WEST TEXAS — Football star and TV celebrity Michael Strahan caught a ride to space with Jeff Bezos’ rocket-launching company Saturday, sharing the trip with the daughter of America’s first astronaut.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket blasted off from West Texas, sending the capsule on a 10-minute flight with the two VIP guests and four paying customers. Their capsule soared to an altitude of about 66 miles (106 kilometers), providing a few minutes of weightlessness before parachuting into the desert. The booster also came back to land successfully.
It was five minutes and 50 miles (187 kilometers) shorter than Alan Shepard’s Mercury flight from Cape Canaveral on May 5, 1961. His eldest daughter, Laura Shepard Churchley, took along a tiny piece of his Freedom 7 capsule as well as mementos from his Apollo 14 moonshot and golf balls in honor of her dad who hit some on the lunar surface.
Bubbling over with excitement in his “Good Morning America” updates all week, Strahan packed his Super Bowl ring and retired New York Giants jersey No. 92. “Pretty SURREAL!” he tweeted on the eve of the launch, delayed two days by dangerously high wind. Bezos stashed a football in the capsule as well, to be awarded to the Pro Football Hall of Fame following the flight.
Bezos, who flew to space in July in the same capsule, accompanied the six passengers to the launch pad near Van Horn. He had “Light this candle” painted on the launch tower’s bridge, borrowing from Alan Shepard’s famous gripe from inside Freedom 7 as the delays mounted: “Why don’t you fix your little problem and light this candle?”
Shepard Churchley volunteered for Blue Origin’s third passenger flight. She heads the board of trustees for the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.
“It’s kind of fun for me to say that an original Shepard will fly on the New Shepard,” she said in a preflight Blue Origin video.
Bezos, who founded Amazon six years before Blue Origin, was on the debut launch in July. The second, in October, included actor William Shatner – Captain James Kirk of TV’s original “Star Trek.” The late Leonard Nimoy’s daughter sent up a necklace with a “Vulcan Salute” charm on this flight, in honor of the show’s original Mr. Spock.
The reusable, automated capsule was especially crowded this time. Instead of four, there were six flying.
Among the the four space tourists paying unspecified millions each were the first father-son combo: Financier Lane Bess and his son Cameron. Also flying: Voyager Space chairman and CEO Dylan Taylor and investor Evan Dick.
Blue Origin dedicated Saturday’s launch to Glen de Vries, who launched into space with Shatner in October, but died one month later in a plane crash.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
The six-member NS-19 crew is beginning ingress of the New Shepard spacecraft.
Crew begins walk up launch tower
The six-member NS-19 Blue Origin crew is beginning to ascend the launch tower to the New Shepard spacecraft.
NS-19 crew arrives at the launch pad
The NS-19 crew is now at Blue Origin’s Launch Pad One in Van Horn, Texas, getting ready to board the New Shepard spacecraft for launch.
Crew driving to launch pad
The six members of the NS-19 crew, including “Good Morning America” host Michael Strahan, is now driving to the launch pad. Also in one of the vehicles is Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, who flew to space July 20 as part of the debut crew launch, called NS-16.
Crew emerges from training center
The NS-19 crew just emerged from the training center to get into their vehicle that will transport them to the launch pad.
New Shepard system on the pad ahead of NS-19 launch
The Blue Origin broadcast showed an early-morning view of the New Shepard system sitting ready on the pad, ahead of the planned liftoff of the NS-19 mission later this morning.
(Image credit: Blue Origin)
Commemorative coin
Here’s an image of the commemorative mission coin that the NS-19 crew will take into space. It includes images of the Blue Origin symbol (a feather) and the New Shepard rocket.
(Image credit: Blue Origin)
Key moments to watch for before launch
Key moments in today’s countdown to launch:
T-54 mins, ceremony during which crew receives commemorative coins
T-45 mins, crew departs the Astronaut Training Center and moves to the launch tower.
T-33 mins, astronauts will load into the crew capsule.
T-24 mins, capsule hatch close.
T-10 mins, Terminal Count Ready Report from Mission Control.
Robert Pearlman of collectSPACE on site
Robert Pearlman of collectSPACE, who is a long-time Space.com contributor, is reporting live from Van Horn.
Here’s his first report on Twitter from the launch site: “Good morning from ‘s Launch Site One, where there is a #NewShepard rocket on the pad and a chill in the air! Launch preparations are underway for an 8:45 a.m. CST liftoff with the #NS19 crew. @BlueOrigin”
Tribute for Glen de Vries
Blue Origin ran a short tribute video (available below) for Glen de Vries, a participant in the company’s NS-18 spaceflight with “Star Trek” star William Shatner. De Vries died in a plane crash in November.
Weather is good for launch
Blue Origin’s webcast just said that weather is looking good for launch.
Blue Origin’s webcast is live
Blue Origin’s live launch webcast for today’s NS-19 New Shepard mission has begun. You can watch it in the window at the top of this page.
Meet Blue Origin’s NS-19 crew
Blue Origin has released a new video showcasing New Shepard’s NS-19 crew and you can watch it here.
The NS-19 mission will launch Good Morning America host and former NFL star Michael Strahan on a suborbital trip with five crewmates, including Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of the late Alan Shepard, one of NASA’s Mercury 7 astronauts who was the first American to fly in space and later walked on the moon.
“I kind of feel like a little bit like I’m following in my father’s footsteps,” Churchley says in the video.
“The moment that I decided I would be willing to go was here,” Strahan says, referring to when he covered Blue Origin’s first crewed launch with Jeff Bezos aboard for Good Morning America earlier this year. “Watching Jeff and Mark Bezos completely changed my mind. It was amazing.”
Dylan Taylor, one of the four paying passengers, says going to space has been a lifelong dream, while another passenger, Evan Dick, says he’d hoped to work in aerospace when he was younger and is catching up for lost time with this flight.
Father-child duo of Lane and Cameron Bess — also paying passengers — round out the crew.
“When it became real, I went up to the family and said ‘Who wants to go?’ and the only person who raised their hand was Cameron,” Lane says. “We weren’t thinking about it being first father and child so much as it being an opportunity to experience it together.”
“It’s certainly an honor to be one of the first LGTBQ+ people in space,” Cameron, who is pansexual, says in the video. “You know I’m now hero. I didn’t really work to go space, but I do think that the visibility that I’m providing for that community is valuable.”
It’s Launch Day for Blue Origin’s NS-19
The six passengers of Blue Origin’s NS-19 flight, from left: Dylan Taylor, Lane and Cameron Bess, Laura Shepard Churchley, Michael Strahan and Evan Dick. (Image credit: Blue Origin)
It’s launch day for Blue Origin’s NS-19 mission aboard New Shepard, which will liftoff off at 9:45 a.m. EST (1445 GMT) to carry Good Morning America host and former NFL player Michael Strahan and five others on a suborbital trip to space.
The six New Shepard crewmembers are at Blue Origin’s Launch Site One near Van Horn, Texas for today’s launch. They’re staying at Blue Origin’s Astronaut Village, where they’re flight has been delayed since Dec. 9 due to high winds and weather.
Blue Origin’s webcast begn at 8:15 a.m. EST (1315 GMT) and you can watch it in the feed above.
Flying aboard the New Shepard vehicle with Strahan will be:
Laura Shepard Churchley, 74, the eldest daughter of NASA astronaut Alan Shepard. Shepard was the first NASA astronaut to fly in space, and the New Shepard spacecraft is named after him.
Dylan Taylor, 51, chairman and CEO of the space exploration firm Voyager Space, founder of the nonprofit Space for Humanity, and co-founding patron of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.
Evan Dick, age not disclosed, an engineer and investor who is a volunteer pilot for Starfighters Aerospace.
Lane Bess, age not disclosed, principal and founder of a technology-focused venture fund called Bess Ventures and Advisory.
Cameron Bess, age not disclosed, who is a child of Lane. They stream variety content on Twitch under the alias MeepsKitten.
We’ll have live coverage of the countdown and launch here.
Up until a few weeks before his death, Mike Nesmith was touring as the Monkees with Micky Dolenz, the band’s other surviving member, performing I’m A Believer, Pleasant Valley Sunday, Daydream Believer et al, on what was billed as their farewell tour. There was a certain sweet irony in that.
Nesmith was famously the Monkee most horrified by how prefabricated the Prefab Four were supposed to be. Already a gifted songwriter when he signed on for the TV show that would make him famous (Screen Gems, the company behind The Monkees, bought a couple of Nesmith’s songs for the show, although they turned down Different Drum, subsequently the song that launched Linda Ronstadt’s career) he was furious at the restrictions placed on them by producer Don Kirshner. At the height of their fame, it was Nesmith who bluntly informed a US magazine that the band didn’t play on their records – “I don’t care if we never sell another record … tell the world we don’t record our own music” – and that their current album, More of the Monkees, was “probably the worst album in the history of the world”. It was Nesmith who legendarily became so outraged by Kirshner and lawyer Herb Moelis’ high-handed treatment of the band that he put his fist through the wall of Kirshner’s Beverly Hills hotel room and informed Moelis “that could have been your face”.
It was the first in a number of genuinely groundbreaking things that Mike Nesmith would do: albeit unwittingly, he had singlehandedly minted the figure of the manufactured pop band’s loose cannon, unable to cope with the strictures of being stage-managed, willing to blow the gaff in order to escape them: a recurring character in subsequent pop history.
The Monkees in Head: Peter Tork, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, Micky Dolenz. Photograph: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock
At the time, Nesmith’s behaviour caused chaos – weirdly, rather than laud him for standing up for himself and his bandmates, the press turned on the Monkees, decrying them as “a disgrace to the pop world” – but he eventually won the fight: Kirshner was fired, and the band took control of their own musical direction.
Nevertheless, Nesmith’s attitude to the Monkees seemed to remain equivocal at best. The brilliant country rock albums he made in the 70s didn’t receive the reaction they deserved, at least at the time: it was as if the Monkees’ manufactured legacy clung to his name, regardless of the music he made. Even when the Monkees’ oeuvre was reassessed as a subject befitting scholarly box sets and the TV series reshown on MTV to huge success, Nesmith remained detached. He would sometimes take part in band reunion tours and recording sessions, but usually declined. When he did agree, said reunions sometimes ended acrimoniously. “He’s always been this aloof, inaccessible person,” protested Davy Jones in 1997, “the fourth part of the jigsaw puzzle that never fit.”
And yet, for the last decade of his life, Nesmith happily participated in projects featuring the Monkees’ name – long tours, and an acclaimed 2016 album Good Times!, which came with songwriting contributions from Paul Weller, Noel Gallagher and Rivers Cuomo of Weezer. On the final tour, according to the band’s latterday manager, Andrew Sandoval, Nesmith was given to making an unscripted speech onstage “about his relationship to the fans … [telling] them he knew and cared about them, and that he liked the Monkees and he liked Monkees fans”.
The question of what changed is an interesting one. Perhaps the deaths of Davy Jones in 2012 and then Peter Tork in 2019 caused Nesmith to rethink his past. Or perhaps he felt that his own reputation as a musician and songwriter had become so established that the spectre of the 60s most famous manufactured boyband no longer mattered.
Since the rise of Americana as a genre, he had come to be hailed as a genuinely innovative figure in the history of country rock. The Byrds had sneered at the Monkees on 1967’s So You Want To Be a Rock and Roll Star, but a couple of months before they released their genre-defining country-rock album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, you could hear Nesmith pushing the Monkees towards his own definition of cosmic American music on Tapioca Tundra, from 1968’s The Birds the Bees and the Monkees, a direction he explored further the following year on Don’t Wait For Me and the glorious Listen To the Band. His 1970s albums – some with the First National Band, some released as solo projects – had long outgrown their small cult following to be acclaimed as masterpieces of the genre. And quite rightly so: listen to 1970’s Magnetic South, or its follow-up Loose Salute, and you don’t hear someone following in the wake of the Flying Burrito Brothers or the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, but a supremely gifted songwriter intent on forging his own eccentric path through a musical fusion.
Just before Covid hit, Nesmith was to be found performing 1972’s …And The Hits Just Keep On Coming live in the company of alt-rock luminaries Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie and REM alumnus Scott McCaughey. Meanwhile, his 1974 album The Prison – heavy on synthesisers and drum machines, home to the implausibly beautiful Dance Between the Raindrops, and released with an accompanying novella – went from being dismissed as “ghastly” and the work of a “crackpot” to being celebrated as a uniquely innovative triumph. And then there was the story that Nesmith had subsequently “invented” MTV: always fascinated by the potential of pop video, he had sold his video-based 1979 TV show PopClips to Time Warner, who, director William Dear said, “watered down the idea and came up with MTV”. It became so widespread that he gained a reputation as the forefather of the most powerful force in 1980s pop promotion.
It was an entirely deserved and correct rewriting of history, that belatedly gave Nesmith the acclaim due to him. Maybe it altered his view of the band that kickstarted his career and that had, after all, provided a home for a succession of fabulous examples of his skill as a songwriter: not just his early country-rock experiments, but Papa Gene’s Blues; Mary, Mary; You Just May Be The One and Circle Sky, the latter his ferocious contribution to the soundtrack of the cult film Head. Certainly, at the end of his life, Papa Nez, as he styled himself, sounded like a man who had made his peace with his past. “I kind of feel like he wanted to say that he finally got it,” said Sandoval of the speech Nesmith made at the last shows he performed, “that he got why they liked it, whereas he didn’t always.”
In the future, when they talk about performers who did it all the way to the end, they may talk about Michael Nesmith, who died Friday of heart failure at 78. When he enthusiastically pushed to do a Monkees farewell tour this fall with his longtime compatriot Micky Dolenz, he probably had little idea that the end was so close at hand, but certainly he and others knew that the window was closing on how long he had to put himself out in front of fans for any extended trek. Monkees devotees who saw the first few shows on the tour reported some frailty, and yet he seemed to be getting a booster shot night after night, well before the tour ended in triumph at L.A.’s Greek just three and a half weeks ago. If anything involving a death could be said to have had something like a fairy-tale ending, this might’ve been it.
After Nesmith’s death was reported Friday morning, Variety spoke with Andrew Sandoval, who has taken on management duties for the Monkees and also Nesmith as a solo artist for the last decade. His official title with the group has been “producer,” which has been appropriate enough; he did co-produce the band’s studio comeback, “Good Times!,” five years ago, on top of putting together their touring and other duties. Sandoval, who might be as big a scholar of 1960s pop music as there is, is not your typical manager. He’s also been the group’s biggest fan since he discovered them in grade school in the 1970s, years after they’d initially broken up, and he was both their A&R man and an author of books about the band before becoming a crucial force in keeping the surviving members working together over the last decade. If every group had a personally and professionally invested booster like Sandoval, none of them might ever break up.
Sandoval shared his thoughts about the rapprochement that Nesmith had had with the Monkees’ fan base after seeming to not care about it so much about the old days and ways at various points in his career, and what a heartwarming reunion with the faithful this last swing through the U.S. was. He also spoke frankly about what some might see as Nesmith’s peculiarities — from his religiously based distaste for medical care to his perfectionism — and how these co-existed with the songwriting excellence and visionary qualities. Oh, and which Monkee was the wittiest? Sandoval has an opinion on that.
VARIETY: How are you feeling about Michael’s death at the moment? And was this a shock, or did everyone know it was coming? Everyone knew he was in fragile health in recent years, and yet it hasn’t been a month since the end of the Monkees’ tour — he was just in the spotlight, and doing well, at the Greek a few weeks ago.
SANDOVAL: Well, it’s not a total shock, because we anticipated that he would pass at some point, and he has been in the hospital this past week, although he had come home, as were his desires. He passed away at home with his family, in peace. He was raised as a Christian Scientist, and he only sought medical help when it was absolutely necessary or when it was something that he felt still worked with his philosophy.
He had gone on tour, as was his desire and request to me for the last two years. He wanted to wrap up things with the Monkees. He completed very date and did very well, and in fact got quite a bit stronger. He started out the tour where he could only perform sitting down, and then gradually got a cane and was standing up — and then for most of the shows, from about two or three weeks in, he was up for the entire duration of the show. So he gained a lot of strength from the audience and from performing. Lockdown had been tough on him, because he couldn’t go many places, and he had sort of atrophied. So there was a real renewal with the tour. And also, he got to reconnect with a lot of friends and his half-sister and family members and other people. It was a great celebration for him, to do what he had done in the past, and do it really well. His final show at the Greek Theatre was before 5,000 people, and it was joy. So it was a very successful tour. He really went out on top, as far as that’s concerned.
As a solo artist, he had played to his biggest crowd at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass (in San Francisco) in 2019, and he was going from highlight to highlight, as far as performing. And the Monkees’ “Good Times” album (their studio swan song, which went top 20 in 2016) — few other artists of his generation were having that kind of success … and critical success, finally, for the Monkees, where they had been lambasted for decades; they were finally accepted. He died knowing that they were beloved, and he finally embraced what they meant to so many other people. I think he finally got it.
His legacy and his music were being appreciated by more people in so many ways than he ever thought it would be, say, five or 10 years ago. So I’m at peace with that aspect of his life. I wish I had more time with him. I spent 30 years off and on working with him, and I’m going to miss him so much. I already miss him now. I mean, he was just hilarious to be around — just funny stuff, all the time. You think of the four Monkees and you think, well, who was the funniest guy? And really, in so many ways for me, he was, because his sense of humor was so left-of-center and just got right to the heart of me.
I remember seeing him do a Q&A with Micky ahead of an American Cinematheque screening of “Head” in Hollywood a couple of years ago, and it was shocking how comfortable he seemed to be embracing the legacy of the Monkees, after all those years in which people felt that, out of all the group members, he was the one where that was really not his thing.
He was really comfortable in the end. He told me in his living room just a few months ago, before the tour, he said, “You know, I finally really have come to accept the Monkees’ music. I really like it now.” And it was an amazing moment. I was showing him a reissue of the first Monkees album that had just come out on vinyl. And he was like, “This is really beautiful. The people who love this are really going to love this.” And he started to see it more through the eyes of his fans, of how they loved it. And that was bringing him a lot of joy at the end of his life. Their joy was coming back on him. He finally really felt that, and it lit him up, you know?
Mike Nesmith of The Monkees appears at press conference at Warwick Hotel in New York on July 6, 1967.
AP
Is it possible to say what his specific infirmities were, or what his cause of death was?
He had serious heart issues and he had quadruple bypass surgery three years ago. We were on tour in 2018, and because of his Christian Scientist beliefs, he wasn’t going to see a doctor regularly, but I insisted he see a doctor several times. And the doctors who were looking at him didn’t have anything specific to say until we got to Pittsburgh, and then they said, “Look, if you go on stage, you might die tonight.” And so we pulled down the tour, and he went home. He said, “Well, I’m not going to get surgery here. If I’m going to die, I want to die in California.” He went home to California, and he thought about it for some time, and then got medical treatment that he was ready to do when he was ready to do it. I believe that he needed further help with his heart. Ultimately, he declined to go further with what may have been needed, if that (was even) possible. But I can’t say for sure what all of his decision-making was, to be honest with you.
You mentioned how difficult it was for him to come back from having been in isolation during COVID. There are a lot of us without his pre-existing health problems who felt like we got something knocked out of us from not being as active as before, so it’s easy to imagine how hard it would have been for him to go from zero to 70, going into the regimen a tour requires.
It was extraordinarily difficult. He didn’t show up for the first three days of pre-production rehearsals. He was fearful that he couldn’t make it — and we were all fearful whether we would get sick and die from COVID on this tour. But ultimately it was his desire to want to do it that pushed myself and Micky and the band and the crew to go through with it, because we knew we didn’t have that much time with him — that we couldn’t postpone it again. We had already postponed the tour from the year previous, and it just felt like: We’re going to lose the light here.We’re not going to have the time to do it. And he really pushed it through, wanting to be on tour and do as long a tour as we did, which was two and a half months.
No one got sick, and we made it through all the dates. And he went from not being able to walk a few steps to being able to come on and off stage with good ease. And the only reason why I went through the tour was: I visited him for several months prior to the tour and worked with him musically and listened to his voice, and I could hear that his voice was all there, and that when he sang his songs, it would be beautiful. And it was. So once we got down to the business of figuring out how best to help him get on and off stage, we were (up and) away. And after that time-out, moving more and more, he actually got better, not worse. That was heartening. The day that we were finishing the tour in Los Angeles, I looked at a video of him from rehearsal, and we couldn’t believe it was the same person, he had changed so much and was looking so much better.
So his death is a shock in that sense, because the tour work was really helping him. But, you know, we couldn’t be on tour perpetually. We had to end at some point, you know?
When the tour ended, there was still a cruise booked with some other artists from the era for next year that apparently would have been the final-final show, if all had continued to go well. When you ended the tour, was he in the kind of shape that you had faith that the cruise show could happen?
Yeah. A lot of people were quite cynical about the idea that we had added this cruise thing, because they had assumed the Greek Theatre was the last-ever date. But it was just the last date on our schedule. And this past week when he was ill, he continued to ask about doing other dates: “Well, are we going to do this?” Because we were going to do that (cruise) and do a few of the makeup dates, like Savannah, Georgia, a date that we got shut down on because the local municipality said you can’t have more than 500 people together, and we’d sold more than 500 tickets. So the idea of performing and being in front of people was keeping him alive, or giving him more reason, and so I felt no need to shut it down. I thought leaving it as an option was a positive thing, and when the offer came up for the cruise, he was quite excited about it, because he had never done anything like that and thought it would be kind of fun. So we put it on the schedule and hoped for the best. And unfortunately, things declined.
Were you feeling that the end was probably at hand, recently, based on what was happening that you knew of?
I was aware that he was quite ill the last several days, and I knew that he was going to be passing. But it’s only been this past week. It wasn’t a situation where I was aware that he was going to die during the tour or anything like that. We would not have gone through with what we did if we had felt that way.
But we did feel like we were playing out his ultimate desire to do things. And Micky was certainly supportive of him in wanting to be his partner and doing it. People that got to see the shows I think really, really got a lot out of it. It was a really intimate show. And in traditional Monkees fashion, they defied expectation. They did a unique set list. They didn’t just retread things. It was a complete overview of their catalog and their careers. And for the people who got to commune with them one last time, I think it’s going to be a beautiful memory.
Did you feel like this last tour was more for him, then, or more for the fans?
I think it was probably a mixture of both. Each night there was a song he was doing in the show called “While I Cry,” which was from one of their obscure albums, “Instant Replay,” and he would give a speech that varied every night. It was not a scripted speech, but it was about his relationship to the fans. And I kind of feel like he wanted to finally say that he got it — that he got why they liked it, whereas he didn’t always. And I kind of feel like it was more for him in that sense, that he got the opportunity to tell them that he knew and he cared about them, and that he liked the Monkees and he liked Monkees fans. And it was a really beautiful moment in the show.
But, in fact, he was also doing a lot more zany stuff that he wouldn’t normally do. He was really much more comedic, which was fascinating.
He did have an image as the most serious of the Monkees, in some ways, despite you thinking of him as possibly the funniest. He had that inventor image, among those who really followed him.
I think there’s a lot of his career that people missed — his innovations, and things that I picked up on just doing research over the years. He did the show “Pop Clips,” which ultimately became MTV, and sold the concept to Warner Communications, and that was one of his successes. He then became a producer of music videos, and produced music videos for Lionel Richie and all these other people. Had a television series on NBC, “Elephant Parts.” Ran a thriving home-video thing. I found out he was also the first person to put a bar code on a record, because he was interested in how people got paid and doing inventory, and he felt that if all records had barcodes on them, you could easily scan in and out skew numbers. Which is so contemporary, but this is something that he was thinking about in the 1970s. So he was a visionary. Any idea, there had to be a concept to drive it. There was no idea that was just simple — there was always some nuance.
That’s the innovator side. Is there anything you would say most marked him as a songwriter?
Yes. I think his sort of willful obscurity… So many of his finest songs, say, “Some of Shelly’s Blues,” which was covered by Linda Ronstadt and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, the song title never appears in the song, because he didn’t want to do anything obvious, ever., so there was no chorus line that had that song title. “Tapioca Tundra,” which was a top 40 record for the Monkees, there’s no “tapioca tundra” mentioned in the lyrics. “Good Clean Fun,” another single for the Monkees, there’s no “good clean fun” in it. He became more idiosyncratic, but he was also a poet at heart and looked at lyrics in that way.
Melodically, he was inventive. And as far as his concept in mid-1968 that country and rock music should go together, and then going to Nashville to record and do things along the lines of what the Byrds were doing — I mean, he was on the leading edge of it. And I think he’s every bit as important as Gram Parsons and Rick Nelson and the Byrds as far as what he produced and what he was going for.
What did you find him to be like? What was your relationship like, and did it change along the way? Did you see him change as a person at all?
Yeah, he changed quite a bit. He became far more benign in the last few years of his life. And he used to say to me that that was a gift, both to him and to everybody else who dealt with him. [Laughs.] Because he was so concept-driven and such a perfectionist, it was ultimately very difficult to work with him, because the perfectionism wouldn’t just be left on the stage. It wouldn’t just be how a song is presented or how a song is performed, but how is the car being delivered to me? How is the shampoo and the conditioner in the hotel being left? Every detail to him was important. And if he saw details that were left undone, he would lose faith. So in the end, trust was an important part of our relationship, and I learned to do the things that would allow him to trust me so that we could get to the finish line together. That was a really important thing for me, and I learned a lot in the process.
He was a very intimidating person, and most people were incredibly intimidated by him because he would be quite quiet and not communicative. So I had to learn to just go directly and speak to him in a very direct fashion, which is why we got a lot done together. But many other people were put off immediately, and he could cut people to the quick quite easily with a few sharp words. I mean, he was never a physical person; it was always verbal. He was a master of vocabulary. So after you went to the dictionary to find out what he had actually said to you, you could learn quite a bit being around him. [Laughs.]
And in bringing him back into the Monkees in 2012, after he had been out of working with them from 1997 on, that was a big step for him to come back and really embrace that part of his career and reclaim it, which is what he did. I just thought it was brilliant. He did a great job this last nine years as a live performer, after being an executive and doing all these other things.
If there is such a thing as a good way to go out, headlining the Greek, in the last month of your life… maybe there could be no better way to go out than with an appreciative crowd in L.A. at a big venue.
Yeah, in their adopted hometown, and at the place where the four Monkees had reunited in 1986 for the first time since ‘68 or so. There’s a lot of landmark things about the Greek. So as far as the fitting cap to it, it was great.
But I’m kind of sad that… There is just never enough, really, you know? For me, there were other projects I still wished I could have done with him. Not necessarily taking him on some long trip across America again. [Laughs.] But it was a great time and a lot of bonding happened. We got to go through a lot of stuff. I had hoped he would write more songs. I had hoped he would complete some other projects he had talked about. There’s always those hopes. I didn’t think the time would run out so fast.
Probably all the fans who saw him play with Micky in recent years want to thank you for everything you did to reunite him with the broader base of fans, on top of those who always stuck with him and loved him throughout the years.
Well, thank you. I feel him knowing what we were all on about all these years — I mean, that was the success.
JTA — Michael Steinhardt, the hedge funder and megadonor to Jewish causes, has agreed to surrender 180 stolen antiquities worth $70 million to their rightful homelands and to never again collect ancient artifacts.
In return, Steinhardt, a philanthropist who is chair of the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life and co-founder of Birthright Israel, an organization that sends young Jews on free trips to Israel, will not face criminal charges for acquiring more than 1,000 pieces that were illegally smuggled out of 11 countries including Egypt, Greece, Israel, Syria and Turkey, prosecutors said.
Those are the terms of a deal that Steinhardt finalized Monday with Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, whose office began investigating several years ago over a Lebanese statue that Steinhardt loaned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That statue, they concluded, was illegally taken from Lebanon — making it like countless other objects that Steinhardt had amassed over the years, largely from Middle Eastern countries.
Steinhardt’s lawyers and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance issued separate statements Monday, CNBC reported, with vastly different takes on intent: Steinhardt said he bought the items in good faith, but Vance was not buying it.
“For decades, Michael Steinhardt displayed a rapacious appetite for plundered artifacts without concern for the legality of his actions, the legitimacy of the pieces he bought and sold, or the grievous cultural damage he wrought across the globe,” Vance said in a separate statement.
Get The Times of Israel’s Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories
By signing up, you agree to the terms
“His pursuit of ‘new’ additions to showcase and sell knew no geographic or moral boundaries, as reflected in the sprawling underworld of antiquities traffickers, crime bosses, money launderers, and tomb raiders he relied upon to expand his collection.”
Pictured (from left to right): The Larnax, a Death Mask, and Stag’s Head Rhyton (Manhattan District Attorney’s Office)
Steinhardt’s lawyers depicted their client as a well-intentioned patsy.
“Mr. Steinhardt is pleased that the District Attorney’s years-long investigation has concluded without any charges, and that items wrongfully taken by others will be returned to their native countries,” Steinhardt’s lawyers said. “Many of the dealers from whom Mr. Steinhardt bought these items made specific representations as to the dealers’ lawful title to the items, and to their alleged provenance.”
Vance’s office conducted the investigation in cooperation with law enforcement from 11 countries, including Israel.
Some of the items were looted during strife in countries including Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey. Steinhardt loaned some of them to museums.
According to the CNBC report, the deal between Steinhardt and Vance reveals that at least one of the items that is being repatriated, a box for human remains from Crete, was revealed to have been looted when Steinhardt scoffed at investigators looking into another item. “You see this piece?” he reportedly said. “There’s no provenance for it. If I see a piece and I like it, then I buy it.”
Going forward, Steinhardt will be barred for life from acquiring any objects created before 1500 CE.
In 2019, Steinhardt, 80, who helped found Birthright Israel and supports a wide range of Jewish institutions, was accused of a pattern of propositioning and making sexually inappropriate remarks to women who have approached him as part of their work in Jewish philanthropy or the arts. Steinhardt denied the accusations, but acknowledged a pattern of comments “that were boorish, disrespectful, and just plain dumb.”
Michael Steinhardt attends a meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem on April 26, 2017. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Steinhardt, who turns 81 on Tuesday, founded the hedge fund Steinhardt Partners in 1967 and closed it in 1995. He came out of retirement in 2004 to head Wisdom Tree Investments.
New York University named its Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development after Steinhardt in recognition of two $10 million donations.
The items surrendered by Steinhardt include a stag’s head in the form of a ceremonial vessel for libations, dating from to 400 B.C., which prosecutors say appeared without provenance on the international market after rampant looting in Milas, Turkey. The stag’s head is valued at $3.5 million, the district attorney said.
There was also the chest for human remains from the Greek Island of Crete, called a larnax and dating from around 1300 B.C., which prosecutors said was purchased from a known antiquities trafficker.
AP contributed to this report
You’re serious. We appreciate that!
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we come to work every day – to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Karen Grassle, who famously played Caroline “Ma” Ingalls on “Little House on the Prairie,” is getting candid about her journey to sobriety.
The actress recently wrote a memoir titled “Bright Lights, Prairie Dust: Reflections on Life, Loss, and Love from Little House’s Ma.” where she detailed her upbringing and struggles with alcoholism as well as the alleged troubled relationship she had on set with her former co-star and boss Michael Landon. He played her on-screen husband, Charles Ingalls.
Former co-stars didn’t immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment regarding the allegations made in Grassle’s book about Landon.
Despite their ups and downs, Grassle insisted she made peace with the actor before he passed away in 1991 at age 54 from pancreatic cancer.
‘LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE’ STAR CHARLOTTE STEWART RECALLS DAYS WITH JIM MORRISON, ELVIS AND BILL MURRAY
Karen Grassle has written a book titled “Bright Lights, Prairie Dust: Reflections on Life, Loss, and Love from Little House’s Ma.” (Courtesy of Karen Grassle)
Grassle, 79, spoke to Fox News about writing her book now, and what it was like bringing the beloved series to life, as well as the moment she realized it was time to get sober.
Fox News: What inspired you to write this memoir now? Karen Grassle: This book has taken years and years. I started after I moved here to the Bay Area. I was semiretired and I didn’t have as many friends as I did in Los Angeles. All of these memories began to surface. So I started writing them down. I thought that maybe one day, my son would be interested to read them.
And I just kept writing. And the truth is, I had to let my guard down. I’m quite a private person. So I had to be willing to share a lot of my vulnerabilities about my family, my alcoholism, the trials that I went through doing “Little House.” A lot of things that I’ve never really discussed publicly. But it felt freeing. And I’m glad that I did it.
Karen Grassle (left) with her mom backstage during a theatrical performance. (Courtesy of Karen Grassle)
Fox News: It’s been said that you got the role of Caroline Ingalls at a very crucial point in your life. Is that true? Grassle: Very. I was so broke and so discouraged about my career. I was thinking, “I better go back to school and learn to do something else.” And I couldn’t figure out how in the world I was going to pay to go back to school. I had friends in Los Angeles who were doing television. I saw what they were getting paid. So I thought, “I’ll try to get some TV work.” I thought it could help me pay my way to go back to school. So my agency started sending me on auditions. And I think it was two or three months later when I got the call about this new series called “Little House on the Prairie.”
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT NEWSLETTER
Fox News: But you initially weren’t a fan of your character? Grassle: Oh sure. When I first read the script, I thought, “Oh, she’s kind of a downer. She’s prudish.” I hadn’t read the books, so I had a lot of catching up to do. And there wasn’t the same kind of research about the Ingalls that we have today. So I got the work. But as I started doing the role and interacting with the children, I gained a new perspective for my character. She’s a woman who’s so brave and loyal heading into the wilderness with her little girls. She wanted to create a better life for them. I began to experience the nobility of the character and what she truly represented.
Fox News: Michael Landon, to this day, is still viewed as a beloved father figure. Grassle: And he earned that image. He was one of the favorites on television and had one of the longest careers. He created this show and we’re still talking about it today, nearly 50 years later. He deserves a tremendous amount of credit for that.
Karen Grassle said she initially wasn’t impressed by the role of Ma. (Courtesy of Karen Grassle)
Fox News: But you also witnessed a completely different side to him. Grassle: We all worked really hard. I didn’t think it was all that tough because we were all worker bees. There was nobody on that set who was slacking around. Where it really got tough for me was when it was time for the second season. If you were on a hit series, it was common to renegotiate your contract based on its popularity. Michael did not want to give me a raise. He began to diminish my part, my value.
I was a professional. I had just done a year of Shakespeare in England. I had been on Broadway. I really liked the children and I built a good relationship with them. You don’t get that with everybody. So I felt that I had some value. And I stuck to my guns. This went on for months and months. I think it went on over a year where I didn’t say, “I’m sick and I can’t come in to work.” I made the decision that I would show up to work and do my job every day. But it was tough because people knew he was annoyed with me. And he showed it in many ways. So I had to go through that. But I also didn’t want to give up on myself. I worked hard to become the actress I was.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Fox News: Why do you think Michael Landon was so hesitant to give you a raise? Grassle: I don’t know. And to my dying day, I will never really understand why he dug his heels and refused as he did. After a year and a half or so, I did get an excellent contract that was appropriate for the time. It meant a lot to me, but I paid a heavy price for it. I just wanted a fair wage.
Karen Grassle alleged that Michael Landon didn’t want to give her a raise despite the show’s success. (Courtesy of Karen Grassle)
Fox News: How did that impact your relationship with him on set? Grassle: It was so hard to go to work and know he was annoyed with you. You could cut the tension with a knife. And you felt he was probably saying things about you behind your back. He had a sense of humor and if he wanted to make fun of you, boy, you were skewered. He was very clever. I didn’t know what was going to happen. But I kept going to work.
Fox News: You worked on stages and sets before the #MeToo era. What was your experience like with sexism in the workplace? Grassle: I was very lucky in a way because by the time I got to New York, I had already trained in England. I was already a professional. A lot of young women arrived in New York or Los Angeles with very little experience. They became very, very vulnerable. But I did not have a problem with anyone ever assaulting me or anything like that. If somebody made an inappropriate pass, I learned long before how to pretend that I didn’t notice that they were doing it or to laugh it off.
What happened at the “Little House” set was… Mike decided to humiliate me while we were doing the scenes in the bed. This was so awful for me. This was so unbearable and I just tried to get through it. You know, he made these terrible jokes about the female anatomy, made a woman’s body parts sound so disgusting. I just sat there with all these men standing around laughing at his jokes and I couldn’t do anything. We didn’t even have a word for sexual harassment.
‘KUNG FU’ STAR RADAMES PERA EXPLAINS WHY THE SERIES ENDED, WHAT ‘LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE’ WAS LIKE
Karen Grassle was candid about her battle with alcoholism. (Courtesy of Karen Grassle)
Fox News: You were also very candid about your struggles with alcoholism. When did you first realize that you needed to get help? Grassle: I resisted help for a long time. I tried to keep everything under control for a long time. I did not realize the extent to which my alcohol problem was playing a negative part in my life, but this is very common… The one thing [alcoholics] don’t want to do is not drink. We think of many rationalizations for why things are going bad in our lives. But we don’t want to look at the key item. That seems to be how the disease works.
My friend Toni, who I’ve known since we were 7 years old, confronted me and told me I needed help. There was no way for me to wriggle out of it. She knew me… I couldn’t fight the truth of what she was saying. After our conversation, it just took one more bad night where I fought with a friend – a very dear friend of mine.
Karen Grassle said her friend Toni helped her realize that she needed to get clean. (Courtesy of Karen Grassle)
I went home sobbing full of self-pity. I felt everything in my life was wrong and everyone was turning against me. The next morning, I woke up and said, “I must never take another drink, no matter what happens.” I did think that my life would fall apart. I thought I might lose my job. I definitely might lose my boyfriend. I thought I was never going to go to a nice restaurant again. How can you go to a nice restaurant and not drink? How can you go get Mexican food and not have a beer? I thought my life was over. But it was such a blessing.
Fox News: It seems like you were a high-functioning alcoholic. Grassle: Oh yes. I’m glad you brought that up. My dad was the same too. He went to work every day. He worked hard. He paid his bills. And alcoholism killed him.
‘LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE’ STAR ALISON ARNGRIM SHARES MEMORIES OF CO-STARS STEVE TRACY, MICHAEL LANDON
For me, I got up every day with a terrible hangover. I went to work, I pulled myself together, I worked hard and I concentrated all day long. And when they said, “That’s a wrap,” I either took a drink from the prop table or had one when I got home and started again. I thought I was under control because I was working. I hadn’t lost my job. It gave me even more rationale for continuing the way I was.
Karen Grassle said she got sober in 1977. (Courtesy of Karen Grassle)
Fox News: When did you get sober? Grassle: It was 1977 in June. It’s so meaningful because everything changes from that day. I looked at life in an entirely new way. I was able to truly discover who I was and what I wanted in life. And boy, it was a lot of work. And it was all worth it.
Fox News: Do you remember the last time you spoke to Michael Landon? Grassle: Oh yes, very well. I wrote him a letter just to say hello and catch him up with what was going on in my life. He wrote me back the nicest note. I remember he said, “Give me a call so we can discuss the old times before we forget them.”
So I did give him a call. He told me about his family. We had a nice chat about some of the people we worked with. But we mended fences. And I just felt there was a lot of forgiveness from both sides. We were remembering the better parts of our relationship. And I was so grateful for that because it was a very short time after that Mike was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
‘LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE’ ACTRESS WENDI LOU LEE SAYS SHE RELIED ON GOD TO HELP HER FACE BRAIN TUMOR
Karen Grassle said she made peace with Michael Landon before his death. (Courtesy of Karen Grassle)
Fox News: It’s good to hear that the both of you made peace before he passed away. Grassle: You know, we established a very nice working relationship in the first year. And after the contract got settled, we had a lot of good days, too. Lots of laughs. Lots of scenes where we played together and enjoyed each other’s talents… He was perhaps more human. He was very complicated and came from a difficult childhood. So I think for a person who comes to the table with a lot of issues and somehow be able to turn that into a creation that serves other people deserves a lot of credit.
Fox News: Today you’re recognized as one of TV’s most beloved moms. How do you feel about that title? Grassle: I feel honored. I based the character mostly on my mother. And I didn’t realize until later how much people truly love this character. I initially didn’t understand the depths of people’s affections for her. But people still reach out to me and express how much they love her. It’s been very gratifying. And I’m awfully lucky.
Cowboys receiver Amari Cooper missed a pair of key games after testing positive for COVID. He returned on Thursday night in the Dallas win over the Saints.
After the game, Cooper made it clear that he believes he could have played with COVID.
“It was tough,” Cooper told reporters. “[Michael] Jordan played with the flu. That’s how I looked at it. It was a restriction of not being able to play with what I had. It was tough, knowing that I could physically gone out there and played, but the restrictions didn’t allow me to do so.”
The restrictions didn’t allow him to do so because the current protocols, developed jointly by the NFL and the NFL Players Association, require an unvaccinated player who tests positive to exit the facility for at least 10 days. But Cooper raises a point that we’ve recently made, both on PFT Live and #PFTPM. At what point will the NFL decide to not prevent asymptomatic players who test positive from practicing and playing?
The virus transmits much more easily indoors. The NFL has believed from the outset of the pandemic that it’s extremely difficult if not impossible for a player to transfer enough virus to another player in an open-air setting, or in a dome with state-of-the-art ventilation driven by the possibility of an aerosolized terrorist attack.
At what point will the NFL allow players who test positive but who have no symptoms to play? At what point will the NFL allows players who test positive and who have symptoms to play?
Every year, players play with a cold. They play with the flu. They do it because the rules don’t prohibit it. When, then, will the NFL’s COVID protocols evolve to a similar point?
As one source with knowledge of the league’s overall handling of the pandemic explained it to PFT recently, the key becomes not vaccines but therapeutics. When a pill can be taken to treat and/or cure the virus once it’s inside the human body, the stakes of getting infected will plummet. That’s when the NFL will become less cautious about allowing infected personnel in the building, on the practice field, or in the stadium.
MANCHESTER, England — Michael Carrick has decided to leave Manchester United following his stint as caretaker manager, the club have announced.
United released a statement within minutes of the final whistle after their 3-2 win over Arsenal to reveal Carrick has decided to step down from his role as first-team coach and will leave the club with immediate effect. Ralf Rangnick, who was watching from the stands, will take the reins on Friday until the end of the season.
“My time at this great club will always rank as the best years of my career,” said Carrick. “When I first signed over 15 years ago, I never in my wildest dreams could have imagined winning so many trophies and I will certainly never forget the fantastic memories both as a player and as a member of the coaching team.
– Ogden: Ronaldo proves worth to Rangnick on record night – ESPN+ viewers’ guide: LaLiga, Bundesliga, MLS, FA Cup, more – Stream ESPN FC Daily on ESPN+ (U.S. only)
“However, after a lot of thought and deliberation, I have decided that now is the right time for me to leave the club. I want to place on record my thanks to all of the players and a special mention goes to the backroom staff, working long hours with such a great group of people has been a real pleasure and I have made some long-lasting friendships.
“I am, and will always be, a Manchester United fan and will come to as many matches as possible. I would like to wish Ralf, the staff, the players and the fans all the best for the future and I look forward to being in the stands and supporting the boys as a fan.”
Carrick took over as caretaker boss after Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s dismissal on Nov. 21. In his three games in charge, he led United to wins over Villarreal and Arsenal and a draw against Chelsea.
play
1:25
Alejandro Moreno and Shaka Hislop implore Man United to keep Cristiano Ronaldo the centerpiece of Ralf Rangnick’s plans.
“He just spoke to us in the dressing room, an emotional dressing room really, as he’s been a big part of this club for a large number of years as a player but also as a coach,” United captain Harry Maguire said after the match. “He’s been a great player for this club, a legend at the club, he’s won everything at the club and he’s been a fantastic servant in terms of his coaching.
“He’s a really likable man, all the lads respect him and he’s been amazing with each and every one of us. We’re going to miss him, of course we’re going to miss him, and we wish him well for the future.”
Carrick, who worked as a coach under Solskjaer and Jose Mourinho after ending his playing career in 2018, was the last to leave the pitch after victory over Arsenal, spending time to applaud the Stretford End.
Football director John Murtough added: “Michael leaves with the sincerest thanks and best wishes of everyone at Manchester United after 15 years of exceptional service to the club as a player and as a coach. While we are sad to see him go, we respect and understand Michael’s decision.
“He will always be known as one of the finest midfielders in the history of Manchester United, and, more recently, as an excellent coach who has worked tirelessly under two managers to help develop the strong squad which Ralf will now take charge of. We are grateful for the steady leadership Michael has shown through this period of managerial transition, and, while he is now stepping away from day-to-day involvement, he will always be welcome back as a legend of the club.”
Denver Nuggets forward Michael Porter Jr. will undergo a surgical procedure on his lower back Wednesday and miss an indefinite period, his agent, Mark Bartelstein of Priority Sports, told ESPN on Monday.
Porter is expected to make a full recovery, and a timetable for his return will come after surgery, Bartelstein said.
Porter, who signed a five-year, $172 million max contract in September, has been searching for a nonsurgical option since injuring his back on Nov. 6, but multiple opinions landed on surgery.
Porter, 23, had back surgery prior to the 2018 NBA draft, spent his first season recovering and became one of the top young forwards in the league.
He averaged 19 points a season ago, and he formed a partnership with MVP Nikola Jokic and guard Jamal Murray that represents one of the league’s top young cores.
Murray is recovering from a torn ACL, and Jokic is expected back soon from a wrist injury.
Denver (9-10) has lost six straight games and begins a seven-game road trip in Miami on Monday.
