I shudder think how many times Joe Public has crossed that bloody zebra on Abbey Road in an effort to recreate the Beatles photoshoot from 1969; we've all done it, we've all traipsed down to St. John's Wood and annoyed cabbies & bus drivers alike - I know I have. Maybe jazz guitarist Al Di Meola has too, I don't know. Maybe I should ask him. What I do know is that when he brought out a collection of Beatles instrumentals a couple of years ago - Across the Universe - he was channeling his inner John Lennon in more ways than one. Di Meola's virtuosity on the fretboard is matched only by the pose he strikes on the album cover (above). I'm a strong believer that every great album has to have equally great artwork. That's not negotiable. I will always deduct marks for any album whose cover is suboptimal. Harsh? Maybe. But them's the rules.
If you subscribe to The New World (formerly The New European) you'll know they've just ranked and reviewed (what they attest to be) the definitive Top 10 music bios. No surprise that 20% of the list comprises Beatles tomes (or maybe we should be surprised that it's not more).
Although not a bio as such, I've just read Man on the Run which is essentially the tale of what Macca got up to in the 70s - with Wings and various solo efforts (and, not least, sorting out the Beatles' legal shit that was he was still carrying around like a ball & chain; that's the other ball & chain btw, not the keyboard player in Wings). It made for compelling reading and confirmed why I still have conflicting views about this most unreadable of all the former Fabs; he gives away what he wants to give away and no more. I wouldn't want to play Poker with him, that's for sure.
My latest playlist, coincidentally, is Beatles related. It goes by the moniker Very Clean and therein you'll find all sorts of curios. I particularly like the Stan Kenton big band version of Live and Let Die; whilst at the same time I'm absolutely bowled over by Robin Nolan's tender and melancholic interpretation of All Things Must Pass. I met Robin in Amsterdam 25 years ago and have dipped in and out of his gypsy jazz career ever since. His latest album 'For The Love of George' is pretty self explanatory and I can't recommend it highly enough.
The Beatles could never be accused of letting the grass grow beneath their feet; their sixth album was recorded in a four week window during October and November 1965 (less than three years since Please Please Me - their 1st.) and was released on 3 December. Talk about In Like Flynn. Rubber Soul's cover photograph was shot by Robert Freeman on 23 October in Lennon's back garden in Weybridge. It was also, you may or may not know, their first long player not to bear the group's name on the front.
Some albums just shout colours at me and this is one of them. The colour swatch above not only picks out the colours in Freeman's candid photo but also, for me (in a primitive, almost synesthetic, kind of way) are also the colours I hear whenever I play the album. I think it's a very autumnal* sounding collection of songs, even the obligatory Ringo track, What Goes On. George, however, steals the show (not for the first time).
The Beatles - If I Needed someone (1965)
*Maybe the next time I listen to RS I should be sitting under a tree as the leaves are starting to fall.
Back in 2009 I received a rejection letter; a very nice 'Dear John' letter, but a rejection letter all the same. The BBC had passed on a radio play I'd written depicting the last ever meeting between John Lennon & Paul McCartney in New York in 1976. I mention this only because I received a text from James yesterday with the following flyer attached.
In his WhatsApp missive James said - "Dad, didn't you write this play fifteen years ago?" Indeed I did, James. Indeed I did. Which is why, a week on Wednesday, I'll be sat in row G of the stalls at Watford Palace Theatre making copious notes. And muttering a lot.
★
Postscript 22.9.24
As I mentioned above, I went to Watford last Wednesday to see the play. There were some overlaps with mine (there had to be) but the writers took the production in a slightly different direction. And I enjoyed every minute of it. The two thesps who played John & Paul were superb. Will it transfer to the West End? Probably not. But I'm guessing they may take it on the road; in which case I'll definitely go and see it again. Anyway, you'll be pleased to know I've stood my legal team down!
Unless you've been living under a rock for the last week or so you can't fail to have heard the hullabaloo surrounding what some (OK, everyone) are calling the new (and, at the same time, last) Beatles record. And, as you' d expect, this four minute ditty has made some people deliriously happy whilst at the same time making others reach for their quills to pen strongly worded letters to, I don't know, Paul and Ringo, probably. Or Yoko. Yep, it was she, again, who'd found a 'discarded' C60 cassette in the attic with John's scratchy vocals and vamped piano chords all over it and decided it would make a great little trust fund; to go with all the other little trust funds she's acquired since that fateful December night in 1980 outside The Dakota building.
The thing is, it's not as if we haven't already heard the song before; the bootleg has been doing the round since forever (Lennon wrote Now & Then in 1978) and it was even given a 'McCartney Makeover' by one of my favourite John and Paul mimics, Claus Nielsen: his excellent 2017 versh of Now & Then was surely Macca's template for the song everyone's comparing to Imagine (imagine that) but which IMHO is a far superior composition; it really is.
In other Beatles related news, I was down in our nation's capital this weekend getting up to all sorts of high jinks. Not least when I stumbled upon St. Pancras Gardens where the Fabs posed for one of their most iconic photoshoots from their now legendary Mad Day Out in July 1968. The inscription on the bench (which I'm amazed is still there) is priceless.
In the world of Fifth Beatles - I imagine it to be like a low rent Stella Street where Pete Best and Brian Epstein run the corner shop and Billy Preston mans the laundromat - its inhabitants are all tenuously linked (some more than others) to the four lads from Liverpool who shook the world. And the Fifth Beatle (of which there are more than you care to think), by inference, each played his or her (small) part in the shaking. Anyway, about those flutes. Ever wondered who played the beautiful flute solo on John Lennon's You've Got to Hide Your Love Away? As pub quiz questions go it is quite niche, but the answer is Johnny Scott. Whilst this may not qualify him fully for Fifth Beatle status - maybe Sixth? - I bet it's a story that's enchanted the grandchildren over the intervening years.
Scott was - and indeed still is - a respected jazz musician, arranger and composer of many film scores. In the mid 1960s he found himself working with many acts on the EMI roster at Abbey Road and did a lot of work with George Martin (another early occupant of Fifth Avenue) - which is how he got sucked into the Beatles orbit.
At the behest of Martin he laid down a tenor flute in the spaces in Lennon's vocal track and an additional alto part played an octave higher. Hearing cover versions without the flute just don't sound right to me. Before I go, I just want to leave you with one of my all time favourite Beatles quotes. And, before you ask, it's not delivered by a Beatle. It's actually a Dandy Nichols line quite early on in the Help movie: waving to the Fab Four as they get out of their chauffeured limo and walk to their respective front doors, Nichols says to her friend about how fame hasn't changed them: "And still the same as they was before they was."
I read the news today, oh boy. This press cutting appeared on my Twitter feed yesterday: a Beatles fan born in 1856. That's right, 1856!
I know it's from the Daily Mail, but back in 1964 the Mail was an esteemed organ yet to succumb to right wing fake news. As I was asked yesterday, what do we think John Turner - a contemporary of Tchaikovsky - made of Revolver? Tomorrow Never Knows must have melted his head.
John Junkin said it. John Lennon said it. "He's very clean" they both said. I know they were talking about Paul McCartney's grandfather, but my penchant for a bath most weekday nights, in addition to my daily morning shower and, well, I'm surprised sometimes I don't squeak. I'm hoping Carson Robison's theory that too much bathing will weaken you is not based in fact.
Despite assurances from many Beatles scholars to the contrary, I can't shake the notion that - even if only in a subliminal way - the idea for Yellow Submarine came from Thunderbirds. Thunderbird 4 - first seen on UK television screens* in 1964 - is yellow, and is a submarine. Step forward Gerry Anderson and take your rightful place in Beatles history. However, since Anderson passed away in 2012, it will probably be simpler for Macca to 'come out' and be ingratiated into the extended Tracy family. Full speed ahead.
* I am aware that TV in this country at the time was black and white, but Thunderbird merchandising, though in its infancy, (comics, toys etc.) was still a thing.
It was the last album the Beatles recorded together, though not the last album they released (that would be Let it Be). And it's our next Sunday Vinyl Session. I went to see Mark Lewisohn's mesmerising talk last Sunday, so Abbey Road is sitting at the front of my cerebral cortex; where it's been for the last 50 years, pretty much.
There's not many better feelings than putting on a jacket you've not worn in a while and finding a tenner in one of the pockets. Though I do have one: discovering a new Beatles photograph I've not seen before. Here's one such image was made public for the first time only a few days ago. It's from the Abbey Road photoshoot which, unless you've just been beamed up from another planet (or, indeed, the set of 'Yesterday') is probably the most iconic album sleeve ever - certainly the most recreated and copied. Just in case you don't know what the VW Beetle was doing there, or who the guy next to the police van was, you could do a lot worse than taking a look at the most exhaustive back story about that famous day in August 1969 when photographer Ian Macmillan took his memorable snaps.
Back to this new photograph. It was taken by Linda McCartney, who must have been standing practically next to Macmillan as he looked down from atop his stepladders. Apparently no photo exists of either Macmillan from his unique vantage point or, indeed, the police officer who was on hand to stop the traffic whilst the Fabs traversed the crossing. Imagine if such an image was to turn up; an elderly St. John's Wood resident passes and during a house clearance they stumble upon a shoebox with a load of Kodak slides in it. It would surely make the Holy Grail look like a Skegness ashtray.
It's common knowledge that George Harrison cribbed the lyrics from a Good News chocolate box he saw round at Eric Clapton's gaff one day. Clapton was still doing a lot of heroin at the time and, coming down, allegedly, he'd regularly eat an entire box of chocolates in one sitting. Even the SavoyTruffle.
Probably less well documented is how much of an influence on Harrison an EP put out by Lulu two years before the White Album was. The title track, Chocolate Ice (written by Mike Leander - Gary Glitter's scribe), bears more than a passing resemblance to Harrison's effort. Judge for yourself.
Lulu - Chocolate Ice (1966)
Instead of going with the Fabs, I've decided to play you the Analogues' version. The Analogues play Beatles tunes live. Nothing new there, I hear you say. True, but this bunch of Dutch musicians have taken the reproduction of Beatles music to a whole new level. Recreating every note of an alabum - in sequence - with period instruments (often with strings and horns) and with fastidious attention to detail, they really are the business. When they play Maxwell's Silver Hammer, for instance, they even bring an anvil up on stage. I particularly like the songs that not only the Beatles didn't play live (i.e. everything after '66), but also the ones Macca can't be arsed with when he tours; check out Your Mother Should Know from the Magical Mystery Tour EP. You'll be amazed. Truly amazed.
The events of 1969 are currently looming very large. There are a number of monumental 50th anniversaries going on right now; not least Apollo 11 - a must see movie is on general release depicting just what Neil Armstrong and the real Buzz Lightyear got up to when they were floating in their tin can half a century ago. I remember Aldrin saying in Andrew Smith's Moondust that NASA were very candid with the crew when they signed up for the mission of all missions: their chances of coming back alive were given at no more than 50/50. This is one film I will not be missing. And Abbey Road. The Beatles' final recorded album (Let it Be, despite coming out in 1970, was already in the can before the Fabs entered EMI Studios in Abbey Rad for the last time). Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn is touring the country later in the year giving his unique take on the events that made Abbey Road, quite literally, The End. And he's coming to a venue near me, so I'm well chuffed.
Joey Ramone may have left this earth (as too have all the original Ramones), but he still looks down on New Yorkers: the sign for Joey Ramone Place, if you look high enough (it's been stolen so many times it's now been sited where it can only be reached by basketball players) is in the Bowery district, close to the site of a (long gone) club where he and the band played many of their 2,500+ gigs: CBGBs - the New York punk venue.
Went to see the much hyped Yesterday yesterday. Being something of a Beatles nut (clock the number of Beatles and Lennon & McCartney posts on this blog [left]), I thought it would be massively churlish of me if I didn't scribble a few words about it here. I'm usually pretty quick out of the traps when it comes to rating and ranking new movies, but this is a little bit different - I'm still processing it, would you believe; a fantastical plot (a world without the Beatles - really?) with seemingly more holes than a used dartboard, peppered with more than a few comedy cul-de-sacs and incorporating a typically lame Richard Curtis crow-barred rom-com. And yet, and yet...
That soundtrack; those songs. For all its faults, and there are many, it's the music, ultimately, that carries this film over the line. Himesh Patel who plays struggling singer-songwriter Jack Malik, has been gifted the most fantastic set of songs served on a silver platter and ready to be devoured. And they are, for the most part, played brilliantly.
Patel is not just a talented actor but he can play a bit too. That means there's no awkward miming or contrived camera angles to disguise the fact that a non musical actor is holding a strange instrument around his neck and doesn't know what a chord is, let alone know where they can be found on the neck of a guitar.
Himesh Patel - Yesterday (2019)
Apart from Malek's performance (and the Beatles music, obvs) I took three positives away from the film: Lily James - who played the love interest with just the right amount of girl next doorness. Ed Sheeran - just a good egg. The ginger superstar was quite happy to sit on the subs bench for much of the movie, but was given some great lines nonetheless. The best gag in the film - when Jack Malik realises, after an internet search, that his friends really aren't winding him up when they tell him they don't know who the Beatles are, he then Googles Oasis - nothing but a clutch of exotic holiday websites. "That figures" he says.
No need to turn to page 26; he's a bit nearer than that
Baxter Dury was interviewed in 2005. The Beatles cropped up...
"My old man rejected the Beatles and white rock'n'roll from England, he was pretty dismissive of it, so you grow up precociously being dismissive of it yourself. There is something I still hate about the Beatles, but when you're trying to write songs you're an idiot if you don't acknowledge them, 'cause they're brilliant."
A midweek smash and grab raid on that London yesterday. Quality time spent in the company of Brother Mondo and Brother Steve. We zoned in on some of the West One Squares with Beatles and Bowie connections. And nearby pubs too. Obvs. First, the EMI Building in Manchester Square and, just around the corner, is where David Jones was snapped reading all about it. We volunteered a German passer by, showed her Bowie's pic and asked her to recreate same; despite a bit of camera shake, I think we just about get away with it.
Staying in the same zip code you then come across Montagu Square - it's actually a rectangle - and situated at No. 34 is where John Lennon holed up for most of '68. It's not Strawberry Fields, but it's got a blue plaque outside, nonetheless.
A huge thank you to the boys for another great trip to the capital. Let's do it again in the Summer.
I know I've said it before, but helluva lot of new stuff I listen to comes care of the Number One Son. Almost since I first introduced him to the Beatles back when he was still in his cot, James has been my constant sherpa when it comes to navigating treacherous indie landfill and other, equally dangerous, hazards. His end of year roundups, in particular, are a thing of beauty - and also very small - appearing as they do these days on a micro SD card.
I don't know if Man & The Echo will make this year's cut (it is, after all, still only April), but Capable Man appeared on my phone yesterday complete with a simple instruction: 'Listen to this, Old Man!' So I did. It could be a contender. See what you think.
In 1996 Blair’s Britain couldn’t get enough of Britpop. With TFI Friday regularly outgunning News at Ten's viewing figures1, saturation point had yet to be reached and so, what Oasis and Blur had unwittingly started less than two years earlier, was now operating with an open house policy to all and sundry.
But quite how a Fab Four parody troupe who hadn’t been seen since 1979 fitted into the scene was, at first, a little unclear. But fit they did, perfectly.
The Rutles were essentially a ragtag bunch of bewigged men old enough to know better. A post-fab guitar band (in the guise of Neil Innes2– or was it the other way round?) who had openly lifted3 more Beatles riffs, harmonies and melodies than a flock of thieving Noel Gallaghers. Maybe, just (definitely) maybe, this resurgence was down to their mighty Archaeology album in which Innes lovingly tipped his John Lennon cap to the Beatles’ recently released Anthology series. Innes had mined his huge pop sensibility songbook and came up with something far and away greater than a regular tribute to Four Lads From Liverpool Who Shook the World™.
Laid out before us were 16 tunes, each of them a stand alone classic, yet when listened to back to back in, shall we say, the context of a lost Beatles album, then the ensemble piece was staggering. Staggeringly good, staggeringly incisive. Although context is usually everything, Innes proved with Archaeology it isn't always.
At the back end of last year when Neil Innes, via his Twitter feed, agreed to answer a few quick-fire Rutle related questions I jumped at the chance. I kicked off our brief 140 character limited chit-chat with:
When I played them to George H - after 3 or 4 - he said "Hang on, these songs are yours! Don't be shy." So I went ahead...
He went on to tell me that "Questionnaire was the song that persuaded me to go ahead." And what a great song that is - dipping, as it does, in and out of Fool on the Hill, I am the Walrus and Imagine, but never giving up its own identity; unlike the first album where the line between Beatles/Rutles, real/parody was so blurred it all became one.
When I asked Neil if he could condense Archaeology into a 4 track EP4, along with Questionnaire he name-checked Major Happy, Rendezvous and Shangri-La.
Shangri-La is so clever (but not in a smart arse way) in that it turns pastiche on its head. Not long before Archaeology Noel Gallagher had ripped off Innes' How Sweet To Be An Idiot (when Oasis recorded Whatever). Innes couldn't resist dropping that motif straight in at the start. I guess all's fair in love and plagiarism.
It's an "homage". They're not supposed to be Beatle songs but songs about what the Beatles wrote songs about... Love and Life? [Barry is a child - 2 x children]
However, unlike George (a huge supporter of all things Rutle) and, to a lesser extent, John, Paul McCartney never liked the Rutles (no shit Sherlock). He hated them. Indeed because of Macca, Innes spent many an awkward day in the High Court defending both the band and his own songwriting.
He gave me a hug at the cleaned-up "Magical Mystery Tour" screening - not that long ago - but I know he's not happy with the Rutles. I don't think he blames me personally, but he ought to mellow a bit. There was no fat at the BFI...
So treasure Archaeology. And treasure the Rutles. They may not have troubled the charts, or indeed the tabloids, in quite the way that Damon Albarn or the Gallagher brothers did in those heady days of Britpop, but if it's songs you're after (and, at the end of the day, aren't we all?), former Bonzo and Python Neil Innes is definitely worth taking a detour for.
The Rutles are on tour next May/June - "Get Up and Go Again" - Ricky is always drumming with the excellent Bonnie Rait and "Sir Dirk" is flogging his memoirs. After 40 years I'm happy to say it's no longer about the "Trousers" - it's about the songs. One big happy family! x N
1 I may be playing fast and loose with the ratings here. 2 Eric Idle had left the band some years earlier. He couldn't get into his stage pants anymore. 3 Interestingly Innes was accused of stealing Cheese and Onions from the Beatles (it once appeared on a 1980 Fabs bootleg - credited to John Lennon!) It was, in fact, Innes' original demo of his own song. 4 I often condense great works of art into miniature.
...
Postscript 12.5.24
Imagine my horror upon learning that after Neil's death his Twiitter account had been hacked by an illegal crypto currency fuckwit; comedian Dave Gorman flagged it up and basically called it out for what it was. So, if you're wondering why my Twitter interview with Neil looks a bit 'gappy', that's the reason. (I'm kicking myself for not screen grabbing them instead of just leaving the Twitter links.) I may reach out to Mr. Gorman up and ask him to help come and fill the gaps...
Since time immemorial Beatles fans and scholars alike have been debating (often heatedly) whether or not the White Album coulda/shoulda been released as a single album; trim the fat, ditch Revolution No.9 (the Emperor's new clothes, without doubt) and generally rid it of anything devoid of FABness. Pah! I hear you say. Even four sides isn't enough - we want six sides, eight even.
Blue Vinyl (1/1) - signed by Macca (rare as fuck)
Well, as you're probably aware, this month saw the majestic release of a whiter than white White Album with alternative takes, demo recordings made at George's house in Esher - complete with Harrison asking Macca how many sugars he wants in his tea - and is, essentially, the kitchen sink in vinyl format. Indeed, fetching it home from your local record shop would necessitate mechanical lifting machinery and, possibly, road closures.
Not for me, however. I fell in love with this album just the way it was intended way back when; and I've got all the Esher demos on bootlegs anyway.
But to go back to the double album/single album hot potato for a second - if you ever wondered what the perfect pared down track listing would have looked like (5 tracks on Side 1, five on Side 2) - then jazzer Ramsey Lewis has beaten you to it. By 50 years. That's right, Lewis went into the studio and recorded his White Album (he actually called it Mother Nature's Son) in December 1968 and released it later the same month: only a handful of weeks after the Beatles released theirs in the November. He didn't mess about did he? The world was still coming to terms with how utterly brilliant Lennon's Cry Baby Cry was, and here was Ramsey Lewis straight out of the traps giving us his sublime instrumental take. And, I have to say, almost edging it for me. Almost.
Q. What have David Hepworth's latest book Nothing is Real (The Beatles Were Underrated and Other Sweeping Statements About Pop) and my friend Heidi's recent visit to London got in common?
A. As you can see Hepworth's latest tome (his third) once again comes with, like its predecessors 1971 and Uncommon People, a striking orange themed dust-jacket.
And when Heidi was in the capital this weekend she took this splendid photograph of a rather dapper individual on the tube; kitted out, from head to foot (quite literally) in, er, orange.
For exact colour matching purposes, I've included the RAL swatch for all your Orange needs.
Oops! - I don't do F**ebook, so when I was sent this tube photo I thought it was a photograph Heidi had taken; turns out it was Piley. Heidi/Piley; Piley/Heidi. See what I did there. Sorry both!
