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Martin Bandyke Under Covers: Martin talks to author Steve Turner about Beatles '66: The Revolutionary Year.
The year that changed everything for the Beatles was 1966—the year of their last concert and their first album, Revolver, that was created to be listened to rather than performed. This was the year the Beatles risked their popularity by retiring from live performances, recording songs that explored alternative states of consciousness, experimenting with avant-garde ideas, and speaking their minds on issues of politics, war, and religion. It was the year their records were burned in America after John’s explosive claim that the group was "more popular than Jesus," the year they were hounded out of the Philippines for "snubbing" its First Lady, the year John met Yoko Ono, and the year Paul conceived the idea for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Music journalist and Beatles expert Steve Turner slows down the action to investigate in detail the enormous changes that took place in the Beatles’ lives and work during 1966. He looks at the historical events that had an impact on the group, the music they made that in turn profoundly affected the culture around them, and the vision that allowed four young men from Liverpool to transform popular music and serve as pioneers for artists from Coldplay to David Bowie, Jay-Z to U2.
By talking to those close to the group and by drawing on his past interviews with key figures such as George Martin, Timothy Leary, and Ravi Shankar—and the Beatles themselves—Turner gives us the compelling, definitive account of the twelve months that contained everything the Beatles had been and anticipated everything they would still become.
The interview was recorded on November 10, 2016.
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Broadway Star and Ann Arbor Native Ashley Park Discusses Her Experiences On Broadway As Tuptim In The Recent Tony-Winning Musical "The King And I"
Ashley Park is a Grammy-nominated Broadway performer most recently seen playing Tuptim in Lincoln Center’s Tony-Award-Winning Revival of "The King And I" (Original Broadway Cast Recording), and also appeared on Broadway in "Mamma Mia!"
Ashley, a Pioneer High School graduate, discusses her year with "The King And I," her acclaimed portrayal of Tuptim, the Tony and Grammy Awards, and life on Broadway. She also discusses her high school battle with cancer, how the Make-A-Wish foundation granted her dream to see her first Broadway Show ("The Lion King"), and how her career led her from Ann Arbor to New York City and a Tony-winning production.
Ashley’s credits include a national tour as Gabrielle in "Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella," concerts and musical performances at Alice Tully Hall, Feinstein’s/54 Below and other venues. She is a proud graduate of The University of Michigan (BFA Musical Theatre), where she co-founded the Michigan Performance Outreach Workshop (MPOW) and worked as a member of the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP).
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers: Martin talks to author Joel Selvin about his new book Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock's Darkest Day.
In his deeply researched book, Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock's Darkest Day, filled with exclusive, never-before-revealed details, celebrated rock journalist Joel Selvin tells the definitive story of the Rolling Stones’ infamous Altamont concert in San Francisco, the disastrous historic event that marked the end of the idealistic 1960s.
In the annals of rock history, the Altamont Speedway Free Festival on December 6, 1969, has long been seen as the distorted twin of Woodstock—the day that shattered the Sixties’ promise of peace and love when a concertgoer was killed by a member of the Hells Angels, the notorious biker club acting as security. While most people know of the events from the film Gimme Shelter, the whole story has remained buried in varied accounts, rumor, and myth—until now.
Altamont explores rock’s darkest day, a fiasco that began well before the climactic death of Meredith Hunter and continued beyond that infamous December night. Joel Selvin probes every aspect of the show—from the Stones’ hastily planned tour preceding the concert to the bad acid that swept through the audience to other deaths that also occurred that evening—to capture the full scope of the tragedy and its aftermath. He also provides an in-depth look at the Grateful Dead’s role in the events leading to Altamont, examining the band’s behind-the-scenes presence in both arranging the show and hiring the Hells Angels as security.
The product of twenty years of exhaustive research and dozens of interviews with many key players, including medical staff, Hells Angels members, the stage crew, and the musicians who were there, and featuring sixteen pages of color photos, Altamont is the ultimate account of the final event in rock’s formative and most turbulent decade.
Martin’s interview with Joel Selvin was recorded on August 29, 2016.
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers: Martin talks to author Tom Stanton about Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball, and the Secret Society that Shocked Depression-era Detroit.
Martin talks to author Tom Stanton about Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball, and the Secret Society that Shocked Depression-era Detroit.
Detroit, mid-1930s: In a city abuzz over its unrivaled sports success, gun-loving baseball fan Dayton Dean became ensnared in the nefarious and deadly Black Legion. The secretive, Klan-like group was executing a wicked plan of terror, murdering enemies, flogging associates, and contemplating armed rebellion. The Legion boasted tens of thousands of members across the Midwest, among them politicians and prominent citizens—even, possibly, a beloved athlete.
A New York Times Bestseller, Terror in the City of Champions opens with the arrival of Mickey Cochrane, a fiery baseball star who roused the Great Depression’s hardest-hit city by leading the Tigers to the 1934 pennant. A year later he guided the team to its first championship. Within seven months the Lions and Red Wings follow in football and hockey—all while Joe Louis chased boxing’s heavyweight crown.
Amidst such glory, the Legion’s dreadful toll grew unchecked: staged “suicides,” bodies dumped along roadsides, high-profile assassination plots. Talkative Dayton Dean’s involvement would deepen as heroic Mickey’s Cochrane’s reputation would rise. But the ballplayer had his own demons, including a close friendship with Harry Bennett, Henry Ford’s brutal union buster.
Award-winning author Tom Stanton weaves a stunning tale of history, crime, and sports. Richly portraying 1930s America, Terror in the City of Champions features a pageant of colorful figures: iconic athletes, sanctimonious criminals, scheming industrial titans, a bigoted radio priest, a love-smitten celebrity couple, J. Edgar Hoover, and two future presidents, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. It is a rollicking true story set at the confluence of hard luck, hope, victory, and violence.
The interview was recorded on August 3, 2016
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Nerd Nite #37 - The Use of Leitmotif in Wagner’s Ring Cycle: A Boring Musicology Talk
The original “never-ending story,” (okay, so it’s actually 15 hours) Wagner’s epic opera cycle Der Ring des Niebelungen is widely regarded as the best way to thoroughly convince people that they hate opera. But it need not be so! As we cruise through a “brief” synopsis of the plot, we will explore how Wagner’s use of musical motifs neatly ties the storyline together, and how this compositional style has influenced the development of film scores.
About Carl: Carl had many, varied interests throughout the years, and he still sometimes wonders what he wants to do when (if) he grows up. He studied trumpet performance in college at Indiana University and the Royal Academy of Music in London, and performed with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago upon graduation. Currently, as a completely logical next step, he is an MD/PhD student at the University of Michigan Medical School, where he studies how chromatin dynamics influence the development and progression of prostate cancer.
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers: Martin Interviews Steve Lehto, author of Preston Tucker and His Battle to Build the Car of Tomorrow
Martin talks to author Steve Lehto about Preston Tucker and His Battle to Build the Car of Tomorrow.
After World War II, the American automobile industry was reeling. Having spent years building tanks and airplanes for the army, the car companies would need years more to retool their production to meet the demands of the American public, for whom they had not made any cars since 1942.
And then in stepped Preston Tucker. This salesman extraordinaire from Ypsilanti, Michigan, had built race cars before the war, and had designed prototypes for the military during it. Now, gathering a group of brilliant automotive designers, engineers, and promoters, he announced the creation of a revolutionary new car: the Tucker '48, the first car in almost a decade to be built fresh from the ground up. Tucker's car would include ingenious advances in design and engineering that other car companies could not match. With a rear engine, rear-wheel drive, a safety-glass windshield that would pop out in case of an accident, a padded dashboard, independent suspension, and automatic transmission, it would be more attractive and aerodynamic—and safer—than any other car on the road.
But as the public eagerly awaited Tucker's car of tomorrow, powerful forces in Washington were trying to bring him down. An SEC commissioner with close ties to Detroit's Big Three automakers deliberately leaked information about an investigation the agency was conducting, suggesting that Tucker was bilking investors with a massive fraud scheme. Headlines accused him a perpetrating a hoax and claimed that his cars weren't real and his factory was a sham.
In fact, the Tucker '48 sedan was genuine, and everyone who saw it was impressed by what this upstart carmaker had achieved. But the SEC's investigation had compounded the company's financial problems and management conflicts, and a superior product was not enough to keep Tucker's dream afloat.
In Preston Tucker and His Battle to Build the Car of Tomorrow, author Steve Lehto tackles the story of Tucker's incredible rise and tragic fall, relying on a huge trove of documents that has been used by no other writer to date. It is the first comprehensive, authoritative account of Tucker's magnificent car and his battles with the government.
The interview was recorded on July 6, 2016
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers: Martin Interviews Frances Stroh, Author of Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss
Martin talks to Frances Stroh about Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss. Stroh’s debut as an author is a memoir of a city, an industry, and a dynasty in decline, and the story of a young artist’s struggle to find her way out of the ruins.
Frances Stroh’s earliest memories are ones of great privilege: shopping trips to London and New York, lunches served by black-tied waiters at the Regency Hotel, and a house filled with precious antiques, which she was forbidden to touch. Established in Detroit in 1850, by 1984 the Stroh Brewing Company had become the largest private beer fortune in America and a brand emblematic of the American dream itself. While Stroh was coming of age, the Stroh family fortune was estimated to be worth $700 million.
But behind the beautiful façade lay a crumbling foundation. Detroit’s economy collapsed with the retreat of the automotive industry to the suburbs and abroad and likewise the Stroh family found their wealth and legacy disappearing. As their fortune dissolved in little over a decade, the family was torn apart internally by divorce and one family member's drug bust; disagreements over the management of the business; and disputes over the remaining money they possessed. Even as they turned against one another, looking for a scapegoat on whom to blame the unraveling of their family, they could not anticipate that even far greater tragedy lay in store.
Featuring beautiful evocative photos throughout, Stroh’s memoir is elegantly spare in structure and mercilessly clear-eyed in its self-appraisal—at once a universally relatable family drama and a great American story.
The interview was recorded on May 23, 3016
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers: Barney Hoskyns, Author of "Small Town Talk"
Martin talks to author Barney Hoskyns about his new book Small Town Talk: Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Friends in the Wild Years of Woodstock.
Think "Woodstock" and the mind turns to the seminal 1969 festival that crowned a seismic decade of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. But the town of Woodstock, New York, the original planned venue of the concert, is located over 60 miles from the site to which the fabled half a million flocked. Long before the landmark music festival usurped the name, Woodstock—the tiny Catskills town where Bob Dylan holed up after his infamous 1966 motorcycle accident—was already a key location in the '60s rock landscape.
In Small Town Talk, Barney Hoskyns re-creates Woodstock's community of brilliant dysfunctional musicians, scheming dealers, and opportunistic hippie capitalists drawn to the area by Dylan and his sidekicks from the Band. Central to the book's narrative is the broodingly powerful presence of Albert Grossman, manager of Dylan, the Band, Janis Joplin, Paul Butterfield, and Todd Rundgren—and the Big Daddy of a personal fiefdom in Bearsville that encompassed studios, restaurants, and his own record label. Intertwined in the story are the Woodstock experiences and associations of artists as diverse as Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Tim Hardin, Karen Dalton, and Bobby Charles (whose immortal song-portrait of Woodstock gives the book its title).
Drawing on numerous first-hand interviews with the remaining key players in the scene—and on the period when he lived there himself in the 1990s—Hoskyns has produced an East Coast companion to his bestselling L.A. canyon classic Hotel California. This book is a richly absorbing study of a vital music scene in a revolutionary time and place.
The interview was recorded on April 4, 2016.
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Eclipse Jazz: 40 Years On
In the fall of 1975, a dozen U-M undergrads came together to launch a student-run concert program, Eclipse Jazz, which became a local music phenomenon.
Beginning with a performance by jazz pianist McCoy Tyner (of the John Coltrane Quartet) at the Power Center, Eclipse Jazz presented over one hundred concerts by the world’s finest jazz musicians over the next 15 years.
This event featured memories by many of Eclipse Jazz founders and was moderated by WEMU’s Michael Jewett. Scheduled panelists included Lee Berry, Tom Bray, Michael Grofsorean, Mike Landry, Ann Rebentisch, Jimmy (Max) Robins, and Max Dehn. The discussion also focused on what happened to Eclipse Jazz and why.
The panel also discussed the legacy of Miles Davis, whose genre-bending music helped inspire and propel both the members and audience of Eclipse Jazz. A new biopic about Davis, Miles Ahead, starring and directed by Don Cheadle, opens at the Michigan Theater on Friday, April 22.
This event is cosponsored by AADL and the Michigan Theater. Information and tickets for the Michigan Theater film may be found on the Theater’s website at michtheater.org.
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers: Martin interviews Andy Partridge, co-author of Complicated Game: Inside the Songs of XTC
One of the defining rock groups of the post-punk / new wave era, XTC was led by the gifted British singer-songwriters Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding. Active from the mid-70s through the early 2000s, the band is best known for the songs Dear God, Senses Working Overtime, Making Plans for Nigel, Life Begins at the Hop, and Mayor Simpleton. I still have fond memories of seeing the band perform with the Police at the Michigan Theater back on Jan. 22, 1980!
The book Complicated Game offers unique insights into the work of XTC founder Andy Partridge, one of Britain's most original and influential songwriters. It is also an unprecedentedly revealing and instructive guide to how songs and records are made.
Developed from a series of interviews conducted over many months, it explores in detail some thirty of Partridge's songs - including the controversial 'Dear God' - from throughout XTC's thirty-year career, as well as an extensive interview dedicated solely to the art and craft of songwriting. While the interviews cast new light on the writing of lyrics, the construction of melodies and arrangements, the process of recording, and the workings of the music industry, they are also filled with anecdotes about Partridge, his XTC bandmates, and their adventures around the world - all told with the songwriter's legendary humour.
Martin’s interview with Andy Partridge was originally recorded on March 8, 2016.