Worst Thing That Can Happen To A Girl Is Her Friend Gets A Boyfriend

Another regular conversational pit stop during our calls was the guests I was interviewing on my radio show on any given week, especially if they were rock stars. Inevitably, John would have some spirited opinions to share about his competition. One time, for instance, I casually mentioned an upcoming booking with Mick Jagger.

“Why are you interviewing him?” John asked.

The truth was, I was interviewing Jagger because he was holding a concert in L.A. to raise money for victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua. (His wife, Bianca, was Nicaraguan.) But for some reason I foolishly blurted out, “Because the Rolling Stones are probably the greatest live touring band in the world.”

“Isn’t that what they used to say about us?” John coolly replied.

“But the Beatles aren’t touring anymore,” I said, stepping on a landmine. “The Beatles as a group don’t exist anymore. And the Rolling Stones are as important a presence as anybody in rock ’n’ roll.”

“The Rolling Stones followed us!” John shouted. “Just look at the albums! Their Satanic gobbledygook came right after Sgt. Pepper. We were there first. The only difference is that we got labeled as the mop tops and they were put out there as revolutionaries. Look, Ellie,” he went on, “I spent a lot of time with Mick. We palled around in London. We go way back. But the Beatles were the revolutionaries, not the Rolling Pebbles!”

Excerpt From, ‘We All Shine On’, Elliot Mintz

16 year old Pauline Blackburn is queuing for tickets to see The Beatles at The Majestic Ballroom in Birkenhead, England | 17 April 1963

Literature and 'authenticity'

Reading Patrick Hamilton's Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, I was struck by this passage:

"Bob conceived it his duty to get wildly drunk and do mad things. He had no authentic craving to do so: he merely objectivised himself as an abused and terrible character, and surrendered to the explicit demands of drama... In deciding to get wildly drunk and do mad things, Bob believed he was achieving something of vague magnificence and import, redeeming and magnifying himself - cutting a figure before himself and the world."

So funny and true! And considering this was written in the 20s, film and TV has had a thousand times more influence over what we often suppose to be spontaneous expression of joy or anguish since then. Something to think about....

Twenty Thousand Streets... is full of astute observations like this, and is an unnerringly true and compassionate look at the lives of early 20th-century working-class people. A good review of The Midnight Bell, the first volume of the trilogy, can be found here. 

Cor Klaasen

Record sleeves for the Mercier Catholic Record Club, designed by Cor Klaasen

Cor Klaasen was a Dutch designer who worked in Irish advertising throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s, but is best remembered for the covers he designed for numerous Irish books and records, including school books for Fallons and sleeves for the Mercier Catholic Record Collection, the original incarnation (pardon the pun) of Mercier Press. A brief exhibition of his work, held as part of Dublin Design Week, is on show in Adifferentkettleoffishaltogether, a small gallery on Ormond Quay, until next Wednesday 10th November. It’s worth a visit, both to appreciate Klaasen’s clean, clever design and to get a feel of some of vibrancy that existed in Irish art and design between the 50s and the 70s.

As exhibition co-ordinator, Niall McCormack (who also maintains the excellent site about vintage Irish book covers, www.hitone.ie) said at a talk he gave as part of OFFSHOOT last night, we assume that 50s Ireland was all ‘Angela’s Ashes and people whipping each other’, but while Ireland was nowhere near as advanced as other European countries in art and design, there was still a number of talented, enthusiastic people who did their best to shake up the stifling social conservatism that dominated in all cultural fields for so long.

I thought McCormack was perhaps a little too dismissive about the Catholic Church’s cultural influence in this period during his talk, because the Klaasen exhibition shows that though it was largely responsible for the lack of innovative cultural activity in the country at the time, there was a surprisingly strong forward-thinking element within the Church at the time too, who provided Klaasen with a substantial portion of his employment. Some of the record sleeves he designed for Mercier are astonishingly radical, like one where the almost cartoonishly dull title ‘Building a new moral theology’ read by Rev. Albert Johnson, belies the surreal black-lined Christ-head, complete with long red spikes extending from his stylised crown of thorns. It certainly wasn’t John Charles McQuaid and his ilk who were OK-ing this and other striking cover designs.

Klaasen worked in a simple, classic style, occasionally branching out into 60s-style cartoon but overall you get the feeling he preferred the clean lines of the De Stijl style he would have grown up with in Amsterdam. One highlight is a cover for a religious book entitled ‘The Methods of Dogmatic Theology’ by Walter Kaspar, which is a plain black background broken by a simple white circle enclosing the text of the title. Smaller white bubbles extend from the large circle, but not so much so as to break the tranquil cleanness of the design. His more detailed images are successful too, particularly the abstract covers of the various schoolbooks he designed for Fallons, many of which were carved out directly on his printing surface without the aid of a pencil drawing.

He could turn his hand to political material too, evidenced by his cover for a book on the UVF, published in 1973 by Torc Press, in which a row of grotesque-looking paramilitaries, printed in lines so thick as to be almost unintelligible, line the bottom of a plain red cover, with the word UVF rendered in jarring black-lined orange above. He incorporates the symbolic orange of the Unionist paramilitaries against what would normally be a clashing red tone, perhaps to imply the blood that was on the hands of the people suggested by the images below. The grimaces of the terrorists evoke the grotesque leers of George Grosz’s villains, an artist that Klaasen admired and often imitated.

It’s easy in the 21st century to dismiss mid-20th century Ireland as a place of unmitigated drear and uncreativity, so it’s a good thing for exhibitions like this to display the often-forgotten figures who played a role in bucking that trend. I would recommend catching this exhibition before it finishes, it can be viewed in the gallery from 11am-5pm daily between now and next Wednesday.

A city melting into air

Spy tower, Teufelsburg

I was recently in Berlin, staying near Alexanderplatz in the old East, and was struck by the still-unfinished look of the city, even 65 years since the war and 20 since reunification. The picture-perfect reconstructions of 19th-century streets in Oranienburgerstrasse and Auguststrasse contrast strongly with random patches of debris-strewn grass and fenced, abandoned building sites. The city’s long history of artistic occupation of abandoned buidings is still visible in the admittedly touristified Tacheles complex, but other buildings further from the centre, especially abandoned GDR edifices, are keeping the ad-hoc nature of Berlin’s urban settlements alive. This super slideshow presents some highlights, including an abandoned GDR amusement park, a spy tower built by the West in the wonderfully named Teufelsburg and the remains of the hastily exited Iraqi embassy. These images reveal Berlin to be a fine example of how Marshall Berman famously described modernity:  ‘this maelstrom…..in a state of perpetual becoming.’

A depressing conclusion to a mystery

T/W anorexia, disordered eating, just generally miserable times

Something was bothering me from a few anecdotes that I'd read over the past couple of months regarding John's height. In Elliot Mintz account of John giving him a hug, he mentions that John was no giant, despite apparently being 5"10. Robert Rosen, the man who got hold of Lennon's diaries says that John's shirts fitted his 5"8 frame perfectly (just ... just don't ask how he got them) and Mike Tree estimates that John's height was about 5"8. ((A random redditor further apparently interviewed Halstead, the captain of John Bermuda trip, who said he thought John was 5"7/5"6)). From this it would be a pretty fair to conclude that John had been lying about his height, especially as the Beatles did wear heels.

The thing is that we know from John's midsummer Night's Dream costume fitting was measured to 5"10, a pretty good indicator that John actually was that height. (Note as well that Ringo is listed as 5"6 here when his PR height was 5"8, indicating that these are accurate.)

Even by today's standards, 5"10 is above average height. So what's going on? Why are there multiple accounts of John in the 70s of him not being very tall?

One reason could be his posture and that he may have been slouching, which he seems to have done a bit. The other reason is that John may have just been extremely skinny, but in saying that in my experience skinniness usually makes you look a bit taller.

So let's go back to the drawing board and look at common reasons for what causes an adult to lose height. The obvious answer is age, but what is it about age that causes people to shrink? Welll, many factors, a big one being spinal compression as the vertebrae thins out and loses elasticity. However, two other key factors are muscle wastage and Osteoporosis: a condition where bones lose their density and become weaker. As the bones become weaker, micro breaks in the spine can occur, causing people to stoop and lose height. Muscle wastage on the other hand affects the spine as well as posture.

What does this have to do with John? He was in his late 30s-40 when these stories started coming in, not an old man in the slightest. See unfortunately, Osteoporosis doesen't just occur in old people, it can also crop up in younger people too due to different risk factors; factors like genetics, hormone issues, lack of vitamins and ... malnutrition.

I think anyone who has seen pictures of 1980 John and knows about his eating habits knows where I'm going with this.

Osteoporosis is a common side effect of anorexia, occuring in 30% of sufferers with 90% of sufferers experiencing bone thinning. Osteoporosis can also occur within a year of the onset of symptoms. As far as we know John's disordered eating and periods of starvation started in the late 60s, meaning that he had nearly a decade of consistent bouts of starvation. Muscle wastage too is extremely common with anorexia and from pictures you can see that this is also the case with John. In the picture above, there is no muscle on the chest area to cover the bones. A lack of physical activity would also have exacerbated both conditions.

I could be wrong, man could just have had a terrible posture and people could be misremembering his height. Nevertheless, I think there's a real possibility that John actually starved himself shorter.

Like something that looks very like something else.

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Conspiracies and arson - St Patrick's Day in 1741

The Bowery Boys are two guys with a blog and podcast who serve up regular helpings of truly fascinating New York history. With erudition and infectious enthusiasm, they present the histories of countless New York landmarks, from the famous (Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge) to the obscure (the African Burial Ground and Famous Dogs of New York). Today on the blog they remember a shameful episode of the city's history from 1741, where the authorities became convinced, seemingly on no conclusive evidence, that the local slave and freed black community of the city were planning its destruction, and executed over 30 almost certainly innocent people. The Patrick's Day link reveals how the soldiers patrolling Fort George outside the city were so hungover this very morning in 1741 that they didn't catch a mystery arsonist who burned down the camp and almost let the flames spread to the city. In the febrile atmosphere of the time, when the authorities were whipping the white populace into a panicked frenzy about supposed plots, it didn't take long for blame for the fire to be put on the black population.Whoever the arsonist was, if the soldiers had been on the ball that morning the arson could have been stopped and the fire of paranoia dampened. There really are some jobs you can't turn up hungover for! 

Read the full article here. And subscribe to the podcast, it's brilliant!

Allan Williams & Rod Murray with friends at Flat 3, Hillary Mansions, Gambier Terrace in Liverpool, England | July 1960 © Harold Chapman (I) (II) (III)

This line is so funny. Soccer mom that just gave herself a pelvic injury by doing crescent lunge pose too enthusiastically.