An Obscure Conqueror of Fame

Tara Murtha’s contribution to Bloomsbury Academic’s 33 1/3 series on classic albums, Ode to Billie Joe, is something of a sleight of hand. The monograph devotes only three pages to the titular LP. Instead, the primary focus is on the few known facts about Bobbie Gentry prior to her spectacular rise to international fame in 1967, the disputed authorship of “Ode to Billie Joe,” and Gentry’s reclusive life beginning about 1980. Happily, Murtha’s monograph demonstrates the value of impeccable research. The book’s fundamental thesis, how a young woman originally from Mississippi named Roberta Lee Streeter reinvented herself as Bobbie Gentry, is a fascinating read. Although she created an image of herself as a girl from the Mississippi Delta, a regional singer who emerged “out of a swamp fog” suddenly to appear on television (p. 5), Gentry in fact spent most of her life in Southern California, moving there in the mid 1950s at age 13. We are set up to expect an answer to the question, “Where is Bobbie Gentry?”, but we never get it. There is no final revelation, no answer to the question, because Bobbie Gentry has chosen to remain silent. She emerged from the fog, as it were, and then stepped back into it. For despite Murtha’s extensive and impressive research, Bobbie Gentry remains, to quote Joseph Conrad, “an obscure conqueror of fame,” a stubbornly inscrutable figure who in fact wrote no classic albums but one classic song. Actually, two classic songs, the other one being “Fancy,” a 1991 hit for Reba McEntire. But since Gentry had largely vanished from pop history by then, and because Gentry’s best album, Fancy (1970), was long out-of-print, McEntire effectively took possession of the song. Now 72 (Murtha points out that Gentry was born in 1942, not 1944 as is widely published), Gentry spent about fourteen years of her life as a star before retreating into obscurity, spending almost exactly the same time in the spotlight as another famous recluse, Greta Garbo.

But Garbo remained childless; Gentry did not. Murtha reports that Gentry married singer/comedian Jim Stafford on 15 October 1978. The next year, a son, Tyler, was born to them, and shortly after that, the marriage (her third) broke up. “In 1980,” Murtha writes, “Gentry was a 38-year-old single mother” (p. 125). If one were to venture reasons for Gentry’s decision to end her career, a rather obvious reason is the birth of her son: the end of her career coincides with the birth of her son. Another possible reason is that Las Vegas, where she entertained for most of the 1970s, lost its allure due to the death of Elvis in 1977 (Gentry became friends with Elvis in the 70s and also performed as “the female Elvis” as part of her stage show). As an artist she may have said all she wished to say, and decided, given the circumstances, it was time to move on.

Murtha’s book raises some practical and theoretical questions about the process of canonization, as well as the future direction of the 33 1/3 series that I’d like, briefly, to sketch out:

The practical question is whether the 33 1/3 series will, in the future, publish books on an artist largely famous for one song. With the exception of “Fancy,” Gentry’s subsequent albums included more and more cover versions, rendering them less significant achievements. As I mentioned earlier, the book is something of a sleight of hand, because it’s not about the album, Ode to Billie Joe, per se, but about an enigmatic artist and her one justly famous song (with a brief chapter devoted to the film inspired by it). While you can’t criticize a book for what it didn’t set out to do, one profitable direction might have been the intertextual linkage, pointed out by Greil Marcus, that “Ode to Billie Joe” has with “Long Black Veil”: “The singer [of 'Ode to Billie Joe'] is like the woman who walks the hills in 'Long Black Veil': she knows why Billie Joe went to his death, she knows what they threw into the black water, but . . . she [will] not tell . . . .” (The Old, Weird America, p. 141). The songs are different in that in “Long Black Veil” the dead narrator reveals the crime for which he was found guilty, but most importantly, both songs share the idea of the guilty secret. I mention this only to point out that if you wish to unpack an enigmatic song, intertextual analysis is essential. Murtha does acknowledge, however, the answer song to “Ode to Billie Joe,” Bob Dylan and the Band’s “Answer to ‘Ode’,” released as “Clothesline Saga” on the official Basement Tapes (1975). (See the chapter, “Kill Devil Hills,” in Marcus’s The Old, Weird America.)

Theoretically speaking, the book makes explicit an observation made by Robert Christgau over a decade ago, that the idea of a rock canon is “a complete absurdity.” It has never been completely clear whether at its inception the 33 1/3 book series set out to publish critical analyses of canonical rock albums, or (more likely, in retrospect) sought to engage in journalistic canonization. In any case, the economics of the publishing industry have dictated the series become more democratic in its selection process, publishing studies of albums that are cult classics (Spiderland), are critically acclaimed commercial failures (Song Cycle), and are commercially successful contemporary works (My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy). I should add that while economics has a good to deal with it, the title selection also reveals how we live in an age of aphorisms (statements of personal taste) rather than one of axioms (universally accepted truths that are potentially falsifiable). Hence in every instance the author reveals the reasons behind his or her personal attachment to the album under discussion, meaning the author is also a fan as well as a critic. I suspect the series will continue to rely on critical approaches based on the principles of race-, sex-, and gender-based criticism initially developed in the 1970s, but will also rely on Bakhtinian aesthetics (the artifice of social life, the public persona as an invention) in order to rehabilitate the reputation of neglected works and artists, Bobbie Gentry being a perfect illustration.

Still, I admire Tara Murtha’s book and welcome it as an important addition to the series.

Dolan - Dolan - Carless (Hard Meat)

Five years ago, in December 2009, I posted a blog, The Importance of the Name, on Hard Meat, a British trio that released two albums on Warner Bros. in 1970 and then vanished. Recently, Michael Gray, the former manager of the band Big Front Yard featuring the Dolan brothers, kindly wrote to me and provided information on the fate of the Dolan brothers, whom he knew very well. I thank Mr. Gray, author of several important books on Bob Dylan, for taking the time to write. Please visit his blog, www.michaelgray.net.

Here is Mr. Gray's report:

You asked for more information on Hard Meat. On drummer Mick Carless, I have no information, but in their post-Hard Meat days I knew Mike and Steve Dolan very well, so I can tell you a bit about them. Mike Dolan died on August 2nd, 2014, from brain cancer, after having survived the throat cancer he had fought against a few years earlier. Steve, the younger brother, died on May 22, 2000.

I met the Dolans in 1973 when we all lived in West Malvern, Worcestershire. They played a few local gigs with a changing assortment of other local musicians; I met them by going to one or two of these gigs.

At some point in 1974 they became Big Front Yard (another bad name? – anyway, taken from a SF short story Mike admired) and I became their manager. They got nowhere.

When exactly they became Big Front Yard I’m not sure, but it only became a fixture after Mike and Sue went to London, supposedly for a week, while he rehearsed with, and joined, a group named Forsyth… and came home a few days later, Forsyth having broken up. They paid Mike off with £30. This was in March 1974.

£30 was about the amount Big Front Yard were being paid for some of their gigs: £30 to be shared between the band, roadie Phil, me and the petrol. They played gigs all around the Birmingham area in the mid-1970s. It was that weary period punk soon abolished, when groups had to be fine musicians with loads of heavy-maintenance equipment and one gas-guzzling old van after another to transport all that gear and themselves, just to be able to play in a pub for next to nothing.

Mike was the leader of the group, lead guitarist and lead vocalist. He lived down a winding hill just outside West Malvern, in a cottage that had once been a country pub and was still called The Bell, with his wife Sue (whose sister lived in the Napa Valley in California) and Jesse, their very Just-William little boy. (Sue and Jesse both live in California now.) The others in the group all lived around town.

The first drummer, I believe, was Alan Mennie, always known as Min, and he was older. If he’s still alive, he’ll be 73 now. My then-wife and I had a house on a hill, with two stories at the front but four at the back, and these extra layers were flats we rented out. In 1974 Min and girlfriend Dot had one of them. Min and I played chess together from time to time. I can’t remember when Min quit the group, but it must have been at some point soon after February 1975, when he was playing on the recording session they did at Birmingham’s commercial radio station BRMB (which are on YouTube). Min gets credits on albums by King Crimson and Pete Sinfield, and was always somewhat jazz-oriented. Many years later – in the early 1990s – he and Dot co-owned a house in a little village in Turkey with Mike Dolan and his girlfriend Glenn, and I remember calling in there once and seeing Mike emerging from the sea with his surfboard, looking far healthier than he’d ever looked in the 1970s of his youth.

Min seems to have disappeared without trace now, along with Dot and the son they had called Jamie. We’ve googled till we’re blue in the face but cannot find them.

There were a couple of drummers after Min – one whose name I’ve forgotten and one called Keith Baker, who was a local postman, and who in 1976 also became a tenant of a flat at our house. At one point early on, the band also included an organ player, and he’s to be heard to good effect on "Mad John’s Dream," the B-side of their one single. The A-side was "Money-Go-Round," a Dolan composition. It was recorded in a nearby barn, and issued on Rampant Records, a label formed by my then-wife and I specially to release their record. At some point around the end of 1974 they added a second guitarist, Sam Sun (Keith Sampson, I think), who is on the BRMB sessions and the single and was a long-time stalwart of their gigs. He’s dead now too. I believe he killed himself.

Live and on record, Big Front Yard sounded pretty much like Hard Meat – which, impressively, the Dolans rarely mentioned in BFY days. Big Front Yard played a couple of London gigs (Newlands Tavern, Peckham, Feb 19, 1975: fee £20) they hoped A & R men would come to, but nothing. They sent a demo cassette to John Peel. Nothing.

Mike also had a little home studio at The Bell, and there produced, and played guitar on, a couple of tracks by childhood friend of mine, Peter Harrison – whose splendidly politically incorrect stage name was Huge Black Gussie Watson – which I have on a home-made CD. Peter died in 2007. Steve played bass on an unissued track by Edwin Dude which I produced in 1981 and have yet to give up on…

I last spoke to Mike on the telephone when he was living in Cornwall in another relationship that broke up subsequently. In his last two or three years he spent half his time in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, with his final partner Jackie, and half his time, also with her, in another little village house in Turkey, having quarreled irretrievably with Min and Dot over their previous shared Turkey house.

Yours sincerely,
Michael Gray
www.michaelgray.net

As Michael Gray indicates, several recordings of Big Front Yard are available on YouTube.

Why Did John Lennon Buy A Second Phantom V?

Guest blogger Eric Roberts writes:

After a long hiatus, this rolling research project about the history of John Lennon's white Rolls-Royce rolls on. Having authenticated the current owners and the whereabouts of one of the most iconic cars of Sixties pop culture eighteen months ago, we thought it was a wrap. Job done. Since late January, however, very exciting news has reached us that will interest Beatles boffins and Lennon lovers alike. As of the last few weeks we have been sworn to secrecy until our inside informant advises us that we can “let the brakes off and go public.” So watch this space for an important announcement about EUC 100C/5VD63, John & Yoko's luxury peace and love machine.

In the meantime, our last entry answered the question, “When did John Lennon dispose of EUC 100C and to whom did he sell it?” One thing that still remains to be addressed is why Lennon felt the need to add a second 1965 Rolls-Royce Phantom V to his already  impressive collection of cars parked in Kenwood's garage.

Before we examine the available information, it has to be admitted that a degree of conjecture, or theorizing, is unavoidable concerning this question. Until we have an accurate date of purchase, which we hope will soon be forthcoming, certain assumptions are inevitable.

So what do we know? Unlike his original Phantom V, FJB 111C, chassis # 5VD73, Lennon acquired his second Phantom V second hand. The completed chassis, 5VD63, was delivered from Rolls-Royce's famous Crewe works in Cheshire, just over 50 klms from Liverpool, to coachbuilders, Mulliner Park Ward on December 22, 1964. Five months later, the completed vehicle was purchased by Patrick Barthropp Ltd., London.

The name Paddy Barthropp (1920 – 2008) still resonates among RAF veterans and survivors of the Battle of Britain. Wing Commander Barthropp was one of the most highly decorated yet unconventional “gun” pilots of the Second World War. Self declared “sworn enemy of stuffed shirts,” Barthropp had no time for boring routine and “only obeyed those rules he agreed with,” not unlike John Lennon, in fact. So it was that in 1957, he could no longer tolerate the red tape and petty officialdom of peace time service in the RAF.

Wing Commander Patrick Peter Barthropp DFC AFC

With his friend and fellow flying ace, Brian Kingcomb, Barthropp established a luxury limousine chauffeur service in London, catering to movie stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison, Gregory Peck and Gina Lollobrigida. Kingcomb was also a modestly successful movie producer and so it was a natural progression for Patrick Barthropp Ltd. to supply vehicles to film production companies. Hence, in early 1966, when a Rolls-Royce was needed for the film Georgy Girl, 5VD63 came to be immortalized on screen. Note the personalized registration number, PPB1--Patrick Peter Barthropp's initials.

Patrick Barthropp's 1965 Rolls-Royce Phantom V, chassis # 5VD63,
purchased by John Lennon in 1966

Later that same year, when Lennon ordered his driver and bodyguard, Les Anthony, to find a second hand Phantom V, it was logical that he should call Barthropps to see if they had any ex-hire cars for sale. And as it happens, they did. Less than two years old, 5VD63 was driven from London to Lennon's home, Kenwood on the St George's Hill estate in Weybridge, Surrey for him to inspect. We have it on good authority that the original paint work of 5VD63 was not as it would seem to appear in the black and white film Georgy Girl and in available photographs of the car. In fact, the side panels were “velvet green” while the upper paint work--roof, hood and trunk--were “valentines black.” Lennon, however, had a clear vision of what he wanted--pure white, inside and out--the opposite of the all over black color scheme of his original Phantom V.

Our only current source of information regarding the year that Lennon bought 5VD63 from Patrick Barthropp is an ITN interview with David Allison of Christies, London, recorded just prior to a major children's charity auction in December 1985. In the short TV news item (see video here) we are told twice that JL acquired 5VD63 in 1966, the same year that he met Yoko Ono.

August 1966 had been a momentous month for The Beatles, with the release of Revolver to critical acclaim, swiftly followed by their last, nerve-wracking tour of America. Lennon must have been especially wrung out by death threats and endless questions from journalists about his “more popular than Jesus” remark to Maureen Cleave. Less than a week after the band's return to the UK, Lennon flew to Germany to start work on Dick Lester's film, How I Won the War (1967). Later, he reflected, “The Beatles had stopped touring and I thought if I stopped and thought about it I was going to have a big bum trip for nine months so I tried to avoid the depression of the change of life by leaping into the movie.”

By an odd coincidence, as Lennon left London for Germany and Spain, Yoko Ono flew into London from New York with her husband Tony Cox and their child, Kyoko. She had dropped everything, leaving the organizers of a Fluxus event in Central Park to hasily find a substitute performer for her notorious “Cut Piece,” in order to attend the Destruction in Art Symposium and participate in a month-long program of anti-Art events. More than capable of holding her own in the heavily male dominated company of international avant-guard artists, Ono asserted that “Happenings” had become establishment and explained that her work was “a rehearsal and not an ultimate state of mind.”

“Two Evenings With Yoko Ono” on September 27th and 29th at the Africa Centre, Covent Garden, was one of the highlights of D.I.A.S., as reflected by the hefty entrance fee. On both nights she performed “Cut Piece”, daring audience members to participate and to confront their suppressed lust and violence by slowly stripping her, piece by piece, of her clothing as she sat on stage in a state of mindful imperturbability.

One of the members of the honorary committee of the Destruction in Art Symposium was Barry Miles who, along with John Dunbar and Peter Asher, was a co-owner of the Indica bookshop and art gallery. Miles would go on to run Apple Corps' spoken word record label, Zapple, until Allen Klein closed it down, and is the author of Many Years From Now, Paul McCartney's biography. Miles states that as soon as D.I.A.S. was over, Yoko Ono approached John Dunbar and persuaded him to give her a show at Indica, where her self-published book, Grapefruit (1964), was already on sale. Five weeks later, on the night of the 9th of November, “Unfinished Paintings and Objects” was previewed to invited guests, among whom was John Lennon.

John and Cynthia returning from Spain, 6 November 1966

Mr. and Mrs. Lennon had only touched down at Heathrow two days earlier after two months filming in Spain, where he'd composed “Strawberry Fields Forever” in his spare time. Les Anthony drove Lennon in his black Mini Cooper to Mason's Yard in London's West End. Anthony relates that his employer had second thoughts about attending the event and chose to sit in the back seat for half an hour before leaving the security of the blacked out windows of the Mini and entering the gallery.

Indica Bookshop & Gallery, Mason's Yard, St. James, London, ca. 1966

Perhaps it was because Lennon was experiencing the effects of LSD, or perhaps he was reluctant to face what he referred to as the “smiling scene” and assume the mantle of his own celebrity status. In any case, Les Anthony accompanied Lennon and was able to observe first hand what happened when John and Yoko met for the first time. (Note: McCartney insists that it was in late 1965 that Ono first came to London looking for original musical scores for “Notations,” a book by John Cage. When McCartney declined, he referred her to Lennon, who obliged by giving her the original handwritten lyrics to “The Word” from Rubber Soul.)

“Yoko took one look at John and attached herself to him like a limpet mine--with much the same destructive effect,” recalled Lennon's driver, Les Anthony. “She clung to his arm while we went around the exhibition, talking away to him in her funny little high-pitched voice until he fled.” -- Barry Miles, Many Years From Now

“In those first days, before John left Cynthia, he and Yoko used to do their courting, to put it politely, in the back of the car while I was driving them around.” According to Les Anthony, who was certainly in a position to know, the time between meeting and mating was exactly three weeks. -- Albert Goldman, “John Lennon: In the Hard Day's Light”

Yoko Ono, Peter Asher, Barry Miles and John Dunbar, 1966

Whatever the truth about how and when the relationship between Ono and Lennon began, two undeniable facts have been largely overlooked by Beatles historians. The stark white walls of the Indica gallery served to emphasize the whiteness of Yoko Ono's art works. In pieces such as Play it by Trust, white serves to obliterate the dichotomy between self and not self. Conceptually, conflict is disabled by the unifying color, white. Though she often wore black, the dominant impression of Ono's work from the Sixties is of white on white.

Play it by Trust, Yoko Ono, Indica Gallery, 1966

Then we come back to John Lennon's decision to purchase a second 1965 Phantom V Rolls-Royce not long after he met Yoko. As we've already seen, Lennon immediately had the car resprayed white with white fitted seat covers and even a white steering wheel. Is there a connection between these two facts?

Limbo Rock

The shift from the single to the album in the 1950s and 1960s represented a shift from music for dancing to music for listening. As a result, the album, designed for listening, became the basic material artifact of rock culture. (It's no coincidence that the music most strongly associated with the Sixties, psychedelia, was designed for listening on stereo systems.) One consequence of this shift in patterns of music consumption was the rise of the rock critic. Nowadays, of course, rock critics are ubiquitous, but back in those days, there were very few. As an illustration of the rise of rock music criticism, consider the number of journals that were established in the late 1960s:

Crawdaddy! - February 1966

Rolling Stone - November 1967

Creem - February 1969

The problem, though, was that while rock criticism rather quickly became a recognized profession, what was the rock music critic's precise function? Was he simply a means to free promotion and publicity, or did he provide good and true insights into the music? If the latter, what were the criteria for judgement? The rock critic also had an additional problem: If he wanted to be read, he had to have the proper bohemian credentials (a member of the counterculture, or at least sympathetic to it), and therefore to the Left politically. Criticism thus became oppositional, as critics saw their primary function as counteracting commercialism ("hype"), the dominant discourse of the popular press. But how was the critic to go about recognizing The Real Thing? The approach developed at the time was to distinguish the authentic from the commercial, with the idea of authenticity determined negatively, that is, structured by what it was not: for example, Rock was not Pop, Soul was not White. Thus was established the fundamental myth of rock criticism: authenticity vs. commercialism.

That's not all. Like any cultural critic since the time of Matthew Arnold, the critic's authority was premised on his having a keener judgement (in this case, a more discerning ear) than the broader, untrained population. In a way, the critic was the ideal listener, presumably in full position of rock's history: its major figures, moments, themes, contours, its codes, paradigmatic shifts, and its innovators. But how did the critic rescue or recover those albums released prior to the formation of rock criticism in 1966-67? Retroactively, of course, by means of the list, an old Victorian parlor game used to pass the idle hours.

In his Divine Comedy, Dante assigned the virtuous pagans (such as Homer and Virgil) to Limbo, denying them access to salvation because they did not have knowledge of Christ. By way of analogy, we might call Limbo Rock (with all due respect to Chubby Checker) those unaccountably neglected, but nonetheless historically important, albums released prior to the establishment of journals publishing rock criticism such as Rolling Stone in 1967.

Consider Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The list is heavily composed of albums released after 1967 A.C. (After Critics). Of course, a few towering figures make the list, those whose B.C. (Before Critics) musical careers could not be ignored--for instance, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Hank Williams, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, and James Brown--but also, improbably, Phil Spector, who wasn't known as a musician, and John Coltrane, whose 1964 classic jazz album A Love Supreme is in this context (re)considered as a monumental rock album, revealing how fluid and open-ended the category "rock" actually is. Moreover, several of the putative "albums" appearing on the Rolling Stone All-Time list are really singles compilations, assembled on CD decades after the fact, such as Spector's Back to Mono (1958-1969), released in 1991, and Hank Williams' 40 Greatest Hits, released in 1988.

As an example of a profoundly important album not appearing on this list and hence doomed to exist as Limbo Rock, consider the Butterfield Blues Band's East-West, released in August 1966 B.C. (True, it was released a few months after Paul Williams established Crawdaddy! However, at the time, Crawdaddy! was still in limited circulation to college students in mimeographed format.) I fully recognize that the Rolling Stone list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time includes (at #468) the Paul Butterfield Blues Band's eponymous first album, but it is included for entirely the wrong reasons, among them the utterly facile claim that "white kids got the notion they could play the blues." (Underlying this assertion, of course, is the idea of authenticity, that only black men can play authentic blues. Apparently the editors haven't yet read Chapter 3, "Mastering the Cult of Authenticity: Leonard Chess, Willie Dixon, and the Strange Career of Muddy Waters," in Benjamin Filene's essential critical work published in 2000, Romancing the Folk: Public Memory & American Roots Music.) Dave Marsh claims that "East-West can be heard as part of what sparked the West Coast's rock revolution, in which such song structures with extended improvisatory passages became a commonplace." Hence, if importance is measured by influence, as on the Rolling Stone list, then East-West is certainly that. Additionally, according to Mark Naftalin, a member of the Butterfield Blues Band when East-West was recorded, the album's signature piece, "East-West," "was an exploration of music that moved modally, rather than through chord changes." Naftalin goes on to explain:

This song was based, like Indian music, on a drone. In Western musical terms, it "stayed on the one." The song was tethered to a four-beat bass pattern and structured as a series of sections, each with a different mood, mode and color, always underscored by the drummer, who contributed not only the rhythmic feel but much in the way of tonal shading, using mallets as well as sticks on the various drums and the different regions of the cymbals. In addition to playing beautiful solos, Paul [Butterfield] played important, unifying things in the background--chords, melodies, counterpoints, counter-rhythms. This was a group improvisation. In its fullest form it lasted more than an hour."

While the editors of the 500 Greatest Albums list include Miles Davis' Kind of Blue (1959), championing it because Miles Davis turned his back "on standard chord progressions" and for using "modal scales as a starting point for composition and improvisation," they ignore "East-West" for doing the same thing in a rock context. West Coast bands such as Jefferson Airplane are included on the list (Surrealistic Pillow is listed at #146), as is Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's Déja vu (listed at #147). Still, the album which provided the sonic foundation for much of West Coast rock's success is omitted.

For Dante, those in Limbo do not suffer. However, they endure an even worse fate, to "live in desire without hope." So, too, with those works considered Limbo Rock, recognized by some, but without any hope of canonization.

George Jones, 1931 - 2013

George Jones was a great singer for two reasons: he had a great voice, and he knew how to dramatize an idea. But because genre distinctions matter to consumers and marketers, and are therefore bound up with identity categories, George Jones is known primarily as a great country singer. Kris Kristofferson, who knows something about country music, observed that George Jones was the greatest country singer since Hank Williams, perhaps the most accurate assessment of George Jones' stature. Because Hank Williams died so young and so many years ago, it is easy to overlook the fact that George Jones was, almost to the day, just eight years younger than Hank Williams. Born in Texas in 1931, after the end of Prohibition and at the beginning of the Texas oil boom, George Jones grew up knowing well those taverns at the outskirts of large towns where itinerant Southern white laborers, farmers, and truck drivers assembled to drink beer and listen to music, otherwise known as honky tonks. Indeed, as Joli Jensen observes, the honky tonk "figured in the careers of virtually every major country music star of the '50s and '60s" (The Nashville Sound, 23). Of those performers strongly associated with honky-tonk music, among them Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, Lefty Frizzell, Hank Snow, and Ray Price, George Jones was the last surviving member.

The honky tonk bar is, of course, one of the many mythic sites of origin for country music, along with the front porch, the country barn dance, and the hills of home (the recording studio is often elided in the list of such origins). Hence honky-tonk is an urban music, the symbol of which is wet asphalt and the neon sign. In "Honky Tonk Blues," Hank Williams sings:

Well, I stopped into every place in town
This city life has really got me down
I got the honky tonk blues
Hey, the honky tonk blues

Lyrics such as these lead Joli Jensen to argue that the structuring absence of honky-tonk music is "the mythological hills of home," "the absence of the hills and hollers," the loss of Eden. The honky-tonk music genre "is about living in a city, cut off from the solace of home" (The Nashville Sound, 24). Hence, although considered "country music," honky-tonk music has nothing to with the hills, porches, and barns of home, but rather is about the risks and temptations of urban night life: drinking, cheating, and getting hurt (either physically or emotionally). The steel guitar became essential to honky tonk music as a sonic equivalent to boozy self-pity (memories) and self-indulgence (another drink).

George Jones became George Jones the great country singer only after his voice matured into a mellow baritone, perfectly suited to the world-weary experience of the persona he adopted to convey the anguish of his best songs. For the best songs by George Jones are about the traumatic loss of home, symbolically about the loss of Eden. We live in a curious age, in which excess of whatever kind (for example, drugs, alcohol, spending money) is considered a form of authenticity. Strangely, during his years of drug use and heavy drinking, Jones himself (as opposed to the person who earned his living as a singer) was lost and inauthentic. Despite his legendary drinking and drug-taking, George Jones always seemed most comfortable not in the big concert halls, but in small venues in the South; he never seemed comfortable in "the big city." (Remember that one of the better duets he recorded with his one time wife Tammy Wynette was, "(We're Not) The Jet Set," and I think Jones, at least, meant it.) The one time I saw George Jones in concert, in 1991 and by which time his past exploits had become installed as part of his legend ("No Show Jones"), it was in a relatively small theater in Branson, Missouri, and he was in fine form. His was one of the finest concerts I've ever attended, not only because of his exuberant, enthusiastic performance (Becky and I were fortunate enough to be in the front row) and great band, but because he seemed perfectly relaxed, comfortable, "at home." Certain of his songs employed standard honky-tonk themes, such "Tennessee Whiskey," in which the special virtues of his woman are likened to the pleasures of drinking good whiskey. Better songs, though, are "The Window Up Above" (written by Jones), "A Picture of Me (Without You)," and "The Grand Tour," precisely because of his heartfelt performance of what it means to lose Eden. He returned to this theme in one of his last great recordings, "Where the Tall Grass Grows" (on the album, And Along Came Jones, recorded in 1991 after leaving Epic and also producer Billy Sherrill, with whom he recorded many of his best-known songs). If you can't appreciate songs like these, you'll never understand the special power of George Jones, and why he was so widely admired. I really can't deny the fact that "He Stopped Loving Her Today" is quintessential George Jones, widely touted as "the greatest country song of all time" (Jones, however, after having finished recording the song, allegedly referred to it as a "morbid son of a bitch"). "Best of" lists, are, of course, an old Victorian parlor game, a pleasant form of diversion, a way to pass the time. However, assuming for the sake of argument that "He Stopped Loving Her Today" is indeed "the greatest country song of all time," it holds that distinction not because of the song, but because of the singer. Had a singer of lesser talent recorded it, it would indeed have remained only a morbid son of a bitch.

Pop Aphorisms XIII

It has been four years since my last list of pop aphorisms. I thought it was high time for another.

1. The discovery of the teen idol was to pop music what the discovery of the star system was to Hollywood.

2. Brill Building composers are to the Sixties teenager what filmmaker John Hughes is to the Eighties teenager.

3. Improvisation is the name for privileging performance over composition, while pretension may be understood as the name for uninspired improvisation. No drum solo ever heard on a rock album must be considered as improvisation.

4. The rock drum solo is simply a form of Modernist bluster.

5. "Noise" must be understood as simply another category of taste.

6. If fans of rock music hadn't routinely violated the dictum, "don't judge a book by its cover," records in cut-out bins never would have been purchased.

7. Rock culture's most pernicious myth: initial failure is a sign of greatness.

8. One unanticipated consequence of the Beatles' success was the Sixties garage band, while an unanticipated consequence of the garage band was the groupie.

9. Rock critics' greatest theoretical challenge: how to explain why the worst records they've ever heard have perhaps ten or fifteen wonderful minutes, while the best records they've ever heard have perhaps ten or fifteen wonderful minutes.

10. Rock critics' second greatest theoretical challenge: how to distinguish between the music of fans trying to be artists from the music of artists trying to be fans.

Knockin' On Heaven's Gate

The forthcoming Criterion Collection Blu-ray/DVD release of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980/81) has, predictably, prompted a fair amount of revisionism. Once a film that Vincent Canby claimed was nothing less than “an unqualified disaster,” now at least one website hails it as a “masterpiece.” A recent screening of the restored (original) version of the film at the Venice Film Festival received a standing ovation. Strangely, like many of the “New” Hollywood films released during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the film has conspicuously polarized its viewing audience, eliciting strong responses from both sides, revealing that the issue is not really about the film itself, but about the film and its audience. Once reviled, now celebrated, the film’s curious afterlife should remind us of an insight offered by the great cynic Diogenes, who, legend has it, asked to be buried standing on his head, because, so he thought, one day down would be up, and up would be down.

Touted on the Criterion Collection website as a film that is “among Hollywood’s most ambitious and unorthodox epics,” I think Dennis Lim, writing in the New York Times, offers a more accurate insight into the film absent the promotional spin: Heaven’s Gate “plays more than ever like a fittingly bleak apotheosis of the New Hollywood, an eccentric yet elegiac rethinking of the myths of the West and the western, with an uncommonly blunt take on class in America. . . .” Mr. Lim goes on to say that by the time Heaven’s Gate was released, late in 1980, it was an anachronism, in large part explaining its failure. While the popular and critical success of The Deer Hunter demonstrated that Michael Cimino had been able to address historical events by employing a traditional, Classic Hollywood form (The Best Years of Our Lives set in the post-Vietnam era), Heaven’s Gate was far more radical, having a counterculture sensibility that more properly belonged to what Robert B. Ray calls the “Left and Right cycle” of the late 60s and early 70s (A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1980, p. 296 and following.) Many of the comments that follow are extrapolated from arguments made in his excellent book.

As Steven Bach pointed out in Final Cut (1985), his best-selling account of the production of the film, Heaven’s Gate was originally titled The Johnson County War and was based on a script that Cimino had written several years earlier, perhaps around 1971 or 1972, in other words, at the height of the Left and Right cycle that characterized the so-called “New” Hollywood of the period. Ray observes that following the 1967 success of The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde, “the industry followed with a series of movies intended to appeal to the counterculture’s most visible elements. Nixon’s election, and the surprising popularity of the old-fashioned Airport (1970), however, demonstrated the existence of a large conservative audience and set off a wave of right-wing films” (298). In addition to The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde, other Left films included Cool Hand Luke (1967), Easy Rider (1969), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Little Big Man (1970), and McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971). Among the Right films are Coogan’s Bluff (1968), Dirty Harry (1971), Walking Tall (1973), and Death Wish (1974). What this list of Left and Right films had in common was the motif of the frontier and its ideological value in American life. “Politically,” Ray writes, “the willingness to concede the frontier’s closing became the bedrock issue dividing the Left and Right” (301). The Johnson County War/Heaven’s Gate was created during this period.

Obviously, the explicit treatment of this theme was in the Western, and the Left movies of this period rather uniformly concluded that the American frontier had closed. So, too, does Heaven’s Gate, except it did so long after the Left and Right cycle had come to a close, supporting Dennis Lim’s argument that the film’s failure was due in large part to being released too late, after the political divisiveness of the 1960s had subsided. Moreover, Heaven’s Gate was released after what Robert Ray calls “corrected” genre pictures such as The Godfather (1972) and Taxi Driver (1976), two films premised on an ideological ambivalence, meaning they could be read two ways, appealing to both Left and Right. (Actually, the first film I remember working this way was Patton [1970], which had adherents on both sides of the ideological divide cheering: Patton as psychopath, Patton as hero. Think Travis Bickle.) Essentially, these “corrected” genre pictures had brought the Left and Right cycle to a close, years before the release of Heaven’s Gate.

Given that Criterion has chosen to champion Heaven’s Gate thirty-two years after its initial release, it’s now possible to see the film for what it was originally intended to be, a film made for what Robert Ray calls “ironic filmgoers,” film buffs who are “bored with conventional movies” and who champion “art films and revisionist reworkings of Classic Hollywood formulas,” precisely the sort of filmgoer for which Criterion was established. Certainly, this sort of viewer has steadily grown since the early 1980s, but one must remember that the sort of films that set out to frustrate viewer expectations promoted by their genres almost always fail at the box office. As Ray points out, none of the seventies movies now greatly admired by ironic filmgoers, films such as Badlands, New York, New York, The Conversation, Mean Streets, and Nashville, made the Top Twenty lists. As Ray observes, these films’ “lack of success reconfirmed the audience’s fundamental conservatism” (328).

Seen in the context of the late 60s and early 70s Left and Right cycle, however, what seems most obvious about Heaven’s Gate is not its singularity, but its ordinariness. Formally and thematically, it shares a startling number of features with films of the Left and Right cycle. Formally, like all Left films, such as those made by Stanley Kubrick and Robert Altman, for instance, Heaven’s Gate foregrounds its artiness (for many Left films made in the sixties and seventies, a heavy borrowing of stylistic devices borrowed from the French New Wave), leading to the charge made by its opponents that the film is too “artsy.” Right films were never “artsy.” On the contrary, they sought to be anything but “artsy,” employing a traditional or Classic Hollywood style that sought to make its narrative strategies “invisible.” Heaven’s Gate’s much-ballyhooed budget overrun is really just an underhanded form of mockery, a way of condemning the film for being too pretentiously “artsy.”

For the film’s thematic adherence to the films of the Left and Right cycle, a few examples will suffice.

The Villains. Left movies of the late 60s and early 70s period typically had villains whose cold impersonality, according to Ray, “seemed to stand for an historical process” (303). Outside of the head of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, Frank Canton, Heaven’s Gate’s villains, an army of thugs, is largely anonymous and impersonal, a mass. The Wyoming Stock Growers Association functions rather like the mysterious “Corporation” of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, representing the inexorable advance of modernity. The icy cold and imperturbable “Man with No Eyes” of Cool Hand Luke is an another obvious example of the impersonality Ray is talking about, but so, too, is the line from 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, “Who are those guys?,” referring to the Pinkerton men pursuing the outlaw heroes. (Pinkerton men as avatars of the closing of the frontier also appeared in Philip Kaufman’s 1972 Left film, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid.) Indeed, the question, “Who are those guys?,” caught on in the counterculture, and is a line that Ray avers “summed up the Left’s anxiety about the Europeanizing of America” (303). The “Europeanizing of America” is what Heaven’s Gate is all about.

The Setting. Although set in frontier Wyoming, Cimino’s West is Breughelian, already crowded and claustrophobic, suggesting the closing of the frontier is all but over. The closing of the frontier appears in The Wild Bunch (1969), for instance, and is associated with the dawn of a new, technological age represented by automobiles, machine guns, and German military advisors. Ironically, the giant roller skating rink that supplies Heaven’s Gate with its title is a symbol of the closing of the frontier, since its financial existence is premised on large numbers of customers, or, in this case, settlers. The film’s title is thus ironic, irony being a standard feature of many late sixties and seventies films of the Left and Right cycle. The film’s concluding sequence, showing James Averill having returned East, implies the West has run out of room.

The Hero. Like other Left films such as The Wild Bunch, Heaven’s Gate suggests that individualism is outdated, an outmoded lifestyle. (The Wild Bunch’s tagline was, “Unchanged men in a changing land.”) As a consequence, Bonnie and Clyde, the Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Heaven’s Gate’s James Averill seem, to borrow a phrase from Robert Ray, “to exist in worlds mysteriously emptied of alternatives” (311). I think the frustration expressed by the critics when the film was first released in 1980 can be boiled down to one critical issue: the audience’s identification with the hero. James Averill’s moral choice amounts to nothing more than choosing sides. No middle ground exists. Perhaps Cimino should have been told about Robert Warshow’s observation, that Hollywood has “always been uneasy with a situation that cannot be solved by personal virtue.” We know Averill is the hero because any character he meets with an opposed point of view is almost always repulsive. And, like other protagonists of Left films during the period in which Heaven’s Gate was first written, the hero’s individualism was suggested by his non-adherence to the standards of genteel morality—like the Wild Bunch, Easy Rider’s Billy and Wyatt, and John McCabe, Averill prefers whores. It may be that the closest analogue to James Averill is John McCabe, of McCabe and Mrs. Miller (the two films also share the same cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond). In Altman’s film, as part of what we can call its pattern of intention, we slowly come to realize, or at least strongly suspect, that McCabe has created a fraudulent image of himself, that he is a fake. But Heaven’s Gate has no similar pattern of intention. Are we to believe that James Averill, like some of the other protagonists of the Left films (e.g., the aforementioned John McCabe, Easy Rider’s Billy, Midnight Cowboy’s Joe Buck), has self-consciously derived his sense of self from ready-made Western myths? If not, where does his sense of self come from? After all, he’s hardly a “natural man,” since he graduated back East, at Harvard. Unlike McCabe, however, he isn’t murdered by the agents of some pernicious “Corporation,” but instead, in the film’s final sequence, is shown to have acquired all the external signs (wife, yacht) of bourgeois respectability. To the film’s detriment, what David Denby said about McCabe can also be applied, for the worse, to James Averill: he is a man “who adopts the manner of some famous or legendary character of the Old West, but who actually has the imagination and humor of a second-rate traveling salesman.”

A final point. The film’s problematic hero reveals how Heaven’s Gate is unlike a standard Left movie, for by refusing to glorify its hero (violence does not lead to regeneration), it reveals his individualism as woefully obsolete. He seems overwhelmed by the complexity of the emerging modern world, fails to protect his friends, and inevitably succumbs to the inexorable forces of modernity.

When Did Allen Klein Buy John Lennon's White Rolls-Royce?

John and Yoko with Allen Klein in happier times, probably in the early 1970s

Guest blogger Eric Roberts reports:

One primary aim of this research blog has been achieved. We now know that John Lennon's white 1965 Rolls-Royce, last seen in public in the mid 1980s, still remains the property of the Klein family and is currently being restored in England. However, two salient points remain unanswered: when exactly did Lennon purchase this second-hand Phantom V Rolls-Royce, and when did he sell it?

In answer to the first question, we have established that he bought the ex-hire car in 1966, the same year that it appeared in the film, Georgy Girl. What we don't know is the precise date. Based on circumstantial evidence, we strongly suspect that Lennon felt the need for for a second Phantom V after his first encounter with Yoko Ono at the Indica Gallery in London on 9 November 1966. It is on record that soon after purchasing it, Lennon gave instructions for the entire car to be made white, both inside and out. Surely, this could only be a kind of homage to Yoko Ono, since white was her signature color.

As for the date that John Lennon sold the white Phantom, elsewhere in this blog it has been suggested that perhaps ownership transferred to Allen Klein in 1977, when Yoko Ono negotiated a deal with Klein which put an end to several years of litigation. Recently, though, new information has emerged that contradicts this assumption.

We owe Bob Lange of KarKix our thanks for alerting us to the fact that Allen Klein's former chauffeur, Alf Weaver, asserts in his autobiography that sometime in late 1969, Klein acquired John and Yoko's famous limo. The relevant paragraph in Weaver's book is worth quoting verbatim. On page 93 we read:

My job during 1969 also now included keeping close to Klein, but he was only in the UK about one week in every eight. He was mostly based at his glass tower in New York, the ABKCO offices, on Broadway. A bit later in the year, Allen asked me to pick up his new car. Actually, it was John's old car, his Rolls-Royce Phantom V limousine, EUC 100C. Lennon had bought it in 1966 and completely resprayed it (white) and refitted its interior (white shag and white seats). John liked white. Lennon and Klein sealed the deal. $50,000, I think. Good price, John. I picked the car up at Hoopers in Kilburn and ended up driving it for the next decade, on and off.

(Quoted from The First Rock 'n' Roll Bodyguard, Alf Weaver and Robert Ashton. London: Sanctuary Publishing, 2001. ISBN: 1-86074-328-5.)

We are inclined to believe Alf Weaver's claim, despite Tony King's recollection that the car remained in the garage at Tittenhurst after Ringo bought John and Yoko's mansion in 1973. After all, if anyone is in a position to know when Allen Klein bought EUC 100C, it's Klein's driver.

Alf Weaver and friend on the bonnet of Allen Klein's Phantom V in 1976, ten years after John Lennon bought it

So with what make and model of car did John replace his '65 white Rolls-Royce Phantom V? In 1970 he bought a white Mercedes-Benz 600 Pullman, which you can read about here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/4749300/Baby-you-can-buy-my-car.html

Young and Old

Tuesday night's History Detectives program focused exclusively on rock music collectables, the dramatic intrigue hinging on determinations of whether certain rock culture artifacts were the Real Thing, or fakes. After having spent the past couple of years trying to find the whereabouts of John Lennon's white Rolls-Royce (5VD63), and in the process of doing so encountering several fakes, the roughly seventeen minute sequence of Tuesday night's show devoted to authenticating the electric guitar Bob Dylan played at the Newport Folk Festival on 25 July 1965 seemed strangely familiar.

Of the many foundational myths of rock culture, the 1965 Newport Folk Festival is perhaps one of the most heavily mythologized, having been repeatedly subjected over the years to a number of misrepresentations, distortions, and false claims. For many years, the predominant myth surrounding Dylan's Sunday night appearance at the festival was that Dylan was booed by an irate crowd because he had “betrayed” folk music by playing rock & roll. Recent revisions have attempted to redress this inaccuracy, but there are still widespread misperceptions. To name just a few: First, Dylan had already “gone electric" before that night, otherwise he wouldn't have had a Fender Stratocaster to play. Second, earlier, on 26 March 1965, he had already appeared on stage with The Byrds at Ciro's Le Disc nightclub on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, this just prior to the release (on Columbia Records) of The Byrds' cover single of “Mr. Tambourine Man” on 12 April 1965, over three months before the Festival. In a sense, the “electrification” of Dylan had already occurred prior to the Newport Folk Festival, with the release of The Byrds' cover version of Dylan's song. Just so the point cannot be conveniently neglected, The Byrds sold more records for Columbia during the mid-1960s than Dylan. Third, Dylan had already recorded “Like a Rolling Stone” prior to the Newport Folk Festival, the single being released about five days before he appeared at the Newport Festival. The assertion that Dylan was “transformed” that night “from a protest folkie to a rebel genius” is an example of what Robert Ray calls “critical senility,” an over-emphasis on the careers of aging Sixties stars that is at least one consequence of the utter lack of interest in the work being done by younger, contemporary artists. Moreover, only someone biased against folk music would make such a claim anyway -- note the condescending tone suggested by the use of the word “folkie.” At the very least, Dylan's popularity increased as a result of The Byrds' success, whose cover of “Mr. Tambourine Man” reached No. 1 on the pop music charts weeks before the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

To be true to Dylan's “rebel” nature, one ought to feel free to ask improper questions. For me, the far more interesting question, one that wasn't addressed during Tuesday night's History Detectives program, is why Dylan chose to play a Fender guitar. Why didn't he choose to play a Gibson, or Gretsch, or Rickenbacker? Famously, a Rickenbacker was played by The Byrds' Roger McGuinn. Guitars made by these manufacturers were popular among electric guitarists at the time, so why did Dylan choose to play a Fender? According to L.A. Times journalist Randy Lewis, citing electric guitar specialist Andy Babiuk, in January 1965 -- seven months before the Newport Folk Festival -- Leo Fender “sold his company to CBS for the then-king’s ransom price of $13 million.” According to Lewis, it is highly probable that CBS encouraged artists on its Columbia Records label “to use and promote the instruments coming out of what was then the largest music instrument and equipment manufacturing operation in the world.” Lewis goes on to write:

In his definitive 1995 book about the history of Fender, Fender: The Sound Heard Round the World, Richard Smith highlighted these ads and wrote, “One almost surreal  endorsement for the Jazz Bass came from Bob Dylan. He was to jazz what Lionel Hampton was to protest music.” I checked with Smith this week to find out whether there was an active campaign in the CBS era of Fender (the company was sold by CBS to a group of private investors in the 1980s) to cross-promote the products among musicians signed to CBS labels and he said, simply, “Yes.”

Coupled with the fact that “Like a Rolling Stone” was released by Columbia Records on 20 July 1965 -- coinciding almost to the day with Dylan's appearance at the Newport Folk Festival -- in retrospect Dylan's appearance at the Festival playing a Fender guitar and performing, among other songs, “Like a Rolling Stone,” is not so much a transformative event as it was a shrewd act of promotion by CBS and Columbia Records.

Bob Dylan did not transform himself into a “rebel genius” at Newport. To understand why not, I recommend that readers refer to my earlier entry on prophetic cool, a form of cool, following Michael Jarrett, “characterized by barely harnessed rage.” Exemplary figures of prophetic cool are the young Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, and Ice-T. In contrast, figures such as Jack Kerouac epitomized “philosophical cool,” which might also be called existential cool -- the self as an effect of performance. In addition to Kerouac, exemplary figures epitomizing existential cool are Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Keith Richards, Snoop Doggy Dogg, and the old Bob Dylan. The Bob Dylan that appeared at Newport on 25 July 1965 playing an electric guitar remained as he had been before that night: a model of prophetic cool.

John Lennon's White Rolls-Royce . . . And Its Phantom Double

Having established in our last entry that for nearly four decades John Lennon's white 1965 Phantom V Rolls-Royce, chassis No. 5VD63, has been in the possession of the Klein family and is currently being faithfully restored, it remains for us to dispel some of the confusion concerning the real identity and history of a notable impostor.

In January this year, self-made multi-millionaire and real estate developer, Stephen Tebo made international headlines when he acquired the historic Cadillac hearse that transported President Kennedy's body from Dallas Parkland Memorial Hospital to the airport in November 1963. Virually every news item that reported this latest addition to the Tebo Auto Collection also made mention of “a 1965 Rolls-Royce custom made for John Lennon” that resides among the 400 other cars in his collection. When and wherever the Tebo Rolls is put on show, a well known photo of The Beatles in 1969 beside Lennon's genuine Phantom V is proudly displayed.

The juxtaposition of the sign with the impressive  white limousine is intended to convince the spectator that this is indeed the same car as the one in the “Ballad of John & Yoko” video. Visitors to the Tebo Auto Collection are left with no doubt that they have seen at close quarters the very car that John Lennon and Yoko Ono travelled everywhere in during the late 1960s.
Leaving aside the fact that we know for sure that the authentic John Lennon white Phantom V, chassis No. 5VD63, has never left England and that it has been in the Klein family at least the last 35 years, let's take a closer look at Tebo's Rolls-Royce.

The most obvious difference between the two Phantoms is the steering. The genuine Lennon/Klein Rolls-Royce is right-hand drive (RHD), whereas the car in Tebo's collection is left-hand drive (LHD) and was built for the American market. (Click on images to enlarge.)

LHD Tebo Phantom (left), RHD Lennon Phantom (right)

The next most apparent difference is the interior upholstery and carpeting. Immediately after purchasing 5VD63 in 1966, John Lennon spent a small fortune by totally transforming the exterior from black to white and replacing the interior furnishings with white carpets and fabric. In addition, tinted polarized glass windows, mobile telephone and 8-track stereo system were installed. A glance inside Tebo's Rolls-Royce tells you that either someone has stripped all of Lennon's custom modifications or that this is not the same car.

Front interior Tebo Phantom (left), Lennon Phantom (right)

The interior of Tebo's Rolls-Royce is beige. In contrast, Lennon's Phantom V has white carpet and fabric front and back.

Interior Tebo (left), Lennon (right)

And where has the distinctive antenna on the roof of the real white Phantom V gone? The Tebo Auto Collection Rolls appears to have only a standard radio aerial behind the right side wing mirror.

Tebo Phantom V (left), Lennon Phantom V (right)

As is clear, the antenna on Lennon's Rolls (right) is missing on Tebo's car. Another obvious difference is the size of the two air vents at the front of both vehicles. Stephen Tebo's Phantom has narrow, standard air inlets whereas, in the late 1960s, Lennon added a pair of large intakes directly beneath the quad headlamps.

Tebo Phantom V (left), Lennon Phantom V (right)

Tebo's car lacks the custom air intakes on Lennon's Rolls (right).

One of the rarest features of Lennon's 5VD63 is the white steering wheel. It is probably the only Phantom V which has one, the rest would have been black.

The Tebo Rolls-Royce (left) has a standard black steering wheel. Somewhat eccentrically, Lennon insisted that his Phantom V was fitted with a custom white steering wheel (right). Then there is the fact that someone has painted John Lennon's signature on the driver's side door of the Tebo Auto Collection's Phantom V.

Why would anyone feel the necessity do this, unless it is meant to further convince the public that this was Lennon's car? Isn't this a bit like an art forger copying the signature of an old master?

The most important distinctions between Tebo's Rolls-Royce and the original white Rolls owned by the Klein family are not visible without a detailed inspection. These are the manufacturer's ID numbers for the chassis, the engine and the body. The serial numbers for John Lennon's white 1965 Phantom V are: Chassis No. 5VD63; Engine No. D31PV; Body No. V.327/20076. Our research convinces us that the serial numbers for the Phantom V in the Tebo Auto Collection are: Chassis No. 5LVD15; Engine No. D7PV; Body No. 20062. The coachwork of both vehicles was made by Mulliner Park Ward, Design No. 2003.

The Rolls-Royce in the Tebo Auto Collection was completed in June 1964, not 1965 as is always stated. One can only assume that this confusion is intentional, as it is public knowledge that the black Phantom V that John Lennon bought second-hand in 1966 was first delivered to Patrick Barthropp Ltd. in May 1965. 

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE TEBO AUTO COLLECTION ROLLS-ROYCE  

Tebo Auto Collection Phantom V with original paint, as shown in Sotheby's 1984 sale catalogue 

The original owner of Mr. Tebo's 1964 Phantom was Ben B. Bodne. Proprietor of one of New York's most prestigious old hotels, The Algonquin, Bodne took possession of his left-hand drive, latest model Rolls-Royce Phantom V (pictured above) in 1964. Its original color was sable brown with matching interior. Until the late-1970s, Bodne's giant Phantom would have been a familiar sight cruising through New York's theatre district, or parked outside the entrance to the Algonquin. Exactly when and how its next owner acquired it has not yet been established, but Yoko Ono presumably bought Bodne's brown Phantom some time after John Lennon's assassination, probably around 1981-82.

As executor of her deceased husband's estate, Yoko decided to auction over 100 items in her possession though Sotheby's in New York on June 23, 1984. (Click on the link to see "For Sale: John and Yoko," Evening Independent (Ann Kolson) 26 June 1984. Go to page 4). The last lot to be sold was her beautiful sable brown Rolls-Royce. An unidentified woman and a phone bidder pushed the auction price past the reserve of $100,000 to $184,250, the proceeds going to Yoko Ono's children's charity, The Spirit Foundation. It must be said that she did nothing to correct news reports before and after the sale that her brown Phantom V was a “1965” model and that it had belonged, not just to her, but to “John and Yoko.” The long distance telephone buyer who outbid all other rivals was a shopping mall developer based in Pensacola, Florida. A long-time Beatles fan with an impressive collection Napoleonic memorabilia, Wallace C. Yost was nothing if not ambitious. At the height of his career he employed over 200 people and owned Mariner Mall shopping centers in Pensacola, Fort Walton Beach, Crestview and Panama City, with a luxurious home in Gulf Breeze. 

At some point, perhaps in the late 1980s, Yost ordered his sable brown Rolls-Royce to be re-painted and re-upholstered to resemble John Lennon's famous limo. For a year or two, his imitation Lennon Rolls was put on display in the Mariner Mall as a public attraction until, that is, he went into hiding owing his creditors over $44 million. As FBI agents began a six-year hunt for the absconder, his re-painted Rolls-Royce was acquired by the banks and promptly auctioned off.

In 1997, Wallace Yost was captured and sentenced to 18 months jail. After having passed through several auction houses, his now white Phantom V went under the hammer at a Barrett-Jackson auction in January 1999 for $118,000. The buyer was Stephen Tebo. Though advertised by Barrett-Jackson as coming with all the necessary documentation, in fact there was no actual provenance proving that the car had once belonged to John Lennon, as the catalogue implied. The honest Mr. Tebo had made an honest mistake and found himself the owner of a convincing fake. While it gives us no pleasure whatsoever to debunk Mr. Tebo's claim to be the owner of one of the most famous limousines in rock music history, we believe we have a public duty to do so. John Lennon gave the world so much of himself through his music and his  public anti-war demonstrations--for which he paid the ultimate price--that any form of counterfeit activity involving his name and image is simply wrong.

Should Mr. Tebo or anyone else wish to provide proof that any the assertions published in this blog are inaccurate, we would be only too willing to correct our research and publish a sincere apology.