#bwncvs

[beggarscantbevegans]

Songs Whose Named changed Very Slightly #30:

The eponymous heroine of Bob Dylan's song Rita May has always been called that - not Rita Mae, with an e - ever since the Desire outtake was released on an Australian compilation and a Japanese single in 1978. So why is she so often spelt wrong by bootleggers and people writing about Dylan?

Maybe just because people with double names like that - eg Anna Mae Bullock (who became Tina Turner) and Fannie Mae (who became a weird kind of US government bank or something) - tend to spell it Mae. But also, probably, because there's a theory the song is about the most famous person of that name: Rita Mae Brown, the American writer and prominent feminist who co-writes detective stories with her cat and is an unlikely advocate of fox-hunting.

The outtake has its own outtake, by the way - there's a pretty good alternate version drenched with the unmistakable harmonica of Sugar Blue (born James Whiting), the guy who played on The Rolling Stones' Miss You.

[beggarscantbevegans]

Songs Whose Names Changed Very Slightly #28:

Bands Whose Names Changed Very Slightly #29:

Bob Dylan & The Band - "I'm Not There"

This is one of the most beautiful and mysterious songs ever recorded and is nearly 50 years old, but no one [except maybe Bob Dylan] knows what the unfathomable words are or what it's really called. For thirty years it was only available on bootlegs and was always listed as I'm Not There (1956). The first official "release" was in December 1997 when it was streamed on bobdylan.com under that same name. The tracks available used to change frequently, so it wasn't up for long.

Ten years on, when officially released, the track lost the (1956). Nothing in what can be deciphered of the lyrics hints at why it was ever there, and Dylan has never commented, at least in public. The official release is the only Dylan recording on the soundtrack album of the 2007 film I'm Not There. That's not part of the Dylan catalogue, so the song's still unlisted on his website, and there are no published lyrics.

It has other names, too. The Band's Garth Hudson, who took charge of recording the 1967 sessions known as the Basement Tapes, apparently listed it somewhere as I'm Not There, I'm Gone. But then, it was also Hudson that asked for the "Safety Tape" copy to be made, and on there it's labelled as But Its [sic] Not Here.

Appropriately enough, the backing musicians on the Basement Tapes have a strange naming history themselves. They're now called The Band on official recordings from Dylan's infamous 1966 world tour and the Basement Tapes, but they never took that name until after both were completed. It was in part a reference to the fact that they were always just called "the band" when they were with Dylan, and before that with Ronnie Hawkins, although they were actually The Hawks (and briefly Levon & The Hawks after they stopped working with Hawkins.)

[beggarscantbevegans]

People Whose Names Changed Very Slightly #27:

Morrissey's book “Autobiography" contains a passing reference to Albert Grossman, who was Bob Dylan's manager for most of the 60s. He was large and sometimes fierce and clearly someone you would rather have fighting for you than against you; but he has a distinctly clean reputation as rock managers go.

Grossman was never indiscreet about his clients and never wrote a book, yet he is referred to scathingly as a kind of model for muck-raking mud-slinging unreliable rockstar biographers. All of which would make perfect sense provided Morrissey actually meant to name instead the infamous Dylanologist A J Weberman, known for stealing and studying Dylan's garbage and for, unsurprisingly, having a bitter feud with him.

[beggarscantbevegans]

Things Whose Names Changed Very Slightly #26:

George Clooney used to be in a show called E/R. It was a creaky Elliott Gould sitcom that was no one's finest hour and lasted one season in the mid-80s. In the UK pre-satellite it was only ever shown after sensible people had gone to bed. A few years later Clooney was one of the stars of a very different show called ER that was lots of people's finest hour and a huge success.

[beggarscantbevegans]

Bands Whose Names Changed Very Slightly #25: Frankie Goes To Hollywood

The story has always gone that FGTH took their name from a magazine headline, possibly in Variety. Wikipedia partially corrects this, pointing out that they got it from a Guy Peellaert picture - in his hugely influential book Rock Dreams - showing that headline. But to be more precise the headline in the picture is "Frankie Goes Hollywood".

[beggarscantbevegans]

Things Whose Names Changed Very Slightly #23:

The first Harry Potter book/film is called Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone in the UK but in the US and some other territories it's Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone.

The philosopher or sorcerer in question, Nicolas Flamel, is probably the only person mentioned both in The Da Vinci Code and in the Potter books. He and his wife Perenelle were real people but there's a better than even chance they did not actually live for 600+ years thanks to the magical stone.

[beggarscantbevegans]

Lou Reed Tribute Portmanteau Special Post: "Stephanie Says"

i) Neglected Gems By Big Names #72

ii) Spooky Sort-Of Covers #7

iii) Things Whose Names Changed Very Slightly #23

The Velvet Underground recorded the Lou Reed song Stephanie Says in 1968 but it remained unreleased - apart from on bootlegs - until 1985. Meanwhile Reed released two songs with the same tune as Stephanie Says on his 1973 solo album Berlin: Caroline Says I & II. The second of these shares some lyrics - including the title character's nickname Alaska - with Stephanie Says.

[beggarscantbevegans]

Bands Whose Names Changed Very Slightly #22:

The Jackson Five usually had six members, on stage at least, so when Jermaine left they could really have kept the name. They only changed into The Jacksons because when they changed label, Motown kept not just Jermaine (who was married to the boss's daughter) but the name The Jackson Five as well.