The Lonely Hearts Club

 

It’s not exactly a slow news day; but I have nothing useful to say about the news. So let’s talk culture. The Beatkes are in the culture news, with “Now and Then.” Seems to me it is a comment on how moribund pop music is these days, that the biggest news is a new album by the Rolling Stones and a new single by the Beatles.

The idea behind the Beatles’ “Sergeat Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album cover was that the audience standing behind them was meant to represent their ideal audience.

I don’t find the selection that impressive.

Aleister Crowley?
The Vargas Girl?
Karl Marx?
Sonny Liston?

Rather adolescent.

I imagined my own selection. Rules: must be dead, and no fictional characters. Not necessarily the greatest people ever; perceived kindred spirits.

Stephen Leacock
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Leonard Cohen
Dylan Thomas
W.B. Yeats
T.S. Elliot
George Orwell
Sinead O’Connor
Prince
William Blake
Don Bosco
Theresa of Avila
Rene Descartes
Ian Tyson
William Kurelek
Kateri Tekakwitha
J.D. Salinger
Richard Halliburton
Hans Christian Anderson
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Jack Kirby
Maurice Sendak
Thomas D'Arcy McGee
Thomas Jefferson
John Stuart Mill
Edmund Burke
Buster Keaton
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel O’Connell
William Shakespeare
Confucius
Stanley Kubrick
Alfred Hitchcock
Milton Friedman
Lauren Bacall
Carrie Fisher
Patty Duke
Jack Benny
Lewis Carroll
John Paul II
Benedict XVI
John XXIII
John Locke
Whitney Houston

Readers might enjoy making their own list; or send nominations in the comments.

It Was 50 Years Ago Today

In honour of the album’s 50th anniversary (I grow old; I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers belled) Rolling Stone or somebody recently did a modern “update” to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album cover. If they were to do it again today, whom would they add?

Their choices seem dull and predictable. J.K. Rowling. Rosa Parks. Boring and pious and politically correct. The original point, I think, for the Beatles, was to be quirky.

Here is the original list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_images_on_the_cover_of_Sgt._Pepper%27s_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band

But it makes a fun parlour game. Or Facebook game.

Rules: 50 figures. They must be your own most important personal influences. Ideally, you also want faces that are distinctive when seen small on an album cover. They must be fairly recently alive: say, recent enough that there are existing photographs.

Here are mine.

Leonard Cohen
William Kurelek
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Stephen Leacock
Ian Tyson
Buffy Ste. Marie
Thomas D’Arcy McGee
Joni Mitchell
Pierre Trudeau
Stephen Harper
Richard Halliburton
Salvador Dali
Anton Gaudi
Andy Warhol
Buster Keaton
Stanley Kubrick
Alfred Hitchcock
Walt Disney
George Orwell
W.B. Yeats
Samuel Beckett
T.S. Eliot
Lewis Carroll
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
J.D. Salinger
Stan Lee
Pope John Paul II
Pope Benedict XVI
Pope John XXIII
Pope Paul VI
Saint John Bosco
Saint Bernadette Soubouris
Lauren Bacall
Grace Kelly
Sharon Robinson
Raymond Collishaw
Billy Bishop
Billy Barker
Red Kelly
Eddie Shack
Maurice Richard
Jean Beliveau
Jacques Plante
Johnny Bower
Ezra Levant
Mark Steyn
Kate McMillan
Kathy Shaidle
The Thing
Iron Man