WEBVTT

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That'll do it, little bird.
Every time, ask not what your country

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can do for you, ask what
you can do for your country. Mister

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garbage off, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet podcast with Peter Robinson

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and Charles CW. Cook sitting in
for rob Long. I'm James Lylax and

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you are not gonna believe what we
talk about today. So let's am Rezulo's

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a podcast. I'm hearing neigba.
It's a neighbor. It's what they said,

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neighbor. Hello, mister walkin be
Does this table worked for you?

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Yeah? Yeah, we like.
I just think it would be really nice

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if people think that I make this. So that's my thing. Ladies and

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gentlemen, The Beatles Welcome everybody.
It's the Wickershy podcast numbers six hundred and

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seventy nine. I'm James Lylax here
in Minneapolis and I'm joined by Peter Robinson

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and Charles C. W. You
Cook, and gentlemen. It is past

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Valentine's Day, past the super Bowl. The era of love and organized state

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sanctioned violence is passed. But still
we can talk about these things. Valentine's

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Day, eh, who cares?
But super Bowl? I know that you

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guys are anxious and desperate to talk
about it, because, as we've learned

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from Twitter this week, it's raked. It's all a scio and it's all

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you know. The people up here
who just think that it's an honest contest

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need to understand what's really going on. And Charlie, you're the world expert.

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Now that there has been an interview
with you in the New York Times

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about this very subject of football,
I'll go first and briefly, but that's

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just to tee you up. Like
so much in my life, I came

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to football late and honestly didn't begin
paying attention to it until my own boys

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began playing high school football, at
which point I began to realize it's an

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extremely interest kit game, and on
any given play, it is simply impossible

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to watch all eleven little contests that
are taking place. To put it in

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a crude way, you just you
just can't take it in. Therefore,

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once you begin to realize what's going
on, once you begin to realize what

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the various assignments are, you feel
a kind of richness about the game.

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I missed that. But then you
turn to the neighbor, what did what

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did what did that alignment? Just
do? I all right over to you,

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Charlie. You're quicker. You're quicker
on the uptake than I am on

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these ways. You seem, you
seem to indicatepe you to the difficulty of

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fixing something that is that complex.
We gues play after play, week after

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week, team after team. It's
nonsense. It's nonsense on still, but

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still they believe it. Of course
they put lots of things. So Charles,

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your your view on the contest that
we just saw. It was an

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exceptional game. The whole wonderful americanness
of the of the event, from its

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commercial attributes, to with songs,
to its to the to the game itself.

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It is just a joy. And
I am always deflated when it's when

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it's over. Yeah, I must
say, despite my admonitions of the conspiracy

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theorists, I'm much more open to
the idea that it's rigged this year,

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given what happened to the Jaguars that
made me feel bad. They were eight

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and three, And when you can't
even pronounce the name of the team,

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you know, I met a lady
last week in Miami and she made me

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say the name three times because she
thought it was so funny. Hey,

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you don't have to worry. Yeah, we had a quarterback who went out

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because somebody with laser vision or blowdout
up in the stands too, you know

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too, came in at his ankle. That's that's conspiracy we're going with here.

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You did not have the kind of
season that we did, but yes,

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yes, so it was. It
was an extraordinary game, lots of

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everything that you want from it.
But what I find also fascinating is the

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ancillary commercial aspect to it. Because
at the same time you have this contest,

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this ballet of violence here, you
also have and now we're going to

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break for what we believe to be
the kreme de la creme of this particular

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artistic slash commercial medium advertising. And
you see the spots, and so I

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would just like to know if,
because I think that's something more interesting to

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our broader audience than the game itself. In the contest, what you thought

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about those commercials, what they said
about the state of the culture, the

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state of the art, of the
industry, et cetera. James, You're

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doing exactly what unnerves me a little
bit about the Super Bowl. What neerves

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me a little bit about the Super
Bowl is the extent to which it tails

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away from actual football. Now,
so I divide that into two subcategories,

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and we'll see again what Charlie has
to say. Charlie's given all of this

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much more thought, and he has
an English accent, so he sounds smarter

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anyway. But we'll see what he
has to say. There's the category that

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may, of course it was the
game took place in Las Vegas. But

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there's a category that makes for example, the halftime shows I detest because they're

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becoming They have nothing to do with
music. They're just becoming pure spectacle,

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pure sensory stimulation, light movement,
noise. It's noise, not music.

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I don't like those. On the
other hand, in this fractured society,

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this fractured time in which we live, football is one of the very few

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non political moments that we all have
in common. The convening power of the

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game is enormous, and when there
are advertisements that know that, that understand

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the reach, and that have a
certain lightness of touch that I do feel

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enhances the whole fun of the experience, one of the biggest components of which

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is that you're sharing it with one
hundred million other Americans, and that's exactly

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why the CIA chose to take it
over with Tyler Swift and Travis Kelcey.

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So before we get to the ads, the game taught me something in that

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I have spent all years saying the
Kansas City Chiefs aren't what they were.

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I said it after they played the
Jaguars and the Jaguars should have won.

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I said it after their loss to
the Bills in December, and I bet

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against them three times in the postseason. And what I've learned is that after

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a while, if a team that
isn't quite good enough keeps winning, it

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is good enough. Yes, exactly. You can't start with the premise.

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And the thing is if they are
put under pressure, they come out of

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it, and their defense is good
enough, and Patrick Mahomes is a phenom,

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and they had enough offensively to get
it done. And all the reasons

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that you can contrive as to why
that's not going to happen this year,

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they just don't care if they keep
winning games. Yes, I have to

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admit there was several times hit this
season. Actually, I thought Green Bay

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outplayed the forty nine ers consistently except
for the third. There was the drive

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that the forty nine ers put together
to score and win the game. I

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think that they put together eight plays
in a row that worked, and aside

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from that, the other fifty some
plays, Green Bay outplayed them. And

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I found myself saying, oh,
the final score is deceptive. And why

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don't you start saying the score is
deceptive? You need to re examine the

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way you're looking at the game.
The other thing I'd add is that Andy

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Reid is a tough, patient,
crafty coach. And this Super Bowl contest

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was two games. The first half
was one game and the second half was

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Andy Reid making adjustments, waiting,
watching for his openings, tightening, tweaking

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the defense, putting Purty under more
pressure. I just I you have to

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give that tough, old, patient, old, crafty, old coach a

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certain amount of credit. I think, no doubt, no doubt. All

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Right to the ads. What do
we make of the ads? I liked

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a few of them. I thought
that Michael sarah ad was hilarious. Yes,

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And I like the Christopher walking ad
partly because I'm a huge fan of

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people doing Christopher walking impressions and look
up YouTube videos of people doing Christopher walking

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impressions. So this ad was tailored
to me. Charlie, you are so

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American now, no matter how you
mispronounced the name of your team. And

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I love Schwarzenegger, the sheer,
good spiritedness of that, the willingness to

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engage in a touch of self mockery. He's older now, he doesn't look

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the way he used to look,
but he still has a sense of fun.

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James, you're the master of advertise, of the commercial analysis. What

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did you make of it? Well, this is the kind of nerd and

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geek I am about these things.
When the Walking ad came on, at

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the start of it, something in
the back of my brain lit up and

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I knew exactly where he was.
He was walking through the hallway the Builtmore

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hotel in Los Angeles, And when
we walked out to the next scene to

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the alleyway, I thought, that's
it. I've been there. I was

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there fourteen years ago. Why do
I remember that. I went back in

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my pictures in my videos and found
the exact spot where Christopher walk and was

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standing. So I thought, wow, interesting, but not interesting to anybody

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else. This is the thing that
I took away from all of them.

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There was a dominant color that's been
working in advertising for about a year or

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two, and it's this sort of
metallic teal turquoise sea blue tint that was

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saturating almost eighty percent of the ads
last year. This year it's found about

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twenty percent now. The reason that
they chose this color, I think is

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fascinating because it's not a pleasant color. There's something very off putting about it,

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something unnerving about it, and for
some reason, it was used over

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and over again. I went back. I found original examples of the of

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the ads last year that ran on
YouTube, and then compared them to the

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ones that I saw on television,
and you could tell that they'd added the

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color and dialed it. I up
because they're always playing with these things.

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Part of that is fashion. A
certain color becomes hot and the rest of

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them have to jump on it.
But part of it maybe because they have

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data that says this color does this
to people, and everybody decides to do

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it. I don't know. I
asked my daughter and she says, it's

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mostly just people following following what everybody
else is doing. She's in the industry.

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This year, the color that is
rising is red, which is interesting

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because that plays into the whole satanic
thing that we got going on here with

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Taylor Swift and the rest. That's
what they're saying. It was interesting for

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the ads that blew up brands and
did them absolutely no help whatsoever. There

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was a homes dot com series of
ads that are supposed to be these little

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stories, but they didn't work at
all. They didn't land, None of

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them did. There was one for
a crypt for a data security company that

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was preventing break preventing breaches, as
a matter of fact, that's their slogan,

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we stop breaches, which is really
dull, huge ady, And you

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could tell that they'd taken a four
minute spot and edited it down to this

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thing, with the idea that you
would go on the web and say,

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gosh, that was interesting. Let
me see the whole thing. Same thing

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with the Dunkin Donuts ad. In
the Dunkin Donuts ad, it worked because

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there was enough there that we saw
to make it interesting of itself. The

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other ad was just a complete and
total waste of money. So yes,

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some of the ads that the more
focused and tight they were, the better

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at introducing a brand. Although there's
one called Poppy, which is supposedly some

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sort of soda that's good for your
gut health. And the more they mentioned

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gut health in relig in reference to
Poppy, I kept thinking, it's poopy.

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Poopy is the name of the soda, and that's just not working for

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me. There was Timu, which
had a big buy and attempted to introduce

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the brand name to everybody through a
series of really circa twenty sixteen animation not

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very good. And Timu is this
reseller of cheap Chinese crap that if you're

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on Twitter you see the ads for
it all the time. It's making a

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big bid to be the next amaz
On, and everybody I saw who saw

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the ads kind of reeled back from
it, saying there's something dreadfully and authentic

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about this. I don't like it. I don't like it at all.

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So I mean, as fascinating,
was it as clever and intelligent as previous

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years? I would like to say
no, But then again, everybody says

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that. Everybody says every year to
the last year, the most thing to

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remember take away probably is bringing back
the Clydesdale's, because after the damage that

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Bud had with their whole brand,
bringing back the Clydesdale's and then ending the

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spot with a dog licking the muzzle
of a Clydesdale. Was really about as

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naked an appeal to you love us
again as you can possibly get, and

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it probably worked. And if they
not on me, it didn't I know,

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but it may have with some.
But you know, then they made

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the mistake later of having the Clydesdales
wash somebody's feet, and that that just

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that just didn't that just didn't work
at all. Where else could you get

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a review of Super Bowl ads like
that? Where else? I'm just going

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to start only I'm kidding about the
Clivesdale watching somebody I know. Yes,

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no, no, no, no, all right, because that one was

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that one really just it sparked more
controversy, more discussion online than I than

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any other ad that I'd seen,
which I of course was their intention.

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Yeah, but you know, you
talk about the country being divided. There's

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a perfect symmetry to that, because
last year I wrote about this ad that

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I thought was really good from the
same people. Yeah, essentially said look,

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we all disagree and shouted each other, but don't And there was this

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outcry from the left against that one
because some of the people who were depicted

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being shouted at were Donald Trump loving
maga types who should be shouted at,

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right, and the left said,
oh well, look Jesus would have loved

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shouting at them. And I wrote
a post at National reviewsay, look,

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I'm not actually a Christian, but
I was raised Christian and I don't think

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Jesus made exceptions for people who have
red hats. And this is a good

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ad with a good message. So
this year was the turn of the right

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to get really angry at the Jesus. There's a nice symmetry to that.

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They've they've they're doing something right.
They've annoyed everyone. They have annoyed everyone,

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and it did. The visual language
that they used, these these very

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striking, saturated renaissance tableau is I
think was very effective from from their previous

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stuff because when you saw one scene, just as your brain processed the dynamic,

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they moved to the next. I
mean, it was a good piece

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of work. Of course, what
we don't know is how much product they

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moved their ad agencies right all over
the country right now trying to analyze tweets

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and is bud light moving off the
shelves faster. It'll be a few days

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before they know that anyway. Well, but my bud light is dead.

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I think what what anheiser Busch was
trying to do? There was contagion.

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They didn't they didn't want the whole
the idea completely into the Bud brand.

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I mean, I think they've written
off bud like completely. I see Peter

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mentioned the music and the music ever
since Prince's Halftime Show, which is the

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greatest ever, I agree, it's
been generally meretricious a couple of years ago.

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I mean, last year it was
just it was dark and messy,

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and it had a tone to it
that I just didn't like. This year,

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I don't care. There wasn't a
song in there that made me perk

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up my ears. What's interesting is
at one point, I shu walks over

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to Alicia Keys was sitting at this
piano which it looks like they chopped out

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the tongue of Godzilla and lacquered it. It's huge, weird thing. And

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she's playing and she starts to sing, and the first few notes that she

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sayed are were she always say?
Inexpertly delivered? There was a frack,

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a crack a sourness to it,
but she recovered and frankly, if I

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was asked to sing at the Super
Bowl, and I turned to the camera

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and there were one hundred and twenty
seven million people looking at me live.

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I would improvise what it had happened
into some sort of commercial for depends,

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because I wouldn't be able to speak, and I would have emptied my bladder,

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my bottles. She recovered nicely.
But here's the thing. When they

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uploaded it to YouTube, they corrected
her singing. They corrected her notes,

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so she no longer has to live
under the shame ignominy of missing those few

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notes. Now it's been corrected.
And this is very bad. This is

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a very bad thing to do.
Is this not literally or Willian? Yes?

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This is extremely creepy, and it's
going to lead to the opposite of

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the outcomes that we are told flow
from the Super Bowl, which is that

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all of us have a shad experience
in shad memories, yep, because those

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who saw it live are going to
have different conception of what happened than the

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people who watch it. Subsequently,
all those who say, hey, remember

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when that happened, and then you
go to the record and it didn't,

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or at least it seems as if
it didn't. I find this really creepou

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And I've written a lot about this
because this is an unexpected turn. If

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you go back to the birth of
the Internet, and I was an early

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adopter, at least my parents were. I had a website when I was

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about ten. I've always been an
Internet guy. What year was that to

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in nineteen ninety four? Okay,
the promise of the internet was Look,

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finally all of that, George orwell, stuff can't happen. We have this

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distributed system that is not centrally controlled
or controllable, and as such, any

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00:17:48.599 --> 00:17:52.720
piece of information can be copied infinitely, or put in different places, or

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hosted in different ways, such that
the central state in a tyrannical society,

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or even the CIA in a non
tyrannical society can't do anything about it.

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And yet what we've actually started to
do voluntarily is the opposite, and it

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is voluntary. Is one example of
it that I think is really interesting.

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But there was a movie a few
years ago called Juno I'm sure you sorry

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with written by a woman from the
Twin City. Yes, so there's an

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00:18:25.680 --> 00:18:32.680
actress in it called Ellen Page,
who at that point was a woman and

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her name was Ellen and she was
in the movie as Ellen, and it

250
00:18:37.079 --> 00:18:44.279
said Ellen on the DVD cover and
Ellen in the credits. She changed her

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name and decided that she was actually
a man. Fine, I'm not getting

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into the details of that. Whether
you think that's great or bad, it's

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not the point. The point is
now, if you look up the movie

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Juno on any single service that people
watch movies on, whether that's Netflix,

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Apple, Amazon, whether you're buying
a digital copy of it, it doesn't

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say Ellen Page. It says Elliott
Page, which is to say that the

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history of the movie, the thing
that actually happened when I went to the

258
00:19:18.799 --> 00:19:23.839
movie theater has gone. At the
end of the movie, in the credits,

259
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it says Elliott Page. They redid
the credits. And that's voluntary.

260
00:19:30.960 --> 00:19:34.799
That's not because President Biden came in
and said, extirpate that. No,

261
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that is a voluntary decision. And
it is really creepy. Imagine if Audrey

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00:19:41.400 --> 00:19:45.839
Hepburn had at some point in the
nineteen seventies said I am now a man

263
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oscar. Yeah, and all of
the movies had been changed, and my

264
00:19:51.440 --> 00:19:52.240
dad would say, we hang on
a minute. When I used to go

265
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to the movies, it was Audrey
Hepburn, but the only thing I could

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find was Oscar Hepbert. I think
that's a very weird, and we've decided

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to do this without being forced.
I'm looking right now at Amazon. You

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remember Jan Morris, the English writer
who died last year, as I recall

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perhaps a year before, was one
of the first whatever it's called, and

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used to be James Morris, and
by the way, James desh Jan Morris

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I thought was a beautiful prose writer. Little finn sometimes on the content,

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but the prose was so beguiling you'd
read page after page even so, and

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I'm just checking now. He when
he was happy to be, or at

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least do when he was a he
wrote a trilogy on the British Empire called

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Farewell the Trumpets, and I see
some old copies of the individual. Heaven's

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00:20:45.079 --> 00:20:49.400
Command was one of the books,
and that's advertised as by James Morris.

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But we see here Farewell to Trumpets
by Jan Morris. It's happening all over.

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Yeah. It was Wendy Carlos who
has planted Walter Carlos. So I

279
00:20:59.079 --> 00:21:03.480
mean that goes back to the seventies. But the thing is is what's next

280
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about this? If we can correct
her performance because it's what she actually intended

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and everybody knows that she I mean, she did those word the notes that

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she was supposed to sing, they
were just a little bit off. So

283
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what's the harm in autotuning that when
we autotune every other performance? What's possibly

284
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the harm? Well, because it's
just done post hawk, Well, I

285
00:21:23.319 --> 00:21:30.160
know that is exactly right, right, But so what's the harm really if

286
00:21:30.160 --> 00:21:33.720
a candidate goes out and makes a
speech and uses the wrong word in using

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00:21:33.799 --> 00:21:37.319
AI to replace the word that he
said and to fix his mouth so he

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00:21:37.359 --> 00:21:38.640
says the proper word. I mean, the word was there in the speech,

289
00:21:38.759 --> 00:21:41.920
The word was there in the teleprompter. What's the harm in fixing it?

290
00:21:42.319 --> 00:21:45.880
What's the harm then in really doing
it in real time? And AI

291
00:21:45.920 --> 00:21:48.279
will be able to do this and
you know, six weeks from now,

292
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to be able to make sure that
the proper words are said, or to

293
00:21:52.440 --> 00:21:56.200
you know, to get in front
of the candidate if he says something,

294
00:21:56.200 --> 00:21:57.960
if he's starting to go with something
that isn't on the script, we don't

295
00:21:57.960 --> 00:22:02.440
want him to say that. What's
the harm in using AI to keep Biden

296
00:22:02.799 --> 00:22:06.119
from wandering off and gaffing and saying
that he met somebody who's been dead for

297
00:22:06.160 --> 00:22:10.440
thirty years. I mean, after
all, we're just framing the truth in

298
00:22:10.480 --> 00:22:15.319
a more truthy way. So I
was, you know, the other day,

299
00:22:15.319 --> 00:22:18.160
I was listening to Greeg's Piano Concerto, and there are many versions of

300
00:22:18.240 --> 00:22:22.839
it. They're all great, but
my favorite is actually a mono recording that

301
00:22:22.880 --> 00:22:27.119
I think was reworked in the stereo
in nineteen sixty Leon Fleischer with George l

302
00:22:27.160 --> 00:22:30.759
and the Cleveland Orchestra. It was
the first version that I had, first

303
00:22:30.880 --> 00:22:33.000
one that I had when I was
growing up, and I listened to it

304
00:22:33.039 --> 00:22:37.039
and there's a part in the cadenza
there's these rolling chords, dun dun,

305
00:22:37.200 --> 00:22:45.319
dun un dumb, and at the
end of it there is this spectacular concatenation

306
00:22:45.519 --> 00:22:49.079
of dissonant notes that sounds like the
piano is dealing with the end result of

307
00:22:49.119 --> 00:22:55.400
eating a burrito. It's this.
It's just wow. And I always thought

308
00:22:55.400 --> 00:22:57.400
there was a very modern thing for
Greg to put in. It wasn't later

309
00:22:57.519 --> 00:23:00.160
until I went back and listened to
other version stuff that I realized that Fleischer

310
00:23:00.160 --> 00:23:04.960
made a mistake. He screwed up
that recording. His hands got tangled if

311
00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:07.880
he'd held them up. It would
have been like a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

312
00:23:07.920 --> 00:23:10.880
We're all you know, he's at
the piano and his fingers were all

313
00:23:10.960 --> 00:23:15.559
knotted together. It was a mistake, and there was too much for them

314
00:23:15.559 --> 00:23:18.440
to do it, barely to go
back and re record it. Now we

315
00:23:18.480 --> 00:23:22.960
could go back now with computers and
fix that complete, so that Fleischer,

316
00:23:22.960 --> 00:23:26.119
who was a beautiful pianist, just
does it flawlessly like Rubinstein and Bernstein and

317
00:23:26.160 --> 00:23:33.119
everybody else. Yeah, well,
we can't go on, but we mustn't.

318
00:23:33.519 --> 00:23:34.799
We mustn't. But also, James, if we do, you will

319
00:23:34.799 --> 00:23:38.079
be able to say, hey,
I have physical copies of this that differ

320
00:23:38.319 --> 00:23:42.960
from the altered form, right,
freaks me out. But if you only

321
00:23:44.079 --> 00:23:48.559
have online distribution for certain things,
so there is an article and National Review

322
00:23:48.640 --> 00:23:53.119
that is only on the website,
or a Netflix show that is only streamed,

323
00:23:55.359 --> 00:24:00.279
and you fix that in inverted comments, well then you've actually rewritten in

324
00:24:00.319 --> 00:24:03.880
history, and no one can prove
otherwise. I know that's the thing.

325
00:24:03.920 --> 00:24:07.519
I tell somebody that that's not right, Fleischer Blue. If you frecked that

326
00:24:07.759 --> 00:24:10.799
like nobody's business the first time was, well, prove it. I suppose

327
00:24:10.839 --> 00:24:12.680
you believe that. You know,
I suppose you believe the fruit of loom

328
00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:17.240
Logo didn't have a cornicopia, So
yes, I had. So I have

329
00:24:17.359 --> 00:24:19.480
copies of these things, but I
and I have hard drives backed up.

330
00:24:19.880 --> 00:24:23.119
But I feel like I'm part of
some Fahrenheit four fifty one group which gets

331
00:24:23.160 --> 00:24:26.359
together and talks about the things that
are no longer you know, that are

332
00:24:26.440 --> 00:24:30.279
that are no longer allowed to be
spoken of. So I worry about that,

333
00:24:30.319 --> 00:24:33.000
and people's just absolute acquiescence in it, because you know, who cares.

334
00:24:33.759 --> 00:24:37.759
We all ought to care, because
this is I mean, I mean,

335
00:24:37.799 --> 00:24:41.480
you're right about it being voluntary.
The strange thing about nineteen eighty four

336
00:24:41.519 --> 00:24:45.200
is it turned out to be a
completely voluntary thing to do. The government,

337
00:24:45.279 --> 00:24:48.319
Big Brother didn't have to put listening
devices in all of our homes.

338
00:24:48.920 --> 00:24:52.599
We did that. We did that, right, tell us screens and the

339
00:24:52.759 --> 00:24:56.160
like, all just waiting for the
wake word. Uh Peter, Speaking of

340
00:24:56.240 --> 00:25:00.039
music, though, I know that
what you really wanted out of this this

341
00:25:00.160 --> 00:25:02.799
was sort of like a Stars on
forty five thing where they did all your

342
00:25:02.799 --> 00:25:06.359
favorite Beatles songs set to the same
beat and you could just nod your head

343
00:25:06.359 --> 00:25:08.599
along with what is regarded as the
greatest songbook of the post war era,

344
00:25:08.759 --> 00:25:15.400
right, something like that. A
listener to this podcast, an old friend

345
00:25:15.440 --> 00:25:19.039
of mine whom I haven't actually set
eyes on in forty years, Michael Garrett.

346
00:25:19.319 --> 00:25:22.319
At one point I said to you
and Rob, when Rob was on

347
00:25:22.359 --> 00:25:30.400
the podcast He's Traveling Today, that
I had just discovered the Beatles, and

348
00:25:30.440 --> 00:25:34.240
of course you both rolled your eyes
and laughed, and my friend, Michael

349
00:25:34.279 --> 00:25:37.400
Garrett said, no, actually tell
us about this. So I'm going to

350
00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:41.720
tell you why I'm ignorant of pop
music. I'm going to tell you three

351
00:25:41.960 --> 00:25:47.640
groups, three artists that I think
actually are musicians, and then I would

352
00:25:47.680 --> 00:25:52.240
like you briefly to tell me what's
wrong with me. And then it's somewhat

353
00:25:52.319 --> 00:25:56.359
somewhat more like you can go ahead
and discuss tell me whether I'm right or

354
00:25:56.400 --> 00:26:03.039
wrong about the value that I now
assign to these artists, Ladies and gentlemen.

355
00:26:03.079 --> 00:26:06.000
The idea of somebody waking up from
a coma and discovering the Beetles,

356
00:26:06.039 --> 00:26:08.000
Yes, is a fascinating subject.
And it's one of those things that we're

357
00:26:08.000 --> 00:26:11.400
going to get to right after the
break, because I know that you want

358
00:26:11.400 --> 00:26:12.400
to hear it. So I know
that you're going to listen to what I

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All right, Peter, you have the

387
00:27:57.400 --> 00:28:02.000
floor the polarion. All right,
I'm going to treat the two of you

388
00:28:02.079 --> 00:28:07.359
as as therapists. Here's the story. When I was a kid Charlie,

389
00:28:07.680 --> 00:28:11.200
I predate you by some years.
When I was a kid, we had

390
00:28:11.240 --> 00:28:15.400
a thing called a stereo in our
home, and it was in the living

391
00:28:15.480 --> 00:28:18.279
room, in a place where it
was perfectly visible, because it was considered

392
00:28:18.319 --> 00:28:23.759
a nice piece of furniture, a
console console exactly, stereo console. Both

393
00:28:23.759 --> 00:28:27.440
words got used. It was that
lavish. However, we were much too

394
00:28:27.519 --> 00:28:34.599
poor to buy very many records,
but my father found a bargain and bought

395
00:28:34.640 --> 00:28:40.759
the Reader's Digest collection of great band
music, with the result that when I

396
00:28:40.960 --> 00:28:44.480
was a kid, what got played
in my house over and over and over

397
00:28:44.519 --> 00:28:49.400
again was my father's youth, not
mine. On the other hand, I

398
00:28:49.440 --> 00:28:56.319
still think Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington, Duke Ellington was a

399
00:28:56.400 --> 00:29:00.039
good Benny Good. I still think
that they shouldn't have been as completely forgotten

400
00:29:00.079 --> 00:29:03.839
as they are today. But those
I thought were real musicians, don't ask

401
00:29:03.839 --> 00:29:07.200
me why. And furthermore, as
they went through high school and college.

402
00:29:07.240 --> 00:29:11.480
We're talking about the seventies, Charlie, before you came into this world,

403
00:29:11.519 --> 00:29:18.680
somehow or other, I don't know, I was a really at a very

404
00:29:18.680 --> 00:29:23.359
young age, I became an old
curmudgeon. I somehow condescended to contemporary music

405
00:29:23.400 --> 00:29:29.559
and just didn't think much of it. Okay, So that's one question that

406
00:29:29.599 --> 00:29:32.279
could be touched upon briefly, what
the hell was going on with me?

407
00:29:32.839 --> 00:29:37.039
But here's what's happened. All these
decades later. My wife was traveling.

408
00:29:37.240 --> 00:29:40.880
I'm fine during the day when she's
traveling, but I can't sleep at night.

409
00:29:40.880 --> 00:29:45.359
And I found myself watching a documentary
about Paul McCartney, and it interviewed

410
00:29:45.359 --> 00:29:48.480
the contemporary Paul McCartney, and I
looked at him. I looked at the

411
00:29:48.519 --> 00:29:52.920
way he talked about the sixties.
I looked at the way he talked about

412
00:29:53.400 --> 00:29:57.920
how they composed their music, the
rhythms, the sounds. How he added

413
00:29:57.920 --> 00:30:03.519
a uh, I can't remember the
word for it. There's a particular kind

414
00:30:03.519 --> 00:30:07.799
of trump at the very high neck, thank you exactly how he added a

415
00:30:07.839 --> 00:30:14.839
pil And I thought to myself,
Oh, my goodness, this man is

416
00:30:14.920 --> 00:30:21.279
a serious musician. I don't know
whether he's memorized scores of Bach or Beethoven

417
00:30:21.359 --> 00:30:26.559
or Brahms, but he's a he
thinks musically, he's aware of And then

418
00:30:26.599 --> 00:30:32.160
I thought to myself, what I, who paid no attention at all to

419
00:30:32.200 --> 00:30:42.279
the Beatles, can hum to myself, let it be yesterday. People who

420
00:30:42.279 --> 00:30:48.799
can produce melodies that stay in the
mind, stay happily in the minds of

421
00:30:48.880 --> 00:30:53.319
people such as me, who essentially
ignored them when they were at center stage.

422
00:30:55.240 --> 00:31:00.559
The sheer musicality that is a feat
and I have been a fool for

423
00:31:00.680 --> 00:31:03.720
ignoring it. It am one of
three, but the other two are much

424
00:31:03.799 --> 00:31:11.559
quicker. Like millions of people.
Apparently I somehow or other tripped across on

425
00:31:12.039 --> 00:31:19.799
YouTube or Twitter or something like that. Joni Mitchell at last year's Newport Festival.

426
00:31:21.240 --> 00:31:26.599
This eighty year old woman who's in
bad health, singing both sides now

427
00:31:26.279 --> 00:31:30.240
a song that dates back to when
she was in her twenties and she's now

428
00:31:30.240 --> 00:31:33.720
eighty years old. Her voices dropped
almost an octave. It's husky from She's

429
00:31:33.720 --> 00:31:38.119
a perpetual smoker apparently, which may
have led to her health troubles. But

430
00:31:38.599 --> 00:31:45.799
the rendition was sort of magnificent.
She had kind of reinvented the way to

431
00:31:45.880 --> 00:31:48.920
handle this. She slowed it down, She made it elegaic in a way

432
00:31:48.960 --> 00:31:52.359
that it didn't quite used to be. It wasn't a young girl who was

433
00:31:52.400 --> 00:31:56.160
confused by the world. It was
an old woman now and it was just

434
00:31:56.680 --> 00:32:01.319
heart wrenching and done. But you
could see this was this person was a

435
00:32:01.440 --> 00:32:06.799
professional, she was a real musician. She'd taken the text and the music

436
00:32:07.000 --> 00:32:13.119
and reworked it. Phrasing, intonation, all still there, fantastic, And

437
00:32:13.160 --> 00:32:17.200
I thought to myself, how did
I miss this final point, the one

438
00:32:17.440 --> 00:32:21.319
piece of music that I did love
when it happened. Although, again,

439
00:32:21.440 --> 00:32:25.839
Charlie, this pre day to you
was Don McClain miss American Pie or what

440
00:32:25.920 --> 00:32:29.880
the American Pie? I guess is
the title of the song, and that

441
00:32:29.960 --> 00:32:32.440
stayed in my head. I hummed
it all summer long, in the summer

442
00:32:32.480 --> 00:32:37.319
of nineteen seventy six, as I
recall, when I was an intern at

443
00:32:37.359 --> 00:32:43.799
the State Capitol in Albany, New
York. And so I've never understood what

444
00:32:43.839 --> 00:32:46.119
it meant. I've never had the
slightest clue what the lyrics referred to,

445
00:32:46.160 --> 00:32:52.559
although it seemed kind of wildly enjoyable
and almost effervescent in its energy, but

446
00:32:52.640 --> 00:32:58.680
elegaic at the same time, A
and B. Whatever happened to Don McClain,

447
00:32:59.200 --> 00:33:02.200
Why that is? Okay, that's
it. Boys. You may now

448
00:33:02.839 --> 00:33:07.720
psychoanalyze me, give me an education. Make of this what you will Charlie,

449
00:33:07.799 --> 00:33:12.480
you were raised as a musician.
You were a choir boy in Cambridge,

450
00:33:12.799 --> 00:33:15.920
which means that you were taught music
in a very serious fashion. So

451
00:33:15.960 --> 00:33:20.480
there must be at least some residue
of that for you professionalism in you.

452
00:33:20.599 --> 00:33:22.759
All right over to you guys,
well there is. It's funny you mentioned

453
00:33:22.799 --> 00:33:25.200
your upbringing there, because I had
the same thing. It's just that I

454
00:33:25.319 --> 00:33:30.559
also was interested in the music that
was being produced when I was younger.

455
00:33:31.200 --> 00:33:37.079
My dad had an enormous collection of
records and he recorded them onto tape for

456
00:33:37.240 --> 00:33:43.000
me, and I had a player
in my room, so I had all

457
00:33:43.039 --> 00:33:45.759
the Beatles albums when I was five
or six, and I had Fleetwood Mac

458
00:33:45.839 --> 00:33:51.960
and Pink Floyd and led Zeppelin and
the Who and pretty much everything. And

459
00:33:52.039 --> 00:33:55.640
then I also followed music that was
current, and then at school I had

460
00:33:55.839 --> 00:34:00.759
a great classical music education. So
I have the same thing you did.

461
00:34:00.799 --> 00:34:02.599
I just had the rest. You
had the rest on top of it,

462
00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:08.920
on top of it. I think
the piccolo story that you identify is actually

463
00:34:09.000 --> 00:34:15.079
quite funny because it was used on
Penny Lane. Yes, yes, that's

464
00:34:15.119 --> 00:34:19.880
exact. Double A side in nineteen
sixty seven was actually recorded during the Sergeant

465
00:34:19.880 --> 00:34:22.760
Pepper Sessions. The guy who played
it was a fabulous musician called David Mason,

466
00:34:22.800 --> 00:34:30.880
who was one of the great piccolo
trumpet players, and Paul McCartney had

467
00:34:30.920 --> 00:34:34.599
not come up with that idea himself. It was suggested by George Martin,

468
00:34:34.800 --> 00:34:38.639
the Beatles producer, who was classically
trained. But McCartney, because he's a

469
00:34:38.719 --> 00:34:44.719
genius, understood broadly what it was
that David Mason needed to play. So

470
00:34:44.840 --> 00:34:49.440
McCartney conveyed to David Mason, here's
what I wanted to sound like, and

471
00:34:49.480 --> 00:34:52.920
then he would say yes or no. Well, I eventually get the take

472
00:34:52.000 --> 00:34:57.800
that you're hear on the record today. And McCartney, who was really good

473
00:34:57.800 --> 00:35:01.920
at motivating people but wasn't basically trained
enough to understand when the limits of the

474
00:35:01.960 --> 00:35:07.079
instrument had been reached, says to
David Mason, that was really good,

475
00:35:07.159 --> 00:35:08.599
David, but I think you could
do it just a little bit better.

476
00:35:08.679 --> 00:35:14.159
And David Mason exploded at him.
He said, no, one could do

477
00:35:14.239 --> 00:35:16.199
it better. That was a perfect
take. You're never going to get a

478
00:35:16.199 --> 00:35:20.880
better take than that, and he
was right, And George Martin diplomatically came

479
00:35:20.920 --> 00:35:22.119
in and said, I think that's
perfect. And now you hear that on

480
00:35:23.079 --> 00:35:29.639
that record. So McCartney understood how
to use this stuff. But the idea

481
00:35:30.119 --> 00:35:35.440
was that of his classically trained producer. So how much was George Martin and

482
00:35:35.480 --> 00:35:37.519
how much was the Beatles themselves?
They were sort of geniuses, weren't they,

483
00:35:37.559 --> 00:35:40.719
Oh, no question about it.
Off the charts. They had three

484
00:35:40.760 --> 00:35:45.639
wonderful songwriters, with George Harrison as
well, but they needed, in my

485
00:35:45.840 --> 00:35:49.760
view, they later resented this,
but they needed, in my view,

486
00:35:49.800 --> 00:35:54.400
George Martin to pull them together.
And George Martin was interesting because he wasn't

487
00:35:54.440 --> 00:36:01.280
phased by anything. If they came
to him completely high strumming the same chord

488
00:36:01.719 --> 00:36:07.039
and singing the lyrics from the Tibetan
Book of the Dead, he found a

489
00:36:07.039 --> 00:36:09.159
way to turn that into a song, which they did with Tomorrow. Never

490
00:36:09.280 --> 00:36:15.920
knows. When McCartney would write these
astonishingly beautiful ballads, ballads that have the

491
00:36:15.920 --> 00:36:22.039
same harmonic characteristic as say Percel,
then George Martin would say, well,

492
00:36:22.039 --> 00:36:30.400
we'll use a harpsichord and we'll bring
in trumpets or trombone, and he just

493
00:36:30.480 --> 00:36:35.400
knew how to do that. And
then McCartney was good enough to understand how

494
00:36:35.400 --> 00:36:37.599
to utilize that idea that he probably
wouldn't have had himself. By the way,

495
00:36:37.840 --> 00:36:42.280
George Martin still alive. We're talking
about unfortunately not right. So we

496
00:36:42.320 --> 00:36:46.280
have McCartney and Ringo Starr still and
that's all correct. And Ringo Star was

497
00:36:46.360 --> 00:36:50.639
not. Ringo Star was a more
than adequate drummer, all writer as a

498
00:36:50.719 --> 00:36:52.559
vocalist, but he was not a
composer. Is that correct? Correct?

499
00:36:52.559 --> 00:36:55.800
He couldn't write. He's not a
great vocalist, although his performance song with

500
00:36:55.880 --> 00:37:00.800
Little Help from My Friends is good. But I would quibble with more than

501
00:37:00.840 --> 00:37:02.599
adequate drummer. I think Ringo Stars
one of the greatest rock drummers. And

502
00:37:04.760 --> 00:37:07.920
oh my goodness, because and I'll
let James talk. Sorry he started me

503
00:37:07.960 --> 00:37:10.800
on the Beatles. The thing is
with Ringo is it's not just that he's

504
00:37:10.800 --> 00:37:16.880
an extremely good and tight drummer.
It's that he understood what every song needed

505
00:37:17.000 --> 00:37:22.920
instinctively, and so you get these
peculiar rhythms on say Ticket to Ride,

506
00:37:22.480 --> 00:37:30.760
where he makes the song move,
or in both Revolver and Sergeant Pepper,

507
00:37:30.199 --> 00:37:40.599
his drumming is almost melodic. He's
almost using the toms as instruments that are

508
00:37:40.719 --> 00:37:46.519
are tied to certain notes, and
you get this odd non rock drumming.

509
00:37:46.760 --> 00:37:51.480
Was Barock drumming on that album that
no one had done before and that no

510
00:37:51.480 --> 00:37:54.599
one has done since. So I
would put in at the top of his

511
00:37:54.800 --> 00:38:00.519
profession. He's not the most technically
gifted drummer. He's not John Bonham of

512
00:38:00.599 --> 00:38:02.400
led Zeppelin or Keith Moon of the
Who. But for the Beatles, he

513
00:38:02.440 --> 00:38:07.360
couldn't have been more perfect right bottom
or Moon in the Beatles, it would

514
00:38:07.360 --> 00:38:12.440
have been a disaster. Yeah,
take you three points backwards, Peter American

515
00:38:12.440 --> 00:38:15.880
Pie. Yes, how we learned
to endure that song when it came on

516
00:38:16.440 --> 00:38:20.119
DJ's Friend. It's like one of
those tunes you put it on and you

517
00:38:20.159 --> 00:38:22.119
know you got time to run to
the cannon back. It's a long allegory

518
00:38:22.119 --> 00:38:25.119
about American music in society. Oh
the gesture. The gesture is supposed to

519
00:38:25.119 --> 00:38:28.920
be Bob Dylan. And the day
the music died was the day that Buddy

520
00:38:28.920 --> 00:38:32.960
Holly's plane went down with Richie Allens
or the Big Bopper, And I you

521
00:38:32.960 --> 00:38:36.320
know, while that may be true, I'm more interested in the Holly part

522
00:38:36.360 --> 00:38:39.199
of the story rather than the Donald
McLean recap of it, because Buddy Holly

523
00:38:39.280 --> 00:38:44.719
was a great fresh American talent who
had some great ideas and really made some

524
00:38:44.760 --> 00:38:46.679
extraordinary music. The rest of the
guys in the plane not so much.

525
00:38:46.920 --> 00:38:50.920
Big Bopper was a DJ who just
you know, lucked into a novelty song.

526
00:38:51.320 --> 00:38:54.079
But Buddy Holly was a tragic loss. Then again, Buddy Holly at

527
00:38:54.119 --> 00:39:00.719
that time was touring Iowa at that
point in his career. Really realize that,

528
00:39:00.840 --> 00:39:02.920
you know, if he'd lived,
he was covering other people's work by

529
00:39:02.960 --> 00:39:07.320
then. If he lived, he
would have probably been eclipsed completely by what

530
00:39:07.400 --> 00:39:10.199
came along in the wake of the
Beatles, not so much the Beatles type

531
00:39:10.199 --> 00:39:14.039
stuff, but the psychedelia and the
post psychedelia and the rest of the crap

532
00:39:14.039 --> 00:39:15.480
in the direct that infected the bait, you know, the basement of the

533
00:39:15.519 --> 00:39:20.079
sixties. And Buddy Harley, if
you lived, would be doing casinos and

534
00:39:20.119 --> 00:39:22.239
that would be kind of sad,
But it also meant that all of us

535
00:39:22.239 --> 00:39:25.719
could have possibly seen him, which
would have been a gift to the next

536
00:39:25.719 --> 00:39:30.599
one. To Joni mitchell I never
liked Jonny mitchell I found that hippie top

537
00:39:30.679 --> 00:39:34.480
stuff to just be annoying. And
yes, both sides now is a sweet

538
00:39:34.480 --> 00:39:37.639
tune, but it's part of us. It's part of a sixties cohort of

539
00:39:37.760 --> 00:39:43.000
music that I have absolutely no fellow
feeling with, because, oddly enough,

540
00:39:43.639 --> 00:39:51.000
I felt no connection or desire to
claim that I could possess the music of

541
00:39:51.039 --> 00:39:54.840
the people immediately before me, the
music of the people in the past,

542
00:39:54.920 --> 00:39:59.079
the forties, the fifties. Classically, yes, yes, I could connect

543
00:39:59.119 --> 00:40:01.599
to that, but the off of
the immediate boomers, from the Beatles to

544
00:40:01.840 --> 00:40:06.320
the Stones to the rest of it
was somebody else's stuff, and it was

545
00:40:06.400 --> 00:40:08.559
on the other side of a wall, a cultural wall that I didn't share.

546
00:40:08.840 --> 00:40:12.880
I grew up in the seventies and
I may have peeked my head over

547
00:40:13.039 --> 00:40:16.039
the wall and taken a look at
what I regarded as the nadir of sixties

548
00:40:16.079 --> 00:40:20.159
counterculture. But it wasn't me,
and I didn't want anything to do with

549
00:40:20.199 --> 00:40:22.199
it. It was flower power,
it was groovy, it was acid.

550
00:40:22.239 --> 00:40:25.679
As you know. I didn't like
it. That said, if you put

551
00:40:25.679 --> 00:40:29.599
a gun to my head tomorrow and
said you are going to a desert aisle,

552
00:40:30.079 --> 00:40:32.920
you can take one record. It
would be Joni Mitchell. It would

553
00:40:32.920 --> 00:40:39.119
why it would be Agyra by Joni
Mitchell, because I think it's the most

554
00:40:39.679 --> 00:40:44.239
welling up. As I say,
I think it's the most beautiful, mystical,

555
00:40:44.800 --> 00:40:47.760
romantic thing I've ever heard in my
life. I listened to it about

556
00:40:47.800 --> 00:40:52.280
every two or three years or so, and I'm moved beyond compare it.

557
00:40:52.239 --> 00:40:55.519
When I first heard it in nineteen
seventy eight, seventy nine, it hit

558
00:40:55.599 --> 00:41:00.199
me where I lived like few things
ever had, and so I've never been

559
00:41:00.239 --> 00:41:05.519
apart from it. It's discursive,
it's liquid, it's it's it's basically heard

560
00:41:05.559 --> 00:41:09.280
an electric guitar, and Yaco Pastoria
is a fretless bass guy who uh,

561
00:41:10.760 --> 00:41:15.719
it's just marvel. The Beatles,
same thing as I said before about johny

562
00:41:15.719 --> 00:41:17.840
Mitchell and the rest of them.
They were on the other side of the

563
00:41:17.880 --> 00:41:21.599
wall, and I really didn't care
much for their later work. The middle

564
00:41:21.639 --> 00:41:24.320
period. Done knew a lot for
me. I could recognize what was great

565
00:41:24.320 --> 00:41:28.760
about them, though, even and
that's the thing, even if you're not

566
00:41:28.800 --> 00:41:31.239
a Beatles guy, and I was
never a Beatles guy to the point where

567
00:41:31.320 --> 00:41:35.599
a self identification and I had to
know everything about them and the rest of

568
00:41:35.599 --> 00:41:39.239
it, I was aware that this
was absolutely incredible stuff. And even if

569
00:41:39.280 --> 00:41:44.519
I didn't get day in the life, I got the reason for the chord

570
00:41:44.559 --> 00:41:47.360
at the end and the chaos that
came before it. But for me,

571
00:41:47.400 --> 00:41:51.880
it's all the early songs. It's
all the early stuff. What was British

572
00:41:51.960 --> 00:41:55.039
music, Frankly Charlie before the Beatles
came along. It was a renaissance of

573
00:41:55.079 --> 00:42:00.679
American traditional jazz, right. Richard
Lester's movie before he made Hard Day's Night

574
00:42:00.119 --> 00:42:04.920
was its trad Dad, where all
the kids come from the school and pile

575
00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:07.440
into the end of the soda joint
and start listening to clarinet and banjo,

576
00:42:07.519 --> 00:42:10.639
stuff taken out of Dixie Land,
America. It's hilarious. No wonder the

577
00:42:10.639 --> 00:42:15.760
Beatles came along and resot bobular British
popular music was an absolute just My friend

578
00:42:15.760 --> 00:42:20.239
Dennis King will probably hied me for
this, but he was part of it.

579
00:42:20.239 --> 00:42:23.320
It was boring, It was really
boring. When you listen to Hard

580
00:42:23.360 --> 00:42:31.639
Day's Night, that first chord is
a galvanizing event. It's a gong,

581
00:42:31.880 --> 00:42:38.639
it's a hammer that shatters every single
musical preconception about the culture that was in

582
00:42:38.679 --> 00:42:44.559
place at the time. It is
just magnificent. And then they go on

583
00:42:44.599 --> 00:42:49.280
from that to this great tune.
And those early songs took everything that had

584
00:42:49.280 --> 00:42:52.440
been done before in blues and rock
and America and the you know, the

585
00:42:52.679 --> 00:42:55.320
Buddy Holly, the Chubby Checkers,
the brock around the clock to build everything

586
00:42:55.519 --> 00:43:01.559
and created something because they were composition
geniuses that had chord changes and under harmonies

587
00:43:01.559 --> 00:43:06.559
and the rest of it that just
remade it and created a songbook that was

588
00:43:06.599 --> 00:43:09.920
the equal of the American songbook that
preceded the war. So yeah, so

589
00:43:10.039 --> 00:43:15.320
yeah. To come to the Beatles
late in life is a boon to a

590
00:43:15.400 --> 00:43:20.159
mitzvah. It's a blessing to you
because you now can hear it truly without

591
00:43:20.280 --> 00:43:24.199
any of the youthful passions that generally
attend the music like this when you're younger,

592
00:43:24.280 --> 00:43:28.000
you can you can look at it
dispassionately, and you can realize and

593
00:43:28.039 --> 00:43:32.000
see the genius that is there.
And McCartney is an amazing I'm not a

594
00:43:32.079 --> 00:43:37.119
Lenin guy at all personally, or
his subsequent contribution sort of proved the point.

595
00:43:37.360 --> 00:43:42.440
But Paul McCartney, who everybody regarded
as this, this purveyor of saccharine

596
00:43:42.480 --> 00:43:45.599
melodies, this guy who ran off
with wings and turned out silly stuff.

597
00:43:45.679 --> 00:43:47.679
I'm sorry the wings. A lot
of the wing stuff is great, but

598
00:43:49.159 --> 00:43:53.159
his effortless ability to channel and to
summon beauty from out of nowhere, it

599
00:43:53.199 --> 00:43:59.079
seems without breaking a sweat. Hated
a song with Elvis Costello called Veronica.

600
00:43:59.440 --> 00:44:02.920
That is I mean in Elvis Costello, I think is one of the greatest

601
00:44:04.239 --> 00:44:07.400
musicians of the rock era as well, and the two of them together creates

602
00:44:07.400 --> 00:44:10.280
something a melody you never heard before
in your life, but that you are

603
00:44:10.320 --> 00:44:15.760
sure existed in some purefect puber platonic
format that are just waiting for somebody of

604
00:44:15.800 --> 00:44:20.119
their talent to find it and speak
it. So Yeah, McCartney's great,

605
00:44:20.599 --> 00:44:23.199
Joni Mitchell that one thing I love
and Don McLean whatever happened to him.

606
00:44:23.360 --> 00:44:27.880
People were afraid that the second follow
up hit was going to be nineteen minutes

607
00:44:27.920 --> 00:44:30.840
long instead of seventeen, so they
didn't sign him to another album. Nah,

608
00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:35.840
he had more. I'm just that
one song. That whole album is

609
00:44:35.920 --> 00:44:42.280
terrific with Vincent and Empty Chaz and
the Grave and Fatima. That's a good

610
00:44:42.320 --> 00:44:45.039
record. It's not my style of
stuff. I'm not into the acoustics singer

611
00:44:45.079 --> 00:44:47.559
songwriter stuff, but yes, I'm
not going to discount that it has its

612
00:44:47.599 --> 00:44:52.800
merits or that people like it.
That's the thing. It's and Elvis Costello

613
00:44:52.880 --> 00:44:55.840
worked together on a record called Flowers
in the Dirt, and it has the

614
00:44:55.880 --> 00:44:59.639
most terrific song on it called that
Day Is Done, which I want you

615
00:44:59.679 --> 00:45:02.440
to go in listen to a beautiful
song. Charlie You and Joni Mitchell.

616
00:45:02.559 --> 00:45:07.719
What's your view? I am not
the world's biggest Jenni Mitchell find that isn't

617
00:45:07.760 --> 00:45:09.639
to say I don't think she's really
talented. It's just not quite my thing.

618
00:45:09.719 --> 00:45:15.599
But both sides now is one of
the greatest songs ever written. I

619
00:45:15.679 --> 00:45:17.880
was listening the other day to something
because I'm doing on my website the bottom

620
00:45:17.960 --> 00:45:22.360
fifty songs of nineteen sixty four,
because we all you know that everybody knows

621
00:45:22.440 --> 00:45:24.960
the top ten, but what are
the bottom ones? Are they any good?

622
00:45:25.559 --> 00:45:30.280
Turns out that they are. I
own the top three hundred songs of

623
00:45:30.400 --> 00:45:35.880
every year of the twentieth century,
going back to about nineteen ten, thank

624
00:45:35.920 --> 00:45:39.639
you Usenet. And as such,
I can you know I want I can.

625
00:45:39.719 --> 00:45:43.559
I can dip in and find the
stuff that didn't sell and you're surprised.

626
00:45:43.639 --> 00:45:47.679
Sometimes you don't know, for example
that that Booker t They did another

627
00:45:47.760 --> 00:45:54.480
version of Green Onions called More Green
Onions, which is essentially green Onions with

628
00:45:54.559 --> 00:45:59.760
a couple of different things thrown in, and green Onions is an absolutely fantastic

629
00:45:59.800 --> 00:46:04.480
piece, and Moe green Onions is
not, which is why it's at number

630
00:46:04.480 --> 00:46:07.719
two hundred and eighty five. But
then you find some sabby Italian singer in

631
00:46:07.760 --> 00:46:12.920
the teen heart Throb Mold in nineteen
sixty three with a backing female chorus and

632
00:46:12.960 --> 00:46:15.880
the echoe strings Owen Bradley and the
rest of it, and you realize that

633
00:46:15.920 --> 00:46:19.679
this was the stuff that the Beatles
just came in and kipped out of the

634
00:46:19.800 --> 00:46:23.840
room. It would persist for a
while, but it's remarkable. You would

635
00:46:23.840 --> 00:46:29.639
find the funkiest gut bucket gritty blues
in you know, at number two hundred

636
00:46:29.639 --> 00:46:32.079
and ninety nine, but that was
still something they played on the air.

637
00:46:32.679 --> 00:46:36.519
It was probably regarded as race music
done in the South and the rest of

638
00:46:36.559 --> 00:46:40.679
it. But the diversity of voices
and sounds on the radio in the nineteen

639
00:46:40.800 --> 00:46:45.039
in the in the nineteen sixties was
really quite extraordinary, and I you know,

640
00:46:45.159 --> 00:46:49.000
at least was there to pick up
part of that even into the seventies.

641
00:46:49.320 --> 00:46:52.679
Was it the same for you,
Charlie, are you listening to Radio

642
00:46:52.760 --> 00:46:57.239
Luxembourg. My dad listened to Radio
Luxembourg. He would go to bed at

643
00:46:57.360 --> 00:47:01.280
night and pretend he was asleep,
and he would lie under the covers with

644
00:47:01.360 --> 00:47:07.480
this crystal set that he had and
listened to Radio Luxembourg, which was the

645
00:47:07.480 --> 00:47:14.039
only place that he could get the
records that had been banned for whatever reason

646
00:47:14.079 --> 00:47:20.880
by the British government. People in
America forget or don't know how censorious the

647
00:47:20.920 --> 00:47:27.039
BBC was at the behest of the
British government until about nineteen sixty eight.

648
00:47:27.079 --> 00:47:30.400
A lot of Beatles songs were not
played on the radio. You mentioned A

649
00:47:30.480 --> 00:47:34.679
Day in the Life that was banned
because it makes an apparent reference to heroin

650
00:47:34.719 --> 00:47:40.440
and talks about getting high. Some
of the Beatles nineteen sixty six album tracks

651
00:47:40.480 --> 00:47:45.480
weren't allowed to be played on the
radio, and anything that even remotely smacked

652
00:47:45.480 --> 00:47:50.320
of counterculture, including Bob Dylan,
was blacklisted. So the only place you

653
00:47:50.360 --> 00:47:52.800
could hear it was from this boat
that was parked in international waters off the

654
00:47:52.840 --> 00:47:58.880
British Art broadcast in. Was your
father a musician, No, but his

655
00:47:58.960 --> 00:48:02.960
father was a concert piers, so
that the generations I see, I see,

656
00:48:04.039 --> 00:48:10.400
Okay, So next question, where
do these people come from. It's

657
00:48:10.440 --> 00:48:15.599
not a put on, it's not
a made up backstory. Paul McCartney and

658
00:48:15.719 --> 00:48:21.079
John Lennon were both liver What is
it called Liverpudlians? Is that the waver

659
00:48:21.159 --> 00:48:25.679
Pudlians. They both came from working
class families. They had I think English

660
00:48:25.800 --> 00:48:30.719
educations in those days, just this
sort of standard working class education was not

661
00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:35.360
bad. But there was nothing fancy
about them. They didn't go to a

662
00:48:35.480 --> 00:48:37.960
school like the one. Excuse me, I'm not supplying there's anything fancy about

663
00:48:37.960 --> 00:48:44.480
you either, but they didn't have
a rigorous classical education at all. Where

664
00:48:44.519 --> 00:48:50.119
did George Martin come from or come
to that joint these we're talking about people

665
00:48:50.119 --> 00:48:52.960
who seem, in some strange way
one offs George Martin was classically trade.

666
00:48:53.360 --> 00:49:00.239
I just think when you're talking about
Paul McCartney as opposed to many other rock

667
00:49:00.360 --> 00:49:06.039
musicians, you are asking, well, where did Mozart come from? Yes,

668
00:49:06.159 --> 00:49:08.119
and I'm not saying that they are
the same thing, But no,

669
00:49:08.559 --> 00:49:14.320
Paul McCartney's talent is something that explains
them. No, it's so intuitive and

670
00:49:14.360 --> 00:49:16.679
prodigious that you could have put him
on a desert island with no one around

671
00:49:16.760 --> 00:49:21.760
him and only a guitar and he'd
have worked out how to do what he

672
00:49:21.800 --> 00:49:29.800
did. And Lennon was the same. So it's tough with the Beatles compared

673
00:49:29.800 --> 00:49:31.920
to some other bands where you can
sort of see how they got there and

674
00:49:32.039 --> 00:49:37.840
who their influences were and how they
jammed it out. Because I mean McCartney

675
00:49:37.960 --> 00:49:43.119
yesterday came to McCartney in a dream
fully formed. That's Mozart level composition.

676
00:49:43.320 --> 00:49:47.599
Mozart used to wander around and you
know, he'd be in the supermarket and

677
00:49:49.239 --> 00:49:53.880
I'm obviously kidding, and he would
just go, oh, the forty eth

678
00:49:53.920 --> 00:49:58.280
Symphony, and then he would go
home and write it down. I thought

679
00:49:58.320 --> 00:50:00.960
this was a lie. I thought
this was one of these parcop stories.

680
00:50:00.360 --> 00:50:07.159
But he wrote the Overture to Don
Giovanni at three o'clock in the morning while

681
00:50:07.199 --> 00:50:12.000
completely drunk on the day that it
premiad because he hadn't done it. So

682
00:50:12.039 --> 00:50:15.159
you can't ask the question with him
or Beethoven, well where does it come

683
00:50:15.159 --> 00:50:19.599
from? It just does. And
I know this is when of F.

684
00:50:19.639 --> 00:50:23.159
Buckley's line right, that this is
the moment when he is most convinced as

685
00:50:23.159 --> 00:50:28.840
a god, is when he listens
a Mozauce requim well, but it does

686
00:50:28.840 --> 00:50:31.760
seem to come from somewhere outside.
They do seem to be transcribing the music

687
00:50:31.800 --> 00:50:37.880
of the spheres in some weird way. But the creative acts are like that

688
00:50:37.199 --> 00:50:42.400
at their best. And I'm not
comparing any of us to Mozart or Paul

689
00:50:42.480 --> 00:50:46.119
McCartney, but you know that when
you're writing something and you stop writing and

690
00:50:46.159 --> 00:50:51.039
you feel as if you're taking dictation
that it is coming from another place besides

691
00:50:51.079 --> 00:50:53.840
the fun of lobe here, that
you're just your type. That is what

692
00:50:53.880 --> 00:51:00.840
they have, and it is something
that is a combination of innate ability and

693
00:51:01.199 --> 00:51:06.079
knowing how to exercise that power.
So he's right about McCarty being on a

694
00:51:06.079 --> 00:51:07.800
desert island. But at the same
time, the fact that he was able

695
00:51:07.800 --> 00:51:14.400
to be in a studio with other
people and producing something meant that he did

696
00:51:14.440 --> 00:51:16.239
more. And the more you do, I think the wider the pipe gets,

697
00:51:16.400 --> 00:51:19.960
so that it does come a little
bit more easier. I mean,

698
00:51:20.880 --> 00:51:23.440
Mozart had never written a symphony before
the number fortieth wouldn't have come to him

699
00:51:23.440 --> 00:51:25.960
and the supermarket at that point of
his life. It's the fact that thirty

700
00:51:27.039 --> 00:51:30.639
nine preceded it that had shaped his
brain in the way that it did.

701
00:51:30.239 --> 00:51:35.559
Rassini. The story goes wrote the
overture for marriage to figure out. No,

702
00:51:35.960 --> 00:51:39.320
not Figuro, but William Tell.
William Tell overture. The story was

703
00:51:39.320 --> 00:51:43.159
that he was so lazy he wrote
it in bed and the pages fell out,

704
00:51:43.239 --> 00:51:45.039
and he'd rather than actually get up
and get the pages, he just

705
00:51:45.039 --> 00:51:47.239
wrote the other one. And that's
the one that we have. I don't

706
00:51:47.280 --> 00:51:50.880
believe it, but it's kind of
a fun tale, you know. It's

707
00:51:50.960 --> 00:51:57.920
interesting that how some of this genius
is able to intew it things that other

708
00:51:57.960 --> 00:52:01.440
people needed to be taught. Beatles
album with the Beatles in England they were

709
00:52:01.440 --> 00:52:07.679
different in America until the mid sixties
has a song on it which is full

710
00:52:07.719 --> 00:52:13.239
of Aolian cadences and a reviewer pointed
this out to John Lennon and said,

711
00:52:13.320 --> 00:52:17.480
you chose to use Aolian cadences And
John Lennon said, I don't know what

712
00:52:17.519 --> 00:52:22.119
that is. That sounds like an
exotic bird. I know. Of course

713
00:52:22.159 --> 00:52:23.800
they didn't. He didn't know what
it was, but he still knew how

714
00:52:23.800 --> 00:52:28.280
to use them. I find that
really interesting. And then if yes,

715
00:52:28.559 --> 00:52:30.880
but then were there are hundreds of
thousands of people all around the world who

716
00:52:30.920 --> 00:52:35.280
know what alien cadences is, but
couldn't use them in a useful way.

717
00:52:35.320 --> 00:52:38.159
If that life depended on I could
use the phrase it's astonishing the Pink Floyd's

718
00:52:38.239 --> 00:52:42.280
latest effort in the Phrygian mode.
And you know, yeah, no,

719
00:52:42.320 --> 00:52:45.800
I know exactly. Sometimes the more
you know, the less you can do

720
00:52:45.920 --> 00:52:51.079
because you're held back by constraints.
A serious songwriter would never have begun Hard

721
00:52:51.159 --> 00:52:53.559
Day's Night with that chord hasn't anything
to do with it. They would have

722
00:52:53.559 --> 00:53:00.760
gone to the song at nine right, extraordinary. Well, here's the thing

723
00:53:00.960 --> 00:53:02.280
weish probably get out of here,
and we haven't even touched on all the

724
00:53:02.320 --> 00:53:06.440
other music that Peter doesn't know,
but is now going to go out and

725
00:53:06.480 --> 00:53:08.280
go forth and explain. Charles tell
him the next thing that he should go

726
00:53:08.280 --> 00:53:15.599
out and find. Wow, do
you like Pink Floyd? No, I

727
00:53:15.639 --> 00:53:20.320
don't I know them? Well,
I think I know. I think I

728
00:53:20.400 --> 00:53:24.239
heard them once at some fraternity basement
at Dartmouth College and didn't like it.

729
00:53:24.679 --> 00:53:30.639
Right, Yeah, The actual greatest
guitar solo probably of the nineteen seventies is

730
00:53:30.239 --> 00:53:34.239
by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd.
You know what I'm talking about, Charlie

731
00:53:35.559 --> 00:53:37.400
I think so. I mean,
it gets a lot of you know,

732
00:53:37.519 --> 00:53:43.400
it's it's the go to one for
the greatest, the other go to pizza.

733
00:53:43.440 --> 00:53:45.480
Although you will have been exposed to
this band in some form. Is

734
00:53:45.519 --> 00:53:50.320
the Beach Boys? Ah, yes, familiar with the song God Only Knows

735
00:53:50.360 --> 00:53:52.639
the Greatest song? Yes? Yes, yes, yes, okay, so

736
00:53:52.679 --> 00:53:54.199
you do have that, But you
were about to call it the something song,

737
00:53:54.280 --> 00:53:58.239
the greatest something. I think that's
the greatest pop song ever written,

738
00:53:59.280 --> 00:54:04.000
really, I do ever written.
Or the way it's the way it's mixed

739
00:54:04.199 --> 00:54:07.719
and both, all right? Is
that from the famous pet album Pets Sounds?

740
00:54:07.800 --> 00:54:12.280
That's right? And it inspired the
Beatles to do Sergeant Pepper and all

741
00:54:12.320 --> 00:54:16.360
that came afterwards because they were so
envious of it and of it. It

742
00:54:16.400 --> 00:54:20.280
is an absolute master because he writes
himself into a corner and he has to

743
00:54:20.280 --> 00:54:22.239
get himself out of it, and
he manages to do it. He played

744
00:54:22.239 --> 00:54:25.360
it to his dad. This is
he is Brian Wilson. Correct, Yeah,

745
00:54:25.360 --> 00:54:28.400
sorry, this is Brian Wilson.
I know we're running over time,

746
00:54:28.400 --> 00:54:30.760
but there's no no, no.
This story kills me. He was this

747
00:54:30.840 --> 00:54:37.559
remarkable genius. His dad was this
driving force behind the band. Which in

748
00:54:37.599 --> 00:54:40.679
some way was good because it created
some motivation, but his dad also had

749
00:54:40.760 --> 00:54:46.440
terrible judgment and he didn't know what
was good and what wasn't. And anyway,

750
00:54:46.639 --> 00:54:51.519
in nineteen sixty six, Brian Wilson
writes this song and he plays it

751
00:54:51.559 --> 00:54:54.920
to his dad and his dad says, it's no good. Why didn't you

752
00:54:54.960 --> 00:54:59.920
go back to writing, you know, twelve bar songs about cars. That's

753
00:55:00.039 --> 00:55:04.000
what people want. And I just
think that's the most that must have been

754
00:55:04.000 --> 00:55:08.239
the most crushing thing to do.
I mean, it would be like Beethoven

755
00:55:08.679 --> 00:55:13.159
writing, you know, Cavatina or
something and then playing it to his dad

756
00:55:13.159 --> 00:55:17.280
and his dad says, nah,
I just I just can't get my head

757
00:55:17.280 --> 00:55:22.320
around this. But that's that's actually
happened quite a lot in history. As

758
00:55:22.360 --> 00:55:24.960
I mentioned before, I have a
friend who was in a boy band in

759
00:55:25.000 --> 00:55:30.559
the fifties and sixties in England,
and last time we were there, they'd

760
00:55:30.639 --> 00:55:37.800
uncovered more footage of them performing on
the Charlie helped me out Morecombe and why

761
00:55:37.639 --> 00:55:40.599
morecamb and Wise. They were a
staple on Morecombe and Wise for years and

762
00:55:40.599 --> 00:55:44.320
they did all kinds of bits for
them. And I'm watching my friend in

763
00:55:44.360 --> 00:55:46.840
his twenties here just swinging along and
doing well with his two brothers who had

764
00:55:47.199 --> 00:55:52.519
to memorize every single step, and
they one of his brothers became a plumber

765
00:55:52.920 --> 00:55:55.760
and the other just sort of drifted
into other things. But Dennis stayed with

766
00:55:55.840 --> 00:56:00.559
it and taught himself more and more
as he went along, so he he

767
00:56:00.679 --> 00:56:06.119
willed himself into being as a musician. Really sort of this the father formed

768
00:56:06.119 --> 00:56:08.360
this this band, shoved guitars in
their hands and put them on tour until

769
00:56:08.360 --> 00:56:14.639
they were actually selling records and doing
well. George George Harrison asked for an

770
00:56:14.639 --> 00:56:19.559
autograph, by the way, because
they loved the King brothers, uh and

771
00:56:19.639 --> 00:56:23.800
so. But but Dennis went on
to learn how to write music, learn

772
00:56:23.840 --> 00:56:29.960
how to compose music, and he
ended up as a writing one of the

773
00:56:30.000 --> 00:56:35.559
most beloved apparently musical themes for British
television show called Black Beauty, and did

774
00:56:35.599 --> 00:56:42.960
all of the music for Lovejoy with
with Ian McShane, uh did brought did

775
00:56:43.159 --> 00:56:47.599
did body musicals like Privates on Parade, which was his and and it carves

776
00:56:47.639 --> 00:56:52.400
out quite a career for himself as
a musician now. And he knows he

777
00:56:52.480 --> 00:56:54.719
knew everybody at the time. So
you bring up a composer from the time,

778
00:56:54.719 --> 00:56:59.280
and he'll tell you some stories how
nobody liked John Barry for as a

779
00:56:59.280 --> 00:57:01.719
matter of fact, and I don't
know, but that's another day. But

780
00:57:01.760 --> 00:57:06.079
it's so whenever we think of the
people who are the geniuses, from whom

781
00:57:06.079 --> 00:57:08.000
it just flows naturally like water,
we have to think of all the other

782
00:57:08.039 --> 00:57:12.280
people for whom it is a job. They're good at it, they're very

783
00:57:12.320 --> 00:57:16.480
talented, but they don't have the
luxury of having a theme of great beauty

784
00:57:16.480 --> 00:57:21.679
to send in their head, as
with Wilson or McCartney or even Costello.

785
00:57:21.800 --> 00:57:24.119
At that point, it's a job. And I love those guys. I

786
00:57:24.159 --> 00:57:29.079
love the guys who just that's their
job and they can pick up a guitar

787
00:57:29.519 --> 00:57:35.840
and they can play an extraordinary solo
that they never wrote and probably never could

788
00:57:35.840 --> 00:57:37.440
come up with, but damn they
can do it. They can do it

789
00:57:37.480 --> 00:57:40.679
well. And then they're guys like
Brian Setzer. I think you might like

790
00:57:40.719 --> 00:57:47.199
Brian Setzer. Peter, he's my
age. He lives here. He started

791
00:57:47.239 --> 00:57:51.280
the rockabilly a craze back in the
eighties, which really wasn' much of a

792
00:57:51.360 --> 00:57:53.239
craze, and he's still doing it. He produces some of the most American

793
00:57:53.360 --> 00:57:59.000
music possible in rockabilly fashion, and
he's a fantastic guitarist. Other than that,

794
00:57:59.039 --> 00:58:00.880
I don't know who I would reckon, but I'm going to send you

795
00:58:00.920 --> 00:58:02.719
some. I'm also going to send
you a link to the Reader's Digest Big

796
00:58:02.760 --> 00:58:07.079
Band collection, which is available online. Is it really? Oh yeah,

797
00:58:07.119 --> 00:58:08.639
everything is? Everything is. I'm
not sure whether or not they fixed the

798
00:58:08.679 --> 00:58:14.159
notes that were wrong here and there, but it is. And I too,

799
00:58:14.239 --> 00:58:16.440
grew up my dad was a country
Western guy, so we had all

800
00:58:16.480 --> 00:58:21.760
the country Western stuff, but there
was something in my dad he would buy

801
00:58:21.800 --> 00:58:27.559
over and over. He would buy
a pop tune that Bobby Fuller. He'd

802
00:58:27.559 --> 00:58:29.760
buy this stuff if he grabbed him, and he liked it, and so

803
00:58:29.840 --> 00:58:31.320
I always had that in the back
of the mind too. And then I

804
00:58:31.360 --> 00:58:37.000
listened to Disney compilations of their musicals
too, because that was music that was

805
00:58:37.000 --> 00:58:39.400
familiar to me, and then moved
into classical, but always in the back,

806
00:58:39.719 --> 00:58:43.960
always in the back, always back. There was the nineteen forties Big

807
00:58:44.000 --> 00:58:46.000
Ben Big Swing because that was my
dad's era as well, and I finally

808
00:58:46.079 --> 00:58:50.199
rediscovered it when I was in my
late twenties or early thirties when one day

809
00:58:50.760 --> 00:58:55.920
but in the cutout bin took it
home Harry James dropped the needle and was

810
00:58:57.079 --> 00:59:01.639
transported and then it was Miller and
Good and all the rest. And to

811
00:59:01.679 --> 00:59:06.599
this day there's not a week that
goes by before I don't be without listening

812
00:59:06.639 --> 00:59:09.039
to one of those guys and realizing
how they had it. For that matter,

813
00:59:09.079 --> 00:59:12.639
and we should probably leave with this
because it's out of copyright. I

814
00:59:12.679 --> 00:59:19.320
sent my daughter a copy of Happy
Feet nineteen thirty. King of Jazz,

815
00:59:19.400 --> 00:59:23.320
Paul Whiteman, who was anything but
the epitome of jazz right in our modern

816
00:59:23.320 --> 00:59:25.920
mind, a big stout guy with
a little hit or mustache and his hair

817
00:59:27.000 --> 00:59:30.079
plastered down. But he brought jazz
to the masses and he turned out this

818
00:59:30.119 --> 00:59:32.880
tune called Happy Days, which slaps. As the kids would say today,

819
00:59:32.920 --> 00:59:37.400
it's all over the road, the
solos, the changes in tempt, the

820
00:59:37.519 --> 00:59:39.639
changes. I mean, it's just
a delight. And you can imagine people

821
00:59:39.679 --> 00:59:44.559
in nineteen thirty in a room with
this going full blast and everybody playing at

822
00:59:44.599 --> 00:59:46.039
the top of their lungs, and
the joy and the exultation of the absolute

823
00:59:46.079 --> 00:59:51.119
American originality coming out of this.
Now we have this tiny, little monotone

824
00:59:51.239 --> 00:59:53.360
version, but you can imagine what
it was like at the time. Music

825
00:59:53.440 --> 00:59:58.039
the twentieth century and the West is
one of the greatest accomplishments that we have

826
00:59:58.440 --> 01:00:02.960
as a human race. Should we
end there and by fume and thanks Charles

827
01:00:02.960 --> 01:00:06.360
for showing up, unless have you
terms have something else that you want to

828
01:00:06.360 --> 01:00:07.960
add to that. Now, I
was just gonna ask you whether Bobby Fuller

829
01:00:08.039 --> 01:00:12.039
is the Bobby Filler of the Bobby
Philler four who did that cover of I

830
01:00:12.159 --> 01:00:15.679
Fought the Law. Yes, indeed
it was and a tragic story. They

831
01:00:15.679 --> 01:00:17.679
found him dead in a car burned
with gasoline. One of the guys who

832
01:00:17.760 --> 01:00:22.639
was also in the band turned out
to be late from the Crickets, was

833
01:00:22.639 --> 01:00:27.000
Sonny Curtis, who wrote Love Is
All Around, which is the Mary Telllermore

834
01:00:27.039 --> 01:00:32.159
theme song, which of course you
knew. Charlie will now take us out

835
01:00:32.159 --> 01:00:40.559
by humming The Queen of the Knight
Aria by Wolf Kang Amedeus Mozar. Goodbye

836
01:00:40.559 --> 01:00:52.159
boys, Doctor, Doctor Doctors.
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