About an Imaginary Friend

 

Wonderwall is a song by English rock band Oasis, written by the band’s guitarist and main songwriter Noel Gallagher. The song was produced by Owen Morris and Gallagher for their second album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?.

Contrary to popular belief, the song’s title was not appropriated from Wonderwall, a 1968 film with its soundtrack album (Wonderwall Music) by George Harrison. It remains one of the band’s most popular songs; on 9 June 2013, it was voted number one on Australian alternative music radio station Triple J’s “20 Years of the Hottest 100”. Many notable artists have also covered the song, such as rock singer Ryan Adams in 2003, folk singer Cat Power, and jazz musician Brad Mehldau in 2008.

“Wonderwall” was written for Gallagher’s then-girlfriend, Meg Mathews, as Gallagher told NME in 1996: “It’s about my girlfriend, Meg Matthews.” However, after Gallagher divorced Matthews in 2001, he said the song was not about Matthews: “[the song was] about an imaginary friend who’s gonna come and save you from yourself.”

The music video to the song was filmed by director Nigel Dick with his regular collaborator DOP Ali Asad in the relatively brief period when bassist Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan quit the band due to nervous exhaustion; Scott McLeod came in to replace him.

An alternative version, possibly a bootleg recording, exists and is viewable online. It features a single fixed camera shot, the same as is seen in the more common video, of the five band members miming to the song.

The sleeve artwork was inspired by the paintings of the Belgian surrealist René Magritte, and was shot on Primrose Hill in north London. The hand holding the frame is that of art director Brian Cannon. The original idea was to have Liam in the frame before Noel vetoed that idea whilst the shoot was taking place. Instead a female figure was deemed necessary and Anita Heryet, a Creation Records employee, was asked to stand in as cover star for the shot.

 

To watch the music video, please take a gander at The Genealogy of Style‘s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Genealogy-of-Style/597542157001228?ref=hl

In Music I Trust

James Joseph Marshall

 
 

“I love all the musicians – they’re like family. Looking back I realize I was there at the beginning of something special, I’m like a historian. There’s an honesty about this work that I’m proud of. It feels good to think, my God, I really captured something amazing.”

 

Jim Marshall (1936-2010) was born in Chicago and moved to San Francisco with his family when he was only two years old. There in the City by the Bay he remained during his lifetime. A Brownie camera was one of his first toys. Later he bought a Leica when he was in high school. After coming back from the serving in the Air Force, Marshall met John Coltrane. One day, while he was photographing backstage at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco in 1960, Coltrane asked him for directions to Berkeley. “He asked me for directions to a club,” Marshall said later. “I told him I’d pick him up and take him there if he’d let me take his picture.” This way the visual linkage between Marshall and the best jazz and rock performers was strengthened.

 
 

John Coltrane

 
 

Thelonious Monk & Allen Gingsberg

 
 

Ray Charles

 
 

Miles Davis

 
 

Miles Davies & Steve McQueen

 
 

The Beatles

 
 

The Rolling Stones

 
 

Jimi Hendrix

 
 

Janis Joplin

 
 

Grace Slick

 
 

Jefferson Airplane

 
 

Jim Morrison

 
 

Led Zeppelin

 
 

Alice Cooper

 
 

The Who

 
 

Bob Dylan

 
 

Johnny Cash & June Carter

 
 

John Lennon

Dum Vivimus Vivamus

Dum vivimus vivamus is a Latin phrase that means “While we live, let us live”. It is often taken to be an epicurean declaration.

Emily Dickinson once used it in a letter written to William Howland:

“Sic transit gloria mundi*
How doth the busy bee,
Dum vivimus vivamus,
I stay my enemy!”

 
 

Portrait of Salvador Dalí, Philippe Halsman

 
 

Brion Gysin

 
 

Alfred Hitchcock

 
 

One of the members of Jefferson Airplane by Jim Marshall

 
 

Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger

 
 

Still from Tommy (Ken Russell, 1975)

 
 

David Bowie

 
 

Tim Burton

 
 

Beck Hansen

 
 

Michael Stipe, Mario Sorrenti for Interview Magazine, March 2011

 
 

Lady Gaga and model Rick Genest, still from Born This Way music video (Nick Night, 2011)

 
 

*Sic transit gloria mundi is a Latin phrase that means “Thus passes the glory of the world.” It has been interpreted as “Worldly things are fleeting.” It is possibly an adaptation of a phrase in Thomas à Kempis‘s 1418 work The Imitation of Christ: “O quam cito transit gloria mundi” (“How quickly the glory of the world passes away”).

The Two Queen Bees of Rock

 
 
“In the beginning, the rock world was all Adams and no Eves,” Newsweek commented. But now, “the typical rock group resembles a beehive, three or four drones humming around a queen bee.” Two “queen bees” singled out by Newsweek are Janis Joplin and Grace Slick. “There would be no Big Brother & the Holding Company without Janis Joplin and her nuclear-powered blues delivery,” the magazine noted.
 
Miss Joplin joined the four-man group in 1966 and transformed it into “an acoustical aphrodisiac.” She said: “The tenor of the band is different now. The guys are starting to sing and there is something to build around: me.” Miss Slick, who sings and writes for the Jefferson Airplane, has “a crystalline contralto that could haunt a house… and [is] author of two of its most brilliant songs, ‘Rejoice’ and ‘White Rabbit’.” She explained that she got more attention than the rest of the Airplane because “if you had a group of five cows and one pig, you’d look at the pig because he was different.”
 
BMI Magazine, March 1968

 
 

 
“This shot of Grace Slick and Janis was taken in 1967 for Teen Set magazine for an article on the two Queen Bees of San Francisco Rock. That morning I went over to Grace’s house and then had to pick up Janis. Janis wasn’t in the mood to do any pictures that day, but I begged her and she came along. Everyone always thought there was a huge rivalry between Janis and Grace, but they were dear friends…. by the end of the session, we were all getting pretty silly and clowning around.”
 
“Not Fade Away”
Jim Marshall