I love the guitars in this song. Great hooks all the way around. This song was not released as a single…I would have bought it.
This song was on their debut album All Over The Place. It was written by Hoffs and Peterson. The song has no mention of Dover in the lyric…the title comes from the poem Dover Beach, published by the Englishman Matthew Arnold in 1867. The beach in question is the one at the bottom of the white cliffs in Dover, England, as in the 1940 song “The White Cliffs Of Dover.”
When they released this song they were part of the Paisley Underground scene… a Los Angeles scene with bands like Rain Parade, The Dream Syndicate, Green On Red, and others. The Bangles were undoubtedly the most successful band to come out of that group of bands.
Their album All Over The Place was released in 1984. It didn’t have a hit single and the album only peaked at #80 on the Billboard 100, #32 in New Zealand, and #86 in the UK. However…the album sold respectively and stayed on the charts for 30 weeks and that set their next album up.
Their next album Different Light shot them to stardom with the hits Manic Monday, Walk Like An Egyptian and my favorite song by them… If She Knew What She Wants. They made just one more album called Everything before breaking up in 1989. It had the hits In Your Room and Eternal Flame.
Dover Beach, although not a single, remains on their current setlist.
Vickie Peterson: “Susanna and I were slightly geekish about opening the Norton Anthology of English Literature, flipping through that and going, ‘Hey, this is a great line.’ She had come across the Matthew Arnold poem Dover Beach at some point and that inspired that song, that idea of applying the fantasy of escape and the reality of what that would really mean. It was a really fun time to just mine the world for ideas.”
Dover Beach
If I had the time
I would run away with you
To a perfect world
We’d suspend all that is duty or required.
Late last night you cried
And I couldn’t come to you
But on the other side
You and I, inseparable and walking.
Yeah, oh woe.
If we could steal away
Like jugglers and thieves
But we could come and go
Oh, and talk of Michaelangelo.
Oh woe.
If we had the time (we had the time)
We had the time.
The day you looked at me
And it was on your mind
The world is no one’s dream
We will never ever find the time.
Oh woe.
If we had the time
I would run away with you
To a perfect world
(To a perfect world).
It all started with a cracked single of the song Eleanor by The Turtles when I was a kid. I was hooked on this band and soon got the greatest hits. They had some nice pop songs in their catalog. If you ever get a chance to see Flo and Eddie…go see them. I saw them on July 20, 1987, with many more bands…though not many original members, Flo and Eddie were there though. They kicked off the concert with Bon Jovi’s Shot Through The Hot…and said…”No no…we don’t play that crap…we play this crap” and proceeded to start playing their songs. I saw them at the local minor league baseball team’s stadium…they played at the end of the game.
This song was written by Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon…the same two who wrote their biggest hit…Happy Together.
The band was formed by Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan. They were saxophone players who did whatever was trendy in order to make a living as musicians. They were also in the choir together in high school.
They played surf-rock mostly at the time. They also played backup for The Coasters, Sonny And Cher, and The Righteous Brothers when they came through. After a while, Howard and Mark gave up the sax and became singers. They signed a deal with White Whale Records as The Crosswind Singers. When British groups took over America, they tried to pass themselves off as British singers and renamed themselves The Turtles.
Like The Byrds, The Turtles recorded a Bob Dylan song for their first single It Ain’t Me Babe and it was a hit. In 1967 they released Happy Together which peaked at #1. She’s Rather Be With Me was the follow-up single. Not a bad song to follow up the massive hit. This song peaked at #1 in Canada, #3 on the Billboard 100, #8 in New Zealand, and #4 in the UK in 1967. The two songs were on their album Happy Together. It peaked at #25 in the Billboard Album Charts…which is peculiar with you think about it…having two singles hit #1 and #3 off of that album but they were more of a singles band.
The Turtles recorded for a small record company named White Whale. They broke up in 1970 and part of the reason was to get away from their manager…who was also their first manager that got the job again.
Volman and Kaylan were very smart. When White Whale’s master recordings were sold at auction in 1974, the duo won the Turtles’ masters, making them the owners of their own recorded work. When the 80s came around and CDs were sold…they made the money and not their old record company. They also hosted some radio shows in the 70s and 80s and recorded soundtrack music for children’s shows like the Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake.
They became known as Flo (Phlorescent Leech) and Eddie. Kaylan and Volman joined Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention as Flo and Eddie because of contractual restrictions of their record company. Kaylan and Volman sang backing vocals on several recordings by T. Rex, including their worldwide 1971 hit “Get it On (Bang A Gong). Later they did the backup vocals on Bruce Springsteen’s Hungry Heart.
If you are in any way interested in watching band documentaries… watch The Turtles doc! It is hilarious. I will include the full doc above the song.
Here is the documentary…watch it if you have time. What they did to their last manager (who was also their first) is classic! Now…I hope if you didn’t read most of this…READ NOW…if you don’t do anything else today…on the video below…their documentary… GO TO 1:12:46 and listen (or just click the link)…it’s very funny and very sad…this happened all of the time. Of course they were gullible…that helped! It is only a couple of minutes and starts with them talking about their 8 managers.
She’d Rather Be With Me
Some girls
Love to run around
Love to handle everything they see
But my girl
Has more fun around
And you know she’d rather be with me
Me oh my (me oh my, I’m a lucky guy)
Lucky guy is what I am
Tell you why, you’ll understand
She don’t fly although she can
Some boys (some boys)
Love to run around
They don’t think about the things they do
But this boy (this boy)
Wants to settle down
And you know he’d rather be with you
Me oh my (my)
Lucky guy is what I am (my)
Tell you why, you’ll understand (my)
She don’t fly although she can (my)
Some girls (some girls)
Love to run around
Love to handle everything they see
But my girl (my girl)
Has more fun around
And you know she’d rather be with
Yeah, she’d rather be with
You know she’d rather be with me
You know she’d rather be with me
You know she’d rather be with me
You know she’d rather be with me
Dave at A Sound Day gave writers a question to write about. If you could safely go back in time and move about for one day, what one concert or live performance would you choose to go to?
Well, that narrows it down to me because there are two cities that come to mind after he asked that. Now…if this was a baseball question I would go to New York in the twenties and see who I think was the best baseball player ever…Babe Ruth. But it’s music so the two cities are Hamburg and Liverpool…the Star Club in Hamburg or the Cavern in Liverpool…and I shouldn’t have to name the band.
I’m going to pick Hamburg…and the reason is The Beatles would play 6-8 hours a night compared to lunchtime sessions at the Cavern so to Germany I go! From everything I’ve read the performances there were off the charts. They played loud sweaty rock and roll there and accumulated way past 1000 hours playing there in a 3-year stretch from 1960 to 1962. It’s not a stretch to say at that time they could have had more hours on a stage than any other rock band.
The Beatles played over 250 nights in the seedy red-light district of Hamburg. If you average 6 hours a show that would be 1500 hours…that is why they could play so well with a wall of screaming in their ears later on. They would get to know the gangsters who would buy them champagne, the barmaids who would sell or give them Preludin (a type of diet pill speed so they could play all night…”prellies”), and the prostitutes who would take them in and befriend them. They also met Little Richard, Billy Preston, and Gene Vincent there.
They slowed down in 1962 and didn’t play as long of sets but at the end they had Ringo. I would want to see them in 1960-61 when Stuart Sutcliffe was on bass and Pete Best was drumming. Other bands from England started to come over but none of them had the impact of the Beatles. They lived off of prellies and beer when they played and would go have an English breakfast when they could afford it. There are pictures of them holding a Preludin metal tube (what they came in) and grinning manically.
They would write a few songs but mostly played covers through this period of learning. They caused all kinds of trouble and there were rumors of John Lennon urinating off of a balcony on nuns…but that has been disproven…no he did urinate off of balconies but left the nuns alone. He once appeared with a real toilet seat around his head on stage after being angered and ripping it off a toilet. George was booted out of the country for being underaged and Paul and Pete were accused of trying to burn down a cinema. Stuart Sutcliffe found his true love there Astrid Kirchherr. He would die in 1962 of a brain hemorrhage at 22.
When they came back from Hamburg in 1960 to Liverpool…people were amazed and at first thought, they were a German band with their all leather clothes. They were a sensation because they played like no one else. Without Hamburg…there would probably be no Beatles. After they got back they started to play the Cavern regularly and the promoters were wary of them because of their reputation but soon knew they would make them a lot of money. They were NOT the grinning moptops that the world came to love. They were rough and tough growing up in Liverpool with further education in Hamburg. Often after shows in Liverpool, they would have to fight because of the rough audiences being jealous of their girlfriends who were fawning over them.
Well, that was long-winded…but Hamburg in 1961… is where I want Dave’s time machine to take me. I might hijack it and make another trip to the Cavern if Dave is not watching. So what is the saying about rock music? Sex, drugs, and Rock and Roll? This probably helped that saying along.
There are some low-fi recordings of them in Hamburg in 1962 with Ringo drumming which shows how stripped down and raw they were.
If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog.
This show was written by Paul Schneider and Gene Roddenberry
Before we get to the review and story…this is Grace Lee Whitney’s last episode with Star Trek. There are two stories about why she was let go. I will cover it when I do the First Season review in a few weeks…it’s not good and should not have happened. She would not appear again until the first movie came out in 1979.
Excellent Episode! This episode starts off with an attempted marriage on the Enterprise with Kirk about to lead the ceremony. When everyone was ready… a distress call came and everyone went back to their posts. Romulans are attacking a space post and the Enterprise is going to investigate.
This episode is confined to the Enterprise and this is amazing because an episode just on the Enterprise could easily have been static and dull. But, because the writing was so fantastic and the main characters written and acted so well. Overall it’s very tense and exciting. For all of you die-hard Star Trek fans you will recognize Mark Lenard as the same actor who later played Spock’s father.
The Romulans and Vulcans descend from the same ancestor species…both have the same ears and some of the same traits. The writers lay down a not-so-subtle sub-text involving racial prejudice and bigotry. It’s clever that they do this by involving two alien races (Vulcans and Romulans), instead of those we are so generally used to, black and white, North and South, Semitic/anti-Semitic. It helps one to step outside the box of common stereotypes to question why one race, religion, or nationality is any better or worse than another.
Roddenberry was really well ahead of the curve on this, and he would do it again in future episodes. Rod Serling was doing the same thing through SciFi on the Twilight Zone. It looks like some of this bigotry was possibly inspired by the very vivid fear American and Russian citizens had at the time that either nation might be able to destroy the other with nuclear weapons.
Kirk takes a huge chance (a bluff) in this one…which teaches Spock about a game that he doesn’t know…poker. The acting, writing, and yes effects are all very good.
From IMDB:
Network restrictions at the time forbade the tackling of any contentious subjects such as the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement and the rise of feminism. “Star Trek”, under the guise of science fiction, boldly flouted these rules. This story, for example, openly deals with the subject of racism, as reflected through Lieutenant Stiles’ opposition to Mr Spock.
Budgetary and time constraints prevented the make-up and costuming departments from dressing up each Romulan in Vulcan ears as it was such a lengthy process applying them. So they hit on the idea of giving the lesser Romulans helmets, which were manufactured by Wah Chang. Mr. Chang was responsible for creating many iconic Star Trek hand props.
Mark Lenard plays the Romulan Commander, an apparent enemy of the Enterprise and its crew. However, later in his career, he played the famed role of Spock’s father, Sarek, and also played a Klingon in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), making him the first actor to portray the three major alien races (Vulcan, Romulan, Klingon) in the Star Trek franchise.
When Leonard Nimoy held out for a better contract after the first season, Mark Lenard and Lawrence Montaigne were the two leading candidates to replace him as Spock. Nimoy eventually got a raise from $1250 to $2500 per episode.
Two actors who played Romulans in this episode returned in later episodes as Vulcans: Mark Lenard, the Romulan Commander, played Spock’s father, Sarek, in Star Trek: Journey to Babel (1967) (and several return appearances) and Lawrence Montaigne, Decius, played Spock’s rival, Stonn, in Star Trek: Amok Time (1967).
Final TOS appearance (in airing order) of Yeoman Janice Rand, who will not appear again until Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).
Mark Lenard said, “The Romulan Commander was one of the best roles I ever had on TV”. Comparing the part with that of Sarek, Lenard elaborated, “In many ways, I did enjoy that role [Sarek], but I think the more demanding role and the better acting role was the Romulan Commander”.
Summary
The Enterprise answers a distress call from Federation Outpost #4, a monitoring station on the Federation side of the neutral zone with the Romulan Empire. The outposts were established over a century ago and no one has actually seen a Romulan. The Romulan vessel seems to have some type of high-energy explosive device as well as a cloaking device to make the ship invisible. When it appears that Romulans bear a strong resemblance to Vulcans, Kirk must deal with a rebellious crew member. He must also engage in a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with a very intelligent Romulan commander.
CAST
William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk
Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock
Mark Lenard … Romulan Commander
Paul Comi … Stiles
Lawrence Montaigne … Decius
DeForest Kelley … Doctor Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy
Grace Lee Whitney … Yeoman Janice Rand
George Takei … Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu
James Doohan … Lieutenant Commander Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott
Nichelle Nichols … Lieutenant Nyota Uhura
Stephen Mines … Tomlinson
Barbara Baldavin … Angela
Garry Walberg … Hansen
John Warburton … The Centurion
John Arndt … Ingenieur Fields (uncredited)
Bill Blackburn … Lieutenant Hadley (uncredited)
Robert Chadwick … Romulan Scanner Operator (uncredited)
Frank da Vinci … Crewman (uncredited)
Walt Davis … Romulan Crewman (uncredited)
Vince Deadrick Sr. … Romulan Crewman (uncredited)
Jeannie Malone … Yeoman (uncredited)
John Hugh McKnight … Crewman (uncredited)
Sean Morgan … Brenner (uncredited)
Eddie Paskey … Lieutenant Leslie (uncredited)
Anthony Larry Paul … Crewman (uncredited)
Ron Veto … Crewman (uncredited)
This was left over from last week so I thought today would be a good day to put it to use.
I first heard this on AM radio in the 70s as a kid. I didn’t know it was a cover at the time but later I bought Springsteen’s debut album and found it. I know I’m in the minority on this one…I like Bruce’s version more. I do like Manfred Manns’s version though…they made it an epic production and song…and if it wasn’t for their version…the song would not be as well known today so they did a great job on it. I like the way Bruce did the vocals and the extra verses are some lyrical gymnastics.
When putting their own spin on “Blinded by the Light,” Manfred Mann’s Earth Band changed a few of Springsteen’s original lyrics. The most recognizable part of the song, Blinded by the light / Revved up like a Deuce / Another runner in the night, was initially, Cut loose like a Deuce / Another runner in the night.
Bruce’s version is more stripped down as a more common song. The lyrics flow everywhere. The keyword Bruce wrote was “Deuce” and it came out as Douche in the Manfred Mann version. Bruce once said ” “Deuce was like a Little Deuce Coupe, as in a 2-seater Hot Rod. Douche is a feminine hygienic procedure. But what can I say, the public spoke.”
When the band was recording “Blinded by the Light,” they did everything they could do to make it a hit. As they played in the studio, they got stuck trying to transition between the chorus and the verses. Near the end, the drummer Chris Slade said to put the piano tune “Chopsticks” over it. Mann was skeptical of the idea and turned it down multiple times. But when Slade kept insisting, they tried it out. It worked surprisingly well.
The song peaked at #1 on the Billboard 100, #1 in Canada, #8 in New Zealand, and #6 in the UK in 1976-77.
Manfred Mann:“When we finally finished the album track I thought it had a great vibe, but the next question was how to get that into a single. The real problem was how to get from the chorus to the verse smoothly. The way we did it on the album wouldn’t work. I just couldn’t figure out a way to do it. And then – and this is why you need to be in a band – our drummer Chris Slade said: ‘Play Chopsticks over it’. We already had that elsewhere in the song, and I told him it wouldn’t work. But he kept insisting, and I kept saying no, until I suddenly realised that he wasn’t hearing Chopsticks itself, just the chords, which fitted perfectly. So we recorded those as backing vocals and added that to the original. This was in the days when you had to try and lock two tape machines in tandem, so that took another two days.”
Blinded By The Light
Blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Madman drummers bummers, Indians in the summer
with a teenage diplomat
In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps
His way into his hat
With a boulder on my shoulder, feelin’ kinda older
I tripped the merry-go-round
With this very unpleasin’ sneezin’ and wheezin’
The calliope crashed to the ground
The calliope crashed to the ground
But she was blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Some silicone sister with a manager mister
Told me I got what it takes
She said, “I’ll turn you on, sonny, to something strong
Play the song with the funky break”
And go-kart Mozart was checkin’ out the weather chart
To see if it was safe outside
And little Early-Pearly came by in his curly-wurly
And asked me if I needed a ride
Asked me if I needed a ride
But she was blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
She got down but she never got tired
She’s gonna make it through the night
She’s gonna make it through the night
But mama, that’s where the fun is
But mama, that’s where the fun is
Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun
But mama, that’s where the fun is
Some brimstone baritone anticyclone rolling stone
Preacher from the east
Says, “Dethrone the dictaphone, hit it in it’s funny bone
That’s where they expect it least”
And some new-mown chaperone was standin’ in the corner
Watchin’ the young girls dance
And some fresh-sown moonstone was messin’ with his frozen zone
Remindin’ him of romance
The calliope crashed to the ground
But she was blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Blinded by the light (madman drummers bummers, Indians in the summer)
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night (with a teenage diplomat)
Blinded by the light (in the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps)
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night (his way into his hat)
Blinded by the light (with a boulder on my shoulder, feelin’ kinda older)
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night (I tripped the merry-go-round)
Blinded by the light (with this very unpleasin’ sneezin’ and wheezin’)
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night (the calliope crashed to the ground)
Blinded by the light (now Scott with a slingshot finally found a tender spot)
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night (and throws his lover in the sand)
Blinded by the light (and some bloodshot forget-me-not said daddy’s within earshot)
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night (save the buckshot, turn up the band)
Blinded by the light (some silicone sister with a manager mister)
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night (told me I got what it takes)
Blinded by the light (she said, “I’ll turn you on, sonny, to something strong”)
She got down, but she never got tired
She’s gonna make it through the night
I want to thank all of you for reading last week’s “covers” week. Based on the positive response…I’ll start doing covers on Tuesdays coming up.
I just finished another Grateful Dead book so I’ve been listening to the Dead’s albums. Wake of the Flood has slowly become one of my favorites. It’s hard to beat American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead but it’s up there.
The verses of this song are straight-up Grateful Dead but the chorus reminds me a little of The Beatles. No, the Dead didn’t copy anything but it’s a type of chorus that the Beatles would attempt. Phil Lesh’s bass is prominent in this song…so is Jerry Garcia’s wonderful weaving guitar playing.
Garcia wrote the music and the Dead’s lyricist Robert Hunter wrote the verses. The song was influenced by a tragic event. Robert Hunter wrote in his book: Remembering the great Vanport, Washington flood of 1949, living in other people’s homes, a family abandoned by father, second grade. Hunter didn’t state the proper year or state of the flood but some about him.
Hunter was not in the flood but he was 7 years old and in second grade when it happened. His father around this time also abandoned his family. Hunter would live in different foster homes until he returned to his mom.
The song is about the flood that happened in Vanport City Oregon in 1948. Calling this a flood would be treating it mildly. It actually washed the town away. On Monday at 4:17 p.m. on Memorial Day 1948, a combination of heavy rainfall and the Columbia River heavy with melted snowfall broke a portion of the dike surrounding Vanport. Floodwaters fifteen feet deep washed Vanport away.
Residents had been assured by authorities that the dikes were holding and that they would be warned in ample time to evacuate. The break caught everyone, including the authorities, by surprise. Thankfully, the swamps within Vanport absorbed the initial surge, allowing around 40 minutes for most people to escape Vanport to higher ground along Denver Avenue. Still, 15-16 (different sources) people lost their lives in the flood.
Vanport is no more. Several acres of the former city became “West Delta Park” which is now the Portland International Raceway.
The song was on the Wake of the Flood album released in 1973… but not without its problems. It came three long years after the Dead’s previous studio album, American Beauty. They did release the live Europe 72 between the two albums. The Dead had just left Warner Bros and were without a record deal. So they did what other bands did at that time…make their own record company. This was the first album released on their new label.
Mickey Hart was not part of the Grateful Dead at this time. Mickey’s last show was 2/18/71 at the Capital Theater and he rejoined the band the last night of the “Farewell” shows at Winterland in October of ’74.
The album peaked at #18 on the Billboard Album Charts and #30 in Canada in 1973. This song was the B side to the single “Let Me Sing Your Blues Away.”
This would not be a Dead post if I didn’t give you a live version of it.
Here Comes Sunshine
Wake of the flood, laughing water, forty-nine
Get out the pans, don’t just stand there dreaming
Get out the way, get out the way
Here comes sunshine
Here comes sunshine
Line up a long shot maybe try it two times, maybe more
Good to know you got shoes to wear, when you find the floor
Why hold out for more
Here comes sunshine
Here comes sunshine
Asking you nice, now, keep the mother rollin’
One more time, been down before
You just don’t have to go no more, no more
If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog.
This show was written by Barry Trivers and Gene Roddenberry
This episode starts off with Captain Kirk and his friend Dr. Thomas Leighton watching a performance of Macbeth by a Shakespearean acting troupe. The Doctor is sure that the actor that played Macbeth, who goes by Anton Karidian, is really “Kodos the Executioner” who was responsible for 4,000 deaths.
The episode involves the hunt for Kodos, a governor who apparently ordered the execution of half his settlement in order to assure that the rest could survive famine. And, the worst of it is after the executions, help unexpectedly arrived. After all of this is explained…you are not in love with Kodos but you see that his execution orders had a reason. It wasn’t just madness but against what Kirk believed in…exhausting every means of knowledge and know-how and never giving up.
Anton Karidian (Kodos?) has a daughter. The beautiful Barbara Anderson who plays Lenore Karidian goes right after the Captain’s attention and yes she gets it. Yes, Kirk is falling for her but he is also collecting information and digging for information. He makes this very personal after his friend Dr. Thomas Leighton was killed. He keeps it from his crew but Spock wants to know what is going on. Kirk makes it clear that he wants Spock to mind his own business.
Kirk is a double agent in this episode. Yes, he is entranced by Anton Karidian but he is using her for information also. While this is going on, the people who were witnesses to Kodo’s deed, are dying…or more truthfully getting killed. Kirk is one of those witnesses.
This is a solid episode and features some eye-catching set design. Injecting some Shakespeare into a science-fiction setting turns out to be a pretty interesting touch, showing that classics will never go out of style, even centuries later.
A quote from Karidian is interesting…and relevant now when Kirk was examining him to see if he was Kodos. “ I find your use of the word mercy strangely inappropriate, Captain. Here you stand, the perfect symbol of our technical society. Mechanized, electronicized, and not very human. You’ve done away with humanity, the striving of man to achieve greatness through his own resources.”
I think we as a society can relate to that quote in the era of technology we live in.
From IMDB:
Barbara Anderson developed a fever blister/cold sore on her lip during filming. Besides using makeup to partially disguise it, she was often filmed with part of her lower face in shadow.
When Kirk goes to the Leighton dinner party and comes out to meet Lenore, you can hear a very slow jazz version of the series’ theme song. This is the first time it has been played as “source music”. The other times this occurs in the original series is later in the episode when Kirk is speaking to Lenore in Karidian’s cabin, when Areel Shaw enters the bar in Star Trek: Court Martial (1967), and when Kirk, McCoy, and Tonia Barrows run to Sulu’s position in Star Trek: Shore Leave (1966).
This episode contains Star Trek’s first direct reference to eugenics, although there is an oblique reference in Star Trek: What Are Little Girls Made Of? (1966). Spock tells McCoy that Kodos applied his own theories of eugenics when sentencing certain colonists to death, causing McCoy to note that Kodos unfortunately wasn’t the first. Two seasons later, the concept of eugenics resurfaced prominently in Star Trek: Plato’s Stepchildren (1968) when Philana informs Spock that the Platonians are the result of a successful mass eugenics program.
Barbara Anderson (Lenore Karidian) shares the record (with Ricardo Montalban and Joan Collins) for the most costumes worn in a single Trek episode by a guest star (six). She wears a maroon-colored dress for her Lady Macbeth costume, a blue dress with a veil at the party thrown by the Leightons, a fur mini-skirt dress when arriving on the Enterprise, a greenish multicolored mantle on the observation deck, a black and red evening dress when Kirk visits the Karidians in their quarters, and, finally, her yellow and lavender Ophelia costume. It could even be argued that the veil she wears while walking with Kirk just before discovering Tom Leighton’s body could be considered a seventh costume.
In the scene where security guards are searching for Kevin Riley in the corridors, rectangular seams are visible in the floor. This is where the grates visible in Star Trek: Charlie X (1966) and other early episodes were eliminated and filled in with the corridor floor material.
One of the few Original Star Trek episodes in which no-one from the USS Enterprise (even the red-shirts) is killed, although there is an almost successful poisoning.
This is the first of a long line of Star Trek productions which feature scenes, quotes, or references to William Shakespeare. In this case, the title comes from “Hamlet” (Act II, Scene 2). Scenes from Hamlet and Macbeth are acted out, and there is a paraphrase of “Julius Caesar” (Act 1, Scene 2): “Caesar, beware the Ides of March”.
Summary
Captain Kirk is informed by his old friend, Dr. Thomas Leighton, that the head of a Shakespearean acting troupe (known as Anton Karidian) was once known as “Kodos the Executioner”. Having seized power as Governor of Tarsus IV, Kodos had 50% of his colony (4000+ people) killed when the food supply was destroyed by an infestation, rather than have so many starve, not knowing that help was en route. Of the nine witnesses who could potentially identify Karidian as Kodos, only Kirk, Leighton, and a young crewman on the USS Enterprise, Kevin Riley (whose family was killed on Tarsus IV), survive. Kirk dismisses Leighton’s accusations until the latter turns up murdered, and Riley almost dies of poisoning while alone in an engineering sector where no one else is present, which Riley and others view as some sort of punishment although it was really Kirk’s misguided attempt to protect Riley. The other eyewitnesses have all died. Spock tells Bones that on each occasion the acting troupe was in close proximity. When finally challenged directly by Kirk, Karidian dramatically declines to confirm or deny anything but never asks who Kodos was and seems aware, although there is no reason he should be, of the details of what happened on Tarsus IV. Complicating things are Karidian’s beautiful daughter, Lenore, an actress in the troupe. And who’s really behind the murders
CAST
William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk
Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock
Arnold Moss … Anton Karidian
Barbara Anderson … Lenore Karidian
DeForest Kelley … Doctor Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy
Grace Lee Whitney … Yeoman Janice Rand
Nichelle Nichols … Lieutenant Nyota Uhura
William Sargent … Dr. Thomas Leighton
Natalie Norwick … Martha Leighton
David Somerville … Larry Matson (as David-Troy)
Karl Bruck … King Duncan
Marc Grady Adams … Hamlet (as Marc Adams)
Bruce Hyde … Kevin Riley
Tom Anfinsen … Crewman (uncredited)
John Astin … Capt. John Daley (voice) (uncredited)
Majel Barrett … Enterprise Computer (voice) (uncredited)
Bill Blackburn … Lieutenant Hadley (uncredited)
Frank da Vinci … Crewman (uncredited)
Robert H. Justman … Security Guard (voice) (uncredited)
Jeannie Malone … Yeoman (uncredited)
Eddie Paskey … Lieutenant Leslie (uncredited)
Ron Veto … Security Guard (uncredited)
This ends Under The Covers Week. I hope you all have enjoyed it…I wrote a few more but I will post them later.
I’ve stayed away from Steve Miller as far as posting because of the constant play on classic radio he gets. I have to admit though, that guitar lick in the intro never gets old. I always thought he wrote this song. I had no idea that someone did this before.
Jet Airliner was written by Paul Pena, a blind folk singer from Cape Cod. Pena played at the Newport Folk Festival in 1969 but was unable ever to make it big in the music business. Pena wrote this song in 1973 and the song tackled his unhappiness over working on his album New Train which, as a result of disagreements, remained unreleased for 27 years. In 2000 it was finally released and praised.
He was grateful that Steve Miller covered this song. For the rest of his life, his royalties from Miller’s version was his only source of income. In 1997 he was in a fire and with heavy smoke inhalation and was in a coma for four days. In the last years of his life, he had diabetes and pancreatitis…he passed away in 2005 because of both complications. In the eighties, he also lived through his wife passing away.
In 1975, Steve Miller needed one more song to record his Book Of Dreams album. This one fit perfectly…the original song had angry verses that Miller re-shaped and it turned out to be a big hit for him. Personally, I like both versions but Pena’s is really raw and I like it. Miller tightened it up and streamlined it.
The album peaked at #2 in the Billboard Album Charts, #1 in Canada, #5 in New Zealand, and #12 in the UK in 1977. He had 2 top twenty hits off of that album along with Jungle Love which peaked at #23.
The song peaked at #8 on the Billboard 100, #3 in Canada, #12 in New Zealand, and didn’t chart in the UK.
Steve Miller talked about Pena’s song: “‘Jet Airliner’ was about those people and his treatment on the East Coast when he went out, He really didn’t want to leave California and go to the East Coast and record this record, and this was a song about it. When he brought it to me, he had recorded an album, and nothing had happened. On that album, there were five or six really, really great songs, and I needed one song.”
Steve Miller:“it was very long, verse after verse after verse of anger, a lot of it. So I took the song and said, ‘Can I reshape it? Can I play with it?’ They said, ‘You can do anything you want to with it.’ I remember laying out all the lyrics, typing them up on big sheets of paper… I had them all out on my kitchen table, moving the verses around… then I got it all together and went, ‘Yeah, this’ll work – it’s great!’”
Jet Airliner
Leavin’ home, out on the road
I’ve been down before
Ridin’ along in this big ol’ jet plane
I’ve been thinkin’ about my home
But my love light seems so far away
And I feel like it’s all been done
Somebody’s tryin’ to make me stay
You know I’ve got to be movin’ on
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
Don’t carry me too far away
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
‘Cause it’s here that I’ve got to stay
Goodbye to all my friends at home
Goodbye to people I’ve trusted
I’ve got to go out and make my way
I might get rich you know I might bet busted
But my heart keeps calling me backwards
As I get on the 707
Ridin’ high I got tears in my eyes
You know you got to go through hell
Before you get to heaven
Big ol’ jet airliner
Don’t carry me too far away
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
‘Cause it’s here that I’ve got to stay
Touchin’ down in New England town
Feel the heat comin’ down
I’ve got to keep on keepin’ on
You know the big wheel keeps on spinnin’ around
And I’m goin’ with some hesitation
You know that I can surely see
That I don’t want to get caught up in any of that
Funky shit goin’ down in the city
Big ol’ jet airliner
Don’t carry me too far away
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
‘Cause it’s here that I’ve got to stay
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
Don’t carry me too far away
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
‘Cause it’s here that I’ve got to stay
Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah
Big ol’ jet airliner
Don’t carry me too far away
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
‘Cause it’s here that I’ve got to stay
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
Carry me to my home
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
‘Cause it’s there that I belong
If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog.
This episode was written by Gene Roddenberry
How much do The Talosians want Pike back? How much does his former first officer want to help him? What lengths will Spock go to free Pike from his confinement? The planet that Spock was trying to take the Captain is called Talos IV. Starfleet had given strict orders not to go to that planet and the punishment was the death penalty.
The second part of this wonderful two-parter episode has a great payoff. It’s interesting seeing Captain Kirk on the screen watching his predecessor Captain Pike at the helm of the Enterprise. Regular cast members don’t get that much to do. As we find out, Pike had been taken prisoner by the Talosian people, a species that has mastered the art of illusion. It’s how they continue to survive. And they have a plan in store for Pike, as well as for the lovely Vina (Susan Oliver), the sole survivor of a previous expedition.
We get to see an Orion slave girl…who is described as vicious, animal-like, and irresistible to any man. She is in one of the many illusions Captain Pike has been thrust into. This is the first appearance of an Orion Slave Girl in Star Trek not counting The Cage because it wasn’t aired until the 80s.
I really like The Cage, but this story inserted into that one makes it that much better and more well-rounded. If you want to start watching the original Star Trek…these two are not a bad place to start.
At the end of the episode, you have Spock, whose closing exchange with Kirk is a thoughtful dialog on the topic of emotionalism versus logic. It would set the stage for future episodes, many of which would have to be dealt with on the basis of sound reasoning instead of irrational fear or succumbing to the unknown. Quite a remarkable accomplishment for a show more than 50 years old… the stories growing richer and more vibrant with the passage of time.
From IMDB:
In the script, McCoy and Scott have a scene in which they explain to Kirk how they figured out which computer bank Spock tampered with to lock the ship on course. They took perspiration readings on all banks, and since Spock’s sweat has copper in it, traces of copper were found. This scene isn’t shown.
When Number One and Yeoman J.M. Colt transport to the planet, Vina states that Capt. Pike would be better reproducing with a computer than Number One. Majel Barrett provided the standard Federation computer voice throughout the various Star Trek series.
The Talosian “Keeper” alien was actually played by a woman – Meg Wyllie, as were all Talosians. The voice was dubbed by Malachi Throne, who portrays Commodore Jose Mendez. In order to differentiate the ‘Talosians’ voice from the Commodores, Throne’s voice as the Talosian was slightly sped up.
Spock uses the term “hyperdrive” instead of warp drive. Hyperdrive was the propulsion mechanism for the United Planets Cruiser C-57D featured in Forbidden Planet (1956), a movie which Gene Roddenberry used as a source for many other Star Trek elements.
In the images of the Enterprise of the past, the crew prepares for departure from Talos IV. Pike signals the crew by saying “engage”. This is another characteristic of Captain Pike that Picard borrows in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), along with referring to the First Officer as “Number One”.
Sean Kenney took over the role of Pike from Jeffrey Hunter. Kenney also appeared as DePaul in TOS Season 1. Because Malachi Throne was cast as Commodore Mendez, it was necessary to re-dub The Keeper’s dialogue by altering the pitch of the actor’s voice. Throne later played Romulan Senator Pardek in Star Trek: The Next Generation: Unification I (1991) and Star Trek: The Next Generation: Unification II (1991).
Summary
Spock’s court-martial board views the video stream from Talos IV of Captain Pike’s imprisonment 13 years earlier and of the Enterprise’s attempts to rescue him. The Talosians, using their powers of mind-reading and illusion, place Pike in worlds from both his memory and his imagination. The one constant is Vina, the beautiful blonde survivor of a crashed Earth ship (the other half of a Talosian plan for a captive Adam and Eve). Number One’s attempts to liberate Pike result in her and Yeoman Colt’s capture (additional breeding stock for the Talosian plan), but when the humans and Talosians learn more of each other, the situation takes a turn neither side expects. As the Enterprise approaches Talos IV once again, Kirk and the court watch the past unfold and learn the real reason for Spock’s mutiny.
CAST
William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk
Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock
Jeffrey Hunter … Captain Christopher Pike (archive footage)
Susan Oliver … Vina (archive footage)
Malachi Throne … Commodore José Mendez
Majel Barrett … Number One / Enterprise Computer (archive footage) (as M. Leigh Hudec)
Peter Duryea … Lt. José Tyler (archive footage)
John Hoyt … Dr. Phil Boyce (archive footage)
Adam Roarke … C.P.O. Garrison (archive footage)
DeForest Kelley … Doctor Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy
James Doohan … Lieutenant Commander Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott
Nichelle Nichols Nichelle Nichols … Lieutenant Nyota Uhura
Sean Kenney … Christopher Pike
Hagan Beggs … Lt. Hansen
Julie Parrish … Miss Piper
Bill Blackburn … Lieutenant Hadley (uncredited)
Tom Curtis … Jon Daily (uncredited)
Frank da Vinci … Guard (uncredited)
Brett Dunham … Guard (uncredited)
Sandra Lee Gimpel … Third Talosian (archive footage) (uncredited)
James Holt … Starfleet Officer (uncredited)
Clegg Hoyt … Transporter Chief Pitcairn (archive footage) (uncredited)
Anthony Jochim … Third Survivor (archive footage) (uncredited)
Bob Johnson … First Talosian / Transporter Chief Pitcairn (voice) (uncredited)
Jon Lormer … Dr. Theodore Haskins (archive footage) (uncredited)
Tom Lupo … Security Guard (uncredited)
Ed Madden … Enterprise Geologist (archive footage) (uncredited)
Leonard Mudie … Second Survivor (archive footage) (uncredited)
Eddie Paskey … Lieutenant Leslie (uncredited)
Jan Reddin … Enterprise Court Recorder (uncredited)
Serena Sande … Second Talosian (archive footage) (uncredited)
George Sawaya … Chief Humboldt (uncredited)
Georgia Schmidt … First Talosian (archive footage) (uncredited)
Meg Wyllie … The Keeper (archive footage) (uncredited)
This is such a powerful song no matter who covers it. Sonny Curtis of the Crickets wrote this song and the most famous version is by The Bobby Fuller Four in 1965. This song was made for the Clash to cover and they do a great job on this.
The Clash’s version only charted in Ireland at #24 in 1979. It was on the EP The Cost Of Living. The original song sounded like a punk song before punk was a genre. The song was written two decades before The Clash recorded it in 1959. The song was ranked No. 175 on the Rolling Stone list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004.
The Clash covered the song after they heard Fuller’s version on a jukebox. When playing the song live they made the song bleaker, changing the line, “I left my baby” to “I killed my baby.” Their version got them noticed in America, where the song was released in 1979, with “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais” as the B-side.
The song was re-released in 1988 and peaked at #29 in the UK and #17 in New Zealand.
Sonny Curtis: “It was some time during the summer of 1959, and I would have been about twenty-one at the time,” the now 84-year-old songwriter tells Classic Rock. “I was sitting in my living room, about three o’ clock in the afternoon, in a little town called Slaton, Texas, outside of the city of Lubbock, where Buddy and a whole bunch of us started out.
“It was a real windy day, which happens a lot in west Texas. The sand was blowing outside. I picked up my guitar, and I can’t imagine where the idea came from, but I just started writing this song, I Fought The Law. It only took about twenty minutes. You can tell that it didn’t take a rocket scientist to come up with those lyrics. But it’s my most important copyright.”
I Fought The Law
Breakin’ rocks in the hot sun
I fought the law and the law won [x2]
I needed money ’cause I had none
I fought the law and the law won [x2]
I left my baby and it feels so bad
Guess my race is run
She’s the best girl that I ever had
I fought the law and the law won
I fought the law and the
Robbin’ people with a six-gun
I fought the law and the law won [x2]
I lost my girl and I lost my fun
I fought the law and the law won [x2]
I left my baby and it feels so bad
Guess my race is run
She’s the best girl that I ever had
I fought the law and the law won
I fought the law and the
I fought the law and the law won [x7]
I fought the law and the
I hope you enjoy this Byrds cover by Tom Petty. One of the best B-side songs I can think of.
I posted The Waiting not long ago and talked about the similarities between The Byrds and Tom Petty. This Byrds song fits Tom Petty perfectly but the original song was not sung by McGuinn but by its writer…Gene Clark. Clark wrote this song in the mid-sixties when a girl he was seeing started to bother him. He also co-wrote Eight Miles High.
Although the song was the B side to The Byrd’s song All I Realy Want To Do, it gained a lot of promotion from Columbia Records and a lot of radio air time. It also became a classic rock standard, with dozens of artists giving their versions of the song.
This song was on Tom Petty’s solo album Full Moon Fever in 1989. The original name of the album was Songs From the Garage. It would have been an appropriate name for it. They worked on this album mostly in Heartbreaker Mike Campbell’s garage. This album caused a riff in The Heartbreakers. The other members thought Tom was going to leave the band. He kept reassuring them but they were not sure.
What’s unbelievable about it is, MCA rejected the album because they didn’t hear a single. This album would have 5 singles released from it.
Tom was absolutely stunned and depressed. He went back and added Feel A Whole Lot Better and the song Alright For Now and presented MCA with basically the same album again. There had been a regime change at MCA and this time they loved it. Ah…record companies…sometimes they are the spawn of Satan.
Although the album was released in 1989…Petty recorded it back in 1987 and 1988. MCA caused much of the delay when they rejected it.
Gene Clark of the Byrds: “There was a girlfriend I had known at the time, when we were playing at Ciro’s. It was a weird time in my life because everything was changing so fast and I knew we were becoming popular. This girl was a funny girl, she was kind of a strange little girl and she started bothering me a lot. And I just wrote the song, ‘I’m gonna feel a whole lot better when you’re gone,’ and that’s all it was, but I wrote the whole song within a few minutes.”
Tom Petty:“I didn’t see much of the Heartbreakers during that period, Mike I kept in touch with, of course, because he was working on Full Moon Fever with me. I never thought of leaving. And I kept reassuring them that I wasn’t going to leave. But I think there was some doubt in their mind.”
Feel A Whole Lot Better
The reason why, oh, I can’t say
I had to let you go, baby, and right away
After what you did, I can’t stay on
And I’ll probably feel a whole lot better when you’re gone
Baby, for a long time, you had me believe
That your love was all mine and that’s the way it would be
But I didn’t know that you were putting me on
And I’ll probably feel a whole lot better when you’re gone
Oh, when you’re gone
Now I gotta say that it’s not like before
And I’m not gonna play your games any more
After what you did, I can’t stay on
And I’ll probably feel a whole lot better when you’re gone
Yeah, I’ll probably feel a whole lot better when you’re gone
Oh, when you’re gone
Oh, when you’re gone
Oh, when you’re gone
Usually, I don’t like covers better than the original but with this song I do. John Lennon sounds demented and he pushed his vocals over the edge. Lennon has said he screamed the lyrics more than sang them but it worked. He provided the power to this song with just his vocals. The Beatles didn’t have monitors live…no one else at this time didn’t either so they had to sing loud to be heard. Author Mark Lewisohn called it “arguably the most stunning rock and roll vocal and instrumental performance of all time.”
This is probably close to sounding like they did live in Hamburg and The Cavern. This session took place on February 11, 1963, at EMI Studios in London, which was later renamed Abbey Road Studios. The Beatles did 10 songs that day, nine of which ended up on Please Please Me, their first UK album. Think about that for a minute… in one day they recorded their debut album except for the song Please Please Me which was recorded later.
When The Beatles played the Royal Command Performance with the Queen watching. During the introduction to this song, John Lennon famously said,“For the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands and the rest of you, if you’d just rattle your jewelry.” He told Brian Epstein that he was going to say “rattle your fu**ing jewelry” and Epstein was on pins and needles worried that John would go through with that…but he didn’t. John wasn’t a fan of playing at these functions.
They actually did two takes of the song and kept the first one. John was sick with a cold and had stripped off his shirt to let himself sweat it out, but he pulled it off. The next day…February 12, 1963 – The Beatles played two shows, one at the Azena Ballroom in Yorkshire and another at the Astoria Ballroom in Lancashire. No rest for the weary.
This was the first song ever written by Bert Burns. He went on to write, Piece of My Heart, Here Comes the Night, Hang on Sloopy, Cry to Me and Everybody Needs Somebody to Love to name just a few. He signed Van Morrison to his first solo deal with Bang Records. Unfortunately, he died at 38 of a heart attack in 1967. Phil Medley did get a co-writing credit on the song.
The song peaked at #2 on the Billboard 100, #5 in Canada, and #1 in New Zealand in 1964. The Beatles version was not done yet. In the film, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in 1986, the song was used and charted again. It peaked at #23 on the Billboard 100 and #16 in Canada.
The Isley Brothers’ version is great and there have been many other charting versions of it.
Norman Smith engineer: “Someone suggested they do ‘Twist and Shout’ with John taking the lead vocal. But by this time all their throats were sore; it was 12 hours since we had started working. John’s, in particular, was almost completely gone so we really had to get it right the first time. The Beatles on the studio floor and us in the control room. John sucked a couple more Zubes (a brand of throat lozenges), had a bit of a gargle with milk and away we went.”
Twist and Shout
Well, shake it up, baby, now Twist and shout Come on, come on, come, come on, baby, now Come on and work it on out Well, work it on out, honey You know you look so good You know you got me goin’ now Just like I knew you would
Well, shake it up, baby, now Twist and shout Come on, come on, come, come on, baby, now Come on and work it on out You know you twist, little girl You know you twist so fine Come on and twist a little closer now And let me know that you’re mine, woo
Ah, ah, ah, ah, wow Baby, now Twist and shout Come on, come on, come, come on, baby, now Come on and work it on out You know you twist, little girl You know you twist so fine Come on and twist a little closer now And let me know that you’re mine Well, shake it, shake it, shake it, baby, now Well, shake it, shake it, shake it, baby, now Well, shake it, shake it, shake it, baby, now Ah, ah, ah, ah
If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog.
This show was written by Gene Roddenberry
My star rating system goes to 5…but this one…I would give a 12 if I could…that includes Part 1 and Part 2. I point this episode out to people who have never seen the original series before. This two-parter would be a great place to start. It gives you some history of the crew, especially Spock and Captain Pike from the unseen pilot at the time.
Spock charged with mutiny and court marshal? Has the world gone mad? This is part one of a two-parter. They used the unseen pilot (The Cage) to make this one. It takes place 13 years after the episode The Cage that had Captain Pike.
You don’t know how Spock will not be in trouble for all the chaos he has caused. When Spock turns himself into Bones to be arrested…the shock of all the crew around them is priceless. When Kirk tries to pry the Enterprise from Spock’s control he fails. Spock has thought this out down to every single detail.
I have to give Roddenberry a lot of credit for writing this one. He took the pilot and developed this fantastic story around it and got to use the pilot’s footage that the network rejected. It could have been easily a patch job all the way around but it’s a great episode. Even some of the plot holes were explained. While watching the video screen of detailed past events, Kirk remarked that the Enterprise didn’t keep that good of video records but it was explained.
We learn that Vulcans are fiercely loyal, and seeing that Spock served under Captain Pike for over 11 years it would make sense that he still feels a sense of loyalty to his old Captain. Even though Pike rejects Spock’s plan with a series of beeps (Pike cannot talk) Spock still takes Pike against his will with good intentions. We also learn that Vulcans cannot lie, but it certainly appears that Spock did indeed lie in this episode, which seems impossible until Bones acknowledges that Spock is only half-human.
I remember first watching this episode in the 1980s. I totally bought the plot and still do. You are thinking, why is Spock risking everything, his career, and life, against his old Captain’s wishes? Kirk trusts Spock and is shocked when he finds out Spock has taken over the ship. You can see the hurt and confusion in the character. Good acting all the way around. Part II is just as good and has the payoff.
From IMDB
Although scenes from Star Trek: The Cage (1966) feature Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike, he was unavailable and unaffordable for the framing story into which the scenes were to be inserted. Sean Kenney, an actor who resembled Hunter, was used instead. He plays the mute, crippled Captain Pike, now wheelchair-bound after an accident.
According to James Doohan, Gene Roddenberry originally wanted to sell the failed pilot as a theatrical film. However, it needed to be expanded with additional material to reach the feature length. Roddenberry planned to film the crash of the Columbia on Talos IV, because it didn’t require Jeffrey Hunter, who was neither available nor affordable to reprise his role as Captain Pike. However, plans for the feature release were soon abandoned.
The “frame” story of Captain Pike’s injury and abduction to Talos IV was necessitated because the producers’ inability to use the original pilot Star Trek: The Cage (1966) in its unedited form. Normally, series producers count on being able to use the pilot as an episode of the season, despite possible minor changes from the regular series, such as differences in uniform styles, terminology, and props; the second pilot, Star Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before (1966), was used despite such discrepancies. But the differences between the series and the original pilot were too stark to be used unaltered – without the elaborate “frame” placing it 13 years in the past.
This episode was the first Star Trek material to be officially released by Paramount on any home video format in the United States, first in 1980 on VHS and Betamax, followed by a RCA SelectaVision CED videodisc release in 1981, and a US Laserdisc release in 1984.
The novel “Burning Dreams” establishes that the subspace message summoning Enterprise to Starbase 11 was not a fabrication by Spock, but instead an illusion by the Talosians making Spock think he actually did receive a message. The Talosians then spoke telepathically to Spock, making him aware of Pike’s condition and asking him to bring Pike to Talos IV. The novel also establishes that at the end of the teaser, when Spock tells Pike, “I have no choice,” their conversation continued with Spock telling Pike that the Talosians were aware of his condition and wanted to give him a chance for a better life than what he had and that Spock actually asked Pike for permission to try to help him.
Jeffrey Hunter accepted the lead role of Captain Christopher Pike in “The Cage”, the first pilot episode of Star Trek, but declined to film a second Star Trek pilot, requested by NBC in 1965, deciding to concentrate on films. Footage from the original pilot was subsequently adapted into a two-part episode called “The Menagerie” and screened in 1966. It wasn’t until 1988 that it was screened intact as a filler episode in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) due to a writers’ strike.
There have been many reasons given for Jeffrey Hunter not continuing as the captain. The one that rings most true is from Shatner’s book, where he relates that Hunter’s wife was a constant irritant to the production staff, with never-ending demands for how Hunter was to be handled and treated. Other books say that his wife came to a screening pitch for the pilot and declared that he wasn’t interested because he “was a movie star”. It seems likely the second story is a cover for the first and the first is the closest to the truth. Roddenberry decided that he wanted to be rid of Hunter, his wife, and their demands, and so never actually offered him a contract to continue.
It seems the nation of Cuba still exists in the 23rd century. During the court-martial scene, if you look carefully (to the right of where Captain Kirk is seated), you can see a flag stand in the back of the room. The flag hanging on it has the blue stripes and red triangle, which are part of the Cuban flag.
Summary
The Enterprise is summoned to Starbase 11 only to learn that no one there sent a message to them. The base is home to Fleet captain Christopher Pike, Kirk’s predecessor as Captain of the Enterprise. Unfortunately, Pike has recently had a serious accident, rendering him unable to speak and confining him to an automated chair. The base Commander, Commodore Mendez, begins to suspect Mr. Spock but Kirk defends his friend. That is until Spock takes command of the Enterprise and heads to Talos IV, a planet for which all Federation personnel are forbidden to visit under the sentence of death. Kirk and Mendez catch up with the Enterprise in a space shuttle at which time Mr. Spock is arrested. At his trial, he pleads guilty and offers mitigating circumstances in the form of detailed video logs recounting the time the Enterprise visited Talos IV 13 years before with Pike in command and Spock as its science officer.
CAST
William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk
Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock
Jeffrey Hunter … Captain Christopher Pike (archive footage)
Susan Oliver … Vina (archive footage)
Malachi Throne … Commodore José Mendez
Majel Barrett … Number One / Enterprise Computer (archive footage) (as M. Leigh Hudec)
Peter Duryea … Lt. José Tyler (archive footage)
John Hoyt … Dr. Phil Boyce (archive footage)
Adam Roarke … C.P.O. Garrison (archive footage)
DeForest Kelley … Doctor Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy
James Doohan … Lieutenant Commander Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott
Nichelle Nichols Nichelle Nichols … Lieutenant Nyota Uhura
Sean Kenney … Christopher Pike
Hagan Beggs … Lt. Hansen
Julie Parrish … Miss Piper
Bill Blackburn … Lieutenant Hadley (uncredited)
Tom Curtis … Jon Daily (uncredited)
Frank da Vinci … Guard (uncredited)
Brett Dunham … Guard (uncredited)
Sandra Lee Gimpel … Third Talosian (archive footage) (uncredited)
James Holt … Starfleet Officer (uncredited)
Clegg Hoyt … Transporter Chief Pitcairn (archive footage) (uncredited)
Anthony Jochim … Third Survivor (archive footage) (uncredited)
Bob Johnson … First Talosian / Transporter Chief Pitcairn (voice) (uncredited)
Jon Lormer … Dr. Theodore Haskins (archive footage) (uncredited)
Tom Lupo … Security Guard (uncredited)
Ed Madden … Enterprise Geologist (archive footage) (uncredited)
Leonard Mudie … Second Survivor (archive footage) (uncredited)
Eddie Paskey … Lieutenant Leslie (uncredited)
Jan Reddin … Enterprise Court Recorder (uncredited)
Serena Sande … Second Talosian (archive footage) (uncredited)
George Sawaya … Chief Humboldt (uncredited)
Georgia Schmidt … First Talosian (archive footage) (uncredited)
Meg Wyllie … The Keeper (archive footage) (uncredited)
Our small town got a record store in 1982. We had one in the seventies but it went out of business. In the new one…this is the first single I bought there. The store only lasted a year at the most but we enjoyed it while we had it. In 1982 you could not go to school, a store, or anywhere without hearing this song. If you didn’t hear it you heard someone hum it. Much like Another One Bites The Dust from two years earlier…you just couldn’t escape it.
In 2016 I saw The Who in Nashville and I didn’t know who was opening up. I was pleasantly surprised when Joan Jett was announced. She and her band were tight and very loud. The Who had ties with Jett back in 1979 as they helped finance Jett’s debut album Bad Reputation.
This was originally recorded by a British group called The Arrows in 1975, and it was written by their lead singer Alan Merrill and guitarist Jake Hooker. The song was released as a B-side with The Arrows’ “Broken Down Heart.” Co-writer Alan Merrill said “That was a knee-jerk response to the Rolling Stones’ ‘It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll.’ I remember watching it on Top of the Pops. I’d met Mick Jagger socially a few times, and I knew he was hanging around with Prince Rupert Lowenstein and people like that – jet setters. I almost felt like ‘It’s Only Rock and Roll’ was an apology to those jet-set princes and princesses that he was hanging around with – the aristocracy, you know. That was my interpretation as a young man: Okay, I love rock and roll. And then, where do you go with that?”
The Arrows did get their own TV show called The Arrows Show. It ran from 1976-1977 in the UK for two full 14-week seasons on the ITV network. It was this show that Joan Jett saw in 1976. A fun fact about the song. The Arrows were based in England, where they don’t use dimes. At that time they would put a sixpenny in the jukebox to buy a song. That would have had a different ring to it, but the original producer Mickie Most liked dime because it sounded American, and that’s the way The Arrows recorded it. Joan Jett didn’t really differ much from the Arrows version…just a little louder.
When the Runaways broke up in 1979, Joan Jett and her producer Kenny Laguna put her first solo album together with studio time and travel arrangements fronted by The Who. They struggled to get a record deal and had to form their own label, Blackheart Records, to release the album in America. Joan remembered The Arrows singing I Love Rock N Roll in 1976 while touring the UK and knew it sounded like a hit. She wanted the Runaways to cover the song but they turned it down. The reason they turned it down was that they had already covered a song called Rock and Roll by Lou Reed on their debut album and didn’t want another song with “rock” in the title at that time.
Jett recorded it with Paul Cook and Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols and released it as a B-side in 1979. Polygram Records owned that version of the song but they were not excited about the song or Joan Jett. They basically let her go and signed some of the other Runaways. Boy was that a mistake! Joan would end up being the best-known Runaway. Lita Ford was successful also along with Michael Steele with the Bangles but neither became as popular as Joan Jett…and this song was a big reason.
I like the original and both Jett covers. The hit version peaked at #1 on the Billboard 100, #1 in Canada, #1 in New Zealand, and #4 in the UK in 1982.
The album was called I Love Rock And Roll released in 1981. The album peaked at #2 on the Billboard Album Charts, #1 in Canada, #1 in New Zealand, and #25 in the UK in 1982.
The producers were Ritchie Cordell, Kenny Laguna, and Glen Kolotkin.
The song’s co-writer, Alan Merrill, died at 69 on March 29, 2020. Joan Jett offered condolences on Twitter, posting: “I can still remember watching the Arrows on TV in London and being blown away by the song that screamed hit to me.”
Joan Jett:“I think most people who love some kind of rock ‘n’ roll can relate to it. Everyone knows a song that just makes them feel amazing and want to jump up and down. I quickly realized, this song is gonna follow you, so you’re either gonna let it bother you, or you gotta make peace with it, and feel blessed that you were involved with something that touched so many people.”
Producer Kenny Laguna on Polygram Records: “They could care less about Joan Jett, they were busy signing every other Runaway. They thought Joan was the loser and they signed the other girls, who we’re all friends with, but I looked at the band and thought she was the Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the band. The company decided that if I would pay the studio cost of $2,300, I could have all the rights, and I got three songs. I got ‘I Love Rock and Roll’ with The Sex Pistols, I got ‘You Don’t Own Me’ – they did a great version of the Lesley Gore hit, and they did a song Joan wrote called ‘Don’t Abuse Me.’ So I buy these songs back. In the meantime, Joan has a couple of fans. Rodney Bingenheimer of K-ROCK, KMAC in Long Beach, BCN in Boston, LIR in Long Island, they were playing The Sex Pistols’ kind of cruddy version of the song, and it was #1 on the alternative stations. It was really alternative music, they were way-out stations that would play some pretty adventurous stuff, that’s why they would play Joan, because Joan was not getting a record deal, Joan was way on the outside, like a Fugazi of her day. We saw some kind of potential there. I remember these guys from the big record distributors in Long Island kept calling and saying, ‘This is a hit record, we’re getting so many requests for it.’ So we cut it over and did a really good version of it.”
THE 1979 VERSION
I Love Rock and Roll
I saw him dancin’ there by the record machine
I knew he must a been about seventeen
The beat was goin’ strong
Playin’ my favorite song
An’ I could tell it wouldn’t be long
Till he was with me, yeah me, singin’
I love rock n’ roll
So put another dime in the jukebox, baby
I love rock n’ roll
So come an’ take your time an’ dance with me
He smiled so I got up and’ asked for his name
That don’t matter, he said,
‘Cause it’s all the same
Said can I take you home where we can be alone
An’ next we were movin’ on
He was with me, yeah me
Next we were movin’ on
He was with me, yeah me, singin’
I love rock n’ roll
So put another dime in the jukebox, baby
I love rock n’ roll
So come an’ take your time an’ dance with me
Said can I take you home where we can be alone
An we’ll be movin’ on
An’ singin’ that same old song
Yeah with me, singin’
I love rock n’ roll
So put another dime in the jukebox, baby
I love rock n’ roll
So come an’ take your time an’ dance with me
Creedence cut through his song and stripped it bare with their version. I love Marvin Gaye’s version of this song but Creedence spun it into a garage band’s dream. I really like the steady drums that keep it tethered to earth. CCR’s drummer Doug Clifford played off of John Fogerty’s rhythm and it created the atmosphere of the song.
This is embarrassing but this song really hit my radar through constant commercials in 1987. It was used in California Raisin commercials that played, and played, and played more. When I would go to Hardees for lunch…they would give me a plastic figure of one of the raisins. Yea…I collected them. Former drummer of the Jimi Hendrix Band of Gypsies, Buddy Miles, sang lead in those commercials.
Creedence’s album version was a whopping (I love using that word) 11-minute song. This was a change from their other compact songs. This of course was not an original. It was written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong. Strong came up with the idea and asked Motown writers Holland-Dozier-Holland to work on it with him. They refused to credit another writer, so Strong took it to Whitfield, who helped put it together…so it was credited to Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong.
In December 1975, CCR’s label Fantasy Records re-released the song as a single, which peaked at #43 on the Billboard 100 and #76 in Canada. This release came in the middle of some heated legal battles between the band and the label, which resulted in John Fogerty taking a 10-year break from making music. The song was edited down to a more reasonable length for radio.
The song was originally on their Cosmo’s Factory album released in 1970 which is possibly their best album.
Below….the first is one of the many commercials, the second was the single version, and the third is the album’s 11-minute version.
I Heard It Through The Grapevine
Ooh-ooh, bet you’re wondering how I knew
‘Bout your plan to make me blue
With some other guy that you knew before?
Between the two of us guys, you know I love you more
Took me by surprise, I must say, when I found out yesterday
Ooh-ooh, I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine
Ooh-ooh, I heard it through the grapevine
And I’m just about to lose my mind
Honey, honey yeah
You know that a man ain’t supposed to cry
But these tears I can’t hold inside
Losing you would end my life, you see
‘Cause you mean that much to me
You could’ve told me yourself that you found someone else
Instead
I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine
Ooh-ooh, I heard it through the grapevine
And I’m just about to lose my mind
Honey, honey yeah
People say “You hear from what you see
Not, not, not from what you hear.”
I can’t help but being confused
If it’s true, won’t you tell me dear?
Do you plan to let me go
For the other guy that you knew before?
Ooh-ooh, I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine
Ooh-ooh, I heard it through the grapevine
And I’m just about to lose my mind
Honey, honey yeah
Ooh-ooh, I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine
Ooh-ooh, I heard it through the grapevine
And I’m just about to lose my mind
Ooh-ooh, I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine
Aah-aah, I heard it through the grapevine
And I’m just about to lose my mind
Honey, honey yeah
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