Salt and Pepper/One More Time

 (This post is part of the 12th Annual Rule, Britannia Blogathon hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts)

It’s late 1967 and Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford, several years removed from their Rat Pack/Ocean’s Eleven heyday, are skimming off what they can from the excesses of Swinging London, zipping around Soho on matching motorbikes, hitting the trendy discos in Nehru suits and patched jeans, discovering marijuana and taking full advantage of their fame with the local “birds.”

The duo was in town to star in (and co-produce) the comedy adventure Salt and Pepper, playing owners of an eponymous Soho nightclub who find themselves embroiled in a coup to take over the British government.

Salt and Pepper is yet another late-sixties spy movie, borrowing bits and pieces from everywhere: Goldfinger, Help!, Batman, even Hope and Crosby if you can imagine them smoking, boozing and leering their way through one of their road pictures.

(Davis and Lawford are constantly lighting cigarettes and pouring drinks; one could be led to believe that they serve as mnemonic devices to assist them in remembering their lines).

Directed by Richard Donner (Superman, The Omen, Lethal Weapon) whose credits up till then were primarily in television (Davis worked on an episode of The Wild, Wild West that Donner directed), Salt and Pepper tries hard to come off as being with it, including a groovy musical number with Davis “soloing” on an electric guitar that isn’t plugged in. (For what it’s worth, Donner had previously directed six episodes of the Banana Splits Adventure Hour).

Sometimes it takes more than just long sideburns and bellbottoms to be hip.

Filmed on a reconstructed Soho on a backlot of Shepperton Studios (after gawkers prompted the police to shut down production), Salt and Pepper had a strong initial showing at the box office, good enough for United Artists to greenlight a sequel, imaginatively titled One More Time (1970).

Salt and Pepper can be fast-paced fun. One More Time is only for the morbidly curious.

Shot on location in Herefordshire and London, director Jerry Lewis (yeah, that Jerry Lewis) uses the opportunity to essentially resurrect Martin and Lewis – Lawford the suave, tuxedoed straight man and Davis, an underrated actor who deserved much better, the mugging goofball literally channeling Lewis is some scenes.

Lewis takes a lightweight plot – Salt and Pepper bust a diamond smuggling ring – and milks it into an hour and a half of double takes, surreal visual gags and scenes that drag on forever, none very funny: a soused Davis can’t figure out a teapot, Davis sneezes hard enough from a dose of snuff to knock people down, etc., etc.

Strange moments abound. Like how did Lawford, brother-in-law to John and Robert Kennedy, allow this scene?

The most bizarre moment, below, comes out of nowhere, apropos of nothing. I’d imagine that Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing were filming nearby and somehow coerced into these uncredited cameos. Davis’ reaction is straight out of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Following One More Time Lawford, pushing fifty and with serious substance abuse problems, saw his career tumble into a patchwork of television guest shots and B-movies. Davis had two moments of career glory left, his Rhythm of Life number in Sweet Charity (1970), then an unlikely #1 hit with the noxious The Candy Man (1972).

Their bad habits eventually killed them both, Lawford at 61, Davis at 64. Even the coolest and slickest fade away.

Fantasy Park revisited

Fantasy Park was a 48-hour theatre-of-the-mind music festival, an imaginary rock concert aired by nearly 200 radio stations over the Independence Day weekend in 1975. Cooked up by a Dallas radio station, it used a mix of cuts from live and studio albums backed with crowd noises, complete with stage announcements, backstage interview and sound effects.

I caught bits and pieces of it when it originally aired and then again this past Labor Day weekend when the program streamed online. The slate of artists was a mid-seventies wish list; today it’s “classic vinyl”:

Friday: Chicago, Elton John, Joe Walsh, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton.

Saturday: Cream, Shawn Phillips, Pink Floyd, Carly Simon, James Taylor, Carole King, Poco, Alvin Lee, Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Dave Mason, Steve Miller Band, BB King, Stevie Wonder, John Denver, Beach Boys, War, Grand Funk, Yes.

Sunday: Deep Purple, Steely Dan, Jesse Colin Young, Cat Stevens, The Who, Rolling Stones, Moody Blues, Marshall Tucker Band, Allman Brothers, Van Morrison.

Monday: Harry Chapin, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Santana, Bee Gees, Paul Simon, Seals and Croft, America, Joni Mitchell, Doobie Brothers, Loggins and Messina, CSN&Y, Bob Dylan, Beatles.

Looking back, it’s a little odd. John Denver, Seals and Croft, and Carly Simon? Shawn Phillips, whose highest charting U.S. album reached #57? No Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane (Starship at this point), The Band, Jethro Tull, ELP.

In two years, nearly half the Fantasy Park performers would begin losing traction artistically and in album sales, replaced by performers who had yet to work out their sound or were still toiling in the minor leagues, like Boston, Fleetwood Mac, Peter Frampton, Wings, Heart, Bob Segar, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty.

But for now, and as befitting a concert of the mind taking place during the smiley face decade, it’s nothing but good vibes all around. During the Beach Boys set, we’re told by the program’s roving reporter that the band was “really getting into it.” “It’s 1965 all over again,” he added after I Get Around, forgetting that the record came out in 1964.

Fireworks follow the Moody Blues, a Frisbee competition is held “over by the lake” and some dweeb talks kite-flying. During Joni Mitchell’s performance, a nurse who helped with the medical tent delivery of a baby is interviewed (a girl, 7 lbs., 10 oz., no name yet, but Joni would’ve been nice). No mention of any ODs or bad trips.

All 48 hours played over a looped bed of crowd noise that included a woman shrieking every couple of minutes, a Woodstockian Wilhelm scream that makes one wonder if the Ohio Players weren’t on the bill.

Fantasy Park naturally ends with the great white hoped-for, a Beatles reunion, a what-if played out repeatedly at the time in the rock press and during stoned conversations among fans. With between-song patter taken from Let It Be and other sources, their relatively brief set ends with John’s “We’d like to do something that we don’t normally get the chance to do,” – well, yeah – then A Day in the Life.

As the song ends, we can assume that the 750,000 concert goers have dropped through a trap door and the program ends abruptly with the sound of crickets chirping.

When it aired in 1975, listeners supposedly flooded radio station phone lines looking for tickets and directions. The IRS showed up at one station following up on gate receipts to ensure the government got its cut. Not quite as extreme a reaction that the War of the Worlds broadcast received in 1938, but maybe that’s an idea for a future special: Martians invade Woodstock.

Wings for wheels

In September 1975, I bought two albums at Korvette’s: David Crosby and Graham Nash’s Wind on the Water and Born to Run.

During the first half of the 1970s, anything bearing the Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young, especially Young) brand was an automatic buy for me. Wind on the Water didn’t disappoint; it’s easily the duo’s best album despite its front cover yacht rock vibe (and Nash looking alarmingly emaciated). Carry Me, Crosby’s song about loss, was one of his strongest. Their eco-prog To the Last Whale was properly elegiac, the perfect soundtrack for a Jacques Costeau documentary. 

But finding turntable time for Wind on the Water was difficult given how obsessively I played Born to Run. 

It’s one of the great rock records (ironically, it’s not the best record of 1975; that honor goes to Blood on the Tracks; honestly, Born to Run may not even be Springsteen’s best album). Yeah, his lyrics can be purplish at times, Jungleland is a tad overwrought and most of its songs have been long over-exposed. (If you listened to WNEW-FM between 1975 and 1985 you heard the song Born to Run nearly as many times as Springsteen has played it live – 1,875 times). 

But with fifty years perspective, it becomes more obvious than ever that Born to Run is the sound of an artist pouring everything into his personal vision. 

By 1975, more "traditional" rock and roll and soul music were beginning to fall by the wayside as the kids clamored for Kashmir and Wish You Were Here, but Springsteen unapologetically took bits and pieces from the 25-year history of rock – Bo Diddley, Phil Spector, The Locomotion, Duane Eddy, the urban vibe of West Side Story – and customized into a contemporary street racer. 

He made Clarence Clemons’ saxophone the centerpiece at a time when, aside from the occasional Stones record, it wasn’t a popular instrument. And this wasn’t that wimpy soprano sax sound popularized by the Saturday Night Live opening theme, Clemons played it with balls and urgency. His solo in Jungleland still raises the hair on the back of one’s neck, a mini-epic itself, like Clare Torry’s vocalizing on Pink Floyd 's The Great Gig in the Sky. 

I always had some problems squaring with Born to Run’s characters. They hung around parking lots and deserted beaches, seemed preoccupied with their cars and had limited prospects for the future. Unlike them, I didn’t feel trapped in my hometown, for which I’d always had a corny civic appreciation. 

It took a while to realize it, but in 1975 I was like them. I was ready for . . . something. Frustrated with still living at home and going to school, navigating a confused personal life, often feeling inarticulate, unsure and unstuck. 

Under those emotional conditions, you could listen to Crosby and Nash and still feel the same way when the record hit that final runout groove. Listening to Born to Run brought a different reaction, a shared common ground of hope.