In my experience, many very creative people are assholes, though certainly not all. For instance, John Lennon could sometimes be a total ass, and he's one of my all time favorites. This episode was unusual in that it made a little bit of news due to Ryan Adams acting badly. That's not terribly surprising, coming from him, based on other stories I'd heard about him. For instance, not many musical stars have a section of their Wikipedia page called "Disputes with Fans and Other Artists," plus another section called "Harassment Allegations," but Adams has both.
See what I mean, if you're curious:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Adams
Here's my understanding of this dispute. In each episode of this show, the three musicians sing their own songs. Sometimes, as a nice bonus, one or both of the others might join in with instrumentation or backing vocals. Then, at the end of the show, at least one song is sung by all three of them. That's exactly what happened in this episode. However, Adams apparently got annoyed whenever Finn and/or Ian tried to join in with his songs, so they quickly got the message and stopped doing that.
Then, at the end, the plan was for all three of them to sing two Finn songs together, "Weather with You" and "Fall at Your Feet." One of those two songs would be chosen to be included in the broadcast. The performance of "Weather with You" went okay, with all three of them taking part. But when it came time to perform "Fall at Your Feet," Adams got out his cell phone and started bidding on some items on eBay, while still on stage in front of an audience! This annoyed Finn so much that he loudly asked Adams what he was doing and why wasn't he joining in with the song, as they had practiced before the show started. Adams blew him off, then packed up his guitar and left before the song was even over. Ultimately, "Fall at Your Feet" wasn't included in the show, due to this trouble.
I found an article from the Age, a major newspaper in Australia, that went into surprising depth about the controversy. It includes a lot of bickering comments from the days after the concert, mostly between Ian and Adams. Finn generally stayed silent, except for one sarcastic comment: "Well, 'Songwriters' Circle' on BBC will be interesting, watch out for lovely backing vocals on 'Fall at Your Feet' from Ryan." (That's a reference to how those expected backing vocals never happened.)
The back and forth between Adams and Ian is much more extensive and nasty. I'll just quote one section from Ian:
"Ryan Adams, meanwhile, is an extremely talented songwriter - beautiful, wonderful stuff - whose first words to us were that he didn't know why he was there. We heard numerous times that he writes 4-5 songs a day, that they just pour out of him, that he's 'the most unprepared person on earth' and likes it that way, and that he sells out any theater he plays in the UK 'in 30 seconds flat.' All of which was a little weird, from my perspective. I expect a certain amount of narcissism in performers. That's a necessity, part of our stock in trade. I don't expect complete and total self-absorption to the detriment of what was supposed to be three singer-songwriters enjoying each other in a collaborative environment. I do that a lot in Nashville, as you all know, and I've never in my life seen it go south like this did."
It's this sort of thing that has made me not interested to explore Adams' musical output, even though I've heard he's a talented songwriter. (The accounts of him sexually harassing women are especially upsetting.) If you want to make up your own mind, here's the link to the quite lengthy article:
Ryan Adams and Neil Finn fall out during TV taping
Anyway, regardless of what may or may not have happened with this controversy, the episode is quite nice simply as a listening experience. If there was any unpleasantness, it was cleverly edited out, and it seemed as if they were all getting along fine. (Of course, as I mentioned above, the song with the main problem discussed above was completely removed, so that helped a lot.) The three of them even kind of spontaneously created a song together, which I've chosen to call "Center of an Oreo." (I find it strange that none of the bickering in the Age article mentions that.) And the music was very good, including the songs by Adams.
This album is an hour and seven minutes long.
01 talk (Neil Finn)
02 Distant Sun (Neil Finn)
03 talk (Janis Ian)
04 At Seventeen (Janis Ian)
05 talk (Ryan Adams)
06 Carolina Rain (Ryan Adams)
07 talk (Neil Finn)
08 Don't Dream It's Over (Neil Finn)
09 talk (Janis Ian)
10 Society's Child (Janis Ian)
11 Oh My Sweet Carolina (Ryan Adams)
12 talk (Neil Finn)
13 Golden Child (Neil Finn)
14 talk (Janis Ian)
15 Bright Lights and Promises (Janis Ian)
16 Invisible Riverside (Ryan Adams)
17 talk (Ryan Adams)
18 Center of an Oreo (Neil Finn, Janis Ian & Ryan Adams)
19 talk (Neil Finn)
20 She Will Have Her Way (Neil Finn)
21 From Me to You (Janis Ian)
22 Come Pick Me Up (Ryan Adams)
23 talk (Neil Finn)
24 Weather with You (Neil Finn, Janis Ian & Ryan Adams)
NOTE: I'll add in the PixelDrain link when I am able in a few days.
https://bestfile.io/en/IfuuPmzYB9db6ky/file
The cover image is a screenshot I took from this exact concert. From right to left: Neil Finn, Janis Ian, and Ryan Adams.
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