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      Book Review: ‘The McCartney Legacy’ by Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair

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      “The McCartney Legacy” follows the superstar from the last gasp of the Beatles to “Band on the Run.” It’s 700 pages — and only the first volume planned.The MCCARTNEY LEGACY: Volume 1: 1969-73, by Allan Kozinn and Adrian SinclairAre the world’s libraries adequately stuffed yet with literature about the Beatles, still the best-selling band of all time, and their diaspora?Nah.Volume 1 of “The McCartney Legacy,” by Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair, arrives like a well-planned encore a year after the publication of “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present,” by Paul McCartney, edited by the poet Paul Muldoon. The latter volumes were packaged in Kermit green, presumably a nod to the two Pauls’ Irish heritage. The new book is a saucy red, as if inviting customers to stack it atop “The Lyrics,” stick on a bow and cue up the bouncy seasonal synth of “Wonderful Christmastime.”Peter Jackson’s documentary, “Get Back,” also released at the end of 2021, changed the way many people thought about McCartney: always popular but wrongly blamed for the Beatles’ breakup, and often critically drubbed as a middle-of-the-roader given to sappiness or, worse, insincerity. There has always been blatant ageism and sexism in the dismissal of certain McCartney tunes as “granny music” — and this is a problem why? — likewise the idea that his ease with children and nursery-rhyme dabblings made him less of a rocker.Watching McCartney in “Get Back,” his boyish face solemnized by a beard, show up consistently (and at least once tear up), urging “a serious program of work” as his bandmates sulked or even stalked off, rebranded him as a devoted boss who brought his whole self to the office. Seeing him pull the film’s title song out of the air, soaring on bass and guitar before sinking into pillowy ballads at the piano, reminded viewers that, oh yeah, that guy who could be kind of corny and hammy in MTV videos is a musical genius (“about the only one that I am in awe of,” Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone); while his confidence in a sweater vest made even lesbians of my acquaintance swoon. At 80, McCartney continues to fill stadiums with screaming, lighter-hoisting fans.Kozinn, a former reporter and critic for The New York Times, and Sinclair, an English documentarian, were influenced by the methods of Mark Lewisohn, the exacting Beatles historian currently at work on the second volume of a trilogy about the group (the first was 900 pages, and that was an abridgment). In a way “The McCartney Legacy” out-Lewisohns Lewisohn, taking almost 700 pages to cover only five years, from the dying embers of “The End” (1969) to the Duracell bolt of “Band on the Run” (1973), by the star’s new group, Wings.McCartney with his wife, Linda, in 1971. Despite limited experience, she joined him as a keyboardist in Wings.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesDescribed in minute detail are McCartney’s legal troubles with the Beatles manager he didn’t want, Allen Klein, and his retreat to rural Scotland with his new wife, Linda. Also the bumpy formation of Wings, which integrated the game but inexperienced Linda on keyboards and backing vocals — and his decision to go high (and get high, high, high) when his longtime writing partner, John Lennon, went low.But the text, dotted with tour ephemera and recording session recaps, reads less like a pop-rock “Power Broker” than a set of extended liner notes, a devoted document dump, assembled from diaries, court papers and reporting fresh and reconstituted. Seemingly finished with biographies since he authorized his friend Barry Miles to write “Many Years From Now,” published in 1997, the man himself was not interviewed for this project (though Kozinn has sat with him on other occasions) but gave the thumbs-up to other sources.The result is aptly patchwork, considering that McCartney — even as he became a billionaire — is constitutionally a saver and joiner of disparate parts, in life and art (listen to “Junk” for a meditation on waste in capitalist society). But it’s deft patchwork, the seams between old and new tucked away in the neat drawer of its index.Inevitably, too, “The McCartney Legacy” is a graveyard of the once-robust music print press: Melody Maker, Disc, NME — “Enemy!” McCartney once exclaimed. His jousts with journalists give the book some of its best points of tension. Displeased with a negative profile, he and Linda once wrapped up a turd made by their baby daughter Stella (now a major fashion designer), according to Wings’ former drummer Denny Seiwell, and sent it to the reporter responsible. “Hold your hand out you silly girl,” McCartney telegrammed one music critic, Penny Valentine, quoting the Beatles’ “Martha My Dear,” after she called his first solo album “a bitter disappointment.” She was just wrong, he told her. “It is simple it is good and even at this moment it is growing on you.”And you gotta love the aghast reaction of Clive James to the McCartneys’ somewhat cringey (though intermittently adorable) foray into television variety: a “monstro-horrendo, superschlock-diabolical special,” James wrote, that “burgeoned before the terror-stricken eye like a punctured storage tank of semolina.”Trivia, the coin of the realm in pop culture writing, is spilled here in abundance. Lots of it feels relevant or at least redolent, like that Seiwell once played at Mount Airy Lodge, the place in the Poconos known for heart-shaped tubs, and also at Judy Garland’s last performance. Other facts, like the exact dimensions and cost of the luxury liner that took the McCartneys from Le Havre to New York, might be superfluous.Most notably in a book that is all notes — both musical and literary — is how much its subject, in between eponymous albums, is forever trying to escape being Paul McCartney. The “man of a thousand voices,” as Valentine called him, is also a man of a thousand faces: writing songs for others under the fusty nom de plume “Bernard Webb”; checking into hotels under the alias “Billy Martin”; pretending to be a socialite named “Percy ‘Thrills’ Thrillington”; producing as “Apollo C. Vermouth”; signing his own sleeve copy as “Clint Harrigan”; even titling a song and album — his greatest, in my opinion — after a preferred pseudonymous surname, “Ramon.”There will be thousands more pages written about Paul McCartney, and yet, he seems to be taunting, we will never catch him.THE MCCARTNEY LEGACY: Volume 1: 1969-73 | By Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair | 720 pp. | Illustrated | Dey Street Books | $35 More

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      Review: ‘A Beautiful Noise’ Spotlights a Morose Neil Diamond

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      In the new Broadway show, Will Swenson plays the superstar, who seems perpetually dissatisfied, as if on a quest — but for what?For decades, Neil Diamond was on top of the world. He toured arenas packed with shrieking fans. He wrote “Sweet Caroline,” an irresistible anthem that continues to trigger Pavlovian singalongs — a feat that would delight most performers, but Diamond didn’t leave it at that and was a prolific hit machine.A 1986 profile in The New York Times described him in these words: “Olympian aspiration, raw aggression and agonizing self-doubt.”As unlikely as this might sound, it is that last trait that forms the narrative engine of “A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond Musical,” the ambitious, often rousing, occasionally heavy-handed biographical show that opened on Broadway on Sunday at the Broadhurst Theater. We meet a superstar with no confidence, despite being known to engage the beast mode in concert and prowling stages in tight pants and a wide-open satin shirt. He seems perpetually dissatisfied, as if on a fruitless quest — but for what? What gnaws at him?To answer those questions, the book writer, Anthony McCarten, put Diamond on the couch, or more exactly in an armchair: “A Beautiful Noise,” directed by Michael Mayer, is framed as an extensive therapy session between the aging singer (Mark Jacoby) and a psychologist (Linda Powell).Diamond is there because his wife Katie — spoiler alert: she’s the third one — and kids forced his hand. Apparently Diamond is “a little hard to live with these days,” we’re told. Maybe his family is frustrated by his grouchiness and poor interpersonal communication skills, at least based on his laconic sullenness with the doctor. When she presses him for insights, he curtly says, “I put everything I have into my songs.” Fine, then let’s see what they have to tell us about the man who wrote them.Mark Jacoby, seated left, as Neil Diamond and Linda Powell, seated right, as his therapist in the musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd so Diamond makes a second entrance, but now he is in his prime and portrayed by Will Swenson (“Les Misérables,” “Assassins”) in a gravity-defying statement pompadour. This is a swaggering coif that means business, but it is contradicted by the 1965 Diamond’s passive posture and apologetic stammering.As the doctor and the older singer revisit his catalog — often commenting on the action from their chairs, like a double vision of the narrator in “The Drowsy Chaperone” — we retrace Diamond’s journey, starting with his early days at the Brill Building. One of the influential American hit factories, the location also played a key role in “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” and it’s where the mighty Ellie Greenwich (an amusingly perky Bri Sudia) starts mentoring the shy young man from Brooklyn in the mid-1960s.Diamond, after writing hits for others, like “I’m a Believer” for the Monkees, sets out to perform his own material, with smashing results. In one of the most entertaining episodes, he signs with Bang Records, a mob-associated label run by Bert Berns (Tom Alan Robbins), himself a songwriter good enough to earn his own tribute musical, “Piece of My Heart.”By the end of the ’60s, Diamond was a serial chart-topper; by the early ’70s, he had mutated into the Lord Byron of soft rock, all strutting gloom and troubled romanticism. That turning point is when Swenson, a stage veteran and Tony nominee for the 2009 Broadway revival of “Hair,” really takes ownership of the role. While he doesn’t entirely let go during the concert scenes — a common issue with Broadway performers playing rockers — Swenson gets close to Diamond’s swaggering sexuality and delivers hit after hit with a relaxed confidence: “Sweet Caroline,” of course, and especially “Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show.” But there is no “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon,” the epitome of Diamond in his louche Lee Hazlewood mode, which could have really spiced up a musical that can feel timid; likewise, the show’s title echoes Diamond’s 1976 album and one can’t help but wonder what would have happened if his 1968 LP “Velvet Gloves and Spit” had inspired McCarten instead.In any case, the superstar continues seeking, especially love. While still married to his first wife, Jaye (Jessie Fisher), he falls for Marcia (Robyn Hurder, channeling Ann-Margret). The latter gets some of the numbers directly connecting a character’s motivation or emotion with a song — she sings “Forever in Blue Jeans,” for example, when feeling neglected by her constantly touring husband.Robyn Hurder as Marcia and Will Swenson as the younger Diamond.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut much of the time McCarten — who wrote the screenplays for the Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” and whose play “The Collaboration” opens on Broadway later this month — refrains from shoehorning new meaning into existing lyrics by manipulating the context in which the songs are used, à la “Mamma Mia!” Many of this show’s most effective moments simply use the songs as surface signposts, an approach that defeats the purported point of the book but reflects the way many listeners experience pop music: We associate it with events and moods, recall what was happening when a hit came on the radio or when we attended a concert.One such scene is Diamond’s debut at the Bitter End. He performs “Solitary Man” and the audience members, sitting at nightclub tables, slowly lean forward, like flowers drawn to the sun. This is the most striking example of Steven Hoggett’s subtle choreography, which to its credit looks like nothing else on Broadway right now: The movement is fluidly, organically incorporated into the scenes, rather than awkwardly grafted onto them.As Diamond sharpens his live persona in Act II, David Rockwell’s set, until then dominated by hanging lamps, morphs into a “Hollywood Squares”-like concert stage that incorporates the orchestra. (Considering how energized Diamond was when performing, having to retire from touring in 2018 because of Parkinson’s disease must have been especially painful.) It all looks and sounds great, but the clock is ticking — therapy! — and we are no closer to understanding the real Neil.Until, at long last, the older singer cracks and stops obfuscating. Naturally, the source of his discontent can be found in his childhood, and the show finally makes the essential connection between Diamond’s artistry and his roots, including his Jewishness. By that point it feels rushed and not quite earned, not to mention a little too nakedly sentimental.And yet, the beating heart of “A Beautiful Noise” is that sequence, featuring “Brooklyn Roads” and “America” leading into “Shilo,” which becomes Diamond’s Rosebud and is performed with almost unbearable grace by the ensemble member Jordan Dobson. Never mind: naked sentimentality is just fine.A Beautiful NoiseAt the Broadhurst Theater, Manhattan; abeautifulnoisethemusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More

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      Man Is Sentenced to 21 Years in Shooting of Lady Gaga’s Dog Walker

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      Two of the singer’s French bulldogs were stolen during the attack in Hollywood last year, during which her dog walker was shot in the chest, the police said.A man who shot Lady Gaga’s dog walker during a violent robbery last year during which two of the singer’s French bulldogs were stolen was sentenced on Monday to 21 years in prison, prosecutors said.The man, James Howard Jackson, reached a deal with prosecutors under which he pleaded no contest to one count of attempted murder and admitted to inflicting great bodily injury and to “a prior strike,” according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.Mr. Jackson, 20, was immediately sentenced to 21 years in state prison, the district attorney’s office said. “The plea agreement holds Mr. Jackson accountable for perpetrating a coldhearted, violent act and provides justice for our victim,” the office said in a statement.Ryan Fischer, the dog walker who was shot in the chest during the attack on Feb. 24, 2021, in Hollywood, spoke directly to Mr. Jackson in court shortly before Mr. Jackson entered his plea, Rolling Stone reported.“You shot me and left me to die, and both of our lives have changed forever,” Mr. Fischer said, according to Rolling Stone. He added that the shooting led to “lung collapse after lung collapse,” as well as the loss of his career and friendships.Still, Mr. Fischer told Mr. Jackson, according to Rolling Stone: “I do forgive you. With the attack, you completely altered my life. I know I can’t completely move on from the night you shot me until I said those words to you.”It was not immediately clear who Mr. Jackson’s lawyer was.Mr. Jackson was accused of participating in the robbery along with two others, Jaylin White and Lafayette Whaley, who were also charged in the case last year.The area where Lady Gaga’s dog walker was shot and two of her French bulldogs were stolen in Los Angeles last February.Chris Pizzello/Associated PressThe police had said that the robbers, who grabbed the dogs and fled in a car after the shooting, were not targeting the French bulldogs because they belonged to Lady Gaga.Evidence instead suggested that the men knew that the breed was valuable, according to the police. Lady Gaga had offered a $500,000 reward for the safe return of the dogs, which are named Koji and Gustav.Mr. Fischer, who was critically wounded in the shooting, had recalled lying in a pool of blood and holding one of Lady Gaga’s dogs that had not been stolen in the attack.In August, Jaylin White and Mr. Whaley each pleaded no contest to one count of second-degree robbery, the district attorney’s office said. Mr. White was sentenced to four years in state prison, and Mr. Whaley was sentenced to six years in state prison, the office said.The police said last year that two others — Harold White and Jennifer McBride — had been charged with being accessories after the shooting. Ms. McBride reported that she had found the dogs and had responded to a reward email to return them, the police said.Ms. McBride ultimately took the dogs to a Los Angeles police station, the police said. The police said that they later discovered that Ms. McBride had a relationship with one of the men who had been arrested.According to the district attorney’s office, Harold White pleaded no contest on Monday to one count of being a former convict in possession of a gun. He is scheduled to be sentenced next year, the office said. Ms. McBride’s case is continuing, the office said. More

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      Taylor Swift Fans Sue Ticketmaster’s Parent Company

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      In a lawsuit filed on Friday in a California court, a group of 26 fans said Ticketmaster had engaged in anticompetitive conduct.A group of 26 fans of the singer-songwriter Taylor Swift filed a lawsuit on Friday accusing Ticketmaster’s parent company of anticompetitive conduct and fraud several weeks after a chaotic, glitch-filled sale of tickets for Ms. Swift’s upcoming tour left thousands of eager fans empty-handed and unhappy.The 33-page complaint, filed in the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles County, came after Ticketmaster canceled the public sale of tickets last month for Ms. Swift’s Eras Tour, 52 shows scheduled to begin in March. The resulting outcry from fans prompted calls from lawmakers to break up the 2010 merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation.The complaint accuses Ticketmaster of anticompetitive conduct, saying the company has long perpetuated a “scheme” by forcing fans to exclusively use it for presale and sale prices, which are higher than what a competitive market price would be.Ticketmaster also “forced attendees to exclusively use” the platform that it operates for the resale of tickets, called the Secondary Ticket Exchange, to obtain fees and profits above what it could earn in a competitive market, the complaint states. That “anticompetitive behavior,” according to the lawsuit, harms fans and the ticket market.Fans who tried to buy tickets during a presale in mid-November reported waiting in queues for hours or being locked out of online sales. They had to preregister on Ticketmaster and be designated Verified Fans, but, for many, that didn’t help. Ticketmaster ultimately canceled its planned public sale of tickets amid the high demand.The Cultural Impact of Taylor Swift’s MusicNew LP: “Midnights,” Taylor Swift’s 10th studio album, is a return to the pop pipeline, with production from her longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff. Here is what our critic thought of it.Millennial Anti-Hero: On her latest album, Swift probes the realizations and reckonings of many 30-something women around relationships, motherhood and ambition.Fight for Her Masters: Revisit the origin story of Swift’s rerecordings of her older albums: a feud with the powerful manager Scooter Braun.Pandemic Records: In 2020, Swift released two new albums, “Folklore” and “Evermore.” In debuting a new sound, she turned to indie music.“Hundreds of thousands of people waited from four to eight hours and never got an opportunity to buy tickets, so they just want the system to change,” said Jennifer Kinder, a lawyer representing the fans.The lawsuit asks the court to stop Ticketmaster from engaging in similar conduct in the future and to fine the company $2,500 for each violation of a state code that governs unfair competition in California, where the parent company, Live Nation, is based.Even before the botched sale of Taylor Swift tickets, Live Nation, Ticketmaster’s parent company, had come under scrutiny for its power.Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock“It has to be made fair,” said Ms. Kinder, who added that she and her 11-year-old daughter were Swift fans. “This is not a fair market. This is not supply and demand. This is a manipulated market that benefits Ticketmaster.”In 2010, Ticketmaster, a ticketing giant, merged with Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promotion company, becoming Live Nation Entertainment. The company, which says it processes 500 million tickets per year in more than 30 countries, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.Greg Maffei, the chairman of Live Nation Entertainment, said in an interview on CNBC last month that the company “could’ve filled 900 stadiums,” and he partly blamed Swift’s popularity for the problems. “The reality is, Taylor Swift hasn’t been on the road for three or four years, and that’s caused a huge issue,” he said.Ticketmaster apologized in November to Swift fans for the problems with its ticket sales for the Eras Tour.It said that more than two million tickets for the tour were sold on Nov. 15, the most for an artist in a single day. Ticketmaster said it had faced a “staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have codes” to buy tickets, resulting in 3.5 billion system requests, four times its previous peak.Even before the botched sale of the Swift concert tickets, Live Nation had come under scrutiny for its power and size. The Justice Department has in recent months been investigating its practices and whether the company maintains a monopoly over the multibillion-dollar live music industry, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.Ms. Swift called the situation “excruciating” in a sharply worded statement on Instagram last month that did not name Ticketmaster.Ms. Swift wrote that she was “extremely protective” of her fans and had brought “so many elements” of her career in house in order to improve fan experiences “by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do.”“It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse,” Ms. Swift added. “There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward. I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.” More

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      Taylor Swift Holds at No. 1 as Christmas Music Returns to the Charts

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      “Midnights” and “Anti-Hero” top the Billboard 200 and Hot 100, but nostalgic favorites are starting to arrive in force.Taylor Swift holds the top spots on the Billboard album and singles charts this week, as a wave of holiday music arrives with help from streaming playlists.Swift’s “Midnights” reigns atop the Billboard 200 album chart for a fifth time, with the equivalent of 151,000 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate. Her single “Anti-Hero” notches its sixth No. 1 on the Hot 100, with 21 million streams and 69 million “airplay audience impressions,” a measurement of the song’s popularity on radio.Otherwise, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas — particularly on the singles chart, where six nostalgic favorites reach the Top 10. Mariah Carey’s 28-year-old “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is No. 2, and Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” (1958) is No. 3, sending Sam Smith and Kim Petras’s recent dark pop hit “Unholy” to fourth place. Bobby Helms’s “Jingle Bell Rock” (1957), at No. 5, and Burl Ives’s “A Holly Jolly Christmas” (1964), at No. 6, beat out the latest from Drake and 21 Savage, whose “Rich Flex” lands at No. 7.Also in the Top 10: Andy Williams’s “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” (1963) is No. 9, and Wham!’s “Last Christmas” (1984) is No. 10.On the album chart, Drake and 21 Savage’s “Her Loss” holds at No. 2 and Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” is No. 3. (Along with “Midnights,” those positions have held firm for three weeks.) From there, the Christmas brigade begins. Michael Bublé’s “Christmas” (2011) is No. 4, bumping Lil Baby’s “It’s Only Me” to fifth place.Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” (a version of an LP that dates to 1960) is No. 8 and the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (1965) is No. 10. More

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      Review: ‘A Beautiful Noise’ Makes for a Morose Neil Diamond Musical

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      In the new Broadway show, Will Swenson plays the superstar, who seems perpetually dissatisfied, as if on a quest — but for what?For decades, Neil Diamond was on top of the world. He toured arenas packed with shrieking fans. He wrote “Sweet Caroline,” an irresistible anthem that continues to trigger Pavlovian singalongs — a feat that would delight most performers, but Diamond didn’t leave it at that and was a prolific hit machine.A 1986 profile in The New York Times described him in these words: “Olympian aspiration, raw aggression and agonizing self-doubt.”As unlikely as this might sound, it is that last trait that forms the narrative engine of “A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond Musical,” the ambitious, often rousing, occasionally heavy-handed biographical show that opened on Broadway on Sunday at the Broadhurst Theater. We meet a superstar with no confidence, despite being known to engage the beast mode in concert and prowling stages in tight pants and a wide-open satin shirt. He seems perpetually dissatisfied, as if on a fruitless quest — but for what? What gnaws at him?To answer those questions, the book writer, Anthony McCarten, put Diamond on the couch, or more exactly in an armchair: “A Beautiful Noise,” directed by Michael Mayer, is framed as an extensive therapy session between the aging singer (Mark Jacoby) and a psychologist (Linda Powell).Diamond is there because his wife Katie — spoiler alert: she’s the third one — and kids forced his hand. Apparently Diamond is “a little hard to live with these days,” we’re told. Maybe his family is frustrated by his grouchiness and poor interpersonal communication skills, at least based on his laconic sullenness with the doctor. When she presses him for insights, he curtly says, “I put everything I have into my songs.” Fine, then let’s see what they have to tell us about the man who wrote them.Mark Jacoby, seated left, as Neil Diamond and Linda Powell, seated right, as his therapist in the musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd so Diamond makes a second entrance, but now he is in his prime and portrayed by Will Swenson (“Les Misérables,” “Assassins”) in a gravity-defying statement pompadour. This is a swaggering coif that means business, but it is contradicted by the 1965 Diamond’s passive posture and apologetic stammering.As the doctor and the older singer revisit his catalog — often commenting on the action from their chairs, like a double vision of the narrator in “The Drowsy Chaperone” — we retrace Diamond’s journey, starting with his early days at the Brill Building. One of the influential American hit factories, the location also played a key role in “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” and it’s where the mighty Ellie Greenwich (an amusingly perky Bri Sudia) starts mentoring the shy young man from Brooklyn in the mid-1960s.Diamond, after writing hits for others, like “I’m a Believer” for the Monkees, sets out to perform his own material, with smashing results. In one of the most entertaining episodes, he signs with Bang Records, a mob-associated label run by Bert Berns (Tom Alan Robbins), himself a songwriter good enough to earn his own tribute musical, “Piece of My Heart.”By the end of the ’60s, Diamond was a serial chart-topper; by the early ’70s, he had mutated into the Lord Byron of soft rock, all strutting gloom and troubled romanticism. That turning point is when Swenson, a stage veteran and Tony nominee for the 2009 Broadway revival of “Hair,” really takes ownership of the role. While he doesn’t entirely let go during the concert scenes — a common issue with Broadway performers playing rockers — Swenson gets close to Diamond’s swaggering sexuality and delivers hit after hit with a relaxed confidence: “Sweet Caroline,” of course, and especially “Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show.” But there is no “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon,” the epitome of Diamond in his louche Lee Hazlewood mode, which could have really spiced up a musical that can feel timid; likewise, the show’s title echoes Diamond’s 1976 album and one can’t help but wonder what would have happened if his 1968 LP “Velvet Gloves and Spit” had inspired McCarten instead.In any case, the superstar continues seeking, especially love. While still married to his first wife, Jaye (Jessie Fisher), he falls for Marcia (Robyn Hurder, channeling Ann-Margret). The latter gets some of the numbers directly connecting a character’s motivation or emotion with a song — she sings “Forever in Blue Jeans,” for example, when feeling neglected by her constantly touring husband.Robyn Hurder as Marcia and Will Swenson as the younger Diamond.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut much of the time McCarten — who wrote the screenplays for the Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” and whose play “The Collaboration” opens on Broadway later this month — refrains from shoehorning new meaning into existing lyrics by manipulating the context in which the songs are used, à la “Mamma Mia!” Many of this show’s most effective moments simply use the songs as surface signposts, an approach that defeats the purported point of the book but reflects the way many listeners experience pop music: We associate it with events and moods, recall what was happening when a hit came on the radio or when we attended a concert.One such scene is Diamond’s debut at the Bitter End. He performs “Solitary Man” and the audience members, sitting at nightclub tables, slowly lean forward, like flowers drawn to the sun. This is the most striking example of Steven Hoggett’s subtle choreography, which to its credit looks like nothing else on Broadway right now: The movement is fluidly, organically incorporated into the scenes, rather than awkwardly grafted onto them.As Diamond sharpens his live persona in Act II, David Rockwell’s set, until then dominated by hanging lamps, morphs into a “Hollywood Squares”-like concert stage that incorporates the orchestra. (Considering how energized Diamond was when performing, having to retire from touring in 2018 because of Parkinson’s disease must have been especially painful.) It all looks and sounds great, but the clock is ticking — therapy! — and we are no closer to understanding the real Neil.Until, at long last, the older singer cracks and stops obfuscating. Naturally, the source of his discontent can be found in his childhood, and the show finally makes the essential connection between Diamond’s artistry and his roots, including his Jewishness. By that point it feels rushed and not quite earned, not to mention a little too nakedly sentimental.And yet, the beating heart of “A Beautiful Noise” is that sequence, featuring “Brooklyn Roads” and “America” leading into “Shilo,” which becomes Diamond’s Rosebud and is performed with almost unbearable grace by the ensemble member Jordan Dobson. Never mind: naked sentimentality is just fine.A Beautiful NoiseAt the Broadhurst Theater, Manhattan; abeautifulnoisethemusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More

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      Omega X Members Say Their K-pop Agency Mistreated Them

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      A public dispute between band members and the head of their agency has revived concerns about whether South Korean entertainment agencies exploit young musicians.Members of the K-pop group Omega X seemed to be riding high a few weeks ago when their first international tour ended with a successful gig in Los Angeles.But that feeling of triumph was short lived.After the October show, an executive from their management agency screamed at the group at an L.A. hotel and pushed one band member to the ground, footage of the encounter appeared to show. The band members then flew home to Seoul at their own expense and later took their entertainment agency to court.At a hearing on Wednesday, a South Korean judge will consider the request of the group’s 11 members to be released from their multiyear contracts with the agency, Spire Entertainment. Lawyers for the band have said the executive’s behavior in Los Angeles was the latest episode in a yearlong pattern of verbal, physical and sexual abuse. The executive, Kang Seong-hee, resigned last month but has denied any wrongdoing.“I took care of all of them like their mother,” Ms. Kang told The New York Times in a phone interview, adding that Kim Jaehan, 27, the band member who fell at the hotel, had collapsed on his own. She said she hoped the band would resume its normal activities with the agency.Experts on K-pop say the band’s accusations against their agency, if true, would be consistent with other stories from industry insiders and whistleblowers. They say some management companies, especially smaller ones, routinely exploit young artists who are desperate to become K-pop idols by imposing strict controls on their behavior and in some cases subjecting them to verbal and physical abuse.Since the 1990s, “the level of exploitation has been systematized and also normalized because the K-pop industry has become dominant” and more ambitious young people have been drawn to it, said Jin Lee, a scholar of Asian pop cultures and a research fellow at Curtin University in Australia.“Everyone wants to be an idol,” she said.The Fine PrintWorkers in South Korea, a deeply hierarchical society, are increasingly speaking up about bosses who abuse their authority. But experts say that most working K-pop artists don’t publicly criticize their agencies because they fear the consequences of violating their contracts.Omega X onstage during their international tour in October.Omega XKim Youna, an entertainment lawyer in Seoul, said smaller agencies in particular have tended to sign rising musicians to contracts that don’t define work hours or set limits on what the artists can be reasonably asked to do.Regulations governing contracts between artists and their agencies have been around for only about 25 years in South Korea, Ms. Kim said. Other industries in the country have robust labor laws. “In this context, it seems that idols, considered the less powerful parties, have no choice but to suffer a little loss,” she said.Some of the losses are financial. It is common, for example, for agencies to ask artists to pay back the costs of the training they received, such as dance lessons, vocal coaching and other preparation. But there are often questions about how transparently those debts are calculated, said Lee Jongim, a scholar of South Korea’s entertainment industry and the author of “Idol Trainees’ Sweat and Tears.”Aspiring K-pop stars “debut in their teens, but entertainment agents are adults,” she said. “So they start out in a structure in which it is difficult to establish an equal relationship.”Speaking OutSome K-pop musicians have waited until their contracts ended to accuse their agencies of mistreatment.In one example, Heo Min-sun, a member of the former group Crayon Pop, told the YouTube channel Asian Boss in 2019 that the band’s agency had withheld band members’ salaries for a year and half after their debut. She said it had also forced them to go on diets and prohibited them from socializing without the agency’s permission.“Our private lives were strictly controlled. Even if I wanted to make a new friend, I couldn’t,” Ms. Heo said in the 2019 interview. Crayon Pop’s agency, Chrome Entertainment, did not respond to a request for comment.In a 2019 criminal case, two K-pop musicians successfully took legal action against their agency before their contracts had expired.Those musicians — Lee Seok-cheol, now 22, and Lee Seung-hyun, now 20 — are brothers who performed in the boy band The East Light as teenagers. They accused their producer, their agency and its chief executive of assaulting and verbally threatening them. A court fined the agency, Media Line Entertainment, about $15,000 and sentenced the producer to 16 months in prison for child abuse. The chief executive received eight months for aiding and abetting child abuse.Another case, though technically successful, is widely seen as a cautionary tale.Three former members of the group TVXQ struggled for years to appear on television after ending their contract with SM Entertainment, one of South Korea’s most powerful agencies.. The country’s antitrust regulators eventually ordered SM Entertainment to stop pressuring cable channels to blacklist members of the band from appearing on TV.The agency denied the commission’s findings. But CedarBough T. Saeji, an expert on the K-pop industry at Pusan National University, said that the band members had been “unofficially blacklisted from the K-pop industry.” The episode sent “a chilling message to younger idols that crossing a powerful company could be the end of their career, even if they achieve a legal goal,” she added.‘A Lot of Anxiety’After Kim Jaehan’s altercation with Ms. Kang at the hotel in Los Angeles on Oct. 22, a South Korean television network published blurred-out footage of the episode that a bystander had filmed. When the band returned to Seoul, its members took the rare step of creating an Instagram account without permission from their agency, as would normally be required. In another rare step, they aired their allegations of abuse at a news conference.“Every one of us is experiencing a lot of anxiety,” Mr. Kim said at the news conference last month. The band members say that a few months after Omega X debuted in June 2021, Ms. Kang, Spire Entertainment’s chief executive at the time, began habitually making sexual remarks, touching their thighs, hands and faces against their wishes, and regularly forcing them to drink alcohol after rehearsals. Lawyers for the band have also said that Spire, a small agency founded in 2020, ordered each band member pay the agency about $300,000 in debt incurred from their training. ‌So far the band’s lawyers have not filed a criminal complaint or presented any physical evidence to corroborate their accusations, citing concerns that doing so would suggest they were trying to influence the civil proceedings that begin on Wednesday. They said their current focus was on getting the band out of their contract, not pressing charges.In an interview last week, Ms. Kang denied the band members’ accusations. Her request for them to cover her agency’s debts was justified, she added, and she believes that the band members have accused her of abuse in order to justify moving to a larger agency.“In their opinion, our company does not have enough to nurture them,” Ms. Kang said, referring to the company’s financial resources. “So they are conducting a witch hunt.”Looking AheadOmega X’s fate may depend on how the South Korean public reacts to the band’s side of the story, said Ms. Lee, the pop culture scholar. If the dispute escalates and its members can rally more public support, she said, Spire Entertainment may allow them to break their contract.At least two companies that work with Spire abroad have cut ties since the scandal broke: Helix Publicity, which had been responsible for Omega X’s public relations in the United States, and Skiyaki, the company that held the license for Omega X’s activities in Japan. A number of people who worked or volunteered at concert venues on its recent two-month, 16-city tour of the United States and Latin America have also spoken up for Omega X. Gigi Granados, 25, a cosmetologist who attended a show at Palladium Times Square in New York City, said she had witnessed Ms. Kang screaming at members of the band at their hotel after the performance. “No one deserves to be yelled at that way,” she said. More

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      In the Hudson Valley and Catskills, Veteran Rockers Start Over

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      How the Hudson Valley and the Catskills became the home to grunge icons, ex-punks and one-hit wonders.Melissa Auf der Maur spent 15 years as a rocker on the road, playing bass in alternative bands like Hole and the Smashing Pumpkins, dating Dave Grohl, and at times taking up residence in Janis Joplin’s old room at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. But in 2006, when she met and fell in love with the filmmaker Tony Stone, she knew it was time to settle down away from the city, become a mother and raise a child in a “cozy little town with a cool kindergarten and plenty of nature.”She was 34 and in the middle of making her second solo album, she said, when Mr. Stone took her to Hudson, N.Y., to visit friends and family who had moved to the area.“I had a tingling feeling,” she said. “I said to Tony: ‘If we’re going to live anywhere in the U.S., it’s going to be here.’”The couple moved to Hudson in 2008 and started a family soon thereafter. But Ms. Auf der Maur still felt driven by the urge to create. She also wanted to do something community-focused, like starting an arts center similar to the ones she had relied on when she was a struggling young musician growing up in Montreal.Together with Mr. Stone, she started Basilica Hudson in 2010. The arts and performance space, housed in a former railroad wheel foundry, hosts both international music festivals and local events. A reclaimed elementary school, built around 1901 and close to Basilica’s net-zero campus, now serves as a showpiece, design innovation hub and media center for the couple’s interest in green design. Basilica has also become one of the Hudson Valley’s most popular wedding venues, which, as Ms. Auf der Maur puts it, “wasn’t in our original plan, but totally pays for our wild, purist dreams of arts and culture.”A former grunge icon for Courtney Love’s band in the dangerous days of the ’90s, Ms. Auf der Maur is just one of the many musicians who have moved to the Hudson Valley and the Catskills to start over, in one way or another. Some have put their musical careers on hold. Others have continued recording and touring, while devoting themselves to completely new pursuits. But the artists in the area make up a dream festival bill for the Lollapalooza generation, one that remembers vinyl, cassettes, CDs and when MTV still played music videos for most of the day.Melissa Auf der Maur, left, and Courtney Love of Hole, onstage in Los Angeles in 1999.Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic Inc., via Getty ImagesThere’s longtime area resident Natalie Merchant, the former lead singer for 10,000 Maniacs, who has volunteered for educational nonprofits including Head Start in Troy; the bassist Tony Levin, who played with King Crimson and Peter Gabriel, and who now lives in Kingston and pursues photography; the songwriter Amy Rigby, now an author and podcaster in Catskill; Daryl Hall, of Hall & Oates fame, who became a nightclub proprietor with the opening of Daryl’s House in Pawling; and Kate Pierson, the inimitable singer of the B-52’s, who pioneered the funky retro chic motel concept in the Catskills with the opening of Kate’s Lazy Meadow in Mt. Tremper in 2004.And where else but in Woodstock could the dentist who is filling your cavity have had a former life as a “one-hit wonder” in that golden year of pop, 1967?As a couple, Ms. Auf der Maur and Mr. Stone seemed like the perfect combination for making a thriving arts center in Hudson a reality; she had the vision, and he had the know-how. “I wanted to see if I could bring the world to us, to bring all the things I had experienced around the world to this tiny town,” she said.Mr. Stone is the son of two artists who were active in the SoHo and TriBeCa loft scene of the 1970s. “Tony’s dad, Bill, was a contractor in Lower Manhattan, who at one time almost went in on a plumbing pipe threader with Philip Glass,” Ms. Auf der Maur said. “A lot of artists worked renovating many lofts in SoHo, a skill my husband inherited,” she continued. “We’re not afraid of taking on big buildings without plumbing or electricity. Our destiny seems to be taking these buildings and creating a second life for them and ourselves.”Mr. Stone described himself as “an urban-rural hybrid,” who grew up in a loft on Duane Street in Downtown Manhattan but spent every summer “off the grid in a hippie cabin” in Vermont. “By age 12, I was wiring solar panels and digging wells,” he said. “It set the stage for what Melissa and I do today at Basilica.”He came to know the Hudson Valley as a student at Bard College and again when his aunt bought a house in Hudson, followed by his parents, who moved to the area in 1998. Soon after he started dating Ms. Auf der Maur, Mr. Stone introduced her to family haunts in Vermont and upstate New York, where Ms. Auf der Maur “began to understand the power of nature in the raw and the need to preserve it,” she said. “It makes you look at everything differently. And that, too, changed the whole direction of my life.”Ms. Auf der Maur and Mr. Stone seemed like the perfect combination for making a thriving arts center in Hudson a reality; she had the vision, and he had the know-how; Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesNow, the couple are players in the local arts and climate scene. Ms. Auf der Maur is a member of the Regional Economic Development Council for the Capital region, where she reviews grant applications. (Basilica Hudson and The River House Project, their green design initiative, have received grants from the council.) She and Mr. Stone were part of the team that helped secure a $10 million grant from the council to revitalize the Hudson waterfront.Ms. Auf der Maur also joined the writer, musician and producer Jesse Paris Smith (who is the daughter of Patti Smith) and the musician and activist Rebecca Foon to help Hudson become a part of the 1,000 Cities Initiative for Carbon Freedom, a project to get cities of all sizes involved in the renewable energy and zero emissions goals set forth by the Paris Agreement.“Melissa and Tony’s efforts have been a blessing for our community, one that really demonstrates the connection between climate action and social justice,” said Kamal Johnson, the mayor of Hudson. “Basilica has been a great asset,” he continued. “It has brought world-class artists and audiences to our door and served as the stage for many events that bind together our community.”The singer Amanda Palmer, who is half of the punk-cabaret duo the Dresden Dolls and has a place in Woodstock, concurs with the mayor’s take on Ms. Auf der Maur, now 50, who has also found the time to work on a memoir that will include some of the 30,000 photos she snapped during her time as a musician. “She’s an important nexus, a vital connective tissue in the arts, the environment and in swaying a certain kind of creative, like myself, to take up residence in the Hudson Valley,” Ms. Palmer said.About five miles south of Hudson is the town of Catskill. In 2011, the singer-songwriter Amy Rigby (best known for her 1996 album, “Diary of a Mod Housewife”) moved there from France with her rocker husband, Eric Goulden, also known as Wreckless Eric (best remembered for his 1977 record “Whole Wide World”). Her friend Deb Parker, a former owner of the Beauty Bar in the East Village and who had become a real estate broker in the area in the late 2000s, showed the couple around.The singer-songwriter Amy Rigby moved to Catskill with her husband in 2011. These days she’s writing and producing a podcast.Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesOnce they were settled, Ms. Rigby started working part time at the Spotty Dog Books & Ale in Hudson and pursuing writing. In 2019, her memoir, “Girl to City,” about being a musician in the East Village from the 1970s through the mid-90s, was published.During the Covid-19 shutdown, Ms. Rigby created a podcast based on “Girl to City” and began work on a follow-up memoir, “Girl to Country.” The Hudson Valley is all about second acts, she said. “Everybody reinvents themselves up here.”Ms. Rigby onstage with her husband, Eric Goulden, at City Winery in New York City.Al Pereira/Getty ImagesTake Tracy Bonham, who had a No. 1 alternative single in 1996 with “Mother, Mother,” but who has since used much of her time to teach music to children. In 2020, during the height of the pandemic, she and another musician founded Melodeon Music House, an educational program in Woodstock that was inspired by the popular 1970s Saturday morning TV series “Schoolhouse Rock!”But unlike her peers, Ms. Bonham ultimately decided full-time country life was not for her. This fall, she returned to Brooklyn, where she currently teaches the Melodeon curriculum to preschoolers.“It was really for the energy and vitality of the city, and the diversity of the people,” Ms. Bonham said of her return to the city. “Now that I look back on it, it could be a bit isolating,” she said, referring to Woodstock. “The sun goes down early and the winters are long and hard, so you can feel a bit trapped. Now that I am back in Brooklyn, I feel re-energized and inspired. There’s both more opportunity for work and to socialize.”Ms. Rigby, too, feels the pull of the city. “When I was driving down to Manhattan to play a gig at the City Winery recently, I kept telling myself, ‘I don’t care about the city anymore,’” she said. “But it’s a defense mechanism. I still care about the city that made me, and nothing feels as good as playing to a New York crowd.”Ms. Rigby, at home in Catskill, N.Y.Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesHowever, when she hits the New York State Thruway and sees the mountains, Ms. Rigby said, she can breathe again. So for now, she’s staying put. “I probably became a more well-rounded person living up here. New York will always be the paragon of where one goes to pursue a creative life, but that kind of low-rent existence for aspiring artists isn’t possible there anymore.”Tony Levin, who has lived in Kingston since the mid-70s, is also not going anywhere. Best known for his inventive bass playing with King Crimson, Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon, Mr. Levin still tours and records. But he is also a writer and a photographer, and he recently took advantage of his downtime during the pandemic to organize many of his photographs into a new coffee table book, “Images From a Life on the Road.”Across the river in Beacon, Richard Butler, the charismatic frontman of the Psychedelic Furs, who studied at the Epsom School of Art and Design in London before pursuing music, lived and painted there for decades before relocating to Connecticut last year.Another rocker with long ties to the area is Bruce Jay Milner, whose band, Every Mother’s Son, had a hit with “Come on Down to My Boat” in 1967. The tune also earned him and his bandmates a place in the “One-Hit Wonders” exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.Bruce Jay Milner at his dental office, Transcend Dental, in West Hurley, N.Y.Lauren Lancaster for The New York Times“I had just started dental school at N.Y.U., but this was way, way more exciting,” Dr. Milner said of the instant success as a young musician. “I really thought I would pursue this, stay in the music game forever, if we kept getting hits.”Unfortunately, that was not to be. Dr. Milner ended up finishing dental school and now lives and practices dentistry in West Hurley, about three miles south of Woodstock. Naturally, he claims to have attended the famous festival of peace and music in nearby Bethel, in 1969. The name of his practice? Transcend Dental.“I still play a lot locally, have a digital keyboard in my office and have had my hands in the mouths of some of the biggest names in music,” said Dr. Milner, ticking off famous patients like Brian Eno and Sonny Rollins.The musician Amy Helm, whose father was Levon Helm, the drummer for The Band, is a patient. She said Dr. Milner was “the kind of guy who will play a song and sing harmony with you before he gives you a root canal.”Dr. Milner said: “Being a dentist up in Woodstock, with all these great musicians, is a pretty great second act. And what other dentist can say he is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?”“He’s the kind of guy who will play a song and sing harmony with you before he gives you a root canal,” a longtime patient said of Dr. Milner.Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesSal Cataldi is a writer, musician and former publicist living in Saugerties, N.Y. More