Podcasts about castaways

Start Artist Song Time Album Year What Strange Beasts A Call To Lights 0:28 Starlight's Castaways 2023 0:00:28 What Strange Beasts Starlight's Castaways 3:15 Starlight's Castaways 2023 0:04:09 The Flower Kings The River 5:35 The Sum Of No Evil (Limited Ed) 2007 0:09:49 Albion The Lake Isle of Innisfree 1:59 Lakesongs of Elbid 2023 0:12:18 […]

Castaways and perpetual B-team members Pete and Trevor take a trip to see Thunderbolts* (or is it The New Avengers maybe?). Thunderbolts is the 36th entry in the MCU and the 4th covered on this podcast, but how does it stack up? (Really, really well!) This week also marks the beginning of Project Superman, our ongoing project to watch every single live-action Superman film. We are starting right at the beginning with Kirk Allyn in the 1948 serial and its 1950 sequel Atom Man vs. Superman. We also cover the Superman and the Mole Men, the 1951 debut of George Reeves as Superman and the first feature length Superman film. Tune in next week for Richard Donner's Superman (1978). Be sure to enter our draw to win a subscription to Letterboxd Patron: https://boxd.it/Gbt3OIntro (0:00)Review of Superman (1948), Atom Man vs. Superman (1950), and Superman and the Mole Men (16:32)Spoiler-free Review of Thunderbolts* (40:09)Spoiler-talk (54:20)ABOUT THE MOVIEThunderbolts—recently rebranded as The New Avengers—is directed by Jake Schreier, known for his work on Robot & Frank and the series Beef. The screenplay was co-written by Eric Pearson (Black Widow) and Joanna Calo (The Bear). The film features an ensemble of returning and new Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) characters:The film features an ensemble of returning and new Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) characters:Florence Pugh plays Yelena Belova (Black Widow), Sebastian Stan plays Bucky Barnes (Winter Soldier), David Harbour plays Alexei Shostakov (Red Guardian), Wyatt Russell plays John Walker (U.S. Agent), Hannah John-Kamen plays Ava Starr (Ghost), Olga Kurylenko plays Antonia Dreykov (Taskmaster), Lewis Pullman plays Bob Reynolds (Sentry/Void), Geraldine Viswanathan plays Mel Gold, Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, Chris Bauer plays O.X.E. Agent Holt, and Wendell Pierce plays Congressman Gary.

X Minus One serves up the sci-fi this week. We'll hear The Castaways, an episode that first aired September 15, 1955. Listen to more from X Minus One https://traffic.libsyn.com/forcedn/e55e1c7a-e213-4a20-8701-21862bdf1f8a/SciFi879.mp3 Download SciFi879 | Subscribe | Spotify | Support Relic Radio Science Fiction Your support makes this show possible. If you'd like to help, visit donate.relicradio.com for more information. Thank you.

This week Josh and Mark wash up on an unfamilar beach and find themselves discussing those who found that when life gives you lemons, its time to eat spiny lobster. 

  2. The Death and Life of River Song Series 02: Ace and Tegan   This title was released in March 2025. It will be exclusively available to buy from the Big Finish website until 31 May 2025, and on general sale after this date. Ace and Tegan have been plucked from their twenty-first century lives and stranded in 1860. But who is responsible, and why is River Song mixing in nineteenth century society too? Somebody is out to eliminate the three of them, as Ace and Tegan realise that this may not be their first meeting with River. Their lives are entangled, and to escape, somebody must pay the ultimate price... 2.1 Castaways by James Moran Adrift in the past, Ace and Tegan are looking into supposed hauntings on London's new underground railway lines. But how and why are they there? Their memories are not what they were, and they are about to encounter River Song, perhaps not for the first time. One thing is certain - River knows more than she is telling! 2.2 Driftwood by Roland Moore Back in her TARDIS travels, Ace is cut off from the Doctor, on a stricken spaceship with sixty minutes to live. Something has invaded the vessel - something that travels along wires and can control its metal structure. As time runs out, Ace's only hope may be a mysterious woman with a blaster and fantastic hair. 2.3 Dead Rising by Roland Moore With the Doctor and Turlough on ice, Tegan faces interrogation from the Pilot of Vrexel colony. Something is making the colonists drop down dead... Tegan claims she is just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But when River Song arrives and the dead start rising, Tegan's problems get a whole lot worse... 2.4 The End is the Beginning is the End by James Moran River, Ace and Tegan must stop Gregor Ganley from changing their past again, and again... and again. But he's always one step ahead. And River's new friends want to convince her that assassination is not always the best option. But first, they have the matter of imminent certain death to deal with... **Please note: the collector's edition CD box set is strictly limited to 1,250 copies**    

Find your Four: Transforming Lives, Communities, and the World with Brandon FongOur guest on the podcast today is Brandon Fong. He is a husband to his high school sweetheart, Leah, and father to their joyful baby girl, Kaiya. He's also the host of the top 1.5% globally ranked Beyond Curious™ podcast and founder of Curiosity Island™, a premium invite-only community that's redefining how we collaborate and create impact. Citizens of this unique community, affectionately known as “Castaways,” include remarkable individuals like former Olympians, a Queen Elizabeth II award winner, and even a Hollywood storytelling legend.Brandon's life purpose is to create a more deeply connected world by catalyzing curiosity, and his work is a living testament to that mission. In today's episode, we discuss his groundbreaking concept of finding your 4%, a powerful framework inspired by the Pareto Principle that helps us identify the core strengths driving the majority of our results and joy. You'll hear the fascinating story of how Brandon's curiosity shaped his life, from his early experiences to the creation of Curiosity Island, a community built on the foundation of connection, collaboration, and playful exploration. He even takes me through a live demonstration to uncover my own 4%, providing an inside look at his innovative process.Whether you're an entrepreneur, leader, or someone seeking to live more authentically and make a meaningful impact, Brandon's insights will resonate deeply. This conversation will inspire you to embrace your curiosity, harness your unique strengths, and create a life filled with purpose and connection.Key TakeawaysBrandon's personal story of having the curiosity and wonder of a 6-year-old childHow connection can be the foundation for meaningful changeWhat it means to find your four and why this is so important to life and businessHow to build a community in unique and fun ways, integrating both play and structureHow journalling on peak life experiences can uncover your own 4%Episode Resources:Go Beyond Curious WebsiteBrandon's Linkedin ProfileExtra ResourcesSacredChangemakers.comOur Sacred CommunityJayne Warrilow on LinkedinThank you to our sponsor:A huge thank you to our Inner Circle members, podcast sponsors, and extended Sacred Changemakers community, all of whom are visible on our website and helping us make a global impact aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.If you would like to support our show:Please rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and other podcast platforms. We would be SO grateful.Sacred Changemakers is a transformation company that believes in change for good. We provide community and resources for changemakers (coaches, consultants, speakers, authors, business owners, leaders, and conscious humans) to awaken their purpose, lead with resonance, and change the world. Together, we are making a meaningful difference. If you are a fellow changemaker who would like the support of an incredible community (and make a bigger impact along your path), you can

PRESS REVIEW – Friday, February 14: Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin's phone conversation continues to spark concern, panic and worry among European leaders. What does this mean for the future of Europe? Also, The New York Times takes us inside the family succession drama that has torn apart Rupert Murdoch's family. Plus: for the non-romantics this Valentine's Day, name rats after your exes and watch them being devoured by owls! There is alarm, panic and great concern in the European press this Friday after Wednesday's call between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in which the pair appeared to discuss plans for an end to the war in Ukraine. The British daily The i says the call has left European leaders scrambling, but notes that NATO's leader Mark Rutte has commended Trump's honesty and said that Europe needs a wake-up call about its defence spending. "Castaways" is how Libération, French left-wing paper, describes the two leaders on its front page. The paper's editor calls the conversation with Trump the greatest victory for Putin in three years of war, and it didn't even come on the battlefield. There is great concern that talks to end the war in Ukraine will come at Ukraine's expense and will completely sideline Kyiv. In Ransom's cartoon in French paper Le Parisien, Trump tells Volodymyr Zelensky that there is no chair for him at the proverbial negotiating table with Putin.The Frankfurter Allgemeine, the German daily, wonders if Berlin is simply watching all this unravel from the sidelines. The paper notes that Putin and Trump's conversation and subsequent comments this week have not only shaken Germany's understanding of its own role in the conflict. They also come in the middle of an election campaign in the country and beg the question: how can Europe take responsibility for Ukraine's security and its own? Writing in the Daily Mail, Richard Shirreff, former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe for NATO, says that Trump has handed Ukraine on a platter to Russia and says it's worse than Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Nazi Germany. He also acknowledges that this agreement is catastrophic for the courageous Ukrainians who've been fighting for three years. Politico quotes a European official as saying that European leaders simply lack a master plan when it comes to Trump's new world disorder. The official, speaking anonymously, tells Politico that Trump discussing peace talks without even involving Europe shows to what extent Washington disregards the continent. The US president has delivered a rude awakening to the cruel world of today.The New York Times takes us inside the messy court battle and bitter succession fight between Rupert Murdoch and his four children over the future of his empire. Based on 3,000 pages of court documents, the Times article details a family succession saga that reads like a script from the TV series "Succession" (itself inspired by the Murdoch family). Ninety-three-year-old Murdoch has always intended for his empire to be passed on to his four children. In recent times, however, he has sought to consolidate power in the hands of just one child: Lachlan Murdoch, the most politically conservative of the four siblings and who represents the conservative direction Murdoch wants for the future of his news empire. In 2023, he sat down with his two daughters to announce that he'd be changing the trust to give Lachlan majority powers. What ensued was a bitter family legal battle that's played out in dramatic fashion, culminating in a secret trial in which they testified to the power plays, backstabbing and grievances that have defined the family.Finally, it's Valentine's Day and if you're a non-romantic, there are many ways to hate-celebrate this day! The Independent reports that animal shelters and zoos around the world are offering many possibilities to help you forget about your exes. At a bird shelter in Alaska, you can pay $100 to name a frozen dead rat after your ex and then watch it being fed to resident owls at the shelter. If rats aren't your thing, you can always name a feral cat after an ex before it – the cat, not your ex – gets castrated! Meanwhile, Memphis Zoo in Tennessee gives you two options: for $10, you can send a lovely video of a red panda eating a grape to your loved one … or, you can send a video of an elephant pooping. The options are plentiful this Valentine's Day for lovers and haters!You can catch our press review every morning on France 24 at 7:20am and 9:20am (Paris time), from Monday to Friday.

Send us a textWell met friends! In this episode of the Get Piped Podcast, Adam and Nick discuss some pipe dreams from our good friend Kyle.In the Smoking and Joking, Adam and Nick talk about a chance encounter with a supporter of Get Piped and the last ever shipments from Mac Barren and SutliffJ Mouton, Peterson, and MBSD Meerschaum pipes are chosen for our characters this week, along with delicious tobaccos to pair.Finally, we see if Adam is Smarter Than a Pipe Smoker and which villiains Adam ranks as the most smashing.PURCHASE BATTLE OF THE BRIAR FOREVER: https://www.patreon.com/GetPiped/shop/battle-of-briar-pipe-smoking-documentary-690160__________Don't forget to subscribe/follow the GPP so you never miss an episode.We want to hear from you! If you have any further questions, comments, or recommendations, send them to show@getpiped.co.__________Follow Get Piped on Instagram. Follow Producer Guy on Instagram.Check out the Get Piped YouTube for more content.Join the Get Piped community Discord here.Support the GPP by joining the Patreon.Check out the Get Piped merch store.GPP is created by Adam Floyd (Get Piped)GPP is produced by Nick Masella (Producer Guy).Music for this episode is from StreamBeats. Support the show

November of 1966 was a great month for Australian Music with the release of two 45s both of which would go on and reach #1: Normie Rowe's epic Ooh La La, and The Easybeats' anthem, Friday on My Mind are the two songs in question, both recorded in the UK. We'll also hear the 2nd 45 release from an artist then known as JA-AR who, as John Rowles, would go on to international stardom. Amongst others, we'll also hear chart entries from The Kravats, Russ Kruger, and Peter Nelson & The Castaways. Enjoy the Australian artist releases for November of ‘66!

EPISODE SPONSOR: Get 45% off the Magic Mind bundle with my link: https://www.magicmind.com/calmhjan #magicmind #mentalwealth #mentalperformance  ********************* Watch the TV show, Gilligan’s Island, for FREE: Watch 3 full seasons of the TV episodes (free) Watch the unaired Pilot episode (free) Watch the 1978 movie, Rescue from Gilligan’s Island (free) Watch the 1979 movie, Castaways on … Continue reading Gilligan’s Island TV Show: History, Trivia, & Controversies | How to Watch it for Free | Learn, Relax, Sleep (B21)

Sechs Teenager zwischen 13 und 16 Jahren begeben sich 1965 auf eine tollkühne Reise. Mit dem Boot wollen sie von Tonga aus, ihrem Zuhause, die Fiji-Inseln erreichen. Doch schon nach wenigen Stunden erleiden sie Schiffbruch. Nachdem sie tagelang im Meer treiben, erscheint schließlich am Horizont die Rettung: das winzige Eiland ‘Ata. Doch die Insel ist kaum mehr als ein Fels, sie gilt als unbewohnbar - und birgt noch dazu eine dunkle Vergangenheit. Die 6 Jungen werden sich davon allerdings nicht unterkriegen lassen. Sie sind fest entschlossen, zusammenzuhalten und die Insel lebend wieder zu verlassen….......Zur Doku und Interviews: Die originale Doku von 1966.2016 Rückkehr mit Kolo Fekitoa nach ‘Ata.Freunde fürs Leben: 2018 Interview mit Mano Totau und Peter Warner........Das Folgenbild (c. John Carnemolla) zeigt die sechs Teenager Mano Totau, Sione Fataua, Stephen Fatai, Kolo Fekitoa, David Fifita und Luke Veikoso. Sie sind kurze Zeit nach der Rettung auf die Insel zurückgekehrt und haben für den Fotografen John Carnemolla einige Szenen nachgestellt........LITERATURBregman, Rutger: Im Grunde gut: Eine neue Geschichte der Menschheit, Hamburg 2020.Scott, Hamilton: The Stolen Island: Searching for 'Ata, BWB Texts 2016.Tate, Merze, and Fidele Foy. “Slavery and Racism in South Pacific Annexations.” The Journal of Negro History 50, no. 1 (1965): 1–21.Parks, Shoshi: How ‘Blackbirders' Forced Tens of Thousands of Pacific Islanders Into Slavery After the Civil War, in: Smithsonian 05.12.2024........ !Neu! Jetzt hier His2Go unterstützen, Themen mitbestimmen und Quiz2Go mit Moderatorin Chiara erleben! https://plus.acast.com/s/his2go-geschichte-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alright...as you know Slavoj Žižek and Mladen Dolar are the founding members of the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis with Alenka Zupančič as part of their Troika, and this week we have our first episode of a new series we're doing on Mladen Dolar's upcoming book Rumors as part of the Theory Redux editions with Polity Press. A little birdie told me that Tim is busy moving house and we're talking the general rumorization of society from Socrates to Trump, Franz Kafka's the Trial, Lacan's ethology, JD Vance and his couch, Castaways, and Cindy Crawford. A lot of people are talking about it! Thanks to everyone for all of the support and apologies for the episode delay...rumors abound! SUPPORT THE PODCAST HERE - for more episodes, interviews, SHORT SESSIONS and our Discord! See You in Paris! Ž&...

St Peter’s Club Italian Cookie Contestants Andrea Carlson, Sista Felicia and Espresso Cart Barrista Bianca Giacalone From Castaways Livestream Audio Podcast Click Here- Video Podcast Click here- The Sip n Shop and Espresso Bar will be open at 4:30. The Cookie Contest Tickets To be A Judge go on sale at 6PM Contestants- Zina Saputo, … Continue reading St Peter’s Club Italian Cookie Contestants Andrea Carlson, Sista Felicia and Espresso Cart Barrista Bianca Giacalone From Castaways Livestream →

The book tells the story of the quest for Captain Grant of the Britannia. After finding a bottle cast into the ocean by the captain himself after the Britannia is shipwrecked, Lord and Lady Glenarvan of Scotland decide to launch a rescue expedition. The main difficulty is that the coordinates of the wreckage are mostly erased, and only the latitude (37 degrees) is known.Lord Glenarvan makes it his quest to find Grant; together with his wife, Grant's children and the crew of his yacht the Duncan they set off for South America. An unexpected passenger in the form of French geographer Jacques Paganel joins the search. They explore Patagonia, Tristan da Cunha Island, Amsterdam Island, Australia and New Zealand in their search for the castaways. (From Wikipedia.)This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The book tells the story of the quest for Captain Grant of the Britannia. After finding a bottle cast into the ocean by the captain himself after the Britannia is shipwrecked, Lord and Lady Glenarvan of Scotland decide to launch a rescue expedition. The main difficulty is that the coordinates of the wreckage are mostly erased, and only the latitude (37 degrees) is known.Lord Glenarvan makes it his quest to find Grant; together with his wife, Grant's children and the crew of his yacht the Duncan they set off for South America. An unexpected passenger in the form of French geographer Jacques Paganel joins the search. They explore Patagonia, Tristan da Cunha Island, Amsterdam Island, Australia and New Zealand in their search for the castaways. (From Wikipedia.)This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The book tells the story of the quest for Captain Grant of the Britannia. After finding a bottle cast into the ocean by the captain himself after the Britannia is shipwrecked, Lord and Lady Glenarvan of Scotland decide to launch a rescue expedition. The main difficulty is that the coordinates of the wreckage are mostly erased, and only the latitude (37 degrees) is known.Lord Glenarvan makes it his quest to find Grant; together with his wife, Grant's children and the crew of his yacht the Duncan they set off for South America. An unexpected passenger in the form of French geographer Jacques Paganel joins the search. They explore Patagonia, Tristan da Cunha Island, Amsterdam Island, Australia and New Zealand in their search for the castaways. (From Wikipedia.)This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The book tells the story of the quest for Captain Grant of the Britannia. After finding a bottle cast into the ocean by the captain himself after the Britannia is shipwrecked, Lord and Lady Glenarvan of Scotland decide to launch a rescue expedition. The main difficulty is that the coordinates of the wreckage are mostly erased, and only the latitude (37 degrees) is known.Lord Glenarvan makes it his quest to find Grant; together with his wife, Grant's children and the crew of his yacht the Duncan they set off for South America. An unexpected passenger in the form of French geographer Jacques Paganel joins the search. They explore Patagonia, Tristan da Cunha Island, Amsterdam Island, Australia and New Zealand in their search for the castaways. (From Wikipedia.)This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The book tells the story of the quest for Captain Grant of the Britannia. After finding a bottle cast into the ocean by the captain himself after the Britannia is shipwrecked, Lord and Lady Glenarvan of Scotland decide to launch a rescue expedition. The main difficulty is that the coordinates of the wreckage are mostly erased, and only the latitude (37 degrees) is known.Lord Glenarvan makes it his quest to find Grant; together with his wife, Grant's children and the crew of his yacht the Duncan they set off for South America. An unexpected passenger in the form of French geographer Jacques Paganel joins the search. They explore Patagonia, Tristan da Cunha Island, Amsterdam Island, Australia and New Zealand in their search for the castaways. (From Wikipedia.)This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The book tells the story of the quest for Captain Grant of the Britannia. After finding a bottle cast into the ocean by the captain himself after the Britannia is shipwrecked, Lord and Lady Glenarvan of Scotland decide to launch a rescue expedition. The main difficulty is that the coordinates of the wreckage are mostly erased, and only the latitude (37 degrees) is known.Lord Glenarvan makes it his quest to find Grant; together with his wife, Grant's children and the crew of his yacht the Duncan they set off for South America. An unexpected passenger in the form of French geographer Jacques Paganel joins the search. They explore Patagonia, Tristan da Cunha Island, Amsterdam Island, Australia and New Zealand in their search for the castaways. (From Wikipedia.)This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The book tells the story of the quest for Captain Grant of the Britannia. After finding a bottle cast into the ocean by the captain himself after the Britannia is shipwrecked, Lord and Lady Glenarvan of Scotland decide to launch a rescue expedition. The main difficulty is that the coordinates of the wreckage are mostly erased, and only the latitude (37 degrees) is known.Lord Glenarvan makes it his quest to find Grant; together with his wife, Grant's children and the crew of his yacht the Duncan they set off for South America. An unexpected passenger in the form of French geographer Jacques Paganel joins the search. They explore Patagonia, Tristan da Cunha Island, Amsterdam Island, Australia and New Zealand in their search for the castaways. (From Wikipedia.)This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The book tells the story of the quest for Captain Grant of the Britannia. After finding a bottle cast into the ocean by the captain himself after the Britannia is shipwrecked, Lord and Lady Glenarvan of Scotland decide to launch a rescue expedition. The main difficulty is that the coordinates of the wreckage are mostly erased, and only the latitude (37 degrees) is known.Lord Glenarvan makes it his quest to find Grant; together with his wife, Grant's children and the crew of his yacht the Duncan they set off for South America. An unexpected passenger in the form of French geographer Jacques Paganel joins the search. They explore Patagonia, Tristan da Cunha Island, Amsterdam Island, Australia and New Zealand in their search for the castaways. (From Wikipedia.)This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

A new season of #survivor is HERE!! Join Richie and I as we break down every episode each week. We'll highlight our favorite moments from the episode, rename the episode, and reveal who we think will go home next week! Dylan hit the streets of Hollywood and joined numerous former and current castaways to watch this episode with! Welcome to episode 4. Like and Subscribe!! #survivor #survivorcbs #survivor2024 #survivor47 #survivor47Episode4 #episode4 #realitytv #survivorreview #survivorpodcast #jeffprobst #bigbrother 0:00 - Welcome 0:32 - A Special Episode 3:22 - Teeny Feeling It 4:13 - A Shift At Yellow 5:42 - Blue Sue 7:24 - Sue Makes A Splash 10:33 - Rome's Full Court Press 12:12 - Andy Being Andy 14:44 - Immunity Challenge 18:04 - Classic Chicken Dilemma 19:11 - Rome's Ultimatum 20:05 - The Journey 22:15 - Everyone Tells Everyone 23:12 - Scrambling 24:46 - Tribal 25:59 - A Moment For Kishan 27:52 - Stock Up/Stock Down 30:13 - Who Goes Home Next? 31:31 - Survivor Press Conference 33:44 - Renaming The Episode 35:16 - Like And Subscribe!!!

Evan Cohen and Hembo debate if the Mets can be considered underdogs given their payroll and the fact that they've been the best team in baseball for several months. We play Sneaky Hembo Trivia and wonder if Yankees fans should be excited or nervous about their team right now. Multiple teams made QB changes this week and Evan hates the decision for one of them. We wrap up with Hembo trying to identify celebrities based on picture alone before getting rudely interrupted by Francisco Lindor...again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Segunda entrega de esta miniserie dedicada a rescatar singles de las valijas de Immediate Records, el sello fundado por Andrew Loog Oldham -manager de los Rolling Stones- en 1965.(Foto del podcast por Gered Mankowitz; PP Arnold)Playlist;(sintonía) CHARLES DICKENS “Our soul brother TH”CHARLES DICKENS “So much in love”CHRIS FARLOWE “The fool”CHRIS FARLOW “Think”VAN LENTON “You don’t care”THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN “The monkey time”THE STRANGELOVES “Cara-Lin”THE STRANGELOVES “(Roll on) Mississippi”THE McCOYS “Hang on Sloopy”THE McCOYS “Fever”BARBARA LYNN “You can’t buy my love”P.P. ARNOLD “Everything’s gonna be alright”LES FLEUR DE LYS “So come on”LES FLEUR DE LYS “Circles”THE POETS “Baby don’t you do it”JOHN MAYALL and THE BLUESBREAKERS “I’m your witchdoctor”TONY RIVERS and THE CASTAWAYS “The girl from Salt Lake City”APOSTOLIC INTERVENTION “(Tell me) have you ever seen me”P.P. ARNOLD “Life is but nothing”Escuchar audio

Welcome back, Escaping Reality fam! We're recapping Survivor S47 Episode 2 and it's surprisingly straightforward this week... We spend a lot of the episode at each tribe's camp, so we're mostly talking about what went down at each tribe's camp! shocking, I know. Between budding alliance foundations, searching for idols and beware advantages, and ample set up for this week's vote-out, we cover a lot of ground in the first half of the episode. Throw in an amazing challenge and a particularly memorable exchange with Jeff and Rachel, and we're pretty satisfied with how this season seems to be progressing so far. Plus, a classic Vibe checking of Jeff & picking our Castaways of the Week! If you're looking for a specific segment, here's a breakdown: Intro & Initial Thoughts (0:00-5:00) Episode Recap (5:00 - 43:34) Jeff Needs a Vibe Check (43:34 - 46:28) Castaway of the Week (46:28 - 49:26) Rapid Fire & Outro (49:26 - end) Be sure to give us a follow on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@EscapingRealityPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and on TikTok ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@EscapingRealityPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --  If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe & leave us a rating/review on Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify! Make sure to tell your friends about the pod so they can join you (and us) on our journey through reality competition shows. As always, thanks for listening & thanks for Escaping Reality with us!

We're back for another season of Survivor, baby! Jeff is here, and so is Jon Lovett, for one glorious and perfect episode. Anna, Stacey, and Agie break down the highs and lows as well as the the changes, the adaptations, and the shifts. Let's get into it together. We think season 47 is going to be a good one, y'all! If you're looking for a specific segment, here's a breakdown: Intro (0:00-2:05) One Minute Thoughts (2:05-7:29) Episodes Recap (7:29-54:59) Jeff Needs a Vibe Check (54:59-58:47) Rapid Fire (58:47-1:01:17) Castaway of the Week (1:01:17-1:05:02) 4 Castaways to Watch (1:05:02-1:10:05) Outro (1:10:05-end) Be sure to give us a follow on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@EscapingRealityPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and on Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@EscRealityPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --  If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe & leave us a rating/review on Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify! Make sure to tell your friends about the pod so they can join you (and us) on our journey through reality competition shows. As always, thanks for listening & thanks for Escaping Reality with us!

                                         BLACK SHIRT MIXTAPE                                             **Episode 87**   Join host Jesse Karassik aka @heyyyyy_jesse as he takes you on a 2 hour sonic journey playing mixtape inspired tracks in a variety of genres- all for your listening (dis)pleasure!   Tracklisting: 1. Pioneer To the Falls...Interpol 2. Coincidence...Sabrina Carpenter 3. All A Mystery...Phantogram 4. Half Priced Books...Remy Reilly 5. My Kink Is Karma...Chappell Roan 6. Knowitall...Phantom Planet 7. Myxomatosis...Radiohead 8. What a Fool Believes...sELF 9. Once Around The Block...Badly Drawn Boy 10. Can't Hardly Wait...The Replacements 11. Friends of Friends...Abbreviations  12. Fight The Power...Public Enemy 13. Everybody Have Fun Tonight...Wang Chung 14. Waterfalls...Sault 15. I Won...The Sundays 16. Paper Shoes...Incubus 17. did i tell you that i miss you...adore 18. This Modern Love...Bloc Party 19. Castaways...Vicious Vicious 20. Angel In The Snow...Elliott Smith 21. In The Modern World...Fontaines D.C. 22. High...The Cure 23. Under The Milkyway...Grant Lee Phillips 24. Rocket...Smashing Pumpkins  

In this exciting season premiere of Survivor Season 47, Frank and Shirley dive deep into the first episode, “One Glorious and Perfect Episode.” The duo discusses castaways' first impressions, the unexpected early exit of a fan-favorite contestant, and the intense challenges that kicked off the season. They break down how social dynamics started to shape the game early on and highlight the dramatic elimination, where alliances and strategic moves set the tone for what's sure to be a thrilling season. 00:00 - Introduction: Meet the Castaways 02:05 - Challenge Breakdown: Muddy Nets and Puzzle Pieces 06:00 - Game Strategy: First Impressions of Players 10:40 - Bonding and Alliances Forming Early On 15:30 - The Social Struggles of Andy 20:15 - Emotional Tribal Council: John vs. Andy 27:00 - Jeff's No-Nonsense Approach 32:45 - Predictions for Next Week: Who's at Risk? Survivor is back with a bang: The first episode was packed with strategic gameplay and emotional highs and lows. Fan-favorite John was eliminated early, which shocked both fans and cast members. Challenges proved tough: Physical strength and puzzle-solving were equally tested, with Yellow Tribe making a huge comeback. Andy struggled with social dynamics, hinting at emotional battles that may impact his game. Strategic alliances: Castaways began forming bonds, with some smart early-game moves that could shift the game later on. “We all have bad moments; sometimes they happen on the beaches of Fiji.” – John “When there's an easy target, you wonder who's the unnatural target.” – Frank “I thought I'd be good. Turns out, I'm not.” – Andy during a tough moment If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to the Outlast podcast on your favorite platform! Don't forget to leave a review and share this episode with your friends using the hashtag #OutlastPod on social media. Let us know your thoughts on the first episode and who you think will win this season! For all news and updates, visit GeekFreaksPodcast.com.. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61566433282237 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theoutlastpodcast/ Patreon: patreon.com/GeekFreakspodcast Have a question or topic you'd like us to cover in future episodes? Send us your thoughts, and we'll be sure to discuss them in our next episode. Your question might just be featured! Survivor Season 47, Survivor episode recap, Survivor challenges, Survivor alliances, Survivor strategy, Reality TV, Tribal council, Castaway elimination, Survivor fandom, Outlast podcast Timestamps and Topics:Key Takeaways:Memorable Quotes:Call to Action:Links and Resources:Follow Us:Listener Questions:Apple Podcast Tags: --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/outlast-podcast/support

Immediate Records, disquera británica fundada por Andrew Loog Oldham a los 21 años. Productor, compositor y representante, recordado especialmente como manager de los Rolling Stones, todo un visionario a la hora de moverse en el negocio de la música. Como capo de esta discográfica licenció en Inglaterra muchos lanzamientos de artistas de EEUU, y editó a numerosos nombres británicos vinculados al folk, el blues, el soul o la psicodelia. Te dejamos con un primer asalto a sus valijas seleccionando singles lanzados entre 1965 y 1967.Playlist;(sintonía) GREGORY PHILLIPS “That’s the one”SMALL FACES “Here comes the Nice”THE FIFTH AVENUE “The Bells of Rhymney”THE MASTERMINDS “She belongs to me”NICO “I’m not saying”THE POETS “Call again”MICK SOFTLEY “She’s my girl”THE MOCKINGBIRDS “You stole my love”CHRIS FARLOWE “Out of time”CHRIS FARLOWE “Ride on baby”TWICE AS MUCH “Sittin’ in a fence”TWICE AS MUCH “Step out of the line”JOEY VINE “Down and out”LES FLEUR DE LYS “Moondreams”THE McCOYS “Sorrow”GOLDIE “Going back”TONY RIVERS and THE CASTAWAYS “Girl don’t tell me”THE TURTLES “You baby”Escuchar audio

The world needs a lot of things, but what it really needs is a show from Dylan. As a Millennial, he feels the world needs more of him. He will even add a third sentence in the description revealing the need for him. Today, Richie joins the show to discuss the upcoming #Survivor47, Big Brother, and Cam Skattebo!!#survivor #survivorreview #survivorcast #survivorcbs #jeffprobst #collegefootball #arizonastate #survivordraft #survivor50 #survivor2024 0:00 - Intro/Fall Is Here 1:38 - Big Brother 5:38 - Preparing For Survivor 47 6:50.- Do We Like Cast Bio's? 9:12 - A Moment For Mike 9:54 - Who Will Go Home First? 12:09 - Fan Favorite Prediction 15:01 - Survivor 47 Winner Is... 17:38 - One Idea For Survivor 21:32 - Survivor 50 Draft (37-46) 33:06 - Honorable Mentions 34:16 - 24 Castaways??? 34:56 - Arizona State Football Talk 36:58 - Like And Subscribe!!!

Today's transcript⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ We depend on donations from exceptional listeners like you. To donate, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Daily Rosary Meditations is now an App, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here for more info.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ To find out more about The Movement and enroll: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.schooloffaith.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Prayer requests⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe by email⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download our app⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Donate⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Description Returning guest John Darowski joins Joe to talk about the classic television show Gilligan’s Island. We’re discussing two episodes, one in which a popular boy band appears on the island looking for a quiet place, and in the other … Continue reading →

Welcome back to Talks To-Go! In this episode, Jill and George talk about part one of their European vacation to London Town which included afternoon tea, The Eras Tour, birthday celebrations, West End shows, broken tires, and much, much more. No reservations needed. All TALKS are TO-GO.   Instagram: @talkstogopodcast TikTok: @talkstogopod Jill: @jillmorgannnn George: @georgealanruthvo

Co-authors of LOST: Back to the Island, Emily St. James (Yellowjackets) & Noel Murray (The New York Times, The A.V. Club), rank the 7 best films ever made about CASTAWAYS!

Text Abby and AlanAbby and Alan discuss maritime folklore, ghost ships, pirates and so much more. lunaticsproject.comGet Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Listen to the paranormal playlist I curate for Vurbl, updated weekly! Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.SourcesNPR article by Andy Bowers: We've Found the Lost City of Atlantis Again.History.com article by the site's editors: Bermuda TriangleHistory.com article on AtlantisAn article from Naval History and Heritage Command: The Loss of Flight 19DiscoverMagazine.com article by Tree Meinch: How Deep is the Mariana Trench and what have we discovered in its depths?Ars Technica article by Nate Anderson: Release the Kraken! 2,000 years of Tall Tales and a Smattering of Truth2009 History.com article on the Titanic: https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/titanicAn article from thecollector.com 5 of the most famous shipwrecks from the ancient world: https://www.thecollector.com/ancient-famous-shipwrecks/New Zealand Maritime Museum article, Top 20 Sailing Superstitions Thank you to April Brenker for research help, as always! Support the Show.

On today's episode, I talk to musician Colin Meloy. Originally from Helena, Montana, Colin played in a few bands in high school and college before eventually forming The Decemberists in Portland, Oregon at the turn of the century. They released their first album, Castaways and Cutouts a few years later on Kill Rock Stars, who they continued to work with until eventually signing with Capitol Records. Since 2002, the band has released nine albums, and in addition, Colin has recorded a number of solo cover albums, starting with Colin Meloy Sings Morrissey almost two decades ago. The Decemberists latest album, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again, was just released in mid-June on YABB Records, and like everything else the band does, it's great! This is the website for Beginnings, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, follow me on Twitter. Check out my free philosophy Substack where I write essays every couple months here and my old casiopop band's lost album here! And the comedy podcast I do with my wife Naomi Couples Therapy can be found here! Theme song by the fantastic Savoir Adore! Second theme by the brilliant Mike Pace! Closing theme by the delightful Gregory Brothers! Podcast art by the inimitable Beano Gee!  

GloucesterCast with Eric Lorden From Passports 7/24/24 Taped at Castaways Link to Join Here-www.facebook.com/goodmorninggloucester Audio Podcast Click Here- Video Podcast Click here-

Charles H. Barnard, captain of the American sealing brig Nanina, had only the best of intentions. His aim was to ensure the survival of the people under his care. On June 11, 1813, Barnard and four other volunteers disembarked the anchored Nanina, climbed into a small boat, and sailed about 10 miles from New Island to Beaver Island, both part of the Falkland Islands archipelago in the South Atlantic. Armed with knives, clubs, lances, and guns, and with the assistance of Barnard's trusty dog, Cent, the five men planned to kill birds and hogs and take them back to the Americans and British who remained on the Nanina and were fast running out of fresh provisions. It was a mission of mercy.The hunt went well, and within a few days the boat was filled to the gunwales with the bloody carcasses of slain animals. But when the men sailed back to New Island late on June 14, they were greeted with an alarming sight. The Nanina was gone. Stunned, confused, and angry, the men hauled the boat up onto the beach and, according to Barnard, “awaited the approach of daylight in the most impatient and tormenting anxiety.” Sleeping fitfully in the cold night air, they hoped that in the morning light they would find a letter telling them why the Nanina had left, and when it was coming back.A frantic search at dawn turned up nothing: no note either in a bottle or hung conspicuously from a piece of wood or a boulder. They saw only sand, rocks, scrubby vegetation, and birds in the distance, walking on the beach or flying overhead.The events leading up to this abandonment, and what happened afterward, produce a story with so many unlikely threads, and a cast including such exceptionally colorful characters, that one might think that it sprang from the pen of a fiction writer with an overactive imagination. And yet, the story is true. It is a tale involving a shipwreck, British and Americans meeting under the most stressful circumstances in a time of war, kindness and compassion, drunkenness, the birth of a child, treachery, greed, lying, a hostile takeover, stellar leadership, ingenuity, severe privation, the great value of a good dog, perseverance, endurance, threats, bullying, banishment, a perilous thousand-mile open-ocean journey in a 17.5-foot boat, an improbable rescue mission in a rickety ship, and legal battles over a dubious and disgraceful wartime prize. And it all started with two ships—one American, the other British—sailing to the Falklands from different directions.To explore this story is today's guest, Eric Dolan, author of Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World.”

Bonus Episode #38 of BGMania: A Video Game Music Podcast. Today on the show, Bryan and Sean from RPGera are back to discuss the latest expansion for World of Warcraft Classic... going all the way back to 2010 for Cataclysm! Email the show at bgmaniapodcast@gmail.com with requests for upcoming episodes, questions, feedback, comments, concerns, or whatever you want! Special thanks to our Executive Producers: Jexak & Xancu. EPISODE PLAYLIST AND CREDITS The Shattering from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm [Russell Brower, Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford, Neal Acree & David Arkenstone, 2010] Hyjal from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm [Russell Brower, Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford, Neal Acree & David Arkenstone, 2010] Depths of Vashj'ir from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm [Derek Duke & David Arkenstone, 2010] Thaurissan's Reach from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm [Russell Brower, 2010] Tempest's Wake from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm [Glenn Stafford, 2010] Restoring the Balance from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm [Russell Brower, 2010] Call of the Elements from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm [David Arkenstone, 2010] Grim Batol from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm [Russell Brower, Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford, Neal Acree & David Arkenstone, 2010] Druids of the Flame from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm [Russell Brower, Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford, Neal Acree & David Arkenstone, 2010] Twilight's Hammer from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm [Russell Brower, Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford, Neal Acree & David Arkenstone, 2010] Orgrimmar from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm [Russell Brower, Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford, Neal Acree & David Arkenstone, 2010] Castaways from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm [Derek Duke, 2010] Curse of the Worgen from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm [Russell Brower, 2010] Defenders of Azeroth from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm [Neal Acree & Glenn Stafford, 2010] SUPPORT US Patreon: https://patreon.com/rpgera CONTACT US Website: https://rpgera.com Discord: https://discord.gg/cC73Heu Twitch: https://twitch.tv/therpgera Twitter: https://twitter.com/OriginalLDG Instagram: https://instagram.com/bryan.ldg/ Facebook: https://facebook.com/leveldowngaming RPGERA PODCAST NETWORK Very Good Music: A VGM Podcast The Movie Bar

289 - "All I did was to pull him out by the seat of his trousers . . . (and) he called me a hero! . . . I departed in a blaze of glory." Tuck in for the fun of this lighthearted tale from the stepson of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Today we dive into the little-known true story of American castaways abandoned on the Falkland Islands during the War of 1812 ― a tale of treachery, shipwreck, isolation and a desperate struggle for survival.In this fascinating episode, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolan joins Don to explore this wild encounter between an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig and a British warship in the desolate Falklands, all while the two nations remained at war. Fraught with misunderstandings and mistrust, this bizarre incident left three British sailors and two Americans adrift for eighteen months, and is the subject of Eric's new book Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World.Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here.

Happy Friday Creek Talkers!

Friend of The Progrum Max Olson has written a piece about the former players of CU and where they are now.

We're back with our recap of Survivor 46 Episode 9! We're talking idol usage (or lack thereof), the ongoing battle for a "move", and whether or not we would ever throw a challenge to get out a challenge beast. Plus we share our feelings on all this "spicy Jeff" talk. After vibe checking the man for over 3 years, we feel pretty equipped to have this convo. Plus we have our usual vibe checks for Jeff, Castaways of the Weeks, and Rapid Fires. Be sure to give us a follow on Instagram @EscapingRealityPod and on Twitter @EscRealityPod --  If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe & leave us a rating/review on Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify! Make sure to tell your friends about the pod so they can join you (and us) on our journey through reality competition shows. As always, thanks for listening & thanks for Escaping Reality with us!

Cruise passengers were left in Africa after their excursion ran late and didn't get them back in time.

When we discovered she was interrogating Taliban  at an undisclosed location, we had to have her back on the cast. From second helpings of Naked & Afraid to her extensive journey with psychedelics as a healing medium, no punches were pulled on this one. Ladies and Gentlemen, Kerra Bennett is back!  Previous Episode #49Insta: https://www.instagram.com/k.err.a/

The crew makes a magical new friend after the portal spits their submarine out across the ocean. Mingus must use his sign language skills to befriend the strange creature and escape from the sonic booms of a deep sea drilling rig! Want more kids podcasts for the whole family? Grown-ups, subscribe to Starglow+ here Learn more about Starglow Media here Follow Starglow on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

On this week's episode of the Massively OP Podcast, Bree and Justin talk about Cataclysm Classic's beta testing, Dune Awakening's media blitz, Camelot Unchained's lofty plans, New World's paused season, Albion Online's European conquest, and a rant or two about early access. It's the Massively OP Podcast, an action-packed hour of news, tales, opinions, and gamer emails! And remember, if you'd like to send in your question to the show, use this link. Show notes: Intro Adventures in MMOs: ESO, LOTRO, SWG, CoH News: Camelot Unchained hopes to launch next year News: Cataclysm Classic goes into beta testing, mystery patch to be revealed News: Dune Awakening is waking up News: New World hits a hard pause on its next season News: Albion Online is coming to Europe but not everyone's happy about it Mailbag: What do we think about BitCraft? Mailbag: What do we think about early access? Outro Other info: Podcast theme: "Castaways" from World of Warcraft Your show hosts: Justin and Bree Listen to Massively OP Podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Player FM, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Amazon, and Spotify Follow Massively Overpowered: Website, Twitter, Facebook, Twitch If you're having problems seeing or using the web player, please check your flashblock or scriptblock setting.

Episode 171 looks at "Hey Jude", the White Album, and the career of the Beatles from August 1967 through November 1968. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifty-seven-minute bonus episode available, on "I Love You" by People!. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata Not really an error, but at one point I refer to Ornette Coleman as a saxophonist. While he was, he plays trumpet on the track that is excerpted after that. Resources No Mixcloud this week due to the number of songs by the Beatles. I have read literally dozens of books on the Beatles, and used bits of information from many of them. All my Beatles episodes refer to: The Complete Beatles Chronicle by Mark Lewisohn, All The Songs: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Release by Jean-Michel Guesdon, And The Band Begins To Play: The Definitive Guide To The Songs of The Beatles by Steve Lambley, The Beatles By Ear by Kevin Moore, Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald, and The Beatles Anthology. For this episode, I also referred to Last Interview by David Sheff, a longform interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono from shortly before Lennon's death; Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, an authorised biography of Paul McCartney; and Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey. This time I also used Steve Turner's The Beatles: The Stories Behind the Songs 1967-1970. I referred to Philip Norman's biographies of John Lennon, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney, to Graeme Thomson's biography of George Harrison, Take a Sad Song by James Campion, Yoko Ono: An Artful Life by Donald Brackett, Those Were the Days 2.0 by Stephan Granados, and Sound Pictures by Kenneth Womack. Sadly the only way to get the single mix of “Hey Jude” is on this ludicrously-expensive out-of-print box set, but a remixed stereo mix is easily available on the new reissue of the 1967-70 compilation. The original mixes of the White Album are also, shockingly, out of print, but this 2018 remix is available for the moment. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, a quick note -- this episode deals, among other topics, with child abandonment, spousal neglect, suicide attempts, miscarriage, rape accusations, and heroin addiction. If any of those topics are likely to upset you, you might want to check the transcript rather than listening to this episode. It also, for once, contains a short excerpt of an expletive, but given that that expletive in that context has been regularly played on daytime radio without complaint for over fifty years, I suspect it can be excused. The use of mantra meditation is something that exists across religions, and which appears to have been independently invented multiple times, in multiple cultures. In the Western culture to which most of my listeners belong, it is now best known as an aspect of what is known as "mindfulness", a secularised version of Buddhism which aims to provide adherents with the benefits of the teachings of the Buddha but without the cosmology to which they are attached. But it turns up in almost every religious tradition I know of in one form or another. The idea of mantra meditation is a very simple one, and one that even has some basis in science. There is a mathematical principle in neurology and information science called the free energy principle which says our brains are wired to try to minimise how surprised we are --  our brain is constantly making predictions about the world, and then looking at the results from our senses to see if they match. If they do, that's great, and the brain will happily move on to its next prediction. If they don't, the brain has to update its model of the world to match the new information, make new predictions, and see if those new predictions are a better match. Every person has a different mental model of the world, and none of them match reality, but every brain tries to get as close as possible. This updating of the model to match the new information is called "thinking", and it uses up energy, and our bodies and brains have evolved to conserve energy as much as possible. This means that for many people, most of the time, thinking is unpleasant, and indeed much of the time that people have spent thinking, they've been thinking about how to stop themselves having to do it at all, and when they have managed to stop thinking, however briefly, they've experienced great bliss. Many more or less effective technologies have been created to bring about a more minimal-energy state, including alcohol, heroin, and barbituates, but many of these have unwanted side-effects, such as death, which people also tend to want to avoid, and so people have often turned to another technology. It turns out that for many people, they can avoid thinking by simply thinking about something that is utterly predictable. If they minimise the amount of sensory input, and concentrate on something that they can predict exactly, eventually they can turn off their mind, relax, and float downstream, without dying. One easy way to do this is to close your eyes, so you can't see anything, make your breath as regular as possible, and then concentrate on a sound that repeats over and over.  If you repeat a single phrase or word a few hundred times, that regular repetition eventually causes your mind to stop having to keep track of the world, and experience a peace that is, by all accounts, unlike any other experience. What word or phrase that is can depend very much on the tradition. In Transcendental Meditation, each person has their own individual phrase. In the Catholicism in which George Harrison and Paul McCartney were raised, popular phrases for this are "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner" or "Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen." In some branches of Buddhism, a popular mantra is "_NAMU MYŌHŌ RENGE KYŌ_". In the Hinduism to which George Harrison later converted, you can use "Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare", "Om Namo Bhagavate Vāsudevāya" or "Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha". Those last two start with the syllable "Om", and indeed some people prefer to just use that syllable, repeating a single syllable over and over again until they reach a state of transcendence. [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Jude" ("na na na na na na na")] We don't know much about how the Beatles first discovered Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, except that it was thanks to Pattie Boyd, George Harrison's then-wife. Unfortunately, her memory of how she first became involved in the Maharishi's Spiritual Regeneration Movement, as described in her autobiography, doesn't fully line up with other known facts. She talks about reading about the Maharishi in the paper with her friend Marie-Lise while George was away on tour, but she also places the date that this happened in February 1967, several months after the Beatles had stopped touring forever. We'll be seeing a lot more of these timing discrepancies as this story progresses, and people's memories increasingly don't match the events that happened to them. Either way, it's clear that Pattie became involved in the Spiritual Regeneration Movement a good length of time before her husband did. She got him to go along with her to one of the Maharishi's lectures, after she had already been converted to the practice of Transcendental Meditation, and they brought along John, Paul, and their partners (Ringo's wife Maureen had just given birth, so they didn't come). As we heard back in episode one hundred and fifty, that lecture was impressive enough that the group, plus their wives and girlfriends (with the exception of Maureen Starkey) and Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, all went on a meditation retreat with the Maharishi at a holiday camp in Bangor, and it was there that they learned that Brian Epstein had been found dead. The death of the man who had guided the group's career could not have come at a worse time for the band's stability.  The group had only recorded one song in the preceding two months -- Paul's "Your Mother Should Know" -- and had basically been running on fumes since completing recording of Sgt Pepper many months earlier. John's drug intake had increased to the point that he was barely functional -- although with the enthusiasm of the newly converted he had decided to swear off LSD at the Maharishi's urging -- and his marriage was falling apart. Similarly, Paul McCartney's relationship with Jane Asher was in a bad state, though both men were trying to repair their damaged relationships, while both George and Ringo were having doubts about the band that had made them famous. In George's case, he was feeling marginalised by John and Paul, his songs ignored or paid cursory attention, and there was less for him to do on the records as the group moved away from making guitar-based rock and roll music into the stranger areas of psychedelia. And Ringo, whose main memory of the recording of Sgt Pepper was of learning to play chess while the others went through the extensive overdubs that characterised that album, was starting to feel like his playing was deteriorating, and that as the only non-writer in the band he was on the outside to an extent. On top of that, the group were in the middle of a major plan to restructure their business. As part of their contract renegotiations with EMI at the beginning of 1967, it had been agreed that they would receive two million pounds -- roughly fifteen million pounds in today's money -- in unpaid royalties as a lump sum. If that had been paid to them as individuals, or through the company they owned, the Beatles Ltd, they would have had to pay the full top rate of tax on it, which as George had complained the previous year was over ninety-five percent. (In fact, he'd been slightly exaggerating the generosity of the UK tax system to the rich, as at that point the top rate of income tax was somewhere around ninety-seven and a half percent). But happily for them, a couple of years earlier the UK had restructured its tax laws and introduced a corporation tax, which meant that the profits of corporations were no longer taxed at the same high rate as income. So a new company had been set up, The Beatles & Co, and all the group's non-songwriting income was paid into the company. Each Beatle owned five percent of the company, and the other eighty percent was owned by a new partnership, a corporation that was soon renamed Apple Corps -- a name inspired by a painting that McCartney had liked by the artist Rene Magritte. In the early stages of Apple, it was very entangled with Nems, the company that was owned by Brian and Clive Epstein, and which was in the process of being sold to Robert Stigwood, though that sale fell through after Brian's death. The first part of Apple, Apple Publishing, had been set up in the summer of 1967, and was run by Terry Doran, a friend of Epstein's who ran a motor dealership -- most of the Apple divisions would be run by friends of the group rather than by people with experience in the industries in question. As Apple was set up during the point that Stigwood was getting involved with NEMS, Apple Publishing's initial offices were in the same building with, and shared staff with, two publishing companies that Stigwood owned, Dratleaf Music, who published Cream's songs, and Abigail Music, the Bee Gees' publishers. And indeed the first two songs published by Apple were copyrights that were gifted to the company by Stigwood -- "Listen to the Sky", a B-side by an obscure band called Sands: [Excerpt: Sands, "Listen to the Sky"] And "Outside Woman Blues", an arrangement by Eric Clapton of an old blues song by Blind Joe Reynolds, which Cream had copyrighted separately and released on Disraeli Gears: [Excerpt: Cream, "Outside Woman Blues"] But Apple soon started signing outside songwriters -- once Mike Berry, a member of Apple Publishing's staff, had sat McCartney down and explained to him what music publishing actually was, something he had never actually understood even though he'd been a songwriter for five years. Those songwriters, given that this was 1967, were often also performers, and as Apple Records had not yet been set up, Apple would try to arrange recording contracts for them with other labels. They started with a group called Focal Point, who got signed by badgering Paul McCartney to listen to their songs until he gave them Doran's phone number to shut them up: [Excerpt: Focal Point, "Sycamore Sid"] But the big early hope for Apple Publishing was a songwriter called George Alexander. Alexander's birth name had been Alexander Young, and he was the brother of George Young, who was a member of the Australian beat group The Easybeats, who'd had a hit with "Friday on My Mind": [Excerpt: The Easybeats, "Friday on My Mind"] His younger brothers Malcolm and Angus would go on to have a few hits themselves, but AC/DC wouldn't be formed for another five years. Terry Doran thought that Alexander should be a member of a band, because bands were more popular than solo artists at the time, and so he was placed with three former members of Tony Rivers and the Castaways, a Beach Boys soundalike group that had had some minor success. John Lennon suggested that the group be named Grapefruit, after a book he was reading by a conceptual artist of his acquaintance named Yoko Ono, and as Doran was making arrangements with Terry Melcher for a reciprocal publishing deal by which Melcher's American company would publish Apple songs in the US while Apple published songs from Melcher's company in the UK, it made sense for Melcher to also produce Grapefruit's first single, "Dear Delilah": [Excerpt: Grapefruit, "Dear Delilah"] That made number twenty-one in the UK when it came out in early 1968, on the back of publicity about Grapefruit's connection with the Beatles, but future singles by the band were much less successful, and like several other acts involved with Apple, they found that they were more hampered by the Beatles connection than helped. A few other people were signed to Apple Publishing early on, of whom the most notable was Jackie Lomax. Lomax had been a member of a minor Merseybeat group, the Undertakers, and after they had split up, he'd been signed by Brian Epstein with a new group, the Lomax Alliance, who had released one single, "Try as You May": [Excerpt: The Lomax Alliance, "Try As You May"] After Epstein's death, Lomax had plans to join another band, being formed by another Merseybeat musician, Chris Curtis, the former drummer of the Searchers. But after going to the Beatles to talk with them about them helping the new group financially, Lomax was persuaded by John Lennon to go solo instead. He may later have regretted that decision, as by early 1968 the people that Curtis had recruited for his new band had ditched him and were making a name for themselves as Deep Purple. Lomax recorded one solo single with funding from Stigwood, a cover version of a song by an obscure singer-songwriter, Jake Holmes, "Genuine Imitation Life": [Excerpt: Jackie Lomax, "Genuine Imitation Life"] But he was also signed to Apple Publishing as a songwriter. The Beatles had only just started laying out plans for Apple when Epstein died, and other than the publishing company one of the few things they'd agreed on was that they were going to have a film company, which was to be run by Denis O'Dell, who had been an associate producer on A Hard Day's Night and on How I Won The War, the Richard Lester film Lennon had recently starred in. A few days after Epstein's death, they had a meeting, in which they agreed that the band needed to move forward quickly if they were going to recover from Epstein's death. They had originally been planning on going to India with the Maharishi to study meditation, but they decided to put that off until the new year, and to press forward with a film project Paul had been talking about, to be titled Magical Mystery Tour. And so, on the fifth of September 1967, they went back into the recording studio and started work on a song of John's that was earmarked for the film, "I am the Walrus": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] Magical Mystery Tour, the film, has a mixed reputation which we will talk about shortly, but one defence that Paul McCartney has always made of it is that it's the only place where you can see the Beatles performing "I am the Walrus". While the song was eventually relegated to a B-side, it's possibly the finest B-side of the Beatles' career, and one of the best tracks the group ever made. As with many of Lennon's songs from this period, the song was a collage of many different elements pulled from his environment and surroundings, and turned into something that was rather more than the sum of its parts. For its musical inspiration, Lennon pulled from, of all things, a police siren going past his house. (For those who are unfamiliar with what old British police sirens sounded like, as opposed to the ones in use for most of my lifetime or in other countries, here's a recording of one): [Excerpt: British police siren ca 1968] That inspired Lennon to write a snatch of lyric to go with the sound of the siren, starting "Mister city policeman sitting pretty". He had two other song fragments, one about sitting in the garden, and one about sitting on a cornflake, and he told Hunter Davies, who was doing interviews for his authorised biography of the group, “I don't know how it will all end up. Perhaps they'll turn out to be different parts of the same song.” But the final element that made these three disparate sections into a song was a letter that came from Stephen Bayley, a pupil at Lennon's old school Quarry Bank, who told him that the teachers at the school -- who Lennon always thought of as having suppressed his creativity -- were now analysing Beatles lyrics in their lessons. Lennon decided to come up with some nonsense that they couldn't analyse -- though as nonsensical as the finished song is, there's an underlying anger to a lot of it that possibly comes from Lennon thinking of his school experiences. And so Lennon asked his old schoolfriend Pete Shotton to remind him of a disgusting playground chant that kids used to sing in schools in the North West of England (and which they still sang with very minor variations at my own school decades later -- childhood folklore has a remarkably long life). That rhyme went: Yellow matter custard, green snot pie All mixed up with a dead dog's eye Slap it on a butty, nice and thick, And drink it down with a cup of cold sick Lennon combined some parts of this with half-remembered fragments of Lewis Carrol's The Walrus and the Carpenter, and with some punning references to things that were going on in his own life and those of his friends -- though it's difficult to know exactly which of the stories attached to some of the more incomprehensible bits of the lyrics are accurate. The story that the line "I am the eggman" is about a sexual proclivity of Eric Burdon of the Animals seems plausible, while the contention by some that the phrase "semolina pilchard" is a reference to Sgt Pilcher, the corrupt policeman who had arrested three of the Rolling Stones, and would later arrest Lennon, on drugs charges, seems less likely. The track is a masterpiece of production, but the release of the basic take on Anthology 2 in 1996 showed that the underlying performance, before George Martin worked his magic with the overdubs, is still a remarkable piece of work: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus (Anthology 2 version)"] But Martin's arrangement and production turned the track from a merely very good track into a masterpiece. The string arrangement, very much in the same mould as that for "Strawberry Fields Forever" but giving a very different effect with its harsh cello glissandi, is the kind of thing one expects from Martin, but there's also the chanting of the Mike Sammes Singers, who were more normally booked for sessions like Englebert Humperdinck's "The Last Waltz": [Excerpt: Engelbert Humperdinck, "The Last Waltz"] But here were instead asked to imitate the sound of the strings, make grunting noises, and generally go very far out of their normal comfort zone: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] But the most fascinating piece of production in the entire track is an idea that seems to have been inspired by people like John Cage -- a live feed of a radio being tuned was played into the mono mix from about the halfway point, and whatever was on the radio at the time was captured: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] This is also why for many decades it was impossible to have a true stereo mix of the track -- the radio part was mixed directly into the mono mix, and it wasn't until the 1990s that someone thought to track down a copy of the original radio broadcasts and recreate the process. In one of those bits of synchronicity that happen more often than you would think when you're creating aleatory art, and which are why that kind of process can be so appealing, one bit of dialogue from the broadcast of King Lear that was on the radio as the mixing was happening was *perfectly* timed: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] After completing work on the basic track for "I am the Walrus", the group worked on two more songs for the film, George's "Blue Jay Way" and a group-composed twelve-bar blues instrumental called "Flying", before starting production. Magical Mystery Tour, as an idea, was inspired in equal parts by Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, the collective of people we talked about in the episode on the Grateful Dead who travelled across the US extolling the virtues of psychedelic drugs, and by mystery tours, a British working-class tradition that has rather fallen out of fashion in the intervening decades. A mystery tour would generally be put on by a coach-hire company, and would be a day trip to an unannounced location -- though the location would in fact be very predictable, and would be a seaside town within a couple of hours' drive of its starting point. In the case of the ones the Beatles remembered from their own childhoods, this would be to a coastal town in Lancashire or Wales, like Blackpool, Rhyl, or Prestatyn. A coachload of people would pay to be driven to this random location, get very drunk and have a singsong on the bus, and spend a day wherever they were taken. McCartney's plan was simple -- they would gather a group of passengers and replicate this experience over the course of several days, and film whatever went on, but intersperse that with more planned out sketches and musical numbers. For this reason, along with the Beatles and their associates, the cast included some actors found through Spotlight and some of the group's favourite performers, like the comedian Nat Jackley (whose comedy sequence directed by John was cut from the final film) and the surrealist poet/singer/comedian Ivor Cutler: [Excerpt: Ivor Cutler, "I'm Going in a Field"] The film also featured an appearance by a new band who would go on to have great success over the next year, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. They had recorded their first single in Abbey Road at the same time as the Beatles were recording Revolver, but rather than being progressive psychedelic rock, it had been a remake of a 1920s novelty song: [Excerpt: The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, "My Brother Makes the Noises For the Talkies"] Their performance in Magical Mystery Tour was very different though -- they played a fifties rock pastiche written by band leaders Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes while a stripper took off her clothes. While several other musical sequences were recorded for the film, including one by the band Traffic and one by Cutler, other than the Beatles tracks only the Bonzos' song made it into the finished film: [Excerpt: The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, "Death Cab for Cutie"] That song, thirty years later, would give its name to a prominent American alternative rock band. Incidentally the same night that Magical Mystery Tour was first broadcast was also the night that the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band first appeared on a TV show, Do Not Adjust Your Set, which featured three future members of the Monty Python troupe -- Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones. Over the years the careers of the Bonzos, the Pythons, and the Beatles would become increasingly intertwined, with George Harrison in particular striking up strong friendships and working relationships with Bonzos Neil Innes and "Legs" Larry Smith. The filming of Magical Mystery Tour went about as well as one might expect from a film made by four directors, none of whom had any previous filmmaking experience, and none of whom had any business knowledge. The Beatles were used to just turning up and having things magically done for them by other people, and had no real idea of the infrastructure challenges that making a film, even a low-budget one, actually presents, and ended up causing a great deal of stress to almost everyone involved. The completed film was shown on TV on Boxing Day 1967 to general confusion and bemusement. It didn't help that it was originally broadcast in black and white, and so for example the scene showing shifting landscapes (outtake footage from Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, tinted various psychedelic colours) over the "Flying" music, just looked like grey fuzz. But also, it just wasn't what people were expecting from a Beatles film. This was a ramshackle, plotless, thing more inspired by Andy Warhol's underground films than by the kind of thing the group had previously appeared in, and it was being presented as Christmas entertainment for all the family. And to be honest, it's not even a particularly good example of underground filmmaking -- though it looks like a masterpiece when placed next to something like the Bee Gees' similar effort, Cucumber Castle. But there are enough interesting sequences in there for the project not to be a complete failure -- and the deleted scenes on the DVD release, including the performances by Cutler and Traffic, and the fact that the film was edited down from ten hours to fifty-two minutes, makes one wonder if there's a better film that could be constructed from the original footage. Either way, the reaction to the film was so bad that McCartney actually appeared on David Frost's TV show the next day to defend it and, essentially, apologise. While they were editing the film, the group were also continuing to work in the studio, including on two new McCartney songs, "The Fool on the Hill", which was included in Magical Mystery Tour, and "Hello Goodbye", which wasn't included on the film's soundtrack but was released as the next single, with "I Am the Walrus" as the B-side: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hello Goodbye"] Incidentally, in the UK the soundtrack to Magical Mystery Tour was released as a double-EP rather than as an album (in the US, the group's recent singles and B-sides were added to turn it into a full-length album, which is how it's now generally available). "I Am the Walrus" was on the double-EP as well as being on the single's B-side, and the double-EP got to number two on the singles charts, meaning "I am the Walrus" was on the records at number one and number two at the same time. Before it became obvious that the film, if not the soundtrack, was a disaster, the group held a launch party on the twenty-first of December, 1967. The band members went along in fancy dress, as did many of the cast and crew -- the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band performed at the party. Mike Love and Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys also turned up at the party, and apparently at one point jammed with the Bonzos, and according to some, but not all, reports, a couple of the Beatles joined in as well. Love and Johnston had both just met the Maharishi for the first time a couple of days earlier, and Love had been as impressed as the Beatles were, and it may have been at this party that the group mentioned to Love that they would soon be going on a retreat in India with the guru -- a retreat that was normally meant for training TM instructors, but this time seemed to be more about getting celebrities involved. Love would also end up going with them. That party was also the first time that Cynthia Lennon had an inkling that John might not be as faithful to her as she previously supposed. John had always "joked" about being attracted to George Harrison's wife, Patti, but this time he got a little more blatant about his attraction than he ever had previously, to the point that he made Cynthia cry, and Cynthia's friend, the pop star Lulu, decided to give Lennon a very public dressing-down for his cruelty to his wife, a dressing-down that must have been a sight to behold, as Lennon was dressed as a Teddy boy while Lulu was in a Shirley Temple costume. It's a sign of how bad the Lennons' marriage was at this point that this was the second time in a two-month period where Cynthia had ended up crying because of John at a film launch party and been comforted by a female pop star. In October, Cilla Black had held a party to celebrate the belated release of John's film How I Won the War, and during the party Georgie Fame had come up to Black and said, confused, "Cynthia Lennon is hiding in your wardrobe". Black went and had a look, and Cynthia explained to her “I'm waiting to see how long it is before John misses me and comes looking for me.” Black's response had been “You'd better face it, kid—he's never gonna come.” Also at the Magical Mystery Tour party was Lennon's father, now known as Freddie Lennon, and his new nineteen-year-old fiancee. While Hunter Davis had been researching the Beatles' biography, he'd come across some evidence that the version of Freddie's attitude towards John that his mother's side of the family had always told him -- that Freddie had been a cruel and uncaring husband who had not actually wanted to be around his son -- might not be the whole of the truth, and that the mother who he had thought of as saintly might also have had some part to play in their marriage breaking down and Freddie not seeing his son for twenty years. The two had made some tentative attempts at reconciliation, and indeed Freddie would even come and live with John for a while, though within a couple of years the younger Lennon's heart would fully harden against his father again. Of course, the things that John always resented his father for were pretty much exactly the kind of things that Lennon himself was about to do. It was around this time as well that Derek Taylor gave the Beatles copies of the debut album by a young singer/songwriter named Harry Nilsson. Nilsson will be getting his own episode down the line, but not for a couple of years at my current rates, so it's worth bringing that up here, because that album became a favourite of all the Beatles, and would have a huge influence on their songwriting for the next couple of years, and because one song on the album, "1941", must have resonated particularly deeply with Lennon right at this moment -- an autobiographical song by Nilsson about how his father had left him and his mother when he was a small boy, and about his own fear that, as his first marriage broke down, he was repeating the pattern with his stepson Scott: [Excerpt: Nilsson, "1941"] The other major event of December 1967, rather overshadowed by the Magical Mystery Tour disaster the next day, was that on Christmas Day Paul McCartney and Jane Asher announced their engagement. A few days later, George Harrison flew to India. After John and Paul had had their outside film projects -- John starring in How I Won The War and Paul doing the soundtrack for The Family Way -- the other two Beatles more or less simultaneously did their own side project films, and again one acted while the other did a soundtrack. Both of these projects were in the rather odd subgenre of psychedelic shambolic comedy film that sprang up in the mid sixties, a subgenre that produced a lot of fascinating films, though rather fewer good ones. Indeed, both of them were in the subsubgenre of shambolic psychedelic *sex* comedies. In Ringo's case, he had a small role in the film Candy, which was based on the novel we mentioned in the last episode, co-written by Terry Southern, which was in itself a loose modern rewriting of Voltaire's Candide. Unfortunately, like such other classics of this subgenre as Anthony Newley's Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, Candy has dated *extremely* badly, and unless you find repeated scenes of sexual assault and rape, ethnic stereotypes, and jokes about deformity and disfigurement to be an absolute laugh riot, it's not a film that's worth seeking out, and Starr's part in it is not a major one. Harrison's film was of the same basic genre -- a film called Wonderwall about a mad scientist who discovers a way to see through the walls of his apartment, and gets to see a photographer taking sexy photographs of a young woman named Penny Lane, played by Jane Birkin: [Excerpt: Some Wonderwall film dialogue ripped from the Blu-Ray] Wonderwall would, of course, later inspire the title of a song by Oasis, and that's what the film is now best known for, but it's a less-unwatchable film than Candy, and while still problematic it's less so. Which is something. Harrison had been the Beatle with least involvement in Magical Mystery Tour -- McCartney had been the de facto director, Starr had been the lead character and the only one with much in the way of any acting to do, and Lennon had written the film's standout scene and its best song, and had done a little voiceover narration. Harrison, by contrast, barely has anything to do in the film apart from the one song he contributed, "Blue Jay Way", and he said of the project “I had no idea what was happening and maybe I didn't pay enough attention because my problem, basically, was that I was in another world, I didn't really belong; I was just an appendage.” He'd expressed his discomfort to his friend Joe Massot, who was about to make his first feature film. Massot had got to know Harrison during the making of his previous film, Reflections on Love, a mostly-silent short which had starred Harrison's sister-in-law Jenny Boyd, and which had been photographed by Robert Freeman, who had been the photographer for the Beatles' album covers from With the Beatles through Rubber Soul, and who had taken most of the photos that Klaus Voorman incorporated into the cover of Revolver (and whose professional association with the Beatles seemed to come to an end around the same time he discovered that Lennon had been having an affair with his wife). Massot asked Harrison to write the music for the film, and told Harrison he would have complete free rein to make whatever music he wanted, so long as it fit the timing of the film, and so Harrison decided to create a mixture of Western rock music and the Indian music he loved. Harrison started recording the music at the tail end of 1967, with sessions with several London-based Indian musicians and John Barham, an orchestrator who had worked with Ravi Shankar on Shankar's collaborations with Western musicians, including the Alice in Wonderland soundtrack we talked about in the "All You Need is Love" episode. For the Western music, he used the Remo Four, a Merseybeat group who had been on the scene even before the Beatles, and which contained a couple of classmates of Paul McCartney, but who had mostly acted as backing musicians for other artists. They'd backed Johnny Sandon, the former singer with the Searchers, on a couple of singles, before becoming the backing band for Tommy Quickly, a NEMS artist who was unsuccessful despite starting his career with a Lennon/McCartney song, "Tip of My Tongue": [Excerpt: Tommy Quickly, "Tip of My Tongue"] The Remo Four would later, after a lineup change, become Ashton, Gardner and Dyke, who would become one-hit wonders in the seventies, and during the Wonderwall sessions they recorded a song that went unreleased at the time, and which would later go on to be rerecorded by Ashton, Gardner, and Dyke. "In the First Place" also features Harrison on backing vocals and possibly guitar, and was not submitted for the film because Harrison didn't believe that Massot wanted any vocal tracks, but the recording was later discovered and used in a revised director's cut of the film in the nineties: [Excerpt: The Remo Four, "In the First Place"] But for the most part the Remo Four were performing instrumentals written by Harrison. They weren't the only Western musicians performing on the sessions though -- Peter Tork of the Monkees dropped by these sessions and recorded several short banjo solos, which were used in the film soundtrack but not in the soundtrack album (presumably because Tork was contracted to another label): [Excerpt: Peter Tork, "Wonderwall banjo solo"] Another musician who was under contract to another label was Eric Clapton, who at the time was playing with The Cream, and who vaguely knew Harrison and so joined in for the track "Ski-ing", playing lead guitar under the cunning, impenetrable, pseudonym "Eddie Clayton", with Harrison on sitar, Starr on drums, and session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan on bass: [Excerpt: George Harrison, "Ski-ing"] But the bulk of the album was recorded in EMI's studios in the city that is now known as Mumbai but at the time was called Bombay. The studio facilities in India had up to that point only had a mono tape recorder, and Bhaskar Menon, one of the top executives at EMI's Indian division and later the head of EMI music worldwide, personally brought the first stereo tape recorder to the studio to aid in Harrison's recording. The music was all composed by Harrison and performed by the Indian musicians, and while Harrison was composing in an Indian mode, the musicians were apparently fascinated by how Western it sounded to them: [Excerpt: George Harrison, "Microbes"] While he was there, Harrison also got the instrumentalists to record another instrumental track, which wasn't to be used for the film: [Excerpt: George Harrison, "The Inner Light (instrumental)"] That track would, instead, become part of what was to be Harrison's first composition to make a side of a Beatles single. After John and George had appeared on the David Frost show talking about the Maharishi, in September 1967, George had met a lecturer in Sanskrit named Juan Mascaró, who wrote to Harrison enclosing a book he'd compiled of translations of religious texts, telling him he'd admired "Within You Without You" and thought it would be interesting if Harrison set something from the Tao Te Ching to music. He suggested a text that, in his translation, read: "Without going out of my door I can know all things on Earth Without looking out of my window I can know the ways of heaven For the farther one travels, the less one knows The sage, therefore Arrives without travelling Sees all without looking Does all without doing" Harrison took that text almost verbatim, though he created a second verse by repeating the first few lines with "you" replacing "I" -- concerned that listeners might think he was just talking about himself, and wouldn't realise it was a more general statement -- and he removed the "the sage, therefore" and turned the last few lines into imperative commands rather than declarative statements: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "The Inner Light"] The song has come in for some criticism over the years as being a little Orientalist, because in critics' eyes it combines Chinese philosophy with Indian music, as if all these things are equally "Eastern" and so all the same really. On the other hand there's a good argument that an English songwriter taking a piece of writing written in Chinese and translated into English by a Spanish man and setting it to music inspired by Indian musical modes is a wonderful example of cultural cross-pollination. As someone who's neither Chinese nor Indian I wouldn't want to take a stance on it, but clearly the other Beatles were impressed by it -- they put it out as the B-side to their next single, even though the only Beatles on it are Harrison and McCartney, with the latter adding a small amount of harmony vocal: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "The Inner Light"] And it wasn't because the group were out of material. They were planning on going to Rishikesh to study with the Maharishi, and wanted to get a single out for release while they were away, and so in one week they completed the vocal overdubs on "The Inner Light" and recorded three other songs, two by John and one by Paul. All three of the group's songwriters brought in songs that were among their best. John's first contribution was a song whose lyrics he later described as possibly the best he ever wrote, "Across the Universe". He said the lyrics were “purely inspirational and were given to me as boom! I don't own it, you know; it came through like that … Such an extraordinary meter and I can never repeat it! It's not a matter of craftsmanship, it wrote itself. It drove me out of bed. I didn't want to write it … It's like being possessed, like a psychic or a medium.” But while Lennon liked the song, he was never happy with the recording of it. They tried all sorts of things to get the sound he heard in his head, including bringing in some fans who were hanging around outside to sing backing vocals. He said of the track "I was singing out of tune and instead of getting a decent choir, we got fans from outside, Apple Scruffs or whatever you call them. They came in and were singing all off-key. Nobody was interested in doing the tune originally.” [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Across the Universe"] The "jai guru deva" chorus there is the first reference to the teachings of the Maharishi in one of the Beatles' records -- Guru Dev was the Maharishi's teacher, and the phrase "Jai guru dev" is a Sanskrit one which I've seen variously translated as "victory to the great teacher", and "hail to the greatness within you". Lennon would say shortly before his death “The Beatles didn't make a good record out of it. I think subconsciously sometimes we – I say ‘we' though I think Paul did it more than the rest of us – Paul would sort of subconsciously try and destroy a great song … Usually we'd spend hours doing little detailed cleaning-ups of Paul's songs, when it came to mine, especially if it was a great song like ‘Strawberry Fields' or ‘Across The Universe', somehow this atmosphere of looseness and casualness and experimentation would creep in … It was a _lousy_ track of a great song and I was so disappointed by it …The guitars are out of tune and I'm singing out of tune because I'm psychologically destroyed and nobody's supporting me or helping me with it, and the song was never done properly.” Of course, this is only Lennon's perception, and it's one that the other participants would disagree with. George Martin, in particular, was always rather hurt by the implication that Lennon's songs had less attention paid to them, and he would always say that the problem was that Lennon in the studio would always say "yes, that's great", and only later complain that it hadn't been what he wanted. No doubt McCartney did put in more effort on his own songs than on Lennon's -- everyone has a bias towards their own work, and McCartney's only human -- but personally I suspect that a lot of the problem comes down to the two men having very different personalities. McCartney had very strong ideas about his own work and would drive the others insane with his nitpicky attention to detail. Lennon had similarly strong ideas, but didn't have the attention span to put the time and effort in to force his vision on others, and didn't have the technical knowledge to express his ideas in words they'd understand. He expected Martin and the other Beatles to work miracles, and they did -- but not the miracles he would have worked. That track was, rather than being chosen for the next single, given to Spike Milligan, who happened to be visiting the studio and was putting together an album for the environmental charity the World Wildlife Fund. The album was titled "No One's Gonna Change Our World": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Across the Universe"] That track is historic in another way -- it would be the last time that George Harrison would play sitar on a Beatles record, and it effectively marks the end of the period of psychedelia and Indian influence that had started with "Norwegian Wood" three years earlier, and which many fans consider their most creative period. Indeed, shortly after the recording, Harrison would give up the sitar altogether and stop playing it. He loved sitar music as much as he ever had, and he still thought that Indian classical music spoke to him in ways he couldn't express, and he continued to be friends with Ravi Shankar for the rest of his life, and would only become more interested in Indian religious thought. But as he spent time with Shankar he realised he would never be as good on the sitar as he hoped. He said later "I thought, 'Well, maybe I'm better off being a pop singer-guitar-player-songwriter – whatever-I'm-supposed-to-be' because I've seen a thousand sitar-players in India who are twice as better as I'll ever be. And only one of them Ravi thought was going to be a good player." We don't have a precise date for when it happened -- I suspect it was in June 1968, so a few months after the "Across the Universe" recording -- but Shankar told Harrison that rather than try to become a master of a music that he hadn't encountered until his twenties, perhaps he should be making the music that was his own background. And as Harrison put it "I realised that was riding my bike down a street in Liverpool and hearing 'Heartbreak Hotel' coming out of someone's house.": [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Heartbreak Hotel"] In early 1968 a lot of people seemed to be thinking along the same lines, as if Christmas 1967 had been the flick of a switch and instead of whimsy and ornamentation, the thing to do was to make music that was influenced by early rock and roll. In the US the Band and Bob Dylan were making music that was consciously shorn of all studio experimentation, while in the UK there was a revival of fifties rock and roll. In April 1968 both "Peggy Sue" and "Rock Around the Clock" reentered the top forty in the UK, and the Who were regularly including "Summertime Blues" in their sets. Fifties nostalgia, which would make occasional comebacks for at least the next forty years, was in its first height, and so it's not surprising that Paul McCartney's song, "Lady Madonna", which became the A-side of the next single, has more than a little of the fifties about it. Of course, the track isn't *completely* fifties in its origins -- one of the inspirations for the track seems to have been the Rolling Stones' then-recent hit "Let's Spend The Night Together": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Let's Spend the Night Together"] But the main source for the song's music -- and for the sound of the finished record -- seems to have been Johnny Parker's piano part on Humphrey Lyttleton's "Bad Penny Blues", a hit single engineered by Joe Meek in the fifties: [Excerpt: Humphrey Lyttleton, "Bad Penny Blues"] That song seems to have been on the group's mind for a while, as a working title for "With a Little Help From My Friends" had at one point been "Bad Finger Blues" -- a title that would later give the name to a band on Apple. McCartney took Parker's piano part as his inspiration, and as he later put it “‘Lady Madonna' was me sitting down at the piano trying to write a bluesy boogie-woogie thing. I got my left hand doing an arpeggio thing with the chord, an ascending boogie-woogie left hand, then a descending right hand. I always liked that, the  juxtaposition of a line going down meeting a line going up." [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Lady Madonna"] That idea, incidentally, is an interesting reversal of what McCartney had done on "Hello, Goodbye", where the bass line goes down while the guitar moves up -- the two lines moving away from each other: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hello Goodbye"] Though that isn't to say there's no descending bass in "Lady Madonna" -- the bridge has a wonderful sequence where the bass just *keeps* *descending*: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Lady Madonna"] Lyrically, McCartney was inspired by a photo in National Geographic of a woman in Malaysia, captioned “Mountain Madonna: with one child at her breast and another laughing into her face, sees her quality of life threatened.” But as he put it “The people I was brought up amongst were often Catholic; there are lots of Catholics in Liverpool because of the Irish connection and they are often religious. When they have a baby I think they see a big connection between themselves and the Virgin Mary with her baby. So the original concept was the Virgin Mary but it quickly became symbolic of every woman; the Madonna image but as applied to ordinary working class woman. It's really a tribute to the mother figure, it's a tribute to women.” Musically though, the song was more a tribute to the fifties -- while the inspiration had been a skiffle hit by Humphrey Lyttleton, as soon as McCartney started playing it he'd thought of Fats Domino, and the lyric reflects that to an extent -- just as Domino's "Blue Monday" details the days of the week for a weary working man who only gets to enjoy himself on Saturday night, "Lady Madonna"'s lyrics similarly look at the work a mother has to do every day -- though as McCartney later noted  "I was writing the words out to learn it for an American TV show and I realised I missed out Saturday ... So I figured it must have been a real night out." The vocal was very much McCartney doing a Domino impression -- something that wasn't lost on Fats, who cut his own version of the track later that year: [Excerpt: Fats Domino, "Lady Madonna"] The group were so productive at this point, right before the journey to India, that they actually cut another song *while they were making a video for "Lady Madonna"*. They were booked into Abbey Road to film themselves performing the song so it could be played on Top of the Pops while they were away, but instead they decided to use the time to cut a new song -- John had a partially-written song, "Hey Bullfrog", which was roughly the same tempo as "Lady Madonna", so they could finish that up and then re-edit the footage to match the record. The song was quickly finished and became "Hey Bulldog": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Bulldog"] One of Lennon's best songs from this period, "Hey Bulldog" was oddly chosen only to go on the soundtrack of Yellow Submarine. Either the band didn't think much of it because it had come so easily, or it was just assigned to the film because they were planning on being away for several months and didn't have any other projects they were working on. The extent of the group's contribution to the film was minimal – they were not very hands-on, and the film, which was mostly done as an attempt to provide a third feature film for their United Artists contract without them having to do any work, was made by the team that had done the Beatles cartoon on American TV. There's some evidence that they had a small amount of input in the early story stages, but in general they saw the cartoon as an irrelevance to them -- the only things they contributed were the four songs "All Together Now", "It's All Too Much", "Hey Bulldog" and "Only a Northern Song", and a brief filmed appearance for the very end of the film, recorded in January: [Excerpt: Yellow Submarine film end] McCartney also took part in yet another session in early February 1968, one produced by Peter Asher, his fiancee's brother, and former singer with Peter and Gordon. Asher had given up on being a pop star and was trying to get into the business side of music, and he was starting out as a producer, producing a single by Paul Jones, the former lead singer of Manfred Mann. The A-side of the single, "And the Sun Will Shine", was written by the Bee Gees, the band that Robert Stigwood was managing: [Excerpt: Paul Jones, "And the Sun Will Shine"] While the B-side was an original by Jones, "The Dog Presides": [Excerpt: Paul Jones, "The Dog Presides"] Those tracks featured two former members of the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck and Paul Samwell-Smith, on guitar and bass, and Nicky Hopkins on piano. Asher asked McCartney to play drums on both sides of the single, saying later "I always thought he was a great, underrated drummer." McCartney was impressed by Asher's production, and asked him to get involved with the new Apple Records label that would be set up when the group returned from India. Asher eventually became head of A&R for the label. And even before "Lady Madonna" was mixed, the Beatles were off to India. Mal Evans, their roadie, went ahead with all their luggage on the fourteenth of February, so he could sort out transport for them on the other end, and then John and George followed on the fifteenth, with their wives Pattie and Cynthia and Pattie's sister Jenny (John and Cynthia's son Julian had been left with his grandmother while they went -- normally Cynthia wouldn't abandon Julian for an extended period of time, but she saw the trip as a way to repair their strained marriage). Paul and Ringo followed four days later, with Ringo's wife Maureen and Paul's fiancee Jane Asher. The retreat in Rishikesh was to become something of a celebrity affair. Along with the Beatles came their friend the singer-songwriter Donovan, and Donovan's friend and songwriting partner, whose name I'm not going to say here because it's a slur for Romani people, but will be known to any Donovan fans. Donovan at this point was also going through changes. Like the Beatles, he was largely turning away from drug use and towards meditation, and had recently written his hit single "There is a Mountain" based around a saying from Zen Buddhism: [Excerpt: Donovan, "There is a Mountain"] That was from his double-album A Gift From a Flower to a Garden, which had come out in December 1967. But also like John and Paul he was in the middle of the breakdown of a long-term relationship, and while he would remain with his then-partner until 1970, and even have another child with her, he was secretly in love with another woman. In fact he was secretly in love with two other women. One of them, Brian Jones' ex-girlfriend Linda, had moved to LA, become the partner of the singer Gram Parsons, and had appeared in the documentary You Are What You Eat with the Band and Tiny Tim. She had fallen out of touch with Donovan, though she would later become his wife. Incidentally, she had a son to Brian Jones who had been abandoned by his rock-star father -- the son's name is Julian. The other woman with whom Donovan was in love was Jenny Boyd, the sister of George Harrison's wife Pattie.  Jenny at the time was in a relationship with Alexis Mardas, a TV repairman and huckster who presented himself as an electronics genius to the Beatles, who nicknamed him Magic Alex, and so she was unavailable, but Donovan had written a song about her, released as a single just before they all went to Rishikesh: [Excerpt: Donovan, "Jennifer Juniper"] Donovan considered himself and George Harrison to be on similar spiritual paths and called Harrison his "spirit-brother", though Donovan was more interested in Buddhism, which Harrison considered a corruption of the more ancient Hinduism, and Harrison encouraged Donovan to read Autobiography of a Yogi. It's perhaps worth noting that Donovan's father had a different take on the subject though, saying "You're not going to study meditation in India, son, you're following that wee lassie Jenny" Donovan and his friend weren't the only other celebrities to come to Rishikesh. The actor Mia Farrow, who had just been through a painful divorce from Frank Sinatra, and had just made Rosemary's Baby, a horror film directed by Roman Polanski with exteriors shot at the Dakota building in New York, arrived with her sister Prudence. Also on the trip was Paul Horn, a jazz saxophonist who had played with many of the greats of jazz, not least of them Duke Ellington, whose Sweet Thursday Horn had played alto sax on: [Excerpt: Duke Ellington, "Zweet Zursday"] Horn was another musician who had been inspired to investigate Indian spirituality and music simultaneously, and the previous year he had recorded an album, "In India," of adaptations of ragas, with Ravi Shankar and Alauddin Khan: [Excerpt: Paul Horn, "Raga Vibhas"] Horn would go on to become one of the pioneers of what would later be termed "New Age" music, combining jazz with music from various non-Western traditions. Horn had also worked as a session musician, and one of the tracks he'd played on was "I Know There's an Answer" from the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "I Know There's an Answer"] Mike Love, who co-wrote that track and is one of the lead singers on it, was also in Rishikesh. While as we'll see not all of the celebrities on the trip would remain practitioners of Transcendental Meditation, Love would be profoundly affected by the trip, and remains a vocal proponent of TM to this day. Indeed, his whole band at the time were heavily into TM. While Love was in India, the other Beach Boys were working on the Friends album without him -- Love only appears on four tracks on that album -- and one of the tracks they recorded in his absence was titled "Transcendental Meditation": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Transcendental Meditation"] But the trip would affect Love's songwriting, as it would affect all of the musicians there. One of the few songs on the Friends album on which Love appears is "Anna Lee, the Healer", a song which is lyrically inspired by the trip in the most literal sense, as it's about a masseuse Love met in Rishikesh: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Anna Lee, the Healer"] The musicians in the group all influenced and inspired each other as is likely to happen in such circumstances. Sometimes, it would be a matter of trivial joking, as when the Beatles decided to perform an off-the-cuff song about Guru Dev, and did it in the Beach Boys style: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Spiritual Regeneration"] And that turned partway through into a celebration of Love for his birthday: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Spiritual Regeneration"] Decades later, Love would return the favour, writing a song about Harrison and their time together in Rishikesh. Like Donovan, Love seems to have considered Harrison his "spiritual brother", and he titled the song "Pisces Brothers": [Excerpt: Mike Love, "Pisces Brothers"] The musicians on the trip were also often making suggestions to each other about songs that would become famous for them. The musicians had all brought acoustic guitars, apart obviously from Ringo, who got a set of tabla drums when George ordered some Indian instruments to be delivered. George got a sitar, as at this point he hadn't quite given up on the instrument, and he gave Donovan a tamboura. Donovan started playing a melody on the tamboura, which is normally a drone instrument, inspired by the Scottish folk music he had grown up with, and that became his "Hurdy-Gurdy Man": [Excerpt: Donovan, "Hurdy Gurdy Man"] Harrison actually helped him with the song, writing a final verse inspired by the Maharishi's teachings, but in the studio Donovan's producer Mickie Most told him to cut the verse because the song was overlong, which apparently annoyed Harrison. Donovan includes that verse in his live performances of the song though -- usually while doing a fairly terrible impersonation of Harrison: [Excerpt: Donovan, "Hurdy Gurdy Man (live)"] And similarly, while McCartney was working on a song pastiching Chuck Berry and the Beach Boys, but singing about the USSR rather than the USA, Love suggested to him that for a middle-eight he might want to sing about the girls in the various Soviet regions: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Back in the USSR"] As all the guitarists on the retreat only had acoustic instruments, they were very keen to improve their acoustic playing, and they turned to Donovan, who unlike the rest of them was primarily an acoustic player, and one from a folk background. Donovan taught them the rudiments of Travis picking, the guitar style we talked about way back in the episodes on the Everly Brothers, as well as some of the tunings that had been introduced to British folk music by Davey Graham, giving them a basic grounding in the principles of English folk-baroque guitar, a style that had developed over the previous few years. Donovan has said in his autobiography that Lennon picked the technique up quickly (and that Harrison had already learned Travis picking from Chet Atkins records) but that McCartney didn't have the application to learn the style, though he picked up bits. That seems very unlike anything else I've read anywhere about Lennon and McCartney -- no-one has ever accused Lennon of having a surfeit of application -- and reading Donovan's book he seems to dislike McCartney and like Lennon and Harrison, so possibly that enters into it. But also, it may just be that Lennon was more receptive to Donovan's style at the time. According to McCartney, even before going to Rishikesh Lennon had been in a vaguely folk-music and country mode, and the small number of tapes he'd brought with him to Rishikesh included Buddy Holly, Dylan, and the progressive folk band The Incredible String Band, whose music would be a big influence on both Lennon and McCartney for the next year: [Excerpt: The Incredible String Band, "First Girl I Loved"] According to McCartney Lennon also brought "a tape the singer Jake Thackray had done for him... He was one of the people we bumped into at Abbey Road. John liked his stuff, which he'd heard on television. Lots of wordplay and very suggestive, so very much up John's alley. I was fascinated by his unusual guitar style. John did ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun' as a Jake Thackray thing at one point, as I recall.” Thackray was a British chansonnier, who sang sweetly poignant but also often filthy songs about Yorkshire life, and his humour in particular will have appealed to Lennon. There's a story of Lennon meeting Thackray in Abbey Road and singing the whole of Thackray's song "The Statues", about two drunk men fighting a male statue to defend the honour of a female statue, to him: [Excerpt: Jake Thackray, "The Statues"] Given this was the music that Lennon was listening to, it's unsurprising that he was more receptive to Donovan's lessons, and the new guitar style he learned allowed him to expand his songwriting, at precisely the same time he was largely clean of drugs for the first time in several years, and he started writing some of the best songs he would ever write, often using these new styles: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Julia"] That song is about Lennon's dead mother -- the first time he ever addressed her directly in a song, though  it would be far from the last -- but it's also about someone else. That phrase "Ocean child" is a direct translation of the Japanese name "Yoko". We've talked about Yoko Ono a bit in recent episodes, and even briefly in a previous Beatles episode, but it's here that she really enters the story of the Beatles. Unfortunately, exactly *how* her relationship with John Lennon, which was to become one of the great legendary love stories in rock and roll history, actually started is the subject of some debate. Both of them were married when they first got together, and there have also been suggestions that Ono was more interested in McCartney than in Lennon at first -- suggestions which everyone involved has denied, and those denials have the ring of truth about them, but if that was the case it would also explain some of Lennon's more perplexing behaviour over the next year. By all accounts there was a certain amount of finessing of the story th

For our second bonus episode for 2023, we stay across the pond and get to chat with the #1 New York Times best-selling author of the Beartown Series, A Man Called Ove, and Anxious People - Fredrik Backman! Elin and Tim chat with Fredrik about his origin story, his debut novel A Man Called Ove and where the idea for this iconic story came from, his Beartown series and the hockey team and town in the trilogy, and his writing process. We hear the differences between publishing in the U.S. and Sweden, why he thinks his characters resonate so much with people, the stigmas around mental health, and the screen adaptation A Man Called Otto starring Tom Hanks.A special thank you to our Episode Sponsors:Marine Home CenterBook of the Month - limited time, first book for just $5 with code ELINFredrik Backman Reading List:A Man Called OveBritt- Marie Was HereBeartownUs Against YouThe WinnersAnxious PeopleWhat else are we reading in this episode:The Castaways by Elin HilderbrandWinter Street Series by Elin HilderbrandThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas AdamsThe Other Side of Sadness by George A. BonannoFollow/Subscribe to the 'Books, Beach, & Beyond' podcast now to stay current on new episodes.And find us on Instagram at @booksbeachandbeyondHappy Reading!