Bruce, Berlin and Bump-Stocks
Songs by Springsteen, Willie Nelson and Dwight Yoakam, a visit to Hitler's haunted stadium, plus cartoons take aim at SCOTUS, guns, and more.
Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books (see link) and now writer/director of three award-winning films aired via PBS, including “Atomic Cover-up” and “Memorial Day Massacre” (recently nominated for an Emmy). You can still subscribe to this newsletter for free.
A little bit of this and that today.
First, Nashville songwriter Mark James has died at the age of 82. Now, you might be asking, “Mark Who?” I had had the same response until I learned that he composed Elvis’s greatest late-career song, “Suspicious Minds,” but also “Always on My Mind” which won the Grammy for song of the year as delivered by Willie Nelson (bet you thought Willie penned it?). On a lesser note, throw in B.J. Thomas’s “Hooked on a Feeling.”
Here’s Dwight Yoakam covering “Suspicious Minds,” then Willie live with “Always on My Mind.”
Surprising piece in The New York Times sports section on enduring use as a sports and concert venue: Hitler’s showcase for the 1936 Olympics in western Berlin. Of course, that show was ruined for him somewhat by USA’s Jesse Owens winning four gold medals, but it is still a scary, haunting place, as I found on two visits now long ago. The Euro 2024 football finals soon to be played there.
My first visit was with my son-in-law (a local resident with my daughter and grandson then) for a football (that’s soccer to you) match. Olympic symbol remains though the swastikas are gone:
The running track where Jesse Owens humbled Hitler also remains….Stadium structure and limestone endures but now has a partial roof.
Bruce’s management not only got us tickets but invited us to the pre-concert bar and lounge: beneath the stadium. Had to wonder how many Nazis once partied there.
Scene from our seats. I must say, sound was a little too loud bouncing off all that limestone.
And here when Bruce played “The River” for us that night.
Cartoons Tuesday
Barry Blitt:
Always thought (through reading) that Mark James wrote "Always On My Mind" specifically for Elvis, due to his early '70s break-up, and eventual divorce, from Priscilla. Research shows Elvis, indeed, recorded his take in 1972; Willie Nelson's recorded his in 1982. It always irked me that Willie was more identified with the song than was Elvis. Those Mark James lyrics--"Little things I should have said and done. I just never took the time..."--surely resonated with Elvis' emotional state during this time.
All of this. Every bit of it.
There’s a reason Willie Nelson and Bruce Springsteen elicit the response they do. Incredible what a man or woman with life experience know and can bring us back to.