BOB DYLAN & THE BAND – Madison Square Garden, January 30, 1974

This was the concert where I sat front row centre (see other Dylan post). I found this picture on the internet so there's a good chance that the back of my head is among those at the front. This is my review from Melody Maker, dated February 9, one of the longest concert reviews I ever wrote. It was the first (and best) time I ever saw Bob Dylan

THEY CHEERED and clapped and waved for 15 minutes even though the house lights were up and 'Greensleeves' was playing through the PA system and Bob Dylan had already played a couple of numbers for encores.

         Bill Graham, at the rear of the stage, looked perplexed and wondered when in hell the 20,000 Madison Square Garden crowd was ever going to leave.

         Then Dylan returned, on his own and looking slightly sheepish. He'd discarded his black suit and was wearing a blue sweater with a white Maple Leaf on the front which indicated that the wearer was a supporter of a Canadian football team.

         The cheering reached greater heights as Dylan walked to the microphone and looked as if he wanted to say something. Then he changed his mind and walked across the stage, smiling and holding his arms aloft like a prizefighter who's just knocked out Cassius Clay.

         Then he went back up to the mike and said somewhat briskly, “Thank You. See you next year.”

         Then everyone knew it was over.

         Bob Dylan's return to New York last week will doubtless be the highlight of his current 21 city tour of America. He played four concerts at the Garden, selling out each one. There were two concerts last Wednesday and two concerts on Thursday.

         It would have been fitting, I think, if the tour had closed in New York but instead it closes at the Los Angeles Forum on February 14.

         I attended the Thursday afternoon concert and was lucky enough to witness the first time that Dylan had actually walked back on to the stage after the encore to thank the audience. My luck, however, extended even further than that; I was sitting in the front row of the 20,000 seat stadium within ten feet of Bob Dylan.

         A friend – an Irishman had obtained four tickets on the front row by mail order. The luck of the Irish is not just a proverb.

         It was section A, row 1, seat 8 which is slightly to right of the centre of the stage which also happens to be where Bob Dylan stands during the performance and at the close of the show I was pressed hard up against the stage in the throng who joined Dylan in the chorus to ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’. I was also asked by a member of the road crew to stop taking photographs: the practice was annoying the performer.

         Dylan ignored the huge ovation that greeted his arrival on the stage. Dressed in a black jacket and waistcoat, black suede trousers, check shirt with brown boots, he strapped on a sunburst Fender Stratocaster and went straight into his opening song ‘You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine’ which has been the regular opener on the tour.

         The audience were still cheering his actual presence as the first chords were heard.

         To his right was Robbie Robertson, looking younger without his beard and glasses, dressed also in a black suit and picking on a red Strat. To his right was Rick Danko in check jacket and white trousers plucking on a fretless bass. Richard Manuel's grand piano was even further right, next to a battered old couch and at the rear of it all was Garth Hudson's swirling organ and Levon Helm at a drum kit small by today’s rock excess standards.

         Other furniture littered the stage: there was a hat stand to Dylan's left and a fake unlit lamp hanging to his rear. All the action took place on a red carpet over which a couple of roadies made hesitant sorties to straighten mikes, adjust controls and provide different instruments when required.

         Dylan's next song was ‘Lay Lady Lay’, a different version from that on Nashville Skyline. Gone was the country flavour and in its place a jerky, almost rhythm and blues tempo over which the singer stretched out the syllables in all their sensuality. Dylan was stabbing at chords, playing an unheard rhythm guitar which appeared slightly hesitant, but his voice was perfect.

         ‘Rainy Day Woman 12 And 35’ was greeted with a standing ovation and Dylan allowed himself his first smile of the evening as the crowd responded to the chorus each time it came around. Then it was ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’, the second different arrangement he played.

         Before the song Dylan, Robertson and Danko huddled together around Helm’s kit for a quick conference. The variation of the opening chords was such that the audience didn’t recognise the song until the opening line; this time it was a simple rock beat instead of the folksy version on record.

         ‘Ballad Of A Thin Man’, with Dylan at the piano, followed, before he left the stage for the Band to play four numbers without him. Up to this point no-one from the stage had spoken to the audience. They played ‘Stagefright’ which seemed particularly apt in the circumstances, and Danko's vocals were clear enough for all to understand the implications of the song. Next it was ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’ with a tremendous flow on the chorus line, ‘King Harvest’ and the jaunty ‘Up On Cripple Creek’ which seemed to satisfy a voice to my rear that had been requesting this song for 20 minutes.

         The Band was on top form, and while it was obvious that it was Dylan's show, Robbie Robertson came close to stealing the limelight. His guitar runs were a joy, effortlessly played and perfectly executed time and time again.

         Dylan returned for ‘All Along The Watchtower’, playing electric guitar again, then ‘The Ballad Of Hollis Brown’ taken at an easy volume so the lyrics (he remembered them all) were heard before the first half closed with ‘Knocking On Heaven's Door’.

         “Back in ten minutes,” said Dylan as he and the band unstrapped their guitars and prepared to move off. It was the first time he'd spoken to the crowd.

         The opening of the second half was probably the crux of the whole show; Dylan alone with acoustic Martin and harmonica strapped around his neck. He re-appeared to another standing ovation, had a quick word with one of the road crew, sipped from a paper cup and went straight into ‘The Times They Are A Changin’’. It was after this song that the roadie came down to ask me to stop taking pictures.

         Without hesitation Dylan went quickly through his acoustic set, playing next ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’, then ‘Don’t Think Twice’, ‘Gates Of Eden’, ‘Just Like A Woman’ and ending on ‘It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ which – in the light of Richard Nixon’s fall – contains the unusually appropriate words “even the President of the United States must have to stand naked”. At every concert on the tour this line brought a standing ovation. The Garden was no exception and Dylan, predicting the reaction, grinned ruefully.

         This last song, in fact, was undoubtedly the highlight of this segment of the show, taken at a frantic pace and demonstrating what a powerful performer Dylan can be and it struck me then and there that in an era where singer songwriters seems to emerge almost daily, Dylan was the first, setting the pattern for them all and that on this tour he demonstrates an incredible superiority over the rank and file in both material and delivery. Any sceptics who predicted Dylan's era was over were mistaken; here in the seventies, eight years after many of these songs were written, Dylan is still as important as ever in setting standards which others must look towards.

         The acoustic set completed to another standing ovation, Dylan raised his arms in the now typical gesture of the winning sportsman, one arm holding the Martin and the other with a clenched fist that reflected strength now blended with maturity.

         The Band re-appeared for four more songs – ‘Rag Mama Rag’ (superb), ‘Wheels On Fire’, ‘The Shape I’m In’ and ‘The Weight’ all of which were played with clinical perfection.

         Dylan re-appeared with electric guitar to play the only new song of the evening, ‘Forever Young’, with its opening line that sounds rather like the blessing at the end of a church service. Then it was all down to rock and roll and ‘Highway 61’, another taken at a furious pace.

         ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ closed the act proper and by now Dylan was beaming with delight. The house lights were raised, an invitation for all to rush to the front and I was caught up in the melee of delighted faces who swayed with the music and joined the singer on his choruses. A girl behind me was screaming for her idol, a youth to my right lit a roll-your-own and tried to offer it to Dylan and a man to my left produced a box of photographs of Dylan and tried to show him them.

         But Dylan remained calm and sang on, glancing up occasionally at the swaying arms, then down again to concentrate on the chords he was playing. Occasionally he allowed himself a grin, and even visibly laughed at us all during one break. By the end of the song his face was beaming and as he left the stage, his arms were again raised like a footballer who's scored in the last minute of an important match.

         Five minutes later he re-appeared and sang ‘Maggie's Farm’ closely followed by ‘Blowing In The Wind’, another song which invited full audience participation. He re-appeared with mirror sunglasses and from where I was standing the reflection of the audience could clearly be seen in his eyes. It was the reflection of gratitude for the music Bob Dylan has shared with the world, of gratitude for his decision to re-appear from seclusion and of gratitude to an artist who had just put on the best concert New York is likely to get this year or next.

         “Thanks. Me and The Band enjoyed it,” he said before leaving. Fifteen minutes later we were still there and he came back to thank us again. See him next year? I damn well hope so.

THE WHO AT AMSTERDAM, 1969

These are sleeve notes I wrote to accompany a bootleg I gave to a ‘Who’ friend about 20 years ago, Since this was before Live At Leeds was reissued in the mid-nineties as a double CD, including Tommy, the references to it are obviously outdated. The same bootleg is now widely available and well known among fans.

This is a 2-CD copy, probably third generation, of the soundboard tape from The Who’s concert at the Concertgebouw Opera House in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam, on Monday September 29, 1969. It was the first of several opera house concerts the group performed that year, and the first ever performance of Tommy for a non-English speaking audience. It was professionally recorded for subsequent radio broadcast on a local station over two nights, September 30 and October 1, but hasn’t been re-mixed into stereo or edited in any way whatsoever. It sounds too good to simply have been taped from the radio. What you hear is exactly what the audience heard that night, and the overall sound obviously benefits from the venue’s state-of-the-art acoustics. The vocals are especially well recorded throughout, as are the guitar and bass, though the drums are on the muddy side and probably suffer through not being miked up sufficiently. There’s a rough-and-ready feel to the music that contrasts sharply with heavily produced ‘live’ albums by other acts; technically it is far from perfect but in an era when bands take several days to record a single drum track, and others painstakingly re-record their ‘live’ albums in the studio, this is its particular charm.

It’s a two-hour show featuring ‘Heaven And Hell’, ‘I Can’t Explain’, ‘Fortune Teller’, ‘Tattoo’, ‘Young Man Blues’, ‘A Quick One, While He’s Away’ (six separate songs), ‘Substitute’, ‘Happy Jack’, ‘I’m A Boy’, a complete Tommy (21 separate songs), ‘Summertime Blues’, ‘Shakin’ All Over’ and ‘My Generation’ (which includes reprises of the ‘See Me Feel Me’ climax to ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’, ‘Sparks’ and other themes from Tommy, together with improvisations that in due course would become ‘Naked Eye’ and what Townshend subsequently referred to as ‘The Who Hymn’). [CD1 ends after ‘Fiddle About’ from Tommy; CD2 commences at ‘Tommy Can You Feel Me’.] The songs are punctuated by comments from the band, notably Pete Townshend, and Keith Moon can be heard making typically idiosyncratic remarks from time to time.

This was a very prestigious occasion for The Who, the show fulfilling many of manager Kit Lambert’s ambitions for serious cultural recognition of Tommy, and fittingly the group turned in a truly superb performance. Much of what preceded Tommy was flawless, especially ‘Young Man Blues’ and the medley of ‘Substitute’, ‘Happy Jack’ and ‘I’m A Boy’. When they came to Tommy itself, ‘Overture’ emerged as a fine instrumental and was an appropriate and dramatic prelude to the rock-opera. Pete explained from the stage that The Who had decided to give Tommy its opera house premiere in Amsterdam simply because the band thought it a great city and more representative of a European capital than London. ‘Amazing Journey’ was wonderfully charged and powerful, with Roger especially on fine form. This moved into the instrumental ‘Sparks’ at a furious pace, with John Entwistle playing some manic bass lines. When they reached the end of Tommy – a medley of 21 integrated songs no less, performed virtually back-to-back – it took them just over 20 seconds to catch their breath before launching into a scorching ‘Summertime Blues’. Such energy puts The Who’s dedication to the art of stagecraft into sharp focus.

The audience response, perhaps befitting the venue, consisted of polite applause rather than overt cheers and whistles. “We want to thank you very kindly and we’d like to play for you as our going away present a song from the past that we still really mean,” said Pete, before the final number. ‘My Generation’ was newly conceived as a 15-minute medley offering a short ‘history’ of the band in a seamless flow of music from the 1965 single to the reprised sections from Tommy, followed by several improvised passages, snatches of ‘Pinball Wizard’ and ‘The Ox’, the latter prompted by a furious drum roll from Keith Moon, climaxing with screeching guitar solos and crashing riffs. Also during this medley, Pete played several beautiful and delicate passages of guitar to link the various sections, although much of the playing was entirely spontaneous and at several points Entwistle and Moon seemed to lose track of where Pete was heading. The riff that was later incorporated into ‘Naked Eye’ was presented very distinctly as ‘So Very Long’ (an assumed title) which Roger sang as a farewell message.

This was the first time The Who performed an extended ‘My Generation’ in this way, some four months before it was performed in a similar, somewhat more fully realised fashion at the February 14, 1970, concert at Leeds University. This concert, of course, was recorded for the Live At Leeds LP, on which the extended ‘My Generation’ was heard on record for the first time. Incidentally, The Who performed and recorded (on 8-track) the whole of Tommy at Leeds that night but have thus far declined to sanction its official release, largely because Townshend feels the energy level is not maintained throughout. This show in Amsterdam differed only slightly from the more celebrated Leeds concert: the running order of the songs was changed somewhat, and at Leeds the band returned to perform ‘Magic Bus’ as a final encore. 

The two–hour show that The Who presented at this time took the band’s performance to new heights of excitement and excellence. They had played so often together by this time – probably more shows than any other rock band of their generation – that they performed with a casual panache that on their best nights could take your breath away. Vocals, guitars and drums meshed into a seamless whole that no other band, ever, has been able to emulate. Yet it wasn’t a show rehearsed to the point of sterility – it sounded raucous and fresh, despite the fact that during this era they were capable of turning in performances this good night after night.                                                         
        The Who performed Tommy in its entirety (or slightly edited) just over 160 times during 1969 and 1970. The last occasion I saw it was at London’s Roundhouse on December 20, 1970, when they dedicated the opera to their support act, an up and coming pianist/songwriter called Elton John. They performed an inferior rendering at the Isle Of Wight Festival in August 1970, a recording of which has appeared under the title The Who Live At Isle Of Wight. By this time they were getting tired of Tommy – and it shows. From 1971 onwards The Who performed occasional Tommy songs, usually ‘Pinball Wizard’, ‘Sparks’ and ‘See Me Feel Me’ in concert. It wasn’t until 1989, when they took the stage with several additional musicians on stage, that they would perform all of Tommy again. It wasn’t the same, of course – nothing like the full wonder of the young Who in Amsterdam in ‘69.

JOHN - A CONCLUSION

In January of 1976 I sent another of my telegrams to John requesting an interview. I didn’t hold out much hope but I wanted to know what his plans were now that he’d been granted a green card and was free to travel outside of the US. In the event he responded by sending me a postcard, evidently bought in Singapore but posted in New York, declining the request. He wrote: “No comment, was the stern reply. Am invisible, Love John L” and signed it, as he almost always did, with a tiny self-portrait. Of course, I still have that postcard and both sides of it are reproduced below. I never communicated with John Lennon again.

Today, almost 34 years later, the killing of John Lennon seems to me to be the single most tragic event in the history of rock’n’roll. It is a cruel irony that John, a determined peace campaigner, died in the manner he did. In a better world he would have been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for few individuals that I know of did more than him to spread the idea that world peace was probably a good thing. His song ‘Give Peace A Chance’ remains the worldwide anthem of the peace movement and his ever-popular Christmas song ‘Happy Christmas (War Is Over)’ conveys a similar message. To have written ‘Give Peace…’ alone is worthy enough of the Prize if I had any say in the matter, but evidently someone decided that Henry Kissinger, who is still wanted for war crimes in parts of the Far East, deserved one more than John (or Yoko). According to Wikipedia: “These charges have at times inconvenienced his travels”, and there's an irony there in that the Nixon administration's persistent hounding of him certainly inconvenienced John's travels.

         If that sounds cynical, then what about America’s gun culture? I have long been amazed and appalled at the stupidity of a nation whose governments sanction, even encourage, the manufacture and sale of implements with which its citizens routinely kill and maim each other and their children. Nothing exposes the institutionalised corruption of American politics more than the ease with which gun manufacturers, through their stooges the National Rifle Association, can bribe the country’s legislators to block measures designed to control the sale of their loathsome products. Although I sympathise with all the victims of American’s gun madness, especially the families of those children in schools mowed down by madmen with guns, these strong feelings of mine really stem from what happened to John, a man whom I liked to think of as a friend, at least for those few years in New York, and who was slaughtered in cold blood, shot in the back, by a lunatic for whom it was the simplest thing in the world to obtain a gun with which to carry out this barbarous act.

         I have read a great deal of rubbish about John in the years since his death, much of it emanating from mendacious pens wielded by the likes of the late Albert Goldman, but none of it in any way alters my firm conviction that the John Lennon I knew was a good-natured man of integrity and talent who tried to use his exalted position to right a few wrongs and spread what he saw as a gospel beneficial to mankind. He was no saint, it’s true, but he never pretended to be either.

MORE JOHN IN NEW YORK

It was in the first week of March, 1975, that I next interviewed John and beforehand I watched and listened as from an office at Capitol Records he talked on the phone to no less than 35 different disc jockeys simultaneously at radio stations across America. “I like ‘Stand By Me’ and ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’ is one of my all-time favourites,” he said, before going on to discuss the problems he had in making the album. “There’s been more trouble with this album than soft mick,” he stated, using an expression that I’m sure 99% of his listeners had never heard before.

         When he put the phone down, he grinned at me and muttered something about how great it was to speak to so many people at once. I wonder now what he would have made of the internet. John had opinions about everything and wasn’t afraid to share them regardless of the consequences, so the internet would have like manna from heaven to him. I’m pretty sure John would have blogged and tweeted like crazy.

         I began by asking him about the background to the Rock’n’Roll album.

“... I just finished Mind Games when I started the new album and I just wanted to have some fun. It was so soon after Mind Games that I didn’t have any new material. I wanted to just sing and not be the producer. I thought, ‘Who’s the one to do it with?’ and I thought of Phil Spector. We went down to the Record Plant and started cutting and, well, it got pretty crazy... it really got wild at times. But we managed to cut seven or eight in the end before it collapsed... which is the only way to put it.

         “Next thing Phil had apparently had an auto accident. Only he knows whether he did or didn’t, but that’s what the story said. That was the end of it then, because he’d got the tapes and I didn’t get them back until two days before I went into the studio to cut Walls And Bridges. I went on to do the Harry Nilsson thing [Pussycats] and I tried everything to get them [the Rock ’N’ Roll album tapes] back, even just hanging around LA to see if Phil would get better. I couldn’t think what to do, so I did the album with Harry while I was waiting. When I got the tapes, I couldn’t get into them because I was all geared to Walls And Bridges. When I did get into them, I found that out of the eight, there were only four or five that were worth using. The sessions had 28 guys playing live and a lot of them out of tune, which is too much, even for rock and roll. So I didn’t know whether to forget it or carry on, but I hate leaving stuff in the can. I thought about putting out an EP – remember them? But they don’t have them in America, and thought about a maxi-single. In the end I decided to finish it off and produce the rest myself.

         “I did ten tracks in three days in October, all the numbers that I hadn’t got around to with Phil. I had a lot of fun and mixed it all down in about four or five days. My one problem was whether it would sound weird going from the Spector sound to my sound, from 28 guys down to eight. But they match pretty well I think. So there it was, I suddenly had an album.”     

          I mentioned to John that Paul now owned the publishing rights to ‘Peggy Sue’, the Buddy Holly song that John included, and would therefore profit from the album. “What a clever move that was,” he replied. “I hope he gives me a good deal. I don’t care who gets the money. With Paul it’s cool, ‘cos we’re pals, and even Klein’s all right really. I’m not gonna get much money from this album anyway.”

          John seemed happier with his Beatle past than at any time since 1970. “I’ve lost all that negativity about the past and I’d be happy as Larry to do ‘Help!’ I’ve just changed completely in two years. I’d do ‘Hey Jude’ and the whole damn show, and I think George will eventually see that. If he doesn’t, that’s cool. That’s the way he wants to be.”

         John also told me he was back with Yoko. “I’m happy as Larry,” he beamed, “and she is... I hope. We’ve known each other for nine years. I met her in 1966. We had a sort of breakdown last year, one way or another, but we called each other often even when I was going crazy out on the West Coast, and I probably said a lot of balmy things to her which I’ll regret.”

Regrettably I don’t have a complete transcription of this interview, so that’s all I can post. I’ll conclude my thoughts on knowing John tomorrow. 

JOHN IN NEW YORK

I think I jumped the gun posting my story about the hearing when John got his green card. This post really out to have preceded it. Sorry!

The informal manner in which my first interview with John Lennon was arranged at Lou Adler’s house in Los Angeles set the tone for all my subsequent meetings with him. John was never one for PRs and the formalities of the music business, preferring instead an ad-hoc approach to publicising his various works. Just before Christmas 1973 Melody Maker editor Ray Coleman told me to relocate to New York and in the early summer of that year, having decided that LA was no place for him, John too would relocate to the Big Apple.

I saw John a few more times socially over the coming months, at a Grammy Awards party, in Ashley’s bar, at the Pierre Hotel, once in the Oyster Bar at the Plaza Hotel when he was with Harry Nilsson, whom I’d met previously, and again at a small private party in someone’s apartment on the Upper East Side. I remember watching John autograph an Italian Beatles album at this party, and instead of just signing his name he added dialogue in bubbles coming from each of The Beatles’ mouths on the stage shot on the front. George’s bubble read: “Anyone fancy a curry after the show?” while Paul’s read: “Come on lads, we need to rehearse more.” Ringo’s read: “What song are we playing?” and in his bubble John wrote: “I’m leaving to form my own group.” Looking back, I can’t help but think how on-the-nail all this imagined dialogue is.

         Somewhere along the line I felt sufficiently emboldened to ask John for his telephone number so that if I wanted to interview him I could simply ring him up directly instead of going through PRs or his record company. The only drawback with this was that John didn’t know his own phone number, probably never had. “Yoko’s always changing it,” he told me. But he did agree to phone me if I sent him a telegram with my number on it and thereafter if I ever wanted to get in touch with John Lennon I simply sent him a cable. “Hello Chris, it’s Johnny Beatle here,” was the manner in which he chose to announce himself whenever he called me in response to a telegram.

One of those calls involved a quick chat about his immigration situation. For years the US government had been trying to expel John, ostensibly because of his marijuana possession conviction in London in 1968. Of course, the real reason was because of his radical politics, in particular his vocal opposition to the Vietnam War. He was a hero to the youth of the US and the Nixon administration considered him a potential troublemaker, so the dope bust was simply an excuse. The reality was that they were paranoid – as well they might be with all that was going on undercover in the Nixon administration – and probably frightened of him, perhaps thinking he might lead a march on the White House. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. By 1975 John simply wanted a quiet life, to be left in peace with Yoko and, hopefully, to raise a child of their own.

In March 1975 I wrote a story for MM entitled “John’s No. 1 Dream”, and reported that John’s negotiations to remain in America would reach a climax within the next three months.

I talked to John’s lawyer, Leon Wildes, who said that he had: “information that shows that the Government deliberately ignored his application, actually locking the relevant document away in a safe. This was because of a memorandum which was circulated by an unknown Government agency to other Government agencies which stated that John and Yoko were to be kept under physical observance at all times because of possible political activities.” Leon said that he was currently trying to find the source of this document and if he did it would “break the case wide open and prove that there has been a miscarriage of justice”.    

         In the event it would be another year and three months before John was awarded his ‘green card’. Only then would he be able to travel outside of the United States in the certainty that he’d be allowed back in on his return, and the long legal battle cast further doubts on the integrity of the soon-to-be-disgraced Nixon administration.

The next interview I arranged on the phone with John took place later that same month at the Capitol Records offices on Sixth Avenue. The main purpose of this was to discuss his soon-to-be-released Rock’n’Roll album, and I’ll post extracts from it tomorrow. 

TO KNOW HIM IS TO LOVE HIM

Every so often as I listen to my iPod on my daily commute a song crops up that stops me dead. Sometimes it’s new, sometimes it’s something fairly recent I haven’t heard in a long time and sometimes it’s an oldie that I simply can’t resist. So it was that as I sped through Clapham Junction yesterday morning the opening lines of ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’ took me back more than half a century.

         I would have been 11 or 12 when I first heard this song, the original version by an American trio, two boys and a girl, called The Teddy Bears and I remember well the huge impression it made on me. It is a record that I never tire of hearing, a pop classic, and like so many great singles of the era it was on the black and silver London label. I seem to recall that it stayed on the jukebox in the coffee bar by the Mill Bridge in Skipton for almost all of 1959, and that I played it constantly as I sipped my coke or espresso, forever lost in its wistful charms. Soon enough I owned a copy. 

         Of course I knew absolutely nothing about The Teddy Bears, who they were, or its producer Phil Spector, but then again neither did anyone else for this was Spector’s grand entrance into the pop world. All I knew was that this record had a depth to it that was delightfully addictive; the haunting melody and confident ascent into the middle-eight (‘Why can’t he see…’), the simplicity and innocence of its lyrics and the slightly reticent delivery on the verses; all this adding up to the kind of recording that made almost all British productions of the period sound awfully clumsy by comparison, lacking sincerity and somehow second rate. It wasn’t that ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’ was a brilliant Spector production, though it was certainly one of his building blocks, but there was something about the way it was recorded that made it stand out, that made it different, that made it compelling. Well, it captivated me anyway, even though my favourite records in those days tended to be rock’n’roll. Only much later did I discover that Spector, one of the two boys in the group, had taken the title from the words on his father’s gravestone.

     Writing about ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’ in his Phil Spector book Out Of His Head*, my former Melody Maker colleague Richard Williams argues convincingly that, whether intentional or not, teenagers were drawn to the record through what adults might perceive as its imperfections, and that this was the key to its success (number one in the US, two in the UK). “[Annette] Kleinbard’s voice, taking the lead, has a charming artlessness; the two male voices, echoing her in the repetitive chorus (‘and I do and I do and I do and I do’), are hardly more assertive,” he writes. “The flimsy rhythm section could be in a different room. At best it sounds like a demo, and a particularly hesitant one. But that was the beauty of pop music in 1958. It was such a powerful expression of the new teenage consciousness that flimsiness and naivety actually made music more appealing, not less. Annette Kleinbard singing ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’ with Phil Spector and Marshall Leib in support sounded exactly like the people – immature, unformed, full of tentative romantic hopes and dreams – who would hear and respond to the record when, eventually, it was heard on the radio. Devoid of calculation, it simply was its audience.”

     I was 11, going on 12, hardly yet full of romantic hopes and dreams, but this makes perfect sense to me; and it’s just about as perfect a critique of this lovely song as I’ve read anywhere.

     Back on the iPod, The Teddy Bears’ recording is actually one of four versions I have of ‘To Know Him…’, with others by The Beatles, the trio of Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt & Emmylou Harris, and a rather anonymous instrumental played on electric guitar with wafting strings.

     By their standards The Beatles are a bit hesitant, perhaps taking their cue from Spector’s production, and they change the lyrics to ‘To Know Her Is To Love Her’. John, singing lead, could have opened up a bit more on the middle-eight, as he did on the similarly paced ‘This Boy’, but it’s clear they revere the song, John’s sincerity shining through with Paul and George offering equally respectful vocal back-up. This version comes from the Beatles Live At The BBC, and was recorded at the BBC Paris Studio in London on July 16, 1963, but there’s also Beatle versions available on the unofficial Decca Sessions album, recorded during their unsuccessful audition for the label on January 1, 1962, and the (now) pirate Live At The Star Club, recorded in Hamburg on December 31, 1962, when they were gagging to get back to the UK and launch their assault on the world. I had both these on vinyl once but they haven’t made their way on my iPod since I don’t have them on CD.

     The version by Dolly, Linda & Emmylou is equally respectful, stately paced, charming too, albeit it a bit long, with a slightly Hawaiian sounding slide guitar solo, and the instrumental track on my iPod is surplus to requirements really. I have no doubt there are many other cover versions out there that I haven’t heard, but nothing, not even The Beatles, can beat The Teddy Bears and how the song seeped its way into my consciousness all those years ago and, like all the very best in pop, stays there today.

---

* In the autumn of 2003 Omnibus Press published a new edition of Richard’s book that first came out in 1972. Earlier that year, on Monday, February 3, he and I went out for lunch to an Indian restaurant that was close to my office to discuss the book. By a strange coincidence this was the same day/night that the actress Lana Clarkson died from gunshot wounds at Spector’s home in Los Angeles, a crime for which he was subsequently jailed for 19 years to life. So, LA being eight hours behind the UK, at the exact same moment as Richard and I were tucking into our poppadums and onion bhaji, over in LA Lana Clarkson’s body was being removed from Phil Spector’s palatial home and the great record producer was being taken into police custody.

JOHN LENNON INTERVIEW, October 1973 – Part 4

The fourth part of my 1973 interview with John. 

        

John admits he’s dropped out a little recently, and has deliberately stopped making explosive statements that would make newspaper headlines. He says this may have something to do with his visa situation, that he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself in ways that might jeopardise his position. In any case, there has, he says, not been much to talk about. “I think I’ll always be the same whenever there’s an issue. In the olden days, the MM would carry headlines like ‘Lennon Blasts Hollies’ and, not that I’d regret saying what I’d said, it would reverberate back to me for months afterwards.

         “So then I’d drop back a little. I’m going through one of those phases now. Either Lennon is all over the place or he’s invisible. Like other things, I don’t plan it. It just happens naturally.”

         The next project coming up for John, though, is an album of oldies he’s due to make with Phil Spector. “Phil and I have been threatening to do this for years.

         “I want to go in and sing some ‘Ooo eeh baby’-type songs that are meaningless for a change. Whenever I’m in the studio, between takes, I mess around with oldies. I even used to do it in the studio in the Beatle days, so now I’m finally getting round to doing a John Lennon sings the oldies album.

         “This will be my next album. I hope people won’t think I’ve run out of songs, but sod it, I just want to do it. I’m not going to tell you what numbers I’ll be doing; I don’t even know for sure myself. Phil and I are sorting through loads of songs right now.

         “I enjoy working with him, but I equally enjoyed doing the latest album on my own. There was nobody to lean on, and this was a good exercise for me. I always control everything anyway, but this time I thought I’d do it all on my own.”

         Conversation turned to the recent double Beatles compilation albums [the ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ albums] that have been so successful, a fact which pleases Lennon almost as much as when ‘Imagine’ occasionally creeps back into the charts. He gets a bigger kick, however, out of his own albums doing well rather than Beatle material.

         “George controlled the choice of the material on those albums more than any of us. They sent me lists and asked for my opinion, but I was busy at the time. I think it was the pressure of the bootlegs that finally made us put them out after all this time.

         “Did you know that there’s a bootleg out now of the Decca audition which The Beatles did? I have a copy of it, but I’m trying to find the tape. It’s beautiful. There’s us singing ‘To Know Her Is To Love Her’, and a whole pile of tracks, mostly other people’s but some of our own. It’s pretty good, better than that Tony Sheridan thing on Polydor.

         “Every time I go on TV here somebody tapes it and within a week it’s in all the shops. In a way I dig it because it’s good for your ego, but I know I’m not supposed to because it’s against the business. I got copies made from this Decca audition and sent it to them all. I wouldn’t mind actually releasing it.”

         I told John I had a copy of The Beatles Live At Shea Stadium. “Yes, I’ve got that,” he said. “I think I’ve got them all. There’s one of a Beatles show at the Hollywood Bowl which was an abortion, and there’s others from everywhere we played, obscure places here in the States. It seemed someone was taping it everywhere.

         “I think the official reissue albums came out around the right time. Maybe we’d have sold more if we’d got them out before the bootleggers, but they didn’t do too badly at all. They got gold records each. They brought back the sixties.”

         With talk having moved to The Beatles, not a subject I’d intended to discuss, I asked John if he had a favourite Beatles song. “Not really,” he said. “I usually preferred whatever was current at the time. I have a favourite of Paul’s, and a favourite of George’s and a favourite of my own.

         “Of mine I like ‘Strawberry Fields’ and ‘Walrus’, of Paul’s I like ‘Here, There And Everywhere’, of Ringo’s I like ‘Honey Don’t’ and of George’s I like ‘Within You, Without You’. Of course I still like ‘Eleanor Rigby’, and another I liked was ‘For No One’.

         “I have favourites from different periods. When I first received a copy of the compilation albums, I was too nervous to play them in case they were mixed badly. I thought the sound was a bit rough.

         “I heard they’ve tried to stereoise the old albums. I wish they hadn’t. I also think they could have put some of the tracks out that were B-sides and aren’t available any more. Maybe they still will. I hope so.”

         My last question was the inevitable... any chance of us seeing the four Beatles on a stage or record together again?

         “There’s always a chance,” grinned John. “As far as I can gather from talking to them all, nobody would mind doing some work together again. There’s no law that says we’re not going to do something together, and no law that says we are.

         “If we did do something I’m sure it wouldn’t be permanent. We’d do it just for that moment. I think we’re closer now than we have been for a long time. I call the split the divorce period and none of us ever thought there’d be a divorce like that.

         “That’s just the way things turned out. We know each other well enough to talk about it.”

        

And just as John said that the tape ran out. In fact he’d leaned over to push the stop button on my tape recorder after I’d asked him the question about The Beatles getting back together in some form or other, and I’d grabbed his hand to prevent him. I guessed he didn’t really want quoting on the issue in case I wrote up another ‘Beatles to reform story,’ a bad habit of mine in those days.

         We’d been nattering for about 90 minutes by the side of Lou Adler’s swimming pool. In the living room of the house was a Gibson Melody Maker guitar, a good omen I thought. This interview was the beginning of a friendly relationship I enjoyed with John that lasted until 1975 when I saw him get his green card at a hearing in New York. I’ll post about that tomorrow. 

JOHN LENNON INTERVIEW, October 1973 - Part 3

The third part of my interview with John in 1973 which I had originally decided to split into three parts but is now four. I hadn’t actually read this for a long time and when I looked at it last week before deciding to post it I realised it was longer than I thought. It was also more interesting. John really was a great interviewee. He, Bowie and Townshend were always great to interview. All three instinctively knew how to give good copy, if that’s the right way to put it. Moon wasn’t bad either but he was a storyteller. John, David and Pete simply thought a lot about the business they were in, had forthright opinions and weren’t afraid to express them, regardless of the consequences.

While emphasising that he doesn’t mean to be insulting to England, John says he never misses home. “I don’t miss England like I didn’t miss Liverpool when The Beatles moved to London. England will always be there if I choose to go back, and when I came here originally I didn’t have a plan to stay. It just happened that way.

         “I love New York. It’s the hottest city on earth. I haven’t been everywhere in the world but it’s the fastest city on earth. The difference between New York and London is the difference between London and Liverpool.

         “For me New York has everything. And if I wanted to get away from it there’s always New England to visit. If I feel homesick for England, I feel homesick for Cornwall, or Ireland or Scotland where I went on holidays. When I think of England now, I think of my childhood or discotheques in London and in New England it’s very similar with the rock and the sea and that.

         “I’ve got a little pad there where I can go to get away from the rush of New York, and I’ve got an apartment in the Dakota Building in New York which is the place they made the film Rosemary’s Baby.

         “I also love the millions of radio stations and television channels and the piped TV movies I can get and things like that which you can’t get in England.”

         John regrets that he doesn’t get out to see many artists performing, a situation that stems from being John Lennon. “I get nervous at shows. Either I have to sit in the audience and I get hassled by the crowd, or I go backstage and have to mix with the groupies and all that trip.

         “Rod Stewart’s here at the moment and I wouldn’t mind seeing him. I like him. I want to see Jerry Lee Lewis, too, while he’s on here. I saw Fats Domino in Las Vegas – I seem to be catching up on the ones I never saw when I was a teenager.

         “I had a ticket for The Rolling Stones on the East Coast but at the time I was in Los Angeles, so I never got to see them. I haven’t seen the Stones since the Rock and Roll Circus which was the film that never came out.

         “I still prefer records. They’re the thing of the moment that matters. I like to see the artist occasionally, but some people have made one great record and I go for that record and don’t care whatever else they’ve done.

         “People are saying the Stones are getting too old to appear now but that’s bullshit. Mick’ll never be past it. I saw the TV show they did over here and it was fantastic. It was a master’s performance and that’s what Mick is, a master performer.

         “The English always tear into their own artists more than others, and worship Americans. Here it’s the other way around. I like a lot of the new British bands though.”

         I told John that Slade had been called the new Beatles. “Hell, who wants to be the new Beatles!” he replied. “I like some of their records. They get it off. I saw them on TV here and it was all right.

         “It must be so hard for them when they come here and they’re used to being treated like God in England, but I think they’ll survive. They’re a good band. They’re a singles band and I’m a singles man.

         “The only reason I make albums is because you’re supposed to. I haven’t really got into somebody’s album since I was into Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins, and even then singles were always the best.

         “I’d like to see The Who when they come over here, they’re like clockwork. I went to see Cheech & Chong the other night, but once is enough for them.

         “That’s another thing that puts me off playing live – the fact that you’ve got to do the same thing over and over again every night, and the audience wants to hear the songs you’re associated with. I remember I sang ‘Imagine’ twice in one day when I was rehearsing it, and that bored me.

         “I’ve nothing against the song, in fact I’m quite proud of it, but I just can’t go on every night singing it. I’d try and vary it, but then I don’t like to see that myself. If I go to watch an artist I’d expect to hear the things I know. I understand it from both points of view. Actually I have trouble remembering lyrics. I sang ‘Come Together’ at Madison Square Gardens for a TV show too and really I sang ‘She Got Hairy Arseholes’ instead of what it should have been, and it was never noticed.”

JOHN LENNON INTERVIEW, October 1973 - Part 2

The second part on my 1973 interview with Johnny Beatle.

John considers Mind Games to be better than Imagine, although he says he’s never completely satisfied with his records. “For the last ten years I’ve said that if I didn’t like something I wouldn’t put it out, but whenever I played the record back I’m thinking of ways to change it and make it better still. It’s good, but you can always do better and that’s why I go on making records.

         “I was disappointed at the reaction to the last album [Sometime In New York City]. Over here they banned it and made such a fuss about the songs, and it was never played because they said it insulted blacks which it didn’t at all. I know a lot of black people, and they know what’s going on.

         “I know it was political with a capital “P”, but that was what I had in my bag at the time and I wasn’t just going to throw them away because they were political. ‘Imagine’ did pretty well, so after that I wanted to just do one that I felt like.

         “I still like the song ‘Woman Is The Nigger Of The World’. I like the sound of it and it gets me off, but it just happened that it didn’t please people.”

         At present, John has no immediate plans to tour or appear live anywhere. He had plans until the much-publicised visa situation reared up, and now he’s content to wait until these problems are sorted out before going on the road.

         “At the time they were trying to throw me out, I really felt like going on the road, but having to go to court and go to Washington put me off the idea. I had no time to think about work, which was maybe what they were trying to do to me – wear me down.

         “I wouldn’t mind doing it, but the organisation frightens me. I could probably earn a lot of money, which wouldn’t be a bad thing because all my money is tied up in England and they won’t let me have it. I get lots of people wanting me to do things for charity, but usually when I show, it turns out the whole thing is a fiasco and I end up running the whole show.

         “Not many people know how to put a show on properly: most of them think that if they get a famous name, he’ll call everybody he knows and they won’t have to worry about anything else.

         “The Bangla Desh show started this big charity thing. Now people ring me and they think that if I say ‘yes’ then Dylan, George and God will appear, too. If Yoko appears anywhere, they automatically expect me to appear, so I now say screw it for the time being.

         “I’m in no particular hurry, I don’t miss not being on stage and one way or the other I always seem to be performing somehow, no matter where I am.

         “When I did the Madison Square Gardens show, I had a sort of deja-vu feeling that I’d done it all before and this was no better or no worse than it had ever been before. It felt strange and I felt like a robot doing the same thing over and over again.

         “I’ll probably go out on the road again before too long, but it’s just the itty-bitty things about it that I can’t stand. If something comes up that interests me, then I may do it. I think I’d sooner play the Roxy here than a ballpark, but the complications of someone like me doing a show anywhere are endless.

         “I couldn’t do what Paul did with Wings and just turn up at Bradford University and play. It’d have to be something more organised than that.”

         Right now, John is waiting for the appeal hearing for his application to remain in the USA. While the appeal is pending, he’s just behaving naturally, and relying on a team of lawyers to keep him informed of how the case is proceeding.

         To this end, he’s kept out of the papers recently, living quietly in an apartment in Central Manhattan, New York, anxious not to offend those who want to see him leave America. His only publicised public appearance recently was when he went to watch the Watergate hearings in Washington.

         “I only went once to see Watergate, but it made the papers because I was recognised straight away. I thought it was better on TV anyway because I could see more. When it first came on I watched it live all day, so I just had the urge to actually go. I had other business in Washington, anyway.

         “The public was there and most Senators have children, so every time there was a break in the proceedings I had to sign autographs. I was looking like a Buddhist monk at the time with all my hair chopped off, and I thought nobody would spot me. They spotted Yoko before me, and assumed – rightly – that I must be with her. It was quite a trip.”

John took part in some of the sessions for Ringo’s forthcoming album which brought three ex-Beatles together – and almost all four – for the first time since the split. “Yea, the three of us were there and Paul would most probably have joined in if he was around but he wasn’t,” said John.

         “I just got a call from Ringo, asking me to write a track so I did. It seemed the natural thing to do. George has written a track and Paul has written one, but most of them are Ringo’s. I like his songs. For the track that I wrote, I was on piano, Billy Preston was on organ, Ringo was on drums, George was on guitar and Klaus Voorman was on bass.”

         John says he talks to at least one of the other three ex-Beatles every two weeks. “I’ve talked to Ringo a lot recently because he’s just moved into my house at Ascot, which is nice because I’ve always got a bedroom there. I haven’t talked to Paul since before he did the last tour with Wings, but I heard Red Rose Speedway and it was all right.

         “I liked parts of his TV special especially the intro. The bit filmed in Liverpool made me squirm a bit, but Paul’s a pro. He always has been. I hear two people have left Wings now. The only news I hear is what I get from the English trade papers. Nobody tells me things, unless I ask and really, it’s nothing to do with me anyway what Wings are doing.”

IN PLAIN SIGHT - The Life & Lies of Jimmy Savile

I was going to post the next extract from my 1973 interview with John Lennon today but decided instead to throw a curved ball and post this book review instead. More John tomorrow.

On the cover of this impressive biography of Sir James Savile OBE is a picture of the subject as an old man reclining in an armchair in a flat that overlooks Scarborough’s South Bay sea front which is clearly identifiable through a large picture window. This is the sea front that I describe elsewhere on Just Backdated in a Beatles-related post that recalls the summer of 1963, the summer of ‘She Loves You’; the sea front where I strolled with a girl on my arm and where Savile strolled on many occasions with his beloved mother, ‘The Duchess’, for whom he bought this flat when he became rich.

         Thankfully this is the only parallel I can find between Savile and myself though I have also posted about two close encounters with him that led me to conclusions not unlike those shared by most everyone following the revelations that have surfaced since his death in 2011, and which readers of this bulky 600-page book will also undoubtedly reach. To wit: Savile was a thoroughly nasty piece of work; shifty, vain, duplicitous and possessed of a genuinely vicious streak that he cleverly suppressed when mixing with defenders he needed to nurture, most notably HRH Charlie Wales and Thatcher PM but also numerous shady senior policemen and scatter-brained clerics. All these and more seemed in thrall to his overbearing personality, like rabbits caught in the glare of a particularly bright headlight. That he was a serial sex-offender was probably suspected by many but never acted upon because he was a big celebrity who hid his crimes behind a massive wall of charity work. Also, cunningly, he often joked about his predilection for ‘dolly birds’ so that he became perceived as a sort of benign ‘Jack the Lad’ figure when he was nothing of the sort. He was a grade-A pervert, rapist and paedophile, almost certainly the most prolific sex offender this country has ever seen.

         The more he sinned the more he expanded his charity work, evidently believing that, as a practising Catholic, when he reached the Pearly Gates his debit and credit columns would cancel each other out and he’d be allowed through. He had all sorts of weird ideas about religion and, visiting Israel, walked in the desert with a wooden staff in the footsteps of Christ or so he believed. On the same visit he attempted to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestine, just as on another occasion he tried to do the same thing between the loyalists and republicans in Northern Ireland.

         All this and more is told in this superbly researched but only tolerably well-written book by an author who admits to being obsessed with Savile for a very long time. Davies evidently knew him well and interviewed him on many occasions, not that the interviews ever revealed much as Savile was a liar and fantasist who invented and exaggerated in order to muddy the waters, or if he didn’t like a question simply clammed up and changed the subject like politicians on TV. Trying to find out the truth can’t have been easy and Davies admits as much as we move through his life.

         The book opens with the destruction of Savile’s gruesome headstone at the cemetery in Scarborough where it had been unveiled amidst much pomp and ceremony just 19 days before. Thereafter it ramps up the tension through a non-linear narrative in which the upward momentum of Savile’s career is told between chapters that describe the author’s own meetings with Savile at his homes in Scarborough and Leeds, and the behind-the-scenes shenanigans at the BBC as details of his crimes begin to emerge after his death; their dilemma over whether to broadcast a fawning Christmas tribute show or a damning exposure on Newsnight, and the cack-handed manner in which they dealt with it.

         The building blocks upon which Savile’s eccentric character was formed are carefully examined; the youngest of seven, childhood poverty and illness, minimal education, unskilled work, ducking and diving, grab all you can. Distanced from his father but adored by his mother, he saw dancehalls as an entry into teenage lives and became a DJ, first in Leeds, then in Manchester, moving from live work in Mecca nightspots to radio, firstly with Luxembourg and then the BBC. That he was a good decade and a half older than others in this line of work was somehow overlooked, largely because he disguised himself with outlandish clothes, bling and long hair dyed blond. Despite the concerns of a few sceptics at the BBC, he moved smoothly from radio to TV and by the time of Jim’ll Fix It he was simply too popular – 15 million watched it every week – to dump. By this time he’d become a big charity campaigner, most often by performing stunts of physical endurance, running and cycling marathons, which drew attention to him. He liked attention all right. He mixed with the Royal Family, acting as an ‘advisor’ to Charles and Diana when their marriage was failing, and became pally with Thatcher who, because of his fundraising for Stoke Mandeville Hospital, pushed through his knighthood in 1990 after several previous attempts and against the advice of wiser heads in the cabinet.

         Along the way Savile amassed a small fortune through kick-backs and endorsements and systematically sexually abused teenage girls and the occasional boy wherever he went, at the BBC, in hospitals, in children’s homes, in his motor home, in hotels, anywhere and everywhere. The extent of this is staggering and discomforting to read, though the book never stoops to sensationalism. On only one occasion – aboard a cruise liner – did Savile’s addiction to pubescent female flesh come to the attention of someone in a position to do something, in this case the ship’s captain who was alerted to his misbehaviour and confined Savile to his cabin until such a time as he could disembark and fly back to the UK. Regrettably this went no further and the press didn’t report it. Towards the end of his life there was another episode in which Surrey police followed up complaints but Savile bluffed his way through the interview and no action was taken. 

         Eventually Saville dies, alone and unloved, virtually friendless too as he avoided personal relationships of any kind. Then, slowly at first but with increasing momentum, the shit hits the fan. It’s an appalling story, fairly well crafted in this book though there are some leads that could have been chased down further and the editing is a tad sloppy here and there. I’m not sure whether to recommend it and, I have to admit, the only reason I read it was out of lurid curiosity and to find out how this ghastly man got away with all that he did. I have a bit better understanding of that now but there’s no real explanation as to why so many people simply let him do as he chose. The only reason seems to be that it was easier to ignore him than confront him, easier to turn a blind eye than rock the boat. In some ways you can forgive the nurses who knew what was going on but were powerless to do anything but the same cannot be said about those in positions of power, supposedly people of good judgement, who were either taken in by him or, worse, let him abuse at will.

         Incidentally, I was disconcerted to discover that on the one occasion I saw The Beatles, at Bradford on December 21, 1963, Savile was in the audience (and Rolf Harris was the compere). I also spotted two silly errors – a reference to Savile wrapping £20 notes around rolled up newspaper to give the impression he had a wad of cash in the fifties (£20 notes weren’t introduced until 1970) and Johnny & The Hurricanes described as a ‘popular singing act’!

         Approach with caution.