The Beatles in India: ‘With their long hair and jokes, they blew our minds!’

04 Jun 2021 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags:

 Photograph: All rights reserved/Paul Saltzman

(via The Guardian) by Andrew Male

In 1968, Paul Saltzman was a lost soul. The son of a Canadian TV weatherman, he was working as a sound engineer for the National Film Board of Canada in India when he received a “Dear John” letter from the woman he thought was going to be his wife. “I was devastated,” he says. “Then someone on the crew said: ‘Have you tried meditation for the heartbreak?’”

Saltzman went to see the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – the founder of transcendental meditation – speak at New Delhi University. Emboldened by promises of “inner rejuvenation”, Saltzman then travelled to the International Academy of Meditation in Rishikesh. It was closed, due to the arrival of the Beatles.

As explained by Paul McCartney in the Beatles book Anthology, the exhausted group, still coming to terms with the suicide of their manager Brian Epstein in August 1967, had arrived in Rishikesh with wives and girlfriends to “find the answer” through the teachings of the Maharishi, whom Paul, George and John had first encountered at a lecture at the London Hilton. “There was a feeling of: ‘It’s great to be famous [and] rich,” said McCartney, “but what it’s all for?’”

Read more: The Beatles in India: ‘With their long hair and jokes, they blew our minds!’ | The Beatles | The Guardian

80 Artists Pick Their Favorite Bob Dylan Song For Bob Dylan’s 80th Birthday

31 May 2021 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags:

(via Stereogum) by Ryan Leas

In the almost 60 years since Bob Dylan released his debut album, countless words have been spilled on his singular legacy. There are books and movies and over half a century’s worth of music journalism trying to dissect the mystery and pin down the multitudes. College courses unpack his lyrics. A Presidential Medal Of Freedom and a Nobel Prize and who knows how many other honors mark Dylan’s towering, seismic presence as not just a musician but a cultural and literary icon of the American Century. All of which is to say: You and I both know about Bob Dylan, and there’s little I could say to celebrate his 80th birthday that hasn’t been said many times before.

Instead, we chose to celebrate the occasion by surveying a vast array of musicians on their favorite Bob Dylan song. (Technically, there are picks from 86 musicians here, but we didn’t want to wait another six years to publish this. Consider it a bonus.) Below, you’ll find singer-songwriters working in a tradition most obviously indebted to Dylan, but you’ll also find young country stars and ascendent art-rockers and jazz boundary-pushers. You’ll find David Byrne writing an essay about one of Dylan’s most recent songs, and you’ll find David Crosby remembering the first time he saw Dylan play in the Village, and a whole lot more. All spoke to Dylan’s incomparable influence, the way he kicked open some kind of door or another no matter what form an artist works in. We were excited and stunned by all the thoughtful responses we received for this project, and we think you will be too. Happy birthday Bob Dylan!

Read more: Best Bob Dylan Songs According To 80 Musicians (stereogum.com)

The Beatles Discuss Abbey Road, Let It Be, and the Future of The Beatles in 1969-70 Interviews

14 May 2021 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: ,

An edit of Beatles interviews from 1969 to 1970. Each Beatle generally sounds positive and supportive of each others’ songs and solo projects, but also realistic about the business issues they had been going through.

They also seem surprisingly open to making more Beatles songs and albums in 1970 and beyond.

This audio seems to contradict a central myth of the Beatles that they made Abbey Road thinking it would be their last album.

01 John Lennon (Everett Is Here, September 1969) 0:00

02 Paul McCartney (Scene And Heard, September 1969) 0:31

03 George Harrison (Scene And Heard, October 1969) 11:42

04 John Lennon (Scene And Heard, October 1969) 22:23

05 John Lennon (Scene And Heard, February 1970) 26:55

06 George Harrison (Scene And Heard, March 1970) 30:31

07 Ringo Starr (Scene And Heard, March 1970) 36:23

08 George Harrison (The Beatles Today, March 1970) 38:33

100 Of The Best 60s Songs: Classic Tunes From A Decade That Changed Music Forever

30 Apr 2021 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: ,

(via udiscovermusic) by Sam Armstrong

The best songs of the 60s? Surely an impossible task. And it is. So we’ll say at the beginning that this list doesn’t purport to be the definitive top 100 songs of the 60s. Instead, what we’re hoping to provide is a window into a decade that changed music forever and a pathway for future discovery.

Two important things that are worth mentioning. The first: We wanted each song we included to have some sort of popular impact, either in the decade it was released (or importance in the following decades). That means most of the jazz you’ll find on this list hit the Billboard charts. The second: We’ve only allowed one song per artist in an effort to pay tribute to as many folks as possible.

With that preamble out of the way, enjoy the list!

100: Roger Miller – King of the Road (1965)

Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” shines a light on the traveling man. The track, a delightful country-pop crossover, tells the story of a nomadic hobo, untethered from all obligations and material goods. The song’s most famous line, “I’m a man of means, by no means, king of the road” was bitingly cynical, reveling in the freedom of refusing to conform to societal norms. The smooth-as-whiskey melody and straightforward instrumentation has made it a reliable cover for country stars and rock bands alike, with artists as diverse as Glen Campbell and Reverend Horton Heat covering the tune. The song’s stripped-down style allows for many different interpretations, but it’s Miller’s original, built around the singer’s charmingly beautiful voice, that remains the definitive “King of the Road.”

99: Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames – Yeh, Yeh (1964)

Georgie Fame and his band, The Blue Flames, found the perfect intersection of pop, jazz, and R&B. Audiences agreed. The group’s version of “Yeh Yeh,” topped the Beatles’ “I Feel Fine” on the UK chart, ending a five-week run from the Liverpool chaps. Shortly after topping the UK charts, “Yeh, Yeh” reached #21 on the Billboard Pop charts, proving that the song was more than a UK wonder. The band truly came into their own once Fame ditched his piano for a Hammond organ, a decision that was directly inspired by Booker T. & The M.G.’s “Green Onions.”

98: Jackie Wilson – (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher (1967)

The instrumentation for Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher” is as crisp as it gets. The bass sounds like it was recorded in a hermetically sealed vacuum, while the iconic conga groove pops without a crinkle or crack. All Wilson had to do was show up. And show up he did. The instrumental for the 1967 hit was written by Gary Jackson, Raynard Miner, and Carl Smith. The song was first offered to The Dells, but was never released. Wilson came in, and originally sang the tune as a ballad. It wasn’t until he reframed his performance as the uptempo, soul-charge you hear today that the song was deemed fit for release and became a 60s classic…

Read more: Best 60s Songs: 100 Classic Tunes | uDiscover Music

America’s Summer Dream – The Beach Boys Before Dealey Plaza

07 Apr 2021 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: ,

by Shaun Kelly

When John F. Kennedy flew to Texas to begin his reelection campaign for the presidency on Thursday morning, November 21, 1963, the number-one band in the US consisted of five teens from Southern California called, appropriately enough, The Beach Boys. A heady mixture of cousins, siblings, and neighbors ranging in age from 17 to 23, the fledgling band had already released four long-playing records between 1962 and ’63, with their latest album release, Little Deuce Coupe, establishing itself as one of rock’s first “concept albums.” Within 18 months of their arrival onto the pop musical scene The Beach Boys had already manifested themselves as quintessentially American in style, concept, and sound.

Why then did such an improbable collection of kids from a working-class suburb of Los Angeles grab hold of the imaginations of millions in such a short time? It’s fairly simple, really: The Beach Boys’ were blessed to be led by the group’s lead vocalist, bass player, and primary composer, Brian Wilson. A musical wunderkind whose tastes ranged from Beethoven to The Kingston Trio, Wilson had been influenced by such disparate composers as George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Chuck Berry, and the R&B songwriting duo of Mike Leiber and Jerry Stoller…

Read more: America’s Summer Dream – The Beach Boys Before Dealey Plaza | slkellydotorg

Inside the Dirty Business of Hit Songwriting

07 Apr 2021 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: , ,

Telekhovskyi/Adobe Stock

(via Variety) by Jem Aswad

Sixty-four years ago, as Elvis Presley’s career reached its supernova stage, the 21-year-old singer’s team hit on a strategy that enabled him to profit from songwriting without actually writing songs. His management and music publisher had added Presley’s name to the credits on a couple of his early hits, but the singer wasn’t comfortable with the practice and frequently told interviewers that he had “never written a song in my life.” Instead, as recounted in Peter Guralnick’s authoritative biography “Last Train to Memphis,” his team set up an arrangement whereby the King skipped the credit but received one-third of the songwriting royalties for each song he released, no matter who wrote it. (This arrangement was confirmed to Variety by an industry source familiar with the catalog.)

According to Dolly Parton, the policy not only was still in practice nearly two decades later, but the King’s ransom had gotten even bigger. Presley was going to cover Parton’s 1974 hit “I Will Always Love You,” which is now one of the top-selling and most-performed songs of all time, largely thanks to Whitney Houston’s epochal 1992 cover.

“I was so excited, Elvis wanted to meet me and all that,” she recalled in a September 2020 interview on the “Living & Learning With Reba McEntire” podcast. “And the night before the session, Colonel Tom [Parker, Presley’s longtime manager] called me and said, ‘You know, we don’t record anything with Elvis unless we have at least half the publishing.’ I said, ‘I can’t do that.’ And he said, ‘Well, then we can’t do it.’ And I cried all night, ‘cause I’d just pictured Elvis singing it. I know it wasn’t [his decision], but it’s true. I said ‘no.’”

Read more: Inside the Dirty Business of Hit Songwriting – Variety

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