John Lennon Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

May Pang shares ‘her’ John Lennon

The Lost Weekend: A Love Story

The headline in the Times Union was intriguing: May Pang shares ‘her’ John Lennon at Guilderland, Hudson exhibit spaces.

The so-called Lost Weekend, “which was actually 18 months long, is the subject of Pang’s new traveling photography exhibition, coming to ArtForms in Guilderland on June 25 and 26 and The Park Theatre in Hudson on June 28 through 30. The show comes on the heels of the documentary ‘The Lost Weekend: A Love Story,’ which debuted at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and stars Pang and Lennon’s son Julian.”

As Pang tells it in the story, “The 23-year-old Pang was approached by Ono, one of her bosses, to date Lennon when the two started having marital problems in 1973. By this point, Pang had been an assistant to the musical pair for three years, following her work on their film projects… and bluffing her way to a receptionist job at Apple Records. Pang refused. Ono asked again and again…

“Yet despite Pang’s resistance, she and Lennon found their own way together without Ono. Pang stopped working for the musicians, and she and Lennon, in a snap decision, flew across the country to Los Angeles without Ono knowing. There, Pang and Lennon built a life.”

Here’s a story from WNTY-TV.

Required

So my friend Mark and I had to go. First off, where is it? 2050 Western Avenue, as it turns out, is somewhere in the middle of the 20 Mall. It’s a fairly tiny location, certainly far less square footage than the first two floors of my house.

By the time we went in, shortly after the opening at 3 p.m., it was quite crowded and warm, and it would only get worse. There were some very nice photos, but it wasn’t easy to read the captions under the pictures without being in someone’s way.

“In addition to portraits of life with Lennon, Pang captured milestones in music. She shot the last known photograph of Lennon and McCartney together… When Lennon reunited with Julian [John’s first son, with Cynthia], Pang was there with her camera. When he added his signature below McCartney, Starr, and Harrison to officially dissolve the Beatles while in Disneyland, Pang was there, too.” There was a picture of John in Ellenville; I explained to someone where it was.

Ultimately, Mark succumbed and bought a poster, which May Pang signed. She encouraged everyone to see The Lost Weekend: A Love Story on Amazon. As she notes, it really was a love story. And as May Pang had said, the pictures she took may be the closest most people will get to John Lennon.

The tour continues on the East Coast in 2024.

Electric Light Orchestra and the Beatles

a reasonable choice

For my next answer to Ask Roger Anything, our contestant once again is Kelly Sedinger, the fine Buffalo-area blogger at ForgottenStars.net.

I read somewhere that ELO did the kind of music that The Beatles WOULD have done had they remained together into the 70s. Agree? Disagree? (I’m not really equipped to assess the claim, but it kind of feels right to me, at least in part.)

First, I have to note that you wouldn’t have gotten this question from Kelly two decades ago because he wasn’t a fan of the Beatles at all and likely was unfamiliar with the Electric Light Orchestra. For some reason, I remember what I believe was his first Beatles song of the week, Don’t Let Me Down, a B-side.

In 2010, I asked him: “OK. How the heck could you dislike the entire oeuvre of The Beatles for so long? I can see if one doesn’t like the more avant-garde stuff or thought the early material wasn’t as good as the later tunes. But to reject the whole eclectic eight years? And how did you finally become enlightened?”

His reply: “The flip answer is, ‘Tastes change.’ The more serious answer is… ‘Tastes change.'”

Me? Obsessing?

Anyway, I started obsessing with this. I found a list of bands with three or more songwriters. Eh. The Band, the Eagles. Nah, not the right vibe.

Reddit has a list of Beatlesque bands, but of a later period. The only one I even considered was the Christine McVie/Buckingham/Nicks version of Fleetwood Mac, which is unrecognizable from the Peter Green Days. Heck, they even have their own white album, Tusk.

I thought the snake-bitten band Badfinger could have been it. The group was on Apple Records; their first hit, Come and Get It, was written by Paul McCartney. Day After Day has a lovely guitar line by George Harrison. And No Matter What is definitely of the Beatles genre.

I began fixating on When The Beatles Hit America by John Wesley Harding, the very strange song in which “John, Paul, George and Ringo are going to be reforming as The Beatles in 1993.” Which was, of course, impossible.

But it has this section, “And for anyone who didn’t realize or know, it sounded a lot like ELO, or ELP, or XTC, ABC, YMO, BTO. But it didn’t sound much like P.S., I Love You.”

The candidates

Well, not much like Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, though the Billy Preston organ, especially on I Want You (She’s So Heavy), is very nice. Bachman- Turner Overdrive? Not really.

ABC is an interesting consideration. Wikipedia notes, “Their early-1980s success in the US saw them associated with the Second British Invasion.”

Yellow Magic Orchestra, I’ll admit I don’t know musically. It’s a “Japanese electronic music band formed in Tokyo in 1978… The group is considered influential and innovative in the field of popular electronic music… and effectively anticipated the “electropop boom” of the 1980s. They are credited with playing a key role in the development of several electronic genres, including synthpop, J-pop, electro, and techno while exploring subversive sociopolitical themes throughout their career.”

XTC was actually the band I first considered. “The band gained popularity during the rise of punk and new wave in the 1970s, later playing in a variety of styles that ranged from angular guitar riffs to elaborately arranged pop.” Eclectic, like the Beatles.

And, in the end

But Electric Light Orchestra is a reasonable choice. The group formed in 1970, the year the Beatles officially broke up. They were more commercially successful than many of the other candidates, selling “over 50 million records worldwide, making them one of the best-selling music groups of all time.” They made it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

John Lennon remarked that ELO were the “Sons of the Beatles.” George and Ringo played with ELO. Jeff Lynne played with Paul McCartney. And of course, Jeff shows up in the Traveling Wilburys with George and produced an album of his and the 1995 Beatles songs. This is a bit ironic because “In an article from the 1970s, when the writer described an ELO song coming on the radio, [George] said, almost dismissively, ‘Sounds like the Beatles.'”

Check out the 2008 article in The Guardian. ELO: The band the Beatles could have been. “Critics called them ‘dull’ and laughed at the spaceships. Did they not realise Jeff Lynne was a songwriter to rival Lennon and McCartney?” And Lynne visited the Abbey Road studios while the Beatles worked on the white album.

So, sure, ELO can claim the title. How are Jeff Lynne, ELO, and The Beatles connected?

Weirdest album from a mainstream artist?

Berry Gordy’s sister

My bud Greg Burgas asked his readers: What’s the weirdest album released by a mainstream artist? Off the top, I couldn’t think of any except from one pair of musicians.

Then I found this list of 35 albums. And I own several! The first, though, I heard of only weeks ago.

Frank Sinatra – Watertown (1970). A concept album that one of my news feeds just mentioned. It Was re-released in June 2022. He “was approached by “Big Girls Don’t Cry” writer Bob Gaudio to do a song cycle about a man whose wife left him with his kids.” It’s named for an upstate New York city; I probably should get it.

The Fireman – Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest (1994). “Without a drop of publicity, 1994 saw Paul McCartney quietly releasing his ambient techno album.” To me, it sounds “at worst needlessly repetitive.”

Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants (1979). This has some good songs, actually, such as Send One Your Love, but also a lot of tedious “synthesizer experimentation.” It was “a detour so far from the commercial norm that it risked alienating scores of unadventurous listeners.”

Yoko Ono/John Lennon – Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins (1968). I wasn’t even going to consider it because I don’t think of Yoko as a “mainstream artist,” even though I own a few of her solo albums. I haven’t listened to Two Virgins in decades. Side one of their Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions (1969) is unlistenable, but side two is conversational, a bit melancholy, and documents Yoko’s miscarriage. Wedding Album (1970) has Yoko yelling JOHN, and John yelling YOKO for twenty minutes; side two is a dialogue about bed-ins and the like.

Bob Dylan – Slow Train Coming (1979). Musically interesting but lyrically theologically lazy.

Starkey

Ringo Starr – Beaucoups of Blues (1970). I LIKE this album quite a bit. “Ringo hunkered down in Nashville, rounded up the city’s top session players, and recorded this love letter to Music City that’s as authentic as the most classic George Jones platter… Beaucoups of Blues remains Starr’s most thoroughly enjoyable, though misunderstood, solo outing.” Agreed. Title song.

Paul McCartney – McCartney II (1980). Why is this album even on the list?

The Who – The Who Sell Out (1967). “Arguably the Who’s greatest album… The oddness [comes] from the fact that these are book-ended by radio jingles and commercials.” SpongeBob SquarePants used this model for an album. Tattoo.

Bob Dylan – Self Portrait (1970). As mentioned, I bought this for my high school girlfriend. I specifically recall a strange version of Simon and Garfunkel’s The Boxer. I always wondered if it was in response to the duo’s A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara’d into Submission). “At the end of the 1966 recording Simon says, ‘Folk-rock,’ and, after an audible noise, ‘I’ve lost my harmonica, Albert.’ This presumably refers to Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman.”

What now?

Neil Young – Trans (1983). “He ticked off “his new label by releasing a vocoder-heavy synth-rock album. He followed it up with a rockabilly disc, and was sued shortly thereafter.” I like Trans, and especially Mr. Soul.

The Clash – Sandinista! (1980). “The Only Band That Mattered follow-up London Calling with a three-LP set filled with reggae, hip-hop, and pop experiments sprawled all over the place.” I bought this album right away and listened to it a lot. Police On My Back.

Joni Mitchell – Mingus (1979). I didn’t appreciate the dialogue as much as the music.

Marvin Gaye – Here, My Dear (1978). “Quite possibly the only album that nearly launched an invasion of privacy lawsuit.” A divorce album re: him and Anna Gordy, Berry Gordy’s older sister. Indulgent but oddly interesting. When Did You Stop Loving Me, When I Stop Loving You?

Devo – E-Z Listening Disc (1987) [Compilation]. Someone from Rykodisc sent this to me when I was working at FantaCo. I think it’s a hoot. Jocko Homo.

The one I think is most “out there” is probably the Fireman or maybe Joni.

Moody Blues, Dylan, the Boss, solo Fab

Smile Away

In response to my most recent Ask Roger Anything request – you can STILL ask! – TWO music questions.

My old buddy Kevin, who grew up in my area, but who I didn’t know until college, asked:
What are your favorite albums by 1) the Moody Blues, 2) Bob Dylan and 3) Bruce Springsteen?

The Moody Blues is easy. While I have a few albums on vinyl that I haven’t listened to in forever, I never got any on CD or as downloads, except for a greatest hits CD. So the only album I can remember without looking it up is Days Of Future Passed. And I liked it not just based on its themes of dayparts, but the fact that a 1967 album could generate a hit half a decade later. Nights In White Satin went to #103 pop in 1968, but to #2 pop for two weeks in 1972.

My first favorite Springsteen album was Born To Run, the album that got him on the cover of Time and Newsweek simultaneously. And Darkness On The Edge Of Town was a very strong follow-up. Born In The USA is, naturally a great album, but I heard it a bit too often in the 1980s.

I should note that c. 2000, my late brother-in-law John asked me what I wanted for Christmas or my birthday. I said any Springsteen CD prior to 1992, most of which I had on vinyl. He bought me Asbury Park, both Born albums, Darkness, and The River, the two-record set which I had never owned.

Around 2006, my sister Leslie bought me We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. Some great songs, done well. But many of them appear in the two-CD Live in Dublin that came out in 2007, and they’re even better.

Zimmerman

Considering the vast number of Dylan CDs I now own, it’s peculiar that I never bought a Bob album in the 1960s. It’s due in part to the fact that I had belonged to the Capitol Record Club in 1966/67, where I got the bulk of my Beatles LPs, not to mention albums by the Beach Boys, Lovin’ Spoonful, and others. Bob was on Columbia. The ONLY Dylan song I owned was from a cheap compilation album, The Best of ’66, which had I Want You.

In fact, the first Dylan album I purchased was for my high school girlfriend, the double album Self-Portrait, which came out in 1970. I wasn’t impressed, and I’m not even sure whether SHE liked it.

Eventually, I bought a few LPs – John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline. But it wasn’t until CDs came out that I started to backfill my Dylan collection: Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde, and my favorite, Blood on the Tracks.

I had pre-ordered Love and Theft, which was to be released on September 11, 2001. After I left work early that day – we all did – I was riding my bike home and I went past the record store. I stopped, got the album, and stood around the store awhile as the television was recapitulating the awful news of the day.

I didn’t listen to the album for well over a week. But when I did, I LOVED it, especially the run that began with the third track, Summer Days. I played this album a lot, and it made me happy in a very sad time.

Solo Fabs

Julie, who I’ve known for a few years – I have a pic of her holding my daughter when L was a baby – wants to know:
What is the best solo Beatles album?

Oh, my, I have been musing on this forever. Conventional Wisdom would put All Things Must Pass by George and Plastic Ono Band by John at the top of the list. These would be totally legitimate choices, especially ATMP, which proved that John and Paul underestimated their younger bandmate. I just watched Concert For George from 2002, and it reminded me just how much I loved Wah Wah.

Yet, and maybe it’s because I’ve listened to it recently, that I’m picking Paul’s (and Linda’s) Ram. Your folks would know that when it came out in 1971, it was savaged by much of the music press. Part of this was a function of the less-than-kind things John said about the album.

Really? Yes

As this 2021 review noted, “The record… saw the singer lay down a blueprint that would eventually help build some of the most notable genres around. You can trace everything from Britpop to pure jangle indie back to this record.” Too Many People, for instance, was a jab at John, much more subtle than John’s How Do You Sleep on his Imagine album.

From All Music: “In retrospect, it looks like nothing so much as the first indie-pop album, a record that celebrates small pleasures with big melodies, a record that’s guileless and unembarrassed to be cutesy. But McCartney never was quite the sap of his reputation… There’s some ripping rock and roll in the mock-apocalyptic goof Monkberry Moon Delight, the joyfully noisy Smile Away, where his feet can be smelled a mile away, and Eat At Home, a rollicking, winking sex song.”

When I played it recently for the first time this century, I said, pretty much to myself, “Damn, I really LIKE this album!” And I remembered it amazingly well.

Oh, and I have a great affection for the Ringo album, which featured all four of them, not all at the same time. Do the Travelling Wilburys count as “solo”? Because I’d stick that first album in the mix.

Some John Lennon Beatles songs

The Beatles in Italy

Sometimes, I just want to play some Beatles music. And since it’s what would have been the 81st birthday of John Lennon today, I opted for some of my favorite Fab songs I associated with him. I described all of these more fully here. But as an exercise, I’m not going to look at what I said at the time.
–
I Want To Hold Your Hand – this is the archetypical Lennon/McCartney song. Lennon told Playboy magazine in 1980; “We wrote a lot of stuff together, one on one, eyeball to eyeball… I remember when we got the chord that made the song. We were in Jane Asher’s house, downstairs in the cellar playing on the piano at the same time. And we had, ‘Oh you-u-u/ got that something …’ And Paul hits this chord and I turn to him and say, ‘That’s it!’ I said, ‘Do that again!’ In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that—both playing into each other’s noses.”

Ticket To Ride – I was at a program for the Albany Institute of History and Art which featured the Fab Four almost 20 years ago. I even had some of my records on display, such as my Japanese singles (I think) and the 1965 album The Beatles in Italy (for sure). That LP title suggests a live performance, but it was just the songs that were not yet on albums. In other words, singles, B-sides, and the four tunes from the Long Tall Sally EP. Ticket To Ride, of course, would subsequently appear on the Help! album.

In the beginning, I misunderstood

The Word – my favorite three Beatles songs in a row on an album are on the US version of Rubber Soul: You Won’t See Me, Think For Yourself, and The Word. (The UK version has Nowhere Man between the McCartney and Harrison tunes).

Day Tripper – one of the great hooks in all of pop music.

Twist and Shout – one of the greatest covers, ever.

Good Morning Good Morning – I did not know for the longest time that McCartney, not Harrison, played the guitar solos.

A Hard Day’s Night – in some ways, I think the whole album is their greatest, done in the midst of Beatlemania, touring, making a movie. And the title song was done on deadline.

I Want You (She’s So Heavy) – I bought the Abbey Road box set in 2021. It’s interesting to hear the Billy Preston organ explode. It’s much more subtle in the final mix.

Help – my daughter has sung it publicly. I relate to it greatly.

Tomorrow Never Knows – a much better title than The Void.