The Isolated Vocal Tracks of the Talking Heads’ “Once In A Lifetime” Turn David Byrne into a Wild-Eyed Holy Preacher

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

…until you iso­late the vocal tracks, above.

Talk­ing Heads’ Afrobeat-inflect­ed “Once In A Life­time ” has become one of the band’s most icon­ic num­bers. Even casu­al fans are prone to aping lead singer David Byrne’s shouty, freaked out preach­er man deliv­ery, a style born of exper­i­ments in human sam­pling, and cowriter Bri­an Eno’s inter­est in ear­ly hip hop, Niger­ian musi­cian Fela Kuti, and com­bin­ing mul­ti­ple rhyth­mic ele­ments in a sin­gle song.

Byrne insists that the infec­tious lyrics are not a cri­tique of con­sumerism, as is pop­u­lar­ly believed. Instead, he explains, they’re about mind­ful­ness and the uncon­scious:

We oper­ate half-awake or on autopi­lot and end up, what­ev­er, with a house and fam­i­ly and job and every­thing else, and we haven’t real­ly stopped to ask our­selves, “How did I get here?

Cut loose from the bass, gui­tar, key­boards and drums, the lyrics seem less like semi-impro­vi­sa­tion­al art-geek con­struc­tions than the semi-sin­is­ter ram­blings of a self-styled holy man, maybe the wild-eyed preach­er char­ac­ter Byrne chan­nels in the orig­i­nal video below.

Peo­ple who’ve lis­tened to the stripped down ver­sion online gath­er in the com­ments sec­tion like friends com­par­ing notes near the exit of a haunt­ed house:

I feel like David Byrne is hold­ing me at gun­point and yelling at me in an aban­doned ware­house.

This sounds like David Byrne is lost alone in a cave and shout­ing non­sense into the dark­ness.

It’s like hear­ing a cult some­where in a cav­ern.

This sounds like some­thing you’d hear before being mur­dered??

Read­ers, what asso­ci­a­tions do you have with this song, and where do you find your­self after lis­ten­ing to it sans orches­tra­tion?

And you may find your­self 

Liv­ing in a shot­gun shack

And you may find your­self 

In anoth­er part of the world

And you may find your­self 

Behind the wheel of a large auto­mo­bile

And you may find your­self in a beau­ti­ful house

With a beau­ti­ful wife

And you may ask your­self, well

How did I get here?

Let­ting the days go by, let the water hold me down

Let­ting the days go by, water flow­ing under­ground

Into the blue again after the mon­ey’s gone

Once in a life­time, water flow­ing under­ground

And you may ask your­self

How do I work this?

And you may ask your­self

Where is that large auto­mo­bile?

And you may tell your­self

This is not my beau­ti­ful house!

And you may tell your­self

This is not my beau­ti­ful wife!

Let­ting the days go by, let the water hold me down

Let­ting the days go by, water flow­ing under­ground

Into the blue again after the mon­ey’s gone

Once in a life­time, water flow­ing under­ground

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Water dis­solv­ing and water remov­ing

There is water at the bot­tom of the ocean

Under the water, car­ry the water

Remove the water at the bot­tom of the ocean!

Let­ting the days go by, let the water hold me down

Let­ting the days go by, water flow­ing under­ground

Into the blue again in the silent water

Under the rocks, and stones there is water under­ground

Let­ting the days go by, let the water hold me down

Let­ting the days go by, water flow­ing under­ground

Into the blue again after the mon­ey’s gone

Once in a life­time, water flow­ing under­ground

And you may ask your­self

What is that beau­ti­ful house?

And you may ask your­self

Where does that high­way go to?

And you may ask your­self

Am I right? Am I wrong?

And you may say to your­self, “My God! What have I done?”

Let­ting the days go by, let the water hold me down

Let­ting the days go by, water flow­ing under­ground

Into the blue again in to the silent water

Under the rocks and stones, there is water under­ground

Let­ting the days go by, let the water hold me down

Let­ting the days go by, water flow­ing under­ground

Into the blue again after the mon­ey’s gone

Once in a life­time, water flow­ing under­ground

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Look where my hand was

Time isn’t hold­ing up

Time isn’t after us

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Same as it ever was

Let­ting the days go by (same as it ever was)

Let­ting the days go by (same as it ever was)

Once in a life­time 

Let­ting the days go by

Let­ting the days go by

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Talk­ing Heads Per­form The Ramones’ “I Wan­na Be Your Boyfriend” Live in 1977 (and How the Bands Got Their Start Togeth­er)

Talk­ing Heads Fea­tured on The South Bank Show in 1979: How the Ground­break­ing New Wave Band Made Nor­mal­i­ty Strange Again

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Thurs­day June 28 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Eight-Year-Old Drum Prodigy Plays Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times Bad Times;” Robert Plant Watches in Wonder

On her Vimeo page, Yoyoka Soma, an eight-year-old-drum­ming prodi­gy, tells you every­thing you need to know to appre­ci­ate this video. Her blurb, accom­pa­ny­ing the video above, reads as fol­lows:

My name is Yoyoka Soma. I am 8 year old Japan­ese drum­mer.

When I was a just small baby, my par­ents had a home stu­dio and there were var­i­ous kinds of instru­ments. My par­ents were per­form­ing music activ­i­ties as ama­teur singer-song­writ­ers and they cra­dled me with their music. When I lis­tened to their songs and gui­tar per­for­mances, I was eager to join them and couldn’t stop beat­ing out a rhythm. That was why I start­ed play­ing the drums. The drum was the first instru­ment in which I felt an inter­est in my life. My par­ents’ music peers often vis­it­ed us to play togeth­er. I was glued to the pow­er­ful and dynam­ic per­for­mances by the drum­mers. At age 2, I was play­ing the drums as if I were play­ing with toys. At age 4, I start­ed per­form­ing at con­certs. At age 5, my fam­i­ly band “Kaneaiy­oyoka” was formed by my par­ents. We have released 2 self-pro­duced CD albums so far. Not only the drums, I also play the key­board and per­form as a vocal­ist. I com­pose lyrics and music as well.

My favorite drum­mers are John Bon­ham, Chris Cole­man and Ben­ny Greb.

As a drum­mer, I enjoy being groove, tones and try to sup­port vocal­ists care­ful­ly. My dream is to be the best drum­mer in the world. In addi­tion, I want to be an artist who can do any­thing: play­ing all instru­ments, record­ing music, mix­ing the sound and design­ing the CD album jack­ets. As I am aim­ing at over­seas activ­i­ties, I am study­ing Eng­lish con­ver­sa­tion. I want to become friends with peo­ple all over the world through my musi­cal activ­i­ties!

As HLAG [Hit Like a Girl] is a con­test only for women, I def­i­nite­ly can’t lose it. I want to be the best female drum­mer. Thanks to the great sup­port by my fam­i­ly and fans, I can con­tin­ue the prac­tice and oth­er musi­cal activ­i­ties. I want to show the best result of my dai­ly prac­tice and come out on top of this con­test!

Yoyoka’s glee­ful per­for­mance of John Bon­ham’s drum sec­tion from Zep­pelin’s “Good Times Bad Times” served as her entry for the 2018 edi­tion of the Hit Like a Girl con­test. She was­n’t amongst the win­ners this year alas. But she undoubt­ed­ly has time–plenty of time–to take anoth­er shot.

Below, you can watch Robert Plan­t’s reac­tion upon view­ing Yoyoka at work. “I know where she could get a good job.” “That’s amaz­ing, isn’t it?”

h/t Mike S.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

John Bonham’s Iso­lat­ed Drum Track For Led Zeppelin’s ‘Fool in the Rain’

Decon­struct­ing Led Zeppelin’s Clas­sic Song ‘Ram­ble On’ Track by Track: Gui­tars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

Decon­struct­ing Led Zeppelin’s Clas­sic Song ‘Ram­ble On’ Track by Track: Gui­tars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

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Experience the Mystical Music of Hildegard Von Bingen: The First Known Composer in History (1098 – 1179)

The Ger­man abbess, vision­ary, mys­tic poet, com­pos­er, and heal­er Hilde­gard von Bin­gen “has become a sym­bol to dis­parate groups,” writes Bri­an Wise at WQXR, includ­ing “fem­i­nists and the­olo­gians, musi­col­o­gists and new-age med­i­cine prac­ti­tion­ers. Her chants have been set to tech­no rhythms; her writ­ings on nutri­tion have yield­ed count­less cook­books (even though she nev­er left behind a sin­gle recipe.)” She did leave behind an astound­ing body of work that has made her improb­a­bly pop­u­lar for a 12th cen­tu­ry nun, with a live­ly pres­ence on Face­book and her own Twit­ter account, @MysticHildy (“very into tech­nol­o­gy, love to trav­el”).

Her fame rests not only on the beau­ty of her work, but on her extra­or­di­nary life sto­ry and the fact that she is the first com­pos­er to whose work we can put a name. She was born in 1098 in Berm­er­sheim, the tenth child of a noble fam­i­ly. It being the cus­tom then to ded­i­cate a tenth child (a “tithe”) to the church, Hilde­gard was sent to the Monastery of Saint Dis­i­bo­den­berg to become a Bene­dic­tine nun under the tute­lage of Jut­ta, a high­ly-respect­ed anchoress.

“After Jutta’s death,” notes Ford­ham University’s source­book, “when Hilde­gard was 38 years of age, she was elect­ed the head of the bud­ding con­vent liv­ing with­in cramped walls of the anchor­age.”

Through­out her life, Hilde­gard had expe­ri­enced visions, begin­ning at the age of 3. (Oliv­er Sacks attrib­uted these to migraines). At age 42, she had a pow­er­ful expe­ri­ence that rad­i­cal­ly changed her life. She described this moment in her writ­ings:

And it came to pass … when I was 42 years and 7 months old, that the heav­ens were opened and a blind­ing light of excep­tion­al bril­liance flowed through my entire brain. And so it kin­dled my whole heart and breast like a flame, not burn­ing but warm­ing… and sud­den­ly I under­stood of the mean­ing of expo­si­tions of the books…

Over­whelmed, and fear­ful of writ­ing down her visions “because of doubt and a low opin­ion of myself and because of diverse say­ings of men,” she nonethe­less found encour­age­ment from lead­ers in the church to write and cir­cu­late her the­o­log­i­cal work: “With papal impri­matur, Hilde­gard was able to fin­ish her first vision­ary work Scivias (“Know the Ways of the Lord”) and her fame began to spread through Ger­many.” Soon after, she relo­cat­ed her con­vent to Bin­gen, and began an incred­i­bly pro­duc­tive peri­od in the last few decades of her life.

All told, she turned out an “extra­or­di­nary array of cre­ative trea­sures,” writes Wise: a dra­ma in verse, “more than 70 musi­cal works, med­ical texts filled with 2,000 reme­dies, writ­ings pre­sent­ing fem­i­nine arche­types for the divine.” Although she held to ortho­dox doc­trine, oppos­ing the Cathars, for exam­ple, and oth­er “schis­mat­ics,” she was a mys­tic whose ideas far exceed­ed the cramped the­o­log­i­cal con­fines of so many male coun­ter­parts. “Hildegard’s visions caused her to see humans as ‘liv­ing sparks’ of God’s love, com­ing from God as day­light comes from the sun,” writes Fr. Don Miller. “This uni­ty was not appar­ent to many of her con­tem­po­raries.”

Her tran­scen­dent sight did not blind her to the diverse beau­ty of the nat­ur­al world. “She not only had faith,” says Ger­man direc­tor and actress Mar­garethe Von Trot­ta, who made a 2010 biopic about Hilde­gard, “but she was so curi­ous. Today, per­haps she would have been a sci­en­tist because she did so much research on heal­ing peo­ple, on plants and ani­mals.” Hildegard’s tal­ent, intel­lect, and force­ful per­son­al­i­ty made her a for­mi­da­ble per­son, “the only known female fig­ure of her time,” writes Music Acad­e­my Online, “who achieved such intel­lec­tu­al stature and whose con­tri­bu­tions have had last­ing impact.” The revived inter­est in her music coin­cid­ed with “the ‘new age’ chant craze in the mid-1990s,” but Hildegard’s work dif­fers marked­ly from medieval chant writ­ten for male voic­es.

Vary­ing from “high­ly syl­lab­ic to dra­mat­ic melis­mas (swirling melodies on a sin­gle open syl­la­ble,” Melanie Spiller explains, “her music is quite dis­tinc­tive and eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able, with unsu­al ele­ments for the time, includ­ing exceed­ing an octave by a fourth or fifth, and large and fre­quent leaps.” Her music also func­tioned as “a vehi­cle for her own mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ence,” and it con­tin­ues to move listeners—of faith and no faith—who hear in her song cel­e­bra­tions of the divine­ly fem­i­nine and the won­ders of the nat­ur­al world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

A YouTube Chan­nel Com­plete­ly Devot­ed to Medieval Sacred Music: Hear Gre­go­ri­an Chant, Byzan­tine Chant & More

Mashup Weaves Togeth­er 57 Famous Clas­si­cal Pieces by 33 Com­posers: From Bach to Wag­n­er

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Hear David Lynch Read from His New Memoir Room to Dream, and Browse His New Online T‑Shirt Store

We think of David Lynch as a film­mak­er, and right­ly so, but the direc­tor of Eraser­headBlue Vel­vet, and Mul­hol­land Dri­ve has long kept a more diverse cre­ative port­fo­lio. He began as a painter, study­ing at the Penn­syl­va­nia Acad­e­my of the Fine Arts, and has also tried his hand at pho­tog­ra­phymusic, and com­ic strips. More recent­ly, writes the AV Club’s Ran­dall Col­burn, “Lynch has also released his own line of cof­fee, col­lab­o­rat­ed on Twin Peaks-themed beer and skate­boards, and cre­at­ed his own fes­ti­val. His lat­est endeav­or? T‑shirts, which is wild because it’s hard to imag­ine the ever-dap­per film­mak­er ever wear­ing one.”

Per­haps a line of Lynch-approved tra­di­tion­al white shirts, made to be but­toned all the way up even with­out a tie, remains in devel­op­ment. But for now, fans choose from the 57 T‑shirts designs now avail­able at Stu­dio: David Lynch’s Ama­zon store. All suit­able for wear­ing to your local revival house, they include “Turkey Cheese Head,” “Cow­boy,” “Small Dog,”“Small Bark­ing Dog,“and “You Got­ta Be Kid­din’ Me.” What kind of life, now solid­ly into its eighth decade, has both enabled and dri­ven Lynch to make not just so many things, but so many Lynchi­an things? Per­haps we can find a few answers with­in the near­ly 600 pages of Room to Dream, Lynch’s new mem­oir.

“Fans who share Lynch’s plea­sure in mys­tery will approach this book anx­ious­ly, hop­ing that his secrets may some­how be both revealed and sus­tained,” writes the Wash­ing­ton Post’s Charles Arrow­smith of the book, an excerpt of which you can hear read by Lynch him­self above. (He begins by say­ing “I’m going to tell you a sto­ry about my grand­par­ents” and ends with the image of his young self vom­it­ing into a hel­met he’d brought to school for show-and-tell.) And those who fear that the con­ven­tion­al­i­ty of the mem­oir form might flat­ten out Lynch’s idio­syn­crasies can rest assured that “in telling his life sto­ry, Lynch demon­strates the same dis­re­gard for causal­i­ty and tonal con­sis­ten­cy that marks his films.”

Despite includ­ing not just Lynch’s per­spec­tive but the per­spec­tives of many oth­ers (“sur­pris­ing­ly can­did ex-wives, fam­i­ly mem­bers, actors, agents, musi­cians, and col­leagues in var­i­ous fields,” pro­claims the jack­et copy), “Room to Dream pulls off a neat trick in draw­ing back a cur­tain and reveal­ing rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle. Despite the book’s heft, there’s not much to expli­cate the mys­ter­ies of Lynch’s work. But then, for him, the mystery’s the thing. To explain would be to destroy. What we get instead is insight into his cre­ative process.” As ded­i­cat­ed Lynch enthu­si­asts under­stand, the cre­ative process, which through­out his career has led him not to answers but ever more strange­ly com­pelling ques­tions, is every­thing.

Note: When Room to Dream comes out on June 19th, you can down­load the audio­book ver­sion, which Lynch helps nar­rate, for free if you sign up for Audi­ble’s free tri­al pro­gram. We have details on that pro­gram here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Paint­ings of Filmmaker/Visual Artist David Lynch

David Lynch’s Pho­tographs of Old Fac­to­ries

Dis­cov­er David Lynch’s Bizarre & Min­i­mal­ist Com­ic Strip, The Angri­est Dog in the World (1983–1992)

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Rapping, Deconstructed: How Some of the Greatest Rappers Make Their Rhymes

If high school Eng­lish teach­ers can chal­lenge skep­ti­cal stu­dents to cul­ti­vate an appre­ci­a­tion for Shake­speare and poet­ry with rap-based assign­ments, might the reverse also hold true?

Many afi­ciona­dos of high cul­ture turn up their noses at rap, believ­ing it to be a sim­ple form, requir­ing more brag­gado­cio than tal­ent.

Estelle Caswell, rap fan and pro­duc­er of Vox’s Ear­worm series, may get them to rethink that posi­tion with the above video, show­cas­ing how great rap­pers assem­ble rhymes.

Caswell uses visu­al graph­ing to explain the progress from the A‑A-B‑B scheme of ear­ly rap­per Kur­tis Blow’s “The Breaks” (1980) to the com­plex and sur­pris­ing holorimes of her per­son­al favorite, MF DOOM.

To appre­ci­ate her visu­al break­downs, you must under­stand that raps can be scored like tra­di­tion­al music. Here the bar reigns supreme—each bar con­sist­ing of four beats. The fur­ther out we go from rap’s ori­gins, the more its prac­ti­tion­ers play with place­ment and rhyme.

Above are some lyrics from Eric B. and Rakim’s 1986 cut, “Eric B. Is Pres­i­dent,” fea­tur­ing inter­nal rhymes high­light­ed in yel­low and mul­ti-syl­lab­ic rhymes picked out in pink. You’ll also find them escap­ing the tyran­ny of the bar line, con­tin­u­ing the rhyme on the first beat of the next bar.

Caswell is so intent on exam­in­ing the late Noto­ri­ous B.I.G.‘s “Hyp­no­tize,” that she over­looks a rather siz­able ele­phant in the room, the misog­y­nis­tic POV behind those en and oo sounds.

Short­ly there­after, Mos Def ups both the rhyming game and the fem­i­nist account­abil­i­ty, by stuff­ing his com­po­si­tions with mul­ti-syl­lab­ic words and phras­es that sort of rhyme—cinnamon, Entenmann’s, adren­a­line and “sent to them.”

Mean­while, Andre 3000 is play­ing with vary­ing the accent of his rhymes, rel­a­tive to the beat and bar, rather than com­mit­ting to a pre­dictable thud­ding.

Eminem, who has the dis­tinc­tion of pen­ning the first rap to win an Acad­e­my Award, places a pre­mi­um on nar­ra­tive, and refus­es to con­cede that noth­ing rhymes with orange.

Cur­rent chart top­per Kendrick Lamar’s gal­lop­ing “Rig­amor­tis” estab­lish­es a musi­cal motif that Caswell com­pares to Beethoven’s famous fifth.

MF DOOM kicks the ball fur­ther down the court with dou­ble enten­dres, word­play and a will­ing­ness to steer clear of the expect­ed “b word.”

Lis­ten to a Spo­ti­fy playlist of the songs ref­er­enced in the video.

Delve fur­ther into the sub­ject by read­ing the thoughts of rap ana­lyst Mar­tin Con­nor, whom Caswell cred­its as a sort of bea­con.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Hip Hop Music Visu­al­ized on a Turntable Cir­cuit Dia­gram: Fea­tures 700 Artists, from DJ Kool Herc to Kanye West

Found­ing Fathers, A Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed By Pub­lic Enemy’s Chuck D, Presents the True His­to­ry of Hip Hop

150 Songs from 100+ Rap­pers Get Art­ful­ly Woven into One Great Mashup: Watch the “40 Years of Hip Hop”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Hear the First Track From John Coltrane’s Lost Album: The Newly-Discovered 1963 Collection Will Get Officially Released Later This Month

Saint­hood and incal­cu­la­ble influ­ence aside, John Coltrane didn’t always break new ground in the stu­dio. “If you heard the John Coltrane Quar­tet live in the ear­ly-to-mid 1960s,” writes Gio­van­ni Rus­sonel­lo at The New York Times—refer­ring to the clas­sic line­up of bassist Jim­my Gar­ri­son, drum­mer Elvin Jones, and pianist McCoy Tyner—you heard “a ground-shak­ing band, an almost phys­i­cal being, bear­ing a promise that seemed to reach far beyond music.”

Pri­or to 1965’s super­nat­ur­al A Love Supreme, how­ev­er, few of the eight albums the clas­sic quar­tet record­ed for Impulse! Records cap­tured “the band’s live eth­ic.” The “fun­ny prob­lem” Coltrane had was his com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty, which made the label eschew record­ing the quartet’s con­sid­er­ably exper­i­men­tal ten­den­cies in favor of “con­cept-dri­ven and con­sumer-friend­ly projects.” Now, Rus­sonel­lo writes, “that sto­ry needs a major foot­note.” A lost Coltrane album from 1963 has emerged, dis­cov­ered by the fam­i­ly of his first wife, Naima.

Coltrane his­to­ry may be rewrit­ten on June 29th when the album, Both Direc­tions at Once, gets its release. We have a glimpse at what fans have been miss­ing for the past 55 years in the soar­ing first track, “Unti­tled Orig­i­nal 11383,” above, a “brisk minor blues.” The album’s remain­ing trea­sures may jus­ti­fy Son­ny Rollin’s com­par­i­son of this dis­cov­ery to “find­ing a new room in the Great Pyra­mid.” In addi­tion to two pre­vi­ous­ly unheard orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions, the album fea­tures some very intrigu­ing record­ings.

The final track, a stu­dio ver­sion of “One Up, One Down,” was “pre­vi­ous­ly heard only on a boot­leg record­ing made at the Bird­land jazz club,” notes Fact Mag­a­zine. “One of Coltrane’s most famous com­po­si­tions, ‘Impres­sions,’ is fea­tured in a trio with­out piano,” and the album also con­tains the first record­ing of “Nature Boy,” which lat­er appeared on The John Coltrane Quar­tet Plays. (See Fact Mag for a full track­list­ing of the stan­dard and two-CD deluxe edi­tions of the album.) This col­lec­tion comes very close “to the breadth of what Coltrane and his asso­ciates were deliv­er­ing onstage,” claims Rus­sonel­lo.

It may also rep­re­sent a pre­scient­ly tran­si­tion­al doc­u­ment, as its title sug­gests. As Coltrane’s son Ravi puts it, “you do get a sense of John with one foot in the past and one foot head­ed toward his future.” After the album’s 1963 record­ing at the Rudy Van Gelder Stu­dio in New Jer­sey, the mas­ter tapes some­how went miss­ing, but Coltrane had tak­en home the ref­er­ence tape that only recent­ly sur­faced. Both Direc­tions at Once fills in a gap between the “mar­velous” albums Coltrane and Cres­cent, show­ing off the band’s dynamism in the peri­od between “spring 1962 to spring 1964” and let­ting them cut loose while stay­ing with­in famil­iar har­mon­ic forms.

Coltrane’s avant-garde bril­liance may have changed the course of mod­ern music, but some of his most for­ward-think­ing exper­i­ments can be dif­fi­cult lis­ten­ing for those unini­ti­at­ed in the rites of modal free jazz. Accord­ing to pianist and schol­ar Lewis Porter, com­ment­ing on an advance copy of Both Direc­tions at Once, the redis­cov­ered album, con­tains “a lot of that musi­cal meat” that Coltrane’s quar­tet deliv­ered to live audi­ences in the ear­ly-to-mid-six­ties, “but in a con­text that will be more acces­si­ble to a lot of lis­ten­ers.”

Maybe more con­ser­v­a­tive lis­ten­ers, how­ev­er, can find in the lost album a key that unlocks the incred­i­ble mys­ter­ies of lat­er record­ings like Ascen­sion, Med­i­ta­tions, and the wild, posthu­mous­ly-released Inter­stel­lar Space.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream the “Com­plete” John Coltrane Playlist: A 94-Hour Jour­ney Through 700+ Trans­for­ma­tive Tracks

John Coltrane Draws a Mys­te­ri­ous Dia­gram Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal & Mys­ti­cal Qual­i­ties of Music

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme (1964)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Hear Eric Clapton’s Isolated Guitar Track From the Beatles’ ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ (1968)

George Har­ri­son of the Bea­t­les was an accom­plished gui­tar play­er with a dis­tinc­tive solo­ing style. So you might think that with a song as per­son­al and gui­tar-cen­tric as “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps,” he would do his own play­ing. In fact, the song fea­tures gui­tar play­ing by Eric Clap­ton.

It was record­ed on Sep­tem­ber 6, 1968, dur­ing the acri­mo­nious White Album ses­sions. Har­ri­son had been strug­gling off and on for over a month to get the song right. He first tried it with his own play­ing on a Gib­son J‑200 gui­tar along with an over­dubbed har­mo­ni­um. He lat­er exper­i­ment­ed by run­ning the gui­tar solo back­wards. Noth­ing seemed to work.

So final­ly Har­ri­son asked his friend Clap­ton for a lit­tle help. When Har­ri­son walked into Abbey Road Stu­dios with Clap­ton, the oth­er Bea­t­les start­ed tak­ing the song seri­ous­ly. In a 1987 inter­view with Gui­tar Play­er mag­a­zine, Har­ri­son was asked whether it had bruised his ego to ask Clap­ton to play on the song.

No, my ego would rather have Eric play on it. I’ll tell you, I worked on that song with John, Paul, and Ringo one day, and they were not inter­est­ed in it at all. And I knew inside of me that it was a nice song. The next day I was with Eric, and I was going into the ses­sion, and I said, “We’re going to do this song. Come on and play on it.” He said, “Oh, no. I can’t do that. Nobody ever plays on the Bea­t­les records.” I said, “Look, it’s my song, and I want you to play on it.” So Eric came in, and the oth­er guys were as good as gold–because he was there. Also, it left me free to just play the rhythm and do the vocal. So Eric played that, and I thought it was real­ly good. Then we lis­tened to it back, and he said, “Ah, there’s a prob­lem, though; it’s not Beat­ley enough”–so we put it through the ADT [auto­mat­ic dou­ble-track­er], to wob­ble it a bit.

For the impres­sion of a per­son weep­ing and wail­ing, Clap­ton used the fin­gers on his fret­ting hand to bend the strings deeply, in a high­ly expres­sive descend­ing vibra­to. He was play­ing a 1957 Gib­son Les Paul, a gui­tar he had once owned but had giv­en to Har­ri­son, who nick­named it “Lucy.” You can hear Clap­ton’s iso­lat­ed play­ing above. And for a reminder of how it all came togeth­er, you can lis­ten to the offi­cial ver­sion here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in May, 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Lost Gui­tar Solo for “Here Comes the Sun” by George Har­ri­son, Dis­cov­ered by George Mar­tin

A Young Eric Clap­ton Demon­strates the Ele­ments of His Gui­tar Sound

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele

Life Lessons from Anthony Bourdain: How He Developed His Iron Professionalism, Achieved Creative Freedom & Learned from Failure

Antho­ny Bour­dain was not a par­tic­u­lar­ly good chef. That state­ment comes not as a cheap shot at the recent­ly depart­ed, but a quote from the depart­ed him­self. Bour­dain freely admit­ted it over a cou­ple of Tiger beers with a Fast Com­pa­ny inter­view­er last year. “I was very deserved­ly fired on a num­ber of occa­sions,” he adds for good mea­sure, ref­er­enc­ing his decades of dirty work and drug abuse before he rose to promi­nence in the worlds of food- and trav­el-cen­tric books and tele­vi­sion. But in more than one way, those decades pre­pared him to ride the kind of suc­cess he would even­tu­al­ly achieve into a body of work that could have arisen from no oth­er life or per­son­al­i­ty.

“Most of the peo­ple I’ve met who’ve been in the tele­vi­sion indus­try for a long time, their great­est fear is that they will not be in the tele­vi­sion indus­try next year,” Bour­dain says. “That they’ll say some­thing or do some­thing or make a deci­sion that will be so unpop­u­lar that they’ll lose their gig and won’t end up back on tele­vi­sion again. I don’t have that fear.” He knew, sure­ly bet­ter than any­one who has pub­licly remarked on it, that he may not have shown the genius in the kitchen to attain star-chef sta­tus. But he also knew he had some­thing ulti­mate­ly more impor­tant: the skills to turn out meal after flaw­less meal, day in and day out. “If I have to,” he says, “I’m pret­ty sure I can keep up on an omelet sta­tion.”

Many remem­brances of Bour­dain have high­light­ed his iron pro­fes­sion­al­ism. “He is con­trolled to the point of neu­ro­sis: clean, orga­nized, dis­ci­plined, cour­te­ous, sys­tem­at­ic,” wrote the New York­er’s Patrick Rad­den Keefe in a pro­file pub­lished last year. “He is Apol­lo in drag as Diony­sus.” Bour­dain cred­it­ed that to his lean years in the kitchen: “Every­thing impor­tant I ever learned, I learned as dish­wash­er and as a cook: you show up on time, you stay orga­nized, you clean up after your­self, you think about the peo­ple you work with, you respect the peo­ple you work with. You do the best you can.” This went for mat­ters per­son­al as well as pro­fes­sion­al: “If I say to you I’m going to meet you tomor­row at twelve min­utes after five to see John Wick 7, I will be there at 5:02.”

He would also, he adds, be “hang­ing out across the street, dis­creet­ly observ­ing to see what time you show up. And I’ll be mak­ing some very impor­tant deci­sions based on your arrival time.” Bour­dain’s exact­ing stan­dards, for him­self and oth­ers, allowed him to achieve an unusu­al degree of free­dom for a major media per­son­al­i­ty. “I detest com­pe­tent, work­man­like sto­ry­telling,” he says of his and his col­lab­o­ra­tors’ pen­chant for cre­ative risk. “A pow­er­ful reac­tion, in one way or the oth­er, is infi­nite­ly prefer­able to me than pleas­ing every­body.” Yet despite tak­ing books and tele­vi­sion shows osten­si­bly about food in new and unpre­dictable aes­thet­ic and intel­lec­tu­al direc­tions, in the kitchen he remained a tra­di­tion­al­ist to the end. “You put chick­en in a car­bonara? You lost me. It’s an unfor­giv­able sin against God.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Antho­ny Bourdain’s Free Show Raw Craft, Where He Vis­its Crafts­men Mak­ing Gui­tars, Tat­toos, Motor­cy­cles & More (RIP)

Hear Leonard Cohen’s Final Inter­view: Record­ed by David Rem­nick of The New York­er

Carl Sagan Issues a Chill­ing Warn­ing to Amer­i­ca in His Final Inter­view (1996)

David Fos­ter Wal­lace: The Big, Uncut Inter­view (2003)

Paulo Coel­ho on How to Han­dle the Fear of Fail­ure

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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