On “Everything Fab Four,” the author discusses being John and Yoko’s neighbor and learning Beatles music theory<\/p>\n
From Salon<\/a><\/p>\n By Nicole Michael<\/p>\n Author, filmmaker and narrator Jamie Bernstein \u2013 daughter of legendary composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein \u2013 joined host Kenneth Womack to talk about meeting the Beatles, becoming neighbors with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, \u201cMaestro\u201d (which was based on her memoir, \u201cFamous Father Girl\u201d) and much more on \u201cEverything Fab Four.\u201d The podcast is co-produced by me and Womack, a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon, and distributed by Salon.<\/p>\n Bernstein, who says growing up with a \u201clarger than life\u201d father certainly \u201cwasn\u2019t boring,\u201d told Womack that her Beatles fandom began at age 11 \u2013 and that she and her dad shared an interest in their music. \u201cThey were already on my radar, so by the time February 1964 hit [when the band played \u201cThe Ed Sullivan Show\u201d] I was obsessed. I was dreaming about them. I was a capital B \u2018Beatlemaniac\u2019 and was the exact right age to witness their parade of albums in real time.\u201d<\/p>\n As for Leonard, who was hosting his \u201cYoung People\u2019s Concerts\u201d TV show at the time, Jamie said, \u201cMy dad quickly figured out that by including pop music examples on those concerts was a really great way to retain the interest and focus of kids . . . He\u2019d play \u2018And I Love Her\u2019 as an example of A-B-A form and all the kids in the audience would go nuts. He put [the Beatles] in the same category with American songbook composers and Schubert for their inventiveness and melodic quality. I learned so much by sharing Beatles music with my dad.\u201d<\/p>\n She also explained that as the Beatles evolved throughout the \u201860s and became more inventive with their music, \u201cMy father was almost as obsessed with \u2018Sgt. Pepper\u2019 as I was,\u201d and soon they were poring over every song together, with Leonard even having dinner guests at their home sit down and listen to the albums.<\/p>\n Their joint ties to the Beatles ran deep both before and after \u201cPepper,\u201d though, with Leonard having toyed with the idea of recording songs based on some of John Lennon\u2019s \u201cIn His Own Write\u201d poems, and with his eventual move to the Dakota building in NYC where Lennon lived with his wife, Yoko Ono. It was also where Lennon\u2019s life was violently taken in December 1980. \u201cI was there that night,\u201d Jamie told Womack. \u201cI can’t even describe the horror and despair. My dad and I sat together in his studio crying and drinking for hours.\u201d But she also has lighter memories of that time, describing a courtyard potluck at the building where she and her friends had a brief, comical brush with Lennon.<\/p>\n Read the full story and listen to the interview.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On “Everything Fab Four,” the author discusses being John and Yoko’s neighbor and learning Beatles music theory From Salon By Nicole Michael Author, filmmaker and narrator Jamie Bernstein \u2013 daughter of legendary composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein \u2013 joined host Kenneth Womack to talk about meeting the Beatles, becoming neighbors with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, \u201cMaestro\u201d … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7414],"class_list":["post-16090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jamie-bernstein"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16091,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16090\/revisions\/16091"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/3457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opus3artists.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}