Podcasts about Henry Diltz

Vicki Peterson and John Cowsill, who are married to each other, have been making music for many years but recently released their first album together, Long After the Fire. Peterson has been singer-songwriter-guitarist for the Bangles and Continental Drifters. John Cowsill began drumming for the Cowsills at a young age, more recently was the Beach Boys' drummer and now fills in as lead singer for the Smithereens. The new album features songs written by John's two late brothers, Bill and Barry Cowsill, and John and Vicki harmonize beautifully and, as you'll hear here, crack each other up. They recount how they decided (and occasionally tangled over) who would sing what and tell great stories too, covering Vicki's long connection with the Cowsills (which dates back to 1978) and John's cosmic if heartbreaking moment with Brian Wilson. (Photo by Henry Diltz.)

WBCQ/The Planet airdate - 4/19/25 (7:00 pm Eastern Time) Welcome to Fluxedo Junction. Each episode, we bring you the best music of all genres from throughout the world, and this week we'll be speaking with singer and drummer John Cowsill. While he's perhaps best known for his work as a singer and drummer with his siblings' band The Cowsill, his career is far more varied than that. He spent years as a drummer and vocalist for The Beach Boys touring band, featuring original Beach Boy Mike Love and longtime member Bruce Johnston. He's also performed and recorded with Jan and Dean, Tommy Tutone, and Dwight Twilley. Most recently, he's been touring as a vocalist with power pop legends The Smithereens and has been releasing new studio recordings with his wife Vicki Peterson of the Bangles. You can check them out on the web at www.vickipetersonandjohncowsill.com Photo by Henry Diltz

Episode 183: Remembering Marianne Faithfull, Jesse Colin Young And Roy Ayers, Jr. + More March 25, 2025 Welcome back to this hour that we call Tales Vinyl Tells.  It's your chance to hear some of the great album rock from the 60s and 70s mostly.  We've been doing these programs since late 2019 and have covered lots a ground.  You know and I know that we've just scratched the surface of recorded rock, so the new shows keep coming.  The reruns aren't bad either.  They can be heard on your favorite podcast app.  Just search for Tales Vinyl Tells. Today we're going to say thanks and farewell to Marianne Faithfull, Jesse Colin Young of the Youngbloods and vibraphonist Roy Ayers Jr. The music under me is Roy Ayres with Herbie Mann at the 1969 Harlem summer of soul extravaganza with a song cowritten by Isaac Hayes. Those three have entered the room next door, as Henry Diltz coined the phrase. You also get some of the blues with Boz Scaggs and Duane Allman, together. So these are the stories that songwriters and artists want to convey to you. These are the Tales Vinyl Tells. I want to say thank you to all the financial supporters of Tales Vinyl Tells. Whether a small amount monthly or a very generous donation, each of you listeners are very appreciated and if you can and do give monthly, my deepest gratitude goes to you. If you're not a supporter yet and want to know more about becoming a patron of this music program you can go Patron.podbean.com/talesvinyltellssupport. Thank you and rock on! And thanks for listening today.  My email is talesvinyltells@gmail.com.  If you want to hear a Tales Vinyl Tells when it streams live on RadioFreeNashville.org, we do that at 5 PM central time Wednesdays. The program can also be played and downloaded anytime at podbean.com, Apple podcasts, iHeart podcasts, player FM podcasts and many other podcast places. And of course you can count on hearing the Tales on studiomillswellness.com/tales-vinyl-tells anytime.

Join us on a nostalgic journey to the 1985 classic film "Vision Quest," where Matthew Modine takes us to the heart of doing something meaningful with his life in Spokane, Washington. From personal movie-going experiences to the rockin' soundtrack featuring Red Rider, John Waite, Madonna and Journey, this trip down memory lane captures the essence of an era marked by cinematic magic.Moving from the silver screen to a captivating vineyard, picture yourself at Buckley's Vineyard for a live music experience with Kevn Kinney and Peter Buck that you won't forget. They celebrate Kevn's debut solo album, "MacDougal Blues," produced by the talented Peter. The stage comes alive with both solo performances and timeless hits from Drivin N Cryin, creating an atmosphere of pure musical enchantment. The harmonious blend of music and countryside charm makes this vineyard concert experience one for the books.Finally, we journey back the iconic theme from "The Rockford Files" and Mike Post's illustrious career in TV music. We also reflect on the resilience of AC/DC after Bon Scott's tragic passing, and their determination to stay together as a band. We revisit the 55th Anniversary of The Doors 'Morrison Hotel' and the historic photos for the album cover taken by Henry Diltz, as well as the 45th Anniversary of the Blondie single "Call Me.""Music in My Shoes" where music and memories intertwine.Learn Something New orRemember Something OldPlease Like and Follow our Facebook and Instagram page at Music In My Shoes. You can contact us at musicinmyshoes@gmail.com.Send us a one-way message. We can't answer you back directly, but it could be part of a future Music In My Shoes Mailbag!!!

Join @thebuzzknight for a walk in Studio City California with the legendary photographer Henry Diltz. Henry has snapped photos of some of the most iconic figures in music history and is known for taking photos that turned out as iconic album covers. Some of Henry's greatest shots include the first Crosby, Stills, Nash first album, The Eagles first album and The Doors Morrison Hotel. If you have questions, comments or suggestions share them at buzz@buzzknightmedia.com. Connect with Buzz on Twitter @TheBuzzKnight and Instagram @takinawalkpodcast. Like this show? Leave us a review here.  ReviewSupport the show: https://takinawalk.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week Jonathan sits down with Henry Diltz, the legendary photographer who brought us photos from Woodstock, Monterey Pop, and many other festivals, and shots for over 200 album covers. Henry and Jonathan talk about his life in Laurel Canyon and his work with The Doors and many other artists. Please subscribe and give us a review wherever you get your podcasts.  The Jam is hosted and produced by Jonathan Shank. Produced by Matt Dwyer and RJ Bee of Osiris Media. Audio Production by Matt Dwyer. Recorded at Sony in Los Angeles. Music by Amar Sastry. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.

I'm filled to the brim with love, compassion, and inspiration. I so enjoyed every moment in Lydia Cornell's most excellent company. A strong, talented, generous, capable woman, who knows who she is, where she's been, and where she wants to be, allowing for godshots that may alter her future at any turn, AFI Best Actress nominee and People's Choice Award winner Lydia, best known for her starring role in Too Close for Comfort, is all that and a standup comedienne, writer, director, public speaker, and activist. We went back to Lydia's early days in El Paso Texas, her Russian father, and challenging mother… the haircut, the Barbies, the boys, oh my! Moving to Scarsdale, starring in High School plays, college in Boulder., Colorado, and Hollywood by way of the music biz, Caribou Ranch…. some great stories there… Billy Joel, Joni Mitchell, Dennis Wilson, Henry Diltz, dating Paul Stanley and Donnie Most, and how her naive approach to breaking into the biz, worked! On her third audition, she landed a starring role on a hit TV show and garnered the fame she sought. Loads of TV shows and films followed, including co-starring with James Earl Jones right after shooting that first pilot. We talked about drinking, drugging, dieting, and the trouble they brought… getting sober, surrender, releasing resentments, recovery, and the innumerable gifts they continue to bring. Lydia's won acting, directing, and writing awards, as well as the Southern California Motion Picture Council's Golden Halo Lifetime Achievement Award, and the first Elizabeth Montgomery Humanitarian Award. It's the service she does every day as a woman in recovery that perhaps makes the greatest impact. A screenplay Lydia wrote 20 years ago is finding its place now, and the book she started years ago is also readying to bloom. Lydia's loving her life, writing, and loving with Larry––acting and looking perfect seeming less and less important. I'm loving this Lydia more than ever if that's even possible. Lydia Cornell Live on Game Changers with Vicki Abelson Wednesday, April 17, 5 PM PT, 8 PM ET Streamed Live on my Facebook Replay here: https://bit.ly/3vNhZTr

On this week's edition of Le Show, Harry brings us The Apologies of the Week, News of Musk Love, and recounts a recent experience with musician and photographer Henry Diltz. We then turn to the archives of Le Show for another batch of Highlights from the Recent Past with all sorts of sketches and songs. We'll hear Clintonsomething, Keeping Up with the Murdochs, Nixon in Heaven, music by The Folksmen, an interview with Gary Marcus and much more.

When photographer Sarah Sharaf-Eldien contacted me about discussing her new book, Mālama Maui, which showcases the island and the musicians who play there, I knew I had to have her on. Especially since 100% of the profits from the book will be donated to the Maui United Way Fire Disaster Relief Fund. After a chance meeting, Sarah landed a music photography job most photographers would consider a dream, working alongside Mick Fleetwood, legendary drummer of the band Fleetwood Mac. This led to Sarah working closely with not only local music artists but internationally acclaimed music superstars as well.  It only seemed natural to her to use the photos from that time in her life to help with the relief effort in some way. "The word 'Mālama' in the Hawaiian language means 'to serve, honor, protect, and care for.' The wildfires' heartbreaking devastation left hundreds of families displaced, countless businesses destroyed, and a tragic toll of lives lost. It is my hope that the photographs I've presented in Mālama Maui will preserve treasured memories, celebrate moments of magic, and cherish a sense of community that perseveres even in the face of adversity," says Sharaf-Eldien. "To the Ohana of Maui who have lost this historical part of their homeland, I wish Ka Lā Hiki Ola – the dawning of a new day. I sincerely hope that the funds raised from the sales of my book will contribute to the families and individuals who need our support, and will assist in the preservation and rebuilding efforts of Maui and Lahaina." Episode Promos Manscaped - Save 20% and get free shipping with code NERDYPHOTO at https://manscaped.com Siteground Website Hosting Services - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/siteground Elementor WordPress Website Builder - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/elementor Support The Nerdy Photographer Want to help The Nerdy Photographer Podcast? Here are a few simple (and mostly free) ways you can do that: Subscribe to the podcast! Tell your friends about the podcast Follow on Instagram - https://instagram.com/thenerdyphoto Follow on Threads - https://threads.net/@thenerdyphoto Follow in Tiktok - https://tiktok.com/@thenerdyphoto Get some Nerdy Photographer merchandise - https://www.teepublic.com/stores/nerdy-photographer If you're feeling extra generous, check out our support page - https://nerdyphotographer.com/support-nerdy-photographer/ ABOUT SARAH SHARAF-ELDIEN: Sarah Sharaf-Eldien (pronounced ‘Sheriff el-Deen') is an Egyptian-American portrait photographer who has worked closely with some of the most sought after musicians of our time. She began working in a fashion photography studio in Sydney, Australia, and transitioned into the world of music photography while shooting for legendary Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood on the island of Maui, Hawai'i. Her book, Mālama Maui, was published in December 2023 by Genius Book Publishing. The new book chronicles numerous musicians performing at Fleetwood's on Front Street in Maui, between 2016-17. Profits from the sale of the new book will be donated to the Maui United Way/Fire Disaster Relief Fun. While working in Maui, she also photographed iconic music photographer Henry Diltz at The Morrison Hotel Gallery, influencing her perception of portrait photography as an art of storytelling. Her timeless images of musicians and celebrities to entrepreneurs and everyday people, capture intimate soulful moments that reveal the subtle genuine beauty within. Sarah is currently based in Alexandria, Virginia, and travels with her two mini-pin chihuahua rescues, Ava and Julian. Website: https://www.1144studios.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1144studios/ Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/1144studios LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-sharaf-eldien Studio LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/11-44-studios/ ABOUT GENIUS BOOK PUBLISHING: Genius Book Publishing, based in Milwaukee, WI, was founded by Steven and Leya Booth, both avid readers. The company was launched in 2011 and, to date, has published over 60 titles in genres ranging from horror to mystery-thrillers to true crime stories. The Genius catalogue also includes traditional print coffee table books about music, photography, and history. Website: https://geniusbookpublishing.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GeniusBookPublishing X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GeniusBooks Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/geniusbooks/ LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/genius-publishing/about/ About The Podcast The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com 

In a town like LA that takes its food scene seriously, local chefs say coming together and breaking bread has taken on new meaning as the war in Gaza continues. Musician and photographer Henry Diltz captured rock history magic while hanging out with CSN&Y in the 1960s, and he's sharing it all in his new photography book.

The Wilson sisters say they are not sure if there will be more Heart tour dates after NYE in Seattle...and legendary photographer Henry Diltz has a book coming out about Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young!

First off, sad news this morning about Jimmy Buffett's passing. The 2020 Life on the Flip Side LP is his 28th release. A billionaire many times over, he brought to life the adventures of a pirate, a sailor, a surfer and a guy who seems to love the life of excitement and relaxation. I've been listening to Flip Side this morning and will listen to more of his great happy music as time keeps on passing. This podcast replays the early June radio show and has Traffic, Mamas and Papas and a few from Tina Turner, who had then recently gone “into the next room.”~Henry Diltz. Enjoy your day, every day. Your/my expiration date is closer with each day. One way you can appreciate this podcast is by becoming a financial supporter. $1, $5, $10 a month helps to pay the bills and grow this podcast. You can become a sustainer by going to patron.podbean.com/talesvinyltellssupport. And a very large thanks and hugs to all of you who have already shown your love. This podcast is available for listening, download and sharing at StudioMillsWellness.com and many podcast apps. You can even say: “Alexa, play podcast Tales Vinyl Tells.” She'll know what to do.

In the Laurel Canyon music scene, few left as indelible a mark as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The post Henry Diltz on CSN&Y appeared first on The Strange Brew .

In today's episode of Takin' A Walk, Buzz recalls a conversation he had with Henry Diltz. A Classic Replay from a Classic American Photographer. Henry is known for some iconic photographs and album covers including: The Doors Morrison Hotel, Crosby, Stills and Nash and The Eagles Desperado. At 84 years young Henry continues to do what he loves the most, shoot amazing photos. He also continues to be an amazing storyteller and Buzz Joined him last year for a walk in Studio City California. *****Thank you so much for listening to the TAKIN’ A WALK PODCAST SHOW hosted by Buzz Knight! Listen to more honest conversations with a compelling mix of guests ranging from musicians, authors, and insiders with their own stories. Get inspired, get motivated, and gain insights from honest conversations every week that can help you with your own journey. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and be part of this blessed family. Website: https://takinawalk.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebuzzknight LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/buzzknight Linkfire: https://lnk.to/takinawalk Please consider subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with your friends and family! http://www.henrydiltz.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In today's episode of Takin' A Walk, Buzz recalls a conversation he had with Henry Diltz. A Classic Replay from a Classic American Photographer. Henry is known for some iconic photographs and album covers including: The Doors Morrison Hotel, Crosby, Stills and Nash and The Eagles Desperado. At 84 years young Henry continues to do what he loves the most, shoot amazing photos. He also continues to be an amazing storyteller and Buzz Joined him last year for a walk in Studio City California.   http://www.henrydiltz.com *****Thank you so much for listening to the TAKIN’ A WALK PODCAST SHOW hosted by Buzz Knight!   Listen to more honest conversations with a compelling mix of guests ranging from musicians, authors, and insiders with their own stories. Get inspired, get motivated, and gain insights from honest conversations every week that can help you with your own journey. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and be part of this blessed family. Website: https://takinawalk.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebuzzknight LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/buzzknight  Linkfire: https://lnk.to/takinawalk Please consider subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with your friends and family!  

Promo for the upcoming episode: Takin' A Walk with Henry Diltz-A Classic Replay from a Classic American Photographer. Henry is known for iconic photographs and album covers, including The Doors Morrison Hotel, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and The Eagles Desperado. At 84 years young Henry continues to do what he loves the most, shoot amazing photos. He also continues to be a fantastic storyteller and Buzz Joined him last year for a walk in Studio City California." Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and be part of this blessed family. Website: https://takinawalk.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebuzzknight LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/buzzknight Linkfire: https://lnk.to/takinawalk Please consider subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with your friends and family! Learn more about your ad choices.http://www.henrydiltz.com*****Thank you so much for listening to the TAKIN’ A WALK PODCAST SHOW hosted by Buzz Knight! Listen to more honest conversations with a compelling mix of guests ranging from musicians, authors, and insiders with their own stories. Get inspired, get motivated, and gain insights from honest conversations every week that can help you with your own journey.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Promo for the upcoming episode: Takin' A Walk with Henry Diltz-A Classic Replay from a Classic American Photographer.  Henry is known for iconic photographs and album covers, including The Doors Morrison Hotel, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and The Eagles Desperado. At 84 years young Henry continues to do what he loves the most, shoot amazing photos. He also continues to be a fantastic storyteller and Buzz Joined him last year for a walk in Studio City California." http://www.henrydiltz.com*****Thank you so much for listening to the TAKIN’ A WALK PODCAST SHOW hosted by Buzz Knight!   Listen to more honest conversations with a compelling mix of guests ranging from musicians, authors, and insiders with their own stories. Get inspired, get motivated, and gain insights from honest conversations every week that can help you with your own journey. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and be part of this blessed family. Website: https://takinawalk.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebuzzknight LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/buzzknight Linkfire: https://lnk.to/takinawalk   Please consider subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with your friends and family! Learn more about your ad choices.

If you would like to donate to "Rock History Music" https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=VB2DNTLWAK8RNJoin our Patreon to get early access to our videos https://www.patreon.com/RockHistoryChannelsHELP SUPPORT ROCK HISTORY MUSIC..CHECK OUT OUR STORE FOR T-SHIRTS, MUGS ETC https://rock-history-music-store.creator-spring.comOur Instagram account https://www.instagram.com/rockhistorymusic/?hl=enCHECK OUT OUR TIKTOK CHANNEL https://www.tiktok.com/@johnbeaudin80Check out the ‘Rock History Book' PodcastSpotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0LYdVTfmXN5khxXor8TzPg?si=9OY8tLroRJ6iVgGeUwe6yAiHeart “Rock History Music” Podcast https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-rock-history-book-80154771/Tune-In “Rock History Music” Podcast https://tunein.com/podcasts/p1419168/Our Apple Podcast Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/rock-history-book/id1560259111We have 3 active channelsRock History Music - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChUv5CZuAuh08DfHA8klNSARock History Book - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDKUUfqq_iuwk63pZEUOTIQRock History Canada - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFpz17zDi5ShOVQBiNZV8xASupport the show

Debbie Kruger, the author of “Songwriters Speak,” joins Staci to talk about her definitive book on Australia's most popular and important songwriters. This is part two of the in-depth interview, and in this episode, she talks about her take on the controversy surrounding AC/DC's "Back in Black" album, interviewing Nick Cave, her love of the band Sherbet, and working with rock photography legends like Henry Diltz and Bob King for the pictures in “Songwriters Speak,” plus upcoming projects. Part 2 of 2.

Maggie and Dale Bell discuss his book: Woodstock: An Inside Look at the Movie that Shook Up the World and Defined a Generation and the film, Woodstock 3 Days of Peace & Music: The Director's Cut screening at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Summer of Music: Concert Films 1959–2020 Jun 10 – Aug 26, 2023Dale Bell, has spent his professional life in the arts, television and film. His awards include the Academy Award (Woodstock), the Peabody Award (Kennedy Center Tonight), two Emmys, four BAFTAs, and two Christophers. His work―performance, dramatic, documentary, commercials and industrials―has been seen globally, primarily on public television and NBC, ABC, A&E, Discovery, History, The Learning Channel, TBS, and others. In 1999, he joined Harry Wiland to create the Media & Policy Center, where together, they have earned the Ashoka and the Purpose Prize Fellowships while producing social justice multi-media initiatives for PBS on such topics as health care, eldercare, sustainable pioneers, healthy schools and communities, and now, Opioids, the VW scandal, and Our Kids with Professor Robert Putnam. They have also been professors of a two-year graduate course at Woodbury University in Burbank that focuses on leveraging media for greater social justice.Henry Diltz is an extraordinary rock n roll photographer unlike any other. A founding member of the Modern Folk Quartet, Diltz is as much at home as a musician on tour, as he is a visual historian of the last four decades of popular music. The rapport he's developed with his musician friends, along with his down-to-earth-grin and frequent laugh, enables him to capture the candid shots that convey a rare feeling of trust and intimacy with his subjects.Featuring a foreword from legendary director Martin Scorcese, Woodstock: Interviews and Recollections combines stories, anecdotes, and perspectives from dozens of musicians and filmmakers about the making of the Academy Award-winning documentary Woodstock. Assembled by associate producer Dale Bell, the oral history takes readers behind the scenes―and behind the camera―at the decade-defining event.Source: https://mediapolicycenter.org/meet-the-team/dale_bell/Source: https://paw.princeton.edu/article/dale-bell-60-living-woodstockSource: https://www.academymuseum.org/en/programs/series/summer-of-music-concert-films-1959-2020Source: https://rarebirdlit.com/woodstock-interviews-and-recollections-by-dale-bell/Host Maggie LePique, a radio veteran since the 1980's at NPR in Kansas City Mo. She began her radio career in Los Angeles in the early 1990's and has worked for Pacifica station KPFK Radio in Los Angeles since 1994.Support the show

From Rolling Stone Magazine to the latest instagram feed, celebrity has always meant being seen and hopefully in the coolest way.  Icons are built on innate talent, personality and a well crafted image of who they are and want to be believed to be. Musicians in particular rely heavily on photographers to capture their essence and persona to become known legends. So when my dear, wildly creative, friend since the third grade, Brian Lima grew up to be an insanely talented and successful music photographer, I had to share him and his all access pass with you. Hang out with us as we shoot the s%#t like the old friends we are about our shared love/hate relationship with photography,  the trajectory of his creative career in the music scene, Joni Mitchell at Newport Folk last year and so much more. Join us as we explore: How photography can shape how you look at life.What it means to be a seer in the world and its many lessons.How to fuel your creativity and stay in relationship with your art.The ways being present allows you to experience more of the momentThe unexpected way listening informs how you see and beyond. Connect with Robyn Ivy here: Website:: https://www.brianlima.com/Instagram:: https://www.instagram.com/limaphoto/ Quick note, I just want to say thank you for listening to this episode. I know it means a lot to myself and my guests.  If you enjoyed this episode, you will also like: Episode #46: Mary Jo Hoffman: Everyday Stillness Episode #42: Onne van der Wal: Live Your Adventure Episode #6o: Fred Poisson: Illuminating Creativity and Process   MORE ABOUT BRIAN LIMA: I remember getting my first couple of vinyl LP's as a kid and falling in love with the album art and the photography that told the visual story of the music I loved listening to.   Anton Corbijn black & white images for The Joshua Tree by U2 blew my mind.  Dennis Morris's candids and portraits of Bob Marley are magic, Henry Diltz's Laurel Canyon work just so dreamy.  To this day I'm constantly inspired by so many other photographers work.   ​ I'm constantly in search of new projects and ideas.  2023 will mark 13 years of being one of the principal photographers for the historic Newport Folk Festival & Newport Jazz Festival.  I'm proud of the images I'm creating with this amazingly talented team of creatives. ​ I'm also part of the creative team for Coachella Music Festival.  2020 is Coachella's 20th anniversary.  It has been fun to watch this idea blossom into what it has become.   Staff Photographer :  Coachella Music Festival | Newport Folk Festival | Newport Jazz Festival | Stage Coach Music Festival | Day In Vegas Music Festival ​ Clients: ​Golden Voice Entertainment | AEG World Wide | TuneIn Radio | Rolling Stone Magazine | Billboard Magazine | New York Times

Mark ...Lou..& Perry talk Henry Diltz --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/perry--dedovitch/message

What a down year this has started out to be. Jeff Beck, now David Crosby. Rock photographer Henry Diltz said: “Our old friend David Crosby walked into the next room today. Imagine what he's seeing right this minute. We can only guess, but they say it's pretty cool. Looking forward to seeing him on the other side”. Can you dig what Beck and DC just might be up to?The year is gonna get better, I do believe. So lets get down to business. Jeff Beck's imaginative and innovative guitar work spilled all over rock, blues and jazz worlds since he played with The Yardbirds as early at 1965. “‘Cause we've ended as lovers” is sultry, Goin Down rocks the house. Great stuff here today! That'll be Wednesday at 5 Central on RadioFreeNashville.org.

Iconic photographer Henry Diltz has shot more than 250 album covers and thousands of publicity shots in the ‘60s and ‘70s, for bands and artists such as The Doors, the Eagles, Neil Young, Crosby Stills & Nash, Jackson Browne, America, Steppenwolf, James Taylor, Jimi Hendrix, The Monkees and David Cassidy. He was the official photographer at the Woodstock festival in August 1969. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, LIFE, People, Rolling Stone, High Times and Billboard.My Rock Moment has been lucky enough to have Henry on twice, and in this episode we delve into the 70s, covering everything from the first two Eagles album covers, to meeting Jackson Browne for the first time to shooting James Taylor's Sweet Baby James album cover. Henry also recalls shooting Mama Cass in Palm Springs, Monterey Pop and Woodstock '99, which is getting quite a bit of attention recently due to the Netflix documentary that painted a dark picture of the 3 day festival.If you would like to check out some of Henry's iconic work, sold exclusively through The Morrison Hotel Gallery, click here: https://morrisonhotelgallery.com/collections/henry-diltzAnd don't forget to follow My Rock Moment on social:Instagram: @la_woman_rocksFacebook: https://morrisonhotelgallery.com/collections/henry-diltz

So I was singin' Lee Lo with Henry Diltz in Creque Alley and having a Conversation with Sweet Baby James. I Ain't Scared Of Your Jail, I told him. Then he asked me, Who Are the Brain Police? Well, I said I was Born Under a Bad Sign with the Roadhouse Blues, and I'm helplessly hoping that there's a Place in the World for a Gambler. Confused, he said, I'm gonna Go Back Home For What It's Worth.

Episode one hundred and fifty-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs is the last of our four-part mini-series on LA sunshine pop and folk-rock in summer 1967. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Baby, Now That I've Found You" by the Foundations. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources There is no Mixcloud this week, because there were too many Turtles songs in the episode. There's relatively little information available about the Turtles compared to other bands of their era, and so apart from the sources on the general LA scene referenced in all these podcasts, the information here comes from a small number of sources. This DVD is a decent short documentary on the band's career. Howard Kaylan's autobiography, Shell Shocked: My Life with the Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and Frank Zappa, Etc.,  is a fun read, if inevitably biased towards his own viewpoint. Jim Pons' Hard Core Love: Sex, Football, and Rock and Roll in the Kingdom of God is much less fun, being as it is largely organised around how his life led up to his latter-day religious beliefs, but is the only other book I'm aware of with a substantial amount of coverage of the Turtles. There are many compilations of the Turtles' material available, of which All The Singles is by far and away the best. The box set of all their albums with bonus tracks is now out of print on CD, but can still be bought as MP3s. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript We've spent a lot of time recently in the LA of summer 1967, at the point where the sunshine pop sound that was created when the surf harmonies of the Beach Boys collided with folk rock was at its apex, right before fashions changed and tight sunny pop songs with harmonies from LA became yesterday's news, and extended blues-rock improvisations from San Francisco became the latest in thing. This episode is the last part of this four-episode sequence, and is going to be shorter than those others. In many ways this one is a bridge between this sequence and next episode, where we travel back to London, because we're saying goodbye for a while to the LA scene, and when we do return to LA it will be, for the most part, to look at music that's a lot less sunshine and a lot more shadow. So this is a brief fade-out while we sing ba-ba-ba, a three-minute pop-song of an episode, a last bit of sunshine pop before we return to longer, more complicated, stories  in two weeks' time, at which point the sun will firmly set. Like many musicians associated with LA, Howard Kaylan was born elsewhere and migrated there as a child, and he seems to have regarded his move from upstate New York to LA as essentially a move to Disneyland itself. That impression can only have been made stronger by the fact that soon after his family moved there he got his first childhood girlfriend -- who happened to be a Mouseketeer on the TV. And TV was how young Howard filtered most of his perceptions -- particularly TV comedy. By the age of fourteen he was the president of the Soupy Sales Fan Club, and he was also obsessed with the works of Ernie Kovacs, Sid Caesar, and the great satirist and parodist Stan Freberg: [Excerpt: Stan Freberg, "St. George and the Dragonet"] Second only to his love of comedy, though, was his love of music, and it was on the trip from New York to LA that he saw a show that would eventually change his life. Along the way, his family had gone to Las Vegas, and while there they had seen Louis Prima and Keeley Smith do their nightclub act. Prima is someone I would have liked to do a full podcast episode on when I was covering the fifties, and who I did do a Patreon bonus episode on. He's now probably best known for doing the voice of King Louis in the Jungle Book: [Excerpt: Louis Prima, "I Wanna Be Like You (the Monkey Song)"] But he was also a jump blues musician who made some very good records in a similar style to Louis Jordan, like "Jump, Jive, an' Wail" [Excerpt: Louis Prima, "Jump, Jive, an' Wail"] But like Jordan, Prima dealt at least as much in comedy as in music -- usually comedy involving stereotypes about his Italian-American ethnic origins. At the time young Howard Kaylan saw him, he was working a double act with his then-wife Keeley Smith. The act would consist of Smith trying to sing a song straight, while Prima would clown around, interject, and act like a fool, as Smith grew more and more exasperated, and would eventually start contemptuously mocking Prima. [Excerpt: Louis Prima and Keeley Smith, "Embraceable You/I've Got It Bad and That Ain't Good"] This is of course a fairly standard double-act format, as anyone who has suffered through an episode of The Little and Large Show will be all too painfully aware, but Prima and Smith did it better than most, and to young Howard Kaylan, this was the greatest entertainment imaginable. But while comedy was the closest thing to Kaylan's heart, music was a close second. He was a regular listener to Art Laboe's radio show, and in a brief period as a teenage shoplifter he obtained records like Ray Charles' album Genius + Soul = Jazz: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, "One Mint Julep"] and the single "Tossin' and Turnin'" by Bobby Lewis: [Excerpt: Bobby Lewis, "Tossin' and Turnin'"] "Tossin' and Turnin'" made a deep impression on Kaylan, because of the saxophone solo, which was actually a saxophone duet. On the record, baritone sax player Frank Henry played a solo, and it was doubled by the great tenor sax player King Curtis, who was just playing a mouthpiece rather than a full instrument, making a high-pitched squeaking sound: [Excerpt: Bobby Lewis, "Tossin' and Turnin'"] Curtis was of course also responsible for another great saxophone part a couple of years earlier, on a record that Kaylan loved because it combined comedy and rock and roll, "Yakety Yak": [Excerpt: The Coasters, "Yakety Yak"] Those two saxophone parts inspired Kaylan to become a rock and roller. He was already learning the clarinet and playing part time in an amateur Dixieland band, and it was easy enough to switch to saxophone, which has the same fingering. Within a matter of weeks of starting to play sax, he was invited to join a band called the Nightriders, who consisted of Chuck Portz on bass, Al Nichol on guitar, and Glen Wilson on drums. The Nightriders became locally popular, and would perform sets largely made up of Johnny and the Hurricanes and Ventures material. While he was becoming a budding King Curtis, Kaylan was still a schoolkid, and one of the classes he found most enjoyable was choir class. There was another kid in choir who Kaylan got on with, and one day that kid, Mark Volman came up to him, and had a conversation that Kaylan would recollect decades later in his autobiography: “So I hear you're in a rock 'n' roll band.” “Yep.” “Um, do you think I could join it?” “Well, what do you do?” “Nothing.” “Nothing?” “Nope.” “Sounds good to me. I'll ask Al.” Volman initially became the group's roadie and occasional tambourine player, and would also get on stage to sing a bit during their very occasional vocal numbers, but was mostly "in the band" in name only at first -- he didn't get a share of the group's money, but he was allowed to say he was in the group because that meant that his friends would come to the Nightriders' shows, and he was popular among the surfing crowd. Eventually, Volman's father started to complain that his son wasn't getting any money from being in the band, while the rest of the group were, and they explained to him that Volman was just carrying the instruments while they were all playing them. Volman's father said "if Mark plays an instrument, will you give him equal shares?" and they said that that was fair, so Volman got an alto sax to play along with Kaylan's tenor. Volman had also been taking clarinet lessons, and the two soon became a tight horn section for the group, which went through a few lineup changes and soon settled on a lineup of Volman and Kaylan on saxes, Nichol on lead guitar, Jim Tucker on rhythm guitar, Portz on bass, and Don Murray on drums. That new lineup became known as the Crossfires, presumably after the Johnny and the Hurricanes song of the same name: [Excerpt: Johnny and the Hurricanes, "Crossfire"] Volman and Kaylan worked out choreographed dance steps to do while playing their saxes, and the group even developed a group of obsessive fans who called themselves the Chunky Club, named after one of the group's originals: [Excerpt: The Crossfires, "Chunky"] At this point the group were pretty much only playing instrumentals, though they would do occasional vocals on R&B songs like "Money" or their version of Don and Dewey's "Justine", songs which required more enthusiasm than vocal ability. But their first single, released on a tiny label, was another surf instrumental, a song called "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde": [Excerpt: The Crossfires, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde"] The group became popular enough locally that they became the house band at the Revelaire Club in Redondo Beach. There as well as playing their own sets, they would also be the backing band for any touring acts that came through without their own band, quickly gaining the kind of performing ability that comes from having to learn a new artist's entire repertoire in a few days and be able to perform it with them live with little or no rehearsal. They backed artists like the Coasters, the Drifters, Bobby Vee, the Rivingtons, and dozens of other major acts, and as part of that Volman and Kaylan would, on songs that required backing vocals, sing harmonies rather than playing saxophone. And that harmony-singing ability became important when the British Invasion happened, and suddenly people didn't want to hear surf instrumentals, but vocals along the lines of the new British groups. The Crossfires' next attempt at a single was another original, this one an attempt at sounding like one of their favourite new British groups, the Kinks: [Excerpt: The Crossfires, "One Potato, Two Potato"] This change to vocals necessitated a change in the group dynamic. Volman and Kaylan ditched the saxophones, and discovered that between them they made one great frontman. The two have never been excessively close on a personal level, but both have always known that the other has qualities they needed. Frank Zappa would later rather dismissively say "I regard Howard as a fine singer, and Mark as a great tambourine player and fat person", and it's definitely true that Kaylan is one of the truly great vocalists to come out of the LA scene in this period, while Volman is merely a good harmony singer, not anything particularly special -- though he *is* a good harmony singer -- but it undersells Volman's contribution. There's a reason the two men performed together for nearly sixty years. Kaylan is a great singer, but also by nature rather reserved, and he always looked uncomfortable on stage, as well as, frankly, not exactly looking like a rock star (Kaylan describes himself not inaccurately as looking like a potato several times in his autobiography). Volman, on the other hand, is a merely good singer, but he has a naturally outgoing personality, and while he's also not the most conventionally good-looking of people he has a *memorable* appearance in a way that Kaylan doesn't. Volman could do all the normal frontman stuff, the stuff that makes a show an actual show -- the jokes, the dancing, the between-song patter, the getting the crowd going, while Kaylan could concentrate on the singing. They started doing a variation on the routine that had so enthralled Howard Kaylan when he'd seen Louis Prima and Keeley Smith do it as a child. Kaylan would stand more or less stock still, looking rather awkward, but singing like an angel, while Volman would dance around, clown, act the fool, and generally do everything he could to disrupt the performance -- short of actually disrupting it in reality. It worked, and Volman became one of that small but illustrious group of people -- the band member who makes the least contribution to the sound of the music but the biggest contribution to the feel of the band itself, and without whom they wouldn't be the same. After "One Potato, Two Potato" was a flop, the Crossfires were signed to their third label. This label, White Whale, was just starting out, and the Crossfires were to become their only real hit act. Or rather, the Turtles were. The owners of White Whale knew that they didn't have much promotional budget and that their label was not a known quantity -- it was a tiny label with no track record. But they thought of a way they could turn that to their advantage. Everyone knew that the Beatles, before Capitol had picked up their contracts, had had their records released on a bunch of obscure labels like Swan and Tollie. People *might* look for records on tiny independent labels if they thought it might be another British act who were unknown in the US but could be as good as the Beatles. So they chose a name for the group that they thought sounded as English as possible -- an animal name that started with "the", and ended in "les", just like the Beatles. The group, all teenagers at the time, were desperate enough that they agreed to change their name, and from that point on they became the Turtles. In order to try and jump on as many bandwagons as possible, the label wanted to position them as a folk-rock band, so their first single under the Turtles name was a cover of a Bob Dylan song, from Another Side of Bob Dylan: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "It Ain't Me Babe"] That song's hit potential had already been seen by Johnny Cash, who'd had a country hit with it a few months before. But the Turtles took the song in a different direction, inspired by Kaylan's *other* great influence, along with Prima and Smith. Kaylan was a big fan of the Zombies, one of the more interesting of the British Invasion groups, and particularly of their singer Colin Blunstone. Kaylan imitated Blunstone on the group's hit single, "She's Not There", on which Blunstone sang in a breathy, hushed, voice on the verses: [Excerpt: The Zombies, "She's Not There"] before the song went into a more stomping chorus on which Blunstone sang in a fuller voice: [Excerpt: The Zombies, "She's Not There"] Kaylan did this on the Turtles' version of "It Ain't Me Babe", starting off with a quiet verse: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "It Ain't Me Babe"] Before, like the Zombies, going into a foursquare, more uptempo, louder chorus: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "It Ain't Me Babe"] The single became a national top ten hit, and even sort of got the approval of Bob Dylan. On the group's first national tour, Dylan was at one club show, which they ended with "It Ain't Me Babe", and after the show the group were introduced to the great songwriter, who was somewhat the worse for wear. Dylan said “Hey, that was a great song you just played, man. That should be your single", and then passed out into his food. With the group's first single becoming a top ten hit, Volman and Kaylan got themselves a house in Laurel Canyon, which was not yet the rock star Mecca it was soon to become, but which was starting to get a few interesting residents. They would soon count Henry Diltz of the Modern Folk Quartet, Danny Hutton, and Frank Zappa among their neighbours. Soon Richie Furay would move in with them, and the house would be used by the future members of the Buffalo Springfield as their rehearsal space. The Turtles were rapidly becoming part of the in crowd. But they needed a follow-up single, and so Bones Howe, who was producing their records, brought in P.F. Sloan to play them a few of his new songs. They liked "Eve of Destruction" enough to earmark it as a possible album track, but they didn't think they would do it justice, and so it was passed on to Barry McGuire. But Sloan did have something for them -- a pseudo-protest song called "Let Me Be" that was very clearly patterned after their version of "It Ain't Me Babe", and which was just rebellious enough to make them seem a little bit daring, but which was far more teenage angst than political manifesto: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Let Me Be"] That did relatively well, making the top thirty -- well enough for the group to rush out an album which was padded out with some sloppy cover versions of other Dylan songs, a version of "Eve of Destruction", and a few originals written by Kaylan. But the group weren't happy with the idea of being protest singers. They were a bunch of young men who were more motivated by having a good time than by politics, and they didn't think that it made sense for them to be posing as angry politicised rebels. Not only that, but there was a significant drop-off between "It Ain't Me Babe" and "Let Me Be". They needed to do better. They got the clue for their new direction while they were in New York. There they saw their friends in the Mothers of Invention playing their legendary residency at the Garrick Theatre, but they also saw a new band, the Lovin' Spoonful, who were playing music that was clearly related to the music the Turtles were doing -- full of harmonies and melody, and inspired by folk music -- but with no sense of rebelliousness at all. They called it "Good Time Music": [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Good Time Music"] As soon as they got back to LA, they told Bones Howe and the executives at White Whale that they weren't going to be a folk-rock group any more, they were going to be "good time music", just like the Lovin' Spoonful. They were expecting some resistance, but they were told that that was fine, and that PF Sloan had some good time music songs too. "You Baby" made the top twenty: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "You Baby"] The Turtles were important enough in the hierarchy of LA stars that Kaylan and Tucker were even invited by David Crosby to meet the Beatles at Derek Taylor's house when they were in LA on their last tour -- this may be the same day that the Beatles met Brian and Carl Wilson, as I talked about in the episode on "All You Need is Love", though Howard Kaylan describes this as being a party and that sounded like more of an intimate gathering. If it was that day, there was nearly a third Beach Boy there. The Turtles knew David Marks, the Beach Boys' former rhythm guitarist, because they'd played a lot in Inglewood where he'd grown up, and Marks asked if he could tag along with Kaylan and Tucker to meet the Beatles. They agreed, and drove up to the house, and actually saw George Harrison through the window, but that was as close as they got to the Beatles that day. There was a heavy police presence around the house because it was known that the Beatles were there, and one of the police officers asked them to drive back and park somewhere else and walk up, because there had been complaints from neighbours about the number of cars around. They were about to do just that, when Marks started yelling obscenities and making pig noises at the police, so they were all arrested, and the police claimed to find a single cannabis seed in the car. Charges were dropped, but now Kaylan was on the police's radar, and so he moved out of the Laurel Canyon home to avoid bringing police attention to Buffalo Springfield, so that Neil Young and Bruce Palmer wouldn't get deported. But generally the group were doing well. But there was a problem. And that problem was their record label. They rushed out another album to cash in on the success of "You Baby", one that was done so quickly that it had "Let Me Be" on it again, just as the previous album had, and which included a version of the old standard "All My Trials", with the songwriting credited to the two owners of White Whale records. And they pumped out a lot of singles. A LOT of singles, ranging from a song written for them by new songwriter Warren Zevon, to cover versions of Frank Sinatra's "It Was a Very Good Year" and the old standard "We'll Meet Again". Of the five singles after "You Baby", the one that charted highest was a song actually written by a couple of the band members. But for some reason a song with verses in 5/4 time and choruses in 6/4 with lyrics like "killing the living and living to kill, the grim reaper of love thrives on pain" didn't appeal to the group's good-time music pop audience and only reached number eighty-one: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Grim Reaper of Love"] The group started falling apart. Don Murray became convinced that  the rest of the band were conspiring against him and wanted him out, so he walked out of the group in the middle of a rehearsal for a TV show. They got Joel Larson of the Grass Roots -- the group who had a number of hits with Sloan and Barri songs -- to sub for a few gigs before getting in a permanent replacement, Johnny Barbata, who came to them on the recommendation of Gene Clark, and who was one of the best drummers on the scene -- someone who was not only a great drummer but a great showman, who would twirl his drumsticks between his fingers with every beat, and who would regularly engage in drum battles with Buddy Rich. By the time they hit their fifth flop single in a row, they lost their bass player as well -- Chuck Portz decided he was going to quit music and become a fisherman instead. They replaced him with Chip Douglas of the Modern Folk Quartet. Then they very nearly lost their singers. Volman and Kaylan both got their draft notices at the same time, and it seemed likely they would end up having to go and fight in the Vietnam war. Kaylan was distraught, but his mother told him "Speak to your cousin Herb". Cousin Herb was Herb Cohen, the manager of the Mothers of Invention and numerous other LA acts, including the Modern Folk Quartet, and Kaylan only vaguely knew him at this time, but he agreed to meet up with them, and told them “Stop worrying! I got Zappa out, I got Tim Buckley out, and I'll get you out.” Cohen told Volman and Kaylan to not wash for a week before their induction, to take every drug of every different kind they could find right before going in, to deliberately disobey every order, to fail the logic tests, and to sexually proposition the male officers dealing with the induction. They followed his orders to the letter, and got marked as 4-F, unfit for service. They still needed a hit though, and eventually they found something by going back to their good-time music idea. It was a song from the Koppelman-Rubin publishing company -- the same company that did the Lovin Spoonful's management and production. The song in question was by Alan Gordon and Gary Bonner, two former members of a group called the Magicians, who had had a minor success with a single called "An Invitation to Cry": [Excerpt: The Magicians, "An Invitation to Cry"] The Magicians had split up, and Bonner and Gordon were trying to make a go of things as professional songwriters, but had had little success to this point. The song on the demo had been passed over by everyone, and the demo was not at all impressive, just a scratchy acetate with Bonner singing off-key and playing acoustic rhythm guitar and Gordon slapping his knees to provide rhythm, but the group heard something in it. They played the song live for months, refining the arrangement, before taking it into the studio. There are arguments to this day as to who deserves the credit for the sound on "Happy Together" -- Chip Douglas apparently did the bulk of the arrangement work while they were on tour, but the group's new producer, Joe Wissert, a former staff engineer for Cameo-Parkway, also claimed credit for much of it. Either way, "Happy Together" is a small masterpiece of dynamics. The song is structured much like the songs that had made the Turtles' name, with the old Zombies idea of the soft verse and much louder chorus: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Happy Together"] But the track is really made by the tiny details of the arrangement, the way instruments and vocal parts come in and out as the track builds up, dies down, and builds again. If you listen to the isolated tracks, there are fantastic touches like the juxtaposition of the bassoon and oboe (which I think is played on a mellotron): [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Happy Together", isolated tracks] And a similar level of care and attention was put into the vocal arrangement by Douglas, with some parts just Kaylan singing solo, other parts having Volman double him, and of course the famous "bah bah bah" massed vocals: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Happy Together", isolated vocals] At the end of the track, thinking he was probably going to do another take, Kaylan decided to fool around and sing "How is the weather?", which Bonner and Gordon had jokingly done on the demo. But the group loved it, and insisted that was the take they were going to use: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Happy Together"] "Happy Together" knocked "Penny Lane" by the Beatles off the number one spot in the US, but by that point the group had already had another lineup change. The Monkees had decided they wanted to make records without the hit factory that had been overseeing them, and had asked Chip Douglas if he wanted to produce their first recordings as a self-contained band. Given that the Monkees were the biggest thing in the American music industry at the time, Douglas had agreed, and so the group needed their third bass player in a year. The one they went for was Jim Pons. Pons had seen the Beatles play at the Hollywood Bowl in 1964, and decided he wanted to become a pop star. The next day he'd been in a car crash, which had paid out enough insurance money that he was able to buy two guitars, a bass, drums, and amps, and use them to start his own band. That band was originally called The Rockwells, but quickly changed their name to the Leaves, and became a regular fixture at Ciro's on Sunset Strip, first as customers, then after beating Love in the auditions, as the new resident band when the Byrds left. For a while the Leaves had occasionally had guest vocals from a singer called Richard Marin, but Pons eventually decided to get rid of him, because, as he put it "I wanted us to look like The Beatles. There were no Mexicans in The Beatles". He is at pains in his autobiography to assure us that he's not a bigot, and that Marin understood. I'm sure he did. Marin went on to be better known as Cheech Marin of Cheech and Chong. The Leaves were signed by Pat Boone to his production company, and through that company they got signed to Mira Records. Their first single, produced by Nik Venet, had been a version of "Love Minus Zero (No Limit)", a song by Bob Dylan: [Excerpt: The Leaves, "Love Minus Zero (No Limit)"] That had become a local hit, though not a national one, and the Leaves had become one of the biggest bands on the Sunset Strip scene, hanging out with all the other bands. They had become friendly with the Doors before the Doors got a record deal, and Pat Boone had even asked for an introduction, as he was thinking of signing them, but unfortunately when he met Jim Morrison, Morrison had drunk a lot of vodka, and given that Morrison was an obnoxious drunk Boone had second thoughts, and so the world missed out on the chance of a collaboration between the Doors and Pat Boone. Their second single was "Hey Joe" -- as was their third and fourth, as we discussed in that episode: [Excerpt: The Leaves, "Hey Joe"] Their third version of "Hey Joe" had become a top forty hit, but they didn't have a follow-up, and their second album, All The Good That's Happening, while it's a good album, sold poorly. Various band members quit or fell out, and when Johnny Barbata knocked on Jim Pons' door it was an easy decision to quit and join a band that had a current number one hit. When Pons joined, the group had already recorded the Happy Together album. That album included the follow-up to "Happy Together", another Bonner and Gordon song, "She'd Rather Be With Me": [Excerpt: The Turtles, "She'd Rather Be With Me"] None of the group were tremendously impressed with that song, but it did very well, becoming the group's second-biggest hit in the US, reaching number three, and actually becoming a bigger hit than "Happy Together" in parts of Europe. Before "Happy Together" the group hadn't really made much impact outside the US. In the UK, their early singles had been released by Pye, the smallish label that had the Kinks and Donovan, but which didn't have much promotional budget, and they'd sunk without trace. For "You Baby" they'd switched to Immediate, the indie label that Andrew Oldham had set up, and it had done a little better but still not charted. But from "Happy Together" they were on Decca, a much bigger label, and "Happy Together" had made number twelve in the charts in the UK, and "She'd Rather Be With Me" reached number four. So the new lineup of the group went on a UK tour. As soon as they got to the hotel, they found they had a message from Graham Nash of the Hollies, saying he would like to meet up with them. They all went round to Nash's house, and found Donovan was also there, and Nash played them a tape he'd just been given of Sgt Pepper, which wouldn't come out for a few more days. At this point they were living every dream a bunch of Anglophile American musicians could possibly have. Jim Tucker mentioned that he would love to meet the Beatles, and Nash suggested they do just that. On their way out the door, Donovan said to them, "beware of Lennon". It was when they got to the Speakeasy club that the first faux-pas of the evening happened. Nash introduced them to Justin Hayward and John Lodge of the Moody Blues, and Volman said how much he loved their record "Go Now": [Excerpt: The Moody Blues, "Go Now"] The problem was that Hayward and Lodge had joined the group after that record had come out, to replace its lead singer Denny Laine. Oh well, they were still going to meet the Beatles, right? They got to the table where John, Paul, and Ringo were sat, at a tense moment -- Paul was having a row with Jane Asher, who stormed out just as the Turtles were getting there. But at first, everything seemed to go well. The Beatles all expressed their admiration for "Happy Together" and sang the "ba ba ba" parts at them, and Paul and Kaylan bonded over their shared love for "Justine" by Don and Dewey, a song which the Crossfires had performed in their club sets, and started singing it together: [Excerpt: Don and Dewey, "Justine"] But John Lennon was often a mean drunk, and he noticed that Jim Tucker seemed to be the weak link in the group, and soon started bullying him, mocking his clothes, his name, and everything he said. This devastated Tucker, who had idolised Lennon up to that point, and blurted out "I'm sorry I ever met you", to which Lennon just responded "You never did, son, you never did". The group walked out, hurt and confused -- and according to Kaylan in his autobiography, Tucker was so demoralised by Lennon's abuse that he quit music forever shortly afterwards, though Tucker says that this wasn't the reason he quit. From their return to LA on, the Turtles would be down to just a five-piece band. After leaving the club, the group went off in different directions, but then Kaylan (and this is according to Kaylan's autobiography, there are no other sources for this) was approached by Brian Jones, asking for his autograph because he loved the Turtles so much. Jones introduced Kaylan to the friend he was with, Jimi Hendrix, and they went out for dinner, but Jones soon disappeared with a girl he'd met. and left Kaylan and Hendrix alone. They were drinking a lot -- more than Kaylan was used to -- and he was tired, and the omelette that Hendrix had ordered for Kaylan was creamier than he was expecting... and Kaylan capped what had been a night full of unimaginable highs and lows by vomiting all over Jimi Hendrix's expensive red velvet suit. Rather amazingly after all this, the Moody Blues, the Beatles, and Hendrix, all showed up to the Turtles' London gig and apparently enjoyed it. After "She'd Rather Be With Me", the next single to be released wasn't really a proper single, it was a theme song they'd been asked to record for a dire sex comedy titled "Guide for the Married Man", and is mostly notable for being composed by John Williams, the man who would later go on to compose the music for Star Wars. That didn't chart, but the group followed it with two more top twenty hits written by Bonner and Gordon, "You Know What I Mean" and "She's My Girl". But then the group decided that Bonner and Gordon weren't giving them their best material, and started turning down their submissions, like a song called "Celebrity Ball" which they thought had no commercial potential, at least until the song was picked up by their friends Three Dog Night, retitled "Celebrate", and made the top twenty: [Excerpt: Three Dog Night, "Celebrate"] Instead, the group decided to start recording more of their own material. They were worried that in the fast-changing rock world bands that did other songwriters' material were losing credibility. But "Sound Asleep", their first effort in this new plan, only made number forty-seven on the charts. Clearly they needed a different plan. They called in their old bass player Chip Douglas, who was now an experienced hitmaker as a producer. He called in *his* friend Harry Nilsson, who wrote "The Story of Rock & Roll" for the group, but that didn't do much better, only making number forty-eight. But the group persevered, starting work on a new album produced by Douglas, The Turtles Present The Battle of the Bands, the conceit of which was that every track would be presented as being by a different band. So there were tracks by  Chief Kamanawanalea and his Royal Macadamia Nuts,  Fats Mallard and the Bluegrass Fireball, The Atomic Enchilada, and so on, all done in the styles suggested by those band names. There was even a track by "The Cross Fires": [Excerpt: The Cross Fires, "Surfer Dan"] It was the first time the group had conceived of an album as a piece, and nine of the twelve tracks were originals by the band -- there was a track written by their friend Bill Martin, and the opening track, by "The US Teens Featuring Raoul", was co-written by Chip Douglas and Harry Nilsson. But for the most part the songs were written by the band members themselves, and jointly credited to all of them. This was the democratic decision, but one that Howard Kaylan would later regret, because of the song for which the band name was just "Howie, Mark, Johnny, Jim & Al". Where all the other songs were parodies of other types of music, that one was, as the name suggests, a parody of the Turtles themselves. It was written by Kaylan in disgust at the record label, who kept pestering the group to "give us another 'Happy Together'". Kaylan got more and more angry at this badgering, and eventually thought "OK, you want another 'Happy Together'? I'll give you another 'Happy Together'" and in a few minutes wrote a song that was intended as an utterly vicious parody of that kind of song, with lyrics that nobody could possibly take seriously, and with music that was just mocking the whole structure of "Happy Together" specifically. He played it to the rest of the group, expecting them to fall about laughing, but instead they all insisted it was the group's next single. "Elenore" went to number six on the charts, becoming their biggest hit since "She'd Rather Be With Me": [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Elenore"] And because everything was credited to the group, Kaylan's songwriting royalties were split five ways. For the follow-up, they chose the one actual cover version on the album. "You Showed Me" is a song that Roger McGuinn and Gene Clark had written together in the very early days of the Byrds, and they'd recorded it as a jangly folk-rock tune in 1964: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "You Showed Me"] They'd never released that track, but Gene Clark had performed it solo after leaving the Byrds, and Douglas had been in Clark's band at the time, and liked the song. He played it for the Turtles, but when he played it for them the only instrument he had to hand was a pump organ with one of its bellows broken. Because of this, he had to play it slowly, and while he kept insisting that the song needed to be faster, the group were equally insistent that what he was playing them was the big ballad hit they wanted, and they recorded it at that tempo. "You Showed Me" became the Turtles' final top ten hit: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "You Showed Me"] But once again there were problems in the group. Johnny Barbata was the greatest drummer any of them had ever played with, but he didn't fit as a personality -- he didn't like hanging round with the rest of them when not on stage, and while there were no hard feelings, it was clear he could get a gig with pretty much anyone and didn't need to play with a group he wasn't entirely happy in. By mutual agreement, he left to go and play with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and was replaced by John Seiter from Spanky and Our Gang -- a good drummer, but not the best of the best like Barbata had been. On top of this, there were a whole host of legal problems to deal with. The Turtles were the only big act on White Whale records, though White Whale did put out some other records. For example, they'd released the single "Desdemona" by John's Children in the US: [Excerpt: John's Children, "Desdemona"] The group, being the Anglophiles they were, had loved that record, and were also among the very small number of Americans to like the music made by John's Children's guitarist's new folk duo, Tyrannosaurus Rex: [Excerpt: Tyrannosaurus Rex, "Debora"] When Tyrannosaurus Rex supported the Turtles, indeed, Volman and Kaylan became very close to Marc Bolan, and told him that the next time they were in England they'd have to get together, maybe even record together. That would happen not that many years later, with results we'll be getting to in... episode 201, by my current calculations. But John's Children hadn't had a hit, and indeed nobody on White Whale other than the Turtles had. So White Whale desperately wanted to stop the Turtles having any independence, and to make sure they continued to be their hit factory. They worked with the group's roadie, Dave Krambeck, to undermine the group's faith in their manager, Bill Utley, who supported the group in their desire for independence. Soon, Krambeck and White Whale had ousted Utley, and Krambeck had paid Utley fifty thousand dollars for their management contract, with the promise of another two hundred thousand later. That fifty thousand dollars had been taken by Krambeck as an advance against the Turtles' royalties, so they were really buying themselves out. Except that Krambeck then sold the management contract on to a New York management firm, without telling the group. He then embezzled as much of the group's ready cash as he could and ran off to Mexico, without paying Utley his two hundred thousand dollars. The Turtles were out of money, and they were being sued by Utley because he hadn't had the money he should have had, and by the big New York firm, because  since the Turtles hadn't known they were now legally their managers they were in breach of contract. They needed money quickly, and so they signed with another big management company, this one co-owned by Bill Cosby, in the belief that Cosby's star power might be able to get them some better bookings. It did -- one of the group's first gigs after signing with the new company was at the White House. It turned out they were Tricia Nixon's favourite group, and so they and the Temptations were booked at her request for a White House party. The group at first refused to play for a President they rightly thought of as a monster, but their managers insisted. That destroyed their reputation among the cool antiestablishment youth, of course, but it did start getting them well-paid corporate gigs. Right up until the point where Kaylan became sick at his own hypocrisy at playing these events, drank too much of the complimentary champagne at an event for the president of US Steel, went into a drunken rant about how sick the audience made him, and then about how his bandmates were a bunch of sellouts, threw his mic into a swimming pool, and quit while still on stage. He was out of the band for two months, during which time they worked on new material without him, before they made up and decided to work on a new album. This new album, though, was going to be more democratic. As well as being all original material, they weren't having any of this nonsense about the lead singer singing lead. This time, whoever wrote the song was going to sing lead, so Kaylan only ended up singing lead on six of the twelve songs on what turned out to be their final album, Turtle Soup. They wanted a truly great producer for the new album, and they all made lists of who they might call. The lists included a few big names like George Martin and Phil Spector, but one name kept turning up -- Ray Davies. As we'll hear in the next episode, the Kinks had been making some astonishing music since "You Really Got Me", but most of it had not been heard in the US. But the Turtles all loved the Kinks' 1968 album The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, which they considered the best album ever made: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Animal Farm"] They got in touch with Davies, and he agreed to produce the album -- the first time he did any serious outside production work -- and eventually they were able to persuade White Whale, who had no idea who he was, to allow him to produce it. The resulting album is by far the group's strongest album-length work, though there were problems -- Davies' original mix of the album was dominated by the orchestral parts written by Wrecking Crew musician Ray Pohlman, while the group thought that their own instruments should be more audible, since they were trying to prove that they were a proper band. They remixed it themselves, annoying Davies, though reissues since the eighties have reverted to a mix closer to Davies' intentions. Some of the music, like Pons' "Dance This Dance With Me", perhaps has the group trying a little *too* hard to sound like the Kinks: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Dance This Dance With Me"] But on the other hand, Kaylan's "You Don't Have to Walk in the Rain" is the group's last great pop single, and has one of the best lines of any single from the sixties -- "I look at your face, I love you anyway": [Excerpt: The Turtles, "You Don't Have to Walk in the Rain"] But the album produced no hits, and the group were getting more and more problems from their label. White Whale tried to get Volman and Kaylan to go to Memphis without the other band members to record with Chips Moman, but they refused -- the Turtles were a band, and they were proud of not having session players play their parts on the records. Instead, they started work with Jerry Yester producing on a new album, to be called Shell Shock. They did, though bow to pressure and record a terrible country track called "Who Would Ever Think That I Would Marry Margaret" backed by session players, at White Whale's insistence, but managed to persuade the label not to release it. They audited White Whale and discovered that in the first six months of 1969 alone -- a period where they hadn't sold that many records -- they'd been underpaid by a staggering six hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They sued the label for several million, and in retaliation, the label locked them out of the recording studio, locking their equipment in there. They basically begged White Whale to let them record one last great single, one last throw of the dice. Jim Pons had, for years, known a keyboard player named Bob Harris, and had recently got to know Harris' wife, Judee Sill. Sill had a troubled life -- she was a heroin addict, and had at times turned to streetwalking to earn money, and had spent time in prison for armed robbery -- but she was also an astonishing songwriter, whose music was as inspired by Bach as by any pop or folk composer. Sill had been signed to Blimp, the Turtles' new production and publishing company, and Pons was co-producing some tracks on her first album, with Graham Nash producing others. Pons thought one song from that album, "Lady-O", would be perfect for the Turtles: [Excerpt: Judee Sill, "Lady-O"] (music continues under) The Turtles stuck closely to Sill's vision of the song. So closely that you haven't noticed that before I started talking, we'd already switched from Sill's record to the Turtles' version. [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Lady-O"] That track, with Sill on guitar backing Kaylan, Volman, and Nichol's vocals, was the last Turtles single to be released while the band were together. Despite “Lady O” being as gorgeous a melody as has ever been produced in the rock world, it sank without trace, as did a single from the Shell Shock sessions released under a pseudonym, The Dedications. White Whale followed that up, to the group's disgust, with "Who Would Ever Think That I Would Marry Margaret?", and then started putting out whatever they had in the vaults, trying to get the last few pennies, even releasing their 1965 album track version of "Eve of Destruction" as if it were a new single. The band were even more disgusted when they discovered that, thanks to the flurry of suits and countersuits, they not only could no longer perform as the Turtles, but White Whale were laying legal claim to their own names. They couldn't perform under those names -- Howard Kaylan, Mark Volman, and the rest were the intellectual property of White Whale, according to the lawyers. The group split up, and Kaylan and Volman did some session work, including singing on a demo for a couple of new songwriters: [Excerpt: Steely Dan, "Everyone's Gone to the Movies"] When that demo got the songwriters a contract, one of them actually phoned up to see if Kaylan wanted a permanent job in their new band, but they didn't want Volman as well, so Kaylan refused, and Steely Dan had to do without him. Volman and Kaylan were despondent, washed-up, has-been ex-rock stars. But when they went to see a gig by their old friend Frank Zappa, it turned out that he was looking for exactly that. Of course, they couldn't use their own names, but the story of the Phlorescent Leech and Eddie is a story for another time...

On today's show, we have a musician and a photographer who has worked with such groups as The Monkees, The Turtles, The Doors, Crosby Stills Nash and Young and many, many more. Here he is, Henry Diltz, along with Charles F. Rosenay!!! Plus, the usual news from Fun Ideas Productions.

Join Buzz Knight takin a walk in Studio City California with distinguished Music Photographer Henry Diltz. Henry Diltz is a Rock N Roll Photographer who has been active for decades capturing images of Classic Artists like The Doors, Crosby Stills and Nash, The Eagles, Joni Mitchell and many more.

Teaser for Henry Diltz Music Photographer Episode of Takin A Walk. Henry was the official photographer of Woodstock and is Co-Founder of the Morrison Hotel Gallery.

Take a trip back in time with one of the most iconic rock photographers in history. Henry Diltz was the man behind the camera for some of the most famous rock photos in history. He also photographed famed album covers such as The Doors' Morrison Hotel and James Taylor's Sweet Baby James. Diltz joins us to share stories about this unique time in American music history. Plus, discover what gets him excited these days.

Take a trip back in time with one of the most iconic rock photographers in history. Henry Diltz was the man behind the camera for some of the most famous rock photos in history. He also photographed famed album covers such as The Doors' Morrison Hotel and James Taylor's Sweet Baby James. Diltz joins us to share stories about this unique time in American music history. Plus, discover what gets him excited these days.

Episode 143 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Summer in the City'”, and at the short but productive career of the Lovin' Spoonful.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Any More" by the Walker Brothers and the strange career of Scott Walker. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, all the songs excerpted in the podcast can be heard in full at Mixcloud. This box set contains all four studio albums by the Lovin' Spoonful, plus the one album by "The Lovin' Spoonful featuring Joe Butler", while this CD contains their two film soundtracks (mostly inessential instrumental filler, apart from "Darling Be Home Soon") Information about harmonicas and harmonicists comes from Harmonicas, Harps, and Heavy Breathers by Kim Field. There are only three books about the Lovin' Spoonful, but all are worth reading. Do You Believe in Magic? by Simon Wordsworth is a good biography of the band, while his The Magic's in the Music is a scrapbook of press cuttings and reminiscences. Meanwhile Steve Boone's Hotter Than a Match Head: My Life on the Run with the Lovin' Spoonful has rather more discussion of the actual music than is normal in a musician's autobiography. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Let's talk about the harmonica for a while. The harmonica is an instrument that has not shown up a huge amount in the podcast, but which was used in a fair bit of the music we've covered. We've heard it for example on records by Bo Diddley: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "I'm a Man"] and by Bob Dylan: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Blowin' in the Wind"] and the Rolling Stones: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Little Red Rooster"] In most folk and blues contexts, the harmonicas used are what is known as a diatonic harmonica, and these are what most people think of when they think of harmonicas at all. Diatonic harmonicas have the notes of a single key in them, and if you want to play a note in another key, you have to do interesting tricks with the shape of your mouth to bend the note. There's another type of harmonica, though, the chromatic harmonica. We've heard that a time or two as well, like on "Love Me Do" by the Beatles: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love Me Do"] Chromatic harmonicas have sixteen holes, rather than the diatonic harmonica's ten, and they also have a slide which you can press to raise the note by a semitone, meaning you can play far more notes than on a diatonic harmonica -- but they're also physically harder to play, requiring a different kind of breathing to pull off playing one successfully. They're so different that John Lennon would distinguish between the two instruments -- he'd describe a chromatic harmonica as a harmonica, but a diatonic harmonica he would call a harp, like blues musicians often did: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love These Goon Shows"] While the chromatic harmonica isn't a particularly popular instrument in rock music, it is one that has had some success in other fields. There have been some jazz and light-orchestral musicians who have become famous playing the instrument, like the jazz musician Max Geldray, who played in those Goon Shows the Beatles loved so much: [Excerpt: Max Geldray, "C-Jam Blues"] And in the middle of the twentieth century there were a few musicians who succeeded in making the harmonica into an instrument that was actually respected in serious classical music. By far the most famous of these was Larry Adler, who became almost synonymous with the instrument in the popular consciousness, and who reworked many famous pieces of music for the instrument: [Excerpt: Larry Adler, "Rhapsody in Blue"] But while Adler was the most famous classical harmonicist of his generation, he was not generally considered the best by other musicians. That was, rather, a man named John Sebastian. Sebastian, who chose to take his middle name as a surname partly to Anglicise his name but also, it seems, at least in part as tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach (which incidentally now makes it really, really difficult to search for copies of his masterwork "John Sebastian Plays Bach", as Internet searches uniformly think you're searching just for the composer...) started out like almost all harmonica players as an amateur playing popular music. But he quickly got very, very, good, and by his teens he was already teaching other children, including at a summer camp run by Albert Hoxie, a musician and entrepreneur who was basically single-handedly responsible for the boom in harmonica sales in the 1920s and 1930s, by starting up youth harmonica orchestras -- dozens or even hundreds of kids, all playing harmonica together, in a semi-militaristic youth organisation something like the scouts, but with harmonicas instead of woggles and knots. Hoxie's group and the various organisations copying it led to there being over a hundred and fifty harmonica orchestras in Chicago alone, and in LA in the twenties and thirties a total of more than a hundred thousand children passed through harmonica orchestras inspired by Hoxie. Hoxie's youth orchestras were largely responsible for the popularity of the harmonica as a cheap instrument for young people, and thus for its later popularity in the folk and blues worlds. That was only boosted in the Second World War by the American Federation of Musicians recording ban, which we talked about in the early episodes of the podcast -- harmonicas had never been thought of as a serious instrument, and so most professional harmonica players were not members of the AFM, but were considered variety performers and were part of the American Guild of Variety Artists, along with singers, ukulele players, and musical saw players. Of course, the war did also create a problem, because the best harmonicas were made in Germany by the Hohner company, but soon a lot of American companies started making cheap harmonicas to fill the gap in the market. There's a reason the cliche of the GI in a war film playing a harmonica in the trenches exists, and it's largely because of Hoxie. And Hoxie was based in Philadelphia, where John Sebastian lived as a kid, and he mentored the young player, who soon became a semi-professional performer. Sebastian's father was a rich banker, and discouraged him from becoming a full-time musician -- the plan was that after university, Sebastian would become a diplomat. But as part of his preparation for that role, he was sent to spend a couple of years studying at the universities of Rome and Florence, learning about Italian culture. On the boat back, though, he started talking to two other passengers, who turned out to be the legendary Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart, the writers of such classic songs as "Blue Moon" and "My Funny Valentine": [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, "My Funny Valentine"] Sebastian talked to his new friends, and told them that he was feeling torn between being a musician and being in the foreign service like his father wanted. They both told him that in their experience some people were just born to be artists, and that those people would never actually find happiness doing anything else. He took their advice, and decided he was going to become a full-time harmonica player. He started out playing in nightclubs, initially playing jazz and swing, but only while he built up a repertoire of classical music. He would rehearse with a pianist for three hours every day, and would spend the rest of his time finding classical works, especially baroque ones, and adapting them for the harmonica. As he later said “I discovered sonatas by Telemann, Veracini, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Hasse, Marcello, Purcell, and many others, which were written to be played on violin, flute, oboe, musette, even bagpipes... The composer seemed to be challenging each instrument to create the embellishments and ornaments to suit its particular voice. . . . I set about choosing works from this treasure trove that would best speak through my instrument.” Soon his nightclub repertoire was made up entirely of these classical pieces, and he was making records like John Sebastian Plays Bach: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Flute Sonata in B Minor BWV1030 (J.S. Bach)"] And while Sebastian was largely a lover of baroque music above all other forms, he realised that he would have to persuade new composers to write new pieces for the instrument should he ever hope for it to have any kind of reputation as a concert instrument, so he persuaded contemporary composers to write pieces like George Kleinsinger's "Street Corner Concerto", which Sebastian premiered with the New York Philharmonic: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Street Corner Concerto"] He became the first harmonica player to play an entirely classical repertoire, and regarded as the greatest player of his instrument in the world. The oboe player Jay S Harrison once wrote of seeing him perform "to accomplish with success a program of Mr. Sebastian's scope is nothing short of wizardry. . . . He has vast technical facility, a bulging range of colors, and his intentions are ever musical and sophisticated. In his hands the harmonica is no toy, no simple gadget for the dispensing of homespun tunes. Each single number of the evening was whittled, rounded, polished, and poised. . . . Mr. Sebastian's playing is uncanny." Sebastian came from a rich background, and he managed to earn enough as a classical musician to live the lifestyle of a rich artistic Bohemian. During the forties and fifties he lived in Greenwich Village with his family -- apart from a four-year period living in Rome from 1951 to 55 -- and Eleanor Roosevelt was a neighbour, while Vivian Vance, who played Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy, was the godmother of his eldest son. But while Sebastian's playing was entirely classical, he was interested in a wider variety of music. When he would tour Europe, he would often return having learned European folk songs, and while he was living in Greenwich Village he would often be visited by people like Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, and other folk singers living in the area. And that early influence rubbed off on Sebastian's son, John Benson Sebastian, although young John gave up trying to learn the harmonica the first time he tried, because he didn't want to be following too closely in his father's footsteps. Sebastian junior did, though, take up the guitar, inspired by the first wave rock and rollers he was listening to on Alan Freed's show, and he would later play the harmonica, though the diatonic harmonica rather than the chromatic. In case you haven't already figured it out, John Benson Sebastian, rather than his father, is a principal focus of this episode, and so to avoid confusion, from this point on, when I refer to "John Sebastian" or "Sebastian" without any qualifiers, I'm referring to the younger man. When I refer to "John Sebastian Sr" I'm talking about the father. But it was John Sebastian Sr's connections, in particular to the Bohemian folk and blues scenes, which gave his more famous son his first connection to that world of his own, when Sebastian Sr appeared in a TV show, in November 1960, put together by Robert Herridge, a TV writer and producer who was most famous for his drama series but who had also put together documentaries on both classical music and jazz, including the classic performance documentary The Sound of Jazz. Herridge's show featured both Sebastian Sr and the country-blues player Lightnin' Hopkins: [Excerpt: Lightnin' Hopkins, "Blues in the Bottle"] Hopkins was one of many country-blues players whose career was having a second wind after his discovery by the folk music scene. He'd been recording for fourteen years, putting out hundreds of records, but had barely performed outside Houston until 1959, when the folkies had picked up on his work, and in October 1960 he had been invited to play Carnegie Hall, performing with Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. Young John Sebastian had come along with his dad to see the TV show be recorded, and had an almost Damascene conversion -- he'd already heard Hopkins' recordings, but had never seen anything like his live performances. He was at that time attending a private boarding school, Blair Academy, and his roommate at the school also had his own apartment, where Sebastian would sometimes stay. Soon Lightnin' Hopkins was staying there as well, as somewhere he could live rent-free while he was in New York. Sebastian started following Hopkins around and learning everything he could, being allowed by the older man to carry his guitar and buy him gin, though the two never became close. But eventually, Hopkins would occasionally allow Sebastian to play with him when he played at people's houses, which he did on occasion. Sebastian became someone that Hopkins trusted enough that when he was performing on a bill with someone else whose accompanist wasn't able to make the gig and Sebastian put himself forward, Hopkins agreed that Sebastian would be a suitable accompanist for the evening. The singer he accompanied that evening was a performer named Valentine Pringle, who was a protege of Harry Belafonte, and who had a similar kind of sound to Paul Robeson. Sebastian soon became Pringle's regular accompanist, and played on his first album, I Hear America Singing, which was also the first record on which the great trumpet player Hugh Masakela played. Sadly, Paul Robeson style vocals were so out of fashion by that point that that album has never, as far as I can tell, been issued in a digital format, and hasn't even been uploaded to YouTube.  But this excerpt from a later recording by Pringle should give you some idea of the kind of thing he was doing: [Excerpt: Valentine Pringle, "Go 'Way From My Window"] After these experiences, Sebastian started regularly going to shows at Greenwich Village folk clubs, encouraged by his parents -- he had an advantage over his peers because he'd grown up in the area and had artistic parents, and so he was able to have a great deal of freedom that other people in their teens weren't. In particular, he would always look out for any performances by the great country blues performer Mississippi John Hurt. Hurt had made a few recordings for Okeh records in 1928, including an early version of "Stagger Lee", titled "Stack O'Lee": [Excerpt: Mississippi John Hurt, "Stack O'Lee Blues"] But those records had been unsuccessful, and he'd carried on working on a farm. and not performed other than in his tiny home town of Avalon, Mississippi, for decades. But then in 1952, a couple of his tracks had been included on the Harry Smith Anthology, and as a result he'd come to the attention of the folk and blues scholar community. They'd tried tracking him down, but been unable to until in the early sixties one of them had discovered a track on one of Hurt's records, "Avalon Blues", and in 1963, thirty-five years after he'd recorded six flop singles, Mississippi John Hurt became a minor star, playing the Newport Folk Festival and appearing on the Tonight Show. By this time, Sebastian was a fairly well-known figure in Greenwich Village, and he had become quite a virtuoso on the harmonica himself, and would walk around the city wearing a holster-belt containing harmonicas in a variety of different keys. Sebastian became a huge fan of Hurt, and would go and see him perform whenever Hurt was in New York. He soon found himself first jamming backstage with Hurt, and then performing with him on stage for the last two weeks of a residency. He was particularly impressed with what he called Hurt's positive attitude in his music -- something that Sebastian would emulate in his own songwriting. Sebastian was soon invited to join a jug band, called the Even Dozen Jug Band. Jug band music was a style of music that first became popular in the 1920s, and had many of the same musical elements as the music later known as skiffle. It was played on a mixture of standard musical instruments -- usually portable, "folky" ones like guitar and harmonica -- and improvised homemade instruments, like the spoons, the washboard, and comb and paper. The reason they're called jug bands is because they would involve someone blowing into a jug to make a noise that sounded a bit like a horn -- much like the coffee pot groups we talked about way back in episode six. The music was often hokum music, and incorporated elements of what we'd now call blues, vaudeville, and country music, though at the time those genres were nothing like as distinct as they're considered today: [Excerpt: Cincinnati Jug Band, "Newport Blues"] The Even Dozen Jug Band actually ended up having thirteen members, and it had a rather remarkable lineup. The leader was Stefan Grossman, later regarded as one of the greatest fingerpicking guitarists in America, and someone who will be coming up in other contexts in future episodes I'm sure, and they also featured David Grisman, a mandolin player who would later play with the Grateful Dead among many others;  Steve Katz, who would go on to be a founder member of Blood, Sweat and Tears and produce records for Lou Reed; Maria D'Amato, who under her married name Maria Muldaur would go on to have a huge hit with "Midnight at the Oasis"; and Joshua Rifkin, who would later go on to become one of the most important scholars of Bach's music of the latter half of the twentieth century, but who is best known for his recordings of Scott Joplin's piano rags, which more or less single-handedly revived Joplin's music from obscurity and created the ragtime revival of the 1970s: [Excerpt: Joshua Rifkin, "Maple Leaf Rag"] Unfortunately, despite the many talents involved, a band as big as that was uneconomical to keep together, and the Even Dozen Jug Band only played four shows together -- though those four shows were, as Muldaur later remembered, "Carnegie Hall twice, the Hootenanny television show and some church". The group did, though, make an album for Elektra records, produced by Paul Rothchild. Indeed, it was Rothchild who was the impetus for the group forming -- he wanted to produce a record of a jug band, and had told Grossman that if he got one together, he'd record it: [Excerpt: The Even Dozen Jug Band, "On the Road Again"] On that album, Sebastian wasn't actually credited as John Sebastian -- because he was playing harmonica on the album, and his father was such a famous harmonica player, he thought it better if he was credited by his middle name, so he was John Benson for this one album. The Even Dozen Jug Band split up after only a few months, with most of the band more interested in returning to university than becoming professional musicians, but Sebastian remained in touch with Rothchild, as they both shared an interest in the drug culture, and Rothchild started using him on sessions for other artists on Elektra, which was rapidly becoming one of the biggest labels for the nascent counterculture. The first record the two worked together on after the Even Dozen Jug Band was sparked by a casual conversation. Vince Martin and Fred Neil saw Sebastian walking down the street wearing his harmonica holster, and were intrigued and asked him if he played. Soon he and his friend Felix Pappalardi were accompanying Martin and Neil on stage, and the two of them were recording as the duo's accompanists: [Excerpt: Vince Martin and Fred Neil, "Tear Down the Walls"] We've mentioned Neil before, but if you don't remember him, he was one of the people around whom the whole Greenwich Village scene formed -- he was the MC and organiser of bills for many of the folk shows of the time, but he's now best known for writing the songs "Everybody's Talkin'", recorded famously by Harry Nilsson, and "The Dolphins", recorded by Tim Buckley. On the Martin and Neil album, Tear Down The Walls, as well as playing harmonica, Sebastian acted essentially as uncredited co-producer with Rothchild, but Martin and Neil soon stopped recording for Elektra. But in the meantime, Sebastian had met the most important musical collaborator he would ever have, and this is the start of something that will become a minor trend in the next few years, of important musical collaborations happening because of people being introduced by Cass Elliot. Cass Elliot had been a singer in a folk group called the Big 3 -- not the same group as the Merseybeat group -- with Tim Rose, and the man who would be her first husband, Jim Hendricks (not the more famous guitarist of a similar name): [Excerpt: Cass Elliot and the Big 3, "The Banjo Song"] The Big 3 had split up when Elliot and Hendricks had got married, and the two married members had been looking around for other musicians to perform with, when coincidentally another group they knew also split up. The Halifax Three were a Canadian group who had originally started out as The Colonials, with a lineup of Denny Doherty, Pat LaCroix and Richard Byrne. Byrne didn't turn up for a gig, and a homeless guitar player, Zal Yanovsky, who would hang around the club the group were playing at, stepped in. Doherty and LaCroix, much to Yanovsky's objections, insisted he bathe and have a haircut, but soon the newly-renamed Halifax Three were playing Carnegie Hall and recording for Epic Records: [Excerpt: The Halifax Three, "When I First Came to This Island"] But then a plane they were in crash-landed, and the group took that as a sign that they should split up. So they did, and Doherty and Yanovsky continued as a duo, until they hooked up with Hendricks and Elliot and formed a new group, the Mugwumps. A name which may be familiar if you recognise one of the hits of a group that Doherty and Elliot were in later: [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "Creeque Alley"] But we're skipping ahead a bit there. Cass Elliot was one of those few people in the music industry about whom it is impossible to find anyone with a bad word to say, and she was friendly with basically everyone, and particularly good at matching people up with each other. And on February the 7th 1964, she invited John Sebastian over to watch the Beatles' first performance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Like everyone in America, he was captivated by the performance: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand (live on the Ed Sullivan Show)"] But Yanovsky was also there, and the two played guitar together for a bit, before retreating to opposite sides of the room. And then Elliot spent several hours as a go-between, going to each man and telling him how much the other loved and admired his playing and wanted to play more with him. Sebastian joined the Mugwumps for a while, becoming one of the two main instrumentalists with Yanovsky, as the group pivoted from performing folk music to performing Beatles-inspired rock. But the group's management team, Bob Cavallo and Roy Silver, who weren't particularly musical people, and whose main client was the comedian Bill Cosby, got annoyed at Sebastian, because he and Yanovsky were getting on *too* well musically -- they were trading blues licks on stage, rather than sticking to the rather pedestrian arrangements that the group was meant to be performing -- and so Silver fired Sebastian fired from the group. When the Mugwumps recorded their one album, Sebastian had to sit in the control room while his former bandmates recorded with session musicians, who he thought were nowhere near up to his standard: [Excerpt: The Mugwumps, "Searchin'"] By the time that album was released, the Mugwumps had already split up. Sebastian had continued working as a session musician for Elektra, including playing on the album The Blues Project, which featured white Greenwich Village folk musicians like Eric Von Schmidt, Dave Van Ronk, and Spider John Koerner playing their versions of old blues records, including this track by Geoff Muldaur, which features Sebastian on harmonica and "Bob Landy" on piano -- a fairly blatant pseudonym: [Excerpt: Geoff Muldaur, "Downtown Blues"] Sebastian also played rhythm guitar and harmonica on the demos that became a big part of Tim Hardin's first album -- and his fourth, when the record company released the remaining demos. Sebastian doesn't appear to be on the orchestrated ballads that made Hardin's name -- songs like "Reason to Believe" and "Misty Roses" -- but he is on much of the more blues-oriented material, which while it's not anything like as powerful as Hardin's greatest songs, made up a large part of his repertoire: [Excerpt: Tim Hardin, "Ain't Gonna Do Without"] Erik Jacobsen, the producer of Hardin's records, was impressed enough by Sebastian that he got Sebastian to record lead vocals, for a studio group consisting of Sebastian, Felix Pappalardi, Jerry Yester and Henry Diltz of the Modern Folk Quartet, and a bass singer whose name nobody could later remember. The group, under the name "Pooh and the Heffalumps", recorded two Beach Boys knockoffs, "Lady Godiva" and "Rooty Toot", the latter written by Sebastian, though he would later be embarrassed by it and claim it was by his cousin: [Excerpt: Pooh and the Heffalumps, "Rooty Toot"] After that, Jacobsen became convinced that Sebastian should form a group to exploit his potential as a lead singer and songwriter. By this point, the Mugwumps had split up, and their management team had also split, with Silver taking Bill Cosby and Cavallo taking the Mugwumps, and so Sebastian was able to work with Yanovsky, and the putative group could be managed by Cavallo. But Sebastian and Yanovsky needed a rhythm section. And Erik Jacobsen knew a band that might know some people. Jacobsen was a fan of a Beatles soundalike group called the Sellouts, who were playing Greenwich Village and who were co-managed by Herb Cohen, the manager of the Modern Folk Quartet (who, as we heard a couple of episodes ago, would soon go on to be the manager of the Mothers of Invention). The Sellouts were ultra-professional by the standards  of rock groups of the time -- they even had a tape echo machine that they used on stage to give them a unique sound -- and they had cut a couple of tracks with Jacobsen producing, though I've not been able to track down copies of them. Their leader Skip Boone, had started out playing guitar in a band called the Blue Suedes, and had played in 1958 on a record by their lead singer Arthur Osborne: [Excerpt: Arthur Osborne, "Hey Ruby"] Skip Boone's brother Steve in his autobiography says that that was produced by Chet Atkins for RCA, but it was actually released on Brunswick records. In the early sixties, Skip Boone joined a band called the Kingsmen -- not the same one as the band that recorded "Louie Louie" -- playing lead guitar with his brother Steve on rhythm, a singer called Sonny Bottari, a saxophone player named King Charles, bass player Clay Sonier, and drummer Joe Butler. Sometimes Butler would get up front and sing, and then another drummer, Jan Buchner, would sit in in his place. Soon Steve Boone would replace Bonier as the bass player, but the Kingsmen had no success, and split up. From the ashes of the Kingsmen had formed the Sellouts, Skip Boone, Jerry Angus, Marshall O'Connell, and Joe Butler, who had switched from playing "Peppermint Twist" to playing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in February 1964. Meanwhile Steve Boone went on a trip to Europe before starting at university in New York, where he hooked up again with Butler, and it was Butler who introduced him to Sebastian and Yanovsky. Sebastian and Yanovsky had been going to see the Sellouts at the behest of Jacobsen, and they'd been asking if they knew anyone else who could play that kind of material. Skip Boone had mentioned his little brother, and as soon as they met him, even before they first played together, they knew from his appearance that he would be the right bass player for them. So now they had at least the basis for a band. They hadn't played together, but Erik Jacobsen was an experienced record producer and Cavallo an experienced manager. They just needed to do some rehearsals and get a drummer, and a record contract was more or less guaranteed. Boone suggested Jan Buchner, the backup drummer from the Kingsmen, and he joined them for rehearsals. It was during these early rehearsals that Boone got to play on his first real record, other than some unreleased demos the Kingsmen had made. John Sebastian got a call from that "Bob Landy" we mentioned earlier, asking if he'd play bass on a session. Boone tagged along, because he was a fan, and when Sebastian couldn't get the parts down for some songs, he suggested that Boone, as an actual bass player, take over: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Maggie's Farm"] But the new group needed a name, of course. It was John Sebastian who came up with the name they eventually chose, The Lovin' Spoonful, though Boone was a bit hesitant about it at first, worrying that it might be a reference to heroin -- Boone was from a very conservative, military, background, and knew little of drug culture and didn't at that time make much of a distinction between cannabis and heroin, though he'd started using the former -- but Sebastian was insistent. The phrase actually referred to coffee -- the name came from "Coffee Blues" by Sebastian's old idol Mississippi John Hurt – or at least Hurt always *said* it was about coffee, though in live performance he apparently made it clear that it was about cunnilingus: [Excerpt: Mississippi John Hurt, "Coffee Blues"] Their first show, at the Night Owl Club, was recorded, and there was even an attempt to release it as a CD in the 1990s, but it was left unreleased and as far as I can tell wasn't even leaked. There have been several explanations for this, but perhaps the most accurate one is just the comment from the manager of the club, who came up to the group after their two sets and told them “Hey, I don't know how to break this to you, but you guys suck.” There were apparently three different problems. They were underrehearsed -- which could be fixed with rehearsal -- they were playing too loud and hurting the patrons' ears -- which could be fixed by turning down the amps -- and their drummer didn't look right, was six years older than the rest of the group, and was playing in an out-of-date fifties style that wasn't suitable for the music they were playing. That was solved by sacking Buchner. By this point Joe Butler had left the Sellouts, and while Herb Cohen was interested in managing him as a singer, he was willing to join this new group at least for the moment. By now the group were all more-or-less permanent residents at the Albert Hotel, which was more or less a doss-house where underemployed musicians would stay, and which had its own rehearsal rooms. As well as the Spoonful, Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty lived there, as did the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Joe Butler quickly fit into the group, and soon they were recording what became their first single, produced by Jacobsen, an original of Sebastian's called "Do You Believe in Magic?", with Sebastian on autoharp and vocals, Yanovsky on lead guitar and backing vocals, Boone on bass, Butler on drums, and Jerry Yester adding piano and backing vocals: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Do You Believe in Magic?"] For a long time, the group couldn't get a deal -- the record companies all liked the song, but said that unless the group were English they couldn't sell them at the moment. Then Phil Spector walked into the Night Owl Cafe, where the new lineup of the group had become popular, and tried to sign them up. But they turned him down -- they wanted Erik Jacobsen to produce them; they were a team. Spector's interest caused other labels to be interested, and the group very nearly signed to Elektra. But again, signing to Elektra would have meant being produced by Rothchild, and also Elektra were an album label who didn't at that time have any hit single acts, and the group knew they had hit single potential. They did record a few tracks for Elektra to stick on a blues compilation, but they knew that Elektra wouldn't be their real home. Eventually the group signed with Charley Koppelman and Don Rubin, who had started out as songwriters themselves, working for Don Kirshner. When Kirshner's organisation had been sold to Columbia, Koppelman and Rubin had gone along and ended up working for Columbia as executives. They'd then worked for Morris Levy at Roulette Records, before forming their own publishing and record company. Rather than put out records themselves, they had a deal to license records to Kama Sutra Records, who in turn had a distribution deal with MGM Records. Koppelman and Rubin were willing to take the group and their manager and producer as a package deal, and they released the group's demo of "Do You Believe In Magic?" unchanged as their first single: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Do You Believe in Magic?"] The single reached the top ten, and the group were soon in the studio cutting their first album, also titled Do You Believe In Magic? The album was a mix of songs that were part of the standard Greenwich Village folkie repertoire -- songs like Mississippi John Hurt's "Blues in the Bottle" and Fred Neil's "The Other Side of This Life" -- and a couple more originals. The group's second single was the first song that Steve Boone had co-written. It was inspired by a date he'd gone on with the photographer Nurit Wilde, who sadly for him didn't go on a second date, and who would later be the mother of Mike Nesmith's son Jason, but who he was very impressed by. He thought of her when he came up with the line "you didn't have to be so nice, I would have liked you anyway", and he and Sebastian finished up a song that became another top ten hit for the group: [Excerpt: (The Good Time Music of) The Lovin' Spoonful, "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice"] Shortly after that song was recorded, but before it was released, the group were called into Columbia TV with an intriguing proposition. Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson, two young TV producers, were looking at producing a TV show inspired by A Hard Day's Night, and were looking for a band to perform in it. Would the Lovin' Spoonful be up for it? They were interested at first, but Boone and Sebastian weren't sure they wanted to be actors, and also it would involve the group changing its name. They'd already made a name for themselves as the Lovin' Spoonful, did they really want to be the Monkees instead? They passed on the idea. Instead, they went on a tour of the deep South as the support act to the Supremes, a pairing that they didn't feel made much sense, but which did at least allow them to watch the Supremes and the Funk Brothers every night. Sebastian was inspired by the straight four-on-the-floor beat of the Holland-Dozier-Holland repertoire, and came up with his own variation on it, though as this was the Lovin' Spoonful the end result didn't sound very Motown at all: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Daydream"] It was only after the track was recorded that Yanovsky pointed out to Sebastian that he'd unconsciously copied part of the melody of the old standard "Got a Date With an Angel": [Excerpt: Al Bowlly, "Got a Date With an Angel"] "Daydream" became the group's third top ten hit in a row, but it caused some problems for the group. The first was Kama Sutra's advertising campaign for the record, which had the words "Lovin' Spoonful Daydream", with the initials emphasised. While the group were drug users, they weren't particularly interested in being promoted for that rather than their music, and had strong words with the label. The other problem came with the Beach Boys. The group were supporting the Beach Boys on a tour in spring of 1966, when "Daydream" came out and became a hit, and they got on with all the band members except Mike Love, who they definitely did not get on with. Almost fifty years later, in his autobiography, Steve Boone would have nothing bad to say about the Wilson brothers, but calls Love "an obnoxious, boorish braggart", a "marginally talented hack" and worse, so it's safe to say that Love wasn't his favourite person in the world. Unfortunately, when "Daydream" hit the top ten, one of the promoters of the tour decided to bill the Lovin' Spoonful above the Beach Boys, and this upset Love, who understandably thought that his group, who were much better known and had much more hits, should be the headliners. If this had been any of the other Beach Boys, there would have been no problem, but because it was Love, who the Lovin' Spoonful despised, they decided that they were going to fight for top billing, and the managers had to get involved. Eventually it was agreed that the two groups would alternate the top spot on the bill for the rest of the tour. "Daydream" eventually reached number two on the charts (and number one on Cashbox) and also became the group's first hit in the UK, reaching number two here as well, and leading to the group playing a short UK tour. During that tour, they had a similar argument over billing with Mick Jagger as they'd had with Mike Love, this time over who was headlining on an appearance on Top of the Pops, and the group came to the same assessment of Jagger as they had of Love. The performance went OK, though, despite them being so stoned on hash given them by the wealthy socialite Tara Browne that Sebastian had to be woken up seconds before he started playing. They also played the Marquee Club -- Boone notes in his autobiography that he wasn't impressed by the club when he went to see it the day before their date there, because some nobody named David Bowie was playing there. But in the audience that day were George Harrison, John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Spencer Davis, and Brian Jones, most of whom partied with the group afterwards. The Lovin' Spoonful made a big impression on Lennon in particular, who put "Daydream" and "Do You Believe in Magic" in his jukebox at home, and who soon took to wearing glasses in the same round, wiry, style as the ones that Sebastian wore. They also influenced Paul McCartney, who wasn't at that gig, but who soon wrote this, inspired by "Daydream": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Good Day Sunshine"] Unfortunately, this was more or less the high point of the group's career. Shortly after that brief UK tour, Zal Yanovsky and Steve Boone went to a party where they were given some cannabis -- and they were almost immediately stopped by the police, subjected to an illegal search of their vehicle, and arrested. They would probably have been able to get away with this -- after all, it was an illegal search, even though of course the police didn't admit to that -- were it not for the fact that Yanovsky was a Canadian citizen, and he could be deported and barred from ever re-entering the US just for being arrested. This was the first major drug bust of a rock and roll group, and there was no precedent for the group, their managers, their label or their lawyers to deal with this. And so they agreed to something they would regret for the rest of their lives. In return for being let off, Boone and Yanovsky agreed to take an undercover police officer to a party and introduce him to some of their friends as someone they knew in the record business, so he would be able to arrest one of the bigger dealers. This was, of course, something they knew was a despicable thing to do, throwing friends under the bus to save themselves, but they were young men and under a lot of pressure, and they hoped that it wouldn't actually lead to any arrests. And for almost a year, there were no serious consequences, although both Boone and Yanovsky were shaken up by the event, and Yanovsky's behaviour, which had always been erratic, became much, much worse. But for the moment, the group remained very successful. After "Daydream", an album track from their first album, "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?" had been released as a stopgap single, and that went to number two as well. And right before the arrest, the group had been working on what would be an even bigger hit. The initial idea for "Summer in the City" actually came from John Sebastian's fourteen-year-old brother Mark, who'd written a bossa nova song called "It's a Different World". The song was, by all accounts, the kind of thing that a fourteen-year-old boy writes, but part of it had potential, and John Sebastian took that part -- giving his brother full credit -- and turned it into the chorus of a new song: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City"] To this, Sebastian added a new verse, inspired by a riff the session player Artie Schroeck had been playing while the group recorded their songs for the Woody Allen film What's Up Tiger Lily, creating a tenser, darker, verse to go with his younger brother's chorus: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City"] In the studio, Steve Boone came up with the instrumental arrangement, which started with drums, organ, electric piano, and guitar, and then proceeded to bass, autoharp, guitar, and percussion overdubs. The drum sound on the record was particularly powerful thanks to the engineer Roy Halee, who worked on most of Simon & Garfunkel's records. Halee put a mic at the top of a stairwell, a giant loudspeaker at the bottom, and used the stairwell as an echo chamber for the drum part. He would later use a similar technique on Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer". The track still needed another section though, and Boone suggested an instrumental part, which led to him getting an equal songwriting credit with the Sebastian brothers. His instrumental piano break was inspired by Gershwin, and the group topped it off with overdubbed city noises: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City"] The track went to number one, becoming the group's only number one record, and it was the last track on what is by far their best album, Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful. That album produced two more top ten hits for the group, "Nashville Cats", a tribute to Nashville session players (though John Sebastian seems to have thought that Sun Records was a Nashville, rather than a Memphis, label), and the rather lovely "Rain on the Roof": [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Rain on the Roof"] But that song caused friction with the group, because it was written about Sebastian's relationship with his wife who the other members of the band despised. They also felt that the songs he was writing about their relationship were giving the group a wimpy image, and wanted to make more rockers like "Summer in the City" -- some of them had been receiving homophobic abuse for making such soft-sounding music. The group were also starting to resent Sebastian for other reasons. In a recent contract renegotiation, a "key member" clause had been put into the group's record contract, which stated that Sebastian, as far as the label was concerned, was the only important member of the group. While that didn't affect decision-making in the group, it did let the group know that if the other members did anything to upset Sebastian, he was able to take his ball away with him, and even just that potential affected the way the group thought about each other. All these factors came into play with a song called "Darling Be Home Soon", which was a soft ballad that Sebastian had written about his wife, and which was written for another film soundtrack -- this time for a film by a new director named Francis Ford Coppola. When the other band members came in to play on the soundtrack, including that track, they found that rather than being allowed to improvise and come up with their own parts as they had previously, they had to play pre-written parts to fit with the orchestration. Yanovsky in particular was annoyed by the simple part he had to play, and when the group appeared on the Ed Sullivan show to promote the record, he mugged, danced erratically, and mimed along mocking the lyrics as Sebastian sang. The song -- one of Sebastian's very best -- made a perfectly respectable number fifteen, but it was the group's first record not to make the top ten: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Darling Be Home Soon"] And then to make matters worse, the news got out that someone had been arrested as a result of Boone and Yanovsky's efforts to get themselves out of trouble the year before. This was greeted with horror by the counterculture, and soon mimeographed newsletters and articles in the underground papers were calling the group part of the establishment, and calling for a general boycott of the group -- if you bought their records, attended their concerts, or had sex with any of the band members, you were a traitor. Yanovsky and Boone had both been in a bad way mentally since the bust, but Yanovsky was far worse, and was making trouble for the other members in all sorts of ways. The group decided to fire Yanovsky, and brought in Jerry Yester to replace him, giving him a severance package that ironically meant that he ended up seeing more money from the group's records than the rest of them, as their records were later bought up by a variety of shell companies that passed through the hands of Morris Levy among others, and so from the late sixties through the early nineties the group never got any royalties. For a while, this seemed to benefit everyone. Yanovsky had money, and his friendship with the group members was repaired. He released a solo single, arranged by Jack Nitzsche, which just missed the top one hundred: [Excerpt: Zal Yanovsky, "Just as Long as You're Here"] That song was written by the Bonner and Gordon songwriting team who were also writing hits for the Turtles at this time, and who were signed to Koppelman and Rubin's company. The extent to which Yanovsky's friendship with his ex-bandmates was repaired by his firing was shown by the fact that Jerry Yester, his replacement in the group, co-produced his one solo album, Alive and Well in Argentina, an odd mixture of comedy tracks, psychedelia, and tributes to the country music he loved. His instrumental version of Floyd Cramer's "Last Date" is fairly listenable -- Cramer's piano playing was a big influence on Yanovsky's guitar -- but his version of George Jones' "From Brown to Blue" makes it very clear that Zal Yanovsky was no George Jones: [Excerpt: Zal Yanovsky, "From Brown to Blue"] Yanovsky then quit music, and went into the restaurant business. The Lovin' Spoonful, meanwhile, made one further album, but the damage had been done. Everything Playing is actually a solid album, though not as good as the album before, and it produced three top forty hits, but the highest-charting was "Six O'Clock", which only made number eighteen, and the album itself made a pitiful one hundred and eighteen on the charts. The song on the album that in retrospect has had the most impact was the rather lovely "Younger Generation", which Sebastian later sang at Woodstock: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Younger Generation (Live at Woodstock)"] But at Woodstock he performed that alone, because by then he'd quit the group. Boone, Butler, and Yester decided to continue, with Butler singing lead, and recorded a single, "Never Going Back", produced by Yester's old bandmate from the Modern Folk Quartet Chip Douglas, who had since become a successful producer for the Monkees and the Turtles, and written by John Stewart of the Kingston Trio, who had written "Daydream Believer" for the Monkees, but the record only made number seventy-eight on the charts: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful featuring Joe Butler, "Never Going Back"] That was followed by an album by "The Lovin' Spoonful Featuring Joe Butler", Revelation: Revolution 69, a solo album by Butler in all but name -- Boone claims not to have played on it, and Butler is the only one featured on the cover, which shows a naked Butler being chased by a naked woman with a lion in front of them covering the naughty bits. The biggest hit other than "Never Going Back" from the album was "Me About You", a Bonner and Gordon song which only made number ninety-one: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful Featuring Joe Butler, "Me About You"] John Sebastian went on to have a moderately successful solo career -- as well as his appearance at Woodstock, he released several solo albums, guested on harmonica on records by the Doors, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young and others, and had a solo number one hit in 1976 with "Welcome Back", the theme song from the TV show Welcome Back, Kotter: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Welcome Back"] Sebastian continues to perform, though he's had throat problems for several decades that mean he can't sing many of the songs he's best known for. The original members of the Lovin' Spoonful reunited for two performances -- an appearance in Paul Simon's film One Trick Pony in 1980, and a rather disastrous induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. Zal Yanovsky died of a heart attack in 2002. The remaining band members remained friendly, and Boone, Butler, and Yester reunited as the Lovin' Spoonful in 1991, initially with Yester's brother Jim, who had played in The Association, latterly with other members. One of those other members in the 1990s was Yester's daughter Lena, who became Boone's fourth wife (and is as far as I can discover still married to him). Yester, Boone, and Butler continued touring together as the Lovin' Spoonful until 2017, when Jerry Yester was arrested on thirty counts of child pornography possession, and was immediately sacked from the group. The other two carried on, and the three surviving original members reunited on stage for a performance at one of the Wild Honey Orchestra's benefit concerts in LA in 2020, though that was just a one-off performance, not a full-blown reunion. It was also the last Lovin' Spoonful performance to date, as that was in February 2020, but Steve Boone has performed with John Sebastian's most recent project, John Sebastian's Jug Band Village, a tribute to the Greenwich Village folk scene the group originally formed in, and the two played together most recently in December 2021. The three surviving original members of the group all seem to be content with their legacy, doing work they enjoy, and basically friendly, which is more than can be said for most of their contemporaries, and which is perhaps appropriate for a band whose main songwriter had been inspired, more than anything else, to make music with a positive attitude.

Episode 141 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “River Deep Mountain High'”, and at the career of Ike and Tina Turner.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Also, this episode was recorded before the sad death of the great Ronnie Spector, whose records are featured a couple of times in this episode, which is partly about her abusive ex-husband. Her life paralleled Tina Turner's quite closely, and if you haven't heard the episode I did about her last year, you can find it at https://500songs.com/podcast/episode-110-be-my-baby-by-the-ronettes/. I wish I'd had the opportunity to fit a tribute into this episode too. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Wild Thing" by the Troggs. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, all the songs excerpted in the podcast can be heard in full at Mixcloud. Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era by Ken Emerson is a good overview of the Brill Building scene, and I referred to it for the material about Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. I've referred to two biographies of Phil Spector in this episode, Phil Spector: Out of His Head by Richard Williams and He's a Rebel by Mark Ribkowsky. Tina Turner has written two autobiographies. I Tina is now out of print but is slightly more interesting, as it contains interview material with other people in her life. My Love Story is the more recent one and covers her whole life up to 2019. Ike Turner's autobiography Takin' Back My Name is a despicable, self-serving, work of self-justification, and I do not recommend anyone buy or read it. But I did use it for quotes in the episode so it goes on the list. Ike Turner: King of Rhythm by John Collis is more even-handed, and contains a useful discography. That Kat Sure Could Play! is a four-CD compilation of Ike Turner's work up to 1957. The TAMI and Big TNT shows are available on a Blu-Ray containing both performances. There are many compilations available with some of the hits Spector produced, but I recommend getting Back to Mono, a four-CD overview of his career containing all the major singles put out by Philles. There are sadly no good compilations of Ike and Tina Turner's career, as they recorded for multiple labels, and would regularly rerecord the hits in new versions for each new label, so any compilation you find will have the actual hit version of one or two tracks, plus a bunch of shoddy remakes. However, the hit version of "River Deep, Mountain High" is on the album of the same name, which is a worthwhile album to get,. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today's episode is unfortunately another one of those which will require a content warning, because we're going to be talking about Ike and Tina Turner. For those of you who don't know, Ike Turner was possibly the most famously abusive spouse in the whole history of music, and it is literally impossible to talk about the duo's career without talking about that abuse. I am going to try not to go into too many of the details -- if nothing else, the details are very readily available for those who want to seek them out, not least in Tina's two autobiographies, so there's no sense in retraumatising people who've experienced domestic abuse by going over them needlessly -- but it would be dishonest to try to tell the story without talking about it at all. This is not going to be an episode *about* Ike Turner's brutal treatment of Tina Turner -- it's an episode about the record, and about music, and about their musical career -- but the environment in which "River Deep, Mountain High" was created was so full of toxic, abusive, destructive men that Ike Turner may only be the third-worst person credited on the record, and so that abuse will come up. If discussion of domestic abuse, gun violence, cocaine addiction, and suicide attempts are likely to cause you problems, you might want to read the transcript rather than listen to the podcast. That said, let's get on with the story. One of the problems I'm hitting at this point of the narrative is that starting with "I Fought the Law" we've hit a run of incredibly intertangled stories  The three most recent episodes, this one, and nine of the next twelve, all really make up one big narrative about what happened when folk-rock and psychedelia hit the Hollywood scene and the Sunset Strip nightclubs started providing the raw material for the entertainment industry to turn into pop culture. We're going to be focusing on a small number of individuals, and that causes problems when trying to tell a linear narrative, because people don't live their lives sequentially -- it's not the case that everything happened to Phil Spector, and *then* everything happened to Cass Elliot, and *then* everything happened to Brian Wilson. All these people were living their lives and interacting and influencing each other, and so sometimes we'll have to mention something that will be dealt with in a future episode. So I'll say here and now that we *will* be doing an episode on the Lovin' Spoonful in two weeks. So when I say now that in late 1965 the Lovin' Spoonful were one of the biggest bands around, and possibly the hottest band in the country, you'll have to take that on trust. But they were, and in late 1965 their hit "Do You Believe in Magic?" had made the top ten: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Do You Believe in Magic?"] Phil Spector, as always, was trying to stay aware of the latest trends in music, and he was floundering somewhat. Since the Beatles had hit America in 1964, the hits had dried up -- he'd produced a few minor hit records in 1964, but the only hits he'd made in 1965 had been with the Righteous Brothers -- none of his other acts were charting. And then the Righteous Brothers left him, after only a year. In late 1965, he had no hit acts and no prospect of having any. There was only one thing to do -- he needed to start making his own folk-rock records. And the Lovin' Spoonful gave him an idea how to do that. Their records were identifiably coming from the same kind of place as people like the Byrds or the Mamas and the Papas, but they were pop songs, not protest songs -- the Lovin' Spoonful weren't doing Dylan covers or anything intellectual, but joyous pop confections of a kind that anyone could relate to. Spector knew how to make pop records like that. But to do that, he needed a band. Even though he had been annoyed at the way that people had paid more attention to the Righteous Brothers, as white men, than they had to the other vocalists he'd made hit records with (who, as Black women, had been regarded by a sexist and racist public as interchangeable puppets being controlled by a Svengali rather than as artists in their own right), he knew he was going to have to work with a group of white male vocalist-instrumentalists if he wanted to have his own Lovin' Spoonful. And the group he chose was a group from Greenwich Village called MFQ. MFQ had originally named themselves the Modern Folk Quartet, as a parallel to the much better-known Modern Jazz Quartet, and consisted of Cyrus Faryar, Henry Diltz, Jerry Yester, and Chip Douglas, all of whom were multi-instrumentalists who would switch between guitar, banjo, mandolin, and bass depending on the song. They had combined Kingston Trio style clean-cut folk with Four Freshmen style modern harmonies -- Yester, who was a veteran of the New Christy Minstrels, said of the group's vocals that "the only vocals that competed with us back then was Curt Boettcher's group", and  they had been taken under the wing of manager Herb Cohen, who had got them a record deal with Warner Brothers. They recorded two albums of folk songs, the first of which was produced by Jim Dickson, the Byrds' co-manager: [Excerpt: The Modern Folk Quartet, "Sassafras"] But after their second album, they had decided to go along with the trends and switch to folk-rock. They'd started playing with electric instruments, and after a few shows where John Sebastian, the lead singer of the Lovin' Spoonful, had sat in with them on drums, they'd got themselves a full-time drummer, "Fast" Eddie Hoh, and renamed themselves the Modern Folk Quintet, but they always shortened that to just MFQ. Spector was convinced that this group could be another Lovin' Spoonful if they had the right song, and MFQ in turn were eager to become something more than an unsuccessful folk group. Spector had the group rehearsing in his house for weeks at a stretch before taking them into the studio. The song that Spector chose to have the group record was written by a young songwriter he was working with named Harry Nilsson. Nilsson was as yet a complete unknown, who had not written a hit and was still working a day job, but he had a talent for melody, and he also had a unique songwriting sensibility combining humour and heartbreak. For example, he'd written a song that Spector had recorded with the Ronettes, "Here I Sit", which had been inspired by the famous graffito from public toilet walls -- "Here I sit, broken-hearted/Paid a dime and only farted": [Excerpt: The Ronettes, "Here I Sit"] That ability to take taboo bodily functions and turn them into innocent-sounding love lyrics is also at play in the song that Spector chose to have the MFQ record. "This Could be the Night" was written by Nilsson from the perspective of someone who is hoping to lose his virginity -- he feels like he's sitting on dynamite, and he's going to "give her some", but it still sounds innocent enough to get past the radio censors of the mid-sixties: [Excerpt: Harry Nilsson, "This Could Be the Night (demo)"] Spector took that song, and recorded a version of it which found the perfect balance between Spector's own wall of sound and the Lovin' Spoonful's "Good Time Music" sound: [Excerpt: MFQ, "This Could be the Night"] Brian Wilson was, according to many people, in the studio while that was being recorded, and for decades it would remain a favourite song of Wilson's -- he recorded a solo version of it in the 1990s, and when he started touring solo for the first time in 1998 he included the song in his earliest live performances. He also tried to record it with his wife's group, American Spring, in the early 1970s, but was unable to, because while he could remember almost all of the song, he couldn't get hold of the lyrics. And the reason he couldn't get hold of the lyrics is that the record itself went unreleased, because Phil Spector had found a new performer he was focusing on instead. It happened during the filming of the Big TNT Show, a sequel to the TAMI Show, released by American International Pictures, for which "This Could Be the Night" was eventually used as a theme song. The MFQ were actually performers at the Big TNT Show, which Spector was musical director and associate producer of, but their performances were cut out of the finished film, leaving just their record being played over the credits. The Big TNT Show generally gets less respect than the TAMI Show, but it's a rather remarkable document of the American music scene at the very end of 1965, and it's far more diverse than the TAMI show. It opens with, of all people, David McCallum -- the actor who played Ilya Kuryakin on The Man From UNCLE -- conducting a band of session musicians playing an instrumental version of "Satisfaction": [Excerpt: David McCallum, "Satisfaction"] And then, in front of an audience which included Ron and Russel Mael, later of Sparks, and Frank Zappa, who is very clearly visible in audience shots, came performances of every then-current form of popular music. Ray Charles, Petula Clark, Bo Diddley, the Byrds, the Lovin' Spoonful, Roger Miller, the Ronettes, and Donovan all did multiple songs, though the oddest contribution was from Joan Baez, who as well as doing some of her normal folk repertoire also performed "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" with Spector on piano: [Excerpt: Joan Baez and Phil Spector, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'"] But the headline act on the eventual finished film was the least-known act on the bill, a duo who had not had a top forty hit for four years at this point, and who were only on the bill as a last-minute fill-in for an act who dropped out, but who were a sensational live act. So sensational that when Phil Spector saw them, he knew he needed to sign them -- or at least he needed to sign one of them: [Excerpt: Ike and Tina Turner with the Ikettes, "Please, Please, Please"] Because Ike and Tina Turner's performance at the Big TNT Show was, if anything, even more impressive than James Brown's performance on the TAMI Show the previous year. The last we saw of Ike Turner was way back in episode eleven. If you don't remember that, from more than three years ago, at the time Turner was the leader of a small band called the Kings of Rhythm. They'd been told by their friend B.B. King that if you wanted to make a record, the person you go to was Sam Phillips at Memphis Recording Services, and they'd recorded "Rocket '88", often cited as the first ever rock and roll record, under the name of their sax player and vocalist Jackie Brenston: [Excerpt: Jackie Brenston and the Delta Cats, "Rocket '88"] We looked at some of the repercussions from that recording throughout the first year and a half or so of the podcast, but we didn't look any more at the career of Ike Turner himself. While "Rocket '88" was a minor hit, the group hadn't followed it up, and Brenston had left to go solo. For a while Ike wasn't really very successful at all -- though he was still performing around Memphis, and a young man named Elvis Presley was taking notes at some of the shows. But things started to change for Ike when he once again turned up at Sam Phillips' studio -- this time because B.B. King was recording there. At the time, Sun Records had still not started as its own label, and Phillips' studio was being used for records made by all sorts of independent blues labels, including Modern Records, and Joe Bihari was producing a session for B.B. King, who had signed to Modern. The piano player on the session also had a connection to "Rocket '88" -- when Jackie Brenston had quit Ike's band to go solo, he'd put together a new band to tour as the Delta Cats, and Phineas Newborn Jr had ended up playing Turner's piano part on stage, before Brenston's career collapsed and Newborn became King's pianist. But Phineas Newborn was a very technical, dry, jazz pianist -- a wonderful player, but someone who was best suited to playing more cerebral material, as his own recordings as a bandleader from a few years later show: [Excerpt: Phineas Newborn Jr, "Barbados"] Bihari wasn't happy with what Newborn was playing, and the group took a break from recording to get something to eat and try to figure out the problem. While they were busy, Turner went over to the piano and started playing. Bihari said that that was exactly what they wanted, and Turner took over playing the part. In his autobiography, Turner variously remembers the song King was recording there as "You Know I Love You" and "Three O'Clock Blues", neither of which, as far as I can tell, were actually recorded at Phillips' studio, and both of which seem to have been recorded later -- it's difficult to say for sure because there were very few decent records kept of these things at the time. But we do know that Turner played on a lot of King's records in the early fifties, including on "Three O'Clock Blues", King's first big hit: [Excerpt: B.B. King, "Three O'Clock Blues"] For the next while, Turner was on salary at Modern Records, playing piano on sessions, acting as a talent scout, and also apparently writing many of the songs that Modern's artists would record, though those songs were all copyrighted under the name "Taub", a pseudonym for the Bihari brothers, as well as being a de facto arranger and producer for the company. He worked on many records made in and around Memphis, both for Modern Records and for other labels who drew from the same pool of artists and musicians. Records he played on and produced or arranged include several of Bobby "Blue" Bland's early records -- though Turner's claim in his autobiography that he played on Bland's version of "Stormy Monday" appears to be incorrect, as that wasn't recorded until a decade later. He did, though, play on Bland's “Drifting from Town to Town”, a rewrite of Charles Brown's “Driftin' Blues”, on which, as on many sessions run by Turner, the guitarist was Matt “Guitar” Murphy, who later found fame with the Blues Brothers: [Excerpt: Bobby "Blue" Bland with Ike Turner and his Orchestra, "Driftin' Blues"] Though I've also seen the piano part on that credited as being by Johnny Ace – there's often some confusion as to whether Turner or Ace played on a session, as they played with many of the same artists, but that one was later rereleased as by Bobby “Blue” Bland with Ike Turner and his Orchestra, so it's safe to say that Ike's on that one. He also played on several records by Howlin' Wolf, including "How Many More Years", recorded at Sam Phillips' studio: [Excerpt: Howlin' Wolf, "How Many More Years?"] Over the next few years he played with many artists we've covered already in the podcast, like Richard Berry and the Flairs, on whose recordings he played guitar rather than piano: [Excerpt: The Flairs, "Baby Wants"] He also played guitar on records by Elmore James: [Excerpt: Elmore James, "Please Find My Baby"] and played with Little Junior Parker, Little Milton, Johnny Ace, Roscoe Gordon, and many, many more. As well as making blues records, he also made R&B records in the style of Gene and Eunice with his then-wife Bonnie: [Excerpt: Bonnie and Ike Turner, "My Heart Belongs to You"] Bonnie was his fourth wife, all of them bigamous -- or at least, I *think* she was his fourth. I have seen two different lists Turner gave of his wives, both of them made up of entirely different people, though it doesn't help that many of them also went by nicknames. But Turner started getting married when he was fourteen, and as he would often put it "you gave a preacher two dollars, the papers cost three dollars, that was it. In those days Blacks didn't bother with divorces." (One thing you will see a lot with Turner, unfortunately, is his habit of taking his own personal misbehaviours and claiming they were either universal, or at least that they were universal among Black people, or among men. It's certainly true that some people in the Southeastern US had a more lackadaisical attitude towards remarrying without divorce at the time than we might expect, but it was in no way a Black thing specifically -- it was a people-like-Ike-Turner thing -- see for example the very similar behaviour of Jerry Lee Lewis. I'm trying, when I quote him, not to include too many of these generalisations, but I thought it important to include that one early on to show the kind of self-justification to which he was prone throughout his entire life.) It's largely because Bonnie played piano and was singing with his band that Turner switched to playing guitar, but there was another reason – while he disliked the attention he got on stage, he also didn't want a repeat of what had happened with Jackie Brenston, where Brenston as lead vocalist and frontman had claimed credit for what Ike thought of as his own record. Anyone who saw Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm was going to know that Ike Turner was the man who was making it all happen, and so he was going to play guitar up front rather than be on the piano in the background. So Turner took guitar lessons from Earl Hooker, one of the great blues guitarists of the period, who had played with Turner's piano inspiration Pinetop Perkins before recording solo tracks like "Sweet Angel": [Excerpt: Earl Hooker, "Sweet Angel"] Turner was always happier in the studio than performing live -- despite his astonishing ego, he was also a rather shy person who didn't like attention -- and he'd been happy working on salary for Modern and freelancing on occasion for other labels like Chess and Duke. But then the Biharis had brought him out to LA, where Modern Records was based, and as Joel Bihari put it "Ike did a great job for us, but he was a country boy. We brought him to L.A., and he just couldn't take city life. He only stayed a month, then left for East St. Louis to form his own band. He told me he was going back there to become a star." For once, Turner's memory of events lined up with what other people said about him. In his autobiography, he described what happened -- "Down in Mississippi, life is slow. Tomorrow, you are going to plough this field. The next day, you going to cut down these trees. You stop and you go on about your business. Next day, you start back on sawing trees or whatever you doing. Here I am in California, and this chick, this receptionist, is saying "Hold on, Mr Bihari, line 2... hold line 3... Hey Joe, Mr Something or other on the phone for you." I thought "What goddamn time does this stop?"" So Turner did head to East St. Louis -- which is a suburb of St. Louis proper, across the Mississippi river from it, and in Illinois rather than Missouri, and at the time a thriving industrial town in its own right, with over eighty thousand people living there. Hardly the laid-back country atmosphere that Turner was talking about, but still also far from LA both geographically and culturally. He put together a new lineup of the Kings of Rhythm, with a returning Jackie Brenston, who were soon recording for pretty much every label that was putting out blues and R&B tracks at that point, releasing records on RPM, Sue, Flair, Federal, and Modern as well as several smaller labels. usually with either Brenston or the group's drummer Billy Gayles singing lead: [Excerpt: Billy Gayles with Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm, "Just One More Time"] None of these records was a success, but the Kings of Rhythm were becoming the most successful band in East St. Louis. In the mid-fifties the only group that was as popular in the greater St. Louis metro area was the Johnny Johnson trio -- which soon became the Chuck Berry trio, and went on to greater things, while the Kings of Rhythm remained on the club circuit. But Turner was also becoming notorious for his temper -- he got the nickname "Pistol-Whippin' Ike Turner" for the way he would attack people with his gun, He also though was successful enough that he built his own home studio, and that was where he recorded "Boxtop". a calypso song whose middle eight seems to have been nicked from "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?" and whose general feel owes more than a little to "Love is Strange": [Excerpt: Ike Turner, Carlson Oliver, and Little Ann, "Boxtop"] The female vocals on that track were by Turner's new backing vocalist, who at the time went by the stage name "Little Ann". Anna Mae Bullock had started going to see the Kings of Rhythm regularly when she was seventeen, because her sister was dating one of the members of the band, and she had become a fan almost immediately. She later described her first experience seeing the group: "The first time I saw Ike on stage he was at his very best, sharply dressed in a dark suit and tie. Ike wasn't conventionally handsome – actually, he wasn't handsome at all – and he certainly wasn't my type. Remember, I was a schoolgirl, all of seventeen, looking at a man. I was used to high school boys who were clean-cut, athletic, and dressed in denim, so Ike's processed hair, diamond ring, and skinny body – he was all edges and sharp cheekbones – looked old to me, even though he was only twenty-five. I'd never seen anyone that thin! I couldn't help thinking, God, he's ugly." Turner didn't find Bullock attractive either -- one of the few things both have always agreed on in all their public statements about their later relationship was that neither was ever particularly attracted to the other sexually -- and at first this had caused problems for Anna Mae. There was a spot in the show where Turner would invite a girl from the audience up on stage to sing, a different one every night, usually someone he'd decided he wanted to sleep with. Anna Mae desperately wanted to be one of the girls that would get up on stage, but Turner never picked her. But then one day she got her chance. Her sister's boyfriend was teasing her sister, trying to get her to sing in this spot, and passed her the microphone. Her sister didn't want to sing, so Anna Mae grabbed the mic instead, and started singing -- the song she sang was B.B. King's "You Know I Love You", the same song that Turner always remembered as being recorded at Sun studios, and on which Turner had played piano: [Excerpt: B.B. King, "You Know I Love You"] Turner suddenly took notice of Anna Mae. As he would later say, everyone *says* they can sing, but it turned out that Anna Mae could. He took her on as an occasional backing singer, not at first as a full member of the band, but as a sort of apprentice, who he would teach how to use her talents more commercially. Turner always said that during this period, he would get Little Richard to help teach Anna Mae how to sing in a more uncontrolled, exuberant, style like he did, and Richard has backed this up, though Anna Mae never said anything about this. We do know though that Richard was a huge fan of Turner's -- the intro to "Good Golly Miss Molly": [Excerpt: Little Richard, "Good Golly Miss Molly"] was taken almost exactly from the intro to "Rocket '88": [Excerpt: Jackie Brenston and the Delta Cats, "Rocket '88"] and Richard later wrote the introduction to Turner's autobiography. So it's possible -- but both men were inveterate exaggerators, and Anna Mae only joined Ike's band a few months before Richard's conversion and retirement from music, and during a point when he was a massive star, so it seems unlikely. Anna Mae started dating Raymond Hill, a saxophone player in the group, and became pregnant by him -- but then Hill broke his ankle, and used that as an excuse to move back to Clarksdale, Mississippi, to be with his family, abandoning his pregnant teenage girlfriend, and it seems to be around this point that Turner and Anna Mae became romantically and sexually involved. Certainly, one of Ike's girlfriends, Lorraine Taylor, seems to have believed they were involved while Anna Mae was pregnant, and indeed that Turner, rather than Hill, was the father. Taylor threatened Bullock with Turner's gun, before turning it on herself and attempting suicide, though luckily she survived. She gave birth to Turner's son, Ike Junior, a couple of months after Bullock gave birth to her own son, Craig. But even after they got involved, Anna Mae was still mostly just doing odd bits of backing vocals, like on "Boxtop", recorded in 1958, or on 1959's "That's All I Need", released on Sue Records: [Excerpt: Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm, "That's All I Need"] And it seemed that would be all that Anna Mae Bullock would do, until Ike Turner lent Art Lassiter eighty dollars he didn't want to pay back. Lassiter was a singer who was often backed by his own vocal trio, the Artettes, patterned after Ray Charles' Raelettes. He had performed with Turner's band on a semi-regular basis, since 1955 when he had recorded "As Long as I Have You" with his vocal group the Trojans, backed by "Ike Turner and his Orchestra": [Excerpt: The Trojans, Ike Turner and His Orchestra, "As Long as I Have You"] He'd recorded a few more tracks with Turner since then, both solo and under group names like The Rockers: [Excerpt: The Rockers, "Why Don't You Believe?"] In 1960, Lassiter needed new tyres for his car, and borrowed eighty dollars from Turner in order to get them -- a relatively substantial amount of money for a working musician back then. He told Turner that he would pay him back at a recording session they had booked, where Lassiter was going to record a song Turner had written, "A Fool in Love", with Turner's band and the Artettes. But Lassiter never showed up -- he didn't have the eighty dollars, and Turner found himself sat in a recording studio with a bunch of musicians he was paying for, paying twenty-five dollars an hour for the studio time, and with no singer there to record. At the time, he was still under the impression that Lassiter might eventually show up, if not at that session, then at least at a future one, but until he did, there was nothing he could do and he was getting angry. Bullock suggested that they cut the track without Lassiter. They were using a studio with a multi-track machine -- only two tracks, but that would be enough. They could cut the backing track on one track, and she could record a guide vocal on the other track, since she'd been around when Turner was teaching Lassiter the song. At least that way they wouldn't have wasted all the money. Turner saw the wisdom of the idea -- he said in his autobiography "This was the first time I got hip to two-track stereo" -- and after consulting with the engineer on the session, he decided to go ahead with Bullock's plan. The plan still caused problems, because they were recording the song in a key written for a man, so Bullock had to yell more than sing, causing problems for the engineer, who according to Turner kept saying things like "Goddammit, don't holler in my microphone". But it was only a demo vocal, after all, and they got it cut -- and as Lassiter didn't show up, Turner took Lassiter's backing vocal group as his own new group, renaming the Artettes to the Ikettes, and they became the first of a whole series of lineups of Ikettes who would record with Turner for the rest of his life. The intention was still to get Lassiter to sing lead on the record, but then Turner played an acetate of it at a club night where he was DJing as well as performing, and the kids apparently went wild: [Excerpt: Ike and Tina Turner, "A Fool in Love"] Turner took the demo to Juggy Murray at Sue Records, still with the intention of replacing Anna Mae's vocal with Lassiter's, but Murray insisted that that was the best thing about the record, and that it should be released exactly as it was, that it was a guaranteed hit. Although -- while that's the story that's told all the time about that record by everyone involved in the recording and release, and seems uncontested, there does seem to be one minor problem with the story, which is that the Ikettes sing "you know you love him, you can't understand/Why he treats you like he do when he's such a good man". I'm willing to be proved wrong, of course, but my suspicion is that Ike Turner wasn't such a progressive thinker that he was writing songs about male-male relationships in 1960. It's possible that the Ikettes were recorded on the same track as Tina's guide vocals, but if the intention was to overdub a new lead from Lassiter on an otherwise finished track, it would have made more sense for them to sing their finished backing vocal part. It seems more likely to me that they decided in the studio that the record was going to go out with Anna Mae singing lead, and the idea of Murray insisting is a later exaggeration. One thing that doesn't seem to be an exaggeration, though, is that initially Murray wanted the record to go out as by Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm featuring Little Ann, but Turner had other ideas. While Murray insisted "the girl is the star", Turner knew what happened when other people were the credited stars on his records. He didn't want another Jackie Brenston, having a hit and immediately leaving Turner right back where he started. If Little Ann was the credited singer, Little Ann would become a star and Ike Turner would have to find a new singer. So he came up with a pseudonym. Turner was a fan of jungle women in film serials and TV, and he thought a wild-woman persona would suit Anna Mae's yelled vocal, and so he named his new star after Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, a female Tarzan knock-off comic character created by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger in the thirties, but who Turner probably knew from a TV series that had been on in 1955 and 56. He gave her his surname, changed "Sheena" slightly to make the new name alliterative and always at least claimed to have registered a trademark on the name he came up with, so if Anna Mae ever left the band he could just get a new singer to use the name. Anna Mae Bullock was now Tina Turner, and the record went out as by "Ike and Tina Turner": [Excerpt: Ike and Tina Turner, "A Fool in Love"] That went to number two on the R&B charts, and hit the top thirty on the pop charts, too. But there were already problems. After Ike had had a second son with Lorraine, he then got Tina pregnant with another of his children, still seeing both women. He had already started behaving abusively towards Tina, and as well as being pregnant, she was suffering from jaundice -- she says in the first of her two autobiographies that she distinctly remembered lying in her hospital bed, hearing "A Fool in Love" on the radio, and thinking "What's love got to do with it?", though as with all such self-mythologising we should take this with a pinch of salt. Turner was in need of money to pay for lawyers -- he had been arrested for financial crimes involving forged cheques -- and Juggy Murray wouldn't give him an advance until he delivered a follow-up to "A Fool in Love", so he insisted that Tina sneak herself out of the hospital and go into the studio, jaundiced and pregnant, to record the follow-up. Then, as soon as the jaundice had cleared up, they went on a four-month tour, with Tina heavily pregnant, to make enough money to pay Ike's legal bills. Turner worked his band relentlessly -- he would accept literally any gig, even tiny clubs with only a hundred people in the audience, reasoning that it was better for the band's image to play  small venues that had to turn people away because they were packed to capacity, than to play large venues that were only half full. While "A Fool in Love" had a substantial white audience, the Ike and Tina Turner Revue was almost the epitome of the chitlin' circuit act, playing exciting, funky, tightly-choreographed shows for almost entirely Black audiences in much the same way as James Brown, and Ike Turner was in control of every aspect of the show. When Tina had to go into hospital to give birth, rather than give up the money from gigging, Ike hired a sex worker who bore a slight resemblance to Tina to be the new onstage "Tina Turner" until the real one was able to perform again. One of the Ikettes told the real Tina, who discharged herself from hospital, travelled to the venue, beat up the fake Tina, and took her place on stage two days after giving birth. The Ike and Tina Turner Revue, with the Kings of Rhythm backing Tina, the Ikettes, and male singer Jimmy Thomas, all of whom had solo spots, were an astonishing live act, but they were only intermittently successful on record. None of the three follow-ups to "A Fool in Love" did better than number eighty-two on the charts, and two of them didn't even make the R&B charts, though "I Idolize You" did make the R&B top five. Their next big hit came courtesy of Mickey and Sylvia. You may remember us talking about Mickey and Sylvia way back in episode forty-nine, from back in 2019, but if you don't, they were one of a series of R&B duet acts, like Gene and Eunice, who came up after the success of Shirley and Lee, and their big hit was "Love is Strange": [Excerpt: Mickey and Sylvia, "Love is Strange"] By 1961, their career had more or less ended, but they'd recorded a song co-written by the great R&B songwriter Rose Marie McCoy, which had gone unreleased: [Excerpt: Mickey and Sylvia, "It's Gonna Work Out Fine"] When that was shelved they remade it as an Ike and Tina Turner record, with Mickey and Sylvia being Ike -- Sylvia took on all the roles that Ike would normally do in the studio, arranging the track and playing lead guitar, as well as joining the Ikettes on backing vocals, while Mickey did the spoken answering vocals that most listeners assumed were Ike, and which Ike would replicate on stage. The result, unsurprisingly, sounded more like a Mickey and Sylvia record than anything Ike and Tina had ever released before, though it's very obviously Tina on lead vocals: [Excerpt: Ike and Tina Turner, "It's Gonna Work Out Fine"] That made the top twenty on the pop charts -- though it would be their last top forty hit for nearly a decade as Ike and Tina Turner. They did though have a couple of other hits as the Ikettes, with Ike Turner putting the girl group's name on the label so he could record for multiple labels. The first of these, "I'm Blue (The Gong Gong Song)" was a song Ike had written which would later go on to become something of an R&B standard. It featured Dolores Johnson on lead vocals, but Tina sang backing vocals and got a rare co-production credit: [Excerpt: The Ikettes, "I'm Blue (The Gong Gong Song)"] The other Ikettes top forty hit was in 1965, with a song written by Steve Venet and Tommy Boyce -- a songwriter we will be hearing more about in three weeks -- and produced by Venet: [Excerpt: The Ikettes, "Peaches 'n' Cream"] Ike wasn't keen on that record at first, but soon came round to it when it hit the charts. The success of that record caused that lineup of Ikettes to split from Ike and Tina -- the Ikettes had become a successful act in their own right, and Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars wanted to book them, but that would have meant they wouldn't be available for Ike and Tina shows. So Ike sent a different group of three girls out on the road with Clark's tour, keeping the original Ikettes back to record and tour with him, and didn't pay them any royalties on their records. They resented being unable to capitalise on their big hit, so they quit. At first they tried to keep the Ikettes name for themselves, and got Tina Turner's sister Alline to manage them, but eventually they changed their name to the Mirettes, and released a few semi-successful records. Ike got another trio of Ikettes to replace them, and carried on with Pat Arnold, Gloria Scott, and Maxine Smith as the new Ikettes,. One Ikette did remain pretty much throughout -- a woman called Ann Thomas, who Ike Turner was sleeping with, and who he would much later marry, but who he always claimed was never allowed to sing with the others, but was just there for her looks. By this point Ike and Tina had married, though Ike had not divorced any of his previous wives (though he paid some of them off when Ike and Tina became big). Ike and Tina's marriage in Tijuana was not remembered by either of them as a particularly happy experience -- Ike would always later insist that it wasn't a legal marriage at all, and in fact that it was the only one of his many, many, marriages that hadn't been, and was just a joke. He was regularly abusing her in the most horrific ways, but at this point the duo still seemed to the public to be perfectly matched. They actually only ended up on the Big TNT Show as a last-minute thing -- another act was sick, though none of my references mention who it was who got sick, just that someone was needed to fill in for them, and as Ike and Tina were now based in LA -- the country boy Ike had finally become a city boy after all -- and would take any job on no notice, they got the gig. Phil Spector was impressed, and he decided that he could revitalise his career by producing a hit for Tina Turner. There was only one thing wrong -- Tina Turner wasn't an act. *Ike* and Tina Turner was an act. And Ike Turner was a control freak, just like Spector was -- the two men had essentially the same personality, and Spector didn't want to work with someone else who would want to be in charge. After some negotiation, they came to an agreement -- Spector could produce a Tina Turner record, but it would be released as an Ike and Tina Turner record. Ike would be paid twenty thousand dollars for his services, and those services would consist of staying well away from the studio and not interfering. Spector was going to go back to the old formulas that had worked for him, and work with the people who had contributed to his past successes, rather than leaving anything to chance. Jack Nitzsche had had a bit of a falling out with him and not worked on some of the singles he'd produced recently, but he was back. And Spector was going to work with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich again. He'd fallen out with Barry and Greenwich when "Chapel of Love" had been a hit for the Dixie Cups rather than for one of Spector's own artists, and he'd been working with Mann and Weill and Goffin and King instead. But he knew that it was Barry and Greenwich who were the ones who had worked best with him, and who understood his musical needs best, so he actually travelled to see them in New York instead of getting them to come to him in LA, as a peace offering and a sign of how much he valued their input. The only problem was that Spector hadn't realised that Barry and Greenwich had actually split up.  They were still working together in the studio, and indeed had just produced a minor hit single for a new act on Bert Berns' label BANG, for which Greenwich had written the horn arrangement: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Solitary Man"] We'll hear more about Neil Diamond, and about Jeff Barry's work with him, in three weeks. But Barry and Greenwich were going through a divorce and weren't writing together any more, and came back together for one last writing session with Spector, at which, apparently, Ellie Greenwich would cry every time they wrote a line about love. The session produced four songs, of which two became singles. Barry produced a version of "I Can Hear Music", written at these sessions, for the Ronettes, who Spector was no longer interested in producing himself: [Excerpt: The Ronettes, "I Can Hear Music"] That only made number ninety-nine on the charts, but the song was later a hit for the Beach Boys and has become recognised as a classic. The other song they wrote in those sessions, though, was the one that Spector wanted to give to Tina Turner. "River Deep, Mountain High" was a true three-way collaboration -- Greenwich came up with the music for the verses, Spector for the choruses, and Barry wrote the lyrics and tweaked the melody slightly. Spector, Barry, and Greenwich spent two weeks in their writing session, mostly spent on "River Deep, Mountain High". Spector later said of the writing "Every time we'd write a love line, Ellie would start to cry. I couldn't figure out what was happening, and then I realised… it was a very uncomfortable situation. We wrote that, and we wrote ‘I Can Hear Music'…. We wrote three or four hit songs on that one writing session. “The whole thing about ‘River Deep' was the way I could feel that strong bass line. That's how it started. And then Jeff came up with the opening line. I wanted a tender song about a chick who loved somebody very much, but a different way of expressing it. So we came up with the rag doll and ‘I'm going to cuddle you like a little puppy'. And the idea was really built for Tina, just like ‘Lovin' Feelin” was built for the Righteous Brothers.” Spector spent weeks recording, remixing, rerecording, and reremixing the backing track, arranged by Nitzsche, creating the most thunderous, overblown, example of the Wall of Sound he had ever created, before getting Tina into the studio. He also spent weeks rehearsing Tina on the song, and according to her most of what he did was "carefully stripping away all traces of Ike from my performance" -- she was belting the song and adding embellishments, the way Ike Turner had always taught her to, and Spector kept insisting that she just sing the melody -- something that she had never had the opportunity to do before, and which she thought was wonderful. It was so different from anything else that she'd recorded that after each session, when Ike would ask her about the song, she would go completely blank -- she couldn't hold this pop song in her head except when she was running through it with Spector. Eventually she did remember it, and when she did Ike was not impressed, though the record became one of the definitive pop records of all time: [Excerpt: Ike and Tina Turner, "River Deep, Mountain High"] Spector was putting everything on the line for this record, which was intended to be his great comeback and masterpiece. That one track cost more than twenty thousand dollars to record -- an absolute fortune at a time when a single would normally be recorded in one or two sessions at most. It also required a lot of work on Tina's part. She later estimated that she had sung the opening line of the song a thousand times before Spector allowed her to move on to the second line, and talked about how she got so hot and sweaty singing the song over and over that she had to take her blouse off in the studio and sing the song in her bra. She later said "I still don't know what he wanted. I still don't know if I pleased him. But I never stopped trying." Spector produced a total of six tracks with Tina, including the other two songs written at those Barry and Greenwich sessions, "I'll Never Need More Than This", which became the second single released off the "River Deep, Mountain High" album, and "Hold On Baby", plus cover versions of Arthur Alexander's "Every Day I Have to Cry Some", Pomus and Shuman's "Save the Last Dance", and "A Love Like Yours (Don't Come Knocking Everyday)" a Holland-Dozier-Holland song which had originally been released as a Martha and the Vandellas B-side. The planned album was to be padded out with six tracks produced by Ike Turner, mostly remakes of the duo's earlier hits, and was planned for release after the single became the hit everyone knew it would. The single hit the Hot One Hundred soon after it was released: [Excerpt: Ike and Tina Turner, "River Deep, Mountain High"] ...and got no higher up the charts than number eighty-eight. The failure of the record basically destroyed Spector, and while he had been an abusive husband before this, now he became much worse, as he essentially retired from music for four years, and became increasingly paranoid and aggressive towards the industry that he thought was not respectful enough of his genius. There have been several different hypotheses as to why "River Deep Mountain High" was not a success. Some have said that it was simply because DJs were fed up of Spector refusing to pay payola, and had been looking for a reason to take him down a peg. Ike Turner thought it was due to racism, saying later “See, what's wrong with America, I think, is that rather than accept something for its value… what it's doing, America mixes race in it. You can't call that record R&B. But because it's Tina… if you had not put Tina's name on there and put ‘Joe Blow', then the Top 40 stations would have accepted it for being a pop record. But Tina Turner… they want to brand her as being an R&B artist. I think the main reason that ‘River Deep' didn't make it here in America was that the R&B stations wouldn't play it because they thought it was pop, and the pop stations wouldn't play it because they thought it was R&B. And it didn't get played at all. The only record I've heard that could come close to that record is a record by the Beach Boys called ‘Good Vibrations'. I think these are the two records that I've heard in my life that I really like, you know?” Meanwhile, Jeff Barry thought it was partly the DJs but also faults in the record caused by Phil Spector's egomania, saying "he has a self-destructive thing going for him, which is part of the reason that the mix on ‘River Deep' is terrible, he buried the lead and he knows he buried the lead and he cannot stop himself from doing that… if you listen to his records in sequence, the lead goes further and further in and to me what he is saying is, ‘It is not the song I wrote with Jeff and Ellie, it is not the song – just listen to those strings. I want more musicians, it's me, listen to that bass sound. …' That, to me, is what hurts in the long run... Also, I do think that the song is not as clear on the record as it should be, mix-wise. I don't want to use the word overproduced, because it isn't, it's just undermixed." There's possibly an element of all three of these factors in play. As we've discussed, 1965 seems to have been the year that the resegregation of American radio began, and the start of the long slow process of redefining genres so that rock and roll, still considered a predominantly Black music at the beginning of the sixties, was by the end of the decade considered an almost entirely white music. And it's also the case that "River Deep, Mountain High" was the most extreme production Spector ever committed to vinyl, and that Spector had made a lot of enemies in the music business. It's also, though, the case  that it was a genuinely great record: [Excerpt: Ike and Tina Turner, "River Deep, Mountain High"] However, in the UK, it was promoted by Decca executive Tony Hall, who was a figure who straddled both sides of the entertainment world -- as part of his work as a music publicist he had been a presenter on Oh Boy!, written a column in Record Mirror, and presented a Radio Luxembourg show. Hall put his not-inconsiderable weight behind promoting the record, and it ended up reaching number two in the UK -- being successful enough that the album was also released over here, though it wouldn't come out in the US for several years. The record also attracted the attention of the Rolling Stones, who invited Ike and Tina to be their support act on a UK tour, which also featured the Yardbirds, and this would be a major change for the duo in all sorts of ways. Firstly, it got them properly in contact with British musicians -- and the Stones would get Ike and Tina as support artists several times over the next few years -- and also made the UK and Europe part of their regular tour itinerary. It also gave the duo their first big white rock audience, and over the next several years they would pivot more and more to performing music aimed at that audience, rather than the chitlin' circuit they'd been playing for previously. Ike was very conscious of wanting to move away from the blues and R&B -- while that was where he'd made his living as a musician, it wasn't music he actually liked, and he would often talk later about how much he respected Keith Richards and Eric Clapton, and how his favourite music was country music. Tina had also never been a fan of blues or R&B, and wanted to perform songs by the white British performers they were meeting. The tour also, though, gave Tina her first real thoughts of escape. She loved the UK and Europe, and started thinking about what life could be like for her not just being Ike Turner's wife and working fifty-one weeks a year at whatever gigs came along. But it also made that escape a little more difficult, because on the tour Tina lost one of her few confidantes in the organisation. Tina had helped Pat Arnold get away from her own abusive partner, and the two had become very close, but Arnold was increasingly uncomfortable being around Ike's abuse of Tina, and couldn't help her friend the way she'd been helped. She decided she needed to get out of a toxic situation, and decided to stay in England, where she'd struck up an affair with Mick Jagger, and where she found that there were many opportunities for her as a Black woman that simply hadn't been there in the US. (This is not to say that Britain doesn't have problems with racism -- it very much does, but those problems are *different* problems than the ones that the US had at that point, and Arnold found Britain's attitude more congenial to her personally). There was also another aspect, which a lot of Black female singers of her generation have mentioned and which probably applies here. Many Black women have said that they were astonished on visiting Britain to be hailed as great singers, when they thought of themselves as merely average. Britain does not have the kind of Black churches which had taught generations of Black American women to sing gospel, and so singers who in the US thought of themselves as merely OK would be far, far, better than any singers in the UK -- the technical standards were just so much lower here. (This is something that was still true at least as late as the mid-eighties. Bob Geldof talks in his autobiography about attending the recording session for "We Are the World" after having previously recorded "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and being astonished at how much more technically skilled the American stars were and how much more seriously they took their craft.) And Arnold wasn't just an adequate singer -- she was and is a genuinely great talent -- and so she quickly found herself in demand in the UK. Jagger got her signed to Immediate Records, a new label that had been started up by the Stones manager Andrew Oldham, and where Jimmy Page was the staff producer. She was given a new name, P.P. Arnold, which was meant to remind people of another American import, P.J. Proby, but which she disliked because the initials spelled "peepee". Her first single on the label, produced by Jagger, did nothing, but her second single, written by a then-unknown songwriter named Cat Stevens, became a big hit: [Excerpt: P.P. Arnold, "The First Cut is the Deepest"] She toured with a backing band, The Nice, and made records as a backing singer with artists like the Small Faces. She also recorded a duet with the unknown singer Rod Stewart, though that wasn't a success: [Excerpt: Rod Stewart and P.P. Arnold, "Come Home Baby"] We'll be hearing more about P.P. Arnold in future episodes, but the upshot of her success was that Tina had even fewer people to support her. The next few years were increasingly difficult for Tina, as Ike turned to cocaine use in a big way, became increasingly violent, and his abuse of her became much more violent. The descriptions of his behaviour in Tina's two volumes of autobiography are utterly harrowing, and I won't go into them in detail, except to say that nobody should have to suffer what she did. Ike's autobiography, on the other hand, has him attempting to defend himself, even while admitting to several of the most heinous allegations, by saying he didn't beat his wife any more than most men did. Now the sad thing is that this may well be true, at least among his peer group. Turner's behaviour was no worse than behaviour from, say, James Brown or Brian Jones or Phil Spector or Jerry Lee Lewis, and it may well be that behaviour like this was common enough among people he knew that Turner's behaviour didn't stand out at all. His abuse has become much better-known, because the person he was attacking happened to become one of the biggest stars in the world, while the women they attacked didn't. But that of course doesn't make what Ike did to Tina any better -- it just makes it infinitely sadder that so many more people suffered that way. In 1968, Tina actually tried to take her own life -- and she was so fearful of Ike that when she overdosed, she timed it so that she thought she would be able to at least get on stage and start the first song before collapsing, knowing that their contract required her to do that for Ike to get paid. As it was, one of the Ikettes noticed the tablets she had taken had made her so out of it she'd drawn a line across her face with her eyebrow pencil. She was hospitalised, and according to both Ike and Tina's reports, she was comatose and her heart actually stopped beating, but then Ike started yelling at her, saying if she wanted to die why didn't she do it by jumping in front of a truck, rather than leaving him with hospital bills, and telling her to go ahead and die if this was how she was going to treat him -- and she was so scared of Ike her heart started up again. (This does not seem medically likely to me, but I wasn't there, and they both were). Of course, Ike frames this as compassion and tough love. I would have different words for it myself. Tina would make several more suicide attempts over the years, but even as Tina's life was falling apart, the duo's professional career was on the up. They started playing more shows in the UK, and they toured the US as support for the Rolling Stones. They also started having hits again, after switching to performing funked-up cover versions of contemporary hits. They had a minor hit with a double-sided single of the Beatles' "Come Together" and the Stones' "Honky-Tonk Women", then a bigger one with a version of Sly and the Family Stone's "I Want to Take You Higher", then had their biggest hit ever with "Proud Mary". It's likely we'll be looking at Creedence Clearwater Revival's original version of that song at some point, but while Ike Turner disliked the original, Tina liked it, and Ike also became convinced of the song's merits by hearing a version by The Checkmates Ltd: [Excerpt: The Checkmates Ltd, "Proud Mary"] That was produced by Phil Spector, who came briefly out of his self-imposed exile from the music business in 1969 to produce a couple of singles for the Checkmates and Ronnie Spector. That version inspired Ike and Tina's recording of the song, which went to number four on the charts and won them a Grammy award in 1971: [Excerpt: Ike and Tina Turner, "Proud Mary"] Ike was also investing the money they were making into their music. He built his own state-of-the-art studio, Bolic Sound, which Tina always claimed was a nod to her maiden name, Bullock, but which he later always said was a coincidence. Several other acts hired the studio, especially people in Frank Zappa's orbit -- Flo and Eddie recorded their first album as a duo there, and Zappa recorded big chunks of Over-Nite Sensation and Apostrophe('), two of his most successful albums, at the studio. Acts hiring Bolic Sound also got Tina and the Ikettes on backing vocals if they wanted them, and so for example Tina is one of the backing vocalists on Zappa's "Cosmik Debris": [Excerpt: Frank Zappa, "Cosmik Debris"] One of the most difficult things she ever had to sing in her life was this passage in Zappa's song "Montana", which took the Ikettes several days' rehearsal to get right. [Excerpt: Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, "Montana"] She was apparently so excited at having got that passage right that she called Ike out of his own session to come in and listen, but Ike was very much unimpressed, and insisted that Tina and the Ikettes not get credit on the records they made with Zappa. Zappa later said “I don't know how she managed to stick with that guy for so long. He treated her terribly and she's a really nice lady. We were recording down there on a Sunday. She wasn't involved with the session, but she came in on Sunday with a whole pot of stew that she brought for everyone working in the studio. Like out of nowhere, here's Tina Turner coming in with a rag on her head bringing a pot of stew. It was really nice.” By this point, Ike was unimpressed by anything other than cocaine and women, who he mostly got to sleep with him by having truly gargantuan amounts of cocaine around. As Ike was descending further into paranoia and abuse, though, Tina was coming into her own. She wrote "Nutbush City Limits" about the town where she grew up, and it reached number 22 on the charts -- higher than any song Ike ever wrote: [Excerpt: Ike and Tina Turner, "Nutbush City Limits"] Of course, Ike would later claim that he wrote the music and let Tina keep all the credit. Tina was also asked by the Who to appear in the film version of their rock opera Tommy, where her performance of "Acid Queen" was one of the highlights: [Excerpt: Tina Turner, "Acid Queen"] And while she was filming that in London, she was invited to guest on a TV show with Ann-Margret, who was a huge fan of Ike and Tina, and duetted with Tina -- but not Ike -- on a medley of her hits: [Excerpt: Tina Turner and Ann-Margret, "Nutbush City Limits/Honky Tonk Woman"] Just as with "River Deep, Mountain High", Tina was wanted for her own talents, independent of Ike. She was starting to see that as well as being an abusive husband, he was also not necessary for her to have a career. She was also starting to find parts of her life that she could have for herself, independent of her husband. She'd been introduced to Buddhist meditation by a friend, and took it up in a big way, much to Ike's disapproval. Things finally came to a head in July 1976, in Dallas, when Ike started beating her up and for the first time she fought back. She pretended to reconcile with him, waited for him to fall asleep, and ran across a busy interstate, almost getting hit by a ten-wheel truck, to get to another hotel she could see in the distance. Luckily, even though she had no money, and she was a Black woman in Dallas, not a city known for its enlightened attitudes in the 1970s, the manager of the Ramada Inn took pity on her and let her stay there for a while until she could get in touch with Buddhist friends. She spent the next few months living off the kindness of strangers, before making arrangements with Rhonda Graam, who had started working for Ike and Tina in 1964 as a fan, but had soon become indispensable to the organisation. Graam sided with Tina, and while still supposedly working for Ike she started putting together appearances for Tina on TV shows like Cher's. Cher was a fan of Tina's work, and was another woman trying to build a career after leaving an abusive husband who had been her musical partner: [Excerpt: Cher and Tina Turner, "Makin' Music is My Business"] Graam became Tina's full-time assistant, as well as her best friend, and remained part of her life until Graam's death a year ago. She also got Tina booked in to club gigs, but for a long time they found it hard to get bookings -- promoters would say she was "only half the act". Ike still wanted the duo to work together professionally, if not be a couple, but Tina absolutely refused, and Ike had gangster friends of his shoot up Graam's car, and Tina heard rumours that he was planning to hire a hit man to come after her. Tina filed for divorce, and gave Ike everything -- all the money the couple had earned together in sixteen years of work, all the property, all the intellectual property -- except for two cars, one of which Ike had given her and one which Sammy Davis Jr. had given her, and the one truly important thing -- the right to use the name "Tina Turner", which Ike had the trademark on. Ike had apparently been planning to hire someone else to perform as "Tina Turner" and carry on as if nothing had changed. Slowly, Tina built her career back up, though it was not without its missteps. She got a new manager, who also managed Olivia Newton-John, and the manager brought in a song he thought was perfect for Tina. She turned it down, and Newton-John recorded it instead: [Excerpt: Olivia Newton-John, "Physical"] But even while she was still playing small clubs, her old fans from the British rock scene were boosting her career. In 1981, after Rod Stewart saw her playing a club gig and singing his song "Hot Legs", he invited her to guest with him and perform the song on Saturday Night Live: [Excerpt: Rod Stewart and Tina Turner, "Hot Legs"] The Rolling Stones invited Tina to be their support act on a US tour, and to sing "Honky Tonk Women" on stage with them, and eventually when David Bowie, who was at the height of his fame at that point, told his record label he was going to see her on a night that EMI wanted to do an event for him, half the record industry showed up to the gig. She had already recorded a remake of the Temptations' "Ball of Confusion" with the British Electric Foundation -- a side project for two of the members of Heaven 17 -- in 1982, for one of their albums: [Excerpt: British Electric Foundation, "Ball of Confusion"] Now they were brought in to produce a new single for her, a remake of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together": [Excerpt: Tina Turner, "Let's Stay Together"] That made the top thirty in the US, and was a moderate hit in many places, making the top ten in the UK. She followed it up with another BEF production, a remake of "Help!" by the Beatles, which appears only to have been released in mainland Europe. But then came the big hit: [Excerpt: Tina Turner, "What's Love Got to Do With It?"] wenty-six years after she started performing with Ike, Tina Turner was suddenly a major star. She had a string of successes throughout the eighties and nineties, with more hit records, film appearances, a successful autobiography, a film based on the autobiography, and record-setting concert appearan

This week's guest is the great musician and photographer Henry Diltz. Among the bands Diltz played with was the Modern Folk Quartet. While a member of the Modern Folk Quartet, Diltz became interested in photography. His work also attracted the eye of musicians who needed publicity and album cover photos. He was the official photographer at Woodstock, Monterey Pop Festival and Miami Pop Festival, and has photographed over 200 record album covers.The Cowsills ask Henry how he transitions from playing the banjo to professional photography and how he got involved in Woodstock.Song of the Week: This Could Be The Night by The Modern Folk Quartet

In Part Two of my talk with rock photographer Henry Diltz we'll discuss the self-titled Crosby, Stills and Nash album cover, hanging with Neil Young at Broken Arrow Ranch and of course, Woodstock. Henry had an all access pass to the festival that praised peace, love, God's Herb and rock and roll, so he'll be recounting his favorite memories and performances from those mythological 3 days.To check out some of Henry's work - sold exclusively though The Morrison Hotel Gallery in Los Angeles - visit: https://www.morrisonhotelgallery.com

Today My Rock Moment catches up with legendary rock photographer Henry Diltz. His iconic photos have graced hundreds of album covers and have been featured in books, magazines and newspapers. He's best known for his work with The Doors, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Neil Young and his photo photographic essays of Woodstock and the Monterey Pop Festival.In Part One of our discussion we'll talk about his own musical journey in LA with the Modern Folk Quartet, the move to photography, his work with the Laurel Canyon folk rock scene, and his time working on the Morrison Hotel and Crosby, Stills & Nash album covers. To check out some of Henry's work - sold exclusively though The Morrison Hotel gallery in Los Angeles - visit: https://www.morrisonhotelgallery.com

Henry Diltz is one of the most iconic rock and roll photographers of today. He has shot over 200 album covers and countless photographs. The Doors, Morrison Hotel is one of the most famous works of art, which he named is gallery after (Morrison Hotel Gallery). The gallery features the works of over 125 famous music photographers with their photographs for sale. Henry tells  us some of the stories behind his photography, like hanging on the set with the Monkees, touring with David Cassisdy, shooting James Taylor and so many more.  

in which we discuss Jimi and the Star Spangled Banner, his new books on the film, and "Just move one stone."

6-28-21 show- Johnny Ray Miller in studio, interviews with Brian Forster (Chris Partridge on PF), & famed rock photographer Henry Diltz. Jeff Pike of A1A co hosts.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/a1a-media-network. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

6-28-21 show- Johnny Ray Miller in studio, interviews with Brian Forster (Chris Partridge on PF), & famed rock photographer Henry Diltz. Jeff Pike of A1A co hosts.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/a1a-media-network. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

For over forty years, Henry Diltz has befriended and photographed almost every music legend you can imagine. OWC Host Cirina Catania talks with him about it in part two of their conversation for OWC RADiO.

Woodstock, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchel, Mama Cass, Crosby Stills & Nash, Neil Young, the Eagles, Brian Williams...Name a famous musician from the last 40 years, and there is a distinct possibility that Henry Diltz has photographed them!

Canciones escogidas con el banjo como protagonista o cuando menos como base de las mismas. John Hartford, Rusty Young (Poco), Glenn Campbell o su hija Ashley, John Curtis (Pousette-Dart Band), el fotógrafo legendario Henry Diltz tocando para el trío America, Bernie Leadon (The Flying Burrito Bros, Eagles o Run C& W), Emily Robinson (Dixie Chicks) o George McCorkle (The Marshall Tucker Band) haciéndose con el instrumentos para embellecer e impulsar melodías preciosas que animan el día, comienzo de la semana. DISCO 1 THE MARSHALL TUCKER BAND The Long Ride (Cara 1 Corte 1) DISCO 2 POCO Susannah (2)  DISCO 3 POUSETTE-DART BAND Smile On Me (9) DISCO 4 CHATHAM COUNTY LINE Rock In the River (4) DISCO 5 JOHN HARTFORD Gentle On My. Mind (Cara 1 Corte 4) DISCO 6 GLENN CAMPBELL Faithless Love (Cara A) DISCO 7 ASHLEY CAMPBELL Better Boyfriend (3) DISCO 8 BILL KEITH (MUD ACRES MUSIC) Never Got To Meet The Mom (Cara 1 Corte 6) DISCO 9 THE LONG RYDERS Never Got To Meet The Mom (Cara 2 Corte 4) DISCO 10 DIXIE CHICKS Ready To Run (1) DISCO 11 DAN FOGELBERG Think Of What You've Done (10) DISCO 12 AMERICA Don’t Cross The River (3) DISCO 13 DOLLY PARTON Don’t Cross The River (3) DISCO 14 RUN C & W Unchained Medley: Flint Hill Special [Intro]/What'd I Say/Superstition/Stop In The Name Of Love (3) DISCO 15 KIRK DOUGLAS And The Moon Grew Brighter (19) Hombre sin Rumbo Escuchar audio

Relive some of the greatest moments in rock history with an icon. Photographer Henry Diltz describes shooting photos and album covers for artists such as Paul McCartney, Crosby, Still and Nash, Joni Mitchell and The Doors.

Relive some of the greatest moments in rock history with an icon. Photographer Henry Diltz describes shooting photos and album covers for artists such as Paul McCartney, Crosby, Still and Nash, Joni Mitchell and The Doors.

On this week's Growing Bolder, we're taking a trip back in time with one of the most iconic rock photographers in history.

On this week's Growing Bolder, we’re taking a trip back in time with one of the most iconic rock photographers in history.

Henry Diltz and his friend Rich Horowitz together own the Morrison Hotel Gallery, a fine art music photography art gallery with locations in New York, Maui, Los Angeles, and online. From his Winnebago studio, Ron Henry interviews artists about their creative process and journey. https://www.blackrapidmedia.com Follow Henry Diltz & Rich Horowitz Photography Website – HenryDiltz.com Gallery Website – MorrisonHotelGallery.com Henry Diltz Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/henrydiltz/ Morrison Hotel Gallery Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/morrisonhotelgallery/ Original Podcast with Ron Henry, Henry Diltz, and Rich Horowitz

In a raucous, candid and humorous interview Diltz tells of the historic Laurel Canyon days of the sixties with pals like Steven Stills, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, the Doors, James Taylor, Mama Cass, John Sebastian and the whole range of American rock, folk music and pop culture legends he photographed before they were famous and over the next 50 years. It’s thought that Henry may have sold more prints than any photographer in history. 

Darrell Lloyd singles out David Cassidy being responsible for his successful career as a photographer, an interest which started in 1970 when he was 10 years old. Teen magazines played an important part in that development mainly through Tiger Beat, Flip, 16 as well as Rolling Stone, Look and TV Guide. In our conversation he explains those early influences through images of The Osmonds, The Jackson 5, Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy. Photographers that made a huge impact on him were Gene Trindl, Kenny Lieu, Annie Leibovitz and Henry Diltz. “Images from these photographers were a constant influence on a weekly, bi-weekly and monthly schedule. I would be at my local newsstands absorbing all the magazine covers my eyes could handle,” he explained. “As time grew on, a person became a common denominator of each photographer I admired. They all singled in on one subject in front of their cameras.....David Cassidy who was on the trajectory of becoming a teen idol of gigantic proportions, the likes the world had never seen before.  “The way photographers did shoots with David were second to none. The man was incapable of taking a bad photo.  “Because each photographer had their main focus on David was like a master class in photography for me. They taught me a lot about the proper way to compose a photo. I owe these photographers a tremendous debt that I could never repay in 10 lifetimes.” Darrell shares anecdotes about his photographic career, meeting David, and a revealing conversation he had with Mike Melvoin who was a member of The Wrecking Crew the musicians who worked on The Partridge Family music.  Darrell also calls for musicians who admire David's work to pay a special tribute to his music.

In this week's episode, RBP's very own Terrible Trio are joined by the legendary Jill Furmanovsky for a free-ranging conversation about her long career – and about rock photography in general. Jill describes her lucky 1972 break at London's Rainbow Theatre, talks about shooting Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan, and namechecks fellow snappers Pennie Smith and Barrie Wentzell. Discussion follows about free pieces (on Henry Diltz, Dennis Morris, and Barry Feinstein) by Observer photography critic Sean O'Hagan. The first of three clips from a 1975 interview with the late Errol Brown prompts reflections on the delicious Hot Chocolate – and what made Brown such a compelling star of '70s pop. Mark then guides us through new library pieces about Andy Williams (1963), the MC5 (1968), Ringo Starr (1972), and Scritti Politti (1988). Barney spotlights articles on Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the state of music journalism in 2018. Jasper wraps up the episode by considering the post-Velvets careers of Lou Reed, John Cale and co., plus an unlikely 2011 live pairing of Foo Fighters and CeeLo Green… Many thanks to special guest Jill Furmanovsky; visit rockarchive.com to see her photography.The Rock's Backpages podcast is part of the Pantheon podcast network.

In this week's episode, RBP's very own Terrible Trio are joined by the legendary Jill Furmanovsky for a free-ranging conversation about her long career – and about rock photography in general. Jill describes her lucky 1972 break at London's Rainbow Theatre, talks about shooting Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan, and namechecks fellow snappers Pennie Smith and Barrie Wentzell. Discussion follows about free pieces (on Henry Diltz, Dennis Morris, and Barry Feinstein) by Observer photography critic Sean O'Hagan. The first of three clips from a 1975 interview with the late Errol Brown prompts reflections on the delicious Hot Chocolate – and what made Brown such a compelling star of '70s pop. Mark then guides us through new library pieces about Andy Williams (1963), the MC5 (1968), Ringo Starr (1972), and Scritti Politti (1988). Barney spotlights articles on Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the state of music journalism in 2018. Jasper wraps up the episode by considering the post-Velvets careers of Lou Reed, John Cale and co., plus an unlikely 2011 live pairing of Foo Fighters and CeeLo Green… Many thanks to special guest Jill Furmanovsky; visit rockarchive.com to see her photography.We are delighted to launch our exclusive collaboration with Rockarchive at rocksbackpages.com/rockarchive.The Rock's Backpages podcast is part of the Pantheon podcast network.Pieces discussed: Jill Furmanovsky's Moment, Jill's Bobquest, Val Wilmer, Dennis Morris, Henry Diltz, Barry Feinstein, Hot Chocolate audio, Andy Williams, The Beatles, MC5, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Scritti Politti, Suede, Fiona Apple, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Music journalism, Life beyond the Velvets, Foo Fighters/CeeLo Green and Zoot Suit riots.

In this week's episode, RBP's very own Terrible Trio are joined by the legendary Jill Furmanovsky for a free-ranging conversation about her long career – and about rock photography in general. Jill describes her lucky 1972 break at London's Rainbow Theatre, talks about shooting Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan, and namechecks fellow snappers Pennie Smith and Barrie Wentzell. Discussion follows about free pieces (on Henry Diltz, Dennis Morris, and Barry Feinstein) by Observer photography critic Sean O'Hagan.  The first of three clips from a 1975 interview with the late Errol Brown prompts reflections on the delicious Hot Chocolate – and what made Brown such a compelling star of '70s pop. Mark then guides us through new library pieces about Andy Williams (1963), the MC5 (1968), Ringo Starr (1972), and Scritti Politti (1988). Barney spotlights articles on Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the state of music journalism in 2018. Jasper wraps up the episode by considering the post-Velvets careers of Lou Reed, John Cale and co., plus an unlikely 2011 live pairing of Foo Fighters and CeeLo Green…  Many thanks to special guest Jill Furmanovsky; visit rockarchive.com to see her photography. The Rock's Backpages podcast is part of the Pantheon podcast network.

In this week's episode, RBP's very own Terrible Trio are joined by the legendary Jill Furmanovsky for a free-ranging conversation about her long career – and about rock photography in general. Jill describes her lucky 1972 break at London's Rainbow Theatre, talks about shooting Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan, and namechecks fellow snappers Pennie Smith and Barrie Wentzell. Discussion follows about free pieces (on Henry Diltz, Dennis Morris, and Barry Feinstein) by Observer photography critic Sean O'Hagan.  The first of three clips from a 1975 interview with the late Errol Brown prompts reflections on the delicious Hot Chocolate – and what made Brown such a compelling star of '70s pop. Mark then guides us through new library pieces about Andy Williams (1963), the MC5 (1968), Ringo Starr (1972), and Scritti Politti (1988). Barney spotlights articles on Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the state of music journalism in 2018. Jasper wraps up the episode by considering the post-Velvets careers of Lou Reed, John Cale and co., plus an unlikely 2011 live pairing of Foo Fighters and CeeLo Green…  Many thanks to special guest Jill Furmanovsky; visit rockarchive.com to see her photography. We are delighted to launch our exclusive collaboration with Rockarchive at rocksbackpages.com/rockarchive. The Rock's Backpages podcast is part of the Pantheon podcast network. Pieces discussed: Jill Furmanovsky's Moment, Jill's Bobquest, Val Wilmer, Dennis Morris, Henry Diltz, Barry Feinstein, Hot Chocolate audio, Andy Williams, The Beatles, MC5, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Scritti Politti, Suede, Fiona Apple, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Music journalism, Life beyond the Velvets, Foo Fighters/CeeLo Green and Zoot Suit riots.

Woodstock 1969 was a sort of Critical Mass of the Counterculture, when 500,000 people converged on a bucolic field in Upstate New York for three days of Peace, Love and Music. Henry Diltz witnessed it all up close, and shares his story with host Julian Simmons -- one of the 500,000 young people attracted to the event when he was just 15. (Julian never made it -- he was stuck in the historic traffic jam on the New York State Thruway).

Monkees fans gather for a Pleasent Valley Weekend down under. Linda Groundwater talks the "Pleasent Valley Weekend" 2/29/20-3/1/20  An Australian Monkees Celebration.You can purchase a download of Ken Sharp's Davy Jones charity songs at www.kensharp.bandcamp.com for $1. Or, email him at sharpk@aol.com for details on how to order the special limited edition vinyl 7" single, which will be accompanied by two exclusive '60s era color photos of Davy taken by acclaimed photographer Henry Diltz.Order your Peter Tork buttons and photos to benefit Sherri Hansen via PayPal to zilchorders@gmail.com. $10 per button, $20 per photo, or $25 for both. International orders, add $5.Originally aired 2/22/20We were born to love one another.Check Support Zilch , get a cool shirt!www.redbubble.com/people/designsbyken/works/12348740-zilch-podcast?c=314383-monkees-inspired-artJoin our Facebook pageFind us on Twitter @ZilchcastIf you cannot see the audio controls, listen/download the audio file hereDownload (right click, save as)

Nicole and Henry Diltz by Good Morning LaLa Land

Nicole and Henry Diltz by Good Morning LaLa Land

Henry Diltz is an extraordinary rock n roll photographer unlike any other. A founding member of the Modern Folk Quartet, Diltz is as much at home as a musician on tour, as he is a visual historian of the last four decades of popular music. The rapport he’s developed with his musician friends, along with his down-to-earth-grin and frequent laugh, enables him to capture the candid shots that convey a rare feeling of trust and intimacy with his subjects For Diltz, the pictures began with a $20 second-hand Japanese camera purchased on tour with the Modern Folk Quartet. When MFQ disbanded, he embarked on his photographic career with an album cover for The Lovin’ Spoonful. Despite his lack of formal training, Diltz easily submerged himself in the world of music: the road, the gigs, the humor, the social consciousness, the psychedelia, the up and down times. For over 40 years, his work has graced hundreds of album covers and has been featured in books, magazines and newspapers. His unique artistic style has produced powerful photographic essays of Woodstock , The Monterey Pop Festival, The Doors, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Jimi Hendrix and scores of other legendary artists. Diltz continues his distinguished career, generating new and vibrant photographs that inspire the rock n’ roll fan in each of us. Henry Diltz is a partner in, and is exclusively published and represented by the Morrison Hotel Gallery. “This is not history, this is evidence!” - Glenn Frey, Eagles “I’m the drummer, you’re the photographer, it’s as simple as that.” - Ringo Starr “Early on in his career, Henry mastered the art of capturing the moment. What he has proved over the decades is the illusive art of capturing life” - Gerry Beckley, America  

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Lifelong musician and Morrison Hotel Gallery co-founder Peter Blachley,  will issue his debut, Nevada Sky. The masterful Americana album—which will be available as a vinyl LP with a download card—features a vibrant Henry Diltz photographed cover image of a trusty old cherry red 1949 GMC pickup cruising down a rustic stretch of highway in anytown USA. Nevada Sky documents a life of inspiration, reinvention, and marks a profound coming together of many of the facets of Blachley’s life—family, photography, music, loves won and lost, and professional and personal aspirations.Nevada Sky begins with the sweet country weariness of “Big Old Train” and the opening lines: If you tell me where were going/ And I’ll tell you where we’ve been/And that big old train keeps rolling down the line. It’s an apt and warmly engaging metaphor to start a storyteller album. From there, with a richly expressive baritone, Blachley takes the listener to the streets of New York City with paternal sensitivity on the folk tune “Soho Sunday Morning,” and to breathtaking open sky beauty of “Nevada Sky.” And the poignant and poetic “Salvation Songs” transports the listener to the optimistic fire of the protest song movement and the ensuing introspective singer-songwriter movement of the 1970s.Nevada Sky folds family stories, personal and professional journeys, and lifelong dreams into one Americana storybook. Blachley says in conclusion: “With this album, I’ve left my legacy.”  

Episode 5 of ‘Art of Rock with Kosh & Friends’ finds Henry Diltz in conversation with Kosh. While they have known each other for decades they only worked together once, but crossed paths constantly with similar clients. Henry Diltz is a legendary photographer and musician active since the 1960’s. He is famous for capturing the laidback Laurel Canyon scene of the early 1970’s, the cover of The Doors album, ‘Morrison Hotel’ and the Woodstock music festival, where he was dubbed the “official photographer”. He got his professional start meeting the Monkees, photographing them and actually playing on a few of their tracks. First recognized as a musician for the Modern Folk Quartet, where he began shooting pictures of the group to shooting album covers for James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James and The Eagles, Desperado albums, as well as over 200 others. Henry is still working and is co-founder of the Morrison Hotel Gallery (Los Angeles, Maui, New York). Check out his new exhibit “Listening Through the Lens: The Music Photography of Henry Diltz at NAMM’s Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad California, now through October 28th, 2018. Details here: https://www.museumofmakingmusic.org/exhibits/diltz More on Henry: http://www.henrydiltz.com/ Buy Henry's Photos: https://www.morrisonhotelgallery.com/default.aspx museumofmakingmusic.org

Henry Diltz is a legendary photographer and musician active since the 1960’s. He is famous for capturing the laidback Laurel Canyon scene of the early 1970’s, the cover of The Doors album, ‘Morrison Hotel’ and the Woodstock music festival, where he was dubbed the “official photographer”. He got his professional start meeting the Monkees, photographing them and actually playing on a few of their tracks.

Paul Zollo is an author, journalist, songwriter and photographer. Presently he is the Senior Editor of American Songwriter magazine, and Chief Editor and Photographer for Bluerailroad. A native of Chicago, he’s the author of several books, including Songwriters On Songwriting, Expanded Edition (which has been called “the songwriter’s bible” and features in-depth interviews with more than sixty of the world’s greatest songwriters, including Frank Zappa, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Neil Young, Townes Van Zandt, Laura Nyro, Randy Newman), its sequel, More Songwriters On Songwriting, as well as Conversations with Tom Petty (featuring a full year of discussions between Petty & Zollo), The Schirmer Rhyming Dictionary, Hollywood Remembered (an oral and narrative history of Hollywood), The Beginning Songwriter’s Answer Book (a manual on the art and craft of songwriting), and Sunset & Cahuenga, a novel. He’s currently working on books with Matisyahu, and the legendary photographer Henry Diltz. The recipient of the NAS John Bettis Fellowship Award for service in the songwriting community, Zollo is former editor of SongTalk magazine, and Managing Editor of Performing Songwriter. He has written for numerous publications, including Variety, Billboard, Oxford American, Sing Out!, Grammy Magazine, Playback, Boulevard, Acoustic Guitar and others. The lead singer-songwriter for the LA band The Ghosters for many years, he released one self-titled album with the band, and two solo albums: Orange Avenue (2000), (which features his famous duet with Art Garfunkel on the song “Being In This World”) and Universal Cure (2014), which has a duet with Terre Roche of the Roches called “Maggie.” As a songwriter he’s collaborated with many great writers, including the late Steve Allen, as well as Dan Bern, Severin Browne, Bob Malone, James Coberly Smith and others. With Darryl Purpose, he’s written many songs, including all included on Darryl’s most recent album, Still The Birds. As a photographer, Zollo has photographed many musicians and performers, such as Aimee Mann, Peter Case and Leiber & Stoller, and his photos have been displayed in galleries in L.A. and published in American Songwriter and elsewhere. He is presently at work completing his first book of photos, Angeleno. He produced and hosted events for the Aspen Writer’s Foundation’s Lyrically Speaking Program, and hosts many songwriter tributes such as the annual Bobfest in L.A. a tribute to Bob Dylan. He produced NAS’ Salute To Songwriters for many years, has contributed to NARAS’ Living Histories video project, and for the past 16 years has written about the Best Song nominees for the annual Grammy program book. He also hosts the live web-series “Songwriters On Songwriting Live,” which is filmed and webcast every month from The Songwriting School of Los Angeles, where his guests have included Neil Sedaka, Stephen Bishop, Mike Love, Rumer, Dave Stewart and more.

Paul Zollo is an author, journalist, songwriter and photographer. Presently he is the Senior Editor of American Songwriter magazine, and Chief Editor and Photographer for Bluerailroad. A native of Chicago, he’s the author of several books, including Songwriters On Songwriting, Expanded Edition (which has been called “the songwriter’s bible” and features in-depth interviews with more than sixty of the world’s greatest songwriters, including Frank Zappa, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Neil Young, Townes Van Zandt, Laura Nyro, Randy Newman), its sequel, More Songwriters On Songwriting, as well as Conversations with Tom Petty (featuring a full year of discussions between Petty & Zollo), The Schirmer Rhyming Dictionary, Hollywood Remembered (an oral and narrative history of Hollywood), The Beginning Songwriter’s Answer Book (a manual on the art and craft of songwriting), and Sunset & Cahuenga, a novel. He’s currently working on books with Matisyahu, and the legendary photographer Henry Diltz. The recipient of the NAS John Bettis Fellowship Award for service in the songwriting community, Zollo is former editor of SongTalk magazine, and Managing Editor of Performing Songwriter. He has written for numerous publications, including Variety, Billboard, Oxford American, Sing Out!, Grammy Magazine, Playback, Boulevard, Acoustic Guitar and others. The lead singer-songwriter for the LA band The Ghosters for many years, he released one self-titled album with the band, and two solo albums: Orange Avenue (2000), (which features his famous duet with Art Garfunkel on the song “Being In This World”) and Universal Cure (2014), which has a duet with Terre Roche of the Roches called “Maggie.” As a songwriter he’s collaborated with many great writers, including the late Steve Allen, as well as Dan Bern, Severin Browne, Bob Malone, James Coberly Smith and others. With Darryl Purpose, he’s written many songs, including all included on Darryl’s most recent album, Still The Birds. As a photographer, Zollo has photographed many musicians and performers, such as Aimee Mann, Peter Case and Leiber & Stoller, and his photos have been displayed in galleries in L.A. and published in American Songwriter and elsewhere. He is presently at work completing his first book of photos, Angeleno. He produced and hosted events for the Aspen Writer’s Foundation’s Lyrically Speaking Program, and hosts many songwriter tributes such as the annual Bobfest in L.A. a tribute to Bob Dylan. He produced NAS’ Salute To Songwriters for many years, has contributed to NARAS’ Living Histories video project, and for the past 16 years has written about the Best Song nominees for the annual Grammy program book. He also hosts the live web-series “Songwriters On Songwriting Live,” which is filmed and webcast every month from The Songwriting School of Los Angeles, where his guests have included Neil Sedaka, Stephen Bishop, Mike Love, Rumer, Dave Stewart and more.

Join Holly Stephey & Spencer Drate as we talk to our friend Aaron Zych who is at the Morrison Hotel Gallery in NYC.Morrison Hotel Gallery® is the world leader in fine art music photography representing over 100 of the most highly acclaimed music photographers -- those who made, and continue to make, an indelible mark on music culture with photographic portrayals of the industry’s most influential artists.Morrison Hotel Gallery was founded by former record company marketing executive Peter Blachley; music retail industry professional Richard Horowitz; and legendary music photographer Henry Diltz. The concept of Morrison Hotel Gallery originated with the Diltz archive and the eponymous Morrison Hotel album cover taken by Diltz in 1969 for The Doors. With it’s flagship gallery in Soho, New York City, the gallery has always maintained a strong presence in Los Angeles, and is now suitably housed in the rockstar’s hotel, Sunset Marquis Hotel – this incarnation the brainchild of world-renowned author, director and photographer Timothy White. White, the gallery’s newest partner, is well known for documenting the charisma of an astounding list of Hollywood royalty.In 2016, Morrison Hotel Gallery joined forces with Fleetwood Mac founder and rock icon Mick Fleetwood to open our newest gallery in Fleetwood’s General Store in Lahaina, Maui. Morrison Hotel Gallery curates hundreds of the world’s most exceptional collections of rare and iconic music photography for international exhibition and sale. 

Famed Rock 'n' Roll photographers Pattie Boyd, Henry Diltz and Carinthia West tell their stories on The Dinner Party To Go podcast on WGN Radio Plus with host Elysabeth Alano.

The Morrison Hotel® gallery is about people. Founded in 2001 by former record company executive and producer Peter Blachley, music industry professional Richard Horowitz, and music photographer Henry Diltz, The Morrison Hotel® Gallery, which represents world renowned photographers, has grown to become the place to purchase fine art music photography. As you view some of the most inspiring and iconic images of music and musicians photographed over the last fifty-plus years, think about the people who existed on both sides of the lens. The photographers had no idea what they were creating or how historic the imagery would become. It is a one-second click of the shutter that creates a timeless moment in our lives.   From a very early age Aaron has had a deep understanding and appreciation of photography. Not only has he been with Morrison Hotel Gallery for 10 years, but he has been instrumental in the curation of over a hundred shows here.  Aaron works hand and hand with each of the represented photographers to cultivate the emotional experience that the art deserves. He is closely involved with the overseas markets creating the same real time experience as if one was standing in the actual SOHO gallery space.  Before settling down in New York, Aaron was on the West Coast immersed in its diverse art scene. He now lives in Brooklyn with his wife. Morrison Hotel Gallery - SoHo, NYC 116 Prince Street, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10012 phone: 212.941.8770 Morrison Hotel Gallery - West Hollywood, CA Sunset Marquis Hotel 1200 Alta Loma Road West Hollywood, CA 90069 phone: 310.881.6025 

Nevada Sky documents a life of inspiration, reinvention, and marks a profound coming together of many of the facets of Blachley’s life ,family, photography, music, loves won and lost, and professional and personal aspirations.In Blachley’s journey, he’s been a carpenter and served in Vietnam. His second act was being a music video pioneer through making culture-defining videos with the Stray Cats, George Thorogood, and Duran Duran as an executive producer/marketing visionary. During this time, Blachley worked at Capitol/EMI, and he went from mailroom up to being a music marketing exec before cross-fading to EMI’s Picture Music International as music video executive, content producer and marketerer. At 50, his music business tenure ended, and he reinvented himself as a gallery owner, co-finding the fine art music photography gallery the Morrison Hotel Gallery with partners Richard Horowitz and iconic photographer Henry Diltz.“There is hope in the fact that you can always reinvent yourself. Reinventing is about finding something you want to do everyday, something that makes you happy, and finding a way to make money doing it,” . For his third act, Peter Blachley is emerging as a captivating singer-songwriter with his debut album,Nevada Sky. It’s one of those storyteller albums that instantly feel like an old friend. It recalls the work of CSN, John Stewart, Neil Young, Waylon Jennings, Ian Tyson. It stretches across the highways of high lonesome country, confessional folk, and swampy rock n’ roll and it authentically evokes the rugged mountains and big open skies of the West, and the burly swagger of the big cities of the east it is pure Americana through and through.Nevada Sky folds family stories, personal and professional journeys, and lifelong dreams into one Americana storybook. Blachley says in conclusion “With this album, I’ve left my legacy "

Highly prolific and talented music photographer Henry Diltz stopped by our studio to promote his new book and chat about his fantastical life. He has been said to be the "best photographer you've never heard of." Diltz just stumbled upon this profession by taking photos of all of his friends who just so happened to be Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and others living in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles. You will find yourself shaking your head as he nonchalantly tells you the story of how he got the shot of The Doors' "Morrison Hotel" and James Taylor's "Sweet Baby James" album covers.  Henry watched and documented Woodstock being built from the ground up. He now is a co-founder of The Morrison Hotel Gallery which started in 2001 by record company exec and producer Peter Blachley, music industry professional Richard Horowitz (who joins this podcast) and Diltz. The Gallery represents world renowned photographers, and has now grown to become the place to purchase fine art music photography. Each account would be a disservice to summarize here; listen for yourself to this simply amazing man's stories.  henrydiltz.com morrisonhotelgallery.com  

About Aaron! From a very early age Aaron has had a deep understanding and appreciation of photography. Before settling down in New York, Aaron was on the West Coast immersed in its diverse art scene. In addition to fine art music photography, he has a passion for photojournalism and has varied musical tastes the run the gamut from Indie Rock to Jazz. The Morrison Hotel® gallery is about people. Founded in 2001 by former record company executive and producer Peter Blachley, music industry professional Richard Horowitz, and music photographer Henry Diltz, The Morrison Hotel® Gallery, which represents world renowned photographers, has grown to become the place to purchase fine art music photography. As you view some of the most inspiring and iconic images of music and musicians photographed over the last fifty-plus years, think about the people who existed on both sides of the lens. The photographers had no idea what they were creating or how historic the imagery would become. It is a one-second click of the shutter that creates a timeless moment in our lives.   NYC Soho Gallery 116 Prince Street New York, NY 10012 212-941-8770 212-941-8815 fax Hours: 11:00 – 6:00 (Mon - Thur) 11:00 – 7:00 (Fri - Sat) 12:00 - 6:00 (Sun) Los Angeles Gallery The Sunset Marquis Hotel Lobby 1200 Alta Loma Road West Hollywood, CA 90069 (310) 881-6025 Hours: 10:00 - 7:00 (Mon - Sat) 11:00 - 6:00 (Sun)