I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in "Cheers & Jeers".
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Laramie, Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.
ART NOTES— an exhibition of works created by eight New York-based Italian artists — in an exhibition entitled Homegrown— will be at the Magazzino Art Foundation in Cold Spring, New York through September 7th.
YOUR WEEKEND READ is this essay in The Atlantic by the former lead prosecutor in the special counsel’s office of Bob Mueller, Andrew Weissman— on William Barr’s favoritism for Roger Stone and why four prosecutors walked off the case.
THURSDAY's CHILD was located by an Alabama chartered fishing boat in the Gulf of Mexico— “sucked out by the tide”— then rescued and now has a new home.
LITERARY NOTES— a new book written by chemist Grigory Rodchenkov tells the story of how he rose to become head of (ostensibly) Russia’s anti-doping sports laboratory …. which in reality supplied athletes with a steroid cocktail dissolved in Chivas Regal, how the program was stepped-up during the Putin era and for which ... he now lives in protective custody in the US (lest he be a target of assassins).
FRIDAY's CHILD is named Johnny Arnold the Cat— a kitteh adopted from a Humane Society in Ontario and who has since developed …. a heart pattern.
BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC ...… and the easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz.
OLDER-YOUNGER BROTHERS?— two retired military officers with former/current ties to the Administration: former Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Douglas MacGregor, the Trumpster’s nominee as ambassador to Germany.
...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… in late 1995, the six-part documentary entitled The Beatles Anthology was shown on television — and it was only then that I came to learn that three men had played drums onstage in the band. Sure, there was Ringo … and many are aware of the story of how he came to replace their first drummer (Pete Best). Yet I had no idea that an experienced London-area drummer named Jimmie Nicol was asked to fill-in for a hospitalized Ringo for the first two weeks of a tour. Unlike Pete Best, he has avoided the spotlight, to a fault …….. and yet his story is worth telling.
Jimmie Nicol was born in 1939 in London and by age eighteen had started on a versatile career as a drummer: playing with local bands, having a stint in the pit orchestra for a musical theater show, sitting-in with several larger acts (such as Georgie Fame’s Blue Flames), working as a studio session drummer and even appearing (in a band led by Colin Hicks) in a 1959 Italian documentary film about European nightlife, which led to them touring Italy. He had the same drum idol as did Ginger Baker — the British jazz drummer Phil Seaman — and also cited the alto saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley as an inspiration.
By 1964 he co-founded The Shubdubs, a jazz/R&B band similar to Georgie Fame’s band (with the ex-Merseybeats bassist) ..… and then on June 3rd, the phone rang.
For the day before the Beatles were about to depart on a Europe/Asia tour: Ringo Starr was hospitalized with tonsillitis. Their manager Brian Epstein and producer George Martin were torn, yet felt the band should make the tour with a substitute drummer. John and Paul were OK with it, yet it took every ounce of persuasion from Epstein and Martin to convince George Harrison, loyal-to-a-fault to Ringo.
But whom?
George Martin had recently used Nicol on a recording session and had also heard him on a low-budget compilation album (of Hit Parade songs) that included some Beatles covers, so he would know the material. Since Paul had once heard Jimmie sit-in with Georgie Fame, he agreed with Martin that he should be invited over for an audition at Abbey Road Studios. Jimmie Nicol passed the six-song audition and was asked to go home and pack for a flight to Copenhagen the very next day.
And for the next eight shows (with Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and Australia) by all accounts he filled in competently (the fan screaming notwithstanding).
While he was mobbed when he accompanied the rest of the band to/from airports and venues ….. (at times) he was able to get away, and later said:
In Hong Kong, I went to see the thousands of people who live on little boats in the harbour. I saw the refugees in Kowloon, and I visited a nightclub. I like to see life. A Beatle could never really do that.
Ringo recovered and flew to Melbourne, Australia to join the tour on June 14th. Nicol’s flight home was early in the morning and was unable to say goodbye to the others (still asleep), then was handed a check for £500 (about $8.3k in today’s money) and a gold watch by Epstein at the airport.
He was praised by both Martin and McCartney, was later sent 5,000 fan letters by an Australian disk jockey and upon his return to Britain re-formed the Shubdubs (now billed as Jimmie Nicol and the Shubdubs) yet with little commercial success.
He felt a bit depressed over his rapid change of fortune and declared bankruptcy just a few months later. He then joined the Swedish band The Spotnicks, who had some modest success before he left the music field in 1967 for a business career.
And since then, he has kept an extremely low profile: saying that he did not want to cash-in on his temporary fame, saying that the Beatles “had been damn good for me and to me”. He moved to Mexico for several years, attended only one Beatles fan convention in 1984, has given few interviews and is believed to have been back living in the UK as of 2017 … emphasis on “believed”.
He turned age eighty-one earlier this week and his son Howard is an award-winning sound engineer in Britain. Tom Hanks has said when he wrote the screenplay for the 1996 film That Thing You Do that he was partly inspired by Nicol’s story. Perhaps his most lasting influence is his answer to the question the others asked him during his tenure, about how he was doing? “Getting better all the time”— inspiring the song Getting Better on the 1967 Sgt. Pepper album.
In 2013, author Jim Berkenstadt wrote the paperback The Beatle Who Vanished— optioned four years later by Roy Orbison’s son Alex for a possible film: yet which has not yet come to fruition.
First, here is their show in the Netherlands, with George Harrison singing Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven”— and you can hear Jimmie through the crowd.
And here is a Spotnicks instrumental tune with a notable Jimmie Nicol drum solo.