Crystal clear

 

The bronze bell incident

As detailed in Karina Longworth's book cited below, movie mogul Howard Hughes (1905-76) was an expert in manipulating the women in his life, and kept them constantly at his beck and call. He was also furiously possessive and abusive when he thought they were seeing anyone else, which was of course the height of hypocrisy given all his myriad affairs. But few of his girlfriends were as brave as Ava Gardner (1922-90), who was determined not to be anyone's punching-bag and retaliated with gusto:

Ava had never seen Howard angry. Now he got really angry. He swung at her, and the next thing she knew she had fallen back into a chair. Then, she recalled, Hughes "jumped at me and started to pound on my face until it was a mess."

Ava, stuck in the chair, couldn't fight back. Satisfied that he had made his point, Hughes gave up and started to walk away. Then, Ava recalled, "I looked for some weapon to attack him." She spotted an ornamental bronze bell on the mantelpiece. Knowing the partially deaf Hughes wouldn't be able to hear her coming, she followed behind him, and just as she caught up, she shouted his name. He turned, and she struck him down the front of his face, splitting his forehead open and knocking loose two teeth. Livid at what he'd done to her, Ava couldn't help but continue the beating while Howard was down. She grabbed a chair and started hitting him some more. Finally her maid walked in and put a stop to it.

"I thought I'd killed the poor bastard," Ava later said. "There was blood on the walls, on the furniture, real blood in the bloody Marys."

- Karina Longworth, Seduction: Sex, Lies & Stardom in Howard Hughes' Hollywood, New York, 2018, p.248

See also:
Movies: The refreshingly brutal candour of 'The RKO Story', 27 July 2021
Movies: The Aviatrix, 21 December 2009
Movies: The greatest vampire film ever, 28 October 2009

Now I want you try to tell me how I look

Thursday music corner: William Onyeabor (1946-2017) was a Nigerian funk musician popular in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, and a crowned high chief in Nigeria’s Enugu state, where he lived and worked as a businessman when not making music. Fantastic Man was one of the five tracks on his 1979 funk album, Tomorrow. In 1985 he became a born-again Christian, refusing to speak of his music career ever again, which contributed greatly to the air of mystery (outside Nigeria, at least) surrounding his music. The 2013 compilation album Who is William Onyeabor?, released on the Luaka Bop label, spurred greater interest, followed by a 2014 documentary and a supergroup tribute tour including such artists as David Byrne, Damon Albarn, and Malian music legends Amadou and Mariam, which brought his old music to greater prominence in the West. Even broader appeal also resulted from Fantastic Man being used in an Apple iPhone 7+ commercial in 2017. I first heard this track playing in Everyday Music in Portland, Oregon, in June 2018 - so, thanks for the find, Oregonian tune-merchants!

William Onyeabor – Fantastic Man (1979)

The Masked Ascender

Makara Peak panorama, 22 August 2021

 

Oh will you take me as I am, strung out on another man

Thursday music corner: The second single taken from one of Canadian folk legend Joni Mitchell’s most critically acclaimed albums, Blue, California was written in self-imposed exile in Europe as she recuperated from her break-up with Graham Nash, and evokes a wistful, playful longing for the creative atmosphere of the laid-back Pacific state that was then the centre of the global counterculture. Featuring Mitchell on dulcimer and guitar, the recording also benefits from Mitchell’s then paramour James Taylor’s guitar-work, although their relationship would soon break down when Taylor attained global fame. In 2020 Blue was rated third-highest in Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Joni Mitchell – California (1971)

Written, of course, by the mightiest hand

Thursday music corner: Sparks are Californian brothers Ron (b.1945) and Russell (b.1948) Mael, who have been making experimental art-pop music together since the late 1960s, and are gaining new fans in 2021 thanks to the loving and comprehensive portrait of them in director Edgar Wright’s recently-released music biopic The Sparks Brothers. 

Following their breakthrough 1974 single This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us, which reached no.2 in the UK pop charts thanks to an electrifying appearance on Top of The Pops, Sparks went through a variety of supporting band-members and musical styles. By 1979, they were struggling for relevance until they became intrigued with the newly-emerging opportunities of electronic music spawned from the disco scene. Enlisting the maestro producer of the disco oeuvre, the Italian legend Giorgio Moroder, they created The Number One Song in Heaven to act as the title track of an album of innovative, boundary-pushing electronic music that helped usher in the new wave/synth explosion. 

Most recently, Sparks collaborated with French film director Leos Carax to write the music for his film Annette, an intensely operatic musical melodrama featuring Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver. The soundtrack to Annette is Sparks’ 27th album release, if you include FFS, their 2015 ‘supergroup’ collaboration with Scots band Franz Ferdinand.

Sparks – The Number One Song in Heaven (1979, single version)

See also:

Music: Lo-o-o-o-ng songs, 11 June 2008 

Taking in the dawn

Brooklyn wind turbine, 7.23am, 7 August 2021

 

Along about ten, I'll be flying high

Thursday music corner: Rock ‘n roll pioneer Little Richard (1932-2020) was one of the first black artists to cross over into mass appeal with white audiences in the US pop scene, and was a major driver for the popularisation of high-energy rhythm and blues that became global less than a decade later with a little bit of help from the Beatles. Tutti Frutti and Long Tally Sally b/w Slippin’ and Slidin’ were his breakthrough singles in 1955 and 1956, and the classic Rip It Up emerged in June 1956, becoming his second US R&B chart-topper and fourth Top 40 single. The track also appeared on his March 1957 debut album, Here’s Little Richard, which holds the distinction of having nine of its 12 songs making the US Billboard Hot 100 charts. 

Further afield and a couple of decades later in 1977, when Murray Cammick and Alistair Dougal established a new music magazine in Auckland, they borrowed this single’s name for the title. Rip It Up Magazine was distributed free in New Zealand music shops until 1991, when a cover price was instigated. It played an important role in New Zealand music history until its last issue was published in 2015.

Little Richard – Rip It Up (1956)