Wasn't It Good, 'Norwegian Wood'?

Rush Limbaugh passes as Texas freezes, then on to the Bob Dylan-John Lennon song dispute, Led Zep with Sandy Denny, and an Oscar contending tune from Leslie Odom Jr.

On this day in 1964, after appearing for their second Ed Sullivan appearance, the Beatles visited the training camp of Cassius Clay (as he was then known) just before his Liston fight—and the motel meeting captured in One Night in Miami. The boys nearly fled after the boxer (who felt at first they were “sissies”) made them wait, but eventually it yielded one of the most famous photos in both Ali and Beatles histories. Much more below and please subscribe if you wish—it’s still free!

News/Politics

No Rush: Chris Hayes remarks, “You should take the broad spectrum of conservatives offering their genuine affection and admiration for Limbaugh as an accurate reflection of what the conservative movement’s values are and what it’s all about.” For example, Erick Erickson: “God bless Rush Limbaugh.” Or Kayleigh McEnany: “He has built a legacy that will endure for many generations to come and will continue to inform our country. Thank you, Rush, for all you have done for this nation. The United States of America is better because of you.”

Don’t Rush: As for myself, I don't engage in celebrating people's deaths, because I'm not Rush Limbaugh. But to mark his passing, we will re-post last week’s NY Times piece on how right-wing talk radio—the brothers and children of Rush— “stoked” the deadly January 6 insurrection. It’s amusing to hear people, such as hillbilly elegist J.D. Vance call on critics to remain silent on Limbaugh’s evil words and legacy when Rush himself was cruel to so many—from AIDS victims to Chelsea Clinton at age 12. So get over it, J.D. And as writer Mark Harris points out: “Pretty telling that J.D. Vance was Mr. We-All-Need-To-Understand-Each-Other when he had a book to sell, but is embracing every anti-media, anti-left, anti-Democrat trope now that he's prepping for a GOP candidacy.”

The Onion: “Doctor Assures Limbaugh Family It’s Normal For Body To Continue Ranting About Welfare Queens Hours After Death.” I’d add that to honor Rush we should call reports of his death just a “false flag.” And, for that matter, the demolition of the Trump hotel and casino in Atlantic City was nothing but a “hoax.” Prove it wasn’t.

Fun response by Trevor Noah, meanwhile, when ex-Fox creep Bill O’Reilly tweeted, Mr. Biden says there is a ‘rise’ in white supremacy—where? Trevor: “Your old time slot.”

Yes, he Cancun Claims nowconfirmed that in the middle of Texas crisis Sen. Ted Cruz split last night with his family for Cancun….

New from Bill McKibben at The New Yorker hitting the “absurdity” of “blaming the wind” for the Texas power failure catastrophe. Dan Rather, old Texan, says, “Sorry folks, I don't have a folksy analogy. It's just plain dishonest, stupid, and dangerous. We need solutions based on science not sophistry.” Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos points out: “It seems like conservatives are passing up a prime opportunity to blame Antifa for yet another one of their failure.” Trevor Noah: “This just goes to show you—you can’t put profits over quality and safety. Money’s not worth a whole lot if you have to burn it to keep warm.”

My old E&P comrade Ari Berman, now the country’s top voting rights/ suppression expert, with new piece at Mother Jones. His latest warnings: “The violent invasion of the Capitol on January 6 drew rebukes from many Republican lawmakers. But it reflected, in extreme form, something Republicans have long displayed: a disregard for the will of the majority. With Republicans shut out of the White House and congressional leadership, minority rule is likely to intensify over the next four years in ways not seen in modern times.” Dig this David Plunkert illustration:

Nukes of Hazard: “Starting a nuclear war by mistake is the greatest existential risk to the United States today,” writes longtime expert Frank von Hippel in new piece in Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Of course, I’ve said the same since mid-1980s when I first met Frank. Naturally, the USA is planning on building a costly, dangerous, new ICBM fleet…. Also, new docs just released show how (really) close we were to a nuclear war with the Soviets in 1983 under Reagan—I remember this well as I was the editor of the leading anti-nuke magazine Nuclear Times then. Too much to summarize but if interested go here.

Life expectancy in the U.S. dropped by a full year in 2020, the most dramatic drop since World War II. For Blacks, the drop was 2.7 years.

Well it seems the daughter of Stanley Kubrick (director of two films in my all-time top ten) is something of a QAnon and Proud Boys fan, according to new piece at Daily Beast. Vivian Kubrick was known to be a Scientologist but this goes beyond that, as she voices support for her droogies (no strangers to “the old ultra-violence”) the Boogaloo Boys and Proud Boys. Just as bad, she often claims her dad would have supported one conspiracy or another—except for the persistent one claiming he filmed a fake U.S. moon landing for NASA.

In just the first two weeks of February, for example, she referred to Bill Gates as a “Bioterrorist,”railed against COVID-19 vaccines (as well as mask-wearing generally), and posted a link inviting readers to a private QAnon discussion group….On various occasions, she has referred to victims of the Holocaust as “hapless Jews”; spread a popular, though debunked conspiracy theory linking George Soros, a frequent target of anti-Semitic alt-right propaganda, to population control; and decried Lucasfilm’s recent firing of The Mandalorian actress Gina Carano as blacklisting.

Film/TV

C-SPAN just out with a preview for a special program airing this weekend focusing on my award-winning book, The Campaign of the Century, on Upton Sinclair’s wild and wildly influential left-wing race for governor of California—and the newsreels created by Irving Thalberg to torpedo him. As many know, that is a key plot element in the current David Fincher drama, Mank, and now you can hear more about it and view excerpts from those newsreels, which I’ve called “the first attack ads on the screen.” It airs at 10 p.m. ET Saturday and 4 p.m. on Sunday, and several times thereafter. Here’s my recent NY Times piece related to the campaign and Mank.

HBO just dropped its trailer for a series coming in April starring Kate Winslet as a small town Pennsylvania detective faced with the inevitable local murder—and a challenging accent.

Media

Erik Wemple on CNN’s Chris Cuomo failing to cover his brother’s now-emerging failures in managing the Covid crisis in New York.

The Onion, once again sadly on the mark with this headline: “White Supremacist Tired After Long Day Of Interviews With Mainstream News Outlets.”

Music

A new, interesting piece, on a story part known and part new for me. I’ve been aware, going back to shortly after Blonde on Blonde, that Dylan’s “4th Time Around” was a takeoff or pay back (or something) to semi-friend John Lennon for borrowing for “Norweegian Wood” Bob’s emerging songwriting style circa 1965. Of course, that’s partly why the Beatles were being credited with “growing up” as lyricists in this period. I didn’t know that John recognized this immediately and maybe resented it (as shown in interviews), although he veered from viewing it as a cruel “parody” to accepting it as an “homage.” Still, he felt somewhat paranoid faced with Dylan’s closing line, “I never asked for your crutch / Now don't ask for mine.” A few years later John would sing, “I don’t believe in Zimmerman.”

What I also didn’t know was that the song was expressly about an affair John wanted to hide from his wife Cynthia (a couple of women have been mentioned) so he didn’t appreciate any additional attention to, or mockery, of the lyrics. In fact, the surprising addition of George’s sitar—purchased hurriedly from a local shop—helped deflect from that and also from the not-radio-friendly “take her to bed” line. In any case, many attribute the rise of “raga rock” to this tune, with quick appearances in the Yardbirds’ “Heart Full of Soul” and the Stones’ “Paint It Black.” (It must be noted, however, that Ray Davies used that sound earlier than George for The Kinks’ “See My Friends.” ) Final note: Paul later claimed that he provided the ending’s key burn-the-house-down line.

So here below: Beatles and then Bob, another time around. You probably have never heard this wonderfully odd demo of “Norwegian Wood.” Ditto for Bob’s alt-take.

We’ll be learning the five Oscar nominees any time now, but this candidate on the short list released last week from One Night in Miami, co-written and sung by Leslie Odom Jr., certainly deserves a fine shot (no, not a reference to Aaron Burr, sir). And he does not sing it as Sam Cooke.

The great writer and guitarist Richard Thompson’s memoir Beeswing coming in two months!

Elliot Mazer has died. Not a household name, except in certain key households in the 1970s as producer/engineer for the likes of Neil Young and Linda Ronstadt. Neil says this week, “Harvest is one of my most recognized recordings, and it all happened because of Elliot Mazer.”

Song Pick of the Day

We featured a Sandy Denny cut here a couple of weeks ago, which proved popular (and I promised many more), so here’s her classic folk-like 1971 one-off with Led Zep, with its Lord of the Rings references. She was the only guest vocalist ever on a Zep album and in tribute was given her own symbol on the cover of the album: three pyramids. Plant had met her, the best Brit singer of her time, the year before when she was still in Fairport Convention. By the way, Page had just gotten interested in the mandolin.

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 and now has written and directed his first feature, Atomic Cover-up, which will have its American premiere at a festival this spring.