Springsteen in Sing Sing and R.I.P. Redford

Plus our usual cartoons, film, 64 hits from '64, commentary

My latest film, “The Atomic Bowl: Football at Ground Zero—and Nuclear Peril Today” has been airing over PBS stations this past month and streaming for free (key links to watch now and more here). A companion book is now available, and you can read more or order here. Thank you. And subscribing to this newsletter is still somehow FREE.

First off:

Robert Redford, Screen Idol Turned Director and Activist, Dies at 89

and

Israel Launches Gaza City Ground Offensive

and:

Karen Attiah, an opinion columnist for The Washington Post, said she was fired after posting on social media about gun violence and “racial double standards” after Kirk’s death.

Attorney General Pam Bondi: "There's free speech and then there's hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society...We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech."

As noted yesterday, The New Yorker magazine has a piece about me and my new PBS film (see links above), which you can read here, although it still seems to be paywalled. So with that in mind, here is another excerpt, actually how the piece starts. I will add that while we had to end up putting someone else on the cover, we did publish an unprecedented eight-page piece on thoroughly unknown (outside New Jersey) “Brucie” in the same early 1973 issue, and then his first cover anywhere in 1975.

In 1972, Greg Mitchell was an editor at Crawdaddy, the proto-rock magazine, when someone called his desk. “It was some fast-talking manager, who said, ‘I’ve got this hot act. We’re getting a big press entourage, taking you all up to Sing Sing prison,’ ” Mitchell recalled. The act was playing for the inmates to début his new band. “I thought, Well, I don’t care about this guy, but I get to go to Sing Sing,” Mitchell said. He and Peter Knobler, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, rode along in the band’s van. The manager was Mike Appel. The act was Bruce Springsteen.

Nobody else showed up. “Greetings from Asbury Park” came out soon after, and Mitchell and Knobler wanted Springsteen for Crawdaddy’s cover. “The staff revolted: ‘You can’t put him on the cover, it’ll kill the magazine.’ So we ended up with Loggins and Messina.”

A little over 18 months later, backstage in Central Park:

And 51 years later: Brand new trailer for the upcoming bio-pic dropped yesterday:

Since you seem to continue to enjoy these compilations of little bits from hit songs from the past, here’s one more: 64 hits from 1964, as British invasion arrived in full plus who can forget “The Surfin’ Bird.”:

From Tunes to Toons for Tuesday