FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
The Rolling Stones debut ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ in an almost *scary* British TV appearance, 1968
02.24.2014
12:32 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
There’s always a first time for everything and this is the very first time that The Rolling Stones unveiled their then brand new “Sympathy for the Devil,” on London Weekend Television’s Frost on Saturday program, hosted by the late David Frost, in 1968

Although this is but a live vocal sung to a backing tape, the Stones manage to set a distinctly evil tone to the proceedings. Put yourself in mind of the average person watching British television on a Saturday night in 1968. This must have seemed downright frightening!
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
02.24.2014
12:32 pm
|
David Frost R.I.P.
09.02.2013
12:39 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
Oh dear, David Frost has died. What a lovely man. Dead at 74 of a heart attack.

There will be a lot written about David Frost in the next few days. He was at the center of major political and social events for several decades as both a commentator and brilliant interviewer. His death has triggered many personal memories of cultural touchstones that populate my life. Among them, his encounters with The Beatles. He had an ongoing relationship with John Lennon that was vital and shot through with the kind of energy that animates many friendships defined by respect and curiosity.

Here’s Frost interviewing John and Yoko in 1968 on British TV show Frost On Saturday. Kind of a Jungian mindfuck with Lennon struggling to communicate what sounds like some insights he received while tripping. Frost goes with the flow.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
|
09.02.2013
12:39 am
|
Sex is like sneezing: Truman Capote explains his views on love, 1969
06.26.2013
09:10 am
Topics:
Tags:

etopacnamurt.jpg
Photograph of Truman Capote, 1948, by Carl Van Vechten.

Truman Capote is quite adorable in this interview with David Frost from 1969, although the great writer becomes slightly unstuck by his inquisitor’s questioning.

When asked, Capote says love and friendship are the same thing, but that sex doesn’t have anything to do with friendship.

“I think it is very difficult to have a sexual relationship with somebody who is actually a friend, because there is a kind of tension and antagonism that goes on in a sexual relationship that is the antithesis of friendship.”

Though he may have once written that sex was like sneezing, Capote reveals he has had more “love relationships” than “sex relationships.” Which puzzles Frost, as Capote only admits to having been in love twice.
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
06.26.2013
09:10 am
|
John Cleese at 36: On Basil, Monty and anger management

image
 
You could say it all started with Adolf Hitler. That was who John Cleese could impersonate when he was at school. Highly wrought, apoplectic impressions of the deranged Nazi leader. It brought Cleese laughs and popularity, which all made the shy young schoolboy feel less awkward and less self-conscious about himself, and particularly his height.

Being Hitler was also a release for his anger, his frustrations, and it allowed him to develop his natural comic skills. Most importantly, it offered Cleese an alternative career to the one his family expected.

‘When I was 16, everyone told me, “John, the thing to do is to get a good qualification. You go in an accountant’s office now and by the time you’re thirty-seven, you’ll have several letters after your name, you know you’ll be able to get married…” It was that kind of feeling. Fine. It’s one type of life, but it was laid down to me as a sort of golden pathway leading up to the A.C.A.’

A sense of duty saw Cleese study Law at Cambridge University. He soon found it frighteningly dull, and after 3 years, was more proud of a 12-minute sketch he had written and performed for the Cambridge Footlights than his knowledge of libel laws or past trials.

The sketch was the start of his long and successful career as a writer and performer, firstly in Cambridge Circus, then The Frost Report, At Last the 1948 Show, to Monty Python’s Flying Circus and the brilliant Fawlty Towers. Each of these shows, in their own way, allowed Cleese to vent the anger he could never express in his public life.

‘I know something’s manic in me,’ thirty-six-year-old Cleese explained in this BBC profile. ‘Yes, there is something manic somewhere in me, and I think it’s something to do with being trapped in a shell of lower middle class reasonableness, politeness.

‘Sometimes I get very angry and I find it frightfully difficult to be angry, and I think anger in particular—people talk to me at parties, and they really do talk, talk at me. And I have fantasies of picking things up, cheese dips and…[mimes rubbing the dip in someone’s face].

‘But I’ve never had the courage to do it.’

Broadcast in February 1976, after the highly successful first season of Fawlty Towers, this profile of John Cleese includes interviews with the great man himself, his then wife and co-writer, Connie Booth, as well as performers, writers and friends such as Tim Brooke-Taylor, Antony Jay, Alan Coren and David Frost, who said of Cleese:

‘I think it was the element of benevolent-sadism in his work really, in the sense that his humor can be immensely cruel—and the nice thing is that he means it.’
 

 
Previously on dangerous Minds

‘Sez Les’ What John Cleese did after ‘Monty Python’


John Cleese Carefully Considers Your Futile Comments


With many thanks to NellyM
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
04.09.2013
08:26 pm
|
John & Yoko: Discussing Art on David Frost’s show 1968

image
 
The Fab Two, John Lennon and Yoko Ono gave their first interview together on the David Frost show Frost on Saturday, August 24 1968. On it they discussed how they met, their personal and artistic philosophies, and explained some of the ideas behind their shared exhibition You Are Here:

Frost: Yes, you gave me one of these badges beforehand. Now, what, this is really the basis of what you’re talking about isn’t it, You Are Here.

Lennon: It’s that show, yeah.

Frost: Now what exactly does it mean, You Are Here?

Lennon: Well, er, You, are, here.

Ono: Usually people think in vicarious terms, they think ‘Somebody’s there,’ ‘John Lennon’s there,’ or somebody. But it’s not that. YOU are the one who’s here, and so in art, usually art gives something that’s an object and says ‘This is art,’ you know, but instead of that, art exists in people. It’s people’s art, and so we don’t believe in just making something and completing it and giving it to people, we like people to participate. All the pieces are unfinished and they have to be finished by people.

As part of the interview, two audience members tried out Yoko’s Hammer and Nail Piece, where they hammered nails into a block of wood. Both found the experience “satisfying” and “unbelievable”. When Lennon encouraged Frost to have a go, the “bubonic plagiarist” said he felt like “a man hammering in a nail”, to which Lennon countered, “I felt like one hammering it in on TV”.

The interview over-ran, and ends with Lennon conducting the audience to sing-a-long on “Hey Jude”, as the closing titles played out.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

John and Yoko: The Dentist Interview 1968


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
01.25.2012
07:55 pm
|