The Vinyl Frontier

by Jonathan Scott

  2 He wrote: ‘The movements of the heavens are nothing except a certain ever-lasting polyphony (intelligible, not audible) … Hence it should no longer seem strange that man, the image of his Creator, has finally discovered the art of singing polyphonically, which was unknown to the ancients. With this symphony of voices man can play through the eternity of time in less than an hour, and can taste in small measure the delight of God the Supreme Artist…’

  3 The square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit. Duh. Kepler was essentially tweaking and improving the model of Copernicus, explaining and predicting the eccentricities of planetary movements through slightly elliptical, rather than perfectly circular, orbits.

  4 On a computer running the GROOVE (Generating Realtime Operations On Voltage-controlled Equipment) hybrid system. Laurie says: ‘GROOVE was essentially a library of FORTRAN IV and assembly language subroutines that could be called by the FORTRAN programmes each of us individual users would write for our various individual purposes. Those routines provided to the computer’s hardware input and output channels and provided some basic logic and arithmetical functions, such as (notably for this work) a then-relatively-complex periodic function generator. So GROOVE might now be thought of as being a software development environment rather than an application programme.’

  5 The dot-matrix data structure of a rectangular grid of pixels.

  6 The idea was that these sound-converted video signals were different enough from all other sounds on the record, that it would be guessed that they stored information besides sound. Plus there were to be repeated tones at the start of each.

  7 The record cover would include binary notation of the 21cm emission of neutral atomic hydrogen.

  8 In printed form this reads one and 42 hundredths, times 10 to the power nine ‘t’s, equals an ‘s’ – a second.

  9 Ha! Ridiculous!

  10 By now the team had a video camera and small TV set up in the Cornell workroom so they could view the pictures live in the resolution in which they would be recorded.

  11 An international photographic co-operative owned by its photographer-members.

  12 Another person who’s often left out of the Voyager story is Roscoe Barham. He was working at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington and, according to Frank, essentially agreed to be the go-between and messenger, driving between the George Washington University, the National Geographic Society and the airport in order to make sure that the vital slide of an embryo arrived in time.

  13 This diagram also had a photographic sister: an asexual image of a naked couple standing hand in hand, the woman visibly pregnant. But as we know from the Pioneers, NASA was not keen on nakedness. And by the time Voyager came around, little had changed.

  14 Studying a celestial object as it crosses the line of sight between the observer and another celestial object.

  15 A trans-Neptunian object from the Kuiper belt located in the outermost regions of the solar system and discovered by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope on 26 June 2014.

  16 Jay receives requests for copyright permission from time to time. One came from artist and director Steve McQueen for a 2002 piece put on at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. The film was called Once upon a Time, a slow projection of 118 successive stills, using images from the Voyager probe, set to a soundtrack of ‘interwoven snippets of gibberish’.

  17 It’s reproduced twice in Murmurs, and in one place it is reproduced with the insect flying upside down.

  18 It’s a beautiful photo and actually one of very few in the final list that Jon chose purely for aesthetic reasons. Both Frank and Carl felt it was too open to misinterpretation.

  19 Taken by David Doubilet in the Red Sea off Na’ama Bay in Sinai. According to Murmurs, Frank, Carl and Jon were all keen scuba divers, and wanted a picture that showed humans using breathing apparatus underwater.

  20 This photograph came from the Time-Life book The Cooking of Spain and Portugal.

  21 The US equivalent of Heath Robinson.

  22 You can only see it’s chocolate in the colour version. Aliens may well assume it’s vanilla.

  23 The pitcher belonged to Amahl.

  24 An infrared space telescope launched in 2003, named after astronomer Lyman Spitzer, who had promoted the concept of space telescopes in the 1940s (www.spitzer.caltech.edu).

  25 Frutkin (b.1918) was deputy director of the NASA international programmes office between 1957 and 1978, basically putting him right at the coalface throughout the space race.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Berry v Beatles

  ‘It’s very hard to describe my mental state because I was so full of adrenaline and so hyped up most of the time. I think that another advantage of having such a compressed time period was you didn’t have time to be overwhelmed. You just had to make decisions. You had to keep on going.’

  Jon Lomberg

  The most famous track on the Voyager Golden Record is Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny B. Goode’. Exactly who was responsible for its inclusion is sometimes disputed, but let’s be absolutely clear: it was Ann. Lots of other people were behind the idea. If the song was a huge oil tanker idling in a harbour, many other tugboats helped guide it out to sea. But Ann was the harbour master who first suggested it, and then campaigned tirelessly for its inclusion.

  Written by Berry in 1955, the partially autobiographical song is about an illiterate country boy who plays a mean guitar. The name was inspired by Berry’s birthplace – he was born on 18 October 1926 at 2520 Goode Avenue, St Louis – and partly by his bandmate, piano player Johnnie Johnson. The year 1955 was a pivotal moment in Berry’s career. He had visited Chicago, signed with Chess, and put out ‘Maybellene’. It promptly sold a million copies, becoming the first in a run of hits from ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ and ‘School Days’ to ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ and ‘Memphis, Tennessee’, all of them packed with catchy-as-all-hell riffage and story-song lyrics. ‘Johnny B. Goode’ was released in 1958, becoming yet another crossover hit, reaching number 2 on the R&B charts and number 8 on the pop charts.

  Tim told me: ‘That was Annie’s idea originally. I think I agreed because you have both the innovator himself, doing a song about himself, you know about this process. It’s a very unusual nexus in pop music and rock music. So yeah, I thought it was a great choice.’ Besides, Tim knew they were unlikely to have more than one rock piece on the record, so if the team settled on Chuck then that category was all done and dusted – another item ticked off his to-do list. Nevertheless, the song would be contested in daily and nightly debates. For a start, Carl was not a fan. Indeed, the first time Ann played ‘Johnny B. Goode’ to Carl, his reaction was: ‘What? No! I don’t like this at all!’ When it came to popular performers, or which modern performer should make the record, Carl was firmly in team Dylan or team Beatles. This was just too silly, too throwaway, too lightweight. However, with Ann campaigning, and Tim and others in the group being supportive, his position gradually shifted.

  ‘I’ve said this many times,’ Ann told me. ‘When it came to “Johnny B. Goode”, I was like Cato saying “Carthage must be destroyed.” At one point I think Tim played “Roll Over Beethoven” by Chuck Berry, thinking maybe the classical reference would impress [Carl] more, but he didn’t like it either. And I was still saying, “Johnny B. Goode, Johnny B. Goode, Carthage must be destroyed!” And the reason it had to be Chuck Berry was that he was the progenitor, you know that crossover between African, European and American music. And those guitar riffs and those lyrics that went like the lyrics of a novel … I mean, Chuck Berry wrote novels that you could experience in under three minutes.’

  Carl may not have liked it either, but he was at least tempted by ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ – perhaps the fact that it namechecked a classical great also bound for space appealed to him. Bill Nye the Science Guy and CEO of the Planetary Society, was just another young dude taking a class at Cornell around t
his time. There Sagan put the question to his students: ‘Which rock ’n’ roll song should we put on? We’re considering “Roll Over Beethoven” or “Johnny B. Goode”.’ According to Nye, everyone shouted: ‘No! Professor Sagan, no! Not “Roll Over Beethoven”!’ The consensus in the class was that yes, it’s good – no argument there – but it just isn’t ‘Johnny B. Goode’. Nye was definitely one of the tugboats helping ‘Johnny B. Goode’ out to sea.

  While Carl was slowly coming round to it, Alan Lomax was dead against it. Alan thought it was for teenagers and children. To which Sagan countered that, as the Earth is full of teenagers and children, wasn’t it appropriate to have a song on a global interstellar record that represented them too? Tim told me: ‘I used to go up and see Alan at his place sometimes, collect pieces of music there. I think he wanted to be more involved in all the deliberations, but he wasn’t really very well set up to do that. He hated “Johnny B. Goode”, for instance. And he would sometimes dig his heels in. And we didn’t really have time for that. We needed to keep our eye on the ball.’

  Carl not only came round to ‘Johnny B. Goode’, but he and Chuck would enjoy, if not a friendship, certainly a warm acquaintanceship. Berry would play at JPL’s Voyager fly-by celebrations in years to come, and Carl would sign off a letter to Chuck on his 60th birthday, in October 1986, with the words ‘Go Johnny, go.’1

  ‘I love the guy. I think he’s a genius,’ says Ann. ‘John Lennon saying to camera, “how do you spell rock ’n’ roll? You spell it ‘Chuck Berry’.” Without him there would be no rock ’n’ roll. So I also felt … vindicated. I learned later that the original lyric for the song had been “coloured boy”, but the producers had Chuck change it to “country boy” so it wouldn’t alienate a white audience … He was really a crossover artist pioneering his way into the hearts of this new audience that had not really been paying attention.’

  Ann remembers one more critical thing about the Chuck Berry debates. It was a moment she recalls vividly, when Carl looked up at her and said: ‘Okay. Chuck Berry. Johnny B. Goode.’ She remembers it because there was something in the way he said it, in the way he looked at her. It seemed to Ann that Carl was saying much more.

  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The Beatles were still in the running, remember? And if there was to be only one rock ’n’ roll song on the record, surely The Beatles would be chosen over Berry. Right? I mean … it’s The Beatles.

  Abbey Road is the 11th Beatles album, and in a way it’s their last proper studio album as the Let It Be sessions were recorded prior to Abbey Road. It was certainly the last complete Beatles album to which all four members were fully committed. In any event, it’s an album, with highlights, lowlights and curios. It’s heavily produced, which annoyed some contemporary reviewers, who, alongside plenty of praise, used words like ‘gimmicky’ (Times), ‘disposable’ (Life), ‘nothing special’ (NY Times). Within the album sits what is generally accepted to be George Harrison’s best song (before going solo). And it was ‘Here Comes The Sun’ that some in the Golden Record team were excited about sending.

  Now, the often-repeated story is this: they wanted to send ‘Here Comes The Sun’, they put out feelers, they were told that all four of The Beatles were keen and were happy for the song to go to space but, in the end, the copyright owners, Northern Songs, wanted to charge an extortionate amount ($50,000 for each copy of the record on the two spacecraft), which meant The Beatles missed this particular boat to immortality.

  In the 2017 documentary The Farthest Frank misremembered this story, telling it as if all four of The Beatles had said ‘no’. But that isn’t quite right either. It’s certainly true that Northern Songs owned the copyright and did want an extortionate amount. Carl writes how there were many other stories like this – great artists and musicians who, because of time or money constraints, could not be included on the record. Carl also writes how they imagined a cartoon printed in a newspaper, showing a group of performers, all staring wistfully up at the Voyager rockets as they took off from Cape Canaveral, mourning their missed opportunity. In any event, because it’s The Beatles and because it’s a lot of money, this story is told a lot. However, Tim remembers it differently:

  ‘What’s often reported is that we were all dying to put a Beatles track on but The Beatles asked for too much money or their record label did … But that’s not quite accurate. One of the songs that came through early on was “Here Comes The Sun”. I may have proposed it myself, I can’t remember who did. I remember we played it at my place and Carl was kind of enchanted, but was concerned about whether it would be released. I was less enchanted because I didn’t think the song was going to make it to the record. It’s a pleasant enough piece, but it’s way down in my opinion … it was way below the standard we were looking for on the record. I went to something at Forest Hills with John Eastman, who was Paul McCartney’s attorney … We had a chat about it while we were out there and he said: “You know, I don’t see how that could be a problem. But then I don’t control the publishing on this particular song.”’

  Then Tim describes that around this time he also saw George Harrison at a party. Tim remembers that George was being ‘all prickly’ because of something that had appeared in Rolling Stone recently. This wasn’t a bad argument, just a spirited exchange of views, and in any event, Tim didn’t even mention ‘Here Comes The Sun’ at the time because he didn’t think it would ever make it: ‘I was convinced pretty early on that this was never going to make it through competition. There’s nothing on the record that’s as simple and un-resonant as “Here Comes The Sun”. All you really have is a pun, which isn’t accurate anyway because we’re not sending you the Sun, we’re sending you this record. So I stopped pursuing it and went on to other things.’

  But while Tim may have abandoned the idea, it seemed someone on the team had not: ‘Somebody – Carl maybe, or somebody on the team – apparently called somebody else who came up with some “fuck you” number [to pay for the song’s inclusion]. You know, that was probably about the annual income of the average American at that time. And it was just a crude way of saying no. I don’t know who said it. But as the piece was never going to be on the record anyhow, I regarded all of that as kind of incidental. So those are the facts, and the conclusion I reached is simply that it’s not true that The Beatles aren’t on the record because somebody asked for a ton of money. Bob Dylan isn’t on the record either. And there are a lot of people who aren’t on the record who are just fantastic. You know, I wish they were on the record. But you can’t have everybody.’

  You certainly can’t. No Dylan. Elvis was discussed but discounted. There was no Bob Marley (a fact that still bothers Jon), no Billie Holiday, no Jimi Hendrix, no Aretha Franklin, no Miles Davis and no Rolling Stones. Even Jefferson Starship, who had offered their music for free, weren’t in the running.

  Nevertheless, Ann is confused by this. She remembers how they were only paying a nominal fee for the rights for most songs, but the labels and performers, including Chuck Berry, were keen, knowing it was a one-time chance, a shot at immortality. She was sure that Tim had contacted The Beatles and that all four Beatles said yes, and it was Northern Songs who wanted this huge amount – not only that but a huge amount for each spacecraft.

  ‘It was very funny because we were paying a two-cents-per-spacecraft royalty for “Universal Rights” for all the tracks, which is a phrase that appears in all music contracts and publishing contracts, but was never ever meant galactically before Voyager.’

  ‘Here Comes The Sun’ certainly would have been an okay fit for the record. It’s a pretty, delicate song, with a subtle yet satisfying melody and structure. It mentions a heavenly body, which kind of fits with the project, but the fact is, for me at least, it’s no goosebump-raiser and it’s nowhere near the best record The Beatles made. If The Beatles were going to be aboard Voyager, I for one would have wanted almost any other song to be their representative, ‘Across the Universe’ for exampl
e.

  Ann was stoked anyway. Whatever the barrier was to ‘Here Comes The Sun’, its omission left the way clear for her favoured horse when it came to 20th-century popular music. Chuck Berry was definitely going.

  While The Beatles missed that boat, another very British record with its own Abbey Road connection was being readied for embarkation. ‘The Fairie Round’ was written by 16th-century composer Anthony Holborne, performed and arranged by David Munrow.2 Munrow was an influential performer, who in a very short career did a huge amount to further popular appreciation for Middle Age and Renaissance music. He led pioneering musical expeditions into the past, digging up, dusting off and recording a monumental multi-LP treasury of medieval music, with his touring and recording group of roughly 10 years, the Early Music Consort of London. By all accounts he was an astonishing human being, with vast reserves of energy and incredible skill – it is always boasted he could play 43 instruments, including the bassoon, the crumhorn and the recorder. In the UK he recorded more than 650 editions of Pied Piper, a programme full of ‘tales and music for younger listeners’ that enjoyed a five-year run on Radio 3. And he did all this before his death at the age of just 33.

  ‘The Fairie Round’, recorded at Abbey Road Studios in September 1973, was a perfect fit for the Voyager project as it shows off complex, wide-ranging musical form, while at the same time being very short – it’s only one minute and 15 seconds long. Tim Ferris writes in Murmurs about how he felt it sat happily between various strands of the Golden Record playlist, forging connections between the horns and panpipes of New Guinea and the strings of Bach.

  Finally, for all you Beatles fans out there still struggling with the disappointment, I would like to point out that side two of the Fab Four’s second LP, With The Beatles (1963), kicks off with a cover of Chuck Berry’s ‘Roll Over Beethoven’. And who takes lead vocal? George Harrison. Isn’t that all rather fitting?