An online Beatles fan club for and about Beatle fans
Thursday, April 16, 2026
Brain Damage Control (2009)
Brain Damage Control
By Paul Krassner
High Times
2009
When Phil Spector was sentenced 19 to life in prison for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, I had a flashback to 1971 at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse.
I was a guest of John Lennon and Yoko Ono for the celebration of Yoko's show, This is Not Here. The Videofrex, a counterculture video commune, was there to shoot a documentary titled, You're Not Here, Yoko
Nancy Kane recalls, "We were all going up for the opening, which would be jammed because John Lennon and Ringo Starr were going to be there too. And it was true. In the crush of people, there went Ringo. He was being swept past us into the main gallery. There he goes, "Hi, Ringo!", he was gone, but we could play our video as much as we wanted to. There he goes, "Hi Ringo". There he goes again, "Hi Ringo."
It was, in fact, Ringo's birthday, [sic] and I found myself sitting on the floor in a large room where a group of friends and associates sang "Happy Birthday" to him, and then "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" with each individual singing a chorus. The Women's Liberation Movement was flourishing at the time, and I sang, " She's Got the Whole World in Her Hands."
Later, I was about to enter another large room with John and Yoko. It was quite crowded. As I walked through the door, Phil Spector stood up at the far side of the room, pointed at me, and shouted, "You killed. Lenny Bruce!" I was stunned. Lenny and I had been close friends, and I was the editor of his autobiography, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People.
Rather than ratchet up the sour vibe that Specter had just created, I immediately turned around and left the room. John and Yoko ran after me, apologizing profusely for Spector's insane outburst. A A couple of years later, at the A &M recording studio, he pointed a gun at Lennon, chasing him through the corridors.
That incident at the museum wasn't the only occasion I've been falsely accused. I was also accused of being an accessory to an attempted assassination of Andy Warhol by Valerie Solanas, author of The SCUM Manifesto (SCUM = the Society for Cutting Up Men).
Warhol cohort Paul Morrissey said in a 1996 interview with actor Taylor Mead that in the spring of 1968, "Solanas approached underground newspaper publisher Paul Krassner for money, saying, "I want to shoot Olympian press honcho Maurice Grandis." He gave her $50, enough for a .32 automatic pistol."
Actually, she asked me to lend her $50 for food, which I did, sympathizing with the anguish of a poor pamphleteer. But that was on Friday. On Monday, I took my four-year-old daughter, Holly, out for lunch. On the way, we bumped into Valerie just a block from Warhol's loft. We talked a little. Then Holly and I went to Brownies, a vegetarian restaurant.
Minutes later, we were seated at a table, and Valerie walked in. "Do you mind if I join you?" She asked. " Yeah, I do mind, actually, but only because I don't get a chance to see my daughter that often." "Okay, I understand," she said and left.
Five hours later, she shot Warhol, seeking revenge out of the paranoid belief that he had ruined her literary career. Valerie could have bought the gun with that $50, but if I had known that her intention was to kill Warhol, I might have been able to talk her out of it. Then again, she could have shot me and Holly right there in that restaurant. What do you mean? I can't join you for lunch. Bang, bang. That easy. That's horrible. That's absurd.
Mourning John Lennon and Making Movies (1981)
Mourning John Lennon and Making Movies
By Bernard Drew
Gannett News Service
April 17, 1981
When I asked for "Ringo Starr" at the desk at the Plaza Hotel, they said there was no such person registered. Luckily, his manager's name was listed, and he responded to my phone call by coming downstairs and escorting me up to a large suite where a security officer sat in front of the door. The suite was registered under "Richard Starkey", Ringo Starr's real name. The security precautions were begun after John Lennon's brutal murder in December.
Ringo came in to greet me. He has changed a great deal since he was the sassy, fun loving drummer of the pop quartet. Aside from the two memorable movies, the Beatles made A Hard Day's Night in 1964 and Help! a year later. Ringo went on to appear on his own and starred in The Magic Christian, That'll Be the Day, and the prehistoric comedy Caveman, which he co-starred with Barbara Bach.
He and Bach have been living together since the film was made and have plans to marry. With a mustache, Ringle looks more handsome than he used to be and a lot more serious. He wears one beautiful earring.
Over lunch, I asked him about his early movies and mentioned that Richard Lester, who directed those first two Beatles movies, never again achieved the zest and fun he had in the beginning. "Well, Dick was excited too." Then Ringo explained, "Like us, he was fresh and new. In those days, we were just having a good time, having fun with everything. We were like four excited little boys.
"There was no undercurrent of seriousness. We had all come from Liverpool, where, despite our success, feelings there and in London were more restrained. Then we came to New York, and the media's carrying on was mind boggling. That's what caused the crowd screaming everywhere. It was almost, but not really, too much.
"We'd take an entire floor of a hotel we stayed at and had a different channel on the telly in each suite, and would run from one room to the other. We were together for eight years. I joined the other three in 1962, and we toured for the next four years. Then, by 1966, we decided to make some serious music. So we stopped touring and worked solely in the recording studios, and then it started falling apart. The four of us had been dedicated to one image, the Beatles, but we were getting older, channeling our own individual songs, Paul's songs, John's songs, George's songs; we weren't on the same track anymore. We were turning 30, so that by 1970, it was all over, and we went our separate ways."
Ringo remained in England until 1975, making a few albums and playing roles in occasional films. He maintains residences in Monte Carlo and Los Angeles. Part of the year, he returns to England and visits his children, who live with their mother.
Barbara joined us, looking weary and sipping chicken soup, as she was suffering from the flu. "Barbara and I live mostly in Los Angeles now," Ringo stated, "with her two children from her former marriage to an Italian industrialist.
"After 1975, I did an album a year and a couple of TV specials. Then for two years, I just took off," Ringo recalled. "I didn't want to work. I'd lost my direction and did nothing until Caveman came along."
All this early success can present problems later on. Is that what happened to John Lennon, too? "Yes, I'm sure of it," Ringo said soberly. "What can I say about John? It was a terrible shock, and we miss him and think about him all the time. I lost a good friend, and the world lost a great artist. John had stopped working because he got tired of it. You reach a point when you don't want to do what you're doing just to do it. I know I had, and John wanted to raise Sean because he missed his older son, who was in England with his mother, and he just wanted the experience of raising a child.
"I still can't understand what happened and why," Ringo muttered about John's death. "You can understand a political assassination, bad as it is, but a rock and roll assassination is beyond me. There was no great motive behind it. It was all so dumb and meaningless. A guy came in and went, boom-boom. It makes no sense."
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
Wings: Business and Usual (1979)
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| Photos by Andre Cillag |
Wings: Business as Ususal
By: Ryan Kelly
Smash Hits
December 1979
If ever there was one British rock star who has seen everything, done everything, and emerged virtually unscathed, it has to be Paul McCartney. He's a man with the true Midas Touch who began as a Liverpudlian yob and has worked his way up to become one of the richest and most accomplished men in Britain.
There can hardly be a household in Britain that doesn't possess a record either written or performed by him, whether as a Beatle, a solo artist, or with the band he now leads, Wings.
Wings are not McCartney's yes-men (or yes-women, in Linda's case), but a working unit. Denny Laine has been with the band since its formation in '71, while both guitarist Laurence Juber and drummer Steve Holly joined the ranks nine months ago.
When the group gave a few of their infrequent interviews to accompany their first British tour for three years, it was everybody in on the act, not just the main man.
Punctuality is not their strong point, I discovered, waiting for Wings to materialize after a devastating show at the Manchester Apollo. But the wait was worth it to find that the band was not big-headed or temperamental, but normal, somewhat high-spirited, reasonably sane people.
"Everyone thinks that because I've got money and some power, I'm gonna be walking around with me head in the clouds," said Paul. "I'd be the last one to know if I'd changed since the Beatles days at the Oasis Club, but though a lot of things have happened since then, I think my feet are still pretty close to the ground.
"It may seem as if I've gone round in circles and forgotten half of what I've done, but you don't; it stays with you." He continues, "I'm definitely not the same person as I was in the beginning, but that's just because you learnt so much through the years, and I've enjoyed that. You experience life and get to know yourself better. Even through things like the psychedelic era of the '60s, I learned to meditate then, and I'm glad I did, because it can be great," though he adds cautiously, "If you like that kind of thing..."
What happened to the secret gigs they had originally planned to do to warm up for this current tour? "It turned out that they were just unbelievably difficult to organize," Paul answers. "We had enough trouble playing the Royal Court in Liverpool and even concerts holding two or 3000, so club dates were out of the question. Even now, we're getting letters saying, 'My daughter is a Wings fan, but she couldn't get tickets to see you.' So small dates would have made it even worse.
Another show involving Wings also seems unlikely -- that of "Rockestra," -- a performing live rock orchestra which Wings put together to perform one track on Wings' latest album, Back to the Egg, and which featured members of the Who, Led Zeppelin, and the Shadows, to name but a few.
Paul explained the idea behind the group. "Everywhere in the world, there are kids who can play flutes and violins and so on. So they get themselves into orchestras so that they can play together. We thought it would be great to come up with a word, an example of how kids who play electric guitars and drums can do the same thing. You only need a simple tune, but arrange it for 10 guitars instead of one. It's not that difficult. I mean," he laughs. "We did it, and I can't even read music!
"The track sounded more awesome than it did when we recorded it, but the people in Rockestra are just old friends, who we shepherd together for the day. The difficulty comes in trying to get that line up together again, because it spread all over the world."
"It was surprising how quickly and easily everything came together that day," Steve continued. "Each group of instruments immediately found its own natural leader, and as soon as I had John Bonham (of Led Zeppelin) next to me, well, it was as if the third world war had started."
Wings do, however, have another ace up their extremely roomy sleeves. On their last tour, they filmed Wings Over the World, a film which gave a detailed account of their trip. At present, they are contemplating a film tentatively titled Band on the Run to show a different side of their lives.
"Willie Russell (a Liverpool playwright who wrote the musical John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert) is currently writing a script for us, and as soon as it is in a form that we all like, we hope to go ahead and film it," said Paul. "We seem to be coming up against one big problem, though, so far, and that is that every British film company we have approached to film has turned around and told us that we should make it in America, which is exactly what we don't want to do."
"The script is being written to suit our character," adds Steve. "Although we won't actually be playing it as Wings. We'll be performing a role rather than just acting out our lives. And acting is one thing that I, for one, will have to get the hang of.
"Once we were up in Scotland, we thought we'd have a go." He smiles. "One of us would walk out of the room, then come back in and ask another for a cigarette. That sounds simple enough, but because we were aware that we were just playing a role, nine times out of 10 we would end up falling about laughing at each other."
So over the years, McCartney has written literally hundreds of hits. Does he have any favorites amongst cover versions of his own songs?
"Yes, I think the ones Ray Charles has done are amazing, particularly 'Good Day Sunshine.' But then I think all the best ones have been by black artists. Phoebe Snow had the hit with 'Every Night', and Michael Jackson had just done 'Girlfriend'. I like black music a lot, particularly reggae, Michael Jackson, and the Specials."
I asked whether his songwriting is still as prolific as ever and whether Steve or Laurence will be contributing material to the band in the near future. "If we come up with anything of the standard of Paul or Denny's work, we will," chips in Laurence tactfully, "But it won't have to be in character with the band. It's difficult to get the feel right, though, until we've had the experience of working live together and for Steve and I, this is the first time."
"I find that I often come up with songs or ideas at least when I dream," continues Paul. "I know it's the same for a lot of friends who are only vaguely musical. The trouble with that is --I'm getting very personal here ---you go through a stage when you're just waking up and semi-conscious, and if you can't get it, then you've had it. It's pretty well done for good.
"There was one night," he recalls. "When I woke up, I could remember dreaming that the Rolling Stones were on stage doing this amazing number called ' No Values'. It was just a song I pictured them doing, and it suited them down to the ground. But even though I can still remember it, there's just no way I can get it written down."
"Don't let Jagger read that, or he'll pinch it as his own," added Denny dourly as Paul and Linda break into a duet of the fabled number.
With the general air of well-fed mirth that surrounds the band, it's easy to think that they think of Wings as an amusing sideline to their lives, rather than a profession, but they know that the high standards they have set for themselves can backfire at any time, if the work isn't top quality. Apart from the very strong family ties (the McCartneys still take the four children on the road with them), Wings is the most important thing in their lives, and it's up to them not to let outside influence interfere.
"People are forever suggesting things for us to do," finishes Denny, "and if something comes along that grabs our interest, we may take it on, as we did when we brought Professor Long Hair (a blues veteran) over here, and made an album with him. Most fans, though, tend to want us to get involved and to manage them and so on, which just isn't right for us as a band. It's been Wings who has brought us this far, and so now it's up to us to put ourselves first, to stay ahead."
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