These days when a rock star sells out to a car manufacturer or Pepsi Cola my respect for them is diminished, particularly whenever they’re an artist I revere. But these ads from the Sixties make sense, if you’re going to sellout, at least sellout to the things that got you where you are. John Lennon shilling for Rickenbacker is hip. The Clash for Pontiac, not so much.
More ads after the jump…
He blew his mind out in car, he didn’t notice that the lights had changed. These are the lyrics from The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life”, which immortalized the death of sixties socialite Tara Browne.
On the night of December 18th 1966, Browne, together with his girlfriend, Suki Potier, drove through the streets of South Kensington in his Lotus Elan. The couple had just left a friend’s apartment at Earls Court around 1am, and were now in search of food. Browne sped through a stop signal at the corner of Redcliffe Square and Redcliffe Gardens. As he swerved to avoid an oncoming vehicle, Browne crashed his car into a parked van. His last minute actions saved Potier from certain death, but left Browne fatally injured, and he died in hospital the following day.
Browne was 21-years-of-age, a member of the Irish aristocratic family Oranmore and Browne, and heir to the Gunness fortune. He looked like a cross between Paul McCartney and Peter Cook (more of which later), was said to be barely literate - having walked out of a dozen schools, lived with his mother, Oonagh Guinness and her boyfriend a “show designer” Miguel Ferreras, drank Bloody Marys for breakfast, smoked Menthol cigarettes, and according to his friend Hugo Williams lived the life of a “Little Lord Fauntleroy, Beau Brummell, Peter Pan, Terence Stamp in Billy Budd, David Hemmings in Blow-Up.”
‘Tara could hardly have failed to be a success in Swinging London. While I was wandering around the globe in ’63 and ‘64, he embarked on the second and last phase of his meteoric progress. He got married, met the Stones and the Beatles, opened a shop in the King’s Road and bought the fatal turquoise Lotus Elan in which he entered the Irish Grand Prix. He let me drive it once in some busy London street: ‘Come on, Hugo, put your foot down.’ I had just got my first job and our ways were dividing. His money and youth made him a natural prey to certain charismatic Chelsea types who turned him into what he amiably termed a ‘hustlee’.
He reputedly gave Paul McCartney his first acid trip. The pair went to Liverpool together, got stoned and cruised the city on mopeds until Paul went over the handlebars and broke a tooth and they had to call on Paul’s Aunt Bett for assistance. There is still a body of people — and a book called The Walrus is Paul — who believe that Paul is dead and is now actually Tara Browne with plastic surgery.’
A month after his death, January 17th 1967, John Lennon was working on a song when he read a newspaper article on the coroner’s report into Browe’s death:
‘I was writing “A Day In The Life” with the Daily Mail propped in front of me on the piano. I had it open at their News in Brief, or Far and Near, whatever they call it. I noticed two stories. One was about the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the main headline story. He died in London in a car crash.’
Lennon further explained his inspiration in Hunter Davies’ biography of The Beatles:
‘I didn’t copy the accident. Tara didn’t blow his mind out. But it was in my mind when I was writing that verse.’
However, more recently, in the authorized biography, Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, Paul McCartney added his tuppence worth:
‘The verse about the politician blowing his mind out in a car we wrote together. It has been attributed to Tara Browne, the Guinness heir, which I don’t believe is the case, certainly as we were writing it, I was not attributing it to Tara in my head. In John’s head it might have been. In my head I was imagining a politician bombed out on drugs who’d stopped at some traffic lights and didn’t notice that the lights had changed. The ‘blew his mind’ was purely a drugs reference, nothing to do with a car crash.’
Whichever version is true, Tara Browne is still the man best associated with lyrics. Here is Tara, and his Lotus Elan, in some incredibly rare footage from a short French TV feature, where the aristocrat drives around London and mumbles in French about his car, art, fashion, music and life. There are no English subtitles, but they’re not really necessary as the film is easily understandable. Appearances from Paul McCartney, Marianne Faithfull and famed gallery owner Robert Fraser.
With thanks to Simon Wells
Empire Magazine held a photoshop contest and asked its readers to mash-up David Bowie with recognizable movie posters. The majority of the submissions were bad photoshop jobs, but some were really funny and quite clever. Here are a few that made me smile.
More after the jump…
Paul Butterfield makes an appearance on To Tell The Truth. Broadcast on Mar 28, 1966.
Butterfield does his best to create something bluesy while the back-up band scrambles to find a groove.
I always dug Kitty Carlisle, Peggy Cass, Tom Poston and Orson Bean. They seem kind of hip for the times.
Another stellar Talking Heads concert for you lucky people, a 50-minute performance from the Westfalenhalle, in Dortmund, Germany, on December 20th, 1980 for the Rockpop TV show.
Set List:
Psycho Killer
Cities
I Zimbra
Once In A Lifetime
Animals
Crosseyed And Painless
Life During Wartime
The Great Curve
Can you tell what I’ve been listening to around the house, lately? Is it that obvious?
The final, 8-minute-long romp on “The Great Curve” will fry your synapses.
(For those of you unaware of its existence, there is an amazing 5:1 remix of Remain in Light
The Looters. Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Ray Winstone, and Paul Simonon. Photo: Caroline Coon.
Here’s the first in a series of video compilations of fake bands. These are fictional music groups or solo acts that were created for film or TV. Some are quite excellent.
1. The Mosquitoes - “Gilligan’s Island”
2. Android - “Buck Rogers In The 25th Century”
3. The Looters -“Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains”
4. The Flowerbuds - “Carry On Camping”
5. Drimble Wedge And The Vegetations - “Bedazzled”
6. Steven Shorter - “Privilege”
7. The Bugaloos - “The Electric Company
8. Tom Monroe - “SCTV
9. The Queen Haters” - SCTV
Compilation two coming soon.
For much of this decade, UK grime and hip-hop MCs have been focusing on skills much more than swag, and have fostered a sound that evokes what many consider the “golden era” of hip-hop circa mid-‘80s-to-mid-‘90s. It’s a stripped-down, loquacious and attitudinal sound, short on gimmicks and high on the culture. And in some crucial ways, it’s putting the American hip-hop scene to shame.
The last truly great MC squad to come out of hip-hop was the Wu Tang Clan. But there’s little reason to doubt that the UK Female Allstars—a rhyme crew assembled by British producer Mikey J (best known for his work with East London superstar MC Kano)—could rise to, or possibly even surpass, the Wu’s legendary status. (I’ll prolly get shit for saying that, but what the hell…)
The UK Female All Stars are made up of Mz Bratt, Lady Leshurr, Lioness, RoxXxan, Baby Blue and A.Dot. If you love hip-hop, just check out this video for the Allstars’ debut single “Rock the Mic,” both of which dropped yesterday (they’re giving the tune away here. And try to tell me these women don’t have game.
Sad to hear that Oscar-nominated singer/songwriter Dory Previn has died. I’ve actually been listening to her music in the car lately.
Previn’s lyrics brought a different, more wizened, mature sensibility to the confessional folk rock songwriting ethos of the 70s. Her concerns were those of a middle-aged woman who had seen it all. Previn braved a difficult abusive childhood, mental illness, divorce and betrayal in her life, and it was all grist for the mill of her uniquely feminine, yet soul-baring, muse.
In one of the more famous episodes from her life, after a spell of hospitalization for psychological difficulties, Dory’s husband, composer and orchestra conductor Andre Previn, left her for 24-year-old actress Mia Farrow, who the singer considered a close friend. She wrote about the situation on her 1970 album On My Way to Where which was described by one critic as “Freud with music.” From The Guardian:
In its most famous track, “Beware of Young Girls,” which Farrow at first thought tasteless but later appreciated, Dory wrote of a visitor who came bearing daisies: “She was my friend/ I thought her motives were sincere… / Ah but this lass / It came to pass / Had / A dark and different plan / She admired / My own sweet man.” She noted that this visitor “admired my unmade bed”, and even predicted that, having made off with the sweet man, “she will leave him one thoughtless day”. The album’s let-it-all-hang-out, confessional quality is encapsulated in Twenty-Mile Zone, about being detained by a policeman who accused her of “doing it alone / You were doing it alone / You were screaming in your car / In a twenty-mile zone”.
More LPs swiftly followed: Mythical Kings and Iguanas, Reflections in a Mud Puddle (both 1971) and Mary C Brown and the Hollywood Sign (1972), originally an unproduced stage-show. There were also shy stage appearances – she knew that her talent lay more in the words than the music – one of which was captured as Live at Carnegie Hall (1973). A new label brought Dory Previn (1974) and We’re Children of Coincidence and Harpo Marx (1976).
Before her solo career, Previn co-wrote the Oscar-nominated score for the film Valley of the Dolls with then husband Andre. Dory Previn penned two autobiographies, Midnight Baby, 1976 and Bog-trotter: An Autobiography with Lyrics in 1980. She has been cited as an influence by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker and he has long been a champion of her work. Dory Previn was 86
“Beware of Young Girls”:
Below, Dory Previn appears on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1974:
Richard Metzger shared The Nomi Song with DM readers back in 2010 but the original source for the video is gone. Here’s a new link to the film.
Andrew Horn’s excellent 2004 documentary about New Wave opera diva from outer-space, Klaus Nomi, follows the rise of Nomi’s unlikely career until his death in 1983 from AIDS complications. With Kristian Hoffman, Kenny Scharf, Ann Magnuson, Tony Frere, Page Wood, David McDermott and in a great performance clip, David Bowie and Joey Arias.
High quality video and audio.
Apparently so. The born again Christian heavy metal guitarist and vocalist who was kicked out of Metallica in 1983 for being too wasted all of the time gave Music Radar his informed burnt out rockstar guy assessment of the Republican Presidential field:
“I’m just hoping that whatever is in the White House next year is a Republican. I can’t bear to watch what’s happened to our great country. Everybody’s got their head in the sand. Everybody in the industry is like, ‘Oh, Obama’s doing such a great job…’ I don’t think so. Not from what I see.
“Looking at the Republican candidates, I’ve got to tell you, I was floored the other day to see that Mitt Romney’s five boys have a $100 million trust fund. Where does a guy make that much money? So there’s some questions there. And watching Newt Gingrich, I was pretty excited for a while, but now he’s just gone back to being that person that everybody said he was – that angry little man. I still like him, but I don’t think I’d vote for him.
“Ron Paul… you know, I heard somebody say he was like insecticide – 98 percent of it’s inert gases, but it’s the two percent that’s left that will kill you. What that means is that he’ll make total sense for a while, and then he’ll say something so way out that it negates everything else. I like the guy because he knows how to excite the youth of America and fill them in on some things. But when he says that we’re like the Taliban… I’m sorry, Congressman Paul, but I’m nothing like the Taliban.
“Earlier in the election, I was completely oblivious as to who Rick Santorum was, but when the dude went home to be with his daughter when she was sick, that was very commendable. Also, just watching how he hasn’t gotten into doing these horrible, horrible attack ads like Mitt Romney’s done against Newt Gingrich, and then the volume at which Newt has gone back at Romney… You know, I think Santorum has some presidential qualities, and I’m hoping that if it does come down to it, we’ll see a Republican in the White House… and that it’s Rick Santorum.”
No word yet on how the Santorum campaign has reacted to Mustaine’s endorsement…