Get them young and you’ll have them for life. That was the maxim when I worked in television. It was called “creating brand loyalty,” which probably explains why the bloke who was then Chief Executive of the broadcaster who occasionally employed me, was responsible for making “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” a big success in the UK. I suppose, this maxim was a more cynical variation of the Jesuit saying, “Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man.” Brand loyalty was a way of ensuring the audience stuck with the channel and watched the adverts. Programs were the wrapping paper for the advertisements. Advertisers in a way dictated the kinds of things that could or could not be seen on commercial TV.

In the seventies, creating early brand loyalty saw the publication of children’s magazine Look-In in January 1971. Look-In was the equivalent of kids’ TV Guide or as it was known “The Junior TVTimes.” The TVTimes was the rival listing publication to the BBC’s Radio Times. There were basically two broadcasters back then—the BBC which was financed by a compulsory license fee payable by anyone with a TV set; and ITV, or independent television, which was financed by advertising.

Look-In was ITV’s kids comic or teen magazine. It contained a mix of cartoon strips based on popular ITV broadcast shows like Benny Hill, Man About the House, Kung Fu, The Six Million Dollar Man, Sapphire and Steel, Freewheelers, and Catweazle. There was also sports, puzzles, crosswords and plenty of pictures and pullout posters of pop stars like Marc Bolan, Debbie Harry, David Cassidy, Donny Osmond, Slade, David Bowie, Suzi Quatro, Roy Wood and so on.

If memory serves, the very first issue of Look-In contained a free, cut-out and make your very own TV studio which featured the set, presenters and a camera from ITV’s hit kids show Magpie—rival to BBC’s more mild-mannered Blue Peter. Perhaps my interest in TV started then? Who knows. Look-In was a strangely appealing magazine, for it always contained something of interest—whether a pop star interview or favorite comic strip, or just the double-paged regional listings for the week. I lived in Scotland which meant watching local programming like Knot-Tying from Drumnadrochit or Haggis Farming from Pittenweem, while the rest of the country enjoyed Captain Scarlet or Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).

Look-In also had fabulous cover artwork featuring portraits of pop stars, DJs, and actors as painted by Arnaldo Putzu. These covers made the magazine instantly recognizable and iconic. A bit like Richard Bernstein’s covers for Andy Warhol’s Interview which followed in 1972. Putzu had a career painting movie posters, most notably for the Carry On films and Get Carter. His paintings were featured on the cover of Look-In until the 1980s when they were sadly and unimaginatively replaced with photographs.

Look-In lasted from January 1971 until March 1994 and here’s a small selection of the cover artwork from the 1970s to early eighties.
 

 

 

 

 

 
More poptastic covers, after the jump…
 

Tom Savini and Andy Warhol. All photos by Christopher Makos via Pittsburgh City Paper.
 
Before Tom Savini made Andy Warhol look like a character from one of George Romero’s films, he had never met the soft-spoken artist. However, his actor/makeup artist/stuntman younger brother Joe Savini had attended school with Warhol at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh. George Romero is also an alumnus of the school. Following the release of Day of the Dead in 1985, Savini would receive a call on behalf of Andy Warhol requesting that he transform Andy into one of his iconic zombies. Given the fact that Pittsburgh is truly the center of the zombie universe, as well as the birthplace of Andy Warhol and Tom Savini, the pop artist’s request to become a zombie was perhaps inevitable. Whatever the case may be, Savini and long-time colleague FX legend Greg Nicotero traveled to meet Warhol in New York to make Andy’s dream of becoming one of the undead a reality.

During their time with Warhol, the platinum-wigged artist sat quietly while Savini and Nicotero worked their magic. Also on hand was Massachusetts native, photographer (and former apprentice to Man Ray) Christopher Makos, who captured a few moments from the threesome’s strange get-together. According to Savini, he himself was unaware Warhol was wearing a wig and gently tried to adjust Andy’s “hair.”
 

Zombie Warhol.
 
It turns out Andy Warhol was very much a fan of Romero’s Living Dead series and zombie culture. In an interview with the Pittsburgh City Paper, Makos, a close friend of the artist, believed Romero’s films—and others like them—were a part of the artist’s “fieldhouse” (though he likely meant “wheelhouse”). Warhol’s 1977 film Bad features a gory scene of a woman tossing her crying infant out of a window. It splatters on the sidewalk next to a woman walking by, spraying blood from its head.

Another aspect of Romero’s films that appealed to Warhol was how the filmmaker was able to make such a strong statement with a relatively small budget. In the case of 1985’s Day of the Dead, Romero saw his initial budget of seven million slashed in half. This forced Romero to make huge concessions not only to the original script and larger scale of the film, but his desire for Day of the Dead to be unrated. If you’re a fan of this film, the reality of the drastic cuts ended up producing some of the greatest practical effects ever, as well as the gift of another Massachusetts native, Joseph Pilato (RIP) in the unforgettable role of Captain Henry—“Choke on ‘em!”—Rhodes, who only got the part as a direct result of the reduction in the film’s budget.

Makos’ photographic legacy is astounding in its own right, and his many images of Andy Warhol can be found in his beautiful books on Andy. Tom Savini has recently released his highly anticipated autobiography, Savini: The Biography.
 

An alternate image of Warhol as a Savini zombie.
 

The trailer for Andy Warhol’s ‘Bad.’

Debbie Harry by Andy Warhol.
 
On December 8th, 1977, Blondie were set to make their first appearance in Brisbane, Australia. But the show didn’t go on as scheduled, and it would become known as the only show the band would be forced to cancel. In Australia, Blondie’s first record, Blondie was a huge hit, and fans were rabid as they waited at Her Majesty’s Theater, a former opera house, for the band to take the stage. And, as the title of this post indicates pretty clearly, that never happened. Here’s the story about how Debbie Harry’s alleged overindulgence on a fruit close to my heart, cherries, resulted in a good-old-fashioned punk rock riot.

As the story goes, the turnout for the show was about 1200 strong. After waiting around an hour for the show to start, drummer Clem Burke came out on stage to personally apologize to the crowd, letting them Blondie wouldn’t be able to play because Deborah Harry was “ill.” The cause of Harry’s illness was blamed on the singer eating too many cherries, and was apparently so acute a doctor was dispatched to the theater to treat the ailing singer. Ray Maguire, the band’s road manager, would later make a curious statement supporting the cherry-theory:

“In New York, we don’t see very much fruit, but out here, we’ve been going mad on it. I think that Deborah just had a few too many cherries over the last few days.”

I don’t know about you, but I had no idea there was some sort of fresh fruit crisis going on in New York in the 1970s. Anyway, after apologizing to the crowd, Burke was loudly booed and pelted with an object thrown by someone in the audience. As bottles and cans started to fly at the stage, Burke made a hasty exit while local Brisbane punk band The Survivors (known initially as Rat Salad, just like Van Halen) were begging show promoters to let them play. Some attendees started to leave while a group of five tried to get on stage and ended up throwing their fists at members of Blondie’s road crew. The fisticuffs continued backstage as crew members battled to eject the punchy fans, a few who were arrested by the police.

Meanwhile, other angry ex-Blondie fans somehow managed to remove a huge iron gate and iron bar from the premises and using their makeshift weapons to try to bust open the door. They were eventually able to hurl the iron bar over an opening at the top of the door, where it nearly landed on top of fans trying to leave what was pretty much a riot in progress. A riot attributed to an unnamed, unemployed twenty-year-old youth and three minors charged with willful destruction of property. The youngsters were tried in Children’s Court.
 

An article in the Telegraph describing the riot at Her Majesty’s Theater.
 
In a fantastic twist to this story, Australian writer and culture vulture Clinton Walker (author of many books, including the incredible biography on Bon Scott, Highway to Hell: the Life and Death of AC/DC Legend Bon Scott) literally had a front-row seat when the riot began and, according to Walker, his pal Bob Farrell (later of the band Laughing Clowns) was one of the kids who stormed the stage. In Walker’s account of the riot, cherries were perhaps not to blame for Harry’s illness, but instead the ingestion of potent Australian heroin. The acclaimed author admits it was a “scurrilous” thing to say, but confirms it to be very much a part of the mythology behind the cancelation of Blondie’s first gig in Brisbane. Walker was also at the poorly attended make-up show ten days later on December 18th at Her Majesty’s Theater, where the band concluded their set by smashing up their instruments. Nice.
 

Blondie live at CBGB’s in May of 1977.

George Harrison posing on a Triumph motorcycle in 1972.
 
Beatle George Harrison was a profoundly fascinating cat and a mass of contradictions. Despite being known as the “quiet Beatle,” Harrison could prove to be anything but. A deeply spiritual man, Harrison believed he had led a previous life. He brought his Beatle bandmates to Northern India to become better acquainted with transcendental meditation in 1968. Later that same year, gentle George invited members of the Hells Angels to the offices of Apple after meeting a few of them getting high on Haight Street in San Francisco.

Rolling Stone founding editor David Dalton wrote about the entire affair. When Harrison met two Angels, Bill “Sweet Willie Tumbleweed” Fritch, the leader of the SF Hells Angels in the mid-60s, and Frisco Pete (Pete Knell), he extended an invitation for them to visit him in London, and attend a Christmas party at Apple Corps headquarters. Since you can’t ride a chopper all the way to London from San Francisco, the Angels’ spiritual advisor (yep), Peter “Monk” Zimmels (formerly a Buddhist monk on the run after deserting his gig with the U.S. Navy), went to concert promoter Bill Graham for travel cash.

Graham was already in deep with the Hells Angels and had received four death threats (noted in the book The Zapple Diaries: The Rise and Fall of the Last Beatles Label) including bullets fired into his office at the SF Fillmore by the infamous motorcycle gang. So when Peter the Monk arrived at the Fillmore to talk to Graham, his negotiation tactics revolved around the promise to “remove” the bullets in exchange for a $1,000 bucks so the Angels could go party with the Beatles in London. Graham coughed up the cash quickly, and a bunch of Hells Angels and two of their motorcycles would soon be on their way to see their pal, George. In anticipation of their visit, Harrison sent out a memo on December 4th to Apple Corps, letting them know a dozen members of the Hells Angels would be guests at Apple Corps’ Savile Row offices:
 

 

Now the notion Harrison was concerned about the Hells Angels visit is pretty apparent, as he ominously reminds Apple staff to not allow the bikers to “take control” of Savile Row—to say nothing of their plans for Czechoslovakia, which is over 800 miles away from London. Once they arrived, only two of the Angels actually made it through customs, Frisco Pete and Tumbleweed, along with an assorted group of hangers-on. When they arrived at the party, they were expecting to hook up with George, who would later whisk them away to his massive mansion. Once Harrison showed up, he gave the motley group a tour of Apple and then vanished, leaving the staff at Apple to deal with his guests. At the party, John and Yoko were dressed as Ma and Pa Christmas while a giant 43-pound turkey took its time cooking. All the while, Hells Angels, being Hells Angels, along with their jet-lagged entourage, consumed tons of booze and smoked hash. A completely blotto Frisco Pete, blind from drink and suddenly hungry, lurched into the main party room and screamed at John Lennon, “What the FUCK is going on in this place? We wanna eat!”

Pete’s announcement sucked all the air out of the room as everyone waited to see what was going to happen next. This is the part of the story when fists start flying. Because it ain’t the holidays until someone gets punched.

According to The Zapple Diaries, journalist Alan Smith responded to Pete’s demand for grub, politely asking the biker to “have a little consideration.” This got Smith punched in the face by the angry, drunk, high and hungry biker, sending him across the room where he crumbled into a pile on the floor. Now Pete turned to Santa Lennon and screamed the following:

“You got more fucking food in that kitchen than there are people, and it’s all locked up, and those two fucking broads upstairs tell me I’ve gotta wait until 7:00 just like everybody else! There’s a forty-three-pound turkey in that kitchen, and I want some of it now!!!”

 

A photo of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Apple artist Mary Hopkin at the Apple Corps Christmas Party in 1968.
 
After Lennon told Pete it wasn’t “cool” to be hungry, Peter Coyote (Frisco Pete’s multi-talented actor/director/friend, who had spent the flight from California to London injecting himself with methamphetamine and B12 to help “cure” his hepatitis), intervened telling Lennon to take a seat. It was now time for Apple’s administrative director Peter Brown to materialize and deliver this soliloquy (via The Zapple Diaries) to Frisco Pete in an effort to chill out the volatile situation:

“Now listen, Pete, we have every intention of feeding you, and I apologize for the delay, but I was hoping you could appreciate the kitchen staff have been working since 9:00 am, and they’ve been under considerable pressure. We’re waiting for the caterers to finish laying the tables, and it shouldn’t take more than another ten minutes, and then we can all go downstairs and gorge ourselves to death, but please, I beg you, be patient.”

Amazingly, Brown’s very English entreaty didn’t get him whomped in the face; it instead, quite surprisingly, sent Frisco Pete back to his clan, who were still imbibing and salivating in the other room. As promised, ten minutes later, the downstairs boardroom opened, and because he was hungry and presumably all out of fucks to give, Frisco Pete grabbed a turkey leg and started eating it caveman-style. The rest of his entourage invaded the room and devoured the entire dinner, including the fancy wine it was served with. Then, since it ain’t really a party until somebody pukes, several of Harrison’s not-so-angelic guests barfed on the carpets due to overindulgence. The bikers would stick around Apple, sleeping wherever they wanted, including George’s office, until, a few days into their invasion, Harrison finally asked if they would be “moving all of their stuff” out tonight. The biker contingency was caught off guard, still thinking Harrison was their buddy, causing someone in the group to ask George if he “dug them or not.” Harrison’s very “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” response was allegedly as follows:

“Yin and yang, heads and tails, yes and no.”

Apple Corps president Neil Aspinall witnessed the showdown, recalling that Harrison’s quizzical comment left the bikers speechless. To illuminate what George was trying to say, he chimed in with, “You know, BUGGER OFF!” which wasn’t lost on Tumbleweed and Frisco Pete, and the group left without further incident.
 

 
The trailer for the 2017 documentary ‘The Beatles, Hippies and Hells Angels: Inside the Crazy World of Apple.’ Narrated by Peter Coyote.
 
With thanks to the wonderful Martin Schneider.

A coat with an image of Malcom McDowell as Alex DeLarge in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (a bargain at $1,380).
 
Recently we shared with you the wildly overpriced, hideous Captain Beefheart designer silk shirt that nobody asked for. Now, direct from the “nobody asked for this shit” department comes a line of high-priced coats containing disturbing visuals from Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange.

Because nothing says high fashion like a giant tormented image of Alex DeLarge (played by Malcolm McDowell) with his eyes being held open by sharp metal clamps on a coat, here’s a little background. In the scene, DeLarge is going through the horrific, but fictional Ludovico’s Technique, a kind of aversion therapy during which he was forced to watch extremely graphic Nazi imagery. But wait! It gets worse. Kubrick was well known for getting his actors to push themselves to the point of no return. For instance, actress Shelly Duvall shared in an interview in 1980 with Roger Ebert that her character in The Shining, Wendy Torrance, “cried twelve hours a day, all day long,” concluding she spent thirteen months on location essentially in tears. And that’s just one account of Duvall’s difficult experience with Stanley Kubrick. Getting back to the image on the jacket above, the shocking scene was shot in ten excruciating minutes during which McDowell’s corneas were repeatedly scratched. McDowell broke it down in an interview in 2014 like this:

“I didn’t feel at the time, my eyes were anesthetized. In the car going home, I don’t know if you’ve ever scratched your corneas, but you don’t want to do it. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced pain like that before. It was horrible. Like being cut with razor blades.”

Before I go any further, I should say the coat in question is 100% polyester, and it’s the least expensive of the four coats being sold by Moscow-based conceptual clothier (?) SVMOSCOW. If tortured Alex DeLarge isn’t your bag, SVMOSCOW also has a coat featuring an aggressive-looking DeLarge in his Droogs getup, including his massive white codpiece. But honestly, aside from the price tag aligning with a specific demographic, I’m pretty sure if I spotted someone sporting one, they would likely know fuck nor all about what it was based on. To be fair, lots of heavy metal fans can’t name more than one song by the band whose t-shirt they are currently wearing. So the next time you see someone wearing an Iron Maiden shirt, ask them to name their favorite Maiden jam. If they tell you it’s “Run to the Hills,” its a lie. Of course, if these spendy duds are your thing, you can break payments into monthly installments that look like a car payment. See the rest of the worst of the collection below.
 

A variant of the jacket at the top of the post which retails for $2,775.
 

A long coat featuring McDowell as Alex in his Droogs gear, $1,955.
 

Another long coat with an image of Alex DeLarge, $2,135.
 

The official NSFW trailer for ‘A Clockwork Orange.’

 
Scene: Opening titles.

A group of sunny So-Cal cheerleaders kick and shake: “Give it an L. Give it an I. Give an S. Give it a Zee. Give it…”

They’re going to do the whole fucking alphabet…

“...an O. Give it an M. Give it an A…”

We’ll be here all day….Jesus fucking Sanchez...

“..Give it an N. Give it an I. Give it an A.”

Wait…

“...What does it it spell…LISZTOMANIA!”

Cue Alan Whicker, for it is he…He speaks into his microphone…

Whicker: The thing about Ken Russell’s most misunderstood and most reviled film Lisztomania is that it has some of his best stylistic devices and some of his worst artistic traits. It is a film that shows the best of Ken Russell while revealing the problems involved in ever fully realizing such a febrile imagination on a shoestring budget.

Cut to: Archive footage of producer David Puttnam in a bank vault counting money while reading movie reviews. In the background hundreds of Oompa-Loompahs are making telephone calls to very important Hollywood producers.

Whicker (in voice-over): This man is God. He is a movie producer. He wants to leave his fingerprint on everything he touches…Today he wants people to know he is making the Ken Russell film that will “Out-Tommy Tommy.”

Note that David Puttnam has a beard. The writer Roald Dahl hated people who wore beards because he thought they were hiding something. Ken Russell sported a beard during Tommy. Two beards could be seen as two negatives. But as Woody Allen once noted, two negatives make a positive.

Puttnam hopes Lisztomania will be a positive.

Unfortunately, Russell shaved his beard before filming and tried out a rather dapper mustache…

Suitable music, cue the blog:

Russell had originally intended to make a film about George Gershwin starring Al Pacino. He was under contract with Puttnam to make six movies on six composers. Together they’d already made Mahler starring Rober Powell and Georgina Hale to mixed reviews though some minor success at the box-office. Then came Tommy, the movie version of the Who’s classic concept album. Tommy had been a major hit with both audiences and critics across the world. Russell’s movie kick-started pop promos and whole new way of cinematic storytelling. At Puttnam’s bidding, Russell wrote two scripts. One on sex-mad classical composer Franz Liszt. One on George Gershwin. The latter was dull, The former interesting...

Scene: Exterior Day: Enter Roger Daltrey juggling fish while walking on water and turning it to wine.

Daltrey was at his peak. He was Tommy. He was the frontman for the Who. He was the one name everyone wanted to work with. Russell wanted to make another film with Daltrey. Daltrey wanted to make another film with Russell—despite 32-takes running barefoot through a mustard field for Tommy.

Puttnam liked the idea of Daltrey and Russell making another film together. He opted for Lisztomania and dropped the idea of Pacino as Gershwin.

Cut to: Ext. Day: Archive footage of Ken Russell on location.

Russell: Roger is a natural, brilliant performer. He acts as he sings and the results are magical. He also has a curious quality of innocence which is why he was a perfect Tommy and why he is the only person to play Liszt.

Flashback: Roger Daltrey discusses Liszt in a TV interview from 1974.

Daltrey: Liszt’s music is just like modern day rock. He was a lot like me. He had this religious thing like me but he still went lusting after women.

Cut to Alan Whicker walking on a surf-washed beach.

Whicker: Lisztomania was the term coined by German Romantic poet Heinrich Heine to describe the mass adulation composer Franz Liszt aroused in his fans. Liszt was mobbed by breathy young women, who swooned at his recitals, chanted his name, plundered discarded detritus for keepsakes (cigar butts, coffee cups, gloves) and dared to touch the hem of his garment.

Many Germans considered Lisztomania to be a genuine fever, but no one could find its cause or its cure. Heine later wrote:

What is the reason of this phenomenon? The solution of this question belongs to the domain of pathology rather than that of aesthetics. A physician, whose speciality is female diseases, and whom I asked to explain the magic our Liszt exerted upon the public, smiled in the strangest manner, and at the same time said all sorts of things about magnetism, galvanism, electricity, of the contagion of the close hall filled with countless wax lights and several hundred perfumed and perspiring human beings, of historical epilepsy, of the phenomenon of tickling, of musical cantharides, and other scabrous things, which, I believe have reference to the mysteries of the bona dea. Perhaps the solution of the question is not buried in such adventurous depths, but floats on a very prosaic surface. It seems to me at times that all this sorcery may be explained by the fact that no one on earth knows so well how to organize his successes, or rather their mise en scene, as our Franz Liszt.

The seed was sown in Russell’s brain. Classical musicians like Liszt are the same as pop stars like Daltrey, Mick Jagger or the Beatles.

Cut to the blog:

Actually, Russell originally wanted Mick Jagger to play Liszt. However, the starting point for his script and the film was the novel Nélida by Marie d’Agoult–the “thinly disguised fictional account” of her four year affair with the long-fingered composer Liszt.

Russell saw Liszt, as Joseph Lanza notes in Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films,  as “Romanticism’s baby and the precursor to the modern pop star.”

Like other great names that caught Russell’s eye, Liszt fought internal wars. He was torn between love for his music and his prurient desires, his guilt about leading a cushy lifestyle and sitting idly during the 1849 Hungarian rebellion against the House of Hapsburg, his desperation for the kind of commercial success that would belie his artistic integrity, and most important, the queasy fact that Wagner was eclipsing him as Europe’s symphonic superstar.

Russell saw much to play with here and described Lisztomania as not a straightforward biography but coming:

...from things I feel when I listen to the music of Wagner and Liszt, and when I think about their lives.

Russell wanted to make a film about the rivalry between Liszt and Wagner, and how Wagner plagiarized some of Liszt’s work and ended up marrying Liszt’s daughter, Cosima. However, Puttnam wanted another Tommy full of rock stars and great tunes. Tommy was money. Tommy was Oscar-nominations. Puttnam liked both. But Lisztomania was an unknown quantity. Puttnam forced Ringo Starr on Russell. He added scenes and even included some musical cues that had nothing to do with anything. Russell was beginning to feel frustrated.

Sidebar: When I produced stuff for TV, I saw my job as enabling the director to bring their vision to the screen. Puttnam was of the olde school where he thought a producer had his/her vision on the screen, not so much the director. The problem with creative industries is that everyone thinks they are creative. But in truth: Producers are money and editorial. Directors and writers are talent.

Here’s another interesting piece of casting: Russell allegedly wanted Marty Feldman to play Wagner but he settled for Paul Nicholas. Not that there’s much wrong with “Cousin Kevin” Mr. Nicholas, but he ain’t Marty Feldman…

Russell’s screenplay was only 57-pages long. The script was all in his head. Puttnam insisted on having everything down on paper so he could cost it. The budget spiralled upwards but not as much as Russell wanted. What should have been Fellini became end-of-the-pier cabaret. It probably suited Russell as his imagination soared in adverse circumstances. But the different aims of a producer who wanted a pop promo; and director who wanted to make a film about art, music, and rivalry between two composers, were never fully resolved.

Russell fell back on the comic strip format he had used with his (banned) TV biopic on Strauss Dance of the Seven Veils. The film became a series of dreams which highlighted key moments in Liszt’s life. Russell eschewed any realism using references to Universal horror movies, pop concerts, the rise of National Socialism, mensch und übermensch, Pop Art, comedy, and even some of the movies that most influenced the young Ken Russell.

The resulting film may be considered by some as a mess, but it’s a genius mess. A film that offers up more ideas in one sequence than a dozen studio movies with one-hundred times the budget. As Ross Care correctly noted in Film Quarterly:

Ken Russell is an intuitive symbolist and fantasist, a total film-maker who orchestrates his subjects in much the same manner that a composer might transcribe a musical composition from one interpretative medium to another…

Or as Joseph Lanza wrote:

Lisztomania—[was] the film that established once and for all Ken Russell’s refusal to pay any more token favors to biographical “realism.” Lisztomania contains many relevant facts about Liszt—his music, the people who affected his life, his marital problems, his womanizing, his recourse to religion, and of course, his strained relationship with Wagner—but it goes further into the deep end than even the swastika-adorned portrait of Strauss from five years before.

Released in 1975, shortly after Tommy, Lisztomania continues Russell’s harder, more satirical edge, with more lavish sets, more crazed acting, more frenetic plot pacing, and a premise that is simultaneously silly and fantastic.

Cut to: Alan Whicker up to his next in water on a beach.

Whicker: Cinema and TV was never the same after Tommy. And Ken Russell’s career was never quite the same after Lisztomania.

End titles.
 

 

 
More on Ken Russell’s ‘Lisztomania’, after the jump…
 

 
If you owned a desktop PC in the nineties, then you must remember weepuls. Your friend’s mom might have even had one on the dash of her ‘99 Honda Accord. They were lovable little critters; pom-poms with googly-eyes, antennae, and flat, adhesive feet. Costumed in a variety of smile-provoking themes and colors - with cowboy hats, sunglasses, suits, dog ears, or wings - weepuls were used as a customizable promotional tools for pharmaceuticals and local real estate agents alike. They were also used as a bargaining chip, a notable bottom-tier prize of the millennial generation’s Elementary School magazine drives. Those, and Tootsie Roll banks.
 
The first Weepul was created in 1971 by Oklahoma City toy company, Bipo Inc. The story of the weepul, which I’m sure during its heyday was a multi-million dollar useless-crap empire,  isn’t all that notable, so I’ll spare you the boring details. Something that did catch my attention though was that these cotton ball creatures led a fascinating second life in the Netherlands, under the oh-so similar name, wuppies. The summer of 1981 was Dutch wuppie madness and apparently everyone had to have one. And interestingly enough, much of that can be attributed to a bizarre man named Vader Abraham, who wrote an entire record about them.
 

 
Never without with his iconic bowler hat and thick gray beard, Vader (Father) Abraham from Holland is the singer of such chart-topping Dutch Schlager hits like “Het kleine café aan de haven” and his right-wing populist banger (yep), “Den Uyl is in den olie.” Just from the photos alone, you know Vader is a total tripper. His website celebrates 128 gold and platinum records, but you know back in the day this dude probably partied pretty hard.
 
In 1977, Vader Abraham was asked to write a promotional song for The Smurfs (then big in the Netherlands). The serenading crooner, with his brooding baritone and twisted looks, Vader Abraham wrote the smash hit ‘T Smurfenlied (“The Smurf Song”) - a call and response duet with his chippy little blue friends. And of course, you know what happened next. People fucking loved it. So, he spent the next few years promoting himself as keeper of The Smurfs. He wrote several albums’ worth of Smurfs tunes, and you guessed it, every song sounds the exact same.
 

 
High off the successes of Smurf-mania, but seeing that his glory was quickly fading, Vader Abraham shed his skin as the Smurfs guy and rebranded - as the wuppies guy. His weepul tribute album saw the little throwaway toys as nearly life-sized, animated and singing a high-pitched tune to accompany the Vader’s powerful ballads. Once more, the music sparked a craze that was equally as massive as it was a trading tool for free child labor.
 
See Vader Abraham in action, after the jump…

The invitation for the ‘Nevermind’ record release party held at Re-bar in Seattle on September 13th, 1991.
 

“Nevermind Triskaidekaphobia, Here’s Nirvana. On Friday the 13th, join Nirvana and DGC Records for a release party in honor of Nirvana’s DGC debut album Nevermind. Edible food, drinks, prizes you might want to take home, a few surprises, people to meet, the band to greet… But nevermind all that, the important part is the music. Hear Nevermind in its entirety and loud.”

—the details for Nirvana’s album release party for Nevermind.

The first signal that things at Nirvana’s record release party for Nevermind might get out of hand was it was a strictly “beer only” event. To remedy this, Kurt Cobain’s pal Dylan Carlson of the band Earth snuck in a huge bottle of whiskey (allegedly Jim Beam) served it up covertly in a photo booth inside the infamous Seattle entertainment mecca/gay-friendly watering hole, Re-bar. Smuggling booze into a bar is a thing thrifty drunks do, but you also might be asking yourself why did it have to be smuggled into a bar hosting a party full of industry types from Geffen Records, local label Sub Pop and thirsty musicians? To explain this, we have to consider Seattle’s long, complicated history with hard liquor. Prior to the 1970s, it was illegal for people to drink whilst standing up, and women were not permitted to sit on bar stools.

Additionally, and until very recently, all sales of hard liquor were controlled by Washington State and obtaining a license to sell booze in clubs, restaurants, and other establishments was challenging. Getting a license to sell booze was even more difficult for venues that catered to lovers of “black” music or that was welcoming of gay people. The Washington State Liquor Board started watching Re-bar (a gay hotspot) microscopically, and would often roll into the club close to closing time to check up on Re-bar’s clientele and essentially harass patrons and employees.
 

A photo of Nirvana (apparently with former publicist Susie Tennent) taken inside the whiskey bar/photo booth at Re-bar.
 
In Everett True’s book Nirvana: The Biography, author and journalist Carrie Borzillo remembers she was told the reason Re-bar wasn’t able to serve liquor at the Nevermind record release was due to the venue also serving food (or the frightening promise of “edible food” as the invitation at the top of the post notes). Borzillo arrived at the party, and after surveying the food, spotted Cobain allegedly knocking back a fifth of Seagram’s straight out of the bottle. There were several kegs of beer but the free suds disappeared quickly. Sub Pop’s Bruce Pavitt was DJ’ing the party, and around the time the beer ran out, he had already spun Nevermind twice and twice was enough for Kurt, Krist, and Dave, who started feeding Pavitt requests to play new wave and disco hits. Naturally, Pavitt, a purveyor of good taste, complied. It wouldn’t be long before some of the edible food offered up at Re-bar starting flying, and Borzillo’s new dress was covered by onion dip.

The first food item that became a projectile was a tamale hurled by Krist Novoselic at Kurt and Dylan Carlson.

Since Nirvana was no newbie to food fights, Kurt whipped some guacamole back at Krist, though Nirvana fan club founder Nils Bernstein was certain (as noted in Nirvana: The Biography) Kurt actually threw Green Goddess dip at Krist, because these details are fucking important. Amid the flying food chaos, someone thought it would improve the party’s awesome anti-ambiance by rolling the tapped kegs around the bar. Steve Wells, the owner of Re-bar at the time collected the three knuckleheads who started the food fight, the guests of honor, and tossed the trio (as well as Bruce Pavitt) out on Howell Street, where they would proceed to puke, because it’s not really a night to remember until someone barfs.

Recently, Screaming Trees guitarist Gary Lee Connor shared his memories of the night recalling that after Nirvana got booted, he heard Krist egging on the people still inside their party through a barred open window, sarcastically “begging” to be let back in. Since this is Seattle in the magical year of 1991, Susie Tennant, the band’s publicist at the time, pulled up in a limousine and brought the band and a few friends back to her house to continue the festivities. Kurt slingshot eggs at her neighbor’s cars with Fastbacks vocalist, the always well dressed Kurt Bloch. Now that’s a fucking party. A few photos of the night Nirvana got kicked out of their own party because they knew how to party follow.
 

A photo taken at the Re-bar party by Jennifer Finch of L7.
 

Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic.
 

A thrilled looking Kurt Cobain at the Nevermind record release party. Photo by Charles Peterson.
 

Dylan Carlson (standing), Screaming Tree’s vocalist Mark Lanegan and Kurt playing dress up at Susie Tennant’s apartment. Photo credit.
 

 
I’m pretty sure most of us are well acquainted with one of Faith No More’s most controversial moments—the 1989 video for “Epic” directed by video visionary Ralph Ziman. The cringey, surreal video got animal rights activists riled up as it features a fish flailing around on the floor of the set seemingly in the throes of death as the song dramatically plays out. Historically, FNM’s reputation for fucking with their fans, bands they’ve toured with, and random people are well documented. They danced in the nude around Billy Idol in Seattle in 1990, and Mike Patton has told countless, wildly gross stories about the things he does with poop. Although not all the yarns were always factual, such as the rumor he took a shit in Axl Rose’s orange juice while Faith was touring with Guns N’ Roses in 1991. Now that we’ve established how members of FNM have enjoyed fabricating some of their antics let’s break down one of their greatest pranks and the video for “Epic” which started it all. 

After parting ways with original Faith No More vocalist Chuck Mosley, the band joined forces with 21-year-old Mike Patton for their third album, The Real Thing. Armed with Patton’s aggressive vocals and innovative musical arrangements “Epic” would become FNM’s first top ten hit and, with respect to Mr. Mosely, put the band on the map. The video was a massive hit with MTV viewers and FNM performed it live and unhinged at the MTV Video Music Awards show in September of 1990 and on Saturday Night Live in December of the same year. Living up to their rep as tall-tale tellers, and likely to help quell some of the negativity surrounding the fish in the video gasping for air from its gills, a story began to circulate that the fish in question was named Linear Soul Child and was formerly a pet of Icelandic chanteuse Björk. The part about Björk owning a fish called Linear Soul Child isn’t that hard to buy, but the rest of the tale is slightly fishy, and it goes like this; Björk was given the fish as a gift from a fan after her poetry reading in San Francisco. She then traveled to FNM keyboardist Roddy Bottum’s home in Berkley, California where he was throwing a party. Sometime during the evening, the fish disappeared. In another unlikely move, it was alleged during an interview with CNN (?) Björk would make the following statement about her beloved Linear Soul Child and what, if anything, the members of Faith No More had to do with its possible demise after appearing in the video:   

“I know those guys, I know they wouldn’t do anything to harm [him]. But I know, if I had gone home with MY fish, which was given to ME, none of this would have ever happened.”

 

The fish from the “Epic” video.
 
While I’m sure we’d all love to believe the fish in “Epic” belonged to Björk, it’s simply not true. Sure, it’s not hard to conceive Björk was traveling with a fish she got as a gift from a random fan in San Francisco, but it sadly never happened much like the shitty Axl Rose orange juice caper. As far as the idea for the fish to be used in the video and where it came from, there are two accounts—one from director Ralph Ziman and the other from FNM bassist Billy Gould. Gould claimed the idea to use the fish in the video was his, inspired by the ethos of director John Waters, and in Gould’s words, how to get “maximum attention for minimum money.” In an interview from 2010, Zimon debunked the Björk rumor (which he had never heard until then) and gave his version of how the fish ended up in the video: 

“It wasn’t Björk’s goldfish. But yes, I am responsible for that. And it wasn’t even a goldfish, interestingly enough. I was talking with someone about this yesterday. We made that video in 1987. I remember the band had one day off from tour, and they were in London. The record company had phoned us on very short notice and asked us to do a music video. They made it sound like a really low priority. I think it was being done for Warner Bros. at the time. I just made a list of a bunch of things I thought we could do. Exploding a piano. A fish flopping around. We literally had one day to pre-produce it. So we handed the fish off to the art department. I can’t remember what it was. If it was a carp? It was a freshwater fish. We shot that in London in some studios next to the tour venue. And we wound up letting that fish go in the river when we were finished. We had a couple of them. We would let them flop around, and then we’d swap it over, and we’d shoot another one. I don’t remember what kind of fish they were, but the animal handler had brought them in because they were so feisty.”

First of all, Zimon must have meant to say the video was made in 1989, not 1987 as that would pre-date Patton’s formal affiliation with FNM. Anyway, now that we know the fish in “Epic” was some sort of British freshwater fish, Mike Patton has also gone on the record saying the song is about sex, or more accurately, the frustration associated with not getting it on enough. Later in 2005, Patton would say his unique vocal stylings in “Epic” was his attempt to cultivate his sound to be in line with Debbie Harry’s performance on “Rapture,” a song Patton often covered in live performance during his time with Mr. Bungle. 
 

Faith No More performing “Epic” in London, 1990.

 
Karl Marx always looked like he had birds nesting in his beard or maybe a smorgasbord of food debris clogging up his grizzled follicles from the last few meals he’d scoffed. He never looked quite healthy. He wasn’t. He drank too much, smoked too much (noxious cheap cigars), and was almost driven demented by a rash of painful boils on his butt that meant he did a lot of his writing standing up. More importantly, he hardly looked like the guy who is regularly blamed for the state oppression and the genocide of millions of people under communism or socialism or whateverism. If Marx knew the atrocities supposedly carried out in his name he’d probably swing fists or hurl chunks. The gulf between Marx’s ideas and the practice of so-called communism and socialism as has all-too often been carried out in his name is like the difference between those dour gritty portraits of a bad Santa and what the real Karl Marx was like as a person.

He was a complex fucker was our Karl.

Photographic portraits of Marx don’t suggest a guy who wrote poetry, loved his wife with a passion, doted on his kids, and was once a hellraiser of a student—getting drunk, causing mayhem, and being chased by the police after one too many for the road. He was also scarred in a duel and exiled from Germany, Belgium, and France over his barbed and satiric attacks on these countries often despotic rulers. Marx was a man of action always willing to lead the fight who eventually settled for a life of sedentary toil to produce works that changed the world.

He was also a voracious reader who loved the works of Shakespeare and could quote entire plays by the Bard—just as his children could—and generally took an interest in everything. “Art,” he said, “is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.” No idea or philosophy or culture was foreign to him, and there was nothing that didn’t keen his interest.

Yet, he could also be bad tempered and foul to those who went against him. And on occasion was anti-semitic and racist—he described one poor frenemy (Ferdinand Lassalle) as a Jewish n-word. No saint, but all human.

Karl also enjoyed playing parlor games like Confessions, which is now probably better known as the set of questions devised by Marcel Proust. In April 1865, Marx was staying with relatives when he as asked by his daughters to answer a set of confessions. Marx’s responses give an interesting (and at times humorous) insight into the great political and economic philosopher, journalist and writer.

Your favourite virtue: Simplicity

Your favourite virtue in man: Strength

Your favourite virtue in woman: Weakness

Your chief characteristic: Singleness of purpose

Your idea of happiness: To fight

Your idea of misery: To submit

The vice you excuse most: Gullibility

The vice you detest most: Servility

Your aversion: Martin Tupper [popular Victorian author]

Your favourite occupation: Glancing at Netchen [“Netchen, or Nannette, was Antoinette Philips, aged 28 at the time, Marx’s cousin and a member of the Dutch section of the International”]

Your favourite poet: Aeschylus, Shakespeare

Your favourite prose-writer: Diderot

Your hero: Spartacus, Kepler

Your heroine: Gretchen

Your favourite flower: Daphne

Your favourite dish: Fish

Your favourite colour: Red

Your maxim: Nihil humani a me alienum puto [Nothing human is alien to me]

Your favourite motto: De omnibus dubitandum [Doubt everything]

 
H/T Marx/Engels Archive.