Editor’s Note: On the occasion of The Who’s first new album in 13 years, we look back at the band’s secret Jewish history, which we first explored in 2015. If The Who’s visionary songwriter and guitarist Pete Townshend had had his way, “Tommy” — an allegory about a traumatized messiah — would not have been…
Fifty years after her passing, Judy Garland is having a moment. Renee Zellweger portrays her in the new feature film “Judy.” A new Showtime documentary, “Sid & Judy,” examines her life and career, focusing on her relationship with Sidney Luft, who served as her husband for 13 years and her manager for even longer. And…
In a recent celebrity memoir, the author writes, “In 1933, my Jewish grandfather fled from Germany with his wife, Hedwig, to escape Hitler’s regime. He was not only a brilliant mind but also a humanitarian who helped Jews escape Germany. I’m extremely proud of my peace-loving grandfather.” The grandfather was Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born,…
Since I was a boy, my musical heroes have been jazz musicians — Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Young, John Coltrane. My own trumpet playing was good enough to get me the solo chair in the school band, but my taste far outstripped my talent and I would never stoop to play in a band…
In the summer of 2014, on the strength of a BMI-Woody Guthrie Fellowship, I spent a glorious few weeks researching in the archives in the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The materials I found there not only fed into the writing of two books on Guthrie, but they also revealed some of the least…
There is a telling moment in “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story,” a new film by Martin Scorsese that played in theaters for one night only on June 11, before commencing to stream on Netflix on June 12. David Mansfield, who at age 19 played mandolin and pedal-steel guitar on the 1975 Rolling Thunder…
Leonard Cohen’s status as a musical and literary icon is a matter of historical record. But what the notoriously stoic poet and songwriter thought of his rise to fame remains more elusive; it was information shared only with a few intimates, Marianne Ihlen foremost among them. Over 50 letters that Cohen sent to Ihlen, his…
The late phase of Leonard Cohen’s career began, like a lot of artistic triumphs, with the desperate need for a quick buck. In 2004, Cohen learned that his manager, Kelley Lynch, had been quietly stealing his money and that he was now, at the age of seventy, virtually penniless. Lynch was ordered to pay 9.5…
The late Leonard Cohen worked in many mediums – poetry, music, fiction – less remembered is his contribution to the realm of drama. And what a contribution it is! Visitors to the new exhibit “A Crack in Everything” at the Jewish Museum will find, amid relics more germane to the artist’s ongoing influence in the…
Editor’s Note: Peter Illyich Tchaikovsky was born on this day in May 7, 1840. Here’s a look at the brilliant composer’s complicated history: When the conductor Semyon Bychkov arrived at a Russian-style cafe in midtown Manhattan to discuss the upcoming Peter Illyich Tchaikovsky festival at the New York Philharmonic, I handed the conductor a one-page…
The weathered words on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty endure to this day, even though most immigrants no longer encounter them on their journey. But the sonnet “The New Colossus,” written by Emma Lazarus, is only the poet’s most visible contribution to literature. This year, the American Jewish Historical Society, the steward of…
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