Nancy & Lee, Part III: Movin’ With Nancy

You don’t walk through life anymore. You run. You dance. You drive a car. You take a plane, not a train. Clothes must be able to move too. — Fashion Designer André Courrèges (1923-2016)

The pop charts in 1967 belonged to Nancy Sinatra. The year began with the success of the soon-to-be RIAA gold single, “Sugar Town”/“Summer Wine”, followed by “Somethin’ Stupid,” a duet with her father Frank that spent a month at #1 and months more on the chart. “Somethin’ Stupid” was later nominated for a Grammy Award for Record of the Year, losing to the 5th Dimension’s “Up, Up And Away,” a song she was to perform in Movin’ With Nancy. At one point, for the week ending April 22, she had three singles on Billboard’s Hot 100: “Somethin’ Stupid,” “Love Eyes,” and “Summer Wine.” She would repeat this rare feat the next week as well. During the Summer of Love, her single featuring the title track to the latest James Bond film, “You Only Live Twice,” was released, followed by another hit single, “Lightning’s Girl,” followed in turn by yet another hit single with Lee Hazlewood, “Lady Bird”/”Sand.”

At the end of the year, she starred in a successful TV special. Broadcast on NBC December 11, 1967, the Emmy Award-winning Movin’ With Nancy is a kind of road movie filmed in and around Los Angeles—e.g., Leo Carrillo State Park,  The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power—with one sequence shot at Big Sur and a short sequence at Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco. The Beatles’ attempt at a road movie, Magical Mystery Tour, would show on British TV later that month (in black & white) and in early January 1968 in color. (Movin' With Nancy would repeat as well, in April 1968, shortly after the release of the Nancy & Lee LP.) In contrast to the critical and commercial success of Movin’ With Nancy, the Beatles’ avant-garde road movie was a flop. Movin’ With Nancy features appearances by “special guests” Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Lee Hazlewood. Choreographer David Winters (who was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work in this show) is also acknowledged as a special guest, as is Frank Sinatra, Jr., who makes a cameo appearance.

The show opens with a medium long shot of a brick red ’57 Ford Thunderbird convertible parked in a driveway. Residence behind. Close on a white entry door. It opens, revealing a pair of brick red leather boots—not flat-heeled ankle “go-go” boots, these boots have spiked heels and rise above mid-calf, these boots are strictly non-utilitarian and represent above all style and fashion—instantly reminding us of the song to which Nancy Sinatra is most famously linked, “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” a song about a woman who ain’t gonna take any more shit from her man, a two-minute-forty-two-second proto-feminist anthem. Pull back to reveal Nancy Sinatra in checkered miniskirt, not a micro-mini, but plenty short, in a white sweater with a wide black stripe at the waist and leather gloves matching the brick red color of her boots and her Thunderbird. The impression is that of a confident young woman embracing her body and style. She strolls over to her stylish vehicle—this car is hers—climbs in, starts it up, throws it in gear, and speeds off down the driveway, singing “I Gotta Get Out of This Town.” Opening credits over a Vorkapich montage. She passes through residential streets onto Ocean Blvd. in Santa Monica, and soon she’s rolling on the 405 heading north to Moorpark to take a ride in a balloon (“Up, Up and Away”) before doing some hiking at Big Sur (“Sugar Town”).

NANCY SINATRA: I knew it [“These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”] would be important from the moment the band played it through. I had shopped at Mary Quant’s boutique before the record was released, and the clothes fit the attitude the song portrayed.

The opening sequence is surprising: a woman hitting the road, going where she pleases. It’s not Kerouac in the car, it’s not Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters searching for the Kool Place, it’s not four blokes roaming the countryside in a bus, it’s not those two fellas driving around in the Corvette from Route 66 (1960-64)—she’s got a convertible, too, like those guys, but her T-Bird has a big Dodge engine with a McCulloch blower and eats Corvettes for lunch. She is in her automobile and she is autonomous, free, mobile—moving—and looking to have some fun. “My Thunderbird was totally restored and rebuilt by my friend George Barris of Batmobile fame. It had a Borg-Warner 5-speed stick transmission and a Dodge engine with a McCullogh [sic] supercharger. . . . I took great pleasure in beating Corvettes away from red lights in my innocent looking little T-Bird.” (Liner notes included with the Image DVD release of Movin’ With Nancy.) She may be diminutive (5’ 3”, 90 pounds) and look innocent, but like the singer in “These Boots,” she doesn't take any crap.

NANCY SINATRA: The timing was perfect. . . . I think Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton and I captured the fashion of the time best.

Famed British fashion designer Mary Quant is among those credited with introducing the miniskirt (and perhaps responsible for making it shorter and then shorter again), but where did the boots come from? What attitude is represented by the boots? In 1964, the year before “These Boots” was recorded, when the women’s movement and the space program were just beginning to take off, French fashion designer André Courrèges unveiled his highly influential “Space Age” or futuristic collection of minimalist designs—drop-waist miniskirts, simple A-line dresses, and flat-soled white leather ankle boots with a zipper down back and a Velcro placket. A pair of boots “were essential for girls emulating the ‘moon-girl’ image, a new version of femininity, inspired by youth, sportswear, and space travel.” It is perhaps good to remember that Oklahoman Lee Hazlewood originally wrote “These Boots” for a male vocalist, not a moon-girl, recording his version of the song for his 1966 MGM album, The Very Special World of Lee Hazlewood. The boots in his version therefore aren’t futuristic go-go boots, but the old-fashioned cowboy variety.

After ballooning and visiting Big Sur, the “Sugar Town” sequence ends with Nancy strolling away up a slight hill (white leather boots now) into the woods, her back to us. Cut to Lee Hazlewood on a sandy rise at Leo Carrillo State Beach, riding a black horse—the sequence featuring “Some Velvet Morning,” one of Nancy & Lee’s most frequently covered duets. Lee delivers his vocals as he rides, Nancy delivers hers as she strolls somewhere else on the beach. Now dressed all in ghostly white, she is in loose slacks and a diaphanous blouse, holding some flowers. Intercutting between one and the other as they sing. The two are never in the same shot together.

Lee’s voice:
Some velvet mornin’ when I’m straight
I’m gonna open up your gate
And maybe tell you ’bout Phaedra
And how she gave me life
And how she made it end
Some velvet mornin’ when I’m straight

Nancy’s voice:
Flowers growing on a hill, dragonflies and daffodils
Learn from us very much, look at us but do not touch
Phaedra is my name

FROM THE BACK COVER LINER NOTES ON NANCY & LEE: What Does “Some Velvet Morning” Really Mean? We don’t know. The words “Velvet” and “Morning” rhyme in our heads. Phaedra sounds like an “upper” that doesn’t quite make it.

THE PHAEDRA MYTH: In one version, Phaedra marries Theseus but falls deeply in love with Hippolytus, Theseus’ son. Horrified by her declaration of love, Hippolytus rejects her. In revenge, Phaedra writes Theseus a letter, falsely accusing Hippolytus of raping her, after which she commits suicide. Angered, driven by revenge, Theseus curses Hippolytus. Frightened by a sea monster, Hippolytus’ horses drag the falsely accused man to his death.

If Nancy is Phaedra, who is Lee? Theseus? If so, to whom is he singing? Certainly not Phaedra (“And maybe tell you ’bout Phaedra”). During the sequence in Movin’ With Nancy, he’s riding his black horse along the seashore. Wouldn’t that suggest that he’s in fact supposed to be Hippolytus? What if Lee Hazlewood only partially knew the Greek myth, or imperfectly remembered it if he knew it at all? 

In his essay, “Why Do Songs Have Words?” (included in his collection of essays, Music For Pleasure), British critic Simon Frith writes:

“In the best of songs,” according to Christopher Ricks, “there is something which is partly about what it is to write a song, without in any way doing away with the fact that it is about things other than the song.” Sociologists of pop have been so concerned with these “other things”—lyrical content, truth and realism—that they have neglected to analyze the ways in which songs are about themselves, about language. (121)

Certainly the above observation is applicable to “Some Velvet Morning.” The song consists of the interplay of sound and language, the contrast of voices, and is more redolent of meaning than having any clearly defined meaning. What does it really mean? We don’t know. It seems to tease at meaning, promising more than what it actually says, as if the lyrics are fragments of some longer manuscript, now lost, an ancient, mythic narrative of which only a few pieces survive. Commentators have remarked upon the two different time signatures, 4/4 (Lee) and 3/4 (Nancy), but as I remarked in a previous entry, recording by the mid-60s resembled filmmaking, with a single song consisting of multiple takes seamlessly edited together. The best analogy I can think of is to The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever,” a track that resulted from two (or more) takes played at different tempos and in different keys, subsequently cut together, with one take sped up and the other slowed down. “Some Velvet Morning” does something similar. It splices different takes which have different tempos, different rhythms. Perhaps it is not as sonically dense as “Strawberry Fields Forever,” but it shares the same spirit of inventiveness, and rises and falls like a masterful drama.

One final comment. In the same essay referred to above, Frith makes the observation—especially apt as a description of Nancy & Lee’s duets—that songs are “more like plays than poems.” Singers are like actors performing a role. They are like characters in a play. Changes in tone, a pleading voice, sighs and hesitations (to name only a few) are non-verbal devices that carry meaning every bit as much as the semantic connotations of the words themselves. Because male-female duets are rather like conversations, listening to a duet is similar to eavesdropping, forcing the listener into the role of the voyeur. The result is that the conversation is charged with erotic overtones, even if that is not overt or intended.

Question to be explored: What is the basis of rock's claim to a superior pop music status?

The Search For John And Yoko’s White Rolls Royce Goes On...

Frequent 60x50 correspondent Eric Roberts provides a year-end update on the continuing saga of John Lennon's white Rolls Royce:

The mystery of the disposition of John Lennon's white Rolls Royce remains unsolved. Despite the recent 30th commemoration of Lennon’s assassination, we still aren’t sure of the exact whereabouts of John and Yoko’s white, 1965 Phantom V, or who owns it. To the best of our knowledge, there are at least three contenders, all of whom are based in the United States. One is doing time in a Californian prison; one is a legal attorney in Pensacola, Florida; and another is a property developer/car enthusiast in Colorado.

Phil Spector has never claimed to be the owner of EUC 100C. As we have seen, he just happens to have in his garage a white Rolls Royce of similar vintage to John & Yoko’s famous limousine. The only evidence in this line of inquiry is Alan White’s widely published recollection of Lennon offering Spector the keys to his white rolls at the end of the Imagine sessions in mid-1971 (see the previous blogs below on this issue). However, as Mick Brown has commented elsewhere in this blog, Spector would not have neglected to mention during the course of Brown’s interviews that his white Rolls was a gift from John Lennon. It would have been a talking point early on in the conversation, which took place in 2003.

This is supported by a short note in The Beatles Years Volume 2: After the Break-Up 1970-2001. December 1977: “On a sad note, Beatles fans in New York are horrified at the sight of John’s famous vintage white Rolls Royce car sitting neglected in an inch-deep pool of oily water in a $100 a month private garage.” (Source: http://www.wingspan.ru/bookseng/diary2/b10_1977.html)

The next “suspect” on the list is equally unverifiable. In a casual discussion between members of the Pensacola Fishing Forum, (http://www.pensacolafishingforum.com/f22/white-rolls-royce-bayfront-61968/) we learn that there is a local urban legend in the city of Pensacola, Florida, that links the vintage white roller that is permanently parked outside the office of attorney, Jim Reeves, to John Lennon. The forum commentary evokes a tangled, impossible to authenticate, “oral history” of a car that someone once claimed belonged to John and Yoko. (No photos available.)

Yet another white Rolls Royce purporting to be Lennon's former limo is featured on Flickr, parked on Main Street, Louisville, Colorado, USA. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/18767293@N00/sets/72157622341089611/detail/).

How bizarre that we know exactly where John Lennon's not-so-famous psychedelic 1956 Bentley is preserved but cannot state with any certainty what happened to the car that John and Yoko are most closely associated with. (See: http://www.sarasotacarmuseum.org/ and http://www.smallplanetbigworld.com/2009/05/john-lennon.html as well as http://www.bentleyspotting.com/2009/03/john-lennons-phantom-v.html)

At this stage, the leading protagonist in the white Roller saga has to be property entrepreneur and philanthropist, Stephen Tebo in Colorado. A recent contributor to this blog supports this hypothesis (see comments on the white Rolls posted on this blog).

Though still inconclusive, little by little, the real “life” of EUC 100C is emerging. Thanks to Rolls Royce historian, Rob Geelen, it is clear that the year and model of John & Yoko’s white Roller are identical to Lennon’s original black Rolls Royce, FJB 111C. And we also note that Performance (1970) was not the first time that EUC 100C had appeared in a motion-picture. (Source: http://imcdb.org/vehicle_317774-Rolls-Royce-Phantom-V-1966.html)

1965 Rolls Royce Phantom V Limousine By H. J. Mulliner, Park Ward design 2003 5VD63, delivered May 65 to to Patrick Barthropp Ltd., registered PPB1, and used in the movie Georgy Girl (UK, 1966), and subsequently by the Beatles. So not ordered new by Lennon.

You can be certain of one thing: whoever the real owner of EUC 100C is, providing they can establish the car’s provenance, they are sitting on a multi-million dollar investment. Its more famous, but by no means more significant black twin, FJB 111C, sold for nearly three million dollars 25 years ago. Ideally, however, John and Yoko’s white Rolls Royce should be on display in a major museum, preserved as an integral part of Beatle history.

Alas, the saga continues.

The Continuing Story of The White Roller

If you’ve been following this blog, then you know that I have been trying to learn what happened to John Lennon’s white Rolls Royce (scroll down to follow the developments, and be sure to check out the comments). It seems that once John Lennon began his life with Yoko Ono, he began wearing white clothes (as you can discern from the famous picture to the left). The interiors of his and Yoko’s home, Tittenhurst Park, were predominantly white, the exterior boldly white. White seems to have taken on a symbolic significance for both John and Yoko, perhaps influencing the minimalist design of the two-record set, The Beatles, released late in 1968, typically referred to as “the white album.” Presumably, Lennon felt that his so-called “psychedelic” Rolls Royce was no longer a true expression of who he was, and he (and perhaps the other members of the Beatles) no longer wanted to be associated with the psychedelic era.

So what, then, happened to John Lennon’s white Rolls Royce (EUC 100C)? Eric Roberts, whose dedicated efforts I have reproduced on this blog, is trying to find the answer. We did get a response from writer Mick Brown, who kindly agreed to do some checking around, specifically asking Tony King what he knew about the disposition of Lennon's vehicle. Although Mr. Brown’s reply was posted in the comments to the original blog (below), I have reproduced them here:

I have spoken with the estimable Tony King, who worked at Apple and was a close friend of John’s. He furnishes the following.

“I wish I could be the source of all information but I have no idea where it ended up, although I did use it when I was at Apple to go to lunch sometimes!

I think Ringo had it down at Tittenhurst Park for a while which is where John and Yoko lived and then Ringo and Maureen took it over after John and Yoko moved to the USA.

It also went very psychedelic for a while and was hand painted by Simon and Marijke also known as The Fool who did the outside of the Apple store on Baker St.

It had a loud speaker on the top so you could ask people to cross the road a bit faster which scared the daylights out of them!”

I thank Mick Brown very much for taking the time to ask Tony King about the matter. However, the fact is, Mr. King’s comments have not, unfortunately, determined the fate of the white Rolls Royce.

Eric Roberts responds:

Mick - Thanks for posting Tony King’s recollections about the vehicle. Unfortunately, there are one or two problems with the text. I suspect that Tony is talking about the white rolls (EUC 100C) in paragraph 3, but then, in the last 2 paragraphs, he is thinking of Lennon’s original black Rolls that he purchased around May 1965. As we know, it was this black Rolls (FJB 111C) that was hand painted with Gypsy (not “psychedelic”) designs. And we also know that in 1966 Lennon had a loud speaker system installed so he could chat with his fans without rolling down the windows, or startle pedestrians with a burst of song.

The reference to Ringo is also interesting (paragraph 3). I remember reading (somewhere) that John Lennon originally acquired the white Roller from Ringo, sometime in 1968, I assume. Ringo may well be able to shed light on the matter. Do you have his contacts? Or do you think it’s a blind alley?

Perhaps Yoko might be open to a short question about their famous car. Was it acquired by Stephen Tebo at auction, or was it a gift to Phil Spector? Are you by any chance thinking of a follow-up interview with Spector? In which case, you might slip it into the conversation…?

I hope this is of some help and that you will discover who is the current owner of this historic white Rolls Royce.

John Lennon's Other Roller

A couple of years ago I posted a blog on John Lennon’s white Rolls Royce Phantom V, the vehicle that appears at the end of Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg’s Performance (1970), the one in which Harry Flowers sits awaiting delivery of Chas ("Hello, Chas!"). It was this white Rolls that was later used in the Apple Records promotional video, "The Ballad of John and Yoko" (1969). It so happens that three different Rollers were used in Performance: the black one, shown in the film's opening moments; the black Rolls in the garage with a "tasty finish" on which acid is poured, destroying the paint job (actually that Rolls was coated with a clear substance that reacted to the chemicals in the liquid dumped from the jug—that wasn’t real acid poured on the Rolls!); and the white Rolls-Royce belonging to John Lennon used in the last sequence.

I'm happy to report that my post on Lennon’s white Phantom V prompted Eric Roberts of Brisbane, Australia to conduct some original research on Lennon’s second Rolls, which he kindly shared with me. I wrote him asking permission to share his findings on this blog, and he agreed. I wish to thank Eric for both the research and for allowing me to publish the information here. If anyone has additional information, especially regarding the date of John Lennon's purchase of the white Rolls Royce (EUC 100C), please write and I'll share it here. If anyone is willing share archival images of the white Rolls, please send them to me and I'll post them. Mr. Roberts' essay follows.

JOHN LENNON’S OTHER ROLLS ROYCE by Eric Roberts

Please note:
1. I think I saw (somewhere on the web) original documentation stating that FJB 111C was originally black. I may be wrong.
2. I am no expert when it comes to the subtle differences between various models of Rolls Royce cars. Is EUC 100C a Phantom V or a Silver Cloud III?

Everyone knows that, in 1967, John Lennon’s black, 1965 Phantom V, registration FJB 111C, was repainted yellow and covered in colourful gypsy-inspired designs. While it seems fairly conclusive that the original colour was black, a number of websites insist that it was white when Lennon bought the vehicle in June 1965 and that, subsequently, he decided to respray it black. Clearly, this cannot be true, since the so-called “psychedelic” Rolls Royce has a different number plate to the white Rolls that Lennon used from 1968 until he moved with Yoko to the United States. Further research is needed to verify that sometime ca. 1967-68, Lennon purchased a second Phantom V, identical to his 1965 black Rolls FJB 111C. It is important to recognize that Elvis Presley owned a 1960 Phantom V Roller, which he bought with the proceeds from his five picture deal with Warner Bros. Similarly, Lennon seems to have splurged on a Phantom V around the same time that The Beatles were contracted to make the movie Help!

In the aftermath of the critical failure of Magical Mystery Tour (1967)—in which FJB 111C makes a cameo appearance—Lennon began a new phase of his life with Yoko Ono. Lennon takes to wearing white clothes. The interiors of their new home, Tittenhurst, are predominantly white, and the exterior is (strikingly) white. White seems to take on a symbolic significance for both John and Yoko. Presumably, his psychedelic Rolls Royce was no longer an expression of who he was. It could only associate him with The Beatles in the mind of the media and the fans.

EUC 100C looks identical to FJB 111C, apart from the paint work and the wing-like radio antennae mounted on the roof. In the mid-1960s, the Phantom V was longer and heavier than the Silver Cloud III – a flying fortress, fully equipped with the latest communications technology. It was a status symbol and a mobile office within which one could feel perfectly safe. So taken was he with the new Roller that he took Yoko on an extended driving tour through Europe. Yoko is quoted as saying:

“He [John] had this beautiful white Rolls Royce and he said to me: ‘We should go round Europe in this car.’ I said Great! Let’s do that!”

Because of the matching number plates, we know that this was the same vehicle that was used in the film Performance shot in London in 1968. EUC 100C was also used in several Beatles photo shoots. Film and photographs from the late 1960s of John and Yoko contain glimpses of the white Phantom V, whereas FJB 111C would seem to have been put into semi-storage in Lennon’s garage at Tittenhurst.

THE SPECTOR CONNECTION
As the Beatles were in the final stages of disintegration as a band, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s global Peace campaign took them to Montreal and Toronto , where Lennon agreed to take part in a rock festival featuring some of his idols, such as Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. Having missed Woodstock, Lennon felt the need to honour this post-bed-in commitment, the only snag being that he had no band. By chance, he saw a young drummer playing in a London club and immediately recruited him into the newly formed Plastic Ono Band. Alan White, then 20 years old, only learned that Eric Clapton was also in the band at the airport. White went on to play on the Imagine album, recorded in Tittenhurst Manor and produced by Phil Spector. According to Alan White, at the end of the final session, Lennon was so ecstatic with Spector’s work that he gave him the white Phantom V:

“I’m giving you my white Rolls-Royce outside. That is what he said; he said, you’ve done a great job, I’m giving you my Rolls-Royce. And he gave him his white Rolls-Royce – the huge one that he used, and he gave it to him that day. He said take it, see you’ve done a good job… Amazing.”

Strangely enough, housed in Phil Spector’s garage in Los Angeles, is a white Rolls Royce that looks very like EUC 100C. (The original number plates have been changed to PHIL 500). Telegraph journalist, Mick Brown, in his book and various articles on his meeting with Spector a few months prior to Lana Clarkson’s murder, insists that Spector’s white Rolls is a Silver Cloud III, and gives its year of production as 1964 or 1965, depending on which of his articles you read. How certain is Brown that it is not a Phantom V?

To the untrained eye, a white 1965 Silver Cloud III would be very difficult to distinguish from a white 1965 Phantom V. Spector kept everything Lennon gave him—drawings, guitars, etc.—so why wouldn’t he keep Lennon’s classic Roller?

The only problem is that, in Longmont Colorado, multi-millionaire named Stephen Tebo, claims to have John Lennon’s white Rolls Royce in his private Tebo Auto Collection. In all probability, then, EUC 100C is owned either by Tebo or Spector. But which is it? How can we find out for sure and put this mystery of Lennon’s white Rolls Royce to bed?

REFERENCES:
1) Phil Spector: Nobody Would Want His Life Now
Telegraph
Mick Brown
14 Apr 2009

Our meeting was, to say the least bizarre. A 1965 Rolls Royce ferried me from my Los Angeles hotel to the Pyrenees Castle, driven by the same chauffeur who would later testify in court that he had seen Spector emerge from the mansion on the night of February 3 holding a revolver in his bloodied hand, and say, “I think I killed somebody.”

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/phil-spector/5154302/Phil-Spector-nobody-would-want-his-life-now.html

2) Notes From the Edge #247
Mike Tiano
August 11, 2001

Mike Tiano: So, along with working with John Lennon, you also worked with Phil Spector on a lot of (the Imagine) sessions. Any memories or stories that pop into your mind?

Alan White: Just small things like John walking up to him [and] in front of me, saying [to Spector], “I’m giving you my white Rolls-Royce outside.” (laughs). That is what he said; he said, you’ve done a great job, I’m giving you my Rolls-Royce.

MT: He said that to Phil?

AW: Yeah, and he gave him his white Rolls-Royce—the huge one that he used, and he gave it to him that day. He said take it, see you’ve done a good job... amazing.

Link: http://nfte.org/interviews/AW247.html

3) Pop’s Lost Genius
Mick Brown
4 Feb 2003

A car was waiting for me downstairs, a white 1964 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, license plate ‘Phil 500’.

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandjazzmusic/3589445/Pops-lost-genius.html

4) Tearing Down the Wall of Sound by Mick Brown (Knopf, 2007)

A car, I was informed, would be collecting me from my hotel at noon. At the appointed hour, a white 1965 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, license plate PHIL 500, drew up outside the hotel.

5) With a Bullet
Joe Domanick
Los Angeles Magazine, April 2007

Phil Spector’s arrest came at the end of a long, traumatic night. It began when his backup chauffeur, Adriano DeSouza, drove his red Ford Crown Victoria up the castle’s steep, winding quarter-mile-long asphalt driveway and parked adjacent to the two-story, six-car garage and motor court. A Brazilian army veteran working illegally in L.A. while on a student visa, DeSouza - who was formally dressed in a chauffeur¹s uniform of black suit and tie and white dress shirt - locked his car, walked past Spector’s 1964 white Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud to a shiny new black Mercedes-Benz S430. He got behind the wheel and waited until Spector stepped out of the rear door at about 7 p.m.

Link: http://www.lamag.com/article.aspx?id=14736

6) Mrs. Phil Spector’s Hot Rides
Rachelle shows 20/20 her husband's 1965 white Rolls Royce Silver Cloud.
Video - 00:21 | 07/30/2009
Link: http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=8213055

7) Yoko Caused International Incident With Belgium Strip Show
The Quietus, Ben Hewitt, September 10th, 2009

She also revealed that she had been forced to keep a low profile when she returned to Belgium with John Lennon, adding: “He [John] had this beautiful white Rolls Royce and he said to me, ‘We should go round Europe in this car.’ I said ‘Great! Let’s do that!’ So we were driving round Europe until he said: ‘Now we’re going to go to Belgium’. I said, ‘John, er, I have to tell you something!’

“And he said, ‘Oh, well, let’s just lie low.’ So we were lying down very low in the back of the car. We drove through Belgium on the floor of the car! But they didn’t stop us!”

Link: http://thequietus.com/articles/02706-news-yoko-ono-caused-international-incident-after-stripping-in-belgium

8) Tebo Auto Collection
Longmont Colorado

Jump on this unique opportunity to attend a private event featuring Stephen Tebo’s extensive collection of antique and classic motor vehicles. Mr. Tebo started his car collection in 1975 when he purchased a sleeve-valve, three-door 1925 Willys Knight for $2,500. Recent additions include a 1929 Duesenberg and a mid-1960s Shelby Mustang. Other highlights are John Lennon’s white Rolls Royce, Steve McQueen’s Indian Chief, Frank Sinatra’s Jeep, the taxi used on the Jerry Seinfeld show, a limited-production 1954 Kaiser Darrin, a room of Corvettes, a room of British cars, vintage fire trucks and much, much more. This rarely-seen private collection will go back under wraps after this event, so don't miss your chance!

Eric Roberts
Brisbane, Australia

In My Tree

About three weeks ago, I wrote a short blog entry on the famous cynic Diogenes, the great anti-Socratic. Diogenes was greatly admired by Alexander the Great for the freedom exemplified by his way of life. According to legend, the famous conqueror approached the sage on a day when he, Diogenes, was sunning himself. Alexander the Great asked him, Diogenes, if there were anything he could do for him. “Yes,” said Diogenes, “Get out of my light.” It’s said that Diogenes asked to be buried standing on his head, because, so he thought, one day down would be up, and up would be down. In the earlier blog, I claimed that one can hear Diogenesian thought in many pop songs, including Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” when Dylan sings, “You don’t need a weather man/To know which way the wind blows.” One can hear him in the Rolling Stones’ “Get Off Of My Cloud” and in Ian Hunter’s “Standin’ In My Light.” It occurred to me this morning that one may also hear Diogenes in the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever,” written by John Lennon. I have excerpted a few of the lyrics below:

Living is easy with eyes closed

Misunderstanding all you see

[…]

No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low

That is you can't you know tune in, but it’s all right

That is I think it’s not too bad

[..]

Always know sometimes think it’s me,

But you know I know when it’s a dream

I think a “No” will mean a “Yes” but it’s all wrong,

That is I think I disagree

I was prompted to revisit “Strawberry Fields Forever”—a recording which, in my view, represents one of the Beatles’ finest moments—because according to Dave Haber’s The Internet Beatles Album, it was on this day in 1967 the Beatles shot the night scenes for the “Strawberry Fields Forever” video (available here), in Sevenoaks, Kent. Watching the video this morning, shot over forty years ago, I thought of Jean-Luc Godard’s observation that the cinema also happens to be a documentary record of persons and things at a particular moment in time. Godard said about his film Breathless, for instance, “This film is really a documentary on Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo.” Thus the “Strawberry Fields Forever” video is really a documentary recording about how the Beatles looked on 30 January 1967—an example of how photography connects us to what we, even now, still call “the real.”

Albus

Sleeve—the protective cover in which a vinyl LP record is packaged and stored, normally with distinctive graphics. According to Michael Jarrett, it was Impulse! Records founder Creed Taylor who consciously attempted to change the look of jazz by concentrating on the graphics of the record sleeve or album cover. He said:

“I thought that the audience for jazz was, generally, of a higher level of intelligence,” says Taylor. “Gil Evans’s Out of the Cool, if you recall, has a photograph of Gil seated on a stool; he’s holding a manuscript. Instead of making him seem like the shadowy artistic type, it was set up to give him a Madison Avenue look, to make people think, ‘He’s a pretty good looking guy. He’s intelligent looking. I thought jazz was down-in-the-basement and seedy.’” (Sound Tracks 170)

Taylor, along with George Avakian at Columbia, Reid Miles at Blue Note, and Norman Granz at Verve, all consciously attempted to shift the connotations of jazz from “left-leaning bohemian values,” widely associated at the time with folk music. (p. 170) By consciously altering the graphic signifiers on the album covers, they successfully changed the public perception of jazz to urbane—Modernism as understood by the middle class.

Which sleeve in the history of rock music was the first to try to shift the connotations of rock from “teenybopper” or “pop” to “art” through the use of cover art and design? Certainly the black and white photograph by Robert Freeman used on the cover of Meet the Beatles! (January 1964), was consciously “artistic,” but it did nothing to alter the widespread association of rock with folk, and therefore its left-liberal bohemianism. In fact, the Meet the Beatles! cover became the prototype of all rock album sleeves to follow, as it became common practice to use a formally arranged picture of the band on the LP sleeve. The black and white cover of the Stones’ The Rolling Stones (April 1964) was clearly modeled after Meet the Beatles!, as well as all subsequent Beatles albums, e.g., Beatles For Sale (December 1964), although the latter was in color. Rubber Soul (December 1965) continued the practice of using a group photo on the cover, slightly modified in this latter case by the use of what might be termed psychedelic expressionism. So which album cover in the annals of rock consciously attempted to alter the perception of rock music from that of left-liberal bohemianism, lower working class values (“garage”), down-in-the-basement seediness, and the gaudy day-glo, paper cut-out signifiers that signaled stoned-out psychedelia? I initially considered the Velvet Underground’s first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico (March 1967), but ruled it out because the name of the band is so stridently bohemian, and because Andy Warhol’s famous banana peel cover smacked of Pop Art and was too deliberately outré anyway.

My nominee, therefore, is the Beatles’ The Beatles (December 1968), aka “The White Album” (the word album from the Latin albus, meaning blank, or white) with its minimalist art approach. Early issues of the album had the band’s name embossed on the cover on a white background, with a unique serial number printed on each cover. In subsequent issues, the band’s name was no longer embossed but printed in gray, with no serial number. In both instances, though, the album art was startlingly different than other sleeve art at the time, and the cover design, inspired by minimalist art, was quintessentially modern, and therefore urbane. Of course, the Beatles’ bold effort was all for nothing, as Charles Manson hijacked the album shortly after, and rock remained as “controversial” as ever, and hardly a sign of urbanity. I suspect, however, that the cover art concept demonstrated on The Beatles cover sleeve inspired countless graphic designers, and initiated what we now call “rock album art” as a distinct artistic form.

T For Teen

09.09.09: “No. 9” indeed. It’s as if the date was predestined, its significance anticipated over four decades ago on The Beatles, aka the “white album.” Today is the day of The Beatles on Rock Band, coinciding with the (re)release of remastered versions of Beatles’ albums on CD. In addition, there has been widespread speculation that today may see the announcement that the Beatles catalog shall finally be available on iTunes, even though all four of the band members have solo material in the store available for download already. The marketing apparatus has attributed to the date a significance as profound as occultists do the date 2012, as if the human calendar, for the past few hundred years comprised of twelve months and 365 days—save when leap year makes it 366—is linked to events in nature—indeed, all across the universe. Hence today is to feel “historic,” a momentous day that occurs only once in a lifetime, nature and culture coinciding with all the awe and mystery of a planetary alignment: the Beatles remastered, on Rock Band, and perhaps, God willing, even on iTunes. All of this on a Wednesday, too, even though new releases typically occur on Tuesdays: presumably, the event is so unique that it must occur outside a normal routine, a predictable and banal cycle, and be set aside on a singular day and date, a calendar event so fraught with the aura of magic (and the mnemonic properties of an incantation) - 9.9.09 - that only something utterly singular and profound may occur.

Of course, despite all the media hype, what today’s event really marks, or rather reveals, is something Marshall McLuhan observed decades ago: The content of the new media is the old. It also reveals something about the nature of the commodity that Marx observed over a century ago, that the commodity appears initially as an obvious, trivial thing, “but its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.” Remember that the media loves singular dates as much as it loves anniversaries: it provides ready-made content that can be repackaged as “news,” as novelty. The 40th anniversary of Woodstock came and went; this day, too, shall pass, with neither bang nor whimper.

Cowlicked Doughboys

The first thing I did this morning, as I started running around using the car to do banal errands (e.g., recycling, purchasing stamps, etc.), was to turn on the radio. First up after the commercial break was the Guess Who’s “American Woman,” a song that time has proved to be as dull as the errands I was performing: Nothing dates faster than lyrics intended to shock. The album American Woman was released in 1970, i.e., during the Vietnam War Era. I was in high school. There are some good songs on the album, but “American Woman” isn’t one of them. The song’s political “message,” with its references to “war machines” and “ghetto scenes,” was so painfully obvious that even a sophomore in high school could “get it,” thus proving the fact that when you take up politics and seek to be politically correct, you end up making forgettable music. Indeed, most politically correct music is bad: John Lennon & the Plastic Ono Band’s “Cold Turkey” is musically quite powerful; “Woman Is the Nigger of the World” is quite the opposite. So is “Give Peace a Chance,” now nothing more than a quaint museum piece, a historical artifact. The lesson? John Lennon assumed that his ideas were more important than his music.

By way of analogy, think of the movies Jean-Luc Godard made under the auspices of “The Dziga Vertov Group,” e.g., La gai savoir (1969), Wind from the East (1970), British Sounds (1970). These films were then, as they are now, tedious and boring, and the only ones interested in screening them at all are Godard scholars, obligated to watch everything. The irony is, when he paid attention to his art, to aesthetics, Godard was far more subversive—think of the “revolution” in cinema caused by Breathless (1960), historically important, still watchable, and a film that altered the course of world cinema. It’s far more memorable than anything he made during the Dziga Vertov period.

Well over thirty years ago, in 1975, Lester Bangs wrote an article lamenting the rather undistinguished careers of the individual Beatles in the 1970s, and he pinpointed what happened to them quite well. He wrote:

What made the Beatles initially so exciting and sustained them for so long was that they seemed to carry themselves with a good humored sense of style which was (or appeared to be) almost totally unselfconscious. They didn’t seem to realize that they were in the process of becoming institutionalized, and that was refreshing. By the time they realized it the ball game was over. In this sense, Rubber Soul (in packaging) and Revolver (in content as well) can be seen as the transitional albums. They doped it up and widened their scopes through the various other tools they had access to at the time just like everybody else down to the lowliest fringe-dripping cowlicked doughboy in the Oh Wow regiment, and the result was that they saw their clear responsibility as cultural avatars in what started out as a virtual vacuum (nice and clean, though), which of course ruined them. (Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader, p. 45)

In other words, acute self-consciousness is the enemy of any artist, but what’s worse is taking yourself too seriously and over-estimating your cultural significance. When the music is no longer as important as the message, it’s all over.

“More Popular That Jesus”

The way the story goes, John Lennon’s infamous remark about the Beatles being “more popular than Jesus” was printed in an interview that appeared in the London Evening Standard in early March 1966. Lennon is quoted as saying, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock ‘n ‘ roll or Christianity.” Apparently, so the story goes, his remark created nary a stir in Britain upon the publication of the interview.

Things went differently in the United States. Roughly five months after the aforementioned interview was published in England, some of Lennon’s remarks from the earlier interview were excerpted and reprinted in the 29 July 1966 issue of Datebook, a teen magazine, apparently to coincide with the release of Revolver on August 8. Within days of the magazine’s appearance on the newsstands, the American backlash against the Beatles began. It took a few days for the remark to circulate in the media, of course, but by 11 August, or right around that date, rock music, at the very least an annoyance, became a full-blown “social problem.” The vast popularity of the Beatles led many adults to conclude that the band’s influence on teenagers was immense, on the assumption, I suppose, that young people would accept their messages uncritically, the personal beliefs of the Beatles being like scripture. The first edition of Bob Larson’s Rock & Roll: The Devil’s Diversion, the subject of which he called “the moral and religious significance of rock and roll music,” was published in January or February of 1967, that is, about five months after Lennon’s remark was reprinted in Datebook. A second edition of Larson’s book followed in 1968, and a third in 1970. However, in a footnote in the third edition (1970) of his book, Larson claims that Lennon’s remark, “Christianity will go. We’re more popular than Jesus now,” appeared in the 21 March 1966 issue of Newsweek. I haven’t confirmed that reference, but I’ll take his word for it. If so, one wonders why the remark didn’t prompt such controversy in the American media until it was reprinted in Datebook in July later in the year.

Peter Watkins’ film Privilege (1967), about the trials and travails of an influential British pop star, was probably being filmed when Lennon’s remark was first published in Britain. But Lennon’s remark, “We’re more popular than Jesus,” was re-deployed and spoken by a character in AIP’s Wild in the Streets (1968), a satirical allegorical fantasy about the political dangers posed by a charismatic rock star. Written by Robert Thom (Death Race 2000, 1975), the film draws on a wide variety of themes, including, perhaps most importantly, the Oedipal romance. It features a weak father (Bert Freed) and a terrible (castrating) mother (Shelley Winters). The mother’s character was probably inspired by the Angela Lansbury figure of 1962’s The Manchurian Candidate, and like the Angela Lansbury character, the Shelley Winters character is shown to be politically ambitious once she learns that her runaway son has become rich and famous. The film’s anti-hero is Max Frost (born Max Flatow, Jr.), played by Christopher Jones, whose lack of proper maternal love is the implied motivation for his desperate need for adulation and affection. Precociously intelligent but also highly self-centered, Max escapes his unhappy home life to become a multi-millionaire by age twenty-two, by forming a hugely successful rock band and by hiring a fifteen-year-old financial genius as a band member. In order to suggest his fundamental immorality, we learn that Max has fathered several illegitimate children with whom he has no contact, literally and emotionally neglecting them in the same way his mother did him. Oddly, he likes to sleep with children, and encourages his band members to use LSD. He does nothing to discourage being seen as a Christ-like figure; in one scene, his hook-handed and slightly stoned band member, played by Larry Bishop, asks Max if he has the power to restore his missing hand.

After learning that 52% of the U. S. population is under twenty-five, Max uses his celebrity status to hijack the proceedings at the youth-oriented political rally of Senatorial candidate Johnny Fergus (Hal Holbrook, sharing a family resemblance to John F. Kennedy, in the same way that Millie Perkins, who plays Fergus’s wife, is meant to suggest Jackie Kennedy). Revealing that he is fundamentally a demagogue rather than an entertainer, Max presents a platform to reduce the voting age in the United States to fourteen (“Fourteen or Fight”) and initiates a covert plan to gain control of the Senate, first by engineering the successful Senatorial bid of drug-addled band member Sally LeRoy (Diane Varsi). Eventually, by lowering the voting age, he is elected President of the United States. In his Oedipal struggle for control over his figurative father, Johnny Fergus, Max lures away Fergus’s son Jimmy (Michael Margotta), “brainwashing” him to his way of thinking and turning him against his parents. Throughout, during his speeches Max has called his youthful minions “troops” and “babies,” and once he is President, he enacts laws imprisoning those over thirty, requiring them to ingest large quantities of LSD. Not only does the film want to suggest the demagoguery of rock stars, but American youth are shown to be terribly misguided, mindlessly throwing support behind an individual who is fundamentally a self-serving tyrant, able to use the power of the media to shape his image for his own ends. The film also invokes the hippie hysteria of the late Sixties, an hysteria that was in part spurred by the counterculture’s embrace of non-Christian (largely Oriental) religion. I suspect that one of the sources of inspiration for Robert Thom’s script was the “CBS Reports” documentary hosted by Harry Reasoner, titled The Hippie Temptation, that aired on 22 August 1967. Indeed, in general the film seems heavily influenced by the media depiction of the counterculture in the late 1960s. The film is one instance of the widespread reaction to Lennon’s remark, and perhaps one of the earliest films to do so.

Folsom Prison News

Glenn Gould scandalized the classical music community in the 1960s when he acknowledged that the recordings on his LPs were spliced together from multiple takes. Appropriately, Gould compared this process to filmmaking, where scenes are often shot out of order and subsequently edited together to form a coherent sequence. By the 60s, though, the splicing or editing together of multiple takes should have been old news. The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever,” for instance, was composed of two different takes, played at different tempos and in different keys, spliced together, synced by speeding up one take and slowing down the other. Equally as famous, Art Garfunkel’s vocal on Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” was painstakingly assembled from many dozens of takes.

Thus it should come as no surprise that one of most significant moments in 60s music—and in the creation of the Johnny Cash mythos as well—never happened. On “Folsom Prison Blues,” the opening track on perhaps the most important recording of Johnny Cash’s career, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (recorded January 18, 1968; released July 1968), Cash sings the lyric, “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,” which is followed, memorably, by the cheers and approving applause of the inmates. But as Michael Streissguth reveals in his book, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece (2004), the crowd response to Cash’s lyric was spliced in sometime later by Columbia Records producer Bob Johnston. In short, the moment consists of “canned” crowd noise, and is not the savage response of brutal prison inmates. The moment, although a cornerstone of the Johnny-Cash-as-folk-hero myth, is yet another instance of tape splicing, not the reproduction of an authentically recorded live sound.

Since the recording is so historic, however, Columbia has chosen to leave the moment in its edited, post-recorded, form on its new, 40th anniversary 3-disc boxed set, At Folsom Prison Legacy Edition, choosing not to release it sans cheers and applause. However, the revelation included in the brand new release (this past Tuesday) is that instead of the widely-known opening of the album—silence, until Cash intones “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash”—the new Legacy edition begins with radio DJ Hugh Cherry commanding the inmate audience to remain quiet until after Cash greets them. Additionally, the new boxed set includes that day’s opening act, the Statler Brothers and Carl Perkins, and additional duets (besides “Jackson,” of course) with June Carter.

Do these revelations diminish Cash's achievement? Of course not: the Beatles made tape splicing famous, and their legend remains firm, as does Glenn Gould's. As Gould himself pointed out, by the 1960s, studio recording had become analogous to acting in the cinema.

(Under) Cover

In the discourse about popular music, you’ll find that that the re-recorded version of a song previously recorded by an earlier artist is referred to as the “cover version” or, more often, “cover.” The implications of the word “cover” merit exploring. If you explore the issue in depth, then you’ll find that the word “cover” is a contranym or an antilogy—a word that is its own antonym (it is what it is not). A cover is an open response, a challenge made, to the received understanding of a previously existing musical text, but it also conceals (hides), and also protects (to ward off damage or injury). Hence the existence of the “cover version” invokes one of the many sets of oppositions animating popular music criticism, in particular the opposition between original and copy. What this means is that the original recording must be regarded as definitive (authentic), while any subsequent version must be considered a copy (a simulacrum, or a “fake”). But there are any number of other implications of the word “cover,” one of which means to efface or erase the original: to do a “cover version” is “cover up” (hide) a previous version. It has been argued that white rock musicians (e.g., Elvis Presley) covered (hid) “the blackness” of the songs they made famous to white listeners. A case in point would be Elvis’s cover of “Tutti Frutti,” made more palatable in his version to white listeners than Little Richard’s raunchier (first) version. Did Elvis’s version also efface the meaning of the song title in Italian, “all fruits,” one meaning of which is bisexuality? Is this what is meant by “cover,” as in hide, to obscure?

Viewed less pejoratively, that is, more benignly, the cover version is the re-interpretation of song previously recorded by another artist. But why is the “cover version” always singled-out or announced as a copy, that is, stigmatized as debased, as a duplicate? Why should anyone care? The paradox is, Americans generally have always privileged the re-interpretation, the re-invention, of an existing work. That is, since the Jazz Era, the improvisation—the artistic response—has been valued higher than the composer (the source of intentionality, the origin). Popular music privileges improvisation, while classical music privileges the composer. In other words, American popular music since the Jazz Era has valued idiom (style) over strict adherence to any pre-existing text.

The history of rock has numerous examples of the “cover” effacing the original (first) version. Where does one begin? Where does one stop?

Elvis Presley – That’s All Right (Mama)
The Beatles – Ain’t She Sweet
John Lennon – Stand By Me
Ringo Starr – You’re Sixteen
The Carpenters – Ticket to Ride
U2 – Helter Skelter
Jimi Hendrix – All Along the Watchtower
The Byrds – Mr. Tambourine Man
José Feliciano – Light My Fire
Van Morrison – It’s All in the Game
Shadows of Knight – Gloria
The Blues Brothers – Soul Man
Carl Carlton – Everlasting Love
Vanilla Fudge – You Keep Me Hangin’ On
Van Halen – You Really Got Me

World's First Acid Road Trip

A couple of blog entries ago, I wrote on the waning of the Populuxe era and the early days of the psychedelic era, discovering the transitional linkage between the two eras in the image of the New York World's Fair that opened in April 1964. The New York World's Fair, the mediocre reception of which marked the end of the Populuxe era (1954-1964), was also the final destination of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, who started out on the world's first acid road trip headed for New York on 14 June 1964. The linkage between these two events was unexpected but revealing, providing us a convenient means to date the beginning of "a new era."

As Katie Mills has observed in her fine book, The Road Story and the Rebel (2006), it was a consequence of the Merry Pranksters' cross-country excursion that the word trip "took on a double meaning that was part of the era's playfulness with language--to travel as well as to take LSD or blow one's mind. In the Prankster's league, the two became one" (86). For novelist Ken Kesey--by 1964 famous as a result of the publication of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) and the about-to-be published Sometimes a Great Notion (1964)--part of the explicit purpose of the bus (to be entirely accurate, a 1939 school bus) trip was to make the record of a transformative journey, which is why the Pranksters took along with them film cameras and tape recorders. As Mills observes, "One goal of the Pranksters' road trip was to expand their expressive possibilities by making a film while on the road, to push further than the novel in order to break through to new expressive and artistic forms" (85). Of course, this film, which Tom Wolfe refers to as The Merry Pranksters Search for the Kool Place, was never completed, despite Ken Kesey spending years (and many thousands of dollars) trying to finish it. Hence, the only record we have of the Pranksters' journey is in the form of Tom Wolfe's New Journalistic account, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968). But... fortunately for both scholars and for posterity, footage of the Pranksters' trip has been released on video through Zane Kesey's (Ken Kesey's son's) website, key-z.com. What this footage reveals is the remarkably accurate account of the journey Tom Wolfe made in his book.

In my previous blog on the subject, I made mention of the possible influence the Merry Pranksters' bus trip had on the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour, first aired (in black & white, for some strange reason) on British television in December 1967. As Tom Wolfe observed in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, the Pranksters had serious artistic ambitions in mind with their film. The Merry Pranksters, according to Wolfe, wished to make

the world's first acid film, taken under conditions of total spontaneity barreling through the heartlands of America, recording all now, in the moment. The current fantasy was . . . a total breakthrough in terms of expression . . . but also something that would amaze and delight many multitudes, a movie that could be shown commercially as well as in the esoteric world of the heads. (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Bantam, 1981, p. 122)

But Wolfe also notes, sixty-seven pages later in the same book:

Early in 1967, the Beatles got a fabulous idea. They got hold of a huge school bus and piled into it with thirty-nine friends and drove and wove across the British countryside, zonked out of their gourds. They were going to . . . make a movie. Not an ordinary movie, but a totally spontaneous movie, using hand-held cameras, shooting the experience as it happened--off the top of the head!--cavorting, rapping on, soaring in the moment, visionary chaos--a daydream! A black art! A chaos! They finished up with miles and miles of film . . . which they saw as a total breakthrough in terms of expression but also as a commercial display. . . . (Wolfe, Acid Test, p. 189)

As Katie Mills observes, by means of the deliberate redundancy in the diction between these two passages, Wolfe explicitly links The Merry Pranksters Search for the Kool Place with the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour. Although no indubitable connection between the two films has been definitively established, Bob Neaverson, in The Beatles Movies (first published 1997), suggests that Paul McCartney, flying home from America in April 1967, very easily could have read Tom Wolfe's first articles on the Merry Pranksters' bus trip, published in the World Journal Tribune in January and February 1967 (not to be confused with the book publication of Wolfe's account, which was August 1968). Magical Mystery Tour was filmed in September 1967. There are no hard feelings, apparently: according to Mills, the Pranksters "like to claim credit for this inspiration--they seem genuinely happy for the Beatles' success with what may well have been their idea" (103).

The idea? The world's first acid road trip. That Magical Mystery Tour was widely panned by the critics when it first aired on December 26, 1967, reaffirms an insight I made a few blogs ago on why early psychedelic albums failed--the audience didn't yet exist. The psychedelic aesthetic, largely non-narrative, more lyrical and abstract, and prone to making startling, sometimes surreal juxtapositions, had to be learned. Taste is not innate; it has to be developed.

The Ballad of John and Yoko's Rolls

In yesterday's blog I mentioned John Lennon's Rolls-Royce Phantom V, the car that was later repainted in psychedelic fashion (for complete information on this particular Roller, go to the following website). I also said that Lennon didn’t acquire this particular Rolls-Royce until 3 June 1965, and that it was repainted in psychedelic fashion in April 1967. I encourage readers to visit the aforementioned website to verify all of this information.

I have brought up this issue because a couple of individuals have emailed me--including a third person whom we actually interviewed as part of our research--challenging my and Rebecca's assertion in our book, Donald Cammell: A Life on the Wild Side (2006), that the white Rolls-Royce used at the end of Performance (1970), the one in which Harry Flowers sits awaiting delivery of Chas ("Hello, Chas!"), and the Rolls in which Chas/Turner rides off in the film's final moments, was John Lennon's Phantom V. It was this same white Rolls, so we asserted, that was later used in the Apple Records promotional video, "The Ballad of John and Yoko" (1969). That could not be John Lennon's Rolls-Royce used in the film, we have been informed, because it was painted in psychedelic colors. The Rolls-Royce used at the end of Performance is white. I responded to these queries by saying that we did our research, and that indeed our information is correct.

It is true that three different Rollers were used in Performance: the black one, shown in the film's opening moments; the black Rolls in the garage with a "tasty finish," on which acid is poured, destroying the paint job (actually that Rolls was coated with a clear substance that reacted to the chemicals in the liquid dumped from the jug--that wasn't real acid poured on the Rolls!); and the white Rolls-Royce belonging to John Lennon used in the last sequence.

Since the issue has come up in the past, and since there may be others who haven't written me but who also think we are incorrect, I thought I'd address it, and settle the matter once and for all. I've included below a series of frame grabs from the final moments of Performance in order to fully reveal the identity of the Rolls-Royce used in the last sequence of the film.

The first still consists of a shot taken from Chas/Turner's subjective POV approaching the white Rolls...


Chas/Turner climbs in and the Rolls pulls away, revealing the front license plate, EUC 100C. Note the antenna on the roof toward the front, over the top of the windshield:


Following the 180 degree rule (editing on the axis), there is a cut to the rear of the Rolls-Royce as it pulls away from the curb and begins down the street. Again the shot reveals the license plate, EUC 100C:


The same white Rolls used in Performance, owned by John Lennon--certainly he was wealthy enough to own more than one such luxury car--was used a few months later in the Apple Records promotional video, "The Ballad of John and Yoko." Please forgive the poor quality of the image, but here's a screen grab taken from early in the video. Note the gull-wing antenna on the roof, near the front windshield:


Here's a shot of the Rolls toward the end of the video (again I apologize for the poor quality of the image). Note the license plate, EUC 100C:


I should also add that David Cammell, the film's Associate Producer, told us that it was John Lennon's car, so I hope that all of this is proof enough that our assertion in our book about the identity of the white Rolls-Royce is correct. The equipment in Turner's "studio" was also borrowed from the Beatles' Abbey Road studio, with the exception of the Moog Series III synthesizer, which was brought over by Jon Weiss, a representative of Moog at the time.

In a subsequent blog I'll discuss what happened to the Moog synthesizer that was used in Performance.

(Do What You Can Do) Then Move On

A Klee painting named “Angelus Novus” [1920; pictured] shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

--Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (Trans. Harry Zohn)

If Robert B. Ray is correct, we live in an age characterized by a longing for missed opportunities, the age of the catastrophe. Citing Walter Benjamin’s definition of catastrophe—“to have missed the opportunity”—the late twentieth century (and early twenty-first) seems to be an age that pines excessively for lost opportunities, and so longs for omnipotence, for “extensive presence” (15). While Robert Ray’s specific subject in his essay is the origins of photography and its subsequent social impact, the same longing for the unattainable is a persistent feature of the discourse about popular music, for that presumed unrecoverable "lost album"--to have everything. For instance, what masterpiece was lost when Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys’ Smile was destroyed by flames? What music was left unmade as a consequence of the murder of John Lennon? What albums might have Brian Jones made, or Jimi Hendrix? What would have been the musical response by Buddy Holly upon hearing the Beatles? If only...

What prompted these musings was my reading of Andrew Sandoval’s informative liner notes to the just released 2-CD "Collector’s Edition" of Love’s Forever Changes (1967), and his discussion of a rumored lost album by the original lineup of Love, titled Gethsemane. Sandoval writes:

Though [Arthur] Lee fronted several versions of Love in the years that followed [Forever Changes], rumors of a lost album by the original lineup (the mythical Gethsemane) continue to circulate. “There was no Gethsemane,” said Lee in 2002. “There’s no such thing as that stuff. I don’t know any of those songs. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t take being around those guys anymore. There’s no album.”

Mythical elaboration often develops around something about which little is known or understood, in this case a rock band whose definitive lineup didn’t cohere as a group of musicians very long (not that this phenomenon is unusual in the history of rock music; on the contrary, it’s a commonplace). What interested me was the supposed “lost album” titled Gethsemane, whose putative existence I hadn’t heard about before, but that’s not the point. The putative existence of this “lost album” is an example of an excessive, unhealthy pining for a supposed missed opportunity, the catastrophe represented by the image of unreleased masters buried in the wreckage of Time and History.

It is, of course, a grand myth, the Romantic myth of lost, or perhaps neglected, genius, but it is an elusive genius in that it is presupposed on the existence of music that no one has ever heard. The idea is amusing, in that it presumes that the vast majority of mere mortals are either, 1) “not ready” for it or, 2) if they were, wouldn’t have fully comprehended it anyway. But as an idea it is also repulsive, because it presupposes a colossal act of genius that the previously published work simply doesn't support (or anticipate). Moreover, in its actual manifestation, the work could never match the simulacrum of it one has constructed in one's imagination. Of course, none of these realities have prevented the aforementioned Romantic myth from becoming a foundational myth of rock criticism.

We need to move beyond a constant yearning for the unattainable, the continual longing for the missed opportunity—the catastrophe—which is really a sublimated religious impulse that demands of this woefully banal world something that it cannot give to, or provide for, us. Writing in The New Rolling Stone Record Guide (Dave Marsh and John Swenson, Eds., Random House/Rolling Stone Press, 1983), John Swenson observed of The Beatles:

In retrospect, the group’s much-lamented decision to call it quits as the Seventies began was entirely appropriate; the collected work does not leave you with the impression that there were unfinished statements....They did it all, they did it right, and then they went their separate ways. (32)

The vanished band members of popular music history did what they could do, and then moved inexorably on, moving on through the garden of forking paths. There has been no catastrophe, and never was. (Or rather, if there has been, it lies in the particular circumstance surrounding their premature deaths.) The lesson for all of us: Do what you can do, and then move on, just as they did. Let the dead bury the dead. We shall all hear the incomparable music of the heavenly choir much sooner than we think--or wish.

Mondegreen, Pt. 4: Lucy in Disguise With Diamonds

A few weeks ago I began to explore the mondegreen, the unintentional mishearing of a verbal utterance enabled by homophonic ambiguity. The first venture, "Dead Ants Are My Friends, A-Blowin’ in the Wind," was followed by a second entry, "Betty and the Jets." The third, which I wrote on Easter Sunday exploring the implications of the Biblical mondegreen, I titled "Melon Calling Baby." I have said throughout my discussions of the mondegreen that I'm not so much interested in it as a form of "error" as I am in the way it is a sort of creative interaction with the song's actual lyrics. In my “Betty and the Jets” entry, I’d suggested the existence of the mondegreen, at least insofar as lyrics are concerned, is a consequence of a message being deformed once it is subject to electronic transmission, a technology which emphasizes the received nature of messages.

If information available on the web is correct, then the origin of John Fred (pictured) & His Playboy Band’s marvelous #1 hit of early 1968, “Judy in Disguise (With Glasses),” was the result of John Fred's (actual name: John Fred Gourrier) mishearing The Beatles' lyric, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," as "Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds." Hence, “Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)” is one song, at least, that we can definitively point to as a song actually invented or created through mondegreen deformation. The relationship between the two songs is rather obvious, with "Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)" being a pastiche of the earlier tune. There is a match between the bi-syllabic names Lucy/Judy, in which the glyph "L" of Lucy is turned around in mirror-image form to become a "J" (as in "John"), while the phoneme "d" in Judy (and also "Fred") nicely alliterates with the "d" in disguise, just as the "-cy" of Lucy alliterates with the "s" phoneme of “sky.” Additionally, "With Glasses" is a sort of deliberate devaluation of "With Diamonds" (glass being a sort of cheap imitation of a diamond).

Many websites are available that contain the lyrics to "Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)," but I'll present the following lyrics as being a faithful transcription--with one exception, clearly indicated. Highlighted words or phrases are glossed below:

Judy in disguise, well that’s what you are
Lemonade pies with your brand new car
So cantaloupe eyes come to me tonight
Judy in disguise with glasses

Keep wearin’ your bracelets, and your new Rara
And cross your heart, yeah, with your livin’ bra
A chimney sweep sparrow with guise [guys?]
Judy in disguise with glasses

Come to me tonight
Come to me tonight
Taking everything in sight
Except for the strings on my kite

Judy in disguise, hey that’s what you are
Lemonade pies, you got your brand new car
So cantaloupe eyes come to me tonight
Judy in disguise with glasses

Come to me tonight
Come to me tonight
Taking everything in sight
Except for the strings on my kite

Judy in disguise, what you aiming for
A circus of horror, yeah yeah,
Well that’s what you are,
You made me a life of ashes
I…guess…I'll…just…take…your…glasses

Lemonade Pies: At the very least, this phrase is a pastiche of "marmalade skies" of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (LSD), although the phrase may be a reference to the sheer size of Lucy's stylish (and presumably yellow) sunglasses, possibly large hooped (yellow) earrings, or perhaps even the characteristic color of her clothing. An inevitable association, I'm somewhat hesitant to mention, is the word "Pie" with female genitalia. The slang phrase, "Hair Pie" (cf. Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band's Trout Mask Replica), is a slang term for female genitalia that one may "eat," that is, perform oral sex. The meaning of "lemonade" given the terms of this reading hardly needs to be made explicit.

Cantaloupe eyes: Again, a pastiche, this time of of the collocation "kaleidoscope eyes" of LSD. The word kaleidoscope is derived from the Greek words kalos, meaning beautiful, and eidos, meaning form, and hence does not refer to colors as such, although the child's toy referred to as a "kaleidoscope" often produces startling color combinations. Actually, the word "kaleidoscope" refers to the shifting colored shapes one can see at the end of the scope, not the colors themselves. "Cantaloupe eyes" therefore seems to be a surreal metaphor at its farthest reach, but in any case refers to the shape of her eyes (or perhaps her glasses) and not their color.

Your new Rara: "Rara" is a reference to a chic brand of women's clothing, particularly a stylish kind of sexy dress. Hence "new Rara" reiterates the "new car" of the previous stanza, suggesting the vast disposable income of the femme fatale's parents. The implication is that she is spoiled and pampered, like the "rich bitch girl" in Hall and Oates' "Rich Girl" ("You can rely on the old man's money").

Cross your heart, yeah, with your livin' bra: A reference to the "Playtex Living Bra," that is, a brand of brassiere introduced in the mid-60s employing an innovative "cross your heart" means of breast support (as the adman's slogan went), meaning a brassiere that could provide more comfortable and more shapely support. In 1968 this particular lyric was quite provocative, although it may be hard to believe now. My wife Becky and I both remember the "livin' bra" lyric to be the subject of sensational conversation when we (at the time) were still in junior high. As my friend Tim Lucas pointed out to me, John Fred ventured into territory with this lyric that The Beatles wouldn't tackle until "Ob La Di, Ob La Da" ("Life goes on...bra!") in late 1968. "Burn your bra," was a feminist slogan in the 1960s, the symbolic casting off of middle-class, bourgeoisie repression. Our femme fatale is not a feminist.

Chimney sweep sparrow with guise: Most sites containing the lyrics to this song have the word "guise"--but is it actually the homophone of "guise," guys? For me, this is probably the most elusive line in the entire song. If the word is "guise," then to what does the metaphorical phrase, "Chimney sweep sparrow," refer? But if the word is "guys," then the lyric is more intelligible, the swift, swooping, darting flight of a chimney sweep sparrow being the key image. "Chimney sweep sparrow with guys" would then be descriptive of her behavior, flitting from one "guy" (boy) to the next, the repetitive behavior of our femme fatale to "seduce and abandon" the boys who fall under her spell. She engages in "serial dating," but is loyal to no one boy--"guy." Mary Wells, in "My Guy," sings, "I'm stickin' to my guy like a stamp to letter/Like birds of a feather we stick together." Not so of our "Judy in disguise."

Except for the strings on my kite: Perhaps an oblique reference to The Beatles song, "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" from Sgt. Pepper's. It seems more likely, however, that "the strings on my kite" is a metaphor for male sexual arousal, the erection our narrator has whenever he's near our femme fatale. Thus the utterance, "Taking everything in sight/Except the strings on my kite," means she's quite willing to "make out," indeed, is quite aggressive when doing so, but refuses to "put out," or engage in sex. Hence our narrator is turned on by her behavior, but complains of the lack of sexual fulfillment, of consummation. In other words, she's a "tease."

What you aiming for: Our narrator's admission that he's suspicious of her motives, that is, is fundamentally afraid of her. That she's a mystery to him is suggested by her (sun)glasses which disguise her, not her appearance, but what she actually desires "in her heart."

Circus of horror: Circus of Horrors was a British film released in 1960, a loose adaptation of Phantom of the Opera set within a circus. Interestingly, several of its characters figuratively wear masks: either disfigured or seeking a disguise, their visages are restored and/or modified by reconstructive surgery. Additionally, the film featured prominently the pop song Look for a Star on its soundtrack. The lyric, "A circus of horror...is what you are," is actually the most explicit lyric in the entire song in terms of its characterization of the femme fatale: she may be beautiful in appearance, but in reality she is a monster, hiding her real nature by means of her disguise.

You made me a life of ashes: The goal of the femme fatale may or may not be conscious, but in any case she initiates a series events that result in the complete destruction of the male--not his death, but the complete destruction of his world. Her objective is not to destroy him, but rather his world, to initiate in the male a crisis of subjectivity, the ontological destruction of everything he believed to be certain. Hence the appropriateness of the metaphor, "life of ashes." While I cannot "prove" it--nor do I have any inclination to do so--I choose to believe that John Fred had in mind the famous image of Sue Lyon from Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (1962), which seems to me an image which sufficiently captures the femme fatale he was trying, impressionistically, to sketch.

One final remark: "Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)" is referred to by some as "bubblegum," but I think this incorrect. Prior to recording the song, John Fred had worked with several prominent New Orleans musicians, including members of Fats Domino's band and Mac Rebennack (Dr. John). I agree with those who see the song as R&B with psychedelic features; its overt allusion to "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" also recommends it as an example of psychedelia.

Exergue: For those interested, "Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)" is one of the mid-60s Top 40 songs "covered" (as it were) on the Residents' album "The Third Reich 'n' Roll," apparently because the Residents were from Louisiana, as was John Fred.