Podcast appearances and mentions of John Betjeman

Send us a textWelcome to tonight's episode where ‘Erica's Place' by Mindshambles awakens a kaleidoscope of reminiscences about Mum and ‘elevensies' and her never ending supply of fresh scones. As the different memories flow and glide past, it slowly becomes clear how much of ‘Erica's place' and Mum's philosophy still lives on and unconsciously shapes these podcasts. Welcome to Erica's place.   Journal entry:20th May, Tuesday“The yellow flag are out. Unfolding the origami of their petals From the squashed chrysalis of their buds.Yellow iris arrives flat-packed To be assembled without sound Held only by a dance of air and light.”  Episode Information:In this episode I read the first verse of John Betjeman's ‘Upper Lambourne' and a short extract from Miles Hadfield's (1950) An English Almanac. I also read ‘Erica's Place' by Mindshambles (2025)With special thanks to our lock-wheelersfor supporting this podcast.Susan BakerMind Shambles Clare Hollingsworth Gabriela Maria Rodriguez-Veinotte Kevin B. Fleur and David Mcloughlin Lois Raphael Tania Yorgey Andrea Hansen Chris Hinds David Dirom Chris and Alan on NB Land of Green Ginger Captain Arlo Rebecca Russell Allison on the narrowboat Mukka Derek and Pauline Watts Anna V. Orange Cookie Mary Keane. Tony Rutherford. Arabella Holzapfel. Rory with MJ and Kayla. Narrowboat Precious Jet. Linda Reynolds Burkins. Richard Noble. Carol Ferguson. Tracie Thomas Mark and Tricia Stowe Madeleine SmithGeneral DetailsThe intro and the outro music is ‘Crying Cello' by Oleksii_Kalyna (2024) licensed for free-use by Pixabay (189988). Narrowboat engine recorded by 'James2nd' on the River Weaver, Cheshire. Uploaded to Freesound.org on 23rd June 2018. Creative Commons Licence. Piano and keyboard interludes composed and performed by Helen Ingram.All other audio recorded on site. Support the showBecome a 'Lock-Wheeler'Would you like to support this podcast by becoming a 'lock-wheeler' for Nighttime on Still Waters? Find out more: 'Lock-wheeling' for Nighttime on Still Waters.Contact Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/noswpod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nighttimeonstillwaters/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/noswpod.bsky.social Mastodon: https://mastodon.world/@nosw I would love to hear from you. You can email me at nighttimeonstillwaters@gmail.com or drop me a line by going to the nowspod website and using either the contact form or, if you prefer, record your message by clicking on the microphone icon. For more information about Nighttime on Still Waters You can find more information and photographs about the podcasts and life aboard the Erica on our website at noswpod.com.

Our guest today is writer  Ralph Dartford who works for the National Literacy Trust and is the poetry editor of literary journal Northern Gravy.   Ralph kindly made the journey from Bradford to the Lockwood residence in Sheffield, and we settled down in my living room with mugs of tea and a plate of biscuits, surrounded by books and looked down upon by at least three pictures of Larkin. Ralph also co-organises the fantastic Louder Than Words festival that takes place in Manchester every autumn, and is a celebration of writing about music. They gather together amazing writers, broadcasters and musicians to discuss, explore and debate all things music and music industry related.  I hope we will continue to see Ralph at more PLS events.Larkin poems mentioned:The Whitsun Weddings, Dockery and Son, Mr Bleaney, For Sidney Bechet, High Windows, Cut Grass, To The Sea, MCMXIV, Here, BroadcastAll What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961-1971 (1985) by Philip LarkinThe Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse - ed.  Philip Larkin (1973) I am happy to see Mr. Larkin's taste in poetry and my own are in agreement ... I congratulate him most warmly on his achievement. - W. H. Auden, The GuardianPoets/writers/musicians mentioned by RalphKae Tempest, Joelle Taylor, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Vicky Foster, Steve Ely, Chris Jones, Ian Parks, John Betjeman, John Cooper Clarke, John Hegley, Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy, Michael Stewart, Blake Morrison, Count Basie, John Coltrane, Sidney Bechet, Alan Bennett, Stewart Lee, David Quantick, Ray Davis, Blur,  Van Morrison,  Hang Clouds, Evelyn Glennie, Kingsley Amis, Andrea Dunbar, Helen MortOther references:Adlestrop (1914) by Edward Thomas https://www.edwardthomaspoetryplaces.com/post/adlestropArthur Scargill:  “Arthur Scargill, the miners' leader and socialist, once told The Sunday Times, ‘My father still reads the dictionary every day. He says your life depends on your power to master words.” Martin H. Manser, The Penguin Writer's ManualBob Monkhouse https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/dec/30/guardianobituaries.artsobituariesLongbarrow Press https://longbarrowpress.com/Valley Press https://www.valleypressuk.com/Kes (1968) by Barry HinesRalph is Poetry Editor for Northern Gravy https://northerngravy.com/Ralph reads Geese and England's Dreaming from House Anthems  https://www.valleypressuk.com/shop/p/house-anthemsGareth Southgate https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-57816651 Simon Armitage Larkin Revisited Radio 4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m0019yy2Nick Cave- Honorary Vice President for the Philip Larkin Society- Desert Island Discs https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0027cglLyn's English teacher 1982-1989 https://petercochran.wordpress.com/remembering-peter/The Ted Hughes Network https://research.hud.ac.uk/institutes-centres/tedhughes/James Underwood https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/early-larkin-9781350197121/Albums mentioned:OK Computer (1997) by Radiohead , Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) and The White Album (1968) by The Beatles, Park Life (1994) by BlurSummertime in England by Van Morrison https://www.vice.com/en/article/summertime-in-england-a-monologue-on-van-morrison/Events:https://louderthanwordsfest.com/"My Friend Monica": Remembering Philip Larkin's Partner Monica JonesSat 22 Mar 2025 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM Ken Edwards Lecture Theatre 2, University of Leicester, LE1 7RHhttps://www.tickettailor.com/events/literaryleicester/1538331A celebration marking 70 years of Philip Larkin's 'The Less Deceived'For World Poetry Dayhttps://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-celebration-marking-70-years-of-philip-larkins-the-less-deceived-tickets-1235639173029?aff=oddtdtcreatorProduced by Lyn Lockwood and Gavin HoggPlease email Lyn at ⁠plsdeputychair@gmail.com ⁠ with any questions or commentsPLS Membership, events, merchandise and information: philiplarkin.com

This episode explores new research, which has found that countries like the US and UK use more land for golf courses than for wind or solar energy. --- Read this episode's science poem here. Read the scientific study that inspired it here. Read ‘Seaside Golf' by John Betjeman here. --- Music by Rufus Beckett. --- Follow Sam on social media and send in any questions or comments for the podcast: https://linktr.ee/sam.illingworth

In a new guessing game Alex tries to pick the material chosen to sculpt the Prince of Wales. 100 years ago the crowds were gathering in Wembley for the extraordinary spectacle that was the British Empire Exhibition. A showcase for trade, manufacturing and, it turns out, people. Problematic? Just a tad. But there was a miniature railway, a palace of engineering, a palace of art including the teeny tiny wine bottles in Queen Mary's Dolls House. And a regular display of destruction of the House of Commons. What's not to like? When the empire was at it's height, but with the cracks beginning to show, an exhibition was bound to be both brilliant and disturbing. Join visitors John Betjeman and Virginia Woolf as we explore the exhibition together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Send us a textJoin us on the narrowboat Erica on a moonless, star-filled night as we celebrate autumns, real and imagined, present and remembered. Although October (at the moment) is far from 'golden', it is apple picking time mem ries of which take us meandering down the wandering paths of my childhood.Journal entry:3rd October, Thursday“Afterglow of sunlight Ash etched into ice blue Overseen by a watching rook.Smoke curls Listless on no wind. Cabin lights call me home.”Episode Information:In this episode I read the following poems:‘Equinox' by Roger Garfitt ‘Autumn, 1964' by John Betjeman.With special thanks to our lock-wheelersfor supporting this podcast.Sami Walbury Tania Yorgey Andrea Hansen Chris Hinds David Dirom Chris and Alan on NB Land of Green Ginger Captain Arlo Rebecca Russell Allison on the narrowboat Mukka Derek and Pauline Watts Anna V. Orange Cookie Donna Kelly Mary Keane. Tony Rutherford. Arabella Holzapfel. Rory with MJ and Kayla. Narrowboat Precious Jet. Linda Reynolds Burkins. Richard Noble. Carol Ferguson. Tracie Thomas Mark and Tricia Stowe Madeleine SmithGeneral DetailsIn the intro and the outro, Saint-Saen's The Swan is performed by Karr and Bernstein (1961) and available on CC at archive.org. Two-stroke narrowboat engine recorded by 'James2nd' on the River Weaver, Cheshire. Uploaded to Freesound.org on 23rd June 2018. Creative Commons Licence. Piano and keyboard interludes composed and performed by Helen Ingram.All other audio recorded on site. Support the showBecome a 'Lock-Wheeler'Would you like to support this podcast by becoming a 'lock-wheeler' for Nighttime on Still Waters? Find out more: 'Lock-wheeling' for Nighttime on Still Waters.ContactFor pictures of Erica and images related to the podcasts or to contact me, follow me on: Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/noswpod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nighttimeonstillwaters/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/NoswPod Mastodon: https://mastodon.world/@nosw I would love to hear from you. You can email me at nighttimeonstillwaters@gmail.com or drop me a line by going to the nowspod website and using either the contact form or, if you prefer, record your message by clicking on the microphone icon. For more information about Nighttime on Still Waters You can find more information and photographs about the podcasts and life aboard the Erica on our website at noswpod.com.

Ronald Stuart Thomas (29 March 1913 – 25 September 2000), published as R. S. Thomas, was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest noted for nationalism, spirituality and dislike of the anglicisation of Wales. John Betjeman, introducing Song at the Year's Turning (1955), the first collection of Thomas's poetry from a major publisher, predicted that Thomas would be remembered long after he himself was forgotten. M. Wynn Thomas said: "He was the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn of Wales because he was such a troubler of the Welsh conscience. He was one of the major English language and European poets of the 20th century."-bio via Wikipedia Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, of Danny Hurst´s Unusual Histories London Bridge Series, he shares the fascinating history of Albert Bridge, which, when it first opened was known as “The Trembling Lady.” Danny explains why that was, why it looks like a fairground ride and shares its connection to The Pogues, John Betjeman and A Clockwork Orange. He also shares why the area is bristling with blue plaques and memorials. If you can´t get enough of these podcasts, head to https://www.patreon.com/DannyHurst to access my exclusive, member-only, fun-filled, and fact-packed history-related videos. KEY TAKEAWAYS There is still a sign on Albert Bridge telling troops to break step when marching over it. Only 11 years after opening the bridge had to be reinforced. For decades, the bridge was only one-way. The number of dogs crossing the bridge each day is causing it to rot. BEST MOMENTS ‘Albert Bridge suffered from a phenomenon known as vertical excitation ´ ‘Twelve layers of paint had to be stripped back.' ‘Making the bridge a hybrid of suspension cable-stayed and now also a beam bridge.' EPISODE RESOURCES https://www.citybridgefoundation.org.uk/ HOST BIO Historian, performer, and mentor Danny Hurst has been engaging audiences for many years, whether as a lecturer, stand-up comic or intervention teacher with young offenders and excluded secondary students. Having worked with some of the most difficult people in the UK, he is a natural storyteller and entertainer, whilst purveying the most fascinating information that you didn't know you didn't know. A writer and host of pub quizzes across London, he has travelled extensively and speaks several languages. He has been a consultant for exhibitions at the Imperial War Museum and Natural History Museum in London as well as presenting accelerated learning seminars across the UK. With a wide range of knowledge ranging from motor mechanics to opera to breeding carnivorous plants, he believes learning is the most effective when it's fun. Uniquely delivered, this is history without the boring bits, told the way only Danny Hurst can. CONTACT AND SOCIALS https://instagram.com/dannyjhurstfacebook.com/danny.hurst.9638 https://twitter.com/dannyhurst  https://www.linkedin.com/in/danny-hurst-19574720 Podcast Description "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." James Joyce. That was me at school as well. Ironically, I ended up becoming a historian. The Unusual Histories podcast is all about the history you don't learn at school, nor indeed anywhere else. Discover things that you didn't know that you didn't know, fascinating historical luminaries and their vices and addictions, and the other numerous sides of every story. Danny continues his Unusual Histories podcast with the Bridge Series, remaining in London travelling east to west to look at the bridges which span the Thames. He looks at their design, construction and history, along with the history of the areas in which they're located on both sides of the river. This series kicks off with an exclusive interview with Dirk Bennett of the City Bridge Foundation, the organisation which looks after London's bridges. Tower Bridge is marking its 130th anniversary this month and Dirk talks to Danny about the history of the bridge as well as the new exhibition that is opening for it. If you love history; or indeed if you hate history, this is the podcast for you…

Traditionally, August has been the time for Britons to head off to the seaside for their annual holiday. This week's episode celebrates this custom and causes me to reconsider the momentous moment when I saw the sea for the first time.   Journal entry:23rd August, Friday“All night the winds blew; Battering and hooliganing Around the boat. Perhaps that's why I woke In a disquieted mood.I stand on the bank And feel my feet set squarely On the towpath. Each morning, a raven rows his way Across the sky, from east to west.” Episode Information:In this episode I read Mind Shamble's poem ‘Over Steam (Spring 2021)' and read excerpts from John Betjeman's poems, ‘Seaside Golf', ‘Trebetherick', and ‘Greenaway.' I also refer to the song ‘Morningtown Ride' by M. Reynolds and sung by The Seekers.  With special thanks to our lock-wheelersfor supporting this podcast.Andrea Hansen Chris Hinds David Dirom Chris and Alan on NB Land of Green Ginger Captain Arlo Rebecca Russell Allison on the narrowboat Mukka Derek and Pauline Watts Anna V. Orange Cookie Donna Kelly Mary Keane. Tony Rutherford. Arabella Holzapfel. Rory with MJ and Kayla. Narrowboat Precious Jet. Linda Reynolds Burkins. Richard Noble. Carol Ferguson. Tracie Thomas Mark and Tricia Stowe Madeleine SmithGeneral DetailsIn the intro and the outro, Saint-Saen's The Swan is performed by Karr and Bernstein (1961) and available on CC at archive.org. Two-stroke narrowboat engine recorded by 'James2nd' on the River Weaver, Cheshire. Uploaded to Freesound.org on 23rd June 2018. Creative Commons Licence. Piano and keyboard interludes composed and performed by Helen Ingram.All other audio recorded on site. Support the Show.Become a 'Lock-Wheeler'Would you like to support this podcast by becoming a 'lock-wheeler' for Nighttime on Still Waters? Find out more: 'Lock-wheeling' for Nighttime on Still Waters.ContactFor pictures of Erica and images related to the podcasts or to contact me, follow me on: Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/noswpod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nighttimeonstillwaters/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/NoswPod Mastodon: https://mastodon.world/@nosw I would love to hear from you. You can email me at nighttimeonstillwaters@gmail.com or drop me a line by going to the nowspod website and using either the contact form or, if you prefer, record your message by clicking on the microphone icon. For more information about Nighttime on Still Waters You can find more information and photographs about the podcasts and life aboard the Erica on our website at noswpod.com.

Punch Magazine published its first edition on 17th July, 1841. Subtitled ‘the London Charivari', the weekly periodical aimed to carve a niche in the market with less crude and bawdy satire compared to its contemporaries.  Its early days were challenging, with poor circulation and financial troubles. But, as it gained in popularity and influence, it contributed the modern use of the word "cartoon" to the English language - alongside some excellent examples of the form, thanks in large part to illustrator John Leech - before its downfall in the second half of the twentieth century. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly explain how Punch innovated the idea of the Christmas annual; explore how they gave big breaks to the likes of John Betjeman, Sylvia Plath, and P.G. Wodehouse; and discover Mohammed Al-Fayed's attempts to turn the publication's fortunes around…  Further Reading: • ‘The first issue of Punch' (History Today, 2016): https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/first-issue-punch • ‘About Punch Magazine' (PUNCH Magazine Cartoon Archive): https://magazine.punch.co.uk/about/index • 'Punch Magazine' (British Pathé, 1962): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ACJhyygIxU Love the show? Support us!  Join 

Frankie is cooking up a storm with Suk Pannu, author of Mrs Sidhu's ‘Dead and Scone', as they discuss developing a beloved character across multiple mediums, balancing procedural policing with amateur sleuthing, the enduring genius of Agatha Christie and how John Betjeman did Slough dirty. Follow Suk on Twitter at @sukpannu and on Instagram at @suk.pannu. Want to talk books? Email us at readandburiedpodcast@gmail.comFollow us on Instagram and Threads: @readandburiedpodcastFollow us on Twitter: @readburiedpodFollow us on Bluesky: @readandburiedpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

TT 2024 reflections, Manx meat supply disrupted, Wilf's phone credit woes, smart meter alternative charges, & Sir John Betjeman in 1972. It's Mannin Line with Andy Wint #iom #manninline #manxradio

Unfortunate residents of Slough are forever blighted by the infamous poem by John Betjeman, which suggests that the town is so awful it should be razed to the ground. Though literary critics say it's a protest poem against industrialisation, nevertheless, several mayors of Slough have objected to it. 

Do you prefer a Georgian terraced house or a new build? Classic cars or a Tesla? We often assume that because something is old it must hold intrinsic value. But is there a downside to valuing the old over the new? How old do things have to get before age becomes a defining feature? In this week's episode, we discuss the old and new. We speak about architecture, pubs, psychology, technological progress, house prices, John Betjeman, Chesterton's fence and Peter presents an idea for an old vs new thought experiment. Finally, we share our favourite old and new things. A few things we mentioned in this podcast: - The Ancient House, Walthamstow: London's oldest house https://lookup.london/walthamstow-ancient-house/ - List of demolished buildings and structures in London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demolished_buildings_and_structures_in_London - Buying a new build vs old house: Which is better? https://www.comparemymove.com/advice/new-build-homes/new-build-vs-old-build#:~:text=More%20Expensive%20%E2%80%93%20Although%20new%20builds,could%20affect%20the%20completion%20date For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email podcast@alephinsights.com

This talk was given to the PLS in 2001 by Winifred Dawson. Winifred was born in London, but educated in Belfast which is where she met Larkin when they were both working at Queen's University Library. Win also went on to write herself and published a biography of Amy Audrey Locke, a muse for the poet WB Yeats. Win opens with a reflection on Larkin's love for his parents, However, the talk is mainly about Larkin's relationship with the women in his life: Ruth Bowman, Winifred, Monica Jones, Patsy Strang, Maeve Brennan (who is listening in the audience) and Betty Mackereth. Ruth, Maeve and Win went on to form a friendship, having first met at Ruth's house in 1993, 8 years after Larkin died. Maeve Brennan can be heard very briefly at the end of the talk. The talk is full of humour, and a frank account of her feelings about Larkin, as well as readings of Larkin's poetry and letters. The poetry readings were not recorded at the time of the talk, and so are instead read by members of the current Philip Larkin Society committee. We have also added the 1975 poem ‘When first we faced' after Toads Revisited as a second poem about Betty Mackereth. Books and writers mentioned: Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life by Andrew Motion(1993) Philip Larkin Selected Letters ed. Anthony Thwaite (1993) Playing the Harlot- Patsy Avis (published by Virago in 1996) Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (1954) Peter Ackroyd, Katherine Mansfield, Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two- Birds (1939),  The Real Charlotte by Somerville and Ross (1894), John Betjeman, Scenes from Provincial Life by William Cooper (1950) , DH Lawrence, The Porter's Daughter: The Life of Amy Audrey Locke by Winifred Dawson (Sarsen Press, 2014) Larkin's review of The Girls by Henry de Montherlant (1959) can be found in Required Writing (1983) Poems mentioned- poems which are read in the episode are in bold: Days, Faith Healing, An April Sunday Brings the Snow , Reference Back, Mother, Summer, I Wild Oats, No Road, Within the dream you said, Show Saturday, Talking in Bed, Poem About Oxford,  Latest Face,  Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album, At thirty-one, when some are rich He hears his beloved, Long roots, Maiden Name, Broadcast, Morning at last,  Toads Revisited, When First We Faced, To My Wife, Counting,  An Arundel Tomb References: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/28/winifred-dawson Ann Thwaite's obituary of Win Dawson https://philiplarkin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/About-Larkin-01.pdf First issue of About Larkin  Further reading: Philip Larkin, Life, Art and Love by James Booth (Bloomsbury, 2014) Thank you to Jim Orwin for the original  recording and sleeve notes. Thank you to Graham Chesters, Simon Smith, Daniel Vince, Phil Pullen, Clarissa Hard, Rachael Galletly, Alex Davis, Gavin Hogg and Julian wild for reading the poems. Produced by Lyn Lockwood and Gavin Hogg PLS Membership and information: philiplarkin.com  Theme music: 'The Horns Of The Morning' by The Mechanicals Band. Buy 'The Righteous Jazz' at their Bandcamp page: https://themechanicalsband.bandcamp.com/album/the-righteous-jazz

An attempt to raise standards in the SLL marketWill WE Soda's IPO pop?Grocer price caps enrage bond investorsFirst off, apologies to John Betjeman for the above mauling of his work but it isn't often that you see market participants applauding attempts to regulate what they do and it inspired us to verse, albeit not our own. That happened this week when the UK's Financial Conduct Authority decided to investigate the sustainability-linked loan market to see if things needed tightening up. We tell you what they are and why.Meanwhile, after years of fretting over its status as a major equity market, London is about to host the biggest listing in Europe all year. WE Soda may not be the sort of glamourous tech company the UK craves for its stock exchange but it will be a big deal and a big moment for both the UK and European IPO markets. We discuss what is at stake.Meanwhile, bond investors expressed fury that food retailers might be subject to price caps. We examine why.

Fancy going for a spin with us? ‘Cos we're about to head off in this ole, beat up Cadillac. Laura Barton is at the wheel and she's got the windows down and the radio up. Jon's nodding seriously to the majestic growl of Johnny Cash and Tommy's got his head out the window, forcing air up his nose like a blood hound. And we're here and we're alive and just shooting the breeze about sad songs, rock stars, lost love, writing, Betjeman, Springsteen, journalism, and turnips… for some reason. Yeah. I'm not entirely sure why, but turnips seem to… crop up, so…  Laura's new book - Sad Songs https://www.waterstones.com/book/sad-songs/laura-barton/9781529406948 Laura's BBC "Notes on music"  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m000t4t5 Laura's sad songs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElygSMtokAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP6a-7MP91g Jon's sad song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhDnyPsQsB0 Tom's sad song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVfaf43W9cM Some other things that crop up: The amazing producers of ‘Notes' http://www.fallingtree.co.uk/about/ Rebecca Solnit; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Solnit Laura's novel, Twenty-One Locks: https://www.waterstones.com/book/twenty-one-locks/laura-barton/9780857381217 Shape note singing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyrUhdBHOg8 Cold Mountain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_Mountain_(film) John Betjeman & Jim Parker's Banana Blush Album https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lCyv7pJrrVekvs4QdgFQfNYwwEb3XS9w0 How to grow really nice turnips https://www.rhs.org.uk/vegetables/turnips/grow-your-own

Today poem is from Sir John Betjeman CBE (/ˈbɛtʃəmən/; 28 August 1906 – 19 May 1984), an English poet, writer, and broadcaster. He was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death. He was a founding member of The Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture, helping to save St Pancras railway station from demolition. He began his career as a journalist and ended it as one of the most popular British Poets Laureate and a much-loved figure on British television.Bio via Wikipedia Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

This week, John Betjeman gets a tennis-based humiliation from the girl of his dreams. The poem referenced is ‘A Subaltern's Love Song'.

This episode's guests are Gavin Hogg and Bruce Lindsay and we are discussing Ivor Cutler, poet, writer, teacher and musician, who was born Jan 15th 1923 and so is a close chronological contemporary of Philip Larkin, although their paths never crossed. We look at their surreal sense of humour, their different experiences of World War II, their approach to poetry, letter writing, jazz, public performance and the cultural landscape of Britain in the twentieth century. Bruce Lindsay, Ivor Cutler: Life Outside the Sitting Room (Equinox, 2023) https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/ivor-cutler/ Gavin Hogg and Hamish Ironside, We Peaked At Paper An Oral History of Fanzines (Boatwhistle Press, 2022) https://www.boatwhistle.com/we-peaked-at-paper Ivor Cutler poems referenced: A Flat Man; Is that your Flap, Jack?; Creamy Pumpkins; Cycling; Giant: I Believe in Bugs; Mud; Pass the Ball, Jim ; Pickle Your Knees, Sleepy Old Snake; Life in A Scotch Sitting Room Vol 2 John Peel Sessions: https://peel.fandom.com/wiki/Ivor_Cutler Philip Larkin poems referenced: Bridge for the Living, Aubade, Essential Beauty, Mr Bleaney, Church Going The Sunday Sessions (Faber and Faber, 1980) The Selected Letters of Philip Larkin ed. Anthony Thwaite (Faber, 1993) Letters to Monica by Philip Larkin ed. Anthony Thwaite (Faber, 2011) Read more about Brunette Coleman in Trouble at Willow Gables and Other Fictions ed. James Booth (Faber and Faber, 2002) Other cultural references Centipede (band), John Peel, The Fall, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Albert Ammonds, Miles Davis, Robert Wyatt, Spike Milligan, The Goons, John Betjeman, John Cooper Clark, Van Morrison, Linton Kwesi Johnson Forces of Victory (1979), Harold Pinter, Charlie Parker, Neil Ardley, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Sidney Bechet. Interludes – Thelonious Monk (Round Midnight and Thelonius) Produced by Lyn Lockwood and Gavin Hogg PLS Membership and information: The Philip Larkin Society – Philip Larkin Theme music: 'The Horns Of The Morning' by The Mechanicals Band. Buy 'The Righteous Jazz' at their Bandcamp page: https://themechanicalsband.bandcamp.com/album/the-righteous-jazz

World Cup superfans join Dotun, Tim and Maher to talk about all things football related.

On A Portrait Of A Deaf Man By John Betjeman

This week much of the country fell silent for a while and that stillness was the occasion for a chance encounter and finding within the silence the music of bells among crow song. Join us aboard the Erica tonight as we are touched by the enigmatic qualities of bells and stillness.    Journal entry: 21st September, WednesdayDew, the smell of sheep and wet grass. Rooks jostle the lightening sky. The company of ducks hunched at the water's edge Shake themselves awake And drop into the pool of water The colour of dawn. Episode Information:fAll field recordings made on 19.09.2022 and features the bells of St Peter's church,  Wootton Wawen. In this episode I read short extracts from:SeánStreet's (2012) The Poetry of Radio: The colour of sound published by Routledge. Seán Street's (2019) The Sound inside the Silence: Travels in the Sonic Imagination published by Springer.I also read two short extracts from John Betjeman.John Betjeman (1958) Introduction to English Country Churches  John Betjeman (1960) Summoned by Bells originally published by John MurraySteve Tyrell's vlog recording his adventures on the NB Precious Jet can be viewed here: Narrowboat Precious Jet. David Keating's Instagram account to view his photographs: david_keating.For more information about Nighttime on Still WatersYou can find more information and photographs about the podcasts and life aboard the Erica on our website at noswpod.com. It will also allow you to become more a part of the podcast and you can leave comments, offer suggestions, and reviews. You can even, if you want, leave me a voice mail by clicking on the microphone icon. General DetailsIn the intro and the outro, Saint-Saen's The Swan is performed by Karr and Bernstein (1961) and available on CC at archive.org. Two-stroke narrowboat engine recorded by 'James2nd' on the River Weaver, Cheshire. Uploaded to Freesound.org on 23rd June 2018. Creative Commons Licence. Piano and keyboard interludes composed and performed by Helen Ingram.All other audio recorded on site. ContactFor pictures of Erica and images related to the podcasts or to contact me, follow me on:Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/noswpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/nighttimeonstillwaters/Twitter: https://twitter.com/NoswPodI would love to hear from you. You can email me at nighttimeonstillwaters@gmail.com or drop me a line by going to the nowspod website and using either the contact form or, if you prefer, record your message using the voicemail facility by clicking on the microphone icon. 

34. St Olave Hart Street has been described by John Betjeman, once poet laureate, as a ‘country church' but was also described by Charles Dickens in one of his essays a century earlier as ‘the church of ghastly grim'. It was also the local church for the great diarist Samuel Pepys's. Curious? Hear about these and its other connections in this podcast. With thanks to Reverend Arani Sen.

Den brittiske poeten Philip Larkins litteratur är läst och älskad. I brev och biografier framkommer mindre smickrande sidor, som till exempel rasism. Men när hans brev till livskamraten Monica Jones publicerades nyanserades bilden något. Jan Norming har läst. ESSÄ: Detta är en text där skribenten reflekterar över ett ämne eller ett verk. Åsikter som uttrycks är skribentens egna. Ursprungligen publicerad den 18 mars 2011.För en tid sen stod en notis i engelska The Guardian. En okänd kärleksdikt av poeten Philip Larkin hade hittats i en skokartong. Dikten låg instucken i ett gammalt, tummat internkuvert. Föremålet för Larkins ömma känslor var Betty Mackereth. Han var bibliotekarie på universitetet i Hull och hon var hans sekreterare.Till notisen fanns ett foto. Larkin sitter i sina hornbågade glasögon lutad mot en pelare av betong. Bakom honom står en cykel. Är det hans? Jag vet att han cyklade och på omslaget till diktsamlingen The Whitsun Weddings finns också en cykel. Whitsun betyder pingst. Det är en tunn bok i vitt och olivgrönt med hård pärm, jag hittade den hos Blackwells i Oxford. Den ser ut som en sådan där liten skolradioutgåva från femtiotalet.Larkin är läst och älskad i England. Föra året hade han varit död ett kvartssekel. Hans dikter är ofta rimmade bilder av engelskt liv och kynne. Jag vill fånga, tolka och bevara livet som det ter sig, skriver Larkin i ett tidigt brev till sin livskamrat Monica Jones. Kanske bevara i meningen konservera, som att lägga in frukt eller syra grönsaker, och noggrant anteckna innehållet på etiketterna.Det får mig att tänka på Tomas Tranströmers dikt Decemberkväll från 1972. Här kommer jag den osynlige mannen, kanske anställd av ett stort Minne för att leva just nuJag tänker mig att det är Larkin som kommer på sin cykel. Och samma svävande exakthet finns i hans dikter, små sakliga och gåtfulla stycken om att dricka te, åka tåg och gå i kyrkan, allt det där som finns och sen inte finns, som skingras och försvinner som rök ur våra liv. Om ingen minns åt oss.I samband med 25-årsminnet av diktarens död utkom nyligen Letters to Monica, ett urval av hans korrespondens med Monica Jones. Philip Larkin föddes 1922. Som ung bibliotekarie kom han 1946 till universitet i Leicester där jämnåriga Monica Jones föreläste i engelsk litteratur. Båda hade examen i ämnet från Oxford, han vid St Johns, hon vid St Hughes. Men i Oxford möttes de aldrig.På omslaget ser man de bägge. De är på semester. Det är mitten av femtiotalet. Hela sitt långa förhållande åker de regelbundet på semester. Tillsammans planerar de resrutter. Larkin beställer biljetterna, kollar tidtabeller och bokar hotell. Andra har äktenskap, barn, hushåll och ekonomi ihop. De har sina semestrar. Så kallade semestrar, skriver den elake Martin Amis i en anmälan av boken. Resmålen var inte alltför vidlyftiga. Hope you got my letter from Pocklington, citerar Amis.Larkin var en motvillig semesterfirare. Semestern som koncept, hävdade han, bygger på en huvudsakligen kvinnlig föreställning om att allt blir bättre i Venedig eller Frinton. Själv stannade han helst hemma. Hela sitt vuxna liv försörjde han sig som bibliotekarie, de sista trettio åren i Hull, en håla vid Nordsjön med låga moln, dis, dimma, fukt och frånlandsvind, en perfekt plats för utövare av den speciella sorts misantropi som var Larkins.Men här är de alltså på Sark, en av kanalöarna intill den franska kusten, hav och obruten horisont, ett bukoliskt landskap med bräkande får och en varm bris. Omslagets foto är svartvitt. Det är en fin dag av skuggorna att döma. I fonden ett band av kobbar och skär. Hon sitter och han står, rygg mot rygg, hon i solglasögon, han med kikaren i händerna, hon med en ryggsäck av smärting, han barfota i sandalerna, hon ser ut mot havet, han in mot land, de är så unga, redan så ensamma och så vita i solen.Kanske är semestrarna hans offer. Hennes är i så fall större. Hon vill gifta sig, kanske ha barn. Det vill inte han. Eller törs inte. Kan inte bestämma sig. Så det blir som det blir. Varje gång frågan kommer upp skyller han på sitt skrivande och hon fogar sig, han får dåligt samvete och hon förebrår sig, han tröstar henne och hon honom, prisgivna åt varandra. Red ut det, den som kan.I nästan fyrtio år försökte de, skrev och skrev, Philip skickade mer än 1 421 brev och 521 kort, inalles cirka 7 500 sidor. Hon postade säkert lika många. Någon borde ge ut dem i urval, Letters to Philip. Här finns bara några få brottstycken av Monicas brev återgivna i finstilta fotnoter.Varför har du alltid mer tid för andra än för mig, undrar hon, och ber genast om ursäkt, intill förtvivlan resonabel. I ett annat fragment framgår att hon är djupt sårad av hans affärer med andra kvinnor, särskilt när hon blir varse att han tagit med en dikt om en av dem i The Whitsun Weddings. Fast han lovat. Hennes behärskning är hjärtskärande. Samtidigt som han skrockar något om hur ogärna han ser att hon träffar en PhD i åttkantiga glasögon, någon som var i Rom förra året.Philip Larkin och Monica Jones bodde aldrig ihop, förutom hans sista år. Ett kort tag kom de att dela adress och leva i något som liknade ett äktenskap. Hon fick bältros och flyttade in efter en sjukhusvistelse. Larkin dog först. Enligt hans önskemål maldes dagböckerna ner till makulatur under överinseende av hans sekreterare. I brev till Monica hade han betackat sig för illvilliga levnadstecknare.  Hon bodde ensam kvar. På sexton år gick hon knappt utanför dörren. Efter Monicas död hittade man högarna av brev. Den digra samlingen köptes av Bodleian Library i Oxford.Deras brevväxling ger begreppet resonemangsförhållande en ny innebörd. Här avhandlas allt, också sånt som inte blir sagt när de ses, i varandras närhet är de valhänta, blyga, försagda. Det är lättare att komma till tals i breven, tonen är stundtals ömsint och kärleksfull, de leker och tumlar runt som kattungar i texten. Båda har en fäbless för Beatrix Potter och hennes sagovärld. Larkin illustrerar breven med små teckningar i trubbig blyerts. Han är sälen och hon är kaninen. Dear bun, inleder han sina depescher.De kommenterar politik och boxning, cricket och litteratur, han rådgör löpande med henne om sina dikter, hon är uppskattande men inte okritisk. Som korrekturläsare är hon omutlig och säger ifrån. Det kan gälla stilen i stort, enstaka ordval eller ett tveksamt demonstrativt pronomen. De skriver om böcker och författare, levande och döda, skvallrar och baktalar, få finner nåd inför deras ögon. Philip som redigerar Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, anförtror henne vad han tycker, att det mesta är skräp, ingen som är född efter 1930 kan skriva, Ted Hughes klarar sig med knapp nöd.Andra råkar värre ut. Who cares about asses like Blake or bores like Byron? Några duger, Thomas Hardy alltid, W. H. Auden för det mesta, John Betjeman åtminstone ibland, Kingsley Amis för gammal vänskaps skull, Barbara Pym, Shakespeare förstås, är det inte underbart att han finns och är engelsk och att vi är engelska, tänk om du var tjeck, oupphörligt knorrande, och jag en jänkare som skrev på en avhandling om vattenmetaforer hos Pound.De klagar ständigt över sakernas tillstånd, vädret, krämpor, huvudvärk, hösnuva, matsmältning, sprit, brist på pengar, Larkins morsa, tristess, tråkiga historier, grannar som grälar eller spelar fel musik för högt, något atonalt som låter som en färja på väg ut ur en pianofabrik.Med åren blev Larkin a grumpy old man enligt principen om att aldrig underskatta sanningshalten i en djupt rotad fördom, fast så värst gammal blev han inte, och sin språkliga skärpa tappade han aldrig, heller inte sin osvikliga blick för tillvarons mer absurda sidor. Han är emellanåt rätt underhållande och klarsynt i sin grinighet.Letters to Monica är en text full av koder, förkortningar, tecken, medvetna felstavningar, omskrivningar, ordlekar, ett partitur för två ensamma röster. Idag bär jag de gula strumporna du gav mig. Ikväll tog jag en stor G & T, synd på citronerna annars. De dricker för mycket, var och en på sitt håll. Åren går och man undrar hur hon har det, Monica Jones, när breven glesnar och han får medalj av drottningen, går på fest hos Faber & Faber eller träffar sina älskarinnor.When it comes to women, I fucking give you up, skrev en gång Kingsley Amis till Larkin. I Amis roman Lucky Jim från 1954 får en av figurerna, Margaret, låna drag av Monica. Det är ett infamt porträtt. Larkin slutade inte umgås med vännen för det. Föga ridderligt mot Monica kan man tycka. Om han med tiden fick svårare att fördra Amis berodde det på annat. Framför allt var det Amis obestridliga talang för ett bekymmersfritt leverne som väckte hans harm, eller möjligen förtäckta avund. Åtminstone om man får tro Marin Amis, Kingsleys son.Åtskilligt har sagts om Larkins dystra tillvaro, och om motsättningen mellan liv och dikt, de till synes vattentäta skotten. Men jag tänker att det ena hör ihop med det andra, och att det har med hans ambivalens att göra, hans vacklan, det dubbla seende som berikar hans konst men föröder hans liv.Å andra sidan, vad vet vi? Kanske njöt han i hemlighet av att skrubba skjortkragar, tvätta lakan, klippa gräs, av sina eviga stuvningar och persikor på burk, sina stunder med The Archers i radion, en halv flaska sherry till Händels Water Music, cykelturerna i Hull med omnejd, två stora gin och tonic medan Sidney Bechet snurrade på skivtallriken, kanske njöt han så skamlöst att han var tvungen att beklaga sig, och som sagt förmågan att förvandla ledan till skön dikt hade han, som i Home is so Sad, Days, Church Going och den oändligt sorgsna Take One Home for the Kiddies.Men vad vet vi? Vad vet vi om varandra, om varandras liv? Ingenting, inte ett vitten, inte ens när vi tror oss veta, inte ens när vi vet, vet vi.Jan NormingLitteratur: Larkin, Philip: Letters to Monica Edited by Anthony Thwaite, Faber and Faber och Bodleian Library Larkin, Philip: The Whitsun Weddings, Faber and Faber Larkin, Philip: Collected Poems, The Marvell Press och Faber and FaberLarkin, Philip: Döden är ett moln, dikter i urval, översättning av Olle Thörnvall, Ellerströms förlagLänkar: Diskussionssida om och med Philip Larkins nyupptäckta dikt, Dear JakeThe Poetry Archive, med inläsningar av Philip Larkin Programledare: Fredrik Pålsson  fredrik.palsson@sr.se Producent: Lena Birgersdotter  lena.birgersdotter@sr.se

We're heading off to Cornwall to learn about the poet Charles Causley. His peers in the 1970s regarded his poetry to be on par with Ted Hughes and John Betjeman. Our guest is Nicola Nuttall who is acting director of the Charles Causley Trust, a registered charity that preserves Causley's legacy. The Trust's 2022 Causley Festival of Arts and Literature takes place in Launceston in Cornwall from July 29-31.

This week's episode looks at “All You Need is Love”, the Our World TV special, and the career of the Beatles from April 1966 through August 1967. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a thirteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Rain" by the Beatles. 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/ NB for the first few hours this was up, there was a slight editing glitch. If you downloaded the old version and don't want to redownload the whole thing, just look in the transcript for "Other than fixing John's two flubbed" for the text of the two missing paragraphs. Errata I say "Come Together" was a B-side, but the single was actually a double A-side. Also, I say the Lennon interview by Maureen Cleave appeared in Detroit magazine. That's what my source (Steve Turner's book) says, but someone on Twitter says that rather than Detroit magazine it was the Detroit Free Press. Also at one point I say "the videos for 'Paperback Writer' and 'Penny Lane'". I meant to say "Rain" rather than "Penny Lane" there. 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. Particularly useful this time was Steve Turner's book Beatles '66. I also used Turner's The Beatles: The Stories Behind the Songs 1967-1970. Johnny Rogan's Starmakers and Svengalis had some information on Epstein I hadn't seen anywhere else. Some information about the "Bigger than Jesus" scandal comes from Ward, B. (2012). “The ‘C' is for Christ”: Arthur Unger, Datebook Magazine and the Beatles. Popular Music and Society, 35(4), 541-560. https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2011.608978 Information on Robert Stigwood comes from Mr Showbiz by Stephen Dando-Collins. And the quote at the end from Simon Napier-Bell is from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, which is more entertaining than it is accurate, but is very entertaining. Sadly the only way to get the single mix of "All You Need is Love" is on this ludicrously-expensive out-of-print box set, but the stereo mix is easily available on Magical Mystery Tour. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick note before I start the episode -- this episode deals, in part, with the deaths of three gay men -- one by murder, one by suicide, and one by an accidental overdose, all linked at least in part to societal homophobia. I will try to deal with this as tactfully as I can, but anyone who's upset by those things might want to read the transcript instead of listening to the episode. This is also a very, very, *very* long episode -- this is likely to be the longest episode I *ever* do of this podcast, so settle in. We're going to be here a while. I obviously don't know how long it's going to be while I'm still recording, but based on the word count of my script, probably in the region of three hours. You have been warned. In 1967 the actor Patrick McGoohan was tired. He had been working on the hit series Danger Man for many years -- Danger Man had originally run from 1960 through 1962, then had taken a break, and had come back, retooled, with longer episodes in 1964. That longer series was a big hit, both in the UK and in the US, where it was retitled Secret Agent and had a new theme tune written by PF Sloan and Steve Barri and recorded by Johnny Rivers: [Excerpt: Johnny Rivers, "Secret Agent Man"] But McGoohan was tired of playing John Drake, the agent, and announced he was going to quit the series. Instead, with the help of George Markstein, Danger Man's script editor, he created a totally new series, in which McGoohan would star, and which McGoohan would also write and direct key episodes of. This new series, The Prisoner, featured a spy who is only ever given the name Number Six, and who many fans -- though not McGoohan himself -- took to be the same character as John Drake. Number Six resigns from his job as a secret agent, and is kidnapped and taken to a place known only as The Village -- the series was filmed in Portmeirion, an unusual-looking town in Gwynnedd, in North Wales -- which is full of other ex-agents. There he is interrogated to try to find out why he has quit his job. It's never made clear whether the interrogators are his old employers or their enemies, and there's a certain suggestion that maybe there is no real distinction between the two sides, that they're both running the Village together. He spends the entire series trying to escape, but refuses to explain himself -- and there's some debate among viewers as to whether it's implied or not that part of the reason he doesn't explain himself is that he knows his interrogators wouldn't understand why he quit: [Excerpt: The Prisoner intro, from episode Once Upon a Time, ] Certainly that explanation would fit in with McGoohan's own personality. According to McGoohan, the final episode of The Prisoner was, at the time, the most watched TV show ever broadcast in the UK, as people tuned in to find out the identity of Number One, the person behind the Village, and to see if Number Six would break free. I don't think that's actually the case, but it's what McGoohan always claimed, and it was certainly a very popular series. I won't spoil the ending for those of you who haven't watched it -- it's a remarkable series -- but ultimately the series seems to decide that such questions don't matter and that even asking them is missing the point. It's a work that's open to multiple interpretations, and is left deliberately ambiguous, but one of the messages many people have taken away from it is that not only are we trapped by a society that oppresses us, we're also trapped by our own identities. You can run from the trap that society has placed you in, from other people's interpretations of your life, your work, and your motives, but you ultimately can't run from yourself, and any time you try to break out of a prison, you'll find yourself trapped in another prison of your own making. The most horrifying implication of the episode is that possibly even death itself won't be a release, and you will spend all eternity trying to escape from an identity you're trapped in. Viewers became so outraged, according to McGoohan, that he had to go into hiding for an extended period, and while his later claims that he never worked in Britain again are an exaggeration, it is true that for the remainder of his life he concentrated on doing work in the US instead, where he hadn't created such anger. That final episode of The Prisoner was also the only one to use a piece of contemporary pop music, in two crucial scenes: [Excerpt: The Prisoner, "Fall Out", "All You Need is Love"] Back in October 2020, we started what I thought would be a year-long look at the period from late 1962 through early 1967, but which has turned out for reasons beyond my control to take more like twenty months, with a song which was one of the last of the big pre-Beatles pop hits, though we looked at it after their first single, "Telstar" by the Tornadoes: [Excerpt: The Tornadoes, "Telstar"] There were many reasons for choosing that as one of the bookends for this fifty-episode chunk of the podcast -- you'll see many connections between that episode and this one if you listen to them back-to-back -- but among them was that it's a song inspired by the launch of the first ever communications satellite, and a sign of how the world was going to become smaller as the sixties went on. Of course, to start with communications satellites didn't do much in that regard -- they were expensive to use, and had limited bandwidth, and were only available during limited time windows, but symbolically they meant that for the first time ever, people could see and hear events thousands of miles away as they were happening. It's not a coincidence that Britain and France signed the agreement to develop Concorde, the first supersonic airliner, a month after the first Beatles single and four months after the Telstar satellite was launched. The world was becoming ever more interconnected -- people were travelling faster and further, getting news from other countries quicker, and there was more cultural conversation – and misunderstanding – between countries thousands of miles apart. The Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, the man who also coined the phrase “the medium is the message”, thought that this ever-faster connection would fundamentally change basic modes of thought in the Western world. McLuhan thought that technology made possible whole new modes of thought, and that just as the printing press had, in his view, caused Western liberalism and individualism, so these new electronic media would cause the rise of a new collective mode of thought. In 1962, the year of Concorde, Telstar, and “Love Me Do”, McLuhan wrote a book called The Gutenberg Galaxy, in which he said: “Instead of tending towards a vast Alexandrian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence.… Terror is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time.…” He coined the term “the Global Village” to describe this new collectivism. The story we've seen over the last fifty episodes is one of a sort of cultural ping-pong between the USA and the UK, with innovations in American music inspiring British musicians, who in turn inspired American ones, whether that being the Beatles covering the Isley Brothers or the Rolling Stones doing a Bobby Womack song, or Paul Simon and Bob Dylan coming over to the UK and learning folk songs and guitar techniques from Martin Carthy. And increasingly we're going to see those influences spread to other countries, and influences coming *from* other countries. We've already seen one Jamaican artist, and the influence of Indian music has become very apparent. While the focus of this series is going to remain principally in the British Isles and North America, rock music was and is a worldwide phenomenon, and that's going to become increasingly a part of the story. And so in this episode we're going to look at a live performance -- well, mostly live -- that was seen by hundreds of millions of people all over the world as it happened, thanks to the magic of satellites: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "All You Need is Love"] When we left the Beatles, they had just finished recording "Tomorrow Never Knows", the most experimental track they had recorded up to that date, and if not the most experimental thing they *ever* recorded certainly in the top handful. But "Tomorrow Never Knows" was only the first track they recorded in the sessions for what would become arguably their greatest album, and certainly the one that currently has the most respect from critics. It's interesting to note that that album could have been very, very, different. When we think of Revolver now, we think of the innovative production of George Martin, and of Geoff Emerick and Ken Townshend's inventive ideas for pushing the sound of the equipment in Abbey Road studios, but until very late in the day the album was going to be recorded in the Stax studios in Memphis, with Steve Cropper producing -- whether George Martin would have been involved or not is something we don't even know. In 1965, the Rolling Stones had, as we've seen, started making records in the US, recording in LA and at the Chess studios in Chicago, and the Yardbirds had also been doing the same thing. Mick Jagger had become a convert to the idea of using American studios and working with American musicians, and he had constantly been telling Paul McCartney that the Beatles should do the same. Indeed, they'd put some feelers out in 1965 about the possibility of the group making an album with Holland, Dozier, and Holland in Detroit. Quite how this would have worked is hard to figure out -- Holland, Dozier, and Holland's skills were as songwriters, and in their work with a particular set of musicians -- so it's unsurprising that came to nothing. But recording at Stax was a different matter.  While Steve Cropper was a great songwriter in his own right, he was also adept at getting great sounds on covers of other people's material -- like on Otis Blue, the album he produced for Otis Redding in late 1965, which doesn't include a single Cropper original: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Satisfaction"] And the Beatles were very influenced by the records Stax were putting out, often namechecking Wilson Pickett in particular, and during the Rubber Soul sessions they had recorded a "Green Onions" soundalike track, imaginatively titled "12-Bar Original": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "12-Bar Original"] The idea of the group recording at Stax got far enough that they were actually booked in for two weeks starting the ninth of April, and there was even an offer from Elvis to let them stay at Graceland while they recorded, but then a couple of weeks earlier, the news leaked to the press, and Brian Epstein cancelled the booking. According to Cropper, Epstein talked about recording at the Atlantic studios in New York with him instead, but nothing went any further. It's hard to imagine what a Stax-based Beatles album would have been like, but even though it might have been a great album, it certainly wouldn't have been the Revolver we've come to know. Revolver is an unusual album in many ways, and one of the ways it's most distinct from the earlier Beatles albums is the dominance of keyboards. Both Lennon and McCartney had often written at the piano as well as the guitar -- McCartney more so than Lennon, but both had done so regularly -- but up to this point it had been normal for them to arrange the songs for guitars rather than keyboards, no matter how they'd started out. There had been the odd track where one of them, usually Lennon, would play a simple keyboard part, songs like "I'm Down" or "We Can Work it Out", but even those had been guitar records first and foremost. But on Revolver, that changed dramatically. There seems to have been a complex web of cause and effect here. Paul was becoming increasingly interested in moving his basslines away from simple walking basslines and root notes and the other staples of rock and roll basslines up to this point. As the sixties progressed, rock basslines were becoming ever more complex, and Tyler Mahan Coe has made a good case that this is largely down to innovations in production pioneered by Owen Bradley, and McCartney was certainly aware of Bradley's work -- he was a fan of Brenda Lee, who Bradley produced, for example. But the two influences that McCartney has mentioned most often in this regard are the busy, jazz-influenced, basslines that James Jamerson was playing at Motown: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "It's the Same Old Song"] And the basslines that Brian Wilson was writing for various Wrecking Crew bassists to play for the Beach Boys: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)"] Just to be clear, McCartney didn't hear that particular track until partway through the recording of Revolver, when Bruce Johnston visited the UK and brought with him an advance copy of Pet Sounds, but Pet Sounds influenced the later part of Revolver's recording, and Wilson had already started his experiments in that direction with the group's 1965 work. It's much easier to write a song with this kind of bassline, one that's integral to the composition, on the piano than it is to write it on a guitar, as you can work out the bassline with your left hand while working out the chords and melody with your right, so the habit that McCartney had already developed of writing on the piano made this easier. But also, starting with the recording of "Paperback Writer", McCartney switched his style of working in the studio. Where up to this point it had been normal for him to play bass as part of the recording of the basic track, playing with the other Beatles, he now started to take advantage of multitracking to overdub his bass later, so he could spend extra time getting the bassline exactly right. McCartney lived closer to Abbey Road than the other three Beatles, and so could more easily get there early or stay late and tweak his parts. But if McCartney wasn't playing bass while the guitars and drums were being recorded, that meant he could play something else, and so increasingly he would play piano during the recording of the basic track. And that in turn would mean that there wouldn't always *be* a need for guitars on the track, because the harmonic support they would provide would be provided by the piano instead. This, as much as anything else, is the reason that Revolver sounds so radically different to any other Beatles album. Up to this point, with *very* rare exceptions like "Yesterday", every Beatles record, more or less, featured all four of the Beatles playing instruments. Now John and George weren't playing on "Good Day Sunshine" or "For No One", John wasn't playing on "Here, There, and Everywhere", "Eleanor Rigby" features no guitars or drums at all, and George's "Love You To" only features himself, plus a little tambourine from Ringo (Paul recorded a part for that one, but it doesn't seem to appear on the finished track). Of the three songwriting Beatles, the only one who at this point was consistently requiring the instrumental contributions of all the other band members was John, and even he did without Paul on "She Said, She Said", which by all accounts features either John or George on bass, after Paul had a rare bout of unprofessionalism and left the studio. Revolver is still an album made by a group -- and most of those tracks that don't feature John or George instrumentally still feature them vocally -- it's still a collaborative work in all the best ways. But it's no longer an album made by four people playing together in the same room at the same time. After starting work on "Tomorrow Never Knows", the next track they started work on was Paul's "Got to Get You Into My Life", but as it would turn out they would work on that song throughout most of the sessions for the album -- in a sign of how the group would increasingly work from this point on, Paul's song was subject to multiple re-recordings and tweakings in the studio, as he tinkered to try to make it perfect. The first recording to be completed for the album, though, was almost as much of a departure in its own way as "Tomorrow Never Knows" had been. George's song "Love You To" shows just how inspired he was by the music of Ravi Shankar, and how devoted he was to Indian music. While a few months earlier he had just about managed to pick out a simple melody on the sitar for "Norwegian Wood", by this point he was comfortable enough with Indian classical music that I've seen many, many sources claim that an outside session player is playing sitar on the track, though Anil Bhagwat, the tabla player on the track, always insisted that it was entirely Harrison's playing: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love You To"] There is a *lot* of debate as to whether it's George playing on the track, and I feel a little uncomfortable making a definitive statement in either direction. On the one hand I find it hard to believe that Harrison got that good that quickly on an unfamiliar instrument, when we know he wasn't a naturally facile musician. All the stories we have about his work in the studio suggest that he had to work very hard on his guitar solos, and that he would frequently fluff them. As a technical guitarist, Harrison was only mediocre -- his value lay in his inventiveness, not in technical ability -- and he had been playing guitar for over a decade, but sitar only a few months. There's also some session documentation suggesting that an unknown sitar player was hired. On the other hand there's the testimony of Anil Bhagwat that Harrison played the part himself, and he has been very firm on the subject, saying "If you go on the Internet there are a lot of questions asked about "Love You To". They say 'It's not George playing the sitar'. I can tell you here and now -- 100 percent it was George on sitar throughout. There were no other musicians involved. It was just me and him." And several people who are more knowledgeable than myself about the instrument have suggested that the sitar part on the track is played the way that a rock guitarist would play rather than the way someone with more knowledge of Indian classical music would play -- there's a blues feeling to some of the bends that apparently no genuine Indian classical musician would naturally do. I would suggest that the best explanation is that there's a professional sitar player trying to replicate a part that Harrison had previously demonstrated, while Harrison was in turn trying his best to replicate the sound of Ravi Shankar's work. Certainly the instrumental section sounds far more fluent, and far more stylistically correct, than one would expect: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love You To"] Where previous attempts at what got called "raga-rock" had taken a couple of surface features of Indian music -- some form of a drone, perhaps a modal scale -- and had generally used a guitar made to sound a little bit like a sitar, or had a sitar playing normal rock riffs, Harrison's song seems to be a genuine attempt to hybridise Indian ragas and rock music, combining the instrumentation, modes, and rhythmic complexity of someone like Ravi Shankar with lyrics that are seemingly inspired by Bob Dylan and a fairly conventional pop song structure (and a tiny bit of fuzz guitar). It's a record that could only be made by someone who properly understood both the Indian music he's emulating and the conventions of the Western pop song, and understood how those conventions could work together. Indeed, one thing I've rarely seen pointed out is how cleverly the album is sequenced, so that "Love You To" is followed by possibly the most conventional song on Revolver, "Here, There, and Everywhere", which was recorded towards the end of the sessions. Both songs share a distinctive feature not shared by the rest of the album, so the two songs can sound more of a pair than they otherwise would, retrospectively making "Love You To" seem more conventional than it is and "Here, There, and Everywhere" more unconventional -- both have as an introduction a separate piece of music that states some of the melodic themes of the rest of the song but isn't repeated later. In the case of "Love You To" it's the free-tempo bit at the beginning, characteristic of a lot of Indian music: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love You To"] While in the case of "Here, There, and Everywhere" it's the part that mimics an older style of songwriting, a separate intro of the type that would have been called a verse when written by the Gershwins or Cole Porter, but of course in the intervening decades "verse" had come to mean something else, so we now no longer have a specific term for this kind of intro -- but as you can hear, it's doing very much the same thing as that "Love You To" intro: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Here, There, and Everywhere"] In the same day as the group completed "Love You To", overdubbing George's vocal and Ringo's tambourine, they also started work on a song that would show off a lot of the new techniques they had been working on in very different ways. Paul's "Paperback Writer" could indeed be seen as part of a loose trilogy with "Love You To" and "Tomorrow Never Knows", one song by each of the group's three songwriters exploring the idea of a song that's almost all on one chord. Both "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Love You To" are based on a drone with occasional hints towards moving to one other chord. In the case of "Paperback Writer", the entire song stays on a single chord until the title -- it's on a G7 throughout until the first use of the word "writer", when it quickly goes to a C for two bars. I'm afraid I'm going to have to sing to show you how little the chords actually change, because the riff disguises this lack of movement somewhat, but the melody is also far more horizontal than most of McCartney's, so this shouldn't sound too painful, I hope: [demonstrates] This is essentially the exact same thing that both "Love You To" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" do, and all three have very similarly structured rising and falling modal melodies. There's also a bit of "Paperback Writer" that seems to tie directly into "Love You To", but also points to a possible very non-Indian inspiration for part of "Love You To". The Beach Boys' single "Sloop John B" was released in the UK a couple of days after the sessions for "Paperback Writer" and "Love You To", but it had been released in the US a month before, and the Beatles all got copies of every record in the American top thirty shipped to them. McCartney and Harrison have specifically pointed to it as an influence on "Paperback Writer". "Sloop John B" has a section where all the instruments drop out and we're left with just the group's vocal harmonies: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Sloop John B"] And that seems to have been the inspiration behind the similar moment at a similar point in "Paperback Writer", which is used in place of a middle eight and also used for the song's intro: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"] Which is very close to what Harrison does at the end of each verse of "Love You To", where the instruments drop out for him to sing a long melismatic syllable before coming back in: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love You To"] Essentially, other than "Got to Get You Into My Life", which is an outlier and should not be counted, the first three songs attempted during the Revolver sessions are variations on a common theme, and it's a sign that no matter how different the results might  sound, the Beatles really were very much a group at this point, and were sharing ideas among themselves and developing those ideas in similar ways. "Paperback Writer" disguises what it's doing somewhat by having such a strong riff. Lennon referred to "Paperback Writer" as "son of 'Day Tripper'", and in terms of the Beatles' singles it's actually their third iteration of this riff idea, which they originally got from Bobby Parker's "Watch Your Step": [Excerpt: Bobby Parker, "Watch Your Step"] Which became the inspiration for "I Feel Fine": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Feel Fine"] Which they varied for "Day Tripper": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Day Tripper"] And which then in turn got varied for "Paperback Writer": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"] As well as compositional ideas, there are sonic ideas shared between "Paperback Writer", "Tomorrow Never Knows", and "Love You To", and which would be shared by the rest of the tracks the Beatles recorded in the first half of 1966. Since Geoff Emerick had become the group's principal engineer, they'd started paying more attention to how to get a fuller sound, and so Emerick had miced the tabla on "Love You To" much more closely than anyone would normally mic an instrument from classical music, creating a deep, thudding sound, and similarly he had changed the way they recorded the drums on "Tomorrow Never Knows", again giving a much fuller sound. But the group also wanted the kind of big bass sounds they'd loved on records coming out of America -- sounds that no British studio was getting, largely because it was believed that if you cut too loud a bass sound into a record it would make the needle jump out of the groove. The new engineering team of Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott, though, thought that it was likely you could keep the needle in the groove if you had a smoother frequency response. You could do that if you used a microphone with a larger diaphragm to record the bass, but how could you do that? Inspiration finally struck -- loudspeakers are actually the same thing as microphones wired the other way round, so if you wired up a loudspeaker as if it were a microphone you could get a *really big* speaker, place it in front of the bass amp, and get a much stronger bass sound. The experiment wasn't a total success -- the sound they got had to be processed quite extensively to get rid of room noise, and then compressed in order to further prevent the needle-jumping issue, and so it's a muddier, less defined, tone than they would have liked, but one thing that can't be denied is that "Paperback Writer"'s bass sound is much, much, louder than on any previous Beatles record: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"] Almost every track the group recorded during the Revolver sessions involved all sorts of studio innovations, though rarely anything as truly revolutionary as the artificial double-tracking they'd used on "Tomorrow Never Knows", and which also appeared on "Paperback Writer" -- indeed, as "Paperback Writer" was released several months before Revolver, it became the first record released to use the technique. I could easily devote a good ten minutes to every track on Revolver, and to "Paperback Writer"s B-side, "Rain", but this is already shaping up to be an extraordinarily long episode and there's a lot of material to get through, so I'll break my usual pattern of devoting a Patreon bonus episode to something relatively obscure, and this week's bonus will be on "Rain" itself. "Paperback Writer", though, deserved the attention here even though it was not one of the group's more successful singles -- it did go to number one, but it didn't hit number one in the UK charts straight away, being kept off the top by "Strangers in the Night" by Frank Sinatra for the first week: [Excerpt: Frank Sinatra, "Strangers in the Night"] Coincidentally, "Strangers in the Night" was co-written by Bert Kaempfert, the German musician who had produced the group's very first recording sessions with Tony Sheridan back in 1961. On the group's German tour in 1966 they met up with Kaempfert again, and John greeted him by singing the first couple of lines of the Sinatra record. The single was the lowest-selling Beatles single in the UK since "Love Me Do". In the US it only made number one for two non-consecutive weeks, with "Strangers in the Night" knocking it off for a week in between. Now, by literally any other band's standards, that's still a massive hit, and it was the Beatles' tenth UK number one in a row (or ninth, depending on which chart you use for "Please Please Me"), but it's a sign that the group were moving out of the first phase of total unequivocal dominance of the charts. It was a turning point in a lot of other ways as well. Up to this point, while the group had been experimenting with different lyrical subjects on album tracks, every single had lyrics about romantic relationships -- with the possible exception of "Help!", which was about Lennon's emotional state but written in such a way that it could be heard as a plea to a lover. But in the case of "Paperback Writer", McCartney was inspired by his Aunt Mill asking him "Why do you write songs about love all the time? Can you ever write about a horse or the summit conference or something interesting?" His response was to think "All right, Aunt Mill, I'll show you", and to come up with a lyric that was very much in the style of the social satires that bands like the Kinks were releasing at the time. People often miss the humour in the lyric for "Paperback Writer", but there's a huge amount of comedy in lyrics about someone writing to a publisher saying they'd written a book based on someone else's book, and one can only imagine the feeling of weary recognition in slush-pile readers throughout the world as they heard the enthusiastic "It's a thousand pages, give or take a few, I'll be writing more in a week or two. I can make it longer..." From this point on, the group wouldn't release a single that was unambiguously about a romantic relationship until "The Ballad of John and Yoko",  the last single released while the band were still together. "Paperback Writer" also saw the Beatles for the first time making a promotional film -- what we would now call a rock video -- rather than make personal appearances on TV shows. The film was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who the group would work with again in 1969, and shows Paul with a chipped front tooth -- he'd been in an accident while riding mopeds with his friend Tara Browne a few months earlier, and hadn't yet got round to having the tooth capped. When he did, the change in his teeth was one of the many bits of evidence used by conspiracy theorists to prove that the real Paul McCartney was dead and replaced by a lookalike. It also marks a change in who the most prominent Beatle on the group's A-sides was. Up to this point, Paul had had one solo lead on an A-side -- "Can't Buy Me Love" -- and everything else had been either a song with multiple vocalists like "Day Tripper" or "Love Me Do", or a song with a clear John lead like "Ticket to Ride" or "I Feel Fine". In the rest of their career, counting "Paperback Writer", the group would release nine new singles that hadn't already been included on an album. Of those nine singles, one was a double A-side with one John song and one Paul song, two had John songs on the A-side, and the other six were Paul. Where up to this point John had been "lead Beatle", for the rest of the sixties, Paul would be the group's driving force. Oddly, Paul got rather defensive about the record when asked about it in interviews after it failed to go straight to the top, saying "It's not our best single by any means, but we're very satisfied with it". But especially in its original mono mix it actually packs a powerful punch: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"] When the "Paperback Writer" single was released, an unusual image was used in the advertising -- a photo of the Beatles dressed in butchers' smocks, covered in blood, with chunks of meat and the dismembered body parts of baby dolls lying around on them. The image was meant as part of a triptych parodying religious art -- the photo on the left was to be an image showing the four Beatles connected to a woman by an umbilical cord made of sausages, the middle panel was meant to be this image, but with halos added over the Beatles' heads, and the panel on the right was George hammering a nail into John's head, symbolising both crucifixion and that the group were real, physical, people, not just images to be worshipped -- these weren't imaginary nails, and they weren't imaginary people. The photographer Robert Whittaker later said: “I did a photograph of the Beatles covered in raw meat, dolls and false teeth. Putting meat, dolls and false teeth with The Beatles is essentially part of the same thing, the breakdown of what is regarded as normal. The actual conception for what I still call “Somnambulant Adventure” was Moses coming down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments. He comes across people worshipping a golden calf. All over the world I'd watched people worshiping like idols, like gods, four Beatles. To me they were just stock standard normal people. But this emotion that fans poured on them made me wonder where Christianity was heading.” The image wasn't that controversial in the UK, when it was used to advertise "Paperback Writer", but in the US it was initially used for the cover of an album, Yesterday... And Today, which was made up of a few tracks that had been left off the US versions of the Rubber Soul and Help! albums, plus both sides of the "We Can Work It Out"/"Day Tripper" single, and three rough mixes of songs that had been recorded for Revolver -- "Doctor Robert", "And Your Bird Can Sing", and "I'm Only Sleeping", which was the song that sounded most different from the mixes that were finally released: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I'm Only Sleeping (Yesterday... and Today mix)"] Those three songs were all Lennon songs, which had the unfortunate effect that when the US version of Revolver was brought out later in the year, only two of the songs on the album were by Lennon, with six by McCartney and three by Harrison. Some have suggested that this was the motivation for the use of the butcher image on the cover of Yesterday... And Today -- saying it was the Beatles' protest against Capitol "butchering" their albums -- but in truth it was just that Capitol's art director chose the cover because he liked the image. Alan Livingston, the president of Capitol was not so sure, and called Brian Epstein to ask if the group would be OK with them using a different image. Epstein checked with John Lennon, but Lennon liked the image and so Epstein told Livingston the group insisted on them using that cover. Even though for the album cover the bloodstains on the butchers' smocks were airbrushed out, after Capitol had pressed up a million copies of the mono version of the album and two hundred thousand copies of the stereo version, and they'd sent out sixty thousand promo copies, they discovered that no record shops would stock the album with that cover. It cost Capitol more than two hundred thousand dollars to recall the album and replace the cover with a new one -- though while many of the covers were destroyed, others had the new cover, with a more acceptable photo of the group, pasted over them, and people have later carefully steamed off the sticker to reveal the original. This would not be the last time in 1966 that something that was intended as a statement on religion and the way people viewed the Beatles would cause the group trouble in America. In the middle of the recording sessions for Revolver, the group also made what turned out to be their last ever UK live performance in front of a paying audience. The group had played the NME Poll-Winners' Party every year since 1963, and they were always shows that featured all the biggest acts in the country at the time -- the 1966 show featured, as well as the Beatles and a bunch of smaller acts, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Yardbirds, Roy Orbison, Cliff Richard and the Shadows, the Seekers, the Small Faces, the Walker Brothers, and Dusty Springfield. Unfortunately, while these events were always filmed for TV broadcast, the Beatles' performance on the first of May wasn't filmed. There are various stories about what happened, but the crux appears to be a disagreement between Andrew Oldham and Brian Epstein, sparked by John Lennon. When the Beatles got to the show, they were upset to discover that they had to wait around before going on stage -- normally, the awards would all be presented at the end, after all the performances, but the Rolling Stones had asked that the Beatles not follow them directly, so after the Stones finished their set, there would be a break for the awards to be given out, and then the Beatles would play their set, in front of an audience that had been bored by twenty-five minutes of awards ceremony, rather than one that had been excited by all the bands that came before them. John Lennon was annoyed, and insisted that the Beatles were going to go on straight after the Rolling Stones -- he seems to have taken this as some sort of power play by the Stones and to have got his hackles up about it. He told Epstein to deal with the people from the NME. But the NME people said that they had a contract with Andrew Oldham, and they weren't going to break it. Oldham refused to change the terms of the contract. Lennon said that he wasn't going to go on stage if they didn't directly follow the Stones. Maurice Kinn, the publisher of the NME, told Epstein that he wasn't going to break the contract with Oldham, and that if the Beatles didn't appear on stage, he would get Jimmy Savile, who was compering the show, to go out on stage and tell the ten thousand fans in the audience that the Beatles were backstage refusing to appear. He would then sue NEMS for breach of contract *and* NEMS would be liable for any damage caused by the rioting that was sure to happen. Lennon screamed a lot of abuse at Kinn, and told him the group would never play one of their events again, but the group did go on stage -- but because they hadn't yet signed the agreement to allow their performance to be filmed, they refused to allow it to be recorded. Apparently Andrew Oldham took all this as a sign that Epstein was starting to lose control of the group. Also during May 1966 there were visits from musicians from other countries, continuing the cultural exchange that was increasingly influencing the Beatles' art. Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys came over to promote the group's new LP, Pet Sounds, which had been largely the work of Brian Wilson, who had retired from touring to concentrate on working in the studio. Johnston played the record for John and Paul, who listened to it twice, all the way through, in silence, in Johnston's hotel room: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "God Only Knows"] According to Johnston, after they'd listened through the album twice, they went over to a piano and started whispering to each other, picking out chords. Certainly the influence of Pet Sounds is very noticeable on songs like "Here, There, and Everywhere", written and recorded a few weeks after this meeting: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Here, There, and Everywhere"] That track, and the last track recorded for the album, "She Said She Said" were unusual in one very important respect -- they were recorded while the Beatles were no longer under contract to EMI Records. Their contract expired on the fifth of June, 1966, and they finished Revolver without it having been renewed -- it would be several months before their new contract was signed, and it's rather lucky for music lovers that Brian Epstein was the kind of manager who considered personal relationships and basic honour and decency more important than the legal niceties, unlike any other managers of the era, otherwise we would not have Revolver in the form we know it today. After the meeting with Johnston, but before the recording of those last couple of Revolver tracks, the Beatles also met up again with Bob Dylan, who was on a UK tour with a new, loud, band he was working with called The Hawks. While the Beatles and Dylan all admired each other, there was by this point a lot of wariness on both sides, especially between Lennon and Dylan, both of them very similar personality types and neither wanting to let their guard down around the other or appear unhip. There's a famous half-hour-long film sequence of Lennon and Dylan sharing a taxi, which is a fascinating, excruciating, example of two insecure but arrogant men both trying desperately to impress the other but also equally desperate not to let the other know that they want to impress them: [Excerpt: Dylan and Lennon taxi ride] The day that was filmed, Lennon and Harrison also went to see Dylan play at the Royal Albert Hall. This tour had been controversial, because Dylan's band were loud and raucous, and Dylan's fans in the UK still thought of him as a folk musician. At one gig, earlier on the tour, an audience member had famously yelled out "Judas!" -- (just on the tiny chance that any of my listeners don't know that, Judas was the disciple who betrayed Jesus to the authorities, leading to his crucifixion) -- and that show was for many years bootlegged as the "Royal Albert Hall" show, though in fact it was recorded at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. One of the *actual* Royal Albert Hall shows was released a few years ago -- the one the night before Lennon and Harrison saw Dylan: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone", Royal Albert Hall 1966] The show Lennon and Harrison saw would be Dylan's last for many years. Shortly after returning to the US, Dylan was in a motorbike accident, the details of which are still mysterious, and which some fans claim was faked altogether. The accident caused him to cancel all the concert dates he had booked, and devote himself to working in the studio for several years just like Brian Wilson. And from even further afield than America, Ravi Shankar came over to Britain, to work with his friend the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, on a duet album, West Meets East, that was an example in the classical world of the same kind of international cross-fertilisation that was happening in the pop world: [Excerpt: Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar, "Prabhati (based on Raga Gunkali)"] While he was in the UK, Shankar also performed at the Royal Festival Hall, and George Harrison went to the show. He'd seen Shankar live the year before, but this time he met up with him afterwards, and later said "He was the first person that impressed me in a way that was beyond just being a famous celebrity. Ravi was my link to the Vedic world. Ravi plugged me into the whole of reality. Elvis impressed me when I was a kid, and impressed me when I met him, but you couldn't later on go round to him and say 'Elvis, what's happening with the universe?'" After completing recording and mixing the as-yet-unnamed album, which had been by far the longest recording process of their career, and which still nearly sixty years later regularly tops polls of the best album of all time, the Beatles took a well-earned break. For a whole two days, at which point they flew off to Germany to do a three-day tour, on their way to Japan, where they were booked to play five shows at the Budokan. Unfortunately for the group, while they had no idea of this when they were booked to do the shows, many in Japan saw the Budokan as sacred ground, and they were the first ever Western group to play there. This led to numerous death threats and loud protests from far-right activists offended at the Beatles defiling their religious and nationalistic sensibilities. As a result, the police were on high alert -- so high that there were three thousand police in the audience for the shows, in a venue which only held ten thousand audience members. That's according to Mark Lewisohn's Complete Beatles Chronicle, though I have to say that the rather blurry footage of the audience in the video of those shows doesn't seem to show anything like those numbers. But frankly I'll take Lewisohn's word over that footage, as he's not someone to put out incorrect information. The threats to the group also meant that they had to be kept in their hotel rooms at all times except when actually performing, though they did make attempts to get out. At the press conference for the Tokyo shows, the group were also asked publicly for the first time their views on the war in Vietnam, and John replied "Well, we think about it every day, and we don't agree with it and we think that it's wrong. That's how much interest we take. That's all we can do about it... and say that we don't like it". I say they were asked publicly for the first time, because George had been asked about it for a series of interviews Maureen Cleave had done with the group a couple of months earlier, as we'll see in a bit, but nobody was paying attention to those interviews. Brian Epstein was upset that the question had gone to John. He had hoped that the inevitable Vietnam question would go to Paul, who he thought might be a bit more tactful. The last thing he needed was John Lennon saying something that would upset the Americans before their tour there a few weeks later. Luckily, people in America seemed to have better things to do than pay attention to John Lennon's opinions. The support acts for the Japanese shows included  several of the biggest names in Japanese rock music -- or "group sounds" as the genre was called there, Japanese people having realised that trying to say the phrase "rock and roll" would open them up to ridicule given that it had both "r" and "l" sounds in the phrase. The man who had coined the term "group sounds", Jackey Yoshikawa, was there with his group the Blue Comets, as was Isao Bito, who did a rather good cover version of Cliff Richard's "Dynamite": [Excerpt: Isao Bito, "Dynamite"] Bito, the Blue Comets, and the other two support acts, Yuya Uchida and the Blue Jeans, all got together to perform a specially written song, "Welcome Beatles": [Excerpt: "Welcome Beatles" ] But while the Japanese audience were enthusiastic, they were much less vocal about their enthusiasm than the audiences the Beatles were used to playing for. The group were used, of course, to playing in front of hordes of screaming teenagers who could not hear a single note, but because of the fear that a far-right terrorist would assassinate one of the group members, the police had imposed very, very, strict rules on the audience. Nobody in the audience was allowed to get out of their seat for any reason, and the police would clamp down very firmly on anyone who was too demonstrative. Because of that, the group could actually hear themselves, and they sounded sloppy as hell, especially on the newer material. Not that there was much of that. The only song they did from the Revolver sessions was "Paperback Writer", the new single, and while they did do a couple of tracks from Rubber Soul, those were under-rehearsed. As John said at the start of this tour, "I can't play any of Rubber Soul, it's so unrehearsed. The only time I played any of the numbers on it was when I recorded it. I forget about songs. They're only valid for a certain time." That's certainly borne out by the sound of their performances of Rubber Soul material at the Budokan: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "If I Needed Someone (live at the Budokan)"] It was while they were in Japan as well that they finally came up with the title for their new album. They'd been thinking of all sorts of ideas, like Abracadabra and Magic Circle, and tossing names around with increasing desperation for several days -- at one point they seem to have just started riffing on other groups' albums, and seem to have apparently seriously thought about naming the record in parodic tribute to their favourite artists -- suggestions included The Beatles On Safari, after the Beach Boys' Surfin' Safari (and possibly with a nod to their recent Pet Sounds album cover with animals, too), The Freewheelin' Beatles, after Dylan's second album, and my favourite, Ringo's suggestion After Geography, for the Rolling Stones' Aftermath. But eventually Paul came up with Revolver -- like Rubber Soul, a pun, in this case because the record itself revolves when on a turntable. Then it was off to the Philippines, and if the group thought Japan had been stressful, they had no idea what was coming. The trouble started in the Philippines from the moment they stepped off the plane, when they were bundled into a car without Neil Aspinall or Brian Epstein, and without their luggage, which was sent to customs. This was a problem in itself -- the group had got used to essentially being treated like diplomats, and to having their baggage let through customs without being searched, and so they'd started freely carrying various illicit substances with them. This would obviously be a problem -- but as it turned out, this was just to get a "customs charge" paid by Brian Epstein. But during their initial press conference the group were worried, given the hostility they'd faced from officialdom, that they were going to be arrested during the conference itself. They were asked what they would tell the Rolling Stones, who were going to be visiting the Philippines shortly after, and Lennon just said "We'll warn them". They also asked "is there a war on in the Philippines? Why is everybody armed?" At this time, the Philippines had a new leader, Ferdinand Marcos -- who is not to be confused with his son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, also known as Bongbong Marcos, who just became President-Elect there last month. Marcos Sr was a dictatorial kleptocrat, one of the worst leaders of the latter half of the twentieth century, but that wasn't evident yet. He'd been elected only a few months earlier, and had presented himself as a Kennedy-like figure -- a young man who was also a war hero. He'd recently switched parties from the Liberal party to the right-wing Nacionalista Party, but wasn't yet being thought of as the monstrous dictator he later became. The person organising the Philippines shows had been ordered to get the Beatles to visit Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos at 11AM on the day of the show, but for some reason had instead put on their itinerary just the *suggestion* that the group should meet the Marcoses, and had put the time down as 3PM, and the Beatles chose to ignore that suggestion -- they'd refused to do that kind of government-official meet-and-greet ever since an incident in 1964 at the British Embassy in Washington where someone had cut off a bit of Ringo's hair. A military escort turned up at the group's hotel in the morning, to take them for their meeting. The group were all still in their rooms, and Brian Epstein was still eating breakfast and refused to disturb them, saying "Go back and tell the generals we're not coming." The group gave their performances as scheduled, but meanwhile there was outrage at the way the Beatles had refused to meet the Marcos family, who had brought hundreds of children -- friends of their own children, and relatives of top officials -- to a party to meet the group. Brian Epstein went on TV and tried to smooth things over, but the broadcast was interrupted by static and his message didn't get through to anyone. The next day, the group's security was taken away, as were the cars to take them to the airport. When they got to the airport, the escalators were turned off and the group were beaten up at the arrangement of the airport manager, who said in 1984 "I beat up the Beatles. I really thumped them. First I socked Epstein and he went down... then I socked Lennon and Ringo in the face. I was kicking them. They were pleading like frightened chickens. That's what happens when you insult the First Lady." Even on the plane there were further problems -- Brian Epstein and the group's road manager Mal Evans were both made to get off the plane to sort out supposed financial discrepancies, which led to them worrying that they were going to be arrested or worse -- Evans told the group to tell his wife he loved her as he left the plane. But eventually, they were able to leave, and after a brief layover in India -- which Ringo later said was the first time he felt he'd been somewhere truly foreign, as opposed to places like Germany or the USA which felt basically like home -- they got back to England: [Excerpt: "Ordinary passenger!"] When asked what they were going to do next, George replied “We're going to have a couple of weeks to recuperate before we go and get beaten up by the Americans,” The story of the "we're bigger than Jesus" controversy is one of the most widely misreported events in the lives of the Beatles, which is saying a great deal. One book that I've encountered, and one book only, Steve Turner's Beatles '66, tells the story of what actually happened, and even that book seems to miss some emphases. I've pieced what follows together from Turner's book and from an academic journal article I found which has some more detail. As far as I can tell, every single other book on the Beatles released up to this point bases their account of the story on an inaccurate press statement put out by Brian Epstein, not on the truth. Here's the story as it's generally told. John Lennon gave an interview to his friend, Maureen Cleave of the Evening Standard, during which he made some comments about how it was depressing that Christianity was losing relevance in the eyes of the public, and that the Beatles are more popular than Jesus, speaking casually because he was talking to a friend. That story was run in the Evening Standard more-or-less unnoticed, but then an American teen magazine picked up on the line about the Beatles being bigger than Jesus, reprinted chunks of the interview out of context and without the Beatles' knowledge or permission, as a way to stir up controversy, and there was an outcry, with people burning Beatles records and death threats from the Ku Klux Klan. That's... not exactly what happened. The first thing that you need to understand to know what happened is that Datebook wasn't a typical teen magazine. It *looked* just like a typical teen magazine, certainly, and much of its content was the kind of thing that you would get in Tiger Beat or any of the other magazines aimed at teenage girls -- the September 1966 issue was full of articles like "Life with the Walker Brothers... by their Road Manager", and interviews with the Dave Clark Five -- but it also had a long history of publishing material that was intended to make its readers think about social issues of the time, particularly Civil Rights. Arthur Unger, the magazine's editor and publisher, was a gay man in an interracial relationship, and while the subject of homosexuality was too taboo in the late fifties and sixties for him to have his magazine cover that, he did regularly include articles decrying segregation and calling for the girls reading the magazine to do their part on a personal level to stamp out racism. Datebook had regularly contained articles like one from 1963 talking about how segregation wasn't just a problem in the South, saying "If we are so ‘integrated' why must men in my own city of Philadelphia, the city of Brotherly Love, picket city hall because they are discriminated against when it comes to getting a job? And how come I am still unable to take my dark- complexioned friends to the same roller skating rink or swimming pool that I attend?” One of the writers for the magazine later said “We were much more than an entertainment magazine . . . . We tried to get kids involved in social issues . . . . It was a well-received magazine, recommended by libraries and schools, but during the Civil Rights period we did get pulled off a lot of stands in the South because of our views on integration” Art Unger, the editor and publisher, wasn't the only one pushing this liberal, integrationist, agenda. The managing editor at the time, Danny Fields, was another gay man who wanted to push the magazine even further than Unger, and who would later go on to manage the Stooges and the Ramones, being credited by some as being the single most important figure in punk rock's development, and being immortalised by the Ramones in their song "Danny Says": [Excerpt: The Ramones, "Danny Says"] So this was not a normal teen magazine, and that's certainly shown by the cover of the September 1966 issue, which as well as talking about the interviews with John Lennon and Paul McCartney inside, also advertised articles on Timothy Leary advising people to turn on, tune in, and drop out; an editorial about how interracial dating must be the next step after desegregation of schools, and a piece on "the ten adults you dig/hate the most" -- apparently the adult most teens dug in 1966 was Jackie Kennedy, the most hated was Barry Goldwater, and President Johnson, Billy Graham, and Martin Luther King appeared in the top ten on both lists. Now, in the early part of the year Maureen Cleave had done a whole series of articles on the Beatles -- double-page spreads on each band member, plus Brian Epstein, visiting them in their own homes (apart from Paul, who she met at a restaurant) and discussing their daily lives, their thoughts, and portraying them as rounded individuals. These articles are actually fascinating, because of something that everyone who met the Beatles in this period pointed out. When interviewed separately, all of them came across as thoughtful individuals, with their own opinions about all sorts of subjects, and their own tastes and senses of humour. But when two or more of them were together -- especially when John and Paul were interviewed together, but even in social situations, they would immediately revert to flip in-jokes and riffing on each other's statements, never revealing anything about themselves as individuals, but just going into Beatle mode -- simultaneously preserving the band's image, closing off outsiders, *and* making sure they didn't do or say anything that would get them mocked by the others. Cleave, as someone who actually took them all seriously, managed to get some very revealing information about all of them. In the article on Ringo, which is the most superficial -- one gets the impression that Cleave found him rather difficult to talk to when compared to the other, more verbally facile, band members -- she talked about how he had a lot of Wild West and military memorabilia, how he was a devoted family man and also devoted to his friends -- he had moved to the suburbs to be close to John and George, who already lived there. The most revealing quote about Ringo's personality was him saying "Of course that's the great thing about being married -- you have a house to sit in and company all the time. And you can still go to clubs, a bonus for being married. I love being a family man." While she looked at the other Beatles' tastes in literature in detail, she'd noted that the only books Ringo owned that weren't just for show were a few science fiction paperbacks, but that as he said "I'm not thick, it's just that I'm not educated. People can use words and I won't know what they mean. I say 'me' instead of 'my'." Ringo also didn't have a drum kit at home, saying he only played when he was on stage or in the studio, and that you couldn't practice on your own, you needed to play with other people. In the article on George, she talked about how he was learning the sitar,  and how he was thinking that it might be a good idea to go to India to study the sitar with Ravi Shankar for six months. She also talks about how during the interview, he played the guitar pretty much constantly, playing everything from songs from "Hello Dolly" to pieces by Bach to "the Trumpet Voluntary", by which she presumably means Clarke's "Prince of Denmark's March": [Excerpt: Jeremiah Clarke, "Prince of Denmark's March"] George was also the most outspoken on the subjects of politics, religion, and society, linking the ongoing war in Vietnam with the UK's reverence for the Second World War, saying "I think about it every day and it's wrong. Anything to do with war is wrong. They're all wrapped up in their Nelsons and their Churchills and their Montys -- always talking about war heroes. Look at All Our Yesterdays [a show on ITV that showed twenty-five-year-old newsreels] -- how we killed a few more Huns here and there. Makes me sick. They're the sort who are leaning on their walking sticks and telling us a few years in the army would do us good." He also had very strong words to say about religion, saying "I think religion falls flat on its face. All this 'love thy neighbour' but none of them are doing it. How can anybody get into the position of being Pope and accept all the glory and the money and the Mercedes-Benz and that? I could never be Pope until I'd sold my rich gates and my posh hat. I couldn't sit there with all that money on me and believe I was religious. Why can't we bring all this out in the open? Why is there all this stuff about blasphemy? If Christianity's as good as they say it is, it should stand up to a bit of discussion." Harrison also comes across as a very private person, saying "People keep saying, ‘We made you what you are,' well, I made Mr. Hovis what he is and I don't go round crawling over his gates and smashing up the wall round his house." (Hovis is a British company that makes bread and wholegrain flour). But more than anything else he comes across as an instinctive anti-authoritarian, being angry at bullying teachers, Popes, and Prime Ministers. McCartney's profile has him as the most self-consciously arty -- he talks about the plays of Alfred Jarry and the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio: [Excerpt: Luciano Berio, "Momenti (for magnetic tape)"] Though he was very worried that he might be sounding a little too pretentious, saying “I don't want to sound like Jonathan Miller going on" --

Broadcaster and railway historian Tim Dunn (Architecture The Railways Built, Secrets of the London Underground) talks about the comforts of John Betjeman and Edward Mirzoff's 1973 documentary Metro-Land. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The archdeacon is one of the colourful local characters who live here.  Irascible and combative, he is nevertheless an important part of the social life of this small portion of the watery world. He's a feral domestic duck with a chequered past and a strong sense of his own importance. A rather restless, listless day resulted in me drinking a lot of tea and reflecting on him and the work of Donna Haraway. Journal entry:16th April, Saturday"I like it up here. It's not miles away from anywhere, but it certainly feels like it. The broad sky. The rise of hill. The tawny dried stems of last year's grass that rustle in the breeze that surfs over the hill's crest. I could walk to the top and look down on the world beyond but I won't, because then I'd know I am not on a fellside in Teasdale, buttoned with gentians and quartz, with the smell of tent canvas and crushed grass and the brassy shine of a primus stove. And I'd know that the world is waiting for me, even now, seeping across the borders of my mind."Episode Information:In this episode I read the first verse of John Betjeman's poem ‘Upper Lambourne'. You can read the full poem here: Upper Lambourne. You can also hear John Betjeman read it on this video: John Betjeman reads ‘Upper Lambourne'. I also refer to the work of Donna Haraway. She has written a lot on this subject, but arguably she is best known for her essay 'A Cyborg Manifesto'. There are also numerous short (and long) videos on YouTube in which she presents her ideas in an accessible way.  For more information about Nighttime on Still WatersYou can find more information and photographs about the podcasts and life aboard the Erica on our website at noswpod.com. It will also allow you to become more a part of the podcast and you can leave comments, offer suggestions, and reviews. You can even, if you want, leave me a voice mail by clicking on the microphone icon. General DetailsIn the intro and the outro, Saint-Saen's The Swan is performed by Karr and Bernstein (1961) and available on CC at archive.org. Two-stroke narrowboat engine recorded by 'James2nd' on the River Weaver, Cheshire. Uploaded to Freesound.org on 23rd June 2018. Creative Commons Licence. Piano and keyboard interludes composed and performed by Helen Ingram.All other audio recorded on site. ContactFor pictures of Erica and images related to the podcasts or to contact me, follow me on:Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/noswpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/nighttimeonstillwaters/Twitter: https://twitter.com/NoswPodI would love to hear from you. You can email me at nighttimeonstillwaters@gmail.com or drop me a line by going to the nowspod website and using either the contact form or, if you prefer, record your message using the voicemail facility by clicking on the microphone icon. 

Daisy Dunn tells Spencer Mizen how students at Oxford University – including Evelyn Waugh, Vera Brittain and John Betjeman – were buffeted by world events in the 1920s and 30s. (Ad) Daisy Dunn is the author of Not Far From Brideshead: Oxford Between the Wars (Orion Publishing, 2022). Buy it now from Waterstones: http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=4746&awinaffid=489797&p=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.waterstones.com%2Fbook%2Fnot-far-from-brideshead%2Fdaisy-dunn%2F9781474615570&clickref=historyextra-social-histboty See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

"where felons and criminals dwell"

In this episode, Lyn is joined by PLS Treasurer Thomas Gordon, writer and musician Robin Allender and writer, comedian and BBC radio presenter John Robins. The conversation focuses on some of Robin and John's favourite Larkin poems, such as Deceptions and I Remember, I Remember and their huge knowledge and love for Larkin's work. Poems discussed: Sad Steps, High Windows, The Whitsun Weddings, Absences, Here, Livings, The Building, How, Dockery and Son, An Arundel Tomb, Deceptions, Afternoons, Mythological Introduction, I Remember, I Remember, Vers de Societie, The Life With a Hole in It, Toads, Toads Revisited, Home is So Sad, For Sidney Bechet, Going Going, The Mower Larkin prose: All What Jazz, Required Writing Other texts and references: Faber Book of Modern Verse- ed. Peter Porter, The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein (1937), On The Road, Hamlet, Yeats, John Betjeman, DH Lawrence, Iain Banks, Somewhere Becoming Rain by Clive James (2019), The Waste Land by TS Eliot (1922), Jackson Pollock, Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce (1939), Lennon Ono- The Wedding Album (1969), Queen, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart Safe As Milk (1967), Spin Magazine, Melody Maker, Bjork Venus as a Boy, Howl by Allen Ginsburg (1965), In Love With Hell by William Palmer (2021), The Thirsty Muse by Tom Dardis (1991), Kingsley Amis, Peter Cook, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943), Tom Paulin, The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951), Joe Rogan (podcaster) The Moon Under Water BBC Radio 5 live - Elis James and John Robins The Moon Under Water All Episodes — Your Own Personal Beatles This episode contains discussion of rape and alcohol misuse which some listeners may find upsetting, so please take care. Presented by Lyn Lockwood. Theme music: 'The Horns Of The Morning' by The Mechanicals Band. Buy 'The Righteous Jazz' at their Bandcamp page: https://themechanicalsband.bandcamp.com/album/the-righteous-jazz Audio editing by Simon Galloway. Follow us and get it touch on Twitter - https://twitter.com/tiny_air Find out more about the Philip Larkin Society here - http://philiplarkin.com/

Snuggle up comfortably as you join us on the NB Erica for a wild night and day as we ride the storms Dudley and Eunice. The poems of Ted Hughes, Louis MacNeice, A.A. Milne, William Blake, and John Betjeman keep us company as they take us through a day of roaring wind and rattling rain-squalls.   Please note, the audio for this episode has been intentionally kept ‘dirty' to capture the ambient sounds of a storm as experienced on a narrowboat and so any bangs, clicks, clunks, and other background noises are entirely deliberate!Journal entry:“16th February, Wednesday.21:15Storm Dudley batters the boat,  The world roars and shakes with a crashing frenzy of noise Like bed linen whipping and cracking on a gale-harried washing line. Curtains of rain laced with twigs sluice against the windows.It is a night for wild souls who can match this night, storm for storm, And who run as free as starlight and hawthorn blossom.”Episode Information:In this episode I read the following poems (see episode chapters for time locations):Ted Hughes: ‘Wind' from his first collection Hawk in the Rain (1957) published by Faber and Faber.Louis MacNeice: ‘House on a cliff' from his collection Blind Fireworks (1929) subsequently published in collections by Faber and Faber.A.A. Milne: ‘The wind on the hill' from his Now We are Six (1927) now published by Egmont (2009). William Blake: ‘Mock on. mock on, Voltaire and Rousseau' (1796)John Betjeman: ‘Harrow on the Hill' (1949) published first in A Few Late Chrysanthemums (1953) by in various later collections and anthologies like The Best of Betjeman (1978) published by Penguin Books.  General DetailsIn the intro and the outro, Saint-Saen's The Swan is performed by Karr and Bernstein (1961) and available on CC at archive.org. Two-stroke narrowboat engine recorded by 'James2nd' on the River Weaver, Cheshire. Uploaded to Freesound.org on 23rd June 2018. Creative Commons Licence. Piano and keyboard interludes composed and performed by Helen Ingram.All other audio recorded on site. ContactFor pictures of Erica and images related to the podcasts or to contact me, follow me on:Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/noswpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/nighttimeonstillwaters/Twitter: https://twitter.com/NoswPodI would love to hear from you. You can email me at nighttimeonstillwaters@gmail.com or drop me a line by going to the nowspod website and using either the contact form or, if you prefer, record your message using the voicemail facility by clicking on the microphone icon. 

My program today follows up on my programs about the whiteness and cold of winter. The physical and emotional and aesthetic contexts of winter at the ocean are powerful affirmations of life experienced, so today I read poems about the ocean in winter, celebrating the clarities made possible by whiteness and cold that wraps the sands and waters. I read poems by Walt Whitman, Sara Teasdale, John Betjeman, Thomas McGrath, and Joseph Millar. I end the program with two of my own poems.

CORRECTION: Rob mentioned some 80s film essays on Channel Four by Lindsay Anderson and Alan Clarke – it was actually Alan Parker. (His correction)Rob Young's new book continues his exploration of British culture, delving into TV and cinema.Growing up in the 1970s, Rob Young's main storyteller was the wooden box with the glass window in the corner of the family living room, otherwise known as the TV set. Before the age of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, YouTube and commercial streaming services, watching television was a vastly different experience. You switched on, you sat back and you watched. There was no pause or fast-forward button.The cross-genre feast of moving pictures produced in Britain between the late 1950s and late 1980s - from Quatermass and Tom Jones to The Wicker Man and Brideshead Revisited, from A Canterbury Tale and The Go-Between to Bagpuss and Children of the Stones, and from John Betjeman's travelogues to ghost stories at Christmas - contributed to a national conversation and collective memory. British-made sci-fi, folk horror, period drama and televisual grand tours played out tensions between the past and the present, dramatised the fractures and injustices in society and acted as a portal for magical and ghostly visions.In The Magic Box, Rob Young takes us on a fascinating journey into this influential golden age of screen and discovers what it reveals about the nature and character of Britain, its uncategorisable people and buried histories - and how its presence can still be felt on screen in the twenty-first century.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/writers-on-film. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The hot weather has broken with rain and slab-like grey/white skies. While we wait for the sun's return, it's probably a good time to remember those lazy sunny days of long ago (and not so long ago). In this week's episode we explore the sounds of canals in summer from bees to lock sluices and enjoy the words of John Betjeman and E Temple Thurston. We also discover the meaning of the word 'haysel'.Journal entry:“16th June, WednesdayThe summer heat has come, dustily settling across the fields and with it, the weighty, drowsiness that hums and buzzes in the head. The noontime hedges are as still as the night-time ones and the trees click and stretch beneath the sun. But the lethargy is short lived; the summer is still young, it hasn't yet shaken off the new-yeast of spring. The elder that the park-keeper laboured to cut back last month, explodes with green, lacy life, rearing in delight; defiantly laughing at the clean straight edges loved by sheers and humankind.”      Episode InformationIn this episode I read an extract from Miles Hadfield's (1950) An English Almanac published by JM Dent and Sons. I also refer to a reference about haysel in Ruth Binney's (2010) Weather Lore for the Wise Words and Country Ways series published by David and Charles. In this Summer Sounds section I read part of John Betjeman's (Poet Laureate) ‘Inland Waterways' which he wrote for the re-opening of Stratford upon Avon canal by the Queen Mother in 1964. It is published in The Best of John Betjeman (1978) published by Penguin. However, you can read the complete poem as well as a write up (with pictures) of the opening celebrations and its background on the Canal and River Trust's Waterfront website: From the archives: A royal visit. I conclude by reading a short extract from E Temple Thurston's (1911) evocative The Flower of Gloster published by David and Charles. General DetailsIn the intro and the outro, Saint-Saen's The Swan is performed by Karr and Bernstein (1961) and available on CC at archive.org. Two-stroke narrowboat engine recorded by 'James2nd' on the River weaver, Cheshire. Uploaded to Freesound.org on 23rd June 2018. Creative Commons Licence. Piano interludes composed and performed by Helen Ingram.All other audio recorded on site. ContactFor pictures of Erica and images related to the podcasts or to contact me, follow me on:Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/noswpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/nighttimeonstillwaters/Twitter: https://twitter.com/NoswPodI would love to hear from you. You can email me at nighttimeonstillwaters@gmail.com

Welcome back to the BOOF! This episode recounts a week living wild on several of the most southernmost Japanese islands in the Pacific - from August 2020. Prepare for digressive treatises on the WWF's Attitude Era, amateur DJs, the Robert Browne Mutiny of 1852, marketing Attenborough to the Japanese, the virtues of Spam, John Betjeman, dealing with arachnids, urban vs. rural upbringings, and the casting of Finding Nemo. I hope you enjoy.   Subscribe to the podcast and follow our socials to keep up-to-date with new episodes and upcoming guests, and go behind the scenes of BITB. Instagram: https://instagram.com/barter_in_the_booth Facebook: https://facebook.com/bitb.podcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/barter_booth Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyO2DvOW7tjSlLxhs-BpYOQ Email: bitb.pod@gmail.com

Ronald Stuart Thomas (29 March 1913 – 25 September 2000), published as R. S. Thomas, was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest who was noted for his nationalism, spirituality and dislike of the anglicisation of Wales. John Betjeman, in his 1955 introduction to Song at the Year's Turning, the first collection of Thomas's poetry from a major publisher, predicted that Thomas would be remembered long after he himself was forgotten. M. Wynn Thomas said: "He was the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn of Wales because he was such a troubler of the Welsh conscience. He was one of the major English language and European poets of the 20th century." - Bio via Wikipedia. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The second of our two podcasts with a John Betjeman focus, our guest is writer and railway historian Greg Morse. Topics include Betjeman and Larkin’s relationship with the media, twentieth century architecture and cultural history and, of course, lots of poetry, both Larkin and Betjeman. Larkin poems mentioned: Church Going, Whitsun Weddings, High Windows, This Be The Verse, Toads, Essential Beauty, Home is So Sad, High Windows. Betjeman poems mentioned: Executive, A Lincolnshire Church, Death In Leamington, Croydon, Devonshire St W1, Summoned by Bells. A Girl in Winter by Philip Larkin (Faber and Faber, 1947) The Real John Betjeman (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjQC0PdHit4, (Channel 4, 2000) Railways Forever ( 7min documentary released 1970 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg4wpL2f2RE ) Metroland (BBC, 1973) Summoned by Bells (1976) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsDb-dgXnU4 Time with Betjeman (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDlG7_2puao ) (BBC2, 1983) Railways Forever! https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-railways-for-ever-1970-online Monitor: A Poet in London (BBC, 1959) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p022kr11 London’s Historic Railway Stations (John Murray, 1972) Monitor: Down Cemetery Road (BBC, 1964) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Coe11pgoj8E) Samuel West’s poetry readings ( https://soundcloud.com/user-115260978/sets/pandemic-poems-by-samuel-west) Grayson Perry, Kingsley Amis, Evelyn Waugh, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath Passport to Pimlico https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041737/ (1949, Ealing Studios) The Righteous Jazz by The Mechanicals Band The Righteous Jazz | The Mechanicals Band (bandcamp.com) Betjeman Reading the Victorians by Greg Morse (2012, Sussex Academic Press) John Betjeman : Greg Morse (author) : 9781845195342 : Blackwell's Betjeman by Greg Morse (2011, Shire Publications) John Betjeman (Shire Library) Greg Morse: Shire Publications (bloomsbury.com) ------------------------------------------- Presented by Lyn Lockwood. Theme music: 'The Horns Of The Morning' by The Mechanicals Band. Buy 'The Righteous Jazz' at their Bandcamp page: https://themechanicalsband.bandcamp.com/album/the-righteous-jazz Audio production by Simon Galloway. Follow us and get it touch on Twitter - https://twitter.com/tiny_air Find out more about the Philip Larkin Society here - http://philiplarkin.com/

In the last programme in a series celebrating the joys of Essex, surely the most maligned of counties, writer Gillian Darley explores the unsung delights of Mid Essex, with a trip along the Essex Way. Known recently for the pneumonic blondes and diamond geezers of television's The Only Way Is Essex, as well as the peroxided 'Essex Girls' of the 80s, Essex seems to have an image problem. John Betjeman called it 'a stronger contrast of beauty and ugliness than any other southern English county'. This series explores the contrasts of this boundary county, this interzone, which has become a parody of itself. Reader and writer: Gillian Darley is the author of Excellent Essex. She is a writer, broadcaster and architectural campaigner, with an OBE for her services to the Built Environment and its Conservation. Producer: Justine Willett

In the next in a series celebrating the joys of Essex, surely the most maligned of counties, writer and social historian Ken Worpole explores Essex as a place of retreat and refuge. Known recently for the pneumonic blondes and diamond geezers of television's The Only Way Is Essex, as well as the peroxided 'Essex Girls' of the 80s, Essex seems to have an image problem. John Betjeman called it 'a stronger contrast of beauty and ugliness than any other southern English county'. This series explores the contrasts of this boundary county, this interzone, which has become a parody of itself. Reader and writer: Ken Worpole is an acclaimed writer with books on architecture, landscape, planning, design, and social history. He was a founder-member of openDemocracy, and is a senior professor at The Cities Institute, London Metropolitan University. Producer: Justine Willett

In the next in a series exploring the joys of Essex, surely the most maligned and misunderstood of counties, writer and poet Lavinia Greenlaw takes us back to the formative landscape of her childhood - a place that she rejected for so long... Known recently for the pneumonic blondes and diamond geezers of television's The Only Way Is Essex, as well as the peroxided 'Essex Girls' of the 80s, Essex seems to have an image problem. John Betjeman called it 'a stronger contrast of beauty and ugliness than any other southern English county'. This series explores the contrasts of this boundary county, this interzone, which has become a parody of itself. Reader and writer: Lavinia Greenlaw is an acclaimed poet and novelist. Producer: Justine Willett

In the next in a series exploring the joys of Essex, surely the most overlooked and misunderstood of counties, AL Kennedy takes on a watery journey through the rivers, mudflats and reedbeds of the county she now calls home. Known recently for the pneumonic blondes and diamond geezers of television's The Only Way Is Essex, as well as the peroxided 'Essex Girls' of the 80s, Essex seems to have an image problem. John Betjeman called it 'a stronger contrast of beauty and ugliness than any other southern English county'. This series explores the contrasts of this boundary county, this interzone, which has become a parody of itself. Reader and writer: AL Kennedy is an acclaimed novelist and short story writer. Producer: Justine Willett

Martin Jennings statues have been commissioned by the UK's greatest institutions: the National Portrait Gallery, St Paul's Cathedral, the Palace of Westminster, the University of Oxford, and many others. His statue of John Betjeman, the driving force behind the saving of St. Pancras station in the 1960s, welcomes visitors from all over the world to the capital city. He won the Public Monuments and Statue Associations Marsh Award for Public Sculpture in 2017. Join us for a new episode and BE INSPIRED BY SCULPTURE. You can find images of Martin Jennings work and a transcription of the interview at SCULPTURE VULTURE If you are looking for a new book, the novel mentioned in this interview is currently available free from Sculpture Vulture. This podcast was brought to you by Antique Bronze Snippet from the interview: Lucy: Today, I began our chat by asking him if he'd always been creative. Martin: Well, that's a big, open question. I think we all are from birth, and I have, I suppose, been so in different ways. I went to university, studied English literature, and looked at art literature, as it were, from the outside before I went to art school to start making things myself. Lucy: And so, it was books and literature, words, that drew you before the form and fine arts? Martin: Yes, it was. I come from a very artistic family. My mother was a painter, and I have several brothers who are writers and journalists, and also painters and good at drawing and that sort of thing, and calligraphy. In fact, what I first studied at art school was calligraphy and lettering. But I came to it rather late in my 20s. So I'd struggled with playing the piano at school, and, as I said, most of my exposure to the arts was through books and reading. But as a visual artist, well, I didn't really start till I was in my early 20s. But it has gone on continuously since then. Lucy: Was it somebody that influenced the moving towards sculpture, or did it just feel like a very natural progression? Martin: there was a moment at school I remember, I went into the art teacher's sculpture studio. And as soon as I saw the working life he had, you know, surrounded with blocks of stone, and with dusty books on the bookshelves, and just, sort of, dust everywhere, I came to the conclusion that this was the life for me. I'd never have to put a tie on ever again. But I then went to university, and it took me until after I left university before I really approached it seriously. Lucy: With my own children, we have a studio at home, and there's all sorts of projects all the way around them, but because it's so familiar to them, they kind of go against that. They want to do the opposite of what I'm interested in. But for you, I suppose, the familiarity of having your mum painting, and the materials, and those things at home, just felt much more natural to you? Martin: It certainly seemed like an occupation that could command respect, insofar as my parents were forever talking about art and artists, mainly painters. So where other people

Lyn and Rachael look back on the events of 2020 in the PLS world. This episode also includes contributions from Professor Graham Chesters (PLS Chair), novelist Chris Walsh, PLS trustee Julian Wild, Philip Pullen (Chair of Larkin100), PLS members Sally Button and James Tarry, Leigh Bird and Esther Johnson from Ships In The Sky, Hull. Poems discussed: Self’s the Man, Vers De Societe, Home Is So Sad, The Mower. Topics discussed: PLS online events, Coventry City of Culture, Larkin100, Larkin embroidery, cricket, John Betjeman, Larkin on YouTube, About Larkin, merchandise, the Larkin quiz, lockdown. Presented by Lyn Lockwood. Audio production by Simon Galloway. Follow us and get it touch on Twitter - https://twitter.com/tiny_air Find out more about the Philip Larkin Society here - http://philiplarkin.com/

Christmas By John Betjeman

Back From Australia By John Betjeman

Novelist, playwright and teacher Jonathan Smith has written two plays about Poet Laureate John Betjeman (1906-1984), Mr Betjeman's Class, and Mr Betjeman Regrets that were first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2017. His wonderful new book Being Betjeman(n) has recently been published by Galileo Publishing (https://galileopublishing.co.uk/being-betjemann). We talk about the life of John Betjeman and his wider cultural significance, Betjeman’s many connections to Philip Larkin, and Jonathan’s own very personal relationship with Betjeman and actor Ben Whitrow, who played Betjeman in Jonathan’s plays. Jonathan also reads Devonshire St, W1. Betjeman poems discussed; The Cottage Hospital, 5 O’Clock Shadow, Death in Leamington, Varsity Student Rag, At Pershore Station, Summoned by Bells. Larkin poems discussed; The Whitsun Weddings, Toads Revisited, Aubade, The Old Fools, Church Going. Other stuff; Evelyn Waugh, Andrew Motion, TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, Barry Humphries, Kenneth Williams and the Carry On team, Grayson Perry, the ‘English Eccentric’. Monitor ‘Down Cemetery Road’ (1964): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Coe11pgoj8E Kenneth Williams and Maggie Smith read Death in Leamington (Parkinson, BBC1 1970): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dI8SYa8Szo John Betjeman: The Biography by Bevis Hillier (John Murray, 2007) Betjeman by AN Wilson (Arrow, 2007) Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life by Andrew Motion (Faber and Faber, 1993) Presented by Lyn Lockwood. Theme music: 'The Horns Of The Morning' by The Mechanicals Band. Audio production by Simon Galloway. Follow us and get it touch on Twitter - https://twitter.com/tiny_air Find out more about the Philip Larkin Society here - http://philiplarkin.com/

Branch Line to Benceston by Sir Andrew CaldecottBranch Line to Benceston was published in the collection Not Exactly Ghosts in 1947. He turned to writing after retirement from the Malaysian Civil Service, again like many of our ghost story writers, he had a career in the Colonial Civil Service of the British Empire. Sadly, he didn’t live long after retirement and died aged 65. Sir Andrew Caldecott (1884–1951) was born in Kent. He was educated at Uppingham School and at Exeter College, Oxford, where he became an Honorary Fellow in 1948. His father was a clergyman. Spooky. how this happens so much. He had a very distinguished career in the Colonial Service and was Governor of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) from 1937 until 1944 (so during the Second World War), and before that Governor of Hong Kong (1935–1937). He also worked in Malaya and Singapore and there is a station named after him in Singapore. He had a lifelong interest in the supernatural and, as is evident from his two volumes of supernatural tales, he was an accomplished writer, but it wasn’t until after his retirement in 1944 that he published his first volume of ghost stories. Not Exactly Ghosts was published in 1947 by Edward Arnold & Co. It contains twelve tales. Interestingly, features of Caldecott’s own interests, such as playing the piano, crop up in his stories and I suppose that is true for most writers, hence my frequent mentions of Hawkwind. In ‘Branch Line to Benceston’, Adrian Frent, a railway enthusiast and herbalist, is the first tenant of ‘Brentside’, the newly-built house next to the narrator’s own house in Brensham. Frent is a partner in a firm of music publishers, but he hates the other partner with a vengeance, feeling that the man has messed up his life stence since they were boys. He wishes his partner dead, and then when he does die, things turn weird. But the story is not exactly a ghost story. C aldecott does a couple of things wonderfully. Firstly; this story is a portrait of Metroland, the area outside London that was developed in the first half of the twentieth century with the benefit of faster rail connections to allow the middle classes, to have the benefits of living in a suburbia that appeared and was sold as being the English countryside, while still able to travel easily into London to their day jobs. Vast swathes of the Home Counties were gobbled up and railways proliferated. John Betjeman, the English poet laureate captured all of this in his film entitled: Metroland and much of his poetry is set in this half-and-half land bathed in the sunlight of the English dream. The second thing I think Caldecott does well is the set up of the story. The death of the Dachshunds and the herbalism and poison seems to be a red-herring. Though giving his great enemy Paul Saxon one of the tinctures he makes reminds Frent of his wish to kill Paul, and thus his sin, he does not actually poison the man. This is a misdirection, I think: a red herring. However, the real set-up is the trap-door. We have already been told how Frent tends to go off half-cocked, but after a brief mention of this trap-door, Caldecott leaves it. This is subtle and I didn’t get that until the end. Caldecott is a great wit and his comment about the coroner’s view that these houses are death-traps being ignored as normal with coroner’s comments reflects his own professional experience, I am sure, and is a bit of a joke because we are going to ignore this clue too, at least I did. Caldecott even flags this clue up saying he has recorded it for a reason that will become clear later. This to me is a great example of burying the obvious, and doing it well. The picture of Frent’s fire escape being one you swarm down a rope on, hand over hand, like you did at prep school is hilarious and worthy of P G Wodehouse or Evelyn Waugh. I began to suspect something about the clock when it was mentioned it was set five minutes fast. Caldecott sets up all the railway stuff too with the... Support this podcast

Blind Man's Buff by Herbert Russell WakefieldH R Wakefield was born in 1888 in Sandgate, Kent, England and died 1964. He was the son of the Bishop of Birmingham. He was educated at the prestigious Marlborough College and then went to Oxford University where he studied history and played cricket, golf, hockey and football. He was secretary to Viscount Northcliffe and served with the Royal Scots Fusiliers when the First World War broke out and was promoted to Captain. After 1920 he settled in London and worked as chief editor in a publishing house.  His wife was American, Barbara Standish Waldo, and he met her when she was in London as her family were wealthy and took a house in London each year for the season. He divorced her in 1936 and married again in 1946. Older now, during the Second World War he served as an air-raid warden. H R's brother Gilbert was a successful playwright. Wakefield was famous for his ghost stories during his life. He published seven volumes of ghost stories during his life. His work was appreciated by August Derleth, H P Lovecraft's disciple and some of his stories were published in Weird Tales. His main influences were M R James and Algernon Blackwood (both of whom we have featured on the podcast.) The poet laureate John Betjeman considered Wakefield in the second rank of ghost story writers after M R James, which was praise indeed. However, M R James wasn't as fond of Wakefield's work. H P Lovecraft on the other hand showered Wakefield in praise and said he reached the heights of horror. Wakefield strongly believed in the paranormal, and it is perhaps because of this he was drawn to write in this field. He claimed to have had personal experiences of supernatural phenomena.  This story, Blind Man's Buff, plays on the primal fear of the dark and what might lurk within. In that play on phobia it struck me that it was similar to Marghatina Laski's The Tower, which we read as Episode 13 (https://player.captivate.fm/episode/6682b629-19d6-4cff-ab73-24a1ed629ab8) Tony's Ghost Story BooksMy latest book, London Horror Stories is available on Amazon US (https://amzn.to/2NgZHQu). Ghost and horror stories with a sense of place.  It's available free for Patrons. It's doing moderately well and the audiobook will be coming in stream soon through Author's Republic, which you'll be able to get on Audible. If you've read it and like it, could you please leave a review on Amazon? All purchases, recommendations and support of London Horror Stories is massively helpful to me. Support Tony on Ko-fi!The show is only possible through the support of appreciative listeners. If you'd like to show your appreciation for the podcast, why not nip over to Tony's Ko-Fi page and buy him a coffee? There are also some free tracks there for download, and others to buy. Go here (https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker) to visit Tony's Ko-Fi page. For Hardcore Lovers of The Podcast: Pledge via PatreonThe regular support of patrons via Patreon ensures that podcast hosting gets paid every month. If you feel you'd like to be a committed supporter, please sign up at the Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/barcud). Music by The Heartwood InstituteYou can listen to the album from which this is taken here (https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four). Please support hauntological music! Start Your Own Podcast!I am very happy with the wonderful responsive support and constant innovation of my podcast host, Captivate FM. If you want to start a podcast, you will be supported by them all the way. If you use this affiliate link (https://www.captivate.fm/signup?ref=tonywalker) to join Captivate, I also benefit, so thank you! Do You Shop At Amazon?And if so did you know, that if you click to Amazon on my link, even if you don't buy my book, anything you do buy in that session gives me a tiny little percentage of love.  So, buy my book! It's only Support this podcast

In this episode, Rich gets mad at table abuse, then opens his heart about the terrible condition of Dry Eye, while Matt gives recommendations on pubs in Brighton // Follow @poetryblokes on Twitter and Instagram to make sure you don’t miss out! // Subscribe to the show now to ensure each and every episode is delivered directly to you. // To advertise with us, visit http://www.poetryblokes.com/advertising%20/ (www.poetryblokes.com/advertising //) Hosted by: Matthew Adamo // Created by: Richard Gaughran & Matthew Adamo // Producer: Dominic Gore // Music: The Lazlo Project // Thanks for reading this far, we love you, you're great Support this podcast

Episode eighty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Apache”, by the Shadows, and at the three years in which they and Cliff Richard were on top of the music world. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode, on “Handy Man” by Jimmy Jones. My apologies for the lateness of this episode, which is due to my home Internet connection having been out for a week. 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/  —-more—- Resources   As usual, I have put together a Mixcloud mix with every song excerpted in this podcast. This four-CD set contains all the singles and EPs released by Cliff Richard and the Shadows, together and separately, between 1958 and 1962. Meanwhile, this six-CD set contains every recording the Shadows made on their own between 1959 and 1966, for a very low price. Pete Frame’s The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Be warned, though — his jokey and irreverent style can, when dealing with people like Larry Parnes (who was gay and Jewish) very occasionally tip over into reinforcing homophobic and anti-semitic stereotypes for an easy laugh. Some of the information on Royston Ellis and Norrie Paramor comes from the extended edition of Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In, which is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the Beatles, British post-war culture, and British post-war music. This volume contains Royston Ellis’ two very slim books, one on Cliff and one on the Shadows, written for a teen audience in 1960 and 61. They are more of historical interest than anything else. And Cliff Richard: The Biography by Steve Turner is very positive towards Richard, but not at the expense of honesty.  Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we’re going to look at the group that, more than any other, made the guitar group the standard for rock music; the group which made the Fender Stratocaster the single most popular guitar in the world; and who dominated the British charts for much of the early 1960s. We’re going to look at the Shadows: [Excerpt: The Shadows: “Apache”] We talked about Cliff Richard four months ago, but we’ve not yet looked at his backing group in any great detail. That’s because his group at the time of “Move It”, the single we looked at back then, was not the group that would end up becoming famous for backing him. We only mentioned in the last few minutes of that episode how his original backing band, the Drifters, were replaced one at a time by Hank Marvin, Bruce Welch, Jet Harris and Tony Meehan, most of whom had been members of the Vipers at one point or another during that group’s commercial decline. This group, still calling themselves the Drifters, went into Abbey Road studios with Cliff in February 1959, to record Richard’s first album — a live album in front of a studio audience. The album was mostly made up of rather anaemic cover versions of American records, though drawing from a rather wider pool than one might expect — as well as ballads like Ritchie Valens’ “Donna” and rockabilly covers like “Baby I Don’t Care” and “That’ll Be the Day”, there were also attempts at styles like Chicago blues, with a cover version of “My Babe”, the song Willie Dixon had written for Little Walter: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Drifters, “My Babe”] The album also featured two instrumentals by the Drifters, one of which was “Jet Black”, named after Jet Harris, who was the de facto leader of the band at this time. Harris was a very experienced musician long before joining the group. He had played bass with Tony Crombie and the Rockets, the very first ever British rock and roll band, and Crombie had told him about a new instrument — the electric bass guitar. Harris had obtained one, and seems to have been the very first British musician to play an electric bass. His bass was a signature of the band’s early work, and it gets the spotlight in “Jet Black”: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Drifters, “Jet Black”] It was around this time that Hank Marvin ended up being the first British musician to play a solid-body electric guitar — and a Fender Stratocaster at that. At the time we’re talking about, there were import restrictions on many goods from America — at the time, most economies were a lot more protectionist than they are these days, and the doctrine of free trade hadn’t taken a foothold — and so there were literally no American electric guitars in the UK, and there were no British manufacturers of them. Every British electric guitar player was playing a hollow-bodied guitar — what we’d these days call a semi-acoustic or electro-acoustic guitar. But Cliff Richard was determined that his guitarist was going to have the best instrument. An instrument that was suitable for his music. While Cliff was portrayed as England’s Elvis, and always credited Elvis as his inspiration, he had another favourite American singer, Ricky Nelson, whose softer style appealed to him, and was closer to the music that he ended up making: [Excerpt: Ricky Nelson, “Poor Little Fool”] Nelson’s lead guitarist was James Burton, who Hank Marvin admired almost as much as Cliff admired Nelson. Burton had got his start playing on Dale Hawkins’ “Suzy Q”: [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins, “Suzy Q”] But at this point, as well as playing for Nelson, he was making a reputation as the best session guitarist on the West Coast of America — so much of a reputation that even musicians in Britain knew his name. So it made sense that they should get Marvin the guitar that Burton played. They knew it was a Fender guitar, but they didn’t know anything else, so they got themselves a Fender catalogue sent over from the US. Looking through it, they recognised one guitar, the Stratocaster, as being the one Buddy Holly played. It was also the most expensive, and the coolest-looking, so it must be the one that Burton played, right? As it turns out, Burton didn’t play a Stratocaster, but a Telecaster, but they didn’t know that until much later, and so Cliff Richard sent off the equivalent of several months’ worth of Marvin’s salary to have a Stratocaster shipped over and pay the import taxes. While they were waiting for it, though, there were records to be made — and some of those records were ones that nobody involved was particularly interested in making. Cliff had started up a film career in parallel with his musical career. His first film was an attempt at an “issue” film, about teen pregnancy and false rape accusations, which featured him in a very minor role as a juvenile delinquent. In the film, he had to sing three songs written by Lionel Bart, who had written Tommy Steele’s hits, and he didn’t realise until afterwards that his film contract stipulated that one of them must be released as a single. The one that was chosen was “Living Doll”. The problem was that Richard loathed the song. He thought it was an attempt at sounding like an American rock and roll record, but one that completely missed everything that made American rock and roll exciting. He flat-out refused to do it. And then Norrie Paramor came up with an ingenious scheme. Paramor was Richard’s producer at EMI, and in a couple of years he became notorious in Britain when a jealous colleague, George Martin, leaked one of his scams to the TV presenter David Frost. Paramor would regularly write songs under pseudonyms, and get his artists to record them as B-sides, so he would get the same royalties from the record sales as the composer of the hit on the A-side. He apparently used thirty-six different pseudonyms, and was so widely known for this in the industry that people would sing of him “Oh I Do Like To See Me On The B-Side”. Paramor earned enough money from his songwriting sideline that he owned a speedboat, a second home at the seaside, and an E-type Jag, while George Martin, ostensibly on the same salary, had a second-hand Mini. But for once, Paramor was going to be able to get the A-side to a single, and present it as doing his artist a favour. He explained to Richard that one way to be sure he’d never have to put out “Living Doll” as a single would be if he’d already put out a single with a similar name. So if, say, Paramor were to write him a song called “Livin’ Lovin’ Doll”, then there’d be no way they could put out “Living Doll” — and, if anyone had seen the film and *did* want “Living Doll”, well, that would be free promotion for Paramor’s song. “Livin’ Lovin’ Doll” went to number twenty on the charts: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Drifters, “Livin’ Lovin’ Doll”] But, as it turned out, the contracts didn’t say anything about only releasing a single if you didn’t have a good reason not to. Cliff still had to release the song he’d sung in the film. But he decided he wasn’t going to release that recording — he was going to get the band to rearrange it into something that he could live with. The band members put their heads together, and decided that the song might work in a country direction, perhaps with a little of that Ricky Nelson soft-rock feel that Cliff liked. So, grudgingly, they recorded a slowed-down, acoustic version of “Living Doll”. Which promptly became Cliff’s first UK number one, as well as becoming a minor hit in the USA: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Drifters, “Living Doll”] Meanwhile, the Drifters were doing some stuff on the sidelines by themselves, too, including backing a beat poet. British popular culture in the late 1950s and early 1960s was largely, if not solely, made up of poor imitations of American pop culture, usually without any understanding of what that culture was. The phrase “cargo cult” is one that reinforces a number of unpleasant stereotypes, and as far as I can tell the story on which the phrase is based is a gross misunderstanding, but if you imagine the cargo cult as it is popularly imagined, much of British pop culture was a cargo cult imitation of America, with signifiers yanked completely out of their contexts and placed in wholly new ones. The British musicians we’ve looked at so far have been the ones that were the most innovative, the least tied to their American inspirations, and yet I’m sure you’ve been able to detect even in them the sense that they were the ersatz version of the American rock stars, the Cheez-wizz to Elvis Presley’s fine mature Stilton, a collection of sneers and hip swivels and “uh-huh”s performed in the vain hope that by doing so they could invoke some of the magic of the King of Rock and Roll. But it wasn’t just popular culture that was like this — even the Bohemian underground were trying desperately to copy American models. We’ve already seen how the skiffle craze came out of trad music, which was in itself an attempt to replicate the music made by black American musicians in New Orleans some thirty or forty years earlier. In the visual arts, there was Pop Art, which was, to start with, a purely British artistic phenomenon, but it was one made up of recycled Americana. A work like Richard Hamilton’s 1956 collage Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? was made up entirely of images found in American magazines sent over to Britain. Pop Art was interested in commenting on mass culture, but Hamilton wasn’t interested in commenting on culture that British people would have any experience of — he uses an image of a Young Romance comic cover, drawn by Jack Kirby, rather than Biffo the Bear or Desperate Dan, and the advert the collage was based on was from Ladies Home Journal, not Home Chat. And so in the late 1950s Britain got its own Beat Poet, Royston Ellis. Ellis was a bearded bisexual teenage speed freak, who hung around in Soho, which was, not coincidentally, simultaneously the gayest place in Britain, the most ethnically diverse, the artiest, and the place where every fifties British rock and roll artist came from. For all that the dozens of identikit Larry Parnes artists were made to a showbiz formula, British rock and roll was still fundamentally intertwined with the Bohemian subculture, and there were usually at most only two degrees of separation between some spotty bequiffed youth pinup in the teen magazines and a bearded folk-singing physics lecturer who went on Ban the Bomb marches every weekend. Ellis managed to parlay being willing to say controversial things like “many teenagers quite like drugs” and “some teenagers have sex before marriage” into a “spokesman for his generation” role, with regular appearances on TV. And so when he decided that he was going to copy the American Beat poets and perform in front of musicians, he wasn’t going to just go for jazz musicians like they did. He was going to continue being the voice of a generation by performing the music that would go with his talk of sex and drugs — he was going to perform his poetry backed by rock and roll music, what he called “rocketry”. And when you think of sex and drugs and rock and roll, obviously your first thought is of Cliff Richard. And so it was that Royston Ellis struck up a friendship with Cliff. Ellis’ first book of beat poetry was dedicated to Cliff, and Cliff’s first attempt at autobiography was dedicated to Royston. And Cliff’s backing band became Ellis’ backing band: [Excerpt: Royston Ellis and the Shadows, “Gone Man Squared”] That wasn’t all the Drifters were doing without Cliff. They were encouraged by Cliff to make their own records — it made him look better if his backing band were famous in their own right, and it would make the tours more attractive if both Cliff and the Drifters were star names, and so they went into Abbey Road themselves to record their first single, which is actually strikingly like the Merseybeat music that would become famous a few years later — Everly Brothers-inspired harmonies, but with the electric guitar more prominent than on the Everlys’ records, and sung in an English accent. Even the scream as they went into the guitar solo sounds very familiar if you’ve spent a lot of time listening to records from 1963 and 64. Remember again that this is 1959: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “Feeling Fine”] That was unsuccessful. By this time, though, Hank Marvin’s Fender had arrived, and he was using it on records like Cliff’s second number one, “Travellin’ Light”: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Shadows, “Travellin’ Light”] That single was also the first to bear a new credit — rather than by Cliff Richard and the Drifters, it was credited to Cliff Richard and the Shadows. It turns out that if you want to release records in the US by a new group made up of geeky-looking white British teenagers, putting it out under the name of an established black vocal group who are climbing the charts with their own massive hit is a good way to get legal letters and have to withdraw the release. Jet Harris and Hank Marvin went to the pub to discuss a new name, and Harris suggested “The Shadows”, because they were always standing in Cliff Richard’s shadow. Their first single under the Shadows name, “Lonesome Fella”, was a hybrid of country and doo-wop, with backing vocals that were more than a little reminiscent of the Del-Vikings’ “Come Go With Me”: [Excerpt: The Shadows, “Lonesome Fella”] That was also unsuccessful, and it seemed that for the time being the Shadows’ time was best spent working as a backing group, either with Cliff Richard or Royston Ellis. But Ellis worked with other musicians too. For example here’s a TV appearance with John Betjeman from very early 1961, where Ellis is accompanied by a single guitar: [Excerpt: Royston Ellis, “Lumbering Now”] The guitar there was played by a young musician Ellis had discovered named Jimmy Page. And in summer 1960, Ellis went up to Liverpool and met a band there that had been formed by a couple of art students and their younger friends. He got them to back him on stage and introduced them to drugs (showing them how at the time you could open up an inhaler to get at the amphetamine inside). He was impressed enough by them that in July 1960 an article appeared about him in Record Mirror, reading in part “the bearded sage of the coffee bars has not always been satisfied with the accompaniment provided, so he’s thinking of bringing down to London a young backing group which he considers is most in accord with his poetry. The name of the group? The Beetles!” When Tony Meehan saw that, he got annoyed — Meehan was the Shadow who, more than any of the others, was interested in being properly artistic. He’d thought that they were doing something worthwhile with Ellis, and didn’t appreciate having their accompaniment dismissed like that in favour of some nobodies from Liverpool. Ellis had to write to the Record Mirror “clarifying” his previous remarks: “These remarks were not intended as disparaging comments on the many excellent groups I have worked with on television and stage shows — groups such as Cliff Richard’s Shadows and the London group The Red Cats. For some time I have been searching for a group to use regularly, and I feel that “The Beetles” (most of them are Liverpool ex-art students) fill the bill. However, I am looking forward to working with other groups as well, and plans are at the moment underway for television appearances with both Bert Weedon and with The Shadows.” As it turned out, Ellis never did bring the Beatles down to London — when he turned twenty, he declared that as he was now middle-aged, he could no longer function as the voice of the teenagers, and turned to travelling and writing novels. You’ll notice that in Ellis’ apology, he refers to “Cliff Richard’s Shadows”, because at this point they were still just Cliff’s backing band in the eyes of the public. That was going to change that same month, and it was about to change, in part, because of someone else Ellis mentioned there — Bert Weedon. Weedon is someone who, when I pencilled in my initial list of songs to cover, was down as a definite. I was going to look at his record “Guitar Boogie Shuffle”: [Excerpt: Bert Weedon, “Guitar Boogie Shuffle”] But unfortunately, it turned out that the tiny amount of information about Weedon available made it impossible to write a full episode about him, even though he had a career that lasted sixty years and was one of the most important people in British music history. But to boil it down to its basics, Bert Weedon was a jazz guitarist, at a time when the guitar was not the prominent instrument it has been since the sixties. When he was growing up in the twenties and thirties, as he would put it, the only time you’d see a guitar was being held by a singing cowboy in a film. There were almost no guitarists in Britain, and he soon became the first-call session player any time anyone in Britain was making a record that needed guitar. Then came both rock and roll and the skiffle boom. Most of Weedon’s contemporaries were bitterly contemptuous of the new music, but the way he saw it, for the first time in his lifetime people were starting to make a decent living out of the guitar, and he wanted in. While his jazz friends started sneering at him and calling him “boogie Bert”, for the first couple of years of British rock and roll he played on almost every record that came out. But his biggest contribution to music came with a book called “Play in a Day”. That book was the first guitar tutorial published in the UK to attempt to show young players how to play the instrument in a way that got them playing songs quickly. While it’s creakily old-fashioned today, Weedon did know that what kids wanted was to learn a couple of chords so they could accompany themselves playing a song, rather than to have to practice scales for months before moving on to anything more interesting. These days there are much better books, and Weedon’s book looks exactly like all those older books it was replacing, but at the time it was a revelation. A lot of guitarists are credited as having learned from Weedon’s book, some of them almost certainly apocryphally. But while it’s been superseded by many better books, it was a massive seller in its time, and sold over two million copies. It’s safe to say that at the very least every British guitarist we look at over the next hundred or so episodes will have had a look at Weedon’s book, and many of them will have learned their first chords from it. Weedon had been a session musician and writer, but not a star musician in his own right, until he released his single “Guitar Boogie Shuffle” in 1959. It was a cover version of a hillbilly boogie called “Guitar Boogie”, by Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith, and Weedon’s version became a hit, reaching number ten in the UK — the first British guitar instrumental to make the top ten: [Excerpt: Bert Weedon, “Guitar Boogie”] Dick Rowe, the boss of Top Rank Records, for which Weedon recorded at the time, had disliked that song so much that Weedon had tried to record it under a pseudonym for another label, because Rowe wouldn’t put it out. But it became a hit, and started a run of instrumental hits for Weedon. After he’d had four hits along the lines of “Guitar Boogie Shuffle”, Weedon was sent a piece of sheet music by the publishers Francis, Day, and Hunter. “Apache” was a song inspired by a 1954 western, and written by a young songwriter called Jerry Lordan. Lordan was a minor British singer, who’d had a recent hit with “I’ll Stay Single”: [Excerpt: Jerry Lordan, “I’ll Stay Single”] But while he was a mildly successful singer, he was much more successful as a songwriter, writing Anthony Newley’s top five hit “I’ve Waited So Long”: [Excerpt: Anthony Newley, “I’ve Waited So Long”] And “A House, a Car, and a Wedding Ring”, which had the unusual distinction for a British song of getting an American cover version, by Dale Hawkins: [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins, “A House, a Car, and a Wedding Ring”] Lordan’s song, “Apache”, seemed to be the kind of thing that Bert Weedon could do well, and Weedon recorded a version of it some time in late 1959 or early 1960: [Excerpt: Bert Weedon, “Apache”] Weedon also started performing the song in his shows and on TV. But the recording hadn’t been released yet — according to Weedon, he was planning on releasing the single in September, because that was when the most records were sold. But Lordan didn’t want to wait until September for his song to come out on a record, so while he was on tour with Cliff and the Shadows, he showed the tune to Jet Harris on his ukulele. The group liked the tune, and released it as their second single under their new name. Hank Marvin had by this time been given a guitar echo unit by Joe Brown, who’d bought it and then disliked it. He used it on this record, along with another innovation — the tremolo arm on his guitar. A tremolo arm, sometimes called a whammy bar, is a metal bar on your guitar that allows you to bend all the strings at once, and nobody else in Britain had a guitar with one at this point, but Hank had his Fender Stratocaster, on which they come fitted as standard. The combination of the tremolo arm and the echo unit was a sound that no-one else in the UK had, but which was strikingly similar to some of the surf music being made in the US, which was still mostly on tiny labels with no distribution over here: [Excerpt: The Shadows, “Apache”] “Apache” went to number one on the charts, knocking off “Please Don’t Tease”, a track by Cliff with the Shadows backing him. It stayed on the charts for five months, and became a standard performed by every British guitarist — and soon by American guitarists like the Ventures. Weedon’s version was rushed out to compete with it, but only made number twenty-four. Many versions of the song have become classics in their own right, and I won’t go through all the hit versions here because this is a long episode anyway, but I do have to mention one version — a novelty version recorded as album filler by a group of session musicians hired to make an album under the name The Incredible Bongo Band: [Excerpt: The Incredible Bongo Band, “Apache”] The guitarist on that, incidentally, is Mike Deasy, who we heard last week playing with Bruce Johnston and Sandy Nelson in various bands, and who had been in Eddie Cochran’s backing band. That track includes a drum break, with bongos by King Errisson, and drums probably played by Jim Gordon, which is probably the most sampled recording of all time, and certainly in the top ten: [Excerpt: The Incredible Bongo Band, “Apache”, drum breaks] That’s been sampled by everyone from the Roots to Madonna, Vanilla Ice to Amy Winehouse, Rage Against the Machine to Kanye West. It’s been called “hip-hop’s national anthem”, and there’s a whole ninety-minute documentary on Netflix just about that track. But getting back to 1960 and the Shadows’ version of the tune, it came as a revelation to many British kids, inspiring thousands of young boys who had already learned the guitar to start playing *electric* guitar, and making everyone who wanted to be a rock and roll star covet a Stratocaster specifically (with a few odd exceptions who reacted against what was popular, like there always are). Pete Townshend, for example, in a documentary earlier this year said that hearing “Apache” was for him even more important than his first orgasm. “Apache” stayed on the charts so long that the group’s next single, “Man of Mystery”, went to number five in the charts while “Apache” was still in the top forty: [Excerpt: The Shadows, “Man of Mystery”] And while that was at number five, “Nine Times Out of Ten” by Cliff Richard and the Shadows was at number three. Between 1959 and 1965, Cliff had twenty-six consecutive top ten hit singles, of which twenty-one had the Shadows (or the Drifters) as his backing group. In the same time period, the Shadows had a run of thirteen top ten hits in their own right. They were a phenomenon in British music like nothing anyone had ever seen. They appeared in a series of films, starring Richard, who was in 1962 and 63 a bigger draw at the British cinema than the early James Bond films. Neither Cliff nor the Shadows ever had much American success, but in Europe and Australia, and from 1962 on in Canada, they were at the very peak of success in the music industry. Everything seemed to be going perfectly for Cliff and the Shadows, even when in 1961 a bizarre love triangle upended everything. Jet Harris, who was at the time the band member who was closest to Cliff, had married a beautiful young woman called Carol Costa, without realising that she had never really been interested in him, but was using him to get to Cliff. Cliff and Costa started an affair, Harris became physically abusive towards Costa, she — quite rightly — left him, and he spiralled into depression and alcoholism. Cliff and Costa’s affair didn’t last long either — but as it turned out, she would be the only woman with whom he would ever have sex. Richard’s sexuality or lack of it has been the subject of a huge amount of discussion over the years. For many decades he said he was straight but celibate because of his religious views — that he couldn’t get married without disappointing his female fans, and that he felt sex outside marriage was wrong. In more recent years he’s switched the wording he uses, saying his sexuality is his own business, that he’ll never talk about it publicly, that he has a live-in male companion, and that it shouldn’t matter to anyone what his sexuality is. Most descriptions of him from those who’ve known him over the decades have said that he was and is someone who is simply not very interested in sex. I mention this not to engage in prurient speculation about him, but to show how utterly bizarre it is that the one woman he would ever have sex with would be the wife of a friend and colleague. More in character, though, was the way he would dump Costa — as was so often the case with Cliff Richard when discarding people for whom he had no further use, he got someone else to do it. In this case it was Tony Meehan who was given the task of letting her know that Cliff had suddenly developed moral scruples. Those moral scruples would soon get a lot more scrupulous, as this affair would indirectly lead to the most famous religious conversion in all of British music history. Shortly after dumping Costa on Cliff’s behalf, Tony Meehan left the group, just before a tour of Australia and New Zealand. Meehan had slowly become disenchanted with the rest of the group, and didn’t really fit in with them — he was an intellectual who read books about the history of folk music and jazz, and wanted one day to write a history of Soho’s music scene in the style of books he’d read about New Orleans, while the rest of them just liked reading thrillers. When he left, the group’s second number one, “Kon-Tiki”, was still at the top of the charts: [Excerpt: The Shadows, “Kon-Tiki”] He was replaced by Brian Bennett, who had played in the very first lineup of Vince Taylor and the Playboys, and had been in Marty Wilde’s Wildcats for a while. Jet Harris lasted in the group another few months, until April 1962, when the drink caught up with him and he was fired. Bennett suggested that the group get in his old friend Licorice Locking, who he’d played with in the Vipers, the Playboys, and the Wildcats, and who had played with Bennett on those Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent Saturday Club sessions we heard a couple of weeks back. Locking was a fine bass player, had played with most of them before back in their 2is days, and fitted in perfectly, though he had a very different playing style than Harris — many hardcore Shadows fans think the group’s golden age ended when Harris left, and he’s rated enough as a bass player that while there are currently no substantial books on the Shadows themselves still in print, there are two separate self-published biographies of Harris available. Within a month of being fired, Harris had his own solo hit, making the top thirty with a version of “Besame Mucho” modelled on the Coasters’ version, but with Harris playing lead bass instead of singing: [Excerpt: Jet Harris, “Besame Mucho”] But Locking would have an odd effect on the Shadows. Brian Bennett had been brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness, and even though he was no longer a believer in that religion, he’d told Locking about its beliefs — and Locking had become an enthusiastic convert. As soon as he joined the group, he set about trying to convert the other members, too. He succeeded with Hank Marvin, who to this day is a devoted Witness, and he came part way with Cliff, who never became a Witness but was inspired by Locking’s Bible-reading sessions to become an evangelical Christian, and who is now British rock music’s most famously religious person. Meanwhile, Harris had switched from bass to guitar, and was now going in a more Duane Eddy style. He teamed up with Tony Meehan, and together they recorded another Jerry Lordan song, “Diamonds”, featuring Royston Ellis’ friend Jimmy Page on rhythm guitar, on his first major session: [Excerpt: Jet Harris and Tony Meehan, “Diamonds”] At the beginning of 1963, Cliff and the Shadows, past and present, had a ridiculous monopoly of the top of the charts. “Bachelor Boy” by Cliff and the Shadows, written by Cliff and Bruce Welch, was at number one for three weeks, then was replaced by “Dance On” by the Shadows, which in turn was replaced by “Diamonds” by Jet and Tony. There was a brief three-week respite while Frank Ifield topped the charts with his “Wayward Wind”, then “Summer Holiday” by Cliff and the Shadows, written by Bruce and Brian. Then “Foot Tapper” by the Shadows went to number one, then “Summer Holiday” went back to the top position. They all looked unstoppable. However, while they would all chart again, it would be two years before Cliff would have another number one, and neither the Shadows nor Jet and Tony ever would. In the case of Cliff and the Shadows, this change in commercial fortunes was because of a general change in the music market, which we’ll be looking at towards the end of the year. In the case of Jet and Tony, though, that was only part of it. Jet was in a car accident which put him out of commission for a while, and when he got better he was drinking even more. He made a brief attempt at a comeback and even joined an early lineup of the Jeff Beck Group, but spent the rest of his life either working labouring jobs or playing the nostalgia circuit. He died in 2011. Jet and Tony’s touring bass player, John Paul Jones, actually auditioned for the Shadows, as Licorice Locking left the group to spend more time evangelising, but Jones didn’t get the job, and we’ll be picking up on him later. We’ll be seeing Cliff again too, as well as having a brief appearance from Tony Meehan, but this is the last we’ll see of the Shadows, who continued with a variety of different bass players, and with Brian Bennett as the permanent drummer, off and on until 2015. Marvin, Bennett, and Welch all continue to make music separately, and it’s still possible they may perform together as the Shadows one day. But even if they don’t, “Apache” stands as the moment when a million British kids first decided that they wanted to be a guitar hero and play a Fender Stratocaster.

Episode eighty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Apache", by the Shadows, and at the three years in which they and Cliff Richard were on top of the music world. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode, on "Handy Man" by Jimmy Jones. My apologies for the lateness of this episode, which is due to my home Internet connection having been out for a week. 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/  ----more---- Resources   As usual, I have put together a Mixcloud mix with every song excerpted in this podcast. This four-CD set contains all the singles and EPs released by Cliff Richard and the Shadows, together and separately, between 1958 and 1962. Meanwhile, this six-CD set contains every recording the Shadows made on their own between 1959 and 1966, for a very low price. Pete Frame's The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Be warned, though -- his jokey and irreverent style can, when dealing with people like Larry Parnes (who was gay and Jewish) very occasionally tip over into reinforcing homophobic and anti-semitic stereotypes for an easy laugh. Some of the information on Royston Ellis and Norrie Paramor comes from the extended edition of Mark Lewisohn's Tune In, which is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the Beatles, British post-war culture, and British post-war music. This volume contains Royston Ellis' two very slim books, one on Cliff and one on the Shadows, written for a teen audience in 1960 and 61. They are more of historical interest than anything else. And Cliff Richard: The Biography by Steve Turner is very positive towards Richard, but not at the expense of honesty.  Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we're going to look at the group that, more than any other, made the guitar group the standard for rock music; the group which made the Fender Stratocaster the single most popular guitar in the world; and who dominated the British charts for much of the early 1960s. We're going to look at the Shadows: [Excerpt: The Shadows: "Apache"] We talked about Cliff Richard four months ago, but we've not yet looked at his backing group in any great detail. That's because his group at the time of "Move It", the single we looked at back then, was not the group that would end up becoming famous for backing him. We only mentioned in the last few minutes of that episode how his original backing band, the Drifters, were replaced one at a time by Hank Marvin, Bruce Welch, Jet Harris and Tony Meehan, most of whom had been members of the Vipers at one point or another during that group's commercial decline. This group, still calling themselves the Drifters, went into Abbey Road studios with Cliff in February 1959, to record Richard's first album -- a live album in front of a studio audience. The album was mostly made up of rather anaemic cover versions of American records, though drawing from a rather wider pool than one might expect -- as well as ballads like Ritchie Valens' "Donna" and rockabilly covers like "Baby I Don't Care" and "That'll Be the Day", there were also attempts at styles like Chicago blues, with a cover version of "My Babe", the song Willie Dixon had written for Little Walter: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Drifters, "My Babe"] The album also featured two instrumentals by the Drifters, one of which was "Jet Black", named after Jet Harris, who was the de facto leader of the band at this time. Harris was a very experienced musician long before joining the group. He had played bass with Tony Crombie and the Rockets, the very first ever British rock and roll band, and Crombie had told him about a new instrument -- the electric bass guitar. Harris had obtained one, and seems to have been the very first British musician to play an electric bass. His bass was a signature of the band's early work, and it gets the spotlight in "Jet Black": [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Drifters, "Jet Black"] It was around this time that Hank Marvin ended up being the first British musician to play a solid-body electric guitar -- and a Fender Stratocaster at that. At the time we're talking about, there were import restrictions on many goods from America -- at the time, most economies were a lot more protectionist than they are these days, and the doctrine of free trade hadn't taken a foothold -- and so there were literally no American electric guitars in the UK, and there were no British manufacturers of them. Every British electric guitar player was playing a hollow-bodied guitar -- what we'd these days call a semi-acoustic or electro-acoustic guitar. But Cliff Richard was determined that his guitarist was going to have the best instrument. An instrument that was suitable for his music. While Cliff was portrayed as England's Elvis, and always credited Elvis as his inspiration, he had another favourite American singer, Ricky Nelson, whose softer style appealed to him, and was closer to the music that he ended up making: [Excerpt: Ricky Nelson, "Poor Little Fool"] Nelson's lead guitarist was James Burton, who Hank Marvin admired almost as much as Cliff admired Nelson. Burton had got his start playing on Dale Hawkins' "Suzy Q": [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins, "Suzy Q"] But at this point, as well as playing for Nelson, he was making a reputation as the best session guitarist on the West Coast of America -- so much of a reputation that even musicians in Britain knew his name. So it made sense that they should get Marvin the guitar that Burton played. They knew it was a Fender guitar, but they didn't know anything else, so they got themselves a Fender catalogue sent over from the US. Looking through it, they recognised one guitar, the Stratocaster, as being the one Buddy Holly played. It was also the most expensive, and the coolest-looking, so it must be the one that Burton played, right? As it turns out, Burton didn't play a Stratocaster, but a Telecaster, but they didn't know that until much later, and so Cliff Richard sent off the equivalent of several months' worth of Marvin's salary to have a Stratocaster shipped over and pay the import taxes. While they were waiting for it, though, there were records to be made -- and some of those records were ones that nobody involved was particularly interested in making. Cliff had started up a film career in parallel with his musical career. His first film was an attempt at an "issue" film, about teen pregnancy and false rape accusations, which featured him in a very minor role as a juvenile delinquent. In the film, he had to sing three songs written by Lionel Bart, who had written Tommy Steele's hits, and he didn't realise until afterwards that his film contract stipulated that one of them must be released as a single. The one that was chosen was "Living Doll". The problem was that Richard loathed the song. He thought it was an attempt at sounding like an American rock and roll record, but one that completely missed everything that made American rock and roll exciting. He flat-out refused to do it. And then Norrie Paramor came up with an ingenious scheme. Paramor was Richard's producer at EMI, and in a couple of years he became notorious in Britain when a jealous colleague, George Martin, leaked one of his scams to the TV presenter David Frost. Paramor would regularly write songs under pseudonyms, and get his artists to record them as B-sides, so he would get the same royalties from the record sales as the composer of the hit on the A-side. He apparently used thirty-six different pseudonyms, and was so widely known for this in the industry that people would sing of him "Oh I Do Like To See Me On The B-Side". Paramor earned enough money from his songwriting sideline that he owned a speedboat, a second home at the seaside, and an E-type Jag, while George Martin, ostensibly on the same salary, had a second-hand Mini. But for once, Paramor was going to be able to get the A-side to a single, and present it as doing his artist a favour. He explained to Richard that one way to be sure he'd never have to put out "Living Doll" as a single would be if he'd already put out a single with a similar name. So if, say, Paramor were to write him a song called "Livin' Lovin' Doll", then there'd be no way they could put out "Living Doll" -- and, if anyone had seen the film and *did* want "Living Doll", well, that would be free promotion for Paramor's song. "Livin' Lovin' Doll" went to number twenty on the charts: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Drifters, "Livin' Lovin' Doll"] But, as it turned out, the contracts didn't say anything about only releasing a single if you didn't have a good reason not to. Cliff still had to release the song he'd sung in the film. But he decided he wasn't going to release that recording -- he was going to get the band to rearrange it into something that he could live with. The band members put their heads together, and decided that the song might work in a country direction, perhaps with a little of that Ricky Nelson soft-rock feel that Cliff liked. So, grudgingly, they recorded a slowed-down, acoustic version of "Living Doll". Which promptly became Cliff's first UK number one, as well as becoming a minor hit in the USA: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Drifters, "Living Doll"] Meanwhile, the Drifters were doing some stuff on the sidelines by themselves, too, including backing a beat poet. British popular culture in the late 1950s and early 1960s was largely, if not solely, made up of poor imitations of American pop culture, usually without any understanding of what that culture was. The phrase "cargo cult" is one that reinforces a number of unpleasant stereotypes, and as far as I can tell the story on which the phrase is based is a gross misunderstanding, but if you imagine the cargo cult as it is popularly imagined, much of British pop culture was a cargo cult imitation of America, with signifiers yanked completely out of their contexts and placed in wholly new ones. The British musicians we've looked at so far have been the ones that were the most innovative, the least tied to their American inspirations, and yet I'm sure you've been able to detect even in them the sense that they were the ersatz version of the American rock stars, the Cheez-wizz to Elvis Presley's fine mature Stilton, a collection of sneers and hip swivels and "uh-huh"s performed in the vain hope that by doing so they could invoke some of the magic of the King of Rock and Roll. But it wasn't just popular culture that was like this -- even the Bohemian underground were trying desperately to copy American models. We've already seen how the skiffle craze came out of trad music, which was in itself an attempt to replicate the music made by black American musicians in New Orleans some thirty or forty years earlier. In the visual arts, there was Pop Art, which was, to start with, a purely British artistic phenomenon, but it was one made up of recycled Americana. A work like Richard Hamilton's 1956 collage Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? was made up entirely of images found in American magazines sent over to Britain. Pop Art was interested in commenting on mass culture, but Hamilton wasn't interested in commenting on culture that British people would have any experience of -- he uses an image of a Young Romance comic cover, drawn by Jack Kirby, rather than Biffo the Bear or Desperate Dan, and the advert the collage was based on was from Ladies Home Journal, not Home Chat. And so in the late 1950s Britain got its own Beat Poet, Royston Ellis. Ellis was a bearded bisexual teenage speed freak, who hung around in Soho, which was, not coincidentally, simultaneously the gayest place in Britain, the most ethnically diverse, the artiest, and the place where every fifties British rock and roll artist came from. For all that the dozens of identikit Larry Parnes artists were made to a showbiz formula, British rock and roll was still fundamentally intertwined with the Bohemian subculture, and there were usually at most only two degrees of separation between some spotty bequiffed youth pinup in the teen magazines and a bearded folk-singing physics lecturer who went on Ban the Bomb marches every weekend. Ellis managed to parlay being willing to say controversial things like "many teenagers quite like drugs" and "some teenagers have sex before marriage" into a "spokesman for his generation" role, with regular appearances on TV. And so when he decided that he was going to copy the American Beat poets and perform in front of musicians, he wasn't going to just go for jazz musicians like they did. He was going to continue being the voice of a generation by performing the music that would go with his talk of sex and drugs -- he was going to perform his poetry backed by rock and roll music, what he called “rocketry”. And when you think of sex and drugs and rock and roll, obviously your first thought is of Cliff Richard. And so it was that Royston Ellis struck up a friendship with Cliff. Ellis' first book of beat poetry was dedicated to Cliff, and Cliff's first attempt at autobiography was dedicated to Royston. And Cliff's backing band became Ellis' backing band: [Excerpt: Royston Ellis and the Shadows, "Gone Man Squared"] That wasn't all the Drifters were doing without Cliff. They were encouraged by Cliff to make their own records -- it made him look better if his backing band were famous in their own right, and it would make the tours more attractive if both Cliff and the Drifters were star names, and so they went into Abbey Road themselves to record their first single, which is actually strikingly like the Merseybeat music that would become famous a few years later -- Everly Brothers-inspired harmonies, but with the electric guitar more prominent than on the Everlys' records, and sung in an English accent. Even the scream as they went into the guitar solo sounds very familiar if you've spent a lot of time listening to records from 1963 and 64. Remember again that this is 1959: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Feeling Fine"] That was unsuccessful. By this time, though, Hank Marvin's Fender had arrived, and he was using it on records like Cliff's second number one, "Travellin' Light": [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Shadows, "Travellin' Light"] That single was also the first to bear a new credit -- rather than by Cliff Richard and the Drifters, it was credited to Cliff Richard and the Shadows. It turns out that if you want to release records in the US by a new group made up of geeky-looking white British teenagers, putting it out under the name of an established black vocal group who are climbing the charts with their own massive hit is a good way to get legal letters and have to withdraw the release. Jet Harris and Hank Marvin went to the pub to discuss a new name, and Harris suggested "The Shadows", because they were always standing in Cliff Richard's shadow. Their first single under the Shadows name, "Lonesome Fella", was a hybrid of country and doo-wop, with backing vocals that were more than a little reminiscent of the Del-Vikings' "Come Go With Me": [Excerpt: The Shadows, "Lonesome Fella"] That was also unsuccessful, and it seemed that for the time being the Shadows' time was best spent working as a backing group, either with Cliff Richard or Royston Ellis. But Ellis worked with other musicians too. For example here's a TV appearance with John Betjeman from very early 1961, where Ellis is accompanied by a single guitar: [Excerpt: Royston Ellis, “Lumbering Now”] The guitar there was played by a young musician Ellis had discovered named Jimmy Page. And in summer 1960, Ellis went up to Liverpool and met a band there that had been formed by a couple of art students and their younger friends. He got them to back him on stage and introduced them to drugs (showing them how at the time you could open up an inhaler to get at the amphetamine inside). He was impressed enough by them that in July 1960 an article appeared about him in Record Mirror, reading in part "the bearded sage of the coffee bars has not always been satisfied with the accompaniment provided, so he's thinking of bringing down to London a young backing group which he considers is most in accord with his poetry. The name of the group? The Beetles!" When Tony Meehan saw that, he got annoyed -- Meehan was the Shadow who, more than any of the others, was interested in being properly artistic. He'd thought that they were doing something worthwhile with Ellis, and didn't appreciate having their accompaniment dismissed like that in favour of some nobodies from Liverpool. Ellis had to write to the Record Mirror "clarifying" his previous remarks: "These remarks were not intended as disparaging comments on the many excellent groups I have worked with on television and stage shows -- groups such as Cliff Richard's Shadows and the London group The Red Cats. For some time I have been searching for a group to use regularly, and I feel that "The Beetles" (most of them are Liverpool ex-art students) fill the bill. However, I am looking forward to working with other groups as well, and plans are at the moment underway for television appearances with both Bert Weedon and with The Shadows." As it turned out, Ellis never did bring the Beatles down to London -- when he turned twenty, he declared that as he was now middle-aged, he could no longer function as the voice of the teenagers, and turned to travelling and writing novels. You'll notice that in Ellis' apology, he refers to "Cliff Richard's Shadows", because at this point they were still just Cliff's backing band in the eyes of the public. That was going to change that same month, and it was about to change, in part, because of someone else Ellis mentioned there -- Bert Weedon. Weedon is someone who, when I pencilled in my initial list of songs to cover, was down as a definite. I was going to look at his record "Guitar Boogie Shuffle": [Excerpt: Bert Weedon, "Guitar Boogie Shuffle"] But unfortunately, it turned out that the tiny amount of information about Weedon available made it impossible to write a full episode about him, even though he had a career that lasted sixty years and was one of the most important people in British music history. But to boil it down to its basics, Bert Weedon was a jazz guitarist, at a time when the guitar was not the prominent instrument it has been since the sixties. When he was growing up in the twenties and thirties, as he would put it, the only time you'd see a guitar was being held by a singing cowboy in a film. There were almost no guitarists in Britain, and he soon became the first-call session player any time anyone in Britain was making a record that needed guitar. Then came both rock and roll and the skiffle boom. Most of Weedon's contemporaries were bitterly contemptuous of the new music, but the way he saw it, for the first time in his lifetime people were starting to make a decent living out of the guitar, and he wanted in. While his jazz friends started sneering at him and calling him "boogie Bert", for the first couple of years of British rock and roll he played on almost every record that came out. But his biggest contribution to music came with a book called "Play in a Day". That book was the first guitar tutorial published in the UK to attempt to show young players how to play the instrument in a way that got them playing songs quickly. While it's creakily old-fashioned today, Weedon did know that what kids wanted was to learn a couple of chords so they could accompany themselves playing a song, rather than to have to practice scales for months before moving on to anything more interesting. These days there are much better books, and Weedon's book looks exactly like all those older books it was replacing, but at the time it was a revelation. A lot of guitarists are credited as having learned from Weedon's book, some of them almost certainly apocryphally. But while it's been superseded by many better books, it was a massive seller in its time, and sold over two million copies. It's safe to say that at the very least every British guitarist we look at over the next hundred or so episodes will have had a look at Weedon's book, and many of them will have learned their first chords from it. Weedon had been a session musician and writer, but not a star musician in his own right, until he released his single "Guitar Boogie Shuffle" in 1959. It was a cover version of a hillbilly boogie called "Guitar Boogie", by Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, and Weedon's version became a hit, reaching number ten in the UK -- the first British guitar instrumental to make the top ten: [Excerpt: Bert Weedon, "Guitar Boogie"] Dick Rowe, the boss of Top Rank Records, for which Weedon recorded at the time, had disliked that song so much that Weedon had tried to record it under a pseudonym for another label, because Rowe wouldn't put it out. But it became a hit, and started a run of instrumental hits for Weedon. After he'd had four hits along the lines of "Guitar Boogie Shuffle", Weedon was sent a piece of sheet music by the publishers Francis, Day, and Hunter. "Apache" was a song inspired by a 1954 western, and written by a young songwriter called Jerry Lordan. Lordan was a minor British singer, who'd had a recent hit with "I'll Stay Single": [Excerpt: Jerry Lordan, "I'll Stay Single"] But while he was a mildly successful singer, he was much more successful as a songwriter, writing Anthony Newley's top five hit "I've Waited So Long": [Excerpt: Anthony Newley, "I've Waited So Long"] And "A House, a Car, and a Wedding Ring", which had the unusual distinction for a British song of getting an American cover version, by Dale Hawkins: [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins, "A House, a Car, and a Wedding Ring"] Lordan's song, "Apache", seemed to be the kind of thing that Bert Weedon could do well, and Weedon recorded a version of it some time in late 1959 or early 1960: [Excerpt: Bert Weedon, "Apache"] Weedon also started performing the song in his shows and on TV. But the recording hadn't been released yet -- according to Weedon, he was planning on releasing the single in September, because that was when the most records were sold. But Lordan didn't want to wait until September for his song to come out on a record, so while he was on tour with Cliff and the Shadows, he showed the tune to Jet Harris on his ukulele. The group liked the tune, and released it as their second single under their new name. Hank Marvin had by this time been given a guitar echo unit by Joe Brown, who'd bought it and then disliked it. He used it on this record, along with another innovation -- the tremolo arm on his guitar. A tremolo arm, sometimes called a whammy bar, is a metal bar on your guitar that allows you to bend all the strings at once, and nobody else in Britain had a guitar with one at this point, but Hank had his Fender Stratocaster, on which they come fitted as standard. The combination of the tremolo arm and the echo unit was a sound that no-one else in the UK had, but which was strikingly similar to some of the surf music being made in the US, which was still mostly on tiny labels with no distribution over here: [Excerpt: The Shadows, "Apache"] "Apache" went to number one on the charts, knocking off "Please Don't Tease", a track by Cliff with the Shadows backing him. It stayed on the charts for five months, and became a standard performed by every British guitarist -- and soon by American guitarists like the Ventures. Weedon's version was rushed out to compete with it, but only made number twenty-four. Many versions of the song have become classics in their own right, and I won't go through all the hit versions here because this is a long episode anyway, but I do have to mention one version -- a novelty version recorded as album filler by a group of session musicians hired to make an album under the name The Incredible Bongo Band: [Excerpt: The Incredible Bongo Band, "Apache"] The guitarist on that, incidentally, is Mike Deasy, who we heard last week playing with Bruce Johnston and Sandy Nelson in various bands, and who had been in Eddie Cochran's backing band. That track includes a drum break, with bongos by King Errisson, and drums probably played by Jim Gordon, which is probably the most sampled recording of all time, and certainly in the top ten: [Excerpt: The Incredible Bongo Band, "Apache", drum breaks] That's been sampled by everyone from the Roots to Madonna, Vanilla Ice to Amy Winehouse, Rage Against the Machine to Kanye West. It's been called "hip-hop's national anthem", and there's a whole ninety-minute documentary on Netflix just about that track. But getting back to 1960 and the Shadows' version of the tune, it came as a revelation to many British kids, inspiring thousands of young boys who had already learned the guitar to start playing *electric* guitar, and making everyone who wanted to be a rock and roll star covet a Stratocaster specifically (with a few odd exceptions who reacted against what was popular, like there always are). Pete Townshend, for example, in a documentary earlier this year said that hearing "Apache" was for him even more important than his first orgasm. "Apache" stayed on the charts so long that the group's next single, "Man of Mystery", went to number five in the charts while "Apache" was still in the top forty: [Excerpt: The Shadows, "Man of Mystery"] And while that was at number five, "Nine Times Out of Ten" by Cliff Richard and the Shadows was at number three. Between 1959 and 1965, Cliff had twenty-six consecutive top ten hit singles, of which twenty-one had the Shadows (or the Drifters) as his backing group. In the same time period, the Shadows had a run of thirteen top ten hits in their own right. They were a phenomenon in British music like nothing anyone had ever seen. They appeared in a series of films, starring Richard, who was in 1962 and 63 a bigger draw at the British cinema than the early James Bond films. Neither Cliff nor the Shadows ever had much American success, but in Europe and Australia, and from 1962 on in Canada, they were at the very peak of success in the music industry. Everything seemed to be going perfectly for Cliff and the Shadows, even when in 1961 a bizarre love triangle upended everything. Jet Harris, who was at the time the band member who was closest to Cliff, had married a beautiful young woman called Carol Costa, without realising that she had never really been interested in him, but was using him to get to Cliff. Cliff and Costa started an affair, Harris became physically abusive towards Costa, she -- quite rightly -- left him, and he spiralled into depression and alcoholism. Cliff and Costa's affair didn't last long either -- but as it turned out, she would be the only woman with whom he would ever have sex. Richard's sexuality or lack of it has been the subject of a huge amount of discussion over the years. For many decades he said he was straight but celibate because of his religious views -- that he couldn't get married without disappointing his female fans, and that he felt sex outside marriage was wrong. In more recent years he's switched the wording he uses, saying his sexuality is his own business, that he'll never talk about it publicly, that he has a live-in male companion, and that it shouldn't matter to anyone what his sexuality is. Most descriptions of him from those who've known him over the decades have said that he was and is someone who is simply not very interested in sex. I mention this not to engage in prurient speculation about him, but to show how utterly bizarre it is that the one woman he would ever have sex with would be the wife of a friend and colleague. More in character, though, was the way he would dump Costa -- as was so often the case with Cliff Richard when discarding people for whom he had no further use, he got someone else to do it. In this case it was Tony Meehan who was given the task of letting her know that Cliff had suddenly developed moral scruples. Those moral scruples would soon get a lot more scrupulous, as this affair would indirectly lead to the most famous religious conversion in all of British music history. Shortly after dumping Costa on Cliff's behalf, Tony Meehan left the group, just before a tour of Australia and New Zealand. Meehan had slowly become disenchanted with the rest of the group, and didn't really fit in with them -- he was an intellectual who read books about the history of folk music and jazz, and wanted one day to write a history of Soho's music scene in the style of books he'd read about New Orleans, while the rest of them just liked reading thrillers. When he left, the group's second number one, "Kon-Tiki", was still at the top of the charts: [Excerpt: The Shadows, "Kon-Tiki"] He was replaced by Brian Bennett, who had played in the very first lineup of Vince Taylor and the Playboys, and had been in Marty Wilde's Wildcats for a while. Jet Harris lasted in the group another few months, until April 1962, when the drink caught up with him and he was fired. Bennett suggested that the group get in his old friend Licorice Locking, who he'd played with in the Vipers, the Playboys, and the Wildcats, and who had played with Bennett on those Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent Saturday Club sessions we heard a couple of weeks back. Locking was a fine bass player, had played with most of them before back in their 2is days, and fitted in perfectly, though he had a very different playing style than Harris -- many hardcore Shadows fans think the group's golden age ended when Harris left, and he's rated enough as a bass player that while there are currently no substantial books on the Shadows themselves still in print, there are two separate self-published biographies of Harris available. Within a month of being fired, Harris had his own solo hit, making the top thirty with a version of "Besame Mucho" modelled on the Coasters' version, but with Harris playing lead bass instead of singing: [Excerpt: Jet Harris, "Besame Mucho"] But Locking would have an odd effect on the Shadows. Brian Bennett had been brought up as a Jehovah's Witness, and even though he was no longer a believer in that religion, he'd told Locking about its beliefs -- and Locking had become an enthusiastic convert. As soon as he joined the group, he set about trying to convert the other members, too. He succeeded with Hank Marvin, who to this day is a devoted Witness, and he came part way with Cliff, who never became a Witness but was inspired by Locking's Bible-reading sessions to become an evangelical Christian, and who is now British rock music's most famously religious person. Meanwhile, Harris had switched from bass to guitar, and was now going in a more Duane Eddy style. He teamed up with Tony Meehan, and together they recorded another Jerry Lordan song, "Diamonds", featuring Royston Ellis' friend Jimmy Page on rhythm guitar, on his first major session: [Excerpt: Jet Harris and Tony Meehan, "Diamonds"] At the beginning of 1963, Cliff and the Shadows, past and present, had a ridiculous monopoly of the top of the charts. "Bachelor Boy" by Cliff and the Shadows, written by Cliff and Bruce Welch, was at number one for three weeks, then was replaced by "Dance On" by the Shadows, which in turn was replaced by "Diamonds" by Jet and Tony. There was a brief three-week respite while Frank Ifield topped the charts with his "Wayward Wind", then "Summer Holiday" by Cliff and the Shadows, written by Bruce and Brian. Then "Foot Tapper" by the Shadows went to number one, then "Summer Holiday" went back to the top position. They all looked unstoppable. However, while they would all chart again, it would be two years before Cliff would have another number one, and neither the Shadows nor Jet and Tony ever would. In the case of Cliff and the Shadows, this change in commercial fortunes was because of a general change in the music market, which we'll be looking at towards the end of the year. In the case of Jet and Tony, though, that was only part of it. Jet was in a car accident which put him out of commission for a while, and when he got better he was drinking even more. He made a brief attempt at a comeback and even joined an early lineup of the Jeff Beck Group, but spent the rest of his life either working labouring jobs or playing the nostalgia circuit. He died in 2011. Jet and Tony's touring bass player, John Paul Jones, actually auditioned for the Shadows, as Licorice Locking left the group to spend more time evangelising, but Jones didn't get the job, and we'll be picking up on him later. We'll be seeing Cliff again too, as well as having a brief appearance from Tony Meehan, but this is the last we'll see of the Shadows, who continued with a variety of different bass players, and with Brian Bennett as the permanent drummer, off and on until 2015. Marvin, Bennett, and Welch all continue to make music separately, and it's still possible they may perform together as the Shadows one day. But even if they don't, "Apache" stands as the moment when a million British kids first decided that they wanted to be a guitar hero and play a Fender Stratocaster.

The panel bridges McGonagall's Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay to a discussion of twentieth-century poet laureate John Betjeman, who had an abiding fascination for railway buildings both architecturally and as a connecting point for human experiences.

The panel bridges McGonagall's Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay to a discussion of twentieth-century poet laureate John Betjeman, who had an abiding fascination for railway buildings both architecturally and as a connecting point for human experiences.

Discussed areSloughOn a Portrait of a Deaf ManYouth and Age on Beaulieu River HantsA Subaltern's Love Song

Hello from Suffolk, England. Here's five minutes of civilised calm to start your day right. With a poem by John Betjeman, Seaside Golf. "How straight it flew, how long it flew, It clear'd the rutty track..." From the show: Live at the Abbey from Pro Corda Machineries of Joy by British Sea Power Sign up to receive email alerts and show notes with links when a new episode goes live at marcsalmanac.substack.com Please share this with anyone who might need a touch of calm. If you like Marc's Almanac please do leave a review on Apple podcasts. It really helps new listeners to find me. Have a lovely day. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/marc-sidwell/message

Kieron Winn is a widely published poet and teacher whose debut collection The Mortal Man (2015) was glowingly reviewed by both Clive James and Melvyn Bragg. In this first of two episodes, Kieron talks to us about Toads, Dockery and Son, Myxamatosis and more, as well as The Flight from Bootle by John Betjeman, Kieron's thoughts on writing poetry and the 'lunar' landscape of Hull, taking in Tennyson, Wordsworth and Ted Hughes along the way. The podcast also features Kieron reading his own poem First Photo. More information about Kieron can be found at kieronwinn.com. Presented by Lyn Lockwood. Theme music: 'The Horns Of The Morning' by The Mechanicals Band. Audio production by Simon Galloway. Follow us and get it touch on Twitter - https://twitter.com/tiny_air Find out more about the Philip Larkin Society here - http://philiplarkin.com/

On this day, we remember 1905 French Law on the Separation of Church and State and the feast of Juan Diego. The reading is "Christmas" by John Betjeman. We’re a part of 1517 Podcasts, a network of shows dedicated to delivering Christ-centered content. Our podcasts cover a multitude of content, from Christian doctrine, apologetics, cultural engagement, and powerful preaching. Support the work of 1517 today.

show notes and other material available at https://www.zenglop.net/zenglop/podcast/

show notes and other material available at https://www.zenglop.net/zenglop/podcast/

Karen Considine was born and brought up in rural Southern Ireland and it was a lack of family money that lead to Karen leaving Ireland to become an au pair in Paris. A love of languages and adventure resulted in Karen joining the Polo circuit, a career that spanned 30 years and took her to countries all around the world. A second career in travel journalism took off when Karen had to leave behind the world of Polo due to injury and, following the death of her mother, Karen decided that southern Spain was the place where she was most likely to be able to afford to buy a house, and she pitched up in Gaucin. Earlier this year, Karen and a couple of horses, decided to retrace the journey through Andalucia taken in 1961 by Penelope Chetwode the wife of poet John Betjeman, and Karen is now writing an account of her adventures. Support the show (http://patreon.com/IanRutter)

--About the Lecture By 1947, the year of his first visit to America, Evelyn Waugh had wounded most of his friends. He had tried to bully John Betjeman and Lady Diana Cooper into Catholicism; he had condemned Olivia Plunket-Greene, the woman who had brought him to the Church, as a traitor to the faith; he had lampooned Cyril Connolly in mordant literary reviews. When, two years later, Nancy Mitford entertained him in Paris and he conscientiously insulted all her friends, she asked him why he needed to be so cruel. 'You have no idea,' he replied, 'how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.' This much-quoted remark from Christopher Sykes’s biography is often set alongside another. Hilaire Belloc, after a visit from Waugh, described him as 'possessed'. Waugh’s American experience, however, reveals a much more sympathetic character. In 1944, after Waugh broke a leg while learning to parachute, the army gratefully allowed him extended leave, during which he wrote Brideshead Revisited (1945). Appearing with the Armistice, it transformed his career. In America, it was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. At a time when most of his countrymen were suffering the austerities of the aftermath, Waugh became rich, and he had the Americans to thank for this. But he didn't. In 1947, he travelled to Hollywood to negotiate the film rights for an additional $100,000. Waugh preferred to visit Forest Lawn and the pets' cemetery to attending script conferences, so, although this trip resulted in no film, it did produce The Loved One (1948), an hilarious satire of the American Dream. Waugh's agent advised him not to publish it in the US. Waugh ignored his advice, and the book rocketed into the best-seller list. His celebrity status had never been higher there. Two more American journeys, however, present us with a quite different personality. He believed that American Catholicism was likely to be the Church's powerhouse in the post-war world, and he determined to do what he could to support it. A lecture tour was planned for January 1949. Before that, in November 1948, he went on a research trip to discuss the faith with the monks, Bishops and Professors. Less than a year after completing The Loved One, he was returning to the country his book had savaged in search of spiritual enlightenment. Everywhere he went, he amused and baffled his hosts. He would not play the celebrity game. The great art of public presentation, he felt, was that people should never know what to make of you. A contract existed between writer and public. 'The writer,' he once wrote, 'sweats to write well; the reader sweats to make dollars; writer and reader exchange books for dollars.' That was the end of the matter. He did not seek intimacy with strangers. But this was not arrogance or hypocrisy. In fact, he was withdrawing from the world, in search of contrition, compassion and humility. --About the speaker Martin Stannard is Emeritus Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Leicester. He has published extensively on Evelyn Waugh, following The Critical Heritage (1984) with a biography in two volumes (1986 and 1992). His Norton edition of Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier appeared in 1995 (revised 2011), and his biography of Muriel Spark in 2009. Currently he is Co-Executive Editor of OUP's 43-volume The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh, having edited Vile Bodies (2017) for this, and is researching a new biography of Ford. Prof. Stannard is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the English Association. --About the Ushaw Lecture Series The Ushaw Lecture Series celebrates the cultural and research significance of the remarkable bibliographical, archival and material-cultural collections at Ushaw, and the wider history of which they are expressions. The lectures cover music, art, drama, poetry and literature, architecture, material-culture, politics, science and theology.

We rejoin Paul and Rob in Highgate Woods, five miles or so into Rob's pre-Yorkshire Marathon twenty miler. Featuring dogs, the booze gang, a pre-school attempt on Everest, the quest for an unfriendly parkrun, wrestling with your central governor and fibbing to yourself about finishes, time, John Betjeman, and the dronings of Elon Musk. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/runningcommentary. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With the title finally all tied up, Jimbo, Football 365’s Daniel Storey, Michael Cox and Duncan Alexander from Opta look back over the weekend in the Premier League and around Europe. RUNNING ORDER: • PART 1a: United blow it at home to West Brom and hand the title to City (02m 00s) • PART 1b: Spurs 1 - 3 City; niche City stats (06m 30s)  • PART 2: Wolves back in the big time - with Sky Sports’ Adam Bate (18m 30s) • PART 3: World Cup memories (23m 20s) • PART 4a: Newcastle 2 - 1 Arsenal; Rafa the romantic (29m 00s)
 • PART 4b: Southampton 2 - 3 Chelsea; the rest of the relegation battlers (35m 10s) • PART 5a: Euro round-ups (44m 50s) • PART 5b: The most dangerous lead and a final stat attack (55m 50s) • PART 6: Paddy Power’s Movers & Shakers with Lee Price (58m 40s)  • PART 7: Adios (60m 40s) 
PARISH NOTICES: • join [**Paddy Power’s Rewards Club** - home of the Money Back Special](http://www.paddypower.com/) • combine your knowledge of the footy with your knowledge of the FTSE at [**Football Index**](www.footballindex.co.uk). Enter the offer code TOTALLY to trade up to £1000 risk free. T&Cs apply • get your shave on with [our friends **Cornerstone**, who are giving you £10 off your first order](https://www.cornerstone.co.uk/totally) • [get stickering with **Panini**](https://paninistickeralbum.fifa.com/launch)! CHARITY NEWS: • we’re working with CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably, who are dedicated to preventing male suicide. Find out more at the Calm Zone.  
 GET IN TOUCH: • find us on [**Facebook**,  - home of the Totally Football Quiz every Friday at 1230 GMT](https://www.facebook.com/thetotallyfootballshow/) • send us a **[tweet: @TheTotallyShow](http://www.twitter.com/thetotallyshow)**

Susan MacTavish Best is the founder & CEO of Living MacTavish. She hosts salons around the world on a diverse range of topics bringing together an eclectic array of influencers she knows into one room. At these salons Susan mixes cocktails and cooks for all of her guests, then interviews an expert or two on a specific topic followed by a live music performance. In an era of always-on one’s phone, always connected to technology, Susan brings people together informally and imperfectly, and encourages them to look each other in the eye and have a spirited conversation all the while tickling their senses with tasty food, yummy smells, interesting debates and live music. Susan sits on the advisory board of the Berkeley Center for New Media at UC Berkeley and the Quantitative Biosciences Institute at UC San Francisco. Susan has been on the advisory board of a handful of startups, and has worked closely mentoring many entrepreneurs.When she was 24, Susan founded Best Public Relations, a firm that specialized in influencing the public, the media and the influencers themselves around the globe. She handled the public relations needs for dozens of companies including: Bankrate, craigslist, Esurance, Founders Fund, Hampton Creek, Klout, LaLa, LuLu, MainStreet.com, Olivia, Playfish, Quid, Smugmug, Spoonflower, VentureBeat and YouNoodle. Susan was an Executive Producer of craigslistTV, the TV series that originated out of craigslist. In the mid 90’s Susan went back to night school to learn how to code and, as a result, started Posthoc, one of the first online guides to San Francisco which she grew into a local resource managing over 100 volunteer editors and writers. Susan graduated from Hamilton College with a BA in History. During a one year stint at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford University, she was co-Editor of the UK’s longest running university magazine, The ISIS, following in the shoes of past editors Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, John Betjeman and Sylvia Plath. While a student at Oxford, Susan won an internship at The Sunday Times (London), where she sat on the Transportation Desk outside the office of editor Andrew Neil. Here, she lasted two weeks until she realized sitting behind a desk writing about transportation news was not her calling. She left one Friday lunchtime on a train to Europe abruptly ending her journalism career. Other early jobs included Soda Jerk during summers in Connecticut at a nuclear submarine shipyard and Pickle Packer at Emandal Farm in Mendocino County. Susan lives in Soho in NYC, SF, and on the Big Sur Coast. She is a long distance trail runner. Susan grew up in Scotland, and went to school at St. Leonards in St. Andrews. She was born on Prince Edward Island after her very pregnant mother, Laurie MacTavish, flew herself unexpectedly to Charlottetown in her Cesna to deliver her daughter.

Weekly JourneywithJesus.net postings, read by Dan Clendenin. Essay by Dan Clendenin: *Best Books of 2017* for Sunday, 31 December 2017; book review by Dan Clendenin: *Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver* by Mary Oliver (2017); film review by Dan Clendenin: *Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold* (2017); poem selected by Dan Clendenin: *Christmas* by John Betjeman.

Josephine chats with author Ruth about her romantic, ghost story and mystery. Ruth is an who is an avid reader who after having a car accident had to more time on her hands to write. THE KEEPER OF LOST THINGS is Ruth's first published book and it has been translated into 14 different languages. RUTH lives in a large rambling victorian house with her rescue dogs and partner. She loves collecting THINGS and is a massive fan of the poet John Betjeman. Follow: @ruthmariehogan Buy the book: http://www.tworoadsbooks.com/fiction/the-keeper-of-lost-things-ruth-hogan/ LOVE Podcasts? Love Radio Gorgeous www.radiogorgeous.com

Weekly JourneywithJesus.net postings, read by Dan Clendenin. Essay by Dan Clendenin: *Best Books of 2016* for Sunday, 25 December 2016; book review by Dan Clendenin: *Revelation; A Search for Faith in a Violent Religious World* by Dennis Covington (2016); film review by Dan Clendenin: *The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir* (2014); poem selected by Dan Clendenin: *Christmas* by John Betjeman.

Music, poetry and fun for a very merry Christmas and a blessed Yule! The Christmas Goose by Kate Rusby From the album "The Frost Is All Over" (2015) "Johnny's Christmas Guitar" with Johnny Cash from The Johnny Cash & Family Christmas TV Show (1977) Sleigh Ride by Sam Bush from the album "Christmas Roots" (2013) Standing By My Christmas Tree by Cara Dillon from the album "Upon A Winter's Night" (2016) The Winter Song by Skinner And T'Witch single release (2016) Infinite Space by Eddie & Luc from the album "Tirade" (2016) with "A Christmas Poem" written and read by Jim Thielen Christmas Pudding by Greg Trafidlo from the album "Folk Singular" (2005) "Have you ever seen a million dollars?" Judge Reinhold and Eric Lloyd from "The Santa Clause" (1994) The Secret Tree Of Gotham by Hicks & Goulbourn from the album "Immortal" (2016) Pass The Bottle (A Christmas Song) by Jethro Tull single release (2016) "Santa's Little Helper" Julie Andrews and Peter Ustinov from "Julie's Christmas TV Special" (1973) The Oak King Rises (Live) by Wood, Wire & Words FolkCast exclusive (2016) "Christmas" by John Betjeman, read by Robert Donat with Carol Medley by Ken Nicol from the album "Tidings" (1991) Rejoice (O Come Emmanuel) by Eddy Mann single release (2016) "It's Christmas Eve…" Bill Murray from "Scrooged" (1988) There's Magic In Christmas Eve by The Changing Room from the EP "The Magic Of Christmas" (2016) The World Falls In Love by The Houghton Weavers from the album "Christmas In Lancashire" (2016) "December" by Dollie Radford Reading courtesy of Classic Poetry Aloud with The Holly And The Ivy by Andrews Massey Duo from the album "Make Merry" (2013) The Magic Christmas Tree by Pilgrim's Way from the EP "Shining Gently All Around" (2011) A Winter's Tale by The Magnets from the album "Christmas - The Collection" (2011) "A Christmas Surprise…" with The Muppets from "Muppet Family Christmas TV Special" (1987) #1 Record For Christmas by Neil Diamond from the album "Acoustic Christmas" (2016) The Snowman's Song by Simon Mayor & Hilary James from the Musical Mystery Tour albums (2016) "Snow for Christmas…" Gracie Burns and Peter Brocco from "Burns and Allen: Company for Christmas" (1955) Come Mad Boys by Telynor from the album "Off The Beaten Track" (1992) The Quantock Carol by Ange Hardy from the EP "The Quantock Carol & Mary's Robin" (2016) By The Fireside by Ellen And The Escapades single release (2012) "None of us are as young as we look these days…" Bing Crosby and David Bowie from "Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas" (1977) Christmas Day by Johnnyswim from the album "A Johnnyswim Christmas" (2014) "Goodbye…" Julie Andrews from "The Sound Of Christmas TV Special" (1987) God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen / The Official Brawle by Joshua Burnell single release (2016) For full details and links to artists’ websites, see the ShowNotes at www.folkcast.co.uk

Joanna Lumley reads BUSINESS GIRLS by John Betjeman as part of The Betjeman Poetry Prize for young people aged 10 - 13 for more info see the website below. http://www.betjemanpoetryprize.co.uk/ #Poetry #Young #Literacy

Weekly JourneywithJesus.net postings, read by Dan Clendenin. Essay by Dan Clendenin: *Homeless at Christmas* for Sunday, 20 December 2015; book review by Dan Clendenin: *The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings* by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski (2015); film review by Dan Clendenin: *Don't Tell Anyone* (2015); poem selected by Dan Clendenin: *Christmas* by John Betjeman.

  Andrea Diener verreist, schreibt über ihre Reisen in der FAZ und ist so freundlich, mir von ihren Reisen zu erzählen. Diesmal war sie in Brighton und wir reden über Londonleben, Wischmeyers Analyse des “Tommy” (auf Youtube), Schottenröcke, Bermudas auf Bermuda, Jane Austen, Quadrophenia, den Brighton Riots, den Seebrücken (Brighton Pier, West Pier), John Betjeman, Liverpool Street […]

  Andrea Diener verreist, schreibt über ihre Reisen in der FAZ und ist so freundlich, mir von ihren Reisen zu erzählen. Diesmal war sie in Brighton und wir reden über Londonleben, Wischmeyers Analyse des “Tommy” (auf Youtube), Schottenröcke, Bermudas auf Bermuda, Jane Austen, Quadrophenia, den Brighton Riots, den Seebrücken (Brighton Pier, West Pier), John Betjeman, Liverpool Street […]