David McCallum has long been a TV icon, since his early days as the pin-up sidekick Illya Kuryakin to Robert Vaughn’s Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., through the bizarre Sapphire and Steel to “Ducky” Mallard in today’s NCIS. What’s perhaps less known about the blonde-haired Glaswegian, is the fact he is a classically trained musician, a career McCallum nearly followed, as he explained to 16 magazine back in 1966:
The wonder was that David ever became an actor at all—for he was trained to be a musician from the age of four, playing the oboe with classic clarity. An appreciation of music ran deep in the McCallum family. David’s father, a famous violinist and leader of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, was taught classical music at his mother’s knee.
The McCallums came from a little Scottish mining village, Kilsyth in Stirlingshire, where David’s paternal grandfather was the village grocer. It was a deeply religious community, and David’s grandmother hoped her son would learn the harp. But no one there could play the instrument, so young David Fotheringham McCallum was taught violin instead. And his own son, David Keith McCallum—born on September 19, 1933, at 24 Kersland Street, Glasgow—inherited this musical tradition.
When the family moved to Bracknell Gardens, Hampstead, in London, David went to University College School, and musical evenings became a feature of this childhood. He was taught violin and piano, but it was the oboe that he mastered. However, David secretly harbored a longing to become an actor, so when one of his uncles needed an oboe, David offered his—cheap!—and started out on his acting career. Though he laughingly calls the oboe “...an ill wind nobody blows good,” David still admits, “I always knew that I could turn to music if I failed as an actor.”
Like many sixties stars, McCallum was given a recording contract, and between 1966 and 1968, released four albums on Capitol Records - Music…A Part Of Me, Music…A Bit More Of Me, Music…It’s Happening Now!, and McCallum. However, rather than singing his way through these discs McCallum, together with producer David Axelrod, created a blend of oboe, French horn, and strings with guitar and drums, for musical interpretations of hits of the day. These included “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”, “Downtown”, “Louie, Louie”, “I Can’t Control Myself” and his own compositions, “Far Away Blue”, “Isn’t It Wonderful?” and “It Won’t Be Wrong”.
The best known McCallum tracks today are “The Edge,” which was sampled by Dr. Dre as the intro and riff to the track “The Next Episode,” and “House of Mirrors,” sampled by DJ Shadow for “Dark Days”.
McCallum did sing with Nancy Sinatra in The Take Me to Your Leader Affair episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Okay, Mick ‘Woody’ Woodmansey’s drums are missing, which is a damn shame for as a four piece David Bowie, Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder and Woodmansey were incredible. Together over three albums Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars and Aladdin Sane they changed music forever. That said, we do have the infectious leering joy of Bowie’s vocal, the brilliance of Ronson’s guitar and the drive of Bolder’s bass to be relished. It’s as up-to-date now, as it was thirty-eight years ago.
Bowie was on a roll when he recorded “Suffragette City”, he was writing enough songs for his own catalog and for others to record. He’d already given Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits “Oh! You Pretty Things”, which was quite a move for the toothsome pop star but, as rock writer Charles Shaar Murray noted, Noone’s version was “one of Rock and Roll’s most outstanding examples of a singer failing to achieve any degree of empathy whatsoever with the mood and content of a lyric.” Noone was possibly thinking about dental hygiene and girls rather than Aleister Crowley and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose ideas are referenced in the song. Bowie had also tried his hand at punting a teenage dress-designer into pop stardom with “Moonage Daydream” and then offered his services to Mott the Hoople.
Hoople were a superb band who hadn’t broken through to the level of success they deserved. Bowie was a fan and on hearing Mott were about to split, offered their lead singer, Ian Hunter, the song “Suffragette City” to record, if the band would stay together. Hunter felt it wouldn’t be a hit, and knew that after a few chart failures he had to have a winner. He therefore asked Bowie for “All the Young Dudes” which Hunter saw as a definite hit, it was and became an anthem for a generation of British youth. “All the Young Dudes” had originally been a part of Bowie’s plan for a concept album that told the story of an alien saving the Earth from destruction, which would become Ziggy Stardust.
“Suffragette City” was written in 1971 and recorded in January 1972. It gives a big nod towards The Small Faces “Wham Bam Thank You Ma’m”, and references (via the word “droogie”) Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, which was the hit film of that year.
Infamously, when Bowie performed “Suffragette City” at the Oxford Town Hall in June 1972, he was photographed by Mick Rock apparently simulating oral sex on Mick Ronson’s guitar. Bowie was actually playing the guitar with his teeth. However, Rock’s photo was so iconic that Bowie convinced his manager, Tont Defries, into buying a whole page of advertising space in the UK music weekly, Melody Maker.
If fucking began in 1963, “Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles’ first LP,” then blow-jobs began during “Suffragette City” and before Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust LP.
The line-up for the recording of “Suffragette City” was David Bowie: Vocals, Guitar; Mick Ronson: Guitar, piano and ARP synthesizer (which doubles as the saxophone); Trevor Bolder: Bass; Mick Woodmansey: Drums.
David Bowie - Vocals
More from ‘Suffragette City’ plus bonus clips after the jump…
Michael Reeves was just twenty-three when he wrote and directed Witchfinder General. It would prove to be his most critically acclaimed and successful film, and would also be his last. For Reeves died not long after the film’s release from an accidental overdose - a tragic demise for a director of such immense talent, who had proven himself with three distinct horror films: Revenge of the Blood Beast, The Sorcerers and Witchfinder General (aka The Conqueror Worm).
Reeves’ precocious talent and early death led to a mythologizing of his life. The film writer David Pirie likened him to the Romantic poets Shelley, Byron and Keats, and as his death came at the end of the sixties, there was the inevitable twinning with the untimely deaths of troubled rock musicians, such as Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones. Add to this the belief that Reeves may have killed himself, then we have the beginning of a cinematic legend - which is all good copy, but sadly removes the man from his art.
Reeves was precocious, he made his first film at the age of 8. Whether the resulting home-movie was good or bad is irrelevant, for what is important here is the realization of Reeves’ youthful ambition. At school he met and became friends with Ian Ogilvy, who went on to become an actor and star of all his films. From school, Reeves traveled to Hollywood at 16, where he door-stepped Don Siegel, director of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Siegel was Reeves’ favorite director, and let’s be frank, it takes balls to turn up at someone’s door and convince them, then and there, that they need to employ you. Siegel was convinced and gave Reeves a job as his assistant - now, there’s a lesson here we all can learn from. Working for Siegel gave Reeves the opportunity to make the contacts and raise the cash for his own first feature film, Revenge of the Blood Beast, which starred Ogilvy and horror queen Barbara Steele. The film was well regarded and if not exactly brilliant, it marked the arrival of a new and original cinematic vision, and as with all young film-makers, there was soon the predictable murmur of Reeves being the next Orson Welles. Nice thought, but not exactly correct.
Two years later, in 1967, Reeves made his first important horror film, The Sorcerers, a trippy slasher which starred Ogilvy and film legend, Boris Karloff, who was at a stage of making many strange and often dreadful films, but had this time, as he did later with Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets, made a wise choice by agreeing to star in Reeves’ film. While Post-Modernism has made it easy to intellectualize anything, it is fair to say that in this case there is enough meat on this film’s bones to justify a more rigorous examination. The Sorcerers is more than a horror film, it has a subtext about voyeurism and cinema, and questions the cultural obsession with youth. The movie, and especially Karloff’s association with it, propelled Reeves into the top rank of British film directors, which saw him listed as the-man-most-likely-to, alongside the older and more experienced film-makers Ken Russell, Lindsay Anderson and Ken Loach. Don’t forget, at this point, Reeves was just 22.
But it is Witchfinder General that is Reeves most important and best film, a grisly horror that starred Vincent Price, Ian Ogilvy, Rupert Davies, Hilary Dwyer and Patrick Wymark.
The film had depth as it was based on the true story of Matthew Hopkins, the self-appointed Witchfinder General, who carried out the torture and execution of alleged sorcerers/witches during the English Civil War, in the 1640s. Hopkins was a notorious figure who made a fortune out of his activities, being paid roughly two bucks for every soul he saved by hanging, burning or drowning.
Vincent Price was brilliant as Matthew Hopkins, for Reeves had coaxed a more measured performance from the usually “camp and hammy” film star. The story goes Price was so annoyed by Reeves continual directions to underplay that one day he turned on Reeves and said, “I have made 84 movies, how many have you made?” To which Reeves replied, “Two good ones.” Price laughed, and thereafter, did as he was told. Of course, this may be apocryphal for, as years later, Price talked about his unhappiness in working with Reeves:
Well he hated me. He didn’t want me at all for the part. He wanted some other actor, and he got me and that was it. I didn’t like him, either, and it was one of the first times in my life that I’ve been in a picture where really the director and I just clashed [twists his hands], like that. He didn’t know how to talk to actors, he hadn’t had the experience, or talked to enough of them, so all the actors on the picture had a very bad time. I knew though, that in a funny, uneducated sort of way, he was right in his desire for me to approach the part in a certain way. He wanted it very serious and straight, and he was right, but he just didn’t know how to communicate with actors.
Hindsight is a great thing, and Price has the upperhand here, able to score points after the director’s dead and the film has been highly praised. Whatever the disagreements between the two on set, Reeves got Price to deliver one of his best cinematic performances.
The film’s release captured the public’s imagination, as many saw Witchfinder General‘s barbarism as a damning comment on the Vietnam War. Despite criticisms of the film’s shocking, documentary-like violence, Witchfinder proved to be Reeves biggest commercial success.
Yet after it, Reeves seemed to lose his way. He became unraveled, started to drink heavily, medicated himself with uppers and downers, and started a slow spiral into depression. Those who were witness to this give different accounts: some, the strain of working with Vincent Price; others, a failed romance; others still, Reeves’ nihilism. When visiting the composer Paul Ferris in hospital, where Ferris was recuperating from his own failed suicide attempt, Reeves joked, which between the two would be first to succeed in killing himself?
In February 1969, Reeves returned home after a night’s drinking, and swallowed a handful of anti-depressants. Whether intentionally or not is open to conjecture, but what’s known is Reeves died in the early hours of the 11th February from an overdose of barbiturates - his death robbed British film, and the horror world, of one of its most brilliant and original talents.
Parts 2 & 3 on Michael Reeves plus bonus trailer after the jump…
The superb writer Steve Duffy alerted me to this fab site Pin-up RDJ, where these stirring pictures of Robert Downey jnr. can be found. The images are created in photo-shop by Lisa René, who’s a college freshman, into “Graphic design. Science. Music. The 1940s. Vintage advertisements. Nerdfighters. LGBTQA. Nutella. Pita chips. The sound of heels clicking on a tile floor.”
Lisa also has the blog Who M.D. and co-runs Fuck Yeah Hotties in Glasses, which is, well, fuck, yeah, hotties in glasses. Of Pin-Up RDJ Lisa writes:
“Vintage pinups are the pinnacle of art. Robert Downey jnr. is the pinnacle of sexy. It’s not rocket science.”
No, not rocket science, but damn fine fun. View the Pin-up RJD archive here.
Here is a moment of pop culture history from Derek Jarman’s 1976, Latin romp Sebastiane. Blink and you will miss Patricia Quinn, Nell Campbell and Peter Hinwood from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Punk icon Jordan (in stockings and suspenders) as Mammea Morgana, sprawled between Hinwood and the multi-talented artist Duggie Fields. Also, hovering around in this scene are sculptor, Andrew Logan, dancer and actor, Lindsay Kemp (who taught David Bowie mime), and designer, Christopher Hobbs.
Sebastiane was Jarman’s first film, co-directed with Paul Humfress, and caused considerable outrage with its exquisite scenes of gay love-making, images of an erect penis, and the fact the film’s dialogue was entirely in schoolboy Latin, where the word “Oedipus” was translated as “Motherfucker.” The music for the film was composed by Brian Eno.
Thanks to Soft Skull Press for sending me an advance paperback copy of Daniel Radosh’s “Rapture Ready: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture.” This book is righteously demented—true to the title, it’s a voyage through the bizarre world of Christian pop culture, in a time where it is essentially one more underground scene, a pocket pop universe just like juggalos or furries (though slightly bigger—as Radosh points out, this stuff totals up to a $7 billion a year industry). Radosh takes us on a voyage through the cult of Left Behind, Christian rock, and the rest of the American Christian scene. Along the way we get some serious gems like “BibleZine” (!!!), bumper stickers reading “Any Sex that can Put You in Hell ISN’T SAFE” and Jay Bakker (Jim and Tammy’s son), who runs his own punk rock church.
I mean, reading this, it’s like… this is the alternate universe version of Dangerous Minds’ readers, like we went into a wormhole and came out with goatees and freshly baptized.
There are some absolutely jaw-droppingly great snippets of “Christian” lore from the book. For instance, Radosh includes a depiction of the Rapture from one of the “Left Behind” books:
“[M]en and women soldiers and horses seemed to explode where they stood. It was as if the very words of the Lord had superheated their blood, causing it to burst through their veins and skin… Their innards and entrails gushed to the desert floor, and as those around them turned to run, they too were slain, their blood pooling and rising in the unforgiving brightness of the glory of Christ.
Gloria in excelsis Deo, motherfucker.
Awesome. Or try this one, from a Christian joke book Radosh finds:
One women’s libber started out a speech: “Where would you men be without us women?” A guy in the back shouted, “In the Garden of Eden!”
I gotta remember that one to impress the ladies with.
Anyway, excellent, hilarious, disturbing, sobering book. I imagine it would make a great read alongside Jeff Sharlet’s “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power” for a look at where the Christian right is, both in politics and in culture at large, at this moment. (Interview with author below!)
LOST Season 5 might have gone out with its usual bang, but that doesn’t mean the summer ahead can’t still be long and hot. When you’re done combing through Lostpedia’sThe Incident theory page (it’s endless, I know), you might want to dip a toe, or something, into the wacky alt waters of Lost slash (fan) fiction. A 3-way between Ben, Locke and Richard…sure, why not? Desmond choosing Sayid over Penny…yeah, I can see that! What I find fascinating about these HIGHLY detailed reconfigurings, of course, is not the nature of the participants or their transgressions, but how they expose that nagging, near-universal hunger to see our hopes, dreams, fantasies—whatever they may be—projected through the prism of popular culture. Then again, maybe there’s just a LOT of people out there who wanna see Jack and Sawyer feeding each other mangos!
Mr. Metzger and I always giggle about how I once shared a dojo with the original LAND OF THE LOST “Chaka,” Philip Paley. We very seldom sparred together (he was older, ranked higher) but I think I could have totally Sleestaked his ass using a bit of the old “ST.”
for a look at where the Christian right is, both in politics and in culture at large, at this moment. (Interview with author below!)
