When director David Hillman Curtis and cinematographer Ben Wolf paid a visit recently to composer Philip Glass to film a promotional piece for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, they were granted just 30 minutes. “He was booked solid the day we visited his offices and actually was being followed by a minder who sat on the couch just out of the frame checking his watch,” said Curtis. “I’ve become a pretty good interviewer and was able to loosen Mr. Glass up a bit and he took it from there, giving a great interview, and we were done in 30 minutes.” In the resulting two-minute film, Glass expresses amusement over his recent fascination with classical music. “Where are my frontiers,” asks the composer, whose work is frequently described as avant-garde? “My frontiers are actually not in front of me. They’re behind me.”
You can learn more about Philip Glass and hear free samples of his music at PhilipGlass.com.
Today is John Lennon’s would-be 71st birthday, and it jogged my memory, reminding me of this lengthy 1970 interview. Conducted by Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone Magazine, this important conversation (listen via iTunes) was recorded shortly after The Beatles’ bitter breakup, and the emotions were still running high. Running over 3 hours, it is one of Lennon’s most extensive interviews, touching not just on the breakup, but also on art and politics, drugs, Yoko, primal therapy and more. It’s not always flattering, but it gives you a good feel for the man and the great artist.
Just a quick reminder, Martin Scorsese’s two-part documentary on George Harrison airs tonight and tomorrow night on HBO. After making films about Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones, the legendary filmmaker now turns somewhat unexpectedly to the silent Beatle, and you have to wonder why. Why George? So Scorsese recalls when things originally clicked, the first moment when he realized the “picture had to be made.”
This week, HBO will air George Harrison: Living in the Material World, a two-part documentary dedicated to The Beatles’ guitarist who long played in the shadow of John and Paul. While George slips back in the spotlight, we should highlight his vintage interview with Dick Cavett. Recorded 40 years ago (November 23, 1971), the conversation starts with light chit-chat, then (around the 5:30 mark) gets to some bigger questions — Did Yoko break up the band? Did the other Beatles hold him back musically? Why have drugs been so present in the rock ‘n roll world, and did The Beatles’ flirtation with LSD lead youngsters astray? And is there any relationship between drugs and the Indian music that so fascinated Harrison? It was a question better left to Ravi Shankar to answer, and that he did.
The rest of the interview continues here with Part 2 and Part 3. Also, that same year, Cavett interviewed John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and we have it right here.
One of the most original and distinctive songs Led Zeppelin ever recorded was the exotic, eight-and-a-half minute “Kashmir,” from the 1975 album Physical Graffiti. In this clip from Davis Guggenheim’s film It Might Get Loud(2009), Jimmy Page explains the origins of the song to fellow guitarists Jack White and The Edge. Then Page demonstrates it by picking up an old modified Danelectro 59DC Double Cutaway Standard guitar that he played the song with on some of Led Zeppelin’s tours. (Watch Kashmir live here.)
In 1973, Page had been experimenting with an alternative D modal, or DADGAD, tuning often used on stringed instruments in the Middle East, when he hit upon the hypnotic, rising and falling riff. The song came together over a period of a couple of years. John Bonham added his distinctive, overpowering drums during a two-man recording session with Page at Headley Grange. Singer Robert Plant wrote the lyrics while he and Page were driving through the Sahara Desert in Southern Morocco. (Neither Page nor Plant had ever visited Kashmir, in the Himalayas.) Bassist and keyboard player John Paul Jones added the string and horn arrangements the following year. In a 1995 radio interview with Australian journalist Richard Kingsmill, Plant recalled his experience with “Kashmir”:
It was an amazing piece of music to write to, and an incredible challenge for me. Because of the time signature, the whole deal of the song is…not grandiose, but powerful. It required some kind of epithet, or abstract lyrical setting about the whole idea of life being an adventure and being a series of illuminated moments. But everything is not what you see. It was quite a task, because I couldn’t sing it. It was like the song was bigger than me.
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Allen Mezquida is an accomplished alto saxophonist. As a regular on the New York jazz scene in the 80s and 90s, he performed and recorded with many of the greatest musicians still playing at that time, like Art Blakey and Gerry Mulligan. His 1996 solo album, A Good Thing, was well-received by critics. In an earlier age it might have been the beginning of a glorious career. But as the 20th century came to a close, Mezquida was becoming increasingly disillusioned.
“I was more frustrated with jazz’s tiny place in the current cultural landscape than with my jazz career,” Mezquida told Open Culture. So he turned to another of his artistic passions. The visual arts–cartooning, in particular–had always attracted him. “Mad magazine, Chuck Jones and various art books held my attention alongside Miles, Coltrane and Stan Getz,” Mezquida said. He began experimenting with digital animation, and before long he moved to Los Angeles and began receiving work from Disney, Warner Brothers, Sony and PIXAR. He contributed to Aladdin and Toy Story.
Mezquida found himself where he wanted to be: at the very heart of America’s cultural landscape. Still, something wasn’t right. As he told The Daily Beast in 2010, “I was just holding an oar in the bowels of a Viking ship. And executing the ideas of morons that I didn’t respect.” Mezquida wanted cultural relevance and artistic freedom. As a consequence, Smigly was born.
Smigly is Mezquida’s alter ego, an Everyman adrift in a dehumanized, corporatized culture in which social media serve only to intensify a sense of social alienation. As an artist, Smigly faces a society less interested in art than in the degradation of artists. Like Charlie Chaplin, or Charlie Brown, there is something timeless about Smigly: a sensitive soul pouring his heart out to an indifferent, or hostile, world.
The trials and tribulations of Smigly are chronicled on Smigly.tv. The latest installment, Kind of Black and Blue, is shown above. The piece was commissioned by Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band, but Mezquida was given complete creative control. Kind of Black and Blue moves like a Swiss watch, each part fitting tightly into place. A musician’s sense of timing is evident. “I spend a lot of time thinking about the clearest way to visually communicate an idea,” Mezquida said. “It brings people into the story faster. Gary Larson, PIXAR and Don Martin quickly come to mind as very precise visual storytellers. Coltrane made every note count. Same thing.”
Mezquida continues to play music, performing with several jazz groups in the Los Angeles area. And many of his cartoon episodes feature his saxophone playing. With his growing popularity on YouTube, Smigly has helped Mezquida find a new audience for his music. And so, Mezquida moves closer to that elusive combination of artistic independence and popular success. We asked him about his hopes for the future. “I want to experience a major existential crisis deciding what to do when a major corporation wants to sponsor Smigly,” he said. “I’m kidding. A little.”
For more Smigly, go directly to Smigly.tv or begin by checking out a few or our favorite episodes:
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Today is John Lennon’s would-be 71st birthday, and it jogged my memory, reminding me of this 
