From Golden Gate Park to Ancient Troy: On The Record Goes Big

The latest episode opens with the passing of saxophonist Plas Johnson, 94, a player whose name might not mean much outside musician circles but whose sound is embedded in popular culture.

Johnson’s cool, slinking work on Henry Mancini’s Pink Panther theme is his best-known contribution, but the wider CV is properly formidable: Frank Sinatra, B.B. King, Joni Mitchell, Marvin Gaye, The Beach Boys, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville all appear on the roll call.

Johnson was one of those rare musicians who could bring authority to jazz, blues, R&B, pop and film music without making the transition sound like a job application. He was simply everywhere—often unnoticed, always unmistakable.

From Los Angeles studios, the conversation heads to San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, which Wise describes, with persuasive evidence, as the world’s best roots-music festival.

Held each October in Golden Gate Park, the event remains free thanks to the late banjo-playing financier Warren Hellman, who left funds to sustain it after his death.

This year’s early line-up is the kind of thing that can trigger hasty airfare searches: Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, The Golden Messenger, Kathleen Edwards, My Morning Jacket, Old Crow Medicine Show, William Tyler, Yasmin Williams and John Craigie are among those named.

The associated Steve Earle tribute at the Masonic—with Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller, Jackson Browne, Molly Tuttle, Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams, plus Welch and Rawlings—sounds less like a support bill than a small republic of American songwriting.

The festival is also offered as the grand finale to an entirely hypothetical, entirely plausible music pilgrimage: AmericanaFest in Nashville, Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival in Austin or the Monterey Jazz Festival.

It’s the sort of itinerary that makes a Byron Bay accommodation bill look strangely avoidable.

Monterey, naturally, prompts memories of the 1967 Pop Festival: Jimi Hendrix setting a guitar alight, The Who facing the impossible task of following him, and transformative appearances by Janis Joplin and Otis Redding.

Wise notes that Monterey Jazz Festival still occupies the site, with its own mix of large-scale performances, smaller rooms and artist conversations. Clint Eastwood, a devoted jazz fan, has also been a familiar presence there over the years.

Back home, or at least back on the couch, the pair discuss Silo, Apple TV’s sprawling dystopian drama. Wise is enjoying the latest season and its elaborate backstory, while Mackenzie—despite admiration for Rebecca Ferguson—confesses to fading out during the earlier episodes.

The Beatles receive forensic attention through Evolver 62, a documentary centred on historian Mark Lewisohn’s deep dive into the group’s pivotal year. Lewisohn traces 1962 event by event: the Hamburg residency, Brian Epstein’s manoeuvring, EMI, Tony Sheridan and the fragile sequence of events that pushed four Liverpool musicians towards history.

The program also punctures the familiar line that Decca simply rejected The Beatles.

According to Lewisohn’s research, the band was offered a deal—just not one Epstein considered worth accepting.

Ringo Starr’s eventual arrival is treated with similar gravity.

Quite right too: the longer the Beatles story runs, the clearer it becomes that Ringo’s distinctive, left-handed approach to a right-handed kit was not an incidental detail.

Then comes The Odyssey—or, more accurately, Mackenzie’s enthusiastic case for Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer.

It is an enormous case.

Mackenzie admits to being less than fully persuaded by Oppenheimer and baffled by Tenet, but describes Nolan’s three-hour epic as one of the great cinematic experiences of his life.

Matt Damon’s Odysseus receives particular praise, while the director’s decision to minimise digital trickery is presented as central to the film’s impact.

The episode closes with a recommendation for Nashville songwriter Aaron Lee Tasjan, whose new album will feature in Wise’s Off The Record program.

It is a modest ending after a conversation that takes in shellac-era saxophone, Golden Gate Park, Beatles mythology and the fall of Troy.

Then again, modesty was never really the point of an odyssey.