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- [00:02]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
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- [01:00]
Candy Leonard
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- [01:29]
Richard
Do you feel that Americans are out to get you, that this is all developing into something of a witch hunt? No, we thought it might be that kind of thing. I think a lot of people in England did because there's this thing about, you know, when America gets violent, gets very hung up on a thing, it tends to have this sort of blue Kux Klan thing around it. It seems to me you've always been successful because you've been outspoken and direct and forthright and all this sort of thing. Does it seem a bit hard to you that people are now knocking you for this very thing? Yes, Richard, it seems hard. It seems hard, you know, free speech. But is it possible just to say what you think all the time? What about 14 year old teenagers who think you're absolutely marvellous and can't bear to be heard? See, when we say anything like that, we don't say it as older people seem to think to be offensive. We mean it helpfully, you know, and if it's wrong what we say, okay, it's wrong. And people can say, you know, you're wrong about that one. In many cases we believe it's right. You know, we're quite serious about it. But do you mind being asked questions? For example, in America, people keep asking a question about Vietnam. Does this seem useful? Well, I don't know. You know, if you can say that war is no good and a few people believe you, then it may be good. I don't know. You can't say too much. That's the trouble. It seems a bit silly to be in America and for none of them to mention Vietnam as if nothing was happening. But why should they ask you about it, your successfulness? Because Americans always ask questions, showbiz people, what they think about it. So do the British. You know, showbiz, you know how it is. But I mean, you've just gotta. You can't just keep quiet about anything that's going on in the world unless you're a monk. Sorry, monks, I didn't mean it. I meant, actually it doesn't matter about people not liking our records or not liking the way they look or what we say, you know, they're entitled to not like us, and we're entitled not to have anything to do with them if we don't want to or not to regard them. We've all got our rights, you know.
- [03:30]
D
Hello, and welcome to episode 308 of Something about the Beatles podcast. My guest today, returning guest is Candy Leonard, who is a sociologist by trade and was on the show earlier when we did a deep dive into the Paul is dead nonsense back when. And we also did a show on 1968, just sort of examining the backdrop that the Beatles created within that year. The White Album, the hey Jude Revolution single, etc. And if you're a subscriber to the newsletter, good on you. And if you're not, then maybe you'll understand the value of it, because there was an offhand comment I'd made back in the newsletter that came out around Memorial Day weekend in the States and something about the Beatles politics. And in that comment I was making the point of their overtly political material, obviously revolution, but certainly something like all you need is love. And I think I. I can't remember what I said, but I might have traced it back to the word being an overtly sort of proselytizing song. And in between you had the whole more popular than Jesus thing, which is certainly if offhandedly and not deliberately political, was treated like a political story, for sure. But in any event, she'd commented back that as far as she was concerned, the Beatles were always political from the get go, if not calculatedly so. And I thought that was an interesting point. Say more. And that's what led to this conversation. Now, if you know the name Candy Leonard, you might know her best from the book she put out now 10 years ago called how the Beatles and Their Fans Remade the World. And it is this terrific way ahead of the curve book, a deep dive into fandom and the phenomenon of the Beatles. She looks at the phenomenon of Beatlemania in a scientific way through the eyes of her subjects. Builds a three dimensional, completely human tale, the likes of which has never been before tackled by a Beatles author. Then backs it up with scientific data to discover why the Beatles became the phenomenon they were and still are today. So I know certain segment of the population looks at the word scientific and proof and data and evidence those words as sus. Well, they're not. There are reasons why things happened. And you can assemble a thesis by examining the data, which is what she did. And I've said before that I think we're kind of living in this golden age of Beatle scholarship. There's all kinds of amazing books coming out. Just go to the Bloomsbury site if you want to take a look at some of the things that are out there. But all kinds of authors. And it so happens, obviously Candy's a woman and there's a lot of women scholars getting their voices heard. And there's a lot of examination of the fandom coming in recent years. We had that conversation earlier this year with Richard Mills, his book the Beatles and Fandom. We've certainly got the good work going on through the years from Sarah Schmidt with her Meet the Beatles for Real site as well as her book on Beatle fan clubs, which I swear to God we're gonna be talking about on the show one of these days. And Alison Bumps does work on the fan magazines of the 60s and 70s. So there's a whole ton of the story of fandom and what it means in terms of the Beatles history being examined. All fresh angles, all good stuff. So beatleness was one of the first books overtly examining the fandom fresh angle. And anyway, this conversation we put together to have her say more about the Beatles as political figures from the get go. And it made sense as she was connecting the dots also was prompted by the one to one film letting her know that that's not a concert film, like I'm letting everybody else know the concert is sort of a backdrop, but it's really about the political activity of John and Yoko circa 1971, 72. And put you into the context of the times people way too young or unborn at the time of the Nixon administration. It may be an eye opener for. And the resonance to this very day. So all worthwhile stuff. I know that there's some people that are listeners to the show that aren't necessarily enthusiastic about the shows that get into music theory, but I think we have tried to make that as accessible as possible on the show and you get something of value out of it if you give it a chance. I would say the same with this. If you're not into political science or sociology, you might think, oh God, I just want to hear what they did in the studio or how the song came to be written. Give it a shot. Because I think there's a lot to be learned. And ultimately the goal of any show in this podcast is to get you to re listen, re examine, rethink your position and what you believe about the Beatles. See it in a fresh way because there's always a fresh way to approach them. Just let that play out. If you get something deeper of value out of their music or their story that you didn't before, all to the greater good. And if you're not in the newsletter subscription list, it is not a spamming or selling mechanism. It's just a way of staying in touch. I don't really care for social media all that much, even less so than I once did. I generally only use it to post new shows unless something happens in the news. But it gets a lot more in depth, a lot of sharing going on and keeps you up to date on beetle news. So satb2010mail.com that was part of the.
- [09:11]
Candy Leonard
Motivation for me writing Beatleness was that not only was it only a male perspective, but the fan perspective was not there. The fans were almost like an afterthought. Which of course made no sense to me because both the female perspective and the fan perspective are what made this thing possible. Right.
- [09:31]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
The feedback loop between artist and audience absolutely is what made this thing what it is that we're still talking about.
- [09:38]
Candy Leonard
It now for sure, right? I know. All these years later, Right. It is something of course, out of another time and place, but given the way things are right now in the world and here it's almost the contrast is just I was thinking about this when watching the one to one and also just thinking about the things we were going to be talking about that it was just a different world.
- [10:02]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Say more about that. Because we'd had this email exchange and I was encouraging to see one to one because I thought that was something that it's not what people think if they don't know. They think it's just a concert Film. It is definitely not that. And you'd made that comment in the email thread about the Beatles were always political, which I thought was a great point to start a conversation on. So you said that you thought everything that you had to say had been said, but now things are getting sparked. So say more about that. What's been germinating.
- [10:32]
Candy Leonard
It comes in waves. Like every, I don't know, six to 12 months, I sort of get back into thinking about the Beatles. But in this case it was a comment that I made about them being political from the get go. And you wanting to follow up on that. I do think that. I mean, I've always thought that. Because if you think about the disruption and the upheaval that they caused, especially around young people, but in the country, it's all anybody was talking about. They were on every magazine. I mean, the whole Beatlemania period was a disruption. And everything about them was very challenging, very new. And young people, there were so many of us at the time. So there was a lot of power inherently in that potential, which became actual. But yeah, I mean, everything about them. Let's look at one, obviously very salient feature, the hair. Right? That's what got all the attention right away, even before the music. I mean, the press hadn't even heard the music yet, but they were all about the hair. And they look like girls. I mean, that was the big thing. And so that was very threatening. It was laughed at, but it was very threatening. I mean, hair, you know, it was very disruptive to gender norms and the constraint and conformity. That was still very much the norm. The norm was the norm at that time. And it's almost like night and day when you think about it, because it was, you know, you have sort of the Kennedy 60s. And then after that one event in February of 1964, you have the long 60s begin and of course the assassination and the 79 days in between those two events, which is like the corridor between the Kennedy 60s and the Beatles 60s or whatever you want to call it, long 60s, and the fact that young people were so energized and excited by them. I guess we should go back and like, what do we mean by political when I say they were political? What does that mean? Politics is about power relations, power dynamics. Who gets to say what's reality? Who gets to have their voice heard? Who gets to define the discourse? And so that shifted with them immediately.
- [12:47]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
As defined by the institutions of power in place that the majority of people look to, to take their cues from that were willing to Accept whatever was handed down at that time in a way that eroded over time.
- [13:02]
Candy Leonard
They tipped it over the edge. I think that, you know, during the Kennedy era, there were all these, you know, the civil rights movement already, some anti militaris, self reverential humor and comedy. Like there were a lot of things that were happening already in the 60s, folk music, Dylan. I mean, there were things that were in place certainly, but they kind of, because of the size of their megaphone and the historically large demographic that they appealed to, they were able to shift it over. In other words, what I talk in Beatleness about, there was this cognitive dissonance in the culture, you know, this sort of tension almost, and the reaction of this huge demographic of young people, and not only young people, old people as well, were very intrigued by them. That kind of just flipped it over. So something changed after that, and it was palpable. I mean, I was very young at the time, you know, but I remember it very vividly. You know, I felt I was sort of a participant observer.
- [14:12]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
So you're very conscious in real time that this was a sea change.
- [14:15]
Candy Leonard
Yes, because they became such a focal point and the release of emotion, joy, they were all anybody talked about. I've written about this, other people have written about it, but remembering this in real time, I mean, it was truly something new. And of course, people have remarked about how some of this extra exuberance might have been a result of the Kennedy assassination. I do think that that's true, but not in the sense that most people talk about it. I think what they represented, and this again gets to the politics of it, or the power relations, if you will, is that they represented youth and youth ascendancy in the way that Kennedy did. The charisma citizens of the world I called the new New Frontier was really what they represented. So there was a shift and getting back to the hair even not only sort of at the cultural level were commentators commenting about that, not acting like they were threatened by it, but couldn't stop talking about it. They looked like girls. But also in households, in families, in schools, in workplaces, men were starting to grow their hair. That was disruptive. That was a problem at first. And then of course became too big to push back that tide.
- [15:56]
Richard
You look like a girl.
- [16:07]
Candy Leonard
But I talk about this in the book, and I'm sure many people listening to this have memories of terrible arguments and fights with parents about boys growing their hair, boys getting suspended from school because their hair or sideburns were too long. And again, in some sense, it seems Trivial? Oh, it's just hair. But hair is not a trivial thing. I mean, throughout civilization hair has had enormous symbolic value, I mean, going back to the Bible, to Samson. So the hair became very symbolic of a lot of things that were going to change.
- [16:46]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Right. And what is interesting is when you consider pre Beatles, if you talked about long hair music, you were referring to classical music.
- [16:55]
Candy Leonard
Right.
- [16:55]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
It wasn't quite the same sexual identity threatening thing that became when the Beatles had it.
- [17:01]
Candy Leonard
Well, because in that era men wore their hair longer. They still wear those ridiculous wigs in certain houses of Parliament and all that. So yeah, long hair meant something different. It wasn't young people making the decision on their own to make that statement. That's the crux of it is that they saw this, they liked it, it represented freedom, it represented the style, whatever. By growing your hair long, you chose to identify with this thing.
- [17:34]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
You were asserting your own cultural identity distinct from the people who raised you.
- [17:39]
Candy Leonard
Exactly. And the people who raised you really didn't like it, especially fathers. You know, it reflected badly on you as a parent if your son grew his hair long. He was a non conformist, he was a fairy. And there was a lot of fear on the part of the establishment, and frankly rightly so, underlying all this pushback around the hair. But it was too big to contain groove duck. No Blackjack, no cypher, no. Long hair.
- [18:17]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yeah.
- [18:19]
Richard
How about those hairdos? What do you like about the Beatles anyway?
- [18:25]
Candy Leonard
I like their music and the way they dress and their hair and their looks. They look like girls to me. They do not.
- [18:32]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
It's very interesting. It's not something anybody could have contrived to get headlines or attention or as some kind of thing that nowadays people called influencers will come up with some kind of twist on the norm that will get them all the media attention. It was a natural evolution. They went to Hamburg, they fell in with these culturally literate people who by the way, like to wear their hair that way for whatever reason. And the Beatles adopted it, thought it was cool. It was a total change in the culture and identifier when they went back to Liverpool and that became the thing, as you say, certainly Americans picked up on. I'm not sure if the Brits, to whom it was new to when they started doing it, had the same sense of threat that Americans did. Americans were put on high alert.
- [19:20]
Candy Leonard
I don't know that it was explicitly talked about at the time as a threat. I said before, I mean, it was joked about, they look like girls. I don't know exactly how The British press reacted to their appearance at the time. By the time we met them, the British press were already used to them. And I suspect the hair might have been a bit of a issue in the uk. And how could it not have been? Because the same cultural norms of boys and men don't have long hair, which of course their hair at the time is like ridiculously not long, but at the time it was right. So I suspect that was an issue in the UK as well, to some extent.
- [20:01]
Richard
Well, I've got one. I wish the hell he'd get it cut.
- [20:04]
Candy Leonard
I think it's disgusting, disgraceful and effeminate.
- [20:07]
Richard
I can't kill one from the other. Bloody all right.
- [20:10]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
If it's kept tidily, it's not so bad.
- [20:12]
Richard
Only an exhibitionist would cultivate this sort of style.
- [20:15]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
The thing that I think about in the uk, as far as the hair goes, is, and I remember reading this in some contemporary accounts, it being likened to the film that had come out earlier, Village of the Dead, for all the kids have that haircut. And it very much is a threatening thing, but it's science fiction, it's not something you'd see in real life. So to your point, maybe they saw the Beatles immediately connected to that film and thinking, ah, this is funny, that's what they're evoking when it wasn't at all.
- [20:42]
Candy Leonard
I think the people who had the strongest, most negative visceral reaction to it, which was feeling threatened by what it represented. I'm not sure they even were aware of what they were thinking at the time. They just didn't like it. It was wrong, it was anomalous, it was not how things should be. And I think that throughout the decade the Beatles were a catalyst for questioning everything how things should be. You can trivialize here and say, well, it's just fashion. Yeah, but fashion has meaning. It's a form of self expression and what are you expressing? So then when they started to wear the colorful shirts and all the different things that happened throughout the decade, but more significant than shirts and hair even, was what they were saying and the power really that they came to have as we grew to trust and love them over those years, you know, from the get go, I mean, talk about love at first sight. It was love at first sight and they got our attention, kept our attention for six years. We didn't look away. And from the beginning it was kind of a seduction in a way. They were a reliable source of joy, is kind of how I describe it. One of their signature moves was Exceeding expectations. And by doing that you create delight. That's sort of like a business thing where people say, oh yeah, exceed expectations. But that's what they did and not consciously. You can see it in the airport, in the JFK airport thing, there was some amount of cynicism or just what is all this about? And then with this over the top charm and wit and charisma, it was more than anything. And you see the same thing with the response to A Hard Day's Night.
- [22:33]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
You talked about a business corollary under promise over deliver. It worked to their advantage that the establishment was so undervaluing them. These clowns, this joke, what are you going to do in the bubble burst? Because obviously you guys don't have a long life, right? And wow, they're charming, they're funny, they're witty. And then A Hard Day's Night comes out expecting more Elvis type jukebox musical teenage crap. And it's actually a very good film that has lasted to this day. So yes, that completely underscores it, is that at every turn the establishment was sort of undervaluing them. And boom, not only rise to the occasion, but exceeded.
- [23:13]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. And they did that without fail. You could almost say to this day, they're doing it in all the product that continues to come out.
- [23:21]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
To your point, when now and Then came out, it became for the people who were invested in the Beatles, it's like, oh my God, they did it again. That pocket of joy that we need in the world, they've lifted this up. We had a whole long show about it and people were describing their own experiences, emails flying back and forth. I cried. This sort of thing, whatever it is, they grabbed in their audience. Starting in 64 in America, they have held onto all the people that were invested then and still are now. That power's not diminished one bit.
- [23:53]
Candy Leonard
It was very deep and it was like a wraparound experience. And the relationship was not only between the fans and the Beatles, but what we called press then. But the media were also. It was like a three way relationship because the press knew that fans couldn't get enough of reading about them. And so they were on it constantly in the news. Their every move.
- [24:16]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
They made good copy.
- [24:17]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. And it sort of became this loop. But thinking about the politics of it, if you will, and how that is reflected even that all the events depicted in the documentary, one to one, the context for that, I mean the backstory of that, if you will, was this building of trust over those six years where they became authority figures. What Durkheim would call charismatic authority because they had this quality, that way of communicating and reaching young people in a way that had never happened before.
- [24:58]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
It resonated.
- [24:59]
Candy Leonard
It resonated. And, you know, we tend to think of it in the US or the uk, but it was really all over the world. I remember several years ago I met a woman around my age who grew up in Mexico and we got into talking about the Beatles and she said the thing about the Beatles was that one word, permission. So that's a woman, a first generation fan in Mexico City, summing it up like that. And I think that's brilliant because that's really what it was. And young people didn't have permission. And then again, getting back to the one to one documentary that shows Lennon's experience in Greenwich Village with the Yippies and all that, is that not only did we get permission, but we got permission to vote by the end of this period. And so they were able to accrue all this trust because they did reliably bring us joy and happiness and great music and things to talk about with our friends and the fashion and the word play, you know, and all the people who took up instruments or took up writing lyrics, you know, the impact, it was just enormous. But that's why they were so powerful. Derek Taylor called it like the greatest love story of the 20th century or something like that. It was. And it, as we were just saying, has extended into the 21st century and will likely continue as long as people are listening to music. So again, thinking about them as a political entity, their very presentation of themselves and the music and the evolution of them as people and learning about the world, I mean, they were so young. You know, I look at these early pictures of them and they were so young.
- [26:51]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Speaking as a first gen female fan, something that's easy to see in hindsight, and I don't know if it was a conscious observation at the time or was something maybe subconscious. The same thing that was attracting fans and maybe female fans in a particular way. To the Beatles, that might have been the same thing repelling them or feeling threatened by, to the establishment, quote unquote, was they're sort of representing a new male archetype.
- [27:23]
Candy Leonard
Right, exactly. I mean, I talk about that in B. They represented a new way of being a male in the world. I mean, the hair, yes, but also the, the friendships between them, the emotional temperature, the emotional intelligence that's communicated in their songs. And their lyrics was very different. Talking about women as friends, I mean, there's a whole host of things that made them appealing to women and also to men. I often say, you know, first generation male Beatle fans, boomer men, like they never quite got the memo, unfortunately. So it was liberating for everybody in a way.
- [28:08]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Permission for everyone. Yes.
- [28:10]
Candy Leonard
Again, getting back to that concept of permission. Yeah.
- [28:13]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Have you read the Ian Leslie book, John and Paul Love Story? I have not because it speaks to a lot of this, the high level emotional import of the way they wrote in their lyrics from right out of the gate. What you're discussing here.
- [28:30]
Candy Leonard
Right. I mean, people dismiss the early songs as not interesting lyrically, but I would argue that that's, you know, we don't have to go into all of it. But there are. Obviously the got more complex as we went along. But those five songs that were in the echo chamber in April of 64 where they occupied the five slots, those are little bursts of energy and all this. But the lyrics, they weren't heavy or deep, but they were easy to remember. These were short songs that were sort of simple in some ways, easy to remember. And that contributed to this falling in love, this seduction. I mean, that was very early on in all of this. Right. But you're hearing these songs constantly, one of them being Can't Buy me Love, which is a slightly different kind of way of thinking about love. What's important, values. I mean, just there was a kind of playful, higher sort of level of intelligence, if you will, in the lyrics than, you know, as I said in beat on this. And I'm like. They represented, I would have to add like one version of how intelligent men think about women or how a certain kind of man thinks about women. And women liked this. It's important to point out that a lot of this was aspirational.
- [29:54]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Sure.
- [29:54]
Candy Leonard
Because as we know in their personal lives, particularly at that time, they didn't have a new consciousness with regard to women. And I don't fault them for that.
- [30:05]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
They were old school, right.
- [30:07]
Candy Leonard
They're of their time and place. But there was something aspirational about love and romance and that it wasn't always doomed, that there was some uplift around all of it in those early songs that were so bouncy and happy. And that's where the brain rewiring happened with young people, like spinning around the rec room dancing to these songs that were just quick little snippets of, as one person referred to, she loves you, Joy on a piece of plastic. All of this stuff is how they came to be these charismatic authority figures, because we gave it up for them, you know, and they were giving us so much like something to talk about with friends, something to discuss with the other kids at the lunchroom who maybe didn't want to sit with you. And now they will, because you like the Beatles also. And it was everywhere. It was a wraparound experience. Then as the lyrics changed, became more sophisticated, and they were talking less about the subject matter of pop music was always romance and relationships and things. But as they got to move more away, to social commentary, if you will, it changed. And by that time, we were on the bus, we were on the journey with them. And so we were still taking it all in. I refer to it as Beatleness, as an alternative curriculum, which is what it was in the sense that you're following along with them. At the time, it didn't seem like this, but looking back on it as you consumed these different outputs of theirs over the years. And how they struck you and how you interpreted them. Or not. I mean, not that everybody thought about what lyrics mean. I understand a lot of people don't, but a lot of people do. A lot of people do, even though they don't realize they do. I'm still having this. Like, there are certain Beatles songs that. I can't say I listen to the Beatles a lot, but I do listen to them and certain things especially. And I'm still hearing them with aging ears. In other words, the idea of, like, a spiraling curriculum. Like, you study science in kindergarten, then in first grade, it gets more complex. In other words, you are older and wiser. So you go back and visit that subject matter with your new sensibilities or new knowledge.
- [32:31]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yeah, fresh years.
- [32:32]
Candy Leonard
Fresh years, right. And that happens. But even when it was new, it was like, wow. And then there's, as I talk about in Beatleness, some fans by the time of Revolver, like, it was a little too much. They weren't ready for it. And, of course, the Monkeys were there to fill that space. But the Monkeys were just as countercultural in their own way as the Beatles. They really defined the whole spirit of that time in a way that it was palpable. I was thinking. I made some notes. I was just thinking about. The role of drugs in all of this, I think is important. And I think it often gets whitewashed, if you will, out of the story, traditionally.
- [33:20]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
But there's been more groundbreaking work. I did a show about it years ago, correlating their choice of drugs with where the music was going. The amphetamine years, the pot years, the acid years. Definitely, you could trace that lie.
- [33:36]
Candy Leonard
Yeah, definitely.
- [33:37]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
And there's been a whole book written about it now called Riding so High.
- [33:54]
Candy Leonard
That was good. I was glad that someone did that because I think it's an important part of the story. We can conjecture, well, what if they. Whatever, what's the point, right? I mean, they did what they did, how they did, when they did, and we're glad they did and it's all good. But it did impact their output. And also as fans came to know that, that the Beatles were using pot and then lsd. I think it had an impact on a lot of young people that it was of a piece with the youth movement and everything else that was happening. Protests against the war and civil rights. I mean, there was so much happening at that time, so much change and tumult in the culture and they were very much a part of that.
- [34:40]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Is it safe to say that the youth of America would have found drugs without help from the Beatles?
- [34:46]
Candy Leonard
Well, probably. I don't know.
- [34:49]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Do you remember when you first became aware that they used pot? We know it started full blown with Dylan in August 64 and then manifested in the music that followed to varying degrees.
- [35:03]
Candy Leonard
It wasn't so much that we knew per se that they were using drugs. It was more that somehow pot became sort of part of what was happening in the way that they were what was happening. I certainly associate it with that time. I don't know. I mean, it's hard to say. The thing between thinking about these disruptive forces of the political aspects of drugs or political mindset, whatever, like thinking about it vis a vis Dylan. The Beatles had a much larger megaphone than Dylan had. And the Beatles were reaching fans, people across a much wider age range. Like there were not 5, 6, 7, 8 year olds listening to Dylan in 1964. Maybe if an older sibling or an uncle or a parent. But Dylan was not taken as he's ours by this mass of people that as the Beatles were. So anything they did, just the scale is really the key here. And anything they did had more impact because they did it and the press covered it. I mean, the reason that LSD became illegal and all the really important research that was being done for alcoholism and different uses of LSD all came to a halt because of the counterculture's embrace of it. And if you look at the recent resurgence of interest in that over the last 10, 15 years, and the accounts of people who are using LSD or psychedelics for depression or post traumatic stress disorder, they report their accounts of the experience read like within you, without you. You know what I'm saying, like, we're all one. I saw God. Like that whole unity consciousness that the Beatles were talking about that came as a result of using psychedelics was also extremely threatening to the status quo. So when I think it was David Crosby who made some comment about if all the leaders of the world used lsd, we'd be better. All this, you know, we look back on this as like the silliness of the period. But there was actually, you know, there was more going on there. In other words, like, LSD does make people more tolerant, more. I don't want to say spiritual, but it changes your consciousness in a way that was threatening to the status quo at the time, for sure. So I think that the drugs are certainly part of the story of their legacy. And the altered consciousness that they themselves experienced and that they sang about are, I think, important parts of the story.
- [38:01]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
So really, the results of taking the drugs in terms of expanding consciousness, if drugs were the vehicle that your consciousness became expanded, that's great if you tie that part to the Beatles, because they were sort of spearheading as the biggest thing with the biggest megaphone during that time. What they were saying musically could espouse that.
- [38:21]
Candy Leonard
Yeah, again, I don't think that they set out to take on this cultural role of leaders of the youth movement, which they were recognized as. Certainly from 66 on. They were generally seen, as you can look in the press at the time, and you know that they were seen as sort of the leaders of the counterculture. I don't think they set out to do that or to impart wisdom or anything. I think that it was a combination of things. Their skill, their talent was part of it for sure. But it was also the times that they were living in and they found themselves in this. This role that, as we know, particularly George and John were very ambivalent about.
- [39:05]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
But even before the bed in for Peace. Well, before that, I'm thinking December 65, the word on Rubber Soul. Yes, a recognition. We've got this platform. Our consciousness has expanded. Let's start sending direct messages out there. The right people will get it.
- [39:22]
Candy Leonard
My take is that they're political from the beginning, but some people will recognize. Oh, yeah, well, they start to be political with the word.
- [39:30]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
They were unwittingly political from the get go.
- [39:33]
Candy Leonard
Yes, unwittingly from the get go, but conscious of it before too long. I think that when you look at their incredulity, when they looked up around them at Shay, like they were coming to understand that this was something they didn't sign on. Not that they didn't sign. It was. I saw the Mountaintop. I mean, it blew their minds.
- [39:58]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
This is what bigger than Elvis looks like.
- [40:00]
Candy Leonard
Exactly. This is what the Topper most of the Popper most looks like. And I think they came, certainly George and John came to see a responsibility that came with it. I mean, John was very media savvy, and the way he talked about selling peace and all this advertising. And he recognized that he was in a historically unique position, that they were. He perhaps in particular, to have some impact. There's a very interesting interview that John did with look magazine in December 66 when he was in Spain working on How I Won the War. And he talks about basically wanting to leave the Beatles and do something more interesting. But you can hear he recognizes that he has to do something different, that there's something about his place in the zeitgeist, whatever, that he was very aware of and that he needed to figure out, like, what was next. What I find so interesting, sort of an aside about that look magazine, is that there are also articles in that same magazine about the Pope and Sigmund Freud. Okay, but Lenin is on the COVID all right, Which I just think is very funny. So I think he was uneasy about. You know, you break it up into like the Beatlemania years or the touring years and then the studio years or the 66 on. And you can see that certainly, you know, with Nowhere man and with Revolver and with the whole Jesus thing, they had become what Ian Inglis, who wrote this great article, talking about them as the men of ideas, that their position in the culture changed at that point. And people started asking, the press would ask them their opinions about different issues. Civil rights, the war, legalization of marijuana. Like, they became authorities. They became people whose opinions mattered to people really of all ages, in a sense.
- [42:13]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Would any of you care to comment on any aspect?
- [42:17]
Candy Leonard
I would be more.
- [42:18]
Richard
In Vietnam, we don't like it.
- [42:24]
Candy Leonard
No.
- [42:27]
Richard
I've elaborated enough, you know, just don't like it. It's, you know, it's just more. And it's obvious it's wrong. And that's all there is to be said about it. We can elaborate in England.
- [42:40]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
And that's an interesting thing because people anointing them to that position must have been picking up on the size of their megaphone and influence. Rather than being specialists or political scientists or anything. They were musicians. Right, but we want to know what you think about Vietnam.
- [42:57]
Candy Leonard
Right, but I don't think they wanted to know what they thought about Vietnam. Because what are you going to tell our kids? It was more like, you are four intelligent young men, citizens of the world with a great persistent. And you're obviously smart and intelligent and well read. In other words, they were men of ideas. I mean, they thought deeply about things.
- [43:21]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
And nobody was asking Peter Nunez.
- [43:23]
Candy Leonard
Right, right, exactly. It's funny that you mentioned Peter Noon. There's a great clip, where was it?
- [43:29]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Of him? With Graham Nash. Yes, yes, yes, yes. It's in that Leonard Bernstein special.
- [43:35]
Candy Leonard
Yes. Where Graham Nash is trying to kind of raise Peter Noon's consciousness.
- [43:43]
Richard
Another top English group, the Hollies, traveling with the Hermits and opening the show after the concert, the inevitable bull session. And even the show busiest of today's young musicians knows something is going on besides just entertainment. I think the pop musicians in today's generation are in a fantastic position. They could rule the world, man. And how does music fit into this? Music is the whole thing, man. It's an expression of the younger generation. Paul Simon, John Sebastian and John Phillips. And people like this. And Donovan, especially Donovan have got this great universal love man today because the kids are so tolerant and they really, they really want to understand what people are trying to say. Then they'll go with Donovan 99% of the way, because what he's trying to put over is best for everybody. It'll stop. What Donovan is trying to put over, will stop wars dead. I believe you. I believe that you're right about Donovan saying that love is a great thing. Now we have the power, we have the tolerance. We can go in front of a television camera, we can go on the air and we can say with definition that Hitler was wrong, that Rockwell is wrong, that people who hate Negroes are wrong. Right. And we can. Can get up there and shout it to the world, Pete. Well, I don't argue. You can shout it to the world. So why don't we do more of it? That's what I'm saying. We can stop world wars before they ever started. I disagree. I don't believe that. You know who start world wars for what? You know who start world wars? People that are over 40 people. That's it. People start war? No, people that are too old to realize that love rules the world.
- [45:19]
Candy Leonard
So they became very, you know, they were influencers. They were influencers from day one. But the content of their influence, the subject matter about which they were influencers, broadened and changed and came to include politics and the war, in particular, civil rights. At the time, we were not aware of all the things with the contracts and not playing segregated audience. I don't know that that was known at the time so much.
- [45:49]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I confronted Paul McCartney with reports that there might be segregation at their Gator bowl concert in 1964 in Jacksonville. He made it clear the Beatles wouldn't stand for it.
- [45:59]
Richard
I think it'd be a bit silly to segregate people because, you know, I mean, I don't think colored people are any different. You know, they're just the same as anyone else over here. There are some people who think that there's animals or something, but I just think it's stupid, you know, you can't treat other humans beings like animals. And so, you know, I mean, I. I wouldn't mind them sitting next to me. Great. You know, because that's the way we all feel. And a lot of people in England feel that way, you know, because there's never any segregation in concerts in England. And in fact, if there was, we probably wouldn't play them, you know.
- [46:28]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
But, you know, the Date Book magazine that got him in trouble, the McCartney quote, that's on that very cover.
- [46:34]
Candy Leonard
Right, right. But the zeitgeist of the time was such that all these movements for liberation became of a piece, and particularly as the decade wore on. And the Jesus thing was a real turning point because it really showed how powerful Lenin especially was. And we know that the record burning and all that, a lot of it was publicity. But there was a deep fear about their influence on young people, and rightly so. I mean, that guy, I forget his name, who wrote that pamphlet about the Beatles and communism and all the. The fact is they did have a. I don't want to say trance like, but they had an enormous, enormous influence on millions and millions of young people from a very young age. You know, it wasn't only teenagers. I always say this, maybe because I represent this category of fan, but, you know, if you look at a bar graph of the years of. That's defined as the baby boom generation from 46 to 64, the largest population were in the mid-50s. So I was born in 56. So people who were born between 54 and 58 were kids. But that was a large. I mean, look at the merch they made. It was all toys and games and things for children. So there was this huge swath of the population. And I think that that explains a lot historical circumstance.
- [48:12]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Just as in England when skiffle hit and rock and roll hit and that's All Right Mama and Rock Island Line were cut within a fortnight of each other in July 1954, it was the very same time that wartime rationing had ended. So now these kids that were born into war, 14, 15 years old, suddenly they're asserting themselves and this is the perfect vehicle for it. So it was this confluence that set the Beatles on their path back in England starting in 54, right.
- [48:42]
Candy Leonard
And the fact that they didn't have to do national service. I mean, imagine if they had to do national service. Like we might not be having this conversation today.
- [48:50]
Richard
Don't know where we'd be without you really though. In the army, perhaps.
- [48:53]
Candy Leonard
Again, you know, the whole Beatles story is compelling because it has these what if moments, right? Because there is the perfect storm that made all this possible. The size of their potential fan base, the technology, the national service, the post war feeling of maybe this is more true in the UK and the films in the UK that were highlighting working class life and all that, that there was this kind of renaissance or this liberation that was sort of in the air and it took a slightly different form here, Mad Men, that the pre Beatles era and the transition can be seen if you follow along the seasons of Mad Men. Also speaking of the UK is what made me think of that is in Call the Midwife. I don't know if you're familiar with that series.
- [49:50]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I've never seen it. I'm aware of it, yeah.
- [49:52]
Candy Leonard
Actually, Paul has commented that it really captures the experience because his mother was a midwife, but it takes place in this working class, kind of impoverished, really, area of London and it starts in the mid-50s and it goes all through the 60s.
- [50:09]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Oh, wow.
- [50:10]
Candy Leonard
They're mentioned a few times in fact, there's an episode where they had the newspaper and they were looking at about the Shea Stadium concert. But yeah, there was this sense after the war that there was a kind of renewal and I think with the way that the post war generation was raised, this whole thing with too permissive and Dr. Spock and all that, and that's why they were protesting, because they're spoiled. I mean, there is a sense in which the parents of first generation Beatles fans, the war had just ended, really. It was this feeling that we had defeated the Nazis and World War II was over and we triumphed and the economy was great. And so there was this real sense that something was going to be different. So I think that contributed in its way to this kind of trajectory of new and better that we were experiencing, which the 60s kind of represent. And those of us who witnessed this growing up to experience over the course of, let's say 10 years. All these positive changes that happened. And what we've learned recently is how quickly it can all go away, which is kind of devastating.
- [51:28]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
It reminds me, that sense of optimism. The New Frontier. That Donald Fagan song, igy, Are you familiar with it? The International Geophysical Year.
- [51:39]
Candy Leonard
Just machine to make big decisions. Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision. Vision. We'll be clean when that work is done. We'll be eternally free. Yes. And eternally young. What a beautiful world this will be.
- [52:00]
Richard
What a glorious time to be free.
- [52:04]
Candy Leonard
What a beautiful world this will be what a glorious time to be free yeah, yeah, I know that song. Yeah.
- [52:14]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
And so that's the start of the 60s, and, boy, does it end up in a different place. Which is not to say there was not any progress. But once it starts to gain momentum, what happens to arrest it and land us where we ended up in the 70s?
- [52:27]
Candy Leonard
I think that people talk about Manson and Altamont and all this as like, oh, the 60s are over. You know, all this darkness. All right? But a lot of it was, to quote Ian McDonald's, A revolution in the head. You know. In other words, people were changed by this. Okay, so you have Manson and you have whatever, all these things. But I don't think it was all for naught. Personally, you can't. Yeah, but if I were given a time machine to go back, where would I intervene in this? I would intervene and in Los Angeles, at Robert Kennedy's speech after winning the California primary. Because the loss of Robert Kennedy Sr. Was a real loss to all those ideals. And that vision of a fairer America was lost with him. And because of all the protests against the war and the Hard Hat riots and all this, you know, Nixon comes along, he's like, law and order, Law and order. Which, of course, has echoes to today as well. Of course, the pendulum swings in different directions. And there are backlash. I think we're experiencing a backlash now. I mean, we have been for the last ten years or so. When people talk about Make America great, well, when was America great? It was before the Ed Sullivan show, that's for sure. And before Dylan, too, probably. But the Beatles ability to captivate a generation and mobilize them in the way they did. I mean, that's what scared Nixon so much. That's why Lenin was on his enemies list, because Lenin was a threat to the social order. Now, I don't go so far as to say that. I mean, I know there are conspiracy theories about Lenin's assassination. I don't buy any of that, because by 1980, he was not seen as a threat to the government. I don't believe at all.
- [54:36]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
That's the hard part for sure. That's the part I find problematic. But some would argue back the reality versus the perception might not be the same thing. If he's perceived as a threat, that may be enough. And I'm not arguing one way or another, I'm just saying.
- [54:53]
Candy Leonard
You mean in 1980.
- [54:54]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I would argue he's living the right wing Dream in 1980.
- [54:58]
Candy Leonard
Right. Which is not to say he was right wing, but he was a recluse who no one thought about compared to the 60s or the early 70s, when he was more of a threat. He wasn't part of the cultural discourse anymore in 1980. Really very much.
- [55:16]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I don't know if you've seen some of the stuff. There was definitely during those five years, a clamor in the rock media. Come back, Johnny, we need you. Do you remember being aware of that stuff? That particular demographic was looking for a John Lennon and they didn't have one, so they're trying to drag the old one back onto the stage.
- [55:35]
Candy Leonard
You're talking about in the 70s?
- [55:37]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yes. There was Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone writer that penned an essay. We need you. John Trouser Press had a comeback, Johnny. Article, I think around 78 or so. This is all stuff going on during that era where there's no John to be what we projected onto him, what we wanted him to be in 7172.
- [55:57]
Candy Leonard
Oh, I'm not aware of all that, but I know that musically, those same writers that you mentioned, of course they wanted the Beatles back because they didn't like disco and punk was like. I don't know, they didn't go for punk or new wave. So of course they wanted their Beatles back.
- [56:14]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
There was nostalgia.
- [56:15]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. I mean, I don't know that they wanted him back as a totem, as a cultural power center. I don't know. But yeah. So by the time the events shown in the documentary. One to one, I have to say that documentary was. They should have given it a different name. Why did they call it that? Because the concert is almost incidental.
- [56:38]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Right.
- [56:39]
Candy Leonard
I really enjoyed it. Triggered a lot of memories from high school. But again, it speaks to his awareness of how much power he had and really genuinely wanting to use it in some way for good. I think that that's what he was musing about in that 1966 look magazine article. In other words, in this historically unprecedented situation, what do I do with this? And of course, the one to One concert was a year after Bangladesh, where he had seen George's triumphant, wonderful thing that he did both musically and culturally.
- [57:23]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Using the very thing he mused about at the end of 66, that rock star status, to put some good in a very tangible way into the world.
- [57:32]
Candy Leonard
Yeah, I think he felt an obligation to do that. Also a burden. I think he was ambivalent about it.
- [57:38]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yeah. Bangladesh was kaka.
- [57:40]
Candy Leonard
Oh, he said that.
- [57:41]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
He did say that. 1980.
- [57:42]
Candy Leonard
Oh, I didn't know that. Okay, well, that was not nice. But speaking of George, something that George did back in 68 that I think is a really important Beatles moment that doesn't get enough attention, particularly if we're talking about the Beatles as influencers, is George's surprise cameo on the Smothers Brothers. Very underappreciated moment. I urge everybody to go to YouTube, search on George Harrison's brothers and brothers, and play the longest clip that comes up because it's brilliant and it's beautiful. And of course, he looks fantastic. You're familiar with it, I presume.
- [58:22]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yeah, he's got the 66 George look.
- [58:25]
Candy Leonard
68.
- [58:25]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Right. This is 68, but he's got no mustache, no beard. He looks like Beetle George.
- [58:30]
Candy Leonard
Right. And he's wearing those wonderful striped pants and the silk shirt with the leather jacket. He just looks great.
- [58:37]
Richard
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. George Harrison. Hey, George, do you have something important, something very important to say on American television? You know, we don't. We. A lot of times we can't. We don't have opportunity saying anything important because it's American television. Every time you say something and try to say something important, they. Well, whether you can say it or not, keep trying to say it. That's what's important. You get that? Yeah, that is very important. Okay, cue the clap. Now.
- [59:27]
Candy Leonard
Why is this politically significant? Because the two prior weeks, the Beatles, the Hey Jude and Revolution videos had shown on the Smothers Brothers. And so we have to assume that the Smothers Brothers had the youth audience for sure. So he showed. And of course, the backstory being that the Smothers Brothers humor and their skits and the whole show was very countercultural. It was very anti establishment, particularly around the war. And there was also a lot of drug references and things. So they were in constant battle with the CBS censors, and eventually they did get canceled. But George came on and did a little clever back and forth with them and urged them to keep fighting. In other words, to keep fighting against the censors who wanted to silence them. And, of course, The Smothers Brothers were known for being so anti war. So I talk about this in Beatleness that fans said, if the Beatles are against the war, that's probably where I'm at with this. And again, not that young people even necessarily understood what the war was about or who's Viet Cong, who's Vietnam. We didn't know. Most people didn't know. I mean, certainly younger fans.
- [60:42]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Didn't you think it was a dog whistle?
- [60:44]
Candy Leonard
I wouldn't call it a dog whistle. I think it was George acting as an influencer. I mean, you want to call it a dog whistle? I don't know.
- [60:50]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Well, in terms of that audience watching the show, he's not explicitly saying anti war stuff. He's encouraging him to keep the resistance up, which by extension means because they're very political, they're very anti war, very anti LBJ administration.
- [61:06]
Candy Leonard
Right.
- [61:06]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Therefore you could extrapolate.
- [61:08]
Candy Leonard
Right. So it was not only against the war, it was also pro free speech, which again, resonates very much to today. But there was one fan who, I quote in the book who says, I came to realize that all the cool people were against the war. So they provided a framework for young people to think about all the stuff that was going on. I guess that's what leaders do. Like, you know, I'm reluctant to say they were leaders.
- [61:37]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
They're no leadership position. People are looking to them.
- [61:40]
Candy Leonard
Yes. And they were very successful at it. You know, if you look, I think it was in 68 and 69, the number of the protests on campus. I don't remember the numbers now, but like hundreds and hundreds of protests. And there was often some kind of little bit of beat on this. Often at these things, they'd be singing Yellow Submarine. Everyone had long hair.
- [62:03]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
No, you're right. We've talked about in this show the people wearing the little yellow submarine badges, this ideal place, this haven, this utopia.
- [62:12]
Candy Leonard
Right, utopia. You know, and this belief that the protests would make a difference, which I think it. I mean, it took a long time. I think it did make. It certainly resulted in the voting age being lowered. I think that it affected that. I don't know. I mean, there are a lot of people, as we know at the time and certainly now, who think all of this is horrible, this is all a disaster. But all of these things that came before Lenin came to the US the reason he was so threatening to Nixon was it started back in 64. In other words, this was a process that happened. This seduction, this falling in love with them and then trusting them. And they became authority figures and voices that we listened to. I think you've had a lot to do with the peace movement going on in Berkeley today.
- [63:03]
Richard
We've been screaming like, man from don't kill himself. And no bit of grass is worth that. No park is worth dying for.
- [63:11]
Candy Leonard
Even with the spirituality, which George still doesn't get enough credit for. Or should I say Patty? But, you know, here are these men, these young men, top of the world, all the money they could ever want, all the fame, all the power, all the sex. Like, you know, they wanted for nothing, right? But yet they were spiritually. Like there wasn't enough. And so they modeled this behavior for this generation of being seekers. Like, what is life about? Ask some important questions, like, why are we here? What is this all about? And you can say it's spiritual, but it's also political in the sense that it changed the way people thought about things. I have one fan I quoted in the book who talked about how they made me question success without meaning or something like that. And the foray into meditation and Eastern practices, you know, yoga and all that. Hugely, hugely impactful. It may be one of their biggest legacies, actually.
- [64:17]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
100%.
- [64:18]
Candy Leonard
And again, like, what does meditation do? What do these practices do? Well, they make you get past your own ego and your own bullshit. They foster what I call unity consciousness.
- [64:31]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I think Mike Love is doing it wrong.
- [64:35]
Candy Leonard
Maybe. I guess so. Their impact on so many things that we now take for granted. It's very interesting to look back on it and see how it all evolved.
- [64:47]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Do you think it only could have happened in the 60s in that there's not a precedent for a much loved entertainment entity for society to be taking their cues from prior to the Beatles, is there?
- [64:59]
Candy Leonard
There is no precedent. In fact, there's this way I describe it. Okay, so you have. They were communicating simultaneously to millions of young people at the same time across cultures, across language barriers. This had never happened before. You say about entertainment, forget entertainment, any cultural figure, even the Pope, even Jesus, did not have. Did not reach as many people in real time across cultures during these years of critical child and adolescent development. So if you step back and look at the scale of this and what was actually happening, that this communicating entity called the Beatles. Okay. I mean, the enormity of it. I've been writing about it for years and it still blows my mind when I think about it.
- [65:57]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yeah. Because I'm trying to look back. Other acts had screamers. Other acts received similar pushback from the establishment. Certainly Elvis, to a certain extent. Sinatra. But whatever reach they had, they weren't really wielding it to upgrade people's lives.
- [66:20]
Candy Leonard
Well, other than the enjoyment of the music. But, yeah, it was about entertainment. It was not about anything other than entertainment. And the Beatles very quickly became. Well, again, like, from the beginning, the way they showed up, they were obviously about more than entertainment. And I think that that moment. Could they have happened at another time? I don't know.
- [66:42]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
It just seemed like the people were ripe for it. At least that baby boomer generation.
- [66:47]
Candy Leonard
There was this what I call the cognitive dissonance in the culture. And young people realizing that we were not living up to the ideals that we learned about in school, about civil rights or why was there so much poverty. And. And the sds, you know, the Port Huron statement is very interesting to read, too, in this regard, where they talk about a society that's less militaristic, based on love and human flourishing. And so these ideas were out there, these little seeds, if you will, were out there. But the Beatles watered them and they sprouted and were consumed, to continue the metaphor, by this huge, huge demographic. So people say, well, were they agents of change or were they just reflecting what was happening? And I think it's a little of both, but I think they were certainly a catalyst. Again, it gets back to this premission you mentioned about other acts that had screamers. There's a book coming out soon called Swoon, which I was asked to write a blurb for. It's a really interesting book about. It looks at these various entertainers. And it, of course, includes the Beales and goes back to Byron, goes back, way back. Franz List, all of this. The interesting thing about all the acts that she talks about and the acts that had this or writers, in the case of Byron, that had this huge impact, they were all presenting a different masculinity. Even Sinatra was not in the way the Beatles were. But he did not impact as a traditional male Persona at all. The appearance, the songs he sang.
- [68:33]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yeah, well, he was super skinny, too skinny to make the war, I think. And then you had to punch your eardrum or something. But he was not your robust he man. Bing Crosby.
- [68:43]
Candy Leonard
Right. And Elvis, of course. List was also. This is maybe off topic a little, maybe not. I took my grandson to see this Boston Symphony Orchestra doing the songs of Led Zeppelin. And in preparation for this, I was revisiting a lot of Led Zeppelin stuff, and they did not get good press in the US at first. @ all. Now, maybe I'm wrong, but they were so androgynous. Robert Plant especially. And I think that the Gods of Rock press that you mentioned before and that ilk, I don't think they liked that. I think they found it very threatening.
- [69:26]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Isn't that interesting?
- [69:27]
Candy Leonard
Well, we know that's why the Kinks were not allowed. Didn't they have some issue with customs? They didn't let them in or something?
- [69:34]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
They had gotten into a brawl on stage. Mick Avery and Dave Davies, they got in trouble with the musicians union and then they got blocked from coming into the States for like three years or something.
- [69:44]
Candy Leonard
But they were also very androgynous. I don't know if you use that word, because that was sort of an easy way to describe it. But yeah, I was just really struck by the contrast, like juxtaposing the appearance and the novelty of Led Zeppelin's sound and their appearance with the rejection, the criticism that they got from the press. I think that the gender issue had something to do with that. I really do. Looking back on it now, that's interesting.
- [70:13]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I wonder then how they reacted to New York Dolls.
- [70:16]
Candy Leonard
By that point we'd been through Bowie and Stonewall and I don't know, the position has shifted. Shifted a little bit. Yeah. I think there was some more openness to that, you know, Transformer. I don't know. I mean, when did Led Zeppelin come here for the first time?
- [70:35]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Was 68, 69? Well, they started end of 68, but I think they came to the States in 69. There's that new doc about them that you've maybe seen.
- [70:44]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. So, you know, it's one thing to tolerate long hair on the Beatles and some other acts, but like, their appearance was really over the top as far as the gender bending or whatever people were calling it that. And I really do believe that that was part of the resistance to them.
- [71:02]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I think it was perceived at least, because there's a great interview circa 1970 with Badfinger and they're as benign a pop rock band as can be. They're not looking to shift any paradigms. But they talk about having very much a legit fear for their lives in coming to America because of their long hair. And the radio interview is like incredulous. Like, why? And Tommy says, because we saw Easy.
- [71:32]
Candy Leonard
Rider, you know, long hair, it always had a lot of different meanings to different people. It was threatening, but in different ways.
- [71:40]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Biker culture changed.
- [71:42]
Candy Leonard
Biker culture changed. Right. I mean, it's complicated. That would be a great book. I don't know if somebody's written that yet about the meaning of hair through the 60s and 70s, but the guy in Easy Rider gets shot because he's a dirty hippie. But then not long after that, you had what we now call right wing bikers also growing their hair. So it's a symbol of freedom. It's self expression. It's like, leave me alone. That's threatening to a wide swath of groups. They unleashed something that again, gets back to this notion of permission, I think is a big part of it. Yeah, the thing that struck me about the documentary, I mean, a lot of things struck me about it. I hadn't seen it and you suggested that I watch it. And I'm glad you did because I really did enjoy it, the phone conversations between the various people. But John still wanted to do something. Like here he was in New York, still recognizing he had this platform that he was an influencer. And I think some of it was misguided at times, but I think he genuinely really wanted to use his platform for good and was working to figure out how to do that. And then of course, the Willowbrook, they happened to see the thing on the news about Willowbrook. So that became the thing thing. There was a quote that I loved. I think it was Yoko in the film where she says, I guess somebody asked them why Willowbrook? And she said that the children of Willowbrook are symbolic of the pain in the world. And I thought that that was really beautiful and simple. You know, there was a simplicity and also juxtaposed with John's famous discomfort with people who are handicapped. But it was interesting that that wasn't an issue for him in this.
- [73:43]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yeah, you say you want an evolution, right.
- [73:45]
Candy Leonard
They saw these children as symbolic of the pain in the world, which I thought was beautiful. And of course, that began the friendship between John on Yoko and Geraldo Rivera, which one wonders what happened to Geraldo Rivera. But that's a whole other conversation too.
- [74:04]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Well, it's interesting because it's not a explicit point made in a film. Maybe, or maybe I'm just thick. But clearly the peril he put himself in by getting involved in all these political causes that brought the full force of the US government down on him must have bitten him hard enough that he backed the hell off of it and just kind of hunkered down. Even after he won his Green card and maybe 1980, 1981, he was ready to start venturing back into that arena again. It's hard to know, but when you hear his interviews in promoting Double Fantasy, he has this tone of regret about his involvement with leftist politics in the early 70s. Like he did it for the wrong reasons.
- [74:49]
Richard
Power to the people. Another one to add the collection.
- [74:52]
Candy Leonard
Any memories of that?
- [74:53]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Now, it's not that long ago really.
- [74:54]
Candy Leonard
But it's nine years.
- [74:55]
Richard
As we sit here in this seems hell. December day in 1980. Does it seem a hell of a long time ago? Oh, it just seems like power of the people. Wasn't that the. The First World War? No, no, it wasn't. Anyway, I remember that that was the sort of the expression going around those days. And I just. Tarek Allied kept coming around wanting money for the Red Mole or some magazine, you know, And I used to give anybody. It was sort of left field, avant garde or so in the art field or the political field, Money kind of out of guilt as well. Because I was thinking, well, I'm working class and I'm not one of them, but I'm rich, so therefore I have to. So anytime somebody said something, I would fork out, you know. And he was hustling for whatever he was hustling for. And I kind of wrote Part of the People in a way, kind of as a guilt song, you know, sort of. I better do that, you know.
- [75:50]
Candy Leonard
But incidentally, we heard it last night just by accident. So. Good intro and it's very heavy. Very good.
- [75:58]
Richard
Yeah, not bad. It's like.
- [76:00]
Candy Leonard
It's.
- [76:00]
Richard
To me, it's like a newspaper song, you know, when you write about something instant that's going on right now. And I don't call it a well crafted song or anything. Just that with the news headline, you know, with misprints and everything. Even with the Jerry Rubins and the Tariq Alleys and that we'd always comment to them and after they'd left, well, where's the women? You know, where's the women running Red Mole? Where's the women socialists? Where's the women left wingers? Where's the women in on the meeting about how they're going to overthrow the government or whatever the hell they were talking about.
- [76:28]
Candy Leonard
And Jerry's girlfriend typing his thesis or something, you know, liberate the world.
- [76:34]
Richard
They're all doing the typing and making the coffee, you know. Come on, this is garbage. But, you know, it took us time to sort of see through it all like that. We'll help with the concert because that's positive. We'll sing our part and, you know, all the rest of it. And we were naive as well, thinking not none of the money would go to anything nasty, but. And the reality was we'd have these incredible dialogues. And we keep saying to Abby you know, you can't. We're not against that. We're for this. We're not against that. We're for this.
- [77:05]
Candy Leonard
What happened?
- [77:06]
Richard
There was no concert because we said, no way. And Ginsburg was with us. He said, create Chicago is to create death and destruction. We don't want to. Apart from not being dumb enough to want to get hurt ourselves, we weren't going to create a riot. We didn't want to be part of riot or create a riot or be responsible or even promote it. So we just said, no way. That's all. That's out, brother. They leaped it to of Rolling Stone. Jerry couldn't keep his damn mouth shut as usual and was already on the press with his, you know, blabbing off because the media freaks, you know. So Jerry talked to Rolling Stone. There's going to be a San Diego concert. John and Yoko coming and their friends. Who's that?
- [77:47]
Candy Leonard
Dylan?
- [77:47]
Richard
The Beatles. God, Jesus. You know, that bit, those days, wherever we went, there was always those rumors too. So that was already printed out in Rolling Stone that this was all going to happen. Because anybody who was so, who seemed to be powerful enough to be used by these crazy radicals is the way that the right must have been looking at it was dangerous. So therefore, why haven't he. The two foreigners. We don't need any of them any more. Freaks. We've got enough of our own.
- [78:16]
Candy Leonard
Yeah, I think when he saw the potential for violence was when he backed off and also maybe just decided he didn't want to be harassed anymore. There's a lot of looking back on that period with slight embarrassment or regret, you know, because there was a lot of excess.
- [78:34]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
You took it too far.
- [78:35]
Candy Leonard
Yeah, but you know, like Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, they reached out to him. Like, he didn't say, okay, now I'm here, I'm gonna hook up with some radicals. Like, they all kind of glommed onto him.
- [78:50]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Two media savvy people, right?
- [78:53]
Candy Leonard
And maybe you could even say they used him, them, John and Yoko. I mean, they did get John Sinclair released. So that was a good thing. And they raised money for Willowbrook, which was a good thing. It wasn't a great musical period for them. I remember that very. I remember all that Que pas in New York and all that stuff. I remember that.
- [79:14]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
How did you, as presumably leading feminist, react to the song?
- [79:20]
Candy Leonard
Well, I've written about this. I have a piece called John Voice for Feminism. Obviously there are many tragedies about John no longer being with us, but one of them is that in terms of the public, not his family and the loss to them, but that I think he could have been an influencer on feminism and perhaps other issues as well. You have a record here that bears some explanation because there's a bit of hassling going on as to whether or not it can be sung or not.
- [79:53]
Richard
Yeah, there's always every other record I seem to have a hassle with. Well, this is a song about the women's problem. It was written by Yoko and I, and the song is called Woman Is the Nigger of the World. And obviously there was a few people that reacted strangely to it, but usually they were white and male. But that's. I'll tell you the story of how it came about in 1969. I put it on the COVID of the single, so it helps explain it a bit. Yoko did an interview with the woman about the woman's problem. And I didn't have anything to do with it. And then I noticed the COVID it was called Nova. It's an English woman's magazine, like McCall's or something like that. And the first time I heard about it was I saw it on the COVID of McCall's like that. And it sort of said, she, Woman is the nigger of the world. Well, at the time I was more of a chauvinist than I am now. And I must say, I was saying, well, come on, what about this and what about that? And I argued a lot. And then as like everybody else, we talked about more and more about it in the last two years, it became more of a thing. And I had to, you know, find out about myself and my attitude to women. And this phrase of hers kept coming through my head, Woman is the nigger of the world. Woman is the nigger. So I said, come on, Yoko, look, this is it. You've said it here, I agree with you. Now I think she is. She's the slave of the slaves. That's what Connolly said, the great Irishman. And so we sat down together and we wrote. We tried to write together the whole story as best we could in a three or four minute song. And it's called Woman is the Nigger of the World. And then luckily for me, because a lot of stations were saying, well, we're not going to play this because it says nigger. And a white man shouldn't say it, though all my black friends feel that I have quite a right to say it because they understand it. And then, strangely enough, the chairman of the Black Caucus, that great guy, Congressman Ron Dellums, Democrat, California, says Here he came out with this, which is fantastic. If you define niggers as someone whose lifestyle is defined by others, whose opportunities are defined by others, whose role in society is defined by others, then good news, you don't have to be black to be a nigger in this society. Most of the people in America are niggers. I didn't say that. Oh, my goodness, we'll never get him now. I think. I think the word nigger has changed. It does not have the same meaning as it used to. And I think he put it very succinctly there. And I really believe women have the worst. Whatever it is, whatever however badly or poor people are, it's the woman that takes it when they get home from work.
- [82:18]
Candy Leonard
I think he genuinely evolved. I mean, I write about this in this piece. I wrote in the film. They talk about the primal scream, therapy and trauma and all this. Like, John owned his shit. Like, he recognized that he had trauma from his childhood and from his upbringing and his parental stuff. And he recognized that his understanding of women was off and, you know, whatever. I mean, he was raised around a lot of strong women, but he was still misogynist. Right, or whatever. Yoko genuinely raised his consciousness and he admits that, like, I think there's a lot of evidence to suggest that he genuinely underwent transformations around a lot of things in his life that were problematic that he had the self awareness to recognize. And he worked on himself and I think he, whatever, became enlightened, more highly evolved, whatever you want to call it. But I think that he genuinely, with Yoko's help, developed a feminist consciousness and recognized the stupidity of half of humanity being oppressed for no reason. And I think he also got over his own ego, which I think is necessary for men to get to that point. And he did it kind of publicly. Yeah. So there's a lot to admire about him. I know his place in history. A lot of new fans, like, discover all this negative shit about, oh, my God, he's terrible human being. He's a product of his time and place. I believe he is a good role model for anybody, but perhaps especially for men in that, like I say, he owned his shit, he owned his childhood traumas, and he worked it through and became better for it.
- [84:14]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Do you see that line in Getting Better as an early clue to the new direction? I used to be cruel to my woman. I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved.
- [84:23]
Candy Leonard
Oh, I don't know. Paul probably wrote that line. I don't really know what to make of that.
- [84:28]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
It's public. Assuming if you're in the audience, you're thinking that they're writing autobiographically and not just creating characters like Desmond and Molly, that he means what he's saying there. I just wonder how that was received.
- [84:43]
Candy Leonard
Some people were a little disturbed by that whole. I think it's fine. I mean, man, I was mean and I'm changing my scene. I mean, I'm growing as a human being. I'm not a finished product. Again, a lot of boomer men never got the memo about self awareness and how we grow as human beings throughout our lives. And I mean even that was probably a new idea in the 60s. It's sort of out of the human potential movement and all that. But I think that maybe was an early clue to the new direction. He was very savvy about a lot of things and his whole talking with McLuhan about the power of media in 1969, I think also left an impact on him and it affirmed his belief, I think, in the power of media and the power that he had as a media figure. He almost understood all that intuitively, I think, you know, he watched TV constantly.
- [85:47]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yeah. Which one to one really uses as a through line.
- [85:51]
Candy Leonard
Yes, it's very nicely done. I like his line where he said that TV is like the new fireplace. I thought that was very good.
- [85:59]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yeah, it was interesting in a way. Maybe it makes your point about them being political in even unwitting messaging right out of the gate that the makers of that Beatles 64 doc put Marshall McLuhan in there.
- [86:15]
Candy Leonard
That's why I'm thanked in the credits.
- [86:17]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Oh, it was your idea.
- [86:19]
Candy Leonard
And also the Friedan clip. Ah, yeah. I was contacted. I didn't. And she was very hush hush about the project. But somebody contacted me about. They were looking for a contemporaneous commentary about the Beatles impact. And I talked and so I told him about. There's a great clip about Betty Friedan talking about the long haired boys and what they represent. I mean it's great. Again, if you haven't seen it, like go to YouTube and Google Betty Friedan long Haired boys. It's a great little clip of her talking about what it represented at that time.
- [86:57]
Richard
My opinion, the other half of the woman of the revolution, the other half, half of women's liberation movement is the boys in my country and in yours wearing their hair long. Those boys who are wearing their hair long are saying no to the masculinistique. They are saying no to that brutal, sadistic, tight lipped, crew cut, Prussian, big muscle you know, Ernest Hemingway, kill bears.
- [87:22]
Candy Leonard
When there are no bears to kill.
- [87:24]
Richard
And napalm all the children in Vietnam and Cambodia to prove that I'm a.
- [87:28]
Candy Leonard
Man, you know, and be dominant and.
- [87:29]
Richard
Superior to everyone concerned and never show any softness. Well, these boys that are wearing their hair long are saying, no, I don't have to be all that crew cut and tight lipped. I don't have to be dominant and superior to anyone. I don't have to have big muscles because there aren't any bears to kill. I don't have to kill anybody to prove anything. I. I can be tender and I can be sensitive and I can be compassionate and I can admit sometimes that I'm afraid and I can even cry. And I am a man, and I am my own man. And that man who is strong enough to be Geno, that is a new man.
- [88:10]
Candy Leonard
It's very sad in a sense, because a lot of this utopian vision that's kind of baked into all of this clearly did not come to pass. But nevertheless, I mean, it was very aspirational. But. Yeah, and McLuhan, too, that the instantaneity of everything suddenly and the power of media. Yeah. Somebody contacted me that I was thanked in the credits. And I was thrilled, of course, but I didn't know why. And then I remembered, oh, that was that person who contacted me. I was thrilled that they put it in because it really does show the impact. I liked Beatle 64 a lot. There's so many documentaries. I can't claim to have seen all of them, frankly, but I liked it. I thought it had more value in terms of the historical record than Ron Howard's thing, which was in many ways a vanity project.
- [89:04]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Anthology Lite.
- [89:06]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. In the hands of Martin Scorsese and his team. I thought that it really showed the context and that's what's important, I think, in terms of future generations or historians wanting to understand this, it really showed it very, very well, I think. And that wonderful clip of Smoking Robinson talking about Paul and how they had met them so many years before. There's something very sweet about that, that they were still both alive and doing their thing. And I liked that documentary a lot. I thought it was very well done. And it. It wasn't the usual fetishizing. It added some meat to the bones.
- [89:49]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I'm glad to hear you say that. And I'm glad that the listeners are hearing you say that because that's a nice drop of validation for a lot of people who felt disappointed in that film because they were expecting the first US visit on steroids. And it wasn't that. It wasn't that kind of film.
- [90:06]
Candy Leonard
There's enough of that. Like, why would Martin Scorsese bother doing that? Like, I don't know how many Beatles documentaries there are. There are many, many, many. And I think this one stands out. You know, again, it's only focusing on that short period of time, you know, like the first U.S. visit. But it gets to why they were such a big deal in that moment.
- [90:30]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yeah.
- [90:30]
Candy Leonard
And of course, some of that footage, you know, I mean, a lot of the footage in that was already seen, but I guess there's, like, was 18 minutes of new Maisie's footage that no one had seen or something. I mean, it's incredible how it echoes A Hard Day's Night. I mean, it's just hilarious. It's just hilarious.
- [90:49]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
The best thing in there, for my money, was that bit of found footage that I guess they had thought was not usable because it was too dark or something like that. They restored it. It's Paul on a train saying, we're just having a laugh. Yeah, that was beautiful. Thank God they rescued that.
- [91:07]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. And, you know, not thinking about how long it would last or anything like that. Even though they were asked that constantly. Yeah, they were having fun. And, you know, they had their own cameras with them and, as we now know, taking lots of pictures. As I said earlier, like, you know, sometimes I think I have nothing else to say about the Beatles, but I guess I do. I don't know. As I said, there are moments when I, as much as familiar as I am with all of the facts of the case and having lived through it, talking about it with, you know, somebody like yourself, who's informed and into it and all that, it's just, I think, anew of how fucking amazing it all was, seriously.
- [91:51]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
And to that point, because it was so kind of ahead of the curve of where we are now, all these women scholars now contributing mightily to the conversation beatleness was pioneering in its way. For anybody that is not familiar with the book, what do they need to know?
- [92:10]
Candy Leonard
Well, I really appreciate your saying that, because I do think that I inspired a lot of women scholars, and I have a PhD. I'm a sociologist, so in that sense, I'm a scholar. I'm not an academic per se, but I do think that I inspired a lot of women to not only write about it from an academic perspective, but also from their own fan story. Right. You know, the validity of the fan story. I think I can take some credit for that, Gary Berman wrote a book with some, you know, also looked at fans. But what Beatleness does is it looks at it from the perspective of a young person growing up in the 60s, immersed in Beatles and what that was like and how each album, each TV appearance, each film, how that affected them. And you know, as a qualitative researcher, you know, I'm a professional interviewer, so I was able to bring out that micro level. You know, every fan sitting in his or her room staring at the album cover and listening and getting blown away. But also at the macro level, at the cultural level where, you know, it gets back to, you know, I talk about, you know, the statue in Liverpool of four lads who shook the world and my dream that I talk about, which this really did happen, where I had this dream where I ran it, saw Paul McCartney on a bus and we start talking and I said to him, like, you know, you guys changed everything. You know, it's like that statue in Liverpool says, right for life. So he says to me in this dream, well, shook your world maybe. And then I woke up and realized that's the thing here, is that as a sociologist looking at the micro level and the macro level, all the individuals whose world was shook, right, Your world, my world, my neighbor's world, my cousin's world, the kids in my class at school, okay, so that's how it happened because we were all seduced. But yeah, so Beatleness, I'm very proud of it. And I think that it's kind of a 360 view of the whole thing and the story's told in real time. So in other words, the reader only knows what we knew at the time as you're reading it. So it's like, I think there's maybe at the end one reference to John not being around anymore, but it shows how the politics and the events that were happening in the country at that time and the experience of young people and how the music kind of mediated that in a way almost like the music and the Beatles and everything that followed in their wake, the renaissance that they started. Young people used that as a way of understanding what was going on in the world and finding their voice or their position being influenced, but also just thinking differently, as the ad said years later, right, with a picture of John in yoga. Right. You know, so I sort of show how all of this, how the music and the politics and the day to day experience of young people really was in fact very intertwined. I mean, I tell an anecdote about a fan who has this very vivid memory of sitting with his friends on the curb near their house listening to hey Jude right after it came out. And a car pulled up and men in uniforms came out to tell a neighbor that their son had died in Vietnam, which was a very common occurrence at that time. So they were present during all of these events. You know, the single hey Jude Revolution actually was released during those three, four day period of the Chicago convention in 68, you know, so hey Jude became a kind of very comforting, healing. Yeah, yeah. You know, I feel very fortunate to have witnessed that, to live through that. But as I say, there's a certain sadness about it all now, really, in a way, not about the Beatles. I mean, the music is still there. And in fact, for people who grew up with them, really, there's nothing else in our lives to this day that is as reliably pleasant and uplifting. I'm 68 years old, right. Like, I've been through a lot of shit. My marriage ended, friends come and go. You know, my kids got older and moved out. You know, different things. You know, I lost this job I got. You know, through all the changes that we've all gone through in our lives, they remain a constant and there's nothing else. So in that sense, they still hold this very unique place because you can put on whatever, take your pick, whatever record, song, whatever it is, and it still sounds great, maybe even better, either because it's been remixed or because you appreciate it in a new way because you're older and I mean, we can talk about this forever.
- [97:37]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
The beauty of what you're saying is it's not restricted to first gen fans.
- [97:42]
Candy Leonard
No, it's not.
- [97:43]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yeah. People are discovering the Beatles every day that were born decades after they played their last collective note.
- [97:50]
Candy Leonard
Yes.
- [97:51]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
That's the amazing thing. And getting exactly that same power out of it.
- [97:54]
Candy Leonard
Yeah.
- [97:55]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
So that book hasn't been written yet. What is this?
- [97:58]
Candy Leonard
I think part of the intrigue for younger fans is certainly the music. Of course. I mean, it's always in the first instance, since it's the music that brings you in. But I think their story, their story of how they came to be and then the story of the 60s and the Beatle years and then a lot of, from what I understand and have spoken to some young, it becomes like a whole area of study. Like they want to learn more and they want to understand how this happened. But the improbability of the whole thing. But the improbability of the four of them coming together in the first place is you know, like, how did that happen?
- [98:49]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Which is why we haven't made another Beatles since right now.
- [98:53]
Candy Leonard
I have to say, I have to put out a word for Taylor. Cause one of my takes, and I talk about this in the book, is how Beatles being a constant presence for six years, right? This intense, constant presence in our lives, in the culture, all this, okay. And the impact that that had. Their words, their attitudes, everything about. Okay, so now Taylor Swift has been making music and has fans who have been with her for 18 years. And she is an amazing poet, lyricist, whatever you want to call it. And so there are things one can equate about these at the phenomenon level. And there are definite differences. But I think that her impact on her fans, her hardcore Swifty fans, you know, the ones who've been with her from the beginning, is an enormous impact. Bigger than the Beatles in that sense. I mean, the Beatles were talking into our ear for six years. Okay, I'm talking again first. You know, like sort of in real time at, you know, six years. She's been doing that for 18 years. And as a powerful woman, and a woman who has become more powerful over that time, her influence on the psyche of her fans is bigger, I think we have to say, than the Beatles, really.
- [100:18]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
See, that's the thing. I wonder, because all due respect to Taylor, I couldn't tell you a single song of hers. And I'm not somebody who lives in a cave. I interact regularly with the world and music and whatever path that reaches me. And I don't see her have the same sort of unifying reach that the Beatles did. And at the same time, in real time, in the 60s, all the other artists are like, what are the Beatles going to put out next that we can be influenced by and take from? Are they doing that with Taylor Swift?
- [100:49]
Candy Leonard
Yes. I mean, Rob Sheffield's book on Taylor Swift. You might want to read it. I think you might find it interesting. Yeah. I mean, this whole crop of single female singers who are taking control of their thing, writing their own songs. Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, Chapel Roan. I mean, there are a lot of them who have been inspired by her over the years. I don't think she's. You know, all those things we were talking about before, about how the moment kind of favored the Beatles to have the impact they had. I don't think that was not true for her, just given where she came from and all that.
- [101:28]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
And there's not the same unification of media channels that's true.
- [101:32]
Candy Leonard
But given how fractured the media landscape is now compared to when she actually has accomplished. I mean, she is kind of monoculture in the way the Beatles were, really. Even in spite of all the fractured media landscape. I mean, she's on her third generation of fans and you know, obviously people don't like her, you know, and again, like, she was dismissed. I wrote a piece on this, how I became a Swiftie. She's a great wordsmith. She really is. You know, when I first became interested in learning more about her, I did what I encouraged new Beatle fans to do, which is I went back to the beginning and I listened in chronological order from 2006 to her first debut, they call it, to all the way to now. And you can hear the development, you can hear her development, you can hear her evolving the lyrics, the emotional palette. And musically, you know, she drops the whole country thing. But here's what I wanted to say was that she was, of course, by the still mostly male music press, dismissed. She was written, in fact, I always, until I learned more about her, I thought that she was a product of American Idol for some reason. Like, I didn't know that much about her. But she was dismissed. And then at some point, well, like many older people, I discovered her during the pandemic with Folklore and I was really impressed. And well, I knew Shake it Off, I guess I had heard, but that's all I knew. So after listening to Folklore, that inspired me to go back and listen from the beginning. She's a huge, huge talent at the phenomenon level, which is always, you know, my interest in a lot of these pop culture music phenomena are at the phenomenal level, you know, because I was, oh, never be another Beatles. Never be in other Beatles. Yeah, well, we didn't know she was gonna show up in a sparkly leotard. And again, there are things about like, I don't think she's the artist the Beatles were. I don't wanna say that necessarily. I mean, she's of her time and place, they're of their time and place. But there are a lot of similarities, a lot of precedent setting things about both phenomena. Whatever you might think about Taylor Swift as a performer or an artist, the scale of her fame is absolutely beyond Beatle caliber.
- [104:10]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I've left you speechless because I'm sitting here thinking it's curious she ends up not with a Beatle archetype, but with a football player. How the World's Come Full Circle.
- [104:22]
Candy Leonard
You should read Rob Sheffield's book. It's called Heartbreak Is a National Anthem. He's a big Swiftie.
- [104:27]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Is that a song Title, It's a.
- [104:29]
Candy Leonard
Line in one of her songs, New Romantics. And in the book, he lists his. I think he listed in the book his top Swifty songs, his top 10 solo songs. She's very clever, she's very funny. I mean, she's clearly been influenced by all the greats. All the greats. And like the Beatles, she had parents who helped her realize her dream.
- [104:52]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Isn't her mother her manager?
- [104:53]
Candy Leonard
She travels with her all the time. She's very close with her mother. But she's sui generis in some ways, like the Beatles were. Well, actually, maybe that's not the right word, but I can't wait to see what she does next. And I feel really happy for all those mostly female, but not all female, you know, her fans who have been with her that long, how great that must be. And talk about parasocial relationships. Right. 18 years she's been singing to women about. Again, I shouldn't say she has a male fan base as well, but I think her influence is enormous. And I can't say I'm waiting for her next album like I was awaiting the next female album. I won't go that far. But I think that the fact that she is so young still and so talented and evolving as a talent, I mean, that's the thing. I think one of the keys to evaluating an artist or a performer as an artist is do they evolve? Do they change? Do they grow as a person? And we saw this, of course, with the Beatles, and we saw it with David Bowie and Joni Mitchell and Dylan. And did the Stones evolve? Not really. They're still great rock and roll musicians, but it's still the same. And when you see this artistic development and it's consistently. I mean, I can't say every. Just like every Beatles song is not wonderful, every Taylor Swift song is not wonderful. I don't want to misrepresent my swiftiness, but she's doing great stuff. It's great pop music. Like, she's not innovative in the way the Beatles were, okay? And some could probably take issue with that too. But she's doing really great state of the art pop music, I put it that way. And it's intelligent. There's an intelligence to it that I think was there from the beginning but was dismissed because she was a teenage girl. So we'll see what that goes. But at the phenomenon level, there's some interesting compare and contrast with Beatlemania. I say everybody likes Taylor Swift. That's not true. But those who do like her are very diverse. In terms of age, Is that your Beatle parallel thinking about the Beatles now or even then? In other words, this notion of the monoculture. Everybody's tuned into this thing. This thing comes from now where Stephen Colbert, I don't know how much of a Swifty he is, and he may just be pandering, but couple of references over a couple of things. In his monologue, he references to Taylor Swift, things like when she was in the news a lot with Travis Kelsey, but it reminded me of the Beatles in a sense. And like, you have to be under a rock to not have heard of Taylor Swift. You may not like her, you may not know her music, but, like, you know that she's a thing out there that like a lot of people like, yeah, sure. And you say you haven't heard any of her songs. Like, you know, you probably have.
- [108:09]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I have. They haven't made an impression.
- [108:11]
Candy Leonard
Haven't made an impression. Yeah, that's fine.
- [108:14]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I'd recognize her as a force for good. Would a male fan be a swifter?
- [108:18]
Candy Leonard
I think swifties is a gender neutral term.
- [108:21]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Okay.
- [108:22]
Candy Leonard
But yeah, she's a total force for good. I mean, she gives huge, huge bonuses to all her crew and her roadies. She contributes to food banks and every city she goes to. Like she's changing people's lives.
- [108:36]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Right. That much penetrates. It's the music that does it. I recognize her positively. She's a cat lady. I like that.
- [108:43]
Candy Leonard
Yeah, I like that she's out of the, you know, like, I think that she's taking a little deserved break. I mean, again, like, that kind of fame, you know, like, you look at the footage of her at all these concerts, you know, like, you can't help but think about Shea Stadium. And at least I, you know, that evokes Shea Stadium for me. And you know, when John said, like, he felt like he was going mad looking at the top of the mountain and all that, she does that, like night after night after night after night for years. And she's one person. She doesn't have anyone to share it with except her dancers and her crew, but it's all her. And she's more apt to protect her mental health than the Beatles were. George Harrison famously talked about his nervous system. How do you go to sleep after an evening like that? And this is why a lot of performers get involved with drugs, because you just need turn it off somehow or so. I hope that she continues to take care of herself and doesn't become a Michael Jackson or an Amy Winehouse or a court culain. Many to choose from. And I think we're, as a culture, we're more accepting of people who sport, like Simone Biles, you know, people talking about their mental health and taking breaks and all that. I think that's a healthy thing to do. But it's fun to think about the idea of, like, could there be another Beatles? And I think the answer is no. But I think that with Taylor Swift, we're seeing a phenomenon that has elements of that, for sure.
- [110:15]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Right, right. And I think the next Beatles to come is gonna be maybe in an unrecognizable form because they are unique. And so was everything that came before them that was that level. You know, there's only one Franz List, there was only one Sinatra.
- [110:30]
Candy Leonard
You know, the sound was different with the Beatles. I don't know what that would look like. I mean, I'm tempted to say that it sort of can't happen, but that's like saying, like, history is over. So I don't want to say that. But Swift comes close by a lot of measures in answering that question. I mean, just think all those, you know, people say, oh, the Bay City Rollers are going to be the next Beatles. Remember that? Or I think that Nirvana has a claim by some criteria to that. You know, you can sort of look at different huge stars that had huge following artists over the decades that have elements that were similar to the Beatles, as far as looking at it at the phenomenon level, if you will.
- [111:18]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
And maybe that's the difference is they are the whole package in a way that nobody has come close to.
- [111:23]
Candy Leonard
Exactly right. They had the whole package. They had the scale, they had the innovation, they had the historical moment that fed them and that they in turn affected. You know, so they had the whole package and three vocalists and, you know, four vocalists, you know, two great songwriters. They had all of it.
- [111:46]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Amanda film when it was not them running the show like Mystery Tour, but in other vehicles. Hard Day's Night helped they more than hold their own.
- [111:54]
Candy Leonard
Actually, I have to say I did a screening of Help for Some People a couple months ago, and while I have a great fondness for that movie, it's beginning to feel to me it doesn't hold up so well.
- [112:09]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Are you thinking about the sort of colonialism?
- [112:13]
Candy Leonard
Well, that. But also just. There's a lot of violence in it.
- [112:17]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
But if you look at it through the eyes of. They're spoofing James Bond.
- [112:21]
Candy Leonard
I know, but it's still the Beatles involved in fighting people, which is John's.
- [112:27]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Quote about were of clams In a movie about frogs.
- [112:30]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. Yeah.
- [112:32]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
It's a great idea, but maybe not for us.
- [112:35]
Candy Leonard
My favorite scene in that film, if I were to, like, capture a still from that film, it's when they're in the Scotland Yard office and John and Paul are standing at either side of him. He's sitting at his desk. They're towering over him, rifling through the stuff on his desk, asking him about the Great Train Robbery in their carnabitian red shirt and all that. And to me, there's something pregnant about that image. In the same way that the picture holding the MBE's. You know, they got this long hair, they got these suits and the whole. You know, there was a clash of iconography in both of those images that. I'm talking about world's colliding. Yeah. That speak to what's to come.
- [113:24]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yeah. Interesting observation.
- [113:26]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. It remains fascinating to me, except when it doesn't.
- [113:33]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I defend help to people. I just enjoy the hell of it. But you got to ratchet down your expectations. A Hard Day's Night is so singular.
- [113:41]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. The music in Help is incredible. And what I call. Really, it's a music video of Ticket To Ride with and all that. I mean, visually, it's beautiful. The cinematography, yes, it was spoofing James Bond and had a little bit of Get Smart and all that, but I don't know, the last time I saw it, I have to say I was not thrilled. It was mostly the violence. I just didn't like it.
- [114:08]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yeah, there's definitely that. I look at it as very Batman cartoonish.
- [114:12]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. I guess if you kind of look at it as strictly as a cartoon, which it is, but it's also. I mean, the colors. I mean, it's shot beautifully. The camera work is really great and the music is great.
- [114:24]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
There's a lot of nice little moments, almost like background things that you pick up on through repeated watchings that are fun.
- [114:31]
Candy Leonard
Such as?
- [114:32]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Such as when they're at Buckingham palace and there's a card game going on with Ringo and George. And one of them evokes Robert Scott. I love how he sacrificed himself for his mates.
- [114:43]
Richard
Right.
- [114:43]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. There's a lot of clever banter, that's for sure.
- [114:47]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I thought George was very underwritten in that film.
- [114:49]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. Which, of course, that was. In that film, was his first encounter with an actual sitar. And he was drawn to it, which I think the more I delve into George, which I do from time to time, I think his mother, when she was pregnant with him, listened to Indian music.
- [115:09]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Right. BBC World Service or whatever it was.
- [115:12]
Candy Leonard
Ravi Shankar released an album, I think it was, in 57, I want to say, that was like a sort of an introduction to Indian music. And each track starts with a little like explanation about the timing and a little sort of a little primer to like what you're going to hear.
- [115:32]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Like a Leonard Bernstein introduction to the orchestra for young people.
- [115:36]
Candy Leonard
Right. And so this album apparently was a pretty big hit in the uk and I think that. And we know that sounds that are heard in utero have an impact. I think when he heard that music, it lit him up. It could have been like a pre birth memory or something.
- [115:57]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Right. It certainly resonated and clicked with him with an immediacy.
- [116:03]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. That's really profound. And that then he devoted all that time to learning and he was wired for it almost, you know, because of his mother's interest in it. It's very interesting. And then of course, you know, that led to the spiritual stuff and we've talked about the legacy of that, but it's really. It's all very fascinating.
- [116:28]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yeah. That gap year of 1967 where he puts down the guitar and everything he writes is on keyboard that year until he picks it up again after Rishikesh.
- [116:38]
Candy Leonard
Right. And I think Sour Milk Sea is a great song. And I have a theory, if I may share.
- [116:44]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Oh, go.
- [116:45]
Candy Leonard
It's in what might be called the preachy George mode, you know, which I actually like, because everything he's saying is true and should be listened to. But I think the reason Lennon didn't want that song on the White Album is for that very reason.
- [117:02]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Preachiness.
- [117:03]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. I think that if that had been on the White Album, George would have sang the lead vocal. It would have given him prominence and it's a great song. And it would have given him prominence in a way that I don't think John and Paul would have wanted. Just a theory in that preachy way. In other words, like John's like, I'm gonna be the preacher here. You know, if there's gonna be a preacher, it's gonna be me.
- [117:29]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Stay in your line.
- [117:30]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. I think it's a great song and it would have fit great on the Escher demos. And you can hear how it would have been a great addition to the White Album, I think.
- [117:41]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
What do you feel about Not Guilty?
- [117:43]
Candy Leonard
I don't know. I don't have strong feelings about Not Guilty. I don't know. What do you think?
- [117:49]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I don't care much for the Beatle recording. There's something Not Gelling. But I liked his solo version that he did years later. Like the acoustic, sort of jazzy feel.
- [118:00]
Candy Leonard
Right. It's interesting to hear, like, think about what they didn't do and why, thank.
- [118:05]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
God, they buried Mary Jane.
- [118:07]
Candy Leonard
There could be more stuff in the vaults that will emerge sometime. Who knows?
- [118:12]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Carnival of Light.
- [118:13]
Candy Leonard
So what do you think about how Paul's conducting himself these days in terms.
- [118:18]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Of this rap against him? Give it up, Paul. You haven't got the voice for it, Is that what you mean?
- [118:23]
Candy Leonard
No, just in general.
- [118:25]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I see him as an ideal. Keep going till you drop if you love it. In a perfect world, since you no longer have that exquisite instrument of a voice that you once did, maybe be the architect and bring in other singers to sing the songs. You could produce it, play all the instruments if you must, but you're certainly capable of writing decent material. When he did, now and then, his creaky old voice worked beautifully beneath John's. In terms of what you're putting out there. The implicit sort of meaning of old friendships. That was a suitable use for it, I thought.
- [119:01]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. You probably saw the clip with him and Bruce Springsteen. Yeah. I mean, he couldn't really sing, but it almost doesn't matter.
- [119:10]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
God Loves A Tryer.
- [119:11]
Candy Leonard
I just look at that and I think what a thrill it must be for all these guys. Get to meet their heroes.
- [119:19]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
And if you're in the crowd that night.
- [119:21]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. No, that must have been such a thrill for everybody there.
- [119:24]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Have you seen the clip of Taylor with Paul?
- [119:27]
Candy Leonard
I have.
- [119:28]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I saw her standing there. Is that what they're doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was interesting. I wonder how big a Beatle fan she is.
- [119:35]
Candy Leonard
She's a huge Beatle fan.
- [119:37]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
We know that.
- [119:38]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. She grew up listening to the Beatles, you know. She grew up listening to all, you know, a lot of 60s music. I mean, her parents are, like, probably my age, more or less. Yeah. She grew up big Joni Mitchell fan. Not surprising. Yeah. She just loves the Beatles. She's learned from all the greats and she's. I can't say she's innovative in the way that the Beatles are. I wouldn't say that. But some of the stuff that I listened to, I actually didn't like it. It was, you know, a lot. It sounded sort of like. A lot of it was, like, very synthy and very synthetic and, like. Which didn't appeal to me the first time I heard it. Like, it just sounds too overproduced.
- [120:20]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Dated.
- [120:21]
Candy Leonard
No, it just sounded like. It was, like, modern sounding to my ear. In a way that didn't appeal to me. It was too electronic. But what drew me in were, you know, I'm a lyrics person. Like, I haven't listened to the whole thing, but, like, I found her lyrics so clever and fun and smart. I don't know, like, it kept me there. So it grew on you, which stuff pop music does. Right. And I came to appreciate even the songs that to my ear sounded like, where's the music? You know, whatever. Like, I came to appreciate in a new way. Perhaps more open minded or not as judgmental, I don't know. But she's really good. You should give her a listen.
- [121:05]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I will do that. I'll make a concerted effort on the basis of. I respect your opinion.
- [121:10]
Candy Leonard
Well, read Rob Sheffield's book.
- [121:12]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Okay. Is that the point of it? Sort of convince people of her greatness that are skeptics?
- [121:19]
Candy Leonard
No, but because of his credibility as a music writer. I mean, I was already convinced when I read. I was already a fan when I read it. But I think because of his credibility, he deconstructs a lot of it. And, you know, he brings his very broad musical knowledge to it. And so it, you know, and then you can sort of listen as you read along. Oh, yeah, that. You know, and so it may very well end up being like, convincing people. But of course, anybody picking up that book is already probably somewhat interested in ours.
- [121:53]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yeah, Taylor curious.
- [121:55]
Candy Leonard
Taylor curious, right. But he was a, like, way, you know, before she started to be taken more seriously, he was already talking her up. And, you know, the other thing I think about is, like, growing up in the 60s and consuming all that great music. Like, you know, 99% of it was produced by men, you know, with very few exceptions. Like, it didn't come off as like, oh, that's something I could do or look at that powerful. In other words, had there been a Taylor swift in the 60s, it would have been empowering. Like, it doesn't even make sense to even think about it that way. But that three generations of women have had her as a role model, I guess, is kind of what I'm getting at. Is a good thing is a good thing. Like, I didn't have that, you know, growing up, there were no performers that I could look up to. Not that one needs to look up to performers, but there were, you know, cultural figures, whatever, that you didn't identify with. Right. I mean, I did identify with certainly Lennon in a lot of ways, whatever.
- [123:01]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Were you Nia Simone fan?
- [123:02]
Candy Leonard
No, I wasn't. I know who she is. I'm familiar with. But I wasn't like a. Yeah.
- [123:08]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Oh, so you were in real time.
- [123:09]
Candy Leonard
No, in real time, I wasn't. I was a huge Joni Mitchell fan. In real time, which I've written about. I've written about how her. In my experience as a young consumer of music, her voice was a thing apart because there weren't that many women. I mean, I can remember hearing, well, of course, the Supremes, but they're always like this long suffering. A lot of, you know, very well. I remember, like, looking at them on the Ed Sullivan show and their beautiful gowns and all that. You know, the glamour of the Supremes. But I remember when Diff'rendt drum came out, I remember that this is something like, oh, okay, here's a woman singing. And, you know, Cher to some extent.
- [123:57]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
But Laura Nero.
- [123:59]
Candy Leonard
Yeah, Laura Nero, too. Yeah. But, you know, during my most formative years, there really weren't many female voices. I mean, obviously there were females, but.
- [124:11]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
You know, in your consciousness.
- [124:14]
Candy Leonard
Yeah.
- [124:15]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
There's a Leslie Gore or.
- [124:17]
Candy Leonard
Right. And the Beatles took up so much space, too. It's like, you know, when I was listening to Led Zeppelin, I was thinking, like, my gang, like my group of kids, like, we were not into Led Zeppelin. Like, you know, like, that wasn't our thing. And, you know, there's a lot of music from that time, that 60s music that I listen to now that I realized, like, I didn't pay attention to because the Beatles were taking up so much of my attention.
- [124:46]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
So they're acts that you go back to now. You missed the first time that you're into. Yeah, like who?
- [124:52]
Candy Leonard
Led Zeppelin is an example. Well, the Birds I was kind of always into, but Jefferson Airplane, you know, it's not that I wasn't aware of this music, but I see it now. It's like, oh, the Beatles were. They just took up all the space. I mean, again, this was, you know, myopic view, perhaps. But even like the Doors, I go back and listen to the Doors and realize that organ, like, how great that is. Some of the lyrics I find a little, like, pretentious and not so wonderful. But, I mean, the Stones will always be the Stones. They always sound like the Stones. I'm kind of over them, really.
- [125:35]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Crosby, Stills in Eschat.
- [125:37]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. Crosby, Stills and Ash. I listened to their first album sometime during the pandemic, and I hadn't heard it for a really long time. It brought tears to my eyes. How beautiful it is. Absolutely beautiful. I mean, I listened to that a lot at the time.
- [125:52]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
And George turned him down for Apple.
- [125:55]
Candy Leonard
Well, that was a mistake. Whatever.
- [125:57]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
It was for the better.
- [125:59]
Candy Leonard
Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of music from that time. The Beatles took up most of my attention. Like they were a focal point. And I'm sure I speak for many when I say that. But then once they were over, see, maybe this is why I never got into the Beatles solo stuff that much. Because, like, once they were over, it made more space for others to start, you know? And then I got very into Bowie and still Joni Mitchell. Those were biggies for me. But of course, all this said, I still listen to Donovan now.
- [126:34]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
You said you're a Monkees fan.
- [126:35]
Candy Leonard
I was, yeah.
- [126:36]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yeah. What was your favorite album? Just out of curiosity.
- [126:40]
Candy Leonard
I think it was the one Sagittarius.
- [126:45]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Oh, Pisces, aquarius, Capricorn Jones Ltd. Might.
- [126:49]
Candy Leonard
Have been that one. I liked them all. I was very into the Monkeys. I was into the Beatles at the same time, but very into the Monkeys.
- [126:56]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Did you ever listen to Nesmith solo stuff?
- [126:59]
Candy Leonard
I haven't, no.
- [127:01]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
His early stuff especially is quite good. That's what I. I don't know how much of a country fan you are, and I'm not a country fan really at all. But that simple, old school pedal steel, acoustic, and it's such a damn good lyricist. It's so good. I think he'd like it.
- [127:19]
Candy Leonard
I believe that that would be good. Yeah. Well, he wrote different drum.
- [127:24]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Different drums.
- [127:26]
Candy Leonard
Which also speaks to his ability to inhabit female consciousness.
- [127:31]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
There you go. I think it's a really good point.
- [127:33]
Candy Leonard
So that's a point in his favor. I think that's one of the things that appeals to me about Donovan, actually, at the time and still that he has a number of songs that people probably don't know. They're deep cuts, but that are kind of taken from the female vantage point. I think of my. You know, during those years, I was listening to a lot. Like when I was listening to the Beatles and Donovan at the same time. I compare it to. I don't know if this analogy will work for you. I compare it. It's like the Beatles were Sesame street, but Donovan was Mr. Rogers.
- [128:05]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Oh, that's interesting.
- [128:06]
Candy Leonard
In other words, the Beatles were like. Yes, there was a personal aspect of it for me, but they were like big and loud and multifaceted and overstimulating. Whereas Donovan was. You know, it's like more like Mr. Rogers. I don't know how to describe it. Maybe I should write about it. I don't know. I actually have started writing about It. There's something about him. He's a gentle soul. I was thrilled to meet him at The Fest in 2014. So thrilled to meet him. Oh, my God, it was great.
- [128:42]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
You signed my. From a Flower to a Garden.
- [128:45]
Candy Leonard
Oh, wow.
- [128:46]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yeah. That was nice for me.
- [128:48]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. That album, I'm not embarrassed to say I still listen to that with regularity. Not necessarily the whole thing. I mean, I have a Best of Donovan play. I can make myself a bunch of different playlists, and I have a Best of Donovan playlist. But that album, as an album, I think it has moments of real brilliance and joy. Of course, the other two big Donovan albums are Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow, both of which. It's like they're beyond music to me. It's like they create an environment, you know, like, I'll put that on and it's like I'm in another place.
- [129:26]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
It's a vibe.
- [129:27]
Candy Leonard
It's a vibe, yeah. It's a vibe. I don't even know how much of it is nostalgia. I mean, there is an element of nostalgia with the Beatles, for sure, some small element, and maybe there is with Donovan, but with him, it's like, I.
- [129:40]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Don'T know, you can come back to it with fresh ears and still get something out of it, in how much you've evolved since. And your criteria may be different.
- [129:49]
Candy Leonard
Right. And also understand, you know, like different British idioms or slang or just different things that you know more meaning. In fact, just the other day, what was it I was reading something about the Beatles, about the line in, you were in a car crash and you lost your hair, apparently lost your hair is like a British expression, like, to, like, get upset and go, you know, like. Yeah, which I didn't know.
- [130:19]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I didn't know that.
- [130:20]
Candy Leonard
I didn't know that either. And, you know, I remember learning that Meet the Wife was a British TV show, Time for tea and Meet the Wife. I didn't know that.
- [130:29]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
No. But one that I found out from somebody in the past year, Stick it up your jumper. As in I'm the walrus with some comedian's laugh line in Britain.
- [130:40]
Candy Leonard
Yeah, yeah.
- [130:41]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
So little things like that.
- [130:43]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. So sometimes you come back to this or, you know, you get, like, different references or things that maybe they were getting at.
- [130:50]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
There's a moment on the rooftop when you hear it uncut. I don't mean the Let It Be film, but I mean, like, I've heard it on the audio between songs where John goes, can you hear me, mother? And he also says that in the coda. Of whatever gets you through the night, really. Where the sax is vamping. Yes. Come to find out it was another comedian punchline, really.
- [131:14]
Candy Leonard
From Britain.
- [131:15]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Yep.
- [131:15]
Richard
Can you hear me, mother?
- [131:18]
Candy Leonard
That's interesting. Speaking of mother and John saying, can you hear me, mother? The one to one concert performance of Mother, the hairs on my arms were standing on. I mean, it was just really great, transcendental. He was in the zone for sure.
- [131:39]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
And that's the thing. I've seen that film or I've seen the footage of that show for decades. It's always been underwhelming. Suddenly, whatever the hell they did with that, it packs a punch.
- [131:51]
Candy Leonard
Yeah, it did. His voice was great. You know, I noticed, I think, that both John and Paul. I don't know if this is true for George, but I notice with, you know, their early 70, real early 70s vocals are really great in a way that makes me think it has something to do with the freedom of not being in the Beatles anymore. That they're full throated, like they're not. Not constrained, they're free in a way that I think you can hear in not only the power of their vocals, but the color. I don't know, I don't know how to describe it.
- [132:30]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I wonder if that's a absent George Martin thing. That could be, because as we know, the White Album, they pretty much sidelined him during that. And you hear moments of it, these beautiful vocals that come out of John and Paul at moments during that album. And I get what you're saying in the solo years, especially the early ones, where you get more of that sort of full throated expression that was very unbeataly.
- [132:56]
Candy Leonard
Yeah, no, it could have been Martin. I mean, I first noticed as I was listening to Ram, which I've always liked a lot. And I think Paul's vocals on Ram are just magnificent. And I think part of it is it was his second solo endeavor. Right. So the first one, maybe he was still a little nervous, but by the time he got to Ram, he was just. I just think his voice is great on that record. I really like it a lot.
- [133:27]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
At some point I came up, at least in my own head, this thesis that he's very angry. There's a lot of emotion from a guy who normally keeps that stuff under wraps. You look at the context. Beatles have split up, he's being pilloried in the press and he's taken them to court. The court case is informing that album.
- [133:47]
Candy Leonard
I never thought about it that way, but yeah, I guess.
- [133:50]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I guess so in the middle of it John does. Lennon remembers, Right?
- [133:56]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. Then they got into that stupid back.
- [133:58]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
And forth with the how do you sleep?
- [134:01]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. And that picture of John holding the.
- [134:05]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
The pig.
- [134:06]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. Like, making fun of Paul's country boy Persona. I mean, that was all kind of sad and silly, you know, and apparently they were very much in touch during the 70s, more than people realized as far as continuing their friendship. So that's a nice thing, if true.
- [134:26]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
I talked to people that were around them that absolutely confirmed that in John's sort of. If you in his presence in any way belittled Paul, how he would leap to his defense. You can't do that. I can do that.
- [134:39]
Candy Leonard
Yeah. Paul's experienced a lot of loss in his life, of course, but the older you get, the more loss you experience. But, you know, at a young age and in the years since, and good for him that he's still out there. It makes him happy. And even though he can't really sing anymore, so great. I say keep doing it. Why not?
- [135:02]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Sure. If people weren't showing up at his shows, you could say, okay, now you're embarrassing yourself. People love this. You're giving them an experience they'll take to their graves.
- [135:11]
Candy Leonard
It's true. It's true. And. And it just brings him so much joy and it feeds back to the audience. It's very nice.
- [135:42]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
Something about the Beatles, created and hosted by Robert Rodriguez, executive producer Rick Way, title song performed by the Corgis. Something about the Beatles is an evergreen podcast.
- [136:06]
Candy Leonard
I'm remembering that we kind of heard rumors or that there was some possibility. And, you know, in those days, like, you'd get the New York Times on Sunday and you'd see what concerts were coming up and you would like. We went down there, my friend. You know, we slept out at the box office and got tickets for the Elton John show. I think we must have heard rumors or maybe knew. But, yeah, that was. That was very special. Very special.
- [136:33]
Host (Robert Rodriguez)
So was it the way it's been described that when Elton begins his introduction, the whole stadium shook?
- [136:41]
Candy Leonard
Oh, my God, the place exploded. Absolutely exploded. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, that's in the days when people were holding up matches. I'm remembering all the. The candles and lights matches with the don't let the sun go down on me and thinking how that sort of worked. But I think that was. Maybe it was either earlier in this show or later. I don't remember. But, yeah, the play, we went. It went. We went crazy. Like, it was. Yeah, it was pretty. It was great, you know.