Voting begins on March 6.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
2016 Favorite Classic Movie Actress Tournament: Ravishing Redheads
The "Ravishing Redheads" division of the 1940s bracket. Collect your favorites, collect 'em all.
Voting begins on March 6.
Voting begins on March 6.
Friday, February 26, 2016
2016 Favorite Classic Movie Actress Tournament: 1940s Bracket
For the last four years, we here at the Monkey have been fortunate enough to host one of the brackets and we're back again. This year, it's the 1940s. Haven't done the '40s before, but it will feature some of my all-time favorites — Katharine Hepburn, Maureen O'Hara, Rosalind Russell and Jane Greer. Because she won the bracket last year, Greer Garson is the top seed.
Looking forward to it.
Here's a list of the match-ups:
RAVISHING REDHEADS
Greer Garson v. Esther Williams
Katharine Hepburn v. Joan Leslie
Maureen O'Hara v. Jeanne Crain
Rita Hayworth v. Ann Sheridan
CLASSY BROADS
Olivia de Havilland v. Jane Wyman
Ingrid Bergman v. Loretta Young
Vivien Leigh v. Wendy Hiller
Joan Fontaine v. Teresa Wright
FEMME FATALES
Gene Tierney v. Marie Windsor
Ava Gardner v. Joan Bennett
Lauren Bacall v. Claire Trevor
Ida Lupino v. Jane Greer
SUGAR AND SPICE
Rosalind Russell v. Paulette Goddard
Veronica Lake v. Joan Greenwood
Judy Garland v. Deanna Durbin
Betty Hutton v. Dorothy Lamour
I'll post some promotional banners and photos and whatnot in the coming days.
Voting begins on March 6.
Thursday, January 14, 2016
Thursday, January 7, 2016
Too, Too Funny
What endures for the critics and their lay associates, for aesthetes who live for the beauty and the pleasure of movies, is [George] Lucas’s directing—of two films, “Attack of the Clones” and, especially, “Revenge of the Sith.” If Lucas had done nothing else in his life, he’d have an honored place in my personal pantheon for that work.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Hilarious! Droll! Well-played, sir!
Oh, wait, I think he's serious ...
After twenty years, Katie-Bar-The-Door and I are letting our subscription to the New Yorker magazine lapse. Richard Brody's comments about George Lucas have nothing to do with it, but close enough.
By the way, we very much enjoyed the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens. It's fun the way they used to be fun nearly forty years ago now. That there are people, including George Lucas himself, who don't like it for that very reason is explanation enough for how the franchise ran seriously off the rails in the dismal prequel years.
Sunday, December 27, 2015
The Hateful Eight: Simply Great
After getting shutout of a sold-out performance Saturday, Katie-Bar-The-Door and I drove back down to the AFI-Silver on Sunday to see the eighth film of Quentin Tarantino's illustrious career, aptly titled The Hateful Eight. Tarantino resurrected the long-abandoned Panasonic Ultra 70 film format, the same ultra-widescreen process used on the 1959 classic Ben-Hur (indeed, the film was shot with the same lens used to shoot the chariot race), and for one week only has released it in 98 theaters as an old-school roadshow engagement, complete with overture, intermission and commemorative program.
Just the way they used to make 'em in my childhood.
The story is essentially a three-hour retelling of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None in a Wild West setting. A motley crew of bounty hunters, war veterans, cow punchers, an Englishman with a fascination for the niceties of public executions and a gallows-bound Jennifer Jason Leigh wind up riding out a blizzard in a strangely-deserted general store deep in the trackless nowhere of a very empty Wyoming. They sit by the fire, drink coffee and talk, talk, talk.
And then when the talking is through, the blood and the bullets start flying.
Stripped of the filigree, this is the plot of every Quentin Tarantino movie ever made.
If you know and love Tarantino the way we do, you know you're in for a banquet of ornate oratory, digressions and shaggy dog stories that for someone eager to get to the point I suppose must be maddening. But I'll tell you right out, I like listening to a man who likes to talk and The Hateful Eight stars some of the great talkers of screen history.
Kurt Russell is the bounty hunter determined to see Jennifer Jason Leigh swing, Samuel L. Jackson is another bounty hunter lugging three dead bodies and a letter from Abraham Lincoln through waist-deep snow, Walton Goggins as a would-be sheriff finally gets a big screen role worthy of his silver-tongued talents, Tim Roth as the hangman channels Eric Blore in Top Hat, Bruce Dern is a broken-down Civil War general, and Michael Madsen is a passing cowboy who says he's just headed home to visit his dear old ma.
For such an out-of-the-way place, this deserted cabin starts to seem a bit like Grand Central Terminal. With the emphasis on "terminal."
This is Tarantino, and you know at some point you're going to get a bloodbath worthy of a 1970s horror movie, violence so over-the-top it has an innocence about it, like something a demented preschooler might doodle in his hymn book during a long, boring church sermon. As I put it in an e-mail to my good pal Mister Muleboy, "it's a 3-hour gabfest ... directed by a drunk Sam Peckinpah right after he'd seen John Carpenter's The Thing."
High praise, indeed.
What rating do I give it? Why, an 8 of course.
(8 stars out of 10).
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Saturday, December 12, 2015
Sinatra At 100
The Capitol Years Box Set
(A terrific 3 cd collection from Sinatra's peak years, 1953-1961. 75 classic songs. A must for anyone with ears.)
Songs For Swingin' Lovers! (Unwilling to spring for more than one cd? This is best of the finger-snappin' Sinatra records, including such standards as "You Make Me Feel So Young" "Too Marvelous For Words" and what I consider the single best recording of his career, "I've Got You Under My Skin.")
Frank Sinatra Sings For Only The Lonely (Prefer your Sinatra sitting alone in a bar at 3 in the morning? This is the one to get, my favorite Sinatra album, featuring the classic suicide song "One For My Baby.")
Sinatra: Best Of The Best (Okay, so you really, really, really only want all the good stuff and you don't want to spend a lot for it. This has everything from "I've Got The World On A String" to "New York New York" and all the other hits in between. It's like $10. Go for it and feel good, you cheap bastard!)
From Here To Eternity (Sinatra was also an Oscar-winning actor. The best picture of 1953, From Here To Eternity is the story of love in the surf in the final days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.)
The Manchurian Candidate (My favorite Sinatra picture, here he unravels the mystery of a brainwashed American hero doing the bidding of evil Commies.)
On The Town (And one more makes lucky seven, this is a movie from Sinatra's early teen heartthrob period.)
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
The Beatles Black Album Meme — Part 5: 1974-1975
This final collection spans two years simply because Lennon put out a studio album of original material in 1974, McCartney in 1975, but not vice versa.
The Beatles Solo: 1974-1975
SIDE ONE
● Venus and Mars/Rockshow – Paul (3:46) (A favorite pastime of the press is to build someone up to ridiculous heights, tear him down because he gets a nose bleed way up there on that pedestal, then write a lovely redemption story after he bounces off the bottom — or a "whatever happened to" story if he doesn't. It's a lazy narrative arc and we could surely do with something better, but in the mid-1970s, McCartney was riding his redemption story to the toppermost of the poppermost, with five straight number one albums. Critics eventually went back to ripping him with the release of Back to the Egg in 1979, but he wrote hit singles into the 1980s, hit albums to the present day, and has won every award known to mankind. This is the single edit, which made it to #12 in the U.S. charts.)
● Whatever Gets You Thru the Night – John (3:28) (Lennon's only solo #1 hit during his lifetime, part of me thinks even that was only because Elton John sang vocals with him. The song came to him one night when he stumbled across a sermon by Reverend Ike while channel surfing. Elton predicted this track would hit the top of the charts and got the skeptical Lennon to agree that if it did, they would play live together during Elton's upcoming concert at Madison Square Garden. The rest is rock n roll history.)
● Stand By Me – John (3:28) (From John's oldies album, Rock 'n' Roll, this cover of the Ben E. King classic was a top twenty hit. For such a simple recording, there's a long, tortuous history behind it, including accusations of plagiarism, lawsuits and countersuits, stolen tapes and gunfire in the studio. You can read about it here. All you really need to know is that this was the last record Lennon released before his five-year self-exile from the music scene.)
● Magneto and Titanium Man – Paul (3:16) (Actually, even though Venus and Mars hit number one on the charts, it did so for only a week, and compared to the success of Band on the Run, was considered something of a disappointment. This song, based on the Marvel comic book characters, was the flip side of "Venus and Mars/Rockshow," the third single from the album.)
● (It's All Down To) Goodnight Vienna – Ringo (3:01) (The title tune to Ringo's fourth album, Lennon wrote it — that's him on the count-in. Appearing twice on the album, this version combines elements of both and was released as a single in the U.S. It only reached #31 in the charts. Apparently nobody was in the mood to buy this paean to the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.)
SIDE TWO
● #9 Dream – John (4:47) (Appropriately enough, the lyrics came from a dream. Lennon later dismissed this as a "throwaway," but it's the best thing on Walls and Bridges and it cracked the top ten as a follow-up to "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night.")
● Dark Horse – George (3:55) (The title tune from George's worst solo album. He was suffering from laryngitis but recorded a record anyway, an effort the critics dubbed "Dark Hoarse." A failed marriage, a return to drugs and alcohol, and the pressure of having to fulfill a recording contract were all getting to him. Still, I love the single, which hit #15 in the U.S. If you like anything else from the album, I'm happy for you.)
● Listen to What the Man Said – Paul (3:57) (A #1 hit in the U.S. Recorded in New Orleans with what I think was the fifth iteration of the Wings lineup, with Joe English joining the group on drums and Tom Scott sitting in on saxophone. Looking back at the contemporaneous reviews, the critics wanted to hate this but grudgingly conceded it was really good pop music — damn those catchy melodies! This is the version from Wingspan without the unintelligible muttering between tracks.)
● Bless You – John (4:38) (A love letter to Yoko during their long separation. Lennon also offers words of encouragement here to David Spinozza, a session musician from the Mind Games era who may or may not have been sleeping with Yoko in his absence. Certainly John was sleeping with May Pang with Yoko's encouragement. John and Yoko had a very strange relationship, but then they were very strange people.)
● Scared – John (4:37) (This is also about Lennon's separation from Yoko, but the other side of the coin. "Hatred and jealousy, gonna be the death of me / I guess I knew it right from the start / Sing out about love and peace / Don't want to see the red raw meat / The green eyed goddamn straight from your heart.")
SIDE THREE
● Junior's Farm – Paul (4:24) (Written at songwriter Curly Putman, Jr's farm, recorded in Nashville. Released as a standalone single in 1974, it hit #3 on the U.S. charts, just #16 in the U.K.)
● Surprise, Surprise (Sweet Bird of Paradox) – John (2:55) (A love song for May Pang, that's Elton John on backing vocals. According to the Beatles Bible, it took three hours of takes for Elton to match Lennon's phrasing. "People were leaving the room," Elton said later. "Razor blades were being passed out!")
● No No Song – Ringo (2:34) (Ringo's last unalloyed commercial success, a #3 hit in the U.S. He never cracked the top twenty again. Not being a songwriter himself, Ringo had to rely on the kindness of strangers for his material, and unfortunately, with each passing year strangers and friends alike grew more and more careless, palming off indifferently-written dreck that left Ringo's limited vocal talents very much exposed. I suspect it didn't help that he started chasing musical trends — Ringo does disco! — or, if you'll pardon me for saying so, that he was drinking like a fish. His next album, Rotogravure, limped in at #28 in the charts, the three after at #162, #129 and #98, respectively. In the 1980s, he was the narrator of the Thomas the Tank Engine series.)
● Old Dirt Road – John (4:12) (Co-written with Harry Nilsson. Along with the Who's Keith Moon and ex-Beatle Ringo, Nilsson was one of John's drinking mates during the Lost Weekend. Compared to those legendary boozers, Lennon was a relative lightweight. And yet he could fall down with the best of them.)
● Letting Go – Paul (4:32) (This is the album version of a song that was later remixed and edited for release as a single. It hit only #39 in the charts, McCartney's first single to miss the top twenty in the U.S. since "Mary Had a Little Lamb," which hardly counts. He wouldn't suffer another flop until "Mull of Kintyre," the biggest selling single in U.K. history at that time but which failed to chart altogether in the U.S.)
SIDE FOUR
● You – George (3:43) (George followed up 1974's critically-panned Dark Horse with Extra Texture, the second worst album of his career. Released as a single, "You" made it to #20 in the U.S. The follow-up single, "This Guitar (Can't Keep From Crying)" — no, really, that's what it was called — failed to chart at all. Harrison would eventually regain his form, if not all of his commercial appeal, and would make some great records as part of the Traveling Wilburys.)
● Sally G – Paul (3:41) (The flip side of "Junior's Farm," this was in itself a top twenty hit. A country-and-western love letter to Nashville where McCartney recorded the single, this got a lot of radio play in my hometown back in the day. That's Johnny Gimble on the fiddle, Lloyd Green on the pedal steel guitar.)
● Steel and Glass – John (4:38) (Most people assume this is about Allen Klein, John's choice to manage the Beatles after the death of Brian Epstein, and whom Lennon would later sue, but John said it wasn't that simple. "[L]ike a novel writer, if I'm writing about something other than myself, I use other people I know or have known as examples. If I want to write a 'down' song, I would have to remember being down, and when I wrote Steel And Glass I used various people and objects. If I had listed who they were, it would be a few people, and you would be surprised. But it really isn't about anybody ... For sure, it isn't about Paul and it isn't about Eartha Kitt.")
● Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out) – John (5:10) (Lennon wrote this one with Frank Sinatra in mind who, unfortunately, never recorded it. Would have made a great companion piece to "One For My Baby.")
● Call Me Back Again – Paul (4:59) (McCartney doing a soul number in New Orleans with Jimmy McCulloch on guitar. A live version appeared on Wings Over America.)
Total Running Time: 79:42.
What have we got here — 9 Lennon's, 7 McCartney's, 2 Harrison's, 2 Starr's. The final totals: John 37, Paul 37, George 20, Ringo 9. 103 total.
That's it. As usual for the Monkey, this has been an exhausting exercise in overkill. I hope the nineteen people who read it get a small modicum of pleasure from the effort.
Monday, November 9, 2015
The Beatles Black Album Meme — Part 4: 1973
1973 was as good to the ex-Beatles as 1972 was rough. Paul went to Nigeria and found his mojo, George released his underrated followup to All Things Must Pass, and Ringo finally recorded a rock n roll record and knocked it out of the park. Only John was having a down year, beginning the drunken odyssey now known as "The Lost Weekend" — a weekend that lasted eighteen months.
The Beatles Solo: 1973
SIDE ONE
● Band on the Run – Paul (5:13) (After a series of critical pastings, Paul was looking to get out of town and chose to record his next album at the EMI studios in Lagos, Nigeria, for no real reason other than that it wasn't as far away as China. Just before leaving for Africa, two members of the band quit — guitarist Henry McCullough because he was tired of Paul telling him how to play; and Denny Seiwell because he didn't want to make the trip. Rather than the funny, sunny vacation Paul envisioned, Lagos was all rain, biting insects and a mugging at knifepoint. But maybe the unpleasantness gave the sessions some urgency because it was McCartney's best record yet. A #1 hit in the U.S., the title track was stitched together from three song fragments including one based on George Harrison's promise to give away all his possessions if he could escape yet another interminable business meeting. As an ex-lawyer, I feel his pain.)
● Jet – Paul (4:09) (Named for a black lab and rhymed with suffragette for no real reason at all. The first single released from Band on the Run, "Jet" hit #1 hit in the U.S., #7 in the UK.)
● I Know (I Know) – John (3:14) (After the critical and commercial failure of Some Time in New York City, Lennon retreated from music and politics for over a year. He finally returned to the studio, perhaps embarrassed that Yoko had recorded not one but two albums during the break. John later poo-poo'ed the resulting album, Mind Games, but it did make it to #9 in the U.S. charts. I don't mind the heavy reverb Lennon laid on top of the record as much as some critics, but I think the acoustic demo version of this song — which some hear as an apology to McCartney for "How Do You Sleep," others as recognition that his marriage to Yoko was falling apart — is clearly superior to the album version. From the John Lennon Anthology box set.)
● Don't Let Me Wait Too Long – George (2:59) (Overall, I think All Things Must Pass is the best of George's solo albums, but I actually prefer the four songs I've selected from 1973's Living in the Material World to anything on the former.)
● Oh, My My – Ringo (4:17) (Ringo's return to the studio after three years spent making movies. All four Beatles worked on Ringo, but not all at the same time, the closest they ever got to a reunion. The third single released from the album, "Oh My My" was a top five hit in the U.S.)
SIDE TWO
● Mind Games – John (4:15) (Originally written as "Make Love, Not War," Lennon had grown wary of political sloganeering after the Some Time debacle. You know, you want to be self-conscious enough to work hard, but not so self-conscious you don't work at all. Which somehow reminds me of a post-game conversation Washington quarterback Kirk Cousins had with New England legend Tom Brady yesterday after the Patriots beat-down of the R'Skins. In so many words, Cousins asked him when do you know you've made it, and Brady told him he's still working on it. Which probably explains the four Super Bowl victories. Well, that and the cheating. I kid.)
● Mrs. Vandebilt – Paul (4:42) (Only today did I realize that McCartney had misspelled "Vanderbilt" on this track. What, they didn't have auto-correct in 1973? First added to his live shows in 2008 when it topped a Ukranian poll of song requests before a free concert in Kiev.)
● You're Sixteen – Ringo (2:48) (An ex-Beatle rides a wave of nostalgia for all things pre-Beatles and scores the biggest hit of his solo career. It's here because it was #1 with a bullet, even outperforming the original by John Burnette, but from the vantage point of 2015, the notion of a 32 year old man singing a song about playing tonsil hockey with a 16 year old girl is creepy as hell. Not to mention illegal. By the way, that's not a kazoo on the recording, but Paul McCartney vocally imitating a saxophone.)
● The Day the World Gets Round – George (2:54) (Harrison had mixed feelings about the Concert for Bangladesh — happy so many people pulled together to make it happen, angry that it had to happen at all, disillusioned by the tax and legal wrangles afterwards. This song came out of that.)
● Let Me Roll It – Paul (4:51) (McCartney doing his best post-Beatles Lennon imitation, with heavy reverb and lyrics about finding love in the palm of your hand. A playful pastiche, loving spoof, or brutal boot-stomping depending on what your ears hear.)
SIDE THREE
● Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth) – George (3:38) (A #1 hit in America, knocking Paul's "My Love" off the top of the charts.)
● Out the Blue – John (3:21) (Lennon later dismissed this as "nothing special" but I am especially fond of Ken Ascher's piano solo. Written to celebrate his love for Yoko about ten minutes before she kicked him out of the house for a year and half.)
● Photograph – Ringo (3:57) (Another #1 hit for Ringo who was a hit machine there for a while. Credited to "Harrison-Starkey," the pair wrote it during the Cannes Film Festival two years earlier.)
● Bluebird – Paul (3:25) (Never one of my favorite songs, but I was outside Nationals Park when Paul played it for the sound check before the show there and I thought, in the words of somebody else, the worst you ever gave me is the best I ever had.)
● You Are Here – John (4:12) (The title is from Yoko's 1968 London art exhibition, the lyrics are a reworking of Kipling's maxim "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet," and the music is what Lennon called "a Latinesque song in a ballad tradition." There's also a nice version on the John Lennon Anthology box set.)
SIDE FOUR
● I'm the Greatest – Ringo (3:22) (By now maybe you've noticed that each of the four "sides" of this cd collection kicks off with the first track from an ex-Beatles' 1973 solo record. Lennon wrote this one then gave it to Ringo, thinking critics would otherwise take it too seriously. John's demo shows up in the John Lennon Anthology box set.
● Helen Wheels – Paul (3:48) (A standalone single issued before Band on the Run, hitting #10 in America, Capitol Records insisted it also appear on the album in the U.S. to improve sales. Must have reminded Paul of the old days when Capitol carved up all the Beatles' records prior to Sgt. Pepper to make more sausage out of the same amount of meat.)
● Aisumasen (I'm Sorry) – John (4:44) (That's "Sneaky Pete" Kleinow on the steel pedal guitar.)
● Be Here Now – George (4:11) (The music came to George while he was drifting off to sleep, the title from Ram Dass's introductory text on Hinduism.)
● Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five – Paul (5:29) (McCartney came up with the first line — "No one ever left alive in nineteen hundred and eighty-five" — then took months to come up with a second. Ends with a reprise of "Band on the Run.")
Total running time: 79:31.
That's seven McCartney songs, five Lennon's, four Harrison's and four Starr's. The running total: Paul has pulled ahead with 30, John's in second with 28, George has 18 and Ringo 7. Under the rules of the game, though, Lennon and McCartney have to tie, so John has a little work to do on the last cd.
Next, Part 5: The Beatles Solo 1974-1975.
Sunday, November 8, 2015
The Beatles Black Album Meme — Part 3: 1972, Sort Of
1972 was not a good year for ex-Beatles. John and Yoko's double album, Some Time in New York City, was a commercial and critical disaster. Paul had bottomed out following the disappointment of late-1971's hastily written and recorded Wild Life LP. Ringo had a hit with a single recorded the previous year but was otherwise silent. And George didn't record anything at all.
Altogether, about ten solid minutes of music.
But instead of skipping the year altogether, I swept up all the uncollected singles, B-sides and songs leftover from other albums, and with a handful of songs that appeared in 1973 but were written earlier, cobbled together a sort of Odds and Sods/Anthology. I mean, you gotta put "Cold Turkey" somewhere.
The Beatles Solo: 1972, sort of
SIDE ONE
● New York City – John (4:29) (From Some Time in New York City. The lyrics are lazy and the production values are sloppy, but otherwise this is a pretty good rocker. John and Yoko actually opened their double album with "Woman is the N***** of the World" — I can't bring myself to post its full name — which was something Yoko muttered to herself when first confronted with the misogyny of the London art world. I know Lennon thought he was making a point when he wrote a song around the sentiment and he doubled down by releasing it as a single, but it turns out it was the same point Ben Carson made when he compared the Affordable Care Act to slavery, i.e., that he's an idiot. I figure that by 1972 John was so accustomed to success that without someone of the stature of Paul, George or Ringo to say "no," he had grown to believe he could blow his nose and find 24-carat gold nuggets in the handkerchief. John was shattered when the critics and record-buying public apprised him otherwise. You know, there's nothing wrong with devoting yourself to a cause — thank God somebody does — John's problem was investing so much of his self-image in the assumption people would open their wallets and celebrate the effort because his name was "I Used To Be A Beatle.")
● John Sinclair – John (3:29) (Upon arriving in New York, Lennon's new-found pals requested a song in support of a local poet jailed for possession of marijuana. John later dismissed this effort as uninspired craftsmanship, but it's actually the best thing on Some Time in New York City. You can put your politics in a song — you can put anything in a song — as long as it's a good song. See, e.g., "Revolution" "Imagine" "Working Class Hero." Hell, even "Come Together" started as a political song.)
● C Moon – Paul (4:35) (The flip side of the single "Hi Hi Hi," released in time for Christmas 1972.)
● Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll) – George (3:54) (From All Things Must Pass. For an explanation of why it's on this cd, see Part 1 of this series.)
● Hi Hi Hi – Paul (3:09) (This McCartney single, like "Give Ireland Back to the Irish," was banned by the BBC, here because of overt drug and sexual references. In protest, he recorded and released "Mary Had a Little Lamb," which in retrospect was the most offensive of the three.)
SIDE TWO
● Live and Let Die – Paul (3:13) (The theme song from the 1973 James Bond film, this was recorded in 1972. A #2 hit in the U.S., I can say from personal observation, it makes for a fantastic live performance.)
● Gimme Some Truth – John (3:17) (A leftover from Imagine, it fits right in with the rest of the agitprop.)
● Tomorrow – Paul (3:27) (In an overreaction to the critical beating the highly-polished Ram album took, McCartney taped Wild Life in one week, with five of the eight tracks recorded in a single take. John used to complain that Paul would work his songs to death in the studio trying to refine the sound he heard in his head, but while Lennon's songs often drifted farther and farther from his original vision with each take, McCartney's benefitted from the effort. Not everybody works the same way.)
● Bring on the Lucie (Freda Peeple) – John (4:12) (This was recorded in 1973 and released that year on Mind Games. But Lennon first recorded a demo of this in 1971 and, again, it fits with the political nature of his other 1972 releases.)
● Smile Away – Paul (3:53) (From Ram.)
SIDE THREE
● Power to the People – John (3:19) (Recorded in October 1970, released as a single in March 1971, it hit #11 on the U.S. charts. I have to agree, though, with Hunter S. Thompson's savage assessment of the song which appears in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: "John Lennon's political song, ten years too late. 'That poor fool should have stayed where he was,' said my attorney. 'Punks like that just get in the way when they try to be serious.'" Of course, this was long before John's canonization as a secular saint. No doubt the good doctor's opinion mellowed over the years. You know, like the good doctor himself.)
● Oo You – Paul (2:50) (From McCartney.)
● My Love – Paul (4:09) (After the critical failures of Ram and Wild Life, McCartney really had no idea what to do next. He spent most of 1972 recording what was going to be a double album called Red Rose Speedway, but in the end he cut it down to a single LP and even that only had two good songs on it, this and "Big Barn Bed." He released "My Love" as a single and it was a #1 hit in the U.S. It's polished enough to appear on Abbey Road while everything else on this c.d. sounds like it was recorded in my garage ...)
● If Not For You – George (3:33) (... well, except for George's numbers. He definitely did not record this in anybody's garage.)
● Isolation – John (2:53) (From Plastic Ono Band, this would have concluded "side one" of my 1970 collection if it had been a 90-minute cassette tape as originally envisioned.)
● Big Barn Bed – Paul (3:50) (From Red Rose Speedway, "Big Barn Bed" is perhaps the most obscure of McCartney's classic songs.)
SIDE FOUR
● Give Peace a Chance – John (4:54) (A single recorded in 1969 during John and Yoko's Bed-In Peace protest, it hit #14 in America, #2 in Britain.)
● Beware of Darkness – George (3:49) (The last of the songs I've raided from All Things Must Pass, fourteen in all. It's only now I realize that all fourteen are from disc one of the double cd, with none of disc two — four studio numbers and a live jam session — making the cut.)
● Bip Bop/Hey Diddle – Paul (3:37) ("Bip Bop" was the sort-of highlight of Wild Life, with this very off-the-cuff rendition appearing on Wingspan.)
● Early 1970 – Ringo (2:21) (The flip side of "It Don't Come Easy," Ringo made it clear with this open letter to his former band mates that he really, really, really wanted the Beatles to get back together.)
● Cold Turkey – John (5:01) (Part of me would like to think Paul made a big mistake turning down John's suggestion in the Fall of 1969 that "Cold Turkey" be the next Beatles single. Lennon's response was to quit the band and put the song out under his own name. How might have things played out if McCartney had said yes? But the fact is, at least three of the Beatles had been chaffing under the band's yoke since even before India. Lennon had wanted to put out "Across the Universe" "Revolution No. 1" and "Cold Turkey" as singles, Paul wanted to start playing live again which was a non-starter for his bandmates, and George offered up about half of All Things Must Pass only to have all those songs thumbed down. The Beatles were the most inventive, creative band in music history but the moment they started saying, no, we can't do that, they were done, put a fork in it. And put a fork in it, they did. The rest, as they say, is non-Beatles history.)
Total running time: 77:57.
Eight by Lennon, nine by McCartney, three by Harrison and one by Starr. In total now, Paul finally catches John at 23, George has 14 and Ringo 3.
Next, Part 4: The Beatles Solo 1973
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