Monday, May 27, 2013

The 2 Sides of Eddie Ramone.

It looks as if I won't have time to write a proper post this week as I'm rehearsing my play again; it sure is a 'work in progress' and maybe next year it will be ready – but there again is something ever really ready?
I'm due to do it at The Bossanyi Studio, 22 Field End Road, HA5 2QL; if you're in the neighbourhood or planning to head to it, put the post code into your Sat Nav and I hope to see you. I believe it will cost £8.
This will be a few times that it is to be produced; it started life at Santa Monica Playhouse for 3 nights in June 2011; then I tried it out at The Lord Stanley in Camden the night that Amy Winehouse died in July 2011; she lived just around the corner from The Lord Stanley and on the night she died the streets were blocked off by the police whilst they made their enquiries.
After that there was a 3 week run at The Edinburgh Festival where it attracted great reviews and then last year I entered it into the 'Solo Festival' at the Lord Stanley again and it won best play – who knows where it will lead?
I look forward to seeing you at about 8:00 pm. Oh I didn't give you the date, did I? Saturday June 8th 2013.

Sunday, May 12, 2013

The Men Who Run Hollywood.



There we are above – the men who run Hollywood. On the left, wearing a baseball hat, and red shirt, is a film director; he has directed, among many other things, quite a few episodes of the TV series Star Trek, The Twilight Zone and many movies.
The next one across the back with the white hair is me – and you know me; Hollywood actor and novice novelist - and to my left, wearing sun glasses and the inevitable baseball cap, is a Hollywood agent. He has represented many of the actors you may have heard of and seen work throughout your life.
Then we have a writer: he writes screenplays and is wearing the aqua marine zipper jacket, the baseball hat and a big smile. He has written many movies, which have been produced, and a couple of books and, as you can see, is about to get stuck into that breakfast we were all enjoying a couple of Sundays ago.
In the background you will see The Pacific Ocean and yes that is a man wearing a cowboy hat playing a guitar behind the bullet proof glass; click on the photo if you want to see it large.
Oh the girl? She is a guest of one of the above. She was telling us that she has started to make guitars.
As you can see, we have the best table at the Fig Tree Restaurant and on the right, by the door, is our security 'back up' in the white trousers. He is talking to someone and getting them to bring the limo around with our bikes and making sure the paparazzi are kept out!
The girl taking the photograph is Angelina Jolie, by the way, but we didn't take one of her.
Of course there are other people who think they run Hollywood: people like Tom Cruise, agents like CAA and the rest of them – but as you can see they don't have the best table at The Fig Tree and we do.
Hollywood is run by agents, actors and writers and there we are – we even have a guest who makes guitars but I have told you that already.
Actually I am a guest too, these days, as I now live in London where I am pursuing my career of trying to run London; but there is no one to run it with me yet. My wife isn't interested; she's far too sensible.
We used to meet each Sunday, as above, and report to each other the comings and goings, happenings and shenanigans of our busy week; they still do that – I don't. s are spring chickens.



We would tell of the movies we'd seen, sometimes even telling the whole plot, which would save the others from going to see the talked about movie at all. Sometimes one of us would tell the story of the same movie two weeks in a row forgetting it had been relayed the week before. That is called a senior moment but, as you can see, none of u

Monday, May 6, 2013

The Beatles.

I know very little about Frank Sinatra; I know a bit more about Elvis Presley because he's nearer to my time but The Beatles really clashed with my time line; I know what there is to know about them and where they came from, what influenced them and what was influencing me at the same time. People coming to The Beatles afterwards and maybe, even though they were great fans, loved the music and got to know everything about them, still wonder what the fuss was about.

Sinatra was one of the greatest voices of the century; I got to know how he breathed, how he held a phrase, when others might have 'pointed' the note and how he let half a bar go through, sometimes, before coming in with the next note. We could feel those high notes paining him or was it the emotion in the lyric? – Set 'em up Joe – whatever the case he was a 'one off' – but he could only do one take when acting in a movie.

John Frankeheimer said he had to leave a scene, which was out of focus, in the movie The Manchurian Candidate because 'old blue eyes' couldn't do the same performance again.

I sat in the same town as Sinatra, Los Angeles, watching the same local TV stations going out, seeing someone on there, who had run in to hard times, someone who needed money for surgery, or a funeral or a trip somewhere to save their life and I got to know that someone somewhere in Los Angeles called up the TV Station, found out who needed the money and I eventually got to know that the anonymous donor, the guy who came up with the big bucks was Frankie Boy himself – Sinatra.

Terrible things have been written about him; a bag man for the Mafia and all the other stories of his dubious associations but I know nothing about that; I know about The Beatles.

When a novelist or a great artist paints something or writes a novel they start with the first mark and finish with the last one and The Beatles were started the day John Lennon picked up that first guitar and finished with . . . . finished with what?
Finished with four beats on the drums by Ringo and a cymbal crash on the day they made their first LP – that was the day we lost our virginity – 'between Lady Chatterley and the Beatles First LP!' - to paraphrase Philip Larkin.
The Beatles were three working class lads and a posh one – a middle class one; the middle class one – the posh one - was John Lennon and he was the one who, ironically, eventually wrote Working Class Hero – but that was when it was all over and it was all over the same year it started; 1963; fifty years ago.
I saw The Beatles three times live and those three performances summed up their progress. There were two performances at a small dance hall in King's Heath Birmingham and one as a support act for Tommy Roe and Chris Montez; The Beatles closed the first half of that show and when they had finished their act a third of the audience left. That show was sandwiched in between the two shows at the aforementioned ballroom.
The first show at the dance hall was magnificent; most of the audience were men; well 18 to 25 age group men – about the same age as The Beatles - and not that many girls. This meant that nobody screamed and we could hear them. Ringo still had the Teddy Boy hair cut and had bits of tape wrapped around his sticks. My brother walked up the stairs with him and in the bar afterwards John and Paul played around with the photographers and tried to get Ringo and George to come out and take part and people, who were with us, were included in the photos.
Not us; we were cool dudes propping up the bar, on the look out for girls and eventually when Ringo and George came George was wearing a fur coat right to the ground.
George looked to be the hard man even though John hit the headlines a few weeks later when he got into a drink induced fist fight with one of their roadies.
The difference between the two 'dance hall' performances was huge. They were tired the second time, we'd just found out John Lennon was married and the girls screamed too loud and, even though we could just about hear them that night, nobody heard them again.
I realise the many people who saw The Beatles in their live performances over the years, right up to their final performance at Candlestick Park, San Francisco, had to make do with seeing them in a huge stadium and not being able to hear them at all, but when we saw them they were less than 20 feet from us and they sang all the songs they sang on their first LP the first time and a variation of that the second time.
Before The Beatles, pop singers in the UK covered American songs that hadn't been released in the UK; songs such as Rubber Ball (Bobby Vee/Marty Wilde), Tower of Strength (Gene McDaniels/Frankie Vaughan), 100 pounds of Clay (Gene McDaniels/Craig Douglas) and many others. The British covers are the second artist mentioned above after each song title.
In those days, covers were covers and revivals were called revivals which are called 'covers' today. In those days not many singers wrote their own songs; they concentrated on their voices so everybody was what they would call today a 'cover band' – although we didn't call them bands. The bands in those days were bands - big bands with trombones, trumpets saxaphones: Joe Loss, Ted Heath  – going back to Glenn Miller.
The Beatles were a group who sang mostly other artists' songs – these days called covers.
They sang Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry songs, mainly and they also sang a lot of the black girl singers' songs: The Shirelles, The Marvelettes etc. The last time I saw them they opened their act with Paul McCartney singing the Tony Orlando version of Beautiful Dreamer – note for note from the phrasing to the screaming wows!
Each time I saw them they finished their act with John Lennon singing Twist and Shout – an old Isley Brothers song. John Lennon ruined his throat the day he recorded it for their first LP, album, whatever you want to call it and that LP was called Please Please Me!
There is a lot of confusion about Ringo's status as the drummer; the fact remains that he was and still is, a better drummer than Pete Best; he is a better drummer than most rock drummers who used to bore the pants off us in those days with their fifteen minute drum solos. Ringo was left handed (on the drums) and The Beatles wanted him to join the group because they knew him from Germany where he played with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes and, more importantly, he knew them.
The great thing about their first LP was that they recorded it in one day; they showed up at Abbey Road Studios at about ten in the morning and Lennon finished his famous Twist and Shout shortly before midnight – although I'm told it was more like 8:45 pm. At lunch time the workers went to lunch but 'the lads' stayed behind and rehearsed A Taste of Honey – which was one of the few 'over dubs' on the LP – and the rest were recorded in single takes; I don't mean one take per song but complete takes till it was right.
And that was it – The Beatles had done it! As soon as Ringo joined the others and they made that recording it was the beginning of the end; all the hard work had been done and the business plan, the publicity plan, the image controllers and publicity men took over and that innocent day February 11 1963 would never be repeated.
We were lucky enough to see them on February 15th (so I am told) just four days after they made the Please Please Me! LP.
The LP is as close as you can get to their live act and is their best. Oh you can worship Sergeant Pepper and The White Album, the changing sound of pop music with John Lennon's Tomorrow Never Knows but the innocence of the Please Please Me LP and the sound of the group that day would never be repeated. Four beats on the drums by Ringo, a cymbal crash and it was all over.

Friday, May 3, 2013

Out of touch with my banjo.

I decided not to take my lap top to Los Angeles and as I don't have a 'smart phone' – just a regular mobile/cell –  I was 'out of touch.' I was out of touch for all the time I was there. I could have used the computer at the house where I was staying but hot mail didn't think it was me when I used it so they wanted to send me a text. That would have been okay if I'd have been in Yiggieland*, which is there my phone works, but I wasn't in Yiggieland I was in La La Land**.
The first thing I discovered was that I didn't know my wife's cell phone number in Yiggieland; it was in my address book on my mobile; I hadn't bothered to remember it didn't even know any of the numbers – I know it now. Why? Because I had to. In my head I have all the numbers I had to remember – all the PINs, my national insurance number from Yiggie, mine and my wife's social security numbers from America, bank account numbers, sort codes and the rest of the access numbers, favourite name of first pet, mother's maiden name and the rest.
It got me thinking – if we never have to remember numbers and other things we save to machines maybe we will stop being good at it. Now you may ask why we want to remember those things for when we can have it done for us with the fine fine super fine technology of today and you may be right but if we get out of the habit of having to learn and remember things our brains may turn into grey matter – well they are already grey matter but you know what I mean.
People will have to think for us; people being the people who make the computers, invent the programmes, apps and the other stuff. They will be the only people who speak the special language and be able to read it too and the rest of us (well you, I will be dead by then) will have to believe what they say. Just like when only the church people could read and the plebs had to believe what they said. This is why they didn't really want the plebs to be able to read – just like these days when they (the magic 'they' who rule us) don't really want the plebs to be educated.
So I did a bit of work in Los Angeles and the other things I had to do by visiting my old haunts – Chili Johns, The Farmers' Market – and pick up my banjo which I had left with a friend.
I wasn't sure if the banjo had go as a 'special' item or not, on the flight back, so I decided to get it packed properly and checked it in and the greatest news is that there is no story about it getting broken or smashed to smithereens and there is the picture to prove it at the top of the page. And if you want to hear my banjo and me playing on some of the tracks copy and paste this http://tinyurl.com/bpyerf2
* Yiggieland - England
** La La Land - Los Angeles. 
Oh by the way. The other good thing about my trip was that I could get a decent cup of coffee and here I am drinking it in Chili Johns.