Moody Blues bassist and singer John Lodge was born on July 20th, 1945. Their song "The Story in Your Eyes" was written on acoustic guitar and recorded on eight-track in an old London church. It was on the album Every Good Boy Deserves Favour which peaked at number-23 on the Billboard Hot 100. One of The Moody Blues' most fondly remembered songs. Here is Justin Hayward, who wrote and sings it saying how it came about.
“It was a kind of an angry song and it was started in a proper recording studio and finished up in Mike Pinder’s garage and mixed there. And this really came out of an A-minor guitar riff and frantic drums. The original version really swung and the end of it went on for ages and ages. It’s just a huge jam session, none of which appears on the record.”
Ozzy Osbourne is making yet another reality series with his family.
The Osbournes Want to Believe will feature son Jack trying to convince Ozzy and Sharon that various videos of paranormal activity are real. The series premieres August 2nd on the Travel Channel. It will be the first time since the original MTV series that Ozzy, Sharon and Jack have been on a show together. Kelly is not taking part in this series.
Jack tells Variety that being in lockdown freed up time so his parents could do the series, which is being shot mostly in their home. He says, "It’s actually going to be a lot of fun." Ozzy and Jack had their own reality show, Ozzy and Jack's World Detour, for three seasons from 2016 to 2018.
Ozzy Osbourne hasn't thrown his hat into the Presidential race like Kanye West says he's doing, but he has launched a line of "Ozzy For President" merchandise.
In a short clip promoting the line, quotes from Ozzy appear saying:
Among the items available are t-shirts, hoodies, lithographs, bumper stickers and buttons. They are available in Ozzy's online store.
The Osbournes are no stranger to President Trump as Sharon was a contestant on Trump's Celebrity Apprentice in 2010. But that doesn't mean they support him.
Last year they called him out for using Ozzy's music without permission.
And, Sharon has also criticized his Presidency.
"It's kind of fearful. I know a lot of my friends are fearful. We kind of wake up every day and go, 'What's gonna happen now?' You don't feel secure that everything will be smooth and people are in control of what they should be in control of. … For me, I wake up afraid of what on Earth is going to happen and who he's going to insult today."
Richard Starkey...Ringo Star turns 80 today. He wrote The Beatles' song "Octopus's Garden" on a trip to Sardinia, Italy after a chat with the captain of his boat about how octopuses build gardens. The popular album track was the second song Ringo wrote for The Beatles and the last song he sang for them.
”I went to Sardinia. And I knew Peter Sellers and he had a boat and somehow he knew I was going — ‘Use my boat,’ which we did. And I ended just hanging out with the captain talking, and we were talking about octopus and he actually was telling me that they build these gardens. Octopuses go around the sea bed finding shiny things — nice stones — and they put ‘em around. And I just thought, ‘Well, this is the happiest thing I’ve ever heard.’ And I had me guitar with me, I played three chords and that’s how it happened.”
THE BEATLES almost got back together in 1976 . . . six years after they broke up . . . but their reunion was prevented by a GREAT WHITE SHARK. According to RINGO STARR, a promoter offered them the equivalent of about $250 million in today's money, and the four of them talked about it.
"We called each other to see what we think. We decided not to do it because the opening act was a guy [fighting] a shark. So we thought no."
It sounds crazy, but there might be some truth to this. According to an old "People" magazine article from 1976, a promoter named Bill Sargent made the offer.
But after the Beatles turned him down, he decided to concentrate on his next project, in which an Australian diver named Wally Gibbins would, quote, "fight to the death with a 14-foot, 2,500-pound killer shark in a lagoon off Western Samoa."
Happy birthday to Roy Bittan, E Street Band keyboards. He's 71 today. Born to Run was the first Bruce Springsteen album to feature pianist Roy Bittan and drummer Max Weinberg as members of the E Street Band. Bittan recalls that even though it was his debut with the band, Bruce was open to his input when it came to arranging "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out."Bruce Springsteen: "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out"
"That was really fun, that song. It really had that R&B-type feel and I remember in rehearsal we were trying to figure out a great intro for it and I said, 'Why don't we take that "I'm on my own" section -- let's use that instrumentally up front, but let's built it up. There was this minor chord intro and all of a sudden there was a big drum shot and then, wham, we went into the rockin' part of it. And pumping the piano really seemed to just push it along. For me, it was a great thing. I really got to play like a really heavy rockin' piano part on that."
Ringo Starr says the reason the new Beatles documentary, Get Back, has been postponed from its opening in September until August of next year is because director Peter Jackson has been locked out of his studio due to the pandemic.
The film is based primarily on unreleased footage captured during the 1969 making of their Let it Be album. Ringo says he's impressed with what's already been done. The movie only shows that the Beatles are not getting along but that's not the whole story, that's just the way it was edited. Here is Ringo on the documentary.
"I'd only seen the on the roof stuff that Peter edited together and, you know, in the movie, it was, I'm guessing, 10 minutes long. It's now 36 minutes long and it is incredible. You know how it started. We found 56 hours of unused footage ... and I always believed that the one that came out (Let it Be) was a bit dull and it stuck to one second of what happened between the boys. And he when he comes into L.A. he'll bring up his iPad...we're all laughing or telling jokes. We're having fun we’re playing and there's a lot more joy."
Elton John’s ex-wife Renate Blauel has broken her three-decade silence about their marriage and launched legal proceedings against him.
While not going into details about what the suit is about, her lawyer says she felt the need to seek a high court injunction against him, but added that she was “hoping to resolve it amicably.”
Renate and Elton met during the sessions for his 1983 album Too Low for Zero. Although he's gay, they married in 1984 while he was on tour in Australia. They divorced in 1988.
He wrote about her in his memoir, Me, and the marriage was featured in his film Rocketman, both of which were released last year. Elton John on his marriage scene in Rocketman:
"I could not leave the fact that I got married and I was a gay man out of a movie. Renate's only in the film for a very short time, we didn't need to elaborate. And I wanted it to show her as being loving and I made the mistake."
And she figures; you're rich give me money. (I added that last part)
Former Clash guitarist and singer Mick Jones was born on June 26th, 1955. The song "Should I Stay or Should I Go" has an interesting history. It was on the album Combat Rock in 1982 and peaked at number-45 on the Billboard Hot 100. 9 years later the song was re-released in Britain and it went to number 1 there. Guitarist Mick Jones -- who sang the song on Combat Rock, his final album with the group -- explained what happened.
“It was a pretty strange situation, because the record company wanted to release it and it was released and sort of went to number-one in this country. I don’t know, it was pretty nice to have a number-one, but the problem was that I think it was probably about eight years too late, because the group had already split up. I mean, it’d probably have helped us out a lot more if it’d been a hit while we were still together.”
Original Foreigner multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald, who co-wrote "A Long, Long Way From Home," was born on June 25th, 1946. McDonald was also an original member of King Crimson.That song was the first song Mick Jones and Lou Gramm wrote together and the first Foreigner worked on as a band. It peaked at number-20 on the Billboard Hot 100. The original Foreigner lineup featured three British expatriates -- Mick Jones, Dennis Elliott and Ian McDonald -- along with Ed Gagliardi and Al Greenwood from New York City and singer Lou Gramm from Rochester, New York. Jones says that situation directly led to the writing of "Long, Long Way From Home."
“When Lou came down to New York when we were getting the band together that was sort of the first song that we collaborated together on and wrote. Lou was actually a long way from home, I guess I was, too, and here we were kind of getting something together. And that was the first thing we put together as a band when the final lineup got together. I guess we were all feeling a bit lost — ‘Gosh, what are we doing? What is this?’ — and that sort of summed up the feeling.”
