Watch “The Corridor,” a Tribute to the Music Video Stanley Kubrick Planned to Make Near the End of His Life

in Film, Music | July 7th, 2016

When Stan­ley Kubrick died, he left behind numer­ous film ideas that would nev­er see the light of day. There was his epic Napoleon film; an adap­ta­tion of a Jim Thomp­son nov­el; his long-talked about Holo­caust film Aryan Papers; and so much more.

But this was a new one to hear about: in 1996 Kubrick agreed to direct a music video for UNKLE’s upcom­ing Psyence Fic­tion album. You may recall, back when MTV played music videos, see­ing Jonathan Glazer’s “Rab­bit in Your Head­lights” video, or Jake Scott’s “Be There,” both from UNKLE’s album. Alas, Kubrick­’s video nev­er got made. He had start­ed film­ing Eyes Wide Shut and then passed away upon its release.

Now “The Cor­ri­dor,” a glimpse of which you can see above, is an attempt to bring Kubrick and UNKLE back togeth­er. It’s not what actu­al­ly might have been filmed by the direc­tor, but some­thing that cap­tures the project in spir­it. It’s also a lov­ing trib­ute to Kubrick’s career and his love of sin­gle-point per­spec­tive, which has been video essayed else­where.

Direc­tor Toby Dye, who has direct­ed videos like “Par­adise Cir­cus” for Mas­sive Attack and “Anoth­er Night Out” for UNKLE, took on the job of bring­ing “The Cor­ri­dor” to the screen, co-designed by Rid­ley Scott Asso­ciates, work­ing with Dye’s Black Dog Films.

“The Cor­ri­dor” uses the one song off Psyence Fic­tion that nev­er got a video, the Richard Ashcroft-sung “Lone­ly Souls,” as its back­drop. Dye has cre­at­ed four nar­ra­tives that play on Kubrick’s icon­ic films–The Shin­ing, A Clock­work Orange, Bar­ry Lyn­don,and 2001–but then inter­weaves time and char­ac­ter along a long cor­ri­dor track­ing shot, star­ring Joan­na Lum­ley and Aiden Gillen.

In addi­tion, “The Cor­ri­dor” is a video cen­ter­piece to what sounds like a very cool exhi­bi­tion. Curat­ed by Mo’Wax and UNKLE founder James Lavelle, “Day­dream­ing with Stan­ley Kubrick” opened yes­ter­day at Som­er­set House in Lon­don and runs through August 24, 2016. Along with the video, the exhi­bi­tion fea­tures art­works cel­e­brat­ing Kubrick’s influ­ence on gen­er­a­tions of artists. (The stack of heaters on top of the Over­look car­pet is great.)

Said Dye:

‘For me, the unblink­ing red eye of 2001 A Space Odyssey’s HAL 9000 per­fect­ly encap­su­lates the cin­e­ma of Stan­ley Kubrick. For all his films share that same cool­ly ana­lyt­i­cal gaze, study­ing from afar mankind and all its many foibles. Kubrick’s cam­era nev­er appeared to fol­low the action, it was as if it moved of its own accord and the tableau of life sim­ply unfurled before it. It was his seem­ing­ly nev­er-end­ing cam­era zooms from Bar­ry Lyn­don that first sparked the seed of the idea behind “The Cor­ri­dor,” before that idea grew, and grew into some­thing that was, at times, infu­ri­at­ing­ly ambi­tious, but I hope in the best tra­di­tion of the man who inspired it.’

Those who can’t attend will have to wait and see if and when the full video for “The Cor­ri­dor” appears online. In the mean­time, Som­er­set House awaits.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

A Tour of Stan­ley Kubrick’s Prized Lens Col­lec­tion

The Shin­ing and Oth­er Com­plex Stan­ley Kubrick Films Recut as Sim­ple Hol­ly­wood Movies

Lost Kubrick: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick’s Unfin­ished Films

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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What’s the Essence of Music & Sound?: Meditations from Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad Presented in a Short, Creative Film

in Music | July 6th, 2016

If you’ve ever lis­tened to Radi­o­lab, one of the most pop­u­lar and endur­ing pod­casts out there, you know how much music (and sound more gen­er­al­ly) plays a spe­cial role in the show’s pro­duc­tion. And that’s all large­ly the cre­ation of Radi­o­lab’s co-host, Jad Abum­rad. You know those “jaggedy sounds, lit­tle plurps and things, strange stac­ca­to, per­cus­sive things” that make the show so dis­tinc­tive? That’s all Abum­rad, who majored in exper­i­men­tal music com­po­si­tion and pro­duc­tion at Ober­lin Col­lege.

To get inside Abum­rad’s think­ing about music (what is sound? what is music? why do we orga­nize sound into music?) watch the video above. Mac Pre­mo inter­viewed Jad, then turned the con­ver­sa­tion into a short cre­ative film. Note: If you don’t react well to see­ing fast-mov­ing images, you might want to skip this one.

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 and BlueSky.

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!

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The Prince Online Museum Archives 16 of Prince’s Official Web Sites, Spanning 20 Years

in Archives, Music | July 6th, 2016

PrinceOnline Lotusflow3r

In March of 2015, The Guardian pub­lished a piece on Prince’s vault, begun by his for­mer sound engi­neer Susan Rogers before his Pur­ple Rain super­star­dom: “It’s an actu­al bank vault, with a thick door,” she said, “in the base­ment of Pais­ley Park. When I left in 87, it was near­ly full.” That was 30 years ago. Com­pos­er and Prince orches­tra­tor Brent Fis­ch­er spec­u­lat­ed that “over 70% of the music we’ve worked on for Prince is yet to come out.” Already able to release “in a decade what most musi­cians couldn’t put out in a life­time,” Prince stored in his vaults enough to reveal him as thrice the pro­lif­ic genius we knew in life.

PrinceOnline TheDawn

Now that Prince has depart­ed, the vault has been final­ly been opened. What’s in it? Spec­u­la­tion, rumor, and hoax­es abound; we could see a posthu­mous album a year for the next cen­tu­ry. As they trick­le out we’ll like­ly see more con­ven­tion­al, less Prince-like releas­ing strate­gies, now that he is no longer per­son­al­ly in con­trol of his out­put. This will sure­ly make it eas­i­er on his fans, but will also strip the music of much of its curi­ous mys­tique. “A stream­ing skep­tic before it was fash­ion­able,” writes August Brown at the L.A. Times, and “a born futur­ist,” Prince excelled at “cre­at­ing new dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems under his purview.” As an ear­ly adopter of web tech­nol­o­gy, he began giv­ing away and sell­ing his music and mer­chan­dise online as ear­ly as 1996, when he cre­at­ed his first offi­cial web­site, “The Dawn” (above).

PrinceOnline NPG2003

Prince’s web debut hap­pened in the midst of his pitched bat­tle with Warn­er Broth­ers, and three years after he changed his name to the “Love Sym­bol.” Brows­ing through the his­to­ry of his inter­net strate­gies allows us to see how his per­son­al­ized dis­tri­b­u­tion approach­es and online iden­ti­ties evolved over the next two decades as he regained full cre­ative inde­pen­dence. We can eas­i­ly sur­vey that his­to­ry all in one place now, thanks to the Prince Online Muse­um, an archive of 16 of Prince’s var­i­ous web­sites, each one with its own pro­file writ­ten in Prince’s dis­tinc­tive idiom, with “tes­ti­mo­ni­als from the peo­ple who were involved in cre­at­ing and run­ning them for Prince,” writes The New York Times, and “links as well as screen shots and videos” of each site, none of them cur­rent­ly active.

There’s even a pre­cur­sor to Prince’s online world, Prince Inter­ac­tive, a 1994 CD-Rom “cou­pled with Prince’s under­ground film, The Beau­ti­ful Expe­ri­ence.” This ear­ly attempt makes clear that “Prince was fas­ci­nat­ed and excit­ed by the pos­si­bil­i­ties of con­nect­ing direct­ly 2 his audi­ence through their com­put­ers. It would be sev­er­al years until that became a real­i­ty 4 him, but the idea start­ed here.” (See a slow video walk-through of the CD-Rom above). After 1996’s “The Dawn” came the first offi­cial online retail store, “1–800-NewFunk,” and an online lyric book, “Crys­tal Ball Online.” Suc­ces­sive sites each had a dis­tinc­tive focus: on Prince’s char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion with “Love 4 One Anoth­er”; on var­i­ous iter­a­tions of his “NPG Music Club,” an “online dis­tri­b­u­tion hub”—including the “vir­tu­al estate” of the 2003 iter­a­tion (see pic­ture fur­ther up); and on rebrand­ing efforts like “3121.com.”

PrinceOnline 3rdEyeGirl

One of the most strik­ing of all of the var­i­ous sites, “Lotusflow3r” (top) con­tained “vibrant 3D imagery and ani­ma­tion con­nect­ed 2 the music” and design of the 3‑CD album set of the same name from 2009. The last entry in the archive, the “3rdEyeGirl” site from 2013, was cre­at­ed for Prince’s new band and “was anoth­er exam­ple of choos­ing 2 bypass tra­di­tion­al chan­nels and go his own way.” Each of these site pro­files act as “snap­shots in time to expe­ri­ence the Web sites just like when they were active,” writes Prince Online Muse­um direc­tor Sam Jen­nings. They also show­case “his fierce inde­pen­dence” and desire “to con­nect direct­ly with his audi­ence with­out any mid­dle­man.”

You can explore the Prince Online Muse­um here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Life of Prince in a 24-Page Com­ic Book: A New Release

See Prince (RIP) Play Mind-Blow­ing Gui­tar Solos On “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” and “Amer­i­can Woman”

Prince Plays Unplugged and Wraps the Crowd Around His Lit­tle Fin­ger (2004)

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

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The Haunting Background Vocals on The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter:” Merry Clayton Recalls How They Came to Be

in Music | July 5th, 2016

The ques­tion of what an artist is will­ing to give up for her art is unan­swer­able until the moment of sac­ri­fice arrives, and she must make a choice—safety, com­fort, fam­i­ly, etc, or the leap into a cre­ative endeav­or whose out­come is uncer­tain? Then there are those artists—often just as tal­ent­ed and ambitious—who make these choic­es for oth­er people’s art: the pop star’s dance troupe, the Broad­way cho­rus mem­bers, and the rock and roll back-up singers, some of whom we got to know in the 2014 doc­u­men­tary 20 Feet from Star­dom, includ­ing the great Mer­ry Clay­ton, who con­tributed her haunt­ing gospel chops to the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter.”

For the work­ing back­up singers in the doc­u­men­tary, the choic­es between every­day secu­ri­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty aren’t bina­ry. They often present them­selves instead as the kind of seem­ing­ly ordi­nary com­pro­mis­es we all make to some degree: do I go on this lucra­tive tour or attend my daughter’s recital? Do I turn down this job—and paycheck—or miss a birth­day, a fam­i­ly din­ner, a night’s sleep? Clay­ton had to make such a spur-of-the-moment deci­sion late one night, while just get­ting ready for bed at her L.A. home. She got a call from pro­duc­er Jack Niet­zsche, she tells us in a clip from the doc­u­men­tary above, whom she remem­bers say­ing: “There’s a group of guys in town called… the Rolling… Some­bod­ies… and they need some­body that will sing with them.”

Clay­ton had no idea who the Stones were, but at her husband’s urg­ing, she took the gig. She was, after all, a pro. As Mike Springer wrote in a pre­vi­ous post on the Stones’ side of the sto­ry, Clay­ton “made her pro­fes­sion­al debut at age 14, record­ing a duet with Bob­by Darin. She went on to work with The Supremes, Elvis Pres­ley and many oth­ers, and was a mem­ber of Ray Charles’s group of back­ing singers, The Raelettes.” When she got to the stu­dio, she had some reser­va­tions when Richards and Jag­ger asked her to sing “Rape, murder/It’s just a shot away,” but when the band explained the gist of the song, she said “Oh, okay, that’s cool,” and total­ly went for it, as you can hear in her iso­lat­ed part above.

Deter­mined to “blow them out of this room,” she did three increas­ing­ly intense takes, pitch­ing it up an octave and push­ing her voice till it cracked. The results give the song its chill­ing apoc­a­lyp­tic urgency, and they also came at a great per­son­al cost to Clay­ton. Preg­nant at the time of record­ing, “the phys­i­cal strain of the intense duet with Mick Jag­ger,” notes the Los Ange­les Times, “result­ed in a mis­car­riage after the ses­sion.” As Mike Springer wrote in his post, the Stones’ song, and the entire Let It Bleed album, cap­tured a par­tic­u­lar­ly dark time for the band—as Bri­an Jones dete­ri­o­rat­ed into addic­tion and men­tal illness—and for the world, com­ing as it did after the assas­si­na­tions of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. and the Kennedys and the esca­la­tion of the Viet­nam War. “Gimme Shel­ter” also came to rep­re­sent, Clay­ton told the L.A. Times, “a dark, dark peri­od for me,” though she couldn’t have known the price she’d pay for that ses­sion when she agreed to do it.

But she “turned it around,” she says: “I took it as life, love and ener­gy and direct­ed it in anoth­er direc­tion so it doesn’t real­ly both­er me to sing ‘Gimme Shel­ter’ now. Life is too short as it is and I can’t live on yes­ter­day.” Watch her above take the lead in an incred­i­bly pow­er­ful recent ren­di­tion of the song at the Gib­son Amphithe­atre in Uni­ver­sal City, CA. The per­for­mance fur­ther proves, I think, that, just as much as Richards’ gui­tar lines and Jagger’s lyrics, her voice played a cru­cial, star­ring role in the clas­sic record­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mick Jag­ger Tells the Sto­ry Behind ‘Gimme Shel­ter’ and Mer­ry Clayton’s Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals

The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter” Played by Musi­cians Around the World

Gimme Shel­ter: Watch the Clas­sic Doc­u­men­tary of the Rolling Stones’ Dis­as­trous Con­cert at Alta­mont

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

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Hear Electronic Ladyland, a Mixtape Featuring 55 Tracks from 35 Pioneering Women in Electronic Music

in Music | July 5th, 2016

Electronic Ladyland

Giv­en that we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured two doc­u­men­taries on elec­tron­ic music pio­neer Delia Der­byshire, an intro­duc­tion to four oth­er female com­posers who pio­neered elec­tron­ic music (Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros), and sev­en hours of elec­tron­ic music made by women between 1938 and 2014, no loy­al Open Cul­ture read­er could claim igno­rance on the theme of this new mix­tape, Elec­tron­ic Lady­land. It comes from the French musi­cal project Aran­del, whose mem­bers remain anony­mous and could there­fore be of any gen­der, but who, in these 45 min­utes (made of 55 dif­fer­ent tracks by 35 female com­posers), dis­play a mas­tery of the field.

“We real­ized that an uncon­scious fem­i­nine elec­tron­ic music Inter­na­tionale has exist­ed through­out the ages and we won­dered whether a secret intu­ition might have gath­ered around shared research,” says Aran­del in a trans­lat­ed inter­view. “Was their mutu­al desires achieved dif­fer­ent­ly in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, with dif­fer­ent tools in dif­fer­ent time­zones? The idea was to see what would hap­pen if we gath­ered them in the same fic­ti­tious room for 45 min­utes, and built a choir from all their pro­duc­tions.”

Aran­del’s inter­view­er describes the musi­cians in the mix as com­ing from “very dif­fer­ent musi­cal hori­zons: we find aca­d­e­m­ic learned musi­cians, research music com­posers and exper­i­menters who used to do DIY works com­posed for adver­tis­ing or tele­vi­sion in a pop or easy lis­ten­ing con­text, some eccen­tric women like The Space Lady or Ruth White.” We also hear from famous names like Lau­rie Ander­son and Wendy Car­los, and Delia Der­byshire. “What she accom­plished is fas­ci­nat­ing,” says Aran­del of Der­byshire, “as is lis­ten­ing to her talk about her inter­est­ing work in doc­u­men­taries,” and they’ve also includ­ed work from Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Eliane Radigue, and Pauline Oliveiros, sub­jects of the oth­er doc­u­men­taries we’ve post­ed here.

Elec­tron­ic Lady­land drops you right into a retro-futur­is­tic son­ic land­scape equal­ly dance­able and haunt­ing, one with great vari­ety as well as an unex­pect­ed con­sis­ten­cy. It pro­vides not just a kind of brief overview of what cer­tain gen­er­a­tions of female com­posers dis­cov­ered with their new and then-strange elec­tron­ic instru­ments and oth­er devices, but one you may well want to keep in your library for fre­quent lis­ten­ing. It will also, accord­ing to Aran­del, make you think: “There is an almost mag­ic link between women and elec­tron­ic music, from the 50’s / 60’s. Have you asked your­self the ques­tion of social, artis­tic, maybe mag­ic rea­sons behind this link?” Hit the play but­ton, and you may start. Find the list of tracks below.

1. Gly­nis Jones : Mag­ic Bird Song (1976)

2. Doris Nor­ton : Nor­ton Rythm Soft (1986)

3. Colette Mag­ny : « Avec » Poème (1966)

4. Daphne Oram : Just For You (Excerpt 1)

5. Lau­rie Spiegel : Clock­works (1974)

6. Pauline Oliveiros : Bog Bog (1966)

7. Megan Roberts — I Could Sit Here All Day (1977)

8. Suzanne Ciani : Paris 1971

9. Lau­rie Ander­son : Tape Bow Trio (Say Yes) (1981)

10. Gly­nis Jones : Schlum Rooli (1975)

11. Ruth White : Mists And Rains (1969)

12. Wendy Car­los : Spring (1972)

13. Ann McMil­lan : Syrinx (1978)

14. Delia Der­byshire : Rest­less Relays (1969)

15. Mag­gi Payne : Flights Of Fan­cy (1986)

16. Else Marie Pade : Syv Cirkler (1958)

17. Daniela Casa : Ricer­ca Del­la Mate­ria (1975)

18. The Space Lady : Domine, Libra Nos (1990)

19. Johan­na Bey­er : Music Of The Spheres [1938]

20. Mad­dale­na Fagan­di­ni : Inter­val Sig­nal (1960)

21. Eliane Radigue : Chryp­tus I (1970)

22. Ruth White : Owls (1969)

23. Ursu­la Bogn­er : Spe­ichen (1979)

24. Beat­riz Fer­reyra — Demeures Aqua­tiques (1967)

25. Doris Nor­ton : War Mania Analy­sis (1983)

26. Tera De Marez Oyens : Safed (1967)

27. Daphne Oram : Rhyth­mic Vari­a­tion II (1962)

28. Mireille Chamass-Kyrou : Etude 1 (1960)

29. Lau­rie Spiegel : Drums (1983)

30. Tere­sa Ram­pazzi : Stom­a­co 2 (1972)

31. Tere­sa Ram­pazzi : Esofa­go 1 (1972)

32. Suzanne Ciani : Fourth Voice: Sound Of Wet­ness (1970)

33. Ursu­la Bogn­er : Expan­sion (1979)

34. Alice Shields : Sac­ri­fice (1993)

35. Megan Roberts and Ray­mond Ghi­rar­do : ATVO II (1987)

36. Lau­rie Ander­son : Drums (1981)

37. Doris Hays : Som­er­sault Beat (1971)

38. Lily Green­ham : Tillid (1973)

39. Ruth Ander­son : Points (1973–74)

40. Pril Smi­ley : Kolyosa (1970)

41. Cather­ine Chris­ter Hen­nix : The Elec­tric Harp­si­chord (1976)

42. Joan La Bar­bara : Solo for Voice 45 (from Song­books) (1977)

43. Sla­va Tsuk­er­man, Bren­da Hutchin­son & Clive Smith : Night Club 1 (1983)

44. Monique Rollin : Motet (Etude Vocale) (1952)

45. Sofia Gubaiduli­na : Vivente – Non Vivente (1970)

46. Ruth White : Spleen (1967)

47. Doris Hays : Scared Trip (1971)

48. Daphne Oram : Pulse Perse­phone (Alter­nate Parts For Mix­ing)

49. Mag­gi Payne : Game­lan (1984)

50. Lau­rie Spiegel : The Unques­tioned Answer (1980)

51. Ursu­la Bogn­er : Homöo­stat (1985)

52. Wendy Car­los : Sum­mer (1972)

53. Suzanne Ciani : Princess With Orange Feet

54. Pauline Oliveiros : Poem Of Change (1993)

55. Suzanne Ciani : Thir­teenth Voice: And All Dreams Are Not For Sale (1970)

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

Two Doc­u­men­taries Intro­duce Delia Der­byshire, the Pio­neer in Elec­tron­ic Music

Meet Four Women Who Pio­neered Elec­tron­ic Music: Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros

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

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music, 1800–2015: Free Web Project Cat­a­logues the Theremin, Fairlight & Oth­er Instru­ments That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Rufus Wainwright and 1,500 Singers Sing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”

in Music | July 4th, 2016

We’ve seen 1999 mem­bers of Choir! Choir! Choir! per­form “When Doves Cry,” a mov­ing, mass trib­ute to Prince. And they’re now back, 1500 strong, with Rufus Wain­wright at the helm, singing Leonard Cohen’s beloved and oft-cov­ered song, Hal­lelu­jah.” Per­formed at the Hearn Gen­er­at­ing Sta­tion in Toron­to, it must have been a won­der­ful thing to expe­ri­ence live in per­son.

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 and BlueSky.

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!

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The Fight to Liberate the “Happy Birthday” Song, Told in a Short Documentary

in Law, Music | July 1st, 2016

You may have fol­lowed the sto­ry in the news lately–the song, “Hap­py Birth­day to You,” has offi­cial­ly entered the pub­lic domain, thanks to a court bat­tle fought by the doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Jen­nifer Nel­son. The bat­tle start­ed years ago when Nel­son was billed $1,500 to use “Hap­py Birth­day to You” in a doc­u­men­tary–the price of licens­ing a song still under copy­right. Wait, what? Flab­ber­gast­ed that “the world’s most pop­u­lar song,” which could be traced back to 1893, could still be under copy­right, Nel­son filed a class action suit against Warner/Chappell Music, the group claim­ing rights to “Hap­py Birth­day.” And won.

In this new short doc­u­men­tary from The Guardian, Nel­son tells the sto­ry of the song and her four-year strug­gle to give “Hap­py Birth­day” back to the world. With a lit­tle luck, “This Land is Your Land,” will be next.

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 and BlueSky.

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!

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Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson’s Three Rules for Living Well: A Short and Succinct Life Philosophy

in Life, Music | June 30th, 2016

Reg­u­lar read­ers of Open Cul­ture know us to gush over our favorite celebri­ty cou­ples now and then: John and Yoko, Jean-Paul and Simone, Fri­da and Diego…. Not your usu­al tabloid fare, but the juicy details of these amorous part­ners’ lives also hap­pen to inter­sect with some of our favorite art, music and lit­er­a­ture. One cul­tur­al pow­er cou­ple we haven’t cov­ered much, sur­pris­ing­ly, well deserves the “pow­er” adjec­tive: Lou Reed and Lau­rie Ander­son, two per­son­al­i­ties whose influ­ence on the art and music of the last sev­er­al decades can hard­ly be over­stat­ed.

Has Reed’s rep­u­ta­tion at times been inflat­ed, and Anderson’s under­played? Maybe. She doesn’t get near­ly enough cred­it for the wit­ty, pro­found, mov­ing work she’s done, year after year (with one lengthy hia­tus) since the 70s. Reed’s career since the 70s con­sist­ed of more miss­es than hits. But put them togeth­er (in 1992) and you get a har­mo­nious meet­ing of Reed’s raw, gut-lev­el asser­tions and Anderson’s curi­ous, play­ful con­cepts.

Wit­ness their per­son­al strength togeth­er in the Char­lie Rose excerpt at the top of the post. Reed, who was often a dif­fi­cult inter­view sub­ject, to put it mild­ly, and who gained a rep­u­ta­tion as a bru­tal­ly unpleas­ant, abu­sive rock and roll diva (immor­tal­ized lov­ing­ly in Bowie’s “Queen Bitch”), comes off in this sit-down with Ander­son as almost warm and fuzzy. Did she make him want to be a bet­ter per­son? I don’t know. But Anderson’s short obit­u­ary after his 2013 death remem­bered Reed as a “prince and fight­er,” her longer obit as a “gen­er­ous” soul who enjoyed but­ter­fly hunt­ing, med­i­ta­tion, and kayak­ing. No rea­son he wasn’t all those things too.

When it came to music, Reed could pull his part­ner into the orbit of his sweet R&B songcraft, as in their duet of “Hang on to Your Emo­tions,” fur­ther up, and she could pull him out of it—like John Cale and Nico had done in the Vel­vet Underground—and into the avant-garde drone of her exper­i­men­tal scene (as above in the pair’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with com­pos­er and sax­o­phon­ist John Zorn). Just this past Spring, in one of the most touch­ing musi­cal trib­utes I’ve ever seen, Ander­son recre­at­ed Reed’s abra­sive screw-you to his record label, Met­al Machine Music, as a con­cep­tu­al art piece called Drones, lean­ing sev­er­al of his gui­tars against sev­er­al ful­ly-cranked vin­tage amps, let­ting the feed­back ring out for five days straight.

None of us can be Lou Reed and Lau­rie Ander­son; every cou­ple is hap­py, or unhap­py, in their own way. But what, in the grand tra­di­tion of min­ing celebri­ty cou­ple’s lives for advice, can we learn from them? I guess the over­all message—as Ander­son her­self sug­gest­ed in her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame accep­tance speech for Reed (above, in shaky audi­ence video)—is this: keep it sim­ple. Kansas State Eng­lish Pro­fes­sor Philip Nel points out Anderson’s “wise… thought­ful” words on the sub­ject of liv­ing well, deliv­ered in her speech at the 8:55 mark:

I’m remind­ed also of the three rules we came up with, rules to live by. And I’m just going to tell you what they are because they come in real­ly handy. Because things hap­pen so fast, it’s always good to have a few, like, watch­words to fall back on.

And the first one is: One. Don’t be afraid of any­one. Now, can you imag­ine liv­ing your life afraid of no one? Two. Get a real­ly good bull­shit detec­tor. And three. Three is be real­ly, real­ly ten­der. And with those three things, you don’t need any­thing else.

Can you imag­ine Lou Reed as “real­ly, real­ly ten­der”? He cer­tain­ly was in song, if not always in per­son. In any case, these three rules seem to me to encap­su­late a per­son­al phi­los­o­phy built solid­ly on fear­less integri­ty and com­pas­sion. Dif­fi­cult to live by, but well worth the effort. And because I’m now feel­ing super warm and fuzzy about Lou and Lau­rie, I’ll leave you with the short WNYC inter­view clip below, in which she reveals her favorite Lou Reed song, which he hap­pened to write about her.

via Nine Kinds of Pie

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lau­rie Anderson’s Top 10 Books to Take to a Desert Island      

An Ani­mat­ed Lou Reed Explains The Vel­vet Underground’s Artis­tic Goals, and Why The Bea­t­les Were “Garbage”

Lou Reed, John Cale & Nico Reunite, Play Acoustic Vel­vet Under­ground Songs on French TV, 1972

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

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