The Beatles, With a Little Help From Their Friends

Covid cases on the rise again. An anniversary for the most famous album cover ever, plus music from (of course) The Beatles, Stevie Nicks the McGarrigles and Daniel Lanois.

Just a reminder that today is the final day to watch the premiere of my Atomic Cover-up film streaming at the Cinequest Film Festival. Here is a link for tickets ($3.99)—or you can try to use free promo code (FM17Y4N). Via same link see early responses to the film from top people. And now my usual: please comment, share, or subscribe to this newsletter, it’s still free!

News & Politics

John Fugelsang: “You can watch Derek Chauvin at his trial now; or wait & see him join Donald Trump onstage at a fundraiser next year.”

The Onion: “Police Now Ignoring Active Shooter Reports in Effort to Deprive Killers of Attention.”

Axios scoop which should surprise no one: “Rep. Matt Gaetz has privately told confidants he's seriously considering not seeking re-election and possibly leaving Congress early for a job at Newsmax, three sources with direct knowledge of the talks tell Axios.”

AP: Garrett Miller, genius accused of storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, was wearing a t-shirt bearing Donald Trump's picture that said “Take America Back” and “I Was There, Washington D.C., January 6, 2021" when the FBI came to arrest him.

Debbie Lai, chief operating officer of Covid Act Now , tells Politico that the country’s Covid trajectory is deteriorating: “There may be a fourth surge underway, with cases now growing in two-thirds of states versus half before the weekend.” The number of new cases jumped by 11 percent over the past week to a seven-day average of about 60,000 daily cases. And the NY Times headline today: "Biden pushes mask mandate as CDC director warns of 'impending doom'."

Tom Hanks in the Wall St. Journal today on lessons of the pandemic year: “Our time is limited and finite. In the accumulated minutes I wasted, what didn’t I do instead?”

The Wash Post has rescinded its ban on Felicia Sonmez, a national political reporter, from covering sexual misconduct due to her being a survivor of assault, Sonmez announced Monday.

A wonderful piece at The New Yorker by novelist Mary Gaitskill on a certain house in her town (up the Hudson a bit from me), in Catskill, NY. It was long decorated with a massive amount of pro-Trump signs and other right-wing symbols (such as a Confederate flag). Then there were the “large mannequins, including a white male figure wearing a MAGA hat and a shirt with a picture of Smokey the Bear warning that ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT SOCIALISM; just behind him lurked a skeleton that sported a bow-tie and a faded Trump cap….The handmade sign, posted directly in front of the male doll thing, declared the V.A. to be an example of ‘socialized medicine.’” And after Biden took office? The proprietor admitted defeat…sort of, removing much of the Trump memorabilia but leaving up, for example, the Confederate flag.

Yes, somewhat moderate GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski already has a 2022 Trump-backed opponent and Kelly Tshibaka is already signing up key advisers.

“AP Exclusive: WHO report says animals likely source of COVID”: A joint WHO-China study on the origins of COVID-19 says that transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario and that a lab leak is ‘extremely unlikely,’ according to a draft copy obtained by The Associated Press.

Black farmers in 1920 owned 14 percent of all farms in the U.S. Today, they own just 1.6 percent.

Music

And on this date in 1967, Michael Cooper shot the photos of The Beatles for their Sgt. Pepper’s album. Those pictures plus a collage of over sixty famous historical figures soon would become (and perhaps endures as) the most famous album cover history. Other photos from this session were used on the back cover and the gatefold. Lennon would claim that he was “flying on drugs” throughout. Later the entire lyrics for the album were printed on the back—possibly a first for a rock album. EMI rejected Lennon’s request to add images of Hitler and Jesus to the collage, and also turned down Harrison’s plea for Gandhi. Why was Elvis, of all people, omitted? McCartney asserted, “Elvis was too important and too far above the rest even to mention.”

Later that night, the group worked on a little ditty titled “A Little Help from My Friends.” To bring you into the studio, here is a clip which isolates both Ringo’s lead vocal and the other boys’ background work.

The other day I posted Stevie Nicks’ solo demo of “Dreams” which proved to be a big hit here. So here is her demo which led to “The Chain.” Yes, below, you can click through to listen at You Tube.

A video of the young McGarrigle Sisters performing a folk song in French on a Canadian TV show has surfaced, from 1962. Kate was 16 and Anna 17 at the time.

Song Pick of the Day

You know him as the stellar producer for Dylan and U2, possibly for Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson, and others, but Daniel Lanois has also written and recorded some great songs himself. Here, below, is one of the best, “The Maker” which I first heard him do live a couple of times when touring with Emmylou around 1996. Or you can watch him do it with Willie Nelson here.

Greg Mitchell’s film, Atomic Cover-up, has its world premiere at the Cinequest Film festival March 20-30. Go here to read more, watch trailer, buy tix. He 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.