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The time Ian McKellen jammed with the Fleshtones on MTV in 1987
07.02.2014
08:57 am
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Last week, we told you about the short-lived MTV series Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes, a brilliant and unimpeachably hip NYC countercultural olio that the famous pop artist curated and co-hosted for the music network before its final descent into full suck. I combed the Internet for videos from that show in an effort to be as comprehensive as possible. I’m almost embarrassed to tell you how many hours I spent looking, actually. But despite all that effort, OF COURSE I missed something brilliant, and lucky I am that an attentive reader clued me in.
 

 
Just before they set off on their Fleshtones Vs. Reality tour in 1987, NYC’s Fleshtones—a great band who’d combined early psych cool, surf-rock twang, R&B swagger, and shitloads of cheeky, high energy fun—taped two segments for Warhol’s show. This confluence of personalities was a perfectly natural one—Fleshtones singer Peter Zaremba was in Warhol’s orbit going back to the days when he lived in a loft across the street from Warhol’s Factory, and he was, at the time, also the host of his own MTV program, the excellent IRS’s The Cutting Edge. (It’s such a damn shame The Fleshtones never really took off big—back in those days, Zaremba seemed to me like such an unfuckwithable ambassador/avatar of cool.) The band first did a madcap lip-syncing of their song “Return of the Leather Kings.”
 

 
And while that was great fun, it’s the second segment they taped that should be far, far better known than it is. In it, the band jams while Ian freakin’ McKellen recites a Shakespearean sonnet. It’s my good fortune that the reader who tipped me off to this happens to be the man who literally wrote the book on the Fleshtones, Sweat: The Story of the Fleshtones, America’s Garage Band, music writer Joe Bonomo. (Among other works, Bonomo also wrote a dandy 33 1/3 on AC/DC.) I quote here from Sweat, page 256:

The pairing with McKellen was fantastic: as the actor dramatically recited Shakespeare’s “Twentieth Sonnet,” the Fleshtones accompanied him in the background, creating ambient psychedelic music. The kind of marriage of high and low art prized by Warhol, the union provided all concerned with kicks. The guys invited McKellen down to the Pyramid with them after the taping, and he gladly came along for some alternative East Side divertissement. (When the performance was released the next year on the Time Bomb compilation, the Fleshtones were able to enjoy one of the more notable songwriting credits in recent pop history: “Zaremba / Milhizer / Spaeth / Warren / Streng / Shakespeare”.)

 

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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07.02.2014
08:57 am
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Ian McKellen gives a Master Class on acting Shakespeare, 1982
01.28.2014
12:00 pm
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These days, Sir Ian McKellen is best known for playing characters in big-budget CGI films such as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, or Magneto in The X-Men, but once, not so long ago, when he was just a plain “Mister,” McKellen was to be found giving incredible performances on TV in the likes of Tom Stoppard’s play Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, where he played an imprisoned dissident; or, his unforgettable, ambitious and murderous Thane of Glamis in Trevor Nunn’s adaptation of Macbeth; or, an increasingly paranoid commuter in Armchair Thriller; or, just as himself reading children’s stories on Jackanory.

All of the above was my introduction to the talented Mr. McKellen, and these productions have remained lodged in my memory long after some of the things he has done with CGI, no matter how compelling and brilliant his performances. (This has little to do with the quality of his acting, rather my own aversion to the bloody awful world of CGI movies.)

One of my favorite McKellen productions from way back then was his “entertainment” Acting Shakespeare, in 1982.

You don’t have to be a fan of Shakespeare to enjoy this brilliant one-man show, in which McKellen interweaves key moments of his life—from childhood productions of Hamlet, to his beginnings as an actor at school, university and beyond—with stunning performances of the Bard’s best known works. McKellen performs on stage without props or costume in front of an audience, and his talent to almost shape-shift from one character-to-another is something to behold.
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.28.2014
12:00 pm
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You must see this before you die: Ian McKellen fronting The Fleshtones at Warhol’s Factory
04.07.2011
01:08 am
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Ian McKellen recites a Shakespeare sonnet while The Fleshtones zone out in the background at Warhol’s Factory in 1987.

This is one of those things that language can’t encapsulate. Not so much because it’s something wondrous or epic, it’s not. But because it is just so inexplicably Zen… as most inexplicable things are.

Broadcast on MTV as part of the last episode of “Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes” TV program.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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04.07.2011
01:08 am
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