Yesterday, today was tomorrow

In December 1974, four years after the breakup, the Beatles were still all over the Billboard Hot 100.

There were other weeks when two or three members had solo records in the Top 40, but for the week ending December 14, each Beatle had a solo record in the top 40: Paul (Junior’s Farm, #10), Ringo (Only You, #18), George (Dark Horse, #32) and John (Whatever Gets You Through the Night, #40).

(The feat was repeated one month later for the week ending January 11, 1975, with the same songs but swapping out John’s Whatever Gets You Through the Night for #9 Dream).

George’s attempt at a New Year’s Day anthem, Ding Dong, Ding Dong, was also released in December 1974, climbing to #36 in January.

As a footnote, several records with Beatles connections also made the Hot 100 that month.

Elton John’s cover of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was moving up the charts; John Lennon sang backing vocals and played guitar on the cut. It would go to #1 for two weeks in January 1975. Less than a month earlier, on November 28, 1974, Lennon joined Elton John onstage at Madison Square Garden to sing Lucy, Whatever Gets You Through the Night (which the two co-wrote) and I Saw Her Standing There.

Day Tripper by Anne Murray was on the lower rungs of the chart, peaking at #59. Murray had a mini-career covering Beatles’ songs. In 1973 she took You Won’t See Me to the top ten and her 1980 cover of I’m Happy Just to Dance with You went to #13 on the Adult Contemporary chart.

Following the Beatles break up, George Martin moved on to produce seven albums for America, including the hits Tin Man (on which he played piano) and Lonely People, both records making Top 100 appearances that December.

Four years after scoring a #3 hit with Green-Eyed Lady, Sugarloaf’s Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You debuted this month, eventually moving into the Top Ten. The song lifts the riff from I Feel Fine, and alludes to a song that "sounds like John, Paul and George")

If you’re looking for something Beatlesque, there was the Hudson Brothers’ So You Are A Star, which peaked at #21. Mark Hudson later worked with Ringo as a producer and composer.

The Electric Light Orchestra, a band whose mission was, as founder member Roy Wood said, to "pick up where the Beatles left off,” had Can’t Get It Out of My Head on the charts where it would peak at #9.

Lastly, also debuting in December 1974 was Billy Preston’s instrumental Struttin’, which would enter the Top 40 in January 1975.

John Saxon in The Glove

(This blog is part of the John Saxon Blogathon hosted by Realweegiemidget and Cinematic Catharsis)

Following Enter the Dragon (1973), directors (I’m hesitant to say Hollywood) began to see John Saxon in a different light – that of action hero – leading to his appearing in a string of adventure films through the rest of 1970s, including The Swiss Conspiracy (1975), Raid on Entebbe (1977) and several Italian crime/action flicks among others. The final film in that run was The Glove (1979).

John Saxon: If the glove fits

Saxon plays Sam Kellog, an ex-cop turned bounty hunter, six months behind in child-support payments and experiencing a full-blown existential crisis, doubting his career choice, waxing nostalgic over his pre-cop minor league baseball days and generally confused by his purpose in life.

(We know this because director/screenwriter Ross Hagen's script has Saxon provide voiceover narration about “the emptiness in my gut,” or “when you live on the edge, one push and you’re over” and “a bounty hunter does things the police can’t.”)

When Kellog catches wind of a $20,000 reward for the capture of Victor Hale (Rosey Grier), an ex-con suspected of the brutal murders of several prison guards, this is the opportunity for him to at least solve his financial woes.

Hale was beaten in jail by prison guards using an outlawed riot glove, described as “five pounds of lead and steel.” He now has his own version of the glove and with revenge on his mind, he punches through a car windshield to get at one victim and destroys a bathroom while beating another. This is no Nintendo power glove.

Kellog and Hale play cat-and-mouse before an epic showdown on the roof of Hale’s apartment building. They beat each other silly before Kellog concedes defeat, but as Hale offers to escort Kellog from the building a rival bounty hunter suddenly shows up, leading to Hale’s death as well as that of the bounty hunter when residents of the building take matters into their own hands avenging a death of “one of their own.”

You might say (if you’re corny enough and I guess I am) that the role of Sam Kellog fits Saxon like a glove. He’s a complex character, whether interacting with his grade-school daughter, joking – a fluffed line that was kept in the movie – with his kibbitzing boss (Keenan Wynn) or providing cynicism and world-weariness in his narration. Saxon even does his own stunts, including a fight with a bail-skipper in a meat-packing plant, which includes using animal parts as weapons.

After a successful career in pro football, Rosey Grier moved on to TV and films, including The Thing with Two Heads (1972), and becoming almost better known as a macrame and needlepoint enthusiast. In The Glove, when he’s not beating people to death, he’s a gentle giant playing guitar, befriending a neighborhood kid, driving a Country Squire station wagon and shopping for groceries (he buys a bouquet of flowers for his shabby apartment).

Along with Grier, the supporting cast also includes Joanna Cassidy, Keenan Wynn, Michael Pataki, Jack Carter, Aldo Ray and Joan Blondell (her final role before her death). 

The Glove can feel a bit schizophrenic. When Saxon is onscreen tracking down bail jumpers and bemoaning his lot in life, the film takes on a noirish quality. When the focus is on Grier, the vibe is one of Blaxploitation. Overall, the film has the feel of an extended TV pilot, serving to introduce Sam Kellog and his world to viewers.

Either way, the movie holds its own as an action film, John Saxon playing a hero who is a Hamlet for 1970s: plagued by self-doubt and uncertainty while outfitted in an Adidas track suit (the jacket fashionably unzipped enough to show off his bare chest).