I’d Love to Turn You On Comment by Joel Jambon on Mar 26, 15:07 Excellent, thought-provoking analysis! “Beatles as alcoholic children” is going to stick in my head forever.Memories of Nicholas Schaffner and The Beatles Forever Comment by on Mar 25, 11:05 Lemme post about the addiction/mental health issues in the Beatles story, and why they are so essential. I always give Goldman a lot of slack, because I really do believe that he came to the project admiring John (as most people did then) and what he found shocked him. So he over-corrected. And besides, what will endure about Lennon is his music and his cultural impact, neither of which can be changed by a muckraker. The “Lennon-as-abuser” line of argument has turned him into a non-entity to the terminally online under 35s, but eventually he will be seen by future-folk for the amazing unique genius he was, warts and all. He’s just too important within pop cultural history. The last-minute cancellation of Prisoner of Love makes me 99% sure that there were real bad things going on 1975-80 — not just junkie behavior, either, but stuff that would fundamentally change how the public views several powerful people. They really don’t want that story to be told in full, and given what we already know, how much more damning can it be? Quite a bit more damning, I guess! It might even be possible that the public would read it and shrug, but someone(s) with a guilty conscience or a corporate-type obsession with narrative control would see it differently. It even could’ve been Apple, worried that PoL would depress future sales of things like “Get Back.” The Beatles are now elemental, the movement of vast sums into some wallets and not others. All this is pure speculation on my part, but the question must be asked: what’s important enough to suppress, after 45 years? On the other hand, the suppression could’ve been reflexive: “…because I/we can.” If you have specific questions about the book, email them, I will read them and answer them if I feel comfortable. I’m sorry to be uncharacteristically cagey, but it really was an awful psychological experience and I so I treat it all with a great deal of wariness. As a sort of general statement, I will say that over the years I was writing I began to see the outlines of a very plausible plot, shockingly cynical and truly upsetting if you cared about John Lennon. I am fully willing to admit that this was probably my own story-making brain, which by that point was quite paranoid. This didn’t merely come from my Beatles-knowledge, but also my deep reading about the intelligence community — both of these interests are decades-long. So I found myself in a truly terrible spot: I could write the book that these data-points were suggesting to me, which might cause a stir but felt thoroughly awful and was nothing any Beatles/Lennon fan would want to read, or I could veer totally comic, which had been done excellently by Mark Shipper and The Rutles. To finish the project I charted a middle way, which was very unsatisfying to me, and why when third parties have attempted to embiggen the project via republishing or TV, I have gone limp.
- Memories of Nicholas Schaffner and The Beatles Forever Comment by on Mar 25, 08:17 Thank you for the detailed response. As someone with both a personal and professional life deeply enmeshed in mental health issues and addictions, I definitely think that’s an extremely interesting way to view The Beatles story, but only if done with empathy. It makes me wonder what kind of book Goldman could have written if he’d been more empathetic and less hell bent as portraying John as Bond villain level evil. The cancellation of Prisoner of Love was massively disappointing, as I suspect it was exactly the kind of unflinching yet empathetic view of John that has been sorely lacking since before the man died. I certainly wasn’t writing for SNL, but my background in academia makes me absurdly perfectionist and I’m always surprised when ideas that are rawer and more persona resonant far more with people than those that I’ve redrafted and edited for months on end. Truth be told, my main questions for you pertain to the “real” story you brushed up against while writing Life After Death for Beginners, but based on your posts I imagine you’d rather do that privately, if at all.
- “Paperback” Trail; or, The Hunt for Mark Shipper Comment by on Mar 23, 07:16 What the hell, one more Mark Shipper story, this one with a Beatles twist (and shout). Mark told me once that the two best “screamers” in rock and roll — as a tool in their vocal repertoires — were John Lennon and the Gerry Roslie of the Sonics. Like so many of his observations, this is true to a point, and that point is the boundary of what Mark had actually heard or experienced or — frankly — given any thought to. Still, I know exactly what he meant…
- “Paperback” Trail; or, The Hunt for Mark Shipper Comment by on Mar 23, 06:59 How about that? I wrote what amounts to an obituary and your question has made me realize I actually have no idea if Mark is alive or dead. See, I stumbled on your website and this thread, and all of these memories came flooding out and…well, you get it. The answer to your query: I don’t know and I have no way of finding out. The Mark myth/mystery lives on, it seems…
- Memories of Nicholas Schaffner and The Beatles Forever Comment by on Mar 23, 02:20 I suspect you mightily underestimate your contributions here, much as you rightly heap praise upon your peers. Due to absurd level sleep deprivation, I have very little to say at present besides thank you for reactivating the site, and (however odd it doubtlessly sounds to you), I am genuinely proud to be part of this community. Is there a way to register or do we all just have to manually write our names and email addresses with every comment?
- Memories of Nicholas Schaffner and The Beatles Forever Comment by on Mar 22, 09:51 Michael, I believe I may be the “smart” (debatable) Redditor you mentioned in the “turning the lights back on” post, and I’m fantastically glad you didn’t just nuke this site. I’m sure the maintenance and moderation is at times a nightmare, but this is the home of the most civilised, nuanced and deep Beatles discourse I’ve ever encountered. And I’ve read just about all the books, trawled the forums since I was ten or so in the 90s, and seen everything Reddit has to offer. As either you or somebody else on here once posted, “The Beatles lead everywhere”, and it’s entirely true. Shifts in culture, gender norms, media,” and politics, before we even get down to the music itself. I’m afraid it seems impossible to comment on the post I’m referencing, so apologies for doing it here. But this is a great resource and even in its inactive state, my number one recommendation to fans wanting to delve beneath the surface.
- Old Draft: Beatles Folk Memory 1970-1995 Comment by on Mar 21, 21:54 @Michael, SO glad to see you’re back — I had the misfortune to discover HD just when the lights were going out, and I’ve been kicking myself (and reading the ENTIRE blog straight through) for the last two years. Your take(s) on John & heroin and “what happened in India” changed the way I thought about the whole history of the group after 40+ years of fandom, and among so many other gifts I (SO belatedly) discovered “Magic Circles” thanks to this blog. In the 70s I was a little nerd who liked to read ABOUT the Beatles (even though we didn’t have the records), but didn’t really have my born-again moment till 1984 — completely random timing, the proximate cause only being that a friendly art teacher loaned me the later albums. In hindsight it wasn’t such a great time to be a Beatles fan, unless you really dug “Spies Like Us”… I’d agree that 1987 was a turning point with the CD catalog release, and to me 1988 seems pretty huge by itself: Goldman’s book and the “official response” of the “Imagine” film, Lewisohn’s “Recording Sessions”, and “Ultra Rare Trax” on CD — those to me are before/after events. for good and ill. Probably the next big “marker” in the timeline would be the Anthology, and it does get a little fuzzy after that. But whatever “eras” have happened in-between (already), I’ll put this out there: “Get Back” has had the biggest impact of anything released by or about the Beatles in the last thirty years, both within the fandom and with the normies.
- Reader question: “Thoughts on Prisoner of Love?” Comment by on Mar 20, 03:05 https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-927ai-193f30d Peter gave a short answer to my question about his book on my podcast last year
- “Paperback” Trail; or, The Hunt for Mark Shipper Comment by on Mar 19, 15:31 I just ran across this discussion, a few years too late. I went to high school with Mark — we both wrote for the school newspaper — and he and I shared a lifetime friend, the superb L. A. Times reporter, Bob Baker. Bob and Mark had a berserk two-man sorta garage band in high school called Ron and the Gauchos. Bob told me that Shipper played him a Phil Ochs album back then and he was so impressed it he hung a hard left politically and never looked back, Most of the times I saw Shipper over the years were with Bob. The note about Flash being “Bangs and Meltzer influenced” doesn’t go far enough: Mark was a friend of Lester Bangs and I believe Meltzer actually wrote for it. Of all the madness and brilliance that went into Flash, I think my favorite piece — and it may have been Mark’s, too — was a deeply felt and absolutely unhinged rant by Ronnie Weiser, rockabilly maniac and the man behind Rollin’ Rock Records. Weiser’s righteous hatred of everything about rock and roll after, say, Eddie Cochran’s death was a pure flame of indignation, and hilarious, to boot. Flash also permitted Mark to do a mock ad in the mag which situated two of his fave bands — who shared a numeral — the MC5 and the Dave Clark 5; the tagline on this, as I recall, was: “One band wants to tour America. Thew other wants to DESTROY America.” If you’re a fan of unrepentant rock and roll, you’ll know who was who.) Thinking back over the years, I recall when Mark lived in an apartment over a garage in Laurel Canyon (I think) and when Bob and I visited, he played us the first Elvis Costello album, which hadn’t been released in the U. S. He was dazzled by it, I recall. “Doesn’t he just sound like someone who has been shat upon his entire life,” Mark offered as context. For the record, Paperback Writer was originally self-published, but it was too good and crazy and funny not to land a real publisher eventually. One thing that those coming to this later on seem to miss is that the rave blurbs from Robert Hilburn and Greil Marcus were fictional and satirical. Mark thought Marcus — a great writer, to me — was far too pompous and was utterly dismissive of Hilburn (here I agree). That night in Laurel Canyon, he had hundreds of the self-published version stacked all over the apartment, doomed now by the new edition I remember he, Bob and I went to the Long Beach Blues Festival sometime in the mid-1990s (Bobby Blue Bland and Buddy Guy both in fine form) In the intervening years, I would get the odd email from Mark, completely out of the blue, commenting on some rocker he thought I’d like. But he was reclusive, living alone in the same apartment in Marina del Rey for many years. The radio gig made him plenty of money — he never lost his edge, his wit or his eye for the telling cultural detail — but he seems to have found precious little to spend it on. Once he emailed me a clip from Conan O’brien’s late night show; the talk show host had slicked back his hair, strapped on a guitar and shake, rattled and rolled himself through a full-tilt rockabilly number. Mark thought it was great, and, as was often the case, he was right. I seem to recall we exchanged message when Bob died a few years ago. I suspect his final years were sad but couldn’t say for sure. And that’s what I know about Mark Shipper. The years may have dulled my memories a bit, so forgive any missteps. But I think I got it right. I remember, over a period of almost half a century, a very smart, very clever, very perceptive, very funny guy. And beyond that, who cares?
- The Artist as a Dissipated Man: Fred Seaman’s “The Last Days of John Lennon” Comment by on Mar 17, 20:19 God Bless you for not nuking this site. This was a hell of a read to stumble upon—as I’ve always been fascinated by John and his later life. I remember stumbling upon his demo tapes like “Mirror (On The Wall)” and the (now ruined imo) “Now and Then,” and the 12 year old me would just listen over and over trying to figure how on EARTH he could’ve been such a ghost of a man, yet depict himself in lyrics and haunting piano progressions. Now, at 22 and being just as perceptive, I find myself once more laying on the floor listening to the demos (that I can find—why are they so hard to locate now??) and wondering what could’ve helped him out of it. Looking forward to reading the book. Thank you again for keeping this insight around.
- Memories of Nicholas Schaffner and The Beatles Forever Comment by on Mar 15, 09:58 I remember reading it in 1970 and then believing somehow that Paul took the bus every day to the sessions. There’s a quote somewhere in it “I get the horrors every morning on the bus” (I’m paraphrasing). Kids believe the darndest things. I’m looking at it now. First thing I notice is how minimalist it is. Completely black front & back cover. No text anywhere on the front or back, just pure black with the famous 4 “Let It Be” photos on the front, but small. The book is a transcription of some of the movie’s dialogue. It reads like a stage play. Along with the text are photos, many photos from the sessions. Some group shots, some extreme close-up photos. I see “text by Jonathan Cott and David Dalton, photos by Ethan A. Russell”. This is very much a classy coffee table book, circa 1969. It’s a lovely layout, actually, a nice mix of photos and dialogue. Back it goes with the other Beatles books on my shelf. I’ll leave them to my heirs to either cherish or discard, however they see fit.
- Old Draft: Beatles Folk Memory 1970-1995 Comment by on Mar 14, 22:58 Well, the thrill of watching the live game is incomparable to watching it on the replays… The Beatles phenomenon hasn’t died out, but it has mutated, and each new generation experiences a different Beatles phenomenon than in the past. For example, even though the music is the same as it was sixty years ago, the way we consume it has changed, so while many of us would love to have lived during the sixties and been part of the mania, few would trade the privilege of listening to their music on a modern, immersive sound system. I discovered them in 1994, so I knew The Beatles through The Threetles, when bootlegs became official merchandise and musical rarities ceased to be rarities, becoming more mainstream and expensive products. As a fan, I feel less special than the baby boomers and for some selfish reason I wish the Fab Four to be a niche group and less global cause I believe that the intensity of a fandom is inversely proportional to its size, although Them proved otherwise
- Memories of Nicholas Schaffner and The Beatles Forever Comment by on Mar 11, 19:10 So happy you’re back, Michael! Of the 143 Beatle books I’ve read so far (he tosses off casually), The Beatles Forever is one of my favorites.
- The Artist as a Dissipated Man: Fred Seaman’s “The Last Days of John Lennon” Comment by on Feb 28, 08:36 Yoko’s fault.
- Why Those Screaming Beatlemania Girls Matter Comment by on Feb 10, 10:34 Looking at this 11 years from now, and wow. I’m a student researching The Beatles and their Impact on Female Youth, and I’m wondering if I can use this as a credible source. It’s well researched and the analysis is quite nice.
- The Beatles and Jeffrey Epstein Comment by on Feb 4, 07:46 The Beatles were from Liverpool, Great Britain. Liverpool is just over the water from Wales.
- Memories of Nicholas Schaffner and The Beatles Forever Comment by on Feb 1, 09:29 This blog got me through covid, and for that, I owe you a lifelong debt. As one who is also severely immune compromised, I can relate to your concerns, especially with family, of all people!
- Memories of Nicholas Schaffner and The Beatles Forever Comment by on Feb 1, 09:26 Happy you’re back Mike, I hope you can keep it going!
- Memories of Nicholas Schaffner and The Beatles Forever Comment by on Jan 30, 07:06 https://i.redd.it/2xvctbijthgg1.jpeg We’ll be getting four more movies soon, in addition to all the reading material. I have an old book on my shelf. It’s an annotated version of the “Let It Be” documentary. Still photos from the film with some of the dialog in print form. It’s such a fragile old book I’m afraid to touch it. I imagine it disintegrating like those volumes in The Time Machine movie from 1960.
- Fool’s Goldman: Reliving “The Lives of John Lennon” Comment by on Jan 29, 05:53 @Michael Bleicher which 2 art scene people are you referring to here (your post March 30th 2022): “one of whom had been named in the will of another eccentric wealthy woman in a toxic, Oedipal relationship and then, whoops, got killed.”
- Memories of Nicholas Schaffner and The Beatles Forever Comment by on Jan 8, 08:52 Thanks for resurfacing this book, Michael. Schaffer’s The Beatles Forever was a revelation to me as yet another second generation 1970s fan. Not only did it reveal an entire world around The Beatles that wasn’t otherwise accessible, but it exposed 12 year-old me to a careful and contemporary writing style that was foundational to my future communication skills (such as they are). I read it so many times that I ended up taping the binding and holding it together with a book cover made from a brown paper grocery bag. As an aside, I found a used copy of DiLello’s “The Longest Cocktail Party” shortly after I read The Beatles Forever and it completely broke my impressionable mind. Despite the lack of actual Beatle content (or perhaps because of it), it’s still my favorite fab-related book. I can’t believe no one has made it into a film.
- Memories of Nicholas Schaffner and The Beatles Forever Comment by on Jan 6, 15:18 Yes, you should definitely read the Peter Shotten book written with help by Nicholas Shaffner. It is great. He was a gifted writer who died way too young.
- Memories of Nicholas Schaffner and The Beatles Forever Comment by on Jan 6, 10:35 Re: Shotton book. It’s the only place you’ll get stories like this: “We must have been about eleven the day John accosted me with the dramatic announcement: ‘I’ve had a wank, Pete, I actually came! It’s f-ing great, the most amazing feeling ever!’ We repaired at once to our abandoned Vale Road garage, where John did it all over again for my benefit — but try as I might,I wasn’t to achieve a climax myself until several months later.” Re: AIDS Thank you for the very thoughtful reply. Very well said. The empathetic ones passed away and the greedy ones lived. I was a young gay man just entering adulthood in 1990, frightened beyond belief. There aren’t words harsh enough to describe my feelings for the Reagan administration.
Memories of Nicholas Schaffner and The Beatles Forever Comment by on Jan 5, 16:27 I’m of the same generation as you. Beatles Forever was the third book I picked up about the fabs somewhere around 1979-1980 after The Beatles Illustrated Record and the Podrazik and Castleman discography. Along with the LP’s and singles, these books were the launching pad for my lifelong fascination with the Beatles. I did meet Nicholas Schaffer along with Pete Shotton at the 1983 Beatlefest in New Jersey upon the release of their Lennon book, In My Life. I still have that original version I purchased that day to which they personally signed to my then 13 year old self. I believe I did shake his hand. By the way, I’m glad you’re back!
- Memories of Nicholas Schaffner and The Beatles Forever Comment by on Jan 4, 12:52 Also, for me, two other touchstone books of the time were: “The Beatles A to Z” (by Goldie Friede, Robin Titone and Sue Weiner) that was an encyclopediac breakdown of the career and singles. Besides being a good reference for b-sides, it was just a lot of fun to pore through. A kalideoscopic way to look over the 60s and 70s. and “The Beatles: An Illustrated Record” by Roy Carr and Tony Tyler (1981 edition) which is full of vicious hot-takes on the solo years that friends and I used to laugh at and disagree with.
- Memories of Nicholas Schaffner and The Beatles Forever Comment by on Jan 4, 12:52 Thank you for this post and for the link to Podrazik. I was happy he mentioned the Shotton book. That one had some unique stories but it’s been forgotten, hasn’t it? I became a hardcore fan in 1981 at age 14. I still have my copies of: SHOUT, the RS/Warhol, the Hunter Davies bio, and The Beatles Forever. I was shocked and upset when I opened the paper on Labor Day weekend 1991 and saw Schaffner’s obit. I pulled out “Beatles Forever,” opened my copy to the last page and wrote “we are losing our best and brightest to this f-ing disease.”
- Kiss as the Anti- Beatles Comment by on Jan 3, 04:09 Their music’s decent hard rock, & their concerts are an event to be experienced. Their music was part of the soundtrack of my youth, but now I can’t give them the time of day. Most of it is due to Gene Simmons’, and to a lesser extent, Paul Stanley’s egoic crassness, & their tasteless merchandise machine. Ace & Peter are low life, anti-Semitic losers. And there’s another recent event that I won’t mention that sunk the ship for good. Once a raw & unique presence, they’re more of a cult than a band or a brand.
- Just how blind was John Lennon without his glasses? Comment by on Jan 1, 08:41 The picture of John Lenon peering closely at a 45 record on a turntable is not because he is shortsighted, I suggest but because he is making sure the needle goes on to the opening groove of the record. If you were manually putting on a record mots people wold adopt that post to see better the union of tiny needle and minute groove.
- Old Draft: Beatles Folk Memory 1970-1995 Comment by on Dec 26, 13:04 I am a lurker who stumbled on the blog again. Glad you are back. I was 5 months old in February 1964, so I didn’t really plug into the Beatles until the Red and Blue albums and the Beatles Forever book. I am the same age as Julian Lennon, so I was really affected by the assassination when I was a senior in high school. I tried to talk the school librarian into giving me the commemorative issue of Time magazine (!) and I bought the paperback version of the John and Yoko Playboy interviews. John was ” sixteen in the head’ himself IMHO, so he really resonated with me then. I would pore over that book and it seemed replete with wisdom and truth to me! I think you are right; people my age were nothing like the “first wave” baby boomers and our Beatles experience was quite different too. I still have a library of Beatles books, but the concerns of adult life took hold by the 90s. But, I do think they are a band for the ages. The music itself and the stories and personalities behind it have an enduring and peculiar fascination for every succeeding generation , it seems. There are internet discussions about them all over the internet from every demographic. I am sure all the other bands would like to know the secret…
Recent CommentsMichael Gerber2020-09-14T13:07:50-07:00