Review: Rolling Stone: Life and Death of Brian Jones

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2020
Images from the Internet

Rolling Stone: Life and Death of Brian Jones
Directed by Danny Garcia
Dudeski; Chip Baker Films; MVD Entertainment
98 minutes, 2020
www.chipbakerfilms.com
www.mvdb2b.com

In General Semantics, a philosophy about language, there is something known as Time Binding. This is the human ability to pass information and knowledge from one generation to the next. Over the past few years, Danny Garcia has been an important time binder for the First and Second Wave of the punk movement, both in New York and England. Topics of his previous films include The Clash (The Rise and Fall of the Clash, 2012), Johnny Thunders (Looking for Johnny, 2014), Sid Vicious (Sad Vacation, 2016), and the Dead Boys’ Stiv Bators (Stiv, 2019). Most of these have been reviewed on this blog.

For his current release, he delves a decade further back into Rock and Roll history, to a biography of Brian Jones, the infamous co-founder and guitarist (among a multitude of other instruments) of the Rolling Stones during what is arguably its most revolutionary pop-and-blues period. This ground has been covered before many times, but Garcia often has an eye for something different.

I’ve read a book or two about the Stones’ and Jones’ wild life and questionable death, but I do not consider myself an expert by any stretch in the tale, other than Jones’ ostracization by the band he helped form, and that he drowned or was murdered in his swimming pool in 1969. Therefore, I will be approaching Garcia’s release as a standalone, and not compare it to the information found in the other multitude of books and videos on just Jones, never mind the rest of the band.

Beginning with a quote that I’m not sure I agree with 100 percent – “When you think of the Rolling Stones in the mid-‘60s, you think of Brian Jones. You don’t think of Mick Jagger; you certainly don’t think of Keith Richards” – the film starts off where it ends up, with the farm built by Winnie the Pooh creator AA Milne in Hartfield, Sussex, UK, bought by Jones to escape the insanity (and I am going to assume to get away from the drugs) of being a rock star from arguably the second biggest band in the world at the time.

After a brief prologue at Hartfield, like a rock skipping over a backyard pool, the first act is based on Brian’s childhood into being an adult in Cheltenham. There are numerous home films (8mm, I’m assuming) and photos of him as a young man who by the age of 19 had fathered three known illegitimate children (not covered but curious, I wonder if he was involved in any of their lives in any way, be it physically or financially). Wild and rambunctious with a mixture of shyness and acting out, he turned to jazz as he learned to play multiple instruments and eventually blues as he settled in on the guitar, even perfecting the slide.

Meeting Ian Stewart (d. 1985) started the formation of the Rolling Stones. Ironically, of course, that the two who originally created the beast were the ones who were kick out. Ian contributes to this by telling his side of the formation via archival vocals.

The story is oft told about the Stones, but for me, I enjoyed the rare footage and stills; but the documentary really picks up at about the halfway point starting Act 2 when discussing the 1967 drug busts of the band, with Jones being especially singled out. Archive news footage is interesting in this context. Of course, it is not long after this affair that Jones is excised from the band in the middle of 1969, being in a rough shape from whatever he was doing on his own, including heavy drinking and being over-prescribed pills (as with Elvis, it was a common practice in those days).

Of course, the significant third and final act revolves around Brian’s mysterious death. It’s here, especially, that the documentary shines in that it does not posit what happened that night as most Jones biographies tend to do; rather it presents multiple possibilities and leaves it up to the viewer. This is a smart tactic. It’s a tale told through time: was it the builder Frank Thorogood, who according to Jones’ shifty manager Tom Keylock, confessed on his deathbed (how convenient); this was the focus of the book I had read on the topic. And what was Keylock's and Stones’ manager Allen Klein's involvement? Was he drowned elsewhere and dumped in the pool? Was the coroner and the police in on a coverup as they refuse to reopen the case with new information (the case is sealed for 75 years)?

Throwing all these and additional theories in together make it clear that there is more to the horse than just the tail, but we may never know exactly what happened in the Pooh pool in our lifetime, if ever. Not taking a position one way or another was a smart move on Garcia’s part, since it is all speculation at this point.

Some of the information used in the documentary are dismissive, in my opinion, as they are second hand accounts, such as by authors Simon Wells (Butterfly on a Wheel: The Great Rolling Stones Drug Bust, 2011), Chris Salewicz (Dead Gods: The 27 Club, 2015), and filmmaker Stephen Woolley, director of the non-documentary film Stoned (2005), from which some deleted scenes are inserted into Garcia’s release.

For me what was more interesting were the first-hand accounts of Brian’s personality and events around him by the likes of artist and author Prince Stash Klossowski de Rola who was with Jones the night of his arrest in 1967, PR specialist Keith Altham, Sam Cutler, who was the Rolling Stones tour manager in 1969, photographers Gered Mankowitz and Terry O’Neill, and musicians Alexis Korner, “father of British Blues” who mentored Jones as a youth, vocalist of the underrated the Pretty Things Phil May, Dick Taylor of both the Stones and the Pretty Things, and relatively obscure singer (on this side of the pond) Chris Farlowe.

It was the more personal interviews that I found the most interesting and informative, such as singer and actress and ex-lover (pre-Anita Pallenberg, d. 2017) ZouZou, and friends throughout his life, Graham Ride, author of Foundation Stone (2005), childhood friend in Cheltenham Richard Hattrell, and Pamela Wynn. Especially noteworthy is Brian’s daughter, Barbara Anna Marion, and the voice of his father, Lewis Jones, Brian’s supposedly overbearing father, talking about Brian picking up music.

For the DVD extras, there are some Deleted Scenes lasting nearly an hour, which actually could have been named “Really Interesting Stories about Jones and the Boys.” While I was most intrigued by tales of Anita, and her and Jones’ touches with the occult, the anecdotal interviews are interwoven and remain fun and interesting the whole time through.

Next up are two featurettes. First is “Behind the Scenes: Return to Hartfield,” a 4-minute cobbling of interviews with people discussing Jones’ death, and some local footage, including at a once-pub-now-residence where Jones would occasionally hang out (and apparently died owing a bit of dinero). Next is the 9-minute “Muddy Waters: The Scott Jones Files,” a fascinating one-person interview on what the investigative journalist found not only about Brian’s death, but about the local police reaction to the information back in 1969 and in 2010.

The last two extras are the film’s trailer, and a nice sized physical hard-paper poster in the clamshell case.

An interesting side aspect for me is that there is not a single note of music by any of the Stones (I’m sure the costs were beyond the budget) – nor Jones himself – but there is appropriate music all the way through of Blues and bands that have written songs about Jones. Of note, for me, was hearing Greg “Stackhouse” Prevost, which is always a pleasure.

As a whole, on one hand this documentary is likely to get lost among the Stones and Jones canon, but it nicely sums up a lot of the current known information and posits intelligently on what is not yet known, which makes it worth the watch.

Coming up next for Garcia is another Vicious look at Sid: The Final Curtain, currently filming.

ABBA in Heaven and Other Considerations [1983]

Text by Anni Ackner / FFanzeen, 1983

Introduction by Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2017

Images from the Internet

This article was originally published in FFanzeen, issue #11, dated 1983, by Anni Ackner. Normally, ABBA is not a band I would have published anything about in my fanzine. It’s nothing against the music, which I found non-harmful albeit vanilla, it just didn’t fit into the format of what I imagined the mag to be at the time, but was tricked into publishing it by the writer, whose name was a pseudonym for another writer who tended to focus on British and other European pop artists. Yes, I was duped, and I was not pleased about it.

Looking back at the piece, I think it is an interesting work of free association via run-on sentences, despite all the whoo-ha. It is also important to note that ABBA was more at a cult status at this point, before they became what “Anni” calls “legitimate.” While I don’t agree with some of what’s written here, it’s still a pretty amusing commentary on the state of the music industry at the time, although on some level some points still stand. However, on some punk level, the more “legitimate” (accepted) a band becomes, the less legitimate it stays (i.e., “I saw them back when…”). – RBF, 2017

Celestial Scenario: Phase One

Someday, as will happen to us all, ABBA will die and, Sweden being a tolerably Lutheran country, journey to Heaven to be met at is outskirts by the Keeper of the Gates, envisioned, in this instance, as one of those Grown Up music critics who hang around at One University and write long dissertations on Rock’n’Roll as an Art Form. There will be several tense moments as the Keeper of the Gates polishes his Chameleon Sunglasses, snorts a little cocaine through a discarded angel’s wing, and decides whether to let them all in or to send them to the place where the really bad pop stars to, which is either hell or a disc jockey spot at the Peppermint Lounge.

Eventually, Frida will get in because she did an album with Phil Collins and so bought herself a piece of rock’n’roll respectability. Agnetha will get in on the theory that anyone who bears that strong a resemblance to Malibu Barbie could not possibly have led a sinful life. Benny will get in because with all the negative reviews, bad criticism, and just plain nasty cracks ABBA has received over the years, no one has ever been truthfully able to say that he isn’t an immensely talented musician. There will then be a certain amount of hemming and hawing and buffing of the fingernails when it comes to Bjorn. Bjorn – reasonably good guitar player, reasonably good singer – nothing terribly askew there – but – ah ha, here we go – the one generally assumed, rightly or wrongly, to be the perpetrator of Those Lyrics. You know Those Lyrics. “Superficial” is probably the nicest adjective that’s ever been applied to them: “saccharine” seems almost too kind. There will be serious doubts as to whether a man capable of inflicting “The Winner Takes All” upon a mass audience ought to be allowed into the same Heaven that will, at least theoretically, harbor the likes of Pete Townshend and Bob Dylan. Ultimately, however, mumbling under his breath about the Need for Escapism in a Complex World and People Writing in Second Languages, the Keeper of the Gates will let Bjorn in, a bit condescendingly, somewhat impatiently, and with a hint of embarrassment, but in nevertheless, as long as he keeps in mind the extreme tenuousness of his position, and the great honor that has been accorded him.

Legitimacy and How it Gets That Way

or

How I was Mick Jaggered Into Submission

There’s a lot of justification floating about the music criticism circles regarding ABBA. Periodically, articles (or perhaps it’s the same article – they always do seem to be called ABBA-Dabba-Do) crop up in places like Creem or Trouser Press in which the writer admits, sheepishly, that he likes the band, goes on to list 20 or 30 good reasons why he shouldn’t like them and then, striking a literary pose vaguely reminiscent of the belligerent six-year-old gallantly defending his teddy bear against the taunts of the neighborhood gang, reiterates that he likes them anyway, and if you don’t like it, you can just lump it, that’s all. It’s a curious cultural phenomenon. No one, after all, feels called upon to justify his fondness for, say, Pete Townshend, even allowing for “All the Best Cowboy Have Chinese Eyes,” but then, no one has ever referred to the Who as “the most pointless band in the world,” a superlative invented for ABBA by a Grown Up music critic whose name, after a great deal of effort, I have managed to forget.

“I know it’s only rock’n’roll
But I like it” – The Rolling Stones

“It’s got to be rock’n’roll

To fill the hole in your soul” – ABBA

The most interesting aspect of the previous superlative, to my way of thinking, is that rock’n’roll, just in general, is pretty much beside the point anyway. To defer to the Pioneer Corporation, the music matters, but not all that much. Rock’n’roll, painful as it may be to admit, is simply rock’n’roll. It does not cure cancer. It does not end discrimination. It maybe the soundtrack for a revolution, but it does not bring about the revolution, as Paul Kantner once discovered, and it was never meant to do any of those other things. All rock’n’roll was ever meant to do was bring a few moments of pleasure to a lot of people, and make a lot of money for a few people, which are not inconsiderable tasks in themselves, but any pretentions it has to being either an Art Form or a Great Social and Political Force were thrust upon it by the Grown Up music critics, many of whom seem to feel slightly ashamed of themselves for reviewing independent label releases for Hit Parade rather than small press books for the Sunday Times. As such, given that criteria, there’s really no more inherent point to the Clash rocking the Casbah than there is to ABBA metaphorically refighting the battle of Waterloo.

Of course, there’s good rock’n’roll and there’s bad rock’n’roll, but what is or is not one thing or another is basically a matter of taste. You either like something or you don’t – in spite or because of – its supposed technical aspects or, at least, that’s the way it is ideally. Which brings me to:

Subheading Number Nine Number Nine Number Nine

or

It’s Hard to be Hip and Think Johnny Lydon Walks Funny

There is an insidious but observable – well, “prejudice” is no doubt too strong a word; let’s say “leaning” – at play in the minds of the Grown Up rock critics that can be summed up most easily as, “Some bands are legitimate, some bands are not,” or paraphrased another way, “It’s cool to like some music, it’s shit to like others.” The criteria for legitimacy are changeable, but always strict and well-defined. A legitimate band always comes from a legitimate place, currently for instance, New York, England or Berlin. A band may then cement its legitimacy by being the first to be recognized as performing in a certain way – the Beatles weren’t the first to do “Beatle” music, but they were the first that anyone noticed – by sounding legitimate – an indefinable quality that has nothing whatsoever to do with sounding meaningful. Pete Seeger sounds meaningful. The Police sound legitimate – or by becoming the pet band of a rock critic who himself has legitimacy, i.e., Lester Bangs and the Velvet Underground.

A good way to become legitimate, particularly for a solo performer (who normally has a harder time obtaining it than do bands), is to die. Harry Chapin was on no one’s legitimate list until he happened to meet up with the wrong end of a truck. The most passive way to achieve legitimacy is simply to hang around so long that you begin to look either basic or venerable – vis-à-vis the Monkees – but no matter how you attain it, it all boils down to the same thing in the end.

Bands which are not legitimate come from places like Los Angeles and Cleveland and, then, at least at the moment, compound this crime by playing soft rock – on the grounds that anything that doesn’t deafen you can’t possibly be worth listening to – or heavy metal – on the grounds that anything that deafens you that much can’t be any good either – by looking too clean (real rock stars don’t take baths) or too pretty (real rock stars are weathered by Life), by lacking a sense of humor or having too much of one, or simply by being a singer / songwriter who doesn’t have the right music fans in his back-up band, or who uses no back-up band at all. Again, getting there is none of the fun. When you’re hot you’re hot, and when you’re not you get a bad rating from Robert Christgau.

From whence cometh:

The Goat’s Head Soup Syndrome

The Goat’s Head Soup Syndrome, in its entirety, states that a legitimate band cannot make a bad record. When the Rolling Stones released Goat’s Head Soup several years ago, it was obvious to everyone whose hearing had not been damaged by prolonged exposure to tapes of the campaign speeches of the 1972 Presidential candidates that this was a Bad Record, a painful listening experience, a Real Stinkeroo, and had anyone except a completely legitimate band like the Stones (the Cadillacs of legitimate bands) released it, it would have been consigned to the 99¢ bins where it belonged, inside of a week. However, as it was the Stones, the album not only sold very well, at full retail price, the reviews, rather than being damning, ran along the lines of, “Although this is not up to the Stones’ usual standards, it is still better than 90% of the music released today.” A clear case of praising with faint damns.

The Goat’s Head Soup Syndrome, almost of necessity, carries with it:

The Maurice Gibb Corollary

Which states, in its entirety, that if the Bee Gees were to suddenly turn around and release the most stupendously good record ever heard since the invention of the diamond needle, no one would admit it. No one would buy it, the AOR stations wouldn’t play it, MTV wouldn’t show the videos, and the Grown Up rock critics would give it awful reviews. Once a band has been declared “not legitimate,” it’s very difficult for it to achieve legitimacy. It just about takes, as has been stated, death, or venerability or, short of that, teaming up with a songwriter or bass player or producer who comes equipped with his own legitimacy, as Fridadid with Phil Collins.

Which brings us, in a roundabout way, back to:

ABBA

ABBA has always been not legitimate. To begin with, they come from a silly place. Unlike England, Sweden is not legitimate. England has working class angst; Sweden has meatballs. England has the dole; Sweden has the welfare state. England has Benny Hill; Sweden has pornographic films. You see how it goes. And it gets worse. ABBA plays soft rock. They are most awfully clean. They have not one, but two (three, if you’re in the mood to count Bjorn) pretty lead singers, and they use their own musicians, rather than the ones Todd Rundgren had on his last record. And then, of course, there are Those Lyrics, about which much can be said, and probably will.

Since ABBA does have a few things going for them. They have catchy little tunes, terrific harmonies, and clean productions. They’re fun to listen to, and even Billy Altman likes to have fun. There are still Those Lyrics, but by the same token, not everything Bob Dylan writes is a little gem either. And lately, ABBA has been making some minor stabs at respectability, if not legitimacy. There’s Frida and her good friend Phil, and that last record – actually a jazzed-up Greatest Hits album, but what the hell – got a great, live, bona fide rave from Rolling Stone, no easy ravers, and now Bjorn and Benny, the wonderful folks who brought you “Dancing Queen,” are teaming up with Lloyd-Weber and Rice, the wonderful folks who brought you Evita, to write an opera about Soviet chess players (well, okay, but I bet a musical about singing kitty cats didn’t sound lie a hot idea either), so you never know.

And so, the Grown Up rock critics sneak about, hiding their copies of “The Visitors” (not a bad little record by itself, by the way) in the closet behind the old Nehru jackets, and justifying their taste as though it were a particularly bizarre sexual predilection. If ABBA’s new-found respectability grows any larger, there may be a lot more repetitions of ABBA-Dabba-Do. In their case, it probably won’t bother ABBA, who will someday, as will all of us, die.

Celestial Scenario Phase Two:

After journeying to Heaven, ABBA is met at its outskirts by the Keeper of the Gates. Frida will get in because she made an album with Phil Collins. Agnetha will get in because no woman with 32-inch hips can ever be conceived of having led a sinful life. Benny will get in because he is a consummate musician. And then there will be Bjorn.

The Keeper of the Gates and Bjorn will look at each other thoughtfully:

“Well,” the Keeper of the Gates will say.

“Well,” Bjorn will say.

“Wrote an opera with Lloyd-Weber and Rice, didn’t you?” The Keeper will say.

“Yes,” Bjorn will say.

“That’s nice.”
“Thank you.”

“’The Visitors’ really wasn’t such a bad song, at that,” The Keeper will say, looking at his feet.

“I always thought so,” Bjorn will say, looking at whatever piece of the sky you can see from Up There.

“But still, most of Those Lyrics…”

“But still, how many songs have you written in Swedish? Or in any language, for that matter?”

“That’s no defense. Other people didn’t write Those Lyrics.”

Bjorn will hum selected cuts from Face Dances. They will look at each other once again.

“Oh, God,” the Keeper of the Gates will sigh.

“So I hear,” Bjorn will say, And he will go in.

The end. Amen.

DVD Review: B.B. King: The Life of Riley

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2016

Images from the Internet

B.B. King: The Life of Riley

Directed by Jon Brewer

Emperor / Cardinal Releasing

119 minutes, 2012 / 2014

www.cardinalreleasing.com   

www.mvdvisual.com

First some housekeeping: so in case you didn’t already know, blues legend extraordinaire B.B. King was born Riley King, hence the name of the documentary about his life. While a young’n in Mississippi and Tennessee, he became known as Blues Boy King, which led to his better known shortened moniker. While his name has undergone a couple of changes, all his guitars share a similar one: Lucille.

Okay, now back to our show. The film opens up with a short, terse clip of Bill Cosby (how’s that for timing?) describing what it was like to be Black and to live in the Deep South pre-1960s. Along with his ruined reputation, Cosby has spent much of his life and career heralding the Blues genre, especially the Northern, electric variety.

Before the introduction of King the Man, we are given another brief intro to what the Blues means, and what King has brought to the Blues. Pointing in that direction are the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Carlos Santana, John Mayall, Aaron Neville and Eric Clapton.

Though King was born into the more traditional acoustic sounds of the Delta, he would move north to Chicago and become the father of the electric Blues, and the touchstone for nearly every ‘60s classic rock band that followed. Hit records on the R&B charts and near-constant touring during his 90 years-plus on this earth [b. 1925] has made him a legend, an originator, and a man with whom to be reckoned.

The film follows his life chronologically and in sharp detail, interviewing many of his elderly relatives that certainly must be near the centennial mark, talking about how B.B. was a kid when they met him. While the story follows his trajectory, there is a mix of media of B.B. at different stages of his life, talking about those days, mostly taken from various interviews from television through the decades. Mixed in with these are some b-roll films and stills from the period of poor workers and kids, and the occasional historical re-creation (e.g., clips of a young “B.B.” walking down the road with a guitar, or hitching to Memphis).

One chilling part, especially considering the U.S. politics as the moment, is the discussion of living in the Deep South under the watchful and vengeful hand of the KKK (Mississippi Goddamn, for real). This section is both about King, and the culture in which he lived and grew into adulthood.

Because much of this follows his life’s history line, we get to see the inexperienced youth he started out to be, and follows through to fame. His rise came in spurts, each one jetting him up the ladder and bringing him further notoriety. For example, his recording career started as a jingle writer – and then DJ – for the first black radio station in Memphis, WDIA (where he officially became solidified with the shortened “B.B.”), leading to recording at Sun. A contract dispute there brings him to Chicago and Chess Records, where he would break into the “Chitlin Circuit” (there is a humorous argument on the film between some musicians and a photographer from the time arguing over the term).

I once had a professor who posited that trends started with the lower classes, was noticed and copied by the rich trying to show how “cool” they were (via appropriation), and then finally reaching the Middle Class, who want to emulate the wealthy. This is certainly true of the Blues, and has certainly had an effect to King’s career. While popular within the Blues audience, he was “discovered” and copied by British musicians such as the aforementioned Clapton and John Mayall, Ronnie Wood, Mick Taylor, Paul Rodgers, Ringo Starr, Bono and Peter Green, all of whom are represented in this film. This brought the sound to American audiences, including musicians John Mayer, Jonny Lang, Susan Tedeschi, Slash, and Joe Walsh. Bonnie Raitt comes right out and states that she learned about the sound from the British Blues.

In fact, King opened for the Stones on one tour, as a brief interview with four of the band (including Keef and Mick), attest. Also included are some clips from the U2 documentary, Rattle and Hum (1988), in which King played with the band.

                                                                                                            

But it’s not all big-time musicians who have a voice here, as we meet King’s second wife, producers, managers, other Blues musicians, and also some members of his band, which is what I especially enjoyed.

His breakthrough point to mainstream audiences, after being put on the brink by the Brit rockers, was “The Blues Is Gone,” the song that would be forever identified as his. But even so, this is just part of his career as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th (and 21st) century, which is clearly posited – and rightfully so – by this documentary.

The director is Jon Brewer, a Brit who has a history in both rock and rockumentaries, thereby gaining insights from musicians who would have normally been out of scope, such as members of the Stones and U2, which elevate this film into a stratosphere not usually reached by most filmmakers, even if their subject is someone, well, like B.B. King.

But does that make a good documentary? Well, in this case, considering the talent, it probably was important to have that many names to show how loved King is, but personally, I would have liked to hear more of B.B. rather than mostly a parade of stars. The balance is far more to the other musicians than to King, but I guess it is okay considering who those names are, in the long run. Luckily, there is Morgan Freeman to narrate the whole thing, and a lot of B.B. King’s music.

The extras are a number of extended interviews and an 8-minute clip of King live at Albert Hall in his later years, accompanied by the likes of Slash, members of the Stones, and others.

B.B. King passed away in May of 2015. RIP, and thank you for all you have contributed. The world of music would have been a very different place without you.

The Max's Kansas City Funnies of Shari Szaba, from 1981-82

Text and images (c) Shari Szaba / FFanzeen, 1980-81, 2015
Introductory text (c) Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2015

Lord knows there was a lot of good reason to go to Max's, such as the bands and strange food, communal tables, and second floor ambience. But it was an extra special extra when Shari Szaba's Max's Comics were available. I still have most of them, and even reprinted (with permission) a couple in the pages of my fanzine, FFanzeen (published 1977-88). Every character in the strips is based on a real, specific person. Shari was and continues to be an excellent artist whose work over the years is worth checking out.

The text below is Shari's description taken (again, with permission) from her comments on Facebook. - RBF, 2015

With all the buzz on Facebook about the upcoming Max's Kansas City 50th Anniversary reunion and music festival coming in June, it seemed like a good time for me to dig out these old comic strips that I created for Max's back in 1980-81, when I was a waitress upstairs where the bands played. I was also a student at the School of Visual Arts at the time, and a teacher of mine had just hired me to work on the album cover art he'd been commissioned to create for KISS (the album w...as KISS Unmasked). I happened to show some photos of the artwork I was doing for that to Peter Crowley, and to my bosses, Tommy and Laura Dean.

They liked it so much that they suggested I create my own comic strip about the crazy, nightly goings-on upstairs at Max's. The idea being that it could be a free handout at the door of the club and posted around the East Village for people to read and enjoy. They paid me $40-a-piece for them. I was given creative freedom to write and draw whatever I wanted, and of course I'd run each issue by them for approval. I think they printed 100 copies of each strip. There were only 7 of these unfortunately, because my workload began to pick up, and it was too hard to juggle full time college, daily homework, my freelance jobs, and my nightly job at Max's, too! So this is all there is.

Years later, when I reconnected on Facebook with friends I hadn't seen in decades from the old Max's days, I found out that a few folks had kept these comics over the years, which was amazing to me. I even found one of the Xeroxed strips selling on eBay for 80 bucks! And in 2010, I was thrilled when a few of these strips were included in the widely publicized Max's Kansas City exhibit at the Steven Kasher Gallery in NYC, thanks to my friend, musician and pop culture collector Howie Pyro, who submitted them as memorabilia.

These first 5 are the best ones. They're just a silly vignette of a short period of time. There are so many other Max's people and situations I would've liked to have portrayed but the strips were a short-lived project. They will probably make little sense to anyone who didn't play or hang out there at the time because they were never intended for a wide audience, and there are some in-jokes that you probably had to have been there to really get. But those of you who were there at the time, or who know or remember some of these characters, you may enjoy seeing these again.

The images can be enlarged by clicking on them.

DVD Review: Here We Are in the Years: Neil Young’s Music Box

Text © Robert Barry Francos/FFanzeen, 2011
Images from the Internet



Here We Are in the Years: Neil Young’s Music Box
Produced and directed by Alex Westbrook
Narrated by Thomas Arnold
Sexy Intellectual
120 minutes, USD $19.95
Chromedream.co.uk
MVDvisual.com

I can’t remember now, as it’s been years, if I read it or some musician told me directly that when someone wants to interview him/her, first the reporter gets asked what they think of Neil Young. If the potential interviewer is not a fan, the Q&A doesn’t happen because obviously they are just not knowledgeable, or cool enough.

To be honest, before the mid-1980s, I would not have been on the interviewer list. All I knew of Young, essentially, was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and I put them in the same category of boring as Kansas, Rush, and any of those other guitar-meandering Classic Rockers. Hey, I was a punk, and I liked my music short and brash, with some exceptions (usually produced by Phil Spector, Brian Wilson or George Martin). Then someone at work gave me a copy of CSNY’s Greatest Hits. While I still found the first couple of songs meh, starting with “Teach Your Children,” I found that I selectively liked them. Of course, from there, the trail led to Buffalo Springfield and Crazy Horse, and I found myself a Young fan. It’s true, rust never sleeps.

To the casual listener, Neil Young may seem like an auteur, but the man has been changing to different styles and genres every decade or so, along the lines of a Frank Zappa, the Who to some extent, or, if you’ll pardon the connection, Madonna. His career has been multi-faceted, to say the least, and this British documentary is out to show his path.

From Toronto, Neil Young (not to be confused with Yonge St.) was born in 1945, being just the right age of around 10 at the birth of rock and roll. Clips of Chuck, Little R and Elvis (singing “Tutti Frutti”!) are used as examples of what Young was seeing. But it was Roy Orbison’s pure vocals and style that touched Young. Later Young would write “The Birds,” which has an Orbison-esque tone, and contains the lyrics, “It’s over / It’s over.”

Having moved to Winnipeg when he was 16, he started being influenced by the surf instrumentals of the likes of the Ventures, Link Wray, and the Tornados, as he became more and more obsessed with the guitar. Around this time, he started his first band, the Squires. And then Mersey Beat hit. Being Canadian, he probably had better access to the early British sounds than those in the US, and like everyone else, he drawn into the new variations, especially the double guitar attack of The Stones’ Brian Jones and Keef.

And that is just the start of this two-hour look at Young’s life and career (mostly the latter). As usual in this series, there is more focus of thoughts, beliefs and opinions by music writers and historians than the actual musicians who played with Young, though two of his early band mates tell some tales: Ken Smyth (The Squires) and George Tomsco (The Fireballs). Along with this series’ usual suspects and critics, the likes of Anthony Curtis (Rolling Stone mag), Johnny Rogan (Neil Young: Zero to Sixty), and the ever present Nigel Williamson (Neil Young: Stories Behind the Songs), joining them is one of my favorite musicologists, Richie Unterberger, who wrote amazing books about the Velvet Underground and The Who, among others. It is so good to see him get his own thoughts in.

The subtitle of the DVD is accurate, as there are many great points about Young’s music and especially influences, sometimes played right after each other. Among those people and styles who had sway in his styles presented here include Randy Bachman (pre-Guess Who / BTO), Bob Dylan / Ian & Sylvia / Joni Mitchell, punk, Devo’s electronic bent, and neo-punk like Pearl Jam, who appeared with him on MTV Video Music Awards in 1993.

Of course, he also had an even larger influence on others, mostly good, but occasionally icky, such as Kurt Cobain’s suicide note quoting one of his lyrics. But that is all part of the mythos that is Neil Young.

Young, as Anthony Curtis states, “Can’t be written off.” He is still touring, still writing, and still recording. And possibly grumpy as ever.

The extras include a seven-minute-plus interview with one of his earliest band members, Ken Smyth, in a piece titled, “A Brief History of the Squires.” This includes a number of rare still photos of the band, shown under Smyth’s narration. His story of how they broke up gave me a smile.

There is also a collection of contributor bios, giving some back-up to the many critics and historians who appear within the DVD, but as with most of the series, the text is too small to read on the small screen (I have a 19”); not everyone has a large plasma, y’know.

If you’re a die-hard Young fan, odds are there may not be much new information, other than opinions and conjecture that you haven’t heard before, but I find it positive, because for casual fans there is a lot of new material and insights, presented in a measured yet enjoyable way.

Most of this series concerns British music (next up for me is about Robert Plant), and a slice of American rockers, but this is one of the few Canadian acts I’ve seen them cover. Nice. Meanwhile, I’ve heard that there is a town in north Ontario…

Bonus Videos:

Concert Stubs From Long Ago

Text by Robert Barry Francos

Doing some cleaning, I recently came across a stack of ticket stubs from shows and events I had seen in New York. While the shows the tickets represent is hardly inclusive to the shows I have attended, and it mostly certainly does not include clubs like Max’s and CBGBs, here are some of them. Note that I have some with no dates, so I will leave them blank. Notes will be in [brackets]. I have also added who I attended to the shows with, if I remember, or in certain cases, I know but do not want to say. Here they are in order of date:

* NY Rangers vs. Detroit Red Wing, Madison Square Garden, Feb 4, 1970 ($4.00) [My father would occasionally get tickets from the office pool]

* The Kinks, Felt Forum, Nov 27, 1974 ($6.50) [After the first half where they played older material, they returned and did the entire Preservation; attended with Bernie Kugel]

* Marcel Marceau, City Center, Mar 25, 1975 ($7.95) [Was on the guest list after interviewing him earlier in the day; attended with Alan Abramowitz]

* Mireille Mathieu, Carnegie Hall, April 8, 1975 ($5.00) [Beautiful voice; learned about her from the Des O’Connor Show on television; this was just 3 months before the first time I went to CBGB’s and was introduced to the Ramones; attended this show stag]

* Alice Cooper / Suzi Quatro, Madison Square Garden, May 5, 1975 ($6.50) [last row of the balcony, dead center, and he looked like a spec; saw Cooper a total of 4 times]

* Mary Travers / Paul Davis, The Bottom Line, May 19, 1975 ($4.00) [I saw her do the same show twice, and she wore the same dress… other date below; RIP]

* Rolling Stones / Dem Boys, Madison Square Garden, Jun 27, 1975 ($12.50) [Dem Boys was pure torture: a sea of steel drums in an echoing auditorium; it sounded like one long and continuous note, and I have not liked the sound of steel drums since]

* New York Cosmos vs. San Jose Earthquakes, Downing Stadium (Randalls Island), Jul 23, 1975 ($4.00) [Pele was in the Cosmos then; it was a long day, going into double overtime, and by the time we left, my backside was killing me, sitting that long on concrete seats]

* Mary Travers, The Bottom Line, Jul 28, 1975 ($4.00) [Attended with Bernie Kugel]

* Sparks / Mott, Avery Fisher Hall, Nov 19, 1975 ($6.50) [Opening was Mott; note that it was not Mott the Hoople; was on the guest list after interviewing Sparks the evening before: ffanzeen.blogspot.com/2009/04/bad-interviews-lynyrd-skynyrd-and.html; attended with Alan Abramowitz]

* Roxy Music, Beacon, Nov 26, 1975 (?) [Saw them twice, the other at the Academy of Music; attended with Bernie Kugel]

* Linda Ronstadt / Andrew Gold, Beacon Theatre, Dec 4, 1975 ($7.50) [Our seats were the very last row, left side; attended with Alan Abramowitz]

* Patti Smith, The Bottom Line, Dec 27, 1975 ($5.50) [The infamous show that was bootlegged everywhere; RIP Richard Sohl; attended with Bernie Kugel]

* NY Rangers vs. Buffalo Sabres, Madison Square Garden, Dec 10, 1975 ($6.00)

* The Who / Golden Earrings, Madison Square Garden, Mar 10, 1976 ($8.50) [The Who was amazing, of course, and did a large chunk of Tommy]

* Sparks, Bottom Line, Dec 21, 1976 ($4.50)

* Patti Smith Group, The Palladium, Dec 31, 1976 ($8.50)

* The Dictators / The Dead Boys, CBGB Theatre, Dec 18, 1977 ($7.50) [RIP Stiv]

* Patti Smith Group / Richard Hell, CBGB Theatre, Dec 29, 1977 ($7.50)

* Harry Chapin, Central Park, Aug 11, 1979 ($4.50) [Saw Harry a number of times; RIP; attended with Dennis Concepcion]

* Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, Club Tomato, Sep [?], 1979 ($4.00) [Attended with Alan Abramowitz]

* Herman’s Hermits [sans Peter Noone], Club Tomato, Sep 20, 1979 ($4.00) [Also saw HH with Noone once, and saw Noone without the HH once; attended with Alan Abramowitz]

* The Uncle Floyd Show, The Bottom Line, Dec 6, 1979 ($5.50) [attended with Alan Abramowitz and Stacy Mantel]

* The Tourists / Speedies, The Bottom Line, Apr 15, 1980 ($6.00) [The Tourists were Annie Lennox, Dave Stewart, soon to be the Eurythmics; attended with Alan Abramowitz]

* Alice Cooper (New York, New York show), Palladium, Aug 15, 1980 ($12.50)

* Dictators, ?, Sep 12, 1980 ($8.00)

* Rockpile / Moon Martin, The Ritz, Nov 24, 1980 ($10.00) [Have no memory of Moon Martin at all; attended with Alan Abramowitz]

* Blotto / Doug & the Slugs, The Bottom Line, Mar 16, 1981 ($7.00) [On guest list; RIP Doug Bennett]

* Franken and Davis, Savoy, May 20, 1981 ($3.00) [The show was a disappointment, despite the famous audience members, and many of SNL members guest appearing; this was the night I insulted David Bowie to his face; attended with Alan Abramowitz]

* Alice Cooper / The Spiders, Savoy, Aug 14, 1981 (12.50)

* NY Rangers vs. Buffalo Sabres, Madison Square Garden, Jan 3, 1982 ($8.00)

* Mireille Mathieu, Carnegie Hall, Apr 10, 1982 ($10) [The whole audience was full of Russians, which I found surprising; didn’t hear a word of English from the audience the whole night; attended with Alan Abramowitz]

* Dave Edmunds / NRBQ, The Ritz, May 17, 1982 ($12.50) [This is around the time Dave Edmunds was a phenomenon, and rightly so; while I respected NRBQ’s talent, I found them so boring, in a Phish kind of way, and my ex-FFanzeen managing editor had quit because I refused to publish an article about them; attended with Alan Abramowitz and Stacy Mantel]

* Let’s Active / Fuzztones, Irving Plaza, Oct 21, 1983 ($8.00) [I had met Lynn Blakey of LA at a party while on vacation in North Carolina a couple of years earlier; the Fuzztones are always great]

* The Animals, Beacon Theater, Nov 12, 1983 ($15.00) [on guest list; night I met them backstage and interviewed Eric Burdon (you can find the interview on an earlier blog); saw the same 2-1/2 hour show on the same tour earlier in the year at Shea Theater in Buffalo, NY; Attended with Mary Anne Cassata]

* Monkees Reunion, Jones Beach Theater, Jul 17, 1986 (14.75) [No Mike]

* Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, Mar 14, 1987 (?) [This may have been the time at the Bottom Line; I’ve seen JR a few times; attended with Dawn Kugel]

* Sweet Honey in the Rock, Washington Irving High School [Gramercy Park], Jan 14, 1990 ($19.00) [Another group I have seen a few times; some of the most magical harmonies; attended with my partner and Tamani Wooley]

How many of these have you attended? Feel free to leave a comment on the blog!

DVD Review: “The Rolling Stones, 1969-1974: The Mick Taylor Years”

Text © Robert Barry Francos/FFanzeen
Images from the Internet

The Rolling Stones, 1969-1974: The Mick Taylor Years (Limited Collector’s Edition)
Directed by Alex Westbrook
Narrated by Thomas Arnold
Sexy Intellectual, 2010
99 minutes, USD $19.95
Chromedreams.co.uk
MVDvisual.com

The Rolling Stones are a three-act play, all positioned around lead guitar: The first was the Brian Jones early period (1962-1969), the middle were the Mick Taylor years of growth (1969-1974), and then there is the Ronnie Wood time of pop malaise and decline (1974-present). Obviously, from the title, this British telley documentary deals with the center portion.

While I’m more of a Brian Jones era kinda guy, there is no doubt that the Rolling Stones had a growth spurt under Mick Taylor’s tenure that was bolstered in part by (and not given enough credit for here) producer Jimmy Miller a nice (though drug addled) Brooklyn boy who was very approachable the few times I met him in Joe Viglione’s kitchen in the 1980s.

The difference between the Brian Jones and Mick Taylor phases of the Rolling Stones is sort of like silver-era DC and Marvel Comics, relatively: DC had one issue complete stories with exemplary yet uncomplicated art, while Marvel was into pushing the envelope with story arcs and art by, well, Jack Kirby – the Mick Taylor of comics - at his finest.

During his five-and-a-half years with the Stones, Mick Taylor worked on five albums that ranged from some of the more musically adept the band were to produce to signs of spinning out of control.

Before I jump ahead, I would like to comment that one of the many things I liked about this particular documentary is that when it says it covers the Stones during the Mick Taylor years, it means the focus is on the Stones part, not just the Mick Taylor influence. They use his tenure as a guide rather than a solitary viewing direction. That being said, I recommend watching the extra first here, which is a 6 minute short, hosted by the oft-Chrome Dreams-used writer Alan Clayson and musician extraordinaire, John Mayall, which tells of Taylor’s pre-Stones life, with Clayson handling the beginning, and Mayall describing Taylor’s influence in the Bluesbreakers. This will set the viewer up nicely for the main feature.

As with many of the Alex Westbrook British bios, this one is well researched and the wide use of clips covers the topic well, including bits by the band (here, mostly live cuts) and some of the other music discussed as influences, or that, say, Keith was into at the moment. There are no complete songs, but that’s okay because that’s not what this is all about.

The selection of experts here is well chosen, generally, including the aforementioned Clayson and Mayall, and includes guitarist (of the Only Ones and Pink Fairies) and writer John Perry, some music historians like Nigel Williamson, Robert Greenfield, and Robert “D-“ Christgau, and Exile on Main Street studio musicians Al Parkins (of the Burrito Bros. on steel guitar) and Bill Plummber (bass). Even a puffy Mick Taylor has a recent, if brief interview toward the end of the program(me) concerning his leaving the Stones. What I want to know is where are all the commentary by the women in the Stones’ world? Where’s Marianne Faithful? Anita “pretty-pretty” Pallenberg? Surely there are female authors or experts on the period? There is a lot of testosterone on this documentary.

Okay, getting back to the subject at hand…

The first single Mick Taylor worked on for the Rolling Stones was the killer “Honky Tonk Women.” His fretwork sets fire to it. Taylor’s first live performance with band was the concert two days after Brian Jones’ drowning (recommended reading on Jones’s death: A.E. Hotchner’s 1990 Blown Away). Talk about pressure for the 20 year old guitar wizard.

While recording their LP, Let It Bleed (produced by Jimmy Miller), the first with Mick Taylor and their eighth in total, a lot of the ideas were from previous sessions, and Taylor was as much a session man as a key member. At this point, there is a discussion on the DVD about the influence of both Taylor and Altamont on the band (opposite poles, but both substantial).

Here, the documentary veers away from Taylor specifically and into the life of the band, when they realize that they were broke and kicked out Allen Klein, a lesson the Beatles had already learned. They start their own record company, attached to Ahmet Ertegun’s Atlantic Records. Their first release was Sticky Fingers, on which Keith was heavily influenced by U.S. country music via Gram Parsons (e.g., “Wild Horses”), much to Jagger’s dismay, according to this telling. This record also produced their monster hit “Brown Sugar.” Drugs started to make more of an appearance with the likes of “Moonlight Mile.” While Keith’s (and Brian before him) substance abuse is mention frequently in this, everyone else is left untouched. Whether Taylor (or the rest of the band) was imbibing is not a topic mentioned, but I wondered.

Next up was Exile on Main Street (produced by Miller), like the Beatles’ White Album, sort of a conglomeration as much as anything else, created in the studio. It was started in the south of France, with the full band present, but thanks to a drug raid of Keff’s palace (which doubled as their recording studio) and a need to am-scray as ast-fay as ossibe-pay, Keith and Jagger went to L.A. by themselves, and recorded a bulk of the album using studio musicians, such as Parkins and Plummber. The sound ended up being arguably muddy, and many critics were lukewarm to it, but it is still considered by many to be the Stones’ best release. “Tumbling Dice” was the only cut that Taylor was given any writing credit for, on any album, a bone of contention with him (and rightfully so, as any band that has long guitar solos deserves to have the guitarist given writing credit). It’s at this point, also noted here, that the Stones – that is Keith and especially Jagger due in part to his marriage to Bianca Perez Morena de Macias (who is mentioned in passing) – became socialite butterflies who were know for, as they state here, “being famous for being famous” as much as being musicians.

Goat’s Head Soup, the last Miller produced for the band, is acknowledged by some of the critics here as having less soul, and rehashing of old ideas (one claims that “Dancing with Mr. D” is just a follow-up to “Sympathy for the Devil”), leaning more towards pop than rock, or as one critic here posits, “Where it all starts to go wrong.” It was a No. 1 album that had lukewarm critic enthusiasm, and one big hit: “Angie.”

For the It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll LP, Jagger and Richards produced it themselves as the “Glimmer Twins.” Many consider this their last album before they hit the skids, including some of the experts here (or, as one eloquently states, “they peaked”). But driven by lack of appreciation through being ignored for songwriting credit and tensions within the band, Taylor left after it was released to join the Jack Bruce Band (good luck with that!).

There are some good still pictures at this point, including one of Taylor jamming with Hendrix, as the documentary closes up. There lots of good details here, some great live footage of the band, and plenty of anecdotes, that makes this an interesting watch. I was a DC guy, but I – er – Marvel and appreciate what the Stones accomplished at this growth stage. Meanwhile, I think I’m going to go listen to Hot Rocks now…

DVD Review: The Rolling Stones: Rare and Unseen

Text © Robert Barry Francos/FFanzeen
Images from the Internet

The Rolling Stones: Rare and Unseen
Wienerworld Presentations, 2010
64 minutes, USD $14.95
Wienerworld.com
MVDvisual.com

As is usual with this series, there is only action and dialog, with no music. However, there is a lot going on all the time. Less linear than the one on John Lennon, jumping back and forth in both time and topic, it still remains as relatively comprehensive over the career of the band.

Again, there is nothing about the lads before the band’s formation, nor is there even much about how they got together in the first place, but that’s to be expected. Where it does start is with a humorous quote from Mick Jagger very early on after the band had been together for a couple of years. During a television interview, he pensively states (and this is the opening line of the documentary): “I’ve never thought I’d be doing it for two years even; we’re probably set up for another year.”

The first major clip shown is of Mick being interviewed by Jools Holland (of the band Squeeze) on his The Tube show. This is just the first of many interviews presented, both as individuals and as a group, such as the hilarious questions asked by Ulster Television’s The South Bank Show, where the reporter asks questions about how much money they’ve made and which band is better, the Stones or the Beatles.

There are plenty of shots of the band playing, but always with no music, either overlaid by the sound of radio coverage or a split screen with the band talking on television. In the place of a narrator, there are blue rectangular boxes on the bottom of the screen, filling in what the viewer is looking at, sometimes quite humorously. As for the framework, there seems to be very little thought to chronology given to the clips, sort of like driving a familiar road paying no attention to the yellow line down the center. There are also few temporal descriptors, so events are not well explained or placed in context of the timeline of the band. While this is sometimes frustrating, it can also be said that most die-hard fans know the facts, and are more interested in the rare clips than have the screen filled with redundant (to them) text.

An example of this is the amusing press conference in Russia during the Bridges to Babylon tour in 1998, where it is obvious there is a language barrier that is both funny, and somewhat frustrating to the participants. Another interesting interview is one taken from a 1983 television program where Mick and director Julian Temple are taken to task for the violence in their music video “Undercover of the Night.”

A theme throughout, especially from their early period, is how often the Stones are asked questions on how they compare themselves to the Beatles. They are usually quite diplomatic about it, though it’s obvious Mick is drolly annoyed. Mick, however, is not the only one interviewed, and in fact there is an interesting one-camera Q&A outside a studio with Bill Wyman on the 10th anniversary of his being in the band. He is quite frank and sharp.

There are few details given about the big drug bust of the band, and includes all the same footage one usually sees of them entering and exiting the courthouse both after the arrest itself, the trial, and after the rap-on-the-wrist plea bargain. This is the only time one gets to see Maryanne Faithful and Anita Pallenberg, who go undefined and unexplained. There is, however, a bit more footage of Mick’s marriage to Bianca in 1971 in St. Tropez, where we get to hear Mick speak French. In fact, it’s kind of cool to watch Mick’s accent change over the years, as he starts to drop the faux working class cockney tinge he applied early on.

Speaking of drug busts, there is some coverage of their 1977 Canadian arrest, including the press conference, where Keith Richards looks completely stoned (pun intended).

Jeri Hall makes a very brief (and again, unexplained) appearance at the 2000 opening of the Mick Jagger Centre. Amazingly, there is very little on Brian Jones here, but more focus is placed on some of the other members of the band one usually does not get to see, such as the abovementioned Wyman interview and his live, on-camera resignation from the band in 1993, and some footage of Ronnie Wood’s art show opening at the Drury Lane Theatre.

But the main focus remains on Mick Jagger, with the conclusion of this DVD focusing on Mick’s knighthood, and the band showing up for the opening of Martin Scorcese’s concert film about the Rolling Stones, Shine a Light, which premiered in Berlin in 2008.

While this DVD is somewhat of a mess as far as linearity, the footage shown is accurately described as rare and unseen. I do recommend this more for those somewhat familiar with the band’s history to place the context of the footage, but overall it was an enjoyable ride through the Rolling Stones’ public psyches.