In “We Were Famous, You Don’t Remember,” directors Daniel Fetherston and Danny Szlauderbach approach this great left-of-center Kansas punk band. 

Throughout his sixty-year-plus career, Bob Dylan has combined an “incredible skill with a wildness of spirit,” as magician Penn Jillette recently put it. He towers above others—Bruce Springsteen, John Prine, Leonard Cohen, and Joni Mitchell—through volume, range, and brash unpredictability. In the past decade he has retooled Frank Sinatra crooning (Triplicate) and wrung suspicious reverie from Covid crazy (Rough and Rowdy Ways). In this latest book, he submits essays on sixty-six recordings, having his say about cherished records in a voice that favors wildness over skill...

The latest rockcritics podcast features Tim Riley, author of one of my favourite Beatle books, Tell Me Why: The Beatles: Album by Album, Song by Song, the Sixties and After. A couple weeks prior to our chatting, I asked Tim — currently completing a large-scale John Lennon biography — to submit a list of some of his favourite Beatle books, and it’s that list which forms the basis of our conversation. We delve into more than a dozen titles here, including a few obscurities, a few ancillary titles (Aesthetics of Rock, Peter Doggett’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On) plus, of course, Tell Me Why, which, among other things, is notable for its annotated (in-need-of-an-update!) Beatles bibliography.

Big thanks to Tim for taking time out to do this (and for putting up with my usual nonsense and semi-competence).

Titles discussed:

• Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head
• Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions **+ **The Complete Beatles Chronicle
• Devin McKinney, Magic Circles
• John Lennon, In His Own Write and Spaniard in the Works
• Bob Dylan, Tarantula
• Allan Kozinn, The Beatles
• Wilfid Mellers, Twilight of the Gods
• Peter Doggett, Art and Music of John Lennon + There’s a Riot Goin’ On
• Ringo Starr, Postcards From the Boys
• Chris Salewicz, McCartney
• Jim O’Donnell, Day John Met Paul
• Beatles, Anthology
• Michael Braun, Love Me Do
• Richard Meltzer, The Aesthetics of Rock

Musical interludes (in order of appearance) by: Al Green, David Hillyard & the Rocksteady Seven, DJ Dangermouse, Bongwater, Peter Sellers, Irvin’s 89 Key Marenghi Fairground Organ, unknown house artist (“Revolution”), Rainer, Sunshine Company, First Moog Quartet, Los Fernandos, Cristina, Candy Flip, Bryan Ferry, P.M. Dawn, Sunshine Company (redux).

Ten years ago NPR had me on to rant about pagan rituals, from the vault. 

Jason Gross has edited PSF since 1993, overseeing an important venue for critics and passionate listeners. Like all the good editorial conversations, one topic begat another, so the links can help you figure out some of the sounds we reference. 

Igor Levit – Tristan (Sony, 2022)

Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, Yo-Yo Ma – Beethoven for Three, Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5 (Sony, 2022) 

Why listen to symphonic music stripped of strings, winds, brass, and percussion...? 

A few weeks after Get Back aired last year, I spoke with Magic Circles author Devin McKinney about the film and its many quirks. As we take stock of the Revolver box set, the timeline sharpens: January of 1969 happens only three years after they record that 1966 breakthrough. 

Visit https://timrileyauthor.com for more Beatles. 

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, John Lennon. Apple, 1970.

THE 1970s DAWNED with a blistering hangover. On September 13, 1969, just before Abbey Road began dominating end-of-’60s radio, John Lennon sang at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival, an early 1950s festival. He called his pickup group the Plastic Ono Band: Eric Clapton (lead guitar), Klaus Voorman (bass) and Alan White (drums). They launched with standards, “Blue Suede Shoes, “Money,” and then “Dizzy Miss Lizzy,” before turning to Lennon’s “Yer Blues,” an unreleased “Cold Turkey,” and “Give Peace a Chance,” his anti-war chant. Then he turned the stage over to his Japanese-American wife, Yoko Ono, who screamed against Lennon’s guitar feedback for almost half an hour. It stupefied the audience. One week later, at an Apple business meeting in London, Lennon told the other Beatles he wanted a “divorce.” However, Lennon agreed to keep a lid on his departure—they were in the middle of contract negotiations, and if word got out, they could lose leverage. From that point on, the chronology went extremely fuzzy for most fans, as Beatles group releases overlapped with the members’ early solo records. Plans progressed for a Let It Be album and film early in 1970 (shot in January 1969) as the breakup remained a secret...