This year marks the Golden Anniversary of many events and milestones of the Woodstock generation. LBJ’s “War on Poverty,” King’s “Dream Speech” and the Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night to name a few. And anyone tracking the news in any media will be hard pressed to avoid this long look into our cultural rear view mirror. As the generation of baby boomers cross the threshold of retirement, they now look back on the youth they so robustly celebrated. And they are willing to pay top dollar to see performers that have survived the years well enough to recreate moments from the past, or at least reissue them.
So in that spirit I offer you a tale of a failed Beatles movie and a recasting of a Beatles cover. In 1966, a third Beatles film project was in the works. English playwright Joe Orton was chosen to write the screenplay. Beatles manager Brian Epstein rejected Orton’s offering, and before a revision could be considered, Orton, his lover, and even Epstein would be dead.
Over two decades later, Todd Rundgren was tapped to write the music for this script, now conceived as a play, Up Against It. So in 1989, Rundgren created the music for Orton’s revised script and its off-Broadway staging, with a few songs ending up on later Rundgren recordings. The entire piece was only released in Japan a decade later.
Five years later Rundgren was involved in a revival of Up Against It in NYC. Hearing of the revival, sometime Big Apple resident, Joe Jackson, contacted Rundgren asking if he might be able to help out. Rundgren cast him unannounced and the audience was thrilled. This led to the two of them being asked to perform in Central Park with the eclectic, electric, string-quartet Ethel. After Ethel’s opening set, Jackson and Rundgren each performed a solo set. The finale brought Jackson, Rundgren and Ethel together for what was an enthusiastically receptive audience.
This began an extended tour following that same format. And the rest, as they say, is YouTube.
So when you watch this video of this unlikely coupling of these three artists, realize how appropriate it is that they play a Beatles song, given the Beatles are what brought them together in the first place. And then ask if anyone under 30 would care. For some of us, Jackson, Rundgren, Beatles, ‘While Eric’s Guitar Weeps as I Bury Paul’ evokes layers of memories from multiple decades at once, even as Ethel infuses new energy and life into Harrison’s chestnut. But I wonder if it has any gravitational pull for anyone born after Woodstock II. Maybe all that glitters is not golden.
This summer the Swedish duo, First Aid Kit, who channel a genuine 60s Laurel Canyon vibe, show evidence of learning from the generations before them when they sing:
But there is only forward, no other way
Tomorrow was your whole bad at the end of the day
And gold turns gray, and gold turns gray-”Stay Gold”
Now that gives a guitar reason to weep.
The main source of information for this blurb can be found at: http://www.bohemian.com/northbay/todd-rundgrenjoe-jackson/Content?oid=2180469
