Photographer Joel Bernstein has tales that boggle the mind, like accidentally shooting the cover of Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush” as a high school student…you’ll love his stories!

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/joel-bernstein/id1316200737?i=1000751733399

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/3d8eb756-c4ee-4c46-bceb-b6ec17f9151a/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-joel-bernstein

And they don’t seem to know it.

We thought that the country was divided by right and left, Republican and Democrat, that hating and owning the libs was irreversible, that the country couldn’t agree on anything. But this proved untrue, everybody hates the rich.

And the rich only found out about this as a result of the last election, where affordability became the defining issue. And it’s not only Trump who is out of touch, who keeps telling us things are great, it was Biden before him, most of the political class, in thrall to the money, is spewing this hogwash, but even worse, they don’t know how the average person lives.

Jeff Bezos and his plastic wife Lauren have been announced as Honorary Chairs of the Met Gala. Does anybody like these people? ANYBODY? No one is as out of touch with people’s perception of him as Jeff Bezos. A nerd who is trying to convince us since he goes to the gym and wears cowboy hats that he is cool. And the two of them are adulterers to boot. And unlike the rich of the pre-tech era, these two keep parading their wealth and their consumption and… You’d be best off protesting the Met Gala completely, it’s out of touch with the times. If I was a celeb I wouldn’t go. Then again, no one can say no.

That’s what we learned from the Epstein files.

It doesn’t matter whether they get Trump, it doesn’t matter who exactly falls, the truth has been revealed…it’s a club, and you’re not in it, as George Carlin said. But it’s worse than that, it’s a club that sucks up to money and gives its members a pass on heinous activities. It’s like high school, but even worse, because of the money. Academics sucked up to Epstein for donations, letting his “girlfriend” into dental school… That’s what colleges care about most, money. If you’ve got bucks, you can get in. Just ask Jared Kushner, whose father gave $2.5 million to Harvard and then his son was accepted.

Everybody wants to fly on the private jet. First and foremost they don’t want to hang with you, the hoi polloi, the great unwashed, but they also like the smell of money, they want to hang with the rich and powerful. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress say they’re supporting the public but cave in to anything Trump wants and Democrats keep crying their hands are tied.

As for techies…

AI better work for Musk, because Tesla is a disaster. The sale of cars is down, down, down and it doesn’t look like it’s going to recover. As for self-driving, anybody paying attention knows his vehicles drive sans lidar, they rely only on cameras, which are far from perfect. The more we know about Musk the more we don’t like him.

As for Zuckerberg, maybe his wife likes him, but he’s hated as much as the Bezos couple, it’s just that he doesn’t parade his wealth as much.

And Bill Gates? Another philanderer apologizing for his contact with Epstein?

And then you’ve got the California wealth tax. We can debate its pluses and minuses, it’s benefits and costs, but only Jensen Huang was able to say the right thing here, that he would pay it. The rest of the billionaires…they’re all establishing residence outside the Golden State, because god forbid a fraction of their billions gets attached by the government.

There shouldn’t be any billionaires.

“Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” expired with the last century, Robin Leach is six feet under. But the press believes the public is still in thrall to those with money. And there’s no illusion that entertainers play at the same level as billionaires. You just can’t make that much money in music or movies…then again, techies can buy movie studios!

We keep hearing what they’re doing with their billions, boys with their toys. Meanwhile, we go to the grocery store and buy nothing and it’s $45.

And if you challenge the rich they keep saying they earned it, that without them the country wouldn’t run. When the truth is each and every one of their companies relies on public consumption and the truth is the entire nation runs on public consumption.

It’s hard to be brain dead today. After all, you’re using your smartphone, you’re on social media, you’re exposed to these billionaires 24/7.

As for being inviolate…

Prince Andrew? His fall was as unforeseeable as a Black president.

Which means…another domino could fall.

As for Trump… We all know he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but more importantly he has lost all credibility, he’s lied so much that when he talks about the economy and wealth there’s not a soul who believes him, probably not even himself.

The resentment has been brewing and now the Epstein files have tipped the scale.

As for Republicans in Congress…they’re on the wrong side of this issue. If you don’t excoriate the offenders, you’re going to pay a price. No one wants to see someone suck up and protect an offender like Epstein’s “friends” were doing for him.

We can debate all day long Trump’s policies, whether they’re good or bad for the country…but one thing everybody agrees on, except for a tiny slice of wealthy people, is we’re financially f*cked. We just can’t get ahead. Trump ran on saying the game was rigged, and then he took advantage of it, lining his pockets, pardoning criminals and giving a pass to anyone who has money.

There’s a fiction that the president has power, that the government has power, that the press has power, but the truth is immutable, THE PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER!

And they’re pissed.

Our entire nation has bent to the whims of the wealthy. And our interests are secondary, if they’re considered at all. And all we have in the news is horse race discussion about coming elections.

Seemingly everybody in power is missing the point. It is not business as usual. We were in thrall to tech for nearly thirty years, but the game of musical chairs has ended. There’s not a new platform every day, and the titans are established. Meanwhile, they’re building data centers everywhere, hogging up our electricity, on a trip to… Will AI pay off? Many say at this point it has not.

But they want us to fear it so we won’t look at the real issues. And the bloviators of AI, people like Sam Altman, are hated by the public too. Our issues are more basic, like how to make ends meet. The average price of a new car is north of $50,000. The average person is priced out of this and that and…

When will it blow?

We can’t seem to get everybody riled up about Trump’s authoritarianism, but income inequality? That’s something nearly        everyone can relate to, that everyone is aware of. Meanwhile, the rich don’t STFU, they keep parading their money and lifestyles as if we should respect and adore them.

This country is ready for a rupture. A reset. It’s the rich who are tearing up the social fabric and the public is at a boil.

And just like Trump’s election in 2016, the media has no idea what is going on. Because reporters want to hang with the rich and powerful just like the people in the Epstein files.

This cannot go on, it’s just a matter of when it blows.

Hearts and minds… We couldn’t beat the Vietcong, with all our money and power. Hearts and minds have turned off of politics, don’t trust the words of the rich and powerful. All we need is a spark.

From: Caleb Keen

Re: Must-Read Article

Out of curiosity, I played the first song on your playlist through the studio monitors in my office. In seconds, my 8-year-old and 11-year-old daughters ran in and started dancing. I clicked to the second track. “Do you know this one too?” “Yes.”Third track?” “Ummmm, yes – I know this one too.”

I’ve never seen them react to music with such obvious delight. I’m an audio junkie with great hi-fi equipment, always keeping my ears open for new stuff. I wasn’t aware this existed ten minutes ago, but it’s already become my kids’ favorite music somehow. Thanks for the tip!

I thought he was a different guy.

What do I know about Billy Preston? He showed up in the studio and played with the Beatles and he had a few hits in the early seventies sporting a giant afro. He was always smiling, I thought he was a happy-go-lucky guy.

Turns out that was not the case.

Obviously I know a bit more, but that was my impression, of someone lighthearted, not tortured. But that’s what Billy was.

A theme explored throughout the film is Billy’s sexuality. Bottom line…he was gay. Oh, there are theories that when Kathy Silva left him for Sly Stone it turned him off women. But this film says that was not a romantic relationship.

And this film alludes to abuse early in Billy’s life, but I had to go to Wikipedia for the details. Which says Preston was abused by the pianist of a touring company of “Amos ‘n’ Andy” and subsequently was abused by a pastor too.

Not that Billy ever talked about it. Other than to his last manager, Joyce Moore, who revealed these details.

Yes, you can watch this entire film and still not know who Billy Preston was…because he was internalized, didn’t reveal his feelings seemingly to anyone. No one in this film can testify as to his inner monologue, his thoughts, and there are a lot of people talking.

That’s what makes this documentary different from most. It wasn’t done on the cheap. Today anybody can make a film, and oftentimes they do. Which ends up being opinion and whatever footage they can scrap together, because back in the sixties and seventies there were no home video cameras and film was expensive…

But there is a good amount of film of Billy. He was a prodigy. I don’t remember “Rolling Stone” or the other rags saying this, then again did Billy get short shrift because he was Black? Although the white rockers were inspired by the Black delta bluesmen…it was a white business, very much so, Jimi Hendrix was an anomaly.

But there’s footage here of Billy playing in church, on TV with Nat King Cole… This is not the traditional avenue of a white rocker, that’s for sure. The white rockers were off the radar screen before they broke through, but Billy’s talent was recognized right away, and he was exposed, he even made records, but they didn’t penetrate the white market.

And Billy played in church. The conundrum here is Billy got his inspiration and community from the church which preached against homosexuality, and this film says many men in the choir were gay and…for all the progress we’ve made, the pendulum is swinging back, did you see they removed the Pride flag from the Stonewall Monument? They don’t like people who don’t look like them and act like them…ironically, it is the outsiders, those who are different, who provide so much of the entertainment for close-minded people.

Anyway, Billy goes on the road to England with Little Richard and he’s just a teenager, fifteen or sixteen, I heard both in the movie. This is an age when kids are still in high school. And what you see on the road…

And the Beatles met Billy when they all played in Hamburg. Which is set up well in this flick, such that when he shows up in the studio it truly is just a friend dropping by, whereas previously it appeared Billy was an opportunist.

But the thing with Billy was… He could pick up a song on the fly, add a solo the first time through. The footage with the Beatles will jet you right back to the era, when everybody was still young, you’re stunned they could come up with this stuff.

And Billy makes music for Apple and then George gets him a release and he signs with A&M and…

There’s “Outa-Space,” I loved that song. But there’s also “Will It Go Round in Circles,” which bugged me on the radio in my ’63 Chevy all through the summer of ’73, the convertible only having an AM radio. I just didn’t like it, seemed a trifle, too simple.

Which is actually what Billy and his co-writer thought it was. But it became a hit.

Of course Billy wrote “You Are So Beautiful”…which became Dennis Wilson’s signature song, when he sang it in concert there was a pathos, with his ultimately gruff voice, absent from the rest of the show.

And, of course, Joe Cocker had a hit with the number. And one of the absolute highlights of the film is when Joe and Patti Labelle perform “You Are So Beautiful” at the 50th anniversary concert at the Apollo. Your jaw will drop, it’s akin to Aretha giving that tour-de-force performance at the Kennedy Center Honors. I had to do research… This concert was broadcast, but I never saw it. It’s a time capsule…you’ll be stunned that people so talented were walking the earth and performing.

And Billy’s playing in the background…

Now Billy was tight with George Harrison, and that led him to Eric Clapton, who put Billy in his band and then realized it was Billy’s show…not because he hogged the spotlight, but because he was so damn good.

And you see that over and over and over again, you see what the Beatles saw. This guy would just sit down at the keys and what came out was exactly right, you couldn’t have predicted it, but there it was.

And then Billy’s peak is over.

We get great stories before that, from the studio engineer and his co-writer and his bass player…we normally don’t get this peek into the lives of Black people, too many believe they’re cartoons…but these guys are talking and they’re just like you and me. (Oh, give me sh*t, you’re better than me, you don’t have a racist bone in your body, you don’t see color…but it don’t really happen that way at all, as Pete Townshend wrote.)

And Billy’s got this best friend who gives the most insight.

And Billy steals the show at the Concert for George, but…

It eventually all runs out. That’s what always happens, time passes you by.

Now unlike Nicky Hopkins, Billy had hits on his own, so he had money. But what are you going to do when you’re famous but no longer hot?

Drugs. And alcohol.

Billy fell down the rabbit hole. Lost everything.

Now those of us who remember Billy, those of us who lived through his arc, forget these days when Billy was still on the planet, struggling.

He was the bandleader for David Brenner’s ultimately failed TV show, but…

This is what we never see. Yes, “Behind the Music” revealed the downward spiral, and Billy ultimately went down too, but before that…you’re famous but you will never reach the heights, get that level of adulation again. Where do you go from here? How do you make sense of life?

It’s well-documented that Billy ultimately went to jail, but this film is just not a recitation of facts. It tries to get to the heart of the real Billy. And it goes further than any previous exploration, but to a degree Billy remains an enigma.

But it was a different time. We didn’t know every move of everybody’s life.

But like I said, this film illustrates how Billy was a prodigy, and acknowledged even by his hero, Ray Charles.

It’s all here, the arc of Billy’s life. And it’s well done.

But exactly who Billy is…

He was a church boy who ultimately got into drugs? Was he just in that much pain? Could he not cope with falling from the mountaintop career-wise?

The gap-toothed smiling guy was just not the right person at the right time. He was so good he was undeniable, people wanted to work with him, he seemingly could do no wrong.

But the smile was oftentimes a cover.

This film isn’t perfect, because I’m still not sure exactly who Billy Preston was. However…

This is a guy who deserves recognition, the accolades. This is a guy who was a household name whose name seems to have been forgotten. This film puts Billy Preston back in the firmament, claims his talent and achievements. And it’s peopled with those who were there then, who knew the guy.

But did anybody really know Billy Preston?

Watch the movie and tell me what you think.