Entertainment For Lively Minds
The Question You Would Ask A Rock Star
Should you be a Word journalist for the day and you got to interview your favourite artist what question would you ask that's never been asked before?
The one I'd ask every rock star would be "do you have your own music on your i-pod? and under what name?" I'd love to know what the consensus is on that one. (does anyone know if any rock stars do?)
Other specific questions;
to Ringo: "How did you feel when you found out that Karmic George was boffing your wife?"
to Paul: "What do you think of Tom Jones' new look? Do you think he's ageing more gracefully now?" (hint hint)
to Elvis Costello: "How did you feel when Phil Collins rejected the songs you had written for Frida from ABBA's solo LP?"
to Phil Collins: "Why did you reject Elvis Costello's songs for the Frida LP you were producing? And was there a hint of resentment involved due to the critical accolades accorded to EC that had never come your way?"
to Bob Dylan: "Why don'y you like writing choruses?"
Any more?
(If anyone genuinely knows their answers to these questions would love to know)
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Off the top of my head:
Mr Tambourine Man
It Ain't Me Babe
Just Like A Woman
Like A Rolling Stone
Blowing In The Wind
Quinn The Eskimo
Forever Young
Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands
Idiot Wind
If You Gotta Go
..there's ten of the best choruses ever written. Catchy, memorable and quite distinct from the verses.
Middle Eights
It's middle eights, not choruses that Bob appears not to like.
Just Like A Woman is the only song on that list to feature a middle eight.
I Threw It All Away from Nashville Skyline is another.
Hazel from Planet Waves has a textbook middle eight, while ‘Cross The Green Mountain from the soundtrack of Gods & Generals has a vague section that may or may not be a middle eight.
I can't think of many other Dylan songs with middle eights off the top of my head.
Maybe when your choruses
are that good you don't need a middle eight? Little Richard seemed to cope without them.
Little Richard
I'm tempted to say that just about every one of LR's big hits were 12 bars and as such don't require middle eights.
But that would only confuse things even more ;-)
disagree vehemently
about Mr Tambourine Man. The chorus is EXACTLY the same as the verse.
What about the following (off the top of my head)
Masters Of War
The Times They Are A-Changin
Subterranean Homesick Blues
Obviously Five Believers
All Along The Watchtower
Gates Of Eden
plus about 300 others.
I take the point about middle 8's also. Pre-the late sixties most songs were verse/middle 8's rather than verse/chorus. (most early Beatles were plus rock'n'rollers like Little Richard). I think my point was the lack of variety in melody and arrangement in a lot of Dylan's stuff. (and I like some of the above songs)
Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands
from the above list doesn't really have a chorus either. Just a repeated line at the end of each verse.
But you're right, many Dylan songs don't have choruses. But even fewer have a middle eight,
Is the chorus not
My warehouse eyes my Arabian drums, should I leave them by your gate, oh sad eyed lady should I wait?
Not a musician so have no idea what technically constitutes a chorus, but the music swells at that point, the melody seems to shift and I generally get a tingle, so it feels like one to me.
Yes it is
a kind of chorus, you're quite right. Even though it's just a repeated line tacked on the end of each verse it does act as a chorus.
.
.
I'd ask Tom Waits
if his larynx is fucked.
Bono
Can I get you your coat?
To Nile Rodgers...
"What does it feel like to know you made the whole world dance?"
Stevie Wonder
What happened around 1978?
Levon Helm
Would you mind if I went gay for you?
Sly Stone
For fuck sake you pranny, why????
I'll answer for Mr Wonder
"Oh, I made Hotter Than July in 1980 which is chuffin' ace."
(Admittedly, it all went horribly wrong after that, though)
Jimi Hendrix
"C'mon, don't you think Eric is better than you?"
One for George
In the opening scene of A Hard Day's Night we see the Beatles running hell for leather down Boston Place next to Marylebone Station. They are wearing full stage suits and Cuban heel Beatle boots which are clearly not suitable for sprinting.
Suddenly George trips and goes down like he's been polaxed, much to the amusement of his Beatle chums.
The fall is obviously not staged and actually looks quite nasty. To this day I wince every time I see it.
I've always wondered if George suffered any injury due to the fall.
Lou Reed
Are you ticklish?
Manners maketh the man
Lou has been on Front Row on R4 and on Andrew Marr on BBC1 in the last few days; both times I've switched off in annoyance.
My question would be "Lou, you're here to publicise a record you've just made. You don't have to be here, but because you want to sell some discs you've come in to the studio to talk about it. Therefore could you explain why you act like such an obnoxious arsehole, wasting my time and that of the audience when a bit of civility costs nothing and you could actually end up selling more than is likely to be the case?"
The Front Row
interview brought to mind Mark Ellen's comment that there are two types of people; those that like Lou Reed, and those who have met him.
Well said, he
was interviewed (if that's a fair description) by Jools Holland on Later and he was just unpleasant. I've only ever walked out early from two concerts, one of those was Lou Reed.
I've only walked out of one
That was Lou Reed.
Our walk out was at the Albert Hall around 2003 (promoting The Raven CD). We lasted about an hour, but the first leavers started getting up after around 30 minutes.
When was your LR walk out?
I rarely feel sorry for Jools
as, IMO, he's a dreadful interviewer. But on that occassion I felt he did well not to tell Reed to just Fuck Off if he doesn't want to play. Lou Reed is just not interesting enough to act the disinterested and superior rock star who is prostituting himself to promote the new album.
Jools did spoil it by fawning over the new Lou/Metallica album.
Yeah, seriously.
If he's such an Important Artist, why does he do the publicity round? He's made his money. If it's all so beneath him, there's no compulsion on him to do it. He's just a complete dick whose entire personality appears to be set up to bolster his own self-image as Important and Uncompromising. And not, presumably, as a lucky bastard whose best work is 40 years distant and relied heavily on actual talent (Cale, Bowie).
I blame the French. Didn't they give him the Légion D'Honneur or something?
The one thing that the very odd Metallica pairing up shows..
.. as clear as the blazing sun - is that that Lou Reed is a truly awful musician. By musician of course I mean someone who can play. His vocal delivery is a wonder to behold in it's sheer awfulness. Clumsy phrasing, and not a shred of the ability to even hit a note. Pairing himself with a bunch of musically obsessed train-spotters like Metallica does provide a fascinating contrast. But it's a contrast that doesn't do Lou any favours whatsoever. In fact it's an entertaining thing to witness, because it's almost an "Emperors New Clothes" moment.
Indeed I suspect as their tour progresses, that James Hetfield will feel increasingly obliged to drown out Lou's unmusical mono-tonal grunt.
Good lyric writer though. Best lyrics by a country mile that that band have ever been graced with.
So my question then - "Have you any idea Lou, exactly WHY has it taken people so long to realise the basic truth that you couldn't sing if your life depended on it? Did you make some kind of deal with The Devil?" See how that goes down.
Van Morrsion
Did you ever notice your harmonica had a very distinctive aroma?
Morrissey
Really ? I mean... C'mon....Really ?
So, Phil Oakey...
Who was better Joanne or Susan?*
*asked with insane jealousy...
McCartney
If I could ask Paul a question, it wouldn't be about his hair. I'm not sure why people seem so fixated on his hair color anyway when the list of elder rock stars who dye their hair is quite long; and then there are the ones with hair plugs like Elton and Bruce Springsteen. It's what rock stars do.
Anyway my question for Paul would be: Are you EVER going to have enough confidence in your recent solo material to start singing more of those songs live?
He's written a wealth of great songs since that Flaming Pie record but you'd never know it judging by his concerts. I was listening to his Chaos & Creation album in the car today and thinking the songs were like forgotten gems: Friends to Go, Fine Line, This Never Happened Before, Jenny Wren. There are some truly fine songs on that album with strong melodies and good lyrics but he never performs any of them live. Why would you bother to write new songs and then only perform your old ones, thus reinforcing the notion that you haven't written any good songs recently?
Macca's predicament...
... is that he doesn't (or isn't able to) tour frequently enough to make that a viable option, at least for the vast majority of gig-goers who are shelling out their hard-earneds for a greatest hit set, or effectively to be in the same postcode as An Actual Beatle as hes sings Actual Beatles songs.
My guess is that he'd theoretically love to do a tour only playing stuff from after (say) 1990, but is he really prepared to take a year out to do that? Apparently not...
I was being fecetious
about Macca. I agree about the new songs. Why has he not done "Fine Line" live? That would be a cracking song live much better than another run through of "Yesterday". Seeing him at Hyde Park I was thrilled beyond belief when he sang a couple of verses of "Ram On". Maybe only 10 per cent of that crowd knew that song but you can guarantee they loved it more than yet another version of "Get Back" and "Helter Skelter" (yawn).
The question I would seriously ask him would be about the guitar solos in "The End". Were they recorded at the same time and if not then in what order?
Directions
To any members of Teenage Fanclub:
When are you going to provide the voice for a GPS device or navigation application?
A Teenage Fanclub satnav...
...would be rubbish, because it would always assume that your journey started at "Your Love". No good to anyone.
Pete Townshend's my
musical hero but I would have to down a large one, summon the courage and ask "Pete, why did you do it ?".
And
Where's that biog - you were so busy researching..
Sadly, Francis...
...I think - Occam's razor and all that - we probably know the answer to that, don't we?
I can't believe he's effectively got a pass for it. If nothing else, his PR people have earned their fee.