Did you guess the answer to this week’s Christian music trivia question? Apparently some of you thought is was too easy … is it because you knew the answer or googled Lou Carlozo, LOL?
Prominent rock music journalist and solo artist Lou Carlozo recently made what newsworthy discovery while exploring the music archives at a major university?
The answer is …
Wait a minute, who is Lou Carlozo, anyway?
For those of you who don’t know, here’s the official bio: He’s the features staff writer for the Chicago Tribune who won the prestigious Bob Briner Impact Award from Biola University in 2007. The award is given in honor of Robert A. Briner, an Emmy-award winning television producer, global pioneer in sports media and author of the popular book “Roaring Lambs,” in which Briner encouraged artists and media professionals of faith to take their work to the mainstream of American pop cultural life, pursue excellence and to “give people the chance to choose good things instead of bad things.”
Carlozo also writes for magazines like Christian Century, Paste and CCM.
At the age of 44, after listening to, he says, “about the 1,549th album (give or take two) that promised me a pop revelation, I gave up. And I fought back, a Rickenbacker 12-string guitar as my sword and shield.”
He recorded his own pop album, called Stick Figure Soul.
“Play it backwards and you won’t hear the devil; play it forwards and you won’t hear angels,” Carlozo says. “But you’ll hear one man–one mixed-up, funny, Italian-American, slightly balding man–sing about life from a Christian worldview, with a thinly veiled Jersey accent.”
So what great musical discovery did this music journalist turned-pop artist make?
When D.J. Hoek, the head librarian at Northwestern’s music library, invited the music journalist to peruse the library archives, Carlozo found a manila envelope with writing on it that appeared to be missing verses and discarded choruses for the song “Why Did It Die?,” which eventually became “For No One” on The Beatles’ Revolver album.
Apparently the two missing choruses were previously known only to a few folks in academia, and were never reported in a major publication until Carlozo found them. He wrote about them in the March 23, 2008 edition of the Chicago Tribune.
The document suggests McCartney spent some time tinkering with these choruses before abandoning them. He wrote the middle lines to both in black ink that appear nowhere else on the paper. He scribbled the verses, most of which made the final cut, in pencil.
“I don’t know which was more thrilling: making the discovery or getting to hold the manuscript Paul wrote in my own hands,” Carlozo says. “If I never get to collaborate with Paul, which I highly suspect will be the case, this is the next best thing!”
To read more about Lou Carlozo, visit his website or his MySpace page.
Related post: Where the Beatles a Christian band?