In this 2015 pro­duc­tion, Yes key­boardist Rick Wake­man revis­its Anto­nio Vivaldi’s The Four Sea­sons, and makes the case for why “it was so far ahead of its time that it was actu­al­ly the first ever con­cept album, mak­ing Vival­di the world’s first rock super­star.”

“Uncov­er­ing the dark rumours sur­round­ing the church­es, orphan­ages and canals of Venice, Rick Wake­man sets out to inves­ti­gate the extra­or­di­nary life of Anto­nio Vival­di. From 18^th cen­tu­ry scan­dals to inter­views with fel­low musi­cian Mike Ruther­ford, uncov­er the mys­tery behind one of the world’s favourite com­posers.” Rick Wake­man: Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons appears on the “Rick Wake­man’s World” YouTube chan­nel.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Authen­tic Vivaldi’s The Four Sea­sons: Watch a Per­for­mance Based on Orig­i­nal Man­u­scripts & Played with 18th-Cen­tu­ry Instru­ments

Rick Wake­man Tells the Sto­ry of the Mel­lotron, the Odd­ball Pro­to-Syn­the­siz­er Pio­neered by the Bea­t­les

Rick Wakeman’s Prog-Rock Opera Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984

14-Year-Old Girl’s Blis­ter­ing Heavy Met­al Per­for­mance of Vival­di

Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons Brought to Life in Sand Ani­ma­tions by the Hun­gar­i­an Artist Fer­enc Cakó

Hear Rick Wakeman’s Musi­cal Adap­ta­tion of Jules Verne’s Jour­ney to the Cen­tre of the Earth, “One of Prog Rock’s Crown­ing Achieve­ments”

At the height of Motown’s pow­ers in the 1960s they were set­ting trends, not chas­ing them, but even that record com­pa­ny fell under the spell of the British Inva­sion. Sure, the juke­box R’n’B sin­gles that made their way across the Atlantic were in the DNA of The Bea­t­les, Rolling Stones, and the Who, but in the mid’60’s the label decid­ed they need­ed a beat group of their own. That’s how one of the weird­est tales of pop music unfold­ed, and would have stayed a tiny foot­note if it weren’t for the future fame of two of the Mynah Birds’ mem­bers: funk over­lord Rick James and folk-rock­er-noise­mak­er Neil Young.

Yes, for a brief peri­od of time they were in the same band togeth­er in Toron­to, Cana­da, part of an explod­ing beat group scene that was most­ly all white. “I was an authen­tic R&B singer liv­ing in a city where white musi­cians were striv­ing to play authen­tic R&B,” Rick James wrote in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy quot­ed in Bandsplaining’s above video. “That added to my sta­tus. It also got me laid.”

James Ambrose John­son Jr., had been in Cana­da for two years already, hav­ing escaped the Viet­nam draft by flee­ing north in 1964. Saved from a bar brawl by future mem­bers of The Band, Lev­on Helm and Garth Hud­son, he entered the music scene and adopt­ed the name Ricky Matthews, as a way to hide his iden­ti­ty. The Mynah Birds began in 1964 and even put out a sin­gle on Colum­bia that went nowhere. They tried (and failed) again in 1965, with an ever-chang­ing line-up. Ricky Matthews though, remained the dynam­ic lead singer.

Enter Neil Young. As Rick James tells it, he was look­ing to change their sound and he saw Neil Young play­ing in a cof­fee­house and asked him to join. (James’ rec­ol­lec­tion is in the above video.) How­ev­er, Kevin Plum­mer in the Toron­toist has a dif­fer­ent ver­sion:

One day—most like­ly in the fall of 1965, but some say in ear­ly 1966—Young was walk­ing down Yorkville Avenue with an amp on his shoul­der. As he passed, Palmer struck up a con­ver­sa­tion. The Mynah Birds were, once again, with­out a lead gui­tarist, so he asked Young to join—despite the fact that Young only owned the twelve-string acoustic. “I had to eat,” Young is quot­ed in John Einarson’s Neil Young: Don’t Be Denied (Quar­ry Press, 1992). “I need­ed a job and it seemed like a good thing to do. I still liked play­ing and I liked Bruce so I went along. There was no pres­sure on me. It was the first time that I was in a band where I wasn’t call­ing the shots.”

As Young and James were soon to share a base­ment apart­ment and a whole lot of drugs, the par­tic­i­pants can be for­giv­en for their hazy mem­o­ries.

The video also con­flates their sven­gali (John Craig Eaton, a depart­ment store heir who bankrolled the band and gave them rehearsal space) with their man­ag­er (folk singer and fan Mor­ley Shel­man). Whether it was Eaton, Shel­man, or just luck, with­in two months of hav­ing Young in the band, and a rep­u­ta­tion for wild, amphet­a­mine-dri­ven concerts—the band had signed a sev­en-year con­tract with Motown, the first most­ly-white act to do so.

Neil Young remem­bered the first album ses­sions in an inter­view with Cameron Crowe:

We went in and record­ed five or six nights, and if we need­ed some­thing, or if they thought we weren’t strong enough, a cou­ple of Motown singers would just walk right in. And they’d Motown us! A cou­ple of ’em would be right there, and they’d sing the part. They’d just appear and we’d all do it togeth­er. If some­body wasn’t con­fi­dent or didn’t have it, they didn’t say, ‘Well, let’s work on this.’ Some guy would just come in who had it. Then every­body was groov­ing. And an amaz­ing thing happened—we sound­ed hot. And all of a sud­den it was Motown. That’s why all those records sound­ed like that.

Rick James was wor­ried about enter­ing the States and being arrest­ed for avoid­ing the draft. But in Detroit he was safe. It was when he returned that the trou­ble began—he dis­cov­ered that Shel­man had appar­ent­ly spent their advance on a fan­cy new motor­bike and a not-so-fan­cy hero­in habit. A fight broke out and Shel­man retal­i­at­ed by rat­ting James out. James turned him­self in to the Amer­i­can author­i­ties and the Mynah Birds’ career—at least the James/Young version—ended. Only four of the tracks record­ed for the album were ever released, two at the time as a sin­gle, the oth­er two in 2006 as part of a Rhi­no Records Motown ret­ro­spec­tive. More are rumored to exist but they remain hid­den away in a vault at best, destroyed at worst.

Young would move to Cal­i­for­nia soon after and join Buf­fa­lo Spring­field. James, once out of jail, would make his way back into the record­ing indus­try, iron­i­cal­ly return­ing to Motown. Band mem­bers Goldy McJohn and Nick St. Nicholas would form Step­pen­wolf. And through it all, James and Young remained friends.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Visu­al­iz­ing the Bass Play­ing Style of Motown’s Icon­ic Bassist James Jamer­son: “Ain’t No Moun­tain High Enough,” “For Once in My Life” & More

Catch Ste­vie Won­der, Ages 12–16, in His Ear­li­est TV Per­for­mances

Neil Young Releas­es a Nev­er-Before-Heard Ver­sion of His 1979 Clas­sic, “Pow­derfin­ger”: Stream It Online

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

When did the first rooftop con­cert hap­pen? Prob­a­bly not long after con­struc­tion of the first rooftop. How could ear­ly humans resist such an oppor­tu­ni­ty to project sound over the heads of a crowd? But if we’re talk­ing about a Rooftop Con­cert, we’re talk­ing about a spe­cial genre of gig defined by The Bea­t­les’ farewell rooftop show in Lon­don on Jan­u­ary 30, 1969. Since that his­toric moment, each time musi­cians take to a rooftop, they inevitably face com­par­isons with the Fab Four, even if their rooftop con­cert hap­pened first.

Before Paul McCart­ney sang “You’ve been play­ing on the roofs again” in an impro­vised “Get Back” in Lon­don, Jef­fer­son Air­plane “per­formed on a New York City rooftop in 1968,” writes Rajesh Kumar Jha at The Cit­i­zen.

“The con­text for the con­cert was pro­vid­ed by events like the assas­si­na­tion of Robert Kennedy and Mar­tin Luther King, and the accel­er­at­ing Viet­nam War.” The affair was orga­nized by Jean-Luc Godard, who “want­ed to film the rad­i­cal mood of the times under his 1 AM. Project, for which the Air­plane were best suit­ed.”

Grace Slick opened “The House at Pooneil Cor­ners” by shout­ing from the roof, “Hel­lo, New York! Wake up, you fuc&ers! Free music! Nice songs! Free love!” They made it 7 min­utes into a set before the police broke it up and made arrests. Godard end­ed up aban­don­ing the film, leav­ing it to D.A. Pen­nebak­er to fin­ish and release it as 1 P.M. Can we cred­it Godard for the rooftop con­cert as a thing? Or did he steal it from an even ear­li­er antecedent, Brazil­ian singer Rober­to Car­los, nick­named “the Elvis Pres­ley of Brazil”? Car­los staged a rooftop con­cert liv­ing room set below for his song “Quan­do” in 1967.

Who­ev­er invent­ed the rooftop con­cert, by the time U2 did it on an L.A. rooftop — legal­ly — play­ing “Where the Streets Have No Name” to kick off the Joshua Tree tour, the trick had become old hat. Acknowl­edg­ing their debt, Bono joked in an inter­view, “it’s not the first time we’ve ripped off the Bea­t­les.” Lit­tle did he know, per­haps, that they were also rip­ping off Jef­fer­son Air­plane, who them­selves were only imi­ta­tions, when it came to rooftop con­certs, of “the Frank Sina­tra of Latin Amer­i­ca.” Rober­to Car­los might be lip synch­ing, and seem­ing­ly sans audi­ence in his appear­ance on a São Paulo rooftop, but we must admit he set a styl­ish stan­dard for the genre of the rooftop con­cert all his own, two years before the Bea­t­les made it theirs.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch The Bea­t­les Per­form Their Famous Rooftop Con­cert: It Hap­pened 50 Years Ago Today (Jan­u­ary 30, 1969)

Jef­fer­son Air­plane Plays on a New York Rooftop; Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures It (1968)

Dick Clark Intro­duces Jef­fer­son Air­plane & the Sounds of Psy­che­del­ic San Fran­cis­co to Amer­i­ca: Yes Par­ents, You Should Be Afraid (1967)

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

To me Robert Johnson’s influ­ence — he was like a comet or a mete­or that came along and, BOOM, sud­den­ly he raised the ante, sud­den­ly you just had to aim that much high­er. 

As Kei­th Richards tells it, the first time he met Bri­an Jones, the two “went around to his apart­ment crash-pad,” where all Jones had was “a chair, a record play­er, and a few records, one of which was Robert John­son.” Jones put on the record, and the moment changed Richards’ life. He wasn’t so much inter­est­ed in the dev­il at the cross­roads. The first ques­tion he asked — “Who’s that?” — was fol­lowed by, “Yeah, but who’s the oth­er guy play­ing with him? That, too, was Robert John­son, play­ing rhythm with his thumb while bend­ing and slid­ing with his fin­gers, the fan­cy gui­tar work that earned him the envy of fel­low blues­men, and led to the rumor his skills came from hell.

“One of the sta­ples of Johnson’s style is his abil­i­ty to sound at times like two gui­tar play­ers,” writes Andy Ale­dort at Gui­tar World, “com­bin­ing dri­ving rhythms on the low­er strings with melod­ic fig­ures with the high­er strings.” Like every oth­er British gui­tarist of his gen­er­a­tion, Richards was enchant­ed. “I’ve nev­er heard any­body before or since use the form and bend it quite so much to make it work for him­self…. The gui­tar play­ing — it was almost like lis­ten­ing to Bach. You know, you think you’re get­ting a han­dle on play­ing the blues, and then you hear Robert John­son….”

The leg­endary blues­man became not only Richards’ hero, but also his teacher. “We all felt there was a cer­tain gap in our edu­ca­tion,” he tells The Guardian, “so we all scram­bled back to the 20s and 30s to fig­ure out how Char­lie Pat­ton did this, or Robert John­son, who, after all, was and still prob­a­bly is the supre­mo.”

Fig­ur­ing out what John­son did still con­sumes his biggest fans. Since his record­ings were inten­tion­al­ly sped up, inter­preters of his music must make their best guess­es about his tun­ings, which “can be bro­ken down into four cat­e­gories: stan­dard tun­ing, open G, open D and drop D,” Ale­dort notes. (There are oth­er argu­ments for alter­nate tun­ings.) Richards fre­quent­ly used open tun­ings like John­son’s before he learned 5‑string open G from Ry Cood­er, on songs, for exam­ple, like “Street Fight­ing Man.” At the top, he gives us his inter­pre­ta­tion of John­son’s “32–20 Blues,” in stan­dard tun­ing.

And just above, Keef offers a brief les­son on how to play the blues, mum­bling and growl­ing over a 12-bar vamp. The music took him over, he says, “it’s just some­thing you’ve got to do. You have no choice. I mean, we had oth­er things to do and every­thing, but once you got bit­ten by the bug, you had to find out how it’s done, and every three min­utes of sound­bite would be like an edu­ca­tion.”

What did their blues heroes think of the Stones? The band nev­er got to meet Robert John­son, of course, but he might have been appre­cia­tive. “I got the chance to sit around with Mud­dy Waters and Bob­by Wom­ack,” says Kei­th, “and they just want­ed to share ideas.” John­son didn’t leave much behind to learn from, but his keen­est stu­dents found exact­ly what they need­ed in his few haunt­ing record­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kei­th Richards Demon­strates His Famous 5‑String Tech­nique (Used on Clas­sic Stones Songs Like “Start Me Up,” “Honky Tonk Women” & More)

Cov­er­ing Robert Johnson’s Blues Became a Rite of Rock ‘n’ Roll Pas­sage: Hear Cov­ers by The Rolling Stones, Eric Clap­ton, Howl­in’ Wolf, Lucin­da Williams & More

Robert John­son Final­ly Gets an Obit­u­ary in The New York Times 81 Years After His Death

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