When the DTs were bad, the writer Malcolm Lowry had a trick to stop his shaking hands from spilling his drink. He would remove his tie, place it around the back of his neck, wrap either end around each hand, take hold of his glass, then pulled the tie with his free hand, which acted as a pulley, lifting the glass straight to his mouth. Lowry drank anything, hair tonic, rubbing alcohol, aftershave, anything. But unlike most drunks, Lowry was a dedicated writer, a constant chronicler of his own life - everything was noted down as possible material for his novels, and generally, it was. He couldn’t enter a bar or cantina without leaving with at least four pages of hand-written notes. That’s dedication.

In 1947, when Lowry’s novel Under the Volcano was published, he was hailed as the successor to James Joyce, and his novel hit the top of the New York Times Best Seller List. Move ten years on, to the English village of Ripe, Lowry is dead from an overdose, at the age of forty-eight, penniless, forgotten, with his books out of print. It was an ignoble death for such a brilliant writer, a death that has since been clouded with the suspicion he was murdered by his wife, Margerie Bonner, who may (it has been suggested) have force-fed him pills when drunk - for the pills he swallowed were prescribed to Margerie, and Lowry was unlikely to have taken his own life without writing copious notes of his final experience.

Lowry was born in Cheshire in 1909 and educated at The Leys School and St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. At school he discovered the two passions that were to last the whole of his life - writing and drinking. He wrote poetry and became friends with the American poet and novelist, Conrad Aiken, sending him letters about his drunken excesses. Aiken recognized Lowry’s natural talent and encouraged the teen literary tyro to write. But Lowry didn’t have the experience to write from, so between school and university, he enrolled as a deckhand and sailed to the far east. This provided him with the material for his first novel Ultramarine (1933), the story of a privileged young man, Dana Hilliot, and his need to be accepted, by his shipmates. The story takes place during 48-hours on board a tramp steamer, the Oedipus Tyrannus, “outward bound for Hell.” Like all of Lowry’s work it is semi-autobiographical, and contains the nascent themes he would develop in Under the Volcano (1947), Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid (1968) and October Ferry to Gabriola (1970).

Booze flows through Lowry’s writing. It’s a way of escape, as much as the sea voyages and plane journeys he wrote about. In Medieval times, a definition of possession included drunkenness, and Lowry was well aware of drink’s shamanic association:

“The agonies of the drunkard find their most accurate poetic analogue in the agonies of the mystic who has abused his powers.”

Few writers physically endured the excesses of alcohol or wrote about them so powerfully. While everyone knows Under the Volcano and its tale of the descent into Hell of alcoholic British consul, Geoffrey Firmin, during the Day of the Dead, in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac, it is his novella Lunar Caustic which gives the clearest insight into the cost of Lowry’s alcoholism. It’s the harrowing tale of Bill Plantagenet, a pianist and ex-sailor who, after a long night’s drinking, awakens to find himself in New York’s Bellevue psychiatric hospital surrounded by the dispossessed and insane.

The story is as much about Lowry as it is about the “collective and individual anxieties of the age,” and it was a story Lowry worked on repeatedly during his life. Early versions were published in literary magazines, and Lowry eventually spliced it together into a novella he thought too “gruesome” to publish in his lifetime, though he gave it a most interesting title:

Lunar Caustic as a sardonic and ambiguous title for a cauterizing work on madness has, | feel, a great deal of merit. But lunar caustic is also silver nitrate and used unsuccessfully to cure syphilis. And indeed as such it might stand symbolically for any imperfect or abortive cure, for example of alcoholism.

Like many drunks, Lowry teetered between self-pity and self-loathing, but the writer in him kept a careful watch on his often disastrous and eventful life, and it is because of this his writing never indulged in the worst excesses of the bar-room drunk of being boring. Indeed, Lowry’s books are complex enough to deserve more than one reading, for as Schopenhauer once wrote:

“Any book that is at all important ought to be at once read through twice; ... on a second reading the connection of the different portions of the book will be better understood, and the beginning comprehended only when the end is known; and partly because we are not in the same temper and disposition on both readings.”

Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry is an Oscar nominated documentary which:

focuses on Malcolm Lowry, author of one of the major novels of the 20th century, Under the Volcano. But while Lowry fought a winning battle with words, he lost his battle with alcohol. Shot on location in four countries, the film combines photographs, readings by Richard Burton from the novel and interviews with the people who loved and hated Lowry, to create a vivid portrait of the man.

It does create a vivid portrait, but one under the shadow of Lowry’s last wife Marjorie Bonner, and it was not until after her death, in 1988, and the publication of Gordon Bowker’s top-class biography, Pursued by Furies: A Life of Malcolm Lowry, that a complete picture of Lowry came to fruition. Still it’s a damn fine documentary, and well worth the watch. As for an epitaph, I’ll leave that to the man himself:

Malcolm Lowry
Late of the Bowery
His prose was flowery
And often glowery
He lived, nightly, and drank daily
And died, playing the ukelele

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Kerouac’s Boozy Beatitudes on Italian TV, 1966

 
I wonder if Franz Kafka ever saw Wladyslaw Starewicz’s 1912 animation The Cameraman’s Revenge before writing Metamorphosis in 1915? It’s an interesting thought, but if Starewicz’s use of insects (especially beetles) to animate a tale of adultery and revenge didn’t influence Metamorphosis then it has certainly influenced succeeding generations of animators like Jiri Trnka and Terry Gilliam.

Starewicz started his career in 1911, making puppet films with dead animals (the mind boggles), and from this he developed an array of techniques, which he successfully employed in The Cameraman’s Revenge, a landmark film that offered a template for future animators. So real was the film to audiences that some reviewers thought Starewicz had trained insects to “perform” for the camera. Even watching it today, The Cameraman’s Revenge is a delightful and surreal treat.

Starewicz made dozens of films throughout his fifty-plus year career, sometomes mixing live action, stop-motion and animation. His best known stop motion films are,  The Night Before Christmas (1913), The Insects’ Christmas (1913), The Frogs Who Wanted a King (1923), The Voice of a Nightingale (1923), and The Tale of the Fox (1939).

During the Russian Revolution, Starewicz sided with the anti-Bolshevik White Army, and after Lenin’s successful rise to power, Starewicz moved to France, where he spent the rest of his life making his own distinct films.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

 
With thanks to Alessandro Cima
 

 
French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre have documented the decline and decay of Detroit through its buildings and structures that were once source of civic pride (schools, churches, hotels, stations), but now “stand as monuments to the city’s fall from grace.”

Over the past decades, Detroit has suffered a post-industrial decline far worse than any other American city. The once booming city has seen its population fall from 2.5 million in the 1940s, to just over 1 million today, with 1 in 3 people unemployed.

Marchand and Meffre have published a book of their stunning and quite beautiful photographs. Each plate reveals a hidden history of Detroit, detailing an evolutionary process, where:

Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies and their changes, small pieces of history in suspension.

The state of ruin is essentially a temporary situation that happens at some point, the volatile result of change of era and the fall of empires. This fragility, the time elapsed but even so running fast, lead us to watch them one very last time : being dismayed, or admire, making us wondering about the permanence of things.

Photography appeared to us as a modest way to keep a little bit of this ephemeral state.

More images from this collection can be viewed here.
 

 
More Ruins of Detroit by Marchand & Meffre, after the jump…
 

 
I once met the artist, sculptor and jewelry-maker, Andrew Logan at a Divine concert in Edinburgh, circa 1984. He was charming and delightful and showed me a selection of his jewelry designs, including a ring with a tiny book attached. He told me there was nothing written in it yet, and full of youthful enthusiasm, I offered to write him something. I did, but never sent it. A pity, for opportunity only ever comes once.

Andrew’s work mixes Pop Art with Neo-Romanticism, and a pinch of English eccentricity. He is the only living artist with a museum in Europe, of which music maestro Brian Eno said:

‘Andrew’s work doesn’t offer that much to the would-be catalogue mystifier: if you start saying anything too pretentious about it, it sort of laughs in your face. It’s hard to place, because it doesn’t really quite belong anywhere, guilelessly straddling a number of heavily contested boundaries - such as those between art and craft, between art and decoration, between pop and fine, between the profane and sacred. But I don’t think this straddling is some sort of ideological position that Andrew has contrived - it’s just where he happens to find himself when he makes the work he wants to see.’

While the art critic and writer John Russell Taylor said:

‘Logan has achieved something beyond the reach of any other 20th Century British Sculptor, even Henry Moore: he has managed to open his own museum, dedicated entirely to his own work and carried it off with showbiz flair.’

Born in Oxfordshire in 1945, Andrew studied to become an architect at the Oxford School of Architecture, graduating in 1970, he then gave that all up to start a career as an artist, believing:

“Art can be discovered anywhere.”

He mixed with Duggie Fields, and Derek Jarman, and became an influence on Jarman’s early Super 8 films, which documented the social scene around Logan and Jarman’s studios at Butler’s Wharf.

In 1972, he started the now legendary the Alternative Miss World, a creative, free-reign competition, which was more about transformation than beauty. The event was filmed and made Logan rather famous.

But his work as an artist continued, and he was acclaimed for his beautiful and fun jewelry, used by such fashion designers as Zandra Rhodes; while his fabulous sculptures celebrated classic form with whimsy. 

Logan has generally found himself near the front of cultural developments. In 1976 his studios were the setting for Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s Valentine Ball, at which the Sex Pistols made their debut.

Since then, Logan has exhibited his sculptures and designs across the world - from London to St Petersburg, California to Baltimore.  His lifesize horse sculptures, Pegasus I and Pegasus II were displayed at Heathrow Airport, and his Icarus sculpture hangs in Guy’s Hospital. His jewelry was presented by Emmanuel Ungaro in Paris, and more recently it inspired designs for Commes Des Garcons.

This short documentary from Channel 4’s 1980s series Alter Image gives a delightful introduction to the wonderful world of Andrew Logan. Enjoy.
 

 
The brilliant artist Duggie Fields supplied Dangerous Minds with this fabulous Holiday snap of a Christmas party with Divine and Larry ‘J.R.’ Hagman in the 1980s. As Duggie explains:

The photo was Christmas day at Zandra Rhodes’ in London Maybe a year or two after ‘J.R.’ was shot in Dallas - Andrew Logan was also there, Joan and Jack Quinn and Janet Street-Porter too….Lunch and afternoon rather than evening…..Larry is giving out his Christmas gifts to everyone of mini portable fans with his photo on - his Patented Anti-Smoking Device...!

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Tea With Duggie Fields

 
Bonus snaps and clip, after the jump…
 

 
Being sent to prison for defacing library books was the making of playwright, Joe Orton. It gave the him isolation from the intense and difficult relationship with lover, Kenneth Halliwell, and allowed him to break free creatively. Orton had been in awe of the older Halliwell from their first meeting at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) in 1951, and the two were soon lovers. The poorly educated Orton flourished under Halliwell’s tutelage. However, by the end of the decade, he had outgrown his mentor’s teachings. Moreover, as they lived, loved and wrote together, the intensity of their bond stifled Joe from finding his own creative voice and ambition.

Between 1957 and 1959, the pair took jobs to help Halliwell’s dwindling inheritance. With their earnings they purchased a small 16’ x 12’ one-room flat, at 25 Noel Road, Islington. It was to be their home until the fateful night Halliwell bludgeoned Orton to death with a hammer, before overdosing on 22 Nembutals.

This tragic murder has always overshadowed the love and joy the couple shared. Their love wasn’t all doom and gloom as some would have us believe. No. Theirs was a shared glee that fatefully led to the prison sentence that changed their lives.

Annoyed at the poor selection of books in their local library, Orton and Halliwell concocted their own unique revenge. Together they stole and defaced approximately 72 books, and removed over 1,653 plates - many of which adorned the wall of their bedsit (see photo above). Theri actions were nothing more than jolly schoolboy japes. The pair stole and carefully modified the cover art or the book’s blurbs before returning them to the library. A volume of poems by John Betjeman was returned to the library with a new dustjacket featuring a photograph of a nearly naked, heavily tattooed, middle-aged man. A copy of The Plays of Emlyn Williams was altered to include such titles as “Knickers Must Fall”, “Up the Front” and “Fucked by Monty”. Bentz Plagemann’s novel The Steel Cocoon was re-covered with a picture of young man’s groin in tight, white trunks. Phyllis Hambledon’s book Queen’s Favorite had an image of two men suggestively wrestling or buggering each other on the front, and an oiled Adonis in supplication on the back. As Orton later recalled:

‘I used to stand in the corners after I’d smuggled the doctored books back into the library and then watch people read them. It was very fun, very interesting.’

The authorities didn’t think so, and when the pair were eventually caught, they were charged and tried in May 1962. The arrest was reported in the Daily Mirror as “Gorilla in the Roses” - referencing one particularly surreal cover of a grinning ape stuck atop a rose. Orton and Halliwell were charged with five counts of theft and malicious damage, were fined $400 and jailed for six months. The pair thought the sentence was unduly harsh “because we were queers.”

While prison life made Halliwell more introspective and morose, Orton thrived. He was free to do as he pleased, and as being a prisoner allowed him to clearly see the corruption and hypocrisy at the heart of liberal England.

“It affected my attitude towards society. Before I had been vaguely conscious of something rotten somewhere, prison crystallised this. The old whore society really lifted up her skirts and the stench was pretty foul… Being in the nick brought detachment to my writing. I wasn’t involved anymore. And suddenly it worked.”

Released in September 1962, the couple returned to Noel Road - Halliwell to lick his wounds; Orton to start his career as a dramatist, writing such marvelous black comedies as Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Loot and What the Butler Saw. Interestingly, Orton’s last commission before his death was a screenplay for The Beatles called Prick Up Your Ears - how different things could have been if the Fab Four had made Orton’s script about revolutionary anarchists rather than The Magical Mystery Tour

Orton’s and Halliwell’s vandalized book covers can be viewed here.
 

 
Bonus clip The Crimes of Joe Orton, after the jump…
 

 
It’s probably the most famous pop album in the world, and here is its title track, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” broken down into its constituent parts, and all in one clip.
 

 
With thanks to Tim Lucas
 
Bonus documentary The Making of Sgt Pepper, after the jump…
 

 
The Artist Formerly Known as Captain Beefheart is a BBC documentary from 1997, on the late, great Don Van Vliet. Its presented by the also late and lamented DJ, John Peel, who was once tour driver for Captain Beefheart, and contains contributions from Frank Zappa, John French, Ry Cooder, and Matt Groening.
 

 
The rest of the Captain Beefheart documentary after the jump…
 

 
Only someone with Ken Russell’s outrageous genius would have the balls to make a film like Dance of the Seven Veils. Sub-titled A Comic Strip in Seven Episodes on the life of Richard Strauss 1864-1949, the film depicted the German composer of “Also Sprach Zarathustra” as a Nazi. As Michael Brooke describes it over at the BFI’s Screen on Line:

Russell’s composer biopics were usually labours of love. This was the opposite: he regarded Strauss’s music as “bombastic, sham and hollow”, and despised the composer for claiming to be apolitical while cosying up to the Nazi regime. The film depicts Strauss in a variety of grotesquely caricatured situations: attacked by nuns after adopting Nietzsche’s philosophy, he fights duels with jealous husbands, literally batters his critics into submission with his music and glorifies the women in his life and fantasies.

Later, his association with Hitler leads to a graphically-depicted willingness to turn a blind eye to Nazi excesses, responding to SS thugs carving a Star of David in an elderly Jewish man’s chest by urging his orchestra to play louder, drowning out the screams. Unexpectedly, Strauss is credited as co-writer, which was Russell’s way of indicating that every word he uttered on screen was sourced directly from real-life statements.

Though Russell used genuine statements from Strauss, the film is in no way a factual representation, as Joseph Gomez explained in his 1976 biography of Russell:

What we have is Russell’s vision of the man - a vision which uses many of Strauss’s own words as found in his letters and the man’s music to shape a “metaphorically true” portrait of the composer. There is no attempt to explain anything about Strauss’s behavior; he is reduced to a one-dimensional comic strip figure - as the subtitle of the film suggests. The subject matter, the role and responsibilities of the artist, is deadly serious, but the treatment is devastatingly comic.

The content and violence of Russell’s film caused outrage after its first and only transmission on the BBC in 1970. Questions were raised in the House of Parliament, where 6 M.P.s tabled a motion denouncing the Corporation for transmitting the program. Britain’s self-appointed arbiter of the country’s morals, Mrs Mary Whitehouse attempted to sue the General Post Office for transmitting the film “over its wires”. But the damage was done by the Strauss family, which placed an outright ban on the film, which is still in place today and will continue until 2019, when the copyright on Strauss’ music expires.

Aided and abetted by the BBC, It was guerilla film-making at its best, as Russell explained to his biographer, John Baxter, Dance of the Seven Veils was:

a good example of the sort of film that could never be made outside the BBC, because the lawyers would be on to it in two seconds. I would have had to submit a script to the Strauss family and his publishers Boosey and Hawkes would have come into it, and it would never have happened. The great thing about the BBC is that the quickness of the hand deceives the eye. Before anyone can complain, the film is out. But the price you pay with a really controversial film is that it’s usually only shown once.

It was also Russell cocking-a-snook “at the whole dramatized documentary idea”, as he explained to Baxter, which had “degenerated into a series of third-rate cliches”.

The film finished Russell’s long and successful career at the BBC, but this was of little importance, as Russell continued on from the Oscar-winning success of his 1969 movie Women in Love to become the greatest British film director of the 1970s.

Dance of the Seven Veils stars former dancer, Christopher Gable as Strauss, Kenneth Colley as Hitler and the marvelous Vladek Sheybal as Goebbels. Watch it now before the Strauss Family lawyers have it removed.
 

 
The rest of Ken Russell’s Dance of the Seven Veils, after the jump…
 

 
The War You Don’t See is a must-see documentary by Emmy-award-winning journalist John Pilger, who examines the news media’s failures, mistakes and crass ineptitude when reporting the truth about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In The War You Don’t See, Pilger, himself a renowned correspondent, asks whether mainstream news has become an integral part of war-making.

Focusing on the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Pilger reflects on the history of the relationship between the media and government in times of conflict stretching back to World War I and explores the impact on the information fed to the public of the modern day practice of public relations in the guise of ‘embedding’ journalists with the military.

Featuring interviews with senior figures at major UK broadcasters, the BBC and ITV, and high profile journalists on both sides of the Atlantic, including Rageh Omaar and Dan Rather, the film investigates the reporting of government claims that Iraq harboured weapons of mass destruction.

Pilger also speaks to independent film makers, and whistleblowers, including the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange and to former senior British Foreign Office official Carne Ross to investigate why what he believes were key voices and key details did not figure prominently on the mainstream media’s agenda. The film also includes hard-hitting footage from independent media sources showing scenes in Afghanistan and Iraq, including footage leaked to Wikileaks.

Dan Rather, the famous CBS news anchor, and BBC World Affairs Correspondent Rageh Omaar both reflect on their own roles during the lead up to hostilities in Afghanistan and Iraq and the lessons they have learned.  Rather speaks about pressure felt by journalists who face the danger of becoming what he calls mere ‘stenographers’. Rageh Omaar speaks about the proliferation of 24 hour news and the effects this has on war reporting, including his own experience reporting on the liberation of Basra.

Fran Unsworth, the BBC Head of Newsgathering and David Mannion, Editor in Chief of ITV News, both face questioning on their news departments’ reporting of the Iraq war and the scrutiny of George Bush and Tony Blair’s claims about weapons of mass destruction.

The documentary also focuses on the abuse of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers and speaks to Phil Shiner, a lawyer who is representing a number of Iraqi victims. It examines the notion that our media distinguishes between ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ victims of conflicts and how.

The War You Don’t See also looks at the balance of the media’s reporting on the hostilities between Palestinians and Israelis, with particular focus on mainstream broadcasters’ coverage of the Israeli attack on the aid flotilla in Gaza earlier this year.  Both the BBC and ITV are asked about the influence of Israeli government efforts to shape the reporting of such incidents on their coverage.

Now in his seventy-first year, Pilger has lost none of his investigative skill as journalist or any of his anger at injustice and falsehood, and while it can be argued that he has his own agenda, Pilger is a very much needed David, pitched against the dangerous Goliath of Fox News.  As Pilger once said:

“It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it”

 
Parts 2-7 of John Pilger’s ‘The War You Don’t See’ after the jump…
 

 
“One lifetime is nowhere near enough to do all that there is to do.” So said the actor, comic, psychic, and writer Michael Bentine, and in his case it was probably true.

Born in Watford, to a Peruvian father and an English mother, Bentine was party at an early age to his parents’ interest in seances, clairaudience, “table turning” and the paranormal. Such an introduction inspired his own life-long interest into spiritualism and the Occult.

In his autobiography, The Long Banana Skin, Bentine claimed whilst in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War he had visions through which he was able to tell whether his comrades would live or die. If he saw a skull super-imposed over their faces, he then knew they would not return from their next mission. Not the kind of talent to win friends and influence people, but certainly one to impress others with in later years, as he did when he recounted such tales on chat shows.

If it was all true, then it was most certainly a curse, as Bentine foresaw the death of his son, who was killed in a plane crash; and foresaw the death of his friend, the Tory politician, Airey Neave, who was blown-up by the IRA. Bentine was also a member of a Wiccan coven, and indulged in various rituals. Nothing wrong with that, but when tied to the fact Bentine was very close to the Royal Family it’s enough to give David Icke something to fantasize about.

Bentine was also involved in paranormal investigation, on one occasion he helped a family whose child suffered from recurrent illness. As the child grew weaker, Bentine was convinced evil forces were at work. His hunch proved correct when it was uncovered the family’s neighbors, an elderly couple, were using magical rites to drain the child of its life-force.

Towards the end of his military service, Bentine was involved in the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which had such a traumatic affect on him he was never able to describe what he had seen, other than to call it “the ultimate blasphemy”.

After the war he started his career as a comedian at the Windmill Theatre, home to nude tableaux, dirty old men wanking and a generation of great comedians – Tony Hancock, Morecambe and Wise, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, Tommy Cooper and Jimmy Edwards. It was through the Windmill that Bentine met Secombe and Sellers and later Spike Milligan, with whom he formed The Goons.

Amongst the memorable roles he played in The Goons was Professor Osric Pureheart, a mad scientist whose achievements included digging the Channel Tunnel, building the giant Brabagoon aircraft and discovering the East Pole. Bentine left The Goon Show after thirty-eight episodes, just before fame struck. He then chose his own route to success, touring Australia, before returning to make his first great children’s TV series The Bumblies.

The success of The Bumblies was only a taster of what was to come. During the sixties Bentine achieved international fame with the BBC comedy series It’s a Square World (winner of the Golden Rose of Montreaux, amongst others), and made the greatly under-rated gem The Sandwich Man.  Yet, for all this original and brilliant work, to a generation of young uns, Michael Bentine’s Potty Time will be perhaps what he is remembered for best.

Potty Time (1973-80) with its mix of Goonish humor, followed the comic’s investigations into the funny and surreal world of cuddly, chubby, big-nosed puppets, which he voiced, as they re-enacted a selection of classic novels and historical events – Sherlock Holmes, Hadrian’s Wall, the Northwest Frontier, Vikings and Pirate Buses amongst others. The show was recorded live with Bentine performing to his own taped voice. Timing was essential as Bentine couldn’t fluff lines and the puppeteers had to hit their mark perfectly.

Watching the series now, it is still quite incredible how they managed to pull it off, but thankfully they did.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

 
John Lennon 24 Hours is a “rarely seen” BBC documentary following John and Yoko over five days in early December 1969. It’s an intimate and interesting film with some very fine moments - a few you may have seen before, but even so it’s well worth watching.

There’s a spooky moment for Lennon-philes at around 1 minute 20 seconds in part 3 (below), when Lennon reads out a letter from a concerned fan who wrote:

Dear Mr Lennon, From information I received whilst using ouija board I believe there will be an attempt to assassinate you. The spirit who gave me this information was Brian Epstein.

Enjoy!
 
John Lennon 24 Hours - Part 1
 

 
It’s the Kennedy moment for a generation, who know where they were, and what they were doing when they heard about John Lennon’s murder thirty years ago today.

I was woken from sleep, and half-awake, half asleep, the news was dreamlike, “John Lennon’s dead. He was shot.” It didn’t make sense, and three decades on, still doesn’t.

Lennon’s loss is immeasurable, for we are left with unfulfilled expectations. That said, Lennon’s creative work as a solo artist, but more importantly with The Beatles changed everything. John, Paul, George and Ringo were the most revolutionary and influential quartet since Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

To celebrate their revolutionary drive, here is “Revolution” deconstructed.

Lennon started writing “Revolution” in early 1968, when off on retreat with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Arguably, it was the first real political song The Beatles produced, and was a considered move away from the lovable mop-top image, as Lennon explained:

“I thought it was about time we spoke about it [revolution], the same as I thought it was about time we stopped not answering about the Vietnamese war. I had been thinking about it up in the hills in India.”

1968: the Vietnam War, My Lai Massacre, Grosvenor Square demonstration, student riots in Paris, Rome and Brazil, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin start a bombing campaign, Russia crushes the Prague Spring revolt in Czechoslovakia, Martin Luther King assassinated, Bobby Kennedy assassinated. It was a hell of a year.

In May The Beatles recorded Take 1 of “Revolution”, a slow almost Blues-like number with Lennon singing his vocal while lying on the floor. During this recording Lennon included the word “in” at the end of the line “You can count me out” as he was undecided about supporting violent revolution. Even so, Lennon was keen to have this version released as the next Beatles’ single. McCartney, however, was against causing any controversy, and argued, along with Harrison, that the track was far too slow to be a hit. It was eventually released, with lots of overdubs, on the White Album

A longer version (Take 20), lasting over 10 minutes was recorded and begins with Lennon shouting “Take your knickers off and let’s go.” Yoko Ono can be heard on this track, saying “Maybe it’s not that,” to which Harrison replies, “It is that.” Parts of this were later incorporated into “Revolution No. 9”.

Lennon was still adamant about releasing a version of “Revolution” and a faster, more up-tempo version was recorded on 9 July. It begins with “a startling machine-gun fuzz guitar riff,” with Lennon’s and Harrison’s guitars prominent throughout. Their distinct fuzzy sound was achieved by plugging the guitars directly into the recording console, and then routing the signal through two microphone preamplifiers, almost causing the channel to overload. Lennon overdubbed the opening scream, and double-tracked some of the words “so roughly that its careless spontaneity becomes a point in itself.” This version of “Revolution” was released as the B-side to “Hey, Jude” in August 1968. Highly controversial at the time, dividing both Left and Right, “Revolution” is now regarded as one of the “greatest, most furious rockers” with “challenging, fiery lyrics” where the listener’s “heart immediately starts pounding before Lennon goes into the first verse.” Rock critic Dave Marsh included “Revolution” in his 1989 book of 1001 greatest singles, describing it as a “gem” with a “ferocious fuzztone rock and roll attack” and a “snarling” Lennon vocal. Who can disagree?
 
John Lennon - Vocals
 

 
More tracks plus bonus clips of The Beatles after the jump…
 

 
London. The Swinging Sixties. Beat Combos. Guitars. Bri-Nylon Shirts. Bad Teeth. Fast Cars. Chicks. Guys. Fights. Suits. Fights. Chocolates. Exotic Locations. Hair. Lots of Hair. More Chicks. More Guys. George Lazenby. Glossy Color Magazines. Shaw Taylor. Newspapers. Weddings. Symbolism. Cigarettes. What more could you ask for?
 

 
With thanks to Simon Wells
 

Tonight’s feature presentation, ladles and gentlespoons, is Frankenstein, Edison Studios’ 1910 production of Mary Shelley’s novel The Modern Prometheus. Directed by J. Searle Dawley and starring Augustus Phillips, Mary Fuller and Charles Ogle as the monster.

This was the first ever movie production of Frankenstein, filmed over 3 days at the Edison Studios in the Bronx, New York. For many years it was thought this film was lost, only a few lobby cards, stills and posters were thought to exist, that was until the early 1950’s, when a print of the film was purchased by Alois F. Dettlaff, a movie collector from Wisconsin. However, Dettllaff didn’t realize the rarity or value of his latest possession until the 1970s, when he had it preserved on 35mm. Though the film had deteriorated, it was still viewable, and had its original caption cards and beautifully hand-tinted sequences.

This version of Frankenstein differs from Shelley’s novel but does touch on some of the themes implicit in her novel. The one thing that has always struck me about Shelley’s tale is the absence of love. It is pointed to throughout the narrative by negatives, from the very creation of the monster, to its lack of a name, to Frankenstein addressing it as “hideous”, “loathsome”, “deformed”. Though the doctor may feel pity for his handiwork, he cannot look at it without seeing “the filthy mass that walked and talked,” which fills him with “horror and disgust.” Talk about absentee fathers.

The creature having failed to win the love of his creator, seeks it in the outside world, when this fails, he realizes he must he have Frankenstein make him a partner. The doctor reluctantly agrees, and starts his preparations on the isle of Orkney. Unfortunately, for the monster, Frankenstein has a change of heart, fearing a world populated by monstrous off-spring, and destroys his second creation. When this happens, you know it’s going to end in tears, as the monster claims vengeance on his maker.

In this film version, the snaggle-toothed monster with the Russell Brand hair is similarly desperate for love, and behaves as a jealous lover for Frankenstein’s affection. But what is more intriguing is the suggestion the monster is not so much real but an element within Frankenstein’s nature, an idea Mary Shelley may have agreed with, for who is Victor Frankenstein? other than a portrait of her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the monster? But a metaphor for their love?