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aion-rsa · 4 years

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When Paul McCartney Braved the Set of Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death

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Jane Asher is as well-known for acting as she is for dating an ex-Beatle, and in 1964 she brought Swinging London to the canteen of Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death.

Based on the gothic short story “The Mask of the Red Death: A Fantasy,” the film remains the most ambitious installment in Corman’s Edgar Allen Poe cycle of movies, contrasting the bleak landscape of a dying village with the psychological torment of six rooms of color, and one with no color at all, just a deep black with a blood red crimson glow cast on it. Vincent Price stars as the sadistic and satanic Prince Prospero, whose darkness reigns over his dominions.

Price wouldn’t be this malignant again until 1968’s Witchfinder General, which was retitled The Conqueror Worm, even though it had nothing to do with the Poe story. In Masque, he throws decadent orgies to distract himself from the catastrophes which rage out of his control around him. The Masque of the Red Death came out in 1964, but shot in London during the titillating Profumo Scandal of 1963, and the pampered and entitled characters Hazel Court (Hammer’s Curse of Frankenstein) and Patrick Magee (Dementia 13, A Clockwork Orange) played could have stood in for unholy political unions. The 19-year-old Asher, as virginal peasant girl Francesca, personified the bright lights of the other side of town.

Asher was an iconic face of Swinging London and the emerging youth culture of the early 1960s. Probably best recognized as the little girl who makes friends with the astronaut in The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), she was a child actress who first appeared on screen in the 1952 film Mandy. Before Jefferson Airplane warned about chasing “The White Rabbit,” Asher played the title role in Argo Records’ productions of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass in 1958. While her parts in films like The Greengage Summer, and the 1962 Disney production of The Prince and the Pauper increased her visibility, it was a spot on the BBC’s Juke Box Jury which forever tagged her name with the pop revolution which was swinging through London in the wake of the racket coming from the seaport of Liverpool.

Asher was 17 in 1963 when the British magazine Radio Times assigned her to cover a Beatles concert at the Royal Albert Hall. “Now these I could scream for,” she declared in the story when it came out. Asher’s onscreen persona and public profile personified hope and helpful activism which may have seemed naïve to the Prosperos of the older generation but lurked outside their castle walls. Asher’s flame-red hair promised as much of a danger to the old guard as the Red Death. And he brought that optimism to the set of Masque.

“Jane Asher was wonderful to work with,” Roger Corman tells Den of Geek while talking about the restoration of The Masque of Red Death. “She was a very young girl. She had worked on the stage. I think she was in the Young Shakespeare Group. And I don’t know if it was her first picture or not, but she was very good. She was an excellent actress and very good and easy to work with.”

Asher’s Francesca is so accommodating, she tells Prospero’s mistress Juliana, “I will do what I must to save my men. But if they die, I will die — and so will Prince Prospero.” Asher’s performance is fragile and courageous, giving the character sensuality and dignity. As part of “the Resistance,” she is a worthy opponent for Price’s dark prince. Although she is uneducated, she can counter his Satanic philosophies and self-serving moral relativism. She is also the stand-in for the audience to relate to as she ventures through the colored rooms with her eyes wide open, occasionally in shock.

The first cut of the film shocked the Catholic Legion of Decency in the U.S. and the British Board of Film Censors, which bemoaned the “Satanism and erotic costuming” on the screen, according to the booklet which comes in the restoration package. Corman cut nine frames from the scene where Francesca is stripped down and thrown into a bathtub because it gave the illusion of nudity. The removed frames ensured Asher’s breasts would not appear on screen.

Offscreen, Asher was just as fresh and friendly as her character. The actress was also dating a very famous musician, who happened to write a big hit for the band her brother, Peter Asher, was in. Den of Geek asked whether Asher introduced Corman to any of the other players in Swinging London.

“A little bit,” Corman says. “Jane and I used to have lunch together in the studio commissary. And on a Thursday, she said a friend of hers was traveling through, on his way to London the next day. Would it be all right if he came and watched a shooting during the morning, and we could all have lunch together? And I said, ‘Sure, fine.’

“So, I got a director’s chair, sitting next to mine, during the shooting. And it was a nice, young guy, and we talked during the shooting. And I explained to him a little bit between shots, how it all worked. And then we all, Jane, and he and I, had lunch together. And it all went very well. And at the end of the lunch, I said, ‘Jane tells me you’re going to London. What are you going to be doing in London?’ He said, ‘Well, I’m with a singing group from Liverpool, and we’re going to be making our debut tomorrow night in London.’”

Yes, it was Paul McCartney.

By that point, Corman had already made the jukebox movie Rock All Night, which featured the music of The Platters, and would go on to produce the 1979 punk movie classic Rock ‘n’ Roll High School. That film starred The Ramones, who got their name from Paul McCartney when he tried out the stage name Paul Ramon. But Corman had no clue who he was talking to back then, and the Mersey musician kept up his part in the masquerade of red sauce.

“He was very cool,” Corman says. “He knew that as an American, I didn’t know who The Beatles were, or what he was. And as he left, I said, ‘Well, good luck, Paul, on your debut in London tomorrow night.’ And I remember he was very cool. He understood, and he didn’t want to say, ‘Listen, buddy, we’re the number one group.’ He just said, ‘Well, we’re a singing group.’”

Whatever show it was Paul’s singing group was in town for, the band apparently passed the audition. “Then I saw the paper Sunday morning headlines, ‘Beatles conquer London,’” Corman remembers.

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While McCartney never came back to the set again. It wasn’t the last informal encounter the two legends had. “We were at an Academy Award party, which was I think the Vanity Fair party, and I saw across the room Paul McCartney,” Corman recalls. “And I said, ‘Oh, there’s Paul over there.’ And my wife, Julie, said, ‘Let’s go over and talk to him.’ And I said,’”No. I had lunch with him 60 years or so ago. He isn’t going to remember some guy he had lunch with 60 years ago, and I don’t want to intrude’ because he was in a conversation.

“And Julie said, ‘Well, I want to meet Paul McCartney.’ So, she went over and talked to him, and he came over to see me. As he approached, he said, ‘Masque of the Red Death.’ He knew exactly where we’d met.”

Shortly after the filming of The Masque of the Red Death, McCartney moved into the attic of Asher’s parents’ 18th-century London townhouse. McCartney and John Lennon wrote many of their signature songs in a music room in the basement, including “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

Asher inspired McCartney to write classic love songs like “All My Loving,” “And I Love Her,” and “Here There and Everywhere.” Their relationship also drove him to pen the equally classic “We Can Work It Out,” “You Won’t See Me,” and “I’m Looking Through You,” which McCartney says, in the biography Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, “I seem to remember after an argument with Jane.”

Jane’s mother, Margaret Asher, taught McCartney to play the recorder, which was used on the song “The Fool on the Hill.” That song was written about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and Asher was part of the Beatles’ entourage on the band’s meditation retreat to India.

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After The Masque of the Red Death, Asher would go on to star in Alfie opposite Michael Caine in 1966 and continue a diverse artistic course. Besides being a consistent presence on film, television, and stage, Asher has written three novels: The Longing, The Question, and Losing It.The Masque of the Red Death will be available on Blu-Ray, DVD and Digital on Jan. 25.

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dancewithmeplano · 7 years

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Groove Terminator talks 30 Decades of Australian dance music

This season sees Simon Lewicki celebrating three decades of mischief since Groove Terminator.

Starting out as a hip-hop DJ in his hometown of Adelaide from 1987, Lewicki made his way to the climbing club scene of Sydney in the mid-’90s. From there he swerved into building a couple of artist records with Virgin/EMI — 2000’s Road Kill along with 2002’s Electrifying Mojo— who cemented the GT title and made him a local festival circuit.

The two Groove Terminator LPs came in a formative time. Even though Road Twist nodded to Fatboy Slim with a sample-driven big beat sound, its own follow up featured digital maestro Andy Page as an studio collaborator. The mid-2000s watched up Lewicki team with Sam Littlemore for the project Tonite however there was room for standalone GT about the bar circuit.

30 years on from Lewicki, that awakening and his alter ego are specialists of the arena. In his life, the DJ-producer repetitions house music on the weekends and performs his 9-5 as A&R Manager for Publishing and Recordings for TMRW Music Group (previously Ministry of Sound Australia.)

Lewicki can also be on board as the Director of Orchestrated after seeing the MOS Reunion Tour’s sold-out success. The displays in Melbourne and Sydney will reimagine dancing classics with a live symphony orchestra, together with GT also joined by Daniel Merriweather and Owl Eyes. The toughest part is determining which particular anthems make the trimoff.

“We’ve got a working set-list that’s true to what Australian classics have been,” Lewicki informs inthemix. “You whittle it down out there to what is likely to sound great with an orchestra behind it. I could’ve easily done a four-hour show with this much stuff.”

Sinking into the spirit of celebrating the past of Orchestrated, inthemix requested us to walk .

What’s life like as a DJ before you made your very first album, Road Kill?

It’ll seem weird to people however I did that the very first. It was completely illegal but I sold thousands and thousands of duplicates. I get people hitting me up on it. It was a time in a community of a couple thousand people. Everyone was really in it and super-critical of their standard of mixing.

I transferred to Sydney so I grabbed the tail-end of the expat celebrations. Subsequently with guys like Phil [Smart] and [Sugar] Ray doing Tweekin’ to a Friday night , there was an extraordinary party vibe. I really don’t know when the medication had something to do with this, however, the music in Adelaide was a ton quicker than Sydney, so it took me some time to slow down it! That’s when I started getting more into that very first wave of filter house, which occurred together with the arrival of Daft Punk.

I signed about two years. I was the first DJ and they had no clue what to do with me personally.

Can it be a surprise for you as well that you were suddenly an artist with a record deal?

Josh Abrahams Paul Mac and I got picked up around exactly the exact same moment. And a wave of executives came in and everybody got dropped together with me. Obviously Josh then proceeded to make ‘Addicted To Bass’ and Paul had the biggest listing of his career [3000 Feet High] two decades after that.

Kathy McCabe, who’s currently in the Tele, was A&Ring afterward, and I believed it was eyesight on their own behalf. I can not even begin to imagine the type of discussions she had been having with EMI in the moment, who had activated their having anything that is not done for most of the ’90s. They proceeded to get an wonderful run.

Was there a specific release out there in the time that turned EMI onto you?

I had a record out on Dance Pool [‘It’s On’] and I had done a remix for [UK dance-pop group] Dead or Alive that had gone gold. I had been given an advance, so I did everything you’d usually do if you’re granted a whack of money get onto a plane and go to Europe. I ended up with most of an album thank god, but it still took me a year and a half.

“I really don’t know if the medication had something to do with this, however, the audio in Adelaide was much quicker than Sydney”

It was to make a record back then — I delivered it fairly cheaply but to get a sampler was 8000 back. I started off as a hip-hop DJ and that I approached things with this particular magpie sensibility. I was fortunate they coughed up.

Were the advances then unlike anything that an artist would see now?

Well, here’s a good example. I had been signed to Virgin to make a listing. Most folks would have gone off and purchased a house and still exercised a way. I chose to utilize it all to make the record. You get to a point where you’re running out of money.

“I really don’t think people have an opportunity on documents as much nowadays.”

Fortunately my buddy Tim [McGee] worked in Central [Station Records]. Also he went and I told him I had so I flicked that off to him and sold it in the united kingdom to Ministry. We got roughly a $50,000 advance for this. This was the kind of money that floated about back then. I thought, ‘Oh, this is fairly easy, I could definitely keep doing so!’

And those sorts of numbers dried up. I really don’t think nowadays people have an opportunity on documents as much. If you’ve got every label on the planet is going to be knocking down your door to throw money at you. However, no one’s going to take a chance.

Can Road Kill take its cues from what was occurring internationally with digital music at the moment?

You can certainly hear the effect of ol’ Norman Cook on that record. I was a fan. To me it was really important to take everything I had been into — punk, hip-hop, breakbeats, house audio, and also the pop up I climbed up on — and then mash it all together.

‘Here Comes Another One’ was based on an MC5 riff. Subsequently [The Fifth Dimension’s] ‘Let The Sunshine In’ [sampled on GT’s ‘One More Time (The Sunshine Song)’] is such a ’60s anthem of the moment. I had been hanging out with Fatboy Slim a little, and I truly wished to make a record that he would play in his collection. This was my intention for that one. After it was heard by the label, they were like, ‘No, ‘ that’s your only.’

I had been looking back at some older Big Day Out line-ups, and I first saw your title in 1996.

I did in a row like ten Big Day Outs, and now I feel the previous four or five I had been in the touring party. It had been me and Paul and Bexta Mac — it was a community with the people about the line-ups everywhere. I’m still friends with all those people now.

I recall playing [the ‘ Chemical Brothers’] ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’ at the Boiler Room when that record was huge, and the reaction was just over the top. In 1997, The Prodigy was the very first digital action to perform the main stage, and I remember thinking ‘Oh yeah, we have arrived, we are taking over today.’ It was a great moment.

“The 2006 era needed The Presets, Cut Copy, Sneaky Sound System; I believe time stood up any place on the planet and always will.”

The line-ups was crazy, since you’d have then and Aphex Twin OMC [of ‘How Bizarre’ celebrity]. It would not be merely techno all day. I believe that the diversity was super-important and informative. There was a lot of tribalism happening with genres ‘I like techno’ or ‘I just like happy hardcore’. You’d see it with all the tribes dressed in their way in Central Station Records. But everybody comes together in the Boiler Room.

From the early 2000s, when Road Kill came out, there is a groundswell of other Australian digital groups: you’d Pnau, Sonic Animation, Resin Dogs, The Avalanches…

Yeah, you noticed it when it was time to collect a tour to get a record. I toured with Sonic Animation and I toured with Grinspoon, you understand? It was like, ‘They both play Big Day Out, they could go!’

I know that the songs the Pnau boys had been making before they found nightclubs was full-on psytrance. And they had this moment, found Derrick Carter and DJ Sneak, and went stateside. Then the Avalanches album is just one of the best to ever come from this country stop. I recall that being the soundtrack of summer hanging out with…oh, I’m not even going to name-drop, however a few touring DJs! That album was being played with nonstop.

In that 2005-2008 period once you started Tonite Just, the audio coming from Australia felt very connected to an worldwide phenomenon.

From the early 2000s everybody was in their own lane setting out their records. Then I think that the advent of having the ability to record in-the-box and not go into studios attracted the cost of production right down.

This 2006 era had Cut Copy, The Presets, Sneaky [Sound System]; I think will and always that moment stood up any place in the world. Those documents had a large influence. I recall seeing DJ AM do an open format hip-hop/rock/party set and going to LA, playing [the Just remix of Sneaky Sound System’s] ‘Pictures’ in its middle. That wave of electro — with a clean sawtooth wave, a snare and a kick — only sounds great loud. You can not beat it.

As a young DJ, you’re Australian runner-up from the DMC DJ competition. The tools of the trade have changed quite a great deal since then…

When I started DJing, I did not even see [Technics] 1200s for two decades. It was this idea that there! It had been like, what? These were the types of discussions.

You are able to learn to DJ in about 90 minutes so the bar has lowered. The thing that’s not likely to change is that the art of DJing is understanding what tune to play next. That is any time period, any genre, ever. That’s how you rock a celebration: understand what tune to play following the one that’s playing.

Orchestrated together with the Ministry Of Sound Orchestra strikes Melbourne’s Hamer Hall on Friday August 11 and Sydney’s State Theatre on Friday August 18. Tickets are now on sale.

Jack Tregoning is an independent writer based in New York. He’s about Twitter.

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