Quote of the Day (Mike Lupica, on the Knicks’ Dick McGuire)

“Dick McGuire was the city game when it started with a good pass, with a good passer changing everything. He was the old 69th Regiment Armory on Saturday nights, the old Garden, he was Garden doubleheaders, college and pro. He was St. John's, Class of '49. Mostly he was a gentleman of his time in pro basketball, someone who worked for the New York Knicks for only 53 years.”—Mike Lupica, “Dick McGuire Was a True New Yorker and Knick Until the End,” New York Daily News, Feb. 4, 2010

Columnist Mike Lupica is at his best in this tribute to a virtual lifer at Madison Square Garden, a player, coach, scout and, at his death this week, senior consultant at the cathedral of basketball.

I’ve given up on the Knicks during this last lost decade of front-office mismanagement, coaching embarrassments, and player indifference that matched their bloated salaries. In contrast, the reserved Dick McGuire represents, as Lupica puts it, “the old kind of grace in sports, the best kind, the kind of grace where the top guys don't have to thump their chest and tell you all about it.”

A song called “When New York Was Irish” paid tribute to the Celtic impact on Gotham’s construction, politics and public safety. For what seems now like a brief, shining moment, Dick and Al McGuire—the only brothers in the Basketball Hall of Fame—made the city game Irish, too.

Al, with that Cagneyesque confidence and verbal energy, did it courtside with Marquette and in the broadcast booth, while Dick did so on the court, with precision passing and an unselfish style of play that led the Knicks to three successive NBA finals in the 1950s.

When his playing and coaching days were done, he continued to scout. He was responsible for the Knicks picking one of the building blocks of their Seventies championship teams, Clyde Frazier, as well as a point guard who eventually passed him among the team’s leaders in assists, Mark Jackson.

These days, when the Garden feels like a tomb, raise your eyes to the ceiling, where you’ll spot McGuire’s retired #15 (later worn by Earl Monroe), and hold in your mind, for as long as you can, the game at its best.

Song Lyric of the Day (Phil Spector on “That Lovin’ Feelin’”)

“You never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips.”—“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”, written by Phil Spector, Barry Mann, and Cynthia Weil, produced by Phil Spector, recorded by The Righteous Brothers

Bill Medley’s deep, dark rendition of this line made it clear from the get-go that this would not be one of the standard-issue lightweight singles from producer Phil Spector’s Philles label. 

The pop genius—dubbed by Tom Wolfe “the first Tycoon of Teen”—was after something else entirely this time--immense, oceanic even—to convey the most titanic feelings involved with possession and loss, the kind that haunts Heathcliff every day of his life.

He found it when he counterpointed Medley’s baritone with Bobby Hatfield’s stratospheric wail on this song, which reached #1 on the UK charts on this date in 1965, before attaining the same position two days later in the U.S.

Notice who this headline credits for the song. Not the Righteous Brothers, though it made their career. Not even the husband-and-wife team of Mann and Weil, even though they wrote all but the song's bridge and last line. 

No, the headline—my responsibility!—credits Spector because he was the first pop music equivalent of film director Frank Capra: The Name Above the Title. You might not know the Ronettes from the Crystals, or Curtis Lee from Bob B. Sox and the Blue Jeans. But you knew a Spector record the way you knew Capracorn, instantly, with that “Wall of Sound” of multilayered instruments and voices.

All this despite the fact that the style influenced artists as disparate as the Beach Boys, Abba, The Beatles, Billy Joel (“Until the Night”) and Bruce Springsteen (who made no secret of his debt to Spector on Born to Run, which featured the fullest, warmest sound of The Boss’s long career).

"For Spector,” Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler told Rolling Stone four years ago, “the song and the recording were one thing, and they existed in his brain. When he went into the studio, it came out of him, like Minerva coming out of Jupiter's head. Every instrument had its role to play, and it was all prefigured."

But, after the tragic events of the last several years, I can’t hear “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” anymore without considering it a song of desperation, a control freak’s last strangled, needy cry. 

The need to make himself noticed, to be honored, to be loved, had grown exponentially since the suicide of Spector’s father when the future producer was only 12.

That sense of urgency made him cut corners and take chances in his career and personal life. How else to explain the shameless financial grand larceny that took advantage of Darlene Love and the Ronettes--and led them to take him to court?

Sometimes Spector’s chances were minor, like listing “Lovin’ Feelin’” as 40 seconds shorter than it actually was in order to circumvent deejay guidelines regarding three-minute-plus songs. But brandishing guns in the studio before the likes of John Lennon and the Ramones was a cry for help.

In 2003, that latter penchant caught up with him, as he was arrested in connection with the death of a B-movie actress who had come back to his home and, police say, died at Spector’s hands. 

After one mistrial, Spector was convicted in the death of Lana Clarkson and sentenced to a term of 19 years to life.

Forty-five years ago, past, present and future came together, in three-and-a-half minutes of some of the most broodingly majestic sounds in American pop music history. That first line of “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin” initially seems plaintive, but repeated listening reveals it as accusatory.

If I had to rank Spector songs, I’d put this just a notch below “Be My Baby” because of the latter’s pure joy, or that steeplechase of a song released a year later, “River Deep, Mountain High” (a tune turbocharged from its opening chord, then, amazingly, taken to higher and higher levels, before concluding in a deeply satisfying musical thunderclap).

But “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” has its own awesome power, a compressed emotionalism bursting way beyond the confines of any turntable, jukebox, CD or Internet connection. Born to Run shares one theme in common with “Lovin’ Feelin’": the sense that everything is riding on the present moment. The tragedy of the narrator of the latter, however, is that, like the mad genius who brought it to life, it might already be too late.

This Day in Supreme Court History (Ex-Prez Taft Resigns as Chief Justice)

February 3, 1930—With age and illness finally catching up with him, ex-President William Howard Taft resigned the job that had made him happiest in life: Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The next month, he was dead from complications of heart disease, high blood pressure, and inflammation of the bladder.

Whenever you read about the most important ex-Presidents, John Quincy Adams and Jimmy Carter come most readily to mind. But Taft occupied a more consequential office than Congressman Adams and left a more significant mark on major American institutions than Carter.

You can certainly find Presidents greater than Taft, more active, and, much less frequently, even more intellectually gifted. But it’s doubtful you’ll find one better loved by those who came in contact with him.

That’s undoubtedly one of the reasons why, when President Warren G. Harding nominated Taft—who, for the eight years after leaving the White House, had taught at Yale University Law School—in 1921 to succeed the deceased Edward White as Chief Justice, the Senate not only didn’t refer the nomination to a committee, but confirmed the appointment the very same day.

(Tell me, faithful reader: Are we really better off with all the televised Supreme Court confirmation food-fights of the last 40 years?)

The Supreme Court was Taft’s dream job—and if he’d had his druthers, he’d have taken it years earlier. His good friend (and later, tragically, rival), Theodore Roosevelt, impressed by his work as Solicitor-General (the lawyer who conducts all litigation on behalf of the U.S. before the Supreme Court—often viewed as a stepping stone to that court) in the Harrison administration, wanted to promote him to the high court when a vacancy opened.

Taft—by this time, Governor-General of the Philippines—reluctantly turned him down out of a sense of duty: he wanted to stabilize a land that had suffered shocks from the Spanish-American War and from the insurrection against the U.S. led by Emilio Aguinaldo.

Several years later, Taft—by this time, Secretary of War under T.R.—was sounded out by his friend again, when the two men and their wives were at a White House reception. T.R., jokingly announcing that he could predict Taft’s future, said that his Cabinet member had open to him one of the two highest offices in the land.

“Make it Chief Justice,” Taft said.

“Make it President,” his wife Helen (Nellie) urged.

Genial Willie went along with the latter idea, and ended up regretting it for the rest of his life.

You can guess how unhappy Taft was in the White House by considering his weight.

Ah, weight.

Now, aficionados of quiz shows and trivia games know that Taft was the only U.S. president also to serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (sort of analogous, at the federal level, to the New Jersey’s Richard Hughes, who served as governor before being called back to serve as Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court). Somewhat less well-known is that he’s the only President besides JFK to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. And baseball fans like myself cherish that he inaugurated the Presidential tradition of throwing out the first pitch at opening day.

But many, many, many more people know that Taft was our fattest President. It defines him in the public mind, even more so than the fact that Thomas Jefferson is now better known for having bedded one of his slaves than for writing the Declaration of Independence.

But the particulars of how this came to be—and why it changed when he was on the high court—are instructive.

Right after college, Taft stood a shade under six feet tall, weighing 243 pounds—hefty, to be sure, but not morbidly obese. He reached the Refrigerator Perry level (i.e., upwards of 300 pounds) when he became Secretary of War. Even then, under the watchful eye of an English physician, he shed more than 70 pounds over the next year and a half.

But tons of stress as President made him look for all the comfort food he could find. You’d be stressed out, too, if the following happened to you:

* The same day your son had a messy, unexpectedly bloody adenoid operation, your wife suffered a stroke;

* To protect her, you hid the worst effects of her condition from the press;

* You equaled—and maybe even bettered—the record of your predecessor in one of his best-known achievements, trust busting, but virtually nobody noticed;

* You sacked one of TR’s favorite appointees, Forest Service head Gifford Pinchot, when he got in a dispute with one of your Cabinet members—and suddenly everybody noticed;

* You ignored rumors that TR was unhappy about this firing and about not trying for a third term;

* You discovered that those rumors were true;

* You won renomination, but only with the help of party bosses, and the high-handed manner of it made TR bolt the GOP and run as the Progressive candidate;

* You came in third, behind Woodrow Wilson and TR, in your bid for re-election;

* You sharde the blame with TR for dividing the party, for much of the rest of the century, between moderates and conservatives;

* You cred in the White House—not so much because you lost the election but because (at least for the next six years) you lost the friendship of TR.

Anyway, with all of that, Taft’s weight went up—way up—to 340 pounds by the time he left the White House.

Then, something magical happened: Taft lost weight again. One of his saving graces all along was self-deprecating good humor (he once judged a fat baby contest, awarding the trophy to an actor who, in his adult years, became famous for his lean frame and virility: Lloyd Bridges). But now the stress was gone.

The progress on the weight front continued when Taft took his chair on the high court. By the time he stepped down, he was back close to his college weight—a remarkable achievement.

In assessing Supreme Court justices, historians—and, even more so, reporters—look to two factors: the outcome of their vote and the quality of their prose. What they find harder to judge—an absolute necessity in weighing a Chief Justice—are administrative records and interactions with fellow justices.

On the voting/prose scale, Taft barely registers. On the administrative scale—well, the thought is irresistible: his legacy is positively weighty.

When Taft took over in 1921, the Supreme Court was obligated to review any case involving a federal point of view. Delays were horrendous. To his credit, Taft—whose general voting record is rightly regarded as conservative—wanted to fix this, because while wealthy individuals and corporations could wait cases out, the less affluent had no such recourse. The legislation that Congress enacted at his urging, the Judiciary Act of 1925, has enabled the court to try cases of highest priority ever since.

The Supreme Court building that we have today is just as much his legacy. The court had been deliberating in a chamber in the Capitol for years. Taft wanted a separate building for the court for reasons both practical (individual justices would get their own chambers for a change) and symbolic (the third, equal branch of the federal government deserved to have a building similar to the others in grandeur). He didn’t live to see the completion of the imposing neoclassical structure by famed architect Cass Gilbert, but it’s very much his handiwork, too.

As the 1920s came to an end, Taft could feel his mental as well as physical powers waning. Some Presidential historians who specialize in medicine have speculated that Taft was experiencing the beginning of Alzheimer’s by 1929. He had to improvise while administering the oath of office to President Hoover, and in the days before he stepped down he was hallucinating.

Taft himself confessed exhaustion in an uncharacteristically peevish letter to his brother in November 1929: “I am older and slower and less acute and more confused. However, as long as things continue as they are, and I am able to answer in my place, I must stay on the court in order to prevent the Bolsheviki from getting control."

I’m not sure about the Alzheimer’s diagnosis, but paranoia certainly seems definite when you read that “Bolsheviki” line. Taft had a solid conservative majority at his back at all times. The only dissenting votes usually turned out to be Louis Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (who was a full decade older than Taft), joined occasionally by Harlan Fiske Stone. In fact, the year of Taft’s resignation and death, then-Harvard professor Felix Frankfurter noted: “Since 1920 the Court has invalidated more legislation than in fifty years preceding."

It doesn’t sound like there was a Bolshevik in sight, does there?

No matter what his economic views, Taft was undoubtedly better suited, by temperament, for the Supreme Court than the Presidency. It was probably for the best that the period between his retirement and death lasted only a month, because he would have deeply missed the job that meant so much to him. He himself left the best summary of his service as President and Chief Justice: "The truth is that in my life I don't ever remember that I was President."

Quotes of the Day (Heraclitus and Richard Pryor, Offering Radically Different Epistemologies)

“Eyes are more accurate witnesses than ears.”—Heraclitus, Fragments

“Who you gonna believe? Me or your lyin’ eyes?”—Richard Pryor (in the image accompanying this post, of course!), recounting what he told his wife when she found him in flagrante delicto with another woman, in Live on the Sunset Strip (1982)

This Day in New Age History (Human Potential Movement Crystallizes at Esalen)

February 2, 1965—Dinner chat that spilled over into the wee hours of the morning helped to solidify disparate trends in social justice, psychology, and health into the “human potential movement,” giving rise to a whole cottage industry of seminars, books, music—and one of the great satires of the late Sixties—much of it centered on the California spiritual retreat, the Esalen Institute.

The gabfest was the first meeting between Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy and journalist George Leonard. They started talking while dining at a female friend’s, then continued elsewhere, trading ideas that they wrote down on paper.

When the session ended at 3 am, recalled Leonard (who died last month at age 86), “the accumulated paper looked like a snowstorm.” He admitted that it changed his life.

What had engaged this ferocious interest? The talk built on the energy of ideas already out there in the intellectual ether.

Two-thirds of that phrase “human potential movement” apparently derived from a speech given by Aldous Huxley at the University of California—San Francisco Medical Center in 1960. “The neurologists have shown us,” said Huxley, “that no human being has ever made use of as much as ten percent of all the neurons in his brain. And perhaps, if we set about it in the right way, we might be able to produce extraordinary things out of this strange piece of work that a man is.”

(Time out: This remark would give rise, nearly 50 years later, to Owen Wilson’s immortal pickup line in Wedding Crashers: “You know how they say we only use 10 percent of our brains? I think we only use 10 percent of our hearts.”)

In the audience was Richard Price, who related it to his partner at Esalen, Murphy. Correspondence and visits with Huxley and another British expatriate, Gerard Heard, induced Price and Murphy to explore health food, yoga and alternative lifestyles.

Going in a direction that ended up intersecting with Murphy’s was Leonard, whose 1964 article for Look Magazine on education had also used the term “human potential.” Intense reader interest in that phrase led Leonard to research a follow-up piece—which is how he wound up meeting Murphy. In the news that year was the civil-rights movement and the Berkeley-based free speech movement, so Leonard suggested taking the word "movement" onto "human potential" to suggest the sort of humanistic psychology they hoped to foment.

The conversation with Murphy intrigued Leonard enough that he began making pilgrimages to Esalen. And really, what was not to like about the place? Its main campus was by the sea, in central California, with redwoods nearby.

Take a look at that accompanying image. If you couldn’t find yourself there, you were well and truly lost.

The humanistic psychological theories of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow (see my prior post on the latter) were explored in due course here, but at points it seemed that every aspect of self-actualization was being tried, in one context or another, on the grounds. The place became overrun with counterculture legends of the Sixties: Jack Kerouac, Timothy Leary, Joan Baez, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, R.D.Laing, Susan Sontag, Sharon Tate, the Beatles and Ravi Shankar —and others too numerous to mention.

With its frequent explorations of the mind-body connection, Esalen also developed not just a touchy-feely but a loosey-goosey reputation. Tom Wolfe summed up this sentiment in his much-talked-about 1976 essay, “The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening”: “Esalen's specialty was lube jobs for the personality. Businessmen, businesswomen, housewives—anyone who could afford it, and by now many could—paid $220 a week to come to Esalen to learn about themselves and loosen themselves up and wiggle their fannies a bit.”

Esalen would inspire Sandstone, the Southern California sex spa profiled (and frequented, in the course of his research!) by Gay Talese in his 1980 bestseller, Thy Neighbor’s Wife. But more than a decade earlier, its fame has spread enough that it came to the attention of writer-director Paul Mazursky. What caught the filmmaker’s eye would have caught yours, too—a picture in Time Magazine of gestalt therapist Fritz Perls, “sitting in a hot tub with five or six people who were naked up at Esalen.”

The 24-to-48-hour marathon session the Mazurskys endured after their arrival figured strongly into Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, which created a sensation in 1969 with its depiction of wife-swapping. What tended to get lost in the media hoopla, however, was the cunning dissection of the Bob and Carol characters (played by Robert Culp and Natalie Wood).

Bob is thrilled that his stay at the Esalen-like institute has gotten him past all kinds of hang-ups about infidelity, but wife Carol, despite her best efforts, is having a tougher time with the issue. The plot shows that, no matter how idealistic the characters are, self-delusion and self-interest continue to play a role in the sexual Eden they try to create. Over the years, the human potential movement has had a more ambiguous influence, because of the hydra-headed nature of the many types of sessions conducted at Esalen. Some of these influences have been frivolous, to be sure, but some have enabled people to achieve much-needed greater inner peace.

Quote of the Day (George Carlin, with a News Flash on the Mafia)

“The Mafia has killed an information clerk because he knew too much. His replacement, appointed today, says he has no further information.”—George Carlin, Napalm and Silly Putty (2001)

Quote of the Day (Chic Murray, on Being a Late Bloomer)

“I won’t say I was a slow developer, but our teacher was quite pleased to have someone her own age in the class to talk to.”—Scottish comedian Chic Murray (1919-1985), on his education, quoted in “The List: Five Great Scots,” The Financial Times, Saturday, January 23, 2010