EXCERPTS FROM THE BOOK: “IT’S A LONG WAY HOME"(& HOW BEATLES' MUSIC SAVED MY LIFE), A Musical Memoir
Alan Chrisman, grew up in the innocence of a small U.S. Midwestern town. But that was soon to change with two world-shaking events, The Vietnam War and The Beatles. The 60’s were a tumultuous time and their music was a large part of its soundtrack.
Propelled by both events, he moved to a cold but welcoming land and its capitol, Ottawa, Canada, a place with similarities and differences from where he was raised. There, inspired especially by The Beatles’ founder and co-writer, John Lennon, he became involved in various aspects of music, setting up one of its first used record stores, ”IMAGINE”, organizing The Ottawa Beatles Conventions and meeting many whom were there from the Beatles' beginnings. Several of the chapters are named after Beatles’ and Lennon’s songs and parallel his own experiences. Later, he would also learn of an intriguing story how this revolutionary music even helped change a repressive system half way around the world.
It was to be a Long and Winding Road with many curves and he describes some of the characters he met along the way and their sometimes trying, but humorous stories. He also writes about the joys and pains of relationships and how pop music and culture affects our views of them and with some of his own song lyrics.
Ottawa, which one of its well-respected musicians called the“Liverpool of the North”, had more direct connections to England and felt the British Invasion earlier than the U.S. and he includes its 60’s and 70’s scene as well as his own involvement with musicians for the next several years.
So come along for the journey and see how Beatles’ music influenced him and millions of others and why it still resonates decades later.
Dedicated to my parents and my muses, musical and otherwise.
Especially to some of Ottawa's most inspiring musicians, etc:
Richie Patterson, Les Emmerson,The Cooper Bros., Harvey Glatt, Ian Tamblyn, David Wiffen, & Lynn Miles.
"IT'S A LONG WAY HOME" (& HOW BEATLES' MUSIC SAVED MY LIFE), A Musical Memoir
COVER BELOW FOR: BOOK, CD, AUDIO CD, & eBook & ORIGINAL SONGS CD TO ACCOMPANY BOOK
Alan Chrisman, grew up in the innocence of a small U.S. Midwestern town. But that was soon to change with two world-shaking events, The Vietnam War and The Beatles. The 60’s were a tumultuous time and their music was a large part of its soundtrack.
Propelled by both events, he moved to a cold but welcoming land and its capitol, Ottawa, Canada, a place with similarities and differences from where he was raised. There, inspired especially by The Beatles’ founder and co-writer, John Lennon, he became involved in various aspects of music, setting up one of its first used record stores, ”IMAGINE”, organizing The Ottawa Beatles Conventions and meeting many whom were there from the Beatles' beginnings. Several of the chapters are named after Beatles’ and Lennon’s songs and parallel his own experiences. Later, he would also learn of an intriguing story how this revolutionary music even helped change a repressive system half way around the world.
It was to be a Long and Winding Road with many curves and he describes some of the characters he met along the way and their sometimes trying, but humorous stories. He also writes about the joys and pains of relationships and how pop music and culture affects our views of them and with some of his own song lyrics.
Ottawa, which one of its well-respected musicians called the“Liverpool of the North”, had more direct connections to England and felt the British Invasion earlier than the U.S. and he includes its 60’s and 70’s scene as well as his own involvement with musicians for the next several years.
So come along for the journey and see how Beatles’ music influenced him and millions of others and why it still resonates decades later.
Dedicated to my parents and my muses, musical and otherwise.
Especially to some of Ottawa's most inspiring musicians, etc:
Richie Patterson, Les Emmerson,The Cooper Bros., Harvey Glatt, Ian Tamblyn, David Wiffen, & Lynn Miles.
"IT'S A LONG WAY HOME" (& HOW BEATLES' MUSIC SAVED MY LIFE), A Musical Memoir
COVER BELOW FOR: BOOK, CD, AUDIO CD, & eBook & ORIGINAL SONGS CD TO ACCOMPANY BOOK
EXCERPTS FROM CHAPTERS (UNDER VARIOUS SITE HEADINGS):
.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1: Crossing the Borderline (“Paul is Dead" rumour)
Chapter 2: Midwestern Childhood (“Thank God For The Beatles”, “Trip Back" lyrics)
Chapter 3: University Days (“Woman the Muse” lyrics)
Chapter 4: Ottawa, Canada
Chapter 5: “IMAGINE", (John & Yoko in Ottawa, Beatles in Canada)
Chapter 6: Vancouver (J. Lennon shot, Dec, 8, 1980)
Chapter 7: Back in Ottawa (Spectrum Newspaper, “Open Space” Coffeehouse)
Chapter 8: Walls and Bridges
Chapter 9: Rock This Town! Prods. ('85-'93: Shawn Ecano, D. Gentes, The Option)
Chapter10: Happy Birthday and NY Dakota Visit (Strawberry Fields Memorial, Auto. McCartney Poster)
Chapter 11: Connecticut Beatles Convention (Cynthia Lennon, May Pang, photos)
Chapter 12; #9 Dream (Stu Sutcliffe Art, Astrid K.)
Chapter 13: Ottawa Beatles Convention, ‘95 ( Pete Best autograph, Casbah, Cavern, Liverpool photos)
Chapter 14: Ottawa Beatles Convention, ‘96( L. Harrison, Lennon car, The Day John Met Paul)
Chapter 15: Long Lost Weekend (“Real Good Woman", Lady In Black" lyrics)
Chapter 16 Lady In Red ( P. Best Gets His Due, “Lady in Red”)
Chapter 17: ‘Get Back’ (“Gotta Be Strong”, “Bleeding Heart” lyrics)
Chapter 18: Clean-up Time (You Never Knew Who Might Drop In )
Chapter 19: Lady in Red 2 ( 'Annie Hall', “Thought of You” lyrics)
Chapter 20: Lister in L.A. ( "So You Want to be a R' n 'R Star")
Chapter 21: Time for a Change (G. Harrison passes)
Chapter 22: “Back in the U.S.S.R.”(The Beatles Help Bring Down Communism! “Yeah Yeah Virus”)
Chapter 23: Music Never Dies ("Al & THE G-MEN”, Still Rockin')
Chapter 24: Long and Winding Road ( P. McCartney Plays Ottawa 2013, “We Didn't Know” lyrics)
Chapter 25: “THE STORY OF OTTAWA 60's & 70's MUSIC”('Liverpool of the North', "Harvey Glatt")
(This book published by Alan L. Chrisman © 2013; All Alan Chrisman lyrics © 2012, 2013; Cover graphic by ‘G-Man’) Dedicated to my parents and muses, musical and otherwise
FOR COMPLETE BOOK on CD(MSWord), AUDIO DVD(narrated), e book,(2014) or Original SONGS CD To Accompany Book, CONTACT: Alan L. Chrisman www.rockthistownproductions.com
MORE MUSICAL STORIES, BOOK REVIEWS, ETC., by Alan L. Chrisman http://beatlely.wordpress.com
ALAN L. CHRISMAN—BIOGRAPHY:
Alan L. Chrisman ( www.RockThisTownProductions.com) ran the used vinyl stores (Imagine, Get Back, Rock This Town!) for several years in Ottawa, Canada, and a coffeehouse, an alternative newspaper, promoted musicians, put on concerts and organized the two Ottawa Beatles Conventions ‘95 & ‘96. He wrote a memoir/book and an original songs CD, “It’s A Long Way Home”, about his life and his influences, including The Story of Ottawa Music, in late 2013.
Today, he continues to be involved in music: writing and recording songs (for AL & The G-Men), helping local musicians, shooting videos ( Youtube alanchrisman1), and organizing shows. He also writes short stories, reviews and articles and blogs on a wide variety of subjects. Several of his songs have been played on and he has been interviewed by CKCU-FM and CBC Radio. And some of his artifacts have been on display at the “Ottawa Rocks” City Hall archives exhibit.
Alan L. Chrisman ( www.RockThisTownProductions.com) ran the used vinyl stores (Imagine, Get Back, Rock This Town!) for several years in Ottawa, Canada, and a coffeehouse, an alternative newspaper, promoted musicians, put on concerts and organized the two Ottawa Beatles Conventions ‘95 & ‘96. He wrote a memoir/book and an original songs CD, “It’s A Long Way Home”, about his life and his influences, including The Story of Ottawa Music, in late 2013.
Today, he continues to be involved in music: writing and recording songs (for AL & The G-Men), helping local musicians, shooting videos ( Youtube alanchrisman1), and organizing shows. He also writes short stories, reviews and articles and blogs on a wide variety of subjects. Several of his songs have been played on and he has been interviewed by CKCU-FM and CBC Radio. And some of his artifacts have been on display at the “Ottawa Rocks” City Hall archives exhibit.
" IT'S A LONG WAY HOME" BOOK AND CD REVIEWS:
"It's a Long Way Home" by Alan Chrisman, read by the author
Complete Book on CD or audio file and ebook available direct from the author: www.rockthistownproductions.com
This is listed because I am privileged to know Alan and he was kind enough to give me both audio and MSWord copies. Only a small number of people are currently aware. For (music) historians this can be a significant source, and Ottawa residents will relate very well. Alan immigrated from the US in 1969, a poignant time. Finding a job taxed his capabilities though he was a university student, and his exploits and relationships in Ottawa eking out a living are so different from those that we usually read about. His love of music, and particularly John Lennon drew him into the music industry, promoting concerts and local artists. I met him after the 1995 Ottawa Beatles Convention which he organized, and this inspired me to found the Ottawa Beatle Site. Fast forward to today, and he is writing songs, and is still organizing concerts and guiding bands. He knows all of Ottawa's key music personalities.
Tony Copple, host CKCU-FM, "Window Of Opportunity"; Co-founder Ottawa Beatles Site.
MORE REVIEWS:
ERIC IDLE’s (Monty Python member & George Harrison’s friend) reply to “Paul is Dead” Rumor: McCartney Impostor Finally Revealed! (& The Rutles Involvement) ,article written by Alan L. Chrisman:
“That was damn good! You have very intelligent wit going on all in it. Really good.”
Nov. 10, 2014
& Eric Idle:
(Shared only with you - Yesterday 11:34 PM, Nov.15, 2014):
“Hey I saw the “Get up and Go” post, funny stuff!”
Above, ERIC IDLE’S REPLY to Alan Chrisman’s video post, " Fake Beatles’ Band Arrested on Record Company ( Banana)'s Rooftop After Illegal Concert”, posted, Nov. 15, 2014.
"From fleeing the F.B.I., setting up one of the 1st vinyl stores in Ottawa to pre-trendy Westboro, to being involved in the music scene, to re-uniting The Beatles, Mr. Chrisman’s book tells it all. THE OTTAWA JOURNAL, 2013.
“Who is this man from the sleepy Canadian government capitol? We recommend our members to read his fascinating book to find out.” “OPAL’S” BOOK CLUB.
"A truly epic ”personal and musical journey”, also punctuated with his incisive song lyrics about the pains and joys of relationships. CBC
“Not since my recent autobiography,” THE WAY”, has someone done it “His Way”. FRED ANKA, teen idol and Vegas songwriter, and former Ottawa native.
"The ups and downs of Rock' n' Roll and his encounters with several of The Beatles' circle." Rolling Pebbles Magazine
ERIC IDLE’s (Monty Python member & George Harrison’s friend) reply to “Paul is Dead” Rumor: McCartney Impostor Finally Revealed! (& The Rutles Involvement) ,article written by Alan L. Chrisman:
“That was damn good! You have very intelligent wit going on all in it. Really good.”
Nov. 10, 2014
& Eric Idle:
(Shared only with you - Yesterday 11:34 PM, Nov.15, 2014):
“Hey I saw the “Get up and Go” post, funny stuff!”
Above, ERIC IDLE’S REPLY to Alan Chrisman’s video post, " Fake Beatles’ Band Arrested on Record Company ( Banana)'s Rooftop After Illegal Concert”, posted, Nov. 15, 2014.
"From fleeing the F.B.I., setting up one of the 1st vinyl stores in Ottawa to pre-trendy Westboro, to being involved in the music scene, to re-uniting The Beatles, Mr. Chrisman’s book tells it all. THE OTTAWA JOURNAL, 2013.
“Who is this man from the sleepy Canadian government capitol? We recommend our members to read his fascinating book to find out.” “OPAL’S” BOOK CLUB.
"A truly epic ”personal and musical journey”, also punctuated with his incisive song lyrics about the pains and joys of relationships. CBC
“Not since my recent autobiography,” THE WAY”, has someone done it “His Way”. FRED ANKA, teen idol and Vegas songwriter, and former Ottawa native.
"The ups and downs of Rock' n' Roll and his encounters with several of The Beatles' circle." Rolling Pebbles Magazine
CHECK OUT SONGS BY ALAN CHRISMAN and "AL & THE G-MEN" by clicking next heading, "SONGS AND CD'S" above. Sample songs below:
"Thank God For The
Beatles" Lyric by Alan Chrisman (Beatlely song)
Intro
Growing up in the 60's
It was all Top 40
Straight middle-aged pop
And watered-down folk
Then They were on the Sullivan show
Shaking their long hair
There was nothing like it
Since Elvis had been there
Chorus:
Dylan went electric Thank God for The Beatles
Despite the purists' boo And that back back back beat
But he knew full well We all wanted to rock rock rock
what he must do And to dance dance dance in the street
It was never the same
We could not sit still
We had to get up
and join in the thrill
Chorus
Instrumental
It still stands up
even till this day
and makes us want
to still get up and play
chorus
repeat last verse
chorus
Dance dance dance-2 times
She loves you, Yeah Yeah Yeah-3 times
Dance dance dance-2 times
c. 2013
Intro
Growing up in the 60's
It was all Top 40
Straight middle-aged pop
And watered-down folk
Then They were on the Sullivan show
Shaking their long hair
There was nothing like it
Since Elvis had been there
Chorus:
Dylan went electric Thank God for The Beatles
Despite the purists' boo And that back back back beat
But he knew full well We all wanted to rock rock rock
what he must do And to dance dance dance in the street
It was never the same
We could not sit still
We had to get up
and join in the thrill
Chorus
Instrumental
It still stands up
even till this day
and makes us want
to still get up and play
chorus
repeat last verse
chorus
Dance dance dance-2 times
She loves you, Yeah Yeah Yeah-3 times
Dance dance dance-2 times
c. 2013
LISTEN AND DOWNLOAD BELOW: "THANK GOD FOR THE BEATLES" by Al & THE G-MEN
| thankgodforthebeatlesver1acs.mp3 |
To hear ROCK version of "THANK GOD FOR THE BEATLES" by The Gee Men, produced by Bryan Anthony go to www.soundclick.com and type song name in search.
READ FOLLOWING EXCERPTS FROM BOOK: “IT’S A LONG WAY HOME”
CHAPTER1: CROSSING THE BORDERLINE
It is early November, 1969. I’m at the Detroit bus station about to head to the Great North. I am a wanted man by the U.S. government. And I’m about to leave the country, U.S.A., of my birth.
How I, a still naïve young man from a small Midwestern town, came to this point in my life, is a long, convoluted tale. I’m about to board a bus for Toronto, Canada. I’m a bit paranoid, afraid that I could be arrested at any moment. So I board the bus anxiously. I happen to sit next to a young man with short hair. We gradually talk and it becomes apparent that he is doing the same thing I’m doing-trying to avoid the Vietnam War. We begin to talk and he reveals that, as a U.S. Marine, he had been sent to Vietnam twice and they are threatening to send him again (illegally). How these two very different people(he, a grade 8, relatively uneducated black man from Georgia and me, a white, lower- middle class and recent college student from Illinois), are basically doing the same thing and are now together on this bus is, as I said, a story. Of course, the Vietnam War and the 1960’s were to change a lot of our lives.
But I had never thought it would come to this: having to leave my country and family, which I felt I might never be able to visit again. I wasn’t political at all really. I had attended Purdue University in Indiana from 1964-65, having enrolled in pharmacy. It was a conservative, mainly engineering school (the early astronauts were from there) and most everyone there, and most of the country, had supported the war. Change had been happening for a while now in California, but it hadn’t much reached where I was yet. But soon after that time, the war was starting to go badly for the U.S- supported side, and it became more and more apparent that the American people weren’t getting the whole story from their government. More and more U.S. body bags came back, and even the media couldn’t ignore it.
By the next two years, my parents had moved back to Illinois, where I was born, from my childhood home in Indiana and I had decided to switch to Political Science and History. I was now attending the University of Illinois, which was quite a different place than Purdue. It was much more liberal and the late-60’s effects were filtering down. It was 1968 now, President Lyndon Johnson had resigned because of the war and there was a cultural divide. And into the middle of all this I was thrown. 1968, was a watershed year: Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated; the Paris student movement; the L. A. Watts riots; and The Beatles had released their pivotal Sgt. Pepper’s (’67) and now the White Album. So frankly, my school studies seemed not very relevant anymore and also because of some personal relationship reasons, I dropped out of school. We were supposed to have a student deferment for 4 years and because I had been in science for two before and now I was in my third year in Political Science and History (International Relations), I was thus available for the draft. And sure enough in 1968, I got my notice. I had passed the physical, despite a heart murmur, and even my Conscientious Objector status (you had to prove you were ‘religiously’ against killing people) had been rejected by my small town draft board, still back in Indiana. There seemed to be few options for me. I had decided I would not go (I was basically a pacifist). I had told my parents such, but I don’t think they believed I would go through with it, and even I wondered sometimes. But my only choice seemed to be 5 years in jail and a $10,000 fine.
I wasn’t as I say, overtly political. But I had some friends on the ‘left’ who recommended I go see the only radical on campus. I went to see him and he suggested I could commit sabotage (but I was a pacifist!). But when I asked for any other possibilities he mentioned going to Canada, but didn’t recommend it. In passing though, he had given me the address to the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme. I wrote to them and received a copy, still never thinking I would use it. But as I was soon to learn, this whole experience only got more scarily absurd as it went on. I asked him how long it would take for the FBI to come after me and he said probably 6 months or so. But only a few weeks after I saw him, he was arrested on campus just for publically burning his draft card.
I moved from my apartment and took odd jobs to try to save up for my big ‘trip’, as it seemed the only other possibility now. I didn’t tell my parents where I was still living in that same university town (as I thought they might be pressured to tell the authorities where I was). I essentially lived underground, like an outlaw, trying to get up enough guts to leave. Just a few weeks before I finally planned on actually doing it, I went to check the mail at my old address. There was a note from my parents that an FBI agent had visited them and wanted to talk to me. I felt totally defeated. I had waited too long and they would very soon find me. So I reluctantly called. The agent was surprisingly nice and said if I agreed to put myself up for the army, they wouldn’t pursue charges. I saw no way out now.
That happened to be the one month in history when President Nixon, under pressure, agreed for a moratorium on the draft. I actually was supposed to appear at an introductory session at an army base in Indianapolis, but I didn’t show up. And the whole process was started again. There was now to be a warrant for my arrest. I was never officially in the army, so I was considered a “draft dodger” which was a civil offence and not as serious as a military one, like the deserting charge my new friend I’d met on the bus, now faced.
I had read in the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme that they couldn’t stop me legally coming into Canada as a visitor. Fortunately, this was before computers, as I was technically ‘wanted’.
The idea was to come into Canada legally for 30 days and find a job offer and re-apply at the border to be a resident. But that meant I might also have to be smuggled back across the U.S. border (which was dangerous to say the least). But I had no choice at this point. They also advised not to bring much money so they wouldn’t think I was staying and to have a round trip ticket. My new friend knew nothing of these things. I had planned it so I would cross the border late at night, in hopes, they might not be as thorough. A few hours later, we arrived at the Canadian border and Customs came on the bus. I’m sure they knew what my friend and I were doing (we were draft age), but we passed. As the bus pulled away, we almost danced in the aisles! We didn’t know what our future held, but for now we were free. My hero, John Lennon, had sung on his recent song ,”Come Together”: “One thing I can tell you is you got to be free” (1) and that is the mantra that had sustained me those past several harrowing months. Also right before I left, another Beatles event helped me to keep my sanity, during this time, the “Paul Is Dead” rumor. (1) “Come Together”, John Lennon, c. 1969 Northern Songs Ltd
Paul is Dead Rumor –by Alan Chrisman – November 1969
Alan Chrisman is an American who, for political reasons, decided to come to Canada in the Fall of 1969. But before he came to this country, he was a student living on the campus of the University of Illinois. Alan wrote an article concerning the "Paul is Dead Hoax" shortly after the first Ottawa Beatles Convention and is presented here for the first time on the internet at the Ottawa Beatles Site. Alan Chrisman was the event organizer and producer for the first and second Ottawa Beatles Convention held respectively in 1995 and 1996. He is also past proprietor for several years of a vinyl shop entitled "Get Back Records" that was located in the cozy Westboro area of Ottawa.
- John Whelan, Ottawa Beatles Site, December 26, 2003
AN INSIDE STORY: THE PAUL IS DEAD RUMOR - by Alan Chrisman
In late 1969, a rumor went around the world that Paul McCartney was dead. There were supposed to be several clues on various Beatles albums that gave evidence of this. There have been two books in last couple of years that published on this topic.
I have some inside knowledge of the whole affair because in September '69, I was living at the University of Illinois which happened to be the second campus, perhaps, where this rumor began to spread. This is the way I remember it happening: My younger brother, who also went to school there, had a friend who was related to a fellow at a university in Michigan who supposedly had first discovered it. One night I was visiting my brother when the friend told us of this theory. We didn't take it too seriously, but decided to test it by calling England late one night (there was a phone number hidden on the cover of Magical Mystery Tour and the time to call was located on the back of Sgt. Peppers’ album cover: "Wednesday morning at 5 a.m."). To our surprise, it actually was a phone number in England, although it was busy. So we tried again for the next two weeks and kept getting busy signals. This just wetted our appetite and soon we were looking for more clues. As we learned more about this rumor, we began to find more and more evidence. We found many hints on Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, The White Album, etc.
Actually, at first we thought the clues might have been about John (in keeping with his sometimes dark humor) because, after all, he had sung I Am the Walrus. I had seen the North American premiere of the film Magical Mystery Tour in 1968 and had failed to notice that the little girl on John's lap had said "No you're not," which is stressed in the liner notes too. It was actually left-handed Paul dressed as the Walrus (something Lennon was to confirm in the White Album's Glass Onion: "here's another clue for you all, the Walrus was Paul.") We played backwards and slowed down such songs as Strawberry Fields Forever, which said "I buried Paul". We were just getting into it deeply when The Beatles released their new album, Abbey Road, in early October. And who's on the cover, but Paul barefooted as he was a year earlier on Magical Mystery Tour crossing the street with George in denim (a grave digger), Ringo in black (undertaker), and John in white (minister or angel). The new single from the album was for the first time to not include a McCartney song but John's Come Together (over me) and George's Something; in fact the whole second side could be interpreted as, perhaps, about the life of one person: Here Comes the Sun King; The End is equal to the love you make. When we heard this we believed we were really on to something. Supposedly it was Paul and he had been killed in a car crash ("he blew his mind out in car" lyric from A Day In the Life) and had been replaced by an imposter. An article in our campus newspaper was soon reaching to other campuses and before long we were holding regular meetings in a large lecture hall. Now we had no idea then, just how far this would go around the world.
But for me, this happened at an especially significant time in my life. It came just as I was about to be drafted into the American army for the Vietnam War. I had already decided that I wouldn't go and was trying to get enough guts to possibly come to Canada (as the only logical choice rather than going to jail). So in a strange way, (as Beatles' music and occurrences have somehow seemed to fatefully guided me throughout my life), this Paul is Dead thing allowed me to get my mind off the momentous decision I was about to make. At these meetings I was involved in, more and more people attended and several people told things that had happened to them or their friends. Some had supposedly gotten through the phone number and had to answer three questions and been whisked away to a secret island, etc. (Yes, it was the 60's after all!). Now what did this mean? Was McCartney really dead? (which was one of the questions supposedly asked to the callers). I won't go into all the clues and theories here, but all I can say is that at that final meeting I attended (I had to leave to go to Canada soon after), the guy who had supposedly started the whole thing showed up and said there were indeed clues and The Beatles were trying to tell us something.
When I arrived in Ottawa in November '69, on the magazine stand were to my amazement -- several international magazines with stories on the rumor that only a few of us had first heard and with several clues listed (even a voiceprint which showed McCartney's voice was different.) So make of it what you will. Was Paul really dead? The Beatles were soon to break up with the other three siding against Paul and some would argue that he was to later only make Silly Love Songs. Was it perhaps just a joke by John saying as he later wrote about Paul when he said: "Those freaks were right when they say said you was dead, the sound you make is muzak to my ears". Or was he fed up with the Beatles as was evidenced on The White Album and Let It Be and saying they were just falling apart. Why would The Beatles do such a thing- just to sell albums as some have accused? They certainly didn't have to. Was it just a product of the times? At the very least, it shows the power that the Beatles had over us and still do. Or as the “founder" of the theory hinted at that last meeting I attended, were The Beatles trying to get across something more important? We may never really know. Intriguing anyway, over 25 years later. I have my own theories about what it all meant. As I said in my last article about The White Album, very few people according to Lennon have understood what that was about (and I believe it's all tied together). You can search and listen for the "clues" yourself. Think about it. They are still there for those smart enough to discern them.
TURN ME ON, DEAD MAN by Andru J. Reeve (a review)
After I had written my above article, I ordered and read over Christmas this excellent book that focuses mainly on how the rumor got started and how it had spread into the media. I wanted to see if it had actually happened the way I had remembered it all those years ago. I discovered first of all that I probably had been in on the early beginnings of such. As the first radio station in Detroit was not to publicize it until October 12, 1969, and I had remembered hearing of it in September almost a full month earlier just as it first surfaced. The author, in fact, interviewed several of the key participants and did exhaustive research on its evolvement.
The book unfolds almost as a mystery as he tries to find its origins. The development of the rumor becomes almost as interesting as the rumor itself. I won't give away the contents of the book but before it was over, it led to thousands of calls a day to Apple, the Beatles' record company, over 300 newspaper reportings and coverage by all the major networks. And such unlikely occurrences as special meetings between the starters and Beatles insiders and the Beatles' new manager, Allan Klein; a TV courtroom trial with F. Lee Baily (yes, of O.J. Simpson fame) and even a call by Paul (or his double?) to the Detroit radio station. Most intriguing of all, a mysterious single by a Detroit singer that first hinted of Paul's death (and by the Beatles' own publishing company, Maclen!) Quite amazing for something that only a handful of college kids had first "discovered". So it's a fascinating story and the phenomenon is still studied as an example of a spontaneous rumor and how the "clues" remained remarkably consistent and spread so fast (this was before the internet and social media). So as I said above, believe what you want. But almost 40 years later people are still fascinated with it and lecturers such as Joel Glazier, who provides an afterward in the book, are still giving talks on it at Beatles conventions and colleges. The author does list many of the major clues and evaluates them systematically and some like the spoken ones on Revolution #9 and I'm So Tired are hard to refute. After reading the books and thinking about it all these years later, I don't think it can all be dismissed as some might think. Do I think, as everyone asks, that Paul is Dead? After all we've seen in the past few decades (and with the Kennedy 's deaths and John Lennon's assassination) anything is possible. But yes, as I've always thought there were some "clues" there. Who put them there, we may never know, but I suspect they were put there for a purpose that few have still yet understood. It all fits in with my theory (and my review of the "White Album") with what The Beatles, perhaps, may have been trying to tell us all along. John Lennon said once only probably 300 people understood the "White Album".
Anyway, you can read the books and see for yourself. I would recommend Reeve's book or for more on the clues, try The Walrus was Paul by Gary Patterson (published by Simon & Shuster).
ONE FINAL NOTE ON PAUL IS DEAD:
From the Official Beatles fanzine, the Beatles Book Monthly, Feb., 1967:
Stories about the Beatles are always flying around Fleet Street. The seventh of January was very icy, with dangerous conditions on the MI motorway, linking London with the Midlands, and towards the end of the day, a rumor swept London that Paul McCartney had been killed in a car crash on the MI. But, of course, there was absolutely no truth in it at all, as the Beatles' Press Officer found out when he telephoned Paul's St. John's Wood home and was answered by Paul himself who had been home all day with black Mini Cooper safely locked up in the garage.
No comment!
See Ottawa Beatles Site : http://beatles.ncf.ca/alan_chrisman.html
ABOVE: "PAUL IS DEAD" CLUES, The Rumour That Went Around The World; LIFE MAGAZINE, TIME, etc. '69. "Here's another Clue for you all, 'the WALRUS WAS PAUL', "Glass Onion" song by John Lennon, The White Album, 1968.
EXCERPT: “IT'S A LONG WAY HOME” CHAPTER 5: “IMAGINE”,1972
There are actually several connections with the Beatles and Ottawa and Canada. John and Yoko held their “Bed Piece” event at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal May 26-June 2, 1969, where they recorded live their anthem, “Give Peace a Chance”. But a lot of people don’t know they also came to Ottawa briefly for a peace conference at Ottawa U. at that same time. I discovered there were photos of that visit in the Quebec archives which I displayed at my 2nd Ottawa Beatles Convention in ’96. In fact, they stayed at the Chaplaincy on Laurier Ave. (where my friend, and I used to play chess at the Wasteland Coffeehouse). And of course, they famously met with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau on Dec.23, 1969. Years later, Trudeau’s personal assistant, Tim Porteous, the only other person attending that meeting, came into my store and described it and them to me. Lennon also played at the” Live Peace in Toronto” Concert on Sept.’69 (the first time he’d played live in North America since Beatles’ tours in ‘64 & ’65). Also not many people know that George Harrison visited Ottawa secretly in Feburary,’69. He was here to check out Eric Anderson, a N.Y. folksinger, for the Beatles’ own new record label, Apple, and heard him at Ottawa’s Le Hibou Coffeehouse And could it even have been that the world-famous term, ”BEATLEMANIA”, may have been coined by an Ottawa writer? That has long been an Ottawa legend. For Sandy Gardiner, of the Ottawa Journal, had seen them in Scotland early on in ‘63 and wrote “a new disease is sweeping through Britain-it’s BEATLEMANIA”. And this quote is credited to him on the 1st Beatles album released in North America and with that same title. Sandy Gardiner also managed several successful 60’s Ottawa bands like The Staccato’s, The Esquires, and The Townsmen.
As I said, I had arrived the month before he met with Trudeau. But I was pretty preoccupied just trying to survive. I actually wasn’t a big fan of Canada’s “hippie” P.M. For in 1970, during the “October Crises”, Trudeau had declared martial law because a small group of radicals called the FLQ had kidnapped a British envoy and a Quebec cabinet minister. Canadians supported it (they told me it would keep the ‘frogs’ in place). But I was horrified, I had just fled my country where if Nixon had tried that, there would have been massive demonstrations. But Trudeau and the Chicago Daly-like, Montreal mayor Drapeau used it to their advantage to stifle their own political opponents. It backfired and within 6 years the Separatist PQ became the Quebec government (It’s still “Two Solitudes” to this day). Pierre Berton, Canadian writer and historian, said that the difference was that Americans would round up a posse and apply rough ‘justice’, whereas Canadians just had the RCMP do the dirty work, and liked big government to run their lives.
I was visited by the RCMP when I became a Canadian resident (no doubt checking for the FBI). Later I became briefly involved in trying to help some Native people, and my store where we had meetings, was being watched; so I had learned not to trust governments of any kind.
The Beatles had broken up in 1970 and the 60’s had ended. A lot of fans lamented it. But if you watch the making of the film “Let it Be” you can see the tensions (and it wasn’t Yoko who did it) and well as some great songs still. John released his masterpiece, POB with “Working Class Hero” and “God”(“the dream is over”). George surprised everyone with his spiritual “ All Things Must Pass”. McCartney had his first solo Lp with one of his best songs”Maybe I’m Amazed”, and Ringo, an album of standards for his mom and also the excellent” Beaucoups of Blues”. For as Ringo said, ”Now there are four Beatles’ albums”. The 60’, as I said , had come to a close but it was to influence us all for decades to come. But after Woodstock the excesses (drugs, money, ego’s, etc.) had finally caught up; the superficial parts, like fashion, carrying on. The hippies who had been mainly white middle-class found it wasn’t so easy to go back to the land. Lennon had taken flack from the left during calls for violent revolution, for advocating pacifist ways. He said we should “free our minds instead”.
But there was still hope. Lennon released his signature song” Imagine” and album in 1971. And that was the beautiful summer I met Jackie. I think I understood what he might have felt; he had been hanging around with the ‘guys’ since he was a teenager and it was time to move on and with a woman. Some of my old roommates, perhaps, weren’t too happy I was “leaving” the group, but it’s what I had been waiting for. It had been both fun and crazy and I was ready for a change.
So Jackie and I moved into together. My parents came up to see me for the first time and met her. I still wasn’t allowed back in the States and might never be. I had found a job cleaning but was laid off at Christmas. Jackie was working as an assistant manager at Classics Books at the Arts Centre. We had just moved to a new apartment. On the bus one day in our neighborhood, I noticed a small used bookstore and decided to ask them for a job, but they said they were closing soon. But for some reason, I turned and asked them if they’d be willing to sell it.
I was unemployed and had no money, but they said maybe. I told Jackie and she said go for it! ( (she believed in me). They decided to move and not sell. But I approached the landlord and he agreed to rent it to me for only $215/month. I noticed there were two small rooms in the back behind the store that we might be able to live in too. But I had to convince a recent friend, Gary Moffat, to move in too, to help cover the cost. I managed to find a guy who was closing one of his three stores on Bank St. and he sold me 1000 books at 10c ea. We had to move them in a snowstorm and we had no money left for the shelving.
The area was later to become Chinatown, but at that time there was only one Chinese restaurant there and they gave me some wooden shipping boxes and we stacked them up to put the books in (everything smelled like Chinese food). I had had to sell my record player to raise money, so I came up with this idea to put some of my old records in the window to see if anybody would buy and sell them secondhand too. That was Feb. 1972 and may have been one of the first used record stores in Ottawa. We called the store “IMAGINE” after Lennon and our dreams and hopes. It was then an Italian immigrant neighborhood on Somerset W. near Booth St. And very poor; the laundromat actually had a sign ”NO running on top of machines!” We became involved in the community. We would borrow a projector and films from the library and show to the neighborhood kids. Some people thought we showed porno films because there was only a blanket separating the store and where we lived. And how else could have survived in that neighborhood, they thought?
I eventually bought a record player from the guy upstairs who was up on charges of manslaughter. I also took a part-time job cleaning popcorn off the floor at movie theatres. But people seemed to like the idea of used records. I started out with only 25, but traded 2 for 1, and soon had more. In the mist of all this, we started a little community newspaper called “SHOESTRING PRESS”. One day in 1972, a hockey player came in and wanted Beatles 45’s; he was going to play in the later famous CANADA-RUSSIA game in Moscow and said you could get anything there with Beatles’ records and panty hose. Another time, a cousin of John Lennon’s from Montreal, who must have recognized the store name, and was on her way to Liverpool to see the original Cavern before they tore it down, came in . So you never knew who might drop in.
The landlords would raise the rent every couple years and we would have to move constantly. We had three locations in that neighborhood, including a nicer house across the street where we ran the store downstairs and lived upstairs. We had an interesting cat then. He was black and white and small for a male, but wirey. He’d go out at night looking like Sammy Davis Jr. in a tuxedo and would return to be fed the next morning all disheveled (I think he ran the cat neighborhood). He’d then be in a foul mood like he had a hangover and spend the day sitting on the store desk, swiping at customers. We called him Mr. Ali.
Jackie and I would visit her single mother often in Montreal; they had fled Germany during the war. We loved Montreal; it was the closest to Paris or New York in Canada. I think if I could have spoken French I would have moved there. They had great record stores like Cheap Thrills, where I could buy records I could never find in Ottawa and resell them to my customers at still decent prices. You didn’t even have to have much money, you just could walk on St. Catherine St. and take in the crowds and the food and culture. We would go there as often as we could, to get re-inspired.
In 1979, Gary and I heard of a great location right downtown near Sparks St, a block from Parliament Hill with all the politicians and tourists; a deal of a lifetime really. But we had to buy the owner’s stock as she was going back to England. It was only $180/month (cheaper, than in our poor neighborhood!) because the government owned the building. So we managed to scrape together the money. It would be in the basement with no windows, but Gary could open a science fiction store and I could sell used records. Perfect, so we signed the lease.
But there was a real fly in the ointment. Jackie had decided to leave me. I knew that we had been having problems. It had always been hard financially and there had been pressures from her family. Her mother had always liked me but her older brother had returned from Germany and I wasn’t Jewish. Jackie was having some identity problems herself. She was in a dead end job and didn’t know what she wanted to do. And she had recently joined a religious group and was on a macrobiotic diet. I was still running the store, newspaper, and doing cleaning jobs. We were trying to still save the world. It all just caught up with us. But I thought, finally with this great new location, we could finally make it and I had already signed the lease. I just hoped, if I made it a success and this was the best location I’d ever had, she might come back.
This religious group, I began to realize, was really more like a cult. Jackie just disappeared. Looking back now, I think maybe she had had a breakdown, but I didn’t know enough about relationships then to prevent it. But I always knew I’d sometime run into her again. I was devastated and it’s one of the most sad things that’s ever happened to me. And like having to leave my heartthrob before I came to Canada, it took its toll. I blamed myself for it.
EXCERPT: CHAPTER 6 VANCOUVER, 1980 (J. LENNON SHOT)
Gary and I moved into our new location near Sparks St. But shortly after, there was a fire upstairs at the Rideau Club. As we watched the firemen fight the flames, part of me didn’t care. Besides I thought, maybe the insurance money will help me to go find Jackie. But Gary, being the anarchist he was (not violent, but didn’t believe in governments), admitted to me that he had not sent in our insurance check. Our part in the basement was okay except for water on the floor, so we re-opened. But a couple months later, they said the walls had structural damage and we couldn’t stay there. We had just signed the lease so the government-landlord offered us a place right on Rideau St. in exchange. It was to be torn down when they built the Rideau Centre ( but they had talked of doing that for years). It was on the 2nd floor but three times as big. We had a room for each of our stores and an extra room.
Gary set up his science fiction and comics store and I had my records. As I said, Gary was a character too; he’d been in the ‘ban the bomb’ marches in the early 60’s, but he was really a big kid at heart. He loved opera but hated rock n’ roll, which I mainly sold, but we got along well. One day, these bikers showed up at the store. They looked like they could rob the place. It was a Saturday, so Gary was watching cartoons. And before I knew it, the bikers were on the floor with him watching too! Gary and I had also expanded our little neighborhood ”Shoestring Press” into a bigger across-the-city alternative arts and community newspaper, “SPECTRUM”, with grants from the City and ads.
Despite the store and newspaper doing okay, I wasn’t happy and I needed a change. So I decided all at once to just get away-anywhere. I brought in some of my old records from home to try and sell off. Among them was an unknown band from Boston called “Stainless Soul”. Later that very afternoon, a guy comes in and I asked him if he wanted to hear anything, and to my amazement, he requests this unknown band. I asked him why (that same unknown band which I had just brought in that very day) and he says he’s playing the keyboards on it; which was the part I liked). I asked him what he’s doing in town and he says he‘s playing that night with THE BEACH BOYS in town He was from California and had played in all kinds of famous bands like Joe Cocker, etc. He bought the record and then offers to leave two tickets for me at the box office. So I called Marie whom I hadn’t talked to in while (but I knew loved The Beachboys) and she said yes. And sure enough, there were two third-row tickets for us. It was actually the first time Brian Wilson had toured with the Beach Boys in years. We had an extra room in the back of the store, and had rented it to a theatre group. And one day that same week, I heard this female singer rehearsing for the John Gray country musical”18 Wheels” . I thought it was a record, her voice was so good. Her name was Diane Gentes and her voice haunted me. I would meet her again too.
I sold off all my personal possessions , except for my Beatles Collection, which I stored at the store. I told a guy who sometimes would watch the store, that I needed to get away and I didn’t know how long I’d be gone, but I’d be back. I was in such an emotional state, I didn’t even sign a contract with him. The next morning I decided to take whatever train was available; the Montreal one had gone and I’d already moved out of my apartment. They said there was one soon for Calgary, where I didn’t want to go to, but they said I could catch a train to Vancouver from there. I knew Jackie’s younger brother was in Vancouver so maybe he’d know where she was. I boarded the train with just a backpack, 10 years since I’d first arrived in Ottawa, and my life,I felt was a mess.
I walked down the train aisle, and whom do I see, but a woman who had worked on my newspaper. She had no idea I was leaving, nor I her. She told me later, her father had recently died and she was doing the same thing I was- trying to run away from her pain. I’d always liked her; an aspiring writer and poet, in fact, we had the same birth date. She was going to Vancouver too. Now at least I had a travelling companion, and we got along great on the trip. When we arrived in Vancouver we stayed the first night at a hostel, and I remember thinking maybe I could start over here. She was supposed to stay at a house out there, but we decided to look for a place to share. We saw an empty place the first day, but It was more like a store, We even talked about possibly setting up a store together; she’d run the bookstore and I, the records. I figured I could ship some records from my store back in Ottawa, but keep both places. Soon we found a small apartment; I gave her the bedroom and I slept on the pull-out couch. Then we found a job so we could save up to open a store. On Thanksgiving weekend, by coincidence, that store we had first seen on arrival was available; all we had saved for. But I broke down and cried. John and Yoko had just released their first album” Double Fantasy” in 5 years, since he’d dropped out of the music business. Their single “Starting Over” was moving up the charts. And I was hopeful of starting over. Maybe even with Jackie still. Lennon and Yoko had plans to tour again, maybe come to Canada and Montreal, where I figured she might be. I hadn’t found her in Vancouver. So when I announced to my lady friend, my plans to return, she was rightly hurt. And it led to our biggest fight yet-on that fateful night, Dec. 8, 1980.
Gary and I moved into our new location near Sparks St. But shortly after, there was a fire upstairs at the Rideau Club. As we watched the firemen fight the flames, part of me didn’t care. Besides I thought, maybe the insurance money will help me to go find Jackie. But Gary, being the anarchist he was (not violent, but didn’t believe in governments), admitted to me that he had not sent in our insurance check. Our part in the basement was okay except for water on the floor, so we re-opened. But a couple months later, they said the walls had structural damage and we couldn’t stay there. We had just signed the lease so the government-landlord offered us a place right on Rideau St. in exchange. It was to be torn down when they built the Rideau Centre ( but they had talked of doing that for years). It was on the 2nd floor but three times as big. We had a room for each of our stores and an extra room.
Gary set up his science fiction and comics store and I had my records. As I said, Gary was a character too; he’d been in the ‘ban the bomb’ marches in the early 60’s, but he was really a big kid at heart. He loved opera but hated rock n’ roll, which I mainly sold, but we got along well. One day, these bikers showed up at the store. They looked like they could rob the place. It was a Saturday, so Gary was watching cartoons. And before I knew it, the bikers were on the floor with him watching too! Gary and I had also expanded our little neighborhood ”Shoestring Press” into a bigger across-the-city alternative arts and community newspaper, “SPECTRUM”, with grants from the City and ads.
Despite the store and newspaper doing okay, I wasn’t happy and I needed a change. So I decided all at once to just get away-anywhere. I brought in some of my old records from home to try and sell off. Among them was an unknown band from Boston called “Stainless Soul”. Later that very afternoon, a guy comes in and I asked him if he wanted to hear anything, and to my amazement, he requests this unknown band. I asked him why (that same unknown band which I had just brought in that very day) and he says he’s playing the keyboards on it; which was the part I liked). I asked him what he’s doing in town and he says he‘s playing that night with THE BEACH BOYS in town He was from California and had played in all kinds of famous bands like Joe Cocker, etc. He bought the record and then offers to leave two tickets for me at the box office. So I called Marie whom I hadn’t talked to in while (but I knew loved The Beachboys) and she said yes. And sure enough, there were two third-row tickets for us. It was actually the first time Brian Wilson had toured with the Beach Boys in years. We had an extra room in the back of the store, and had rented it to a theatre group. And one day that same week, I heard this female singer rehearsing for the John Gray country musical”18 Wheels” . I thought it was a record, her voice was so good. Her name was Diane Gentes and her voice haunted me. I would meet her again too.
I sold off all my personal possessions , except for my Beatles Collection, which I stored at the store. I told a guy who sometimes would watch the store, that I needed to get away and I didn’t know how long I’d be gone, but I’d be back. I was in such an emotional state, I didn’t even sign a contract with him. The next morning I decided to take whatever train was available; the Montreal one had gone and I’d already moved out of my apartment. They said there was one soon for Calgary, where I didn’t want to go to, but they said I could catch a train to Vancouver from there. I knew Jackie’s younger brother was in Vancouver so maybe he’d know where she was. I boarded the train with just a backpack, 10 years since I’d first arrived in Ottawa, and my life,I felt was a mess.
I walked down the train aisle, and whom do I see, but a woman who had worked on my newspaper. She had no idea I was leaving, nor I her. She told me later, her father had recently died and she was doing the same thing I was- trying to run away from her pain. I’d always liked her; an aspiring writer and poet, in fact, we had the same birth date. She was going to Vancouver too. Now at least I had a travelling companion, and we got along great on the trip. When we arrived in Vancouver we stayed the first night at a hostel, and I remember thinking maybe I could start over here. She was supposed to stay at a house out there, but we decided to look for a place to share. We saw an empty place the first day, but It was more like a store, We even talked about possibly setting up a store together; she’d run the bookstore and I, the records. I figured I could ship some records from my store back in Ottawa, but keep both places. Soon we found a small apartment; I gave her the bedroom and I slept on the pull-out couch. Then we found a job so we could save up to open a store. On Thanksgiving weekend, by coincidence, that store we had first seen on arrival was available; all we had saved for. But I broke down and cried. John and Yoko had just released their first album” Double Fantasy” in 5 years, since he’d dropped out of the music business. Their single “Starting Over” was moving up the charts. And I was hopeful of starting over. Maybe even with Jackie still. Lennon and Yoko had plans to tour again, maybe come to Canada and Montreal, where I figured she might be. I hadn’t found her in Vancouver. So when I announced to my lady friend, my plans to return, she was rightly hurt. And it led to our biggest fight yet-on that fateful night, Dec. 8, 1980.
DECEMBER 8, 1980 - JOHN LENNON SHOT
(All of a certain generation remember where we were when we heard the news)
(THIS IS MINE AND I’M NOT MAKING THIS STORY UP):
On the night of December 8, 1980, my lady friend and I had a fight and she moved out of our apartment. The next morning I still had to go to work with her. I noticed they were playing lots of Beatles’ music on the radio in our truck that morning. I didn’t know why. Someone said, ”Didn’t you hear John Lennon was killed last night?” I hadn’t heard because my lady friend and I had split exactly around that time (11p.m). I was just in shock; it felt so personal. Lennon had guided me since I was young. He’d been largely the reason I’d refused to go in the army; had come to Canada; set up my “IMAGINE” store, etc. I, as I said, took it very personal; I didn’t really realize fully just how many around the world would too, even with all the outpourings of emotion later.
I just wanted to be alone in the truck, but they left the radio on. My lovely lady friend came back to the truck to console me. She knew how much Lennon meant to me. She asked if they knew who did it. I said it didn’t matter. But just then, the radio said the killer’s name. And it was her name too! She turned white as a sheet. A month before I had read an interview in Playboy magazine with John Lennon and upon putting it down, had strangely told her” Lennon has told me everything he can”. He had said then, ”There’s nothing to be scared of, It’s all an illusion”. Everybody of my generation remembers for their whole lives, two tragic dates and events: John Kennedy’s assassination and John Lennon’s. For they defined our hopes and our own mortality too.
For at the end of that Playboy interview, ironically, John Lennon had said it all:
”Well, you make your own dream. That’s the Beatles’ story, isn’t it. Don’t expect John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. They can leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshipped for the cover of the book and not for what it says. People can’t provide it for you. You can wake you up. I can’t cure you. You can cure you. It’s our fear of the unknown. The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that-it’s all an illusion. Accept that it’s unknown and it’s plain sailing. Everything is unknown-then you’re ahead of the game. That’s what it is, right?” (1)
(1) John Lennon and Yoko Ono interview, c. Playboy Magazine, Jan. 1981.
(All of a certain generation remember where we were when we heard the news)
(THIS IS MINE AND I’M NOT MAKING THIS STORY UP):
On the night of December 8, 1980, my lady friend and I had a fight and she moved out of our apartment. The next morning I still had to go to work with her. I noticed they were playing lots of Beatles’ music on the radio in our truck that morning. I didn’t know why. Someone said, ”Didn’t you hear John Lennon was killed last night?” I hadn’t heard because my lady friend and I had split exactly around that time (11p.m). I was just in shock; it felt so personal. Lennon had guided me since I was young. He’d been largely the reason I’d refused to go in the army; had come to Canada; set up my “IMAGINE” store, etc. I, as I said, took it very personal; I didn’t really realize fully just how many around the world would too, even with all the outpourings of emotion later.
I just wanted to be alone in the truck, but they left the radio on. My lovely lady friend came back to the truck to console me. She knew how much Lennon meant to me. She asked if they knew who did it. I said it didn’t matter. But just then, the radio said the killer’s name. And it was her name too! She turned white as a sheet. A month before I had read an interview in Playboy magazine with John Lennon and upon putting it down, had strangely told her” Lennon has told me everything he can”. He had said then, ”There’s nothing to be scared of, It’s all an illusion”. Everybody of my generation remembers for their whole lives, two tragic dates and events: John Kennedy’s assassination and John Lennon’s. For they defined our hopes and our own mortality too.
For at the end of that Playboy interview, ironically, John Lennon had said it all:
”Well, you make your own dream. That’s the Beatles’ story, isn’t it. Don’t expect John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. They can leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshipped for the cover of the book and not for what it says. People can’t provide it for you. You can wake you up. I can’t cure you. You can cure you. It’s our fear of the unknown. The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that-it’s all an illusion. Accept that it’s unknown and it’s plain sailing. Everything is unknown-then you’re ahead of the game. That’s what it is, right?” (1)
(1) John Lennon and Yoko Ono interview, c. Playboy Magazine, Jan. 1981.
So it was time to go back and face my own dream:
Friends had been writing me that the guy I had trusted with my store back in Ottawa was ruining it. My lady friend had moved out but we remained friends and I cooked her a Christmas dinner. I had some money saved and still hoped to find Jackie. So I headed back to Ottawa to try and pick up the pieces. When I left I asked my lady friend if there was anything I could give her. She asked for Lennon’s P.O.B. album, my favorite. I took the train back to Montreal hoping Jackie was there. I spent the weekend there walking the streets in the rain not knowing how to approach her family. Her brother, who didn’t like me, lived upstairs in the same house.
Finally, I realized I had only one choice, to return to Ottawa and try and salvage my store. For I had learned you can’t run away from yourself. I discovered they had moved my store across the street when the Rideau Centre was built while I was away. As I walked, unannounced,in my store, the guy who was supposed to keep an eye on it ran out, never to be seen again. I soon found out why. He had destroyed most of my business. Even my own private Beatles’ Collection; he had sold it at high prices after Lennon’s death. But In a few months I had re-set it all up again; the store, newspaper, coffeehouse, etc. One day, I was thinking about my lady friend back in Vancouver. George Harrison had just released “All Those Years Ago”, and had said it better than anybody could “You said it all when you say ‘All You Need Is Love’, but not many had ears” (2). So that day I mailed the song to her. Later that same afternoon, who walks into my store, but her! She would later teach overseas and meet her husband there and have children and become an artist. And I was grateful for her kindness.
(2) “All Those Years Ago”, George Harrison, c. Ganga Publishing B.V., 1981.
EXCERPT: IT'S
A LONG WAY HOME” CHAPTER
7: BACK IN OTTAWA '81
After I returned to Ottawa from Vancouver, I decided to try and get back my record store. My good store partner, Gary, had moved across the street from the recently built Rideau Centre.
We named the new location. ” IMAGINE-ALTERNATIVES”. It was on the 2nd floor , above a new record store, Treble Clef, which Harvey Glatt owned, and where, later CHEZ-FM host, Brian Murphey was manager. I had my used record part and Gary, his science fiction and comic store. Again in the back of the store we had this extra area so I thought of putting the bookshelves flat along the wall and that would give us some open space to have live music perhaps. So we built there a little coffeehouse and called it ”OPEN SPACE”. We also put out our “SPECTRUM” newspaper, once a month. It was a co-operative, alternative community, non-profit 8-page paper. We distributed it free each month, to over 100 places, all over town. Anybody could join or submit articles. Gary and I were the founders and Co-editors. We covered everything from political and local events to arts. There were usually about 15-20 volunteers at any one time. We did everything on it; wrote articles which Gary typed usually (this was before computers), graphics, cartoons, poetry, etc. One of the highlights was a calendar of free events each month. We even pasted all the typed pages down ourselves and then we would send the layout by bus to Smith Falls to be printed and then we would all fold it together and distribute it. We did this for 8 and ½ years.
But a lot of the time, besides trying to keep it on track, and maintain our City grant, and sell ads to small shops to support it too, I had to do damage control sometimes. You see, Gary liked to create reactions in people. For example, he wrote a regular column on films. He bragged that he could review them without seeing them. When people asked how, he would say”Anybody can review one they’ve seen, but It takes a real genius to review one they haven’t”. We shared the store hours, and I also had a cleaning job at night. One morning Gary calls me and wakes me up and says to get right down to the store, because we’re in a scandal. And sure enough, we had caused a little one; even Ottawa Mayor Dewar had to defend us and CJOH-TV was coming to interview me about it. Someone had evidently submitted a political article against Cruise missiles in Canada. As I said, we printed pretty well anything that anyone in the community provided, as long as it wasn’t cause for libel. And I told the reporter that. After, I just wanted to hide, thinking nobody would probably see the interview anyway. But that night it made both the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. news and they edited it to make it even more controversial. Of course, Gary loved it.
I had lost my Beatles collection, because of that guy who had watched my store. I’ve never been much of a possessions person, but each album had an emotional connection for me. Finally I found another copy of the “IMAGINE” album in another store. It wasn’t my own album, because I would have recognized it. But when I got home I found inside; my own poster of Lennon sitting at a white piano! It’d been on the wall at my very first store back in ’72. I had torn the corners when I had moved and had cut them at certain angles.
By coincidence, my friend, Wally, had heard that I was back in town, and a week later from me finding the poster, returned a box of reggae albums I had left him when I went to Vancouver. And to my great surprise, there was my original “IMAGINE” album too. I had found my long lost original album and my original poster too in the same week! Wally’s brother, Boris, whom I would get to know later, would often find me music items and movies I’d request over the years.
We set up the coffeehouse as a place, where every Saturday night local musicians of all styles, could get up and play. It only held about 20-25 in the audience and we only charged $1 at the door and sold coffee for 50c. A lot of talented artists who might not get a chance at some of the other places in town got to perform. Some later well-known names played there. “LUCKY RON”, who would become a fixture in Ottawa , was in a rockabilly band then, for example. Other nights we rented it out to bands as a rehearsal space for all kinds of music from folk to punk. At first, the different styles of performers wouldn’t mix with each other, but before long, everybody was jamming together. Some of my favorites and whom I later promoted were husband and wife,”Rick and Monique”; they were like Ian and Sylvia, and Monique had an amazing range in her voice. When she performed Patsy Cline’s “Crazy”, it sent shivers up your spine. Bryan Claremont had been my roommate on Elgin St. before I went to Vancouver, and was the most natural musician I’d met. He played an accordion and could play any kind of keyboards and wrote scores of Beatles-influenced songs. Once some girls thought Bryan and I were the musicians, “Seals and Crofts” and later I was asked for my autograph as comedian, Gallager, because we wore similar caps (we said, sure!), and kept wearing them. And Bryan with his friend, Tom, were once hitchhiking in Florida, when Jimmy Buffet pulled over and invited them to play at his club. But I especially liked the performers who wrote their own songs.
An incredible guitar player was Shawn O’Connor (stage name “SHAWN ECANO”). He would hook up a synthesizer to his acoustic guitar, and out would come these electronic sounds. And when he picked up an electric guitar, his fingers would fly like Jimi Hendrix. His masterpiece was “Heartbreaker”, originally by Grand Funk Railroad, but in Shawn’s hands he turned it into a 10 minute extravaganza. He would dress up in a fedora and suspenders and wraparound sunglasses. He was unlike anything Ottawa had seen before or since. I was later to put on several concerts for these and others.
About a year after I was back, I noticed that this singer, I had only heard rehearsing in the back of my store that week I left for Vancouver, was playing San Antonio’s Downstairs Club on Rideau. I asked another female musician if she would go with me to see her. My friend asked what was her name and I said, “Diane Gentes”. And she said she was her best friend. We walked in the door that night, and Diane was on stage singing and when she saw me and her friend together, she stopped in the middle of the song. As I say, I had been haunted after hearing her voice only once before. She blew me away again. She was a country singer from Winnipeg originally, but with a blues accent and soul. Pretty soon I was going to all her shows. She had in her band this great young guitarist too, Danny Artuso. I met with her and told her I wanted to help her and I did, putting on shows and promoting her for the next 8 years. The store, newspaper and coffeehouse were doing well now. More and more musicians were coming to play. Diane Gentes, whom I was promoting now, came to perform, and wowed everybody. It was still small, and everyone would just sit on the floor. We even put on a couple concerts to raise money for Spectrum at the Mayfair Theatre with a live reggae band. The newspaper and coffeehouse were both non-profit. People waiting for the bus downstairs would hear the music coming from upstairs, but luckily nobody complained. It was technically illegal to run the coffeehouse (we couldn’t get away with it these days). We were still basically underground, compared to the regular Ottawa music scene. We had started the newspaper and coffeehouse as an alternative to the mainstream cliques, of whom, we weren’t a part.
After I returned to Ottawa from Vancouver, I decided to try and get back my record store. My good store partner, Gary, had moved across the street from the recently built Rideau Centre.
We named the new location. ” IMAGINE-ALTERNATIVES”. It was on the 2nd floor , above a new record store, Treble Clef, which Harvey Glatt owned, and where, later CHEZ-FM host, Brian Murphey was manager. I had my used record part and Gary, his science fiction and comic store. Again in the back of the store we had this extra area so I thought of putting the bookshelves flat along the wall and that would give us some open space to have live music perhaps. So we built there a little coffeehouse and called it ”OPEN SPACE”. We also put out our “SPECTRUM” newspaper, once a month. It was a co-operative, alternative community, non-profit 8-page paper. We distributed it free each month, to over 100 places, all over town. Anybody could join or submit articles. Gary and I were the founders and Co-editors. We covered everything from political and local events to arts. There were usually about 15-20 volunteers at any one time. We did everything on it; wrote articles which Gary typed usually (this was before computers), graphics, cartoons, poetry, etc. One of the highlights was a calendar of free events each month. We even pasted all the typed pages down ourselves and then we would send the layout by bus to Smith Falls to be printed and then we would all fold it together and distribute it. We did this for 8 and ½ years.
But a lot of the time, besides trying to keep it on track, and maintain our City grant, and sell ads to small shops to support it too, I had to do damage control sometimes. You see, Gary liked to create reactions in people. For example, he wrote a regular column on films. He bragged that he could review them without seeing them. When people asked how, he would say”Anybody can review one they’ve seen, but It takes a real genius to review one they haven’t”. We shared the store hours, and I also had a cleaning job at night. One morning Gary calls me and wakes me up and says to get right down to the store, because we’re in a scandal. And sure enough, we had caused a little one; even Ottawa Mayor Dewar had to defend us and CJOH-TV was coming to interview me about it. Someone had evidently submitted a political article against Cruise missiles in Canada. As I said, we printed pretty well anything that anyone in the community provided, as long as it wasn’t cause for libel. And I told the reporter that. After, I just wanted to hide, thinking nobody would probably see the interview anyway. But that night it made both the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. news and they edited it to make it even more controversial. Of course, Gary loved it.
I had lost my Beatles collection, because of that guy who had watched my store. I’ve never been much of a possessions person, but each album had an emotional connection for me. Finally I found another copy of the “IMAGINE” album in another store. It wasn’t my own album, because I would have recognized it. But when I got home I found inside; my own poster of Lennon sitting at a white piano! It’d been on the wall at my very first store back in ’72. I had torn the corners when I had moved and had cut them at certain angles.
By coincidence, my friend, Wally, had heard that I was back in town, and a week later from me finding the poster, returned a box of reggae albums I had left him when I went to Vancouver. And to my great surprise, there was my original “IMAGINE” album too. I had found my long lost original album and my original poster too in the same week! Wally’s brother, Boris, whom I would get to know later, would often find me music items and movies I’d request over the years.
We set up the coffeehouse as a place, where every Saturday night local musicians of all styles, could get up and play. It only held about 20-25 in the audience and we only charged $1 at the door and sold coffee for 50c. A lot of talented artists who might not get a chance at some of the other places in town got to perform. Some later well-known names played there. “LUCKY RON”, who would become a fixture in Ottawa , was in a rockabilly band then, for example. Other nights we rented it out to bands as a rehearsal space for all kinds of music from folk to punk. At first, the different styles of performers wouldn’t mix with each other, but before long, everybody was jamming together. Some of my favorites and whom I later promoted were husband and wife,”Rick and Monique”; they were like Ian and Sylvia, and Monique had an amazing range in her voice. When she performed Patsy Cline’s “Crazy”, it sent shivers up your spine. Bryan Claremont had been my roommate on Elgin St. before I went to Vancouver, and was the most natural musician I’d met. He played an accordion and could play any kind of keyboards and wrote scores of Beatles-influenced songs. Once some girls thought Bryan and I were the musicians, “Seals and Crofts” and later I was asked for my autograph as comedian, Gallager, because we wore similar caps (we said, sure!), and kept wearing them. And Bryan with his friend, Tom, were once hitchhiking in Florida, when Jimmy Buffet pulled over and invited them to play at his club. But I especially liked the performers who wrote their own songs.
An incredible guitar player was Shawn O’Connor (stage name “SHAWN ECANO”). He would hook up a synthesizer to his acoustic guitar, and out would come these electronic sounds. And when he picked up an electric guitar, his fingers would fly like Jimi Hendrix. His masterpiece was “Heartbreaker”, originally by Grand Funk Railroad, but in Shawn’s hands he turned it into a 10 minute extravaganza. He would dress up in a fedora and suspenders and wraparound sunglasses. He was unlike anything Ottawa had seen before or since. I was later to put on several concerts for these and others.
About a year after I was back, I noticed that this singer, I had only heard rehearsing in the back of my store that week I left for Vancouver, was playing San Antonio’s Downstairs Club on Rideau. I asked another female musician if she would go with me to see her. My friend asked what was her name and I said, “Diane Gentes”. And she said she was her best friend. We walked in the door that night, and Diane was on stage singing and when she saw me and her friend together, she stopped in the middle of the song. As I say, I had been haunted after hearing her voice only once before. She blew me away again. She was a country singer from Winnipeg originally, but with a blues accent and soul. Pretty soon I was going to all her shows. She had in her band this great young guitarist too, Danny Artuso. I met with her and told her I wanted to help her and I did, putting on shows and promoting her for the next 8 years. The store, newspaper and coffeehouse were doing well now. More and more musicians were coming to play. Diane Gentes, whom I was promoting now, came to perform, and wowed everybody. It was still small, and everyone would just sit on the floor. We even put on a couple concerts to raise money for Spectrum at the Mayfair Theatre with a live reggae band. The newspaper and coffeehouse were both non-profit. People waiting for the bus downstairs would hear the music coming from upstairs, but luckily nobody complained. It was technically illegal to run the coffeehouse (we couldn’t get away with it these days). We were still basically underground, compared to the regular Ottawa music scene. We had started the newspaper and coffeehouse as an alternative to the mainstream cliques, of whom, we weren’t a part.
ABOVE: "SPECTRUM" ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER and "OPEN SPACE" COFFEEHOUSE, part of "IMAGINE- ALTERNATIVES" RECORD STORE & BOOKS
ARTICLE ABOVE IN SPECTRUM NEWSPAPER BY ALAN CHRISMAN ABOUT COUNTRY/BLUES SINGER DIANE GENTES w/ Guitarist, DANNY ARTUSO
EXCERPT: CHAPTER 9: ROCK THIS TOWN! PRODUCTIONS 1985-'93
I moved to a new location just off Elgin, near Cooper and O’Connor, in the bottom of an apartment building. From there I would run my record store and manage musicians and put on concerts. It turned out to be a very creative and reasonably successful period in our lives. Sarah was now working as a teacher’s assistant with special needs students. They loved her puppets she would make with them and she put on puppet shows. For the next several years we organized our “Magic in the Music” Concerts every summer with grants from the City of Ottawa and the Musician’s Union. We did these at Confederation Park, NAC Outdoor Stage, Major’s Hill Park, Astrolabe Theatre, etc. They were a combination of children’s entertainment and a wide variety of musical styles.
We also put on shows at the Mayfair Theatre and the Bytowne Cinema (the media thought it might be little strange to do it there, but it made sense to me). We combined live music and movies, and were open to try any place we could find a venue. I used several of the musician’s from our coffeehouse days such as Bryan and Shawn and Monique and Rick, and Diane and Ian Tamblyn even.
My friend, Diane, had moved to Montreal, but she asked me to help organize an Anti-Apartheid Concert for her at GCTC in 1987. She had met this black band playing in Montreal and they came and performed as well as her old friends, Heaven’s Radio and Sarah organized children singing along too. Diane, although she was basically a country singer, was also very influenced by R&B. She was also friends with this other band,TCHUKON. They won the $100,000 top prize on Star Search in the U.S., which led to a record contract with Aquarius Records, out of Montreal.
I was also always looking for new talent. I discovered a great new band called “THE OPTION”; they had 3-part harmonies and were Beatles- influenced but were original. Two of them were Deavey brothers from a family of 10 musicians. I was even getting interested responses from Canadian record companies. They ended up in the semi-finals in Billboard’s Musician Magazine ”Best Unsigned Band” Contest in the States. We had still been pretty well ignored by Ottawa,
including by Eugene Haslem , later the owner of Zaphod’s (where the Rolling Stones were later to play and record a video in Ottawa). But I ran into him on the bus the day he happened to be reading the article in the magazine where they were in the semi-finals (the finalist judges were to be: Lou Reed, Robbie Robertson, Lyle Lovett, Branford Marsalis, etc.!) and finally he offered them a spot at his then club, The Underground. We also won a, rare at the time, Factor Grant, sponsored by the Canadian music industry (I was interviewed on CHEZ-FM as nobody from Ottawa had won one before). So things were happening.
Also I was still promoting Diane Gentes. She was now playing with Ian Tamblyn’s band members in her band too(including bass player Brian Radding, who had been with Ottawa’s most successful band in the 60’s, ”THE FIVE MAN ELECTRICAL BAND”). Ian was the most respected musician in town. And I started to work for him too. Ottawa had him stereotyped as a folksinger but when I met him, he was trying to break out of the mold-trying reggae, jazz, country, etc. Ian was the mentor to many up- and-coming talented musicians like Lynn Miles, etc.
Lynn had just released her first cassette in ‘87 and I had written her a note about it. There was a song on it I especially identified with called “This Town”(1), ( ‘My friends say I’ll never get anywhere in this town’) and she even had a song on it with the chorus’ I’m gonna Rock This Town’( by coincidence the same as the name of my new company). She came in my store and said she was considering quitting music. She was playing little clubs like the Bank St. Café and Rasputin’s but needed a push (she didn’t even have a biography written). I told her she was the most talented singer-songwriter (besides Ian) in Ottawa. At the time she was singing back-up for her friend, Rebecca Campbell, “The Voice” in Ottawa’s most popular band, Fat Man Waving. But I knew Lynn was unique, there was a pain in her voice, especially about relationships, that was unlike any other performer in Ottawa, who usually had a more folky feel. Her favorite singers were Emmylou Harris and Nancy Griffith. I ran into her on Elgin St. one day and she told me she had just been in a workshop with her heroine, Emmylou, at the Mariposa Festival and I had just seen her open for Nancy Griffith in Arnprior. I went to Rasputin’s shortly after that time at my store, and was thinking of maybe asking her to let me manage her. But at that same show too was a good guy I knew, Frank Taylor, and he did manage her for several years. She went on to have a loyal following in Europe and the U.S. as well as Canada. And Ian won a Juno for his “Over My Head” album. He loved to make trips up North and record the nature sounds of whales and seals. Lynn would win a Juno Award for her 2002 masterpiece, “Unravel” and make many more great albums. My instincts had been right about her uniqueness.
1. This Town”, Lynn Miles, c. PROCAN, 1987
I got “THE OPTION” to record their first tape at Lynn’s boyfriend at the time, Ross Murray’s studio. And when we got the “FACTOR” grant I got Ian to produce their 3 song demo at the best studio in Ottawa, Ambience, run by Ian’s friend and musician, Phil Bova. But just as we were starting to get good responses, the band fell apart. And as I had learned with the Ernie Smith band back in 1979, ironically, just when sometimes artists are on the verge of success, they fall apart. (Some people, it seems, are more afraid of success than failure). In “The Option’s” case it was their bass player who had first told me about them. He had refused to go to a showcase I hoped to set up for record executives in Toronto (at which you don’t get paid). Later the leader, Wayne, wrote a song disguised about him ”What Might Have Been”. I understood that fear because around that time, I got a call from THE GOVERNOR GENERAL’S office to see if I’d like to organize a big concert for them with BRYAN ADAMS, at the time one of the biggest stars in the world. The budget was for thousands of dollars. My computer-company owning friend, Paul, said I should charge $500 a day consulting fee. But I had never done anything this “GIANT “ before and frankly got scared and declined. I had blown my chance at becoming a big Rock Star Concert promoter and maybe even rich too!
But I continued to do my thing. “SHAWN “ECANO” was, as I said, unlike anything in Ottawa. He now had the only ($3000) synthesizer guitar in Ottawa and his one- man show was very theatrical. So I put on a concert at the Bytowne Cinema with a movie. The Bytowne choose “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” which I didn’t know much about and as I found out later, the audience goes crazy. Poor Shawn had people walking all over his then, quite complicated early computer and instrument cables and it was chaos. But we didn’t give up on our multi-media shows. In 1992, I released a compilation Cd of 5 of my artists called “Other Voices”, with a wide mix of styles, including Shawn( and his new band,” The MOVERS”), Bryan, Monique and Rick, and Diane, who had now moved to B.C. Sadly, Diane’s parents back in Winnipeg, were killed by a drunk driver. Diane’s dad had been a part-time musician and it, as you can imagine, devastated her, so she didn’t do music for awhile. But I wanted her on the Cd, so she sent a song she had recorded when she lived in Montreal after Ottawa. She would later marry a black bass player who had played with Harry Belafonte, and move to Nashville, where she still performs.
Unfortunately, as I said, “The OPTION” had broken up and didn’t get on my Cd. But their sister, Tammy Deavy, did. She had a good R&B voice so I told her to record something with just a piano so I could hear her and she came back with some jazz ballad standards. She said nobody would be interested in those old songs but she captured them beautifully (this was right before Natalie Cole and Linda Ronstadt were to revive the standards). Also this great gospel singer, Kathy Grant-Mahon, who had played the famous Apollo Theatre in N.Y., came into my store and she agreed to play my upcoming concert too. So we put on the “OTHER VOICES” Concert in ’92 at the Mayfair Theatre with all of the above (including “THE OPTION”, who got back together for the show) except, Diane who was in B.C., and with members of Ian Tamblyn’s band backing up some of the musician’s. The only problem is it was in the late fall and we had a freakishly early, cold snowy day and not many people, but we got a video and broadcast of by local cable TV. But we kept on trying different things and we were soon to have even more success with ”THE OTTAWA BEATLES CONVENTIONS”.
ABOVE: VARIOUS SHOWS AND MUSICIANS ROCK THIS TOWN! PRODUCTIONS ORGANIZED AND PROMOTED: "MAGIC IN THE MUSIC" OUTDOOR FESTIVALS; ANTI-APARTHIED BENEFIT; "SHAWN ECANO"; "THE OPTION" and their CDN. Factor Grant Demo's Produced By IAN TAMBLYN; "OTHER VOICES" CD & CONCERT< MAYFAIR THEATRE: '85-'93.
BELOW: "MAGIC IN THE MUSIC" CONCERTS: NAC OUTDOOR STAGE, CONFEDERATION PARK, ASTROLAB THEATRE, MAJOR HILLS PARK: '85-'90:
"SHAWN ECANO", Sarah & Jan ("SANOLLE PUPPETS"); Alan (CONFEDERATION PARK); ALAN running "ROCK THIS TOWN ! PRODUCTIONS & RECORD STORE, off Elgin St., '85-'93.
"SHAWN ECANO", Sarah & Jan ("SANOLLE PUPPETS"); Alan (CONFEDERATION PARK); ALAN running "ROCK THIS TOWN ! PRODUCTIONS & RECORD STORE, off Elgin St., '85-'93.
EXCERPT: CHAPTER 16: LOST WEEKEND- '97
I didn’t know what I was going to do for work, etc. Maybe open a store again (the only thing I
knew how to do). But I had no stock so I
started getting a spot at the Stittsville Flea Market, starting completely
over, as when I had opened my first store in ’72, with basically nothing. I would go out Sundays very early in the
morning and stay there all day in the hot sun, selling used records. People wouldn’t pay much there and dealers
would try to get my best stuff even before we opened, so they could resell it. But like before, when I had started with only
25 records in my first store, I eventually traded enough to build up some
stock.
I had noticed a small used record store in Westboro and I’d known the owner. He wanted to move to a trendier neighborhood, The Glebe, (Westboro was later to become the trendiest area in Ottawa). But this was 1997 and there were lots of empty stores then. There was a tiny room at the back of the store that I thought maybe I could live in because I couldn’t afford a separate apartment. So I moved in the week of July 6, 1997 (the 40th anniversary of the day John met Paul); hoping that might be a good omen. I called the store GET BACK RECORDS, getting back to vinyl, which had had a bit of a resurgence with a new generation going back to turntables as Dj’s. And also I hoped to somehow try and ‘get back’ my life.
But the store I had replaced, hoping that customers would already know there had been a record store there, had as I was soon to find out, been more popular for selling marijuana paraphernalia. For the next several months, I spent most of my time directing customers to the former store’s new location. A not untypical conversation went like this: “Hey man, is this the same store?” “No, they’ve moved to the Glebe” “ Hey man, where’s the Glebe?” “Have you lived in Ottawa long”, I’d ask. “20 years, man”. And the first day I opened, I had a kid who wanted to purchase 50 records (I thought this isn’t going to be a bad location). Most of the time, I even accepted cheques. The kid gives me one, and I went to the bank, next door to cash it with him and he runs away; it would have bounced. So that’s kind of neighborhood Westboro was, when I moved in.
I had noticed a small used record store in Westboro and I’d known the owner. He wanted to move to a trendier neighborhood, The Glebe, (Westboro was later to become the trendiest area in Ottawa). But this was 1997 and there were lots of empty stores then. There was a tiny room at the back of the store that I thought maybe I could live in because I couldn’t afford a separate apartment. So I moved in the week of July 6, 1997 (the 40th anniversary of the day John met Paul); hoping that might be a good omen. I called the store GET BACK RECORDS, getting back to vinyl, which had had a bit of a resurgence with a new generation going back to turntables as Dj’s. And also I hoped to somehow try and ‘get back’ my life.
But the store I had replaced, hoping that customers would already know there had been a record store there, had as I was soon to find out, been more popular for selling marijuana paraphernalia. For the next several months, I spent most of my time directing customers to the former store’s new location. A not untypical conversation went like this: “Hey man, is this the same store?” “No, they’ve moved to the Glebe” “ Hey man, where’s the Glebe?” “Have you lived in Ottawa long”, I’d ask. “20 years, man”. And the first day I opened, I had a kid who wanted to purchase 50 records (I thought this isn’t going to be a bad location). Most of the time, I even accepted cheques. The kid gives me one, and I went to the bank, next door to cash it with him and he runs away; it would have bounced. So that’s kind of neighborhood Westboro was, when I moved in.
EXCERPT: CHAPTER16: PETE BEST, FINALLY GETS HIS DUE- A MILLIONAIRE!
In 1997, PETE BEST, came back to Ottawa to play the Rainbow
Blues Club, while on a Canadian tour. I
had first booked Pete into the RAINBOW the year before, during my ‘96
Convention. A lot had happened to Pete
since I had first had him at my 1st Convention in ‘95. The BEATLES ANTHOLOGIES, 3 Volumes, had sold
over 30 million copies surprising everybody and were the top selling albums in
the world those years. We had correctly
timed our own OTTAWA BEATLES CONVENTIONS '95 & '96 with them. And
Pete had finally received his proper due- he had gotten a check for 1 and 1/2 million British pounds! He had been on several early Beatles’ songs
on the Anthologies. 30 years after they had unceremoniously
dropped him, he’d been finally rewarded.
He was instrumental in their history.
His mother ran the first place,THE CASBAH, they played in Liverpool,
before even the Cavern. He was an
essential part of them in both Liverpool and in their crucial development in
Hamburg. Pete had a younger half-brother,
Roag, who had played drums too at our convention. But a lot of Beatles’ fans didn’t know that Roag
was actually the son of Neil Aspinall, the Beatles’ road manager in the 60’s
and later the manager of their company, Apple, and the most trusted friend of
all the Beatles. It had been Neil Aspinall’s
idea to put together THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGIES, which led to their remarkable
comeback. He had had a relationship with
Pete’s much older mother and perhaps Neil made sure Pete was included in the
project. But anyway, it was a deserving award
for Pete. So when I met Pete again (now
a Millionaire!) for our 2nd Convention, he remembered how we had
supported him and charged the same old fee.
And Pete, as Cynthia Lennon had told me, was just as humble as ever.
My friend, Al, who was in town, working at one of Ottawa’s festivals, was to meet me that night on August 31, 1997, at the Rainbow and say hello to Pete. Also along with Pete was to be BOB WOOLER, (the Cavern DJ). But Al never made it, because as I found out later, he had fallen off his bike riding the bike path below Parliament Hill. He was in the hospital, and had broken a tooth and lost a piece of his ear, but it could have been even worse with the rocks there. It was a fateful date too, because Lady Diana was killed that night and Mother Teresa also died that same day.
My friend, Al, who was in town, working at one of Ottawa’s festivals, was to meet me that night on August 31, 1997, at the Rainbow and say hello to Pete. Also along with Pete was to be BOB WOOLER, (the Cavern DJ). But Al never made it, because as I found out later, he had fallen off his bike riding the bike path below Parliament Hill. He was in the hospital, and had broken a tooth and lost a piece of his ear, but it could have been even worse with the rocks there. It was a fateful date too, because Lady Diana was killed that night and Mother Teresa also died that same day.
EXCERPT: CHAPTER 17: GET BACK RECORDS, WESTBORO
My store in Westboro was slowly starting to get better. Some of my old customers began to rediscover me and I was gradually building up new ones. I still carried mainly vinyl, but also had used tapes and had some used Cd’s. But it was really only a few very loyal regular customers who kept me going. One, Lenny, who was in the Navy, came in every Friday during his lunch, and he always bought something, usually Elvis or the Beatles, in which I specialized. I’d go to his house sometimes and he had more records than my whole store. But you just never knew who might drop in. I got a lot of musicians, local and out of town. There was a musical instrument store a few blocks away. And there was starting to be a small, but growing reaction against digital by a new generation of musicians. It was mainly two extremes, the old vinyl collectors and the young experimental kids. My friend, Lenny, had even set up an Ebay account and we would sell records online and ship them all over the world. There was a famous restaurant in Westboro, The Newport, all decorated like Elvis Presley, so I came up with this idea to ship our records in their unused pizza boxes. But I much preferred dealing with people in person. I also still was doing the flea market on Sundays and an occasional record show.
ABOVE: OTTAWA CITIZEN AND "THE NEWS" ARTICLES ON ALAN CHRISMAN AND "GET BACK" RECORDS., '99 & 2001.
EXCERPT: CHAPTER 18:" YOU JUST NEVER KNEW WHO MIGHT DROP IN":
It was a ANTI-LAND
MINES BENEFIT at the NAC with: EMMYLOU HARRIS, STEAVE
EARLE, JOHN PRINE, MARY CHAPIN CARPENTER, BRUCE COCKBURN, and NANCI
GRIFFITH, all on one bill! I just
couldn’t miss it. After the great
concert, we waited outside the reception room and they all came by. I got to meet them and have them sign albums
for me.
Emmylou Harris, whom Diane had first turned me onto, was stunning in her silver hair; I was later to meet her again when Lynn Miles opened for her at the Ottawa Folk Festival. But it was Nancy Griffith I most wanted to meet. We had seen her perform in Lincoln Park in’94 and with Lynn in Arnprior, where this petite, but tough, former school teacher had stopped her song in the middle and scolded a drunk. I had my compilation Cd of some of my artists, “Other Voices”, to give her. When I talked to her, I said ”I’ve got my ‘Other Voices’ Cd for you”. She said, “You mean mine, don’t you?’’ She had just released a new highly acclaimed Cd called “OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS” , with covers of Dylan, John Prine,etc . But I also had an album I thought she might like by legendary fellow Texas singer-songwriter, Townes Van Zant, whose song, “If I Needed You”, Emmy had also recorded. I had actually just gotten into my store that very week, the Townes Van Zant Lp (I’d never seen one before; they were that rare). I had suggested to Lynn once that she do “From a Distance” a song from one of Nanci’s albums. Lynn had been greatly influenced by Emmylou and Gram Parsons (who was to die early, but led both The Byrds and the Rolling Stones towards country). I asked Nanci if she still had a turntable and she replied in her distinctive Austin accent “Sure Do!” And well worth almost losing my job for.
A few years later, a musician came into my Westboro store and he was looking for records by a Chicago blues harp player called Charlie Musselwhite (Butterfield Blues Band, etc). He certainly knew a lot about music, so I asked what he was doing in Ottawa and he said he was with EMMYLOU HARRIS at the Lilith Fair Concert that night. I had debated going because I couldn’t afford it, but would have loved to see her again. He knew a lot about Daniel Lanois, a Canadian musician who had helped re-invent Emmylou’s sound. I asked him, what he did for Emmy, thinking he might be a soundman, but he said he played guitar. He told me he had just produced a new couple, Buddy and Julie Miller. By coincidence, I had just gotten in a tape by Julie Miller and had kept it because she looked like Lynn on the cover and had a great voice. Later, Buddy Miller would play for both Stacy Earle and Emmy, when I saw them. Anyway, he had to go, but hadn’t given me his name. I asked him and he said ’Maple’ Burns. After he left, I looked at my copy of ‘Wrecking Ball’, the great aforementioned Emmylou album, Lanois had produced in New Orleans. And there he was, my store visitor, listed as co-producer, MALCOLM ‘MAPLE’ BURNS, producer of U-2, ENO ! Lanois was later to do the same thing for Dylan, Neil Young, etc. The next night I saw Emmylou on David Letterman and ‘Maple ‘Burns was playing guitar up on the screen. You just never knew who might drop by my little shop!
Another Sunday, my boss came by because Mr. Bryden had been trying to get a hold of me. I thought maybe I had done something wrong; I cleaned his office too. I called his private secretary first thing the next morning. She said he had some free Senator’s hockey tickets for me. I thanked them, but declined because I didn’t care for hockey at all. My boss had never been offered tickets in all the time they’d cleaned for Mr. Byrden. But later they offered me tickets to Blue Rodeo, one of my favorite Canadian bands. I had liked them since their 1st album in ’87. My wife had gotten them to sign a poster with all the original members then. We had seen and met them several times over the years. Once they played Centrepoint Theatre and I noticed a big blue bus outside and both leaders, Cuddy and Keelor, came out of the bus right then and were very down-to –earth. They’ve remained very popular for over 25 years now. But later they would have crowds of over 20,000 at the Bluesfests; but I preferred their concerts when it was more intimate.
Emmylou Harris, whom Diane had first turned me onto, was stunning in her silver hair; I was later to meet her again when Lynn Miles opened for her at the Ottawa Folk Festival. But it was Nancy Griffith I most wanted to meet. We had seen her perform in Lincoln Park in’94 and with Lynn in Arnprior, where this petite, but tough, former school teacher had stopped her song in the middle and scolded a drunk. I had my compilation Cd of some of my artists, “Other Voices”, to give her. When I talked to her, I said ”I’ve got my ‘Other Voices’ Cd for you”. She said, “You mean mine, don’t you?’’ She had just released a new highly acclaimed Cd called “OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS” , with covers of Dylan, John Prine,etc . But I also had an album I thought she might like by legendary fellow Texas singer-songwriter, Townes Van Zant, whose song, “If I Needed You”, Emmy had also recorded. I had actually just gotten into my store that very week, the Townes Van Zant Lp (I’d never seen one before; they were that rare). I had suggested to Lynn once that she do “From a Distance” a song from one of Nanci’s albums. Lynn had been greatly influenced by Emmylou and Gram Parsons (who was to die early, but led both The Byrds and the Rolling Stones towards country). I asked Nanci if she still had a turntable and she replied in her distinctive Austin accent “Sure Do!” And well worth almost losing my job for.
A few years later, a musician came into my Westboro store and he was looking for records by a Chicago blues harp player called Charlie Musselwhite (Butterfield Blues Band, etc). He certainly knew a lot about music, so I asked what he was doing in Ottawa and he said he was with EMMYLOU HARRIS at the Lilith Fair Concert that night. I had debated going because I couldn’t afford it, but would have loved to see her again. He knew a lot about Daniel Lanois, a Canadian musician who had helped re-invent Emmylou’s sound. I asked him, what he did for Emmy, thinking he might be a soundman, but he said he played guitar. He told me he had just produced a new couple, Buddy and Julie Miller. By coincidence, I had just gotten in a tape by Julie Miller and had kept it because she looked like Lynn on the cover and had a great voice. Later, Buddy Miller would play for both Stacy Earle and Emmy, when I saw them. Anyway, he had to go, but hadn’t given me his name. I asked him and he said ’Maple’ Burns. After he left, I looked at my copy of ‘Wrecking Ball’, the great aforementioned Emmylou album, Lanois had produced in New Orleans. And there he was, my store visitor, listed as co-producer, MALCOLM ‘MAPLE’ BURNS, producer of U-2, ENO ! Lanois was later to do the same thing for Dylan, Neil Young, etc. The next night I saw Emmylou on David Letterman and ‘Maple ‘Burns was playing guitar up on the screen. You just never knew who might drop by my little shop!
Another Sunday, my boss came by because Mr. Bryden had been trying to get a hold of me. I thought maybe I had done something wrong; I cleaned his office too. I called his private secretary first thing the next morning. She said he had some free Senator’s hockey tickets for me. I thanked them, but declined because I didn’t care for hockey at all. My boss had never been offered tickets in all the time they’d cleaned for Mr. Byrden. But later they offered me tickets to Blue Rodeo, one of my favorite Canadian bands. I had liked them since their 1st album in ’87. My wife had gotten them to sign a poster with all the original members then. We had seen and met them several times over the years. Once they played Centrepoint Theatre and I noticed a big blue bus outside and both leaders, Cuddy and Keelor, came out of the bus right then and were very down-to –earth. They’ve remained very popular for over 25 years now. But later they would have crowds of over 20,000 at the Bluesfests; but I preferred their concerts when it was more intimate.
EXCERPT:CHAPTER 20:LISTER IN L.A. "SO YOU WANT TO BE A R'n'R STAR!"
I hadn’t been back into music for awhile, but there was one band I still went to see and support ”THE MUSTARDS”. Like the “The OPTION”, they were Beatles-influenced, but original, and had three-part harmonies. Les Emmerson of Five Man Electrical Band had said Ottawa always had the harmonies, like The COOPER BROS, etc. And they were in that tradition. I had first met their, drummer, Marco Rayes, when he was still in high school, going to Lisgar High, near my Rock This Town! Store just off Elgin St. in the mid-80’s. You could tell he was going to go places. He was just different than most of the kids at the time, who were into punk. Marco preferred The Beatles, Styx, etc.; more melody and harmony. So did his friends, John Jastremski on guitar, and Stu Lister, on guitar and vocals. I think I might have helped them get one of their first gigs in Kanata doing covers as “Hot Mustard”. They wrote good, catchy songs by John and Stu. And John played great guitar.
Later, they were releasing their first cassette at Irene’s as an acoustic group and this woman walks in and sits at my table. She asks me if I knew anything about them. I didn’t recognize her at first. It was Lynn Miles. But I hadn’t seen her for awhile. She’d been on the road touring and living in Nashville, Austin and L.A. I had asked Ian Tamblyn what advice I could give her, when I first knew her years before, and he had said ”Travel, get some perspective; out of Ottawa” That’s exactly what she had done. Lynn had always seemed a bit shy, awkward to me, but in a nice way. But now she looked completely different; beautiful in a dress. I said, ”Yeah, I’m kind of helping promote them” and gave her a tape. She said she liked them and even took one of their promotion caps and wore it the rest of the evening. This meant a lot to me, for as I said, the musicians I respected the most in this town were her and Ian.
Later “The Mustards” would do shows with my band, “The Option”. Both bands would play both my Beatles Conventions. Also they would open for April Wine, one of Canada’s best 70’s bands, at Barrymore’s and Myles Goodwin, the leader, would record several songs with them at his studio in Montreal, under the name “ZOE”. They just kept getting better and better; I thought they might actually have a chance, like “The Option” to make it. And in fact, they were getting record company response both in Canada and the U.S. I was watching the door for them at a club on Bank St. where they were releasing their new Cd ”Half Built Set”. They were now called “Lister” and John had had to leave because as an engineer, he had to go to Europe often. Mike, Stu’s brother, had replaced him on lead guitar and vocals too. They were developing a good following and the show was sold out. Two men arrived at the door and I was about to turn them away, when Stu noticed them and let them in free. Good thing he did, because they were record company representatives from a top U.S. label, INTERSCOPE RECORDS, from L.A. They had come to catch the band. Also that same night in town were playing “SLOAN”, one of the most successful and respected Canadian bands, who had once been on INTERSCOPE and who knew the representatives; so they were all there at the same table as “LISTER”. “LISTER” was later flown to L.A. by the record companies for a showcase for executives at the famous VIPER ROOM, owned partly by JOHNNY DEPP.
“LISTER”started playing every Sunday at Zaphods, owned by Eugene Haslem. Eugene recognized their potential too as well as Harvey Glatt, a music promoter and legend in this town, who I’d often see at their shows. Soon they left for L.A., much as The FIVE MAN ELECTRICAL BAND had done in the late 60’s before, with Les Emmerson writing their classic hit ”SIGNS” on the way to their move to L.A. Lister found a house there and starting playing around L.A. They got a lawyer and an agent and some of their songs ended up on one of the popular American TV series’ of the time, “DAWSON’S CREEK”. One time I talked to them on the phone in L.A. and Eugene was there visiting them. Two of them worked at the Canadian Consulate, where they met Canadian Prime Minister Chretien. Several Canadians would come to their shows as there were lots of Canadians in Hollywood. But they said it was a struggle getting noticed, because they had to share the night with several bands each night and couldn’t make much money. They did get a new bass player through Tom Green, the Ottawa comedian. But everybody it seemed in L.A. was a wannabe rock star or movie star. They meet some interesting people including JIMMY IOVINE, President of INTERSCOPE RECORDS, legendary producer for John Lennon, Tom Petty, and later LADY GAGA. He liked them, but the music scene had changed and grunge was now in, with bands like Nirvana, and Pearl Jam. And “LISTER” wasn’t that. They also met the guy who had worked with Alanis Morissette in Ottawa when she was only 16 as a mall singer. He now had a studio and big house in L.A. Lynn Miles had told of the time Alanis and her had sang on the streets of L.A. (Lynn had taught her singing lessons in Ottawa), right before Alanis would sell her “JAGGED LITTLE PILL” in the millions. Lynn later told of the story when she ran into Madonna in a restroom in L.A. and gave her advice on how to get candle wax out of her hair. Lynn had recorded an album in L.A. with Larry Klein, ex-husband of Joni Mitchell. one of Lynn's heroines. But Lister only had temporary visiting cards and were missing their girlfriends, etc. This was also around 2001 and 9/11. They returned to Ottawa and decided to break-up and get on with their lives and other jobs. But they were brave to at least try for it; and they came remarkably close. Stu wrote a song about it ”L.A. Heroes (there aren’t any)”. Marco and former guitar player, John, would continue to play in cover bands around town. Marco was to remain my good friend and later landlord.
I hadn’t been back into music for awhile, but there was one band I still went to see and support ”THE MUSTARDS”. Like the “The OPTION”, they were Beatles-influenced, but original, and had three-part harmonies. Les Emmerson of Five Man Electrical Band had said Ottawa always had the harmonies, like The COOPER BROS, etc. And they were in that tradition. I had first met their, drummer, Marco Rayes, when he was still in high school, going to Lisgar High, near my Rock This Town! Store just off Elgin St. in the mid-80’s. You could tell he was going to go places. He was just different than most of the kids at the time, who were into punk. Marco preferred The Beatles, Styx, etc.; more melody and harmony. So did his friends, John Jastremski on guitar, and Stu Lister, on guitar and vocals. I think I might have helped them get one of their first gigs in Kanata doing covers as “Hot Mustard”. They wrote good, catchy songs by John and Stu. And John played great guitar.
Later, they were releasing their first cassette at Irene’s as an acoustic group and this woman walks in and sits at my table. She asks me if I knew anything about them. I didn’t recognize her at first. It was Lynn Miles. But I hadn’t seen her for awhile. She’d been on the road touring and living in Nashville, Austin and L.A. I had asked Ian Tamblyn what advice I could give her, when I first knew her years before, and he had said ”Travel, get some perspective; out of Ottawa” That’s exactly what she had done. Lynn had always seemed a bit shy, awkward to me, but in a nice way. But now she looked completely different; beautiful in a dress. I said, ”Yeah, I’m kind of helping promote them” and gave her a tape. She said she liked them and even took one of their promotion caps and wore it the rest of the evening. This meant a lot to me, for as I said, the musicians I respected the most in this town were her and Ian.
Later “The Mustards” would do shows with my band, “The Option”. Both bands would play both my Beatles Conventions. Also they would open for April Wine, one of Canada’s best 70’s bands, at Barrymore’s and Myles Goodwin, the leader, would record several songs with them at his studio in Montreal, under the name “ZOE”. They just kept getting better and better; I thought they might actually have a chance, like “The Option” to make it. And in fact, they were getting record company response both in Canada and the U.S. I was watching the door for them at a club on Bank St. where they were releasing their new Cd ”Half Built Set”. They were now called “Lister” and John had had to leave because as an engineer, he had to go to Europe often. Mike, Stu’s brother, had replaced him on lead guitar and vocals too. They were developing a good following and the show was sold out. Two men arrived at the door and I was about to turn them away, when Stu noticed them and let them in free. Good thing he did, because they were record company representatives from a top U.S. label, INTERSCOPE RECORDS, from L.A. They had come to catch the band. Also that same night in town were playing “SLOAN”, one of the most successful and respected Canadian bands, who had once been on INTERSCOPE and who knew the representatives; so they were all there at the same table as “LISTER”. “LISTER” was later flown to L.A. by the record companies for a showcase for executives at the famous VIPER ROOM, owned partly by JOHNNY DEPP.
“LISTER”started playing every Sunday at Zaphods, owned by Eugene Haslem. Eugene recognized their potential too as well as Harvey Glatt, a music promoter and legend in this town, who I’d often see at their shows. Soon they left for L.A., much as The FIVE MAN ELECTRICAL BAND had done in the late 60’s before, with Les Emmerson writing their classic hit ”SIGNS” on the way to their move to L.A. Lister found a house there and starting playing around L.A. They got a lawyer and an agent and some of their songs ended up on one of the popular American TV series’ of the time, “DAWSON’S CREEK”. One time I talked to them on the phone in L.A. and Eugene was there visiting them. Two of them worked at the Canadian Consulate, where they met Canadian Prime Minister Chretien. Several Canadians would come to their shows as there were lots of Canadians in Hollywood. But they said it was a struggle getting noticed, because they had to share the night with several bands each night and couldn’t make much money. They did get a new bass player through Tom Green, the Ottawa comedian. But everybody it seemed in L.A. was a wannabe rock star or movie star. They meet some interesting people including JIMMY IOVINE, President of INTERSCOPE RECORDS, legendary producer for John Lennon, Tom Petty, and later LADY GAGA. He liked them, but the music scene had changed and grunge was now in, with bands like Nirvana, and Pearl Jam. And “LISTER” wasn’t that. They also met the guy who had worked with Alanis Morissette in Ottawa when she was only 16 as a mall singer. He now had a studio and big house in L.A. Lynn Miles had told of the time Alanis and her had sang on the streets of L.A. (Lynn had taught her singing lessons in Ottawa), right before Alanis would sell her “JAGGED LITTLE PILL” in the millions. Lynn later told of the story when she ran into Madonna in a restroom in L.A. and gave her advice on how to get candle wax out of her hair. Lynn had recorded an album in L.A. with Larry Klein, ex-husband of Joni Mitchell. one of Lynn's heroines. But Lister only had temporary visiting cards and were missing their girlfriends, etc. This was also around 2001 and 9/11. They returned to Ottawa and decided to break-up and get on with their lives and other jobs. But they were brave to at least try for it; and they came remarkably close. Stu wrote a song about it ”L.A. Heroes (there aren’t any)”. Marco and former guitar player, John, would continue to play in cover bands around town. Marco was to remain my good friend and later landlord.
Above original "THE MUSTARDS" line-up and various "MUSTARDS" cassettes, '94-'96.
Then became below "ZOE" produced by MYLES GOODWIN of APRIL WINE; got songs on DAWSON CREEK U.S. TV SHOW:
Then became below "ZOE" produced by MYLES GOODWIN of APRIL WINE; got songs on DAWSON CREEK U.S. TV SHOW:
Changed name to "LISTER", recorded CD above, "HALF-BUILT SET" '99 and OFF TO L.A., 2000 BELOW:
"LISTER" LIVED A YEAR IN L.A.: PLAYED VIPER ROOM, owned by Johnny Depp; met JIMMY IOVINE, president of INTERSCOPE RECORDS/UNIVERSAL MUSIC "But rock 'n' roll is a vicious game" (song by APRIL WINE); returned Ottawa, 2001.
EXCERPT: CHAPTER 21:TIME FOR A CHANGE:
"IMAGINE", "ROCK THIS TOWN!", & "GET BACK" RECORD STORES
(1972-2002 30 years of "ROCK 'N' ROLL")
On Nov.29, 2001 George Harrison died and I received a call from his hometown newspaper, the LIVERPOOL ECHO. I don’t know how they got my number. I also was interview by the Ottawa papers. They wanted to know my reaction. He had died of cancer, but actually, he also probably died from the effects of being stabbed several times before by a deranged Beatles fan. So I quoted what George had said about John’s killer “How could someone with so little self have killed someone with so much self?” George who never liked all the crowds, also said once: “We gave them our nervous systems, everything, what do they want now-our blood?” Well, they did too. Next to John probably, George was the most loved Beatle, for his spirituality, the ‘quiet’ Beatle (those who knew him said he was anything but quiet about what he was passionate about), his music, his spirituality, etc. And he would be remembered especially for his “All things Must Pass” album with “My Sweet Lord”; “Something” and many more great songs and albums. Some of my favorites were the “Living in the Material World” album and his last, “Brainwashed”. I had seen him live in Montreal in 1974 and he had turned around especially to the cheaper seats, where I was behind the stage so we could get a view too. And “BANGLADESH , the first big benefit concert; which all future ones would copy . I had sat in the Museum Of Science and Technology auditorium at our 2nd Ottawa Beatles Convention with his sister, Louise, as she watched the film”Backbeat” for the first time. She commented to me about him being portrayed up on the screen in Hamburg: “George would never have cussed”. Of course, they had done much more by the time they were only in their 20’s. Ironically, the two Beatles who been the most outspoken and unflinching in their beliefs would become the most adored and respected.
As for me, I had run my stores now for 30 years, sometimes having to start over from nothing several times. And it had come full circle. I gave Westboro five years when I moved there in ’97. The neighborhood had changed. It was once a nice, small little village. But some businessmen wanted to ‘fix’ it up and make a lot of money in the process. I had been one of the few merchants who had dared to complain when Mountain Coop moved just a couple doors down, when I was interviewed in the Ottawa Citizen. It was the first big box store in the neighborhood, but Ottawan’s are nothing if not back-to- the-landers. The people who welcomed Mountain Coop didn’t see that by letting it in, they had opened the door for other big stores like the Loblaws Superstore. Everybody said I’d get rich and even my landlord wanted me to stay. It might have been a poor neighborhood when I had moved in, but I could leave my door unlocked, while I got the paper across the street, and customers would just leave their money on my desk. Now with Mountain Co-op next door, the more well off-people would come in and hassle over every 50c. And there was nowhere to go anymore, I’d had 9 locations in 30 years: Somerset W., Rideau St., Elgin St., etc. I had started perhaps one of the first secondhand vinyl stores in Ottawa and now there were several, and as I predicted, there was even a return to vinyl. A whole new generation was not only, not buying CD’s but they were starting to just download them. The music industry had overpriced itself in the eighties and the kids weren’t gonna take it anymore. But except for the bigger name artists, musicians weren’t going to get much for their work. The people who wanted to ‘develop’ Westboro got what they wanted; it’s now one on the most expensive places to live; antique shops and 3! over-priced coffee shops in one block; traffic, pollution, trendiness and condo’s everywhere. But where’s the little village atmosphere that everybody supposedly wants? So it was time to leave.
My friend, Marco, from “the Mustards” and “Lister” offered me a small bachelor basement (and warm) apartment and at a remarkably reasonable rent in a house he had in Hintonburg. Hintonburg was like what Westboro had been before, poor but interesting. And I didn’t have to live in the back of the store anymore. So I informed my customers that I was calling it quits. Some of my loyal ones, even from past stores heard about it and came by, with stories of how I had introduced them to various musicians and bands; the first Billy Joel, Bob Seeger, Alice Cooper, etc. And I planned to go out as I had started it all those years ago. I gave away whatever I could, cheap; I told them to take whatever they wanted and the rest I gave away to Neighborhood Services, which maybe someone else could use. I only kept most of my own Beatles collection. I still had my full–time cleaning job. I had started ”IMAGINE” in Feb. ’72, because it felt right and I ended it, exactly 30 years later in 2002, because it felt right.
"
ABOVE: GEORGE HARRISON PASSES: NOV.29, 2001
"I SEE THE LOVE THERE THAT'S SLEEPING, WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS" c. Harrisongs Music, Inc. 1969
EXCERPT: CHAPTER 22: “BACK IN THE U.S.S.R.”
I first met Russian, YURY PELYUSHONOK, during our 1st Beatles Convention in ’95. He told me stories about how the Beatles had been banned in Russia and had had a profound effect on helping to bring down Communism. I suggested then that he write them down. At our 2nd Beatles Convention the next year, he was interviewed by the Ottawa Citizen about how in the 8o’s, Soviet sailors (he was a medical doctor in the Russian Navy) had smuggled a Paul McCartney LP out of Russia and traded them for even cars in the West. He had written this first story down in a tiny booklet called the “Golden Disc”. And a couple years later, he had gotten a Canada Council grant to publish a fuller book about his theories and experiences growing up as a Beatles fan and musician (he had made his own guitar) in Russia. He presented me with one of the original, only 147 copies, of ”STRINGS FOR A BEATLE BASS”, which had been translated into English by his wife. Upon reading it, I thought it would make a great movie. He was going to London, in April, 2000, and I suggested he leave a copy with the Beatles’ manager, Neil Aspinall ( the BBC lady had given me his contact at the Connecticut convention in’94). Yury did leave a book there and upon returning, he called me one morning and said he’d had a dream, that Neil Aspinall had called me. I’d always wanted to meet Aspinall because he had been there since the beginning and was their closest confidant. And the very next day Yury calls me back and says,”Guess who just called?” I said”Who?” He says, “Paul McCartney’s personal assistant, Geoff Baker!” And that was the start of a long Magical Mystery Tour.
The Beatles’ record company, Apple, would also call back for more copies for George and Ringo. Yury approached me about finding some musicians for some songs he had written to go along with the book for a Cd he wanted to make. I suggested John Jastremski (from “The Mustards”) and Al Findlay, (from ““The Ground”) who had also played the ‘96 convention; they were both Beatles fans and songwriters. Yury had already written the first song ”Yeah Yeah Virus” and three others in 2000 and together they wrote and recorded four more songs in 2003. Yury went back to the Beatles’ Apple headquarters in London a couple more times to discuss the possibility they would publish his book. Neil Aspinall told him in advance that Paul McCartney was to play in Red Square in May, 2003; it was to be a world event. Yury had taken a lot of flak for suggesting that the Beatles could have helped bring down Communism. But Yury was interviewed in N.Y. on ABC- TV “BEATLES REVOLUTION” in 2000 with several celebrities who agreed, including Czech director Milos Forman and Keith Richards (“What brought it down, in the end, was blues jeans and Rock N’ Roll”). And there was soon to be growing evidence that what Yury had first said, was indeed true.
Yury was contacted by Leslie Woodhead, a BBC director who had read Yury’s book and was planning a film on the Beatles’ influence there. Mr.Woodhead had actually shot the only footage of the Beatles at the Cavern, which was known to exist, in 1962. On a hot August day in 2007, a handful of us gathered in Yury’s backyard in Ottawa to have him interviewed and then to film his song,”Yeah Yeah Virus” . Later, Mr. Woodhead would take Yury back to Russia with him to recreate his experiences and reunite with his teenage band. Mc Cartney was once again to perform in Russia at that same time. Yury had grown up in Minsk, and his friends there had been shown how to make amplifiers by the guy whom had worked with and knew Lee Harvey Oswald, when he had defected there in the early 60’s.
Finally in 2009, the film, “HOW THE BEATLES ROCKED THE KREMLIN” was completed and shown on PBS in the States and CBC in Canada, in conjunction with the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in ‘89. Yury was sent an advance copy. They had interviewed Yury throughout it and used his song and expression”Yeah Yeah Virus” as a theme in the film. But as we watched it on his computer, I could tell Yury was not too happy. They hadn’t even mentioned him in the end of the film credits. So his Russian temper was boiling. I suggested that we ask my friend, Bryan who knew how to establish a web presence and make videos. I showed Yury some the video’s Bryan had done for his own music and he calmed down a bit. For the next several months, we worked hard to create and make videos and interview Yury to present his point of view. We could piggyback this, we thought, with the coverage we believed, this not very well known and revolutionary theory would engender. Sure enough, the film and idea got write-ups in the L.A. Times, Toronto Globe and Mail, etc. Yury was interviewed again by the Ottawa Citizen. And the film has since been repeated several times on both PBS and the CBC. A new book “HOW THE BEATLES ROCKED THE KREMLIN” by Mr. Woodhead about this all was released in 2013. I had written to Mr. Woodhead, which I had gotten to know, on Yury’s behalf, as Yury had left me in charge of his book and Cd when he returned to Russia in 2010, because he couldn’t get his medical training recognized in Canada. And Mr. Woodhead said he hadn’t known of Yury’s feeling of having possibly not been given perhaps full credit for his essential involvement in the film and he said he would make sure Yury would in the book. Mr. Woodhead kindly kept his word and devoted a whole chapter to Yury (afterall as I said Yury is interviewed throughout the film (as well as his mother about having a teenaged son obsessed by them growing up) and his “Yeah Yeah Virus” song and video are used as a fitting theme. Yury is certainly a very talented and interesting guy and my good friend. I knew how the Beatles had affected the West and had changed my life, but I had no idea just what Eastern Block kids had had to do just to listen to and participate in Beatles’ music or the profound role it had on its culture and Communism itself. And Yury had written it down first!
“YEAH YEAH VIRUS”
“While in the West the Beatles stepped on all the rules
The 60’s beat was echoing through all the Soviet schools.
Every Russian schoolboy wants to be a star
Playing Beatles’ music, making a guitar.
Teachers looked upon this as if it were a sin,
We were building Communism but the Beatles butted in.
‘Nyet’ to Beatles music. ‘Da’ the students said.
Even Comrade Brezhnev sadly shook his head…” (1)
- “Yeah
Yeah Virus”, Yury Pelyushonok-Olga Sansom, c. PLY Publishing 2000.
LENNON WALL ABOVE, PRAGUE PHOTO BY KAREN MCCOLLUM
ABOVE POSTERS FOR YURY'S ORIGINAL BOOK "STRINGS FOR A BEATLE BASS"(1998, reissued in 2004) & CD, "YOU CAN"T WHISPER ROCK 'N'ROLL".
YURY'S CD,"YOU CAN'T WHISPER ROCK 'N' ROLL" Hear Songs & Videos:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/YuryPelyushonok
www.youtube.com/user/YuryBeat
Above YURY's CANADIAN BAND doing "YEAH YEAH VIRUS" Photo from VIDEO for BBC Film
"HOW THE BEATLES ROCKED THE KREMLIN", video shot in OTTAWA, 2007.
REVIEW OF LESLIE WOODHEAD'S 2013 BOOK AND FILM AND MORE ON YURY'S BOOK AND CD and "PUSSY RIOT, PUTIN, UKRAINE" Update, see "BLOG" HEADING ABOVE.
http://yuryspace.weebly.com
L.A. TIMES TV CRITIC REVIEW: Leslie Woodhead's Film and Yury's "YEAH YEAH VIRUS":
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/13/entertainment/la-et-beatles13-2010jan13
My 6-year-old neighbor performs "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" with choreography, Robert Zemeckis is planning a 3-D motion-capture remake of "Yellow Submarine," and as I write these words, "Let It Be" is coincidentally streaming onto my computer from a French radio station. They are intercontinental. They are colossal. They are permanently current.
And according to Leslie Woodhead's funny and touching “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin,” airing tonight on KCET -- in a rock block with “Paul McCartney in Red Square,” a 2003 concert film -- they helped bring down the Soviet Union with their sexy big beat, their cultural iconoclasm and their long-haired air of self-determination. It is a thesis based entirely in anecdote and one you will likely not see elaborated upon in the pages of Foreign Affairs, but as a tale of the power of pop it is more persuasive for its personal slant. This is an alternative history of Beatlemania, set in a land where the band never appeared and where their records were banned. If in the West the Beatles were the property of teenagers with disposable income, in the East they were the heroes of a state-created criminal underground.
"In the big, bad West they had whole institutions which spent tens of millions of dollars for undermining the Soviet system," Russian "rock commentator" Artemy Troitsky says here, "and I'm sure that the impact of all those stupid Cold War institutions has been much smaller than the impact of the Beatles." There is no way to prove this, of course, short of going back in time, preventing the band from forming, and running the whole experiment again. Perhaps this psychic liberation would have happened with some other group -- ABBA, the Ting Tings. Or not.
Woodhead, who famously filmed the pre-gear Fabs at Liverpool's Cavern Club, cruises the former Soviet republics, listening to old fans, some of whom have themselves become musicians, record producers and full-time Beatles experts. The story they tell is one of homemade electric guitars, pickups fashioned from stolen telephone receivers; of bootlegged Beatles albums cut in streetside recording booths on the celluloid from discarded hospital X-rays; of school uniforms with the collars scissored off; and of fabulous Beatles sightings, the most potent and widespread tale being that en route to Japan the group stopped somewhere in the Soviet Union to refuel and played an impromptu concert on the wing of their plane.
Eventually, though they had split by then, the Beatles triumphed in the U.S.S.R., as they always will everywhere. Their records were released, their songs became part of the common culture -- no longer dangerous but not stripped of their power. (The "Kremlin" soundtrack is made of local covers of Beatles tunes and of songs about the Beatles.) And finally, there was Paul McCartney in Red Square, the first Russian appearance of a Beatle who was not Ringo. (The drummer's 1998 concert is not even mentioned in Woodhead's film.) In the souvenir concert film that follows "Kremlin" tonight, the man even the Russians call Sir Paul leads his 21st century band of energetic whippersnappers through an impeccable bash at the hits. Still, the performance matters less than the moment, a delirious fusion of past and present, dreams and reality. "There were rivers and waterfalls of tears," says Troitsky, "something that sums up your whole life."
YURY'S CD,"YOU CAN'T WHISPER ROCK 'N' ROLL" Hear Songs & Videos:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/YuryPelyushonok
www.youtube.com/user/YuryBeat
Above YURY's CANADIAN BAND doing "YEAH YEAH VIRUS" Photo from VIDEO for BBC Film
"HOW THE BEATLES ROCKED THE KREMLIN", video shot in OTTAWA, 2007.
REVIEW OF LESLIE WOODHEAD'S 2013 BOOK AND FILM AND MORE ON YURY'S BOOK AND CD and "PUSSY RIOT, PUTIN, UKRAINE" Update, see "BLOG" HEADING ABOVE.
http://yuryspace.weebly.com
L.A. TIMES TV CRITIC REVIEW: Leslie Woodhead's Film and Yury's "YEAH YEAH VIRUS":
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/13/entertainment/la-et-beatles13-2010jan13
My 6-year-old neighbor performs "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" with choreography, Robert Zemeckis is planning a 3-D motion-capture remake of "Yellow Submarine," and as I write these words, "Let It Be" is coincidentally streaming onto my computer from a French radio station. They are intercontinental. They are colossal. They are permanently current.
And according to Leslie Woodhead's funny and touching “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin,” airing tonight on KCET -- in a rock block with “Paul McCartney in Red Square,” a 2003 concert film -- they helped bring down the Soviet Union with their sexy big beat, their cultural iconoclasm and their long-haired air of self-determination. It is a thesis based entirely in anecdote and one you will likely not see elaborated upon in the pages of Foreign Affairs, but as a tale of the power of pop it is more persuasive for its personal slant. This is an alternative history of Beatlemania, set in a land where the band never appeared and where their records were banned. If in the West the Beatles were the property of teenagers with disposable income, in the East they were the heroes of a state-created criminal underground.
"In the big, bad West they had whole institutions which spent tens of millions of dollars for undermining the Soviet system," Russian "rock commentator" Artemy Troitsky says here, "and I'm sure that the impact of all those stupid Cold War institutions has been much smaller than the impact of the Beatles." There is no way to prove this, of course, short of going back in time, preventing the band from forming, and running the whole experiment again. Perhaps this psychic liberation would have happened with some other group -- ABBA, the Ting Tings. Or not.
Woodhead, who famously filmed the pre-gear Fabs at Liverpool's Cavern Club, cruises the former Soviet republics, listening to old fans, some of whom have themselves become musicians, record producers and full-time Beatles experts. The story they tell is one of homemade electric guitars, pickups fashioned from stolen telephone receivers; of bootlegged Beatles albums cut in streetside recording booths on the celluloid from discarded hospital X-rays; of school uniforms with the collars scissored off; and of fabulous Beatles sightings, the most potent and widespread tale being that en route to Japan the group stopped somewhere in the Soviet Union to refuel and played an impromptu concert on the wing of their plane.
Eventually, though they had split by then, the Beatles triumphed in the U.S.S.R., as they always will everywhere. Their records were released, their songs became part of the common culture -- no longer dangerous but not stripped of their power. (The "Kremlin" soundtrack is made of local covers of Beatles tunes and of songs about the Beatles.) And finally, there was Paul McCartney in Red Square, the first Russian appearance of a Beatle who was not Ringo. (The drummer's 1998 concert is not even mentioned in Woodhead's film.) In the souvenir concert film that follows "Kremlin" tonight, the man even the Russians call Sir Paul leads his 21st century band of energetic whippersnappers through an impeccable bash at the hits. Still, the performance matters less than the moment, a delirious fusion of past and present, dreams and reality. "There were rivers and waterfalls of tears," says Troitsky, "something that sums up your whole life."
EXCERPT CHAPTER 24: " THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD"
So truly, it has been a long and winding road, and hopefully there are several more miles yet left to go. ”IT’S A LONG WAY HOME”, still. But somehow, it feels a little closer, as I write this, in the year - 2013.
“Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see. No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low. It’s getting hard to be someone, but it all works out.”
“Strawberry Fields Forever”, John Lennon, c. Northern Songs Ltd. 1967.
“Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge. Others only gargle”. Woody Allen.
So truly, it has been a long and winding road, and hopefully there are several more miles yet left to go. ”IT’S A LONG WAY HOME”, still. But somehow, it feels a little closer, as I write this, in the year - 2013.
“Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see. No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low. It’s getting hard to be someone, but it all works out.”
“Strawberry Fields Forever”, John Lennon, c. Northern Songs Ltd. 1967.
“Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge. Others only gargle”. Woody Allen.
BUT ROCK THIS TOWN! PRODUCTIONS AND ALAN CHRISMAN RISE AGAIN! 2014 SEE HEADING "STILL ROCKIN' " ABOVE AND CLICK.
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