Frank Beacham's Journal

Eddie Holland is 82 years old today

Eddie Holland is 82 years old today.

A singer, songwriter and record producer, Holland was born in Detroit.

Although he was an early Motown artist who recorded minor hit singles such as "Jamie," he started working behind the scenes due to stage fright.

Holland was a member of Holland–Dozier–Holland, the songwriting and production team responsible for much of the Motown Sound and hit records by Martha and the Vandellas, The Supremes, the Four Tops and The Isley Brothers.

Holland served as the team's lyricist, and also worked with producer, Norman Whitfield, on lyrics for the songs he produced for The Marvelettes and The Temptations, like "Too Many Fish in the Sea" and "Beauty's Only Skin Deep."

Photo by Frank Beacham

Grace Slick is 82 years old today

Grace Slick is 82 years old today.

A singer, songwriter and former model, Slick was one of the lead singers of The Great Society, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship and Starship. She was also a solo artist from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s.

An important figure in the 1960s psychedelic rock movement, Slick is known for her witty lyrics and powerful contralto vocals.

Slick's music career started in 1965 in San Francisco when she and her then husband, Jerry Slick, formed their own band, The Great Society. By early 1966, the band became a popular psychedelic act in the Bay area. Grace Slick provided vocals, guitar, piano and recorder and co-wrote a majority of the band's songs with her brother-in-law, Darby Slick.

That autumn Jefferson Airplane's singer, Signe Toly Anderson, left the band to start a family and the Airplane asked Slick to join them. Slick said that she joined the Airplane because it was run in a professional manner, unlike The Great Society.

She took two compositions from The Great Society with her; "White Rabbit,” which she is purported to have written in an hour, and "Somebody to Love,” both of which went on to become hits.

Though both songs were first performed by The Great Society, their versions of the songs were much different. The Great Society's rendering of "White Rabbit" featured an oboe solo by Slick. With Slick on board, the Airplane began recording new music. They took on a new direction, performing more psychedelic music.

By 1967, Surrealistic Pillow and the singles taken from it were great successes, and Jefferson Airplane became one of the most popular bands in the country. Slick rose to fame, earning her position as one of the most prominent female rock musicians of her time.

During Jefferson Starship's 1978 European tour, Slick's alcoholism became a problem for the band. The group had to cancel the first night in Germany because she was too intoxicated to perform, causing the audience to riot.

Slick performed the next night with the band, but was so inebriated she could not sing properly. She began to attack the audience, mocking the country for losing World War II and groping both female audience members and band mates. The next day she left the group.

Slick was one of the first female rock stars, alongside her close contemporary, Janis Joplin, and therefore an important figure in the development of rock music in the late 1960s.

Here, Slick with Jefferson Airplane performs “White Rabbit” at Woodstock, 1969

Ezra Pound, poet, was born 136 years ago today

Ezra Pound, poet, was born 136 years ago today.

An expatriate poet and critic and a major figure of the early modernist movement, Pound’s contribution to poetry began with his promotion of Imagism, a movement that derived its technique from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry, stressing clarity, precision and economy of language.

His best-known works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) and his unfinished 120-section epic, The Cantos (1917–1969).

Working in London in the early 20th century as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, Pound helped to discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Robert Frost and Ernest Hemingway.

He was responsible for the publication in 1915 of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and for the serialization from 1918 of Joyce's Ulysses.

Hemingway wrote of him in 1925: "He defends [his friends] when they are attacked, he gets them into magazines and out of jail. He writes articles about them. He introduces them to wealthy women. He gets publishers to take their books. He sits up all night with them when they claim to be dying ... he advances them hospital expenses and dissuades them from suicide."

Outraged by the loss of life during the First World War, he lost faith in England, blaming the war on usury and international capitalism.

He moved to Italy in 1924, where throughout the 1930s and 1940s, to his friends' dismay, he embraced Benito Mussolini's fascism, expressed support for Adolf Hitler and wrote for publications owned by the British fascist, Oswald Mosley.

The Italian government paid him during the Second World War to make hundreds of radio broadcasts criticizing the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt and, in particular, Jews. As a result, he was arrested for treason by American forces in Italy in 1945.

He spent months in detention in a U.S. military camp in Pisa, including 25 days in a six-by-six-foot outdoor steel cage that he said triggered a mental breakdown, "when the raft broke and the waters went over me.”

Deemed unfit to stand trial, a decision disputed for decades after his death, he was incarcerated in St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C. for over 12 years. While in custody in Italy, he had begun work on sections of The Cantos that became known as The Pisan Cantos (1948), for which he was awarded the Bollingen Prize in 1949 by the Library of Congress.

The award triggered enormous controversy, mostly because of his antisemitism and the charge of treason, and in part because it raised literary questions about whether a supposedly "mad" poet who held such contentious views could produce work of any value.

He was released from St. Elizabeths in 1958, thanks to a protracted campaign by his fellow writers, and returned to live in Italy until his death. His political views ensure that his work remains controversial.

Pound show in 1913.

Photo by Alvin Langdon Coburn

Louis Malle, French film director, was born 89 years ago today

Louis Malle, French film director, was born 89 years ago today.

Also a screenwriter and producer, Malle’s film, Le Monde du silence, won the Palme d'Or and Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1956. He was also nominated multiple times for Academy Awards later in his career.

Malle worked in both French cinema and Hollywood, and he produced both French and English language films. His most famous films include Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958), Atlantic City (1981) and Au revoir, les enfants (1987).

Malle worked as the co-director and cameraman to Jacques Cousteau on the Oscar and Palme d'Or-winning (at the 1956 Academy Awards and Cannes Film Festival respectively) documentary, The Silent World (1956).

He assisted Robert Bresson on A Man Escaped (French title: Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut, 1956) before making his first feature, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (released in the U.K. as Lift to the Scaffold and in the U.S. originally as Frantic, later as Elevator to the Gallows) in 1957.

A taut thriller featuring an original score by Miles Davis, the film made an international film star of Jeanne Moreau, at the time a leading stage actress of the state Comédie-Française. Malle was then 24 years old.

Malle's The Lovers (Les Amants, 1958), which also starred Moreau, caused major controversy due to its sexual content, leading to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case regarding the legal definition of obscenity. In Jacobellis v. Ohio, a theater owner was fined $2,500 for obscenity.

The decision was eventually reversed by the higher court, which found that the film was not obscene and hence constitutionally protected.

However, the court could not agree on the definition of "obscene," which caused Justice Potter Stewart to utter his, "I know it when I see it" opinion, perhaps the most famous single line associated with the court.

Malle is sometimes associated with the nouvelle vague — though his work does not directly fit in or correspond to the auteurist theories that apply to the work of Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer and others.

Though Malle had nothing whatsoever to do with Cahiers du cinéma, he did exemplify many of the characteristics of the movement, including using natural light and shooting on location. His film, Zazie dans le métro ("Zazie in the Metro," 1960, an adaptation of the Raymond Queneau novel), did inspire Truffaut to write an enthusiastic letter to Malle.

Malle later moved to the United States and continued to direct there.

His later films include Pretty Baby (1978), Atlantic City (1981), My Dinner with Andre (1981), Crackers (1984), Alamo Bay (1985), Damage (1992) and Vanya on 42nd Street (1994, an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's play Uncle Vanya) in English; Au revoir, les enfants (1987) and Milou en Mai (May Fools in the U.S., 1990) in French.

Just as his earlier films such as The Lovers helped popularize French films in the United States, My Dinner with Andre, was at the forefront of the rise of American independent cinema in the 1980s.

Malle married actress Candice Bergen in 1980. They had one child, a daughter, Chloe Francoise Malle, on November 8, 1985.

Malle died from lymphoma at age 63 in Beverly Hills, California on Thanksgiving Day, 1995.

Arlen Roth, guitarist, tutor and author, is 69 years old today

Arlen Roth, guitarist, tutor and author, is 69 years old today.

Roth’s first solo album won the Montreaux Critics' Award for Best Instrumental Album of the Year in 1978. He was a regular columnist for Guitar Player magazine from 1982 to 1992.

Roth has performed and recorded with artists such as Bob Dylan, Danny Gatton, John Entwistle, John Prine, Kate Taylor, James Taylor, Livingston Taylor, Rick Wakeman, Paul Simon (as well as Simon and Garfunkel), Ry Cooder, David Lindley, Sonny Landreth, Levon Helm, Bill Kirchen, Duane Eddy, Steve Morse, Albert Lee and Phoebe Snow.

A Telecaster enthusiast, Roth has written the book Masters of the Telecaster, which details the techniques and licks of many famous Telecaster guitar players.

As a solo artist, Roth performs frequently with his younger daughter, Lexie Roth, a recording artist, performer and songwriter in her own right.

Roth was greatly influenced by Clarence White of The Byrds' string bending style, but at the age of 14, he did not know White had invented a "B-string bender" for his Telecaster, so Roth developed a new style of doing this with fingers alone.

He thus innovated many string-bending styles on the guitar, simulating a "pedal steel" guitar. He is also an innovator in the use of "harmonics" within guitar playing.

Here Roth performs “Tequila” with Danny Gatton, 1992

Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring premiered on this day in 1944 — 76 years ago

Aaron Copland, working by candlelight in his studio in the Berkshires, 1946

Copland’s American Spring premiered 76 years ago today

Photo by Victor Kraft

Born and raised in the same urban environment that produced Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and George and Ira Gershwin, American composer Aaron Copland was trained in the classics but steeped in the jazz and popular Jewish music that surrounded him in childhood.

As a young composer, his stated aim was to write music that would "make you feel like you were alive on the streets of Brooklyn."

Ironically, it was music that evoked the rural American heartland that made Copland famous.

One such work — arguably his greatest — was the score for the ballet Appalachian Spring, which became one of the most recognizable and beloved pieces of American music ever written almost immediately following its world premiere on this day in 1944 — 76 years ago.

The score for Appalachian Spring was commissioned in 1942 to accompany a ballet being choreographed by a young Martha Graham.

Copland would know the work only as "Ballet for Martha" throughout its composition, having no guidance other than that the ballet would have some sort of a "frontier" theme.

In fact, the name Appalachian Spring and the setting of western Pennsylvania would be decided on only after Copland had completed his score.

Yet somehow, without having had any idea of doing so, Copland had composed a work that audiences and critics alike found brilliantly evocative of the specific time and place referenced in the title.

The most recognizable passage of Appalachian Spring is the portion Aaron Copland adapted from the Shaker song, "Simple Gifts" — "'This a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to be free" — which was largely unfamiliar to Americans prior to Copland's adaptation.

Copland's artful incorporation of the folk tradition with his distinctly modern sensibility is what made Appalachian Spring the transcendent work that it is.

In its review of the October 30, 1944, premiere, the New York Times praised all elements of the "shining and joyous" work: the choreography by Martha Graham; the set design by the Isamu Noguchi; and the score by Aaron Copland, which it called "the fullest, loveliest and most deeply poetical of all his theater scores....It is, as the saying goes, a natural."

Though written expressly for the ballet and for only 13 instrumentalists — a limitation dictated by the size of the orchestra pit at the Library of Congress where the premiere was held — Appalachian Spring was soon adapted into an orchestral suite, which is the form in which it became widely popular.

Appalachian Spring was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1945.

Copland and his music is perhaps more connected to the folk era of the 1960s than one might think.

In his book, Bob Dylan in America, Sean Wilenz connected the dots between the American Communist world of the 1930s, the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s and the folk music era of the 1960s.

Copland, who was very close to Charles Seeger, Pete’s father, wrote the film score in 1939 for Of Mice and Men, the John Steinbeck novella, for director Lewis Milestone.

Young Jack Kerouac saw that movie in high school and later wrote about it in Chorus 54 of his poetry book, Mexico City Blues.

Bob Dylan was greatly influenced by Kerouac’s "breathless, dynamic bop phrases," and called Mexico City Blues the first poetry to speak to him in his own American language.

Kerouac showed deep understanding for lower working class life and appreciation for Steinbeck’s writing about the box cars of American trains — a trait shared by Dylan.

Pete Seeger, who got among the first permits to sing folk music in Washington Square Park, was — with Earl Robinson and Alan Lomax — directly connected to the leftist political movements of the 1930s.

When Dylan reached Greenwich Village in 1961, the Gaslight — where he played — had earlier alternated folk musicians with beat poets. Among those poets with Allen Ginsberg.

Even so, Ginsberg and Dylan would become close. Dylan taught Ginsberg to play his harmonium and influenced the poet to perform musically in his later years.

From 1963 until Ginsberg’s death, he and Dylan would work and travel together, influencing each other with their talents.

Dylan gave Ginsberg the money to purchase a Uher tape recorder on which he composed Wichita Vortex Sutra, the great antiwar lament of the Vietnam era.

Dylan acknowledged his debt to the beats for his classic song, Chimes of Freedom.

"Making music out of nature's sights and sounds had attracted Dylan before in his mystical song Lay Down Your Weary Tune, just as Jack Kerouac had tried to render the ocean's roar as poetry in his book, Big Sur, published in 1962," said Wilentz. "Chimes of Freedom was far outside the old politics of left and right and black and white."

Thanks History.com and Sean Wilenz

Aaron Copland, 1946

Photo by Irving Penn

On this day in 1975 — 46 years ago — Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review tour began at the War Memorial Auditorium in Plymouth, Massachusetts

On this day in 1975 — 46 years ago — Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review tour began at the War Memorial Auditorium in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Here, the show plays in Gainesville, Florida on April 25, 1976

With Joan Baez in the left back are two crew members. On the drums in the blue hat is Howie Wyeth, to his right on the congas is Gary Burke, Steven Soles is to the right on guitar in the black vest. Rob Stoner in the red shirt plays bass guitar behind Dylan, in front.

Above photo by Frank Beacham

Bob Dylan and Joan Baez at the Rolling Thunder Review

Photo by Frank Beacham

A scene from the movie Bob Dylan made during the Rolling Thunder Revue called Renaldo & Clara.

Jennifer Yaffee Goetz is wearing the French maid outfit on the right; Joan Baez is on the couch along with David Mansfield and others.

In 1978, producer John Hammond talks about discovering Bob Dylan and fighting for him to stay on with Columbia Records

India

Photo by Craig Semetko

Denny Laine is 77 years old today

Denny Laine, Iridium, New York City, Nov. 10, 2013

Photo by Frank Beacham

Denny Laine is 77 years old today.

Born in Birmingham, England, Laine is a musician, singer, songwriter and guitarist. He was an original member of The Moody Blues, singing their first hit, "Go Now," in 1964, and was a member of Wings with Paul McCartney from 1971 to 1981.

Laine is of Romani and French descent. He was educated at Yardley Grammar School in Birmingham, and took up the guitar as a boy under the influence of Gypsy jazz legend, Django Reinhardt.

Laine had his first solo performance as a musician at the age of twelve and began his career as a professional musician fronting Denny Laine & the Diplomats, which also included future Move and Electric Light Orchestra drummer, Bev Bevan.

In 1964, Laine left the Diplomats to join Mike Pinder in The Moody Blues and sang their first big hit, "Go Now."

Other early highlights included “I Don't Want To Go on Without You,” another UK hit, plus the further two minor UK chart hits "From The Bottom of My Heart ( I Love You)," “Everyday” (both written by Laine & Pinder), "Can't Nobody Love You" and the harmonica-ripping, "Bye Bye Bird," a big hit in France.

Laine's tenure with the Moody Blies was short-lived and, after a number of comparative chart failures, Laine quit the band in August, 1966. The last record issued by the Moody Blues that featured Laine was "Life's Not Life"/"He Can Win" in January, 1967 after Justin Hayward had just replaced him in the band.

After leaving the Moody Blues in early October, 1966, he formed the Electric String Band in December, 1966, which featured himself on guitar and vocals, Trevor Burton (another former member of The Move) on guitar, Viv Prince on drums, and electrified strings in a format not dissimilar to what Electric Light Orchestra would later attempt.

In 1971, Laine joined Paul McCartney to form Wings, and stayed with them for ten years until they disbanded in 1981. He provided lead and rhythm guitars, lead and backing vocals, keyboards, bass guitar and woodwinds, as well as writing or co-writing some of their material.

Together with Paul and his wife, Linda, they formed the nucleus of the band, being called that "strange, 3-winged beast." It was with Wings that Laine enjoyed the biggest commercial and critical successes of his career, including co-writing the hit, "Mull of Kintyre."

In January, 1980, McCartney was arrested for possession of marijuana upon arrival at an airport for a tour in Japan. The tour was cancelled and in April, 1981, Laine announced that he was leaving Wings.

He holds no ill-will toward McCartney over breaking up Wings and continued working with McCartney on a biographical book that will include the Wings era.

Denny moved to the United States in the 1990s where he continues to tour.

Here, Laine, with Wings, performs “Go Now”

On what is real creativity...

These days I’m hearing more and more very young people refer to themselves as “artists.”

It doesn’t matter whether they are musicians, photographers, painters or whatever, they still invoke the word artist. Most, of course, are clueless as to what a real artist does, much less a genuine understanding of creativity.

One person, who recorded sound on a couple of video projects, actually — with dead seriousness — called himself an “artist.” His arrogance made me so angry I wanted to strangle him.

That lame comment reminded me of a lecture I heard in the 1970s by David Lyman, when he ran the Maine Photographic Workshop.

Everyone in the audience was about to embark on an intense week of learning a craft, such as lighting, editing, video production or writing. The work was incredibly difficult, from early morning until late at night. Lyman prepared each week’s attendees with his now famous lecture on creativity.

He told us that when one learns a craft — take photography, for example — it takes about ten years to master the basics of it. Then it takes another ten years to throw out all the rules and seek the higher ground through one’s own creativity. Only then, and not before then, is it known whether a person might ascend to be a real artist.

Whether one becomes an artist — a very rarefied position in society — is determined not by the person himself, but by the people who are moved by that person’s work. One never refers to him or herself as an artist.

“This activity is what we do . . . we are a photographer, a painter, a musician, a dancer, a playwright or novelist. It’s up to society to tell us if we are artists. If the work we do is deep enough, if it touches a well of shared humanity, that universal quality of human existence, if the work is inspired and touches others, then perhaps it is art, and the creator is an artist,” Lyman wrote in his book on creativity.

Otherwise, the self-appointed artist is just more hyperbole in a bankrupt culture that attempts to self appoint heroes when very few exist.

Real artists have always been in very short supply. When some kid refers to himself as one, run for the hills!