birthday Archives - Page 10 of 49

John Lennon would have been 80

“The whole Beatles thing was just beyond comprehension.”

John-Lennon The problem with me writing about John Lennon is that I’ve written about him, as a solo artist or with The Beatles, about 200 times. Examples are here (The Word) and here (John and Yoko).

As I’ve noted, when my sisters, a neighbor girl, and I used to charge the local kids a couple cents to watch us lipsynch to the songs of Beatles VI, I was John.

Ten years ago, I listed my Top Ten Lennon songs, which has not appreciably changed. BTW, NONE of the original music links worked, but I replaced at least those.

Here are some covers

David Bowie Covering “Imagine” Live.

Covers by various artists of the entire Imagine album.

John Lennon’s Rock ‘n’ Roll album from 1975. The links don’t work. BUT here is the whole album. I bought it on December 9, 1980, in no small part because Double Fantasy was sold out.

A few covers of (Just Like) Starting Over.

Instrumentals from HELP

Since Coverville celebrated the 55th anniversary of the album HELP, I found the desire to listen to the instrumentals that were on the American soundtrack, arranged by Ken Thorne.

The James Bond Theme (Help ‘intro’). When I was about to be on JEOPARDY! back in 1998, Glenn Kagan from the show was going over my response card. He asked about my favorite group, to which I replied, “The Beatles.” This led to a conversation about the American Beatles albums and the two of us started doing this instrumental. I said, “I’m not familiar with that. How does it go?” We both laughed heartily. (On the videotape, this looks VERY goofy.)

From Me To You Fantasy
In the Tyrol
Another Hard Day’s Night
The Bitter End/You Can’t Do That
The Chase

Help is the first Beatles movie I ever saw. The title song is among the top five of my favorites of the group’s songs. Lennon said he wrote the song while feeling “the whole Beatles thing was just beyond comprehension” and subconsciously crying out for help.

Miscellany

John Lennon official site

Biography.com

A Songwriting Mystery Solved: Math Proves John Lennon Wrote ‘In My Life’

Rolling Stone interview, November 1968

An updated, comprehensive guide from Beginner Guitar HQ on how to play rhythm guitar like John Lennon

John Lennon posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 1994.

Lest I forget, it’s also Sean Ono Lennon’s 45th birthday.

“Partly truth and partly fiction”

complicated

Les.Roger.backporch2 — Les and Roger Green, 1953

The more I learn about my late father Les Green, the more I want to know. “He’s a walking contradiction. Partly truth and partly fiction” is a line from a Kris Kristofferson song. His life was very complicated.

Did he know that the Reverend Raymond Cone was his biological father? Surely, the pastor was not in dad’s life. What kind of teasing did he have to endure?

Or was his lineage hidden from most people? In the 1930 Census, when he was three and a half, he was listed as the son, rather than the grandson, of Samuel and Eugenia Walker. And he was mistakenly listed as Wesley Walker, an error that wasted some research time and money by my sisters and me.

Agatha Walker and McKinley Green were married in April 1931. How and when did they meet? And why were they separated for the latter half of the 1930s? According to the 1940 Census, Agatha Greene and Leslie Greene – the surnames were misspelled – were back with Samuel and Mary.

There is a picture of a group of Boy Scouts and their dads in a 1942 Binghamton newspaper. Les and McKinley are included in the group. But it wasn’t until 1944 when Les was 18, he got a new birth certificate, with McKinley listed as the father. It notes McKinley’s age in 1944, rather than in Les’ birth year of 1926. But Agatha’s age is properly 24, her age when Les was born.

Race matters

I’ve mentioned my father’s ambivalence about serving in post-war Germany. It was due to the racism, not of the German people but of the white GIs. He also experienced colorism from his future in-laws, the Yates, since he was much darker than they were.

If he was a bit of a standoffish father early on, could it have been a result of the miscarriage my mother experienced in April 1951? It would have been a boy. Maybe it’s why he made sure that I was named for no one else. Yet he named his first daughter after himself.

He may have been the most gregarious person I’ve known in a public setting. Yet, sometimes at home, he was dubbed by my sisters and me, as the “black cloud” who seemed to suck the oxygen out of the room. This was true mostly when we were growing up, but we experienced it as late as 1997.

Some people are who they are almost all of the time. I think our mom was like that. Then there was our dad, who was…complicated. We wish we could ask him questions about all of these things. But the items about his youth, for instance, we really didn’t understand until he passed.

Les Green would have been 94 tomorrow.

Actor Bill Murray turns 70

The Cubs win the Series! (2016)

bill murray.groundhog-day-driving As I perused the Wikipedia page of Bill Murray, I discovered a potential link. “Murray’s direct paternal grandfather was from County Cork, while his maternal origins are from County Galway.” I have fourth cousins from Munster, County Cork.

Of course, I first remember him from NBC’s Saturday Night, which he joined after Chevy Chase left. I don’t recall him from ABC variety show Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell, and I did watch that single season. (The NBC series added Live to the title once Cosell’s show was canceled.) I associate Murray mostly with Nerd scenes with the late Gilda Radner, and the lounge singer performing the Star Wars theme. He was also Bill Murray the K in the Rutles TV movie, which was a Beatles parody.

He went on to have a great movie career. One of the first three VHS tapes I ever purchased was Groundhog Day (1992). I always loved that film, as it speaks of redemption. But I’ve only seen a fraction of his films. I’ve never seen, for instance, Meatballs (1979) or Caddyshack (1980).

Murray movies I’ve seen

Stripes (1981) I didn’t see this until 2018, while I was giving blood. While dated, it had its moments. He was great in a small part in Tootsie (1982). Ghostbusters (1984), Scrooged (1988), and What About Bob (1991) I remember fondly; Ghostbusters II (1989) was a lesser effort.

His body of work since 2005 that I’ve watched, all in the movie theater, that I wrote about is not an overwhelming list. It includes Get Low (2009); Moonrise Kingdom (2012); Hyde Park on the Hudson (2012); and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).

Also, he voiced characters for The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009); The Jungle Book (2016); and Isle of Dogs (2018). His voice is always both familiar and evocative.

I feel I’m going to have to watch The Royal Tennenbaums (2001) and Lost in Translation (2003) again. Murray was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actor in a Leading Role in the latter film. He did receive the Golden Globe as Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical. Yet I found both of them terribly… frustrating. Sometimes, you’re just not in the right mood for a particular film.

In 2016, Bill Murray was deservedly awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor by the Kennedy Center. The following year, he was touring a “series of ‘songs and literary recordings’ accompanied by chamber music.” I saw a bit of this on CBS Sunday Morning at the time.

Baseball has been very, very good to him

“In 1978, Murray appeared in two at-bats for the Grays Harbor Loggers Minor League Baseball team, credited with one hit and a lifetime batting average of .500.

“He is a part-owner of the St. Paul Saints independent baseball team and occasionally travels to Saint Paul, Minnesota to watch the team’s games.[43] He also owns part of the Charleston RiverDogs, the Hudson Valley Renegades, and the Brockton Rox. He has invested in a number of other minor league teams in the past… In 2012 he was inducted into the South Atlantic League Hall of Fame for his ownership and investment activities in the league.”

And his love of Chicago sports teams is legendary, especially for his beloved Cubs. He has done commentary for games and sung Take Me Out to the Ballgame. He was present when the Cubs took Game 7 to win the 2016 World Series, after a 108-yar drought. He’s a fan of other sports as well.

In spite of a list of possible feuds in the past, he now seems comfortable in his skin.

Leslie Ellen, to distinguish her

Codfish

My sister Leslie was born less than two years after I was. I have few specific recollections growing up, aside of being in class, in which she was not at least tangentially involved.

One of the truly odd things my parents did was to name my sister after my father. This was occasionally a pain for both of us. For me, since people knew there was someone named after Dad, they assumed it was me. I got cranky when some people, primarily men of our church, would refer to me as Little Les. Eventually, we needed something to distinguish between the two Leslies. Dad was generally Les anyway. My sister became Leslie Ellen.

I seem to recall introducing her to my classmates on the first day of school. Because I started school in February and she in September, we almost never had the same teachers in elementary school. She had one named Miss Coddington in the fifth grade. Miss Codfish, as some of the kids referred to her, really seemed to have it in for my sister. I don’t know if it was racially motivated or if the woman was just a bitter human being. Quite possibly, it was both.

She’s a saint

And while the name “Leslie Ellen” could be a bit weighty, it was convenient when she converted to Catholicism during Holy Week of 2018. While Leslie isn’t a saint name, Ellen/Helena is. Helena “was about sixty-four years of age when she received the light of the Gospel.”

Sadly, one of her oldest friends was quite bothered by Leslie’s conversation. Her reasoning, in the letter I read after Leslie’s bicycle accident, frankly baffled both of us. It was a general evangelical anti-Catholic screed that wasn’t tied to any position of the church, failings by priests, or the like.

Leslie is having another birthday, which is a good thing. After that 2018 bike wreck, every birthday is a bit of a miracle.

Ringo Starr, Beatle, is 80

Tanglewood in June 2021

Ringo Starr has been mentioned at least a couple hundred times in this blog. Unsurprising, given my unabashed affection for the Beatles. And I see that, 50 years after the band broke up, the Beatles and Ringo generate a lot of comments online.

Questions such as whether he is a good drummer. “Dave Grohl, frontman of Foo Fighters and former drummer of the legendary grunge band Nirvana, said about him: ‘Define ‘best drummer in the world’. Is it someone that’s technically proficient? Or is it someone that sits in the song with their own feel? Ringo was the king of feel.'”

Of course, he was picked to replace Pete Best. Ringo himself said his best drumming for the Beatles was on Rain.

The Beatle also known as Richard Starkey had his particular brand of charisma. The other Beatles insisted he was the best actor in their first movie, A Hard Day’s Night. The storyline of the second film, Help!, was centered around him.

Ringo still tours with his All-Starr band. I have never seen him play, though the tour has been in my neck of the woods a few times. In fact, he was supposed to have been at Tanglewood last month, but that program was postponed a year.

Ringo was scheduled to play with Steve Lukather (Toto guitarist), Colin Hay (Men at Work singer), Gregg Rolie (Santana keyboardist), Warren Ham (vocals/sax/flute), Gregg Bissonette (drums), and Hamish Stuart (Average White Band bass/guitar/vocals),

Previously…

Back in 2018, I wrote about his country album Beaucoups of Blues, which I think is pretty darn good. Unfortunately, many of the links are not working. So check out the album here or here.

In 2016, I discussed Ringo’s “peace and love” initiative, and how we should still do it, even if we’re not sure it’s working.

In 2011, I noted that, around Ringo’s birthday, I play Beatles cover albums. And I have a lot of them.

Finally, back in 2010, I listed my favorite songs by Ringo Starr. Many of the links no longer worked, but I’ve replaced them.

Happy 80th birthday, Ringo. Peace and love to all of us.