Miles Davis’ Chili Recipe Revealed

in Food & Drink, Music | August 23rd, 2014

Image by Tom Palum­bo, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

No one cooked on the trum­pet like Miles Davis. And, as it turns out, he was also quite good in the kitchen (see? I spared you a pun). Tired of going out to restau­rants, the food­ie Davis decid­ed to learn to make his favorite dish­es. “I taught myself how to cook by read­ing books and prac­tic­ing, just like you do on an instru­ment,” he wrote in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “I could cook most of the French dishes—because I real­ly liked French cooking—and all the black Amer­i­can dish­es.”

Davis, writes the Chica­go Sun-Times, “knew how to sim­mer with soul […] He made chili, Ital­ian veal chops and he fried fish in a secret bat­ter.” Davis’ cook­book has dis­ap­peared, and he’s appar­ent­ly tak­en his recipe secrets to the grave with him. All but one—his favorite, “a chili dish,” he writes, “I called Miles’s South Side Chica­go Chili Mack. I served it with spaghet­ti, grat­ed cheese, and oys­ter crack­ers.”

While Davis didn’t exact­ly spell out the ingre­di­ents or instruc­tions for his beloved chili in his mem­oir, his first wife Frances, whom Davis trust­ed implic­it­ly with the chili mak­ing, sub­mit­ted the fol­low­ing to Best Life mag­a­zine in 2007. While you’re prep­ping, I rec­om­mend you put on 1956’s Cookin’ With the Miles Davis Quin­tet.

Miles’s South Side Chica­go Chili Mack (Serves 6)

1/4 lb. suet (beef fat)
1 large onion
1 lb. ground beef
1/2 lb. ground veal
1/2 lb. ground pork
salt and pep­per
2 tsp. gar­lic pow­der
1 tsp. chili pow­der
1 tsp. cumin seed
2 cans kid­ney beans, drained
1 can beef con­som­mé
1 drop red wine vine­gar
3 lb. spaghet­ti
parme­san cheese
oys­ter crack­ers
Heineken beer

1. Melt suet in large heavy pot until liq­uid fat is about an inch high. Remove sol­id pieces of suet from pot and dis­card.
2. In same pot, sauté onion.
3. Com­bine meats in bowl; sea­son with salt, pep­per, gar­lic pow­der, chili pow­der, and cumin.
4. In anoth­er bowl, sea­son kid­ney beans with salt and pep­per.
5. Add meat to onions; sauté until brown.
6. Add kid­ney beans, con­som­mé, and vine­gar; sim­mer for about an hour, stir­ring occa­sion­al­ly.
7. Add more sea­son­ings to taste, if desired.
8. Cook spaghet­ti accord­ing to pack­age direc­tions, and then divide among six plates.
9. Spoon meat mix­ture over each plate of spaghet­ti.
10. Top with Parme­san and serve oys­ter crack­ers on the side.
11. Open a Heineken.

Men­tal Floss, who bring us the above, also cites anoth­er recipe Davis learned from his father, quot­ed by John Szwed in So What: The Life of Miles Davis. This one comes with no instruc­tions, so “like a jazz musi­cian, you’ll have impro­vise.”

bacon grease
3 large cloves of gar­lic
1 green, 1 red pep­per
2 pounds ground lean chuck
2 tea­spoons cumin
1/2 jar of mus­tard
1/2 shot glass of vine­gar
2 tea­spoons of chili pow­der
dash­es of salt and pep­per
pin­to or kid­ney beans
1 can of toma­toes
1 can of beef broth

serve over lin­guine

Dig it, man.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac­a­roni and Cheese

1967 Cook­book Fea­tures Recipes by the Rolling Stones, Simon & Gar­funkel, Bar­bra Streisand & More

Ernest Hemingway’s Sum­mer Camp­ing Recipes

Alice B. Tok­las Reads Her Famous Recipe for Hashish Fudge (1963)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Did Joe Strummer, Frontman of The Clash, Run the Paris and London Marathons?

in Music, Sports | August 21st, 2014

As a kid who wore Doc Mar­tins to high school gym class and refused par­tic­i­pa­tion on prin­ci­ple, it was my firm belief that “sports aren’t punk.” But had I known then what I know now about the ath­let­ic prowess of one of my heroes, Joe Strum­mer, I might have been a lit­tle more moti­vat­ed to try and com­pete with the great man’s abil­i­ty. A cham­pi­on run­ner dur­ing his lone­ly years at board­ing school, Strum­mer nev­er lost the runner’s bug, sup­pos­ed­ly fin­ish­ing two marathons, and pos­si­bly a third, while with The Clash. Let’s begin with that “pos­si­bly,” shall we? First, watch the clip above from the doc­u­men­tary Joe Strum­mer: The Future is Unwrit­ten.

For con­text, know that before the release of 1982’s Com­bat Rock, the band’s man­ag­er Bernie Rhodes sug­gest­ed that Strum­mer dis­ap­pear to Austin for a while to stir up some con­tro­ver­sy and increase tick­et sales. Strum­mer instead went to Paris with­out telling anyone—turning a hoax A.W.O.L. sto­ry into a real one. He tells it above, casu­al­ly toss­ing out, “and I ran the Paris Marathon, too,” a bury­ing of the lede Grantland’s Michael Bertin com­pares to Buzz Aldrin men­tion­ing his moon­walk between a bass fish­ing sto­ry and his wife’s casse­role. Peo­ple train for months, years, for marathons; Strum­mer, it seems strolled onto the course with his girl­friend of the time, Gaby Salter, and “allegedly”—alleges this Wikipedia entry—fin­ished in an aston­ish­ing 3 hours, 20 min­utes. Lat­er, asked by a reporter to describe his reg­i­men before the race, he said, “Drink 10 pints of beer the night before the race. Ya got that? And don’t run a sin­gle step at least four weeks before the race.”

StrummerParisMarathon

Every­thing about this sto­ry seems sus­pect, includ­ing the fact that in the sup­posed pho­to­graph of Strum­mer and Salter post-race (above)—both in run­ning gear but look­ing as fresh as if they’d just strolled out of the hotel patis­serie—nei­ther one wears a bib num­ber … “some­thing,” Bertin points out, “that a race par­tic­i­pant should have.” What’s more, Strum­mer was “capa­ble of rewrit­ing his­to­ry to make him­self look bet­ter,” which may explain his cagey reluc­tance to elab­o­rate. Bertin offers many more rea­sons to think the sto­ry a fab­ri­ca­tion, yet there is at least one high­ly cred­i­ble fact to sup­port it: The Lon­don Marathon, which Strum­mer most decid­ed­ly did run (see him below, race bib and all), fin­ish­ing with a most respectable time of 4:13 with­out any pri­or train­ing at all. Chris Salewicz’s Redemp­tion Song: The Bal­lad of Joe Strum­mer quotes Gaby Salter say­ing “He hadn’t trained. He just bought some shorts and said, ‘Let’s run a marathon.’” Salter petered out halfway through. Lat­er in the book, Antony Genn, Strummer’s col­lab­o­ra­tor in the Mescaleros, recounts the hard-drink­ing Strum­mer say­ing of his marathon expe­ri­ence, “I didn’t fuckin’ train. Not once. Just turned up and did it.’”

StrummerLondonMarathon

While this seems patent­ly impos­si­ble, per­haps it’s true after all that the front­man of the The Clash, who weath­ered the rise and fall of punk bet­ter than any of his con­tem­po­raries, had such nat­ur­al phys­i­cal endurance he could casu­al­ly toss off a marathon in-between drunks and packs of smokes. Real run­ners will sure­ly scoff, but if Joe Strum­mer ever did train, no one ever saw him do it. If he were alive now, he’d be 62 years old and prob­a­bly still mak­ing records and knock­ing ’em back. Maybe he’d even breeze through the New York Marathon on his way to the stu­dio. And if we asked him for his secret, he’d prob­a­bly tell us some­thing like he told that reporter who asked about Paris: “’Do not try this at home.’ I mean, it works for me and Hunter Thomp­son, but it might not work for oth­ers.” Yeah, ya think?

via Dan­ger­ous­Minds and Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Joe Strummer’s Lon­don Call­ing”: All 8 Episodes of Strummer’s UK Radio Show Free Online

Doc­u­men­tary Viva Joe Strum­mer: The Sto­ry of the Clash Sur­veys the Career of Rock’s Beloved Front­man

John­ny Cash & Joe Strum­mer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” (2002)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Dave Grohl Raises the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to an Art Form

in Film, Life, Music | August 19th, 2014

Foo Fight­ers front­man Dave Grohl raised an inter­net meme to an art form when he took the ALS Ice Buck­et Chal­lenge while par­o­dy­ing the epic prom scene from Car­rie. John Tra­vol­ta appeared in the 1976 hor­ror film, and Stephen King wrote the book behind it. So Grohl name checks them both. Where Jack Black fits into the pic­ture, I’m not exact­ly sure.

Dona­tions to help find a cure for the hor­rif­ic dis­ease can be made over at the ALS Asso­ci­a­tion. For a tru­ly sober­ing account of what it’s like to live with ALS, read Tony Judt’s essay, “Night,”  in The New York Review of Books. It was pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary 2010, short­ly before the dis­ease took his life.

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Wattstax Documents the “Black Woodstock” Concert Held 7 Years After the Watts Riots (1973)

in Music, Politics | August 16th, 2014

Recent events in Mis­souri have brought back painful mem­o­ries for many of the bru­tal treat­ment of pro­tes­tors by police dur­ing the Civ­il Rights Move­ment. Oth­ers see specters of the riots in cities like Detroit, Wash­ing­ton, DC, and the belea­guered Watts neigh­bor­hood of Los Ange­les in the wake of Mar­tin Luther King Jr.’s mur­der. These are bat­tles we would like to think belong to the past, but in remem­ber­ing them, we should also remem­ber peace­ful expres­sions of sol­i­dar­i­ty and non­vi­o­lent respons­es to per­sis­tent social injus­tice. One such response came in the form of a mas­sive con­cert at the L.A. Col­i­se­um put on by Mem­phis’ Stax records in 1972, sev­en years after the Watts riots. Fea­tur­ing some of Stax’ biggest names—Isaac Hayes, Albert King, The Sta­ples Singers, and more—the Wattstax music fes­ti­val brought in more than 100,000 atten­dees and raised thou­sands of dol­lars for local caus­es, becom­ing known infor­mal­ly as the “black Wood­stock.”

The idea came from West Coast Stax exec For­rest Hamil­ton and future Stax pres­i­dent Al Bell, who hoped, he said, to “put on a small con­cert to help draw atten­tion to, and to raise funds for the Watts Sum­mer Fes­ti­val” as well as “to cre­ate, moti­vate, and instill a sense of pride in the cit­i­zens of the Watts com­mu­ni­ty.” To make sure every­one could attend, rich or poor, the orga­niz­ers sold tick­ets for a dol­lar each. Rev. Jesse Jack­son gave the invo­ca­tion, lead­ing the thou­sands of con­cert­go­ers in a call-and-response read­ing of William H. Bor­ders’ poem “I Am – Some­body.”

There to film the event was Mel Stu­art, direc­tor of Willy Won­ka and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry. The result­ing doc­u­men­tary, which you can watch at the top of the post, fea­tures incred­i­ble per­for­mances from Stax’ full ros­ter of artists at the time (see a swag­ger­ing Isaac Hayes play “Shaft” above). Despite secu­ri­ty con­cerns from LA offi­cials, still ner­vous about a gath­er­ing of “more than two black peo­ple” in one place, says Bell, the con­cert was a peace­ful and joy­ous­ly funky occa­sion: “you saw the Crips and Bloods sit­ting side by side—no prob­lems.”

The film inter­cuts con­cert footage with man-on-the street inter­views and “tren­chant mus­ings” from a then lit­tle-known Richard Pry­or, who offers “sharp insight into the real­i­ties of life for black Amer­i­cans, cir­ca 1972.” It’s a moment of “get-down enter­tain­ment, raised-fist polit­i­cal ral­ly, and stand-up spir­i­tu­al revival” char­ac­ter­is­tic of the post-Civ­il Rights, Viet­nam era move­ment, writes the PBS descrip­tion of Wattstax. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the doc­u­men­tary “was con­sid­ered too racy, polit­i­cal, and black to receive wide the­atri­cal release or tele­vi­sion broad­cast” despite a “not­ed” Cannes screen­ing and a 1974 Gold­en Globe nom­i­na­tion. It’s been a cult favorite for years, but deserves to be more wide­ly seen, as a record of the hope and cel­e­bra­tion of black Amer­i­ca after the rage and despair of the late-60s. The mes­sages of Wattstax still res­onate. As Bell says, “forty years lat­er, I hear African Amer­i­cans in the audi­ences react­ing to the same scenes, the same way they did forty years ago.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Brown Saves Boston After MLK’s Assas­si­na­tion, Calls for Peace Across Amer­i­ca (1968)

Nina Simone Per­forms Six Songs in 1968 TV Spe­cial, The Sound of Soul

James Brown, the God­fa­ther of Soul, Extols Some Odd Virtues of Ronald Rea­gan in New Ani­mat­ed Video

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Robin Williams & Bobby McFerrin Sing Fun Cover of The Beatles’ “Come Together”

in Comedy, Music | August 14th, 2014

In 1998, leg­endary Bea­t­les’ pro­duc­er George Martin—all set to “hang up his ear­phones” and retire— brought togeth­er the most unusu­al assort­ment of peo­ple for In My Life, a trib­ute album com­posed entire­ly of Mar­tin-pro­duced Bea­t­les’ songs per­formed pri­mar­i­ly by actors and come­di­ans. Goldie Hawn gives a “gig­gly night­club chanteuse” read­ing of “A Hard Day’s Night,” Bil­ly Con­nol­ly does a slight­ly cracked ver­sion of “Being for the Ben­e­fit of Mr. Kite,” Jim Car­rey cov­ers “I Am the Wal­rus” (in a musi­cal per­for­mance sur­pris­ing­ly sub­dued next to, for exam­ple, his ren­di­tion of ”Some­body to Love”), and Sean Con­nery clos­es things out with a somber read­ing of “In My Life.”

But the album’s open­ing track is its best: Robin Williams and Bob­by McFerrin’s duet of “Come Togeth­er” redeems many of the record’s weak­est moments. Just above, hear the track over a fan-made slideshow of Williams high­lights. Williams and McFer­rin had teamed up before in the won­der­ful­ly sil­ly video for “Don’t Wor­ry Be Hap­py.” Here, with ample help from Martin’s lush pro­duc­tion, they man­age to evoke the slinky, seduc­tive weird­ness of the orig­i­nal song while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hav­ing a goofy old time of it. Pop­mat­ters edi­tor Sarah Zup­ko, a self-con­fessed Beat­le­ma­ni­ac who oth­er­wise found the album a supreme dis­ap­point­ment, calls Williams’ “leer­ing” through the song “a hoot,” and I’m sure you’ll agree.

Just above, watch a one-hour BBC doc­u­men­tary on the mak­ing of In My Life. At 9:30, see Williams, Mar­tin, and McFer­rin in the hys­ter­i­cal record­ing ses­sions for their “Come Togeth­er” cov­er. Mar­tin admits that he asked Williams to join the project “with some trep­i­da­tion,” then real­ized that “it was with some trep­i­da­tion” that Williams accept­ed. It was Williams who sug­gest­ed “bring­ing along a mate,” McFer­rin, whom he calls “a one-man accom­pa­ni­ment.” Among many oth­er charms, the short doc fea­tures Mar­tin through­out explain­ing not only the process of record­ing In My Life, but also his mem­o­ries of the orig­i­nal record­ing ses­sions for these songs, clear­ly so dear to him and his proud­est lega­cy. But of course, giv­en our nation­al peri­od of mourn­ing for the warm, bril­liant­ly fun­ny, deeply humane, and trag­i­cal­ly sad Robin Williams, the real joy is see­ing him here in much hap­pi­er times, encour­ag­ing and prais­ing the tal­ents of oth­ers even as he shines so bright­ly along­side them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Robin Williams (1951–2014) Per­forms Unknown Shake­speare Play in 1970s Standup Rou­tine

Bob­by McFer­rin Shows the Pow­er of the Pen­ta­ton­ic Scale

George Mar­tin, Leg­endary Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er, Shows How to Mix the Per­fect Song Dry Mar­ti­ni

Jim Car­rey Sings a Pret­ty Damn Good Cov­er of The Bea­t­les “I Am the Wal­rus”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

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Finnish Musicians Play Bluegrass Versions of AC/DC, Iron Maiden & Ronnie James Dio

in Music | August 8th, 2014

Euro­peans do weird things with Amer­i­can folk music. Some­times they do hor­ri­ble things, like the 1994 tech­no ren­di­tion of tra­di­tion­al coun­try song “Cot­ton-Eyed Joe” by a Swedish act who called them­selves “Red­nex” and who dressed up like car­toon­ish hill­bil­lies in a par­o­dy only slight­ly less offen­sive than their music. In the video above, we have three con­ti­nents col­lid­ing for anoth­er Scan­di­na­vian appro­pri­a­tion of Appalachi­an tropes, by way of a cov­er of “Thun­der­struck” by Aussies AC/DC. The Finnish blue­grass band Steve ‘N’ Seag­ulls has achieved viral noto­ri­ety with their most recent release, which fea­tures ban­jo, man­dolin, upright bass, accor­dion, a drum­mer who plays the spoons, and an anvil. Oh, and of course a wardrobe of over­alls and sus­penders with­out shirts. And the accor­dion play­er arrives on the scene on a rid­ing mow­er.

Offen­sive? I don’t know—where Red­nex was clear­ly min­strel­sy, this has the feel of a fond trib­ute to a cul­ture whose musi­cal tra­di­tions Steve ‘N’ Seag­ulls clear­ly adores, though their wear­ing of Native head­dress (below) would not sit well with cer­tain music fes­ti­val orga­niz­ers.

As for their take on AC/DC; I almost pre­fer it to the orig­i­nal, though one Metafil­ter user point­ed out that being able to hear the lyrics with such clar­i­ty does con­firm one’s sus­pi­cion that they’re com­plete­ly inane. And lest you think Steve ‘N’ Seag­ulls is some one-cov­er-hit won­der, check out their cov­ers of Iron Maiden’s “The Troop­er” above and Dio’s “Holy Div­er” below.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Blue­grass Ver­sion of Metallica’s Heavy Met­al Hit, “Enter Sand­man”

Robert Plant and Ali­son Krauss Sing Coun­try Ver­sions of Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” & “When the Lev­ee Breaks”

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Religions of Bob Dylan: From Delivering Evangelical Sermons to Singing Hava Nagila With Harry Dean Stanton

in Music, Religion | August 8th, 2014

My first reac­tion upon learn­ing about Bob Dylan’s brief con­ver­sion to Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty may have been some­thing like “What in the hell?” It wasn’t a reli­gious Dylan that sur­prised me; it was Dylan embrac­ing a faith that can often seem dogged­ly lit­er­al and, well, just a lit­tle inflex­i­ble. What with his love of ambi­gu­i­ty, of occult sym­bol­ism and sym­bol­ist poet­ry, and his res­olute con­tempt for con­ven­tion, Dylan has always struck me as more of an ancient Gnos­tic than a mod­ern Bible thumper. While Dylan’s immer­sion in the Chris­t­ian world may have been brief, it was deep, and it was confusing—enough so that Andy Greene in Rolling Stone com­ments that his pros­e­ly­tiz­ing from the stage “took audi­ence provo­ca­tion to the next lev­el.”

In his gospel shows of 1979/80, Dylan pre­sent­ed “a night of music devot­ed exclu­sive­ly to selec­tions from his new gospel records, often paus­ing for long, ram­bling ser­mons about Christ’s immi­nent return and the wicked­ness of man.” Hear one of those ser­mons at the top, a sev­en-minute the­o­log­i­cal dis­qui­si­tion, before Dylan and band launch into a pow­er­ful per­for­mance of “Sol­id Rock.” Just above, in anoth­er ser­mon from 1979, Dylan holds forth on the “spir­it of the Antichrist” before an unsym­pa­thet­ic crowd in Tempe, Ari­zona. That same year, he gave an inter­view to Bruce Heiman of KMGX Radio in Tuc­son on the sub­ject of his con­ver­sion (below).

In a cer­tain way, a Dylan obsessed with divine judg­ment and the book of Rev­e­la­tion jibes with his pur­suit of the arcane and the mys­ti­cal, with his con­sis­tent­ly apoc­a­lyp­tic vision, prophet­ic mum­blings, and ten­den­cy to mor­al­ize. But the preach­ing is just…. well, kin­da weird. I mean, not even Dylan’s friend, the deeply devout John­ny Cash, used his musi­cal plat­form to harangue audi­ences about the Bible. Was it a stunt or a gen­uine, if per­haps overzeal­ous, expres­sion of deeply held beliefs? That ques­tion could be asked of almost every move Dylan has ever made. This brief peri­od of very pub­lic reli­gios­i­ty may seem anom­alous, but Dylan’s inter­est in reli­gion is not. Google his name and any faith term, and you’ll see sug­ges­tions for “Dylan and Islam,” “Dylan and Bud­dhism,” “Dylan and Catholi­cism,” and, of course, “Dylan and Judaism,” the reli­gion of his birth. Some con­tend that Dylan still keeps faith with Jesus, and that it doesn’t mutu­al­ly exclude his Jew­ish­ness.


And yet, how Dylan’s Chris­t­ian preach­ing could line up with his lat­er com­mit­ment to Chabad—an Ortho­dox Hasidic move­ment that isn’t exact­ly warm to the idea of the Chris­t­ian mes­si­ah, to put it mildly—is beyond my ken. But log­i­cal con­sis­ten­cy does not rank high­ly on any list of virtues I’m famil­iar with. Dylan seemed to be recon­nect­ing with Judaism when he explic­it­ly expressed sol­i­dar­i­ty with Israel in 1983 in his Zion­ist anthem “Neigh­bor­hood Bul­ly” from Infi­dels, in oth­er respects, a whol­ly sec­u­lar record.

Three years lat­er, Dylan appeared on the Chabad telethon (above), accom­pa­ny­ing his son-in-law Peter Him­mel­man on har­mon­i­ca in a ren­di­tion of “Hava Nag­i­la,” along with, of all peo­ple, Har­ry Dean Stan­ton (whose chill­ing turn as polyg­a­mous Mor­mon sect leader in HBO’s Big Love you may well recall). By this time, at least accord­ing to Jew­ish Jour­nal, “Chabad rab­bis had helped Dylan return to Judaism after the musi­cian embraced Chris­tian­i­ty for a time.” The mid-90s saw Dylan wor­ship­ping with Brook­lyn Lubav­itch­ers, and in 2007, he was sight­ed in Atlanta at Yom Kip­pur ser­vices at the Chabad-Lubav­itch of Geor­gia, say­ing the “bless­ings in Hebrew with­out stum­bling, like a pro.”

So is Bob Dylan a fire­breath­ing Chris­t­ian or an Ortho­dox Jew? Or, some­how… both? Only Dylan knows, and frankly, only Dylan needs to. His beliefs are his busi­ness, but his pub­lic expres­sions of faith have giv­en his fans much to puz­zle over, read­ing the lyri­cal tea leaves for evi­dence of a sol­id rock cen­ter amidst the shift­ing sands of Dylanol­o­gy. Let ‘em sift. Some peo­ple obsess over Dylan’s reli­gious com­mit­ments, oth­ers over his “secret” wife and daugh­ter, his cor­po­rate sell­outs, or his some­times inscrutable per­son­al pol­i­tics. It’s all part of the busi­ness of fame. What I find fas­ci­nat­ing about the many lay­ers of Bob Dylan is not how much they tell me about the man, who has the right to change his mind, or not, as often as he likes, but how much they reveal about his strange lyri­cal themes. After all, Dylan’s seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry alle­giances and ambiva­lent iden­ti­ties as an artist may in in fact make him all the more the arche­typ­al Amer­i­can song­writer he’s always said to be.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Dylanol­o­gy, or How to Under­stand Bob Dylan by Dig­ging Through His Garbage

The Times They Are a‑Changin’: 1964 Broad­cast Gives a Rare Glimpse of the Ear­ly Bob Dylan

Ani­mat­ed Video: John­ny Cash Explains Why Music Became a Reli­gious Call­ing

John­ny Cash Reads the Entire New Tes­ta­ment

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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John Lennon Writes Eric Clapton an 8‑Page Letter Asking Him to Join the Plastic Ono Band for a World Tour on a Cruise Ship

in Music | August 7th, 2014

lennon-clapton2

Most every­one who com­ments on the phe­nom­e­non of the super­group will feel the need to point out that such bands rarely tran­scend the sum of their parts, and this is most­ly true. But it does seem that for a cer­tain peri­od of time in the late six­ties, many of the best bands were super­groups, or had at least two or more “super” mem­bers. Take the Yard­birds, for exam­ple, which con­tained, though not all at once, Jim­my Page, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clap­ton. Or Cream, with Clap­ton, Jack Bruce, and Gin­ger Bak­er. Or Blind Faith—with Clap­ton, Bak­er, and Steve Win­wood…. Maybe it’s fair to say that every band Clap­ton played in was “super,” includ­ing, for a brief time, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Plas­tic Ono Band.

It start­ed with the one-off per­for­mance above in Toron­to, which led to an undat­ed eight-page let­ter Lennon wrote Clap­ton, either in 1969, accord­ing to Book­tryst, or 1971, accord­ing to Michael Schumacher’s Clap­ton bio Cross­roads. The let­ter we have–well over a thou­sand words–is a draft. Lennon’s revised copy has not sur­faced, and, writes Book­tryst, “the con­tent of the final ver­sion is unknown.” In this copy (first page at top), Lennon prais­es Clapton’s work and details his and Yoko’s plans for a “rev­o­lu­tion­ary” project quite unlike Lennon’s for­mer band. As he puts it, “we began to feel more and more like going on the road, but not the way I used to with the Beatles—night after night of tor­ture. We mean to enjoy our­selves, take it easy, and maybe even see some of the places we go to!”

Lennon explic­it­ly states that he does not want the band to be a super­group, even as he recruits super mem­bers like Clap­ton and Phil Spec­tor: “We have many ‘rev­o­lu­tion­ary’ ideas for pre­sent­ing shows that com­plete­ly involve the audience—not just as ‘Super­stars’ up there—blessing the peo­ple.” While Lennon and Ono don’t expect their recruits to “rat­i­fy every­thing we believe polit­i­cal­ly,” they do state their inten­tion for “’rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing’ the world thru music.” “We’d love to ‘do’ Rus­sia, Chi­na, Hun­gary, Poland, etc.,” writes Lennon. Lat­er in the mis­sive, he explains his detailed plan for the Plas­tic Ono Band tour he had in mind—involving a cruise ship, film crew, and the band’s “fam­i­lies, chil­dren what­ev­er”:

How about a kind of ‘Easy Rid­er’ at sea. I mean we get EMI or some film co., to finance a big ship with 30 peo­ple aboard (includ­ing crew)—we take 8 track record­ing equip­ment with us (mine prob­a­bly) movie equipment—and we rehearse on the way over—record if we want, play any­where we fancy—say we film from L.A. to Tahi­ti […] The whole trip could take 3–4‑5–6 months, depend­ing how we all felt.

It sounds like an out­landish pro­pos­al, but if you’re John Lennon, I imag­ine noth­ing of this sort seems beyond reach—though how he expect­ed to get to East­ern Europe from the Pacif­ic Rim on his ship isn’t quite clear. The prob­lem for Clap­ton, biog­ra­ph­er Michael Schu­mach­er spec­u­lates, would have had noth­ing to do with the music and every­thing to do with his addic­tion: “after all his prob­lems with secur­ing drugs in the biggest city in the Unit­ed States, Clap­ton couldn’t begin to enter­tain the notion of spend­ing lengthy peri­ods at sea and try­ing to obtain hero­in in for­eign coun­tries.” In any case, “in the end, Lennon’s pro­pos­al, like so many of his improb­a­ble but com­pelling ideas, fell through.” This may have had some rela­tion to the fact that Lennon had a hero­in prob­lem of his own at the time.

The clip of Clap­ton per­form­ing with the band comes from Sweet Toron­to, a 1971 film made by D.A. Pen­nebak­er of the band’s per­for­mance at the 1969 Toron­to Rock and Roll Revival Fes­ti­val (see the full film above). That event had a whol­ly improb­a­ble line­up of ‘50s stars like Chuck Berry, Lit­tle Richard, Jer­ry Lee Lewis, and Bo Did­dley along­side bands like Alice Coop­er, Chica­go, and The Doors. As the title open­ing of the film states, “John could at last intro­duce Yoko to the heroes of his child­hood.” Pen­nebak­er gives us snip­pets of the per­for­mance from each of Lennon’s heroes—opening with Did­dley, then Lewis, Berry, and Lit­tle Richard—before the Plas­tic Ono Band with Clap­ton appear at 16:43. (This per­for­mance also pro­duced their first album.) The Bea­t­les Bible has a full run­down of the fes­ti­val and the band’s some­what sham­bol­ic, bluesy—and with Yoko, screechy—show.

Read the full tran­script and see more scans of Lennon’s draft let­ter to Clap­ton over at Book­tryst, who also explain the cryp­tic ref­er­ences to “Eric and,” “you both,” and “you and yours”—part of the “soap opera” affair involv­ing Clap­ton, George Harrison’s (and lat­er Clap­ton’s) wife Pat­tie Boyd, and her 17-year-old sis­ter Paula.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1969 Telegram, Jimi Hen­drix Invites Paul McCart­ney to Join a Super Group with Miles Davis

Eric Clap­ton and Steve Win­wood Join Forces at the His­toric Blind Faith Con­cert in Hyde Park, 1969

John Lennon Plays Bas­ket­ball with Miles Davis and Hangs Out with Allen Gins­berg & Friends

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

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