#like george's brother peter being the same age as ringo and john

[with-eyes-closed]

George, meanwhile, hated the Removes as Paul had done twelve months before. It was demeaning to be lumped in with boys a year younger. As he put it with characteristic brevity, "I did one day in Mike McCartney's class and then I thought fuck this and went over the railings."

Tune In - The Beatles: All These Years Vol 1 by Mark Lewisohn, page 188

[captain-sodapop]

So, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking (uh-oh), and here’s the thing:

Most people agree that The Outsiders takes place in either 1965 or 1966.  I always went with ‘66, and I’m too entrenched in that to think otherwise now, but I can see ‘65, too.  Anyways, so it’s probably one of those two years.  Now, if you know me, you know I’m a big Beatles fan, and I’m even taking an entire college course about them (almost unnecessarily for me, but it’s fun, okay?), so I kinda like to poke fun at the greasers for this quote:

“They liked the Beatles and thought Elvis Presley was out, and we thought the Beatles were rank and that Elvis was tuff, but that seemed the only difference to me.”

I mean - okay.  Okay.  Let’s start with the two most obvious things:

1. The Beatles are not rank.

2. Elvis was definitely out.  He had been drafted at the end of the 1950s, and that was a part of the death of that era of rock, along with the death of Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis being blacklisted as a pervert and Chuck Berry going to jail...it was the end of an era, and the gang would have been kids when that was happening, middle school-aged at the oldest, compared to say...John Lennon being about eighteen.  Ponyboy especially would have been very young when Buddy Holly died. 

So what did that leave them with between 1958 and when The Beatles came in 1964?  Well, obviously, people still kept listening to that rock music from the fifties, which I guess that the gang was still listening to the stuff they remembered from when they were kids, because I can’t exactly imagine Dallas Winston doing the Twist, or Steve voluntarily listening to The Skyliners.  There’s Hank Williams, but Ponyboy and Dally hate his music, he had been dead since 1953, and implied that liking his music made you out of touch (”He [Buck Merill] was out of it.  He dug Hank Williams - how gross can you get?”)  But country and western music would have been - and is - huge in Oklahoma.  It was the days of the Grand Ole Opry, which was popular nationwide.  Then there’s the folk movement, which by the time of the book/movie had morphed into the folk-rock movement thanks to Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Simon and Garfunkel, etc.  But that came a little after The Beatles; the folk movement pre-1964 would have mostly been Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Pete Seeger, and the Kingston Trio.  Those guys.  However, folk music was kind of an “educated” genre, and probably wouldn’t have appealed to a bunch of young guys living on the wrong side of the tracks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, even though the father of folk music - Woody Guthrie - was an Okie himself.  Then there was obviously still guys like Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, and Dean Martin, who even socs would view as being “parent music,” so they’re out at the jump.

So they don’t like classic crooners.  The gang probably didn’t get the appeal of folk music.  At least a couple of them don’t seem to be too into country.  Probably weren’t into new pop and dance music.  And they don’t like The Beatles.  So, yeah, I guess the gang and other greasers were hanging onto rockabilly and fifties rock, and I’d be interested in whether or not they might be into Motown/soul/blues (which would have been referred to, especially in the south, as “race music.”)  They were into that greaser music, but by the mid-sixties, greasers weren’t really a thing, ya know?  It was folkies and the pre-hippie era, which would reach it’s peak in the late sixties, so not too long after the book (they get mentioned in That Was Then, This Is Now, which is in the same universe and even has Ponyboy in it).  

Here’s what I’m getting at: from what we can get from Pony’s telling of the world around him, he and his friends aren’t into modern music.  They’re behind the times.  Just by saying in 1965/66 that he and his friends are still into Elvis while the socs are into The Beatles almost makes them anachronistic.  Now, obviously this book was written during that time period, so this is probably an accurate reflection of the kids in Tulsa at that time, which makes this even more interesting.  The Beatles have proven to be a timeless band for anybody from all walks of life, cultural leaders of the decade.  Parents didn’t like them in much the same way they didn’t like Elvis.  They were the rebellious choice!

Until the Rolling Stones got big.

Stones fans were the real rebels.  The Beatles were tame in comparison.  I can see the gang getting into them completely.  But The Beatles came first, and that still leaves the gang in a lag, and there are a few things that absolutely baffle me.  

It’s probably my bias showing through, but let’s say the book takes place in 1965.  It’s also been widely agreed upon that it takes place in the fall, so in the fall of 1965, Rubber Soul hadn’t been released yet, but there was still Please Please Me, With The Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night, and Beatles for Sale.  All of those albums have pop, Motown, soul, and blues music on them.  Something for everybody, and a great movie to boot.  That is already a lot of great, innovative music, and it’s not even the group’s peak of innovation.  It would be a little weird, in the fall of 1965, to not like The Beatles.  Not liking The Beatles didn’t make you cool back then (which I guess is another thing that makes the greasers outcasts.  A trivial thing, but also kinda not.  We’ll return to that in a minute.)

Now, let’s imagine the book takes place in the fall of 1966.  Not only did you have all the albums I just listed, but Help!, with the accompanying movie, Rubber Soul, and Revolver.  Fucking Rubber Soul and Revolver!  Both of which have allusions and overt references to drug use, politics, and spirituality.  They were vastly influential and rebellious and so, so different than anything else on the radio that by the fall of 1966, if you didn’t like The Beatles by then, it really was a matter of what the fuck is wrong with you?  By the fall of 1966, Elvis and his contemporaries were indeed an influence and important, a gateway for these guys, but we were two years away from his comeback.  He wasn’t relevant.  Preferring him over The Beatles and the rest of the bands from Britain just wasn’t the thing to do.

To me, all of this is so revealing.  It’s a tiny detail, a throwaway comment made by Ponyboy early in the book as being the only difference he could see between greasers and socs, but it tells us so much.  It is yet another thing that alienates Ponyboy, his friends, and the guys on his side of town from the upper class in Tulsa.  To like The Beatles would probably mean conformity to them, which is such a surface-level take on them, but to them, the guys that you see on Ed Sullivan singing songs from The Music Man in suits probably don’t seem very rock-and-roll at first.  In fact, the way they dressed was probably extremely off-putting for blue-collar guys like the Curtis brothers and Two-Bit Mathews (who had sideburns before John, Paul, George, and Ringo decided they were cool ;).  Their dislike makes them look stuck in the past and the socs look progressive, when really the socs are just keeping up with the times (which were admittedly progressive, so culturally, the socs were “with it”, which is a commodity of the upper class, to be educated culturally.  But The Beatles were pretty accessible, let’s not pretend they weren’t.)  They have made a judgement based on appearances and surface level stuff, the very same thing they accuse the socs of doing to them.  

With just this one comment about musical preferences, we see a reflection of the situation around them.  They were digging in their heels.  The socs are certainly just as guilty of their part in the class war, but in my eyes, this one line shows the greasers as the ones least willing to budge, stuck in their ways, stuck in the past.  I mean, who later approaches them to organize a rumble to resolve this issue once and for all?  Cherry and the rest of the socs.  It also reveals them as being left behind.  The world around them is moving forward without them, and in order to catch up, they’re going to have to face their adversaries.  But what happens when you do that?  The rumble victory didn’t mean as much as they thought it would.  Did things cool off?  Yes.  But I don’t think that has anything to do with winning the rumble.  I think it has more to do with everybody realizing that things should have never gotten to that point.  Then everything just sort of awkwardly comes to a point where you look around and decide it’s time to grow up and put your differences aside as best you can.  You grow up.  

But the greasers are still lower class.  They can’t change that.  It doesn’t matter that they won, just like Randy, with his semi-Beatle haircut, predicted.  They’ve grown up, and they can see now that winning the battle doesn’t mean they’ve won the war, and they likely never will.  

So what do you do?  

Well, you pick yourself up.  You realize they’re well-off and you’re poor, and those things are hard to change, are systematic, so what’s the point in the grudge?  It’s exhausting, anyways.  You stop putting grease in your hair.  You take off the leather jackets.  You probably keep your switchblade, but as a tool, not a threat - in fact, you’re thinking a multi-tool might be more practical.  You look around and think it might be better to identify as just an Okie - everybody in Oklahoma is an Okie, anyways.  You realize Elvis isn’t cool anymore.  You get in your old pickup, you turn on the radio, and you don’t change the station when Tomorrow Never Knows comes on.

You start liking The Beatles.

[ecoamerica]

Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc

The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!

[idasessions]

Famous Muses & Groupies in Rock Music Pt. 13

MUSE: Jane Asher

Jane was born on April 5th, 1946 in Willesden, England to a father who was a medical author and a mother who was a performing arts professor. Jane and her siblings, Peter and Claire, grew up as child performers in UK stage, film and TV programs. In between her acting jobs, Jane was educated at all-girls prep schools in London. Since age 5, Jane has had a lifelong, impressive career with popular films like The Masque of the Red Death (1964), Alfie (1966), The Buttercup Chain (1970), Deep End (1971), and Death at a Funeral (2007); as well as the mini-series “Brideshead Revisited” (1981). She portrayed Juliet in ‘Romeo & Juliet’ during a 1967 US repertory tour; and has published a handful of novels and cookbooks. Since 1971, Jane’s been with husband, animator Gerald Scarfe and has three children with him.

Now let me tell you a little story on how Jane lowkey became the most influential rock music muse of all time. On April 18th, 1963, Jane met the Beatles after a radio broadcast performance at Royal Albert Hall, where she appeared for a photo op for the zine Radio Times. Apparently when the band first saw Jane, all the members asked her out (I guess John and Ringo forgot they weren’t available, lol), but she had eyes for the cute one: Paul McCartney. The 17-year-old actress and 20-year-old music star hit it off right away and began dating instantly. By Christmas, Paul was living at Jane’s family’s house as her brother’s roommate until mid-1966, when Paul and Jane got their own house. Paul eventually proposed on December 4th, 1967. Supposedly back in the day, Beatle fangirls were most envious of Jane and Pattie Boyd (George’s first wife). Though most think of Pattie as the quintessential Beatle muse, about 50% of the songs she inspired were actually written after the band broke up. Jane on the other hand, quite possibly inspired more Beatles tunes than any other lady.

Although Paul and Jane looked like the perfect couple in magazines and news footage, the young pair were also a bit messy off camera. The two did indeed have a romantic courtship, but as is usually the case, things are ~different in relationships with musicians. By the time the sexual revolution was breaking through in 1965, Paul was a huge pothead, and was also experimenting with acid and coke by 1967. This didn’t really mesh well with Jane, who was rather straight-laced and didn’t care about trying drugs. In Marianne Faithfull’s 1994 memoir, Faithfull, the pop singer mentions going to a party at Paul & Jane’s house during the Summer of Love. She remembers Paul opening a kitchen window, and then Jane closing it, and the two passive-aggressively repeating the act throughout the night. There was also the issue of Paul being the most fangirled and lusted after dude in the British Invasion, and boy did he take full advantage of it with sidechicks like Maggie McGivern and Francie Schwartz.

Things seemed to be overall fine after Paul and Jane got engaged; and when Jane accompanied the Beatles and their wives on a famous trip to Rishikesh, India for a meditation retreat in spring 1968. But the legend goes that by summer of that same year, Jane returned home from a film shoot to find Paul and Francie in their bedroom together. Jane literally dumped him on the spot and drove away without second thought. While this is legit one of the crappiest ways for an engagement to end, Francie still wasn’t the sole reason Paul and Jane broke up. Besides everything else already covered in the previous paragraph, Paul was also hoping for a wife who would be willing to be a housewife fulltime. Jane was constantly insistent on keeping her career even if she started a family (you go, girl).

Now on to the most important impact of this Beatle union: the songs. Jane has a dozen timeless songs written about her, and the funny thing is, she really couldn’t care less, lol. She vowed to move on and never publicly speak about Paul after she left him and she’s kept her promise 50 years on. But the songs remain iconic and include

‘All My Loving’

‘And I Love Her’

‘Things We Said Today’

‘She’s a Woman’ [underrated]

‘Every Little Thing’

‘What You’re Doing’

‘Tell Me What You See’

‘We Can Work It Out’

‘You Won’t See Me’

‘I’m Looking Through You’

‘Here, There and Everywhere’  ← the magnum opus

‘For No One’ [omg, so good]

Jane inspired pop songs, love songs, break-up songs, slow songs, fast songs, etc. Even if she didn’t become Macca’s soulmate like a lovely Linda ultimately did, she arguably got the best songs out of him and can be forever secretly smug. But then again, is it really flattering to hear these tunes everywhere when they were written by an ex who was always getting high with his mates and fooling around with a bagillion groupies on the road? All I know is if I inspired a ballad like ‘Here, There and Everywhere,’ I would be bragging about that ‘til the day I die.

[theresas-sound-world-blog]

Theresa’s Sound World Interview

Person: Rosie Varela

Bands: EEP/ The Rosie Varela Project

Genre/s: Dreampop/Shoegaze/Indie

In my interview, I talk to Rosie Varela of US Dreampop Shoegaze band EEP and The Rosie Varela Project about music, inspirations, her music projects, the modern music industry and...Star Trek! ⭐️

❓When did you first feel the impulse to create music and why?

🅰️I wrote my first song around 1975, when I was 8 years old. I was inspired after watching “My Fair Lady.” I was the youngest child of five and a latchkey kid, so I was alone after school every day. I turned to singing and writing little songs to amuse and comfort myself. I had a little tape recorder I used to record little tunes with my vocals or on my flute.

Picking up guitar at 30 was an epiphany - I suddenly had a way to really write fully formed songs. And once I started, it felt like a flood of songs came pouring out. It still feels that way.

❓Can you name the top ten inspirations for your music? It can be anything, bands, songs, albums, books, poems, art, films, people...

🅰️1. AM/FM radio and shows like American Bandstand, Soul Train, and The Midnight Special.

2. My older brothers’ huge record collection that covered jazz, blues, oldies, rock, and latin music.

3. When I was a kid, I was inspired by The Beatles, Steely Dan, ELO, Fleetwood Mac, Tower of Power, Tom Petty, Motown, and Blondie.

4. Movies that have a focus on music - Woodstock, Blues Brothers, A Hard Day’s Night.

5. My first concert - Carlos Santana at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley. A powerful and spiritual experience.

6. Raymond Carver’s short stories. Minimal and intense slices of life.

7. Movies that put characters in morally challenging situations like Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, The Big Lebowski, and Goodfellas.

8. In my late teens and 20s, I was inspired by the recordings of bands and artists like REM, Bowie, Talking Heads, and Peter Gabriel.

9. The Verve awakened me to what I call Proto Shoegaze. The textures and layers of “A Storm In Heaven.” And first wave Shoegaze bands like Slowdive, MBV, Ride, Catherine Wheel, and Lush.

10. The art and lives of Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keefe. Their independent and unapologetic dedication to their art has inspired me to do the same.

❓You’re known for your band EEP and more recently, your solo material in the form of the Rosie Varela Project, but can you say what you were doing before musically?

🅰️I think I spent from age 18-51 in a bit of a haze - working, raising my son, writing music in my spare moments, playing in cover bands here and there, and trying to find my voice as a songwriter. So I played every night in my living room and wrote a lot of songs that didn’t sound like me. It seems like I only recently found my voice.

So I’m a very late bloomer!

❓ Can you tell me a bit about how EEP got together?

🅰️I had been helping some musicians in El Paso to record their music, and through that met Ross and Sebastian of Brainville Studio. Because we worked so well together, we formed an experimental synth-based project called Something Something Sound System.

One day I wrote a shoegaze song for my husband that just came out of nowhere (in Spanish to boot!) and I recorded the whole demo at home in 2 hours.

“Hogar” was the first song I had ever written in Spanish. It felt really easy, fluid, natural, and everything just clicked into place organically. My husband Justin really loved it and encouraged me to talk to Ross about recording it as a one-off single. Ross, Seb and I started writing more songs and eventually I asked Serge and Lawrence to join us. The combination of our influences and ages made for a really great band dynamic.

❓How different is it working on a solo project without your bandmates?

🅰️The RVP is basically me taking songs I’ve written that don’t make it into the EEP catalog, in varied genres, and having fun producing them through a gazey lens alongside some of my friends in music. The big difference is I am learning how to produce my own music for the first time. My goal is to release 4 singles this year while I work on my 2022 solo album and so far it’s going well!

❓Have you found that Lockdown/ The Pandemic has impacted on you positively or negatively in a creative sense? Why do think this is?

🅰️For me, the pandemic has affected me positively. It forced me to adapt, modify, and accept a whole new model in making music. Songwriting and remote recording collaborations have had to become a bigger priority than rehearsing and playing live shows. I think EEP and I have pivoted pretty well in that aspect.

❓ I sometimes feel that although financially a lot of bands are struggling owing to miserly streaming platform revenue and (at the moment) no tours, getting music to an audience is easier than it was say, in the 1990s. It seems that social media is key. Have you any tips for bands/artists starting out in the modern music industry ?

🅰️I think figuring out your musical WHY is super important at the start. And every band member’s answer to that will build the collective creative effort and also the band’s calling card, so to speak.

Decide on your short-term and long-term goals and figure what you need to achieve each one.

Assess how each band member can contribute to them and make sure everyone buys in on those goals. If not financially, then with their creativity and skills.

Don’t be in a hurry and don’t be desperate about your music. If it takes a year to save up the budget you need to record your album, save and focus on getting your music ready. Be patient and actually have a solid release plan. I see some bands who release music quickly and often without any marketing plan and it’s sad to see these releases come and go with very little coverage or sales.

Don’t expect to make any profit from your music. Breaking even financially is a great goal to shoot for instead.

It’s important for DIY bands to set realistic benchmarks of success and remain humble about them. The myth of an album “blowing up” to huge financial gain is just that. A myth. It is extremely rare. Instead, think about different kinds of specific goals - how many Bandcamp followers, how many pre-order sales, etc. Make those goals achievable.

Our goal for EEP was to simply have 30 fans who would buy our music and to know our fans by name and cultivate real friendships. I’m happy to say we surpassed that number by a bit.

Use your social platforms to engage, inform, and have fun. Ask for help if you need it from people who you feel have figured it out. We use our social platform to geek out about Shoegaze bands we love, share our stories, and share the behind the scenes of our making music. We love to showcase our peers, and ask our followers about what they like so that we get to know them better.

And always, support those sho support you whenever you can.

❓What are your plans from a musical point of view next? Have you any pipe-dreams for post-lockdown?

🅰️For The RVP, I want to challenge myself musically by interpreting non-Shoegaze songs I’ve written through a Dream Pop and Shoegaze lens. Because I have so many different kinds of songs, it will either be really good or incredibly bad!! I’m willing to take that risk.

For EEP, the pipe dream is to tour the US and the UK when things stabilize and travel is possible. For now, our short-term dream is just to be able to record and rehearse together.

Next, just for fun...

❓Who is your favourite Beatle and why? For example, I like Ringo Star the best, because of his laid back man-of-the-people attitude, his sense of humour and ability not to take himself seriously, namely voicing Thomas the Tank Engine. Musically, in terms of personality, or both, which member of the Fab Four do you sway to the most?

🅰️I think lyrically John Lennon is definitely my favorite. There is a spirit of rebellion, humor, and absurdity in how he played with words and song structure, especially towards the end.

As a person, I identify with George Harrison the most. His curiosity and reverence for Indian music, philosophy, and using music to process the larger questions of life was a refreshing contrast to his bandmates’ style.

❓ I know, like me, you’re a Star Trek fan, so I couldn’t resist this one; Spock or Data and why?

🅰️I identify so much with Data for his quest to understand the different aspects and fullness of being human. I think that has driven a lot of my past and present interactions and relationships. He’s probably the most noble of characters in The Next Generation in his unflinching willingness to sacrifice himself for the needs of the many⭐️

🎼Below are links to Rosie’s latest single, ‘Low’ in her incarnation as The Rosie Varela Project, plus links to two Theresa’s Sound World reviews of music by Rosie’s band, EEP from last year ⭐️

🎧Listen to the single ‘Low’ by The Rosie Varela project: https://thervp.bandcamp.com/track/low

📚🎧: Read my 2020 review of the single ‘Hogar’ by EEP, including listening platform links to the track: https://www.facebook.com/116279076583978/posts/180288703516348/?d=n

📚🎧Read my 2020 review of the album, ‘Death of a Very Good Machine’ by EEP including listening platform links to the album: https://www.facebook.com/116279076583978/posts/198924518319433/?d=n

#MusicBlogger #MusicBlogs

#MusicWriter #MusicBlog #TSW #MusicReviews #TheresasSoundWorld #MusicReviewer #Shoegaze #Dreampop #Indie #AlternativeMusic #Writer #EEP #AlternativeMusicBlog #UK #IndieBlogger #TheRosieVarelaProject #UnderGroundMusic

[aion-rsa]

Do You Feel Like I Do? Review: Peter Frampton Lets Loose With a Killer Solo Memoir

https://ift.tt/3m41AiN

Just to count it off, Peter Frampton’s Do You Feel Like I Do? A Memoir is as much fun as hearing a talking box guitar solo for the first time. Live and with an audience, of course. Each of Frampton’s best-known albums, either with his bands like Humble Pie or in his solo career, are live records. He may also love the studio albums he made, but just like The Who, whose studio albums he loves, those records are a different breed from a live show. Frampton should know, one of the first gigs he ever got was touring as an opening act for The Who.

And, as much fun as they were to see on stage, even their live shows paled when compared to ducking bottle rockets Keith Moon and John Entwistle aimed into his motel windows between shows. Frampton had fun, and it comes across on the pages of Do You Feel Like I Do?

While still in the school era of the book, Frampton talks about going nuts when he first got to jump on a trampoline. He was the first in his class to do a somersault, and then a backwards somersault. It got him shoved into a crate, but it sounds like a blast. Almost as exciting as meeting a young David Jones at school. No, not the Monkee, the one who had to change his name because of the Monkees: David Bowie, who remembered seeing Frampton in a band on TV before he had a hit. 

Bowie was a few years older than Frampton and his recollection of seeing the young guitarist he jammed with outside his favorite teacher’s office was “what’s he doing on TV? He should be in school.” Frampton’s father, the teacher Bowie loitered with, initially agreed. Frampton left school early to go pro as a musician. Years later, when Frampton brought his parents backstage to a Bowie concert, his father disappeared with the Thin White Duke. The stories make you grin. They are exactly the kind of rock and roll parables we want to hear from musicians.

That’s not to say Frampton doesn’t foist some stories we would never have expected. Like one about his father in the war, the details of which you have to read to believe. It’s not the kind of thing you want to know happens in reality. But you won’t stop reading it, not even if you’re just looking for the rock and roll gossip. There are a few of these stories thrown in, and Frampton is upfront about his drinking and drugging. He even explains why it took him so long to take his first toke. The very smell of some of the shit Steve Marriott smoked made him want to throw up. That didn’t stop him from getting high though. Nonetheless, the book doesn’t dwell in sadness.

It dwells on guitars, and jubilantly. Frampton’s favorite guitar, the Phenix, a modified 1954 Gibson Les Paul Black Beauty with the same three-humbucking-pickup configuration as the guitarist in Smokey Robinson’s Miracles, gets a book in itself. The ode of the Phenix could be a miniseries. Guitarists would watch. But that’s not the only guitar that the mostly monogamous Frampton fingered. He talks about seeing the set list still taped on the back of John Lennon’s red Rickenbacker when he played for Harry Nilsson. He was the first person to touch the guitar since whatever show the set list fit.

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Frampton’s journey through the guitar is as interesting as his trek through life. Oh, and just hearing how everyone in Humble Pie was a Star Trek fan is a giggle, especially as they discuss Spock’s ears. But Frampton’s mission to seek out new sounds led him through from The Shadows to Django Reinhardt, through George Benson, and back to Kenny Burrell, giving him an arsenal of tonalities Eric Clapton didn’t touch. Everyone wanted to be Clapton, except Frampton who makes it clear he wanted his guitar sound to be uniquely his. He also talks about drums and filling in for drummers who don’t show. He talks about the balls of covering Stevie Wonder songs. He makes it all sound like a dream.

Great musicians refer to respected peers as motherfuckers, and the one thing anyone who’s ever pushed a beat or a melody out of their fingers or throat will agree on is Peter Frampton was one lucky motherfucker. He could play, he took in everything he heard so that he could do whatever it was he wasn’t hearing from other guitarists and made it his own. But he had the good fortune to play with the best, and at the earliest of ages. Before he could even get into clubs he was playing them. Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones asked Frampton’s mother permission so he could play. He didn’t ask permission to get Frampton laid though, but when the teenaged guitar wiz came home with crabs, his mother took it in stride. Musicians, it’s an occupational hazard.

Frampton released Frampton Comes Alive! nearly 45 years ago. It’s always been thought that the album made him a pinup. He’s fought this all his career, since he was named the “Face of 1968” as an 18-year old guitarist/singer for the rock-poppy band the Herd. Sure, he got laughed at a few times for one-sleeved shirts with frills on the crotch, long before he put on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band uniforms for an ill-advised movie where the Bee Gees also carried that weight. Frampton didn’t want to be Vivien Leigh, so beautiful you forget what a phenomenal actress she is.

Peter is a musician, and a lot of artists owe him a big debt, not only because of his fretwork influence. He gleefully recounts Dr. John telling him how he got out of jail on a drug charge with the money he earned when Frampton recorded his song “I Walk on Gilded Splinters.” Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones thanked Frampton for including “Jumping Jack Flash” on the gazillion-seller Frampton Comes Alive! He bought a house with the royalties.

As sad as the circumstances, it is a joy to hear how other rock stars come to collect. Frampton recalls when his career was in a slump and he got a phone call from Pete Townshend. The Who’s guitarist and songwriter was sick of touring and asked Frampton to take his place, before even consulting Roger Daltrey. Frampton says he told Townshend he couldn’t fill his shoes, but think of the fun Frampton had on the trampoline. Townshend was known as “Bouncy” in the “Meaty,” “Beaty” “Big” and “Bouncy” quartet. He jumped higher than Daltrey’s shoulders, often in self-defense to get away from the swinging mic, but still. Frampton could have made the leap.

The era of Humble Pie, which also included ex-Spooky Tooth bassist Greg Ridley and drummer Jerry Shirley, is also where producer Frampton really gets to work with Glyn Johns. They’d had a happy history, and it continues through the Humble Pie albums Rock On and Rockin’ the Fillmore, which made them huge when it came out in the fall of 1971. So big, Frampton had to jump ship onto a solo career before he’d never be able to get out.

Frampton keeps the telling light, but is absolutely candid. He never thought he could be as good a singer as Steve Marriott, who had been in the Small Faces, but at least he’d know enough not to balk at opening Jimi Hendrix on his first American tour. Frampton also explains how he went from one Johns brother to another as he embarked on his solo career.

Oh, and the book’s got mob stories. Not quite as heavy as the ones surrounding Led Zeppelin, who Frampton credits with a sonic boom as great as the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper, but suspenseful nonetheless. His manager Dee Anthony has a meeting with Genovese family soldier Joey Pagano in front of Frampton, and when the rock star became a pop idol, he was kept high, happy and distracted. Frampton had no idea he was totally bankrupt until the movie Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band bombed at the box office. The only reason Frampton did Sgt Pepper was because his manager said Paul McCartney would be in it.

Frampton can’t quite say enough about his school chum Bowie. Not only did Frampton credit the older musician with a few needed pushes, gigs, and music store jobs when he was coming up, but Bowie reenergized Frampton when he was running out of steam. In 1987 Frampton played guitar on Bowie’s Glass Spider world tour. Two years later, Frampton comes back with a vengeance, which happens, as he says, on the album title When All the Pieces Fit.

Many will see this book as an example of rock stardom gone wrong. But as a reader, it really is what we want to hear, except for the inflammatory muscle disease, Inclusion-Body Myositis, which threatens to end his career as a live performer.

Frampton’s still working, and the book, co-written with Alan Light, is as happy to say it as fans will be to read it. But more than fans, most musicians should read this, not because of any cautionary tale titillation. Because of his explanation of how he found his sound, the horns Frampton listens to, the piano parts he plays and appreciates in others. Yes, the most fun are stories like having a Beatle (Ringo Starr), an honorary Beatle (Billy Preston), and a long-time Beatle artist and an alternative bassist (Klaus Vorman) backing him at a music pitch; or being told by George Harrison he’d like to hear him on every track. But for musicians, Do You Feel Like I Do? rocks loudest when he speaks about what he’s playing. Imagine it coming out of a talk box. It’s that enjoyable.

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Do You Feel Like I Do? hits bookshelves on Oct. 20, from Hachette Books.

The post Do You Feel Like I Do? Review: Peter Frampton Lets Loose With a Killer Solo Memoir appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[amoralto]

Quotes for curious contemplation: John on distinguishing between best friends and partners, creative and romantic, male and female. (a compilation in progress)

(Note: I’ve had this sitting in my drafts for an age and have frankly forgotten why I even started it, but it was probably the product of some vagrant thoughts and some amused despair/despairing amusement at John Being Awkward About The Distinction (Or Lack Thereof) Between Who You Collaborate With And Who You Have Romantic And Sexual Feelings For And Whether They’re Female (Or Decidedly Not). So in lieu of a succinct and self-reflexive #tag that would suitably express this, here’s a compilation post of sorts! For now. I did not include quotes with comparisons between partnerships and marriages or more general comparisons between Yoko and Paul or relevant thoughts about love and loss, because we’d be here for days, and anyway, this post is meant to be a bit specific and silly.)

It’s just handy to fuck your best friend. That’s what it is. And once I resolved the fact that it was a woman as well, it’s all right. We go through the trauma of life and death every day so it’s not so much of a worry about what sex we are anymore.

— John Lennon, interview w/ Jonathan Cott for Rolling Stone: Yoko Ono and her sixteen-track voice. (March 18th, 1971)

I just realized that [Yoko] knew everything I knew, and more, probably, and it was coming out of a woman’s head. It just sort of bowled me over, you know? And it was like finding gold or something. To find somebody that you can go and get pissed with, and have exactly the same relationship as any mate in Liverpool you’d ever had, but also you could go to bed with him, and it could stroke your head when you felt tired, or sick, or depressed. It could also be Mother. And obviously, that’s what the male-female – you know, you could take those roles with each other.

— John Lennon, interview w/ Peter McCabe and Robert D. Schonfeld c/o Peter McCabe and Robert D. Schonfeld, John Lennon: For The Record. (September 5th, 1971)

Still, while the Lennon and McCartney tiff made for good press, even Lennon admitted (to a Syracuse University audience, on the day of the [Imagine] album’s release), that ‘How Do You Sleep?’ was “an outburst. Things are still the same between us. He was and still is my closest friend, except for Yoko.”

— John Lennon, c/o Tom Zito, Washington Post: Peace, love, art and Yoko. (October 9th, 1971) c/o Kenneth Womack, The Cambridge Companion to The Beatles. (2009)

JOHN: Well, [‘How Do You Sleep’]’s an answer, you know? Paul, uh, personally doesn’t feel as though I insulted him or anything. ’Cause I had dinner with him last week, and he was quite happy.

YOKO: They were friends, you know, and they were swearing at each other or, you know. It’s nothing.

JOHN: If I can’t have a fight with my best friend, I don’t know who I can have a fight with. 

DOUGLAS: Is he your best friend? Paul?

JOHN: I guess... in the male sex, he – he was. I don’t know about now, because I don’t see much of him.

— John Lennon, interview w/ Mike Douglas on The Mike Douglas Show. (February 12th, 1972) 

JOHN: It’s a plus, it’s not a minus. The plus is that your best friend, also, can hold you without… I mean, I’m not a homosexual, or we could have had a homosexual relationship and maybe that would have satisfied it, with working with other male artists. [faltering] An artist – it’s more – it’s much better to be working with another artist of the same energy, and that’s why there’s always been Beatles or Marx Brothers or men, together. Because it’s alright for them to work together or whatever it is. It’s the same except that we sleep together, you know? I mean, not counting love and all the things on the side, just as a working relationship with her, it has all the benefits of working with another male artist and all the joint inspiration, and then we can hold hands too, right?

SHEVEY: But Yoko is a very independent person. Isn’t it— [inaudible]

JOHN: Sure, and so were the men I worked with. The only difference is she’s female.

SHEVEY: But you didn’t find it difficult to make that transition?

JOHN: Oh yeah. I mean, it took me four years. I’m still not – I’m still only coming through it, you know.

— John Lennon, interview w/ Sandra Shevey. (Mid-June?, 1972)

I’ve only selected to work with – for more than a one night stand, say with an odd thing with [David] Bowie, or an odd thing with Elton [John], or anybody who was hanging around – two people. Paul McCartney, and Yoko Ono. Okay? I brought Paul into the original group, The Quarrymen, he brought George in, and George brought Ringo in. I had a say in whether they did join or not, but the only initial move I ever made was bringing Paul McCartney into the group. The second person of that much interest to me as an artist, and somebody who I could work with, was Yoko Ono.

— John Lennon, interview w/ Jonathan Cott for Rolling Stone. (December 5th, 1980)

I was saying to somebody the other day, “There’s only two artists I’ve ever worked with for more than a one night stand, as it were. That’s Paul McCartney, and Yoko Ono.” And I think that’s a pretty damned good choice! [...] Now George came through Paul, and Ringo came through George, although of course I had a say in where they came from. But the only – the person I actually picked as my partner, who I’d recognised had talent, and I could get on with, was Paul.

Now, twelve or however many years later, I met Yoko, I had the same feeling. It was a different feel, but I had the same feeling. So I think as a talent scout, I’ve done pretty damn well!

— John Lennon, interview w/ Dave Sholin for RKO Radio. (December 8th, 1980)

After all, we’re presenting ourselves as a couple, and to work with your best friend is a joy, and I don’t intend to stop it. [...] I’ve had the boyhood thing of being the ‘Elvis’ and doing my thing and getting my spot on the show. Now I want to be with my best friend – my best friend is my wife. Who could ask for anything more?

— John Lennon, interview w/ Dave Sholin for RKO Radio. (December 8th, 1980)

[ecoamerica]

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

[dulwichdiverter]

From sitcoms to Shakespeare

BY MARK BRYANT

Best known as the dapper but rather snooty Captain Peacock in the long-running BBC TV sitcom, Are You Being Served? which aired from 1972 to 1985, Frank Thornton was born in Dulwich, attended Alleyn’s School and carved out a distinguished career in theatre and film that spanned more than seven decades.

Born Frank Thornton Ball on January 15, 1921, his father William Ernest Ball was a bank clerk who was also the organist at St Stephen’s Church on College Road near Sydenham Hill Station. His mother was Rosina Mary Thornton, the daughter of Joseph Thornton, a musician.

Both of Frank’s parents lived locally. At the time of their marriage, in April 1912 (at the Emmanuel Congregational Church on Barry Road in East Dulwich), William Ball was living in Dulwich Village with his own parents at “Charnwood” – a large house on the south side of Court Lane immediately next to the entrance to Dulwich Park and opposite Eynella Road. The family had previously lived at 244 Barry Road.

Frank’s mother Rosina, a music teacher, was then living in East Dulwich with her parents at 349 Lordship Lane, on the corner of Crystal Palace Road and opposite what is now the Plough Cafe near Sainsbury’s Local and Dulwich Library.

According to the electoral rolls, in 1920, shortly before Frank was born, his parents were living at 127 Barry Road. However, in 1923, when his older brother John joined Alleyn’s School, John’s home address was given as 347 Lordship Lane, next door to his maternal grandparents.

Like his father, his two paternal uncles, his older brother John and his two younger brothers Edmund and Alan, Frank was educated at Alleyn’s, where he was a pupil from 1932-37.

Here he was a contemporary of Kenneth Spring OBE, who later became an art teacher at Alleyn’s and co-founded the National Youth Theatre; the composer and conductor John Lanchbery OBE; and the distinguished civil servant Sir Philip Woodfield.

As a child Frank described himself as “a bit of a loner, not one of the lads. I think I was probably a bit of a prig because I seem to have been stuck with this supercilious persona for as long as I can remember.”

While he was at Alleyn’s the family lived at 149a Devonshire Road in Forest Hill and then, from 1935, at 11 Zenoria Street in East Dulwich, which runs off Lordship Lane near Goose Green.

Though Frank had appeared in school performances of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado and The Yeomen of the Guard (playing cello in the orchestra), and was keen to become an actor from a young age, his father insisted that he should first get a “proper” job.

As a result, after leaving Alleyn’s he worked as a clerk for an insurance company, like his brother John, while taking evening classes in acting at the London School of Dramatic Art on Bute Street in South Kensington. After two years, he was offered a place as a full-time day student and managed to persuade his father to finance the course.

Frank was 18 when the Second World War broke out and he and his fellow students were evacuated to Oxfordshire. Shortly thereafter he landed his first professional acting job in a touring production in Ireland of Terence Rattigan’s comic play French Without Tears.

In 1941 he returned to London where he worked for the famous actor-manager Sir Donald Wolfit, who had reopened the Strand Theatre to stage lunchtime productions of abridged versions of Shakespeare plays.

In one of these, Richard III in January 1942, Wolfit played King Richard, Frank was Sir William Catesby and Eric Maxon, who was born in Balham, was Edward IV. It was while Frank was playing Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice for Wolfit that he met his future wife, the actress Beryl Evans – who had been cast as a page.

In 1942 he had a small part in John Gielgud’s acclaimed production of Macbeth at the Piccadilly Theatre. Gielgud played the starring role and also directed.

The same year Frank appeared as Corporal Wiggy Jones in the first production of Terence Rattigan’s RAF play, Flare Path, at the Apollo Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue. Its original cast included a number of fellow south Londoners – Catford-born Leslie Dwyer, Tooting-born George Cole and Kathleen Harrison, who had been to school in Clapham and whose father was borough engineer for Southwark.

In 1943, Frank was conscripted into the RAF and after training as a navigator, he eventually joined the Air Ministry’s Entertainment Unit.

As he later said: “At the end of the war I was redundant aircrew doing various jobs waiting to be demobbed, and I ended up in the Air Ministry Entertainment Unit which ran the RAF gang shows. I had to go round and watch all the shows, meeting all the participants...”

These included a number of airmen who later became celebrated actors and comedians, such as Peter Sellers, Tony Hancock and Dick Emery.

On June 1, 1945 Frank was promoted to the post of flying officer and got married four days later. He and Beryl had a daughter, the TV producer and curator of the Eden Valley Museum, Jane Thornton Higgs MBE.

After he was demobbed in 1947 he joined a repertory company. During the 1950s he continued to work on the stage and also began appearing in films and on television.

In November 1950 he made his TV debut in The Secret Sharer, part of the BBC drama series Sunday Night Theatre. Then in 1953 he was cast as a barman in The Silent Witness, an episode of the television series Scotland Yard, which was hosted by Edgar Lustgarten.

His first credited film role was as Inspector Finch in Radio Cab Murder (1954), starring Jimmy Hanley. He went on to appear in more than 60 films.

In November 1957 he starred as PC Cox in an episode of the BBC’s Dixon of Dock Green, written by Ted Willis, whose granddaughter, TV producer Beth Willis, went to JAGS in Dulwich. Then in January 1959 he appeared in ITV’s new swashbuckling series The Adventures of William Tell, which began in 1958 and starred Conrad Phillips as the legendary Swiss rebel.

Frank’s fellow actors in his first episode included Wilfrid Brambell, with whom he would later appear in Steptoe and Son (five episodes, 1962-65) and in the film, Steptoe and Son Ride Again in 1973.

Also in 1959 he was cast in nine episodes of the ATV drama series The Four Just Men, based on a story by Edgar Wallace, who had been at school in Peckham.

In 1961 he appeared in a number of classic television series. These included Danger Man, The Avengers, The Rag Trade and Michael Bentine’s comedy It’s a Square World, in which he was a regular cast member.

He also appeared in Hancock’s Half Hour – notably in The Blood Donor episode in 1961, but not the earlier episode The Alpine Holiday in 1957, in which Kenneth Williams played Snide, the yodelling champion of East Dulwich...

In 1964 he was cast as Commander Fairweather in the ITV comedy series HMS Paradise with Richard Caldicot, who had attended Dulwich College. It was a spin-off from BBC radio’s The Navy Lark, in which he also appeared briefly, and from 1966-68 he starred in another radio spin-off of the series, The Embassy Lark.

He also later appeared in The Goodies, Love Thy Neighbour and other comedy series as well as in shows hosted by such household names as Dick Emery, Benny Hill, Frankie Howerd, Harry Worth, Reg Varney, Tommy Cooper, Spike Milligan, Ronnie Corbett and Kenny Everett, on whose show he appeared dressed as a punk rocker.

Frank continued to be cast in films, mostly comedies, during the 1960s and 70s. These included Carry On Screaming! (his only appearance in the famous Carry On series), The Bedsitting Room (written by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (as the one-armed doorman of the Diogenes Club) and No Sex Please, We’re British, with Ronnie Corbett and Arthur Lowe.

In April 1964 he even played the part of a chauffeur in The Beatles’ film, A Hard Day’s Night, but sadly his appearance ended up on the cutting-room floor. However, he did have an uncredited role in cult film The Magic Christian (1969) which starred Peter Sellers and Beatles drummer Ringo Starr.

In addition he worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and at the age of 50 he played the part (singing) of Eeyore in a musical version of Winnie the Pooh at the Phoenix Theatre.

Ten years later in 1982 he played Sir Joseph Porter, First Lord of the Admiralty, in Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. Interviewed at the time he said: “I made my singing debut at 50, my operatic debut at 60 – and I shall look forward to dancing with the Royal Ballet at 70.”

However, despite a long and varied career, Frank will always be best remembered as Captain Stephen Peacock, the pompous floor manager of Grace Brothers’ department store in the popular BBC sitcom Are You Being Served? which in 1979 reached a peak viewing audience of 22 million.

He appeared in every episode from 1972 until 1985, starred in a 1977 film of the same name and later reprised the role in a TV sequel, Grace & Favour (1992-93). In the early episodes of Are You Being Served? he wore an Alleyn’s School tie.

While playing Captain Peacock he also took on other kinds of roles. In the 1980s these included the part of Sir John Tremayne in the hit London musical, Me and My Girl (starring Robert Lindsay) – which earned him an Olivier Award nomination – and acting with John Cleese in Jonathan Miller’s BBC television production of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. He also worked with Derek Nimmo’s touring theatre company in Asia and the Middle East.

In addition Frank had small roles in Emmerdale, Casualty and Holby City, appeared as Judge Geoffrey Parker-Knoll in comedian Julian Clary’s All Rise for Julian Clary, and from 1997 until the show ended in 2010 he played the retired policeman Herbert “Truly” Truelove in Last of the Summer Wine. He also appeared as Mr Burkett in Robert Altman’s Oscar-winning period drama Gosford Park, which came out in 2001.

His last film part was in the farce, Run for Your Wife, released in 2013, in which he was one of 80 celebrities to make a cameo appearance. This also had a Dulwich connection as it was written and co-directed by Ray Cooney, who had attended Alleyn’s School.

Frank died at his home in Barnes, west London, on March 16, 2013 aged 92.

 Dr Mark Bryant lives in East Dulwich, close to many of the childhood homes of Frank Thornton and his family, in particular Underhill Road where Frank Thornton’s uncle Alfred John Ball lived shortly before Frank was born