It’s unfor­tu­nate, I think, that legions of Bea­t­les fans turned on Yoko Ono with such fero­cious ani­mos­i­ty after the breakup of the band. Most fans still absolute­ly despise Yoko. (See the legion of often crude­ly misog­y­nist com­ments under every Youtube video in which she appears.) Sure, her voice and music is cer­tain­ly not to everyone’s taste, but with­out her artis­tic and con­cep­tu­al influ­ence on John Lennon post-Bea­t­les, it’s unlike­ly his amaz­ing solo albums John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970) and Imag­ine (1971) would sound the way they do. Yoko, in fact, more or less gave Lennon the seeds of “Imag­ine,” the song, in her quirky 1964 self-pub­lished book, Grape­fruit: A Book of Instruc­tions and Draw­ings, though she nev­er took the cred­it for it.

Like it or not, if we love solo Lennon, we have no choice but to take the more tra­di­tion­al­ly great song­writ­ing with the messy, exper­i­men­tal, and some­times unlis­ten­able. They can­not be com­plete­ly untan­gled, to the dis­may of a great many peo­ple. As Dami­an Fanel­li at Gui­tar World com­ments on Lennon and the Plas­tic Ono Band’s impromp­tu performance/jam with Eric Clap­ton in Toron­to in 1969, “Yoko screams—very loudly—during the entire oth­er­wise-decent per­for­mance.” This is not an exag­ger­at­ed or espe­cial­ly biased char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. “Some­day,” Fanel­li then goes on, “I’ll vent about how ter­ri­ble and depress­ing this is.” Fine, but whether we think of her singing as chal­leng­ing per­for­mance art or “depress­ing” cat­er­waul­ing, we’re stuck with it. But do the dynam­ics of John and Yoko onstage change when we add anoth­er polar­iz­ing weirdo—Frank Zappa—to the mix? See for your­self in the videos here, from an onstage jam ses­sion the two did with Zap­pa and the Moth­ers of Inven­tion at the Fill­more East in 1971.

See Zap­pa, Lennon, et al. do Wal­ter Ward’s “Well (Baby Please Don’t Go),” which Fanel­li declares “the high­light of the jam, for sure.” Zap­pa announces to the band the key and “not stan­dard blues changes,” then Lennon intro­duces the tune as “a song I used to sing while I was in the Cav­ern in Liv­er­pool. I haven’t done it since.” Zap­pa rips out a fan­tas­tic solo and the band—though seem­ing­ly in the dark at first—lays down a right­eous groove. And Yoko? Well, it’s true, as Fanel­li notes, “all she did was scream her head off.” In this straight-ahead blues num­ber, I have to say, it’s pret­ty obnox­ious. But her vocal tics play much bet­ter in more freeform, odd­ball, Zap­pa-lead jams like “Jam­rag” and “King Kong,” and the shouty, repet­i­tive “Scum­bag,” which sounds almost like a Can out­take.

Zap­pa and band, as always, are in top form. Lennon at times looks out of place and uncer­tain in their impro­visato­ry envi­ron­ment, but he game­ly keeps up. Yoko… Yoko does her usu­al lot of scream­ing, howl­ing, yodel­ing, etc. But before you gin up to tear her to pieces in yet anoth­er nasty online com­ment, bear in mind, for what it’s worth, no Yoko, no “Imag­ine.”

As Fanel­li notes, “the per­for­mance was released as part of Lennon and Ono’s poor­ly received (and not very good at all) 1972 studio/live album, Some­time in New York City.” See Allmusic’s review for a much more thor­ough, fair-mind­ed assess­ment of that record­ing, which “found the Lennons in an explic­it­ly polit­i­cal phase.”

via Gui­tar World

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

The Night Frank Zap­pa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Cap­tain Beef­heart Too (Bel­gium, 1969)

Down­load the John Lennon/Yoko Ono “War is Over (If You Want It)” Poster in 100+ Lan­guages

Hear John Lennon’s Final Inter­view, Taped on the Last Day of His Life (Decem­ber 8, 1980)

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

Kye Smith, a drum­mer based in New­cas­tle, Aus­tralia, recent­ly hauled his drum kit to a near­by rooftop (an homage to The Bea­t­les’ 1969 rooftop gig?) and start­ed bang­ing out a pret­ty won­der­ful trib­ute to Ringo Starr, play­ing drum parts from 71 Bea­t­les songs in 5 quick min­utes. Smith moves chrono­log­i­cal­ly, play­ing the songs in the order they were released (not record­ed). We start in 1962, move through 1969, and even momen­tar­i­ly vis­it 1995. On his Face­book page, Smith had this to say:

Way before I found out about punk rock or even knew what a snare drum was I spent my child­hood play­ing vinyl records at my grand­par­ents place spin­ning artists such as Slim Dusty, ELVIS PRESLEY and The Bea­t­les.

This chronol­o­gy called for some spe­cial treat­ment and got me out of the stu­dio and onto the rooftop of The Great North­ern Hotel — New­cas­tle, Aus­tralia for a pret­ty stun­ning view of New­cas­tle, New South Wales in the back­ground.

Thanks to every­one at The Great North­ern for let­ting me make some noise up there and to Elu­mi­nate for help­ing me shoot it and lug heaps of gear up 7 storeys of stairs!

Below the jump, you can find the list of songs that appear in the video, com­plete with cor­re­spond­ing time stamps. And keep in mind that Smith, as he men­tions on Youtube, is “avail­able for stu­dio and live work and will be open­ing up some slots for drum lessons short­ly.” Con­tact him here.

PS: If you can name one of the drum parts that was orig­i­nal­ly played by Paul McCart­ney, you get bonus points.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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Has the end­less dis­trac­tion of mod­ern life destroyed our abil­i­ty to sit with the sym­phonies of Beethoven and Bach? Do we no longer have the atten­tion span to read nov­els? These are the kinds of ques­tions schol­ar Alan Jacobs asks in books like The Plea­sures of Read­ing in an Age of Dis­trac­tion, and they’re ques­tions he admits—on his blog Text Pat­terns—may obtain dif­fer­ent answers depend­ing on the age of whom you ask. In a post from this past August, Jacobs wrote of his need to coun­ter­act social media with “the more peace­able and order­ly music of Bach and Mozart and Han­del,” and pon­dered the emo­tion­al resilience of younger peo­ple exposed pret­ty much dai­ly to videos of real-life vio­lence online. “It occurs to me,” he con­cludes, “maybe Twitter—maybe social media more generally—really is a young person’s thing after all. Intrin­si­cal­ly, not just acci­den­tal­ly.”

I admit, Jacobs’ post res­onat­ed with me because of the dif­fi­cul­ty I some­times have as I get old­er in dis­con­nect­ing from the con­stant stream of hor­ror and triv­i­al­i­ty on social media—and of get­ting lost in a good book or a mov­ing piece of music after wit­ness­ing spec­ta­cle after spec­ta­cle online. Per­haps it is a func­tion of age, as Jacobs sur­mis­es, and the young are bet­ter equipped to bounce right back. Or per­haps our dai­ly expo­sure to end­less con­flict has all of our ner­vous sys­tems frayed raw, leav­ing us unable to appre­ci­ate the “coun­ter­vail­ing forces” of music and lit­er­a­ture that demands sus­tained atten­tion. The Spo­ti­fy Clas­si­cal Playlist blog seems to sug­gest as much in quot­ing Pol­ish com­pos­er Witold Lutoslaws­ki’s claim, “peo­ple whose sen­si­bil­i­ty is destroyed by music in trains, air­ports, lifts, can­not con­cen­trate on a Beethoven Quar­tet.” Sub­sti­tute “Twit­ter tsuna­mi” and “24-hour cable news” for “music in trains, air­ports, lifts” and the point may apply to our cur­rent cul­tur­al con­di­tion.

So you may think of the Spo­ti­fy Clas­si­cal Playlists of all of Beethoven and all of Bach fea­tured here as exer­cis­es in increas­ing your men­tal sta­mi­na, or as ther­a­peu­tic “cop­ing mech­a­nisms” as Jacobs writes, to keep “emo­tion­al bal­ance.” You may think of them as ways to con­nect ful­ly with com­posers who lived in a world very dif­fer­ent from ours, one that moved much more slow­ly and demand­ed much less of our over­taxed sens­es.

Or you can choose not to apply any kind of frame­work, and sim­ply rev­el in the fact that thanks to the internet—be it over­all a scourge or a boon to human life—you can now enjoy all of the works of Beethoven and Bach, each in chrono­log­i­cal order; 250 hours of enthralling clas­si­cal music, for free. So enjoy. And learn more about how these playlists were com­piled at the the Spo­ti­fy Clas­si­cal blog. And if you need Spo­ti­fy soft­ware, get it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear All of Mozart in a Free 127-Hour Playlist

All of Bach Is Putting Videos of 1,080 Bach Per­for­mances Online

Down­load the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free

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

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

How­ev­er you feel about Bri­an May and Roger Tay­lor of Queen reform­ing recent­ly under the band’s name with Amer­i­can Idol run­ner-up Adam Lam­bert on vocals, the band has stat­ed on sev­er­al occa­sions that they nev­er intend­ed to replace Fred­die Mer­cury. “[Lam­bert] inter­prets the songs the way he inter­prets them which is won­der­ful,” May has remarked, “We want­ed him to be him­self.” Fair enough. But even if Queen had want­ed to replace Mer­cury after his death from AIDS com­pli­ca­tions in 1991, the task would have proved impos­si­ble. No one sounds like Fred­die Mer­cury, no one com­mands a stage like he did, and no one writes like him either, with his unique mix of raunchy, fun­ny, quirky, can­did, and deeply heart­felt lyri­cism.

“Moth­er Love,” the last song Mer­cury record­ed—at the band’s Mon­treux stu­dio—con­tains some of the most painful of Mercury’s lyrics, an expres­sion of his desire “for peace before I die.” In what we can’t help but hear in hind­sight as a direct ref­er­ence to his ill­ness, Mer­cury sings, “My body’s aching, but I can’t sleep… I’m com­ing home to my sweet / Moth­er love.” The inher­ent pathos of “Moth­er Love,” per­vades the posthu­mous­ly-released 1995 album Made in Heav­en, but the song that most seemed to define Fred­die Mer­cury imme­di­ate­ly after his death is also a rumi­na­tion on mor­tal­i­ty. Shot through with nos­tal­gia, remorse, and expres­sions of the brevi­ty of life, “These Are the Days of Our Lives”—from Innu­en­do, the last album the band released dur­ing Mercury’s lifetime—laments, “you can’t turn back the clock, you can turn back the tide.” Long­ing for child­hood lost, Mer­cury sings, “the rest of my life’s been just a show.” Maybe so, but what a show it was, even in the band’s final video, above, shot in black-and-white to hide Mercury’s frail con­di­tion.

At the top of the post, you can see behind-the-scenes footage of Mer­cury from the “These Are the Days of Our Lives” video shoot, dis­cov­ered, writes The Inde­pen­dent, “dur­ing a five-year trawl through the Queen archives by Rhys Thomas, the com­e­dy actor,” who co-pro­duced the BBC Two doc­u­men­tary, Queen: Days of Our Lives. “The footage of Fred­die in his final video,” says Thomas, “is shock­ing. He is so frail, he needs two hands to hold a cham­pagne glass. But he knows he is being filmed and wants to show peo­ple what he was going through.” Bri­an May remem­bers Mer­cury spend­ing “hours and hours in make-up sort­ing him­self out so it’d be OK. He actu­al­ly says a kind of good­bye in the video.”

A con­sum­mate per­former to the end, Mer­cury was deter­mined to work until he couldn’t, record­ing new mate­r­i­al until days before his death. In the full-col­or film from the “These Are the Days of Our Lives” shoot, we see him study­ing and cri­tiquing footage of him­self, ful­ly engaged in the cre­ation of what he like­ly knew would be his final per­for­mance. He had cer­tain­ly come a long way from the shy school­boy he was before Queen brought him inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty and acclaim. In the poignant video above, we see what is like­ly the first footage of the young man then known as Fred­die Bul­sara. The film shows Mer­cury in 1964—the year his fam­i­ly migrat­ed to Eng­land from Zanzibar—with school mates at Isle­worth Poly­tech­nic (new West Thames Col­lege). It would be anoth­er six years before Mer­cury would meet May and Tay­lor and form the band that defined the rest of the days of his life.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fred­die Mer­cury, Live Aid (1985)

Queen Doc­u­men­tary Pays Trib­ute to the Rock Band That Con­quered the World

The Mak­ing of Queen and David Bowie’s 1981 Hit “Under Pres­sure”: Demos, Stu­dio Ses­sions & More

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