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      Directing the Beatles Was Just One Part of His Long and Winding Career

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      HUDSON, N.Y. — Of course I wanted to talk with Michael Lindsay-Hogg about the Beatles. Everyone wants to talk with him about the Beatles, especially since his star turn in “Get Back,” Peter Jackson’s epic documentary, which debuted last fall on Disney+.In January 1969, Mr. Lindsay-Hogg was the brash young film director who tried to charm and cajole John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr through warring agendas as they hashed out new songs and gave their last concert on a London rooftop. Soon after that, he started shaping his nearly 60 hours of footage into the documentary “Let It Be,” a film largely unavailable since its initial theatrical run in 1970.Mr. Lindsay-Hogg’s footage, as well as more than 100 hours of audio that he recorded with his crew, some of it with hidden microphones, got new life when Mr. Jackson cleaned it up and reassembled it for his nearly eight-hour series. Mr. McCartney and Mr. Starr, along with most critics, hailed “Get Back” as an upbeat corrective to Mr. Lindsay-Hogg’s more somber take.So would he like to talk about his time with the Beatles?“That was a small part of a long career,” he said in the sitting room of his three-bedroom Civil War-era house in Hudson, N.Y.He had a point. In the so-called Swinging London of the 1960s, Mr. Lindsay-Hogg made a name for himself as a creator of the music video, directing promotional films, as they were then called, for the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who a decade and a half before MTV. In the early 1980s, he was again a trailblazer, as the co-director of “Brideshead Revisited,” an 11-hour adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh novel that was a forerunner of prestige television dramas like “The Sopranos.” He is also a Tony-nominated stage director, painter and author. Oh, and Orson Welles may very well be his biological father.It’s almost too much to get through. No wonder he had a request, delivered in a deadpan voice: “Please make the entire article about my painting.” But eventually, over the course of three interviews, we got around to John, Paul, George and Ringo.The Third ManMr. Lindsay-Hogg, 82, lives with his wife, Lisa Ticknor Lindsay-Hogg, a former fashion model and casting agent, in a narrow cream-colored house in this river town nestled into lush green hills. The rooms have a lived-in feel, with book stacks rising from table tops and the walls blanketed with paintings, many of them scavenged from flea markets, and photos from his varied career.“I am the maximalist,” he said. “Lisa is the organizer.”A photo on display in Mr. Lindsay-Hogg’s home of a dinner in London more than 50 years ago, after a screening of his film “Let It Be.”Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesIn addition to working with the Beatles, Mr. Lindsay-Hogg directed the Rolling Stones in the concert film “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.”Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesSprinkled among the decorations are posters from past projects, including “Agnes of God,” a 1982 Broadway play he directed, for which the actress Amanda Plummer won a Tony, and “The Object of Beauty,” a 1991 film written and directed by Mr. Lindsay-Hogg, with John Malkovich and Andie MacDowell in the lead roles. A sculpture of a rabbit head sits on a credenza. He got it in Harare, Zimbabwe, when he filmed Paul Simon’s “Graceland: The African Concert” in 1987.Three cats provide daily entertainment. “She’s a movie star waiting to happen,” Mr. Lindsay-Hogg said when a black cat named L’il Mew brushed against my leg.The couple has lived here less than two years. During lockdown, they rented a rock-star-style tour bus and fled Los Angeles, where they had lived since they were married in 2002. California’s wildfires were part of what drove them out.“The sky was yellow,” Mr. Lindsay-Hogg said. “You could taste the soot.”The move meant abandoning a city where he had deep ties. Although he was born in Manhattan and educated at Choate, the Connecticut prep school, he spent six years of his childhood in Hollywood, mingling with William Randolph Hearst, Olivia de Havilland and Humphrey Bogart.His mother was the actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, who starred opposite Laurence Olivier in William Wyler’s “Wuthering Heights” in 1939. His father — at least, according to his birth certificate — was Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, a baronet of Rotherfield Hall in East Sussex, England. The younger Mr. Lindsay-Hogg inherited the title upon the elder’s death in 1999.“Technically, I could be a ‘Sir,’ but unlike Mick and Elton, I didn’t earn it,” Mr. Lindsay-Hogg said, referring to his friends Mick Jagger and Elton John.A young man in Swinging London: Mr. Lindsay-Hogg in 1965, when he was a director of the British pop music show “Ready Steady Go!”Evening Standard, via Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesThe question of paternity has long hovered over him. His mother, born in Ireland, made her American stage debut opposite Orson Welles in a 1938 revival of George Bernard Shaw’s “Heartbreak House.” The production was directed by Mr. Welles at the Mercury Theater, the New York repertory house he had co-founded. When Mr. Lindsay-Hogg was a teenager, his mother told him of the rumors that Mr. Welles, best known for his 1941 film classic “Citizen Kane,” was his biological father.“It certainly played into my life growing up, partly because of the way I look,” he said. “I was heavy when I was young, and Orson was heavy. I have a round face; he had a round face. I didn’t look like Edward Lindsay-Hogg, who, if anything, looked more like, say, Jeremy Irons.”At 19, Mr. Lindsay-Hogg had a small role in Mr. Welles’s stage production of “Chimes at Midnight” in Dublin. “I knew him over the years, and he’d pop up every so often,” he said. Shortly after the run, Mr. Welles offered him a job in a London production of Eugène Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros.” “He said, ‘I’ll call you in a couple of days and you can come over,’” Mr. Lindsay-Hogg recalled. “I then did not hear from him for five years.”Decades later, his mother, who had Alzheimer’s at the time, gave a cryptic confirmation that Mr. Welles was his father — then seemed to contradict it. Mr. Lindsay-Hogg got an answer when he spoke with Gloria Vanderbilt, a friend of his mother’s whom he had dated in the 1980s, while working on his 2011 memoir, “Luck and Circumstance.”“Gloria said, ‘I hesitate, because I promised your mother I wouldn’t say this, but she’s dead now. Geraldine told me Orson was your father,’” he recalled. He took a pause. “I’m kind of past that,” he said. “Whoever was in the bed that night was in the bed that night.”‘Seventh Career’He led me up a narrow staircase to a well-lit bedroom that he had converted into a painting studio. His latest work was on the easel: a portrait of a couple with haunted eyes that recalled the German Expressionists of the 1920s. Painting has become “a seventh career of sorts,” Mr. Lindsay-Hogg said.He said he recently sold four pieces at the Frieze Art Fair in Los Angeles, but art is more of a passion than a business. Painting also comes as a relief for someone who has endured the pressures of directing. “It’s all yours,” he said. “There’s no producer to say, ‘I don’t like that scene, why don’t you cut it out.’”Mr. Lindsay-Hogg calls painting his “seventh career.”Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesHe hasn’t abandoned show business entirely. In recent years he directed several episodes of the web comedy series “Tinsel’s Town,” about a YouTube star in Hollywood, and he is writing a script for a film he hopes to direct, set in 1946 Nevada.On the wall next to the staircase were two black-and-white close-up portraits of Mr. Jagger in his early 20s, both stills from the 1960s British pop music show “Ready Steady Go!,” the program that gave Mr. Lindsay-Hogg his start in directing at 24, a few years after he dropped out of Oxford. On the third episode he directed, the Rolling Stones performed “Play With Fire,” and Mr. Jagger made an immediate impression.“He was absolutely beautiful, like a Botticelli cosh boy,” Mr. Lindsay-Hogg recalled, using an old British slang term for stylish teenage hoodlum.He went on to direct more than a dozen Rolling Stones music videos, from early hits like “Paint It Black” to “Start Me Up” in 1982, and has remained close with Mr. Jagger. Mr. Lindsay-Hogg said he called him for advice last year, shortly before he was scheduled to have valve-replacement heart surgery, a procedure Mr. Jagger had gone through.“Mick is creative,” he said, “but he’s also extremely practical.”In 1968, around the time of the release of the Rolling Stones album “Beggars Banquet,” Mr. Jagger asked him to direct a TV concert film. A few weeks later, Mr. Lindsay-Hogg called Mr. Jagger and said, as he recalled it: “‘I’m going to say seven words to you: “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.”’ And he got it. It just sounded right.”The production, filmed during a grueling one-day shoot on a London soundstage, included performances by the Who, Jethro Tull and a supergroup called the Dirty Mac featuring John Lennon, Eric Clapton and Yoko Ono. The Rolling Stones closed the show. Now considered a classic, the film was shelved until 1996, when it premiered at the New York Film Festival.“In late January ’69, while doing ‘Let It Be,’ I showed a rough cut to Mick, Keith and Allen Klein,” he said, referring to the guitarist Keith Richards and the group’s manager at the time. “When it was over, they thought the Who were great, but didn’t think the Stones were as good as they could be. Keith said, ‘If it were called “The Who’s Rock and Roll Circus,” I wouldn’t mind.’”Mr. Lennon’s appearance came as little surprise. Mr. Lindsay-Hogg had been working with the Beatles since 1966, when he directed promotional films for “Paperback Writer” and “Rain.” Two years later, he was at the helm for the videos for “Revolution” and “Hey Jude.”Let It Be?In late 1968, Mr. McCartney asked him to direct a television special meant to accompany the album the band was about to record. Mr. Lindsay-Hogg was enthusiastic, but he knew from experience that “four Beatles would be four opinions.”“Giving an idea to them was like putting a lump of meat in an animal’s cage,” he said. “One of them would pick it up and sniff it and toss it to the next one to take a bite.”A poster in Mr. Lindsay-Hogg’s home of a 1991 film he wrote and directed, “The Object of Beauty.”Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesHis leather-bound diaries, which he started keeping in the mid-1960s, in his library in Hudson, N.Y.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesAfter 10 days of filming, it became clear that the production he had envisioned — a concert in a cinematic location, with Mr. Lindsay-Hogg pushing for an amphitheater in Libya, as well as a separate show documenting the rehearsals to run as a kind of teaser — was not going to happen. In the end, he did what he could to salvage something of the original idea by nudging the Beatles to the roof of the Savile Row building that housed Apple Corps, the group’s media company. There they played a glorious lunchtime set as passers-by peered up quizzically from the sidewalks below.Drawing from the dozens of hours that did not make it into “Let It Be,” Mr. Jackson turned Mr. Lindsay-Hogg into a major character in “Get Back”; his efforts to maintain some kind of momentum against long odds provided the three-part series with a narrative through-line. When “Get Back” started streaming, however, Mr. Lindsay-Hogg found himself in a vulnerable position: The man accustomed to a behind-the-camera role was now in the spotlight.And so he was seen chomping on a cigar and suggesting that he could film the Beatles playing a benefit show for orphans or sick children. “But I don’t mean for really sick kids,” he was quick to tell the group. “I mean for kids with broken legs. I mean, really, kind of, 1944 Hollywood musical Bing Crosby kids.” On social media, Disney+ viewers took swipes at his 28-year-old self, calling him “the upper class twit of the year,” among other insults.“I try to steer as clear from social media as possible,” Mr. Lindsay-Hogg said.He added that he is more concerned about the legacy of his own documentary. The Beatles skipped the premiere, and “Let It Be” has never appeared as a DVD or on streaming platforms. Most fans know it from washed-out videocassettes; and its reputation has suffered thanks to remarks made by Mr. Starr and Mr. McCartney. “There was no joy in it,” the Beatles drummer said last year on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”Mr. Lindsay-Hogg disagrees with that assessment.“There are moments of great sweetness,” he said. “No matter where you put the camera, no matter how you edited it, they loved each other. Anybody who sees ‘Let It Be’ again will find that.”He believes the tone he struck is not really so far from that of “Get Back,” which he said he found “terrific.” Mr. Jackson’s account, he added, had the advantage of being five times longer, its images and sound enhanced by 21st-century technology. “He had canvas to fit a Rubens painting,” he said, “and I had a canvas to fit a little David Hockney painting.”On July 20, 1969, the day Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, the four Beatles and some family members attended a private screening of a rough cut of “Let It Be” in Hanover Square. They seemed pleased, Mr. Lindsay-Hogg said. Afterward, he and his girlfriend at the time, the British actress Jean Marsh, went for a late dinner at Provans, a restaurant in the Fulham section of London, with Paul and Linda McCartney, Mr. Lennon and Ms. Ono, and the Apple executive Peter Brown.“It was a friendly meal,” he recalled. “We had a couple of bottles of wine and mostly talked about our differing childhoods. They were happy with the way things were going, certainly, otherwise there would have been no dinner.”“They were grown men, not the Fab Four of the early 1960s,” he added. “And they were OK with being shown navigating relationships which were old, but changing.”Mr. Lindsay-Hogg in his studio.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe film was a victim of bad timing, in his view. By the time of its May 1970 premiere, the Beatles had broken up. Traumatized fans saw it as “a breakup movie: ‘Mom and Dad are getting divorced!’” he said.Apple has said in the past that it had plans to rerelease “Let It Be” at some point, and Mr. Lindsay-Hogg believes it deserves a fresh viewing; but he doesn’t dwell on his time with the Beatles, or the past in general, he said.“I have a very, very good memory,” he said. “It may be because I never took all the drugs. But I’m very not-nostalgic. Nostalgia is, for me, like the vermouth that I do not put in my martini.”He has preserved much of what he went through with the Beatles in diaries, which he has kept since the “Ready Steady Go!” years.He led me to a bookcase in the memento-filled library next to his art studio. It was filled with dusty leather-bound diaries, many overstuffed with letters and photos. At my suggestion, he dug out the volume from 1969. It was curiously slender.He thumbed through the pages and landed on January 30, the blustery day in London when the Beatles played in public for the last time. As captured by Mr. Lindsay-Hogg and his team, their swan-song performance was the climax of both “Let It Be” and “Get Back.”The diary page was blank, except for one word scribbled in black ballpoint pen.Roof.“The busier you are,” Mr. Lindsay-Hogg said, “the less you write down.” More

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      A Trip Through Pop, Rap and Jazz’s Past, in 27 Boxed Sets

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      Collections from labels like Fania and Armabillion, icons including Ray Charles and J Dilla, and living artists such as Beverly Glenn-Copeland and Radiohead were welcome additions this year.In an era of abundance when every day brings a deluge of new music to consume, it may seem particularly futile to turn to the past. But this year’s resurrections and recontextualizations in boxed sets and reissues gathered up what’s been forgotten or overlooked — or in some cases, what’s been dissected ad nauseam but still commands attention — and put it back at center stage. As Taylor Swift proved this year, there’s no reason the old can’t be experienced as new, too.‘Almost Famous 20th Anniversary’(UMe; multiple configurations with deluxe editions starting at $169.98)Cameron Crowe’s 2000 film, “Almost Famous,” was his fond reminiscence about writing for Rolling Stone during the hard-partying, all-access 1970s. The expanded anniversary editions are overstuffed with familiar songs alongside a few live rarities. They also include a disc of mostly folksy soundtrack instrumentals by Nancy Wilson, from Heart, and the complete recordings of the film’s invented band, Stillwater — a Led Zeppelin/Bad Company knockoff stomping through songs written by Crowe, Wilson and Peter Frampton — along with, in boxed-set style, the demo versions. (A Stillwater EP, minus the demos, is also available separately.) Stillwater’s vintage style was meticulously reconstructed — booming drums, screaming lead guitar (from Mike McCready of Pearl Jam) — with hints of meta self-consciousness in the lyrics. “It was juvenile, it was something wild,” the band shouts in “You Had to Be There.” JON PARELESArmabillion Recordz(Armabillion.com; albums start at $30)One of a handful of obscurantist rap reissue labels that have emerged in recent years, Armabillion is based in Italy but specializes in limited-run vinyl pressings of undersung gangster rap classics from around the United States, especially the South and the Bay Area. This year’s slate of releases has been impressive, among them Gank Move’s dreamy, tough-talking “Come Into My World”; Coop MC’s slinky “Home of the Killers”; Ant Banks’s essential debut album “Sittin’ on Somethin’ Phat”; and the rowdy “Straight From tha Ramp!!!” by Tec-9 (of U.N.L.V.), an early release on Cash Money Records. JON CARAMANICALouis Armstrong, ‘The Complete Louis Armstrong Columbia and RCA Victor Studio Sessions 1946-1966’(Mosaic; seven CDs, $119)The period covered by this boxed set mostly fits within what’s considered to be Armstrong’s long midcareer lull, but when it comes to the creator of the modern jazz solo, even the mellow years can support a certain level of fascination. And this loving revisitation from the jazz archivalists at Mosaic spares no enthusiasm: The scholar Ricky Riccardi’s liner notes clock in at roughly 30,000 words, illustrated by 40 photographs, most of them never before seen. And the recordings — covering the full sweep of Armstrong’s studio dates for Columbia and RCA over a 20-year span — have been transferred directly from the originals and remastered. There are two discs of singles that include midsize- and large-ensemble performances, a rare duet with the German singer and film star Lotte Lenya on “Mack the Knife,” and even a promotional track, “Music to Shave By,” that Armstrong recorded on behalf of the Remington Company. Also included are his Columbia LPs from this era, plus outtakes from the sessions: “Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy”; “Satch Plays Fats” (that’s Fats Waller); and his musical-theater collaboration with Dave Brubeck, “The Real Ambassadors.” GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOPastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir, ‘I Shall Wear a Crown’(Numero Group; five CDs, $35; five LPs, $90)Half a century ago, T.L. Barrett was far from the only pastor in Black America — or even on the South Side of Chicago — fusing gospel standards with funk. But good luck finding anyone who did it with more flavor, more hooks or more genuine frontman flair. “I Shall Wear a Crown” pulls together the four albums and various singles Barrett released throughout the 1970s, all with his Youth for Christ Choir joined by a crackling rhythm section. The end of the ’60s was a golden moment for youth choruses on wax, with the era’s each-one-teach-one activism shining through. (See also: the Voices of East Harlem; Sister Nancy Dupree’s classroom choir in Rochester, N.Y.; and the loose group of neighborhood kids whose voices are captured on James Brown’s “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud,” from 1968, possibly helping to set off the trend.) But Barrett’s music evolved through that moment, and he kept finding new ways to use the choir. By the mid-70s, he was dealing with synthesizers and crunchy electric guitar and cosmic slow-jam textures. This is the era that provided Kanye West with one of his most brilliant “Life of Pablo” samples, “Father Stretch My Hands,” a sultry, tantalizingly slow song in multiple parts. The box’s 24-page booklet features evocative and scholarly liner notes by Aadam Keeley and Aaron Cohen shining light on what has been, in many ways, a life of bridged contradictions and extraordinary achievement. RUSSONELLOThe Beach Boys, ‘Feel Flows: The Sunflower & Surf’s Up Sessions 1969-1971’(UMe; five CDs and hardcover book, $125)The Beach Boys revisit a less-heralded era in their history in “Feel Flows.”“Sunflower” (1970) and “Surf’s Up” (1971) were the Beach Boys’ most ambitious attempts to stay relevant in the 1970s while living up to Brian Wilson’s vision of merging complex music with mass popularity. “Sunflower” celebrated the joys of music and romance; “Surf’s Up” was as topical as the Beach Boys would ever be, worrying about environmental pollution, fatal student protests and the end of youthful innocence, with lyrics that sometimes reveled in literary conundrums. The boxed set includes both of the full albums and some complete outtakes, along with concert performances, alternate versions and stripped-down instrumental and a cappella tracks. The tracks are an education for aspiring producers, unveiling elaborate arrangements and savoring every earnest nonsense syllable of the band’s defining vocal harmonies. PARELESThe Beat Farmers, ‘Tales of the New West’(Blixa Sounds; two CDs, $19.99)The debut album from the San Diego band the Beat Farmers, released in 1985, is a dynamic and sturdy roots-rock gem, with flickers of the cowpunk sound that had been coursing through the region in the years just prior. The band’s best known song from this album, “Happy Boy,” scans as a novelty in retrospect, but the rest is full of savvy guitar work, slinky, yelpy singing and a rollicking rhythm section, peaking on the uproarious and blowsy “Lost Weekend.” The reissue’s bonus disc is an assured and easeful concert recording, “Live at the Spring Valley Inn, 1983.” CARAMANICAThe Beatles, ‘Let It Be (Super Deluxe)’(Capitol; five CDs, one Blu-ray audio disc and hardcover book, $140; five LPs and hardcover book, $200)An expanded boxed set for the Beatles’ “Let It Be” includes two discs of studio conversation.Anyone who didn’t get enough Beatles outtakes, dialogue and rehearsals in Peter Jackson’s documentary “Get Back” can try the expanded boxed set of “Let It Be,” which includes a new mix of the original album and singles (including the goopy orchestral arrangements), two discs of studio music and chatter, and another of the engineer Glyn Johns’s rough 1969 mixes from the album sessions. After making elaborate, groundbreaking studio albums, for “Let It Be” the Beatles dared themselves to record live in real time in front of a film crew — no pressure — joined only by the keyboardist (and unifier) Billy Preston. As in the documentary, the outtakes contrast Paul McCartney’s goal-oriented consistency with John Lennon’s casual restlessness. The find is the 1969 mixes: more open, more revealing, sounding even more live than the original album tracks. PARELESBush Tetras, ‘Rhythm and Paranoia: The Best of Bush Tetras’(Wharf Cat Records; three LPs, $98.98; two CDs, $29.98)With their most-loved songs scattered across various 7” singles and EPs, the delightfully prickly New York art-rockers Bush Tetras are the perfect candidates for a best-of collection like “Rhythm and Paranoia,” a chronologically sequenced triple album that puts their long, rich career into proper context. Thanks to underground hits like the walking-after-midnight anthem “Too Many Creeps” from 1980 and the groovy kiss-off “You Can’t Be Funky” the following year, the group was often associated most closely with the post-punk and no wave scenes. But the latter half of this set proves that for decades it continued to evolve in surprising yet intuitive new directions, as heard on the 1996 Fugazi-like wailer “Page 18” or the billowing blues-rock of “Heart Attack” from 2012. LINDSAY ZOLADZEva Cassidy, ‘Live at Blues Alley (25th Anniversary Edition)’(Blix Street Records; two LPs, $37.98)A new Eva Cassidy reissue presents her first solo album fully remastered, in the highest fidelity available.Though the vocalist Eva Cassidy didn’t write her own songs, and could sometimes slip into an almost exact approximation of Aretha Franklin or Bonnie Raitt’s phrasing, it never made sense to question her legitimacy or intent. Cassidy’s heart was right there, laid bare in her voice. When she saved up the money to record “Live at Blues Alley,” her first solo album, in January 1996, Cassidy wasn’t even a known figure on the small Washington, D.C., music scene. Just months after it came out, she died of cancer at age 33. It would be another couple of years before she broke through to a wider audience, thanks to a posthumous compilation CD, “Songbird” (drawn partly from the “Blues Alley” recordings), and the stream of cobbled-together releases that followed. This new reissue, pressed at 45 r.p.m. onto a pair of heavyweight LPs, presents the original document fully remastered, in the highest fidelity available. RUSSONELLOWhat to Know About ‘The Beatles: Get Back’Peter Jackson’s seven-plus hour documentary series, which explores the most contested period in the band’s history, is available on Disney Plus.Re-examining How the Beatles Ended: Think you know what happened? Jackson may change your mind.Yoko Ono’s Omnipresence: The performance artist is everywhere in the film. At first it’s unnerving, then dazzling.6 Big Moments: Don’t have time to watch the full documentary? Here’s a guide to its eye-opening scenes.‘Changüí: The Sound of Guantánamo’(Petaluma; three CDs and hardcover book, $63)When he realized there were very few recordings of local, rural changüí — music for all-night neighborhood parties in Guantánamo province, at Cuba’s eastern tip — the journalist Gianluca Tramontana began making his own with a hand-held stereo recorder, capturing the music live, acoustic and unadorned. This extensive boxed set, annotated with lyrics and musicology, offers Afro-Cuban music at its most elemental and kinetic: endlessly syncopated riffs picked on a tres (Cuban guitar) backed only by percussion and the plunked bass notes of a marímbula (a box with metal prongs), topped by singers who may well be improvising rhymes, answered by backup refrains. The lyrics offer history, advice, love, pride in the changüí tradition and up-to-the-minute commentary on what’s going on at the party or in the world. More important, the percussion and tres make the music eternally danceable. PARELESRay Charles, ‘True Genius’(Tangerine; six CDs and hardcover book, $105)“True Genius” collects decades of Ray Charles’s work.For me, and others, America’s greatest male singer was Ray Charles. His voice was grainy, earthy and wise; his emotional impact was unmistakable and complex, merging pain and strength, sorrow and humor, flirtation and heartache. Of course, he was no slouch as a pianist, either. This straightforward, career-spanning compilation covers his early years as he forges his fusion of gospel, swing, blues, country and pop, though for his pivotal 1950s Atlantic singles — “Hallelujah, I Love Her So,” “I’ve Got a Woman” and “What’d I Say” — it swaps in live versions instead of the studio classics. It moves through his decades as an interpreter, when he homed in on the soul within other people’s hits, and includes a rambunctious 1972 concert set from Stockholm and latter-day duets with admirers like Willie Nelson, Norah Jones and Billy Joel. PARELESJ Dilla, ‘ Welcome 2 Detroit — The 20th Anniversary Edition’(BBE Music; 12 7” singles for $129.99)A box of 7” singles includes instrumental versions and alternate mixes of J Dilla’s 2001 debut studio LP.By the time the tastemaking Detroit hip-hop producer J Dilla released his 2001 debut studio album, “Welcome 2 Detroit,” he was already somewhere in the realm of mythos. A member of the Soulquarians and the Ummah production collectives, he was known for music that was both luscious and thumping — he was wildly influential and essentially uncopyable. (He died in 2006.) “Welcome 2 Detroit” is a musically wide-ranging album, but never thrums with anything but his particular vibration, the J Dilla feel that exists somewhere just beneath the skin. This immaculately detailed boxed set features 7” singles of the album’s songs along with instrumental versions, alternate mixes and a book detailing the making of the album. CARAMANICAWillie Dunn, ‘Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies: The Willie Dunn Anthology’(Light in the Attic; two LPs, $35; MP3 download, $10)Willie Dunn (1941-2013) was a Canadian songwriter, filmmaker and Indigenous activist; this set offers just a sampling of his extensive recorded catalog. He emerged in the 1960s with songs rooted in folk and country, sometimes incorporating Indigenous instruments and melodies. His voice was a kindly but forthright baritone, with hints of Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Gordon Lightfoot. Dunn was a cleareyed storyteller, and in songs like “The Ballad of Crowfoot” he chronicled individual lives, historical injustices and the power and majesty of nature. PARELESBob Dylan, ‘Springtime in New York: The Bootleg Series Vol. 16 (1980-1985)’(Columbia/Legacy; five CDs, hard-bound book and memorabilia, $140)The latest excavation of Bob Dylan’s archives is from the first half of the 1980s, when he let go of the certainties of his born-again phase and returned to thornier, more enigmatic songs that still grappled with morality, love, history and responsibility on the albums “Infidels” (1983) and “Empire Burlesque” (1985). He also tried 1980s-style production, which left those albums with overblown drum sounds and a dated electronic sheen. Two discs from the 1980 sessions and rehearsals for his 1980 “Shot of Love” are mostly throwaways, except for the murky, ominous “Yes Sir, No Sir.” But the songs from sessions and tours for “Infidels” and “Empire Burlesque” offer more. The set unveils a full-band version of “Blind Willie McTell” and a boisterous, bluesy rock song that only surfaced briefly on tour in 1984, “Enough Is Enough.” It finds more vulnerable, less gimmicky versions of familiar songs, and it details the evolution — and sometimes overnight rewrites — of the songs that became “Foot of Pride” and “Tight Connection to My Heart,” a close-up of Dylan’s constant tinkering and improving. PARELESBeverly Glenn-Copeland, ‘Keyboard Fantasies’ and ‘Keyboard Fantasies Reimagined’(Transgressive; LP, CD, cassette or download, from $6.99 to $27.99)This is the latest installment of the campaign to resurrect the work of Beverly Glenn-Copeland, the Canadian new age/electronic music producer and singer whose recordings were rediscovered a few years ago. “Keyboard Fantasies,” originally released in 1986 in a limited cassette run, is entrancing and almost uncannily soothing. “Welcome to you, both young and old/We are ever new, we are ever new,” Glenn-Copeland softly warbles, a beacon of safety and possibility. The original album, now released on CD and vinyl for the first time, was followed by a collection of remixes and reinterpretations by acolytes, most notably Kelsey Lu’s ecstatically elegiac take on “Ever New.” CARAMANICAGeorge Harrison, ‘All Things Must Pass (50th Anniversary Edition)’(Capitol/UMe; Uber Deluxe Box, $999.98; Super Deluxe Box with eight LPs, $199.98, or five CDs, $149.98; other configurations from $19.98 to $89.98)Seek out the discs featuring 42 previously unreleased demos from George Harrison’s solo debut, “All Things Must Pass.”Anyone who has watched “Get Back” knows how creatively stifled George Harrison was feeling in the final days of the Beatles. His first post-Fab Four solo album, the sprawling, tenderly spiritual masterwork “All Things Must Pass” from 1970, became a repository for all those pent-up ideas. The joy of creation is palpable throughout the 50th anniversary deluxe edition of the album, which features a meticulous and punchy new mix derived from the original tapes by Paul Hicks. The set’s most revelatory material is on the discs featuring 42 previously unreleased demos, which strip Harrison’s compositions down to their bare essentials and showcase the almost otherworldly outpouring of song-craft that accompanied his musical liberation. This season of retroactive Beatlemania is the perfect opportunity for a deep dive into Harrison’s long-gestating opus — consider it “Get Back,” Part 4. ZOLADZ‘It’s a Good, Good Feeling: The Latin Soul of Fania Records (The Singles)’(Craft Latino; four CDs, one 7” vinyl record, $63.98; two LPs, $29.98)While it was on its way to becoming New York salsa’s equivalent of Motown Records, Fania was also helping to boost the Latin-soul hybrid known as boogaloo. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Fania put out a stream of albums and singles with English-language lyrics, mixing funk, rock ’n’ roll and son rhythms; dollops of doo-wop vocals; and more than enough cowbell. This box culls together 89 such singles that Fania released between 1965 and 1975; most weren’t hits, but plenty were by hitmakers: Ray Barretto (whose smash “El Watusi” had presaged boogaloo), Joe Bataan, Willie Colón. Boogaloo could sometimes feel like a fusion of related but not directly compatible parts (“Everybody gather ’round,/I’m gonna introduce the Latin soul sound,” Joe Bataan sings, with something of a heavy hand, on “Latin Soul Square Dance”), but some of the most fun to be had here is on the covers of pop and soul hits sprinkled throughout, which embrace the task directly: Larry Harlow’s orchestra covering “Grazing in the Grass,” Harvey Averne’s take on “Stand,” Joe Bataan’s “Shaft.” The LP version of the box is abridged, including 28 tracks across two discs. RUSSONELLOThe KLF, ‘Solid State Logik 1’(Streaming services)In 1992, the KLF — the British Dada prankster dance-music anarchists who had become global hitmakers in the previous two years — fired machine-gun blanks at the audience at the BRIT Awards and announced their retirement from the music business. Shortly thereafter, they took their whole catalog out of print and, later, burned one million pounds in royalty payment cash. So it’s cause for excitement, and perhaps skepticism, that the group’s catalog began to trickle onto streaming services this year. Most crucial is the compilation “Solid State Logik 1,” which contains all the stratospheric, ornate, deeply ambitious hits: the spooky “What Time Is Love? (Live at Trancentral),” the ecstatic and triumphant “3 a.m. Eternal (Live at the S.S.L.)” and “Justified & Ancient,” with those Tammy Wynette vocals that still, three decades on, are disorienting in just the right way. Is the reissue series a scam? A prelude to a prank? Or a concession to permanence from a musical act that seemed content to live on only as a memory? CARAMANICANirvana, ‘Nevermind: 30th Anniversary (Super Deluxe Edition)’(Geffen; five CDs, one Blu-ray videodisc and hardcover book, $200)A 30th-anniversary edition of “Nevermind” features four concert recordings from 1991 and 1992.GeffenAs if Nirvana ever had to, it proves its punk bona fides yet again with the 30th-anniversary expansion of “Nevermind.” The newly remastered album adds a little additional clarity that brings out both the songs’ pop structures and the rasp and yowl of Kurt Cobain’s voice. It’s packaged with four live concert recordings of variable fidelity from 1991 and 1992 — Amsterdam (included as both audio and video), Melbourne and nearly mono-sounding sets from Del Mar, Calif., and Tokyo — that show Nirvana bashing the music out night after night, screaming and blaring, overloading with physical impact and probably spurring some wild mosh pits. Wherever the tour led, as Cobain sang, there was “no recess.” But the 20th-anniversary “Nevermind” box, in 2011, included a better-sounding 1991 concert, “Live at the Paramount,” and more rarities. PARELESOutkast, ‘ATLiens (25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)’(Legacy Recordings/Sony Music; four LPs, $69.98)A sublimely sinuous Southern funk album full of jackhammer rhymes, “ATLiens,” the second Outkast album, from 1996, is perhaps the duo’s most overlooked from its pre-pop-breakthrough era — not the scrappy statement of purpose that preceded it (the 1994 debut, “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik”) nor the psych-rock philosophy lesson that followed (“Aquemini,” from 1998). But it’s crucial to the Outkast worldview formation — it shows the duo both at ease with the languor of laid-back Southern production but also champing at the bit to incorporate small moments of explosion. This release includes the original album alongside, for the first time, the full set of instrumentals. CARAMANICA‘R&B in DC 1940-1960’(Bear Family; 16 CDs, $273.04)Probably the heavyweight champion of boxed sets this year (it weighs 10 pounds), “R&B in DC 1940-1960” collects nearly 500 singles recorded in the nation’s capital back when doo-wop, mambo, early rock ’n’ roll, jump blues and big-band jazz were first being lumped together in the pages of trade magazines into a category called “R&B.” It’s all contextualized engagingly in a 352-page book, full of closely researched history, images and song-by-song notes. You can tease out the presence of some major figures and themes: Marvin Gaye lingers in the backing vocals on at least one track; his mentor, Bo Diddley, also makes an appearance; the recordings of the Clovers and Ruth Brown, as the notes attest, played a role in keeping Atlantic Records afloat in the label’s fledgling days. But the point of this collection is to get you to listen more broadly, and more completely, to an entire musical and social moment: Jay Bruder, the researcher who compiled the collection, wisely included commercials, jingles and other radio-broadcast ephemera in this collection. These are the sounds of Washington in the midcentury, when it was home to one of the country’s most thriving Black middle classes and an incubator of musical talent to match. RUSSONELLORadiohead, ‘Kid A Mnesia’(XL; three CDs, $23; three LPs, $60)Radiohead dig out songs that didn’t make the cut for “Kid A” or “Amnesia” on a new box taking in both releases.Radiohead thoroughly dismantled its rock reflexes to make “Kid A” (2000) and “Amnesiac” (2001), two albums drawn almost entirely from the same sessions. Its former arena-rock guitars and anthemic choruses receded behind fragments, loops, electronic beats, orchestral experiments and ominous noises; disquiet and malaise floated free. “Kid A Mnesia” unites the two companion albums and adds a disc of alternate takes, stray instrumental tracks and songs Radiohead had not quite committed to disc: “Follow Me Around” and “If You Say the Word.” They’re not revelations, but they extend the mood. PARELESThe Replacements, ‘Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take out the Trash (Deluxe Edition)’(Rhino; four CDs, one LP, one 7,” $79.98)Snarling, thrashing and defiantly tuneful, the Replacements’ 1981 debut album, “Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash,” has always sounded like a power-pop LP stuffed into a blender and flicked on to high. But this comprehensive, 40th-anniversary deluxe edition is a sustained reminder of the craft and winning chemistry behind an album that was never quite as anarchically tossed-off as it seemed. Across 100 tracks — 67 of them previously unreleased — it becomes clear that the sturdy melodic core of Paul Westerberg’s songwriting and the ramshackle fury of Bob Stinson’s solos were present from the earliest days of the Minneapolis band’s existence. Some of the most fascinating tracks on this reissue, though, point to where the Replacements were headed on “Let It Be” from 1984 and beyond: A handful of Westerberg’s solo home demos, the best of which is the gut-wrenching “You’re Getting Married,” foreshadow the ragged-heart balladry of a ’Mats classic like “Answering Machine.” Nearly four hours of material is plenty to sift through, but a high percentage of this “Trash” is treasure. ZOLADZThe Rolling Stones, ‘Tattoo You’(Interscope; four CDs, picture disc and hardcover book, $150; five LPs and hardcover book, $198; two CDs, $20)Beyond the kick of “Start Me Up” and the unexpected tenderness (and Sonny Rollins saxophone solo) of “Waiting for a Friend,” “Tattoo You” (1981) was a second-tier Rolling Stones album: vigorous performances of merely passable material. With band members estranged, it was built largely by finishing lyrics and vocals atop outtakes from previous albums. Its 40th-anniversary expanded version includes nine previously unreleased songs that casually continue the album’s 1981 strategy, revisiting tracks from the vault; Mick Jagger sings some obviously anachronistic lyrics in songs like “It’s a Lie,” which mentions eBay. (More deluxe versions add a two-CD 1982 Wembley concert recording.) The new tracks offer familiar pleasures: hearing the band romp through every song. PARELESNina Simone, ‘The Montreux Years’(BMG; two LPs, $29.99; two CDs, $19.98)Between 1968 and 1990, Nina Simone played the Montreux Jazz Festival five times.The most arresting scene in Liz Garbus’s 2015 Netflix documentary “What Happened, Miss Simone?” is a performance from the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival, during which a weary but incandescent Nina Simone performs her interpretation of Janis Ian’s “Stars.” Simone’s reading is one of the most damning and deeply felt critiques of fame I have ever heard — and luckily it is featured on “Nina Simone: The Montreux Years,” a new and beautifully packaged two-album collection of live material. Between 1968 and 1990, Simone played the Swiss jazz festival five times; each performance was both a reflection of a specific moment in her career and a testament to her continued virtuosity. For all her ambivalence about jazz festivals and her noted preference for performing in classical music halls, Simone clearly had a special connection to Montreux and, as this collection attests, brought her best to its stage decade after decade. ZOLADZWadada Leo Smith’s Great Lakes Quartet, ‘The Chicago Symphonies’(TUM; four CDs, $71.99)The trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith turned 80 this month but continues to compose and perform prolifically. And his projects have only been growing grander in scale, while still centering his stark, epigrammatic style of playing and writing. Smith’s latest effort (it isn’t an archival recording) is “The Chicago Symphonies,” four extended works, carefully composed but minimalist in craft, written not for an orchestra but for a quartet: the Pulitzer Prize winner Henry Threadgill on alto saxophone, John Lindberg on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. (The saxophonist Jonathon Haffner replaces Threadgill on the fourth and final symphony.) It’s the same group that was featured on Smith’s celebrated “Great Lakes Suite,” from 2014. This new collection of music is dedicated not to the natural beauty of the region, but to the lives of great Midwesterners, from politicians like Abe Lincoln and Barack Obama to Smith’s own colleagues in the avant-garde. The simpatico between Smith and Threadgill is an exciting and rarely documented thing, and it gives these already spellbinding compositions the allure of a privileged conversation. RUSSONELLOThe Who, ‘The Who Sell Out (Super Deluxe Box Set)’(UMe/Polydor; five CDs, two 7” singles, hardcover book, memorabilia, $139)A new boxed set pulls together the Who’s scattered trove of recordings from 1967-69.The Who tried multiple directions while writing and recording “The Who Sell Out,” amid tour dates and the general psychedelic ferment of 1967. Pete Townshend was coming up with character sketches, expanding songs toward mini-operas and layering voices and instruments ever more ingeniously. To hold together its hodgepodge of songs, “The Who Sell Out” was sequenced as a pirate radio show, including jingles and parody commercials. The boxed set pulls together the Who’s scattered trove of recordings from 1967-69. It expands the original album (in mono and stereo versions, plus non-album singles) with three discs of recordings from 1967-68 along with sketches that Townshend would mine for “Tommy” in 1969 and, newly unveiled, a dozen of Townshend’s increasingly ambitious demos, including a thoroughly unrelaxed “Relax” and a smoldering, baleful “I Can See for Miles” that fully maps out the album version, which would be one of the Who’s pinnacles. PARELES More

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      For Pop Music, 2021 Was the Year of the Deep Dive

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      Documentaries brought us closer to musicians this year, and it wasn’t always pretty.The pandemic, it seems, sent certain enterprising music lovers into editing rooms. For those still leery of gathering for a live concert, the 2021 consolation prize was not a slew of ephemeral livestreams, but an outpouring of smart, intent music documentaries that weren’t afraid to stretch past two hours long. With screen time begging to be filled, it was the year of the deep dive.Those documentaries included a binge-watch of the Beatles at work in Peter Jackson’s “The Beatles: Get Back”; a visual barrage to conjure musical disruption in Todd Haynes’s “Velvet Underground”; far-reaching commentary atop ecstatic performances from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival in Questlove’s “Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)”; and a surprisingly candid chronicle of Billie Eilish’s whirlwind career — at 16, 17 and 18 years old — in R.J. Cutler’s “The World’s a Little Blurry.” The documentaries were about reclaiming and rethinking memory, about unexpected echoes across decades, about transparency and the mysteries of artistic production.They were also a reminder of how scarce hi-fi sound and images were back in the analog era, and how ubiquitous they are now. Half a century ago, the costs of film and tape were not negligible, while posterity was a minor consideration. Experiencing the moment seemed far more important than preserving any record of it. It would be decades before “pics or it didn’t happen.”The Velvet Underground, in its early days, was simultaneously a soundtrack and a canvas for Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a multimedia club-sized happening that projected images on the band members as they played. Although the Velvets’ social set included plenty of artists and filmmakers, apparently no one got the obvious idea of capturing a full-length performance by the Velvets in their prime. What a remarkable missed opportunity.Haynes’s documentary creatively musters circumstantial evidence instead. There are memories from eyewitnesses (and only eyewitnesses, a relief). And Haynes fills the lack of concert footage with an overload of contemporaneous images, sometimes blinking wildly in a tiled screen that suggests Windows 10 running amok. News, commercials and bits of avant-garde films flicker alongside Warhol’s silent contemplations of band members staring back at the camera. The faces and fragments are there, in a workaround that translates the far-off blur of the 1960s into a 21st-century digital grid.Todd Haynes’s “The Velvet Underground” fills the lack of concert footage with an overload of contemporaneous images.Apple TV+Luckily there was more foresight in 1969, when Hal Tulchin had five video cameras rolling at the Harlem Cultural Festival, which later became known as “Black Woodstock.” New York City (and a sponsor, Maxwell House) presented a series of six weekly free concerts at Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park) with a lineup that looks almost miraculous now, including Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, B.B. King, Sly and the Family Stone and Mongo Santamaria, just for starters. Tulchin’s crew shot more than 40 hours of footage, capturing the eager faces and righteous fashions of the audience along with performers who were knocking themselves out for an almost entirely Black crowd. Yet nearly all of Tulchin’s material went unseen until Questlove finally assembled “Summer of Soul” from it.The music in “Summer of Soul” moves from peak to peak, with unstoppable rhythms, rawly compelling voices, snappy dance steps and urgent messages. But “Summer of Soul” doesn’t just revel in the performances. Commentary from festivalgoers, performers and observers (including the definitive critic Greg Tate) supply context for a festival that had the Black Panthers as security, and that the city likely supported, in part, to channel energy away from potential street protests after the turbulence of 1968.Questlove’s subtitle and his song choices — B.B. King singing about slavery, Ray Baretto proudly claiming a multiracial America, Nina Simone declaiming “Backlash Blues,” Rev. Jesse Jackson preaching about Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder in 1968, even the Fifth Dimension finding anguish and redemption in “Let the Sunshine In” — make clear that the performers weren’t offering escapism or complacency. After five decades in the archives, “Summer of Soul” is still timely in 2021; it’s anything but quaint. Here’s hoping that far more of the festival footage emerges; bring on the expanded version or the mini-series. A soundtrack album is due in January.The music in “Summer of Soul,” which includes the 5th Dimension, moves from peak to peak, but the film doesn’t just revel in the performances. Searchlight PicturesCameras were filming constantly during the recording sessions for “Let It Be,” when the Beatles set themselves a peculiar, quixotic challenge in January of 1969: to make an album fast, on their own (though they eventually got the invaluable help of Billy Preston on keyboards), on camera and with a live show to follow. It was one more way that the Beatles were a harbinger of things to come, as if they had envisioned our digital era, when bands habitually record video while they work and upload work-in-progress updates for their fans. In the 1960s, recording studios were generally regarded as private work spaces, from which listeners would eventually receive only the (vinyl) finished project. The “Let It Be” sessions represented a new transparency.Its results, in 1970, were the “Let It Be” album, reworked by Phil Spector, and the dour, disjointed 80-minute documentary “Let It Be” by the director Michael Lindsay-Hogg — both of them a letdown after the album “Abbey Road,” which was released in 1969 but recorded after the “Let It Be” sessions. The Beatles had announced their breakup with solo albums.The three-part, eight-hour “Get Back” may well have been closer to what the Beatles hoped to put on film in 1969. It’s a bit overlong; I will never need to see another close-up of toast at breakfast. But in all those hours of filming, Lindsay-Hogg’s cameras took in the iterative, intuitive process of the band constructing Beatles songs: building and whittling down arrangements, playing Mad Libs with syllables of lyrics, recharging itself with oldies and in jokes, having instruments in hand when inspiration struck. Jackson’s definitive sequence — the song “Get Back” emerging as Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr are jamming one morning — merges laddish camaraderie with deep artistic instinct.Cameras were filming constantly during the recording sessions for “Let It Be” in January 1969.Apple Corps“Get Back” newly reveals the situations that the Beatles were juggling even as they pushed themselves toward their self-imposed (and then self-extended) deadline. They moved from the acoustically inhospitable Twickenham film studios to a hastily assembled basement studio at Apple. They seriously mulled over some preposterous locations — an amphitheater in Tripoli? a children’s hospital? — for the impending live show. There was so much tension that George Harrison walked out of the band, only to reconcile and rejoin after a few days. Meanwhile, they faced predatory coverage from British tabloids. It’s a wonder they could concentrate on making music at all.Yet as established stars, the Beatles could work largely within their own protective bubble in 1969. Fast-forward 50 years for “The World’s a Little Blurry,” and Billie Eilish faces some of the same pressures as the Beatles did: songwriting, deadlines, playing live, the press. But she’s also dealing with them as a teenage girl, in an era when there are cameras everywhere — even under her massage table — and the internet multiplies every bit of visibility and every attack vector. “I literally can’t have a bad moment,” she realizes.In “The World’s a Little Blurry,” Eilish performs to huge crowds singing along with every word, sweeps the top awards at the 2019 Grammys and gets a hug from her childhood pop idol, Justin Bieber. But as in her songs — tuneful, whispery and often nightmarish — there’s as much trauma as there is triumph. Eilish also copes with tearing a ligament onstage, her recurring Tourette’s syndrome, a video-screen breakdown when she headlines the Coachella festival, an apathetic boyfriend, inane interviewers, endless meet-and-greets and constant self-questioning about accessibility versus integrity. It’s almost too much information. Still, a few years or a few decades from now, who knows what an expanded version might add? More

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      Glyn Johns is a Fashion Favorite in 'The Beatles: Get Back'

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      The long-lost outfits of the Beatles sound man have made him an unwitting fashion favorite, five decades later.“It’s just cringe-making,” said Glyn Johns, the recording engineer and producer who plays a prominent role in “The Beatles: Get Back,” Peter Jackson’s marathon documentary series about the fateful Beatles sessions in 1969 that culminated in the “Let It Be” album.Mr. Johns was not talking about the nearly eight-hour series, which critics and fans have embraced as a watershed television event, but of the Austin Powers-esque outfits his 26-year-old self wears throughout it. “I look like a bloody clown,” he added.His yeti-like goatskin coat. His dandyish Oscar Wilde jackets. His Capri-ready neck scarves and Janis Joplin sunglasses.It is not easy to stand out in a documentary featuring four of the 20th century’s most famous people. But with his flair for accessories and slinky-pants-cool, Mr. Johns has found a new round of appreciators a half century after the fact.“Glyn Johns is the late ’60s fashion icon I didn’t know I needed,” tweeted Katie Irish, a costume designer who worked on “The Americans.”“Glyn Johns in the fluffy jacket is my look for the rest of winter,” said Emma Swift, an Australian singer and songwriter, on Twitter. Others have noted his uncanny resemblance to Liam Gallagher of Oasis; Cillian Murphy, the star of “Peaky Blinders;” and Ronnie (Z-Man) Barzell, the debauched rock impresario in the 1970 camp classic, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.”“The coolest thing I think I wore in the film was the crocodile Levi jacket, which in fact had been given to me by Keith Richards,” Mr. Johns said. Disney+For Mr. Johns, 79, the experience has been amusing — to a point.“I’m fed up with it now, I’ll tell you,” he said with a laugh in a telephone call from his home in Chichester, England. “I have 9,000 emails and texts from people from my past, all taking the Mickey unmercifully.”“Some people are saying, ‘Oh, the jacket you wore on X day was fantastic,’ or ‘Where did you get the goatskin coat?’ But in general, they’re laughing at how ridiculous I looked, which of course is true.”Mr. Johns was hardly the only peacock during those fateful weeks, as the Beatles labored to get over their differences and get back to their roots with a no-nonsense rock n’ roll album, accompanied, in theory, by a concert television special.What to Know About ‘The Beatles: Get Back’Peter Jackson’s seven-plus hour documentary series, which explores the most contested period in the band’s history, is available on Disney Plus.Re-examining How the Beatles Ended: Think you know what happened? Jackson may change your mind.Yoko Ono’s Omnipresence: The performance artist is everywhere in the film. At first it’s unnerving, then dazzling.6 Big Moments: Don’t have time to watch the full documentary? Here’s a guide to its eye-opening scenes.While John Lennon and Paul McCartney generally seemed to be dressed for comfort, befitting long hours toiling in the studio, Ringo Starr showed up to one session in a lime-green pinstriped suit with a forest green musketeer shirt. George Harrison, wore a similar ensemble in pink and purple. (Fashion sites including W and Marie Claire have offered guides on how to shop the looks in “Get Back.”)In such company, it is a little surprising that Mr. Johns has garnered so much attention. He was already an industry heavyweight, who would later become the go-to sound man for The Who, Eric Clapton, the Eagles and many others. But at that point, Mr. Johns was anything but a Beatles insider. He was associated with the Rolling Stones, whom he had worked with since the early days. In fact, when the Beatles first reached out to him, he was dubious.“I was at home on a very rare night off and the phone rang, and the person on the other end announced themselves in a Liverpudlian accent as being Paul McCartney,” he said. Mr. Johns thought it was Mick Jagger pulling a practical joke, so he told him to get lost, albeit in saltier language..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“And of course there was silence on the other end of the phone,” Mr. Johns added. “He started all over again, and I thought, ‘Oh, it is Paul McCartney, Jesus Christ!”The Stones’ fashion influence on Mr. Johns is undeniable. “I remember Brian Jones taking me to a store in Carnaby Street once, and we bought stuff,” he said. “I remember Mick gave me a fabulous shirt.”“The coolest thing I think I wore in the film was the crocodile Levi jacket, which in fact had been given to me by Keith Richards,” he added. “We were in Paris, and Keith had this jacket made for him in France, and it had been delivered to the hotel. He took it out of the packaging, put it on and said, ‘Here you have it, I don’t want it.’ I have no idea what happened to it. Maybe I gave it away.”Nor can he remember where he got the goatskin coat that viewers are obsessed with, although he does remember how it smelled after a rainstorm.“I distinctly remember queuing for an airplane wearing that coat, and the people in front and behind me moved away from me because it actually stank,” Mr. Johns said. “And of course in those days, if you had long hair you were suspect anyway.”Fans rightly laud Mr. Johns’s looks in the film as the epitome of ’60s British rocker cool, and the costume-like whimsy he (and various Beatles at various times) display in “Get Back” has all the color and exuberance of the peak-psychedelia moment.Mr. Johns, left, would become the go-to sound man for The Who, Eric Clapton, the Eagles and many others.Disney+By 1969, however, rock was taking a harder, darker turn, as evidenced by the Rolling Stones’ “Let it Bleed” and Led Zeppelin’s eponymous first album (both of which Mr. Johns worked on), not to mention Beatles songs like, yes, “Get Back.”The Beatles’ public image was starting to reflect that. For the cover shot of “Abbey Road,” taken on Aug. 8 of that year (coincidentally, the same day four members of the Manson family set out for Sharon Tate’s house in Los Angeles.) Mr. McCartney and Mr. Starr opted for somber navy and black, Mr. Lennon blank-slate white and Mr. Harrison, “gravedigger” denim — at least according to the viral Paul-is-dead conspiracy theory of the day.Nor did the Beatles seem to gussy themselves up much for their last public appearance on a London rooftop — the climax of “Get Back.”Gone were the Technicolor satins. Mr. McCartney was basically dressed for the office in a somber black three-piece suit and open-collar shirt. Mr. Lennon, in sneakers, and Mr. Starr went minimalist black-on-black, although the former wore a fur coat borrowed from Yoko Ono and the latter, his wife Maureen’s bright red raincoat, presumably to gird themselves against the winter chill. George Harrison looked somewhat festive, if a little thrift-store chic, in bright green pants and a grizzly-like Mongolian lamb-fur coat. And then of course there was the ever-present Ms. Ono herself, in her ever-present black.A traditional analysis was that the Beatles had stopped putting on showbiz airs by then because they were bickering over money and management, and were headed toward a breakup. That view became canonical after the release of “Let It Be,” the downbeat 1970 documentary by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who plays a prominent role in “Get Back,” and captured the hours of unseen footage that appears in the series.To Mr. Johns and many others, “Let It Be” has all the joy of a divorce proceeding.“It’s awful, terrible,” Mr. Johns said of the earlier film. “My memory was that we actually had a really good time and everybody got on great. The fact that George left the band for 24 hours is no different from any other band I ever worked with, or anyone who works in an office. People who work together for years on end, they fall out, and they patch it up at the end. It’s normal.”He would never have guessed the Beatles were heading toward a split.“The four of them had gone through this mammoth experience, from when they were unknown, to being four of the most famous people in the world,” he said. “There was this massive bond between them. They were like family, really.”He recalls a lot less about what he was wearing, and why.“Listen, mate, it was 50 years ago, how can I remember?” Mr. Johns said with a laugh. “Everyone has a style of their own, I suppose. But I was busy working.” More

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      Denis O’Brien, Force in Ex-Beatle’s Film Company, Dies at 80

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      He and George Harrison created Handmade Films to make “Monty Python’s Life of Brian.” Other successes followed, but the partnership ended badly.Denis O’Brien, who with George Harrison, the former Beatle, founded a production company that made several audacious hit movies, beginning with “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” in 1979, before the partnership and the company’s fortunes soured, died on Friday in Swindon, west of London. He was 80.His daughter Kristen O’Brien said the death, in a hospital, was caused by intra-abdominal sepsis.Mr. O’Brien became Mr. Harrison’s business manager in 1973, hired to bring some stability to Mr. Harrison’s financial affairs, which had been muddled since the Beatles broke up four years earlier. And when Mr. Harrison’s friend Eric Idle, of the Monty Python comedy troupe, went to Mr. Harrison with a problem in 1979, it was Mr. O’Brien who nudged Mr. Harrison into producing movies.Monty Python had begun work on a follow-up to its 1975 hit, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” The new movie was a satire about a man who is mistaken for the Messiah. Mr. Idle’s problem was that EMI, the entertainment conglomerate that had been financing the new movie, had gotten cold feet and pulled out just as production was gearing up. He asked if Mr. Harrison could help financially, and Mr. Harrison in turn consulted Mr. O’Brien.“Denis called me back a few days later and said, ‘OK, I think I know how to do it: We’ll be the producers,’” Mr. Harrison told The Advertiser of Australia in 1986. “He was laughing because he knew that my favorite movie was ‘The Producers’” — the Mel Brooks comedy — “which I’d watched over and over.”Mr. Harrison, putting up as collateral his estate in Henley-on-Thames, England, provided some $4 million to make “Monty Python’s Life of Brian.” It was the first release of Handmade Films, the production company that he and Mr. O’Brien created. As Mr. Idle told the story, Mr. Harrison had a simple reason for financing the film: He wanted to see the movie.“At $4 million, this is still the most anyone has ever paid for a movie ticket,” Mr. Idle wrote in an essay in The Los Angeles Times in 2004.In his telling, Mr. O’Brien had actually structured the project assuming that the film would lose money and that it could be a tax write-off; instead, it became a hit and a beloved entry in the annals of comedy films. Time Out recently ranked it No. 3 on its list of the 100 greatest comedy movies of all time, trailing only “Airplane!” and “This Is Spinal Tap.”With “Brian,” Handmade Films was off on a run of quirky critical and often financial successes, including “The Long Good Friday” (1980), a crime drama with Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren; “Time Bandits” (1981), directed by Terry Gilliam of the Python troupe and featuring other Pythons; the noir drama “Mona Lisa” (1986), another vehicle for Mr. Hoskins; and the comedy “Withnail & I,” which became a sort of cult classic and was ranked No. 7 on that Time Out list.Mr. O’Brien and Mr. Harrison were executive producers on these and numerous other Handmade films, and their early successes were credited with helping to revive the moribund British film industry. They shared a taste for offbeat scripts.“We tend to do movies that come to us because no one else wants to make them,” Mr. Harrison told Newsweek in 1987.That was certainly the case with “Time Bandits,” a hard-to-categorize movie about time-traveling dwarves that they had trouble getting distributed, securing a deal with the independent Avco Embassy Pictures only after the major studio distributors had declined.“There were any number of majors who walked out of the screenings,” Mr. O’Brien told The Los Angeles Times in November 1981, just after the film had enjoyed a robust opening weekend.But Handmade’s Midas touch didn’t last. Some of its movies were costly bombs, most famously “Shanghai Surprise” (1986), a widely panned adventure yarn that starred Madonna and Sean Penn.By the 1990s the company was in financial trouble, and Mr. Harrison soon turned on his longtime partner, accusing him in a 1995 lawsuit of mishandling his money. A court later awarded Mr. Harrison more than $11 million. When Mr. O’Brien sought to declare bankruptcy, Mr. Harrison tried to block that declaration.In 2001, when Mr. Harrison, by then ill with cancer, did not show up to give a deposition in that court challenge, a bankruptcy judge dismissed the case. Mr. Harrison died later that year at 58.In the years since, Mr. O’Brien took most of the criticism for the collapse of Handmade, which was sold in 1994 to a Canadian concern. In a rare interview, with The Belleville News-Democrat of Illinois in 1996, Mr. O’Brien, who lived in the St. Louis area at the time, gave his own interpretation.“As long as we were successful, we had a wonderful relationship,” he said of Mr. Harrison.“The money is not the important aspect here,” he added. “It wouldn’t make any difference if it were a dollar or a million dollars. It’s George not knowing how to accept failure or take responsibility for it.”Ms. O’Brien, his daughter, used to visit Mr. Harrison’s estate with her father as a child, playing in the elaborate gardens that were Mr. Harrison’s pride and joy. The falling-out, she said by email, was painful for her father.“I know he felt just as hurt and betrayed as I am sure Harrison felt,” she said.Eric Idle, center, in a scene from “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” (1979). A satire about a man who is mistaken for the Messiah, it was the first movie produced by Handmade Films.Python (Monty) PicturesDenis James O’Brien was born on Sept. 12, 1941, in St. Louis. His father, Albert, worked for Ralston Purina, where he rose to president; his mother, Ruth (Foster) O’Brien, was office manager for an interior-decorator shop as well as a homemaker.Mr. O’Brien played basketball at Webster Groves High School, near St. Louis, before earning a bachelor’s degree at Northwestern University and a law degree at Washington University in St. Louis.He worked with the Paris law firm Coudert Frères from 1967 to 1969, then held finance positions at N.M. Rothschild & Sons and the EuroAtlantic Group, working out of London.In 1971 he began advising the comic actor Peter Sellers, who recommended Mr. O’Brien to Mr. Harrison, a friend.Mr. Harrison was known to enjoy Pythonesque humor, but Mr. O’Brien also had a sense of impishness. Michael Palin, one of the Pythons, recalled by email that Mr. O’Brien used to call him up and pretend to be Mr. Sellers. Funny accents were a favorite gag — Kristen O’Brien said that when she or her sister, Laura, would call their father, they would sometimes find themselves speaking to “Fritz the German.”On “Life of Brian,” Mr. O’Brien and Mr. Harrison let the Pythons do the filmmaking, but Mr. O’Brien later became more involved in the creative side of movies he was financing. His detractors said this had contributed to the company’s downfall; however, the screenwriter Stephen Rivele (“Ali,” “Nixon”), who with his writing partner, Chris Wilkinson, wrote seven scripts for Handmade in its later years (though none were produced), said his experience with Mr. O’Brien had been positive.“On every draft, he gave careful, handwritten notes, which were always as perceptive as they were polite,” Mr. Rivele said by email. “He had very keen insights and original ideas which invariably made the scripts better.”Mr. O’Brien moved back to England in 2008 after living near St. Louis for a time. At his death he lived in Little Somerford. He was married four times, most recently to Phyllida Riddell O’Brien, who died in 2019. In addition to his daughters — who are from his first marriage, to Karen Lazarus — he is survived by a brother, Douglas.Ms. O’Brien said that in the last year her father had been showing signs of dementia, which seemed to alter his memory of his relationship with Mr. Harrison.“He seemed to have forgotten there was ever a falling-out,” she said, “and in this last year he loved to hear George’s music, and it would transport him back to some really good times in his life. He had nothing but good memories left.” More

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      The Sublime Spectacle of Yoko Ono Disrupting the Beatles

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      In Peter Jackson’s “The Beatles: Get Back,” Ono is a performance artist at the height of her powers.Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.Early in “The Beatles: Get Back,” Peter Jackson’s nearly eight-hour documentary about the making of the album “Let It Be,” the band forms a tight circle in the corner of a movie soundstage. Inexplicably, Yoko Ono is there. She perches in reach of John Lennon, her bemused face oriented toward him like a plant growing to the light. When Paul McCartney starts to play “I’ve Got a Feeling,” Ono is there, stitching a furry object in her lap. When the band starts into “Don’t Let Me Down,” Ono is there, reading a newspaper. Lennon slips behind the piano and Ono is there, her head hovering above his shoulder. Later, when the group squeezes into a recording booth, Ono is there, wedged between Lennon and Ringo Starr, wordlessly unwrapping a piece of chewing gum and working it between Lennon’s fingers. When George Harrison walks off, briefly quitting the band, there is Ono, wailing inchoately into his microphone.At first I found Ono’s omnipresence in the documentary bizarre, even unnerving. The vast set only emphasizes the ludicrousness of her proximity. Why is she there? I pleaded with my television set. But as the hours passed, and Ono remained — painting at an easel, chewing a pastry, paging through a Lennon fan magazine — I found myself impressed by her stamina, then entranced by the provocation of her existence and ultimately dazzled by her performance. My attention kept drifting toward her corner of the frame. I was seeing intimate, long-lost footage of the world’s most famous band preparing for its final performance, and I couldn’t stop watching Yoko Ono sitting around, doing nothing.From left, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and John Lennon play as Yoko Ono arranges some papers.Apple Corps“The Beatles: Get Back” is being read by some as an exculpatory document — proof that Ono was not responsible for destroying the Beatles. “She never has opinions about the stuff they’re doing,” Jackson, who crafted the series out of more than 60 hours of footage, told “60 Minutes.” “She’s a very benign presence and she doesn’t interfere in the slightest.” Ono, also a producer on the series, tweeted an article without comment that claims she is merely performing “mundane tasks” as the band gets to work. In the series, McCartney himself — from the vantage of January 1969, more than a year before the band’s public dissolution — pokes fun at the idea that the Beatles would end “because Yoko sat on an amp.”Her presence has been described as gentle, quiet and unimposing. Indeed, she is not the set’s most meddlesome interloper: That is Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the hapless director of the original documentary “Let It Be,” who keeps urging the band to stage a concert in an ancient amphitheater in Libya or perhaps at a hospital for children suffering from reassuringly minor ailments.And yet there is something depressing about the recasting of Ono as a quiet, inconspicuous lump of a person. Of course her appearance in the studio is obtrusive. The fact that she is not there to directly influence the band’s recordings only makes her behavior more ridiculous. To deny this is to sap her of her power.What to Know About ‘The Beatles: Get Back’Peter Jackson’s seven-plus hour documentary series, which explores the most contested period in the band’s history, is available on Disney Plus.Re-examining How the Beatles Ended: Think you know what happened? Jackson may change your mind.Yoko Ono’s Omnipresence: The performance artist is everywhere in the film. At first it’s unnerving, then dazzling.6 Big Moments: Don’t have time to watch the full documentary? Here’s a guide to its eye-opening scenes.From the beginning, Ono’s presence feels intentional. Her gauzy black outfit and flowing, center-parted hair lend her a tent-like appearance; it is as if she is setting up camp, carving out space in the band’s environment. A “mundane” task becomes peculiar when you choose to perform it in front of Paul McCartney’s face as he tries to write “Let It Be.” When you repeat this for 21 days, it becomes astonishing. The documentary’s shaggy run-time reveals Ono’s provocation in all its intensity. It’s as if she is staging a marathon performance piece, and in a way, she is.The Beatles play their final public performance as Yoko Ono looks on.Apple Corps/Disney+Jackson has called his series “a documentary about a documentary,” and we are constantly reminded that we are watching the band produce its image for the camera. Ono was, of course, already an accomplished performance artist when she encountered Lennon, seven years her junior, at a gallery show in 1966. She was a pioneer of participatory artwork, a collaborator of experimental musicians like John Cage and a master at coyly appearing in spaces where she was not supposed to belong. In 1971, she would stage an imaginary exhibition of ephemeral works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the catalog, she is photographed in front of the museum holding a sign that says “F,” recasting it as the “Museum of Modern [F]art.”The idea that Ono doomed the band was always a canard that smacked of misogyny and racism. She was cast as the groupie from hell, a sexually domineering “dragon lady” and a witch who hypnotized Lennon into spurning the lads for some woman. (In 1970, Esquire published an article titled “John Rennon’s Excrusive Gloupie” that promised to reveal “the Yoko nobody Onos,” featuring an illustration of Ono looming over Lennon, who is rendered as a cockroach on her leash.) These slurs would spiral into an indefatigable pop-culture meme that has haunted generations of women accused of intruding on male genius.Ono did not “break up the Beatles.” (If Lennon’s distancing from the band was influenced by his desire to explore other pursuits, including his personal and creative relationship with Ono, that was his call.) But she did intrude. In the documentary, McCartney politely complains that his songwriting with Lennon is disrupted by Ono’s omnipresence. For her part, she was vigilant about escaping the typical role of the artist’s wife. In a 1997 interview, she commented on the status of women in rock in the 1960s: “My first impression was that they were all wives, kind of sitting in the next room while the guys were talking,” she said. “I was afraid of being something like that.” Later, she would dedicate her barbed 1973 song, “Potbelly Rocker,” to the “wives of rockers who are nameless.”The Beatles record the album that will become “Let It Be.” Yoko Ono is also there.Apple CorpsIn her 1964 text project “Grapefruit,” a kind of recipe book for staging art experiences, she instructs her audience “not to look at Rock Hudson but only Doris Day,” and in “The Beatles: Get Back,” she skillfully redirects the eye away from the band and toward herself. Her image stands in contrast to that of other Beatles partners — modelesque white women in chic outfits who occasionally swoop in with kisses, nod encouragingly and slip unobtrusively away. Linda Eastman, McCartney’s future wife, lingers a little longer, occasionally circulating and photographing the band. Eastman was a rock portraitist, and one of the film’s most fascinating moments shows her in deep conversation with Ono — as if to prove Ono’s point, it is a rare on-set interaction with no recovered audio.Ono simply never leaves. She refuses to decamp to the sidelines, but she also resists acting out stereotypes; she appears as neither a doting naïf nor a needling busybody. Instead she seems engaged in a kind of passive resistance, defying all expectations of women who enter the realm of rock genius.The Barenaked Ladies song “Be My Yoko Ono” compares Ono to a ball and chain (for the record, Ono said of the song, “I liked it”), but as the sessions go on, she assumes a weightless quality. She seems to orbit Lennon, eclipsing his bandmates and becoming a physical manifestation of his psychological distance from his old artistic center of gravity. Later, her performance would grow in intensity. The “Let It Be” sessions were followed by the recording of “Abbey Road,” and according to the studio’s engineer, when Ono was injured in a car accident, Lennon arranged for a bed to be delivered to the studio; Ono tucked herself in, commandeered a microphone and invited friends to visit her bedside. This is a lot of things: grotesquely codependent, terribly rude and iconic. The more Ono’s presence is challenged, the more her performance escalates.Ono wailing inchoately into Harrison’s microphone during his absence from the recording sessions.Apple CorpsAll of this was used to crudely fashion Ono into a cultural villain, but it would also later establish her as a kind of folk hero. “It all comes down to YOKO ONO,” the drummer Tobi Vail wrote in a zine connected to her riot grrrl band Bikini Kill in 1991. “Part of what your boyfriend teaches you is that Yoko Ono broke up the Beatles,” she writes. That story “makes you into the opposite of his band.” It relegates women to the audience and ridicules them for attempting to make their own music. In Hole’s 1997 song “20 Years in the Dakota,” Courtney Love summons Ono’s powers against a new generation of whining fanboys, and says that riot grrrl is “forever in her debt.” Vail called Ono “the first punk rock girl singer ever.”In Jackson’s film, you can see the seeds of this generational shift. One day, Eastman’s young daughter, Heather, a bob-haired munchkin, whirls aimlessly about the studio. Then she spies Ono singing. Heather observes her with scrunch-faced intensity, steps up to the microphone and wails. More

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      6 Big Beatles Moments

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      6 Big Beatles MomentsDavid RenardWatching and listening ��Disney+What: Paul, on John and Yoko
      When: Part 2, 5 minutesPaul admits to band tension over the pair but also downplays it: “It’s going to be such an incredible, comical thing like in 50 years’ time, you know: ‘They broke up because Yoko sat on an amp.’” More

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      Maureen Cleave, Pop Journalist and Beatles Confidante, Dies at 87

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      Ms. Cleave’s interview with John Lennon, in which he said the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus,” drew worldwide attention.Maureen Cleave, a British journalist who was one of the first music writers to introduce readers to the Beatles, and who recorded John Lennon’s famous observation that the band was “more popular than Jesus,” died on Nov. 6 at her home in Aldeburgh, England. She was 87.Her daughter Dora Nichols confirmed her death. She did not give a cause but said Ms. Cleave had Alzheimer’s disease.When Ms. Cleave began writing the column “Disc Date” for The London Evening Standard in 1961, serious writing about pop music was in its infancy. She helped raise its profile, in columns that featured conversations with luminaries including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and the Rolling Stones. She became a marquee byline; in 1976, The Standard called her “the writer who gets people to talk about themselves in the way no other writer can match.”But she was best known for her regular reporting on the Beatles, with whom she had a warm relationship, and whom she described affectionately in the newspaper’s pages. Her piece headlined “The Year of the Beatles,” published in The Standard in 1963, was one of the first major newspaper articles about the band.“Their behavior ranges from the preposterous, farcical and impossible to the kindly, thoughtful and polite,” Ms. Cleave wrote. “You are outraged, diverted and charmed. You are never, ever bored.”Her biggest moment stemmed from an interview with Lennon published in March 1966, in which she delved into his thoughts on organized religion. “Christianity will go,” he said. “It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I know I’m right and will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first — rock ’n’ roll or Christianity.”Readers, and the rest of the British press, paid little notice. But in July, a month before the Beatles began a tour of the United States, the American magazine Datebook reprinted the interview and provoked a frenzy.Lennon’s remark, which came to be widely known as a claim that the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus,” prompted demonstrations and drew the ire of many American Christians. Lennon was accused of blasphemy — as, by extension, was Ms. Cleave.A Baptist pastor in Cleveland threatened excommunication for members of his parish who attended a Beatles concert. The Ku Klux Klan protested Lennon’s remarks. The Vatican issued a statement condemning the comparison.Lennon apologized — albeit reluctantly — at a news conference during the American tour, under pressure from the band’s manager, Brian Epstein.Paul McCartney said in the multimedia release “The Beatles Anthology” that Ms. Cleave was one of the band’s go-to journalists. “Maureen was interesting and easy to talk to,” he said. Lennon, he added, “made the unfortunate mistake of talking very freely because Maureen was someone we knew very well, to whom we would just talk straight from the shoulder.”Lennon’s line made it into The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.The 1966 American tour, fraught with protests and the lingering fear of violence, was the Beatles’ last.Maureen Diana Cleave was born on Oct. 20, 1934, in India, which was part of the British Empire at the time.Her father, Maj. John Cleave, was a British officer stationed in India. Her mother, Isabella Mary Fraser Browne, was a homemaker. She had two sisters.Ms. Cleave attended high school in her mother’s native Ireland after the family returned there.After graduating from St. Anne’s College at Oxford in 1957, Ms. Cleave found a job at The Evening Standard as a secretary.An avid fan of pop music, she pitched a column on the subject to the paper’s editors. That idea became “Disc Date.” She traveled to Liverpool in 1963 to see the Beatles in person.She married Francis Nichols, an Oxford classmate, in 1966, and they later moved to his ancestral home at Lawford Hall in Essex. He died in 2015. Her survivors include their daughters, Dora and Sadie Nichols; their son, Bertie Nichols; and three grandchildren.After the Beatles broke up in 1970, Ms. Cleave continued covering the music scene for The Evening Standard. In a series of articles in the 1970s under the rubric “Maureen Cleave’s Guide to the Young,” she explained the hippie movement to Standard readers and explored the Hells Angels, among other topics.Ms. Cleave was diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome, after collapsing on a London Underground platform in 1992. She documented her experience with the ailment in The Standard the next year. “The medical profession lagged behind in M.E. awareness,” she wrote; “because there is no test, ergo it doesn’t exist.”“Apart from having it, I knew little about it myself,” she added. She saw homeopathic doctors as well as traditional practitioners in an effort to manage her condition.Among the other topics she explored was women’s fitness. She also wrote profiles of painters, writers and philanthropists.But she also continued publishing reflections on her time with the Beatles. In 2005, she wrote a piece for The Daily Telegraph tied to what would have been John Lennon’s 65th birthday.“Charisma rarely survives the aging process,” she wrote, “but, killed in the prime of life, Lennon remains a very powerful absence.” More