176 Big Thinkers Answer the Question: What Scientific Idea is Ready to Be Dead and Buried?

in Science | January 19th, 2014

It’s a new year, which means it’s time for the Edge.org to pose its annu­al ques­tion to some of the world’s finest minds. The 2014 edi­tion asks the ques­tion, “What Sci­en­tif­ic Idea is Ready for Retire­ment?” The ques­tion came pref­aced by this thought:

Sci­ence advances by dis­cov­er­ing new things and devel­op­ing new ideas. Few tru­ly new ideas are devel­oped with­out aban­don­ing old ones first. As the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Max Planck (1858–1947) not­ed, “A new sci­en­tif­ic truth does not tri­umph by con­vinc­ing its oppo­nents and mak­ing them see the light, but rather because its oppo­nents even­tu­al­ly die, and a new gen­er­a­tion grows up that is famil­iar with it.” In oth­er words, sci­ence advances by a series of funer­als. Why wait that long?

So what estab­lished sci­en­tif­ic idea is ready to be moved aside so that sci­ence can advance? The replies — 176 in total — fea­ture thoughts by Steven Pinker, Kevin Kel­ly, Sher­ry Turkle, Robert Sapol­sky, and Daniel Den­nett, among oth­ers. If you’re will­ing to ven­ture down the rab­bit hole, you can access the com­plete col­lec­tion of respons­es here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

Philoso­pher Daniel Den­nett Presents Sev­en Tools For Crit­i­cal Think­ing

New Ani­ma­tion Explains Sher­ry Turkle’s The­o­ries on Why Social Media Makes Us Lone­ly

Neil Young Performs Classic Songs in 1971 Concert: “Old Man,” “Heart of Gold” & More

in Music | January 18th, 2014

A the­o­ry of mer­it states that Neil Young rein­vents him­self every 10 years or so, but the work in-between isn’t always pret­ty. Yet for an artist with a some­what lim­it­ed range, he remains one of the most inter­est­ing singers and song­writ­ers in rock and roll well over four decades after his start. Young once played gui­tar in a garage band with Rick James in 1965 called the Mynah Birds; released a sur­pris­ing­ly lis­ten­able elec­tro album in 1982 com­plete with Gior­gio Morodor-like synths and vocoders; and last year, record­ed a col­lec­tion of folk stan­dards like “Oh, Susan­na” and “She’ll Be Com­ing ‘Round the Moun­tain” in the style of 1979’s Rust Nev­er Sleeps (an album, Paul Nel­son wrote at the time, that “burns [rock & roll] to the ground”). In-between the styl­is­tic leaps and inno­va­tions are some painful­ly mediocre albums and some that define, or rather rede­fine, gen­res. One of the lat­ter, Young’s 1972 Har­vest picked up and refined the folk-rock of his first band Buf­fa­lo Springfield’s self-titled 1966 debut—an album wide­ly cred­it­ed with the cre­ation of folk-rock.

Har­vest—by any account one of Young’s best albums and the high­est-sell­ing of ’72—produced “Heart of Gold,” “Old Man,” and, indi­rect­ly led to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alaba­ma” (writ­ten in response to Har­vest’s anti-seg­re­ga­tion rock­er, “Alaba­ma”). It’s a sur­pris­ing­ly qui­et album for the impact it’s had, and it set the stan­dard for lat­er folk-acoustic Young albums like 1992’s Har­vest Moon and 2000’s Sil­ver & Gold. And as much as Young can destroy a venue with a full-on elec­tric attack (even now!), he can mes­mer­ize an audi­ence with just an acoustic gui­tar, piano, har­mon­i­ca, and casu­al ban­ter, even while play­ing a suite of songs they’d nev­er heard before. See him do so above in a 1971 con­cert live at the BBC’s Shep­herds Bush Empire The­atre. Young plays four songs that would appear on Har­vest: “Out on the Week­end,” “Old Man,” “Heart of Gold,” and “A Man Needs a Maid.” He also does “Jour­ney Through the Past” and “Love in Mind,” which would appear two years lat­er on the bleak 1973 Time Fades Away, and “Don’t Let it Bring You Down,” a song from 1970’s bril­liant After the Gold Rush. Young per­formed the last song, “Dance Dance Dance,” with Cros­by, Stills, and Nash, but it went unre­leased in a stu­dio ver­sion until the 2009 box set The Archives, Vol­ume 1: 1963–1972.

Some fur­ther evi­dence of Young’s con­tin­ued rel­e­vance: just last week, he per­formed a series of shows at Carnegie Hall, and audi­ence mem­bers took video of sev­er­al songs, includ­ing the title track to Har­vest (above). It’s a song Young almost nev­er played live until 2007. Onstage, alone, with acoustic and harp, he is still, forty-three years lat­er, a mes­mer­iz­ing pres­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Great Sto­ry: How Neil Young Intro­duced His Clas­sic 1972 Album Har­vest to Gra­ham Nash

‘The Nee­dle and the Dam­age Done’: Neil Young Plays Two Songs on The John­ny Cash Show, 1971

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage

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

Hunter S. Thompson’s Personal Hangover Cure (and the Real Science of Hangovers)

in Food & Drink, Letters | January 18th, 2014

Last year, we brought you a descrip­tion of Hunter S. Thompson’s dai­ly drug and alco­hol reg­i­men, con­sist­ing of fright­en­ing amounts of cocaine and liquor, sup­plant­ed by the occa­sion­al cup of cof­fee or acid tab. While the sto­ry may be apoc­ryphal, Thomp­son was no dilet­tante when it came to psy­choac­tive sub­stances. The father of gonzo jour­nal­ism bur­nished his image as a for­mi­da­ble sub­stance user in the open­ing lines of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971):

The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police nar­cotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy—five pel­lets of mesca­line, five sheets of high—powered blot­ter acid, a salt shak­er half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi—colored uppers, down­ers, scream­ers, laugh­ers and also a quart of tequi­la, a quart of rum, a case of Bud­weis­er, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. All this had been round­ed up the night before, in a fren­zy of high—speed dri­ving all over Los Ange­les County—from Topan­ga to Watts, we picked up every­thing we could get our hands on. Not that we need­ed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a seri­ous drug col­lec­tion, the ten­den­cy is to push it as far as you can.

It’s safe to say that if you were to con­sult any­one about a hang­over fix, Thomp­son would be a good can­di­date for coun­sel. Luck­i­ly, the author left us with a guide. In 2011, Play­boy released a com­pendi­um of its 1960s and 1970s cor­re­spon­dences with Thomp­son. Most were dis­ap­point­ing­ly pro­sa­ic, but among the dross was a hur­ried­ly scrib­bled note on the top­ic of hang­over cures:

P.S. — inre: Oui’s request for “my hang­over cure” — it’s 12 amyl nitrites (one box), in con­junc­tion with as many beers as nec­es­sary.

OK H

If a hair of the dog approach doesn’t quite suit you, or if Thompson’s recipe exceeds your ini­tial con­sump­tion, I sug­gest a bot­tle of sports drink at the tail end of a big night to replen­ish elec­trolytes. Still, accord­ing YouTube’s SciShow, which does a fan­tas­tic job of elu­ci­dat­ing the chem­i­cal process­es behind all the headaches and room spins, there’s only one fool­proof method:

As a PSA to stave off angry com­ments, a spoil­er alert: SciShow’s rec­om­men­da­tion is on par with the absti­nence mod­el of birth con­trol: just don’t do it, and you’ll be fine.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Calls Tech Sup­port, Unleash­es a Tirade Full of Fear and Loathing (NSFW)

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son (NSFW)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Remem­bers Jim­my Carter’s Cap­ti­vat­ing Bob Dylan Speech (1974)

Quentin Tarantino Lists His Favorite Records: Bob Dylan, Freda Payne, Phil Ochs and More

in Film, Music | January 17th, 2014

Quentin Taran­ti­no cares about music, as you can tell from watch­ing any of his films, from his max­i­mal­ly dis­com­fit­ing use of Steal­ers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Mid­dle with You” in Reser­voir Dogs on out. A Tele­graph arti­cle on that song’s writer Ger­ry Raf­fer­ty describes it as “writ­ten as a par­o­dy of Bob Dylan’s para­noia,” “lit­tle more than a joke but with a catchy pop arrange­ment” that unex­pect­ed­ly sold more than a mil­lion copies. If Taran­ti­no has a fas­ci­na­tion with Dylan par­o­dies, then he has an even deep­er fas­ci­na­tion with the real thing, as revealed in a post on his ten favorite records from Uncut’s Michael Bon­ner. He pulled Taran­ti­no’s selec­tions and com­ments from an inter­view he con­duct­ed with the direc­tor back around the time of Pulp Fic­tion. Above, you can watch Dylan play “Tan­gled Up in Blue,” which Taran­ti­no calls his “all-time favorite song,” “one of those songs where the lyrics are ambigu­ous you can actu­al­ly write the song your­self.” (Hear the orig­i­nal record­ing here.)

Just above, we have Fre­da Payne per­form­ing “Band of Gold,” anoth­er of Taran­ti­no’s choice cuts, on Soul Train in 1970. “This is just so cool,” he says. “It’s a com­bi­na­tion of the way it’s pro­duced, the cool pop/R&B sound, and Freda’s voice. Its kin­da kitschy in a way – y’know, it’s got a real­ly up-tem­po tune – and, the first few times I heard it, I was, like, total­ly into the cool­ness of the song. It was only on the third or fourth lis­ten I realised the lyrics were so fuck­ing heart­break­ing.” Below you’ll find a cut from Phil Ochs’ I Ain’t March­ing Any­more, which Taran­ti­no calls “one of my favorite protest/folk albums. While Dylan was a poet Ochs was a musi­cal jour­nal­ist: he was a chron­i­cler of his time, filled with humor and com­pas­sion. He’d write songs which would seem very black and white, and then, in the last verse, he’d say some­thing which, like, com­plete­ly shat­tered you.” This par­tic­u­lar song, “Here’s To The State of Mis­sis­sip­pi,” he con­sid­ers “every­thing the movie Mis­sis­sip­pi Burn­ing should have been.”

In Bon­ner’s Uncut post, you can read Taran­ti­no’s fur­ther thoughts on Bob Dylan, his dec­la­ra­tion of Elvis’ finest era, and his film scores of choice. And speak­ing of things cin­e­mat­ic, see also our lists of Taran­ti­no’s favorite films since 1992, his ten favorite films of last year, and what he deems the twelve great­est films of all time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Imper­son­ates His Idol, Elvis Pres­ley

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

The Rolling Stones at 50: Mick, Kei­th, Char­lie & Ron­nie Revis­it Their Favorite Songs

Mick Jones Plays Three Favorite Songs by The Clash at the Library

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Fyodor Dostoevsky Draws Elaborate Doodles In His Manuscripts

in Art, Literature | January 17th, 2014

Few would argue against the claim that Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky, author of such bywords for lit­er­ary weight­i­ness as Crime and Pun­ish­ment, The Idiot, and The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov, mas­tered the nov­el, even by the for­mi­da­ble stan­dards of 19th-cen­tu­ry Rus­sia. But if you look into his papers, you’ll find that he also had an intrigu­ing way with pen and ink out­side the realm of let­ters — or, if you like, deep inside the realm of let­ters, since to see draw­ings by Dos­to­evsky, you actu­al­ly have to look with­in the man­u­scripts of his nov­els.

Above, we have a page from Crime and Pun­ish­ment into which a pair of solemn faces (not that their mood will sur­prise enthu­si­asts of Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture) found their way. Just below, you’ll find exam­ples from the same man­u­script of his pen turn­ing toward the orna­men­tal and archi­tec­tur­al while he “cre­at­ed his fic­tion step by step as he lived, read, remem­bered, reprocessed and wrote,” as the exhi­bi­tion of “Dos­toyevsky’s Doo­dles” at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty’s Har­ri­man Insti­tute of Russ­ian, Eurasian, and East Euro­pean Stud­ies put it.

Accord­ing to the exhi­bi­tion descrip­tion, Dos­to­evsky’s notes to him­self “rep­re­sent that key moment when the accu­mu­lat­ed pro­to-nov­el crys­tal­lized into a text. Like many of us, Dos­to­evsky doo­dled hard­est when the words came slow­est.” Some of Dos­to­evsky’s char­ac­ter descrip­tions, argues schol­ar Kon­stan­tin Barsht, “are actu­al­ly the descrip­tions of doo­dled por­traits he kept rework­ing until they were right.” He did­n’t just do so dur­ing the writ­ing of Crime and Pun­ish­ment, either; below we have a page of The Dev­ils that com­bines the human, the archi­tec­tur­al, and the cal­li­graph­ic, appar­ent­ly the three main avenues through which Dos­to­evsky pur­sued the doo­dler’s art.

Even if you would per­son­al­ly argue against his claim to great­ness (and thus side with his coun­try­man, col­league in lit­er­a­ture, and fel­low part-time artist Vladimir Nabokov, who found him a “mediocre” writer giv­en to “waste­lands of lit­er­ary plat­i­tudes”), sure­ly you can enjoy the charge of pure cre­ation you feel from wit­ness­ing his tex­tu­al mind inter­act with his visu­al one. Works by Dos­to­evsky can be found in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vir­ginia Woolf Loved Dos­to­evsky, Oscar Wilde Some­times Despised Dick­ens & Oth­er Gos­sip from The Read­ing Expe­ri­ence Data­base

Albert Camus Talks About Adapt­ing Dos­toyevsky for the The­atre, 1959

Crime and Pun­ish­ment by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky Told in a Beau­ti­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Film by Piotr Dumala

Nabokov Makes Edi­to­r­i­al Improve­ments to Kafka’s “The Meta­mor­pho­sis”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Student Rickrolls Teacher By Sneaking Rick Astley Lyrics into Quantum Physics Paper

in Comedy, Physics | January 17th, 2014

Here’s a fun­ny lit­tle vari­a­tion on “rick­rolling,” a term some of our read­ers might not be famil­iar with. So let’s quick­ly refer you to Wikipedia:

Rick­rolling is an Inter­net meme involv­ing the music video for the 1987 Rick Ast­ley song “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up”. The meme is a bait and switch; a per­son pro­vides a hyper­link which is seem­ing­ly rel­e­vant to the top­ic at hand, but actu­al­ly leads to Ast­ley’s video. The link can be masked or obfus­cat­ed in some man­ner so that the user can­not deter­mine the true des­ti­na­tion of the link with­out click­ing. Peo­ple led to the music video are said to have been rick­rolled. Rick­rolling has extend­ed beyond web links to play­ing the video or song dis­rup­tive­ly in oth­er sit­u­a­tions, includ­ing pub­lic places, such as a live appear­ance of Ast­ley him­self in the 2008 Macy’s Thanks­giv­ing Day Parade in New York. The meme helped to revive Ast­ley’s career.

Now, in anoth­er sign that rick­rolling has gone beyond the web, we have above a snap­shot of a quan­tum physics writ­ten by Sairam Gud­i­s­e­va, a stu­dent at (we believe) White Sta­tion High School in Ten­nessee. As the snap­shot shows, Gud­i­s­e­va man­aged to run the lyrics of “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up” down the left mar­gin of the page … while still keep­ing his ideas flow­ing. Well done, young man. You can see a full page of his essay here.

By the way, this is not the first time some lev­i­ty has been intro­duced to a physic paper. You might want to refer back to our 2012 post, Phys­i­cal Attrac­tion: Mar­riage Pro­pos­al Comes in the Form of a Physics Paper.

via i09

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Physics: Free Online Cours­es (Part of our col­lec­tion of 825 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties)

Neil deGrasse Tyson Talks Aster­oid Physics & “Non New­ton­ian Solids” with Inspir­ing 9‑Year-Old Stu­dent

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Explains Rel­a­tiv­i­ty to Albert Ein­stein (in a Nico­las Roeg Movie)

The Most “Intel­lec­tu­al Jokes”: Our Favorite Open Cul­ture Read­er Sub­mis­sions

View the Passport Photos of F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf & Other Cultural Icons

in Travel | January 16th, 2014

Click images to enlarge.

If you’ve had the for­tune of trav­el­ling for leisure, you know that there are three types of memen­toes that unfail­ing­ly elic­it pangs of nos­tal­gia. The first are pho­tographs. The sec­ond are the run­ning com­men­taries we write down in jour­nals and blogs, doc­u­ment­ing the var­i­ous impres­sions, thoughts, and minu­ti­ae we expe­ri­ence. The third are pass­ports. When brim­ming with exit stamps and tat­tered visas, pass­ports are the mark of a world­ly trav­eller: a grimy, well-worn sign to fel­low hos­tel guests that you’re want­ed com­pa­ny when the time comes to com­pare sto­ries.

Today, we bring you sev­er­al pass­port scans from a num­ber of the 20^th century’s best-known cul­tur­al fig­ures. Above, you can see a trav­el doc­u­ment belong­ing to Vir­ginia Woolf, who received a 1923 stamp from the For­eign Office. Below we have John Lennon’s entry card into the U.S., which the Bea­t­le received after a bat­tle for per­ma­nent res­i­den­cy that last­ed for sev­er­al years.

Then Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Depart­ment of Defense-issued ID card, under the name of Nor­ma Jean DiMag­gio. Fur­ther down are the pass­port pho­tos of writ­ers James Joyce and F. Scott Fitzger­ald, accom­pa­nied by their respec­tive fam­i­lies, who were trav­el­ling under the same doc­u­ments. Last­ly, we present to you the most impres­sive­ly dec­o­rat­ed pass­port pages of all, belong­ing to Ella Fitzger­ald:

John Lennon

Mar­i­lyn

James Joyce and Fam­i­ly

The Fitzger­alds

Ella Fitzger­ald

For more icon­ic pass­port pho­tos, head to Vintage.es or The Untrav­elled Paths blog.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Footage of Scott and Zel­da Fitzger­ald From the 1920s

Ella Fitzger­ald Sings ‘Sum­mer­time’ by George Gersh­win, Berlin 1968

James Joyce Plays the Gui­tar, 1915

Six Post­cards From Famous Writ­ers: Hem­ing­way, Kaf­ka, Ker­ouac & More

Quentin Tarantino Impersonates His Idol, Elvis Presley

in Film | January 16th, 2014

Quentin Taran­ti­no once told an inter­view­er (Howard Stern, if you must know) about the Elvis phase he went through dur­ing his late teenage years. “When I was about eigh­teen-years-old, I got waaaay into rock­a­bil­ly music.” “I was like the sec­ond com­ing of Elvis Pres­ley. I dyed my hair black. I wore it in a big ole pom­padour.” And he put Elvis imper­son­ation on his resume. In 1988, just a year after he shot his first film, My Best Friend’s Birth­day (watch the sur­viv­ing parts here), the still-unknown auteur land­ed a cameo appear­ance on an episode of The Gold­en Girls. He described the appear­ance in a 1994 inter­view with Play­boy:

Well, it was kind of a high point because it was one of the few times that I actu­al­ly got hired for a job. I was one of 12 Elvis imper­son­ators, real­ly just a glo­ri­fied extra. For some rea­son they had us sing Don Ho’s Hawai­ian Love Chant. All the oth­er Elvis imper­son­ators wore Vegas-style jump­suits. But I wore my own clothes,because I was, like, the Sun Records Elvis. I was the hill­bil­ly cat Elvis. I was the real Elvis; every­one else was Elvis after he sold out.

Taran­ti­no appears in the back row, dead cen­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Quentin Taran­ti­no Tells You About The Actors & Direc­tors Who Pro­vid­ed the Inspi­ra­tion for “Reser­voir Dogs”

The Pow­er of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

625 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Read Beethoven’s Lengthy Love Letter to His Mysterious “Immortal Beloved” (1812)

in Music | January 16th, 2014

If you’ve ever seen the 1994 fea­ture film where Gary Old­man plays Lud­wig van Beethoven, you know the sig­nif­i­cance of the words “Immor­tal Beloved” from which it takes its title. But have you seen the actu­al arti­fact that inspired it? “Around 1812 Beethoven wrote a long let­ter (10 pages) to a woman who he was obvi­ous­ly quite tak­en with,” says the blog LvB and More. “Sad­ly we will nev­er know for cer­tain who it was. How­ev­er the let­ter itself was dis­cov­ered after Beethoven’s death in a secret draw­er where he also kept the Heili­gen­stadt Tes­ta­ment, some sav­ings and some pic­tures.” There you can find images of the let­ter in ques­tion (the first two pages appear above, the sec­ond two below) and a trans­la­tion from LVBeethoven.com, faith­ful right down to the com­poser’s line breaks, which begins as fol­lows:

July 6
In the morn­ing-

My angel, my all
my self — only a few
words today, and indeed with pen­cil
(with yours)
only tomor­row is my lodg­ing pos­i­tive­ly fixed
what a worth­less waste
of time on such — why
this deep grief, where
neces­si­ty speaks -
can our love exist but
by sac­ri­fices
by not demand­ing every­thing
can you change it, that you
not com­plete­ly mine. I am not
com­plete­ly yours — Oh God

Despite the best efforts of Beethoven’s biog­ra­phers (and of the wide­ly dis­put­ed the­o­ry on which the afore­men­tioned movie oper­ates), igno­rant we remain of the iden­ti­ty of the Immor­tal Beloved to whom Beethoven addressed such words of pas­sion. Still, don’t let that stop you from draw­ing your own con­clu­sions, such as you can from exam­i­na­tion of the pages them­selves, also avail­able for perusal at Fu$k Yeah Man­u­scripts. You may remem­ber them from our post on the draw­ings Dos­toyevsky did as he wrote his nov­els, and from there you can draw the cor­rect con­clu­sion that the site offers a deep well of intrigu­ing works in progress, pieces of cor­re­spon­dence, cris de coeur, and var­i­ous com­bi­na­tions there­of.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Slavoj Žižek Exam­ines the Per­verse Ide­ol­o­gy of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy

Beethoven’s Ode to Joy Played With 167 Theremins Placed Inside Matryosh­ka Dolls in Japan

Richard Feynman’s Let­ter to His Depart­ed Wife: “You, Dead, Are So Much Bet­ter Than Any­one Else Alive” (1946)

James Joyce’s “Dirty Let­ters” to His Wife (1909)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

In 1968, Artist Imagines What John, Paul, George & Ringo Will Look Like When They’re 64

in Art, Music | January 15th, 2014

When I get old­er los­ing my hair,
Many years from now,
Will you still be send­ing me a valen­tine
Birth­day greet­ings bot­tle of wine?

Paul McCart­ney’s wist­ful song “When I’m Six­ty-Four” was released on the Bea­t­les’ 1967 album Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. The next year, an artist named Michael Leonard tried to imag­ine what the young musi­cians might look like four decades lat­er — on their 64th birth­days. We nev­er got a chance to fig­ure out whether he sized up Lennon and Har­ri­son cor­rect­ly. But we know that Paul, even at 71 today, nev­er got jow­ly. And Ringo nev­er went the suit route. You can see for your­self when the two per­form at the Gram­mys on Jan­u­ary 26.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day. 

Relat­ed con­tent 

Flash­mob Per­forms The Bea­t­les’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ in Madrid Unem­ploy­ment Office

Eric Clapton’s Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Track From the Clas­sic Bea­t­les Song, ‘While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps’ (1968)

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)