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In 1969, Bill Rotari was Regional Managing Director with Capitol Records in Quebec when he received word that John and Yoko were coming. As label rep, it was his job to see to it that John’s needs were met; ultimately this included securing recording gear for tracking the first Plastic Ono Band single, “Give Peace A Chance.”
Bill has led an interesting life; as record company executive, recording artist…and minor league pitching prospect for the Atlanta Braves. His group, The Favorites, recorded for London during the 1950s, and later, as Managing Director of CBS/Sony Records in Montreal, he was directly responsible for signing Celine Dion and getting her first English language recordings produced.
Bill tells all about the Montreal Bed-In, as well as his life and career in music (encompassing Paul and George, the Rolling Stones, Petula Clark, Pink Floyd, Leonard Cohen, Tony Bennett and others).
I have a bit of a unique perspective on the Al Capp moment. I’m a graduate of the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon & Graphic Art, class of ’89, At that time, the Kubert School was (and may still be) the only school in the country where the curriculum was focused entirely on teaching cartooning as a professional, marketable skill, and every teacher at the school was a freelance cartoonist or graphic artist working or retired (one of my teachers was Irwin Hasen, the guy who created the old comic strip Dondi, for instance).
Among those teachers was a guy named Tex Blaisdell, who had been an inker for comic strips and books through the 40’s to the ‘80s, and one of the many jobs in his resume had been as an inker on the backgrounds of Li’l Abner. Tex taught three days a week at the school and crashed in the basement of the student housing house were I was resident assistant, and we would often chat in the evenings about his past — anecdotes and so forth. It was through Tex that I learned that reknowned fantasy cover painter Frank Frazetta was the guy Capp hired to draw all the attractive women in Li’l Abner, for example, or that Capp made sure that all the trees had knotholes that were actually vaginas.
I asked Tex once about the Capp confrontation with John and Yoko, because Tex had been working with him at the time, and the Imagine movie had just come out so that sequence was at the forefront of my mind.
Tex laughed and said, “Yeah, that was Al. I can tell you right now — he just went there to stir shit up because winding people up was just one of his favorite things to do. He was actually in complete agreement with them, but he just liked pissing people off and being an asshole. He deliberately went in there to get them worked up and he came back laughing about it, and then said he hoped that what John and Yoko were trying to do actually worked. That’s the kind of guy Al was.”
So whenever I listen to that audio, or watch that clip, that’s what I think of — Capp going in there in complete agreement with them and fucking with them anyway just because he enjoyed being the asshole.
Thank you for clearing this up for all the Beatlemania fans around the world.
I remember seeing the “Imagine: John Lennon” film when it came out in ’88: Al Capp’s belligerent and provocative performance was a highlight. It was interesting to see John bite back and show the not-so-peaceful side of his character…which was probably why Andrew Solt (and Yoko) included it, I’d think. (That, as well as the footage of “How Do You Sleep?” with John referring to Paul as a cnut (sic)).
I wonder if Al Capp knew that John Lennon had spent a lot of time making fun of cripples? Capp had lost much of one leg and used a prosthetic limb, so he was well-armed (or well-legged!!) with a chip on his shoulder to go into battle with Lennon.
Capp was accused, several times, of making unwanted advances (Goldie Hawn was a recipient of one of these), so he was a sleaze, it seems.