Beatles as Visual Artifact

A student acquaintance of mine has designed a cover for a Beatles coffee-table book:



These images have become iconic. They evoke a time, a place, and a set of distinctive experiences. And--like everything else about the Beatles--they're tasteful, aesthetically pleasing, and compelling.

Close Call for Roberta Flack

Hard at work on a new album of Beatles covers, sultry-voiced Roberta Flack nearly lost a year's work:

One rainy day last month, Roberta Flack, the smooth voice of 1970s soul ballads, stepped out of her recording studio in Chelsea, hailed a yellow taxi and threw a suitcase of CDs into the back seat. Arriving at the Dakota, her longtime home, Ms. Flack got out and hurried past the wrought-iron entrance gate, seeking cover from the downpour.

Then: “Panic! Panic! Panic!” Ms. Flack recalled on the telephone the other day. “I left the suitcase in the cab!”

In an instant, Ms. Flack had joined the ranks of world-class musicians (most famously the cellist Yo-Yo Ma) forced to grapple with a quintessential nightmare of New York transit. More than a year’s worth of work, including much of a new compilation of Beatles covers — tentative title: “Let It Be Roberta” — had disappeared to points unknown.

“It was priceless,” Ms. Flack, 73, said a few weeks after the episode. (The trauma still sounded fresh.) “I’ve been working on this album for a while. I had packed all of the stuff that had been finished, stuff that had not been finished, things I was thinking of approaching, things I was not thinking of approaching ever.”

I can't believe she's 73! But I guess that makes sense, since she had her first hit in 1973:

Her duets with Donny Hathaway (who committed suicide in 1979) were magical. Here are Roberta and Donny singing "The Closer I Get to You" in 1978:

This song always gives me the chills. I'm sure John Lennon loved Roberta Flack's music; he and the other Beatles were huge fans of the 1950s and 1960s soul classics with which Roberta grew up. And she lives at the Dakota!

Catholic Church Blesses Beatles UPDATED

Father Guido Sarducci, former gossip columnist for L'Osservatore Romano

L'Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Vatican, announced this week that all is forgiven for the Beatles:

“Their beautiful melodies changed music and continue to give pleasure …what would pop music have been like without the Beatles?”

Lots of snarky comments have met this news, see here, here, and here. If the Vatican's new stance is all about damage control, though, remember that not everyone has forgiven the Beatles: they're still banned in Iran.

UPDATE: See this Catholic News Service story, claiming that the Vatican never cursed the Beatles, even in the throes of the "bigger than Jesus" scandal. The author of this story rightly observes that that comment was widely taken out of context, and, as John explained in 1966, the statement was an observation, not a boast.

Lady Gaga Inspired by the Beatles

Lady Gaga, looking like the offspring of John Lennon and Dusty Springfield

After trying to watch the video of "Bad Romance," I'm not sure I see the connection. But apparently the Beatles inspire everyone, even Lady Gaga:

Lady Gaga was inspired by the Beatles' hometown Liverpool during her U.K. tour - insisting she wrote the "greatest music" of her career while staying in the English city.

The Poker Face hitmaker took her Monster Ball trek to the U.K. in February, and played just one night in the northern city where the Fab Four kickstarted their groundbreaking music careers.
But the singer insists it was during her short stay in Liverpool that she wrote her best material to date.
She tells fans on her official website, "I've already written the first single for the new album and I promise you that this album is the greatest of my career.
"It is the anthem for our generation. I wrote it for you, because of you, when I was in Liverpool I wrote the greatest music I've ever written."

In a way, I guess, the Beatles inaugurated the synthesis of performance art and pop music when they donned their Sgt. Pepper's garb and invented new identities for themselves. Glam Rock soon followed, which in turn spawned the high-concept videos of Madonna, Lady Gaga's most important precursor. Lady Gaga's songs, though (at least what I've heard) aren't particularly musical--industrial syntho beat and vocals so processed they don't sound like they come from a human being. I'd like to hear her explain exactly how the Beatles and Liverpool influenced her. Maybe on the new album, her "greatest ever," she'll actually make music!

New Beatles Monument in Kazakhstan

In my book, The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles, I say that the Beatles were the first truly universal cultural touchstone, the avatars of celebrity in the modern world. Here's proof, a statue of the Fab Four in Kazakhstan:




I think there must be Beatles monuments on every continent (except Antarctica).