This blog posting was written about April 14, 2009 in Los Angeles, CA.
Today I am standing at 1750 Vine Street, site of the Capitol Records building. This, the world's first circular office building, was completed in 1956. It stands thirteen stories high and many believe the myth that it was designed to look like a stack of records. Atop the building is a spire and at the tip of the spire is a little light that at night blinks out the words "Hollywood" in morse code.
The reason I am here today is for the George Harrison Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony. Beatle George is receiving a star today from the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. The Hollywood Walk of Fame was established in 1958 as a way to spruce up the image of this main drag of Hollywood. The two thousand plus stars are located on Hollywood Boulevard from Gower Avenue to La Brea Avenue and north to south on Vine Street between Yucca Street and Sunset Boulevard. The first star was awarded to Joanne Woodward (actress and wife of the late Paul Newman) in 1960 you trivia buffs out there.
In order to receive a star, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce's Walk of Fame committee is usually solicited by a sponsor (movie studio or record label) but sometimes by the star themselves. If the committee approves the celebrity,then $25,000 must be paid and there is usually a proviso that the celebrity, if living, must show up to attend the ceremony. Well, no chance of that happening today, but Capitol Records (the sponsor for George) no doubt promises to wheel out a cavalcade of celebs and near-celebs to honor the quiet Beatle.
A crowd somewhere near a thousand people have gathered in the area just outside the barricades set up at the edge of the sidewalk and another set about half way into the Vine Street. I would describe this mass of humanity to be comprised of many Beatle fanatics, some might say nerds. Yes, Beatle nerds. Beatle nerds belong to a special sub-category of music nerds. Nerd-dom can take on so many forms: Comedy nerds, movie nerds, Star Wars nerds, Dungeon and Dragons nerds, (video) Gamer nerds, Monty Python nerds (often in tandem with Beatle nerds I find--perhaps they belong to the larger school of Anglophile nerds), and science nerds are the ones I can think of right off the bat.
Nerdiness is a form of obsession adopted by people in their formative years as a way with coping with the world. What better way to combat your social awkwardness than to obsess over something and at the same time find like-minded individuals to bond with over said obsession. Nothing wrong with being nerdy: it demonstrates you are really serious about something and often it shows you can really devote yourself to the pursuit of that something and master it. Some nerdy pursuits can really get you ahead in life. For instance, computer nerds now run the world. Beatle nerds, on the other hand, show up outside an office building at 10 am on a Tuesday. To be fair, I'm sure some of them have jobs.
My Beatle nerd-dom began in 1979 when my mother purchased the Beatle compilation albums "63-66" and "67-70" (aka the Red and Blue albums) on cassette and indoctrinated me to the world of the Beatles' music. To say my life has never been the same would be an understatement. Prior to this, I had dabbled in music, mostly the John Denver,Waylon Jennings and Simon and Garfunkel albums my dad would play on car trips and soundtracks such as "Saturday Night Fever", "Grease" and, god help me, "Thank God It's Friday". I also joined a record club (RCA Record Club - 8 albums for a penny) back in 78' maybe, but was mostly indifferent to the motley assortment of albums I selected. Not sure what my methodology was, but I do remember receiving Peter Frampton's "Frampton Comes Alive", Bob Seger's "Night Moves", Steve Miller Band's "Greatest Hits 74-78" and maybe a James Taylor record. Of course I never sent back the monthly form to reject that month's selection, so our house was inundated with such gems as Fogat's "Rock and Roll" (cover sported a picture of a small stone and a dinner roll) until my mother called the RCA Record Club and pitched a fit about how young I was and they agreed to cancel my membership.
The Beatles was a whole other story. I was initially captivated by the music, but it became a full-time obsession soon after the death of John Lennon. I heard about Lennon's murder like many American males did--from Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football. I ran to tell my mother,who I was staying with on that particular evening, this during the early stages of my parent's separation. She shrieked "What !!" and was no doubt more stunned by the news than I was. My mother, though by no means a Beatle fanatic, had actually seen the group live in Stockholm in 1963 during their Scandinavian tour, several months before they even came to American for the first time in February 1964.
Soon after my whole world was Beatles. I bought all the albums. I bought most of the solo records up to that point. I bought books and old Life magazine covers. I started buying picture sleeve singles and bootlegs. I became a regular customer at the hole-in-the-wall used record store downtown (what was the name of that place, Morgan?) that traded in such contraband. I went to these shoe string budget Beatle "Film Festivals" at places like the Davis Veteran's Memorial so I could see old grainy clips of Beatle press conferences, Ed Sullivan and other television appearances, promo films such as "Hello, Goodbye" and "Strawberry Fields" and maybe that amateur filmmaker disaster, "Magical Mystery Tour". I went to a midnight screening of "Let It Be" at the Varsity Theater in downtown Davis and even persuaded someone to drive me to a showing of "Wings Over America" at the dome shaped (where I saw "Star Wars" in 77') Century Theaters in Sacramento. I think I was bored to tears by those last two films, but such was my mania for all things Beatle that I could not pass them up.
At one point I was even looking into attending a Beatles convention in Los Angeles. If you are attending a convention of any fan-worshipping kind, you have most certainly graduated into another realm of nerd-dom.This period of insanity lasted from approximately 1980 until some time in 1982 when I began to discover other music and my obsession was redirected and soon mutated into so many other directions that I soon lost count. I think my buddy Morgan's obsession with the Who soon sent me down that road and into all things mod-related, though I never did adopt a mod fashion identity.
So, this must be why I am standing out here on this overcast Los Angeles morning waiting for the dignitaries to show up for this questionable dedication to a music great. A public address system has been set up and George Harrison solo music plays from the speakers placed atop stands. As the song 'All Things Must Pass' plays from the speakers, it is not lost on many folks in the audience that the producer of this song (Phil Spector) sits in a Los Angeles jail cell waiting to be sentenced for second degree murder. And wouldn't you it, as the "Concert For Bangladesh" version of 'Here Comes The Sun' plays, the sun begins to peak through the clouds and shower us in sunshine. I would claim divine intervention, but perhaps it is just a well-timed case of typical Los Angeles marine layer being burned off by the sun as we approach noon.
There are two platforms set up outside of Capitol Records. One is for the assembled press, who take their places as the 11:30 start time approaches. The other is situated a few feet in front of them--a dais with a podium for today's speakers. And at the appointed hour the VIPs file out of the front doors of Capitol Records, I'm thinking by order of importance. We are all straining our necks to see who has come and I immediately start recognizing and checking off in my head who is there. Tom Petty ( major rock star and a Travelling Wilbury), Mike Campbell (a member of Petty's band), Jeff Lynne ( ELO leader,produced George's "Cloud Nine" and also a Travelling Wilbury, Jim Keltner (drumming god who has played with everybody, including George), T-Bone Burnett (producer and solo artist extraordinaire), David Foster (big-time producer and writer of mostly MOR music), Joe Walsh (James Gang, The Eagles, solo artist), Ray Cooper (session percussionist who played on many George albums), Gary Wright (Spooky Tooth and solo artist-'Dream Weaver'-who played on some George albums), Ed Begley Jr. (???--actor and environmental activist), Tom Hanks (???--2 time Academy Award winning actor), Eric Idle (founding member of Monthy Python, actor/comedian) and Olivia (the wife) and Dhani ( the son, musician in his own right, and spitting image of his father) Harrison. What? No Beatles are here? Then Sir Paul McCartney is the last to emerge from the foyer of Capitol Records and the assembled Beatle fans really lose their sht*t.
What follows is a twenty-odd minute ceremony that sees a member of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce read, verbatim, the press release bio of George's life that was posted on his web site. Then we get another member of the Hollywood CoC who gives a speech where he repeatedly says that George is "with the angels now" and then, bizarrely, presents George's wife, Olivia, with some b.s. certificate from the city and a loaf of bread he says was the last loaf baked by a group of locals nuns whose ovens have broken down and they are now trying to raise money for. He also introduces representatives of the British and Bangladeshi embassies and his whole appearance basically makes for the one truly awkward moment of the day.
Next up is Tom Hanks, top notch actor and seemingly good guy, but why on earth is he up here stumping for George? Perhaps he was a close friend of his, I don't know. Hanks gives a brief, blustery, over-the-top kind of speech that sounds like he was making it up on the spot. Perhaps he was. His speech is very specific to the impact the Beatles had on America and how trans-formative they were to popular culture. He then gestures to the Capitol building and says "They built this!"--not quite, but he meant well.He signs off with "All things must pass, this this true, but George Harrison will live forever".
Eric Idle is next.He was a close friend of George (George was a Python nut and went on to almost single-handedly finance "Life of Brian" and then through his Hand Made Films production company, finance several other Python-related films) and he proceeds to give a comic speech that is by turns ribald, funny, not funny,crass and inappropriate.One thinks that George would have probably approved. Idle pondered what George would have thought of a star on the Walk of Fame and then says George would have said "What a load of old bollocks". No doubt this is true. Idle then solemnly recounts how Paul McCartney was there for George in his final days when he was ailing from the throat cancer that killed him on November 29, 2001 in Los Angeles at the age of 58. Idle stated the often rumored fact that Harrison died in (one of ) Paul McCartney's homes. This turns out to set up a joke: "George died in Paul's house, which is why I won't go stay with John Cleese"--they both live in the L.A. area.
Olivia Harrison, who was a secretary at A&M Records when George met her in the mid 70's, then gave a brief speech thanking all those who came out and those who spoke and saying of George, "...he was a mystical man living in a material world, funny as the day was long and just as perplexing." His son, Dhani, followed by just saying "Hare Krishna" and then it was on to unveiling the star. A wood panel was lifted to reveal the freshly-minted new star and Olivia, Dhani, Idle, Hanks and McCartney posed for a photo. Tom Petty and a few others also came down for a photo op and that was pretty much that. McCartney, who was bombarded with cries of "Paul ! Paul !" (one can only wonder what a life of hearing that for 46 years can do to a person) tried to mount the podium and say thanks, but it had already been shut off. He mouthed the words, placed his hands over his heart and then was gone.
Alas, no sign of Ringo.
Today I am standing at 1750 Vine Street, site of the Capitol Records building. This, the world's first circular office building, was completed in 1956. It stands thirteen stories high and many believe the myth that it was designed to look like a stack of records. Atop the building is a spire and at the tip of the spire is a little light that at night blinks out the words "Hollywood" in morse code.
The reason I am here today is for the George Harrison Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony. Beatle George is receiving a star today from the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. The Hollywood Walk of Fame was established in 1958 as a way to spruce up the image of this main drag of Hollywood. The two thousand plus stars are located on Hollywood Boulevard from Gower Avenue to La Brea Avenue and north to south on Vine Street between Yucca Street and Sunset Boulevard. The first star was awarded to Joanne Woodward (actress and wife of the late Paul Newman) in 1960 you trivia buffs out there.
In order to receive a star, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce's Walk of Fame committee is usually solicited by a sponsor (movie studio or record label) but sometimes by the star themselves. If the committee approves the celebrity,then $25,000 must be paid and there is usually a proviso that the celebrity, if living, must show up to attend the ceremony. Well, no chance of that happening today, but Capitol Records (the sponsor for George) no doubt promises to wheel out a cavalcade of celebs and near-celebs to honor the quiet Beatle.
A crowd somewhere near a thousand people have gathered in the area just outside the barricades set up at the edge of the sidewalk and another set about half way into the Vine Street. I would describe this mass of humanity to be comprised of many Beatle fanatics, some might say nerds. Yes, Beatle nerds. Beatle nerds belong to a special sub-category of music nerds. Nerd-dom can take on so many forms: Comedy nerds, movie nerds, Star Wars nerds, Dungeon and Dragons nerds, (video) Gamer nerds, Monty Python nerds (often in tandem with Beatle nerds I find--perhaps they belong to the larger school of Anglophile nerds), and science nerds are the ones I can think of right off the bat.
Nerdiness is a form of obsession adopted by people in their formative years as a way with coping with the world. What better way to combat your social awkwardness than to obsess over something and at the same time find like-minded individuals to bond with over said obsession. Nothing wrong with being nerdy: it demonstrates you are really serious about something and often it shows you can really devote yourself to the pursuit of that something and master it. Some nerdy pursuits can really get you ahead in life. For instance, computer nerds now run the world. Beatle nerds, on the other hand, show up outside an office building at 10 am on a Tuesday. To be fair, I'm sure some of them have jobs.
My Beatle nerd-dom began in 1979 when my mother purchased the Beatle compilation albums "63-66" and "67-70" (aka the Red and Blue albums) on cassette and indoctrinated me to the world of the Beatles' music. To say my life has never been the same would be an understatement. Prior to this, I had dabbled in music, mostly the John Denver,Waylon Jennings and Simon and Garfunkel albums my dad would play on car trips and soundtracks such as "Saturday Night Fever", "Grease" and, god help me, "Thank God It's Friday". I also joined a record club (RCA Record Club - 8 albums for a penny) back in 78' maybe, but was mostly indifferent to the motley assortment of albums I selected. Not sure what my methodology was, but I do remember receiving Peter Frampton's "Frampton Comes Alive", Bob Seger's "Night Moves", Steve Miller Band's "Greatest Hits 74-78" and maybe a James Taylor record. Of course I never sent back the monthly form to reject that month's selection, so our house was inundated with such gems as Fogat's "Rock and Roll" (cover sported a picture of a small stone and a dinner roll) until my mother called the RCA Record Club and pitched a fit about how young I was and they agreed to cancel my membership.
The Beatles was a whole other story. I was initially captivated by the music, but it became a full-time obsession soon after the death of John Lennon. I heard about Lennon's murder like many American males did--from Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football. I ran to tell my mother,who I was staying with on that particular evening, this during the early stages of my parent's separation. She shrieked "What !!" and was no doubt more stunned by the news than I was. My mother, though by no means a Beatle fanatic, had actually seen the group live in Stockholm in 1963 during their Scandinavian tour, several months before they even came to American for the first time in February 1964.
Soon after my whole world was Beatles. I bought all the albums. I bought most of the solo records up to that point. I bought books and old Life magazine covers. I started buying picture sleeve singles and bootlegs. I became a regular customer at the hole-in-the-wall used record store downtown (what was the name of that place, Morgan?) that traded in such contraband. I went to these shoe string budget Beatle "Film Festivals" at places like the Davis Veteran's Memorial so I could see old grainy clips of Beatle press conferences, Ed Sullivan and other television appearances, promo films such as "Hello, Goodbye" and "Strawberry Fields" and maybe that amateur filmmaker disaster, "Magical Mystery Tour". I went to a midnight screening of "Let It Be" at the Varsity Theater in downtown Davis and even persuaded someone to drive me to a showing of "Wings Over America" at the dome shaped (where I saw "Star Wars" in 77') Century Theaters in Sacramento. I think I was bored to tears by those last two films, but such was my mania for all things Beatle that I could not pass them up.
At one point I was even looking into attending a Beatles convention in Los Angeles. If you are attending a convention of any fan-worshipping kind, you have most certainly graduated into another realm of nerd-dom.This period of insanity lasted from approximately 1980 until some time in 1982 when I began to discover other music and my obsession was redirected and soon mutated into so many other directions that I soon lost count. I think my buddy Morgan's obsession with the Who soon sent me down that road and into all things mod-related, though I never did adopt a mod fashion identity.
So, this must be why I am standing out here on this overcast Los Angeles morning waiting for the dignitaries to show up for this questionable dedication to a music great. A public address system has been set up and George Harrison solo music plays from the speakers placed atop stands. As the song 'All Things Must Pass' plays from the speakers, it is not lost on many folks in the audience that the producer of this song (Phil Spector) sits in a Los Angeles jail cell waiting to be sentenced for second degree murder. And wouldn't you it, as the "Concert For Bangladesh" version of 'Here Comes The Sun' plays, the sun begins to peak through the clouds and shower us in sunshine. I would claim divine intervention, but perhaps it is just a well-timed case of typical Los Angeles marine layer being burned off by the sun as we approach noon.
There are two platforms set up outside of Capitol Records. One is for the assembled press, who take their places as the 11:30 start time approaches. The other is situated a few feet in front of them--a dais with a podium for today's speakers. And at the appointed hour the VIPs file out of the front doors of Capitol Records, I'm thinking by order of importance. We are all straining our necks to see who has come and I immediately start recognizing and checking off in my head who is there. Tom Petty ( major rock star and a Travelling Wilbury), Mike Campbell (a member of Petty's band), Jeff Lynne ( ELO leader,produced George's "Cloud Nine" and also a Travelling Wilbury, Jim Keltner (drumming god who has played with everybody, including George), T-Bone Burnett (producer and solo artist extraordinaire), David Foster (big-time producer and writer of mostly MOR music), Joe Walsh (James Gang, The Eagles, solo artist), Ray Cooper (session percussionist who played on many George albums), Gary Wright (Spooky Tooth and solo artist-'Dream Weaver'-who played on some George albums), Ed Begley Jr. (???--actor and environmental activist), Tom Hanks (???--2 time Academy Award winning actor), Eric Idle (founding member of Monthy Python, actor/comedian) and Olivia (the wife) and Dhani ( the son, musician in his own right, and spitting image of his father) Harrison. What? No Beatles are here? Then Sir Paul McCartney is the last to emerge from the foyer of Capitol Records and the assembled Beatle fans really lose their sht*t.
What follows is a twenty-odd minute ceremony that sees a member of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce read, verbatim, the press release bio of George's life that was posted on his web site. Then we get another member of the Hollywood CoC who gives a speech where he repeatedly says that George is "with the angels now" and then, bizarrely, presents George's wife, Olivia, with some b.s. certificate from the city and a loaf of bread he says was the last loaf baked by a group of locals nuns whose ovens have broken down and they are now trying to raise money for. He also introduces representatives of the British and Bangladeshi embassies and his whole appearance basically makes for the one truly awkward moment of the day.
Next up is Tom Hanks, top notch actor and seemingly good guy, but why on earth is he up here stumping for George? Perhaps he was a close friend of his, I don't know. Hanks gives a brief, blustery, over-the-top kind of speech that sounds like he was making it up on the spot. Perhaps he was. His speech is very specific to the impact the Beatles had on America and how trans-formative they were to popular culture. He then gestures to the Capitol building and says "They built this!"--not quite, but he meant well.He signs off with "All things must pass, this this true, but George Harrison will live forever".
Eric Idle is next.He was a close friend of George (George was a Python nut and went on to almost single-handedly finance "Life of Brian" and then through his Hand Made Films production company, finance several other Python-related films) and he proceeds to give a comic speech that is by turns ribald, funny, not funny,crass and inappropriate.One thinks that George would have probably approved. Idle pondered what George would have thought of a star on the Walk of Fame and then says George would have said "What a load of old bollocks". No doubt this is true. Idle then solemnly recounts how Paul McCartney was there for George in his final days when he was ailing from the throat cancer that killed him on November 29, 2001 in Los Angeles at the age of 58. Idle stated the often rumored fact that Harrison died in (one of ) Paul McCartney's homes. This turns out to set up a joke: "George died in Paul's house, which is why I won't go stay with John Cleese"--they both live in the L.A. area.
Olivia Harrison, who was a secretary at A&M Records when George met her in the mid 70's, then gave a brief speech thanking all those who came out and those who spoke and saying of George, "...he was a mystical man living in a material world, funny as the day was long and just as perplexing." His son, Dhani, followed by just saying "Hare Krishna" and then it was on to unveiling the star. A wood panel was lifted to reveal the freshly-minted new star and Olivia, Dhani, Idle, Hanks and McCartney posed for a photo. Tom Petty and a few others also came down for a photo op and that was pretty much that. McCartney, who was bombarded with cries of "Paul ! Paul !" (one can only wonder what a life of hearing that for 46 years can do to a person) tried to mount the podium and say thanks, but it had already been shut off. He mouthed the words, placed his hands over his heart and then was gone.
Alas, no sign of Ringo.
