Amy Winehouse died last week and joined the “27 club” which is a group of rockers that died at age 27. Gary Thain also joined that same group long ago and I wanted to look at his life today.
Uriah Heep – Wizard
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By Sean Nelson, Special to MSN Music , July 23, 2011
The bassist from Uriah Heep is more or less the quintessence of the rock ‘n’ roll casualty. Known only to the band’s die-hard fans (and their families and loved ones), these guys neither burn out nor fade away; they merely get replaced in time for the next tour, the next session. Gary Thain was from New Zealand. He moved to London. He played with a band that opened for Uriah Heep. They asked him to replace their bass player. He did. They made some records, played some tours. Somewhere along the way he got addicted to heroin and got fired, replaced by someone else. He overdosed on December 8, 1975. As fate would have it, he was 27.
Today RockStar Weekly would like to pay tribute to Uriah Heep bassist Gary Thain, a member of rock’s 27 Club who passed away on this date (Dec. 8) in 1975. The 27 Club, also occasionally known as the Forever 27 Club or Club 27, is the name for a group of influential rock and blues musicians who all died at the age of 27, including such notables as Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Kurt Cobain.
Early in 1972, Gary received a phone call from Ken Hensley and joined Uriah Heep as their 3rd bass player (replacing Mark Clarke). Heep was touring the USA at the time, Gary flew in to join the band and practiced the material he had to perform for several weeks. His first gig with Uriah Heep was on February 1, 1972 at the Whiskey A Go-Go in Los Angeles, California.
The first album that Gary recorded with Uriah Heep was “Demons & Wizards” (released May 1972), only 4 months after he joined the band. “The Magician’s Birthday” followed later that same year, and by that time Gary co-wrote some of the songs (Spider Woman and Sweet Lorraine). The remastered edition (released 2003) also includes “Crystal Ball” and “Gary’s Song”, which he wrote during that time. (Gary’s Song being an alternate version of Crystal Ball).
Gary also toured with Uriah Heep almost non-stop. In the beginning of 1973 the first collection of some of those touring efforts was released, aptly titled “Uriah Heep Live 1973”. One of the points worth mentioning is the excerpt of their Rock ‘N Roll Medley endings. It shows Gary’s skill of using the 50’s and R ‘n R Bass lines that he had so diligently learned early on in his career.
All in all, he participated in over 140 live performances all over the world with Uriah Heep in just 3 years. After continued struggles with health and drug problems, Gary died of respiratory failure due to a heroin overdose on December 8, 1975, in his flat at Norwood Green at the young age of 27.
Enjoy this promo clip from 1972, Sweet Freedom, featuring the legendary Uriah Heep line up: David Byron, Mick Box, Ken Hensley, Gary Thain, Lee Kerslake
I have had an amazing two years. About two years ago I graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and joined the family business. Just over a year ago I married a wonderful man. This past spring, my husband and I bought a fantastic house for the children we hoped to have in a few years. Just over a week ago I completed my master’s degree. Sounds like I should have been happy, right?
And yet I wasn’t. About six months ago, I realized that I had lost my purpose. What had really happened was that I had lost my joy.
I tried everything. In a session at the Monadnock women’s retreat a few weeks ago, the speaker, Linda Shultz Anderson, spoke about looking for happiness in all the wrong places. She described the Avis mode–if I only try harder, I’ll be happy. She also discussed the mall mode–if I only had this new pair of shoes, or in my case, this house, I’d be happy. Then there was the devastating leaning mode–somehow my family or friends should ensure my happiness. The reason that this was so destructive for me was that nobody, including myself, could even figure out what I had to be so depressed about, so what was it that I was expecting from them? In a nutshell, she had summarized the year and a half of my life leading up to my salvation.
Trying harder only made me tired. Buying more was fun for a while, and don’t get me wrong, I love our home. But it didn’t fill my emptiness. And trying to make other people responsible for my happiness only strained our relationships. I finally realized that I was tiring myself out trying too hard to achieve the things that mean success according to the society we live in. I just felt stressed out and tired. I started having brief fits of depression, where I would be completely devastated by anything that didn’t go my way. Then I would cry uncontrollably, because I didn’t know what I was so upset about and felt like I had lost control of my life. If I didn’t get any joy from the life I’d been living and the goals I’d achieved, then why was I doing it? And if none of these things could give me a fundamental purpose, then where was I possibly going to turn to find one? I felt like I had looked everywhere.
During one of my crying fits, my father made a very simple suggestion. So simple that it’s amazing to me that nobody else had suggested it, or that it hadn’t even crossed my mind. He said, “Why don’t you go to church with Beth this weekend and see if there’s something there that can help you with this?” I said, “Yeah, you know, it couldn’t hurt.”
Before I even got to church that weekend, my dad gave me some tapes of some of the Pastor’s sermons. There were two in particular that I’ll never forget, because they spoke right to my heart and my troubles. The first one was based on Philippians 3:12-14 and Philippians 4:11-13, where Paul talks about learning to always be content no matter what his material and worldly situation is. It became so clear to me that I had been chasing material goals and I needed to chase God instead. I could stop worrying so much about having a great car, house, and career, because He would take care of me if I’d only ask Him to.
The second sermon talked about Pontius Pilate and how he was troubled by Jesus because he knew that there was something extraordinary about this guy, but he shrugged it off and turned away his chance for salvation. This struck me, because God had caught my attention a few times over the past few years, and I had let my interest fade each time. I asked God not to let me slip away this time. Within two months I accepted Jesus as my personal savior and asked God into my life.
Since then, I’ve slowly been healed. I still mess up of course. I can still slip into having pity parties for myself, or find myself worrying about things instead of turning them over to God. But I can pull myself out of these modes because when I’m starting to fall by relying on a new source of joy in my salvation. I have a new feeling of purpose.
I have been amazed by the things that God has provided for me every time I’ve asked. This spring, He gave me those taped sermons. He has brought me back in touch with an old friend of mine, who accepted Christ in the last year and has been a great help in my young faith. I asked Him for some kind of bible study group because I feel like I need something structured to get me reading the bible on a regular basis. He brought me to a discipleship conference which really helped. I was driving to church a couple of weekends ago thinking that I needed a booster shot, and the Pastor’s sermon was “Do you need a fill-up?” Every time I’ve asked, He’s given.
So I thank God for my family; especially my husband. I also thank God for being stubborn with me this time, and showing me all the reasons I have to rejoice.
Like most people, you may have wondered why you are here on Earth. Do you think your existence is an accident or are you here for a reason? Is there some purpose for your life? According to the Bible, you are not a mistake and you were created by God for a reason.
Created For A Reason
The main reason God created you is to make you part of His eternal plan (Romans 8:28-29). God wants us to be in Heaven with Him and to tell people about Him. His plan is for every person to be saved from their sin and Hell and to spend eternity with Him (2 Peter 3:9). Unfortunately, some people choose to live their own way and abandon God’s plan for their life (Proverbs 14:12).
What Are You Living For?
Most people seem to believe that the main purpose of life is enjoyment and personal fulfillment. Are you living for things such as money, fame, success, fun, possessions and power? The wise King Solomon accomplished many great things and had all that anyone could desire, yet described it all as meaningless (Ecclesiastes 1:2). How about you? Are you more consumed with the pleasures of life than what happens to your soul when you die? The Bible says “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul” (Mark 8:36)?
Life Is Short Compared To Eternity
Hopefully, you would agree that what happens to you eternally is far more important than what happens to you on Earth. Think about the word eternity. That is far beyond trillions and trillions times longer than our earthly life. It is so hard to even comprehend that concept because it never ends. You may have a great life or a terrible life on Earth, but either way it will come to an end someday. Then, you will spend everlasting life in either Heaven or Hell (Matthew 25:46). Please think carefully about where you will go after you die as it can happen any day.
The Problem
Too many people assume they will go to Heaven when they die based on their own concept of God. The reason why everybody can’t spend eternity in Heaven is because sin separates people from God (Isaiah 59:2). You have rebelled against God and committed a sin every time you broke one of God’s commandments by stealing something, telling a lie, hating somebody, disobeying your parents, having a lustful thought, or countless other things. God hates sin and will severely judge each and every one of your sins. Just being a good person or believing in God won’t erase your sin either. The Bible says that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).
The Good News
The good news is that no matter how severe your sins are, God made a way for you to be forgiven and be declared innocent on judgment day. “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Being a good person or being religious won’t rescue you from your sin. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9) The word grace means “undeserved favor”. Your sin separated you from a perfect and sinless God, but Jesus died on the cross to pay for your sins and later rose back to life (Matthew 28:5-6) so you can have everlasting life in Heaven. Even though none of us deserve Heaven, God was kind enough to make a way for us.
Receiving Forgiveness
It is not enough to just believe that Jesus died for your sins. You must personally trust in Jesus to save you from the penalty of your sin (Romans 8:1-4). You must also be willing to repent (turn from) your sin (Luke 13:5) and follow Jesus as Lord of your life (Romans 10:9-10). Doing this mends your broken relationship with God and allows you access into Heaven.
Live For God
You were created to know God and to live for Him. That is why you exist. Only then does your life have the meaning and purpose God intended for you. “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). To live your life for the glory of God means that you will love, obey, worship, please, and trust Him. This should not be a burden, but a pleasure because of what He means to you.
The Choice Is Yours
You never know how much time you have left on this Earth and nothing is more important than where you spend eternity. Hopefully, you will decide to follow Jesus so your life can be used to glorify God. Please make this choice right away, because after you die it will be too late.
posted by Rod Dreher | 11:50 amThursday April 22, 2010
Rod Dreher is director of publications at the John Templeton Foundation, a philanthropy that focuses on science, religion, economics and morality. A journalist with over 20 years of experience, Dreher has written for The Dallas Morning News, the New York Post, and other newspapers and journals. He is author of the book “Crunchy Cons.” Archives of his previous Beliefnet blog, “Crunchy Con,” can be found here. He and his family live in Philadelphia.
RL: When Ingmar Bergman died, you said even if you made a film as great as one of his, what would it matter? It doesn’t gain you salvation. So you had to ask yourself why do you continue to make films. Could you just say something about what you meant by “salvation”?WA: Well, you know, you want some kind of relief from the agony and terror of human existence. Human existence is a brutal experience to me…it’s a brutal, meaningless experience–an agonizing, meaningless experience with some oases, delight, some charm and peace, but these are just small oases. Overall, it is a brutal, brutal, terrible experience, and so it’s what can you do to alleviate the agony of the human condition, the human predicament? That is what interests me the most. I continue to make the films because the problem obsesses me all the time and it’s consistently on my mind and I’m consistently trying to alleviate the problem, and I think by making films as frequently as I do I get a chance to vent the problems. There is some relief. I have said this before in a facetious way, but it is not so facetious: I am a whiner. I do get a certain amount of solace from whining. RL: Are you saying the humor in your films is a relief for you? Or are you sort of saying to the audience, “Here is an oasis, a couple of laughs”?WA: I think what I’m saying is that I’m really impotent against the overwhelming bleakness of the universe and that the only thing I can do is my little gift and do it the best I can, and that is about the best I can do, which is cold comfort.
Allen goes on to say that human creative endeavor is all about distracting us from the fundamental emptiness and meaninglessness of existence. I think there’s something admirable about the willingness of Allen to deal with the fullest implications of nihilism, which is to say, a world without God. Father Robert Lauder, who interviewed Allen here, says that even though he does not share Allen’s atheism, it is admirable that Allen, in his art, sees clearly that how one answers the question of whether or not God exists influences everything in one’s outlook on life.For myself, I cannot escape the same conclusion as Woody Allen: either God exists, or Woody Allen is right (and so is the monstrous Judah character in Allen’s great Dostoevskian film “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” who concludes in the final scene — excerpted below — that in a world without God, moral conduct becomes a matter of whatever you can get away with and rationalize. That is not an argument for God’s existence, of course, but I would say that people who think the non-existence of God is not such a big deal haven’t really thought through the question like Allen has. Unfortunately, Allen keeps making the same movie over and over again, from a philosophical point of view, because I think he’s realized that the only way he’ll ever find what he’s looking for is if he accepts God, and he either cannot or will not allow for that possibility
Does life have meaning? If life will end one day then why even go on? Woody Allen has no answers according to the video clip above.
Midnight in Paris, the latest chapter in Woody Allen’s ongoing Euro-travelogue, commences with an old-fashioned overture—a lengthy montage of postcard-pretty Parisian street scenes set to a Sidney Bechet clarinet number—hearkening back to the opening scenes of Manhattan (1977), the Woodman’s swoony, romantic ode to NYC. Steeping himself in European locations for the last half decade hasn’t so much compelled Woody to forge new material, as it has encouraged him to approach longstanding preoccupations from a foreign perspective.
Cultural cross-pollination isn’t just Woody’s latest modus operandi; it’s also one ofMidnight’s overarching themes. Situating a familiar constellation of Woody Allen stock characters—the indecisive, lovelorn and –torn protagonist (Owen Wilson, whose troubled personal history adds an affecting layer of vulnerability to his performance) who suffers the slings and arrows of indignity at the hands of his shrewish fiancée (Rachel McAdams) and slave-to-status, presumptive in-laws (Kurt Fuller, Mimi Kennedy)—against unfamiliar surroundings generates the majority of the film’s fish-out-of-water gags, whether they’re social-political (Gil’s persistent potshots at his future in-laws’ Tea Party leanings) or cultural (Michael Sheen’s bearded blowhard correcting a tour guide on the fine points of Rodin’s love life). At this point in his six-decade career, Woody can write that sort of material in his sleep, and while it doesn’t negate the few hearty chuckles these jokes elicit, the thematic heart and soul of the film rests with what he designates “golden age thinking,” the unshakeable sensation haunting aspiring novelist (and erstwhile Hollywood screenwriting hack) Gil Pender that life would have been more satisfying if only he had lived in some ideal, bygone era.
In Midnight’s central conceit, Gil wanders the streets in a drunken stupor until, at the stroke of (you guessed it!) midnight, a vintage Rolls crowded with revelers pulls up at the cobblestone curb to whisk Gil back to the 1920s, the fabled era of the expatriate Lost Generation, where he soon finds himself keeping company with the likes of Hemingway, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates). These stand-ins not only permit Woody to drop some tidbits of cultural and historical knowledge, they also serve as sounding-boards for Gil, allowing him to bounce his meager stock of ideas off his literary idols. It’s a good thing, as it turns out, that their rather surprising goodwill and encouragement do not simply lead to a warm ego-bath for Gil (and, by extension, Allen theauteur). What could so easily have come across as portentous and heavy-handed just about breezes past under Woody’s (for once, of late) deft touch.
Parenthetically, my favorite bit of historical revisionism must be the scenes where Gil meets up with the Surrealist cohort of Salvador Dali, Man Ray and the inimitable Luis Buñuel. Gil at one point inadvertently suggests the scenario for Exterminating Angel(1962) to a bewildered Buñuel. Probably it’s no coincidence that one of Buñuel’s early films was the Surrealist masterwork L’Age d’Or (aka The Golden Age [1930]).
The light-hearted, nigh-on whimsical, atmosphere is, however, a bit deceptive: Ultimately, in a neatly recursive step even further back into the past, in the service of his paramour Adriana’s (Marion Cotillard) own hyperinflation of the late 19th century Belle Époque, where they encounter Toulouse-Lautrec and Gauguin, Gil realizes that existence invites dissatisfaction, whenever and whatever you happen to be. Midnight’s conclusion is therefore inversely proportional to VickyCristina Barcelona’s (2008), wherein its protagonists reject the possibilities that Spain opens up for them, only to return to the status quo of their former lives. Gil, on the other hand, ends by endorsing Rainer Maria Rilke’s apothegm: “You must change your life.”
Never mind that this sea-change occurs altogether too quickly and easily for Gil, in the winsome form of a simpatico vendor (Léa Seydoux) who shares Gil’s cornball quirks (playing the flâneur in the soaking rain, a Cole Porter fixation). That the film even attempts an affirmative, baseline existential conclusion, rather than embracing stasis and status quo ante, is to be commended. The Woodman still has a few excellent ones in him. And that alone is reason enough to rejoice…
Many years ago, when I was finishing work on my graduate degree in political science in New York, I took a course on international affairs. The professor was a Muslim man from Beirut, Lebanon. One day for some reason he was talking about Pope John Paul II and he paused and looked over at me and asked: “What is the pope like personally?”
He assumed that because I was an Evangelical pastor, I must know the Roman Catholic Pope pretty well, because after all, we both professed the Christian faith. This was sort of like if I were to ask an elderly African-American friend of mine if he knew Lena Horne.
This kind of associate thinking is rather benign, but a more malignant type occurs when there is a broad-brush sweep such as the recent labeling of Anders Behring Breivik, the man who wrought murderous havoc in Norway, as a “Christian Fundamentalist.”
He isn’t. And in this case the media not only gets it wrong—they do so recklessly.
Christian Fundamentalists—of which there are multitudes in this country, are not murderous or delusional thugs. They are devout people who believe in the fundamentals of the historic Christian faith—although sometimes there are extra “fundamentals” thrown into the mix. They may be strict in their codes, dogmatic in their views, somewhat austere in lifestyle, and quite critical of popular culture (while observing it from a safe distance as diehard separatists), but they are not hate-filled murderers.
I come from a background of fundamentalism, and though I long ago shelved the nomenclature in favor of evangelical, I am still grateful for some of the important things I learned and hid in my heart. I may have moved (some Fundamentalists today likely consider me at least slightly apostate) from some of the cultural “isms” – we couldn’t go to movies or swim in pools with the opposite sex and had to dress like the Amish much of the time—but I reject any characterization of Christian Fundamentalists as dangerous people. In fact, they have been among the first and loudest to condemn that evil man in Norway.
Even a cursory reading of Breivik’s twisted tome yields clues hiding in plain sight that speak to him being anything but a Christian Fundamentalist. For example, on page 1,132 (the document weighs in at more than 1,500 ponderous pages), Breivik attacks the idea of “sola scriptura” (the Protestant Reformation doctrine that means scripture alone is the final authority in matters of faith and practice), whereas to Christian Fundamentalists (as well as most Evangelicals) the concept is very much foundational to the faith. But in Breivik’s view: “Scripture was never intended to be the believer’s sole guide for all of faith and practice; for all that he believes and does.” Real Christian Fundamentalists would reject that.
In fact, the document clearly indicates that Breivik rejects “Protestantism” in favor of Roman Catholicism (“Only Rome is the true church” according to him). This is hardly the view of a Christian Fundamentalist, especially if you have any idea of the historic relationship between Fundamentalism and Catholicism. But then again, this evil man who says he admires Catholicism advocates abortion “if the baby has mental or physical disabilities (page 1,179).”
So to label Breivik as a Catholic and his murder of 76 people as somehow motivated by this would be just as egregious as calling him a Christian Fundamentalist.
Breivik is also routinely called a “conservative,” yet he spends an entire section challenging the notion that capitalism is a “force for freedom.” But pointing out these and numerous other clear differences between the mindset of Anders Behring Breivik and that of adherents to Christian Fundamentalism, Catholicism, or American-style Conservatism, seems to be lost on many who have already made up their minds.
Yep—this must be another case of a Christian nut behaving murderously, just like that Timothy McVeigh guy. Of course, McVeigh wasn’t actually a Christian (“Science is my religion,” he said) certainly not a Fundamentalist, either—but why split hairs? A fanatic is a fanatic, right?
Apparently not. This is America after all, a place where Christian Fundamentalists are regularly demonized, while clueless masses wear images of Che Guevera, whose firing squads murdered more than 10,000 people, on T-shirts or tattoos. To quote a line from a 1940 Three Stooges short, A Plumbing We Will Go: “This house has sho’ gone crazy!”
What strikes me as incredible is the difference between how the Norway story has been handled by the mainstream media as compared to the Fort Hood massacre back in 2009. From the start, the Norway narrative has been all about a rush to judgment, the clear determination from the get-go to make this evil deed the work of a conservative Christian Fundamentalist, even though the facts hiding in plain sight clearly tell a very different story.
Yet when Nidal Malik Hasan committed his horrific crimes in November of 2009, the same outlets did their best to avoid any mention of his religion—even though multiplied eyewitness testimony had it that the guy was doing it all in the name of Islam.
Could it be that there is a fundamental (pun intended) bias in some media quarters against various expressions of the Christian faith? One that leads them to a tortured attempt to connect the incredible foulness of a murderous rampage to people who, in the opinion of media elites, take their belief system way too seriously?
Christian Fundamentalism may have its “challenges” and some things in its background that have never been fully dealt with or repudiated (I have written about some of this in my new book), but no real Christian Fundamentalist would advocate or carry out such evil violence.
Sure, the media will parade the usual suspects, McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, George Tiller, James Wenneker Von Brunn, Andrew Joseph Stack—and now Anders Breivik, but even an amateur sleuth can find glaring clues that these losers had no connection to the faith or the faithful.
In a very real sense, when the mainstream media seeks to draw a straight line from the horror in Norway to Christian Fundamentalists here, they are ironically playing the same kind of conspiracy-theory-guilt-by-association game as the one chronicled on the pages of Anders Breivik’s disgusting manifesto.
Recently Amy Winehouse joined the “27 Club” when she died of a drug overdose. The “27 Club” is a group of rockers that died at age 27. Unfortunately Jimi Hendrix died at age 27 in 1970 and Janis Joplin did the same three weeks later. Today we are going to look at her life and also at the life of two people who were comtempories of hers. Actually John Michael Talbot shared the stage with her at one point.
‘Janis Joplin’ 1/5 from True Hollywood Story
By Sean Nelson, Special to MSN Music , July 23, 2011
Two and a half weeks after Jimi Hendrix died, on October 4, 1970, the world of rock was stunned to learn that he had been joined in the afterlife by Janis Joplin. Here was the one-two punch that made the curse of 27 achieve mythic proportion. A boisterous, self-destructive Texan who found her singing voice in the church and her inner one in San Francisco, Joplin had the most distinctive and powerful set of pipes anyone had ever heard, introduced first as the chanteuse of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist. She also had a taste for alcohol and narcotics that followed her wherever she went. No matter how many times she managed to get clean, she always relapsed. She died of a heroin overdose while recording an unfinished album released after her death as “Pearl.”
In the northwest corner of Arkansas, atop one of the picturesque Ozark Mountains, sits The Little Portion Retreat and Training Center, owned and operated by the Brothers and Sisters of Charity community. Here you will find Little Portion’s founder and benefactor, Christian singer/songwriter and monk, John Michael Talbot.
John Michael was born into a musical Methodist household in Oklahoma in 1954. He began playing piano and drums when he was six years old, and later took up the banjo, dobro, and guitar. He left school at 15 and together with his brother Terry, began his musical career as a guitarist for the country folk/rock band Mason Proffit. The group produced five albums during the ’60s and early ’70s, before disbanding just as they were on the brink of stardom.
Talbot became disillusioned with the rock music life. He never did drugs, and after a concert where Mason Proffit shared the stage with Janis Joplin, Talbot looked out over the arena floor, now strewn with empty wine and whiskey bottles and drug paraphernalia. “Suddenly it all seemed empty, sad.”
Following the breakup of the band, John Michael began a spiritual exploration that included Native American religion, Buddhism, and finally the Bible. As members of the ’70s Jesus Movement, John and his brother helped lead the way in the contemporary Christian music scene. By the end of the decade, John had written and recorded several albums, but had withdrawn from the public eye to pursue his increasing interest in St. Francis of Assisi. In 1978 he joined a secular Franciscan order in Indianapolis. He started The Little Portion, a house of prayer, and planned to live as a hermit. But having had a taste of his mellow and reflective new sound, people clamored for more, and so he started his music ministry.
In 1982 he and six friends moved to the Ozark Mountains, where Talbot had bought 25 acres while on tour with Mason Proffit. They established The Little Portion Hermitage. There are currently about 37 members of his Brothers and Sisters of Christ community, plus another 500 worldwide. Like Talbot, all the members have taken vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and work to provide help to those in need.
Talbot likes to experiment with his music by combining text, music, and instruments of past and present, thereby spanning the ages. The Dove Award winner has raised millions of dollars, along with public awareness, for Mercy Corps International, a Christian emergency relief agency that helps people worldwide. In 1988 he was awarded Mercy Corps International’s Humanitarian of the Year award.
Talbot, who has also written 13 books, had been nominated for the Dove Award 10 times and won in 1982 for Album of the Year with Light Eternal. His expansive discography lists 39 titles, recorded from 1976 to the present, with the most recent project being The Pathway Series, six instrumental albums designed for quiet contemplation. What makes him so prolific? “If you have something good, you’re not afraid to share it,” he says. And his fans, having bought over 4 million albums, have found something good with his soothing tenor voice and virtuosic guitar playing.
I was brought up by Christian parents here in Australia, along with two brothers and two sisters. I went to good schools, got excellent grades up until I hit about 15, and generally had a normal, though very strict, upbringing.
Around the age of 14 I started to question everything my parents had taught me – I began to question the strict religious upbringing I’d had, the values I’d learnt, everything. I felt like I was just getting told what to believe about life, that my parents had set a course for me to follow, and that they expected me to blindly walk that course.
I wasn’t allowed to do a lot of things that other kids my age could – listen to rock’n’roll music, watch any TV programs that contained sex or violence, go to unsupervised parties, etc etc.
As soon as I was old enough to legally refuse my parents’ wishes (16 in Australia), I quit school and got a job, and started teaching myself rock’n’roll guitar – my heroes were guitar players like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Pete Townsend and Keith Richards.
Around the same time I began to hang around with other kids of my age from my area who had the same interests, and I began to embrace their lifestyle – smoking pot, drinking, sex and general teenage rebellion.
This was so far removed from the way I’d been brought up, and seemed (initially anyway) like such a great way to live, that I jumped on the bandwagon, and discovered a whole new world that I’d only ever read about, and had thought sounded pretty exciting – sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.
At that time in Australia, the whole drugs sub-culture from the 1960’s was still going strong, tied very tightly to the music that went with it, and kids of my age who were getting into this scene and alternative lifestyles thought we were finding a better and more enlightened way of life than our parents had.
At 17, I quit my job and moved into a big old house with 4 other people, a little older than me, and really threw myself into the alternative lifestyle – the people that I hung out with were into elements of Transcendental Meditation, Zen Buddhism, Indian mysticism, and a big diet of psychedelic drugs.
In that first year I embarked on what I thought was a ‘voyage of self-discovery’ – my friends and I would sit around having what we thought were ‘enlightened’ discussions under the influence of various drugs – in that initial period of drug use I tried pot, hash, hash oil, LSD, magic mushrooms, barbiturates and speed. While initially my drug use seemed like great fun, and a huge adventure of flashing colours, hallucinations, astral travel and spiritual enlightenment, tripping to music by Hendrix, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Santana, Dylan, Janis Joplin etc, that initial phase of my drug use didn’t last very long.
Pretty soon I began to have some pretty weird things going on inside my head – I would suffer incredible bouts of paranoia, thinking that people were against me. A couple of times I had some pretty heavy LSD trips that I had to be talked down from – I realise now that the effects must have been pretty close to psychosis. I astral traveled a couple of times – floating above my body on my bed, completely detached from the physical world.
The thing was, instead of becoming more enlightened, or leading a better life than I had had, and being set free from what I thought were the petty restrictions set down by my parents and the beliefs I was brought up with, these drugs were doing incredibly destructive things to my mind and my spiritual well-being.
Never having been the kind of person who’s done things by halves, I decided that the solution to my problems must be to use more drugs, until I ‘broke through’ some sort of barrier. There was something completely dark and reckless that had taken hold of me, that urged me to flirt with danger – I was starting to discover some dark things in me.
I had just turned 18, and was starting to move in a heavier scene – friends and I went to score some pot one afternoon, and the guy I was making the buy from said he didn’t have any pot left, and offered me heroin instead. My friends backed away, but I thought ‘What the hell, I’ll try it, once won’t kill me’. Talk about famous last words …
A few months later, I had a motorcycle accident, nearly losing my left leg in the process. I was in hospital for months and months, having operation after operation as the doctors tried to save my leg. All the time they pumped me full of pethidine, morphine and other narcotic painkillers, and I came close to a physical dependency at that point. I remember when I was finally released from the hospital, I was too weak to use my crutches, and my Dad had to carry me to the car to take me home.
My poor parents had been through so much during this time, as they knew I had dabbled in the drug scene, but were not aware to what extent.
They thought that as I had moved home after leaving hospital, I would straighten out, maybe go back to school and finish my education. However, I still had a lot of friends who were doing drugs, and I got back into it, but this time with a vengeance.
The thing was, I had discovered that there was no enlightenment in these drugs, or in all the mystical practices and eastern religious beliefs that all my hip friends were into. Instead, it felt like there was this big black hole in the centre of my being, a vacuum that kept screaming out to be filled.
I started using different kinds of drugs to try and fill up this void – speed, mescaline, barbiturates, nitrous oxide, alcohol, in any concentration and mix.
That hole in the centre of my being was still there, but I was starting to lose sight of any normal perspective I could have used to seek some help out of the mess.
And all this time, at the back of my mind, and at the heart of my desires, I could remember the first time I shot up heroin – that warm wave that just enveloped my entire being, that seemed for a time at least, to put the world where I wanted it – at my feet.
I started hanging out with people that were into it, and my old friends dropped away, as I started moving in rougher circles.
As I began to get to know the drug sub-culture better, and saw up close what it does to people, I discovered that people in the drug scene weren’t all peace, love and understanding, that terrible things happened in life, and a lot of them were done by people to each other.
At the age of 18, my brush with the ‘hippie’ scene was well and truly over, as I saw a complete absence of the promised enlightenment and freedom that the hippie movement claimed to stand for being manifested in real life.
What I had actually bought into was darkness and bondage.
My disillusionment found a perfect vehicle in the punk rock scene which sprung up towards the end of the Seventies.
I joined my first band as a guitar player, called World War 4, playing Sex Pistols, Stranglers, the Damned, and a lot of songs we wrote ourselves. We got a few gigs in Sydney, but spent most of our time doing drugs.
The bass player in that band, his girlfriend and his brother were all heavily into the heroin scene, and I started hanging out with them, doing heroin occasionally at first, but mostly smoking dope and taking acid and mushrooms. But the more I hung out with them, the more heroin we did. Pretty soon I stopped taking any other drugs altogether, because I could never trust what was going to happen in my mind, whereas with heroin you always new how it would feel.
The thing is, the first few times you try heroin, you feel like the king of the world, but after that, the craving for that first huge rush isn’t satisfied as easily, and there begins the slide into addiction.
Each time I used, the high wasn’t as high, and it didn’t last as long, so I needed more. The line between being really stoned, and having an overdose becomes very blurred, very quickly.
And no matter how I justified it and rationalised it to myself, and tried to persuade myself that I wasn’t really addicted, I had entered into a world that leads to overdoses, diseases and an early death.
As well, I was now starting to feel out of place somehow, when I was straight.
I found that using heroin was something you had to hide, that the only people who accepted it were other people who were also heroin users, that my old friends didn’t want to hang out with me any more, because I just didn’t relate to them any more – my emotions weren’t stirred by the same things theirs were, and as they heard about what I was doing, initially they’d try to help, but they soon figured out that I didn’t want help, or friendship, or love, because all those desires had been replaced by the need to be so stoned on heroin that absolutely nothing could touch me.
I was also starting to drop the pretence of being a ‘casual’ heroin user – I even found a perverse ‘cool’ in being a junkie. I was starting to associate with people who have that desperate edge to them, people whose drug addiction was the be-all and end-all of their lives. Now, also, the line between right and wrong began to blur as my need for heroin escalated.
Initially I had things under control, holding down jobs occasionally, but more and more heroin became the focus of my life – I started resorting to dishonesty to pay for it, then outright theft – from my parents, friends, everyone I knew.
By 1979 I was in big trouble – I’d been kicked out of home, my girlfriend had nearly died from all the heroin we’d been taking, and I weighed about 7 stone. As my habit got worse and worse, my dealer set me up selling for him, and I made enough money to support my habit for a while, but pretty quickly it was all just going straight in my arm. After losing everything I owned, I straightened out for the first time – taking barbiturates to numb the horrific withdrawal pains. My parents allowed me to move back into their home, and I found a job.
Things went OK for a while, but I discovered that once you’ve had heroin everything else seems pale and grey in comparison, and that desire never let me go. Pretty soon I was hanging out with my old friends again, using heroin as often as I could get it, and wandering aimlessly through life.
I used heroin, cocaine and amphetamines, in that order of preference, whenever I could, with a few short breaks now and then, for the next 6 years. I travelled all over Australia, playing in bands, chasing sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. In that time I also graduated to speedballs – heroin and cocaine mixed together, because heroin by itself wasn’t enough for me anymore.
I got married in 1984, and my wife and I moved to the States for a year, living in Los Angeles and scoring ‘Mexican brown’ heroin and street cocaine in Hollywood.
It was in America that my wife fell pregnant, right in the middle of one of the worst drug binges of my life.
In that year alone, I had already spent close to $100,000 on heroin and cocaine.
My mother flew my pregnant wife home, as I had spent every single cent we possessed feeding my habit, and I stayed on with my brother in Las Vegas, came down and dried out, and flew home just in time for my baby girl’s birth.
That was the only time in my life where I stayed off serious drugs for any length of time – even though my wife and I divorced a year later, I kept straight, kept my job, and just occasionally I’d have a line of coke, though I did some serious drinking in that time.
Things improved (or I thought they did) – I had a succession of jobs, played in a succession of bands, had a couple of girlfriends that really cared about me, but the demons that I thought had been laid to rest were still there inside me, content to lie dormant for a while.
I had dealt with the symptoms of my problem, but not the real disease deep inside of me.
Then in 1994, after 8 years of never even considering touching heroin, I woke up one morning, and I had a craving for a speedball of heroin and cocaine. This desire, which I had thought was dead, awoke in me like it had never been away.
One day I was fine, the next I craved heroin – craved it to the point of not being able to think about anything else.
I lasted two weeks, and then I was into it again, like I’d never been away. I headed straight for Sydney’s red light Kings Cross district, and within a couple of hours I was back to being a junkie. This time I went to desperate lengths to conceal what was going on. My girlfriend left me, though she fought hard to keep me away from the drugs, and for the next three months I got stuck into it.
After overdosing twice, I realised that I was going to die if I didn’t do something – the second OD I woke up from with a collapsed lung, and I was paralysed down one side for nearly two days.
I managed to stop using again, but now I had a worse fear – the knowledge that I had no control over this thing – that though I could fight it off successfully from time to time, it was always going to be there, and that one day, this thing was going to kill me.
You have to understand that I’ve been through five or six overdoses in my life. Three of these were critical – on one occasion, I was revived by paramedics with Narcane (an anti-opiate) after overdosing – I dropped immediately after a hit, turned blue, my heart stopped, my friends couldn’t find a pulse, and it took the ambulance officers more than 15 minutes to get there – according to all the accepted knowledge about brain damage after oxygen starvation to the brain, I should have brain damage, but through some miracle of God, once the ambulance officers revived me, I recovered completely.
Most of the people I had hung around with who were into heroin are now in one of three situations – dead, in jail, or drug addicts and alcoholics.
I managed to pull out of this tail-spin, but my idea of ‘getting it together’ was to become a pot dealer – I knew so many people that liked smoking pot that I found it easy to make money from it, and by dealing in a drug I no longer used, I felt safe. By the end, I was making up to 4 or $5,000 a week.
I was playing in my own band, I had a gorgeous girlfriend, nice car, didn’t have to work for a living, if I wanted to buy anything I had the money, and for a little while I thought I was really living – outside the law, thumbing my nose at society – a successful sociopath.
I didn’t take drugs, I drank moderately, I had it together.
Then things happened to bring things to a head – my girlfriend split up with me, and that started the ball rolling.
I coped with breaking up with her, but then I began to sense something I’d never experienced before –
I’ll never forget how the process started. I was sitting on the couch having my first cigarette and coffee of the day, watching TV, and suddenly I just burst into tears. And, along with the tears, came a realisation. Someone was speaking to me, right in the place where all the heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, alcohol, sex and rock’n’roll had gone – that hole in my being that I could never fill.
It was like someone who knew me intimately taking me back over all the things I had done in my life – a trip through all the dead, empty spaces in my life, where you start off with hopes and dreams, and you wake up 36 years later, and half of your life is gone.
I was remembering things from my past that I had buried for years – things that I didn’t want to look at – but I had no choice -this person was bringing these things up out of my dead heart, exposing them to the light, and asking me to evaluate them and take responsibility for them.
It was a devastating experience – for years, every time a bad memory had popped up, I had pushed it away, pretending not to remember too many of the specifics of the horrible things I had done. Now though, I had no choice – and I had to face the person I had become.
At this point my whole world just imploded – I couldn’t function at all – For three weeks I’d just burst into tears, tears of heartbreak and guilt and self-disgust.
At this point, a friend of mine told me I needed to get my relationship right with God, and that’s when I realised what was going on – that it was God showing me the person I had become.
I began to realise that it was a real, living person speaking to my spirit, and this person wasn’t condemning me, or taunting me with my failures – this person was showing me the results of the choices I’d made in life, and this person was telling me, in my spirit, that it didn’t have to be that way, that there was a way out of the hole I’d dug for myself.
God was telling me that it was time to let Him take over, that He wanted me to put things right with Him. Not only that, he wanted to help me, to heal me.
All I had to do was surrender.
It was the hardest thing I think I’ve ever done. I had been a rebel all my life. To have to admit that you have completely made a mess of your life is an extremely humbling thing to have to do.
In the end I did it, because I knew in my heart that there was nowhere else to go – I’ve tried anything and everything else in my life, and nothing filled that emptiness within me.
I’m not going to tell you that it’s all been sweetness and light since I accepted Jesus as my personal savior and redeemer, because it’s a hard and narrow road to obey God, and it’s no fun to take responsibility for the misery you have inflicted on those around you, but at the end of every day I carry in my heart a sure and certain knowledge –
That God cares about every one of us, even though we deserve nothing, and to prove it He sent his only son to be tortured, humiliated and killed by the likes of you and I, and that His death as a substitute for our sin brings us eternal life if we just humble ourselves and ask for it.
I now know in my heart that drugs and alcohol will never be a force in my life again. Drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs can never be completely successful by themselves, because they don’t deal with the evil that generates these desires.
Only God can do that. That’s what God has done in me, and He is working an ongoing, continuous miracle in every aspect of my life every day.
Note – I wrote this testimony of God’s deliverance and salvation in 1997, a year after giving my life to Jesus.
Here’s an update….
May 22nd 2004
As I sit writing this update to my testimony, I find it hard to comprehend the enormity of the changes the Lord has made in my life. I started Bible College a couple of weeks ago, and if someone had told me 8 years ago that I would be studying at Bible College, preaching in gaols, recording Christian music cd’s and running evangelistic events in parks, I would have sent them off to have their ‘head read’!
What really amazes me is that 8 years ago, when I turned my life over to Jesus, my life was such a mess, and I was so damaged emotionally, physically and spiritually by the life I had led, that I really had no expectations left of life – I felt completely and utterly crushed.
And yet God knew all along that He wasn’t finished with me, and that He had a plan for my life that I had never expected.
Where to start this update? As soon as I became a Christian, in February 1996, I knew there were things in my life that had to go . I knew my rock band had to go – I couldn’t reconcile my faith in God with lyrics glorifying sex, drugs and rebellion. I knew the binge drinking had to go. I knew the drugs had to go. I knew the casual sex had to go. I knew I had to work. I had done nothing but play in bands, drink, party, do drugs etc etc for the previous 3 years of my life, and for most of my adult life before then.
My problem was that even though I had accepted Jesus as my saviour, and I had such an awesome conversion experience, the whole Christian lifestyle as I understood it was completely alien to me. There were many times when I would look back and begin to wish some of those things in my life that I had stopped were still there. Without those crutches of drugs, sex, alcohol and my old lifestyle to support me, my true human frailty was there exposed before me.
There were times when I felt naked and exposed and raw in a way that was completely humiliating to me. It wasn’t until those crutches were stripped away that I realised how emotionally damaged and racked with depresssion I actually was, and how this had been covered up and masked by my dissolute lifestyle.
Thank God that He placed me somewhere I could get help.
Within a week of my conversion, I realised I needed to start going to church. I knew I needed to have fellowship with other Christians, and I knew I needed help. And then I began to have re-curring memories of a church my parents had taken me to as a child, called Calvary Chapel. Calvary Chapel is a pentecostal church of the Foursquare Denomination, and is situated in Georges Hall in Sydney, near Bankstown (to have a look, click here). I remembered that as a child when I was taken there that people would be in that church raising their hands, praising and worshipping God, and I just knew somehow that I needed to be in that environment.
I rang my mother and asked her if the place still existed, and she told me it did, and offered to go there with me the following Sunday. So I went, and what an experience it was! I couldn’t work out why everyone was smiling, for a start, and why people were so friendly towards me. In fact I was so used to negativity being around me that at first I was very mistrustful of their motives!
The worship music was so hearfelt from the lips of all the believers there. When people were asked to come forward for prayer, and were prayed for, many of them fell under the power of the Holy Spirit. The atmosphere in the church just crackled with a sense of the power of God. Within a few minutes of the service starting, the tears began to roll down my face. All the shame, the painful memories of my past, all of it seemed to come to the surface, and the enormity of it all was all just too much for me.
When the preacher spoke, he spoke on Jeremiah 29:11 – “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” I felt like every word of what he spoke was just for me. At the end of his message, he invited those in the church who wanted God’s plan for their life to come to fruition to come forward and be prayed for. I hesitantly went to the front as prayed for. More tears!
God began to show me all the things that were wrong within me, how I had opened up my life to demonic oppression and how I needed prayer ministry for those areas. I went to church as often as I could, and received much counselling, deliverance ministry and prayer from the pastoral and counselling staff.
In the meantime, I had no job, no money, and things were looking extremely grim. Since abandoning my band, I had turned over all my talents and gifts as a musician to God, and made the commitment that I would serve Him with my music. However, my change of heart was not paying the rent.
Once again, God showed me his provision – I had aptitude and some skills in computing, but little formal training. My brother offered to give me some part time work, helping him with his fright management software company, and so I moved from Sydney down to the Southern Highlands an hour from Sydney, and worked on the help systems for his software.
Now, I wasn’t a great fan of computers, and never imagined my future in that area. In fact, there were times I was extremely fortunate that my brother continued to put up with my complaining about the type of work I was doing, but I look back now and I see God re-forging me as a person, building character and stripping away the junk I had allowed to build up inside me.
One day my brother brought home a new software package for designing web sites, and said, “I think we should have a web site – why don’t you have a go at using this to put something together for my company?”
When I opened the software and got it working, I discovered an area of computing I actually really enjoyed, and have some aptitude for.
From that small opportunity, God has blessed my attempts to re-train and learn new skills, and I now head a web and multimedia development company that I founded some 6 years ago – SEO Technologies Pty Ltd.
What does being a Christian mean to my life today? Where once I was racked with shame over the way I had lived my life and the things I had done wrong, I now have forgiveness and right standing with God. Where once I was tormented and angry I now have peace, and where once I was a constant victim to depression, I now carry a sense of joy.
God continues to work His miracle in me every day – To sum it all up, once I was lost, but now I’m found!
Have you ever thought that you were born in the wrong time? Since I was a child, I found my love for MGM musicals set me apart from my friends. Are we really out of place, or is a sense of nostalgia just a part of our human experience? If you are feeling particularly nostalgic of late, a visit to the movies just may be the thing for you.
In Woody Allen’s new film Midnight in Paris, Gil (Owen Wilson) is in Paris with his girlfriend Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents (Mimi Kennedy & Kurt Fuller). As a Hollywood screenwriter, Gil is successful but unfulfilled. He is delighted to walk the same streets that his literary heroes such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Earnest Hemingway did in the 1920’s. Inez and her parents find Gil’s references to the romantic feel of Paris contrary to their own pursuits – which consist mostly of shopping with Gil’s money. So completely opposite of each other in personality it’s difficult to see how Gil and Inez became a couple in the first place. But in Paris they are, and when friend’s show up unexpectedly it’s just about too much for Gil to handle.
When Gil takes a quiet walk alone during a Paris night he finds himself transported to the 1920’s and among the artist’s community of the time. As he parties with his heroes Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Gil feels welcomed to this new world and gains enough trust to offer up his unpublished book for criticism from none other than Gertrude Stein. Each night, Gil leaves his winey girlfriend and her disapproving parents for the spirited and unconventional party life of his new found friends and a time lost long ago. As a discussion over Picasso’s newest painting develops, Gil meets the painter’s muse, beautiful Adriana (Marion Cotillard).
Entranced my Adriana, Gil falls in love with the mysterious woman and becomes totally engaged in his new world. But when Adriana yearns for a different time of her own, Gil is caught off guard and discovers that his overgrown sense of nostalgia just may be a sign that his current life is the real problem.
Midnight in Paris is a funny, beautiful and mindful film that explores our vision of the past with our desires of the present. It’s been quite a long time since Woody Allen has use a reflection in time as a theme and comparisons can be made between this film and his 1985 hit The Purple Rose of Cairo. Owen Wilson is perfectly cast as the protagonist à la Woody Allen and is well suited for this material. Wilson provides just the right bit of romanticism, wit and wonder to his character’s quandary. Marion Cotillard, is beautiful and mystifying as Adriana and fits perfectly in this projection of 1920’s Paris.
Allen definitely had fun with casting the characters of the past, most notably Corey Stoll as Hemingway. And it isn’t far-fetched to say that as in many of his films, Allen has brought forth characters that he himself would find amusing to meet and party with should time travel ever be possible. If any one thing could be attributed to the success of Midnight in Paris is the overall mood that Allen has perfectly cast over both his present day and his period scenes. Shot on location, Paris rarely fails. Allen takes his time with linear shots around the city at the beginning of the film before even starting the initial credits, giving the moviegoer just the ample amount of time to know – this is Paris.
So, if your credit card is maxed out and a summer adventure is out of the family budget, step into a movie theater and see Midnight in Paris. It will entertain you, inspire you and do what every great movie does – make you feel.
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This week I watched on tv the replay of the last game in the series with Texas. It was the 1991 game in Little Rock against Texas. Right before that game Craig O’Neill pulled a prank on the Texas Athletic Dept. Listen to the clip above.
› I started in radio when I was 19 in 1969 at KBTN in Jonesboro. The most popular show was a 15-minute newscast at 9:30 p.m. that included five minutes of obituaries. You’ve heard of the top 20 hits? We did the top 20 obits.
›I did a black gospel show, I did play-by-play, I did news, I covered parades, I even played a clown. In those two and a half years, I learned more about life and people than I could ever have hoped to in college.
› Johnny Carson was the blueprint. Johnny Carson started in radio, went to TV, had a little local TV show, picked up and went out to California, got on an afternoon game show and the rest is history. So, I thought, there’s my blueprint. The trouble is you get married, you have kids, you have great ratings, the station gives you a car, you’re fat and happy and you forget all about the blueprint.
› I was Randy Hankins until 1972, and then in 1972 my program director at KARN thought that Randy Hankins sounded too country. He had worked with a guy in Seattle named Craig O’Neill and thought that was a cool name, so he gave it to me.
I’ve never heard from him, but I have heard from people who say, “Didn’t you used to work Seattle?” I also get, “Didn’t you used to work at Cincinnati?” And, “Didn’t you used to work in Atlanta?” So I’m thinking the other Craig O’Neill, the real one, he got around a lot.
› We called Texas and said, “It was twilight, a young UA student was sleep deprived when he put the lettering in the end zone and he accidentally put an extra ‘s’ on Texas. We can’t take it off there. What do you want us to do about it?” And the guy goes, “Well we can’t have Tex-ass, now can we?”
› I wrote a skit for Lou Holtz to use on “The Tonight Show” in 1981. He called me and said, “Craig, my child’s in the hospital, and I don’t feel funny. But they still want me on. Can you write me some material?” So what I wrote him was, him saying, “I’ve always wanted to be the host of ‘The Tonight Show.’ Johnny, if you’d let me sit behind the desk just for a minute, I’ll let you draw up a Razorback play that we will actually use during the year.” So they would switch places. Lou Holtz would sit behind the desk. “Oh, this is nice.” Johnny would have fun drawing up the play. The punchline was, Lou looking at the play saying, “I’m not sure if we’re going to use this. If it’s a Johnny Carson play, you know it’s only going to work three days out of the week.”
When I ran it by the head writer, he loved it. But when you watch the tape, you’ll see Johnny Carson ask Lou Holtz three times, “what’re some of the things you’ve always wanted to do?” trying to set Lou up to do the bit. But Lou was so nervous and so anxious, he never did it.
› Around 1996 or 1997, when I was 45 years old, I started looking around and going, “What else can I try?” I thought, “Why not TV?” I had a friend who was general manager over here, and she said, “Why don’t you come over and do wacky sports?”
› There are times when I break all decorum and slip into Bozo.
› At 4 p.m., one of my favorite things is to stand back and watch these creative clusters in the KTHV newsroom working on stories they want to tell. I just eat that up.
› I love comedians and that process of saying something and getting a response. There’s so much truth in comedy. My mentor now is Jon Stewart. I think he’s the greatest interviewer in America. Because he’s looking for the comic opening. To do that, you have to listen.
› I grew up with my mother saying, “Tone it down.”
› The story I’ve heard is that a little girl leaned over to her mother at my church and goes, “Are we gonna go to Sunday school after God gets through?” When I read the Bible, I’m James Earl Jones.
› I’ve never had a drink in my life. My first communion at Trinity Episcopal, I was so anxious that when the wine came at me, I took a gulp, held it in my mouth, walked out the chancel outside and hurled. Now, booze has such a psychological aversion in me, that I can’t stomach it. I don’t mind you drinking; I just can’t do it.
› I’m the best dancing 60-year-old white man in America. I’m a walking dancing museum. I can do every dance from 1955 until now. With the exception of breakdancing, because I’m 60, and I would break a hip.
› My favorite fluffy news story? I can almost do it word for word: A woman in Conway last night came downstairs to find a man asleep in her recliner. She tried to wake the man, but he wouldn’t move. So she called the Conway police, who came and arrested the man for intoxication. When he came to, he said he thought he was in Cabot.
› After 39 years of having a fake name, it’s easier to remove your ego. It’s like a doctor putting on a white coat or a priest putting on a collar. When you get booed or when you bombed or when you stumble on air, it’s easier to let those things go.
› When you become a bobblehead, I think you’ve arrived.
The other day when Amy Winehouse died she joined the “27 Club” which includes other famous rockers who died at age 27. Most of them died because of drugs. Unfortunately Jimi Hendrix joined the club for the same reason.
Something special for all music and Beat Club-Lovers on YouTube: The 2nd take of the “Purple Haze” Performance by The Jimi Hendrix Experience at the Marquee Club in London on the 11th of March 1967! Never broadcasted in the regular episodes of the Beat Club! Enjoy it!
although jimi did not make my top 10 guitar players (as scandalous as that sounds) he had to be added to this list as he was without a doubt one of the most flamboyant, cool, badass dudes in the history of our planet, let alone rock n’ roll. jimi was immensely talented, blending his virtuosic guitar playing with great melodic sensibilities and serious songwriting chops. it was a coin toss for first and second on this list as hendrix could have easily topped it.
a rockstar archetype who clearly defined the role of a new breed of star, hendrix brought a sexy swagger to rock n’ roll that didn’t really exist before he showed up. the fact that he really stands alone as a black artist in the rock genre is a bit odd i find. although black artists have dominated in many other genres such as soul, r&b, rap, hip hop, and blues and contributed to many of the jazz greats, there is a strange lack of black artists in rock. some will say what about bad brains, living colour…am i missing anybody? (also an insane stretch to compare those bands with hendrix).
not only was jimi a black artist, he was also apparently a man of legendary sexual prowess (not to mention phallus size), and it was the sixties. although it was a time of certain …liberties, let’s say, civil rights was still a new idea. it takes a pretty cool individual to negotiate those waters and i’m sure jimi had to endure the standard racism of the day, death threats, etc.
there is a great story of jimi when he first arrived in london. he was doing a house gig at a club downtown and word started to spread about this guitar demon that no one had heard the likes of before. one night the club was full of all the local luminaries that had come to pay homage or just check out what all the fuss was about. jimmy page, jeff beck, brian jones, keith richards, eric clapton, pete townshend — all were all there to check out jimi and his crack band the experience. i think it was jones who opined “the front of the stage was wet with the tears of all the other guitar players in the room”. it was a collective “what do we do now” from the awestruck crowd that jimi had just blown away.
he was also a fashionista of the highest order. as spencer said in a previous post (and i’m paraphrasing here), “he had the ability to make a hawaiian print blazer look cool”. big hair, big floppy hats, etc. jimi and his wild looks and incredible talent cut an indelible mark in rock history.
essential listening: are you experienced, electric ladyland (the jimi hendrix experience)
I grew up in the sixties, a period of guys with long hair, the Beatles, rebellion, so-called “free love,” hippies and drug experimentation. “Do your own thing” or “if it feels good, do it” were the catch cries of my generation. I had long hair, wore satin shirts and beads and loved “pop” music. Jesus was just a swear word and a fairy tale to me. In my view, anyone who believed in God was weak and unscientific. Unwanted suicidal thoughts
However, I began to have destructive thoughts. Out of the blue, the thought of “Cut your wrists!” would be planted in my mind. I was amazed and scared by these thoughts because I was satisfied and content with life. In fact, I thought I had everything I needed to be happy. My friend had gone crazy!
I visited my friend Dave. In the past, he had mocked the Bible as unscientific and argued strongly for the truth of evolution. Now he told me that he trusted in this person called Jesus and also that the scientific evidence didn’t back up the theory of evolution! “Right,” I thought, “Give me a Bible; I’ll prove him wrong!” The stumbling block of evolution and the miracle of life
I had come close to having a very bad motorcycle accident and this started me thinking about God. But the theory of evolution was a stumbling block for me in believing the Bible because the Bible says that God (not time, chance, mutation and natural selection) is responsible for the universe and for life. I witnessed the miracle of the birth of both of my children. I was stunned by the complexity of the human body and I was starting to see that the theory of evolution was the fairy tale! I began to search for the one who was the Creator of life.
I was invited to view a video on the effect of music and I was stunned as it laid out the nature of my beloved music . . . promotion of rebellion, drugs, depravity, violence, the occult, witchcraft, the devil, sexual perversion, suicide and mockery of Jesus. I wondered why musicians were spending so much time mocking this Jesus character if he was just a fairy tale as I once thought.
I wondered why so many rock musicians died young from suicide and drug overdose, etc. The Who, in their song “My Generation,” sing, “Hope I die before I get old.” But when faced with his friends dying before they got old, Pete Townsend, the guitarist of The Who lamented, “Look at my life. Look at my generation. How did that work? Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon . . . the list is . . . endless. They’re dead people. My life is full of dead people. My friends are dead.”
How had my music affected me? One thing I knew, I would be a brave person to say that music had not affected me at all! Unexplainable blasphemy
Jesus said that I should pray so I thought Well, let’s pray! As I said the Lord’s Prayer, the words in the second line (Let your Holy Name be honoured) were replaced by foul and blasphemous words. This occurred on two successive nights and I wasn’t too keen on this evil articulate force that was controlling my thought patterns with suicide and blasphemy! Placing a challenge before God
One dark night, I was lying in bed thinking. “God, if you are so powerful that you made the universe by speaking, then show me evidence you exist.” I didn’t expect anything to happen because there was no way (or so I thought) that God could show me anything as I lay in bed. A visitor in the night—God is supernatural!
Suddenly, a man in white clothes appeared in the doorway of the room with his right hand outstretched like a policeman. Out of his hand came a beam of light that moved halfway across the room. I cried out in my mind, “Stop, stop, I believe . . . I believe . . . I’ve seen enough!” This did not stop what I was seeing as the beam of light continued across the room and through the glass into the black of the night where the light destroyed what I conceived as the evil in the world. God had shown me that His light could overcome the darkness. The grace of God
I surrendered my will to Jesus and trusting in Him has had a powerful effect on my life, totally setting me free from the power behind the thoughts of self-destruction. Immediately (without being conscious of it) I stopped swearing, making comments with sexual connotations and letting my mind wander as I looked at bikini-clad girls. Things I did not realize as an skeptic
These include: Jesus was a real person, the Bible is the world’s bestselling book, many of the early great scientists and composers had a Christian world view, humans are spiritual beings, many of the great modern scientists believe (as Einstein puts it) that science points us to a “spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble,” the scientific evidence against evolution and the Bible is very reliable when judged against the standard historical tests. God is not far from any of us My wife lost her engagement ring and we looked in three different places—searching the ground with no success. Lastly we went to the squash court car park. I thought, Now I’m a Christian, I suppose I should pray! I started to pray. “Lord help us find . . . ” In mid-sentence my wife interrupted me saying, “Here’s the ring!”
Jesus is the only way to God. He is the key for you and me. Give Jesus the control of your life. After 20 years as a Christian, I still marvel at the blessings and grace that Jesus continues to shower into my life. Now I wonder why I took so long to come to know Him!
Not much remains to be said about the primal genius of Jimi Hendrix. He could play any style. He reinvented the electric guitar as an instrument of musical expression. He wrote several of the most enduring and important songs of the rock ‘n’ roll era — including “Purple Haze,” “Foxey Lady,” “Are You Experienced?” and “Crosstown Traffic” (and so many others) — helping to define several generations of music and popular culture. He was impossibly cool. He was impossibly great. And he died a most gruesome death, choking on his own vomit after taking too many prescription sleeping pills and drinking too much wine on September 18, 1970.
Midnight in Paris, the latest chapter in Woody Allen’s ongoing Euro-travelogue, commences with an old-fashioned overture—a lengthy montage of postcard-pretty Parisian street scenes set to a Sidney Bechet clarinet number—hearkening back to the opening scenes of Manhattan (1977), the Woodman’s swoony, romantic ode to NYC. Steeping himself in European locations for the last half decade hasn’t so much compelled Woody to forge new material, as it has encouraged him to approach longstanding preoccupations from a foreign perspective.
The Daily Hatch 