To help celebrate the 50th anniversary of George Harrison’s classic solo album, All Things Must Pass, the classic track, “My Sweet Lord,” has now received an official music video. And it features a number of cameo appearances–from other former Beatles (Ringo Starr), to family members (Olivia Harrison and Dhani Harrison), to other guests (Mark Hamill, Fred Armisen, Al Yankovic, Rosanna Arquette). Enjoy.
Featuring In Order of Appearance:
Mark Hamill
Fred Armisen
Vanessa Bayer
Moshe Kasher
Natasha Leggero
Jeff Lynne
Reggie Watts
Darren Criss
Patton Oswalt
Al Yankovic
David Gborie
Sam Richardson
Atsuko Okatsuka
Rosanna Arquette
Brandon Wardell
Ringo Starr
Joe Walsh
Jon Hamm
Brett Metter
Anders Holm
Dhani Harrison
Rupert Friend
Angus Sampson
Taika Waititi
Eric Wareheim
Tim Heidecker
Kate Micucci
Riki Lindhome
Alyssa Stonoha
Mitra Jouhari
Sandy Honig
Olivia Harrison
Aimee Mullins
Courtney Pauroso
Natalie Palamides
Shepard Fairey
Claudia O’Doherty
Tom Scharpling
Paul Scheer
Sarah Baker
We’ve all given at least a little thought to “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I myself happen to have given it more than a little, since I and all my classmates had to learn the song and sing it together back in seventh-grade music class. But I haven’t given it as much thought as music Youtuber Polyphonic, whose exegesis “The True Meaning of Bohemian Rhapsody” appears above. “The apex of the 1970s rock experiment,” Queen’s six-minute rock epic “somehow manages to take the transformative structure of progressive rock and shove it into a form that could be a radio rock staple and sell out arenas worldwide.” It also delivers “an operatic breakdown, a legendary guitar solo, and iconic lyrics that perfectly walk the line between grounded and cryptic.”
Like all the best lyrics — and especially all the best lyrics of elaborately produced 1970s rock — the words to “Bohemian Rhapsody” invite all manner of readings. Polyphonic opts to take the concept of reading more literally, visually rendering his interpretation of the song through a set of tarot cards.
Within this traditional framework, he makes the thoroughly modern choice of grounding these often fantastical- or even bizarre-sounding lyrics in the sexual identity of Queen’s lead singer. Born in Zanzibar to a conservative Indian family, the boy who would become Freddie Mercury would have had more than one reason to feel out of place in the world. Do we have here an artistic sublimation of his personal isolation, alienation, and self-reinvention?
When it was released in 1975, “Bohemian Rhapsody” met with a critical reception here and there impressed, but on the whole indifferent or perplexed. Perhaps the song was simply too much, not just musically but culturally: it draws in a seemingly haphazard manner from the realms of cowboys, of opera, of Christianity, and of much else besides. But to Polyphonic, all these elements reflect the central theme of Mercury’s survival in and ultimate defiance of a hostile world. “In the end,” his character realizes, “people’s minds are not going to change, and his own identity isn’t going to change, so there’s no use hanging on in fear. Armed with this knowledge, Freddie Mercury completes his magnificent transformation and ascends to rock godhood.” Such an interpretation was far from my own mind in middle school, admittedly, but there were no doubt other students who could feel the powerful inspiration this sonic spectacle continues to offer.
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. His projects include the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.
“You look so goth today” one might say to a friend wearing too much eyeliner or black nail polish or leather pants. But goth is so much more than just a look, the maker of the above video claims, walking viewers through a brief history of the blues, rock, punk, post-punk, and new romantic waves made to the sound and style of what came to be called goth rock (though none of these artists described themselves that way). The video essay claims goth has been hijacked by ersatz pretenders like Marilyn Manson and My Chemical Romance, who might look the part but bear little resemblance sonically or culturally to forebears like The Doors, The Cure, The Birthday Party, or (this video’s stopping point) goth rock darlings Bauhaus.
Maybe the distinctions seem like trivial subcultural squabbling, but the essay raises an interesting question about the origin of the word “goth” as a subculturally descriptive term. It’s easy to see how someone might mistake oughties emo rockers for 80s goths; it’s perhaps more of a stretch to see how 70s and 80s goth rock carried forth the creative spirit of a medieval architectural style or a 19th-century literary genre. Superficially, we might say the operative link is “dark and scary,” but if that’s all it takes to be “goth,” then we’re back to goth as costume rather than a set of artistic tenets. Examining the Gothic a bit more closely may give us clues to the distinctiveness of Goth.
Author Nick Groom identifies a historical tension within the Gothic. First used in the 16th century to describe the ornate pan-European style that arose back in the 12th century, the term was pejorative, implying that the glories of Rome had been replaced by the barbarism of the German Goths (despite the fact that Gothic style originated in France). The Gothic was revived in the 18th and 19th centuries — at first almost single-handedly by Horace Walpole, who wrote the first Gothic novel and turned his home, Strawberry Hill, into a Gothic theme park of sorts. By this point, says Groom above, the Gothic had taken on dual connotations in English usage — positively, the Gothic was a rebellious spirit: The Magna Carta was Goth. Martin Luther was Goth.
On the other hand, the Gothic referred to the occult, to Medieval Catholic rites and superstitions, to ancient ruins, monsters, and gargoyles. This is the Gothic with which we’re familiar, but it comes to us — via Walpole, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, etc. — as kitsch. “Gothic fiction began as a sophisticated joke,” John Mullan observes of Walpole’s weird novel, The Castle of Otranto. For all its investment in the darker regions of human experience, the Gothic, and thereby the Goth, has always had a certain sense of humor about itself, creating cavernous sounds that evoke cathedral acoustics, performed with an ironic theatricality that dramatizes literary, Romantic excesses — qualities, it must be said, few bands before or since embodied quite so succinctly as goth rock darlings Bauhaus.
Peter Jackson’s new documentary series Get Back allows its viewers to spend about eight hours watching the Beatles at work in the studio. In that time, a fair few non-Beatles linger in the frame as well: from Yoko Ono to keyboardist Billy Preston to a couple of grumpy young policeman trying to shut down the climactic rooftop concert. If you’ve seen Get Back, you’ll also have noticed one fellow somewhat taller, older, and more tastefully dressed than everyone else, who, though often in the studio, seems not to have had much to do. This, as every Beatles aficionado knows, is George Martin: the EMI record producer who, seven years earlier, had been tasked with helping the not-yet-Fab Four start properly recording their songs.
From then on Martin kept working closely with John, Paul, George, and Ringo, and that, as Polyphonic argues in the video above, grants him rightful claim to the coveted title of “Fifth Beatle.” Martin, he explains, “was the producer, composer, and arranger for most of the Beatles’ career, and his contributions are directly responsible for some of the band’s most iconic songs.” Take “Yesterday,” a simple guitar-based number enriched, at Martin’s suggestion, by a string quartet. Though Paul initially balked at this no doubt square-sounding addition, he was persuaded by the results. For the first time but not the last, the contrast between the musical backgrounds of band and producer — the former being obsessed with American rock-and-roll and the latter having come out of the BBC’s classical-music department — paid off.
The following year, Martin contributed an even more powerful (and Psycho-inspired) string arrangement to “Eleanor Rigby” as well as “all kinds of studio experimentation,” including the run-in-reverse guitar solo on “I’m Only Sleeping” and the hypnotic tape loops on “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Despite not belonging to a generation especially invested in the psychedelic experience, he made possible the mind-blowing sonic textures of songs like “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “I Am the Walrus.” The unusual variety of sound in the latter owes a great deal to Martin’s technical know-how and willingness to experiment: “If I said ‘I want the radio on it,’ George would make it so that I could mix it in, and the radio would be coming through the machines,” John remembers in the 1975 interview clip below.
John acknowledges that Martin didn’t just realize the Beatles’ unconventional musical ideas, but contributed his own more traditional but no less effective ones: “He’d also come up with things like: ‘Well, have you heard an oboe?’ ” Because “he taught us a lot, and I’m sure we taught him a lot,” not much in the Beatles’ record catalog is ascribable simply to him or them. By the time of Get Back, the Beatles had decided to return to their live-performing roots by recording an album without studio overdubs, and much fewer orchestras and backward tape loops. Those sessions put Martin in the background, but thereafter he “returned triumphantly” on Abbey Road. From the orchestration on “Here Comes the Sun” to the “ethereal harpsichord riff” on “Because” to “some of the greatest moments ever recorded” on the side-two medley, that album stands as perhaps the most compelling testament to the achievements of the Fab Five.
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. His projects include the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.
It’s going to be a tearjerker, I think — artist Candice Breitz
Watch 18 diehard Leonard Cohen fans over the age of 65 ardently fumbling their way through the title track of his 1988 album, I’m Your Man, for a deep reminder of how we are transported by the artists we love best.
These men, selected from a pool of over 400 applicants, don’t appear overly bothered by the quality of their singing voices, though clearly they’re giving it their all.
Instead, their chief concern seems to be communing with Cohen, who had died the year before, at the age of 82.
Artist Candice Breitz zeroed in on the likeliest candidates for this project using a 10-page application, in which interested parties were asked to describe Cohen’s role in their lives.
Almost all were based in Cohen’s hometown of Montreal.
Many have been fans since they were teenagers.
Participant Fergus Keyes described meeting Cohen at a 1984 signing for his poetry collection, Book of Mercy:
He told me he liked my name. He asked if he could use it in some future song. I said yes and he wrote it down in his little notebook. I said to him, ‘Sometimes I don’t understand what you’re saying.’ And he said there was no wrong way of interpreting it, because he wrote for others and whatever we interpret is right.
In person, it’s displayed as an installation in-the-round, with viewers free to roam around in the middle, as each participant is projected on his own life-size video monitor for the duration.
They’re our men.
Some standing stiffly.
Others with eyes tightly shut.
Some cannot resist the temptation to act out certain choice lines.
One joyful uninhibited soul beams and dances.
They keep time with their hands, feet, heads… a seated man taps his cane.
One whistles, confidently filling the space most commonly occupied by an instrumental, while the majority of the others fidget.
There are suit jackets, a couple of Cohen-esque fedoras, a t‑shirt from a 2015 Cohen event, and what appears to be a linen gown, topped with a chunky sweater vest.
Breitz’s only requirement of the participants was that they memorize the lyrics to the I’m Your Man album in its entirety, prior to entering the recording studio.
Each man laid his track down solo, singing along while listening to the album on earbuds, unaware of exactly how his contribution would be used. Several professed shock to discover, on opening night, that synchronous editing had transformed them into members of an a cappella choir.
The project may strike some viewers as funny, especially when an individual or group flubs a lyric or veers off tempo, but the purpose is not mockery. Breitz worked to establish trust, and the participants’ willingness to extend it gives the piece its emotional foundation.
Victor Shiffman, co-curator of the 2017 Cohen exhibitA Crack in Everything at the commissioning Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, told the Montreal Gazette:
They are not precisely singers. They are just passionate, ardent fans; their goal was to communicate their devotion and love for Leonard by participating in this tribute. It is not about hitting the notes. The emotion comes through in the conviction these men portray and in the dedication they show in having put themselves out there. There is so much beauty in that work; it disarms us.
I was really interested in this moment in life when one starts to look back and contemplate what kind of a life one has lived and what kind of life one wishes to continue living as one approaches the end of that life. And I think that even when he was a young man, Cohen was somebody who thought about and wrote about mortality in very profound ways. So what I decided to do was to invite a group of Cohen fans who really would be up to the project of interpreting that complexity.
Prior to the work’s premiere, Breitz gathered the group for a toast, suggesting that the occasion was doubly special in that it was highly unlikely they would meet again.
Sometimes artists are unaware of the powerful force they unleash.
Rather than going their separate ways, the participants formed friendships, reunite for non-solo Cohen singalongs, and in the words of one man, became “a real brotherhood… once you establish that connection, everything else disappears.”
New York-born, L.A.-based record producer Rick Rubin started his musical career as a guitarist, first in a short-lived high school band, then in the punk band Hose, touring the country with 80s hardcore stalwarts like Hüsker Dü and the Meat Puppets. It was an auspicious beginning for the major producer Rubin would become in later years, behind albums by Weezer, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Slayer, Danzig, Metallica… the list goes on. Not all of his work has been beloved, but hardly any of it has been ignored. Rubin’s won 9 Grammy awards since 1998, including one this year for the Strokes’ The New Abnormal and one in 2009 for Producer of the Year; in 2007 he appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, covered in a white blanket and signature flowing beard, meditating over the headline “Can Rick Rubin Save the Music Business?”
Rubin revitalized Johnny Cash’s career, capturing the singer’s achingly poignant last recordings in six classic albums. He has appeared in documentaries over the past few years with Cash, Dave Grohl, and Paul McCartney he’s been a guest of David Letterman’s My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman; he’s had a four-part documentary made about him in 2019 called Shangri-La.… And he is also – of course – all over contemporary hip-hop, producing Jay Z’s “99 Problems” and pivotal albums by Kanye West and Eminem. This is no surprise, considering he was a major figure of the genre’s origins, taking time between Hose gigs to found and co-run Def Jam Records with Russell Simmons and produce seminal albums by LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Run‑D.M.C., and the Beastie Boys.
Given all of the above, in what sense can anyone claim Rick Rubin is “invisible”? Just such an argument is made in the video above by Soulr. It’s a compelling one, due mainly to Rubin’s presence, a steady calming force – the result of years of transcendental meditation and a relaxed approach to work that favors conversation over control. “Despite his reputation as a solid-gold hitmaker,” a WNYC profile noted, “Rubin remains stubbornly modest. He attributes his success to his one rule in the studio. ‘We don’t talk about what’s going to get on the radio [or] how are we going to make our release date,’ he says. ‘We talk about how we make this song as good as it can be.’” In letting the artist’s vision emerge, Rubin lets himself disappear, playing the role of therapist, as he himself describes it:
If you really listen to what people say, usually they tell you everything. I just really pay attention to what people say, and through that I can reflect back thoughts that they’ve told me about themselves that they don’t know about themselves. And allow them to unlock those doors to get to the places they want to go artistically.
In a clip taken from Shangri-La, we see star rapper Tyler, the Creator tell Rubin, “You’re so goddamn free.” As Judy Berman writes in a Time review of that Rubin-produced documentary, “coming from an artist whose entire career has been a series of shocks to the mainstream, that’s high praise indeed.” The clip also sets the tenor for the fan-made documentary above. There isn’t a significant amount of criticism, to say the least, of Rubin’s role in the so-called “loudness wars” or charges from bands like Muse that he’s hardly involved in sessions at all. Those charges may indeed come from people who do not understand how a man “behind hundreds and hundreds of beloved records… doesn’t appear to do much, while doing everything at the same time.” Find out how Rubin has used his powers of invisibility for the good of popular music. His superpower, the video’s narrator tells us, is “simply his ability to listen.”
The Beatles aren’t the only fab talents causing a stir in the recently released Beatles documentary, Get Back.
As has been widely noted, soul singer Billy Preston lights up every scene he’s in.
One of the 60’s finest session keyboardists, Preston contributed to the Beatles’ Let It Beand Abbey Road albums, and joined them for their famous final gig on the roof of Apple Records.
He also served as a leveling influence when tensions within the band frequently exploded into fits of temper.
“It’s interesting to see how nicely people behave when you bring a guest in,” George Harrison observed.
In addition to his successful solo career, with a number of funk and R&B hits, Preston gigged for a host of all time greats: Ray Charles, Little Richard, Sam Cooke, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones…the list goes on.
A year later, he entered America’s living rooms, when he appeared on The Nat King Cole Show, above, to duet with TV’s first national Black variety show host on “Blueberry Hill,” a 40s tune Fats Domino had popularized earlier in the decade.
“You have a very excellent career ahead of you,” Cole predicts, following their performance.
Daughter Natalie Cole later enthused that the celebrated crooner “lets this kid have all the glory,” though the self-possessed pre-teen holds his own ably, alternating between organ and his own impressive pipes.
Within the year, Cole and Preston shared the big screen, and a memorable part, when they were cast as “The Father Of The Blues” W.C. Handy, as a child and adult, in the 1958 movie St Louis Blues.
As an adult, Preston’s star was tarnished by addiction, arrests and self-sabotaging behavior that his manager, Joyce Moore, and half-sister Lettie, said was most deeply rooted in his mother’s refusal to believe that he was being sexually abused by the pianist of a summer touring company, and later a local pastor.
It’s part of a lurid, longer tale, calling to mind other promising, oft-prodigious young talents who never managed to get out from under damage inflicted by adults when they were children.
Your host Mark Linsenmayer is joined by musician David Brookings, Gig Gab podcast host Dave Hamilton, and OpenCulture writer Colin Marshall to discuss Peter Jackson’s documentary Get Back and the enduring popularity of The Beatles.
This was recorded on 12/8, the anniversary of John Lennon’s death. We consider the arc of their career, the various post-mortem releases that keep our interest, why Beatles solo work remains a cult interest, and much more.
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