A Cool Exec With a Heart of Steel

When I was in the 11th grade, for Christmas I wanted nothing but records, and one of those albums I wanted because of one song in particular…

[audio:/2008/MAY/IronMan.mp3]

… later, in 1975, Paul McCartney did this song:

[audio:/2008/MAY/MagnetoAndTitaniumMan.mp3]

Titanium Man and the Crimson Dynamo are Iron Man villains. The comic book stories I read forty years ago were wild and unbelievable, but today what’s even more unbelievable is those same super-hero stories are the basis for major high-budget movies. The Superman movie in 1978 I thought of as an exception to the rule. The Hulk TV show, a re-working of the The Fugitive, was more typical of what was being done with comic book material.

The previews for the new Iron Man movie look good, and it’s getting generally favorable reviews. Hey, it’s better than playing Grand Theft Auto 4. Now that’s trash!

[flv:/Video/2008/MAY/IronManMovie.flv 440 330]

I’m glad that the comics I loved as a kid are finally socially acceptable, because believe me it was tough remaining a comic book fan past junior high school. It’s beyond my comprehension how we got to this slick, crowd-pleasing, powerhouse movie from these humble, semi-animated beginnings that nobody over twelve dared admit to enjoying…

[flv:/Video/2008/MAY/IronManCrimsonDynamo.flv 440 330]

100.3

No, 100.3 isn’t the frequency of a favorite FM radio station, it was my temperature last night. My fever has broken, but I’m still miserable with a very bad cold, the worst I can recall having in many years.

Carol says because of the fever and muscle aches, it must be the flu.

Eaton An Apple

Way back in high school, in the November 23, 1972 issue of Rolling Stone, was a review of a record by a pair of brothers, Lon and Derrek Van Eaton. Click the thumbnail picture to see a scan from my original copy of the magazine. The LP was on the Beatles’ Apple label, and it was called, fittingly, Brother. The cover looked a bit weird, with the brothers bare-chested and embracing, but the review was a rave, it was on Apple, and George Harrison was involved, so I bought it. I enjoyed the record a lot, and being very much into church at the time I liked the religious theme that ran through many of the tracks. The Van Eaton brothers had a follow-up record, but by then Apple Records as a recording studio was gone, so they were on a different label. I forget which one (A&M) because I was a totally broke college student and my record purchases were very few.

A brief account of the demise of Apple Records as anything but a logo and a legal entity (albeit a significant one, ably run by the late Neil Aspinall), is told in the memoir of recording engineer and producer Geoff Emerick, Here, There and Everywhere. Emerick also describes his involvement, or lack of it, with the recording of the Brother album.

One of George Harrison’s new signings was the Von [sic] Eaton brothers–Lon and Derrek… Harrison started out producing the brothers’ album, with me doing the engineering, but then he got fed up and frustrated, so he had his old friend Klaus Voormann take over as producer. I knew him from as far back as the Revolver days, when he’d come into the sessions to talk about the album cover he was designing. He and I just didn’t click, though, so I begged off from the project and turned the reins over to another engineer.

I’ll play a couple of tracks from the album. First, the song produced by George Harrison, “Sweet Music,” that the Rolling Stone review characterized as being similar to, and as good as, “My Sweet Lord.”

To hear this song, buy this CD.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/APR/SweetMusic.mp3]

And this is “Sun Song,” produced by Klaus Voormann.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/APR/SunSong.mp3]