Wah Wah

The GRAMMY Museum® :: Exhibits :: George Harrison: Living in the Material World

2011-10-23T09:33:00.000-07:00

The GRAMMY Museum® :: Exhibits :: George Harrison: Living in the Material World

Trailer do Documentário LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD - GEORGE HARRISON

2011-08-22T11:57:00.001-07:00

Para quem, assim como eu, está morrendo de curiosidade e contando os dias para assistir ao documentário de Martin Scorsese sobre o gênio da música George Harrison:

Living in the Material World: George Harrison

Thanks to The Guru @Gustaffah

Concert for George - o livro

2011-08-04T14:39:00.000-07:00

A editora Genesis, que em 2009 lançou o song book dos Traveling Wilburys, acaba de lançar meu mais novo objeto do desejo: o songbook do Concert for George.

Não preciso dizer mais nada, é ver e desejar a obra em edição limitada em homenagem a vida de George Harrison, a venda por 325 libras.

http://www.genesis-publications.com/book/concert-for-george/collector

Flower by Kenzo, by Chandler Blurr

2011-05-23T12:48:00.000-07:00

Flower by Kenzo tem um dos acordes de saída mais surpreendentes de qualquer uma das fragrâncias no mercado. Se você for ao balcão de perfumes longe das horas de rush, é completamente possível borrifar um pouco do frasco da amostra em sua pele, inalá-lo, ser transportado, elogiá-lo para qualquer um que esteja por perto e assinar o recibo do cartão de crédito num espaço de quatro minutos. Que é a duração do primeiro brilhante e hipnótico movimento de Flower.

Creio que Alberto Morillas, seu perfumista, gastou muito tempo e energia com aquela abertura. O Flower poderia, em seu primeiro desdobramento na pele, ser chamado de "pedúnculo". Ele não cheira, de maneira alguma, à flor, e sim a mais maravilhosa e delicada haste verde, fresca e tenra, encolhida, preparando-se para se revelar. Se as primeiras notas não o encantarem, você está imune a qualquer coisa, com exceção do perfume Bandit, e sinto muito por você.
O que não significa dizer que Flower é necessariamente para todos. Dizer para quem ele não é, entretanto, é um pouco complicado. Isto que é estranho em Flower: ele não é, na verdade, um floral no sentido exato do termo. Começando por um fato que todos podemos concordar: ele não é, de modo algum, um soliflore (como os perfumistas chamam um perfume que imita o odor de uma única flor com - metaforicamente falando - precisão fotográfica; algumas pessoas dizem queDiorissimo é um soliflore de lírio-do-vale, embora estejam enganadas). Flower não tem o cheiro de nenhuma flor conhecida. Dito isto, a questão é qual sua intenção. Exceto pelo seu nome, não estou convencido.

Para classificá-lo, eu o colocaria ao lado do brilhante trabalho de arte abstrata que é o Rush, de Gucci, que tem o cheiro de um fabuloso salão de cabelereiros - seus sprays, os xampus, as pias de metal, o ar quente dos secadores... E é o segundo ato de Flower que tem cheiro de conceito de arte abstrata: a idéia de uma flor, de todas as flores que você já sentiu o cheiro, mas aperfeiçoadas, transbordando luz halógena (ele deve estar carregado de metil-diidrosjaminato, uma molécula que parece luz líquida), suavizada com talco. Dá para entender por que ele se mantém no topo da lista dos mais vendidos desde que surgiu, em 2000.

Flower recebeu a direção criativa de Patrick Guedj e Odile Lobadowsky, e eu imagino que ambos estavam pressionando o perfumista Alberto Morillas com a mesma idéia - a de uma "flor", no sentido genérico - e com uma única palavra, "transcender", mas no imperativo: "Faça para nós um floral e vá além. Pelo amor de Deus, Alberto, nada de margaridas pálidas (que não têm cheiro), nenhuma flor com cheiro de uma bomba explodindo (como a tuberosa), nenhuma flor que diga acabo-de-fazer-sexo-com-um-policial-italiano (jasmim, com seu toque de axilas), nada de senhoras almoçando em algum café chique (mimosa)." Então Morillas saiu e voltou com o que eles queriam.

David Foster Wallace escreveu um romance sobre um filme tão engraçado que ele mata quem o assiste. Morillas criou uma analogia a isso em forma de perfume, e este perfume é real. Este é um trabalho de arte do perfume tão apaixonante que captura quase todos aqueles que o borrifam em sua pele.

Tradução: Erika Brandão

Eau de Shalimar by Chandler Blurr

2011-05-23T12:42:00.000-07:00

A classificação "oriental" para perfumes é definida basicamente como fragrâncias construídas sobre duas matérias-primas: a baunilha e o labdanum. A baunilha é levemente problemática: os anos 60 transformaram-na em um clichê hippie. E há o labdanum, uma resina natural de um arbusto proveniente do Mediterrâneo que tem o cheiro tão forte quanto as axilas de um estivador.

Shalimar, criado em 1925 pelo perfumista Jacques Guerlain, é, historicamente, um dos perfumes mais importantes já desenvolvidos, assim como é, discutivelmente, o progenitor de toda uma categoria de perfumes gourmands. Mas Shalimar também é um perfume oriental de verdade, o que quer dizer baunilha e labdanum, e isso significa que a Guerlain enfrenta o desafio de vender esta grande obra de arte do século 20 no mercado global do século 21.

O que fazer?

Em 2004, Guerlain lançou o Shalimar Light, criado pela perfumista Mathilde Laurent, que modernizou com brilhantismo o perfume ao mesmo tempo em que mantinha sua alma intacta. Guerlain agora, inexplicavelmente, tirou Shalimar Light do mercado e lançou uma versão atualizada ainda mais atualizada, o Eau de Shalimar.

Na última semana usei a versão de 1925 em meu braço direito (para ser preciso, o perfume de 1925 foi atualizado com novas matérias-primas, já que a fórmula original continha vários ingredientes que hoje são ilegais por questões alérgicas) e o novo, de 2008, no meu braço esquerdo. Quando levantei o braço esquerdo para um executivo de meia-idade da Pfizer, ele disse: "Bom. Eu com certeza compraria". Braço direito? "Antiquado". Mas um homem de trinta e poucos anos do [banco de investimentos] Lehman Brothers amou o perfume antiquado. "Baunilha!", disse, com alegria. Ele então cheirou meu braço esquerdo e franziu a testa: "Olha, depois daquele primeiro, eu mal posso sentir o cheiro deste".

Isto pode ser um problema. Eau de Shalimar é, pelo menos durante seus vinte primeiros minutos, motivo de estudos sobre como modernizar uma fragrância. Enquanto a versão de 1925 traz um mistério soturno e suculento - tem o cheiro dos corredores levemente embolorados dos hotéis exóticos - a de 2008 sai do frasco com uma nota de cabeça (saída da cartilha atual) cítrica e brilhante, que os perfumistas mais jovens vêm sendo instruídos a acrescentar em seus perfumes que têm apelo comercial (é possível sentir o cheiro dos diretores de criação apontando para a faixa demográfica do mercado que fica entre os 15 e os 29 anos).

Quando a Guerlain moderniza a categoria oriental até que o labdanum evapore e a baunilha fique encharcada pelo limão, será que alguma coisa do DNA do Shalimar ainda existe? Em determinados momentos, não estou convencido, pois sua redução minimalista me parece um pouco higiênica demais: mal posso sentir seu cheiro. Em outros momentos, parece funcionar. Em um almoço com uma amiga, recentemente, eu lhe ofereci o braço esquerdo (de 2008). "Gostei disso!", ela disse. Antes de levantar meu outro braço, ela acrescentou: "Ele me lembra oShalimar". (Trad. Erika Brandão)

Cleudemar Alves Fernandes / Analista do Discurso

2011-04-17T17:32:00.000-07:00

Divulgando vídeo do Professor Doutor Cleudemar Alves Fernandes, autor de

Análise do Discurso: reflexões introdutórias.

Livro que expõe, de maneira didática - as bases conceituais da Análise do Discurso.

Ele nasceu da experiência do autor no ensino de graduação e pós-graduação e da constatação de que é necessário aproximar os leitores das problemáticas desse campo de estudos. A contextualização histórica, a apresentação dos conceitos e a demonstração das análises são seguidas de indicações bibliográficas que permitem que as bases lançadas neste livro possam ser aprofundadas em outras leituras. Assim, ao apresentar reflexões de caráter introdutório, o autor fornece pistas, abre portas para que o leitor se situe no interior de um campo rico em possibilidades de investigação científica.

Editora: Claraluz

Autor: CLEUDEMAR ALVES FERNANDES

ISBN: 8588638215

Origem: Nacional

Ano: 2007

Missing my ex-students

2011-04-17T14:55:00.000-07:00

Amor verdadeiro

2011-04-03T20:31:00.000-07:00

True Love

(George Harrison)

I give to you and you give to me

True love . . .

It's a true love

So on and on it will always be

True love . . .

It's a true love

For you and I have a guardian angel

On high with nothing to do

But to give to you and to give to me

A love forever true

Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood - Presence of the Lord

2011-03-26T16:38:00.000-07:00

Deus existe e está no meio de nós!

When will I see you again?

2011-03-26T16:09:00.000-07:00

Pra se ouvir na praça do Edifício

2011-03-26T15:56:00.000-07:00

Graham Nash - Prison Song

Perfeita canção para se ouvir num entardecer de sábado, sentado em frente ao antigo Bar do Edifício.

STOMU YAMASITA『GO...LIVE FROM PARIS』「Solitude～Nature」.wmv

2011-03-25T14:26:00.000-07:00

Início de Outono...

Likes & Dislikes

2011-01-22T14:02:00.000-08:00

My favorite purse - the Damier Speedy 35

A magia da luz! Happy Holidays by Tiffany & Co. Holiday 2010

2010-12-03T12:46:00.001-08:00

Jeff Beck - People get ready

2010-11-26T02:50:00.000-08:00

São Paulo recebeu ontem um deus vivo da guitarra.

Jeff Beck esteve na Via Funchal e simplesmente encantou o público que presenciava sua performance explêndida, que foi do sublime ao delirante.

Descrever como SU-BLI-ME é pouco!

A gravação é do músico Kalau, pai do Lavico.

Jeff Beck - People get ready

2010-11-26T02:46:00.000-08:00

Gravação do músico Kalau, pai do Lavico

Descrever como SU-BLI-ME é pouco!

Procol Harum - Conquistador

2010-11-05T18:56:00.000-07:00

Lullismo fashion

2010-10-22T10:02:00.000-07:00

...Só a Dilma que pode dar um UP e andar de bolsa Hermés agora? Que nada, a companheirada toda vai se "aprumar" ...

Além da Osklen lançar linha exclusiva para as lojas Riachuelo, as marcas Glória Coelho, Isabela Capeto e Maria Bonita Extra, apresentaram ontem suas coleções criadas especialmente para as lojas C&A.

Grateful Dead - Touch of Grey - Happy Birthday Brent!!

2010-10-21T17:51:00.000-07:00

Winwood e Clapton em Londres / Maio 2011

2010-10-04T10:13:00.001-07:00

Eric Clapton e Steve Winwood anunciaram hoje em Londres que farão dois shows no London's Royal Albert Hall. Os shows serão nos dias 26 e27 de Maio de 2011. A partir das 9 da manhã de hoje (GMT), os ingressos já começaram a ser vendidos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeqMGFJftrs

Blind Faith - Sea of Joy

www.youtube.com

blind faith -sea of joy with jelly fish

CLAPTON PLUS

2010-09-17T17:11:00.000-07:00

Acabou de sair a pre-order do novo lançamento de Clapton, Clapton PLUS, que traz como bonus track a música “You Better Watch Yourself”.
O cd vem acompanhado de um livreto de 16 páginas com fotos exclusivas das gravações, além de uma litografia autografa por ele, da icônica Blackie.
$39.99

Tracklisting do novo cd

1 Travelin’ Alone

2 Rocking Chair
3 River Runs Deep
4 Judgement Day
5 How Deep Is The Ocean
6 My Very Good Friend The Milkman
7 Can’t Hold Out Much Longer
8 That’s No Way To Get Along
9 Everything Will Be Alright
10 Diamonds Made From Rain*
11 When Somebody Thinks You’re Wonderful
12 Hard Times Blues
13 Run Back To Your Side
14 Autumn Leaves
15 You Better Watch Yourself

Bob Dylan e Rolling Stones

2010-09-14T04:57:00.000-07:00

De acordo com meu amigo Hugo, há algumas curiosidades envolvendo Dylan e os Stones, a começar pela influência que Dylan teve sobre as letras das músicas nos primeiros anos da banda. Então ele resolveu documentar isso, até porque Dylan recentemente fez declarações sobres os Stones, e a amizade entre eles vem desde os sixties

Pra começar

Os Stones, em seus respectivos quartos de hotel, se preparavam para uma festa no Ondines Club, quando toda a cidade de Nova York ficou sem energia elétrica, falha que durou de cinco da tarde até as cinco da manhã. O hotel forneceu as velas e uma festa foi improvisada no andar entre os corredores e quartos de toda a equipe. Por volta de uma da manhã aparece Bob Dylan e seus amigos batendo na porta de Brian Jones, anunciando "uma invasão de Marte". Acontece então a histórica sessão acústica com Brian Jones, Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson e Bobby Neuwirth. O quarteto passaria a se referir a esta noite como "The Lost Jam" (O Improviso Perdido).

http://whiplash.net/materias/curiosidades/064389-rollingstones.html

E é claro

Rolling Stones Bob Dylan encontro historico no Brasil

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzVxSIKvtwo

Bob Dylan: é dele a "Maior Música de Todos os Tempos"

Traduzido por Nathália Plá | Em 24/05/10 | Fonte: Nightwatchershouseofrock
http://whiplash.net/materias/melhores/108431-bobdylan.html

O sucesso de 1965 de BOB DYLAN, "Like A Rolling Stone" ficou no topo de uma nova lista das "Maiores Músicas de Todos os Tempos".

Editores e colaboradores da revista Rolling Stone levaram meses formando a última lista das top 500 e a faixa do disco de Dylan, "Highway 61 Revisited", bateu "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" dos THE Rolling Stones no posto de número um. "Imagine" de JOHN LENNON vem em terceiro enquanto "What's Going On" de MARVIN GAYE e o hino "Respect" de 1967 de ARETHA FRANKLIN, formaram as top cinco.

Mas não foram os Stones que inspiraram a música

Dylan pegou a idéia de Hank Williams na canção "Lost Highway," que contém a linha, "I'm a rolling stone, I'm alone and lost."

conforme esta na songfacts
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2737

[]

Em 1972 e 1975, Dylan foi ao show dos Stones no Madison Square

palavras do mestre:

Rolling Stones, «a maior banda de rock `n` roll do mundo»

Referindo-se aos Rolling Stones, Dylan considera que Bill Wyman faz falta à banda, desde que saiu em 1997. «Sem ele, os Stones não são mais do que uma banda funk».

«Os Rolling Stones estão longe de estar acabados, são verdadeiramente a maior banda de rock `n` roll do mundo e serão sempre», elogiou o cantor.

«Tudo o que veio depois deles, metal, rap, punk, new-wave, pop-rock, pode enumerar... podemos encontrar a influência dos Rolling Stones. Eles foram os primeiros e os últimos e não houve ninguém a fazer melhor [música] que eles.

[]

LIVE AID BOB DYLAN Feat,KEITH RICHARDS & RON WOOD.mp4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlSu0mARDj8

The Rolling Stones - Who's Been Sleeping Here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVyeDfB1Nfc

Segundo um comentario, esta música do Between the Buttons (1967) teria influência de Visions of Johana de Dylan, (Blonde on Blonde 1966 ) será mesmo?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dr8-ZT2rr0

Fonte - Hugo, profundo conhecedor de boa música.

RICK WAKEMAN-Journey Pt2 TheVideoMusicTribute RELOADED

2010-09-12T10:59:00.000-07:00

"Roses" Elton John Leon Russell Bernie Taupin Union I Should Have Sent R...

2010-09-08T08:26:00.000-07:00

Petição de título póstumo para George Harrison

2010-09-07T19:38:00.000-07:00

Petição para título póstumo para

George Harrison

George Harrison has contributed so much to the world of music, film and charity, including The concert For Bangladesh.

Why has he gone unnoticed for so long?

He was one of the most influential people of the last half of the 20th century and I feel that is about time that he was recognised for all the good that he has given worldwide.

A Posthumous Knighthood for George Harrison !!!

Assinem e divulguem:

http://www.gopetition.com/petition/38885.html

Dead flowers (Rolling Stones Cover) THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

2010-08-24T16:20:00.000-07:00

Stones’ Management Cagey About Keef's Autobiography | undercover.com.au, Music, News, Entertainment

2010-07-05T19:37:00.000-07:00

Stones’ Management Cagey About Keef's Autobiography undercover.com.au, Music, News, Entertainment

Maior que Beatles? Só o Queen

2009-11-28T05:32:00.000-08:00

A Official UK Charts Company pesquisou por 6 meses os álbuns mais vendidos nos últimos 50 anos, no Reino Unido.

O resultado?

A banda Queen vendeu mais álbuns que The Beatles. E muto mais que Pink Floyd e até mesmo Madonna.

O álbum Queen's Greatest Hits vendeu um pouco mais que meio milhão de discos a mais que Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, dos Beatles e quase 2 milhões a mais que Dark Side of the Moon, da banda Pink Floyd.

Os resultados foram baseados apenas em vendas, não em votação de fãs ou críticas de especialistas.

Isso nos lembra da frase de John Lennon, que disse que The Beatles eram mais populares do que Jesus... mas ele não previu o sucesso do Queen..

Ron Wood Down His Last $60 million | undercover.com.au, Music, News, Entertainment

2009-11-16T14:43:00.000-08:00

Ron Wood Down His Last $60 million undercover.com.au, Music, News, Entertainment

Black out - FIM DO MISTÉRIO DO APAGÃO

2009-11-11T10:20:00.000-08:00

Fim do mistério:

O apagão de ontem foi coisa do MST.

Eles confundiram torres de energia com pés de laranja.

CINEMAUÊ - O CINEMA EDUCA? EDUCA!!!

2009-10-22T10:01:00.000-07:00

Alunos da Arquitetura (FAURB) UFU, sob orientação do professor Lu de Laurentiz, (apresentador do programa Ladeira Metálica, no Canal da Gente) convidam para o "CinemAUÊ: O cinema educa?! Educa!", na próxima quinta-feira, às 19h30min, no anfiteatro do bloco Y, Campus Sta Mônica.

Fruto de um projeto de pesquisa envolvendo alunos e orientador, o CINEMAUÊ!: O cinema educa?! Educa!", é uma sessão de cinema interativa, na qual, quinzenalmente, será apresentado um filme após um debate com um comentarista convidado especialmente para a exibição.

Nesta semana, o filme a ser exibido é MANHATTAN, do polêmico diretor Woody Allen, e o comentarista será o ex-reitor da Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, prof. dr. Arquimedes Ciloni [FECIV-UFU], que possui graduação em Engenharia Civil pela Faculdade de Engenharia Civil de Araraquara (1975), mestrado em Engenharia Civil (Engenharia de Estruturas) pela Universidade de São Paulo (1984) e doutorado em Engenharia Civil (Engenharia de Estruturas) pela Universidade de São Paulo (1993). Atualmente é professor associado 2 da Universidade Federal de Uberlândia. Tem experiência na área de Engenharia Civil, com ênfase em Análise Não Linear Física e Geométrica de Estruturas de Concreto Armado, atuando principalmente nos seguintes temas: planos nacionais de pós-graduação, financiamento de pesquisa, ensino de engenharia, foprop- fórum nacional de pró-reitores de pós-grad e ensino superior: situação e perspectivas. Foi reitor da UFU por dois mandatos, 2001-2008.

QUINTA-FEIRA 22/10 ÀS19:30hs ANFITEATRO DO BLOCO Y da Engenharia Civil

Realização:

Orientador e coordenador: Luiz Carlos de Laurentiz, prof.dr.

Colaborador: Jesiel Cunha, prof. dr. PET-FECIV

Bolsistas:

Anna Cláudia Zelante Menegasso

Camila Ribeiro Campos

Danielle Faria Morais

Luiz Gustavo Oliveira de Carvalho

Co-realização:

DALAU - Diretório Acadêmico Livre de Arquitetura e Urbanismo

PET - Engenharia Civil

Blog: http://cinemaue. blogspot. com/

A entrada é franca!!

Capas de álbuns ingleses em selos postais

2009-10-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

A partir de janeiro de 2010, os britânicos poderão selar suas cartas com capas de discos de bandas como The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin e Pink Floyd, entre outros.

É que em janeiro de 2010 o correio britânico disponibilizará selos com capas de discos de bandas inglesas famosas.

Veja a lista das capas que estarão estampando os selos:

Let It Bleed – The Rolling Stones

London Calling – The Clash;

The Division Bell - Pink Floyd;

IV – Led Zeppelin;

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars – David Bowie

A Rush of Blood to the Head - Coldplay;

e ainda, as capas de Parklife, da banda Blur; Power Corruption and Lies, da New Order; Tubular Bells, de Mike Oldfield e Screamadelica , da Primal Scream.

Perfeito pra colecionar!

Ravi Shankar recebe prêmio George Harrison de ajuda humanitária

2009-10-16T10:07:00.000-07:00

George Harrison vira prêmio e Ravi Shankar recebe.

No último 10 de Outubro, nos salões do Carnegie Hall, em New York, aconteceu a entrega do prêmio GEORGE HARRISON HUMANITARIAN AWARD.

E adivinhem quem o levou?

Por reconhecimento ao seu esforço em salvar vidas de milhares de crianças, o lendário músico indiano e amigo do ex- Beatle, Ravi Shankar foi o primeiro a ser contemplado com o prêmio, recebido de Olivia e da presidente do fundo da Unicef, Caryl Stern.

O prêmio será dado todos os anos pela fundação George Harrison para Unicef, em conjunto com a Unicef.

Após a entrega do prêmio houve uma apresentação de Ravi.

RAVI SHANKAR RECEIVES FIRST-EVER

GEORGE HARRISON HUMANITARIAN AWARD

Recognition for Efforts in Saving the Lives of Children

Legendary Indian musician and peace advocate, Ravi Shankar has been honored with the first-ever George Harrison Humanitarian Award. The award was presented by the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and The George Harrison Fund for UNICEF following Shankar's concert at Carnegie Hall in New York on October 10.

Shankar was recognized for his unprecedented efforts in saving the lives of children, and his involvement with the Concert for Bangladesh - organized by George Harrison and inspired by Ravi Shankar, the Concert marked the first time rock musicians collaborated for a common humanitarian cause.

"George Harrison and Ravi Shankar have been stalwart advocates on behalf of the world's children their entire careers," said Caryl Stern, President and CEO, U.S. Fund for UNICEF. "Every day 24,000 children die of preventable causes. We are pleased to honor Ravi Shankar with the George Harrison Humanitarian Award for his commitment to reducing that number and believing in zero."

In 1971, George Harrison staged two concerts at New York's Madison Square Garden that brought together a star-studded cast of musicians including: Ravi Shankar, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Leon Russell and Billy Preston-to alert the world to the plight of the Bangladeshi people. At that time, the country was ravaged by floods, famine and civil war, which left 10 million people-mostly women and children-displaced and vulnerable.

"The Concert for Bangladesh was one of the most ambitious humanitarian efforts in rock music history," said Olivia Harrison, Founder of The George Harrison Fund for UNICEF. "The concert focused global attention on the crisis in Bangladesh and raised the consciousness of other musicians and millions of their young fans to a new awareness of UNICEF and its mission in doing whatever it takes to save a child."

The 1971 concert pioneered the all-star rock benefit concert model, which has since been widely emulated for various causes worldwide. It produced an extraordinary contribution for UNICEF, exceeding $15 million to support programs providing lifesaving assistance to children caught in humanitarian emergencies. The George Harrison Fund for UNICEF continues to support UNICEF programs in Bangladesh while expanding its influence to include other countries in crisis where children are at risk.

For more information, please visit The George Harrison Fund For UNICEF at www.unicefusa.org

Versão inédita de faixa do Nirvana está na rede/Premiere: An Unreleased Live Nirvana Song From the Bleach Reissue

2009-09-30T17:35:00.001-07:00

Premiere: An Unreleased Live Nirvana Song From the Bleach Reissue

Shared via AddThis

Foi divulgada nesta quarta, 30, uma versão inédita, ao vivo, da música "Scoff", do Nirvana. O site Pitchfork disponibilizou o arquivo para download.

Scoff" foi originalmente lançada em 1989, em Bleach, primeiro disco de estúdio do trio liderado por Kurt Cobain. Esta nova versão estará na edição de edição de aniversário do álbum , que contará com outras faixas ao vivo, gravadas no Portland's Pine Street Theatre, em 1990 (o show já saiu em discos não autorizados, mas é a primeira vez que chegará às lojas oficialmente). O relançamento terá versão em CD (com livro de 48 páginas, incluindo fotos inéditas) e vinil duplo (livro de 16 páginas), branco, como no original, no dia 3 de novembro.

Um dia antes do relançamento de Bleach, também chegam às lojas DVD e CD oficiais da apresentação do Nirvana no Reading Festival, em 30 de agosto de 1992. O show, na Inglaterra, mostrou ao público as primeiras versões de músicas como "All Apologies", que entraria no disco In Utero, de 1993.

Além das canções, a apresentação foi imortalizada pela aparição de Kurt Cobain no palco sentado em uma cadeira de rodas e vestido com um avental branco. Depois do lançament,o em 2 de novembro, a compilação ganhará também uma edição especial em vinil duplo, marcado para sair no dia 16 do mesmo mês.

Leilão de réplica de Mini Cooper de George Harrison decepciona.

2009-09-19T14:49:00.000-07:00

O leilão da réplica do mini Cooper S de George Harrison, ocorrido na última sexta-feira, dia 18, no Goodwood Revival, em Chichester, Sussex, atingiu a mísera quantia de 23 mil libras - valor bem abaixo do esperado, já que uma mini Cooper 2009 vale cerca de 30 mil.

O mini Cooper foi dado a ele em 1966, pelo empresário Brian Epstein, que, na época, fez o mesmo com cada um dos outros Beatles. Harrison personalizou o seu com imagens psicodélicas, incluindo yantras e mantras em sânscrito e apareceu com o carrinho no filme Magical Mystery Tour.

Essa réplica da icônica Mini Cooper 1965 de George foi desenhada pelo estúdio da BMW Udelhoven & Harrison, do amigo da família, David Costam, que é diretor de arte, livros e designer gráfico, que faz trabalhos no ramo da música (foi ele quem criou as capas famosas para álbuns de George Harrison, dos Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Phil Collins, Genesis, The Spice Girls, Girls Aloud , Destiny's Child e Beyonce). Ele também é Diretor de Criação para 46.664, o veículo de campanha da Fundação Nelson Mandela.

A réplica foi doada por Olívia (a viúva, na foto acima entre o mini original e a réplica), em nome da Material World Charitable Foundation, durante o Mini Fest, no autódromo de Silverstone, no começo de 2009.

O que fosse arrecadado com a venda iria beneficiar a Material World Charitable Foundation, que George que fundou em 1973. No valor da libra esterlina de ontem, o carro saiu a R$ 67.512,00. Muito pouco, principalmente se levarmos em conta que o objetivo do leilão,O que é bem pouco, porque um mini Cooper normal, 2009, sai por 30mil e 900libras. Decepcionante, pois a renda tinha destino certo...

Uma justificativa pra um valor tão baixo PODERIA ser que o Goodwood Revival, o festival britânico de carros antigos, que acontece todo ano, nesta época, tem um público mais direcionado e limitado, geralmente formado por pessoas ligadas ao automobilismo que frequentam os 3 dias do evento e não por fãs beatlemaníacos.

A divulgação também não foi lá essas coisas, na mídia eletrônica, por exemplo, nem em sites de músicas tradicionais houve algum barulho... uma ou outra notinha aqui ou ali...

Mas em se tratando de George Harrison, que nunca foi de se expor, acho meio "normal", embora decepcionante, a timidez dos lances.

Ainda não consegui o nome do comprador, assim que souber, posto aqui.

Too much information sucks!

2009-09-15T17:22:00.000-07:00

Palhaçada essa velocidade de informação desencontrada...

Ontem Mick Taylor acusava os Stones/ hoje negou...

Ontem Elton John teve pedido de adoção negado na Ucrânia / hoje negou....

Assim, eu acho que Patrick Swayze não morreu... que amanhã vão negar... será??

.

John Lennon, por Ray Connolly

2009-09-15T07:26:00.000-07:00

Do jornal The Sunday Times, publicado no último dia 6 de Setembro, pelo jornalista Ray Connolly :

Exclusive: John Lennon, the lost interviews

John Lennon did many brilliant things in his life, but arguably one of his most inspired acts was his deliberate destruction of the Beatles in 1969 — just 40 years ago this month. It didn’t seem that way then, not to tens of millions of devastated Beatles fans around the world, and not to Paul McCartney, who, feeling abandoned, went off to his farm in Scotland and into a deep depression.
But if Lennon, who’d started the group that evolved into the Beatles, hadn’t murdered his creation at that moment, if the band had somehow struggled on through their rows into the 1970s, I doubt that you’d be reading this article today.

By killing the Beatles before they could disappoint us, as they inevitably would have done when music fashions changed and the band’s later albums didn’t quite live up to the ones we still love, Lennon froze them for ever at their peak.

At the time of their break-up in 1969, I was an interviewer on London’s Evening Standard with the special task of covering rock music. Today, journalists are kept at arm’s length from stars by legions of publicists, but it was different then, for me anyway. Only now, looking back, do I fully appreciate the astonishing access to the Beatles I had, from 1967, that Sgt Pepper high water of their careers, until 1972, when their dissolution was making its way through the High Court.

So I was at the Abbey Road studios in October 1968 to hear Yoko Ono be happily indiscreet about her affairs during her first two marriages, before ending the evening being given a personal concert by McCartney at the piano as he worked on a new song called Let It Be — while from down the corridor I could hear John Lennon and the producer George Martin mixing Cry Baby Cry for the White Album.

Almost every conversation I had during those final febrile Beatle days ended up in my new little Sony recorder, where intimacies and opinions were caught on cassettes, and then stored away, forgotten and uncatalogued in an old Pickfords packing case. And it’s those tapes, unplayed in decades (if ever, in some cases), that I recently unearthed — recordings that in some cases challenge views of the Lennon-McCartney relationship that have been held for 40 years.

Not all the interviews have survived. Cassettes were expensive then, and I’m mortified to admit that I have one on which the names McCartney, Jagger and Hendrix have each been successively crossed out as the interviews were recorded over. Nor was everything that was recorded published. Much was off the record. Time heals. Now it doesn’t matter that I write some of it here.

By 1969 there were rumours of strife in the Beatles camp, but on the surface it still seemed jolly enough. Then, while I was hanging around their Apple headquarters in Mayfair one day in September, I realised something was seriously wrong. There was a Beatles meeting in the boardroom that suddenly ended in a row, followed by much running up and down the stairs. But nobody was saying what it was about.

A few weeks later I got a call from John telling me he’d just sent his MBE back to the Queen. He was in a giddy mood, I reflected, as I typed out my story. But he was also acting so separately from the other Beatles that two days later I wrote a piece headlined "The Day the Beatles Died".
At the time I was half-afraid I’d overstated my case, because to the outside world they were still very much alive. But no sooner was the article published than a white rose wrapped in Cellophane was delivered to my desk with the message "To Ray with love from John and Yoko".

From then on, when it came to covering Beatles affairs, my tape recorder and I would have the best possible source. And, just before Christmas that year, I would listen in astonishment (and some despair) as John, who’d flown me out to join him and Yoko in Toronto, gleefully let me in on the secret of how he’d destroyed the band.

"At the meeting Paul just kept mithering on about what we were going to do, so in the end I just said, ‘I think you’re daft. I want a divorce.’"
He hadn’t planned to say that, but once spoken, and although news of the split wasn’t going to be announced until the Let It Be album came out the following May, the words were never withdrawn.

Of course, there are McCartney interviews on tape, too. While John was busy pulling the walls of the Beatles temple down around him, Paul eventually recovered from the setback enough to make his first solo album, McCartney. Usually astute with publicity, at this point he slipped up, putting out an ambiguous press statement along with his record in April 1970 that was interpreted as saying that he’d broken up the band. Headlines of blame ran around the world. "How could he?" distressed fans wanted to know. "It was all a misunderstanding," he told me a few days later. "I thought, ‘Christ, what have I done now?’ and my stomach started churning up.

I never intended the statement to mean ‘Paul McCartney quits Beatles’."
It was ironic. The Beatle who had most wanted the group to stay together, the biggest Beatles fan of all, was being blamed for its dissolution.
"Why didn’t you write it when I told you in Canada?" John demanded when he realised that Paul had accidentally got the dubious honour of ending the world’s favourite group. As he’d started it, he thought he should be the one to end it. "You asked me not to," I said. He was scornful. "You’re the journalist, Connolly, not me," he snapped.

What strikes me most, though, listening again to the tapes, is how prescient John was, how closely his ear was tuned to the changing mood of the times. As once he’d instinctively known which songs to write and what pithy comments would grab a headline, somehow, while in the middle of the whirlpool that was the Beatles, he’d seen the end approaching.

"The whole thing died in my mind long before all the rumpus started," he said in 1971 when I was spending a few days with him and Yoko in New York. "We used to believe the Beatles myth just as much as the public, and we were in love with them in just the same way. But basically we were four individuals who eventually recovered our own individualities after being submerged in a myth.

"I know a lot of people were upset when we finished, but every circus has to come to an end. The Beatles were a monument that had to be either changed or scrapped. As it happens, it was scrapped. The Beatles were supposed to be this and supposed to be that, but really all we were was a band that got very big.
"Actually, our best days were before we got that big, when we used to play for hours in clubs. My favourite number was always Elvis’s Baby Let’s Play House. We’d make it last about ten minutes, singing the same verse over and over.

I pinched one of the lines from it later to put in one of my own songs called Run for Your Life — something about ‘I’d rather see you dead, little girl, than to see you with another man’.
"Mick Jagger said we weren’t a good band as performers. But he never saw us at our best in Liverpool and Hamburg. We were the best bloody band there was. I know all the early rock songs much better than most of those I’ve written myself."

During most of that time, however, John was in iconoclastic mode. It was as though, having made his decision, he couldn’t smash his Beatle persona quickly, or outrageously, enough. He didn’t want to be "one of four gods on the stage", he told me, so instead he invited the world’s press to his honeymoon bedside for a week "in aid of world peace". Then, not minding that he was being widely ridiculed, not to mention chastised by his formidable Aunt Mimi for "making an exhibition of himself", he appeared naked with Yoko on an album of electronic music called Two Virgins, before really chasing controversy with a series of erotic lithographs featuring Yoko, and sometimes himself too.

"Why do you draw so much cunnilingus?" I asked him during the trip to Canada, as I passed the lithographs for him to sign. "Because I like it," the one-time moptop grinned merrily. London’s Metropolitan Police would later close down his exhibition in a West End gallery. They didn’t like it.
At the time, Yoko was much publicly blamed for the Beatles’ demise, and she certainly might have played her part more tactfully. But she was only one of several catalysts. And John, as I’ve been hearing again on my tapes, was absolutely besotted by her, this sexy, mysterious artist who matched the zany dottiness in him.

"It was Yoko that changed me," he teases her during one conversation in 1970. "She forced me to become avant-garde and take me clothes off when all I wanted to do was become Tom Jones. And now look at me! Did you know avant-garde is French for bullshit?" Then, referring to how she’d begun to join him on stage, he goes on: "We’ve only got to play four bars and she grabs the microphone and she’s off… Aggghhh! Take her anywhere and she does her number for you." In the background, Yoko giggles. She was his pal.

The John Lennon I recorded was a very funny man who liked to paint himself ironically as the indignant butt of his own stories. "Did you see that Time magazine is saying that George is a philosopher?" he asked me one day. "And

there’s an article in The Times , that I’ve actually thought about sending to Pseuds Corner [in Private Eye] — anonymously, of course — saying how Paul is this great musician. One a philosopher, another a great musician. Where does that leave me?"
"The nutter?" I hear myself suggest.
"Yes. I’m the nutter. F*** ’em all."

Today he would have been a star as a stand-up comedian with a line in self-mockery. And, having returned from a session of primal therapy in California in 1970, he was more loquacious than ever. He could have done a whole act on the subject of what made people like him want to become famous. "There you are up on the stage like an Aunt Sally waiting to have things thrown at you. It’s like always putting yourself on trial to see if you’re good enough for Mummy and Daddy. You know, ‘Now will you love me if I stand on my head and fart and play guitar and dance and blow balloons and get an MBE and sing She Loves You — now will you love me?’" It was a typical Lennon rant, but he was smiling all the time.

On another occasion, talking about his song Not a Second Time from the Beatles’ second LP, in a conversation devoted to his music, he says: "That was the one where that f***ing idiot Thomas Mann (he meant William Mann, the Times music critic) talked

about the aeolian cadence at the end being like Mahler’s Song of the Earth . They were just chords like any other chords. It was the first intellectual bullshit written about us." Then the knowing pause. "Still, I know it helps to have bullshit written about you."
Later, saying how a favourite of his songs, You Can’t Do That, was his attempt at being Wilson Pickett, he becomes mock-anguished when admitting it was "a flip side because Can’t Buy Me Love [Paul’s song] was so f***ing good".

He was competitive with Paul, yes, and, when relations between the two were really bad, vituperative, as evidenced in a line in a song about his former partner on his Imagine album: "The sound you make is Muzak to my ears."
Paul had to have been hurt, and a few months later in New York even John would admit slightly ruefully: "I suppose it was a bit hard on him…" But, as he would so often say, "They were just the words that came out of my mouth at the time."
In truth, he always knew how good Paul was, without necessarily liking everything he did.

"I only ever asked two people to work with me as a partner," he would boast of his talent-spotting abilities. "One was Paul McCartney and the other Yoko Ono. That’s not bad, is it?" Indeed, I recall a writer from an underground magazine being snide about Paul’s song Let It Be, presumably assuming John would agree. He didn’t.
"Paul and me were the Beatles," he would emphasise to me privately. "We wrote the songs." And on the subject of his debt to the young McCartney, he was actually generous. "I didn’t write much material early on, less than Paul, because he was quite competent on guitar.
Paul taught me quite a lot of guitar, really."

Those who see John as the towering greatest of the great should reflect on that: John Lennon quietly, happily admitting how much he owed to Paul McCartney. And while he could be flattering about some of Paul’s songs — he liked For No One particularly ("that was one of his good ones. All his semi-classical ones are best, actually") — he was disarmingly dismissive about several of his own. "I Am the Walrus didn’t mean anything," he says, consigning to the pointless bin the work of a generation of Beatles anoraks who’d tried to interpret its lyrics, while he always hated Yes It Is, didn’t think he sang Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds very well ("I was so nervous I couldn’t sing, but I like the lyrics"), and admits that he and Paul would give the lousy songs they wrote to George and Ringo to sing.

But It’s Only Love from the Help! album was the one that earned his greatest ire. "It’s the most embarrassing song I ever wrote. Everything rhymed. Disgusting lyrics. Even then I was so ashamed of the lyrics, I could hardly sing them. That was one song I really wished I’d never written," he says. Then, after another comic pause: "Well, you can say that about quite a few." And the ones he liked? "Across the Universe was one of my favourites. I gave it at first to the World Wildlife Fund, but they didn’t do much with it, and then we put it on the Let It Be album. It missed it as a record but maybe the lyrics will survive. And Strawberry Fields Forever meant a lot. Come Together is another favourite. It started off as a slogan song for Timothy Leary’s wife, but I never got around to finishing it. Everyone takes it as meaning ‘come together in peace’, but there’s the other meaning too!" Actually, he was proud of quite a few — In My Life, I’m a Loser, Girl…

"When I was in therapy I was asked to go through a book of all the songs I’d written, line by line. I just couldn’t believe I’d written so many."
Interestingly, and it’s something I’ve only realised listening again to the tapes, no matter how much John publicly criticised Paul, in none of my interviews with Paul did he ever criticise John. Quite the contrary. "On Abbey Road I would like to have sung harmony with John, like we used to. And I think he would have liked me to. But I was too embarrassed to ask him."

I always wished I’d been involved in the Beatles’ early happier days, but my role was to cover the final act of their career, and to observe the fallout, mostly, though not totally, with John. There were some bizarre and revealing moments during those days. Visiting a Native American village in upstate New York the day after his 30th birthday, he showed that even he, in his enthusiasm, could get it wrong. "When I used to see cowboys-and-Indians films when I was a kid in Liverpool, I was always on the side of the Indians," he told the assembled group, not realising how patronising he sounded.

I’m sure when he said he wanted a divorce from the Beatles he never imagined how complicated, or expensive for all of them, it would be. But by October 1971, when he was living in New York, he was beginning to get a good idea. Asking me to be a go-between, he gave me a message to take to Paul suggesting that perhaps the two of them could solve at least one of their differences without either Allen Klein, his manager, or Lee Eastman, Paul’s manager and also Linda McCartney’s father, becoming involved. Back in London I delivered the message, but in the end it was inevitably lawyers who sorted out their problems.
Listening to the tapes, and hearing John’s singsong voice again after all these years, has led to some poignant memories. But what has stayed with me most from all the interviews is the vitality of the man, and that straight-faced, British, tongue-in-cheek delivery he had. A very generous person, he would say: "I can’t think about money. It rains in and rains out. I always wanted to be an eccentric millionaire, and now I am."

John on his education made me laugh: "If I’d had a better education, I wouldn’t have been me. When I was at grammar school I thought I’d go to university, but I didn’t get any GCEs. Then I went to art school and thought I’d go to the Slade and become a wonder. But I never fitted in. I was always a freak, I was never lovable. I was always Lennon!"

Then there’s John, as forthright as ever when I suggested he might like to write a musical. "No. No musicals. I loathe musicals. I never did have a plan for doing one. My cousin made me sit through some f***ing musical twice. I just hate them. They bore me stiff. I think they’re just horrible. Even Hair. And they’re always lousy music." What he would have made of Cirque du Soleil’s Las Vegas show Love, an interpretation of the Beatles’ records, would have been interesting to know.

John, talking about a Hare Krishna group who’d been painting a little temple in the grounds of Tittenhurst Park near Ascot, which was briefly his home, was typical. "I had to sack them. They were very nice and gentle, but they kept going around saying ‘peace’ all the time. It was driving me mad. I couldn’t get any f***ing peace."
And finally there’s John in 1970 being ominously prophetic. "I’m not going to waste my life as I have been, which was running at 20,000 miles an hour. I have to learn not to do that, because I don’t want to die at 40."

He was 40 and two months when he was murdered by a mad fan in New York in 1980.
I was due to interview him for The Sunday Times the following day

Mick Taylor falido (sic)

2009-09-14T13:16:00.000-07:00

Depois de uma semana em que dois Stones (um ex, pra ser mais exata) foram manchetes nos principais sites de música da internet, agora é a vez de Mick Taylor ocupar o mesmo espaço.

O guitarrista Mick Taylor foi quem substituiu Brian Jones e permaneceu na banda até a metade da década de setenta.Taylor, agora aos 61 anos, gordinho e falido, deu uma entrevista para o jornalista inglês Bob Graham, que saiu publicada no Daily Mail de ontem.

Na entrevista, Mick diz que apesar de estar literalmente quebrado e sendo alvo de cobradores, não se arrepende de ter abandonado a maior banda de rock'n roll de todos os tempos, pois hoje vive bem melhor (sic) , completamente livre das drogas, diferentemente daquela época.

No entanto, Taylor se disse aborrecido por conta de um brecha em seu contrato com os Stones, que possibilitou o cancelamento dos roylaties que recebia pelos seis albuns que gravou com o grupo. Ele disse já ter procurado Mick Jagger várias vezes, mas até agora não foi recebido.

Enquanto os fãs discutem se Mick Taylor deve ou não voltar a receber sua grana, já tem gente dizendo que os Rolling Stones "reclamaram tanto da postura do Allen Klein com eles e fizeram o mesmo com o Mick Taylor", não é mesmo Caparica?

Os dois Micks.

Para quem não viu, segue, na íntegra, a entrevista do guitarrista.

The Rolling Stone who's stony broke: Why Mick Taylor lives in a

rundown Suffolk semi with a shabby car

By Bob Graham

It is a curious effect of the passage of time that The Rolling Stones are now as much admired for their business acumen as for their rock and roll. Nearly half a century after their rebellious beginnings, the Stones remain the world’s highest-earning rock stars.
Their albums have made them £250million and their spectacular tours have grossed upwards of £1.8billion.
Mick Jagger, whose androgynous sneer was once so feared by The Establishment, is now canny Sir Mick with a £225million fortune and palatial homes on three continents.

Even guitarist Ronnie Wood, a relative newcomer who was only made a full member of the band in 1990, was estimated to be worth £70million during his recent divorce.
All of which is a source of bitter amusement to the shambling figure in a dark grey duffel coat, stopping to light his umpteenth cigarette of the day as he walks from his ramshackle cottage in rural Suffolk to the village shop.
Mick Taylor is Ronnie Wood’s direct predecessor and the musical virtuoso behind the Rolling Stones’ golden age.
When the band announced six weeks ago that it was switching record labels from EMI to Universal, much was made of the continuing selling power of classic albums such as Exile On Main Street, Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers – all made in an astonishingly productive five-year period between 1969 and 1974, when Taylor was the Stones’ lead guitarist.

Taylor, who replaced the erratic Brian Jones, played guitar on Honky Tonk Women, Wild Horses, Angie, It’s Only Rock And Roll and a host of other classic tracks.
He was present at the height of the band’s decadent excess at Nellcote in the South of France in the summer of 1971 and on the legendary tours of America in 1969 and 1972-73.
Yet Taylor walked away from the band at the height of its musical powers.
And while Jagger, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts have become fabulously wealthy on the back of music he helped make, Taylor scrapes a hand-to-mouth existence by playing pub gigs and hasn’t seen a penny in royalties from the Rolling Stones since 1982.

For years, he has refused to discuss his time as a Stone and has brushed off the two questions that have dogged him ever since: why did he leave, and does he regret it?
Now, 61-year-old Taylor has broken his silence in an extraordinary interview with The Mail on Sunday.
It is clear that the scruffy, two-bedroom semi where he has lived for the past 20 years hardly fits the image of a former Rolling Stone. The tiny house in a Suffolk country lane is in serious need of repair and redecoration.

‘Yeah, I know it needs doing,’ he said dismissively. ‘I just don’t feel up for it right now.’
Even less edifying is the unopened stack of bills and threats to cut off the water, electricity and gas. The uncut grass, empty cans in the kitchen sink and the ancient car parked in the driveway with weeds growing through its wheels also tell a tale.
The thick-set Taylor has none of the dandyish elegance of Jagger or the outlaw chic of Keith Richards. His once-golden mane of hair is streaked with grey. He is jowly and far heavier than in his prime – the legacy, he admits, of years of drug abuse.

‘People are always asking me whether I regret leaving the Rolling Stones,’ he said. ‘I make no bones about it – had I remained with the band, I would probably be dead.
'I was having difficulties with drug addiction and couldn’t have lasted. But I’m clean now and have been for years.
‘My life is so much better now than being a drug-ravaged member of the Stones. So no, I don’t regret leaving.
‘But people who really know me ask another question – whether I regret joining the Stones. To me, that’s far more astute.’
In truth, Taylor has always been ambivalent about the Stones – a fact that explains in part why he has never pursued what he believes may be millions of pounds in unpaid royalties.
For all his undoubted virtuosity on the electric guitar, he was never a huge fan of the band and found their brand of bar-room rock and roll musically limited.

When they asked me to come to the studio in 1969, I thought they just wanted me to play a session,’ he recalled. ‘I sort of liked them, but was never passionate about the Stones. In some ways I liked The Beatles more.
‘At the first session, I overdubbed the guitar on Honky Tonk Women, but I thought they were all a little bit vain and full of themselves.
‘After doing guitar parts on three songs, I said to Mick and Keith, “If you guys are just going to sit and mess around, I’m going home. I’ve got things to do.” I told them to give me a call if they wanted me to do anything else.
‘The next day, Mick called and asked if I wanted to join. He came and picked me up in his Bentley. I wasn’t impressed by all that and I think they kind of liked that attitude.
‘Part of the charm of the Rolling Stones, as far as I could see, was that they were not technically very good but were very raw and had great ideas.’
Taylor was always set apart from the rest of the band, who had already been together for seven years by the time he joined.

He was five years younger than his bandmates and a far more gifted instrumentalist, having toured for three years with the influential John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers.
Furthermore, as a fitter’s son from Hatfield, Hertfordshire, he was genuinely working class, while the Stones were middle-class boys pretending to be rough.
From January 1971, he also had a daughter, Chloe, to support from a short-lived marriage to his first wife, Rosie.
His first public appearance with the band was the Stones’ huge free concert in Hyde Park, which became an impromptu memorial for the band’s founder and original guitarist Brian Jones, who had been found dead two days earlier.
Taylor’s influence on the band was immediately appreciated by critics and fans alike for his brilliant, fluid guitar-playing. And climbing aboard the Stones’ rollercoaster gave him access to an extraordinary world he had never even dreamed of.
‘There was as much sex as you wanted,’ he smiled. ‘That was part of being a rock musician, especially in America. And they always had people around them telling them how great they were and to try some of this or that. I hated that.
'Keith in particular was surrounded by people telling him how great he was when he could hardly keep his eyes open.’
Taylor revealed that around 1972-73, Keith’s drug-taking became a serious problem.
‘Several times the band almost broke up,’ he said. ‘Keith had his own separate social scene and it was obvious there was a lot of drug-taking. There were also problems travelling to certain countries because of all the drug convictions.
‘When I left John Mayall I was a London musician with London friends. But because the band wanted to live in France to be tax exiles, I was forced to go along with them.
'I didn’t need to be a tax exile, I didn’t have financial problems to hide. It was all very well being with the Stones and apparently making all this money – although no one really knew how much because it was all on paper – but I was losing my friends and missing the scene in London.
'I began to realise how big an effect the Stones was having on my life.’

By now Taylor was also dabbling with narcotics. ‘It began as an occasional recreational thing,’ he explained. ‘I never thought I would get addicted. But by the time I returned to London in 1973, I’d become more and more dependent. I was using every day.

By 1974, I felt I’d gone as far as I could with the band. I didn’t think they’d stay together. The records were doing well but the band was falling apart – it was in chaos.
‘Mick and Keith weren’t talking or working together and it was taking longer and longer to make the albums. So as well as Keith’s addiction there was Mick’s frustration and my own disenchantment and disillusionment with them.’
And Taylor confided: ‘I was a bit impulsive back then. I had a reputation on stage of being quiet, but off it I wasn’t. We used to fight and argue all the time. And one of the things I got angry about was that Mick had promised to give me some credit for some of the songs – and he didn’t.
‘I believed I’d contributed enough. Let’s put it this way – without my contribution those songs would not have existed. There’s not many but enough, things like Sway and Moonlight Mile on Sticky Fingers and a couple of others.
'I took offence and that was a contributory factor in my departure. But I’d never seen being with the Stones as a permanent thing.
‘When I told the Stones’ office I was leaving, they asked for my gold Amex card. Mick tried to persuade me to stay, but I told him I was fed up and how my drug problems were beginning to worry me.
'Mick suggested taking six months off, but I’ve never been good at taking advice. Maybe I should have listened.’
Given all that, it is perhaps not surprising that it was not an amicable split. ‘When I left, they cut off my money for a year, just like that,’ said Taylor. ‘But I had to leave because I was frustrated.
‘I had a creative relationship with Mick, but I was also bored for a lot of the time. I wanted more and they wanted to remain the same. I also wanted to deal with my drug problems. I believed if I removed myself from that situation I would sort myself out.’
But life outside the band was not easy. Taylor divorced Rose, sold his gold records, moved to New York and squandered most of his money on heroin and cocaine. ‘I was addicted then, using anything I could get,’ he said.

The downward spiral continued even when he flew back to Hertfordshire to sit at his father’s deathbed.
‘My father was dying of liver cancer and was in terrible pain in hospital,’ Taylor recalled. ‘He said he knew I’d been using drugs and asked if I would ask the nurses for stronger painkillers. I did and they gave him morphine. I sat there trying to balance the irony of the situation.
'My father needed morphine to ease his pain and there was me, addicted to the stuff for pleasure. I was so disgusted, I felt numb.’
Taylor moved to Los Angeles in 1990 and enrolled at a methadone clinic in Hollywood Boulevard.
‘I joined the line of junkies. I was a virtual down and out,’ he admitted. ‘My lowest time was in the clinic on Christmas Day. A nurse gave me a tumbler of methadone and said, “Have a nice Christmas.”
'I told her there wasn’t any Christmas for junkies. I decided to go back to England to find a cure, however painful.’
Since the end of his marriage to his second wife, an American called Valerie, Taylor has lived on his own and rarely sees his daughter Chloe, or Emma, a second daughter by a one-time backing singer with his band.
But he still plays music with friends, including former Jeff Beck keyboard player Max Middleton, ex-Manfred Mann guitarist Denny Newman and ex-Snowy White drummer Jeff Allen.
On the days he has some money, he roots through the stack of bills and pays the ones he can. When he doesn’t, which is often, he phones his friends and suggests they play a few gigs in local pubs and clubs, living out of the back of a Transit van.
But what about his royalties from the Stones? ‘In 1982 they stopped paying me. They’d signed to a different record company and had new contracts and were advised they didn’t need to pay me any more,’ explained Taylor with a shrug.
‘Until then, I’d had a contract with Rolling Stones Records which was licensed to Atlantic Records – the same contract as the rest of the band.’

The deal gave him an equal share of performing royalties, though Jagger and Richards shared the writers’ royalties. But when the Atlantic contract expired, the band’s management used a loophole in Taylor’s contract to stop all payments.
‘I should have got a lawyer,’ he said. ‘But instead I called them rude words and asked how they could just stop paying me. They all know it’s not right. In fact it is outrageous. They get all the money and I get the plaudits and praise, even from Mick.
‘I’ve tried to talk to Mick a couple of times, but I realise that hiring a lawyer is probably the only way they’ll take me seriously. But they figure I’m not going to do anything about it.’
Taylor thinks for a moment, then adds: ‘I’m going to do something about it because it’s morally wrong to cut my royalties for those six albums.

Fotos da casa e do carro de Taylor.

The Beatles Rock Game

2009-09-11T07:57:00.000-07:00

Sobre o recém-lançado jogo dos Beatles ADIVINHEM QUEM foi o primeiro a descer a lenha????

Ele, o do nariz gordo, o Bill gracinha, nosso velho e querido baixista da melhor banda de rock'n roll de todos os tempos, o ex- Rolling Stone Bill Wyman.

Bill disse, em entrevista para a BBC que o problema de games como esse, lançado no último dia 9, é que isso desencoraja a molecada a aprender a tocar, fazendo com que cada vez mais as pessoas não se dediquem a realmente aprender a tocar um instrumento

Suas palavras -"It encourages kids not to learn, that's the trouble. It makes less and less people dedicated to really get down and learn an instrument."

E não foi só ele quem abriu a boca para chiar a respeito do novo gadget que tem tudo para se tornar o campeão de vendas absoluto pra molecada, e também papais e avós, que curtem Beatles.

Outro dinossauro do rock, o baterista do Pink Floyd, Nick Mason, sem descartar a possibilidade de que a sua banda poderá ou não lançar um game parecido com o dos Beatles, disse que é irritante observar a criançada disperdiçando seu tempo apertando os botõezinhos do jogo, enquanto poderiam estar dedilhando as cordas de guitarras de verdade, pra aprenderem a tocar.

Nick disse - "It irritates me having watched my kids do it - if they spent as much time practising the guitar as learning how to press the buttons they'd be damn good by now."

Fonte - Dave White/Classic Rock

Menino ou Menina??? La Bundchen barrigudinha!

2009-09-08T17:57:00.001-07:00

Diferentemente da exposição desnecessária da barrigona da baiana Ivete Sangalo, acabou agora a discrição que a top brasileira Gisele Bundchen conseguia manter em torno de sua gravidez.

Nesta terça, 8 de setembro, um papparazzi finalmente conseguiu fotografar a barriguinha gravidíssima de la Bundchen. Nem o moleton folgado conseguiu esconder a barriga, discreta, porém evidente.

A modelo foi fotografada no portão da casa que divide com o marido Tom Brady, em Boston, Massachusetts.

Ainda Charlie Watts - tá virando novela...

2009-09-02T18:36:00.000-07:00

Depois de desmentido oficialmente pela porta-voz dos Stones, nesta quarta-feira, o jornalista Paul Cashmere comentou no meu Facebook, sarcasticamente, (já na quinta-feira, dia 3 (aloooooooooou , ele está na Austrália) o seguinte:"I wish I had a dollar for every publicist who denied a story that turned out to be fact," ou seja, ele queria ganhar um dólar pra cada nota desmentida que se tornasse verdade...

Isso me leva a crer que ele mantém sua versão.

Agora é esperar para ver...

By the way, segue na íntegra, a matéria de amanhã (hj) do site Undercover a respeito do que tem tudo para virar uma novela:

Stones Deny Charlie Is Leaving The Band

by Paul Cashmere - September 3 2009

It looks like only time will tell until we really know if Charlie Watts has hung up his drumsticks in the Rolling Stones.
A source close to the band told Undercover that Charlie has decided not to return to the Rolling Stones and has no interest doing another tour or recording on the next album.
The source also named Charlie Drayton from Keith Richards` other band The Expensive Winos as being prepped for the vacated drum stool.
The loss of Charlie Watts would be a major blow to the Stones. His impeccable timing is the backbone of their sound.
Yesterday’s story has gone right to the centre of the Stones empire with an announcement from Stones spokesperson Fran Curtis calling it a ‘”fabricated story”. Not quite. The story did not come from an anonymous email or from someone unconnected to the band. It was a reliable source.
The next phase of the Rolling Stones is yet to be announced. There is nothing on the calendar so far for 2010. The next major benchmark for the band will be in 2013. January 2013 will mark the 50th anniversary of when Charlie joined the band.
Right now, we will take on board at face value the statement from Curtis saying “drummer Charlie Watts has not left The Rolling Stones” and look forward to hearing about what the Stones will do next.
Not every official announcement about an artist always turns out to be true. Not every reliable source always turns out to be right either.
Undercover does not make up stories. We write about what we hear Charlie has left the band.
Undercover is sticking by the absolute truth of the story until Charlie Watts himself denies it.

Fonte>http://undercover.com.au/News-Story.aspx?id=9155_Stones_Deny_Charlie_Is_Leaving_The_Band

PS - Já sugeriram que Ringo Starr poderia ocupar a vaga...

COMUNICADO OFICIAL - CHARLIE WATTS FICA!!!

2009-09-02T12:43:00.000-07:00

Contrariando a notícia -pesadelo que correu o mundo nesta manhã e no início da tarde, a porta-voz da banda The Rolling Stones, Fran Curtis, negou oficialmente que o baterista Charlie Watts tivesse deixado a banda. Ela detonou o site australiano, até então bem respeitado, chamando-o de "pequeno site de música". (Gostaria de saber o que o Paul Cashmere vai dizer...)

"Diferentemente da estorinha fabricada esta manhã por um pequeno site de

música da Austrália, o baterista Charlie Watts não deixou a banda The Rolling Stones",

disse Fran, num email enviado à Agência Reuters.

Thanks God!! Ainda serei uma senhorazinha muito católica! Deus existe e não é só Eric Clapton...

Confira o comunicado da Reuters:

Rolling Stones Official Denies Watts Quit the Band
September 2, 2009

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts has not quit the band, a spokeswoman said on Wednesday, denying a news report from Australia.
The report, from the normally credible online outlet Undercover (http://www.undercover.com.au), stirred up a worldwide panic among fans, since Watts' departure would likely mean the end of the venerable group.
"Contrary to a fabricated story that ran this morning on a small music web site in Australia, drummer Charlie Watts has not left The Rolling Stones," spokeswoman Fran Curtis said in an emailed statement.
The Undercover report, attributed to "a source within the Stones inner-circle says," said Watts will never record or tour with the band again. It said the Stones were looking to replace him with New York session drummer Charlie Drayton, who has played on solo projects with Stones guitarist Keith Richards.
The Rolling Stones, which Watts joined in 1963 after a stint in the advertising world, have not released a new album since 2005's poor-selling "A Bigger Bang." Their last tour ended in London in August 2007. Future plans are unknown.
Watts, 68, does not contribute to the songwriting, but his spare, jazz-influenced drumming style is considered key to the band's success. He is closely involved in the design of the band's stage sets and merchandising, and gets the loudest cheers when the four members are introduced in concert.
He was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2004, but it went into remission, and the band embarked on a three-year world tour the following year. During the 1980s, the famously clean-living drummer fought a drug addiction at a time when the band had essentially broken up.
Watts has traditionally been the most reluctant to tour, since he hates to leave his wife and Arabian horses at the couple's horse-breeding farm in Devonshire. The media-shy grandfather generally avoids the spotlight, and seems disdainful of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle.

Agora é torcer para que daqui a 3 anos, a maior banda de rock'n roll de todos

os tempos complete seu Jubileu de Ouro sem mais contratempos!

Charlie Watts abandonou os Rolling Stones?

2009-09-02T08:50:00.000-07:00

Charlie Watts abandonou os Rolling Stones?

Depois de uma manhã nervosa com uma invasão de um vídeo do Keith Richards, no Facebook, que na verdade, era um vírus, vem essa BOMBA:

Charlie Watts estaria fora da melhor banda de Rock'n roll de todos os tempos??

Seria o fim dos Rolling Stones??

Todo mundo sabe que antes da tourneé mundial “A Bigger Bang Tour”, o baterista que adora cavalos já teria demonstrado vontade de se aposentar, mas não o fez, devido aos pedidos (e $$$?) dos outros membros da banda.

De acordo com a nota, até um possível baterista teria sido cogitado: no caso, outro Charlie, o Drayton, da banda Expensive Winos, do Keith Richards.

Até agora nada confirmado oficialmente, mas a notícia do Cashmere nos faz ouvir Mixed Emotions com o coração apertado.

Veja na íntegra a notícia do site Undercover:

EXCLUSIVE: Charlie Watts Quits The Rolling Stones

by Paul Cashmere - September 2 2009

Undercover has learned that Charlie Watts has quit The Rolling Stones.
A source within the Stones inner-circle says, “Charlie Watts has quit the band. He will never record or tour with the band again”.
The news does not come as a surprise. It was common knowledge that Keith Richards had to talk Charlie into contributing to the A Bigger Bang tour but this time it seems there is no calling Charlie back to active duty.
“The Stones are looking to Keith's Expensive Winos drummer Charlie Drayton to fill the void in all future Stones' callings,” our source says.
With Mick Jagger planning more Stones activity next year, the departure of Charlie will be a huge blow to the band. Charlie was the backbone of the band.
The 68-year old drummer simply doesn't want to do it anymore.
Charlie joined the Rolling Stones in January, 1963. He didn’t expect it would last. In fact, he kept his day job for several months until the band started to feel like a career.
Charlie’s decision to quit the band comes a three years short of the Stones 50th anniversary.
The Stones A Bigger Bang tour ran from August 2005 to August 2007.

It was the highest tour of all-time.

fonte: http://undercover.com.au/News-Story.aspx?id=9154_EXCLUSIVE:_Charlie_Watts_Quits_The_Rolling_Stones

.

Perfumes - 3

2009-08-20T17:03:00.000-07:00

No início da adolescência comecei a gostar e usar White Magnolia e Flor de Maçã (Apple Blosson), ambos também de Helena Rubinstein .

O primeiro, por não ser tão adocicado quanto o segundo era o meu preferido, mas eu também usava e abusava dos perfumes de minha mãe, os que eu mais gostava eram Ma Griffe, de Carven; Heure Intime, de Vigny

; Fleur de Roccaile

e Muguet Du Bonheur, de Caron; Givenchy III, de Givenchy ; Mme Rochas, de Rochas e Cabochard, de Grés.

Nesta época eu também comecei a gostar do perfume Vetiver, de Guerlain, que meu pai ocasionalmente usava.

Até hoje não conheço outro perfume masculino tão gostoso quanto ele.

A crítica da crítica

2009-08-02T08:41:00.000-07:00

A excelente jornalista Michelle Achkar publicou neste domingo, no Terra, uma matéria sobre o look das vips presentes à estreia do filme de Ang Lee, Taking Woodstock.

Só para lembrar, o festival de Woodstock, que completa 40 anos neste verão americano, aconteceu nos dias 15, 16 e 17 de agosto de 1969, quando quase 500 mil pessoas se aglomeraram numa fazenda para curtir, entre muito sexo, drogas e rock'n roll, Joe Cocker, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Joan Baez, Country Joe & The Fish, Ten Years after, entre outros.

Michelle se supera (assumindo uma "vingança quase hollywoodiana" da Andy Sachs, interpretada pela gracinha da Anne Hathaway) no título da matéria: "Até Anna Wintour erra em look na estreia de filme"

Entre comentários e fotos sobre erros e acertos nas roupas de outras vips ilustrando a matéria, a jornalista faz uma enquete sobre a aprovação (ou não) do look da intocável Anna Wintour, a temida e respeitada diretora da Vogue americana e dá a dica para o internauta sobre o erro da Miranda Presley da vida real: os pés da dita cuja, numa sandália aparentemente um número menor, de onde um dedinho horrivelmente escorrega para fora.

Getty Images

Mas pior que isso é o "Oooops, my mistake!" de quem manda e desmanda, literalmente, no mundo da moda: deixar ser fotografada com casaco fechado e sandálias de dedo.

Será que já não está na hora de pensar em aposentadoria para a xará?

Perfumes - 2

2009-07-27T09:29:00.000-07:00

Foi na penteadeira de minha avó paterna, que usava Heure Intime, de Vigny, e Je Reviens, de Worth, que me aventurei pela primeira vez no mundo dos perfumes masculinos.

Em meio a brilhantinas perfumadas e frascos de Lancaster para o pós barba do meu avô, meu perfume favorito de então era um que ele usava, que tinha uma folha. Vou explicar: eu não sei ao certo qual era o perfume, mas meu avô o usava em seu lenço branco (que ele dobrava em forma de cisne para colocar no bolsinho de seu paletó). Era delicioso, um chipre levemente adocicado, e me lembro que o líquido do perfume era meio esverdeado e que tinha, no frasco redondo, uma folha desenhada no rótulo. Recordo que o aroma era muito parecido com o L’instant, de Guerlain. Eu acho que era perfume de Guerlain, mas meu pai, que também o usava em seu lenço, diz que era um Margareth Duncan. Lembro-me do aroma e do frasco, mas não do nome do perfume, nem da grife. Quem souber, me conte!

Perfumes - 1

2009-07-22T16:35:00.000-07:00

Perfumes são uma velha paixão e fazem parte da minha vida desde a infância, sempre fui apaixonada por aromas e frascos, desde bem pequena...
Lembro da grande quantidade de perfumes na penteadeira da tia Rosa Maria, que tinha um gosto totalmente eclético, que ia desde o Toque de Amor, da Avon, até o Chanel n.o 5.

Quando eu tinha uns quatro ou cinco anos minha aventura preferida era trancar-me em seu quarto e passar todos os perfumes ao mesmo tempo, antes que minha avó viesse tirar me de lá...

Fui crescendo e minhas aventuras pelas penteadeiras alheias continuaram, mas eu já sabia que deveria usar apenas UMA fragrância, e, desse modo, quando visitava minha avó materna, saía de lá perfumada com Maderas de Oriente ou Promessa, de Maja.

Antes dos dez anos já ganhava meus próprios perfumes, e um deles, Emotion, de Helena Rubinstein, era o meu preferido.

Lembro-me de como chorei no dia em que minha madrinha de Crisma me mandou um novo, pois o meu havia acabado e, ao abrir o frasco, deixei-o cair e ele se espatifou no chão... foi num dos encontros da família de minha mãe, num feriado de Finados.

Tive que ansiosamente esperar pela segunda feira, para poder comprá-lo.

PART ONE: GEORGE AT THE BOBFEST

2009-07-08T10:43:00.000-07:00

GEORGE HARRISON(Photo By Myles Aronowitz)

[In COLUMN SIXTY-TWO, I told about George Harrison agreeing to an interview before his participation In Madison Square Garden’s 1992 concert celebrating Bob Dylan’s 30th year with Colombia Records. PART ONE begins the original manuscript of what I afterwards wrote. Portions first appeared in the short-lived New York Planet.]

I, of course, think you have to be a total narcissist to want to become a musician in the first place. But what sets George Harrison apart from most other superstars I have known is that he doesn't treat his superstardom as a license to act like a spoiled brat. I am proud and happy to be able to tell you (even at the risk of sounding too much like the smarmy, gushy, awe-struck Beatles fan I happen to be) that, on a personal basis, George Harrison is one of the sweetest, kindest and most considerate men I know. I've seen him try very hard to be a prick and each time I have seen him fail miserably.

For instance, I was riding with George in London once when a Bobby accused him of blocking the box at an intersection during rush hour. It was a close call and when the cop stepped into the path of George's expensive blue Italian sports car and started to write out a ticket, George gunned the engine and inched as close as possible to the Bobby, as if threatening to run the cop down. But the Bobby just had to take one look at George's face to know George was just bluffing.
The Bobby stood his ground in front of George's car and finished writing out the ticket.Another time, while visiting at George's home, Friar Park, a landmark estate built years ago as a sort of Disneyland Castle by an old eccentric millionaire, I went with George and George's brother to the local pub where George's brother's mates in the volunteer fire brigade were drinking. This was during the anti-war days when we were all railing against the government's Vietnamese policies. George had a drink or two, got a little loose and slipped into his belligerent-anarchist-activist mode, telling the fire brigade volunteers how much he despised cops and all similar arms of fascistic civil governments, such as the local fire brigade, who therefore were as bad as cops. George worked himself up enough to tell the fire brigade volunteers that even if Friar Park started burning down, he wouldn't allow them on his property, not even to put out the fire.
This attempt at nastiness struck the fire brigade volunteers as so preposterous that they laughed it off as a send-up. With the volunteers thinking that George must have been putting them on all along, the argument turned into a hilarious joke, and the laughing fire brigade volunteers went home thinking that rich Beatle lad sure was a lot of fun to hang out with.George's face is so accustomed to having a smile on it, that no wonder everyone can see the kindliness engraved in his visage. The folds of George's facial skin just don't have any practice wrinkling in any other direction. George is too much of a Mr. Nice Guy, as if there can be too much of such a thing in a world so dominated by an absence of Mr. Nice Guys.I wrote to George asking for an interview and a few days later he phoned me backGeorge radiates a warmth and love that a fan can take home with him from a seat all the way in the uppermost bleachers of Madison Square Garden (or of any similar arena with bleachers that put you as far away as outside the city limits or so high up that you interfere with the flight control pattern). For me, personally, George radiates a warmth and love that has reached across the Atlantic for more than a quarter of a century.

In September, I wrote George:I hope this letter gets to you in time or gets to you at all. I just got wind you're going to give a concert in New York with Bob, etc. Bob isn't talking to me these days and I've been blacklisted out of New York journalism for the past 20 years, but I'm starting all over again at the age of 64 with a column in a new newspaper that's going to be part of the alternative press. I sure wish you'll let me see you when you're in New York for an interview so I can get a "scoop" for my new column.
A few days later, George called from England and said of course he would give me my scoop. He said he would call again as soon as he checked into a hotel in the city. On the phone, he reminisced about all the good times we'd had years ago when we were running around Manhattan together. But then he added sadly that he hasn't been able to feel the same about New York since John was shot here.
Later, when I saw him after he checked into his Pierre Hotel suite, George explained:"Well, a city where a Beatle has been shot is obviously not going to be one of my favorite cities to visit."Running around atop Popdom's Mount Olympus, I always found George one of the most human, one of the most natural, one of the most unaffected of the superstar gods. I also always found him to be the most composed and the most at one with himself, starting with the part of him still very much a member of a bus driver's family, a kid from the working class, a baby brother who hit it big. To win a million in the lottery or to earn a million with your talent, you still had to be struck by the same kind of lightning, touched by the same finger of God. George is so giving that, while others in his profession often have to feign humility, George has to hold his in check."There's something very sincere about him," a woman who watched the Dylan Tribute concert on Pay-Per-View TV later told me. "Just looking at him, I could tell he's a gentle soul with a very forgiving nature."

So, I wasn't just imagining it. Just from watching George on the tube, this woman friend of mine had gotten all the same sweet vibrations that I always had gotten from George in the flesh. Do I have to conduct a survey? Do I have to take a poll? I don't think I'll have many challengers when I say most of us are ready to agree George inspires good cheer wherever he goes. What I mean is that everybody---even yours truly---has been a spoiled brat at least once in a while. But not once in the 28 years I've known George have I ever seen him (or even heard of him) lose his cool, fly into a rage and throw the type of tantrum too often displayed by George's egocentric equals in Rock's Royal hierarchy.
Not that I mean to point any fingers on the occasion of what Neil Young called a "Bobfest," the Madison Square Garden tribute to Bob Dylan, a man who has been probably my greatest idol, my most adored hero. Whatever harsh words Bob and I may currently harbor for each other on a personal level, I'm certainly ready to agree that Dylan has been an overwhelming influence in my life. Whether for the worse or for the better remains to be seen, but Bob has without question enriched my life. And, in fact, he has enriched the lives of all of us.
George and I, we're both fans of Bob. Obviously, George shares my opinion at least to some degree that Bob has done more to change the English language than anybody since Bill Shakespeare. But nobody, not George nor anybody else, was ever a bigger Dylan fan than I was (or maybe even still am). I was famous as the World's No. 1 Dylanite. Didn't one of Bob's biographers refer to me as a "notorious pop star lackey"? That's what I was! There was even a time I went nutso enough to think Bob was the New Messiah, a misconception that caused me no end of mental complications in view of the fact that Bob had once joked in a well publicized interview that I was the only man who could save the world.

I hadn't seen George since I went that crazy. I hadn't seen George since 1973, when he last came to New York to play the Garden. I hadn't seen George since I lost my grip and fell off the edge. I'd been staying away from people like George because nobody wants to hear a horror story and all I had to offer were letters from Desolation Row.
I used to think George said we ALL made mistakesI was a winner, but I looked back at a trail along which I had tripped too often."I've made a lot of mistakes!" I told George as the two of us sat on the sitting room couch of his Hotel Pierre suite while Myles, my photographer son, snapped pictures."I know I've fucked up!" I added, for emphasis.Putting his hand on mine, George looked at me and said:"You didn't fuck up with me, Al."Then he added:"We all did, didn't we? We all fucked up. D'y know that tune of Bob's, 'Every grain of sand. . .' In which he says, "don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake. . .Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must now break'?"Almost ever since I introduced George to Bob, George has always been quoting Bob's lyrics to me."It started to get painful for me to listen to Bob's stuff," I explained."I can imagine," he said.
But then I told George about someone giving me a copy of Bob's Most of the Time."I love that song!" I said. "His stuff is still inspirational! His stuff is still great!"I told George that hanging out with Bob had been maybe my most memorable adventure, except maybe for hanging out with the Beatles. He nodded."Bob's kinda--" George started to say and then he interrupted himself. "Obviously," he said, "I know him much more now than I knew him when we. . . when I knew you. . . when we were in that period. From what I've seen, he doesn't judge people. Sometimes people don't---what they're lacking is whatever that is that just. . . that's able to just reach out. But I've seen him being very forgiving and not really. . . He don't put anybody down and in that way I think he’s really cool.""Do you think he's mellowed out?" I asked."Oh, yeah!" George said. "Yeah, he's. . . Sometimes, he's very ordinary. He's just an ordinary person who’s got a lot of knowledge."

Sometimes it's tough for a genius like Bob to accomplish tasks that are easy for ordinary mortals. The truth is that I am proud to have contributed at all to the career of one of the greatest songwriters of our time. Still, I don't think Bob was ever straight with me. Like I say, I don't know if Bob ever gave a straight answer to anybody."I've seen Bob in all kinds of moods," I told George. "What he did with me, the way he dumped on me, I've seen him do with many guys along the way. Oh, by the way, I spoke to Leon Russell. . ."
It was at Leon's urging years ago that George sent me to ask Buckminster Fuller for suggestions on what to do with the proceeds from George's Concert for Bangladesh. "Bucky" kept me spellbound for hours with a plan for a city of his geometric domes, using (among other innovations) recycled human methane for energy. The plan made perfect sense, but George gave the money to agencies with less radical agendas. I told George I had seen Leon recently, explaining that Leon had undergone a hip replacement identical to that of Bo Jackson.
"Leon should've been on this show, really," George said, "doin' Hard Rains Gonna Fall on the piano. That's where I would have had him on this show, because Leon was hot on that piano."I told George that Leon had once disclosed to me that Bob had shat on him, too."He told me that Bob shit on him in the same kind of way that I've known Bob to shit on a lot of people," I said.
"But I don't know," George interrupted, "because I haven't seen Leon, either, and maybe he thinks I shit on him, too. But he moved out of L.A. in a real depression when it wasn't so good for me, either. The record companies were going through that period in the '70s.

The record company discouraged Leon Russell where they were having market surveys on the streets to find out what was supposed to be a hit tune. And at that time, I was told a hit song constitutes love gained or lost between 15- and 20-year-olds. And I thought, 'Well, what chance to I have?'
"And at that period, Leon was making albums. He made a couple of really good albums and the record company said, like they said to me at that point, 'It's very artistic, but we don't hear any hits.' And then Leon made a new album and then another album and then I think from what I could see of it, he just got disheartened and he gave up. And the next time I came to L.A., he'd gone. I didn't see him and I heard about 20 years later---I asked where is he? And they said, 'Oh, I think he lives in Nashville now!'
"And I saw him on a TV show from somewhere like Austin, Texas, with Johnny Winter. And that's the only thing I've seen of him for years, and I often think of what happened to him. But I wonder if he thinks like I shat on him just because he never heard from me. But how do you keep in touch with people if they don't. . . Like I just saw Al Kooper last night and I was vaguely in touch with him, but if he leaves town and changes his phone number and address and goes to live in some other state, unless he sends a post card, how are you to know where people have gone?

"It's like somebody wrote this song in the past, like 1930 or something, and it says, 'Famous men, they come and go/Where they go to, I don't know/'All I know is clear/I'm still here!'"I knew George wasn't going to have much time to spend with me. Somehow, he was going to have to shoehorn my "interview" into a very tight schedule. He was only going to remain in New York a day or two or possibly three. When he called from the Pierre the day before the Friday night "Bobfest", he said he wished he could take me to the rehearsal with him and then added: "But I can't." To me, "But I can't" meant that George had asked Bob if he could bring me along and Bob had specifically vetoed the idea. At one point, George wanted to know what was Bob's beef against me. I laughed and told him that the last time I had seen Bob, he all but accused me of being the reason Albert Grossman was suing him. He kept demanding to know, as if I were in the witness chair and he were the county prosecutor:"Why is Albert suing me? Why is Albert suing me?"
As if it were all my fault. Albert, of course, was the personal manager who is generally credited with having invented Dylan, although it's perfectly obvious that it was Bob who really invented himself. In the end, Bob and Albert were at war with each other and when two men are at war, they fight with words or fists or clubs or knives or guns or armies or lawyers. As far as I knew, Albert was suing Bob for money that Bob had wittingly or unwittingly ripped off from Albert. But the fight had to be over more than money, because it got so bitter that the legal fees on both sides soon exceeded by far the amount in dispute.

Bob and Albert were really fighting over something deeply personal, but George knew probably as well as I did that the super secretive Bob would never reveal himself by giving anybody a straight answer about it. In all the years I've known Bob, I don't think I've ever heard him give a straight answer to anybody about anything. He has certainly never told me the real reason why he took the liberty of ordering me out of Levon Helms's dressing room into which Levon invited me. It was when Levon was appearing with Rick Danko at the old Lone Star, on Fifth Ave. and 13th St., with a giant replica of an iguana on the roof.)
Probably all of us who have ever loved and adored Bob, who have been inspired by him and who have followed his leadership, who have been kept spellbound by his songs, who have had the good fortune to get close enough to him to dote on him and sit at his feet, we all have known that, on a personal level, Bob can be about as rational as a big baby and ten times as demanding. But he is our big baby. To a certain extent, I feel the same way about my own one-year-old grandson. I'll do anything I can to keep my grandson happy.
I've been told by Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary that he had to teach Bob to brush his teeth and clean his fingernails when Bob was 22. The people up in Cambridge claimed Bob's teeth were still green when he first showed up there looking for a gig in the early '60s. All along the way, people have mothered and fathered and babied Bob for many reasons, not the least of which has been Bob's innate ability to charm the birds out of the trees. But Bob's most redeeming quality has been his genius. I, for one, was proud to know as brilliant a writer, a performer, a star as Bob. As I said, I used to feel ennobled simply being in his company. Although Bob would never reveal himself by giving anybody a straight answer, I found eternal truths in his lyrics.

Some of those in Bob's inner circle had hitched their wagons to his star because they knew he would make money for them. I, for one, was attracted to Bob by his artistry. But whatever reasons any of us had for clinging to him, we all took our turns coddling him. Every last one of us let him get away with never giving any of us a straight answer. We let him keep putting all of us on. We let him keep enjoying his game of manipulating us, sometimes playing cruel jokes on us just for laughs. That was the price we paid for the honor of hanging out with one of the greatest talents of our time.
"Bob's not the only one who's turned his back on me," I told George. "I can't get through to Robbie Robertson, either.""Oh, Robbie!" George laughed in response. "Robbie doesn't even talk to Bob any more!"I suppose I should feel honored to be lumped with such a distinguished and talented legion of old friends and old lovers discarded into the trash heap by Bob for reasons I don't know if he ever really made clear to any of us. It seems that, constitutionally, he can't reveal enough of himself to tell what he's really angry about, so, like Ross Perot, he gives any old reason, no matter how irrational it might sound.
Obviously, he kicked me out of his coterie to punish me for what I know not. Obviously, he meant I should suffer pain and do you know what? I do. The truth is that I am as pained as Bob meant me to be. Still, I could go down the list, starting with Bob's ex-wife, Sara, or Bob's ex-lover, Joan Baez, and I'll bet every one of us would jump at the chance of doing it all over again. Even Albert would rise up from the grave like a petulant giant of a ghost to do it again. For those of us who thought we were helping pioneer new breakthroughs in music, art and culture, who thought we were helping open the door to new artistic and social freedoms, the 1960s were thrilling times. Flawed as he was (and, I presume, still is), Bob was our hero, always an adventure to be with. Yes, those were glory days for all of us. You'll notice, however, that Baez wasn't on the lineup for the Garden "Bobfest," even though she played Manhattan's Bottom Line a few nights later.

George is a peacemaker. Like me, he believes in patching things up. Like me, he believes that fighting wastes too much energy. Lighten up, everybody! It's only the extremists who want to start the wars. I figured George must have made overtures to Bob about settling the problem between Bob and me. I've got my beefs with Bob, too, but I'm all for harmony and brotherhood. Yes, George wished he could take me to the rehearsal and I would have liked to go. George wished he could take me but he couldn't because, obviously, I had been disinvited. I understood.

PART TWO:GEORGE AT THE BOBFEST

2009-07-08T10:38:00.000-07:00

George Harrison had told me to meet him at the Pierre at 4 p.m. but it must have been close to 5 when a charming, dark-haired woman assistant whose name I think was Linda found me downstairs in the Pierre Cafe, just off the lobby, where I was with my photographer son, Myles, having a cup of coffee at my table in anticipation of the long night ahead. In my all too wasted past, I would have equipped myself with stimulants much more exotic and illicit than coffee, but that great self-destructive binge of creativity spawned by the 1960s had long ago come to an emphatic end, no matter to what extent its fruits might be celebrated later tonight.

Tonight would be when George would mount the stage of Madison Square Garden to join a veritable Who's Who of Rock's most accomplished heroes in a "Bobfest," which is what Neil Young would call it when it came his turn to step up to the mike. What's a "Bobfest?"
"'COLUMBIA RECORDS CELEBRATES THE MUSIC OF BOB DYLAN' HONORS HIS 30TH YEAR;" the headline on the press release said. "ALL-STAR OCT. 16 MADISON SQUARE GARDEN CONCERT EVENT SELLS OUT IN RECORD 70 MINUTES." I think the last Garden show to sell out that fast was George's Concert for Bangladesh. I don't know. I've been out of the loop for the last 20 years. Except that the tickets for this show started at $80 and went up to $150 and you were allowed to buy only one pair at a time.

The cast for tonight's show included a house band consisting of Booker T. on keyboards, Steve Cropper and G. E. Smith wielding guitars, Duck Dunn on bass and Jim Keltner on drums. I told George I still had my "Jim Keltner Fan Club" pin that George had made up on one of his previous tours years ago. For this show, George ordered a supply of black T-shirts that bore a line from one of Bob's songs, in crazy, colorful lettering:
"It's That Million-Dollar Bash."

The show certainly had a million-dollar cast. The lineup featured Eric Clapton, Kris Kristofferson, John Mellencamp, Willie Nelson, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash and June Carter, Tracy Chapman and on and on and on, including Roger McGuinn, whose Byrds got their first hit with a pop version of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man."
In an article in the Times two days before the concert, Peter Watrous quoted Roger as saying that if Dylan hadn't come along, pop music might have stayed strictly "bubblegum" and there might not have been Bob's brand of "thinking man's music."

"All those concepts of his might have been lost," Roger was quoted as saying. "The Beatles were doing straight pop, and Dylan had a talk with Lennon and after that the Beatles changed, got motivated to do something more interesting, more intellectual."
Which is exactly the reason why I decided it was so essential for me to get Bob and the Beatles together in the first place. Well, it wasn't exactly like acting as go-between for the Arabs and the Jews, but I knew that such a meeting was going to be an earth-shaking
At first, Dylan waslukewarmto meeting the Beatles event. I wrote about Dylan and Lennon as mirror images of each other. To me, it was obvious that if I could get Dylan and the Beatles together, what would evolve is exactly what did evolve. They influenced one another and everybody's music got better still. The world benefited.

It's true that I had youthful ambitions of one day claiming far greater contributions to contemporary culture than that, but I certainly feel honored to have played at least that role. At first, Dylan was lukewarm to meeting the Beatles. He sneered at their music as kid stuff. To Bob, the Beatles were more "bubblegum." Bob had started out as a rock-and-roller like all the other kids, but when I met him he was in his folkie-purist phase. He turned up his nose at pop, but I argued:
"Today's pop is tomorrow's folk music."

I finally got Bob and the Beatles to meet in Manhattan's Hotel Delmonico. Afterwards, when the Beatles were playing a benefit at the old Paramount Theater in Times Square, I brought Bob to the show. He stood on a chair in the wings to watch. He was staying a lot at my house in Berkeley Heights, N.J., in those days and afterwards he asked my wife to drive him over to Rondo Music on Route 22 in Hillside. There, he rented an electric guitar and took it back to my house. Soon, he was in the studio recording his first electric album.

"It's chaos, absolute chaos down there at the Garden!" George told me when Linda, after apologizing profusely for her boss' lateness, finally ushered me into the sitting room of his suite. "I don't know how they're ever going to get that show together. I'm sorry I had to keep you waiting but they kept me waiting. Then I still didn't even get to do my run-through."
He smiled and we shook hands and then we hugged. We hadn't seen each other in close to 20 years. I reminded him that the last time was in his suite at the Plaza after his last Garden concert.

"That was in '74," George recalled. "We used to come to New York a lot when [Allen] Klein managed Apple. Then he no longer managed Apple and we no longer came to New York so much. I've only been here probably two or three times in 20 years since John was shot. Actually twice. The [Rock and Roll] Hall of Fame in February, '88 and then '89 or '90 to do a couple of tracks on Eric's [Clapton] 'Journeyman' album."
I asked George what he thought about New York nowadays.

"I think they should pull a lot of it down and plant some trees in it," he laughed, "and thin out the people a bit. Ship a few people off into different places. I don't think it's very healthy at all. It's crumbling, it's tired, but it still has a kind of atmosphere. In the '60s and '70s for me, it was kind of interesting when we used to hang out, we used to go in weird places.
"Then there's that kind of thing where you can get into feelin,' 'Hey, man, yeah, we're in the city and this is city life and we're cool.' But for me, I have no desire to be in any city, even a small city. I don't like cities. I want to be as close to nature as possible. Purely just because I want to survive and I think it takes its toll on you---the pollution, the noise, the uptightness, the hostility---and all it does is it fries your nervous system and knocks years off your life."

I asked George what he has been doing to advance his musical career.
"Musically, I've just sort of come along," he said, but then he quickly added: "Not really. . . Like I'm doing it like most people who are doing their career, making sure they have an album out every year and the tours and all that. When I feel like it, I'll just do an album. I'll probably make one. That's what I've been planning to do the last couple of months is to start writing some new tunes. . .

What about the Traveling Wilburys, I asked, referring to the fictional group that George concocted with the help of Dylan, Petty and ex-ELO leader Jeff Lynne.
"The Wilburys was fun," George said. "I think we should do some more again, because it is relatively simple. It's not like a solo album, in which the responsibility is on you. You can hide behind each other's backs and maybe write lyrics that you maybe wouldn't write
George alsohad becomea movie mogul on your own. I thought that was fun. I like that last album we did. The first one, we did in 10 days, to write it and do the basic tracks, and then Jeff Lynne and I spent a bit more time with Tom puttin' it together.
"The last one, the second one we did, it took six weeks to write it, record it and mix it, everything. It's really good because you tend to get bogged down doin' solo albums. You get used to doin' it over and over until you lose the point. So, it's a little rough bug. It's got that more natural feeling."

Since I last saw George, he also had become a movie mogul, producing a string of films that won critical and commercial success.
"When the economy went bad in the world," George said, "a lot of people couldn't pay us what they owed us and we suffered a little bit over the past few years, paying interest on bank loans that were due to the bank from the money that the other people hadn't paid us. Now we had to sue Cannon Films. Then Cannon sold the company to this Italian, Paretti, who was even worse than Cannon and then he got rid of it to MGM. You know that big story that was in the papers about Credit Lyonnais. It ended up we won the case and we got the money from MGM, but it wasn't MGM's fault.

"The people who actually caused all the problems in the first place got away with it, really. But they'll get theirs, eventually. A lot of people in film, well, in any business, are like that, where they take the attitude, 'We just won't pay and they won't sue us!' We just had a few years of trying to regroup and we've got a few projects that we're trying to get started. I'd like to do just a few more projects and then see how it goes.

"We would change the way we do the business because in the past we raised our own money from the banks. But I think now the days of those smaller budgeted films which we were making---there's no market for them. It's just becoming difficult. So, we've been making films with Hollywood, with those people. Did you ever see any of the films we made? Did you ever see Life with Brian? That was the first film we did. There were a few that were quite good. One with Bob Hoskins. Bought this film that was being shelved. Good Friday. One of his first films."
The telephone rang and George picked it up. It was a friend of Tom Petty who cracks backs. George didn't tell me if the friend actually was a chiropractor or not.

"Where are you?" George said, talking on the telephone. "I don't think I have time. Today has just been a mess. I have so many things to do that I'm just gonna spend some time before I come back just tryin' to get myself calmed down and have a shower and do all that. If I get time, maybe I. . . I think it might be best to pass. . . I am a bit tight around the neck, but I wouldn't worry about it. If I see you backstage, you'll understand. . . Maybe you'll be able to fix my neck or something."

George explained to me that the friend had done George's back the night before but his back probably had just snapped right back to where it had been before the friend had cracked it. Anyway, George said he had found his salvation in guess what? Transcendental Meditation. Remember the Maharishi?

"It's quite good to get an amount of stress out," George said. "Today it's a bit odd because I've been doing a lot of this meditation to gettin' myself together. I just do it. It's part of my day, that's the most important thing, twice a day. And today, because my boy came in with some friends of ours on the Concorde and they came in at 9:30, and we'd. . . so I missed my program this morning and it's like it feels wrong all day, it's not quite right yet.

"So, I'm planning, before I go down to the Garden. . . I'm just going to cool out and do a big long one and get myself together."
George said his wife, Olivia, was in the bedroom, where their 14-year-old son, Dhani, was having a bath.
"But I feel tired as well, for some reason," George said. "Oh, I know why. Because I'm five hours' jet lag, and that's it! I go on at 10:30 tonight, which is like 3:30 in the morning for me, IF the show comes off, because it looked pretty chaotic this afternoon. They were trying to run it down in order to get the timings of everybody. I think they For the 'Bobfest,'they didn't knowwhen to say no made a mistake either by not being able to say no---remember in the '70s when we did Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden? For me to get the commitment of those people for the basis of the show, it took quite a while. But once I knew I had the show, after that, EVERYBODY suddenly wanted to be on the show.

"We were getting phone calls, 20 calls a day. All these different artists who were then volunteering to do it. But I just said, 'NO! That's it! We’ve got the show now!' Whereas this show, it's like they can't say no. Or maybe they feel indebted to so many people for one reason or another or maybe they're just gettin' carried away. And so consequently, they're paying the price of that right now---by being three hours behind in the run-through to time the show. And the show is like three and a half hours long. I mean I wouldn't personally want to sit in the audience for three and a half hours, although, at least, it's not just one person to watch. I mean I don't know anybody I would want to watch for more than two hours. The best show I've seen in the last 20 years was a lecture by Deepak Chopra, this doctor I heard, and it was more entertaining than most rock shows I've seen. He was talking about the spontaneous fulfillment of desire."

George looked at me and then looked at the cassette recorder lying on the couch between us as it wound up every one of his words.
"I would like to just some time hang out with you, not with that feeling that we're doing an interview," George said. "Not that there's nothin’ I don't want to say. . ."

All of a sudden, I was like a cub reporter who couldn't think of the next question to ask. The truth is that George and Bob both became suns around which perhaps too much of me had once revolved. At the concert later that evening, I would find myself weeping with awe over Dylan's enormous body of work.
"I used to know these guys!" I felt obliged to explain to the pretty blonde sitting next to me. She said her name was Sally and she surprised me by referring to Dylan as "Mumbles," affectionately, of course.
"He always changes the lyrics," she said. "You can't tell what he's singing anyway."
Later, when George came onstage, I felt so proud, I turned to Sally and said:
"I was just talking to him."
"Is he really as sweet as he looks?" she asked.
"He's a saint!" I said.

In his Pierre suite, George said he still had to shower and shave before the 8 o'clock start of the show, which was now close to two hours away. He also wanted to know if there were still a Hare Krishna restaurant open in New York. Myles said all the ones he knew of were closed.
"They've got food over at the Garden," George said, "I got them to get some vegetarian rice and dahl, but now I'm not going to be there to eat it, am I? I could do with eating. Otherwise, I'll have no strength at all by the time I get to 10 o'clock. That's when I'm supposed to go on."
Once, years ago, George and I went to a Salsa night on East 86th St. Another time, I took George for his first and last New York subway ride, from Sheridan Square to 14th St. on the Broadway line. When we got out at 14th St., cops were chasing someone down the platform with their guns drawn. But the best night of all was the night I turned the Beatles on to marijuana. That was the night I brought Bob up to meet them at the Delmonico Hotel. We all had one of the best laughs of our lives that night. We did nothing but laugh at one another. That was the night that ushered in Pop's Psychedelic Era.

Now, 28 years later, I no longer smoked anything, but I had scored a chunk of hash in my pocket for George just in case he needed it. But George wasn't having any, either. He started talking about the guy who lives for so long in the country but then decides to get an apartment in the city.
"He sits in the dark because he doesn't know how to plug the light," George said. "In a way, that's what we all do. That's enlightenment. People don't really wanna look for enlightenment. And so, it's like we go through our lives in the dark. But we can just go inside and plug in the source within you/without you. Just learn and be able to dip in, that's the thing. Each time you meditate you can dip in. Each time you meditate you can dip in to that reservoir.

"I forgot about it for years and then I got really stressed out during the early '80s or it was the culmination of all the monkey business I'd been doing. It took me years trying to figure out what's happening to me? I think it was just the accumulation of those years when there was drugs in my life and those years of staying up all night and partying and just being in recording studios and business problems and all these people I talked about earlier---the banks wanting their money and these other people not paying us and all that got me to the point where I said, 'Jesus! I gotta do something here!’

“And I remembered, 'What about meditation!' I had forgotten totally that that's what it was all about---to release the stress out of your system. And I got back into that! And I do a double-dose now and it's like, say, whereas an alcoholic can't go through a day without going to AA or doing some kind of a program like that, for me, it's the meditation program. In order to keep myself focused and keep the buoyancy, the energy, and also to realize that all this stuff that's going on is just bullshit. It's hard to be able to not let that get next to ya!"

an old topic of The Blacklisted Journalist.

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40 Anos de Joe Cocker - De Woodstock ao Hamilton Place!

2009-07-03T15:03:00.000-07:00

Saiu hoje, no The Spec, jornal canadense:

40 years of Joe Cocker From Woodstock to Hamilton Place

por Graham Rockingham The Hamilton Spectator (Jul 3, 2009)

Joe Cocker took the stage shortly after 2 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 17, the third day of Woodstock, almost 40 years ago next month.
His backing group, The Grease Band, had already been jamming through two instrumental numbers to warm the half million or so people in attendance.
Cocker arrived by helicopter, it was the only way in. Traffic jams had kept the roads closed for days.
"It was quite an amazing sight as we grew closer and closer," Cocker says in an interview from his Mad Dog ranch in Colorado. "Only a year before, I was playing the pubs in England to like a hundred people. So it was a bit of an eclipse ...
"I never had a chance to get scared, though. I got off the helicopter and a guy who had managed me for years, Michael Lang, said 'Joe are you ready to go? The band is already warmed up.' And I just climbed up the stairs and there was that wall of people."
He tore through eight songs before reaching one of those iconic moments in rock 'n' roll history.
Less than a year earlier, Cocker had recorded a version of the Beatles' With A Little Help From My Friends. It was a Ringo novelty song off the Sergeant Pepper's album. Cocker rearranged it into a slower, gospel-style call-and-response anthem that had more to do with Ray Charles than the Beatles. It rose to a monster crescendo, punctuated with a lightning guitar riff from Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page. Little Help From My Friends had been a minor hit in Cocker's native England, but it had yet to make an impact in America.
Cocker chose the song to close his Woodstock set. It was literally a showstopper (an ensuing downpour closed the stage for several hours) that will be remembered as much for Cocker's body contortions as his amazing, bottom-of-the-gravel-pit, vocal delivery.
He was wearing a gaudy tie-dyed shirt, thrown to him by a couple of girls in the crowd. Sweat flew from his unkempt hair as he entered into his bizarre little dance, arms flying about trying to play air guitar, drums and keyboard all at once, his fingers searching for imaginary strings while his feet, wrapped in silver-starred boots, stomped out a pigeon-toed beat.
It was grotesquely beautiful.
After he ended the eight-minute performance to an enormous ovation, he went back stage and removed his shirt. The colours had bled through the tie-dye, mixing with his sweat, imprinting purple, red and orange stains on his torso.
"I was the only guy who wasn't on acid, you know," Cocker confides with a deep-throated chuckle. "The whole band had dropped LSD before they went on and if you look at me, I may appear a little bit labouring."
The performance, his last with The Grease Band, changed his career and made him a superstar.
Soon after, Cocker hooked up with Leon Russell -- a cultlike musician and songwriter from Oklahoma who had learned his craft playing guitar and piano in the early '60s with Phil Spector. Russell had wooed Cocker with a song called Delta Lady and promised to put together a special touring band for him. Cocker expected a five or six-piece combo, instead Russell delivered the 20-piece rock orchestra that became known as Mad Dogs and Englishmen.
"We were all into walking around with no clothes on," Cocker says about the rehearsals at Russell's house. "I don't have much recall but they were pretty crazy days."
The Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour played 48 cities in 56 days, with a film crew catching the antics both onstage and off for a big screen movie. It all started out fun, but ended up, as they used to say, "a drag." There were too many concerts, too many drugs and way too much booze.
After that Cocker continued to score occasional hits, but his career was never the same.
By the mid-'70s his alcohol consumption and onstage contortions were being parodied by John Belushi on Saturday Night Live. At one point during one of his Cocker skits, Belushi falls flat on the floor and pours a bottle of liquor over himself. It's funny, but sad.
Cocker recalls the first time he heard about Belushi's antics.
"I was in a bit of bad shape. After a couple of tours I wasn't doing great and I remember someone saying, 'Joe, there's this guy doing a terrible impersonation of you."
Then Cocker saw it: "I wasn't offended. I thought it was great. I could see the humour, pouring beer over his head. I thought he did a pretty good vocal impersonation."
Eventually, Cocker agreed to sing on the show with Belushi. "We did an SNL together. (Belushi) was always a bit in awe. He'd follow me around. He was very shy around me."
Ironically, it was Belushi who would succumb to his addictions -- dying of an overdose in 1982 -- and not Cocker.
At 65, Cocker now takes much better care of himself than he did in the '70s. He quit his two-pack-a-day cigarette habit 15 years ago and hasn't had a drink in more than eight. Although his voice may not have the range it once had, he can still belt out the hits on the road, five shows a week.
He tours with a full band -- somewhere in size between the Grease Band and Mad Dogs and Englishmen -- that includes two backup singers. He does all the hits -- Delta Lady, The Letter, She Came In Through the Bathroom Window, Cry Me a River, You Are So Beautiful, Leave Your Hat On and Up Where We Belong.
A Little Help From My Friends now runs up to 10 minutes in concert. And, yes, he still does that strange little dance with his hands, not quite so pronounced, but it's there.
"When I first started, I used to slap my ass and the girls didn't like that," Cocker says. "I had to think of something to do with my hands."
After the 1970 Woodstock movie focused attention on his stage moves, people started wondering if he actually suffered an affliction.
"Yeah, I know. They called it 'spastic,'" Cocker says. "They don't use that term anymore. When I first heard people talking about it that way -- that there's something wrong with me -- it affected the way I did it ... I tried to suppress it a little, but it's just there.
"I still do it now but not as pronounced. It's a way I conduct the band in my mind. I kind of just feel the beat and the guys know by the shapes I'm making if I'm happy or not."

Sent by Steve Liddycoat, my Leonlifer canadian friend!

Mais sobre Joe Cocker:

Joe Cocker has released 25 albums over his 40-year career, but it's really only his first three that deserve special attention. If you happen to have a passion for later hits like You Are So Beautiful, Leave Your Hat On or Up Where We Belong, go out and buy a greatest hits CD.
* With a Little Help From My Friends, May 1969. Joe Cocker's debut album with The Grease Band and a few ringers like Jimmy Page, Albert Lee and Stevie Winwood helping out. The title track is all the talk here, but there are other outstanding tracks as well, especially his covers of Traffic's Feelin' Alright and Bob Dylan's I Shall Be Released (which he performed immediately before A Little Help From My Friends in his Woodstock set). While primarily known for covering other people's music, there are three fairly decent Cocker cowrites with Grease Band collaborator Chris Stainton -- Marjorine, Change in Louise and Sandpaper Cadillac.
* Joe Cocker!, November 1969. This marks the start of his work with Leon Russell, who gets a production credit on the album with Denny Cordell, as well as writing two of the album's 10 songs including the hit, Delta Lady. He rolls out two more Beatle's songs (three if you count Let It Be, a bonus track) -- Something and the still popular She Came In Through the Bathroom Window. Other standouts here are his very early cover of Leonard Cohen's Bird On the Wire and the Lovin' Spoonful's Darling Be Home Soon.
* Mad Dogs and Englishmen, September 1970. A double live album recorded during four shows at New York's Filmore East auditorium in March 1970. The band -- drawn largely from Delaney and Bonny's touring group -- is one of the greatest rock orchestras ever assembled. Key members later went on to work with Eric Clapton's Derek and the Dominoes. Outstanding tracks here include Cry Me a River, Honky Tonk Women, The Letter and Girl From North Country (a duet with Leon Russell). Rita Coolidge's early rendering of Superstar, written by Bonnie Bramlett and Russell, is also worth noting.

The Undercover Interview / George Harrison 1943-2001

2009-07-02T15:41:00.000-07:00

Interview and photo by Paul Cashmere

The highlight if my media career was definitely having the chance to interview George Harrison. George was funny, informative and up for a chat. Today marks the 7th anniversary of the death of what we all called `the Quiet Beatle`. Here is a a candid chat with Beatle George.

Paul Cashmere: I'm going to start off by talking about movies. I don't know how many times I've see "Monty Python's Life of Brian," in which you have a cameo. I've searched for your part, even on freeze frame. The problem with that movie is that everyone in it looks like George Harrison. Put me out of my misery. Where are you in it?

George Harrison: Well if you're looking for me, then everybody's going to look like that. There's just one little shot, it's probably about 12 frames. Do you know the scene where he comes out of the room and there's crowds of people in the house and John Cleese is there saying, "Those people with gifts form a queue on the left. Those possessed by demons over to the right," and then he comes out and he says, "Brian, Mister Papadopolus has promised to loan us the mount for Monday." You have to go through it again and see that scene and it cuts across and I'm in the crowd. And I just say "Eh, hello, thank you or something ... hello". That's all it is!

Paul Cashmere: And you never got an Oscar for that, George?

George Harrison: No, no, but I'm still hoping. Well, actually they wanted me to do the part of Christ in there, you know, at the beginning where he's doing the sermon on the mount. That's what they tried to get me to do, but I thought that's a bit too controversial.

Paul Cashmere: Yes, for someone from Liverpool, England, that is a bit over the top, isn't it!

George Harrison: (Laughing) Yes, it is.

Paul Cashmere: You and Eric Clapton go back a long way. When did you first meet?

George Harrison: I think I met him ... I'm not sure which year ... it was probably '63. No, must have been after that ... must have been '64 or '65 at the Hammersmith Odeon. He was in the Yardbirds. We did a Christmas season there ... two or three weeks we played there. That's the first time I met him. Then, later I met him ... somehow Brian Epstein was managing the Cream and the Bee Gees, and I used to see him hanging around at that point. That was when that guy (Robert) Stigwood had come to work for Brian Epstein. That's when I really got to know him quite a bit. It must have been 1966, '67.

Paul Cashmere: Considering Eric ran off with your first wife Patti, how have you managed to remain friends?

George Harrison: Well, he didn't really run off with her, because we'd kind of finished with each other basically anyway. And, you know, for me, this is what I think is the main problem, not the fact that he got married to Patti. I think the fact that makes the problem is that I didn't get annoyed at him and I think that has always annoyed him. I think that deep down inside he wishes that it really pissed me off, but it didn't, because I was happy that she went off, because we'd finished together, and it made things easier for me. You see, because otherwise we'd have had to gone through all these big rows and divorces. And you know, she went off to live in the same style she became accustomed to and it was really very convenient for me. So there.

Paul Cashmere: You've done a great version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" with Eric on both "The Beatles" album and the live album. Let's set the record straight. Going back to the original version, there was a version recorded with John on lead guitar, one with yourself on lead guitar and one with Eric. Now which one was the one that actually made the (Beatles') White album?

George Harrison: Well, I don't know about one with John on guitar. There was one that just a kind of demo. When I wrote it, that was done with just an acoustic guitar. And then there's the version that was on the Beatle White album, the version with Eric Clapton. There's only ever really been the one's the Eric on it. Even the one I did on the Princes Trust album was still Eric playing on it.

Paul Cashmere: Who came up with the lead break for it?

George Harrison: Yeah, Eric just played that, you know, live as we were figuring out the song. Paul played piano on the original record in 1967. There was Ringo on drums. I don't believe John was there. I played acoustic guitar, Paul played piano, Ringo on drums and Eric played live with us, and then Paul overdubbed the bass later. So Eric just made up the guitar part spontaneously. So this is the thing ... when we went to rehearsal for the Live in Japan tour, he consciously listened to the old version and tried to re-learn, at least, to use the old version as the basis for where he started, and I guess sometimes you forget about good stuff you've already done. So he picked back up on what he'd done originally, but the solo on that one is brilliant, I think, on the live version now.

Paul Cashmere: Can you tell me about "Something". Now, you wrote that about Patti, is that right?

George Harrison: Well no, I didn't. I just wrote it, and then somebody put together a video. And what they did was they went out and got some footage of me and Patti, Paul and Linda, Ringo and Maureen, it was at that time, and John and Yoko and they just made up a little video to go with it. So then, everybody presumed I wrote it about Patti, but actually, when I wrote it, I was thinking of Ray Charles.

Paul Cashmere: He's not as good looking, but well, you know ...

George Harrison: Yeah, but he's a better singer. (Laughs) But that's what I was thinking of. I could hear in my head Ray Charles singing it.

Paul Cashmere: Were you frustrated by the fact that it took just about the entire career of the Beatles before you were granted the "A" side of single, and then the band broke up?

George Harrison: Well, it wasn't so much the "A" side of a single, but it was frustrating at times when we had to wade through millions of "Maxwell's Silver Hammer's" before we could get to one of mine, you know. Because I think now that when you look retrospectively, that there were a couple of my tunes that were good enough ? or better ? than ones that Paul or John had written occasionally. But you know, that's just how it was. It doesn't bother me, really. I was just on hold for a while.

Paul Cashmere: Which of your solo hits do you think would have made great Beatle songs?

George Harrison: This is the funny thing, isn't it? If the Beatles had continued making records, all of the solo stuff that we'd done would have been on Beatle albums. So "Cloud 9" would have been a Beatle record and all that stuff like that. So I don't know. Somebody just asked me about the songs on the "Live in Japan" record, saying did I worry about putting so many Beatle songs on. But so much time has elapsed. I don't even think of them as being Beatle songs so much, you know. When you go back to "I Want To Tell You" and "Taxman," they, to me, were just tunes I wrote, and they were recorded at that period, and it was the Beatles. And "Cloud 9" was a song that I wrote, but I recorded it with those other guys, and it was a solo album. Basically, the thread that binds it all together was that I wrote it, so I don't really see things as Beatles or solo. I just see it as a body of work that I've been involved with one way or another.

Paul Cashmere: What's the story with the Traveling Wilburys?

George Harrison: Well the story at the moment is that we've all been doing our day jobs, and the Wilburys being a kind of hobby has been just put on hold. So Tom Petty had just done an album, and he did a whole bunch of tours at the end of last year and going into this year. Bob Dylan, as you know, is continually on tour. And I did that live album and tour, so I'm not sure when we'll do a new record, because, you know, I'm planning to start planning and writing a new studio album ... although we all got together in New York for Bob Dylan's Madison Square Garden show, which was for 30 years of Bob Dylan kind of celebration. We all went on to do Bob Dylan songs.

Paul Cashmere: Have you heard Guns 'n' Roses "Knocking on Heaven's Door"?

George Harrison: Yeah, didn't even get the chords right, did they?

Paul Cashmere: So I take it you're not a big fan of that one, then?

George Harrison: There's only three chords in it, but they managed to get one of them wrong. (Laughs)

Paul Cashmere: Bob Dylan's been a great friend of yours over the years. Were you in awe of him when you first met him?

George Harrison: You know we'd had our first number one in America when we first met him, and I don't think he'd ever had a number one record. He just had two albums ... the first album didn't do that well and the second album, you know. He was definitely hot at the time. No, we weren't particularly in awe of him, but we really loved his album. We just heard his second album, "Freewheelin'." We'd just spent a month in Paris prior to going to do the Sullivan shows in 1964, February. We'd just spent a month listening to this album of his and it blew us away really. It was just something special about him obviously.

Paul Cashmere: You must have that same effect on new artists now when they meet you.

George Harrison: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Sometimes you do and sometimes you don't. But with Bob, he has proven to be special, you know, the words he wrote, the songs he's done. And I think one of the best things about him is that he's true to today to how he was back in 1963, and not a lot of people still believe in the same stuff they believed in then.

Paul Cashmere: Do you enjoy doing sessions, like when you played on albums by Belinda Carlisle and Jimmy Nail? How do you decide what you will or won't do?

George Harrison: I don't know. I'm not so sure now. The deal is usually I'll play on it if somebody just sends me the tape and they take whatever I do. I don't like having someone saying, "Do this, do that and no, can you make it sound like this?" Basically if they want me, they get what I am. Usually they want slide guitar parts. I don't know. Sometimes it works out good and sometimes I can't work out what to do with it when it's the type of song I normally wouldn't normally play myself.

Paul Cashmere: When your live album came out it ended with a nice touch, "Roll Over Beethoven". That was the "With the Beatles" track, the old Chuck Berry thing. That was the song you actually did the duet with yourself on originally.

George Harrison: Oh yeah. Well that's the kind of tune I would have forgotten totally about, but a friend of mine, who's into rock and roll, said, "You've got to do 'Roll Over Beethoven.'"And as it turned out, we went to do this press conference in Tokyo, and one of the questions, they said, "Mister Hallison, will you be playing Loll Over Beethoven?" (sic). And I said yes, and the whole room stood up and applauded. (Laughs) And I said, "It's a good job. We are doing it." The Japanese are very into "Roll Over Beethoven".

Paul Cashmere: The Apple catalogue, George, is slowly being re-released on CD. Why has that taken so long?

George Harrison: I would imagine because EMI, who have the original deals with the Beatles and Apple Records, you know, they went through years and years of re-negotiation. And it could have had something to do with that, you know, when they finally got it all cleared up, and also because it took a number of years when everybody started re-issuing everything back onto CD.

Paul Cashmere: I hear "Wonderwall Music" (George's first solo album) is coming up soon.

George Harrison: Oh good, because you can't find it on vinyl. If you've got a vinyl copy of that thing, it's really rare.

Paul Cashmere: I might head down the markets with mine if that's the case.

George Harrison: Yeah, you want to put it into one of them Beatle sales.

Paul Cashmere: Who are the bands you're most proud of from the Apple stable?

George Harrison: Anybody who had a hit, probably ... like Badfinger was pretty good. It was a very sad story, though, because the guy, he ended up killing himself. Pete Ham, who was a lovely fellow, he was a good guitar player and a great singer. He wrote ... the most famous tune I would imagine is "Without You", you know, the Harry Nilsson record.

Paul Cashmere: Tell us about Anthology and what's happening at Apple?

George Harrison: There's a lot of activity going on in Apple at the moment. We made this series of films, nine or 10 hours of film, because we've virtually completed 1962 and it's 75 minutes long, and there's also one about the same length for 1963 and then it will go through each year, 1964, '65, and it will go through like that. It will be a bit like "The Civil War," (editor's note: the Ken Burns TV miniseries) you know. Hopefully, a whole box of video cassettes or a TV series. But it's really interesting because of the years that elapsed, everybody's put out Beatle footage or videos. They think they've just about told all the stories, but the real story is the one that only we can tell, from our point of view, and we know all of the little intimate details. So we've been compiling all this footage from our own cameras, and there's just tons and tons of material. It's really exciting. I was very pleased to see it, because it's got all of our influences. It's this finely woven web of intrigue.

Paul Cashmere: How do you feel about "My Sweet Lord" these days. How did the court case surrounding that song effect your songwriting?

George Harrison: It didn't really affect my songwriting. I did record "This Song," which was kind of a comment about the situation. The thing that really disappoints me is when you have a relationship with one person and they turn out to betray you. Because the whole story of "My Sweet Lord" is based upon this fellow, Allan Klein, who managed the Beatles from about 1968 or '69, through until 1973. When they issued a complaint about "My Sweet Lord", he was my business manager. He was the one who put out "My Sweet Lord" and collected 20 percent commission on the record. And he was the one who got the lawyers to defend me, and did an interview in Playboy where he talked about how the song was nothing like the other song. Later, when the judge in court told me to settle with them, because he didn't think I'd consciously stolen their song, they were doing a settlement deal with me when they suddenly stopped the settlement. Some time elapsed, and I found out that this guy Klein had gone around the back door. In the meantime, we'd fired him. He went round the back door and bought the rights to the one song, "He's So Fine," in order to continue a law suit against me. He, on one hand, was defending me, then he switched sides and continued the law suit. And every time the judge said what the result was, he'd appeal. And he kept appealing and appealing until it got to the Supreme Court. I mean this thing went on for 16 years or something ... 18 years. And finally, it's all over with, and the result of it is I own "My Sweet Lord," and I now own "He's So Fine," and Allan Klein owes me like three or four hundred thousand dollars 'cause he took all the money on both songs. It's really a joke. It's a total joke.

Paul Cashmere: There's a movie plot in there somewhere.

George Harrison: There's definitely a book, because, now with any kind of law pertaining to infringement of copyright, they always quote this case. It's become the precedent in all these law students' books.

Paul Cashmere: So we might be seeing George Harrison make a guest appearance on "LA Law."

George Harrison: (Laughs) I doubt it, but we did keep a lot of lawyers employed for years, and we still are in one way or another. There's always some kind of bullshit going on.

Paul Cashmere: You've already documented your own anthology. For the benefit of Aussies, tell us about "When We Was Fab".

George Harrison: Yeah, until I finalized the lyric on it, it was always called "Aussie Fab". That was it's working title. I hadn't figured out what the song was going to say ... what the lyrics would be about, but I knew it was definitely a Fab song. It was based on the Fabs, and as it was done up in Australia there, up in Queensland, then that's what we called it. As we developed the lyrics, it became "When We Was Fab". It's a difficult one to do live because of all the all the little overdubs and all the cellos and the weird noises and the backing voices. Who knows ... maybe next time, we'll attempt it. We'll try it in the rehearsal and see.

Paul Cashmere: What do you think of the Beatle sound alike bands, the bands that have drawn influence, not the copy bands, but bands like Crowded House, for instance?

George Harrison: I don't think I've heard that Crowded House ... is that the latest one? You know, it's good, because there were some really good sounds in the mid-'60's Beatle records. Thats's really why I wanted to do that "Fab" one as well, to recreate some of those sounds.

Paul Cashmere: Were you ever disappointed that the Beatles stopped performing live when they did?

George Harrison: Not really. I was disappointed retrospectively. I was disappointed that we got so famous, because as musicians, we were a really good band in the early days. And the more fame that we got, the more the audience screamed and the more that we did just 20 or 30 minute shows of our latest singles. The musicianship kind of went out the window. And when I hang out with somebody like Eric Clapton, who, on the other hand never stopped touring and never got into that situation, he always just changed bands, he really became so fluent on his instrument. You know, we pigeonholed ourselves by the mania that was going on and the inability to perform for longer periods at a time, because of the way it was.

Paul Cashmere: The works got so intricate. You could never have done "Sgt Pepper" or "Abbey Road" live, could you?

George Harrison: But then again, if we'd have kept touring, we might not have gone into the studio to do those kind of intricate works. But the last tour we did, I remember trying to do "Paperback Writer", which had a kind of double-tracked vocal and all that stuff, and it was a bit embarrassing at the time. I remember, "This isn't making it. This doesn't sound very good." So I don't know, but the Beatle tours were something else. You would have had to have been there to know how ridiculous it was. There was no way we could have continued under those circumstances.

SENT BY G.SARMENTO (MR ENCYCLOPEDIA)

Fracas - o perfume!

2009-06-26T11:09:00.000-07:00

Há perfumes lendários, há perfumistas lendários e há perfumes que se transformam em obsessão. Fracas é as três coisas, um feito bem menos comum do que se imagina.

Extraordinário, o perfume feminino Fracas é construído a partir da tuberosa, uma pequena flor branca (que não tem nada a ver com a rosa, o nome vem do latim e remete ao sistema de raízes da planta, que se assemelham a tubérculos) que exala um forte odor e é notória entre os perfumistas por ser uma matéria-prima muito difícil de ser trabalhada.

E talvez seja por isso que a perfumista de Fracas, Germaine Cellier, conseguiu domá-la.
Nascida em Bordeaux em 1909, Cellier foi pioneira em todos os sentidos: uma profissional em química, uma artista trabalhando no ambiente do olfato, alta, bela, abrasiva (e possivelmente lésbica), brilhante e intelectualmente insaciável, amiga de Cocteau, defensora das matérias-primas sintéticas. Ela foi também a criadora de um estilo impressionante.

"Ela transpôs o fauvismo e o abstracionismo para a perfumaria", escreveu Jeannine Mongin. "Ela criava na dissonância."E as criações se perpetuaram. Durante a Segunda Guerra, o designer Robert Piguet pediu um perfume para Cellier. Ela criou Bandit para ele em 1944. Em 1946, fez o Couer Joie para Nina Ricci, e em 1947 a referência Vent Vert para Balmain. Piguet então lhe pediu mais uma fragrância.É possível que o segredo de Fracas (1948) seja o equilíbrio entre o poder do estilo de Cellier e o poder da tuberosa.

O perfumista Aurelien Guichard é o guardião da fórmula, que ele diz ser "incrivelmente complexa". Devido à proibição do uso de várias matérias-primas por questões toxicológicas, nenhum perfume criado no meio do século passado é legal em sua fórmula original, e Guichard está encarregado de conservar a visão de Cellier enquanto a atualiza, com frequência, com componentes não-alergênicos.

Cellier embrulhou sua fórmula com tuberosa indiana absoluta, que lhe traz muita força e "sillage" (o rastro olfativo que ele deixa). Como todos os bons perfumistas, ela era uma ilusionista.

Para conseguir uma tuberosa ainda mais realista, ainda mais natural (que já carrega o cheiro de axila, carne e deterioração devido a pesadas moléculas chamadas indoles, que também estão presentes no jasmim), ela utilizou uma quantidade ainda maior de flor de laranjeira tunisiana absoluta, além de um pouco dos astronomicamente caros jasmim francês e manteiga de raiz de íris italiana.

Acrescente folha natural de violeta para dar ao cheiro doce e pesado um caráter refrescantemente selvagem e de grama molhada; íris para uma profundidade amadeirada; civeta sintética (o cheiro de um mestre de obras que não tomou banho) para denotar poder; os sintéticos C18 para uma qualidade tropical amanteigada e leitosa e metil-antranilato para a efervescência.

O resultado é uma assinatura, uma fixação na pele e uma intensidade que são, todas, surpreendentes. Mais um grande feito. Fracas

por Chandler Burr, do "The New York Times" *

Tradução: Erika Brandão

veja mais em www.robertpiguetparfums.com

Vestido de casamento

2009-04-26T15:11:00.000-07:00

Tenho três filhas

Todas lindas

Um dia uma delas irá se casar antes das outras

Com quem?

Não sei, nem elas ainda...

Mas o vestido, Oscar de la Renta já fez:

Alcachofras à moda do meu avô

2009-04-25T10:58:00.000-07:00

É a receita mediterrânea (que meu avô dizia ser napolitana).

Na Europa a alcachofra é apreciada mais pura que com outros ingredientes, que acabam mascarando o sabor e os benefícios para a saúde- que são muitos!

Alcachofra à la Nelson Zelante

1 fio de azeite de olivas

1 dente de alho espremido

2 ou 3 alcachofras lavadas e com os cabos cortados bem rente

6 ou mais dentes de alhos finamente fatiados

salsinha (só as folhas inteiras)

um cálice (de licor) de vinagre de uvas boa qualidade

a mesma medida de azeite de olivas (puro ou extra-virgem)

uma colher (de café) de sal marinho

Depois de lavar cada alcachofra, abra com cuidado as pétalas e introduza entre elas folhas de salsinha e fatias de alho (mais ou menos para cada alcachofra uma colher de sopa cheia de salsinha e 3 dentes de alho fatiados) com cuidado para que elas tornem a se fechar.

No fundo da panela de pressão coloque um fio de azeite e o dente de alho espremido em seguida ajeite as alcachofras em pé, na panela e regue cada uma com azeite e vinagre.

Coloque o sal e cubra até a metade com água (evite água de torneira por causa do gosto de cloro).

Leve ao fogo médio a panela tampada e quando começar a pressão conte mais ou menos de 10 a 15 minutos.

Quando abrir a panela espere esfriar apenas alguns minutos e já pode ser degustada manualmente folha a folha.

Use talheres apenas para saborerar o miolo, tomando cuidado com os "espinhos", que devem ser desprezados.

Vinho novo, tipo Beaujolais, e pão italiano são uma pedida para companhar, mas na minha família uma boa cerveja (na qual pode-se molhar o pão italiano) é a tradição.

Enjoy!

Al Kooper - Happy Belated Birthday!!

2009-04-05T05:30:00.000-07:00

Al Kooper comemorou seus bem vividos 65 anos.

Seu "birthday bash" aconteceu em 9 de Fevereiro no B B King's night club na Times Square, em NY

A "lenda" ao vivo e a cores, clicada por minha filha

Sincronicidade, Coincidência ou Premonição?

2009-02-07T08:36:00.000-08:00

When the moon is in the Seventh House

And Jupiter aligns with Mars

Then peace will guide the planets

And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius

The age of Aquarius

Aquarius!

Harmony and understanding

Sympathy and trust abounding

No more falsehoods or derisions

Golden living dreams of visions

Mystic crystal revalation

And the mind's true liberation

Aquarius!

When the moon is in the Seventh House

And Jupiter aligns with Mars

Then peace will guide the planets

And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius

The age of Aquarius

Aquarius!

Alinhamento Aquariano de 14/fev/2009

por Jude Currivan

No alvorecer do dia 14/fevereiro, dia dedicado à São Valentim nos Estados Unidos e Europa (Valentine´s Day, o patrono e Santo do Amor) a lua em Libra entra na sétima casa dos relacionamentos; Jupiter e Marte estarão alinhados no signo de Aquarius na décima segunda casa da transformação espiritual.

Quarenta anos atrás, as palavras intuitivas de uma canção chamada Aquarius, trouxe o alvorecer da Nova Era ao Consciente Coletivo :"When the Moon is in the seventh houseand Jupiter aligns with Mars.Then peace will guide the planetsand love will steer the stars "" Quando a Lua estiver na sétima casae Jupiter se alinhar com Marte,Então a PAZ guiará os planetase o Amor varrerá as estrelas "

No alvorecer do dia 14/fevereiro, o Cosmos realmente vai personificar este perfeito alinhamento que irá apoiar nossa manifestação coletiva de Amor e PAZ, no alvorecer da Era de Aquarius.

O mapa astral do dia 14/fev que revela uma incrível concentração de influências cósmicas combinadas com as energias de Aquarius na décima segunda casa. Júpiter, o planeta da expansão, e Marte, o planeta da energia estarão alinhados com o objetivo mais elevado.

A presença de Quíron, o curador ferido, nos oferece a oportunidade de curar os fatos que nos separaram durante tanto tempo de nós mesmos e do todo.Netuno enfatiza os movimentos humanitários coletivos e a co-criação da justiça social.

A presença do SOL ilumina todo este alinhamento especial.Mercúrio, também na décima segunda casa, porém em Capricórnio, se alinha com Plutão que significa Transformação para se comunicar e ancorar a MUDANÇA através de nossas estruturas globais e instituições.

A Lua em Libra na sétima casa enfatiza o início de relacionamentos harmoniosos.Venus em Áries na primeira casa energiza e dá Poder à co-criatividade e ao dinamismo.

Saturno, o grande mestre do trabalho em oposição à Urano, o desperto inesperado, sugere uma série de confrontações dos velhos paradigmas que não são mais sustentados, entregando-se ao novo paradigma com novas esperanças.

Sua colocação entre Virgem e Peixes traz altruísmo prático e inspiração visionária nesta transição.

Durante os 18 minutos do alinhamento, eu convido você, em seu coração universal, para colocar sua intenção de AMOR e PAZ e juntos CO-CRIARMOS O ALVORECER DA ERA DE AQUARIUS no Cosmos .

Na forma que mais for apropriada para você, energize este momento com suas INTENÇÕES E ORAÇÕES e juntos criaremos uma onda de energia que abraçará a Mãe Terra.

recebido do Titio Ciborg

Terrapin station - lady with a fan

2009-01-07T12:28:00.000-08:00

Let my inspiration flow in token rhyme, suggesting rhythm,

That will not forsake you, till my tale is told and done.

While the firelights aglow, strange shadows from the flames will grow,

Till things weve never seen will seem familiar.

Shadows of a sailor, forming winds both foul and fair all swarm.

Down in carlisle, he loved a lady many years ago.

Here beside him stands a man, a soldier from the looks of him,

Who came through many fights, but lost at love.

While the story teller speaks, a door within the fire creaks;Suddenly flies open, and a girl is standing there.

Eyes alight, with glowing hair, all that fancy paints as fair,She takes her fan and throws it, in the lions den.

Which of you to gain me, tell, will risk uncertain pains of hell?

I will not forgive you if you will not take the chance.

The sailor gave at least a try, the soldier being much too wise,Strategy was his strength, and not disaster.

The sailor, coming out again, the lady fairly leapt at him.

Thats how it stands today. you decide if he was wise.

The story teller makes no choice. soon you will not hear his voice.

His job is to shed light, and not to master.

Since the end is never told, we pay the teller off in gold,In hopes he will return, but he cannot be bought or sold.

Terrapin station

Inspiration, move me brightly.

light the song with sense and color;

Hold away despair, more than this I will not ask.

Faced with mysteries dark and vast, statements just seem vain at last.

Some rise, some fall, some climb, to get to terrapin.

Counting stars by candlelight, all are dim but one is bright;

The spiral light of venus, rising first and shining best,

On, from the northwest corner, of a brand new crescent moon,

While crickets and cicadas sing, a rare and different tune,Terrapin station.

In the shadow of the moon, terrapin station.

And I know well get there soon, terrapin station.

I cant figure out, terrapin, if its the end or beginning, terrapin,

But the trains put its brakes on, terrapin,And the whistle is screaming, terrapin.

Terrapin station - at the siding

While you were gone, these faces filled with darkness.

The obvious was hidden. with nothing to believe in,

Sullen wings of fortune beat like rain.

Youre back in terrapin for good or ill again, for good or ill again.

November 29th 2001

2008-11-29T13:52:00.000-08:00

Blog - aula da Anna Cláudia

2008-10-20T07:19:00.000-07:00

Homework da minha filha-quase-arquiteta :

http://analisesartnouveau.blogspot.com/

Leon Russell, após ataque cardíaco passa bem

2008-09-25T16:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.leonrussellrecords.com/

Na noite de ontem, quarta-feira, o cantor e multi-instrumentista americano Leon Russell sentiu-se mal na viagem que fazia de Nashville, Tenneesse, para South Bend, onde deveria fazer um show no Club Fever.

Leon teve um ataque cardíaco e foi hospitalizado às pressas.

Hoje Leon já está passando bem.

Após ter colocado dois stents em seu coração, o músico, que foi grande colaborador do ex-Beatle George Harrison na organização do primeiro evento beneficente da história da música, o Concert for Bangladesh (em agosto de 1971, no Madison Square Garden, em Nova Iorque), deverá permanecer na UTI ainda por alguns dias.

CLÁSSICOS DO ROCK VI - STEVE WINWOOD

2008-09-04T19:04:00.000-07:00

Steve Winwood nasceu em Birmingham, Inglaterra, em 12 de maio de 1948. Ele foi um garoto-prodígio na música desde cedo. Ainda pequeno tocava piano e, aos 8 anos, já era guitarrista, com seu pai, numa banda chamada The Ron Atkinson Band. Aos 15 acompanhava seu irmão, que era baixista, na banda The Muff Woody Jazz Band, e logo eles entraram para o Spencer Davis Group, onde Steve passou a ser vocalista, guitarrista além de tecladista.

Spencer Davis Group

O hit Gimme some loving é dessa época, mas apesar do grupo ir super bem nas paradas de sucesso, Steve queria mais... e fez mais: formou a banda Traffic, incomparável até hoje por seus traços de blues psicodélicos misturados a um som bastante clean.
Formavam o Traffic os seus amigos Jim Capaldi, Dave Mason e Chris Wood. A banda ficou conhecida por canções como "Feelin' Alright", "Dear Mr. Fantasy" e "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys”. Esta última é até hoje um dos grandes clássicos da banda que durou, nesta primeira vez, dois anos apenas.
Traffic – http://www.stevewinwood.com/

Em seguida Steve juntou-se a Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker e Rick Grech na banda Blind Faith, com quem fica por um ano. Isso foi no ano de 1969, quando eles lançaram o único e incrível álbum da banda.
Blind Faith

De lá, Steve e Grech foram para o Ginger’s Baker Airforce, com quem gravaram dois álbuns em 1970. Os dois acabaram não ficando por muito tempo na nova banda e Steve teve acabou reunindo o Traffic novamente e levando junto o amigo.
Em 1972, Winwood teve um sério problema de saúde que o obrigou a se recolher por um longo período. Ele montou um estúdio em sua casa e passava o tempo experimentando novos sons. Foi nesta época que ele colocou em prática um antigo sonho, de gravar com percussionistas de outras terras, e, em 1973 gravou o álbum Aiye-Keta, com os africanos Abdul Amao e Romi Kabaka.
O Traffic, apesar do sucesso, acabou no ano de 1974, e Steve se desdobrou trabalhando com vários artistas, desde Leon Russell, Alvin Lee, George Harrison, Joe Cocker, até Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, bem como com a namorada doidinha dos Stones, Marianne Faithfull.

Em 1976 ele gravou com o percussionista japonês Stomu Yamashata os sensacionais álbuns GO e GO 2 (Solitude, uma das mais sublimes de todas as suas músicas, é do primeiro álbum).
Ele lançou dois álbuns, Winwood e Winwood & friends, com material inédito do Spencer Davis Group, mas só em 1977 é que ele lançou seu primeiro solo oficial: Steve Winwood, que alcançou o terceiro lugar no Top 30 dos EUA com a música While you see a chance.
No seu próximo álbum, o Arc of a Diver, de 1980, Steve fez juz a sua fama de excêntrico: para fazer o álbum, ele entrou em estúdio, produziu e gravou sozinho, além da voz, cada um dos instrumentos.
Em 1981 ele emplacou de novo nas paradas de sucesso com o hit Valerie, do álbum Talking back to the night, mas uma vez um trabalho feito inteiramente por ele. Em 1986 Steve Winwood lançou Back in the High Life, que lhe deu dois prêmios Grammy no ano seguinte, pelas músicas Back in the High Life Again e Higher Love.

O álbum de 1988, Roll with it também fez o mesmo sucesso na Europa e nos EUA. Este álbum é ótimo, já que Steve incorporou o estilo Rhythm & Blues dos tempos do Spencer Davis Group ao psicodelismo light do Traffic e disso surgiram oito músicas incríveis.
Em 1990 ele lançou Refugees of the Heart, que trazia One and only man, dele e de Jim Capaldi, velho companheiro dos tempos do Traffic. Os dois se juntaram a Rosko Gee em 1994 numa nova temporada do Traffic e lançaram o imperdível Far from Home.
Steve ainda lançou Junction Seven, em 1997 e , em 2003, ao completar 40 anos de estrada, lançou o cd About Time. A capa é estonteante e as músicas são excelentes. Destaque para as músicas Why Can’t We Live Together?, Different Light e Cigano (For the Gypsies}.

Em fevereiro deste ano fez um show memorável ao lado do Still God Eric Clapton, no Madison Square Garden, em New York.

É esperar para ver o que ainda vem por aí deste cara extraordinário.

George Harrison Interview: Crawdaddy Magazine, February 1977

2008-08-22T09:34:00.000-07:00

Jay Spangler, Beatles Ultimate Experience

ABOUT THIS INTERVIEW:While promoting his recently released album entitled '33 1/3', George Harrison gave an especially nostalgic and enlightening interview to Crawdaddy magazine. Topics of discussion include Beatle albums, the Hamburg days, the Ed Sullivan appearance, the Maharishi, Beatle reunion offers, songwriting with Bob Dylan, and even Eric Clapton's involvement with Patti Harrison.

Q: "Were you nervous before the Beatles 1964 debut on the Ed Sullivan Show?"
GEORGE: "The Sullivan Show was funny because I didn't attend the rehearsal. I was sick somehow on the flight over on the first trip to the States. The band did play alot of rehersal for the sound people, they kept going into the control room and checking out the sound. And finally when they got a balance between the instruments and the vocals, they marked on the boards by the control, and then everybody broke for lunch. Then we came back to tape the show and the cleaners had been 'round and polished all the marks off the board. It was sort of a bit tacky in those days with the sound. People would put amplifiers off to the side of the stage so it didn't spoil the shot, you know."

Q: "I just always wondered if you felt the pressure."
GEORGE: "Oh yeah, we did. But we knew we'd had sufficient success in Europe and Britain to have a bit of confidence. And we really needed a helluva lot of confidence for the States because it was such an important place. I mean, nobody'd ever made it, you know, British acts-- apart from the odd singer like Lonnie Donnegan."
"But Ed Sullivan was, you know-- Everybody had told us how he was really big. But again, we were pretty naive to certain things so that helped at the time. I remember them asking us did we know who Walter Cronkite was. And I said, 'I dunno, isn't he somebody on the television?' You know, things like that were good because they all had fun-- the people asking questions and the press-- us being naive and not seeming to care about that sort of thing."

Q: "Was there ever a tendency to still act naive after you wised up?"
GEORGE: "I dunno. But by that time we'd got into that whole sort of routine that we used to have, you know, at press conferences. Alot of it was just nervous energy, just for jokes and stuff which everybody seemed to like. That was one of the big helps for the Beatles at the time-- If anybody dried up in the press conferences there was always somebody else there with a smart answer. There was always a good balance, so nobody could ever really quite nail us."
"The Sullivan show was just the climax to the Beatles' whole America thing. In retrospect it probably wouldn't have mattered what we'd done on the Sullivan show, it was like already established by the previous press that had gone before. But that was a long time ago. We'll get over the question, 'Are the Beatles getting together again?'"

Q: "I won't even ask you."
GEORGE: "...because the answer is just like going back to school again, really. The four of us are so tied up with our own lives, and it's been eight years since we split. And time goes so fast. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility, but we'd have to want to do it for the music's sake first. We wouldn't stick together because somebody had put an ad in the paper putting us on the spot."

Q: "Somebody in New York is saying the Beatles are getting back together to wrestle a Great White Shark in Australia."
GEORGE: "That was the other guy-- He was gonna try and do the Beatles show, and then try and do the other one with somebody fighting a shark. I thought, 'If HE fights the shark, the winner can be the promoter!"

Q: "It seemed that all four of you were locked into something larger than its parts."
GEORGE: "It was. But none of us really thought about leaving until '67 or '68, which was after we stopped touring. I know the first time for me which was the most depressing was during 'The White Album.' It was a problem making a double album because it takes such a long time."

Q: "Why did you make a double?"
GEORGE: "I think it was because there were so many songs, but it was a period that had started a bit negative. It was a bit difficult and we got through it and it was fine. We finally got through the album and everybody was pleased because the track were good. Then I worked on an album with Jackie Lomax on an Apple record and I spent a long time in the States, and I had such a good time working with all these different musicians and different people. Then I hung out at Woodstock for Thanksgiving and, you know, I felt really good at that time. I got back to England for Christmas and then on January 1st we were to start on the thing which turned into 'Let It Be.' And straight away, again, it was just weird vibes. You know, I found I was starting to be able to enjoy being a musician, but the moment I got back with the Beatles it was just too difficult. There were just too many limitations based upon our being together for so long. Everybody was sort of pigeon-holed. It was frustrating."
"The problem was that John and Paul had written songs for so long it was difficult-- First of all because they had such alot of tunes and they automatically thought that theirs should be priority. So for me, I'd always have to wait through ten of their songs before they'd even listen to one of mine. That was why 'All Things Must Pass' had so many songs, because it was like I'd been constipated. I had a little encouragement from time to time, but it was very little. It was like they were doing me a favor. I didn't have much confidence in writing songs because of that. Because they never said, 'Yeah that's a good song.' When we got into things like "While My Guitar Gently Weeps,' we recorded it one night and there was such a lack of enthusiasm. So I went home really disappointed because I knew the song was good."
"The next day I brought Eric Clapton with me. He was really nervous. I was saying, 'Just come and play on the session, then I can sing and play acoustic guitar.' Because what happened when Eric was there on that day, and later on when Billy Preston... I pulled in Billy Preston on Let It Be... it helped, because the others would have to control themselves a bit more. John and Paul mainly because they had to, you know, act more handsomely. Eric was nervous saying, 'No, what will they say?' And I was saying, 'Fuck 'em, that's my song.' You know, he was the first non-Beatle person who'd ever played on anything."

Q: "It must have been terrifying..."
GEORGE: "And it was a good date. Paul would always help along when you'd done his ten songs-- then when he got 'round to doing one of my songs, he would help. It was silly. It was very selfish, actually. Sometimes Paul would make us do these really fruity songs. I mean, my god, 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' was so fruity. After a while we did a good job on it, but when Paul got an idea or an arrangement in his head... But Paul's really writing for a 14-year-old audience now anyhow. I missed his last tour, unfortunately."

Q: "'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' was such a personal song, I'd always wondered why Eric was there."
GEORGE: "Well, I'd been through this sitar thing. I'd played sitar for three years. And I'd just listened to classical Indian music and practiced sitar-- except for when we played dates, studio dates-- and then I'd get the guitar out and just play, you know, learn a part for the record. But I'd really lost alot of interest in the guitar. I remember I came from California and I shot this piece of film for the film on Ravi Shankar's life called 'Raga' and I was carrying a sitar. And we stopped in New York and checked in a hotel, and Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton were both at the same hotel. And that was the last time I really played the sitar like that. We used to hang out such alot at that period, and Eric gave me a fantastic Les Paul guitar, which is the one he plays on that date. So it worked out well. I liked the idea of other musicians contributing."
"I helped Eric write 'Badge' you know. Each of them had to come up with a song for that 'Goodbye Cream' album and Eric didn't have his written. We were working across from each other and I was writing the lyrics down and we came to the middle part so I wrote 'Bridge.' Eric read it upside dwn and cracked up laughing-- 'What's BADGE?' he said. After that Ringo walked in drunk and gave us that line about the swans living in the park."

Q: "I always thought your contributions guided the band's direction. Beatles '65-- the country influence. Or the Indian influence."
GEORGE: "Well, Ringo as well, you know. We all gave as much as we could. The thing was, Paul and John wrote all the songs in the beginning. And they did write great songs, which made it more difficult to break in or get some action on the songwriting thing. But you know, we all did contribute such alot to the Beatles. There was a period of time when people thought, 'Ringo doesn't play the drums.' I don't know what they thought of me, but they tended to think it was John and Paul for a period of time."
"I helped out such alot in all the arrangements. There were alot of tracks though where I played bass. Paul played lead guitar on 'Taxman,' and he played guitar-- a good part-- on 'Drive My Car."

Q: "You played bass?"
GEORGE: "No, I didn't play-- We laid the track because what Paul would do, if he's written a song, he'd learn all the parts for Paul and then come in the studio and say, 'Do this.' He'd never give you the opportunity to come out with something. But on 'Drive My Car' I just played the line, which is really like a lick off 'Respect,' you know, the Otis Redding version-- and I played that line on guitar and Paul laid that with me on bass. We laid the track down like that. We played the lead part later on top of it. There were alot of things... like on a couple of dates Paul wasn't on it at all, or John wasn't on it at all, or I wasn't on it at all. Probably only about five tunes altogether where one of us might not have been on."

Q: "Which of the Beatles albums do you still listen to?"
GEORGE: "I liked when we got into 'Rubber Soul,' 'Revolver.' Each album had something good about it and progressed. There were albums which weren't any good as far as I was concerned, like 'Yellow Submarine.'"
"We put all the songs together into an album form-- I'm talking about English albums now, because in the states we found later that for every two albums we had, they (Capitol) would make three... because we put fourteen tracks on an album, and we'd also have singles that weren't included on albums in those days. They'd put the singles on, take off a bunch of tracks, change all the running order, and then they'd make new packages like 'Yesterday And Today,' just awful packages."

Q: "That entire era was so productive. Did it seem that way to you?"
GEORGE: "Yeah, it was good, it was enjoyable. We'd get into doing harmonies and this and that. Beacause in the early days we were only working on four-track tapes. So what we'd do would be work out most of the basic track on one track, get all the balance and everything set, all the instruments,. Then we'd do all the vocals, or overdub. If there was guitar, lines would come in on the second verse and piano in the middle eight with shakers and tambourines. We'd line up and get all the sounds right and do it in a take, and then do all the vocal harmonies over."
"Those old records weren't really stereo. They were mono records and they were rechanneled. Some of the stereo is terrible because you've got backing on one side. In fact, when we did the first two albums-- at least the first album which was 'Please Please Me,' we did it straight onto a two-track machine. So there wasn't any stereo as such, it was just the voices on one track and the backing on the other. Sgt Pepper was only a four-track."

Q: "It's hard to believe."
GEORGE: "Yup. Well, we had an orchestra on a separate four-track machine in 'Day In The Life.' We tried to sync them up. I remember-- they kept going out of sync in playback, so we had to remix it."

Q: "Was the rest of the band difficult when you started getting into Indian music?"
GEORGE: "Not really. They weren't really as interested. When I'd first met Ravi (Shankar) he played a private concert just at my house, and he came with Alla Rakha, and John and Ringo came to that. I know Ringo didn't want to know about tabla because it just seemed so far our to him."

Q: "He couldn't relate to it?"
GEORGE: "Well, he could relate to it as a percussion instrument, as drums. But how Rakha actually played it, he couldn't figure that out at all. But they liked it. They knew there was something great about it. But they weren't into it as I was. Then they all went to India and had those experiences in India, too... which, for anybody who goes to India, I think straight away you can relate much more to Indian music because it makes so much more sense having been there."

Q: "Was it intimidating to start out at age 17 or 18, and be younger than the others?"
GEORGE: "No. There are around nine months between me and Paul... Nine months between Paul and John. In the early days when I was still at school, I was really small. I sort of grew in height when we were away in Hamburg. A few years before that we did a few parties at night-- just silly things-- John, Paul, and I. And there were a couple of other people who kept coming and going. John was in school, the College of Art, which was adjoining our school. Paul and I would sneak out of our school and go into his place, which was a bit more free, you know. Ours was still in school uniforms, and we could smoke in his place and do all that. I think he did feel a bit embarrassed about that because I was so tiny. I only looked about ten years old."
"But in Hamburg, we were living right in the middle of St Paulie, which is right in the middle of the Reeperbahn district in Hamburg. All the club owners were like gangsters, and all the waiters had tear-gas guns, truncheons, knuckle-dusters. They were a heavy crew. Everybody around that district were homosexuals, pimps, hookers. You know, being in the middle of that when I was 17. (laughs) It was good fun. But when we moved into our second club we were becoming so popular with the crowd of regulars that we never got in any problems with all these gangster sort of people. They never tried to beat us up because they knew the Beatles. And you know, they'd say 'Pedels' (pronounced, Peedles), that's German for prick."

Q: The whole image of the Beatles got cleaned up and smoothed over, which is always attributed to Brian Epstein."
GEORGE: "In the Hamburg days we had to play so long and really rock it up and leap about and foam at the mouth and do whatever. We missed the whole period in England-- Cliff Richards and the Shadows became the big thing. They all had matching ties and handkerchiefs and gray suits, but we were still doing Gene Vincent, Bo Didley, you know, Ray Charles things. So when we got back to England that was the big thing. They didn't know us in Liverpool, and there was a big gig at the townhall or something, at a dance. There was an advertisement in the newspaper saying, 'Direct from Hamburg,' and so many people really dug the band, and they were coming up to us and saying, 'Oh, you speak good English!'"
"But a year or so after that, When Brian Epstein came on the scene, he said, 'You should smarten up because nobody wants to know you,' --TV producers or record producers or whatever. We just looked too scruffy. In Germany they had alot of leather stuff, like black leather trousers and jackets and boots."

Q: "Do you miss that Hamburg in your music?"
GEORGE: "I just had a good time just playing, you know. That's what I miss. Even when we sold records and started doing alot of tours, it was a bit of a drag because we'd go on the road and we'd play the same tunes to different people, and then we'd drop a few and add the new ones all the time. It got stale. I felt stale, you know, because you play the same riffs... da-da-ding-ding-dow, you know. 'Twist And Shout' and things. By the time you came off the road, touring the world, I'd just want to not particularly..."

Q: "...look at an instrument?"
GEORGE: "Yeah... for a while. And so we did get very stale, and that's a period when-- I was saying about after being into the sitar-- I got really friendly with Eric, and all the kids were playing guitars. I'd felt as though I'd missed so many years out."

Q: "You mean like Hendrix and Cream, and that whole era?"
GEORGE: "Yeah, and all the young kids coming up were all playing so good, and I hadn't been involved with it for so long, both being in the Beatles just playing the same old tunes, and playing Indian music. So I felt a long way behind. That was one reason why I had all the instruments. I suddenly realized, 'I don't like these guitars,' and Eric gave me this Les Paul which really got me back into it because it sounded so funky. That was one of the reasons I started playing slide, you know, because I felt so far behind in playing hot licks. With slide I didn't have any instruction, I just got one and started playing."

Q: "Do you feel self-conscious about your guitar playing?"
GEORGE: "I just had to force myself back. Alot of it was just confidence."

Q: "John said the best Beatle music happened before the group ever cut a record."
GEORGE: "Mmm, well yes. I think some of the best stuff we did was when we stopped touring and spent alot of time in the studio. You know, we lived in a studio, really. Alot of things which were innovations as far as recording went-- I think THAT was some of the best music. But as far as playing live, I agree with what John says about the old days. We were really rocking. We had fun, you know. We really had fun."

Q: "Since you've gone solo, your signiture musically is different from that now. Like when you did 'Wah-Wah.'"
GEORGE: "That was the song, when I left from the 'Let It Be' movie, there's a scene where Paul and I are having an argument, and we're trying to cover it up. Then the next scene I'm not there and Yoko's just screaming, doing her screeching number. Well, that's where I'd left, and I went home to write 'Wah-Wah.' It had given me a wah-wah, like I had such a headache with that whole argument. It was such a headache."

Q: "When did you meet Eric for the first time?"
GEORGE: "We were in the Hammersmith Odeon, and the Yardbirds were sort of supporting a group on the bill, and I just met him then, but really didn't get to know him. I met him again when the (Lovin) Spoonful were at the Marquee, and John and I went down and were just sort of hanging about backstage with them. We were going down to their hotel... I can remember just seeing Eric, 'I know him. I'm sure I know this guy, and he seems like, you know really lonely.' I remember we went out and got in a car and went off to Sebastian's Hotel and I remembered thinking, 'We should've invited that guy 'cuz I'm sure we know him from somewhere and he just seemed, like, lonely."
"And then a couple of years, maybe a year or so later, The Bee Gees, the Cream, were all involved with Brian Epstein originally, so I started meeing Eric and hanging out with him then at Brian Epstein's house. We sort of went out quite a bit with Brian for dinner and stuff, and then the whole Cream thing started happening. Through that period he played 'Guitar Gently Weeps,' and after that he just escaped out of London because some cop was after him. And he bought a house just a bit further out in the country from where I was, and we used to hang out."
"'Savoy Truffle' on The White Album was written for Eric. He's got this real sweet tooth and he'd just had his mouth worked on. His dentist said he was through with candy. So as a tribute I wrote, 'You'll have to have them all pulled out after the Savoy Truffle.' The truffle was some kind of sweet, just like all the rest-- cream tangerine, ginger sling-- just candy, to tease Eric."

Q: "I remember him saying he was dedicating 'Layla' to some mystery woman. Did you know what was happening?"
GEORGE: "Well yeah, sort of. The thing is, with Eric over the years, and you know we (George and Patti Harrison) both loved Eric. Still do. And there were a few funny things. I pulled his chick once. That's happened, and now you'd think he was trying to get his own back on me. (laughs) But much later, when all that thing was going on, when I split from Patti, you know... Patti and he got together after we'd really split. And actually we'd been splitting up for years. That was the funny thing, you know. I thought that was the best thing to do, for us to split, and we should've just done it much sooner. But I didn't have any problem about it-- Eric had the problem. Everytime I'd go and see him, and stuff, he'd be really hung up about it, and I was saying, 'Fuck it, man. Don't be apologizing,' and he didn't believe me. I was saying, 'I don't care.'"

Q: "You said 'All Things Must Pass' was like as explosion for you."
GEORGE: "Yeah. I had alot from during the Beatles time and I was writing all the time, and I wrote a few while making the album as well."

Q: "Which was your favorite? 'My Sweet Lord?'"
GEORGE: "No, not particularly. I liked different songs for different reasons. I liked the first song that was on the album, 'I'd Have You Anytime,' and particularly the recording of it, because Derek and the Dominoes played on most of the tracks and it was a really nice experience making that album-- because I was really a bit paranoid, musically. Having this whole thing with the Beatles had left me really paranoid. I remember having those people in the studio and thinking, 'God, these songs are so fruity! I can't think of which song to do.' Slowly I realized, 'We can do this one,' and I'd play it to them and they'd say, 'Wow, yeah! Great song!' And I'd say, 'Really? Do you really like it?' I realized that it was okay... that they were sick of playing all that other stuff. It's great to have a tune, and I liked that song, 'I'd Have You Anytime' because of Bob Dylan."
"I was with Bob and he'd gone through his broken neck period and was being very quiet, and he didn't have much confidence anyhow-- that's the feeling I got with him in Woodsock. He hardly said a word for a couple of days. Anyway, we finally got te guitars out and it loosened things up a bit. It was really a nice time with all his kids around, and we were just playing. It was near Thanksgiving. He sang me that song and he was, like, very nervous and shy and he said, 'What do you think about this song?' And I'd felt very strongly about Bob when I'd been in India years before-- the only record I took with me along with all my Indian records was 'Blonde On Blonde.' I felt somehow very close to him or something, you know, because he was so great, so heavy and so observant about everything. And yet, to find him later very nervous and with no confidence. But the thing that he said on 'Blonde On Blonde' about what price you have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice-- 'Oh mama, can this really be the end.' So I was thinking, 'There is a way out of it all, really, in the end.'"
"He sang for me, 'Love is all you need/ Makes the world go 'round/ Love and only love can't be denied/ No matter what you think about it/ You're not going to be able to live without it/ Take a tip from one who's tried.' And I thought, Isn't it great, because I know people are going to think, 'Shit, what's Dylan doing?' But as far as I was concerned, it was great for him to realize his own peace, and it meant something. You know, he'd always been so hard.. and I thought, 'Alot of people are not going to like this,' but I think it's fantastic because Bob has obviously had the experience. I was saying to him, You write incredible lyrics,' and he was saying, 'How do you write those tunes?' So I was just showing him chords like crazy. Chords, because he tended just to play alot of basic chords and move a capo up and down. And I was saying, 'Come on, write me some words,' and he was scribbling words down. And it just killed me because he'd been doing all these sensational lyrics. And he wrote, 'All I have is yours/ All you see is mine/ And I'm glad to hold you in my arms/ I'd have you anytime.' The idea of Dylan writing something, like, so very simple."

Q: "Did you get any feedback from John or Ringo or anybody, saying Congratulations?"
GEORGE: "I remember John was really negative at the time, but I was away and he came 'round to my house, and there was a friend of mine living there who was a friend of John's. He saw the album cover and said, 'He must be fucking bad, putting three records out. And look at the picture on the front, he looks like an asthmatic Leon Russell,' There was alot of negativity going down. You know... Ringo played on almost the whole album. I don't care about that. Fuck it-- we've been through the thing. I felt that whatever happened, whether it was a flop or a success, I was gonna go on my own just to have a bit of peace of mind."

Q: "So you weren't apprehensive about how it would go over?"
GEORGE: "No. Not at all. I felt it was good music, whether people bought it or not. I was concerned that the musicians who played on it were concerned. It was good."

Q: "By the time it was finished, you were confident it was good?"
GEORGE: "Even before I started I knew I was gonna make a good album because I had so many songs and I had so much energy. For me to do my own album after all that-- it was joyous. Dream of dreams."

Q: "Let's move ahead. On the new album I've never been able to figure out whether you're talking about Krishna or a woman."
GEORGE: "That's good-- I like that. I think individual love is just a little of universal love. The ultimate love, the universal love or love of God, is a basic goal. Each one of us must manifest our individual love, manfest the divinity which is in us. All individual love between one person loving another, or loving this that or the other, is all small parts or small examples of that one universal love. It's all God, I mean if you can handle the word 'God.'"
"Ultimately the love can become so big that we can love the whole of creation instead of 'I love this but I don't like that.' Singing to the Lord or an individual is, in way, the same. I've done that consciously in some songs."
"I've had alot of interest in different ways and one of the things I never liked was the whole bit in the late '60s when everybody started getting into it. One thing I really disliked was this, 'My guru's better than your guru.' It's like little kids on the street-- 'My dad's bigger than your dad.' The point is that there is only one God, he's got millions of names, but there's only, but there's only one God. All Maharishi ever gave me was good advice and he gave me the technique of meditation which is really wonderful."

Q: "They say he was a..."
GEORGE: "Well you know, John went through a negative thing moreso than I did with the Maharishi. I can see now much clearer what happened, and there was still just alot of ignorance that went down. Maharishi was fantastic and I admire him, like Prabhupada, for being able in spite of all the ridicule to just keep going. And there's more people now-- especially in the United States-- who are all doing it. And in the '60s they were laughing at us saying it was stupid. All of these people have influenced me and I've tried to the best out of all of them without getting spitiual indegestion."

Q: "What about your albums like, 'Living In The Material World,' the whole concept of maya. It's so ironic that you got caught up in it."
GEORGE: "Oh yeah. I'm living in it. But people interpret it to mean money, cars, that sort of thing-- although those are part of the material world. The material world is like the physical world, as opposed to the spiritual. For me, living in the material world just meant being in this physical body with all the things that go along with it."

Q: "The litigation involved in the Concert For Bangladesh, didn't that depress you?"
GEORGE: "Yeah, that is sure enough to make you go crazy and commit suicide. The whole thing of being Beatles-- it was very heavy on us four. It was like some people wrote saying, 'Well, the problem with the Beatles is that when we were all growing up they were just tooling 'round the world in limosines.' Actually it was the reverse. We were forced to grow up much faster. And what they call growing up was actually being stuck in a rut while we were transcending layer upon layer. So the heaviness of just the things we've been through, we either use it or rise above it or it pulls you down. For me, it's like it makes me have to call upon the inner me for the strength in order to rise above it, because that part is the maya. Whereas, if you just cop out, it doesn't do anybody any good."
"Is it a prioity to go 'round the world being a rock & roll star? That's what I'm saying. There's no time to lose, really, and there's gonna have to be a point where I've got to drag myself away and try and fulfill whatever I can."
"There are alot of people in the business that I love, friends, you know, who are really great but who don't have any desire for knowledge or realization. It's good to boogie once and a while, but when you boogie all your life away it's just a waste of life and of what we've been given. I can get high like the rest of them, but it's actually low. The more dope you take, the lower you get, really. Having done that, I can say that from experience. Whatever it is-- you just need more, and the more you take the worse you get."
"I used to have an experience when I was a kid, which used to frighten me. I realized (years later) in meditation that I had the same experience... I'd feel really tiny, and at the same time I'd feel I was a whole thing as well. It was feeling like two different things at the same time. And this little thing with this feeling would vibrate right through me... and it would start getting bigger and bigger and faster and faster until it was going so far and getting so fast that it was mind-boggling, and I'd come out of it really scared."
"I used to get that experience alot when we were doing 'Abbey Road' recording. I'd go into this big empty studio and get into a soundbox inside of it and do my meditation inside of there, and I had a couple of indications of that same experience, which I realized was what I had when I was a kid."

Source: Transcribed by the Beatles Ultimate Experience website from original magazine issue

SENT BY G.SARMENTO (MR ENCYCLOPEDIA)

CONCERT FOR BANGLADESH / 37 YEARS AGO - THE SONG

2008-08-01T19:36:00.000-07:00

BANGLADESH

George Harrison

My friend came to me,

with sadness in his eyes

He told me that he wanted help

Before his country dies

Although I couldnt feel the pain,

I knew I had to try

Now Im asking all of you

To help us save some lives

Bangla desh, bangla desh

Where so many people are dying fast

And it sure looks like a mess

Ive never seen such distress

Now wont you lend your hand and understand

Relieve the people of bangla desh

Bangla desh, bangla desh

Such a great disaster

- I dont understand

But it sure looks like a mess

Ive never known such distress

Now please dont turn away,

I want to hear you say

Relieve the people of bangla desh

Relieve bangla deshBangla desh, bangla desh

Now it may seem so far from where we all are

Its something we cant neglect

Its something

I cant neglect

Now wont you give some bread to get the starving fed

Weve got to relieve bangla desh

Relieve the people of bangla desh

Weve got to relieve bangla desh

Relieve the people of bangla desh

CONCERT FOR BANGLADESH / 37 YEARS AGO

2008-08-01T15:39:00.000-07:00

LEON RUSSELL MASTER OF SPACE AND TIME

A PERFECT VISION OF THE CONCERT

CLASSIC ROCK MUSIC

Concert for Bangladesh, Rock, Country, Gospel, and the roots of most music that is recorded today.

Musical Director for Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen Tour in the 1970's.

Founder of Shelter Records, also Paradise records.

Russell, who has worked in every genre of music for almost six decades, is one of the most prolific studio musicians, songwriters and record producers in the world.

Along with a fruitful solo career, he has collaborated with Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Ike and Tina Turner, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, the Byrds, Wayne Newton, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Phil Spector, Eric Clapton, Frank Sinatra,Willie Nelson, George Harrison, Marvin Gaye, and so many more artists that it is very hard to find one artist today, who's music hasn't been influenced in some way by the Master of Space and Time.

Wah Wah

The GRAMMY Museum® :: Exhibits :: George Harrison: Living in the Material World

Trailer do Documentário LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD - GEORGE HARRISON

Concert for George - o livro

Flower by Kenzo, by Chandler Blurr

Eau de Shalimar by Chandler Blurr

Cleudemar Alves Fernandes / Analista do Discurso

Análise do Discurso: reflexões introdutórias.

Missing my ex-students

Amor verdadeiro

True Love

Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood - Presence of the Lord

When will I see you again?

Pra se ouvir na praça do Edifício

STOMU YAMASITA『GO...LIVE FROM PARIS』「Solitude～Nature」.wmv

Likes & Dislikes

A magia da luz! Happy Holidays by Tiffany & Co. Holiday 2010

Jeff Beck - People get ready

Jeff Beck - People get ready

Procol Harum - Conquistador

Lullismo fashion

Grateful Dead - Touch of Grey - Happy Birthday Brent!!

Winwood e Clapton em Londres / Maio 2011

Eric Clapton e Steve Winwood anunciaram hoje em Londres que farão dois shows no London's Royal Albert Hall. Os shows serão nos dias 26 e27 de Maio de 2011. A partir das 9 da manhã de hoje (GMT), os ingressos já começaram a ser vendidos.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeqMGFJftrs

CLAPTON PLUS

Bob Dylan e Rolling Stones

Bob Dylan: é dele a "Maior Música de Todos os Tempos"

RICK WAKEMAN-Journey Pt2 TheVideoMusicTribute RELOADED

"Roses" Elton John Leon Russell Bernie Taupin Union I Should Have Sent R...

Petição de título póstumo para George Harrison

Petição para título póstumo para

George Harrison

Dead flowers (Rolling Stones Cover) THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

Stones’ Management Cagey About Keef's Autobiography | undercover.com.au, Music, News, Entertainment

Maior que Beatles? Só o Queen

Ron Wood Down His Last $60 million | undercover.com.au, Music, News, Entertainment

Black out - FIM DO MISTÉRIO DO APAGÃO

CINEMAUÊ - O CINEMA EDUCA? EDUCA!!!

Capas de álbuns ingleses em selos postais

Ravi Shankar recebe prêmio George Harrison de ajuda humanitária

Versão inédita de faixa do Nirvana está na rede/Premiere: An Unreleased Live Nirvana Song From the Bleach Reissue

Leilão de réplica de Mini Cooper de George Harrison decepciona.

Too much information sucks!

John Lennon, por Ray Connolly

Mick Taylor falido (sic)

The Beatles Rock Game

Menino ou Menina??? La Bundchen barrigudinha!

Ainda Charlie Watts - tá virando novela...

COMUNICADO OFICIAL - CHARLIE WATTS FICA!!!

Charlie Watts abandonou os Rolling Stones?

Perfumes - 3

A crítica da crítica

Perfumes - 2

Perfumes - 1

PART ONE: GEORGE AT THE BOBFEST

PART TWO:GEORGE AT THE BOBFEST

40 Anos de Joe Cocker - De Woodstock ao Hamilton Place!

The Undercover Interview / George Harrison 1943-2001

Fracas - o perfume!

Vestido de casamento

Alcachofras à moda do meu avô

Al Kooper - Happy Belated Birthday!!

Sincronicidade, Coincidência ou Premonição?

Terrapin station - lady with a fan

November 29th 2001

Blog - aula da Anna Cláudia

Leon Russell, após ataque cardíaco passa bem

CLÁSSICOS DO ROCK VI - STEVE WINWOOD

George Harrison Interview: Crawdaddy Magazine, February 1977

CONCERT FOR BANGLADESH / 37 YEARS AGO - THE SONG

CONCERT FOR BANGLADESH / 37 YEARS AGO

Eric Clapton e Steve Winwood anunciaram hoje em Londres que farão dois shows no London's Royal Albert Hall. Os shows serão nos dias 26 e27 de Maio de 2011. A partir das 9 da manhã de hoje (GMT), os ingressos já começaram a ser vendidos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeqMGFJftrs