Great interview with Monte Melnick on the Please Kill Me blargh. If you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, here’s the best part.
PKM: There’s a great story in your book that takes place in a Texas gas station.
Monte A. Melnick: My favorite story. This was early on. We were driving through rural Texas, driving five or six hours, and we pulled into a gas station to get some gas, and there was a little store there too, so they all pile out of the van, looking like zombies. They were staggering around because they were seven hours in the van. So they’re in the store looking at stuff, and I come in to pay for the gas and the lady says “It’s sure nice of you to take care of these retarded boys.”
New & exclusive 2018 Raw Studio Mix video with never-before-seen footage.
The IMAGINE Raw Studio Mixes place you in the centre of Ascot Sound Studios with John Lennon and The Plastic Ono Band all around you. No reverb or echo, no effects, no strings, just live, unvarnished and raw. Available in stereo and exclusively in 5.1 Surround Sound in The Ultimate Collection Box Set.
Imagine you are at the Lennon’s home, Tittenhurst Park in Ascot, England. It’s night. It’s the last week in May in 1971 and you are their special guest, sat in a chair in the very center of the their recording studio, Ascot Sound Studios. John Lennon is sat in front of you, teaching the musicians one of his latest compositions. He is talking and singing and playing the same wood-finish Epiphone Casino electric guitar he played on ‘Revolution’. A bearded George Harrison is in front of you, to the right, playing electric slide on John’s pale blue Fender Strat. Just behind you and to your right, Rod Lynton with Ted Turner from Wishbone Ash are strumming chords on twelve string acoustic guitars, and directly behind you to the right, John and George’s old friend Klaus Voormann is playing his deep hand-painted Fender Precision bass. Behind you to the left, Alan White (who would later join Yes) is playing his Ludwig silver sparkle drumkit, and in front of you to the left, John Tout from Renaissance is playing chords on the Steinway upright piano, and to his right, Nicky Hopkins is improvising on the red-top Wurlitzer Electric Piano, literally days before he leaves for Nellcôte to play on Exile on Main Street with The Rolling Stones. You are listening to the band playing ‘How Do You Sleep’ and all the hairs are standing up on your arms.
For the Raw Studio Mix of ‘How Do You Sleep?’ (Takes 5 & 6) In the Imagine Ultimate Collection Box Set on Blu-Ray Audio Disc 2, the 5.1 Surround Sound positions are:
Front Centre – John Lennon: electric guitar, vocal
Front Left – Nicky Hopkins: electric piano
Front Right – George Harrison: electric slide guitar
Surround Left – Alan White: drums
Surround Right – Klaus Voormann: bass
About ‘How Do You Sleep?’ by John & Yoko
excerpted from the 120 page book in the Imagine Ultimate Collection Box Set
John: Somebody said the other day ‘It’s about me’. You know, there’s two things I regret. One is that there was so much talk about Paul on it, they missed the song. It was a good track. And I should’ve kept me mouth shut – not on the song, it could’ve been about anybody, you know? And when you look at them back, Dylan said it about his stuff, you know, most of it’s about him. The only thing that matters is how he and I feel about those things and not what the writer or the commentator thinks about it, you know? Him and me are OK. So I don’t care what they say about that, you know? I’ve always been a little, you know, loose. And I hope it’ll change because I’m fed up of waking up in the papers. But if it doesn’t, my friends are my friends whatever way.
Recorded January 14, 1978, at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, CA.
Setlist:
0:00:00 – God Save The Queen
0:04:13 – I Wanna Be Me
0:08:19 – I’m A Lazy Sod
0:10:42 – New York
0:14:25 – EMI
0:18:09 – Belsen Was A Gas
0:20:22 – Bodies
0:25:15 – Holidays In The Sun
0:29:19 – Liar
0:34:15 – No Feelings
0:37:18 – Problems
0:41:56 – Pretty Vacant
0:45:14 – Anarchy In The UK
0:49:00 – No Fun
The Winterland Ballroom, originally called the New Dreamland Auditorium, opened on June 29, 1928. It initially served as a venue for boxing, opera, and tennis matches, but sometime in the late 1930s, it began to be used as an ice skating rink too – hence the name change.
In 1966, world-renowned asshole Bill Graham began renting the 37,675 square foot space for the rock ‘n’ roll, and it hosted concerts by artists including Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, The J. Geils Band, The Who, Queen, Slade, Boston, Cream, Yes, Kiss, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Steppenwolf, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Styx, Van Morrison, The Allman Brothers Band, Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Ten Years After, Rush, Electric Light Orchestra, Genesis, Jefferson Airplane, Traffic, Golden Earring, Grand Funk Railroad, Humble Pie, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Robin Trower, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Loggins and Messina, Lee Michaels, Heart, Journey, Deep Purple, J.J. Cale, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Foghat, Mountain, B.B. King, Elvis Costello, and the incomparable Sha Na Na.
Legal capacity was 5,400 souls, so the Winterland was decent-sized but cozy. It was where Zeppelin first performed “Whole Lotta Love,” Scorsese shot The Last Waltz, and parts of “Frampton Comes Alive” were recorded.
Unfortunately, it also served as a sort of home base for The Grateful Dead, so it had to be torn down. Okay, not really. It was purchased by Consolidated Capitol Inc in 1978, demolished in 1985, and replaced with apartments.
So here’s some highlights from the 1976 MDA Telethon, including Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Buddy Rich.
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