Bob Dylan, Forever Young …

May 24, 1971 – In honor of Bob Dylan’s 30th birthday, Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip features Linus telling Charlie Brown that Bob Dylan was turning 30.  Charlie Brown replies “That’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard.” Born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota in 1941, Dylan became the poet, musician and songwriter of his generation and has gone on to release more than 500 songs in his career, including such ballads as Blowin’ in the Wind, Lay, Lady Lay,  and House of the Risin’ Sun.  He burst upon the music scene during the folk music movement and was often associated with Joan Baez, civil rights and the anti-war protest.  In a 2004 interview, he revealed that he was influenced by poetry of Dylan Thomas and explained changing his name: “You’re born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself.  This is the land of the free.”  Perhaps the Peanuts comic strip inspired Bob Dylan to write “Forever Young” which was released a few years later in 1974.  Dylan himself marks the occasion at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall.  Later he became a born-again Christian but then quietly returned to something between a devout Jew and man seeking his God.

My Girl – Taking it Smooth

March 3, 1965 –  The Temptations, one of the longest running musical acts in the world, scored their first Number One hit with “My Girl”.  Their classic sound and smooth choreography made them unique on the world stage.  The original five members had been in and out of different groups over the years.  Finally they agreed to the name Temptations while on the steps of Motown’s offices.  A final personnel change in 1964 gave us the “Classic Five” who scored big the Smokey Robinson’s “My Girl” which has remained their signature song.  Considered by many to be among the founding father of Soul, the Temptations have endured and prevailed though countless changes in popular music with over 20 different men joining the group at one time or another.  Today, original group member Otis Williams continues to record and tour with the group.

Break on through to the other side

 March 1, 1969 – The Doors performed at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami, FL.  What really happened that night is the stuff of legend.  What is known is that it was very hot, there was no air conditioning, seats had been removed to boost ticket sales and over 12,000 concert goers packed an auditorium designed for 7,000.  After drinking all day, the rapidly declining lead singer, Jim Morrison, arrived over an hour late and engaged in bizarre behavior.  It’s said that Morrison rambled on and cursed the audience inciting them to remove their clothes and, according to the Miami Police, inciting them to riot.  They also said Morrison exposed himself after simulating oral sex on the guitarist.  For indecent exposure Morrison was sentenced to 6 months in jail but remained free pending appeal and continued on his downward spiral.  He died in Paris on July 3, 1971 at the age of 27 and is buried there.  Cause of death unknown.  On December 9, 2010 Republican Florida Governor Charlie Crist posthumously pardoned Morrison on the indecent exposure charge.  Morrison’s grave in Paris has become a much vandalized shrine and is visited my many every year.

It’s a Tie!

February 23, 1978 – For the first and only time, The Grammy Award for Best Song was a tie. The Grammy in this category is given to the songwriter. The tie was for “You Light Up My Life” a one hit wonder for singer Debbie Boone, daughter of Pat Boone, and awarded to Joe Brooks. The other winner was for “Love Theme from A Star Is Born (Evergreen)” which was sung by Barbara Streisand and co-written by Barbara Streisand and Paul Williams. Other contenders for 1977’s Song of the Year were Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish,” Elvis Costello’s “Allison,” Tom Petty’s “American Girl” or Bob Marley’s “Jammin'”.

Brian Wilson begins recording Good Vibrations

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February 17, 1966 Brian Wilson rolls tape for the first time on “Good Vibrations”.  Over the next 8 months he will rewrite and re-record  words and music searching to duplicate the sound he hears in his head. It’s said he used 17 separate recording sessions in four studios amassing 90 hours of tape. Meanwhile, across the pond, the four lads from Liverpool are working on their own sound.  Rock and Roll is changing….

Black Sabbath

Friday, February 13, 1970 – Black Sabbath is released in the U.K.  The band, consisting of Ozzy Osbourne (lead vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass guitar), and Bill Ward (drums) was found in 1969 in Birmingham, England.  Originally named Earth, they learned that there already was another band Earth.  Looking out the window from rehearsal, they saw a line forming to see Boris Karloff’s 1963 film Black Sabbath.   This inspired Osbourne and Butler to write the song Black Sabbath in hopes of creating the musical equivalent to a horror film.  Impressed by their own success, the band changed their name to Black Sabbath.  In November 1969, they rented a recording studio for a day and played their usual live set.  Their dark and morbid sound mixed with references to the occult was something completely new and helped inspire the whole heavy metal scene along with the likes of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple.  Their sound, along with the macabre artwork on the album jacket created a great deal of publicity as people scrambled to know more about this dark group from the other side.  This comes just 6 years after the young and innocent Beatles first come to America.

The Beatles appear on the Ed Sullivan Show

February 9, 1964 – 73 million Americans – 40% of the population – tuned into the Ed Sullivan Show on CBS that evening.  For months the airwaves and popular culture where abuzz about a new group from England.  Teenage girls were hysterical in their infatuation.  John, Paul, Ringo and George, The Fab Four, were the subject of rabid devotion as screaming mobs followed their every move.  More than 50,000 requests were made for the 700 seats in the Ed Sullivan Theater.  The screams of the audience drowned out their singing and young girls bumped and grinded to their parent’s horror in living rooms across America.  It was a welcome relief to a tragic assaination just 77 days prior.  And the Beatles were handsomly compansated $2500 for their efforts.

The British Invasion has begun

February 7, 1964 – The Beatles arrive at JFK airport on Pan Am Flight 101.  For months the airwaves had been abuzz about this new group from Liverpool with strange clothes and long hair.  All around the city, posters proclamed “The Beatles are Coming!”  More than 3,000 screaming fans were there to meet them and Beatlemania had begun.  They would give three concerts and appear for the first time on the Ed Sullivan Show.  They would return to the U.S. in August 1964, 1965, and 1966.  Their concert in San Francsico on August 29, 1966 was their last.

The Death of Sid Vicious

February 1, 1979 – Born John Simon Ritchie, Sid Vicious was the son of a Buckingham Palace guard, and sometimes musician, who never married the boy’s mother.  In the mid-70s, Ritchie, a high school dropout,  began to hang around the new Punk scene in London and sometimes plays in a couple of bands.  At the time, the Sex Pistols were making a name for themselves with both their outrageous behavior and music.  Punk was new, outlandish, and frightening.  The bitter attitude, black leather, spike and dyed hair, and safety-pin piercings made them stand out and shock.  Contempt for the passive existence of the middle class and the drug induced delirium of bands like Pink Floyd, Punk was loud, irreverent and energizing.  In the decay of the 1970s their credo was “there is no future”.

The Sex Pistols were formed in 1975 with John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten) as front man.  In February, 1977 bassist Glen Matlock quits, or is kicked out, of the band.  Manager Malcolm McLaren wants Ritchie, with his million dollar sneer, more for his Punk look than is musicianship – – Ritchie couldn’t play bass.  After Rotten’s pet hamster Sid bites Ritchie, and Ritchie replies “Sid is really vicious”, Ritchie is given a new stage name and a star is about to be born.  Vicious plays his first gig in April with his amp turned down, but he soon captivates the crowd with his obnoxious behavior and Punk charisma.  McLaren would later recall, “if Johnny Rotten is the voice of punk, then Vicious is the attitude.”  He was the epitome of Punk and the Sex Pistols become famous even though few people had ever heard them play.

In March, 1977 Vicious met Nancy Spungen and they become inseparable.  Spungen was an American who had led a troubled life.  She saw her first psychiatrist at age 4, attacked her mother with a hammer at 11, first tried drugs at 13, and was a heroin addict by 15.  By 17 doctors refused to treat her, and her parents ask her to leave their home.  She and Vicious had an almost insatiable appetite for drugs and theirs was a violent relationship – literally a match made in Hell.

In January 1978 the Sex Pistols break up.  Vicious and Spungen end up at the Hotel Chelsea in New York still flush with cash from Vicious’ music royalties.  Their lives spin out of control and Vicious buys a knife on 42^nd Street, supposedly to protect him and Nancy from the street people they associate with.  On the morning of October 12, Vicious wakes up to find Spungen dead with a single stab wound in her abdomen.  She was 20 years old.  He is later arrested, sometimes claiming he killed her, and sometimes claiming she must have fallen on her knife, and is taken to Riker’s Island and admitted to the detox unit. Vicious asks former-manager McLaren to get the $50,000 bail from Virgin Records which he does on the October 16^th.

Over the several weeks Vicious tries to kill himself 3 times and eventually ends up in Bellevue hospital.  His mother, also a heroin addict, sells her story to the New York Post for the money to buy a plane ticket to New York to take care of her son.  Vicious soon finds a new girlfriend, though she is no Nancy, and starts making the rounds of the city’s Punk clubs.  He gets into a fight with musician Patti Smith’s brother, cuts his face, and ends up back in Riker’s detox unit for seven weeks.

Released on February 1, 1979, his mother and his friends hold a Just Out of Jail party.  Mom brings the heroin and helps fix her son.  He soon collapses, but everyone tries to get him up and walking about.  He was said to have gone to bed about 3 AM.  Later the next morning his girlfriend wakes up to find him dead.  He was 21.

His mother claims to have found a suicide note in the pocket of his jacket:

We had a death pact, and I have to keep my half of the bargain.  Please bury me next to my baby in my leather jacket, jeans and motorcycle boots. Goodbye.

“My baby” is Nancy Spungen who was Jewish and buried in a Jewish cemetery. Sid was not Jewish, and thus could not be buried with her.  Allegedly his mother scatters his ashes over Nancy’s grave to fulfill her late son’s wishes.  In 1996 his mother  commits suicide with a heroin overdose.

In 2006 Vicious is inducted posthumously into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the other members of the Sex Pistols.  The story of Sid and Nancy, the Punk Romeo and Juliet, is rarely remembered by anyone outside the long forgotten Punk scene.  The angst, contempt, and frustration of the late 1970s manifested itself in many ways.  One of them had to be a “Love Story”.

Beatles on the Roof

January 30, 1969 – The Beatles last live concert was in Candlestick Park, San Francisco, on August 29, 1966.  Exhausted by Beatlemania, they retreated to the studio where some say their best work was about to begin.  After wrapping up the White Album in October 1968, the Fab Four returned to the studio on January 2, 1969.  The plan was to eventually film a live concert which would be broadcast over television and release a new album.  Without a definite plan, it was decided to start rehearsals and a film crew and sound crew joined the band at Twickenham Film Studios, London.

Time had taken its toll on these young lads from Liverpool and tensions were running high.  On the 6th, McCartney and Harrison exchange heated words.  On the 10th, Harrison announces he was leaving the band and storms out.  On the 15th, Harrison returns, and they collectively decided to abandon the concept of a concert and reassemble at  Apple Studios to continue recording intending to produce a feature film.  They resume on the 21st, and Harrison invites Billy Preston to sit in and play keyboards.  Having someone new join them apparently rekindled the old feelings of cooperation and collaboration, and for the next 10 days they work peacefully together.  Ideas are kicked around for an ending to the film, and on the 30th, the Beatles and Billy Preston retreat to the rooftop of Apple Studios for an unannounced 45 minute live concert.  It would be the last time they were seen playing publicly.  Throughout the rest of the year they continued to unravel and they wrap-up Abbey Road in August.  After much post production haggling, Let It Be album is released on May 8th and the film premiered in New York City on May 13, 1970.  It was their final work.