Rock Bio #7: Led Zeppelin

Part of a series of brief artist biographies I wrote for Rhino.com in the spring of 2010 ...

Led Zeppelin "wrote the book and all of us are just trying to write a page," said Paul Stanley of Kiss, in Danny Goldberg's Bumping Into Geniuses: My Life Inside the Rock and Roll Business. "They are the template and the road map that everyone else follows." Anyone who first heard "Stairway to Heaven" as a teenager and dreamed of being the next Jimmy Page would likely agree.

By 1968 Page was the last man standing in England's Yardbirds, after members like Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck had flown the coop. That summer he tried to recruit Terry Reid for a new band, but the singer's schedule was already full. Reid recommended another vocalist, 20-year-old Robert Plant, who then convinced drummer John Bonham, a longtime friend, to join Page's group with him. Bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones rounded out the lineup.

Fulfilling a contractual obligation, Page's new band played some European dates as the New Yardbirds in September of '68, then switched their name to Led Zeppelin and recorded their eponymous first album in roughly 30 hours. Led Zeppelin (1969) included two Willie Dixon blues standards as well as future rock standards like "Communication Breakdown" and "Dazed and Confused." The band's thunderous approach to rhythm and blues and their interest in mythology—several of their songs contain references to J.R.R. Tolkien works like The Lord of the Rings—helped create the template for heavy metal and hard rock in the 1970s.

Led Zeppelin II was recorded at various studios while the band was on tour in 1969; it hit stores near the end of the year. "Whole Lotta Love" was a top-five hit in the U.S., where Zeppelin was becoming a major concert draw (shows sometimes lasted up to four hours and included 30-minute "Bonzo" drum solos), but the group didn't release singles in the UK or grant many interviews to the press, adding to their overall mystique.

Though 1970's Led Zeppelin III kicked off with the propulsive "Immigrant Song," the album showcased the quartet's acoustic folk influence on tracks like "That's the Way" and "Gallows Pole." Their next release had no title, and Zeppelin refused to edit the eight-minute "Stairway to Heaven" down to a single-friendly size, but 1971's "Led Zeppelin IV," as it's commonly known, still ended up selling 37 million copies over the next four decades, with "Stairway" becoming the most requested song of all time on rock radio stations. The untitled disc also featured instant classics like the riff-heavy "Black Dog" and "Rock and Roll," and the epic folk-rock number "The Battle of Evermore."

By 1973 Led Zeppelin was the biggest band in the world, allowing them to stretch out on that year's Houses of the Holy with playful stabs at reggae ("D'Yer Maker") and funk ("The Crunge"), while 1975's Physical Graffiti was a double album that contained Eastern influences ("Kashmir") alongside touches of country ("Down by the Seaside") and pop ("Houses of the Holy," left off the album of the same name).

The band launched their own Swan Song label through Atlantic Records in 1974, and their concert film The Song Remains the Same was a hit at the box office in '76, but Presence (1976) and In Through the Out Door (1979) arrived in record stores as punk and disco were dominating the musical landscape. On September 25, 1980, John Bonham died of asphyxiation. Led Zeppelin announced their breakup shortly thereafter.

Various one-off reunions have taken place over the past 30 years, including the band's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. With Bonham's son, Jason, on drums, Zeppelin performed on December 10, 2007, as part of a tribute to Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, but the band has been silent ever since. Fortunately for fans new and old, Led Zeppelin's timeless music continues to speak for itself.

Accept no substitutes.

This blog is not this blog.


Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, offending sir or madam, but ID theft feels like a particularly aggressive yet nonverbal way of saying "f**k you," so please come up with another name for your "internationally broadcast scratch paper" (that phrase is mine too—I'm calling retroactive dibs on everything). For instance, I have no qualms with the name Wineberry Koala 69, so think it over and get back to me. You have five seconds. (What do you think this is, a Capitol Hill debt-ceiling negotiation? I don't have that kind of patience.)

Also, in case anyone out there is confused, I've written for Popdose and Popblerd, but not Popdust, PopCrush, PopCrunch, PopSugar, or Pop Candy. Believe me, there have been days when I've felt like a fraud, but I'd still like to think I'm no one's carbon copy.

Welcome to Mulberry Panda 96, your one-stop shop for music-producer sleaze.

Thanks to Blogger's behind-the-scenes "Stats" feature (it hasn't always been there, has it?), I can find out which search-engine queries bring people here. My favorite so far is "'david gates' and 'producer' and 'sleaze.'"

Hey, the man from Bread ain't no sleaze. Or maybe you know something I don't about his business ethics and/or personal life, searcher. I'll allow you that Gates put a particularly innuendo-licious line in "If," but it took Telly Savalas's 1975 cover of the song to coax the sleaze out of its soft-rock shell.

If you're not sure what line I'm talking about, read this excerpt from Lester Bangs's review of The Best of Bread for Rolling Stone (May 24, 1973):

But the real payoff is side one, all those mellow yellow David Gates love ballads. "Make It With You" is the Seventies strawsippin' successor to "I Want to Hold Your Hand." It still melts my heart into a puddle of treacle. And that's because I'm treacle, not Bread; they're honchos!

... And they got plenty of sex in their songs too, don't let nobody tell you they're puds when they hit ya with lines like: "And when my [love for] life is running dry / You come and pour yourself on me." Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!

Now read these posts from last year that I recently rescued from their "draft" prisons (Lester Bangs shows up again, as does a much more juvenile sexual reference):

12/17: authors and other fools
10/10: I like your style, CyborgQX38.
9/24: My face is an open book.
8/2: Before Columbine, there was RoboCop 2.
8/1: Lisa Simpson's (imaginary) wedding day
6/11: Help us, Roger Ebert. You're our only hope.

My consciousness is gone with the wind.

"We still feel that color is hard on the eyes for so long a picture."

That's what Frank S. Nugent had to say about Gone With the Wind, the most successful film of all time (when its gross is adjusted for inflation), in the December 28, 1939, edition of the New York Times.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I feel the same way about black-and-white movies. They make me sleepy. Is there a psychological diagnosis for this "condition," or am I just too accustomed to the faster pace of modern movies (specifically, everything from Jaws onward)? Then again, as my girlfriend says, "You think the pacing of the dialogue in His Girl Friday [1940] was slow?"

shortcut to movie limbo (or scenic route to movie oblivion?)

"I'd be a great film critic," Alec Baldwin says in the June 24-26 edition of USA Weekend, as part of a two-question interview (pace yourself, you hardworking Sunday supplement!) promoting his role as host of the Turner Classic Movies series The Essentials. "Most film critics make a huge mistake. The movie business is a director's medium. The actors actually have the least amount of responsibility for the film. It's really incumbent on critics to understand who is responsible for what's on screen."

It's true that film actors are generally at the mercy of their directors, not to mention the editors who shape performances in postproduction and sometimes discard them entirely on the cutting-room floor. But it sounds like Baldwin may still be irked that his career as a leading man went south in the '90s along with critics' opinions of box-office failures like The Marrying Man (1991), The Shadow (1994), and Ghosts of Mississippi (1996).

Baldwin started to gain weight around the time of 1997's The Edge, meaning he quickly transitioned from money-losing leading man to the more financially secure status of "character actor" (the talented Russell Crowe, whose metabolism seemed to give up on him after 2008's Body of Lies, appears to be entering this career phase himself, having been cast in a supporting role as Marlon Brando—I mean, Superman's biological dad—in the upcoming Man of Steel). It suits him well—Baldwin had great comic timing even before he entered John Belushi's weight class, having hosted Saturday Night Live 15 times since 1990, but it's certainly helped him pay the bills the past five years—and win a couple Emmys—as Tina Fey's boss on 30 Rock. He's the best thing about that show.

(The actor discussed his time near the top of the Hollywood food chain in a New Yorker profile three years ago. "In Hollywood, the success of [1990's 'The Hunt for Red October'] earned him 'an all-access pass that lasts for five years,' Baldwin recently said. 'You have to capitalize. And, if the movies you make don’t make money in that period, your pass expires.'" I'd never seen a former A-list leading man be that honest about his career before. It made me respect Baldwin even more.)

In 2001, after his big-ticket starring roles had dried up, Baldwin put his money where his mouth is and directed a film based on an old perennial of high school English classes, Stephen Vincent Benet's short story "The Devil and Daniel Webster." It starred Anthony Hopkins as Webster, who defends Baldwin's protagonist in supernatural court against the Devil (Jennifer Love Hewitt, an intriguing choice at the very least) after the struggling writer sells his soul to her and then decides he wants it back.

Sounds somewhat promising, but the film languished in postproduction limbo, appropriately enough, for more than five years after its funding dried up—Baldwin told reporters in 2004 that his investors' checks bounced while the film was being shot—leaving "The Devil and Daniel Webster" unfinished and potential distributors wary of picking up the tab.

Yari Film Group finally bought the film in 2007 and released it that July as Shortcut to Happiness. As proof of how many different hands the movie passed through on its way to (a handful of) theaters, 19 (!) producers are listed on the film's poster, including Baldwin, who chose to use the pseudonym "Harry Kirkpatrick" for his director's credit, having washed his own hands of the project.

So the next time you think Alec Baldwin has phoned in a performance, remember, it's not his fault. Blame it on the Devil if you have to, but even then keep in mind that it wasn't the Devil's idea to cast Jennifer Love Hewitt.

Rock Bio #6: Faces

Part of a series of brief artist biographies I wrote for Rhino.com in the spring of 2010 ...

Ever been to a raucous party that didn't end, it just changed locations? After the Small Faces' frontman, Steve Marriott, announced his resignation by walking offstage during a New Year's Eve performance in 1968, the rest of the group—Ronnie Lane (bass), Ian McLagan (keyboards), and Kenney Jones (drums)—decided to carry on with new members Ron Wood (guitar) and Rod Stewart (vocals), both of whom had recently left the Jeff Beck Group.

Having ditched the Marriott-led configuration's brand of mod pop for a more blues-based rock sound, the Small Faces shortened their name to signal that they were a new band and quickly got down to business, releasing First Step in early 1970. Stewart, meanwhile, had already begun a solo career, releasing his debut album, complete with contributions from Wood and McLagan, just a few months ahead of First Step.

Long Player followed in early '71. Its live covers of Paul McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed" and Big Bill Broonzy's "I Feel So Good" emphasized the Faces' growing reputation for sloppy, liquored-up concerts—punk rockers on both sides of the Atlantic took notice in the latter half of the '70s, as did the Replacements in the '80s—and Lane showed off his songwriting talents on "Richmond."

By the time the Faces' third album, A Nod Is as Good as a Wink ... to a Blind Horse, hit record stores at the tail end of '71, Stewart had been crowned a solo star thanks to Every Picture Tells a Story and its number-one hit "Maggie May," which spent five weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100. The Faces' own "Stay With Me" was lifted into the top 20 on the heels of "Maggie May's" success.

Stewart didn't tour separately from the Faces during this period, but because he also played his solo hits in concert, tensions arose between him and the rest of the band, who began to feel (ahem) faceless, mere backing musicians in the eyes of Stewart's newfound "Maggie May" fans. The singer was absent from some of the sessions for the band's next album, Ooh La La (1973), whose second side was dominated by Ronnie Lane compositions, including the wistful title track ("I wish that I knew what I know now / When I was stronger"), which featured Ron Wood's first-ever lead vocal.

After Stewart gave his low opinion of Ooh La La to the press, Lane quit the group and was replaced with ex-Free bassist Tetsu Yamauchi. The Faces carried on for a couple more years, releasing a live album and a few singles, but Stewart's solo career showed no signs of slowing down. As 1975 came to a close, the boys from England called it a day.

Wood replaced Mick Taylor in the Rolling Stones that year, while McLagan and Jones recorded two more Small Faces records with Steve Marriott, fresh from his tenure in Humble Pie. Lane sat out the reunion but kept busy by collaborating on albums with Wood and Pete Townshend before being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the late '70s. When the Who's drummer, Keith Moon, died in 1978, Townshend asked Jones to take over.

The Faces reunited in 1986 and '93 for one-off performances, but in September 2009 McLagan, Jones, and Wood played a charity event without Stewart (Lane died in 1997), adding new faces like Simply Red's Mick Hucknall to the mix. Only time will tell if Rod the Mod can be coaxed out of the house for one last pint.

kiss of death

Actress Jane Lynch has apparently aged quite a bit since I last saw her on the small screen, but I respect the fact that she refuses to "glam it up" for awards ceremonies. Good for you, Jane!

Rock Bio #5: Television

Part of a series of brief artist biographies I wrote for Rhino.com in the spring of 2010 ...

When Television took the stage at CBGB on March 31, 1974, it was a new club in Manhattan's Bowery district and they were a new band. But over the next six months, both gained a sizable following in New York music circles. Television's Sunday-night residency at CBGB lit a fire under the nascent genre of punk rock, which became the club's calling card in spite of its initials standing for "Country, Bluegrass, and Blues."

Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell, née Tom Miller and Richard Meyers, met in boarding school in Delaware in the mid-'60s. Verlaine wanted to be a musician, Hell a poet, and by 1967 they were both living in New York City. Verlaine's passion for John Coltrane and the saxophone eventually gave way to the Velvet Underground and electric guitar; Hell couldn't play any instruments, but Verlaine taught him some basics on the bass, and together they formed the Neon Boys with drummer Billy Ficca in 1972. The group wanted to add a rhythm guitarist but couldn't find anyone to their liking (Dee Dee Ramone and Chris Stein, soon to join Blondie, auditioned), and after recording six songs they called it quits.

Finally, in the fall of '73, Verlaine met Richard Lloyd and discovered a guitarist he could spar with onstage. Rebranded as Television (Hell's idea), Lloyd and the ex-Neons began to carve out a name for themselves on the New York club scene, attracting the attention of established stars like David Bowie and Lou Reed. But Hell's lack of experience on the bass was becoming a hindrance to the rest of the band, and in March of '75 he left Television, merging with ex-New York Dolls Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan soon after to form the Heartbreakers. He then left that band the following year to create Richard Hell & the Voidoids, whose song "Blank Generation" became one of the defining anthems of '70s punk.

Once Hell was replaced with Fred Smith, who defected from Blondie, the new lineup of Television recorded a single, "Little Johnny Jewel." Elektra Records liked what they heard—the inspiration for Television's sound was equal parts garage rock and free-form jazz—and in 1977 released Marquee Moon, considered by many to be one of the greatest debuts in rock history. By the time the band entered the studio to record it, they knew the album's eight cuts, including classics like "Friction" and "See No Evil," backward and forward. Rumor has it they recorded the ten-minute title track, which features exquisite intertwining guitar work from Verlaine and Lloyd, in one take.

Marquee Moon sold more copies in the UK than in the States, but Television quickly followed it up with Adventure (1978). Though it lacked the high-wire tension of its predecessor, the sophomore effort still produced memorable pop-rock tracks like "Foxhole" and "Glory." But after the album's supporting tour, Television disbanded. Verlaine and Lloyd pursued solo careers in the '80s, and Smith re-upped with Blondie.

In 1992 Television reunited for a third, self-titled album and their most extensive tour to date, but aside from additional concert and festival appearances in 2001 and 2007, the band hasn't recorded again. Nevertheless, the influence of Marquee Moon and Adventure's dynamic musicianship on artists like Lloyd Cole, Matthew Sweet, Echo & the Bunnymen, and even U2 and R.E.M. over the past 30 years has proven immeasurable.

What a long, strange title it's been.

Many people believe that Hollywood produced more great movies in the 1970s than in any other decade. It certainly allowed some oddball titles to get through the system. Here's a sample:

Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971): Dustin Hoffman plays a famous songwriter in director Ulu Grosbard's comedy-drama. Its title was referenced for the 2010 documentary Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him)?, which is appropriate since Nilsson himself was a songwriter for hire—the Monkees recorded "Cuddly Toy" in 1967—before he found fame as a singer. His first Top 40 hit as a performer was "Everybody's Talkin'," the theme song to Midnight Cowboy (1969), which starred Hoffman. The song was written and originally recorded by Fred Neil, however, and Nilsson's biggest solo hit, 1972's "Without You," was a cover of a Badfinger song.

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972): Paul Newman directed his wife, Joanne Woodward, in this family drama based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Paul Zindel, who went on to write young-adult novels with similarly odd titles, such as My Darling, My Hamburger (considered a classic of YA literature), Harry and Hortense at Hormone High, Confessions of a Teenage Baboon, and Pardon Me, You're Stepping on My Eyeball! Alvin Sargent penned the screenplay for Gamma Rays as well as Robert Redford's directorial debut, Ordinary People (1980), which is a movie with an ordinary title, but he also wrote or cowrote films as diverse as Paper Moon (1973), Unfaithful (2002), What About Bob? (1991), and Spider-Man 2 (2004), an accomplishment that isn't ordinary at all.

Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing (1973): One of Sargent's lesser-known films (along with 1978's Straight Time, another collaboration between Ulu Grosbard and Dustin Hoffman) is this romantic drama starring Maggie Smith and Timothy Bottoms (The Last Picture Show) and directed by Alan J. Pakula, his follow-up to 1971's Klute. In Peter Bart and Peter Guber's book Shoot Out: Surviving Fame and (Mis)Fortune in Hollywood, Pakula is quoted as saying that the movie's title accurately described how he felt about opening weekend: "I wish I could make movies but never have to release them."



A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich (1978): My favorite of the four titles spotlighted here, director Ralph Nelson's drama centers on a 13-year-old heroin addict and is based on a young-adult novel by playwright and author Alice Childress. Her name is the title of a song on Ben Folds Five's 1995 self-titled debut album, but it isn't about her—Anna Goodman, the song's cowriter (along with Folds), named "Alice Childress" after a patient of the same name at the mental institution where she once worked. The film version of A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich stars Cicely Tyson, Paul Winfield, and Larry B. Scott, who's still probably best known for his role as Lamar in Revenge of the Nerds.

"Boldy" is my new favorite typo.

"Throughout the film's production, [20th Century Fox chairman Bill] Mechanic—especially Mechanic—had taken on the pressure with a wavering composure. He had stood up for Fight Club as boldy as he could, but after this screening, he knew that if this baby didn't fly, there might be a huge career price to pay."

—from chapter 12 of What Just Happened? Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line (2002) by Art Linson, producer of Fight Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Into the Wild but not Jodie Foster's The Beaver, which is "boldy original," according to People magazine

If you go too fast and furious, Roger Ebert will get lost.

In his April 29 review of Fast Five for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert wrote:

The "F&F" titles got confusing with the unrelated "Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift" and John Singleton's "2 Fast 2 Furious," which is why, I suppose, "Fast Five" drops the "furious." But it isn't technically the fifth "F&F" unless you count the outliers. So I don't know what "Five" refers to. That doesn't bother me.

Maybe the titles did get confusing since only two in the decade-old series employ numbers—it doesn't help that the first and fourth entries essentially have the same title—but if Ebert had checked his facts he wouldn't be so confused. (Perhaps he should have visited Mulberry Panda 96 for a refresher course on the highly profitable street-racing saga.)

The series' second entry, 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003), stars Paul Walker, who was also in the first film, The Fast and the Furious (2001); his costar in the sequel was Tyrese Gibson, who returns in Fast Five. Vin Diesel skipped 2 Fast 2 Furious but showed up in a cameo at the end of 2006's The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift—which didn't feature any other characters from the first two films—then returned to the series full-time, along with Walker, for Fast & Furious in '09.

See, Roger? They're all connected, and Fast Five really is the series' fifth installment, even if it sounds more like the name of a lotto game than a movie. And since it had an $86 million opening weekend, it's a safe bet that "Grandmaster Fast and the Furious Six" will be crashing into a theater near you sometime in 2013.

Rock Bio #4: Bee Gees

Part of a series of brief artist biographies I wrote for Rhino.com in the spring of 2010 ...

Unless you were living under a rock in 1978, the sound of the Bee Gees was inescapable. The brothers Gibb—twins Robin and Maurice and older brother Barry—were all over the radio that year thanks to "How Deep Is Your Love," "Stayin' Alive," and "Night Fever," their number-one singles from the record-breaking Saturday Night Fever soundtrack album. Then there were the smash hits they wrote for other artists, including "If I Can't Have You" (Yvonne Elliman), "Emotion" (Samantha Sang), and "Grease" (Frankie Valli), not to mention the singles they penned with their little brother, Andy, who rocketed to the top of the charts himself with "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" and "Shadow Dancing."

The Bee Gees may have become the poster boys for the American disco explosion of the late '70s, but their origins were much different. Born in England, the Gibbs started performing together as children in 1955. A few years later their family moved to Brisbane, Australia, where a local DJ started playing their songs on the radio, leading in short order to club gigs, TV appearances, and a debut album in 1965. Emboldened by the Beatles' success in the United States, the Gibb brothers returned to England the following year, where manager Robert Stigwood heard their Australian LP and signed them to a five-year contract with Polydor Records.

In the beginning the Bee Gees' music had a psychedelic, Beatlesque feel; some American DJs and listeners even mistook the group's first hit, "New York Mining Disaster 1941," for a new single from the Fab Four. However, their knack for blue-eyed soul was already evident—their second stateside hit, 1967's "To Love Somebody," was originally written for Otis Redding to sing.

The Bee Gees continued to pick up steam in the U.S. with hits like "I Gotta Get a Message to You" and "I Started a Joke," but a disagreement over which song from 1969's Odessa should be released as a single led Robin to quit the group for a brief period. After the brothers regrouped in late 1970 they scored their first number-one hit in the U.S., "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart," but for the next three years their soft-rock balladry and Moody Blues-style progressive pop failed to generate much interest.

It wasn't until Stigwood introduced the Bee Gees to producer Arif Mardin in 1974 that the second phase of their career began to take shape. Their first collaboration, Mr. Natural, pushed the group in more of an R&B direction than ever before, and on the follow-up, 1975's disco-flavored Main Course, Mardin utilized Barry's now famous falsetto for the very first time on "Nights on Broadway."

Main Course's "Jive Talkin'" went all the way to number one, as did "You Should Be Dancing," from 1976's Children of the World. The disco boom was coming to an end in the States when Saturday Night Fever arrived in movie theaters in December of '77, but the John Travolta film and its iconic soundtrack album, which eventually sold 40 million copies, revived disco's fortunes and then some. When the Bee Gees released their next album, Spirits Having Flown, in early '79, it yielded three more consecutive number-one hits: "Tragedy," "Too Much Heaven," and "Love You Inside Out."

The Bee Gees kept a fairly low profile in the first half of the '80s, contributing new songs to the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever's sequel, Staying Alive (1983), and writing hits like "Heartbreaker" for Dionne Warwick and the Kenny Rogers-Dolly Parton duet "Islands in the Stream." In 1989 they proved they could still scale the charts themselves when their single "One" landed in the Billboard top ten, a fitting comeback for three brothers with one unforgettable sound.

My infatuation with Three Days of the Condor is forever (dot dot dot).

Film critic Juliette Small invites her daughter, Erica, and Erica's friend Katherine to join her for an advance screening of a new Robert Redford movie in chapter 14 of Forever..., Judy Blume's controversial 1975 novel about young love, which I'm reading for a grad-school research paper on young-adult fiction.

After the picture Mrs. Small asked me, personally, what I thought of it.

"Well ..." I told her, "I just love Robert Redford."

"Don't we all ..." Mrs. Small said, "but I mean about the story."

"Oh, the story ... I liked it ..."

"But ..."

"I don't think it could happen that way in real life ..."

"Exactly!" she said. "But you wanted it to, didn't you ... you were hoping it would turn out just that way."

"Yes," I told her.

"You see ... that's the whole point."

"It's going to be a smash," Erica said.

"In spite of my review, you mean?"

"In spite of anybody's review."

"I agree with you, completely," Mrs. Small said.

In 1975 Robert Redford starred in two films, The Great Waldo Pepper and Three Days of the Condor. The former was scripted by William Goldman and directed by George Roy Hill, who had previously collaborated with Redford on 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, while the latter was helmed by Sydney Pollack, who, prior to Condor, had already directed the California native in three films, including the western Jeremiah Johnson (1972) and the romantic drama The Way We Were (1973), costarring Barbra Streisand.

The Great Waldo Pepper is a period piece in which Redford plays a 1920s stunt pilot, but Three Days of the Condor is a contemporary thriller that asks audiences to believe that a guy as handsome as the Sundance Kid is employed by the CIA as a bookworm rather than a dashing James Bond clone. As Katherine says, "I don't think it could happen that way in real life." But you want it to.

Waldo was released in March of '75; Condor came out in September. When Katherine, the protagonist of Forever..., takes a train from Westfield, New Jersey, into New York City with Erica and her mom to see "a preview of a new Robert Redford picture," it's either late March or early April in the book's narrative. Yes, I'm fully aware of the possibility that Blume isn't talking about any Redford movie in particular—for one thing, I don't know when exactly Forever... was published in '75 (spring, summer, etc.), or if she even had a particular year in mind besides "right now, whenever that is" when she wrote the book, or if copyright issues prevented her from using the title of an actual Redford movie—but a boy can still dream, even when he's no longer a young adult.

another comic strip about piracy (not the "arr, matey" kind)

In Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury this week talk-radio host Mark Slackmeyer asked pop star Jimmy Thudpucker for his thoughts on musicians who perform private concerts for dictators, à la Beyoncé performing at a 2009 New Year's Eve party thrown by Moammar Gadhafi's son Hannibal in St. Barts.

Is it wrong? Should fans be offended? Will I post a new comic strip each month about the music industry's financial woes, gradually exposing myself as someone who can't comprehend economic issues unless they're illustrated—literally—with cartoon characters and joke-filled word bubbles? (Answers: Maybe, screw 'em, and God willing if one of The Lockhorns suddenly has a bone to pick with the iTunes Store come Mother's Day.)

Rock Bio #3: The Smiths

Part of a series of brief artist biographies I wrote for Rhino.com in the spring of 2010 ...

When Morrissey (vocals) and Johnny Marr (guitar) started writing songs together in 1982, they picked the Smiths for their new band's moniker, partly as a reaction to extravagant group names like Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. But though the Smiths' name was ordinary, their impact on British pop music—which up to that point in the '80s had been drenched in synthesizers—was not, lighting a path for the Stone Roses, Oasis, Blur, and many other bands.

Morrissey and Marr filled out their lineup with Mike Joyce on drums and Andy Rourke on bass, and after six months of club gigs the Smiths signed with London's Rough Trade Records in 1983. Their first single, "Hand in Glove," failed to ignite the interest of radio programmers, but the follow-up, "This Charming Man," cracked the top 30 on the UK singles chart. Despite his often heartsick lyrics (evinced by song titles like "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" and "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now"), which continue to speak to many a lonely, tortured adolescent on both sides of the pond, Morrissey was an invigorating, hip-gyrating presence in concert, not to mention an eccentric one—the frontman was known for wearing a hearing aid onstage and putting gladioli in his back pocket.

The Smiths' self-titled first album was released in February 1984 on a wave of tremendous buzz. It was also met with controversy when British tabloids interpreted "Reel Around the Fountain" and "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" as endorsements of pedophilia, an allegation Morrissey vehemently denied.

Meat Is Murder followed a year later, with the Smiths producing the album themselves, gaining confidence and moving beyond jangly guitar pop to embrace rockabilly ("Rusholme Ruffians") and even a bit of funk ("Barbarism Begins at Home"). It was their first number-one album in the UK.

After their third LP, The Queen Is Dead, was completed at the end of '85, Rourke was fired, allegedly because his heroin use was affecting his performance. He was replaced with Craig Gannon, but just a few weeks later Rourke was rehired, with Gannon moving to rhythm guitar (he wasn't "the fifth Smith" for long—by the end of 1986 he'd left the band). Queen was released in June of '86, delayed by six months because of a legal dispute between the band and Rough Trade, and since the label appeared incapable of pushing the band's singles up the charts in either the U.S. or the UK, Morrissey and Marr decided it was time to move on.

Bucking their "independent" reputation, the Smiths signed with major label EMI in 1987, but by the time Strangeways Here We Come, their fourth album and Rough Trade swan song, was released that fall, the band was no more. Marr quit after the album was finished, frustrated by Morrissey's immovable obsession with 1960s pop melodies, and though the rest of the band tried to continue as a trio, it didn't last long.

Morrissey went on to a successful solo career, and Marr formed Electronic with New Order's Bernard Sumner. A reunion isn't likely: in 1996 Joyce sued Morrissey and Marr for recording and performance royalties and won. But never say never. As the Smiths' frontman once sang, "There is a light that never goes out...."

Please and Liquor

Thanks to my friend and fellow improviser Michael, who's currently traveling and performing in and around the Gulf of Mexico, I've learned what Please has been up to lately.

Thoughtful as always, Please. Michael also informed me that our mutual friend (and enemy) Liquor has gone into business.

"Obviously, my dream of making millions through poetry is dust."

My dad sent this Tom the Dancing Bug strip to me the other day, reminding me that I'd originally sent it to him in August 2000 after it appeared in print and online. Tom creator Ruben Bolling is wickedly funny and smart, and he gave good e-mail when I wrote him as a fan later that year.

Now that I'm studying library science this strip is even funnier, although the record industry's fate now seems much more dire than it did a decade ago, when Napster was the only music-pirating bug that needed to be squashed. And these days e-publishing, aided by ambiguous forces of good and/or evil such as Amazon.com, threatens to wipe out the traditional publishing industry, taking down bookstore chains like Borders in the process.

Everything's cheaper now, but we're all paying the price.

Rock Bio #2: Stone Temple Pilots

Part of a series of brief artist biographies I wrote for Rhino.com in the spring of 2010 ...

After more than two decades together, Stone Temple Pilots have proven themselves to be one of the most resilient bands in rock 'n' roll. Initially dismissed by critics as Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains wannabes, the San Diego quartet were a hit with listeners from the start, and despite various breakups, side projects, and internal squabbles over the years, STP continue to record and tour, proving they've still got fuel to burn.

The band's origins date back to 1986, when Scott Weiland (vocals) and Robert DeLeo (bass) met at a Black Flag concert in Long Beach, California. Quickly realizing they were dating the same girl, they moved into her apartment once she left town, and decided to form a band. With DeLeo's brother Dean on guitar and Eric Kretz on drums, the band named themselves Mighty Joe Young and slowly built a following in San Diego's clubs. They kept their distance from the L.A. music scene and its corporate influence, but by 1992 Atlantic Records had come calling, and that fall the group released their debut album, Core, under their new name, Stone Temple Pilots.

Core was an immediate success, and the tracks "Sex Type Thing," "Plush," and "Creep" became staples on MTV and alternative radio stations. Though STP's sound was accused of being derivative of grunge, it was closer in spirit to '70s stadium rockers like Led Zeppelin and Kiss, tethering hard-rock riffs to concise melodies. The band's winning streak continued with 1994's Purple, which spawned the hits "Vasoline," "Interstate Love Song," and "Big Empty."

In the spring of '95 Weiland was arrested for possession of cocaine and heroin and ordered to enter rehab for his drug addiction. Upon completion of his treatment program he joined the rest of STP for the recording of their third album, Tiny Music ... Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop, which debuted at #4 on the Billboard 200 in March of '96. It didn't reach the same commercial heights as its predecessors, though, partly because Weiland relapsed that spring and had to return to rehab, forcing the band to cancel its summer tour.

At that point Stone Temple Pilots went on hiatus. The DeLeo brothers and Kretz formed Talk Show with singer Dave Coutts and recorded a one-off, self-titled album (1997), and Weiland worked on his first solo LP, 12 Bar Blues (1998), in between arrests and trips back to rehab. STP reunited to record No. 4 in 1999, after which Weiland spent five months in jail for violating his probation.

To the surprise of many, the band soldiered on, following up No. 4 and its hit single, "Sour Girl," with Shangri-La Dee Da in the summer of 2001. But after Weiland and Dean DeLeo almost came to blows onstage in the fall of '02, it looked like Stone Temple Pilots had finally crashed and burned. Weiland then joined Slash in the hard-rock supergroup Velvet Revolver, while the DeLeo brothers formed Army of Anyone with Filter lead singer Richard Patrick.

In 2007 Weiland reconciled with his former bandmates, and after quitting Velvet Revolver because his new bandmates reportedly nixed the idea of him doing reunion concerts with the old ones, he joined STP for a 65-date tour in the summer of '08. Their chemistry reestablished, the band entered the studio a year later, with their self-titled sixth album set for release in May 2010.

"What's hard is knowing that KeeKee may be six or seven now but that in three or four years she'll be thirty."

Last week in my Literature and Resources for Young Adults class we were assigned Christopher Paul Curtis's Bucking the Sarge (2004, Random House), which is narrated by a 15-year-old named Luther T. Farrell who works for his mom, "the Sarge," and is forced to grow up fast. Below are two excerpts I particularly liked.

"There's always something desperate and fake when you have to deal with someone who's about to get evicted. They'll say anything to try and get another rent-free week or two. That makes it easy not to listen to what they have to say, 'cause you know there's a pretty good chance they're lying. It's nothing to make your heart hard to that. Even if you feel bad for them odds are they're not doing nothing but playing you, and who wants to get played?

"People will throw their babies in your face or have their sick, dying mommas cough on you or they'll tell you the check's in the mail or that the Department of Social Services computer is down or that they've got the inside word on what next Thursday's number is going to be or  any of a million other stupid excuses as to why they haven't paid the rent in three months. It gets real easy to let those excuses slide right by you 'cause it's real obvious that they are what Ms. Warren calls rhetoric, or speech designed to influence.

"What's hard is a stupid little picture drawn by a little mostly-As student who's got a dope fiend momma. What's hard is knowing that that girl was gonna be living in a busted-up Impala until her momma drags her into some other hole to live. What's hard is wondering, and I know some philosopher somewhere has wondered this and probably figured it out to the day, how much longer that little girl has before she's beaten down so bad that being room C's Citizen of the Month doesn't mean a thing. What's hard is knowing that KeeKee may be six or seven now but that in three or four years she'll be thirty." —pg. 61-62

"Once you get some years on you and a little experience under your belt it turns out that those things you have great expectations about are just as tired and played out as anything else in your life. I don't know why so many of the fools I go to school with can't wait to get older, it seems like with age fewer and fewer things are exciting. And it seems like the more excited you are about something, the more time you spend dreaming and wondering and fantasizing what it's going to be like, the more disappointing it turns out to be.

"Which has got me seriously worried about sex." —pg. 68

a Wayne Shorter-free weather report

On the morning of February 1, just a few hours before Chicago was hit by its biggest blizzard since 1999, SmoothChicago.com sent me an e-mail with this subject heading: "Weather Advisory - Chicago & Vicinity."

"Here in the Midwest, we know how to deal with the snow," the e-mail said. "The BIG STORY is that very soon, things will be heating up in Chicago."

Needless to say, this fake severe-weather warning was no help earlier today when I found myself wading through 18-inch-tall snowdrifts in shorts and flip-flops. I probably should've read the next paragraph of the e-mail before heading outside:

"The SmoothChicago.com Weather Center has issued a HEAT ADVISORY for Saturday February 12th at the DuSable Museum in Chicago. It is going to be HOT."

February 12? Way to bury the lede, SmoothChicago.com.