Thom's Link Emporium - 0026 - 25 July 2022

Apologies for the lack of a newsletter last week. I had a very busy weekend and just hadn’t found enough through the week to warrant sending anything out. We should be back to normal from now on.

Hope you’ve been surviving the heat. I’m beginning to wonder if we shouldn’t keep turning up the thermostat on this planet.

As ever, if you want something to read as the planet burns, you can subscribe here.

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Links

1. I was interviewed by my good friend (who I've never had the pleasure of meeting face to face) Andy Mascola on his People Are The Enemy podcast. It was a really fun chat!

2. Ted Gioia on the books that changed how he heard music. And they're not music books, but a very good list (at least the couple I've read, Flow and From Ritual to Romance) I also recommend that you sign his petition to get Duke Ellington the Pulitzer he was denied in 1965. (Update)

3. Is the largest NFT seller, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, racist? (As well as, obviously, being a massive scam)

4. The surprising crossovers between early series of Red Dwarf, and those of Chucklevision

Listening

Anyone who's read more than a couple of these knows that I've fallen very deep into a Beatles rabbit-hole of late and as such, found a wonderful story this week that I'd never heard before.

Back in 1970, Phil Collins was a jobbing session drummer. He was in his band Flaming Youth, and wouldn't join Genesis until later in the year. One day, Ringo Starr's chauffeur called saying they needed a percussionist for Harrison's solo project, an album that would become All Things Must Pass.

Collins, being a huge Beatles fan, jumped at the chance, arrived at Abbey Road, and saw Harrison and Starr there as well as Klaus Voormann, Billy Preston and Phil Spector. Collins was given congas to play, and sat with Starr, cadging cigarettes through nervousness and playing when asked. He wasn't an experienced conga player, adding to the anxiety, and at the end suddenly everyone disappeared and he was left in the studio alone. He was told they'd all gone off to watch TV or something and he wasn't needed any further and could leave. Still, he'd recorded his parts, and he headed home wondering how his life would change after appearing on a solo Beatles record.

When All Things Must Pass came out, Collins was understandably excited, but checking through the credits, his name wasn't there, and listening through the track in question, they'd clearly used a different take. Collins was disappointed and for some years, reached out to Harrison to see if he could get a tape of his contribution.

This continued for many years and Harrison wouldn't send him what he asked. However, eventually Collins happened to buy F1 driver Jackie Stewart's house. When Collins and Stewart were chatting, Stewart mentioned that his friend Harrison was remixing All Things Must Pass and Collins told the story and asked again whether he could receive the tape.

This time, though, he was successful and a couple of days' later a tape arrived with a note from Harrison saying "Could this be you?" Collins's put the tape on, one can imagine rather eagerly, to see how his youthful self sounded playing with his heroes.

So there he is, one can imagine him with his headphones on, listening to this cut, wondering if the new remixed version would contain this fascinating moment from his history. Maybe this take is the better one and people would realise when they heard? Obviously I'm guessing a bit here, but I assume those are the sort of thoughts running though his head. Instead, though, he heard the congas come in and they were loud, out of time and just generally terrible. To add to the ignominy at the end of the take you can hear Harrison in the recording booth saying to Spector "Hey, Phil, can we try another without the conga player?"

Suddenly, everything became clear. Collins wasn't left alone while the others watched TV, he was politely fired without him even realising it. And Harrison hadn't been keeping the tape from him because he was busy, or was just ignoring him. He'd kept it from him because the tape was awful and he didn't want Collins to know.

These thoughts float around in Collins's head, until he gets a call from Jackie Stewart. "I've got someone here to speak to you" he said and puts George onto the line. "Did you get the tape?"

"I now realise I was fired by a Beatle" said Collins.

I imagine here that there's a few moments of silence, perhaps a little muffled giggling, before Harrison said "Don't worry, it was a piss-take. I got Ray Cooper to play really badly and we dubbed it on. Thought you'd like it!"

So not only had Harrison kept a joke running with Phil Collins for many, many years, he finished off the prank by paying for a whole band to spend time in the studio with him just so he could make the joke. If this doesn't make you love George Harrison more than ever, I really don't know what will.

• Story in Far Out magazine that I used for a lot of the quotes

• My original source for the story, the wonderful Nothing Is Real podcast

Reading

Yet more Beatles in my reading list this week I'm afraid, because I'm currently reading Many Years from Now which is a biography written by Barry Miles and published in 1998. It's effectively an official biography since Miles (a friend of McCartney for many years) had unparalleled access to his source. As such, it's a very one-sided picture, and McCartney says as much towards the beginning of the book.

However, once you read it knowing that that's the case, it colours in many parts of McCartney's life I was either unaware of or didn't quite understand. His time living in Jane Asher's parents's house in Wimple Street is described in the most detail I've come across, as is McCartney's involvement with the setting up of the Indica gallery where, later, John Lennon would meet Yoko Ono.

It also contains one of my favourite stories that says an awful lot about McCartney. One day, he decided he'd go and speak to philosopher and, at the time, famed war protestor Bertrand Russell. So that's what he did - he just turned up to his house, knocked on the door, was kept in a waiting room for a while before being introduced to one of the greatest British philosophers and chatting with him for an hour or two.

Basically, McCartney lived the fantasy 1960s that all fans of the 1960s really wanted to live, bumping into William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, checking with Alma Cogan whether Yesterday was his own composition. In summary, it's both a fascinating picture of a great life and some wonderful wish fulfilment.

Watching

I rewatched Cloud Atlas this week. I realise this is a film that splits people. I think it's a classic, perhaps the second best film the Wachowskis ever made. However, I can see why people would watch it and find the plot baffling and the actors playing multiple characters of varying races and genders either actively offensive or at the very least confusing and annoying.

However, for me, it's an outstanding and sympathetic solution to filming a book that to most would have seemed entirely unfilmable. The problem with adapting David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is that it's a book about words. About how words are passed through the ages, and can affect us in hugely different ways depending on our context. However, running through it too is the fact that humanity does not change that much. Problems that appear to be "solved" in the earlier parts of the story (e.g. slavery) come back in the later stories in various ways.

To see, then, these characters being played by the same actors throughout the film ties all of the stories together, reinforcing that we are who we are by the chance of when we were born, and how we were raised. We're reminded of this fact over and over when actors play entirely different roles, we know underneath they're the same person. It's a brave, creative, and sympathetic approach.

The film is a gamble from end to end. It's two creators pushing themselves as far as they possibly can. You can argue that some of it doesn't work, but to me it's one of the most innovative and interesting films of the 21st century.

Quote

"You're on Earth. There's no cure for that"

Samuel Beckett

Ringo by Ringo Starr

It's 1973, four years after the rooftop concert and recording of Let It Be you might have seen recently in Get Back. In that time, The Beatles have split, and George and John have released perhaps their best solo albums (All Things Must Pass and Plastic Ono Band) and Paul's Band on the Run is just around the corner.

Ringo's was the first proper solo album released in 1970 and Sentimental Journey - an album of standards with a solid collection of contributors - was pretty successful. The country album, also from 1970, Beaucoups of Blues didn't trouble the charts but it's been three years since then and Ringo's ready for his third album.

Being an ex-Beatle gives you an ability call in some pretty big players to star on your album. Ringo contains performances by all four Beatles (never all on the same track) and is therefore as close to a Beatles reunion as we ever got. Indeed, while it was being recorded in LA there were rumours that a Beatles reunion was happening with Klaus Voormann replacing Paul on bass. (As an aside, this is such a weird idea - like the only thing you'd need to replace if Paul wasn't available was his bass playing?)

The opener, I'm The Greatest is written by John and had he performed it would have been suitably sarcastic whilst also showing more of his insecure megalomaniac personality than perhaps he would have liked. In Ringo's voice, it's charming and sweet, and when he sings "I was in the greatest show on earth, for what it's worth" it seems both fitting and self-effacing. As well as John on piano, this has George on guitar and Billy Preston on organ. On Have You Seen My Baby, a sweet if insubstantial Randy Newman cover, Marc Bolan plays guitar. Because why not?

The third track, the George-penned Photograph is the real star of the show. It's a beautiful, poignant song, especially when you know it was written by George for Ringo. With its soaring strings and beautiful melody it's one of George's best tracks after All Things Must Pass. The next track, Sunshine Life For Me (Sail Away Raymond) is not as strong, but in its defence it does have four of the five members of The Band playing on it.

Oh My My opens side two and it's a charming sing-along penned by Vini Poncia (more on him later). On backing vocals it has Merry Clayton (famous for her vocals on the Stones's Gimme Shelter as well as being perhaps the greatest backing singer of all time - I recommend watching the documentary Twenty Feet From Stardom in which she has a large role) and Martha Reeves. They're entirely wasted on this track, but if nothing else, Ringo's a great chooser of collaborators.

Ringo's own song, Step Lightly is perfectly fine, but has little to remember about it. It's followed by a lovely track, Six O'Clock written by, and starring both Paul and Linda McCartney. It's a song that is perfect for Ringo's range and is the second highlight of the album. Ringo had to visit the McCartneys in London since Paul was not at this time allowed to travel to the US due to his drug conviction. I doubt if he had been able to travel that we would have seen all of The Beatles performing together considering John, George and Paul were yet to make up, but who knows?

The penultimate song is by far the worst thing about the album. Devil Woman is a nastily misogynistic song penned by Ringo and Vini Poncia. The Ringo fans amongst us, of which I am definitely one, really have to hope that lines like:

Your eyes are green and your legs are long,

And if I'm gonna get you, well, I gotta be strong.

But you're like the devil with horns in your head,

The only way I'll get you is to get you in bed.

…came from the mind of Poncia rather than Ringo. Even worse, in this song in which the author laments that this woman who he's seen walking down the street is clearly satanic because she's attractive, there is also the line:

I wanna beat you up then I wanna be kind,

Lazy misogynist songs were hardly unusual in the 70s but a line in which a man wants to start out a relationship by threatening a women still seems unusually awful. If this song was a TV show, John Cleese and Laurence Fox would be defending it on Twitter, it's that bad.

Thankfully, the album finishes with the perfect chaser - a charming song about friendship, You and Me (Babe) written by George and Mal Evans. It's a delight and closes off with Ringo thanking everyone who performed on the record (somewhat pointedly ordering the Beatles according to his current closeness to them, George, John, Paul) and for those of us of a certain age, the Thomas and Friends voice saying anything is deeply calming.

So the horrendous Devil Woman aside, there's a lot to like on this album. It's more than a curio, but perhaps not quite enough to be a classic album, but it's definitely worth a listen.

(Spotify,  Music)