“We got a call one day from Granada television in England. They said The Beatles were arriving in two hours in New York at Idlewild Airport. Would we like to make a film of them? I put my hand over the phone and asked my brother ‘Who are The Beatles? Are they any good?'”

Dee de dee dee dee dee…

Life can be quirky.
So you might as well cast your fate to the wind.
And don’t sit under ledges where pigeons are roosting.

John Lennon was murdered 40 years ago today. Paul Simon wrote a song around that event. Even today, my mind gets teary when it lights on John Lennon’s death. He appears in Paul Simon’s song only obliquely, because the song isn’t about John Lennon, and it’s not about Johnny Ace. It’s about Paul Simon, and about you, and about me.

‘Strawberry Fields’ was born of Lennon’s genius. But it was engendered by the miraculous, unique, liberating status of The Beatles.

So much of the best music of the last hundred years has come from Jewish men writing songs for female Black singers. And it don’t get no better than the Burt Bacharach/Dionne Warwick, ‘Walk on By’.

A great contemporary artist inspired by an iconic original. Lilting, uplifting, in π/4.

Bobby Vee died in 2016 from Alzheimer’s. That’s pretty surprising, considering that he’s still an 18-year old pop star and I’m still a pimply 13-year old with my ear glued to a Top 40 transistor radio.