7/2/22
Newsletter29
The Ass Crack of Dawn
It’s night outside my window.
In 1987-88 I lived in a bungalow in Hollywood across the street from A&M Records. This was where Quentin Tarantino hung out (not with me) before his career began. A&M Records was originally the Charlie Chaplin Studio, and is now Jim Henson Productions. I met Jim Henson at a party. He was six-and-a-half feet tall, incredibly nice, and naturally spoke in Kermit the frog’s voice.
I’ve looked really hard, but the documentary, “Tom Dowd and the Language of Music,” seems to have disappeared, and is no longer available anywhere. In 1943 at the age of eighteen, having already proved himself to be physics genius, Tom Dowd was drafted into the army and immediately went to work on the atom bomb. Thinking he’d return to physics after the war, he quickly realized he now knew more about physics than any teacher working. Naturally, he went into music. He became the head engineer at the newly-formed Atlantic Records and worked on a hundred brilliant jazz records with every big jazz artist of the 1950s. He then became a producer. Aretha Franklin had cut seven records for Columbia without a hit. She came to Atlantic, Dowd was her producer, and she became a veritable hit machine. I don’t have the space here, but here are some of the artists Tom Dowd produced: Eddie Money, Bee Gees, Eric Clapton, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Black Oak Arkansas, Derek and the Dominos, Rod Stewart, Wishbone Ash, Cream, Lulu, Chicago, the Allman Brothers Band, Joe Bonamassa, the J. Geils Band, Meat Loaf, Sonny & Cher, the Rascals, the Spinners, Willie Nelson, Diana Ross, Eagles, the Four Seasons, Kenny Loggins, James Gang, Dusty Springfield, Eddie Harris, Charles Mingus, Herbie Mann, Booker T. & the M.G.s, and Otis Redding. Anyway, he was a wonderful, ebullient person, and a pleasure to watch.
Speaking of music, when Peter Jackson stepped in to edit the recent Beatles documentary, “Get Back,” from the 57 hours of outtakes from “Let it Be,” part of the sales campaign was that the movie, “Let it Be,” sucked and was unfair because it showed a little bit of the tension in the band that would soon break up. Well, I saw “Let it Be” in the theater when it was released, then The Beatles and Apple Corp pulled the film, and it was gone. No VHS, no DVD. About ten years ago I scoured the internet and found a real (not bootleg) DVD copy manufactured in Russia. Guess what? Not only is it a good movie; it’s far better than Jackson’s “Get Back,” and three times shorter.
One of my very favorite pieces of music is Dimitri Shostakovich’s 5th symphony, written and premiered in Russia in 1943, during WWII. Joseph Stalin, who holds the dubious honor of having killed more people than Hitler, didn’t like Shostakovich’s 4th, and told him so. I can’t even imagine the pressure of writing his 5th symphony, and knowing that if Stalin didn’t like it he would probably end up in gulag in Siberia. Luckily, it’s brilliant, and Stalin loved it.
Here’s an oldie but goody: A Presidential aide goes into the Oval Office and asks President Clinton, “What do you want to do about the abortion bill?” Clinton shakes his head wearily and says, “Pay it.”
It looks like another beautiful day in the neighborhood.