Fresh Air - Remembering Composer Peter Shickeley / Shangri-Las Lead Mary Weiss

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

We remember composer and classical music satirist Peter Schickele, whose alter ego was "P.D.Q. Bach." His comic music arrangements were funny, but the level of musicianship was no joke. He spoke with Terry Gross in 1985. Also, we remember Mary Weiss, lead singer of the Shangri-Las, the girl group whose biggest hit was "Leader of the Pack." From working-class Queens, they acquired a tough girl image, in contrast to the glamor girl groups of the era. Weiss was on Fresh Air in 2007 when she released a solo album. Also, TV critic David Bianculli reviews Masters of the Air, the new World War II series from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks on Apple TV+. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. Well, hello there, everybody. This is your friendly professor, Peter Shickley. music from the Juilliard School and even taught there. Over his long career, he composed more than 100 serious musical works, symphonies, choral and chamber works, and solo instrumentals. He also wrote for film in the theater. He supplied songs for the infamous Broadway musical O Calcutta and wrote the music for the cult science fiction movie Silent Running, which included songs sung by Joan Baez. Fields of children running wild in the sun Like a forest is your child

Growing wild in the sun But Peter Shikley was best known for concocting, presenting, and performing the works of P.D.Q. Bach, whom Shikley claimed was the youngest and oddest of Johann Sebastian Bach's twenty-odd children. Shikley, claiming to be a musicologist, would perform premieres of newly unearthed works by PDQ Bach, works which demonstrated both Schickely's talents as a composer and arranger and his shamelessly childish sense of humor. PDQ's first work, performed on stage in 1965, was called Concerto for Horn and Hard Art. An album was released that same year, launching a parody mini-empire that ended up eclipsing Schickely's more serious work. But Schickely had only himself to blame.

His hilarious PDQ Bach compositions included his Unbegun Symphony, a mini-opera called The Civilian Barber, and a parody of the madrigal My Bonnie Lass She Smileth, which in Shikali's hands, or PDQ Box, became My Bonnie Lass She Smelleth. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la Jones. Classical and comedy influences ran throughout the works of P.D. Kubach, whether in his Philip Glass parody called Einstein on the Fritz, or his strangely familiar Overture 1712 for Really Big Orchestra. Terry Gross spoke with Peter Shickley in 1985. Basically what I am is a composer, and I think that Peter K. Bach grew very gradually. It did not start with a career in mind at all.

It was something that started with friends in a living room in Fargo, North Dakota, and then it started semi-publicly as concerts put on at Juilliard and also at Aspen in the summer for fellow faculty and students. And then finally in 1965, the first real public performance. And it was never planned. It just sort of happened in the beginning. But in retrospect, it seems very obvious to me that this is a prime example of the thing that has always seemed true to me, and that is that most satirists make fun of what they like, not what they don't like. I think it's no accident that Spike Jonze, who was the granddaddy of it all for me, I was a Spike Jonzeak when I was a kid. The water he swam in was the 30s and 40s big band style, dance band kind of thing. He even put out records with Spike Jonze and his other orchestra that were

straight without comedy. And since Bach and Mozart are two of my absolute favorite composers, there's an affinity there, a stylistic affinity, that is the only reason that decades later I'm still having fun doing this. You grew up in Ames, Iowa and in Fargo, North Dakota. Was there much of a classical music scene in either of those two places? Well, we moved from Ames when I was eight years old. I don't have any particular memory of that. I wasn't particularly interested in music as a kid. I was not a prodigy at all. I don't have any particular memory of that. I wasn't particularly interested in music as a kid. I was not a prodigy at all. I didn't get interested in music really at all until I was 12, 13. We lived for four years at the end of World War II in Washington, D.C., and then I moved to Fargo.

And it was then that I got interested in music, partly because Spike Jonze had such a wonderful stage show. I was very theatrically inclined. I was much more interested in theater than music when I was 11 years old. And it was really in an imitation of Spike Jonze's stage show that I put together the first little band I was in. It was a four-man band called Jerky Jims and His Bomby Brothers. It featured two clarinets, violin, and tom-tom. But during the teenage years, what happened was that I got just more and more involved in the

music for its own sake and less and less in the theater. My memories of Fargo are extremely lively. My brother was and is a fanatic chamber music player, and he was always talking kids into coming over and playing quartets. Not only that, but among the adults, some of our best friends were the conductor of the community orchestra, which, by the way, in 1950 played Messiaen. And we were getting together at homes playing the Schubert 2 cello quintet and the Mozart and Beethoven quartets, and also the Brahms sextets and quintets. And it's not what people associate with Fargo, North Dakota at all. It was a very lively scene. of college, first to Swarthmore College and then to Juilliard, I've always kept that sort of

amateur standing along with my professional standing in the sense that I still love writing rounds to be sung at parties. And a lot of my best pieces started out as birthday presents for somebody or something like that. And that very much comes from that atmosphere of Fargo. What kind of music did you think you were going to compose when you first went to Juilliard? Well, I assumed that I would end up being a college teacher or something and writing. I mean, I knew what I wanted to do was write. And think that I've always been very, well, fond is even the wrong expression. I've always loved all sorts of non-classical kinds of music in addition to classical music. I've always loved all sorts of folk and jazz and rock and ethnic music from around the world. I think that what's happened over the decades is

that I feel that gradually those different kinds of music have had their influence on mine. I now write a piece that is a regular chamber music piece in terms of its instrumentation or in general form, but it'll have a lot of jazz or rock kinds of things in it. I use drones a lot, which partially came from the fad of listening to a lot of Indian music in the 60s, you know, and partially from drone instruments such as a bagpipe and even the mountain dulcimer. Do you think that there's any classical composers that we treat a little too sanctimoniously? Yes, I think my feeling about that is that a lot of people don't realize that the people who wrote that music weren't as stuffy

as the atmosphere of concert halls suggests that they were. But I do feel that the atmosphere surrounding music in the 18th century was probably closer to the atmosphere that we're familiar with now in terms of, let's say, a jazz group or something that is very serious in preparing its music, but often more lighthearted in its presentation. For instance, one of the things that annoys me is that because of my reputation, I can't give a light title to a serious piece, because if I do, everybody's going to be looking for something specifically funny. Whereas in jazz, you very often get flippant titles for pieces that are just straightforward jazz pieces.

You get a piece called Bike Up the Strand or something like that that's just a piece. It's not a joke piece. I can't believe if you look at the programs of those concerts in Beethoven's day that must have gone on for three or four hours sometimes. When you read that the Handel organ concertos were written to be played between the acts of the oratorios, I can't believe that the audiences sat there the way we sit at a concert now. I'm sure there was a lot of noise. You read in the 19th century that some of the great chess matches were played at the opera in a box. So I think the attitude was very different. And I don't even say that's the way it ought to be. I like getting myself completely engrossed in a piece. I don't like audiences that make noise. But I think you pay a price, you know. We have this thing now that

you shouldn't applaud after movements. In the 19th century, if the audience liked a movement, they applauded sometimes to the point where they had to play the movement over again. Now, you can say that that destroys the architecture of the symphony, but it's also something that comes out of a tremendous spontaneous enthusiasm. Mozart wrote home when he did the Paris Symphony, the last movement of which starts not with a big tutti, a big loud thing right away that everybody usually expects in a symphony, but it starts with just the first and second violins scurrying around. And then finally, 10 seconds into it or whatever it is, the whole orchestra

comes blazing in. Apparently, the audience was delighted and burst into applause right then when the orchestra came in. And Mozart wrote that home proudly because he obviously got them. He had delighted them. And I think the price we pay for the very serious approach, and as I say, I'm of two minds about it because I like not being distracted, but the price we pay is a lack of spontaneity. Well, speaking of serious approaches, when you make your entrance in your concerts, you've entered in some most unusual ways. Do you want to describe some of the entrances you've made? Well, now, these, of course, are in PDQ Bach concerts. The professor does have a habit of not being able to find the stage door of auditoriums. And so I've been known to end up in the balcony. And the only way I can get down quickly to the orchestra floor is by

shimmying down a rope from the balcony to the aisle or swinging in from the front of the balcony like Tarzan. It's true that this has happened, but I think that to do that in a concert of Peter Shickley music would be to raise false expectations. So I try to find the right door in that case. Well, I don't know if this has ever happened, but have you ever been at a concert where the musicians were laughing in the middle of it and just ruining the concert by laughing along with the joke instead of being straight-faced? Well, actually, I don't ask them to be straight-faced anymore. When I first started appearing with symphony orchestras, I did, and I found that it sort of puts a wet blanket on it. When I'm appearing with my own group, the Intimate PDQ Bach, we are very serious. But I've found with a symphony orchestra, the atmosphere is better

if I don't do that. And in fact, I've gone a little bit, I've gone the other direction in that I don't even do everything at the rehearsal. I save some stuff for the performance to be a surprise for the orchestra as well as the audience. It's a very empirical decision in what works, you know. You see, it's one thing when you're working with your own group, people that you've hired, auditioned, whatever, you put together the intimate PDQ Bach group, for instance, there you can work with them. You work out the routine. Everything is quite theatrically worked out. In the case of my appearances with the symphony orchestra, I almost never have more than two rehearsals with them, sometimes only one. I don't know these people. Some of these people might be good comedians,

some of them might not. Sometimes they're better comedians than they think they are. I have to sort of discourage participation on their part. But what I have found is that if I tell people not to laugh, it isn't as good a concert as if I tell them don't worry about it. And one of the things I found actually is that in cities where the symphony matters, where people really care about their orchestra, usually members of the audience, I don't mean people on the board either, I just mean people who go regularly, they really get to know the orchestra. They have people they particularly like to watch.

They maybe know the people, maybe not, but they know them from watching them. And they love seeing them having a good time. I've had so many, had so many times had people in the audience say, well, it's so wonderful to see that first cellist crack up. He's always so serious, you know. And so I think that that's a sort of a, that's something that's worth having, you know. When you first started performing, before you were famous, did musicians think twice about playing with you because they thought that they'd be taken as comedians instead of serious musicians and it might have a negative impact on their careers? Well, there was a certain amount

of that. I think the very first humorous concert wasn't even called PDQ Bach at Juilliard when I was a student there in 1959. And Jorge Mester and I and some other people put together a teeny little orchestra. Well, he put the orchestra together, but I mean it was probably two first violins and two seconds and a viola and a cello and a bass and a few winds. And the Quodlibet was written for that concert, literally overnight, with friends, including Phil Glass, sitting beside me, taking parts and copying parts as I finished the score. And when it came in the Quodlibet to the place where Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is combined

with T for Two, at the first and only rehearsal, one of the violinists got up and walked out and never came back. There's nothing we could do about it. It wasn't as if anybody's being paid or if it was a school function or something like that. She didn't want to play. She didn't have to. And so she got up and walked out and never came back. But I think one of the things that was nice is that the fact that I did the concerts for six years at Juilliard and at Aspen meant that by the time I did the first public concert in 65, it already had an underground reputation among musicians as something fun to do. So right from the very beginning in New York, and this has remained true, I've worked with the very best freelance musicians, and the PDQ Bach pieces

reflect that. Some of them are quite difficult. People are often surprised if they attend a rehearsal at how hard we work on just getting the music right. Because one of the things I learned from Spike Jones is the better played it is, the funnier it is. It's not goofing off. And so the high trumpet parts, for instance, it takes the really good high trumpet players to play them. And that's because I've always had the top musicians. And one of the nice things about having done it as long as I have is that I've played with most of the orchestras in the country, and most of the major symphonies, and many community and college orchestras. And so they know that I'm not out to make a fool of them.

And I'm very careful in my rehearsals to be very respectful of them because my attitude is that they are not hired to be comedians. They're hired to play the music. Did anyone ever say to you that you were ruining your own career and your own chances as a serious musician by focusing so much on the musical satire that you do? Yeah, definitely. I mean, there are people who are fans of my serious music that decades ago, years ago, you know, wished that I had given up P.D.Q. Bach. I think the one thing I would do differently if I had to do it all over again, trouble is I love that whole theatrical part of me.

I said, you know, when I was 11, if you'd asked me what I was going to be when I grow up, I would have said an actor or a playwright or something like that. That whole side of me, of course, is very satisfied by the very theatrical nature of PDQ Bach concerts. The one thing I would do differently, I think, would be to use a funny, phony name for the professor. Not as a secret, but just as a signpost. I mean, not trying to keep my identity a secret. But just so that Peter Schickley could be used for the so-called serious music and the professor, Hassenfesser or whatever it's going to be, would be used for PDQ Bach. Because it is upsetting at a concert that has a serious piece of mind if a bunch of people, as sometimes has happened, come in just determined to find

something to laugh at. Very often people don't know that I do anything serious, which isn't surprising. But sometimes when they find out that I do, they're not only surprised, but even disappointed. It's sort of like, oh, here's another clown who wants to play Hamlet. And I have no desire to shove my serious music down people's throats. One of the reasons that I work hard on trying to get as much of it recorded as possible is it tends that way to get out to people who are interested in it. I get very nice feedback from people who've heard it on classical music stations. But I couldn't put a serious piece on a P.D.Q. Bach concert because everybody would be waiting for something funny to happen. Peter Shickley, a.k.a. P.D.Q. Bach, speaking to Terry Gross in 1985.

Shickley died last week at age 88. After a break, we remember Mary Weiss, the lead singer of the Shangri-Las, the girl group best known for the song Leader of the Pack. And I'll review the new Apple TV Plus miniseries about World War II pilots, Masters of the Air. Here's one more sample from a PDQ Bach piece, the unforgettable ending to his oratorio called The Seasonings, with the chorus singing, To curry favor, favor curry. The finale includes an instrument rarely heard in concert, the air horn. I'm David Bianculli, and this is Fresh Air. Thank you. CHOIR SINGS To the end Ever, ever Are you

In me In me Is she really going out with him? Well, there she is. Let's ask her. Betty, is that Jimmy's ring you're wearing? Mm-hmm. Gee, it must be great riding with him. Is he picking you up after school today? Mm-mm.

By the way, where'd you meet him? I met him at the candy store. He turned around and smiled at me. You get the picture? Yes, we see. That's when I fell for... The leader of the pack. That's one of the big hits from the 1960s by the girl group The Shangri-Las.

Today, we remember the group's lead singer, Mary Weiss. She died last week at the age of 75. The Shangri-Las had a tough urban image and sang songs about teenage love, love that often ended up in tragedy. Their other hits include Remember, Give Us Your Blessings, Long Live Our Love, and Give Him a Great Big Kiss. Their producer was George Shadow Morton. Some of their records were produced like mini-dramas with dialogue and sound effects.

During the 60s, James Brown hired the group for a big show and was surprised to discover they were not black, as he assumed. The Shangri-Las influenced Debbie Harry, Amy Winehouse, and the Ramones. The group originally consisted of sisters Mary and Betty Weiss and twin sisters Marge and Mary Ann Ganser. Mary Weiss left music after the group broke up in the late 60s, but she returned to music in 2007 and released her first solo album, which she titled Dangerous Game. The CD was described in The New Yorker as a remarkable solo debut. Quote, Weiss is in fine voice, and the songs combine the dark innocence of girl group records with a mature sense of regret. Unquote. Terry Gross spoke with Mary Weiss then.

They began with the opening track from the CD, the song, My Heart is Beating. When you held me close, that's when I knew You chilled me through and through I couldn't let you go. I couldn't let it show. In this whole world of air, I know it's true. What can I do? One day you'll be free.

You'll come running to me. Till then, my heart's beating, beating Baby, I know You've been cheating But if I take you back You gotta wanna Stay in that road track I said if I take you back

I wanna know You'll be good to me That's Mary Weiss from her new CD, Dangerous Game. Mary Weiss, welcome to Fresh Air. It's so great to have you recording again. Thank you. Yeah, you really sound great on the new record, but you haven't recorded and you haven't even performed much since the Shangri-Las broke up in the late 60s.

Why have you stayed away from music for so many years? Basically, when we first started, it was all about music, and by the time we finished, it was all about litigation, and it just became thicker than the music. So what changed, and did somebody convince you to come back now? Interestingly enough, I was listening to an interview you did with Iggy Pop. And he mentioned life being in seven-year cycles. And I was just floored because I've always viewed life that way. And I've had a lot of things happen to me in recent years. I lost my mom. I lost my brother. And I've been reevaluating what it is I want to do

with the last sector of my work life. And why did you think you wanted to go back to music? Because music is home to me. It always was. Music was my life as a child growing up, and it got me through most of the things in my life. And it feels like where I belong. So it must have been horrible to not be able to perform for all those years. I've never been real fond of performing live.

I'm a very private person, but I love this studio. That's my home. So that must have been frustrating, not being able to record. Yes and no. When I put something down, I really put it down. And I packed my bags and I went on my way. I developed a new career. I was working for an architectural firm. And I had started in their accounting department. By the time I left, I was their chief purchasing agent. And I worked at commercial furniture dealerships, and I installed multimillion-dollar installations.

Did they know who you were? Yeah, unfortunately. Unfortunately. Sometimes people would show up at my place of employment with an album in hand. Let's talk a little bit about the Shangri-Las. You started out in high school performing at local bars with the Shangri-Las before you started recording. And the band was initially made up of you, your sister Betty,

and two twins who were your friends. Right. What was the band like before you started recording? Well, actually, we met in grammar school, and we used to sing on the street corner, all of us. So that's how we really started, and not bars. I was too young to be in a bar, actually. Right. Little hops and dances and things like that we did initially

until we went up to Bob Lewis's apartment and met Shadow Morton. And the story of how you met George Shadow Morton, who became one of your producers and one of your chief songwriters, is a story that's kind of entered rock and roll lore, but I want you to tell it. We had an original manager. I believe his name was Tony Michaels, and he wanted Bob Lewis to hear us singing.

So he had made an appointment with him, and we went up to his apartment just to hear us, and we got up and sang for him a cappella. And George was there, Shadow, Shadow, sitting there, and that's when I met him. And he, I think, wrote this on a dare. He was trying to convince the songwriter, Jeff Barry,

that he was really a songwriter, and he could write a ballad, an up-tempo tune. And the song was Remember, Walking in the Sand, which is one of those like great like drama songs that you recorded. I really like that record. Oh, I love the record. I mean, who doesn't? I'm doing that on stage. Are you? Yes, I am. Let's hear Remember, which was the Shangri-La's first hit, and you were what, 15 when this was recorded? I believe so. Okay, here we go. Seems like the other day

my baby went away he went away across the sea It's been He went away across the sea It's been two years or so Since I saw my baby go And then this letter came for me

He said that we were through He said, but he knew Let me think, let me think What can I do? Oh no, oh no Oh no, no, no, no, no Remember, walking in the sand Remember

Walking hand in hand Remember The night was so exciting Remember The smile was so inviting Remember Then he touched my cheek Remember

With his fingertips Remember Softly Softly we'd meet with the wind Whatever happened to That's the Shangri-Las, their first hit. I guess Mary Weiss

was the lead singer of the Shangri-Las and now she has a new solo CD which is called Dangerous Game. This song has such drama to it, you know, like when you're saying, like, let me think, let me think, what can I do? Were you used to that kind of drama in your performances? I was used to that kind of drama in my life, so I think it would come out

in my performances. What kind of drama in your life? Well, I think teenagers for the most part, I know I can only speak for myself, but teenagers have an intensity that we seem to, I don't think we grow out of, but there's variable shades of gray added where when you're a teen, a lot of things, or for me anyway, everything was black and white. I don't know if I'm expressing myself correctly. Can you give us like an example of a dramatic incident that had already happened to you when you were 15 and recorded this? Not specifically. I grew up with a difficult childhood. We grew up pretty poor.

And I mean, I've been supporting myself since I'm 14. So I don't know. There was a lot of pain in me. Some people lose their bearings when they have that kind of sudden success at a young age. Did you? Definitely. I think most, it's hard enough for an adult to deal with that type of situation, much less a child. I grew up on the road. I had a road manager who was barely a couple of years older than me. So, I mean, kids were going to proms and I was giving press conferences in London. It's quite a weird way to grow up. If you don't mind my asking, did guys and bands try to hit on you on the road when you were traveling in rock and roll shows and sharing a bill?

Other bands? Yeah. Sometimes, of course. We have such a tough image, supposedly. The Shangri-Las, absolutely. I think a lot of that comes from surviving, from making people back down. So you didn't have a tough image before your success? I never thought much about image. I just didn't like chiffon dresses and high heels. That's as honest as I can be.

And I never liked women's slacks back then. You know they didn't have low-rise pants in 1964? They just didn't make them. So I used to go to a place on 8th Street and have men's clothes tailored for me. Did anyone from a record company ever tried to make the Shangri-Las more girlish and glamorous and less kind of tough looking and, you know, your boots and pants? No, actually not. What we wore on stage after we

started making money, I mean, you can see the difference from early on. We didn't have any clothes. Where you saw other groups, they had money and support behind them, were extremely well-dressed from the beginning. We were out there pretty much in our street clothes. But then when we started making money, we designed our own clothes and had them made in the village. Mary Weiss speaking to Terry Gross in 2007. More after a break. This is Fresh Air. Let's hear, but talk about first, another really famous Shangri-La's recording, and I'm thinking of Leader of the Pack. Okay.

Your first impression of the song? I really had to sit down with this one. I took it home and listened to it for a very long time before I agreed to do it. Why were you so reluctant? Even at the time, it was pretty much out there. I mean, in England, there was a very rigid environment, even globally. I mean, the record was banned in England the first time it came out. Did you rehearse this song differently than you usually rehearsed songs

because of the spoken parts in it and the drama? Well, usually I'd rehearse those home initially, and I remember having hard times with certain songs where we'd actually dim lights in the studio so I could feel, like, alone in order to be able to deliver it properly. The lookout took a little bit because it's kind of metered, and it had to be right on the money to do,

so I would just sit at home and yell, look out. I'm sure my neighbors loved that. Well, why don't we hear the song? Okay. And this is the Shangri-La's Leader of the Pack. Is she really going out with him? Well, there she is. Let's ask her. Betty, is that Jimmy's ring you're wearing?

Mm-hmm. Gee, it must be great riding with him. Is he picking you up after school today? Mm-mm. By the way, where'd you meet him? I met him at the candy store. He turned around and smiled at me. You get the picture?

Yes, we see. That's when I fell for the leader of the pack. My folks were always putting him down. Down, down. They said he came from the wrong side of town. What do you mean when you say that he came from the wrong side of town? They told me he was bad. But I knew he was dead. That's why I fell for the leader of the pack.

One day my dad said to find someone new. I had to tell my Jimmy What do you mean when you say that you better go find somebody new? He stood there and asked me why But all I could do was cry I'm sorry I hurt you The leader of the pack He's so to smile and kiss me goodbye The tears were beginning to show As he drove away on that rainy night

I begged him to go slow Whether he heard, I'll never know Look out, look out, look out, look out! I've felt so helpless, what could I do? Remembering all the things we've been through. In school they all stop and stare I can't have her tears

But I don't care I'll never forget him The leader of the group. As we were saying, the Shangri-Las had the image of being very tough. What was your neighborhood like in Queens when you were growing up? I probably would consider it middle to low middle class. There were a lot of kids in the neighborhood. An average neighborhood, pretty much.

What did your mother do to support you? She had periodic jobs on occasion, but nothing really substantial. So you were pretty much scraping by? Yeah, absolutely. So it must have been really welcomed when you started making a lot of money. There you go. And did you send a lot back to your mother? Always.

We kind of raised her as much as we could. What are you hoping for musically and professionally this time around? You stayed away from the music business since the late 60s. There was so much litigation. You were so kind of disillusioned with the business at that point. You stayed away for decades. What do you want this time around?

Actually, I want music. The funny thing about it now is I'm not a kid. There is no ladder I'm trying to climb. I have nothing to prove. No one can remove what I. I don't know. The whole thing has been fabulous, and the response is absolutely overwhelming. But I'm not looking for anything specific. I just want to rock and roll. That's how I want to spend my last days before I retire.

Mary Weiss speaking to Terry Gross in 2007. The former lead singer of the Shangri-Las died last week at age 75. Coming up, I'll review Masters of the Air, the latest World War II series from the makers of Band of Brothers and The Pacific. This is Fresh Air. In the 90s, Steven Spielberg directed two unforgettably powerful films about World War II, Schindler's List in 1993 and Saving Private Ryan in 1998. Saving Private Ryan starred Tom Hanks, and Hanks and Spielberg weren't through with their obsession with World War II dramas. They were just beginning. Teaming with Gary Getzman, they produced two impressive, captivating HBO miniseries

about World War II, Band of Brothers in 2001, followed nine years later by The Pacific. Both of them did what Saving Private Ryan also had accomplished so brilliantly. They allowed the audience to experience the intensity and brutality of wartime. Not just allowed us, but forced us, in unrelenting battle sequences that gave new meaning to the phrase, you are there. And those dramas also delivered large helpings of surprise and of loss. We got to know and care deeply about its soldiers and marines, and then, without warning, many of them were taken away from us. Masters of the Air is the newest entry in this World War II project by Spielberg, Hanks, and Company. It's every bit their equal and boasts precisely the same strengths. It's presented by

Apple TV Plus this time, rolled out weekly after tonight's two-episode premiere. And because Masters of the Air, like Band of Brothers in the Pacific, is a limited miniseries, even the main characters are at risk of dying at any time. And some do. Two of the primary characters share a similar nickname, a confusing gimmick that's explained early on. There's Gail Buck-Clevin, played by Austin Butler, and John Bucky Egan, played by Callum Turner. Bucky had the nickname first and gave the shorter name Buck to his friend just to annoy him until it stuck. Bucky is a loudmouth hothead.

Buck is more quiet and private. But they're good friends and they're both great pilots. In this early scene, they're in a club drinking and listening to the jukebox, about to be shipped off to fight overseas. Bucky has orders to go first, and has some news for Buck. So this is it. This is it. See you in a few weeks.

If I don't die first. Hate to break it to you, Bucky, but you are the hundreds air executive now. You're not going over there to fly missions. Look, I, uh, I had a conversation with the CO over at the 389th, and I'm fine with those boys and two of you guys show up. I'll be an observation pilot. You son of a bitch. Yeah, well, someone's got to taste a little combat.

Tell you what it's really like up there. Well, don't you die on me before I get over there. Don't count on it. When Buck finally gets to Europe and flies his first mission, it's more manic and terrifying than he ever imagined. When he pilots his bomber back to the base, Buck finds Bucky waiting for him. It's an unexpected reunion and not necessarily a happy one, because Buck has some questions. Why didn't you tell me? What? You'd been up.

Two missions. He didn't tell me it was like that. I didn't know what to say. You've seen it now. I don't know what I saw. Austin Butler empowers Buck with the undeniable charisma of an old-fashioned movie star, like a bomber pilot James Dean. Butler's breakout starring role was as Elvis Presley in Elvis, and here, even without the trappings of showbiz flash and glitz, he's just as magnetic.

But he's not carrying this story or fighting this war alone. Callum Turner's Bucky matches him throughout. And so does Anthony Boyle, who plays a young navigator named Harry Crosby. And a lot more players contribute greatly. This is a large cast doing justice to a very big story. Masters of the Air is based on the book by Donald L. Miller. Several talented directors traded off working on various episodes, but all were adapted for TV by screenwriter John Orloff. His narrative not only follows the leading characters during World War II, but makes time over its nine episodes

to weave in such familiar wartime narratives as the Tuskegee Airmen and the Great Escape. Lots of time is spent airborne, in one thrilling mission after another, but there also are scenes set in briefing rooms, barracks, rest and recreation spots, even German prisoner of war camps. Masters of the Air finds drama in all those places. And it's nice to know that this miniseries, like its predecessors, is being rolled out in weekly installments. These hours of television are like the Air Force missions themselves.

They're such intense experiences. It's nice to have a little time between them to reflect and to breathe. On Monday's show, journalist and author Antonia Hilton. She's written a new book called Madness, Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum. It's the culmination of over a decade of investigative and archival research. It pieces together the 93-year history of Maryland's first segregated asylum, which she says gives us context about the state of mental health care today. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Charlie

Kier. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.