John Lennon & Plastic Ono Band - Live at Toronto - 1969 [Full Concert]

When is it time to call it quits? It was 50 years ago this month that the world learned that the Beatles had broken up. Paul McCartney released a solo album that included a press release that said the Beatles were basically over and done with. Ever since, scholars and fans have tried to assign blame for the break up. In the 1970s into the 1980s, everyone blamed Paul. But the consensus has changed. Most people now pin the blame on John.

What we've learned is that the Beatles held a band meeting right after they completed their final album, Abbey Road. It was September 1969. The Beatles were wondering what to do next. Paul thought they should return to the road and become a touring band again. But Lennon and George Harrison nixed that idea. Touring was a pain in the ass.

Paul really wanted to keep things moving. John had had enough. He told the band he wanted a divorce, like the one he'd had with Cynthia, the nice Liverpool girl that John had married before the Beatles became famous. He left Cynthia for Yoko Ono. When Paul came up with touring ideas, John said, "I think you're daft." He then announced he was leaving the band.

There was a problem, though. The Beatles' new manager, Allen Klein, reminded the band that they were about to sign a new contract with EMI Records, and that their higher royalty rate would be jeopardized if the Beatles announced the breakup. Klein was right. He was a bulldog accountant if there ever was one, and he ended up driving a wedge between the band because Paul did not want Klein to take charge. But you don't jeopardize a new contract. And besides, the others thought John was going through one of his phases. John had been acting out lately, and his drug problem was affecting his judgment and his productivity. At around this time, he actually told the Beatles entourage that he believed he was Jesus Christ and he wanted to tell the world. As it was, John actually looked like Jesus Christ at the time, with the long hair and beard and all. But, no, he was not Jesus Christ, and the others told John to hold off on the announcement because the world was not ready for this kind of news. John agreed and moved onto some other obsession.

It wasn't like the band was getting along at this time. Ringo had quit the band for a few weeks in 1968 as they recorded the White Album. He was sick of the arguing. And George Harrison quit for a brief period during the Let it Be sessions in early 1969. Their engineer, Geoff Emerick, only a few years after taking on the dream job of working with the Beatles, begged off the assignment by then because he could not handle the tension. And except for some mop-up work on the Let it Be album (recorded prior to Abbey Road) in January 1970, the Beatles never worked together again. And that mop-up did not include John. He was off on a new tangent at the time, doing his peace stuff with Yoko.

Beatles scholars think the band had not closed off the future by this point. There was always tomorrow. Bands did not really break up in the late 1960s, and those that did usually did so with fanfare, like Cream. Other bands forged ahead without key members if they had to. The Beatles had done it all by 1969, and they were approaching their peak as musicians and songwriters. Last year, a tape recording surfaced of another band meeting in which the Beatles talked about ways to record a follow-up to Abbey Road, giving each member four songs per album. So the September 1969 meeting may not have been the end.

But other Beatles scholars think John made up his mind to leave the band when he recorded Cold Turkey, his first solo single. The Beatles had rejected that song, so John created the Plastic Ono Band and found other musicians to work with him on the song. And still other scholars think John got ideas about going solo when he did a concert in Toronto in late 1969 on his own.

Let's go with that theory for a minute. The Beatles had not played before a live audience since August 1966. They stopped touring because the concerts were crazy. The girls were screaming, the band could not hear itself play, they wanted to spend more time in the studio, and their first album following that decision was Sgt. Pepper. So who needs concerts? Yet, the rest of the rock and roll world was performing all over the place. The Rolling Stones hit the road again in 1969 after taking three years off. And don''t forget Woodstock and the other rock festivals that year.

The Toronto show was one of those festivals. It featured the old timers, like Chuck Berry, who were not even that old yet. Lennon was asked to play, and he accepted, bringing along Eric Clapton, Klaus Voormann and Alan White as his pick-up band. Clapton was an obvious choice, a friend of the Beatles who played on the White Album. The Beatles knew Voormann from their Hamburg days of the early 1960s. He went on to play bass for Manfred Mann and guested on some of the Beatles' solo albums of the early 1970s. White became the drummer for Yes. Since the band did not have much time to rehearse, they played the songs they all knew, including Money and Blue Suede Shoes. And that's what you got in this video below. Plus some pyrotechnics from Yoko.

John is really enjoying himself during this performance. Maybe he realized he did not need the Beatles anymore. Time to break out with other musicians. Maybe breaking up the band he had started was not such a bad thing. This concert was about 10 days before John told Paul he was daft. The Beatles never worked together again. All things must pass.

Led Zeppelin - Kashmir (Madison Square Garden) 1975

I often think about the 20/20 hindsight that pinpoints when a band reached the peak of its career. Sometimes it happens when the band does not realize it. You only appreciate the peak after-the-fact. When did Led Zeppelin peak? I would say it began 47 minutes and 55 minutes into this show at Madison Square Garden in February 1975. That is when the band played Kashmir to 20,000 people who were hearing the song for the first time.

By 1975, Led Zeppelin were the biggest rock band in music. The band was in it eighth year, having released one blockbuster album after another. The fourth album, released in 1971, was their greatest record, wall-to-wall hard rock and folk, climaxing with Stairway to Heaven. The band toured the United States in 1972, 1973 and again in 1975. They toured the U.S. again in 1977. The 1977 tour (their last in the U.S.) was not considered a good one. It got off to a late start because singer Robert Plant had laryngitis. The tour ended early because Plant's young son died from natural causes. From what I have read, the band's performances during the 1977 tour were not stellar. There were drug problems, for starters. One year earlier, Led Zeppelin released Presence, a good album, but few fans place it in their top three Led Zeppelin albums. The band did not break new ground with Presence, and the album was recorded after Robert Plant was seriously injured in a car accident in August 1975. He sang most of the tracks sitting down. And after 1977, the band only released one more album, a good one but not great, and they broke up in 1980 after the drummer died from alcohol poisoning.

Prior to Plant's auto accident, 1975 was their last great year, when Led Zeppelin released their only double album, Physical Graffiti. When a great band issues a two-record set, that album becomes their defining moment. This one included tracks that were rejected from prior albums. No matter. Physical Graffiti was four album sides of stellar music of varying styles. The standout track is Kashmir. If you have listened to the radio over the last 40 years, you know Kashmir, one of the two contenders for LZ's "greatest song of all time," along with Stairway to Heaven.

Here is what interests me. Imagine you're a Led Zeppelin fan. It's 1975. Scoring a ticket to their Madison Square Garden concerts that year made you the king of your high school. You know the band's back catalogue and hope to hear Stairway and other classics. You'll get that at the Garden. But what you don't know is that Led Zeppelin will be playing stuff from their new, yet-unreleased album, including Kashmir. Remember what it felt like to hear Kashmir for the first time? Imagine hearing it for the first time at the Garden.

Now imagine you're Led Zeppelin. You are on top of the world. The band had its own airplane, Physical Graffiti was going to debut at number 3 on the charts, a rare occurrence back then. The Garden was the showcase for the most popular bands in music. Plant was in a good mood. He mentioned during the show that the snowfall in NYC gave the city a nice "vibe." Good observation. The band was about to debut one of its greatest songs. At this precise moment, LZ was on top of the world. They had it all. Things would never be the same. The song starts at 47:55.

This is what 2020 sounds like

I knew a lawyer who used to talk with me about music, literature and related matters whenever we saw each other. In one of our last conversations before he died suddenly a few years ago, he told me that he was getting into Van Morrison's Astral Weeks album for the first time even though it was released in 1968, when he was in his late teens. He said Astral Weeks sounded exactly what 1968 felt like. I told him I was surprised to hear that. Astral Weeks is a laid-back, jazzy album with a spiritual side. It was not the Van Morrison that most people have come to associate with that artist, i.e., Brown Eyed Girl and Moondance. I reminded my friend that 1968 was a violent year: riots, the Vietnam War, assassinations, etc. My friend was politically-minded, so I thought he might agree with me. He did not. He insisted that Astral Weeks captured what 1968 felt like.


What does 2020 feel like? It's a very discordant year, and we are all watching it unravel. In the past, I would read about pandemics in passing. It was always a threat lurking in the background, but the newspaper and public officials did not dwell on the topic for long. I did not know anything about pandemics except that they involve a virus that is spread easily. We all know about pandemics now.


In 2019, I was reading some commentary on a music discussion board about a musician, Mark Hollis, who died at the early age of 64. Hollis was the bandleader for Talk Talk, a band I had heard of but knew nothing about. They had a hit in the early 1980s "It's My Life" that sounded like a sophisticated Duran Duran. After that, nothing, at least not for me. I did not know until Hollis's death that Talk Talk went on to release an album in 1988 that many music fans worship as a moody, meditative, and emotional record, the crown jewel of Talk Talk's recording career. I gave it a listen and read some reviews of the album. The album apparently was the start of something called "post rock," which for the 1980s meant it was no longer the usual loud-drums-and-power-ballads that we'd grown accustomed to 35 years ago. I hear some Pink Floyd in this album, and now I know where Radiohead must have gotten some of its ideas. The highlight for me is I Believe in You, the penultimate track. It moves slowly, but the melody is there, and the bass line picks up midway through the track, giving the song a special intensity.


One fan review of this album said this is the sound of the Earth crying. I agree. Little did that reviewer know the Earth would be crying in 2020. You may not make it all the way through this album; it takes some getting used to. If you give it a few listens, it may grow on you. It grew on me last year. I did not know it would foreshadow this year.