"I invented heavy rock because I never even heard of Link Wray til the 80s - his records weren’t hard rock - the Ventures were heavier than Link Wray..."

"... No Trespassing by the Ventures is a heavy record - he wasn’t an influence on me... Link Wray played open chords with a slight distortion i used heavy bar chords with distortion through my green amp which I cut the speaker up with the razor blade to get the sound I wanted and no one was doing that then... I’m surprised you would say this. I’m not going off I’m defending me self."

Tweets The Kinks' Dave Davies, responding to a tweet by Stevie Van Zandt that is deleted now.

Stevie appeases: "You know I love you. No offense intended. Thought it was one of those obvious things everybody agreed on. I didn’t say he influenced you. I’m sorry but the attitude that became Hard Rock was born with Rumble. What other instrumental has ever been banned on the radio?"



Dave: "I disagree and I love you too - I’m glad You Really Got Me wasn’t banned."



Stevie tries to make a deal: "How about we give him inventing the Hard Rock power chord, and you inventing the Hard Rock riff? Townshend won’t mind being 2nd. Or 3rd!"

Dave is not taking it: "No - I liked Link Wray after I heard him in the 80s but he didn’t invent the Hard rock power chord - he used open strings - he didn’t use heavy bar chords - heavy bar chords are the foundation of hard rock guitar playing - surely you know. Link Wray used regular E and D open chords - he didn’t use the heavy bar chording technique that I started and which proved to be the foundation of all hard rock guitar playing."

"Excessively efficacious" cops pull the plug on a McCartney/Springsteen concert that went on past the licensed time.

"Guitarist Steven Van Zandt, a member of Springsteen's E Street Band, was angered by the forced curtailment, accusing 'English cops' of preventing '80,000 people having a good time.' 'When did England become a police state?'..."

Ironically, England is having a hell of a time coming up with security personnel for the Olympics.

Newspaper accounts have told of recruits hired for essential security tasks at more than 100 sites — including the main Olympic stadium, which seats 80,000 — falling asleep during training sessions. Instructors for G4S, the private company that has a $440 million contract to provide 10,400 guards for the Games, have complained of facing rows of recruits who speak little or no English.

One tabloid published a photograph, which it said had been taken at a training session, that showed a young woman slumped at her desk, apparently sleeping, with a youth alongside her apparently listening to music through earphones.

Music, maybe by Paul McCartney or Bruce Springsteen.

From the old Beatles catalog:

Mister City Policeman sitting, pretty little policemen in a row
See how they fly like Lucy in the sky, see how they run
I'm crying, I'm crying....

ADDED: Remember the old Beatles rooftop performance in "Let It Be." The police clownishly shut it down. There's a funny dramatic arc as the playing begins, people gradually notice and realize it's the Beatles, and eventually the cops arrive at the notion that it needs to end and do their their piddling duty.

"I am having the experience two times in my life of doing something that makes New Jersey fashionable. What are the odds on that?"

Says Steven Van Zandt.

"I don't sing black, I don't sing white, I sing Bronx."

Have you ever thought about how great Dion is? He is a brilliant singer, and a completely warm performer, whose patter between songs is as entertaining as a good stand-up comedian's. I saw him in a small club here in Madison in 1990, and I can honestly say it was the most enjoyable concert I've seen in my whole life. I just loved him. He sang his old songs -- even, just to make us happy, "Teenager in Love" -- though he had a new album out, "Yo, Frankie." (A terrific album.) I remember him talking about how "The Wanderer" wasn't really what he was like. It was just an attempt to do a follow up to "Runaround Sue," a male version of the female character who meant a lot to him. He married Sue, he said, and was still married.

Now, he's made a CD of blues songs:

Dion said that despite being urged at various times by Bonnie Raitt, Van Morrison and Steven Van Zandt to make an album of blues, he never seriously considered it until a record producer, Richard Gottehrer, heard him talking about his early influences and performing examples on the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air," and suggested a session on his Dimensional Music Recordings label. And it wasn't until Dion actually began working on the record that he realized how these songs had been "the undercurrent of everything."

"You can't hear me thinking on this record," he said with a laugh. "I guess when you're an adult, things don't affect you like they do when you're 13 and vulnerable, and I didn't realize how much Hank Williams and Jimmy Reed were a part of me. It's all the music that kept me honest through the years. You can learn how to sing rock 'n' roll, but I don't know if you can learn how to sing blues because you have to sing without an agenda to capture it. It's so beautiful; you can express anything. I think it fell out of the sky."

Well, beautiful. A beautiful guy with a beautiful voice.

The new CD is "Bronx in Blue":