Midnight Viewing x Noise Junkies Crossover - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978)

Will you wait, miss. Welcome back to midnight Viewing. I'm Father Malone, and oh my god, this isn't just a midnight viewing. I've got a special guest in the studio with me. Is it Antonio Lapour?

No? Is it Christasio? No, Michael White? No? Is it Ripley g No.

It is HP, our composer here on midnight Viewing and a host of his own several programs, one of which I appear on. That is Night Mister Walter's a taxi podcast. He's the host over there on that. But more importantly, he is the host of Noise Junkies, which is a musical podcast which I encourage you all to go check out right now. There's going to be a link below in the comments.

Noise Junkies is an examination of all things musical, whether it's a genre, a particular album, or a particular artist, in depth and fantastic. And HP has joined us here to talk about a musical film we wouldn't normally cover here on midnight Viewing. I should just say, how you doing, HP? I'm doing great, Father Blone. This is going to be a treat.

This was I feel like this was a long time coming. Us talking about this particular movie, so I'm looking forward to it as always. And we are talking about a jukebox musical in an era of millions of jukebox musicals. I eat the laziest form of musical theater. Not shocked to find out that jukebox musicals go way way back.

In fact, one could say Singing in the Rain is a jukebox musical that's made up of hits of the twenties and thirties. There are several types of jukebox musicals. There's the composer's life, where we have what diogenic and non diogenic, like maybe it's just them performing their songs. That's like Yankee Doodle Dandy with James Cagney, like we get his life in music, but it's all performed on stage, so it's not really a musical necessarily. But then we get something like oh, just recently, what's that fucking Eldon John bullshit rocket man?

And it is complete fantasy. All the characters are breaking in. We're expressing mood and emotion and situation through song. So you raise a lot of good points. I actually I always thought of a jukebox musical in the vein of something like Mamma Mia, where you're using the music of Abba, but you're not telling a story that has anything to do with Abba at all.

It's basically like Rock of Ages, right, Rock of Ages tells a story, but it's not beholden to any one given artist. But I guess I never thought of a movie like Yankee Doodle Dandy being a jukebox musical. But you're absolutely right. It fits the bill. You guys love the music of Abba.

Right here, Let's string them all together and fashion a bit of a story. Here we go. It's spoiler alert that this is I agree, this is a jukebox musical, but this hill the idea of a jukebox musical so hard for the beat toodles that what was it another thirty years before that Julie Taymor movie came out Across the Universe? Was the next attempt. At at That's right, that was in two thousand and seven, But that we are talking about nineteen seventy eight's Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band.

He hasn't gone a day. Play. They've been gone in. The cath. The town of Hotland.

He left his musical instruments, these instruments have the power to make dreams come true, and as long as they remained in the Hotland's care, humanity would live happily forever. After sid last side and his long side backless down, it's not sup it's certainly through. My bloody is small, loody you sweet. Swell silver Iver came down in the border. And its well your.

Headrade s but you can come again. Oh the sun was. Rehelp you have to make that the show something that episode. Sorry, by the time the sad sad, sad. Sad, we re like it.

Thank you. On second. Sun up, it's got beating, so jumps down. They saw Jim pandas down its side. That was down.

At that's right. Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, written after a fashion by Henry Edwards, directed by Michael Schultz and starring Oh well we should say it's produced by Robert Stigwood. We're gonna be talking about Stigwood a lot, I imagine, and starring here we go Peter Frampton. The begs Frankie Howard. That's with an E.

Howard, which he did evidently just because it was weird. Is that right? Is that right? Yeah? Just because it does look weird, like a spell check that you can never really correct.

It just looks odd. You'll always find him because of the way he spelled his last name. Frankie Howard is an interesting cat bombadier in World War Two Anyway, also starring Paul Nicholas, Donald Pleasance is in this movie, Sandy Farina, Diane Steinberg, My Goodness, and also featuring musical performances by Steve Martin, Arrowsmith, Alice Cooper, earth Wind and Fire Billy Preston. Oh, let's not forget George Byrne. We can't forget?

Can we please forget George Burns in this please? I'd love to now. This film is, as we said, a jukebox musical, in this case, made up with songs by Paul McCartney and John Lennon and one by George Harrison. It is the first cinematic attempt at a jukebox musical on screen, not the first attempt at a jukebox musical with the Beatles. I'm not counting Beatlemania.

That's just a tribute band. However, I know what you're coming up to here. Goddamn right you do, because back in what nineteen seventy four. This is where Robert Stigwood gets involved. In nineteen seventy four, Tom O'Horgan, who was the director of hair and every other experimental thing going on in the early nineteen seventies, had an idea to do a candid version of the Beatles' catalog, focusing on the more psychedelic They're more psychedelic songs.

So Robert Stigwood, through what apparently were insane negotiations with Paul McCartney and John Lennon, taking several years and putting the project off for nearly a year, they end up creating Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Run, which must have been a burn for John Lennon. Am I right? I would agree with you there, you know, but it's from all accounts because I did a little research on it, and apparently this was a It was a very well received production. Evidently, I think some of the Beatles were actually involved in it directly involved. What I found most fascinating, Father Malone, is did you see who one of the stars was of this production?

Are we talking about understudy to the lead and yet playing the role of Sargeant Pepper mister David Patrick Kelly. He had the Ars fame. This is years before the Warriors. It is it is. I did, like I said, I tried to do a little research on this.

It's very little information out there, but you're right it was apparently it was so well received that Stickwood was on top of the world at that point anyway, or he eventually had the cloud to do this. They produced like the soundtrack to Grease, Saturday Night Fever. I think he was involved in the movie Grease. It seemed like I can't miss proposition right. The music of the Beatles.

The Beg's were never hotter. Peter Frampton was never hotter. What could go wrong? Father Malone? I keep hearing or I keep reading about the genesis of this film.

Obviously it owes itself to this stage production. But the Beg's involvement I keep reading about because they participated in a sort of documentary called All This in World War Two, where there were a bunch of different artists all covering the Beatles, including the Bege's, who did several of the songs that we're going to eventually hear in this film. Most reports say that inspired their participate patient but the fact is Robert Stigwood owned the rights to these twenty nine songs and he was going to use them, whether whether or not the Beg's were involved. He had already been involved with the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. He ran the label RSO that they were on, So it's.

Not like he needed some fucking documentary where they recorded a couple of Beatles covers to get his interest in them going. Yeah, they were. They were already obviously he was. They were in his stable. So that's that accounts for the Bear involvement.

But Stigwood was huge. It's no one knows about him now and no one's heard of him, but in his day that was a huge label RSO. And like I said, this seemed to be a can't miss proposition. Who wouldn't want to use their cachet to make a movie musical about the Beatles. It seemed like it was of course, was going to make money.

Oh absolutely, And as I said, he's got the rights to twenty nine songs, so now you've got to we've got to do something with them. Here's a question, HP. How stoked is everyone who has to adapt the Beatles catalog into some sort of coherent storyline, because they've also done it here in Las Vegas up till recently it just closed. Circu Sile had a Beatles show Love. How stoked is everyone who has to compose the book for that musical that the Beatles named so many characters in so many of their songs.

Well, I would say it's it probably going into it, it probably seems like, oh, this isn't going to be hard. There's Lovely read a meter maid and Henry the Horse. In Being for the Benefit of Mister Kite, there's mister Kite. So you're right, there's a rich Beatle verse from which to draw from. But I think that and maybe I'm speaking a little bit about across the universe, which I did, I liked, but didn't love.

I think it's the temptation is to be very lazy with it and take it as a very literal How many Lucy's are we going to find Lucy and the Diamonds in this movie? For example? I guess it's enticing to a storyteller, but it ends up always feeling a little bit like a children's story. Where you know, evidently that that stage play Sergeant Pepper's Lonely hearts called band on the Run. The story was effectively the story we're going to get here in the film, where Billy Shears, who is like an up and coming rock star who's in love with Strawberry Fields, ends up being tempted by Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, who's like this rival band.

Yeah, that carries over almost directly from one version of this to the next. But yeah, it couldn't help themselves again once they get to Across the Universe. In fact, they did it a little more cannily there, at least, like one of the leads is named Maxwell, after Maxwell silver Hammer. They even comment on it. But it doesn't mean we need a scene where he's thinking about being a psychopath, right.

He swings a hammer around and talks about it. Yeah, obviously, if you're gonna between the two, I'm going to take Across the Universe as a quality picture ten times out of ten over Sergeant Pepper's. But what's interesting, as I'm watching this, I'm watching it with more critical eye because we're going to be talking about it, discussing it. It would have I think it would have been okay, maybe better if they had stuck to this idea of a candide of morality play where it's about Billy Shears and his tug and pull between his wholesome girlfriend and life of a rock star. But what I was struck by and I never thought about as a child, is they brought in this whole weird subplot about Sergeant Pepper and these magical instruments that somehow bring the world into harmony.

So it's like a lot of warring impulses I found this time around watching it. What did you think? There are so many directions you could go with these songs. What they decide it was, let's just make a big old MGM musical, which they certainly achieved. They shot this on the MGM backlot.

It's beautiful. It is a big old production. I do agree with you, though, because there's so much, I don't know, just weird darkness involved in this film. It is. I had the same reaction, and I thought some of it might have been my sense memory of watching this as a six or seven year old.

Maybe probably we both saw it around that time. But there is a strange like that, the stuff with the band getting tempted by Donald Pleasant's BD, the record executor, the record company. Owner, bdeler who that's what George Burns refirst to him, even though on his desk it says bad Brockhurst Rockhurst. Yeah, but there's I'd forgotten maybe that there's a lot of I don't know. It's a little scary even now watching it.

There's a scene so they're performing I Want You She's So Heavy, which is one of the darker Beatles songs anyway, but it basically soundtracks this band going out meeting bed him taking them back to his mansion for this sort of bacchanalian feast during which he basically drugs them and entices them to sign a contract for them. But all of this is happening, and the lights get very dark and there's all these sort of strange sexual things happening in the background. That actually, that part I thought was actually still pretty effective. I thought, yeah, that I found that to be wildly disturbing as a child. Yeah, I mean too.

But then, as you said, we were watching this way too early. Because the fact is, at this movie, I think people want to call it a bomb, but it made twenty million against thirteen, so it at least broke even even though this movie was basically considered a bomb or a flop at the time, considering what was going on around and what was being released around it, it made its way to cable pretty quick. And if you were of a of the right age, where this new world of cable television where you could watch movies over and over and over again uncut, here you were. I watched this movie seven billion times. Every kid in my neighborhood watched this movie seven billion times.

Every kid in my neighborhood. At one point, I remember piling into my den to watch this movie, and they were all of the kids. These were older kids, and they were only there to see Aerosmith. To that point, I was freaked out by the whole BD basically devil sequence. Watching it again now, it's only scary for two reasons.

They keep doing sweaty close ups of Donald pleasants biting his finger in anticipation of will will they or won't they sign? That's freaky. And the other thing is when finally drugged Peter Frampton looks like he's fucking mind has been erased. He looks like there's nothing there at all. It looks like no fun whatsoever, And that looks scary.

The rest of it, I'm down, but. It's all very exaggerated. He is Billy Shears, The character Billy Shears is drinking from the biggest like Brandy sniffer you've ever seen. The thing is literally twice as big as Peter Frampton's head, and music's. Going and it's dark.

It's filled with dark liquid that we've seen them drop this capsule of powder into. It's just there's just an overpowering darkness to the whole thing, because it's all I mean, as a child, obviously, we're seeing these people drink and do drugs, things that we were told are bad or that you're not supposed to do. And it's clear that the fact is he's coercing the band into doing something they wouldn't do unless they were drugged or whatever. So that's still pretty dark and pretty shocking. But to be fair, there's a lot of there's a lot of darkness in this movie that as I'm watching it, that's probably the darkest, one of the tonally darkest bits of the whole movie.

But there's a lot of crazy stuff happening here, and there's I don't know that's an. Murder, there's suicide, there's yeah, there's the ruination of a town that becomes an entire red light district with prostitution and there are robots. It's crazy that there's this guy, mean mister Mustard, who is obsessed with starberry fields to the degree that he basically kidnaps her and is basically responsible for her death. It's really really awful. I don't think he's responsible for her death.

He's just he's just following orders. But from FVB. Yeah, it's but he But like the look of the movie, I can't describe what filmically what's happening, But the movie itself seems to have a layer of grime, like the actual like picture seems a little dirty, a little dark, which I think you find with a lot of these movies from like the late seventies especially. I don't know what is causing it. It's almost like there's like a fog around everything.

It is that late seventies gauzy, a new attempt at old Hollywood. Somehow, they're, you know, invoking the musicals of the past by casting everything through a pair of fucking sweat socks. It's very, very hazy, and but along that point, you know, it's this is a really kind of a throwback to an old timey movie musical because there's the only dialogue that's spoken is really spoken by George Burns, who narrates the whole picture as the mayor of this place that they're from Heartland. But everything else is told through song and or like these silent movie type interstitials where someone will say something but it'll be rendered in text below them, like a subtitle. It's all very old, tiny and kind of goofy.

For some reason, every time the beg's or the band has to go in hot pursuit, they're taking a hot air balloon, which I couldn't quite understand. Hot air balloons were hot in the late late seventies. Man, it was like a Foreigner album cover. Basically, they were trying to. I guess so.

But yeah, it's this. There's a lot of weirdness going on. We'll get into it. But let's get into it's a weird Let's get into the story of the movie. Given I don't know, maybe twenty or thirty minutes, you and I could come up with a better story with this group of songs.

They I would say they took the easy way out with a lot of this. A lot of it is told very literally. I guess what do you do when you have a song like Maxwell's Silver Hammer, which in itself tells a story, but at the same time, and maybe I'm a little bit biased because, to be honest, that might be my least favorite Beatles song of all times. Also the Beatles' least favorite song of all time except Paul McCartney. Right, all some fucking hate of it.

Yeah, but you're yeah, you're absolutely right. This it's lazy, like who let me ask? You had mentioned who wrote this screenplay? You know you have that information. Name is Henry Edwards.

So it was just one person. It wasn't a bi committee. Correct. Okay, then it makes even less sense why it's so disjointed and going in all sorts of different directions unless he was getting notes from Stigwood saying no, you have to put. This song in there is Henry Edwards is Stigwood's guy?

You know this is Stigwood's script in this writer's format. Yeah, I have no doubt based on the previously produced material like stripping away the more the weirdly, stripping away the fantastical elements like the candide like commentary elements, and then just making it a straight ahead story where we're going to treat it like movie musical logic. We're going to basically treat it like an opera or an operetta. We're going to make it a comic book. And in fact, it's funny you say that, because there were Marvel used to put out a book called Marvel Super Special.

It's the one everybody knows. Kiss famously had their comic book under this umbrella of the Marvel Super Specials. In France, they produced a Marvel Super Special around this movie. There is a graph basically a comic book of this movie, but it's all in French. So I'm going to have to get my hands on it.

It's very weird because they did Blade Runner. They did Conan in this series, so why not do Sergeant Pepper. I had Blade Runner and the conand but I had Conan. I didn't have Blade Runner. They're great, they were great.

Yeah, I have a paperback of it still before we get any further, because we are going to be talking about technique along with plot as we move along, and we just mentioned the screenwriter who was kind of a nobody and continued to be a nobody. But this film is helmed by mister Michael Schultz, HP and I were talking about him off air. His filmography is actually quite incredible. This was his only attempt at like a big budget studio film, and literally anyone would have taken it. You or I would have taken it right, undoubtedly, undoubtedly.

Never mind the fact that he is an African American director, So it made it actually really big deal that he was handled the reins of a big studio movie in nineteen seventy eight. But he had proven himself clearly in the past with films like Coolie High and car Wash and Greased Lightning. After this, he would do Bust and Loose with Richard Pryor and Carbon Copy, and in nineteen eighty five Crush Groove and The Last Dragon. Both in one year he did the Disorderlies film with the Fucking Fat Boys. He has been living on television ever since, incredibly.

I'm going to go down the list from the beginning. The first series he was involved when was The Rockford Files. He did Starsky and Hutch and Barretta. He eventually worked on Ally McBeal and Everwood and Arrow, the Fucking Arrow series, Blackish, Crazy Ex Girlfriend. He's still working today.

His last credit was The Wonder Years, that revamp of The Wonder Years. Clearly an incredibly talented director saddled with the worst possible situation of all time. Yes, I want to do a big studio movie. Yes I want this crazy budget and access to all of these people and these actors and these musicians. Who wouldn't I would take the job just to work with Billy Preston.

Here you go, here's the script. Oh no, here are your actors quote unquote Peter Frampton and the Beg's Oh no. I was stunned because up to now I gave zero thought to whoever directed this, because it just seemed like I would not have been surprised if there was a one and done someone who got their shot and just blew it. But I was as surprised as you to see who did it, and obviously what a strong filmography they had. I'm just on the basis of your Crush Groove is I would label it as an important movie about breakdancing.

It's up there with I mean, it's a better movie than Breaking. Put it that way. Breaking may be better remembered, but Crush Groove is better move. It's an important movie for hip hop culture. In general, But for me, my personal favorite of all of that was The Last Dragon.

I love that movie unreservedly. I think it's a fantastic movie. They it's this unicorn where they made it and it was great, and I don't know, we've never seen one quite like it again. It's almost like a throwback, like a hip hop version of a Bruce Lee movie. That's what I always loved about it.

Show us, but. Show that's I don't get me started. But anyway, it was I think you said it. Any one of us, if given the opportunity, would have jumped at the chance to make a big budget and this was a very This was a big budget, you know, ten pole piece of film. It's just I can't imagine what went through his head when a month into filming and he's dealing with musicians who can't act, a story that doesn't make sense, a soundtrack that is terrible to say the least.

Yeah, I give him credit for doing this, getting past it and continuing with his career. It's pretty amazing. The opening of the movie is terrible. Where it's not terrible, it's just a waste of time because it's setting up what you were alluding to earlier, which is we get this weird mythology of the actual Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band who somehow, while marching through World War One, shut that war down, and then we're treated like heroes upon their return. And then we are feeded to a the Sargeant Pepper's Only Hearts called band through the ages, through the musical ages, like a Ralph Bakshi sequence from American pop, where we get like a nineteen twenties jazzy version of them, and we get like thirties.

All of that sucks. However, when Dougie Shears, we got to talk about that. When Dougie Shears first steps out with the coronet to introduce the band, that's one shot up until Billy Shears, up until that until Frampton starts singing, Oh. When they circle the bandstand, Yeah, it's amazing. It is incredible because it starts at the fucking city Hall, follows him through that crowd, goes over to these old men.

He does his thing on the stage, pans down to the old men. The French horn guys pans back up, Hey, here are the Beg's pans three sixty around them, and then spins around to Peter Frampton and then we finally but that's basically the entire song, Sergeant Pepper's only heartskallle Band in one take, and it's never uninteresting. The direction is good, and again I'm sure that he's doing Michael Schultz is doing the best with what he has to do and trying to make it as artful as possible, because there are other aspects which I'm sure we'll get to, that are interesting, that are visually interesting, but none of that has to do with the actual acting or the music on display here. Okay, so much props to Michael Schultz.

Okay, we are about to, I think eviscerate this fucking movie. So present day, nineteen seventy eight. We're in Heartland. We're in generic Heartland. It's the way, it's a literal.

It's a town called Heartland, in. The whitest town on Earth. George Burns is the mayor. He won't stop talking, and you know I love George Burns. My favorite part is when we flash back to ten years ago when Sargeant Pepper actually died and they've made up George Burns to look younger by giving him brown hair and a mustache, and they must have taped back his wrinkles.

It's so ridiculous. So the plot, such as it is, is Sergeant Pepper's magical instruments are now going to be stored at city Hall, thus maintaining peace in the world, or at least in I want to call it pepper Land too. At least the community is going to maintain harmony with these magical instruments there. There's a whole band's worth of instruments here. It will remain the whitest city in America as long as these instruments are all.

Just called it Whitesville. Sergeant Pember had the like the American Eagle medallion from the war, which he's passed down to his grandson, his grandson Billy Shears, Thank you Beatles, and thank you Paul. Really, and he's got a jealous half brother, step cousin. Cousin. I think it's his cousin.

And the other members of the band are his friends, the Hendersons. The Henderson's will all be there. Why are they not named Vera, Chuck and Day. That would have been great. Could have named Robin Vera.

It would have been fine, could have. But yeah, but that that. So he has the jealous cousin who's always when he gets when he's an adult, he's always angling for money. He's trying to backstab his virtuous cousin Billy to take money and all that. But the Hendersons, the other three are played by an adulthood by the Beatles.

They comprise. They are not HP. They are played by the Begs. I'm sorry I say the Beatles. I meant the Begs with me.

This movie would have been fucking crazy if the Beatles reunited. To be in it, right, it would have been in a more interesting movie. Maybe imagine John Lennon punching out Steven Tyler. Fighting with I guess that would have been Peter Frampton anyway, fighting with Steve Martin. But the thing of it is, I have to say like having the Begs comprise the band and Peter Frampton, beyond the fact that they couldn't deliver conceptually, that's a really smart idea for the time because they were so popular and the Beg's have always been thought of in the same breath as the Beatles.

Anyway, they always considered, you know, a little less than the Beatles, but in the same swimming in the same waters, So why not. I can't fault them for the concept here. Yeah, the Beg's in particular, they were ruling the world. Of course you're going to put them in a movie. You got the Spice Girls, Put them in a movie.

You gotta strike while they iron? Are you got these Beatles? Put them in a movie? Yeah? Serious?

And they're they're not actors, but they are and were great musicians and great vocalists. So what could go wrong? Fatherm alone did you say they weren't actors? They were? Did they do something to do Oliver or something when they were young?

I never thought of them as actors. The Begs. No, I'm agreeing with you. They're fucking terrible. They should not labeled as actors.

Frampton either, By the way, Peter Frampton loved Peter Frampton because I grew up white and it's suburban, so he's like in my bloodstream. Somehow, that fucking Frampton comes a live album. None of us could escape. But watching him in just that opening scene we were talking about where he's canoodling with Strawberry Fields and they're like, come on, Billy Shears, get up here on the stage and he comes running up with this grin, it's this kind of all I can think is that is Tiger Beat Magazine on two legs. It's a little bit on Canny Valley for me, because he's trying to play at emotion and there's just nothing behind it.

I feel bad for him because he was so overmatched clearly in this He's just this is a guy who made it big as a musician, and he stretched a little bit too far. It's kind of sad. He's very, very pretty. It only makes sense, but don't ask him to do anything that could only contribute to the what you described as the sort of silent movie. We're going to throw in placards to give us some dialogue, but mainly they do the weirder thing, which is they're over emoting as if it's a silent movie and saying the lines out loud, and George Burns's voice is coming out of them as he's narrating.

Yet, was everyone on LSD when they were making this film. They weren't, you know what? They were all on cocaine. Robin Gibb apparently was like staggered by the amounts of cocaine and was merely taking barbituwitz just to get to sleep at night. From the filming of this film, I.

Read similar things where they're saying there were like crew members walking around with huge baggies just in the open, full of Cocaine's that was the late seventies. I guess for you. I mean they look they the Beg's weren't immune to the allure of drugs. They weren't, you know, choir boys. But for them to be shocked at the level of drug usage on that production.

Says something, what is driving this film? It's silly, right, They just they're going to reform the band. They're going to reform Sarente and Pepper. They're going to continue the legacy of se Pepper. They're going to tank the music to the masses.

That's the idea. They're going to spread world peace, that is the idea. And almost immediately during this introductory show, they get a telegram from Bad Brockhurst saying, I love it. I don't know is it Brockhurst, I don't know one of the other Bad and he says he loves the music. So almost immediately they go to the Big City, which I think is actually La.

I think it's literally La. Think of course it's La. My god, let's just say how they got there. Now you said their form of conveyance from Heartland, I continue to want to call it Pepperland is a giant hot air balloon covered in hearts, which they take to head to LA But b D has sent his private jet which smashes into the thing in one of this fantasy moments, and now they're inside the airplane like a cartoon. All of a sudden, I thought I'd missed something.

I'm watching it. Then like the next thing I know, they're in this jet. What happened? Yeah, the jet hits the balloon, but there's no indication of anything happening. It's just a jump cut and they're inside the jet.

Now, okay, we land in Los Angeles, the city of Angels. That yeah, there's a shock. I mean they show them staring out the window of a smog covered Los Angeles and there's the joke, City of Angels, get it, ha ha, it's smoggy. Now we meet Donald Pleasance, who is He's great here. He's having so much fun, you can just tell.

And he gets to singing. Is a stretch Okay, he's talk singing it. You a one to you. One? You so bad.

It's driving me mad. It's driving me mad. It's great is It's one of the tracks I will listen to off of the thing. There are a couple of songs on here that I think are really good interpretations, the obvious ones being earth Wind and Fire and Arrowsmith. Those became radio hits for Fox's sake.

Curiously, those are the only two songs in the soundtrack that George Martin did not produce. Shocking, not at all shocking, not at all shocking. I was all ready to give him credit to say the only real lasting wonder from any of this is the soundtrack, But the two strongest songs he had nothing that he had nothing to do with their reinvention. Let's say I will contend that there are a couple of songs here, not Beg's necessarily related that that are not like radio hits, but as good as an interpretation as you were going to get. I think when I'm sixty four this actually might be the most superior version of when I'm sixty four I've ever heard, as sung quote unquote, I guess by Frankie Howard.

It's great when I get old, losing my hand many years from now, willing me av time my bottle of wine. If I've been out to quante, would you love at all? William still need me when I'm stiff. Paul McCartney was such a theatrical writer that having somebody like Frankie Howard, who is old school vaudevillian basically performing that was is great. The other one, as far as that goes to me, is this song.

Because they're not taking it too seriously. They're not slavishly trying to do a seventies version of that song. So I guess in that way there are successes. I don't know that I would, to be perfectly honest, I don't know that I would listen to the Frankie Howard when I'm sixty four as for leisure, but I can appreciate the stretch. Let's say this is where we meet Lucy Diane Steinberg, who was a burgeoning solo artist at the time.

Right, So she's the chauffeur here, right. I love this part. I think I know what you're getting into, but I love what they did with her here because they're singing I want you. It's I want you like like we've been talking about. But the perspective keeps shifting.

First it's Donald Pleasant saying I want you to the band to convey I want to sign you. And then Lucy Diane Steinberg is singing it to Billy Shears because she has the hots form, so she's singing, I want you to an un comfortable Billy Shears. And Dougie Shears is in the car and he's singing it to Lucy because he wants her. So there's all these different perspectives. But meanwhile, like there's a band, a group of like Hell's Angels that drive past the car, and on the back of one of them is Lucy done up as a Hell's Angel.

So they keep seeing, like they'll see prostitute on the street. It's a prostitute. So yes, the bikers go by, and so it's bikers, and then each of has a different girl on the back, the final one being Lucy. When they pull forward the backs of their jackets read Lucy and the Diamonds, four of them together. The other thing I want to point out is Lucy is on the back of a motorcycle driven by the guy who's dressed exactly the same in Peewee's Big Adventure.

You know you're at the hot out of the Satan's Helpers, same guy, same outfit, SAP. I didn't know that got World. War two ace kind of helmet, you know that thirty thing. Anyway, now we've met Lucy in the Diamonds, although we've met them prior, because before we even get to Heartland we get scheming BD and Lucy in the Diamonds. So Lucy has already decided she wants Billy Shears and just trying to keep that quiet from BD.

But so we've met them. Now we're meeting them as these biker chicks, as if the sort of presentation. But Lucy is also driving the car and like you said, they drive past like a group of prostitutes. It's Lucy and the Diamonds there too. So now Lucy and the Diamonds are every temptation in Los Angeles this part of the movie.

I really really like this whole sequence is the best sequence in the movie as far as I'm concerned. Hands down, I one hundred percent agree. I loved it because it's the song itself works on so many levels. It's not just the literal interpretation of the song. You have all these things going on, and I love the fact that she is the object of obsession for everybody else in that car, for all of the Beg's, for Dougie.

It's great, it's really it's like art. I don't know, I just I thought it was really creative. Yeah, and then we've already talked about the rest of that sequence, which is the sort of the actual seduction sequence where it becomes very very impressionistic. It's so good Man, Like, I wish the whole movie had lived up to the rest of this, and I wish we had gotten more of them as the seduced, because honestly, this is all meaningless because as soon as they get popular, it's just squeaky clean, fucking Billy Shears and the Begees. Yeah, they don't go full on corruption with the band.

They don't fall prey. Beyond the scene of them getting signed by Bad there's really no degradation for them. There's still the same band. And in fact, eventually Strawberry Fields decides to go to La to because she has some premonitions that there's bad stuff happening, so she takes a bus and goes. She is right, and she goes, and she puts a stop to all the nonsense and then we're into a hole.

Then that whole bit about them getting signed, that whole plot of them, like the corruption versus the wholesomeness is gone after she picks them up. That's it. No, But it isn't because what it has done is allowed mean mister Mustard to infiltrate Pepperland, I mean Heartland. But that's still locked down to the stresses of a rock band on the Ascent and all the temptations. No, because that would have required actors to portray these rules in and out.

What we have to do is keep this farcical and jump around and use as many of the twenty nine songs as Robert Stigwood paid for. God damn it, we have the subplot of what the corruption has rocked back at home. Instead of seeing them corrupted, we get the corruption of Heartland quite literally. By the way, did you bring up the fact that mister Mustard's henchman is the guy from Twin Peaks? I did not.

We're talking about Carol Strikin. Yeah, yeah, not only the giant from Twin Peaks, but he is Lurch in the Barry Sunenfeld Adams Family movies. He's one of the aliens and men in black. He's been in ev everything, and this is his first role. He's mean mister Mustard's henchman, simply known as the Brute.

The Brute, yeah, no lines, but he makes it impact. Oh yeah, dancing around and stuff. He's great. Felt like the movie took a real left turn after bake Ben in the Hole. I can see your point that mister Mustard continues that that idea, but it really that's where it becomes about the FVB, which in the movie is called the Future Villain Band, And it has to be said, this is the organization that is sending mean mister Mustard to steal the instruments?

Is it? Though? Look, I know I just watched it, but this stuff goes out of my head immediately. Are the messages come from FVB or he's to deliver the instruments to f VB? Because I want to know who is the voice behind everything because we never meet them.

Well, I think it's a piece of narration that mister that George Burns makes that he's getting his orders from the FVB. You're right, because FVB is technically aerosmith in the movie, but it's almost like like a doctor. No or something someone who it's a vocoder. It's a vocoder voice that says you know, but it's it's one person giving him all of the orders. For what to do, and we never meet them.

So here's what needed to have happened. They needed to either pick one or the other. They needed to pick this plot line where somebody is infiltrating Heartland and fucking shit up, and there this their band has to come and solve all this shit, or it's the corruption of the band in me old Hollywood. That's what I'm saying. I would have loved if they continued with the latter, with the Hollywood versus Heartland thing.

I think it would have. You could have could use the songs for a much better purpose, give them double meanings like I want you had That sequence I think we just agreed is pretty fucking brilliant. But then it's all thrown away once they decide to go on this sort of mad cap adventure to get these instruments back. There is another great sequence, which is they and one of the most economical things I've ever seen in a movie, which is the printing of the soundtrack album. They film it as if this is their first album.

Coming out. So they have used the production of their soundtrack as a piece of film in their film Brilliant. Which is crazy because I mean, at what point do you produce the soundtrack to the movie that you're making it the same time? I was. It twisted my mind up to think about.

That because it is a musical and a traditional one event. They recorded all the tracks and they're just lip syncing in the film, so it's ready. To go, So why wait? It's pretty smart. Probably late in production they got that footage, but still it's a great sequence and it ends at Tower Records, the long lamented, long lost Sunset Boulevard, Tower Records.

I purchased Peace and Love cassette of the Pogues album Peace and Love at that Tower Records. That was the original, right, No, the originals in San Francisco, I believe, but that was the big one in Hollywood. Because that was in I remember seeing that in the movie FM. Also that that figures into it. If you so.

Anyone going to Tower Records in the seventies and eighties, it was probably Sunset definitely iconic. You couldn't mistake it for any other place. Sure used to go to the one in Santa Monica all the time when I was living there. But did you ever go to Amiba? Was that a round?

Oh yeah, of course I still go to Amba when I go to La. Okay, I knew it's still likes big thing. But yeah, they're like the last fucking resort. Man. They're like that, They're the only game in town.

It feels like, oh my god, me, mister Muster's under orders has got to steal the instruments and scatter the instruments, right, He's got to take them to different people, because to do you have different nefarious purposes for them. We don't know what any of these instruments actually do. It's not like the Lost Room or something where with the instruments of if you have the coronet, that'll give you the power of flight. No, we don't get anything like that, just that we need the instruments. It's not like the Infinity Stones where you know that one controls time and one is power.

It's And the other interesting thing that I never picked up on is this is Sergeant Pepper had a band. There's the coronet, there's the French horn, there's a bass room, there's saxophones, there's all kinds of stuff. But ultimately there's only three instruments that they have to track down, right, it's the coronet, It's the bass drum. Oh, father's son has the tuba. What happened to all the other instruments?

Are the other ones not magical? No, I guess not. It's just those four and they never use them, right he Yeah, Mustard gets the orders, so he has to he has He gets three instruments. One goes, the coronet goes let's let's get into this. The coronet goes to doctor Maxwell played by Steve Martin.

A'llah Maxwell silver hammer. The bass drum in a weird I don't know why, but the bass drum is just on the bus that they steal, so there's no searching. They keep the drum for yourself, okay, And he has no reaction or anything. It should be like, oh, like you know, like, okay, I guess I'll fucking keep this drum. So the bass drum's just on the bus and they find it just by happenstance.

And the tuba, like I said, goes to this guy named father's son who's played maybe the probably the creepiest performance in the whole picture. Is Alice Cooper as father's son. We'll talk a little bit about each individual scene, but I did I still find his and it's not him. It's we'll talk about it, but I don't want to get ahead of it. But yeah, So.

There are these three associates of the Future Villain Band. They've got to go and do battle with them, basically, right. Meanwhile, Heartland Pepperlind just keeps sinking into further and further degradation, so much so that the grand Gazebo with that three hundred and sixty degree shot from the opening that was so beautiful, it is now a cheeseburger. It's a giant cheeseburger with saggy cheese. It's bizarre, sad.

Is the Hitler youth man a little, a little weird. But what does the hammer do? He has this hammer, His hammer will whence applying to your skull, will labottomize you and turn you into one of the FVB youth one of their one of their army, the f BB army. But it's odd because while he's and and we have to mention that Steve Martin is not singing maxwell silver Hammer, He's doing another He's like it's as if Jim Carrey was doing it. Joe was quizical physical in the home.

Like Everson Majoring and medicine calles, come take you out there. It's as if they boiled down his whole stick to well, excuse me, it's all very exaggerated. This was before he reinvented himself as more of a serious actor. I would say this is his first thing. Man, Like they're plucking him out of not necessarily obscurity because he was wildly popular at the time, but they are like presenting him as the wild and crazy guy.

Yeah, and that's exactly what you get. He's it's all very a lot of with his hands. But these the old people file in on a conveyor belt in hospital Johnny's and he whacks them with this hammer with this strange sort of matted in lightning effect, and like you said, they turn into younger versions of themselves in basically Hitler youth garb. Let's say that it's something. There's a lot of brainwashing in this movie, and this is only the first part of it.

Like that's the central thing that f phoebe is on is after, right, Yeah, I yeah, it's all various ways to brainwash somebody because so, so that's his deal. Okay, Then we get par fight and it and it's. The point where Billy Shears is squared off against doctor Maxwell and it's almost like a lightsaber duel. It is exactly a lightsaber duel. Man like, they let's go as hard as we can without George Lucas suing us, because he will because we heard what happened over at Battlestar Galactica.

Right, So they somehow Billy Shears gets knocked out by the hammer. He doesn't get brainwashed, but he's knocked out, but they retrieve the coronet, and that leads to the saddest interpretation of the song Strawberry Fields Forever sung by the character of Strawberry Fields as they're trying to revive him. By the way, we did not mention Sandy Farina, who plays Strawberry Fields Shears. Well, here's the thing. Number one, I will admit that I had a crush on her.

I thought she was super cute at the time. She didn't really her career didn't really pan out. I don't know that she did any other movies after this, but she's probably best known after this as being the co lead vocalist of Hands Across America. Do you remember that in the think it was eighty five across We all remember it, right, So I think what happened was they recorded this song as a demo, expecting some famous musicians, like like a USA for Africa, we are the World kind of thing, but nobody did, so they just left her on it. So she's singing that basically her and some other nameless, faceless vocalist, but a good look, good vocalist, good singer didn't really the stars didn't line up for her.

I think she passed away a few years ago, sadly, but I always had a soft spot for her. I just thought she was really cute. I hate her. I Well, no, I'm not saying. The character is annoying and she has no agency in this whole picture.

It's really unfortunate for her. I'm just suggesting that I thought she was talented and super cute. Okay, Yeah, I'm perhaps being unfair because what I'm saying is I hate the character of Strawberry. They get the cornet back from Doctor Maxwell. They find the bass room already on the bust.

They've stolen. Only one place to go the freakiest part of this movie. We thought that earlier seduction seem was freaking No, no, no, no, that was fine. You expect that they're in Hollywood. What did you expect?

No one expects what the fuck is going on here with Alice Cooper. This was probably the thing, Like, I know, we made a lot about the sort of the seduction scene with the band, but this probably was the most I don't want to use the word damaging to me as a child, but this is the one that freaked me out the most out of all of the sequences in this movie, because again we're in a brainwashing situation. He is overseeing a classroom of it's almost like something out of Pink Floyd's The Wall, where it's a classroom of kids that are being basically forced to watch these viewscreens all around them, these giant movie screens. And it's the song because that Alice Cooper is singing, but he's being rendered in psychedelic, like very darkly psychedelic poses, and he's not really singing it.

So much as sounds like the fucking Riddler. Like he's in a leotard, like a black leotard, and it's Alice Cooper as a child. As you're saying, this is really too much to bear. That is all going on. The Hitler youth are being brainwashed by him by Alice Cooper in a unitard singing, because while the actual Alice Cooper, who has been filmed and is apparently appearing on that screen, is in the same auditorium monitoring what's going on in like manning the equipment.

But it's a really brutish version of himself. We're getting, like we're getting Vince here. We're not getting Alice Cooper. We're getting Vince Vernie absolutely, and he's I think he's actually watching a boxing match, yeah, on an old black and white TV. So he it's as if he's just hit play on something and he's ignoring everything that's happening in the classroom.

And he's just because I think they say that he's an ex janitor who was picked on and this is his revenge to all the kids that used to pick on him. So you're right, we're getting the idealized version of Alice Cooper with this weird skin tight body suit, but doing these that doesn't that under sells it. He's doing these weird poses and he's singing the song. He's not singing it so much as squeaking it. Out of his voice, like croaking it at us.

It's croaking. It's so bizarre, Suy, this guy. This is a beatlesnukebox musical, as is across the universe. They also used because in that film, do you remember how they use it? I don't remember how they used it.

It's after they've visited the Dennis Leary. They after they've visited the Timothy Leary. After the bono sequence, right, They're all laying in a field together and it's all blissful and the sun is rising and they're all singing in unison. It is the most tranquil thing in the world. Here, it's the most horrifying.

Thank you, Alice Cooper. It's really and to be really honest, I can't really listen to the original Beatles version without thinking about that, because, frankly, this might have been my first exposure to the Beatles music before I knew that there was a Beatles. It was either this or maybe Yellow Submarine the movie to some degree, But certainly I would never have heard because off of I never would have heard Addie Road. There's something sinister about the whole thing now when I listened back to it, and it's probably all down to this scene in particular, because it's very, like I said, the imagery is very it's very nightmarish. I would say I had an early top loader VCR back in the day, and certainly had a recording of this film.

I think, honestly I still have my VHS copy. I know I could dig it out. I definitely have the soundtrack album and I think the novelization somewhere. But anyway, because I had the ability to fast forward, there are two sequences that I would fast forward as a child watching this movie. This was one of them, just because it was genuinely freaky.

As bizarre as I found the seduction scene, it was still Diane Steinberg being super fucking sexy, and the whole scene is alluring, even if Peter Frampton is ruining it by looking like a moron. This scene, however, the Alice Cooper scene was just absolute nightmare fuel, so I would fast forward through it. Can you guess the other sequence I would fast forward through. Let me think, I gotta think about this for just a moment. I know sequences you wouldn't, but if let me think about this for a minute.

Is it a Day in the Life by the Begs? No, although on rewatch I now would skip that sequence just because visually they do nothing at all. So what was the other sequence you disliked so much? Fixing a hole? Oh oh, I can't believe it.

Didn't think of that. It's as if the guy has no rhythm. It's weird. Everything is on like the one in the three beat, like he doesn't have any nu once. I'm fixing a hole where the rain dan sand and stops my mind from wandering where it will go.

But it doesn't really serve any purpose. It's just old ass George Byrns singing this in a an oldie time style. I bought twenty nine songs. You're a musing twenty nine songs. It's right, you better fucking well use all every one of those songs.

God damn it, you know what this is costing. I totally agree. There's a lot about that first third of the movie that, to be honest, I would just fast forward through including that. But yeah, that Alice Cooper thing was hard to shake. Man continues to be to this thing.

I'm glad it's in here. It's what's funny about this movie is it's really lame, but at the same time, Aerosmith is in it and Steve Martin, as miserable as that sequence ends up being, Steve Martin was super fucking up. It's Steve Martin to this day, he's in it. Alice Cooper was in it. If they oh Stigwood money, they're lending so much cred to this film that doesn't deserve it.

It is weird. And I give Alice Cooper credit because what was really interesting about it is it's almost like he was deflating the image or the idea of Alice Cooper, the shock of it by having him depicted simultaneously as this schlubby guy eating like a turkey sandwich, like shadow boxing, watching this cheesy old boxing match, like he's so ordinary in that guy's and yet him with the body suit singing is so extraordinary. It came to light and while they were making The Fast and the Furious movies that there were actual contracts from actors where a certain amount of punches had to be thrown between each character. We're basically talking about the rock and fucking Vin Diesel right like they have it in their contract, like they can't lose the fight.

And if they get hit six times and they had hit seven times in return, like bullshit? Like that, right, just ego nonsense, And it didn't. The Rock had that with Black Adam too. I think that was part of the reason why he didn't fight Superman, because he didn't want to be the one to lose the fight. All ego is my point.

And now you watch the end of this scene and Barry Gibb from the Beaches punches out Alice Cooper. Alice Cooper lets that happen on screen forever. Who cares, Right, it's a fucking movie. We all got paid, we're all on cocaine, we're all having a good time. Who gives a shit.

Yeah, I think Alice Cooper has always been one of the savviest entertainers in rock and roll history. Anyways. I think he's always had a refreshing lack of ego, and I think this is a good indication of that because he held himself up as this shocking symbol, but he knew that he was just laughing. He was scaring people all the way to the bank. Really smart guy.

The best way to scare people to the bank, we got to get back to fucking Pepperland, I mean Heartland, Hartland. So they retrieve these instruments for some reason. We'll overlook the fact that there's probably another half dozen instruments that are still out there in the wild, but that they're never referenced. After this, they convinced Pepper Heartland is still in ruins because of me and mister Mustard Bad sets up a benefit concert featuring Sergeant Pepper's band. So they're going to come back triumphantly to their hometown and put on a shoe as it were show.

Yeah, so they I think they come out being for the benefit of mister Kite. It's all we talk about MGM, big old production number. Here it is, man, we've even brought the clowns. Yeah, there's a roller skating horse, of course, and it's and they bring hope back to pepper Land. But there's still darkness nibbling at the edges of this fairy tale.

My probably my favorite song, one of my favorite songs on the album. They watch a performance of Earth Wind and Fire doing Gotta Get You, Got to Get You into My life, and it's fantastic. I went for years not even realizing that that was a Paul McCartney song, because because it's pretty damn near definitive, what they do with it, what the band does with it, how they interpret it, you would never even guess it was a Beatles song. I tell you that. You knew I want, I had to go on, You knew a time would be again, say will be.

Every day. Oh it's a stand up. The whole sequence is great with them, But but what happens during the song, Yeah, not so great. Happening during their songs? What's going on backstage with Dougie, Dougie Tears and Lucy of Lucy and the Diamonds.

They've gone rogue their fight there. They have no fealty to anyone now, not Sergeant Pepper, not b D, not fucking mean mister Mustard or the f v B. They're gonna get paid and fucking hit the road. This is another sequence that I think could have been great, But we haven't really talked about Dougie. Paul Nicholas, Yeah, who's terrible.

He's got an okay voice. He's got an okay voice for the late seventies, okay rock voice. He's really a theater guy, you can tell. But his performance is so fucking over the top. Man.

It makes me want to murder him. Meanwhile, Diane Steinberg is fucking great in that sequence and just ill served by this human cartoon she's staddled with. I have no idea what happened with Diane Steinberg's Steinberg, right, I keep saying Steinberg, I did whatever cut that out. I don't know what happened with her career. She had everything going for her in this movie.

She's gorgeous, she can sing her ass off. I know she put out a number of albums, and I think that was her thing, but I never I did some research. I never got a sense for why this was her one and only motion picture. It's weird. Well, I think she just wanted to focus on music after this.

Remember this was even though you can say, hey, financially this made money and everything, but this was a flop. And you mentioned it was critically lauded. I don't think so, my man. No, I didn't say it was critically I said, I, you're right, it did make a modest profit twenty million off of thirteen million million dollar budget. But there's no getting around the fact that this was critically Why would I rever say it was I don't think I said that.

At the very beginning, you were like, this was a critical darling, and I didn't sure ask to why it didn't make more money, because I I agree with all of those critics that is one of the best films of all time. No, this was I make no mistake. If I said that, I wasn't. I didn't know what I was talking about, because this was a this critically, this could not have been a worse flop on those terms. But at my jail one from pursuing further roles or in the face of casting agents going oh that thing.

Yeah, no, it's not going to be for year, sweetie. But she's so talented. That's what I can't get past. I, like I said, she seemed to have it all, and from what I understand, this was a pretty highly sought after role. I think she's I think, I want to say Tina Turner might have tried out for it.

I think there were some heavy hitters. Oh no, no, no, Donna Summer, excuse me, Donna Summer was apparently in the mix for this. Whether that's true or not, who knows. But but no, but she's fait I Paul Nicholas, I think was he wasn't the original, but I think he had made his name as Jesus Christ Superstar, he. Would have would have been Ted Neely's understudy.

Ted Neely, by the way, was in the original Sergeant Pepper's Olian Hearts called Band on the Road. Yes, in that study was David Patrick Kelly. Yeah, it's pretty pretty cool. By the way, I saw Ted Neely do a production of Jesus Try Superstar in college. It's a thrill.

And he was seven hundred years old. No, he wasn't. He was. He was awesome. He was really really it was a thrill for me to see him.

But anyway, that so what there's this performance of Got to Get You into My life going on. It's fabulous. The band is. Watching this, but what's happening. They can't see what's happening in the back.

What's happening in the back? Bottom alone, they've stolen strawberry fields. Now here's what I'm going to say about this. You mentioned that this character has no agency. I will say that they've actually given her negative agency.

Right. She has come and rescued them from their life of deprivation or depredation and collected the instruments triumphantly to return to Pepperland, I mean Heartland, where they're gonna they're gonna reinvigorate the town right now, and they basically stick her on the merch booth. Well, she's selling popcorn. She's selling popcorn. They're seated in the front row watching earth Wind and Fire and the girlfriend who has fucking.

It always really I got to say, it always really bothered me. There's something because it's the guy from Twin Peaks, this brute, he's like twice as tall as Strawberry Fields as the actress, and he, mister Mustard, sees her and gets this slavering look on his face and he kind of points to the brute to say, you grab her and let's go. And the brute comes from behind her and basically just picks her up bodily and takes her into this bus that they're gonna leave town with. Even I just I found that really scary as a kid. They basically steal a human being in the middle of all of this, and no one notices, right, how.

Could you notice when fucking earth Wind and Fire up on stage. It's not gonna notice my girlfriend being kidnapped, right, right? Out from under me when they're grooving up there. My god, can you hear Maurice White? No one sings like him.

No, that's another disturbing aspect to this. It's played for laughs a little bit, which is but it's abduction. It's really kind of so they disappeared. The HP though it's abduction in like this snidely whiplash manner. She's tied up and.

It is and it's all it's played. It's cartoonish, but I don't know. There's something about that that always Howard a mustache. He would twirl it true, and that's what made him singing. So you talked about when I'm sixty four being a highlight, but there's a and maybe this is a positive, there's a disturbing edge to it.

Because they're on the bus. They're taking the they're going to see FVB with these hostages because it's Strawberry Fields and Douggie and Lucy are all discovered on this bus. He starts to sing when I'm sixty four, but he's essentially singing it to this helpless hostage that he has. I don't know, there's something that's great. It's a threat.

This is what anytime, like they did with She's So Heavy, anytime they recontextualize the song and make those lyrics meaningful in another way. I think it really really works. I wish they had done it more. I have to agree, it's clearly that the things that we love the most that made the most impact were those moments where they take the song away from its origins as far as they can and they interpret it in a different way. And then it's that song is not a duet.

But then she gets a verse, which is the more plaintive of the two verses, where she's not really talking to him at all. She's calling for help. It's I love the whole sequence. Send me a postcott, drop me alive. Inndicate, besides me, what.

You mean to say? You give me an. Tell me you still see me. And by the way the band are chasing them, did you mention they're back in the hot air balloon. But not only that, but when they get into the hot air balloon to leave in hot pursuit, they duck down into the basket and there's a flash of light and they duck back up and they're wearing old, tiny like flight goggles, and I think they even have like a crank that's cranking a propeller behind.

It old timey, but that's not what happens. They go down and then they come back up and everything is satin because they are like superheroes man like three Wonder Women. It is so they make it all the way. We finally see who FVB is, and this is also again we're praising this movie an awful lot for being such a flop, but this was also another sequence that that made an impact that I think is effective because we see FVB finally and who is f VB? Bah bah bahlone.

It's fucking Aerosmith and it's Aerosmith peak Aerosmith. This is my Aerosmith. Everyone else's Aerosmith seems to be the Wayne's World, rag Doll, Daddy's Little Qtie. Every song begins with the chorus, then a verse, then a chorus, then second verse, then chorus, chorus, chorus, chorus. That is late era Aerosmith.

These are the fucking scary motherfuckers, the boys from Boston, and again, the fact that they're in this movie gave the movie so much credibility that it didn't deserve. And this cover, I don't know about you, man, But this is the version of come Together that I listened to. Jump Jump. Now you. Can, I tell you, is you got to be bree come again?

Oh? This this is the the we're seeing the toxic Twins version of Arismith. These are the kind of glammed out, drugged out skiv. Really, they are so young and beautiful here. It's out of hand, like the by the way, this was the ugly band.

Right. I'm looking at them here and I'm like, these kids like at the height of their sort of creative power. Fucking a man, I thought, I agree with you. What they represent is that skive danger. But they're not given like Junkie.

Here, they're given like they're given viril performances. There's something there's a moment where well I think it's during a guitar break where so they're just to set. But visually, what's happening here, Strawberry fie they're on. It's like giant towers of coins money, right, Because fvb's whole slogan is we hate love, we hate joy, we love money. You keep hearing this repeated as a mantra.

So when they get to the headquarters of FVB, they're performing on top of giant stacks of coins, basically the very top. The band's all set up there. Strawberry Fields is tied to a giant Neon dollar sign right at during the guitar break, Steven Tyler A sachets over to her and takes his He's got the scarves and everything around his mic stand and he starts to canoodle with her a little bit and kiss her, and it's you can see, it's great acting on Strawberry Fields as part of Sandy Freeda's part because she raises her hand and it's almost trembling because she's I want you to get away from me, because you're this is so freaking me out right now. That's it's there's a danger, is what I'm trying to say.

There's a real danger to Aerosmith in the moment and in Stephen Tyler because now he's a goofball. He looks like he's old. He looks like you're crazy old aunts. He's just a weird looking guy. But here he was young, Like you said, he was virile, he was dangerous.

And that's what I took away from this scene is there's there's an energy to them and their performance that I think is probably one of the best things about the movie. Absolutely, it's so funny, because this is a terrible movie, but there are so many sequences that I can point to and go, that's really good. You definitely should watch that sequence. This is one of them. And that energy, that sort of danger the whole band is giving off that vibe, particularly that whenever there's a shot of Steven Tyler singing and Joe Perry leans in to sing a line or two with him, it's that danger compounds.

It's it's amazing. There's a real even now when I watch it, there's an energy to that, to their performance that I think is really remarkable. But I should say it speaks once again to this idea that had they wanted to because they had all of these songs and they could have been telling this story if this had been a straight ahead We're a band who've gone off to Hollywood to make it big, and this is our struggle and this was their rival band. Yeah, if they were like, oh, that would have been dynamite. Oh my god, Like, this is the band they have to supplant to become the greatest band in La or whatever.

And they've got they've got a rivalry going on. Wow, that would have been awesome. Instead it's this weird heightened it's I still I don't know what they were thinking when they were writing this, because it goes in so many weird directions, including this, because what happens is our heroes, Sergeant Pepper's band makes their way they finally make their way to Strawberry Fields, and a giant fist fight ensues where all the band members are fighting against each other, and it's actually it's a bit horrifying even as a kid. Strawberry Fields ends up. I don't know she even though she's tied to this.

Okay, look it's a melee, right, it is a melee. Yeah, Beg's versus Arrowsmith and the Hitler youth menacing them with flagpoles. It's a crazy sequence. And Stephen Tyler is on top of Peter Frampton strangling him. By the way, I mentioned all the teenagers who piled into my den to watch this cheering, a lot of cheering going in nineteen eighty or eighty one when Steven Tyler from Boston and we're all from Boston is strangling Peter Frampton anyway, so he's strangling Peter Frampton Strawberry Fields in order to save billion, Shears kicks Steven Tyler off, which he plummets off of the tower.

This is a great sequence. Who he dies, he falls to his death, but then when they show him dead, he's splayed really crazily over an image of a dollar bill with his face on it. It's really good and it's it looks so real when he falls off of that stack of coins like it, there's nothing special effecting about it. He plummets and then you see the after effects, which was rare in movies to see this guy dead, Like you said, splayed across a picture of a dollar bill, no less. But in doing so, she has had to move this giant dollar sign, this neon dollars.

It's a neon green dollar sign, and it's like a coin, but it's in two parts, so it's like two coins slotted together. And she's chained in the corner of one of those where they meet. And now that thing has become so rickety that it's off. Oh my god, it's so good, it's crazy. I remember watching this as a kid, and you know, as a kid, you watch these movies and these shows and the good guys never die, you know, someone always figures out a way to save the day at the end.

But yet here we are, this virtuous, sweet, innocent woman has It's awful the way they show it, because this neon thing crashes over these stairs and you see her body get jangled with it and it explodes in like a bunch of sparks, and everything stops at that point, right, They all stop fighting, and Billy Shears goes down to see his dead girlfriend. It's really it's horrible what happens. And for the first time in forty years, I noticed that all of the Hitler youth have disappeared, not just disappeared. Their boots and their outfits are still laying on those stairs. Holes are still there, laying a kimbo.

So evidently, in killing Stephen Tyler, their army has been defeated in wisps of smoke because there's smoke pouring up. Oh, they got vaporized. Yeah, I never noticed that, not even they never featured it. But it's right there. Wow, that's crazy, because everything grinds to a halt in that moment.

Everybody stops fighting. But Tyler is dead, ah, which lends. Credence to the theory that he was that disembodied. Voice must have been must have been. It doesn't it's not really Stephen Tyler speaking, but it must have been his character.

Right, that's interesting. So we so that. There you go, we're making it better. Gave us past this point. This is where the movie should have ended, honestly, right, But then the.

Movie becomes a real bummer because because they take Strawberry Fields back for her fewuneral in Pepperland slash Heartland, and they've made the inexplicable decision to entomb her in a glass see through casket. I didn't even right like snow White. But I'd like to also point out that Pepperland slash Heartland hasn't been rejuvenated at all. They had a big concert there, but it's still a fucking pit. Yeah, the cheeseburger is still there in the center of town.

Yeah, it's still all porno theaters. And foreclosures, yeah everything. Yeah. Yeah. So this becomes a reflective part of the movie for our heroes because Billy Shears is beside himself with grief as anybody would be.

So they just before we get there, because we do Golden slumbers, right, Yeah, once it was white. Okay, so we get golden slumbers first, which is weird. The Beg's and Peter Frampton and Dougie are the pall bearers hefting this glass coffin and inside there. During the sequence, all I kept thinking was, please let that be a mannequin, because would you trust these coked up freakazoids to carry you in a glass coffin in a scene. I wouldn't trust them to tell me what the weather was that day.

They must have been so out of their minds on drugs. But I and I looked, I couldn't tell if it was a mannequin or not. I hope it was. I hope she didn't help get shirt. But then I think about James Bond and Jane Seymour sitting in the double decker bus while they're doing crazy stunts because they wanted her character in there, and she didn't know any better and didn't think to go, hey, can we just have a stunt person.

So it's really Jane Seymour and like this bus doing crazy shit. So I wouldn't put it past the late seventies to have Sandy Farina stuck in that glass coffin. It's just it's a bummer man, because like you said, it starts. Golden Slumbers. For me has always been one of the saddest of Beatles' songs.

I don't know what it is. There's something in the tonality of it and the sentiment and the way that Paul sings it that. Maybe lyrics once there was a way to get back homeward, once there was a way to get back home. It's clearly I'm at my wits ends. Yeah, And it's the callback to you never give Me your money.

I loved it. This would have been the first time I ever heard it, by the way, So maybe this is part of why I find it so sentimental. I don't know, because it is there, if you think about it, is sad because this guy whose girlfriend has died under the most tragic circumstances, and he's essentially singing Golden Slumbers to her dead body and this coffin as they take her out to the carriage to be buried or what have you. And that's HB. There is one cast member we have failed to mention.

That is Glycerin Glcer and Tears play a prominent role here for the rest of the movie. Anytime Peter Frampton is on screen. He is just slathered in glitcerin tears because apparently he's not going to be able to cry when he's that fucking happy, because he's on ten pounds of cocaine. In this next scene, we're going to take all of your cocaine away. Maybe he could have cried.

Then his face is tears streaked for the rest of the movie, basically or glycerin all over those cheeks. The band and he they're wandering around Heartland reminiscing about the good times. Listen, I'm gonna be eating humble pie here, but I'll just say this, Peter Frampton is terrible. He has no dialogue and he's awful walking around. I don't believe him, at.

Least I have to say rewatching this. I'm not suggesting that Barry Gibb is any kind of an actor, but there are moments during this whole thing, because he eventually starts singing A Day in the Life Barry Gibb as he's reminiscing about the band's halcion rise to fame. There's a few moments there where you can see something in his face approaching acting. Oh, yes, he should have been Billy Shears. If they wanted an actor, then they should have gone with him, definitely.

Also, no, he am I not going to get any noise junkie props for my humble pie joke. I noticed it. I let it go because I didn't want because I thought maybe you were gonna I just I figured I'd let it go and it would be our own little Easter egg. But that's okay. So yeah, So, like I said, it's a big bummer there.

They're very sad about what's happened to this girl and about what's happened to their town. And while this is all happening, they're all reminiscing and looking very sad and dressed in black. Billy Shears has snuck to Now he's gonna jump out of a window. But I have to say he picked a very low, short drop. It's like barely one story high.

He was going to hurt himself. He was gonna break his legs, that's all he was gonna do. But he's jackass. Has taught us anything, is that the human body can withstand quite a bit. Billy Shehears was in no real danger here, no, but he's.

He can't take it anymore. He can't live with himself, so he's gonna he's gonna kill himself. This is what the suicide we alluded to earlier, and this is all this movie has just gone in a very dark direction. Here. In that flashback earlier where you talked about how they made George Burns look younger, for a flashback about Sergeant Pepper, they erected a in the center of a heartland.

They put up a weather vein. That's a brass rendering of Sergeant Pepper. And the thing is, it's always supposed to point the way towards happiness. Right, show me the way, Show me the way. Wow.

Wow Wow. They've timed it so that Billy Shears jumping coincides with the famous part at the end of Day in the Life where the strings are getting very tense. And it's all very and I just say, before we get there, HbA, okay, because this is significant. Yeah, go for it. During the Day in the Life sequence when we get to the it made the bus sugus that that whole thing, we get that brief moment of the actual Day in the Life of Sargant Pepper's Only Hearts Club band when they were at the top of their game back in Hollywood once again, just reinforces that's the movie I wanted to see.

It is because you actually because when they emerge from that and somebody spoke and I went into a dream, they cut to them performing live as the band in their sort of heyday in the movie. It is very cool. In talking this out, I agree that there is a better movie to be had if you stick to it. May not be the most original idea to have them, you know, fighting against temptation and looking to make it, but I think it would have been a more interesting, less fanciful. It wouldn't have been a mess.

I'll say that that we have here sore anyway, There's this weather vein that's supposed to point the way towards happiness, and because Billy Shears is jumped off of a building, the weather vein starts spinning wildly because there where's happiness. There's no happiness anymore. It's trying to find the happiness in this whole thing. And but then it starts to strobe and it takes the form of none other than Billy Preston, dressed in a gold Sergeant Pepper outfit. Gold le May Sergeant pepper Affitt.

Oh my god, the movie comes alive. It's amazing and it If you ever wanted to truly define the term dio SX machina for somebody, all you really need to do is show them the final ten minutes of this movie, because it's the very definition of dio SX machina. So what happens is this weather vein comes to life in the form of Billy Preston singing get Back, which is look it. They don't deviate from the template of the original song, but I like it because I like Billy Preston a lot. It's very funky, but it's still the bones of it is still very much the same as the Beatles version.

But he sings that. He sings his ass off. He's great, your mama's shoes and next step. Your boss, your boss, and. He dances his way to the ground.

He floats down from the weather vane position while dancing. It's totally convincing. It is. He comes down and he's just bopping his way around and where the damn sex know what. As shitty as this movie is, this whole sequence is elating the fact that you would have this magical character show up and go, this is fucked up.

Let's put everything right. And not only let's put everything right, but let's put everything right in the most joyous way possible. He's so happily meeting out wonder he is. Because he goes pew like he'll point his finger and it's flash Gordon sound effect. Lightning bolts come out of it, and he shoots and they roll back.

The footage of Billy Sheier's jumping. So he floats back up to his little half story height and he's. Oh my god, I'm okay, and then he top of this step ladder. Right, I will just throw myself off the building again. What happened?

He shoots mister Mustard and the brute and they become the Pope and another cleric. For some reason. First they become a nun and a priest, and then they write like a bishop and a friar or something like that. That's what it is. And then he does the same thing.

He shoots Douggie and Lucy, who are trying to sneak away, and they become a nun and a priest or something. For some reason, the clergy are not looked at well here if they're like the uppins for the bad guys. But most all holy folk people now, much to their own horror. I guess that's that's both realizing he's in a leisure suit right. But most importantly he shoots and Strawberry Fields is whole again.

She goes, oh my god, I'm alive, which is disturbing when you think about it, because I what I want to have happened now as an adult, Like as a kid, I took it all at face value, but I would love it if he ran over to her and like she turns her head, but half her face is missing because she's actually a zombie that's. Been Yeah, along those lines, I would have liked to have said that you don't know where I've been. Gods, it's waiting for all of us. This is all as we always made so Starbarry, so everything that was bad is now. He even zaps like these banners for mister Mustard, so he's effectively he's correcting everything that was bad in Heartland.

He's fixed everything in the span of a three minute pop song, which a child, I took it face value, and like you said, I found it very uplifting, and I was elated to see all of. That but leads to confusion. It was just I guess they just couldn't. I don't know how else would you end it. I guess you can't end it on a downer, But how do you wrap up all of these things?

I think you ended with him shooting into the camera and the end peering and not, as I said, the confusion of a room full of whoever happened to be on the MGM lot that day to sing the chorus the reprise of Sergeant Finale. This is you mentioned we are the world and hands across America earlier, and that's what this is meant to be, like the super star studded array of people all joyously celebrating this terrible version of Sergeant Pepper. Well, clearly Robert Stigwood cashed in every single IOU that he had in Hollywood, because now it's silly because you're seeing people like Seals and Crofts and David Carradine and Carol Channing in the group. But it is for the time, it is fairly star studied this this chorus, right.

Do you think? Look? I am always will be a giant fan of mister Wolfman Jack, so I'm happy to see him in there, but the rest of it there. It just feels it feels like everyone is dan akright, and we are in the at the Weird of the World session. Everyone just feels like, what are we doing here?

Is it? Like Ron sap I think Connie Francis might be in there? She is, I can't imagine he wouldn't be. I didn't see Milton Burrow. But Peter Allen is there.

People remember Peter Allen. Dame Edna is there from for some reason, Tina Turner's there. There's some It's the thing of it is, when we were kids, movies like, look, we were watching movies. This was before wide screen, right, so you're watching a movie on a square box. So they had to reform at these movies so that they would fit.

Oftentimes, when they would get to the credits, you had to show all of the credits so the movie would shift to this weird elongated aspect ratio. Right fatherm alone, everybody became tall. So as a kid, I always tried to pick out like people like who's there? I can't you know. It was hard to do because they were also elongated and bizarrely stretched.

But now because it's on wide screen, I can see all of these great. Performers Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Giants. They looked very alien like, with very long arms and legs like they I used to. The ending of the Warriors was the same thing where they're walking. Along right, Definitely remember that, Like, why is it suddenly blown up to crazy town?

Why are they all tall all of a sudden? It was weird. But yeah, it is fairly inexplicable some of the people in that chorus. But at the same time, I don't know, maybe in nineteen seventy eight or whenever it was these there's there's some star power there. I think Elvin Bishop and Stephen Bishop are both there.

You mean Stephen Bishop does my favorite thing, which is as he's singing Sergeant Pepper's only he does this thing where he does the Sergeant Pepper like salute. I don't know, there's something about that. I think I thought that guy actually gets it. This is a goof for him. It's Stephen Bishop who is essentially a goof under his easy listening heart.

Rick Darringer is there, Donovan is there, Doctor John is there. I guess you're right. This is pretty star stud at heart. Was there. Yeah, Leif Garrett was big.

I was saving Leife Garrett because I have a life Garrett story. When I was living in Los Angeles, I went to on Sunset Boulevard. I went, or maybe it was Hollywood Bulevard. I think it's Hollywood. Actually there was a peer One imports, and I went into this peer One and there was somebody talking behind me, and I turned around and standing behind the counter was Leaf Garrett.

And I went wow, Leaf Garrett, and he went, oh hey. And then I looked at him because he was standing behind the counter, and I said, you don't work here. Do you? And he wentugh no, and then walked away. So why was he behind the counter if he didn't work there?

He had been talking to I think an employee and had just found himself backed into it accidentally while they were talking, just found himself situated back there. So I just happened to find him there. Oh okay, because it's not out of the realm that because he's had his ups and downs. We all know this, and there's no shame if he's working up here. One.

Let's be honest, hey, man, that's everything is work. Peter Noone, Robert Palmer Bonnie or eight. This is a pretty good list, honestly. Curtis Mayfield, that's huge. I take Bruce, Seana nah Gwen Verdon, Hank William, Yeah, Bobby whoa mac oh Man.

I want a movie about that. There's a lot of interesting the movie with that group of people in the back of a truck like a flatbed and they just drive around singing that song. Everywhere, just them singing it over and over and over. Option for this film they could have gone total fantasy route. They could have gone gritty look at coming up in the streets of Hollywood, and they could have gone this total fucking celebrity grandstand roadshow athon.

So let me ask you one last question about this chorus at the end. If you're looking at this list, who do you reckon is the biggest star? Now? Like looking back thinking because obviously leif Gary doesn't cut it modern day, but looking at this, who do you think is the biggest star that was there that day? Clearly Gary Wright, author of dream Weaver, Dream Weaver, Look, Tina Turner was there.

So Tina Turner is the winner. She is the winner. She's unquestioned. I don't know why I didn't think of that in the first place. But when you're looking at it's funny because I'm looking at this list, but on the screen it looks like the chorus goes on forever.

It looks like there's easily five hundred people up there on the stage, but it's really not that many people when you look. At the list, and thank goodness, it was brief. So what do we make of Sergeant pepper Bottom alone? What do we make of it? It's nearly two hours long and should be ninety minutes.

That's what I make of it. I think, ultimately, I love this movie just because it's a warm blanket on a Sunday afternoon, flick like. It just feels cozy to me, like you. I think this was, in fact, my introduction to the Beatles. I had to discover them all over again and re learned some after this film.

I think it's a fascinating snapshot of a time and place. I think the joke of people were on cocaine is a bit overused, particularly in podcasts when they refer to anything from the seventies and eighties, and yet I can point to this movie and go cocaine and it's on screen. It's all there. What do you think about this movie? HB.

I agree. I'm always a little bit torn when we go over movies or music from our childhood, respectively, because there's always this idea, is my nostalgia coloring my impression of the quality of the piece, right? I think in this case, for sure, if I wasn't raised with this movie as in a formative time, I don't know what I would make of it. I don't know that I would hold it as dear to my heart because I could quote this movie. I can close my eyes and replay any bit of this movie because I've seen it so many times.

For me, this was a big Channel fifty six night at the movies thing. I don't remember it so much on cable as I remember it being on Channel fifty six in the Boston area. I'm I again, I'm going to agree with you that it's just one of those things that I it makes me feel happy because I have memories of being little and watching this. But if I were an adult and you plunk this in front of me and said watch this, I think I would have checked out before they even you know, form the Reformed Sergeant Pepper's Band. I think I would have been like, this is terrible, this is trash.

I can't recommend this movie as a movie or film. I can recommend it as a curiosity, the same way I can recommend The Apple or mister Freed Apple. The Apple is a great analog for this. You're you're so right on with that because tonally and visually, look, this isn't as out there as the Apple. The Apple goes to some places that Sergeant Pepper can only dream of.

But what this has is the fucking Beatles soundtrack. It's stylistically and visually, this has that same sort of gauzy look to it that The Apple had, and they were and both pictures were born out of I believe a sense of hubris, like we can't Lose. That was Cannon, that was Golan and Globus, the Apple Canon Films. This was Stigwood who owned these songs and thought he could he was gonna print money with this movie. So there's definitely a connection there.

That was various. Dude, Why thank you? You know, I just I can't believe I didn't think of it myself because I love both movies, probably for similar reasons. So I can recommend the movie that way. But as much as I can draw any kind of comfort food feeling from this movie, I think we, even as children right recognized this is terrible.

It exists as this bizarro sort of fantasia of Beatles and Beg's and everything going on at that moment in our history. I think I still appreciated on that level. But as a movie Jesus H. Christ, what are they thinking? Man?

It's the laziest form of Hey, you recognize these songs, Let's put them into some kind of an order that makes enough sense that you'll buy this soundtrack out. The bottom line for me is I saw this movie before I had developed the capacity to watch a movie critically and think about whether it's a good or a bad movie. To me, all movies were just movies on TV, and I didn't I gave no thought to the quality. The only quality that I detested as a child was is it boring? This is a lot of things I wouldn't say this is particularly boring.

There's a lot of weirdness happening at any given moment. In that way, I almost have to recuse myself judge from, you know, really critically analyzing this, because I may not have, because I have such a history with it. I may not have the capacity to think that critically. I'll thank that critically for you. It's bad.

Don't watch it if you for a good and coherent flick. If you are have access to some cannabis and have never seen this movie before, yeeha, I envy you. You're gonna have a good time. And I will add this before we go. I would still fast forward through two sequences in this movie, but not the Alice Cooper sequence anymore.

Oh no, no, no. The other one is a song that never should have been recorded. Oh I know what it is? Can I guess before you tell me? Here comes the Sun?

No, she's leaving home? Ooh yeah with the robot voices. No, not so much. I like actually that part of the song. I liked HP The fact that the robots were singing it for part of it was fantastic.

It's when the adults, the adult humans, take over, and then it becomes total melodrama. It becomes all the worst instincts of Paul McCartney's writing. I mentioned earlier he had that fucking tend to lean into the dramatic a little too hard sometimes, And this song is probably the worst song I think he's ever. Written, sacrificed most of the. Everything money.

Really you think this is wait wait, wait, let's back up. Is one of the worst songs ever written. It's his worst song. You think it's worse than Maxwell's Silver Hammer. I enjoy Maxwell's Silver Hammer.

You're out of your mind. That song is garbage. Martin's version, I'm talking about the Beatles version. I'm talking That's what I'm talking about. The Beatles version.

Even the Beatles version, I hate it. I hate Maxwell's Silver Hammer. I like it more than I like than She's Leaving Home. Look, I here's the thing. I jump in save me.

Now you're on your own with this one. No, let me qualify that just slightly. I'm not suggesting that I rock She's Leaving Home on a regular basis. It's a It's not in my Beatles rotation. When I listen to it in my car, However, I recognize that it is a good piece of soap opera, kind of mellow drama.

The strings are wonderful. By the way, the strings weren't even done by George Martin. It's on one of his lost opportunities. But that's another story. I will listen to that a million times before I will ever listen to Mac swel silver Hammer.

I just can't get Bang Bang much. I hate the jauntiness of it, the hitting of the anvil. Ah so cheesy. Fah bah balon. I can't believe you said that.

You're saying that's cheesier than this fucking goddamn soap opera. Bullshit? Are you crazy? No, that's exactly what I'm saying. Baby's gone?

Why did she leave us so thoughtless? Oh my god, all shut the fuck up already. We we maybe have a difference of opinion, but screaming from the gallery say he must go free. The judge that does not agree. That's at least lyrically satisfying as opposed.

To oh my god, where is our child gone? Here's the thing, we will find a way to meet in the middle, because at a minimum, you have we have to keep in mind that these are both songs written by Paul So so we can at least agree that he was the most He leaned into those melodramatic, cheesy impulses more than anyone else, including ring Up. So I think we can agree on that. At least, oh yeah, one percent. We are talking about Paul versus Paul.

Here we are arguing, which is the worst Paul song of Paul's terrible songs. Paul had some terrible songs. Well, no, if we're looking for his worst song ever, the answer is obvious. It's Temporary Secretary, Right, that's his worst song. I don't know, man, I can't really get past She's Leaving Home that you.

Think that's worse than Temporary Secretary. I think so, oh man, this is got to be we gotta to be continued. We got to get into this in another This is not the right arena for this, but we got to talk about this. My friend in Maxwell Silverhammer at one point he laughs like while he's singing the song, and it's charming. So that has that going for which is nice.

Yeah, this is not We're not recommending that anybody go out and see this movie. If you're really that curious, go to YouTube. You can find these scenes. I'm sure a la carte. So if you want to see the scene where FVB.

Hill's Strawberry Fields go to town. Yeah, basically, I mean it's like a mixtape where you can just jump to your favorite song, favorite sequence, and I highly encourage everyone to do that. You definitely don't want anything to do with getting better or fixing a whole. But if you wanted to jump into I want you. She's so heavy.

Yehah man, that's great, that's all. That whole sequence great. The whole Earth Wind and Fire sequence is great. The Aerosmith sequence is great. There was another sequence, what did I forget?

Oh? The when I'm sixty four sequence is great? You like that more than me. I found that a little more disturbing. But maybe that's part of the beauty supposed to be.

Okay, then I guess it's accomplishing its goals. Then it's just not one that I would necessarily seek out. But those others are pretty unimp. I think, well, I think we've done it again. We've I don't know what we did here.

We watched this movie. I watched it twice for this. I feel dirty a little bit. I did two. We got there.

We got there. It took a while, but we got there. And at least we ended with Billy Preston telling everyone to get back. And I love, by the way, when she comes back to life and he's like back Loretta. It's so fantastic, it's so familiaral And just uplifting.

Don't forget that Billy came in and he really rescued those letted b sessions for the Beatles. They were it's maybe a little bit overdone, but they weren't getting along. And George Harrison brought him in because A. He knew he was a great fucking player, and b he knew that he was a solid fucking guy that they would all be on their best behavior around. And you can see that.

There's something so ebulliant about his appearance in the movie. He's smiling, he's dancing, he's singing his ass off. He's awesome. He's Billy fucking pressed and he's great. Yeah.

I guess that alone should recommend the movie, but I'm not recommending the movie anyway. When you're not here, where can people find you? Your No, he's Junkie Hughes Ah Walter's man, I. Am you said it. When I'm not listening to music or talking music with you, fatherom alone you can find me.

I co host The Night Mister Walters, a taxi podcast with my esteemed colleague across from me here, and I'm an occasional guest on The Culture Cast with Chris Dashu. I have a band campsite, Father Malone hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com. I just released my first real quote unquote album, Wired in Waiting. Please listen to it. It's free if you want to send a few bucks my way.

I would not turn that down, but enjoy it nevertheless. And that's where you can find me. How about yourself, father alone? Where else can the folks find you when you're not talking music with me? First of all, go listen to that album immediately.

It is like a soundtrack to an eighties movie that doesn't exist perfectly. So I fucking loved it. Man. Congratulations, Thank you. If you want to find me, basically, you're just gonna find me here at midnight viewing.

You all know that. But if you want to help out in any way, then please head over to Patreon dot com slash follom Alone. Subscribers get this show and all of our shows early and commercial free, and you get bonus shows like another show I do with HP. Here, we do a show called Cable Box Theater where we look at early eighties late seventies cable networks when they were showing Broadway plays as content because they were just out of everything. Else.

Instead of playing Sergeant Pepper's Only Hearts Club band. They would occasionally show plase you can find me there if money is tight, and it certainly is, and it's only gonna get tighter. Everybody, could you just like this show or give it five stars or night or write a nice review, or tell somebody else to listen to it, or hand it over to an influential agent who has ties with Beatie, Hoffler or Brockhurst until next time. Thank you for joining us here at midnight viewing. We're gonna We're gonna leave you with a bit from the movie.

Here we go. He wants for dream. Picking the bag, getting away the scene. So that'll be old way from here, get a gash and wipe that tail away. Who wants with red?

Came to today, James today? Water people? My f felt, Oh the children don't tell what the people? My f felt. All the children go to.

Heven what the people mythyn I'll t go to help what two people Out Ei