Elektra Records 75th Anniversary

By Harvey Kubernik

 

As part of Elektra Records’ 75th Anniversary celebration, Rhino Entertainment has just released an extensive collection of iconic Elektra titles on vinyl. The series encompasses acclaimed albums issued from the ‘60s through the ‘90s that underline the label’s timeless, genre-defiant catalog. Titles from the collection were issued each Friday in July. They are available at participating brick-and-mortar stores across the country.

The July albums included The Afghan Whigs – Gentlemen, Anita Baker – Rapture, Bread – Best of Bread, Grover Washington Jr. – Winelight, Keith Sweat – Keith Sweat, Nanci Griffith - Other Voices, Other Rooms, Public Image Ltd – This Is What You Want… This Is What You Get, Superdrag – Regretfully Yours, Television – Adventure (High Fidelity), The Stooges – The Stooges (High Fidelity), Third Eye Blind – Third Eye Blind, Tim Buckley – Happy Sad (Rhino Reserve), Sisters of Mercy - First and Last and Always, The Cars – The Cars (High Fidelity), Television – Marquee Moon (High Fidelity), The Cars – Shake It Up (Rhino Reserve), Love – The Elektra Singles, The Doors – Golden Doors 2.

Rhino’s Quadio continues the Elektra 75th anniversary with four hits collections: Judy Collins’ Colors of the Day (1972), the New Seekers’ The Best of the New Seekers (1973), and Carly Simon’s The Best of Carly Simon (1975).

Each disc pairs the original quadraphonic mix with a hi-res 192 kHz/24-bit stereo transfer, both sourced from the original analog four-track quad master tapes. Available exclusively through Rhino.com and select Warner Music Group stores worldwide.

As a highlight of this special Elektra 75 collection, label founder Jac Holzman has assembled an album featuring Bob Dylan alongside other influential folk artists such as Fred Neil, Tom Paxton, and Judy Collins, entitled Dylan’s Circle. It’s available as a 1LP/1CD that highlights the collaboration and competition between these legendary musicians and honors the Greenwich Village music scene of the early 1960s. From Dylan’s “North Country Blues” to “Maggie’s Farm,” the compilation showcases the era’s defining sound. It’s a tribute to the artists who helped shape the folk revival and to Jac Holzman’s legacy.

(more…)

Newport & The Great Folk Dream – new documentary

By Harvey Kubernik 

 

Memphis-based director Robert Gordon’s newest film Newport & The Great Folk Dream will be featured in the Venice International Film Festival as part of the Venice Biennale 2025 on Friday, September 5th. The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest film festival in the world — and is viewed as one of the “Big Five” influential festivals, along with Cannes, Berlin, Sundance, and Toronto.

Gordon produced the film along with Historic Films Archive owner Joe Lauro and Memphis filmmaker Laura Jean Hocking, who also edited the film. The team has working on and off on Newport & The Great Folk Dream for eight years. The recent critical and box office success of the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown surely had an impact to get this long-awaited documentary across the finish line.

Gordon and company sifted through pristine 4K transfers culled from 80+ hours of mostly never-seen 16mm negative footage they had access to, initially shot by award winning filmmaker Murray Lerner and his crew at the Newport Folk Festivals between 1963 and 1966.

Portions of those footage performances became the foundation for Lerner’s acclaimed documentary Festival! (1967), now titled Festival, available via The Criterion Collection. Lerner visited the annual Newport Folk Festival to document a thriving, idealistic musical movement as it reached its peak as a popular phenomenon.

For decades Lerner’s cinematic study had influence on the booking policies at blues, folk, and bluegrass venues nationally, and especially in Southern California at The Ash Grove and McCabe’s Guitar Shop. Festival! developed a cult following on college campuses and the midnight movie circuit of the late sixties and seventies.

Newport & The Great Folk Dream features musical performances by Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, Howlin’ Wolf, Mississippi John Hurt, the Lovin’ Spoonful, Judy Collins, the Freedom Singers with Bernice Reagon, John Lee Hooker, Pete Seeger, and Richard & Mimi Fariña.

(more…)

Marianne Faithfull’s Decca Catalog Reissues & 1995 interview

By Harvey Kubernik

 

Singer, actress, author and performer Marianne Faithfull’s complete UK Decca catalog has been reissued on LP, CD and streaming.

Before her passing on January 30 this year, Marianne completed work on two projects that were to commemorate her 60th anniversary in music; the first was her final EP Burning Moonlight, a collection of four songs inspired by her Decca recordings, the second was her contribution to this series of reissues where she talked in-depth about her Decca recording career for the first time.

All four of Marianne’s original Decca albums, Marianne Faithfull, Come My Way, North Country Maid and Loveinamist have been reissued on vinyl alongside Cast Your Fate to the Wind: a new double LP of the collected singles, B-sides and rarities. Simultaneously a 6-CD box set will be released called Cast Your Fate To The Wind: The Complete UK Decca Recordings, which features all the albums reproduced on miniature facsimile LPs, a new double album of the singles, B-sides and rarities, five art cards and a 76-page book featuring many rare and unpublished photographs.

Three of the original albums are appearing on vinyl for the first time since they were released, and the artwork on all four original LPs has been recreated where possible from the original images giving a high-quality finish to this set of reissues. The music has been remastered from the original tapes by Grammy nominated producer Andrew Batt who was the Executive Producer of Burning Moonlight. He also contributes a full-scale reassessment of the Decca recordings in his in-depth sleeve notes included in each LP and the CD box set. In these, Marianne comments on the source of the songs and her role in the recordings, conclusively debunking the received wisdom that in this phase of her career she was little more than a record label puppet.

In 1964, Marianne Faithfull was spotted by the impresario Andrew Loog Oldham, and her recording career began in June of that year with the release of her debut single “As Tears Go By,” a song penned by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Andrew Loog Oldham. It reached a Top Ten position in the UK singles chart. The Stones then recorded their own version, included on the American pressing of December’s Children (And Everybody’s) in 1965. Their American record label London issued “As Tears Go By” as a single that landed in the number six spot on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. The Rolling Stones subsequently performed the tune on an episode of The Ed Sullivan Show.

 

##

In 2000 I discussed Faithfull with Andrew Loog Oldham, the 1963-1967 record producer and manager of the Rolling Stones, for Discoveries magazine.

“The fact is forgotten that Marianne had, between August of ‘64 and the summer of ‘65 four Top Ten hits in the UK. ‘As Tears Go By’ and ‘Come and Stay With Me’ held up.

 

“For one it was obvious that ‘this thing of ours’ was not going to disappear. We had come in following the twist, Davy Crockett, skiffle, and trad jazz. Skiffle and trad jazz had been very important; they had been the BBC and the establishment’s last chance to control the key to what music we got to hear. You had during 1957-1958 like The Six-Five Special; hosted by Pete Murray (God bless him!) and Jo Douglas which invited us all to deck up in jeans and sweaters and be really daring with our shirt collars turned up.

 

“There were villains, there was mayhem, action and if we had not had pirate radio I might not have had a hit with Marianne Faithfull’s ‘As Tears Go By.’ The BBC would not touch it, they said Marianne could not sing. Mind you, that’s what they’d said about Mick Jagger a year earlier when the Rolling Stones failed their BBC live audition. They said ‘The singer cannot sing.’ The BBC was the enemy, a limp wristed arm of the government trying to keep kids on a rationed musical diet of trad jazz and skiffle.”

 

A news announcement from ABKCO provides an overview of Faithfull’s Decca catalog reissues, and observes that: “Marianne’s furious resurfacing in the late ‘70s with Broken English completely superseded her earlier artistic achievements, and for a time she felt the need to distance herself both personally and artistically from her earlier incarnation.

 

“Inadvertently, this led to one of the biggest misconceptions about the early stage of Marianne’s career, namely that she was not creatively involved in her ‘60s releases, or that these recordings did not have the same artistic consideration behind them as her later music. She was at pains to correct that impression on these reissues; ‘I think I did express a lot in my early work, what people hear with the jump between these recordings and Broken English is just experience; life happened, but for me it’s all been connected. The music changed, my voice changed, but my approach to making records has always been the same: I’ve always known what I was doing.’

“2025 marks the 60th anniversary of the release of Marianne’s two debut albums and in the months before her passing, she reflected on this early part of her career with renewed appreciation: ‘I don’t think people realize how much care and real consideration we put into this early material. It took a long time for me to appreciate it, but now I do and I’m really proud of what we did, and I hope you all like it as much as I do.’”

 

##

During 1995 I interviewed Marianne Faithfull when Faithfull: An Autobiography, written with David Dalton, was published. Portions of our conversation were published in my first book This Is Rebel Music: The Harvey Kubernik InnerViews.

It was Faithfull’s friend, poet Allen Ginsberg, who encouraged me to look Marianne Faithfull up the next time she was in Hollywood. Faithfull had just done a show at The Henry Fonda Theater on Hollywood Blvd, and in the city. “Go talk to her and let her talk to you,” suggested Allen.

Her publicist at Island Records arranged for me to visit her on Sunset Blvd at the famed Chateau Marmont. I nervously knocked on the door to her hotel room, ironically, right next to the suite where years earlier I had interviewed and had lunch with Leonard Cohen.

Marianne answered my knuckles, “Welcome to the poet’s corner,” she beamed.

I looked at her for about 20 seconds.

She was clad in black. Not punk black, but black blouse, black pants and black nylons. She was an image out of Hollywood’s Jazz City music club circa 1958. Musician/activist Buddy Collette once described the venue to me, “where a lot of hip and talented musicians went. Lady Day… And the girls… The hair, in black, smiling… And the music in that place…”

My junior high school pinup girl was now in front of me. She is wearing no makeup, blond, long hair, shorter in person that I expected, kind of a Juliette Greco meets later-day Gloria Grahame visual. Marianne has big green eyes.

She turned out to be a fascinating interview subject. A real yenta. She’s a lot of fun and never avoided a question during our time together.

 

Marianne Evelyn Gabriel Faithfull was born in Hampstead on December 29, 1946. The left-handed Capricorn has a dancer’s body. In fact, twice during the two-hour chat, Marianne leaped off the couch onto the rug and sort of did a move, an interpretation of “the sideways pony” dance that Tina Turner once taught Mick Jagger in the hall way in front of her in 1965 at Colston Hall in Bristol, England.

She explained that her mother Eva, a ballet dancer, taught her to dance as a child. I then mentioned that I briefly danced on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand as a teenager, and many years after that, I had interviewed Tina Turner for the UK music periodical Melody Maker, and Tina gave me a very brief lesson on how to do “The Popcorn” dance.

“Whew…Remind me to give you a kiss and a hug when you leave today and don’t worry if my boobs get in the way,” she cautioned.

“No problem,” I assured her.

Room service delivered Marlboro Lights. She also ordered a vodka martini for our smoky conversation. I had a mineral water. The label paid. In our conversation, Marianne was confident and elegant.

 

Q. Throughout all your recording career, you’ve included speech or narrative aspects to your vocal singing style. You never had a ‘Motown’ voice.

 

A. (laughs). It’s something I’ve done all my life. Listen to ‘Jabberwock.’ I’ve always included the spoken word. The talk. To their credit, really, the music business let me do it.

 

Q. In your Decca period, you covered Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In the Wind.” I noticed you were in one of the hotel room scenes in Bob Dylan’s Dont Look Back film that chronicled his 1965 British tour. In your book in the Dylan Redux chapter, you provide a real cool glimpse of Dylan in action in the mid-‘60s. He wrote a poem for you and then tore it up. In your autobiography I thought it was one of the sections where you and David Dalton worked really hard in bringing the moment to the reader.

 

A. I think that was the bit that David did best. I didn’t work the hardest on that, David did. But it was wonderful. I wish he’d written the whole book like that. And all the Bobby Neuwirth stuff was so beautiful.

 

Q. Had you never seen a person like Dylan or an American like him in 1965?

 

A. Never. Never seen. Never in my wildest dreams could have imagined anyone like Bob in 1965. His brain, but I was frightened. I didn’t know they were probably more scared of me. I don’t know. They were all on methedrine. He played me the album Bringing It All Back Home himself on his own. It was just amazing. And I worshipped him anyway. That was where I got very close to Allen (Ginsberg) ‘cause Allen was the only sort of person I could recognize as being somewhat like me.

Q. I really enjoyed the passage when Allen came to London with the Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti. They read at Queen Elizabeth Hall. You had spent some time with Ginsberg.

 

A. (smiles) I find them very sexy all those guys. Wonderful. I teased Allen in my book. I adore him. The first time I went to Naropa, Allen was literally by my side like he is. There was a lot of criticism and ‘Who is the woman?’ ‘Why do you (Allen) think she can do this?’ And he didn’t say anything. ‘I just do.’ And then I came back again. We are very good friends. He also represents a lot of things for me that aren’t part of our friendship or our relationship. He is the greatest living American poet. I hooked Allen up with Hal Willner.

 

Q. On the Decca label you recorded a version of the Phil Spector-produced Ronettes’ “Is This Is What I Get For Loving You.” A song written by Spector, Carole King and Gerry Goffin.

 

A. I can tell you that while Andrew Loog Oldham turned me on to Phil Spector and Jack Nitzsche, Bob Crewe and the Four Seasons, the Mamas & the Papas, and a lot of things, the person who really educated me on the Motown level was Mick. I would have never gone that deeply into Motown without Mick. We just played the songs at home constantly. It must have been great fun for him…

There I am at age nineteen and I’ve never listened to the Miracles before. ‘The Tracks of My Tears…’ Mick would run down the bass lines, song constructions on the label, and actually act out the songs in front of me! [Chuckles]. It was really an amazing education. And, of course, when I wanted another type of thing, I’d go and see Keith and then it was all blues. It all kind of fitted in somehow.

Mick and I wore out the grooves on the records so much we’d have to buy them again. For a long time, it was Vivaldi and Marvin Gaye in the morning. That’s how we lived. Which is so wonderful. And I had Mick telling me everything. He knew everything. He knew the names of the session musicians at a snap. So did Jack Nitzsche. Brilliant man. We never could quite get it together to do an album, but at least we have “Sister Morphine.”

 

Q. May I proudly announce that I recently did a series of interviews with the Funk Brothers, the surviving Motown session men who are spotlighted in the documentary film, Standing in the Shadows of Motown.

 

A. Oh God…I’m dying to see that movie. Oh man…Oh man… Nice to see the players get some attention. I like the idea that Berry Gordy still cares that much. He cares about the Motown legacy and we’re not just talking about money. There’s something he did there that he cares very much about. It’s incredible. Obviously, he knows what he did, but for me, it changed my life. I found the Stax records myself. I was lucky.

Mick knew the Motown records already, but they knocked me for a six. That’s why I know about the Four Tops doing ‘Walk Away Renee.’ I spent years listening to Motown. Smokey Robinson…His voice…The Love I Saw In You Was Just a Mirage.’ [Sings the first two lines]. The most beautiful stuff I’ve ever heard…And to this day I’m sure some Motown songs are in the Stones’ live repertoire.”

 

Q. How has meditation impacted your life and work?

 

A. Oh yes. Philip Whalen taught me to meditate. That was a great help. It cleans. It is sort of brain washing I suppose. (laughs). Not a real brain washing. When I’m home, I meditate twice a day. Shell Cottage is…The whole point of it is one great long meditation and the long walks. On my third trip to Naropa I also learned how to do a walking meditation.

 

Q. So Professor Faithfull. Tell me about your work and teaching functions at The Naropa Institute?

 

A. I was teaching lyric writing and Allen Ginsberg eventually showed me a book of one of his great treasures of Japanese haiku. He explained all that to me and said ‘Don’t you understand this is the same thing.’ I was a teacher dealing with process and content. And my other thing, was that I took to meditation like a duck to water that I was always somebody so when students said, ‘We find meditation very boring and very hard,’ Allen could depend on me to say, ‘Well, you’re all wrong.’ ‘Meditation is a very good thing and if you really want to write something interesting, I suggest you go off and meditate.’ So that’s another thing. Allen knew that base was covered. Not that I’m a Buddhist exactly, and I’m not joining. I’m part of Naropa but not as close as Allen is. I don’t have a guru. Allen is my guru. (grins).

Q. There has been some books on Brian Jones and kind of a musical re-evaluation of his many instrumental talents?

 

A. I use Brian. I have a whole lot of friends on the other side that I call up when I need them. I use Brian, Janis and now I’ve got Tony Secunda and Denny Cordell. Well Brian was a genius but he was a very irritating person. Keith really loved Brian. They were all very much in love with me at that time. Not only me, but I was one of the many women they were in love with. Keith and I are still very close. I’m under his wing and I know I will always be under his wing.

 

Q. In the autobiography, you write some of the Rolling Stones characters in their songs came out of LSD.

 

A. Of course they did. I don’t think acid is relative or relevant anymore. I wouldn’t do it again. But I think that it was important then, and I think it taught us a lot. I mean, I pushed them away so much. It’s my fault. The door is open completely. I had to push them away I suppose to find my own spot. Much too much. Mick, too. ‘Cause I couldn’t stay in that position. Don’t be too harsh on Mick. (smiles). You’d really like him and he’d support you. He’s a good guy.

 

Q: Anita Pallenberg is in your autobiography.

 

A: Like most of the time I don’t remember what people were wearing. And I remember one thing, I think is the White Ball and the black dress. Sometimes it’s only on very clear demarcations like clothed, unclothed, black, white that I really know exactly.

Like most of the time I don’t remember what people were wearing. I remember what Allen was wearing, because often, Allen would take his clothes off. So, I would know that and understand that. And that’s a very simple situation.

Now Anita actually remembers things only through what we were wearing, ‘cause that’s what she’s interested in. I don’t mean that as a put down. But that’s how she remembers things. When I say, ‘Do you remember such and such a day…?’ The way back for Anita is ‘Oh yeah… You were wearing a red velvet …and I was wearing…’ You’d dig her, man. [In 1994, Pallenberg graduated from Central Saint Martin’s in London with a fashion and textile degree].

 

Q. Marianne, I read decades ago you were raised Catholic. Mutual friends told me you have Jewish ancestors. I know in England you went to a Roman Catholic Boarding School, St Joseph’s.

.

A. My dear little Piscean. My mother and my grandmother were Jewish. My mother came from a line of Austro-Hungarian aristocrats. My mother was a doctor’s daughter. She was a Jewess, those great Jews who went out and did it from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Doctors, writers, sort of like going into Oklahoma. Allen Ginsberg now is my Jewish Mother.

 

Q. Can we talk about your mother, Eva? She was with you the whole way.

 

A. She was the great love of my life.

 

Q. Eva seemed a very generous woman. She saw it all.

 

A: She certainly did. My mother died as I was performing Kurt Weill and Bertholt Brecht. I was performing The Seven Deadly Sins. And during the performance she died in England. I was in Australia.

On the flight back from Brisbane, Australia, I had a copy of The White Goddess. John Dunbar had called me when I got back from my concert in Australia. Of course it was John, there’s no one else who could call me to tell me Eva was dead. I was at my hotel, sitting about, having a cup of tea and John called and said, ‘Your mother died.’ And got on the plane to go back to England for the funeral and started to read The White Goddess. It’s a 24 hour trip.

There were two people who understood immediately what Broken English was and one was Chris Blackwell and the other was Eva. Immediately. And lots of people did not understand. I would play Broken English for people. My mother got it and Blackwell got it. The movies she would see with her father were Tom Mix movies. She was born in 1911.

 

Q. Tell me about 93 year old Glynn Faithfull?

 

A. My dad. He’s also a Pisces. My father is a scholar of Dante. My father has always known I would do it. And my mother, too. I grew up with total confidence from both of them. They’ve never wavered. My father not for a second. He’s had complete faith in me all of my life.”

##

When I interviewed Marianne in 1995, she autographed copies of her autobiography to my brother Kenneth, and to photographer/journalist Heather Harris.

I later asked Heather, about Marianne Faithfull and the sixties world of London.

“Here in the States the number of incontestably hip young women in the 1960s seemed attenuated for such a huge populace of an equally gigantic nation, but vestigial Puritan forces seemed to limit our own Swinging Sixties to a select few female musicians, groupies, actresses, models and activists. Otherwise, ratted bouffants and stiff, ultra-conservative wear were all one encountered.

“Across the pond offered far better hunting grounds for new, iconoclastic young female souls carrying the banner of modernity in attitudes, fashion, creative output, nascent feminism and the sea change looks of wild straight hairstyles and clothes no one would ever mistake for that of any older generation.

“So even we American teens of the ’60s thrilled to the ‘one of ours’ recognition of British and European new icons like Jean and Chrissie Shrimpton, Pattie and Jenny Boyd, Julie Christie, Jane Asher, Donyale Luna, Twiggy, Talitha Getty, Jane Birkin, Alice, Jane and Victoria Ormsby-Gore, all of David Bailey’s favorite fashion models and the hundred plus young XX chromosome professionals and scenesters in 1967′s iconic compendium by John D Green Birds of Britain (haha).

“Out of these hordes emerged seemingly impossible superlative stand outs, and the leading rock stars of the day snapped them up. Back in the day you were never going to see a better-looking young blonde than Marianne Faithfull, she was born with the je ne c’est quoi beauty genes. (And even later. During the punk era, she stood out like a beacon in a darkened club watching her then boyfriend play. All eyes were on her. You couldn’t miss her even with no light to speak of in a crowded audience of 200. And she was wearing the metallic pink boots I had coveted on the King’s Road but couldn’t afford. She could.)”

##

In 2025, the novelist and writer Daniel Weizmann sent me a Facebook post from music journalist Bill Holdship when Marianne Faithfull left the physical world.

“The first week of March 2005, in the lobby of Hollywood’s Pantages Theater, immediately following a great Bob Dylan show with the equally-great-that-night Merle Haggard opening, I was with my friend Harvey Kubernik, who has known her and Andrew Loog Oldham a long time.

“Harvey suddenly stopped in his tracks and exclaimed: ‘Marianne!’

“She was purchasing a Bob Dylan poster at the time, which was kind of endearing in and of itself.

“‘Hello, Harvey!’ She warmly said. She recognized him immediately, giving him a hug and a kiss. ‘Wasn’t that just a fantastic show?’

“Harvey introduced me to her as ‘my friend Bill.’ She was incredibly nice. And absolutely lovely and charming.

“When we were leaving following a brief conversation during which she told us what she’d been up to recently, she made a point of making eye contact with me, smiling, and saying: ‘Very nice to meet you, Bill!’

“It was short but so sweet and enjoyable and unexpected that it has stuck with me as a cherished memory all these years. I was rarely starstruck after all those years in Los Angeles and what I did for a living. But I’m grateful that my memory of Marianne Faithfull will always be a good and pleasant one.

“I don’t think she probably ever fully recovered after she almost died a few years ago from Covid. But I will sure miss her presence on this planet on many different levels.”

 

© 2025 Harvey Kubernik

 

Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972, 2015′s Every Body Knows: Leonard Cohen, 2016′s Heart of Gold: Neil Young and 2017′s 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love. Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021 the duo wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble.

Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. His Screen Gems: (Pop Music Documentaries and Rock ‘n’ Roll TV Scenes) is scheduled for 2025.

Harvey wrote the liner notes to CD re-releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, The Essential Carole King, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special, The Ramones’ End of the Century and Big Brother & the Holding Company Captured Live at The Monterey International Pop Festival.

During 2006 Kubernik spoke at the special hearings by The Library of Congress in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and audiotape preservation. In 2017 he appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, in their Distinguished Speakers Series. Amidst 2023, Harvey spoke at The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles discussing The Last Waltz music documentary. The New York City Department of Education is developing the social studies textbook Hidden Voices: Jewish Americans in United States History. Kubernik’s 1976 profile/interview with music promoter Bill Graham on the Best Classic Bands website Bill Graham Interview on the Rock ’n’ Roll Revolution, 1976, is included.