Song Spot: Waterloo Sunset

  

So what moments from the London Olympics closing ceremony remained in your memory afterwards?

One of them for me was Ray Davies singing Waterloo Sunset, a song that I found myself humming and whistling for days afterwards.  Despite Davies’ shaky beginning and his difficulty with some of the notes, it was an enjoyable performance of a song symbolic of 1960’s London.

Some trivia: 

The Olympics Police zealously guard all things Olympic so if you do find a clip on You Tube, it won’t be there for long.  Here is a link to Ray Davies performing it at the 2010 Glastonbury Festival:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vRURpe6FXE

1960’s clip:.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvDoDaCYrEY

Apparently NBC, broadcasting the ceremony in the US, cut the Davies’ song from its telecast.  The network cut out performances by Ray Davies, The Who and Muse for an hour-long preview of Animal Practice.

The lyrics:

Dirty old river, must you keep rolling
Flowing into the night
People so busy, makes me feel dizzy
Taxi light shines so bright
But I don't need no friends
As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset
I am in paradise

Every day I look at the world from my window
But chilly, chilly is the evening time
Waterloo sunset's fine

Terry meets Julie, Waterloo Station
Every Friday night
But I am so lazy, don't want to wander
I stay at home at night
But I don't feel afraid
As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset
I am in paradise

Every day I look at the world from my window
But chilly, chilly is the evening time
Waterloo sunset's fine

Millions of people swarming like flies 'round Waterloo underground
But Terry and Julie cross over the river
Where they feel safe and sound
And they don't need no friends
As long as they gaze on Waterloo sunset
They are in paradise

Waterloo sunset's fine

The person singing is either watching, or imagining watching, two lovers, Terry and Julie, passing over a bridge.  It was speculated at the time that the lovers were Terence Stamp and Julie Christie, stars of the 1967 flick Far from the Madding Crowd. 

Ray Davies wrote, produced and sings the song.  In a 2008 interview he denied that the lovers were Terence Stamp and Julie Christie:   “It was a fantasy about my sister going off with her boyfriend to a new world and they were going to emigrate and go to another country.”

In a 2010  interview he has said that Terry was his nephew, with whom he was close during adolescence.

Ray Davies in a 2009 interview:  "It came to me first as a statement about the death of Merseybeat. But I realized that Waterloo was a very significant place in my life. I was in St. Thomas' Hospital when I was really ill as a child, and I looked out on the river. I went to Waterloo every day to go to college as well. The song was also about being taken to the Festival of Britain with my mum and dad. I remember them taking me by the hand, looking at the big Skylon tower, and saying it symbolized the future. That, and then walking by the Thames with my first wife (Rasa, who left Ray, taking his two daughters, in 1973) and all the other dreams that we had. Her in her brown suede coat that she wore, that was stolen. And also about my sisters, and about the world I wanted them to have. The two characters in the song, Terry and Julie, are to do with the aspirations of my sisters' generation, who grew up during the Second world War and missed out on the '60s.  Sometimes when you're writing and you're really on good form, you get into the frame of mind where you think, I can relate to any of these things. It's something I learned at art school-let all the ideas flow out. But if you listen to the words without the music, it's a different thing entirely. The lyrics could be better. But they dovetail with the music perfectly."

2010 interview:  “Liverpool is my favourite city, and the song was originally called Liverpool Sunset.  I was inspired by Merseybeat. I'd fallen in love with Liverpool by that point. On every tour, that was the best reception. We played The Cavern, all those old places, and I couldn't get enough of it. I had a load of mates in bands up there, and that sound – not The Beatles but Merseybeat – that was unbelievable. It used to inspire me every time.  So I wrote Liverpool Sunset. Later it got changed to Waterloo Sunset, but there's still that play on words with Waterloo.”

The song was released as a single in 1967.

A London FM radio poll in 2004 named this the "Greatest Song About London", while Time Out named it the "Anthem of London". It holds spot #42 on Rolling Stone’s's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.  Pete Townshend of The Who has called it "divine" and "a masterpiece".

Davies is also the author of You Really Got Me, All Day And All Of The Night, Dedicated Follower Of Fashion, Sunny Afternoon, Days, The Village Green Preservation Society and Lola.  He has also composed musicals, acted, directed and produced shows for theatre and television.

And now it’s going around in my head again.

C’mon. . .  sha la la . . .

Footnotes to History: Ron L Ziegler

  

"This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative."

-       Ron Ziegler

When working in the office recently I gave some facts in a matter to my son.  He said to me that those facts were different to the facts that I had previously given him.  I replied that these facts were the operative facts; the others were inoperative.  In making that comment, I was facetiously paraphrasing Ron Ziegler, a man unknown to my son but a true footnote to history.

Ronald Louis "Ron" Ziegler (1939 – 2003) was White House Press Secretary and Assistant to the President during the administration of President Richard Nixon between 1969 and 1974.

When Ziegler became White House Press Secretary in 1969 at age 29, he was the youngest Press Secretary in history.  From 1974 he was also Assistant to the President.

Fiercely loyal to Nixon to the end, he became a buffer between the President and a hostile press corps as the developing Watergate scandal began to bite deeper, eventually reaching into the White House and ultimately even the Oval Office itself.  In that time Ziegler became the public face of the embattled Nixon administration and a source of public and journalistic bemusement, his befuddled speaking style and constant changes earning him the nick name of “Zig-Zag”.  One magazine called his style of speech “Zieglerrata”.

There is no doubt that he was tarnished by his loyalty to Nixon, that he became the focus of anti-Nixon hostility and that his abilities were overshadowed by his defence of the Nixon administration during Watergate.  According Gerald Warren, a former deputy press secretary under Presidents Nixon and Ford: "I think he was placed in an awkward position as a young man. ... It wasn't easy for him, but he did his best and he was very loyal.  I don't think he ever showed the great promise that he had, I wish that he had been able to tell his story to the world."

Some Zieglerisms:

"This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative."

–        April 17, 1973, retracting previous statements that had been revealed to be false.

According to The Guardian, reporting the death of Ron Ziegler in 2003:

During his career as US President Richard Nixon's press secretary, Ron Ziegler, who has died after a heart attack aged 63, delivered thousands of White House statements. But the only one that reverberates down the years came on April 17 1973, and consisted of two short sentences: "This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative."

This pronouncement signalled the first breach in the wall of lies and evasions that the Nixon administration had erected around the break-in at the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic national committee in June 1972. After months of press revelations and congressional investigation of official corruption, the president had finally given in, ordering his staff to give evidence to the US senate and lifting their immunity from prosecution. In response, his press secretary simply junked all his previous statements on the issue.

"Certain elements may try to stretch the Watergate burglary beyond what it is."

–        1972, referring to Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward

'I think we would all have to say, and I would be, I think, remiss if I did not say, that mistakes were made during this period in terms of comments that were made, perhaps. I would say that I was overenthusiastic at the time in my comments about The Post, particularly if you look at it in the context of the developments that have taken place. In thinking of it at this point in time, yes, I would apologize to The Post. . . . When we're wrong, we're wrong.''

-       May 1, 1973, the day after H. R. Haldeman, the White House chief of staff, and John D. Ehrlichman, the chief domestic policy adviser, resigned over Watergate, when Ziegler was asked whether he would apologise to The Post.

When he started to add, ''But . . .'' a reporter called out, ''Don't take it back, Ron!''

"If my answers sound confusing, I think they are confusing because the questions are confusing and the situation is confusing."

"The president is aware of what is going on in Southeast Asia. That is not to say that there is anything going on in Southeast Asia."

–        1971, answering a question whether allied troops were preparing to invade Laos.

''I would feel that most of the conversations that took place in those areas of the White House that did have the recording system would, in almost their entirety, be in existence, but the special prosecutor, the court, and, I think, the American people are sufficiently familiar with the recording system to know where the recording devices existed, and to know the situation in terms of the recording process, but I feel, although the process has not been undertaken yet in preparation of the material to abide by the court decision, really, what the answer to that question is.''

-       1974, a statement by Ziegler on the safeguarding of the White House tapes, winning an award from the Committee on Public Doublespeak of the National Council of Teachers of English.

"Devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world (which) will remain as an example for free men everywhere.”

- 1970, in reference to the career of CIA security adviser Dan Mitrione, killed in Uruguay, whose promotion of torture later became substantiated.

Ziegler with Elvis Presley, 1971, at a meeting of the US Jaycees Congress of Ten Outstanding Young Men.  Presley and Ziegler were two of the honourees.

Funny Friday

  

My father in law, Noel, relayed an item that he thought might be suitable for a Funny Friday post.  Noel sets the bar high in both humour and class.  I have revised the joke to make it printable (as I have also done with a couple of the ones below).  It is the first of the following items and it also sets the theme for this week’s Funny Friday: thermometers. . . 

A redneck comes home unexpectedly and finds the doctor in bed with is wife.  “What do you think you’re doin’, Doc?” he asks.  “I’m, er, taking your wife’s temperature,” replied the doctor.  “Well, I don’t know much about doctorin’,” said the redneck as he took his shotgun from the wall, “but that thing better have numbers on it when you take it out.”

A bigshot business man had to spend a couple of days in the hospital. Whilst there, he was a royal pain to the nurses because he bossed them around just like he did his employees. None of the hospital staff wanted to have anything to do with him.

The head nurse was the only one who could stand up to him. She walked into his room and announced, “I have to take your temperature.”

After complaining for several minutes, he finally settled down, crossed his arms and opened his mouth.”No, I’m sorry”, the nurse stated, “but for this reading, I can’t use an oral theremometer.”

This started another round of complaining, but eventually he rolled over and bared his behind.

After feeling the nurse insert the thermometer, he heard her announce, “I have to get something. Now you stay JUST LIKE THAT until I get back!”

She leaves the door to his room open on her way out. He curses under his breath as he hears people walking past his door, laughing. After almost an hour, the man’s doctor comes into the room.

“What’s going on here?” asked the doctor.

Angrily, the man answers, “What’s the matter, Doc? Haven’t you ever seen someone having their temperature taken before?”

After a pause, the doctor replies, “Yes, but never with a daffodil!”

Upon arriving home, a husband was met at the door by his sobbing wife.  Tearfully she explained, "It's the druggist - he insulted me terribly this morning on the phone." 

Immediately the husband drove downtown to confront the druggist and demand an apology.

Before he could say more than a word or two, the druggist told him, "Now, just a minute - listen to my side of it. This morning the alarm failed to go off, so I was late getting up. I went without breakfast and hurried out to the car, just to realise that I locked the house with both house and car keys inside."

"I had to break a window to get my keys. Then, driving a little too fast, I got a speeding ticket. Later, when I was about three blocks from the store, I had a flat tire. When I finally got to the store there was a bunch of people waiting for me to open up. I got the store opened and started waiting on these people, and all the time the darn phone was ringing off the hook."

He continued, "Then I had to break a roll of nickels against the cash register drawer to make change, and they spilled all over the floor. I got down on my hands and knees to pick up the nickels - the phone was still ringing - when I came up I cracked my head on the open cash drawer, which made me stagger back against a showcase with a bunch of perfume bottles on it...half of them hit the floor and broke. Meanwhile, the phone is still ringing with no let up, and I finally got back to answer it. It was your wife - she wanted to know how to use a rectal thermometer. and believe me, Mister, I TOLD HER! “

  

A doctor is going about his business, with a rectal thermometer tucked behind his ear.

He goes into a staff meeting to discuss the day’s activities, when a co-worker asks why he has a thermometer behind his ear?

He removes the thermometer, looks at it and exclaims: "Damn, some asshole has my pen!"

Quote Keith Richards

“Sure thing, man.  I used to be a laboratory myself once.”

-       Keith Richards (1943 - ), on being asked to autograph a fan’s school chemistry book.

Robin Williams has commented on Keith Richards:

“I know there's a cure for bio terrorism or whatever it is, and I know it lies within Keith Richards.. He is the only man on the planet who can go ‘Anthrax?’ ”

“We will all be dead and gone, but Keith will still be there with five cockroaches. He'll be going, ‘I smoked your uncle, did ya know that?’ ”

The reference to smoking their uncle comes from Richards admitting that he once smoked his father’s ashes:

“The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father.  He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow.  My dad wouldn't have cared - he didn't give a shit. It went down pretty well. And I'm still alive.”

Following public criticism, he said a few days later that it had been a misunderstanding:

 "The complete story is lost in the usual slanting.  The truth of the matter is that I planted a sturdy English Oak. I took the ... ashes [and sprinkled them beneath the tree], and he is now growing oak trees and he would love me for it!”

As for the ashes-and-cocaine-snorting story, "I was trying to say how tight Bert and I were — that tight!"

He subsequently denied his denial, admitting that he really had snorted his dad’s ashes, just not with cocaine.

“The cocaine bit was rubbish. I said I chopped him up like cocaine, not with. I pulled the lid off (my father's urn) and out comes a bit of dad on the dining room table. I'm going, 'I can't use the brush and dustpan for this'. What I found out is that ingesting your ancestors is a very respectable way of ... y'know, he went down a treat.”

Last Words: Countess Di Vercellis

“Well! A woman that can fart is not yet dead!”

-       La Contessa Therese Di Vercellis

Madame di Vercellis (1670-1728), the wife of Count Hippolyte Vercellis, a Sardinian army officer, married at age 20 and was a childless widow 6 years later. In 1728, when she was aged 58, she employed 16 year old Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who had run away from Geneva, as a footman. 

Rousseau would later find fame as a philosopher, writer and composer of 18^th century French Romanticism.  His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution  as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.

In 1728 such fame was still a long way away.  His employer, Madame di Vicellis, was dying of breast cancer.  Becoming increasingly unable to write, she utilised the young Rousseau to take down dictation and look after her correspondence. 

Rousseau was with her at her death and recorded her last words in his posthumously published  autobiography, Confessions:

At length we lost her--I saw her expire. She had lived like a woman of sense and virtue, her death was that of a philosopher. I can truly say, she rendered the Catholic religion amiable to me by the serenity with which she fulfilled its dictates, without any mixture of negligence or affectation. She was naturally serious, but towards the end of her illness she possessed a kind of gayety, too regular to be assumed, which served as a counterpoise to the melancholy of her situation. She only kept her bed two days, continuing to discourse cheerfully with those about her to the very last. At last, when she could hardly speak, and in her death agony, she let a big wind escape.  “Well!” said she, turning around, “a woman that can fart is not yet dead!” These were her last words.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Pics are back

I have my pics function back.  The computer chap didn't find the problem that was preventing me importing images, he simply arranged things so that I am now using a different browser.  From what I gather, it is the equivalent of catching the train, instead of the bus, to travel to the city.  What counts is that I can again post pics, so that today's post is a visual feast: another collection of amazing street and public art, and a contribution from Byter Leo...

Public and Street Art -

and Leo's item:

After receiving numerous customer complaints,
about their employees, "plumber crack"....a
German plumbing firm bought their plumbers a
new t-shirt, designed to make their employees more
attractive to the customers...

No Pics?

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Last week I posted a quote without pics.  Yesterday’s post on the Pulitzer did not include a pic of the photographer, Nat Fein, as I had originally intended.  The reason is that I am having trouble with my computer in uploading pics to the blog.  I thought the problem had been fixed by the computer geek our office uses but it has come back, so I will need him to look at my computer again.  Because I can’t upload pics at the moment, I will be posting items that don’t require visuals.

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More on Jimmy Sharman

 

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Byter Arthur sent me an email in respect of the Jimmy Sharman post: “Very interesting.  I remember them quite well, I must be getting old. Or older.” 

Byter Jon sent me an email saying that he was surprised that I hadn’t mentioned the Midnight Oils song.  Jon is correct about the Oils' reference.  When I had posted the item I had decided to omit the Oils' aspect for reasons of length.  From hindsight I should have included it.  The comments on that issue are below.

For the benefit of overseas visitors, Midnight Oil was an Australian rock band whose music  prominently focused on social issues, especially environmental matters and matters relating to indigenous people.  Lead singer Peter Garrett has been a Member of the Australian Parliament since 2004. 

The lyrics of the Midnight Oil song Jimmy Sharman’s Boxers suggest that Sharman exploited the aboriginal boxers that were part of his troupe.  In Sharman’s defence, I have not found any evidence of exploitation of black boxers to any greater extent than exploitation of white boxers.  If he was an exploiter (which we can argue for ages), then he was an equal opportunity exploiter. 

See the song performed at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0OPPUGJAj4

The lyrics of Jimmy Sharman's Boxers are:

 

From the red dust north of Dalmore Downs Sharman's tents roll into town
Twelve will face the auctioneer
Sharman's boxers stand their ground

Their days are darker than your nights
But they won't be the first to fall
Children broken from their dreams
But they won't be the first to fall [ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/m/midnight_oil/jimmy_sharmans_boxers.html ]
Fighting in the spotlight
Eyes turn blacker than their skin
For Jimmy Sharman's boxers
It's no better if you win
Standing in the darkness
Lined up waiting for the bell
The days are wasted drinking
At the first and last hotel

Why are we fighting for this?
Why are you paying for this?
You pay to see me fall like shrapnel to the floor
What is the reason for this?
There is a reason for this?
What is the reason they keeping coming back for more?

The blows now bring him to his knees
But still the crowd calls out for more
The drums are burning in his ears
The man keeps counting out the score

Cold Chisel, another Oz rock group, also made reference to Jimmy Sharman’s boxing tents in their song Yesterdays:

Baby, that's ok, I'll live to fight another day
Black man, on the ropes
At Jimmy Sharman's fighting ring
I've seen a lot of things before I had the time to sort them through
I'm takin' time for you

Yesterdays are gone, we don't need them now

After all is said and never done
Take a long term view
Everybody blows a few
It's a game, it's a game, it's a game and it's the only one

Maybe  black fighters in a white man’s boxing tent simply makes a good metaphor for indigenous issues.

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Quote: Bill Clinton

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“The divide of race has been America's constant curse. Each new wave of immigrants gives new targets to old prejudices. Prejudice and contempt, cloaked in the pretense of religious or political conviction, are no different. They have nearly destroyed us in the past. They plague us still. They fuel the fanaticism of terror. They torment the lives of millions in fractured nations around the world. These obsessions cripple both those who are hated and, of course, those who hate, robbing both of what they might become.”

-          Bill Clinton

 

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (1946 - ) served as the 42^nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, the third youngest president, he is the first president of the baby boomer generation. Clinton left office with the highest end-of-office approval rating of any U.S. president since World War II and has continued to achieve high ratings in public opinion polls.

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:

Pulitzer Prize for Photography: Nat Fein, 1949

 

Year:  1949 

Award:  Pulitzer Prize for Photography 

Photographer:  Nathaniel Fein of the Herald Tribune 

Photograph:  “Babe Ruth Bows Out”

Comments: 

George Herman Ruth, Jr (1895-1948), best known as "Babe" Ruth and nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Sultan of Swat", was an American baseball player who spent 22 seasons in Major League Baseball, playing for three teams (1914–1935). Known for his hitting brilliance, Ruth is credited with changing baseball itself. The popularity of the game exploded in the 1920s, largely due to his influence. Ruth ushered in the “live-ball era”, as his big swing led to escalating home run totals that not only excited fans, but helped baseball evolve from a low-scoring, speed-dominated game to a high-scoring power game. He has since become regarded as one of the greatest sports heroes in American culture.  Ruth's legendary power and charismatic personality made him a larger than life figure in the “Roaring Twenties” and he is now regarded as the first true American sports celebrity superstar whose fame transcended baseball.  Off the field he was famous for his charity, but also was noted for his often reckless lifestyle.  Ruth has been named the greatest baseball player of all time in various surveys and rankings. 

Following his retirement in 1935 he attempted coaching but without success.  He assisted with the American legions youth baseball program and appeared on radio, both as a guest and as host of his own shows.

From 1946 he was in poor health.  Cancer treatments failed to eradicate the cancers from which he was suffering.   In ill health with throat cancer, he nonetheless attended the 25th anniversary celebration of the opening of Yankee Stadium in 1948. He was reunited with old teammates from the 1923 Yankee team and posed for photographs.  

Nathaniel Fein’s photo of Ruth taken from behind, showing Ruth leaning on his baseball bat as a cane, standing apart from the other players and facing "Ruthville" (right field) became one of baseball's most famous and widely circulated photographs.  

The celebration also honoured Ruth by retiring his Number 3 to the Bseball Hall of Fame in New York, that number not to be used again by the Yankees.  His speech and bow to the crowd was not only a farewell to baseball, but a farewell to life.  

The fans watched and cheered as Ruth slowly made his way onto the field.  Fifty thousand had attended to pay their respects to one of baseball’s greats. 

Two months after the photograph was taken he was dead. 

Nat Fein was a photographer of people.  He liked to work out the best viewpoints, the best angles and the most interesting items to emphasise in photographs.  He had Ruth slumped in the dugout, weakened by illness. According to Fein, "He looked tired, very tired; the power that had been his in his youth and manhood was slowly ebbing away.”

''When we were in the dressing room, he sat beside his old No. 3 locker and we made a picture there,'' Mr. Fein wrote in an unpublished memoir. ''Then he pulled out the belt showing how much thinner he'd got and I wanted to make a picture then, but they told me he's going to have all he can do to get out there -- he's a very sick man -- and the least bother here as possible because there's going to be a ceremony outside.” 

Fein took several photographs but was not satisfied with what he had.  He walked to the other side and was behind Ruth.  "I saw Ruth standing there with his uniform, No. 3, the number that would be retired, and knew that was the shot. It was a dull day, and most photographers were using flash bulbs, but I slowed the shutter and took the picture without a flash." 

The photograph was initially published in the Herald Tribune sports section but was later moved to the front page, eventually becoming one of America’s best known sports photograph, an icon of an icon.

Fein (1914-2000) worked for the New York Herald Tribune for 33 years.  He won more press photo awards than any of his contemporaries and was considered to be one of the greatest human interest photographers in journalism.

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