and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.
Harry Kroto
I have attempted to respond to all of Dr. Kroto’s friends arguments and I have posted my responses one per week for over a year now. Here are some of my earlier posts:
In the first video below in the 14th clip in this series are his words and I will be responding to them in the next few weeks since Sir Bertrand Russell is probably the most quoted skeptic of our time, unless it was someone like Carl Sagan or Antony Flew.
50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)
Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2)
A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)
__
Quote from Bertrand Russell:
Q: Why are you not a Christian?
Russell: Because I see no evidence whatever for any of the Christian dogmas. I’ve examined all the stock arguments in favor of the existence of God, and none of them seem to me to be logically valid.
Q: Do you think there’s a practical reason for having a religious belief, for many people?
Russell: Well, there can’t be a practical reason for believing what isn’t true. That’s quite… at least, I rule it out as impossible. Either the thing is true, or it isn’t. If it is true, you should believe it, and if it isn’t, you shouldn’t. And if you can’t find out whether it’s true or whether it isn’t, you should suspend judgment. But you can’t… it seems to me a fundamental dishonesty and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it’s useful, and not because you think it’s true.
About the only solution the atheist can offer is that we face the absurdity of life and live bravely. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell, for example, believed that we have no choice but to build our lives upon “the firm foundation of unyielding despair.” Only by recognizing that the world really is a terrible place can we successfully come to terms with life. Camus said that we should honestly recognize life’s absurdity and then live in love for one another.
The fundamental problem with this solution, however, is that it’s impossible to live consistently and happily within the framework of such a worldview. If you live consistently, you will not be happy; if you live happily, it is only because you are not consistent.
Francis Schaeffer has explained this point well. Modern man, says Schaeffer, resides in a two-story universe. In the lower story is the finite world without God; here life is absurd, as we have seen. In the upper story are meaning, value, and purpose. Now modern man lives in the lower story because he believes there is no God. But he cannot live happily in such an absurd world; therefore, he continually makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm meaning, value, and purpose, even though he has no right to, since he does not believe in God.
Let’s look again, then, at each of the three areas in which we saw that life was absurd without God, to see how difficult it is to live consistently and happily with an atheistic worldview.
Meaning of Life
First, the area of meaning. We saw that without God, life has no meaning. Yet philosophers continue to live as though life does have meaning. For example, Sartre argued that one may create meaning for his life by freely choosing to follow a certain course of action. Sartre himself chose Marxism.
Now this is totally inconsistent. It is inconsistent to say life is objectively absurd and then to say you may create meaning for your life. If life is really absurd, then you’re trapped in the lower story. To try to create meaning in life represents a leap to the upper story. But Sartre has no basis for this leap. Sartre’s program is actually an exercise in self-delusion. For the universe doesn’t really acquire a meaning just because I happen to give it one. This is easy to see: Suppose I give the universe one meaning, and you give it another. Who’s right? The answer, of course, is neither one. For the universe without God remains objectively meaningless, no matter how we happen to regard it. Sartre is really saying, “Let’s pretend the universe has meaning.” And this is just fooling yourself.
The point is this: If God does not exist, then life is objectively meaningless; but man cannot live consistently and happily knowing that life is meaningless; so in order to be happy he pretends life has meaning. But this is, of course, entirely inconsistent—for without God, man and the universe are without any real significance.
Value of Life
Turn now to the problem of value. Here is where the most blatant inconsistencies occur. First of all, atheistic humanists are totally inconsistent in affirming the traditional values of love and brotherhood. Camus has been rightly criticized for inconsistently holding both to the absurdity of life and the ethics of human love and brotherhood. The view that there are no values is logically incompatible with affirming the values of love and brotherhood. Bertrand Russell, too, was inconsistent. For though he was an atheist, he was an outspoken social critic, denouncing war and restrictions on sexual freedom. Russell admitted that he could not live as though ethical values were simply a matter of personal taste, and that he therefore found his own views “incredible.” “I do not know the solution,” he confessed.6
The point is that if there is no God, then objective right and wrong do not exist. As Dostoyevsky said, “All things are permitted.” But man cannot live this way. So he makes a leap of faith and affirms values anyway. And when he does so, he reveals the inadequacy of a world without God.
The horror of a world devoid of value was brought home to me with new intensity several years ago as I watched a BBC television documentary called The Gathering. It concerned the reunion of survivors of the Holocaust in Jerusalem, where they rediscovered lost friendships and shared their experiences. One former prisoner, a nurse, told of how she was made the gynecologist at Auschwitz. She observed that pregnant women were grouped together by the soldiers under the direction of Dr. Josef Mengele and housed in the same barracks. Some time passed, and she noted that she no longer saw any of these women. She made inquiries. “Where are the pregnant women who were housed in that barracks?” “Haven’t you heard?” came the reply. “Dr. Mengele used them for vivisection.”
Another woman told of how Mengele had bound up her breasts so that she could not suckle her infant. The doctor wanted to learn how long an infant could survive without nourishment. Desperately this poor woman tried to keep her baby alive by giving it pieces of bread soaked in coffee, but to no avail. Each day the baby lost weight, a fact that was eagerly monitored by Dr. Mengele. A nurse then came secretly to this woman and told her, “I have arranged a way for you to get out of here, but you cannot take your baby with you. I have brought a morphine injection that you can give to your child to end its life.” When the woman protested, the nurse was insistent: “Look, your baby is going to die anyway. At least save yourself.” And so this mother felt compelled to take the life of her own baby. Dr. Mengele was furious when he learned of it because he had lost his experimental specimen, and he searched among the dead to find the baby’s discarded corpse so that he could have one last weighing.
My heart was torn by these stories. One rabbi who survived the camp summed it up well when he said that at Auschwitz it was as though there existed a world in which all the Ten Commandments were reversed. Mankind had never seen such a hell.
And yet, if God does not exist, then in a sense, our world is Auschwitz: There is no right and wrong; all things are permitted.
But no atheist, no agnostic, can live consistently with such a view. Nietzsche himself, who proclaimed the necessity of living beyond good and evil, broke with his mentor Richard Wagner precisely over the issue of the composer’s anti-Semitism and strident German nationalism. Similarly, Sartre, writing in the aftermath of the Second World War, condemned anti-Semitism, declaring that a doctrine that leads to mass extermination is not merely an opinion or matter of personal taste of equal value with its opposite. In his important essay “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” Sartre struggles vainly to elude the contradiction between his denial of divinely preestablished values and his urgent desire to affirm the value of human
persons. Like Russell, he could not live with the implications of his own denial of ethical absolutes.
Neither can the so-called New Atheists like Richard Dawkins. For although he says that there is no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference, he is an unabashed moralist. He vigorously condemns such actions as the harassment and abuse of homosexuals, religious indoctrination of children, the Incan practice of human sacrifice, and prizing cultural diversity over the interests of Amish children. He even goes so far as to offer his own amended Ten Commandments for guiding moral behavior, all the while marvelously oblivious to the contradiction with his ethical subjectivism.
Indeed, one will probably never find an atheist who lives consistently with his system. For a universe without moral accountability and devoid of value is unimaginably terrible.
Purpose of Life
Finally, let’s look at the problem of purpose in life. The only way most people who deny purpose in life live happily is either by making up some purpose—which amounts to self-delusion, as we saw with Sartre—or by not carrying their view to its logical conclusions. The temptation to invest one’s own petty plans and projects with objective significance and thereby to find some purpose to one’s life is almost irresistible.
For example, the outspoken atheist and Nobel Prize–winning physicist Steven Weinberg, at the close of his much-acclaimed book The First Three Minutes, writes,
It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that somehow we were built in from the beginning.… It is very hard to realize that this all is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.
But if there is no solace in the fruits of our research, there is at least some consolation in the research itself. Men and women are not content to comfort themselves with tales of gods and giants, or to confine their thoughts to the daily affairs of life; they also build telescopes and satellites and accelerators, and sit at their desks for endless hours working out the meaning of the data they gather. The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.
There’s something strange about Weinberg’s moving description of the human predicament: Tragedy is not a neutral term. It expresses an evaluation of a situation. Weinberg evidently sees a life devoted to scientific pursuits as truly meaningful, and therefore it’s tragic that such a noble pursuit should be extinguished. But why, given atheism, should the pursuit of science be any different from slouching about doing nothing? Since there is no objective purpose to human life, none of our pursuits has any objective significance, however important and dear they may seem to us subjectively. They’re no more significant than shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.
Today we look at the 3rd letter in the Kroto correspondence and his admiration of Bertrand Russell. (Below The Nobel chemistry laureates Harold Kroto, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley) It is with sadness that I write this post having learned of the death of Sir Harold Kroto on April 30, 2016 at the age of […]
On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto _________________ Below you have picture of Dr. Harry Kroto: Gareth Stedman […]
Top 10 Woody Allen Movies __________ John Piippo makes the case that Bertrand Russell would have loved Woody Allen because they both were atheists who don’t deny the ramifications of atheism!!! Monday, August 06, 2012 (More On) Woody Allen’s Atheism As I wrote in a previous post, I like Woody Allen. I have long admired his […]
______ Top 10 Woody Allen Movies PBS American Masters – Woody Allen A Documentary 01 PBS American Masters – Woody Allen A Documentary 02 __________ John Piippo makes the case that Bertrand Russell would have loved Woody Allen because they both were two atheists who don’t deny the ramifications of atheism!!! Monday, August 06, 2012 […]
THE MORAL ARGUMENT BERTRAND RUSSELL But aren’t you now saying in effect, I mean by God whatever is good or the sum total of what is good — the system of what is good, and, therefore, when a young man loves anything that is good he is loving God. Is that what you’re […]
Great debate Fr. Frederick C. Copleston vs Bertrand Russell – Part 1 Uploaded by riversonthemoon on Jul 15, 2009 BBC Radio Third Programme Recording January 28, 1948. BBC Recording number T7324W. This is an excerpt from the full broadcast from cassette tape A303/5 Open University Course, Problems of Philosophy Units 7-8. Older than 50 years, […]
Uploaded by riversonthemoon on Jul 15, 2009 BBC Radio Third Programme Recording January 28, 1948. BBC Recording number T7324W. This is an excerpt from the full broadcast from cassette tape A303/5 Open University Course, Problems of Philosophy Units 7-8. Older than 50 years, out of UK/BBC copyright. Pardon the hissy audio. It was recorded 51 […]
Fr. Frederick C. Copleston vs Bertrand Russell – Part 1 Uploaded by riversonthemoon on Jul 15, 2009 BBC Radio Third Programme Recording January 28, 1948. BBC Recording number T7324W. This is an excerpt from the full broadcast from cassette tape A303/5 Open University Course, Problems of Philosophy Units 7-8. Older than 50 years, out of […]
THE MORAL ARGUMENT BERTRAND RUSSELL But aren’t you now saying in effect, I mean by God whatever is good or the sum total of what is good — the system of what is good, and, therefore, when a young man loves anything that is good he is loving God. Is that what you’re […]
Fr. Frederick C. Copleston vs Bertrand Russell – Part 1 Uploaded by riversonthemoon on Jul 15, 2009 BBC Radio Third Programme Recording January 28, 1948. BBC Recording number T7324W. This is an excerpt from the full broadcast from cassette tape A303/5 Open University Course, Problems of Philosophy Units 7-8. Older than 50 years, out of […]
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Tim Bergling (Swedish pronunciation: [tɪm ²bærjlɪŋ]; 8 September 1989 – 20 April 2018),[3] better known by his stage nameAvicii (/əˈviːtʃi/, ə-VEE-chee, Swedish: [aˈvɪtɕɪ]; stylized as ΛVICII and ◢ ◤), was a Swedish musician, DJ, remixer and record producer.[4]
Bergling was a member of the Laidback Luke Forums, where he refined his craft and, at times, demonstrated his distinct deep house style.[citation needed]
By 2009 to 2010, Bergling was a prolific producer and was releasing music incredibly quickly. His remixes during this period were “Sound of Now,” “Muja,” “Ryu,” and “Even.”
Bergling explained that the name Avicii means “the lowest level of Buddhist hell” (Avīci) and he chose the moniker because his real name was already used upon creating his MySpace page.[21][22]
In 2012, his collaboration track “Sunshine” with David Guetta was nominated for a Grammy award under the category for Best Dance Recording.[7] His track “Fade into Darkness” was sampled by Leona Lewis on her single “Collide“. The sampling was not accredited and led to controversy as Bergling attempted to block the single’s release. However, the matter was resolved outside of court with representatives stating “that Leona Lewis and Avicii will work together on the forthcoming single of Collide”.[40]
On 23 March 2012, Bergling’s unsigned single “Last Dance” was previewed on Pete Tong’s show on BBC Radio 1.[41] The song was later released on 27 August 2012. At Ultra Music Festival 2012 in Miami, he premiered two tracks, “Girl Gone Wild” (Avicii’s UMF Remix) with Madonna[42] and “Superlove” with Lenny Kravitz.[43] Avicii’s UMF Remix of “Girl Gone Wild” was released on 20 April 2012, and “Superlove” with Kravitz was released on 29 May 2012. After reaching two million followers on Facebook, Bergling released a new song titled “Two Million”. It was put out as a free download on his official Soundcloud page. On 27 April 2012, Bergling released “Silhouettes“. The song featured vocals from Salem Al Fakir and peaked at number 5 on the UK Dance charts[44] and number 4 on the BillboardHot Dance Club Songs.[45]
Bergling was a featured performer on 4 August 2012 at Lollapalooza festival in Chicago’s Grant Park. On 12 August 2012, he released “Dancing in My Head” (Avicii’s ‘Been Cursed’ Mix) on Beatport.[46] The track features vocals from Eric Turner. A radio edit of the track, titled “Dancing in My Head” (Tom Hangs Mix) was released on 14 August 2012 on iTunes, and a remix EP was later released on 30 October 2012 featuring remixes from Charlie Bernardo and Michael Woods. On 26 September 2012, Bergling made history by being the first DJ to headline the world-famous Radio City Music Hallin New York City.[47] He performed two sold out shows on 26 and 27 September. He was supported by Matt Goldman and Cazzette at the two shows. At his Radio City Music Hall shows, he played a preview of his new track with Mike Posner titled “Stay with You”.
On 29 December 2012, Bergling premiered many new songs at Lights All Night, Dallas Convention Center, some of which made it into his first album, True. These unreleased songs included “I’ll Be Gone” and “Let It Go”.[48] The instrumental of “Let It Go” was mixed with the a capella of “Addicted to You” to become “Addicted to You (Avicii by Avicii)”.
On 29 December 2012, Bergling released “I Could Be the One” with Nicky Romero.[49] After first being debuted at his shows almost a year earlier, the track finally got released via Bergling’s record label LE7ELS. The new vocal version was released along with an instrumental version, a radio edit, and remixes from Audrio and Didrick. On 9 January 2013, Bergling launched the Avicii X You project, a partnership with Ericsson[50] designed to create the world’s first “crowdsourced” hit song. The project enabled fans to send in basslines, effects, melodies, rhythms and vocals to Bergling as sound files over the Internet.[51] The song features sequences from Kian Sang (melody), Naxsy (bassline), Martin Kupilas (beat), ВАНЯ ХАКСИ (break), Jonathan Madray, Mateusz Kolata, and Christian Westphalen (effects). Bergling acted as executive producer and created the finished song officially titled X You, which was released on 26 February 2013. On 30 January 2013, Bergling released “Three Million” featuring Negin to celebrate three million fans on his Facebook page.[52]
In March 2013, Bergling announced and premiered many new tracks from his new album True, which would later be set to be released in September, during his Main Stage set at Ultra Music Festival in Miami. The new tracks were experimental in nature. For example, Bergling brought out a stomping band to play through the new bluegrass-tinged song “Wake Me Up”.[56] Many of these new songs, however, received mixed critical reviews after the concert.[57]
On 11 April 2013, Bergling released his new album promo mix on SoundCloud. It contained some songs from True and some of his non-album singles.[58] It also contained some of his ID’s such as “Black and Blue” and “Enough is Enough (Don’t Give Up On Us)”.
On 14 June 2013, the world premiere of Bergling’s new single, “Wake Me Up“, was previewed by Pete Tong on BBC Radio 1, featuring vocals from Aloe Blacc.[60] The song was later released on iTunes and radio on 25 June 2013. It is the first single from Bergling’s album True, which was released on 16 September 2013. “Wake Me Up” was number 1 on the Spotify Global Chart and Bergling was at 2 in most streamed artist worldwide.[61]“Wake Me Up” later went on to set a then record of 14 weeks as the number one hit on Billboards Dance/Electronic Songs list.[62] The Official Charts Company announced on 21 July that “Wake Me Up” had become the UK’s fastest selling single of 2013 after overtaking Robin Thicke‘s “Blurred Lines“, having sold 267,000 copies in its first week on sale in the UK.[63] “Wake Me Up” subsequently became a major hit, topping the charts in over 20 countries including Australia,[64] Germany,[65] Ireland,[66] Italy, Sweden,[67] the Netherlands,[68] and New Zealand.[69]
On 19 October 2013, the DJ Mag 2013 Top 100 DJs List was announced, with Bergling ranking number 3 on the list. Hardwell became the new World No.1 displacing Armin Van Buuren.[70] On 28 October 2013, Bergling released the single “Hey Brother” with vocals by Dan Tyminski. On 10 November, Bergling won his first award “Best Electronic” at the MTV EMA’s.[71]
On 24 November 2013 he won the American Music Award for favorite Electronic Dance Music Artist.[72]
In December 2013, Bergling released his fourth single off the album, “Addicted To You”, which reached number 1 in Australia[citation needed], with vocals from Audra Mae, who also sings on Shame on Me and Long Road to Hell, both tracks on the album.[73] Bergling also released the single, “Lay Me Down” featuring vocals from Adam Lambert and guitar from Nile Rodgers.[74] On 29 December 2013, Bergling debuted his new track “Dreaming of Me”, featuring vocals from Audra Mae, via episode 19 of his LE7ELS podcast.[75] It is unknown whether it will be released in the future.
In January 2014, the French hit music radio station NRJ released a new web radio station called “NRJ AVICII”, which plays songs only by Bergling.[citation needed]
On 8 March 2014, Bergling’s Instagram account confirmed a collaboration with Madonna. The extent of the collaboration is unknown.[76] On 21 March 2014, Bergling released a remixed edition of his album True titled True: Avicii By Avicii containing remixes by himself of all the tracks, excluding “Heart Upon My Sleeve” for unknown reasons. The promotion of this album was supposed to begin at the 2014 Ultra Music Festival, but Bergling announced he had been hospitalised on 28 March, and was unable to play his closing set at the festival.[77] On 28 March 2014, FIFA and Sony Music Entertainmentannounced that Bergling would be collaborating with Carlos Santana, Wyclef Jean and Alexandre Pires for the official FIFA World Cup Anthem titled “Dar um Jeito (We Will Find a Way)”. The anthem was performed at the FIFA World Cup Closing Ceremony on 13 July 2014.[78]
In 2014, following the FIFA World Cup, Bergling released his single “Lay Me Down“.[79] He also produced and collaborated with Chris Martin from Coldplay, co-writing and co-producing the track “A Sky Full of Stars” from the band’s sixth studio album Ghost Stories, released on 19 May 2014. He also played and recorded the piano parts on the track. “A Sky Full of Stars” was released on 3 May as the second single from Ghost Stories.[80] “Lovers on the Sun“, a track Bergling co-produced with David Guetta, was released on 30 June 2014.[81] He has also worked with Wyclef Jean on a single titled “Divine Sorrow” off his upcoming album Clefication.[82]
During his tour for True, he also performed his upcoming single “No Pleasing A Woman” with vocals from Billie Joe Armstrong of American rock band Green Day. It has a similar instrumental to “Wake Me Up” albeit different chord progressions, along with “No Pleasing A Woman.” Bergling also performed other upcoming songs like “In Love With Your Ghost” with Daniel “Danne” Adams-Ray, “Love To Fall” with Tom Odell and “Million Miles” with LP which is the demo version of “Trouble”, a song from “Stories” with vocals from Wayne Hector.[85]
“Lose Myself”, a collaboration between Bergling and Chinese singer Wang Leehom, was released on 1 September 2014.[86] On 8 September 2014, his 25th birthday, Bergling decided to cancel all of his remaining performances of 2014 due to health concerns.[87] The following day, he announced through Denim & Supply that he would release his new single “The Days” later in 2014; a video was also featured with a preview of the track.[88] “The Days” is a collaboration between Bergling and Robbie Williams, and was released on 3 October 2014 via PRMD. On 16 September 2014, it was announced through EA Sports that Bergling was debuting a brand new track called “The Nights” exclusively on FIFA 15.[89] On 17 November 2014, it was officially announced that the track is to be released as a part of an EP together with “The Days”.[90]
On 17 November 2014, Wyclef Jean released a track titled “Divine Sorrow” featuring Avicii.[91]
On 2 March 2015, Bergling performed live at Australia’s Future Music Festival his upcoming single “Heaven”, a collaboration with Coldplay frontman Chris Martin on vocals. However, the vocals were later resung by singer Simon Aldred from Cherry Ghost; Chris Martin will receive writing credits on “Heaven”.[92] A lot of songs were leaked into the internet via Bergling’s UMF set 2015.[93] These songs include “Heaven”, “Waiting For Love,” and some of his ID’s “For A Better Day”, “City Lights”, “Can’t Catch Me”, “True Believer”, “What Would I Change It To”, “Can’t Love You Again” (previously leaked on the internet under the name “Don’t Call”) and “Attack”.[93][94]
On 25 April 2015, Bergling announced on episode 35 of his LE7ELS podcast that he would be playing some of his unreleased songs on his show. He also previewed his bootleg of Kings of Tomorrow’s song “Finally” and one of his old songs that he did with ASH, titled “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”.[95]
On 6 May 2015, Bergling released his rework of Nina Simone‘s version of “Feeling Good“,[96] composed in 1964 by the English songwriters Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse. On 8 May 2015, Bergling previewed his song “I’ll Be Gone” via episode 422 of Tiësto’s Club Life Podcast[97] which has a very similar instrumental to Liar Liar (Avicii by Avicii) albeit different vocals and chord progressions. It was leaked into the internet between 2013–2014 via the name “Stars” and is yet to be released. It also shares a similar drop to one of Bergling’s ID’s “Black and Blue”.[98] On 22 May 2015, Bergling premiered another single from Stories, “Waiting for Love“. The track was co-produced by fellow DJ and producer Martin Garrix, and featured vocals from Simon Aldred of Cherry Ghost.[99] On 25 May 2015, Bergling previewed three old tracks on episode 36 of his LE7ELS podcast: “Tracks of My Tears”, “Sorry Mr. Atari” and “Time to Get lll”,[100] all of which are songs that Bergling had made years ago. “Tracks of My Tears” is the original version of Bergling’s “All You Need is Love”. On 27 May 2015, it was confirmed by a Swedish newspaper through an interview with Bergling that his sophomore album Stories would be released in fall 2015.[101]
On 3 July 2015, Bergling previewed two tracks from his album Stories on episode 37 of his LE7ELS podcast: “Broken Arrows” featuring Zac Brown Band and “Can’t Catch Me” featuring Wyclef Jean and Matisyahu.[102] He also played a full version of his track “Heaven” and also revealed that he was doing another track with Chris Martin on vocals called “True Believer”. Later, Bergling also revealed that he is also singing on that track.[103][104] On 18 July 2015, it was announced by Bergling that he had finally finished production on Stories after 2 years of work.[105]
A couple of weeks later, on 4 August 2015, it was announced that the final singles before the release of Stories would be “For a Better Day” featuring American singer Alex Ebert and “Pure Grinding” featuring vocals from Kristoffer Fogelmark and Earl St. Clair.[106] On 27 August, Bergling released a teaser video on Instagram with the song “Pure Grinding” playing. The tracks “For a Better Day” and “Pure Grinding” were released the following day through Spotify and iTunes.[107] On 26 September, Bergling announced “Stories – Megamix” on Spotify.[108]
Stories was released on 2 October 2015 alongside 3 promotional singles: “Broken Arrows” with Zac Brown, “Ten More Days” with Zak Abel and “Gonna Love Ya” with Sandro Cavazza.[109]
2016: Touring retirement
On 15 January 2016, Bergling released his remix of Morten’s “Beautiful Heartbeat”.[110] Coca-Cola had partnered with Bergling for a global campaign anthem “Taste the Feeling” featuring Conrad Sewell.[111] The song was released on 19 January. On 25 January, Bergling teamed up again with Coldplay to co-produce the band’s single “Hymn for the Weekend“, which was released as the second single from their album A Head Full of Dreams.[112] In 2016, according to a report by Inc magazine, Avicii was the 6th fastest growing company in Europe, with a revenue of €7.7 million in 2014.[113][114][115]
On 19 March 2016, Bergling performed live at Ultra Music Festival and premiered new IDs such as “Without You (feat. Sandro Cavazza)”, “We Burn (Faster Than Light)”, and a collaboration with Australian pop star Sia (which he first played in Dubai).[116] On 29 March, Bergling announced on Facebook that he would be retiring from performing live and touring in 2016.[117]
On 7 April 2016, Bergling announced that he’s working on a third studio album.[118]
On 3 June 2016, Bergling released his collaboration with Otto Knows titled “Back Where I Belong”. It’s the second collaboration with the two producers after “Itrack”, back in 2011.[119]
On 15 July 2016, Bergling released a remix of his own song, ‘Feeling Good’. The remix was titled “Feeling Good (Avicii By Avicii)”.[120] This track was only released on Bergling’s official YouTube channel. However, on 1 August, it appears to have been pulled with the YouTube video being made private.
On 28 August 2016, Bergling performed his final live performance in Ibiza, before retiring from touring citing health concerns. His initial announcement was made on his website in April.[121]
On 22 December 2016, a representative of Avicii Music AB had announced that Avicii had parted ways with long time manager Ash Pournouri and At Night Management along with Ash’s record label PRMD. The representative also announced that Avicii had signed on to Universal Music Sweden and is expected to release his third studio album in 2017.[122]
2017–18: Avīci (01) and True Stories
In June 2017, British singer Rita Ora debuted a semi-acoustic version of “Lonely Together” at a private event at Annabel’s in London.[123] “Lonely Together” was later the second single from Avīci (01)
From 13 July to 2 August, Avicii shared one-minute snippets on Instagram, captioned “New music coming very very (very) soon!”, with track titles as hashtags.[124][125]
Avicii uploaded teasers of each track from the EP online upon release.[126][127][128]
On 10 August 2017, Bergling released the six-track EP Avīci (01).[12] Avicii has said of the release: “I’m really excited to be back with music once again. It has been a long time since I released anything and a long time since I was this excited over new music! My focus on this first EP of the album was to get a mix of new and old songs: some that fans have been asking about and waiting for mixed with brand new songs that they have never been heard before!”
In an interview with Pete Tong on BBC Radio 1, Bergling stated that the EP is one of three parts of his third studio album.[129]
On 20 April 2018, Avicii’s publicist Ebba Lindqvist announced that he had died that day at the age of 28 in Muscat, Oman. No cause of death was given.[130][13]
Bergling described his earliest entree to electronic music as “listening to a lot of Daft Punk, way before I knew what house music was.”[132]
Avicii is named in the song “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” by American singer and songwriter Mike Posner. Posner recounts the event when he went to an Avicii show in Ibiza and got a mystery pill from someone,[133] with the starting lyrics “I took a pill in Ibiza / To show Avicii I was cool”. The song was made in the week they wrote a song together in Sweden called “Stay with You”. Posner released an acoustic version of the unreleased “Stay with You” on the Target Deluxe Version of his album At Night, Alone.
Philanthropy
Since achieving widespread commercial success, Bergling began working with his manager and executive producer Ash Pournouri to start House for Hunger[134] in 2011, a charity dedicated to alleviating global hunger. The pair wanted to showcase the giving spirit fostered by the house music community. Bergling explained, “You have to give something back. I am so fortunate to be in the position where I can actually do that. I feel lucky every day when I wake up and am able to do what I love and make a living.” In addition to donating $1 million to Feeding America, a charity founded by John van Hengel, House for Hunger has helped fund the efforts of The Feed Foundation, started by Laura Bush,[135] allowing it to distribute over 2 million school meals throughout Africa.[136]
Jump up^Murray, Gordon. “Avicii Sets Mark; A Bundle of Brit.” Billboard – The International Newsweekly of Music, Video and Home Entertainment 21 December 2013: 181. ProQuest. Web. 5 October 2015
I am moving the FRIEDMAN FRIDAY to a monthly feature on http://www.thedailyhatch.org. My passion has been recent years to emphasize the works of Francis Schaeffer in my apologetic efforts and most of those posts are either on Tuesdays or Thursdays.
“What kind of society isn’t structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system.” — Milton Friedman
Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. – Milton Friedman
Whenever we depart from voluntary cooperation and try to do good by using force, the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions. – Milton Friedman
The essential notion of a capitalist society … is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force. – Milton Friedman
“The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another. “– Milton Friedman
“The power to determine the quantity of money… is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power… Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes – excusable or not – can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic – this is the key political argument against an independent central bank. “— Milton Friedman
“Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion – the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals – the technique of the marketplace.” – Milton Friedman
Self-interest is not myopic selfishness. It is whatever it is that interests the participants, whatever they value, whatever goals they pursue. The scientist seeking to advance the frontiers of his discipline, the missionary seeking to convert infidels to the true faith, the philanthropist seeking to bring comfort to the needy – all are pursuing their interests, as they see them, as they judge them by their own values. – Milton Friedman
“The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-union-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline.”
“Whenever we depart from voluntary cooperation and try to do good by using force, the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions.”
“There was a time when we [the U.S.] had completely unrestricted immigration, when anybody could come to these shores and the motto on the Statue of Liberty had some real meaning. This was a country of hope and of promise for immigrants and their children, and as many as a million immigrants a year came in 1906 and ’07 and ’08. By 1914, roughly a third of the population was foreign-born or the immediate descendants of foreign-born . . . The fact that year after year hundreds of thousands of people left the countries of Europe to come to this country was persuasive evidence that they were coming to improve their lot, not to worsen it.”
“Why have we had such a decline in moral climate? I submit to you that a major factor has been a change in the philosophy which has been dominant, a change from belief in individual responsibility to belief in social responsibility. If you adopt the view that a man is not responsible for his own behavior, that somehow or other society is responsible, why should he seek to make his behavior good?”
“The essential notion of a capitalist society . . . is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force.”
“The preservation of liberty, not the promotion of efficiency, is the primary justification for private property. Efficiency is a happy, though not accidental, by-product–and a most important by-product because liberty could not have survived if it had not also produced affluence.”
“The great virtue of free enterprise is that it forces existing businesses to meet the test of the market continuously, to produce products that meet consumer demands at lowest cost, or else be driven from the market. It is a profit-and-loss system. Naturally, existing businesses generally prefer to keep out competitors in other ways. That is why the business community, despite its rhetoric, has so often been a major enemy of truly free enterprise.”
“Adam Smith’s key insight was that both parties to an exchange can benefit and that, so long as cooperation is strictly voluntary, no exchange can take place unless both parties do benefit.”
“There’s a widespread belief and common conception that somehow or other business and economics are the same, that those people who are in favor of a free market are also in favor of everything that big business does. And those of us who have defended a free market have, over a long period of time, become accustomed to being called apologists for big business. But nothing could be farther from the truth. There’s a real distinction between being in favor of free markets and being in favor of whatever business does.”
“Most economic fallacies derive. . . from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.”
“I’m in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my value system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal.”
“Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion–the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals–the technique of the marketplace.”
“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there would be a shortage of sand.”
“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
“Freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself . . . Economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.”
“We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes non-work.”
“Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.”
“Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men.”
“A society that puts equality. . . ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.”
“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”
“The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.”
“Inflation is taxation without legislation.”
“What kind of a society isn’t structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm.”
“Self-interest is not myopic selfishness. It is whatever it is that interests the participants, whatever they value, whatever goals they pursue. The scientist seeking to advance the frontiers of his discipline, the missionary seeking to convert infidels to the true faith, the philanthropist seeking to bring comfort to the needy—all are pursuing their interests, as they see them, as they judge them by their own values.”
“The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.”
“History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom.”
“The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.”
“Most economic fallacies derive . . . from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.”
“When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it. When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone else, he is still very careful about how much he spends, but somewhat less what he spends it on. When a man spends someone else’s money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he buys, but doesn’t care at all how much he spends. And when a man spends someone else’s money on someone else, he does’t care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that’s government for you.”
Given what we know in 2012, saying that capitalism will make a society richer than socialism should be about as controversial as saying the earth is round, not flat. Yet, a recent Gallup poll shows that more liberals have a positive view of socialism than capitalism. This is only possible because there are so many perverse incentives that drive the promotion of socialism. If you’re a politician, socialism puts power in your hands while capitalism takes it away. If you want to use the government to control people’s lives, socialism is a wonderful vehicle to do just that while capitalism robs you of that opportunity. If you would rather live off the dole than to work or alternately, prefer to make money off “who you know” instead of “how good a service you provide,” again socialism works better for you. Now take into account the fact that there are no pure socialist or capitalist economies left and it becomes very easy to muddy the water and keep people from realizing the obvious economic superiority of capitalism.
1) Socialism benefits the few at the expense of the many: Socialism is superior to capitalism in one primary way: It offers more security. It’s almost like an extremely expensive insurance policy that dramatically cuts into your quality of life, but insures that if worse comes to worse, you won’t drop below a very minimal lifestyle. For the vast majority of people, this would be a terrible deal. On the other hand, if you’re lazy, completely incompetent or alternately, just have a streak of very bad luck, the meager benefits provided by socialism may be very appealing. So a socialist society forces the many to suffer in order to make it easier for the few. It’s just as Winston Churchill once noted, “The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
2) Capitalism encourages entrepreneurship while socialism discourages it: A government in a capitalist economy can quite easily give everyone equality of opportunity with a few basic laws and regulations, but socialism strives to create equality of results. This should frighten people who value their freedom because ultimately, as F.A. Hayek has noted, “A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.“ You can see this happening in America as our efforts to reduce “inequality” have led to an ever expanding government and a vast regulatory tangle that is almost unexplainable despite the fact that it is certainly enforceable. Capitalism encourages people to start a business and build a better life for themselves while socialism lays in wait with IRS agents, nooses made of red tape and meddling bureaucrats looking for businesses to control and loot.
3) Capitalism leads to innovation: Coming up with new products is often time consuming, expensive and hit or miss. Nine ideas may fail before that tenth one takes off. The less the creative people behind these ideas are allowed to benefit, the less time, money and effort they’ll put into developing new concepts and inventions. Put another way, the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward has to be to convince people to take it. Capitalism offers big rewards for productive people while socialism offers makers only a parade of bureaucratic leeches who want to take advantage of their “good fortune.”
4) Capitalism produces more economic growth: Capitalism produces considerably more economic growth than socialism and as John Kennedy said, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” A fast growing economy produces more jobs, more wealth and helps everyone. Many people assume that capitalism isn’t working if there are still poor people, but that misses the point. In many parts of the world, poverty means living in a hut with a dirt floor while in America, most poor Americans have TVs, refrigerators and cell phones. The rich may take home a larger share of the pie in capitalism, but the poor also benefit tremendously from living in a growing, thriving economy.
5) Socialism is too slow to adapt: Capitalism is extremely good at allocating capital to where it’s most valued. It has to be. Either you give people what they are willing to pay for or someone else will. On the other hand, socialism is slow and stupid for a variety of reasons. Because the government is spending someone else’s money, it doesn’t get particularly concerned about losing money. Political concerns about appearances often trump the effectiveness of a program. Moreover, even if politicians and bureaucrats are intelligent and competent, which are big “ifs,” they’re simply not going to have the specific knowledge needed to make decisions that may impact thousands of different industries. This is why capitalism may have its share of troubles, but when there are really colossal economic screw-ups, you’ll always find the government neck deep in the whole mess.
6) Socialism is inherently wasteful: Milton Friedman once said, “Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else’s resources as carefully as he uses his own.” This is very true and it means that the more capital that is taken out of the economy and distributed, the more of it that will be wasted. The market does a considerably better job of allocating resources than the government because there are harsh penalties for failure. A company that makes products no one wants will go out of business. A poorly performing government program that wastes a hundred times more money will probably receive a bigger budget the next year.
7) Capitalism works in concert with human nature while socialism works against it:Ayn Rand said it well, “America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to ‘the common good,’ but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance—and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way,” but Adam Smith said it better, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” A man will work much harder to take care of himself, his family and his friends than he will to make money for the state, which will then waste most of it before redistributing it to people who aren’t working as hard as the man who earned it in the first place.
I am moving the MUSIC MONDAY to a monthly feature on http://www.thedailyhatch.org. My passion has been in the recent years to emphasize the works of Francis Schaeffer in my apologetic efforts and most of those posts are either on Tuesdays or Thursdays.
Mark JosephProducer, author and publisher of Bullypulpit.com
I know. I know. Baby-boomers are still in power so the rest of us have to endure an entire week of blathering about how great John Lennon was. Fortunately there’s TiVo. Certainly he deserves credit for, if nothing else, writing an amazing song likeWoman, but every time I hear an aging Boomer reminisce about world peace and anti-materialism I remember Paul’s words: “Somebody said to me, ‘But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.’ That’s a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, ‘Now, let’s write a swimming pool.’”
When I think of the life and premature death of a musician who really rejected materialism and was for all practical purposes the Godfather of the Napster Generation I fast-forward a year and a half to July 28, 1982 to the also untimely death of another musical genius named Keith Green.
At around the time Lennon was trading religious correspondence with Televangelist Oral Roberts and calling into Pat Robertson’s 700 Club hotline to talk to a prayer counselor, Green, a child prodigy who was the youngest ASCAP writer in history and who signed to Decca Records at the age of 11, was also finding God, but Green’s spiritual odyssey produced a far more interesting brand of counter-culturalism: Green and his wife and friends so embraced their newfound faith that they left L.A. for Texas, set up a commune-type lifestyle, begged out of his record deal and did the unthinkable: began giving away his records to his fans in exchange for whatever they could afford to pay. Green’s album “So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt,” which featured a harmonica solo by his pal Bob Dylan shipped 200,000 units, 61,000 of them for free.
_ Washed Out – Within and Without (Full Album) Published on Aug 16, 2013 Within and Without is the 2011 debut album by the artist Washed Out. Track List: 1. “Eyes Be Closed” 00:00 2. “Echoes” 4:48 3. “Amor Fati” 8:56 4. “Soft” 13:23 5. “Far Away” 18:54 6. “Before” 22:55 7. “You and I (Ft. Caroline Polachek)” 27:41 8. “Within and […]
Washed Out – It All Feels Right (Live on KEXP) Washed Out – Eyes Be Closed (Live on KEXP) Published on Feb 8, 2012 Washed Out performs “Eyes Be Closed” live in the KEXP studio. Recorded on 10/11/2011. Host: DJ El Toro Engineer: Kevin Suggs Cameras: Jim Beckmann, Shelly Corbett & Scott Holpainen Editing: Christopher […]
_ Feel It All Around by Washed Out – Portlandia Theme Published on Dec 24, 2011 This is the song Feel It All Around used in the opening for the TV Series on IFC called Portlandia. I claim no rights to the song or any rights to the show. All rights go to IFC, the […]
____________________ Sixteen Candles Final Scene Movie Ending Video if you were here i could deceive you and if you were here you would believe but would you suspect my emotion wandering, yeah do not want a part of this anymore The rain water drips through a crack in the ceiling and i’ll have to spend […]
________ Elvis Presley – Scene from “Viva Las Vegas” (MGM 1964) Elvis & Ann Margret Elvis Presley, Ann Margret – The Lady Loves Me – Viva Las Vegas Come On Everybody – Elvis and Ann-Margret HD. Hollywood Legend Ann-Margret on Faith, Love and Recovery Julie Blim – 700 Club Producer Scott Ross Ann-Margret interview on […]
__ Barry McGuire – Eve Of Destruction Barry McGuire Eve of Destruction [1965] Eve of Destruction (song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2010)(Learn how and when to remove this […]
Barry McGuire – Eve Of Destruction Machine Gun by Jimi Hendrix Marvin Gaye ” What’s Going On ” Live 1972 Bob Dylan – Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door “Blowin’ in the Wind” – Bob Dylan | Vietnam War Montage Edwin Starr – War (Original Video – 1969) Uploaded on Dec 6, 2007 Original […]
__ Faces “Stay With Me” The Faces – Had Me A Real Good Time Stay with Me (Faces song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia “Stay with Me” Single by Faces from the album A Nod Is As Good As a Wink… to a Blind Horse B-side “You’re So Rude” (US) “Debris” (Intl.) Released December 1971 […]
__ It is Enough – The Waiting Published on Feb 26, 2014 John 3:16-17 King James Version (KJV) 16,For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17,For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn […]
__ Religious Songs That Secular People Can Love: Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Sam Cooke, Johnny Cash & Your Favorites in Music, Religion| December 15th, 2015 7 Comments There are good reasons to find the onslaught of religious music this time of year objectionable. And yet—though I want to do my part in the War on […]
I am moving the MUSIC MONDAY to a monthly feature on http://www.thedailyhatch.org. My passion has been in the recent years to emphasize the works of Francis Schaeffer in my apologetic efforts and most of those posts are either on Tuesdays or Thursdays.
Thirty-three years ago today, the world lost one of its great songwriters. On July 28, 1982, Keith Green boarded a private plane with two of his young children and a family of church planters. It crashed shortly after take off, killing all 12 people on board.
Though he was only 28-years-old when he died, Green’s music and legacy as a songwriter, minister and artist continue to have an impact today.
Following his commitment to Christ, after spending his youth years searching for meaning, Green began to write songs at a prolific pace—releasing dozens over his relatively short career
Though Green was a respected musician—he was close friends with Bob Dylan—his legacy as recording artist transcends his songs. He implemented a then-unheard-of “whatever you can afford” pricing system for some of his music (even if it meant giving it away)—all the way back in 1979. And, long before TOMS, he embraced the “buy-one, give-one” model, requesting that Christian bookstores that sold his album give another to the customer for he or she to give to a friend.
Throughout his life, Green strived to be more than a singer. He was involved in missions, helping people recovering from addiction, prison outreach, evangelism and more. Despite his influence, he maintained a conflicted view of his own fame. He once explained, “I only want to build God’s Kingdom and see it increase, not my own. If someone writes a great poem no one praises the pencil they used, they praise the one who created the poem. Well, I’m just a pencil in the hands of the Lord. Don’t praise me, praise Him!”
Banning Liebscher, founder and director of Jesus Culture, explained to RELEVANT,
Keith Green gave the church more than just music; he gave us his life. His daily wholehearted devotion for the Lord has created a lasting impact on a generation. Keith was the message. His music was merely an extension of his life. Even today, he challenges us to live boldly for Jesus and to burn for the One who gave it all. My heart continues to be stirred by how Keith’s passion for Jesus showed up in his extravagant love for people. He would not allow the walls that can so quickly form in the church keep him from expressing his sincere love for believers. I am so grateful for the life of Keith Green and the impact he continues to have on us.
_ Washed Out – Within and Without (Full Album) Published on Aug 16, 2013 Within and Without is the 2011 debut album by the artist Washed Out. Track List: 1. “Eyes Be Closed” 00:00 2. “Echoes” 4:48 3. “Amor Fati” 8:56 4. “Soft” 13:23 5. “Far Away” 18:54 6. “Before” 22:55 7. “You and I (Ft. Caroline Polachek)” 27:41 8. “Within and […]
Washed Out – It All Feels Right (Live on KEXP) Washed Out – Eyes Be Closed (Live on KEXP) Published on Feb 8, 2012 Washed Out performs “Eyes Be Closed” live in the KEXP studio. Recorded on 10/11/2011. Host: DJ El Toro Engineer: Kevin Suggs Cameras: Jim Beckmann, Shelly Corbett & Scott Holpainen Editing: Christopher […]
_ Feel It All Around by Washed Out – Portlandia Theme Published on Dec 24, 2011 This is the song Feel It All Around used in the opening for the TV Series on IFC called Portlandia. I claim no rights to the song or any rights to the show. All rights go to IFC, the […]
____________________ Sixteen Candles Final Scene Movie Ending Video if you were here i could deceive you and if you were here you would believe but would you suspect my emotion wandering, yeah do not want a part of this anymore The rain water drips through a crack in the ceiling and i’ll have to spend […]
________ Elvis Presley – Scene from “Viva Las Vegas” (MGM 1964) Elvis & Ann Margret Elvis Presley, Ann Margret – The Lady Loves Me – Viva Las Vegas Come On Everybody – Elvis and Ann-Margret HD. Hollywood Legend Ann-Margret on Faith, Love and Recovery Julie Blim – 700 Club Producer Scott Ross Ann-Margret interview on […]
__ Barry McGuire – Eve Of Destruction Barry McGuire Eve of Destruction [1965] Eve of Destruction (song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2010)(Learn how and when to remove this […]
Barry McGuire – Eve Of Destruction Machine Gun by Jimi Hendrix Marvin Gaye ” What’s Going On ” Live 1972 Bob Dylan – Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door “Blowin’ in the Wind” – Bob Dylan | Vietnam War Montage Edwin Starr – War (Original Video – 1969) Uploaded on Dec 6, 2007 Original […]
__ Faces “Stay With Me” The Faces – Had Me A Real Good Time Stay with Me (Faces song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia “Stay with Me” Single by Faces from the album A Nod Is As Good As a Wink… to a Blind Horse B-side “You’re So Rude” (US) “Debris” (Intl.) Released December 1971 […]
__ It is Enough – The Waiting Published on Feb 26, 2014 John 3:16-17 King James Version (KJV) 16,For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17,For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn […]
__ Religious Songs That Secular People Can Love: Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Sam Cooke, Johnny Cash & Your Favorites in Music, Religion| December 15th, 2015 7 Comments There are good reasons to find the onslaught of religious music this time of year objectionable. And yet—though I want to do my part in the War on […]
The Beatles Anthology project was a huge undertaking and to complement the historical and archival material that was made available both on CD and on video, the band recorded two new tracks. Released in December 1995, ‘Free As A Bird’ was the first of the new songs. Instead of recording a completely new composition together, Paul, George and Ringo created a track based on John’s 1977 demo, recorded at his and Yoko’s home in the Dakota in New York City.
Jeff Lynne, a good friend of George Harrison’s and a fellow member of the Travelling Wilburys, was drafted in to help with production. The ‘Free As A Bird’ video had it’s first public outing on America’s ABC TV on Sunday November 19th 1995, and the track was subsequently aired on BBC Radio 1 the day after – the day before Anthology came out. The single release followed two weeks later and made No.2 on the UK charts, while in the US ‘Free As A Bird’ enjoyed an 11-week run on the best-seller list, peaking at No.5.
Joe Pytka, a talented American filmmaker who had made several music videos with Michael Jackson, directed the beautiful video. The visual concept was a ‘bird’s-eye-view’ of countless Beatles songs.
This article is about the Beatles song. For the album by Supertramp, see Free as a Bird (album). For the Lynyrd Skynyrd song, see Free Bird. For the concept in Germanic law, see Vogelfrei.
The single was released as part of the promotion for The Beatles Anthology video documentary and the band’s Anthology 1compilation album. For the Anthology project, McCartney asked Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono for unreleased material by Lennon to which the three remaining ex-Beatles could contribute. “Free as a Bird” was one of two such songs (along with “Real Love“) for which McCartney, Harrison, and Starr contributed additional instrumentation, vocals, and arrangements. Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra, who had worked with Harrison on Harrison’s album Cloud Nine and as part of the Traveling Wilburys, was asked to co-produce the record.
The Dakota building, where Lennon lived and composed, and where he recorded a demo of the song on cassette
McCartney, Harrison and Starr originally intended to record some incidental background music, as a trio, for the Anthology project, but later realised, according to Starr, that they wanted to record “new music”.[2] According to Harrison, they had always agreed that if one of them was not in the band, the others would never replace them and, “… go out as the Beatles”, and that the “only other person that could be in it was John.”[3]
McCartney then asked Ono if she had any unreleased recordings by Lennon, so she sent him cassette tapes of four songs.[4] “Free as a Bird” was recorded by Lennon in 1977,[5] in his and Ono’s Dakota building apartment in New York City, but was not complete. Lennon introduced the song on the cassette by imitating a New York accent and saying, “Free—as a boid” (bird).[6][7][8] The other songs were “Grow Old With Me“, “Real Love“, and “Now and Then“.[9] Ono says that it was Harrison and former Beatles road manager Neil Aspinall who initially asked her about the concept of adding vocals and instrumentation to Lennon’s demo tapes. Ono stated: “People have said it was all agreed when Paul came over to New York to induct John into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but it was all settled before then. I just used that occasion to hand over the tapes personally to Paul.”[10]
McCartney went to Ono’s home after the induction ceremony at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to listen to, and receive, the Lennon demo tapes; he recalls the meeting with Ono:
She was there with Sean … and she played us a couple of tracks. There were two newies on mono cassettes which he did at home … [s]o I checked it out with Sean, because I didn’t want him to have a problem with it. He said, “Well, it’ll be weird hearing a dead guy on lead vocal. But give it a try.” I said to them both, “If it doesn’t work out, you can veto it.” When I told George and Ringo I’d agreed to that they were going, “What? What if we love it?” It didn’t come to that, luckily. I said to Yoko, “Don’t impose too many conditions on us, it’s really difficult to do this, spiritually. We don’t know, we may hate each other after two hours in the studio and just walk out. So don’t put any conditions, it’s tough enough.”[11]
During an interview for the Anthology project, McCartney revealed that he was surprised to learn that Lennon’s demos of “Grow Old With Me” and “Real Love” had already been released and were well known by Lennon fans.[6][12] Starr admitted that when he first listened to the recording he found it very emotional.[13]
George Martin, who had produced most of the Beatles’ 1960s recordings, turned down an invitation to produce “Free as a Bird” due to hearing problems (though he subsequently managed to produce and direct the Anthology series). Harrison, in turn, suggested Lynne as producer (co-producer of his 1987 album, Cloud Nine) and work commenced at McCartney’s studio in February 1994.[14]Geoff Emerick and Jon Jacobs were chosen to engineer the new tracks.
The original 1977 tape of Lennon singing the song was recorded on a mono cassette, with vocals and piano on the same track.[15] They were impossible to separate, so Lynne had to produce the track with voice and piano together, but commented that it was good for the integrity of the project, as Lennon was not only singing occasional lines, but also playing on the song.[16]
Although Lennon had died in 1980, Starr said that the three remaining Beatles agreed they would pretend that Lennon had “gone for lunch”, or had gone for a “cup of tea”.[17] The remaining Beatles recorded a track around Lennon’s basic song idea, but which had gaps they had to fill in musically.[18] Some chords were changed, and the arrangement was expanded to include breaks for McCartney and Harrison to sing extra lines. Harrison played slide guitar in the solo.[19]
The Beatles’ overdubs and production were recorded between February and March 1994 in Sussex, England, at McCartney’s home studio.[20] It ends with a slight coda including a strummed ukulele by Harrison (an instrument he was known to have played often) and the voice of John Lennon played backwards.[21] The message, when played in reverse, is “Turned out nice again”, which was the catchphrase of George Formby.[8] The final result sounds like “made by John Lennon”, which, according to McCartney, was unintentional and was only discovered after the surviving Beatles reviewed the final mix.[22] When Starr heard McCartney and Harrison singing the harmonies, and later the finished song, he said that it sounded just like them [the Beatles]. He explained his comment by saying that he looked at the project as “an outsider”.[23] Lynne fully expected the finished track to sound like the Beatles, as that was his premise for the project, but Harrison added: “It’s gonna sound like them if it is them… It sounds like them now.”[24]
McCartney, Harrison and Starr all agreed that the recording process was more pleasurable than when they later recorded “Real Love” (the second song chosen for release); as it was almost finished, they had very little input, and felt like sidemen for Lennon.[25]
The music video for “Free as a Bird” was produced by Vincent Joliet and directed by Joe Pytka and depicts, from the point of view of a bird in flight, many references to Beatles songs, such as “Penny Lane”, “Paperback Writer”, “A Day in the Life”, “Eleanor Rigby”, “Helter Skelter”, “Piggies”, “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”, “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “Doctor Robert”, and “The Fool on The Hill”. Between 80 and 100 allusions to the Beatles’ story, music and lyrics in the video have been estimated.[26] Although the bird can be heard at the beginning of the video, it is never seen. Neil Aspinall (Apple Records executive at the time) said that this was because no-one could agree on what kind of bird it should be.[27] Pytka had to send his ideas to McCartney, Harrison and Starr, as well as Ono, to make sure they all agreed before he could proceed with the filming of the video. Derek Taylor (ex-Apple Records executive) sent a two-page letter to Pytka confirming that he could proceed, and personally encouraged and supported Pytka’s ideas.[28] The video was filmed in as many authentic locations as possible: Penny Lane was made by Pytka’s art department to look as it was in the 1950s, and other locations filmed were The Liver Building, and Liverpool Docks (as a reference to Lennon’s father Alfred Lennon).[29]
Although Pytka fixed the ideas on a storyboard, he abandoned it as soon as filming began, and followed ideas based on what angles and perspectives the steadycam camera produced. One instance was the filming of the car crash, which Pytka filmed for hours from above, but realised that a steadycam shot on the ground was a much better idea.[30] Archive footage was used by imposing it on scenes shot by Pytka, who utilised a greenscreen stage to digitally blend it into the finished film, such as Paul’s Old English Sheepdog in the graveyard, and the elephant in the ballroom procession scene.[31] The elephant was put in last, as Aspinall phoned Pytka and said that Starr liked the scene, but insisted an elephant be put in it, which Pytka later did, as he had already put a sitar in at the request of Harrison.[32] Apart from the steadycam shots, Pytka used a Russian-made Akil-crane for sweeping overhead shots, such as the Abbey Road zebra crossing shot at the end, as well as a remote-controlled toy helicopter with a camera added to it for intricate aerial shots.[33] To make it more interesting, two Blue Meanies make cameos.
Harrison played the ukulele in the studio for the song, and asked to appear as the ukulele player seen only from behind at the very end of the video. Pytka resisted this, as he felt it would be wrong for any contemporary members of the Beatles to appear on screen. Pytka later stated that it was “heartbreaking” that Harrison had not played the role, particularly after Harrison’s death in 2001 and upon discovering that the ukulele was not a sample of an old song as Pytka had assumed.[34] The video won the Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video in 1997.[8]
On 6 November 2015, Apple Records released a new deluxe version of the 1 album in different editions and variations (known as 1+). Most of the tracks on 1 have been remixed from the original multi-track masters by Giles Martin. Giles Martin, with Jeff Lynne also remixed “Free as a Bird” to accompany the music video for the DVD and Blu-ray releases. The remix of “Free as a Bird” cleans up Lennon’s vocal further, and uses a different take of Harrison’s vocal phrase, replacing the lyric “whatever happened to the life that we once knew” with “whatever happened to love that we once knew”. Towards the end of the track, this version also contains a clip of Lennon stating the phrase “turned out nice again” played forward – which was played backwards in the original mix of the song. McCartney’s lead vocal, buried in the original mix to serve as a double track for Lennon’s own vocal, can now be heard more prominently in the second verse.
“Free as a Bird” was premiered on BBC Radio 1 in the early hours of 20 November 1995.[35] It was released as a single in the UK on 4 December 1995, two weeks after its appearance on the Anthology 1 album. The single sold 120,000 copies in its first week, entering the UK Singles Chart at No. 2. It remained on the chart for eight weeks.[36] In the US, the song reached No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming The Beatles’ 34th Top 10 single in America.[7][37] It was the group’s first Top 10 song in the U.S. in nineteen and a half years, the longest span for the group between Top 10 hits since first charting in America in 1964.
“Free as a Bird” marked the first time a single containing new material had been released under the Beatles’ name since “The Long and Winding Road” in the United States in 1970.[6][7] The promotional video was broadcast during episode one of The Beatles Anthology that aired on ITV in the UK and ABC in the US.[38][39]
“Free as a Bird” was greeted with mixed reviews. Its release was criticised by Caroline Sullivan in The Guardian as a publicity gimmick, exploiting the Beatles brand, and owing less to the Beatles than to Lynne.[40] Andy Gill in The Independent called the song “disappointingly low-key. … George’s guitar weeps gently enough when required, but the overall effect is of a dirge.”[41]Ian MacDonald, writer of Revolution in the Head, declared it to be a “dreary song” that stood no comparison with the Beatles’ sixties music.[14]Chris Carter, now the host of Breakfast with the Beatles, commented: “I would value any song (especially if it was great) performed by John, Paul, George and Ringo, no matter how (or when) it was recorded.”[42] “Free as a Bird” later won the 1997 Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.[7]
This version (take 9) was recorded after the version released on the album Please Please Me (take 1). The introductory count-in from take 9 was edited onto the start of take 1 for the album.
Sawyers, June Skinner (editor) (2006). Read the Beatles: Classic and New Writings on the Beatles, Their Legacy, and Why They Still Matter. USA: Penguin (Non-Classics). ISBN978-0-14-303732-3.
Free as a bird
It’s the next best thing to be
Free as a bird
La, la, la, la
Home and dry
Like a homing bird I fly
As a bird on wings
Whatever happened to the life that we once knew Can we really live without each other? Where did we lose the touch That seemed to mean so much It always made me feel so
Free as a bird
It’s the next best thing to be
Free as a bird
La, la, la, la
Home and dry
Like a homing bird I fly
As a bird on wings
Whatever happened to
The life that we once knew?
Always made me feel so free
Free as a bird
It’s the next best thing to be
Free as a bird
Free as a bird
Free as a bird
Ooh, ooh, ooh
____
In 1970 the Beatles broke up and their search for meaning as a group ended. They had rejected the “plastic” culture of “peace and affluence” that the earlier generation was offering according to Schaeffer and they started their search in the area of drugs. Francis Schaeffer noted:
First they were just a rock group, then they took to drugs and expressed that in such
songs as Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. When
drugs didn't pan out, when they saw what was happening in
Haight-Ashbury, they turned to the psychedelic sounds of
Straivberry Fields, and then went further into Eastern religiousexperiences. But that, too, did not work out, and they wound
up their career as a group by making The Yellow Submarine.
When they made this movie, some people said, "The Beatles
are coming back." But of course that was not the case. It was
really 'the sad end of their ideological search as a group. It's
interesting that Erich Segal, the man who wrote the film script
for The Yellow Submarine, then wrote Love Story.
Featured artist is Susan Weil
Studio Tour with Susan Weil
Published on Jan 13, 2015
Studio Tour with artist Susan Weil, recorded on videotape in 1997–part of the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center Oral History Project. Edited for the 2015 exhibition, poemumbles: 30 years of Susan Weil’s poem/images (Jan. 30 – May 23). http://www.blackmountaincollege.org/e…
Interview with Susan Weil
Published on Jan 29, 2015
Interview with artist Susan Weil, recorded in 2002 as part of the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center Oral History Project. Edited as part of the 2015 exhibition, poemumbles: 20 years of Susan Weil’s poem/images (Jan. 30 – May 23). http://www.blackmountaincollege.org/e…
Artist Interview: Susan Weil
Published on Apr 17, 2013
Susan Weil discusses her artistic process, including examples of her own work, and reflects on her childhood and influences in this Artist Interview.
This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources.(November 2013)
Susan Weil (born 1930) is an American artist best known for her experimental three-dimensional paintings, which combine figurative illustration with explorations of movement and space.
In addition to creating painting and mixed media work, Weil has experimented with bookmaking and has produced artist’s books with Vincent Fitzgerald and Company since 1985. During a period of eleven years Weil experimented with etchings and handmade paper while also keeping a daily notebook of drawings inspired by the writings of James Joyce. Her exhibition, Ear’s Eye for James Joyce, was presented at Sundaram Tagore gallery in New York in 2003.
In 1954, after returning to New York, Johns met Robert Rauschenberg and they became long-term lovers. For a time they lived in the same building as Rachel Rosenthal.[3][4][5] In the same period he was strongly influenced by the gay couple Merce Cunningham (a choreographer) and John Cage (a composer).[6][7] Working together they explored the contemporary art scene, and began developing their ideas on art. In 1958, gallery owner Leo Castelli discovered Johns while visiting Rauschenberg‘s studio.[2] Castelli gave him his first solo show. It was here that Alfred Barr, the founding director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, purchased four works from this show.[8] In 1963, Johns and Cage founded Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, now known as Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York City.
Johns currently lives in Sharon, Connecticut, and on the Island of Saint Martin.[9] Until 2012, he lived in a rustic 1930s farmhouse with a glass-walled studio in Stony Point, New York. He first began visiting St. Martin in the late 1960s and bought the property there in 1972. The architect Philip Johnson is the principal designer of his home, a long, white, rectangular structure divided into three distinct sections.[10]
Left to right: John Cage, Merce Cunningham
and Robert Rauschenberg. London. 1964
–
Francis Schaeffer’s favorite album was SGT. PEPPER”S and he said of the album “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings.” (at the 14 minute point in episode 7 of HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? )
How Should We Then Live – Episode Seven – 07 – Portuguese Subtitles
“Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings…” Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984). We take a look today at how the Beatles were featured in Schaeffer’s film. How Should We then Live Episode 7 small On You Tube […]
__________________ A Funny Press Interview of The Beatles in The US (1964) Funny Pictures of The Beatles Published on Oct 23, 2012 funny moments i took from the beatles movie; A Hard Days Night ___________________ Scene from Help! The Beatles Funny Clips and Outtakes (Part 1) The Beatles * Wildcat* (funny) Uploaded on Mar 20, […]
_____________________ Great article on Dylan and Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Cover: A famous album by the fab four – The Beatles – is “Sergeant peppers lonely hearts club band“. The album itself is one of the must influential albums of all time. New recording techniques and experiments with different styles of music made this […]
__________________________ Beatles 1966 Last interview 69 THE BEATLES TWO OF US As a university student, Karl Marx (1818-1883) joined a movement known as the Young Hegelians, who strongly criticized the political and cultural establishments of the day. He became a journalist, and the radical nature of his writings would eventually get him expelled by the […]
____________ Aleister Crowley on cover of Stg. Pepper’s: _______________ I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. […]
bob dylan plays harmonica on the song I PLEDGE MY HEAD TO HEAVEN on this Keith Green album below
I pledge my head to heaven
Published on Mar 26, 2010
And extremely god fearing text! i’d rather be found dead to love my wife more than he who saved my soul…
Check out the text here:
Well, I pledge my head to heaven for the Gospel,
And I ask no man on Earth to fill my needs.
Like the sparrow up above, I am enveloped in His love,
And I trust Him like those little ones, He feeds.
Well I pledge my wife to heaven, for the Gospel,
Though our love each passing day just seems to grow.
As I told her when we wed, I’d surely rather be found dead,
Than to love her more than the one who saved my soul.
I’m your child, and I want to be in your family forever.
I’m your child, and I’m going to follow you,
No matter whatever the cost, I’m gonna count all things lost.
Well I pledge my son to heaven for the gospel.
Though he’s kicked and beaten, ridiculed and scorn.
I will teach him to rejoice, and lift a thankful praising voice,
And to be like Him who bore the nails and crown of thorns.
I’m your child, and I want to be in your family forever.
I’m your child, and I’m going to follow you,
No matter whatever the cost, I’m gonna count all things lost.
Oh no matter whatever the cost, I’m gonna count all things lost.
Well I’ve had the chance to gain the world, and to live just like a king,
But without your love, it doesn’t mean a thing.
Oh no matter whatever the cost, I’m gonna count all things lost,
Oh no matter whatever the cost, I’m gonna count all things lost.
Well I pledge my son, I pledge my wife, I pledge my head to heaven,
I pledge my son, I pledge my wife, I pledge my head to heaven, for the gospel.
Brooklyn-born Messianic Jew Al Kasha, 75, the double Oscar winning songwriter who in 1978 prayed with Bob Dylan at a Bible study in his Beverly Hills home to receive Christ, believes that Dylan never lost his faith despite many rumors to the contrary.
Bob Dylan made a well-publicized conversion to Christianity, went through a discipleship course at a Southern California Calvary Chapel, and produced three strongly Christian albums, “Slow Train Coming” – written in Kasha’s home — “Saved” and “Shot of Love”.
However, when a fourth “Christian” album failed to materialize in 1983, a rumor was circulated that Dylan had “renounced” his faith.
His new album, “Tempest,” is replete with Christian lyrics, as Kasha notes: “I am absolutely thrilled that Bob has shown through this new record that he has never lost God’s calling in life,” he said. “He’s never given up.
“I get upset when people think that he has because you don’t write all these songs just out there. It takes time to write them and they’re all about Christ so I’ve said this in the past — the media has hurt rather than helped him.”
Kasha went on to say, “I have known Dylan since 1960 when I was at Columbia as their youngest-ever record producer and they were going to drop him from the label as his first CD only sold 7,000 copies.
“I was 22 years old and they had all of these great artists like Rosemary Clooney, Guy Mitchell as well as Johnny Mathis and Tony Bennett, and when I heard this in a meeting, I stood up and, with my legs shaking, and told all of these veteran record producers, “We can’t drop him. He’s a great song writer and they finally agreed and now the rest is history.”
Despite all of his success, having won two Oscars for the theme songs from The Poseidon Adventure (The Morning After) and The Towering Inferno (We May Never Love Like This Again), (both with Joel Hirschhorn), he had a secret that was destroying his life – he was suffering from agoraphobia.
He told me that it was destroying his life, but then one night, in the bedroom which he woulnd’t leave, he tuned into a late Christian TV show and realized that Jesus was indeed his Messiah. He prayed in his room and gave his life over to Christ and was healed of his agoraphobia.
Not long after, Kasha met up with Jess Moody, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Van Nuys, an independent congregation with some 10,000 members, who Kasha said “was very sensitive to people in Hollywood.” It was Moody who then suggested that Kasha begin studying at theological seminary, and he became an ordained Southern Baptist pastor, and started his weekly Bible study in his home where he would teach with his two Oscars on the piano, as I well know as I often would attend, as would people like Bob Dylan, Donna Summer and Mel Carter.
“We had them all coming along to my home Bible study, and that would include struggling actors and actresses, singers and dancers, but also these big stars as well,” he told me. “At that time, there was no place for them to go so we would try to solve some problems that they were facing that were biblically based.”
He then spoke about Bob Dylan who he said had been told about the study by some friends who had shared about this Jewish man who was teaching about Jesus.
“He came to the house every week for six months. In fact he wrote the album, ‘Slow Train Coming’ in in our house. Bob was, at that time, going through a spiritual search and if you look at his track record as a writer, he was always seeking after Jesus and he finally realized that Jesus was his Savior.”
Kasha said that the night that Dylan prayed the “Sinners Prayer” with him, he was with his friend called Clark Mathias and his wife, Ceil.
I asked Ceil if she could remember what happened and she replied, “I sure do, like it was yesterday. There was an amazing warm feeling in our home and in our hearts, and he [Dylan] just opened up and said [after Al Kasha had asked him if he wanted to receive Jesus into his life], ‘Yes I do, yes I do, yes I do,’ and that was that.”
Al Kasha then added, “And he wrote his whole entire ‘Slow Train Coming’ Album in front of our fireplace.”
Did Bob Dylan ever share those songs with you when he was writing them?
“Yes he did,” said Kasha. “We gave him a key to the house because we were song writers and song writers feel a sense of spirit in a room. You know, Dan, you’re a writer yourself and I am sure you would say, ‘I want to sit where I feel something good.’ So he [Dylan] had a key to our house and we trusted him. I heard the guitar playing some nights but I wouldn’t bother him. It was an incredible experience.”
Kasha added, “He [Dylan] said that he felt out home was ‘spiritually anointed’. So many other people also got saved at our home and I see many of them here tonight for this affair. I could hug every one of them.”
I asked Al Kasha what his all-time favorite of the ones Bob Dylan wrote in his home.
“He has a song called ‘Jesus is Lord’ and I love that one,” he said. “However, there are many that I love and I don’t really want to pick out one because I want everyone to buy the album, but I love a lot of them.”
Kasha said that Bob Dylan was baptized after his conversion in Santa Monica, near Malibu, by people from the Calvary Chapel affiliated church.
“So is Bob Dylan a believer?” I again asked him.
“The answer is yes,” he said firmly, “and I think the world doesn’t like to see someone like him being a believer because he’ll bring other people to the Lord, which he’s done.”
Al Kasha concluded by saying, “Looking back, it is an amazing thing that happened in our home. It’s been all these years and our Bible study eventually wound up seeing people like Donna Summer and Bob Dylan accepting Christ.”
If you would like to know God personally, here are four steps…
_ Washed Out – Within and Without (Full Album) Published on Aug 16, 2013 Within and Without is the 2011 debut album by the artist Washed Out. Track List: 1. “Eyes Be Closed” 00:00 2. “Echoes” 4:48 3. “Amor Fati” 8:56 4. “Soft” 13:23 5. “Far Away” 18:54 6. “Before” 22:55 7. “You and I (Ft. Caroline Polachek)” 27:41 8. “Within and […]
Washed Out – It All Feels Right (Live on KEXP) Washed Out – Eyes Be Closed (Live on KEXP) Published on Feb 8, 2012 Washed Out performs “Eyes Be Closed” live in the KEXP studio. Recorded on 10/11/2011. Host: DJ El Toro Engineer: Kevin Suggs Cameras: Jim Beckmann, Shelly Corbett & Scott Holpainen Editing: Christopher […]
_ Feel It All Around by Washed Out – Portlandia Theme Published on Dec 24, 2011 This is the song Feel It All Around used in the opening for the TV Series on IFC called Portlandia. I claim no rights to the song or any rights to the show. All rights go to IFC, the […]
____________________ Sixteen Candles Final Scene Movie Ending Video if you were here i could deceive you and if you were here you would believe but would you suspect my emotion wandering, yeah do not want a part of this anymore The rain water drips through a crack in the ceiling and i’ll have to spend […]
________ Elvis Presley – Scene from “Viva Las Vegas” (MGM 1964) Elvis & Ann Margret Elvis Presley, Ann Margret – The Lady Loves Me – Viva Las Vegas Come On Everybody – Elvis and Ann-Margret HD. Hollywood Legend Ann-Margret on Faith, Love and Recovery Julie Blim – 700 Club Producer Scott Ross Ann-Margret interview on […]
__ Barry McGuire – Eve Of Destruction Barry McGuire Eve of Destruction [1965] Eve of Destruction (song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2010)(Learn how and when to remove this […]
Barry McGuire – Eve Of Destruction Machine Gun by Jimi Hendrix Marvin Gaye ” What’s Going On ” Live 1972 Bob Dylan – Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door “Blowin’ in the Wind” – Bob Dylan | Vietnam War Montage Edwin Starr – War (Original Video – 1969) Uploaded on Dec 6, 2007 Original […]
__ Faces “Stay With Me” The Faces – Had Me A Real Good Time Stay with Me (Faces song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia “Stay with Me” Single by Faces from the album A Nod Is As Good As a Wink… to a Blind Horse B-side “You’re So Rude” (US) “Debris” (Intl.) Released December 1971 […]
__ It is Enough – The Waiting Published on Feb 26, 2014 John 3:16-17 King James Version (KJV) 16,For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17,For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn […]
__ Religious Songs That Secular People Can Love: Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Sam Cooke, Johnny Cash & Your Favorites in Music, Religion| December 15th, 2015 7 Comments There are good reasons to find the onslaught of religious music this time of year objectionable. And yet—though I want to do my part in the War on […]
The Beatles are featured in this episode below and Schaeffer noted, ” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world.”
“Real Love” is a song written by John Lennon, and recorded with overdubs by the three surviving Beatles in 1995 for release as part of The Beatles Anthology project. To date, it is the last released record of new material credited to the Beatles.
Lennon made six takes of the song in 1979 and 1980 with “Real Life”, a different song that merged with “Real Love”. The song was ignored until 1988 when the sixth take was used on the documentary soundtrack Imagine: John Lennon.
“Real Love” was subsequently reworked by the three surviving former members of the Beatles (Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr) in early 1995, an approach also used for another incomplete Lennon track, “Free as a Bird“. “Real Love” was released as a Beatles single in 1996 in the United Kingdom, United States and many other countries; it was the opening track on the Beatles’ Anthology 2 album. It is the last “new” credited Beatles song to originate and be included on an album. To date, it is the last single by the group to become a top 40 hit in the US.
The song reached number 4 and number 11, respectively, in the UK and US singles charts, and earned a gold record more quickly than a number of the group’s other singles. The song was not included on the BBC Radio 1 playlist, prompting criticism from fans and British members of parliament. After the release of “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love”, Starr commented: “Recording the new songs didn’t feel contrived at all, it felt very natural and it was a lot of fun, but emotional too at times. But it’s the end of the line, really. There’s nothing more we can do as the Beatles.”[1]
According to Beatles biographer John T. Marck, “Real Love” originated as part of an unfinished stage play that Lennon was working on at the time titled “The Ballad of John and Yoko”. The song was first recorded in 1977 with a hand-held tape recorder on his piano at home. Eventually the work evolved under the title “Real Life”, a song Lennon would record at least six takes of in 1979 and 1980, and then abandoned. The song was eventually combined with elements of another Lennon demo, “Baby Make Love to You”.[2] In June 1978, Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono told the press that they were working on a musical, “The Ballad of John and Yoko”, which had been planned during the previous year.[3] Songs proposed to be included up to this point were “Real Love” and “Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him“.[3]
In later versions, Lennon altered portions of the song; for example, “no need to be alone / it’s real love / yes, it’s real love” became “why must it be alone / it’s real / well it’s real life.” Some takes included an acoustic guitar, while the eventual Beatles release features Lennon on piano, with rudimentary double-tracked vocals, and a tambourine. The version released in 1996 most closely reflected the lyrical structure of the early demo takes of the song.[4]
Lennon appears to have considered recording “Real Love” for his and Ono’s 1980 album Double Fantasy. A handwritten draft of the album’s running order places it as the possible opening track on side two.[5] The song remained largely forgotten until 1988, when the take 6 of “Real Love” appeared on the Imagine: John Lennon soundtrack album. The song was also released on the Acoustic album in 2004. The demo with just Lennon on piano was issued in 1998 on John Lennon Anthology and then later on Working Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon.
Before the Anthology project, the closest the Beatles had come to reuniting on record (while all four members were still alive) was for Starr’s Ringo album in 1973, when Lennon, Harrison and Starr collaborated on “I’m the Greatest“. By the early 1990s, the idea of redoing some of Lennon’s old songs was inspired by former Beatles road manager Neil Aspinall and Harrison, who first requested some demos from Ono. In January 1994, McCartney went to New York City for Lennon’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. While there, he received at least four songs from Ono. According to Aspinall, it was “two cassettes” which “might have been five or six tracks”. Ono said of the occasion: “It was all settled before then, I just used that occasion to hand over the tapes personally to Paul. I did not break up the Beatles, but I was there at the time, you know? Now I’m in a position where I could bring them back together and I would not want to hinder that.”[6]
In an interview, McCartney remarked:
Yoko said “I’ve got a couple of tracks I’ll play you, you might be interested”. I’d never heard them before but she explained that they’re quite well known to Lennon fans as bootlegs. I said to Yoko, “Don’t impose too many conditions on us, it’s really difficult to do this, spiritually. We don’t know, we may hate each other after two hours in the studio and just walk out. So don’t put any conditions, it’s tough enough. If it doesn’t work out, you can veto it.” When I told George and Ringo I’d agreed to that, they were going, “What? What if we love it?” It didn’t come to that, luckily.[6]
McCartney, Harrison and Starr then focused their attention on four songs: “Free as a Bird“, “Real Love”, “Grow Old with Me” and “Now and Then“. Of these, they liked “Free as a Bird” the most, and worked hard on it. Eventually the song was released as the first new Beatles single since 1970. The remaining Beatles then turned their attention to “Real Love”, which, co-producer Jeff Lynne later remarked, at least “had a complete set of words”.[7]
With George Martin declining to produce the new recording, the Beatles brought in Electric Light Orchestra‘s Jeff Lynne, who had worked extensively with Harrison, including as part of the Traveling Wilburys, and had already co-produced “Free as a Bird”.[1] The first problem that the team had to confront was the low quality of the demo, as Lennon had recorded it on a hand-held tape recorder. Lynne recalled:
We tried out a new noise reduction system, and it really worked. The problem I had with “Real Love” was that not only was there a 60 cycles mains hum going on, there was also a terrible amount of hiss, because it had been recorded at a low level. I don’t know how many generations down this copy was, but it sounded like at least a couple. So I had to get rid of the hiss and the mains hum, and then there were clicks all the way through it … We’d spend a day on it, then listen back and still find loads more things wrong … It didn’t have any effect on John’s voice, because we were just dealing with the air surrounding him, in between phrases. That took about a week to clean up before it was even usable and transferable to a DAT master. Putting fresh music to it was the easy part![1]
Although “Real Love” was more complete than “Free as a Bird”, which had required the addition of some lyrics by McCartney,[6] the song also suffered from problems with Lennon’s timing. Lynne recalled that “it took a lot of work to get it all in time so that the others could play to it.”[7] Lynne emphasised that the three remaining Beatles were keen to ensure the song sounded very “Beatles-y”: “What we were trying to do was create a record that was timeless, so we steered away from using state-of the-art gear. We didn’t want to make it fashionable.”[7]
As with “Free as a Bird”, the Beatles worked at McCartney’s studio in Sussex, with the intention of producing another single. Added to the demo were the sounds of a double bass (originally owned by Elvis Presley’s bassist, Bill Black), Fender Jazz bass guitar, a couple of Fender Stratocaster guitars, one of which was Harrison’s psychedelically-painted “Rocky” Strat (as seen in the “I Am the Walrus” video), as well as a Ludwig drum kit.[7] Other than their regular instruments, a BaldwinCombo Harpsichord (as played by Lennon on the Beatles song “Because“) and a harmonium (which appeared on the band’s 1965 hit single “We Can Work It Out“) were also used. During the recording process, it was decided to speed up the tape, thereby raising the key from D minor to E flat minor.[8]
As their sound engineer, the Beatles opted for Geoff Emerick, who had not only worked with them to a great extent in the 1960s, but is often credited with many of the Beatles’ audio inventions. The assistant engineer was Jon Jacobs, who had worked with McCartney and Emerick since the late 1970s. The attitude in the studio was very relaxed, according to Lynne: “Paul and George would strike up the backing vocals – and all of a sudden it’s the Beatles again! … I’d be waiting to record and normally I’d say, ‘OK, Let’s do a take’, but I was too busy laughing and smiling at everything they were talking about.” Starr said that the lightheartedness was key to ensuring he, Harrison and McCartney could focus on the task: “We just pretended that John had gone on holiday or out for tea and had left us the tape to play with. That was the only way we could deal with it, and get over the hurdle, because [it] was really very emotional.”[7]
The single’s video features shots of the three remaining Beatles recording in Sussex, mixed with shots of the Beatles taken during their career. Geoff Wonfor, who directed the Anthology documentary, filmed the Beatles recording in the studio with a handheld camcorder, as they did not want to be aware of the camera recording. Kevin Godley, who co-directed the music video, said that it was meant to be a “fly on the wall thing”.[1]
Two different versions of the video were made. The first version aired during the second installment of The Beatles Anthology television mini-series on ABC, at the end of the episode. The second version is the more common of the two, and appears on the Anthology DVD set. The most notable difference between the two is in the way the videos begin: the first is presented by a strawberry – possibly a reference to “Strawberry Fields Forever“, although also quite likely a nod to Godley’s “Strawberry Studios” – while the second opens with a piano (the piano chord at the beginning).
Although “Real Love” was released as single in both the UK and US on 4 March 1996, the first time the song was publicly aired was on 22 November 1995, when the American television network, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) aired the second episode of The Beatles Anthology. The single debuted on the British charts on 16 March 1996 at number 4, selling 50,000 copies in its first week.[9] The single’s chart performance was subsequently hindered by BBC Radio 1‘s exclusion of “Real Love” from its playlist. Reuters, which described Radio 1 as “the biggest pop music station in Britain”, reported that the station had declared: “It’s not what our listeners want to hear … We are a contemporary music station.”[10]
Beatles spokesman Geoff Baker responded by saying that the band’s response was “Indignation. Shock and surprise. We carried out research after the Anthology was launched and this revealed that 41% of the buyers were teenagers.”[11] The station’s actions contrasted strongly with what had occurred at the launch of “Free as a Bird” the year before, when Radio 1 became the first station to play the song on British airwaves. The exclusion of “Real Love” provoked a fierce reaction from fans also, and elicited comment from two members of parliament (MPs). Conservative MP Harry Greenway called the action censorship, and urged the station to reverse what he called a ban.[10]
An angry McCartney wrote an 800-word article for British newspaper The Daily Mirror about the alleged ban, in which he stated: “the Beatles don’t need our new single, ‘Real Love’, to be a hit. It’s not as if our careers depend on it … It’s very heartening to know that, while the kindergarten kings of Radio 1 may think the Beatles are too old to come out to play, a lot of younger British bands don’t seem to share that view. I’m forever reading how bands like Oasis are openly crediting the Beatles as inspiration, and I’m pleased that I can hear the Beatles in a lot of the music around today.” The letter was published on 9 March, the day after Radio 1 announced the “ban”.[11][dead link]
The station’s controller, Matthew Bannister, denied that the failure to include “Real Love” was a ban, saying that it merely meant that the song had not been included on the playlist of each week’s 60 most regularly featured songs.[citation needed] The station also hit back by devoting a “Golden Hour” to the group’s music as well as music by bands influenced by the Beatles. This “Golden Hour” concluded with a playing of “Real Love”.[12]
“Real Love” fell out of the British charts in seven weeks, never topping its initial position of number 4. In the US, the single entered the charts on 30 March, and peaked at number 11.[13] After four months, 500,000 copies had been sold in the US.[9][14] The Beatles’ compilation album Anthology 2, which included the song, eventually topped the British and American albums charts.[15][16]
John Lennon’s solo versions appear on several Lennon compilations, the film Imagine: John Lennon, and also in a 2007 ad campaign for J. C. Penney.[17] On 6 November 2015, Apple Records released a new deluxe version of the 1 album in different editions and variations (known as 1+). Most of the tracks on 1 have been remixed from the original multi-track masters by Giles Martin. Martin and Jeff Lynne also remixed “Real Love” for the DVD and Blu-ray releases. The remix of “Real Love” cleans up Lennon’s vocal further, and reinstates a several deleted elements originally recorded in 1995, such as lead guitar phrases and drum fills, as well as making the harpsichord and harmonium more prominent in the mix.
The song’s lyrics have been interpreted by one reviewer to be conveying the message that “love is the answer to loneliness” and “that connection is the antidote to unreality.”[18]
The song has been sped up 12% from the demo, apparently to “effect the … snappy tempo” as Alan W. Pollack has speculated. The tune is nearly completely pentatonic, comprising primarily the notes E, F♯, G♯, B and C♯. The refrain is higher than the verse; while the verse covers a full octave, the refrain, at its peak, is a fifth higher.[19]
The instrumental intro is four measures long, and the verse and refrain are eight measures. The introduction occurs in parallel E minor,[20] with the main thrust of the song being in E major. There are several other occasions where Lennon moves to a chord from the parallel minor, e.g. in the chorus where the progression moves from a major tonic (I) chord to a minor subdominant (iv) chord. The move to minor harmony happens on the words ‘alone’ and ‘afraid’. This combination of lyrics and harmony turning at the same point is a common Beatles device, and helps give the song a wistful feeling. The outro largely comprises the last half of the refrain repeated seven times, slowly fading out.[19]
Recorded at EMI Studios, London, on 26 May and 1 June 1966. A new remix with a previously unreleased “marching” introduction with the sound effects mixed higher in volume throughout.
Recorded at EMI Studios, London, on 16 June 1966. This is a combination of take 7 (a mono mix of the basic track with McCartney’s guide vocal) with a 1995 stereo remix of the harmony vocals as overdubbed onto take 13 superimposed at the end.
In 2014, English singer-songwriter Tom Odell released a cover version of the song. It was released on 6 November 2014 in the United Kingdom as a digital download through Sony. The song was selected as the soundtrack to the John Lewis 2014 Christmas advertisement and was later included on the “Spending All My Christmas With You” EP released in 2016.
Chart performance
On 9 November 2014 (week ending 15 November 2014), “Real Love” debuted at number 21 in the UK Singles Chart with only 3 days of sales, and then reached a new peak of number 7 the following week.
All my little plans and schemes
Lost like some forgotten dreams
Seems that all I really was doing
Was waiting for you
Just like little girls and boys
Playing with their little toys
Seems like all they really were doing
Was waiting for love
Don’t need to be alone
No need to be alone
It’s real love, it’s real
Yes, it’s real love, it’s real
From this moment on I know
Exactly where my life will go
Seems that all I really was doing
Was waiting for love
Don’t need to be afraid
No need to be afraid
It’s real love, it’s real
Yes, it’s real love, it’s real
Thought I’d been in love before
But in my heart, I wanted more
Seems like all I really was doing
Was waiting for you
Don’t need to be alone
Don’t need to be alone
It’s real love, it’s real
It’s real love, it’s real
Yes, it’s real love, it’s real
It’s real love, it’s real
Yes, it’s real love, it’s real
It’s real love, it’s real
Yes, it’s real love, it’s real
It’s real love, it’s real
__
In 1970 the Beatles broke up and their search for meaning as a group ended. They had rejected the “plastic” culture of “peace and affluence” that the earlier generation was offering according to Schaeffer and they started their search in the area of drugs. Francis Schaeffer noted:
First they were just a rock group, then they took to drugs and expressed that in such
songs as Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. When
drugs didn't pan out, when they saw what was happening in
Haight-Ashbury, they turned to the psychedelic sounds of
Straivberry Fields, and then went further into Eastern religiousexperiences. But that, too, did not work out, and they wound
up their career as a group by making The Yellow Submarine.
When they made this movie, some people said, "The Beatles
are coming back." But of course that was not the case. It was
really 'the sad end of their ideological search as a group. It's
interesting that Erich Segal, the man who wrote the film script
for The Yellow Submarine, then wrote Love Story.
Jesus commanded believers to love God and to love one another and so what are some of the top Bible verses commanding us to love one another?
The Greatest Commandment
Matthew 22:37-39 “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus gave us the greatest commandment of all. We must love God first and foremost and this love encompasses all of our minds, our soul, and our heart. That means our devotion toward God comes first (Matt 6:33) and involves all that we think about (our mind), all of our soul (whatever we do), and all of our heart (what we desire the most). We are also to love our neighbors as ourselves. Of course, we don’t need to learn to love ourselves because that comes naturally, at least for most, but to love others means that we take care of them as we do our own body, mind, and soul.
Jesus’ New Commandment
John 13:34-35 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
This commandment is evangelistic in nature because Jesus says that by our loving one another “everyone will know that [we] are [His] disciples.” The converse is true; if we are not loving one another or acting in love toward one another, everyone will know that we are not His disciples. This love is the same kind of love that Jesus directed toward them…and that was a life-giving, self-sacrificing kind of love that was willing to die for others.
Honoring Others in Love
Romans 12:10 “Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.”
Love is not a feeling but a choice. It’s not what you feel but more what you do. Being devoted to one another in love means that we honor others above ourselves as it puts others first and ourselves last.
Knowing God is Knowing Love
First John 4:7-8 “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
If someone hates their brother, then they don’t really know God and are a liar because John writes that “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20). Talk is cheap. Anyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer at heart (Matt 5:21-22). Someone can say that they “know God” but if they don’t love others, they are only lying to themselves and to us.
Love our Enemies
Matthew 5:44-45 “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
It’s easy to love our friends and family but what’s so different about that than from the way the world lives? Unbelievers do the same thing (Matt 5:46-47). What is truly remarkable and displays the love of God in our hearts is when we love our enemies and more than that, we pray for them who persecute us. Jesus said that if we do this, it makes us the true children of God. Jesus said “that you may be children of your Father in heaven” or to put it another way, “so that you might be the children of your Father in Heaven.”
John 15:12-13 “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
Jesus commands us to love others just as Jesus loved us and that means we are to be willing to die for them, as He said “greater love has no one than this.” Easy to say, hard to do but remember that Jesus died for us while we were still His enemies and wicked sinners (Rom 5:8, 10).
Love Fulfills the Law
Romans 12:8 “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.”
Paul is writing that we should stay debt free but one debt remains that has an outstanding balance and that is the “debt to love one another” because “whoever loves others has fulfilled the law” and Paul may be referring to Jesus’ commandment to love one another as He loved us.
Conclusion
God loved us so much that He gave us the supreme example and so “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19), not that we loved Him first. He loved us so much that He willingly gave His one and only unique Son to die for us so that we might have eternal life (John 3:16-17) and in fact, it was the only way to gain eternal life! If you haven’t trusted in Christ and repented, then you do not presently have eternal life but an eternal death sentence hanging over you (Rev 20:11-15). I trust that is not your eternity because time is short but eternity is a long, long time.
Jack Wellman is Pastor of the Mulvane Brethren church in Mulvane Kansas. Jack is also the Senior Writer at What Christians Want To Know whose mission is to equip, encourage, and energize Christians and to address questions about the believer’s daily walk with God and the Bible. You can follow Jack on Google Plus or check out his book Blind Chance or Intelligent Design available on Amazon
(born 1943, Springfield, Illinois; lives and works in Brooklyn and Harlem, New York)
David Hammons is a conceptual artist working in a variety of media including performance, installation, sculpture, printmaking, among other modes of production. Hammons occupies an iconic role in this exhibition and remains a point of influence for many of the artists included. Beginning in the 1960s in Los Angeles, and then later in New York, Hammons set a compelling precedent for with his witty, wry conceptual approach to infusing art into life and vice versa. Much of his early work incorporates the body and ordinary found materials—hair, chicken bones, grease, musical instruments, shovels, paper bags. From these functional or punning objects, Hammons creates art that resonates with the puns and humor of Conceptual art, and with the material, corporeal and social presence of African-American life. Two works from the late 1960s and early 70s on view at the Grey Art Gallery are drawn from Hammons’s iconic series of body prints, in which he coated himself with grease or pigment and then used his own body to create impressions on paper. While they function as stand-alone works of art, the prints also serve as records of the physical markings of Hammons’s gestural and performative process.
In the famed performance Bliz-aard Ball Sale (1983), documentation of which is on view at both the Studio Museum and the Grey Art Gallery, Hammons stood on the street alongside other vendors on Cooper Square, selling snowballs in different sizes (from XS to XL) to passersby. By assigning value and appearing to seek profit from a commonplace, short-lived object, Hammons draws attention to both the arbitrary nature of the art market and the precarious financial conditions of many working-class New Yorkers.
Biography
Before moving to New York in 1974, David Hammons studied in Los Angeles at Chouinard Art Institute and Otis Art Institute. He was an artist in residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem in 1980–81. His solo exhibitions include David Hammons, L&M Arts, New York (2011); Sequence 1, Skulptur Projekte Munster 07, Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2007); David Hammons, L&M Arts, New York (2007); and Real Time, Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland (2000). His group exhibitions include Radical Conceptual: Positionen aus der Sammlung des MMK, Museum fur moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany (2010); 30 Seconds off an Inch, The Studio Museum in Harlem (2009);NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith, Menil Collection, Houston (2008, traveling); Person of the Crowd: The Contemporary Art of Flanerie, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY (2008); Black Panther Rank and File, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2006); Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2005); Shadowland: An Exhibition as a Film, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2005); Seeds and Roots, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2004); The Big Nothing, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2004); Dreams and Conflicts: The Dictatorship of the Viewer, Venice Biennial (2003); and Over the Edges, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium (2000).
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David Hammons (born 1943) is an American artist especially known for his works in and around New York City and Los Angeles during the 1970s and 1980s.
David Hammons was born in 1943 in Springfield, Illinois, the youngest of ten children of a single mother.[1] In 1962 he moved to Los Angeles, where he started attending Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts) from 1966 to 1968 and the Otis Art Institute from 1968 to 1972.[2] There he was influenced by internationally known artists such as Bruce Nauman, John Baldessari, and Chris Burden, but was also part of a pioneering group of African-American artists and jazz musicians in Los Angeles, with influence outside the area.[3] In 1974 Hammons settled in New York City, where he slowly became better known nationally. He still lives and works in New York.
Much of his work reflects his commitment to the civil rights and Black Power movements. A good example is the early Spade with Chains (1973), where the artist employs a provocative, derogatory term, coupled with the literal gardening instrument, in order to make a visual pun between the blade of a shovel and an African mask, and a contemporary statement about the issues of bondage and resistance. This was part of a larger series of “Spade” works in the 1970s, including Bird (1973), where Charlie Parker is evoked by a spade emerging from a saxophone, and Spade, a 1974 print where the artist pressed his face against the shape leaving a caricature-like imprint of Negroid features.[4]
In 1980, Hammons took part in Colab‘s ground-breaking The Times Square Show, which acted as a forum for exchange of ideas for a younger set of alternative artists in New York. His installation was made of glistening scattered shards of glass (from broken bottles of Night Train wine).[5]
Other works play on the association of basketball and young black men, such as drawings made by repeatedly bouncing a dirty basketball on huge sheets of clean white paper set on the floor; a series of larger-than-life basketball hoops, meticulously decorated with bottle caps, evoking Islamic mosaic and design; and Higher Goals (1986), where an ordinary basketball hoop, net, and backboard are set on a three-story high pole – commenting on the almost impossible aspirations of sports stardom as a way out of the ghetto.
Through his varied work and media, and frequent changes in direction, Hammons has managed to avoid one signature visual style. Much of his work makes allusions to, and shares concerns with minimalism and post-minimal art, but with added Duchampian references to the place of Black people in American society.[6]
On James Turrell‘s works concerning perception of light, Hammons said “I wish I could make art like that, but we’re too oppressed for me to be dabbling out there…. I would love to do that because that could also be very black. You know, as a black artist, dealing just with light. They would say, “how in the hell could he deal with that, coming from where he did?” I want to get to that, I’m trying to get to that, but I’m not free enough yet. I still feel I have to get my message out.”[7]
Along with his focus on cultural overtones, Hammons’s work also discusses the notions of public and private spaces, as well as what constitutes a valuable commodity. An illustration of these concepts can be seen in Bliz-aard Ball Sale (1983), a performance piece in which Hammons situates himself alongside street vendors in downtown Manhattan in order to sell snowballs which are priced according to size.[8] This act serves both as a parody on commodity exchange and a commentary on the capitalistic nature of art fostered by art galleries. Furthermore, it puts a satirical premium on “whiteness“, ridiculing the superficial luxury of racial classification as well as critiquing the hard social realities of street vending experienced by those who have been discriminated against in terms of race or class.
Also noteworthy is the artist’s use of discarded or abject materials, including but not limited to elephant dung, chicken parts, strands of African-American hair, and bottles of cheap wine. Many critics see these objects as evocative of the desperation of the poor, Black urban class, but Hammons reportedly saw a sort of sacrosanct or ritualistic power in these materials, which is why he utilized them so extensively.
In “The Window: Rented Earth: David Hammons,” [9] an early solo exhibition at the New Museum, Hammons dealt with the diametrically opposed relationship between spirituality and technology by juxtaposing an African tribal mask with a modern-day invention—a child’s toy television set.
Hammons explored the video medium, collaborating with artist Alex Harsley on a number of video works, including Phat Free (originally titled Kick the Bucket), which was included in the Whitney Biennial and other venues. Hammons and Harsley have also collaborated on installations at New York’s 4th Street Photo Gallery, a noted East Village artist exhibition and project space.
In a show at L & M Arts in uptown Manhattan (January 18–March 31, 2007, his first authorized New York show since 2002, although there have been unauthorized surveys), Hammons collaborated with Japanese artist Chie (Hasegawa) Hammons in a piece that enjoyed public acclaim.[10] In the posh uptown gallery specially selected by Hammons (who does not accept to be associated with any one gallery), they installed full-length fur coats on antique dress forms—two minks, a fox, a sable, a wolf and a chinchilla: “Hammons and his wife have also painted, burned, burnished, and stained the backs of all of these coats, turning them into aesthetic/ethical/sartorial traps…. Hammons has said that he wants ‘to slide away from visuals and get deeper.’ At L & M, not only does Hammons do this; along the way he conjures thoughts of shamanism, politics, consumerism, animism, genre painting, animal rights, and jokes. Here, we’re treated to a sensibility as barbed, serious, maybe fearsome, and as passionate as any in the art world.”[11]
Jump up^ Mcfadden, Jane. “Here, here, or there : on the whereabouts of art in the seventies.” Pacific standard time : Los Angeles art 1945-1980. Los Angleles: Getty Research Institute and the J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011. 262.
Jump up^The Brooklyn Rail (April 2007), “David and Chie Hammons,” review by Jen Schwarting; The Village Voice (February 27, 2007), “Fur What It’s Worth,” by Jerry Saltz; among others.
Francis Schaeffer’s favorite album was SGT. PEPPER”S and he said of the album “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings.” (at the 14 minute point in episode 7 of HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? )
How Should We Then Live – Episode Seven – 07 – Portuguese Subtitles
“Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings…” Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984). We take a look today at how the Beatles were featured in Schaeffer’s film. How Should We then Live Episode 7 small On You Tube […]
__________________ A Funny Press Interview of The Beatles in The US (1964) Funny Pictures of The Beatles Published on Oct 23, 2012 funny moments i took from the beatles movie; A Hard Days Night ___________________ Scene from Help! The Beatles Funny Clips and Outtakes (Part 1) The Beatles * Wildcat* (funny) Uploaded on Mar 20, […]
_____________________ Great article on Dylan and Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Cover: A famous album by the fab four – The Beatles – is “Sergeant peppers lonely hearts club band“. The album itself is one of the must influential albums of all time. New recording techniques and experiments with different styles of music made this […]
__________________________ Beatles 1966 Last interview 69 THE BEATLES TWO OF US As a university student, Karl Marx (1818-1883) joined a movement known as the Young Hegelians, who strongly criticized the political and cultural establishments of the day. He became a journalist, and the radical nature of his writings would eventually get him expelled by the […]
____________ Aleister Crowley on cover of Stg. Pepper’s: _______________ I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. […]
(HD) Paul McCartney & Ringo Starr – With a Little Help From My Friends (Live) John Lennon The Final Interview BBC Radio 1 December 6th 1980 A young Aldous Huxley pictured below: _______ Much attention in this post is given to the songs LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS and TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS which […]
Lyrics:
Oh, a storm is threat’ning
My very life today
If I don’t get some shelter
Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away
War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
Ooh, see the fire is sweepin’
Our very street today
Burns like a red coat carpet
Mad bull lost your way
War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
Rape, murder!
It’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
Rape, murder!
It’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
Rape, murder!
It’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
The flood is threat’ning
My very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter
Or I’m gonna fade away
War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
I tell you love, sister, it’s just a kiss away
It’s just a kiss away
It’s just a kiss away
It’s just a kiss away
It’s just a kiss away
Kiss away, kiss away
“Gimme Shelter” is a song by the Rolling Stones. It first appeared as the opening track on the band’s 1969 album Let It Bleed. Although the first word was spelled “Gimmie” on that album, subsequent recordings by the band and other musicians have made “Gimme” the customary spelling. Greil Marcus, writing in Rolling Stone magazine at the time of its release, said of it, “The Stones have never done anything better.”[3]
The recording features Richards playing in his new open tuning on electric guitar. The recording also features vocals by Merry Clayton, recorded at a last-minute late-night recording session during the mixing phase, arranged by her friend and record producer Jack Nitzsche.[4]Lisa Fischer was later recruited to perform the song during their concerts.
“Gimme Shelter” was written by the Rolling Stones’ lead vocalist Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards, the band’s primary songwriting team. Richards began working on the song’s signature opening riff in London whilst Jagger was away filming Performance. As released, the song begins with Richards performing a guitar intro, soon joined by Jagger’s lead vocal. Of Let It Bleed’s bleak world view, Jagger said in a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone magazine:
Well, it’s a very rough, very violent era. The Vietnam War. Violence on the screens, pillage and burning. And Vietnam was not war as we knew it in the conventional sense. The thing about Vietnam was that it wasn’t like World War II, and it wasn’t like Korea, and it wasn’t like the Gulf War. It was a real nasty war, and people didn’t like it. People objected, and people didn’t want to fight it… That’s a kind of end-of-the-world song, really. It’s apocalypse; the whole record’s like that.[5]
It was a very moody piece about the world closing in on you a bit… When it was recorded, early ’69 or something, it was a time of war and tension, so that’s reflected in this tune. It’s still wheeled out when big storms happen, as they did the other week [during Hurricane Sandy]. It’s been used a lot to evoke natural disaster.[6]
After the first verse, guest vocalist Merry Clayton enters and shares the next three verses. A harmonica solo by Jagger and guitar solo by Richards follow, then with great energy, Clayton repeatedly sings “Rape, murder! It’s just a shot away! It’s just a shot away!”, almost screaming the final stanza. She and Jagger then repeat the line “It’s just a shot away” and finish with repeats of “It’s just a kiss away.” (Of her inclusion, Jagger said in the 2003 book According to the Rolling Stones: “The use of the female voice was the producer’s idea. It would be one of those moments along the lines of ‘I hear a girl on this track – get one on the phone.'” ) Summoned—pregnant—from bed around midnight by the producer Jack Nitzsche, Clayton made her recording with just a few takes then returned home to bed.[4] It remains the most prominent contribution to a Rolling Stones track by a female vocalist.[7]
At about 2:59 into the song, Clayton’s voice cracks under the strain; once during the second refrain on the word “shot”, then on the word “murder” during the third refrain, after which Jagger is faintly heard exclaiming “Woo!” in response to Clayton’s powerful delivery. Upon returning home she suffered a miscarriage, attributed by some sources to her exertions during the recording.[8] Merry Clayton’s name was erroneously written on the original release, appearing as ‘Mary’. Her name is also listed as ‘Mary’ on the 2002 Let It Bleed remastered CD.
The song was first recorded in London at Olympic Studios in February and March 1969; the version with Clayton was recorded in Los Angeles at Sunset Sound Recorders and Elektra Studios in October and November of that same year. Nicky Hopkins played piano, the Rolling Stones’ producer Jimmy Miller played percussion, Charlie Watts played drums, Bill Wyman played bass, Jagger played harmonica and sang backup vocals with Richards and Clayton. Guitarist Brian Jones was present during the early sessions but did not contribute, Richards being credited with both rhythm and lead guitars on the album sleeve.
Releases on compilation albums and live recordings[edit]
“Gimme Shelter” quickly became a staple of the Rolling Stones’ live shows. It was first performed sporadically during their 1969 American Tour and became a regular addition to their setlist during the 1972 American Tour. Concert versions appear on the Stones’ albums No Security (recorded 1997, released 1998), Live Licks (recorded 2003, released 2004), Brussels Affair (recorded 1973, released 2011), and Sweet Summer Sun: Hyde Park Live (2013). A May 1995 performance recorded at Paradiso (Amsterdam) was released on the 1996 “Wild Horses” (live) single and again on Totally Stripped (2016).
Michel Gondry, an Academy Award-winning French filmmaker, directed a music video for the song, which was released in 1998. The video features a sixteen-year old Brad Renfro, playing a young man escaping with his brother from a dysfunctional home and the abuse they suffered at the hands of their abusive alcoholic father, and then from society as a whole.[9]
“Gimme Shelter” was placed at number 38 on Rolling Stone‘s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time” in 2004. Pitchfork Media placed it at number 12 on its list of “The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s”.[10] Ultimate Classic Rock put the song at number one on their Top 100 Rolling Stones songs [11] and number three on their Top 100 Classic Rock Songs [12]
The song was used in the TV movie Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam (1987).
The song was played in a commercial for the American Red Cross‘ “Play Your Part” public service advertising campaign in 1989. This particular commercial featured popular music artists such as Carly Simon, Branford Marsalis, and Randy Travis providing service in an effort to attract more young people to serve.[13]
The song was used in the closing scene of the series finale of Showtime’s series Masters of Sex.
The song was used in season 4/episode 5 (“Dawn Budge”) of the FX television series Nip/Tuck, which aired on October 3, 2006. It begins during the final scene of the episode and continues over the closing credits.
The song is used in the Life series, episode 10, season 1 (season finale) in 2007.
The song was also used in a Heineken beer commercial featuring Brad Pitt in 2008.
It is used at the end of Person of Interest, season 2, episode 10, 13 December 2012, titled “Shadow Box” as Reese, and three other men in suits, are arrested by the FBI. The episode’s plot line concerns an effort by a disabled veteran to steal and return money stolen from other veterans.
The song was used in a February 2013 episode of The Daily Show spoofing the Scorsese uses of the song in a news segment by Jason Jones “exposing” the underground maple syrup criminal organization in Quebec, Canada.[14]
The Sisters of Mercy in 1983, on the B-side of their single “Temple of Love” (released on the album Some Girls Wander by Mistake in 1992). In this version the words “shot” and “kiss” were interchanged.
Tom Jones recorded the song with New Model Army. It was released on his album The Definitive Tom Jones 1964-2002.[20]
U2 covered the song at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame benefit concert on 30 October 2009, with Mick Jagger sharing lead vocals with Bono and featuring the Black Eyed Peas members Fergie, singing Merry Clayton’s vocal part, and will.i.am, playing piano and synthesizer.
The Underachievers used the introduction of “Gimme Shelter” for the production of their 2013 single “The Proclamation”.
In 1993, a Food Records project collected various versions of the track by the following bands and collaborations, the proceeds of which went to the Shelter charity’s “Putting Our House in Order” homeless initiative. The versions were issued across various formats, and had a live version of the song by the Rolling Stones as a common lead track to ensure chart eligibility.
At about the same time as the Berkeley Free Speech Move-
ment came a heavy participation in drugs. The beats had not
been deeply into drugs the way the hippies were. But soon
after 1964 the drug scene became the hallmark of young
people.
The philosophic basis for the drug scene came from Aldous
Huxley's concept that, since, for the rationalist, reason is not
taking us anywhere, we should look for a final experience, one
that can be produced "on call," one that we do not need to
wait for. The drug scene, in other words, was at first an ideol-
ogy, an ideology that had very practical consequences. Some of
us at L'Abri have cried over the young people who have blown
their minds. But many of them thought, like Alan Watts, Gary
Snyder, Alan Ginsberg and Timothy Leary, that if you could
simply turn everyone on, there would be an answer to man's
longings. It wasn't just the far-out freaks who suggested that
you could put drugs in the drinking water and turn on a whole
city so that the "pigs" and the kids would all have flowers in
their hair. In those days it really was an optimistic ideological
concept.
So two things have to be said here. FIRST, the young people's
analysis of culture was right, and, SECOND, they really thought
they had an answer to the problem. Up through Woodstock
(1969) the YOUNG PEOPLE WERE OPTIMISTIC CONCERNING DRUGS--
BEING THE IDEOLOGICAL ANSWER. The desire for community and
togetherness that was the impetus for Woodstock was not wrong, of course. God has made us in his own image, and he
means for us to be in a strong horizontal relationship with each
other. While Christianity appeals and applies to the individual,
it is not individualistic. God means for us to have community.
There are really two orthodoxies: an orthodoxy of doctrine
and an orthodoxy of community, and both go together. So the
longing for community in Woodstock was right. But the path
was wrong.
AFTER WOODSTOCK TWO EVENTS "ENDED THE AGE OF INNOCENCE,"
to use the expression of Rolling Stone magazine. The FIRST
occurred at Altamont, California, where the ROLLING STONES put
on a festival and hired the Hell's Angels (for several barrels of
beer) to police the grounds. Instead, the Hell's Angels killed
people without any cause, and it was a bad scene indeed. But
people thought maybe this was a fluke, maybe it was just
California! IT TOOK A SECOND EVENT TO BE CONVINCING.
On the Isle of Wight, 450,000 people assembled, and it was
totally ugly. A number of people from L'Abri were there, and I
know a man closely associated with the rock world who knows
the organizer of this festival. Everyone agrees that the situation
was just plain hideous.
THUS, AFTER THESE TWO ROCK FESTIVALS THE PICTURE CHANGED. IT IS
NOT THAT KIDS HAVE STOPPED TAKING DRUGS, FOR MORE ARE TAKING
DRUGS ALL THE TIME. And what the eventual outcome will be is
certainly unpredictable. I know that in many places, California
for example, drugs are down through the high schools and on
into the heads of ten- and eleven-year-olds. But drugs are not
considered a philosophic expression anymore; among the very
young they are just a peer group thing. It's like permissive
sexuality. You have to sleep with a certain number of boys or
you're not in; you have to take a certain kind of drug or you're
not in. THE OPTIMISTIC IDEOLOGY HAS DIED.
During the 1960’s many young people were turning to the New Left fueled by Marcuse and Habermas but something happened to slow many young people’s enthusiasm for that movement.
1970 bombing took away righteous standing of Anti-War movement
Francis Schaeffer mentioned the 1970 bombing in his film series “How should we then live?” and I wanted to give some more history on it. Schaeffer asserted:
In the United States the New Left also slowly ground down,losing favor because of the excesses of the bombings, especially in the bombing of the University of Wisconsin lab in 1970, where a graduate student was killed. This was not the last bomb that was or will be planted in the United States. Hard-core groups of radicals still remain and are active, and could become more active, but the violence which the New Left produced as its natural heritage (as it also had in Europe) caused the majority of young people in the United States no longer to see it as a hope. So some young people began in 1964 to challenge the false values of personal peace and affluence, and we must admire them for this. Humanism, man beginning only from himself, had destroyed the old basis of values, and could find no way to generate with certainty any new values. In the resulting vacuum the impoverished values of personal peace and affluence had comes to stand supreme. And now, for the majority of the young people, after the passing of the false hopes of drugs as an ideology and the fading of the New Left, what remained? Only apathy was left. In the United States by the beginning of the seventies, apathy was almost complete. In contrast to the political activists of the sixties, not many of the young even went to the polls to vote, even though the national voting age was lowered to eighteen. Hope was gone.
After the turmoil of the sixties, many people thought that it was so much the better when the universities quieted down in the early seventies. I could have wept. The young people had been right in their analysis, though wrong in their solutions. How much worse when many gave up hope and simply accepted the same values as their parents–personal peace and affluence. (How Should We Then Live, pp. 209-210
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Garry Shead’s portrait of Martin Sharp shows the artist as he lived, orchestrating a magic theatre of people and objects. Felicity Jenkins/EPA
The tributes have been flowing in from friends and art critics for Martin Sharp, who died this week aged 71.
The common thread linking all the tributes, all the memories, is that the artist was never alone.
Sharp was instrumental in the creation of Oz magazine, the satirical magazine published in Sydney and London between 1963 and 1973; the Sydney gallery and artists’ space the Yellow House; the visual aesthetic of 1960s London; and much more.
He was, primarily, a collage artist – and a collaborator. Both his work and his life can be imagined as a kind of glorious living collage – of people, objects and art.
With that in mind, I’d like to present my collage of memories of Martin Sharp.
London – and Oz magazine
The cover of Oz magazine #12.AAP Image/Facebook
In Oz magazine, Martin Sharp and the two Richards – Walsh and Neville – turned undergraduate humour into colourful biting satire that critiqued the folly of their elders. Sharp’s distinctive graphic style was combined with an insistence that the publishers use the best quality art paper.
It is impossible to think of 1960s London in music, art and performance without seeing it as drawn by Sharp. He was responsible for Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan’s iconic record covers, creations embedded in the LSD and pot-fuelled days of London.
Artwork by Martin Sharp helped define the psychedelic look of pop culture in London in the 1960s.AAP Image/Facebook
Sharp used friends and associates to create a space that still echoes through the years as an important powerhouses of creative energy.
Martin Sharp and Tiny Tim: Sharp’s fascination with the vaudeville singer was a transcendental moment that lasted a lifetime.
Martin Sharp and the ghost of Arthur Stace, the reformed alcoholic who spread the gospel by writing the word “Eternity” on Sydney pavements in chalk. Together they made enough copperplate Eternitys to fill a Sydney starry sky.
Then the mood changes.
Sharp and Luna Park: first for fun, when he created one of the version’s of the clown-face that formed the park’s entrance, and then for fight as he became an obsessive campaigner to call to account those whose negligence caused the death of a father and six children in the Ghost Train fire of 1979.
Sharp in his later years: passionate about the injustice meted out to Aboriginal people as he looked increasingly to the spiritual truths of Christianity, the sacrifice on the cross, and compassion for all those dispossessed.
SydneySights.Wikimedia Commons
A grand collaboration
Sharp was always at his most effective when he was a part of a grand collaboration, whether it was the intelligent anarchy of Oz, in both Sydney and London, his collaborations with musicians, or the grand vision of the Yellow House. Sharp was no solitary genius; he was at his best when with others of like mind.
Martin Sharp at a Sydney gallery in 2010.AAP Image/Facebook
For many years his home was his grandmother’s former home, Wirian, one of those grand 1920s mansions in Sydney’s Bellevue Hill. It was filled to excess with memories, memorabilia and friends.
Sharp collected people almost in the same way as he collected art, surrounding himself with them, watching as they interacted with each other – the famous, the colourful, the offbeat, the eccentric, the intensely spiritual.
His mother, Jo Sharp, was his first art teacher as she taught him how to make collage, cutting up images to place them in different contexts, relishing both a sense of the absurd and the beauty that came with unusual conjunctions.
His grandmother, who had a large collection of black and white graphic art, introduced him to Boofhead comics.
Van Gogh
Sharp’s art teacher at Cranbrook, Justin O’Brien, gave him a book on Van Gogh as an art prize. In his doctor father’s surgery there was reproduction of Van Gogh’s On the road to Tarascon, a painting destroyed in the second world war. The absence of its real presence made the many reproductions more poignant.
Vincent Van Gogh, Self-portrait on the road to Tarascon (1888).Wikipaintings
This is the image that guided Sharp, the one he reworked with variations throughout his life. It is telling that the name he gave the constant reworkings of this work was Courage, My Friend.
Van Gogh was always on his mind.
It was in London, while he was living in the Peasantry with Eric Clapton, filmmaker Philippe Mora and other artists and musicians, that he read Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo.
While acid freed his mind to make the images that are forever associated with the 1960s, the creative chaos of communal life acted as both a support and a stimulus.
When Sharp returned to Sydney it was not surprising he had something similar in mind.
At the Yellow House
Many people claim credit for creating the Yellow House, and in a perverse way they are all right. But without Sharp none of them could have created this house where artists could live and work together.
The Yellow House today.Sydney Heritage
It was Sharp who was able to persuade the owners of the old Terry Clune Galleries in Potts Point to let him have the last exhibition before it closed.
Then, as the building was doomed to be demolished for a high-rise apartment development, there was no harm in letting him and a few friends live there and make art.
Because the building was seen as ephemeral, Sharp was allowed to modify it to suit his needs.
By the time the Yellow House dissolved into chaos in about 1972, the developer may have regretted that decision.
The ever-shifting group of people who came and lived, loved, made art and performed at the Yellow House had little respect for real estate. A hole in the wall – covered in mock fur – made it easier to access. It was hard to work out who exactly made what, and some works had their ownership severely contested.
Peter Kingston‘s Stone Room had ceramics made to order by George Gittoes’ mother, while the Hokusai-inspired Wave was painted by either Martin Sharp or Brett Whiteley depending what day it was as they both tried to impose their vision on it.
In the end it was Sharp who prevailed with the Wave, and in reality with every other aspect of the Yellow House. The glory of the house is that the art, the people, the performances, were all part of a giant living collage.
Martin Sharp was the artist who placed them all together, to create ever-changing patterns of excitement and oddity.
And so he continued for the rest of his life, as a magician placing objects in opposition so that they may be seen with new eyes.
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It started with the acceptance of the attitude basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived…. …. The first direct order for euthanasia was issued by Hitler on Sept. 1, 1939…. All state institutions were required to report on patients who had been ill for five years or more or who were unable to work, by filling out questionnaires giving name, race, marital status, nationality, next of kin, whether regularly visited and by whom, who bore the financial responsibility and so forth. The decision regarding which patients should be killed was made entirely on the basis of this brief information by expert consultants, most of whom were professors of psychiatry in the key universities. These consultants never saw the patients themselves.
The Nazis set up an organization specifically for the killing of children, which they called, “Realm’s Committee for Scientific Approach to Severe Illness Due to Heredity and Constitution.” Children were transported to the killing centers by “The Charitable Transport Company for the Sick.” “The Charitable Foundation for Institutional Care” collected the cost of killing the children from the relatives, who did not know that they were paying to kill their own kinfolk. The cause of death was falsified on the death certificates. [Francis A. Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop, M.D., Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1979), pp. 103-107].
It hasn’t been too far back in the history of the United States, that black people were sold like cattle in our slave markets. For economic reasons, white society had classified them as “nonhuman.” The U S Supreme Court upheld this lie in its infamous Dred Scott Decision.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking as Rev. Jesse Jackson listens on.
Jesse L. Jackson, in 1977, tied the prior treatment of blacks with our present treatment of the preborn:
You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore outside your right to be concerned…. The Constitution called us three-fifths human and the whites further dehumanized us by calling us `n@$%#rs.’ It was part of the dehumanizing process…. These advocates taking life prior to birth do not call it killing or murder, they call it abortion. They further never talk about aborting a baby because that would imply something human…. Fetus sounds less than human and therefore can be justified…. What happens to the mind of a person, and the moral fabric of a nation, that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience? What kind of a person and what kind of a society will we have twenty years hence if life can be taken so casually? It is that question, the question of our attitude, our value system, and our mind set with regard to the nature and the worth of life itself that is the central question confronting mankind. Failure to answer that question affirmatively may leave us with a hell right here on earth. [Francis A. Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop, M.D., Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1979), p. 209.]
Twenty-five years after Rev. Jackson’s prediction, we have seen 45,000,000 preborn children killed for convenience and money. There is no telling how many newborns have been sedated and deliberately left to die of starvation.
For a former “insider” expose of the brutal and woman-exploiting abortion industry, read Carol Everett’s book, Blood Money (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Press Books, 1992). Her book tore at my heart. It spoke of how degenerate a part of the medical community had become. Carol Everett later found Christ and now ministers hope and healing.
The infamous pathologist Jack Kevorkian has grabbed headlines by murdering sick people. But, secretly in the hospitals, how many old and sick people have been “put to sleep” by other physicians simply by administering an overdose of medication, or by withholding needed medication?
I was touched, influenced and inspired by the ideas of Bill Bennett. See William J. Bennett, The De-Valuing of America—The Fight for Our Culture and Our Children (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992).
The death of Nat Hentoff a couple of weeks ago was movingly memorialized for First Things by William Doino. Hentoff was truly a remarkable individual with a sharp, consistent mind and a very broad range of friends and readers.
I first came across his work when I emigrated in 2001 and bought on a whim a remaindered copy of his autobiography, Speaking Freely. Little did I know that his love (and mine) of freedom of speech in the civic sphere would soon be jeopardized by those who fail to understand—or perhaps who understand just too well—that free speech means the right of my bitterest opponents to articulate their most reprehensible views in the public square. Hentoff was a man of the left, but he was also a libertarian on matters of freedom and an evangelist for the same. Indeed, his children’s novel, The Day They Came to Arrest the Book, became a staple in our house, with both of our boys reading it, loving it, and taking its message to heart.
There is one passage in Speaking Freely (177-78) that offers disturbing insights into modern political culture. Hentoff quotes a certain politician on abortion: “What happens to the soul of a nation that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience? What kind of society will we have twenty years hence if life can be taken so casually?” He also quotes the same politician on the right to privacy: “There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right of life. That was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore outside of your right to be concerned.” This politician had himself almost been aborted, and he saw the clear connection between the dehumanizing of a child in the womb and racial oppression, in that both involve a denial of real personhood to a human being.
Later on, this politician decided to run for president and magically changed his mind on abortion. His name? Jesse Jackson.
In his memoir, Hentoff recalls meeting Jackson on a train in 1994. As they journeyed together, Hentoff told Jackson that he frequently quoted his pro-life writings because they were among the most compelling he had read. Jackson, he said, looked troubled. Hentoff then asked the politician whether he had any second thoughts on his change of mind. Jackson looked even more troubled and said, “I’ll get back to you on that.” Hentoff ended the anecdote on this laconic note: “I haven’t heard from him since.”
Of course, Jackson had no arguments for his change. He changed, as Hentoff pointed out, when he wanted to run for president. He is the quintessential politician in an era of mass media and entertainment, where politicians’ views are too often shaped by the perceived direction of the popular wind. That is a tragedy, for opinion polls are more a means of shaping public opinion than of reflecting it. Have you noticed that they continue to be paraded by the media after Brexit and Trump? The media clings so very tightly to its manipulative ideological necromancy. And sadly, politicians today are too often the successors of the Jacksons, not the Hentoffs—selling their consciences to whatever and whoever they think will get them the necessary votes. We need politicians of conviction, not spineless puppets of popular taste.
The politicizing of the issue of abortion has done little more than trivialize human personhood. The career of Jesse Jackson is a great and pitiful example of this. As was, in an opposite way, the career of Nat Hentoff. He may have been an atheist, but he understood that human personhood is not a function of the ballot box, the focus group, or the latest opinion poll.
Carl R. Trueman is Paul Woolley Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary.
Featured artist today is Patti Smith
Paul McCartney, Patti Smith , and Johnny Depp
Patti Smith discusses “Just Kids” at National Portrait Gallery
A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of browsing Patti Smith’s “Camera Solo” at the AGO, and really got an opportunity to get an inside glimpse of the one-of-a-kind artist and human being.
Her works are exhibited in a sparse open gallery with a few antique chairs for sitting, on top of an aptly bohemian rug you most definitely would find in her own living space, surrounded by her snapshots and polaroids, her letters, her drawings, and beloved objects from her past all come together to expose the tender romantic heart beneath that hard rock shell you might at first perceive her.
There are photographs of her children, and of her idols (Frida Kahlo’s bed, Nureyev’s ballet shoe, Walt Whitman’s tomb, and of course her beloved Mapplethorpe, who understandably is a resonating force in her life and work), and they are displayed with the kind of simple black-and-white wisdom she must have come to understand over the course of her life.
Now 66 years old, her soul seems as vital and vibrant as ever. And while we will always remember her as the Punk Rock Queen, her “Camera Solo” really helps display her sense of bohemian elegance. The mix of old and new is obviously something of great interest to us here at The Eye of Faith, and Patti Smith does well to juxtapose her personal memories, the memories of others, and the present day, all in a peaceful vortex of still life serenity.
There is the sense of a true individual, a libertinian quality, in everything showcased. The sum of the parts, are nothing without her own experience, and thereby no singular person could recreate the moments captured forever by Patti Smith in her writing, drawings, music, film, and photography. Indeed, she is quite the Renaissance woman, and so we thought it apropo to put together a collection of some of our favourite images of the Rebel Goddess, and hopefully ignite that same age old wisdom and passion Patti Smith inherently seems to possess.
And though she is known for her punk rock roots, it was great to see such a refined vision. There wasn’t that garbage, safety pin, and spray paint aesthetic some people immediately cling to when you say “PUNK”. If you think about it, it’s just a state of being that denies following the “norm”. Being “punk” says you’re doing it your way. No apologies. That’s where her divine sensibility sets in for us.
So as you look through these photos, just let it take over. You don’t have to be right all the time. Just feel it, and let it just be.
Patti Smith’s “Camera Solo” is running through until May 19 at theAGO, so don’t miss out on the opportunity to spy through the window of a true punk rock soul.
To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. It’s freedom.
Patti Smith Group – Because the night 1978
Uploaded on Apr 27, 2008
Take me now baby here as I am
Hold me close, try and understand
Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe
Love is a banquet on which we feed
Come on now try and understand
The way I feel when I’m in your hands
Take my hand come undercover
They can’t hurt you now,
Can’t hurt you now, can’t hurt you now
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to lust
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to us
Have I doubt when I’m alone
Love is a ring, the telephone
Love is an angel disguised as lust
Here in our bed until the morning comes
Come on now try and understand
The way I feel under your command
Take my hand as the sun descends
They can’t touch you now,
Can’t touch you now, can’t touch you now
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to lust
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to us
With love we sleep
With doubt the vicious circle
Turns and burns
Without you I cannot live
Forgive, the yearning burning
I believe it’s time, too real to feel
So touch me now, touch me now, touch me now
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to lust
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to us
Because tonight there are two lovers
If we believe in the night we trust
Because tonight there are two lovers
Because the night belongs to lust
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to us
Patti Smith is a highly influential figure in the New York City punk rock scene, starting with her 1975 album Horses. Her biggest hit is the single “Because the Night.”
Synopsis
Born on December 30, 1946, in Chicago, Illinois, Patti Smith is a singer, writer and artist who became a highly influential figure in the New York City punk rock scene. After working on a factory assembly line, she began performing spoken word and later formed the Patti Smith Group (1974-79). Her most famous album is Horses. Her relationship with Fred “Sonic” Smith caused a hiatus in her singing career, but she returned to music after his untimely death. She went on to release more than 10 albums.
Early Life
Singer, songwriter and poet Patricia Lee Smith was born on December 30, 1946, in Chicago, Illinois. She was the eldest of four children born to Beverly Smith, a jazz singer turned waitress, and Grant Smith, a machinist at a Honeywell plant. After spending the first four years of her life on the south side of Chicago, Smith’s family moved to Philadelphia in 1950 and then to Woodbury, New Jersey, in 1956, when she was 9 years old.
A tall, gangly and sickly child with a lazy left eye, Smith’s outward appearance and shy demeanor gave no hint of the groundbreaking rock star she would become. However, Smith says she always knew that she was destined for greatness. “When I was a little kid, I always knew that I had some special kind of thing inside me,” she remembered. “I mean, I wasn’t attractive, I wasn’t very verbal, I wasn’t very smart in school. I wasn’t anything that showed the world I was something special, but I had this tremendous hope all the time. I had this tremendous spirit that kept me going… I was a happy child, because I had this feeling that I was going to go beyond my body physical… I just knew it.”
As a child, Smith also experienced gender confusion. Described as a tomboy, she shunned “girly” activities and instead preferred roughhousing with her predominantly male friends. Her tall, lean and somewhat masculine body defied the images of femininity she saw around her. It was not until a high school art teacher showed her depictions of women by some of the world’s great artists that she came to terms with her own body.
“Art totally freed me,” Smith recalled. “I found Modigliani, I discovered Picasso’s blue period, and I thought, ‘Look at this, these are great masters, and the women are all built like I am.’ I started ripping pictures out of the books and taking them home to pose in front of the mirror.”
Smith attended Deptford High School, a racially integrated high school, where she recalls both befriending and dating her black classmates. While in high school, Smith also developed an intense interest in music and performance. She fell in love with the music of John Coltrane, Little Richard and the Rolling Stones and performed in many of the school’s plays and musicals.
Upon graduating from high school in 1964, Smith took a job working at a toy factory—a short-lived but terrible experience that Smith described in her first single, “Piss Factory.” Later that fall, she enrolled at Glassboro State Teachers College—now known as Rowan University—with the intention of becoming a high school art teacher, but she didn’t fare well academically and her insistence on discarding traditional curricula to focus exclusively on experimental and obscure artists did not sit well with school administrators. So in 1967, with vague aspirations of becoming an artist, Smith moved to New York City and took a job working at a Manhattan bookstore.
Lyrical Expression
Smith took up with a young photographer named Robert Mapplethorpe, and although their romantic involvement ended when he discovered his homosexuality, Smith and Mapplethorpe maintained a close friendship and artistic partnership for many years to come.
Choosing performance poetry as her favored artistic medium, Smith gave her first public reading on February 10, 1971, at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery. The now legendary reading, with guitar accompaniment from Lenny Kaye, introduced Smith as an up-and-coming figure in the New York arts circle. Later the same year, she further raised her profile by co-authoring and co-starring with Sam Shepard in his semiautobiographical play Cowboy Mouth.
Over the next several years, Smith dedicated herself to writing. In 1972, she published her first book of poetry, Seventh Heaven, earning flattering reviews but selling few copies. Two further collections, Early Morning Dream (1972) and Witt (1973), received similarly high praise. At the same time, Smith also wrote music journalism for magazines such as Creem and Rolling Stone.
The Birth of Punk Rock
Smith, who had experimented earlier with setting her poetry to music, began to more fully explore rock ‘n’ roll as an outlet for her lyric poetry. In 1974, she formed a band and recorded the single “Piss Factory,” now widely considered the first true “punk” song, which garnered her a sizeable and fanatical grassroots following. The next year, after Bob Dylan leant her mainstream credibility by attending one of her concerts, Smith landed a record deal with Arista Records.
Smith’s 1975 debut album, Horses, featuring the iconic singles “Gloria” and “Land of a Thousand Dances,” was a huge commercial and critical success for its manic energy, heartfelt lyrics and skillful wordplay. The definitive early punk rock album, Horses is a near-ubiquitous inclusion on lists of the best albums of all time.
Commercial Success
Re-billing her act as the Patti Smith Group to give due credit to her band—Lenny Kaye (guitar), Ivan Kral (bass), Jay Dee Daugherty (drums) and Richard Sohl (piano)—Smith released her second album, Radio Ethiopia, in 1976. The Patti Smith Group then achieved a commercial breakthrough with its third album, Easter (1978), propelled by the hit single “Because the Night,” co-written by Smith and Bruce Springsteen.
Seclusion and Domestic Life
Smith’s fourth album, 1979’s Wave, received only lukewarm reviews and modest sales. By the time she released Wave, Smith had fallen deeply in love with MC5 guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith, and the pair married in 1980. For the next 17 years, Smith largely disappeared from the public scene, devoting herself to domestic life and raising the couple’s two children. She released only one album during this time, 1988’s Dream of Life, a collaboration with her husband. The album was a commercial disappointment despite including one of Smith’s most iconic singles, “People Have the Power.”
Comeback and Legacy
When Fred “Sonic” Smith died of a heart attack in 1994—the last in a series of many close friends and collaborators of Smith’s who passed away in quick succession—it finally provided Patti Smith the impetus to revive her music career. She achieved a triumphant return with her 1996 comeback album Gone Again, featuring the singles “Summer Cannibals” and “Wicked Messenger.”
Since then, Smith has remained a prominent fixture of the rock music scene with her albums Peace and Noise (1997), Gung Ho (2000) and Trampin’(2004), all of which were highly praised by music critics, proving Smith’s ability to reshape her music to speak to a new generation of rock fans. Her 2007 album, Twelve, featured Smith’s take on a dozen rock classics including “Gimme Shelter,” “Changing of the Guards” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Smith followed with the critically acclaimed Banga (2012), proving that after 35 years of music and 11 albums, she is ever evolving.
One of the pioneers of punk rock music, a trailblazer who redefined the role of female rock stars, a poet who unleashed her lyrical talent over powerful guitars, Patti Smith stands out as one of the greatest figures in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. After four decades, Smith finds her continued motivation to write and make music in the unfairly shortened lives of her loved ones and the needs of her children.
“The people I lost all believed in me and my children needed me, so that’s a lot of reasons to continue, let alone that life is great,” she says. “It’s difficult but it’s great and every day some new, wonderful thing is revealed. Whether it’s a new book, or the sky is beautiful, or another full moon, or you meet a new friend—life is interesting.”
Just Kids
In 2010, Patti Smith published her acclaimed memoir Just Kids, which gives readers a personal glimpse into her prototypical “starving artist” youth and her close relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe during the late 1960s and 1970s in New York City. The work became a NY Times bestseller and received a National Book Award. In 2015, Showtime Networks announced it would be developing a limited series based on the book.
Patti Smith talks to music writer Anthony DeCurtis about how she became an artist, what happens when she performs on stage, her relationships to the dead and her artistic process.
Anthony DeCurtis: One of the really interesting things about the film is that it’s very much a portrait of an artist. You’re talking about and engaging with William Blake and Jackson Pollock and Arthur Rimbaud. It made me think of the quote that’s on the back of your album Radio Ethiopia, “Beauty will be convulsive or not at all,” and reminded me of the tradition of artists that you’re drawn to. Could you talk about the first time you read Blake, the first time you read Rimbaud, the first time you looked at a Pollock painting? What did you draw from those experiences, and how did you use those experiences?
Patti upon the stairs. Chelsea Hotel, New York, 1996. Photographer by Steven Sebring.
Patti Smith: I remember all of those experiences, actually. I was an avid reader as a child, and my mother gave me a copy of “Songs of Innocence” by Blake, so that was my entrance into Blake. The first time I saw art was when my father took us on a trip when I was 12. My father worked in a factory, he had four sickly children, my parents had a lot of money problems and we didn’t go on excursions often. But there was a Salvador Dali show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that included the painting “The Persistence of Memory,” and my father found Dali’s draftsmanship just astounding, so he wanted to see the show in person. So he dragged us all to the museum. I had never seen art in person before. And seeing paintings – seeing work by Picasso, John Singer Sargent – I was completely smitten, I totally fell in love with Picasso and I dreamed of being a painter.
All of these things, every time I’ve seen art that I’ve responded to, what I’m responding to is that moment of creative impulse – and that’s something Steven and I have always worked with. The moment of creative impulse is what an artist gives you. You look at a Pollock, and it can’t give you the tools to do a painting like that yourself, but in doing the work, Pollock shares with you the moment of creative impulse that drove him to do that work. And that continuous exchange — whether it’s with a rock and roll song where you’re communing with Bo Diddley or Little Richard, or it’s with a painting, where you’re communing with Rembrandt or Pollock — is a great thing.
We long for those moments, and it was so nice to work with Steven on this film because we could look for those moments within ourselves; he was interested in everything I was interested in. If I wanted to drag him to a graveyard in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of London traffic, to say hello to William Blake’s grave, he was right there. It was fun and it was also beautiful for the spirit. We both wanted to share this with other people. A lot of people might love William Blake but never get to go visit his grave. So we wanted to take them with us.
DeCurtis: We also see you with your children, and we see your very warm relationship with your parents in Patti Smith: Dream of Life. Can you talk about your relationship to them and about your family life?
Smith: I love my family. My parents struggled very hard; they had three kids in quick succession right after World War II, and we were all sickly. My dad worked in a factory; my mom was a waitress. They had a lot of strife. My father was a dreamy fellow – he read Plato and Socrates and watched Phillies games. My mother was the real worker, and she did everything for us. She always made any situation a happier situation. If there was no food except for potatoes in the house, she would make a mountain of French fries and say, “We’re going to have a French fry party!” We’d say, “Yay,” and sit around eating French fries, not realizing that it was hard for her because she was the mother of four children who had nothing else to give her kids to eat. She made it exciting and fun.
Patti with her parents, Beverly and Grant Smith
I have great respect for my parents. I got such beautiful things from both of them. It doesn’t mean that we didn’t have our rough times, but they were remarkable people who were open-minded, creative and hard-working and had great senses of humor. They set really good examples for all of us. I love my family, and I know it’s not normal, because when I came to New York, everybody thought I was crazy when I would tell tales of my childhood and of my mom and dad. I was seen as abnormal because I loved my family. But I did love my family. They were great people.
DeCurtis: You mentioned coming to New York City. What were your impressions of New York when you came here?
Smith: I was raised in rural south Jersey, and there was no culture there. There was a small library and that was it. There was nothing else. I loved my childhood, I loved my siblings, I loved being a child, but I craved culture. Once I saw art I wanted to see more art. I fell in love with opera and I dreamed about going to the opera. But there was nothing in New Jersey, and the first time I went to New York City, I was in total heaven.
I had been made fun of a lot growing up, because I was a skinny kid with long greasy braids who dressed like a beatnik. I didn’t really fit in where I grew up; I didn’t look like the other girls – I didn’t have a beehive. And in New York, suddenly I just blended in with everybody else. Nobody cared. I didn’t get stopped by the cops. I wasn’t yelled at from cars. I was just free. And I think that’s what New York represented to me more than anything – freedom.
DeCurtis: Getting back to your family, and we see you a lot with your family in this film, publicly you’re an important musician and poet and artist. Could you talk about the two sides of you – a public identity that’s out in the world and the day-to-day, family aspect of your life?
Patti in private studio session at Sebring Studio. New York, 1999. Photographer by Steven Sebring.
Smith: Well, I don’t have two separate personas. When I’m onstage and working, I channel different things, including aspects of aggression or anger or political fervor that I keep more balanced offstage. But I’m not really that different offstage from how I am onstage, and I’ve never really been interested in being a celebrity. I just want to be able to do my work and converse with the people. And I don’t like a lot of fuss. So I’ve pretty much always stayed the same.
At home, I was a mom. My kids didn’t even know I did anything, except tend to them. Even now – and they comprehend my work, they’ve worked with me, they’ve all performed with me in front of thousands of people – they still look at me as their mom, the person who’s going to sew a button, tend to them if they’re sick or remember their father with them. I don’t have a separate identity at home with my kids, and I don’t want one.
DeCurtis: There are a few times when you talk about death in the film. You talk about your brother having died and you being infused by his spirit, in a sense. And you also mention Allen Ginsberg’s call to you when your husband died, Allen saying, “Continue the celebration.” Death is obviously a terrible thing, but you seem, somehow, to have found a way to take something from it and make the dead part of your ongoing life and work. Can you talk a little about that?
Smith: I’ve had to find a way to take something from death. I experienced death as a child: My best friend died of leukemia when I was about seven or eight. I learned early that we lose people. Then, going through the death of Robert Mapplethorpe was so devastating and difficult. Our friendship was so deep, and his consciousness was so intertwined with mine because we bonded so young, that I knew he would still be with me when he died. And he was with me, even more, it seemed, once he died. That taught me a lot. It didn’t make things less painful for me, in terms of the people I lost after Robert, but it proved to me that our people are still with us if we keep our minds, ears and hearts open. It’s nothing mystical; it just is.
A young Patti Smith with Robert Mapplethorpe.
I’ve learned from Robert since he died, argued with him, walked quietly and seen him sitting. Each person that passes away passes away differently, and your communication with them is different. With my brother, as I said in the film, it’s a feeling of love. Sometimes I’ll be sitting somewhere and I start laughing. I can’t even talk about him without laughing. He makes me laugh; he makes me smile. And each loss, whether it’s my husband or my parents, presents me with an unexpected, unique and different way to communicate with the dead as I go through life. There’s a certain beauty in that. It doesn’t take away the sorrow or the longing to see a person in his or her earthly state, but if we lose that possibility – the possibility of a person in his or her earthly state – there is still a multitude of other possibilities. Pasolini said that it is not that the dead do not speak, it’s just that we have forgotten how to listen. And that made a lot of sense to me. We have to just let go of our expectations and see how they talk to us. Each person we lose will speak to us, but in a different way. Sometimes it’s a flutter of feeling and sometimes they’ll bug you.
DeCurtis: I also wanted to ask you about performing, and the transformation that takes places within you when you’re onstage.
Smith: Well, I curse more onstage than I do in real life. Even my kids are like, “Mom, what are you doing?” But it’s just adrenaline, really. I’m a natural performer. I like being in front of people; I like working with people; I like making them laugh; I like inciting their spirits or minds. But I was always like that – I was like that as a kid. I led my siblings into battle and I wrote plays for us to perform. When I was younger, I thought of being a schoolteacher so I would have a ready audience every day. And I have no fear on the stage – it’s friendly territory for me. I fear a dinner party with strangers a hundred times more than getting on a stage in front of 70,000 people. I like communicating with the people. I like channeling their energy and giving it back to them.
During this transitional time in which I began performing again after a long time away from it, which Steven rode out with me, it didn’t take me that long to get my footing. It was more a matter of transitioning through other things, where I had to find my balance as a human being. But the people were so great. They were happy that we were back.
DeCurtis: I remember going to a reading that you did in Central Park in the early 1990s.
Smith: That was the first time I had appeared in New York City in 14 years or something like that. And [my husband] Fred and my brother were both still alive. It was 102 degrees or something like that in New York City, and I was so nervous, I was afraid the whole time we were driving up to New York. I didn’t know if anybody would come or if they would remember me. And Fred was saying, “Oh, they’ll be there,” and my brother was saying “Don’t worry, there’ll be lots of people.” And there were. There were lots of people! There was a moment when I was standing onstage and all of a sudden I froze. I think I was trying to recite “People Have the Power.” I froze, and in the corner of my eye I could see both my brother and my husband advance just a little toward me. They could feel me being frightened. I saw them coming toward me and I took a breath and pulled myself together. I was really surprised that all those people came. It was really great.
DeCurtis: The level of intensity there was so powerful.
Smith: It was just a poetry reading, and it was so exciting.
DeCurtis: Everybody came, and they were all almost transformed by being there.
Patti in concert. London, 2005. Photographed by Steven Sebring.
Smith: Yeah, it was really like a gathering of the tribe, that’s one thing I remember. I saw people out there that I hadn’t seen in over a decade, and people were there seeing one another. It was a beautiful moment. But that’s one of the great things about performing, and one reason to stay healthy and stay in communication with the people, because performing is a continual gathering of the tribe. The tribe does shift. We’ll have performances where I look out and everyone is younger than my daughter. And I think, what a compliment, you know that the new young tribe would come to see what we’re doing and give us some energy. I feel it’s our duty to take this energy that they give us, transform it and give it back to them.
Performing is a beautiful thing. The way I look at it, it’s not playing or singing at people; it’s creating a night and an experience with them. And it’s what keeps me going actually. I never thought I’d still be performing at 63, but it still comes, and I’ll be there.
DeCurtis: Patti, can you talk about yourself as an artist? Not just being a songwriter or a singer, but the romantic sense that if you’re an artist, you bring an artist’s eye to everything that you do.
Smith: Absolutely, I believe that. And I learned that through other artists. As a very young girl, I learned that William Blake painted, wrote songs, was an activist, wrote these poems, had a philosophy and was a visionary. Leonardo da Vinci was a scientist and an artist. Lewis Carroll was a photographer, a writer and a poet. I was very comfortable with this idea at an early age. I find the people who are uncomfortable with this idea are often journalists. They think that if you sing rock and roll you must be an idiot, and that you can’t possibly be a scholar, or write a book about jazz or paint with any depth. For me, I’m a worker, and I do everything with the same conviction, whether I’m taking photographs or performing or painting or writing. I’m the same person.
In the same vein, if you’re doing a performance for four or five people, you do it with the same conviction as when you go on stage and there are 40,000 people. You don’t do things by degrees. If one has a vision, then one brings that vision into everything they do. Robert Mapplethorpe worked like that, in constructions, in the way he dressed – everything was art for Robert. Waiting for Robert to get dressed was such a nightmare because he would work on his outfit with the same fervor as he did on a collage or a construction. Of course, I’m just joking, but there is a certain amount of truth in saying that people don’t put away their aesthetic awareness as they jump from ship to ship.
On the other hand, I admire people who have one vocation. Joan Mitchell said, “I’m a painter. That’s all I do. That’s all I know how to do.” When I heard that, I wished I were like that, that I had one vocation and put everything in. But I just didn’t turn out that way. It’s not the way that I am. I would be lying or I would have to submerge other aspects of myself to be like that. But I think it’s a beautiful thing. It’s just that I’m just not like that.
DeCurtis: I asked Steven what he learned from you. What did you learn from working with him?
Smith: Working with Steven, especially at the time that I met him, did so much to strengthen my confidence that things can be done. It transformed me. He’s unbelievable. He does these things on such a scale. To watch him get an idea was amazing. He looked at my things. He took pictures of them on a light box, and the next thing you know he blew them up and had these frames made and they wound up in the film. As modest as he is, he’s quite fearless; with seemingly not many resources, he saw this project through. And that actually has been one of my shortcomings. I leave a lot of poems abandoned, songs abandoned, paintings abandoned. Steven finishes things. Seeing this film go from the first moment, over 10 or 12 years, and then seeing it finished makes me realize really anything is possible. So that was a very important lesson.
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Article by Jack Wellman
Dear readers in 
