1967 studio album by the Beatles
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Best of John Lennon 1962-1980 DELUXE EDITION (sans mes commentaires) P.McCartney-Rockestra theme-Back to the egg (79)-GénériqueBeatles-Twist and shout-Please please me (63)Beatles-You've got to hide your love away-Help! (65)Beatles-Girl-Rubber Soul (65)Beatles-Norwegian Wood-Rubber Soul (65)Beatles-I'm only sleeping-Revolver (66)Beatles-Tomorrow never knows-Revolver (66)Beatles-Lucy in the sky with Diamonds-Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (67)Beatles-A day in the life-Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (67)Beatles-Strawberry fields forever-Magical Mystery Tour (67)Beatles-I am the walrus-Magical Mystery Tour (67)Beatles-Happiness is a warm gun-White Album (68)Beatles-Sexy Sadie-White Album (68)Beatles-I want you (She's so heavy)-Abbey Road (69)Beatles-Because-Abbey Road (69)J.Lennon-Give peace a chance-"Single" (juil. 1969)J.Lennon-Working class hero-Plastic Ono Band (70)J.Lennon-Imagine-Imagine (71)J.Lennon-Jealous guy-Imagine (71)J.Lennon-New York City-Some time in New York City (72)J.Lennon-Mind games-Mind Games (73)J.Lennon-Intuition-Mind Games (73)J.Lennon-#9 dream-Walls and bridges (74)J.Lennon-You can't catch me-Rock'n'roll (75)J.Lennon-Slippin' and Sliddin'-Rock'n'roll (75)J.Lennon-Woman-Double fantasy (80)Beatles-Free as a bird-Single (95)Beatles-Real love-Single (96)Beatles-Now and then-Single (23)P.McCartney-Rockestra theme-Back to the egg (79)-Générique
Best of John Lennon (1962-1980) Beatles-Twist and shout-Please please me (63)Beatles-You've got to hide your love away-Help! (65)Beatles-Girl-Rubber Soul (65)Beatles-Norwegian Wood-Rubber Soul (65)Beatles-I'm only sleeping -Revolver (66)Beatles-Tomorrow never knows-Revolver (66)Beatles-Lucy in the sky with Diamonds-Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (67)Beatles-A day in the life-Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (67)Beatles-Strawberry fields forever-Magical Mystery Tour (67)Beatles-I am the walrus-Magical Mystery Tour (67)Beatles-Happiness is a warm gun-White Album (68)Beatles-Sexy Sadie-White Album (68)Beatles-I want you (She's so heavy)-Abbey Road (69)Beatles-Because-Abbey Road (69)J.Lennon-Give peace a chance-"Single" (juil. 1969)J.Lennon-Working class hero-Plastic Ono Band (70)J.Lennon-Imagine-Imagine (71)J.Lennon-Jealous guy-Imagine (71)J.Lennon-New York City-Some time in New York City (72)J.Lennon-Mind games-Mind Games (73)J.Lennon-Intuition-Mind Games (73)J.Lennon-#9 dream-Walls and bridges (74)J.Lennon-You can't catch me-Rock'n'roll (75)J.Lennon-Slippin' and Sliddin'-Rock'n'roll (75)J.Lennon-Woman-Double fantasy (80)Beatles-Free as a bird-Single (95)Beatles-Real love-Single (96)Beatles-Now and then-Single (23)
Face the Music: An Electric Light Orchestra Song-By-Song Podcast
The movie, not the album
Album de la semaine: "Driving rain" Paul McCartney 2001 P.McCartney-From a lover to a friend-Driving rain (01)J.Lennon-I found out (Ultimate mix)-Plastic Ono Band (The Ultimate collection) (21-70)G.Harrison-Hear me Lord (2020 mix)-All things must pass (50th anniversary edition) (21-70)R.Starr-Six o'clock (extended version) (feat. P.McCartney)-Goodnight Vienna (74)P.McCartney-For no one-Give my regards to Broadstreet (84)P.McCartney-Driving rain-Driving rain (01)Beatles-Strawberry fields forever (2015 mix)-"Strawberry fields forever" double A side (67)Beatles-Penny Lane (2017 mix)-"Strawberry fields forever" double A side (67)Traveling Wilburys-End of the line-Traveling Wilbury vol.1 (88)Beatles-A day in the life (2017 mix)-Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Deluxe Edition) (17-67)P.McCartney-Heather-Driving rain (01)J.Lennon-Gimme some truth (Ultimate mix)-Imagine (The Ultimate Mixes Deluxe) (18-71)Beatles-I am the walrus (2023 mix)-The Beatles 1966-1970 (2023 Edition)Beatles-Now and then-The Beatles 1966-1970 (2023 Edition)Traveling Wilburys-Inside out -Traveling Wilbury vol.3 (90)P.McCartney-Magic-Driving rain (01)E.Clapton-Love comes to everyone-Back home (05)Hal Bruce-We can dream on-Rock steady line (18)R.Starr-Feeling the sunlight (written by Paul McCartney)-Rewind forward (23)P.McCartney-About you-Driving rain (01)J.Lennon-Whatever get you through the night (feat.E.John)-Walls and brigdes (74)Beatles-Let it be/Please please me/Let it be (Take 10)-Let it be (Super Deluxe) (21-70)P.McCartney-Riding to Jaipur-Driving rain (01)R.Starr-Let's change the world -Change the World (21)Beatles-Tomorrow never knows (alternate take)-Anthology Highlights (10)R.Starr-Gonna need someone -Crooked boy (24)P.McCartney-Freedom-Driving rain (01)
Director Alan G. Parker on Borrowed Time; The Truth Behind John Lennon's Final Years REVEALED!Alan G. Parker, director of Hello Quo Love Kills: The Story of Sid and the Pistols and It Was Fifty Years Ago Today... Sgt Pepper and Beyond, BORROWED TIME: LENNON'S LAST DECADE explores the final decade of Lennon's life in extraordinary detail.Alan G. Parker is a British documentary filmmaker renowned for his in-depth explorations of iconic music figures, such as Sid Vicious, Monty Python, and The Beatles. His latest project, Borrowed Time: Lennon's Last Decade, is a visionary documentary that delves into the final ten years of John Lennon's life. The film chronicles Lennon's evolution beyond The Beatles, highlighting his solo musical endeavors, activism at the forefront of anti-war protests, and personal growth during the 1970s. It covers his activism and the associated naivety, delves into new information, and to some extent explodes some of the myths about Lennon, which lead to a greater understanding of the man. To me, tt feels like an honest portrayal, particularly around his murder, sometimes with people who haven't talked before. Utilizing rare archival footage, interviews with close associates, and never-before-seen materials, Parker offers an intimate portrait of Lennon as he navigated fame, artistic reinvention, and his enduring influence as a pop culture icon. Borrowed Time: Lennon's Last Decade is scheduled for release in UK cinemas on May 2, 2025, with an exclusive Director's Cut available on the Icon Film Channel the same day. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Send us a message, so we know what you're thinking!Why do you like the music you do? Is it as simple as “It's what I heard on the radio”? Or something deeper? People with elder siblings may be exposed to music earlier than first children. Jeff had an older brother, so was exposed earlier to cool music - Beatles, Janis, Hendrix, and so on. Mick was the eldest in his family and had to find his own taste. (No surprise considering what he listens to!) Were you bullied as a child? Influence! Did you share music with your friends? Influence! Did you have access to a good radio station? Or print media? Influence!! We talk about our early influences – musical & otherwise – and look at how they played a role in what we listen to today. In Rock News, Ringo has released a country album, and Toto is touring. Oh well, shouldn't take them long to play their 3 hits. You know Jeff's obsessed with AI, so he asked three AI brands to nominate the greatest albums of 1971. Not much variation, really. One day, we may ask them to understand quality, rather than sales figures, and see what they give us. Our Album You Must Listen to Before you Die is “Blue” by Joni Mitchell - an top grade album that deserves to be here. Mick references Atlantic Records' sampler called “Very Together” which featured “Carey” from this album, and pointed out a link between Joni Mitchell and Scottish hard rock band, Nazareth. How did YOUR tastes develop? Drop us a line & let us know. Enjoy! References: RAM Magazine, Rock Australia Magazine, Countdown, Molly Meldrum, 2DoubleJay, The Magus/Holger Brockman, Chris Winter, Mac Cocker, “Never Mind the Bollocks”, The Sex Pistols, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, David Bowie, “Five Years”, “Room to Move”, Chris Winter, “Starman”, “Rock'n'roll Suicide”, Birdland, Weather Report, Joe Zawinul, Brian Eno, “Another Green World”, “Zawinul Lava”, “Rock'n'Roll Animal”, Lou Reed, Steve Hunter, “Sweet Jane”, “Heroin”, “Rock'n'Roll”, Berlin, Alice Cooper, Velvet Underground, Peter Gabriel, “Car”, “Stranded”, Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry, “Song for Europe”, “Street Life”, “Psalm”, Sisters of Mercy, XTC, Nico, REM, Television, Patti Smith, “Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band”, The Beatles, "Within You Without You”, “Tomorrow Never Knows”, Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Like a Rolling Stone”, Revolver, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel, Pearl, Janis Joplin, Tapestry, Carole King, Slade Alive, Hot August Nigh”, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, “Dark Side of the Moon”, “Led Zeppelin IV”, “Silk Degrees”, Box Scaggs, “Journey to the Centre of the Earth”, Rick Wakeman, “Woodstock”, “Monterey Pop”, “The Song Remains the Same”, “The Last Waltz”, The Guitar Spa, Redeye Records, John Foy, bootleg records, “His Master's Voice”, “Sheetkeeckers”, Australian electronica/dance music store, Hipgnosis, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, Regurgitator, “I like your old stuff better than your new stuff", DeepSeek, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Blue, Joni Mitchell, Henry Lewy, “Very Together”, “This Flight Tonight”, Nazareth Episode Playlist The first song played by 2DoubleJay - “You Just Like Me ‘Cos I'm Good in Bed”
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)
We got a bad one this week! One of the most disappointing---but talent filled films ever---it's "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band".. Comic and Host Steve Mazan interviews the person who recommended we revisit this film, comedian Lesli Simms. Plus the Irish Critic joins in with her thoughts. Is this any good? Why was the director such a bold choice? Is it the most disappointing movie of all time? Should the actors have spoke? Are any of the songs as good as the Beatles? What's up with that balloon? All these questions and more get answered on this week's Mazan Movie Club Podcast. "Sgt Pepper" on IMDB Home of the Mazan Movie Club Steve Mazan on Instagram Home of Corporate Comedian Steve Mazan
Album de la semaine: "Please please me" -Beatles 1963 Beatles-I saw her standing there-Please please me (63)P.McCartney-Another day-Single (71)J.Lennon-Crippled inside (ultimate mix)-Imagine (Ultimate Mixes Deluxe) (18-71)G.Harrison-Wah wah-All things must pass (70)R.Starr-Oo-wee-Goodnight Vienna (74)Beatles-Chains-Please please me (63)J.Lennon-Meat city-Mind games (73)J.Lennon-Old dirt road-Walls and bridges (74)P.McCartney-Good Times coming/Feel the sun-Press to play (86)P.McCartney-I'm carrying-London Town (78)Beatles-Boys-Please please me (63)Beatles-One after 909 (2021 mix)-Let it be (Super Deluxe) (21-70)R.Starr-In a heartbeat-Time takes time (92)J.Lennon-To know her is to love her-Menlove Ave. (86)Beatles-Lovely Rita (2017 mix)-Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition) (17-67)Beatles-Love me do-Please please me (63)Queatles and Been-Revolution (cover)-USBThe Rutles-Ouch ! (almost Help !)-All you need is cash (78)P.McCartney-No values/No more lonely nights (ballad reprise)-Give my regards to Broadstreet (84)Beatles-Penny Lane (2017 mix)-The Beatles 1967-1970 (2023 edition)Beatles-Please please me-Please please me (63)Beatles-The fool on the hill-Magical Mystery Tour (67)Beatles-Anna (go to him)-Please please me (63)G.Harrison-Sue me, sue you blues (2024 mix)-Living in the Material World (50th anniversary)(24-73)G.Harrison-This guitar (can't keep from crying)-Extra texture (read all about it) (75)P.McCartney-New-New (13)Beatles-Twist and shout-Please please me (63)P.McCartney-That's all right (feat. Scotty Moore & DJ Fontana)-Good rockin' tonight: The legacy of Sun Records (01)G.Harrison-Stuck inside a cloud-Brainwashed (02)R.Starr-Rewind forward-Rewind forward (23)R.Starr-Breathless-Look up (25)P.McCartney-Party-Run Devil run (99)P.McCartney-Maybe baby-B.O. "Maybe baby" (00)P.McCartney-High-heels sneakers (live)-Secret show (02)P.McCartney-Rockestra theme-Back to the egg (79)-GénériqueP.McCartney-Band on the run (One hand clapping sessions)-One hand clapping (live sessions) (24-74)
On the March 30 edition of the Music History Today podcast, a famous photograph is taken, two great albums are released, and happy birthday to a guitar God.For more music history, subscribe to my Spotify Channel or subscribe to the audio version of my music history podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts fromALL MUSIC HISTORY TODAY PODCAST NETWORK LINKS - https://allmylinks.com/musichistorytoday
They created each other Does the world actually need another Beatles book? There are Mongolian peasants in one-yak villages far outside Ulan Bator who could tell you how John and Paul met at the Woolton Church fete in July 1957, and offer a considered opinion of the relative merits of Revolver and Sgt Pepper. Ian Leslie has performed a marvellous balancing act in telling a story that is in the public domain while bringing a fresh consideration of the relationship between the creative powerhouse of The Beatles. He has listened to Lennon and McCartney's output as if it were a dialogue between them, and while he doesn't go so far … Continue reading →
There's a February 29 edition of the Music History Today podcast because yes, music history DOES happen on this day. It's just that it's once every 4 years For more music history, subscribe to my Spotify Channel or subscribe to the audio version of my music history podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts fromALL MUSIC HISTORY TODAY PODCAST NETWORK LINKS - https://allmylinks.com/musichistorytoday
Jump into this episode where we do a fully-detailed analysis and deep dive of the 1978 movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band starring Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees, among *numerous* other guest stars of the day like George Burns and Steve Martin. Often deemed one of the worst films of all time, we talk about the absolutely idiotic plot, the terrible acting, some of the awful covers, a few of the good ones, what the movie did to the careers of the stars, and so much more. We leave no stone unturned in this analysis! We finish with some of the latest Beatles news. Thanks for listening! Feel free to email or record a message to ivegotabeatlespodcast@outlook.com and we'll include you in our "Please Mr. Postman" segment. Also, please rate us wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can now watch us on YouTube! Complete episodes can be found at https://ivegotabeatlespodcast.podbean.com. Email: ivegotabeatlespodcast@hotmail.com X: @ivegotabeatles Facebook: I've Got A Beatles Podcast Our video venture: "Song Album Career!"
The BH Sales Kennel Kelp Holistic Healing Hour: Grandpa Bill Today on The BH Sales Kennel Kelp Holistic Healing Hour we explore the power of music and memory with a unique exercise inspired by the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. We'll transform this iconic album into a personalized 'Mind Palace,' using each song as a distinct room or scene to enhance focus and recall. This isn't just about remembering lyrics; it's about creating mental connections, boosting cognitive function, and unlocking your inner potential. Tune in to discover how this creative technique can bring clarity and focus to your daily life, sales strategies, and overall well-being."Grandpa Bill Asks: What are some of the most vivid memories you associate with music, and how do those memories make you feel? Beyond today, where else in your life could you benefit from improved focus and memory, and how do you envision this technique helping you achieve that? YouTube @billolt8792:Hey everyone, Grandpa Bill here! Ever wish you had a superpower for remembering names, facts, or even your life's pitch? In this video, we're diving into a fascinating memory technique using the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper as our guide. We'll build a 'Mind Palace' together, associating each song with memorable images and ideas. This fun and engaging exercise will not only sharpen your memory but also boost your creativity and mental agility. Get ready to unlock the potential of your mind with this unique approach!"Grandpa Bill Asks: What's one thing you'd love to improve your memory of, and why is it important to you? What other creative tools or techniques do you use to enhance your memory or learning?Community Advocacy Program-
(S4-Ep10)The Beatles: Sgt. Peppers Lonely Heart's Club Band (Parlophone/Capitol) Released May 26, 1967, Recorded Between December 6, 1966 and April 21, 1967 Summary Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), the Beatles' eighth studio album, revolutionized rock music and became a defining cultural moment. Combining psychedelic rock, art rock, and avant-garde techniques, it's often considered the first concept album. Created during intense studio experimentation, it marked the Beatles' shift from live performances to studio-bound artistry. The album's groundbreaking production featured innovative techniques like direct injection recording, backward sounds, and orchestration, setting new standards for the music industry. Its vivid, psychedelic cover art, designed by Peter Blake, became iconic, and the album's impact shaped the 1967 Summer of Love.Sgt. Pepper produced hits likeLucy in the Sky with Diamonds andA Day in the Life, blending influences such as Indian music and Western rock. Despite internal tensions, particularly with George Harrison and Ringo Starr feeling sidelined, the album received universal acclaim and won four Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year—the first rock album to do so. Its cultural influence is immeasurable, inspiring future generations of artists and solidifying the Beatles' legacy. For many,Sgt. Pepper's remains the pinnacle of rock music, reshaping the possibilities of popular music and continuing to captivate listeners with every play.Signature Tracks:A Little Help From Friends,Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,A Day In The Life. Full Album:YouTube,Spotify Playlist: YouTube Playlist Spotify Playlist,
Album de la semaine: "Flowers in the dirt" (Paul McCartney 1989) Marianne Faithfull-The ballad of Lucy Jordan-Broken English (79)- HommageP.McCartney-Rockestra theme-Back to the egg (79)-GénériqueP.McCartney-My brave face-Flowers in the dirt (89)J.Lennon-Mother-Plastic Ono Band (70)G.Harrison-The day the World gets 'round-Living in the Material World (73)R.Starr-Goodnight Vienna-Goodnight Vienna (74)Beatles-Blackbird (2018 mix)-White album (Super Deluxe edition) (18-68)P.McCartney-Rough ride-Flowers in the dirt (89)Beatles-Sgt Pepper's Loney Hearts Club Band (2017 mix)-Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Deluxe edition) (17-67)Beatles-With a little help from my friends (2017 mix)-Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Deluxe edition) (17-67)J.Lennon-Jealous guy-Imagine (71)J.Lennon-Only people-Mind games (73)P.McCartney-Put it there-Flowers in the dirt (89)G.Harrison-Blow away-George Harrison (79)Beatles-Dear Prudence (2018 mix)-White album (Super Deluxe edition) (18-68)Beatles-Glass Onion (2018 mix)-White album (Super Deluxe edition) (18-68)J.Lennon-What you got-Walls and bridges (74)P.McCartney-Figure of eight-Flowers in the dirt (89)Jeff Lynne-Love is a many splendoured thing-Long wave (12)Hal Bruce-Dream on-Single (14)P.McCartney-Flying to my home-"Flowers in the dirt" sessions (89)Beatles-I'm only sleeping-Revolver (66)P.McCartney-Distractions-Flowers in the dirt (89)G.Harrison-I live for you/It's Johnny's birthday-All things must pass (70)R.Starr-Vertical man-Vertical man (98)Beatles-Now and then-Single (23) Grammy award 2025Beatles-Free as a bird-Single (95)Beatles-Real love-Single (96)
Album de la semaine: "Flaming pie" (Paul McCartney-1997) P.McCartney-Young boy-Flaming pie (97)Dirty Mac-Yer blues (feat. J.Lennon, E.Clapton, K.Richards) (Live)-Rolling Stones's "Rock'n'roll circus" (68-96 DVD)G.Harrison-I dig love-All things must pass (70)R.Starr-Bye bye blackbird-Sentimental journey (70)Beatles-Lady Madonna (2015 mix)-The Beatles 1967-1970 (2023 edition) (23)P.McCartney-If you wanna$Flaming pie (97)J.Lennon-Life begins at forty-Lost Lennon tapes (88)Beatles-Blue moon of Kentucky/Ain't she sweet-Meet the Threetles (03)Beatles-Like dreamers do/hello little girl-Anthology 1 (95)G.Harrison-That's the way it goes-Gone Troppo (82)P.McCartney-Flaming pie-Flaming pie (97)J.Lennon-Intuition-Mind games (73)J.Lennon-Do you wanna dance-Rock'n'roll (75)R.Starr-As far as we can go-Old wave (83)Beatles-I am the walrus-Magical Mystery Tour (67)P.McCartney-Somedays-Flaming pie (97)Hugues Aufray-Je croyais (VF "Yesterday)-EP 4 titres dont "L'homme orchestre" (65)Beatles-Yesterday-Help ! (65)P.McCartney-Heaven on a sunday-Flaming pie (97)Travelling Wilburys-Poor House-Travelling Wilburys vol.3 (90)Beatles-She said she said-Revolver (66)P.McCartney-Calico skies-Flaming pie (97)Beatles-Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise)-Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (67)Beatles-A day in the life-Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (67)R.Starr-Free drinks-Choose love (05)G.Harrison-Cockamamie business-Best of Dark Horse (1976-1989) (89)P.McCartney-Souvenir-Flaming pie (97)P.McCartney-Beautiful night (feat. Ringo Starr)-Flaming pie (97)Beatles-Hello goodbye-Magical Mystery Tour (67)R.Starr-Eye to eye-Ringo Rama (03)
Finally we are back! Sorry for the radio silence in 2024, but life got busy for your hosts... Anyway, we go big with The Beatles, so hopefully it was worth the wait. Henry mentions a documentary/interview thing with Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White, which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lQxxEQceYc To listen to the music we discuss, go check out the playlist on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0JiUyxne9bHlKSV2VpHv8B Drop us a line at: @imightbewronguk on Twitter and Facebook. Thanks to T-Toe for the intro music! Find his work at https://t-toe.bandcamp.com/
Danny Baker, the act you've known for all these years, is kicking his legs up again in 2025 on a thundering new theatre tour, ‘Aye Aye! Ahoy Hoy!' “Dead men tell no tales,” he points out, “so we might might as well get ‘em all told now.” This will be another barnstorming one-man circus - as, naturally, is this barrelling conversation with the two of us which collides with the following … … being shot, Welsh cake, an olive green Humber, goldfish, when videos were the size of a loaf of bread, why half his Maidstone audience got up and left, stolen gear being hustled over Waterloo Bridge, bad things done by Rod Stewart and Britt Ekland, ELP, the Average White Band, Max Miller, Kenneth Williams' loathing for Michael Aspel, when records become like furniture, getting £4k for a Ziggy Stardust white label, why he doesn't miss the 14,000 albums he sold, and the record that came out the same day as Sgt Pepper and Bowie's first album but is better than both. The podcast includes an extract from Ronnie Barker's “A Pint Of Old And Filthy” and Terry Thomas reading PG Wodehouse. Order tickets for Danny's 2025 tour here:https://www.dannybakerstore.com/Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Danny Baker, the act you've known for all these years, is kicking his legs up again in 2025 on a thundering new theatre tour, ‘Aye Aye! Ahoy Hoy!' “Dead men tell no tales,” he points out, “so we might might as well get ‘em all told now.” This will be another barnstorming one-man circus - as, naturally, is this barrelling conversation with the two of us which collides with the following … … being shot, Welsh cake, an olive green Humber, goldfish, when videos were the size of a loaf of bread, why half his Maidstone audience got up and left, stolen gear being hustled over Waterloo Bridge, bad things done by Rod Stewart and Britt Ekland, ELP, the Average White Band, Max Miller, Kenneth Williams' loathing for Michael Aspel, when records become like furniture, getting £4k for a Ziggy Stardust white label, why he doesn't miss the 14,000 albums he sold, and the record that came out the same day as Sgt Pepper and Bowie's first album but is better than both. The podcast includes an extract from Ronnie Barker's “A Pint Of Old And Filthy” and Terry Thomas reading PG Wodehouse. Order tickets for Danny's 2025 tour here:https://www.dannybakerstore.com/Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Danny Baker, the act you've known for all these years, is kicking his legs up again in 2025 on a thundering new theatre tour, ‘Aye Aye! Ahoy Hoy!' “Dead men tell no tales,” he points out, “so we might might as well get ‘em all told now.” This will be another barnstorming one-man circus - as, naturally, is this barrelling conversation with the two of us which collides with the following … … being shot, Welsh cake, an olive green Humber, goldfish, when videos were the size of a loaf of bread, why half his Maidstone audience got up and left, stolen gear being hustled over Waterloo Bridge, bad things done by Rod Stewart and Britt Ekland, ELP, the Average White Band, Max Miller, Kenneth Williams' loathing for Michael Aspel, when records become like furniture, getting £4k for a Ziggy Stardust white label, why he doesn't miss the 14,000 albums he sold, and the record that came out the same day as Sgt Pepper and Bowie's first album but is better than both. The podcast includes an extract from Ronnie Barker's “A Pint Of Old And Filthy” and Terry Thomas reading PG Wodehouse. Order tickets for Danny's 2025 tour here:https://www.dannybakerstore.com/Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A reasonable case can be made that the eighth studio album by the Beatles is the most important album in all of Rock and Roll. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band creates a dividing line between 60's rock and what Rock and Roll would become in the 70's. Incorporating elements of eastern mysticism, psychedelic music and art, counter-culture sensibilities, and complex orchestration, Sgt. Peppers was a groundbreaking demonstration of what an album could be.Sgt. Peppers is one of the first concept albums - taking a theme and incorporating it into the entirety of the record. The Beatles adopted personas for this album, becoming the fictional "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." This allowed the band members to experiment with styles they either hadn't previously explored, or had not fully developed. The studio also became an instrument for the band, and they incorporated techniques like multitracking, variable speed recording, and the use of sound effects to create complex soundscapes.Lyrics vary from social commentary to whimsy, to surrealism. While many songs remain lighthearted, others take a more somber tone, mirroring the cultural upheaval that was happening in the late 60's counterculture. The album also brings visual art into the mix, with psychedelic cover art rather than simple photographs.Sgt. Peppers tops many "best albums" lists, and has sold over 32 million copies worldwide.Friend of the show Steve Hardin presents this monster album this week, and we're joined by friend of the show Julie Doran as Wayne and Lynch are out of town for today's podcast. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club BandThe opening track introduces us to the alter ego of the band, including an intro of a pit orchestra warming up and a transitional brass band in the middle of the song. Paul McCartney acts as the carnival barker introducing the band, reunited after 20 years. Lennon then takes over, thanking the audience for their attendance. With A Little Help from My FriendsDrummer Ringo Starr takes lead vocal duties on this song that has a more intimate touch. In contrast to the bombastic start, Starr shows vulnerability as he asks what would happen if he sang out of tune, and leans on his friends for support. Ringo Starr didn't write the music like Lennon and McCartney, but typically would sing lead on one song on each album.Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!The track that finishes side 1 was inspired by an old circus poster from 1943 that Lennon had purchased in an antique store. The song is a collage of circus images, complete with calliope. It returns to the theme of the first song, but this time focusing on circus performers rather than the band. Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)/A Day in the LifeThe concluding album tracks are often played together. The reprise of the opening track is faster paced, and more rock oriented. The concluding track alternates between a dream sequence and the rush of an ordinary day. It concludes with four pianos simultaneously sounding an E-major chord. ENTERTAINMENT TRACK:Casino Royale by Herb Alpert (from the motion picture “Casino Royale”)Not your ordinary James Bond fare, this film was a comedic spoof on the popular spy franchise starring David Niven, Peter Sellers, and Ursula Andress. STAFF PICKS:For What Its Worth by Buffalo SpringfieldBruce's staff pick peaked at number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100. Stephen Stills was inspired to write the song by the Sunset Strip curfew riots in Los Angeles. Buffalo Springfield got a close look at the riots as the house band at the Whiskey a Go Go, when young people rebelled against a strict 10:00 p.m. curfew successfully advocated by local residents, annoyed with club goers clogging the streets late at night. The Loser (with a Broken Heart) by Gary Lewis and the PlayboysRob brings us a jangle pop hit from the son of Jerry Lewis. Gary Lewis and the Playboys cultivated a "boy next door" image and had a string of hits in the late 60's. Lewis was drafted into the army in 1967, and though some songs previously recorded (like this one) continued to be successful, the band began to diminish in popularity.I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You) by Aretha FranklinJulie features a soulful song from the iconic Queen of Soul. This is off Franklin's tenth studio album. The first nine were jazz oriented, and much less successful than this influential album. This album was recorded in Mussel Shoals where an altercation resulted in an abrupt change of venue to New York.Strawberry Fields Forever by the BeatlesIt might appear that Steve is double dipping on this staff pick, but this well known Beatles song was a non-album single popular at the time. The song was the result of multiple takes spliced together. Lennon was inspired by a memory of a strawberry field where he played as a child. INSTRUMENTAL TRACK:Wade In the Water by Herb AlpertAlpert had a TV special this month on which he played his jazzy rendition of this gospel standard. 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.
Episode 165: Survived Another Election November 14, 2024 We are back again with another expedition into that great album rock of the 60s & 70s here on Tales Vinyl Tells. This expedition has been going on for quite a while now, the podcast version since December 2019. The radio version premiered in the spring of 2022. I vaguely remember the evenings during this music's time when we'd visit a friend in our apartment complex and we'd burn some while putting on some Carole King or James Taylor or Stones or better yet, Sgt Pepper's. The smell of incense, a lot of times, could mask the weed aroma and I played the psychedelic Smell of Incense from the West Coast Pop Art Experiment Band along with Graham Nash, some jazzy numbers from Seals and Crofts and Victor Wooten, and the closer is a very rocky one from The Rascals that is really good. Hope you enjoy all that! Show your love for the great album rock of the 60s and 70s by becoming a monthly contributor to Tales Vinyl Tells. Learn more at patron.podbean.com/talesvinyltellssupport. Thank you so much, especially you who already contribute monthly and I hope you feel really good supporting this effort to enjoy what I think is the best creative music of this generation. You can stream Tales Vinyl Tells Wednesdays at five central time on Radiofreenashville.org. And all of the episodes are free and downloadable on many podcast apps and of course at studiomillswellness.com/tales-vinyl-tells. Dig this hour!
The Netflix series of David Nicholls' worldwide hit novel One Day was Top Ten in 89 countries and he's been heavily involved in its soundtrack album, a process as enjoyable, he says, as devising the compilation tape the fictional Emma made for Dexter in 1989 featuring the Smiths, Prefab Sprout and Public Enemy. We talk to him here about the glorious pitfalls of using pop music to broadcast your personality. All bases covered, from the Geoff Love Orchestra to Joy Orbison, along with … … prog rock drummer replacement fantasies. … when a compilation tape is a Valentine's card. … music as a way of telegraphing a time. … what the 1812 Overture does to a five year-old. … the eternal impact of Shipbuilding and Running Up That Hill. … “punk terrified me”. … classic male musical taste paranoia. … memories of Live Aid – Bowie onstage, Kiki Dee in the car park. … buying a knock-off cassette of Sgt Pepper. … remembering every note of a record you haven't heard for 50 years. … and the greatest record of all time! Order the One Day Netflix soundtrack here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jessica-Jones-Morrish-Anne-Nikitin/dp/B0CXJNM4WVFind out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Netflix series of David Nicholls' worldwide hit novel One Day was Top Ten in 89 countries and he's been heavily involved in its soundtrack album, a process as enjoyable, he says, as devising the compilation tape the fictional Emma made for Dexter in 1989 featuring the Smiths, Prefab Sprout and Public Enemy. We talk to him here about the glorious pitfalls of using pop music to broadcast your personality. All bases covered, from the Geoff Love Orchestra to Joy Orbison, along with … … prog rock drummer replacement fantasies. … when a compilation tape is a Valentine's card. … music as a way of telegraphing a time. … what the 1812 Overture does to a five year-old. … the eternal impact of Shipbuilding and Running Up That Hill. … “punk terrified me”. … classic male musical taste paranoia. … memories of Live Aid – Bowie onstage, Kiki Dee in the car park. … buying a knock-off cassette of Sgt Pepper. … remembering every note of a record you haven't heard for 50 years. … and the greatest record of all time! Order the One Day Netflix soundtrack here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jessica-Jones-Morrish-Anne-Nikitin/dp/B0CXJNM4WVFind out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Netflix series of David Nicholls' worldwide hit novel One Day was Top Ten in 89 countries and he's been heavily involved in its soundtrack album, a process as enjoyable, he says, as devising the compilation tape the fictional Emma made for Dexter in 1989 featuring the Smiths, Prefab Sprout and Public Enemy. We talk to him here about the glorious pitfalls of using pop music to broadcast your personality. All bases covered, from the Geoff Love Orchestra to Joy Orbison, along with … … prog rock drummer replacement fantasies. … when a compilation tape is a Valentine's card. … music as a way of telegraphing a time. … what the 1812 Overture does to a five year-old. … the eternal impact of Shipbuilding and Running Up That Hill. … “punk terrified me”. … classic male musical taste paranoia. … memories of Live Aid – Bowie onstage, Kiki Dee in the car park. … buying a knock-off cassette of Sgt Pepper. … remembering every note of a record you haven't heard for 50 years. … and the greatest record of all time! Order the One Day Netflix soundtrack here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jessica-Jones-Morrish-Anne-Nikitin/dp/B0CXJNM4WVFind out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode, the Mullets introduce their new, but similar, structure. It's a struggle when you have to discuss wild covers, bad facial expressions, giant mouths, lightning shooting out of your fingers and hot air balloons.All kinds of awesome, bonus content is available on our Patreon! Rate, review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Spotify! Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
Mighty Blue On The Appalachian Trail: The Ultimate Mid-Life Crisis
We have a NASA guy on the show today. Nick Kindred worked on the Artemis Program, and when he was able to retire, he set his sights on completing his Appalachian Trail adventure of a number of years by finishing the rest of it in a 1200 mile LASH from Harpers Ferry to Katahdin. Nick's thoughtful observations, and his conversations with his wife about the extended separation on trail, should give pause to those who haven't considered the impact of lengthy separations on their own adventures. He hasn't shared any social media links, but he sent me this link about the Artemis program that is of interest. Artemis Our Class of 2024 members who we catch up with this week are No Rush the Elder, and Professor Milkshake. No Rush is trying out the delis of New York as we speak, while the Prof is just a day or so from the VT / NH border. Our new book reading, Happy Hiking, by my friend, Emily Leonard is–of course–written from a woman's POV and a woman's voice. I hope you enjoy listening to my reading of it. If you'd like to buy the book, you can find it on Amazon at Happy Hiking: Falling in love on the Appalachian Trail, or on Emily's website, at Happy Hiking. I used my recent hike in the UK on the South West Coast Path to help raise money for my absolute favorite charity, Parenting Matters, on whose board I've been privileged to serve for over a decade. You can learn more about the hike and the organization–and donate–by visiting Hike with Steve - Empowering Parents, One Step at a Time | Parenting Matters %. I hope you want to support this critical mission. Don't forget. Our entire series of videos from our Woods Hole Weekend in 2022 is now FREE and available at my YouTube page at Woods Hole Weekend - Trailer. There, you'll find all sorts of tips and tricks that our guests took away from the weekend that helped them with their own hikes. Check it out. I often ask listeners for ideas on who to interview, and I'm sure several of you say, “I could do that. I've got an awesome story to tell.” You're the person we need to hear from. If you'd like to be interviewed on the podcast, just register as a guest on the link below, and I'll be in touch. Come on the show! If you like what we're doing on the Hiking Radio Network, and want to see our shows continue, please consider supporting us with either a one-off or monthly donation. You'll find the donate button on each Hiking Radio Network page at Hiking Radio Network. If you prefer NOT to use PayPal, you can now support us via check by mailing it to Mighty Blue Publishing, PO Box 6161, Sun City Center, FL 35751. Any support is gratefully received. If you'd like to take advantage of my book offer (all three of my printed hiking books–with a personal message and signed by me–for $31, including postage to the United States) send a check payable to Mighty Blue Publishing at the address just above.
Music Rewind welcomes Indie-Pop star Lola Violet to the show to talk about the immortal classic, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band by The Beatles. Lola Violet is an L.A. based artist whose music is rapidly making waves throughout the industry. She is most active on her TicTok where Lola is live each night garnering over 100 million streams! Her recent EP “Crazy Baby” is now available through her website: https://www.musicbylola.com/ Check out Lola Violet's socials: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@musicbylola Twitter/X https://twitter.com/Musicbylola_ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/musicbylola_/ Album: Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Artist: The Beatles Year: 1967 Listen to the album on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/6QaVfG1pHYl1z15ZxkvVDW?si=QQ2pKMyHTO2cT48mFVfjeg Blog Post: https://medium.com/@musicrewindpodcast/the-beatles-sgt-peppers-lonely-hearts-club-band-with-guest-lola-violet-a84370a41c16 —-------------------------------------------------- Buy Me A Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/musicrewind —-------------------------------------------------- Useful Links for Music Rewind Music Rewind: All Episodes - https://www.musicrewindpodcast.com/listen Music Rewind Treasure Hunt - https://bit.ly/MixCD_Treasure_Hunt Music Rewind Selects: A playlist of select tracks from albums covered on the show. - https://bit.ly/MusicRewindSelects Music Rewind Patreon Early access to future episodes - https://bit.ly/MusicRewindPatreon Discover our sister podcast, Cinema Decon, deconstructing the movies of the 80's, 90's and 2000's. www.cinemadecon.com —-------------------------------------------------- “No ownership of music material. All credits go to its rightful owner. Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act in 1976; Allowance is made for “Fair Use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair Use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. All rights and credit go directly to its rightful owners, no copyright infringement intended.” #music #podcast #musicpodcast #lolaviolet #thebeatles #sgtpepperslonelyheartsclubband
Send us a Text Message.It's not unusual for bands to change their sound or style as they move through their career. We take a look at bands that changed their sound, or started a completely new sound for a whole lot of reasons - from The Beatles, Bowie and Dylan and Black Sabbath through to Japan, The Cure and Split Enz. Our album you must hear before you die is Let it Bleed by The Rolling Stones. From the cover art to the great music it contains, this album from The Stones' golden period leading into the 70's - Sticky Fingers & Exile on Main Street - is a corker! In Rock News, Jeff updates us on The Sex POistols, Ritchie Blackmore and Cyndiu Lauper, while our Ozzy Osbourne report has Sharon telling us that “If a bomb dropped there would be cockroaches, Keith Richards and Ozzy!” Enjoy. References: The Sex Pistols, Ritchie Blackmore, Deep Purple, Blackmore's Night, Candice Night, Cyndi Lauper, The Police, Spotify, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, John Lennon's guitar, Ozzy Osbourne, Keith Richards, The Rolling Stones, Let it Bleed, Jimmy Miller, Brian Jones, Mick Taylor, “Gimme Shelter”, “Midnight Rambler”, “Love in Vain”, “You can't always get what you want”, “Honky Tonk Woman”, Beggars Banquet, The Beatles, The Quarrymen, Lonnie Donegan, Revolver, Sgt Peppers, Paul MacCartney, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, The Bee Gees, “New York Mining Disaster”, “Stayin' Alive”, David Bowie, “Love you ‘til Tuesday", “The Laughing Gnome”, art-rock, glam, Bob Dylan, T-Rex, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Japan, Jimi Hendrix, Chitlin' Circuit, Split Enz, Neil Finn, Tim Finn, The Cure, Billy Joel, Black Sabbath, “Black Sabbath”, The Animals, “The House of the Rising Sun”, Isaac Hayes, “Theme from Shaft”, Pixies, “Monkey Gone to Heaven”, Kurt Cobain, Nirvana, Soundgarden, BushPlaylist John Lennon on Dick Cavett Show Hendrix Live on TV
Today in 1978, the American release date of what looked like a blockbuster movie musical: "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," starring some of the biggest music and movie stars of the era. Yeah, it didn't go so well. Plus: the Apollo 11 astronauts had to fill out customs declarations when they came back from the moon!?! Beatles-Based Movie Is A Box Office Bomb (Songfacts) Back from the Moon, Apollo Astronauts Had to Go Through Customs (Space.com) I don't really want to stop the show, but I thought you might like to know, you can back our show on Patreon for just $1 a month --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/coolweirdawesome/support
This guy is afraid of his co worker lol
The grandfather of British Pop Art, Sir Peter Blake is one of most influential and popular artists of his generation. A Royal Academician with work in the national collection, including Tate and the National Portrait Gallery, he is renowned for paintings and collages that borrow imagery from advertising, cinema and music. Having created The Beatles' Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band sleeve in 1967 he became the go-to album designer for other musical artists including The Who, Paul Weller, Madness and Oasis. He was knighted for services to art in 2002.Sir Peter tells John Wilson how, after a working class upbringing in Dartford, Kent, he won a place at the Royal College of Art alongside fellow students Bridget Riley and Frank Auerbach. He recalls being influenced by early American pop artists including Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and how he began making art inspired by everyday popular imagery. He chooses Dylan Thomas's 1954 radio play Under Milk Wood as a work which captivated his imagination and later inspired a series of his artworks based on the characters, and also cites Max Miller, the music hall artist known as 'the Cheeky Chappie'; as a creative influence. Sir Peter remembers how he made the iconic Sgt Pepper sleeve using waxwork dummies and life size cut-out figures depicting well-known people chosen by Peter and The Beatles themselves. Producer: Edwina PitmanArchive used: Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, performed by Richard Burton, BBC Third Programme, 25 Jan 1954 Max Miller, introduced by Wilfred Pickles at the Festival of Variety, BBC Light Programme, 6 May 1951 Max Miller archive from Celebration, The Cheeky Chappie, BBC Radio 4, 3 July 1974 Monitor: 89: Pop Goes The Easel, BBC1, 25 March 1962 Peter Blake: Work in Progress, BBC2, 21 February 1983 Newsnight, BBC2, 7 February 1983 Ian Dury, Peter the Painter
In this special snackable episode, Mark compares The Beach Boys' 1967 SMiLE album with The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. A year earlier the bands came out, respectively, with the classic Pet Sounds and Revolver LPs, and it was The Beach Boys who were favored in NME's year-end poll. If SMiLE had come out during the Summer of Love, how would it have fared? Mark weighs the two albums track by track, and in terms of cultural impact and overall artistic impression. These records are considered by many to be both bands' ultimate production statements - which one will come out on top? (This mini-episode is a longer version of a clip Mark recorded for the Apples & Oranges Podcast.)
Author and filmmaker Jamie Bernstein joins Everything Fab Four to discuss growing up with a world-famous father, and why Leonard Bernstein chose Beatles songs to explain musical concepts. Jamie Bernstein's 2018 memoir, Famous Father Girl, traces the story of growing up with composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein, and pianist and actress Felicia Montealegre in an atmosphere bursting with music, theatre and literature. Famous Father Girl served as the inspiration for the Academy Award-nominated movie Maestro. Over the years, Bernstein has written and narrated concerts about Mozart, Aaron Copland, and Stravinsky, as well as “The Bernstein Beat,” a family concert about her father. She performs concert narrations all over the world, including for Copland's “A Lincoln Portrait” and her father's Symphony No. 3, “Kaddish.” Bernstein has also produced and hosted the New York Philharmonic's live national radio broadcasts, and recently narrated the podcast “The NY Phil Story: Made in New York.” Her other works include co-directing the award-winning documentary film Crescendo: the Power of Music, about children from struggling urban communities who participate in youth orchestra programs, and articles and poetry in Symphony, Town & Country, and Opera News. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/everythingfabfour/support
In the second installment of our Rock Hall 2024 Inductee Spotlight episodes, Jeremy had Mike deep dive into the career of upcoming inductee Peter Frampton
On this week's episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy suggests dissociating from yourself to better analyze your job performance! Sargent Peppers was a genuinely cool album, showcasing the intrinsic creativity of the Beatles, but if you think about in work terms you get things like “Customer Service Voice” The better you can analyze your performance, the better you can do your job. Sometimes when your heart just isn't in it that day your coworkers can make it instantly better or worse. We also get into some of the bigger ideas of being a good employee and how to keep them in your building making you money - and the answer is money and recognition! Also Uncle Jimmy's new apartment acoustics need to be figured out, and his chair gets the Keith Moon treatment.
It's Story Time, our walk through cricket history via your listener quiz challenges. Daniel Norcross is back with Adam for a second installment of their doubleheader, recorded beneath the Jardine portrait then later at the former England captain's home ground. It's an Australian skipper, Allan Border, who is celebrated for his secondary discipline after we learn all there is to know about the man who was for many decades Lancashire's finest quick. An astonishing get later in the show, somehow linking Liverpool's Fab Four and Sri Lanka's Tremendous Two. We finish on even 100s made in both innings, hitting a variety of Final Word sweet spots along the way. Enjoy! Your Nerd Pledge numbers this week: 2.52 – James 2.00 – Alex P 7.56 – Steven Westwood 2.00 – Paul Reeve 10.00 – Anna Forsyth revisited Support the show with a Nerd Pledge at patreon.com/thefinalword Get down to Westfield London and Westfield Stratford City! More extra, less ordinary. westfield.com/united-kingdom/london Get your 10% discount on top-notch kit from Serious Cricket. Use FINALWORD24 at checkout --> seriouscricket.co.uk Get that sweet Nord VPN discount - nordvpn.com/tfw Donate to support our Edinburgh Marathon runners for the Lord's Taverners All links at linktr.ee/thefinalword Find previous episodes at finalwordcricket.com Title track by Urthboy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
[originally published on Patreon Jul 18, 2022] Today I'm joined by Flipper (@moonbaseking) to discuss all things sus Beatles. We start by going through the Profumo Affair largely through the lens of the Beatles. Then we discuss my favorite topic, John Arthur Reid Pepper, dentists, LSD, MKULTRA and parallel programs, and so forth. I explore the Beatles' finances in an attempt to understand why they became the biggest band in the world. That's right - taxes, offshoring, capital gains, stock companies, and especially the shadowy financial figures behind the Beatles. We talk about the Maharishi (very interesting guy), Magic Alex, the Eastmans, Allen Klein, and anything Beatles must inevitably talk about Yoko Ono. Finally, we discuss Lennon's assassination. Songs: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by EVE Can't Buy Me Love by the Korean Kittens Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by Puffy AmiYumi Help by Let's Sing in Japanese! Within You Without You by the Strawberry Feel Run 4 Your Life by the Beetles
We start by taking a listener's question from The Bone socials about Aerosmith & the Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band movie from the 1980s, where we learn how Peter Frampton was bamboozled into the part. We learn about the bald eagle nest in St3ve's neighborhood. Steve has some advice for the pending nuptials of Millie Bobby Brown and Jake Bongiovi and we chat about the new (and old) Pear Jam.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We somehow have NEVER covered a Beatles album, despite us both being fans, and despite us talking about THIS album many times before, and despite us talking about the Beatles many times before! So we picked Sgt. Pepper's to start with! Maybe we'll do more of these! We of course also play Smish or Piss. Enjoy! You can contact the show at agoodpodcast@gmail.com and find us @HowStarWarsIsIt on all platforms. You can also follow Mike @MikeGospel on Twitter and @WordGospel09 on Youtube and Instagram and Josiah @JosiahDotBiz on social media and on his website josiahrobinson.biz. And don't forget to rate and review on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts! And if you REALLY like the show head over to our Patreon at patreon.com/howstarwarsisit for bonus episodes, Star Wars movie commentaries, and more!
SUBSCRIBE TO IMPOSSIBLE WAY OF LIFE ON PATREON TO ACCESS FULL EPISODEhttps://www.patreon.com/animpossiblewayoflifeWe test out Johnny's claim that Beatles for Sale is a better record than Sgt Peppers. We also dive back into the Lord Of The Rings / Beatles Universe.
We kick into the last quarter of our first century of episodes with a deep discussion of reprises, especially as they relate to SOAD jerks. We then record an INTRO IN ARREARS before introducing true pod royalty in our guest Alex Goldman, taking Alex on a journey that includes a serious discussion of pronunciation, the worst Tweets of 2023, Alex's music Slow Fawns, The Beastie Boys, a lot about A Day in the Life, iconic 1-2-3-4s, the strange connections between podcast producers, and the end of the concept with an analysis of the Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band - Reprise.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 TommyGuest: Alex Goldman (@AGoldmund)Executive Producer: Scotty C.Musical Supervisor: RB (@ryanobrooks)Associate Musical Supervision: Tim Clark (@nodisassemble)#PeteBestGetThatCheck
ABOUT ARTIMUS PYLE AND ANTHEMS: HONORING THE MUSIC OF LYNYRD SKYNYRDAnthems - Honoring The Music of Lynyrd Skynyrd Includes Dolly Parton, Sammy Hagar, Warren Haynes, Ronnie Dunn, Lee Brice, Michael Ray, Chris Janson, Billy Ray Cyrus, LOCASH, Jerrod Niemann, Marty Raybon, and Lindsay EllRock & Roll Hall of Fame Member and former drummer of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Artimus Pyle is excited to release the Artimus Pyle Band's long-awaited album 'Anthems - Honoring The Music of Lynyrd Skynyrd.' With a total of thirteen tracks, this record features artists including Ronnie Dunn, Sammy Hagar, Lee Brice, Billy Ray Cyrus, Warren Hayes, Michael Ray, Chris Janson, LOCASH, Jerrod Niemann, Marty Raybon, Lindsay Ell, and Dolly Parton! Released by Get Joe Records and distributed by BFD/Orchard, the Artimus Pyle Band has recently made his Grand Ole Opry debut and has been featured in Forbes, Cowboys & Indians, Larry London's Border Crossings on Voice of America, RFD-TV,Huckabee, The Tennessean, and a premiere of Artimus Pyle and Dolly Parton's collaboration on "Free Bird" with Garden & Gun. This new version of "Free Bird" also includes a new guitar recording from late Lynyrd Skynyrd founding member Gary Rossington.Fans can also order the limited edition Anthems - Honoring The Music of Lynyrd Skynyrd on vinyl by going to ArtimusPyle.com. As part of a separate limited-edition bundle, music lovers can order the CD and an autographed collector's edition drumhead. Priced at $100.00, this exclusive package includes the tribute album and a one-of-a-kind, autographed 15" drumhead featuring Artimus Pyle's logo. Limited in availability, this special offer guarantees fans a unique and collectible addition to their music memorabilia, making it a must-have while supplies last.Renowned as the untamed force behind Lynyrd Skynyrd, Artimus Pyle's impactful double bass drumming was instrumental in defining the band's iconic sound. His breakthrough moment came at the Charlie Daniels Volunteer Jam, where his authoritative drumming, initially credited simply as "Artimus Pyle, percussion," captured widespread attention. Further establishing himself as a sought-after session drummer, Pyle connected with acts such as Charlie Daniels and the Marshall Tucker Band, eventually crossing paths with Ronnie Van Zant and Ed King at Studio One in Doraville, Georgia. This fateful encounter paved the way for the creation of Saturday Night Special, leaving an indelible mark on Ronnie. Making his live debut at Jacksonville's Sgt Pepper's Club in October 1974, Pyle assumed the role of Skynyrd's drummer following the release of Second Helping, contributing to the band's subsequent four albums, including the legendary Street Survivors. Pyle survived the band's tragic 1977 plane crash that took six lives, including Steve and Cassie Gaines, along with the band's leader, Ronnie Van Zant."This project has been a year in the making, but when the fans hear it they will understand why it took so long," says Len Snow, Get Joe Records president. "Artimus is legendary within the Southern Rock space. The music that Lynyrd Skynyrd made will always live as a part of rock history. This album honors that music and gives Artimus a way to honor his former bandmates." Anthems - Honoring The Music Of Lynyrd Skynyrd Track Listing:I Know A Little - Micheal RaySweet Home Alabama - Ronnie DunnSimple Man - Sammy HagarNeedle And The Spoon - Lindsey EllThe Ballad Of Curtis Loew - Chris JansonWorkin' For MCA - Lee BriceThat Smell - Jerrod NiemannGimme Three Steps - Marty RaybonCall Me The Breeze - Billy Ray CyrusSaturday Night Special - Warren HaynesThe Hunt - Artimus Pyle BandWhat's Your Name - LOCASHFreebird - Dolly PartonABOUT ARTIMUS PYLEFollowing his time as a Marine Corps Sergeant from 1967 to 1971 and a short stint with Spartanburg, SC-based band Thickwood Lick, Artimus Pyle was recommended by the late Charlie Daniels and joined Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1974. He would replace their original drummer (Bob Burns) following the release of the group's second album, Second Helping, and performed with the band and on Skynyrd's subsequent four albums,Nuthin' Fancy, Gimme Back My Bullets, Street Survivors, and their live album, One More for the Road. Pyle was injured but survived the band's 1977 horrific plane crash that abruptly ended the lives of six people, including band members Steve and Cassie Gaines, and most notably, frontman and musical visionary Ronnie Van Zant.In 1979, the band began to reunite, first for the 5th Annual Charlie Daniels Volunteer Jam, and eventually, as the Rossington Collins Band (which included all the remaining band members and Pyle, plus Dale Krantz on lead vocals and Barry Lee Harwood on guitar). However, shortly after that, Pyle was in a car accident that broke his leg in 21 places and shattered his hopes of remaining with the group. Pyle spent the next three years healing, both physically and emotionally, before returning to the States and establishing the Artimus Pyle Band (A.P.B.) to honor the music and legacy of Ronnie Van Zant.In 1987, Pyle rejoined his former bandmates to tour and eventually record as Lynyrd Skynyrd 1991, but the experience left him flat. While he deeply loved them, he no longer felt the magic he once did with Van Zant at the helm, nor was he interested in returning to the party lifestyle for which the band was known and stepped away from the group permanently, only to return in 2006 during Lynyrd Skynyrd's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (where he played alongside Bob Burns).Now in his 70s, Pyle still continues to honor Van Zant's musical legacy, recording and touring with the Artimus Pyle Band, now comprised of Pyle (drums), Scott Raines (guitar/vocals), Jerry Lyda (guitar) Brad Durden (keyboards/vocals), and Dave Fowler (bass).https://artimuspyleband.com/https://www.amazon.com/Anthems-Honoring-Music-Lynyrd-Skynyrd/dp/B0CKH9X2WHBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/i-am-refocused-radio--2671113/support.
This week on "I've Been Meaning To Listen To That", we listen to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with very special guest Grace Spelman (The Ringer, Buzzfeed)! Plus, Andrew, Sean, Michael, & Grace do a deep dive into what led the Beatles to donning the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band" persona, how revolutionary this band was to the art rock genre and concept albums in general, and we pontificate on Ringo's weird MS paint art and his feet pic tweets! Follow Grace Spelman on Twitter (@GraceSpelman) & Instagram (@GraceSpelman) Follow Andrew Ambrose Lee on Twitter (@AundrewALee) & Instagram (@aundrewalee) Follow Michael Limentato on Twitter (@limentaco) & Instagram (@limentaco) Follow Sean Wilkinson on Instagram (@diabetictwink) Follow Stefanie Senior on Instagram (@stefmsenior) & Twitter (@stefmsenior) Theme Song by OTNES Cover Art by Olivia Jensen (Twitter: @oliviaaj22, Instagram: @oliviajensen_art) Listen to our I've Been Meaning To Listen to That (And I Did!) Playlist Follow us at (@ibmtltt) on Facebook, Tiktok & Instagram, and email us at ivebeenmeaningtolistentothat@gmail.com Have a good daaay! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ibmtltt/message
Steve Howe talks to us from the old house and studio in Devon where they rehearsed ‘The Yes Album' in 1970. He's been recording there for 54 years and is part of the current line-up about to set out around Europe. He looks back here on what he's learnt from 60 years onstage and mentions … … the effect of seeing Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins and The Animals in 1964. … playing old Shadows tunes at the Barnsbury Boys School in Holloway, aged 14. … how Yes songs evolved and the cover versions they used to play (America by Paul Simon, Something's Coming from West Side Story). … “the dark 1968 that followed the rainbow 1967”. ... Duane Eddy, Hank Marvin, Chet Atkins, Alison Krauss and the Big Three. … how Sgt Pepper – and blues, jazz and classical music - lit prog's blue touchpaper. … the value of “homework” and the hours of painstaking rehearsal that allowed them to play Fragile onstage. … how Iron Butterfly helped transform the Yes stage show. … Starship Trooper, Roundabout and other songs they're guaranteed to play. … old memories of Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe. … and the road ahead: “I'll keep going while I can still do the twiddly bits”. Yes tour dates: https://www.yesworld.com/Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free - access to all of our content, plus a whole load more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
For those who haven't heard the announcement I just posted , songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the second part of a multi-episode look at the Byrds in 1966-69 and the birth of country rock. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode, on "With a Little Help From My Friends" by Joe Cocker. 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/ Resources No Mixcloud at this time as there are too many Byrds songs in the first chunk, but I will try to put together a multi-part Mixcloud when all the episodes for this song are up. My main source for the Byrds is Timeless Flight Revisited by Johnny Rogan, I also used Chris Hillman's autobiography, the 331/3 books on The Notorious Byrd Brothers and The Gilded Palace of Sin, I used Barney Hoskyns' Hotel California and John Einarson's Desperadoes as general background on Californian country-rock, Calling Me Hone, Gram Parsons and the Roots of Country Rock by Bob Kealing for information on Parsons, and Requiem For The Timeless Vol 2 by Johnny Rogan for information about the post-Byrds careers of many members. Information on Gary Usher comes from The California Sound by Stephen McParland. And this three-CD set is a reasonable way of getting most of the Byrds' important recordings. The International Submarine Band's only album can be bought from Bandcamp. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before we begin, a brief warning – this episode contains brief mentions of suicide, alcoholism, abortion, and heroin addiction, and a brief excerpt of chanting of a Nazi slogan. If you find those subjects upsetting, you may want to read the transcript rather than listen. As we heard in the last part, in October 1967 Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman fired David Crosby from the Byrds. It was only many years later, in a conversation with the group's ex-manager Jim Dickson, that Crosby realised that they didn't actually have a legal right to fire him -- the Byrds had no partnership agreement, and according to Dickson given that the original group had been Crosby, McGuinn, and Gene Clark, it would have been possible for Crosby and McGuinn to fire Hillman, but not for McGuinn and Hillman to fire Crosby. But Crosby was unaware of this at the time, and accepted a pay-off, with which he bought a boat and sailed to Florida, where saw a Canadian singer-songwriter performing live: [Excerpt: Joni Mitchell, "Both Sides Now (live Ann Arbor, MI, 27/10/67)"] We'll find out what happened when David Crosby brought Joni Mitchell back to California in a future story... With Crosby gone, the group had a major problem. They were known for two things -- their jangly twelve-string guitar and their soaring harmonies. They still had the twelve-string, even in their new slimmed-down trio format, but they only had two of their four vocalists -- and while McGuinn had sung lead on most of their hits, the sound of the Byrds' harmony had been defined by Crosby on the high harmonies and Gene Clark's baritone. There was an obvious solution available, of course, and they took it. Gene Clark had quit the Byrds in large part because of his conflicts with David Crosby, and had remained friendly with the others. Clark's solo album had featured Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke, and had been produced by Gary Usher who was now producing the Byrds' records, and it had been a flop and he was at a loose end. After recording the Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers album, Clark had started work with Curt Boettcher, a singer-songwriter-producer who had produced hits for Tommy Roe and the Association, and who was currently working with Gary Usher. Boettcher produced two tracks for Clark, but they went unreleased: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "Only Colombe"] That had been intended as the start of sessions for an album, but Clark had been dropped by Columbia rather than getting to record a second album. He had put together a touring band with guitarist Clarence White, bass player John York, and session drummer "Fast" Eddie Hoh, but hadn't played many gigs, and while he'd been demoing songs for a possible second solo album he didn't have a record deal to use them on. Chisa Records, a label co-owned by Larry Spector, Peter Fonda, and Hugh Masekela, had put out some promo copies of one track, "Yesterday, Am I Right", but hadn't released it properly: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "Yesterday, Am I Right"] Clark, like the Byrds, had left Dickson and Tickner's management organisation and signed with Larry Spector, and Spector was wanting to make the most of his artists -- and things were very different for the Byrds now. Clark had had three main problems with being in the Byrds -- ego clashes with David Crosby, the stresses of being a pop star with a screaming teenage fanbase, and his fear of flying. Clark had really wanted to have the same kind of role in the Byrds that Brian Wilson had with the Beach Boys -- appear on the records, write songs, do TV appearances, maybe play local club gigs, but not go on tour playing to screaming fans. But now David Crosby was out of the group and there were no screaming fans any more -- the Byrds weren't having the kind of pop hits they'd had a few years earlier and were now playing to the hippie audience. Clark promised that with everything else being different, he could cope with the idea of flying -- if necessary he'd just take tranquilisers or get so drunk he passed out. So Gene Clark rejoined the Byrds. According to some sources he sang on their next single, "Goin' Back," though I don't hear his voice in the mix: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Goin' Back"] According to McGuinn, Clark was also an uncredited co-writer on one song on the album they were recording, "Get to You". But before sessions had gone very far, the group went on tour. They appeared on the Smothers Brothers TV show, miming their new single and "Mr. Spaceman", and Clark seemed in good spirits, but on the tour of the Midwest that followed, according to their road manager of the time, Clark was terrified, singing flat and playing badly, and his guitar and vocal mic were left out of the mix. And then it came time to get on a plane, and Clark's old fears came back, and he refused to fly from Minneapolis to New York with the rest of the group, instead getting a train back to LA. And that was the end of Clark's second stint in the Byrds. For the moment, the Byrds decided they were going to continue as a trio on stage and a duo in the studio -- though Michael Clarke did make an occasional return to the sessions as they progressed. But of course, McGuinn and Hillman couldn't record an album entirely by themselves. They did have several tracks in a semi-completed state still featuring Crosby, but they needed people to fill his vocal and instrumental roles on the remaining tracks. For the vocals, Usher brought in his friend and collaborator Curt Boettcher, with whom he was also working at the time in a band called Sagittarius: [Excerpt: Sagittarius, "Another Time"] Boettcher was a skilled harmony vocalist -- according to Usher, he was one of the few vocal arrangers that Brian Wilson looked up to, and Jerry Yester had said of the Modern Folk Quartet that “the only vocals that competed with us back then was Curt Boettcher's group” -- and he was more than capable of filling Crosby's vocal gap, but there was never any real camaraderie between him and the Byrds. He particularly disliked McGuinn, who he said "was just such a poker face. He never let you know where you stood. There was never any lightness," and he said of the sessions as a whole "I was really thrilled to be working with The Byrds, and, at the same time, I was glad when it was all over. There was just no fun, and they were such weird guys to work with. They really freaked me out!" Someone else who Usher brought in, who seems to have made a better impression, was Red Rhodes: [Excerpt: Red Rhodes, "Red's Ride"] Rhodes was a pedal steel player, and one of the few people to make a career on the instrument outside pure country music, which is the genre with which the instrument is usually identified. Rhodes was a country player, but he was the country pedal steel player of choice for musicians from the pop and folk-rock worlds. He worked with Usher and Boettcher on albums by Sagittarius and the Millennium, and played on records by Cass Elliot, Carole King, the Beach Boys, and the Carpenters, among many others -- though he would be best known for his longstanding association with Michael Nesmith of the Monkees, playing on most of Nesmith's recordings from 1968 through 1992. Someone else who was associated with the Monkees was Moog player Paul Beaver, who we talked about in the episode on "Hey Jude", and who had recently played on the Monkees' Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd album: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Star Collector"] And the fourth person brought in to help the group out was someone who was already familiar to them. Clarence White was, like Red Rhodes, from the country world -- he'd started out in a bluegrass group called the Kentucky Colonels: [Excerpt: The Kentucky Colonels, "Clinch Mountain Backstep"] But White had gone electric and formed one of the first country-rock bands, a group named Nashville West, as well as becoming a popular session player. He had already played on a couple of tracks on Younger Than Yesterday, as well as playing with Hillman and Michael Clarke on Gene Clark's album with the Gosdin Brothers and being part of Clark's touring band with John York and "Fast" Eddie Hoh. The album that the group put together with these session players was a triumph of sequencing and production. Usher had recently been keen on the idea of crossfading tracks into each other, as the Beatles had on Sgt Pepper, and had done the same on the two Chad and Jeremy albums he produced. By clever crossfading and mixing, Usher managed to create something that had the feel of being a continuous piece, despite being the product of several very different creative minds, with Usher's pop sensibility and arrangement ideas being the glue that held everything together. McGuinn was interested in sonic experimentation. He, more than any of the others, seems to have been the one who was most pushing for them to use the Moog, and he continued his interest in science fiction, with a song, "Space Odyssey", inspired by the Arthur C. Clarke short story "The Sentinel", which was also the inspiration for the then-forthcoming film 2001: A Space Odyssey: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Space Odyssey"] Then there was Chris Hillman, who was coming up with country material like "Old John Robertson": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Old John Robertson"] And finally there was David Crosby. Even though he'd been fired from the group, both McGuinn and Hillman didn't see any problem with using the songs he had already contributed. Three of the album's eleven songs are compositions that are primarily by Crosby, though they're all co-credited to either Hillman or both Hillman and McGuinn. Two of those songs are largely unchanged from Crosby's original vision, just finished off by the rest of the group after his departure, but one song is rather different: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Draft Morning"] "Draft Morning" was a song that was important to Crosby, and was about his -- and the group's -- feelings about the draft and the ongoing Vietnam War. It was a song that had meant a lot to him, and he'd been part of the recording for the backing track. But when it came to doing the final vocals, McGuinn and Hillman had a problem -- they couldn't remember all the words to the song, and obviously there was no way they were going to get Crosby to give them the original lyrics. So they rewrote it, coming up with new lyrics where they couldn't remember the originals: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Draft Morning"] But there was one other contribution to the track that was very distinctively the work of Usher. Gary Usher had a predilection at this point for putting musique concrete sections in otherwise straightforward pop songs. He'd done it with "Fakin' It" by Simon and Garfunkel, on which he did uncredited production work, and did it so often that it became something of a signature of records on Columbia in 1967 and 68, even being copied by his friend Jim Guercio on "Susan" by the Buckinghams. Usher had done this, in particular, on the first two singles by Sagittarius, his project with Curt Boettcher. In particular, the second Sagittarius single, "Hotel Indiscreet", had had a very jarring section (and a warning here, this contains some brief chanting of a Nazi slogan): [Excerpt: Sagittarius, "Hotel Indiscreet"] That was the work of a comedy group that Usher had discovered and signed to Columbia. The Firesign Theatre were so named because, like Usher, they were all interested in astrology, and they were all "fire signs". Usher was working on their first album, Waiting For The Electrician or Someone Like Him, at the same time as he was working on the Byrds album: [Excerpt: The Firesign Theatre, "W.C. Fields Forever"] And he decided to bring in the Firesigns to contribute to "Draft Morning": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Draft Morning"] Crosby was, understandably, apoplectic when he heard the released version of "Draft Morning". As far as Hillman and McGuinn were concerned, it was always a Byrds song, and just because Crosby had left the band didn't mean they couldn't use material he'd written for the Byrds. Crosby took a different view, saying later "It was one of the sleaziest things they ever did. I had an entire song finished. They just casually rewrote it and decided to take half the credit. How's that? Without even asking me. I had a finished song, entirely mine. I left. They did the song anyway. They rewrote it and put it in their names. And mine was better. They just took it because they didn't have enough songs." What didn't help was that the publicity around the album, titled The Notorious Byrd Brothers minimised Crosby's contributions. Crosby is on five of the eleven tracks -- as he said later, "I'm all over that album, they just didn't give me credit. I played, I sang, I wrote, I even played bass on one track, and they tried to make out that I wasn't even on it, that they could be that good without me." But the album, like earlier Byrds albums, didn't have credits saying who played what, and the cover only featured McGuinn, Hillman, and Michael Clarke in the photo -- along with a horse, which Crosby took as another insult, as representing him. Though as McGuinn said, "If we had intended to do that, we would have turned the horse around". Even though Michael Clarke was featured on the cover, and even owned the horse that took Crosby's place, by the time the album came out he too had been fired. Unlike Crosby, he went quietly and didn't even ask for any money. According to McGuinn, he was increasingly uninterested in being in the band -- suffering from depression, and missing the teenage girls who had been the group's fans a year or two earlier. He gladly stopped being a Byrd, and went off to work in a hotel instead. In his place came Hillman's cousin, Kevin Kelley, fresh out of a band called the Rising Sons: [Excerpt: The Rising Sons, "Take a Giant Step"] We've mentioned the Rising Sons briefly in some previous episodes, but they were one of the earliest LA folk-rock bands, and had been tipped to go on to greater things -- and indeed, many of them did, though not as part of the Rising Sons. Jesse Lee Kincaid, the least well-known of the band, only went on to release a couple of singles and never had much success, but his songs were picked up by other acts -- his "Baby You Come Rollin' 'Cross My Mind" was a minor hit for the Peppermint Trolley Company: [Excerpt: The Peppermint Trolley Company, "Baby You Come Rollin' 'Cross My Mind"] And Harry Nilsson recorded Kincaid's "She Sang Hymns Out of Tune": [Excerpt: Harry Nilsson, "She Sang Hymns Out of Tune"] But Kincaid was the least successful of the band members, and most of the other members are going to come up in future episodes of the podcast -- bass player Gary Marker played for a while with Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, lead singer Taj Mahal is one of the most respected blues singers of the last sixty years, original drummer Ed Cassidy went on to form the progressive rock band Spirit, and lead guitarist Ry Cooder went on to become one of the most important guitarists in rock music. Kelley had been the last to join the Rising Sons, replacing Cassidy but he was in the band by the time they released their one single, a version of Rev. Gary Davis' "Candy Man" produced by Terry Melcher, with Kincaid on lead vocals: [Excerpt: The Rising Sons, "Candy Man"] That hadn't been a success, and the group's attempt at a follow-up, the Goffin and King song "Take a Giant Step", which we heard earlier, was blocked from release by Columbia as being too druggy -- though there were no complaints when the Monkees released their version as the B-side to "Last Train to Clarksville". The Rising Sons, despite being hugely popular as a live act, fell apart without ever releasing a second single. According to Marker, Mahal realised that he would be better off as a solo artist, but also Columbia didn't know how to market a white group with a Black lead vocalist (leading to Kincaid singing lead on their one released single, and producer Terry Melcher trying to get Mahal to sing more like a white singer on "Take a Giant Step"), and some in the band thought that Terry Melcher was deliberately trying to sink their career because they refused to sign to his publishing company. After the band split up, Marker and Kelley had formed a band called Fusion, which Byrds biographer Johnny Rogan describes as being a jazz-fusion band, presumably because of their name. Listening to the one album the group recorded, it is in fact more blues-rock, very like the music Marker made with the Rising Sons and Captain Beefheart. But Kelley's not on that album, because before it was recorded he was approached by his cousin Chris Hillman and asked to join the Byrds. At the time, Fusion were doing so badly that Kelley had to work a day job in a clothes shop, so he was eager to join a band with a string of hits who were just about to conclude a lucrative renegotiation of their record contract -- a renegotiation which may have played a part in McGuinn and Hillman firing Crosby and Clarke, as they were now the only members on the new contracts. The choice of Kelley made a lot of sense. He was mostly just chosen because he was someone they knew and they needed a drummer in a hurry -- they needed someone new to promote The Notorious Byrd Brothers and didn't have time to go through a laborious process of audtioning, and so just choosing Hillman's cousin made sense, but Kelley also had a very strong, high voice, and so he could fill in the harmony parts that Crosby had sung, stopping the new power-trio version of the band from being *too* thin-sounding in comparison to the five-man band they'd been not that much earlier. The Notorious Byrd Brothers was not a commercial success -- it didn't even make the top forty in the US, though it did in the UK -- to the presumed chagrin of Columbia, who'd just paid a substantial amount of money for this band who were getting less successful by the day. But it was, though, a gigantic critical success, and is generally regarded as the group's creative pinnacle. Robert Christgau, for example, talked about how LA rather than San Francisco was where the truly interesting music was coming from, and gave guarded praise to Captain Beefheart, Van Dyke Parks, and the Fifth Dimension (the vocal group, not the Byrds album) but talked about three albums as being truly great -- the Beach Boys' Wild Honey, Love's Forever Changes, and The Notorious Byrd Brothers. (He also, incidentally, talked about how the two songs that Crosby's new discovery Joni Mitchell had contributed to a Judy Collins album were much better than most folk music, and how he could hardly wait for her first album to come out). And that, more or less, was the critical consensus about The Notorious Byrd Brothers -- that it was, in Christgau's words "simply the best album the Byrds have ever recorded" and that "Gone are the weak--usually folky--tracks that have always flawed their work." McGuinn, though, thought that the album wasn't yet what he wanted. He had become particularly excited by the potentials of the Moog synthesiser -- an instrument that Gary Usher also loved -- during the recording of the album, and had spent a lot of time experimenting with it, coming up with tracks like the then-unreleased "Moog Raga": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Moog Raga"] And McGuinn had a concept for the next Byrds album -- a concept he was very excited about. It was going to be nothing less than a grand sweeping history of American popular music. It was going to be a double album -- the new contract said that they should deliver two albums a year to Columbia, so a double album made sense -- and it would start with Appalachian folk music, go through country, jazz, and R&B, through the folk-rock music the Byrds had previously been known for, and into Moog experimentation. But to do this, the Byrds needed a keyboard player. Not only would a keyboard player help them fill out their thin onstage sound, if they got a jazz keyboardist, then they could cover the jazz material in McGuinn's concept album idea as well. So they went out and looked for a jazz piano player, and happily Larry Spector was managing one. Or at least, Larry Spector was managing someone who *said* he was a jazz pianist. But Gram Parsons said he was a lot of things... [Excerpt: Gram Parsons, "Brass Buttons (1965 version)"] Gram Parsons was someone who had come from a background of unimaginable privilege. His maternal grandfather was the owner of a Florida citrus fruit and real-estate empire so big that his mansion was right in the centre of what was then Florida's biggest theme park -- built on land he owned. As a teenager, Parsons had had a whole wing of his parents' house to himself, and had had servants to look after his every need, and as an adult he had a trust fund that paid him a hundred thousand dollars a year -- which in 1968 dollars would be equivalent to a little under nine hundred thousand in today's money. Two events in his childhood had profoundly shaped the life of young Gram. The first was in February 1956, when he went to see a new singer who he'd heard on the radio, and who according to the local newspaper had just recorded a new song called "Heartburn Motel". Parsons had tried to persuade his friends that this new singer was about to become a big star -- one of his friends had said "I'll wait til he becomes famous!" As it turned out, the day Parsons and the couple of friends he did manage to persuade to go with him saw Elvis Presley was also the day that "Heartbreak Hotel" entered the Billboard charts at number sixty-eight. But even at this point, Elvis was an obvious star and the headliner of the show. Young Gram was enthralled -- but in retrospect he was more impressed by the other acts he saw on the bill. That was an all-star line-up of country musicians, including Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters, and especially the Louvin Brothers, arguably the greatest country music vocal duo of all time: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, "The Christian Life"] Young Gram remained mostly a fan of rockabilly music rather than country, and would remain so for another decade or so, but a seed had been planted. The other event, much more tragic, was the death of his father. Both Parsons' parents were functioning alcoholics, and both by all accounts were unfaithful to each other, and their marriage was starting to break down. Gram's father was also, by many accounts, dealing with what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder from his time serving in the second world war. On December the twenty-third 1958, Gram's father died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Everyone involved seems sure it was suicide, but it was officially recorded as natural causes because of the family's wealth and prominence in the local community. Gram's Christmas present from his parents that year was a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and according to some stories I've read his father had left a last message on a tape in the recorder, but by the time the authorities got to hear it, it had been erased apart from the phrase "I love you, Gram." After that Gram's mother's drinking got even worse, but in most ways his life still seemed charmed, and the descriptions of him as a teenager are about what you'd expect from someone who was troubled, with a predisposition to addiction, but who was also unbelievably wealthy, good-looking, charming, and talented. And the talent was definitely there. One thing everyone is agreed on is that from a very young age Gram Parsons took his music seriously and was determined to make a career as a musician. Keith Richards later said of him "Of the musicians I know personally (although Otis Redding, who I didn't know, fits this too), the two who had an attitude towards music that was the same as mine were Gram Parsons and John Lennon. And that was: whatever bag the business wants to put you in is immaterial; that's just a selling point, a tool that makes it easier. You're going to get chowed into this pocket or that pocket because it makes it easier for them to make charts up and figure out who's selling. But Gram and John were really pure musicians. All they liked was music, and then they got thrown into the game." That's not the impression many other people have of Parsons, who is almost uniformly described as an incessant self-promoter, and who from his teens onwards would regularly plant fake stories about himself in the local press, usually some variant of him having been signed to RCA records. Most people seem to think that image was more important to him than anything. In his teens, he started playing in a series of garage bands around Florida and Georgia, the two states in which he was brought up. One of his early bands was largely created by poaching the rhythm section who were then playing with Kent Lavoie, who later became famous as Lobo and had hits like "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo". Lavoie apparently held a grudge -- decades later he would still say that Parsons couldn't sing or play or write. Another musician on the scene with whom Parsons associated was Bobby Braddock, who would later go on to co-write songs like "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" for Tammy Wynette, and the song "He Stopped Loving Her Today", often considered the greatest country song ever written, for George Jones: [Excerpt: George Jones, "He Stopped Loving Her Today"] Jones would soon become one of Parsons' musical idols, but at this time he was still more interested in being Elvis or Little Richard. We're lucky enough to have a 1962 live recording of one of his garage bands, the Legends -- the band that featured the bass player and drummer he'd poached from Lobo. They made an appearance on a local TV show and a friend with a tape recorder recorded it off the TV and decades later posted it online. Of the four songs in that performance, two are R&B covers -- Little Richard's "Rip It Up" and Ray Charles' "What'd I Say?", and a third is the old Western Swing classic "Guitar Boogie Shuffle". But the interesting thing about the version of "Rip it Up" is that it's sung in an Everly Brothers style harmony, and the fourth song is a recording of the Everlys' "Let It Be Me". The Everlys were, of course, hugely influenced by the Louvin Brothers, who had so impressed young Gram six years earlier, and in this performance you can hear for the first time the hints of the style that Parsons would make his own a few years later: [Excerpt: Gram Parsons and the Legends, "Let it Be Me"] Incidentally, the other guitarist in the Legends, Jim Stafford, also went on to a successful musical career, having a top five hit in the seventies with "Spiders & Snakes": [Excerpt: Jim Stafford, "Spiders & Snakes"] Soon after that TV performance though, like many musicians of his generation, Parsons decided to give up on rock and roll, and instead to join a folk group. The group he joined, The Shilos, were a trio who were particularly influenced by the Journeymen, John Phillips' folk group before he formed the Mamas and the Papas, which we talked about in the episode on "San Francisco". At various times the group expanded with the addition of some female singers, trying to capture something of the sound of the New Chrisy Minstrels. In 1964, with the band members still in school, the Shilos decided to make a trip to Greenwich Village and see if they could make the big time as folk-music stars. They met up with John Phillips, and Parsons stayed with John and Michelle Phillips in their home in New York -- this was around the time the two of them were writing "California Dreamin'". Phillips got the Shilos an audition with Albert Grossman, who seemed eager to sign them until he realised they were still schoolchildren just on a break. The group were, though, impressive enough that he was interested, and we have some recordings of them from a year later which show that they were surprisingly good for a bunch of teenagers: [Excerpt: The Shilos, "The Bells of Rhymney"] Other than Phillips, the other major connection that Parsons made in New York was the folk singer Fred Neil, who we've talked about occasionally before. Neil was one of the great songwriters of the Greenwich Village scene, and many of his songs became successful for others -- his "Dolphins" was recorded by Tim Buckley, most famously his "Everybody's Talkin'" was a hit for Harry Nilsson, and he wrote "Another Side of This Life" which became something of a standard -- it was recorded by the Animals and the Lovin' Spoonful, and Jefferson Airplane, as well as recording the song, included it in their regular setlists, including at Monterey: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "The Other Side of This Life (live at Monterey)"] According to at least one biographer, though, Neil had another, more pernicious, influence on Parsons -- he may well have been the one who introduced Parsons to heroin, though several of Parsons' friends from the time said he wasn't yet using hard drugs. By spring 1965, Parsons was starting to rethink his commitment to folk music, particularly after "Mr. Tambourine Man" became a hit. He talked with the other members about their need to embrace the changes in music that Dylan and the Byrds were bringing about, but at the same time he was still interested enough in acoustic music that when he was given the job of arranging the music for his high school graduation, the group he booked were the Dillards. That graduation day was another day that would change Parsons' life -- as it was the day his mother died, of alcohol-induced liver failure. Parsons was meant to go on to Harvard, but first he went back to Greenwich Village for the summer, where he hung out with Fred Neil and Dave Van Ronk (and started using heroin regularly). He went to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium, and he was neighbours with Stephen Stills and Richie Furay -- the three of them talked about forming a band together before Stills moved West. And on a brief trip back home to Florida between Greenwich Village and Harvard, Parsons spoke with his old friend Jim Stafford, who made a suggestion to him -- instead of trying to do folk music, which was clearly falling out of fashion, why not try to do *country* music but with long hair like the Beatles? He could be a country Beatle. It would be an interesting gimmick. Parsons was only at Harvard for one semester before flunking out, but it was there that he was fully reintroduced to country music, and in particular to three artists who would influence him more than any others. He'd already been vaguely aware of Buck Owens, whose "Act Naturally" had recently been covered by the Beatles: [Excerpt: Buck Owens, "Act Naturally"] But it was at Harvard that he gained a deeper appreciation of Owens. Owens was the biggest star of what had become known as the Bakersfield Sound, a style of country music that emphasised a stripped-down electric band lineup with Telecaster guitars, a heavy drumbeat, and a clean sound. It came from the same honky-tonk and Western Swing roots as the rockabilly music that Parsons had grown up on, and it appealed to him instinctively. In particular, Parsons was fascinated by the fact that Owens' latest album had a cover version of a Drifters song on it -- and then he got even more interested when Ray Charles put out his third album of country songs and included a version of Owens' "Together Again": [Excerpt: Ray Charles, "Together Again"] This suggested to Parsons that country music and the R&B he'd been playing previously might not quite be so far apart as he'd thought. At Harvard, Parsons was also introduced to the work of another Bakersfield musician, who like Owens was produced by Ken Nelson, who also produced the Louvin Brothers' records, and who we heard about in previous episodes as he produced Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson. Merle Haggard had only had one big hit at the time, "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers": [Excerpt: Merle Haggard, "(My Friends are Gonna Be) Strangers"] But he was about to start a huge run of country hits that would see every single he released for the next twelve years make the country top ten, most of them making number one. Haggard would be one of the biggest stars in country music, but he was also to be arguably the country musician with the biggest influence on rock music since Johnny Cash, and his songs would soon start to be covered by everyone from the Grateful Dead to the Everly Brothers to the Beach Boys. And the third artist that Parsons was introduced to was someone who, in most popular narratives of country music, is set up in opposition to Haggard and Owens, because they were representatives of the Bakersfield Sound while he was the epitome of the Nashville Sound to which the Bakersfield Sound is placed in opposition, George Jones. But of course anyone with ears will notice huge similarities in the vocal styles of Jones, Haggard, and Owens: [Excerpt: George Jones, "The Race is On"] Owens, Haggard, and Jones are all somewhat outside the scope of this series, but are seriously important musicians in country music. I would urge anyone who's interested in them to check out Tyler Mahan Coe's podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones, season one of which has episodes on Haggard and Owens, as well as on the Louvin Brothers who I also mentioned earlier, and season two of which is entirely devoted to Jones. When he dropped out of Harvard after one semester, Parsons was still mostly under the thrall of the Greenwich Village folkies -- there's a recording of him made over Christmas 1965 that includes his version of "Another Side of This Life": [Excerpt: Gram Parsons, "Another Side of This Life"] But he was encouraged to go further in the country direction by John Nuese (and I hope that's the correct pronunciation – I haven't been able to find any recordings mentioning his name), who had introduced him to this music and who also played guitar. Parsons, Neuse, bass player Ian Dunlop and drummer Mickey Gauvin formed a band that was originally called Gram Parsons and the Like. They soon changed their name though, inspired by an Our Gang short in which the gang became a band: [Excerpt: Our Gang, "Mike Fright"] Shortening the name slightly, they became the International Submarine Band. Parsons rented them a house in New York, and they got a contract with Goldstar Records, and released a couple of singles. The first of them, "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming" was a cover of the theme to a comedy film that came out around that time, and is not especially interesting: [Excerpt: The International Submarine Band, "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming"] The second single is more interesting. "Sum Up Broke" is a song by Parsons and Neuse, and shows a lot of influence from the Byrds: [Excerpt: The international Submarine Band, "Sum Up Broke"] While in New York with the International Submarine Band, Parsons made another friend in the music business. Barry Tashian was the lead singer of a band called the Remains, who had put out a couple of singles: [Excerpt: The Remains, "Why Do I Cry?"] The Remains are now best known for having been on the bill on the Beatles' last ever tour, including playing as support on their last ever show at Candlestick Park, but they split up before their first album came out. After spending most of 1966 in New York, Parsons decided that he needed to move the International Submarine Band out to LA. There were two reasons for this. The first was his friend Brandon DeWilde, an actor who had been a child star in the fifties -- it's him at the end of Shane -- who was thinking of pursuing a musical career. DeWilde was still making TV appearances, but he was also a singer -- John Nuese said that DeWilde sang harmony with Parsons better than anyone except Emmylou Harris -- and he had recorded some demos with the International Submarine Band backing him, like this version of Buck Owens' "Together Again": [Excerpt: Brandon DeWilde, "Together Again"] DeWilde had told Parsons he could get the group some work in films. DeWilde made good on that promise to an extent -- he got the group a cameo in The Trip, a film we've talked about in several other episodes, which was being directed by Roger Corman, the director who worked a lot with David Crosby's father, and was coming out from American International Pictures, the company that put out the beach party films -- but while the group were filmed performing one of their own songs, in the final film their music was overdubbed by the Electric Flag. The Trip starred Peter Fonda, another member of the circle of people around David Crosby, and another son of privilege, who at this point was better known for being Henry Fonda's son than for his own film appearances. Like DeWilde, Fonda wanted to become a pop star, and he had been impressed by Parsons, and asked if he could record Parsons' song "November Nights". Parsons agreed, and the result was released on Chisa Records, the label we talked about earlier that had put out promos of Gene Clark, in a performance produced by Hugh Masekela: [Excerpt: Peter Fonda, "November Nights"] The other reason the group moved West though was that Parsons had fallen in love with David Crosby's girlfriend, Nancy Ross, who soon became pregnant with his daughter -- much to Parsons' disappointment, she refused to have an abortion. Parsons bought the International Submarine Band a house in LA to rehearse in, and moved in separately with Nancy. The group started playing all the hottest clubs around LA, supporting bands like Love and the Peanut Butter Conspiracy, but they weren't sounding great, partly because Parsons was more interested in hanging round with celebrities than rehearsing -- the rest of the band had to work for a living, and so took their live performances more seriously than he did, while he was spending time catching up with his old folk friends like John Phillips and Fred Neil, as well as getting deeper into drugs and, like seemingly every musician in 1967, Scientology, though he only dabbled in the latter. The group were also, though, starting to split along musical lines. Dunlop and Gauvin wanted to play R&B and garage rock, while Parsons and Nuese wanted to play country music. And there was a third issue -- which record label should they go with? There were two labels interested in them, neither of them particularly appealing. The offer that Dunlop in particular wanted to go with was from, of all people, Jay Ward Records: [Excerpt: A Salute to Moosylvania] Jay Ward was the producer and writer of Rocky & Bullwinkle, Peabody & Sherman, Dudley Do-Right and other cartoons, and had set up a record company, which as far as I've been able to tell had only released one record, and that five years earlier (we just heard a snippet of it). But in the mid-sixties several cartoon companies were getting into the record business -- we'll hear more about that when we get to song 186 -- and Ward's company apparently wanted to sign the International Submarine Band, and were basically offering to throw money at them. Parsons, on the other hand, wanted to go with Lee Hazlewood International. This was a new label set up by someone we've only talked about in passing, but who was very influential on the LA music scene, Lee Hazlewood. Hazlewood had got his start producing country hits like Sanford Clark's "The Fool": [Excerpt: Sanford Clark, "The Fool"] He'd then moved on to collaborating with Lester Sill, producing a series of hits for Duane Eddy, whose unique guitar sound Hazlewood helped come up with: [Excerpt: Duane Eddy, "Rebel Rouser"] After splitting off from Sill, who had gone off to work with Phil Spector, who had been learning some production techniques from Hazlewood, Hazlewood had gone to work for Reprise records, where he had a career in a rather odd niche, producing hit records for the children of Rat Pack stars. He'd produced Dino, Desi, and Billy, who consisted of future Beach Boys sideman Billy Hinsche plus Desi Arnaz Jr and Dean Martin Jr: [Excerpt: Dino, Desi, and Billy, "I'm a Fool"] He'd also produced Dean Martin's daughter Deana: [Excerpt: Deana Martin, "Baby I See You"] and rather more successfully he'd written and produced a series of hits for Nancy Sinatra, starting with "These Boots are Made for Walkin'": [Excerpt: Nancy Sinatra, "These Boots are Made for Walkin'"] Hazlewood had also moved into singing himself. He'd released a few tracks on his own, but his career as a performer hadn't really kicked into gear until he'd started writing duets for Nancy Sinatra. She apparently fell in love with his demos and insisted on having him sing them with her in the studio, and so the two made a series of collaborations like the magnificently bizarre "Some Velvet Morning": [Excerpt: Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra, "Some Velvet Morning"] Hazlewood is now considered something of a cult artist, thanks largely to a string of magnificent orchestral country-pop solo albums he recorded, but at this point he was one of the hottest people in the music industry. He wasn't offering to produce the International Submarine Band himself -- that was going to be his partner, Suzi Jane Hokom -- but Parsons thought it was better to sign for less money to a label that was run by someone with a decade-long string of massive hit records than for more money to a label that had put out one record about a cartoon moose. So the group split up. Dunlop and Gauvin went off to form another band, with Barry Tashian -- and legend has it that one of the first times Gram Parsons visited the Byrds in the studio, he mentioned the name of that band, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and that was the inspiration for the Byrds titling their album The Notorious Byrd Brothers. Parsons and Nuese, on the other hand, formed a new lineup of The International Submarine Band, with bass player Chris Ethridge, drummer John Corneal, who Parsons had first played with in The Legends, and guitarist Bob Buchanan, a former member of the New Christy Minstrels who Parsons had been performing with as a duo after they'd met through Fred Neil. The International Submarine Band recorded an album, Safe At Home, which is now often called the first country-rock album -- though as we've said so often, there's no first anything. That album was a mixture of cover versions of songs by people like Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard: [Excerpt: The International Submarine Band, "I Must Be Somebody Else You've Known"] And Parsons originals, like "Do You Know How It Feels To Be Lonesome?", which he cowrote with Barry Goldberg of the Electric Flag: [Excerpt: The International Submarine Band, "Do You Know How It Feels To Be Lonesome?"] But the recording didn't go smoothly. In particular, Corneal realised he'd been hoodwinked. Parsons had told him, when persuading him to move West, that he'd be able to sing on the record and that some of his songs would be used. But while the record was credited to The International Submarine Band, everyone involved agrees that it was actually a Gram Parsons solo album by any other name -- he was in charge, he wouldn't let other members' songs on the record, and he didn't let Corneal sing as he'd promised. And then, before the album could be released, he was off. The Byrds wanted a jazz keyboard player, and Parsons could fake being one long enough to get the gig. The Byrds had got rid of one rich kid with a giant ego who wanted to take control of everything and thought his undeniable talent excused his attempts at dominating the group, and replaced him with another one -- who also happened to be signed to another record label. We'll see how well that worked out for them in two weeks' time.
Porn girl likes attention, not her father. -Charlie Kirk! Brian Wilson of Beach Boys: My late wife, my savior, my emotional stability! Caller debate on crime! The Hake Report, Wednesday, January 31, 2024 AD TIME STAMPS * (0:00:00) Start/Topics * (0:02:20) Hey, guys! * (0:04:45) Porn girl vs TPUSA's Charlie Kirk on Whatever podcast* (0:13:42) Young women vs men lib-conservative gap widens (graph)* (0:20:00) TJump, atheists, anti-2A, sex "solves" depression* (0:26:53) Charlie Kirk's TPUSA vs Groypers, white Christians* (0:31:34) Brian Wilson: My wife, my savior, emotional stability (Beach Boys guy)* (0:44:15) Men worshiping women, generations! (Bryan Wilson continued)* (0:45:41) DANIEL, TX: Beach Boys vs Beatles* (0:49:51) DANIEL: Garbage, Butch Vig, sound producer ("Mono")* (0:51:38) DANIEL: They know each other* (0:54:04) DANIEL: Groyper, word play. Goy-Griper* (0:55:52) Starflyer 59 - "Give Up the War" (2001, Leave Here a Stranger)* (1:01:37) JOE, AZ: HR 350, Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act* (1:08:12) JOE: Zimmerman hit a cop! * (1:13:03) JOE: Zimmerman hit a woman! * (1:18:34) JOHN, KY w/ JOE: 1.05% black violent crime* (1:22:04) MR PINK: Twisted responsibility: Gun, Alex Jones* (1:27:40) MR PINK: Beach Boys/Beatles, Pet Sounds, Sgt Peppers, Brian Wilson, Smile * (1:31:36) Supers: Robert Garcia and immigration; Is Hake a Barb? A "ginger"?? * (1:38:32) Super: EVs (electric vehicles), environment, EPA (stream glitch!)* (1:42:51) LATINA: People coming to border, warning* (1:49:38) Supers: Greggatron Biden quote, PDFs idc, not mine! * (1:50:41) Ninety Pound Wuss - "Backwards Thinking" (1997, Where Meager Die of Self Interest)CLIPS Charlie Kirk exposes father-alienated porn girl (22-min) YouTube | Rumble // Brian Wilson: My wife, my savior, my emotional stability (14-min) YouTube | Rumble // Hake is live M-F 9-11 AM PT (11-1 CT / 12-2 ET) Call-in 1-888-775-3773 (Also see Hake News on The Jesse Lee Peterson Show) https://www.thehakereport.com/show BLOG https://www.thehakereport.com/blog/2024/1/31/the-hake-report-wed-1-31-24 PODCAST / Substack VIDEO YouTube | Rumble* | Facebook | X | BitChute | Odysee* PODCAST Substack | Apple | Spotify | Castbox | Podcast Addict *SUPER CHAT on platforms* above or BuyMeACoffee, etc. SHOP Teespring || All My Links JLP Network: JLP | Church | TFS | Nick | Joel Get full access to HAKE at thehakereport.substack.com/subscribe
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
Agatha Luz and Andrew Nette join Mike on a special episode to discuss Michael Schultz's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), a story of the dangers of fame set to the music of the music of The Beatles. The film stars the Brothers Gibb and Peter Frampton as innocents from Heartland, USA who get wooed by record producer B.D. (Donald Pleasence) and set against villains Mean Mr. Mustard and the FVB (Future Villain Band).Singer Diane Steinberg who played femme fatale Lucy (of the Sky of Diamonds) discusses the making of the film and her illustrious career.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-projection-booth-podcast_2/support.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5513239/advertisement
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