Sir Tim Rice interviews David Bowie, on the Friday Night, Saturday Morning program in 1980. Bowie, then on Broadway for his critically acclaimed portrayal of “Elephant Man” John (Joseph) Merrick, discusses the role and can be seen here in more of the play than I have ever seen anywhere else.
A friend of mine’s father went to see The Elephant Man on Broadway and for some reason he asked me what he should see—I was 14, what would I know?—and I recommended that he see this play, which he thought was terrific. He brought me back the Playbill from his trip to New York and I still have it.
For those of you who don’t think that David Bowie can act (and there is certainly some evidence for that position!) these extended clips from The Elephant Man will be a revelation. It seems obvious that they must’ve shot the entire play. If so, where the hell is it?
Sherman Hemsley, the actor who played “George Jefferson” on the The Jeffersons and All in the Family is known to be a huge fan of prog rock, especially Gentle Giant, Nektar and Gong.
Hemsley collaborated with Yes’s Jon Anderson on a funk-rock opera about the “spiritual qualities of the number 7” (never produced). Hemsley also did an interpretive dance to the Gentle Giant song “Proclamation” on Dinah Shore’s 70s talkshow, that was apparently somewhat confusing for her.
But the best story, I mean the best story of all time, is the one told by Gong’s Daevid Allen about his encounter with the beloved 70’s sitcom star. Here is Allen’s verbatim tale as related to Mitch Myers (and originally published in Magnet magazine):
“It was 1978 or 1979, and Sherman Hemsley kept ringing me up. I didn’t know him from a bar of soap because we didn’t have television in Spain (where I was living). He called me from Hollywood saying, ‘I’m one of your biggest fans and I’m going to fly you here and put flying teapots all up and down the Sunset Strip.’ I thought, ‘This guy is a lunatic.’ He kept it up so I said, ‘Listen, can you get us tickets to L.A. via Jamaica? I want to go there to make a reggae track and have a honeymoon with my new girlfriend.’ He said, ‘Sure! I’ll get you two tickets.’
I thought, ‘Well, even if he’s a nut case at least he’s coming up with the goodies.’ The tickets arrived and we had this great honeymoon in Jamaica. Then we caught the plane across to L.A. We had heard Sherman was a big star, but we didn’t know the details. Coming down the corridor from the plane, I see this black guy with a whole bunch of people running after him trying to get autographs. Anyway, we get into this stretch limousine with Sherman and immediately there’s a big joint being passed around. I say, ‘Sorry man, I don’t smoke.’ Sherman says, ‘You don’t smoke and you’re from Gong?’
Inside the front door of Sherman’s house was a sign saying, ‘Don’t answer the door because it might be the man.’ There were two Puerto Ricans that had a LSD laboratory in his basement, so they were really paranoid. They also had little crack/freebase depots on every floor. Then Sherman says, ‘Come on upstairs and I’ll show you the Flying Teapot room.’ Sherman was very sweet but was surrounded by these really crazy people.
We went up to the top floor and there was this big room with darkened windows and “Flying Teapot” is playing on a tape loop over and over again. There were also three really dumb-looking, very voluptuous Southern gals stoned and wobbling around naked. They were obviously there for the guys to play around with.
[My girlfriend] Maggie and I were really tired and went to our room to go to bed. The room had one mattress with an electric blanket and that was it. No bed covering, no pillow, nothing. The next day we came down and Sherman showed us a couple of [The Jeffersons] episodes.
One of our fans came and rescued us, but not before Sherman took us to see these Hollywood PR people. They said, ‘Well, Mr. Hemsley wants us to get the information we need in order to do these Flying Teapot billboards on Sunset Strip.’ I looked at them and thought they were the cheesiest, most nasty people that I had ever seen in my life and I gave them the runaround. I just wanted out of there. I liked Sherman a lot. He was a very personable, charming guy. I just had a lot of trouble with the people around him.”
Oi, if Daevid Allen thinks you’re weird, you must be a stone freak! (Like our pal, opera singer/actor Jesse Merlin. He met Daevid Allen in San Francisco and Allen said “Just look at him. He’s a perfect example of himself!” Coming from Daevid Allen, that’s the best compliment in the history of the world, isn’t it?)
Aerosmith might be are pretty cheesy, don’t get me wrong, but that wasn’t always the case. Before lots of money too much money and rampant drug addiction killed their mojo, Aerosmith, uh, rocked. I was an unrepentant rock snob, even as a little kid, but I still had time for their Rocks album, especially, but also for Toys in the Attic and “Dream On.”
After that, they pretty much lost me for good—they’ve been shite for 30 plus years now, of course—although I confess I saw them once at Madison Square Garden (at the height of their cheesiness) but that was only because I got a free ticket and I had never been to the Garden before. I found myself seated right next to actress Sylvia Miles, of all people.
In the clip below, from the (justifiably) much-maligned Sgt. Pepper’s Lonley Hearts Club Band starring Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees, Aerosmith (when the drugs were still working for them, apparently) perform a barnstorming cover of “Come Together.”
This French documentary from 1992 is an enjoyable overview of Brigitte Bardot’s forays into pop music. It features insightful interviews with Bardot, Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, as well as dozens of clips of Bardot’s appearances in TV shows, Scopitones and movies.
Needless to say (though I’m saying it), Bardot was not much of a singer. But her willingness to poke fun at her sex kitten image and serve as a comedic and visual foil to the gruff machismo of Gainsbourg makes it easy to forgive her limitations as a vocalist and appreciate her sassy self-awareness. She’s having fun and so are we. One gets the impression that Bardot was perfectly content with her status as a pop icon, leaving the existential Sturm und Drang to her chain-smoking, brooding co-star.
In his essential book of collected rock music essays and profiles, The Dark Stuff, writer Nick Kent recounts how famed psychiatrist, R. D. Laing watched an interview tape of Pink Floyd’s genius and drug-addled leader, Syd Barrett and claimed the singer was incurable. Not long after, Kent saw the evidence for himself:
Less than five years earlier, I’d stood transfixed, watching [Syd] in all his retina scorching, dandified splendor as he’d performed with his group the Pink Floyd, silently praying that one day I might be just like him. Now, as he stood before me with his haunted eyes and fractured countenance, I was having second thoughts. I asked him about his current musical project (a short-lived trio called Stars…) as his eyes burned a hole through one of the four walls surrounding us with a stare so ominous it could strip the paint off the bonnet of a brand new car. ‘I had eggs and bacon for breakfast,’ he then intoned solemnly, as if reciting a distantly remembered mantra. I repeated my original question. ‘I’m sorry! I don’t speak French,’ he finally replied.
Perhaps Barrett just wanted to avoid the dandified Kent. Then again, when Kent “rubbed up against the likes of Syd Barrett” he astutley realized:
...these were people who’d gotten what they actually wanted, only to find out it was the last thing on earth they actually needed…
This isn’t to dismiss Barrett’s immense talent or achievements - for one, he took an average band and turned them into something quite incredible. And his importance was such that when he left, his bandmates went on to make music inspired by his absence.
The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story was originally screened in 2001, as part of the BBC’s Omnibus strand as Syd Barrett - Crazy Diamond. The documentary gives a fascinating portrait of Barrett’s brilliant rise and tragic fall through a drug-induced breakdown. Contributions come from Roger Waters, Nick Mason, David Gilmour, artist Duggie Fields (who describes sharing an apartment with the Crazy Diamond), Robyn Hitchcock, and, of course, archive of Syd Barrett - who, incidentally, watched the doc, when it was first broadcast and enjoyed seeing the archive, though found the music “too loud”.
Universal Techno is a very fine French documentary from 1996 on the Detroit techno music scene - chronicling its birth in the 1980s and its massive International influence into the 90s..
Drawing inspiration from artists like Giorgio Moroder, Gary Numan, Kraftwerk, Devo and Parliament Funkadelic, Detroit-based electronic musicians Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May developed a style of club music that, with its monolithic beats and mechanical funk, seems to have naturally risen out of the metal and concrete belly of a once grand city.
Part of what makes Universal Techno exceptional is in the way it gets at the roots of the music and its ties to the environment that spawned it. With grim fascination we watch as Derrick May walks through the ruins of the once magnificent Michigan Theater describing its former glories. But in the midst of the decay, music generates a sense of a future yet to be lived.
Nice interview between KCRW host Eric J. Lawrence and Grant Morrison on the five songs that are the most dear to the comics giant. You can read the full transcript on KCRW.
Tracklist:
1 - The Queen Is Dead - The Smiths
2 - Mogadishu - Baader Meinhof
3 - The Heater - The Mutton Birds
4 - Blue Flowers - Dr. Octagon
5 - Joe Public - The Rutles
Jim Laspesa is a musician and hardcore rock and roll archivist who has been a source for quite a few of my groovier posts here on Dangerous Minds. Well, Jim has done it again. He’s been sharing some photos on his Facebook page that he came across a few years ago at a swap meet in Pasadena, California. These uncredited photos capture some of rock’s biggest stars at the zenith of their celestial ascent.
A case of somebody (or somebodies) being in the right place at the right time. Amateur, pro? Who knows?
Twenty-six years ago today, Ireland’s greatest rock star Phil Lynott died. The singer passed away from heart failure and pneumonia after an ‘11 day fight for his life’, at the Salisbury Hospital in Wiltshire, England.
It was a sad day. But this year it can be commemorated with the incredible news that a “treasure trove” of 700 songs, stashed away by Lynott, will be released in June year. The Belfast Telegraph reports:
Shortly before he passed away in 1986, Mr Lynott gave 150 tapes to a third party for safekeeping. The cache of up to 700 songs has finally been released to record company Universal Music.
“This is an absolutely stunning find,” Steve Hammonds, project manager behind the new Thin Lizzy box set, told the Irish Independent.
“In every group there’s a member who lovingly collects their recordings and in Thin Lizzy that was Phil Lynott, because Lizzy was his baby and his band.”
It will be the second boxed set in recent times to feature archive work by the band, following last year’s ‘Live At The BBC’ release.
But the newly unearthed recordings stretch from Thin Lizzy’s years with Decca Records, beginning in 1971, to their ‘Renegade’ album in 1981.
“There are out-takes, unheard versions of Thin Lizzy hits and, most exciting of all, material which was recorded but never released at the time,” said Mr Hammonds.
“Phil Lynott was such a prolific songwriter. He recorded 12 Thin Lizzy albums, two solo albums, along with his Grand Slam post-Lizzy project, and now we find he had even more songs in his drawer.”
However, Thin Lizzy members Scott Gorham and Brian Downey will have the “final say” over which songs are released.
“The members of Thin Lizzy are fully involved with this project. We have been sending them tapes of what we’ve found and respecting their wishes as regards the material being issued and the art work,” added Mr Hammonds.
Label bosses have declined to give more details on why the material is only surfacing now, 30 years after Thin Lizzy split.
“Phil Lynott passed the material on to a third party for safekeeping. They held on to it for decades because they were waiting for the right people to come along.
“They really didn’t trust anyone enough to release it properly. The catalyst was a boxed set of Thin Lizzy BBC sessions we issued earlier this year, which made them believe we were the right people. No money has changed hands, this person is a Thin Lizzy fan.”
In memory of the great man, here’s Phil Lynott and his band Thin Lizzy Behind the Music
