Podcast Summary:
Drink Me A Story blends tales (today about the lost weekend of John Lennon), fiction, and real-world exploration. Here’s the rundown:
Epic Rippers: Stories that f*&k. Raw, adventure travel stories. These non-fiction audio journals offer life lessons and stirring thoughts.
Sips and Shorts: Stories and interviews about drinks from around the world that have shaped culture and society.
The Library: Dive into “The Coin Chronicles,” an exclusive fantasy audiobook series. Each episode reveals a chapter of this epic saga of Gods, humans, and the coin that rules them.
Episode 96 Notes: Brandy Alexander Recipe and The Lost Weekend
Today we’re talking about the lost weekend of John Lennon and the history behind the Brandy Alexander, the drink John took down on that fateful night at the Troubadour Cafe in March of 1972.
Summary of Podcast:
*Note – This is a summary of the full episode and containers spoilers. You can always listen to the podcast above.
The Dutch Princess Alexander
The cream of her skin was a gift that women envied. She wasn’t hated though, like any other in her position. She found admiration. Honored for the loyalty she kept to a man who spent their entire marriage cheating on her. Grace in her modern, elegant dresses with plunging necklines and sparkling ruby necklaces. Respect for her humble roots, one of six children born to modest royalty. So modest that Alix shared a room with her sister growing up and waited tables at home, like any respectable woman of this generation.
Yes, Alix came to Wales from across the water, from the Netherlands, seeking love, and finding hardship, heartbreak, and hurt, everywhere she went. Even that didn’t stop Alix from remaining a woman of grace and elegance, though. It was these qualities that described a drink Alix resembled.
This smooth, elegant drink was soft on the pallet but hard on the drinker, as John found out almost a hundred years later.
John Lennon
Coincidentally, John was born in the same part of the world Alix immigrated to. They both moved for love too. But, very different types of love. The status they sought was the same, though, and both received what they were looking for in… revolutionary ways. They both taught the world something important too, ushering in moments that would change perception and culture.
John was in California. It was March of 1974. John wasn’t much of a drinker, but the last 8 months had been hard on John. As if the crushing burden of fame wasn’t enough, John endured many separations. One of the band. One with his love. The road that got him here was not smooth and graceful, not at all. Which, probably was why he turned an elegant drink into something gritty and nasty. It was mixed with drugs. Heavy partying. Despair manifested in ways that are obvious to everyone but the depressed in the moment.
And so when John saddled up at this famous California bar, back when California was cool, with Harry, he slammed down several of these drinks.
How did we get here?
Let’s go way back. Back before John. Back before he came to the United States. Back to Wales in 1868.
As is usually the case, life peaks and suffers with women. It should be no surprise to us, then that the drink which came to be synonymous with the grace and poise of Alix in the late 1890’s would also become something dirty and sloppy under the direction of a man.
Still, neither are praised or condemned, for there were other factors here too. They were products of their times, which, like everyone that has ever existed makes them excusable, to some degree.
Alix married royalty. She was royalty too. But, minor royalty. Which might be what made her so grounded. It contributed to the social causes she became involved in.
At first she tried to get involved in politics. But, she was denied. Then she tried to get the King to support the Netherlands, her home country, and Greece, her brother was a king there. Those efforts too got denied.
It became clear to Alix that if she was to contribute something to the world, she would need to take a different path. So, she moved outside herself.
Instead of trying to influence things that affected her directly, she sought to fill a need greater than her own.
And this was when she did her greatest work. Which is also when she shined the brightest and became immortalized in that drink which bears her name today. She turned into a symbol of elegance, grace, love, and kindness.
In contrast, for a moment, when John stopped contributing to the world with his creative gifts, when he went inward, when he focused on drugs, and fun, and alcohol, he hit the lowest point in his life.
He sought to serve the master of himself and became slave to his own decline. This period of his life was certainly one of the darkest, punctuated by that famous night everything collapsed.
Is there a lesson here?
Maybe.
It’s harder for the world to be a darker place when others are counting on you. I know that.
Just like it’s easier to go into darkness when you’re fixated only on yourself.
Alix spread her gifts outward. She founded a charity that seeks to help the poor of London. Over a hundred years later it’s still going strong. She lost one of her sons. This made her champion nursing reform and hospital visits.
At this point she was Queen. After serving as the longest Princess of Wales in history, she served as queen for almost a decade, until her husband’s death. During this time, her legacy had been cemented.
Across the pond, in America, in New York, people even knew her by reputation alone. And it was this reputation that inspired bartenders to name a drink after her. It was a drink favored by elites like the ones she mingled with. It was creamy and decadent, matching her refined image. Duty and charm. And the drink became glamour and escapism.
It was the latter, escapism, that John clung to while in California.
The Lost Weekend
Now, John was never much of a drinker. He preferred other things. Hard drugs. This was the rock and roll lifestyle, after all.
It was Harry that introduced him to the drink, and he couldn’t get enough. John was out that night with Harry and May. They were listening to music. John was too drunkj to be of any use to anyone. It was one of those nights he just needed to go home and go to bed. Restart the day tomorrow. Try to do better. But, he didn’t.
He became belligerent. He wore a tampon on his head. He eventually got kicked out for heckling. Oh, so not the image of grace and charm, in this one.
But, it marked an interesting moment in history, and shaped the future of stardom.
This period changed the way tabloids were written moving forward. But, it also pulled back the veil into the raw side of rock. The cost of fame. The price of creativity. The fine line between addiction and destruction and brilliance.
Creative geniuses always flirt with this line. They need to enter the scum of the world, sink down into the depths of the worst things about being human so that they can write, sing, paint works that touch our souls. The best art has at least some hint of darkness in it, or understands darkness enough to avoid it.
And along with this lesson on creativity and rock, was also the lesson of being a celebrity. For one of the first times we saw a meltdown of epic proportions by someone we believed was larger than life. Our idol had fallen.
Today, it’s so common place, we don’t think twice about it. The stars seem to fall as fast as they rise, these days. But, back then, they were falling in private. They were a front page obituary noting Elvis was dead. They were a fading into obscurity, a page three, one hundred word blotter.
But, this publicity, shocking.
Although none of us blamed him for it.
We just felt a little bit different about him.
He was humanized.
He was no longer a God.
He made mistakes.
He battled depression and loss.
He struggled with his identity.
He was one of us.
He was lost.
When John finally pulled himself out of his drug and alcohol induced stupor he found that 18 months had passed.
He returned to New York.
He reconnected with Yoko Ono.
He had another child less than a year later.
And, until his death, he found a new place in the spotlight and history, one away from the Beatles, one where he was able to imagine the world, once and for all, filled with all the people living for today.
No hell below us.
Above us only sky.
John was a dreamer.
So too was Alix. In fact, I think it was probably one of the few things that kept her so full of grace.
She had battled sickness, a cheating husband, death of a child, sexism… and faced it all with enduring grace.
So much grace that bartenders in New York took it upon themselves to name a new drink after her.
A drink that went down smooth. That made you smile. That felt like joy.
A drink that John Lennon fell in love with.
The drink named after Alix, also known as Princess Alexandra of Denmark.
Brandy Alexander Recipe
- 1 ounce (30 ml) brandy or cognac
- 1 ounce (30 ml) dark crème de cacao
- 1 ounce (30 ml) heavy cream
- Freshly grated nutmeg for garnish
Grace, vulnerability, royalty and fame. The stuff of two people separated by almost a hundred years, and connected by a drink – a brandy alexander recipe- that they both used in different ways. One to exude her grace. The other to explore the underbelly of Rock and Roll at the Troubadour Club in California in 1972.