Kiana had been in the wilderness alone. It was against protocol, and exactly what she needed. That’s what she told herself anyway. Lions came to nuzzle her belly, rumbling softly, perhaps due to that acute animal instinct for knowing when something was wrong. Usually they scattered when the Old man came around.
The first time was on the first day of the month, on the first hour past noon. Of course it was. He popped around a tree on those sand scattered Kalahari plains and waved. Kiana started, then bent over the hand-held UV monitor in both her mitts and muttered, “It’s not real.”
On the second day, at the appointed hour, he climbed into the sun-screened Jeep with her with a cheery “Hello!” Her grip tightened knuckle white on the steering wheel. “You’re not real,” she repeated, almost as a mantra. Her bright green eyes shunted her off onto a vision, flashing to the live-feed six weeks past, to the same man, now more emaciated than he’d been at their last contact, seemingly plied with ever-more tubes in every vein. She blinked, jerking to the side, but the man was gone, at least for now.
Twice more she saw him, at a distance paralleling her as she did her job, collecting genetic samples from the indigenous wildlife. It wasn’t normally dangerous work, but it was always better to work in teams. Especially on the Kalahari with its hundred-degree-plus temperatures, sparse grasses, pale sand pans and gnarled camel thorn trees clawing infrequently at the sky. On the sixth day, it almost cost her.
Kiana had sampled some weaver birds but hadn’t been paying enough attention to her surroundings. Which was how the cheetah had stumbled into her. They literally tripped over one another. Luckily Kiana rolled one way and the spotted cheetah the other. Her heart hammered at her ribs with startling ferocity. That was nothing compared to the snarl issuing from the big cat.
Its eyes were cloudy. It must have an older cat who stumbled carelessly into the noonday sun and been blinded. With all the other adverse effects of climate change it couldn’t have been helped. This was not helping her at all, though. Her limbs were still trying not to move. She didn’t seem to have much control over her shrill breathing, something the cheetah’s ears tuned in on with terrible accuracy.
That’s when the Old man stepped around her, waving both long arms and yelling, startling the cat enough that she could get off a shot with her tranq pistol. It took a couple of shots to flatten the agitated beast, but it was done.
The pistol thunked to the brittle yellow grass as the Old Man swung back to her with that familiar grin. “That’s why you shouldn’t be out here by yourself,” he said. “Baby? What’s wrong?”
“…please stop,” she whispered, her overflowing eyes burning. “…god, please stop…you can’t be here…”
“I don’t see why not. The cheetah seemed to agree with me.”
“B-but, Poppa, you’re gone. You’re…y-y-you’re…”
It all came spilling out, all the tears dammed for the past six weeks, all the suppressed emotions, stealing her breath, choking her. The Old Man returned from the truck with a paper bag for her to breath into. He held onto her with soothing words as she hunched over herself, hyperventilating for how long, an hour? All she was able to choke out in all that time was, “forgive me.”
“What for, baby?” he asked.
“I-I wasn’t there, Poppa. I-I didn’t come for the end.”
“The cancer was pretty far along this time. There wasn’t a lot anyone could do.”
As he’d done when she was younger and brought home every stray dog in the neighborhood, teary-eyed, he now dabbed her cheeks with a kerchief that was the same safari-brown as his sleeveless shirt and shorts. “It’s okay, Baby. Say what’s really bothering you.”
She could look at him now, into the smiling eyes that had raised her, the face now smoothed of all aches. “Is heaven real?” she asked.
“It’s better than heaven,” he shrugged. “Go on. You can do it.”
“I can’t.”
“What, the little girl who frolicked with lions? That’s not who I remember.”
“That’s just it. I didn’t want to remember you like that, all wasted away. I wanted you to be strong in my memory. I wanted to remember all the fishing trips with you and Momma. I wanted to remember that big hug you gave me when I came home from my mission.”
“You can still have that. Nothing wrong with that.”
“But I-I’m not ready.”
“I wasn’t. Nobody’s ever ready. That’s okay. I have faith in you, baby.”
“Does Momma hate me, for not coming home?”
He blew a raspberry out the side of his mouth. “Never. ‘Worried’ is more like it. You should give her a call.” Together they stood. “I’ve been allowed this one visit. I’ve probably overstayed it already. Why don’t I help you load that cat in the cage before I get back?”
This was done in no time at all. As she slammed the metal cage shut in the back of the Jeep, he tipped her chin up, chucking her on it. “I’m proud of you, baby.”
She ducked her head with a smile. A stiff breeze whipped through her bones and he was gone. In the depression in the grass where he’d stood, there remained a small red book of Psalms, the one he’d always carried with him for forty years. The one Momma swore she’d buried with him.
On August 30, 1972, John Lennon delivered his biggest concert performances in Madison Square Garden in a benefit for needy children. It would be a last moment of glory before the Nixon administration piled on him. The concerts were intended to raise money for Staten Island’s Willowbrook State School for children with intellectual disabilities, a place where horrifying conditions of overcrowding, neglect and abuse were brought to light in an expose by Geraldo Rivera earlier that year. He came all the way to San Francisco to meet John and Yoko to convince them to perform.
The Plastic Ono Band was no stranger to benefits, having done the 1969 UNICEF benefit at the Lyceum Ballroom with George Harrison, as well as the John Sinclair rally and the Apollo benefit for the families of the Attica Prison inmates in 1971. These would be John’s only full-length concerts as a solo artist, apart from his appearance at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival in September 1969. The proceeds would go to establish new accommodations for the residents of the Willowbrook institution.
For this concert he recruited Elephant’s Memory, a New York group, as his backup band. According to their bassist, Gary Van Scyoc, the band met the Lennons in September 1971, recording a live set for a Long Island radio station. That tape wound up with Jerry Rubin, who passed it on to John, and for all we know Yoko still has her hands on it. Elephant’s Memory would be their backing band for Sometime In New York City as well as Yoko’s solo album Approximately Infinite Universe (released January 1973).
As Rolling Stone’s Jann Wiener described it, “John and Yoko permitted themselves to be exploited in this way because they were trying to clean up their act, to impress the immigration authorities that they were good citizens.”
Paul McCartney came close to performing a set but bowed out due to concerns about how Allen Klein would handle the proceeds. That would be a legitimate concern; George Harriosn was livid at how Klein had mishandled the money raised from the Concert for Bangladesh only a year earlier.
Sha Na Na, Roberta Flack and Stevie Wonder were also at the show, but John Lennon was the headliner. For once Yoko actually SANG, instead of just screaming, but don’t worry. She put in her share of wails. John did both an afternoon matinee and an evening show. The evening performance is believed to have been the better show. According to a New York Times review, “Some of the rough edges of the afternoon performance were smoothed off for the evening show. Interchanges between the Lennons and Elephant’s Memory began to jell, aided in no small measure by Jim Keltner’s drumming.” (“Lennons’ Elan Infuses ‘One to One’ Garden Concert” by Don Heckman, August 3, 1972).
Sha Na Na Playlist: “Yakety Yak”—“Tears On My Pillow”—“Tell Laura I Love Her”—“Rock & Roll is Here To Stay”—“Rama Lama Ding Dong”
I remember watching Sha Na Na with my Dad in 1977, between divorces to his second wife. One of the joys of that show was the endless pranks they played on their celebrity guests. They were a 1950’s revival group popular in the ‘70’s. I didn’t know they’d sung at Woodstock in 1969, right before Jimi Hendrix closed the festival at 7:30 Monday morning, August 18. They were also one of the highlights of Grease (1978); I believe they were allotted a whole side of the 2-record soundtrack. Two of the songs they performed that day, “Tears On My Pillow” and “Rock and Roll is Here to Stay” would be done during the dance scene in Grease.
There was an aura of innocence to their music, the illusion that all’s right with the world. That’s probably why 1950’s nostalgia was so big in the 70’s; it’s what our country needed after spiraling into a national malaise after Vietnam and Watergate. During “Tell Laura I Love Her”, the audience banged tambourines with the band. I hope John appreciated their energetic performance; this was the music that shaped him, this early rock ‘n’ roll magic.
Roberta Flack’s Playlist: “Reverend Lee”—“Somewhere”
Roberta Flack did not appear at the afternoon show. I wish I could have found some video or audio tracks from this concert, but no such luck. Nevertheless, she was a star in her own right. In Don Heckman’s article he states the “black goddess of music proved that her hit song, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” was not a one shot phenomenon. She came out and entranced the audience with a program that blended her sometimes unrecognized ability to play superb jazz with her well known gifts as a fine pop vocalist.”
Stevie Wonder’s Playlist: “For Once In My Life”—“If You Really Love Me”—“Superwoman”—“Heaven Help Us All”—“Superstition”—“Keep On Running”
Stevie Wonder was no stranger to the Garden. He’d spent most of 1972 supporting the Rolling Stones on their Exile on Main Street tour. He’d played four shows with the Stones by the end of July with his band, Wonderlove, which included young up-and-coming musicians such as Ray Parker Jr on rhythm guitar and Greg Phillinganes on keyboards. His appearance at this concert was part of Berry Gordy’s plan to expose him to a wider, more diverse audience.
He gave an energetic performance, albeit of the same songs he’d been playing all summer. But he brought the audience alive with a new song called “Superstition”, which turned out to be an even funkier version than what was soon to be committed to vinyl, with Trevor Lawrence blasting an even livelier sax solo. “Keep On Running” closed to the shriek of a police siren.
John and Yoko’s Playlist, afternoon matinee: Power to the People (excerpt)—New York City—It’s So Hard—Move On Fast (Yoko)—Woman is the N—– of the World—Sisters O Sisters (Yoko)—Well Well Well—Born in a Prison (Yoko)—Instant Karma (We All Shine On)—Mother—We’re All Water (Yoko)—Come Together—Imagine—Open Your Box (Yoko)—Cold Turkey–Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking For Her Hand in the Snow) (Yoko)—Hound Dog
Evening playlist: Power to the People (excerpt) with introduction by Geraldo Rivera—New York City—It’s So Hard—Move On Fast—Woman is the N—– of the Word—Sisters O Sisters—Well Well Well—Instant Karma—Mother—We’re All Water—Born in a Prison—Come Together—Imagine—Open Your Box—Cold Turkey—Hound Dog—Law and Order (statement read by Yoko)—Give Peace a Chance (reggae version)
Five songs performed at these shows, especially Yoko’s, would be drawn from their Sometime in New York City album, released only two months before in June of 1972. Putting that aside, in the past four years John especially had recorded a small but impressive body of albums and singles to draw on. I write this in hindsight, as I was only eight years old at the time of these concerts. Shall we begin?
Over the screams of the audience comes the chant, “Power to the People”, after half a minute it burns into an electric performance of “New York City”. John came onstage in a green army jacket and blue tinted Granny glasses. No politics here, just a homage to John’s adoptive home that thoroughly outdid the studio version. He closed the evening show by shouting “What a bad-ass city!”
Then he growled through “It’s So Hard” and for all the complaints about the matinee being the weaker concert, I think John brought a lot of enthusiasm to his performance. After the drum roll closed the song, John called, “Welcome to the rehearsal.” Lest we forget the other half, Yoko shouted through a new song, “Move On Fast”, a fast paced number that John laid down a decent groove.
“This song is one of those songs of ours that got banned,” John joked, “something Yoko said to me in 1968, took me until 1970 to dig it.” On the count of “one-two-three-four”, the sax opens ‘Woman is the Nigger of the World”. Most people can’t read past the big N-word in the title, which was the point. The song is provocative—it’s SUPPOSED to be provocative! Sadly it’s words are just as relevant now as they were fifty years ago. After the last lyric, “We make her paint her face and dance,” John shouted “Dance—Dance—Dance!” like a wild man, just to emphasize the point.
“This song has the same message, it’s just put in a way she puts it,”, John said. Then Yoko shouted, “This is the time of change! Wake up now!”, jumping right into “Sisters O Sisters”. Yoko was really singing this time, or at least she was trying. John gave the solo a 1950’s rockabilly spin. At the end of the song John called out, “Thank you, sister! Reggae, baby, reggae! They do it in Jamaica and London, they’re gonna do it here one day.”
Next up was John’s “Well Well Well”, from his Plastic Ono Band album. John was not like Mick Jagger, dancing all over the stage; he could be carried away by the music and just rock in one spot. He slipped in a cute addendum: “She looked so beautiful I could eat her—I did!” His anguished screams were still not as distressing as Yoko’s. (He did that twice in the matinee show, once in the evening show.)
“Born in a Prison” was Yoko’s second of three songs of hers from Sometime in New York City. The poetry of this song is gorgeous; if it’d been sung by Joni Mitchell or Joan Baez, it would’ve been legendary. With Yoko singing, well, not so much. Still, “wood becomes a flute when it’s broken” remains a beautiful lyric. I’m not sure she and John harmonized very well. In fact, in the evening performance his voice sounded very strained; Yoko in contrast sung more relaxed. I hope they had water on stage when she started yelling “Let me out-Let me out!”, again and again over the saxophone. (And you’re only reading this: God help those people who were there enduring it!)
“Let us pray the choir comes in on time,” John said, hunched behind an organ for “Instant Karma”. This was the only time he actually performed this song live, as well as most of the rest of his tunes. For the evening show he quipped, “I’m just beginning to understand what this record was about,” bringing an extra bit of energy to his performance. After closing the song in the matinee, John remarked, “we’ll get it right next time.”
The spotlight that shone on John seemed to isolate him starkly behind the keyboard. “This number we’re gonna do now, everybody thought it was about my parents, but it’s about all parents, alive or half-dead.” In his review, Heckman wrote “Mother” was a “smashingly passionate song that drew a shouting, emphatic reaction from the young audience.” The delivery was as haunting as the studio recording, but John shredded the vocals far more powerfully in this concert. For the evening performance he embellished his comments from the afternoon by prefacing, “This is another song from one of the albums I made since I left the Rolling Stones!” I’m sure the audience appreciated that.
Yoko was back for “We’re All Water” The lyrics were slightly different from the album, although I always thought this line was hilarious: “There may not be much difference/ between Chairman Mao and Richard Nixon/if we strip them naked”, although she also compared Nixon to Hitler. And no, we’re not spared the shrieking that closes the number. Her screaming “What’s the difference!” actually seemed more defiant.
“Let’s go back to the past, just once, alright,” John said in the evening performance, “Something about a flat top, that’s all I know.” Elephant’s Memory joined him in a raw, almost spooky rendition of “Come Together”, stretching the song in ways I don’t think he could have with the Beatles. He confused some of the lyrics, which was par for the course for John; he often forgot the words to his own songs while performing with the Beatles. Approprietly enough, after the third chorus he sang, “Come together—right now—STOP THE WAR!” the audience roared their approval; at the time of this concert, young people were still serving and dying in Vietnam.
“This song is more about why we’re here, apart from rocking and that,” John opened the evening performance for “Imagine”. He never did a bad performance of this song. The keyboard offered a ringing quality, while he amended the final lyrics to “Brotherhood and sisterhood of man.”
“This is a song that was banned in America but I don’t see anything wrong with it actually”, Yoko said of the next song, “Open Your Box”.
“It’s so banned, we didn’t even notice ourselves,” John added. Lyrics such as “Open your box—open your legs” may have had something to do with that. At the evening concert Yoko commented, “I think they banned it because I’m a woman.” The drums and guitars laid down a thumping groove. That organ solo was also grand.
In the matinee, the following song stopped after a false start. “Start again! Stop-stop-stop!” John shouted. “Okay, we haven’t been in two weeks of hell of doing that for nothin’!” the evening show went smoother. John quipped, “This is something that happens to all of us, one way or the other.” No false starts for “Cold Turkey” this time, just one of the most intense vocal-guitar-sax assaults of all time. John’s shrieks may have been even more terrifying than on the single, and that scared the shit out of me in ’69.
This segued into “Don’t Worry Kyoko”, appropriately enough since it was the B-side of the “Cold Turkey” single. As painful as this was at Toronto or the Lyceum ballroom, in fairness she poured her mother’s anguish into the vocals. This performance was only four-and-a-half minutes long, as opposed to the 40 minutes she subjected attendees to at the Lyceum. And this was only for the afternoon concert.
For the last number of the matinee, John reached back into his rock and roll roots for an enthusiastic rendition of “Hound Dog”. For the evening performance, an otherwise perfect performance was spoiled by Yoko’s howling behind John. Love it when he shouts, “Elvis, I love you!” near the close.
“Hound Dog” had closed the afternoon concert. The evening show ended slightly differently. Following “Hound Dog”, as an encore, behind a driving groove Yoko reads a statement, “Law and Order” “by a well-known politician”. It might have described the turmoil of the early 1970’s—student unrest, fear of communists and the threat of Russia. The kicker was this statement was given by Hitler in 1931.
The Lennons were joined in the finale by Sha Na Na, Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack, the cast of Godspell, Abbie Hoffman, Allen Ginsburg, Melanie Safka and others to sing a reggaefied version of “Give Peace a Chance”. Melanie was another Woodstock veteran, appearing on day one, (August 15, 1969), only three years prior. John and Yoko had invited Melanie to perform. She almost missed the show but made it to the stage in time for the finale. They did justice to the song, I’ll give them that. Stevie Wonder joins in at three minutes—but did it have to be 10 minutes long?
After the concerts, John and Yoko and all the other artists joined a celebratory party at the Tavern In The Green in Central Park. The concerts had raised over $1.5 million dollars for Willowbrook. John was hyped to do more live shows like this. Maybe he would have if he hadn’t got caught in an immigration battle with Nixon over the next couple of years.
Available on: This is something of a mixed bag. In order, then. To my knowledge, none of the other artists have had an official release of their performances from the One to One concerts. An excerpt of “Give Peace a Chance” from the evening concert featuring Stevie Wonder, segued into the tail end of “Happy Xmas” on the 1975 compilation Shaved Fish.
Both concerts were professionally filmed. The recording supervisor for the shows was Phil Spector. A version with seven songs from the evening concert (“Come Together”, “Instant Karma”, “Sisters O Sisters”, “Cold Turkey”, “Hound Dog” and “Give Peace a Chance”, with “Imagine” played to scenes of the One to One fun day activities in Central Park that afternoon) was transmitted on ABC-TV in America, as a 53 minute special, on December 14, 1972. Yoko’s afternoon performance of “Move On Fast” received a rare one-off screening in England during the January 20, 1973 edition of BBC2’s late night show, The Old Grey Whistle.
The 1986 posthumous album Live in New York City consisted primarily of songs from the afternoon set, with the exception of “Cold Turkey”, “Hound Dog” and an extremely truncated version of “Give Peace a Chance”, which were taken from the evening show. Even that involved some editing; the spoken intro for “Hound Dog” was taken from the afternoon show, while the performance was from the evening show. Yoko’s music was not included to make an exclusively John Lennon LP. A concert film of the same name was broadcast on Showtime in the same period, and released as a one-hour VHS, with different edits and the inclusion of some of Yoko’s songs.
Three songs from the evening show, along with Geraldo Rivera’s introduction, were included on the 1998 box set John Lennon Anthology: “Woman is the N—– of the World”, “It’s So Hard” and “Come Together”.
I’d like to say 2025’s Power to the People 9-CD box set finally released the entire concert on its first two CDs, except for some ungodly reason, Sean Lennon removed “Woman is the N—– of the World” (due to cultural sensitivity) as well as Yoko’s ‘Sisters O Sisters” (apparently for lack of space) from both the afternoon AND evening concerts. That’s essentially four songs deleted from the shows. We’ll see if he can get the job done right on the Blu-Ray of the concert, should Sean decide to remaster it properly.
This album was sitting prominently on a bookshelf at our county library when were living in University Place, Washington in 1979. The cover grabbed me; art is more impactful when its spread over a 12-inch surface and not squashed onto a five inch CD case. I took it home in a paper bag. Back then I walked everywhere, even to school.
My memory is that I loved that album; maybe I loved some tracks more than others. I wasn’t too familiar with Jackson Browne. I blame FM radio. The only song I’d ever heard from him was back in our house in Fircrest, “Doctor My Eyes”, back in 1972—six years before! I hear “The Pretender” on my store’s radio network NOWADAYS, but most AM-FM stations only played the hits. Critics may have loved him, but most of us (myself at least) were oblivious. After 1979 and checking out that LP, I was more aware of Browne and paying attention more when his songs hit the airwaves.
This LP was recorded on the road, either in concert or into hotel rooms, backstage in at least one case (“Nothing but Time”) on a bus in New Jersey on the way to another gig. Basically it was a travelogue of musicians, by musicians, about life on the road. “Running on Empty”, “The Load-Out” & “Stay” were recorded live at Meriweather Post Pavillion in Columbia, Maryland. “You Love the Thunder” was performed at Garden State Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey, while “Love Needs a Heart” was taped in Universal City, California.
Some songs were meant to stick out. The big hit getting airplay in the summer of ’78, along with the music from Grease, was “The Load-Out”, which segued into a cover of Maurice Williams & the Zodiac’s “Stay”. “Stay” was the A-side of a double sided single, backed on vocals by Rosemary Butler and David Lindley on falsetto in the second verse. (To be fair, the Zodiac’s version was short at 1 minute, 36 seconds long).
Other tunes I no longer appreciate on principle, such as “Cocaine”, recorded in a hotel room at a Holiday Inn in Illinois. Having seen the damage drugs had done to my family in the ‘70’s, I’m finding myself of the permissiveness, and also sad for all the artists buried by their addictions.
Some songs I understand better, now that I’m older, especially the title song. No that I’m a musician, but I can relate. The verses make sense in a general way, like this one:
I look around for the friends that I sued to turn to to pull me through/
I found this in one of those cut-out bins at a local drug store in 1979; that must have been 45 plus years ago. I don’t know why it was in a cut-out bin, it was an extraordinary album. It was my first experience with Blue Oyster Cult. Apparently, the best way to listen to this band is in a live setting. It’s actually their second live LP, after 1975’s On Your Feet or On Your Knees. This record’s only sin is that at 38 minutes, it’s too damn short.
The classic line-up is here—Buck Dharma on guitars, Eric Bloom on vocals & stun guitar (whatever the hell that is), Allen Lanier on keyboards, Joe Bouchard on bass, and his older brother Albert Bouchard on drums. Four of the numbers are from their most recent albums (‘R.U. Ready to Rock’ and ‘Godzilla’ from Spectres (1977), and ‘E.T.I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence’ and ‘(Don’t Fear) the Reaper’ from Agents of Fortune (1976)). Only one song originates from their early albums (‘Astronomy’, from Secret Treaties (1974), but then they’d only released five albums at this point. The last two numbers are cover tunes.
The cover reaches out and grabs you. The Grim Reaper rides a black horse over a desert landscape. T.R. Shorr (ie, Todd Shorr) painted it based on a concept by Hillary Vermont and Marty Pekar, with Andrea Klein for the sleeve design. This album recalls the times in the 1970’s when Metal gave the impression of obscure meanings in mystic lyrics.
This was recorded at different venues, for instance at the Fox Theatre, Atlanta, Georgia (‘R.U. Ready to Rock’ & ‘Kick Out the Jams’); the Columbus Municipal Auditorium in Columbus, Georgia (‘E.T.I.’ & ‘Astronomy’), both in April, 1978; New Castle City Hall in the UK, June 1, 1978 (‘Godzilla’ & ‘We Gotta Get Out of This Place’). ‘(Don’t Fear) the Reaper’ was recorded live at Barton Coliseum, Little Rock, Arkansas on April 9, 1978.
The show launches off with a kick-ass rendition of ‘R.U. Ready to Rock’ and never lets up on the momentum. Donald “Buck Dharma” Roesner cranks out some masterful solos without a trace of the self-indulgence Led Zeppelin was known for. Not one song overstays its welcome. I didn’t know MC5 growing up, but I think BOC took their version of ‘Kick Out the Jams’ and made it their own.
I first heard ‘Godzilla’ on one of those late-night rock concert shows they had in the 70s, Night Flight maybe, with a Godzilla head bobbing in the background. I couldn’t believe somebody had actually done a song about him. I’ve always been a Godzilla fan, having watched a lot of admittedly dubbed movies on Saturday afternoon reruns. That song captures the grandeur and sheer terror, the force of nature that is Godzilla.
Everybody knows (Don’t Fear) the Reaper’; it’s the only BOC song they’ll play on the radio these days. This performance from Arkansas is more energetic than what we heard on vinyl. Eric Bloom channels Eric Burdon’s vocals on the closer, “We Gotta Get Out of This Place”, and it’s just possible BOC exceeds the Animals on this tune. I know there’s an expanded version on CD somewhere out there, but this LP remains a treasured favorite. You need to try it sometime.
Papablues Scrapbook 