On May 12, 1963, Bob Dylan walked off the set of The Ed Sullivan Show after CBS executives objected to lyrics in his planned performance of “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues.” The satirical song about the conservative John Birch Society and the organization’s fear of communists had not been a problem during dress rehearsal, and Ed Sullivan had not objected to the song. But CBS lawyers were worried that the song might subject them to lawsuits. Rather than sing another song or change the lyrics, Dylan left, never performing on the popular show.
Although many have repeated the legend that Dylan had a tantrum and stormed off in anger, contemporary reports indicate Dylan was polite about the affair. When a producer explained the options to Dylan, the singer just responded that he only wanted to sing “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” and otherwise he would leave.
Thus, Dylan, whose second album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan had not yet been released, passed up the big break on national TV. The incident, however, received a lot of attention, actually helping Dylan’s sales, and in interviews Ed Sullivan stated he did not agree with the decision.
Thus, there is no Ed Sullivan Show performance of the song for us to hear. So below is another performance of “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” from the same year.
Reportedly, one side effect from the Ed Sullivan controversy was that CBS’s record division, Columbia, then became concerned about the song being on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. At that time, with only one weak-selling album under his belt, Dylan could not fight with the record company. So the song was pulled from the album, and Dylan used the opportunity to make some other last-minute song switches. A live 1963 performance of “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” would officially be released in 1991 on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991.
Should Dylan have changed the lyrics like The Doors and Rolling Stones did for the same show? Leave your two cents in the comments.
In this video, director Brian Billow imagines how Kiss might have come to write their hit song “Beth” from their 1976 Destroyer album. Bob Winter, executive creative director at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, had the idea for the story. Check out this “historically inaccurate tale of the song’s inspiration.”
[2015 Update: If the video does not work for you, it is also available on Vimeo.]
The video, however, is not as “historically inaccurate” as it claims. Guitarist and songwriter Stan Penridge wrote a version of “Beth” while he was in the band Chelsea, which future Kiss drummer Peter Criss joined for awhile. In the song’s original version, the title name was “Beck” after Becky, Chelsea bandmate Mike Brand’s wife, who often called during practices.
Penridge later explained that the genesis of the song is not that far from Billow’s funny video. Penridge stated that the lyrics came “almost word for word, from Mike Brand’s responses to his wife’s constant calls that interupted our rehearsals. It got to the point where I wrote down his remarks over a period of 3 or 4 days . . . ”
Although I have always heard “Beth” as a love song, Penridge explained that one might see the song as “a hen-pecked hubby’s remarks to his nagging wife.” While in David Leaf’s and Ken Sharp’s book KISS: Behind the Mask Penridge acknowledges that the song was “basically written as a joke,” he also appreciates that the song evolved into something different that he also likes.
There are some questions about how much writing credit for the final version of “Beth” should be given to Criss, who sings lead on the Kiss recording of “Beth” and is listed as a co-writer with producer Bob Ezrin. Although sources name Criss as one of the co-writers of the final version, band co-founder Gene Simmons claims that the song was written only by Penridge and Ezrin. Simmons and Criss on not on the best terms, but Penridge seemed to confirm Simmons’s version in a 2000 interview (“Another poorman’s copyright by me in ’70”).
Still, Criss’s relation with the song goes back before Kiss. After Criss was in Chelsea and even before he was in Kiss, he recorded “Beck” with a band called Lips.
The name of the song was later changed to “Beth” so it would be a more recognizable woman’s name. Here is a Kiss version of the song we all know from the 1978 TV-movie Kiss Meets in Phantom of the Park.
After “Beth” was recorded, nobody realized it would become such a big hit. Some band members did not want it on the album, and it was initially released not as a single but as a B-side to “Detroit Rock City.” But then “Beth” became Kiss’s first gold record and one of their most recognizable songs.
No matter what role he played in the lyrics, Criss’s great vocals on the recording certainly helped make it a hit. Others have sang the song too. Eric Singer has rotated in and out and back into Criss’s seat behind the drums with Kiss, so Singer also has performed “Beth.”
There are a number of covers of “Beth,” including a nice one by Adam Lambert when he was on American Idol in 2008. Not surprisingly, the Glee cast performed the song too. Perhaps the most unusual cover appears in the movie Role Models (2008), where Paul Rudd wins back his girlfriend named Beth by making up some new lyrics to the song.
I have not been able to find what happened to Mike Brand and “Becky,” the two who inspired the song. But I hope they are still together and that she still calls him at work after all these years. It would make a great love song.
What is your favorite version of “Beth”? Leave your two cents in the comments. Note: This post was updated March 2014 to include Gene Simmons’s comments about the writing of the song.
After George Jones passed away, a number of articles about him recalled a famous quote from Frank Sinatra where Sinatra called George Jones “the second-best singer” in the world. The Kennedy Center uses the quote on its page about Jones, and after Jones’s death, The Atlantic used the “second-best” quote in its headline. Some articles asserted that Sinatra said that Jones was the second-best “white” singer, implying that Sinatra recognized the great history of great non-white singers, and others claimed Sinatra used the qualification “in America,” while Philly.com claimed that Sinatra added the qualification “male.” While Jones is a great singer and any one of these statements is high praise coming from Ol’ Blue Eyes, it also raises the question about who did Sinatra then think was “the best”?
Most articles did not answer that question and encouraged or left the impression that Sinatra meant that he himself was the best singer. For example, Examiner.com and NBC’s Today Show website stated the quote about Sinatra saying Jones was the second-best “white” singer with both adding, “No prizes for guessing first place,” as if it should be obvious that Sinatra’s ego would lead him to put himself in the top spot. George Jones’s own website implies that Sinatra saved the top spot for himself: “Frank Sinatra famously (and coyly) referred to Jones as ‘the second greatest singer in America.'” The legendary Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards made the same mistake in his otherwise touching statement about the passing of the great country singer: “Sinatra called him the second best singer ever. (The number one obviously being Frank!).”
But Sinatra did not put himself in the top spot, which he reserved for Tony Bennett. I have not found a reliable source for Sinatra’s entire quote about George Jones and Tony Bennett to verify whether Sinatra used any of the qualifications such as “white,” “in America,” or “male.” But other sources give us a good idea who Sinatra put in the first place spot. Throughout his career, Sinatra often claimed that Tony Bennett was the best singer, so it does make the most sense that he was ranking Jones in the second slot not because of himself but because of his love for Bennett. For example, a 1965 Tony Bennett album featured this quote from Sinatra: “For my money Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business.” Frank Sinatra, even in death, does not need me to defend his ego. But these articles in their attempts to praise the great George Jones unfortunately made Frank Sinatra sound like an egomaniac (or more of one than he was) and slighted Tony Bennett at the same time.
So to right this wrong, watch this video of Tony Bennett singing “Body and Soul” with Amy Winehouse and note what a great singer he is (as well as what a great singer the late Winehouse was). Their duet on “Body and Soul” appeared on Bennett’s 2011 Duets II album.
Who is your favorite singer of all-time? Leave your two cents in the comments.
For these and other reasons, in recent years states like Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York also have stopped using capital punishment. Other state legislatures continue to consider bills to abolish the death penalty.
“Green, Green Grass of Home” and Its Twist Ending
Thinking about Maryland’s death penalty, I remembered a hit song from the 1960s called “Green, Green Grass of Home.” Claude “Curly” Putman, Jr. wrote “Green, Green Grass of Home,” which is probably his biggest hit song along with Tammy Wynette’s “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” He also co-wrote the George Jones classic “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”
“Green, Green Grass of Home” belongs in a unique group of songs that have a twist ending. The song begins with the singer talking about a trip home, but in the last verse, we learn that it was all a dream. Although there is no specific reference to the death penalty or executions, the verse makes clear that the singer will die at the hands of the state in the morning. Then I awake and look around me, At the four gray walls that surround me, And I realize that I was only dreaming, For there’s a guard and a sad old padre, Arm in arm we’ll walk at daybreak, And at last I’ll touch the green green grass of home.
Putnam performs a clever sleight of hand in the song. In the opening part of the song, he draws in the listener to see the singer as a human being. The singer has feelings we can relate to, because everyone has been homesick.
Only after we connect with the singer does Putnam let us know that the singer is on death row. Had the song begun by telling us the singer was condemned, we would have seen him in a different light and judged him as something other than human. But like Steve Earle’s “Over Yonder,” the song “Green, Green Grass of Home” lets us see the humanity even in the worst of us, which is pretty cool.
But Porter Wagoner was the first one to have a hit with “Green, Green Grass of Home” in 1965. Check out this performance and note the subtle special effects where the prison bar shadows appear at the end.
Tom Jones Version
The next year in 1966, Tom Jones had a hit with the song. His version went to number 1 on the U.K. charts.
This TV rendition of the song goes for a less subtle approach than the Porter Wagoner shadows. Here, Tom Jones sings from a jail cell. The setting of the song, though, kind of spoils the surprise ending.
Jerry Lee Lewis Version
Tom Jones was inspired to record “Green, Green Grass of Home” after hearing it on Jerry Lee Lewis’s 1965 albumCountry Songs for City Folk. While it is easy to remember Lewis’s place in rock and roll history, sometimes his excellent country work is overlooked.
Here is Lewis’s version.
Joan Baez Version
Joan Baez gives a unique version by being one of the rare woman’s voices to tackle the song. It is appropriate because there currently are approximately sixty women on death rows around the country.
Baez does a nice job in this performance from The Smothers Brothers Show.
Finally, Lewis and Jones have performed “Green, Green Grass of Home” together.
The lyrics of the song constitute a soliloquy that does not lend itself to being a duet. But it is still cool to see the great Tom Jones singing with the legend who inspired him to record one of his biggest hits.
Capital Punishment After “Green, Green Grass of Home”
One may only speculate about the impact of the song on society or society’s impact on the song. But in 1965-1966 when the song was a big hit for Porter Wagoner in the U.S. and for Tom Jones in the U.K., the death penalty was at low levels of popularity in those countries.
Great Britain would abolish the death penalty on a trial basis in 1965 and abolish it permanently in 1969. In the U.S., executions ground to a halt in the late 1960s as courts considered court challenges to the U.S. death penalty.
Within a decade, after states passed new laws, the U.S. death penalty machine began chugging along in the late 1970s, even as other countries continued to abolish capital punishment. But more recently, since the turn of the century, several states have joined the other states and countries that have decided the death penalty is unnecessary, uncivilized, and wasteful of resources.
Maryland has now joined those civilized states and countries. The end of the death penalty, unlike “Green, Green Grass of Home,” is not a dream.
What is your favorite version of “Green, Green Grass of Home”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Eighty years ago this week, Willie Hugh Nelson was born on April 29, 1933 in Abbott, Texas. Nelson is still going strong making music, and he using his annual birthday concert to benefit the West, Texas volunteer fire department that was affected by the recent fertilizer plant explosion that killed fourteen people and injured many others.
We have highlighted some of Nelson’s songs in other posts, and the man has such a range it is hard to select one song to celebrate the special occasion. So here are several spanning the birthday boy’s career.
Here is some early Willie Nelson from before the long hair and the beard. In this video, he performs a medley of songs at the Grand Ole Opry. One of the songs he performs is “Night Life,” which he wrote and which became a hit for Ray Price. Nelson also played bass for a time in Price’s band. Nelson also performs part of his classic ‘Crazy,” which of course was a big hit for Patsy Cline.
Around 1970, Nelson left Nashville and moved back to Texas, where he became an “outlaw.” Here in this performance from 1974, Nelson performs “Good-Hearted Woman,” which he wrote and recorded with Waylon Jennings.
Here is a 1975 performance of “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” The song was written by Fred Rose, but the song is forever linked to Willie Nelson after he covered the song on his great concept album, Red-Headed Stranger (1975).
Here is one you might have missed, a more recent song from Nelson. Nelson is a great interpreter of a range of styles and songwriters, which he shows here in a cover of “Gravedigger,” a Dave Matthews song. The song appeared on Nelson’s 2008 album Moment of Forever.
Finally, here is something even more recent showing Nelson’s sense of humor. Conan O’Brien recently showed Willie Nelson’s audition tape for the role of Gandalf in Hobbit 2. Of course, there is some of Nelson’s pot humor as well as a short rendition of “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Orcs.”
Whether you like early Willie, Outlaw Willie, or modern Willie, put on some music today.
What is your favorite Willie Nelson song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On May 12, 1963, Bob Dylan walked off the set of The Ed Sullivan Show after CBS executives objected to lyrics in his planned performance of “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues.” The satirical song about the conservative John Birch Society and the organization’s fear of communists had not been a problem during dress rehearsal, and Ed Sullivan had not objected to the song. But CBS lawyers were worried that the song might subject them to lawsuits. Rather than sing another song or change the lyrics, Dylan left, never performing on the popular show.
Penridge acknowledges that the song was “
album.
. While it is easy to remember Lewis’s place in rock and roll history, sometimes his excellent country work is overlooked.
