BLOOD ON THE TRACKS Season 4: The Brian Wilson Story
BLOOD ON THE TRACKS is part true crime, part historical fiction, and part spoken word lo-fi beat noir brought to you by Jake Brennan, host of the award-winning music and true crime podcast DISGRACELAND.
Articles
Bob Dylan’s Restless Farewell (A Bob Dylan Story, Chapter 10)
Trees grow tall, leaves fall, rivers dry up, and flowers die. New people are born, every day. Life doesn’t stop. Sometimes things can change in an instant—a gunshot to the head, a man losing control of a motorbike—but sometimes things take years to change. And sometimes, like in the curious case of Bob Dylan, a man can go through a lifetime of change in just ten days.
Read moreIs Bob Dylan Real? (A Bob Dylan Story, Chapter 9)
Nine days after his near-fatal accident, Bob Dylan has become increasingly consumed with his own mortality. He sees the world as a much older, and perhaps wiser, man. He has died as many times as he has lived. Bleak winters in Minnesota have taken their toll. So has the life of a touring musician. There’s also another brush with fate on yet another motorcycle…a harrowing moment that he may never escape.
Read moreBob Dylan Is Lucky Wilbury (A Bob Dylan Story, Chapter 8)
As Bob Dylan’s physical injuries continue to heal, there is a growing concern that mental problems are only beginning to surface. He struggles with an identity crisis. Did he really introduce the Beatles to marijuana? Did he actually steal movie reels of an unreleased film from one of the most famous directors in the world? And what on earth was he doing inside a complete stranger’s house in London…what was it he was waiting for?
Read moreBob Dylan Is a Dead Man (A Bob Dylan Story, Chapter 7)
Bob Dylan continues to recover from his motorcycle accident in upstate New York. He thinks of the things he’s done that he’s not proud of. The depths to which he’s sunk, only to find that you can always go lower. He worries that the words will stop coming. He yearns to hide in the skin of someone who is not Bob Dylan. Someone who can play “dead” one moment and break hearts the next. Someone who plays a pink guitar. Someone who sees the touch of grey in every silver lining.
Read moreBob Dylan Is Pretending to Be Bob Dylan (A Bob Dylan Story, Chapter 6)
Courtrooms, contracts, lawyers, and loss. Stalkers, divorcees, punk rockers, and the wrong harmonica. These are the things on Bob Dylan’s mind as he continues to endure a secret recovery at a doctor’s private house in upstate New York. Dylan’s future continues to unfold from behind his eyes. He changes. So much that he begins to forget who he is. Or was. Who he will be, in 20 years’ time…a complete unknown.
Read moreBob Dylan Is Born Again (A Bob Dylan Story, Chapter 5)
On the fifth day of his recovery from a motorcycle accident, Bob Dylan begins to hallucinate. He claims he’s not only seen our Lord and savior, but that he’s had a close encounter with Jesus Christ himself. It’s an encounter that changes him forever. Don’t believe him? That’s fine. But everyone serves somebody. And you just might question what it is you do and don’t believe after hearing his story.
Read moreBob Dylan Is a Nashville Cat (A Bob Dylan Story, Chapter 3)
Bob Dylan continues to spend his days recovering from his accident thinking about change. And not just artistic change, but physical change. From New York he goes to Nashville in his mind, where he’s callously snubbed by Jerry Lee Lewis, lovingly embraced by Johnny Cash, and hopelessly drunk on Leprechaun Cocktails with some of the finest musicians Music City has to offer.
Read moreBob Dylan Is a Hell’s Angel (A Bob Dylan Story, Chapter 2)
As Bob Dylan continues to recover from his accident, he remembers another motorcycle crash, one that took the life of a biker with a suspiciously familiar name. Robert Zimmerman, president of the San Bernardino chapter of the Hell’s Angels, dies on the road at the very moment that another Robert Zimmerman, this one from Minnesota, becomes Bob Dylan on stage in New York.
Read moreBob Dylan Is Judas (A Bob Dylan Story, Chapter 1)
In July 1966, Bob Dylan crashed his Triumph 500 motorcycle in upstate New York. As he recovers in the privacy of a doctor’s home, he thinks about the death of folk music at Newport. About a piece of history gone missing for decades. Pete Seeger, wielding an ax. Andy Warhol and two Elvis Presleys. Shakespeare and a dog named Hamlet. And what really happened on that road in Woodstock, when the Bob Dylan you thought you knew…died.
Read moreBob Dylan Is Rolling Thunder (A Bob Dylan Story, Chapter 4)
When a man wears a mask, he’s gonna tell you the truth. That’s what Bob Dylan is thinking about as he continues his recovery from his motorcycle accident: being masked and not-so-anonymous on a rambling spectacle of a tour that feels more like the Greatest Show on Earth than a rock concert. Dylan’s fever dream-like state allows him to peek into the future…a future full of gypsies, boxers, sad-eyed ladies, and a homicide that would result in one of the toughest legal battles of his life.
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John Lennon & Holden Caulfield
The fictionalized narrator of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caufield, comes to life to explain exactly why Mark David Chapman’s plan didn’t work – and exactly why Mark David Chapman is himself one of the greatest phonies of all time. Holden also imagines what the 1980s would have been like with John Lennon alive and well, making more music and marching in more rallies.
Read moreJohn Lennon & Mark David Chapman
Go inside the mind of the man who received messages from both God and the Devil. The man who thought he would step into the pages of a dog-eared paperback with one unspeakable deed. The man who took a dreamer from the world. Mark David Chapman tells the chilling story of just how and why he assassinated John Lennon.
Read moreJohn Lennon & Dick Cavett
As the 1970s came to a close, John Lennon famously withdrew from the public eye to focus on his family life. He was no longer appearing on television shows and peace rallies to rail against the confusion and destruction wrought by the political powers of the world. But as one of those television hosts, Dick Cavett, attests, John was anything but dormant during this period. He nearly made a surprise live appearance on a late-night TV show. He nearly died when he went on a sailing expedition through the Bermuda Triangle. And as his public profile began to increase again, the private security that he and Yoko hired to protect them began to raise some very valid concerns.
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John Lennon & David Bowie
As the 1970s wore on, John Lennon found himself at a crossroads. Was he a pop singer or an artist? Would he continue to be a musician at all, or instead would he retreat into quiet family life? Enter David Bowie, who managed to find a way to help John be all of those things at once, while at the same time making Bowie bigger than ever in the United States. Bowie’s tales about John involve the usual vices, drugs like cocaine – but also some very unexpected and unorthodox hallucinogens on the backstreets of Hong Kong.
Read moreJohn Lennon & Elton John
Elton John and John Lennon had a special relationship. It very well may have been the deepest and closest relationship that John had with another musician after Paul McCartney. Elton explains how he and John hid out from Andy Warhol in a hotel room; how one of the most legendary bets in rock ‘n roll history led to John making an unexpected appearance at Madison Square Garden; and how John’s brush with UFOs makes us reevaluate just exactly what we think is real.
Read moreJohn Lennon & Harry Nilsson
Was Harry Nilsson a bad influence on John Lennon? Or was John Lennon a bad influence on Harry Nilsson? Harry ponders this very question as he takes a stroll down a very inebriated memory lane. It’s on this journey that John and Harry consume far too many Brandy Alexanders, Harry tries to get Paul McCartney to take a horse tranquilizer, Harry literally shreds his vocal cords, and John makes a heroic stand at RCA Records.
Read moreJohn Lennon & Keith Moon
Keith Moon, wild man drummer for the Who, has plenty of his own stories to tell, from chopping up hotel rooms with a hatchet to dunking a Lincoln Continental in a Holiday Inn’s pool. He was one of John’s frequent fellow partiers during John’s “lost weekend” in Los Angeles, which was longer than a weekend and even more lost than you’d initially assume. And as Keith Moon explains, the trouble that he and John got up to during that lost weekend was more than fun and games: it nearly got John Lennon killed.
Read moreJohn Lennon & Phil Spector
To settle a copyright lawsuit, John Lennon begins a disastrous recording project with one of the most disastrous producers in the biz: Phil Spector. The former “tycoon of teen” attempts to helm John’s rock ‘n roll covers album in Los Angeles, which quickly devolves into drunken hijinx, all while a threatening music executive presents serious challenges. Plus, Spector reveals the reason why John and Yoko wanted to be in the United States in the first place – and it’s not what you think.
Read moreJohn Lennon & Richard Nixon
As John Lennon becomes the most famous political dissident in America, President Richard Nixon becomes increasingly paranoid. Nixon defends his legacy as well as the lengths to which his administration went in order to silence the rabble rousing ex-Beatle. Nixon’s own fears led him to believe that John wouldn’t just sway the youth vote, but that he would violently disrupt the country. Nixon’s tales include wiretaps, riots, and even the Godfather himself, James Brown.
Read moreJohn Lennon and Yoko Ono
John Lennon’s second wife and creative muse, Yoko Ono, recalls their time as one of the most simultaneously beloved and feared couples of 1970s
Read moreChapter Ten: Phil Spector and Phil Spector
As Phil Spector faces the rest of his life in prison for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, the memories in his head swirl around in a perfect storm of confusion, resentment, misguided anger, and petty entitlement. The words of Lenny Bruce, Ronnie Spector, Keith Richards, Ike Turner, Leonard Cohen, Debbie Harry, John Lennon, Darlene Love, and the late Lana Clarkson continue to haunt him as he pieces together the moments of his life and contemplates the rest of his days.
Read moreChapter Nine: Phil Spector and Lana Clarkson
Actress Lana Clarkson meets Phil Spector for the first and last time on a fateful and fatal night in February 2003. She doesn’t know who he is, but is gradually charmed by the stories he tells about The Beatles, The Righteous Brothers, Tina Turner, The Ramones, Elvis Presley, and more. When they end up at Spector’s Alhambra castle, a tipsy night of good fun quickly devolves into a deadly night of head games and murderous mischief.
Read moreChapter Eight: Phil Spector and Darlene Love
Darlene Love was the anonymous voice behind many of Phil Spector’s earliest chart-topping teenage pop symphonies; songs like “He’s a Rebel” and “He’s the Boy I Love” bear Darlene’s uncredited but unmistakable vocal. Darlene talks about how she struggled to pull herself out of anonymity and into the spotlight, but how every attempt was thwarted by the same person behind the recording console: Phil Spector. With cameos by George Harrison, John F. Kennedy, and Sam Cooke, Darlene story is a story about the battle for legacy in the face of a madman’s oppression.
Read moreChapter Seven: Phil Spector and John Lennon
From Let It Be to Imagine to an infamous “lost weekend” in Los Angeles, no Beatle had more facetime with Phil Spector than John Lennon. John reminisces on drunkenly being tied to a bed, having a gun fired at him in the studio, and lawyering up simply to get his own session tapes back. Every crazy story has the same crazy common denominator: Phil Spector.
Read moreChapter Six: Phil Spector and Debbie Harry
Blondie frontwoman and siren of the ‘70s NYC punk scene, Debbie Harry talks about making the jump from the Big Apple to the City of Angels, with stops at The Whisky, KROQ, American Bandstand, and, of course, Phil Spector’s mansion. Her story is also The Ramones’ story, and both the beauty and the beasts share the good, the bad, and the downright weird in their tales of working with pop music’s most reclusive and abusive record producer.
Read moreChapter Five: Phil Spector and Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen recalls his time with Phil Spector as a time of great confusion and soul searching. It’s also a time of bad omens, punctuated by being held against his will and being held at gunpoint. Despite cameos by Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg, and trips to islands off the coast of Greece and Zen retreats in California, Leonard’s memories keeping coming back to one word: guns.
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