Podcasts about Whisky a Go Go

Butcher Babies singer Heidi Shepherd zoomed in to talk about their new single "Lost In Your Touch" as well as their headline tour hitting the Whisky A Go Go in Hollywood on Wednesday, March 18 2026. Here's what we talked about: new single "Lost In Your Touch" (0-7) new album (7-12) Judge & Jury Records (12-14) 3/18/26 at the Whisky A Go Go (14-19) Living in Las Vegas (19-20) Mandatory Metallica (20-end)

We've done whisky specials before but here we are, back with another. Why? There are always plenty of mighty fine whiskies to shout about. Besides, why the hell not?We start with two whiskies born and raised in the US. One is the result of two actor friends who bonded over their love of the spirit so much they decided to create their own, aptly called Brother's Bond Straight Bourbon Whiskey. The other is also the result of two bright minds coming together: this time it's Sirdavis created by Dr Bill Lumsden and Queen B herself, the one and only Beyoncé Knowles-Carter.Our book is a glorious road trip journal across Japan in which renowned whisky expert Dave Broom shares his very personal observations of the spirit and place in 'The Japanese Way of Whisky'.. And while we're on the subject of travel, there's certainly a whisky-based cocktail or two on the menu at Shakerato, the new bar in Amsterdam from the team behind Mexico City's award-winning Handshake bar.And then there's our guest, the fabulous Georgie Bell-Leoni, who has been evangelising about her favourite spirit, whisky, for over 15 years. She tells us about sourcing whiskies for her company, The Heart Cut, talks about how to fully appreciate them and guides us through a tasting of one of the bottlings on offer from her award-winning company The Heart Cut.For more from The Cocktail Lovers, visit thecocktaillovers.comFor the products featured in this episode, see websites below:What we're drinking:Matcha HighballBy Jason Patz, from Food & Wine Magazine60ml Japanese whisky (we used Hibiki)15ml honey water15ml freshly squeezed lemon juice1/4 tsp Matcha powderChilled Club Soda to topLemon wheel to garnishMethod:Chill Collins glasses. Shake first four ingredients over ice. Pour into the chilled Collins glass, top with Club Soda and garnish with a lemon wheel.Brother's Bond Straight Bourbon WhiskeyShakerato, AmsterdamSirDavis American WhiskyThe Heart CutThe Japanese Way of Whisky – by Dave BroomThe Cocktail Lovers theme music is by Travis 'T-Bone' WatsonEdited by Christian Fox Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Revving up the 'way back machine' today with one of my fave 60s rock groups Strawberry Alarm Clock (Incense and Peppermints; Rainey Day Mushroom Pillow) with bass player for the band, George Bunnell! We start off talking about their new album 'Monsters' (and catch their follow up tune 'Blow Your Mind', also available at their website). Listen in as we talk about the early days of their music (where did the band's name come from you ask?), working with the late Ed King (who went on to work with Lynyrd Skynyrd), creating the ultimate E Major 7th chord (who knew?), working with Big Stir Records AND the band's cool upcoming gig at LA's famed Whisky a Go Go on February 28. Bring your 'flower power' selves and join us!About the Spotlight Conversations podcast:Tune in as I invite friends inside my cozy linoleum free recording studio to talk about all things media - radio, television, music, film, voiceovers, audiobooks, publishing - if guests are in the spotlight, we're talkin'! Refreshingly unscripted and unusually entertaining, listen in as each guest gets real about their careers in the entertainment biz, from where they started to how it's going. Settle into my swanky studio where drinks are on ice and the conversation starters are music + media - always a deal breaker for the rock and roll homemaker! Listen to Donna every night starting at 9 on Houston Radio Platinum, along with a special program she hosts every Tuesday and Thursday night at 10 called 'Late Night Spotlight'. Follow @donnareedvo @spotlightconversations @rockandrollhomemaker New episodes drop every Tuesday. Social media links, website and more hereFollow and subscribe hereBooth Announcer: Joe Szymanski ('Joe The Voice Guy')Theme Song Composer: Mark Sparrow, SongBird Studios

Recorded on day three of Rock Camp Masters of Rock Camp Volume Two in Los Angeles, the Rock Camp podcast features hosts Britt Lightning and Tommy London with past campers George and Hank, who flew in from the East Coast and are being inducted into the third annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony at the Whisky A Go Go on Monday. George and Hank recount meeting at their first camp in Florida with guests including Dave Mustaine, Nico McBrain, Steve Morse, Rudy Sarzo, John Moyer, and Tony Franklin, describing band disruptions from COVID protocols and how Rock Camp created lifelong bonds, revived their musicianship after long breaks, and led to playing in multiple bands. They share standout memories like playing with Rob Halford and Nico McBrain, discuss bucket-list future guests (Metallica members), and talk about returning to guitar with modern learning tools like YouTube. The conversation previews the Hall of Fame event hosted by Tommy and Britt, featuring inductees and honorees including Sebastian Bach, Stephen Perkins, Mike Kroger, Tony Franklin, Ashley Reeve, Valerie Franco, and camper Ed Oates, with proceeds going to benefit charity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1915, a future leader of men, Bode Ioiô, arrived in Fortaleza, Brazil. Just seven years later, he became a legend. A political goat legend! We dive into the first elected animal and some of the other animals holding public office all over the place right now! We also spend a nice time talking mouths, Christmas trees, and Frankenstein in the MouthGarf Report. And there's another magical game of I See What You Did There.Sources:https://visite.museus.gov.br/instituicoes/museu-do-bode-ioio/https://g1.globo.com/ce/ceara/noticia/2022/08/23/simbolo-do-ceara-bode-ioio-ganha-museu-100-anos-apos-ter-sido-eleito-vereador-de-fortaleza.ghtmlPlease give us a 5 star rating on Apple Podcasts! Want to ask us a question? Talk to us! Email debutbuddies@gmail.comListen to the archives of Kelly and Chelsea's awesome horror movie podcast, Never Show the Monster.Get some sci-fi from Spaceboy Books.Get down with Michael J. O'Connor and the Cold Family and check out his new compilation The Best of the Bad Years 2005 - 2025Next time: First Mamma Mia! Sequel... Here We Go Again!

This week on the show, host Sara J is continuing a listener-favorite format with another deep dive into unforgettable moments in music history—this time spanning January 16–22.From the opening of the legendary Whisky A Go-Go on the Sunset Strip to Eric Clapton's iconic MTV Unplugged session, the birth of Mötley Crüe, and the formation of Bad Company, this episode explores a week packed with defining rock moments. We also revisit infamous and unforgettable events like Ozzy Osbourne's bat-biting incident, Neil Young's solo debut, Buddy Holly's final apartment recordings, and the Beach Boys beginning work on “Wouldn't It Be Nice.”Plus, we celebrate music birthdays from legends like Sade, Janis Joplin, Dolly Parton, Paul Stanley, Questlove, Steve Perry, and more—while also remembering Glenn Frey and David Crosby.Part rock history, part cosmic coincidence, and part personal reflection (including a birthday shout-out close to home)Donate to DATC Media Company: https://datcmediacompany.com/supportJoin the community on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Datcmediacompany/giftWant to be a guest on the show? https://datcmediacompany.com/contact/ola/services/be-a-guest-on-dropped-among-this-crowd-podcastWant to be a RoughGauge featured artist? Send an email to: saraj@roughgaugellc.comWebsite: https://www.roughgaugellc.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/roughgaugellc/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RoughGaugeTicTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@roughgauge.llcShare your feedback: https://forms.gle/6ow1bYwtLveFmGGu8The Copper Penny Project: https://www.instagram.com/thecopperpennyproject/Something On- https://www.youtube.com/live/FQS9KZXazBc?si=lDK8vz-5NNvluQXwHave you worked with DATC Media? Share your feedback: https://forms.gle/atJri2DMrnZ6szBD9Want to work with Sara? Book a one-on-one session to bring your music/media vision to life: https://datcmediacompany.com/contact/ola/services/consulting-services-with-sara-jLet's Collab! https://datcmediacompany.com/collab-opportunties-1The DATC Media Podcast Network: https://datcmediacompany.com/podcasts-1Follow DATC Media:https://datcmediacompany.comhttps://www.facebook.com/datcmediahttps://www.instagram.com/datcmediacompany/Follow Dropped Among This Crowd Podcast:https://www.instagram.com/droppedamongthiscrowdpodcast/https://www.facebook.com/droppedamongthiscrowd/Email: droppedamongthiscrowdpod@gmail.comBook a conversation on "Dropped among this Crowd": https://datcmediacompany.com/contact/ola/services/be-on-dropped-among-this-crowd-podcastFollow Sara J:https://www.facebook.com/sara.till41/https://www.instagram.com/sarajachimiak/

John Bush of Armored Saint and Catagory 7 zoomed in to talk about a special concert on Saturday, December 13 at the Whisky A Go Go celebrating the four studio albums he made with Anthrax by performing those songs LIVE. Here's what we talked about: Getting the gig in Anthrax (0-9) "Safe Home" Music Video (9-14) Joey Vera & 12/13/25 at the Whisky (14-18) Catagory 7 (18-20) Armored Saint (20-24) Mandatory Metallica (24-end)

In celebration of David Lee Roth's 71st birthday, and in commemoration of Eddie Van Halen, who passed away 5 years ago this week, Randy Renaud revisits the birth of the band Van Halen and the creation of their debut album, on this week's edition of the Chronicles of Rock.

Meet Michael J. Wistock: The Executive by Day, Rockstar by NightWhat does it take to thrive in two drastically different worlds—corporate boardrooms and rock stages—while still managing to keep your feet on the ground (and your heart full)? My guest, Michael J. Wistock, is the definition of a modern renaissance man who proves that passion and professionalism don't have to live in separate lanes.By title, Michael holds a high-powered position in the corporate world as Senior Vice President of Global Sales in the telecom space. His work takes him around the globe, navigating strategic partnerships, closing multimillion-dollar deals, and leading teams in high-stakes environments. But what truly sets Michael apart is that once the blazer comes off, the mic comes on.That's right—Michael is also the frontman and creative heartbeat behind The Sunset Riot, a rock band that blends gritty soul, explosive guitar riffs, and raw emotion into a sound that stays with you long after the lights go down. Whether it's writing lyrics in hotel rooms between meetings or flying straight from a client dinner to a soundcheck, Michael juggles it all with a rare kind of grace and grit.And just when you think his plate couldn't get any fuller—he recently stepped into another lifelong role: husband. Michael is newly married to the beautiful Red, his partner, muse, and biggest supporter. Her influence is woven into much of his music and decision-making, offering him both grounding and inspiration in equal measure.It's not just about balance for Michael—it's about integration. He doesn't compartmentalize his life; he blends it. Each role fuels the other. His corporate mindset brings structure and drive to the band, while the creative spark from music adds color and emotional depth to his business strategies.In our conversation, we dive into how Michael manages the constant travel, the secret to switching gears between boardrooms and backstage, and how love, music, and leadership all play into his ever-evolving journey. Trust me—you don't want to miss this one.

Episode 899 (32 mins 54 secs) Attempting to see Chained Saint at the Whisky A Go Go. McDonald's Japan Pokémon promotion goes wrong. Nightclubs are dying. Giant Hot Blob going to New York. Cambridge Dictionary adding new slang words. The Average salary in the US. Albert, Ruthy, Jiaming, and Ana discuss all of that. Updates, Show Notes, Links, and Contact Info can be found at… https://www.whowhatwhereswhy.com/stuffjunk/2025/8/19/899

Hollywood-based guitar player, award-winning film producer, and one of the founders of the revolutionary new music streaming service that just launched, called Coda Music, which combines full social with music streaming. He has a great story about auditioning for the guitar spot in Ozzy Osbourne's band and has played countless shows in renowned venues such as Whisky-A-Go-Go, The Roxy, The Troubadour, and The Viper Room. Over the years he has been a prolific session musician and producer, additionally working as a "ghost player" for top charting rock and metal bands, and he has recorded sessions in top L.A. studios.

L.A.-based alternative pop singer songwriter who just released a music video for her single that came out last December. She has close to 70 thousand followers across Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok, and her top five songs on Spotify alone have gotten more than 180 thousand streams. Originally from Minneapolis, where she recorded and released four albums, since moving to Los Angeles seven years ago she has performed at notable venues on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, the Whisky-A-Go-Go and The Rainbow. She is signed to Borderline Music and has more projects in the works, which she talks about during this interview.

Johnny Rivers reprend "Sunny" de Bobby Hebb (Live at the Whisky A Go-Go, 1967)Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Welcome to the Nothing Shocking Podcast episode 285 with our guest Tony West of Blacklist Union.  We discuss the band's latest single Mississippi Moonhound, as well as plans for more new music.  We also discuss songs from the bands albums Letters from the Psych Ward, Back to Momo and side projects Silverstar, The Savior Complex, and more!   For more information visit:  VIDEO  - Mississippi Moonhound Filmed and edited @magikstudioshtx   Social Media/Online https://www.instagram.com/blacklistunionofficial https://www.facebook.com/BlacklistUnionRocks https://x.com/blacklistunion2 https://www.tiktok.com/@blacklistunion https://blacklistunion.bandcamp.com/ https://blacklistunion.com/   Blacklist Union LIVE - Cruefest Hollywood @ the Whisky A Go-Go - 8901 W Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood Los Angeles - July 12th, 2025 Bar Sinister -1652 N Cherokee Ave, Los Angeles -  September 13th, 2025   Please like our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/nothingshockingpodcast/  Follow us on twitter at  https://twitter.com/hashtag/noshockpod.   Libsyn website: https://nothingshocking.libsyn.com For more info on the Hong Kong Sleepover: https://thehongkongsleepover.bandcamp.com Help support the podcast and record stores by shopping at Ragged Records. http://www.raggedrecords.org 

Maggie speaks with legendary guitarist, songwriter and founded member of The Doors about The Doors 60th Anniversary this year (2025) and all the exciting events and releases that are happening and will be happening. Robby Krieger is the guitarist for the legendary rock band The Doors and the songwriter behind some of the band's biggest hits, including “Love Me Two Times,” “Touch Me,” “Love Her Madly,” and their #1 smash, “Light My Fire.” The Doors have sold over a hundred million albums worldwide, inspired a major feature film, been awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy®, and been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Robby, meanwhile, has also become a Grammy®-nominated solo artist, and was listed among the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” by Rolling Stone. He is also an accomplished painter and the co-founder of the annual Medlock-Krieger Rock & Roll Golf Classic & All-Star Concert.Source: https://robbykrieger.com/#x-content-band-3Source: https://whiskyagogo.com/calendar/Source: https://thedoors.com/Source: https://www.artforacause.net/Source: https://www.genesis-publications.com/book/9781905662883/night-divides-the-dayHost 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.Send us a textSupport the show@profileswithmaggielepique@maggielepique

We're back to discuss all the latest, greatest, and strangest in the rock world with Geekwire! Here's what we're chewing on this time: David Lee Roth performs Van Halen hits at the M3 Rock Festival. Reactions were mixed. We give ours. A behind-the-scenes book on This Is Spinal Tap and its sequel is set for release in September. We hope it's in Dubly. Rikki Rockett says Poison gets a strong offer for a 2026 headlining tour; but it's up to Bret Michaels. Will The Cat get Dragged In again in 2026? Wolfgang Van Halen explains why he dropped the "WVH" from Mammoth's name and we try to decipher what he's talking about. Kirk Hammett unboxes Metallica's remastered Load deluxe box set and enthusiastically celebrates it's artwork. A fan spends $12,495 to be Gene Simmons's roadie and shares the experience. Was it worth the dough? Henry Rollins discusses large-scale Punk Rock Museum project and we speculate on it's possible Nashville location. Dee Snider explains why he moved his family to rural North Carolina. Was it worth The Price? A dump truck crashes into the Whisky A Go Go ahead of a Boy Hits Car concert. We really do live in a simulation, eh? George Lynch launches a new band, George Lynch & The Mob, with a rotating lineup. Basically, Lynch Mob. Motörhead's previously unreleased 1976 album The Manticore Tapes gets a release. We share our excitement. A rumor circulates that Led Zeppelin plans a new album and 2026 tour. But, is it even true? Additionally, we touch on listener-submitted topics including Sammy Hagar (yes, again), new releases from LA Guns and Faster Pussycat, Steve Perry collaborating with Willie Nelson, Sleep Token, the live return of Savatage, an upcoming Stryper Christmas album and more. We hope you enjoy Geekwire and SHARE with a friend! Decibel Geek is a proud member of the Pantheon Podcasts family. Contact Us! Rate, Review, and Subscribe in iTunes Join the Facebook Fan Page Follow on Twitter Follow on Instagram E-mail Us Subscribe to our Youtube channel! Support Us! Buy a T-Shirt! Donate to the show! Stream Us! Stitcher Radio Spreaker TuneIn Become a VIP Subscriber! Click HERE for more info! Comment Below Direct Download  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're back to discuss all the latest, greatest, and strangest in the rock world with Geekwire! Here's what we're chewing on this time: David Lee Roth performs Van Halen hits at the M3 Rock Festival. Reactions were mixed. We give ours. A behind-the-scenes book on This Is Spinal Tap and its sequel is set for release in September. We hope it's in Dubly. Rikki Rockett says Poison gets a strong offer for a 2026 headlining tour; but it's up to Bret Michaels. Will The Cat get Dragged In again in 2026? Wolfgang Van Halen explains why he dropped the "WVH" from Mammoth's name and we try to decipher what he's talking about. Kirk Hammett unboxes Metallica's remastered Load deluxe box set and enthusiastically celebrates it's artwork. A fan spends $12,495 to be Gene Simmons's roadie and shares the experience. Was it worth the dough? Henry Rollins discusses large-scale Punk Rock Museum project and we speculate on it's possible Nashville location. Dee Snider explains why he moved his family to rural North Carolina. Was it worth The Price? A dump truck crashes into the Whisky A Go Go ahead of a Boy Hits Car concert. We really do live in a simulation, eh? George Lynch launches a new band, George Lynch & The Mob, with a rotating lineup. Basically, Lynch Mob. Motörhead's previously unreleased 1976 album The Manticore Tapes gets a release. We share our excitement. A rumor circulates that Led Zeppelin plans a new album and 2026 tour. But, is it even true? Additionally, we touch on listener-submitted topics including Sammy Hagar (yes, again), new releases from LA Guns and Faster Pussycat, Steve Perry collaborating with Willie Nelson, Sleep Token, the live return of Savatage, an upcoming Stryper Christmas album and more. We hope you enjoy Geekwire and SHARE with a friend! Decibel Geek is a proud member of the Pantheon Podcasts family. Contact Us! Rate, Review, and Subscribe in iTunes Join the Facebook Fan Page Follow on Twitter Follow on Instagram E-mail Us Subscribe to our Youtube channel! Support Us! Buy a T-Shirt! Donate to the show! Stream Us! Stitcher Radio Spreaker TuneIn Become a VIP Subscriber! Click HERE for more info! Comment Below Direct Download  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bill Gates to give away 99% of his money by 2045. Dump truck crashes into Iconic Whisky A-Go-Go in West Hollywood #BillGates #Money #wealth #WhiskyAgogo // Crash at Whisky A Go Go. A band called Boy Hits Car was meant to be playing a show tonight at the iconic venue on the Sunset Strip. Wango Tango. Power Washing is the BEST! #Powerwashing  Valley Village killer arrested #ValleyVillage #TrueCrimes #Crime // Apartment building in Valley Village/NoHo area [Ashton Sherman Village Apartments] has “really bad reviews,” here are some of them. Management responded to some of the bad reviews in agreement with them. Built over the site where the “Scrubs” hospital was. // Whisky A Go Go plowed into by a dump truck coming out of the Hills. Tim once opened as a standup comic for Taylor Dayne, no-one laughed during his set. Everyone sings “Don't Worry, Be Happy.” High-speed chase in San Pedro, lasted about a minute. Update on Menendez Brothers trial. Website about teen bike gangs in LA launched by man who was attacked by said youths. The father of a teen who shot up people has been arrested. #TaylorDane #HighSpeedChase #LABikeTeen 

On Friday, May 9, 2025, an unmanned dump truck crashed into the legendary Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood, causing serious damage and chaos on Clark Street. We're breaking down all the details from eyewitness accounts to what this could mean for upcoming shows at this iconic venue. Thankfully, no injuries were reported — but it was a wild scene.

Imperfections can feel like all anyone can see, making it difficult to shine the light we hope is underneath all of our flaws. Today we talk to guest expert Jowell Doughly on how coaching can help us love ourselves- imperfections and all- so that we can truly step into our power and live life to the fullest. Jowell is a certified Confidence and Wellness Coach based in West Hollywood. Her mission is to help people embrace their imperfections, break free from societal norms, and build unshakable confidence. She works with individuals struggling with anxiety, depression, and self-worth, providing the tools and support they need to step into their power.In addition to coaching, she founded Midnight Wonderland, an annual rock ‘n' roll charity event at the Whisky A Go Go that raises awareness for mental health and supports The Midnight Mission. She also launched Show Me The Truth, a nonprofit dedicated to raising money for other non profits who fund therapy, rehabilitation, and medication for those in need, especially survivors of trauma.Her passion for music, fashion, and mental health advocacy drives everything she does. Whether through coaching, events, or creative projects, her goal is to inspire others to walk away from toxic situations, embrace self-growth, and live authentically.Find more from Jowell at www.imperfectrockstar.com IG: juju_jowellTikTok: TheimperfectrockstarFind Curtis McCollum with Bespoke Human Potential Coaching here: https://www.bespokehumanpotentialcoaching.comOr on LinkedIn Get your Jumpstart Journal here: http://subscribepage.io/YCauoKWork with me: www.karaleighgarrison.com/coaching

Boy Hits Car singer CRegg Rondell zoomed in to talk about their new single "Mind Elevation" along with their upcoming concert at the Whisky A Go Go in Hollywood on Friday, May 9, 2025. Here's what we talked about: Drummer Erik Peterson (0-3) new song "Mind Elevation" (3-6) 5/9/25 concert at the Whisky A Go Go (6-12) "LoveFuryPassionEnergy" song (12-15) Upcoming 25th Anniversary of "self-titled" album (15-23) Mandatory Metallica (23-end)

He Is Legend singer Schuyler Croom zoomed in to talk about the 20th anniversary of their debut album "I Am Hollywood" which they are performing live at the Whisky A Go Go on Saturday, May 3 2025. Here's what we talked about: mutual friend David Mast (0-2) "I Am Hollywood" 20th Anniversary at Whisky on 5/3/25 (2-4) making "I Am Hollywood" with Adam D (4-11) New Music (11-12) Cancer Bats opening 20th anniversary tour (12-13) Final Ozzy Osbourne concert 7/5/25 (13-18) Mandatory Metallica (18-end)

Today on the Rarified Heir Podcast, we are talking to Michael Rivers, son of rock n' roll icon Johnny “Secret Agent Man” Rivers. Retired and in great health at age 82, Johnny Rivers has lived many lives as one of the groundbreaking musicians in the LA music scene since the early sixties. From session man to Sunset Strip headliner to #1 recording artist to the Monterey Pop Festival, record label owner and publishing mogul and beyond, Johnny Rivers has met and worked with everybody. From Alan Freed to Elvis Presley, from Roger Miller to PF Sloan, from Rickey Nelson to John Phillips, Johnny Rivers knew everyone. Michael was kind enough to join us as a guest today to give us a first-hand look into his father as both a dad and a celebrity. From having a charge account at the flagship Sunset Strip Tower Records to falling asleep in a booth at the ultra-exclusive On The Rox club above the famed Roxy nightclub on the Strip, Michael went with his dad everywhere. From recording sessions on Hollywood Blvd. to dinners at the Strip's most iconic vegetarian restaurant The Source, Michael was taken everywhere with his divorced dad, even places kids couldn't usually go. Not many of us remember the smell of the AMPEX tape machine at United Western Recorders in Hollywood like it was yesterday, but Michael can. We discuss how Johnny Rivers biggest hit, the theme song to the aforementioned “Secret Agent Man” came about to what it was like touring with his dad as first a tour manager and then a drummer in the 80s on Summer break. We also hear about how Johnny was a prudent businessman who bought property in Beverly Hills and Big Sur in the 1960s which he still owns to this day. If Gazzari's on the Sunset Strip, The Whisky A Go-Go and an unmade sequel to Easy Rider are up your alley, hang on, this episode is just around the corner. This is the Rarified Heir Podcast and everyone has a story.  

Chris Akin sits down with guitar sensation Sophie Lloyd to discuss her new single "Do Or Die," her Whisky A Go Go debut, and her path from YouTube to rock stardom with Machine Gun Kelly. They also delve into the complexities of being a woman in rock and how Sophie has embraced her sexuality.NOTE: Everything said here, and on every episode of all of our shows, are 100% the opinions of the hosts. Nothing is stated as fact. Do your own research to see if their opinions are true or notWatch or Listen now!#SophieLloyd #MachineGunKelly #RockMusic #GuitarVirtuoso #WomenInRock

Rhythm Tribe is no ordinary band; they are a family rooted in tradition and innovation, weaving together Neo Soul, Latin Fusion, and Afro beats to create a sound that's both timeless and cutting-edge. As they gear up for live shows at iconic venues like the Viper Room and Whisky A-Go-Go, their music continues to push boundaries and connect with audiences on a deep, emotional level. In this interview, the Guzman-Sanchez family opens up about their creative journey, the power of familial bonds, and their vision for the future. This feature is published in 'The Forward Edition' of AwareNow Magazine: awarenowmagazine.com Featuring: Rhythm Tribe Interviewed by: Allié McGuire Music by: Rhythm Tribe Produced by: AwareNow Media --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/awarenow/support

Drowning Pool guitarist CJ Pierce and singer Ryan McCombs zoomed in to talk about their upcoming show at the Whisky in Hollywood on 10/8 as well as their new single: Revolution (The Final Amen). Here's what we talked about: Football and the call to Ryan McCombs (0-6) New Music (6-7) "Revolution (The Final Amen) (7-17) 10/8/24 @The Whisky A Go Go (17-20) Mandatory Metallica (20-end)

Cleveland, Ohio-based singer, songwriter, guitar player who has released two singles so far this year, the latest being in mid-July, one week before performing at the famous Whisky-A-Go-Go in Hollywood, also performing at The Viper Room and the House of Blues while she was out west. She was also in Nashville in early June, performing in conjunction with CMA Fest. She will be back in both Hollywood and Nashville before this year is over and she will have one more song release this year in addition to having a music video coming out. Presently her YouTube channel has a combined total of more than 1.6 million video views, and her top five songs on Spotify alone have a combined total of close to three hundred thousand streams.

In 2006 the former member of the Dio era Black Sabbath reunited as Heaven and Hell and recorded 3 new songs to be included in a Black Sabbath Dio Years compilation. That led to a tour and then a full album. The subsequent tour would be Ronnie's last as he was diagnosed with stomach cancer shortly thereafter and passed away on May 16, 2010. About a year and half later, the original Black Sabbath convened at the famed Whisky A Go-Go to announce they would be reuniting with plans to record a new album and tour. 13 was released in 2013 and their final tour followed. On this episode, the guys pit the final albums of these two bands careers to see which one we think is the better album. They also give you their BIG 4 Ronnie James Dio Songs. So sit back, relax, turn it up to 11 and let the debate begin. Hosted by - Kenneth Dean, the Dean of Metal and Chris Kaye Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/debatingmetalpodcast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/debatingmetal/ X - https://twitter.com/debatingmtlpod email - debatingmetal@gmail.com

Thanks for watching and listening! In this episode, legendary rocker, Ron Keel (Steeler, Keel, Ron Keel Band, IronHorse, Black Sabbath) returns for a record 3rd time. Ron shares the story of his career-spanning, celebratory, and top 90 charting new release "Keelworld". He shares stories of the new album's creation, his recent show at the Whisky A Go Go, and how his recent Steeler video "Give Me Guitars or Give Me Death" came together. If you would like to keep up with Ron, you can do so at KEELWORLD (ronkeel.com) https://ronkeel.com/ Ron Keel | creating Exclusive Fan Experiences, Music, Video & Audio Content | Patreon Thanks as always for listening and watching! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thisisgonnahurt/support

The boys play some "Rapid Fire" and "Six N 30" before Mark gives his KK's Priest/Accept show review from the Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles.  The Hard Rocking Trivia Show is sponsored by just us and only us. Listen, Like and or subscribe on youtube or your favorite podcast platform.HRTS YouTube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/@hardrockingtriviashow667Hard Rocking Trivia Show T-Shirtshttps://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/468040-hard-rocking-trivia-showHere are the links for our free Spotify playlists:Hard Rocking 80'shttps://open.spotify.com/playlist/3ACMIc6UsL8LUtj4SZ5LSCHRTS Rock Playlisthttps://open.spotify.com/playlist/6fHGHPVMlWj23StoQuY9WyHard Rocking 70'shttps://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Lh2hRgqS2DRQUISuJY5BuHairnation XTRAhttps://open.spotify.com/playlist/1N8zUNfNQKup2tTozyUWBZ

8/22/2024 Returning guest Neska Rose joined Mike and cohost, actress Isabelle Anaya on ConversationsRadio Ep.184 Neska is an 18-year-old singer/songwriter and actress based in Los Angeles. She last joined us on ConversationsRadio Ep.97 in 2021.​ Neska performs with Libi as a musical act. While Neska writes and creates music, playing the guitar. Libi joins in as a harmonist and pianist. They perform at many venues in LA, including The Hotel Cafe, Hotel Ziggy, Whisky A Go Go, and more. In addition to music, the sisters also pursue acting and screenwriting. Together, they wrote and performed in the Nickelodeon sketch show 'Nick Shorts.' Neska recently appeared in the Apple TV series 'Extrapolations' opposite David Schwimmer and Daveed Diggs, and also acted in Nickelodeon's 'Drama Club' as Gertie. Neska and Libi post "Tiny Desk"-styled videos of their original songs on their YouTube channel to showcase their passion for performing.​ Neska has released an EP, including the single "Epithets", which was produced by six-time Grammy-winning producer David Greenbaum, known for his work with Beck, Tom Morello, and Beabadobee. The other two tracks off the EP, "Shelly" and "The Pit", were produced by Neska, Noam Fainer, and her twin sister Libi Rose.​ ​Neska's music and new EP is available on Spotify! Support this amazing Indie Artist!​ You can follow Neska on Instagram @iamneska Enjoy the Podcast!

In this episode, the ZappaCast team takes a DEEP DISH dive into the new Frank Zappa album, Whisky A Go Go, 1968! This is a HUGE release, packed with interesting and unique events. We go inside the making of the album with Vaultmeister Joe Travers, and Joe takes some questions from you, our amazing listeners! Hoopla in every little sip!

Rhythm Tribe, the electrifying family band known for their vibrant Neo Soul and Latin Fusion rock sound is poised to set the music scene ablaze with their latest releases and upcoming live shows, including concerts at two of Los Angeles' most iconic venues, the Viper Room and Whisky A-Go-Go this summer! Comprised of the dynamic trio Thomas Guzman-Sanchez, Mason Guzman-Sanchez, and Brisa Guzman-Sanchez, along with other close family friends rounding out the ensemble, Rhythm Tribe is more than just a band – they are a musical legacy. This summer, Rhythm Tribe will unveil their much-anticipated new music, a collection that promises to push the boundaries of Latin rock with infectious rhythms, heartfelt lyrics, and an unmistakable familial synergy. Beginning with their first single “You'll Be There / Estaras Alli,” which is a fusion of Puerto Rican Aguinaldo, Martillo, Bomba, and Neo Soul. This single is now competing for “Song of the Year” and “Best Tropical Song” in the 2025 Latin Grammy's. The vocalist Brisa Guzman-Sanchez takes both Spanish and English lyrics creating something emotional and heart throbbing. “You'll Be There / Estaras Alli” encapsulates that unexpected last shared moment with a loved one. Each track is a testament to their unique sound, blending traditional influences with contemporary flair. Their music is a celebration of cultural heritage and modern innovation, designed to resonate with audiences of all ages. Their new sound combines the unique guitar artistry of Thomas and Mason Guzman-Sanchez, held together with the insatiable rhythms of Esau Garcia. Rhythm Tribe has added Karthik Suresh on both Upright and Electric Bass and Drummer, Louie Pereira, to make a powerful musical sextet. Rhythm Tribe is not just another band; they are a living, breathing embodiment of musical evolution. Their performances are a family affair, filled with genuine emotion, tight harmonies, and an undeniable chemistry that can only come from shared blood and shared passion. As they gear up for their summer and fall shows, Rhythm Tribe invites you to experience the raw, authentic power of a family united.   Want to watch: YouTube Meisterkhan Pod (Please Subscribe)    

Adema leader Tim Fluckey zoomed in to talk about their upcoming shows at the Whisky A Go Go on 7/11/24 and Parish Room inside House Of Blues Anaheim on 7/13/24. Here's what we talked about: Ryan Shuck (0-3) New Music (3-10) 25th anniversary tour (10-12) meeting Sebastian Bach (12-17) 7/11/24 at Whisky and 7/13/24 at HOB (17-21) Mandatory Metallica (21-end)

The Dead Daisies lead guitarist Doug Aldrich zoomed in to talk about their new song "Light Em Up" and tour coming to the Whisky A Go Go in Hollywood on June 20. Here's what we talked about: "Light Em Up" single and new album (0-6) 6/20/24 at the Whisky A Go Go (6-7) new bassist and drummer (7-8) David Lowy (8-11) Glenn Hughes (11-17) Dio (17-23) Whitesnake (23-25) Mandatory Metallica (25-end)

Pop Art Painter Jamie Roxx (www.JamieRoxx.us) welcomes Michael Isaak, (Indie Folk) to the Show!  (Click to go there) ● WEB: www.michaelisaak.us ● IG: @michaelisaakk ● TK: @michaelisaaktunes ● YT: @michaelisaaktunes ● SC: @michaelisaak Los Angeles singer-songwriter Michael Isaak fuses dreamy indie pop with intimate acoustic folk on his journey through a world that is ever-changing and tragically beautiful. The former Princeton neuroscience student draws audiences into his deepest cerebral spaces, showcasing music as a profound tool for healing. As a first-generation Egyptian-American, Michael offers an ethnic twist to his genre, having grown up on Arabic music. He learned to play piano and ukulele from an early age and later taught himself how to play guitar and use digital audio workstations, receiving his first production credit at 15. Taking inspiration from artists like Phoebe Bridgers and Sufjan Stevens, he went on to put out his first single “Don't Like Being Lonely” in 2022. Since then, Michael has grossed nearly 100,000 streams across platforms. He headlined his first show at The Hotel Cafe in December 2022, and has played on some of LA's most iconic stages including The Whisky A Go Go. ● Media Inquiries: Rachel Rossen Associate Director of Publicity TREND: PR, Branding, and Social Media www.trendpr.com

This week we continue recounting the history of Night Demon's North American Tour in 2014 opening for the mighty Raven.  This week's episode focuses on the historic Whisky A Go Go show in Hollywood, California, with Jarvis and Dusty both stressing how it was the first time they had ever performed at this landmark venue.  We bring you extensive audio from the show, as well as band commentary about how important this gig was, how it honed their perspective to a razor-sharp edge, and how they look back on the experience a decade later.Become a subscriber today at nightdemon.net/subscriber. This week, subscribers have access to the bonus content below:Streaming Video: Full Show:  Whisky A Go Go - October 20, 2014Show Poster Photo Gallery Listen at nightdemon.net/podcast or anywhere you listen to podcasts! Follow us on Instagram Like us on Facebook

New York Rocker Returns With Hot New Album!#newmusic #newalbum #newyorkmusic #bobdeewithpetro #violetta Bob Dee with Petro New York City's premier rock band with a sound reminiscent of Cheap Trick, has developed a significant worldwide fan base, as well as selling CDs & Video's on all major internet sites worldwide. Bob Dee's New York City band consists of Bob Dee (singer/guitarist), TJ Jordan (guitar)  Alison Jones (bass) and Scott Campbell (drums). The band never sleeps with their tireless touring schedule worldwide. Bob Dee billed as "The International Pop-Star", has toured Japan, Europe and several east and west coast tours including SXSW music festival in Austin,Texas and The Kansai Music Festival in Osaka, Japan, Canadian Music Week featured artist performance. Bob Dee just completed a rocking West Coast Tour support for "Enuff Z'Nuff" playing the World Famous "Whisky A Go Go". Bob Dee's UK tour from Newcastle to London playing support for former Wasp guitarist "Chris Holmes". The band's hard driven melodic pop resonates well with fans worldwide.Bob Dee with Petro: new EP “Violetta” features the new single “Breathe You In” released through AMG and SONY records. The EP features Bob Dee vocals guitars, Jack Daley ( Lenny Kravitz), Matt Starr (Ace Frehley), Fred Coury ( Cinderella), Ivan the funkboy Bodley( Humble Pie), Jakeim Hart (Alicia Keys)The EP was mixed by Platinum Producer Lou Giordano ( Goo Goo Dolls, The Ataris) and When The Sky Falls mixed by Platinum recording artist Fred Coury (Cinderella)Website: https://www.bobdeewithpetro.com/https://www.reverbnation.com/bobdeewithpetroInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/bobdeewithpetroFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/bob.dee.14X: https://twitter.com/bobdeewithpetroYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/user/bobdeewithpetroThanks for tuning in, please be sure to click that subscribe button and give this a thumbs up!!Email: thevibesbroadcast@gmail.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/listen_to_the_vibes_/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thevibesbroadcastnetworkLinktree: https://linktr.ee/the_vibes_broadcastTikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeuTVRv2/Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheVibesBrdcstTruth: https://truthsocial.com/@KoyoteI'm Sorry Zero Points ~ Eurovision podcast with Adrian & Seamus.It's season 3 of I'm Sorry Zero Points. Adrian & Seamus bring...Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifyFor all our social media and other links, go to: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/the_vibes_broadcastPlease subscribe, like, and share!

Pamela Des Barres—proud rock and roll groupie, accomplished writer, musician, and raconteur—joins Staci on this episode of the Rock & Roll Nightmares podcast. She of course talks about her bestselling memoir, I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie, which details her experiences in the L.A. music scene of the 1960s 70s, when she frolicked with the likes of Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison, Keith Moon, and Jimmy Page… but she also gives us a glimpse into her next book, which is bound to be a doozy. Miss Pamela shares her own personal “rock and roll nightmare” (another one involving Led Zeppelin! There are so many now…) and tells us about her upcoming appearance at the Whisky A Go Go in Hollywood, and beyond!

ABOUT ART ALEXAKIS: Three decades into a career filled with hits behind songs fueled with impactful messages, Everclear refuses to let time define them….Having recently released their in concert album Live at the Whisky A Go Go and new video for the song "Sing Away”. In this episode we are joined by lead singer, songwriter and guitar player Art Alexakis.  ABOUT THE PODCAST:  Candid discussions with and about those behind the scenes in the music business including industry veterans representing the segments of: Musician, Design & Live ABOUT THE HOSTS: All three Music Buzzz Podcast hosts (Dane Clark, Hugh Syme and Andy Wilson) have spent their careers working with the biggest names in entertainment and have been, and still are, a fly on the wall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

ABOUT ART ALEXAKIS: Three decades into a career filled with hits behind songs fueled with impactful messages, Everclear refuses to let time define them….Having recently released their in concert album Live at the Whisky A Go Go and new video for the song "Sing Away”. In this episode we are joined by lead singer, songwriter and guitar player Art Alexakis.  ABOUT THE PODCAST:  Candid discussions with and about those behind the scenes in the music business including industry veterans representing the segments of: Musician, Design & Live ABOUT THE HOSTS: All three Music Buzzz Podcast hosts (Dane Clark, Hugh Syme and Andy Wilson) have spent their careers working with the biggest names in entertainment and have been, and still are, a fly on the wall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For those who haven't heard the announcement I just posted , songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the first part of a multi-episode look at the Byrds in 1966-69 and the birth of country rock. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode on "My World Fell Down" by Sagittarius. 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 No Mixcloud at this time as there are too many Byrds songs in this chunk, but I will try to put together a multi-part Mixcloud when all the episodes for this song are up. My main source for the Byrds is Timeless Flight Revisited by Johnny Rogan, I also used Chris Hillman's autobiography, the 331/3 books on The Notorious Byrd Brothers and The Gilded Palace of Sin, For future parts of this multi-episode story I used Barney Hoskyns' Hotel California and John Einarson's Desperadoes as general background on Californian country-rock, Calling Me Hone, Gram Parsons and the Roots of Country Rock by Bob Kealing for information on Parsons, and Requiem For The Timeless Vol 2 by Johnny Rogan for information about the post-Byrds careers of many members. Information on Gary Usher comes from The California Sound by Stephen McParland. And this three-CD set is a reasonable way of getting most of the Byrds' important recordings. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript When we left the Byrds at the end of the episode on "Eight Miles High", they had just released that single, which combined folk-rock with their new influences from John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar, and which was a group composition but mostly written by the group's lead singer, Gene Clark. And also, as we mentioned right at the end of the episode, Clark had left the group. There had been many, many factors leading to Clark's departure. Clark was writing *far* more material than the other band members, of whom only Roger McGuinn had been a writer when the group started, and as a result was making far more money than them, especially with songs like "She Don't Care About Time", which had been the B-side to their number one single "Turn! Turn! Turn!" [Excerpt: The Byrds, "She Don't Care About Time"] Clark's extra income was making the rest of the group jealous, and they also didn't think his songs were particularly good, though many of his songs on the early Byrds albums are now considered classics. Jim Dickson, the group's co-manager, said "Gene would write fifteen to twenty songs a week and you had to find a good one whenever it came along because there were lots of them that you couldn't make head or tail of.  They didn't mean anything. We all knew that. Gene would write a good one at a rate of just about one per girlfriend." Chris Hillman meanwhile later said more simply "Gene didn't really add that much." That is, frankly, hard to square with the facts. There are ten original songs on the group's first two albums, plus one original non-album B-side. Of those eleven songs, Clark wrote seven on his own and co-wrote two with McGuinn. But as the other band members were starting to realise that they had the possibility of extra royalties -- and at least to some extent were starting to get artistic ambitions as far as writing goes -- they were starting to disparage Clark's work as a result, calling it immature. Clark had, of course, been the principal writer for "Eight Miles High", the group's most experimental record to date: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Eight Miles High"] But there he'd shared co-writing credit with David Crosby and Roger McGuinn, in part because that was the only way he could be sure they would agree to release it as a single. There were also internal rivalries within the band unrelated to songwriting -- as we've touched on, Crosby had already essentially bullied Clark off the guitar and into just playing tambourine (and McGuinn would be dismissive even of Clark's tambourine abilities). Crosby's inability to get on with any other member of any band he was in would later become legendary, but at this point Clark was the major victim of his bullying. According to Dickson "David understood when Gene left that ninety-five percent of why Gene left could be brought back to him." The other five percent, though, came from Clark's fear of flying. Clark had apparently witnessed a plane crash in his youth and been traumatised by it, and he had a general terror of flying and planes -- something McGuinn would mock him for a little, as McGuinn was an aviation buff. Eventually, Clark had a near-breakdown boarding a plane from California to New York for a promotional appearance with Murray the K, and ended up getting off the plane. McGuinn and Michael Clarke almost did the same, but in the end they decided to stay on, and the other four Byrds did the press conference without Gene. When asked where Gene was, they said he'd "broken a wing". He was also increasingly having mental health and substance abuse problems, which were exacerbated by his fear, and in the end he decided he just couldn't be a Byrd any more. Oddly, of all the band members, it was David Crosby who was most concerned about Clark's departure, and who did the most to try to persuade him to stay, but he still didn't do much, and the group decided to carry on as a four-piece and not even make a proper announcement of Clark's departure -- they just started putting out photos with four people instead of five. The main change as far as the group were concerned was that Hillman was now covering Clark's old vocal parts, and so Crosby moved to Clark's old centre mic while Hillman moved from his position at the back of the stage with Michael Clarke to take over Crosby's mic. The group now had three singer-instrumentalists in front, two of whom, Crosby and McGuinn, now thought of themselves as songwriters. So despite the loss of their singer/songwriter/frontman, they moved on to their new single, the guaranteed hit follow-up to "Eight Miles High": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "5D (Fifth Dimension)"] "5D" was written by McGuinn, inspired by a book of cartoons called 1-2-3-4 More More More More by Don Landis, which I haven't been able to track down a copy of, but which seems to have been an attempt to explain the mathematical concept of higher dimensions in cartoon form. McGuinn was inspired by this and by Einstein's theory of relativity -- or at least by his understanding of relativity, which does not seem to have been the most informed take on the topic. McGuinn has said in the past that the single should really have come with a copy of Landis' booklet, so people could understand it. Sadly, without the benefit of the booklet we only have the lyrics plus McGuinn's interviews to go on to try to figure out what he means. As far as I'm able to understand, McGuinn believed -- completely erroneously -- that Einstein had proved that along with the four dimensions of spacetime there is also a fifth dimension which McGuinn refers to as a "mesh", and that "the reason for the speed of light being what it is is because of that mesh." McGuinn then went on to identify this mesh with his own conception of God, influenced by his belief in Subud, and with a Bergsonian idea of a life force. He would talk about how most people are stuck in a materialist scientific paradigm which only admits to  the existence of three dimensions, and how there are people out there advocating for a five-dimensional view of the world. To go along with this mystic view of the universe, McGuinn wanted some music inspired by the greatest composer of sacred music, and he asked Van Dyke Parks, who was brought in to add keyboards on the session, to play something influenced by Bach -- and Parks obliged, having been thinking along the same lines himself: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "5D (Fifth Dimension)"] Unfortunately for the group, McGuinn's lyrical intention wasn't clear enough and the song was assumed to be about drugs, and was banned by many radio stations. That plus the track's basically uncommercial nature meant that it reached no higher than number forty-four in the charts. Jim Dickson, the group's co-manager, pointed to a simpler factor in the record's failure, saying that if the organ outro to the track had instead been the intro, to set a mood for the track rather than starting with a cold vocal open, it would have had more success. The single was followed by an album, called Fifth Dimension, which was not particularly successful. Of the album's eleven songs, two were traditional folk songs, one was an instrumental -- a jam called "Captain Soul" which was a version of Lee Dorsey's "Get Out My Life Woman" credited to the four remaining Byrds, though Gene Clark is very audible on it playing harmonica -- and one more was a jam whose only lyrics were "gonna ride a Lear jet, baby", repeated over and over. There was also "Eight Miles High" and the group's inept and slightly-too-late take on "Hey Joe". It also included a third single, a country track titled "Mr. Spaceman": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Mr. Spaceman"] McGuinn and, particularly, Hillman, had some country music background, and both were starting to think about incorporating country sounds into the group's style, as after Clark's departure from the group they were moving away from the style that had characterised their first two albums. But the interest in "Mr. Spaceman" was less about the musical style than about the lyrics. McGuinn had written the song in the hopes of contacting extraterrestrial life -- sending them a message in his lyrics so that any aliens listening to Earth radio would come and visit, though he was later disappointed to realise that the inverse-square law means that the signals would be too faint to make out after a relatively short distance: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Mr. Spaceman"] "Mr. Spaceman" did better on the charts than its predecessor, scraping the lower reaches of the top forty, but it hardly set the world alight, and neither did the album -- a typical review was the one by Jon Landau, which said in part "This album then cannot be considered up to the standards set by the Byrds' first two and basically demonstrates that they should be thinking in terms of replacing Gene Clark, instead of just carrying on without him." Fifth Dimension would be the only album that Allen Stanton would produce for the Byrds, and his replacement had actually just produced an album that was a Byrds record by any other name: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "So You Say You've Lost Your Baby"] We've looked at Gary Usher before, but not for some time, and not in much detail. Usher was one of several people who were involved in the scene loosely centred on the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean, though he never had much time for Jan Berry and he had got his own start in the music business slightly before the Beach Boys. As a songwriter, his first big successes had come with his collaborations with Brian Wilson -- he had co-written "409" for the Beach Boys, and had also collaborated with Wilson on some of his earliest more introspective songs, like "The Lonely Sea" and "In My Room", for which Usher had written the lyrics: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "In My Room"] Usher had built a career as a producer and writer for hire, often in collaboration with Roger Christian, who also wrote with Brian Wilson and Jan Berry. Usher, usually with Christian, and very occasionally Wilson wrote the songs for several of American International Pictures' Beach Party films: [Excerpt: Donna Loren, "Muscle Bustle"] And Usher and Christian had also had bit parts in some of the films, like Bikini Beach, and Usher had produced records for Annette Funicello, the star of the films, often with the Honeys (a group consisting of Brian Wilson's future wife Marilyn plus her sister and cousin) on backing vocals. He had also produced records for the Surfaris, as well as a whole host of studio-only groups like the Four Speeds, the Super Stocks, and Mr. Gasser and the Weirdoes, most of whom were Usher and the same small group of vocalist friends along with various selections of Wrecking Crew musicians making quick themed albums. One of these studio groups, the Hondells, went on to be a real group of sorts, after Usher and the Beach Boys worked together on a film, The Girls on the Beach. Usher liked a song that Wilson and Mike Love had written for the Beach Boys to perform in the film, "Little Honda", and after discovering that the Beach Boys weren't going to release their version as a single, he put together a group to record a soundalike version: [Excerpt: The Hondells, "Little Honda"] "Little Honda" made the top ten, and Usher produced two albums for the Hondells, who had one other minor hit with a cover version of the Lovin' Spoonful's "Younger Girl". Oddly, Usher's friend Terry Melcher, who would shortly produce the Byrds' first few hits, had also latched on to "Little Honda", and produced his own version of the track, sung by Pat Boone of all people, with future Beach Boy Bruce Johnston on backing vocals: [Excerpt: Pat Boone, "Little Honda"] But when Usher had got his version out first, Boone's was relegated to a B-side. When the Byrds had hit, and folk-rock had started to take over from surf rock, Usher had gone with the flow and produced records like the Surfaris' album It Ain't Me Babe, with Usher and his usual gang of backing vocalists augmenting the Surfaris as they covered hits by Dylan, the Turtles, the Beach Boys and the Byrds: [Excerpt: The Surfaris, "All I Really Want to Do"] Usher was also responsible for the Surfaris being the first group to release a version of "Hey Joe" on a major label, as we heard in the episode on that song: [Excerpt: The Surfaris, "Hey Joe"] After moving between Capitol, Mercury, and Decca Records, Usher had left Decca after a round of corporate restructuring and been recommended for a job at Columbia by his friend Melcher, who at that point was producing Paul Revere and the Raiders and the Rip Chords and had just finished his time as the Byrds' producer. Usher's first work at Columbia was actually to prepare new stereo mixes of some Byrds tracks that had up to that point only been issued in mono, but his first interaction with the Byrds themselves came via Gene Clark: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "So You Say You've Lost Your Baby"] On leaving the Byrds, Clark had briefly tried to make a success of himself as a songwriter-for-hire in much the same mould as Usher, attempting to write and produce a single for two Byrds fans using the group name The Cookie Fairies, while spending much of his time romancing Michelle Phillips, as we talked about in the episode on "San Francisco". When the Cookie Fairies single didn't get picked up by a label, Clark had put together a group with Bill Rinehart from the Leaves, Chip Douglas of the Modern Folk Quartet, and Joel Larson of the Grass Roots. Just called Gene Clark & The Group, they'd played around the clubs in LA and cut about half an album's worth of demos produced by Jim Dickson and Ed Tickner, the Byrds' management team, before Clark had fired first Douglas and then the rest of the group. Clark's association with Douglas did go on to benefit him though -- Douglas went on, as we've seen in other episodes, to produce hits for the Turtles and the Monkees, and he later remembered an old song by Clark and McGuinn that the Byrds had demoed but never released, "You Showed Me", and produced a top ten hit version of it for the Turtles: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "You Showed Me"] Clark had instead started working with two country singers, Vern and Rex Gosdin, who had previously been with Chris Hillman in the country band The Hillmen. When that band had split up, the Gosdin Brothers had started to perform together as a duo, and in 1967 they would have a major country hit with "Hangin' On": [Excerpt: The Gosdin Brothers, "Hangin' On"] At this point though, they were just Gene Clark's backing vocalists, on an album that had been started with producer Larry Marks, who left Columbia half way through the sessions, at which point Usher took over. The album, titled Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers, featured a mix of musicians from different backgrounds. There were Larson and Rinehart from Gene Clark and the Group, there were country musicians -- a guitarist named Clarence White and the banjo player Doug Dillard. Hillman and Michael Clarke, the Byrds' rhythm section, played on much of the album as a way of keeping a united front, Glen Campbell, Jerry Cole, Leon Russell and Jim Gordon of the Wrecking Crew contributed, and Van Dyke Parks played most of the keyboards. The lead-off single for Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers, "Echoes", is one of the tracks produced by Marks, but in truth the real producer of that track is Leon Russell, who wrote the orchestral arrangement that turned Clark's rough demo into a baroque pop masterpiece: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "Echoes"] Despite Clark having quit the band, relations between him and the rest were still good enough that in September 1966 he temporarily rejoined the band after Crosby lost his voice, though he was gone again as soon as Crosby was well. But that didn't stop the next Byrds album, which Usher went on to produce straight after finishing work on Clark's record, coming out almost simultaneously with Clark's and, according to Clark, killing its commercial potential. Upon starting to work with the group, Usher quickly came to the conclusion that Chris Hillman was in many ways the most important member of the band. According to Usher "There was also quite a divisive element within the band at that stage which often prevented them working well together. Sometimes everything would go smoothly, but other times it was a hard road. McGuinn and Hillman were often more together on musical ideas. This left Crosby to fend for himself, which I might add he did very well." Usher also said "I quickly came to understand that Hillman was a good stabilising force within the Byrds (when he wanted to be). It was around the time that I began working with them that Chris also became more involved in the songwriting. I think part of that was the fact that he realised how much more money was involved if you actually wrote the songs yourself. And he was a good songwriter." The first single to be released from the new sessions was one that was largely Hillman's work. Hillman and Crosby had been invited by the great South African jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela to play on some demos for another South African jazzer, singer Letta Mbulu. Details are sparse, but one presumes this was for what became her 1967 album Letta Mbulu Sings, produced by David Axelrod: [Excerpt: Letta Mbulu, "Zola (MRA)"] According to Hillman, that session was an epiphany for him, and he went home and started writing his own songs for the first time. He took one of the riffs he came up with to McGuinn, who came up with a bridge inspired by a song by yet another South African musician, Miriam Makeba, who at the time was married to Masekela, and the two wrote a lyric inspired by what they saw as the cynical manipulation of the music industry in creating manufactured bands like the Monkees -- though they have both been very eager to say that they were criticising the industry, not the Monkees themselves, with whom they were friendly. As Hillman says in his autobiography, "Some people interpreted it as a jab at The Monkees. In reality, we had immense respect for all of them as singers and musicians. We weren't skewering the members of the Monkees, but we were taking a shot at the cynical nature of the entertainment business that will try to manufacture a group like The Monkees as a marketing strategy. For us, it was all about the music, and we were commenting on the pitfalls of the industry rather than on any of our fellow musicians." [Excerpt: The Byrds, "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?"] The track continued the experimentation with sound effects that they had started with the Lear jet song on the previous album. That had featured recordings of a Lear jet, and "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?" featured recordings of audience screams. Those screams were, according to most sources, recorded by Derek Taylor at a Byrds gig in Bournemouth in 1965, but given reports of the tepid response the group got on that tour, that doesn't seem to make sense. Other sources say they're recordings of a *Beatles* audience in Bournemouth in *1963*, the shows that had been shown in the first US broadcast of Beatles footage, and the author of a book on links between the Beatles and Bournemouth says on his blog "In the course of researching Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth I spoke to two people who saw The Byrds at the Gaumont that August and neither recalled any screaming at all, let alone the wall of noise that can be heard on So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star." So it seems likely that screaming isn't for the Byrds, but of course Taylor had also worked for the Beatles. According to Usher "The crowd sound effects were from a live concert that Derek Taylor had taped with a little tape recorder in London. It was some outrageous crowd, something like 20,000 to 30,000 people. He brought the tape in, ran it off onto a big tape, re- EQ'd it, echoed it, cleaned it up and looped it." So my guess is that the audience screams in the Byrds song about the Monkees are for the Beatles, but we'll probably never know for sure: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?"] The track also featured an appearance by Hugh Masekela, the jazz trumpeter whose invitation to take part in a session had inspired the song: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?"] While Hillman was starting to lean more towards folk and country music -- he had always been the member of the band least interested in rock music -- and McGuinn was most interested in exploring electronic sounds, Crosby was still pushing the band more in the direction of the jazz experimentation they'd tried on "Eight Miles High", and one of the tracks they started working on soon after "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?" was inspired by another jazz trumpet great. Miles Davis had been partly responsible for getting the Byrds signed to Columbia, as we talked about in the episode on "Mr. Tambourine Man", and so the group wanted to pay him tribute, and they started working on a version of his classic instrumental "Milestones": [Excerpt: Miles Davis, "Milestones"] Sadly, while the group worked on their version for several days -- spurred on primarily by Crosby -- they eventually chose to drop the track, and it has never seen release or even been bootlegged, though there is a tiny clip of it that was used in a contemporaneous documentary, with a commentator talking over it: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Milestones (TV)"] It was apparently Crosby who decided to stop work on the track, just as working on it was also apparently his idea. Indeed, while the biggest change on the album that would become Younger Than Yesterday was that for the first time Chris Hillman was writing songs and taking lead vocals, Crosby was also writing more than before. Hillman wrote four of the songs on the album, plus his co-write with McGuinn on "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?", but Crosby also supplied two new solo compositions, plus a cowrite with McGuinn, and Crosby and McGuinn's "Why?", the B-side to "Eight Miles High", was also dug up and rerecorded for the album. Indeed, Gary Usher would later say "The album was probably 60% Crosby. McGuinn was not that involved, nor was Chris; at least as far as performing was concerned." McGuinn's only composition on the album other than the co-writes with Crosby and Hillman was another song about contacting aliens, "CTA-102", a song about a quasar which at the time some people were speculating might have been evidence of alien life. That song sounds to my ears like it's had some influence from Joe Meek's similar records, though I've never seen McGuinn mention Meek as an influence: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "CTA-102"] Crosby's growing dominance in the studio was starting to rankle with the other members. In particular two tracks were the cause of conflict. One was Crosby's song "Mind Gardens", an example of his increasing experimentation, a freeform song that ignores conventional song structure, and which he insisted on including on the album despite the rest of the group's objections: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Mind Gardens"] The other was the track that directly followed "Mind Gardens" on the album. "My Back Pages" was a song from Dylan's album Another Side of Bob Dylan, a song many have seen as Dylan announcing his break with the folk-song and protest movements he'd been associated with up to that point, and his intention to move on in a new direction: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "My Back Pages"] Jim Dickson, the Byrds' co-manager, was no longer on speaking terms with the band and wasn't involved in their day-to-day recording as he had been, but he'd encountered McGuinn on the street and rolled down his car window and suggested that the group do the song. Crosby was aghast. They'd already recorded several songs from Another Side of Bob Dylan, and Fifth Dimension had been their first album not to include any Dylan covers. Doing a jangly cover of a Dylan song with a McGuinn lead vocal was something they'd moved on from, and he didn't want to go back to 1964 at the end of 1966. He was overruled, and the group recorded their version, a track that signified something very different for the Byrds than the original had for Dylan: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "My Back Pages"] It was released as the second single from the album, and made number thirty. It was the last Byrds single to make the top forty. While he was working with the Byrds, Usher continued his work in the pop field, though as chart pop moved on so did Usher, who was now making records in a psychedelic sunshine pop style with acts like the Peanut Butter Conspiracy: [Excerpt: The Peanut Butter Conspiracy, "It's a Happening Thing"] and he produced Chad and Jeremy's massive concept album Of Cabbages and Kings, which included a five-song "Progress Suite" illustrating history from the start of creation until the end of the world: [Excerpt: Chad and Jeremy, "Editorial"] But one of the oddest projects he was involved in was indirectly inspired by Roger McGuinn. According to Usher "McGuinn and I had a lot in common. Roger would always say that he was "out of his head," which he thought was good, because he felt you had to go out of your head before you could really find your head! That sums up McGuinn perfectly! He was also one of the first people to introduce me to metaphysics, and from that point on I started reading everything I could get my hands on. His viewpoints on metaphysics were interesting, and, at the time, useful. He was also into Marshall McLuhan; very much into the effects of electronics and the electronic transformation. He was into certain metaphysical concepts before I was, but I was able to turn him onto some abstract concepts as well" These metaphysical discussions led to Usher producing an album titled The Astrology Album, with discussions of the meaning of different star signs over musical backing: [Excerpt: Gary Usher, "Leo"] And with interviews with various of the artists he was working with talking about astrology. He apparently interviewed Art Garfunkel -- Usher was doing some uncredited production work on Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends album at the time -- but Garfunkel declined permission for the interview to be used. But he did get both Chad and Jeremy to talk, along with John Merrill of the Peanut Butter Conspiracy -- and David Crosby: [Excerpt: Gary Usher, "Leo"] One of the tracks from that album, "Libra", became the B-side of a single by a group of studio musicians Usher put together, with Glen Campbell on lead vocals and featuring Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys prominently on backing vocals. "My World Fell Down" was credited to Sagittarius, again a sign of Usher's current interest in astrology, and featured some experimental sound effects that are very similar to the things that McGuinn had been doing on recent Byrds albums: [Excerpt: Sagittarius, "My World Fell Down"] While Usher was continuing with his studio experimentation, the Byrds were back playing live -- and they were not going down well at all. They did a UK tour where they refused to play most of their old hits and went down as poorly as on their previous tour, and they were no longer the kings of LA. In large part this was down to David Crosby, whose ego was by this point known to *everybody*, and who was becoming hugely unpopular on the LA scene even as he was starting to dominate the band. Crosby was now the de facto lead vocalist on stage, with McGuinn being relegated to one or two songs per set, and he was the one who would insist that they not play their older hit singles live. He was dominating the stage, leading to sarcastic comments from the normally placid Hillman like "Ladies and gentlemen, the David Crosby show!", and he was known to do things like start playing a song then stop part way through a verse to spend five minutes tuning up before restarting. After a residency at the Whisky A-Go-Go where the group were blown off the stage by their support act, the Doors, their publicist Derek Taylor quit, and he was soon followed by the group's co-managers Jim Dickson and Eddie Tickner, who were replaced by Crosby's friend Larry Spector, who had no experience in rock management but did represent Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, two young film stars Crosby was hanging round with. The group were particularly annoyed by Crosby when they played the Monterey Pop Festival. Crosby took most lead vocals in that set, and the group didn't go down well, though instrumentally the worst performer was Michael Clarke, who unlike the rest of the band had never become particularly proficient on his instrument: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star (live at Monterey)"] But Crosby also insisted on making announcements from the stage advocating LSD use and describing conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination: [Excerpt: David Crosby on the Warren Commission, from the end of "Hey Joe" Monterey] But even though Crosby was trying to be the Byrds' leader on stage, he was also starting to think that they maybe didn't deserve to have him as their leader. He'd recently been spending a lot of time hanging out with Stephen Stills of the Buffalo Springfield, and McGuinn talks about one occasion where Crosby and Stills were jamming together, Stills played a blues lick and said to McGuinn "Can you play that?" and when McGuinn, who was not a blues musician, said he couldn't, Stills looked at him with contempt. McGuinn was sure that Stills was trying to poach Crosby, and Crosby apparently wanted to be poached. The group had rehearsed intensely for Monterey, aware that they'd been performing poorly and not wanting to show themselves up in front of the new San Francisco bands, but Crosby had told them during rehearsals that they weren't good enough to play with him. McGuinn's suspicions about Stills wanting to poach Crosby seemed to be confirmed during Monterey when Crosby joined Buffalo Springfield on stage, filling in for Neil Young during the period when Young had temporarily quit the group, and performing a song he'd helped Stills write about Grace Slick: [Excerpt: Buffalo Springfield, "Rock 'n' Roll Woman (live at Monterey)"] Crosby was getting tired not only of the Byrds but of the LA scene in general. He saw the new San Francisco bands as being infinitely cooler than the Hollywood plastic scene that was LA -- even though Crosby was possibly the single most Hollywood person on that scene, being the son of an Oscar-winning cinematographer and someone who hung out with film stars. At Monterey, the group had debuted their next single, the first one with an A-side written by Crosby, "Lady Friend": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Lady Friend"] Crosby had thought of that as a masterpiece, but when it was released as a single, it flopped badly, and the rest of the group weren't even keen on the track being included on the next album. To add insult to injury as far as Crosby was concerned, at the same time as the single was released, a new album came out -- the Byrds' Greatest Hits, full of all those singles he was refusing to play live, and it made the top ten, becoming far and away the group's most successful album. But despite all this, the biggest conflict between band members when they came to start sessions for their next album wasn't over Crosby, but over Michael Clarke. Clarke had never been a particularly good drummer, and while that had been OK at the start of the Byrds' career, when none of them had been very proficient on their instruments, he was barely any better at a time when both McGuinn and Hillman were being regarded as unique stylists, while Crosby was writing metrically and harmonically interesting material. Many Byrds fans appreciate Clarke's drumming nonetheless, saying he was an inventive and distinctive player in much the same way as the similarly unskilled Micky Dolenz, but on any measure of technical ability he was far behind his bandmates. Clarke didn't like the new material and wasn't capable of playing it the way his bandmates wanted. He was popular with the rest of the band as a person, but simply wasn't playing well, and it led to a massive row in the first session: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Universal Mind Decoder (alternate backing track)"] At one point they joke that they'll bring in Hal Blaine instead -- a reference to the recording of "Mr. Tambourine Man", when Clarke and Hillman had been replaced by Blaine and Larry Knechtel -- and Clarke says "Do it. I don't mind, I really don't." And so that ended up happening. Clarke was still a member of the band -- and he would end up playing on half the album's tracks -- but for the next few sessions the group brought in session drummers Hal Blaine and Jim Gordon to play the parts they actually wanted. But that wasn't going to stop the bigger problem in the group, and that problem was David Crosby's relationship with the rest of the band. Crosby was still at this point thinking of himself as having a future in the group, even as he was increasingly convinced that the group themselves were bad, and embarrassed by their live sound. He even, in a show of unity, decided to ask McGuinn and Hillman to collaborate on a couple of songs with him so they would share the royalties equally. But there were two flash-points in the studio. The first was Crosby's song "Triad", a song about what we would now call polyamory, partly inspired by Robert Heinlein's counterculture science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. The song was meant to portray a progressive, utopian, view of free love, but has dated very badly -- the idea that the *only* reason a woman might be unhappy with her partner sleeping with another woman is because of her mother's disapproval possibly reveals more about the mindset of hippie idealists than was intended. The group recorded Crosby's song, but refused to allow it to be released, and Crosby instead gave it to his friends Jefferson Airplane, whose version, by having Grace Slick sing it, at least reverses the dynamics of the relationship: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "Triad"] The other was a song that Gary Usher had brought to the group and suggested they record, a Goffin and King song released the previous year by Dusty Springfield: [Excerpt: Dusty Springfield, "Goin' Back"] Crosby was incandescent. The group wanted to do this Brill Building pap?! Hell, Gary Usher had originally thought that *Chad and Jeremy* should do it, before deciding to get the Byrds to do it instead. Did they really want to be doing Chad and Jeremy cast-offs when they could be doing his brilliant science-fiction inspired songs about alternative relationship structures? *Really*? They did, and after a first session, where Crosby reluctantly joined in, when they came to recut the track Crosby flat-out refused to take part, leading to a furious row with McGuinn. Since they were already replacing Michael Clarke with session drummers, that meant the only Byrds on "Goin' Back", the group's next single, were McGuinn and Hillman: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Goin' Back"] That came out in late October 1967, and shortly before it came out, McGuinn and Hillman had driven to Crosby's home. They told him they'd had enough. He was out of the band. They were buying him out of his contract. Despite everything, Crosby was astonished. They were a *group*. They fought, but only the way brothers fight. But McGuinn and Hillman were adamant. Crosby ended up begging them, saying "We could make great music together." Their response was just "And we can make great music without you." We'll find out whether they could or not in two weeks' time.

Be sure to head to the Whisky for some great music!The legendary rock-n-roll hall of fame club "The Whisky a Go Go" in Hollywood, CA is turning 60.Come celebrate with the Strawberry Alarm Clock on Saturday, January 13, 2024. This show is all ages too!Saturday, January 13, 20248901 Sunset Boulevard WestHollywood, CA 90069(310) 652-4202All Ages, $25.00Doors at 6:00pm, show at 6:30pmGroovy Judy performs at 8:00pm

Art Alexakis of Everclear joins me for a special episode of Car Con Carne.   Everclear returns to the greater Chicago area for two shows at the end of January: Thursday, January 25:  Des Plaines Theatre Friday, January 26:  Arcada Theatre   I've interviewed Art a handful of times since my early Q101 days, dating back to the “Sparkle and Fade” era. What I've always appreciated about talking with Art is that he's candid, honest and authentically “him.”   Discussed in this episode: ”Sing Away” (from “Live at the Whisky A Go Go”) - addressing the topics of suicide and bullying, and the emotional response parents have. Why I think Art is an eternal optimist. Art's lyrics can be categorized in three distinct buckets. Everclear's first record deal in the 1990s. Everclear at the Double Door in 1994. Art's guitar room. The adorable bicycles Everclear rides while on the road. Do full-length albums matter anymore? The best way to support Everclear (and other bands). Performing, touring and living with Multiple Sclerosis. See you at the Everclear shows!   __  Car Con Carne is a nominee for “Best Music Podcast” in the Chicago Reader's “Best of 2023” issue! Voting only lasts for a couple more weeks … please support the podcast by clicking https://bit.ly/votecarconcarne    __ Car Con Carne is presented by Alex Ross Art. Visit Alex Ross on YouTube to keep up to date with one of the comics industry's most important and celebrated creators.   __   Car Con Carne is also sponsored by Easy Automation: easy-automation.net   Transform your living space with cutting-edge home automation. Experience seamless control over audio/video, lighting, climate, security, and more. Embrace the future of smart living – your home, your rules.   Get a quote by visiting Easy-automation.net, or call at 630.730.3728  

On this episode of March Forth with Mike Bauman, Mike chats with Ali Slater! Based in LA via NYC, Ali is a singer-songwriter who has been into music since she was a child. Following the deaths of a coworker and her high school music teacher Joe Carbone during the pandemic, Ali has kickstarted her music dreams in a big way. On 4/8/22, Ali released her debut EP entitled LUS!D. Fueled by catchy, well-written anthems like "Over It" (featuring Jacky Vincent) and the title track, the five-track EP showed off Ali's melodic and songwriting abilities, putting her on the radar of pop-punk and emo fans. On September 29th, Ali dropped her cover of Hilary Duff's "Come Clean" as part of Ghost Killer Entertainment's Pop Goes Hardcore Volume 2 compilation. The cover is the first of more covers to come from Ali, in addition to a new EP. In this conversation, Ali speaks with Mike about what she's been up to since the last time they spoke, including playing her first show ever at the Whisky A Go Go on November 9th, her cover of "Come Clean" and its accompanying music video, her mental health journey, using her music and social platforms to shed more light on mental health to help lift the stigma that often comes with it, her forthcoming new music, and more. This episode of March Forth with Mike Bauman also features Ali Slater's cover of "Come Clean" from Hilary Duff, available where you get your music! Follow Ali on Instagram @alislaterofficial. To stay up-to-date with Ali, visit https://linktr.ee/alislater. Follow Mike on Instagram @marchforthpod. To stay up-to-date on the podcast and learn more about Mike, visit https://linktr.ee/marchforthpod. To help support the post-tornado rebuild of Hendersonville Barbers, please visit: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-hendersonville-barbers. If you or someone you know needs mental health support, please visit https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists. Thanks for listening! If ya dug the show, like it, share it, tell a friend, subscribe, and above all, keep the faith and be kind to one another.

Hello! Welcome to the FOLLOWING FILMS podcast! Every week, we explore the creative minds behind the arts. I'm Chris Maynard, your host, and today we have a special guest with us - Art Alexakis from the band Everclear. We're going to discuss their latest release, "Live At The Whisky A Go Go".  Before we jump into the interview, I'd like to take a moment to thank to our sponsor, Bookmans. Bookmans is an independent bookstore that provides a vast range of options for books, movies, music, and more. They strongly believe in the power of storytelling and the magic of creative arts. So, if you wish to enhance your music, film, or book collection, make sure to visit your nearest Bookmans as there are always incredible discoveries to be made. Have you already followed the Following Films Podcast on Spotify? If you have, we appreciate your support! If you haven't, just go to Spotify and search for Following Films, then click the follow button. It would mean a lot to us and help the show grow.  As a bonus, we have a giveaway for the new Christopher Nolan hit film, Oppenheimer. Two lucky winners will receive digital codes from Universal Pictures. To join the contest, all you have to do is follow the FOLLOWING FILMS podcast on Spotify, take a screenshot, and send it to chris@followingfilms.com. So, don't miss the chance and follow us now! Live At The Whisky A Go Go is available where you buy or stream music! Enjoy the show. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/followingfilms/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/followingfilms/support

Episode 170 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Astral Weeks", the early solo career of Van Morrison, and the death of Bert Berns.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-minute bonus episode available, on "Stoned Soul Picnic" by Laura Nyro. 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/ Errata At one point I, ridiculously, misspeak the name of Charles Mingus' classic album. Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is not about dinner ladies. Also, I say Warren Smith Jr is on "Slim Slow Slider" when I meant to say Richard Davis (Smith is credited in some sources, but I only hear acoustic guitar, bass, and soprano sax on the finished track). Resources As usual, I've created Mixcloud playlists, with full versions of all the songs excerpted in this episode. As there are so many Van Morrison songs in this episode, the Mixcloud is split into three parts, one, two, and three. The information about Bert Berns comes from Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues by Joel Selvin. I've used several biographies of Van Morrison. Van Morrison: Into the Music by Ritchie Yorke is so sycophantic towards Morrison that the word “hagiography” would be, if anything, an understatement. Van Morrison: No Surrender by Johnny Rogan, on the other hand, is the kind of book that talks in the introduction about how the author has had to avoid discussing certain topics because of legal threats from the subject. Howard deWitt's Van Morrison: Astral Weeks to Stardom is over-thorough in the way some self-published books are, while Clinton Heylin's Can You Feel the Silence? is probably the best single volume on the artist. Information on Woodstock comes from Small Town Talk by Barney Hoskyns. Ryan Walsh's Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 is about more than Astral Weeks, but does cover Morrison's period in and around Boston in more detail than anything else. The album Astral Weeks is worth hearing in its entirety. Not all of the music on The Authorized Bang Collection is as listenable, but it's the most complete collection available of everything Morrison recorded for Bang. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before we start, a quick warning -- this episode contains discussion of organised crime activity, and of sudden death. It also contains excerpts of songs which hint at attraction to underage girls and discuss terminal illness. If those subjects might upset you, you might want to read the transcript rather than listen to the episode. Anyway, on with the show. Van Morrison could have been the co-writer of "Piece of My Heart". Bert Berns was one of the great collaborators in the music business, and almost every hit he ever had was co-written, and he was always on the lookout for new collaborators, and in 1967 he was once again working with Van Morrison, who he'd worked with a couple of years earlier when Morrison was still the lead singer of Them. Towards the beginning of 1967 he had come up with a chorus, but no verse. He had the hook, "Take another little piece of my heart" -- Berns was writing a lot of songs with "heart" in the title at the time -- and wanted Morrison to come up with a verse to go with it. Van Morrison declined. He wasn't interested in writing pop songs, or in collaborating with other writers, and so Berns turned to one of his regular collaborators, Jerry Ragavoy, and it was Ragavoy who added the verses to one of the biggest successes of Berns' career: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] The story of how Van Morrison came to make the album that's often considered his masterpiece is intimately tied up with the story we've been telling in the background for several episodes now, the story of Atlantic Records' sale to Warners, and the story of Bert Berns' departure from Atlantic. For that reason, some parts of the story I'm about to tell will be familiar to those of you who've been paying close attention to the earlier episodes, but as always I'm going to take you from there to somewhere we've never been before. In 1962, Bert Berns was a moderately successful songwriter, who had written or co-written songs for many artists, especially for artists on Atlantic Records. He'd written songs for Atlantic artists like LaVern Baker, and when Atlantic's top pop producers Leiber and Stoller started to distance themselves from the label in the early sixties, he had moved into production as well, writing and producing Solomon Burke's big hit "Cry to Me": [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Cry to Me"] He was the producer and writer or co-writer of most of Burke's hits from that point forward, but at first he was still a freelance producer, and also produced records for Scepter Records, like the Isley Brothers' version of "Twist and Shout", another song he'd co-written, that one with Phil Medley. And as a jobbing songwriter, of course his songs were picked up by other producers, so Leiber and Stoller produced a version of his song "Tell Him" for the Exciters on United Artists: [Excerpt: The Exciters, "Tell Him"] Berns did freelance work for Leiber and Stoller as well as the other people he was working for. For example, when their former protege Phil Spector released his hit version of "Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah", they got Berns to come up with a knockoff arrangement of "How Much is that Doggie in the Window?", released as by Baby Jane and the Rockabyes, with a production credit "Produced by Leiber and Stoller, directed by Bert Berns": [Excerpt: Baby Jane and the Rockabyes, "How Much is that Doggie in the Window?"] And when Leiber and Stoller stopped producing work for United Artists, Berns took over some of the artists they'd been producing for the label, like Marv Johnson, as well as producing his own new artists, like Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters, who had been discovered by Berns' friend Jerry Ragovoy, with whom he co-wrote their "Cry Baby": [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters, "Cry Baby"] Berns was an inveterate collaborator. He was one of the few people to get co-writing credits with Leiber and Stoller, and he would collaborate seemingly with everyone who spoke to him for five minutes. He would also routinely reuse material, cutting the same songs time and again with different artists, knowing that a song must be a hit for *someone*. One of his closest collaborators was Jerry Wexler, who also became one of his best friends, even though one of their earliest interactions had been when Wexler had supervised Phil Spector's production of Berns' "Twist and Shout" for the Top Notes, a record that Berns had thought had butchered the song. Berns was, in his deepest bones, a record man. Listening to the records that Berns made, there's a strong continuity in everything he does. There's a love there of simplicity -- almost none of his records have more than three chords. He loved Latin sounds and rhythms -- a love he shared with other people working in Brill Building R&B at the time, like Leiber and Stoller and Spector -- and great voices in emotional distress. There's a reason that the records he produced for Solomon Burke were the first R&B records to be labelled "soul". Berns was one of those people for whom feel and commercial success are inextricable. He was an artist -- the records he made were powerfully expressive -- but he was an artist for whom the biggest validation was *getting a hit*. Only a small proportion of the records he made became hits, but enough did that in the early sixties he was a name that could be spoken of in the same breath as Leiber and Stoller, Spector, and Bacharach and David. And Atlantic needed a record man. The only people producing hits for the label at this point were Leiber and Stoller, and they were in the process of stopping doing freelance work and setting up their own label, Red Bird, as we talked about in the episode on the Shangri-Las. And anyway, they wanted more money than they were getting, and Jerry Wexler was never very keen on producers wanting money that could have gone to the record label. Wexler decided to sign Bert Berns up as a staff producer for Atlantic towards the end of 1963, and by May 1964 it was paying off. Atlantic hadn't been having hits, and now Berns had four tracks he wrote and produced for Atlantic on the Hot One Hundred, of which the highest charting was "My Girl Sloopy" by the Vibrations: [Excerpt: The Vibrations, "My Girl Sloopy"] Even higher on the charts though was the Beatles' version of "Twist and Shout". That record, indeed, had been successful enough in the UK that Berns had already made exploratory trips to the UK and produced records for Dick Rowe at Decca, a partnership we heard about in the episode on "Here Comes the Night". Berns had made partnerships there which would have vast repercussions for the music industry in both countries, and one of them was with the arranger Mike Leander, who was the uncredited arranger for the Drifters session for "Under the Boardwalk", a song written by Artie Resnick and Kenny Young and produced by Berns, recorded the day after the group's lead singer Rudy Lewis died of an overdose: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Under the Boardwalk"] Berns was making hits on a regular basis by mid-1964, and the income from the label's new success allowed Jerry Wexler and the Ertegun brothers to buy out their other partners -- Ahmet Ertegun's old dentist, who had put up some of the initial money, and Miriam Bienstock, the ex-wife of their initial partner Herb Abramson, who'd got Abramson's share in the company after the divorce, and who was now married to Freddie Bienstock of Hill and Range publishing. Wexler and the Erteguns now owned the whole label. Berns also made regular trips to the UK to keep up his work with British musicians, and in one of those trips, as we heard in the episode on "Here Comes the Night", he produced several tracks for the group Them, including that track, written by Berns: [Excerpt: Them, "Here Comes the Night"] And a song written by the group's lead singer Van Morrison, "Gloria": [Excerpt: Them, "Gloria"] But Berns hadn't done much other work with them, because he had a new project. Part of the reason that Wexler and the Erteguns had gained total control of Atlantic was because, in a move pushed primarily by Wexler, they were looking at selling it. They'd already tried to merge with Leiber and Stoller's Red Bird Records, but lost the opportunity after a disastrous meeting, but they were in negotiations with several other labels, negotiations which would take another couple of years to bear fruit. But they weren't planning on getting out of the record business altogether. Whatever deal they made, they'd remain with Atlantic, but they were also planning on starting another label. Bert Berns had seen how successful Leiber and Stoller were with Red Bird, and wanted something similar. Wexler and the Erteguns didn't want to lose their one hit-maker, so they came up with an offer that would benefit all of them. Berns' publishing contract had just ended, so they would set up a new publishing company, WEB IV, named after the initials Wexler, Ertegun, and Berns, and the fact that there were four of them. Berns would own fifty percent of that, and the other three would own the other half. And they were going to start up a new label, with seventeen thousand dollars of the Atlantic partners' money. That label would be called Bang -- for Bert, Ahmet, Neshui, and Gerald -- and would be a separate company from Atlantic, so not affected by any sale. Berns would continue as a staff producer for Atlantic for now, but he'd have "his own" label, which he'd have a proper share in, and whether he was making hits for Atlantic or Bang, his partners would have a share of the profits. The first two records on Bang were "Shake and Jerk" by Billy Lamont, a track that they licensed from elsewhere and which didn't do much, and a more interesting track co-written by Berns. Bob Feldman, Richard Gottehrer, and Jerry Goldstein were Brill Building songwriters who had become known for writing "My Boyfriend's Back", a hit for the Angels, a couple of years earlier: [Excerpt: The Angels, "My Boyfriend's Back"] With the British invasion, the three of them had decided to create their own foreign beat group. As they couldn't do British accents, they pretended to be Australian, and as the Strangeloves -- named after the Stanley Kubrick film Dr  Strangelove -- they released one flop single. They cut another single, a version of "Bo Diddley", but the label they released their initial record through didn't want it. They then took the record to Atlantic, where Jerry Wexler said that they weren't interested in releasing some white men singing "Bo Diddley". But Ahmet Ertegun suggested they bring the track to Bert Berns to see what he thought. Berns pointed out that if they changed the lyrics and melody, but kept the same backing track, they could claim the copyright in the resulting song themselves. He worked with them on a new lyric, inspired by the novel Candy, a satirical pornographic novel co-written by Terry Southern, who had also co-written the screenplay to Dr Strangelove. Berns supervised some guitar overdubs, and the result went to number eleven: [Excerpt: The Strangeloves, "I Want Candy"] Berns had two other songs on the hot one hundred when that charted, too -- Them's version of "Here Comes the Night", and the version of Van McCoy's song "Baby I'm Yours" he'd produced for Barbara Lewis. Three records on the charts on three different labels. But despite the sheer number of charting records he'd had, he'd never had a number one, until the Strangeloves went on tour. Before the tour they'd cut a version of "My Girl Sloopy" for their album -- Berns always liked to reuse material -- and they started performing the song on the tour. The Dave Clark Five, who they were supporting, told them it sounded like a hit and they were going to do their own version when they got home. Feldman, Gottehrer, and Goldstein decided *they* might as well have the hit with it as anyone else. Rather than put it out as a Strangeloves record -- their own record was still rising up the charts, and there's no reason to be your own competition -- they decided to get a group of teenage musicians who supported them on the last date of the tour to sing new vocals to the backing track from the Strangeloves album. The group had been called Rick and the Raiders, but they argued so much that the Strangeloves nicknamed them the Hatfields and the McCoys, and when their version of "My Girl Sloopy", retitled "Hang on Sloopy", came out, it was under the band name The McCoys: [Excerpt: The McCoys, "Hang on Sloopy"] Berns was becoming a major success, and with major success in the New York music industry in the 1960s came Mafia involvement. We've talked a fair bit about Morris Levy's connection with the mob in many previous episodes, but mob influence was utterly pervasive throughout the New York part of the industry, and so for example Richard Gottehrer of the Strangeloves used to call Sonny Franzese of the Colombo crime family "Uncle John", they were so close. Franzese was big in the record business too, even after his conviction for bank robbery. Berns, unlike many of the other people in the industry, had no scruples at all about hanging out with Mafiosi. indeed his best friend in the mid sixties was Tommy Eboli, a member of the Genovese crime family who had been in the mob since the twenties, starting out working for "Lucky" Luciano. Berns was not himself a violent man, as far as anyone can tell, but he liked the glamour of hanging out with organised crime figures, and they liked hanging out with someone who was making so many hit records. And so while Leiber and Stoller, for example, ended up selling Red Bird Records to George Goldner for a single dollar in order to get away from the Mafiosi who were slowly muscling in on the label, Berns had no problems at all in keeping his own label going. Indeed, he would soon be doing so without the involvement of Atlantic Records. Berns' final work for Atlantic was in June 1966, when he cut a song he had co-written with Jeff Barry for the Drifters, inspired by the woman who would soon become Atlantic's biggest star: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Aretha"] The way Berns told the story in public, there was no real bad blood between him, Wexler, and the Erteguns -- he'd just decided to go his own way, and he said “I will always be grateful to them for the help they've given me in getting Bang started,” The way Berns' wife would later tell the story, Jerry Wexler had suggested that rather than Berns owning fifty percent of Web IV, they should start to split everything four ways, and she had been horrified by this suggestion, kicked up a stink about it, and Wexler had then said that either Berns needed to buy the other three out, or quit and give them everything, and demanded Berns pay them three hundred thousand dollars. According to other people, Berns decided he wanted one hundred percent control of Web IV, and raised a breach of contract lawsuit against Atlantic, over the usual royalty non-payments that were endemic in the industry at that point. When Atlantic decided to fight the lawsuit rather than settle, Berns' mob friends got involved and threatened to break the legs of Wexler's fourteen-year-old daughter, and the mob ended up with full control of Bang records, while Berns had full control of his publishing company. Given later events, and in particular given the way Wexler talked about Berns until the day he died, with a vitriol that he never used about any of the other people he had business disputes with, it seems likely to me that the latter story is closer to the truth than the former. But most people involved weren't talking about the details of what went on, and so Berns still retained his relationships with many of the people in the business, not least of them Jeff Barry, so when Barry and Ellie Greenwich had a new potential star, it was Berns they thought to bring him to, even though the artist was white and Berns had recently given an interview saying that he wanted to work with more Black artists, because white artists simply didn't have soul. Barry and Greenwich's marriage was breaking up at the time, but they were still working together professionally, as we discussed in the episode on "River Deep, Mountain High", and they had been the main production team at Red Bird. But with Red Bird in terminal decline, they turned elsewhere when they found a potential major star after Greenwich was asked to sing backing vocals on one of his songwriting demos. They'd signed the new songwriter, Neil Diamond, to Leiber and Stoller's company Trio Music at first, but they soon started up their own company, Tallyrand Music, and signed Diamond to that, giving Diamond fifty percent of the company and keeping twenty-five percent each for themselves, and placed one of his songs with Jay and the Americans in 1965: [Excerpt: Jay and the Americans, "Sunday and Me"] That record made the top twenty, and had established Diamond as a songwriter, but he was still not a major performer -- he'd released one flop single on Columbia Records before meeting Barry and Greenwich. But they thought he had something, and Bert Berns agreed. Diamond was signed to Bang records, and Berns had a series of pre-production meetings with Barry and Greenwich before they took Diamond into the studio -- Barry and Greenwich were going to produce Diamond for Bang, as they had previously produced tracks for Red Bird, but they were going to shape the records according to Berns' aesthetic. The first single released from Diamond's first session, "Solitary Man", only made number fifty-five, but it was the first thing Diamond had recorded to make the Hot One Hundred at all: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Solitary Man"] The second single, though, was much more Bert Berns' sort of thing -- a three-chord song that sounded like it could have been written by Berns himself, especially after Barry and Greenwich had added the Latin-style horns that Berns loved so much. Indeed according to some sources, Berns did make a songwriting suggestion -- Diamond's song had apparently been called "Money Money", and Berns had thought that was a ridiculous title, and suggested calling it "Cherry Cherry" instead: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Cherry Cherry"] That became Diamond's first top ten hit. While Greenwich had been the one who had discovered Diamond, and Barry and Greenwich were the credited producers on all Diamond's records  as a result, Diamond soon found himself collaborating far more with Barry than with Greenwich, so for example the first number one he wrote, for the Monkees rather than himself, ended up having its production just credited to Barry. That record used a backing track recorded in New York by the same set of musicians used on most Bang records, like Al Gorgoni on lead guitar and Russ Savakus on bass: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "I'm a Believer"] Neil Diamond was becoming a solid hit-maker, but he started rubbing up badly against Berns. Berns wanted hits and only hits, and Diamond thought of himself as a serious artist. The crisis came when two songs were under contention for Diamond's next single in late 1967, after he'd had a whole run of hits for the label. The song Diamond wanted to release, "Shilo", was deeply personal to him: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Shilo"] But Bert Berns had other ideas. "Shilo" didn't sound like a hit, and he knew a hit when he heard one. No, the clear next single, the only choice, was "Kentucky Woman": [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Kentucky Woman"] But Berns tried to compromise as best he could. Diamond's contract was up for renewal, and you don't want to lose someone who has had, as Diamond had at that point, five top twenty hits in a row, and who was also writing songs like "I'm a Believer" and "Red Red Wine". He told Diamond that he'd let "Shilo" come out as a single if Diamond signed an extension to his contract. Diamond said that not only was he not going to do that, he'd taken legal advice and discovered that there were problems with his contract which let him record for other labels -- the word "exclusive" had been missed out of the text, among other things. He wasn't going to be recording for Bang at all any more. The lawsuits over this would stretch out for a decade, and Diamond would eventually win, but the first few months were very, very difficult for Diamond. When he played the Bitter End, a club in New York, stink bombs were thrown into the audience. The Bitter End's manager was assaulted and severely beaten. Diamond moved his wife and child out of Manhattan, borrowed a gun, and after his last business meeting with Berns was heard talking about how he needed to contact the District Attorney and hire a bodyguard. Of the many threats that were issued against Diamond, though, the least disturbing was probably the threat Berns made to Diamond's career. Berns pointed out to Diamond in no uncertain terms that he didn't need Diamond anyway -- he already had someone he could replace Diamond with, another white male solo singer with a guitar who could churn out guaranteed hits. He had Van Morrison: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] When we left Van Morrison, Them had just split up due to the problems they had been having with their management team. Indeed, the problems Morrison was having with his managers seem curiously similar to the issues that Diamond was having with Bert Berns -- something that could possibly have been a warning sign to everyone involved, if any of them had known the full details of everyone else's situation. Sadly for all of them, none of them did. Them had had some early singles success, notably with the tracks Berns had produced for them, but Morrison's opinion of their second album, Them Again, was less than complimentary, and in general that album is mostly only remembered for the version of Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", which is one of those cover versions that inspires subsequent covers more than the original ever did: [Excerpt: Them, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"] Them had toured the US around the time of the release of that album, but that tour had been a disaster. The group had gained a reputation for incredible live shows, including performances at the Whisky A-Go-Go with the Doors and Captain Beefheart as their support acts, but during the tour Van Morrison had decided that Phil Solomon, the group's manager, was getting too much money -- Morrison had agreed to do the tour on a salary, rather than a percentage, but the tour had been more successful than he'd expected, and Solomon was making a great deal of money off the tour, money that Morrison believed rightfully belonged to him. The group started collecting the money directly from promoters, and got into legal trouble with Solomon as a result. The tour ended with the group having ten thousand dollars that Solomon believed -- quite possibly correctly -- that he was owed. Various gangsters whose acquaintance the group had made offered to have the problem taken care of, but they decided instead to come to a legal agreement -- they would keep the money, and in return Solomon, whose production company the group were signed to, would get to keep all future royalties from the Them tracks. This probably seemed a good idea at the time, when the idea of records earning royalties for sixty or more years into the future seemed ridiculous, but Morrison in particular came to regret the decision bitterly. The group played one final gig when they got back to Belfast, but then split up, though a version of the group led by the bass player Alan Henderson continued performing for a few years to no success. Morrison put together a band that played a handful of gigs under the name Them Again, with little success, but he already had his eyes set on a return to the US. In Morrison's eyes, Bert Berns had been the only person in the music industry who had really understood him, and the two worked well together. He had also fallen in love with an American woman, Janet Planet, and wanted to find some way to be with her. As Morrison said later “I had a couple of other offers but I thought this was the best one, seeing as I wanted to come to America anyway. I can't remember the exact details of the deal. It wasn't really that spectacular, money-wise, I don't think. But it was pretty hard to refuse from the point of view that I really respected Bert as a producer. I'd rather have worked with Bert than some other guy with a bigger record company. From that angle, it was spectacular because Bert was somebody that I wanted to work with.” There's little evidence that Morrison did have other offers -- he was already getting a reputation as someone who it was difficult to work with -- but he and Berns had a mutual respect, and on January the ninth, 1967, he signed a contract with Bang records. That contract has come in for a lot of criticism over the years, but it was actually, *by the standards in operation in the music business in 1967*, a reasonably fair one. The contract provided that, for a $2,500 a year advance, Bang would record twelve sides in the first year, with an option for up to fifty more that year, and options for up to four more years on the same terms. Bang had the full ownership of the masters and the right to do what they wanted with them. According to at least one biographer, Morrison added clauses requiring Bang to actually record the twelve sides a year, and to put out at least three singles and one album per year while the contract was in operation. He also added one other clause which seems telling -- "Company agrees that Company will not make any reference to the name THEM on phonograph records, or in advertising copy in connection with the recording of Artist." Morrison was, at first, extremely happy with Berns. The problems started with their first session: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl (takes 1-6)"] When Morrison had played the songs he was working on for Berns, Berns had remarked that they sounded great with just Morrison and his guitar, so Morrison was surprised when he got into the studio to find the whole standard New York session crew there -- the same group of session players who were playing for everyone from the Monkees to Laura Nyro, from Neil Diamond to the Shangri-Las -- along with the Sweet Inspirations to provide backing vocals. As he described it later "This fellow Bert, he made it the way he wanted to, and I accepted that he was producing it... I'd write a song and bring it into the group and we'd sit there and bash it around and that's all it was -- they weren't playing the songs, they were just playing whatever it was. They'd say 'OK, we got drums so let's put drums on it,' and they weren't thinking about the song, all they were thinking about was putting drums on it... But it was my song, and I had to watch it go down." The first song they cut was "Brown-Eyed Girl", a song which Morrison has said was originally a calypso, and was originally titled "Brown-skinned Girl", though he's differed in interviews as to whether Berns changed the lyric or if he just decided to sing it differently without thinking about it in the session. Berns turned "Brown-Eyed Girl" into a hit single, because that was what he tended to do with songs, and the result sounds a lot like the kind of record that Bang were releasing for Neil Diamond: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] Morrison has, in later years, expressed his distaste for what was done to the song, and in particular he's said that the backing vocal part by the Sweet Inspirations was added by Berns and he disliked it: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] Morrison has been very dismissive of "Brown-Eyed Girl" over the years, but he seems not to have disliked it at the time, and the song itself is one that has stood the test of time, and is often pointed to by other songwriters as a great example of the writer's craft. I remember reading one interview with Randy Newman -- sadly, while I thought it was in Paul Zollo's "Songwriters on Songwriting" I just checked that and it's not, so I can't quote it precisely -- in which he says that he often points to the line "behind the stadium with you" as a perfect piece of writing, because it's such a strangely specific detail that it convinces you that it actually happened, and that means you implicitly believe the rest of the song. Though it should be made very clear here that Morrison has always said, over and over again, that nothing in his songs is based directly on his own experiences, and that they're all products of his imagination and composites of people he's known. This is very important to note before we go any further, because "Brown-Eyed Girl" is one of many songs from this period in Morrison's career which imply that their narrator has an attraction to underage girls -- in this case he remembers "making love in the green grass" in the distant past, while he also says "saw you just the other day, my how you have grown", and that particular combination is not perhaps one that should be dwelt on too closely. But there is of course a very big difference between a songwriter treating a subject as something that is worth thinking about in the course of a song and writing about their own lives, and that can be seen on one of the other songs that Morrison recorded in these sessions, "T.B. Sheets": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "T.B. Sheets"] It seems very unlikely indeed that Van Morrison actually had a lover die of tuberculosis, as the lover in the song does, and while a lot of people seem convinced that it's autobiographical, simply because of the intensity of the performance (Morrison apparently broke down in tears after recording it), nobody has ever found anyone in Morrison's life who fits the story in the song, and he's always ridiculed such suggestions. What is true though is that "T.B. Sheets" is evidence against another claim that Morrison has made in the past - that on these initial sessions the eight songs recorded were meant to be the A and B sides of four singles and there was no plan of making an album. It is simply not plausible at all to suggest that "T.B. Sheets" -- a slow blues about terminal illness, that lasts nearly ten minutes -- was ever intended as a single. It wouldn't have even come close to fitting on one side of a forty-five. It was also presumably at this time that Berns brought up the topic of "Piece of My Heart". When Berns signed Erma Franklin, it was as a way of getting at Jerry Wexler, who had gone from being his closest friend to someone he wasn't on speaking terms with, by signing the sister of his new signing Aretha. Morrison, of course, didn't co-write it -- he'd already decided that he didn't play well with others -- but it's tempting to think about how the song might have been different had Morrison written it. The song in some ways seems a message to Wexler -- haven't you had enough from me already? -- but it's also notable how many songs Berns was writing with the word "heart" in the chorus, given that Berns knew he was on borrowed time from his own heart condition. As an example, around the same time he and Jerry Ragavoy co-wrote "Piece of My Heart", they also co-wrote another song, "Heart Be Still", a flagrant lift from "Peace Be Still" by Aretha Franklin's old mentor Rev. James Cleveland, which they cut with Lorraine Ellison: [Excerpt: Lorraine Ellison, "Heart Be Still"] Berns' heart condition had got much worse as a result of the stress from splitting with Atlantic, and he had started talking about maybe getting open-heart surgery, though that was still very new and experimental. One wonders how he must have felt listening to Morrison singing about watching someone slowly dying. Morrison has since had nothing but negative things to say about the sessions in March 1967, but at the time he seemed happy. He returned to Belfast almost straight away after the sessions, on the understanding that he'd be back in the US if "Brown-Eyed Girl" was a success. He wrote to Janet Planet in San Francisco telling her to listen to the radio -- she'd know if she heard "Brown-Eyed Girl" that he would be back on his way to see her. She soon did hear the song, and he was soon back in the US: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] By August, "Brown-Eyed Girl" had become a substantial hit, making the top ten, and Morrison was back in the States. He was starting to get less happy with Berns though. Bang had put out the eight tracks he'd recorded in March as an album, titled Blowin' Your Mind, and Morrison thought that the crass pseudo-psychedelia of the title, liner notes, and cover was very inappropriate -- Morrison has never been a heavy user of any drugs other than alcohol, and didn't particularly want to be associated with them. He also seems to have not realised that every track he recorded in those initial sessions would be on the album, which many people have called one of the great one-sided albums of all time -- side A, with "Brown-Eyed Girl", "He Ain't Give You None" and the extended "T.B. Sheets" tends to get far more love than side B, with five much lesser songs on it. Berns held a party for Morrison on a cruise around Manhattan, but it didn't go well -- when the performer Tiny Tim tried to get on board, Carmine "Wassel" DeNoia, a mobster friend of Berns' who was Berns' partner in a studio they'd managed to get from Atlantic as part of the settlement when Berns left, was so offended by Tim's long hair and effeminate voice and mannerisms that he threw him overboard into the harbour. DeNoia was meant to be Morrison's manager in the US, working with Berns, but he and Morrison didn't get on at all -- at one point DeNoia smashed Morrison's acoustic guitar over his head, and only later regretted the damage he'd done to a nice guitar. And Morrison and Berns weren't getting on either. Morrison went back into the studio to record four more songs for a follow-up to "Brown-Eyed Girl", but there was again a misunderstanding. Morrison thought he'd been promised that this time he could do his songs the way he wanted, but Berns was just frustrated that he wasn't coming up with another "Brown-Eyed Girl", but was instead coming up with slow songs about trans women. Berns overdubbed party noises and soul backing vocals onto "Madame George", possibly in an attempt to copy the Beach Boys' Party! album with its similar feel, but it was never going to be a "Barbara Ann": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Madame George (Bang version)"] In the end, Berns released one of the filler tracks from Blowin' Your Mind, "Ro Ro Rosey", as the next single, and it flopped. On December the twenty-ninth, Berns had a meeting with Neil Diamond, the meeting after which Diamond decided he needed to get a bodyguard. After that, he had a screaming row over the phone with Van Morrison, which made Berns ill with stress. The next day, he died of a heart attack. Berns' widow Ilene, who had only just given birth to a baby a couple of weeks earlier, would always blame Morrison for pushing her husband over the edge. Neither Van Morrison nor Jerry Wexler went to the funeral, but Neil Diamond did -- he went to try to persuade Ilene to let him out of his contract now Berns was dead. According to Janet Planet later, "We were at the hotel when we learned that Bert had died. We were just mortified, because things had been going really badly, and Van felt really bad, because I guess they'd parted having had some big fight or something... Even though he did love Bert, it was a strange relationship that lived and died in the studio... I remember we didn't go to the funeral, which probably was a mistake... I think [Van] had a really bad feeling about what was going to happen." But Morrison has later mostly talked about the more practical concerns that came up, which were largely the same as the ones Neil Diamond had, saying in 1997 "I'd signed a contract with Bert Berns for management, production, agency and record company,  publishing, the whole lot -- which was professional suicide as any lawyer will tell you now... Then the whole thing blew up. Bert Berns died and I was left broke." This was the same mistake, essentially, that he'd made with Phil Solomon, and in order to get out of it, it turned out he was going to have to do much the same for a third time.  But it was the experience with Berns specifically that traumatised Morrison enough that twenty-five years later he would still be writing songs about it, like "Big Time Operators": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Big Time Operators"] The option to renew Morrison's contracts with Berns' companies came on the ninth of January 1968, less than two weeks after Berns' death. After his death, Berns' share of ownership in his companies had passed to his widow, who was in a quandary. She had two young children, one of whom was only a few weeks old, and she needed an income after their father had died. She was also not well disposed at all towards Morrison, who she blamed for causing her husband's death. By all accounts the amazing thing is that Berns lived as long as he did given his heart condition and the state of medical science at the time, but it's easy to understand her thinking. She wanted nothing to do with Morrison, and wanted to punish him. On the other hand, her late husband's silent partners didn't want to let their cash cow go. And so Morrison came under a huge amount of pressure in very different directions. From one side, Carmine DiNoia was determined to make more money off Morrison, and Morrison has since talked about signing further contracts at this point with a gun literally to his head, and his hotel room being shot up. But on the other side, Ilene Berns wanted to destroy Morrison's career altogether. She found out that Bert Berns hadn't got Morrison the proper work permits and reported him to the immigration authorities. Morrison came very close to being deported, but in the end he managed to escape deportation by marrying Janet Planet. The newly-married couple moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to get away from New York and the mobsters, and to try to figure out the next steps in Morrison's career. Morrison started putting together a band, which he called The Van Morrison Controversy, and working on new songs. One of his earliest connections in Massachusetts was the lead singer of a band called the Hallucinations, who he met in a bar where he was trying to get a gig: [Excerpt: The Hallucinations, "Messin' With the Kid"] The Hallucinations' lead singer was called Peter Wolf, and would much later go on to become well-known as the singer with the J. Geils Band. He and Morrison became acquaintances, and later became closer friends when they realised they had another connection -- Wolf had a late-night radio show under the name Woofa Goofa, and he'd been receiving anonymous requests for obscure blues records from a fan of the show. Morrison had been the one sending in the requests, not realising his acquaintance was the DJ. Before he got his own band together, Morrison actually guested with the Hallucinations at one show they did in May 1968, supporting John Lee Hooker. The Hallucinations had been performing "Gloria" since Them's single had come out, and they invited Morrison to join them to perform it on stage. According to Wolf, Morrison was very drunk and ranted in cod-Japanese for thirty-five minutes, and tried to sing a different song while the band played "Gloria". The audience were apparently unimpressed, even though Wolf shouted at them “Don't you know who this man is? He wrote the song!” But in truth, Morrison was sick of "Gloria" and his earlier work, and was trying to push his music in a new direction. He would later talk about having had an epiphany after hearing one particular track on the radio: [Excerpt: The Band, "I Shall Be Released"] Like almost every musician in 1968, Morrison was hit like a lightning bolt by Music From Big Pink, and he decided that he needed to turn his music in the same direction. He started writing the song "Brand New Day", which would later appear on his album Moondance, inspired by the music on the album. The Van Morrison Controversy started out as a fairly straightforward rock band, with guitarist John Sheldon, bass player Tom Kielbania, and drummer Joey Bebo. Sheldon was a novice, though his first guitar teacher was the singer James Taylor, but the other two were students at Berklee, and very serious musicians. Morrison seems to have had various managers involved in rapid succession in 1968, including one who was himself a mobster, and another who was only known as Frank, but one of these managers advanced enough money that the musicians got paid every gig. These musicians were all interested in kinds of music other than just straight rock music, and as well as rehearsing up Morrison's hits and his new songs, they would also jam with him on songs from all sorts of other genres, particularly jazz and blues. The band worked up the song that would become "Domino" based on Sheldon jamming on a Bo Diddley riff, and another time the group were rehearsing a Grant Green jazz piece, "Lazy Afternoon": [Excerpt: Grant Green, "Lazy Afternoon"] Morrison started messing with the melody, and that became his classic song "Moondance": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Moondance"] No recordings of this electric lineup of the group are known to exist, though the backing musicians remember going to a recording studio called Ace recordings at one point and cutting some demos, which don't seem to circulate. Ace was a small studio which, according to all the published sources I've read, was best known for creating song poems, though it was a minor studio even in the song-poem world. For those who don't know, song poems were essentially a con aimed at wannabe songwriters who knew nothing about the business -- companies would advertise you too could become a successful, rich, songwriter if you sent in your "song poems", because anyone who knew the term "lyric" could be presumed to know too much about the music business to be useful. When people sent in their lyrics, they'd then be charged a fee to have them put out on their very own record -- with tracks made more or less on a conveyor belt with quick head arrangements, sung by session singers who were just handed a lyric sheet and told to get on with it. And thus were created such classics prized by collectors as "I Like Yellow Things", "Jimmy Carter Says 'Yes'", and "Listen Mister Hat". Obviously, for the most part these song poems did not lead to the customers becoming the next Ira Gershwin, but oddly even though Ace recordings is not one of the better-known song poem studios, it seems to have produced an actual hit song poem -- one that I don't think has ever before been identified as such until I made a connection, hence me going on this little tangent. Because in researching this episode I noticed something about its co-owner, Milton Yakus', main claim to fame. He co-wrote the song "Old Cape Cod", and to quote that song's Wikipedia page "The nucleus of the song was a poem written by Boston-area housewife Claire Rothrock, for whom Cape Cod was a favorite vacation spot. "Old Cape Cod" and its derivatives would be Rothrock's sole evident songwriting credit. She brought her poem to Ace Studios, a Boston recording studio owned by Milton Yakus, who adapted the poem into the song's lyrics." And while Yakus had written other songs, including songs for Patti Page who had the hit with "Old Cape Cod", apparently Page recorded that song after Rothrock brought her the demo after a gig, rather than getting it through any formal channels. It sounds to me like the massive hit and classic of the American songbook "Old Cape Cod" started life as a song-poem -- and if you're familiar with the form, it fits the genre perfectly: [Excerpt: Patti Page, "Old Cape Cod"] The studio was not the classiest of places, even if you discount the song-poems. Its main source of income was from cutting private records with mobsters' wives and mistresses singing (and dealing with the problems that came along when those records weren't successful) and it also had a sideline in bugging people's cars to see if their spouses were cheating, though Milton Yakus' son Shelly, who got his start at his dad's studio, later became one of the most respected recording engineers in the industry -- and indeed had already worked as assistant engineer on Music From Big Pink. And there was actually another distant connection to Morrison's new favourite band on these sessions. For some reason -- reports differ -- Bebo wasn't considered suitable for the session, and in his place was the one-handed drummer Victor "Moulty" Moulton, who had played with the Barbarians, who'd had a minor hit with "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?" a couple of years earlier: [Excerpt: The Barbarians, "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?"] A later Barbarians single, in early 1966, had featured Moulty telling his life story, punctuated by the kind of three-chord chorus that would have been at home on a Bert Berns single: [Excerpt: The Barbarians, "Moulty"] But while that record was credited to the Barbarians, Moulton was the only Barbarian on the track, with the instruments and backing vocals instead being provided by Levon and the Hawks. Shortly after the Ace sessions, the Van Morrison Controversy fell apart, though nobody seems to know why. Depending on which musician's story you listen to, either Morrison had a dream that he should get rid of all electric instruments and only use acoustic players, or there was talk of a record deal but the musicians weren't good enough, or the money from the mysterious manager (who may or may not have been the one who was a mobster) ran out. Bebo went back to university, and Sheldon left soon after, though Sheldon would remain in the music business in one form or another. His most prominent credit has been writing a couple of songs for his old friend James Taylor, including the song "Bittersweet" on Taylor's platinum-selling best-of, on which Sheldon also played guitar: [Excerpt: James Taylor, "Bittersweet"] Morrison and Kielbania continued for a while as a duo, with Morrison on acoustic guitar and Kielbania on double bass, but they were making very different music. Morrison's biggest influence at this point, other than The Band, was King Pleasure, a jazz singer who sang in the vocalese style we've talked about before -- the style where singers would sing lyrics to melodies that had previously been improvised by jazz musicians: [Excerpt: King Pleasure, "Moody's Mood for Love"] Morrison and Kielbania soon decided that to make the more improvisatory music they were interested in playing, they wanted another musician who could play solos. They ended up with John Payne, a jazz flute and saxophone player whose biggest inspiration was Charles Lloyd. This new lineup of the Van Morrison Controversy -- acoustic guitar, double bass, and jazz flute -- kept gigging around Boston, though the sound they were creating was hardly what the audiences coming to see the man who'd had that "Brown-Eyed Girl" hit the year before would have expected -- even when they did "Brown-Eyed Girl", as the one live recording of that line-up, made by Peter Wolf, shows: [Excerpt: The Van Morrison Controversy, "Brown-Eyed Girl (live in Boston 1968)"] That new style, with melodic bass underpinning freely extemporising jazz flute and soulful vocals, would become the basis of the album that to this day is usually considered Morrison's best. But before that could happen, there was the matter of the contracts to be sorted out. Warner-Reprise Records were definitely interested. Warners had spent the last few years buying up smaller companies like Atlantic, Autumn Records, and Reprise, and the label was building a reputation as the major label that would give artists the space and funding they needed to make the music they wanted to make. Idiosyncratic artists with difficult reputations (deserved or otherwise), like Neil Young, Randy Newman, Van Dyke Parks, the Grateful Dead, and Joni Mitchell, had all found homes on the label, which was soon also to start distributing Frank Zappa, the Beach Boys, and Captain Beefheart. A surly artist who wants to make mystical acoustic songs with jazz flute accompaniment was nothing unusual for them, and once Joe Smith, the man who had signed the Grateful Dead, was pointed in Morrison's direction by Andy Wickham, an A&R man working for the label, everyone knew that Morrison would be a perfect fit. But Morrison was still under contract to Bang records and Web IV, and those contracts said, among other things, that any other label that negotiated with Morrison would be held liable for breach of contract. Warners didn't want to show their interest in Morrison, because a major label wanting to sign him would cause Bang to raise the price of buying him out of his contract. Instead they got an independent production company to sign him, with a nod-and-wink understanding that they would then license the records to Warners. The company they chose was Inherit Productions, the production arm of Schwaid-Merenstein, a management company set up by Bob Schwaid, who had previously worked in Warners' publishing department, and record producer Lewis Merenstein. Merenstein came to another demo session at Ace Recordings, where he fell in love with the new music that Morrison was playing, and determined he would do everything in his power to make the record into the masterpiece it deserved to be. He and Morrison were, at least at this point, on exactly the same page, and bonded over their mutual love of King Pleasure. Morrison signed to Schwaid-Merenstein, just as he had with Bert Berns and before him Phil Solomon, for management, record production, and publishing. Schwaid-Merenstein were funded by Warners, and would license any recordings they made to Warners, once the contractual situation had been sorted out. The first thing to do was to negotiate the release from Web IV, the publishing company owned by Ilene Berns. Schwaid negotiated that, and Morrison got released on four conditions -- he had to make a substantial payment to Web IV, if he released a single within a year he had to give Web IV the publishing, any album he released in the next year had to contain at least two songs published by Web IV, and he had to give Web IV at least thirty-six new songs to publish within the next year. The first two conditions were no problem at all -- Warners had the money to buy the contract out, and Merenstein's plans for the first album didn't involve a single anyway. It wouldn't be too much of a hardship to include a couple of Web IV-published tracks on the album -- Morrison had written two songs, "Beside You" and "Madame George", that had already been published and that he was regularly including in his live sets. As for the thirty-six new songs... well, that all depended on what you called a song, didn't it? [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Ring Worm"] Morrison went into a recording studio and recorded thirty-one ostensible songs, most of them lasting one minute to within a few seconds either way, in which he strummed one or two chords and spoke-sang whatever words came into his head -- for example one song, "Here Comes Dumb George", just consists of the words "Here Comes Dumb George" repeated over and over. Some of the 'songs', like "Twist and Shake" and "Hang on Groovy", are parodying Bert Berns' songwriting style; others, like "Waiting for My Royalty Check", "Blowin' Your Nose", and "Nose in Your Blow", are attacks on Bang's business practices. Several of the songs, like "Hold on George", "Here Comes Dumb George", "Dum Dum George", and "Goodbye George" are about a man called George who seems to have come to Boston to try and fail to make a record with Morrison. And “Want a Danish” is about wanting a Danish pastry. But in truth, this description is still making these "songs" sound more coherent than they are. The whole recording is of no musical merit whatsoever, and has absolutely nothing in it which could be considered to have any commercial potential at all. Which is of course the point -- just to show utter contempt to Ilene Berns and her company. The other problem that needed to be solved was Bang Records itself, which was now largely under the control of the mob. That was solved by Joe Smith. As Smith told the story "A friend of mine who knew some people said I could buy the contract for $20,000. I had to meet somebody in a warehouse on the third floor on Ninth Avenue in New York. I walked up there with twenty thousand-dollar bills -- and I was terrified. I was terrified I was going to give them the money, get a belt on the head and still not wind up with the contract. And there were two guys in the room. They looked out of central casting -- a big wide guy and  a tall, thin guy. They were wearing suits and hats and stuff. I said 'I'm here with the money. You got the contract?' I remember I took that contract and ran out the door and jumped from the third floor to the second floor, and almost broke my leg to get on the street, where I could get a cab and put the contract in a safe place back at Warner Brothers." But the problem was solved, and Lewis Merenstein could get to work translating the music he'd heard Morrison playing into a record. He decided that Kielbania and Payne were not suitable for the kind of recording he wanted -- though they were welcome to attend the sessions in case the musicians had any questions about the songs, and thus they would get session pay. Kielbania was, at first, upset by this, but he soon changed his mind when he realised who Merenstein was bringing in to replace him on bass for the session. Richard Davis, the bass player -- who sadly died two months ago as I write this -- would later go on to play on many classic rock records by people like Bruce Springsteen and Laura Nyro, largely as a result of his work for Morrison, but at the time he was known as one of the great jazz bass players, most notably having played on Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch: [Excerpt: Eric Dolphy, "Hat and Beard"] Kielbania could see the wisdom of getting in one of the truly great players for the album, and he was happy to show Davis the parts he'd been playing on the songs live, which Davis could then embellish -- Davis later always denied this, but it's obvious when listening to the live recordings that Kielbania played on before these sessions that Davis is playing very similar lines. Warren Smith Jr, the vibraphone player, had played with great jazz musicians like Charles Mingus and Herbie Mann, as well as backing Lloyd Price, Aretha Franklin, and Janis Joplin. Connie Kay, the drummer, was the drummer for the Modern Jazz Quartet and had also played sessions with everyone from Ruth Brown to Miles Davis. And Jay Berliner, the guitarist, had played on records like Charles Mingus' classic The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady: [Excerpt: Charles Mingus: "Mode D - Trio and Group Dancers, Mode F - Single Solos & Group Dance"] There was also a flute player whose name nobody now remembers. Although all of these musicians were jobbing session musicians -- Berliner came to the first session for the album that became Astral Weeks straight from a session recording a jingle for Pringles potato chips -- they were all very capable of taking a simple song and using it as an opportunity for jazz improvisation. And that was what Merenstein asked them to do. The songs that Morrison was writing were lyrically oblique, but structurally they were very simple -- surprisingly so when one is used to listening to the finished album. Most of the songs were, harmonically, variants of the standard blues and R&B changes that Morrison was used to playing. "Cyprus Avenue" and "The Way Young Lovers Do", for example, are both basically twelve-bar blueses -- neither is *exactly* a standard twelve-bar blues, but both are close enough that they can be considered to fit the form. Other than what Kielbania and Payne showed the musicians, they received no guidance from Morrison, who came in, ran through the songs once for them, and then headed to the vocal booth. None of the musicians had much memory of Morrison at all -- Jay Berliner said “This little guy walks in, past everybody, disappears into the vocal booth, and almost never comes out, even on the playbacks, he stayed in there." While Richard Davis later said “Well, I was with three of my favorite fellas to play with, so that's what made it beautiful. We were not concerned with Van at all, he never spoke to us.” The sound of the basic tracks on Astral Weeks is not the sound of a single auteur, as one might expect given its reputation, it's the sound of extremely good jazz musicians improvising based on the instructions given by Lewis Merenstein, who was trying to capture the feeling he'd got from listening to Morrison's live performances and demos. And because these were extremely good musicians, the album was recorded extremely quickly. In the first session, they cut four songs. Two of those were songs that Morrison was contractually obliged to record because of his agreement with Web IV -- "Beside You" and "Madame George", two songs that Bert Berns had produced, now in radically different versions: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Madame George"] The third song, "Cyprus Avenue", is the song that has caused most controversy over the years, as it's another of the songs that Morrison wrote around this time that relate to a sexual or romantic interest in underage girls. In this case, the reasoning might have been as simple as that the song is a blues, and Morrison may have been thinking about a tradition of lyrics like this in blues songs like "Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl". Whatever the cause though, the lyrics have, to put it mildly, not aged well at all: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Cyprus Avenue"] That song would be his standard set-closer for live performances for much of the seventies. For the fourth and final song, though, they chose to record what would become the title track for the album, "Astral Weeks", a song that was a lot more elliptical, and which seems in part to be about Morrison's longing for Janet Planet from afar, but also about memories of childhood, and also one of the first songs to bring in Morrison's fascination with the occult and spirituality,  something that would be a recurring theme throughout his work, as the song was partly inspired by paintings by a friend of Morrison's which suggested to him the concept of astral travel: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Astral Weeks"] Morrison had a fascination with the idea of astral travel, as he had apparently had several out-of-body experiences as a child, and wanted to find some kind of explanation for them. Most of the songs on the album came, by Morrison's own account, as a kind of automatic writing, coming through him rather than being consciously written, and there's a fascination throughout with, to use the phrase from "Madame George", "childhood visions". The song is also one of the first songs in Morrison's repertoire to deliberately namecheck one of his idols, something else he would do often in future, when he talks about "talking to Huddie Leadbelly". "Astral Weeks" was a song that Morrison had been performing live for some time, and Payne had always enjoyed doing it. Unlike Kielbania he had no compunction about insisting that he was good enough to play on the record, and he eventually persuaded the session flute player to let him borrow his instrument, and Payne was allowed to play on the track: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Astral Weeks"] Or at least that's how the story is usually told -- Payne is usually credited for playing on "Madame George" too, even though everyone agrees that "Astral Weeks" was the last song of the night, but people's memories can fade over time. Either way, Payne's interplay with Jay Berliner on the guitar became such a strong point of the track that there was no question of bringing the unknown session player back -- Payne was going to be the woodwind player for the rest of the album: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Astral Weeks"] There was then a six-day break between sessions, during which time Payne and Kielbania went to get initiated into Scientology -- a religion with which Morrison himself would experiment a little over a decade later -- though they soon decided that it wasn't worth the cost of the courses they'd have to take, and gave up on the idea the same week. The next session didn't go so well. Jay Berliner was unavailable, and so Barry Kornfeld, a folkie who played with people like Dave Van Ronk, was brought in to replace him. Kornfeld was perfectly decent in the role, but they'd also brought in a string section, with the idea of recording some of the songs which needed string parts live. But the string players they brought in were incapable of improvising, coming from a classical rather than jazz tradition, and the only track that got used on the finished album was "The Way Young Lovers Do", by far the most conventional song on the album, a three-minute soul ballad structured as a waltz twelve-bar blues, where the strings are essentially playing the same parts that a horn section would play on a record by someone like Solomon Burke: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "The Way Young Lovers Do"] It was decided that any string or horn parts on the rest of the album would just be done as overdubs. It was two weeks before the next and final session for the album, and that featured the return of Jay Berliner on guitar. The session started with "Sweet Thing" and "Ballerina", two songs that Morrison had been playing live for some time, and which were cut in relatively quick order.  They then made attempts at two more songs that didn't get very far, "Royalty", and "Going Around With Jesse James", before Morrison, stuck for something to record, pulled out a new lyric he'd never performed live, "Slim Slow Slider". The whole band ran through the song once, but then Merenstein decided to pare the arrangement down to just Morrison, Payne (on soprano sax rather than on flute), and Warren Smith Jr: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Slim Slow Slider"] That track was the only one where, after the recording, Merenstein didn't compliment the performance, remaining silent instead – Payne said “Maybe everyone was just tired, or maybe they were moved by it.” It seems likely it was the latter. The track eventually got chosen as the final track of the album, because Merenstein felt that it didn't fit conceptually with anything else -- and it's definitely a more negative track than the oth

Introducing Steven Rosen, author of Tonechaser, a book about the late Edward Van Halen culled from interviews and experiences across their 25+ year friendship. Steven has written for Guitar Player, Guitar World and many other Rock publications. He has authored numerous books about rock legends Jeff Beck, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, Black Sabbath, Free/Bad Company and Randy Rhoads.  We dive deep into Steven's rich relationship with arguably the Greatest guitarist of ALL-TIME, Edward Van Halen! PART 1 starts with Steven's introduction to Eddie at the legendary Whisky-A-Go-Go in December of 1977 and runs through the departure of David Lee Roth in 1985! We discuss Eddie the man and his relationships with Steven, his brother Alex Van Halen, and his relationship to music. Lots of great personal stories here from Steven. This is a very special episode for me personally as Van Halen was the band that kickstarted my lifelong love for music! This interview and the stories and ideas I share during the conversation are my love letter to Van Halen! Enjoy! - Ilan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dave LaGreca, Bully Ray, Mark Henry, Tommy Dreamer, Thunder Rosa, and Mickie James bring you Busted Open LIVE from the Whisky A Go Go in Hollywood, for this year's WrestleMania Party!! Special guests include David Arquette, RJ City, GLOW's Hollywood, Diane Franklin, Dalton Castle, and Ron Funches. 

Adore Delano steps Behind The Rope. About to embark on the US leg of her World Tour, Adore is here to mention it all. Adore starts at the beginning of how the world first came to know her as Danny Noriega, semi finalist on Season Seven of American Idol. Adore chats Paula Abdul, Randy Jackson, the Idol experience and what it was like to have been on the receiving end of a typical day for Mr. Simon Cowell. Adore talks life after Idol - appearing on the Ellen DeGeneres show, being hired by Rosie O'Donnell to perform on her legendary “Rosie” cruises and the birth, as we know her, of Adore Delano. Adore talks about Drag Race - joining, finishing second, returning for All Stars, Mama Ru, guest judge Khloe Kardashian and the state of the show today which has traditionally come under scrutiny for its inclusion, or lack thereof, of all aspects of the LGBTQIA+ rainbow. Speaking of that World Tour, Adore talks musical influences, rock and roll and just what one can expect from an Adore Delano show which starts later this month at the famed Whisky A Go Go in Downtown LA! We cannot wait! To Purchase Tickets to See Adore Head To adoredelano.com/pages/north-america-tour-dates @adoredelano @obsessedintl @behindvelvetrope @davidyontef BONUS & AD FREE EPISODES Available at - www.patreon.com/behindthevelvetrope BROUGHT TO YOU BY: PELOTON  - onepeloton.com/home-trial (Try Peloton Tread Risk Free With a 30 Day Home Trial) RELIEFBAND - reliefband.com (20% Off Plus Free Shipping. Use Code VELVET) ADVERTISING INQUIRIES - Please contact David@advertising-execs.com MERCH Available at - https://www.teepublic.com/stores/behind-the-velvet-rope?ref_id=13198 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices