1992 Documentary about Marilyn's last interview in July 1962 for Life magazine. With rare audio of Marilyn's interview and rare footage. Marilyn's words had been edited together for this show.
Britain's musical icons lost yet another legend in 2016 on Christmas Day when George Michael, a powerful force in concert who sold over 100 million albums died of heart failure according to his manager at age 53.
Here is what some of his friends and fellow legends had to say about the electric George Michael.
Last Christmas (Over 224 million views)
Double click image to enlarge.
Stars pay tribute to
'truly brilliant' George Michael after singer dies on Christmas Day aged 53
Sir Elton John has led the
tributes to his "beloved friend" George Michael, who died on
Christmas Day aged 53. The Rocket Man singer said
he was "in deep shock" at Michael's death. The pair famously
collaborated on a rendition of Elton's classic Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me,
released in 1992, nearly two decades after the original. Writing on Instagram,
Elton said: "I have lost a beloved friend - the kindest, most generous
soul and a brilliant artist. My heart goes out to his family and all of his
fans."
The Wham! singer died at
home (PA) His partner in Wham!,
Andrew Ridgeley, said he was heartbroken. His Wham! partner Andrew
Ridgeley said he was devastated. Heartbroken at the loss of my beloved friend Yog. Me, his loved ones, his
friends, the world of music, the world at large. 4ever loved. A xx https://t.co/OlGTm4D9O6
Pop stars from the former
Wham! front man's heyday were joined by current chart-toppers in declaring
their sadness.
Careless Whisper (Over 162 million views)
Double click image to enlarge.
Martin Fry, lead singer
and songwriter with Look Of Love band ABC, said on Twitter: "Absolutely
devastated to hear of the loss of GeorgeMichael Truly brilliant talent £sad
£sad £sad." Contemporaries Duran Duran
referenced the so-called "curse of 2016" - which has seen the deaths
of rock and pop behemoths David Bowie, Prince and Rick Parfitt - as they posted
on their official Twitter account: "2016 - loss of another talented soul.
All our love and sympathy to George Michael's family."
This year's X Factor winner Matt Terry said:
"Noooooooooooooooo! I cannot believe this !!!! RIP George Michael".
Matt Lucas, who worked
with the singer during a sketch for BBC comedy Little Britain, said: "Well
2016, you had to just take one more, didn't you?" His Little-Britain co-star
David Walliams said: "I pray George Michael finally finds peace. A deeply
private man with an awe-inspiring talent that couldn't help but make him a
superstar." Entrepreneur and
television personality Duncan Bannatyne said: "George Michael has now been
taken by the curse of 2016. Please make him the last. RIP."
While former Radio One
disc jockey Tony Blackburn said: "Unbelievable, George Michael has died at
the age of 53. RIP.This dreadful year goes on and on.So sad, a real
talent."
Former X Factor winner Shayne Ward said: "Absolutely
shocked to hear that one of my vocal idols George Michael Has passed away. I
adored his voice."
Alison Moyet, who
performed at Live Aid in 1985 on the same bill as Michael, said: "I met
George Michael a few times & he was ever a gentle, unassuming soul. A rare
presence in a world full of self. Honest, genuine talent." Eighties pop star Howard
Jones, known for the song I'd Like To Get To Know You Well, said: "Can't
believe George Michael has passed ....one of the greatest singers and writers
the UK ever produced. I'm really saddened ..a lovely man."
1/22
An iconic
shot of George Michael, when he was performing at Live Aid in 1985
PA
2/22
With
Wham! partner Andrew Ridgeley in March 1984
PA
3/22
The pair
in October 1984
PA
4/22
Wham! at
Heathrow on their way to play in Japan in January 1985
PA
5/22
On stage
for Wham's last sell out concert at Wembley Stadium in June 1986
PA
6/22
Michael
collecting his Ivor Novello award at London's Grosvenor House in 1989 for his
album Faith as international hit of the year
PA
7/22
With BBC
Radio 1 DJ Steve Wright in August 1990
PA
8/22
Singing
onstage at Wembley for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in April 1992
PA
9/22
Talking
to Princes Diana ahead of a concert of Hope at Wembley Arena in London, to mark
World Aids Day in December 1993. Diana was patron of the National Aids Trust.
Mick Hucknall looks on
PA
10/22
Leaving
Westminster Abbey after Diana's funeral in September 1997
PA
11/22
Performing
a duet with Tom Jones during a tribute concert to Sir Paul McCartney's late
wife Linda, held at the Royal Albert Hall in London in April 1999
PA
12/22
Looking
dapper at a press conference in September 1999
PA
13/22
Arriving
at the 95.8 Capital FM London Awards with Spice Girl Geri Halliwell in April
2000
PA
14/22
Arriving
with Kenny Goss for Attitude Magazine's 10th Birthday Party at the Atlantic Bar
& Grill in central London
PA
15/22
Outside
Brent Magistrates' Court after he was sentenced to 100 hours community service
for driving while unfit in June 2007
PA
16/22
A day
later he was performing at Wembley Stadium
PA
17/22
Leaving
Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court in August 2010 after he appeared charged
with driving under the influence of drugs after his car crashed into a high street
shop
PA
18/22
Outside
his house in Highgate after being released from prison in October of that year
PA
19/22
Smiling
for the cameras in May 2011
PA
20/22
Pop's
elder statesman in May 2011
PA
21/22
On stage
at the 2012 Brit Awards at the O2 Arena
PA
22/22
In
concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London during his Symphonica Tour in
September 2012
PA
Star Trek actor William
Shatner said: "Is this year over yet? Too many people are passing away.
Rest In Peace, George Michael." Mayor of London Sadiq Khan
said: "Very sad to hear the news about George Michael. An incredible
talent who brought joy to millions of us with his music." Very sad to hear the news about George Michael. An incredible talent who
brought joy to millions of us with his music.
Fellow politician Nicola
Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, said: "This is just too awful.
Such an amazing talent gone too soon. Wham was part of the soundtrack to my
teenage years." Singer and stage actress
Pixie Lott said: "Grew up listening to the beautiful and talented
George Michael - my mama's favourite! was a pleasure to meet him so sad to hear
the news." Fellow pop star La Roux
said: "Another one gone.... What a voice, what a songwriter."
Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me with Elton John
Double click image to enlarge.
Producer and musician Mark
Ronson said: "I bought (and worshipped) Listen Without Prejudice on my
15th birthday. This song readied me for Stevie Wonder... Other than a global
pop phenom, George Michael was one of the true British soul greats. A lot of us
owe him an unpayable debt. bye George xx"
.
Yesterday we lost another of the most prolific songwriters and storytellers in music in Leonard Cohen, whose haunting songs became better known than Leonard. He will be missed but his difficult life path and his beautiful contributions to music history will never be forgotten.
Leonard Cohen - So Long Marianne
(Double click for full screen)
Yesterday, November 10, the following message appeared on the Leonard Cohen website.
Leonard Cohen, the Canadian poet and novelist who
abandoned a promising literary career to become one of the foremost songwriters
of the contemporary era, has died, according to an announcement Thursday night
on his Facebook page. He was 82.
Mr. Cohen’s
record label, Sony Music, confirmed the death. No details were available on the
cause. Adam Cohen, his son and producer, said: “My father passed away
peacefully at his home in Los Angeles
with the knowledge that he had completed what he felt was one of his greatest
records. He was writing up until his last moments with his unique brand of
humor.”
Over a musical
career that spanned nearly five decades, Mr. Cohen wrote songs that addressed —
in spare language that could be both oblique and telling — themes of love and
faith, despair and exaltation, solitude and connection, war and politics. More
than 2,000 recordings of his songs have been made, initially by the folk-pop
singers who were his first champions, like Judy Collins and Tim Hardin, and later
by performers from across the spectrum of popular music, among them U2, Aretha
Franklin, R.E.M., Jeff Buckley, Trisha Yearwood and Elton John.
Mr. Cohen’s
best-known song may well be “Hallelujah,”
a majestic, meditative ballad infused with both religiosity and earthiness. It
was written for a 1984 album that his record company rejected as insufficiently
commercial and popularized a decade later by Jeff Buckley. Since then some 200
artists, from Bob Dylan to Justin Timberlake, have sung or recorded it. A book
has been written about it, and it has been featured on the soundtracks of
movies and television shows and sung at the Olympics and other public events.
At the 2016 Emmy Awards, Tori Kelly sang “Hallelujah” for the annual “In
Memoriam” segment recognizing recent deaths.
Leonard Cohen -
Hallelujah
(Double click for full screen)
Mr. Cohen was an unlikely and reluctant pop star, if in fact he ever was
one. He was 33 when his first record was released in 1967. He sang in an
increasingly gravelly baritone. He played simple chords on acoustic guitar or a
cheap keyboard. And he maintained a private, sometime ascetic image at odds
with the Dionysian excesses associated with rock ’n’ roll.
At some points, he was anything but prolific. He struggled for years to
write some of his most celebrated songs, and he recorded just 14 studio albums
in his career. Only the first qualified as a gold record in the United States
for sales of 500,000 copies. But Mr. Cohen’s sophisticated, magnificently
succinct lyrics, with their meditations on love sacred and profane, were widely
admired by other artists and gave him a reputation as, to use the phrase his
record company concocted for an advertising campaign in the early 1970s, “the
master of erotic despair.”
Early in his career,
enigmatic songs like “Suzanne” and “Bird on a Wire,” quickly covered by
better-known performers, gave him visibility. “Suzanne” begins and ends as a
portrait of a mysterious, fragile woman “wearing rags and feathers from
Salvation Army counters,” but pauses in the middle verse to offer a melancholy
view of the spiritual:
And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon
the water,
And he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower,
And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him,
He said “All men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them.”
But he himself was broken, long before the sky would open,
Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.
In 2008, Mr. Cohen was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which described him as “one of the few artists in
the realm of popular music who can truly be called poets” and praised him for
having “raised the songwriting bar.” In 2010, the National Academy of Recording
Arts and Sciences, the Grammys’ group, gave him a lifetime achievement award,
praising him for “a timeless legacy that has positively affected multiple
generations.”
Wearing a bolo tie and his trademark
fedora, Mr. Cohen dryly made light in his acceptance speech of the fact that
none of his records had ever been honored at the Grammys. “As we make our way
toward the finish line that some of us have already crossed, I never thought
I’d get a Grammy Award,” he said. “In fact, I was always touched by the modesty
of their interest.”
Leonard Norman Cohen was born in Montreal on Sept. 21, 1934, and grew up in the prosperous
suburb of Westmount.
His father, Nathan, whose family had emigrated to Canada
from Poland,
owned a successful clothing store; he died when Leonard was 9, but his will included
a provision for a small trust fund, which later allowed his son to pursue his
literary and musical ambitions. His mother, the former Masha Klonitzky, a
nurse, was of Lithuanian descent and the daughter of a Talmudic scholar and
rabbi. “I had a very messianic childhood,” Mr. Cohen would later say.
In 1951, Mr. Cohen was admitted to McGill University, Canada’s premier institution of
higher learning, where he studied English. His first book of poetry, “Let Us
Compare Mythologies,” was published in May 1956, while he was still an
undergraduate. It was followed by “The Spice-Box of Earth” in 1961 and “Flowers
for Hitler” in 1964. Other collections would appear sporadically throughout Mr.
Cohen’s life, including the omnibus “Poems and Songs” in 2011.
A period of drift followed Mr. Cohen’s
graduation from college. He enrolled in law school at McGill, then dropped out
and moved to New York City, where he studied
literature at ColumbiaUniversity for a year before returning to Montreal. Eventually,
after a sojourn in London, he ended up living in
a house on the Greek island
of Hydra, where he wrote
a pair of novels: “The Favorite Game,” published in 1963, and “Beautiful
Losers,” published in 1966.
“Beautiful Losers,” about a love triangle
all of whose members are devotees of a 17th-century Mohawk Indian Roman
Catholic saint, gained a cult following, which it retains, and eventually sold
more than three million copies worldwide. But Mr. Cohen’s initial lack of
commercial success was discouraging, and he turned to songwriting in hopes of
expanding the audience for his poetry.
“I found it was very difficult to pay my
grocery bill,” Mr. Cohen said in 1971, looking back at his situation just a few
years earlier. “I’ve got beautiful reviews for all my books, and I’m very well
thought of in the tiny circles that know me, but I’m really starving.”
Within months, Mr. Cohen had placed two
songs, “Suzanne” and “Dress Rehearsal Rag,” on Judy Collins’s album “In My
Life,” which also included the Lennon-McCartney title song and compositions by
Bob Dylan, Randy Newman and Donovan. But he was extremely reluctant to take the
next step and sing his songs himself.
“Leonard was naturally reserved and afraid
to sing in public,” Ms. Collins wrote in her autobiography, “Sweet Judy Blue
Eyes: My Life in Music” (2011). She recalled him telling her: “I can’t sing. I
wouldn’t know what to do out there. I am not a performer.” He was “terrified,”
she wrote, the first time she brought him onstage to sing with her, in the
spring of 1967.
Leonard Cohen - Suzanne
(Double click for full screen)
Later that year, after being signed to
Columbia Records by John Hammond, the celebrated talent scout who also signed
Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, Mr. Cohen released his first album. Its simple
title, “Songs of Leonard Cohen,” and its cover, a portrait of the artist gazing
solemnly into the camera, matched the music, which was spare and unembellished,
in stark contrast to the psychedelic style that then prevailed.
The record began with “Suzanne,” which was
already being performed by folk singers everywhere thanks to the popularity of
Ms. Collins’s version. It also included three other songs of great impact that
would become staples of Mr. Cohen’s live shows, and that numerous other artists
would record over the years: “Sisters of Mercy,” “So Long Marianne” and “Hey,
That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.”
His second album, “Songs From a Room,”
released early in 1969, cemented his growing reputation as a songwriter. “The
Story of Isaac,” a retelling of the biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac, became
an anthem of opposition to the war in Vietnam, and “Bird on a Wire” went
on to be recorded by performers including Joe Cocker, Aaron Neville, Johnny
Cash and Willie Nelson.
In 1971, Mr. Cohen released “Songs of Love
and Hate,” which contained the cryptic and frequently covered “Famous Blue
Raincoat,” but after that his production began to tail off and his live
performances became less frequent. He released three more albums during the
1970s but, amid bouts of depression, only two in the 1980s and one in the
1990s.
The quality of his songs remained high,
however: In addition to “Hallelujah,” future standards like “Dance Me to the
End of Love,” “First We Take Manhattan,” “Everybody Knows” and “Tower of Song” date from that era.
Mr. Cohen, raised Jewish and observant
throughout his life, became interested in Zen Buddhism in the late 1970s and
often visited the MountBaldy monastery, east of Los Angeles. Around 1994, he abandoned his
music career altogether and moved to the monastery, where he was ordained a
Buddhist monk and became the personal assistant of Joshu Sasaki, the Rinzai Zen
master who led the center, who died in 2014. He took the name Jikan, which
means “silence.”
During the remainder of the decade, there
was much speculation that Mr. Cohen, rather than merely taking a sabbatical,
had stopped writing songs and would never record again. But in 2001, he
released “Ten New Songs,” whose title suggests it was written while he was in
the monastery. It was followed in 2004 by “Dear Heather,” an unusually upbeat
album.
In 2005, Mr. Cohen sued his former
manager, Kelley Lynch, accusing her of defrauding him of millions of dollars
that he had set aside as a retirement fund, leaving him with only $150,000 and
a huge tax bill and forcing him to take out a new mortgage on his home to cover
his legal costs. The next year, after Ms. Lynch countersued, a judge awarded
Mr. Cohen $9.5 million, but he was unable to collect any of the money.
The legal battles may have soured Mr.
Cohen’s mood, but they did not seem to damage his creativity. In 2006, he
published a new collection of poems, “Book of Longing,” which the composer
Philip Glass set to music and then took on tour, with Mr. Cohen’s recorded
voice reciting the words and Mr. Glass’s ensemble performing the music.
In 2008, Mr. Cohen hit the road for the
first time in 15 years for a grueling world tour, which would continue, with a
few short breaks, through 2010. He was driven, he acknowledged, at least in
part by financial necessity.
“It was a long, ongoing problem of a
disastrous and relentless indifference to my financial situation,” he told The
New York Times in 2009. “I didn’t even know where the bank was.”
Combined with a pair of CDs and
accompanying DVDs recorded in concert, “Live in London” and “Songs From the Road,” the
constant touring, before audiences often larger than those he had enjoyed in
the past, clearly eased Mr. Cohen’s financial problems. Billboard magazine
estimated that the 2009 leg of the tour alone earned him nearly $10 million.
Over that three-year period, Mr. Cohen
performed nearly 250 shows, many of them lasting more than three hours. He
seemed remarkably fit and limber, skipping across the stage, doing deep-knee
bends and occasionally dropping to his knees to sing.
The shows were not without incident:
During a show in Valencia, Spain, in 2009,
he fainted, and early in 2010 one segment of the tour had to be postponed when
he suffered a lower back injury. He recovered, however, and in 2012 he released
“Old Ideas,” his first CD of new songs in more than seven years, and embarked
on another marathon tour.
That pattern of extensive touring and
recording continued into the decade. In 2014, for instance, Mr. Cohen released
a CD of mostly new material, “Popular Problems,” as well as a three-CD, one-DVD
set called “Live in Dublin.”
His final studio album, “You Want It Darker,” was released in October 2016.
Mr. Cohen never married, though he had
numerous liaisons and several long-term relationships, some of which he wrote
about. His survivors include two children, Adam and Lorca, from his
relationship with Suzanne Elrod, a photographer and artist who shot the cover
of his 1973 album, “Live Songs,” and is pictured on the cover of his critically
derided album “Death of a Ladies’ Man” (1977); and three grandchildren.
To the end, Mr. Cohen took a sardonic view
of both his craft and the human condition. In “Tower of Song,”
a staple of live shows in his later years, he brought the two together, making
fun of being “born with the gift of a golden voice” and striking the same
biblical tone apparent on his first album.
Now you can say that I’ve grown bitter, but
of this you may be sure
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
And there’s a mighty judgment coming, but I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices in the tower of song.
“The changeless is what he’s been about
since the beginning,” the writer Pico Iyer argued in the liner notes for the
anthology “The Essential Leonard Cohen.” “Some of the other great pilgrims of
song pass through philosophies and selves as if through the stations of the
cross. With Cohen, one feels he knew who he was and where he was going from the
beginning, and only digs deeper, deeper, deeper.”
1992
Documentary about Marilyn's last interview in July 1962 for Life magazine. With
rare audio of Marilyn's interview and rare footage. Marilyn's words had been
edited together for this show.
The World Lost a Priceless Gem Today - A Prince - Known
for Legendary Music but a Man with a Spirit for Living and Life that Dwarfed
his Musical Contributions
Of all the famous and
iconic entertainers, we knew through the years, Prince, a kid not from LA or New York City but from the streets of Minneapolis
- St. Paul is
among the most mystical, mysterious, and least known of our many great "Spirits in the Sky."
For some time to come a deluge
of books, music, television specials, documentaries, and little known facts
will be offered to you telling you everything you would ever want to know about
this quiet, almost shy, kid from the land of lakes, endless snowfall, and ice
sculptures called the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota.
Ironically, Prince, who
brought about a revolution in the music world, shared the same hometown with an
earlier revolutionary who rattled the music world, one Bob Dylan.
Prince arrived on the
music scene with a new fangled experiment called MTV on television and he was
one visionary who knew exactly how to exploit this new method of communication
with his mastery not just of the music, but the staging of the video as well.
Stories will tell you of his
incredible achievements but perhaps his greatest achievement of all was his
faith in God, his determination to follow the strict teachings of the Jehovah's
Witness religion, and his silent calling to help everyone he could anonymously.
Unlike so many other
successful singers and songwriters, Prince did not collect cars and girls but
used his rags to riches success to build a business empire, once again not in
the music capitals of LA or NYC but in the Twin Cities. You see, he never forgot his roots.
Prince was the classic Renaissance
man, hungry to know everything, to do everything, and to use his gifts to help
people, most that never knew him nor knew he was helping them. Countless times, he gave songs from his
endless supply of creative genius to struggling artists, with no credit or recognition,
part of the mysterious way he operated.
His religion forbids gifts,
celebrations, or recognition that glorifies the individual and he stayed true
to his belief. Sometimes he seemed
rather odd. The few times he ever
granted media interviews, he banned the use of tape recorders and forbid the
interviewer to take notes. Once an
interviewer taped Prince and violated his agreement with Prince on how to use
it, and since he allows no direct quotes.
Read about him, watch the
videos, and learn his story. He was a
Vegan, did not eat meat, did not drink, smoke, or do drugs. He wanted nothing more than to share his
gifts with the people and use his gifts to help people.
We will miss many people in
our lives and many people will disappear into the ether of the mystical and
metaphysical when they die. Very few people
served time on Earth fulfilling their mission to the Creator. Prince was one of those few.
You can bet there is a
place among the Spirits in the Sky
reserved for people like Prince.
His last words to his fans
at his last concert this past week were, "If I could I would give you the
world!"
