samoyeddogs

By Bob Spitz.

Bob spits it out pretty good. I was never a huge Stones fan. I liked some of their tunes but never bought one of their albums. As an infant I recall a favorite from that era “Get Off My Cloud.” I took the tune personally. I felt I knew exactly what get off my cloud was about. Just get off. Get the hell off my cloud. Do it now. Just git. It was the truth. ”Play With Fire” was the same. It wasn’t so much don’t play with me ´cause you’re playin´ with fire as that block in St. John’s Wood and getting your kicks in Stepney not Knightsbridge anymore. I felt that truth in my bones as I roamed around my crib.

I remember Brian Jones. That he was a highly talented musician isn’t overlooked. Neither is fathering four children given birth to by four different girls of varying ages but all under the age of eighteen. The youngest was fourteen. Jones first got to know the girl when she was thirteen. Or that the man who said he held Jones under water is named. He’s dead himself and for some time.. The holding underwater is why Brian Jones was found unresponsive at the bottom of his swimming pool and pronounced dead at the age of twenty-seven. The reasons for his bandmates disaffection for him in the few years leading up to this are laid out in detail. His obnoxious moodiness and showing up stoned out of his gourd and useless. I do recall one clip of Jones gassed to the gills and very obviously drug-bombed off his nut doing nothing while his bandmates played.

I didn’t know bassist Bill Wyman married an eighteen year old when he was into his fifties. The relationship dated from when his bride was thirteen. The elaborate marriage cracked  up quite quickly. Marry in haste, Bill, repent at leisure. Wyman retired from the band but that was later.

Mick Taylor replaced Brian Jones. Mick Taylor was an exceptionally talented guitarist who added depth to the Stones delivery but he packed it in after just a few years, feeling under appreciated. It was too bad. One tune I recall he had a major part in is “Time Waits For No One.” I felt that a fine tune and still do because it’s true about the time thing. Mick Taylor’s gift from the band was an addiction to heroin whose chief long term devotee within the Rolling Stones was Keith Richards. Keith Richards downed enough dope to kill ten men but had a knack for pulling through with the added spice of some very close calls. He had a twenty year relationship with actress, model and raging heroin addict herself Anita Pallenberg that produced three healthy children which one would think should have been highly unlikely, poor things. Richards topped out at father of five children. After finally splitting with Anita he took up with model Patti Hansen and had two more. A model father. He finally did clean up. It was awful. He knew how awful because it was his “tenth or twelfth time” doing it. Hell on wheels. Worse than that, but it sounds like he’s stayed clean for good this time. Survivor. With age comes wisdom? He carries on at 82. It’s only rock and roll but he likes it.

The unobtrusive and steady Charlie Watts back there on his straightforward four drum kit liked it too but eventually retired like Bill Wyman. Not known as a stoner he developed a uncharacteristic drug and alcohol problem late in his Stones tenure. Cancer took him five years ago at the age of eighty.

Ronnie Wood who took over after Mick Taylor is not gotten into too terribly much. His versatile guitar and bass playing filled in some of the big gap left by Taylor and he got on well with Keith, better than Mick T. ever did. He was Keith’s drug buddy. Ronnie today is a mere lad of 79. 

Mick Jagger, is, as in the Stones act, front and center in a lot of the book. More business minded than his fellow “Glimmer Twin” Keith, he evolved into the leader of the group following the demise of Brian Jones. He made a lot of the decisions and picked a lot of the venues. He knew that if the Stones wanted to keep going they had to keep going. And they did.  Through six decades. The last gig of note was in gigantic SoFi stadium in Los Angeles, July 2024 in front of sixty-five thousand people. Okay. They didn’t sell out the stadium. That would have taken another five thousand people, but it’s still quite a few people to see some old guys. The hired help on drums and vocals and some other stuff were younger.

Bob Spitz, who worked as Bruce Springsteen and Elton John’s manager at various times, has the cred to be a biographer in rock and roll. He doesn’t kid around. This epic is 602 pages but moves along very well. His earlier book on the Beatles is four hundred pages longer. He covered Led Zeppelin for close to seven hundred pages.

I did see the Rolling Stones once. Steel Wheels Tour 1989. A strapping lad I was by now. Vancouver. A good friend had a ticket another friend passed on. Go see the Stones? For free? My friend and I had seen many concerts in the past. We stopped going because the concerts stopped starting on time and long gaps between acts seemed the new normal. Not good enough.

And there they were up there. We weren’t close to the stage but we weren’t that far off. Mick skipped around all night. He was nothing if not energetic. They looked exactly as I remembered from my crib days. Just a little older. They gave people their money’s worth. I think they always made a point of doing that.

Okay, I folded. I ordered “Exile on Main Street” because it’s supposed to be good. As Bob Spitz relates, its was considered a dog of sorts when it was released and was mostly panned in the musical press. But the experts came around. After a few listenings the double album ended up being called a classic and a must have. Typical. I’ve experienced the same thing in music. Well, after many a day, it’s finally getting a listen.

“Bard on the Beach” as it’s called and a workmanlike production of Macbeth. Cast of thousands. Very stagey. Very play-like but a little flat, a little rote. A matinee so the cast does it all over again in a couple of hours. It’s hard work, the theatre.

And a lot of work went into this production but isn’t it too ambitious? Less would be more. A main stage production so it needs size to it. Set is a problem. Good backdrop, but there’s no depth or real believability. The set designer’s notes for this version sets the play “in a post-urban era marred by an unspecified event that caused the Macbeth’s to dwell in a sealed underground bunker.” Unspecified for sure. If you didn’t read the notes ahead of the play you’d have no idea what’s supposed to be going on here.

The furnishings of lady and Mr. Macbeth’s unspecified environs do seem meagre indeed and somehow in this world Birnham Wood still eventually comes to Dunsinane, a bunker now, sealing Macbeth’s fate. Don’t forget. We’re acting Macbeth here. Gotta do all the stuff. 

Macbeth and Lady have an intercom of all things on which their porter, the porter or doorman dogsbody of “Here’s a knocking indeed” fame, communicates with them. Bzzz. Yet in the porter role “Here’s a knocking indeed” is never heard. Unless I was doing something else, but I wasn’t. I’m giving the play my full attention.

Munish Sharma, actor/playwright/producer, says his personal website handle, puts in a workmanlike performance as the crazed Macbeth. There’s that word again. He seems a bit old for crazy Macbeth. My vagrant thought is he would be good as a tough veteran cop in some tough, veteran cop thing. Tess Degenstein as our Lady Macbeth looks the part. Her exasperation over her husband’s weakness when he hesitates to act would shrink the soul of the stoutest scot. Kill ´em all Mac comes back with his hands covered in stage blood. The original premise of the play – a nobleman up there in the wilds of Scotland decides his best route to the throne to settle his beautiful bride is murder three people. He offs the king and the king’s guards too of course. Can’t risk them blabbing. It’s brilliant. And everybody everywhere will be okay with it. And furthermore he has the luckless Banquo, who would be king ahead of him if King Duncan disappears, killed by some deadbeats. The crown’s all his.

You’d think the Macbeths might have given consideration to everybody everywhere not being okay with it. Fools. It’s a tragedy. To borrow from the Dane’s (Hamlet’s) old man: Murder most foul. I’d find life difficult if I just murdered three people and ordered the killing of a fourth no matter who I thought I was. It’s crazy talk. But Macbeth’s a brilliant man. Thane of Cawdor The witches said he’d be king. They just didn’t say how. And now you’ve stepped in it.

The witches are underperformed in this effort. The closest resemblance of these three entities is to dark grey sheeted mumbling ghosts. Someday maybe, they’re gonna be witches if they can finally move up.

Withal withal. Worth seeing, good old Macbeth. B on the B is looking terribly successful these days. Bloody good show oldsters. Place was stuffed with them and we fit right in. Macbeth keeps murdering sleep to September 18.

Gordie Howe knew my mother. My mother knew Gordie Howe. Gordie Howe was born in a small Saskatchewan town and moved to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan at an early age. My mother was born in a small Saskatchewan town and moved to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan at an early age. Gordie Howe came from a family of nine siblings. My mother came from a family of nine siblings. Gordie Howe had five sisters. My mother was one of four sisters. You got us there, Gordie.

The similarities trail off. Gordie Howe was a professional hockey player and played most of his career with the Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League. My mother wasn’t a professional hockey player and never played hockey in any league anywhere. She could skate though.

One of Gordie Howe’s five sisters, I wish I knew which one, was a friend of my mother’s when Gordie Howe’s sister and my mother were young girls in Saskatoon. Gordie Howe took his sister and my mother for a ride in his new convertible and he gave my mother the above snapshot from his rookie season in Detroit. And when she died it came to me. I can’t help it if I’m lucky. My mother was twelve years old in Gordie Howe’s rookie season. I do know that those primitive, scuffed skates he’s wearing wouldn’t be sported today by the lowest talent thrashing peewee hockey player, girl or boy. Different era. Gordie Howe was six years older than my mother.

In my infancy I saw Gordie Howe play once. I also saw him close up. He looked just like he did on TV. It was not hockey season and Gordie Howe and his Detroit Red Wings teammates were playing an exhibition game in Peterborough, Ontario against the adult amateur hockey team of the time. The Wings played with their sticks upside down, just the end of the blade on the ice, to give the locals a chance, but it was still a wipe out. Great fun and I was given the autographs of Gordie Howe and two of his teamates, Alex Delvecchio and Terry Sawchuck, hockey players much better known then than now. The trio came along the boards after the game to sign autographs. My mother was there for them.

It’s a nice looking bridge. Modern. Clean. Impressive engineering feat. It should stay closed. Keep traffic off it. There’s too much traffic around there anyway. Trade and traffic need to be cut right back. Just keep the thing for Mr. Hockey, his memory. The grand old man. The image is from the “International Gordie Howe Bridge” site. It proudly states the bridge is to open “Fall 2025.” That should be grand.

Something happened. Never heard of the bridge before it did. Don’t live anywhere around there these days. The American President should make a so-called state visit to Canada soon. See if it can fire Mark up. Show the love. Go for a walk on the bridge. Prove it works wonderfully as a pedestrian bridge. If the president needs a wheelchair the prime minister can push it along. Great story.

International Gordie Howe Bridge opens soon probably, but who know’s with this guy? He needs a good spanking and will get it because history says so. But when? Doesn’t matter. Corrupts absolutely like rotting fruit. Rabbits turn away.