#mick jagger bastard son

[thelasthippie]

Josh Todd, Buckcherry singer and the bastard son of Mick Jager.

#changemymind

[knives-out20]

The Impact Of The Intergalactic - David Bowie Opinion Essay - by Beck S.

This is an essay I wrote about the span of David Bowie's career. I wrote it for a summer school course I took last year (August 2021) for a course called History of Rock & Roll.

My teacher gave nice feedback after he marked it, talking about how it was an "Excellent paper. It charts Bowie's progress throughout his career well, and includes significant detail. I could really feel the passion you have about him throughout. In fact, there is *too much* detail! The paper was supposed to be 3 pages max, double-spaced. Still, this is a good problem to have; better too much than too little."

So...enjoy!!

From his early works like Hunky Dory, to Black Tie White Noise in the 1990’s and stretching over to Blackstar as his final album, David Bowie has rarely had a bad album or song- in my opinion. His career has had ups and downs, his musical creations ranging in the way he would pitch his voice and what instruments he would use, the people he would produce with, and the wild things he would say. Charting David Bowie’s development over time is in fact an interesting journey.

Early on in his dreamy career, Bowie would have done nearly anything- or in fact, anyone- to grow in the music world. Hopping from band to band (like The Velvet Underground), producer to producer, doing whatever he could do to get ‘in’ in the industry. His early albums weren’t taken very highly in their times- especially with the ‘man-dress’ he wore on the British release of his The Man Who Sold The World album. Although, this dress was only the start of the androgynous appearance he would soon be known for, over the course of his 5-decade-spanning career.

The 1970’s were strange, to say the least. He married Angela Bowie at the start of the decade, then welcomed their son Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones a year later. Bowie went on to be hopped up on cocaine. David donned the look of one of his famous personas, The Thin White Duke. The same persona with slicked-back ginger hair, a white button-up under a black waistcoat and paired with black dress pants. The same Duke who called Adolf Hitler one of the first ‘rock stars’ and gave off a lot of faschist energy. He said many statements he’d later apologize for and grow as a better man from, which is good- it’s better than standing by then, or even backing himself up and supporting them. David Bowie called that period the darkest days of his life, and blamed the crazy statements on his horrid addiction and deteriorating mental state. The late 1970’s were more favorable, seeing as it gave the world what was dubbed the Berlin Trilogy alongside Brian Eno and David’s personal friend, Iggy Pop. Made up of three of his albums: Low and Heroes (both in 1977) and Lodger (1978). He moved from Los Angeles to Switzerland, then to Berlin as a further decision to escape his addiction (the reason he moved away from LA in the first place). It was in Berlin, of course, where he wrote his famous song Heroes, about two lovers, one from East Berlin and one from West.

Speaking of Berlin, David Bowie performed near the west of the Berlin Wall in 1987; he played so loud that crowds gathered on the east to listen. At this time, Bowie had no idea he would be the beginning of the city’s soon-coming unifying. After his death in 2016, the German government thanked him for bringing the wall down and unifying a divided Germany.

Music isn’t all he is known for, though it is a majority. He also starred in movies from time to time. Being the titular man in The Man Who Fell To Earth in 1976, Jareth the moody goblin king in Jim Henson’s 1986 Labyrinth film (what is most likely his most famous role), Monte the barman in the 1991 movie The Linguini Incident, cameoing as himself in Zoolander (2001), Nikola Tesla in the 2006 movie The Prestige, and even Lord Royal Highness in Spongebob Squarepants’ Atlantis Squarepantis in 2007, among a few others. David Bowie dabbled in the art of acting, and was not that bad at it. He was good enough to gain a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, too. Sometimes it bends my mind that my first introduction to my all-time favourite musician was in a Spongebob Squarepants movie, back before I knew who he was, but David Bowie was never one to shy away from foreshadowing. At least one song from many of his albums would hint at the direction he’d go in for his next release. For example, his track Queen Bitch on Hunky Dory foreshadowed his soon-coming Ziggy Stardust. And the Diamond Dogs track 1984 actually hinted at the Philadelphian soul of Young Americans, which is a more famous song of his, which he went on to perform on The Cher Show with its host.

The 1990’s were certainly an experimental time for David Bowie. But to my knowledge, I think the 1990’s was a time for everyone. He married supermodel Iman some days after performing at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, and released the album I named earlier, Black Tie White Noise. It is known to have had a prominent use of electronic instruments, as was his other 1990’s album, Earthling. The early 1990’s greeted David’s first real band since the Spiders From Mars, dubbed Tin Machine. They recorded three guitar-driven albums which received mixed reviews from the masses, but Bowie looks back at this period- as do I- with a certain fondness; “a glorious disaster” he called it, when talking to journalist Mick Brown. Tin Machine is a period I don’t listen to often, compared to his solo stuff, but I don’t press the skip button when it comes on.

Alas, the starman’s career drew to a close as the 2000s rolled in. David Bowie greeted the 2000’s with the birth of his and Iman’s daughter, the beautiful Alexandria Zahra Jones. After suffering a- strange, as it were- heart attack symptoms mid-song during a concert in 2004, he took a hiatus from his career. I say strange because given what I know, he was trying his best to stay healthy at the time. According to my special Rolling Stone edition magazine about David Bowie (released at the start of this year), he was on tour and performing in a really hot arena. But Bowie was sober, and had quit smoking. He was taking medication to lower his cholesterol, and worked out with a trainer. Bowie looked great, and yet he felt a pain in his shoulder and chest, along with a shortness for breath. A bodyguard rushed onstage to usher Bowie off of it, cutting the concert short. He only performed live once or twice after that point, but was set on never going live ever again. And he kept his word on that, unfortunately but also fortunately. Unfortunately, because David Bowie live would have been quite the experience- I wouldn’t know, personally. But fortunately, because I do not believe anyone needs a repeat of the 2004 Reality scare.

I am actually not too fond of speaking of his final years. Nobody really likes to speak of the last years of their idols’ life before their death, so it’s no surprise. Blackstar was David Bowie’s 25th and final album, recorded entirely in secret in New York alongside his long-time producer, Tony Visconti. The album's central theme lyrically is mortality, and seeing as Bowie was undergoing chemotherapy for his cancer at the time, I see it as his way of coping with his incoming death. His producer Tony Visconti called him a ‘canny bastard’, when he realized Bowie was essentially writing a farewell album. Every song on the album is what is considered a swan song, a swan song in question being a phrase for a final gesture of some sort before retirement or death. In this case, death. Over the course of recording the album, David Bowie’s chemotherapy had actually been working and he had an eerie optimism while recording. But by the time they shot the two music videos Blackstar and Lazarus, where he showed off the definite passage of time and cruelty of chemotherapy through sparse and gray hair with sagging skin, he knew his condition was terminal and that this would be a battle he would lose. Blackstar wasn’t the first album to have been made by a musician succumbing to a fatal illness, but in my opinion it is in fact the most beautiful. It’s jazzy, and elegant, showing how at peace he had become with dying.

Blackstar the album was released on January 8th, 2016. Also known as David Bowie’s 69th birthday. Two days later, David Bowie died at his Lafayette Street home on January 10th after living with liver cancer for up to 18 months. Beforehand, he had let it be known he did not want a funeral nor a burial, but rather that his body be cremated and the ashes to be scattered in Bali by his loved ones. His wish was received, and planet Earth was very much bluer and quieter without his colour and wonderful noise.

As I said earlier on, David Bowie’s career came with ups and downs. His mysteriously close relationship with Mick Jagger, his cross with famous underage groupie Lori Maddox, the births of his two talented children, his faschist bender in the 70’s, and final bang of Blackstar in his final year on earth. Through the highs and lows, his career and his music meant a lot to the quote-unquote misfits and freaks of the world, myself included. David Bowie turned and faced the strange, shouted “you’re not alone!” To those who felt the loneliest, he surely spent his career helping those who needed to be themselves, feel more freer and braver in doing so, no matter what they may be when they are themselves. He never went boring, he never went stale, he sang what he wanted and dressed how he pleased, and kept to his word on how much more to life there is when you’re just that; yourself. A year after David Bowie’s untimely passing, his son Duncan Jones accepted an award for British album of the year that was won by Blackstar at the 37th annual Brit Awards. When he accepted it, he made a speech about his father that I will leave here, and never forget. Seeing as it perfectly encapsulates David Bowie’ legacy, and the true meaning of his extraordinary career.

“I lost my dad last year, but I also became a dad. And, uhm, I was spending a lot of time- after getting over the shock- of trying to work out what would I want my son to know about his granddad? And I think it would be the same thing that most of my dad's fans have taken over the last 50 years. That he’s always been there supporting people who think they’re a little bit weird or a little bit strange, a little bit different, and he’s always been there for them. So...this award is for all the kooks, and all the people who make the kooks. Thanks, Brits, and thanks to his fans.” - Duncan Z. H. Jones (February 22 2017, at The O2 Arena in London.)

[killerscartv]

The Californians (SNL Series) 2012 -2018

A soap opera parody featuring Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, and others as wealthy blondes with Valley girl accents (Valleyspeak) exaggerated almost to the point of incoherence. Each "episode" opens with the Soapnet logo with Bill Hader's voice-over announcement: "The Californians". Armisen's character, Stuart, owns the house in which the action occurs. His wife Karina (Wiig) is unfaithful (she is said to have died in a car crash when Wiig left the show). Hader plays Devin, a romantic rival and antagonist to and long lost brother of Stuart; a recurring line is Stuart's "Devin? What are you doing here?" Vanessa Bayer appears as a Latina maid, Rosa, the only brunette character. Every installment includes three scenes, generally involving unexpected guests such as a doctor, a private detective, a runaway, or a lost family member. Stuart will invite them to sit down on the furniture, which he describes precisely (e.g., "Mexican country-style chairs", "burlap and cane daybed", or "neutral-toned fruit-wood chairs"). After a shocking revelation typical to soap operas, such as an unexpected pregnancy, the camera zooms in on each character, who displays open-mouthed astonishment. Each scene ends with all of the characters in the room crowded around a single mirror and gazing at their own reflections. Throughout the melodramatic plot developments, much of the dialogue consists of descriptions of routes taken from place to place, with freeways referred to with the definite article, as in "the 10", a usage characteristic of Southern California English. The characters are often seen with white wine or hors d'oeuvres such as nachos and avocado. Armisen writes the sketches for "The Californians" with James Anderson, and says they originated from casual conversations between Armisen, Hader, and castmate Kenan Thompson: "Just for no reason, we would talk about how we were just in L.A. and what roads we were on, and we'd be talking about directions, and, 'Well, yeah, you go on Vermont and you make a left.'" Anderson added the soap opera element. Armisen claims to make a significant effort to ensure the navigation they describe is accurate, relying on both his memory and Google Map. In 2012, LA Weekly reported that a Stanford University research project on Californian accents "suggests that 'The Californians' might be on to something." The story quoted a Stanford grad student describing something called the "California vowel shift": "If you try to think about what you think a surfer or a skater or a valley girl talks like, and do it, you can feel your mouth feels different. And I think that has to do a lot with the way that the vowels are shifting." Josh Brolin plays Greg, Stuart's doctor, who announces that Stuart has cancer. Mick Jagger plays Timothy, Stuart's long-lost father. Steve Martin cameos as a man suffering from amnesia Christina Applegate plays Brie, Stuart's new fiancée, who has a shopping addiction. Cameo appearance by Usain Bolt. Jeremy Renner plays Craig, Stuart's lawyer. Cecily Strong appears as Gia, Stuart's date, who turns out to be Devin's wife. Justin Bieber plays a runaway teen. The 40th Anniversary Special sketch features Bradley Cooper as Craig the pool boy, Betty White as Aunt Lana, Taylor Swift as cousin Allison, Laraine Newman as Karina's mother (Sherry the Valley Girl), Kerry Washington as the doctor, and Kenan Thompson. The sketch was mashed up with David Spade reprising his role from the "Total Bastard Airlines" sketch, with Cecily Strong taking the role of Helen Hunt. In the final episode Devin is showing the new real estate manager, Marie (Kate McKinnon), around and reveals that Rosa had been deported. Stuart holds a party to celebrate his athleisure wear launch, but it is interrupted when a man from Encino (Pete Davidson) reveals himself as Rosa and Devin's long lost son and is confused by their different accents.

[oldfritz]

this was surprisingly hard because half of them I wanted to throw in f, but then felt guilty about it so here’s where we are. explanations under the cut to be nice (fair warning: I’m writing this while tipsy so this is a journey)

S-tier

Old Fritz: look me in the eyes. look at me. are you looking? good. where else was I was going to put him? where? in C with the other losers? foolish. I am ruining my life for this man, I’m going to go into debt so I can be moderately qualified to write books on him so Tim Blanning and Christopher Clark don’t boo my off the stage. I sit here sometimes and I’m like ‘y’know, I would start a podcast to talk about his life’ as if I’m some straight white guy who thinks any of you want to listen to me for an hour. he’s a bastard, a smug bastard, and is the epitome of self-destructive tendencies. and, honestly, I wouldn’t mind if he wasn’t so fucking misogynistic all the time. ‘oh women aren’t fit to rule’ shut up Fritz before I time travel to fuck your wife and make her have one night where life feels worthwhile. but he’s funny, I enjoy how he does foreign policy, and he’s unfortunately relatable to me. cheers, Fritz. here’s to never being satisfied from one gay disaster with anger issues to another. may we burn in hell together

A-tier

Friedrich iii: “Suzanne, he was only on the throne for 99 days!! how can he be this high up when some of these bastards refused to die?” I hear you, my friends, and I have answers. I’ll tell you two words you’ll be shocked to hear put together: liberal Hohenzollern. a rare breed, isn’t it? imagine, friends, a world where he got over his throat cancer because he listened to a doctor and we get through the 1910s, 20s, even the 30s without Wilhelm II Electric Boogaloo being in power. Prussia is still on the map, the Anglo-Prussian alliance is strong, and I live in peace. but no. this stupid man had to keep smoking. because he’s selfish and doesn’t care about my needs. you know, he actually loved his wife. rare in this family. loved her and wasn’t abusive. the bar is so low, guys. and his wife is amazing too, Victoria. the world would’ve been in competent hands if they’d been in power longer (and Bismarck would’ve been out of a job still but at least these guys are smart. their son inherited grandma Vicki’s IQ). I would sleep with both of them and would thank them for the honor (when it should always be the other way around, remember that)

B-tier

Friedrich I: if your name is Friedrich and only Friedrich, we’re buds. that’s my rule. I have to give him credit where credit’s due. he was the first. while I agree with Fritz in his proscription that he was ‘small in big ways and big in small ways’ (I may have flipped that around), he wasn’t a bad guy. he just was born into the wrong job for him. I appreciate that he rode on his father’s coattails of proving useful to the Habsburgs and did a little himself to get that sweet, sweet kingship. smart move. I also like that he saw Louis XIV and said to himself “I stan, I kin, on God we’re gonna do that’ and tried. only for have his stupid, ungrateful, unclassy son to do away with that. I, too, am a woman of luxury and self-indulgance and if I had all the riches of Brandenburg and Prussia at the time (not much), I would spend them ridiculously on outfits and music and art. now, what did he do as king? what policy legacy did he leave behind? that’s a good one :)

C-tier

Friedrich Wilhelm III: now as a king he sucks. and I stand by this because, you know, he lost to him *imagine me pretending to be short and saying ‘oui, oui’ in a bad french accent*. and as any proper Englishwoman I can’t support a monarch who goes around losing to the French unless their name is Mary I. but, he’s a pathetic little man. he really is. so indecisive, so unsure of himself. what are you doing little guy? you think because your last name is Hohenzollern, God thinks you’re a good king? well it is like 1805 and, while divine right isn’t really being used as much, it’s as good as any reason on why you’re the chosen one and my family is eating dirt in Sicily and on the Scottish border. he’s really just a dude, nothing extraordinary about him except that his wife was the only one with brains and was the first to establish that (sorry Wilhelm I). he cried when he found out that his children didn’t call him ‘papa’ and went into a deep depressive state when his wife suddenly died. he’s an average man, of average abilities, but of big heart. and the big heart is what bumps him up, for me, from his old place as an F to a C. though, his moralizing is tedious

Friedrich Wilhelm II: this man should have partied with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. everyone’s got that one ruler whose all about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. for the US it’s JFK, for the UK it’s Margaret Thatcher Charles II, France has Louis XIV. Prussia has this guy and we should thank him. so many mistresses, so much sex, so much revelry and debauchery and sin! this guy’s personal life is like a treasure trove of political and sexual intrigue. if you’re into that - as I am as a town gossip - you’ll love him. I am constantly amazed by the fact that some STD didn’t kill him. syphilis, herpes, crabs. something, man, anything. but he didn’t. he’s a shit king though. absolutely horrible. all he did was whine that he didn’t get taught anything by Uncle Fritz and, yes, that’s not good if it’s true (but it’s not completely because the treatises are detailed but I guess he didn’t have time to read) but c’mon. actually apply yourself and learn on the job. I know that would’ve required him to not be balls deep somewhere, but unfortunately he’s not Dorian Gray. there’s work that needed to be done and he didn’t do it. boo!!

D-tier

Wilhelm I: apparently he was a good guy, unlike the other 3 who populate the lowest rungs of Prussian kinghood. so I give him that and I can respect that. but what did he do? what were his own ideas? I thought about putting Bismarck as king instead because, really, he was. Bismarck was a minister who ran around the king’s back to set things up exactly as he liked and it fucking worked because he was the brains. his wife was intelligent too, but theirs wasn’t a wamr and loving marriage. and Bismarck worked to get Wilhelm to distrust her because she was liberal and the fact that Wilhelm would listen to Otto even if it meant allowing himself to be drowned in the Rhine is pathetic. fun party at Versailles though. hope it was worth the war reparations

F-tier (bastard time) I’m going in a different order because I want to go from the ones I hate least to most xoxo

Friedrich Wilhelm IV: “I won’t accept a crown from the gutter” then you won’t accept a crown at all, stupid idiot! god, the smugness. the authoritarian impulses. I know it was the cool thing in 1848 to put down any revolts/protests with as much force as possible, but man, at least the Habsburgs were transparent. homie was like “yeah guys lol I’ll make a constitution and it’ll be epic! you’ll have so many rights! xoxo gossip girl” and then...nope. and AND he wanted the Habsburgs in charge of things too! Mr. ‘I’m Nostalgic For When HRE Was Great And We Blew Austrian Dick!’ grow up man. it’s Prussia time buddy, Austria is beginning to fall apart. don’t look to the past, look to the future, but you didn’t have that vision did you?

Wilhelm II: *banging pots and pans* I blame this man for everything! now, intellectually, does Germany take all the blame for WWI? no, that’s foolish and propaganda of the Allies only. if you’re a European power in 1914, you get to share the blame (ex: why did UK need to make this a naval arms race? Austria should’ve declared war on Serbia sooner if that’s what it wished to do. Russia, please stay out of the Balkans then and forever). but does my irrational hatred of Wilhelm blind me to this truth when I see his stupid face and that ugly fucking mustache that I wish to yank off? my god, yes. I see him and Rule Britannia and The Yanks Are Coming start playing so loud in my head and I’m like ‘yeah, the kaiser’s gonna pay.’ I’m sorry that Bismarck’s ego was bigger than yours but did you have to prove him right by getting incompetent buffoons who were playing checkers when he set the board up for chess to replace him? Did you have to prove Freud right by displacing private problems onto public life with your little tit-for-tat with George IV (VI?) because his mummy loved you more? Why did you need to fuck every naval vessel you saw like an inferior of Peter the Great who believed he was Sir Francis Drake? but that’s just the first war and he lived to see things setting up for the second. wasn’t in convenient for you to be close with the N@zis when you thought they might want a king back on the throne and you could reclaim your little tyrant. like every goddamn Prussian conservative or Junker, you thought you could play the tyrannical cockroach. sure, you figured out earlier that he was no pal, but you still collaborated and you still allowed yourself to get played like the weak man of conscience you are. cheers!

Friedrich Wilhelm I: ladies and gentleman, the moment you’ve all been waiting for! the biggest bastard straight outta Berlin, FW1! and who doesn’t love an abusive father? who doesn’t love a man, so insecure and pathetic, that he needs to terrorize children to be able to look at himself and have a little pride. I understand that it was because he wanted his kids, specifically Fritz, to be best. but being best and perfect meant being miniature versions of him and aren’t we supposed to want our children to be better than a carbon-copy of a small man? honestly, I could live with the occasional smack for this time period. it’s within the norm and, while horrible, isn’t irreparably damaging. this guy really had to beat the shit out of Fritz and Wilhelmina and I’m sure Augustus and Henry and Amalia and all the others (so many kids) didn’t get spared either because if you hit one, you’ll hit ‘em all. and I judge them for their flaws all the same but, for some of them, it gets hard to. because what fighting chance did they have when their father was telling them how worthless they were and beating them senseless and threatening death and life imprisonment on some? I’m constantly impressed by Henry and Fritz and Wilhelmina for amounting to any semblance of maturity, even though it’s always fleeting, because this man didn’t give them the tools to be functioning adults. but each of them managed to be greater than their father, as did Amalia managing a really cool coup in Sweden. and what did FW1 get? he built up his army, had a tall guy fetish, increased the treasury, and made the cabinet and executive offices more efficient. there used to be this one guy on here that would argue that that was all a good king made and that this lowlife didn’t deserve the contempt he got by some on here (an obvious vague of me) for his behavior as a father. and maybe I’m a crackpot, but I believe the quality of a man outshines all those other achievements and that that’s meaningless to me, in my personal life. and when I get to hell, before I go to any of these other men, I’ll go to him and ask him how hell’s fires feel because, if his God was real, it would never love him. and that’s beautiful

[aion-rsa]

The Beatles: The Strange History of Sexy Sadie

http://bit.ly/2Dq2cvK

John Lennon could turn a bad mood into great song, He worked out some instant karma for a giggling guru for The Beatles' White Album.

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Tony Sokol

Music

Jan 21, 2019

The Beatles

"Well, if you’re so cosmic you’ll know why," John Lennon explained to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as the final two Beatles left his Ashram before fulfilling their Transcendental Meditation regimen. "And he gave me a look like ‘I’ll kill you, you bastard,'” Lennon told Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone in December 1970, which was later published as the book Lennon Remembers. Inner peace is as much a bitch as karma, which bites the asses of rock stars and gurus alike. The Maharishi was accused of sexual misconduct during the Beatles' sojourn to India for enlightenment, a journey which may have culminated in the band teaming with the Beach Boys in spreading the movement. But it darkened Lennon's vibes so bad he banged out the holy rocking roller "Sexy Sadie."

Of course, Lennon's original version called the enlightened one a "cunt" and a "twat," and asked "who the fuck do you think you are?" until George Harrison, who was the real reason the pair were making a hasty exit due to production commitments for a Ravi Shankar film, suggested a better rhyme scheme. And a much hotter title. "Sexy Sadie" from The Beatles ("White") album preceded "How Do You Sleep?" as one of Lennon's signature tunes of personality bashing, and gave murderess Susan Atkins her signature alias.

read more: John Lennon's 'How Do You Sleep?' Footage Reveals Unrest

Lennon has a reputation of taking his personal frustrations out in rhyme and chord scheme to produce classic sides of sarcastic acoustics with melodies that get caught in your head. He could turn a bad mood into a great song. He woke up angry at Paul McCartney one morning and had George Harrison doing slide leads by the afternoon to produce "How Do You Sleep?" for his otherwise peaceable Imagine album. He flipped the bird at rich groupies after a bad one-night stand in "Norwegian Wood" from The Beatles' Rubber Soul. He slapped Peter Fonda for ruining a good trip in "She Said, She Said" from Revolver. After about nine revelations, Lennon wanted to wipe the grin off the face of the giggling guru.

Harrison and McCartney have gone on to publicly apologize to the Maharishi. Pattie Boyd, then-wife to Harrison and perennial rock muse, intimated Lennon wanted to leave the ashram to be with Yoko Ono. "Everybody's Got Something to Hide, Except for Me and My Monkey," Lennon sang. Come on. Peace is such a joy.

The Latest and Greatest of the All

The Beatles brought Indian spirituality to everyday awareness. Harrison was already heavily influenced by Hindu thought, opened by his reverence for the sitar maestro Ravi Shankar. For the iconic cover of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, Harrison suggested the band include images of Paramahansa Yogananda, the author of the 1946 book Autobiography of a Yogi who introduced westerners to Kriya Yoga through his Yogoda Satsanga Society of India and Self-Realization Fellowship; Shyama Charan Lahiri, known as Yogiraj and Kashi Baba; Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, a Kriya yogi, Vedic astrologer and Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads scholar, considered to be the "Incarnation of Wisdom." The Beatles also included Mahātmā Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the civilly disobedient leader of the Indian independence movement, known as the Father of the India.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was born Mahesh Prasad Varma on January 12, 1917, in the Panduka area of Raipur, India. He studied physics at Allahabad University, and became a disciple of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, or Guru Deva, in 1939 until Saraswati's death in 1953. In 1955, Maharishi began to teach a meditation technique called Transcendental Deep Meditation, later shortened to Transcendental Meditation. He began the Spiritual Regeneration Movement in 1957 in Madras, India. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi became known in the United States in 1959. Funded by a $100,000 donation from American heiress Doris Duke, the Maharishi’s ashram was built in 1963, covering 14 acres of forest.

Pattie Harrison heard the Maharishi was giving a series of talks at the London Hilton on August 24, 1967, and George got them front row seats. They brought along Lennon, McCartney, and Jane Asher because "we always seemed to do everything together," Harrison said in The Beatles Anthology. Starr's wife Maureen had given birth to their son Jason on August 19, 1967, and didn't know they were continuing on to Wales until after the trip was booked.

On August 26, The Beatles, along with the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, and Donovan left London's Euston Station for Bangor, north Wales for a Transcendental Meditation seminar. Lennon's wife Cynthia was held back by a security guard who thought she was a fan after she couldn't keep up with the frantic Beatle-cartoon pace the band learned through years of touring. The Beatles spent two nights in Bangor, sleeping with the other students in a rented schoolroom. The band figured maybe the Maharishi could give them what LSD couldn't, and what banana skins no longer provided for Donovan, and held a press conference saying so. 

Tragedy struck when their manager, Brian Epstein died of an overdose of the barbiturate Carbitral, mixed with alcohol, in the locked bedroom of his London home on August 27, 1967. Epstein had purchased the Saville Theatre in London and was promoting a series of Sunday concerts. On the day he died he was promoting two shows by Jimi Hendrix. Epstein was supposed to meet up with the band after the August Bank Holiday. The band was told of Epstein's death by Peter Brown. They credited meditation for helping them withstand their grief. They cut their visit short, and planned to go on a full retreat after they could clear their schedules.

Video of Beatles interview after death of manager Brian Epstein

The Road to Rishikesh

The Beatles traveled to Rishikesh, India, in February 1968 to take part in a meditation course at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's retreat. George and Pattie Harrison, her sister Jenny, and John and Cynthia Lennon, and Mal Evans, the Beatles’ longtime roadie and personal assistant, arrived on February 16. Paul McCartney, Jane Asher, Ringo Starr, and his wife Maureen came on the 19th. Rishikesh is situated where the Ganges river flows out of the Himalayas into the plains between the mountains and Delhi. Ringo brought "fifteen Sherpas carrying Heinz baked beans" because of his allergies, Harrison remembered in Anthology.

Donovan, The Beach Boys' Mike Love, along with jazz flute player Paul Horn, sometimes known as founding father of New Age music, also came. The Maharishi had taught Mike Love meditation in Paris after The Beach Boys played a UNICEF benefit. They were also joined by socialite Nancy Cooke de Herrera; Tim Simcox, an actor who appeared on Bonanza and Gunsmoke; Saturday Evening Post journalist Lewis Lapha and photographer Paul Saltzman. Actress Mia Farrow and her sister Prudence and brother John were already at the ashram. Lennon's former guru, the former TV repairman Alexis “Magic Alex” Mardas arrived weeks later. The Beatles had just gotten back from a trip to Greece where they were looking for an island they could all live together and build a recording studio.

Apple Films head Denis O’Dell stopped by the ashram to pitch The Lord of the Rings as the next Beatles movie project. He wanted John to play Gollum, Paul to play Frodo, George as Gandalf, and Ringo as Sam. O’Dell asked Lennon to read The Fellowship of the Ring, McCartney to read The Two Towers, and Harrison to read The Return of the King. Possible directors included Stanley Kubrick, Michelangelo Antonioni, and David Lean.

read more: Beatles vs. Stones and Two Unmade Stanley Kubrick Movies

Peter Brown's 1983 book The Love You Make claims the Maharishi hit on Mia Farrow, which McCartney and Harrison have since denied, and common wisdom says is a story concocted by Magic Alex. Dr. Susan Shumsky, who has been teaching meditation for 50 years, served on Maharishi’s personal staff for six years. According to her memoir Maharishi & Me: Seeking Enlightenment with the Beatles' Guru, this is merely legend.

Before The Beatles went to India, they were concerned about two things. The first was the Maharishi using them to promote himself. The other was what seemed to be his focus on money, unexpected by them in a spiritual teacher or holy man. Peter Brown's book The Love You Make asserts the Maharishi started using the Beatles without their permission. He even dropped an album as "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Beatles’ Spiritual Teacher." The Maharishi told the American Broadcasting Corporation the Beatles would appear in an upcoming ABC television special he was doing. Peter Brown told the lawyers at ABC the Beatles hadn't agreed but the Maharishi was insistent.

"In fact Peter Brown flew to Stockholm with Paul and George for the express purpose, only for the one purpose of telling him to stop talking to the TV stations, and stop promising that they would do a special for ABC," Shumsky, who was mentored by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for 22 years, tells Den of Geek. "They were angry." The Beatles were also surprised to find the Maharishi expected them to put between ten and twenty-five percent of their annual income in a Swiss bank account in his name. The fool on the hill saw more than the eyes in his head and the sun coming down, he haggled over an extra two and a half percentage points on a film the Beatles wanted no part of.

The World Was Waiting for a Lover

The book Maharishi & Me: Seeking Enlightenment with the Beatles' Guru cites witnesses saying Farrow told them he made a pass at her, and stroked her hair. She even came up with a memorable line, that she could tell a "puja from a pass." By the time Lennon remembered it for Lennon Remembers, the hullabaloo turned into a game of telephone with stories of the Maharishi "trying to rape Mia Farrow or trying to get off with Mia Farrow and a few other women, things like that." Magic Alex was the operator. The Beatles were happy writing songs in spiritual solitude. “Then everything went horribly wrong," Pattie Boyd wrote in her memoirs Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me. "Mia Farrow told John she thought Maharishi had been behaving inappropriately. I think he made a pass at her."

Shumsky confirms the incident with the Rosemary's Baby star but says it was not the primary cause. "It was on her birthday, February 9, 1968," Shumsky tells Den of Geek. "The Maharishi would always do Puja for people that were close to him." The Puja is a ceremonial invocation of the spiritual lineage, in this case to Guru Dev, Maharishi's guru Brahmananda Saraswati. "After the Puja, he stroked her hair. That's what she reported." In Farrow's autobiography What Falls Away, she writes the Maharishi also put his "hairy arms" around her.

"That same night, she reported it to a group of people who were at a party," Shumsky says. Farrow told "my friend Ned Winn, who was the son of Keenan Winn and grandson of Ed Winn, famous actors from the 20th century, personally that the Maharishi definitely tried to get her to lie down with him. … Later on, she said in her autobiography that because of her state of mind at the time, even if Jesus Christ tried to hug her, she would have misinterpreted it."

read more: The Beatles' Help Movie is More Influential Than You Think

Like so many Beatles songs, there is a lot to interpret in the motives and mysteries we find across the universe. Deepak Chopra wrote in the Times of India in 2006 that Harrison claimed the Maharishi asked them to leave because the musicians were still doing drugs at the ashram.

"He asked them to leave because some people in their party were taking drugs and alcohol," Shumsky claims. "I believe that because it has been verified by Mike Dolan as well. Dolan was living in the room right next to Rosalyn [Bonas], and every night he would listen to Magic Alex and Rosalyn having sex, and apparently Magic Alex smuggled alcohol into the ashram. I don't know about hashish. The only hashish stories I know about is the one about Donovan and the one about John Lennon."

Ravindra, a "skin boy" or personal assistant to the Maharishi, told Dolan the guru was "'going to ask Rosalyn to leave,'" Shumsky says. "I believe that it wasn't John and George that were being asked to leave. I believe it was Rosalyn and Alex, and once they found out they all got in a big huff over it, because Maharishi had made a pass at Rosalyn, and they decided to leave. That everybody should just leave. That's what I think happened."

read more: The Beatles: In Defense of Revolution 9

Regardless of who was smoking the hashish, Alex began working his magic. "What we do know is that Rosalyn and Magic Alex told the people at the ashram, spread the news, that Maharishi had made a pass at her," Shumsky says. "I believe it's true is because I know eight women personally who Maharishi made a pass at, and either had sex with or were bidden to have sex with."

According to Lennon Remembers, John and his fellow meditators "stayed up all night discussing, was it true or not true. And when George started thinking it might be true, I thought, 'Well it must be true, 'cause if George is doubting it, there must be something in it.'"

read more - The Beatles "Happiness is a Warm Gun" Still Triggers Debate

"John threw a hissy fit.  'Come on, we're leaving,'" Boyd wrote in her memoirs Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me. "Then Magic Alex claimed that Maharishi had tried something with a girl he had befriended. I am not sure how true that was. I think Alex wanted to get John away from Rishikesh. … Perhaps John had been waiting for an excuse to leave – he wanted to be with Yoko. Whatever the truth, they left.”

Mardas remembered looking through the window of the Maharishi’s villa one night and seeing the guru hugging a teacher. Harrison was, by all accounts, "furious" at Mardas and didn't believe "a word" of the allegation. Lennon would recount the conversation in an early demo of "The Maharishi Song" he recorded at Esher, which never made The White Album. "John Lennon and I went to the Maharishi about what had happened. He asked the Maharishi to explain himself," Mardas, who died in 2017, told the New York Times in 2010. The guru turned out to be merely human.

"So we went to see Maharishi, the whole gang of us the next day charged down to his hut, his very rich-looking bungalow in the mountains," Lennon told Wenner in Rolling Stone. "And I was the spokesman – as usual, when the dirty work came, I actually had to be leader, whatever the scene was, when it came to the nitty gritty I had to do the leading. And I said, 'We're leaving.'"

The guru stopped giggling. "He said, 'I don't know why, you must tell me,'" Lennon remembered in Rolling Stone. "And I just kept saying, 'You know why' – and he gave me a look like, 'I'll kill you, bastard.' He gave me such a look, and I knew then when he looked at me, because I'd called his bluff. And I was a bit rough to him."

Harrison reminded the Maharishi he would be leaving before the course relocated to Kashmir, to film Raga, a documentary about Ravi Shankar, in the south of India. "That's when John said something like, 'Well, you're supposed to be the mystic, you should know,'" Harrison remembered in the 2000 book The Beatles Anthology. "Poor Maharishi. I remember him standing at the gate of the ashram, under an aide's umbrella, as the Beatles filed by, out of his life," Boyd wrote in Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me. "'Wait,' he cried. 'Talk to me.' But no one listened."

Run for Your Life

Perhaps the darker aspects of the divine energies were keeping an ear out. Boyd also wrote that Magic Alex was "convinced that Maharishi was evil. He kept saying, 'It's black magic.'"

"He was always intimating, and there were all his right hand men intimating that he did miracles," Lennon remembered in Rolling Stone.

Vengeful forces may have been unleashed. The entourage couldn't leave Rishikesh because their taxis kept breaking down. Lennon was deserted by the driver after his taxi got a flat. He said they waited for hours, and began to feel he didn't even want to go. Shumsky references Pete Shotton's book John Lennon: In My Life quoting Lennon as saying the Maharishi "sent out so much energy he was like a magnet, drawing me back to him. Suddenly I didn't want to go at all, but I forced myself before it was too late."

"Maharishi was incredibly magnetic, incredibly charismatic," Shumsky says. "He was the most powerful, magnetically charismatic person I've ever met. He was also the happiest person I ever met, and he was filled with this energy that you wanted to be near him all the time. That transfer of energy you just get if you're close to him, you get it by osmosis, by sitting close to him, but if he looks at you and puts his attention on you, it's amplified tremendously. You're feeling these waves of bliss and waves of love, this unconditional love, this love that you've never experienced anything like it before." This energy is much the same as a devotee might feel receiving shaktipat from the Hugging Saint or Mother Meera.

Harrison later mused the incident may have caused the dysentery he caught in Madras which was cured by some amulets Ravi Shankar gave him. Lennon's instant karma kept flowing as he confessed to his wife Cynthia all of times he slept around. In her 2005 book John, Cynthia explains that she initially viewed the India visit as a second honeymoon and this litany was a shattering end. It was a long flight.

When they landed in Delhi, Lennon and Harrison told reporters they had business in London and wouldn't appear in the Maharishi's film. Harrison jetted to Los Angeles, spent time at Ravi Shankar’s Music School and his Hollywood Bowl concert, checked out a Mamas and the Papas studio session, hung out in San Francisco, and wrote "Blue Jay Way" before flying home to London on August 9.

read more: The Beatles' Blue Jay Way Is a Hidden Masterpiece

When Lennon told McCartney about the "big scandal," he wasn't so clear on why it didn’t gel with the free loving attitudes of the swinging sixties. Lennon told McCartney the Maharishi was "just a bloody old letch just like everybody else. What the fuck, we can't go following that!,'" Paul remembered in Anthology.

The Maharishi "claimed to be Bal Brahmachari, which means 'life celibate' and he was not. Also, he encouraged his disciples to be celibate. He told his skin boys to be celibate," Shumscky explains. "He even told married people that they should have celibate marriages. I mean, he was really strong on advocating celibacy, and so people got angry because they thought that he was a hypocrite."

McCartney called the Maharishi a nice fellow the band "wasn't going out with anymore." Harrison told reporters he thought the Spiritual Regeneration Movement was "too much of an organization." "We believe in meditation, but not the Maharishi and his scene," Lennon told The Tonight Show host, Joe Garagiola on May 14. "We made a mistake. He's human like the rest of us." He added, "I don't know what level he's on, but we had a nice holiday in India and came back rested."

And with a lot of songs.

A Songwriting Retreat

The Beatles wrote "48 songs in seven weeks" during their visit to Rishikesh. “I was in a room for five days meditating,” said Lennon in The Beatles Anthology. “I wrote hundreds of songs. I couldn’t sleep and I was hallucinating like crazy, having dreams where you could smell. I’d do a few hours and they you’d trip off, three- or four-hour stretches. It was just a way of getting there, and you could go on amazing trips.”

“Songwriting came easy,” Donovan wrote in The Autobiography of Donovan. “Paul Mac never had a guitar out of his hand. He let us all get a few songs in though, and you can hear the results on the records that followed, the Beatles’ White Album, and my own The Hurdy Gurdy Man.”

Donovan showed Lennon the fingerpicking style he used on the songs "Happiness is a Warm Gun," "Julia," and a song about the sister of the future star of Rosemary's Baby. Prudence Farrow was the inspiration for the song “Dear Prudence.” Mia's sister, who went on to become a meditation instructor, spent hours alone in her room "trying to find God quicker than anyone else,” Lennon told Rolling Stone. “That was the competition in Maharishi’s camp: who was going to get cosmic first.” Lennon even bumped McCartney out of his seat on a helicopter ride because he thought the Maharishi might slip him the answer, the Holy Grail, on the sly. The Beatles weren't in a popularity contest with Jesus, who spent forty days in the desert, though they spent little over a month in Rishikesh.

In 2015, Prudence Farrow told Rolling Stone “The Beatles being there – I can honestly say – did not mean anything to me. But those two people that I met, John and George, I really liked them, and they were very much up my alley.”

“The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" came from a conversation John and Paul overheard American college graduate Richard A. Cooke III tell the Maharishi. Cook and his mother Nancy Cooke de Herrera traveled by elephant on a tiger hunt in Naintal. Richard shot and killed an elephant. The band wrote so many songs, a lot didn't make it to the "White" album, or to the Beatles catalog itself. Lennon wrote “What’s the New Mary Jane?,” “Child of Nature,” which he later reworked as “Jealous Guy” for 1971’s Imagine. McCartney wrote “Junk” and “Teddy Boy” which found a home on his 1970 solo debut McCartney. Harrison wrote “Not Guilty,” which the Beatles recorded in August 1968 but never saw the light until the 1979 solo album George Harrison, and “Circles,” which came out on Gone Troppo in 1982. Harrison also wrote “Sour Milk Sea,” which was It’s based on Vishvasara Tantra, from Tantric art. The song was recorded by Jackie Lomax for the Beatles’ Apple Records. The Beatles also recorded the song “Spiritual Regeneration” which remains unreleased.

  Video of Sexy Sadie (Remastered 2009)

The Song

Lennon started writing "Sexy Sadie" in the car ride from Rishikesh to Delhi. The Beatles' publicist Derek Taylor reportedly remembered Lennon scratching the lyrics onto some wood in the Apple Corps office. Maureen Starkey saved the piece, which ultimately got into the hands of a Beatles collector.

The original lyrics were far more scathing before Lennon changed the protagonist of the song to Sadie. Lennon credited the Smokey Robinson & the Miracles song “I’ve Been Good To You” for the opening line, "Look what you’ve done, You made a fool of everyone." But it could also be a sly reference to McCartney's "Fool on the Hill," which was written on Sept. 2, 1967, weeks after the band first met the guru.

The Beatles recorded a demo of “Sexy Sadie” with the final lyrics onto an Ampex four-track machine on May 29th, 1968, at George Harrison's Esher bungalow "Kinfauns." The cut catches Lennon's double-tracked acoustic guitar and vocals, with a beat held on hand percussion by Paul and Ringo. 

The Beatles first recorded “Sexy Sadie” at EMI Studios' Studio Two on July 19th, 1968 at about 7:30 p.m. John played electric guitar and sang lead vocals, Paul played organ, George was on acoustic guitar and Ringo hit the drums.  The first track improvised lyrics about Brian Epstein and his brother Clive. The band also jammed on the George Gershwin classic "Summertime," for six minutes. The Beatles recorded 21 takes of "Sexy Sadie." Take six was released on the 1996 album Anthology 3.

The band recorded 23 more takes on July 24, using none. On August 13, they recorded eight takes, John played acoustic guitar and vocals, George played an electric guitar through a rotating Leslie speaker, Paul played piano through an echo effect, and Ringo played drums.  The band used the last take, numbered 107, for the basic tracks. The instrumental fade-out was longer and featured a breakdown based on the bridge. This was edited out prior to mixing. On August 21, Lennon recorded a lead vocal and the Hammond organ. The band added bass, tambourine and two sets of backing vocals. George double-tracked the lead guitar on the ending.

"Sexy Sadie" opens with a slightly distorted piano regally inverting six measures of the song's G C F# B minor D chord progression before Ringo kicks it in with one of his impeccably timed runs. Ringo didn't take solos. He didn’t have to. His sound, the timing, the breaths, or cigarette puffs if the studio takes in the film Help! are any indication, is immediately identifiable. The spaces he puts between beats on a run are drum solos by themselves. His bass drum and McCartney's bass strings invariably extend on each other to provide a solid foundation for slippery material. They didn't learn this on retreat in India, this came from a practice as regimented as daily meditation: rehearsal and performance.

Paul McCartney jauntily rises through the spiritual promise of the chords in the bridge, G Am7 Bm7 Cmaj7, as the band gives away everything to sit at her table. The glimpse fulfillment when the chords end on the C major chords as Sadie's smile lightens everything. Only to be let down by the "latest and the greatest" through the descending chromatics of A7 G# G F#7.

read more: The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour Could Have Been a Great Prog Rock Classic

Lennon's vocals come in intimately, but not quite lovingly. He can't believe how far Sadie's foolishness has spread. The harmonies come in as he repeats himself in falsetto, creating a soft netting. We don't know the singer is laying a trap, until Lennon warns "you'll get yours yet, no matter how big you think you are," as the piano tinkles backed with a high vibrato on the guitar. By the second bridge, the harmonies are calling to Sadie, at first seductively, but it turns into a heckle. As George's guitar riff takes over for the outro musical bridge, Lennon's voice becomes taunting, more distorted guitars join in. The vocals seem to mock the giggling of the giddy guru with the head in the clouds.

The Beatles "may have given everything they owned just to sit at her table," but they delivered a tasty just desserts as the song wound up on side 3 of The White Album, cuddled between "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey" and McCartney's thrasher "Helter Skelter." According to Vincent Bugliosi's book Helter Skelter, Charles Manson rechristened Susan Atkins, who he had already nicknamed Sadie Mae Glutz, as "Sexy Sadie" while the family was living at the Spahn Movie Ranch in the Santa Susana Mountains. 

The Beatles played a bit of "Sexy Sadie" on January 29th, 1969, during the Let It Be recording sessions. Ringo mentions "Sexy Sadie" in the song “Devil Woman” from his 1973 album Ringo, and the song “Drumming Is My Madness” from Stop And Smell The Roses, his album from 1981. Harrison mentions the title in his song “Simply Shady” from the 1974 album Dark Horse. The Maharishi may have been coyly lampooned as Jeremy Hillary Boob, the nowhere man in the animated film Yellow Submarine.

Video of Sexy Sadie (Take 3)

However big you think you are

After the Beatles left the Ashram, critics tagged them as eccentric faddists. Lennon continued to look for himself through Primal Therapy sessions with Dr. Arthur Janov, but ultimately found solace in the girl with kaleidoscope eyes, Yoko Ono. Harrison embraced Krishna Consciousness under A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, recording the mantra for the Hare Krishna movement and including it as the centerpiece of his song "My Sweet Lord." Harrison offered a public apology to the Maharishi in 1991 and gave a benefit concert for the Maharishi's Natural Law Party in 1992. The Natural Law Party asked Harrison, McCartney and Starr to run for parliament representing the party for for Liverpool in 1994.

read more: The Beatles Got Back Where They Belonged In Rooftop Swan Song

McCartney continues to quietly meditate in a dome in his home, reportedly on a round bed he got as a gift from Alice Cooper, who had gotten it from Groucho Marx. McCartney and his daughter Stella visited the Maharishi in the Netherlands in 2007. McCartney, Starr, Donovan, and Horn reunited at a concert held at New York's Radio City Music Hall to benefit the David Lynch Foundation, which pays for schools to teach Transcendental Meditation.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi died in Vlodrop, Netherlands, on February 5, 2008, the 45th anniversary of the Deep Space Network. He was 91 years old. "He was a great man who worked tirelessly for the people of the world and the cause of unity," McCartney said in a statement at the time. "I will never forget the dedication that he wrote inside a book he once gave me, which read: 'radiate, bliss, consciousness' and that to me says it all. I will miss him but will always think of him with a smile."

On the day Mahesh died, the Lennon song "Across The Universe," was broadcast in space. The song itself turned 40 that day. Jai Guru Deva om.

Culture Editor Tony Sokol cut his teeth on the wire services and also wrote and produced New York City's Vampyr Theatre and the rock opera AssassiNation: We Killed JFK. Read more of his work here or find him on Twitter @tsokol.

from Books http://bit.ly/2U5Rekl

[danvssomethingorother]

Start Of Something More P2

A03

P1

The second part of my long ass story for @yonduweek

-Ten years later, Half World-

 In and out, not gonna stay too long, don’t talk to no one, drop the shit off and we go.

 Meredith shoulda known that man was full’a shit.

 She ran her fingers gently over her large stomach keeping an eye on Kraglin’s data pad, making sure everything they owed this man was off their ship and none of the men decided to keep any of the dangerous supplies they were dropping off. She couldn’t quite tell you the reason but none of this was sitting right with her. A lotta the people they worked with didn’t sit right with her but half world was so empty. It was barren, surrounded by a jungle of alien life that none of the hardened men around her dared step foot in. The only speck of civilization in this hell-scape was the medical facility dab in the middle of the meteor. She didn’t want to go near it, it reeked of death and made shivers run down her spine, arms protectively wrapping around her swollen stomach.

 What was taking him so long?

 In and out, yet, he had been inside negotiating with that man for two hours now. She and Kraglin had been in and out of the ship four times now and still no sign of him. This was keeping in mind her personal quarters were a very long distance from the docking bay.  

 Some of the men, growing as bored as she and her adopted son, were setting games up on the crates she and Kraglin were keeping a close eye on.

 “Ma,” Kraglin said through a yawn, “Ya think the captain got side tracked again?”

 “It’s possible,” she said making circles around the baby kicking her insides growing as impatient as her, “Might be trying to swindle him out of more money than this junk is worth like he did to them folks on Xandar.”  

 Kraglin snorted leaning against one of the crates, “That’s what we need. Get into a gun fight when Kraglin Jr. is so close to joining us.”

 “I think Yondu settled on his name being little bastard,” Meredith chuckled.

 “Nah,” Kraglin said picking at his teeth, “That’ll be his nickname.”

 “His name is gonna be David Bowie!” Horuz called over to them pausing in his card game, “I will be quite the rich man when ya name him after that singer yer always going on about.”

 “Mick Jagger,” snarled Tulk in disagreement laying down a winning hand making Horuz begin to curse.

 “It’s gonna be Yondu Jr,” another argued.

 Meredith shook her head, those were not gonna be her son’s name. She had settled on Peter months ago but telling them now would ruin the fun, she liked watching them fight. She liked helping get them riled up suggesting a new singer every week. She had Kraglin put in a bet a week ago for Peter so they could split this money between them, it would be their little secret.

 “I can’t wait no longer, I’m gonna go see what’s taking his blue ass,” Meredith decided making each man look towards her with a mix of worry and restraint.

 Meredith Quill wasn’t just first mate because she was banging the captain and now carrying his child. This woman was a fire cracker with a quick hand that would have drawn her gun and killed them before they even rose.  

 “Ma, let me come with you,” Kraglin begged knowing this was trouble. Either Yondu was going to do something rash seeing his girlfriend enter or Meredith was gonna over react and shoot the place up (again) for someone disrespecting her captain.  

 “Stay with the idiots, baby, mama will only be a minute. You need to be here in case one of these morons tries to steal the cargo.”

 “And if we do?” Tulk asked watching her with a raised eye brow.

 “Kraglin will shoot ya.”

 “Alright, so we’re safe,” Tulk laughed watching Meredith disappear. She opened her mouth to make a witty retort but couldn’t find the words so continued to venture into the compound in hopes of finding Yondu and leaving this place.

 ==

 “Give me the money ya owe me and I’ll give ya yer shit,” Yondu growled out leaning across the table so the scientist could see his glare and know he was done messing around.

 “Mr. Udonta, I paid you to be on time and you weren’t. That is highly unprofessional and due to you breaking our agreement, I lost a patient due to not having the supplies I paid for in advance. You are not getting the second half because you broke our contract.”

 “Maybe if’n ya would have warned me the supplies were coming from a Xandarian military base, I could have arranged things better to be on time. I lost fifty men in that dog fight and risked my unborn son’s safety for yer shit! Least ya can do is give me what ya owe me!”  

 “I wasn’t aware you were having a child,” the man said and Yondu felt his stomach drop at the intrigued look he gave him, “I was under the impression most Centaurians  were dead and those who were alive couldn’t breed. What species is the mother?”

 “None of yer damn business,” Yondu didn’t like this, he needed to get his money and go before this turned out ugly for them, “All that matters is ya owe me money.”

 “The Kree were very good at modifying Centaurians. You of all people should know how miraculous it is for one to have a child at all, that child must be very special. I will give you all the money you want for just the opportunity to study this child.”  

 Yondu’s patience was lost at that, he let out a low whistle and his arrow was inches from the doctor’s goggles.  

 The doctor sighed and shrugged in annoyance as if Yondu was the one being unreasonable here.  

 “You act like I would hurt your child, if anything it would be nothing more than a free check up from a real doctor. I am a leading doctor in my field Mr. Udonta, I do not harm my patients, I merely enhance them and make them more than they ever expected they could be.”  

 “Yer no better than a filthy slaver if you really think that way and ya best give me good reason not to kill ya now.”

 “Calm yourself, Mr. Udonta,” he said not even phased by the arrow still floating close to his face, “A slaver and a researcher are very different. I am taking away no one’s free will. I always ask for permission and as the father you have denied access to your child. So, I will not bring it up any further.”

 He paused picking up a stack of papers and sliding them over to Yondu who didn’t touch them. This did not phase the doctor any either, almost expecting it at this point.  

 “That is the reason I cannot pay you. Your lateness cost us a life, a life more valuable than any of your low life crew will ever be worth.”

 “She was in need of those parts so I could complete her new functioning lung as hers was giving out and life support was becoming too costly. I had to put her down to end her suffering because of you. A fine specimen she was, taken too soon.”

 Yondu opened up the file and quirked an eyebrow at the man.

 “What the hell was she?”

 “When I picked her up from a man who was obsessed with all things Terran, she was nothing. A barely evolved, non-sentient creature known as an otter. The other creature I got that day is all I have left. I suppose I can cut the price in half to keep him alive and as an apology for nearly killing your son who seems quite valuable himself.”

 “You want to keep yer life now you better double the original offer,” Yondu hissed shoving the papers to the ground, “Let’s get something straight: I don’t like you. We ain’t friends and no one, god damn no one, is allowed to even suggest my boy needs to be caged for the name of shit. Especially yer god damn science.”

 “I never said that.”

 “But ya implied it. I know yer type. Thinkin’ my boy must be worth somethin’, he ain’t even out of his mama yet and I got to worry about scum like you wanting to buy him.”

 “For the love of the gods,” the man hissed, his patience finally cracking, “I will pay you to just leave at this point. You are wasting valuable time. I need to get back to my patients.”

 He slid Yondu over a units card before turning his attention away from Yondu entirely, holding up his finger to signal Yondu to be silent before answering his communicator.

 “Yes?”

 “Is that so? I’ll be there in a minute.”

 He smiled at Yondu, a smile that made even Yondu’s insides twist a little.

 “It was a pleasure dealing with you. Leave the supplies where we instructed and please leave, our business is done here.”

 Yondu opened his mouth to demand an explanation but he got none from the man who was already disappearing.  

 Yondu wasn’t the trusting sort and didn’t leave anything to chance. Something wasn’t right and he was gonna find out why the hell the doctor gave up on this so easily.

---

 Meredith frowned it was too easy to get into this place, all she did was walk into the back entrance. No security, no check points, nothing but a sterile smell and an eerie silence that made goosebumps break across her arms. She didn’t like this, it didn’t feel right.

 The place felt like a Terran hospital. Cold, devoid of emotion or life, a beeping coming from one of the rooms and just so damn quiet.

 She ran her finger over her stomach feeling Peter kicking up a storm in there, he must have sensed her unease.

 “Its alright baby boy, we’re just gettin’ daddy before they decide to check him in this place.”

 She had heard stories about Half World and none were pleasant ones. Former employees of this facility coming back to their home worlds changed, all talking about what monsters this place turned them into for the sake of progress and science. No patient had ever been recorded to leave this place. Once you checked it, that was it, you were done for, you were donating your body to science.

 That lump in the pit of her stomach grew tighter knowing this was all legal. Half world didn’t have to go by any laws set by the Galactic Federation nor The Kree Empire (which had been enforcing more Federation laws since the signing of the treaty) making anything they did to you behind these walls legal. First class with health care, they had found cures to a number of diseases that many planets accepted happily but the cost was what happened to the patients to get those results.

 She wasn’t letting Yondu face this thing alone, something bad was keeping him and this planet wasn’t getting the father of her son.

 “Peter, baby, its ok,” she whispered again running her fingers over her stomach taking peaks into the rooms. There weren’t many patients here and the ones she did see were on full life support making her more uneasy.

 Peter was restless today, kicking and kicking. Not even born yet and he knew when they were in a bad situation. She needed to turn back for his sake, but she was stubborn and needed to do this on her own.

 Something caught her attention ahead of her, it was someone yelling and it seemed all the staff was with that person yelling. Slowly she crept forward, sliding across the wall, fingers latching onto each door knob she passed by testing them in case she needed somewhere to disappear into fast.

 “You fucking killed her!!!”

 “Calm down, you are only doing harm to yourself. The female otter had no way of surviving as we have been telling you---”

 “No!! SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! You could have done more but you didn’t because she didn’t matter---!!!”

 “That is very untrue, all our patients matter immensely and we are sad the otter did not make it.”

 “Then call her by her fucking name and not treat her as some kind of animal!”

 “Calm yourself or we will be forced to drug you---”

 Meredith was finally at the door where the screaming was coming from, she peaked into the room and did not like what she saw.

 A raccoon (she learned long ago not to question these things) was hanging off one of the large lights in the room and several doctors were surrounding him.  

 They were trying to get the raccoon down and by the looks of it, he had every right to stay where he was far away from these people. The pink shade of skin peaking from their white scrubs told Meredith they were kree and that meant this would not be an easy fight if she got caught. They were armed with more than just needles too she noted eying the blasters on their sides, this would not end good for her or her son. The smart thing would be turn away while they were distracted and leave, go back to her crew but she couldn’t leave the poor creature by himself. That wasn’t in her nature. She did a lot of shitty things since she joined Yondu but leaving someone to suffer wouldn’t be on that list.

 She took a deep breath and decided to use her condition to her advantage. A room full of doctors weren’t likely to kill a pregnant woman.

 “Excuse me!” she yelled opening the door clinging to her stomach for good measure.

 “I’m going into labor! My captain is doing a deal right now for medical supplies and we can’t leave and I need help right now desperately!”

 “Please calm down ma’am, “one of the five doctors said turning away from the raccoon refusing to come down from his spot.

 “We can help please just give us a moment.”

 “I don’t have a moment, ya idiot! The baby is comin’ now and he’s impatient!! Please!!!” she dropped to the ground letting fake sobs travel through her, clinging tighter to Peter still kicking away, “I need to make sure my baby is OK!!! Yer doctors aren’t ya?!”

 She latched onto one of the doctor’s hands, screaming louder in fake agony making a few more of them turn towards her fearing the worst. She looked up, letting out one of her best fake cries to date and caught eyes with the raccoon for just a second and sent him a wink that he returned with a shake of the head at her display.

 It was his only chance to take her distraction and he seemed to get that, climbing down slowly while all eyes were on Meredith screaming loudly. One of the doctors com’d for the head doctor to please come to them immediately.

 “What species are you, ma’am? Are you Xandarian?”

 “No…Terran…please just help me!!! I can’t hold on much longer!! My baby boy is coming!!! I need my boyfriend here. He’s with your head doctor!”

 “We have called him, ma’am, please just be patient. Breath. Your life is not in any danger, you are perfectly safe here.”

 The scowl the raccoon wore as he unscrewed the vent while Meredith had all eyes on her told a different story.

 Luck wasn’t completely on their side though, one doctor glanced up during the commotion and spotted the raccoon trying to make his getaway. He yelled out and two other doctors jumped up with him going towards the rodent. Meredith had always been a quick shot though, pulling out her blaster and shooting two in the back before they could get too far.

 At that moment, their gig was sadly up. The head doctor had arrived and he didn’t look happy. The momentary distraction of his arrival was all they needed to disarm Meredith, her heart began to beat erratically. She was fucked now. She may have saved the rodent but now she was taking poor Peter down with her.

 “We may have lost the raccoon but I think you should be a more then welcome replacement, miss. Welcome to half - world, you and your son’s new home.”

 An arrow flew through at that moment, taking out two of the doctors holding her and she smiled seeing her boyfriend enter the fray.

 Her happiness was short lived as the head doctor grabbed her and shoved a blaster against her neck.

 “Hi, sugar…” she said meekly smiling at her boyfriend who was glaring daggers at her, the fallen doctors surrounding his feet.

 “Hello sweetheart, ya havin’ fun gettin’ caught and endangering our son for some rat?”

 “Not my idea of an afternoon but it wasn’t completely awful, I shot some guys before ya came and ruined ma fun,” she chuckled and scowled as the blaster was shoved more forcefully against her head.

 “I think you both have had more than enough ‘’fun’’ destroying my facility. Leave now Udonta or your wife…”

 “Girlfriend, we ain’t ready to settle down like that yet.”

 “Fine, girlfriend, fuck toy, what ever this bitch is,” he snarled his cool composure breaking further tightening his grip on Meredith who groaned in protest.

 “You let my patient escape. Go who knows where and I think its fair to say you owe me. I have never encountered a Terran before and certainly not a Terran hybrid, so the child will be enough for me. Whether you get the woman back alive or not is to be seen.”

 “You shoot me and I shoot the woman. Both die. You stand down and maybe I will show mercy on your ‘woman’ here and you can both leave together but after all the trouble you have cost me, you are not keeping the child. He is mine now as payment for all my work you have ruined!”

 Meredith began squirming at that, he was not having her son. She looked  towards Yondu with fear but his eyes promised he wouldn’t touch a hair on their son’s head.

 Before either could decide what to do though, the doctor let go of Meredith letting her stumble away from the man who had been holding her. Her arm tight around her stomach, desperately trying to protect her son as Yondu grabbed hold of her, pushing her protectively behind him.

 The raccoon from earlier was standing on top of the doctor’s unmoving form, a needle in his hand that was shaking.

 “Don’t worry about him, he won’t be getting up. I did to him what he did to Lyla.”

 He began walking away from them and Meredith shoved away from her scowling boyfriend in a flash chasing after him the best she could asking him to wait.

 He turned his head towards her and she smiled.

 “Please allow us to repay ya for helpin us out there and give ya a lift to where ever ya want ta go.”

 He shrugged.

 “Not like I had anywhere to go anyway.”

Like my work? Buy me a coffee

[rockloveletters-blog]

Beggar’s Banquet - The Rolling Stones

"Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste."

It's one of the most potent opening verses in the pantheon of immortal rock songs. Instantly recognizable, sinewy, swaggering. No introductions needed.

This is a love letter to Beggar's Banquet, which is celebrating its 50th birthday. 50 years!  That's going to make some of my friends here on Facebook feel old. Boomers, take consolation in the fact that the rock and roll heroes of your generation produced some of the most epic, durable albums in rock history. They genuinely don't make 'em like this anymore.

Beggar's Banquet kicked off a 5-album run of hall of fame material, including Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main Street. Ben Fong Torres describes it as "an album flush with masterful and growling instant classics." This release is where the "World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band" thing started. At least, it's where the masses came to agree with Jagger's own proclamations.

This was the Stones' coming out party as musicians and songwriters. But in typical Stones fashion, there's plenty else to unpack around this album before we even consider the music.

Banquet followed Their Satanic Majesty's Request, the Stones' supposed answer to Sgt. Pepper.  A turnaround of epic proportions, to be sure. Satanic Majesty sucked, except for “She's a Rainbow” and “2000 Light Years From Home.”

It's the last Stones album featuring any meaningful contribution from Brian Jones - his absolutely sublime slide guitar work on "No Expectations" -  before he was found dead in a pool.

Controversy? Yes, please. First, there was Banquet's original album cover: Graffiti scratched onto a wall above a toilet in a dirty bathroom. It was so controversial at the time that it got pulled and replaced with the plain white design most of us are familiar with.  More controversy on the track "Stray Cat Blues," with its sexually-charged lyrics and one of the meanest guitar riffs Keith's ever summoned forth from his Tele.  No way it gets released in the age of #MeToo.

Stellar guest players,  including Nicky Hopkins, Ric Grech, Dave Mason, and Jimmy Miller.

Looking at Beggar's Banquet track by track, I'm struck by how it can be so cohesive and shambling at the same time. It's a  perfect example of how the Stones slipped this ominous tension into everything they did in their classic era. I've heard it described this way: In most rock bands, everybody follows the rhythm section.  Not the Stones, at least not in their work that's got some bite. Charlie follows Keith's guitar, and it feels like everything's perpetually on the verge of falling apart. Until it doesn't. Those in the know say that Charlie is the secret weapon in this band. I believe them.

So there's "Sympathy," which really needs no further explanation. I've heard it a million times. Every time, it's like I'm listening to the soundtrack to the end of the world.

The rest of these drug-fuelled, roots-and-blues numbers equate to a single album, of a unique place and time, worth a book or biopic all its own.  

"Dear Doctor" presages Jagger's tongue-in-cheek country dabblings (Think "Far Away Eyes" from 1978's Some Girls album) and is just plain fun. "I'm down in Virginia with your cousin Lou, and there'll be no wedding today!" he sings in a fake female falsetto to some poor bastard who finally lucks out when his "four-legged sow" of a fiance runs off on their wedding day.

"Parachute Woman: just bleeds Muddy Waters, and when the Stones cover or outright ape Muddy, good things usually happen. Keith doesn't play it straight-Muddy, though. He messed around with his guitar tone in ways he hadn't since "Satisfaction."

And then..."Street Fighting Man."  Oh my God. An uber-anthem for the classic rock ages, guitars like chimes soaring over a city that happens to be on fire. Lyrically, a masterpiece:

"So my name is called Disturbance I'll shout and scream I'll kill the king I'll rail at all his servants Well, what can a poor boy do Except to sing for a rock n' roll band? 'Cause in sleepy London town There's just no place for a street fighting man, no"

And then that bass run, which ends up in Jumpin' Jack Flash a few years later. For good reason, too.  Wyman could work that into every song, and I wouldn't care. It's just that formidable.

Maybe "Factory Girl" and "Prodigal Son," Keith-driven country-blues numbers, were thought of as filler at the time. I don’t know. I wasn’t born yet and my dad probably doesn’t remember. But that would have been premature and disproved in a few short years. Both tracks would have been right at home on Exile on Main Street. And everybody knows there is no filler on Exile on Main Street.

I already mentioned "Stray Cat Blues."  Like I said, it would never get played on the radio today (which I don't understand, given the content of much rap music). You just have to hear it for yourself, throw your sensibilities under the bus and repeat this mantra: It's only rock and roll, but I like it.

No track other than "Sympathy for the Devil" could have opened this album. Likewise, none except "Salt of the Earth" could close it. Keith and Mick trade stanzas in this ode to those who are, well, the salt of the earth.  In somebody else's hands (that isn't Woody Guthrie or Bruce Springsteen), this song might have come off as contrived - and that's before the mid-tempo acoustic guitars and piano tinklings crescendo into an all-hands-on-deck affair with a gospel chorus, of all goddamned things. Emoting heartache and bittersweet yearning or not, it sure feels honest.

"Let's drink to the hard working people Let's drink to the lowly of birth Raise your glass to the good and the evil Let's drink to the salt of the earth

Say a prayer for the common foot soldier Spare a thought for his back breaking work Say a prayer for his wife and his children Who burn the fires and who still till the earth."

The Glimmer Twins weren't yet called the Glimmer Twins when this album was released. These songs - and the ones on the next several albums - were more rust and dust than glitter.  Glimmer, in fact, is the chief problem some of us hardcore fans have with their modern-day efforts like Steel Wheels and Voodoo Lounge. Once in a while, as on Some Girls and even Undercover of the Night, they return to form and act like the World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band. Whether or not they go into the studio deliberately trying to recapture the magic of Beggar's Banquet, their music works best when it at least tries.

========================= Beggar's Banquet Recorded: March 17 - July 25, 1968 Released: December 6,1968

Side A: Sympathy For The Devil No Expectations Dear Doctor Parachute Woman Jigsaw Puzzle

Side B: Street Fighting Man Prodigal Son Stray Cat Blues Factory Girl Salt Of The Earth

[gavintatesmusicjournal]

YAK - Semi-Automatic (Music Video)

01/10/17

By now this would be about a year old, but I had a bit of time away from the writing so give me the benefit of the doubt. Sounding like the re-birth of both The Brian Jonestown Massacre, and their tour buddies The Dandy Warhols, the both blended into one. The UK's most exciting live act YAK hit back not long after their 'Alas Salvation' album release with a AA-side including ‘Heavens Above’, a slice of filth on wheels backed with this epic venture, burying organs reminiscent of Arthur Brown’s ‘Fire’ deep into your skull; whilst unleashing miraculous pop hooks, razor sharp guitars, lyrics relevant to current catastrophes driven by mass political propaganda, along with an excellent music video to boot. Nothing too out of the ordinary; just some great visuals of the group jamming, with their back-line set up in a checked floor living room, very 90′s, and simplistic! Singer Oli is like the bastard son Mick Jagger never had, though echo's a voice that’s not far off that of the one David Byrne spurted out on Talking Heads highly influential '77' album all those years ago! With Burslem's racketeer's track record so far, they seem to have a great path on the horizon, and judging by this, there’s no stopping them. *********9/10

By Gavin Tate

For Gavin Tate's Music Journal

[itsfinancethings]

October 07, 2019 at 12:50AM

LONDON (AP) — Ginger Baker, the volatile and propulsive drummer for Cream and other bands who wielded blues power and jazz finesse and helped shatter boundaries of time, tempo and style in popular music, died Sunday at age 80, his family said.

With blazing eyes, orange-red hair and a temperament to match, the London native ranked with The Who’s Keith Moon and Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham as the embodiment of musical and personal fury. Using twin bass drums, Baker fashioned a pounding, poly-rhythmic style uncommonly swift and heavy that inspired and intimidated countless musicians. But every beat seemed to mirror an offstage eruption — whether his violent dislike of Cream bandmate Jack Bruce or his on-camera assault of a documentary maker, Jay Bulger, whom he smashed in the nose with his walking stick.

Bulger would call the film, released in 2012, “Beware of Mr. Baker.”

Baker’s family said on Twitter that he died Sunday: “We are very sad to say that Ginger has passed away peacefully in hospital this morning.”

His daughter Nettie confirmed that Baker died in Britain but gave no other details. The family had said on Sept. 25 that Baker was critically ill in the hospital.

While Rolling Stone magazine once ranked him the third-greatest rock drummer of all time, behind Moon and Bonham, Baker had contempt for Moon and others he dismissed as “bashers” without style or background. Baker and his many admirers saw him as a rounded, sophisticated musician — an arranger, composer and student of the craft, absorbing sounds from around the world. He had been playing jazz since he was a teenager and spent years in Africa in the 1970s, forming a close friendship with the Nigerian musician-activist Fela Kuti.

“He was so unique and had such a distinctive personality,” Stewart Copeland of the Police told http://www.musicradar.com in 2013. “Nobody else followed in his footsteps. Everybody tried to be John Bonham and copy his licks, but it’s rare that you hear anybody doing the Ginger Baker thing.”

But many fans thought of Baker as a rock star, who teamed with Eric Clapton and Bruce in the mid-1960s to become Cream — one of the first supergroups and first power trios. All three were known individually in the London blues scene and together they helped make rock history by elevating instrumental prowess above the songs themselves, even as they had hits with “Sunshine of Your Love,” ”I Feel Free” and “White Room.”

Cream was among the most successful acts of its time, selling more than 10 million records. But by 1968 Baker and Bruce had worn each other out and even Clapton had tired of their deafening, marathon jams, including the Baker showcase “Toad,” one of rock’s first extended drum solos. Cream split up at the end of the year, departing with two sold-out shows at London’s Albert Hall. When told by Bulger that he was a founding father of heavy metal, Baker snarled that the genre “should have been aborted.”

To the surprise of many, especially Clapton, he and Baker were soon part of another super group, Blind Faith, which also featured singer-keyboardist Stevie Winwood and bassist Ric Grech.

Peter Kemp—AP In this Aug. 20, 1967 file photo, members of the rock group Cream depart from Heathrow Airport in London, for their American tour. The trio, walking with unidentified female companions, from left are, base guitarist Jack Bruce, drummer Ginger Baker, and lead guitarist Eric Clapton.

As Clapton would recall, he and Winwood had been playing informally when Baker turned up (Baker would allege that Clapton invited him). Named Blind Faith by a rueful Clapton, the band was overwhelmed by expectations from the moment it debuted in June 1969 before some 100,000 at a concert in London’s Hyde Park. It split up after completing just one, self-titled album, as notable for its cover photo of a topless young girl as for its music. A highlight from the record: Baker’s cymbal splashes on Winwood’s lyrical ballad “Can’t Find My Way Home.”

“Beneath his somewhat abrasive exterior, there was a very sensitive human being with a heart of gold,” Winwood said in a statement Sunday.

From the 1970s on, Baker was ever more unpredictable. He moved to Nigeria, took up polo, drove a Land Rover across the Sahara, lived on a ranch in South Africa, divorced his first wife and married three more times.

He recorded with Kuti and other Nigerians, jammed with Art Blakey, Elvin Jones and other jazz drummers and played with John Lydon’s Public Image Ltd. He founded Ginger Baker’s Air Force, which cost a fortune and imploded after two albums. He endured his old enemy, Bruce, when Cream was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 and for Cream reunion concerts a decade later. Bruce died in 2014.

Baker continued to perform regularly in his 70s despite arthritis, heart trouble, hearing loss dating from his years with Cream and lung disease from smoking. A stranger to no vice, immodesty included, he called his memoir “Hellraiser: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Drummer.”

“John Bonham once made a statement that there were only two drummers in British rock ‘n’ roll; himself and Ginger Baker,” Baker wrote in his book. “My reaction to this was, ‘You cheeky little bastard!'”

Born in 1939, Peter Edward Baker was the son of a bricklayer killed during World War II when Ginger was just 4. His father left behind a letter that Ginger Baker would quote from: “Use your fists; they’re your best pals so often.”

Baker was a drummer from early on, even rapping out rhythms on his school desk as he mimicked the big band music he loved and didn’t let the occasional caning from a teacher deter him. As a teenager, he was playing in local groups and was mentored by percussionist Phil Seamen.

“At this party, there was a little band and all the kids chanted at me, ‘Play the drums!”’, Baker told The Independent in 2009. “I’d never sat behind a kit before, but I sat down — and I could play! One of the musicians turned round and said, ‘Bloody hell, we’ve got a drummer’, and I thought, ‘Bloody hell, I’m a drummer.'”

Baker came of age just as London was learning the blues, with such future superstars as Clapton, Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page among the pioneers. Baker joined Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, where he met (and soon disliked, for allegedly playing too loud) the Scottish-born bassist Jack Bruce, with whom he was thrown together again as members of the popular British group the Graham Bond Organization.

Clapton, meanwhile, was London’s hottest guitarist, thanks to his work with the Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Blues Breakers, his extraordinary speed and agility inspiring “Clapton is God” graffiti. Clapton, Baker and Bruce would call their band Cream because they considered themselves the best musicians around.

“Oh for god’s sake, I’ve never played rock,” Baker told the blog JazzWax in 2013. “Cream was two jazz players and a blues guitarist playing improvised music. We never played the same thing two nights running. Jack and I had been in jazz bands for years. All that stuff I did on the drums in Cream didn’t come from drugs, either. It was from me. It was jazz.”

___

Italie reported from New York. Kelvin Chan contributed from London.

[newstechreviews]

LONDON (AP) — Ginger Baker, the volatile and propulsive drummer for Cream and other bands who wielded blues power and jazz finesse and helped shatter boundaries of time, tempo and style in popular music, died Sunday at age 80, his family said.

With blazing eyes, orange-red hair and a temperament to match, the London native ranked with The Who’s Keith Moon and Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham as the embodiment of musical and personal fury. Using twin bass drums, Baker fashioned a pounding, poly-rhythmic style uncommonly swift and heavy that inspired and intimidated countless musicians. But every beat seemed to mirror an offstage eruption — whether his violent dislike of Cream bandmate Jack Bruce or his on-camera assault of a documentary maker, Jay Bulger, whom he smashed in the nose with his walking stick.

Bulger would call the film, released in 2012, “Beware of Mr. Baker.”

Baker’s family said on Twitter that he died Sunday: “We are very sad to say that Ginger has passed away peacefully in hospital this morning.”

His daughter Nettie confirmed that Baker died in Britain but gave no other details. The family had said on Sept. 25 that Baker was critically ill in the hospital.

While Rolling Stone magazine once ranked him the third-greatest rock drummer of all time, behind Moon and Bonham, Baker had contempt for Moon and others he dismissed as “bashers” without style or background. Baker and his many admirers saw him as a rounded, sophisticated musician — an arranger, composer and student of the craft, absorbing sounds from around the world. He had been playing jazz since he was a teenager and spent years in Africa in the 1970s, forming a close friendship with the Nigerian musician-activist Fela Kuti.

“He was so unique and had such a distinctive personality,” Stewart Copeland of the Police told http://www.musicradar.com in 2013. “Nobody else followed in his footsteps. Everybody tried to be John Bonham and copy his licks, but it’s rare that you hear anybody doing the Ginger Baker thing.”

But many fans thought of Baker as a rock star, who teamed with Eric Clapton and Bruce in the mid-1960s to become Cream — one of the first supergroups and first power trios. All three were known individually in the London blues scene and together they helped make rock history by elevating instrumental prowess above the songs themselves, even as they had hits with “Sunshine of Your Love,” ”I Feel Free” and “White Room.”

Cream was among the most successful acts of its time, selling more than 10 million records. But by 1968 Baker and Bruce had worn each other out and even Clapton had tired of their deafening, marathon jams, including the Baker showcase “Toad,” one of rock’s first extended drum solos. Cream split up at the end of the year, departing with two sold-out shows at London’s Albert Hall. When told by Bulger that he was a founding father of heavy metal, Baker snarled that the genre “should have been aborted.”

To the surprise of many, especially Clapton, he and Baker were soon part of another super group, Blind Faith, which also featured singer-keyboardist Stevie Winwood and bassist Ric Grech.

Peter Kemp—AP In this Aug. 20, 1967 file photo, members of the rock group Cream depart from Heathrow Airport in London, for their American tour. The trio, walking with unidentified female companions, from left are, base guitarist Jack Bruce, drummer Ginger Baker, and lead guitarist Eric Clapton.

As Clapton would recall, he and Winwood had been playing informally when Baker turned up (Baker would allege that Clapton invited him). Named Blind Faith by a rueful Clapton, the band was overwhelmed by expectations from the moment it debuted in June 1969 before some 100,000 at a concert in London’s Hyde Park. It split up after completing just one, self-titled album, as notable for its cover photo of a topless young girl as for its music. A highlight from the record: Baker’s cymbal splashes on Winwood’s lyrical ballad “Can’t Find My Way Home.”

“Beneath his somewhat abrasive exterior, there was a very sensitive human being with a heart of gold,” Winwood said in a statement Sunday.

From the 1970s on, Baker was ever more unpredictable. He moved to Nigeria, took up polo, drove a Land Rover across the Sahara, lived on a ranch in South Africa, divorced his first wife and married three more times.

He recorded with Kuti and other Nigerians, jammed with Art Blakey, Elvin Jones and other jazz drummers and played with John Lydon’s Public Image Ltd. He founded Ginger Baker’s Air Force, which cost a fortune and imploded after two albums. He endured his old enemy, Bruce, when Cream was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 and for Cream reunion concerts a decade later. Bruce died in 2014.

Baker continued to perform regularly in his 70s despite arthritis, heart trouble, hearing loss dating from his years with Cream and lung disease from smoking. A stranger to no vice, immodesty included, he called his memoir “Hellraiser: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Drummer.”

“John Bonham once made a statement that there were only two drummers in British rock ‘n’ roll; himself and Ginger Baker,” Baker wrote in his book. “My reaction to this was, ‘You cheeky little bastard!'”

Born in 1939, Peter Edward Baker was the son of a bricklayer killed during World War II when Ginger was just 4. His father left behind a letter that Ginger Baker would quote from: “Use your fists; they’re your best pals so often.”

Baker was a drummer from early on, even rapping out rhythms on his school desk as he mimicked the big band music he loved and didn’t let the occasional caning from a teacher deter him. As a teenager, he was playing in local groups and was mentored by percussionist Phil Seamen.

“At this party, there was a little band and all the kids chanted at me, ‘Play the drums!”’, Baker told The Independent in 2009. “I’d never sat behind a kit before, but I sat down — and I could play! One of the musicians turned round and said, ‘Bloody hell, we’ve got a drummer’, and I thought, ‘Bloody hell, I’m a drummer.'”

Baker came of age just as London was learning the blues, with such future superstars as Clapton, Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page among the pioneers. Baker joined Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, where he met (and soon disliked, for allegedly playing too loud) the Scottish-born bassist Jack Bruce, with whom he was thrown together again as members of the popular British group the Graham Bond Organization.

Clapton, meanwhile, was London’s hottest guitarist, thanks to his work with the Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Blues Breakers, his extraordinary speed and agility inspiring “Clapton is God” graffiti. Clapton, Baker and Bruce would call their band Cream because they considered themselves the best musicians around.

“Oh for god’s sake, I’ve never played rock,” Baker told the blog JazzWax in 2013. “Cream was two jazz players and a blues guitarist playing improvised music. We never played the same thing two nights running. Jack and I had been in jazz bands for years. All that stuff I did on the drums in Cream didn’t come from drugs, either. It was from me. It was jazz.”

___

Italie reported from New York. Kelvin Chan contributed from London.

[cvrnewsdirectindia]

Ginger Baker, Cream’s volatile drummer, dies at 80

Ginger Baker, the volatile and propulsive British musician who was best known for his time with the power trio Cream, has died at 80, his family says.

Baker’s family said on Twitter that he died Sunday, “We are very sad to say that Ginger has passed away peacefully in hospital this morning.”

Gary Hibbert, a media representative for Baker’s family, confirmed his death.

Baker wielded his blues power and jazz technique to help break open popular music and become one of the world’s most admired and feared musicians.

With blazing eyes and orange-red hair, and a temperament to match, the London native ranked with The Who’s Keith Moon and Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham as the embodiment of musical and personal fury. Using twin bass drums, Baker fashioned a pounding, poly-rhythmic style uncommonly swift and heavy that inspired and intimidated countless musicians. But every beat seemed to mirror an offstage eruption whether his violent dislike of Cream bandmate Jack Bruce or his on-camera assault of a documentary maker, Jay Bulger, whom he smashed in the nose with his walking stick.

Bulger would call the film, released in 2012, “Beware of Mr. Baker.”

Third-greatest rock drummer

While the Rolling Stone magazine once ranked him the third-greatest rock drummer of all time, behind Moon and Bonham, Baker had contempt for Moon and others he dismissed as “bashers” without style or background. Baker and his many admirers saw him as a rounded, sophisticated musician an arranger, composer and student of the craft absorbing sounds from around the world. He had been playing jazz since he was a teenager and spent years in Africa in the 1970s, forming a close friendship with the Nigerian musician-activist Fela Kuti.

“He was so unique and had such a distinctive personality,” Stewart Copeland of the Police told www.musicradar.com in 2013. “Nobody else followed in his footsteps. Everybody tried to be John Bonham and copy his licks, but it’s rare that you hear anybody doing the Ginger Baker thing.”

But many fans thought of him as a rock star, who teamed with Eric Clapton and Bruce in the mid-1960s to become Cream one of the first supergroups and first power trios. All three were known individually in the London blues scene and together they helped make rock history by elevating instrumental prowess above the songs themselves, even as they had hits with “Sunshine of Your Love,” “I Feel Free” and “White Room.”

Cream was among the most successful acts of its time, selling more than 10 million records. But by 1968 Baker and Bruce had worn each other out and even Clapton had tired of their deafening, marathon jams, including the Baker showcase “Toad,” one of rock’s first extended drum solos. Cream split up at the end of the year, departing with two sold-out shows at London’s Albert Hall. When told by Bulger that he was a founding father of heavy metal, Baker snarled that the genre “should have been aborted.”

To the surprise of many, especially Clapton, he and Baker were soon part of another super group, Blind Faith, which also featured singer-keyboardist Stevie Winwood and bassist Ric Grech.

As Clapton would recall, he and Winwood had been playing informally when Baker turned up (Baker would allege that Clapton invited him). Named Blind Faith by a rueful Clapton, the band was overwhelmed by expectations from the moment it debuted in June 1969 before some 100,000 at a concert in London’s Hyde Park. It split up after completing just one, self-titled album, as notable for its cover photo of a topless young girl as for its music. A highlight from the record- Baker’s cymbal splashes on Winwood’s lyrical ballad “Can’t Find My Way Home.”

Perform regularly

From the 1970s on, Baker was ever more unpredictable. He moved to Nigeria, took up polo, drove a Land Rover across the Sahara, lived on a ranch in South Africa, divorced his first wife and married three more times.

Baker continued to perform regularly in his 70s despite arthritis, heart trouble, hearing loss dating from his years with Cream and lung disease from smoking. No strangers to vices and not a fan of modesty, he called his memoir “Hellraiser- The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Drummer.”

“John Bonham once made a statement that there were only two drummers in British rock ‘n’ roll; himself and Ginger Baker,” Baker wrote in his book. “My reaction to this was, ‘You cheeky little bastard!’”

Baker’s early life

Born in 1939, Peter Edward Baker was the son of a bricklayer killed during World War II when Ginger was just 4. His father left behind a letter that Ginger Baker would quote from- “Use your fists; they’re your best pals so often.”

Baker was a drummer from early on, even rapping out rhythms on his school desk as he mimicked the big band music he loved and didn’t let the occasional caning from a teacher deter him. As a teenager, he was playing in local groups and was mentored by percussionist Phil Seamen.

“At this party, there was a little band and all the kids chanted at me, ‘Play the drums!’”, Baker told The Independent in 2009. “I’d never sat behind a kit before, but I sat down and I could play! One of the musicians turned round and said, ‘Bloody hell, we’ve got a drummer’, and I thought, ‘Bloody hell, I’m a drummer.’”

Baker came of age just as London was learning the blues, with such future superstars as Clapton, Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page among the pioneers. Baker joined Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, where he met (and soon disliked, for allegedly playing too loud) the Scottish-born bassist Jack Bruce, with whom he was thrown together again as members of the popular British group the Graham Bond Organization.

Clapton, meanwhile, was London’s hottest guitarist, thanks to his work with the Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Blues Breakers, his extraordinary speed and agility inspiring “Clapton is God” graffiti. Clapton, Baker and Bruce would call their band Cream because they considered themselves the best musicians around.

“Oh for god’s sake, I’ve never played rock,” Baker told the blog JazzWax in 2013. “Cream was two jazz players and a blues guitarist playing improvised music. We never played the same thing two nights running. Jack and I had been in jazz bands for years. All that stuff I did on the drums in Cream didn’t come from drugs, either. It was from me. It was jazz.”

from CVR News Direct https://cvrnewsdirect.com/ginger-baker-creams-volatile-drummer-dies-at-80/

[biofunmy]

Ginger Baker, Cream’s volatile drummer, dies at 80

Ginger Baker, the volatile and propulsive drummer for Cream and other bands who wielded blues power and jazz finesse and helped shatter boundaries of time, tempo and style in popular music, died Sunday at age 80, his family said.

With blazing eyes, orange-red hair and a temperament to match, the London native ranked with The Who’s Keith Moon and Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham as the embodiment of musical and personal fury. Using twin bass drums, Baker fashioned a pounding, poly-rhythmic style uncommonly swift and heavy that inspired and intimidated countless musicians. But every beat seemed to mirror an offstage eruption — whether his violent dislike of Cream bandmate Jack Bruce or his on-camera assault of a documentary maker, Jay Bulger, whom he smashed in the nose with his walking stick.

Bulger would call the film, released in 2012, “Beware of Mr. Baker.”

Baker’s family said on Twitter that he died Sunday: “We are very sad to say that Ginger has passed away peacefully in hospital this morning.”

His daughter Nettie confirmed that Baker died in Britain but gave no other details. The family had said on Sept. 25 that Baker was critically ill in the hospital.

While Rolling Stone magazine once ranked him the third-greatest rock drummer of all time, behind Moon and Bonham, Baker had contempt for Moon and others he dismissed as “bashers” without style or background. Baker and his many admirers saw him as a rounded, sophisticated musician — an arranger, composer and student of the craft, absorbing sounds from around the world. He had been playing jazz since he was a teenager and spent years in Africa in the 1970s, forming a close friendship with the Nigerian musician-activist Fela Kuti.

“He was so unique and had such a distinctive personality,” Stewart Copeland of the Police told http://bit.ly/35aEsrk in 2013. “Nobody else followed in his footsteps. Everybody tried to be John Bonham and copy his licks, but it’s rare that you hear anybody doing the Ginger Baker thing.”

But many fans thought of Baker as a rock star, who teamed with Eric Clapton and Bruce in the mid-1960s to become Cream — one of the first supergroups and first power trios. All three were known individually in the London blues scene and together they helped make rock history by elevating instrumental prowess above the songs themselves, even as they had hits with “Sunshine of Your Love,” ”I Feel Free” and “White Room.”

Cream was among the most successful acts of its time, selling more than 10 million records. But by 1968 Baker and Bruce had worn each other out and even Clapton had tired of their deafening, marathon jams, including the Baker showcase “Toad,” one of rock’s first extended drum solos. Cream split up at the end of the year, departing with two sold-out shows at London’s Albert Hall. When told by Bulger that he was a founding father of heavy metal, Baker snarled that the genre “should have been aborted.”

To the surprise of many, especially Clapton, he and Baker were soon part of another super group, Blind Faith, which also featured singer-keyboardist Stevie Winwood and bassist Ric Grech.

As Clapton would recall, he and Winwood had been playing informally when Baker turned up (Baker would allege that Clapton invited him). Named Blind Faith by a rueful Clapton, the band was overwhelmed by expectations from the moment it debuted in June 1969 before some 100,000 at a concert in London’s Hyde Park. It split up after completing just one, self-titled album, as notable for its cover photo of a topless young girl as for its music. A highlight from the record: Baker’s cymbal splashes on Winwood’s lyrical ballad “Can’t Find My Way Home.”

“Beneath his somewhat abrasive exterior, there was a very sensitive human being with a heart of gold,” Winwood said in a statement Sunday.

From the 1970s on, Baker was ever more unpredictable. He moved to Nigeria, took up polo, drove a Land Rover across the Sahara, lived on a ranch in South Africa, divorced his first wife and married three more times.

He recorded with Kuti and other Nigerians, jammed with Art Blakey, Elvin Jones and other jazz drummers and played with John Lydon’s Public Image Ltd. He founded Ginger Baker’s Air Force, which cost a fortune and imploded after two albums. He endured his old enemy, Bruce, when Cream was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 and for Cream reunion concerts a decade later. Bruce died in 2014.

Baker continued to perform regularly in his 70s despite arthritis, heart trouble, hearing loss dating from his years with Cream and lung disease from smoking. A stranger to no vice, immodesty included, he called his memoir “Hellraiser: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Drummer.”

“John Bonham once made a statement that there were only two drummers in British rock ‘n’ roll; himself and Ginger Baker,” Baker wrote in his book. “My reaction to this was, ‘You cheeky little bastard!'”

Born in 1939, Peter Edward Baker was the son of a bricklayer killed during World War II when Ginger was just 4. His father left behind a letter that Ginger Baker would quote from: “Use your fists; they’re your best pals so often.”

Baker was a drummer from early on, even rapping out rhythms on his school desk as he mimicked the big band music he loved and didn’t let the occasional caning from a teacher deter him. As a teenager, he was playing in local groups and was mentored by percussionist Phil Seamen.

“At this party, there was a little band and all the kids chanted at me, ‘Play the drums!”’, Baker told The Independent in 2009. “I’d never sat behind a kit before, but I sat down — and I could play! One of the musicians turned round and said, ‘Bloody hell, we’ve got a drummer’, and I thought, ‘Bloody hell, I’m a drummer.'”

Baker came of age just as London was learning the blues, with such future superstars as Clapton, Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page among the pioneers. Baker joined Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, where he met (and soon disliked, for allegedly playing too loud) the Scottish-born bassist Jack Bruce, with whom he was thrown together again as members of the popular British group the Graham Bond Organization.

Clapton, meanwhile, was London’s hottest guitarist, thanks to his work with the Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Blues Breakers, his extraordinary speed and agility inspiring “Clapton is God” graffiti. Clapton, Baker and Bruce would call their band Cream because they considered themselves the best musicians around.

“Oh for god’s sake, I’ve never played rock,” Baker told the blog JazzWax in 2013. “Cream was two jazz players and a blues guitarist playing improvised music. We never played the same thing two nights running. Jack and I had been in jazz bands for years. All that stuff I did on the drums in Cream didn’t come from drugs, either. It was from me. It was jazz.”

———

Italie reported from New York. Kelvin Chan contributed from London.

Sahred From Source link Entertainment

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[megadarkbouquettidalwavethings]

Keith Richards apologizes for swipe at eight times dad Mick Jagger

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards on Wednesday apologized for suggesting that eight times father Mick Jagger get a vasectomy.

Richards, 74, who has four children and five grandchildren himself, called band mate Jagger “a randy old bastard” in an interview with the Wall Street Journal magazine, released on Wednesday.

“It’s time for the snip — you can’t be a father at that age. Those poor kids!,” he said of the Rolling Stones frontman.

Jagger, 74, became a father for the eighth time in December 2016 when his dancer girlfriend Melanie Hamrick gave birth to a son in New York.

“I deeply regret the comments I made about Mick in the WSJ which were completely out of line. I have of course apologized to him in person,” Richards said in a Twitter statement.

Richards and Jagger, who have written most of the Rolling Stones songs over the rock band’s five-decade career, are known for their love-hate relationship.

“It’s been up and downhill, but if I‘m talking about the Rolling Stones, there ain’t a frontman like Jagger,” he told the WSJ magazine in the interview for its March 10 edition. “Don’t matter how many bones you want to pick out of him, he’s amazing to work with.”

Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Susan Thomas

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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