The New York Times Writes About Me

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December 8, 2010, 8:00 AM Unguarded Moments: John Lennon in the Studio By ALLAN KOZINN In February, 1972, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Elephant’s Memory — a downtown band with good connections in the antiwar movement — set up at the Record Plant to begin recording the overtly political “Some Time in New York City” album. The sessions lasted just over a month: Lennon’s idea, at that time, was that recordings should be a form of journalism — that once he had an idea, he should pop into the studio, record it quickly and with few production flourishes, and get it out. It was also a fraught time for the Lennons. The FBI had been following them for months, and had informed the Nixon administration that they had been participating in antiwar demonstrations, were spending time with radicals like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, and were planning (however vaguely) a tour with an antiwar message. About a week before the sessions began, the government began proceedings to try to have Lennon deported, on the pretext of a 1968 drug conviction in England. Just before the sessions began, Mike Jahn — then a pop music reviewer for The New York Times (and the first to hold that position), now a novelist and blogger — wrangled an invitation to attend one of the early sessions. (He believes the date was Feb. 22.) “One of the Elephant’s Memory guys — the drummer, I think — called and said that Lennon was doing his first recording work in this country and did I want to drop in,” Mr. Jahn said in an email. “I had reviewed one of their shows and we shared antiwar politics . I was more political than most of the counterculture reporters of the time, and probably knew a lot of the same people. I presume from what he said that the sessions had already begun. Although there was a lot of getting-acquainted going on in that studio. It just may be that this was the first day. No tracks were laid down while I was there (an hour or two).” At the studio, Mr. Jahn interviewed Lennon for a short column that did not appear in the paper but was syndicated by Times Special Features. He also shot a roll of film. One picture ran with his column; another was published in the rock magazine Creem. The rest have never been seen, until now. They show Lennon talking with members of Elephant’s Memory, and several shots catch him rehearsing, with the group’s bassist, Gary Van Seyoc, just behind him. After Mr. Jahn’s column was published, Lennon thought better about having granted the interview and allowing the photographs. He was in the United States, after all, on a visitor’s visa, and was not legally allowed to work — as the photos clearly show him doing. “Lennon freaked out and accused me of playing into the hands of the C.I.A.,” Mr. Jahn said. His own theory, though is that Lennon was upset with him because “after talking to him and taking pictures I went back to the control room and flirted shamelessly with Yoko. I was smitten with her. What do you expect, she was a New York artist. My crowd. She was also very cute and absolutely magnetic. I had the same reaction to her that John did.” Mr. Jahn is currently working on a memoir. We offer the photos as a commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Lennon’s murder outside the Dakota, on Dec. 8, 1980. Continue reading →

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Bob took part in a Reality TV show called Pawn Stars a few days ago; this is it. He’s comporting himself more youthfully and relaxedly than on stage, it seems to me. He’s 69 years old. Of course he has the advantage that the other guy is as charmless and aesthetically unappealing as a cheeseburger. Continue reading →

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Bob took part in a Reality TV show called Pawn Stars a few days ago; this is it. He’s comporting himself more youthfully and relaxedly than on stage, it seems to me. He’s 69 years old. Of course he has the advantage that the other guy is as charmless and aesthetically unappealing as a cheeseburger. Continue reading →

My Dad, Bert’s Flivver and Dutch Schultz

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As I’ve said to the point of exhaustion earlier in this narrative, I learned the ink-flinger’s trade by imitating my respectable and honored newspaperman father. Well, I was going through his papers over the weekend and found the story below. He wrote it for the Long Island Press, in the 1970s the nation’s fourth largest afternoon daily. Continue reading →

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Bill Haley and His Comets rehearsing at the London Dominion Theatre, February 6, 1957 Photo via Corbis-Bettmann (it says here) Tomorrow, Bill Haley, born in Highland Park, Michigan, would have been 85. I never thought he was young but I never realised he was the same age as my mother… And talking of age, any reports from Hop Farm, anyone? (Thanks already to Jack, for a comment now sent under the earlier blog entry ‘Padova’.) Continue reading →

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Bill Haley and His Comets rehearsing at the London Dominion Theatre, February 6, 1957 Photo via Corbis-Bettmann (it says here) Tomorrow, Bill Haley, born in Highland Park, Michigan, would have been 85. I never thought he was young but I never realised he was the same age as my mother… And talking of age, any reports from Hop Farm, anyone? (Thanks already to Jack, for a comment now sent under the earlier blog entry ‘Padova’.) Continue reading →

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Bill Haley and His Comets rehearsing at the London Dominion Theatre, February 6, 1957 Photo via Corbis-Bettmann (it says here) Tomorrow, Bill Haley, born in Highland Park, Michigan, would have been 85. I never thought he was young but I never realised he was the same age as my mother… And talking of age, any reports from Hop Farm, anyone? (Thanks already to Jack, for a comment now sent under the earlier blog entry ‘Padova’.) Continue reading →

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Bill Haley and His Comets rehearsing at the London Dominion Theatre, February 6, 1957 Photo via Corbis-Bettmann (it says here) Tomorrow, Bill Haley, born in Highland Park, Michigan, would have been 85. I never thought he was young but I never realised he was the same age as my mother… And talking of age, any reports from Hop Farm, anyone? (Thanks already to Jack, for a comment now sent under the earlier blog entry ‘Padova’.) Continue reading →

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Bill Haley and His Comets rehearsing at the London Dominion Theatre, February 6, 1957 Photo via Corbis-Bettmann (it says here) Tomorrow, Bill Haley, born in Highland Park, Michigan, would have been 85. I never thought he was young but I never realised he was the same age as my mother… And talking of age, any reports from Hop Farm, anyone? (Thanks already to Jack, for a comment now sent under the earlier blog entry ‘Padova’.) Continue reading →

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Bill Haley and His Comets rehearsing at the London Dominion Theatre, February 6, 1957 Photo via Corbis-Bettmann (it says here) Tomorrow, Bill Haley, born in Highland Park, Michigan, would have been 85. I never thought he was young but I never realised he was the same age as my mother… And talking of age, any reports from Hop Farm, anyone? (Thanks already to Jack, for a comment now sent under the earlier blog entry ‘Padova’.) Continue reading →

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Bill Haley and His Comets rehearsing at the London Dominion Theatre, February 6, 1957 Photo via Corbis-Bettmann (it says here) Tomorrow, Bill Haley, born in Highland Park, Michigan, would have been 85. I never thought he was young but I never realised he was the same age as my mother… And talking of age, any reports from Hop Farm, anyone? (Thanks already to Jack, for a comment now sent under the earlier blog entry ‘Padova’.) Continue reading →

Go away, Ke$ha.

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I’m new to American Idol and tuned in partly to see what my friends over at Gawker have been blathering about for the past few years. I got there in time to watch someone named Simon, who is supposed to be a bad guy, being harangued by someone named Ryan, who is supposed to be a good guy. My sense is that the exchange was genuine, something new that television must be experimenting with. It was really uncomfortable. This Simon person seemed like he just didn’t give a fuck, which of course no one on television does but few will admit. This is his last season and he has “I’m outta here by summer” written all over him. He should take the opportunity to stomp the Ryan person before he becomes this millennium’s Dick Clark. I don’t want to see him hosting “Ryan Seacrest’s Rockin’ New Year” when the ball falls on the year 2030. Not that I’ll be here anyway. Now there is the matter of someone named Ke$ha, who performed last night. Her putting a dollar sign in her name can be considered redneck bling — how to seem rich when you have no money and less talent. I have a fondness for odd people and bizarre sounds. I like Yoko. I would get Courtney Love drunk and cause her to violate parole. Continue reading →

Why ‘Avatar’ Didn’t Win Best Picture

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“Avatar” didn’t win the best picture Oscar because there was something wrong with it. It lost because there was everything right with it — just not from the Hollywood point of view. Hollywood likes movies it can reproduce. This is the same way that auto manufacturers like cars they can make themselves. But they have no chance at all of reproducing a top-of-the-line Lamborghini and thus don’t like them except maybe for their personal midlife crises. It’s the same thing with “Avatar” and the movie that won, “The Hurt Locker.” There is no one in Hollywood other than James Cameron who can spend 10 years and $350 million to create an emotional and technological masterpiece, a landmark movie. But there are thousands of producers who can churn out $11 million movies about a handful of guys messing around in the mud disarming bombs and griping. Just take any cop show and move it to Afghanistan. Send the cast of “NCIS: LA.” They can do it right now. Book the flight. If anyone other than Cameron creates an “Avatar” at some point in the future, it won’t be anyone currently in Hollywood. It will be someone who right now is a 17-year-old kid locked in his room in the darkness surrounded by graphics programs and thrash metal. Hollywood can’t reproduce him, either. Continue reading →

Ways to spice up the boring Winter Olympics

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— “Ultimate Fighters on Ice” event. — Curling stones to be replaced with improvised explosive devices. — Speed skaters to be motivated by polar bears. — Cross-country, cross-border terrorist-smuggling event. — National anthems to be sung by Bjork. — To reflect the yachting competition of the Summer Olympics, a “Deadliest Catch” winter event. — “Halftime” performance by Adam Lambert. — No guidos in houses at the Jersey Shore. Snow bunnies in the Olympic Village. — Two words: skate bombs. Continue reading →

‘What’s the difference between a Mercedes and a porcupine?’

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The Escalade is coming to surpass the Mercedes as the vehicle of choice for road bullies. And I say that even knowing the old bus driver joke: “What’s the difference between a Mercedes and a porcupine? With a porcupine the pricks are on the outside.” It isn’t just the sticker price. Porsches are expensive too, but too small to compete effectively in NYC traffic, where bulk and balls rule. You know what, though? Continuing the German theme, I’ve noticed that a LOT of Volkswagens are driven by assholes. To me that’s counterintuitive. BMWs cost a buck or two, but don’t seem as bad as Mercedes drivers. Maybe it’s because BMWs are marketed for quality and Mercedes’ are marketed for prestige. SUVs in general are horrible, but the Escalades are the worst. You have to understand Manhattan traffic. There’s a kind of grace to it. Most everybody understands the flow, that three lanes of traffic, all kinds of vehicles, will move as one, flowing around potholes, misplaced manhole covers, and terrified New Jersey drivers in Toyotas. Praying, maybe, that the accelerator doesn’t get stuck while behind a large and grumpy cabbie from Central Asia. Funny. Even cabbies just off the boat from Kazakhstan seem to understand the flow of Manhattan traffic. The SUVs disrupt that with their bullying. I’m surprised that SUVs drivers aren’t occasionally dragged from their vehicles and beaten to death. I’m not into violence. But I bet that Escalade drivers will be after their charming General Motors vehicles fall apart after 65,000 miles and the parts department had been outsourced Kazakhstan where the cabbies come from. Continue reading →

The iPad is a coffee table book that lights up

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Here’s the reason that the iPad has been getting such bad press: the reporters and bloggers who have written about it like computers. The iPad isn’t a computer. It’s a coffee-table book that lights up. It’s a Christmas gift for your parents and others who don’t want and/or don’t understand computers. Such a person doesn’t have room for a desktop or hates the look of one. He doesn’t like laptops because they’re only small computers and who wants to have left a small computer on the coffee table when company comes over. He doesn’t want to learn computers. He doesn’t want to install a WiFi router. The iPad he can leave sitting there. It’s easy to use. It’s kind of attractive, like a coffee table book. You can leave it between the Rembrandt anthology and the L.L.Bean catalog. And when company comes over and if they notice it at all and ask what it is, you can push a button and bingo, there’s the pictures of the grandchildren. Or the movie listings. Or a map and directions to Starbucks. Or a book. Or even the email. Everyone understands email. Even people who don’t like computers. So that’s what the iPad is — a coffee table book that lights up. What’s the market for that? Probably very small and the iPad will fail. Which is why Apple introduced it a few hours before the State of the Union Address. Hoping that the flaws won’t be commented on before Obama occupies the news for a couple of days. And before the stock market has the chance to absorb the bad news. Continue reading →

Can we get the Charmin bears to stop pooping under trees?

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I mean, I love the environment as much as the next guy, but I really don’t want to see Smokey laying a loaf under the old apple tree. And I sure ain’t gonna be doing any tree hugging anytime soon. Last night I saw one spot … er, commercial … where this big ole bear hung his hairy brown … hmmm … butt over a tree limb and plucked off bits of toilet paper that had gotten stuck there. I thought, does this commercial come from a company that in 2012 will be throwing millions of dollars at family values candidates? Continue reading →