LENNONYC : JOHN LENNON and JACK DOUGLAS, MUSIC PRODUCER ON ELVIS and the EARLY ROCK AND ROLLERS

LENNONYC is a documentary put out by PBS : AMERICAN MASTERS

Jack Douglas was the music producer of Lennon's album DOUBLE FANTASY.  In this film, he talks about the song "Starting Over" and John talks about that time in his life when he was reaching back to his roots in early Rock and Roll.

JACK :  "He's doing his Elvis Impersonation... the Elvis intonation.  It brought back the feeling of early Rock and Roll."

JOHN :  "It was tongue and cheek Elvis.  It was John Lennon - American Rock and Roll - not competing but enjoying it."

John Lennon goes on to mention Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly, and Elvis Presley as inspirations to him as a developing musician.

LENNONYC (LENNON NEW YORK CITY) DVD : (JUST LIKE) STARTING OVER

LENNONYC is an American Masters Series DVD which could not have been made without the cooperation of Yoko Ono, and this film did give me a different impression of John Lennon, but having read around the Beatles and John Lennon and Yoko Ono,  I felt also that it had been edited in such a way as to admit previous controversies but also get past them quickly.  All film makers have a point of view so I should not be surprised that this one proposed that at the time of his death on December 8, 1980, John had found personal happiness and career success.

I'm writing about this video DVD here at WES BRYAN- MY LIFE IN MUSIC  because of the coverage of John's music making with Phil Spector as Producer in Los Angeles, and because John talks about how the Beatles used to cover early rock and roll "classics" in the studio when they need to relax, take a break, or get inspiration.  He also references  Elvis Presley in the section that involves his rockabilly song STARTING OVER .

  To me this song has Beatlesque aspects as well as reminding me of some Electric Light Orchestra recordings.  Christine

(421) P.J. PROBY 1965 : RECORDING LENNON-MC CARTNEY SONGS WITH GEORGE MARTIN AS PRODUCER

As some of you know, P.J. Proby was up for some serious charges in Great Britain, but in March 2012 he walked free, acquitted of benefit fraud - all 9 counts. So on this post, because we've linked to his official sites in the past and they're always on our sidebar for you to link to, we're going to link to a news article about this legal issue. Friends of P.J.'s here in the United States were concerned but never lost faith that he would walk free and are hoping to hear from him soon.

On this YouTube video, of the song "That Means A Lot," we see a label that has many names familiar to this blog. P.J. was certainly a big part of the American Invasion of Britain. In fact, he loved the British as much as they loved him, which is why he went to live there and the whole legal issue was so upsetting.

"That Means a Lot," is written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, The Beatles, who were almost everyone's biggest chart competition in '65. The Producer is George Martin, the Beatle's producer, and this is on Liberty Records, the small record label that we've blogged about a lot.

To quote the article we've linked to: "In a statement read by his solicitor, Chris Hilton, PJ Proby said: "For the last four years I have lived in fear of becoming homeless - because my housing benefit was cut off - and of being wrongly sent to prison for a crime I never committed."

BUDDY HOLLY : THOSE BIG GLASSES HAD NEARSIGHTED PEOPLE EVERYWHERE PUTTING THEIR GLASSES BACK ON!

BUDDY HOLLY

JOHN LENNON. the Beatle, PUT HIS GLASSES BACK ON... Today these glasses that Buddy Holly is seen wearing in a famous publicity photo are considered "classic cool." I see the same style on men, young and old, hipster and preppy, everywhere I go.

I'm the first to get the new book on John Lennon - The Man, The Myth, the Music - The Definitive Life by Tim Riley, published by Hyperion - New York, and so far I think this is the best book on Lennon or the Beatles I've ever read. You bet I'll be excerpting from it. Yes, there is a lot about the American Invasion of Britain! in this book... Christine Trzyna

TIM RILEY'S JOHN LENNON : THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE MUSIC - THE DEFINITIVE LIFE

...Early in 1959, after two weeks sleeping on subzero night treks in their broken-down tour bus, Buddy Holly chartered a plane and, along with JP Richardson ("the Big Bopper") and Ritchie Valens, raced ahead from Mason City, Iowa, to the Winter Dance party tour's next gig, in Moorhead, Minnesota. Richardson had caught a nasty flu and had begged his seat off Holly's base player, Waylon Jennings. "Well, I hope your ol' bus freezes up," Holly told Jennnings. "Well, I hope your ol' plane crashes," Jennings shot back. When the plane went down shortly after takeoff in the early hours of February 3, everyone on board perished. Holly's "Heartbeat" had just entered the British charts...

From LENNON, The Man, the Myth, The Music - The Definitive Life by TIME RILEY. Hyperion New York is the publisher C 2011 Tim Riley.

PSYCHIC JOHN EDWARD ON CARL PERKINS, PAUL MCCARTNEY and JOHN LENNON : DECEMBER 8 1980 JOHN LENNON'S DEATH

page 151 of CROSSING OVER by John Edward

(CT: It's 1981 and Paul McCartney has sent Carl Perkins a ticket to fly to the Caribbean where he and George Martin have a recording studio. Carl plays guitar on the "Tug of War" album and spends eight days with Paul and Linda McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and Beatles' producer George Martin.)

"As the time was drawing near for me to go home, I was sitting out on the patio, Carl told Dominic Ambrosio and his camera, his guitar sitting on his lap and looking like a part of him.

(Carl speaking)... "Sometimes I can sing it but I can't say it, and that night before, I wrote a song. And in the morning, I went down to the studio and said to Paul and Linda, 'I'm not good at saying good-bye, but I wrote this song last night, and I want to play it for you.' It was called 'My Old Friend'..."

Carl sang it now for Dominic with the extra emotional emphasis on the refrain: My old friend, won't you think about me every now and then...

"Well halfway through the song, I see Paul is really crying, tears flowing down his face," Carl said. "And he stepped outside. I said to Linda, 'Linda, I didn't mean to upset him.' She says, 'Carl Perkins, how did you know?' I said, 'Darlin', I don't know what yer talkin' about. How did I know what?"

John Lennon had been killed only months before outside his apart met building, the Dakota in New York. Linda explained that, although it wasn't publicly known, only days before his death, she and Paul had visited John and Yoga at the Dakota. At the end of the visit, as they were saying good-bye, John said to Paul, "Think of me every now and then, my old friend."

"Linda put her arms around me, :" Carl said now on a cold January day in Tennessee sixteen years later, "and she said, "Thank you, Carl, he needed that."

BEATLES COVER JOHNNY BURNETTE'S LONESOME TEARS IN MY EYES (Live at the BBC)

This is a find! The Beatles live on the BBC radio singing a Johnny Burnett song, July 1963... You know one of the themes of this blog is THE AMERICAN INVASION OF BRITAIN!

Quote from JOHN by CYNTHIA LENNON - John Winston Ono Lennon (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980)

From JOHN by Cynthia Lennon C 2005 author
page 49

"John Loved Buddy Holly and the Crickets, so they toyed with insect names. It was John who came up with Beetles. He changed it to The Beatles because he said if you turned it around it was "les beat," which sounded French and cool. They settled on Silver Beetles."

Cynthia Lennon

1962 PHIL SPECTOR's TO KNOW HER IS TO LOVE HER THE BEATLES

The "Silver Beatles" recorded the Teddy Bear's hit "To Know Her Is To Love Her." That's John Lennon singing...

The Teddy Bears original

From JOHN LENNON by PHILIP NORMAN : ROULETTE RECORDS's MORRIS LEVY

quotes from pages 745-746 hardback edition of Philip Norman's JOHN LENNON biography...

Christine Trzyna here.

In WES BRYAN - MY LIFE IN MUSIC, we've mentioned a number of early rock and roll managers. One of them is Morris Levy, who both Wes Bryan and Buddy Knox had dealings with in the late 1950's and early 1960's. At they time he was the Roulette Records guy. In this book we learn that Morris Levy also had a deal with John Lennon. In 1975 John still owed Morris an album.

"To show that he and his band were not slipping back into old L.A. ways, he (John Lennon) broke an iron rule and sent Levy several tracks in a rough mix. But, tired of waiting around for his royalty cut, the Octopus issued the unfinished tracks as an album on his own Adam VIII label, titling it Roots:John Lennon Sings the Great Rock & Roll Hits, jacketing it with a garish head shot from the Let it Be Era and marketing it as a cheap-shot TV special offer. The result was a second round of litigating, with Levy suing John for defaulting on the judgement from their earlier court case and John counter suing for release of inferior product under his name without his authorization.'

"... On the witness stand, according to Bob Gruen, "John had to explain why a rough-mix tape was not meant to be sold on the market, and he ...described the difference between that and a final mix and how it was made.... He was incredibly clear and coherent and I remember thinking, if I was a musician this was the best description I could possible have."

John Lennon was awarded more than $144,700 and succeeded in having the Adam VIII compilation withdrawn from sale.

"Rush released before too many TV viewers could send their money to Morris Levy, John's fully mixed album was entitled simply Rock and Roll. Buyers who were expecting a straight nostalgia trip in the current mode were in for a surprise. Some of the tracks, like Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sure" and gene Vincents "Be Bop-a Lula," certainly were just as he used to play them with the Quarrymen and first -draft Beatles in Liverpool and Hamburg. Others, like Bobby Freeman's "Do you Want to Dance?" and Larry Williams, "Bony Maronie" were slowed down almost beyond recognition; Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen," seemed to have collided with the Coasters' "Little Egypt," while "You Cant' Catch Me" sounded like the Beatles "Come Together"....

Quote from JOHN by CYNTHIA LENNON

This excerpt is from the book about her famous Beatle husband, John Lennon, by ex-wife Cynthia...

Page 31 of "John" by Cynthia Lennon

"Music had been an important part of John's relationship with his mother and when she died he used it to blot out the pain and anger he felt. Julia had bought him his first guitar, and she loved music. She played the piano and banjo, and sat with him patiently for hours, showing him over and over again how to play the chords. She had also introduced John to rock and roll. She would play Elvis Presley records at top volume, grabbing job's hand to jive around the kitchen to them. She always encouraged John's musical dreams.

By the time John and I got together, he talked, ate and breathed music. When he wasn't playing the guitar, he was writing lyrics or talking about the latest Lonnie Donegan, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly or Chuck Berry record. Almost every lunchtime he met the two other Quarrymen to rehearse. They were both younger and went to the Liverpool Institute, next door to the art college, the best known of Liverpool's boy's grammar schools: distinguished judges and politicians had been educated there, its pupils were expected to do well. But John's friends, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, were more interested in playing music than passing exams."


Cynthia Lennon

(Christine Trzyna here. This quote was culled from a number of references to Beatle John Lennon's early musical influences. Cynthia Lennon was John Lennon's first wife, of ten years, and mother of his son Julian. The book is C 2005 by Cynthia Lennon and Crown is the publisher.)

(193) JOHNNY B. GOODE, CHUCK BERRY AND JOHNNY LENNON

Chuck Berry wrote so many Rock and Roll songs that become classics and were covered and recorded by other artists he made more in residuals than he ever did performing himself.

Here's Chuck performing one of his most covered classics, Johnny B. Goode.


Here's a YouTube presentation of a rare recording (says the owner) of the Beatles covering Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode. John Lennon especially loved Chuck Berry.



When Elvis was performing at the International, he did a Johnny B. Goode cover that was fantastic. Here's one YouTuber's contribution from a 1969 performance there...

(128) THE FIRST SURGE OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION / THE SHIRELLES & SONGWRITER CAROLE KING

Girl Groups were a rage in the 1950's and this carried into the very early 1960's. The Shirelles, a New York based girl group was maybe the most successful in that period. Shirley Alston Reeves, Addie “Micki” Harris, Doris Kenner Jackson, and Beverly Lee, New Jersey schoolgirls, formed the group and sang their way to stardom. Beatle John Lennon went on record with praise for them. (John is also known for thinking the world of Elvis, though the Beatles meeting with Elvis left much to be desired!)

The Shirelles scored a hit in early 1961 with a song called "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," which was one of the first songs sung by women, from a woman's point of view, that acknowledged that women too were sexual. It was the beginnings of the sexual revolution and they even sang it at a J.F.K. Inauguration party.

Here's a YouTube presentation of the Shirelles Singing "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," written by songwriters Carole King and Gerry Goffin. This song was the first number one hit by a girl group and the first number one hit for Carole and Gerry, who were part of the songwriting factory system in the Brill Building in New York. (See previous posts on the Brill Building scene, where I myself once worked.)

Here is what Oldies.com has to say about the Shirelles' influence on other groups.

OLDIES.COM on the SHIRELLES

Rock and Roll of Fame Inductees - The Shirelles!

SHIRELLES ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME

updated September 2012