Captain at the Zoo!

  

 'Breaking free from the Forty-Second Street traffic impasse, we head north toward Central Park, where a photo session has been set up at the Children’s Zoo. The photographer has decided to shoot Van Vliet with some dwarf goats, which sounds like a good idea . . . the goats are nowhere to be seen, having retired inside their wooden shelter at the first sight of humans bearing photographic equipment – an entirely reasonable reaction.  

As soon as Don swings one leg into their pen, however, they come trotting out. One of them nuzzles his knee. Another chews lightly on his trouser cuff. Not only that, but a pair of squirrels come scampering up the walk to observe the scene, and as Don chats away, a totally unexpected banty rooster steps out from behind a nearby bush. It’s really something to see: Doc and his radar.' - from 'Kurt Loder's article “Captain Beefheart’s Ship Comes In", published in Rolling Stone, November 27th 1980.  

Picture of Don Van Vliet by Laura Levine.

https://beatpatrol.wordpress.com/.../kurt-loder-captain.../

Dylan of the Day | Interviews (Jeff Slate and Rolling Stone)

By the legendary Jerry Schatzberg

 

Bob Dylan: I listen to CD’s, satellite radio and streaming. I do love the sound of old vinyl though, especially on a tube record player from back in the day. I bought three of those in an antique store in Oregon about 30 years ago. They’re just little, but the tone quality is so powerful and miraculous, has so much depth, it always takes me back to the days when life was different and unpredictable. You had no idea what was coming down the road, and it didn’t matter. The laws of time didn’t apply to you.

How do you discover new music these days?

Mostly by accident, by chance. If I go looking for something I usually don’t find it. In fact, I never find it. I walk into things intuitively when I’m most likely not looking for anything. Tiny Hill, Teddy Edwards, people like that. Obscure artists, obscure songs. There’s a song by Jimmy Webb that Frank Sinatra recorded called, “Whatever Happened to Christmas,” I think he recorded it in the 60s, but I just discovered it. Ella Fitzgerald’s “A-Tiskit, A-Tasket.” Janis Martin, the female Elvis. Have you heard her? Joe Turner is always surprising me with little nuances and things. I listen to Brenda Lee a lot. No matter how many times I hear her, it’s like I just discovered her. She’s such an old soul. Lately, I discovered a fantastic guitar player, Teddy Bunn. I heard him on a Meade Lux Lewis – Sid Catlett record.

Interview By Jeff Slate

Photograph

"Before we end the conversation, I want to ask about the controversy over your quotations in your songs from the works of other writers, such as Japanese author Junichi Saga’s “Confessions of a Yakuza,” and the Civil War poetry of Henry Timrod. Some critics say that you didn ‘t cite your sources clearly. Yet in folk and jazz, quotation is a rich and enriching tradition. 

What’s your response to those kinds of charges?

Oh, yeah, in folk and jazz, quotation is a rich and enriching tradition. That certainly is true. It’s true for everybody, but me. I mean, everyone else can do it but not me. There are different rules for me. And as far as Henry Timrod is concerned, have you even heard of him? Who’s been reading him lately? And who’s pushed him to the forefront? Who’s been making you read him? And ask his descendants what they think of the hoopla. And if you think it’s so easy to quote him and it can help your work, do it yourself and see how far you can get. Wussies and pussies complain about that stuff. It’s an old thing – it’s part of the tradition. It goes way back. These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you’ve been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified. All those evil motherfuckers can rot in hell.

Seriously?

I’m working within my art form. It’s that simple. I work within the rules and limitations of it. There are authoritarian figures that can explain that kind of art form better to you than I can. It’s called songwriting. It has to do with melody and rhythm, and then after that, anything goes. You make everything yours. We all do it.

When those lines make their way into a song, you’re conscious of it happening?

Well, not really. But even if you are, you let it go. I’m not going to limit what I can say. I have to be true to the song. It’s a particular art form that has its own rules. It’s a different type of thing. All my stuff comes out of the folk tradition – it’s not necessarily akin to the pop world.

Do you find that sort of criticism irrelevant, or silly?

I try to get past all that. I have to. When you ask me if I find criticism of my work irrelevant or silly, no, not if it’s constructive. If someone could point out here or there where my work could be improved upon, I guess I’d be willing to listen. The people who are obsessed with criticism – it’s not honest criticism. They are not the people who I play to anyway.

But surely you’ve heard about this particular controversy?

People have tried to stop me every inch of the way. They’ve always had bad stuff to say about me. Newsweek magazine lit the fuse way back when. Newsweek printed that some kid from New Jersey wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind” and it wasn’t me at all. And when that didn’t fly, people accused me of stealing the melody from a 16th-century Protestant hymn. And when that didn’t work, they said they made a mistake and it was really an old Negro spiritual. So what’s so different? It’s gone on for so long I might not be able to live without it now. Fuck ’em. I’ll see them all in their graves.

Everything people say about you or me, they are saying about themselves. They’re telling about themselves. Ever notice that? In my case, there’s a whole world of scholars, professors and Dylanologists, and everything I do affects them in some way. And, you know, in some ways, I’ve given them life. They’d be nowhere without me."

- from the September 27th, 2012 issue of Rolling Stone.

 Personally I was always rather fond of Judas in the story book (The Goat Herders Iron Age Guide To The Galaxy) and if you end up hating him then I don’t think you really get the point of the story. Without Judas it doesn’t really work. The main character understood this well and good

Other September birthdays | Remembering Linda (September 24, 1941 – April 17, 1998) Yoko Ono Lennon

The first time I met Linda was at one of the Beatles’ recording sessions. Paul introduced her to us. She was attractive, obviously—she had a sunshine smile—but I thought that there was a certain vulnerability about her. Later I came to understand that that impression was wrong, because when I think of Linda’s life, I think of a very strong woman. One day, around the time of that first meeting, Paul brought in to the studio some photographs of Linda in New York, in front of the building where she grew up. She was wearing a camel coat and a white scarf, just looking casual and glancing around. That is the Linda I remember from that time.

During the Beatles’ sessions, Linda and I quickly learned that our husbands were not all buddy-buddy. John and Paul were both talented but very strong-willed people. There was some tension there. Linda and I left them alone. But we didn’t go chummy-chummy, wink-wink, ‘Aren’t they silly boys?’ either. We both stood by our men. That was how we were. Then came the Beatles’ breakup. The world blamed it on Linda and me. The attack was like a storm. I think the fans needed a scapegoat, and they chose us! We both had the love and protection of our husbands. Linda had that very much from Paul. But still, it could not have been easy for her.

The long years after the breakup were not easy, either. John and Paul were not talking. John and I would play Paul’s latest Wings record in our kitchen. John would say some nice things. He couldn’t say it to Paul, but when Paul was not around, John would say nice things about Paul. When Paul and Linda got a farm in Scotland, John said, ‘That’s Linda. She’s good for him.’ Was the ice finally starting to melt? In the late Seventies, Paul and Linda came to visit us a few times in New York. In a fine old Liverpool tradition, the two guys did most of the talking, and we sat beside them as Paul held Linda’s hand and John held mine. It was nice to see the guys talk after all those years, even if a little stiffness existed between them.

After John’s passing, Sean and I started to receive Linda’s beautiful calendar every year. We felt her warmth; and as a photographer she was getting into her most creative years. We both wanted to show our farms to each other. I was about to go to London with Sean at the time. ‘Mine first, then,’ Linda said. So Sean and I were invited to her farm. I say Linda’s farm, because you really felt Linda’s energy there - you just knew that she was the one who had created this environment for her husband and their children. There was something very real about the way they lived. They weren’t surrounded by servants or anything. And it was wonderful. Linda had horses and sheep - it was a working farm, not a manicured estate. She and her children were doing things together. Seeing them with Sean was great. Hopefully, our children will be wiser than us.

What I noticed with sadness was that Paul and Linda’s children were living with the pain of what their mother went through. Their mother was attacked by the world and for a long time not recognized for her achievements. Everything that was good was considered the work of her husband, and everything the public did not approve of was considered her doing. I didn’t hear any of this from Linda. But when I met her children and saw how protective they were of their mother, I felt the pain of their knowledge that the world was not always kind to her.

When I heard of her illness, my first instinct was to share that with the fans at the concert I was giving in London and to pray together. But, of course, I couldn’t. So I dedicated the concert to ‘a friend in England who has been taken ill.’ 'Names!’ they shouted. 'No names!’ I shouted back.
That’s how it was. We were no-name friends.

The last conversation I had with her was in January this year. She sounded like the usual powerful and energetic Linda. I thought she had beaten the disease. Linda and I did not meet up and have coffee and muffins in a corner cafe or anything like that. But we communicated. We communicated in deeds more than in words. When she was strong, I felt strong. She took a sad song and made it better. Her commitment to vegetarianism and animal rights brought her message to a wider audience than that of rock & roll. But her most important contributions were all made in private. Just like so many women before her, she made a difference in silence. It was nice to know you, Linda.

With love,

Yoko Ono, 1998

By Yoko Ono – Rolling Stone September 24, 1998

Read more:

In Your Mind – The Infinite Universe of Yoko Ono

The true story of the woman John Lennon loved.

https://linktr.ee/conceptualbooks

Dickey Betts on the Allman’s | ROLLING STONE - David Browne

 

Dickey Betts talking about an incident in 1993, when Betts, along with Bob Dylan, the Band, Stephen Stills and others, had been invited to play at a Bill Clinton inauguration event. Betts’ performance was shaky – the house band was so inept, he says, it could barely get through “Southbound,” a song from his years with the Allman Brothers Band. Backstage, Betts recalls, he met “a real smartass in a three-piece suit” who told him, “ ’You got to do some woodshedding to play with the big boys.’ ” Betts became enraged, slugging the guy and knocking him onto Dylan, who was napping on a couch. Betts was afraid he had hit a congressman, but it turned out he was another act’s drug dealer. “It was really a relief,” Betts says. “I was worried about the police comin’ to arrest me.” 

The Allman Brothers Band were among rock’s hardest-living groups, and Betts more than lived up to his side of that deal – from taking swings at two cops in 1976 to instigating an Allmans band brawl 20 years later. Trashed hotel rooms and arrests are as much a part of his legend as signature songs like “Ramblin’ Man” and “Jessica.” With his horseshoe mustache and moody-cowboy image, Betts was so charismatic that Cameron Crowe based one of the central characters in Almost Famous – Stillwater guitarist Russell Hammond, played by Billy Crudup – on Betts. “Cru-dup’s look, and much more, is a tribute to Dickey,” Crowe says. “Dickey seemed like a quiet guy with a huge amount of soul, possible danger and playful recklessness behind his eyes. He was a huge presence.” 

In 1976, the Allmans broke up, Betts telling Rolling Stone, “There is no way we can work with Gregg again. Ever.” Gregg had testified in court against his drug dealer and road manager, which the bandmates saw as a betrayal. After a three-year reunion that ended in 1982, they re-formed in 1989, and Betts soon became the driving force again, especially after Allman relapsed. “I have all the respect for Gregg Allman,” says Betts. “He was a leader when it came to talent. Duh! But he was never the leader-type personality.” But Betts wasn’t easy to work with either. Tired of dealing with his bossiness, drinking issues and unpredictability, the three other founders – Allman, Jaimoe and Trucks – wrote him a letter after a series of rocky shows in 2000, saying he was out of the band until he sobered up. “He would say, ‘I need to go get myself straight,’ and that’s what he would do,” Jaimoe says. “This time he didn’t do it. He didn’t get fired. He quit.” 

Betts disagrees, saying he was kicked out thanks to “a whole clandestine business thing” that stemmed from the moment he asked manager Bert Holman for an audit of their finances. “Big fuckin’ mistake on my part,” Betts says. (Holman says he has no recollection of that request.) Whatever the case, Betts was awarded an undisclosed financial settlement and his walking papers. Betts neglects to discuss that period in detail (“I don’t want to say anything bad about Gregg”), but he speculates that without all the dysfunction, the Allmans might have gotten even more popular – as revered as the Grateful Dead. “After Jerry [Garcia] passed away, we were right in the position to move into that next-step thing,” he says. “But everyone was fucking my band up. Gregg wanted horns. And it was just so crazy.”

- David Browne  / Rolling Stone

Photo: John Atashian

 Jessica - Dickey Betts - 11/12/1984 - Capitol Theatre

INTERESTING READING : Taylor Swift at The Super Bowl | N.M. Ramirez: ROLLING STONE

 

 Why MAGA fears Taylor Swift at the Super Bowl | Salon.com)
Nikki McCann Ramirez at the Rolling Stone

documented how MAGA influencers kept claiming the Super Bowl is “the Democrats’ Taylor Swift election interference psyop” and the Super Bowl is “totally scripted” to “elect Joe Biden WW3 will likely follow in a 2nd Biden term and millions will die.”

…If that sounds like a cult leader feeling threatened by the outside world, well that’s no coincidence. The Swift hatred resembles the argument that cults and other high-control groups make to their followers: cut off all contact with the outside world, abandon everything that gives you joy and pleasure, and dedicate your entire life to the cult’s ideology. Trump and his henchmen sound like David Koresh or Warren Jeffs for a reason. The MAGA media system, wittingly or not, leans heavily on a favourite tactic of cult leaders: painting the outside world as a threat. Paranoia and alienation are a cult leader’s best friends. After all, if the followers discover people outside the group are normal and happy, they might start questioning the cult leader and seeking ways to escape. So it’s best to make them afraid to even look out of their own windows.

 

All the News that’s fit to print . . . . . . . Disappointing heroes

JANN WENNER KICKED OFF 'ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME' BOARD OF DIRECTORS

 Always disappointing when we discover our great heroes and folk we admire turn out to have feet of clay . . . . . or be complete pillocks!

As if we needed any more of late . . . . . . 

A day after the publication of a New York Times interview in which Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner said that Black and female musicians “didn’t articulate at the level” of the white musicians featured in his new book of interviews, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced that he has been removed from its board of directors. 

“Jann Wenner has been removed from the Board of Directors of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation,” a terse statement from a rep reads in full; contacted by Variety, a rep for the Hall had no further comment.

How very disappointing! 

Around the Internet :: Willie Nelson and ‘Trigger' his beloved Martin N-20 guitar

 

I made a terrible mistake when judging the guitar that Willie Nelson played. I somehow believed it to be a no-mark standard little ‘classical’ gut string guitar not worthy of comment and just allowed to get battered over the years because he didn’t care for it! Boy was I wrong!

This is worth a read today . . . . . . . 

“As long as I got my guitar, I’ll be fine.” - Willie Nelson who was struggling to repay a $16.7 million dollar tax debt that had led the federal government to seize all of his assets on November 9, 1990

Yesterday, Willie Nelson celebrated his 90th birthday with his beloved friend, “Trigger”.

Trigger is a Martin N-20 nylon-string acoustic with the serial number 242830. Trigger dates to early 1969, which means it was brand-new when Willie obtained it that same year. Why was Willie in need of a new guitar? Because he had laid his beloved Baldwin 800C acoustic on stage between sets and as the story goes, a drunkard stepped on it.

With Willie's Baldwin broken, he took it to luthier Shot Jackson, who indeed deemed the guitar unsalvageable. Instead, Shot Jackson sold Willie a brand-new Martin N-20 for $750 – which current inflation puts at more than $5,600.

The N-20 was first catalogued in 1969, though Martin began building them in 1968. The model wasn’t a bestseller by any means. Only 262 were made in 1969, making it quite rare.

Trigger wears the scars of more than 50 years of life on the road. The frets are all original but have worn down, meaning some notes thump or buzz. Rather than fixing the issue, as is standard procedure, the artefacts have become part of Trigger’s ageing sound through the years. Just as our voices age over time, the tone of Trigger can be tracked over decades of recordings and live performances.

Martin N-20s typically sell for between $5,000 and $15,000. Though Trigger is not exactly in mint condition, it’s such an integral part of Willie Nelson’s illustrious career that it might prove one of the most valuable guitars in the world if it ever to hit the auction block – even if that’s unlikely.

Trigger has a life of its own. Willie once saved the guitar from a house fire – along with a pound of weed. In turn, Trigger saved Willie from the IRS.

In the early 90s, Willie landed in some legal trouble with the IRS and was ordered to pay millions in back taxes and fines. He had no money to pay a band, so he went into the studio and recorded solo versions of many of his classic songs using only Trigger.

The proceeds from his grass-roots marketing of the album eventually helped him pay off his debts.

Check below to learn more about Willie’s beloved box from Rolling Stone magazine.

On a personal note my daughter’s fellah, Rob, has done a mini-set up on my acoustic guitars lately and my first ever guitar, bought as new from a music shop in Witney of all places, was a lovely jumbo Eko 12 string which I still love. I had been left a little money in my paternal grandmother’s will and spent the £50 on this. Some time back it developed a hole in the waist as it were, maybe stood next to central heating or some such, an electrical fire or something causing it to come away from the edging and the smallest sliver of a gap. I was bereft and went to see my local music store and luthier to ask him his opinion. He said ’Well you could just leave it.’ to which I responded with surprise and said ‘Well won’t it affect the sound?' He asked my why I thought that. To which I had said ‘Well, it's got a hole in it!!”

 To which he said with a slight sigh ’Well its already got a great hole in the top hasn’t it!?’ 

It had never occurred to me . . . . . . . . I learn . . . . . . . . slowly!                  Very, VERY slowly!

More from Keef!

KEITH RICHARDS 

on age and mortality

Keith Richards: I don’t see any reason why it should stop if there’s those of ’em still out there that wanna see it and I wanna play it, let’s get it together. I mean I get antsy just sitting in one place for too long. I’ve had a few brushes with old death, he’s kind of a friend of mine, actually, and er, if you hang around me you’ll have a brush with it too.”

“I played with Muddy Waters six months before he died, and the cat was just as vital as he was in his youth. And he did it until the day he died. To me, that is the important thing. I’ll do this until I drop.”

“I really feel for new bands that are coming up because these days you need a quarter of a million dollars before you can start. And with that big money, the marketing men want to play it safe. And when you play it safe, the best you’re going to come up with is something that’s not bad. We’re here because it is Fucking Great! Playing it safe is not what it’s all about. This music is about beautiful fuckups. And beautiful recoveries.”

Photo: Rolling Stone magazine

Thanks to Don's Tunes

 "BEESWING"

So Richard Thompson announces his first autobiographical book Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice 1967-1975

Richard Thompson - RT on Facebook

 

Yesterday at 14:50  · 

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Very excited to be announcing the forthcoming publication of my book ‘Beeswing’. This is a memoir of the years 1967-76, an important, turbulent and world-changing decade in music. Thank you

Rolling Stone

for the breaking news!

ROLLINGSTONE.COM

Richard Thompson Announces First-Ever Memoir, 'Beeswing,' Out 2021

Richard Thompson - 'Beeswing' - Rolling Stone review