rooms of Haines Hall and Royce Hall.

Performers include Los Rakas, a hip-hop, reggae and dancehall music
duo, Bambu and Aesthetics Crew. Workshop titles include "Applying to
Professional Schools," "Women of Color Incarcerated" and "Redefining
Hip-Hop as a Tool for Social Change," according the SOCC 2008 program booklet.

"There are over 60 different workshops at the conference covering a
wide range of topics that address education, organization and
advocacy," Mahmood said. "These caucus spaces should serve as a safe
place for students of similar representations to discuss issues that
face their communities as well as ways to advocate for them."

On Sunday, the final day of the conference, there will be a rally
held in Bruin Plaza about stopping another fee increase proposed at
this week's UC Board of Regents meeting at UC San Francisco, Mahmood said.

"We will be marching from Bruin Plaza to the Federal Building where
our closing ceremony will be held," Mahmood said. "The Federal
Building will serve as a backdrop to why we are students, bringing
everything into the bigger picture: why are we students, what are we
fighting for and how is everything connected."

Roberts emphasized the importance of the four main topics of the
conference: education, empowerment, organization and activism.

"We want change not only in areas that affect UC students of color
but our communities as well, such as socioeconomic to health care,
homelessness, high incarceration rates, environmental injustices and
more," Roberts said. "We believe that by having over a thousand
students of color and allies from all the UCs that the Student of
Color Conference is a powerful space that will produce opportunities
for us to build coalitions and mobilize for change."

.

The Lasting Impact of a Civil Rights Icon's Murder

The Lasting Impact of a Civil Rights Icon's Murder

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Indelible-Images-Moment-of-Reckoning-200812.html

One of three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in 1964 was
James Chaney. His younger brother, Ben, would never be the same

By Hank Klibanoff
Smithsonian magazine, December 2008

In the 44 days that his brother and two other young civil rights
workers were missing in Neshoba County, Mississippi, 12-year-old Ben
Chaney was quiet and withdrawn. He kept his mother constantly in
sight as she obsessively cleaned their house, weeping all the while.

Bill Eppridge, a Life magazine photographer, arrived in Neshoba
County shortly after the bodies of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner
and Andrew Goodman were pulled from the muck of an earthen dam on
August 4, 1964. Inside the Chaney home in nearby Meridian, Eppridge
felt that Ben was overwhelmed, "not knowing where he was or where he
should have been," he recalls. "That draws you to somebody, because
you wonder what is going on there."

On August 7, Eppridge watched as the Chaney family left to bury their
eldest son. As they awaited a driver, Fannie Lee Chaney and her
husband, Ben Sr., sat in the front seat of a sedan; their daughters,
Barbara, Janice and Julia, sat in the back with Ben, who hunched
forward so he'd fit.

Eppridge took three frames. As he did so, he could see Ben's
bewilderment harden into a cold stare directed right at the lens.
"There were a dozen questions in that look," Eppridge says. "As they
left, he looked at me and said, three times, 'I'm gonna kill 'em, I'm
gonna kill 'em, I'm gonna kill 'em.' "

The frames went unpublished that year in Life; most news photographs
of the event showed a sobbing Ben Chaney Jr. inside the church. The
one on this page is included in "Road to Freedom," a photography
exhibit organized by Atlanta's High Museum and on view through March
9 at the Smithsonian's S. Dillon Ripley Center in Washington, D.C.,
presented by the National Museum of African American History and
Culture. Chaney, now 56, cannot recall what he told Eppridge in 1964,
but he remembers being livid that his mother had to suffer and that
his father's generation had not risen up years before so that his
brother's generation wouldn't have had to. "I know I was angry," he says.

Ben had lost his idol. Nine years older, James Earl Chaney­J.E., Ben
called him­had bought Ben his first football uniform and taken him
for haircuts. He had taken Ben along as he organized prospective
black voters in the days leading to Freedom Summer. Ben, who had been
taken into custody himself for demonstrating for civil rights,
recalls J.E. walking down the jailhouse corridor to secure his
release, calling, "Where's my brother? "

"He treated me," Ben says, "like I was a hero."

After the funeral, a series of threats drove the Chaneys from
Mississippi. With help from the Schwerners, Goodmans and others, they
moved to New York City. Ben enrolled in a private, majority-white
school and adjusted to life in the North. But by 1969 he was
restless. In Harlem, he says, he was elated to see black people
running their own businesses and determining their own fates. He
joined the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army.

In May 1970, two months shy of 18, Chaney and two other young men
drove to Florida with a vague plan to buy guns. Soon, five people,
including one of their number, were dead in Florida and South Carolina.

Chaney said he didn't even witness any of the slayings. He was
acquitted of murder in South Carolina. But in Florida­where the law
allows for murder charges to be brought in crimes that result in
death­he was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to
three life terms.

One of his first visitors in jail was Bill Eppridge. Before setting
up his cameras, Eppridge fired off a quick Polaroid. His editor liked
the Polaroid best. Life readers saw Ben Chaney with his eyes framed
by prison bars. "He just looks scared," says Eppridge, who, after the
weekly Life folded in 1972, went to work for Sports Illustrated.

"I can imagine I was afraid," Chaney says. "I was in jail."

He served 13 years. Paroled in 1983, he started the James Earl Chaney
Foundation to clean up his brother's vandalized grave site in
Meridian; since 1985, he has worked as a legal clerk for former U.S.
Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the lawyer who secured his parole. He
envisions creating a Chaney, Goodman, Schwerner Center for Human
Rights in Meridian.

In 1967, eighteen men faced federal charges of civil rights
violations in the slayings of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman. Seven
were convicted by an all-white jury, eight were acquitted and three
were released after jurors deadlocked. The state of Mississippi
prosecuted no one for 38 years. But in 2005­after six years of new
reporting on the case by Jerry Mitchell of the Jackson
Clarion-Ledger­a sawmill operator named Edgar Ray Killen was indicted
on charges of murder.

On June 21, 2005, exactly 41 years after the three men were killed, a
racially integrated jury, without clear evidence of Killen's intent,
found him guilty of manslaughter instead. Serving three consecutive
20-year terms, he is the only one of six living suspects to face
state charges in the case.

Ben Chaney sees it this way: somewhere out there are men like
him­accomplices to murder. He did his time, he says, they should do
theirs. "I'm not as sad as I was," he adds. "But I'm still angry."
--

Hank Klibanoff is the author, with Gene Roberts, of The Race Beat,
which received the Pulitzer Prize for history last year.

.

Beginning of Afro-American studies

Beginning of Afro-American studies

http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/2008/nov/26/beginning-afro-american-studies/

Though the interdepartmental program has gained prestige, the
formation was tumultuous

Ravi Doshi, Bruin reporter (Contact)
Will Weiss, Bruin senior staff (Contact)
Published: Wednesday, November 26, 2008

At the start of what was then known as "Negro History Week" in
February 1967, members of the Black Student Union, then known as
Harambee, lined Bruin Walk in silent protest.

They stood quietly, not taking questions from reporters or passers-by
for one week, letting only the slogan on their shirts speak for them.
The shirts read "Why one week?" and encapsulated the feeling of many
of the black students on campus at the time, who believed it
inadequate that their history be commemorated in only one week.

"We believed that the injustice that we experienced was particularly
based on the lack of knowledge, on the ignorance of the white
students at the time," said J. Daniel Johnson, a UCLA student and
activist who helped lead the push for the formation of an academic
study center, what would eventually become the Ralph J. Bunche Center
for African American Studies at UCLA. "So, we requested that
instruction be provided and that all students be required to take it."

With that, the movement had gotten underway among committed black
students to form a center for the academic study of African American
history and culture.

By fall of 1967, the administration, under then-Chancellor Franklin
Murphy had allowed for the teaching of the course on African American
history. Students from across the campus and from a variety of
backgrounds enrolled in the course, taught by Professor Ronald Takaki.

Yet, for the student activists, a singular course was not enough. The
movement continued, utilizing campus publications, including content
in the Daily Bruin and the creation of the African American special
interest paper NOMO to push their cause among the campus community.

"We felt we could use the column (in the Daily Bruin) as a bully
pulpit to lobby for an academic study center," Johnson said of the effort.

The effort was not in vain. During the summer of 1968, the decision
was made to create not only an African American studies center, but
also a broader Institute for American Cultures, which could
eventually encompass all ethnic study centers on campus.

The question that remained, however, regarded who would lead the
organization in its inaugural term.

For the students, the choice was clear. Professor Charles Hamilton,
an African American professor of political science was the obvious
choice. Yet, as it would turn out, Hamilton's chairmanship would not
come to fruition due to contract disputes.

Thus, the search continued to find a leader for the new center.

To this end, meetings were then held in January to determine who
would head up the new center.

But the selection was far from seamless.

On Jan. 17, 1969, Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter and John Huggins, two
UCLA students and members of the Black Panther Party, were murdered
in Campbell Hall in what was an act of violence that served as a
great setback to the center's progress.

"It's alienating to have an experience of violence in your midst, and
it made people wonder where this center was going," said Claudia
Mitchell-Kernan, vice chancellor and dean of the graduate division,
who served as director of the center from 1976 to 1989.

And yet, despite the setbacks, the center continued. By 1974, it had
helped create the independent interdepartmental studies program in
Afro-American Studies, and throughout the decade, was gaining
national and international prestige.

"By the 1980s, we were thought of as a real model in the country,
with people visiting from around the world, holding major symposia
and conferences on academic issues, and hosting forums on prominent
contemporary issues," Mitchell-Kernan said.

And, despite its title, the program's initial class was as diverse as its aims.

In 1980, during the inaugural year of the interdepartmental master's
program, two students graduated: one black, one white.

Since that time, not much has changed in this regard, with students
from throughout the campus community enrolling in courses offered
through the Afro-American studies program.

"In spite of periodic and severe budget cuts and lack of funding, the
Afro-American Studies Interdepartmental Program has maintained a
consistent, vibrant enrollment not only of African American students
but students from across the campus who wish to be well-informed
about issues of race and ethnicity," said Dr. Lisbeth Gant-Britton,
student affairs officer of the Afro-American Studies Interdepartmental Program.

But, for those original founders and leaders of the program, there
remains work to be done.

"I think we are a better society today than we were 40 years ago in
terms of inclusiveness, but we still have issues surrounding the
treatment of African Americans, Mexican Americans, other immigrant
groups – now gays and lesbians with the passage of Proposition 8.
These are enduring issues for complex societies such as our own, so I
see the issues that were the impulse for creating the center as
enduring issues," Mitchell-Kernan said.

For Johnson, who still remembers the conversations, protests,
meetings and proposals surrounding the creation of the center in the
1960s, the sense of pride at the accomplishment of forming the center
is met with disappointment regarding its unmet potential.

"I'm very proud of what we did. (The Center) is stronger, but not as
strong as it could have been."

For him, the loss of some of the early programs and research
interests championed by the Center, such as the High Potential
Program, are painful to bear.

"If we look at the problems that plagued, and increasingly continue
to plague the African American community, we need it more than ever,"
said Johnson.

.

Mick Jagger on the trials of life at 65

Not fade away:
Mick Jagger on the trials of life at 65

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/not-fade-away-mick-jagger-on-the-trials-of-life-at-65-994413.html

It's not very rock'n'roll, but Mick Jagger, the man who brought us
'Sympathy for the Devil', supermodel girlfriends and skin-tight
jeans, recently acquired OAP status. So has he mellowed with age?
James Mottram finds out

Saturday, 8 November 2008

Before Mick Jagger enters the hotel room, I'm half expecting to be
reminded of the opening line of The Rolling Stones' old number
"Mother's Little Helper". You know the bit, as Jagger whines in that
unmistakable voice of his, "What a drag it is getting old". This has
been, after all, a watershed year for the Stones' lead singer.
Turning 65 in July, all those jokes about the wrinkly rocker being
old enough to collect his pension finally came true. Sir Mick – as he
became in 2003 – is now officially an OAP. Not that he's ready to
curl up with his cocoa just yet.

It's around 2pm when he finally arrives, a good half-hour late. "I
didn't go to bed until five o'clock," he says, with a measure of
pride, perhaps because it runs contrary to the image painted of him
in the tabloids by his ex-wife Jerry Hall, that of a couch potato who
likes an early night. He had spent the night partying with the other
Stones in Berlin; if it got out of hand, it doesn't show. While the
excesses of a rock'n'roll lifestyle may have taken their toll on his
fellow band member Keith Richards, Jagger looks in remarkable shape.
Rather like his slightly sucked-in cheeks, Jagger's torso, I imagine,
is almost concave, as if he's had the flesh vacuumed out of him.

The Dartford-born singer puts his preternaturally skinny physique
down to being raised in the aftermath of the Second World War. "It's
the diet we had when we ......... were children," he smiles. "There
was very little food, basically, and no junk food and no sugar."
Never mind that his father, Joe, was a games teacher and relatively
affluent compared to some. "Yeah, but that didn't get you any more
food," he adds. "Teachers don't earn much money. Not to labour the
point, but they think this is one reason why our generation doesn't
get fat – unless you drink lots of beer, of course."

While the only things plump about him are those famous lips – more
pink than bright red, as the Stones marketing might have us believe –
he says "there's no secret" to staying fit. "You just have to do a
bit of work when you get over 30. You have to go to the gym. Before
30, you don't really have to worry." Dressed in a striped shirt,
lilac jumper and black jeans, lines already clustering around those
ice-blue eyes, Jagger wisely makes no attempt to look younger by
dressing up in rock-star clobber.

This is the third time I've encountered Jagger, though it's as if
I've been in the presence of three different men. The first was pure
accident, as I glimpsed him mooching around Selfridges' furniture
department about five years ago. Making no attempt to conceal his
identity with sunglasses or the like, he looked disarmingly ordinary
– perhaps that's why he was able to browse through the store almost
unnoticed. The second time, I saw the side most of us know: Jagger
the Showman, doing what he does best. It was on stage during the
Stones' recent A Bigger Bang tour, a two-year marathon jaunt around
the globe that, after reportedly taking $558m, has become the
highest-grossing tour of all time.

If you read anything about Jagger, it usually centres on his
remarkable stage energy, undiluted despite his advancing years. Even
now, there's still something animal about him in the spotlight. Does
he see performance as an almost sexual act? "Is it like sex?" he
ponders. "I don't know. Is there an orgasmic moment? Not that there
necessarily has to be in sex. It's a different kind of thing. Often
times, you have to be more calculated about what you do." It recalls
Truman Capote's comment in light of touring with the band; that
everything he saw "had been coolly and efficiently manufactured by
the Stones and their managers". You don't get to last 46 years in the
music business by leaving things to chance.

It's Jagger's vim and vigour that fuels Shine a Light, the band's
first concert movie since 1983's Let's Spend The Night Together,
which has just been released on DVD. Directed by long-time Stones fan
Martin Scorsese, it captures the band's gig at New York's Beacon
Theatre, a pit-stop during the Bigger Bang tour. Even with Scorsese's
involvement, it doesn't come close to touching the likes of the
notorious fly-on-the-wall documentary Cocksucker Blues, which
detailed the band's drug-fuelled 1972 US tour, or Gimme Shelter, the
seminal account of the 1969 Altamont gig when a Hell's Angel stabbed
a fan to death. Not that Jagger wanted another behind-the-scenes
documentary. "It's a bit of a cliché, Marty and I felt, doing the
backstage stuff. Everyone's done that."

If the film is primarily a straight-up concert movie, it does hint at
what a giant corporate machine The Rolling Stones have become, with
Jagger leading the charge. One early shot sees him sitting in First
Class, sipping champagne and working on the set-list for the show. As
tongue-in-cheek as it is, it highlights a core truth: much of the
Stones' success comes down to Jagger micro-managing the band's
business affairs. As he puts it, "I don't think anyone else in the
band is the slightest bit interested in that part of it. As long as
it's successful." It was he who pushed the Stones into becoming the
first band to truly exploit the money to be made from tours and merchandise.

Estimates vary, but Jagger's now worth in the region of £150m – and
it's certainly convenient to think of the former economics student as
an omniscient control freak, a man the US press dubbed "the greatest
businessman in rock'n'roll history". In person, he's aloof and wary,
not......... the charming stumble-drunk that is Keith Richards.
Rarely given to introspection, he's uncomfortable being interviewed.
Thus, in Kevin Macdonald's documentary Being Mick, showing him up
close and personal with his numerous children, it was almost a given
that this was an entirely manufactured exercise. Or as Jagger
explains, slipping into a Nazi commandant voice as he does so, "It
was all within my control."

It's understandable, given how little control he has over the reams
of tabloid column inches his life has generated. Jagger has been
painted as so many different personas: the gangly, blues-loving teen,
the Crowley-esque dabbler in diabolism (inspired by the classic track
"Sympathy for the Devil"), the sexually promiscuous rock star (dating
everyone from Carla Bruni to Sophie Dahl), and the cricket-loving
country gent. As he puts it, "People seem to find it hard to accept
that you can be several people at the same time." Not least playing a
gyrating hipster on stage. "Of course it's a different persona," he
argues. "If you came to a dinner party as your stage persona, he
wouldn't be a very welcome guest!"

Currently dating the stylist L'Wren Scott, who is more than two
decades his junior, Jagger likes to promote himself as the doting
father. There is Karis, who came from his brief affair with the
singer Marsha Hunt; Jade, from his first marriage to Bianca; his four
children with Jerry Hall – Elizabeth, 24, James, 23, Georgia, 16, and
Gabriel, 11. Then there's nine-year-old Lucas, the product of a
three-month affair with the Brazilian model Luciana Morad that
effectively ended his two decades together with Hall. At one point,
when discussing the band's former bassist Bill Wyman, he tells me, "I
saw him at my kid's 16th birthday party." The mind boggles at what
this bash was like – Jagger playing responsible parent to a bunch of
rowdy teens is an amusing prospect.

Now nearly teetotal, there's nothing he likes more than eight hours
sleep a night and Jagger is far removed from the likes of Jimi
Hendrix and Jim Morrison, who lived fast and died young. "Most people
did survive," he counters. "It's how you came out the other side and
what shape you're in, I suppose." In Jagger's case, he'd been a
whipping boy for the establishment – after the Stones became involved
in a landmark drugs bust when Richards' Sussex mansion was raided in
1967. "Looking back it was very funny," he reflects, "but it wasn't
at the time very funny. It completely took over our lives creatively.
We couldn't do this or that. You had to spend all your time dealing
with the police. We definitely were being targeted. It was quite a
common thing really."

For the record, Jagger doesn't believe narcotics were particularly
helpful in the songwriting process that he and Richards got down to a
fine art. "I think they're overrated as a creative method," he says.
Certainly, having watched his former band member, Brian Jones, head
down a path into narcotic-fuelled oblivion before he wound up dead in
a swimming pool, Jagger has been wise to remain relatively
restrained. Far more dangerous to him was the aftermath of the
Altamont gig. It was revealed earlier this year that a bunch of
Hell's Angels plotted to kill Jagger after he sacked them as stage
security following the concert stabbing. Plotting to raid his Long
Island property by boat, their plan was foiled when a storm nearly
sunk their craft. Yet in many ways, this sort of incident only serves
to further the media mystique that surrounds Jagger and the Stones.

"I think journalism helped make the Stones dangerous and respectable
all at the same time," he says. "After you've been around for 10 or
15 years, you can't be either a) new or b) subversive. People that
try to be subversive for more than 10 years, you'll never get
anywhere. So people get used to that whole idea. By the mid-1970s, it
was very difficult. That's why punk tried to remake this subversive
rock moment." So how does he see rock'n'roll now? "It's another time,
but there are people still doing what we did. There are tons of
bands, looking like they're playing guitars! Millions of them. I see
them all the time." .........

Another side to Jagger is his movie work. Shine a Light aside, Jagger
has enjoyed a rather indifferent career as a movie producer,
beginning in 2001 with the Second World War code-cracking thriller
Enigma for his company Jagged. This year, he produced The Women, a
remake of the 1939 George Cukor comedy starring Rosalind Russell and
Joan Crawford. Despite a cast including Meg Ryan, Annette Bening and
Eva Mendes, the film took just $26m in the US and garnered some
scathing reviews ("a witless, straining mess," said the New York
Times). "It gives me a different outlet," he explains, vaguely, when
I ask him why he does it.

One can't help but think that Jagger is in it merely to dabble –
rather like his four solo albums, including 2001's much-maligned
Goddess in the Doorway, or his intermittent acting career. While his
screen debut as a debauched rock star in Performance was hardly
stretching him, his follow-up as the lead in 1970s outlaw story Ned
Kelly left him looking faintly ridiculous in a wispy beard and iron
helmet. Since then, his roles, from a time-travelling bounty hunter
in Freejack to a cross-dressing cabaret owner in Bent, have been
idiosyncratic to say the least.

So what attracts him to a part? "I don't know," he shrugs. "Sometimes
I get offered little quirky roles and if I like the idea and I feel
good at the time, I'll just do them. You never know how a film is
going to turn out. There can be great people involved and it can turn
out rubbish, so it's always a leap in the dark." Still, it's
understandable why he does it: Jagger, by nature a performer, can't
always be on stage. He is certainly aware of just how addictive it
is. "You don't really want to be doing it all the time. Like when
you're young, you think if you're not having sex, you're wasting your
time. But as you get older you realise everything has its place."

It's the same thing with performance, he says. "You don't want to be
thinking, 'I'm not performing tonight. Why am I not performing? I'm
just going out to dinner with my friends – I should be on stage
somewhere!' So it's a great thing to do but you don't want to be
doing it all the time. But a lot of people are like that – a lot of
actors. They do eight shows a week on stage. It's addictive. And if
they don't go straight into the next one, they don't think that their
life's worth living. I mean, you go to dinner with some comedians and
they're trying out their jokes on you. They're still on. I'm not
saying I'm boring, but you have to have a regular life. You don't
want to be a performer all the time. You don't want me on the table singing."

It must be strange for Jagger, who now has homes all over the world –
from the Loire Valley to Mustique and beyond – to realise how far
he's come. After the Stones' first single, their 1963 cover of Chuck
Berry's "Come On", Jagger admits he had no conception the band would
last the next two years, let alone any further. "You didn't expect
the work to go on and keep coming. You just do it for a year or two
... but it wasn't like we were going to break up or anything." Yet
the band came close to implosion in the 1980s, when Jagger began to
pursue a solo career and he and Richards began squabbling over
songwriting credits. In the end, after Jagger's 1988 US solo tour was
cancelled due to poor ticket sales, the Stones embarked on their
hugely successful campaign to promote Steel Wheels, arguably the last
album of any value they produced.

The Stones have lasted a further two decades, despite the departure
in 1993 of Wyman, and show no signs of stopping. Does he know why
they stuck it out?

"Because we were successful," he says. "I don't think we stayed
together only for the success, but if we hadn't had the success, we
wouldn't have stayed together. You need those two things – the love
of doing it and the love of other people wanting you to do it." While
Jagger claims he doesn't "feel there's a pressure to go on being
sexy", I wonder if he wakes up at night, worrying about not being
able to deliver on stage?

"Sure," he replies, "but don't look at the clouds of tomorrow through
the sunshine of today!" Now that's sound advice from Sir Mick.
--

'Shine a Light' is out now on DVD

.

Bill Ayers and the Demons to Come

Bill Ayers and the Demons to Come

http://www.truthout.org/111808R

Tuesday 18 November 2008
by: Steve Weissman, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Leave it to Rush Limbaugh. We have just elected as our president an
African-American, who would not have been able to vote in large parts
of our country less than 50 years ago, and we have proved to
ourselves and to the world that we remain a land of enormous
opportunity. Yet, the country's best-known radio talk-show host
wasted no time using our airwaves to attack the president-elect for
preaching "racism" and "socialism," and for creating our current
economic collapse by scaring off potential investors who fear higher
taxes. "The Obama recession is in full swing, ladies and gentlemen,"
Limbaugh proclaimed only two days after the election. "Stocks are
dying, which is a precursor of things to come. This is an Obama
recession. Might turn into a depression."

Limbaugh went on to call Obama "a Chicago thug," and suggested
that the incoming president would take advice, or even direction,
from the 1960s radical Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather
Underground and the "terrorist" bogeyman that John McCain and Sarah
Palin accused Obama of "palling around" with. "Bill Ayers is a silent
adviser," warned Limbaugh. "Don't think he's not."

Many Democrats will dismiss Limbaugh as a voice of the past, who
is simply trying to boost his audience ratings. But that's just the
point. For all his noxious rhetoric, the motor mouth from Missouri
knows precisely the kind of red meat his listeners crave, and he's
happy to serve it up - just as right-wing broadcasters did against
John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., with results we
know too well. Pray for an era of Kumbaya, if you will. My bet is
that Limbaugh is only an opening wedge for the anti-Obama war still
to come. To paraphrase an earlier column, welcome to the counterrevolution.

As for my friend from the 1960s, Bill Ayers has been anything
but "a silent adviser." Many of you read his fascinating essay here
at Truthout or saw his appearance on "Good Morning America," where he
talked up a new edition of his political memoir, "Fugitive Days," and
tried to set the record straight on just how minimal a relationship
he had with our new president. "I knew Barack Obama, absolutely,"
said Ayers. "And I knew him probably as well as thousands of other
Chicagoans, and like millions and millions of other people worldwide,
I wish I knew him better right now."

Ayers explained that he had hosted one of maybe 20
meet-the-candidate gatherings when Obama first ran for the Illinois
state Senate in 1996, but he did so at the request of a sitting
senator and had not met Obama before. Bill characterized their
subsequent association as "professional," having served together on a
foundation board and school reform group. And why not? Bill is, after
all, a distinguished professor of education at the Chicago campus of
the University of Illinois and was named the city's "Citizen of the
Year" in 1996 for his efforts to improve Chicago schools.

But wasn't Ayers being evasive, asked "Good Morning America's"
host Chris Cuomo, echoing John McCain. "You have to come clean,"
Cuomo insisted. "You have to say ... either Barack Obama sought me
out or I sought him out to discuss my ideas, my radical ideas."

"It's not at all true that he sought me out to listen to my
radical ideas, or that I sought him out," Ayers replied. "The truth
is, we came together in Chicago in a civic community around issues of
school improvement, around issues of fighting for the rights of poor
neighborhoods to have jobs and housing and so on.... So this idea
that we need to know more, like there's some dark hidden secret, some
secret link, is just a myth, and it's a myth thrown up by people that
wanted to exploit the politics of fear."

Bill told a simple truth, that he and Obama had never palled
around and never discussed anything very radical at all. But truth
alone will never derail the fear-mongering that the right wing in
America has always used to divide people. Read any good history of
the labor movement, the inter-racial alliance of poor black and white
farmers in the South in the 1880s, the Red Scare following World War
I, the campaign for universal health care in the 1940s or the
movements for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam in the
1960s. In all of these, the difference between success and failure
for reform movements was often how well they learned to combat the
race-baiting, red-baiting or other smear tactics used against them,
often from within their own ranks.

Nor are right-wing bigots the only ones who have stooped to
demonize their opponents. Long before John McCain tried to smear
Obama with Bill Ayers, no less than Hillary Clinton cast the first
stone, helped mightily in one of the primary debates by ABC's George
Stephanopoulos and Charley Gibson. Happily, the voters saw the smear
tactics for what they were. But, as Rush Limbaugh and the
stone-throwing Sarah Palin remind us, we are a long way from putting
such divisive nonsense behind us.
--

A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left
monthly Ramparts, <mailto:steveweissman@orange.fr>Steve Weissman
lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and
television producer. He now lives and works in France.

.

R.I.P. Playgirl

[2 items]

[See URL for embedded links.]

R.I.P. Playgirl

http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2008/11/17/playgirl/index.html?source=newsletter

by Tracy Clark-Flory
Nov. 17, 2008

I hadn't thought much about the recent demise of Playgirl magazine
until a New York Times obituary -- in the Sunday Styles section --
gave me reason to grieve. Apparently, Playgirl launched in 1973 as a
"feminist response to Playboy and Penthouse." Somehow that historic
moment was overshadowed in my women's studies textbooks by that
year's wee little court ruling on reproductive rights. But it is good
to now know that, as many celebrated their right to choose, some also
rejoiced at their right to sexy pictorials of men with feathered
locks, handlebar mustaches and hair busting cleavage-like from
plunging necklines.

In the years that followed, the magazine featured Burt Reynolds in a
Santa hat and Christmas PJs, cover model Alan Thicke alongside a
reference to his -- nudge, nudge -- "growing pains" and Jean-Claude
Van Damme in a stretch purple unitard. Woo, feminism?

In fairness, I do have a single fond memory of Playgirl's 35-year
history: the Brad Pitt issue. The (OK, seriously ethically
questionable) photos of him frolicking in the nude while on vacation
were published when I was in 8th grade, and I managed to hunt down
one of the shots online. Flooded with confused excitement, I
immediately announced my discovery to my mother, who replied: "Print
me out a copy?" In her infinite motherly wisdom she recognized it as
an opportunity to communicate her view of the naked human body as
natural and shameless, and, if necessary, to discuss any unhealthy
messages about sex and sexuality conveyed in the photo. (But, also:
Brad Pitt, naked. Hello!)

This was Playgirl's history from the outside, though -- the
obstructed view of the magazine as it peeked out from behind rows and
rows of more acceptable magazines. Apparently the looks of its
cheese-ball cover models deceived; there was a whole lot more going
on behind the scenes. In recent years, a team of three female editors
in their 20s took over and decided to try to "bring Playgirl back to
its roots" and cover "issues like abortion and equal rights,
interspersing sexy shots of men with work from writers like Raymond
Carver and Joyce Carol Oates." That description alone is orgasm-worthy.

But the magazine's publisher, Blue Horizon Media, wanted fewer words
and more extreme closeups of waxed private parts. The Times reports
that the women adopted a "do-it-yourself ethic" -- call it riot grrrl
porn -- and tried desperately to revive the magazine with parties and
a blog, and very little help from higher-ups. But, alas, their
efforts went unrewarded and the publisher decided this summer to
shutter the magazine. The final, January/February 2009 issue now
sits on newsstands.

Don't get me wrong: I won't miss Playgirl. The few times I flipped
through it, I instantly felt that I was not even remotely the target,
that the photos were aimed at gay men, or women with very different
leanings. That isn't to suggest that only gay men like to look at
photos of naked men, it's just that there was nothing for me in the
pictorials of greasy, fully-waxed musclemen. Former Playgirl editor
Colleen Kane recently wrote in Radar that it was a challenge for the
editorial team to meet the tastes of all of their readers, "to
recognize that some want smiling hunks only, some like manscaping,
some hate it, some loved tattooed models while others hated them, and
one woman's cougar-bait is another woman's jailbait."

I suppose that's the trouble you run into when you are the only
magazine publishing photos of naked men for women. (And, even at
that, according to some reports, men comprised roughly 50 percent of
the audience.) Also, look at how endless celebrity centerfolds have
firmly propped up the Playboy brand; meanwhile, Playgirl had ... Burt
Reynolds, stripped to his rawhide skin. Male celebrities simply don't
have the same motivation to bare all -- and I refuse to believe it's
for actual lack of interest on women's part.

Kane also suggested that there might be "some parallels between
Playgirl's struggle to find its identity and readership and the
developing lack of cohesiveness among feminists, as the ranks divided
into second and third waves, and the waves subdivided with different
opinions about sex, porn." But certainly one doesn't have to be a
feminist to have a hunger for porn, and I dare say that if the
previously mentioned vision of legitimately sexy shots alongside
smart writing didn't bridge feminists' supposed generational divide,
it still would have gained a large enough audience to thrive. That
vision was never realized, though; it seems the publisher never gave
it a chance.

In the Radar piece, Kane writes: "What are women going to do for porn
now? I don't know; honestly, I don't even particularly like porn."
Maybe some women who do like porn will come along and create a little
something for other women who do too.

--------

They Couldn't Get Past the 'Mimbos'

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/fashion/16playgirl.html

By CARA BUCKLEY
Published: November 14, 2008

NOT long after Nicole Caldwell became editor in chief of Playgirl
magazine, she realized that looking at photos of naked men all day
was not everything she had imagined it would be. When she would meet
them, there was often a curious vapidity to the men, who Ms. Caldwell
took to describing as "mimbos."

Readers, Ms. Caldwell decided, deserved more.

So she and her fellow editors, all women in their 20s and all
relative neophytes to the world of magazines ­ and pornography ­
resolved to fill Playgirl with something different. They aspired to
bring Playgirl back to its roots, back to a time when the magazine
covered issues like abortion and equal rights, interspersing sexy
shots of men with work from writers like Raymond Carver and Joyce Carol Oates.

All the while, the editors juggled the demands of the publisher, Blue
Horizon Media, which they said pushed to fill Playgirl with even more
nudes and fewer words.

"It always felt like this uphill battle," said Jessanne Collins, 29,
who was Playgirl's senior editor.

The women's dreams crashed when Blue Horizon Media, which also puts
out hard-core magazines, announced it was shutting Playgirl. The last
issue, dated January/February 2009, recently arrived on newsstands.

Although the Playgirl Web site is still running, the graphic content
is geared more toward gay men. None of the magazine's editors are involved.

Ms. Caldwell said Playgirl magazine suffered from the twin malaises
of rising costs and declining sales; Blue Horizon Media did not
return repeated calls for this article.

Playgirl's passing certainly will not be lamented as would the death
of a more respected, or even a mildly respected, magazine. Yet for
its writers and fans, something tangible has been lost in its closure.

"It was almost a way to get back at Playboy," said Pamela Des Barres,
the famed former rock groupie, who wrote a music column for Playgirl.
"It was a great idea, and it could have been done better. It did
offer women a way to see some gorgeous hot, young, sexy guys, and
nothing's wrong with that."

Playgirl was started 35 years ago as a feminist response to Playboy
and Penthouse. (Playboy sued Playgirl in 1973 for trademark
infringement; the suit was settled amicably.) Over the years, the
magazine changed ownership, began catering more to gay men, and
whittled its operations down. Still, the magazine drew an avid
readership, Ms. Caldwell said, selling 600,000 copies per issue in
more than three dozen countries.

In contrast to much of the slender offerings of pornography aimed at
women, which tends to be softer and more story-driven than that
marketed toward men, Playgirl was in-your-face.

Now the three editors' nudie magazine with feminist leanings is gone,
and with it, strange and exciting career moments.

"I think a different kind of porn is very degrading to women, but the
kind of stuff we were peddling was about what women wanted," said Ms.
Caldwell, who is 26. "For better or worse, this was a real blow for
feminism. We were the only magazine that offered naked men to women."

In the end, Playgirl was run by a skeleton crew of these three
editors, along with what Ms. Caldwell described as "a whole horde of
eager unpaid interns."

Ms. Caldwell was a New Jersey girl who had helped run a community
newspaper and graduated from Columbia's journalism school; Ms.
Collins has a master's in creative writing from the New School; and
Corinne Weiner, 26, the magazine's designer for its last two and a
half years, was a graduate of Pratt.

Ms. Weiner and Ms. Caldwell got their jobs the old-fashioned way: by
sending in a résumé. Landing such a high-profile job just four months
out of graduate school seemed "so over the top," Ms. Caldwell said.
"In the end," she said, "that was far greater than reservations I had."

Ms. Caldwell hired Ms. Collins after she wrote an essay for the
magazine about orgasm-related migraines. Ms. Weiner was the only one
who said she half aspired to a career in pornography publishing. "It
definitely was bit intense at first," she said. "But it really didn't
bother me. I'm definitely all about looking at naked dudes."

Playgirl shared offices with Blue Horizon's other publications in a
fluorescent-lighted hive of gray cubicles in an old Art Deco building
near Grand Central Terminal. Outwardly, it seemed the blandest of
places, were it not for the lurid photos and videos that filled
workers' computer screens.

After being hired at Playgirl, each woman followed a similar
trajectory of experiences:

¶First week: shock at being inundated with photos of naked men;
slight horror at catching sight of photos from Blue Horizon's triple
X magazines; terror at having to put out a magazine with only two other people.

¶Second week: less shock, less terror, less horror. Amusement at all
the full-frontal photos that regular Joes ­ plumbers among them ­ mailed in.

¶Third week: the realization that one's eyes are glazing over at the
sight of photos of naked men, who all begin to look the same.
Bewilderment at the letters from female fans, who wanted specific
fantasies to appear. (A common theme: a naked man doing chores for
the fully dressed lady of the house. The editors complied with a photo spread.)

Ms. Caldwell was struck by how many people would assume she was an
expert in sex and then go on to disclose highly private details about
their lives. Ms. Weiner said her parents found her job "hilarious."
Ms. Collins's parents were congratulatory, at first. But just after
being hired, she called their home in eastern Connecticut and sensed
some hesitation in her father's voice.

" 'I thought you were really into this,' " she said.

"Yeah," her father replied. "That's before Mom went out and bought a
copy of the magazine."

The editors strove to publish articles that were saucy but relevant.
They printed articles about a campaign to take toxic chemicals out of
cosmetics and about problems with Amsterdam's red-light district. To
her delight, Ms. Caldwell landed interviews with Jack LaLanne and
Dolly Parton.

A do-it-yourself ethic bloomed. The magazine had no marketing or
public relations budget, so its editors sought to revive the Playgirl
brand themselves, throwing parties at a Lower East Side bar. After
Blue Horizon denied a request to finance a blog, Ms. Collins built
one herself, starting it on WordPress, a free platform.

Their efforts, the women said, got virtually no support; indeed,
their higher-ups, all of them men, usually resisted their push to
give the magazine editorial heft.

Early in 2008, warning signs surfaced. While newsstands sales were
up, Ms. Caldwell said, so were production costs. In the spring,
subscription cards suddenly vanished; the staff members were told it
was a cost cutting measure. Then they were told that issues would
come out bimonthly. In July, a subscriber wrote to complain about a
letter from Blue Horizon saying that Playgirl was no longer in print.

Ms. Caldwell entered the office of an executive editor at Blue
Horizon and asked: "Is there something you want to tell us?" After
some blustering, she learned that the magazine's end was near.

And so began the death throes of Playgirl, which, for all its
swinging history and sass, ended remarkably unremarkably.

There were no final cocktails, no last hurrah. Instead, there was a
frigidness between the Playgirl staff members and the other Blue
Horizon workers. "It was kind of like a long breakup, where you're
both still living together and neither of you have left the
apartment," Ms. Weiner said.

The magazine's editors said they were never told why the magazine was
shut down. But, they said, they were always struck by the paucity of ads.

"I'm not a publishing expert, but it seems to me like it would be
impossible to sustain a magazine on the quantity of ads Playgirl
sold," Ms. Collins said.

ON the Monday of her last week, Ms. Caldwell was called into a
morning meeting, where she received an awkward round of applause from
Blue Horizon staff members. Two days later, the executive editor took
Ms. Caldwell and Ms. Collins out for sushi. (Ms. Weiner had already left.)

Ms. Caldwell's last day was Oct. 3. Ms. Weiner and Ms. Collins were
not around; they had already found new jobs ­ Ms. Weiner as an
officer manager in Brooklyn, Ms. Collins as a copy editor at a male
lifestyle magazine. (Ms. Caldwell now edits at Diamond District News.)

By 6 p.m., Ms. Caldwell had nearly cleared her desk. She rode the No.
4 train home.

.

Looking back at when indie spirit thrived on Canuck screens

Looking back at when indie spirit thrived on Canuck screens

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/540850

Nov 21, 2008
Peter Howell

`The only way to support a revolution is to make your own," the late
Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman once said.

In France in 1968, filmmakers made good on the sentiment. Responding
to student protests sweeping across France, François Truffaut, Louis
Malle and Jean-Luc Godard shut down that year's Cannes Film Festival,
deeming it too bourgeois to continue.

The festival's response, with typical Gallic pragmatism, was to
embrace the rebels rather than punish them. The following year was
born the Directors' Fortnight (Quinzaine des réalisateurs), which was
designed to showcase brave new visions and voices.

Now firmly part of the mainstream, the Quinzaine celebrated its 40th
anniversary last May, boasting of having hosted the first French
screenings of debut works by Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Werner
Herzog, Michael Haneke, Spike Lee, the Dardenne Brothers, Sofia
Coppola and many others.

Cinematheque Ontario is marking the anniversary with retrospective
screenings, which begin tonight and continue through Dec. 9 (go to
cinemathequeontario.ca or call 416-968-FILM).

By extension, the party is also for Canada. The Quinzaine retro
includes an impressive selection of works by Canadian auteurs like
Denys Arcand, Alan King, Don Shebib, Don Owen and Michel Brault who
helped establish our reputation for thought-provoking cinema and who
benefited from early exposure at Cannes.

These are movies primarily made in the late 1960s and early '70s,
before tax shelters commodified, genres classified and glib
quirkiness overrided the Canuck filmmaking spirit.

These are films about rounders, seekers and dreamers, made strictly
for passion.

Films like Owen's The Ernie Game, made in 1967 as part of an intended
CBC trilogy honouring Canada's Centennial, but which was apparently
deemed too extreme for public broadcast.

It stars the late Alexis Kanner as one of the most charismatic
figures ever to stomp through a snowdrift – and there's plenty of
that on the streets of Montreal, where the film was shot in the style
of Godard's Breathless.

Kanner's title character Ernie, released from a mental asylum, is at
once infuriatingly selfish and completely endearing in his
determination to do things his own way. He's the ultimate '60s hippie freak.

Also set in Montreal are Arcand's Réjeanne Padovani and Brault's
Entre la mer et l'eau douce, which look at urban unrest from opposite angles.

Arcand's 1973 film, his second fiction feature and the one that made
his name globally (even as it caused controversy back home), is a
searing critique of Quebec's ruling class, as seen in the cosy
relationship between politicians, developers and gangsters.

Brault's 1967 film studies the shift between Quebec's rural and urban
workers in the late 1960s, through the adventures of North Shore
villager Claude, who seeks fame and fortune as a singer in Montreal.

Claude is portrayed by real Quebec singing star Claude Gauthier; he's
brilliantly matched with a then-unknown Geneviève Bujold, who plays his lover.

The Cinematheque program also recognizes Toronto, where two classic
Canadian films are set: Alan King's A Married Couple and Don Shebib's
Goin' Down the Road.

King's landmark 1969 documentary A Married Couple presages today's
reality TV era with an often painful look into the private lives of
Antoinette and Billy Edwards, a fractious middle-class couple whose
incompatibility grows with every tense minute.

Shebib's 1970 drama Goin' Down the Road, meanwhile, a rare commercial
success for Canadian film, tracks the exploits of two unskilled and
ill-mannered Nova Scotia labourers as they follow the yellow brick
road to Hogtown, vainly hoping to find gold at the end.

It's hard not to feel nostalgic watching these movies, not only for
decades past but also for the richness of character that is missing
from so many of today's films, not just Canadian ones. It was an era
when being independent really meant something, on both sides of the Atlantic.
--

phowell@thestar.ca

.

Day One: Frank Zappa to The Band

Separate But Very Equal: The (Other) Important Albums of 1968

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/special/section/separate-but-very-equal-the-other-important-albums-of-1968/

By PopMatters Staff
November 26 2008

Edited by Bill Gibron / Produced by Sarah Zupko

Nowadays, it's just easier to compartmentalize things. It's
especially convenient when it comes to describing a specific era or
decade. Looking backward, we slight the '70s, referring to it with
buzzword terms like 'Watergate', 'Disco', and that introspective
insult, 'Me'. We turn the '80s into an example of greed, a personal
step into a desktop technological progression, or an oblique blend of
New Wave, Hair Metal, and the King of Pop. The '90s, sadly, looses
all focus, filtered through ambiguities like dot.com, grunge, and the
rise of the Neo-Con. But no period gets more mediocre coverage than
the '60s. While you can argue over the enormous amount of scholarship
on the subject, the truth is that no single overview can accurately
sum up a specific time and an ever-changing place. For many, it will
always represent peace and love, hippies and radicals, the
counterculture and the Establishment, and without question, the band
that set the score to it all­the Beatles.

But most music fans know that there was much more going on in the
musical landscape than the frequent masterworks released by those
Lads from Liverpool. All around the world, artists took inspiration
from the British Invasion (and the American reaction to it) to
redefine their sound and explore the possibilities within the medium.
Some ended up suspiciously similar to the muse. Others went beyond
the boundaries of commerciality to offer up something unheard and
quite extraordinary. As we celebrate the Fab Four's stunning
premature career culmination, otherwise known as The White Album,
we'd be remiss in not mentioning a few of the other noted classics
that came out the very same year. While the selections may seem
subjective, the featured essays explain their necessary inclusion
quite clearly.

It's important to note that, as with any list, there are certainly
other important records to consider, and it's a shame that they all
couldn't be discussed. A cursory glance over the outstanding efforts
of 1968 finds Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, the Byrds serenading the
Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and Sly Stone asking his family to help
everyone Dance to the Music. In '69, the public was introduced to
John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival, the folksy James
Taylor, saw the media-made Monkees release the soundtrack to their
beautifully obtuse film Head, and jammed along with Iron Butterfly as
they spent 17-plus minutes intoning "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida". The ten
albums chosen by the PopMatters staff represent the sonic equal of
the Beatles' brilliant double LP. In remembering the other examples
of excellence being offered at the time, perhaps we can broaden the
perspective of the oft-marginalized era.

­Bill Gibron

--------

Day One: Frank Zappa to The Band

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/66084-day-one-frank-zappa-to-the-band-1/

Separate But Very Equal: The (Other) Important Albums of 1968

[25 November 2008]
by PopMatters Staff

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention: We're Only in It for the Money

Like all superficially idealistic youth movements, the love- and
drug-crazed rebels of countercultural naïveté circa the late 1960s
were incredible hypocrites. The gap between the utopian, free-loving,
nature-attuned neo-transcendentalists that entranced timid teen
squares and scared the equally-stereotypical caricatures of their
stern and stoic postwar parents, and the real lives of the
VD-infested and woefully self-centered societal dropouts is well
chronicled in media artifacts from the time. For film, see the
commune of psych-folk cabaret travelers in Easy Rider; Joan Didion's
Slouching Towards Bethlehem is a fascinating literary chronicle of
the grim realities of Haight-Ashbury. When it comes to musical
representations of the true free-thinker's reaction to this
faux-enlightened mess, it all ties together perfectly on We're Only
in It for the Money.

The thing to remember about 1968 is that the Beatles were
untouchable. So, when the Mothers elected to include a cover image
with Money that lampooned the psychedelic flower-celebrities that
adorned the cover of the recently-released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band, there was another kind of iconoclasm at work. It
was all too easy for the "freaks" to direct their damnation at LBJ,
parents, people over 30­the usual cast of squares­but another thing
entirely for the Mothers to scoff at the meaningless antics of the
counter-cultural types who were probably their majority demographic.
Unsurprisingly, the powers that be in the record-releasing industry
objected, and the intended cover art was remanded to the gatefold
until reissues decades later. Not that the cover headshot of male
band members in dresses in deadpan seriousness was such a turnover to the Man.

Where most of the Haight-Ashbury soundtrack of 1968 fit the "Rhythm
and Blues + LSD" mold, Frank Zappa took great inspiration from
legendary experimental composer Edgard Varese, whose declaration,
"the present day composer refuses to die!", was included in the
original liner notes. Zappa is a composer, and Money is his
mad-genius masterwork­part song-cycle, part experimental freak-out,
yet strangely cohesive. A number of pieces on Money bear the obvious
influence of Varese's percussion arrangements and electronic
experiments. "Nasal Retentive Calliope Music" is a challenging freak
out, distorted musique concrete and disorienting stereo panning,
breaking briefly toward the end into generic surf rock. Chaotic,
challenging music for similar times, and the kind of truly
experimental noise that makes psychedelic contemporaries look tame by
comparison.

Money's emotional core is in Zappa's lyrics. There's sarcasm and
skepticism, directed mainly at the shallow hippie freaks; "I will
love the cops as they kick the shit out of me in the streets" says
the dropout protagonist of "Who Needs The Peace Corps?", blissfully
unaware of the important issues at hand in the world outside of his
self-centeredness. It's another artifact of the time, that Zappa had
to fight an uphill battle to include any profanity on Money, leaving
much of it backmasked or removed entirely. "Concentration Moon" and
"Mom & Dad" are a back-to-back examination of the generation gap, the
former from the perspective of the disgusted and confused flower
child. "Mom & Dad" is a startlingly tender look at the potential for
true tragedy amongst the young freaks, as the depressed parents
reflect on the deaths (by cops) of kids they couldn't understand.
Meanwhile, the parents remain either ignorant of or unwilling to see
the genesis of the generational issues in cold parenting. Money is
full of such vignettes of social observation, from the meathead spawn
of a Congressman and a hooker on "The Idiot Bastard Son" to the "Bow
Tie Daddy", an out-of-touch, elderly alcoholic who is instructed
"don't try to do no thinkin' / just go on with your drinkin'".

It wouldn't be a Zappa album without pop music put through the ringer
of unfamiliar structures. Witness "Flower Punk", an aggressive number
in the truly-psychedelically confusing alternating 7/4 and 5/8 time
signatures (good luck dancing, teenyboppers!), which aptly collapses
into a freak-out of effect-laden squeals. Riffing on '60s standard
"Hey Joe", the titular Punk is another in a long line of Zappa's
misguided free-love casualties, "going to the love in to sit and play
my bongos in the dirt." "Absolutely Free", meanwhile, refuses to
stick with one theme, time signature, or key. The closest thing to
guidance is a menacing voice declaring "flower power sucks!" The
Beatles get theirs on "What's the Ugliest Part of Your Body",
complete with nasally flat backing vocals (The ugliest part,
concludes Zappa's sarcastic narrator, must be "your mind").

In the end, no one escapes the Mothers' criticisms, but nor is anyone
without redemption. The Mothers' ultimate goal is to inspire true
nonconformist self-expression, to peel back layers of society-imposed
self-doubt and constrictive hypocritical morality. In what I can only
imagine is a rare moment of genuine optimism, the Mothers' gleefully
explain to listeners, "We are the other people / You're the other
people, too!" Unless you're only in this for the bottom line.

­David Abravanel
--

Aretha Franklin: Lady Soul

Sitting among hundreds gathered at New Temple Missionary Baptist
Church in Los Angeles, California on the night of January 13, 1972,
the world renowned minister C.L. Franklin struggled to contain
himself as his talented daughter Aretha delivered one of the most
amazing performances of her career. Singing with deep conviction and
supreme intelligence on such gospel classics as "Precious Memories",
"Amazing Grace", and "Oh Mary Don't You Weep", Franklin showcased not
only her artistic genius, but her deep spiritual roots. Testifying
profusely to the transformative power of God, the talented songstress
gloriously wed the prophetic vision of the black church, the
optimistic spirit of the Civil Rights era, and a philosophical
perspective born of personal struggles and triumphs. If there were
any doubts regarding Franklin's religiosity and existential
intactness, her powerful testimonials, soaring notes, triumphant
shouts, and guttural moans erased them all in dramatic fashion.

Five months after Franklin touched the hearts of those gathered at
New Temple, Atlantic Records released her live performance,
appropriately titled, Amazing Grace. Critics and fans alike hailed
the recording as Franklin's return to her church roots, but the
singer's father railed against the idea that Aretha had abandoned her
religious past. "Truth is", C.L. Franklin thundered, "Aretha hasn't
ever left the church!" To a large extent, Reverend Franklin was
correct, for the "church" had informed not only his daughter's
musicianship but the gospel impulse that pervaded many of her biggest
secular hits. Not simply an entertainer, Franklin was the caretaker
of her nation's soul.

Maybe no cultural artifact proves this fact more than her 1968
classic, Lady Soul.

If her Atlantic Records debut, I Never Loved a Man , stands out for
its affirmation of Franklin's talent and commercial viability, Lady
Soul's cultural significance flows from its confirmation of her
genius as a skilled alchemist capable of bringing fragmented worlds
together. Not long after its arrival in record stores on January 22,
1968, Lady Soul dashed up the pop and soul charts, largely due to the
popularity of four smash hits, "Chain of Fools", "Natural Woman",
"Since You've Been Gone", and "Ain't No Way". Cultural and political
differences fragmented the nation, but everyone seemed to arrive at
the same conclusion when it came to Franklin's genius. Time and Ebony
celebrated 1968 as the year of Aretha, probably the only thing these
radically different magazines could agree upon. All at once, Negroes,
blacks, white hippies, and bra-burning second wave feminists
worshiped at the altar of Lady Soul.

One surmises that this had a great deal to do with Franklin's role as
the carrier of the gospel impulse. Sustaining faith in the
possibility of a brighter day had been made exceedingly difficult by
the tensions and divisions magnified by war in Southeast Asia, the
assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, race riots,
the most vitriolic forms of white backlash, and mounting levels of
poverty. Yet something about Aretha Franklin's Lady Soul created a
spiritual space in which the many personalities who comprised our
variegated nation could expand their imagination of the politically
and spiritually possible.

Out of the chaos of 1968, Franklin gave us hope with substance, along
with a musical masterpiece that has withstood the test of time. Fresh
yet rooted in the same blues impulse that inspired Jimi Hendrix's
Electric Ladyland, Lady Soul was a musical gumbo spiced with the
right amounts of hard knock country blues, good news gospel,
captivating pop, and rock 'n' soul. Freely asserting her
individuality, Franklin put her own unique spin on James Brown's
"Money Won't Change You" and Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready",
reached deep into the ethos of the blues with "Good to Me As I Am to
You", breezed through a killer rendition of "Niki Hoeky", and
transformed "Chain of Fools" into a prophetic declaration of
deliverance that would be heard from the riot-torn streets of Newark,
New Jersey, to the battlefields of Vietnam.

So expansive was Lady Soul's message that the album belonged to no
one in particular, but it did have a special place in the hearts of
black women. Undoubtedly, Franklin narrated deeply personal stories,
but there was something profoundly familiar about her tales of love
and heartache. Listening to "Ain't No Way", "Natural Woman", or "Good
to Me As I Am to You" conjures up images of women, young and old, who
inhabit our communal spaces, exchange stories on our front porches,
and find solace in our loving arms. One couldn't escape the realness
embodied in Franklin's songs. "You couldn't jive," wrote poet Nikki
Giovanni, "when Aretha said, 'Woman's only human.'" Nor could you
jive when she demanded her propers on "Good to Me As I Am to You", a
self-penned song that drips with the kind of flesh and blood reality
found on Aretha Arrives' "Prove It". Accompanied beautifully by the
soulful guitar licks of Cream's Eric Clapton, Franklin updates the
Delta Blues for her sisters and brethren living in the inner cities
of Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, and Atlanta.

Not just a great musical portrait of one individual living, loving,
and growing during one of the most chaotic periods in American
history, Lady Soul was a work of synthesis that introduced and
reintroduced of all the black women who've crossed the American
cultural landscape, from Zora Neale Hurston's Janie to Nina Simone's
"Peaches" to Bob Dylan's "Hattie Carroll".

So prodigious was Aretha Franklin's output during the 1960s and early
'70s that a general consensus on her best work will probably never be
reached, but I strongly suspect that we can all conclude that the
cultural twists and turns of 1968 cannot be fully understood without
reckoning with the genius that is Lady Soul.

­Claudrena Harold
--

The Velvet Underground: White Light/White Heat

The Beatles' White Album is­needless to say­a sprawling mess, filled
to the brim with classic songs, one-off experiments, and a
kitchen-sink attitude that more than justifies its audacious
90-minute running time. As a result, it's often easy to forget about
1968's other White album: that lo-fi, distortion-filled epic that
changed the very definition of what a pop song could be over the
course of six not-so-simple tracks.

1968 wasn't a particularly good year for the Velvet Underground, but
you would be hard-pressed to find evidence of the band noticing.
Following 1967's The Velvet Underground & Nico, Lou Reed and co.
dropped Andy Warhol's enigmatic song siren (Nico would go on to do
some solo discs of her own), and­as such­lost contact with Warhol.
Yet Reed and avant-garde maestro John Cale weren't bothered by this;
if anything, it allowed them to go to dark musical places that they
had only hinted at before. Oh sure, they could still write rollicking
piano-rock numbers (the title track), but the lyrics here were
depicting the effects of amphetamines on the body, once again flexing
the anti-commercial tendencies that the band inhibited. "The Gift",
meanwhile, rode a seductive bass groove to which Cale recited a short
story about the man who decides to mail himself to his love, only to
have his loving gesture end with disastrous results.

When anyone writes about White Light/White Heat, much ink is
automatically devoted to the spiraling 17-minute noise-rock epic that
is "Sister Ray", a convention-shattering jam that dared and teased
listeners in ways that had never been touched on before. Though the
song's length was unprecedented in its own right, it was far from its
most noticeable feature. Here, Reed snarled out the line "sucking on
my ding-dong" without the safety net of irony, his guitar chugging
along with a sleazy strut, and­in the process­embodying every aspect
of the term "sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll". It can be safely argued
that no one has come close to topping it since.

Yet perhaps the greatest revelation that White Light/White Heat
provided was perhaps its least talked about aspect: slowly unearthing
the vulnerability that was at the bottom of every Reed composition.
"Here She Comes Now" was the kind of wounded guitar pop that the band
did best, wrapping surreal lyrics around a simple, un-amplified
guitar coda, Reed talking about the woman that never comes (all
Godot-like) in a way that's defiantly anticipatory, revealing more
depths about its narrator than it has any right to. Of course, on the
band's following album, Reed would be penning iconic ballads like
"Candy Says", but, really, those highlights would not have been
possible were it not for his work here.

In retrospect, White Light/White Heat is often looked at as the
Velvet's least accessible album, what with its noise-rock epics and
explicit lyrics and the like. Yet this is also the album where we get
to see the band push the envelope in ways that they weren't able to
before, and by redefining their own boundaries, they redefined the
limits of all of rock music in the process.

­Evan Sawdey
--

Simon and Garfunkel: Bookends

Beginning with President Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the '60s
became one of the most tumultuous, explosive, eye-opening times in
American history. It was a time when Baby Boomers were forced to grow
up and face the future in a way that generations before never
had­with the confidence to change and rebel, the bravery to search
for themselves and life's meaning and the uncertainty of where that
search would lead them.

By 1968, the realities of the Vietnam War had set in completely with
America's youth. Boys in their late teens received their draft cards
to fight in a war that had no clear definition. Robert Kennedy would
meet the same fate as his brother five years earlier, as would Martin
Luther King, Jr. Hippies protested the war and their government, and
the civil rights movement became increasingly more violent.

Simon and Garfunkel released their musical masterpiece Bookends in
late March of that year; a collection of interweaving songs that
focuses on loss­loss of identity, loss of innocence, and loss of
youth. It was their most literary and accomplished album to date.

Like the characters in "Voices of Old People", Art Garfunkel's audio
experiment and social message, the youth of the '60s would inevitably
face the same fate­old age. Bookends is the well-lived life starting
at birth and ending at death.

"Save the Life of My Child", the most "rock and roll" song of the
album, cuts off the quiet lull of "Bookends" the way a rowdy teenager
might interrupt a grandparent mid-story. Paul Simon's thumping bass,
the gospel-like voices in the background, and the brief hint of
"Sounds of Silence" tease and cure and taunt the delicate nature of
the 30-second instrumental introduction that creeps in and out of the
album as a reminder that old age, and eventually, death, is inevitable.

Though earlier songs such as "I Am a Rock" and "Sound of Silence"
both portray dark themes, there is still a naiveté , a lack of
maturity that can only be gained through the turbulent and
controversial experiences of the late '60s. Bookends the album is the
insightful, old man counterpart to Simon and Garfunkel's earlier work.

It was a decade full of change. not only in music but in politics,
American society, and popular culture as a whole. It left the Baby
Boomer generation, by decade's end, with a power unbeknownst to any
generation before them­a power that left them searching, much like
the couple in the song "America", for a different kind of country
than the one they inherited from their parents.

The Summer of Love had come and gone, Bob Dylan had gone electric,
the Beatles were certifiable geniuses, thanks to their innovative,
psychedelic, waking dream Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and
Jimi Hendrix was setting his instruments on fire as rock and roll's
first official guitar god. And then there was Simon and Garfunkel,
the sage-like minstrels of the '60s, who translated easily the
conscious of '60s American youth into songs that are just as relevant
in 2008 as they were 40 years ago.

­Charles Moss
--

The Band: Music from Big Pink

By the time Music from Big Pink was released in July, 1968 had
already seen both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.
assassinated. All the hope and change and love in the decade was
teetering, though not yet crumbled by the events at Altamont in '69.
We were a people in pain, but still pushing on, still trying to make
things better.

But, if the lasting recordings from that year are any indication, we
weren't able to capture our own feelings on record. The Kinks, the
Rolling Stones, and, of course, the Beatles were all at the top of
their powers and releasing undeniably important records that year. As
a culture, we seemed to be looking outside our country for the voices
of that generation. Sure, we had Simon and Garfunkel and the Velvet
Underground making great and lasting records that year. Yet both
records, Bookends and White Light/White Heat, though exceptional,
were set outside of what was going on. The preciousness of Simon and
Garfunkel and the stubborn art house aesthetic of the Velvet
Underground let those groups touch on the signs of the times without
tapping into them. Their music was observant of the zeitgeist, but
not necessarily representative of it.

It took a group of Canadians, and Levon Helm, to truly capture the
sound of America in 1968. Music from Big Pink is soulful and hurt and
hopeful and heartbreaking from beginning to end. Having toured as Bob
Dylan's backing band, the Hawks, in 1966, the Band must have taken in
the whole country as they traveled it and poured all that roaming
feel, all that collective want, into this one record. Even when they
use Dylan's words, particularly on opener "Tears of Rage" and closer
"I Shall Be Released", they make the songs more universally relevant.
Where Dylan's verbose songs felt cluttered and hyper-thoughtful in
their anger, the Band stretch them out into warm, keening
declarations of an alienated country. The melding of Americana,
rhythm and blues, folk, and countless other influences made for a
sound that was dusty with tradition, but still new and laid back and inviting.

However, Music from Big Pink doesn't get enough credit for being so
damn strange when it wants to be. What is that guitar sound in "Tears
of Rage"? Or the organ dirge at the top of "Chest Fever"? Why does
Richard Manual's voice fall so hauntingly off-key in "Lonesome
Suzie"? And what is with just about every weird sound and swirl of
faux-strings on "This Wheel's on Fire"? Perhaps it is easier now not
to address these questions. Better to let the giant shadow of "The
Weight" fall over the album and call it laid-back country and leave
it at that.

But why? It is those strange moments that make the record so germane
to its time. As recognizable as the country feel of the record is,
the Band always come along and knock us sideways in our skin with
some strange sound. They never let us get settled. This isn't
leave-your-worries-behind, front porch music. Music from Big Pink is
a reminder that the world around us can be recognizable one second,
and completely alien the next. Sometimes, it can feel strange and
familiar at the same time. But the key, and what the Band does on
this album, is to recognize our hurt, and even embrace it, without
giving in to it.

"I Shall Be Released" is exhausted and pained, but its straining hope
is the perfect end note to an album that captures that time in
America so well. Because by record's end, they haven't been released,
and neither have we. The world is still out there to change. And
while, any day now, any day now, that release is coming, Music from
Big Pink is the vital sound of a weary country pushing forward with
hope. We had every reason to look across the pond for great music,
for great culture, for inspiration. But, in 1968, if we wanted a
beautiful, heartfelt rendering of what was going on in America, all
we had to do was look north.

­Matt Fiander

.

Day Two: From Jimi Hendrix to the Rolling Stones

Day Two: From Jimi Hendrix to the Rolling Stones

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/66092-day-two-from-jimi-hendrix-to-the-rolling-stones-1/

Separate But Very Equal: The (Other) Important Albums of 1968

[26 November 2008]
by PopMatters Staff

Big Brother and the Holding Company: Cheap Thrills

Before Madonna, before Sinead or Björk or Fiona or Pink or even Patti
Smith, there was Janis­a hard-living, heavy-drinking Ugly Betty of a
girl whose raw, visceral performance was the real deal. When promoter
Chet Helms introduced her to Big Brother and the Holding Company the
combination of the band's heavy psychedelia and Joplin's raspy
throated, Texas blues powered some of the bay area's most memorable
concerts during the '60s. And Cheap Thrills beautifully captures the
spirit of that time.

But before you even get to the music there is the cover. Hailed by
Rolling Stone as one of the 100 Greatest Album Covers of all time (in
the top 10), the artwork was done by underground artist Robert Crumb
who, ironically, released his first issue of the legendary Zap Comix
in 1968. Crumb would go on to create some of pop culture's most
memorable characters such as the "Keep on Truckin'" dude and "Fritz
the Cat". With a busty caricature of Janis holding a bottle (Southern
Comfort was her favorite) the song titles and other credits are part
of the art including a listing of a wide range of American
songwriters not usually seen on one rock and roll record. Alluding to
what would become an unusual alliance with California rock, in the
bottom right corner sits the label "Approved by Hell's Angels".

Opening with guitarist Sam Andrew's "Combination of Two" recorded at
Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium, the band urgently jams as Janis
declares "We're gonna knock you, rock you, gonna sock it to you now!"
And they do, immediately, with Janis' "I Need a Man to Love" as a
Hendrix-flavored guitar explodes before settling into a gentle groove
between David Getz' drum kit and Peter Albin's bass while building up
to Janis' insistence that "it just can't be". Then, where George and
Ira Gershwin's "Summertime" would at first appear misplaced, the band
surprises us with its counterpoint guitars before giving way to
Janis' freestyling vocals that make us wince in awe.

The apex of the LP comes, appropriately, in the middle with the
majestic, gut-wrenching interpretation of Bert Berns' and Jerry
Ragovoy's "Piece of My Heart". As The Beatles made Berns' "Twist and
Shout" forever theirs, "Piece of My Heart" is forever Janis-a painful
ode to love where every "take it, take another little piece of my
heart now, baby" is bitten off like a sarcastic declaration of war.
(Berns, aka Bert Russell, also wrote or co-wrote classics like "Here
Comes the Night", "I Want Candy" and "Hang On, Sloopy".)

"Turtle Blues" brings things down and gives insight into Janis' roots
with her self-penned, piano blues number-a genuine bar tune complete
with a smattering of applause and broken glass. And then it's back to
spaced-out, hippie rock with "Oh, Sweet Mary" as Andrew's vocals are
almost overpowered by Joplin's punctuated improv.

Before the release of Cheap Thrills Janis had blown away 1967's
Monterey Pop Festival with her rendition of Big Mama Thornton's "Ball
and Chain" (with an awestruck Mama Cass in the audience). With James
Gurley's burning guitar it's the perfect closer of a classic album
combining traditional blues with the heavy guitar rock that was
already growing with artists like Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and, of
course, the great Jimi Hendrix. The pain in Janis' voice is palpable
as she asks, "Why does everything go wrong?"

Janis would go on to a successful solo career with hits like "Me and
Bobby McGee", (written by then-unknown Kris Kristofferson) but the
raw exuberance of the era contained in Cheap Thrills was never
duplicated. Janis' bad habits, primarily alcohol and heroin, got the
best of her before her deadly overdose in 1970.

­Tim Basham
--

The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Electric Ladyland

Electric Ladyland was recorded at the very peak of Jimi Hendrix's
recording and playing powers, in a series of marathon, late-night,
drug and alcohol fueled sessions, with guests including Steve
Winwood, Dave Mason, Jack Casady coming in, and a steady escalation
of conflict between long-time Experience bass player Noel Redding and
Hendrix himself. This volatile climate of hedonism, interpersonal
conflict and obsessive perfectionism­Dave Mason is said to have done
20 tracks of the acoustic guitar part on "All Along the Watchtower"
before Hendrix let him go­produced one of the landmark albums in guitar rock.

The album is, of course, studded with staples of classic rock radio,
songs like "All Along the Watchtower", "Crosstown Traffic" and "Gypsy
Eyes", that have become part of the DNA of every kind of hard and
psychedelic rock. Yet listening it end-to-end again, after all these
years, you may be struck by how odd and multi-faceted this record is.
It begins in a burst of trippy psychedelia­the backwards-voices and
echo of "And the Gods Made Love", the falsetto'd daydream of "Have
You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)"­then slips into the hard-guitar
riffery of "Crosstown Traffic". "Little Miss Strange", sung by
Redding and Mitchell, is pretty close to conventional folk rock and
strikingly dull, compared to the rest of the album. If you want an
inkling of what Redding and Hendrix were fighting about, just listen
to this Moby Grape-ish bit of 1960s-ism next to the revelatory,
free-form "1983 (Mermaid I Should Turn to Be)". "Little Miss Strange"
is tightly contained within a country rock idiom, while "1983",
almost never played on dad rock stations, is gorgeously untethered to
almost any convention.

It is also, naturally, a study in the extended possibilities of the
guitar. In 1968, Hendrix, along with Frank Zappa, Eric Clapton and
others, was fairly inventing the sound of the electric guitar, up to
that point mostly used as a louder version of the acoustic. Although
his playing style was based in traditional blues, he was among the
first to augment his capabilities with distortion and effects.
"Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)", recorded with Steve Winwood on organ,
closes out the album with one of the 1960s great wah wah guitar
solos. Joe Satriani, himself no slouch at the solo, called it, "just
the greatest piece of electric guitar work ever recorded. In fact,
the whole song could be considered the holy grail of guitar
expression and technique. It is a beacon of humanity."

Throughout the recording, Hendrix was moving away from his all-white,
hits oriented trio of Redding and Mitchell towards the freer, more
authentic blues and jazz influenced style of his last years. Hendrix
brought in Buddy Miles, who would be his Band of Gypsies drummer, for
"Rainy Day, Dream Away" and "Still Raining Still Dreaming". He
himself played bass for "All Along the Watchtower". Redding,
frustrated with the slow recording process, had slipped out for a beer.

The pleasure of listening to Electric Ladyland lies in rediscovering
its deeper, weirder tracks and in re-hearing its more familiar cuts
in their original context. Most people, at this point, have heard
"All Along the Watchtower" hundreds of times, on the radio, in films
and documentaries, just about any time anyone wants to signify the
1960s. Yet the Dylan cover retains its force here, sandwiched between
the incandescent "House Burning Down" and the twitchy, talking guitar
glories of "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)". The song itself, with its
crashing guitar chords and soaring, electric solo, remains a tense
and hallucinogenic monument, one of those rare covers that eclipses
the original.

Even Dylan himself has recognized the power of Hendrix's cover. "It
overwhelmed me, really," he said in a 1995 interview with the Fort
Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. "He had such talent, he could find things
inside a song and vigorously develop them. He found things that other
people wouldn't think of finding in there. He probably improved upon
it by the spaces he was using. I took license with the song from his
version, actually, and continue to do it to this day."

Electric Ladyland was the last Hendrix studio album to be released
during his lifetime and his most successful one, reaching #1 in the
US and #5 in the UK in 1968. Later materials, recorded with the Cry
of Love band and the Band of Gypsies, were released after his death
in 1970, but to many, this remains his definitive achievement and one
of the best guitar rock albums of all time.

­Jennifer Kelly
--

Van Morrison: Astral Weeks

You could make the argument that, as much as things have changed over
the past four decades, in some ways we're still seeing things through
the prism of 1968. In music, especially, many of the still-popular
forms and genres people work in were either established or
exemplified in 1968, which makes it even more interesting that one of
the best loved and lauded albums of the year is one that is almost
entirely a one-off.

There is enough background information about the writing,
construction, performance and so on of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks
out there if you're curious, but for our purposes it's enough to note
that even Morrison either couldn't or wouldn't follow in its vein.
The startlingly accomplished and at times even avant-garde
arrangements of Astral Weeks (the seemingly random harpsichord hits
and verbal explosion of "Cypress Avenue," the dense, cyclic
arrangements of "Ballerina" and the title track), the impressionistic
haze and harrowingly emotional tenor of the lyrics (on which Lester
Bangs wrote movingly in an essay you should seek out if you haven't),
even the record's privileging of emotional impact over songcraft­none
of this was ground to which Morrison would really return (or at least
return successfully) in the future.

As great as Moondance is, it's a pop record as opposed to a
folk/soul/jazz odyssey. It has singles, whereas with the possible
exception of "The Way Young Lovers Do" (which still works better in
the context of the album) it wouldn't make sense to package any of
Astral Weeks separately.

And you don't really hear Astral Weeks' influence directly in the
music that's happened since, unless you want to count people reaching
for and failing to grasp Morrison's ability to flip between ecstasy
and devastation without seeming insincere, the music's perfect
balance between genres (never do the arrangements seem awkward or
mongrelized), and particularly his stunning verbal/vocal performance.
Anyone can scat, repeat words, skew their lyrics towards the
poetic/mystical/opaque, but no-one has made it sound as natural or
even elemental as Van the Man did.

This is most striking and obvious on the three epics Astral Weeks is
built around, the title track, "Cyprus Avenue" and "Madame George,"
but even on the more immediate likes of "The Way Young Lovers Do" and
"Sweet Thing" Morrison's vocals bear more resemblance to an
invocation or a dream than to a pop song.

And yet, even as Astral Weeks refuses to conform to the sort of
shapes and forms expected of it (and it's an open but interesting
question as to what extent this is deliberate or a product of
Morrison's youth and relative inexperience) it remains immediately,
viscerally compelling. It's probably not played at as many parties as
Moondance is, but Morrison is enough of a craftsman that nobody seems
to have trouble getting into what honestly could have been a fairly
obtuse listen. The emotional impact of the songs on Astral Weeks, and
the album's overall power, are immediately accessible to the
listener, even though you can easily spend months or years exploring
how exactly Morrison and his band did it.

At one point during "Sweet Thing" Morrison sings "Just to dig it all
and not to wonder, that's just fine / And I'll be satisfied not to
read in between the lines," and that's the perfect description of
what Astral Weeks can do to the listener (even if it turns out
reading between the lines in this case ca be pretty interesting).
It's a fugue, a daydream, a harrowing journey, a fond remembrance.
That most of its putative offspring can be reduced down to mawkish
faux-soul singers trying to emote over limp folk-jazz backings is in
a way a testament to its irreducible, ineffable greatness.

­Ian Mathers
--

The Kinks: The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society

"This world is big and wild and half insane…"

It was the album that Ray Davies had been building toward since
shifting the direction of his R&B based band. It was almost their
last stand. Eventually it would be viewed as the song cycle that
would forever redefine the Kinks as the rightful heir to the throne
of true English rock eccentrics. A year before, their brethren the
Beatles took a loosely based concept about a group of lonely hearts'
troubadours and turned it into the anthem for the Summer of Love. The
following year, as they wallowed in discontent, Davies drove a tweed
and Earl Grey stake directly into the center of their
psychedelic-based babble.

The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society is one of the
boldest statements by any act of the modern music era. It's so
focused on its own idiosyncrasy that it avoids the dated trappings of
most '60s recordings to perfectly capture a man and his mood. Having
pushed his brother Dave and the rest of the band toward a more
refined, folk-ish approach, Davies' songwriting was reaching new
heights of stunningly sophisticated simplicity. It had been evidenced
early on, with standout tracks like "The World Keeps Going Round"
from The Kink Kontroversy (1965) and "Sunny Afternoon" from Face to
Face (1966).

The latter album was even important, as it represented Davies return
to performing after a nasty nervous breakdown. The pressures of
stardom saw him turn inward, wistful for a time and a country that
was traditional, tempered, and taciturn. So while the Fab Four
explored the studio as a means of expression, the Kinks broadened
such horizons by merely looking out their backdoor. Something Else
arrived during the after burn of the post-Sgt. Pepper's celebration,
and fans were not quite ready for twee tracks about Waterloo sunsets,
afternoon teas, and a head boy at the school named David Watts.

The Village Green Preservation Society faired no better. While viewed
as a masterpiece today (and rightfully so), its British-centric
themes and understated 'golly gee' subtleties were lost within all
the sex, drugs, and flower power. Davies claims the album-length look
at UK hamlet life was inspired by Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood as
well as a growing discontent within the band. Fearing this would be
the last Kinks album, he tinkered with it feverishly, including and
then dropping the sizable hit "Days". As the amount of material grew,
the frightened frontman saw it as a kind of swansong­to fame, to
fortune, to a forgotten way of life.

Indeed, all throughout The Village Green Preservation Society, Davies
outlines the basics of his lost England. The title track asks an
uncaring god to bless "the George cross", "little shops, china cups,
and virginity". Later on, he would lament the "Last of the Steam
Powered Trains" and the easy, superficial trappings of celebrity
("Starstruck"). Tossing in a few fairy-style stories along the way
("Phenomenal Cat", "Wicked Annabella") and odes to that most
instantaneous of memory makers­the photograph ("Picture Book",
"People Taking Pictures of Each Other"), he created a kind of
revisionist regression. Davies now thought it was hip to be square,
and wanted to share said sentiments with a hopefully accepting audience.

The musical method he chose, however, would ring hollow in the ears
of eager listeners. The Village Green Preservation Society avoided
the power chord chug of the early Kinks hits ("You Really Got Me",
"All Day and All of the Night") to explore more acoustic, orchestral
settings. Strings and keyboards cascaded over carefully strummed
guitars, and when a tad more meat was needed in the mix, the charges
were more considered and compact. This is especially true of the
terrific "Big Sky". While Davies sing-speaks his soul searching
stanzas ("Big Sky feels sad when he sees the children scream and
cry/But the Big Sky's too big to let it get him down"), a veritable
overview of British music circa the late '60 swirls around him.

In the Orwellian referencing "Animal Farm", the break before the last
verse seems to resonate the loudest:

Girl, it's a hard, hard world, if it gets you down,
Dreams often fade and die in a bad, bad world,
I'll take you where real animals are playing,
And people are real people not just playing.

It's like a reality check slamming into the then current Carnaby
Street din, describing in a set of straightforward words the pitfalls
of getting twisted inside the era's scattered idealism. For Ray
Davies, his time in the limelight started out with a bang. But ever
since making the grade, he was melancholy over the price­personal and
professionally. The Village Green Preservation Society was a warning
of where things were going. Too bad too few paid attention at the time.

­Bill Gibron
--

The Rolling Stones: Beggar's Banquet

It was 1968 and the stakes couldn't have been higher. The world of
rock music was caught up in a fervor and transition that both suited
the times and matched them, upheaval for upheaval.

The Rolling Stones, after years of hit singles that hewed to radio
formula, were in something of a creative cul-de-sac. Her Satanic
Majesties Request, released in 1967, was a blatant attempt to ride
the psychedelic coattails of the broad appeal of the Beatles' Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The work of prog-rock explorers
like Pink Floyd, and the release of Electric Ladyland by the Jimi
Hendrix Experience were changing the vocabulary of music.

It was time for something new.

That something new­created in a world in utter disarray, and growing
instability within the band itself­was Beggars Banquet, the Rolling
Stones album that is one of the band's three or four best recordings.
To these ears, it's the best work of the original Stones lineup:
culturally grounded but sonically adventurous, literate, passionate
and, with the death of the Stones' brilliant original guitarist Brian
Jones less than a year after release, tragically moving. Here the
Stones helped change rock music as heard on the radio, breaking with
the three-minute diktat that largely imprisoned rock during the 1960's.

But Beggars also showed the Rolling Stones willing to play against
the prevailing trend: As grandiose, multitracked psychedelia made its
assault on rock culture, the Stones pivoted back to basic American
roots music­a cultural anchor in the face of swirling change. Beggars
Banquet was the anti-Sgt. Pepper.

The opening track, "Sympathy for the Devil" was an experiment in both
length and subject. Mick Jagger was said to have been inspired by
Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, a novel that posits
Satan's return to our world in a number of guises. Jagger's acid
first-person statement of the human condition, an indictment of the
cult of personality­the same one that imprisoned him in an evolving
celebrity culture­remains one of rock's lyric masterpieces.

With tracks like "Prodigal Son" and "Dear Doctor", the Stones
ventured into country and blues like never before. "Prodigal Son", a
blues song by Mississippi bluesman Rev. Robert Wilkins in the 1930s,
was reworked by the Stones as a folky shuffle, a hallelujah romp
straight from the Delta. "Dear Doctor," a wry tale of nuptials gone
awry, borrows from the hill-country music of Appalachia.

For all its wry humor and surreal comic turns, there's a shadow over
this record. You hear it on the plaintive ballad "No Expectations".
It's there we're witness to the twilight of Brian Jones, by this time
a man near the end of the rope. Jones, a drug casualty on a long
downward spiral, performs slide guitar work here that's harrowing in
its emotional honesty. Forty years on, it can still break your heart.

His lead work on "Parachute Woman" and "Jig-Saw Puzzle" is as lean
and inventive as anything he'd recorded before. And listen closely to
"Street Fighting Man"­in some ways the song that embodied the year
1968. Inspired by the student protests in Paris, it captures the
spirit of chaos that made the song possible… and throughout, you'll
hear the sinewy thread of Brian Jones' sitar, the kind of singular,
inventive touch that confirms again his singular contribution to the Stones.

There's a before-Beggars version of the Rolling Stones and an after.
As much as anything, it was Jones' slow fade from his role as the
band's visual symbol and musical polymath­a process made permanent
when Jones died on July 3, 1969­that marks the dividing line between
one iteration of the Rolling Stones and those that followed.

There were later high points in the Stones career: Let It Bleed, the
first Stones album with Jones' able replacement, Mick Taylor; Exile
on Main Street, the sprawling tribute to soul, gospel and the rhythms
of New York City; Tattoo You, a testament to the jaded but vulnerable
creatures of rock's demimonde.

But Beggars Banquet is that first point of departure­the pivot point
that separated the Stones from being just another British Invader and
being a group to be reckoned with, on its own creative terms. As a
musical statement of simplicity in the face of complexity, order in
the face of turmoil, with lyrics Oscar Wilde might have appreciated
and music that still moves you, it more than holds its own­a
document, a soundtrack for an era.

­Michael E. Ross

.

Revolution None: The Beatles' 'Wide Album'

Revolution None: The Beatles' 'Wide Album'

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/66154-revolution-none-1/

How the Beatles fell into avant garde hell with 1968's unreleased Wide Album.

[26 November 2008]
by Tony Sclafani

Editor's note: Each time an important date in Beatle history rolls
around, stories pour forth about the successes of the Fab Four. This
isn't one of them. Instead, this article chronicles the subterfuge
behind the group's 1968 release The Beatles. Known colloquially as
the White Album, this article looks at its origins as the Wide Album.
No one was willing to go on record and confirm details about this
murky chapter of the band's history­a chapter so seemingly
implausible that virtually all esteemed Beatle scholars believe it to
be fictional. Yes, this is satire, just to clear up any confusion.
--

"Unplayable by Listeners! Unstockable by Stores!" This was the tag
line on promotional materials drawn up by advertising executives at
Apple Records for the upcoming Beatles album in the autumn of 1968.

In today's anything-goes world of pop music, such an announcement
might be considered shrewd marketing. But when the Beatles decided to
use it to promote their impending double LP, all hell broke loose at
EMI Records. Though unbeknownst to the public at the time (and
unreported since), the world's biggest selling group was nearly
dropped from its record label and hauled into court for breaking the
terms stated in their 1962 recording contract.

And all they really wanted to do, say sources, was break new ground.

The idea came about after the group returned from India with a
massive cache of over 30 songs and realized they had too much
material for even a double LP. That's when Beatle John Lennon hit on
the idea of enlarging the size of the record's discs from 12 to 14
inches, in order to fit more music. Beatle scholars agree that Lennon
first brought the idea to his buddy, Apple staff "inventor" Magic
Alex Madras, who confirmed that bigger discs could be manufactured.
Unfortunately, no one would be able to play such discs since they
wouldn't be able to fit on regular phonographs. Undaunted, Lennon
pressed on with the idea, saying the band "already did too much" for
its fans and that he was "going to make sure Paul didn't get more
songs than me on the album even if it means no one hears the bloody tunes".

(Editor's note: Some Beatle scholars believe the old Close-n-Play
record players could have accommodated the larger discs. They also
note that Lennon in 1968 would only listen to records on the kiddie
record players, calling them more "honest" and "authentic", than the
"bourgeois stereo" owned by Paul McCartney.)

Other Beatle-ologists claim Lennon and then-girlfriend Yoko Ono were
just trying to stay one step ahead of the avant-garde. It's also been
claimed that Lennon was being spiteful over the other Beatles'
rejection of his song "Revolution" as the a-side of their "Hey Jude"
single and was deliberately attempting to sabotage the group's career.

"The group's true, conservative nature was exposed when they chose to
relegate John's 'Revolution' to the flip side of that record,"
explains a former Apple Boutique employee. "These days, Paul
McCartney tries to take credit for every innovation the band ever
did, but back then he made June Cleaver look like Eldridge Cleaver."
(Editor's note: Many Beatle scholars dispute the validity of this
quote, claiming instead the staffer referred to Wally Cleaver, not
June Cleaver.)

Whatever the case, it came to pass that Lennon goaded executives at
Apple Records into mastering previously-unheard-of 14-inch test
pressings of the LP late in 1968, while fellow Fab Paul McCartney was
away in America. Upon returning to Britain, the baby-faced Beatle was
purportedly livid, but agreed to stand behind Lennon's idea­at least at first.

"The group was so big at the time they figured people would buy the
record anyway," explains a friend of the group.

The disc would be called the Wide Album, because of its unique width,
Lennon said. At an Apple Records board meeting, the Beatle explained
to a group of employees and Hell's Angels that the disc would herald
a "bold new era". (Editor's note: Several Beatle scholars argue there
were no Hell's Angels in the meeting. They claim that Ringo's wife
had brought along an angel food cake and the details got confused in
the ensuing years.)

Lockwood's lock-step

By mid-autumn, thousands of copies of the 14-inch LP were rolling off
the presses. Sure, the concept of a record that could not be played
was odd, reasoned many close to the Beatles. But didn't so many of
the group's previous ideas seem strange at first? You know, like long
hair and actually having to listen to the Maharishi? And then one day
a pressing of the LP found its way into the hands of Sir Joseph
Lockwood, president of EMI Records, which distributed Apple.

Lockwood couldn't play the disc on his office turntable. Thinking his
record machine was broken, he asked his secretary to try and play the
record. But the needle kept popping up off the disc and Lockwood
could barely make out the words to a song that sounded like it was
called "Dear Pruneface".

The elderly EMI president was not amused. Perceiving the "pruneface"
song as a personal jab (Lockwood was nearly 80 at the time), he flew
into a rage and hurled the group's soon-to-be-released masterpiece
against a wall. The next day, a more composed Lockwood summoned
Beatles producer George Martin to his office. Martin had taken a
leisurely vacation that fall and had missed many of the album's
sessions, but was about to be re-immersed back into the weird lair of
the Liverpool Lads.

Lockwood demanded the producer bring the rapidly-fragmenting band
together for a high-level meeting. A terrified Martin heeded
Lockwood's orders.

At the time, Lennon was dealing with the ramifications of his recent
drug arrest, McCartney was in the studio with English thrush Mary
Hopkin, Harrison was working with guitarist Eric Clapton, and Starr
was in Greece. (Editor's note: Some Beatle scholars claim Ringo was
not in Greece but that he was covering his prematurely-gray hair with
Grecian formula.)

When each of the four band members heard Martin erupt on the
telephone, they sped to EMI for the impromptu get-together. Even the
usually bold Ono made like a shrinking violet and begged off. The
arguments came fast and furious, with Lockwood accusing Lennon of
being "crazy" and "arrogant". Lennon kept his cool, explaining that
the unwieldy album would "make fans think" and "cause them to
question who and what we are."

Guitarist George Harrison and drummer Ringo Starr sat slumped in
corners. Neither had known about Lennon's scheme in the first place.
As the always-articulate Lennon pressed on with his arguments,
Lockwood held up a copy of the band's recording contract, noting the
clause which detailed the specific physical dimensions of albums.
(Editor's note: Some Beatle scholars maintain Lockwood did not hold
up the contract, but merely pointed at it.)

New concepts were all well and good, explained Lockwood, but a record
that could not be listened to did not­in his mind­qualify as any type
of "innovation".

"It's not important to us that fans be able to actually play our
albums," snapped an impatient Lennon. "That's a triviality to us at
this point."

"But if they CAN manage to somehow play the LP, they'll get extra
music and better sound," offered a helpful McCartney. (Due to its
larger size, the Wide Album, contained two extra songs, "What's the
New Mary Jane" and "Not Guilty".)

According to newly uncovered EMI documents, Lockwood "threw a hissy
fit". He also threw the band and its crimson-faced producer out of
his office. "Stop acting like spoiled little prats!" he barked. "Come
back when you've made a proper record. And I've never said it before
but that 'Lady Madonna' record was a load of bollocks!"

Where Was George?

As angry as Lockwood was at the band, the brunt of his ire was saved
for Fabs' whipping-boy George Martin. In the passing weeks, Lockwood
not only berated Martin in public, he forced the producer to
personally cough up the cash to have the album re-pressed, since it
was "his oversight that allowed the craziness to happen.

"A producer should run the show," fumed Lockwood. "Here, it looks
like the lunatics have taken over the asylum."

According to yet more Beatle scholars, Martin was furious at his
"betrayal" by both the Beatles and Lockwood. This, say sources, is
the real reason Martin was not present as producer during most of the
Get Back/Let It Be sessions which commenced soon after. According to
newly-discovered documents, the band began to "put out feelers"
(their words) for a new producer. Rolling Stones guitarist Brian
Jones was asked whether Stones producer Jimmy Miller could be
employed. But Jones at the time was a drug-addled mess and claimed
he didn't even know Miller was now producing his band. (Editor's
note: Virtually all the Beatle scholars we talked to said they had
never heard of an alleged band called the "The Rolling Stones".)

Jones snapped into lucidity when told about the band's "Wide Album".
Calling Lennon a "mad genius" he dreamed of the day when he too could
"put out LPs no one can play". When Jones pitched just this idea to
the other Stones a few months later, he was asked to leave the band.

Jones turned up dead weeks later.

Soon, both McCartney and Lennon agreed to "get the LP out as soon as
possible in any way possible". This, it turns out, is why the LP was
issued in a plain white jacket: The Beatles had no time to commission
a proper cover graphic.

"They wasted so much time with their bloody idea," a former EMI
engineer explains, "that they had to quickly assemble a cover in
order to have the album ready by the Christmas rush. In effect, there
was no cover!"

To save face, Lennon dreamed up the idea of calling the
re-constituted LP by the similar name of the White Album, because of
its blank jacket. "People had already been saying Wide Album so
(they) thought up a name that sounded close enough," says a source.
Two songs were pulled from the disc's lineup so the contents of the
LP fit onto two standard 12-inch vinyl discs. EMI lubed up its
presses for another run of LPs.

"The whole incident shows what can happen when egos get out of
control," offers a New Jersey-based rock critic and self-professed
Beatles fanatic who wished not to be identified. "I'm glad all of
this is finally being brought to light, because it hurt George
(Martin) emotionally as well as professionally." (Editor's note:
Several Beatle scholars contend this critic is not a critic at all,
but a convenience store employee who likes to read music magazines.)

Indeed, the occurrence was considered such a professional
embarrassment, it prompted a furious Lockwood to issue a memo to all
EMI staffers, producers and bands to "keep quiet about it, or risk
losing all earnings and your reputation within the industry." To
distract fans from the would-be scandal (and to secure their
financial futures) the two head Beatles would both impulsively marry
well-to-do women in the coming months.

"They can ruin us professionally," said Lennon at the time. "But they
can't ruin us personally. We're more than capable of that."

Although Martin would re-unite with the Beatles for their swan song,
"Abbey Road", the events in the fall of 1968 traumatized him so much
that he vowed "never to work with rock acts again". After a long
search for "the most boring group in the world," he "discovered" soft
rockers America and purportedly produced many of their discs while
asleep in a hammock in the back of his Bentley, which was parked a
block away from the studio.

'England's lamest cover band'

The outcome of the Wide Album incident hit the Beatles hard. No
longer were they the "golden boys" who could "do no wrong" for
EMI. Instead, they felt like cogs in the wheel­another meal ticket
for the stuffed-shirt executives.

Dispirited, the group reconvened in January of 1969 to start work on
an album comprised of safe-as-milk oldies, a move engineered to mock
Lockwood's bland tastes. If Mr. EMI wanted the Best Band in the Word
to make like milquetoast, well, that's exactly what they would do.
"Look out Herman's Hermits!" they joked. "We're going steal your
mantle of being England's lamest cover band!"

Sadly, that plan was realized in spades.

Drugged, depressed, and dispirited, the band slogged through
ear-wrenching, tuneless renditions of numbers they once loved.
Originally called Sloppy Seconds by Lennon (who named it as such
because the band couldn't make it through more than a few seconds of
each tune), it was later re-titled Get Back. For a few weeks it was
called Octopus' Garbage (at Harrison's bequest), then accidentally
named Nancy Wilson Sings the Standards by a novice tape-op who wasn't
paying attention.

At one point during the sessions, a smartly-dressed Keith Richards
dropped by with then-paramour Anita Pallenberg. Hoisting a guitar,
he attempted to jam with the band, but found he could not get in tune
with any given band member at any given time. Dazed, he walked out of
the session saying he "could not believe what he heard." Later that
night he allegedly drove with Pallenberg to the worst section of
London and scored heroin for the first time. "If that's the way the
best band in the world sounds," he slurred, "then there's no point in music."

Lennon took the rejection of the Wide Album particularly hard. He
decided to "turn his back on pop music as we know it" and take up
more substantial causes. (Editor's note: Many Beatle scholars say
they never felt Lennon's causes were really all that substantial, at
least not in the scheme of record collecting.)

'Wide' fallout

As the history books show, the band members decided to go their
separate ways in Aug. 1969. Solo careers were launched, but the
memory of the Wide Album would not go away. In 1974, Beatle roadie
Mal Evans, then on the verge of bankruptcy, threatened to sell his
memoirs­replete with an account of the "Wide Album" incident. One
week later, Evans turned up dead.

Six years later, Lennon did an interview with Playboy magazine writer
David Sheff, where he touched on all points of the group's
career­including the Wide Album. The discovery of the story was
considered a major "coup" for the then-struggling scribe. But when
Sheff went back to transcribe the tape the next day, the segment of
the tape that covered the debacle­all 13 minutes of it­had been
mysteriously erased.

Lennon was murdered less than a week later.

.

The White Album: Side Four

The White Album: Side Four

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/65102-the-beatles-white-album-40th-anniversary-5/

The Beatles' White Album 40th Anniversary

[21 November 2008]
by PopMatters Staff

25. Revolution 1
Primary Songwriter: Lennon
Recorded: May 30-31, and June 1-4 and 21, 1968 at Abbey Road

It doesn't matter if it's your first time: you turn to side four
expecting novelty, but you've heard this all before. Listening in
2001, it's the same tune you heard covered at a 9/11 benefit. In
1987, you recognized the distorted guitars from a Nike ad; two years
earlier it was a Ford commercial. Even if you got there as early as
anyone, on November 22, 1968, "Revolution 1" was hardly
revolutionary. The real surprise came three months earlier when, on
August 28, the Beatles released their "Hey Jude" single, carrying on
its b-side both a musical and lyrical jolt to an unsuspecting
audience. This version, recorded six weeks after the album take, is
how "Revolution" entered the world.

Lennon had wanted to release the original recording, but was
overruled by his band mates who all thought it too slow. All parties
compromised a bit, and a faster, rougher version was recorded and
released, though never as a single. This likely had more than a
little to do with McCartney's other objection to the song: its
political content which he deemed a poor fit for the band's style.
"Revolution 1" is the most overtly political song the band ever
released, and it's this distinction that, its many musical merits
aside, earns the song so prominent a place in the Beatles canon.

Why Lennon wrote "Revolution" in 1968 is no mystery. For such a
socially engaged artist to have made it through that tumultuous year
without commenting on events through his work would have been the
real surprise. "You say you want a revolution / Well you know / We
all want to change the world": These lyrics are now familiar to the
point of cliché, but when they first flew off the aft side of a
7-inch, they were hardly platitudes. Thanks to the success of three
straight masterpieces (Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt. Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band), the Beatles had largely shed the image
cultivated in their early career and revealed a more mature, yet
undeniably playful, psychedelic flower power ethos. "Revolution"
played brilliantly against type.

"You say you'll change the constitution / Well, you know / We all
want to change your head / You tell me it's the institution / Well,
you know / You better free your mind instead." In a sense, Lennon's
lyrics are small-c conservative. They express skepticism about the
wisdom and efficacy of rapid social change and lament the futility of
mere finger-pointing. The slower pace of "Revolution 1" emphasizes
this mournful undercurrent, while the b-side's unrestrained roar
provides an ironically triumphalist counterpoint. But this certainly
isn't a right-wing song, no matter how aggressively the forces of
reaction try to lay claim to it (National Review once laughably named
it one of the 50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs).

"But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao / You ain't gonna
make it with anyone anyhow." These are the lines conservatives most
emphasize in their attempts at appropriation, but it doesn't take a
staunch anticommunist to be troubled by the Great Leap Forward, and
besides, these lyrics are primarily an appeal to pragmatism. You
don't win converts by praising tyrants. So, Lennon's words weren't a
broad assault against the counterculture movement nor were they a
blanket dismissal of anti-war protestors. This was, after all, the
man who'd go on to write "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance". What
"Revolution" represents isn't partisan vitriol or mindless
self-denunciation, but the thoughtful, measured sentiments of a
politically engaged man who knew which side he was on, but wasn't
always comfortable with those standing next to him.

But agree or disagree with this interpretation, one fact remains
uncontroversial: few listeners experience "Revolution 1" outside the
context of The Beatles. It's the b-side that gets all the glory. It's
that version that you remember, that you hear in your mind at the
mere mention of the song, that you recognize spilling out from the
earbuds of a fellow subway passenger, and yes, it's that version that
sells you sneakers. Poor, overlooked "Revolution 1" just has to
settle for being one of the very best songs on one of the very best
albums by the greatest band of all time.

-- Nav Purewal
--

26. Honey Pie
Primary Songwriter: McCartney
Recorded: October 1-2 and 4, 1968 at Trident Studios

In the book Here, There and Everywhere: The 100 Best Beatles Songs,
"Honey Pie" doesn't rank, but is mentioned once. It's described as
"somewhat ridiculous". Somewhat ridiculous? It is ridiculous: a
dive-right-in tribute to British music hall, something akin to
vaudeville in the US. "Honey Pie" is fluff, albeit fluff with a great
melody and sharp musicianship­not unlike much of the Beatles'
discography. Of course the joy of playing fluff wears off eventually,
as it did with the Beatles, but in this moment, one preserved on
record for eternity, it sounds like they're having a ball.

Clearly McCartney's baby, the song is a tribute to showtune music of
the past that keeps all of the goofy theatricality intact, right from
the intro, which sets the scene firmly within the world of show
business. And not showbiz today, but that fantasy world of
yesteryear. "Now she's hit the big time," McCartney announces, his
voice juxtaposed with the sound of a scratchy phonograph. When the
main tune rolls in on a piano, you can practically see McCartney
bounding across the stage with a hat and cane, that silly grin on his
face. The silliest part is McCartney's near-scat singing in one
section: a growl that turns into a falsetto cry. "I like this kind of
hot kind of music," he sings, seemingly on the fly, unable as always
to resist making a sentimental statement, even while hamming it up.

The song's a costume­one of many the Beatles wear on The Beatles. And
yes, the rest of the band is in on the act too. Lennon's contribution
is most notable. He goes at the jazz angle with a Django
Reinhardt-like guitar solo, a nimble one that almost slips into the
background at first, but becomes the song's secret star once you
catch on. It's the scene-stealer at the back of the stage, the one
the audience really remembers later on that night. Or maybe that
guitar solo just adds to the atmosphere, which is romantic but not.
"I'm in love but I'm lazy," runs the basic sentiment, and the song
itself doesn't seem to care much about love, at least compared to the
joy of grinning under the spotlight, or listening to someone else ham
it up through a fuzzy radio.

It's probably the kitsch factor that has made "Honey Pie" a cover of
choice for easy listening/vocal jazz types, like Barbara Streisand,
even. The song's goofy shuffle isn't about rock 'n' roll, though the
song does foreshadow the multitude of rock bands in years to come
willing to throw in non-rock horns or get theatrical. "Honey Pie"
dares to be goofier than any of those bands are likely brave enough
to be. It holds little back for entertainment, like those music hall
performers giving it all for the applause of the crowd. And though
"Honey Pie" is often cast aside as one of the album's low points, so
much of The Beatles is silly, goofy, corny. The Beatles are a corny
band, after all, and not just McCartney. Did you see Help? Yellow
Submarine? A Hard Day's Night?

The "putting on a show" quality of "Honey Pie", and the entire "White
Album", comes from that same place. The Beatles told dumb jokes and
wore costumes, not just in their early years but most of the way
through. Don't forget about that. Don't mistake their "ridiculous"
side for weakness or a lack of substance, either. Every tough-faced,
hard-living rock band is putting on just as much of an act, even the
Stones. But if the White Album is itself a variety show, and it is,
then "Honey Pie" could just be the heart and soul of the album. It's
at least as representative, maybe more so, of the double-album's
essence as any of the more serious or "classic" songs. "Honey Pie" is
a lark, but so is the album. It's Beatles on Vacation.

­Dave Heaton
--

27. Savoy Truffle
Primary Songwriter: Harrison
Recorded: October 3 and 5, 1968 at Trident Studios, and October 11
and 14, 1968 at Abbey Road

Harrison's fourth and last contribution to The Beatles, "Savoy
Truffle" is probably the closest he ever came to writing a stupid
song, or a song about a stupid, absurd topic in the same vein that
his peers had long been doing, especially Lennon. Using a similar
writing technique as Lennon did when penning the lyrics to "Being for
the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" (that is, copying names from a circus
line-up of acts), Harrison effectively decided to write about his
dear friend Eric Clapton's addiction to chocolate. And in order to do
so, he copied the ingredients information from a box of Mackintosh
Good News chocolates.

Apparently, the chorus "But you'll have to have them all pulled after
the savoy truffle" is a direct reference to the deterioration of the
teeth because of eating so much chocolate. From this idea, I extract
two direct consequences:

1. Amongst other things, Clapton should be eternally grateful to
Harrison for not having to expend thousands on dentistry bills.

2. Monty Python surely got their inspiration for Mr. Creosote's
sketch in The Meaning of Life from this song. It has to be so, given
the friendship between Harrison and the sextet of comedians (Is it
necessary to remember that Harrison produced Life of Brian?) and
taking into account that the last thing Mr. Creosote eats before
vomiting and exploding is, yes, a tablet of chocolate.

Musically, it's interesting to notice that "Savoy Truffle" is the
last rock song on The Beatles. After it, there's only time for the
melancholy of "Cry Baby Cry", the artsiness of "Revolution 9", and
the tenderness of "Good Night".

And although Lennon did not participate in the recording, Harrison's
song sounds like a band effort, with McCartney's bass and Starr's
drums resounding in full force. The sound the trio achieved on that
occasion seems to make sense as a direct precedent to Harrison's solo
material: "Savoy Truffle" is closer to any of the rock numbers in the
Phil Spector-produced All Things Must Pass than to anything Harrison
ever did with the Beatles. "Savoy Truffle" is more "Wah Wah" than
"Taxman", much more "What Is Life" than "I Want to Tell You". No
wonder that Harrison stuck with Starr on drums for his solo albums,
'cos part of the vibe in his last songs within the Beatles clearly
comes from the genius of the underrated drummer. In "Savoy Truffle",
Starr gives a master class of his art, with the help of a bit of
delay in the snare microphone (this is something that's pretty
obvious at the start of the song, and in the middle break).

Indeed this song has a groove like no other on The Beatles, a cadence
closer to bossa nova, jazz-funk, and/or acid jazz, thanks to the
importance and adherence of the syncopated melody line that the
saxophone sextet draws. This is even more palpable in the cover
version that Ella Fitzgerald recorded just a year later, in 1969. But
the rhythm pattern sustained by saxophones, bass, and drums is so
integral to the song, that it persists not only in that one, but in
absolutely all the cover versions of "Savoy Truffle" that I have
listened to, including the most improbable of them all, one by They
Might Be Giants. It's funny, though, taking into account that
Harrison decided to distort the sound of the saxophones, to great
displeasure of the original players.

It's not just the saxes, but the falsettos, too, the way some of the
guitars double the vocal melody, and the knife-like guitars­with that
one that howls at a very high pitch rate during the second chorus
acting as a farewell to rock­always made me think that this was one
of the songs with the most modern vibe in all the Beatles'
repertoire, second only to "Tomorrow Never Knows". And now that I
revisit it again and listen to it more closely, it strikes me as
having some kind of Franz Ferdinand-ish quality, to look for some
modern reference. Would they ever dare to cover it?

­Pablo Amor
--

28. Cry Baby Cry
Primary Songwriter: Lennon
Recorded: July 15-16 and 18, 1968 at Abbey Road

"Cry Baby Cry" is the kind of song Beatles fans love to pick apart.
Its cryptic singsong lyrics reflect an absence, like the blank canvas
adorning The Beatles' album cover. The characters and actions of its
verses beg to be deconstructed, but defy certainty of explication. It
is pluralistic and discursive, a cryptographic cipher and addlepated
collection of gibberish all at once. Lennon himself, in one his final
interviews, called the song "rubbish" and disowned it to McCartney.
Yet, it remains on many fans' favorites lists and has been revered
enough to garner a handful of reverent covers by artists as diverse
as Ramsey Lewis, Throwing Muses, Phish, and Bardo Pond.

The verses, about the affairs of royalty (both perfunctory and
extramarital), mime the old nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence",
but with an explicit role reversal. In "Sing a Song of Sixpence", the
extravagances of the lavish king and queen, counting their money and
feasting, take their toll on the worker in garden (the maid), who has
her nose pecked off by blackbirds that were baked into a royal pie.
Lennon's verse imagines a royal family with fealty to the younger
generation, who can command the mother to sigh, make the queen play
them parlor songs and paint them pictures, and haunt their elders
with séances of history repeating. With the '60s so focused on the
incoming generation, the adult world was at their behest, awaiting
each next step.

Lennon's "cry" is a privilege of the young (who are known here as
"baby", a term of both puerility and endearment), but Lennon insists
it be used tactically. The cry could be a mournful weep, a rejection
of principles, a call for change, a spoilt whine, or a barter (Lennon
took the line from an advertisement which implored children to "Cry
baby cry / Make your mother buy"). In any of the above instances,
it's enough to make your mother sigh. Mother is old enough that she
should see in her young a kind of reciprocity of demand. The
expectations instilled in the baby boom generation, the first
generation of Beatles fans who were given to enough leisure time to
decode their indoctrination, gave them over to cries for freedom,
peace, equality, and revolution. Yet, mother is resigned to sigh. She
begrudgingly accepts the world at face value, unwilling to peel back
the layers of the glass onion for fear of disrupting the status quo.

In a sense, "Cry Baby Cry" is clearly representative of the ironies
and the dualities of The Beatles as a whole. The Beatles is a
cross-genre smattering of cultural, historical, and theoretical
bricolage. "Cry Baby Cry" is a standout on that album only in its
clever infusion of unconscious psychodrama, which masquerades under
the subdued bathos of inconsequentiality. Much has been made of the
double album's apparently arbitrary track placement, but it's no
small mistake that "Cry Baby Cry" was placed directly before the
musique concrète pop culture pastiche "Revolution 9", perhaps the
most radically abstract song ever produced by a mainstream pop group.
The nursery rhyme juvenilia lulls the listener into a false sense of
security, the falseness perpetuated by the undergirding darkness of
the seemingly innocent lyrics, which hint at bastard children,
infidelity, and impotence.

The song ends with McCartney asking "Can you take me back where I
came from? Can you take me home?" Having been shown childhood and the
curdling tears of a weeping child in "Cry Baby Cry", McCartney begs
to be taken even further back, back to birth, back to where it all
started. It's fitting then that he should use a blues guitar, the
very seed of rock 'n' roll, as a way of communicating this desire. He
repeats the two lines, but upon repetition addresses his questioning
to Brahma, god of creation (though some will dispute that he says
"Brother" or "Robert", as in the Beatles' psychotropic pharmacologist
"Doctor Robert", one of The Beatles' many self-reflexive references).
"Brahma, can you take me back?"

The listener is then taken perhaps further back than anyone could
have anticipated, back to the primordial ooze of "Revolution 9", an
acid-soaked nightmare, preliterate, precognizant, and defiant of any
solid perimeters or structure. America and Britain regressed back to Pangaea.

"At twelve o'clock a meeting 'round the table for a séance in the
dark / With voices out of nowhere put on specially by the children
for a lark", goes the last official verse of "Cry Baby Cry". The
"voices out of nowhere" foreshadow the random spectral spoken-word
snippets that float through "Revolution 9" like ghosts at a séance.
But was it all a lark, the whole album, the whole Beatles catalogue,
the whole decade?

Years later, when the jaded Lennon would look back and say "nothing
changed except that we all dressed up a bit, leaving the same
bastards running everything" and singing "I don't believe in
Beatles", he hinted at what he might have been insinuating with the
whole lark that is The Beatles. It was a rejection of everything, not
least of all the ultimate authority, that which had become an
institution, a sacred idol even. The Beatles themselves. The "White
Album" was the Beatles' anti-bible, an episteme of future thought
forged through the purging of the past.

­Timothy Gabriele
--

29. Revolution 9
Primary Songwriter: Lennon
Recorded: June 6, 10-11, and 20-21, 1968 at Abbey Road

"Revolution 9 was an unconscious picture of what I actually think
will happen when it happens; just like a drawing of a revolution."
-- John Lennon

"A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting
a picture, or doing embroidery… A revolution is an insurrection, an
act of violence..."
--Mao Zedong

Except for Charles Manson, every Beatles fan seems to despise this
musique concrete track the most. But if they listen closely, they
might understand that the song really is a revolution, just not
necessarily the kind that they imagined or wanted to know about.

The musical roots of "Revolution 9" come not only from Ono's Fluxus
background, but also theatrical compositions from avant composers
like Berio and Kagel. McCartney and Harrison had been skewing song
form (with the unreleased "Carnival of Lights" and the soundtrack
Wonderwall Music, respectively), but their experimentations were not
being included on official Beatles albums. Even the band had made a
habit of screwing with the conventions of 4/4 time and verses and
choruses on "Tomorrow Never Knows", "Happiness Is a Warm Gun", and "I
Am the Walrus" (all Lennon tunes, too). "Revolution 9" is an
extension, or logical conclusion, of these outré urges from what was
the world's most popular band.

If you think about the song conceptually, what was Lennon really
saying? For all extensive purposes, it's a political song, but not
one that takes sides or preaches viewpoints. It's more like the
Stones' "Street Fighting Man", the Mothers of Invention's "Trouble
Every Day", or Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On", describing problems
and divisions, but in a more graphic way here. In some ways,
"Revolution 9" is akin to Dylan's early electric phase where he
rejected protest songs and crafted surreal songs of spiritual and
existential crises.

But in a way, "Revolution 9" is about something more personal for
Lennon. (He was doing similar experiments along with Ono at the same
time, which would soon turn up as their Two Virgins album.) McCartney
and George Martin hated the song and begged Lennon to keep it off the
album, but he refused. He didn't care if it would alienate or confuse
fans. Lennon wanted to make a statement by keeping it on a Beatles
record. In a way, it's saying what the rest of The Beatles is only
telling its listeners obliquely­for all extensive purposes, the
Beatles were finished.

It wasn't just that "Revolution 9"'s anarchic structure blew apart
the band's image or sound; it was also loaded with references to the
Beatles themselves. Just as "Glass Onion" gleefully picked apart the
group's myth with all sorts of sly lyrical references, or "I'm So
Tired" told of Lennon's spiritual malaise, "Revolution 9" contains
torn bits of "Revolution" and "A Day in the Life", and supposedly
tapes of Beatles fans screaming for them (as well as the dead
McCartney clues, if you want to believe those). In some ways, Lennon
was recycling and digesting these Beatles snippets and salvaging them
for the madness that they had become. You could argue that Lennon
wasn't just describing turmoil in the streets, but also in his own
group. Just as he was ambivalent about the idea of insurrection on
"Revolution 1", he was also torn about the Beatles themselves. Within
a year, he would quit the group, effectively spelling the end of the
band. His first "proper" solo album, 1970's Plastic Ono Band, would
be a purging of his persona and the group.

But other than this historical drama, "Revolution 9" shouldn't be
seen only as an annoying, useless noise-fest. For one thing, there
are some nice musical bits submerged there (the intro piano, lulling
mellotron tones, the frantic strings) and plenty of humor too­when
Alarm Will Sound recently covered it live for their 1969 series,
these two points finally became clear; playing it alongside
Stockhausen gave the piece the context it usually lacked alongside
the other Beatles songs on the "White Album". And the song definitely
had fans outside of Manson's Family: Nurse With Wound, Negativland,
Ground Zero, and others all seemed to take "Revolution 9"'s m.o. as
their blueprint, and maybe have the tune to thank for helping to open
up the avant world to the rock/pop world. That might be the song's
real legacy, detractors be damned.

And not surprising, the song does sound even creepier backwards, as
you can hear here. It really does sound like some guy is saying,
"Turn me on dead man."

­Jason Gross
--

30. Good Night
Primary Songwriter: Lennon
Recorded: June 28 and July 2 and 22, 1968 at Abbey Road

Beatles fans have always considered Lennon the smart Beatle, the
intellectual whose cleverness offset the pop sensibilities of
McCartney, the spirituality of Harrison, and the goofiness of Starr.
Listeners believed Lennon was the witty Beatle, the one who made the
band bright and brainy. This may be true, but John was more than
that. He was also the sappy Beatle, the one who most wore his
emotions on his sleeve. Nowhere is this more evident than on The
Beatles' closing song.

Lennon composed "Good Night" as a lullaby for his five-year-old son
Julian. Lennon never recorded a version, although McCartney told an
interviewer about the time when Lennon sang it to the band in order
to teach it to Starr. McCartney said Lennon's singing of the tune
revealed the tender, loving, generous side of Lennon and is one of
McCartney's favorite memories of the deceased Beatle.

Starr sings "Good Night" on the record, and is the only Beatle who
performs on the track. No other Beatle sings or plays a note. George
Martin arranged an orchestra that consisted of 12 violins, three
violas, three cellos, three flutes, one harp, one clarinet, one horn,
one vibraphone, and one string bass. The Mike Sammes Singers provided
back up vocals.

Lennon wanted the song to sound soft and lush. "Good Night" follows
the wild weirdness of "Revolution 9" and like all lullabies, it is
meant to soothe the listener. This is evident from the first notes.
The strings softly swirl and crescendo in welcome. Something
celestial happens, as if dreamland is a place right next to heaven,
if not paradise itself.

The lyrics are simple and easy to understand. From the very
beginning, the meaning is clear. "Now it's time to say good night /
Good night, sleep tight," Starr croons in a hushed tone. He never
raises his voice. Starr wants you to slumber and rest easy. The most
commonly repeated phrase, in a song full of calming redundancies, is
"dream sweet dreams". The corniness of the sentiments border on
self-parody, but Starr's richly sung intonations make it clear that
the song is meant to comfort. The interplay between Starr's voice and
the grand instrumental arrangements that surround him heighten the
effect. If Starr's voice is a yawn, then the orchestrations are a
sigh. Sleep is the time when all people can be the gods of their
perfect worlds.

This impression is reinforced by the softly whispered, spoken word
ending, "Good night, good night everybody / Everybody, everywhere,
good night". Note that the record that began with a song called "Back
in the U.S.S.R." ends with a call to "everybody, everywhere" and
acknowledges the band's global audience. The Beatles know that
millions of people across the earth are hungrily waiting to hear what
the band has to say. And the Beatles say now is the time to chill.

The Beatles released this album into a world of wars and civil
unrest. In America, the nation had recently elected a conservative,
Republican president, Richard Nixon, instead of a liberal Democrat
for the first time during the '60s. There were revolutions of one
sort or another happening here, there, and everywhere. Several other
songs on the album reflect that the Beatles were aware of this
unrest, but here they are asking their listeners to relax. "Close
your eyes / And I'll close mine," Starr intones in a dulcet voice.
Yes, this is Lennon offering words of comfort to his little boy, but
when Starr sings it, he is talking to all of us. There will always be
problems. We will always need to sleep. Tomorrow is another day, and
as another closing song written by Lennon from a previous album says,
tomorrow never knows.

­Steven Horowitz

.

The White Album: Side Three

The White Album: Side Three

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/65101-the-beatles-white-album-40th-anniversary-4/

The Beatles' White Album 40th Anniversary

[20 November 2008]
by PopMatters Staff

18. Birthday
Primary Songwriter: McCartney
Recorded: September 18, 1968 at Abbey Road

With all the past pop culture revisionism going on, it's easy to
forget the Beatles' basic rock 'n' roll roots. This was a band
formulated not on puffy psychedelia, bawdy British musical hall, or
pure song craftsmanship (though they excelled at them all). No, the
neophyte Fab Four found instant common ground as lovers of classic
American icons­Elvis and Buddy Holly, Little Richard and the Everly
Brothers. Whenever they needed to recharge their creative batteries,
so to speak, they returned to the raw, unbridled energy of the sounds
that inspired their adolescent affections. McCartney would later
admit that he "borrowed" a bit of his favorite '50s rave-ups to craft
this simplistic sing-along. But there is much more to "Birthday" than
a backward "Lucille" with a splash of "(Oh) Pretty Woman".

"Birthday" may have been meant as a big, brassy group hug­even
current gal pals Yoko Ono and Patti Harrison sang backup, a first for
the all-boy band­but there is something somewhat sinister about Side
Three's opening track. It's a call out to party, but at the same
time, it suggests a quartet being forced into the position of host.
One can just imagine the boys belting out the track, their
animosities sidelined for the time being in order to create a new
rock 'n' roll take on a creaky old standard. Rumor has it that the
Beatles halted rehearsals on the song so that they could head back to
McCartney's and watch the Jayne Mansfield gem The Girl Can't Help It.
If one listens carefully, you can hear that film's title tune
peppered throughout "Birthday"'s basic blues progression.

The entire effort has the feeling of preplanned anarchy. The first
thing you hear before sound even settles is Starr's resilient
drumming. After a fumbling fill that feels part well practiced and
part improvised, the boys run in with their Penni-Orbison riff. It's
a memorable hook, but also one that appears incomplete. Like most of
The Beatles, it has a tossed-off quality that countermands the
group's previous studio fastidiousness. Soon, McCartney is doing his
best rockabilly howl, with some recognizable help from the superior
shouter, Mr. Lennon. With its Moon/June/Spoon lyricism further
wicking away the complexity, we wind up with the world's most famous
pop artists playing jam band.

But it's the break where things get interesting­very interesting
indeed. As Starr rocks steady and someone counts down the time, we
learn of the imminent celebration. Voices mix and harmonies merge,
once again bringing in the influences of the past. As an
effects-laden guitar joins a treated piano as quasi harpsichord (more
honky tonk, actually), McCartney's voice bellows for the listener to
"take a ch...ch...ch...chance" and "dance". In between each stanza, a
wistful, melancholic responsorial from the gala of the track's title
resembles the last breathy sigh of a dying ghost. Its inherent
eeriness countermands the song's sock hop sentiments. The freaky fade
out of the treated keyboards further amplifies the sense of dread.

As a result, when "Birthday" comes bellowing out of your speakers (or
in these post-modern technological times, your iPod), it more or less
fails to remind one of a Bo Diddley date with Fats Domino and the
rest of the roots revivalists. Instead, what the Beatles managed here
was indicative of their entire career. Instead of copying other
musicians, recreating their approach with student-like seriousness,
they took the signature styles and made them wholly their own. This
is Elvis as envisioned by his fans, except in this case, said
devotees were geniuses of sound and structure. If they were sad that
their take on the syrupy annual sentiment didn't instantly replace
the jerryrigged "Good Morning to You", originally composed in 1893,
they never showed it. Instead, "Birthday" remains the anthem for
every proto-punk's impending maturation. It signaled something very
similar for its creators as well.

­Bill Gibron
--

19. Yer Blues
Primary Songwriter: Lennon
Recorded: August 13-14 and 20, 1968 at Abbey Road

For all that chatter about The Beatles predicting the band members'
solo work, only two of its Lennon tracks would be of a piece with his
Plastic Ono Band, arguably the defining post-Beatles disc. One is the
muted, tender "Julia"; the other, the searing, spooky "Yer Blues".

"Yer Blues" is the only officially released Lennon-McCartney original
to be christened a blues, and one of few to strictly follow a 12-bar
blues structure. Furthermore, while many Beatles songs grapple with
death in some form ("Run for Your Life", "Eleanor Rigby"), "Yer
Blues" is the band's only track to explicitly discuss suicide.

And why? Lennon never expresses "the reason why", other than to
contemptuously grunt, "Girl, you know the reason why." But given that
this is a man who, three tracks later, will feminize the Maharishi in
order to eviscerate him, who earlier in the album bitterly blamed
some woman for his insomnia, whose entire oeuvre (and biography) is
peppered with problematic gender interactions, he might as well be
saying, "Girl, you are the reason why." Following in the grand blues
tradition of women doing wrong and leaving a man in pain often simply
by leaving him, Lennon seethes in heartbreak. But his introspection
(call it his utter self-absorption) turns the misdeed inward, and the
song focuses on his reactions rather than whatever wrong she
supposedly committed. This is not a revenge story, or an attack on an
unfaithful woman. This is instead an attack on the man who, through
some or many unspecified flaws, doomed himself to solitude. Typical
of Lennon, the girl is a scapegoat but secondary, even irrelevant.
Lennon is who matters here. Like many of his most personal
compositions, "Yer Blues" bridges the roots of rock 'n' roll with the
incipient singer-songwriter solipsism.

"Yer Blues" is, paradoxically, both ephemeral (like life) and eternal
(like death). Its cyclical four minutes feel as though they could be
drawn out and repeated ad infinitum; this is a song that some
overindulgent rock band could turn into a 20-minute opus, full of
false endings and (hopefully) unexpected left turns. The track begins
with a count-off in which two is the first audible number, and
Lennon's vocal starts with an authoritative "Yes, I'm lonely", as if
answering a question never posed. What follows is an in-the-moment
snapshot of a shattered psyche, with few of the preceding details
filled in. What brought him to this extreme state? Beyond some
parental info ("My mother was of the sky / My father was of the
earth"), little insight is offered or needed. The immediate feeling
is more important, the spontaneous laments of a man who feels like a
decomposing corpse, right down to the animals pecking away at his carcass.

With such a sparse lyrical base, "Yer Blues"'s chief impact is
musical. It is a fairly abrasive Beatles song, laced with feedback
and white noise; after the psychedelia of 1967, it is refreshingly
raw and tough, perhaps influenced by the electrified blues of bands
like Cream, and sonically not that far removed from the blues-based
hard rock that Led Zeppelin would perfect a year later. The song
actually sounds like the death its singer anticipates. Lennon's vocal
is throat-shreddingly intense­when he asserts "I am of the universe,
AND YOU KNOW WHAT IT'S WORTH", the Nietzschean despair in his scream
suggests it's worth nothing. Being of the universe is scant
consolation, nor is his lifeblood­Lennon identifies with Dylan's
notoriously square Mr. Jones, the purported antithesis of rock 'n'
roll cool, and even music fails to provide solace. In fact, once he
confesses that he "feel[s] so suicidal, EVEN HATE MY ROCK 'N' ROLL",
the slow, foreboding 12/8 blues speeds up into a juke joint shuffle,
from which Lennon quickly retreats­leaving a frantic, blood-rushing
jam that conjures an injurious adrenaline rush, capped with a weeping
guitar solo that sounds like bleeding.

He never fully returns; when the song reverts back to the initial
tempo, Lennon's vocal is off-mic, a buried echo, the final whimpers
of a man about to transcend this earthly plane. He is fading, and the
music is about to fade with him, leaving an ultimately unsettling
message: a man will disappear, and eventually so shall his creations.
A message that, 40 years later, "Yer Blues" has successfully refuted.

­Charles Hohman
--

20. Mother Nature's Son
Primary Songwriter: McCartney
Recorded: August 9 and 20, 1968 at Abbey Road

By 1968, folk rock had become a well-established notion. Bob Dylan
embodied it a number of different ways while hybrids of pop and
old-world Anglo-Saxon swirled about the British scene in the form of
Fairport Convention and the Pentangle. The Beatles' folk rock tracks
on the "White Album" certainly reflected all of this while looking
directly toward the upcoming singer-songwriter movement.

To put the songs into that latter context, though, feels a bit like
saying Keats' odes foretold the dime novel craze. This is not only
because they distinguished themselves through inventive guitar
playing, crafty chord sequences, and melody to spare, but they were
also such singular performances. "Blackbird" and "Julia", for
example, seem like pieces simple enough for the everyman to sing and
play, but you'll never hear them at a campfire­they're just too
complex as compositions and self-contained as recordings.

"Mother Nature's Son" is another one of these and it's a standout.
McCartney wrote the song during the group's summer with the Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi, whose lecturing about nature had inspired both McCartney
and Lennon to write one song each. Lennon's "Child of Nature"
eventually morphed into "Jealous Guy", which appeared on his 1971 LP,
Imagine (hear the early demos on bootlegs like The Alternate White
Album). McCartney's "Mother Nature's Son", of course, flourished into
the fully realized pantheist hymn that appeared on side three of The
Beatles. It's an utterly simple, almost inconceivably beautiful
track. Acoustic guitars trickle playfully like the mountain streams
he sings about. English horns echo throughout ancient hills, while
solitary drums rumble over distant, grassy peaks.

"Listen to the pretty sound of music as she flies," sings McCartney,
who's at once as sweet and melancholy as he'd ever sound. These
contradictory qualities lend the track so much of its unique
atmosphere. Beatles histories like Mark Lewisohn's Complete Beatles
Recording Sessions, of course, have told us that intra-moptop tension
characterized this album's late summer/early fall studio dates.
Here's engineer Ken Scott about "Mother Nature's Son": "Paul was
downstairs going through the arrangement with George and the brass
players. Everything was great, everyone was in great spirits. It felt
really good. Suddenly, halfway through, John and Ringo walked in and
you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. An instant change. It was
like that for ten minutes and then as soon as they left it felt great
again. It was very bizarre."

We can speculate endlessly on the reasons for the hard feelings, but
we needn't ever doubt their musical benefits. (Lennon and Starr were
apparently working that day on Lennon's nerve-rattling "Yer Blues",
which happens to precede "Mother Nature's Son" on The Beatles and
perpetuates forever the McCartney-as-softie conception.)

While singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon, among
others, could certainly rival the Beatles in the sophisticated
folk-rock department, none of that ilk could match their ability to
sound so effortless and simple. And John Denver, nowhere near their
level on any count, turned "Mother Nature's Son" into a live staple
during the '70s by bypassing the song's more complex and melancholy
layers altogether. Such is the pastoral elegance of the Beatles'
original recording of "Mother Nature's Son" that nothing calling
itself folk, folk-rock, or any other such thing, has ever epitomized
the oft-recurring "nature's child" motif to the same degree before or since.

­Kim Simpson
--

21. Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey
Primary Songwriter: Lennon
Recorded: June 26-27 and July 1 and 23, 1968 at Abbey Road

The recording of "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My
Monkey" can be seen as the moment when Lennon-McCartney turned into
Lennon-Ono. To shamelessly mix metaphors, if the Walrus was Paul,
then the Monkey was Yoko.

In June of 1968, Lennon's affair with Ono was quickly overwhelming
every aspect of his life, including his marriage with Cynthia Lennon.
The other marriage in Lennon's life, his songwriting collaboration
with McCartney, was also in shambles. The days of sitting in the same
room and finishing each other's songs were over. Ono quite literally
moved into Beatle territory by becoming the first outsider ever
allowed in the studio.

It's important to note the double meaning of the titular "monkey".
1968 was the year Lennon and Ono descended into heroin abuse, at once
isolating Lennon from his band mates and solidifying his bond with
Ono. This monkey on the back showed up in the lyrics ("the higher you
fly, the deeper you go"). As Bob Spitz states in his landmark
biography, The Beatles, the new level of drug use "manifested itself
in John's adversity and craziness, but the underlying influence had
also crept insidiously into the songs".

"Adversity" and "craziness" are two words that could easily sum up
the manic freakout that is "Me and My Monkey". One can hear a sense
of urgency in Lennon's pleas to "come on" and "take it easy".
Lyrically, it's a defensive crouch that begs for empathy. The only
hitch, of course, was Lennon wouldn't return the favor for any of his
band mates. He had imploded his life from many to Ono and was angry
that anyone would question his motives. As Lennon himself later said,
"Everybody seemed to be paranoid except for us two, who were in the
glow of love."

But for all the turmoil, the song never loses its joyful sense of
abandonment. A spaz-out of the highest order, "Me and My Monkey"
jettisons all limits in a maze of ringing bells, racing blues, and
shouted come-ons. In other words, it's Chuck Berry on crack.

Furthermore, though it might not have the typical makings of one, "Me
and My Monkey" feels like a punk song. It is aggressive and urgent
with a lack of self-consciousness. Sounds like a description for the
Ramones. Just another genre in which Lennon's influence can be heard.

As if it needed more help, "Me and My Monkey" also stands out for its
track placement. Sequenced between McCartney's pastoral "Mother
Nature's Son" and the lilting Lennon ditty that follows, "Sexy
Sadie", "Me and My Monkey" juts out like the markings of a polygraph
during an egregious lie. It is a true WTF? moment. "Love Me Do" this ain't.

In his selfishness and defiance, Lennon created a track for those who
complain the Beatles don't rock enough. It's useful to view "Me and
My Monkey" as a companion piece with McCartney's "Helter Skelter".
Where Lennon goes weird, McCartney goes foreboding, in effect
producing a funhouse mirror image of finger-blister freakouts.

(Further Listening: The blues-boogie version Fats Domino(!) recorded
in 1970. It's a great insight into Lennon's songwriting prowess. Even
in the most frenetic of songs, he provided a song structure to batten
down the hatch.)

­Tim Slowikowski
--

22. Sexy Sadie
Primary Songwriter: Lennon
Recorded: July 19 and 24, and August 13 and 21, 1968 at Abbey Road

Things you may not know about this song include:

1. Lennon wrote this little kiss-off as he was packing to leave India
in late spring, 1968, upset over his discovery that the Maharishi had
made a pass at one of the women in the Beatles' entourage.

2. Charles Manson thought that the song had been written about one of
his followers, the whacked-out soon-to-be-murderer Susan Atkins,
since he had nicknamed her Sadie Mae Glutz before the song came out!
(The logic is impressively lysergic on this one, no?)

3. This was one of my favorite songs for a couple months when I was
12, and also again when I was 17. It is not even my favorite Beatles song now.

4. Lennon's first attempt at the lyrics was outstandingly
straightforward in its anger and bitterness: "You little twat! Who
the fuck do you think you are? Who the fuck do you think you are? Oh,
you cunt!" These lyrics were eventually softened to "Maharishi, what
have you done? You made a fool of everyone." Improvement?

5. When I first heard Radiohead's "Karma Police" I thought it was a
rip-off of "Sexy Sadie", and then Thom Yorke told people that it sort
of was. I still don't know how to feel about this.

6. Harrison persuaded Lennon to change the lyrics after they got home
from India because he found them to be offensive (and he wasn't
talking about the swearing! He was talking about using the name
Maharishi­he suggested "Sexy Sadie" instead). So, instead of this
being a song about the crushing disillusionment Lennon felt at seeing
his idol revealed to be a false prophet, it ended up sounding like a
mean-spirited jab at a loose woman. See point #3.

7. Back at Abbey Road Studios, Lennon scrawled the lyrics onto a
piece of wood for some reason (which reason I'm guessing was
drug-related, since these were the fucking Beatles, so you'd think he
could have found paper and maybe even a pen if he'd wanted to) and
this piece of wood was sold recently at auction by Starr's one-time
wife Maureen. For a lot of dough.

8. The woman that the Maharishi made the pass at was not Mia Farrow.

9. I actually know someone (I am not making this up) who tried to
lose his virginity to "Sexy Sadie", but was detained, reasons
unclear, on the way to the, you know, forum, and he ended up having
what was already bound to be an awkward and anxious first-time sexual
experience to the cacophonic dissonance of "Helter Skelter". Burn.

10. At one point during recording, the song had been clocking in at
eight minutes. See point #9. He just might have made it.

­Stuart Henderson
--

23. Helter Skelter
Primary Songwriter: McCartney
Recorded: July 18, and September 9-10, 1968 at Abbey Road

We got the engineers and George Martin to hike up the drum sound and
really get it as loud and horrible as it could and we played it and
said, 'No, it still sounds too safe, it's got to get louder and
dirtier.' We tried everything we could to dirty it up and in the end
you can hear Ringo say, 'I've got blisters on my fingers.' That
wasn't a joke put-on: his hands were actually bleeding at the end of
the take, he'd been drumming so ferociously.
-- Paul McCartney

Having written such popular mellow tracks like "Yesterday",
"Michelle", and "Blackbird", it was often assumed by casual listeners
that McCartney played the rosy-eyed sap to Lennon's rocker persona.
On the contrary, not only did Macca possess the best pure rock 'n'
roll voice in the band, but he was responsible for some of the
Beatles' most ferocious tunes, from "I'm Down" to "Why Don't We Do It
in the Road?" to the mother of them all, "Helter Skelter". Of course,
venturing into the heavier side of rock was never exactly the
Beatles' forte, especially in 1968 when band after band continued to
push the envelope, but that didn't mean they weren't up for a
challenge. After reading a Pete Townshend quote in which the
guitarist boasted about the rawness of the Who's "I Can See for
Miles", McCartney, in an inspired moment of "if they can do that why
can't we?", penned a track that would prove to be every bit as
primal, potent, and loud as not only the Who, but Jimi Hendrix,
Cream, Blue Cheer, Vanilla Fudge, and White Light/White Heat-era
Velvet Underground as well. Yet again, it was proof that these four
astonishingly versatile musicians were capable of anything.

Initially recorded as a series of extended, slinky, blues-inspired
jams in July 1968 (the unreleased 27-minute third take achieved
legendary status among fans), by the time the band recorded the album
version on the night of September 9 with 21-year-old assistant
producer Chris Thomas at the helm in place of an absent George
Martin, "Helter Skelter" had morphed into a full-throttle rocker. No
fewer than 18 takes were recorded that evening, with the last one
making the cut. The sweat, the blood, and that uneasy balance between
adrenalin-fueled mayhem and late-night fatigue is all palpable
throughout the song's four and a half minutes.

That jarring staccato riff kicks it off, more dissonant than any
other Beatles track prior, McCartney joining in with his famous first
line, playfully referencing the children's spiral slide ("When I get
to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide"), his voice
ascending ominously ("When I stop and I turn and I go for a ride /
Till I get to the bottom") as Starr adds nervous snare beats,
McCartney then exploding into a maniacal, out-of-breath scream: "Till
I see you AGAIN!" On that cue, the entire band launches into an
absolutely vicious groove, McCartney and Harrison on guitar, Lennon
providing a thick bass line, as McCartney continues with one of his
greatest vocal performances, his voice ragged and hoarse, underscored
by the famous descending seven-note riff in the chorus. And like a
bunch of precocious kids fooling around while the headmaster's away,
Lennon and band assistant Mal Evans add some hilariously amateurish
saxophone and trumpet respectively during the outro, which fades out,
in, out, and back in again, in time for us to hear Starr add three
exhausted cymbal crashes, fling his drumsticks, and let out his
infamous exclamation.

The ambiguity of the title works brilliantly throughout the song. Is
it about a person's descent into madness? The dizzying temptation of
pure, physical lust? Or just about a kid playing on a slide? On the
other hand, a creepy little dude in California named Charles Manson
had other ideas what the song was about, and after the grisly events
of August 8 and 9, 1969, "Helter Skelter" would gain more notoriety
than McCartney and the Beatles had ever intended. But in the end, the
song far outlasted that controversy, with many prominent artists
recording covers, and while U2's obnoxious 1988 rendition is arguably
the most famous, Siouxie and the Banshees' feral 1978 interpretation,
Mötley Crüe's pulverizing 1983 cover, and Hüsker Dü's cacophonous
1986 deconstruction actually come closest to equaling the pure, raw,
inimitable power of the original.

­Adrien Begrand
--

24. Long, Long, Long
Primary Songwriter: Harrison
Recorded: October 7-9, 1968 at Abbey Road

Following McCartney's twisted, gas-guzzling, heavy metal-incarnate
"Helter Skelter", Harrison, in an underhandedness that befits his
moniker as "the quiet Beatle", takes the stage: "It's been a looong,
long, long time." Floating in from the ethereal netherworld, the
Harrison of "Long, Long, Long" is a spiritually exhausted disciple,
quietly singing the praises of a higher being after having fumbled
through countless dark years seeking enlightenment.

Almost haiku-like in its exultation, hardly any of the words in
"Long, Long, Long" are more than a syllable long. Each verse has a
first line of seven syllables, followed by a second line of eight,
then a final phrase of four. Despite its lyrical directness, however,
"Long, Long, Long" is more than anything a subtle number. Subtle
meant "bad" in 1968, the year of Jimi Hendrix's Axis: Bold as Love,
Cream's Wheels of Fire, and the Velvet Underground's White
Light/White Heat. Yet with careful nurturing and repeated listens,
"Long, Long, Long" is unveiled as one of Harrison's most supremely
refined songs with the Beatles, and a gem on the "White Album".

Harrison's contributions to the Beatles from 1965-1968 reflected his
preoccupation with Hindu philosophy and Indian music, which
culminated in his taking up the sitar and leading his band mates to
India for a period of meditation in early 1968. Returning from the
upper echelons of 1967's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The
Beatles (among other things) heralded the group's return to rock. For
"Long, Long, Long", this meant the ideal marriage of Harrison's firm
inner beliefs with the traditional instrumentation of rock 'n'
roll­in the track, one can hear the blueprint for his entire solo career.

To understand the spare beauty of "Long, Long, Long", it is even more
important to grasp the chaos and conditions that gave birth to it.
The Beatles was the band's opportunity to project its growing
dysfunction and disassociation with the world at large back upon it.
Giving up touring in 1966 had the effect of confining the band to a
shell at Abbey Road Studios, in the company of only themselves and an
elite inner circle, working through nights to record their double LP.
Yet reports from this time generally agree on the fact that the group
were not getting on particularly well; Mojo magazine's anniversary
edition of this album sensationally labels it "the album that tore
them apart!" Out of this disassociation, eccentricity, and tension
emerged, in this writer's mind, the best collection of songs the
Beatles ever put to vinyl. Many disagree. But what no one can deny is
that unease is reflected in The Beatles's music unlike perhaps any
other album before or after it: it captures the dark underbelly of
the '60s before the Rolling Stones ever did.

Not that you would know it, listening to "Long, Long, Long". The
elusive hymn begins in the key of F major, yet introduces its verses
in a chord away from the tonic, mirroring Harrison's sense of "so
many tears [spent] searching". It grows from a lone, ponderous guitar
to the ethereal billow of a Hammond organ that distorts and shades
and provides an eerie cloak for his voice. Ascending to a surging
bridge, the song waltzes on jazzy ninth-chords, clumping drum fills
coloring the anxious harmonies: "Oh, oh, oh!" With that, the song
finally reaches its yearned-for climax, dying away. Then Harrison
resumes an absolute outpouring of worship: "How can I ever misplace
you? / How I want you / Oh I love you."

"Long, Long, Long" finishes on what the late, great Beatles scholar
Ian MacDonald describes as "the luckiest accident in any Beatles
recording": a wine bottle in the studio that would rattle when
certain notes were played on the organ, providing the backdrop for a
dissonant guitar scratch, an anguished, out-of-body wail, and a final
conclusion through a thundering drum roll. This majestic complexity
of a conclusion, he continues, signifies "death, a new beginning, and
an enigmatic question". It also shrouds the song in unearthly
mystique, touching the avant-garde and the spiritual, closing The
Beatles' third side with a graceful shudder.

Contrary to what one would expect given the song's heavily
theological overtones, the song was not written during the group's
retreat in India but from the studio. Contrasting this with
Harrison's bitter "Not Guilty", also from these sessions, or even the
manic charge of the track before it (a sequencing order that must
have provoked some chuckling when the album was being assembled),
"Long, Long, Long" proves that the key to transcendence through music
is a clear head and peace at the end of a long search. It is a gift
of the sublime.

­Andrew Blackie

.

The White Album: Side Two

The White Album: Side Two

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/65098-the-beatles-white-album-40th-anniversary-3/

The Beatles' White Album 40th Anniversary

[19 November 2008]
by PopMatters Staff

9. Martha My Dear
Primary Songwriter: McCartney
Recorded: October 4-5, 1968 at Trident Studios

A friend of mine once fell for a girl because when faced with an
incomplete yet impressive catalog of Beatles songs in a pub jukebox,
she chose this song. He needed no further convincing, beyond her
beauty and charm, that she was the one for him: her choice of a deep
cut rather than an overplayed hit proved she was unpredictable; her
endorsement of something so explicitly Paul spoke to a sweetness
typically absent from the alcohol-dictated arc of a barroom playlist;
and her weakness for melodic jaunts into falsetto was not a weakness
at all, actually, but a badge of honor to wear, proudly, while
bounding back to the table in sync with the song's spritely rhythm.

It's those sudden falsetto lift-offs that really make "Martha My
Dear" so irresistible: "Look what you've done!" and "...with each
other, silly girl!" That, and McCartney's
blossom-within-a-blossom-within-a-blossom melody, which moves through
three distinct sections, each more rhythmically aggressive and
infectious than the last. (And we should take a moment to remind
everyone that yes, the song's subject shares a name with McCartney's
Old English sheepdog; since the singer addresses her as "you silly
girl", we can assume the song is an ode to a family pet, because why
would a grown man speak that way to a woman? OK? Kinda like how "Got
to Get You Into My Life" is about pot.) The first section ("Martha,
my dear...") sounds like a combination of a barrelhouse piano vamp
and British music hall; the second section ("Hold your head up, you
silly girl...") brings in the pumping brass, which attempts to ground
McCartney's increasingly lightheaded melody; and the third section
("Take a good look around you..."), a rock-band arrangement tackles
an unexpectedly minor-key twist.

"Martha My Dear" was recorded soon after the band finished "Happiness
Is a Warm Gun", and as Ian MacDonald suggested in his book Revolution
in the Head, "it's possible that McCartney, his musical funnybone
tickled by his partner's eccentricities, here set out to create
something equally tricky for his own amusement". It's not as
serpentine a song as "Happiness", but it does sound blessed with the
same kind of budding creativity, as if the songwriter were
discovering music for the very first time while in the midst of
writing the song. It's one of the handful of songs on The Beatles
that McCartney knocked out on his own: he laid down the instruments
and vocals in two days at Trident Studios, even having extra time to
work a little on "Honey Pie" while he was at it. It's pure McCartney
all the way, this pretty little autonomous nugget that, like so many
of his contributions to The Beatles, served as a prelude to imminent
solo albums like McCartney and Ram.

I love the image of McCartney walking into the studio late one
afternoon and hammering out this tune, as if it were an
afterthought­an aside, a thing of lesser consequence. Of course,
"Martha My Dear" is none of these things; it's yet another precious
metal hidden in The Beatles' rough. And if someone puts this on the
jukebox at your neighborhood bar, then proceed directly to his or her heart.

­Zeth Lundy
--

10. I'm So Tired
Primary Songwriter: Lennon
Recorded: October 8, 1968 at Abbey Road

The best thing about "I'm So Tired" is that it's a perfect example of
Lennon just being Lennon. The song was written in Rishikesh, and
expresses Lennon's growing ambivalence about the Maharishi and the
experience in general. Apparently, all the meditation was, of all
things, causing Lennon insomnia. A couple years after the trip, he
said, "the funny thing about the camp was although it was very
beautiful and I was meditating about eight hours a day, I was writing
the most miserable songs on earth". Part of Lennon's grumpiness here
is due to his missing a couple of his usual vices. As a listener, you
become privy to the push-pull going on in Lennon's head. "I wonder,
should I get up and fix myself a drink?" he asks, before answering
his own question with a harried, "No, no, no!" Later, he admits,
"Although I'm so tired, I'll have another cigarette." But instead of
getting down on himself for giving into the vice, he goes after the
man who helped popularize tobacco in the first place: "...and curse
Sir Walter Raleigh, he was such a stupid git". Even in such a
befuddled, lethargic state, the acerbic wit is sharp as ever. "I'm So
Tired" is often compared to "I'm Only Sleeping" from Revolver. Some
of the general sentiment may be the same, but there's something far
more complex, even sinister, going on here.

Lennon thought his material for The Beatles was some of his best. The
authenticity in Lennon's vocal definitely backs up that claim. By the
time he sings, exasperated, "I'd give you everything I've got for a
little peace of mind", you believe that at that moment, he would,
custom-painted Rolls and all. How like Lennon to become so tortured
on a soul-searching, meditative retreat. It's not his fault that in
expressing his feelings he may have inspired a hundred latter-day
rock stars to bitch about their rock 'n' roll lives.

Musically, "I'm So Tired" is fairly straightforward. Though parts of
the original demo, including an extra verse, were trimmed, the track
was recorded in a day's work. Lennon's shifty state of mind transfers
perfectly to the music. To whatever extent they were "working solo"
at this point, the Beatles remained peerless interpreters of each
others' songs. The soulful, laconic feel of the verse shifts to the
dirty, bluesy chorus like a rollercoaster cresting the first big
hill. Starr's drumming lends to the illusion of a tempo change
before, as musicologist Alan W. Pollack notes, McCartney's nonchalant
little bass riff ushers the solipsism back in. And catch the
agitation behind the bass/organ squawk at 1:54...one in an endless
list of the Beatles' "little touches". At the time, Lennon's
muttering at the end of the track was factored into the whole "Paul
Is Dead" conspiracy. What he's saying, perhaps, is "Monsieur,
monsieur, how about another one?" All this happens in about two
minutes. Part of why "I'm So Tired" remains a favorite "White Album"
track, and was one of Lennon's, is those two minutes are wonderfully,
quintessentially him.

­John Bergstrom
--

11. Blackbird
Primary Songwriter: McCartney
Recorded: June 11, 1968 at Abbey Road

On an album that came to be known as the "White Album", "Blackbird"
might rightly be subtitled McCartney's black song. This is because
the tune is said to have been inspired by America's racial troubles
in the spring of 1968­lyrics like "take these broken wings and learn
to fly" can easily be applied to the African-American struggle at
that time. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, passed four years earlier,
banned discrimination in employment practices and public
accommodations. There was also the Voting Rights Act of 1964, which
restored and protected voting rights. Then in 1968, the Civil Rights
Act of 1968 passed, which banned discrimination in the sale or rental
of housing. Yet despite all this progress, Martin Luther King was
assassinated in April of 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots
subsequently broke out in more than 110 cities across the United
States in the days that followed. These hot spots included many major
metropolises, such as Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. These
birds may have been freed, so to speak, but their wings were broken
by a gut-wrenching assassination and then trampled on the ground
during angry riots.

But it wasn't just King's assassination that frustrated many
African-Americans. African-Americans may have had their legal rights
properly restored, but economically they were still down at the
bottom rung. This is why Malcolm X's aggressive­not
passive­resistance found such a huge following. It's also partially
why the Black Panther Party came into vogue. Malcolm X preached "by
any means necessary", because civil disobedience simply didn't finish
the job. Certainly, one didn't see white America crowding the ghettos
in large American cities. Equal rights did not immediately lead to
equal economic standing, which forced many winged ones to sing "in
the dead of night".

Against this backdrop of anger and pain, however, "Blackbird" is a
beautiful song. If you listen closely to McCartney's acoustic guitar
finger picking on it, you can hear how Bach's Bourrée in E minor
inspired its melody. In fact, McCartney and Harrison tried to learn
that Bach piece as kids in order to show off their budding guitar
skills in front of of other aspiring musicians. Guitarists will
immediately recognize how melody and bass notes are played
simultaneously on the upper and lower strings, and how McCartney
adapted a segment of Bourrée for the song's intro. He also applies
this musical motif throughout the tune.

While this lyric alludes to the Civil Rights Movement, it can be
easily applied to almost any situation where somebody is struggling
against the forbiding odds. At one point McCartney sings, "Blackbird
fly / Into the light of the dark black night." Even in the shadow of
death, so to speak, there is always a glimmer of light. McCartney
takes on the role of an encourager when he sings these words.
Circumstances may be bleak, but he believes in this struggling one
and wants to see him or her overcome.

"Blackbird" fit with its time, but it also attained a sort of
timelessness. You don't need to know McCartney's original musical or
lyrical inspirations to appreciate it. Furthermore, acts ranging from
the Waterboys to Eddie Vedder have covered the song over the years.
Clearly, its message has remained relevant, and its melody continues
to move listeners. And to that we say fly, blackbird, fly.

­Dan MacIntosh
--

12. Piggies
Primary Songwriter: Harrison
Recorded: September 19-20 and October 10, 1968 at Abbey Road

Even though Lennon was known as the political Beatle, Harrison proved
for the second time in the Beatles' catalog that he, too, had
political chops with "Piggies". The song, intoned as a humorous
social satire of class dynamics, serves as the perfect follow-up to
his scathing review of the British taxation system on Revolver's "Taxman".

The delightful Baroque-influenced tune, featuring harpsichord and a
four-piece string quartet, is a wonderful offset to the lyrical
content, which on first listen is light enough in itself, but upon
second glance shows its deeper meaning. Lyrically, Harrison's
Orwellian piggies are broken down into classes: the working class
"little piggies" and the upper class/aristocratic/political "bigger
piggies". As life continues to get harder for the little piggies, the
bigger piggies continue profiting and leading ever more extravagant lives:

Have you seen the little piggies
Crawling in the dirt
And for all those little piggies
Life is getting worse
Always having dirt to play around in.

Have you seen the bigger piggies
In their starched white shirts
You will find the bigger piggies
Stirring up the dirt
And they always have clean shirts to play around in.

And in their styes with all their backing
They don't care what goes on around
And in their eyes there's something lacking
What they need's a damn good whacking…

Despite the difficulty the Beatles were going through during this
time period, all four were involved in recording "Piggies". Starr
provided tambourine and McCartney purposefully went with a more
plucking-style bass line to imitate the sound of pigs grunting.
Lennon did not contribute instrumentally, although he helped with the
tape-loop pig gruntings that were used throughout the song and
recommended that Harrison change the final line from "Clutching their
forks and knives to cut their pork chops" to "Clutching their forks
and knives to eat their bacon". The new play on words gave the bigger
piggies an even darker tone; instead of just hurting their own, they
cannibalize their brethren.

Harrison's mother, Louise, also contributed to the lyrics,
recommending the most violent of the lines­"What they need's a damn
good whacking"­when Harrison was looking for something that would
work with the previous line, "In their eyes there's something lacking".

Surprisingly, the version that appears on The Beatles was not the
song it in its entirety. Harrison's final verse was left out of the
studio cut and was only re-instituted in his concerts in the 1990s.
The song, including the additional verse, can be heard on Harrison's
Live in Japan album:

Yeah, everywhere there's lots of piggies
Playing piggy pranks
And you can see them on their trotters
Down at the piggy banks
Paying piggy thanks
To thee pig brother.

Although Harrison never intended the song as anything more than
humorous commentary, upon the album's release in November 1968 many
people took the lyrics to be an attack on the police thanks to the
animal chosen to represent humanity in the song.

Unfortunately the song took on even more of a sinister tone in August
1969 when Charles Manson used it as one of the prophesy songs he
"heard" within The Beatles. Manson saw the song, along with a handful
of others, as a "call to arms" to his family of followers and in the
racial war he had long been predicting. This uprising, which became
known to Manson as Helter Skelter (see also "Helter Skelter", on side
three), was, in Manson's eyes, the time for black people to give
white people the "damn good whacking" he thought they were due. As
the summer progressed and his vision wasn't coming to pass, Manson
felt he would have to start things off by showing the way­by means of
starting the murders on his own.

During the murders of Sharon Tate, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, and
four others that Manson instructed, his minions left references to
the song lyrics throughout the murder scenes. At both houses, "pigs"
and "death to pigs" was written in blood on the victim's walls and in
the LaBianca murder, Leno LaBianca was stabbed and left with both a
fork and knife in his body.

Many consider the Manson murders to be the end, or death knell, of
the summer of love. For these events to have been tied­even if just
through the mind of a crazed and off-kilter fan­to the Beatles
catalog, a band who espoused nothing but love and peace, was in
itself a true crime.

­Stacey Allen
--

13. Rocky Raccoon
Primary Songwriter: McCartney
Recorded: August 15, 1968 at Abbey Road

The Beatles is that rare breed of album where eccentricities and
curiosities, like an acoustic Western ditty about spurned love and
revenge, can fit in simply because they stand out. The inspiration
for "Rocky Raccoon" hit McCartney while the Beatles were visiting
India in the late '60s. An Eastern influence, though, is not anywhere
evident. "Rocky Raccoon" is a thoroughly American number, complete
with a backwoods setting, shootouts, hoedowns, a copy of the Bible,
and dubious health care. It almost plays like a send-up of a Johnny
Cash tune about the failed wiles of a likeable underdog.

Its frontier-folk nature even compels McCartney into character. He
drops the refinement and light Britishness of his usual vocal in
favor of rootsy, more roughhewn inflections. The way he mumbles
through "black mining hills of Dakota", his down-home delivery of
"that boy", and his mispronunciation of "Gideon" ("Gidjin") all
insert McCartney, as a sympathetic narrator, into the song's comic
theatrics. His bumbling-bard persona is of a piece with the mood and
spirit of "Rocky Raccoon".

The story itself is a well-worn account of shame and jealousy-sparked
revenge, or the attempt at it anyway. Young Rocky Raccoon, a
good-hearted if impetuous chap, loses Nancy Magill, "the girl of his
fancy", to another guy named Dan. With a shiner on his face and bad
blood in his heart, Rocky plots his vengeance. It would be a showdown
at the camp hoedown. But Dan proves a quicker draw and shoots Rocky
first, leaving him laid up and in the brief care of a boozy doctor.
Down and out, Rocky ends his hoped-for reckoning by defiantly vowing
a comeback.

McCartney collaborated with Lennon and Scottish folkster Donovan in
fleshing out the concept for "Rocky Raccoon". The broad outline is
fairly standard but it's in the story's seeming marginalia, its
tossed-off narrative details, that this trio of delightfully
whimsical and imaginative minds brings the song to life. Like how the
divine seems to maintain a watchful presence in the form of Gideon's
Bible or how Rocky intends to harm Dan by shooting off his legs.
Perhaps the funniest scene is when the doctor, "stinking of gin",
arrives to aid Rocky and immediately lies down on a table himself.
These are the sort of quirks that aren't unexpected coming from a
late-'60s McCartney composition but they still surprise with their
blithe oddity.

As a piece of music, "Rocky Raccoon" is exquisitely textured, though
it takes its time in achieving that form. It develops gradually, with
McCartney's acoustic guitar initially at the center, garnished by
Starr's light high-hat crunches and Lennon's (unusual) go at a
thudding six-string bass, which, when emphasized, sounds like a brass
section. The smoky grayness of the song's beginning then gives way to
an inventive flow of lively and colorful instrumentation: short
spurts of harmonica, George Martin's slinky, saloon-style piano on
the bridges, and warm patches of an accordion-like harmonium. The
story of Rocky's travails is too screwy for just an acoustic folk
backdrop. That wouldn't have done him justice. And this is an album
where sonic simplicity isn't often the preferred method.

All added up, this is a tune full of charm, wit, and oddball pop
pleasure. The Beatles were peerless in their capacity for such
songwriting. But can you imagine it without the snappy name "Rocky
Raccoon"? Would it have been so lasting and memorable under a
different title, like "Rocky Sassoon", which was McCartney's original
idea? He later determined that "Raccoon" was more cowboyish and,
thus, a better match. In fact, the pairing of "Rocky" and "Raccoon"
perfectly captures the character's mix of macho bluster and lowly
inadequacy. It's absurdly well-calibrated. Rocky is a lovable buffoon
who, from the outset, doesn't appear likely to prevail and probably
won't learn his lesson after he falters. The name "Rocky Raccoon"
renders him an open book. But the details of his story and the
baroque sounds that accompany it are far from predictable. That is
truly the hallmark of The Beatles as a whole. It careens, it
deviates, it undermines, and it positively wows. The Beatles may have
been in collapse, but their art was still soaring.

­Barry Lenser
--

14. Don't Pass Me By
Primary Songwriter: Starkey
Recorded: June 5-6, July 12 and 22, 1968 at Abbey Road

Originally called "Ringo's Tune" and also "This Is Some Friendly",
the ditty that ultimately became "Don't Pass Me By" was the first
solo song written by Starr that the Fab Four ever recorded. Although
the album was recorded in 1968, Starr probably wrote the song years
earlier in either 1963 or '64; indeed, bits of the song are heard on
a 1964 BBC radio broadcast in which Starr and McCartney discuss its
beginnings in their interview.

Fans of Starr commonly claim that his songwriting talents go
underappreciated. But we have little material to judge his talents
by, at least in the context of the Beatles. "Don't Pass Me By" and
Abbey Road's "Octopus's Garden" are the only Beatles songs Starr
wrote by himself, and therefore the only pieces we have to judge his
skill. Fans, digging deep, claim the song's simplicity is endearing,
that the lyrics are telling (the line "You were in a car crash and
you lost your hair" can be, with some stretching, a reference to the
"Paul Is Dead" urban legend), or that the lively performance
solidifies its importance in the scheme of the rest of the album.
Critics, of course, use the song merely as further proof of Starr's
lack of talent in comparison to his bandmates' much more innovative
songwriting.

"Don't Pass Me By" is certainly distinct compared to its fellow White
Album tracks, possessing a bluesy, folk-inspired bounce. At 3:50, it
is the second-longest track on the first disc. But its simplicity (it
follows a very basic blues progression, utilizing only three chords)
makes it difficult to claim that it holds any real importance,
especially compared to The Beatles' more experimental or progressive
cuts. However, it could also be said that it is this simplistic form
that allows for the freedom found in the track's brief bits of
improvisation, both by fiddler Jack Fallon at the song's end, and
also in Starr's short, tinkling piano introduction.

The significance of "Don't Pass Me By" is entirely subjective, and
ultimately the decision of the listeners themselves. There are a few
fans out there who will argue to the end that, although this song is
neither technically impressive nor musically innovative, it is most
certainly enjoyable. In the context of the avant-garde loops of
"Revolution 9" or the poignancy of "Blackbird", "Don't Pass Me By" is
a different ballgame if not a completely different sport. But in many
ways this is the beauty of the The Beatles, and perhaps "Don't Pass
Me By" should simply be seen as what it is­if not a triumph for Starr
himself, then at least a necessary and vital piece of an undeniably
triumphant whole.

­Elizabeth Newton
--

15. Why Don't We Do It in the Road?
Primary Songwriter: McCartney
Recorded: October 9-10, 1968 at Abbey Road

"Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" is posed lyrically as a question,
one of the few Beatles songs that uses this popular rhetorical
convention in a title. However, although the lyrics provide no
answers, instead just repeating the question over and over again, its
musical form does. The song is fundamentally a meditation on
simplicity. Not simplicity for the sake of being simple, but rather,
as an antithesis to the emotionally and intellectually convoluted
ways we overanalyze everything. For McCartney, what we most
frequently overanalyze is that which we hold most dear: our intimate
and sexual relationships.

Invoking the simplest possible approaches to rock 'n' roll
songwriting, namely two lines of repeated lyrics and the classic
12-bar, 1-4-5 chord blues progression, the song is less than two
minutes long and features no solos or musical bravado, just
McCartney's progressively rowdy vocals. The song's simplicity is a
testament to its message, which challenges, and even demands us, to
answer this fundamental question: Why do we complicate things so
often? Whether it's sex, politics, religion, or art, why do we
complicate life with our emotional attachments? McCartney's
aggressive singing conveys his mounting frustration with this
all-too-human limitation.

Interestingly, the only lyrical line beyond the title is the
occasional repetition of "No one will be watching us", suggesting
that one key problem in human sexual relationships is our
surrendering to social pressures. Given the proliferation of sexually
explicit media in today's society, and the pressures those
assumptions and stereotypes place on men and women, McCartney's
message is as prescient as ever.

McCartney's inspiration for the song occurred while traveling in
India. Noticing two monkeys copulating in a street, he mused over the
simplicity of their act when compared to the emotional warfare humans
experience while making love or maintaining a relationship. Quick,
uninhibited, and emotionally neutral, those horny monkeys inspired
something profound in McCartney. Unlike animals, which copulate for
reproductive purposes, our complex relationships to sexuality in
profound ways shape our personalities. "Why Don't We Do It in the
Road?" is Paul's public lamentation about this paradox: Why should
something that feels so good cause us so many problems? Of course, in
the midst of the '60s sexual revolution, such a message gained
instant resonance.

The song's recording also prompted controversy among the increasingly
more fractious supergroup. Since McCartney played bass and lead
guitar, sang the vocals, and recorded the song without Lennon's or
Harrison's knowledge, and since only Starr contributed anything else
(drums and handclaps), Lennon in particular was angry. According to
McCartney, Lennon and Harrison were busy recording two other "White
Album" songs, "Glass Onion" and "Piggies". The song took five takes;
take four, a slightly tamer version of the song, is available on The
Beatles Anthology 3.

­Chris Justice
--

16. I Will
Primary Songwriter: McCartney
Recorded: September 16-17, 1968 at Abbey Road

Side two of the The Beatles has always been my favorite. My love for
it has grown enormously since age three when I was first amused by
the hog grunts in "Piggies". The variety of styles on side two has
kept me listening, as does the meaning I've collected about each song
over the years. The stupefying number of directions those nine tracks
take are like passports for nine completely different
mini-excursions. No two songs are at all alike. It's a thrilling ride.

Despite the kaleidoscopic nature of the material, there is continuity
to how it's sequenced, with one song picking up right where the last
leaves off. Even after years of listening to side two, there are
aural reference points that stir excitement about the sequence of the
songs. Hearing the sound of birdsong on "Blackbird" signals that the
merry harpsichord melody that starts off "Piggies" is only seconds
away. Try to isolate any of these songs and see how difficult it is
not to anticipate the song that follows it.

The dynamic between the order of songs and the aural space between
them is what makes "I Will" such a startlingly beautiful moment after
the cymbal crash that closes the raunchy blues bump 'n' grind of "Why
Don't We Do It in the Road?". In a way, the contrast between the
unbridled lust and romantic love between these two neighboring cuts
make interesting bedfellows. McCartney's carnal cry gives way to a
cool croon. His incessant demand to "do it" becomes an ode to
lifelong devotion.

Or does it? "I Will" boasts one of the sweetest melodies McCartney
has ever sung but it's easy to take the lyrics for granted. I've
always felt that, for what is ostensibly a love song, the words were
a bit ambiguous in their sentiment. The third verse, the one that
begins "Love you forever and forever", gives the song its de facto
wedding vow connotation, but the first two verses and the closing
fourth suggest that McCartney's woman is more a romantic vision than
an actual person, or someone he's merely glanced at rather than
spoken to. "For if I ever saw you, I didn't catch your name", he
sings in the second verse. It's his hope that imbues the song with
romance and just a tad melancholy. He will wait a "lonely lifetime"
until at last he finds this elusive love. Doesn't necessarily mean
happily ever after, does it?

Still, I argue that it's much more fun to be swept away by the charm
of the song rather than get buried under by any despondency that
might be interpreted. "I Will" is certainly the coziest sounding song
on The Beatles. The unpretentious knock-and-shake percussive sounds,
the chunky rise and dip of the bass line, the crystalline guitar
strumming, and, of course, McCartney's creamy vocal performance
create 1:46 of musical ambrosia. It also sets-up the quiet hush that
envelops Lennon's "Julia", which closes side two.

On an album that is, arguably, the most revolutionary in the Beatles'
catalog, "I Will" is a moment of tranquility. Forty years later, it
offers an escape to a romantic vista where the sun never sets on the
hope that love is everlasting.

­Christian John Wikane
--

17. Julia
Primary Songwriter: Lennon
Recorded: October 13, 1968 at Abbey Road

Clocking in at just under three minutes, "Julia" is the last song on
the first disc (or side two of the LP) of The Beatles. It is the only
song recorded solely by Lennon on any Beatles record (and the final
song to be recorded for The Beatles). Lennon sang and played acoustic
guitar, and though attributed to Lennon-McCartney, the song is a solo
Lennon composition. One of the last songs recorded on the album,
"Julia" was written during the Beatles' trip to India in 1968. In
fact, while on the same trip, Donovan and Lennon spent a great deal
of time playing the acoustic guitar together and it was Donovan who
taught Lennon the finger-picking style he uses in the song.

An ode to Lennon's mother, "Julia" is a song of longing and sadness.
Lennon was raised by his Aunt Mimi, having only limited contact with
his mother growing up. However, in his teenage years, they
reconnected and began to spend more time together. Her sudden death
(she was hit by a bus) when he was 17 was a shock, and the loss of
his mother would go on to serve as inspiration for songs throughout
his life. He has said of the moment when he learned of his mother's
death: "It was the worst thing that ever happened to me."

While ostensibly about his mother, "Julia" also references Ono in the
line "oceanchild calls me", as Yoko means oceanchild in Japanese. The
song also contains a reference to Khalil Gibran's The Prophet in the
opening line, "Half of what I say is meaningless / But I say it just
to reach you / Julia." The Gibran line is, "Half of what I say is
meaningless / But I say it so that the other half may reach you."
Lennon's altering of the line makes it more pleading and in keeping
with the rest of the song.

Lennon's gentle repetition of "Julia" throughout the song evokes a
dreamlike, almost ethereal feeling in the way that it often trails
off from one lyric into the next, overlapping words. The technique of
using double-tracked vocals and fading one as another line begins
lends an ephemeral air to the song, further emphasized in imagery
that speaks to the temporary, such as "windy smile", "floating sky",
and "sleeping sand". Perhaps no line echoes this sentiment better
than "When I cannot sing my heart / I can only speak my mind /
Julia", as it speaks to the limits of communicating his thoughts.

His hushed vocal delivery coupled with the tenderness in which he
sings the words makes "Julia" one of Lennon's most intimate songs.
Lennon repeats the line "So I sing a song of love / Julia" five
different times emphasizing the simple intent of the song. Regardless
of the beautiful imagery and oblique references, at its heart "Julia"
is Lennon's love song to his mother and it stands as one of the great
songs on The Beatles, as well as one of Lennon's most heartbreaking
and heartfelt performances.

­Jessica Suarez

.

The White Album: Side One

The White Album: Side One

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/65095-the-beatles-white-album-40th-anniversary-2/

The Beatles' White Album 40th Anniversary

[18 November 2008]
by PopMatters Staff

1. Back in the U.S.S.R.
Primary Songwriter: McCartney
Recorded: August 22-23, 1968 at Abbey Road

It's hard to think of any better way to start The Beatles than with
jet engines, social commentary, and a portrayal of the band's
American influence with a hard edge. Had "Back in the U.S.S.R." been
written stateside during this period, it couldn't have been taken as
parody, but Britain had blood-red communists roaming its everyday
streets, and this was Paul McCartney's brilliant political commentary
and quite possibly one of the best songs he ever contributed to the Fab Four.

A perfect case of tragedy meets comedy in the popular music realm,
"Back in the U.S.S.R" is almost a contradiction of sorts. It was
obvious the U.S. had a conflict with the Soviets during this period,
and it's rather interesting that McCartney arranged the song to share
Beach Boys surf-guitar kicks and vocal harmonies circa 1965. Let's
also not forget that the title is a play on Chuck Berry's "Back in
the USA", and its hook carries the same punch that Berry's
compositions often did. It seemed like the entire band was having fun
in a time of personal turmoil­everyone except for Ringo Starr, who
stormed off mid-session after arguing with McCartney over the drum
part. McCartney, being the perfectionist he is, laid down a fiery
drum performance that was just what the doctor ordered.

John Lennon and George Harrison played two of the better guitar
performances, sharing the lead spot and chugging along with
fast-driven chord breaks. It's hard to judge Lennon's character at
this time during the Beatles, considering he wrote some of his most
controversial tunes for the band during the "White Album"
sessions­but as he seemed largely to show little interest in
McCartney's pop compositions during this period, "Back in the
U.S.S.R." was right up his alley. Lennon even found himself playing
solid rock 'n' roll tunes with the Plastic Ono Band, and whether he
would come to admit it or not, this is one of the last truly great
Lennon-McCartney partnerships.

There are many people that claim there is no place for satire in rock
music, and although McCartney's image has been somewhat tarnished by
the media in recent years, he still remains one of the masters at
tackling serious issues in a comedic fashion. As the rest of the
Westernized world worried about Nuclear power subsiding in the Soviet
Union, here's McCartney claiming things such as "Well the Ukraine
girls really knock me out / They leave the West behind / And Moscow
girls make me sing and shout / That Georgia's always on my
my-my-my-my-my-my-my-my mind!" A Beach Boys-style anthem just went
from surfing to skiing and furry hats are now all the rage. Nuclear
bombs? No way. Nuclear women? You got it, boys. There had to be some
Lennon input here subconsciously, because McCartney tuned in one of
the best hard rock vocal delivered from below the belt.

"Back in the U.S.S.R." is not only a political and social commentary,
but it's also a step forward for the Beatles during a period of
turmoil in their career. Starr aside, they all put their troubles
away and delivered one of the most fierce and joyful performances of
their career. Forty years later, it sounds as fresh and fun as it did
at the time of release. It may be time to pull this one out again
during a time of conflict in the same region, and help people realize
again exactly what the Beatles' made people see during the height of
their career: that music truly can change the world.

­John Bohannon
--

2. Dear Prudence
Primary Songwriter: Lennon
Recorded: August 28-30, 1968 at Abbey Road

"Dear Prudence" is a sunrise of a song, a description of the perfect
day that sets the Beatles experience to a specific place and time.
Like much of The Beatles, "Dear Prudence" was born in India and of
the Beatles' 1968 visit to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Lennon's
distinctive guitar finger-picking is widely believed to have been
taught to him by Donovan, who was also in India to meditate with the
Maharishi. Prudence is Prudence Farrow, sister of Mia and such a
fanatical devotee to the Maharishi that she spent much of the retreat
locked away in her room. At the tail end of a demo version of "Dear
Prudence", Lennon cheekily explains, "All the people around her were
very worried about the girl because she was going insane. So we sang to her."

During the recording of The Beatles, a gap began to open between
Lennon and McCartney, both personally and in their musical styles.
Although most of the Beatles' catalog is credited to the pair, they
didn't always write that way. Often one would write a piece of a song
and the other would help to finish it. By the time they recorded The
Beatles, however, the relationships between the Beatles had changed
and the collaboration between Lennon and McCartney had eroded.

Lennon was falling in love with Yoko Ono, who suddenly appeared
inside the recording booth. As Harrison explains in the Anthology,
"there was a lot of ego in the band". Instead of making decisions
within the group, the writer of each song determined how it would
sound. Like "Back in the U.S.S.R.", the drumming on "Dear Prudence"
is widely credited not to Starr, but to McCartney.

The record opens with "Back in the U.S.S.R", a high-concept rave-up
that sets the tone for McCartney's other contributions to the record.
"Dear Prudence" follows, and does the same for Lennon. Some of his
contributions to the The Beatles are in stark contrast with the
optimism of "Dear Prudence". But all of the songs share a raw intimacy.
"Dear Prudence" exudes a vulnerability that Lennon doesn't bother to
hide behind musical embellishments. He is more direct here than in
any other song on The Beatles­including "Julia", which clearly has a
more personal subject. The lyrics are simple and sweet and it's more
than a little ironic that, besides the Beatles, the group most
identified with "Dear Prudence" is Siouxsie & the Banshees. The punk
band's 1983 cover version of the song was their biggest hit.

On "Dear Prudence", Lennon's request builds from a quiet entreaty to
a full-blown petition. In the song's final minute, as Lennon's voice
breaks on the refrain, he is, for all intents and purposes, Lloyd
Dobler in Say Anything, holding a boombox under a window. It's hard
to imagine how Prudence could resist coming out to play.

­Rachel Kipp
--

3. Glass Onion
Primary Songwriter: Lennon
Recorded: September 11-13 and October 10, 1968 at Abbey Road

In his Chronicles, Bob Dylan wrote, "A song is like a dream, and you
try to make it come true. They are like strange countries that you
have to enter." By that definition, "Glass Onion" is an epic
songwriting achievement. And yet, Lennon, the song's author,
dismissed it as "a throw-away song". Fans and critics alike argue
whether, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, "there is any there, there",
but as I explain below, despite Lennon's protestations, "Glass Onion"
holds significance that elevates it above many of the "better" songs
in the Beatles oeuvre.

One can begin with the title, about which­no surprise­there isn't any
firm agreement. Lennon stated that a glass onion is an object that,
after multiple layers were peeled away, would reveal a void core.
Utter transparency through and through. The Emperor without any
clothes. This interpretation suited Lennon's belief that over-zealous
fans had taken to over-analyzing every Beatle lyric­the urban legend
of McCartney's death and its resulting hysteria, being a primary
exemplar. This was why he said he teased listeners with:

I told you about the walrus and me, man
You know that we're as close as can be, man.
Well here's another clue for you all:
The walrus was Paul.

On the other hand, didn't "glass onions" also refer to caskets with
glass covers? Thus, wouldn't such a title fuel the "Paul Is Dead" fable?

The epitome of "a John song", "Glass Onion" is labyrinthine, layered,
challenging, confounding, ironic, jarring, dreamy. As one of rock's
first "post-modern" compositions, it boasts inchoate intertextuality
and rampant self-referentiality; licentiously mixing past and
present, it blurs image and reality, juxtaposes surface and depth,
and decomposes truth through allusion to other pieces of a
pre-existing puzzle (of which it forms a part). The song verily winks
at its listeners: challenging them, in the final verse ("Trying to
make a dove-tail joint, yeah"), to connect the dots. And how? By
employing a glass onion­which also can mean "monocle", a device that
helps us to see more clearly.

The obvious dots are the litany of Beatles songs­eight in all­which
are referenced: "Strawberry Fields Forever", "I Am the Walrus", "Lady
Madonna", "The Fool on the Hill", and "Fixing a Hole", overtly;
"There's a Place"­in the lyric "Well here's another place you can
go"­likely; "Within You Without You"­possibly­in the word "flow"; and
"She Loves You"­I would aver­in Lennon's intentional repetition near
the end of (the differently inflected) "Yeah, yeah, yeah".

Although "Glass Onion" is the third cut on the album, it was the
first to feature Starr on drums. Thirty-four takes of the drum track
were recorded and a second was laid two days later. A tambourine,
piano, and eight strings were added in subsequent sessions. The
return of Starr is significant because it best captures the degraded
spirit underlying these sessions: personnel feeling slighted, roles
minimized or usurped, contentious bickering, the principals sometimes
recording in separate rooms­in the case of McCartney, working solo.

Legend has it that much of the discord was Lennon's fault: committing
the sacrilege of inviting Ono into the midst. Lennon, himself,
suggests that the Walrus line had its origins in the new dynamic:

At that time I was still in my love cloud with Yoko. I thought,
'Well, I'll just say something nice to Paul, that it's all right and
you did a good job over these few years, holding us together'… The
line was put in partly because I was feeling guilty because I was
with Yoko and I was leaving Paul…

Only...it wasn't just that line. A careful reading suggests that the
entire song is an ode to McCartney, homage to a deep friendship from
a time now passed. Hence the references to a common Liverpool past
("cast iron shore") and the early songs composed together ("She Loves
You") at Paul's home ("There's a Place"). Once distinct talents
perfectly complemented one another, souls were hermetically linked.
The joint held fast.

And by twisting McCartney's own lyrics, Lennon was able to chart the
group's evisceration. McCartney playing wet nurse to the fragmenting
family ("Lady Madonna trying to make ends meet­yeah"), band members
pleading for reconciliation or accord ("trying to make the dove-tail
joint"); but, ultimately being unable to patch the irreparable
("fixing a hole in the ocean"). Metaphoric tears become a torrent
precipitated by the iterated peeling of onion skin: layers of years,
layers of accumulated scar tissue.

Lennon's artistic gift lay in how he externalized his internal. The
world he reduced to meaningful song was one of attachments forged and
broken. Leaving McCartney, cutting out on the Beatles, would require
externalization: explanation, justification, apology. In "Glass
Onion" we encounter a lover's confession, a partner's admission of
infidelity. There is morning-after remorse, but also open-eyed
realization that a threshold of no return has been crossed. As the
final stanza fades, George Martin's staccato strings declare inertia
in decline, with the final pulses mimicking a terminating heartbeat.
"Glass Onion" verily pronounces: "Paul, we are dead. I want a divorce".

As paean to Lennon's lost love for his Beatles, "Glass Onion" should
be regarded not only as one of the more important Beatles songs on
the album, but in the band's entire catalogue. As deep archeology, it
stands as a musical cipher, enabling us to decode the human dynamics
and political-historical back-story of the formation and impending
demise of rock's greatest band.

­tjm Holden
--

4. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Primary Songwriter: McCartney
Recorded: July 3-5, 8-9, 11, and 15, 1968 at Abbey Road

The Beatles can be regarded as rock's first truly sprawling double
album mess-terpiece, eschewing any singular sound in favor of
stream-of-consciousness genre-hopping. That is, of course, what makes
it so exciting: the total abandon of thematic unity altogether is the
theme. It's not just unfocused­it's brilliant. But the line between
genre exploration and parody, paying tribute and mocking, is awfully
thin­just ask Ween­and "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" deserves some of the blame.

Sure, "Back in the U.S.S.R." is a Beach Boys/Chuck Berry knock-off,
and "Yer Blues" spoofs British blues, but "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", a
McCartney-penned foray into reggae-tinged novelty territory, is the
least straight-faced of them all. For one thing, it has the distinct
honor of regularly appearing on lists of the worst songs of all time,
including Blender's "50 Worst Songs Ever". (The rest of the band
despised the track, and vetoed McCartney's request to release it as a
single. Lennon famously referred to it as "Paul's granny shit"­until
he got stoned to the gills and recorded the almost willfully
obnoxious honky-tonk piano. McCartney had spent something to the tune
of 40 hours trying in vain to record a good take, working with much
slower tempos.) It's also the only Beatles track ever to feature a
reggae skank, the rhythmic accent on the off-beat. Hell, how many
Beatles fans even recognize that word (skank) in a musical context?

If I'm being indirect, it's because "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" is at once
the worst and the most fun track on the album. Of all the Beatles'
songs, no other so openly embraces the corniness of a readymade
karaoke tune. What makes it even more hilarious is Starr's(?) seeming
inability to inject into his drumming any of the funk that reggae
syncopations demand­but hey, life goes on, bra. I'm reminded of my
childhood summer camp, where "Ob-La-Di" was a regular camp-wide
sing-along. It was always the hippest counselors who faithfully
recited those cute little elements from the recording that don't
appear on a lyric sheet: the creepy laughter, the infectious horn
breakdown during the bridge, the badass piano riff at 2:32. Other
little accidental sounds are all over the recording, giving it the
screwing-around-in-the-studio vibe of the Beach Boys' Party! album.
It's whimsical, and certainly tons more fun than the Offspring's
insipid tribute, "Why Don't You Get a Job?"

The title isn't drug-addled gibberish, by the way. Nigerian singer
and congo player Jimmy Scott took credit for the phrase (basic
translation: "Life goes on, bra!"), and went so far as to sue
McCartney for its use. Scott reportedly dropped charges after
McCartney helped him with alimony payments. The song is an ode to
starting a family, touching or trite, depending on your mood.
Desmond, the song's protagonist who presents Molly with a "20-carat
golden ring", is a reference to reggae legend Desmond Dekker. As for
the name mix-up in the last verse ("Desmond stays at home and does
his pretty face/ And in the evening she's a singer with a band"),
McCartney intended to sing Molly's name, yet left the mistake in for
confusion's sake.

Ultimately, "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" is a prelude to the inevitable
Lennon-McCartney musical divorce. Lennon hated the song; he was
drifting towards a solo career highlighted by "Imagine" and the
deeply personal catharsis of Plastic Ono Band, in which there is no
room for throwaway reggae tributes. McCartney was drifting
towards...pop. It's still comforting to know that the Beatles didn't
take themselves too seriously, and if that puts "Ob-La-Di" on some
Worst Songs Ever poll­and more than a few karaoke machines­then so be it.

­Zach Schonfeld
--

5. Wild Honey Pie
Primary Songwriter: McCartney
Recorded: August 20, 1968 at Abbey Road

At first, it sounds like notes selected at random, a near-atonal
haywire melody that might come from plucking a rubber band around a
lidless cigar box. It's like a surging swarm of Jew's harps sounding
each of the metronomically alternating notes. Then we settle uneasily
into the song's fumbling staccato rhythm, which could only have been
discovered by accident, a plodding stomp with no hint of backbeat
that works itself out awkwardly and improbably in seven measures
rather than the eight you'd expect. A hobo chorus of ragged falsetto
voices sing the phrase "honey pie" as a derelict war cry rather than
a term of endearment; when one of them warbles "I love you" at the
end of the track's minute of maundering, it sounds more lecherous
than sincere. Then almost before we have a chance to process all that
we've heard, a florid flamenco guitar figure ushers us into the world
of "Bungalow Bill". So it goes with McCartney's "Wild Honey Pie".

As a mid-album-side palate cleanser (especially necessary after the
inane "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da"­dismissed by Lennon as "granny shit"),
"Wild Honey Pie" is peculiarly aggressive, about as far from the
syrupy ballads on which he's made his fortune. On the track,
McCartney works as a one-man band, and it's palpable how much this
suits and pleases him at this point in the Beatles' disintegration.
The amount of fun he seems to be having with himself is almost
antisocial, and it's plain that McCartney no longer needs
collaboration to stoke his creativity.

"Wild Honey Pie" presents McCartney at virtually his most unfettered;
nothing else he would make for the Beatles would be as strange
(assuming you don't count the Magical Mystery Tour film). In Barry
Miles's biography, McCartney remembers the song as "a little
experimental piece":

It was very homemade; it wasn't a big production at all. I just made
up this short piece and I multitracked a harmony to that, and a
harmony to that, and a harmony to that, and built it up sculpturally.

As a kind of deliberately arty aural sculpture, "Wild Honey Pie"
functions as the dialectical response to his nostalgic, music-hall
ditty "Honey Pie", illustrating the two McCartneys that were
beginning to diverge at this point in his career. One is the Mr.
Mellow who is stolidly wedded to traditional forms and continually
sought to outdo himself in mawkishness­the evil McCartney that would
spew out "The Long and Winding Road" and "My Love" and ultimately
"Ebony and Ivory". The other McCartney, though, is a restless artiste
heedlessly chasing his muse into playful self-referentiality and an
odd, madcap minimalism. This McCartney would give us the sublime Ram
(1971) and the 1990s techno experiments of "the Fireman".

Unlike Lennon, whose experimentalism manifests in the arbitrary
tape-loop cacophony of "Revolution 9", McCartney seems more
interested in testing the limits of hookiness than testing listeners'
patience and freaking them out. The freakiest thing that happens
during "Wild Honey Pie" is hearing how the incongruous elements gel
in 52 seconds flat to become coherent and memorable, a sui generic
minor McCartney miracle. His first solo album would end up being full
of these homespun throwaway scraps that defy you to forget them.

­Rob Horning
--

6. The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill
Primary Songwriter: Lennon
Recorded: October 8, 1968 at Abbey Road

Even on the most spiritual of journeys, whenever there's a crowd
involved, you are guaranteed to have at least one asshole in the mix.

That, in perfectly blunt terms, is the general crux of "The
Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill". As legend has it, when the
Beatles were on their much-publicized stay with the recently-departed
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for a transcendental meditation retreat at his
ashram, one of their fellow students was a wealthy American woman by
the name of Nancy Cooke de Herrera, whose son, Richard A. Cooke III,
made a most controversial visit to the camp to see his mother.
Apparently both were big fans of the Beatles, and were said to have
had friendly relations with all of them but Lennon, who maintained a
cynical and distant rapport with them, because they were rich white
Americans at an Indian transcendental meditation camp, and apparently
doubted that the intentions of their presence were wholly sincere.

Well, as is interpreted by Nancy Cooke de Herrera in her book about
her experiences with the Maharishi, Beyond Gurus, Cooke III, who also
went by the name Rik, and his mother joined a group from the camp on
a tiger hunting excursion on elephant. However, when one of the
tigers charged at the herd of elephants, it was Rik who shot it dead
in a kneejerk reaction and got all puffed up over it, going so far as
to take a photograph of him standing over his trophy kill to brag
over with his frat buddies back in the U.S.

When the party returned from their adventure, Lennon quickly called
out Rik on his decision. "Wouldn't you call that slightly
life-destructive?" he quizzed sardonically, mindful of his
surroundings at the ashram. To be publicly lambasted by a Beatle, on
a spiritual journey no less, surely must have been a low point in the
life of Richard A. Cooke III. Meanwhile, Lennon chose to write this
silly campfire sing-along in response to the situation, a song that
certainly appealed more to children than the adults actually going
out to their local Korvette's and picking up The Beatles back on
Thanksgiving week in 1968.

"The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill", at 3:05, recounts the story
of the tiger hunt in Lennon's own scathingly English way. "It was
written about a guy in Maharishi's meditation camp who took a short
break to shoot a few poor tigers, and then came back to commune with
God," he told Playboy magazine.

"Bungalow Bill"­also the only Beatles track to feature a female lead
vocal, with Ono squeaking out the line, "Not when he looked so
fierce", the sheepish call to Lennon's snide response, "His mummy
butted in"­might not be the most beloved Beatles song. Critic Clark
Collis took a swipe at it in a review of the new Oasis album in
Entertainment Weekly just recently, calling Dig Out Your Soul "more
'Bungalow Bill' than 'Eleanor Rigby'". But if you were a little kid
born between 1968 and 1975, there's a pretty sporting chance you know
the lyrics to "Bill" better than "Ba Ba Black Sheep".

­Ron Hart
--

7. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Primary Songwriter: Harrison
Recorded: July 25, August 16, and September 3 and 5-6, 1968 at Abbey Road

My introduction to the Beatles came through my mother who happened to
have been born at an ideal time to appreciate every stage of their
evolution: she was young enough in 1964 to join the legions of
screaming girls across America, singing along to "I Want to Hold Your
Hand" on The Ed Sullivan Show yet mature enough to appreciate the
group through their more artistic, studio-hermit years. An important
aspect about her influence on my experience with their music is the
fact that she always cited Harrison as her favorite Beatle. For me,
the fact that such a powerful force in my young life felt a certain
way about a band whose albums I began to immerse myself in at a very
young age augmented my experience with a heightened level of intrigue
into all things George. The Harrison compositions became my typical
starting point for discovery into any Beatles album.

Choosing a favorite Harrison Beatles song is as utterly trivial as
determining the best song on The Beatles. Upon first listen, however,
no song in either category struck me with such brilliant immediacy as
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps". It is an emotionally, melodically,
and structurally complex masterpiece. Although it received limited
attention upon release, the song has since gained status a guitar
rock staple, as a certifiable major Beatles work, and as perhaps the
definitive statement of Harrison's career.

The supposed inspiration for Harrison's first composition on the
Beatles' historic double album came about through his studies of the
I Ching, an ancient Chinese classic text, which Harrison­as quoted in
the 1980 book of his recollections, I Me Mine­described as seemingly
"based on the Eastern concept that everything is relative to
everything else, as opposed to the Western view that things are
merely coincidental". The legend of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is
that Harrison, while visiting his parents' home, committed to writing
an entire song by applying this theory of relativism to randomly
chosen words out of a randomly chosen book; those words happened to
be "gently weeps".

Harrison first wrote "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" as an
organ-accompanied, acoustic guitar composition. His fellow Beatles
were rumored to have approached this initial incarnation with
complete indifference. The level of annoyed displeasure with early
takes among the band is believed by many to be the only documented
occasion in which Harrison's actions were a primary source of inner
Beatle turmoil. After a failed electric reworking, Harrison invited
Eric Clapton to assume lead guitar for the recording session which,
according to Harrison, "was good because that then made everyone act
better...they all took it more seriously". The session ended up
producing the official album version after, as admitted by Harrison,
Clapton's great yet "not Beatley enough" guitar work had to be put
"through the ADT to wobble it up a bit". (Due to legal reasons,
Clapton's guest appearance was uncredited.)

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps", compared with other Beatles
compositions, is superficially familiar in its verse, bridge, verse,
guitar solo, bridge, verse, outro structure. The uniqueness of the
composition lies in the melodic and lyrical structures of the verses
and bridges. The downbeat, minor-keyed, four-line verses transition
into the pleasantly sublime, major-keyed bridges. Wide-ranging,
pessimistic observations make up the odd lines of each verse while
the even lines are the familiar refrains of "While my guitar gently
weeps" and then "Still my guitar gently weeps". The most distinctive
aspect of the composition lyrically is the fact that the words of the
bridge are completely changed from its first occurrence to its second
while the aforementioned single-line, inner-verse refrains represent
the sole lyrical consistency throughout the track.

The actual content of the lyrics of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
can most easily be interpreted as a lament of love lost, not
particularly on a personal level, but more in a global sense. The
opening line of the song, "I look at you all / See the love there
that's sleeping", implies a sense of large-scale desensitization. The
opening line of the second verse, "I look at the world, and I notice
it's turning", evokes negative sentiments toward the ostensible
indifference shown by some in acknowledging such a loss of
compassion. The constant refrain about the perpetual, gentile weeping
of his guitar puts Harrison's real power to change things into an
existential perspective. Even as part of the most influential
artistic force in the world, he is still simply a musician. His
greatest weapon against the ills of the world is his music which, in
the grand scheme of things, only amounts to a gentle weep.

­A.J. Henriques
--

8. Happiness Is a Warm Gun
Primary Songwriter: Lennon
Recorded: September 23-25, 1968 at Abbey Road

The Beatles' first side ends with an intricate masterpiece that
represents a united­and unusually wonderful and weird­effort amidst
so much individuality. Reportedly McCartney's favorite "White Album"
song, "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" is also classic Lennon: a lyric
mixture of the psychedelic ("She's well acquainted with the touch of
the velvet hand / Like a lizard on a window pane"), the distinctly
British ("Lying with his eyes while his hands are busy working
overtime / A soap impression of his wife which he ate and donated to
the National Trust"), the obviously sexual ("When I hold you in my
arms / And feel my finger on your trigger"), the personal ("I need a
fix", reflecting Lennon's drug dependency), and the political
("Happiness is a warm gun" came from a magazine article about the
American gun lobby).

But beyond its potent poetry of religion, sexuality, violence, and
vision, "Happiness" is one of the Beatles' most musically
sophisticated tunes. It is not built on verses and choruses but
rather from four or five distinct sections that build in intensity.
Lennon claimed it as a miniature history of rock 'n' roll, and that's
fair enough. It opens with a delicate verse of guitar and voice only,
shifting upward as bass and drums enter. There is a sudden change to
3/4 time for a brief, guttural blues guitar solo that precedes "I
need a fix". Just as suddenly, the triple meter double-times to 6/8
while Lennon starts to sing "Mother Superior jump the gun", slowing
to 3/4 on the second half of the phrase. Which happens six times. But
with a measure of 4/4 on the end of the every other repetition. Got
it? Needless to say, the familiar doo-woppy "Happiness is a warm gun
/ Bang-bang, shoot-shoot!" is back in 4/4 again, but Lennon's spoken
interlude ("When I hold you...") is in 3/4 again.

All this intricacy might sound like symphonic prog-rock run amok,
except that it takes a scant 2:43, with each section as concise as a
dot of color in a Seurat painting. And the wonder of the song is
precisely this almost shocking brevity and incongruity: no section
repeats, and each part seems like a new world, a revelation. While it
is clear that "Happiness" glues together several different tunes,
there is also flat-out artistry in how these disparate pieces echo
off each other. The toggling between duple and triple meter gives the
tune balance, even as the intensity of each section ramps ever
upward. There is also a balancing of romantic imagery (starting with
a girl and a man) and violent imagery, allowing Lennon to be
alternately provocative ("Mother Superior" mixed together with "gun")
and playful (is it the woman's trigger or the gun's trigger he has
his finger on?). As always, Lennon is aware of how the
commodification of the Beatles can be exploited: the title of the
song is a bitter joke about the gun lobby, but also a reference to
the cuddly catch-phrase from Peanuts of the time, "Happiness Is a
Warm Puppy". The joy of this play is that it is also sonic: the
beautiful reverb on the opening guitars doesn't even last a minute,
but the vocal falsetto doubling that starts with "I need a fix" is
its own kind of candy, which then develops into the mocking harmony
of "Bang-bang, shoot-shoot".

All of which is to say: Wow. Only five years had passed since "I Want
to Hold Your Hand", yet the Beatles were now writing and recording
complex poetic suites rather than verse-chorus pop tunes. Radiohead
apparently found "Happiness" of inspiration when working on its own
multi-part tune, "Paranoid Android", for OK Computer. But what had
not changed for the Beatles was their keen awareness that rock 'n'
roll­the sublime art of the three-minute symphony­was worth an
investment of great wit and passion. "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" is
catchy like a pop song, provocative like protest art, effortlessly
complex and yet off-the-cuff funny. Which is to say: it is the
apotheosis of "Beatle-esque".

­Will Layman

.

Birthday: The White Album Turns 40

Birthday: The White Album Turns 40

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/65094-the-beatles-white-album-40th-anniversary/

The Beatles' White Album 40th Anniversary

[17 November 2008]
by Zeth Lundy and Bill Gibron

If the Beatles were the Messiahs of Music, then their self-titled
follow-up to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was and is their
Bible, complete with contributing Gospels according to John,
Paul...George, and Ringo. Born out of an attempt to find a spiritual
center within their growing superstardom, the disenchanted lads from
Liverpool were growing up­and growing restless. The death of manager
Brian Epstein still weighed on them, and a recent trip to India had
produced little in the way of enlightenment. What it did create was a
kind of aesthetic purge, a proto-punk decision to strip away the
artifice and 'get back' (to coin a future phrase) to their origins. A
mix of straight ahead rock, lo-fi acoustics, personal reflection,
rambling cockiness, and a minor amount of Lennon's newfound
avant-garde gumption, The Beatles was viewed as a direct retort to
their previous concept epic. But as with anything Beatles, it was
also more than that. Indeed, the so-called White Album also became
the last-act rebuttal to a Summer that was more socio-political lust
than love.

But what does it all mean some 40 years on? Can anything akin to
clarity come from something that, by all accounts, should have been
shaved down to the classic sonic cliché­i.e., a single "good" album?
In many significant ways, The Beatles represents the end of the
counterculture. It signals the moment when the meaning was drained
out of flower power. It pissed on the predilection to "tune in, turn
on, and drop out" and provided the band with the first of many
catalysts for their eventual bad vibe breakup. Unlike everything else
in their astonishingly short career (they hit it big in '62, and were
a professional postscript a mere eight years later), there seemed to
be no purpose, no rhyme or reason to the album's existence. Like the
hit or miss compilations at the beginning, there was an absence of
theme, a lack of stylistic cohesion. Unless you want to consider
backwards glancing experimentalism a model, this was merely a
collection of tunes.

But what a brazen, ballsy anthology it is. Whenever someone suggests
that The Beatles be pared down to a stand-alone LP, the inevitable
debate arises­what to get rid of? Do we junk Ringo's two
contributions (the self-penned "Don't Pass Me By" and the closing
lullaby "Good Night"), or marginalize an already underappreciated
George (who, by this point, was backlogging an impressive list of
soon to be classics). Sure, "Wild Honey Pie" seems like a joke the
band forgot to let its fans in on, but in the context of the two
songs surrounding it­the reggae-fied "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" and "The
Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill"­it makes fractured genius sense.
Naturally, there are many who point their still strident "no Yoko"
fingers and find nothing but noise in Lennon's self-indulgent sound
collage "Revolution 9", and yet what it represents (the zenith of the
boys attempt to grow beyond their mop-top merchandising) gets lost in
the lambasting.

Having retired from touring two years before, the Beatles were both
inspired and stifled by the studio. In that regard, The Beatles often
sounds like a set list for an abandoned tour, the rollercoaster
realities of a band that could handle almost any aural approach with
amazing skill and dexterity. As the aforementioned noise track
suggests, the material here feels raw and unfinished, few tunes
taking on the fully formed awe of "A Day in the Life" or "Penny
Lane". It's as if each member of the group, locked in his own little
world while exiled away in India, decided that there was nothing left
to fight for­at least, not as pop culture icons. Instead, it was
going to be about the art from here on in, no matter what form or
figure it decided to take. Amidst all the quitting and complaining,
the studio session struggles and individual inspirations, it was time
to upend the untamed excesses of their Magical Mystery media image
and return to their roots.

It's no surprise then that, after this professional purgative, the
boys only had a couple dozen songs left in them. Yellow Submarine
would see a quartet of paisley plied outtakes, while Abbey Road and
Let It Be became the pro and con of the band's rekindled spirits.
After climbing the Everest that was international iconography, and
standing on the world's highest precipice in rapt determination on
what to do next, the Beatles decided to do something totally unheard
of. Instead of playing it safe, or retracing their steps into
retirement, they resolved to step up to the edge, and jump. It was
more than just a leap of faith though. It was, perhaps, an attempt to
leave their Earthly shells behind and finally find the spirituality
their journey to Rishikesh failed to provide. The Beatles does have
the aura of legends lost in a void of infinite variables. That they
decided to explore all of them before finally falling apart stands as
the reason the Beatles remain timeless. It's also why this record is
considered a classic.

­Bill Gibron
--

Every time I listen to The Beatles, I regress. Although every Beatles
album will be forever linked to my childhood, their 1968
double-LP­the ninth official full-length studio album the group had
released within a five-year period­is especially conducive to sudden
bouts of youthful nostalgia. It's the one album where the band really
gets back, a motley patchwork of nursery-rhyme ditties and communal
sing-alongs; it is, on its surface, a collection of songs about
tigers, blackbirds, raccoons, monkeys, and piggies, songs that are
alternately fleeting and preoccupied, songs both abstract and
concrete, songs that turn gibberish into mantra­the stuff of pop
fantasy and digressive whimsy that is so appealing to the less
grown-up geography of our so-called sophisticated palate.

But The Beatles is, aesthetically, its own regression, a regression
into the tropes, truisms, and motifs of rock 'n' roll's creviced
shell. It's a chameleon of form, hollowing out the foundations of
Chuck Berry and the ghosts of British music hall, moving from faux
reggae to pastoral folk, from reductive blues jams and progressive
proto-metal vamps to whispered balladry and late-night lullabies. The
Beatles both summarized the splintered British music scene of the
late '60s, with tongue firmly in cheek, and served as a crib sheet
for its origins. Self-referential, perverse, and impishly
stock-taking, The Beatles is the first post-modern pop album: it
nestles into form and fractures it, making the familiar suddenly
fantastical, for the first time and for all time.

At this point, in late 1968, the Beatles had changed the course of
pop music countless times over, and now they were predicting the
paths it would follow in the future. The endearing mess that is The
Beatles­producer George Martin has conceded that they "should have
made a very, very good single album rather than a double"­forecasts
upcoming ego-driven sprawls of concept like the Rolling Stones' Exile
on Main St., Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life, Fleetwood
Mac's Tusk, and the Clash's London Calling, all of them sharing a
perfection wrought from a tapestry of imperfections. Albums could be
whatever they wanted to be, for better and for worse, self-editing
and artistic restraint be damned. (I would also argue that Lennon's
contributions to The Beatles, mostly disparagements of hypocrites and
authority figures, were the beginnings of punk, at least in attitude.)

The album's sprawl, dissociative and in search of a greater purpose,
also predicts the anything-goes, DIY methodology of late-20th century
indie rock and bedroom pop­indeed, a record like Guided by Voices'
fractured Bee Thousand (1994) is a direct descendent of The Beatles'
slackened tactic. The Beatles destroyed the notion that pop records
had to be made in one room of a professional recording studio by a
unified collective. In fact, the album was made in simultaneous
pieces, within different rooms at Abbey Road and nearby Trident
Studios; many songs were recorded by a fraction of the band, while
others were completed entirely by one Beatle alone. And so although
The Beatles is a perennial fan favorite (if you were bringing one
Beatles album to a desert island, why wouldn't it be the generous one
with 30 tracks?), it is actually the least Beatles-esque of all their
albums. As Bob Spitz wrote in his masterful 2005 biography of the
band, "The new repertoire, almost to a song, had lost its
collaborative aspect...the writing process would forgo the critical
feedback­the suggestion of a phrase, a few bars, or a middle
eight­that helped shape a Lennon-McCartney song in the past." (It's
also important to note that by recording so many songs, the band was
effectively getting closer to the end of its contract with EMI. The
Beatles was the first of the group's albums to be released on its own
Apple label, rather than Parlophone/Capitol­yet another connection
that can be drawn to the burgeoning indie trends of later decades.)

Formally, therefore, the songs on The Beatles aren't always up to
classicist snuff. The puzzle-piece functionality of a song like
"Happiness Is a Warm Gun" replaces the compositional neatness of a
past song like "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party", to pick an
arbitrary example (or even a more similar experiment like "A Day in
the Life", which still attempted to emulate the existence of a middle
eight with its pasting-together of separate sections), while tracks
like "Helter Skelter", "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?", and "Yer
Blues" eschew any sort of formal ingenuity in order to satisfy more
primal urges. This isn't to say that these songs are inferior
examples of the Beatles' genius, but for the first time (perhaps the
only time) Beatles songs were being dictated by mood, imagery, and/or
instinct rather than by compositional intellect.

To put it another way: The Beatles appeals to us on a gut level. It's
pop music that's unhinged and presumptive, excitable and unashamed,
blessed with the unpredictable acumen of a mood swing. This is an
incongruous menu of music, and our brains duly inform us that it
shouldn't make any sense, that it is all too much, a consequence of
our gluttonous desires for more. But it does work, against our better
judgment: it is a place where ambivalent political sentiment can rub
up against a sentimental showtune distraction, where declarations of
carnal and spiritual love can exist in close proximity. It works
because it wills itself to work, and because the child inside us deems it so.

­Zeth Lundy

.

Chavez' Delano headquarters now historic landmark

[2 articles]

Chavez' Delano headquarters now historic landmark

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_11032860

The Associated Press
Posted: 11/20/2008

BAKERSFIELD, Calif.­The compound where Cesar Chavez formed the group
that would become the United Farm Workers is now a national historic landmark.

In 1966, Chavez bought his Forty Acres compound outside of Delano,
where he would fast for better wages and working conditions. He also
received Sen. Robert F. Kennedy as a visitor. The compound grew to
include a health clinic and retirement center.

Last month the U.S. Department of the Interior made the compound a
National Historic Landmark, which means it has been recognized as a
significant part of the country's heritage.

The compound now includes regional offices for the UFW. Employees
hope the new designation will increase tourism to Delano.

--------

Cradle of UFW movement earns national honor

http://www.bakersfield.com/1439/story/614957.html

BY LOUIS MEDINA, Californian staff writer
lmedina@bakersfield.com | Wednesday, Nov 19 2008

Norberto Vargas remembers when working without breaks, water or
portable restrooms was the norm for migrant farmworkers in the 1960s.

Then came César Chavez and his Forty Acres compound. He purchased the
land on Garces Highway and Mettler Avenue just west of Delano in
1966, built it up and established the nation's first permanent
agricultural labor union, the United Farmworkers of America ­ now the
United Farm Workers.

"It was hard and the UFW signed a contract in 1967. I'll never forget
that. I was 17 years old," said Vargas, originally from Portugal, who
has lived in converted rental housing on the property for about 12
years. "We suffered a lot, so I think it should be historic."

Well, as of Oct. 7, it is: The U.S. Department of the Interior
declared Forty Acres a National Historic Landmark, only the third
such site in Kern County.

"The National Historic Landmark Program designates sites that are
nationally significant historic places because they possess
exceptional and rare value or quality in illustrating or interpreting
the heritage of the U.S.," said Holly Bundock, spokeswoman for the
the Oakland-based Pacific West Regional Office of the National Park Service.

"That's where we signed the first farmworker contracts in the history
of the country," said Chavez's brother, Richard.

It's also where Chavez fasted for weeks in his fight for better wages
and working conditions for farmworkers and where he received a visit
from Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.

On the site, the farmworkers and their supporters built a gas
station, multipurpose hall, health clinic and retirement center.

"We built the first-ever retirement homes for farmworkers in the
country and it still exists," Richard Chavez said. Named Agbayani
Village after Filipino labor leader Pablo Agbayani, according to UFW
national vice president Armando Elenes, the housing complex has since
been turned into apartments.

Other original buildings have evolved as well.

The multipurpose hall, where a lot of UFW meetings still take place,
is now also rented out for weddings and quinceañeras.

The clinic was converted into offices for about 15 regional UFW
employees around 2001, Elenes said.

One such employee is data entry clerk Julianna Osorno, a Delano
resident who was "born into the movement," and whose father, Manuel
Uranday, was one of Chavez's body guards.

She is hopeful about what the designation as National Historic
Landmark will do for Forty Acres.

"Because Delano, being what it is, and for César, we do get people
stopping here," she said, including student groups and even
out-of-state visitors. "But with this happening, I do think we'll get
a lot more."

A plaque will be erected somewhere on the grounds, Elenes said, but
the process could take a few months.

Elaine Jackson-Retondo, National Historic Landmarks Program Manager
for the Pacific West Region, whose office requested nomination of
Forty Acres through a cooperative agreement with the University of
Washington, said no special funding accompanies the designation of a
site as a National Historic Landmark. However, she said, that
designation can make it a more competitive candidate for grants.

What the designation does give Forty Acres is hands-on consultation
from the Department of the Interior regarding preservation of
structures or alterations that may be done to the buildings without
compromising the integrity of the landmark, she said.

Elenes called the designation "an incredible honor."

"We're very proud of what we accomplished," Richard Chavez said. "The
most important thing is that farmworkers were able to better their
lives. And it continues. That tells us that César's efforts were not in vain."

.

The Castle kiss-in

The Castle kiss-in

http://www.xtra.ca/public/Vancouver/The_Castle_kissin-5906.aspx

IN HINDSIGHT / Gordon Hardy brings us back to GLF's beginnings

Robert Rothon
November 20, 2008

Last month, David Myers reminisced about his involvement with the
Vancouver Gay Liberation Front (GLF) from 1971 to 1973. This month,
Gordon Hardy takes us back a year earlier to the GLF's beginnings.

The youth revolution of the 1960s, the first manifestation of the
baby boom's nascent political power, was beginning to change
Vancouver ­anyone remember how 4th Ave was called Canada's Haight Ashbury?

The city's gay community was changing as well, with young, leftwing
activists beginning to compete with bar owners and business people
for influence. Gordon Hardy was one such activist. Together with
George Smith, a former teacher at SFU, he founded the GLF.

"George and I had first conceived of GLF over drinks one quiet night
at a tiny gay bar on Seymour St called Faces. Faces was a bottle
club, ie. members brought their own booze. It was a great place
although it was so tucked away behind double doors that you almost
needed someone to take you there.

"We were both surprised when so many people showed up at Pink Cheeks,
a run-down little hippy commune on Vancouver's Eastside where our
early GLF meetings were held, and how quickly they wanted to move
from talk to action.

"Our first political action took place at the Castle Hotel beer
parlour on Granville St, a straight-owned and -operated gay pub that
strictly enforced a no-touch rule, ie. if bar patrons of the same sex
so much as touched, let alone kissed, each other they were ejected. A
bunch of us, straight and gay, packed the bar one night and held a
public, very wet "kiss-in" to protest the no-touch policy of the bar.
We had a ball.

"We ignored the waiters' demands to stop. Management called the
police. My favourite recollection of the kiss-in was the reaction of
the young police officers who walked into the bar and then walked out
again as soon as they could, looking acutely embarrassed and arresting no one.

"We only called it quits when the waiters started to beat on people.
Then, as a group, we left, drunk and happy."

The Castle kiss-in was typical of GLF political action according to
Hardy. "It combined theatre, acting out against an absurd anti-gay
regulation, and fun. While we took gay oppression seriously, we made
it the subject of non-violent ridicule and political ambush."

Vancouver's gay community also received the GLF treatment.

"As young gay socialists, we were determined to challenge the corrupt
and corrupting nature of the gay scene in which we found ourselves,"
Hardy says. "We saw it as sexually predatory and exploitative. And we
naively thought we could change it. As quaint as it may sound today,
socialist sexual morality for us meant rejecting promiscuity, the
sexual objectification of others, and avoiding unsocialist depravity
such as public sex and bathhouses."

There was, however, "some backsliding," he acknowledges. "We weren't
angels, after all."

Unlike many leftist movements of the time, the GLF had a flexible
approach to politics.

"Those of us from highly political backgrounds also rejected rigid
structure and party doctrine," says Hardy. "We were sick of the
orthodoxies of the left, and embraced political diversity instead. As
long as people accepted the general idea of gay liberation ­linked to
all the other liberation movements of the time ­we welcomed everyone
regardless of their political views. There was strength in numbers,
and we needed everyone."

This flexibility was also evident in the way the GLF operated. The
group had no particular structure, recalls Hardy.

"Nobody and everybody spoke for GLF. GLF did not claim to speak on
behalf of the gay community. The idea of any unelected person or
group claiming to speak on behalf of an entire community would have
struck us as absurd and undemocratic," he insists, while admitting
that its lack of structure and loose membership resulted in its
disappearance and its replacement by smaller, tighter and, from his
perspective, more doctrinaire organizations like the Gay Alliance
Towards Equality (GATE).

"We always found GATE far too grim and dogmatic for our tastes," Hardy says.

In many ways, the GLF was typical of 1960s counterculture, reflects
Hardy. "GLF stood for joy through leftwing anarchy. Its playfulness
was directly inspired by the Youth International Party. The kiss-in
was one, best example of that."

Would the GLF still be as critical of the gay community today as it
was decades ago, when it demanded that the Georgia Straight drop its
gay columnist, QQ, because of what it considered to be an insulting
focus on drag queen gossip in his writing?

"I believe that many of us would be appalled at the sexual
smuttiness, political intolerance and self-indulgence that have
become standard fare in today's 'queer culture' in Vancouver," states Hardy.

"The gay community is in the grip of self-appointed leaders who
uphold a grim and joyless orthodoxy, paranoid and prone to hysteria.
If the GLF existed today, we would throw rotten eggs at them. We
would mock the empty fetishism that surrounds the rainbow banners," he says.

"The saddest irony is that ­for all our lip service to diversity ­we
have become a community of bullies."

.

From 'Hair' to 'Jesus Christ Superstar,' Neeley is the savior

From 'Hair' to 'Jesus Christ Superstar,' Neeley is the savior

http://www.mydesert.com/article/20081125/LIFESTYLES01/81125023/1263/update

By Bruce Fessier • The Desert Sun
November 25, 2008

Ted Neeley can honestly say Jesus Christ made him a star.

Neeley, who has played lead roles in the stage productions of "Hair,"
"Tommy" and the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," plays Jesus
in the touring production of "Jesus Christ Superstar," opening a
three-night engagement at the McCallum Theatre Friday. But, as he
said from the tour's launch in New Mexico, it seems like he's been
playing Jesus for an eternity. QUESTION: You've been involved with
"Jesus Christ Superstar" since...
ANSWER: Almost 2000 years now. The original Broadway production was
1971, the film was released in 1973 and I've been playing with it off
and on ever since.
I remember you from the Universal Amphitheatre production in the early '70s.
What a great experience that was. Tom O'Horgan, who directed that,
was the original director for the Broadway show. He and Robin Wagner,
who designed the sets, were partners in those productions.
O'Horgan also directed you in "Hair" in Los Angeles.
Yes he did. I had the great opportunity to be part of that for three
years prior to "Superstar." After the "Superstar" film was done, we
came back and collaborated on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"
on the road.
What was it like going from "Hair" to Jesus?
(Laughs) Here's an interesting thing about that. "Hair" basically is
Jesus, Judas and Mary in the Haight-Ashbury. I know that's a stretch,
but the essence of "Hair" was a person who was an extremely
rebellious leader of his time, a man who was more the peaceful
loving, gentle person, and a woman somewhere in between trying to
find herself. What we did (in) "Hair" was to find historical
compadres, if you will, to give ourselves some depth. "Hair" was the
original American tribal love rock musical. I believe, had it not
been for "Hair," there would never have been a "Jesus Christ
Superstar" as a theatrical work.
Do you believe ("Superstar" writers) Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber
were influenced by "Hair"?
There's no question, especially Tim because Tim is your standard
English football player with his nose in the dirt doing the thing on
the street. He had the ability to go into the first four books of the
New Testament – primarily the book of John – to pull the story line
out and add all of that spectacular spiritual element to street
language. Andrew, because of his classical background, added the
orchestral elements. So they were absolutely influenced.
It's funny. "Hair" translated to top 40 radio while only a couple
songs from "Jesus Christ Superstar" broke through to top 40 and they
weren't typical of top 40.
You're absolutely right and it's primarily because "Hair" was
strictly a rock-based piece. There was no idea of getting into
symphonic elements. The initial idea of "Superstar" was the same – to
have just a rhythm section: two guitars, bass and drums, possibly a
keyboard. It wasn't until the film that the whole orchestration was
able to be there. Andre Preven put the London Philharmonic on top of
those (rhythm) tracks. With our group, we have the rock rhythm
section. It is raw, it is raucous, it is symphonic, it is as close to
a combination of all that as can be.
Do you use sequencers (computer-generated music)?
We didn't sequence anything. The Russian Philharmonic Orchestra was
used to record everything we needed. That was then transferred to our
system and digitalized.
There was a spiritual element to "Tommy," too. Was that also an
extension of the same character?
It was. It's interesting. All of those characters, even creeping into
"Sgt. Pepper," where I got to do Billy Shears, had a spiritual
connection. Tommy being the deaf, dumb and blind kid who knew how to
play pinball who got so into his deaf, dumb and blindness – which was
psychosomatic – that he became a spiritual leader. I challenge
anybody to create something that has a single charismatic character
with some sort of following without invoking spirituality. That's why
this one has lasted as long as it has. Everybody connects to the
universal spirituality. Obviously, they have a religious connection,
but this is not about religion at all. This is about the last seven
days in the life of Jesus Christ as seen through the eyes of his
friends. The story is narrated by Judas and Mary and Caiaphas and
Annas and Pontius Pilate and King Herod. All of those characters are
letting us see how the essence of Christ, if you will, affected their
lives. Jesus is there knowing it's the last seven days of his life,
but nobody else does.
Let me ask you about your spiritual association. Do you bring
religious baggage or what might be called a spiritual awakening to the role?
It is definitely an awakening. I grew up in a very tiny town in
Texas, Southern Baptist Bible Belt, so by the time I was 12 I had a
great background in religion. When you grow up in a town that small,
everything you do revolves around the church. So, I knew the Bible
stories. And the dogma is in this piece because it comes out of the Bible.
But the show was controversial when it came out.
It was controversial for many reasons. First and foremost, people
were saying, "My God, Jesus is singing with a rock 'n' roll band."
Second, Mary Magdalene's character sang a song directly to Jesus
saying, "I don't know how to love him." So, look what it did. When
"Superstar" hit the scene there were no Christian rock bands. Now the
Christian rock industry is one of the most successful industries in
all of music. I'm not saying Superstar made that happen, but it
certainly influenced it.
Are you playing your character the same as you were 30 years ago?
I hope so. But it certainly has grown in intensity and extremely so
in terms of in depth of spirituality. You can't do something like
this for a period of time and not be influenced by that which the
subject discusses. And having conversations with people after the
show and through e-mail and regular mail how it has influenced the
lives of people all over the world certainly would make one's
spirituality deepen. Mine certainly has.
How does playing Jesus affect you in real life?
I sincerely hope it has made me a better person. I feel it has. For
me, if I'm going to stand in those sandals and be a part of that
which we perceive as Jesus Christ, I am going to do everything I
possibly can to represent the essence of that spirit on stage and
even more so when I am off.
I would think you couldn't just be sitting at a bar pounding them
down. People would say, 'Look, there's Jesus getting loaded!"
You are absolutely right. I've never been one to sit in a bar and
pound them down anyway. I'm not saying I'm not an imbiber, but I have
always, since the '70s, been aware of how people perceive that.
What do people say to you about playing Jesus?
Honestly, people approach me with such reverence, I have to generally
say, especially to children, "I'm a rock 'n' roll drummer from Texas
who hits high notes for a living and I'm very, very lucky to be a
part of this."
You're 65 now?
Actually, I'm 33. I will forever be 33. But, yes, you hit it right on
the money.
You don't look it.
I have people say to me, "Man, you never age. What is it?" I borrow
once again from theatrical history and say, "You should see the
photographs of me hanging in my closet."

.

Red Army Faction boss to be freed

[4 articles]

Red Army Faction boss to be freed

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7745705.stm

24 November 2008

A German court has approved the release from jail of a leader of a
radical leftist group involved in high-profile killings in the 1970s
and 1980s.

Red Army Faction leader Christian Klar, aged 56, is serving five life
terms but will have served the minimum required 26 years by January.

The court in Stuttgart said there were no grounds to keep him in custody.

The group, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, targeted bankers,
businessmen, judges and US servicemen.

More than 30 people were killed by the gang, before it disbanded 10 years ago.

Gang's brutality

"A major consideration was the question of whether it could be feared
that Christian Klar would commit significant criminal acts again,"
but the judges decided there was no evidence he would, the court said
in a statement.

It said that Klar would remain on probation for five years after his release.

Klar was arrested in 1982 and later convicted of nine murders and 11
attempted murders.

It is the brutality of the Red Army Faction's crimes which shocked
the public, the BBC's Steve Rosenberg in Berlin says.

Along with the principal targets of their terror, bodyguards and
drivers were gunned down.

In one case, the head of a bank was assassinated at his home, after
being presented with a bunch of flowers by the killers.

This year's film - The Baader Meinhof Complex - by Uli Edel, has been
named as Germany's official entry for the 2009 foreign language film Oscar.

--------

Germany to free Baader-Meinhof fighter

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hTbENHP0_7HWjwtM1y-fPizlXkOw

11/24/08

STUTTGART, Germany (AFP) ­ One of two members still in prison from
the left-wing Red Army Faction that terrorised West Germany in the
1970s will be freed in January after 26 years behind bars, a court
ruled on Monday.

Christian Klar, in jail since 1982, will be freed on parole on
January 3 after serving the minimum 26 years of his life sentence on
nine counts of murder and 11 counts of attempted murder, the court in
Stuttgart decided.

Klar, now 56, is one of only two surviving members of the RAF -- also
known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang after two of its founders, Andreas
Baader and Ulrike Meinhof -- still in jail.

"The court sees it as a heavy burden for his victims and his families
that the convicted man has yet to distance himself from his serious
crimes. But on the decisive question of whether (Klar) will commit
other serious crimes this was not deemed ... to be decisive," the
court said in a statement.

It also said that although Klar continued to make public comments
that are "extremely critical" of German society, his behaviour is
"completely changed (and) constructive" and he has "unequivocally ...
distanced himself from the 'armed struggle'."

The RAF grew out of the 1960s civil rights movement, declaring war on
what it said was a morally bankrupt West German state run by former
Nazis, carrying out a wave of assassinations, bombings and
kidnappings from 1970 onwards.

After Baader, Meinhof and other founder members were arrested in
1972, Klar and Brigitte Mohnhaupt took over the leadership of the
group and embarked on a campaign of terror that shook West Germany to
its foundations.

On April 7, 1977 they murdered federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback,
shot dead by a man on a motorbike with a machine gun along with his
driver and a colleague while his Mercedes waited at traffic lights.

On July 30, RAF militants including Klar killed the chairman of
Dresdner Bank, Juergen Ponto, in a shooting outside his house near
Frankfurt in a failed kidnap attempt.

Then in a raid in September they abducted industrialist Hanns Martin
Schleyer, a former member of the Nazi SS, killing his driver and
three others in the process.

Meinhof had been found hanged in her prison cell in 1976 but the
kidnappers demanded the release of Baader and the other leaders
Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe or they would kill Schleyer.

A month later the RAF hijacked a Lufthansa passenger plane with the
help of Palestinian militants, diverting it to the Somali capital
Mogadishu where it was stormed by elite German commandos on October 17.

The next morning Baader and fellow founding members Ensslin and Raspe
were found dead in their cells -- sparking conspiracy theories that
they were murdered -- and on October 19 the RAF killed Schleyer.

Many RAF members went underground in communist East Germany, but Klar
stayed in the West, taking part in the near-fatal 1981 attack on the
head of US forces in Europe, General Frederick Kroesen, using a
Soviet anti-tank missile.

Police finally caught up with him in November 1982, arresting him in
woods near Hamburg, aged 30 but looking gaunt and considerably older.
He then spent seven years in solitary confinement in different top
security prisons.

Mohnhaupt, who led the RAF with Klar after the group's original
leaders were imprisoned, was released from prison in March 2007 after
serving 24 years for her role in nine murders.

The group, which is believed to have killed a total of 34 people,
abandoned violence in 1992 and formally disbanded in 1998.

In May 2007 German President Horst Koehler refused to pardon Klar or
Birgit Hogefeld, the two remaining RAF members still in prison.
Hogefeld is not eligible for release until 2011.

Four RAF members have never been caught: Friederike Krabbe, part of
Klar's "second generation," as well as Daniela Klette, Ernst-Volker
Staub and Burkhard Garweg, members of the third and final wave.

Krabbe, who is accused of involvement in Schleyer's kidnap and
murder, was last reported to have been seen in Baghdad in 2003.

--------

Last 'Red Army Faction' leader to be freed on parole

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2008/1125/1227486545077.html

DEREK SCALLY in Berlin
November 25, 2008

THE LAST ringleader of the Baader-Meinhof guerrilla gang is to be
released on parole in January after 26 years behind bars.

Christian Klar was a member of the so-called "second generation" of
the extreme left gang also known as the "Red Army Faction", and was
involved in the killing of Dresdner Bank chairman Jürgen Ponto and
state prosecutor Siegfried Buback.

He helped to organise the so-called "German Autumn" campaign of 1977
to pressurise the West German government to release from prison Red
Army ringleaders Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ennslin.

The Red Army Faction emerged as a violent offshoot of the 1968
student movement, protesting against US actions in Vietnam and
elsewhere and the perceived failure by the West German state to
address its Nazi past adequately.

Klar was one of the few Red Army members not to go underground in
East Germany after the ringleaders killed themselves in prison in 1977.

Although the Red Army continued officially for another 21 years,
finally disbanding in 1998, its energy was spent. After organising
some unsuccessful attacks on US and Nato targets, Klar was captured
in 1982. He was sentenced to life imprisonment three years later on
nine counts of murder and 11 counts of attempted murder.

He was last seen in public in a 2002 television interview, rejecting
the idea of feeling guilt for his actions. "In the political sphere,
against the background of our battle, that's no way to talk," he
said. "I'll leave the feelings to the other side and respect their
feelings but they're not my feelings."

That lack of remorse prompted German president Horst Köhler to reject
his application for clemency last year.

A Stuttgart court yesterday noted that Klar's failure to show remorse
remained "a heavy burden on the victims and their relatives". However
it awarded the five-year parole, saying there were "no indications of
the convict's continued danger".

Fellow gang member Brigitte Mohnhaupt, leader of the second
generation, was released last year and is now believed to be working
in a Bremen kindergarten.

The director of the Berliner Ensemble, Claus Peymann, has offered
Klar an internship as stage assistant at the theatre founded by
Bertolt Brecht in 1949.

--------

Parole for German terrorist angers victims

http://www.euronews.net/en/article/24/11/2008/parole-for-german-terrorist-angers-victims/

24/11/08

Victims of German leftist terror group the Red Army Faction have
reacted angrily to the news that one of its former leaders is to be
given parole. A court in Stuttgart has ruled that Christian Klar, who
has spent 26 years in prison for murder, will be released on parole
in January. "In agreement with experts and the prison authorities,
the Senate has no reason to believe the prisoner poses a continued
danger to society," a court spokeswoman said. Klar was convicted in
1985 of involvement in 20 murders and attempted murders in the 1970s.
These included the killings of senior German industry figures and
public officials. One of the RAF's victims criticised the decision as
a slap in the face to those who suffered.

.

The Continuing Saga of the Beatles’ White Album

[2 articles]

Why Don't We Do It in the Doll's House?:
A Peek Inside the Beatles' White Album

http://crawdaddy.wolfgangsvault.com/Article.aspx?id=10690

by Jeff Wilson
[November 2008]

I remember what they sounded like. As obnoxious as auctioneers, the
loud, peppy DJs on the Top 40 radio stations crammed in as many words
as they could between commercials and hit songs that grew
increasingly stale, but the disc jockeys on the underground station
were low-key. With deep voices, they spoke slowly and softly, and
listening to them it was easy to imagine bearded hippies with an
encyclopedic knowledge of obscure rock 'n' roll. They never played
hit singles, and they waited until several songs played before they
identified anything, which was frustrating to someone trying to
become familiar with at least a small fraction of the overwhelming
amount of rock 'n' roll that was out there. It really didn't matter,
though: At that point, I still had to hear most songs several times
before they penetrated.

This was in Des Moines, Iowa in the early '70s­early enough that it
still seemed like the late '60s. I was in sixth and seventh grade
when I listened to the underground radio station. Occasionally, on a
Saturday I would walk to a hippie shop called Elysian Fields and try
to figure out who the bands were on the posters covering the walls
and flip through record bins while wondering what all the records
sounded like. As with the underground radio station, you never heard
any Top 40 hits in Elysian Fields. I took in what I could, but I
processed little of what I heard. Fortunately, a friend whose older
brothers left their record collections behind when they moved out set
his selling price at a quarter; it was because of him that I first
had a chance to listen to, at my leisure, bands like Captain
Beefheart and the Electric Prunes.

One day, one of the deep-voiced hippies announced that the
underground station was going to play The White Album by the Beatles
in its entirety. Because most of the other Beatles LPs had number one
singles, The White Album was probably the only serious candidate for
an underground station­that or Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Although none of its songs were hits, Pepper's generally had more of
a pop sound than The White Album, and because at that point the wow
factor associated with Pepper's was still fresh, it got much more
press. Of all the Beatles records, The White Album seemed the most underground.

Before the radio played it, I still hadn't heard anything from The
White Album. Somehow I ended up with the poster that came inside the
record and had the lyrics printed on the back, and sometimes I'd read
the lyrics and wonder what to make of them while trying to imagine
what the songs would sound like that went with those lyrics. And I'd
read about The White Album, usually in connection with Charles
Manson, who claimed that it gave him strict instructions to direct a
series of gruesome murders. When people thought about that record,
they thought about Manson, and that was part of its mystique. Another
part was "Revolution 9." How could it be that an eight-minute sound
collage with no melody and no lyrics could be created by the only
band that was so popular that touring was no longer a sane option? I
had no idea­after all, I hadn't even heard it yet­but I imagined a
minefield full of hidden messages, a treasure chest with all the
answers to all the messages secretly embedded in all the Beatles
albums. Would I be the first person to unlock the mystery?

On that Sunday afternoon, The White Album played from beginning to
end. Reading the lyrics as they were sung, I listened closely, but
all the mysteries connected with the album remained mysteries, and,
with time, more were added. Actually, for decades The White Album
remained the most elusive Beatles record for me. I wasn't sure where
to rate it against the other Beatles albums, and while I could
summarize, in 20 words or less (well, maybe not 20), how all of their
other albums fit into the grand scheme of Beatles things, The White
Album seemed more slippery.

Only recently did The White Album start to make more sense to me.
What helped was skimming one of those Beatles books that music nerds
have on their night stands. The book said­and I'm sure it's appeared
in a thousand other places, but this was the first I caught wind of
it­that the Beatles originally planned to call the record A Doll's
House. That name was scrapped, however, when another British band,
Family, released an album earlier in the year entitled Music in a
Doll's House. Plan B was, quite simply, The Beatles. Going along with
the simpler title was their simplest cover: White, with the band name
embossed on the cover. The implication is a musical Rorschach test
where the connections between the different parts of the record are
left up to the imagination of each listener.

But what about the original title? Where did it come from, and what
was its appeal? Just as Sgt. Pepper's featured the faces of dozens of
people who influenced or inspired the Beatles, the original album
title to The Beatles was a nod to the past, as its original title
came from A Doll's House, a play Henrik Ibsen wrote almost a hundred
years before The White Album. A scathing indictment of the Victorian
era, A Doll's House told the world that middle-class wives were
second-class citizens­or, if you will, dolls. As the play progresses,
the repression and entrapment Nora Helmer experiences becomes
increasingly apparent to her and the audience. When she decides, at
the end, to leave her husband, her prospects look grim, but she would
rather do that than stay trapped in a subservient role.

So why would a play written during the Victorian era speak to the
most important band of the late '60s when the Victorian era seemed
like ancient history? A partial answer would be that apparently, in
1968, the world had not yet achieved a state of utopia­not quite.
There were, among other things, a war that polarized two generations,
racial tension, assassinations, and a few other problems. And while,
in some ways, Nora Helmer's world would have seemed alien to the late
'60s generation, The White Album made clear that the struggle to
break free from different forms of oppression and repression was
still very much a current event. But, it could do so humorously.

In the opening track, "Back in the USSR", McCartney (or his
protagonist, since McCartney had not yet been to Russia) celebrates
returning to Soviet Russia because of all the tail he gets whenever
he goes there. The KGB and Communist repression notwithstanding, the
revolution­or at least the sexual revolution, which played no small
part in the rebellious '60s­was apparently on. A McCartney interview
from 1984 made it clear that something serious was going on under the
surface of such a playful song: "It was also hands across the water,
which I'm still conscious of. 'Cuz they like us out there, even
though the bosses in the Kremlin may not. The kids do. And that to me
is very important for the future of the race." Three sides later,
Lennon would ask, "Don't you know it's gonna be all right?" In one
sense, McCartney seemed to be saying, it already was.

An invitation to experience the world rather than retreat from it
into a pseudo-nirvana, "Dear Prudence" urges a woman to break free
from chains that are partly self-imposed and partly the result of
gurus who are less enlightened than they claim to be. "Piggies" takes
on the establishment, while "Revolution 1" addresses the
counterculture taking on the establishment, and the title of
"Revolution 9" (plus the fact that it was easily the most avant-garde
piece of music the Beatles released) offers more evidence that change
was in the air. On "Yer Blues" and "Everybody's Got Something to Hide
Except for Me and My Monkey", the liberation Lennon seeks is
internal. "Blackbird" addresses racial tensions with lyrics like,
"Take these sunken eyes and learn to see / All your life / You were
only waiting for this moment to be free," and "While My Guitar Gently
Weeps" describes someone (a woman, presumably) who is trapped
emotionally. And bringing us back to the part of the revolution that
takes place below the belt, there's "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?"

It's quite possible that in the next Beatle interview I read, one of
the remaining Fab Four will say that they picked the original title
because they liked how it sounded and that was all there was to it.
Still, if there's more of a connecting thread to the record than is
often assumed, commonly held opinions like this one from allmusic.com
seem questionable: "Each song on the sprawling double album The
Beatles is an entity to itself, as the band touches on anything and
everything they can. This makes for a frustratingly scattershot
record or a singularly gripping musical experience, depending on your
view, but what makes the so-called White Album interesting is its mess."

Many of the songs were written while the Beatles were on a spiritual
retreat in India, which is the sort of thing that is supposed to
breed introspective lyrics describing what rock stars think about
while gazing at their navels­yet no other Beatles album is more
engaged with the outside world. We'd expect rock stars in India to
tell us that all is right with the world, but on The White Album Blue
Meanies abound. "The all-American bullet-headed Saxon mother's son"
in "Bungalow Bill" comes across as your basic trigger-happy asshole,
and the piggies "in their starched white shirts" deserve "a damn good
whacking." "Sexy Sadie" is this week's transcendental con man, and
the portrayal of addiction on "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" seems like a
scene from Naked Lunch. This could have been titled The Dark
Album­but we're sometimes misguided as to why it is so dark.
According to Slant magazine, The White Album "reveals the popping
seams of a band that had the pressure of an entire fissuring
generational/political gap on its back. Maybe it's because it shows
the Beatles at the point where even their music couldn't hide the
underlying tensions between John, Paul, George, and Ringo." I would
argue that the bummer vibe says less about the Beatles than the
world, which is a far more menacing place than on other Beatles
albums. Insisting that the dark tone has everything to do with
conflicts between band members undeservedly takes something away from
the record. It's more like the Beatles were waking up to the fact
that the change their generation sought was going to be more of a
challenge than they thought when they sang "All You Need Is Love."

The White Album is the quirkiest Beatles record, and the one that,
more than any other, pushes the envelope, to the point where it would
be hard to imagine many of its songs showing up on any other record.
George Martin urged the band to whittle the record down to a single
album. Chances are a single LP would have chopped off some of the
stranger material and made a saner and easily palatable record… which
would have been less interesting. Often there's something off-kilter
about the album, as if it were recorded in a funhouse. At times, the
music feels etherized ("I'm So Tired", "Bungalow Bill", and "Long,
Long, Long" drone along in a soporific stupor); elsewhere, it's harsh
and abrasive (the shrill horns of "Savoy Truffle"; the overcooked,
manic "Birthday"); repeatedly, band members seem to be competing with
each other to see who can be the first to rip out their vocal cords.
"Helter Skelter" is the loudest, most caustic song on the record, but
it's also more skewed than most hard rock; the fade-out/fade-in makes
you wonder if they'd been thrashing away the whole night in an
all-out frenzy. Even the happy-go-lucky pop songs seem twisted; it's
hard to imagine the heavy-handed carnival-like organ line on "Don't
Pass Me By" going over on American Bandstand, and the brief guitar
solo on "Honey Pie" is deliberately amateurish. On "Honey Pie" and
"Piggies", McCartney and Harrison sound like radio singers from early
in the 20th century. After such a strange ride, "Good Night" sounds
more spooky than comforting, like deranged, easy-listening music.

The White Album is an album of extremes. It features the most
world-weary John Lennon of any Beatles album, as well as the most
aggressive. McCartney also tends to avoid any middle ground; most of
his songs alternate between hard rock (or gritty blues) and peaceful
pop songs. Whacked-out, over-the-top sonic experiments alternate with
short, simple songs more sparse than anything on any other Beatles
albums. "Julia" may well be the most intimate recording Lennon ever
made, which is saying something. Although it has a nice pop melody,
"Blackbird" is too stripped down to be a single. "I Will" is too
scant and too short to even appear on another Beatles album. For a
band that sold zillions of records, the Beatles were never really
"commercial," but the material on The White Album is less
radio-friendly or easily palatable than on any other record. To some
extent, the changes reflected on The White Album mirrored the
newfound freedom of a successful band having its own record company.
In that sense, the Beatles were leaving their own doll house. They
were free to experiment, try different things, and if the mood hit,
release those things on album.

In another sense, though, the Beatles were starting to feel trapped.
Touring was no longer feasible, which meant spending more time in the
studio, which was starting to feel old, plus they increasingly felt
secluded. Slowly, it was becoming clear that the only way for them to
manage their lives would be to end the Beatles, and the fact that
they began to work more individually during The White Album helped
prepare them for that. We can call that depressing­or, we can call it
liberating.

Also, some of us have reached the point, when listening to The White
Album and everything that came after, where we spend much of the time
lamenting the toll the changing chemistry of the band supposedly took
on the music. True, the arguments increased, but friction between
band members doesn't necessarily spell the death of good music. The
arguments between members of Cream made the worst feud between the
Beatles seem like a love fest, but that didn't stop Cream from making
some fantastic music together. Since Cream's demise, Eric Clapton has
formed several bands where there was less friction, but as his solo
albums continue to cover the same old ground, evidence mounts that
some artists benefit from being surrounded by raging egos.

It's long been fashionable to say that Rubber Soul and Revolver
represented the pinnacle for the Beatles and from there things went
downhill. Partly that's because of the turmoil within the group ("The
rot had already set in" George Harrison said about The White Album);
it also has to do with the Fab Four's musical evolution. Although
Sgt. Pepper's, the first album to follow their supposed peak, was at
first all the rage, its reputation has undergone considerable
revision. As Tim Page, music critic for the Washington Post, put it,
"I much prefer Help! or Revolver to Sgt. Pepper for listening
pleasure­the rock is harder, the tunes are punchier, and there is an
exuberant freshness in these albums that makes much of the Beatles'
later work seem over-marinated." To many critics, Sgt. Pepper's is
too artsy, too self-conscious, and too psychedelic. But how
psychedelic is Pepper's, really? The attempt by the Rolling Stones to
answer Pepper's with Their Satanic Majesties Request tells us what
people thought they were hearing, but Majesties is much stranger
musically and lyrically. Pepper's has solid pop hooks, rich melodies,
interesting storylines, and all the things I like about the early
Beatles. Things turn ambient toward the middle of the record­but
"When I'm 64" reverses that course. Pepper's is much more
engaging­and engaged­than you would expect from an album by four
hippies who had recently discovered LSD.

Immediately, critics deemed Magical Mystery Tour a fall from grace,
and it continues to receive low marks, but this may stem more from a
reaction to what has been deemed a self-indulgent movie than the
actual songs, which, except for a couple throwaways, have held up
well. Also, "Penny Lane", "Your Mother Should Know", and "Hello,
Goodbye" may be happy-go-lucky, but damn, they're good­although much
of the credit must be given to Lennon, whose harmonies on both Tour
and Pepper's were highlights of both records. And can we also mention
Ringo's drumming on "Your Mother Should Know"? Nothing fancy­just perfect.

Although Hey Jude is just a collection of singles and B-sides, it
offers six songs worth of evidence that the band didn't die after
Revolver. If Pepper's was the most carefully crafted Beatles record,
Let It Be was the least, but it shines for the same reason: The songs
are solid. Abbey Road wasn't the last Beatles album to be released,
but due to the chaos surrounding Let It Be, it was the last to be
recorded. The majority of the second side of the record was devoted
to a medley that was as groundbreaking as anything the group did.
Call side two of Abbey Road a sign of decline­and then list how many
bands have matched it at their peak.

That leaves The White Album. If Sgt. Pepper's was the most conceptual
record and Let It Be the most raw, The White Album was the Beatles at
their most serendipitous. Although they'd recorded hundreds of songs
already, they were brimming with new ideas. And that's one reason not
to mourn their breakup: They never became stale or self-derivative.
When fans listened to a new Beatles record for the first time, the
anticipation was intense. Impressively­and especially for a band that
set the bar so high­it stayed that way until the end.

--------

The Continuing Saga of the Beatles' White Album

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/11/the-continuing-saga-of-the-beatles%E2%80%99-white-album/

by Ron Jacobs
November 24th, 2008

The culmination of the year that was 1968 was the release of the
Beatles album familiarly known as the White Album. A collection of
songs with roots in a myriad of musical styles, this two-disc
collection would be the soundtrack to the individual and collective
lives of millions of people for the next several months. From the
hippie ghettos of western civilization to the suburban bedrooms of
America's youth and even to the arid hills east of Los Angeles where
a megomaniacal manchild named Chares Manson raised in the California
prison system was creating a family bent on murder and mayhem, the
White Album would become a totem of the cultural changes that
shattered the known western world. It's not that the White Album was
the best rock album to come out that year. Indeed, other works could
just as easily claim that title: Hendrix's Electric Ladyland; Cream's
Wheels of Fire; Big Brother's Cheap Thrills; or even the first
Creedence Clearwater disc. No, it was because the White Album was
from the top of the rock pantheon–the Beatles.

The music ranged from British dance hall ditties to folk tinged
ballads with some serious hard rock in between. Then there was the
John Cage/Stockhausen mishmash of sound called "Revolution #9". A
counterpart to the other song titled Revolution (known as "Revolution
#1"), "Revolution #9" was meant to be the chaotic sounds of
revolution as conceived by John Lennon. At times reminiscent of a
political protest and other times more like a football game, the
entire collage reminds many listeners of a trip on LSD. "Revolution
#1 , on the other hand, represented a debate going on between the
Beatles, within John Lennon's mind , and in the larger society over
the merits of revolutionary change and the forms any such change
should take. Chairman Mao and dogmatic cadres or Fabian-like
evolutionary change spurred by a revolutionary change in
consciousness. Of course, this latter possibility was also open to
interpretation. Would this change in consciousness be towards the
"new man" that Che Guevara wrote about or would it be the new
consciousness Timothy Leary spoke of and Charles Reich would attempt
to denote in his 1970 book The Greening of America?

The Beatles didn't have the answers. Indeed, they were asking the
questions like everyone else. However, in the convulsive year that
was 1968, when all the pillars of what already was were being
challenged, there were many who did think the Beatles had the
answers. One of these was the aforementioned Charles Manson. His
conclusions regarding the tunes "Helter Skelter" and "Piggies"
combined with a racist and apocalyptic vision fueled an exceptionally
gory spate of Hollywood murders and a particularly surreal series of
spectacular trials. White Panther John Sinclair, meanwhile, wrote an
open letter to John Lennon regarding the latter's apparent hesitation
regarding the political upheaval and dramatic shift to the left among
the youth of the world. The letter was responded to by Lennon and was
read by millions of readers in underground newspapers across the
world. To be more precise, the letters concerned the single release
of the song and not the album release. This difference was essential,
primarily because the lyrics that read

But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out

On the single version, go like this on the album version

But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out (in).

The latter version obviously showed some ambivalence on the part of
the Beatles (or at least John Lennon) regarding an approach that
ignored the fact of the violence being used against the protesters.
One other aspect of Sinclair's argument had to do with these lyrics:

You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You better free you mind instead

It was Sinclair's contention that both the institutions and one's
mind needed to be freed. Lennon eventually came around to a mode of
thinking considerably closer to Sinclair's. In fact, he helped
spearhead a campaign to get Sinclair released from prison after he
was sentenced to ten years for giving a narc one joint of marijuana.

But the four songs mentioned above were not the album. "Back In the
USSR" poked gentle fun at the American rockers who celebrated the
United States as the greatest place to be while conveniently ignoring
its legacy of racism and war. "Julia" is a beautiful poem to Lennon's
mother, his first son and even Yoko Ono­the "ocean child" of the
lyrics. "Blackbird" is a song about Rosa Parks and her refusal to
move when ordered to do so by the realities of American apartheid. As
we all know, that refusal was a pivotal movement in the struggle to
rid the nation of that disgrace. George Harrison's "While My Guitar
Gently Weeps" was inspired by an epigram of the I Ching and is one of
the most beautiful songs ever composed by a Beatle. Ad infinitum.
I'll let the reader fill in the spaces regarding the rest of the
selections on this double disc.

Everyone had (or has) their favorite Beatle. Mine was always John
Lennon. Similarly, everyone has their favorite Beatles song(s) and
album(s). Without a doubt, mine is the White Album.
--

Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the
Weather Underground. His most recent novel Short Order Frame Up is
published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net

.

Sticksman provided Hendrix foil

[2 articles]

Sticksman provided Hendrix foil

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24676902-16947,00.html

November 20, 2008

OBITUARY: Mitch Mitchell. Drummer. Born Ealing, England, July 9,
1947. Died Portland, Oregon, November 12, aged 61.

MITCH Mitchell helped provide the beat to the rock revolution of the
late 1960s, when his drumming underpinned the explosive guitar
pyrotechnics of Jimi Hendrix. With Ginger Baker and Keith Moon, he
was in the influential vanguard of British sticksmen who created the
template for modern rock drumming.

Hendrix's favoured line-up of the power trio -- guitar, bass and
drums -- gave Mitchell space and freedom, and the guitarist fed off
the drummer's rhythmic patterns in a dynamic and frequently thrilling
fashion. A highly versatile drummer, Mitchell was equally adept at
underpinning Hendrix's more tightly structured studio compositions or
buttressing his wildest inventions during long on-stage jams.

John Mitchell was born in 1947 in Ealing, west London. While still at
school, he took a Saturday job in the London music shop run by Jim
Marshall, whose amplification systems were vital to the development
of '60s rock. In 1964, he joined the Riot Squad, whose line-up
included the future Deep Purple organist Jon Lord, but left for the
more lucrative life of a studio session drummer until he received an
offer to join Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames.

In 1966, Mitchell had a call from Chas Chandler, who was managing
Jimi Hendrix, an unknown US guitarist he had brought to London. He
auditioned and was selected. Noel Redding was added on bass and the
new trio became the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The initial contract was
for a two-week tour of France. This went well and Redding and
Mitchell were each put on retainers of pound stg. 15 a week. The
group's first single, Hey Joe, was released at the end of 1966 and
reached No.6 in the charts.

During the next two years the Jimi Hendrix Experience revolutionised
rock music. Further hit singles followed with Purple Haze, The Wind
Cries Mary and Burning of the Midnight Lamp. The group's debut album,
Are You Experienced?, was kept from the top of the charts in the
summer of '67 only by the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band, and before the year was out a second album, Axis: Bold as Love,
had followed it into the top five. In between the group made its US
debut at the Monterey Pop Festival.

Inevitably, it was Hendrix who attracted the attention with his wild
look, incendiary guitar playing and eye-catching stage antics but
Mitchell, sporting a striking frizz of hair and similarly attired as
a psychedelic dandy, made a considerable musical contribution. He was
not only loud and fast but highly innovative, capable of a real
synergy with Hendrix's lead instrument, giving the music not only
rhythmic support but momentum and attack.

By 1968 Hendrix had recognised that there were limitations to the
trio format and added an array of other musicians, including a second
drummer, Buddy Miles. The resulting album topped the US charts and
made it to No.6 in Britain. It included some of Mitchell's finest
studio playing, particularly on 1983 ... (A Merman I Should Turn to
Be) and the bluesy Voodoo Chile.

In 1969 Hendrix decided that the Experience had come to the end of
the road and announced the group's final gig from the stage, much to
the surprise of his bandmates. He rehired Mitchell for the Woodstock
festival in August 1969, but when he formalised the new group as the
Band of Gypsys, Miles took over on drums. Mitchell had been offered
the chance to stay on, but Hendrix had surrounded himself with a new
entourage, many of them associated with the Black Power movement, and
among other considerations, Mitchell was unsure how he fitted in with
"the brothers".

His exile was brief: by 1970 Miles was out and Mitchell was back,
playing with Hendrix on his final Cry of Love tour and in the studio
on his last recordings. After Hendrix's death in September 1970,
Mitchell played an important role in preparing the recordings for
posthumous release on the LPs Cry of Love and Rainbow Bridge.

He never again played a prominent part in the music world. Before
Hendrix's death he had turned down an approach to join Keith Emerson
and Greg Lake in a new band that could have become ELM rather than
ELP. In 1972 he recorded one album with the band Ramatam and there
were gigs with Terry Reid, Jack Bruce and Jeff Beck. As a mere
employee, Mitchell had not made a fortune from the Experience's
success and at one low point in the 1970s he was forced to boost his
funds by selling a guitar Hendrix had given him. It was almost
certainly financial considerations that caused him to audition for
Paul McCartney's band Wings in 1974, but the job went to Geoff
Britton instead.

In later years Mitchell worked on a number of Hendrix tribute
projects. He had finished an Experience Hendrix tour of the US five
days before he died.

--------

Mitch Mitchell dies at age 61 in Portland

http://media.www.clarksonintegrator.com/media/storage/paper280/news/2008/11/17/Entertainment/Mitch.Mitchell.Dies.At.Age.61.In.Portland-3548311.shtml

The Orange County Register (MCT)
Ben Wener
Issue date: 11/17/08

Or 62, depending on which source you believe. In any case, Mitch
Mitchell was found dead early Wednesday morning in a hotel room in
Portland, Ore., apparently of natural causes.

Which means that the entire Jimi Hendrix Experience, guitarist
Hendrix, drummer Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding, is now dead. It
also means both of Hendrix's key drummers are now gone, as Band of
Gypsys sticksman Buddy Miles passed away in February.

Rolling Stone and Pitchfork have brief reports saluting Mitchell's
many accomplishments, chief among them being his groundbreaking work
on the three seminal Experience albums, Are You Experienced? (1967),
Axis: Bold as Love (1968) and Electric Ladyland (1969), as well as
his performances backing Hendrix at Monterey Pop, Woodstock and the
Isle of Wight festival in 1970.

A lesser but interesting footnote: He also drummed for the Dirty Mac,
the ad-hoc group fronted by John Lennon and featuring Eric Clapton on
guitar and Keith Richards on bass, which performed Yer Blues during
the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus in late '68.

But more recently Mitchell had been appearing on the Experience
Hendrix tour, alongside Gypsys bassist Billy Cox and a slew of
guitarists, from veterans like Buddy Guy and Hubert Sumlin to
relative newcomers like Jonny Lang and Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

RIP, Mitch. Your innovative style and key role in a crucial piece of
rock 'n' roll history will not be forgotten.

.

Hey, hey, it's Micky Dolenz

Hey, hey, it's Micky Dolenz

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20081121/ENT03/811210316/1028/ENT

Ex-Monkee credits writers for band's enduring popularity

By Chris Varias • chrisvarias@gmail.com
November 21, 2008

When it comes to the Monkees, it's hard to pinpoint where prefab ends
and art begins.

It's true that they were a manufactured pop act that played the role
of a band on a TV show.

But it's also true that in real life the band sang on (even if they
didn't play all of the instruments on) some big hits in the '60s, and
those hits have stood the test of time.

Micky Dolenz, the lead singer on most of those tunes, credits the
songwriting. "The CDs still sell and the downloads sell. When you're
having songs written by Carol King, and (Tommy) Boyce and (Bobby)
Hart, and Neil Diamond, and Harry Nilsson, and Paul Williams, and
Carole Bayer Sager, David Gates, John Stewart, Diane Hildebrand, the
songs stand up," he says. "I like to think my vocals and our
performances have something to do with it, too. But when you start
with a great song, it's hard to screw it up."

Dolenz will pay respect to those songwriters and their contributions
to the Monkees songbook when he revisits the hits in concert Saturday
at Grand Victoria. In advance of the show, he shared some Monkees memories.

Question: MTV ignited a Monkees revival in the '80s. Do you envision
the conditions where that could happen again?

Answer: The sensibility of the show, not so much the style, was sort
of timeless. That was a conscious choice the producers made, that the
humor was not topical or satirical. The show was about this
out-of-work rock band that wanted to become the Beatles but never
did. It showed us always struggling to survive, and I think that
resonated with those kids out there, and that sensibility resonates
in every generation, trying to make it in the music business. The
reason they keep playing "The Honeymooners" or "I Love Lucy" over and
over again is they keep resonating over generations.

Q: At the time of the MTV revival, the Monkees did a reunion tour.
Wasn't it the highest-grossing tour of the year?

A: It was. It took everyone by surprise. I was living in England in a
big country mansion. I kind of retired a bit. This promoter guy kind
of tracked me down. This guy came up to me and said, "I want to get
you guys together for a summer tour of the States." I thought, "Hey,
this will be fun for a few weeks to see the guys." Three years later,
we were still on the road. The promoter just booked these tiny venues
to start with, and within a few weeks it exploded and we were doing arenas.

Q: Is your solo show exclusively dedicated to Monkees material?

A: In the early '80s, I saw the Everly Brothers, and I was wondering
if they were going to do their hits. They didn't disappoint. They did
"Cathy's Clown," "Wake Up Little Susie," and I had tears running down
my face, thrilled. I thought at the time, "If I ever go back and sing
those Monkees songs, I'm going to do them in their entirety just as
people remember them." But it's not my entire show. I'll do a Chuck
Berry song and tell the story of how it was what I auditioned with
for the Monkees. And I'll do a Jimi Hendrix song and tell the story
of finding him at the Monterey Pop Festival and getting him to be our
opening act.

Q: It was your idea to hire Hendrix to open for the Monkees?

A: I had seen Jimi months before in New York as a sideman with John
Hammond. He was known as this guy who played guitar with his teeth.
I'm sitting there at Monterey in the audience and along comes this
guy dressed in all of these incredible clothes, and I said to myself,
"That's the guy from New York who plays guitar with his teeth." It
was very theatrical, and the Monkees were theatrical, so I went to
the producers and said, "This guy would be great."

Q: Is it true that Hendrix was booed off the stage when he was your
warm-up act?

A: It's semi-true. It's the same thing that happened to Axl Rose
before the Stones concerts. It happens all the time. It's simply
because the fans are there to see the headliner. They don't want to
see an opening act. When you have an act like the Monkees back then,
it's not one of those compilation concerts. Ninety-nine percent of
the audience is there just to see the Monkees. The kids weren't
booing, but they were going, "We want the Monkees!" We want Davy
(Jones)! We want Micky."

.

Putting On Ayers

Putting On Ayers

http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=5692.0.110.0

By Stephen Flurry
January 2009

A radical terrorist and political outcast finds a cozy home in academia.
--

Much has been made about Barack Obama's association with William
Ayers, a man who hasn't expressed one ounce of remorse for his
terrorist attacks on federal targets during the 1960s and 1970s. In
fact, he wishes his organization could have committed more murderous
acts of domestic terrorism.

Mr. Obama's critics rightfully said that his friendly relations with
Ayers should have disqualified him from the presidency. And yet, we
heard little about another disturbing relationship involving Bill
Ayers­and one that is far more dangerous than his association with Obama.

You see, Mr. Ayers still serves as a "distinguished" faculty member
at a respected university in Chicago. Should an unrepentant terrorist
be disqualified from teaching America's future leaders?

Bill Ayers grew up in a wealthy family during the 1950s and '60s. He
attended private schools before enrolling in the University of
Michigan, where he turned into an antiwar protester and dangerous
political activist. On May 19, 1972, he bombed the Pentagon. In his
memoir, Fugitive Days, he recalled, "Everything was absolutely ideal
on the day I bombed the Pentagon. The sky was blue. The birds were
singing. And the [expletives] were finally going to get what was
coming to them."

Nearly 20 years after that, the New York Times interviewed Ayers
shortly before the publication of Fugitive Days. The Times said Ayers
"writes about the Weathermen's sexual experimentation as they tried
to 'smash monogamy.' The Weathermen were 'an army of lovers,' he
says, and describes having had different sexual partners, including
his best male friend. …

"Mr. Ayers … in 1970 was said to have summed up the Weatherman
philosophy as: 'Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and
apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's
where it's really at ….'"

According to his book, Ayers had a hand in bombing the New York City
Police Headquarters in 1970, the Capitol building in 1971 and the
Pentagon in 1972. When the Times asked if he had any regrets for his
violent behavior, Ayers said, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel
we didn't do enough."

Not surprisingly, the Ayers interview received little attention on
the day it was published in the New York Times­Sept. 11, 2001. Talk
about bad timing. Yet, even with the rest of the country reeling from
the 9/11 attacks, Ayers seemed unaffected. Five days after 9/11,
Ayers told the New York Times Magazine that he still didn't trust
America. "You can't live in a society like this in equilibrium and
not sell your soul. This society is not a just and fair and decent
place," Ayers said. Later, he continued, "We're living in a country
where the election was stolen, and we didn't have a mass uprising.
It's incredible. We're all asleep. The pundits all pat themselves on
the back: '[W]hat a great country. You know, we could have had a
constitutional crisis, but instead, we let him steal the election.
Isn't that great. What a country.' It makes me want to puke."

Mr. Obama denounces Ayers the '70s radical. But he also praises Ayers
the present-day educational reformer without any fear of negative
backlash. Could anything better illustrate the despicable state of
modern education today?

In October, more than 3,200 supporters of Ayers­most from the field
of academia­signed a petition expressing their support for the
educational "reformer." The list included the likes of Palestinian
activist Rashid Khalidi, who worked for the official Palestinian news
agency when the Yasser Arafat-led Palestinian Liberation Organization
was engaged in terrorist activities against Israel, and Ward
Churchill, who compared the victims of 9/11 to Nazis.

Ayers's participation in "political" activity 40 years ago, the
petition reads, is history­"what is most relevant now is his
continued engagement in progressive causes, and his exemplary
contribution­including publishing 16 books­to the field of education."

He may be an unrepentant terrorist, but look at what he's done for education.

During the educational upheaval of the 1960s, even as Bill Ayers was
sowing the seeds of hatred and rebellion, Herbert W. Armstrong said,
"The future welfare and even the existence of civilization is
dependent on the educational system" (Plain Truth, December 1965).
During the same period of nationwide student revolt, one national
leader warned: "We live in an age of anarchy both abroad and at home.
… Here in the United States, great universities are being
systematically destroyed."

A cultural revolution was sweeping across the Western world. Mr.
Armstrong wrote in his 1964 book God Speaks Out on "The New
Morality," "The revolt is on against prudery, repression and
ignorance." Almost overnight, our system of education turned into
something that was grossly immoral, radically materialistic and
blatantly hostile to all forms of authority.

That was four decades ago. Today, sexual experimentation, whether you
are a liberal or a so-called conservative, is seen as neither
controversial nor dangerous. Radical individualism and materialism is
not seen as selfish or reckless, but rather as something everyone
deserves by right of birth. Added to that, we've "progressed" so far
in our pursuit of knowledge that even the most infamous rebels of the
1960s are now seen as distinguished professors.

Is it any wonder that, as my father wrote in our September issue, we
have passed the point of no return? We are where we are today largely
because education has failed us. The god of this present evil world
(2 Corinthians 4:4; Revelation 12:9) is now in complete control of
the Western system of education. And every year, he brings in
millions of new recruits with the express purpose of driving them
further and further away from God's way of life.

Instead of disseminating knowledge capable of solving the world's
mounting problems, education itself is ruined.

To learn about the educational system God is about to raise up,
request our booklet Education With Vision.

.

Behind "the Twinkie Defense" [by Paul Krassner]

Behind "the Twinkie Defense"

http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=7544&catid=&volume_id=398&issue_id=406&volume_num=43&issue_num=08

The reporter who coined the infamous phrase in the Guardian looks
back at the White trial

BY PAUL KRASSNER
Wednesday November 19, 2008

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the assassination of San
Francisco Mayor George Moscone, who wanted to decriminalize
marijuana, and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay
individual to be elected to public office in America. November also
marks the release of a film about the case titled Milk. Although a
former policeman, homophobic Dan White, had confessed to the murders,
he pleaded not guilty. I covered his trial for the Bay Guardian.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I said "Thank you" to the sheriff's
deputy who frisked me before I could enter the courtroom. However,
this was a superfluous ritual, since any journalist who wanted to
shoot White was prevented from doing so by wall-to-wall bulletproof glass.

Defense attorney Douglas Schmidt did not want any pro-gay sentiment
polluting the verdict, but he wasn't allowed to ask potential jurors
if they were gay, so instead he would ask if they had ever supported
controversial causes--"like homosexual rights, for instance.

" One juror came from a family of cops -- ordinarily, Schmidt would
have craved for him to be on this jury -- but the man mentioned, "I
live with a roommate and lover."

Schmidt phrased his next question: "Where does he or she work?"

The answer began, "He"--and the ball game was already over--"works at
Holiday Inn."

Through it all, White simply sat there as though he had been
mainlining epoxy glue. He just stared directly ahead, his eyes
focused on the crack between two adjacent boxes on the clerk's desk,
Olde English type identifiying them as "Deft" and "Pltff" for
defendant and plaintiff. He did not testify. Rather, he told his
story to several psychiatrists hired by the defense, and they
repeated those details in court.

At a press conference, Berkeley psychiatrist Lee Coleman denounced
the practice of psychiatric testimony, labeling it as "a disguised
form of hearsay."
* * *

J. I. Rodale, health food and publishing magnate, once claimed in an
editorial in his magazine, Prevention, that Lee Harvey Oswald had
been seen holding a Coca-Cola bottle only minutes after the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He concluded that Oswald
was not responsible for the killing because his brain was confused.
He was a "sugar drunkard." Rodale, who died of a heart attack during
a taping of The Dick Cavett Show -- in the midst of explaining how
good nutrition guarantees a long life -- called for a full-scale
investigation of crimes caused by sugar consumption.

In a surprise move, Dan White's defense team presented a similar
bio-chemical explanation of his behavior, blaming it on compulsive
gobbling down of sugar-filled junk-food snacks. This was a purely
accidental attack. Dale Metcalf, a former member of Ken Kesey's Merry
Pranksters who had become a lawyer, told me how he happened to be
playing chess with Steven Scheer, an associate of Dan White's attorney.

Metcalf had just read Orthomolecular Nutrition by Abram Hoffer. He
questioned Scherr about White's diet and learned that, while under
stress, White would consume candy bars and soft drinka. Metcalf
recommended the book to Scherr, suggesting the author as an expert
witness. In his book, Hoffer revealed a personal vendetta against
doughnuts, and White had once eaten five doughnuts in a row.

During the trial, one psychiatrist stated that, on the night before
the murders, while White was "getting depressed about the fact he
would not be reappointed [as supervisor], he just sat there in front
of the TV set, bingeing on Twinkies." In my notebook, I immediately
scribbled "the Twinkie defense," and wrote about it in my next report.

This was the first time that phrase had been used, and it was picked
up by the mainstream media.

In court, White just sat there in a state of complete control
bordering on catatonia, as he listened to an assembly line of
psychiatrists tell the jury how out of control he had been. One even
testified that, "If not for the aggravating fact of junk food, the
homicides might not have taken place."
* * *

The Twinkie was invented in 1930 by James Dewar, who described it as
"the best darn-tootin' idea I ever had." He got the idea of injecting
little cakes with sugary cream-like filling and came up with the name
while on a business trip, where he saw a billboard for Twinkle Toe
Shoes. "I shortened it to make it a little zippier for the kids," he said.

In the wake of the Twinkie defense, a representative of the ITT-owned
Continental Baking Company asserted that the notion that overdosing
on the cream-filled goodies could lead to murderous behavior was
"poppycock" and "crap" -- apparently two of the artificial
ingredients in Twinkies, along with sodium pyrophosphate and yellow
dye -- while another spokesperson for ITT couldn't believe "that a
rational jury paid serious attention to that issue."

Nevertheless, some jurors did. One remarked after the trial that "It
sounded like Dan White had hypoglycemia."

Doug Schmidt's closing argument became almost an apologetic parody of
his own defense. He told the jury that White did not have to be
"slobbering at the mouth" to be subject to diminished capacity. Nor,
he said, was this simply a case of "Eat a Twinkie and go crazy."

When Superior Court Judge Walter Calcagno presented the jury with his
instructions, he assured them access to the evidence, except that
they would not be allowed to have possession of White's .38 special
and his ammunition at the same time. After all, these deliberations
can get pretty heated. The judge was acting like a concerned
schoolteacher offering Twinkies to students but witholding the
cream-fillng to avoid any possible mess.

Each juror originally had to swear devotion to the criminal justice
system. It was that very system that had allowed for a shrewd defense
attorney's transmutation of a double political execution into the
mere White Sugar Murders. On the walls of the city, graffiti
cautioned, "Eat a Twinkie -- Kill a Cop!"
* * *

On the 50th anniversary of the Twinkie, inventor Dewar said, "Some
people say Twinkies are the quintessential junk food, but I believe
in the things. I fed them to my four kids, and they feed them to my
15 grandchildren. Twinkies never hurt them." A year later, the
world's largest Twinkie was unveiled in Boston. It was 10 feet long,
3 feet 6 inches high, 3 feet 8 inches wide, and weighed more than a ton.

In January 1984, Dan White was released from prison. He had served a
little more than five years. The estimated shelf life of a Twinkie
was seven years. That's two years longer than White spent behind
bars. When he was released, that Twinkie in his cupboard was still
edible. But perhaps, instead of eating it, he would have it bronzed.

In October 1985, he committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in
his garage. He taped a note to the windshield of his car, reading,
"I'm sorry for all the pain and trouble I've caused."

I accepted his apology. I had gotten caught in the post-verdict riot
and was beaten by a couple of cops. My gait was affected, and
ultimately, as a result I now walk with a cane. At the airport, I
have to put the cane on the conveyor belt along with my overnight bag
and my shoes, but then I'm handed another cane to go through the
metal detector. You just never know what could be hidden inside a cane.
--

Paul Krassner is the author of Who's to Say What's Obscene: Politics,
Culture and Comedy in America Today, to be published by City Lights
Books in July 2009.

Click here to read Krassner's original coverage of the Dan White
Trial from the Guardian in 1979.
http://www.sfbg.com/PDFs/politics/Paul%20Krassner_Trial.pdf

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The Last Election [by Paul Krassner]

The Last Election

http://www.expertclick.com/NewsReleaseWire/default.cfm?Action=ReleaseDetail&ID=24074

November 21 2008
by Paul Krassner, Investigative Satirist

The Republicans' party line that Barack Obama was "palling around
with terrorists" didn't work, athough some people believed it because
then they wouldn't need a racist reason not to vote for Obama. Next,
the campaign acted as though his advocacy of age-appropriate sex
education for kindergarteners meant putting condoms on bananas. That
didn't work, either. Then John McCain tried calling him a
"socialist." Also didn't work. Ironically, Socialist Party candidate
Norman Thomas ran for president six times, never won, but every one
of his platform planks were eventually adopted by Democrats and
Republican adminstrations alike. They just didn't call it socialism.

One of the factors in President-elect Obama's win was the
confidence-destroying financial crisis, and now he faces a food chain
of euphemisms. Hey, is this like the Great Depression? Nah, it's not
a depression, it's only a recession. Wait, it's not a recession, it's
just an economic downturn. No, it's not an economic downturn, it's a
correction. Oops, it's not a corrrection, it's an adjustment. Hurry,
get me a chiropractor. Similarly, there's a food-chain of solutions
to the problem. From the Troubled Asset Relief Program to the Bailout
Bill to the Rescue Package to the Emergency Economic Stability Act to
Alan Greenspan confessing, "My bad" to Botox for Everybody.

Perhaps the most bizarre byproduct of the campaign began with an
anonymous ad on Craigslist, headlined: "Need Sarah Palin Lookalike
ASAP for Adult Film." The pay would be $3000 and, it was duly noted,
"No anal required." This porn flick, it turned out, would be shot by
Hustler Video, and no, Tina Fey did not apply for the job. The
climactic scene was a threesome with Sarah Palin, Condoleezza Rice
and Hillary Clinton, played by veteran porn star and sex educator Nina Hartley.

She told me that "The big hullabaloo over the movie is being
generated by feminists from both the pro- and anti-porn sides.
They're up in arms that 'women are being non-consensually satirized'
by Big Evil Porn, and The Big Bad Larry Flynt. The usual nonsense
from the usual suspects. Even some pro-porn feminists are upset at
Palin being 'targeted' by Porn. They conveniently overlook the fact
that most porn satirizes white men in power: politicians, police,
professors. Most recent case in point, The Elliot Splizter Story..."

Nailin' Paylin was ready for release before the election, as was an
issue of the horror comic book Tales From the Crypt, which featured
on the cover a painting of Sarah Palin swinging her hockey stick to
disperse the Vault-Keeper and other ghoulish characters as she
sneeringly asks, "Didn't we get rid of you guys in the '50s?"--a
reference to the censorship problems faced decades ago by EC Comics,
the original publisher of Tales From the Crypt, and concomitantly a
criticism of Palin for her "rhetorical question" about removing
objectionable books from library shelves.

However, another publisher was producing a comic-book biography of
Palin that wouldn't be released until February 2009, so two endings
were prepared. But an edition of South Park--broadcast the day after
the election--took a risk with only one ending, which lampooned
Obama's victory. Co-creator Trey Parker explained, "We're just going
to make the Obama version, and if McCain somehow wins, we're
basically just totally screwed. Likewise, Garry Trudeau gambled that
Obama would win, and his syndicated Doonesbury strip--published the
day after the election--depicted three soldiers in Iraq watching the
returns on TV as a reporter is saying, "And it's official--Barack
Obama has won."
<
Some editors were undecided about whether to publish it. Trudeau
encouraged them to choose hope over fear. "If I'm wrong," he told the
Los Angeles Times, "it'll be my face that'll be covered with eggs,
not theirs." Times editors had decided, in the interest of accuracy,
to wait for the election results, and if Obama won, they would
publish the strip on Thursday, but then they must have realized it
was just a comic strip, not investigative journalism, and they
published it on Wednesday after all.

Trudeau thought that newspapers should run the strip because "polling
data gives McCain a 3.7% chance of victory." Indeed, a week after
Obama's win, McCain himself admitted to Jay Leno, "I can read the
polls--they tried to keep 'em from me." There were dozens of polls,
from ABC to Zogby, and, psychographic sophistication aside, they
didn't always exactly agree. For example, in Nevada during the last
week of October, one poll put Obama's lead at 12%, another at 7%,
another at 5% and two others at 4%, which meant that, given the
margin of sampling error, McCain could conceivably have been slightly
ahead. This, then, was the last presidential election. In the future,
you'll only need to vote for the pollster that you trust the most.

During the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, I was among 10,000
protesters who had gathered in Grant Park for a rally when the
police, triggered by the actions of one of their own provocateurs,
attacked the demonstrators and sadistically beat as many as they
could reach. It seemed impossible that we could ever work within the
system. But now, forty years later, there were 200,000 celebrants who
had gathered in that same park, giddy with the excitement of Obama's
victory. They had worked within the system. But was it possible that
this event also signified the early tremors of a nonviolent revolution?

As the late singer/songwriter once said to me backstage at a benefit:
"If you don't act like there's hope, there is no hope." And remember,
placebos work.

Meanwhile, the memorabilia business flourishes as millions of voters
seek a variety of tangible items to remind them of the part they
played in history simply by voting. Somebody bid $400 on EBay for the
November 5th issue of the New York Times. USA Today printed 500,000
extra copies, and the Washington Post printed 350,000 extras. The
only thing I saved was a full-page ad by the 99 Cents Only Stores,
which included a "Joe the Plumber Special" plunger. There was no
limit on how many I could buy.
--

Who Is Paul Krassner?

Paul Krassner was the editor of The Realist. He calls himself an
investigative satirist. Don Imus labeled him "one of the comic
geniuses of the 20th century." (Imus has since apologized for that
quote.) And, according to the Los Angeles Reader, "Krassner delivers
90 minutes of the funniest, most intelligent social and political
commentary in town."

On the other hand, a couple of FBI agents went to one of his
performances and stated in their report, "He purported to be humorous
about government policies." His FBI files indicate that after Life
magazine published a favorable profile of him, the FBI sent a
poison-pen letter to the editor, complaining: "To classify Krassner
as a social rebel is far too cute. He's a nut, a raving, unconfined nut."

"The FBI was right," says George Carlin. "This man is dangerous--and
funny; and necessary."

Paul Krassner's latest book is Tales of Tongue Fu, published by Ronin
Publishing.

To reach Paul Krassner: paulkrassner@roadrunner.com 760-329-1511

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Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid on Jonestown

[2 articles]

Boisean who survived Jonestown recalls the massacre

http://www.idahostatesman.com/102/story/574690.html

Clifford Gieg, who lost his brother at the cult's Guyana compound,
talks about it publicly for the first time.

BY KATHLEEN KRELLER - kkreller@idahostatesman.com
Edition Date: 11/18/08

For 30 years, the world has watched the last images of Stanley Gieg.

A newsman's blurry footage shows the blond 19-year-old behind the
wheel of a tractor that carried Jim Jones' gunmen to a Guyanese
airstrip on Nov. 18, 1978.

The attack that soon followed killed a congressman and several others
and marked the bloody start of a massacre that left more than 900
people dead in Jonestown.

But Stanley's brother, Clifford Gieg, believes - he knows - there is
more to Stanley's story.

Clifford Gieg last saw his brother alive just hours before the
shootings. Clifford would live through the day. Stanley would not.
Now, in a bid to honor his brother, the Boise cabinet-maker is
talking publicly about his experiences for the first time.

"He died. He was murdered," Gieg said. "I know he was murdered. He
was shot. And he was a victim. And I want him recognized as a victim
and not as part of it."

Gieg calls himself a true believer who was duped by Jones until the
end. His life and loss in Jonestown aren't so much a secret as
something he just doesn't discuss. He doesn't need to talk about it,
Gieg says, because he lives it every day, especially in his nightmares.

Gieg's wife of four years, Norma, learned many details for the first
time as she listened to his interview with the Statesman.

Gieg couldn't come right out and talk about Stanley, or what
happened. He started with a photo, taken just feet away from where
Jones' mother was buried in the Guyanese jungle. Clifford is 18,
Stanley 19. Stanley has a shock of almost white-blonde hair. Clifford
is darker. There is no clue in the photo of what is to come.

"It was what it was," Gieg said. And then he launched into the tale.

CHILDREN OF THE TEMPLE

Gieg's mother joined the People's Temple Disciple of Christ in
California in 1968, when he was 8 and Stanley 9. She's still living -
she never went to Jonestown - and he won't share her name. She was
attracted by the church's cathartic therapy-like sessions and by
Jones' teachings of racial and class equality.

"It was all about the people," Gieg said. "He would welcome anybody.
People on drugs - help them get off drugs. Losers all over the place."

Gieg's parents divorced when he was 11, about the time he started
playing drums in the People's Temple band.

"My mother basically could not take care us. So the church took my
brother and myself in, and we were put in a foster home I think my
mother was forced to give us up because we were living in poor
conditions," Gieg said. "Financially my mother couldn't handle it,
and emotionally ... and the church basically took in the two youngest ones."

To be a member of the People's Temple meant being "very involved," Gieg said.

At first, it was fun and loving, Gieg said. There were the sleepovers
with Jones' children, and long bus trips crisscrossing the country
from Niagara Falls to Philadelphia, to Indianapolis, to San Francisco.

"We would call him Uncle Jim," Gieg said. "I remember sitting on his
lap at Easter and getting a chocolate Easter egg from him. That's a
true story ... He was definitely a father figure to me. He became a monster."

FROM FAVOR TO EXILE

Jones' charisma attracted more people to the People's Temple and
garnered him powerful political allies.

Gieg recalls meeting Rosalynn Carter and hearing from revolutionary
speakers like the Black Panther-connected Angela Davis and Huey
Newton. Gieg remembers Jones' political connections and
quasi-celebrity after the church moved to San Francisco in 1971.
Eventually, Jones and the People's Temple came under fire, and talk
turned to building an egalitarian, socialist society in Guyana.

A year after the first Jonestown settlers left for South America,
Gieg followed. Stanley, now 17, was already there. Their cousin would
come as well.

"I was a kid. I was 16 at the time and it just sounded like an
adventure. We are going to build a community, a town in the middle of
the jungle. And it's a promised land," Gieg said. "There will be no
monetary system ... it will be heaven on Earth. That was the big
promotion. It was like heaven on Earth."

But the thick Guyanese jungle was anything but heaven, Gieg said. He
and other church members worked 12-hour days, six days a week. Gieg,
a talented carpenter, worked "like a slave" to build 12-by-24-foot
houses for church members.

"At first there was plenty of food, chicken and regular meals. But as
soon as more and more people started showing up, it was like things
were getting rationed. There were no more pops. No more Pepsi. No
more goodies," Gieg said. "I constructed a template, or a jig, to
build the houses - 52 houses that were built there to house this
thousand people. That was fulfilling. Of course, it was a lot of work."

A FUN JOB AND FREEDOM

When the pilot of the church's boat got it stuck in the mud in
Venezuela - for which he was beaten - Gieg got a new assignment. He
was the new, 18-year-old pilot of the Temple's 80-foot, wooden-hulled
vessel, the "Cudjo." Gieg would ferry people and cargo to and from
the boat launch at Port Kaituma and other sites in Georgetown and
Morowana. It was an assignment he relished.

Like most teen-age boys, Gieg thought with his stomach. The residents
in Jonestown ate "rice and gravy" for three meals a day. For
breakfast, they'd get brown sugar with their rice. The river gave
Gieg more freedom, more adventure and a more varied diet. He'd eat
curried fish and crab cooked on the boat with the Guyanese people he
would ferry for $1 a ride.

As he talked about these happier days, Gieg grabbed a pen and mapped
out that area of Guyana, drawing the ocean and interconnecting rivers
and the location of ports. He once took a speedboat across the border
into Venezuela to buy Vienna sausage and Irish potatoes, he recalled.
He once sold a calculator at a store for a package of cookies. For
that infraction, "I got a slap on the wrist," he said.

He'd fish with the local children; he fondly remembers a boy named
Rennie. He'd catch piranhas. He'd swim in the "root beer"-colored river.

"I was on the boat; I was out, kind of free," Gieg said. "That was
kind of fun."

But while Gieg was a true believer, quietly obedient, Stanley was
"always in trouble," he said.

Stanley worked as a mechanic and drove the church's World War II-era
Army truck. Stanley didn't like it, and for him life was far from ideal.

CRACKS IN THE VENEER

"To be honest with you, my brother and I didn't really see eye to eye
on much," Gieg said. "We were kind of 'discommunicated.' In fact, we
were put in separate foster homes. And that's probably where it
started the most. Stanley was always rebellious."

Stanley was part of the "hard hat brigade," forced to wear yellow
hats and run everywhere inside Jonestown after committing minor
infractions like stealing food or cursing. With his golden good
looks, Stanley was "popular with the ladies," Gieg said.

Gieg's father wanted his boys home, and Gieg was still under age.
Gieg remembers a short-wave radio conversation with his father, who
had come to the temple in San Francisco.

"We talked to him. Said, 'Yeah, everything is great. We fish. We're
great,'" Gieg said before a sarcastic chuckle. "Yeah."

To keep Gieg in Guyana, Jones found him a wife named Joan. He didn't
spend time with the woman. She survived Jonestown, but Gieg later had
the marriage annulled when he came back to the States.

As Gieg delivered more residents to Jonestown, they quickly learned
the truth; it was no utopia, Gieg said.

Everyone, including ailing senior citizens, worked like "slaves,"
after surrendering all their money and possessions to Jones, Gieg
said. Jones would sell the possessions at a store in a nearby town.

"There is such a fine line between socialism and fascism. It can go
either way at any time," Gieg said. "Yes, it was ideal. We have no
worries, no responsibilities. We don't have to worry about paying
bills. We can look at the monkeys in the jungle. But as more and more
people got there and more and more pressure got on Jones, it became
he was on the loud speaker all the time, telling people, reading
stories about all this terrible stuff that's going on in the world
... It was a total brainwashing operation, and he was an expert at
it. And it worked."

But no one could leave. People who tried were rounded up, brought
back and beaten, Gieg said. The rest stayed through brainwashing and
threats, he said.

"We had a lot of meetings in the pavilion where, hell, everything was
going on. Beatings ... Fisticuffs. Someone would come up and just
beat them as a discipline for disrespecting. One guy come up, a guy
named Tom Grubbs. He was a teacher, and he complained to Jones that
there was not enough nourishment in rice and gravy to educate - he
was a teacher - to educate children. And he got beat for complaining.

"There was dunkings, where they had this huge well, an open pit well,
where they had like the old witch days. They would take someone and
just dunk them in, whoosh, and pull them up. Dunk them in, whoosh,
and pull them up. And you never hear about that on TV, but it's true."

Jones became paranoid that people who left the church had hired
mercenaries to kidnap family members and attack Jonestown. He held
"White Nights," or practice drills for ritualistic suicide and taking
poison, Gieg said.

"It started to hit me, like, what's going on here," Gieg said. "This
is falling apart here. And then you'd never see him either. All you
did is hear him."

AN ESCAPE ROUTE, CUT OFF

In November 1978, after hearing rumors of abuse and theft, U.S. Rep.
Leo Ryan of California arrived in Guyana with an entourage of media
and relatives of People's Temple members. At first, Jones blocked the
road to Jonestown. But Ryan and the media were eventually allowed
into the settlement.

The last night the community existed, Gieg played drums in the
Jonestown band for the visitors.

"In fact, before Leo Ryan was murdered, I actually leaned over my
drum set and shook his hand that night because we had been playing
and everything was great on the surface," Gieg said. "He was a good
man. He was trying to help the people. And I knew it in his tone when
he talked to the congregation that evening."

But some church members wanted out, and Jones' paranoia got the best of him.

At about 5:30 a.m. on Nov. 18, Jones' security guards told Gieg and
his boat-mate to take the Cudjo 50 miles downriver. Now, Gieg
suspects Jones was cutting off all means of escape.

"My brother, Stanley, drove us to the boat in Kamaka and there were
some senior citizens on there, sleeping on the boat, watching the
boat," Gieg said. "So he dropped us off at the boat, myself and
Herbert Newell, who is on the list (of survivors)."

Early the next morning, at about 1:30 a.m., the heavily armed
Guyanese Defense Force descended on the Cudjo. Gieg and Newell were
arrested, interrogated and put in a small "shack" that served as a jail.

"When we first got interrogated by the constable, they said there has
been a mass suicide at Jonestown. We were just crying and carrying
on," Gieg said. "After he told us 'everybody is dead in Jonestown,'
he put us back into the cell and we were bawling like kids, you know.
There were probably 10 people consoling us outside of this jail."

STANLEY'S FATE IS SEALED

With few exceptions, everyone in Jonestown was dead by poison or
bullets - including Gieg's cousin, his wife and their 3-year-old baby.

Leo Ryan and three journalists had been murdered by Jonestown gunmen
at the Port Kaituma airstrip while attempting to leave with
disenchanted church members.

Stanley Gieg had driven a tractor towing the gunmen to the airstrip.
He was among the dead at Jonestown. He'd been shot, Gieg said.

Stanley wouldn't have had a choice, he said, and wouldn't have liked
what happened.

Gieg has run through the scenario a thousand times in his mind.

"I've lived it so many times and in so many different ways. I wasn't
there. I can only imagine, but knowing my brother forever, I bet you
he was bawling like a school girl. I know he had a sensitive side,
but he always had a hard shell. He was something else," Gieg said.
"After that happened, I'm sure he was crying. After he got back to
Jonestown, he was murdered. He probably tried to run or something. He
had some morals. I bet you he was bawling after realizing what was
going on. Yeah, he was hard-assed, his exoskeleton. But he was like
breaking an egg."

THE AFTERMATH

After a couple of days, Gieg and Newell were escorted to a church
compound in Georgetown and kept under house arrest with other
survivors. Weeks later, they were allowed to go to a local hotel,
where Gieg's father had sent money for a ticket home.

He came back to the States on a plane filled with police. An army of
television and newspaper cameras blinded him from inside the airport
terminal. He and other survivors were escorted into waiting
Winnebagos for strip searches and interrogations with federal officials.

They asked about the guns and about Jones.

"Just about the whole involvement. Everything," Gieg said. "I was
just an innocent kid. I was duped. I believed Jones could raise the
dead, heal the sick, you know, make the blind see. Yeah, that he
could see the future. He would say, 'I am the I am,' you know, that
he was God."

Gieg rejoined his father in Reno, wearing only a South American
warm-weather shirt. He remembers a woman loaned him a coat. He was
adrift. His father gave him a job and served as a crutch. For years,
he was afraid that People's Temple members would come to kill him.
The "family" he had known was all but gone.

"It was all we had," Gieg said. "It was everybody I ever knew.
Everybody I had ever communicated with suddenly died."

Stanley's body was brought back to the States, where he was cremated
and buried at sea. The family never held a memorial.

"He's not buried at the ma