Listen to Joe Smith's talks with Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, more

Taped interviews that veteran record executive Joe Smith conducted for his 1988 book “Off the Record” and which he is donating to the Library of Congress this week [June 19] contain a storehouse worth of anecdotes from a couple hundred of the biggest names in pop music.

Talking to rock, pop, R&B, folk and jazz musicians as well as fellow record label chiefs, high-profile managers, songwriters and others, Smith got access to many key figures who are often reticent to talk to the press.

Pop & Hiss is posting some excerpts of the unabridged interviews, collectively known as “The Joe Smith Collection,” that are entering the Library of Congress for posterity, the subject of a news feature in a separate post.

Joe Smith's candid artist talks heading to Library of Congress

Classic-film fans know all about Frank Capra’s 1941 political treatise “Meet John Doe.” Soon, music lovers will have the chance to “Meet Joe Smith,” and in the process get a little closer to dozens of the most important players in 20th century pop music through a trove of one-on-one interviews the veteran record executive conducted a generation ago and is now donating to the Library of Congress.

Smith, who headed three of the most important record labels in the 1960s, '70s and '80s -- Warner Bros., Elektra/Asylum and Capitol Records -- sat down in the mid-’80s with a who’s who of pop music for his 1988 book “Off the Record.”

Over the course of about two years, he interviewed more than 200 musicians, record executives, producers, songwriters and managers, from rock superstars Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and Elton John to key pre-rock figures such as Artie Shaw, Ella Fitzgerald and Woody Herman. He also interviewed some of his business peers and competitors including Clive Davis, David Geffen and Irving Azoff.

LISTEN: Joe Smith's talks with Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, more

Their stories span half a century of pop music, from the swing era to the birth of rock 'n’ roll through dance music, punk and hair metal. Yet even though his book ran 429 pages, it still contained only a fraction of what Smith and each subject talked about, typically for 30 minutes to an hour.

So, Smith is handing over his collection of unabridged audio interviews -- 238 hours’ worth -- to the nation’s official keeper of recorded cultural history, where they’ll be available to the public, to music historians, journalists and academics interested in hearing musicians’ own words about their lives and careers.

“The Joe Smith Collection is an invaluable addition to the library’s comprehensive collection of recorded sound,” librarian of Congress James H. Billington said in a statement issued Monday (June 18). “These frank and poignant oral histories of many of the nation’s musical icons give us unique insights into them as artists, entertainers and human beings. The world knows these great musicians through their songs, but Joe Smith has provided us an intimate window into their lives through their own words.”

Smith’s original tapes, which will be housed at the library’s Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation in Culpepper, Va., have been digitized and are expected to be accessible to the public at the library later this year and eventually online.

Smith said his marching orders for the “Off the Record” came in the mid-'80s from John Hammond Sr., the great talent scout who was responsible for launching the careers of Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Pete Seeger, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen and many others during his five-decade relationship with Columbia Records.

“He was very sick, and I wanted to go see him in the hospital,” Smith, 84, said over lunch at one of his favorite haunts in Beverly Hills, the Grill, where he was greeted by name by most of the staff and many patrons when he walked through the door one afternoon last week.

“So we’re talking -- it was around the time that Count Basie and somebody else died. I said, ‘What a shame. I don’t know if anybody ever got them on tape. I know they’ve done interviews, but did anybody actually get them [talking] on tape?’ And he sat up in bed, and he said, ‘You must do that!’ Get it all -- you know the ones from the past, you know the ones from today.’ And he says, ‘You MUST do this!’ ”

Chris Brown, Drake reportedly brawl in New York City nightclub

New York City police are investigating a nightclub brawl early Thursday that reportedly involved hip-hop stars Chris Brown and Drake and that left four people injured, according to an NYPD spokeswoman.

Police released no names, stating only that “four people sustained minor injuries, they were transported to area hospitals for treatment and the investigation is ongoing.” No arrests have been made. The Associated Press reported that neither Drake nor Brown was present when police arrived.

Speculation quickly arose that the blow-up may have involved Brown’s former girlfriend Rihanna, with whom Drake has been seen recently.

News reports say the skirmish involved Brown’s camp and Drake’s entourage and left Brown with a bloody lip. Brown reportedly tweeted a photo of his injury shortly after the incident, then removed it from his Twitter site. He also reportedly tweeted, then removed, a note chastising unnamed combatants for “throwing bottles like girls? #shameonya!”

TMZ’s website carried photos of a glass-strewn floor of the W.I.P. club in Greenwich Village after the fracas.

In 2009, Brown assaulted Rihanna shortly before both were scheduled to appear at the Grammy Awards ceremony. He was sentenced to five years' probation and 1,400 hours of “labor-oriented service” for the assault.

Rihanna grabbed more headlines earlier this year with the release of a duet with Brown, “Birthday Cake,” a sexually charged single that prompted considerable speculation that the couple had reunited.

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Photos: Chris Brown, left, and Drake. Credit: Matt Sayles and Chris Pizzello / Associated Press.

Alan Jackson, Beach Boys, Neil Young chart with top 10 debuts

Adele, country singer Alan Jackson, the reunited Beach Boys and veteran rocker Neil Young all have noteworthy entries on the new Billboard Top 200 Albums chart.

In reclaiming the No. 1 spot after selling an additional 75,000 copies of her blockbuster "21" album, Adele has logged her 24th nonconsecutive week at the top, the most since Prince’s “Purple Rain” in 1984.  It will be a while, however, before she catches up to the next-longest run as the nation’s bestseller. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” stayed at the top for 37 weeks in 1983.

Meanwhile, Alan Jackson has proved that switching record companies after 20 years with the same label doesn’t have to slow a musician’s momentum: his new “Thirty Miles West,” the first for his Alan Country Records label, distributed by EMI Nashville, entered the chart at No. 2 with first-week sales of 73,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

That’s a smidge better than his final Arista album, “Freight Train,” did two years ago, selling 72,000 out of the gate for a No. 7 chart debut.

Right behind him are the Beach Boys and Young, both with their highest charting albums since the 1970s.

Coming in at No. 3 is the Beach Boys’ “That’s Why God Made the Radio,” the group’s first album of new music with creative leader Brian Wilson aboard in more than two decades. The new set sold 61,000 copies, giving the veteran Southern California band its highest chart debut ever and its best chart showing since the 1974 hits-compilation album “Endless Summer” went to No. 1, according to Billboard. The group is currently on a nationwide 50th anniversary reunion tour.

Another reunion -- this one between Young and his periodic collaborators in the band Crazy Horse -- has given him his highest charting album since “Harvest,” which went all the way to the top in 1972.  Young and Crazy Horse’s “Americana,” which digs into the treasure trove of traditional folk music with their versions of such songs as “Oh Susannah,” “Clementine” and Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” sold 44,000 copies and enters the Billboard chart at No. 4 this week.

In a recent interview with The Times, Young said the idea for the album was spurred by writing his first book, “Waging Heavy Peace,” which is scheduled for Oct. 1 publication.

“One of the things I remembered that I was writing about was that there was this musician Tim Rose, who was in a group [in Canada] called the Big Three, and after that he was in a group called the Thorns," he said. "I saw the Thorns in 1963 or ’64, and they were doing ‘Oh! Susanna.’ That arrangement blew my mind. That was Tim Rose’s arrangement of ‘Oh Susannah’ [used on ‘Americana’]. My band, the Squires, was playing folk-rock, which was kind of happening at that time. So I made a lot of songs that way in that time. That’s where we got to that.”

This week’s chart also includes two rap albums in the top 10: Big K.R.I.T.’s “Live From the Underground,” entering at No. 5 with sales of 41,000 copies, and Curren$y’s “The Stoned Immaculate,” bowing at No. 8 having sold 36,000 copies.

The final new top 10 entry is Brandi Carlile’s “Bear Creek,” at No. 10 with sales of 27,000.

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-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Alan Jackson performs in September at the Concert for Hope in Washington, D.C., marking the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11. Credit: Charles Dharapak / Associated Press.

Music exclusive: Kenny Chesney's 'Makes Me Wonder'

Country superstar Kenny Chesney has always been a road warrior, year in and year out selling as many or more tickets to his concerts than any other act in any genre, and he’s never been long off the radio dial since he surfaced  in the early '90s.

But his output as a songwriter has been up and down since the 2005 annulment of his short-lived marriage to actress Renee Zellweger. For a while, Chesney turned exclusively to songs written by others, as if to make sure that gossip-hungry members of the media and the public couldn’t latch on to any of his own words and try extrapolating explanations for the nuptial meltdown.

His own words, along with his voice, began to resurface with 2008’s “Lucky Old Sun” album, for which he wrote or co-wrote nearly half the songs, then he pulled back again for 2010’s “Hemingway’s Whiskey,” co-writing just one song, “Reality.”

For his new album, “Welcome to the Fishbowl,” arriving June 19, the Luttrell, Tenn., musician has co-written three of the 11 new songs: the title track, “To Get to You (55th and 3rd),” and the song premiering exclusively now on Pop & Hiss, “Makes Me Wonder.”

In this pulsing country-rock power ballad, which he wrote with Wendell Mobley and Neil Thrasher, Chesney explores a reunion with an old flame that brings up fond feelings and raises the question of where things broke down. Unlike many country breakup songs that serve up variations on the “don’t get mad, get even” philosophy, “Makes Me Wonder” places no blame but is built on the equanimity that’s been a strong part of Chesney’s appeal as a writer, with strong empathy for the woman’s point of view.

Chesney is back on the road on his much-anticipated “Brothers of the Sun” tour with Tim McGraw, which began June 2 and makes its only Southland stop on July 14 at Angel Stadium in Anaheim.

He'll also be teaming up with acclaimed director Jonathan Demme, whose latest concert film "Neil Young Journeys" opens a limited run later this month, for a new installment of "American Express Unstaged" that premieres June 20.

Demme, the Academy Award-winning director of "Silence of the Lambs" and other feature films as well as the acclaimed 1984 Talking Heads concert documentary "Stop Making Sense," will direct a livestream performance by Chesney from New Jersey.

“I think it's a unique situation for both of us because odds are we never would have worked together without this thing, you know?” Chesney told the Associated Press. “And I think it's a good thing. I love meeting and working with people who can push me and inspire me creatively in a different way. And I think that all creative people look for inspiration. That's the thing I'm looking forward to the most about this, because it is left of center and it is combining two worlds.”

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Principal's rejection of 'God Bless the USA' 'offends' Lee Greenwood

Country singer-songwriter Lee Greenwood says a New York elementary school principal’s decision to pull his song “God Bless the USA” from a year-end kindergarten promotion ceremony “offends me as a Christian.”

PS 90 principal Greta Hawkins said she decided to eliminate the song from the event because  she  felt that some of the lyrics were “inappropriate for 5-year-olds,” citing a line in the 1984 country hit, which took on new life after Sept. 11, that says, “If tomorrow all the things were gone/I’d worked for all my life/And I had to start again/with just my children and my wife.” She’s also been quoted as saying that she felt the song might offend people of other cultures.

Through a spokeswoman, Greenwood said, “I wrote ‘God Bless the USA’ about the love I have for this country and the struggle we have gone through to remain free.  Our country was founded on the principle that it welcomes people of all cultures and gives them the same rights we have as citizens. However, I feel compelled to echo the faith of our forefathers, who all believed in God and a respect of a higher authority. Personally, denying the children of PS 90 to sing 'God Bless the USA' offends me as a Christian. My song is about hope, faith, spirit and pride. How could that be wrong on any level?"

Hawkins’ superior, City Schools chancellor Dennis Walcott, supported Hawkins’ decision. “I have to rely on the principal’s judgment,” he told the New York Post. “It’s her judgment to make that decision.”

Greenwood also spoke to the Fox 5 “Good Day New York” program Monday and said, “She’s confusing allegiance to worship and, you know, I have a great respect for anybody who wants to worship their god or in the way that they worship, but maybe she should talk to my pastor here at the First Baptist Church in Brentwood and Franklin [Tenn.], who basically could explain the difference between you have allegiance to a country but you worship a god.” But he also said he had no plans to contact the principal to discuss the issue.

“I don’t think there’s any reason to do that,” he said. “I’m sorry for the way she feels and …. I think there’s some issues there that is beyond what we’re talking about.”

Here’s a clip from his "Good Day New York" interview:

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Photo: Lee Greenwood performs in 2001 after his 1984 hit "God Bless the USA" gained new popularity in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Credit: Danny Gilleland / Associated Press.

 

N.Y. school drops 'God Bless the USA' from kindergarten ceremony

This post has been updated. See details at bottom.

Lee Greenwood's ultra-patriotic 1984 hit "God Bless the USA" is out while Justin Bieber's breakup-makeup plea “Baby” stays in for a June 20 kindergarten promotion ceremony in New York.

Greta Hawkins, principal of P.S. 90 in Brooklyn, vetoed "God Bless the USA" as "inappropriate for 5-year-olds" after hearing it rehearsed, according to the New York Post, and her decision has received the backing of city schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott.

A city Department of Education spokeswoman told the Post that the objection came over the opening verse of Greenwood's song, which was named song of the year in 1984 by the Country Music Assn: "If tomorrow all the things were gone/I'd worked for all my life/And I had to start again/with just my children and my wife."

"You have to really wonder about some of the lyrics in the song, so I have to rely on the principal's judgment along that line," Walcott told the Post. "It's her judgment to make that decision. It's important to reinforce that they start out the morning every day of the school with the Pledge of Allegiance and ‘America the Beautiful,’ and that, to me, is what this country is about, and they celebrate that, and that's how we should start our day."

L.A. native Greenwood recorded a new version that made the country Top 20 in 2001 following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in Manhattan.

Plans were still in place for the kindergartners to sing "Baby," the pop hit in which Bieber cajoles a girlfriend not to break up with him, saying, "I wanna play it cool, but I’m losing you/I’ll buy you anything, I’ll buy you any ring."

Update: An earlier edition of this post rendered the title of Greenwood's song as "God Bless the U.S.A." It should be "God Bless the USA."

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Photo: Lee Greenwood at a 2010 ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley marking what would have been former President Reagan's 100th birthday. Credit: Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times

Jonathan Demme on directing 'Neil Young Journeys' concert film

Filmmaker Jonathan Demme sounded downright giddy when I chatted with him recently about his latest collaboration with one of rock’s great iconoclasts in the new documentary film “Neil Young Journeys.” 

It’s the third concert film from Young and Demme in just six years, starting with 2006’s “Heart of Gold” and then 2010’s “Neil Young Trunk Show.”

“The privilege of teaming with Neil three times — it’s like, 'I got to do that in my life?’ Demme said from his home in Rockland County in upstate New York during an interview for the Neil Young story running in Sunday's Arts & Books section. “He’s been a gigantic character in my heart and brain since I was a hippie like him back in the ‘60s. His music was my companion for decades before I even met him.”

I asked about the distinctly different tone of each of their three films, each using pointedly different approaches to avoid any sense of repetition from one to the other.

“When we did the first one, ‘Heart of Gold,’” he said, “everything about that was conceived for that film: the choice of venue, we made the costumes, we made the backdrops, everything. The angles we wanted to shoot we rehearsed with the band for 10 days before the performance. It was lit exactly for the movie. We just knew everything we wanted to create.

“There was an extra bit of excitement with ‘Heart of Gold,’ in that the audience never would have heard any of these songs before, because it was going to be the debut of the ‘Prairie Wind’ album. ‘Heart of Gold’ turned out to be stylistically exactly what it was envisioned as.”

Four years later, they went almost 180 degrees the opposite direction for "Trunk Show," which was shot during his "Chrome Dreams II" tour.

“As a reaction to the grace and elegance of ‘Heart of Gold,’ we decided it would be a punk shoot—we didn’t plan anything. We went with the lighting of the stage show, shot in the moment, very much like that," Demme said.

For “Neil Young Journeys,” yet another angle emerged organically.

“I just had this thought in my head of this grand maestro putting on a show all by himself, creating a huge orchestral sound all by himself,” Demme said, referring to the solo performance documented in the film -- from Young’s 2010-11 tour focusing on the music of “Le Noise,” the Daniel Lanois-produced album on which Young accompanied himself on prepared acoustic and electric guitars.

“We were liberated from one of the great things about the other two films, which was Neil and his screen interaction with other musicians,” he said. “We really capitalized on that in ‘Heart of Gold’ and ‘Neil Young Trunk Show,’ so this time, we’re losing a great value we had in the others, but what we gain now is total access to Neil only. Now it’s about Neil and the audience, Neil and the camera, and we just had a blast with that.

“Because it’s just Neil alone, stylistically it wouldn’t be like either [previous] one," Demme said, "but we also thought about: ‘What else can we do here to make this film absolutely different from the other two?’

"Neil was open to the idea of doing a little road trip," Demme said. "Gosh, got so close to that little town in Ontario where he grew up [Omemee]. I felt it would be fun and interesting to give us some suspense of filming him driving to the concert [at Massey Hall in Toronto]. I really loved that part of the film -- especially as a Neil Young admirer, to put it mildly.”

“Neil Young Journeys” opens a limited theatrical engagement on June 29 at the Nuart Theatre in West Los Angeles and also will screen June 18 and 19 as part of the 2012 Los Angeles Film Festival.

Does this mean Demme and Young have finally exhausted all the creative possibilities?

"It would be so greedy for me to go, 'I hope to get to do it again,' he said. "But if they want to do something again, I’m all over it."

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Photos, from top: Director Jonathan Demme on stage at Toronto's Massey Hall during the filming of the 'Neil Young Journeys' concert documentary; Young on stage at Massey Hall. Credit: Sony Pictures Classics.

Latin jazz Grammy category reinstated, two others added

 
A year after the Recording Academy ignited a firestorm of protest in portions of the jazz and Latin communities by eliminating its Grammy Award category for Latin jazz music, the category has been reinstated as part of annual award revisions that also include two new categories and more changes in other areas of music industry recognition.

A coalition of jazz artists and Latin community activities sued the Recording Academy in an attempt to rescind the changes, but a New York judge dismissed the suit in April. This week’s announcement of category revisions by the academy’s board of trustees is being greeted by affected members as akin to losing a battle but winning the war.

“This member of the community is thrilled,” veteran Latin jazz musician Bobby Matos said Friday. “Restoring this category is a huge step in giving us some dignity and some respect.”

Musicians including Carlos Santana, Paul Simon and Playboy Jazz Festival emcee Bill Cosby were among the celebrities who joined the outcry against the elimination of the Latin jazz category.

Despite the lawsuit, which Recording Academy President Neil Portnow described this week as “distracting” and a significant expense to the group, Portnow had said the board would continue to evaluate the relevance of various categories when it met to consider ongoing revisions.

Last year’s dramatic changes resulted in a net reduction of 31 categories, from 109 to 78. Many of the changes came in niche categories of jazz, classical music, folk, roots and R&B. This year, awards will be distributed in 81 categories.

“With the focus squarely on ensuring the awards process is pertinent within the current musical landscape, the Board of Trustees continues to demonstrate its passionate commitment to keeping the Recording Academy a relevant and responsive organization in our dynamic music community," Portnow said in a statement issued Friday.

"Every year, we diligently examine our awards structure, including evaluating proposals, to develop an overall guiding vision and ensure that it remains a balanced and viable process, as well as maintains the prestige of the highest and only peer-recognized award in music,” Portnow’s statement said.

That philosophy was at the heart of Latin jazz enthusiasts’ protests over last year’s move.

“Jazz is a niche music, and Latin jazz is more of a niche music,” Matos said. “The public perceives the Grammy Awards to be the recording industry’s awards of excellence, and that’s what they were meant to be. How can you do anything meaningful as an artist if your category of music is not recognized? Millions of people don’t know what Latin jazz is, and if they don’t find out from the Grammys, how are they ever going to know about it?”

“Latin jazz is the original world music, as far as I’m concerned,” Matos said. “It has elements of jazz, of Italian romantic music, of English country dances, of African American blues and African gospel music. It’s truly a world music — not just Latin music.

“I’m so happy,” he said. “We don’t go into Latin jazz to make a lot of money. We do it out of passion and love. That’s the only reason.”

The other changes in the Latin field are the split of the Latin pop, rock or urban album Grammy into two awards: Latin pop and Latin rock, urban or alternative album; additionally, separate awards for banda or norteño album and regional Mexican or Tejano album are being merged into a new category for regional Mexican music album (including Tejano).

Also new for next year’s Grammy Awards ceremony, scheduled for Feb. 10 at Staples Center in Los Angeles, the Recording Academy’s board has added a “classical compendium” award to recognize classical albums that incorporate some pop or other nonclassical elements; and a new “urban contemporary album” category under the R&B field for “artists whose music includes the more contemporary elements of R&B and may incorporate production elements found in urban pop, urban europop, urban rock, and urban alternative.”

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Photo: Latin jazz musician Bobby Sanabria, shown here arriving for the Grammy ceremony in 2008,  was part of a group that sued the Recording Academy last year for eliminating the Latin jazz Grammy Awards category. Credit: Chris Pizzello / Associated Press

President Obama, Mitt Romney cameo on 2012 CMT Music Awards

It may be hard to imagine President Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney agreeing on anything, but apparently they’ve found common ground in country music.

The rival presidential candidates have taped what’s described as “a comedic opening segment” for tonight’s 2012 CMT Music Awards show running at 8 p.m. on the country music cable channel.

Obama has previously shown himself to be a capable crooner of the blues (he sang a snippet of “Sweet Home Chicago” during a recent salute to the blues at the White House) and silky R&B (a tidbit of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” at a fundraiser in Harlem earlier this year). Meanwhile, at a January campaign stop in Florida, Romney showed off his vocal skills on “America the Beautiful.”

It’s not the first presidential presence at the CMT awards. During the 2008 election year, the three leading candidates -- Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain -- also delivered taped cameo appearances.