Chimes of Freedom

Will Georgia eat Crow? Plus: music from Dylan, Springsteen, and Marvin Gaye, as Patti Smith launches a newsletter and this question is asked again: Who wrote that piano epilogue to “Layla”?

No pranks for April 1 below, no foolin’. We make our own fun. Feel free to comment, share or subscribe (it’s free).

News & Politics

Headline of the Day goes to NY Times: “Would You Buy Your Dog a Charcuterie Board?”

There are no truths inside Matt Gaetz of Cretin: “My hope is that the truth will set me free, so I’m trying to get as much truth out as possible,” he sez. Yesterday, I labeled this scandal Water-Gaetz but others now favor PrisonGaetz or even Pizzagaetz or GaetzGate.

An April Fools Day pre-emp from Daily Kos editor: “Jokes about Joe Manchin/Susan Collins/ Lisa Murkowski switching parties weren't funny last year and they'll be even less funny this year.”

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said Wednesday the Georgia voting legislation signed into law last week was “unacceptable” and “based on a lie” of widespread fraud in last November’s election. Hours later, Coca-Cola’s CEO also pronounced the measure “unacceptable.” So last night the Georgia House narrowly passed an amendment that would repeal a tax break on jet fuel for Delta in response to the airline's criticism of the election measure. Still needs to pass the Senate there.

Meanwhile, President Biden said on Wednesday he would “strongly support” Major League Baseball moving its All-Star Game from Atlanta after the executive director of the players’ union said he was open to discussing such a move. Also now imperiled: the Master’s golf tourney.

Fun from The New Yorker—that is, if no one shoots off fireworks and someone gets hurt or it starts a forest fire…

From Wash Post review today of Hunter Biden’s memoir: “Page after page features assertions of the brothers’ closeness juxtaposed with gallons of vodka, bowls of crack, dissolute characters parading in and out of trashed hotel rooms — both five-star and no-star — and repeated failed treatment efforts.”

Sarah Palin says she has Covid and urged people to wear masks, though in bizarre fashion: “I view wearing that cumbersome mask indoors in a crowd as not only allowing the newfound luxury of being incognito but trust it’s better than doing nothing to slow the spread.”

Tom Edsall in NY Times on current round of gerrymandering: “Without approval of the kind of election reform the voting rights bill seeks, the odds will shift further against continued Democratic control of the House and Senate and possibly result in another Democratic president ground down by gridlock.”

“Two Capitol Police officers sue Trump for sparking Jan. 6 mob attack”: “Officers James Blassingame and Sidney Hemby described a severe physical and emotional toll from the riot that continues to haunt them. And in a 40-page lawsuit, they said Trump bears direct responsibility for unleashing violent followers upon the Capitol. Both officers are seeking unspecified compensation and damages greater than $75,000 apiece.”

New Morning Consult poll: Two-thirds of voters favor stricter gun control laws, including more than nine in 10 Democrats, 63% of independents and 41% of Republicans. But the percentage of Republicans who oppose stricter laws increased by 13 percentage points since August 2019. House Dems furiously pushing Schumer to get something done in the Senate.

From the great Steve Brodner at his Substack. So long in the slammer we had Bill Kunstler cover Peltier for us at Crawdaddy 46 years ago….

The Democrat who lost a House race in Iowa by only six votes is dropping her challenge to GOP Rep. Marianette Miller-Meeks’ narrow victory.

Politico: Let’s hope Iowa gets dumped by 2024. “Senior party leaders and Democratic National Committee members are privately exploring the idea of pushing South Carolina and Nevada to the front of the 2024 primary election schedule, as well as the possibility of multiple states holding the first nominating contest on the same day.”

Books

A memoir coming from one of our faves, Brandi Carlile, featured in NY Times profile just posted today, going back to when she was “a mean, scrappy little trailer girl with the wrong clothes.” More tomorrow.

Music

There’s a new rival for me on Substack: Patti Smith has announced a (paid) newsletter. Of course, we go way back, to Crawdaddy in 1975 when she wrote a memoirish piece for me. Now:

In an intro letter, Smith said she hoped to use the newsletter to “form an inter-connective body of work for a responsive community.” She plans to post “weekly ruminations, shards of poetry, music, and musings on whatever subject finds its way from thought to pen, news of the mind, pieces of this world, free to all.” There will also be a subscriber tier, through which Smith will release a new serial, The Melting, every Tuesday (the first few installments will be free before it goes behind the paywall). She described The Melting as “a journal of my private pandemic,” noting the first entry was recorded just under a year ago, on April 7th, 2020.

Unlike some, I have never been a huge Clapton fan and while I love “Layla” I have never been obsessed with it. So it was news to me this week that controversy has swirled around the famous “piano coda” which kind of “makes” the song. The song has always been credited (and with massive royalties) to Eric and drummer Jim Gordon. But Rita Coolidge has long claimed that she wrote the piano exit music herself or with Gordon—her boyfriend at that time—and got screwed out of credit, and needless to say, money. Others, such as Clapton bandmate Bobby Whitlock and Graham Nash, have backed her up.

The official story is that Gordon—again, known as a drummer—played the melody on a piano in the studio, Clapton heard it and added it to the ending. Rita complained to Robert Stigwood among others and finally gave up. Not-so-fun fact: Rita’s credit wasn’t the only thing Gordon apparently killed. In 1983, in a psychotic episode, Gordon murdered his mother with a hammer and butcher knife and was sentenced to 16 years to life in prison. He remains incarcerated in California.

Here is a recording of the pre-”Layla” Coolidge/Gordon song “Time” which later ended up on a 1973 album by her sister and Booker T. You be the judge.

Jackson Browne and James Taylor launching that nationwide tour that got cancelled last year on July 29.

On this day in 1966, the Troggs recorded the greatest garage rock song of all-time, “Wild Thing.” Here’s former garage rocker, Bruce Springsteen, with a brief live version.

On this day in 1984, one of the great tragedies in music history, when Marvin Gaye, 44, was shot and killed by his father at his parents’ home in Los Angeles. His parents had been fighting over missing business documents, Marvin intervened, and was shot by his father using a gun he had given him. First-degree murder charges were dropped after doctors discovered Marvin Sr. had a brain tumor, and he was sentenced to six years of probation. He died in 1998. Here, achingly, is Marvelous Marv just a year before his death, at the piano brilliantly speaking a couple minutes of black history and music, and then into “What’s Going On.” Father, father / we don’t need to escalate.

Film/TV

Remember that true-crime series The Staircase a few years back before the genre got so played out? Now it will re-surface as an HBO Max series drama starring Colin Firth as creep Michael Peterson who maybe pushed his wife down said staircase.

The Onion: “Area Man Knows Nothing Good Ever Happens When Godzilla and King Kong Find Themselves in Same Movie.”

Song Pick of the Day

In my view, “Chimes of Freedom” ranks at or near the top of Dylan’s greatest songs, which is saying something. There have been numerous fine covers over the years, from The Byrds to Bruce and more, but for me the greatest single performance was Bob’s own at Newport when the song was fresh in 1964—after dark and the year before he shocked the world there with his electric set. The full seven minutes comes and goes at YouTube but at least there is a 90-second extract up now to give you a fair idea…

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), the current The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s wild atomic bomb movie), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.