Day: May 2, 2024

An 18-year-old Steve Wonder wrote this song? You coulda fooled me. I don’t associate Wonder with this kind of bluesy downerism. I’d certainly never listened to his original version until today.

The Rolling Stones version (i.e., the only one I’d ever listened to for decades) is included on Metamorphosis, a rarities compilation released on 6.6.75.

“I Don’t Know Why” was recorded during the sessions for Let It Bleed — on Thursday, 7.3.69 — apparently in the evening. It was this exact same night that everyone learned of the death of Stones founder and guitarist Brian Jones, who had been found at the bottom of his swimming pool three or four weeks after he’d been fired from the band over drugs. (Jones announced his departure from the band on 6.9.69.)

Am I understanding this correctly? And just under one-quarter of all viewers are primarily or entirely watching broadcast. What is a fair term to describe this segment of the populace? Hayseeds?

From Mike Nichols’ The Graduate (‘67):

Berkeley landlord (Norman Fell) to Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman): “You’re not one of those outside agitators, are you?”

Braddock: “No.”

Berkekey landlord: “‘Cause I won’t stand for that.”

James Stewart’s eyeliner makes him look like a mad ghoul in this German one-sheet for Bell, Book and Candle, which opened on 11.11.58.

It was the year’s second pairing of Stewart and Kim Novak, the first being Vertigo, which tanked after opening on 5.9.58. If memory serves Vertigo wasn’t exactly critically praised either.

Why didn’t Alfred Hitchcock’s haunted classic sell more tickets? Dysfunctional sexual vibes. Gray-haired Stewart (49 or 50 during filming but looking closer to 55) was obviously too long-of-tooth for Novak, who was only 24 or thereabouts.

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Full respect and earnest affection for the greatest actress of the late 20th Century (not to mention her stellar performances in The Devil Wears Prada, The Iron Lady and The Post), although I’ve never forgotten this 2015 Telluride discussion.