A Review: John By Cynthia Lennon

 

A Review

John

by

Cynthia Lennon

One Giant Step For Somebody

Review by R.E. Prindle

Lennon, Cythia: John, Three Rivers Press,  2005

Remember what the door knob said…

–Grace Slick

We built this city on Rock and Roll.

–Jefferson Starship

If you want to be a girl of mine

You’d better bring it with you when you come,

–Trad.

John and Cynthia- Sometime In Liverpool

     Cynthia Lennon’s autobiography of her life with John Lennon opens the door to a number of possibilities of which I’ll explore one, at least, here.

     Let’s begin with Lonnie Donegan’s 1955 hit The Rock Island Line.  Lonnie was the originator of his own genre- Skiffle Music.  Skiffle was all the rage in the British world from England to Australia to New Zealand while passing very lightly over the States except for the fortunate few of which I was one.  Rock Island Line was a major hit in the US though.

     Lonnie, may he rest in peace, was also the originator of the Big Beat.  Of course Lennon and most of the young English rockers studied at Lonnie’s feet.  The first band Lennon formed, the Quarrymen, was a Skiffle band.  That was back in the fifties before the second stage of the big change kicked off.  The first stage began about 1950 with Johnny Ray and his song Cry.

     Eisenhower had the world pretty well organized in 1960 before John Kennedy stole the baton from the intended successor, Richard Nixon.  With the accession of Kennedy the American personality or identity, such as it was, began to disintegrate- I mean in the psychological sense.

     The Celts tried to establish Kennedy as the second coming of King Arthur and his Camelot.  Not the smartest thing they could have done; a couple bullets fired in Dallas on November 22, 1963 put a period to that dream.  By the then the sixties were fairly launched about to begin in earnest in January of 1964 when Lennon’s next group, the Beatles, hit.

     The Beatles began as a Big Beat band rooted in the fifties.  Seized by the avant garde they were made the avatar of the sixties.  In their own way they launched the sixties although the makins’ were already out of the can.  Kennedy was shot almost in December and in January the Fab Four washed his memory out on the Ed Sullivan Show.  The Kennedy assassination was so then, then.  The Beatles were NOW.  IS in capital letters.

     While the Beatles were revamping fifties music they edged into the future with modified Prince Valiant haircuts and collarless suit jackets.  They were then NEW emerging into a brave new world.

     Almost at the beginning of 1960 the art world was shaken by the emergence of Pop Art.  Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and especially Andy Warhol with his Campbell’s Soup Can set the sixties on its ear.  On

Premier example of Pop Art

the film scene the James Bond series with its new sensibility began.  Bond also was a revelation portending changes with unintended consequences.

     Pop Art would figure signficantly in Cynthia Lennon’s life in a few years when one of its more laughable practitioners, Yoko Ono, would step into her life and filch her husband from her.  In fact Pop Art would be inextricably linked with the record industry.  All the pop motifs would find their way onto record covers with increasing frequency.  Tiny Alice would have a cover that opened like a match book.  Talking Head’s colored disc would even become a happening designed by Rauschenberg himself.  The burgeoning poster business would find its way into record sleeves.  Astonishing packages never seen before in the record business although perhaps anticipated by the experimental ESP label of NYC.  Some interesting stuff.   Perhaps Milton Glaser’s poster of Bob Dylan could run for the distinction of the most popular poster design of the whole era.  It was innovation itself at the time although not quite so fresh today.

     Now, all this was happening so fast and from so many directions that it was impossible to get it all or even keep up on what you did get; after all people had lives to live.

     In the San Francisco Bay Area where I was during the sixties the Scene was especially heavy.  I wasn’t in the thick of things but a little off to the side.  Thus while the UC Berkeley Free Speech Brouhaha took center stage in the East Bay, Ken Kesey, the Merry Pranksters and the Acid Tests were simmering on the Peninsula, but actually invading the middle class especially at Stanford and UC Berkeley.  The San Fransciso Mime Troupe was very important in the early stages while Bill Graham was commercializing the Trips Festival with his Fillmore shows and Chet Helms was organizing the Avalon Ballroom out at the beach.  The posters for the ballrooms which epitomized the psychedelic was the first inkling I had that something ‘new’ was happening.  I don’t know how quick on the uptake I was  but the first inkling of New York Pop I had was 1966-67 when I opened a poster store soon to be a record store.

     LA, always commercial, would nevertheless provide the great Ron Cobb political cartoons for the LA Free Press one of the best of the Hippie papers soon to degenerate into porn as did the Berkeley Barb and all the rest.  R. Crumb in San Francisco became the king of Hippie porn which characterized the movement from then on.  The scene was then set for George and Pattie Harrison’s famous descent on the Haight-Ashbury that disappointed them so.

     This brief sketch only contains a few of the highlights of the period.  It was into this world that John and Cynthia Lennon stepped unprepared.  Both Cynthia and John came from a background of very low expectations.  Cynthia’s dreams were very modest while per her John’s dreaming was no bigger than reaching the tops of the pops in England.

     Indeed the much touted German clubs showed no promise of a future whatever.  Essentially playing in brothels in Hamburg one wonders what the ‘lads’ were thinking of the whole process.  The wonder is that they paid enough attention to hone their skills.  One of those making lemonade from lemons situations.

     Only the greatest good luck showed them to success and fortune.  They would have labored in the vineyard for a while and then drifted off into jobs but for the fact that an entrepreneurial romantic by the name of Brian Epstein saw them as the vehicle to realize his own dreams.  He had the direction and energy to galvanize their careers.  Still they were rejected by all the labels until a producer, George Martin, apparently heard what the rest of the world would hear and agreed to record them.  It was then that the unbelievable happened elevating the Beatles into the most successful pop group ever.  It was success far beyond their imaginations.  With that success came challenges that neither John nor Cynthia could meet.  The fact that they failed is no reflection on either one; they came from very low expectations and having fallen down the rabbit hole they were slightly unprepared.  ‘One side makes you larger, the other side makes you smaller.’

     To this time in their lives neither had even eaten at anything other than the English equivalent of McDonald’s, fish and chips or whatever.  Now in one great step they were introduced into the haut ton by their manager Brian Epstein.  Cynthia leads us to believe that Epstein gave special attention to John over the other ‘lads.’  As Epstein was a homosexual and as other sources, Peter Brown, Goldman actually state that Epstein seduced Lennon he obviously had a crush on John seeking to mold him in his own image.  Indeed, John may have been his incentive for taking the Beatles on.  Lust at first sight.

     John had an attractive flip attitude that left the impression that he was much better educated than he was.  Actually he left Art School, already a step down from the top,  flunked out or whatever preferring to devote himself to his guitar chords.  Most of the rockers were in the same situation.  It’s amazing that their fans looked to them for salvation.  This was tragic, because the generation invested all their hopes and dreams in these muscians attributing universal knowledge and genius to them, each and everyone.  While they all did changes on certain political and social themes there was an appearance of ‘deep’ knowledge.  Being anti-pollution was a badge of authority.  Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane made the mistake if, one hopes, jesting that one should never trust anyone over thirty; this while she, John and others were about twenty-nine.

     The phrase stuck.  Those under thirty trusted these youthful, perhaps well-meaning rock stars.  Being somewhat older at the time I could only see some very ordinary boys and girls who were just youthful wiseacres as we all were in that phase of our journey through life.  Give me a break.

     The most revered of all were the three Beatles John, Paul and George with Ringo thought of more as the court jester.  John seemed to take his role most seriously as the guru of the generation, especially after he abandoned Cynthia for, spare me, the psychotic Yoko Ono.

     Her abandonment by John for Yoko Ono is of course the most traumatic incident in her story.  One can only commiserate with Cynthia.  Then one has to search for reasons why; there was certainly no physical attraction there.  Lennon did release a solo album called Mind Games so perhaps the best place to look is the mental.  Lennon’s success must have placed great stresses of various kinds on him.  The transition from a fair degree of poverty to one of a very large income to great wealth under the management of Yoko Ono would be psychologically unsettling in itself.  Cynthia was unable to transit from poverty to wealth always remaining a lower middle class haus frau while John appears to have lacked the social climbing instincts of, say, Mick Jagger.

     Musicians in general are held in very low esteem by the social elite so without unbounded desire and chutzpah, an ability to endure slights of the most painful kind it is highly unlikely that a musician would ever find acceptance in society.  The aristocrats, Marrianne Faithfull describes as associating with Jagger appear to me to be more of the Black Sheep variety.  So, Lennon may have been experiencing some frustration at that level.

     At the same time there are numerous flatterers who are adept at putting ideas of omnipotence into your head not only intimating but saying that you are godlike.  Even though one rejects the notion on the conscious level still a feeling of super powers creeps into your subliminal mind.  One feels invulnerable, that one can do what’s never been done, that one can do drugs with impunity.  There was never a time when the availability of drugs was ever greater or more socially acceptable.

     At the time rumors abounded which have since turned into facts.  During the Kennedy administration there was one Dr. Feelgood operating in New York to whom the social elite went for their drugs.  His name was Dr. Max Jacobson and he was your friendly amphetamine pusher.  His speed cocktails were extraordinary and they lasted for days.   It’s comforting to know that President John F. Kennedy was amphetamine fueled while he was making those difficult international decisions- like Cuba.  Nothing like having an A-man on the job.  He wasn’t alone, VP Lyndon Johnson, followed in his footsteps into the office of Dr. Feelgood.  He would have found his place at the end of the line of the NYC elite.

     One person who took the good doctor’s prescription said that he went blind for three days staying high for several.  Max was the economic type, dirty needles too.

     At the same time Dr. Timothy Leary was sending everyone from prison inmates to Beat poet Allen Ginsberg tripping into inner space with his free handed distribution of LSD.  Kennedy was involved in that too.

     Prior to their arrival for the Sullivan show we are led to believe that the Mop Tops had only used pep pills in Hamburg to fuel their twelve hour sets.  We are told that Bob Dylan was the one who turned them on to La Cucuracha, the most mild of the intoxicants.  From there the boys graduated to LSD through spiked drinks or food.

     Just as Harrison’s wife, Patti, records a spiked introduction to LSD so does Cynthia Lennon.  Cynthia quite properly was revolted by drugs having no use for them.  John was quite the opposite.  He embraced LSD apparently ingesting regularly for long periods of time.  As he would describe it, thousands of trips.  At that point in my estimation the marriage was over.  There is nothing for which Cynthia has to reproach herself except for her small divorce settlement.  Nothing disintegrates the personality like drugs.

The Ghost In The Machine- Albert Hofmann

     The drug influence was followed by a change in their music patterned after Dylan.  When I first heard the Rubber Soul album I found it extremely noisy and unpleasant.  This album was probably influenced by the Band’s playing behind Dylan on the ’65-’66 tour or perhaps the Bringing It All Back Home and Highway ’61 albums.  It seems p;robable to me that the song Norwegian Wood commemorated  Dylan’s turning them on to marijuana.  The girl obviously represents Dylan.

      Succeeding albums would aim for a ‘heavier’ feel with more social significance.  As Lennon said in his ’80 Playboy interview, I Am The Walrus was written in imitation of Dylan.

     The cover of Rubber Soul was traditional uninfluenced by pop art trends.  The succeeding cover in the US, the famous ‘Butcher’ cover would be widely interpreted in the US as a comment on the Viet Nam War.  It may have been meant as a pun- prime cuts of  both meat and record tracks, but I don’t know.  Whether there was a Pop Art influence isn’t clear.

     The cover for the following Revolver by Klaus Voorman seems to indicate an awareness of Pop.  For a band that was thought to be on the cutting edge of everything there are only two covers very avant garde with neither being very satisfying to me.

Acid Art- Victor Vasarely

     Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band that follows Revolver is a complete Pop Art package.  A bizarre and macabre conception it does succeed.  The grave in the foreground with the floral Beatles is chilling, perhaps a presage of the break up of the band.  As Dylan said:  If you’re not busy being born you’re busy dying.’   The Beatles are pictured in dead black and white looking down mournfully on their grave while the newly born Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band stand front and center in vibrant living color.  Obviously the one has risen from the other.

     Behind the band are row on row of ‘ancestors’ or, as was commonly assumed, influences.  In fact members of the band contributed only a few of the names while the rest were contributed by others.  Dylan is certainly among the pictures.  The album comes complete with a childhood toy, a sheet of cut outs, making a complete Pop Art package.  They could have had a designed inner sleeve but they overlooked that.  Peter Blake, the main designer, is known as a Pop Artist.

     The musical content follows the downer social significance motif with aural pyrotechnics such as had not been heard on record before.  The release, as everyone is aware, was a complete smash, but it went beyond smash into realms not achieved until Michael Jackson’s Thriller.  Thriller failed to excite as did Sgt. Peppers.  That summer of ’67 was literally a surround of Sgt. Peppers.  It was almost the only record anyone played.  The Beatles easily trumped Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde  of the summer of  ’66.

     The rest of the Beatles’  covers are pedestrian.  The White LP probably influenced by One was trite at the time.

     Cynthia seems to lack all understanding of what tremendous pressures the very unstable Lennon was subjected to , how his mind was being affected by adulation from the fans and respect from the world at large.  Kid me, being named one of the three most influential men in the world wouldn’t have inflated the head of a Liverpool loser?  My god, the Beatles even sung ‘I’m a loser.’  I couldn’t believe anyhone would sing such a song much less the Beatles who were clearly winners.  How does one endure thinking of oneself as a loser on one hand and one of the most influential men in the world on the other?

     At the same time that Lennon was enlarged Cynthia shrunk into the Liverpool realities of her youth.  The couple had a mansion but unfamiliar with so much space Cynthia preferred to live in one small room!  Clearly she was not equal to the demands of her situation.

     The situation became critical when Lennon began mass consumption of drugs, including heroin, which Cynthia correctly declined to do while at the same time the poisonous Yoko Ono injected herself into Lennon’s life.  There was no hope for Cynthia.  Yoko Ono was a walking disaster looking for a place to happen- and then there was John.

Yoko Ono- Single Fantasy

     Quite frankly Yoko Ono’s ‘career’ was going nowhere.  Born in 1933 she was 33 in 1966 when she began her assault on John who was 25.

     The sexual dynamic is that Lennon seemed to prefer older women than himself having a masochistic submission impulse.  Cynthia herself was a year older.  She too apparently sought security in younger men.  Her second husband was two years younger and her third six.  She seemed to lack the dominating impulse to make such marriages work.  Ono had it in spades.

     While John was by this time psychotic, Ono had been so from childhood, in addition she seems to suffer from extreme cognitive dissonance.  Ono got the rock critic Robert Palmer to shill for her in her 1992 release, Onobox.  In the essay Palmer states:

     It is quite likely that having John Lennon fall in love with her was the worst thing that could have happened to Yoko Ono’s career as an artist.

     Notice the lack of mention of falling in love with Lennon.  This was written, I almost said, dictated to Palmer, in 1992 twelve years after Lennon’s death.  No serious critic could have written that line so one must assume that it was dictated by Ono herself.  The line shows how far she has distanced herself from reality.

     Ono was in fact, a poor little rich girl.  As a woman she felt inferior to the male writing such pieces as ‘Woman Is The Nigger Of The World.’   Once again cognitive dissonance.  Yoko Ono was never in the position of being  ‘a nigger in the world.’  It is true that her father advised her against attempting composing believing that women didn’t make good composers.  How wrong was he, hey?  Ono milked every man she was ever with before actually going into the dairy business herself.  Secondly, having chosen to enter the Western world as an Asian she places her artistic neglect on the twin facts that he is a woman and an Asian.  It never occurs to her that her art is unpleasing.

     As an artist, whether woman or not, Asian or not, she had nothing to offer the art loving peoples of the world.  In this increasingly globalized world of the sixties being Asian meant nothing while being a woman held no one with talent back.  Indeed, male artists were increasingly being suppressed in favor of women in all the arts.  If all girl rock bands isn’t an oxymoron I don’t know what is.

     By her own admission she thought she was an influential person in the New York City art world of the early sixties after an apprenticeship of one year even gaining  ’an international reputation.’  As she told May Pang:  I was famous before I met John.  So, one asks how does one reconcile her imagined great success with the feeling of being held back as an Asian and woman?

      She rented a loft for fifty dollars a month which she coyly implies that as a starving artist the money was not easy to find.  Well, Daddy was only a phone call away, she should have reached out and touched him.  You can be sure he wasn’t going to let his little girl starve.  By comparison I was paying 125.00 a month for an apartment in the Bay Area.  I think we can dismiss the impoverished struggling artist scenario as so much more cognitive dissonance.

     Ono spread herself pretty thin apparently attempting to cover all aspects of the avant garde.  She’s keen on belonging to the avant garde.  In music she patterned herself after John Cage and that weird contemporary ‘classical music’ approach with perhaps more than a nod to the early electronic composers such as Robert Maxwell who she mentions.  She began her career in 1969 between the end of the Absract Expression mode and the beginningof the Pop movement so she was too late for the one and too early for the other.  She and Lennon would try to rectify this in 1971 by doing obeisance to the Pop guru, Andy Warhol.

     In 1961 she threw a party and was devastated that a snow storm discouraged the uptown crowd she had invited from coming.  At least she said there was a snow storm.  This may be another instance of cognitive dissonance.  As she was an actual nobody she had no reason to expect society people to attend, snow storm or no snow storm.   Nevertheless she was devastated, leaving town for Japan shortly thereafter.  One may question where she obtained the fare for that flight when she had difficulty of meeting a fifty dollar rent bill.

     In Japan she acquired her first husband simultaneously being committed to an insane asylum.  As difficult as it may be to believe, her  soon to be second husband, Tony Cox, heard these marvelous things about Ono in NYC deciding to fly to Japan to look her up.  He found her thoroughly doped staggering around the halls of the asylum.  He succeeded in getting her released then he, Ono and her first husband formed a menage a trois.  The first husband wisely was the first to leave so Cox claimed the prize and the couple returned to NYC in 1964 so she is having an eventful four years.  Shortly after their arrival they pulled up stakes and headed further East to London.  Of the move Ono says:

     I thought (the) avant garde world in New York was still very exciting but that it was starting to become an institution in itself, and there were rules and regulations in an invisible way, and I just wanted to get out of it.  I never considered myself a member of any group.  I was just doing my own thing.

     That is just another way of saying that the art scene was a cliquish group in its terminal stages that was difficult or impossible to break into so unable to do so Ono was ‘just doing her own thing.’  It might be noted however that the NYC art scene was or was in becoming a nearly totally homosexual affair.  At any rate we have evidence of sour grapes- I never considered myself a member of any group.  And the result of rejection-  I was just doing my own thing.

     After her rejection she ‘composed’ a musical piece called Wall Piece For Orchestra in which she knelt on a stage and repeatedly banged her heard on the floor.  Today that would be called ‘acting out.’

     Off to new worlds to conquer in London and at the Indica Gallery of John Dunbar, the resident ‘head’ art gallery.  Now, at this point she ‘ruined her career’ by pursuing John Lennon until he caught her.  I imagine that she had been shrewdly observing his career and undoubtedly came to the psychological conclusion that he was a dependent personality who could be easily manipulated by the older maternal type with the right touch.  That John Lennon could be made dependent on this woman eight years his senior is proof positive.  Indeed, John even referred to her as Mother.

     Cynthia for whom the role was impossible correctly assessed the situation noting the influence of Lennon’s Aunt Mimi who brought him up.  Ono courted Lennon, interfering directly in his marriage.  Ono was quite willing to drug herself along with Lennon so that both were heroin addicts.  Ono thus established a sado-masochistic control over Lennon that Cynthia had no chance of breaking.

     Rather than ruining Ono’s career the ‘third most influential man’ in the world gave her a stage on which to perform that she could never have found on her own.  She now considered herself a collaborator with the Beatles.  The injection of the Cage and Maxwell garbage combined with Lennon’s erratic behavior produced the nonsense of Revolution #9 on the White Album.

     Lennon on drugs and under the influenceof Ono, who had her motives, according to Dire Corrector’s blog quoting the biographer of Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now, says:

     The meditation had essentially precipitated a nervous breakdnown which was not helped by John’s tremendous drug intake.  On May 18, 1966 he summoned a meeting of the Beatles at Apple and announced to them that he was Jesus Christ…the night after he told the other Beatles that he was the Savior, he finally called Yoko Ono and told her to come over.

     Quite obviously Lennon was either teetering on the brink or had fallen over the edge.   If he hadn’t broken with Cynthia by this time it is quite clear that apart from a certain inappropriateness of being wed to the Savior she was quite innocent of causing the break in any manner and should have a clear conscience.

     Lennon’s state of mind would explain the insensitive manner in which he broke with Cynthia and its aftermath.  The man must not have been in his right mind.  While easing Cynthia out was relatively easy, from Ono’s end Tony Cox to whom she was still married was not such a simple matter.  One wonders why he would fight so hard to keep a women who was so psychotic.  Perhaps it was their daughter who he later took into hiding to keep her away from Ono.  Justly so, it seems.

     At any rate by ’69 Ono and Lennon were free to marry.  Definitely by this point Lennon had all but surrendered his identity to Ono.  She was now in possession of the reputation of one of the three most influential men in the world.  Blending her identity with his she was about to become hermaphroditic.  Perhaps Lennon was overawed by her avant garde credentials, such as they were, as well as whatever passed for her musical sensibilities.

     She became Yoko Ono Lennon while he legally changed his name to John Ono Lennon so they both became Ono Lennons.  After a number of happenings which one must believe were entirely Ono’s conceptions, such as the ‘bed in’ in Holland and the organization of the Plastic Ono Band, the pair settled in New York in an apartment building known as the Dakota.  The Dakota was a connection to Ono’s past fulfilling an old desire to surpass those uptown types who she felt had slighted her.

     In that connection also the cover of the Plastic Ono Band is a fulfillment of an old desire of Ono’s.  While a child she witnessed the fire bombing of Tokyo in the US attempt to bring an end to the war.  The blue sky was obliterated by the billowing clouds of smoke.  While she didn’t witness Hiroshima yet she imagined the same sky as that over Tokyo.   She then developed a blue sky obsession.  If you notice the cover of the Plastic Ono Band is just a blue sky.  One assumes then that Ono’s plans were coming together.

     The NYC art world of 1960-’61 had shifted totally, the Abstract Expressionists she had tried to piggyback on were gone having been replaced by Pop Art of which Andy Warhol was the reigning doyen.  If the Abstract Expressionists had been exclusive Warhol was nothing if not inclusive.  He worshipped celebrities and Lennon was the number one celebrity.  Himself a groupie and maximum social climber he welcomed an association with the Onos.  For Yoko Ono the association with the leaderof the NYC art scene was her dream come true.  Nothing but blue skies from now on.

     In the accompanying picture you will notice that Warhol is seated in between a standing Yoko Ono with one hand on her right tit while his hand is on a drugged out looking John Ono with his hand on Warhol’s crotch.  The symbolism is quite clear.  The standing Yoko

The transfer of power.

 is the master of two emasculated males who happen to be two of the most influential men in the world.  She ain’t no nigger no more, Maggie’s Farm is a thing of the past, yes, men are now niggers in relation to herself.  Warhol as an artist takes precedence over the disposable oafish John Ono.  Yoko is tallest and standing, Warhol is second tallest and sitting while the now disposable John is lowest, lying on his back.  The future is clear.  Study John’s face; study all three faces.

     The sexually besotted John Ono has surrendered his entire identity even as a musician allowing Yoko Ono to usurp his place by putting out those horrid hideous LP musical montrosities.  Robert Palmer aside, with song titles reminiscent of her head bashing days:  What A Bastard The World Is, I Felt Like Smashing My Face In A Glass Window,  Woman Of Salem (Witches), Coffin Car, Hell In Paradise and Walking On Thin Ice.  Clearly this woman had an unsettled, disturbed mind.

      Having usuped Lennon’s role and identity he became expendable.  Her problem now was to transfer his past and his wealth to herself thereby becoming Yoko-John Ono, Double Fantasy.  Two fantasies melding into her one personality.

     John Ono’s finances were, of course, in complete disorder.   As Yoko was soon to show billions of dollars were disappearing down a sink hole.  She rapidly organized his finances turning his money green.  Within short order the Onos were worth a hundred million or so which she would swell to a billion or more after John’s death.

     I imagine it was fairly easy to have John Ono give her a power of attorney, indeed he forked over his identity allowing her to function in his stead as himself.  An awesome abdication.  A POA would negate the need for a will, and indeed having made herself not only co-owner of John’s assets as well as his identity Yoko Ono would merely acquire full ownership leaving no assets to be willed.  Indeed, she could have turned him out penniless at any time.  When Cynthia was clamoring for a reading of the will she was wasting her breath; if a will existed, unlikely in itself, there would have been no assets to bequeath.

     Yoko Ono having now incorporated John Ono’s reputation and identity into her own had also incorporated the assets and with the assets the legacy of all copyrights held by John Lennon as the double fantasy melded into one fantasy.  The only obstacle to Yoko’s apotheosis  into man-woman was John himself as he was alive.  However John was only thirty-five.  To wait thirty-five years or more with a man she didn’t love or even like would be unbearable.  Some hard thinking was in order.

     She manipulated the poor dolt into thinking he was a boorish oaf who needed to go off to get himself together.  Rather than just sending him off she chose an employee, May Pang, an Asian like herself, to be John’s consort while away.

     In reading May Pang’s book, Loving John, it becomes clear that Yoko Ono was a master hypnotist.  She knew how to make suggestions and have people act on them.  Acccording to Pang she fixed an hypnotic glare on one, assuming an authoritative posture while intoning her suggestion.  She had the reputation of always getting her way.

     Of course her version of what happened is different than Pang’s.  Yoko having suggested she go  off with John, the act was soon consummated.  Pang insists she and John were in love, yet a year and a half later when Yoko called John back he came running.

     Thus, from 1975 to Double Fantasy in 1980 Yoko and John Ono were out of public life living as a double fantasy of Howard Hughes.  Then in 1980 Mark Chapman became the man who shot John Lennon.  There have been speculations that Chapman was hypnotized when he committed his deed.  Conspiracy theories therefore have sprung up.

     One must ask who the death of John Lennon benefited.  Two possible people.  Yoko One on one hand and possibly Chapman on the other.  On the one hand Yoko Ono achieved the psychotic desire to escape being the ‘nigger of the world’ by becoming John Ono Lennon while physically remaining the sweet little girl she had been before the fire bombing of Tokyo.  She was unable to manage the memory of that transformative experience.  In her mind, then, she became the prominent artist-musician of the world.

     I don’t believe the government had anything to do with the assassination.

     As we know Yoko Ono was a master hypnotist; the question is how did she find Mark Chapman and how did she hypnotize him?

     Earlier in the day Chapman had approached Lennon for an autograph.  He can be seen worshipfully  smiling beside his hero in the picture.  There appears to be no indication he meant to harm Lennon.  He might easily have shot him point blank at the time, yet when he came back in the afternoon with a voice in his head insistently saying:  Do it. Do it. Do it. he gunned his hero down.

     At the time Yoko Ono had dropped a few steps behind John.  In similar murder attempts, people step away from the intended victim so as not to be caught in the line of fire.  This may have been the case with Yoko.

     Certainly Yoko is opposed to Chapman’s release from prison even though he has fulfilled the twenty year requirement of twenty to life.  I doubt if he is a threat to society however he may be a threat to Yoko Ono if he were to remember or reveal the details leading up to his shooting of John Ono Lennon.

     Of course, I don’t know why Chapman shot but I do know that Yoko Ono Lennon was the sole beneficiary.  She left Cynthia holding the bag while she realized her double fantasy.

 

Double Fantasy- Yoko Looking Over John's Granny Glasses

 

A Review: Catherine James: Famous Groupies Of The Sixties

 

A Review

Catherine James

Dandelion: Memoir Of A Free Spirit

by

R.E. Prindle

 

I looked at the sea and it seemed to say,

“I took your baby from you away.”

I heard a voice cryin’ in the deep,

Come join me baby in my endless sleep.

Ran in the water, heart full of fear,

There in the breakers I saw her near.

Reached for my darlin’, held her to me,

Stole her away from the angry sea.

-Jody Reynolds- The Endless Sleep

Texts:

Des Barres, Pamela: Let’s Spend The Night Together, Chapter- The Elusive Miss James, Chicago Review Press, 2008

James,  Catherine: Dandelion Memoir Of A Free Spirit, St.  Martin’s, 2007

http://idynamo.wordpress.com/2008/11/10/a-review-pamela-des-barres-lets-spend-the-night-together/

 

     Dandelion by Catherine James is an excellent read whether you consider it a memoir, a novel, or based on a true story.  As a memoir it is a little too sketchy, while as a novel it is a charming read with some effective, real touches of pathos.  The tenderly related death scenes of  her Grandmother and mother may not rank with the passing of Little Nell but they do choke you up a bit.

     Dandelion was apparently written by Miss James unaided by a co-author.  When one considers that she had no schooling beyond the seventh grade this is a remarkable achievement.  In the explanation of her skill, apart from a native intelligence, at a rather advanced age she returned to Jr. College where she took a writing class apparently with good effect.  After a remarkable childhood and youth she is now entering an equally remarkable old age, uh, maturity.

     Miss James had a childhood a bit out of the ordinary in its horridness, a crazy mother, and a succession of housing changes including a stint in a reformatory and a couple years in an orphanage.  My own childhood experiences parallel those of Miss James to some extent so I think I can write of her situation with some sympathy.

     Miss james’ narrative is a coherent psychological whole progressing from beginning to end in an impressive manner, but I am only going to deal with the first half of her memoir.

     I understand the following:  Catherine’s mother, Diana, was vain of her appearance while aspiring to a recording and performing career.  She did succeed in recording an LP titled Dian And The Greenbrier Boys.  I’m guessing that she had no intention of having children but as she married at seventeen on an impulse Catherine is probably a result of that impulse.

     Diana probably then resented her daughter for inhibiting her ability to realize her ambitions.  She then took her frustrations out on her child.  She apparently developed a Hydelike personality in relation to her child.  Mad to the nth degree.  On her death bed she c0nfessed to Catherine that ‘the witches got her.’  One assumes then that Diana was what in the old days was known as being ‘possessed’ by the ‘witches’ when she was around her child.  In a manner of speaking she wasn’t responsible for her actions toward her daughter.  She was severely psychotic.

     By all rights Miss James should have developed into a schizophrenic.  That she didn’t is the result of peculiarity of mind that I share.  Like Miss James I had some difficult years and like her I was able to maintain a separate identity in a world seemingly insane.

     When Catherine’s mother divorced her father she was placed in a high class orphanage, call it a boarding school perhaps, for a period of time.  Understandably Catherine’s notion of time is hazily remembered at this period although she seems to have retained startlingly clear memories beginning from about the year two.  Catherine has no memory of an explanation being given to her for the removal to the boarding school.  It just happened one day.  She was inexplicably dropped off where she remained uncontested by any of her family until one day Grandmother Mimi picked her up from the home.  Catherine lived for perhaps two years with her grandparents without any communication from mother until for some reason her mother reclaimed her.  Perhaps because she had remarried.  The marriage flopped and after some time her mother took up with Travis Edmundson (deceased this year) of the Bud and Travis folk duo.  Her mother had aspirations to be a folksinger having, as mentioned, actually recorded an album as Dian And The Greenbrier Boys.  Dian was shortened from Diana.  More exotic.

     According to Catherine Travis was as bizarre as her mother with the result that at the tender age of ten or eleven she left the house.  The police picked her up but she refused to give them any information.  Stangely they sent her to Los Padrinos Girl’s Reformatory in Downey, California.  She either was or believes she was committed until she was eighteen.  This seems extraordinary to me, although stranger things have happened I’m sure.  But to lock a very young girl up without charges, trial and sentencing for six or seven years boggles the mind.

     With her child safely behind bars, Diana renounced her daughter making her a ward of the State.  Good God! Talk about cruel and inhuman.  One can’t be sure exactly what Catherine knew of what was going on but Diana and Travis refused to allow the girl to be released to her grandparents care.  Since her mother  had made the girl a ward of the State it isn’t clear what she would have had to say about it.  Her grandparents now sought to reclaim her but after legal maneuvers the best they could do for her was to get her released to an orphanage.  Orphanages are slight improvements over lockups.

      Here Catherine becomes intentionally vague.  Her grandfather was named Al Newman and he wrote musical scores for the movies.  The only Al Newman who wrote for the movies I have been able to locate over the internet is Alfred Newman.  Alfred Newman wrote scores for about a hundred movies receiving an incredible amount of awards.  Catherine mentions that when she was staying with her grandparents a large number of Hollywood film people visited the home including Harpo and Chico Marx.  I would assume that she is coyly indicating that her grandparents were the Alfred Newmans.

     If that’s so then her mother’s maiden name was Diana Newman and Randy Newman must therefore be Catherine’s cousin.  Now, she was placed in a country club Jewish orphanage.  Her grandfather Al Newman, she tells us, was a benefactor of the orphanage, so she assumes that is what got a Catholic girl into a Jewish orphanage.  If Al Newman was a benefactor then whether he was the famous Alfred Newman who was Jewish or not, Al Newman must have been Jewish.  In that case it shouldn’t have been that difficult to place her in the Jewish orphanage.  Even so, she says, she was not allowed to visit her grandparents on weekends.  An inexplicable lack of clout, but this is Catherine’s story.

     She implies that efforts were made to convert her from Catholicism to Judaism which she stoutly resisted.  This all requires some clarification here.  She nevertheless learned Hebrew and could at the time recite some Jewish prayers in the language.  She was in the orphanage for about two years from eleven or twelve to fourteen.

     Once agains this seems odd.  Things are done differently in different places no doubt but I also spent a couple years in the municipal orphanage which was much less posh than the place she describes.  She says they gave her good food; the food in our place was so execrable that I virtually didn’t eat for the two years.  She implies she had rather been in a Catholic orphanage but I do believe I can disabuse her of that notion.  An orphanage immediately declasses the inmates placing them outside society so that upon entry a child becomes a societal outcast.

     In the municipal orphanage we were pretty free to come and ago as we chose provided we were back for dinner but even if  we hadn’t I’m not so sure anything would or could have been done about it.  We were a coed facility but the kids were moved out into foster homes at ten to avoid the inevitable sexual problems of old boys among younger girls and boys so I’m surprised Catherine was allowed to stay until she was fourteen.

     I have a little experience with a Catholic orphanage.  There was one down the street from our place.   This place was a hell hole.  The municipal orphanage had a chain link fence around it but the Catholic place had a ten foot high brick wall.  The difference between that and Los Padrinos was non-existent.  Los Padrinos guards probably were more lenient than the nuns and priests.  The latter were not lovely people.  We used to be invited to the Catholic home for special occasions like Catholic movies and other events.  They used to show the Catholic kids what the world outside their institution looked like through the movies.  Like they say, no matter how bad off you are there are others worse off but of course that doesn’t improve your own situation.  I was very happy to return to the municipal home after visiting the Catholic home.  I think I ran all the way back.

      Theirs was a rough life.  I’ll tell you a little story.

     Catherine mentions that kids at the Jr. High she attended didn’t want to have anything to do with orphans.  True in spades all over the world.  We had this kid, all this happened to him in one year, who began the school year with the Catholics.  Those kids were schooled on premises, I’m not kidding you, they never saw the outside world, never.  His parents transferred him to the municipal home where he had to try to fit into the public school we were abused at.  Then he was transferred back to the Catholic home.  I was never so happy to see anyone leave as I was him.  He was already stark raving mad.  Then they transferred the kid back to the municipal home.  Barely holding unto to my own sanity the bastard was pushing me over the edge when fate intervened once again and he was sent back to the Catholic home.  I have no idea who or what he imagined he was by that time.  I had enough trouble surviving in the public school without switching back and forth.  Of course, with the right attitude it would have been a real learning experience but I hadn’t learned to dissociate like that yet.  I lived in total fear he would return.

     A couple years later after my mother remarried and we moved into a garage I was reading the paper where I read that this kid, having returned to his parents from the Catholic home, locked all the doors of the house one night and torched it incinerating parents, siblings and himself.  I was shocked when I recognized who they were writing about.  I understood the situation expliclitly.  I had to keep my mouth shut of course but I lustily cheered what he had done although I certainly would not have burned myself up.  What could they do to you that already hadn’t been done?  It would just be a move from one institution to another.  I’m sure this kid was thought of as the ‘monster.’  Nobody knew the trouble he’d seen, man’s inhumanity to man.  Well, we all have our crosses to bear.

     He was an extreme case but not that far gone compared to the rest of us.  Getting to my point with Catherine.  The boys in the orphanage tended toward violent reactions, rebillion as it was amusingly called.  I would imagine most of them became criminals of one stripe or another.  The girls on the other hand responded to their emotional neglect by offering themselves to anyone who would give them seemingly tender attention.  And there were a lot of them waiting to do that.  The fence of the orphanage was lined with perverts hitting on their preference- either boys or girls eight to ten years old.  Cops said there was no way they could run them off.  Free country.  Whoever said this wasn’t a great country, right?

     So, at puberty, Miss James fled the orphanage, unchaperoned, into the great wide world with an instiable desire to be loved and somehow regain her social status as provided by the Al Newmans.  She fled into a world of rock ‘n roll where unlimited opportunites with guitar ‘gods’ existed.  This was a unique historical opportunity to realize her desires.  A couple years earlier…?

     The story she tells must be a severely edited and corrected version of the reality.  One wonders what really happened.

     Let me explain the genesis of this review.  I wrote a review of Miss Pamela’s ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’ in which I was critical of Miss James’ claim that she met Bob Dylan while in an orphanage.  She appended a comment to the review suggesting I reread Miss Pamela and then read her own book- Dandelion.  As she said, she doesn’t make things up.  All right.  I did both.  As I say, I am sympathetic to any former alumnus of Orphanage U. but you don’t want to drift too far off the band in your reminiscing; that way lies madness.  Who wants to burn their own house down except for the irretrievably damaged- destroyed.

     Miss James’ book of adventures is very tightly edited to produce a certain effect or opinion of the author while not all her memories check out.  Not terribly unusual in itself but she tries very hard to convince you that she is absolutely truthful and accurate.  I will say I’m getting a heck of an education checking her stories out though.  As they fit in with my agenda I have no problem with that.  The extension of my folk knowledge through the investigation of Bud and Travis has been very beneficial.

     Miss James career was essentially from 1965 (possibly very late ’64) to 1970.  That’s five years more or less.  She managed to live two or three lifetimes in those years.  Ah, the sixties, weren’t those the times though?

     Her mother’s agent who was hot after a ten, eleven or twelve year old Catherine was named Jim Dickson (Catherine says some names have been changed so…but then there was a Jim Dickson, talent scout and producer who helped work up the Byrds around LA at that time.)   He was working with the Byrds in ’63-’64 and he had something to do with Dylan according to Miss James.  The orphanage would barely allow Al Newman, a large benefactor of the home to visit his grand-daughter and yet they allowed an adult unrelated male to pick a 13 year old girl up and drive away with her.  Well, OK, if Catherine says so…

     Dickson then took her to a Dylan concert.  Dylan was in LA in May and/or June of  ’63 for a short time according to biographer, Sounes, and again in ’64.  In ’63 Catherine, who certainly must have looked young, if Dickson hadn’t told Dylan that she was 13, says that Dylan asked her to a party where he spent, she says, several hours sitting talking to her while ignoring the big girls and execs.  Well, I don’t know, but I doubt it.  I can’t imagine how Dickson explained things to the orphanage when he brought Catherine back in the wee small hours of the morning.

     Dylan was interested in her, she says, to the extent that every time he came to town he called on her at the orphanage.  These were in addition to the ’63 and ’64 visits so it is difficult to account for them.  Hard to believe, but as we’ll see she says all these famous rock musicians beat a path to her door, she didn’t pursue them.

     Al Newman’s influence with the orphanage notwithstanding his large contributions was pretty limited so that he would have been unable to prevent Catherine being sent back to the reformatory which was then proposed.  One night she scooted out the back door to take her chances.  Brave girl; I shudder to think of it.

     She says she took two hours to hoof it down to the Troubadour Folk Club at the junction of Melrose and Santa Monica.  Doug Weston founded the club in ’57 and this was early ’64.  Catherine is usually shy about identifying the seasons so one can’t pinpoint time within any given year.  She says because her step-father Travis of Bud and Travis was a performer there she was also allowed to perform at the troubadour as a twelve or thirteen year old.  Seems like a trifle of a stretch; she gives us no idea of her repertoire, Mary Had A Little Lamb or whatever.

     In two short hours the orphanage had missed her presence, not very likely in my experience, divined that she was headed for the Troubadour, called the plice who were already on the spot passing her picture around:  Seen this here thirteen year old around here, anywheres?  OK.  Sure, why wouldn’t the cops have her photo already on file? Handy.

     Rather than turning tail she slips into the club ascending the balcony to the right rear seat that just happened to be the only seat left.  I didn’t get to the Troubadour until the early seventies.  Saw Pentangle there.  I din’t go back.  The club was already on the way to becoming the rough place it became.  Anyway I know where she’s talking about.

     This girl cannot possibly have looked, spoken or acted any older than she was.  She tells the guy next to her to pretend he knows her.  She later describes this guy to be in his early twenties although he was only nineteen.  He obligingly wraps his arm around a 13 year old.  Alright!  That’s a chance I wouldn’t have taken.  Probably worth twenty to life in California and we had been terrorized at the prospect of statutory rape.   That was when you looked cross eyed at underage which was against the statutes.

      Catherine tells him all those cops swarming the place are after her.  Can he get her out of there?  Nothing daunted by anything like a statutory rape charge he throws his jacket over her shoulders and he and 13 year old  Catherine stroll out right under the noses of the coppers.  I think I saw that movie.

     The Good Sam turns out to be the brother of John Stewart of the Kingson Trio, Michael.  In 1964 he was up at San Francisco State where he was forming the We Five but at the time he hadn’t.  You Were On My Mind was a year in the future.  He first drops her off at a house with a whole bunch of guys way back in the hills but she was not afraid.  Michael then drives her North to Mill Valley, remember those statutory rape laws if caught, and brother John’s house where she is taken in as a nanny, and California’s Most Wanted Child, for his kids.  The Stewarts want to adopt her which is her cue to split.  It is amazing how lovable this troubled child is.

     As I say, I’ve been researching these astounding stories.  The problem with this one is that John Stewart was single at the time not marrying until 1968 when he wed Buffy Ford.  This story is definitely on the shaky side so that affects Catherine’s credibility a little more than somewhat.

     Traveling to Berkeley with some ‘hippie’ kids she hit the high spot of fabled Telegraph Avenue.  Hippy kids seem a stretcher in ’64.  Now, we’re on home ground though.  I was around Berkeley a bit from ’64-’66.  she appears to be describing a later edition of Telegraph.  In ’64 the street was in transition from trad collegiate to what it later became.  It was the first time I  had ever been panhandled.  Some girl wanted 3.98 to get her dog out of the vet.  Could have been Catherine for all I know.  Naw, this girl was well past 13.

     On Telegraph she chances into the son of Barbara Dane and Rolf Cahn.  Cahn, a guitarist, is living up at Inverness on the ocean side of Marin County.  The younger Cahn puts her up at a sorority, which might seem plausible unless you’ve met some of those stuck ups.  To get her over to Inverness he invents the story that the police are passing pictures around.  Well, they couldn’t find Patty Hearst a couple years later either.  Not to worry, his bed in Inverness awaits.  Just one look was all it too, having his fill of her he splits the next morning with no intention of returning.  His dad also splits leaving her alone in the house.  A different world than I grew up in, no offense.  These things can happen, I don’t say they don’t, but ten or fifteen in a row is worthy of Guiness.

     The next day this guy from Boston shows up looking for Rolf, he’s a music lover.  Likes the stuff, flew out from Boston to listen to Rolf for an afternoon.  He is vastly amused at this endlessly charming 13 year old offering to fly her back to Boston with him which offer she accepts.

      Once in Boston she’s hot to get to NYC so someone going that way offers to drive her down to the East Village while Dr. Cummins, for that was his name, gives her a twenty for bus fare back.  Am I going too fast?  Catherine tells a fast paced story.

     Now, in NYC where Dylan mostly hangs out she has to locate this lad who found her so charming in California.  We’ve moved up from ’63 to very late ’64 or early ’65 so Bob is heading into the thick of his ’64-’66 epiphany.  Thanks to Peter Paul and Mary he is now – Somebody.  Things are rollin’ for Bob.

     At this point Catherine tells two different stories.  In her memoir she calls Woodstock where she says a woman answers and informs her that Dylan has gone on tour.  In Miss Pamela’s book she says she asked some kids where to find Bob Dylan.  Dylan obligingly pulls to a stop in front of her, slow moving traffic.  She runs over to say hi.  Dylan rolls down the window, coldly says he’s on his way to a concert, driving off.  She made no further attempt to contact him and he would have been easy to find.

     Alright, I read and reread.  What am I supposed to believe?

     So, this is 1965, the next five years are truly spectacular.  Unlike any other groupie I’ve ever heard of the rock stars gravitated toward the now fifteen year old Miss James with no effort on her part.  She doesn’t have to shriek for their attention or bare her boobs, she’s stunning and they come running.  Here she makes another minor error.  She says she sees Morrison and The Doors performing Light My Fire in NYC.  A couple of years ahead of the facts.  A small error doesn’t mean much but what about the rest.

     From this point on in order to create an impression of herself Catherine severely edits the facts distorting the reality at the least, what one puts in, what one leaves out.

     In ’65 she met Denny Laine, make-up naturally fooled him, although still young she is now 15.  Close but still statutory.  I’m surprised the Moodies were in the US in ’65 because Go Now, their first hit, didn’t make that big an impression.  Still, on their website the Moodies describe themselves as part of the British Invasion.  In my experience they didn’t hit until ’68.

     The two met more or less formally at a party so the meeting was formalized rather than a groupie-star existential encounter.  Catherine always wishes to create a meeting Southern Belle style where the stars are impressed by her as much as she is by them.  “Oh, Rhett, you don’t mean it?’

     Laine forms the central theme of her groupie years.  She has a child by him which carries her into seventeen and 1967.  It isn’t easy creating a time frame or setting for her cast of characters.  During the three years 1967-1970 she has relations of some sort with the following  without mentioning Bob Dylan who dropped off the radar in 1965.

Roger Daltrey

David Gilmour

John Mayall

Jimmy Webb

Roman Polanski

Jimi Hendrix

Jimmy Page

Eric Clapton

Jackson Browne

Ginger Baker

Mick Jagger

Geno, partner in Granny Takes A Trip

+ Denny Laine

     As you can see it is a regular A list.  George Harrison could be included but she had no relations with him, just a friend.

     Catherine doesn’t mention Geno or David Gilmour herself.  Miss Pamela provides that in Spend The Night.  The gig with Geno and Miss Pamela also took a couple months.  Miss Pamela came to England with Geno’s partner.  The four then took up residence together all sleeping in the same bed with baby Damian in a crib in the corner.  He must have a Freudian memory or two.

     Catherine artfully tells her groupie career bringing the story to a grand climax before she throws in the towel and tries to establish a life as a respectable hausfrau.  The apex of groupiedom was Mick Jagger.  A story made the rounds at the time of a groupie who finally made it to the bed of Mick.  When asked how he was the next day, her reply was:  Well, he was OK, but he was no Mick Jagger. 

     Catherine characteristically was wooed by Mick, herself doing no chasing.  She was staying at Eric Clapton’s when Mick came over for a party.  Catherine tells it this way:

     I remember being engrossed in a book in the study when he peeked in and said:  “You’re pretty.”  With a blush, all I could think to say was a faint “thank you”, and went back to reading my book.

     Just like a debutante Catherine was engrossed in her book.  As the party got into swing and as the mescaline punch was about to hit Catherine thought to call Denny Laine while still coherent.

     As I was speaking with Denny, Mick came into the room and closed the door behind him.  I was seated at the desk in a regal, antique high-back chair with ornate carved arms.  Mick walked up next to me and just stood there.  He was wearing these delicious black-and-white checkered houndstooth wool trousers with a soft cotton white shirt.  When I looked over, all I could see was the undulating moving pattern of the houndstooth.  Mick didn’t say a word, but I felt the electricity.  He was clearly waiting for me to get off the phone.

     I think that’s pretty effective writing for a girl who barely finished grade school.  Obviously she put her time to good use after giving up the life.  Just picture sweet Lady Catherine sitting there as her Prince Charming came into her life, ‘regal, antique, high backed chair with ornate carved arms!’

     The above passage is for the girls who never made it with Jagger.  You can just hear Miss James cooing: Eat your hearts out girls.

      Catherine not only has one night with Mick but moves into the mansion for ‘a couple of months’.  The absolute untopable climax comes next.

     For the event I wore my long, whimsical, gypsy dress from the posh Ozzie Clark’s boutique.  The velvet bodice was formfitting, buttoning down to a billowing skirt of colored silk layers.  My pale pink platform boots with appliqued silver cresent moons and stars from Granny Takes A Trip went perfectly with my outfit.  Stevie Wonder was the hottest ticket in town, and I felt like a female divinity sitting between Mick and Eric, taking in Mr. Wonder’s stellar performance.

     Yes, there was the fairy princess sitting with not one but two Prince Charmings watching Stevie Wonder.  There was no way to top that so apparently Catherine’s philosophy was quit while you’re on top.  I quite agree with her if you know when that is.  And thus perhaps after having gratified one compensatory fantasy she returned to the US to begin her redemption by hard work.  As she has written this book she apparently did that too.

     After knowing all those rock gods so intimately I think it noteworthy that only Roger Daltrey deigned to write a blurb for the jacket.  He and Miss Pamela.

     The book was a very interesting read leading me to some other interesting discoveries that added substance to my understanding of the era.  I have Miss James to thank for that.

     As an alumnus of the orphanage, and believe me orphanages are all one form of horror story or another, I have solidarity with Miss James and wish her well.  I’m sure everything she wrote was based on the facts but I still want some corroboration for the Dylan bit.

     Miss James’ book has enjoyed some success.  My copy is of the second printing so she sold out the first.  At the last check the title was listed as about the 100,000th best seller on Amazon.  I’m not sneering, mine is at about 5,500,000.

     If anyone likes horror stories of this nature may I direct them to my description of  an orphanage- Far Gresham Vol. I- that can be found at reprindle.wordpress.com.  May I also direct your attention to my The Sonderman Constellation by R.E. Prindle published by iUniverse available through alibris, Amazon etc.  I need some readers and sales too.  I probably don’t need more than two sales to jump up to the 1,000.000th best selling.  C’mon help a fellow out   It’s a good book, you won’t regret it.

Exhuming Bob XVII: Bob Dylan, A Napoleon In Rags

Exhuming Bob XVII

A Napoleon In Rags

by

R.E. Prindle

Hoffman, Michael, Judaism Discovered, 2008

Jay Michaelson: http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=1725

Cornyn, Sean: http://www.rightwingbob.com/weblog/archives/1850

Hartley, Mick: http://www.mickhartley.typepad.com/blog/2008/10/dylans-true-message.html

Prindle, R.E. https://idynamo.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/exhuming-b0b-x-lubavitcher-bob/

 

     How does the ‘Napoleon in rags’, Bob Dylan, conceive himself in his role as a reformer of Judaism because that is what Messianic Judaism is.  What does this believer in the Bible as the literal word of God see as his mission?  One should note that as Dylan places the Bible above the Talmud he is a Rabbinical Judaic outlaw as Michaelson says.  Did Dylan really just wake up one morning and say: ‘Oh L-ordy, I have crashed.  I need the crutch of Jesus’ as Michaelson, Cornyn and Hartley suggest or was there an ulterior motive?  Perhaps a conceptual idea if not a well thought out program.

     Jay Michaelson, claiming to be a ‘secular’ Jew takes exception to ‘Messianic’ Judaism.  What exactly is Messianic Judaism?  The notion may take many readers by surprise; those who are only familiar with mainstream Judaism and Christianity.  Most non-Jews don’t realize that Judaism has as many sects as Christianity.

     For instance Dylan’s stance smacks of Karaitism.  the Karaites are a Jewish sect that denies the authority of the oral law or Talmud and hence the Rabbis.  They are outlawed as a cult.  Messianic Jews accepting Jesus as the Jewish Messiah and hence the New Dispensation are and always have been by definition Outlaws, being outside THE LAW.

     The Rabbi David M. Hargis of The Messianic Bureau International is quoted by Michael Hoffman in his Judaism Discovered p. 844:

     “Messianic Judaism” is a means for subverting Christianity by incorporated reverence for the rabbis who are heirs to the religion and customs of the ancient Pharisees as recorded in the Talmud.  The claim of Messianic Judaism is that historic Christianity is “pagan” and imbued with “gentile culture” needlessly alienating and offending Judaics who might otherwise convert to Jesus Christ.  Their “solution” is to fashion a supposedly pagan-free form of Judaism that allegedly believes in Jesus.  ‘We believe it would be the best and is ultiamtely necessary for all Jewish people to know their Messiah Yeshua, but we do not believe that God has called any Jewish person to become Gentile or Western Christian in custom.  Rather, we believe it would be best and is ultimately necessary for Christianity to remove its pagan influences and return to the roots of Judaism, that is, to return to the way of Yeshua as He walked by example and set forth in His entire Word….However this does not mean that Modern Rabbinical Judaism does not have truth within it.”- Rabbi David M. Hargis & Messianic Bureau International, “Basics of Messianic Judaism.”  www.messianic.com/articles/basics.htm (as of Feb. 25, 2008; it may be altered after that date.)

     So it would appear that Messianic Jews want a return to pre-Pauline Jesusism deleting all non-Jewish influences in Christianity.  These would include Platonic influences, the Dionysian Kyrios Christos,  the Persian influences, Gnostic influences and the Egyptian influence that made Mary the Mother of God as patterned after Isis.  In other words the Messianic Jewish Jesus would be one that Christians would scarcely recognize.

     As can be seen by the title of Rabbi Hargis’ organization that it is an international one; indeed, Dylan’s outfit Jews For Jesus is international in scope.  You can call that a conspiracy if you like as Cronyn and Hartley do.    

      It would be fair to assume that Mitch Glaser’s and Al Kasha’s organization, Jews For Jesus, also an international organization, is affiliated to, or at least is associated with the Messianic Bueau International in some way or other as like minded organizations.  We know for certain that Dylan was and is associated with Jews For Jesus.  A purpose of Messianic Judaism is to strip Western, that is to say “pagan” influences from the figure of Jesus returning him to the status of ‘pure’ Semite.

     That is to say that the Greek cult of Kyrios Christos is to be abstracted so that Jesus is no longer The Christ.  So the purpose of Messianic Judaism is to take back Jesus from the Christians while reuniting Messianic and Rabbinical Judaism.  The messianics are willing to concede that there is some ‘truth’ in Rabbinical Judaism.

     Dylan was not merely preaching Messianic Judaism to Jews but whiffing it past Christians also.  It is true that he thinned out his audience rather quickly having apparently misjudged the religiosity of his following.  As a Jew of Orthodox sensibiities Dylan, in his mission as Messiah, or King of the Jews as Michaelson styles him, would have to learn something of Christian beliefs and sensibilities.  It would seem likely then that he approached Dwyer of the Vineyard Fellowship to pick his brains.  The question then was Dylan exploited by the Christians as Michaelson believes or was Dylan exploiting the Christians?

     A question then arises as to whether Dylan wasn’t ‘speaking falsely now’  when he said ‘he never wanted to be the voice of his generation, and he certainly never asked to be ‘King of the Jews’ or a vessel for our hopes and dreams.’  Can we believe the denial of this self-styled ‘Napoleon in rags?’  If Napoleon wasn’t a ‘leader’ who demanded following who has ever been?  How mistaken could his contemporaries have been in taking this ‘Napoleon in rags’  as their spokesman.  Can Dylan have changed direction in 1979 when he wanted to become a great Messianic spokesman leading his people to some Promised Land?  What else could have been his intent in becoming a Jim Jones style religious preacher?  ‘There’s something happening here and you don’t know what is, do you Mr. Jones?’

     Dylan definitely confuses Michaelson who opines ‘his latest incarnation, as a mustachioed journeyman musician, is made of equal parts of authenticity and con’ and ‘Dylan, who always seems to be in on the con when he’s not perpetrating one himself.’  Indeed.  Dylan does project a duplicitous character; speaks out of both sides of his mouth at once.  Or once again as Michaelson understands it:  ‘…like him, I think I can understand the appeal of authentic religious experience in the context of superficiality and doublespeak.’  Uh huh!

     Thus Dylan’s double edged mission was and is to strip ‘Christians’ of their ‘pagan’ sensibilities- i.e. Western culture- while converting Rabbinical Jews to Messianism or Jesus.  So, whether Cornyn and Hartley believe it or not, yes, there is a ‘Great Bob Dylan Conspiracy.’

     It is embarrassing that at this late date in the evolution of human consciousness that Bob Dylan believes the Bible to be the literal word of God.  Consciousness has evolved to that level that the sham of the Religious Consciousness should be apparent to all.  Both Science and Communism have been proclaiming the falsity of the religion and extreme Jewish nationalism that Dylan affects for a hundred years or more.

     I certainly have to reject the Religious Consciousness.  As such I feel defrauded by Dylan’s early career and my attachment to it.  Dylan willfully misrepresented himself, doublespeak, and cheated me as well as all his fans who thought he was enlightened.  I was misled.

     Sorry Bob, but you’re a fraud.

 

Exhuming Bob XVI: Bob Dylan’s Dream..Or Nightmare?

 

Exhuming Bob XVI

Bob Dylan’s Dream or…Nightmare?

by

R.E. Prindle

I’ll let you be in my dream if you’ll let me be in yours.

-Bob Dylan

http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/print.html?id=1725

     When Dylan wrote those words, was he sincere or was it just part of the con?  I was recently asked not ot contribute anymore to expectingrain.com by person or persons unknown.  The webmaster refuses to identify he or them to me.  Too ashamed to let their names by known, I guess.  Or chicken.  I know I’d rather not be known as a rasty, nasty censor.

     I was ejected for voicing pretty much the same sentiments as Jay Michaelson does in the above referenced review of Joel Gilbert’s The Jesus Years.  Maybe the difference between Jay and me is that I don’t think Dylan is such a mysterious elusive guy.  Anybody with a little Freud under his belt has got Dylan pinned.

     He suffers from a fairly severe depression while being very emasculated.  He is so emasculated he can’t even fix on an identity for himself.  His natal Bobby Zimmerman failed him so he apparently attempted to become Elston Gunn which he wasn’t able to sustain so he then became Bob Dylan which also became too much of a burden to him so he threw that identity up for grabs saying anybody can be Bob Dylan who wants it, then he became Masked and Anonymous eschewing any identity whatever.  An empty suit.

     If that isn’t clear to you then there is no reason for you to tackle Freud or psychology now.

     So, what was the conflict?  Duh.  Could it have been that between his Jewish upbringing and his Christian milieu?  Gosh, I don’t know, do you?  Is there anything in his subsequent history that would suggest such a conflict?  Let me think.  I think there is, therefore I am.

     Is there a conflict in the minds of Dylan’s disciples.  Well, now there we’re on firm gound.  Just listen to Jay:

     There’s a telling moment in Joel Gilbert’s new (?) documentary Inside Bob Dylan’s Jesus Years:  an interviewee says that when Dylan became a born again Christian, he went, in two short years, from being an American Jewish hero to the “greatest apostate of the twentieth century”… But worse, because Dylan embodied a specific kind of liberal American Jewish hope that someone would speak truth to  power, and that the world would listen.  These were very Jewish dreams, and Dylan fulfilled them for awhile.

     Damn, then it wasn’t anything I said as the messenger.  I guess it was just not being Jewish that I shouldn’t have attempted to deliver the message.  Right message, wrong face.  Gee, I guess I can’t be in Dylan’s dream because I’m not Jewish.  Whatever happened to One World, One Dream?  Everybody being brothers?  The Global Village?  They didn’t think there wouldn’t be variations  on the theme I hope.  Well, no matter Dylan and his People can still be in my dream.  I’m inclusive.

     But Jay and his People themselves apparently feel excluded from Dylan’s dream also.  Jay says:

     Dylan never wanted to be the voice of his generation, and he certainly never asked to be King of the Jews or vessel for our hopes and dreams.  (My italics.)

     Wow!  King of the Jews, Jesus Christ.  I may have thought it but I didn’t have the cojones (My italics), Jay does and actually says it.  Jesus, I’d be running for my life let alone being kicked off expectingrain.com.

     Jay and his People just can’t seem to get it.  Dylan never became a Christian, he became a Jew For Jesus.  Jay even has the answer before him but his religious bigotry won’t let him see it:  “Why did Dylan…record two religious albums proclaiming the word of G-d?”  There you have it Jay.  Dylan was conflating Jesus and God into one and then substituting G-d for Jes-s.  Jesus is Christian, God is Jewish. Duh.  For Christ’s sake, c’mon Jay.

     Well enough of that.  I’m sure you can’t stop laughing.  Jay is supposed to be reviewing Gilbert’s documentary.  Michaelson; is not either well read on his subject of Dylan or well researched.  Maybe he smoked enough dope that he thinks he automatically knows everything about Dylan.  I’ve seen it happen. 

     As far as the film goes, it may not be a particularly good movie but then it is a documentary and has to judged differently.  As documentaries go I found it more than satisfactory.  The clip art was an unusual special effect but I actually found some of them humorous.  I wouldn’t have done it that way myself but Gilbert can do as he pleases and did.

     Gilbert doesn’t mysteriously look like Dylan as Jay says.  There is no mystery involved.  Gilbert is trying to clone himself as Dylan; does a good job.  He has a good understanding of his subject, after all he’s trying to be Dylan.  His selection of subjects provided enough penetrating information that I have to think they were well chosen.  Perhaps they were all that Gilbert could get, in which case the film maker drew them out well.  Rob Stoner was the key.  He was intelligent, understanding, and well informed- he knew what he was talking about.  Kasha and Glaser gave you all the information you needed to understand the Christian-Jews For Jesus scam.  Come on Jay, open your eyes.

     Weberman has been saying that Dylan was a heroin addict since Christ was a baby.  At least from 1964.  It may have been true, I don’t know, but it didn’t have anything to do with Dylan’s crash.  If Jay knew anything about his subject he would realize that the divorce was the key.  Dylan had finally, after a life time of trying, become so defiled that he had to turn to God/Jesus to lead him back.  I hope he found the way.  Freud again.

     For Michaelson who can’t separate his Jewishness from Dylan the problem is a paramount betrayal because ‘We’re (Jews) scarred and traumatized by two thousand years of Christian hegemony…  So, there you have it, the cat’s out of the bag, couldn’t have said it better myself.  Jay and his People thought Dylan was the Messiach who was going to establish a Jewish hegemony over ‘Christians,’  ‘speak the truth to power.’

     I’m not so sure Dylan won’t still try but that has little to do with the documentary.  The con and exploitation was not that of Dwyer on Dylan but Dylan over the Vineyard Fellowship.  Dylan was using them to try to reach his fellow Jews in  his faith of Jews For Jesus.  As we are never tired of being told:  Jes-s was a J-w.  Case closed.  Forget hegemony.

    In summation Gilbert, in my estimation, did an excellent job for what he set out to do.  I was properly instructed and…I got it.  But, I was still kicked out of Dylan’s dream.  He conned me too.  What a nightmare!

A Review: Ian Whitcomb: Rock Odyssey

 

A Review

You Really Turn Me On

Rock Odyssey

by

Ian Whitcomb

Review by R.E. Prindle

Whitcomb, Ian: Rock Odyssey, 1973

     I don’t suppose too many people today remember Ian Whitcomb.  He surfaced in 1965 with his hit song

Young Ian

‘You Really Turn Me On.  In 1965 I was a very old twenty-seven but getting younger every day.  I saw Whitcomb once while visiting my wife’s relatives.  Her young cousin was watching the Lloyd Thaxton show out of LA.  I’d never heard of Lloyd Thaxton either but according to the cousin he was the hottest thing on TV.  If I remember correctly the Kinks had just sung Dedicated Follower Of Fashion that I thought was very OK.  The Ian came on and did his breathy falsetto androgynous song:  You Really Turn Me On.  At one point after suggestively fondling the microphone stand he shot down out of sight like a tower from the World Trade Center resurfacing moments later.  Pretty startling stuff at a time when nearly every new group was an actual mind blower- The Rolling Stones, Animals, Dave Clark Five and this was just the beginning.  More and even stranger and stronger stuff was to follow quickly only to begin a slow fizzle even as it peaked ending in the Rap and stuff that passes for music today.  A very old Bob Dylan trying to bring light into the heart of his growing darkness.  After the startling sixties came the sedentary seventies.  But then Whitcomb disappeared like his fall from the microphone stand and I never saw or heard of him again.  A true one hit wonder.

     Years later I came across his LP Under A Ragtime Moon.  Then I knew why he had disappeared.  He was into that English music hall stuff.  But then, I didn’t mind that.  He sounded quite a bit like one of my personal favorites The Bonzo Dog Doo Wah Band.  Of course they didn’t really get that far with that stuff either.  You have to be a member of the cult to really dig it.  In order to like the Bonzos you have to have a fairly eccentric side to your musical taste.  A little out of the mainstream which  is where I preferred to live my life.  I thought the Bonzos were wonderful, still do.  But I was pretty much all alone out there.  I liked and like, Neil Innes and the late great Viv Stanshall, two of the Bonzo stalwarts.  ‘Legs’ Larry Smith.  Ragtime Moon lacked the modern rock foundation the Bonzos infused into their music but to this day I couldn’t tell you whose version of Jollity Farm I’m familiar with.  Anyway I have a soft spot for this sort of thing so over the years I’ve played a side of the Bonzos fairly often and dusted off my copy of Ragtime Moon occasionally.

     You Really Turn Me On always stuck in my mind, great song.  Kinda struck my lost chord and made it gong into the distance.  If you’re only going to have one hit you might as well make it a good one.  And then for some reason, I don’t know, I googled Whitcomb and saw that he’d written a few books, including this autobiographical sketch cum pop history so, as it was cheap on alibris, I sent for a copy.  I was delighted with the volume as I read it through.  As biographies go this is one of the better ones, right up there with Wolfman Jack’s not to mention that of that phony Jean-Jacques Rousseau although I stop short at Casanova.  Casanova is one hard one to top.  As a history of the period it is more balanced and beats the hell out of that crap from the Boys Of ’64.

     Ian took offense at being a one hit wonder; he really wanted to be up there with, say, Jim Morrison of the Doors, Mick Jagger, people of that ilk.  I have to believe that stories Ian tells are true although some are stunningly improbable but then those things can and do happen that way, you know.  It’s all in how you see what goes on around you.  Toward the end of the book he’s pondering on where he went wrong, he’s sunk into a fair depression over this, he flees from his apartment in his pajamas one early morning to take a stool in a coffee shop.  That’s depression.  But, let Ian tell it in his own inimitable fashion.  As improbable as it may seem he took a stool next to Jim Morrison who recognized him first.

     When ‘Light My Fire’ had reached number one, Jim had gone out and bought a skintight leather outfit.  At the Copper Skillet, it wasn’t so skintight anymore.

     “How do you do it?”  I asked.

     “I never dug Jerry And The Pacemakers.  How do I do what?”

     I wanted to kick myself for bringing up my obsession with pop success, but I plowed on:  “How do you stay intellectual and still be a hit with the kids, the masses?”

     “You could have done it.  You were into the theater of the absurd.  I saw you on ‘Shindig’ and ‘Lloyd Thaxton’ goofing off and telling the audience that rock n’ roll was a big joke.  That the whole of existence is a big bad joke.  You were too comic.  Tragedy’s the thing.  Western civilization is ending and we don’t even need an earthquake; we’re performing crumble music for the final dance of death and you know what?  Truth lies beyond the grave. I’ll pick up the tab.”

     I couldn’t have put it better.  Ian’s problem was that he was working from a different ethic.  He didn’t understand that the singer and the song was the show, the whole show.  Nothing else was needed. We were only there to see the singer sing his song.  It’s nice to know that Jim and I were watching the same Thaxton show together.  If I hadn’t seen Ian on Thaxton I wouldn’t have been as impressed because on that show singer and song were a single projection.

     Due to the wonders of the internet I was recently able to catch several versions of Ian’s song but not the Thaxton one.  One had him and a half dozen other guys charging around a series of pianos.  Completely missed the point of the singer and his song.  Not even good entertainment.  Ian considered himself an entertainer bacause of a childhood encounter with a music hall comic named O. Stoppit.  Fateful encounter.  Because of it Ian wanted to be a comic, ended up a singer and as Morrison noted the two were too dissimilar to work.

     Ian was probably headed for depression from the age of five or six or so as he came to terms with bombed out London in ’46 or ’47.  His biographical sketch is a wonderful tale of a seemingly cheerful man’s descent into a deep depression.  By book’s end Ian is nearly out of his mind.

     He quotes a psychoanalyst for his definition of depression:

     It was the great Serbian psychoanalyst Josef Vilya who concluded that chronic depression is the result of a head on collision between dream and reality.  The patient dreams of becoming King but goes on to become a member of the tax paying public.

     That’s probably what Morrison meant by tragedy.  Life always fails to meet our expectations so that humanity responds by assuming at least a low grade depression that makes comedy an adjunct to tragedy.  Thus in the Greek theatre  there was a terrifically depressive tragic trilogy followed by some comic relief.  The burlesque of an Aristophanes.

     Ian’s problem was as Morrison noted that he saw the absurdity of the human condition but was too jokey about it.  Absurdity is a serious thing and has to be so treated.  O. Stoppit taught Ian a silliness unmixed with tragedy.  A tragedy in itself.  When silliness such as You Really Turn Me On met the tragedy of a one hit wonder Ian began his descent into depression as Vilya suggested.

     I’ve never been depressed myself, never had the blues, but I have visited the lower depths as a tourist so I have some notion of what Ian’s talking about.  Dirty Harry in drag.  I just never got off the bus that’s all, except once, to walk through Haight-Ashbury where I saw first hand how horrible true depression could be.  Boy, did Ian find out about that.  Good thing he never found his Debbie.

     In his narrative combining grim humor with his developing depression Ian gets off some rippers.  I had a good many uproarious belly floppers.  Try these few lines.  Two good ones in succession.  You do have to have the same sense of humor.  The North and South are those of England.

     These frightening stories of Southern travelers stranded in woebegone depressed cities and suffering under the rough natives.  For example a well known Shakespearean actor, having missed the last train out of Crewe, knocked on the door of a hotel.  “Er, do you have special terms for actors?” the traveler asked.  “Yes- and here’s one:  Fuck off!” 

     And if they weren’t being aggressive, the Northerners were acting daft.  One heard of a Lancashire lad down in London demanding another helping of dressed crab (in the shell):  “Give us another of them pies- and don’t make the crust so hard.”

     Of course Ian can’t do that on every page but laughs are liberally sprinkled throughout the underlying depression.

     Ian’s book opens with his youthful encounter with O. Stoppit and ends with another unifying his theme nicely.

     In between Ian enters the world of rock almost serendipitously with his one hit song:  You Really Turn Me On.  After that his story is a search for a sequel that he can never find but which he pursues somewhat as Alice down the rabbit hole.  He loved his one brush with fame so much that the clash between his cherished hopes of finding his sequel and the grim reality of not being able plunges him deeper and deeper into depression.  Personally I would have gone out and found a songwriter.  There were thousands in LA.

     However his odyssey, as he calls it, Brave Ulysses ne Ian, led him through the heart and soul of the Golden Age of Rock And Roll from the Beach Boys and Beatles and Rolling Stones through Morrison and the Doors, Procol Harum, Cream, Pink Floyd, Donovan, you know, like that.  After that crescendo followed the diminuendo ending in Rap and the current rather laughable music scene.

     Ian has encounters with the aforementioned Morrison, Mick Jagger and others.  His observations of the social scene are trenchant.  He makes an acute observation do in place of a couple hundred pages of twaddle a la Todd Gitlin and Greil Marcus.

     Along the way he sprinkles the little known odd fact:

     Procol Harum is Latin for ‘beyond these things.’  Have no idea what that has to do with Procol Harum’s music.

     …the name Pink Floyd was taken from a record by two Georgia bluesmen named Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.  Amaze your friends with that one.

     And in conversation with Bobby Vee he confirmed a question about Bob Dylan that I needed confirming:

     The afternoon I taped “Hollywood A Go Go” a syndicated TV rock n’ roll show that’s allegedly seen as far away as Rhodesia and Finland.  The set was sparse- cameras, lights and a few rostrums.  The empty spaces were filled with boys and girls who danced or gazed.  All the acts had to lip synch their records.  Chubby Checker (the Twist King) was on the set and, when he heard my record he pronounced it “bitching!”  Bobby Vee was a special guest and looked every inch a star in his sheeny silk suit.  He really had his hand movements and head turns down to an art.  We chatted during a break and I brought up the subject of Bob Dylan and my concern about him.  To my amazement, Vee told me that Dylan- before he got into the folk kick and when he was plain Bobby Zimmerman back in Minnesota- had played a few gigs with Vee’s band- as pianist!  Vee said Dylan was very good, in the Jerry Lee Lewis sytle, but he could only play in C.  He said he knew a lot about country music, too.  As it was hard to find pianos at their gigs Dylan didn’t play with Vee very long.  But as he has fond memories of him and said he was really well versed in current rock n’ roll at the time of their meeting.  He had the impression that Dylan was very hip to whatever was happening.  ;I wondered if the young Zimmerman had ever been a Bill Haley fan.

     So, that would confirm that Dylan did play with Vee in the summer of ’59 after his graduation.

     The book is a great read, a very good book, as Ian struggles and fails to find success.  In a fit of depression he returns to the seaside pier on which he had seen O. Stoppit.  An old poster is hanging that he secures then finding his model’s address he visits him to present him with the poster.  O. Stoppit tells him bluntly to stop living in the past.  A fine thing to tell a historian but Mr. Stoppit was apparently a blunt, unfeeling brute.  Also well past the sunny side of life.

     Has Ian ever adjusted to his being a one hit wonder?  I’m afraid not.  It still rankles.  As late as December 1997 in an essay written for American Heritage Magazine Ian quotes a letter from fan Arlene:

Dear Mr. Whitcomb:

     I have watched you several times now and I want to say that sure you have talent and you’re magnetic, but why, oh, why, do you screw it all up by horsing around, being coy, by camping, as if you’re embarrassed by show business?  You could be great if you found your potential and saw it through, but that would take guts.  Instead you mince, and treat it all as big joke.  Come on now!

     Well, that was the same thing Morrison told him thirty years earlier; the vaccination didn’t take then either.

     I think Ian entered his depression early in life, as many of us do.   Then one has to face it.  Some become phony chipper optimists in their attempt to overcome the conflict between expectations and reality.  Some become goofs and jokers.  Something I fought for years.  Some like Ian become silly.  The most extreme type of this I ever saw was Red Skelton the ‘great’ clown who was painful for me to watch.  In fact I couldn’t do it.  I saw too much of myself in him and ended up hating the bastard.

     If Ian wants that second hit and more he has to master his silliness.  Weld the singer and the song like greats like Jagger and Morrison.  Be to some extent what his fans want.  A good sense of humor on songs done with respect for the song, himself and his audience.  Scratch Red Skelton.  People want to love Ian, just as Ian wants to be loved, but as the saying goes, he won’t let ‘em.  I’m not criticizing or demeaning, I know where that’s at too.  I am recommending the course of action however.  I, Arlene, Jim of blessed memory and others want a sort of closure that has been left hanging.

     The book is a great one through Ian’s struggles to come to terms with his times, himself and the future.

 

Ian Later On

 

 

Exhuming Bob 13, Fits 1 & 2: Bob As Messiah

 

Exhuming Bob

Fits 1 & 2:

Bob As Messiah

by

R.E. Prindle

The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses; and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake.

- H.L. Mencken

 

     I had planned to write further on Bob’s religious development after ‘Lubatitcher Bob’ at some time but the row caused by Sean Curnyn of Right Wing Bob has focused my mind wondrously.

     Before getting to Bob per se I will have to discuss the flap caused by Curnyn who is something of a sidewinder.  Basically this is a contest between religious superstition and scientific investigation.  Facts conflict with belief and in the resolution one or the other has to give.  Since superstition cannot stand up to fact religion has to be the loser whatever name it goes by.  No matter how many violent names you call the scientist the facts remain the same.

     Curnyns vitriol can be found in full at his site:  http://rightwingbob.com.

     I quote relevant parts below:

     I didn’t happen to notice it yesterday (no date but probably 10/10/08) but it was brought to my attention in an email last night by reader Dovid (Dovid not David) Kerner, who tells me that he sent the following to the webmaster of ‘Expecting Rain’, Karl Erik Andersen.

     Regarding your printing the link to Exhuming Bob X: Lubavitcher Bob.

     I love your website but this one shouldn’t have been printed- it’s really written with an violent anti-Jewish slant.  Here’s the reply I left on the site.

<<Is it true that as you say there is “a Jewish world organization” which realized they had something in Bob Dylan and gave him maximum publicity?

     And are the Jews taught, as you write, that they “are to rule the world and the peoples?”  Or does the biblical term “chosen people”  mean that Jews are to set an example for the rest of humanity? (I just finished a whole day in synagogue (Yom Kipper) and I don’t recall praying for Jews to rule the world.)

     Your claims sound vaguely familiar- The Protocols ring a bell here.

     Shalom and Happy New Year.

     Dovid >>

     I think you (expectingrain) should put an apology/warning to your readers regarding the matter.

     Otherwise, thank you and keep up the great work.

     As of this time of writing, the gjy who posted the orignal article hasn’t published Dovid’s comment (which really doesn’t suprise and the guy deserves to be ignored) and Karl Erik has not either taken down the link to the anti-semitic article, nor added any note about it.  This disappoints.

     Well and good.  But this Dovid Kerner fellow, if there is one and he isn’t Sean Curnyn, lied about making a response on my site, I, Dynamo.  He didn’t do it, hence no reply.

     Sean Curnyn did leave a cryptic comment on my site that said nothing.  I decided to check into his site.  Lo and behold I found the above denunciation.  When I checked Curnyn’s site for a response box I found to my dismay that there wasn’t one.  Curnyn is apparently so insecure that he doesn’t welcome comments.  Might be critical of him, I suppose.  However, I did find an email address tucked away in an obscure place  with a warning that he might publish emails.  I had no choice but to ignore the warning and send him an email.

     My first follows:

Dear Sir or Madam:

     I received your cryptic message to my posting, Lubavitcher Bob, and have permitted it as I do all postings.  You say that your reader Dovid Kerner left a comment on the LB posting.  Maybe he thought he did but yours is the first notice I’ve received.

     My suggestion is that you leave a response on the LB posting so that it can be responded to and that the readers may be informed of the dialogue rather than this sort of sneak email attack you’re undertaken.

     I will say at this time that you apparently know nothing of either religion or Judaism or you wouldn’t  make the silly comments you’ve posted on your website Right Wing Bob.

     If it is any help to you I have sat through many hours of synagogue and am quite familiar with the content of the sermons.

     The purpose of my essay that expecting rain courageously, apparently, published, is an attempt to get to the bottom of Bob’s career and what it means.  If you disagree with me and wish to start a dialogue respond in the comments to my posting.  If you don’t post I will have no choice but to think you are a coward and obscurantist.  Your reader Dovid Kerner is welcome to join in if he has the courage.  So far he has misrepresented to you and you have misrepresented to your readers that I have refused to reply to him. 

     I demand an apology and retraction which I know your kind never gives.

     Thank you for time and attention.

R.E. Prindle

     As you can see I openly challenged Both Kerner and Curnyn to respond and that I would reply.

     Naturally neither did.  I received no apology or retraction.  I sent a second email:

Dear Sir or Madam:

     I have just rechecked your site and find no apology or retraction and you have left the false posting on your site.

     I’m tapping my foot, Sir or Madam.  My patience is wearing thin.  Get on it.

R.E. Prindle

     Still no response.  I sent a 3rd email:

     Dear Sir or Madam:

     You have now had several hours to apologize, issue a retraction and remove the slanderous post from your site.  As you apparently refuse to right your wrong that you have committed against me I have no choice but to believe that you and Dovid Kernen are in collusion to defame me.

     Your characterization of Lubavitcher Bob as ‘a piece of screwball Jew-hating screed’ is offensive and unintellectual in the extreme.  Such filth is apparently characteristic of you and your site.  As usual with those of your ilk you refuse to answer to the content of my essay and resort to ad hominem defamation.

     Your kind disgust me.

     I now feel free to write a rebuttal and expose you for the anti-social left-wing bigot that you are.

     You are a disgrace to the internet.

     R.E. Prindle

     As of this date (10/12/08) I have received no reply from either party.  I don’t expect to.  That is the background.  I will now attempt to refute Kerner and Cronyn’s defamations.

Fit 2.

     The boys from Right Wing Bob seem to have been expecially offended by my notion of an International, world, or global Jewish organization.  I am absolutely astonished that they think, or pretend to, that one doesn’t exist.  All religions have a central authority.

     Let us consider the Moslems first.  Mecca is the world center of Moslemism to which all Moslems are expected to make a pilgrimage to look at the meteorite at least once in their life.  While unity is not conspicuous in developed religions, yet the Arabs of the Arabian peninsula generally have charge of the Moslem religion.  The Saudi Princes are directing the worldwide proselytization efforts of the religion.

     Now as to Christianity in its two forms with which we are most familiar, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.  I am not well informed on the conditions or intent of the Greek or Russian Orthodox churches.

     Roman Catholicism like Moslemism is a global organization exercising some sort of authority over the faithful in all its dominions from its global administration center in the Vatican near Rome.  Like the Moslems its goal is to convert all people of whatever relgious stripe to its faith.

     The Protestants while splintered have their various administrative headquarters from whch they seek to proselytize the world.

     The parent organization for Moslemism and Christianity is Judaism.  Together these three religions form the Semitic group of religions.

     If the former two didn’t borrow their organizational ideas from Judaism that would be odd indeed.  Failing that one would think that Judaism would conform to its offspring and organize internationally along the same lines.  if fact, they always have.  Why Messers Kerner and Curnyn are offended by the notion and wish to deny the obvious baffles me.  That they should respond to the innocuous suggestion by defaming me as an anti-Semite does not speak well for either their breeding or intelligence.

     Judaism’s  two sister religions are intent on proselytizing the world.  Once completed the Moslem Arabs would be the directors of the theocratic state as a superior people.  Christianity’s Roman Catholic priesthood would enjoy the favored position if it achieved its goal.  Under Judaism the reward for having brought mankind to thier vision of God would also, as a nation of priests, be to administer the affairs of mankind.  What could be more obvious?  That is the meaning of the phrase, a nation of priests.  That is what it means to be ‘the Chosen People.’  What else could it mean?

     Moslems and Christians wish to proselytize while Jews don’t.  I hope Messers Kerner and Curnyn won’t disagree with that and won’t call me all the terrible names they can imagine because I point out this obvious fact.  Therefore the Jews have to establish their priestly dominion by other means.  They must persuade in some form or manner the peoples to accept their leadership or dominance.  this has always been the thrust of Messianic Jewish politics.

     In 1972 Naomi Cohen published a history of The American Jewish Committee entitled; Not Free To Desist: The American Jewish Committee 1906-66.  The meaning of the title is that Jews are Not Free To Desist from the task of achieving the goal of establishing the priesthood over the peoples.  No one individual is expected to complete the task in their lifetime but none are free to desist from moving it along.

     Messers Kerner and Curnyn can deny this if they wish but to do so is to be merely perverse.

     Now, to be the Chosen of God must necessarily imply that the Chosen are better people than the rest and are therefore entitled to rule.  Indeed, Even Kerner admits this when he says:  ‘Or does the biblical term ‘chosen people’ mean that Jews are to set an example for the rest of mankind?’  To set an example is to be better so Dov defeats his criticism of me.

     The Rabbi who instructed Bob was undoubtedly a Lubavitcher from Brooklyn.  The leader of the Lubavitchers was a man named Rabbi Schneerson.  We are informed that Rabbi Schneerson in addition to being a great religious Rabbinical scholar also had scientific degrees from secular universities.  Back in the forties of the last century genetics seemed to have been his forte because he asserted with great confidence that Jews had a special gene that made them more intelligent than any other people in the world.  Undoubtedly that was how they intended to set an example for the rest of humanity.  Thus Jews were singled out not only by God as the Chosen of Heaven but by evolution right down here on earth.

     So, while I appreciate that Curnyn may believe my essay ‘a piect of screwball Jew-hating screed’ I have to say that Sean Curnyn is an ignoramus of the first water without either the background or education to understand what I am saying.  Indeed, as the Bobber says:  ‘don’t criticize what you can’t understand.’  Kerner and Curnyn should heed the Bob’s advice.

     But as to Bob and Rabbi Reuben Maier who as a Lubavitcher was educated by Rabbi Schneerson.

Fits 3 & 4 follow in another posting.

 

Exhuming Bob 12: Bob And The Middle Class

 

Exhuming Bob 12:

Bob And The Middle Class

by

R.E. Prindle

 

     I was rewatching Martin Scorcese’s No Direction Home today.  I was struck by the various reporters’ insistent demand to know what Bob was trying to say in his music.  Bob seemed genuinely mystified at the time being apparently no more enlightened at the time of Scorcese’s interview.

     I offer a suggestion, no more.  Bob, says in the interview that he had slipped through the net meant to keep he and his ‘type’ out and now it was too late to do anything about it.  I know what he meant. He and his style, viewpoint, were antithetical to everything acceptable in culture.  The later TV creation of the Monkees that imitated, and in its way mocked, the Bohemian Dylan style was the acceptable pop mode of ‘protest’ songs.

     Whether Dylan realized it or not he, in his songs, said everything the middle class did and thought was wrong, and further that they were all ‘assholes.’  Something happening here but you don’t know what it is, do you?  I’m smart and you’re dumb.  Whether he meant it that way or not, that was what they heard.  That is what I heard but I didn’t disagree with him I wanted to be in the chorus and sing along.  I knew exactly what Bob meant even if I couldn’t articulate it any better than he could.

     Bob, in his arty way put things in such terms that so disguised what they believed was his real intent, they did understand, that he left them no convenient handle to denounce him.  So what they wanted Bob to say when they asked ‘What do you songs mean?’ was ‘Well, all my songs mean I know better than you all do and besides you’re all assholes.’

     At that point they would no longer have to take him seriously and could denounce him.  ‘Oh, so YOU think YOU know than the rust of us, do YOU?  Well, there’s something happening here and YOU don’t what it is do YOU, Mr. Dylan?  Well, let us tell YOU Buster…etc. etc.’

     When people say that something new was introduced into pop music it wasn’t necessarily the ‘poetry’ or oddball language but his reviling of how the conventional mind works. 

     Bob said he slipped through.  He could never have passed vetting for pop stardom by Tin Pan Alley so he managed to slip through anyway and destroy those who would never have given him a chance.

     From his cornucopia sprang the ‘singer-songwriter’ genre that completely bypassed Tin Pan Alley.  From his condemnation of the middle class sprang the rancorous Punk music of the seventies.  From his denunciation of ‘a world gone wrong’ sprang the Negro rap music.

     Call it a revolution if you want but it was just an underclass by some sort of heat convection bubbling to the surface.  The sounds were commercially viable meaning that they made money for the labels.  CBS could happily sell the ‘revolution’ on one hand, Johnny Mathis on the other and classical music strapped to its back.

     I hope this makes sense to you.