Happy Birthday to Prue!
Prueday
Category: Beatles
Pretend It’s Last Friday
On April 1 it was revealed that after Paul met John, cosmic forces were unleashed, so powerful they warped space and time, and were detected by ESP in Vermont.
Magazine Writer
Posting the New Yorker piece about Stu Sutcliffe reminded me of something I meant to put here last October. It didn’t happen because that was when I went on hiatus, due to WordPress technical difficulties.
This piece by Paul McCartney should be readable without a subscription, assuming you haven’t already run out of free articles this month.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/25/paul-mccartney-writing-eleanor-rigby-beatles
The copy of “Eleanor Rigby” above is from the one-of-a-kind Yellow Submarine Songtrack project. It’s explained here. Note the color-coordinated nod to Ukraine.
The Fifth Beatle
Before they were four, they were five — John, Paul, George, Pete and Stu. This week’s New Yorker has a remembrance of Stu Sutcliffe.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/essay/the-beatle-who-got-away
The Music… and the Voices… in his Head
I watched the new Brian Wilson documentary, Long Promised Road.
Brian certainly deserves all of the credit and good will he receives, but it’s doubtful that he has ever truly been back — and that’s assuming he was ever completely okay.
The two bad guys in Brian’s life story — his father Murry and his longtime therapist Eugene Landy — are given the right amount of attention. There isn’t a lot of new information in the movie, but I didn’t know that Brian’s 34th birthday, in 1976, was celebrated with Paul McCartney, who was born two days before Brian. Which means they will both turn 80 in June.
Later on that year, John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd set up this SNL skit, featuring the first appearance of the car that I assume inspired the duo to come up with the Bluesmobile. The generic use of “Highway Patrol” was probably a nod to the 1950’s TV series with Broderick Crawford.
When they were at the beach, Annie Leibovitz took this photo of Brian for a Rolling Stone cover.
The record Linda McCartney showed to the camera was 15 Big Ones. In the documentary Brian asks a couple of times to hear this song from the album.
What Putin Wants
Get back, get back, get back to the U.S.S.R. Those Ukraine girls really knock him out.