Today is May Pang’s birthday and I thought that warranted a special announcement here.

I consider May Pang a very special friend to the podcast/website. Over the five years (our birthday is next Friday) that this show has existed, I’ve had the pleasure of talking to some extraordinary Beatle related people. Denny Seiwell was a masterful musician, and Rod Davis (a Quarrymen) has been there from the start. I haven’t had the pleasure of talking to Ringo or Paul (I have my hopes), but the closest thing to that was an actual Beatle. I hung out backstage with Pete Best himself. All very unforgettable experiences. But May Pang will always be special. May Pang was the first.

Before the podcast was on iTunes, before the website was up and running, I was just a little campus radio show growing my legs. I was 18 turning 19 and in  my first year at “Florida Atlantic University”. I was devouring every Beatle book I could read and in 2004 (thanks to Beatle freak Lisa) I was able to borrow a copy of the must sought after “Loving John”, which is May’s first book. I read the book as often as I could, even sneaking it during some college classes.

I ventured onto the internet to check out May’s website and decided to shoot off an e-mail asking for an interview on the show. Being 18 years old and producing a campus radio show which only had a few episodes out, I figured it would be a tough sell. She agreed to do it which was a big deal for me.

The road from agreeing to the do the interview and having the interview actually get done was a long one. At one point we spoke on the phone for a pre-interview arrangement and it was for about an hour. I was in seventh heaven because as a Beatles fan she was like a celebrity to me. It was months later (Feb 2005) when we actually got it done. You can here the interview in all it’s glory by clicking here. You can hear my nervousness at the beginning. I tried to make the interview different by asking her something different than all the same questions which have answers that can be found in her book.

Over the years we kept in touch through casual e-mails. We discussed little things like her brief reunion with Yoko a few years ago and the controversial “Walls and Bridges” remasters. My friend Maddy found out meeting her at a Beatles convention in Canada. I sent Maddy an extra copy of “Loving John” to get signed as a gift. Maddy and May apparently discussed my “cookyness”.

Then earlier this year I made the trip to Georgia to see May and Nancy Andrews photo exhibit. I got to meet May in person and she was wonderful. She spent hours at the reception speaking with all the fans answering all the questions she could. It was a blast. Nancy Andrews was great too, but that is another post for another time.

May doesn’t always get the credit in Beatles history she deserves, but she carries herself with dignity. She’s always willing to talk to Beatles fans and answer questions, including this fan. That first interview with her was our first step from being a campus radio show to becoming what we are now. Happy Birthday May,  I hope it’s awesome.

Joseph Azize Page
Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

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John Lennon & May Pang

“# 9 DREAM”

I once had a dream where I was sweeping the cloistered walk of a temple courtyard. It strangely resembled one I had seen in Turkey: ostensibly a school of traditional music, I had suspected that this Turkish school was in fact connected with Sufism. In my dream, as in life, a strong sense of peace of security possessed the scene. Across one of the cloisters there were hung brightly woven curtains. I was quite light-hearted, and was almost finished sweeping, when someone asked me if I would like to have my fortune told. Across the courtyard garden, others were having their palms read by women who were barely more than teenagers. It all seemed a bit of a hoot, so, in a spirit of fun, I said yes, I would have my fortune told. Directly, someone said that the fortune-teller had arrived, and I felt a slight tremor. When I saw her, something inside me drew back. She was a tall and noble African, with high cheek-bones, a multi-coloured turban, and something of that impersonal, hierarchical presence which Nina Simone commanded. She seemed to displace the air rather than to walk, and she was accompanied by two men, one a bearded man in middle age, and the other an unshaven and demented youth. Somehow, I knew that they meant business. This was the real thing. I was in two minds about going ahead with the consultation, but I found my courage. I sat cross-legged, opposite her, while the two men looked on. She took my left hand with her right, and drew my arm forward. Then she laid the fingers of her left hand on the flesh of my left forearm, placing a slight pressure on the veins. Immediately, sensation filled my body and flowed over into an electric sensation, which took me into another state.

I know how far short these words fall of communicating the experience, and its present significance for me. Yet, the dream is a source of confidence. Perhaps the most I can do is suggest something which you can then relate to a similar dream you may have had. However, some poets and musicians have had more success in communicating these sendings. Samuel Taylor Coleridge managed to evoke an eerie power in “Kubla Khan”, his account of an opium dream. Interestingly, he was moved by the music he heard played and sang by “an Abyssinian maid” with a dulcimer. However, the music had passed from him, as it were, causing him to say that “If I could revive within me her symphony and song”, it would make him a man of altogether different capacities and powers.

I feel that in “#9 Dream”, John Lennon fulfilled something of Coleridge’s yen, and has fashioned a fantasy-ruby, an auditory vision of roughly four and a half minutes’ duration. The first time I heard this song, even though it was on a battered old radio with knobs and switches falling off it, I was entranced and physically affected, I could hardly stand. As is the way of things, no subsequent listening has ever had the same effect, but maybe now the experience goes deeper, to a place which is not so easily overcome by shock. Certainly, the song has benignly haunted me for 35 years. Frequently I sing to myself the opening words: “So long ago: was it in a dream? Was it just a dream?” Even now, it conjures in me a different focus, as it were. It reverberates with echoes of a far-away time, a far-away place, of people and spirits separated only by a veil dancing just beyond my finger tips. The tempo of the song is neither slow nor “dreamy”, and is all the truer to dreams for taking a pleasant walking pace. The nice tread of the music contributes to the sense of visionary reality – there is nothing hallucinatory about this song, unlike “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”. Yet, the melody line takes its time; the words are not hurried. Some of the key words are subtly sustained, or given a light stress. It sounds as if Lennon is singing the following:

So-oh long ago: was it in a dream? Was it just a dream?
I-hi know-oh, yes, I know, seemed so very real
Seemed so (un)real to me –
Took a walk down the street,
Through the heat whispered trees.
I thought I could hear, hear, hear, hear
Somebody called my name – “John, John”,
As it started to rain – “John”,
Two spirits dancing so strange,
Ah! bawawaka, po-say, po-say.
Ah! bawawaka, po-say, po-say.
Ah! bawawaka, po-say, po-say.
Dream, dream away – magic in the air, was magic in the air?
I believe, yes I believe,
More I cannot say, what more can I say?
On a river of sound,
Through the mirror go round (round),
I thought I could feel, feel, feel, feel
Music touching my soul, (whispering)
Something warm sudden cold,
The spirit dance was un-fold-ing,
Ah! bawawaka, po-say, po-say.
Ah! bawawaka, po-say, po-say.
Ah! bawawaka, po-say, po-say.
Ah! bawawaka, po-say, po-say (continued)

May Pang, Lennon’s then girlfriend, whispers his name and some other words I cannot quite make out after the words “music touching my soul”. There is nothing dramatic about Lennon’s delivery or the music, they are almost understated, and yet they leave an impression. “So long ago: was it in a dream? Was it just a dream?” I cannot imagine these words being sung to any other tune, or the tune having more appropriate words. In fact, all the words come out as naturally as if he were speaking them with the unpractised emphasis of everyday conversation.

It seemed so very real, Lennon sings, and then he seems to say that it “seemed so unreal to me”. Perhaps he was only taking an audible breath before saying “real”. But it has always sounded to me as if he were saying “real” and then “unreal”. He both said and unsaid himself in an unreleased version of the Beatles’ song “Revolution”. which was faithfully shown in the movie Imagine, so it is not impossible. The song seems to imply that reality and unreality are two sides of one coin in this dream existence. Indeed, the difference between them is only a question of realisation. Once it has been dreamed, once it has been imagined, the concept or feeling can be realised, even if the realisation is itself an act of imaginative recreation.

I recall that Lennon was interviewed by a Sydney radio station when the album Walls and Bridges was released in 1974. He said that in the song he had described the dream exactly as it happened: so he will have seen himself walking down a familiar street, in hot weather, as trees whispered to him, and someone called his name. The DJ asked him about the spirit mantra “Ah! bawawaka, po-say, po-say”. Lennon answered with disarming simplicity that this was what it sounded to him the spirits were saying.

Was magic in the air? he asks. And he replies, yes, he believes it was. As I have indicated, dreams can comfort, they can console, teach and inspire belief. Thus it was for Lennon: as Lennon fans scholars well know, “nine” was for Lennon the number of destiny, it was his number. For many years he had taken drugs to break free from “the straitjacket of the self”, as he said. Now, through a dream, he was able to go through a mirror and around: through the image, coming back to reality having seen the other side of his perception.

Finally he asks, what more could he say? And what can he say about this mystery? What can be said by anyone about any mystery? Yet, he has described something almost beyond description. Could you imagine a song with the lyrics “I went through the image and came back to reality having seen the other side of my perception”? This is what he has done with the simple words “through the mirror go round”.
It seems to me that Lennon did receive an intimation of something high, I might say “sacred”, in this dream. First, however, we must say a few words about dreaming.

Dreams are the work, in Gurdjieff’s terms, of the “moving centre” (“moving brain”). This centre, which is in charge of our learned movements such as walking, talking, playing guitar, cleaning dishes and so on, continues with a certain consciousness while we are asleep. Generally, and especially during deep sleep, it is not connected with the intellectual or emotional brains, and so the next morning we do not recall the dreams. But if we are not fully asleep, then a faint connection between the centres may subsist, and the intellect can recall something of a dream the next morning. The moving centre, unlike the intellectual centre, is not logical, it does not have a sense of non-contradiction. Therefore, Gurdjieff said, it allows illogicalities and impossibilities, the dreamer can speak with people who are dead. To the extent that the moving and intellectual brains are disconnected during dreams, dreams can be illogical. Gurdjieff told this to Mme Lannes, and she passed the information on to Mr Adie, which is why I can confidently attribute it to Gurdjieff.

I extrapolate from this that to the extent that the moving and the feeling brains are unconnected, our dreams can have emotional aspects – even fearsomely emotional aspects – but the moving centre does not know this, so it blithely goes on creating dungeons and other tortures for us. Meanwhile, the emotional centre is being racked by torments, but is unable to convey this to the moving centre. It may, however, succeed in getting its message to the instinctive centre (which controls the work of the organism one does not have to consciously learn, such as breathing, the circulation of the blood, digestion and so on). And when the message gets through, we awaken. What Gurdjieff does not tell us is why the moving brain dreams, and whether all dreams necessarily come from moving brain.
George Adie’s view, with which I agree, is that the moving centre dreams as a form of digestion. Impressions are received during the waking day, and these impressions are not necessarily fully understood or grasped by the other centres (see the diary note of 4 February 1987 in George Mountford Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia, 283). Some impressions are fairly unimportant, and leave little trace. So little trace do they leave that they appear in dreams only as background. But the concerns of our moving centre, and hence our dreams, tend to be things which are of substantial importance to us. Generally, I find, they relate to two fields: (a) matters where our ideas and feelings are as yet unresolved, and (b) the transfer of patterns from intellectual centre to moving centre. First, unresolved matters. If I have a bad conscience about something (using that phrase in its ordinary sense), if something has disturbed me, or, on the other hand, if something caused me pleasure or an intense hope, it may reappear in dreams. It is as though the moving centre has to file everything away into the tidiest possible place. We are made for order. Significant matters need extra filing, as it were. They demand extra attention, and if they are not given satisfactory attention during the day from the intellectual centre, then they demand it, so to speak, in sleep. So the connection between the moving and intellectual centres is re-established, albeit weakly, the prominent event is gone over with the help of the intellect, and it is given new associations in the psyche – it is acclimatized, as it were.

The filing carried out by the moving brain is not at all conducted in the way the intellectual or the emotional centre would carry it out. It seems to be performed according to a method of random associations or, if not entirely random, of associations possessing a similar intensity, and not necessarily of similar concepts. The result of this is that strong impressions often produce strong dreams where one cannot say what the dream message is, except that the impression was considered important.

The second major function of the moving centre in sleep seems to me to be to allow it to acquire skills learned by the intellectual centre during the day. As Gurdjieff correctly pointed out, I learn typing with the intellect, I have to. But eventually the moving brain takes it over, and does a better job: it does not have to think about every little thing. Well, I suspect that sleep is when the moving centre has a clear field, in which it can learn these things without being crowded out by the head. This would explain why the better we sleep the better we learn.

All this suggests two things to me: one is that we are made to understand. I can hardly insist on this enough, because at the moment there is, in some circles, a sort of exaggerated enthusiasm for non-understanding. It is true that some things cannot be understood, but that hardly means that we should not try to understand them. The very attempt may bring more understanding, or a grasp of other matters. Indeed, I suspect that the allure of the mysterious is a providential arrangement to arouse our curiosity, to evoke a pure love of knowledge and discovery. To anaesthetize that impulse, so readily observed in children is, it seems to me, criminal. I repeat, the fact that our organism knocks out our intellect in order to use dreaming to arrange and organize the day’s events seems to me to be evidence that we are designed to seek understanding and the harmonisation of our various impressions.

Also, and I add this to the blog because the idea may prove useful for some people, I have found that by carrying out the exercise of reviewing the day, I have fewer dreams, and those I do have tend to be less intense. I refer here to the Gurdjieff exercise whereby one casts one’s mind eye over the events of the day, and pauses when one comes to anything important or worrying. It is not necessary to think about these things, let alone to conduct an amateur psycho-analysis. In fact, that may cause new problems. All that is necessary is to put oneself before the memories, and then, I often find, a clearer understanding starts to appear.

To understand “#9 Dream”, and something of the process of art (higher art), I also think that some dreams come from other centres than the moving brain: they can be the products of higher emotional centre, and therefore speak in a natural symbolism – and this is emphatically not the symbolism of dream dictionaries. The higher emotional and higher intellectual centres are the two faculties, existing in every person, which are the means of receiving and transmitting influences from beyond this sensory world. When contact is made between the intellect, and the higher emotional centre, said Gurdjieff: “man experiences new emotions, new impressions hitherto entirely unknown to him, for the description of which he has neither words nor expressions.” However, because we are so rarely in such a state of connection, ” we fail to hear within us the voices which are speaking and calling to us from the higher emotional centre.” (P.D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 194-195).

My view is that Lennon heard these voices of the higher emotional centre calling him in a dream, and hence we have this marvellous song. As May Pang said, when Lennon woke up the morning after the dream, he had the words and the music together. If there has been a gift from the gods in modern music, this, I would say, is it. So the mystery of dreams is, or at least can be, related to the mystery of the life of the soul, the spiritual life. And Lennon made the connection.
As I said in the last blog, Lennon invites us into mystery. He does not make the mistake of trying to strip away the wonder by saying too much. He displays the magic, as it were, by presenting it, highlighted, in his own river of sound (and it should be added that Phil Spector was probably the perfect producer to work with Lennon on this piece). “#9 Dream” marks the high water mark of a tide which had begun with “There’s A Place”, on the Please Please Me album. Between these two points, there is a reasonably substantial body of work which forms a connecting trail. I cannot cover all of it, but in the next Lennon blog, I shall deal with one central concept: the use of creative imagination. I am referring, obviously, to what is Lennon’s signature tune, the classic “Imagine”.

Joseph.Azize@googlemail.com

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Joseph Azize has published in ancient history, law and Gurdjieff studies. His first book The Phoenician Solar Theology treated ancient Phoenician religion as possessing a spiritual depth comparative with Neoplatonism, to which it contributed through Iamblichos. The second book, “Gilgamesh and the World of Assyria”, was jointly edited with Noel Weeks. It includes his article arguing that the Carthaginians did not practice child sacrifice.

The third book, George Mountford Adie: A Gurdjieff Pupil in Australia represents his attempt to present his teacher (a direct pupil of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky) to an international audience.The fourth book, edited and written with Peter El Khouri and Ed Finnane, is a new edition of Britts Civil Precedents. He recommends it to anyone planning to bring proceedings in an Australian court of law.

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On the night of August 23, 1974, John Lennon and May Pang were hanging out in their small penthouse apartment at 434 East 52nd Street, a 1928 Art Deco building that’s part of the Southgate complex just before the East River.

After walking out on the balcony to catch a breeze from the river, Lennon suddenly shouted for Pang to come see something in the sky—a flying saucer.

As Pang recounted in her 1983 book, Loving John: “My eye caught this large, circular object coming toward us. It was shaped like a flattened cone and on top was a large, brilliant red light. . . . When it came a little closer, we could make out a row or circle of white lights that ran around the entire rim of the craft.

“It was, I estimate, about the size of a Lear jet and it was so close that if we had something to throw at it, it probably would have hit it quite easily.”

Pang said that she and John called the police, who told them to relax—other New Yorkers called in the UFO sighting too.

Did Lennon and Pang really see a spaceship? The object zipped out of view and was apparently never spotted again or explained by authorities. So who knows? Strange days indeed.

…but a long, long way for Terry and Jill.

So sang Yoko Ono in her song “What A Bastard The World Is,”  off of  her 1973 album Approximately Infinite Universe, which is probably her most listenable (i.e., least experimental) album. This track is a treasure. Yoko, pissed at John for infidelities, orders him to leave while begging him not to go. The best line: You know the whole world is/ occupied by you pigs/ I can always find another/ pig like you.

What A Bastard The World Is

 The song reveals the dissension forming in their marriage. John and Yoko separated in 1974 when John began a relationship with their assistant May Pang. The relationship was fully endorsed by Ono, but when it proved to have staying power, she was naturally upset. John later described this 18-month period as his “lost weekend.” 

Wow, May Pang is very Britney Spears ca. 2001 in this photo. 

It was during this “lost weekend” that John went out to L.A. to produce Harry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats album. He and Nilsson basically unravelled together: Nilsson ruptured a vocal chord, and John, who’d gone cold turkey with Yoko five years earlier, fell off the wagon. 

From Pussy Cats, a cover of the Shirley & Lee song- which pretty much sums up the recording sessions. 

Let The Good Times Roll

New Orleans natives Shirley & Lee were marketed as lovers, but in truth were just a great vocal combination, and great songwriters.  Here’s one of my fave Shirley & Lee tracks. Shirley has a unique voice. Enough said. 

I’ve Been Loved Before

Lastly, goodbye, Eartha Kitt. And Merry Christmas. It’s almost over.  I’ve spent the last week in Mississippi with family, and it’s been very beneficial to this city bear. 

The qoutes quote before this post was taken from May Pang’s latest book (as of this writing) called “Instamatic Karma”.

The “Instamatic Karma” is a book with never before seen photos of John Lennon during the supposedly “Lost Weekend” in Los Angeles.

Anyway, like I said, a disclaimer that the quote was taken (although it’s probably out there in the internet) from May Pang’s book… And there will be others to follow from that book.. Because I bought a copy.

Now, if May Pang (or her publisher) happen to stumble upon this blog and found out that I may have made a copyright violation or something, I would gladly remove the post (and the future posts).

That’s all… Beatles forever!

“We’re getting a cab and I’m coming home with you” – John Lennon

the other woman keeps playing in my headphones.

which led to this post from the famous other, may pang.

an astonishing discovery: john wore women’s jeans.

El de la izquierda no es precisamente Mark Spitz (¡qué grande fue el del bigote!). Es John Lennon, en una época a la que él se refería en las entrevistas como su “Lost Weekend”.

Desde el verano de 1973 hasta comienzos de 1975 (que se reconcilió con Yoko Ono), Lennon vivió con May Pang. Aunque generalmente se considera que durante esos años Lennon estuvo en estado depresivo y fuera de control, May Pang considera que fue una época muy productiva para el músico.

Instamatic Karma es el libro que acaba de sacar a la venta la señora Pang: una selección de las fotos que hizo durante los dos años que vivió con Lennon. Podéis leer un artículo sobre el libro y ver algunas fotos en la web del New York Times (haced clic AQUÍ).

Y como he hecho referencia a Mark Spitz, los más jóvenes podéis hacer clic en la portada de la revista Time para conocer quién era (y es, que está vivo)

Y por si alguien entró aquí pensando que el título hacía referencia al peliculón de Billy Wilder, The Lost Weekend (1945), os dejo AQUÍ un enlace. Por cierto: espero que escriba algo Julio, que se conoce la película al dedillo.

Por último, y atendiendo al comentario de Ricardo, he recordado que Lloyd Cole tiene una excelente canción llamada Lost Weekend. Escuchadla aquí: