Podcasts about David Frost

Barcelona has become a flashpoint in the global debate around over-tourism. With more than 15 million annual visitors, nearly ten times its population, the city is grappling with rising rents, resident displacement, and growing public anger. David Frost, CEO of the Southern Africa Tourism Services Association (SATSA), joins Crystal Orderson to unpack what’s happening in Spain and what this could predict for tourism hotspots like Cape Town. Presenter John Maytham is an actor and author-turned-talk radio veteran and seasoned journalist. His show serves a round-up of local and international news coupled with the latest in business, sport, traffic and weather. The host’s eclectic interests mean the program often surprises the audience with intriguing book reviews and inspiring interviews profiling artists. A daily highlight is Rapid Fire, just after 5:30pm. CapeTalk fans call in, to stump the presenter with their general knowledge questions. Another firm favourite is the humorous Thursday crossing with award-winning journalist Rebecca Davis, called “Plan B”. Thank you for listening to a podcast from Afternoon Drive with John Maytham Listen live on Primedia+ weekdays from 15:00 and 18:00 (SA Time) to Afternoon Drive with John Maytham broadcast on CapeTalk https://buff.ly/NnFM3Nk For more from the show go to https://buff.ly/BSFy4Cn or find all the catch-up podcasts here https://buff.ly/n8nWt4x Subscribe to the CapeTalk Daily and Weekly Newsletters https://buff.ly/sbvVZD5 Follow us on social media: CapeTalk on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@capetalk CapeTalk on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ CapeTalk on X: https://x.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CapeTalk567 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As President Trump and his allies escalate the administration's battle on colleges, and on Harvard specifically, Steven Levitsky, Harvard professor and author of “How Democracies Die,” joins Christiane to discuss the reshaping of knowledge in America. Then, best-selling German author Daniel Kehlmann speaks with Christiane about his new book “The Director," exploring what it was like for artists like G.W. Pabst who made films for Joseph Goebbels and the Nazis. Marking 600 days of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Christiane highlights both Jeremy Diamond's report on Israel's fight to get back the 58 remaining hostages in Hamas captivity and Oren Lieberman's story on the chaotic aid delivery to starving Palestinians this week. Christiane also talks to Wilfred Frost, son of the legendary TV host David Frost, about his father's iconic interviews with the likes of Richard Nixon, Yasser Arafat and Elton John, and a new documentary series following his storied career. From her archive, Christiane pays tribute to award-winning Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. Finally, marking 45 years since CNN's founding, Christiane revisits her conversation with company founder Ted Turner about how he changed the news business forever. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SATSA’s CEO David Frost talks to Mike Wills about the association’s concern that headlines about crime, following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s meeting with his US counterpart Donald Trump, might negatively impact inbound tourism. Presenter John Maytham is an actor and author-turned-talk radio veteran and seasoned journalist. His show serves a round-up of local and international news coupled with the latest in business, sport, traffic and weather. The host’s eclectic interests mean the program often surprises the audience with intriguing book reviews and inspiring interviews profiling artists. A daily highlight is Rapid Fire, just after 5:30pm. CapeTalk fans call in, to stump the presenter with their general knowledge questions. Another firm favourite is the humorous Thursday crossing with award-winning journalist Rebecca Davis, called “Plan B”. Thank you for listening to a podcast from Afternoon Drive with John Maytham Listen live on Primedia+ weekdays from 15:00 and 18:00 (SA Time) to Afternoon Drive with John Maytham broadcast on CapeTalk https://buff.ly/NnFM3Nk For more from the show go to https://buff.ly/BSFy4Cn or find all the catch-up podcasts here https://buff.ly/n8nWt4x Subscribe to the CapeTalk Daily and Weekly Newsletters https://buff.ly/sbvVZD5 Follow us on social media: CapeTalk on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@capetalk CapeTalk on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ CapeTalk on X: https://x.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CapeTalk567 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the audio from a video we have just published on our YouTube channel – an interview with David Frost. To make sure you never miss great content like this, subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/@spiked  Keir Starmer's ‘Brexit reset' is a comprehensive betrayal of the Leave vote. That's the verdict of Lord Frost, former chief Brexit negotiator for Boris Johnson. Here, he tells spiked why this is such a bad deal for Britain. Frost slams Starmer for handing control over food, fishing, energy and more to Brussels, and for so little in return. This surrender to the EU, he warns, is dangerous for democracy, sovereignty and the UK economy. 

If you're interested in astrology, PGA cleanup, and the most comprehensive preview of the Senior PGA Championship, this is the episode for you! Still basking in the afterglow of Scottie's win at the PGA, Andy and Brendan are in high spirits for this Wednesday episode. They first debate what a fair over-under is for Scottie Scheffler's career major wins and emphasize how hard it is to sustain an elite level of play for ten years. The two then do some more PGA wrap up and briefly look ahead to Oakmont and Royal Portrush, where they expect Jon Rahm to be a contender. On the PGA Tour, Scottie will tee it up again in Dallas for the Charles Schwab Challenge. Joining him there are Corey Pavin, Olin Browne, and David Frost, leading Brendan to question whether these olds will be competitive at Colonial. After making some fire picks for the week, this episode turns into a full-on preview of the Senior PGA Championship at Congressional. Brendan and PJ go through the field and discuss notables, including Andy's favorite, Lee Westwood! There are odds out there for this event, so picks are made for this major championship as well. In news, Detroit's TGL team will begin play in 2027 and some history was made at the USGA Fourball.

Masters rowing is about rowing with adaptations. Timestamps: 00:45 Grant Faulkner quote: The speed the clock moves forwards and the things it takes away. Masters learn to enjoy age and the things we have to adjust for our rowing. 01:45 Recognising when you need to make the next adaptation Nobody told me it was going to be like this! Strength and Mobility are the main things you will notice first. Strength diminishes differently between men and women 50s versus 60s. Your 60s is a 'hold steady' decade. Read article. Use the Facebook group to post questions and get answers from people who have the same issues. https://www.facebook.com/groups/595853370615544/ 04:00 Mobility and aging Range of movement in joints is important - pelvic mobility in the hips to get into the rowing stroke positions. Flexibility is also key. Programs Page "FREE STUFF" How to test your functional movement and strengthening exercises. https://fastermastersrowing.com/member-register/functional-movement-assessment/ David Frost's webinar on Functional Strength and Movement is a deeper dive into exercises for body strengthening for daily life - essential for older women who find it hard to lift a boat. https://fastermastersrowing.com/member-register/functional-strength-and-movement/ If athletes can't get into the right positions for rowing it's difficult to teach them. 05:15 Technique changes with age Adjustments to take account of mobility issues. Adapting Rowing Rigging For Masters Physiology article https://fastermastersrowing.com/adapting-rowing-rigging-for-masters-physiology/ Try to maintain your technique and range of motion as you age. Adjust rigging to accommodate physical limitations - some are easy, medium and hard - they take tools and more time to set up. We can still always improve our technique as we age. Despite losing strength, masters rowers can always be more skilful at the catch, get the blade in without slip, get a full leg drive, recruit extra muscles to add to power delivery. Technique has no regard for age - you can improve at all ages. What is the next horizon for you? https://fastermastersrowing.com/rowing-and-aging-each-decade/ Most of us delay making changes - if you are losing strength, you should be shortening your oars (Volker Nolte Rigging Webinar has charts for oar designs, Men and Women). Most masters row on oars which are too long for their strength and capability. https://fastermastersrowing.com/member-register/rigging/ This webinar includes - Volker Nolte's oar rigging chart – learn how to rig your oars correctly based on the oar make and spoon design - Mike Purcer's Masters 1x rigging chart (span, oar length, inboard) different for men and women. Want easy live streams like this? Instant broadcasts to Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn. Faster Masters uses StreamYard: https://streamyard.com/pal/d/5694205242376192

MSNBC is airing the six-part documentary series David Frost Vs, built around some of the most extraordinary interviews conducted over a 50-year period by David Frost, the legendary British journalist and entertainer. We speak with executive producer Wilfred Frost, one of David's sons, about his dad's tête-à-têtes with Richard Nixon, Elton John, Muhammad Ali, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Physician and author Dr. Ian Smith provides a closer look at popular eating plans and how to choose the right one for you. Also, NBC News contributor Wilfred Frost joins to discuss his new documentary series, ‘David Frost Vs,' which explores recent history through the eyes of his father, legendary broadcaster and interviewer David Frost. Plus, James Brolin stops by to catch up and talk about his new show ‘Ransom Canyon,' centered on three Texas ranching family dynasties.

Join Katy Balls, Michael Gove, Lord Glasman, Lord Frost and pollster James Kanagasooriam as they unpack the highly anticipated Spring Statement and its implications for national policy and global security. Listen for: Michael's plan for how to deal with the Donald, and why the Treasury is not fit for purpose; Maurice on his influence in the White House, and what's wrong with the current political class; David's reflections on why Brexit was ahead of its time; and James's explanation for Britain's lost sense of community.

Join Katy Balls, Michael Gove, Lord Glasman, Lord Frost and pollster James Kanagasooriam as they unpack the highly anticipated Spring Statement and its implications for national policy and global security. Listen for: Michael's plan for how to deal with the Donald, and why the Treasury is not fit for purpose; Maurice on his influence in the White House, and what's wrong with the current political class; David's reflections on why Brexit was ahead of its time; and James's explanation for Britain's lost sense of community.

The celebration of March's Women's History Month continues as GGACP revisits Part 2 of a memorable two-part episode featuring veteran screen and stage actress Sally Struthers. In this episode, Sally regales Gilbert and Frank with entertaining backstage tales from “All in the Family,” “The Gilmore Girls” and the all-female production of Neil Simon's “The Odd Couple,” while sharing personal recollections of Joan Crawford, David Frost, Betty Garrett and idol and personal hero Ruth Gordon. Also, Burgess Meredith philosophizes, Katharine Hepburn paints a birthday card, Sally “gooses” Dennis the Menace and Mel Blanc shows off his vanity license plate. PLUS: Burt Mustin! “Harold and Maude”! “The Great Houdini”! The genius of Rupert Holmes! Colonel Potter goes to Russia! And Sally dates the King of Rock ‘n' Roll and…wait for it…Pat McCormick! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jennifer Johnston remembered - Wilfred Frost on David Frost Vs - Amazon takes over Bond - Museum of the Moon

Scott Bryan and Hayley Campbell join Naga Munchetty to talk about the reboot of Bergerac, Dope Girls and David Frost Vs. They're also joined by award-winning writer Jack Thorne, and talk about his new programme Toxic Town.

Happy Birthday Jack, now to celebrate how about an interview I've never brought here before!

Nick talks to Naomi Smith of the campaign group Best for Britain on the dead hand of BrexitOn the fifth anniversary of Brexit, Nick Cohen @NickCohen4 talks with Naomi Smith, @pimllicat chief executive officer of Best for Britain which is campaigning for a re-building of the important relationship the UK once enjoyed with its closest and biggest trading partners in the European Union.Brexit is dead - but long live Brexit!Poll after poll has shown that public confidence in Brexit has all but collapsed. The July 2024 election returned a strong remainer-friendly parliament and yet the Labour government is trying to work with the badly bungled hard Brexit deal inflicted on the country by Boris Johnson and David Frost.Same old Brexit doom loop to appease the same old Brexit nut-jobsNaomi argues that the government can be bolder in re-building the relationship with Europe, so recklessly destroyed by Johnson & co. The country should not allow itself to be trapped with a project that has obviously failed. It seems Brexit is being prosecuted by people who don't believe in it to indulge the extremist nationalist fantasies of the political & media grifters & con artists who argued for for it.The UK can escape the dead hand of Brexit"We are not stuck with it and there is a way out," insists Naomi, who cites reliable recent research showing how Brexit is impoverishing the average Brit by at least £2,000 a year, killing growth, ransacking public services, crippling business with red tape and not only killing growth, but is knocking a massive 4% off annual GDP. (The 2008 Great Recession/crash led to a 2% reduction.)Breaking the Brexit OmertàNamoi said the government is beginning to break the taboo on Brexit, adding, "they are now beginning to talk more openly about how bad the deal that Johnson and Frost negotiated was for the country...They are now beginning to talk more openly about how bad the deal that Johnson and Frost negotiated was for the country. They don't do it ad nauseam."Naomi adds, "People aren't stupid. They've realised that they were sold a load of rubbish, and that their lives weren't going to improve and they can't now see their GP any more easily than they could before we left the EU etc."Naomi Smith is one of the country's most incisive commentators on politics & the UK-Europe relationship. She can also be found on Bluesky . Naomi is also a seasoned podcaster, co-hosting the Quiet Riot Pod, the politics podcast with more passion, less shouting & lots of laughter. Nick Cohen's @NickCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris Regan joined me to discuss growing up in Central NY; 70's TV; enjoying black & white comedy movies; loving Monty Python; SNL; UK comedy; auditioning for David Frost; comedy aging poorly; Michael Davis; going to Ithaca College; being in a sketch troupe with Andy Daly and the Stangel Brothers; being a NYC comedian and mostly topical; going to a comedy club for the first time at 14; coming advertising; working for Nickelodeon; getting jokes on Weekend Update; Colin Quinn vouching for him to get a job on The Daily Show; political affiliation of late night writers; Gen X not getting a President; teaching; working on Talk Show with Spike Feresten and FOX's bungles; Lopez Tonight almost making him quit show business; Chuck Sklar; poker playing and pai gow; writing for Anthony Jeselnik and Greg Giraldo; first Family he worked on was the Simpsons crossover; his episode "Girl Internetted"; "Send in Stewie"; "Yacht Rockers"; Marjo Gortner; "Teacher's Heavy Petting"; the fun of writing for Chris Griffin; his relationship with Seth MacFarlane; Harry Shearer; the three Family Guy writing rooms; Family Guy references; new season; TV ratings and his new episode "Bring Up Brady" with Tom Brady coming next season

This week marks five years since Britain formally left the European Union, after four years and three Prime Ministers worth of post-referendum negotiations.But as the anniversary comes around, so too does new polling from YouGov, revealing that only 11% of Brits see Brexit as more of a success than a failure, and that 55% say the UK was wrong to vote to leave the EU in the first place.Faced with a Brexit that doesn't seem to be delivering for those who voted either for or against it, Camilla and Kamal ask David Frost - Chief Brexit Negotiator under Boris Johnson - how it can be rescued.Producer: Lilian FawcettSenior Producer: John CadiganPlanning Editor: Venetia RaineyExecutive Producer: Louisa WellsSocial Media Producer: Rachel DuffyVideo Editor: Andy MackenzieStudio Operator: Meghan SearleEditor: Camilla TomineyOriginal music by Goss Studio Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stephen Grootes speaks to David Frost, CEO of the Southern Africa Tourism Services Association, about the impact of the new visa application system and the state of the tourism industry in South Africa. In other interviews, Consumer Ninja Wendy Knowler talks about a little-known practice where banks can install caretakers in "abandoned" homes.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stephen Grootes speaks to David Frost, CEO of the Southern Africa Tourism Services Association, about the impact of the new visa application system and the state of the tourism industry in South AfricaSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Iowa City Community Theatre opens this week with Peter Morgan's, “Frost/Nixon,” a one act play based on televised interviews between former U.S. president Richard Nixon and English broadcaster David Frost. In the studio today are director Barry Schreier, Kehry Anson Lane (Frost), and Scot Hughes (Nixon).  Performances will be January 17-18 & 24-25 at 7:30pm … Continue reading

"The essence of an entrepreneur is you can build whatever you want — come up with an idea for goodness' sake & get started!” – Lloyd Reeb At 16, Lloyd did just that – he got started. When he overheard his dad say, "Our kids will never be able to afford a house at the beach," he didn't accept it. Instead, he asked his dad to co-sign a loan so he could buy land near Atlantic City. That moment sparked a passion for business & freedom that fuels him today. He's not alone. His wife, Linda, is equally driven, empowering everyday moms to lead their families & communities with purpose. Lloyd & Linda aren't ordinary entrepreneurs. Yes, Lloyd built retirement communities for 37+ years & Linda transforms women into leaders. But it's not businesses they build — it's legacies. As for measuring success? Freedom, impact, & legacy are the only metrics that matter for them. And in this episode, they're sharing their blueprint for how YOU can do it too. Find them at Halftime.org & MomsMentoring.com. David Frost said, "Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally." The Reebs were listening.

We are verging on December and the end of the year, so with cold weather and long nights we bring you some positivity. It's one of our intermittent episodes where we revisit old topics and find the best in those categories rather than the worst. In this show, we look at the World's Best Host, Assassin, Banker, Apology and Chat-Up Line. Featuring David Frost, the Assassins and a rather belated apology from an Italian city to one of its most famous sons. Follow us on Twitter: @worstfoot @bazmcstay @VanderLaugh Follow us on Instagram: @worstfoot  Join us on our Discord server! https://discord.gg/9buWKthgfx Visit www.worstfootforwardpodcast.com for all previous episodes and you can donate to us on Patreon if you'd like to support the show! https://www.patreon.com/WorstFootForward

Not that anybody asked but this week we cracked out the microphones and channeled David Frost because we're talking about Mighty Penguins with some incredible people. We are joined by Louis Myles, co-director of the award-winning documentary, and Allan Cockram, the founder and coach of the team, and talk about this fantastic documentary and the fabulous Brentford Penguins.Expect rockhoppers, the green room at SeaWorld and Cry Baby Steve.For more details on the Brentford Penguins check out their website: planetpenguinfootballfoundation.comYou can also find them on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube.Louis also has a website: louismyles.comYou can become a friend of the podcast over at Patreon - all money will go towards making the podcast bigger and better. You can buy our merch over at TeepublicFollow us on Instagram thepodcastnobodyaskedforFollow us on Twitter: @nobodyasked4podFollow us on TikTok: @nobodyasked4podFollow us on Facebook: /nobodyasked4podLeave us a review, including any ideas you have for future episodes on Apple Podcast or Podchaser

The start of a new government sets a tone that is often difficult to change. And the tone of Keir Starmer's first 100 days has been dire, reinforcing a feeling of malaise across the United Kingdom. To help with his first report card, Will is joined by David Frost, a Conservative member of the House of Lords and previously the Europe adviser to Boris Johnson and his Chief Negotiator for Exiting the EU in 2019 and 2020.Follow Will Kingston and Fire at Will on social media here.Read The Spectator Australia here.

In this edition, history comes alive with Richard Nixon being interviewed by British journalist David Frost. This was a major news event, with Nixon emerging from seclusion after spending more than two years away from public life, when he became the first U.S. president to resign from office, due to the Watergate scandal. Nixon granted Frost an exclusive series of interviews, with the premiere episode attracting 45 million viewers, the largest television audience for a political interview in history. It resulted in both a play and movie about the event. You'll hear the first of the 4 interviews, as aired on the Mutual radio network, the evening of May 4th, 1977.   More at KRobCollection.com

This week we meet an architect of 1960s British Satire and a titan of 20th century media, Sir David Frost. From humble beginnings, David found his true course in college where he edited the school paper, edited the literary magazine, and for our purposes most importantly joined the Cambridge Footlights Society where he dove head first into the evolving British comedy scene. A genial presenter, David's first big break came as host of That Was The Week That Was, and he followed it up with more clever series including the Frost Report. Drawing on a writing and acting staff that included (among others) Roald Dahl, The Two Ronnies, and much of the Monty Python Troupe, Frost's shows were literate, topical, and very funny. Over time, David leaned into his interviewing skills (looking at you Dick Nixon) more than comedy, but his place in the comedy firmament is secure! As always find extra cuts below and thanks for sharing our shows! Want more Frost? This clip is over 60 years old -- it's a great bit from That Was the Week that Was back in 1963 -- a consumer guide to religion -- and in true British comedy fashion David and crew take the piss out of everyone! https://youtu.be/tRZWyfERiCc?si=-iX3n5lUM0wEKr-n David followed TW3 with The Frost Report, another brilliant series. Here's a sample episode looking at "trends". https://youtu.be/dnD1WP5wt4s?si=hu2aVAVkkJk6j-oc David specialized in satire, but he also could be silly as in this appearance by the Beatles on his show. He persuaded the lads to play a shaggy version of his theme and they oblige!https://youtu.be/bVI7UWa5K3E?si=NFRMvcDR-oPNKDBB

Let us know what you think of the latest episode of Distinct Nostalgia by clicking here and sending us a messageSadly we've lost another tv and film great. Kenneth Cope has died at the age of 93. And here we have an interview he did with Ashley a few years ago. Much of this has never been broadcast before.Ken talks about being one of the early stars of Coronation Street. working with David Frost on That Was the Week That Was, his time in the Carry Ons, Randall and Hopkirk Deceased and his huge career in British film and TV. Ashley says: 'Kenneth Cope was prolific. A huge talent. Never thought of himself as a star but he was quite simply one of the best. I loved chatting to Ken. Hope you enjoy!' RIP Kenneth Cope 1931-1924.Researched by Andrew Edwards. Produced by Ashley Byrne.A Made in Manchester ProductionAnd don't forget we need your support. Distinct Nostalgia has no budget. You can buy us a coffee by clicking this link. buymeacoffee.com/distinctnostalgiaSupport the showSupport the show

Our Presidential Series continues with the sly, tense Frost/Nixon! Based on Peter Morgan's award-winning play, Ron Howard's film examines the real story of David Frost's landmark interview series with disgraced President Richard Nixon. Both men enter this story with something to prove: Frost seeks improve his reputation as a carousing, boozy entertainer, while Nixon wants to repair his legacy and come out looking more presidential.How much of this movie resembles reality? What was its lasting impact? How does it pertain to our currently fractured political climate? You'll get all those answers and more in this episode! To pair, we enjoy a nice red Bordeaux, one of Nixon's favorite wines.#Nixon #Presidents #PoliticalMovies #Election2024

The right-wing press has gone off the rails after Labour struck a deal on train driver pay to end strikes. So, are union barons really going to rule the country now? Or is it the media having a meltdown again? Plus, Liz Truss and David Frost say Starmer is "a threat to free speech". What's this latest row about – and should we totally ignore it? We're on YouTube!: https://www.youtube.com/@ohgodwhatnow  www.patreon.com/ohgodwhatnow Presented by Jacob Jarvis with Jonn Elledge, Zoe Grunewald, and Hugo Rifkind. Producer: Chris Jones. Audio production by: Robin Leeburn. Video production by: Kieron Leslie and Chris Jones. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. OH GOD, WHAT NOW? is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The latest edition of Behind the Scenes features the first of a two-part conversation with London Weekend Television and pop music video Production Assistant (Script Supervisor), the magnificent Victoria Sturgess. In a career which started in the late 1960s she worked extensively with legendary director Bruce Gowers on innumerable LWT series, travelling the world with David Frost, and filming Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody” video.  Victoria's early career also involved working with Producer-Director Mike Mansfield covering so many iconic pop performances including the Blind Faith and Rolling Stones 1969 concerts in Hyde Park.  She also kindly chats about her love of live TV and all its perils, along with averting a transmission near-disaster during the star-studded gala production marking LWT's move from Wembley to the South Bank. And that's all before she joined the London Weekend Sports Department, which is a whole new episode in itself. Now living in Dorset and a passionate bibliophile, Victoria owns and runs one of the finest independent second-hand bookshops in the land, “Black Pug Books”. https://www.instagram.com/explore/locations/249809868753850/black-pug-books/ https://www.facebook.com/blackpugbooks/?locale=en_GB Support the podcast by becoming a Patron: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/BEHINDTHESCENESWITHCOLINEDMONDS⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Colin Edmonds socials ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook: colin.edmonds.73⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram: colinedmondsssm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter:@ColinEdmondsSSM⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website: https://www.steamsmokeandmirrors.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Listen to all episodes of the podcast available on; ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Amazon Music⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Audible⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ BOOKS Buy Steam, Smoke and Mirrors ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Available at Caffeine Nights⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Available at Amazon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Available on Audible⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy The Lazarus Curiosity: Steam, Smoke and Mirrors 2 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Available at Caffeine Nights⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Available at Amazon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Available on Audible⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy The Nostradamus Curiosity: Steam, Smoke and Mirrors 3 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Available at Caffeine Nights⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Available at Amazon

David Frost – Conservative peer and former chief Brexit negotiator and – returns for this post-election edition of The Brendan O'Neill Show. David and Brendan discuss how the Conservative Party got it so wrong, what Nigel Farage got right, and how the Tories can rebuild from opposition.  This episode is sponsored by Shopify:  https://shopify.co.uk/brendan  Sign up now and get a £1-per-month trial. Order Brendan O'Neill's A Heretic's Manifesto now from:

Frost / Nixon Interview With Salvatore Totino - Ron Howard's Movie  | Watergate ScandalA dramatic retelling of the post-Watergate television interviews between British talk-show host David Frost and former president Richard Nixon. A dramatic retelling of the post-Watergate television interviews between British talk-show host David Frost and former president Richard Nixon.Kingdom of Dreams is a podcast dedicated to the art of storytelling. In this series, we will engage with individuals from diverse backgrounds, hear their stories, and connect them to the world of film and cinemaApple

Høyesterett har kommet med en kjennelse om Donald Trumps påstand om immunitet mot straffeforfølgelse i 6. januar-saken. Hva betyr den, og hva skjer nå? Amerikansk politikk er en podkast fra AmerikanskPolitikk.no. I denne nødpodkasten hører du fra Vårt Lands Sigrid Rege Gårdsvoll, Nettavisens Henrik Heldahl, og Are Tågvold Flaten. Produsert av sistnevnte. Sitatet i tittelen spiller på Richard Nixons berømte sitat til David Frost i 1977: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." Støtter du oss via Patreon.com/ampol får du tilgang til Patreon-spesialer, tidlig tilgang til reklamefrie episoder av «Amerikansk politikk», samt AMPOL-merch i posten.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There seems to be somewhat of a misconception of The Beatles having a really big "Indian period." In reality, there's only 3 songs that really fit that bill, and the 3rd a final one, "The Inner Light," may be the most open hearted and enlightened one. After being inspired/challenged by a scholar he met on the David Frost show, George took lyrics from the Tao Te Ching and created a gorgous song that found it's home on the b-side of the Lady Madonna single. Recorded in Bombay while working on the Wonderwall Music soundtrack, George created an authentic and beautiful song with a gorgeous lyric, that gets sprinkled with a kiss of the Beatles magic at the end, one line of 3 part harmony that reminds the listener "oh yeah, it's The Beatles." It's an unappreciated, somewhat unknown tune that should get more love than it usually does. We're joined this week by an absolute ray of sunshine, the lovely Caitlin Larkin! Caitlin is a DJ on the Sirius XM Beatles Channel who got her job after a campaign of posting a series of faux-radio promos on Tik Tok and catching the ear of the Sirius folks. She's a joy to listen to, has great taste in what she chooses to play, and is one the nicest folks in all of Beatle-fandom. We have a blast talking about old Napster throwbacks, what goes on behind the scenes at the Beatles channel, Liverpool tears, and the magical Beatles quiz book. Be sure to listen to Caitlin weekdays on the Sirius XM Beatles Channel from 12-1 EST, and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. What do you think about "The Inner Light" at #90? Too high? Too low? Or just right? Let us know in the comments on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Be sure to check out ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.rankingthebeatles.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and grab a Rank Your Own Beatles poster, a shirt, a jumper, whatever you like! And if you're digging what we do, don't forget to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy Us A Coffee⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rankingthebeatles/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rankingthebeatles/support

David Frost, former chief Brexit negotiator and Tory peer, joins Chris Snowdon and Tom Slater for the latest episode of Last Orders. They discuss how the Tories became the party of the nanny state, why freedom should be at the heart of politics and the prospects for Conservative electoral renewal. This episode is sponsored by the Munk Debates. Use the code SPIKED10 to get 10% off your supporter membership at munkdebates.com.  Find out more about spiked's internship programme here: spiked-online.com/interns  Send your postbag questions to lastorders@spiked-online.com and we'll try to answer them in the next episode. Support spiked: https://www.spiked-online.com/support/  Sign up to spiked's newsletters: https://www.spiked-online.com/newsletters/ Check out spiked's shop: https://www.spiked-online.com/shop/ 

David Frost has had a wonderful career on tour, winning 10 titles on the PGA Tour and another 6 titles on the Champions Tour. We talk about his growing up in South Africa and learning the game, and his early years as a pro playing in Europe before coming to the US. We also discuss his meetings with Ben Hogan, his high finishes in The Open at Muirfield and Carnoustie, and his family wine business, as well as the distance and equipment issues with today's game and David's all-time 72 hole PGA Tour record for fewest putts.

Spending less than you make and saving money is part of building wealth. It's wealth for your future self. Building wealth takes commitment and sacrifice to have a good quality of life in the future. But will you be around to see it or have the physical capability to enjoy it? In this episode, David Frost will discuss the importance of maintaining muscular strength as we age, explaining why he considers it the "cornerstone of a healthy physical bank account." He'll share practical tips for achieving and sustaining peak physical fitness and the concept of "down aging"—looking and feeling years younger than your chronological age. The show notes can be found here: https://milmo.co/podcast/your-bodys-wealth/

John Wilson talks to actor, comedian, broadcaster and writer Sir Michael Palin. A founding member of the hugely influential comedy troupe Monty Python's Flying Circus, he wrote and performed in its five television series and three feature films including The Life Of Brian. Other big screen credits include A Fish Called Wanda, Brazil, The Missionary and The Death of Stalin. Michael is also a globetrotting documentary presenter and bestselling author.Michael recalls the early influence of listening to radio comedy as a child, especially the absurdist humour of The Goon Show devised by Spike Milligan. Meeting Terry Jones at Oxford University in 1962 proved to be a life-changing event as the two soon started working on sketches together and after graduating were hired for David Frost's satirical television show The Frost Report. It was on this programme that the duo first worked with future Python members John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Eric Idle. Starring in Alan Bleasdale's 1991 ground breaking television drama GBH allowed Michael a departure from comedy but also set the bar high for future acting roles which he increasingly forwent in favour of writing and presenting documentaries, including a particular favourite about the Danish Painter Vilhelm Hammershøi.Producer: Edwina PitmanArchive :A Fish Called Wanda, Charles Crichton, 1988 Take It From Here, BBC Light Programme, 1954 The Goon Show, The Man Who Never Was, BBC Light Programme, 1958 Comic Roots, BBC1, 1983 That Was The Week That Was, BBC, 1963 The Frost Report, BBC1, 1966 Do Not Adjust Your Set, ITV, 1967 Monty Python's Flying Circus, BBC1, 1969-1970 The Meaning of Life, Terry Jones, 1983 Friday Night, Saturday Morning, BBC2, 1979 The Life of Brian, Terry Jones, 1979 GBH, Alan Bleasdale, Channel 4, 1991 The Death of Stalin, Armando Iannucci, 2017 Michael Palin and the Mystery of Hammershøi, BBC4, 2008

John Wilson talks to actor, comedian, broadcaster and writer Sir Michael Palin. A founding member of the hugely influential comedy troupe Monty Python's Flying Circus, he wrote and performed in its five television series and three feature films including The Life Of Brian. Other big screen credits include A Fish Called Wanda, Brazil, The Missionary and The Death of Stalin. Michael is also a globetrotting documentary presenter and bestselling author.Michael recalls the early influence of listening to radio comedy as a child, especially the absurdist humour of The Goon Show devised by Spike Milligan. Meeting Terry Jones at Oxford University in 1962 proved to be a life-changing event as the two soon started working on sketches together and after graduating were hired for David Frost's satirical television show The Frost Report. It was on this programme that the duo first worked with future Python members John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Eric Idle. Starring in Alan Bleasdale's 1991 ground breaking television drama GBH allowed Michael a departure from comedy but also set the bar high for future acting roles which he increasingly forwent in favour of writing and presenting documentaries, including a particular favourite about the Danish Painter Vilhelm Hammershøi.Producer: Edwina Pitman

Hank GarrettTake a walk with me down Fascination Street as I get to know Hank Garrett. Hank grew up in the rough streets of Harlem in the 1940's & 1950's. During that time he watched schoolmates die, or go to prison. Then Willie Bryant "The Mayor of Harlem" stepped in; introduced Hank to Sammy Davis Jr, and everything changed. After that, Hank began his careers in Stand up comedy, professional wrestling, martial arts, and eventually acting. In this episode we chat about his journey From Harlem Hoodlum, To Hollywood Heavyweight. That also hapoens to be the title of his new book. Hank shares stories about working with: Benny The Jet Urquidez, Sammy Davis Jr, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Dean MArtin, Buddy Hackett, Chuck Norris, Jerry Lewis Al Lewis, David Frost, and Robert Redford. Fun behind the scenes tales about 'Car 54 Where Are You?', 'Three Days of the Condor', 'That Was The Week That Was', and 'G.I.Joe'. Hank still won't name the New York mobster that gave him his first gun, or the Cosa Nostra that elped out his mom on some interesting occasions. Make sure you check out his book, and get the rest of the amazing accounts of Hank being the very first white comedian to play The Apollo Theater, touring as Tony Bennett's opener, getting kicked out of The Actors Studio, and how he repaid Robert Redford for keeping Hank from going blind! Special thanks to mutual friends Kat & Clint Howard for connecting Hank & me for this conversation.Follow Hank on social media:Twit: @MrHankGarrettInsta: @Mr_Hank_GarrettFB: Hank Garrett

Blues have some overtime thrillers in the past week The win over Ottawa Nick Leddy plays in game No. 1,000 Bill Day's Save of the Week Oskar Sundqvist injured Theo Lindstein signs his entry-level contract AND MORE! RockinThatIDLife.com - For 10% OFF, Email Dustin at rockinthatidlife@gmail.com & tell him "Lets Go Blues sent me!" Mike Burgoyne, St. Louis' best realtor! - mike@strikewithmike.com, 1-314-753-4060 Check our our T-Shirt Shop! www.LetsGoBlues.com/shop Follow us on the socials! @lgbradio

Election law ... and the courts ... dominate politics as we begin 2024: Michigan's redistricting re-do - what, why, and how! The Supreme Court's challenge from conflicting decisions on Trump's ballot access A separate Supreme Court challenge on whether the President is above the law … or, as Nixon famously told David Frost decades ago "but when the President does it, that means that it's not illegal" Also this week: Another candidate steps up to succeed Dan Kildee in Congress, and immediately becomes the Democratic frontrunner Kristina Karamo's days as Michigan Republican Party chair may be numbered And a new report illustrates how Donald Trump and his family used the U.S. government to rake in millions for their businesses. John Bebow (Bridge Michigan photo) We're joined by award-winning journalist John Bebow. Bebow began his journalism career on a bike delivering newspapers and ended it playing an instrumental role in shaping Michigan's modern media industry. Bebow, 56, stepped down at the end of 2023 from his role as publisher of Bridge Michigan, a publication that under his leadership won more than 200 state and national awards and was lauded as a national model for economic viability in nonprofit news. He will remain as an executive adviser through 2025. He had crucial roles in some of the biggest changes in Michigan media over the past 25 years, from uncovering corruption in Detroit as a reporter and helping launch the MLive online news site to launching and growing Bridge Michigan and its sister publication, BridgeDetroit. In 2006, Bebow was the first employee of The Center for Michigan, that launched what was then Bridge Magazine in 2011. When the latest round of expansion concludes this month, Bridge and the Center will have more than two dozen full-time employees, with offices in Ypsilanti and Lansing and a more than $4 million annual budget. “It is exponentially more rewarding than any story that ever appeared under my byline,” Bebow said of Bridge's growth. “It's so far beyond my wildest dreams, it would have taken me two bottles of Jack Daniel's to have dreamed up the ridiculous success that has happened.” Bebow has had ink in his blood since middle school, when he delivered the Lansing State Journal on a route in his Ingham County hometown of Mason. After graduating from Western Michigan University, he worked at the Lansing State Journal, Traverse City Record-Eagle and Ann Arbor News before joining The Detroit News. There, he covered the mob, corruption in casino development and troubles in the city water department. He deployed to Iraq to cover the war for the News in 2003, and was injured in a military truck mishap. After a stint at the Chicago Tribune, John returned to his home state, where, for the Detroit Free Press, he investigated Baker College. Bebow was part of the launch of MLive, which served as an early model for publications moving stories online. There, he rose to become editor in chief. “Without John Bebow, there is no Bridge Michigan,” said David Egner, CEO of the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation. (Bridge photo by Brayan Gutierrez) At Bridge, the former investigative reporter became a prolific fundraiser, a shrewd accountant, and a boss that demanded the best of his employees while sticking to a mantra of “family first,” giving staffers generous time off to deal with family issues. “I have tremendous admiration and respect for my colleagues,” he said. “I lit a lot of fires, (but) I think a lot of that was needed at various points to get to where we are today. It was the product and the impact that were first and foremost.” By almost any measure, those efforts worked. The initial goal of Bridge in 2011 was to reach 10,000 Michigan residents. By 2022, annual readership had swelled to 7.8 million. In 2024, there will be about 20 journalists putting out at least six online editions and five newsletters every we...

David Frost – former chief Brexit negotiator and Conservative peer – returns for this episode of The Brendan O'Neill Show. David and Brendan discuss the betrayal of the Red Wall and why Rishi Sunak cannot afford to ignore the culture war. Order Brendan O'Neill's A Heretic's Manifesto now from:

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

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Over the past five decades, there have been several docudramas devoted to stories from The Nixon Era including films focusing on his presidency (Nixon), the investigation of the Watergate break-in (All The President's Men, Dick), and even smaller episodes WITHIN his presidency such as Elvis & Nixon which came out just a few years ago starring Michael Shannon as Elvis and Kevin Spacey as Richard Nixon.  But about 15 years ago, Ron Howard directed a somewhat unique POV of President Nixon.....the story of an independently filmed interview between Tricky Dick himself (Frank Langella) and a then somewhat well-known media personality David Frost who was played by Michael Sheen.  This movie was also adapted by an acclaimed stage play written by Peter Morgan (The Crown) who would himself adapt his play for the big screen.  And not only did it receive some awards attention (nominated for Best Picture) but considering its subject matter, it turned out to be quite entertaining!  So it's time to revisit this often funny docudrama also co-starring Kevin Bacon, Oliver Platt, Matthew Macfayden, and Rebecca Hall and remember.....if the President does it, it's NOT ILLEGAL! ;) Host & Editor: Geoff GershonProducer: Marlene Gershon https://livingforthecinema.com/Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/Living-for-the-Cinema-Podcast-101167838847578Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/livingforthecinema/Letterboxd:https://letterboxd.com/Living4Cinema/

John Cleese visits Google to discuss his book “So, Anyway…”, a chronicle of his early life and career. John Cleese's huge comedic influence has stretched across generations; his sharp irreverent eye and the unique brand of physical comedy he perfected now seem written into comedy's DNA. In this memoir, Cleese recalls his humble beginnings in a sleepy English town, his early comedic days at Cambridge University with future Monty Python partner Graham Chapman, and the founding of the landmark comedy troupe that would propel him to worldwide renown. Cleese was just days away from graduating Cambridge and setting off on a law career when he was visited by two BBC executives, who offered him a job writing comedy for radio. That fateful moment propelled him down a different path, cutting his teeth writing for stars like David Frost and Peter Sellers, and eventually joining the five other Pythons to pioneer a new kind of comedy that prized invention, silliness, and absurdity. Along the way, he found his first true love with the actress Connie Booth and transformed himself from a reluctant performer to a world class actor and back again. Originally published in November of 2015. Visit http://g.co/TalksAtGoogle/SoAnyway to watch the video.

David Frost is a former Army Criminal Investigator, Combat Veteran and Bronze Star Awardee. After serving our country, he shifted his passion, leadership, and strong work ethic to the Real Estate business after leaving the military where he had an immediate impact with success. His style, investigative prowess and unique approach to the real estate profession is unlike many. Dave has been a top producing agent, Coach, featured Speaker and now even the author of The Grit and Grind, Surviving and Winning Big in Real Estate. He has been featured as a guest on numerous real estate podcasts and Youtube channels. Dave is now focused on coaching his team and other agents to increase their business by implementing his techniques, strategies, and systems.   In this episode, Brad and David discuss his transition into the real estate industry and how he achieved success.   Follow David @David.N.Frost  See what David does at https://TheRainMakerU.com  Watch the full video episode on Brad's Rumble here: https://rumble.com/c/c-2544182  Watch the full video episode on Brad's Youtube Here: https://bradlea.tv 

There can only be one explanation (maybe two) for someone to want, study, test and pass both the Master of Wine curriculm and the Master Sommelier curriculm. So rare it is that there are only 3 people in the world that have done it. One reason could be the pure academia of them; the study, the knowledge, the challenge to learn more. And another reason is the passion for wine. For David, it is a lot of both. He is clear, articulate and funny...and maybe a little crazy; after all this study and understanding of the wine industry, he goes off and starts a winery in Walla Walla Washington. Who does this? But you will here the commitment and passion it takes to do this very thing. Wine Talks is proud to have tracked him down in Washington as they are preparing for harvest. Have a listen....you will be inspired