The Beatles - Get Back - Part 4

Probably my favorite line in the whole show.

John wanted to make Billy Preston the official fifth Beatle.

It's safe to say Jimmy Nichol was at the bottom of the Fifth Beatle candidates list. 

They didn't have to worry about Billy Preston eyeing all the women - he was gay, although very closeted at this time.

I didn't realize Ringo was a SONY camcorder pioneer.

That's a drink.

Although George does get credit for asking for a prepared piano for "For You Blue" - the "paper-prepared piano" was pioneered by my boy Erik Satie.

And he gets even more credit for sporting psychedelic proto-Uggs.

Oh look, it's Pattie Harrison for five seconds. She's the anti-Yoko.

The only Beatle woman who showed up even less often during the Beatles' recording sessions was Jane Asher. But Asher was history at this point. According to Paul's rebound girlfriend Francie Schwartz, Paul actually speculated that Jane had a guy on the side when she was on theater tour. If she did it would serve him right - Paul cheated on Jane constantly. 

I tracked down Schwartz's book with a chapter about her time with Paul. I will be writing about that soon. Beatle wives/girlfriends generally observed the law of omertà, and Jane was the most tight-lipped of all, refraining from saying a single word about her relationship with Paul ever.

Francie, however, spilled some strong tea.

Speaking of Jane, Paul gets no credit for mis-identifying Pattie as Cynthia in this video segment with Jane and Mike Love.

I did love the video clips from Rishikesh. Peter Jackson got cute, but it was great.

Get Back deep cut - what Paul is referring to here is "bagism" which started when John and Yoko gave a press conference from inside a bag. One of their more successful bits I think.

And of course...

The Beatles - Get Back - Part 3

Oh good, Yoko has some correspondence to read. I'm glad she has something to do,

I wouldn't want her to be bored in the middle of a Beatles recording session.

Very annoying op-ed in the NYTimes by Amanda Hess the other day. She admits Ono was rude - literally using the word rude, at one point, but Hess means rude in a good way.

She perches in reach of John Lennon, her bemused face oriented toward him like a plant growing to the light. When Paul McCartney starts to play “I’ve Got a Feeling,” Ono is there, stitching a furry object in her lap. When the band starts into “Don’t Let Me Down,” Ono is there, reading a newspaper. Lennon slips behind the piano and Ono is there, her head hovering above his shoulder. Later, when the group squeezes into a recording booth, Ono is there, wedged between Lennon and Ringo Starr, wordlessly unwrapping a piece of chewing gum and working it between Lennon’s fingers. When George Harrison walks off, briefly quitting the band, there is Ono, wailing inchoately into his microphone.

And in spite of Ono's obsessive, groupie-like behavior, Hess tries to argue that this makes Ono a feminist icon and a role model for Heather McCartney.

In Jackson’s film, you can see the seeds of this generational shift. One day, Eastman’s young daughter, Heather, a bob-haired munchkin, whirls aimlessly about the studio. Then she spies Ono singing. Heather observes her with scrunch-faced intensity, steps up to the microphone and wails.

I think the psychology here is more like, Heather figured, if a grown-ass woman could scream into a microphone, why couldn't she?

I do find some things to admire about Ono, but her behavior in the studio with the Beatles in 1968-69 was appalling, to be so oblivious to the feelings of other people in a room. 

Hess compares Ono's behavior to a performance piece, but there's a more likely, if prosaic explanation: Ono was from a family of wealthy Japanese aristocrats. The Beatles were working-class musicians. In the world that Yoko came from, you didn't worry about the feelings of the people you outranked. Why should she care if she was irritating the fuck out of everybody? 

A disruptive person in the studio was not only a sign of Ono's disrespect for the men in Lennon's band, it was a sign of Lennon's disrespect for the men in the band. Hess can call Yoko a feminist hero all she wants but Yoko was a tool that Lennon used to drive a wedge between himself and the band.

Speaking of George, the buzzkill is back. Between George and Yoko, it's a miracle the Beatles didn't end in Twickenham studios.

Luckily they had Ringo...

...and Billy Preston

Unlike Yoko, Linda was a fan of the Beatles.

Great shot in the film of all four Fabs

Lennon was mainly subdued in Twickenham studios, but once they got into the Apple basement, he perked up considerably and displayed his charisma and goofy, infectious sense of humor, the things that made him, in McCartney's words, "the boss," and which made all the difference in the sessions.

The Beatles - Get Back - part 2

This is the scene during which McCartney works out Get Back while Ringo and George yawn. Although to be fair, you could see Ringo tapping his foot.

A lot of drinking.

Ugh - Dick James. I don't think McCartney liked him at all. The conversations James has with the Beatles made him seem extremely crass, and later the Beatles made fun of him while jamming. McCartney responds to the comment in the picture below with something like "I don't think you paid enough."

Yes Yoko was annoying but this was one of the most charming moments in the original "Let It Be" movie - waltzing to "I Me Mine." Although I think George wrote that song as a message to the others.

Paul was a very fit 26-year-old. Here he jumps over a chair back, like it's nothing.

Nobody needs Eric Clapton.

No freaking body.

Curiously, in its first incarnation, Get Back was a protest song against, of all people, Enoch Powell. 

During the end of part 1, John and Paul got into it together, and I think this annoyed George as much as  anything else. When J&P get into a groove, there's nothing like it. I think George felt left out.

And he's off.

Buzz.

Kill.

The Beatles - Get Back - part 1

Yes of course I watched the Beatles Get Back and I have some thoughts about it.

They drank a lot of tea... and even more booze on the job.

Yes, Paul could be a pushy perfectionist.

But George could be such a buzzkill!

Beatles Get Back drinking game - drink every time George says something negative.

And Paul did his best to be self-aware and sympathetic. And the fact remains if he had not been so pushy, this film would probably not exist, and definitely not the rooftop concert.

Yes, Yoko did not break up the Beatles. But it is ridiculously rude to come to someone's job and sit right in the middle of their work space. And to make it worse, she would sometimes read while sitting there with the Beatles, as they were working on new songs. If you're going to read, you could go somewhere else, not demonstrate that you find what others are doing to be uninteresting. 

The other Beatles were undoubtedly annoyed by her - who wouldn't be in such a situation - but it would have been even worse had John not already brought her to the White Album sessions during 1968. But even though Yoko being there wasn't new, I think a lot of the Paul-George hostility was fueled in part by Yoko-induced irritation.

She didn't break up the Beatles but she was incredibly self-centered and presumptuous. 

Linda was not the most photogenic person, but she looked great in many shots in this film. And I really like what Peter Jackson did, interspersing footage of her taking photos and then showing the still photos of what she shot. And her presence was much less intrusive than Yoko's. 

This was really sweet, Ringo saying at this point "I'd watch an hour of him (Paul) just playing the piano."

Biiiiitch - they never going to Tripoli!

Some critics complained that Get Back had too many slow bits, but that's part of the charm. If you watch all three episodes back to back you come away with the feeling of having spent the entire day hanging out with the Beatles. What's not to like?

More thoughts soon.

Lettres de Degas à Suzanne Valadon

Drawing by Valadon

Edgar Degas, one of the greatest Impressionist painters was a huge fan of Suzanne Valadon's work as can be seen in his letters to her, which are actually pretty monotonous, as we shall see.

I was doing research for a play I am working on about the relationship between Valadon and Erik Satie (which I first wrote about on this blog nine years ago.) 

I had read that Degas wrote several letters to Valadon, but found only a few online, translated into English. That was not good enough, since I decided to put Degas in the play. I wanted to read them all.

Finally I found a copy of "Lettres de Degas," a collection by Marcel Guérin of Degas' personal and business correspondence, untranslated from the French.

Valadon was known to have had many lovers but there appears to have never been anything romantic between her and the decades-older Degas, and he never used the familiar "tu" with her, always the more formal "vous" so his interest in her appears to have been completely based on his love of her work, which is what he talks about, almost exclusively, in all his letters to her.

I personally believe Degas was gay or possibly asexual - he seems to have had even fewer romantic relationships than Satie, or at least none that were out in the open. I suspect that's where Degas' reputation as a misogynist comes from. He was generous in his praise of women artists and was a friend of Mary Cassatt - although if this collection is anything to go by, he never wrote a letter to her. 

I think his biographers traditionally used "misogynist" as a code word for "sexually uninterested in women."

Here are his letters, in the original French and then my translations.

Degas most often referred to Valadon as Maria, her birth name, rather than Suzanne, her nom de pinceau.

#1 Carte-lettre avec l'adresse: Mlle. Maria Valadon, 11, rue Girardon 

postmarked July 1894

Dimanche

Vous avez dû retirer vos dessins du Champ de Mars, illustre Valadon. Venez donc demain matin m'apporter le mien. Bartholomé vous aura écrit à propos d'un dessin qui lui a terriblement envie. Est-il servi?

Bien a vous.

DEGAS

----------------

Sunday

You must have withdrawn your drawings from the Champ de Mars, illustrious Valadon. So come tomorrow morning and bring me mine. Bartholomé will have written to you about a drawing that he desires terribly. Is it served?

Sincerely,

DEGAS

I had some trouble with "Est-il servi" - I knew the direct translation is "Is it served" but I suspect it's more like, "is it ready" - but I figured better be on the safe side and translate directly.

#2 Carte-lettre adressée a Mme Suzanne Valadon 2 ou 4 rue Cortot

postmarked November 1894

Jeudi

Terrible Maria, hier chez Lebarc de Bouteille, j'ai voulu acheter votre dessin excellent, mais il n'en savait pas le prix. Venez, si vous pouvez, demain matin vers 9 h. 1/2 avec votre carton pour voir si vous n'avez pas encore q. q. chose de mieux.

DEGAS

----------------

Thursday

Terrible Maria, yesterday at Lebarc de Bouteille's place, I wanted to buy your excellent drawing, but he did not know its price. Come if you can tomorrow morning around 9:30 with your box (of drawings) so I can see if you don't have something even better.

DEGAS

#3 Carte-lettre adressée a Mme Suzanne Valadon, 2 Rue Cortot

postmarked March 1895

Samedi

 Voila qu'il faut que j'aille demain à Passy, terrible Maria. Ne manquez pas l'autre Dimanche de venir, si vous pouvez, avec de nouveaux dessins. A present que vous allez bien, travailler dur. 

Amitiés.

DEGAS

----------------

Saturday

You see, I must go to Passy tomorrow, terrible Maria. Don't miss coming the other Sunday, if you can, with new drawings. Now that you are well, work hard.

Cordially,

DEGAS

#4  postmarked March 30, 1895

Vous voyez, ma pauvre Maria, que je ne puis encore grimper a vous voir. Zandomenaghi et Portier m'ont donne de vos nouvelles. J'en voudrais avoir par moi. Courage et soins.

DEGAS

----------------

You see, my poor Maria, that I cannot climb up to see you yet. Zandomeneghi and Portier have given me news of you. I would like to have some with me. Courage and care.

DEGAS

In the next one, Degas uses her hyphenated married name, since she had married the banker Paul Moussis.

#5 Carte-lettre adressée a Mme Valadon-Moussis, 12 Rue Cortot

The postmark is not visible

Janv. 8

J'ai été au lit et vous répond tard, terrible Maria. Ça vous arrivera-t-il ce petit merci pour vous bon souhaits et votre constant souvenir? Êtes-vous toujours rue Cortot?

Venez me voir avec des dessins. J'aime à voir ces gros traits si souples.

Bonne Année.

DEGAS

---------------

January 8

I have been in bed and answer you late, terrible Maria. Will you receive this little thank you for your good wishes and your constant remembrance? Are you still at rue Cortot?

Come see me with some drawings. I love to see those big flexible outlines.

Happy New Year

DEGAS

#6 Carte-lettre adressée a Mme Valadon-Moussis, 12 Rue Cortot

The postmark is not visible

Vendredi

Enfin je reponds, terrible Maria, a vos bons souhaits. C'est la grippe, c'est la bronchite etc. Etes-vous sur pied, de votre côté? Bonne annee et bons dessins que vous viendrez me montrer.

Dites-moi ce qu'on a fait du tableau. Si on y a touche, j'aimerais savoir ce qu'on lui aura fait.

Amicalement

DEGAS

----------------

Friday

Finally I respond, terrible Maria, to your good wishes. It's the flu, it's bronchitis etc. Are you on your feet? Happy New Year and good drawings that you will come and show me.

Tell me what you did with the painting. If you touched it, I'd like to know what you did to it.

Kindly 

DEGAS

#7 Carte-lettre adressée a Mme Valadon-Moussis, 18 route de St-Denis, Pierrefitte

No date, the postmark says 1897

Dimanche

Je vous remercie de vos souhaits, terrible Maria, d'autant plus que j'en ai besoin. On me dit que je suis toujours fragile, et gare au froid du cote gauche. Il faudra bien, malgré la maladie de votre fils, que vous vous remettiez a m'apporter des dessins méchants et souples.

DEGAS

----------------

Sunday

I thank you again for your wishes, terrible Maria, even more because I need them. They tell me I am always fragile, and beware of cold on the left side. In spite of the your son's illness, you must return to bringing me your wicked and supple drawings.

DEGAS

#8 Carte-lettre adressée a Mme Valadon-Moussis, 18 route de St-Denis, Pierrefitte

Postmark: January 1898

Samedi

J'ai trouve vos bon souhaits, terrible Maria, en revenant de chez Bartholome qui nous avait lu les votres a table, ou on les loue monta. Je ne vais pas trop mal, sauf les entrailles et garde souvent la maison. Vous me ferez plaisir et ne me dérangerez pas, comme vous craignez, en venant un jour a la fin de la journée, surtout avec un carton de beaux dessins.

DEGAS

----------------

Saturday

I rediscovered your wishes, terrible Maria, on returning from Barthélemy's who had read your wishes to us at the table, when they were brought up to him. I am not too bad, except my stomach and often stay home. You will make me happy and will not disturb me, as you fear, by coming one day at the end of the day, especially with a box of beautiful drawings.

DEGAS

#9 A Suzanne Valadon

No date

Mardi

Tous les ans je vois arriver, terrible Maria, cette écriture dessinée comme un scie. Mais je ne vois jamais, avec un carton sous le bras, arriver l'auteur. Et cependant je deviens bien vieux. Bonne année.

DEGAS

----------------

Tuesday

Every year I see this writing, drawn like a saw, arriving, terrible Maria. But I never see the author arriving with a box under her arm. And yet I am getting very old. Happy New Year.

DEGAS

  

Two Terry Gross interviews with Paul McCartney, 20 years apart

The first interview is from 2001. McCartney mentions he had "people to talk to" in his "large supportive family." Compared to Lennon's "small range" and "strange upbringing" which "didn't help his emotional profile."

A few years ago I observed that "Eleanor Rigby" was a real feat of emotional imagination by McCartney. He sang about middle-aged loneliness as a pop star in his twenties who had an upbringing in a large supportive family. 

I learned something new about Lennon/McCartney in this interview - Lennon cleared the line "the Walrus was Paul" from "Glass Onion" with McCartney. 

McCartney loses his shit, just a little bit, talking about the fact that his wife and his mother both got  cancer, at minute 42:00 - "... echos... I tried not to notice." 

This second interview is very recent - November 3, 2021. Gross is now 70, McCartney is 79. Gross's voice is pretty much unchanged from the 2001 interview. McCartney's is noticeably different. 

McCartney says his best song is "Here, There and Everywhere" but I think "I've Just Seen a Face" is his supreme masterpiece. 

There's quite a bit of discussion about the new Peter Jackson film made from the "Let It Be" sessions outtakes. McCartney likes it because he felt that the original Let It Be made him look like the bad guy - and so much that he came to believe it. But, he says, the new footage "proves... that we loved each other."

The best part was when Terry asks him about being almost 80 and he says: "I'm twenty-five, actually..." which is the exact age I think I am, in my head. Also great - they share a laugh and I don't think I've ever heard McCartney just laugh out loud like that. At minute 33:45 ish. Good stuff.

Another Terry Gross Fresh Air goody - her tribute to the Colbert Report with excerpts from several interviews with Colbert.

Día de Muertos para un Gato

My Día de los Muertos altar for Mr. Fuzz, who died a week ago tomorrow.

One of the things you're supposed to have on the altar is food, and there's a plate of treats on the left. Mr. Fuzz loved cat treats, especially in the last months of his life. But the parlor palm is also there as food, since Mr. Fuzz loved to munch on palm leaves. He was a very nice man.

Good night, Mr. Fuzz

He just made it to 18 years old two weeks ago. 

The doctor who recommended "humane euthanasia" said that is 106 in human years.

I got Mr. Fuzz & Miss Willow as kittens, around the same time. Miss Willow died two and a half years ago at age 15 and it was a little easier because she died in her sleep. I had to give the go-ahead to the vet to poison Mr. Fuzz. He had gone rapidly downhill after his birthday and the vet said he had probably had a stroke which is why his hind legs had become useless in the past few days. 

This morning he was listless, would not eat anything and broke my heart when he tried to get himself to his litter box by using his front legs, his hind ones dragging on the ground, the sound of his toenails scrapping the tile floor.

I knew it was coming. I had already had a couple of false alarms during the past week, when I thought he was dead. But it was still horrible when it happened, to see his furry little body, his lifeless head on that metal table, never to look at me, or pester me for treats or go for a walk or nibble on the plants or just be there when I came home, ever again. I cried for hours. I'm crying again as I write this.

If I wanted him to lie down on the pillow next to me while I was watching TV, I would pat the pillow and promise him I would say "he's a very nice man." He came to know that phrase, and it always got him to come and lie down. He would lie down on the pillow and I would pet him and say "he's a very nice maaaaaan... everybody loves him cause he's a very nice maaaaan..." until he got tired of it and decided to do something else.

In the killing room, right before the vet came in with the poison, I held him tight in his blanket and said to him over and over "he's a very nice man."

Good-night Mr. Fuzz, you were and always will be a very nice man.

Happy Birthday Mr. Fuzz!

Mr. Fuzz is 18 years young today!

Welcome to Autumn 2021: September 22 3:31 PM EDT

AUTUMN

by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
    Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
    With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
    And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
        To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

    With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
        For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
    Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
    Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
    Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
        Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
    Steady thy laden head across a brook;
    Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
        Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
    Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
    And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
    Among the river sallows, borne aloft

       Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
    Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
    The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
        And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

 

Advertisement by Erik Satie

This appeared in the November 24, 1888 edition of the weekly publication Le Chat Noir.

Vient de paraître 66, boulevard Magenta, la 3e gymnopédie, par Erik Satie. On ne saurait assez recommander au public musical cette œuvre essentiellement artistique, qui passe, à juste titre, pour l'une des plus belles du siècle qui a vu naître ce malheureux monsieur.

Translation:

Just published 66, boulevard Magenta, la 3e gymnopédie, by Erik Satie. We cannot recommend enough to the musical public this essentially artistic work, which passes, rightly, for one of the most beautiful of the century which saw the birth of this unfortunate man.

The page it comes from - it's in the bottom-right corner.

In memory of Earl Rich

I finally got around to donating to the Cousteau Society

Photo shared on Facebook

Paul McCartney's Facebook account shared this photo, taken by Linda in 1969. 

Such a beautiful man. Oof.

McCartney 3, 2, 1

Of course I had to watch the Hulu documentary McCartney 3,2,1. One of the great aspects of the show is that it reveals how much the Beatles were influence by Black American musicians.

I won't deny though that I was bitterly disappointed they didn't talk about McCartney's most perfect masterpiece, in my opinion, "I've Just Seen a Face."

This YouTuber covers it. But it's not the same. 

And such a beautiful man. Oof.