And So It Goes: The Extraordinary Billy Joel Documentary

My wife and I saw the second part of the extraordinary Billy Joel documentary last night, after seeing the first part last week.  I've been a big fan of Billy Joel since "Piano Man".  I thought and still think "Only the Good Die Young" was a masterpiece song, same for "Say Goodbye to Hollywood," and same for "Uptown Girl" which also has a masterpiece video.  In fact, I can't really think of any Billy Joel recording I don't like, and the same only applies only to a dozen or so other artists beginning with The Beatles.

But as to his life, the person who wrote and recorded all those great songs, I never knew too much.  I knew of course he'd been married to Christie Brinkley.  I knew he'd been touring for a while with Elton John -- another piano man -- but that ended on an acrimonious note (they later reconciled).  I heard him a few times on The Beatles Channel on Sirius/XM Radio -- talking about The Beatles and playing their records -- and I knew about his recent long run in Madison Square Garden.  My wife and I were going to a lot of concerts prior to COVID, and I had in my mind that we should go so see Billy Joel, but that didn't (yet) happen.

But I didn't know much about his personal life, and how that related to his music, and And So It Goes -- directed by Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin -- does a brilliant job of telling that true story.  Here are some of my takeaways (in no order of importance, because all are important):

• Billy Joel found writing lyrics somewhat of a burden.  Given that his lyrics were uniquely descriptive, setting scenes and telling stories that seemed to splash out as naturally as the rain, I (as a songwriter as well as a fan) found that especially interesting.
• Billy Joel's manager, his one-time brother-in-law, robbed him of millions of dollars.  As is clear in this documentary, Joel, in addition to being incredibly talented, is also highly intelligent, so I found that surprising as well.  It's well known that doo-wop groups were regularly robbed of their royalties by record companies in the 1950s, but Joel's misfortunates happened 50 years later.
• Billy Joel always loved classical music. (His father, who abandoned his family when Billy was a boy, was a classically trained pianist.)  I knew, of course, that Jeff Lynne and ELO did/do, but Billy Joel always seemed firmly rooted in rock 'n' roll.
• Billy Joel has always been quick to denounce his tone-deaf critics in the media.  Good for him.
• Billy Joel was spoken for in the documentary by a cavalcade of musical stars that lit up the screen:  Paul McCartney (who said Billy's "I Love You Just the Way You Are" was his answer when he was asked which song did he wish that he had written), Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Garth Brooks, Nas,  Sting, and Pink)
• Billy Joel has been beset by demons all of his life -- which makes his extraordinary accomplishments even more impressive.

All too often, these kinds of eye-opening, definitive documentaries happen after the subject is no longer with us.  Good for Billy Joel for giving that to us now.  His active participation in And So It Goes is itself a testament to what mind-blowing talent he has.

Creds to HBO for putting this on!  As I my wife mentioned, this is the second great documentary on HBO this summer, after My Mom Jayne.

Blonde: Only the Acting Was Excellent

Just watched Blonde on Netflix. I'm sorry to say I found only the acting was excellent.

Let's talk about that excellence first. Ana de Armas as Norma Jeane delivered an Oscar worthy performance, conveying the 20% bravado/80% vulnerability that we think we know of Marilyn just perfectly. The voice, the facial expressions, and body language were so good, I could believe I was seeing Marilyn on the screen.

Adrien Brody as "The Playwright" aka Arthur Miller was also superb, not ever really understanding Marilyn, flattered and impressed not just by her beauty but more by her intelligence. Bobby Cannavale as "The Ex-Athlete" aka Joe DiMaggio also gave a strong, if somewhat obvious performance (not his fault, since he didn't write the dialogue). And Julianne Nicholson gave a memorable performance as Norma's mother.

As for the rest -- the story, the pace, the intensity of many of the scenes -- not so good at all. First, to be clear, I obviously know nothing of Norma/Marilyn personally. And I haven't read the "novel" by Joyce Carol Oates that Andrew Dominic's movie is based upon, so I can't say how true the movie was to the novel. (I put "novel" in quotes because the amount of truth in her accounting of Marilyn's life and death has been under debate since the book first was published back in 2000.) But whatever the source of this lurid accounting on the screen, I don't get why Miller and DiMaggio had to go nameless. (I would add that, at least here in the United States, the law says that the dead cannot be slandered.)

But namelessness is the least of this narrative's problems. Norma/Marilyn dies, according to the movie, either accidentally or deliberately taking too many pills and alcohol because she's devastated that someone, obviously not her father, who had been writing to Norma as her father for years, admits that he really wasn't her father? Unless that truly happened, that's a pretty lame reason, given what the movie previously shows us about Marilyn's surprising resilience, rescuing her time after time. Not to mention that someone with her intelligence, which was well portrayed in the movie, surely would have realized that the "tearful father" who communicated with Norma/Marilyn over the years but never showed up as he was promising to do, certainly was not her father.

And the scenes ... with the exception of most of the Arthur Miller segment, which at times had a real tenderness, the overall story was a continuing series of scenes, one after another, that were punches to the stomach and the soul.

Ok, I will admit that the closing scene did have a flash of perverse poetry, perhaps, with Marilyn posing and smiling at us, her audience, after she was gone. It felt like a cinematic embodiment of Bernie Taupin's words in the Elton John song, "Goodbye Norma Jean," about all the papers having to say was that Marilyn's body was found in the nude. Even in death, her body was exploited, with whether or not this was what she wanted never being known for sure.

But as for the rest, I suppose this is a question of personal taste, but the tableaus were just too unpleasant, viscerally revolting, even if the events they were portraying were necessary to see in any form in this movie. The John F. Kennedy fellatio scene was demeaning to everyone -- including the viewer -- not to mention that who knows if this actually happened. And while we're on the JFK-Marilyn relationship, why not show the famous "Happy Birthday Mr. President" iconic scene from Madison Square Garden, which was real and stunning?

So, though I'll take a chance and see any movie about Marilyn Monroe, only the acting and a sparse few scenes save me from saying I'm sorry I wasted my time on this trauma porn. 

 

Killing Eve 3.5: The Darkness

An excellent, standalone episode of Killing Eve - 3.5 - in which Villanelle gets to go back to Mother Russia and her family.

It was clear, or at least I realized, from the beginning that Villanelle was going to kill all or at least some of her family after spending some time with them.  After all, she is a psychopathic or sociopathic (I'm never clear what exactly the difference is) killer.  But it was nice the way it played out.

She spared her brother and the boy (her half-brother) who loved Elton John.  (I've been saying the music is really great this season.)  Both of them were good to her.  So she was good to them.  She was especially good to the boy, leaving him a big wad of rubles sufficient to see Elton John in a farewell concert.  My wife and I saw him in his farewell concert in Hempstead, Long Island in November 2018 (my review is here).  We paid big bucks for that, and it was well worth it.  But it's been a long farewell tour.  Elton John has taken his time saying goodbye to that yellow brick road (sorry, couldn't resist).  So it makes sense that he'd still be touring in this episode of Killing Eve, fortunately written and recorded before the pandemic that's made most concerts around the world virtual (see, for example, mine on April 4, 2020).

But back to Villanelle, what pushes her over the edge, and brings out her killer instinct, is her mother saying she has a darkness within.  Villanelle replies that she her mother has the darkness.  Both statements are true.  But why did Villanelle have to kill her?   See the second paragraph above.

One question: was there anyone in the burning house other than Villanelle's mother?  Maybe not, but tough to say.  We didn't see anyone else - only her mother on the floor.  Anyway, it was a good close to an apt and important episode.  I'm going to watch tonight's episode now, and be back with a review if I'm not too tired,

See also Killing Eve 3.1: Whew! ... Killing Eve 3.2: Bringing It Into Focus ... Killing Eve 3.3: The Third Time's the Charm ... Killing Eve 3.4: Tip Toe Through the Tulips

And see also Killing Eve 2.1: Libido and Thanatos ... Killing Eve 2.2: Villanelle as Victim ... Killing Eve 2.3 Lipstick ... Killing Eve 2.6: Billie ... Killing Eve 2.7: Death and Sex ... Killing Eve Season 2 Finale: Possibilities After the End

And see also Killing Eve: Highly Recommended (Season 1)

Rocketman: Half the Story, But Excellent

What better way to start my 2020 reviews with Rocketman - after all, Elton John and I were literally born on the same day (my Wikipedia page, Elton John's Wikipedia page).  And we both make music - though Elton John's exponentially more successful than mine.  And I remember going around to record companies in New York City in 1970 with some rough mixes of Twice Upon a Rhyme, and hearing Elton John's "Your Song" playing in one of them, with everyone in the office standing around and listening to it and loving it.  I did, too.

The movie, of course, doesn't have that scene.  But it has a lot from the first half of Elton John's life, from his rise to extraordinary and well-deserved fame, to going off the rails, to coming back to the world and his life.   I would have rather the movie continued into something closer to the present, with Elton singing at Diana's funeral, writing the music for Lion King, but, hey, that was not the movie director Dexter Fletcher and writer Lee Hall wanted to make, and they did a fine job with this one.  As did Taron Egerton as Elton John - in acting as well as singing - and everyone else in the movie.

If the story seems a little trite - and yet another star deeply unhappy, sometimes getting it back in control, sometimes not - that's because it apparently happens lots of the time.  And the cinematography was especially excellent - as is the stagecraft of Elton's in-person concerts (see my review of a concert my wife and I went to and loved in October 2018 - where he sang all of his songs).  But, speaking of concerts, I wish Rocketman had included a bit of the concert Elton did with John Lennon in 1974 at Madison Square Garden, where they sang Lennon's superb "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" - here's a not-the-greatest quality video of that performance.

But the songs that Taron as Elton sang in the movie were done with panache, and, as long as you don't expect to see and hear everything, you'll really enjoy it.



Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time soon to be released, CDs now available

Farewell Elton John at Nassau Coliseum

Tina and I just got back from Elton John's fabulous Farewell Yellow Brick Road Concert at the Nassau Coliseum.  This is the third retiring tour concert we've been to in the past few weeks - Paul Simon and Joan Baez were the previous - and each was superb and special in its own way.

Elton John's music has played a surprisingly significant role throughout my professional life - surprising not because his songs (with lyrics by Bernie Taupin) have been wonderful, numerous, and memorable, but because they've had such diverse impact on my own creative work.


Most recently, my novelette, Marilyn and Monet, maybe in the earliest stages of being made into a movie, begins with Marilyn hearing "Candle in the Wind" as she walks off the set of The Misfits with Montgomery Clift in 1961 (hey, it's a science fantasy story).

Back when I began my life as a published writer, the fourth article I wrote for The Village Voice was inspired by "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" - an assessment of how the Wizard of Oz figured in rock music in its first decades.  Never read that article?  Not surprising.  The Village Voice - or rather its then new music editor, dyspeptic critic Robert Christgau, declined to publish it, after his predecessor Diane Fischer had published my first three articles ever published, all about music.  (I tell more of that story here.)

And Elton John's "Rocket Man" has had more long range influence on my work.  One of the few rock songs that were science fiction, it epitomized my passion as a writer for both rock music and science fiction.  And, indeed, I'll soon be recording a brand new album of my songs with science fiction themes for Old Bear Records in Batavia, New York.


Elton John sang all of these and 21 more at his concert tonight.   He hit most of the notes beautifully, and his back-up band was tight as a drum.  I've admired Ray Cooper even since I saw the way he played the tambourine in the George Harrison Memorial Concert.  It was a real treat seeing him in person, singing "pow, pow, pow" as he beat the bejesus out of the drums and anything percussive he could hit.

Elton's repartee was clever, but, more important, he comes across as one decent, sincere human being.  The graphics on the screen behind him were a tour de force.   I'm glad I had a chance to see him in person.  I know I'll continue singing his songs in my head, and who knows what big things that may lead to.

The Village Voice Goes Silent

Last night brought the news that The Village Voice, once the hottest, coolest, in synch weekly newspaper in town, was ceasing publication.   This was the last act in a decline which saw the Voice being given away for free on the streets of New York (in an attempt to boost circulation to staunch declining ad revenue) to going completely online just last year.  Though I've long read much more online than on paper, I hate to see any newspaper go under.   And the Voice's passing has special meaning for me, since it was the first place to publish anything that I'd written.  Actually, my first three publications were in The Village Voice.

In September 1971, I was putting the finishing touches on my LP Twice Upon A Rhyme in Mario Rossi's recording studio at the end of Brooklyn.   Ed Fox, Peter Rosenthal, and I lived in the Bronx, and on the clacking train ride out to Brooklyn, a copy of the Voice, then in just its 16th year of publication, was usually close at hand.   One night, I read a typically tone-deaf, dyspeptic review by Robert Christgau in the Voice of Paul McCartney's second solo album, Ram.  I was sufficiently infuriated that, next day, I pounded out a lengthy Letter to the Editor on my electric portable Smith Corona, stained with coffee and orange juice but still working, and I sent it off to The Village Voice.  I doubt I even made a copy, and pretty much forgot about it.   I didn't really expect to see it published there in the Letters column.

My expectations were right.   I eagerly grabbed a copy of the Voice the next week.  The first page I turned to was the Letters page.  Nothing whatsoever there by me, or about McCartney.  But a few days later, early in October, I found a letter from the Voice in my mailbox - a letter and a check.  I looked at the check, first.  $65.00.  I looked at the letter.  It was from Diane Fischer, one of the Voice's main editors.  She said she assumed it would be ok with me if the Voice published my letter as an opinion piece, in its "Taking Issue," section, and paid me $65.00 for it, for which a check was enclosed.

I was thrilled.   The release of Twice Upon a Rhyme on HappySad Records (a record company created by Ed Fox and me, after two or three major labels turned our album down, and we were not interested in shopping it around, for what could have been years) was still a year away, and I still thought of myself as a singer and songwriter, not an essay writer.   But in retrospect, the publication of my letter as "A Vote for McCartney" in The Village Voice on October 21, 1971 was a turning point in my life.  I'd imagined that Paul McCartney would contact me after reading the article, and maybe get me signed to Apple Records.  That didn't happen.  But what did is I began getting far more recognition as a Voice "columnist" - on the strength of that one publication - than I'd received, or would receiving be in ensuing years, as a singer and songwriter.

My second essay in The Village Voice, "Murray the K in the Nostalgia's Noose" was published a little over a year later to the day, in the October 26, 1972 issue.   I'd sent that one in as an essay, not letter, to Diane, after Tina and I had heard and loved Murray the K's return to New York's airwaves on the July 4th 1972 weekend.   Diane (or someone at the Voice) had taken that title from a line in my generally very flattering essay, which said Murray needs to be careful that "nostalgia doesn't become a noose around his neck".  Murray managed to track down my phone number - no doubt the Voice gave it to him - and I received a call from him the very evening that that issue of the Voice hit the streets.  He told me how much he appreciated my essay and offered me a job as a producer on his new NBC radio show.  I took it, and even wrote and recorded a song, "Murray the K's Back in Town" which he played on his show.

By the time my third and final article was published in The Village Voice - in its July 4, 1974 issue - I was already back at school, completing my BA in Journalism at New York University after a long break from the classroom.  My article about Murray the K had brought me to NBC where, after Murray left, I began working as a producer for Wolfman Jack.  After he left, I wrote an essay about his departure from New York, and Diane not only published it, but kept my title, "Wolfman Hits the Road, Jack".

I'd go on, academically, to walk up the street to the New School after getting my BA from NYU.  At the New School, I earned an MA and began reading everything I could by and about Marshall McLuhan.  I went back down the street to NYU's Media Ecology program for my PhD, which I earned before the end of the decade.  And the rest, as they say, is (my) history.

I did have two more significant interactions with Christgau in that decade.  One came in the mid-1970s, when he rejected an article I'd submitted about the evolution of "The Wizard of Oz" in rock music, then culminating in Elton John's "Yellow Brick Road".  Christgau had been put in charge of all the music pieces in the Voice, and I received a letter from him saying that my essay was very well written but said nothing of any importance.  No check was included.  Undaunted, I sent the article to The Soho Weekly News, a more local kind of Voice, focusing more on popular culture than politics, just down the street.  They accepted the article, sent me a pen-and-ink drawing to go with the article, but before they'd had a chance to publish and pay me for the article, I received a letter from - believe it or not, Christgau - explaining that he also was a consultant or something for the Weekly News, and was advising them not to publish my article.  So it goes.

The Soho Weekly News was gone by the early 1980s.  But Christgau continued at the Voice, which I continued to read, despite his caustic reviews of music that I loved.  But the Voice also had Nat Hentoff, as passionate a champion of the First Amendment as ever there was, and Ron Rosenbaum, who could write a riveting, lengthy essay that you couldn't put down, about Mayor Abe Beame, who took boring to a whole new level.

I consider myself privileged to have been in the pages of this remarkable publication which captured the times we were in, fanned and extended them, and made me even prouder than I was to be a New Yorker.

Almost Human 1.3: Change of Face

You can tell a really good series from just an ok series by the way a non-game-changing episode plays:  if it provides a wallop and a jolt and a laugh even in a business-as-usual episode then it's a really good series, even a great series.   So I was pleased to see how good Almost Human 1.3 was tonight.

The decisive way the good guys get the drop on the bad guys is by Kennex using a change-of-face device, but there's lots more.   Dorian getting shot in the head and Kennex doing emergency work on Dorian's purple circuits - in all kinds of shades - and making it stick with a piece of what passes for chewing gum in this future ... Dorian asking Kennex if he's trying to put a woman almost a hostage to sleep as Kennex tries to calm her with a story how he got through a situation as a boy when his life was at stake ... talk of "New Tokyo" and all kinds of satisfying futuristic touches.

It's been suggested that Kennex may be an android himself, but I'm still thinking not, because (a) that would be too close a clone of Bladerunner indeed and (b) why make such a big deal of Kennex's cyberleg if the rest of Kennex was cyber or totally inorganic too?

But there are lots of other Bladerunner touches in Almost Human - and of Gibsonian cyberpunk in general - as well as Asimov's robots, who inevitably and enjoyably reside in any good robot story worth it's salt or circuitry.  Tonight we get a taste of Asimov when Dorian divulges that he doesn't eat, much as R. Daneel didn't eat in Asimov's robot stories, either.  Or, actually, Daneel did eat, for the sake of fitting in with humans, but he did not digest the food.

Which raises an interesting question: what is the mix of organic and inorganic in Dorian?  The issue of skin has already been addressed, but what about other functions and characteristics of human and, for that matter, living organisms?

Dorian confides to Kennex near the end of the episode, before singing "Benny and the Jets," that he doesn't want to die.   Is self-preservation a function of life rather than machines?   If my car said to me, stopping breaking so quickly, you're choking me, and you might make me crash, would my car be alive?

It's a measure of how good Almost Human is that it leads to such questions.

See also: Almost Human debuts: A Review ... Almost Human 1.2: Sexbots





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