Movie Music 3: interview with Jonathan Taplin (Aaron Aradillas)

Jonathan Taplin is a veteran music manager, concert and movie producer. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, he worked for Bob Dylan and managed The Band. He organized and produced the first music charity concert with George Harrison’s The Concert for Bangladesh. In 1973, he collaborated with Martin Scorsese on the New Hollywood classic, Mean Streets, for which he was Producer and de facto Music Supervisor. In 1976, he collaborated with Scorsese again, organizing and producing The Band’s farewell Thanksgiving concert. The historic event was captured on film as The Last Waltz—one of the greatest concert films ever made. Other movies produced by Taplin include the powerful political journalism drama,Under Fire (1983), the teen sci-fi comedy, My Science Project (1985), and Win Wenders’ epic Until the End of the World (1991). Taplin’s memoir, The Magic Years, is one of the liveliest backstage chronicles of recent years. Taplin turns out to be a modern-day Zelig as he becomes a pivotal player in key events in recent entertainment history. In 2016, he published his first book entitled Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google and Amazon Cornered the Culture and Undermined Democracy—a cautionary analysis of how the rapidly evolving world of technology is threatening our way of life. His latest book The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto is a bristling warning about our Brave New World.
– Aaron Aradillas