PINK FLOYD QUASE CHAMOU ‘MEGADEATHS’ - POR QUE DECIDIRAM TROCAR DE NOME?
O nome oficial da banda surgiu rapidamente antes de um show em 1965

REDAÇÃO PUBLICADO EM ROLLING STONE  

 
10 mar. / 2020 – Quando o Pink Floyd começou a se formar, um dos primeiros nomes usados pelo grupo, antes da estreia no mercado musical com The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967), foi The Megadeaths. Segundo o site CheatSheet, a banda ainda trocou de nome outras três vezes antes de decidir.

Os primeiros nomes usados foram The Megadeaths, The Spectrum 5 e The Screaming Abdabs, posteriormente encurtado para The Abdabs. No livro Inside Out ‑ a Verdadeira História do Pink Floyd (2004), o baterista Nick Mason relembra as inúmeras mudanças no nome e na formação da banda. Após abandonar as ideias iniciais, o grupo, então liderado por Syd Barret, se tornou The Tea Set, “jogo de chá” em português.

Segundo Mason, o nome The Tea Set se tornou um problema durante uma apresentação para a Força Aérea Real, em 1965, pois outro grupo com o mesmo nome se apresentaria naquele dia. A banda precisou mudar o nome às pressas e a ideia final foi de Barret. Fã de blues, o guitarrista usou os nomes de Pink Anderson e Floyd Council para formar o nome The Pink Floyd Sound.

O novo título não foi bem recebido de cara e a banda ainda realizou mais um show com o nome de The Tea Set naquele ano, conta Mason. Algum tempo depois, a palavra “Sound” foi retirada e o nome Pink Floyd se tornou oficial.

MONEY CAN BUY YOU EARLY BEATLES STAGE AT NEW YORK AUCTION

(Reuters)
 

A wooden stage from the Liverpool venue where the Beatles performed before they became famous is displayed in a Julien's Auctions warehouse in Torrence, California, U.S. March 5, 2020, with a pair of pants worn by John Lennon, a guitar played by Paul McCartney and a bass drumhead printed with The Beatles' logo 

 6 mar. / 2020 – The wooden stage of the small Liverpool venue where the Beatles performed before they rocketed to fame is going up for auction, along with Paul McCartney’s hastily scribbled notes for a studio recording of the hit song “Hey Jude.”

The stage and the lyrics are among 300 items of Beatles memorabilia being sold in New York on April 10, including an annotated shooting script of the band’s 1967 “Hello, Goodbye” music video and an ashtray used by Ringo Starr at the Abbey Road recording studios in London, Julien’s Auctions said on Friday.

The stage was removed from Lathom Hall in the Beatles’ British home town of Liverpool, where the band gave its first advertised performance in May 1960 as the Silver Beatles. As the Beatles, but without Starr on drums, the band played there 10 more times until February 1961 - more than a year before the release of debut single, “Love Me Do.”

It is expected to sell for $10,000 to $20,000.

“The stage is a unique piece to come to market,” said Jason Watkins, music specialist at Julien’s Auctions. “There’s not a ton of market history for something quite like this. So it’ll be interesting to see where the price goes.”

A sheet of paper with partial “Hey Jude” lyrics, written by McCartney for a recording session in 1968, has an asking price of up to $180,000.

“The ‘Hey Jude’ lyrics are a very rare, valuable special piece. It’s obviously a very iconic song that everyone’s familiar with. These handwritten lyrics were used in the studio as a guide when they were recording it,” said Watkins.

Other highlights include John Lennon and wife Yoko Ono’s drawing of Bagism, a term the couple created to satirize stereotyping, that was featured in their 1969 Bed Peace documentary, which has a pre-auction estimate of $80,000 to $100,000.

The auction will take place online and at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square, New York.

Reporting by Jane Ross and Jill Serjeant; Editing by Christopher Cushing

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Whiplash.Net |  
Neil Young: "Desculpe, meu site não é para você"

Por Brunelson T., Fonte: Rock in The Head

23 fev. / 2020 – Neil Young foi perguntado recentemente em rede social, sobre um artista que abriu o show dele em Boston na década de 70 e foi brutalmente vaiado pelo público.

Um fã perguntou: "Hey, Neil, eu vi o seu show na cidade de Boston em julho de 2018. O meu filho comprou ingressos para mim como presente do Dia dos Pais e foi no mesmo teatro em que assisti ao meu primeiro de muitos dos seus shows. Hoje, o local se chama The Wang Theater".

"Eu acho que deve ter sido por volta de 1975 e foi na turnê do álbum Tonight's The Night (6º disco, 1975). Ir ao show em 2018 e no mesmo local, foi aquela coisa de completar o círculo, sabe?"

"Mas eu tenho uma lembrança daquele 1º show, quando eu ainda era adolescente... Um artista solo entrou no palco para abrir o seu show e durante a performance ele foi vaiado por uma multidão. Obviamente o público foi muito rude com ele..."

"Numa certa hora, enquanto ele estava afinando o seu violão, uma corda se arrebentou e foi vaiado mais ainda, sendo que ele saiu do palco. Lembro-me de me sentir horrível por ele e então você apareceu e realmente chocou toda a multidão ameaçando cancelar o show".

"Mais tarde, você retornou para iniciar a sua apresentação e fez (para mim, na época) um desempenho confuso do seu material que eu não esperava ouvir. Agora sei o que vi e ouvi, e sou grato por ter estado lá".

"A minha pergunta é: quem era aquele artista solo e como ele se saiu depois na turnê? Na verdade, isso está me incomodando há mais de 40 anos, mas eu nunca tive uma maneira de fazer esta pergunta".

Neil Young respondeu: "John Hammond e ele é um grande artista".

Young também reagiu a uma pessoa em rede social que chamou o seu site pessoal, NeilYoungArchives.com, de "clube das piadas de Mickey Mouse".

Ele disse para esta pessoa: "Fazer dessa maneira melhorou muito a minha experiência pessoal em shows. As pessoas que vêm aos shows agora pelo meu site, realmente querem ouvir música. Elas amam os arquivos e a seleção de suas músicas favoritas com uma ótima qualidade de som - lembrando que todos os meus álbuns estão aqui".

"Tudo que está publicado aqui vem com a minha assinatura de aprovação. Agora, quando eu faço um show, eu sei que as pessoas estão lá para a música. Foi por isso que fiz isto, para proteger a minha alma. Fez uma enorme diferença e é provavelmente por isso que ainda estou tocando e me apresentando, pois está sendo divertido novamente!"

"Os negócios que envolvem shows está bastante sujo atualmente, com sobretaxas, cambistas e 'ofertas especiais' de ingressos para as pessoas que assistem ao meu show no último anel superior das arenas".

"Os ingressos para pré-venda pelo meu site realmente impedem as atuações dos cambistas. Além do público que fica perto do palco, que não está mais apresentando os supostos 'fãs de alto nível' esbanjando os seus telefones celulares, somente para impressionar as pessoas que eles conseguiram ingressos para a primeira fila, porque a maioria delas nem conhecem a minha música".

"Eu quero amantes da música e é melhor assim por vários motivos, como ingressos mais baratos e mais amantes da música nos meus shows. Em meu site não há ingressos de alto preço no valor de diamantes, pulseiras douradas e todo aquele monte de besteira".

"Desculpe, NeilYoungArchives.com não é para você, porque eu gosto muito".

James Taylor admite ter dado drogas a John Lennon: ‘Fui uma má influência para os Beatles’
O cantor norte-americano falou sobre a época em que foi para Londres e ficou amigo do vocalista dos Beatles

PUBLICADO NA https://rollingstone.uol.com.br/noticia/james-taylor-admite-ter-dado-drogas-john-lennon-fui-uma-ma-influencia-para-os-beatles/

 
17 fev. / 2020 – Em uma entrevista concedida ao The Guardian e publicada nesta segunda, 17, o cantor e compositor James Taylor admitiu ter sido uma "má influência para os Beatles" durante a época em que a banda gravava o White Album.

E o motivo pelo qual o músico norte-americano, que assim como o quarteto britânico também fez parte do selo Apple Records, acha isso? Heroína e opioides.

Ele conta que começou a usar esse tipo de drogas assim que se mudou para Londres, pois o acesso a elas era fácil e o preço bem baixo. "Eu não devia começar a falar sobre esse tipo de coisa. Não é um encontro de reabilitação", disse receoso, antes de efetivamente abordar o tema.

"Era possível comprar uma coisa chamada Collis Browne’s Chlorodyne [ou clordano de Collis Browne, um sedativo composto por uma solução de álcool com ópio, tintura de canábis e clorofórmio], que era uma medicação usada antigamente", contou. "Então você bebia algumas garrafas e ficava chapado".

Quando questionado sobre a dificuldade de parar de usar a droga, principalmente se considerado o ciclo de amigos com o qual ele andava, Taylor disse simplesmente: "Bom, eu era uma má influência para estar perto dos Beatles naquela época. Porque dei opioides ao John [Lennon]."

O cantor, porém, não soube dizer se foi ele próprio quem introduziu o vocalista dos Beatles a esse tipo de droga, mas sabe-se que em 1968, Lennon enfrentou um vício em heroína que contribuiu para o fim da banda.

Interview

‘I was a bad influence on the Beatles': James Taylor on Lennon, love and recovery
Jenny Stevens / https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/feb/17/james-taylor-i-was-a-bad-influence-on-the-beatles-lennon-love-and-a-life-in-song

The singer has written many beautiful songs – and was a muse for Joni Mitchell and Carole King. He reflects on his relationship with Mitchell and overcoming childhood trauma and heroin addiction

17 fev. / 2020 – James Taylor looks out at the sprawling London skyline. “This is where it started,” he says. “The moment.” He made his first trip here in 1968, playing for Paul McCartney and George Harrison and becoming the first artist signed to the Beatles’ record label, Apple Records. This was before he moved to Laurel Canyon with the rest of the denim-draped California dreamers who defined the sound of the late 60s and far beyond. Before he met David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, Neil Young, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Carole King and Joni Mitchell. Before he and Mitchell fell in love. Before he wrote his pivotal album Sweet Baby James during a stint in a psychiatric hospital. Before his marriage to Carly Simon, which opened up his personal life – including his long battle with heroin addiction – to public consciousness. Before he sold 100m records, performed for the Obamas and the Clintons, and then, decades later, appeared on stage with one of the world’s biggest pop stars, Taylor Swift, who is named after him.

It has been quite the trip, he admits.

Taylor is in a reflective mood when we meet, and says he is always like this. “I’m a very self-centred songwriter. I always have been. It’s the personal stuff I like, for better or for worse.” He is here to promote his 19th album, American Standard; a covers album of the old standards and Broadway show tunes he was raised on. He says there was a period when his generation wanted to distance themselves from this music, but he now recognises it as “the pinnacle of American popular song ... It was sheet music, anyone would sing it, so the songs had to stand on their own. It’s what informed me as a songwriter, and others of my generation; Lennon and McCartney, Randy Newman, Elton [John] and Bernie [Taupin], Paul Simon ...”

He has also released an audio memoir – Break Shot – which takes him back to his turbulent early years, finishing with that first London trip. He is anxious, he says, about how the memoir will be received. It covers his father’s alcoholism and his brother’s death from the disease, as well as his own drug addiction, all of which, he worries, could be sensationalised. But the memoir is mostly about the shattering effect that early childhood trauma, addiction and grief can have generations later. It’s a subtle exploration of the “ripples”, as Taylor puts it.

Born in Boston in 1948, Taylor was, according to his memoir, “brought up devoted to progressive politics, self-improvement and the arts”. His father, a doctor, moved the family to the south when he became the dean of the medical school of the University of North Carolina; his mother didn’t want to go, and fought against the politics she found there. She saw the north-eastern state of Massachusetts as a “lost Eden” and would spend her days doing sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, on protests, and hauling her five kids to Martha’s Vineyard every summer to “restore our Yankee credentials”. Not long after moving the family to North Carolina, Taylor’s father was assigned to the navy. He spent two years on an expedition to the south pole, where he held the keys to the liquor cabinet of 100 men. He went to the bottom of the world and returned with a serious drinking problem.

“There’s a mysterious energy to someone who lives with a tragedy like this,” Taylor says of his father. “It’s like when you take your report card home from school and you know that if you hand it to him before he’s had his first drink, you’re going to get one response and if you hand it to him after his first drink, you’ll get another.”

Was his dad abusive? “No,” he says firmly. “My father was a remarkable and powerful and beautiful guy who self-medicated with alcohol ... But he was by no means an abusive or stumble-bum or knee-walking or ditch-sleeping drunk.”

Still, an unpredictable parent is rarely a recipe for a stable adulthood. “Sure,” he says. “But complacent happiness is not a gift of the gods, either.”

Taylor began playing guitar in his teens, strumming along to his parents’ record collection: Harry Belafonte, Nina Simone, Judy Garland, Lead Belly. Fingerpicking became his vernacular as much as his lyrics. His first big hit, Fire and Rain, about the suicide of a friend, includes the themes that came to define his songwriting – the precarity of our emotional lives, happiness as something to be treasured and the natural world’s capacity for renewal. The line “I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend,” prompted Carole King to write You’ve Got a Friend for him in response.

It was during high school that he and his family began to unravel. He was admitted to the McLean psychiatric hospital at 16 with what we would now probably call depression and anxiety, staying there for nine months. Two of his siblings followed him there. “When I jumped the tracks and went to McLean, it’s like they thought: ‘Yeah, that’s right, we need this help.’ It became an option.”

When Taylor left hospital, the fund set aside for his university tuition had been spent on his treatment and he decided to go to New York to pursue music. He formed a band, the Flying Machine, and developed a heroin habit. “To be able to take a juice that solves your internal stress ...” he trails off. “One of the signs that you have an addiction problem is how well it works for you at the very beginning. It’s the thing that makes you say: ‘Damn, I like my life now.’ That’s when you know you shouldn’t do it again.” His wasn’t the addiction of rock mythology, chaotic and glamourised. Taylor says mostly he used the drug to “get normal”.

One day, his father called him in New York. “He said: ‘James, you don’t sound too good.’ I wasn’t.” Taylor was strung out, broke and still very unwell. His dad drove through the night, arriving at his West Side apartment the next day. “It’s a cynical thing,” he says. “But, you know, a mother really has to be there. But a father? Well, you can construct a father out of a few good episodes.” It was on that long drive home that his father warned him opiates were like kryptonite to the Taylors. “As a kid, his uncle said to him: ‘If you’re a Taylor and you touch an opiate, you’re finished. You can just kiss your entire life goodbye.’” His father’s family had owned a sanatorium, the Broadoaks asylum in Morganton, North Carolina. “After the civil war, there was a huge opiate problem. A lot of the business in the sanatorium was treating addiction – a lot of mental health problems were secretly addiction problems,” he says.

Taylor boarded a flight to London shortly after New Year’s Day 1968. His friend had given him the number of Peter Asher, the brother of McCartney’s then girlfriend Jane Asher; he had just been hired as a talent scout for the Beatles’ new label. Asher liked Taylor’s demo and arranged an audition with McCartney and Harrison. “I was very nervous. But I was also, you know, on fire,” he laughs. “In my sort of mellow, sensitive way.” He played his song Something In the Way She Moves (a line Harrison pinched for the opening line of his song Something) and they signed him then and there to make his eponymous first album. At the time, the Beatles were making the White Album. “We intersected in the studio a lot,” says Taylor. “They were leaving as I was coming in. I often came in early and would sit in the control room and listen to them recording – and hear playbacks of what they had just cut.” Did you hang out together? “Yeah,” he says. I ask if the band was unravelling by that point. “Well, it was a slow unraveling, but it was also an extremely creative unravelling.”

Heroin and other opiates were very available and very cheap in London at the time. “I picked up pretty soon after I got here,” he says. “I started by …” he pauses. “I shouldn’t go into this kind of stuff. It’s not an AA meeting.” Then he continues. “But you used to be able to buy something called Collis Browne’s Chlorodyne, which was an old-fashioned medication. Essentially, it was a tincture of opium, so you’d drink a couple of bottles and you could take the edge off.” Was it hard to kick the habit, given the circles he was moving in? “Well, I was a bad influence to be around the Beatles at that time, too.” Why? “Because I gave John opiates.” Did you introduce him to them? “I don’t know,” he says. Lennon, by many accounts, picked up a heroin habit in 1968 that contributed to an unhealable rift in the band.

A year later, after being released from his Apple contract, Taylor went to a rehab facility and moved to Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles, a deep-green crease that runs through the Hollywood Hills – which was becoming a haven for the young, politically aware and creative. It was, he says, a rare instance where something heralded as a golden age really was one. A new generation of singer-songwriters came up through the Troubadour nightclub, their work focusing on the internal and domestic, and borrowing from the roots of American song: country, bluegrass, folk.

“It really was a perfect moment, that Laurel Canyon period,” Taylor says. “Carole lived up there, Joni and I lived in her house there for the better part of a year. The record companies were relatively benign and there were people in them who cared about the music and the artists – it hadn’t become a corporate monolith yet. There was a sense of there being a community: myself, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Crosby, Stills and Nash. David Geffen was in the mix a lot. Linda Ronstadt, Peter Asher, Harry Nilsson. You know, it was pretty much what they say. Things really worked well.”

While in rehab, he had written most of the songs for his second album, his breakout, Sweet Baby James. He enlisted King to play keyboard; he then played on her 1971 album Tapestry. His relationship with Mitchell lasted a year, much of it on the road: she was composing the songs for her classic album Blue – he, meanwhile, was writing his third album, Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon, including the gorgeous You Can Close Your Eyes, written for her. But behind the scenes, their relationship was struggling. As Taylor’s career took off, his addiction dragged him down again. Mitchell mourned their split on her album For the Roses in the song Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire, a devastating eyewitness account of a person “bashing in veins for peace”. I ask Taylor if he is able to listen to Mitchell’s music from that time. “Blue, oh yes,” he says. “And she sings so beautifully on my songs.” What about Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire? He goes quiet. “It’s not like listening to me,” he whispers.

What is it like? He hangs his head for some time, silent. “I’m not able to listen to it,” he says.

I ask if he’s still in touch with Mitchell and his face lights up for the first time. “We’ve continued to have a friendship and, well, I recently sort of re-engaged with Joni, and that’s been wonderful. She came to a show of mine recently, at the Hollywood Bowl, which was an unusual thing for her to do.” Mitchell has been recovering from a period of ill health after a brain aneurysm in 2015. “But she’s recovering, she’s coming back – which is an amazing thing to be able to do – and I wonder what she has to tell us about that.” When you say “coming back” does he mean she’s making music? “Yes, I think she’s coming back musically ... It’s amazing to see her come back to the surface.”

Taylor has four children: two with his first wife, Carly Simon, whom he married in 1972. And two with his third wife, Kim Smedvig, whom he married in 2001. Given the experience with his own dad, is he critical of himself as a father? “God, yes, definitely,” he says. “You know, my kids actually say to me: ‘You’re not your dad, you know? You can relax. You’re in no danger of repeating it again. For one thing, you’re sober, and for another thing you’re here and paying attention.’” He was 26 when he married Simon, who was four years his senior. He talks about their marriage very rarely. But she devoted most of her 2015 memoir to unpicking it. “I was very young,” he says. “And I would be an addict for another 10 years. I mean, you marry an addict, you just have no idea who this person is, and he doesn’t have any idea who he is either. It’s terrible.”

In 1983, Taylor got sober, attending AA. But it is an ongoing process, getting clean. He took methadone to address his heroin usage, and that became a “powerful addiction” in itself. “It really lives in your bones; I mean, it just takes for ever to get over it.” It helped to see addiction as a “physical disease”, too. “You’ve trained your body to accept a substance when you feel stress, but that help doesn’t last for ever. It has a negative progression. That’s the only reason people get better. And so you’re left with a feeling that when you encounter stress, you feel it physically, and it feels like withdrawing. It’s a nasty way to feel. And the only advice I give to people who are recovering from addiction is that physical exercise is the only antidote to feeling like you can’t stand being in your own skin.” Is that how it feels? “It’s terrible. It’s like you don’t want to be here,” he says, motioning to his body. “But in here is where you live.” For 15 years, Taylor exercised for hours every day: running and rowing. “It set me free,” he says.

He hopes this year to perform to help get out the vote ahead of the US presidential election. He met Donald Trump once, “in an airport. I just thought of him as a frivolous, minor player. It drives me crazy how unworthy he is of our attention and how much of it he has.” He is rooting for the Democratic candidates Deval Patrick and Elizabeth Warren – both from Massachusetts, where he now lives. “But at this point, I’d be happy to see pretty much anyone in – the bar is so low. Because the very worst person possible that you could think to be heading the thing is there. It’s like the Confederacy has won the civil war.”

As the interview ends, Taylor gets up and shakes my hand. I thank him for his honesty, and tell him his experiences – and the thoughtful way he talks about recovery – are doubtless helpful to other addicts. He leaves the room, comes back and shakes my hand again. Then he leans in and gives me a long, warm embrace, before heading off to be photographed, walking into the light again.

James Taylor’s new album American Standard (Fantasy Records) is released on 28 February