The Print Media's Commentary on Kane Fiasco

[Glenn Anders]

Want to bet? :p

The loser has to buy Todd Baesen a "Maltese Falcon" at John's Grill in San Francisco.

Glenn

[Tony]

if John's Grill still exists!

Glenn: did you ever read "On the Beach"? Great book; I remember he takes the sub to San Fransisco to search for evidence of human life. Also: did you know Welles was going to film a science fiction novel about an apocalypse? It's called "Earth Abides" by George R. Stewart, and it's great- very underated, in fact almost totally forgotten. Oddly, I think it also takes place in California, perhaps L.A. I think it was published in 1949, and Chuck Heston and Welles were going to do it as the follow-up to Touch of Evil. I think Welles bought the rights; of course, they couldn't get the financing, but just imagine how a science fiction film would have opened up Welles ouvre, and away from the powerful man theme.

Here's a review: if you haven't read it, I really think you should: I think it's right down your apocalyptical alley! :;):


http://www.lostbooks.org/reviews/1998-06-11-1.html

And here's some info:

http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue240/classic.html

http://www.sfsite.com/11a/ea92.htm

[Glenn Anders]

No, Tony, John's Grill is still going as it was in the late 1920's, but now a popular tourist spot. They have a room upstairs devoted to Huston's 194l film, THE MALTESE FALCON. Todd Baesen may often be found, in his Harris Tweed jacket, Irish cap, dark glasses, drinking a "Maltese Falcon" under the large photo mural of Humphrey Bogart. This time of year, there is a Saturday walking tour of the downtown which hits various Dashiell Hammett real and fictional locations, ending up at John's Grill.

I, of course, live not far from John's Grill, quite by accident, in the apartment of the late Miles Archer and his wife Irma, at least so near as I can figure, close to the corner of Leavenworth and Geary streets. Occasionally, Todd Baesen passes by me, as I stand outside, and drops a quarter into my paper cup. Then, I am able to join him for a drink with Cruel Karl Kickery, bartender at the Ha-Ra Club. But seldom can I afford a "Maltese Falcon" at John's Grill.

Yes, I remember the novel ON THE BEACH (by Nevil Shute), and the Stanley Kramer film (starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, and Fred Astaire). One can see why, after doing TOUCH OF EVIL in 1959, the story would have appealed to Welles (always apocalyptic) and Heston. It would have been in keeping with a Welles' underlying theme, illustrated in that film, of the breakdown of humanist values in our time. The connection between TOUCH OF EVIL, Shute's On the Beach, and George R. Stewart's Earth Abides would have been a clear one.

More to the point, I am familiar with Stewart's novels. He was a Professor of English at UC, who had a pioneering interest in ecology. He wrote novels (and popular studies) on how the land shapes human history, and vice verse. He wrote of Names on the Land, and Ordeal by Hunger (about the Donner Party), and his novels deal almost entirely with natural catastrophies (storms, fires, famines, floods, etc).

This brings us back to Radio.

In 1941, Stewart published his first novel to generate national attention, Storm. It traces a typhoon from its birth in the Sea of Japan to becoming a snow blizzard that traps a telephone lineman in the California Sierra. The Columbia Workshop and other Welles-type radio series picked Storm up for adaptation, enticed possibly by how the plot lent itself to easy utilization of sound effects for wind, waves and crackling highline wires, etc. The programs became minor hits. Welles would have been keeping his ear out for these developments in Radio back then, and his Hemisphere programs, perhaps coincidentally, stress similar atmospherical sounds.

Stewart also anthropomophized his typhoon, made her female, and named her Maria. The Federal Weather Bureau credits Stewart with their practice of awarding hurricanes and typhoons human names. The song "They Called the Wind Maria" in Paint Your Wagon was inspired by the typhoon in Storm. It is said that Stephen King's The Stand is also based on the novel.

You can read a little scholarly piece, with a nice personal twist, about Stewart here:

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1669857

My general interest in Welles' radio work was extended to Stewart by the Storm adaptations because my father was an electric lineman in Northeastern Ohio, and he suffered second and third degree frostbite burns of nine fingers, atop a sixty foot pole in a winter storm of 1942. I didn't quite realize it then, but that was a very worrisome time for my parents, but Stewart's novel, plus its radio adaptations, did help me recognize what a hero "Pa" was.

Then, in 1949, Stewart wrote Earth Abides, concerning a geologist named Isherwood Fisher, who goes rock hunting for a period of time up in the California Sierra. When he returns to San Francisco, everyone is dead, victims of a worldwide pandemic. The disease eventually kills off most of humankind. Fisher, a virile man and a repository of knowledge, re-fathers much of the human race. It's a kind of Adam and Eve story.

In November of 1950, Escape, aside from Suspense, the longest series which truly carried forward the traditions of the Mercury Theater on the Air, presented an unprecedented two part adaptation of Earth Abides. It starred John Dehner, a significant radio actor, who later became useful in movie character parts (i.e., THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL). Directed by William N. Robson, an un-heralded Wellsian Norman Corwin-like talent in Radio, the adaptations of Earth Abides are generally thought to be among the best dozen or so of over 300 Escape productions.

When I came out to California, I re-discovered Storm and Earth Abides, taught the novels, and often used the Escape radio adaptations in my Film and Mass Media classes.

If wellesnetters wish, they may listen to both parts of the Escape production of Earth Abides through links on the Wikapedia entry for George R. Stewart:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_R._Stewart

Once again, with it apocalyptic theme, less political than atomic annihilation but more plausible than Martian "little green men," Earth Abides might have been the kind of "war of the worlds" story which would have drawn Welles back for a movie on the subject that brought him to Hollywood.

Welles always seemed to be warning mankind that they might go too far, and we seem to be reaching that place AGAIN!

I hope I've been helpful, Tony.

Glenn

[Tony]

Thanks Glenn for an amzing post- another amazing post!

I'm thinking of the great Glenn Campbell/Jimmy Webb song "Wichita Lineman".

:;):

[Glenn Anders]

Interesting, Tony.

Before his death, my Father struck off for Downtown San Francisco, where he insisted on living in a small studio, much as I do now. (He loved to hang out with old soldiers and sailors, trading war stories.) One day I visited him, and I was surprised to find him playing a Glenn Campbell LP on a little machine he had. My Father's musical tastes usually ran to folk songs and bagpipes; he thought most modern popular music was "junk." (Hey, he may have had something!) Then, he explained that he bought the LP because it contained "Do You Know the Way to San Jose" and "Wichita Lineman."

So, Tony, you were right on the mark!

Glenn [Anders]

[Tony]

Glenn:
Wichita Lineman is an amazing song: do you know it? It's like a moment frozen in time. And it's one of the first pop songs to celebrate the so-called "ordinary" person's life; in fact, to see it as just as interesting and heroic as the rich and famous- perhaps even more so:

I am a lineman for the county.
And I drive the mainroad.
Lookin' in the sun for another overload.

I hear you singing in the wire.
I can hear you thru the whine.
And the Wichita Lineman,
is still on the line.

I know I need a small vacation.
But it don't look like rain.
And if it snows that stretch down south,
won't ever stand the strain.

And I need you more than want you.
And I want you for all time.
And the Wichita Lineman,
is still on the line.

Jimmy Webb wrote many songs for Campbell, but the famous city trilogy is "Galveston", "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Wichita Lineman": great Americana. (Webb also wrote a fabulous late sixties metaphor for the spoiling of the American dream as a broken love affair: "McCarthur Park").

To stay slightly on topic, Welles got in trouble in Brazil because he wasn't focussing on the rich and famous and "beautiful" people, but rather on the heroic and fascintaing lives of the "ordinary" people.

I recall Michael Dukakis was asked during his run at the presidency who his heros were: he thought for a second, and replied: "All the ordinary folk: the firefighter, the police officer, the teacher: these are my heroes." He was lambasted for this answer, it being seen as a sign of weakness and lack of imagination that he didn't mention famous and influential people. Personally, I thought the answer was admirable.

[Kevin Loy]

Jimmy Webb wrote many songs for Campbell, but the famous city trilogy is "Galveston", "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Wichita Lineman": great Americana. (Webb also wrote a fabulous late sixties metaphor for the spoiling of the American dream as a broken love affair: "McCarthur Park").

Sorry to interject...

It is worth pointing out that MacArthur Park was recorded by an Irish actor, of course...after being turned down by a certain popular American group of the era.

I don't listen to much "pop" music nowadays, but I dug up my copy of Richard Harris' "The Yard Went On Forever" the other week (as was the case with "A Tramp Shining", Jimmy Webb wrote the entire album). I'm always surprised at how excellent the album is...as well as the ambition of the work.

[Tony]

Kevin:
It's amazing you would say that: I have very fond memories of "The Yard Went On Forever" which is, I think, Webb's masterpiece as a producer. God, what an album! Absolutley timeless, with those wonderful , strange , plaintive womens' voices, and those strange drums: very atmospheric. It reminds me of Brian Wilson's Smile from 1966, in that both could not be termed "rock", but were rather some kind of modern amalgam of pop, world music and classical: a new art form, stillborn I'm afraid. My father was mostly into jazz, but he listened to a few albums from the pop/rock era, and this was something we could share: "The Yard Went on Forever" , Dionne Warwick's "Greatest Hits" and "Tommy" by the Who were his favourites; he also liked the "Mccarthur Park" 45, and it's flip side: "Didn't We', a real gem. I recall "Yard" came out in 1969, during that tiny rennaissance when what the artists' produced and what the public wanted corrresponded precisely- perhaps 1966 to 1972, ending just as the corporations took over.

I'm interested as to which American pop group was offered the song and refuse it: was it the Fifth Dimension?

[Kevin Loy]

The "SMiLE" observation is a keen one, and I recently made a very similar observation to a few friends about the album (though I feel that the execution was different...if SMiLE was geared more towards instrumental textures [including implementing vocals more for instrumental/tonal qualities than lyrical ones], "Yard" was more akin to an operatic work...still, both are amazing works for their time...and I don't think I am being pessimistic when I say that there are probably no pop musicians who offer anything even CLOSE to the scope of works like this nowadays). Though I'm straying severely off-topic with this, here is a bit of what I wrote...

"But for as successful as the first Webb/Harris collaboration was, it is their often-neglected second album that stands as their greatest achievement, and really, one of pop's great unknown albums. Actually, it isn't quite accurate to refer to it as a pop album, since the depth and scope of the work is more akin to an Opera. Throughout the work, there are numerous recurring motifs (including a segment at the end that reprises a melodic passage from the title track against a melodic passage from the final track, "That's The Way It Was"), usage of harmonic continuity, and thematic development between passages (as opposed to the non-sequitur "interludes" used throughout A Tramp Shining). The dramatic tone of the work, as well as the apparent conceptual thread in the lyrics (or libretto, if you want to be more...operatic...about it), bears this out as well. And, like many operas, it is a very difficult work, but by the end, it unveils itself in a magnificent way. And Richard Harris, who isn't really a very skilled vocalist, still does an excellent job with this material (indeed, he is much better here than he was on their first album). It was destined to die a quick commercial death (though, all told, it did make the top 30), but it certainly deserves much more than the near obscurity that it has received...and hopefully, with this spate of renewed interest in Jimmy Webb over the past few years, one can only hope that it will get more attention."

The "American pop group" was The Association. According to the liner notes of The Webb Sessions (which collects the two Webb/Harris albums, as well as a non-album A-side), Webb offered the tune to The Association, who promptly turned it down. Their producer at the time, Bones Howe, told them that they would have his resignation as soon as the song went into the top 10.

[Glenn Anders]

Tony, Kevin: You certainly jogged my old memory with your remenicences. I don't know if I have ever seen the lyric of "Wichita Lineman" written down, but seeing it makes immediately apparent the strength of the song. Jimmy Webb's words are strongly crafted.

Kevin: I failed to recall "Galveston", "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "MacArthur Park," but as soon as you mentioned them, they came right back to me. Possibly, there is a need for Webbnet.com!

Thanks.

Glenn

[Roger Ryan]

It reminds me of Brian Wilson's Smile from 1966, in that both could not be termed "rock", but were rather some kind of modern amalgam of pop, world music and classical: a new art form, stillborn I'm afraid.

In an attempt to put this thread back into Welles territory, let me suggest that "SMiLE" was Brian Wilson's "The Other Side Of The Wind", an innovative/experimental work created entirely of snippets that could be arranged and rearranged in different permutations, but initally left unfinished due to a whole slew of personal, familial and chemical reasons (although funding was not a problem!). For years fans obtained bootleg recordings and tried to determine which snippets went where. The happy ending was that Wilson was still around to finish it himself in 2004.

Alas, Welles is not still around to figure out where all snippets of "The Other Side Of The Wind" go, so it's all up to the fans, informed or not, to attempt a completion.

[Tony]

Well, we''ll have to stay "filmic": :;):

Glenn: The words are georgeous, aren't they?

Kevin: your observations about the differences between Smile and Yard are absolutely spot-on, and I had never realized that about Yard being operatic: that's quite a revelation for me. Isn't the cover on the LP beautiful? Like a still from a classic Japanese film. I disagree about Harris's voice, though I've heard that criticism since McCarthur Park: I always loved his sensitive singing, and CAMELOT is superb, but McCarthur, Didn't We and Yard are his best, I think. I do agree with you however that Tramp is not of a piece in the same way that Yard is: when I bought Tramp for my dad, we were both dissappointed. I'm so glad the Association turned McCarthur down: I liked their songs, but they were a pretty lame group: sort of a Republican rock group, the kind of group whch would have been comfortable playing in the Nixon White House. Coincidentally, I just watched them the other night in MONTEREY POP, and they are so bad! The film starts with them, in their little black accountant suits and ties, takes us through Butterfield, Bloomfield, Janis, Otis Redding, The Who, Hendrix burning his guitar, then: to a higher plane than all before, when it closes with a 20 minute raga performed by Ravi Shankar. What an amazing film! PENNEBAKER is so great! If all he ever gave us was "DON'T LOOK BACK" and "MONTEREY POP", he would still go down in history, but of course he has given us so much more.

Roger: I've often felt there was a similarity between those 2 American geniuses, Wilson and Welles. They both had very early success, they were both written off as creative forces after age 25, "Pet Sounds" is Wilson's "Citizen Kane", and "Smile" is his great lost unfinished masterpiece ( I am among those who still don't believe it is finished: rather, Darian and his engineer edited together the parts Wilson had completed before the project collapsed) just as "Ambersons" is Welles's great lost finished masterpiece. They both became very large and grew beards, and both became living American myths. Of course, being different generations meant Welles was more into wine, women, song and Shakespeare, and Wilson was more into cocaine, women, song and Spector.

But they are surely 2 of the greatest American natural geniuses, and both were/are auto-didacts: Welles never finished high school, and Wilson studied psychology in college, but for only half a term.
:laugh:

[Kevin Loy]

Tony: That was a very good observation about how people basically turned their backs on Welles and Wilson before they had even grown very old. The difference, though, was that "Smiley Smile", while a very intriguing album (though I personally think that "Heroes" and "Good Vibrations" should have been re-recorded, in order to fit in tonally with the rest of the album), was being hyped (or, more appropriately, SMiLE was being hyped) as "the" album that would redefine popular music. That "Smiley Smile" wasn't what people expected caused the tides to turn, and though "Wild Honey" (which I think is a wonderful little album) quickly followed and spawned two minor hit singles, it was too late (as a side note, I'm sure you already know this, but The Beach Boys were originally supposed to appear at Monterey...The Association took their place)...though they did turn into one intriguing, if somewhat uneven, cult band afterwards. Still, like Welles, the Beach Boys would have their ups and downs before eventually dissipating into what we have today. And, like Welles, a lot of people only grudgingly admit the importance and quality of their work (though, like Welles, a lot of people do their best to dismiss the group for various reasons)

I can't kick The Association too much, though, since they did eventually cover Webb's "PF Sloan", as well as recording The Millennium's under-released "Just About The Same" late in their recording career. But they usually didn't fare too well when they attempted any sort of high-brow expressions ("Requiem For The Masses", for example).

Also, please don't misunderstand my comments about Richard Harris' vocals. I do like him as a vocalist, despite his limitations, and I think that it is worth pointing out that I consider all of the rhetoric thrown around nowadays as to what constitutes a "great" vocalist is a load of crap. I'll take an extremely expressive vocalist like Richard Harris anyday over somebody like, say, Joss Stone, who equates vocal gymnastics with emotional embellishment. Richard Harris is believable.
(as a funny side note, one time when I was record-hunting in a thrift shop, I came across a copy of "Camelot" in the racks, and without paying too much attention to the cover, I thought that it was the soundtrack with Richard Harris...and then I took it home to discover that I had instead picked up the cast recording with Richard Burton...)

Do you know if the latest release of Monterey Pop includes any footage from Laura Nyro's performance?

Sorry to stray so far from Welles again...

[Tony]

Kevin: Let me quote Jeff Re: the general discussion:

"General Discussion:
All things Welles discussed here, as well as non-Welles related film topics."

So we're ok.

As for who replaced the Beach Boys I believe it was Otis Redding.

I have the 3 disc Monterey Pop with outakes, and Laura Nyro sings part of "Wedding Bell blues" and all of "Poverty Train"; she is AMAZING!!! Every time I see her, I ask myself how we were shnookled by the Who and Hendrix (who I love, by the way: I have all their albums) into thinking they were the way of the future: Nyro and Shankar are the 2 best musicians in the film. Her whole presentation is so much more sophisticated than anybody eles, it's embarrassing. Compare her to the Airplane: God, what a lousy, pretentoius, lame act. Or the Byrds, or....

Nyro stands head and hands over all of them except Ravi; she is ,simply,a revelation, in every way: rhythmically, harmonically, melodically, lyrically, emotionally, intellectually...in every way.

How did we miss her?

I think it's Pennebaker who says in the commentary that for years the rumour was that Laura had been booed off the stage, and that she was too shattered to perform live again for 2 years. However, when they discovered her footage there is no booing: in fact, she got a very good response. She also got her record contract out of it, cause some exec was watching her performance.

I must say that Joplin and Big Brother are really great too; big mistake for her to get rid of them: they were unpretentious, passionate, sincere and totally committed: they are a joy to watch, and the outakes are amazing! (real rock and roll!). Compare them to the Airplane: the latter are just a bunch of pompous windbags.

[Kevin Loy]

I had always thought that The Association was picked as the replacement...but you obviously know more about the festival than I do. I just remember reading that The Beach Boys were supposed to be the "headliners" for the festival.

I remember seeing a bit of Nyro's performance of "Poverty Train" somewhere on television (I think it was around the time that CBS ran a brief bit on Sunday Morning about Nyro), and it was a very good performance. Of course, it is an excellent song as well.

The "Executive", by the way, was a young David Geffen. He wasn't an executive at the time, and though some people have said that he was merely working in a mail room, I seem to remember reading somewhere that he was managing Biff Rose (and possibly a few others) at around the same time. After becoming her manager, Geffen did get her a new contract with Columbia Records (Verve had released her first album...I'm not completely certain off-hand, but I do think that "Eli & The Thirteenth Confession" was also scheduled for release by Verve, but Columbia released it instead...these were back in the days when Columbia was *slightly* more artist-friendly)...a pretty lucrative contract, actually...and cemented his own reputation in the process. He's listed in the credits on her first four Columbia albums.