Podcasts about Rubber Soul

Hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot pay tribute to the late musical genius Brian Wilson, who died at age 82. They'll discuss Wilson's transcendent music, including doing a deep dive on his masterpiece, Pet Sounds.Join our Facebook Group: https://bit.ly/3sivr9TBecome a member on Patreon: https://bit.ly/3slWZvcSign up for our newsletter: https://bit.ly/3eEvRnGMake a donation via PayPal: https://bit.ly/3dmt9lUSend us a Voice Memo: Desktop: bit.ly/2RyD5Ah Mobile: sayhi.chat/soundops Featured Songs:The Beach Boys, "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times," Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966The Beatles, "With A Little Help From My Friends," Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Parlophone, 1967The Beach Boys, "In My Room," Surfer Girl, Capitol, 1963The Beach Boys, "Lonely Sea," Surfin' USA, Capitol, 1963The Beach Boys, "Don't Worry Baby," Shut Down Volume 2, Capitol, 1964The Beach Boys, "Surf's Up," Surf's Up, Brother/Reprise, 1971The Beach Boys, "Still I Dream of It (Original Home Demo, 1976)," Good Vibrations:Thirty Years of the Beach Boys, Capitol, 1993The Beach Boys, "Sloop John B," Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966The Four Freshman, "I Remember You," Four Freshmen and 5 Trombones, Capitol, 1955The Gamblers, "LSD-25," Moon Dawg!/LSD-25, World Pacific, 1960The Beach Boys, "I'm Waiting for the Day," Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966The Beach Boys, "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)," Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966The Beach Boys, "Let's Go Away for Awhile," Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966The Beach Boys, "Caroline No," Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966The Beach Boys, "You Still Believe in Me," Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966The Beach Boys, "Pet Sounds," Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966The Beach Boys, "Hang On to Your Ego," Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966The Beach Boys, "That's Not Me," Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966The Beach Boys, "God Only Knows," Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966The Beach Boys, "Little Deuce Coupe," Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966The Beatles, "Nowhere Man," Rubber Soul, Parlophone, 1965The Beatles, "She's Leaving Home," Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Parlophone, 1967Horsegirl, "2468," Phonetics On and On, Matador, 2025See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Listeners of The Wolf know that despite the fact that The Wolf lived mere yards (or meters) from Abbey Road, he and Action Jackson aren't huge Beatles fans. While he did go through a Beatles stage in high school, it was really an education on how the band evolved and created some amazing music which is still enjoyed and studied today. However, thanks to a run of 60s rock related movies that ran on Cinemax one night in the 80s, The Wolf became very familiar with Help! as he recorded the movie on VHS and watched it over and over. It was in technicolor, unlike A Hard Day's Night, and showed the boys having fun in exotic locales like Switzerland, The Bahamas, Stonehenge and Buckingham Palace. The seven tunes on the album that were included in the movie all hold up well and are fun to sing along with while you're watching. But the album is the first step moving from being bubble gum pop stars into more respected recording artists. We review the UK version of the album as the US version is shorter with orchestrated score tunes from the movie. The whole first side of the UK album features beloved songs from the movie like the title track, Ticket To Ride, You've Got To Hide Your Love Away and The Night Before. But the second side also features some Beatles classics like Ringo singing Act Naturally, I've Just Seen A Face and the all-time classic Yesterday. It's amazing that the boys were all so young (21-24) and were maturing before our eyes as they were now able to write more robust tunes with more mature themes. Bob Dylan had introduced them to marijuana by now and they'd done their first LSD trips which would show up more on an album from later in 1965, Rubber Soul (and after). But this one has one foot in the old, teenage dream Beatles phase and one in the more mature and experimental Beatles. We can't believe it's turning 60 but we went track x track to celebrate. Check out our new website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ugly American Werewolf in London Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Threads⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LInkTree⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.pantheonpodcasts.com⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Time for George's first entry into Rubber Soul as JG and Andrew tackle Think For Yourself. Is the song as bitter as it sometimes appears? How does the political angle work? And who's the impost important player on the track? Plus we dive into the postbag for a little correspondence. (Also, apologies for JG's slightly odd sound - thanks to some technical constrains, the sound quality isn't it's usual high standard. Apologies, folks!)   Rankings: Track-by-track Ranking eMail: beatlesstuffology@gmail.com Twitter: @beatles_ology Instagram: beatlesstuffology JG's Blog: Judgementally Reviews… Andrew's Blog: Stuffology   Produced By: Blind Luck and JG McQuarrie

Comedian Amy Matthews joins us this week to chat about her early musical memories, her love of Rubber Soul, and we take a deep dive into the 1978 Bee Gee-fronted mind-melting musical film, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Spoiler: it's less than brilliant.For subscribers, Jack and Robin break down George Harrison's Try Some, Buy Some, from 1973's Living in the Material World. Subscribe via Apple Podcasts or at Patreon.com/personalbeatles.Links of note:You can watch the film here: https://youtu.be/ZwfSfdYMfXs?si=QYh9WFEF-0GhFm3qGary Barlow's big son: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/gary-barlow-massive-giant-tall-son-b2642537.htmlDavid Bowie's version of Try Some, Buy Some: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Svpv6UHA-dwAmy's stuff!WEBSITE: www.amymatthewscomedy.comSOCIALS: @amyfmatthewsSUBSTACK: amyfmatthews.substack.comVINYL PRE-ORDER: www.monkeybarrelrecords.com/product-page/amy-matthews-commute-with-the-foxes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When you explore the music of The Yardbirds you are really observing the evolution of what would become hard rock.  This group started in 1963 and over its time would engage the talents of three of the greatest guitarists of the rock world:  Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page.  Additional musicians in the group through 1968 were Keith Relf on vocals and harmonica, Jim McCarty on drums, Chris Dreja on rhythm guitar, and Paul Samwell-Smith on bass.  The group was founded in the blues, but over time would explore psychedelic rock, pop rock, and hard rock, with instrumental jams being a signature sound throughout their tenure.Having a Rave Up, also known as "Having a Rave Up with the Yardbirds," is their second American album, and showcases two of their virtuoso guitarists.  The album has one side of studio recordings in which Jeff Beck is the guitarist.  Side two is a compilation of live performances featuring Eric Clapton on guitar.  During a time when most songs were expected to run about three minutes, the Yardbirds would extend these out in live performances to six or seven minutes with instrumental jams known as "rave ups."  The combination of studio and live work is an excellent introduction to The Yardbirds, as the band's strength was in their live performances.  Their studio efforts would improve with the experimentation of Jeff Beck.Jimmy Page would become their guitarist in mid-1966 until their split-up in mid-1968.  He would form a group as "The New Yardbirds" shortly thereafter, which would be renamed shortly thereafter to Led Zeppelin.Rob brings us this study in the origins of rock for this week's podcast. Heart Full of SoulThis song was the first single released by The Yardbirds after Jeff Beck joined the group.  It was written by Graham Gouldman, who would later be the co-lead singer and bassist of 10cc.  The band wanted to include a sitar in the instrumentation for this song, but when things didn't work out for that, Beck experimented with his guitar to duplicate the eastern sound of the sitar instead.You're a Better Man than IThe opening song from the album is also known as "Mister, You're a Better Man than I."  It was written by brothers Mike and Brian Hugg, and is an attempt at a more folk rock song.  The socially conscious lyrics take aim at the hypocrisy of society and politics, stating that you shouldn't judge a person based on superficial appearances or education.Smokestack LightningThe live opener to side two is a cover of an old blues song recorded by American blues artist Howlin' Wolf in 1956.  The inspiration for the title came from watching trains go by at night and seeing the sparks come out of the smokestack.The Train Kept a-Rollin'While Aerosmith's cover may be more famous, this jump blues piece was originally performed by Tiny Bradshaw in 1951.  The Yardbirds played this song during their first American tour in 1965, and Sam Phillips recorded it for them in Memphis later that year.  It closes out side 1 of the album. ENTERTAINMENT TRACK:Main theme from the television action comedy "Batman"This campy superhero show premiered this month. STAFF PICKS:Don't Think Twice, It's Alright by The Wonder Who?Bruce begins the staff picks with a disguise group.  The Four Seasons used the name "The Wonder Who?" for four records released from 1965 to 1967, including this one.  Frankie Valli wasn't happy with his vocals on this song, and he recorded it with a "joke" falsetto voice while trying to break the tension in the studio.  All Your Love by John Mayall & the BluesbreakersLynch brings us a blues song originally recorded by American blues musician Otis Rush in 1958.  Multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter John Mayall led this group, which included Eric Clapton on guitar and John McVie on bass.  This single is the lead-off track to the debut album "Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton," also known as "The Beano Album" because Clapton is reading a children's comic called "The Beano" on the front cover.My Generation by the WhoWayne's staff pick is the hit that started the trajectory for the Who.  Guitarist Pete Townshend wrote this song about young rebellion.  Roger Daltrey incorporates a stutter in his vocals to sound like a British mod on speed.  While this song would reach number 2 on the UK charts, it topped out at number 74 on the US charts.Day Tripper by the BeatlesRob features a well known song from the Beatles, recorded during the "Rubber Soul" album sessions but not included on the album itself.  It was released as a double A-side single along with "We Can Work it Out" during a time when the Beatles were under pressure to release a single in time for the 1965 Christmas season.   COMEDY TRACK:The Lurch by Ted CassidyTed Cassidy played Lurch on "The Addams Family," and also performed this novelty song.   Thanks for listening to “What the Riff?!?” NOTE: To adjust the loudness of the music or voices, you may adjust the balance on your device. VOICES are stronger in the LEFT channel, and MUSIC is stronger on the RIGHT channel.Please follow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/whattheriffpodcast/, and message or email us with what you'd like to hear, what you think of the show, and any rock-worthy memes we can share.Of course we'd love for you to rate the show in your podcast platform!**NOTE: What the Riff?!? does not own the rights to any of these songs and we neither sell, nor profit from them. We share them so you can learn about them and purchase them for your own collections.

Best of Paul McCartney 1970-1990) sans mes commentaires. P.McCartney-Rockestra theme-Back to the egg (79)-GénériqueBeatles-I saw her standing there-Please please me (63)Beatles-And I love her-A hard day's night (64)Beatles-Long tall Sally-Single (64)Beatles-Yesterday-Help ! (65)Beatles-Drive my car-Rubber Soul (65)Beatles-Eleanor Rigby-Revolver (66)Beatles-When I'm sixty four-Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (67)Beatles-Honey pie-White album (68)Beatles-Hey Jude-Single (68)Beatles-The long and winding road-Let it be (70)P.McCartney-Hot as sun/Glasses/Maybe I'm amazed-McCartney (70)P.McCartney-Too many people-Ram (71)P.McCartney-Tomorrow-Wild life (71)P.McCartney-Jet-Band on the run (73)P.McCartney-My love-Red rose speedway (73)P.McCartney-Live and let die-Single (73)P.McCartney-Magneto and Titanium man-Venus and Mars (75)P.McCartney-Silly love songs-At the speed of sound (76)P.McCartney-Mull of kintyre-Single (77)P.McCartney-With a little luck-London town (78)P.McCartney-Reception/Old Siam Sir-Back to the egg (79)P.McCartney-Wonderful Christmastime-Single (79)P.McCartney-Coming up-II (80)P.McCartney-Here today-Tug of war (82)P.McCartney-Ballroom dancing/Be what you see (link)-Tug of war (82)P.McCartney-Say say say (feat. M.Jackson)-Pipes of peaces (83)P.McCartney-Press-Press to play (86)P.McCartney-My brave face-Flowers in the dirt (89)P.McCartney-Rockestra theme-Back to the egg (79)-Générique

Best of Paul McCartney 1962-1990 (part.1) Beatles-I saw her standing there-Please please me (63)Beatles-And I love her-A hard day's night (64)Beatles-Long tall Sally-Single (64)Beatles-Yesterday-Help ! (65)Beatles-Drive my car-Rubber Soul (65)Beatles-Eleanor Rigby-Revolver (66)Beatles-When I'm sixty four-Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (67)Beatles-Honey pie-White album (68)Beatles-Hey Jude-Single (68)Beatles-The long and winding road-Let it be (70)P.McCartney-Hot as sun/Glasses/Maybe I'm amazed-McCartney (70)P.McCartney-Too many people-Ram (71)P.McCartney-Tomorrow-Wild life (71)P.McCartney-Jet-Band on the run (73)P.McCartney-My love-Red rose speedway (73)P.McCartney-Live and let die-Single (73)P.McCartney-Magneto and Titanium man-Venus and Mars (75)P.McCartney-Silly love songs-At the speed of sound (76)P.McCartney-Mull of kintyre-Single (77)P.McCartney-With a little luck-London town (78)P.McCartney-Reception/Old Siam Sir-Back to the egg (79)P.McCartney-Wonderful Christmastime-Single (79)P.McCartney-Coming up-II (80)P.McCartney-Here today-Tug of war (82)P.McCartney-Ballroom dancing/Be what you see (link)-Tug of war (82)P.McCartney-Say say say (feat. M.Jackson)-Pipes of peaces (83)P.McCartney-Press-Press to play (86)P.McCartney-My brave face-Flowers in the dirt (89)

La Venganza Será Terrible: todo el año festejando los 40 años Chacarerean Teatre, Palermo Alejandro Dolina, Patricio Barton, Gillespi Introducción • Entrada0:01:27 Segmento Inicial • Viajar a Marte0:06:46 Segmento Dispositivo • Carpinteros y artesanos a lo largo de la historia0:41:15 • "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" ♫ (Toca el TSN) The Beatles, Rubber Soul. Segmento Humorístico • Cosas que pueden matarte Sordo Gancé / Trío Sin Nombre • Presentación • "Mañana Campestre" ♫ (Arco Iris) • "La Vieja Serenata" ♫ (Teófilo Ibáñez/Sandalio Gómez) • "Fields of Gold" ♫ (Sting) • "" ♫ () • "Seguir Viviendo Sin tu Amor" ♫ (Luis Alberto Spinetta) • "Tenderly" ♫ (Walter Gross/Lawrence) Chet Baker • "Hit The Road Jack" ♫ (Percy Mayfield)

This week on The Five(ish) Fangirls Podcast, we're heading back to the swinging '60s to dive into the sounds that helped shape modern music. We're putting the needle down on Rubber Soul, the groundbreaking 1965 album from The Beatles. With its mix of folk rock, soul, and lyrical evolution, this record marked a major turning point in their career—and in popular music as a whole. Join us as we explore the tracks, the stories behind them, and why Rubber Soul still resonates decades later. Plus some fandom news and your feedback! Our Linktree: https://linktr.ee/FiveishFangirls #FiveishFam TIME STAMPS 00:00:25 Intro 00:02:10 News 00:13:34 Feedback 00:22:21 Rubber Soul 01:49:51 Closing Thoughts 01:51:40 Outro Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. 

Evan and Amanda review "Pet Sounds" by the Beach Boys. Listen today to learn how the release of "Rubber Soul" from the Beatles pushed Brian Wilson to create what many consider to be the first concept album in the pop & rock genre. Find us on Instagram and Threads @worstpodonmarsFind us on Facebook @ The Worst Podcast on MarsSend us an email: worstpodonmars@gmail.com

Best of George Harrison 1963-2001 P.McCartney-Rockestra theme-Back to the egg (79)-GénériqueBeatles-Don't bother me-With the Beatles (63)Beatles-Roll over Beethoven-For sale (64)Beatles-I need you-Help! (65)Beatles-If I needed someone-Rubber Soul (65)Beatles-I want to tell you-Revolver (66)Beatles-While my guitar gently weeps-White album (68)Beatles-Something-Abbey Road (69)Beatles-Here comes the sun-Abbey Road (69)G.Harrison-My sweet Lord-All things must pass (70)G.Harrison-Isn't it a Pity-All things must pass (70)G.Harrison-Wah Wah-All things must pass (70)G.Harrison-Give me love (give me peace on Earth)-Living in the Material World (73)G.Harrison-The day the World gets 'round (take 22)-Living in the Material World (50th anniversary) (24-73)G.Harrison-Ding dong-Dark Horse (74)G.Harrison-Dark Horse-Dark Horse (74)G.Harrison-This guitar (can't keep from crying) (Platinium weird version)-Extra texture (read all about it) (75)G.Harrison-The answer's at the end-Extra texture (read all about it) (75)G.Harrison-Beautiful girl-Thirty there & 1/3 (76)G.Harrison-This song-Thirty there & 1/3 (76)G.Harrison-Faster-George Harrison (79)G.Harrison-Your love is forever-George Harrison (79)G.Harrison-Writing's on the wall-Somewhere in England (81)G.Harrison-Baltimore Oriole-Somewhere in England (81)G.Harrison-That's the way it goes-Gone troppo (82)G.Harrison-Got my mind set on you-Cloud nine (87)G.Harrison-Rising sun-Brainwashed (02)G.Harrison-Looking for my life-Brainwashed (02)P.McCartney-Rockestra theme-Back to the egg (79)-Générique

O quadragésimo episódio de Rádio Clube Altamont foi gravado agora, mas tresanda à segunda metade da década de 60. Ora vejamos: ditadura brasileira começa em 64; Rubber Soul é lançado em 65; Brian Wilson começa a mostrar o seu génio em 66. E nós, aqui do futuro, relembramos e analisamos as repercussões presentes de tudo isso. Panda Bear e o seu recente "Sinister Grift", "Ainda Estou Aqui", de Walter Salles e "Rubber Soul" são os objectos escrutinados, nesta amena hora de conversa com música. Rádio Clube Altamont, uma parceria Altamont.pt e Futura - Rádio de Autor.

Best of George Harrison Beatles-Don't bother me-With the Beatles (63)Beatles-Roll over Beethoven-For sale (64)Beatles-I need you-Help! (65)Beatles-If I needed someone-Rubber Soul (65)Beatles-I want to tell you-Revolver (66)Beatles-While my guitar gently weeps-White album (68)Beatles-Something-Abbey Road (69)Beatles-Here comes the sun-Abbey Road (69)G.Harrison-My sweet Lord-All things must pass (70)G.Harrison-Isn't it a Pity-All things must pass (70)G.Harrison-Wah Wah-All things must pass (70)G.Harrison-Give me love (give me peace on Earth)-Living in the Material World (73)G.Harrison-The day the World gets 'round (take 22)-Living in the Material World (50th anniversary) (24-73)G.Harrison-Ding dong-Dark Horse (74)G.Harrison-Dark Horse-Dark Horse (74)G.Harrison-This guitar (can't keep from crying) (Platinium weird version)-Extra texture (read all about it) (75)G.Harrison-The answer's at the end-Extra texture (read all about it) (75)G.Harrison-Beautiful girl-Thirty there & 1/3 (76)G.Harrison-This song-Thirty there & 1/3 (76)G.Harrison-Faster-George Harrison (79)G.Harrison-Your love is forever-George Harrison (79)G.Harrison-Writing's on the wall-Somewhere in England (81)G.Harrison-Baltimore Oriole-Somewhere in England (81)G.Harrison-That's the way it goes-Gone troppo (82)G.Harrison-Got my mind set on you-Cloud nine (87)G.Harrison-Rising sun-Brainwashed (02)G.Harrison-Looking for my life-Brainwashed (02)

On this episode of Adventures in Vinyl, Todd and I discuss the eleventh studio album by one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful bands of all time. An album originally aimed at beating the Beatles' Rubber Soul, and their inspiring Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band album, it has since taken its place as one of the greatest and most influential Albums in music history by a band that was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. That band is the Beach Boys, and the album is Pet Sounds.Song of The Week!Handshake Drugs - Wilco - A Ghost Is BornI Wanna Be Adored - The Stone Roses (Self Titled Debut Album)Stump The Barron!Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood - The Animals - Animal TracksThe Beach Boys - Pet SoundsGenre:  Progressive PopRelease Date:  May 16, 1966Producer(s): Brian WilsonLabel:  CapitolLength: 35:57Number of Tracks:  13For more information on the band The Beach Boys visit their website is www.thebeachboys.com .  If you enjoyed this podcast be sure to check us out at our website at www.adventuresinvinyl.com where you can find links to our episodes and through our support section you can find a place to order you very own adventures in vinyl T Shirt.

Celebrating a turning point in the Fab Four's music

Episode: 2450 A Musical Transition: The Beatles 1965-1967.  Today, a great music group changes.

It's time for a fresh new album with a fresh new sound this episode, as JG and Andrew kick off their Rubber Soul discussions with Drive My Car. Does the song prove to be a worthy album opener? Are there any interesting cover versions? Does this truly herald a new period in the band's history? And, perhaps most importantly, why did nobody check out the Beat Bugs episode with this title? Rankings: Track-by-track Ranking eMail: beatlesstuffology@gmail.com Twitter: @beatles_ology Instagram: beatlesstuffology JG's Blog: Judgementally Reviews… Andrew's Blog: Stuffology   Produced By: JG McQuarrie  

Album de la semaine: "Memory almost full" (Paul McCartney 2007) P.McCartney-Dance tonight-Memory almost full (07)J.Lennon-It's so hard-Imagine (71)G.Harrison-I'd have you anytime -All things must pass (70)R.Starr-Have you seen my baby ?-Ringo (73)Beatles-Good day sunshine-Revolver (66)P.McCartney-Ever present past-Memory almost full (07)J.Lennon-Bring it on home to me/Send me some living-Rock'n'roll (75)J.Lennon-Slippin' and slidin'-Rock'n'roll (75)Beatles-Your mother should know-Anthology 2 (96)Travelling Wilburys-Where were you last night ?-Traveling Wilburys Vol.3 (90)P.McCartney-House of wax-Memory almost full (07)G.Harrison-You-Extra texture (Read all about it) (75)G.Harrison-A bit more of you/Can't stop thinking about you)-Extra texture (Read all about it) (75)Travelling Wilburys-Heading for the light-Traveling Wilburys Vol.1 (88)Beatles-What goes on-Rubber Soul (65)J.Lennon-Woman-Double fantasy (80)P.McCartney-Only mama knows-Memory almost full (07)Beyoncé-Blackbiird (cover)-Cowboy Carter (24)Rutles-Cheese and onions-All you need is cash (78)Beatles-The continuing story of Bungalow Bill-White album (68)Beatles-While my guitar gently weeps-White album (68)P.McCartney-That was me-Memory almost full (07)R.Starr-Easy for me-Goodnight Vienna (74)Beatles-Fixing a hole-Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (67)Beatles-She's leaving home-Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (67)P.McCartney-Mr. Bellamy-Memory almost full (07)P.McCartney-End of the end-Memory almost full (07)R.Starr-Harry's song-Liverpool 8 (08)R.Starr-Thank God for music-What's my name (19)Beatles-The long One (medley)-Abbey Road (69)P.McCartney-Rockestra theme-Back to the egg (79)-GénériqueR.Starr-R U ready-Liverpool 8 (08)

ReferencesGlia. 2023 Nov;71(11):2679-2695Cell 2015. 160.6: 1061-1071. March 1Plant Signal Behav. 2017 Jan 19;12(2):e1282022.J Chromatogr B Analyt Technol Biomed Life Sci. 2008 Dec 31;877(26):2696–2708.Lennon/McCartney ;Harrison. 1965. "Rubber Soul"https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lirCIxLpU2odTVLZ_Sbo1wZaeu5IStivs&si=N74HgIimStlNlTEjQMS. 1968. "Happy Trails"https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_k8UyBDJcEQEHx90leh0EQN9STmouMbuDg&si=WZcMR7h1PPCCpX7R

It may be April Fools Day, but the only fools you'll hear are me and Jeff Harris (Behind The Grooves) talking once again about...The Beatles!In this episode we go back 60 years to the pivotal year of 1965, when The Fab Four released their movie and accompanying soundtrack album for Help!, as well as the other major release of the year, their classic album Rubber Soul.And while Jeff and I attempt to stay on topic, of course we go off in different directions and ponder things such as the connection the Beatles have to Superman circa 1983, and various other zigs where we should zagged!As always with Mr. Harris, a spendid time was had by us and hopefully you'll say the same thing after listening to this podcast!* 

A Gab Four spectacular!    Jon Stone, Lonnie Pena, Martin Quibell and I gathered to talk about the characters and stories in Beatles songs.     They started with covers of folks like Long Tall Sally, and this episode takes us through Rubber Soul, where the band gives us Michelle, the Nowhere Man, and asks about the possibility of exchanging golden rings in favor of getting behind the wheel to "Drive My Car!"

Album de la semaine: "Somewhere in England" (George Harrison 1981) G.Harrison-Blood from a clone-Somewhere in England (81)J.Lennon-I found out-Plastic Ono Band (70)P.McCartney-Dear boy-Ram (71)R.Starr-Beaucoups of blues-Beaucoups of blues (70)Beatles-Tell me why-A hard day's night (64)G.Harrison-Unconsciouness rules-Somewhere in England (81)Beatles-What goes on-Rubber Soul (65)Beatles-Eleanor Rigby-Revolver (66)P.McCartney-One of these days-McCartney II (80)Beatles-A beginning (take 4)/Don't pass me by (take 7)-White album (Super Deluxe Edition) (18-68)G.Harrison-Life itself-Somewhere in England (81)R.Starr-Photograph-Ringo (73)J.Lennon-Out the blue-Mind games (73)J.Lennon-Going down on love-Walls and bridges (74)P.McCartney-Band on the run-Band on the run (73)G.Harrison-All those years ago-Somewhere in England (81)Robert Cassard-Across the universe (cover)-Single (24)Rutles-Love life (almost "all you need is love")-All you need is cash (78)P.McCartney-Wanderlust-Tug of war (82)Beatles-Blue Jay Way-Magical Mystery Tour (67)G.Harrison-Writing's on the wall-Somewhere in England (81)Beatles-Strawberry fields forever (2015 mix)-"Penny Lane" double side A single (67)P.McCartney-The other me-Pipes of peace (83)R.Starr-What goes around-Time takes time (92)Beatles-I've got a feeling-Let it be (Super Deluxe) (21-70)G.Harrison-Baltimore Oriole-Somewhere in England (81)

Mike Williams, the creator of the Paul is Dead YouTube channel, unravels the intricate tapestry of the Beatles' cultural significance, which he argues extends far beyond mere musical innovation. Through meticulous documentation and analysis, Mike posits that the ascent of the Beatles was not merely a product of artistic evolution, but rather a calculated orchestration by record companies and media entities aimed at reshaping societal values. This episode explores how the Beatles became the face of a broader cultural manipulation, as well as the challenges of discerning truth in an era where conspiracy theories are becoming mainstream. And we explore the implications of this narrative, particularly in the context of modern pop culture and the role of music as a tool for social engineering. WATCH ON YOUTUBEDOUG WILSON ON CONSPIRACIESWatch HereTAKEAWAYSThe Beatles' rise was part of a calculated cultural shift orchestrated by Tavistock and other institutions."Rubber Soul" marked a pivotal shift, elevating the Beatles through manufactured music and songwriting support.The Beatles' narrative reflects Tavistock's strategy, emphasized by symbols of occultism and mass cultural engineering.Laurel Canyon highlighted a larger story of music's role in societal transformation, as explained by Ian Carroll.Claims of the Beatles writing their own music are questioned, citing professional songwriters behind their hits.The documentary "The Complete Beatles" hints at engineering behind Beatles' success via producer George Martin.CONNECT WITH MIKEYouTubeMain Hub WebsiteMusic WebsiteX/TwitterMENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE"The Memoirs of Billy Shears" by Thomas Uharriet"The Conspirators Hierarchy" by Thomas Coleman"Tavistock Institute" by Daniel Estulin"The Beatles Conspiracy 101""Billy Shears Bloodlines: Presentation"How Do You Sleep?" by John Lennon

Album de la semaine: "Egypt Station"-Paul McCartney 2018 P.McCartney-Speech + Opening station/I don't know-Egypt Station (18)J.Lennon-Do the Oz-Plastic Ono Band (70)/B side "God save Oz" single (71)G.Harrison-Isn't it a pity-All things must pass (70)R.Starr-Oh, my my-Ringo (73)Beatles -All you need is love (2015 remix)-The Beatles 1967-1970 (2023 edition)P.McCartney-Speech + Come on to me-Egypt Station (18)Beatles-Another girl-Help ! (65)Beatles-In my life-Rubber Soul (65)Traveling Wilburys-Poor house-Traveling Wilburys vol.3 (90)Traveling Wilburys-Runaway-Traveling Wilburys vol.3 (90)P.McCartney-Speech + Happy with you-Egypt Station (18)Beatles-Old Brown shoe-The Beatles 1967-1970 (2023 edition)Beatles-Something-Abbey Road (Super Deluxe Edition) (19-69)J.Lennon-It's so hard-Imagine (71)J.Lennon-Meat city-Mind games (73)P.McCartney-Speech + People want peace-Egypt Station (18)Rolling Stones-Bite my head off (feat. P.McCartney on bass)-Hackney Diamonds (23)P.McCartney-Speech + Hand in hand-Egypt Station (18)J.Lennon-#9 dream-Walls and bridges (74)R.Starr-February sky-Crooked boy (24)P.McCartney-Speech + Fuh you-Egypt Station (18)P.McCartney-Speech + Station II/Hunt you down/Naked/C-link-Egypt Station (18)Beatles-While my guitar gently weeps (2018 remix)-White album (Super Deluxe Edition) (18-68)P.McCartney-Speech + Do it now-Egypt Station (18)R.Starr-Time on my hands-Look up (25)R.Starr-Rewind forward-Rewind forward (24)

Jamie Searle, a.k.a. @jjeromemusic, joined me for Episode No. 154, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to've met him and gotten to know him a little bit.Jamie is a son, a husband, a father, a musician, a songwriter, a producer, and he's the guy that runs The Westport Bowery, so holler at him for any of your booking/entertainment needs for that venue.Our conversation touched on family, growing up, the lenses of perspective and identity, making art, being outdoors, and the love of music, just to name a few topics. While we were in that last neighborhood, we did pause for a moment to look at a few of Jamie's favorite albums, which were these:Rubber Soul (1965), The BeatlesDonny Hathaway & Roberta Flack's self-titled release (1972)Thriller (1982), Michael JacksonNirvana's Nevermind (1991)Malibu (2016), Anderson .PaakJamie's other Instagram handles are @chromaticcontact, @mbandskc, and @westportbowery, so please consider giving his @jjerome account a follow, and -- while you're there -- have a peek at those, too. For more information on what goes on at the Bowery, check them out at thewestportbowery.com.Thank you to Jamie, and to all of you for supporting the show.copyright disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the audio samples contained within this episode. They are snippets from a Lemon Jelly tune called, "Ramblin' Man," which comes from their 2002 effort, Lost Horizons (c/o XL Recordings LTD).

Originally recorded September 14, 2024. What else is there to say? The Beatles, Rubber Soul! One of the best records of all time, certainly one of the best transitional albums ever, and the theater kids are all over it!

**Disclaimer: First show of the new year, and yeah, I know, I blew it, but I own up to it! The integrity of the list remains!** The fabs sure loved writing songs about their relationships on vacation. As we discussed one of Paul's recently ("For No One"), now it's John's turn. John's ode to infidelity and arson turned into one of the most sublime sonic moments in their catalogue, as well as one of the most influential. George's now iconic sitar part influenced so many other bands of the time to start experimenting with Indian music (The Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black" maybe most famously), and marked the beginning of his and the band's bringing Eastern music to popular Western culture. It's a defining sound of the 60s, and this song may be well the defining song of the Rubber Soul album. Joining us this week is Beatles author and all around lovely person Sara Schmidt! She's the author Dear Beatle People: The Story of the Beatles North American Fan Club and Happiness is Seeing the Beatles: Beatlemania in St. Louis . She's also the brains behind meetthebeatlesforreal.com where she's been archiving Beatles photos and fan stories since 2007. While Apple and so many are telling the history of the band, this is the other side of the coin, the thing that made it work, the fans, and it's a fantastic archive of stories and interactions with the band. Check out the website and Sara's books at meetthebeatlesforreal.com, and if you have a story to share with her, send it over! What do you think about "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" at 78? Too high? Too low? Let us know in the comments on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠find us now on Bluesky!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Be sure to check out ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.rankingthebeatles.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and grab a Rank Your Own Beatles poster, some of our new Revolver-themed merch, a shirt, a jumper, whatever you like! And if you're digging what we do, don't forget to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy Us A Coffee⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!

Musician and self-described Beatles fanatic Jonathan Pretus ranked the entire recorded catalog of the Beatles, because he's a big, big nerd. Then he decided to make a podcast, Ranking The Beatles, to talk with other people and learn about their connection with The Beatles' music. Jonathan and his guests, joined by his co-host/wife Julia (a more level-headed, casual fan) discuss the rankings, what they think makes each song so great (or not-so-great), and see if it really is a fool's errand to try and rank the music of the greatest band of all time.    In this episode, Jack and Jonathan discuss what it's like to run a Beatles podcast, what makes The Beatles's music so special, their thoughts on the upcoming Beatles biopics, and much more.    Follow Ranking The Beatles on social media here: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rankingthebeatles/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rankingthebeatles YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBretonSoundTV   Follow us on all social media, @BeatlesEarth ! For questions/inquires, please reach us at BeatlesOfCourse @gmail. com   ------ #Thebeatles #beatles #beatle #paulmccartney #johnlennon #georgeharrison #ringostarr #60smusic #60s #70smusic #70s #60s70s80s #70s80s90s #90s #iconic #rocknroll #classicmusic #fyp #foryoupage #foryou #recommended #beatlesfans #mclennon #lennon #viralreels #peaceandlove #letitbe #beatlespodcast #podcast #mccartney #starr #harrison The Beatles were a highly influential and globally popular rock band that originated in Liverpool, England. The group consisted of four members: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. The Beatles' journey began in the late 1950s when Lennon formed a skiffle group called The Quarrymen. McCartney and Harrison joined later, and the lineup eventually evolved into The Beatles. Ringo Starr replaced their original drummer, Pete Best, in 1962. The Beatles achieved unprecedented success and popularity during the 1960s, often referred to as the "Beatlemania" era. Their music was a blend of various genres, including rock and roll, pop, and later, elements of Indian music and psychedelia. They wrote and recorded numerous hit songs, becoming one of the most innovative and successful bands in the history of popular music. Some of their most famous albums include: 1. **"Please Please Me" (1963) 2. **"A Hard Day's Night" (1964):** The soundtrack to their first film. 3. **"Rubber Soul" (1965):** Marking a shift toward a more experimental sound. 4. **"Revolver" (1966):** Further experimentation and the use of studio techniques. 5. **"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (1967):** Widely considered one of the greatest albums of all time. 6. **"The White Album" (1968):** A double album with diverse musical styles. 7. **"Abbey Road" (1969):** Their final studio album, known for its iconic cover and medley of songs. The Beatles' legacy extends far beyond their music. They revolutionized the music industry, set new standards for songwriting, and influenced countless artists across genres. Their impact on popular culture, fashion, and social movements of the 1960s is immeasurable. The Beatles remain one of the most celebrated and enduring musical acts in history.

La banda que lo cambió todo también vivió muchos cambios. Los Beatles en su intensa década en la música protagonizaron invasiones, revoluciones y transformaciones de lo más profundas. El primer gran cambio dentro del grupo y quizá por ello el más importante llegó en 1965 y se tituló Rubber Soul.“Toda nuestra actitud había cambiado para entonces. Habíamos crecido un poco y creo que la hierba había sido muy protagonista en todos nuestros cambios, sobre todo con las letras”, explicaba Ringo. 1965 es el primer gran año de la música como fenómenos de masas que aspira a trascender, a ir más allá de las canciones adolescentes y de los temas de amor. El rock que había nacido una década antes había alcanzado un punto de madurez que se empieza a notar en los discos de aquella cosecha eterna con álbumes que apuntaban más alto y que elevaban el rock como forma artística.Una de esas joyas fue Rubber Soul, el segundo disco de los ingleses en 1965 tras Help. Grabado en cuatro intensas semanas e influido por su encuentro con Bob Dylan, el álbum mostraba un tremendo crecimiento como banda, unas letras más arriesgadas y complejas y el uso del estudio de grabación como un instrumento más.Rubber Soul no tiene por qué ser el mejor disco de los Beatles, pero fue el más importante porque marcó un camino y revolucionó un estilo. Desde este disco los Beatles fueron otra banda.Por todo esto esta semana sentamos en el Sofá Sonoro Rubber Soul y para recordar su historia, contexto y canciones hemos invitado al periodista Ricardo de Querol y a Lucía Taboada.PLAYLIST | Todos los episodios de Sofá Sonoro dedicados a The Beatles

Esta semana tenemos doblete en antena. El sábado volvemos a sentar en el Sofá Sonoro un disco de los Beatles, en este caso Rubber Soul, y el domingo recorremos la historia de Miriam Makeba con Pata Pata, su álbum de 1967.PLAYLIST | Todos los episodios de Sofá Sonoro dedicados a The Beatles

Hello there. Let's time travel!Passing throught the week of November 11th to 15th, the week in 1965 The Beatles finished Rubber Soul.Jimi Hendrix Experience Drummer Mitch Mitchell dies in 2011, even then he was just 61. a A GREAT player.And would you go to the Zoo on your wedding day? Guess who did this week in 1996. All revealed on this weeks podcast.

Send us a textBob and Lisa the driving force behind The BellRays stop by to talk about their musical journey, touring, and their latest album, Heavy Steady Go.***Bob and Lisa Kekaula made The BellRays happen in 1990 in Riverside, California but they weren't really thinking about any of this then. They wanted to play music and they wanted it to feel good. They wanted people to WANT to get up, to NEED to get up and check out what was going on. Form an opinion. React.So they took everything they knew about; the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, the Who, the Ramones Billie Holiday, Lou Rawls, Hank Williams, the DB's, Jimmy Reed, and Led Zeppelin (to name a very few to whom “BLUES IS THE TEACHER”) and pressed it into service.Those bands and artists have since become “buzz words”, things to imitate and sound like. That was never The BellRays intention. The BellRays were never about coming up with a “sound”, or fitting in with a scene. It was about the energy that made all that music so irresistible. The BellRays' influences learned from the Blues and then learned how to make it their own. The Beatles wanted to play R&B, converted that energy, and invented “Rubber Soul”. The Ramones were trying to be Del Shannon or Neil Sedaka and out came “Rocket to Russia”.It's an organic trail that flows through Bob and Lisa and the current rhythm section of Pablo Rodas (Lisa and the Lips, Alber Solo) on bass and Craig Waters (Countdowns, Andre Williams, Cody Chestnut) on drums, and comes out honest and urgent. You will learn and you will feel. Blues is always teaching and Punk is always preaching.For more information go to their website: https://thebellrays.com/****If you would like to contact the show about being a guest please email us at Dauna@bettertopodcast.comThis episode is on YouTube:https://youtu.be/19BYiRDY42E Follow us on Social MediaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/author_d.m.needom/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bettertopodcastwithdmneedomHave a question or want to be a guest on the podcast email: dauna@bettertopodcast.comAudio production by Rich Zei of Third Ear AudioIntro and Outro music compliments of Fast SuziUpcoming guests: https://www.dmneedom.com/better-topodcast©2024 Better To...Podcast with D. M.NeedomSupport the showSupport the show

Chris Shaw has delighted and inspired Beatles fans with his jaunty strolls through Pepperland for the past seven years. Here he discusses The Word, from the Rubber Soul album, highlighting the song's musical intricacies, its biblical lyrical allusions, and its significance as a mid-period Beatles masterpiece. He also touches upon his experience with his own podcast, I Am the Eggpod, and its influence on the Beatles podcasting community. Website: https://iamtheeggpod.comSupport the Eggpod on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/eggpodX.com: https://x.com/IAmTheEggPodInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/iamtheeggpodFollow My Favourite Beatles SongX (Twitter): https://twitter.com/myfavebeatlesFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyFavouriteBeatlesSongInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/myfavouritebeatlessongOriginal music by Joe KaneLogo design by Mark Cunningham

I 1963 begynte the Beach Boys å spille større konserter, og med det åpnet enda en inntektskilde seg, og de var på toppen av sin karriere. Det hele ble for mye for Brian Wilson, som etter et sammenbrudd nektet å være med bandet på turne. Etter å ha eksperimentert med LSD, og hørt "Rubber Soul" av the Beatles, bestemte han seg for å lage det beste albumet i historien.  Støtt ekte norsk podcasting på Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Send us a textTune in to this episode of "Music In My Shoes" as we unravel the fascinating story behind Neil Young and Crazy Horse's "Hey, Hey, My, My (Into the Black)" and its acoustic counterpart, "My, My, Hey, Hey (Out of the Blue)." Discover how Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo influenced the iconic line "it's better to burn out 'cause rust never sleeps.' We'll also reflect on the generational debates ignited by references to Elvis Presley and Johnny Rotten, celebrating Young's complex legacy as the "Godfather of Grunge."Take a nostalgic stroll through the golden age of rock and pop with us. From the Beach Boys' infectious "I Get Around" to the familiar sound of Peter and Gordon's "A World Without Love," we'll uncover the stories and secrets behind these timeless hits. Relive the vivid imagery of the Drifters' "Under the Boardwalk," the innovative sound of the Zombies' "She's Not There," and the emotive charm of the Shangri-La's "Remember Walking in the Sand." Each song is a testament to the creative genius of these legendary artists and their lasting impact on music history.Our journey continues as we delve into the unique sound of Big Star, drawing connections to the Rubber Soul-era Beatles and The Byrds, and celebrating their influence on bands like The Replacements. We'll share memories of an unforgettable live performance of Billy Idol's electrifying 1984 show at Nassau Coliseum. Finally, we'll reflect on the poignant farewell of the 8G Band on Late Night with Seth Meyers, featuring Bob Mould's intense rendition of "Makes No Sense at All." Join us for a heartfelt tribute to the enduring power of music and the unforgettable memories it creates.Please Like and Follow our Facebook page Music In My Shoes. You can contact us at musicinmyshoes@gmail.com.Learn Something New orRemember Something Old

We've got your Ticket to Ride as we rank all the Beatles albums.  Join us as we discuss and celebrate the greatest albums from the Fab Four.  Whether you're a die-hard fan or just getting started, we'll take a Magical Mystery Tour from Revolver to Let It Be, Abbey Road to Help!, Rubber Soul to Please Please Me, and many more.  

La Venganza de los Lunes, el Eterno Retorno de lo Terrible Alejandro Dolina, Patricio Barton, Gillespi Introducción • Entrada0:02:13 Segmento Dispositivo • La muerte de Pelias0:02:32 • "Pucherito De Gallina" ♫ (Canta Edmundo Rivero, 1958) Música y letra de Roberto Medina, 1951. Segmento Humorístico • ¿Qué hay que hacer para ser azafata de vuelo?0:22:06 Segmento Humorístico • Modales y obligaciones sociales (quede como un rey, usted que es un ordinario)0:39:42 Segmento Humorístico • Tchaikovsky0:56:05 • Viajes emocionantes para ver animales salvajes0:56:30 Sordo Gancé / Trío Sin Nombre • Presentación1:14:55 • "The Word" ♫ (The Beatles, Rubber Soul, 1965) • "Lloró Como Una Mujer" ♫ (José María Aguilar/Celedonio Flores) Canta Julio Sosa. Con Leopoldo Federico y Su Orquesta. • "Can't Help Falling in Love" ♫ (Hugo Peretti/Luigi Creatore/George David Weiss) Elvis Presley, Blue Hawaii, 1961. • "Manoblanca" ♫ (Antonio De Bassi/Homero Manzi, 1941) Orquestra Ángel D'Agostino, 1944. • "Sea" ♫ (Jorge Drexler, Sea, 2001) • "Blue Monk" ♫ (Thelonious Monk, Thelonious Monk Trio, 1954) • "Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)" ♫ (Stevie Wonder, Signed, Sealed & Delivered, 1970)

The Beatles Made a Mistake - Mike Cohn It should be a comfort to each of us to know that we'll probably never make a mistake as big as the one The Beatles made during this week in 1966.Following the critical and sales success of the prior year's “Rubber Soul” album, the Beatles released a new album, “Yesterday and Today,” in June 1966. The album was released in the US and Canada and contained songs that had been withheld from North American versions of other Beatles albums.Musically, it's a solid album featuring “Drive My Car,” “Nowhere Man,” “We Can Work It Out,” “Day Tripper,” and of course “Yesterday.”Where The Beatles went wrong was in the choice of the album art. The cover photo shows all four Beatles wearing white butcher's frocks with decapitated baby dolls and pieces of raw meat in their laps.The photo is in incredibly bad taste even to the less sensitive standards of 1966.I'm sharing this because on this day in 1966, The Beatles admitted their mistake and replaced the cover.I think The Beatles' experience with this botched album cover decision holds four lessons.First, it's important to acknowledge that when a team is moving quickly, team members will make some mistakes. “Yesterday and Today” was The Beatles' twelfth album released in North America in four years.Second, when you make a mistake, be willing to admit it. The Beatles did not blame their label for picking the cover. In fact, band members insisted on the cover over the label's objection.The Beatles said the cover was meant to be a protest against the savagery of the Vietnam War. I've always been skeptical of that as it seemed like an after-the-fact justification, but I appreciate that they owned the mistake.Third, correct mistakes as quickly and cost-effectively as possible. The Beatles corrected their mistake by recalling all the albums and pasting a new cover on top of the original.A few savvy DJs and record store owners did not return all the albums. This created a lucrative collector's market in copies of “Yesterday and Today” with the original cover. I've seen some sell for nearly $40,000.Finally, after correcting the mistake, put the memory aside and move on. After the cover debacle of “Yesterday and Today,” The Beatles went on to make some of their greatest albums including “Revolver,” “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the white album, and “Abbey Road.”Mistakes happen. I make them. You make them. Your team makes them. Even The Beatles made mistakes.Let's acknowledge that mistakes will happen when moving quickly. Then, when we do make a mistake, let's own it, correct it, and move beyond it.It's quite possible, as it was for The Beatles, that your best work may follow your biggest mistake, How to connect with AgileDad: - [website] https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram] https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [facebook] https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/ - [Linkedin] https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

Tim Tucker is joined by returning guests Jacob Balcom & Matt Howell of the Bronze-Age Monsters podcast, to discuss a song that signalled a new direction for the band ahead of the Rubber Soul album. They share personal memories and musical insights covering the song's recording history, thematic elements, and its significance within the Beatles' discography.Bronze-Age MonstersBronze-Age Monsters Podcast: https://werewolfbynight.libsyn.com/ Bronze-Age Monsters on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bronzeagemonsters Bronze-Age Monsters on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@bronzeagemonstersBronze-Age Monsters on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/bronzeagemonsters.bsky.socialFollow My Favourite Beatles SongX (Twitter): https://twitter.com/myfavebeatlesFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyFavouriteBeatlesSongInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/myfavouritebeatlessongOriginal music by Joe KaneLogo design by Mark Cunningham

Rubber Soul was the sixth studio ablum released by The Beatles in the US and the UK.  The album was largely recorded in October of 1965 over a four week period, and relesed in December of 1965.  The Fab Four had completed their North American tour by August, and had returned to London to compose this album.  It would be the first album they completed without the pressure of commitments to tour, film, or otherwise make public appearances.  Nevertheless, the band was working under tight timelines, intending to release the album before the Christmas sales cycle.  It would go to the top of the album charts and would be one of the biggest albums of 1966, charting at number 3 in the UK and number 4 in the US for the year.The name of the album is a bit of self deprecation.  The term "plastic soul" was used at the time to describe some artists' attempts to duplicate the sound of black American soul music, and the Beatles recognized their efforts as less-than authentic.  It also has a double meaning, referencing the Wellington boot worn in rural northern England.The album  combines elements of folk rock, soul, progressive rock, and the newly-emerging psychedelic sound.  It would set a new standard with rock groups, encouraging the creation of high quality albums rather than just making a string of singles that were merged onto an LP record.  It also shows the increasing maturity of the group in lyrics and music.  Lynch brings us this classic album from one of the greatest rock bands of all time, and friend of the show Mike Fernandez sits in while Bruce is out. Baby You Can Drive My CarThe opening track was written by Lennon and McCartney.  The lyrics are told from the perspective of a woman who expects to be a big star, and offers the man the opportunity to be her chauffeur.  At the end you find out that she doesn't have a car, but at least now she has a chauffeur.  Norwegian WoodIt really isn't possible to have a deeper cut when you're talking about the Beatles, but this may be as close as we can get.  John Lennon is the primary writer - with some contributions from Paul McCartney - and the lyrics discuss an extramarital affair he had in London.  George Harrison plays sitar on this song, and it is the first use of that instrument recorded in a major release in the rock world. In My LifeThe lyrics from this song were written by John Lennon, and is perhaps the first time he wrote a song inspired from his childhood.  George Martin plays the piano on the bridge, but recorded it at half speed.  This creates the tinny harpsicord feel when the song is run at full speed.MichellePaul McCartney is the primary writer of this song, inspired by the popularity of Parisian "Left Bank" culture, and contains french lyrics despite McCartney's lack of fluency in the language.  The music was partially inspired by chet Atkin's finger picking style.  McCartney began writing the song in 1958, and it went to number 1 in France where it was released ahead of the album. ENTERTAINMENT TRACK:The James Bond Theme (from the motion picture “Thunderball”)This was the fourth film in the spy series starring Sean Connery as James Bond.  It was originally planned to be the first film of the series, but was pushed back due to legal disputes. STAFF PICKS:Treat Her Right by Roy Head and the TraitsWayne leads off the staff picks with a short, happy, party song.  While this may have a surf song vibe, the band is from Texas.  The lyrics tell about how a guy is supposed to treat a woman, and the benefits thereof.  The song peaked at number 2, and is the best known song by the group.  Hang On Sloopy by the McCoysRob brings us a song originally recorded by the Vibrations in 1964 with the title "My Girl Sloopy."  A jazz singer in Ohio named Dorothy Sloop inspired the name.  The McCoys version went to number 1 on the pop charts, and would be picked up by a number of garage bands.  Rick Derringer is the front man for the group.California Girls by The Beach BoysMike's staff pick is a well-known song from the album "Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)" by the group.  Brian Wilson conceived the song during an acid trip, thinking about film scores from Westerns and - of course - girls.Eve of Destruction by Barry McGuireLynch closes out the staff picks with a protest song often covered.  P.F. Sloan wrote this song after the Kennedy assassination, the Gulf of Tompkin military action, and other social upheaval of the early to mid-60's.  American media used this song as an example of what was wrong with youth culture, counterintuitively driving the popularity of the song. INSTRUMENTAL TRACK:Hole in the Wall by The PackersThis jazz instrumental closes out this week's podcast. Thanks for listening to “What the Riff?!?” NOTE: To adjust the loudness of the music or voices, you may adjust the balance on your device. VOICES are stronger in the LEFT channel, and MUSIC is stronger on the RIGHT channel.Please follow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/whattheriffpodcast/, and message or email us with what you'd like to hear, what you think of the show, and any rock-worthy memes we can share.Of course we'd love for you to rate the show in your podcast platform!**NOTE: What the Riff?!? does not own the rights to any of these songs and we neither sell, nor profit from them. We share them so you can learn about them and purchase them for your own collections.

References Cell. 2021 Apr 1; 184(7):1790–1803.e17. NAR Cancer. 2024 Jun; 6(2):zcae023. Peretti, Creatore, and Weiss. 1961. "Cant Help Falling in Love". Elvis Presley. https://youtu.be/O-aavAlSYgc?si=yEHWfI2Ny-zvQLnK Lennon-McCartney. 1965. "Wait" Rubber Soul lp. https://youtu.be/qJngWval8Bc?si=CRTQilYzdVZxAtSe Mozart. WA .1788. Divertimento in E Major. K.563. https://youtu.be/E8c83bpOVXo?si=EBffyTWZz0xHZqYs --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dr-daniel-j-guerra/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dr-daniel-j-guerra/support

John Kosh, known simply as Kosh, is an English art director, album cover designer, graphic artist, and documentary producer/director. He was born in London, England and rose to prominence in the mid-1960s while designing for the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera House. He was the creative director of Apple Corps for The Beatles and was art director and album cover designer for Abbey Road and Let It Be, as well as Hotel California, James Taylor's Greatest Hits, and more.    Today, Kosh sits down with Jack Lawless to discuss his work, reminisce on his memories of working with The Beatles and John and Yoko, tell stories about designing Abbey Road's and Hotel California's covers, the WAR IS OVER! campaign, and much more. Without Kosh, some of the world's most iconic designs would not be here.    Check out A Walk in the Park book here: https://www.andykatzphotography.com/purchase/p/a-walk-in-the-park   Follow Kosh on social media here: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/koshartdesign/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/koshart   Follow us on all social media, @BeatlesEarth ! For questions/inquires, please reach us at BeatlesOfCourse @gmail .com.   ------ #Thebeatles #beatles #beatle #paulmccartney #johnlennon #georgeharrison #ringostarr #60smusic #60s #70smusic #70s #60s70s80s #70s80s90s #90s #iconic #rocknroll #classicmusic #fyp #foryoupage #foryou #recommended #beatlesfans #mclennon #lennon #viralreels #peaceandlove #letitbe #beatlespodcast #podcast #mccartney #starr #harrison The Beatles were a highly influential and globally popular rock band that originated in Liverpool, England. The group consisted of four members: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. The Beatles' journey began in the late 1950s when Lennon formed a skiffle group called The Quarrymen. McCartney and Harrison joined later, and the lineup eventually evolved into The Beatles. Ringo Starr replaced their original drummer, Pete Best, in 1962. The Beatles achieved unprecedented success and popularity during the 1960s, often referred to as the "Beatlemania" era. Their music was a blend of various genres, including rock and roll, pop, and later, elements of Indian music and psychedelia. They wrote and recorded numerous hit songs, becoming one of the most innovative and successful bands in the history of popular music. Some of their most famous albums include: 1. **"Please Please Me" (1963) 2. **"A Hard Day's Night" (1964):** The soundtrack to their first film. 3. **"Rubber Soul" (1965):** Marking a shift toward a more experimental sound. 4. **"Revolver" (1966):** Further experimentation and the use of studio techniques. 5. **"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (1967):** Widely considered one of the greatest albums of all time. 6. **"The White Album" (1968):** A double album with diverse musical styles. 7. **"Abbey Road" (1969):** Their final studio album, known for its iconic cover and medley of songs. The Beatles' legacy extends far beyond their music. They revolutionized the music industry, set new standards for songwriting, and influenced countless artists across genres. Their impact on popular culture, fashion, and social movements of the 1960s is immeasurable. The Beatles remain one of the most celebrated and enduring musical acts in history.

In the last episode, I briefly described my grandfather, who was a lifelong mystic, and his reactions to the dream I'd had about my father and his ring, which was followed by its mysterious disappearance. I also mentioned another unusual incident concerning the ring that took place about twenty years later, when a friend told me about a vivid dream he'd had where my father had given him a message for me, saying that I should “remember the ring.” Now this wasn't a childhood friend, he knew nothing about my father, and had no idea if this message was going to mean anything to me at all.  As you can imagine, the fact that it had come through a completely objective third party and had happened a full twenty years after the original incident made quite an impact on me. So, that completes this part of the narrative. In summary, even though my life had been turned upside down by the sudden death of my father, which had been accompanied by two inexplicable events that had defied all logic, I put it all behind me, or so I thought. I continued with my eleventh-grade life, which basically meant that I returned to my everyday state of constant activity.           Now, as I've mentioned a few times earlier, this podcast narrative focuses on the massive evolution of consciousness that began in the early1960s, as experienced through my own individual lens, which brings us now to the middle of 1966. On a larger level, at this time two huge influences were beginning to shake American society to its core – First, the enormous evolution of the Beatles and their profound impact on popular culture, and second, the war in Vietnam.           With the Beatles, as we mentioned in the last episode, at the end of 1965, they had come out with their revolutionary album, Rubber Soul, which George Harrison said was the first music they made when they were all regularly smoking marijuana. It had enormous appeal and was having a major effect on all of popular music.           By the way, their old friend Bob Dylan was breaking some new ground of his own. In March of 1966, he brought out a radical new song that caught everyone's attention. Its free-wheeling, raucous sound was far more in the style of a New Orleans Dixieland band than of rock and roll. And in the wild chorus, with his background musicians singing along in high hysterics, he kept repeating the signature line, “Everybody must get stoned.” The song was over four and a half minutes long and got a ton of airplay on almost every pop radio station.  So, on a daily basis, with a clever twist of words and a message that was unmistakable, millions of music fans would listen to Dylan constantly urge them to try marijuana. It was quite an advertisement.           A few months later, the Beatles took it all one step further when they released their groundbreaking album, Revolver. Again, according to George Harrison, while Rubber Soul was the first album they made under the influence of marijuana, Revolver was the first one they made under the regular influence of LSD.           The easiest way to describe this remarkable collection of songs is that it was incredibly trippy. One song, “Love to You” followed the form of a classic Indian raga, complete with sitar and tablas. Nothing like it had ever been heard in the west before. Another major breakthrough was the soul-stirring “Eleanor Rigby,” which brought an entirely new level of depth to the Beatles repertoire. All the other songs on the album became instant classics as well, but one track, “Tomorrow Never Knows,” deserves some special attention because it was specifically designed to boost the evolution of consciousness.           Apparently, John Lennon had been influenced by a book called, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner. The book claimed that under the influence of LSD, it was possible to shed the limiting nature of constant ego identification and emerge into a higher, more enlightened level of awareness. And it gave step by step instructions on how to do it.           Supposedly, after Lennon bought the book, he took LSD and followed the instructions to a tee. Soon after that, he wrote the song, with the psychedelic nature of the music combined with the mind-expanding lyrics. He said he wanted to sound like the Dalai Lama chanting on top of a mountain, as he enlightened the public to the message of possible God realization that underlies the LSD experience. “Turn off your mind relax and float downstream,” he sang.  “It is not dying, it is not dying. Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void. It is shining, it is shining. That you may see the meaning of within. It is being, it is being. That love is all and love is everyone. It is knowing, it is knowing…” Some years later, George Harrison offered an interesting perspective on the song as well as on their evolving perspective at the time. “From birth to death all we ever do is think: we have one thought, we have another thought, another thought, another thought,” he said.  “Even when you are asleep you are having dreams, so there is never a time from birth to death when the mind isn't always active with thoughts. But you can turn off your mind. “The whole point is that…the self is coming from a state of pure awareness, from the state of being. All the rest that comes about in the outward manifestation of the physical world. . . is just clutter.” Then he concluded, “The true nature of each soul is pure consciousness. So, the song is really about transcending, and about the quality of the transcendent.” Of course, this understanding about the higher nature of our consciousness was extremely advanced for its time. And whether the public understood it or not, the message was still pouring out to millions of people on a daily basis, subtly or not so subtly affecting their consciousness. The innovative album caught on in a flash and the influence of psychedelic music began to grow significantly. Over the next few months, the Grateful Dead, the Byrds, the Jefferson Airplane, the Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, Traffic, Jimi Hendrix and the Doors all gained enormous popularity, along with many, many other groups. A new idea of a higher, more evolved state of being was clearly being born in the culture. And speaking of the culture, in a larger context, something called the “counter culture” was beginning to emerge, which not only challenged the mainstream norms and values, but also advocated for social change. Embracing ideals of peace, love, and unity, it was all vibrant, inspiring, alive, and unmistakably - young. But at the same time, another enormous, yet rather sinister influence was in the early stages of taking over the consciousness of the country as well. As you probably know, it was the ever-broadening tragedy of the war in Vietnam.  Even though no one seemed to be paying much attention to it, like an undiagnosed cancer, it just kept metastasizing. President Lyndon Johnson continued to insist that the constant build-up of US troops was the right thing to do because at all costs, we had to prevent communism from taking over the Pacific Rim. And the costs were getting pretty serious.  In 1964, we spent $53.4 billion on the effort in Vietnam. In 1965, we spent another $54.5 billion and in 1966, it escalated to 66.4 billion. That's a total of $174.4 billion. Not that anyone looked at it this way, but in those three years, instead of being used for warfare, that amount of money could have abundantly fed well over a billion people. And the human costs were building as well. The US troops which had numbered 23,300 in 1964, grew to 184,300 in 1965, then onto 385,300 by the end of 1966. And with that, the truly horrible number - how many people actually died there – kept swelling. In 1964, 216 US soldiers died. It grew to 1,928 in 1965, then onto 6,350 in 1966. Now that's just US troops. When it comes to how many of the North and South Vietnamese people died, no one really knows for sure, but an estimate of 10-1 is used as a conservative approximation. So here are the basically revolting numbers related to those three years of war - $174.43 billion just plain wasted on destruction, with a total of over 96,000 human beings needlessly killed. Even so, at that point, there still was very little opposition to the war and President Johnson stood resolute and strong. Afterall, he wasn't about to let the Pacific Rim go communist. And on a side note, he was damned if he was going to be the first US President to ever lose a war. So that brings us to 1967, which would go down in history as a truly magical year. Many volumes have been written about it and there's not a whole lot to say that hasn't already been said. On the grim side, the US involvement in Vietnam got much worse, to nobody's surprise. We went up another 100,000 troops to a deployment of a staggering 485,600 soldiers. And US deaths went up an additional five thousand to 11,363. That's 17,713 families who buried their young sons and daughters who had died trying to protect the Pacific Rim from going communist. Not that any of us even knew what that concept meant. So. the dark side had gotten darker.  But incredibly, the light side was about to get much lighter. On May 26, 1967, the Beatles released what was probably the most monumental album of their entire career, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band. This major phenomenon, turned the pop world completely upside down. The album was filled with references to transcendent states of consciousness that were being now being experienced by millions of baby boomers around the world.  It featured the most psychedelic song anyone had ever heard yet, called “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” The music was absolutely hypnotic and the mind-altering lyrics broke radical new ground on many levels. The initials of the title happened to be LSD, but according to John Lennon, that was just a coincidence. However he always said it with a smile. George Harrison took his Indian raga theme one step further in his song, “Within You, Without You.” It was what is called a “Satsang Song” in the Indian tradition because it expresses some of the deeper truths of their ancient wisdom. “Try to realize that it's all within yourself, no one else can make you change,” he sang. “When you see beyond yourself you may find that peace of mind is waiting there. And the time will come when you realize that we're all one and life flows on within you and without you.” Meanwhile, on the very last song of the album, “A Day in the Life,” after a mind-blowing journey through some seemingly random news of the day, to mesmerizing music played by a 40-piece orchestra John hypnotically repeats the stanza, “I'd love to turn you on.” By then, several million people knew exactly what he was talking about. Now, I still wasn't one of them yet, but that part of the story is coming up soon. Which makes this an ideal place to end this episode. As you might guess, things keep on evolving, so as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let's get together in the next one.

Intro song: The Middle by Jimmy Eat WorldAlbum 2: Rubber Soul by The BeatlesSong 1: Nowhere ManSong 2: MichelleSong 3: If I Needed SomeoneAlbum 1: Parachutes by ColdplaySong 1: SpiesSong 2: SparksSong 3: High SpeedOutro song: Life is For Living by ColdplayLink to Andrew's Mix of Rubber Soul

Partiendo con la versión de Johnny Cash y  Joe Strummer de la canción Redemption Song .525000 el disco con el último autógrafo de John Lennon. El LP se llama "Double Fantasy", 1980. Acaba de salir en noviembre cuando el asesinato del músico se produjo el 8 de diciembre. Lennon crean "Woman", una oda al feminismo, un agradecimiento a la mujer como figura básica en la vida de cualquier ser humano. Año 1965, The Beatles están grabando su LP "Rubber Soul".  En él y en una de las canciones, John Lennon dice que la letra habla de la chica de sus sueños y, aunque no lo sabe todavía, será  Yoko Ono. Hablamos de "Girl".

Imagine the feeling you'd get when the band that was the inspiration for YOUR band put out a song and told everyone YOUR band inspired that song? Probably a pretty amazing feeling. That's exactly what happened when The Beatles released the George Harrison-penned "If I Needed Someone" on Rubber Soul in December 1965. George was quick to give credit to Roger McGuinn and The Byrds for the 12 string riff that propels the song, as it's a pretty direct descendant of The Byrds' "The Bells of Rhymney." It's also a pretty brilliant piece of stoned cool that, to me, exemplifies sound of Rubber Soul. The final echoes of the 12 string that powered the 64-Beatlemania hits leads the charge one more time on a song that contains big hints of the new direction, a droning sound taken from George's new interest in Indian music, brilliant 3 part harmonies borrowing a page from the increasingly intricate harmonies of Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys (as well as the aforementioned Byrds). It's a song the Fabs obviously liked too, as they performed it from 65 through the end of their touring career in 1966, making it the only Harrison composition the band ever played live. Joining us to chat about this song is the one and only Ethan Alexanian, the host of Fans on the Run, the podcast for, by, and about Beatles fans. Ethan joins us to talk brave sartorial choices, fandom, obscure 60s groups, the joy and pain of 12 strings, and more! Ethan loves this song so much he's almost at a loss for words! Be sure to listen to Fans on the Run anywhere you get podcasts, follow along on Facebook or Instagram, and check out Ethan's killer artwork at https://ethanalexanian.com What do you think about "If I Needed Someone" at #92? Too high? Too low? Or just right? Let us know in the comments on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Be sure to check out ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.rankingthebeatles.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and grab a Rank Your Own Beatles poster, a shirt, a jumper, whatever you like! And if you're digging what we do, don't forget to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy Us A Coffee⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rankingthebeatles/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rankingthebeatles/support

Episode 77 starts with a dive into Ringo's role as the original Beatle to bring Indian music to the band before we discuss breweries appropriating rockstars visages, teaching Scotty how to drink beer from a bottle, THC beverages, Cheech as the go-getter of the duo, when the Beatles were all by themselves, probably a little too much Jawbreaker talk, RB throwing a middle eight in to make a Beatles song better, Scotty coming out late with this a sleeper fave, and the questionable Ringo sung "What Goes On."As always, you can find Team Blotto Beatles on Instagram (@blottobeatles) and Twitter (@blottobeatles), by emailing us (blottobeatles@gmail.com), or on the web (blottobeatles.com).  We want to hear from you!Please also take the time to rate and review us on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.We have a shop!  Grab some merch.  You can always drunk dial us at 1.857.233.9793 to share your thoughts, feedback, confessions, and concerns and to be featured in an upcoming episode. Enjoying the show? Buy us a beer via the tip jar (don't forget to include a message telling us what we should drink with the money).You know we're making a list of it, see the canonical, argument-ending list of Beatles songs we are assembling here: https://www.blottobeatles.com/list & listen to it on Spotify here.Please remember to always enjoy Blotto Beatles responsibly.Peace and Love.Hosts: Becker and TommyExecutive Producer: Scotty C.Musical Supervisor: RB (@ryanobrooks)Associate Musical Supervision: Tim Clark (@nodisassemble)#PeteBestGetThatCheck

“Michelle” from 1965's Rubber Soul started as a kind of light-hearted party piece. But in McCartney's quest to turn it into a legitimate Beatles song, he went on a bit of a journey to sound not only like a believable French chanteur but also to expand his approach to bass playing, taking inspiration from Motown's James Jamerson. “McCartney: A Life in Lyrics” is a co-production between iHeart Media, MPL and Pushkin Industries. The series was produced by Pejk Malinovski and Sara McCrea; written by Sara McCrea; edited by Dan O'Donnell and Sophie Crane; mastered by Jason Gambrell with assistance from Jake Gorski and sound design by Pejk Malinovski. The series is executive produced by Leital Molad, Justin Richmond, Lee Eastman and Scott Rodger. Thanks to Lee Eastman, Richard Ewbank, Scott Rodger, Aoife Corbett and Steve Ithell.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Turns out some songs stand on their own, however memorable-slash-horrifying their music video might have been.Written by: Chris CornellProduced by: Michael BeinhornAlbum: Superunknown (1994)Listen/Buy via SongwhipALSO DISCUSSED:"Spoonman" and "The Day I Tried to Live" by Chris Cornell and Soundgarden from Superunknown, 1994Kim Thayil interview at SongfactsNorah Jones' cover of "Black Hole Sun," Live in 2021"In My Life" by Lennon/McCartney from Rubber Soul, 1965The 2021 Strong Songs interview with session guitarist Andrew Synowiec"Tom Sawyer" by Rush from Moving Pictures, 1981----LINKS-----SUPPORT STRONG SONGS!Paypal | Patreon.com/StrongsongsMERCH STOREstore.strongsongspodcast.comSOCIAL MEDIAIG: @Kirk_Hamilton | Threads: @Kirk_HamiltonNEWSLETTERhttps://kirkhamilton.substack.com/subscribeJOIN THE DISCORDhttps://discord.gg/GCvKqAM8SmOUTRO SOLO PLAY-A-LONG:https://soundcloud.com/kirkhamilton/strong-songs-outro-music-no-soloSTRONG SONGS PLAYLISTSSpotify | Apple Music | YouTube MusicSHOW ART Tom Deja, Bossman Graphics--------------------FEBRUARY 2024 WHOLE-NOTE PATRONSRobyn MetcalfeBrian TempletCesarCorpus FriskyBen BarronCatherine WarnerDamon WhiteKaya WoodallDan AustinJay SwartzMiriam JoySEAN D WINNIERushDaniel Hannon-BarryChristopher MillerJamie WhiteChristopher McConnellDavid MascettiJoe LaskaKen HirshJezMelanie AndrichJenness GardnerDave SharpeSami SamhuriJeremy DawsonAccessViolationAndre BremerDave FloreyFEBRUARY 2024 HALF-NOTE PATRONSSuzanneRand LeShayMaxeric spMatthew JonesThomasAnthony MentzJames McMurryEthan LaserBrian Johan PeterChris RemoMatt SchoenthalAaron WilsonDent EarlCarlos LernerMisty HaisfieldAbraham BenrubiChristopher BrunoChris KotarbaCallum WebbLynda MacNeilDick MorganBen SteinSusan GreenSean MurphyThirteen71Alan BroughRandal VegterGo Birds!Whit SidenerRobert Granatdave malloyNick GallowayHeather Jjohn halpinPeter HardingDavidMeghan O'LearyJohn BaumanMartín SalíasStu BakerSteve MartinoDr Arthur A GrayCarolinaGary PierceMatt BaxterLuigi BocciaE Margaret WartonCharles McGeeCatherine ClauseEthan BaumanKenIsWearingAHatJordan BlockAaron WadeJeff UlmJamieDeebsPortland Eye CareCarrie SchneiderRichard SneddonDoreen CarlsonDavid McDarbyWendy GilchristElliot RosenLisa TurnerPaul WayperBruno GaetaKenneth JungAdam StofskyZak RemerRishi SahayJason ReitmanAilie FraserRob TsukNATALIE MISTILISJosh SingerAmy Lynn ThornsenAdam WKelli BrockingtonVictoria Yumino caposselaSteve PaquinDavid JoskeBernard KhooRobert HeuerMatthew GoldenDavid NoahGeraldine ButlerMadeleine MaderJason PrattAbbie BergDoug BelewDermot CrowleyAchint SrivastavaRyan RairighMichael BermanLinda DuffyBonnie PrinsenLiz SegerEoin de BurcaKevin PotterM Shane BordersDallas HockleyJason GerryNathan GouwensLauren ReayEric PrestemonCookies250Damian BradyAngela LivingstoneSarah SulanDiane HughesMichael CasnerLowell MeyerStephen TsoneffJoshua HillWenGeoff GoldenPascal RuegerRandy SouzaClare HolbertonDiane TurnerTom ColemanDhu WikMelEric HelmJonathan DanielsMichael FlahertyCaro Fieldmichael bochnerNaomi WatsonDavid CushmanAlexanderChris KGavin DoigSam FennTanner MortonAJ SchusterJennifer BushDavid StroudAmanda FurlottiAndrew BakerAndrew FairL.B. MorseBill ThorntonBrian AmoebasBrett DouvilleJeffrey OlsonMatt BetzelNate from KalamazooMelanie StiversRichard TollerAlexander PolsonEarl LozadaJustin McElroyArjun SharmaJames JohnsonKevin MorrellColin Hodo

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