Podcasts about Strawberry Fields Forever

SPÉCIALE BEATLES PROG COVERS !  Pour ce premier numéro de 2026 en direct et dès le 1er jour de l'année, il nous fallait bien quelque chose de spécial....Alors mes grandes oreilles se sont tournées vers les fab four, ce petit groupe anglais, fervent admirateur du rock américain des 50's, y ajoutant au cours de sa (finalement courte) carrière sa patte et son incroyable inventivité, versant dans le psychédélisme pour devenir à son tour inspirant pour bon nombre de musiciens de générations à venir et l'un des acteurs préfigurant la musique progressive....Et puis juste parce que je suis fan !

durée : 00:06:48 - "Strawberry Fields Forever" : les Beatles ramènent leur fraise - par : Max Dozolme - Découvrons, prises alternatives après prises alternatives, différents visages de "Strawberry Fields Forever" des Beatles : un ovni musical où fleurissent les arrangements très mûrs... Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les autres épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France.

In this bonus episode of Behind The Song, take a journey with Janda Lane into songs where the setting is everything. From the powerful metaphors in "Hotel California" to the real memories behind "Strawberry Fields Forever," these songs are always worth a trip! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

© Richard Buskin, 2025

California grows 90 percent of the nation's strawberries, and many people are devoted to ensuring continued success for this $3 billion industry.The Cal Poly Strawberry Center has been a model for practical research, with continued innovations in pest and disease fighting, as well as technology advancements.One of the more visually captivating new technologies is a robotic harvester. After years of trial and error, there's renewed optimism it will one day be a commercial reality.“There's a possibility that within 10 years, 50 to 60 percent at least, if not more, of the strawberries picked will be done by robots,” said Alex Gutierrez, Founder and CEO of L5 Automation.The Strawberry Center has made steady strides in providing practical, grower-focused solutions.“It gives me a lot of satisfaction to work in this industry because we see the things we are doing actually come to fruition” remarked Center Director Gerald Holmes.

We need a crash cart, stat! Our doctors diagnose the damage after the Mets trucking. Ben says the patient is a goner, Matthew thinks Ben's an idiot, only time will tell who's right. Oh, and Lou Seal gets upstaged by the Crazy Crab.Our new cocktail podcast, The Perfect Sip, is on hiatus but new episodes are in production. (Yeah, it's taking a long time ... life, you know?) If you haven't listened yet, you can catch up here: https://the-perfect-sip.captivate.fm/listen.Speaking of cocktails, today Ben is drinking Strawberry Fields Forever while Matthew is drinking a Brown Derby. Recipes below.Strawberry Fields Forever2 oz Strawberry Infused Vodka1/2 oz Simple Syrup3-4 oz Club Soda1 Strawberry for GarnishTo make the strawberry infused vodka, take a large heap of strawberry tops (leaves and all) or whole strawberries and add to 12 oz of vodka and allow to infuse overnight. Then add vodka and simple syrup to a highball glass with ice. Top with club soda and garnish with strawberry.Brown Derby2 oz high-rye bourbon (like Old Forester, Four Roses Single Barrel, or Woodford Reserve)1 oz fresh pink grapefruit juice¾ oz rich honey syrup (2:1 honey to water)1 dash orange bitters (optional, but highly recommended)Grapefruit twist or expressed oils for garnishCombine all ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake hard for 12–15 seconds. Fine strain into a chilled coupe. Express a grapefruit twist over the top and drop it in.#doitforginny

Ce 2 juillet, Alexis orchestre un nouveau voyage sonore dans Pop-Rock Station. Good Charlotte entame la soirée avec "Rejects", avant que Natalie Bergman dévoile "Gunslinger", extrait de son futur album analogique. On retrouve également Bruce Springsteen pour un nouveau titre inédit tiré de "Tracks II: The Lost Albums", "Don't Back Down". Francis Zegut opte pour le métal puissant de Loathe avec "Gifted Every Strength". Côté live, Guns N' Roses enflamment New York avec "Welcome to the Jungle", tandis que la reprise du jour est confiée à Peter Gabriel, revisitant "Strawberry Fields Forever" des Beatles. Le long format est assuré par Metallica avec "The Call of Ktulu", fresque instrumentale inspirée de l'univers de Lovecraft. Good Charlotte - Rejects The Strokes - Heart In A Cage Mano Negra - King Of Bongo Steely Dan - Do It Again Natalie Bergman - Gunslinger The Beach Boys - Barbara Ann Björk - Human Behaviour Bruce Springsteen - Don't Back Down Weezer - Hash Pipe Loathe - Gifted Every Strengh Stevie Wonder - Free King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Grow Wings And Fly Lovin' Spoonful - Summer In The City Adele - Rumour Has It Dropkick Murphys - The State Of Massachusetts Wet Leg - Davina Mccall The Animals - House Of The Rising Sun Jeff Buckley - So Real Guns N' Roses - Welcome To The Jungle (Live In New York Queens Of The Stone Age - No One Knows David Bowie - The Jean Genie Peter Gabriel - Strawberry Fields Forever Amy Winehouse - Rehab The Sisters Of Mercy - Lucretia My Reflection Nada Surf - Always Love Metallica - The Call Of Ktulu Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Texans Insider & Friend of THE DRIVE- The Great Will Kunkel AKA BIG KUNK Joins - Kunk Can NOT Believe T-Mil's HOT Beatles Take WTF! full 788 Thu, 19 Jun 2025 02:48:20 +0000 GeGj2iJaWUAGMl2VRHcaZQ9DsATvBlmJ nfl,mlb,nba,cj stroud,houston texans,houston astros,demeco ryans,paul mccartney,texans,astros,the beatles,texans news,stroud,caserio,strawberry fields forever,sports The Drive with Stoerner and Hughley nfl,mlb,nba,cj stroud,houston texans,houston astros,demeco ryans,paul mccartney,texans,astros,the beatles,texans news,stroud,caserio,strawberry fields forever,sports Texans Insider & Friend of THE DRIVE- The Great Will Kunkel AKA BIG KUNK Joins - Kunk Can NOT Believe T-Mil's HOT Beatles Take WTF! 2-6PM M-F © 2025 Audacy, Inc. Sports

(S4 Ep 26) The Beatles -Magical Mystery TourReleased in the US on November 27, 1967, In the UK in December 1967, Recorded April 25 - November 1969 (Parlophone/Capitol) Magical Mystery Tour, released in 1967, is one of The Beatles' most experimental and imaginative records. Originally a UK double EP tied to their film of the same name, the U.S. version expanded it into a full album by adding iconic singles like “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane.” The record blends psychedelic rock, orchestral pop, and surrealism, continuing the innovative spirit of Sgt. Pepper. Highlights include Lennon's dreamlike “I Am the Walrus,” McCartney's nostalgic “The Fool on the Hill,” and Harrison's hypnotic “Blue Jay Way.” Though initially met with mixed reactions, especially due to the film's confusing TV debut, the album has since gained recognition for its influence, particularly on the evolution of music videos. It also marked the debut of Apple Corps branding. With vivid songwriting, genre fusion, and rich instrumentation, Magical Mystery Tour captures The Beatles at their creative peak, offering a colorful and surreal snapshot of late-'60s pop experimentation.Signature Songs: "Hello, Goodbye", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "All You Need Is Love" Full Album: YouTube  Spotify Playlist” YouTube Spotify

Morning show producer Hayley Boyd recently came back from her trip to England with many experiences to share. During her time there, she learned all about places throughout Liverpool that inspired Beatles songs, like “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever,” visited Freddie Mercury’s former home in London, and shares her engagement announcement!

This is an Encore Presentation of my November 2021 interview with David Bedford, premier Beatles historian and expert, and Liverpool tour guide. David is from Liverpool, England - the hometown of John, Paul, George and Ringo - and is considered one of the world's foremost Beatles experts. He's written books on the Fab Four, gives Beatle tours in Liverpool, and had a prominent role in the documentary “Looking For Lennon”. David talks about the history and significance of Liverpool, the relationship of the city to the Beatles, and tells the back stories behind “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever”. My featured song in this episode is “I Wanna Be Your Girl” from the album East Side Sessions by my band Project Grand Slam. Spotify link.---------------------------------------The Follow Your Dream Podcast:Top 1% of all podcasts with Listeners in 200 countries!Click here for All Episodes Click here for Guest List Click here for Guest Groupings Click here for Guest TestimonialsClick here to Subscribe Click here to receive our Email UpdatesClick here to Rate and Review the podcast—----------------------------------------ROBERT'S RECENT SINGLES:“DAY AT THE RACES” is Robert's newest single.It captures the thrills, chills and pageantry of horse racing's Triple Crown. Called “Fun, Upbeat, Exciting!”CLICK HERE FOR THE OFFICIAL VIDEOCLICK HERE FOR ALL LINKS___________________“MOON SHOT” reflects my Jazz Rock Fusion roots. The track features Special Guest Mark Lettieri, 5x Grammy winning guitarist who plays with Snarky Puppy and The Fearless Flyers. The track has been called “Firey, Passionate and Smokin!”CLICK HERE FOR THE OFFICIAL VIDEOCLICK HERE FOR ALL LINKS____________________“ROUGH RIDER” has got a Cool, ‘60s, “Spaghetti Western”, Guitar-driven, Tremolo sounding, Ventures/Link Wray kind of vibe!CLICK HERE FOR THE OFFICIAL VIDEOCLICK HERE FOR ALL LINKS—--------------------------------“LOVELY GIRLIE” is a fun, Old School, rock/pop tune with 3-part harmony. It's been called “Supremely excellent!”, “Another Homerun for Robert!”, and “Love that Lovely Girlie!”Click HERE for All Links—----------------------------------“THE RICH ONES ALL STARS” is Robert's single featuring the following 8 World Class musicians: Billy Cobham (Drums), Randy Brecker (Flugelhorn), John Helliwell (Sax), Pat Coil (Piano), Peter Tiehuis (Guitar), Antonio Farao (Keys), Elliott Randall (Guitar) and David Amram (Pennywhistle).Click HERE for the Official VideoClick HERE for All Links—----------------------------------------Audio production:Jimmy RavenscroftKymera Films Connect with the Follow Your Dream Podcast:Website - www.followyourdreampodcast.comEmail Robert - robert@followyourdreampodcast.com Follow Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, and his music:Website - www.projectgrandslam.comYouTubeSpotify MusicApple MusicEmail - pgs@projectgrandslam.com 

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Basel ist die Kunsthauptstadt der Schweiz. Kein Wunder also, werden eigens zum Eurovision Song Contest neue, temporäre Kunstinstallationen erschaffen. Unsere Podcasthosts Selma und Sophie sprechen in dieser Folge über die begehbare Klangwelleninstallation «Lightning Symphony» von Claudia Comte, die Leuchtschriftinstallation «I Drove All Night – Thinking About You» von Admir Jahic und Comenius Roethlisberger sowie die spektakuläre Regenbogen-Leuchtskulptur «we are poems» von Ugo Rondinones. Sämtliche Kunstwerke treten in einen unmittelbaren Dialog mit der Musik und schaffen so eine Verbindung zum grössten Musikanlass der Welt. Sie alle sind öffentlich zugänglich und Must-sees beim ESC-Besuch. Das und noch viel mehr erfährst du in dieser Folge: • Auf welche Kunsthighlights darf man sich während des Eurovision Song Contest freuen? • Wie inspirieren sich Kunst und Musik gegenseitig? • Was hat Céline Dion mit Basler Kunst zu tun? • Welche Erinnerungen verbinden Selma und Sophie mit dem Eurovision Song Contest? Shownotes: - Claudia Comte: https://www.claudiacomte.ch - Jahic/Roethlisberger: https://www.jahic-roethlisberger.ch - Fondation Beyeler: https://www.fondationbeyeler.ch - Alle Infos und Fotos unter https://www.basel.com/podcast - Produktion: Tonton GmbH Die Songs zur Folge: 00:00:00 Eurovision Intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0FIdLyawrQ 00:00:59 Maurice Ravel, Boléro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r30D3SW4OVw 00:09:40 Phil Collins, Je Veux Savoir: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2fSi3Ru3xQ 00:10:28 Zaho de Sagazan, La symphonie des éclairs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqo59FkF_5g 00:12:59 Cindy Lauper, I Drove All Night (1989): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y1TZXc5DiY 00:12:59 Céline Dion, I Drove All Night (2003): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvz_gW5C2cY 00:13:02 Whitney Houston, Thinking About You: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMX_pgpY2Gc 00:13:19 Stardust, Music Sounds Better With You: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQlAEiCb8m0 00:23:41 Jamiroquai, Cosmic Girl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-NvQ6VJYtE 00:24:52 The Beatles, Strawberry Fields Forever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtUH9z_Oey8 00:27:24 Tajči, Hajde Da Ludujemo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksPXBLCwaL4

What if you could sit down and talk to John Lennon today? In this one-of-a-kind episode, Cal has an astonishing conversation with an AI-powered persona of the legendary Beatle, created by heycicero.com. At certain moments, the back-and-forth felt eerily real as John reminisced about writing Help!, I Am the Walrus, Strawberry Fields Forever, and, of course, Imagine. But this chat goes far beyond music—John and Cal dive into everything from the Beatles' famous pillow fight to the deeper question: Why do humans harm and kill each other? Pour yourself a cup of tea, press play, and experience a conversation that blurs the lines between past and future. As John reminds us in the end: Love is all you need.

In the 1980s, women with red hair began vanishing along highways in the Bible Belt, their bodies discarded in shallow graves or along desolate roads. Truck driver Jerry Leon Johns was arrested after his brutal attack on a young dancer went awry, linking him to at least one of the infamous "Redhead Murders." Spanning six states, 14 victims, and decades of unanswered questions, this chilling true crime saga explores the patterns of a predator, the lives of the victims, and the enduring mystery: Was Johns the Redhead Killer—or is he still out there? Tune in to Crime After Dark here:  Spotify Apple Podcasts Author: Mike Colucci Huge thanks to our sponsors: Acorns: Head to acorns.com/crimehub or download the Acorns app to start saving and investing for your future today! Acorns Early: Head to acornsearly.com/crimehub or download the Acorns Early app to get started. Sign up now and your first month is on us! SelectQuote: Go to SelectQuote.com/crimehub today to find the right life insurance for you. Shopify: Go to shopify.com/crimehub to take your retail business to the next level today. * * * DISCLAIMER: This episode contains explicit content. Parental guidance is advised for children under the age of 18. Listen at your own discretion. #crimehub #truecrime #truecrimepodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In tonight's episode of Sessions, Mark Radulich and Jesse Starcher dive deep into their love for Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, exploring the epic scale, timeless themes, and groundbreaking filmmaking that make these movies enduring classics. They reflect on how these films have influenced their perspectives on other movies and TV shows they've reviewed, drawing fascinating parallels between Tolkien's world and modern storytelling.Adding a creative twist, Mark and Jesse debut their original song, “Pellenor Fields Forever,” inspired by Strawberry Fields Forever by The Beatles. This heartfelt and nostalgic tribute blends their love of music and cinema to celebrate the emotional and cinematic brilliance of The Lord of the Rings. With humor, insight, and a touch of musical creativity, they share why these films remain a cornerstone of fantasy cinema and how they continue to shape their appreciation for storytelling. Whether you're a Tolkien fan or a music lover, this podcast is a must-listen for anyone who cherishes great art in all its forms.Disclaimer: The following may contain offensive language, adult humor, and/or content that some viewers may find offensive – The views and opinions expressed by any one speaker does not explicitly or necessarily reflect or represent those of Mark Radulich or W2M Network.Mark Radulich and his wacky podcast on all the things:https://linktr.ee/markkind76alsohttps://www.teepublic.com/user/radulich-in-broadcasting-networkFB Messenger: Mark Radulich LCSWTiktok: @markradulichtwitter: @MarkRadulichInstagram: markkind76RIBN Album Playlist: https://suno.com/playlist/91d704c9-d1ea-45a0-9ffe-5069497bad59

Send us a textErick and Mitch are back with a new Buddha Lounge Grow update. DJ Short Blueberry and Strawberry Cough has arrived and ready for a taste test.Support the showFor secret grow story updates and plant footage follow the Canna Kuyas on Instagram @cannakuyas

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.

Show Topics: 1 Looking Back at the Last One 2. Thoughts on Mike Tomlin's Press Conference 3. Steelers vs Colts Matchup 4. Marquee Matchups 5. Predictions Media Links:

Lenny Kravitz – Megastar seit mehr als drei Jahrzehnten Seit über drei Jahrzehnten steht Lenny Kravitz auf den großen Bühnen dieser Welt. In seiner Heimat Amerika gelang ihm der erste große Erfolg schon mit seinem Debütalbum „Let Love Rule“ im Jahr 1989. In diesem September feiert die Platte also 35. Geburtstag und ist damit genau so alt wie seine älteste Tochter Zoë Kravitz. Kravitz‘ Durchbruch in Deutschland Bei uns in Deutschland war der erste größere Erfolg seine Ballade „It Ain't Over Till It's Over“ von seinem zweiten Album „Mama Said“ aus dem Jahr 1991. Seitdem ist der Rocksänger, Gitarrist und Produzent auch bei uns mit jedem seiner Alben in den Charts gelandet. Beliebt bei anderen Musikern Weil Lenny Kravitz nicht nur Gitarre spielt, sondern gleich mehrere Instrumente beherrscht, war er bei vielen anderen Musikern in seiner Jugendzeit sehr beliebt und wurde auch immer wieder zu Jamsessions eingeladen. Da kam Lenny dann auch auf die Idee sein eigenes Album aufzunehmen. Zusammen mit Henry Hirsch, den er Mitte der 80er kennenlernte. Henry Hirsch ist Tontechniker, Keyboarder und Bassist. Die beiden haben sich wunderbar ergänzt und konnten super zusammenarbeiten. Auch, weil Henry Hirsch damals schon sein eigenes Tonstudio hatte, ein Vorteil, der nicht von der Hand zu weisen ist. Gemeinsam teilten Henry Hirsch und Lenny Kravitz die Leidenschaft für "echte" Instrumente und auch für analoge Aufnahmetechniken. __________ Über diese Songs vom Album "Definitely Maybe" wird im Podcast gesprochen (20:37) – "Let Love Rule"(33:33) – "Precious Love"(42:01) – "I Build This Garden For Us"(48:21) – "Mr. Cab Driver"(53:34) – "Rosemary" Über diese Songs wird außerdem im Podcast gesprochen (25:25) – "White Room" von Cream(26:07) – "Hey Joe" von Jimi Hendrix(44:06) – "Strawberry Fields Forever" von den Beatles__________ Alle Shownotes und weiterführenden Links zur Folge "Let Love Rule" findet ihr hier: https://www.swr.de/swr1/rp/meilensteine/swr1-meilensteine-lenny-kravitz-let-love-rule-100.html __________ Ihr wollt mehr Podcasts wie diesen? Abonniert die SWR1 Meilensteine! Fragen, Kritik, Anregungen? Meldet euch gerne per WhatsApp-Sprachnachricht an die (06131) 92 93 94 95 oder schreibt uns an meilensteine@swr.de __________

www.mikegarrigan.com - Singer/songwriter Mike Garrigan shares the fourth experiment from his Production Lab.  Given the prompt "Record a song imagined as the lost outtake for 'Penny Lane' and 'Strawberry Fields Forever'" and a month in which to work, Mike produced "Space Invaders Champion." Hear the song and a detailed description of the entire creative process.Send me a Text Message.

Kali Mattheus joins us with a story of finding comfort in our memories and letting go of the guilt of missing a goodbye. Kali Mattheus is a podcaster, producer, videographer, editor, and writer who has called Lexington, Kentucky home for more than half her life. She has a rich background in television and movie production that stems from a deep love of storytelling. She sits on the advisory boards for BCTC's Filmmaking and Cinematic Arts and Tahlsound Concert Series, where she also serves as the Internship Director and Videographer. She has a love for connecting people and helping them with their passion projects. Theme song "Appalachian Lofi" composed and performed by Bryan Klausing and Christine Cole.

After #18 got his number retired, the Mets learned how to hit again. Will the beat continue in London? Join us this week as we discuss the Mets bounce back week after they self-appointed themselves the "worst team in the f***ing MLB." (2:18). In the second half, we discuss Francisco Alvarez's pending return and the importance of the no-hitter he caught in Brooklyn. (37:30). Guess The Met at (25:08)

Our guests live from SIAL In Montreal are competition jury President Isabelle Marquis, back for her third visit on the #pod, and Tertulia Brugge's El Gusto Gourmet Drip Coffee's Eugenia Sanchez, who won the Grand Prix Gold award. The brand will receive a $10,000 grant in products or services provided by Nielsen and a 100-square-foot bare booth for SIAL Toronto 2025.In the news, we look at the implications of the Bank of Canada's long-awaited interest rate cut, the labour challenges with beef processing in Canada, what that means for BBQ season, and California's strawberry boom.  The Food Professor #podcast is presented by Caddle. About UsDr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Professor in food distribution and policy in the Faculties of Management and Agriculture at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University. Before joining Dalhousie, he was affiliated with the University of Guelph's Arrell Food Institute, which he co-founded. Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. Google Scholar ranks him as one of the world's most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability.He has authored five books on global food systems, his most recent one published in 2017 by Wiley-Blackwell entitled “Food Safety, Risk Intelligence and Benchmarking”. He has also published over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles in several academic publications. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, including The Lancet, The Economist, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, NBC, ABC, Fox News, Foreign Affairs, the Globe & Mail, the National Post and the Toronto Star.Dr. Charlebois sits on a few company boards, and supports many organizations as a special advisor, including some publicly traded companies. Charlebois is also a member of the Scientific Council of the Business Scientific Institute, based in Luxemburg. Dr. Charlebois is a member of the Global Food Traceability Centre's Advisory Board based in Washington DC, and a member of the National Scientific Committee of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in Ottawa. About MichaelMichael is the president and founder of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. He has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels, most recently on the main stage in Toronto at Retail Council of Canada's Retail Secure conference with leaders from The Gap and Kroger talking about violence in retail stores, keynotes on the state & future of retail in Orlando and Halifax, and at the 2023 Canadian GroceryConnex conference, hosting the CEOs of Walmart Canada, Longo's and Save-On-Foods Canada. Michael brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, Pandora Jewellery, The Shopping Channel and Retail Council of Canada to his advisory, speaking and media practice.Michael also produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including the award-winning No.1 independent retail industry podcast in North America, Remarkable Retail, Canada's top retail industry podcast; the Voice of Retail; Canada's top food industry and the top Canadian-produced management independent podcasts in the country, The Food Professor, with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. Rethink Retail has recognized Michael as one of the top global retail influencers for the fourth year in a row, Coresight Research has named Michael a Retail AI Influencer, and you can tune into Michael's cooking show, Last Request BBQ, on YouTube, Instagram, X and yes, TikTok.Available for keynote presentations helping retailers, brands and retail industry insiders explaining the current state of the retail industry in Canada and the U.S., and the future of retail.

Guy Chambers was a teenager in Liverpool and at John Lennon's old school - "same headmaster, Mister Pobjoy". He remembers the Beatles, Queen, Abba and Jesus Christ Superstar sparking his interest in the "perfect song package" and went on to work with Tina Turner, Rufus Wainwright, Kylie, Diana Ross and scores of others. He talks here about early shows he saw, records bought and his own tour in the autumn, "An Evening With Guy Chambers", stopping off at various points on the way, among them ...... how YOU can write a song with him. ... Bowie's reaction on discovering he was third on the bill below George Michael and Robbie Williams at Netaid. ... seeing XTC and Generation X at the teen shows at Eric's. ... Benny Hill's Ernie, the Scaffold's Lily the Pink and other singles bought at Probe Records.  ... "the great harmony bands" like the Eagles, Byrds and the Mamas & the Papas...."A Is For Banana", his song about dyslexia.  ... writing a string quartet aged 11 and the magic of hearing four people bring his sheet music to life. ... "the wastage": composers who write 50 songs and throw 40 away. .. the cinematic internal worlds of the Cocteau Twins and Lana Del Ray. ... the "subversive harmonies" on Strawberry Fields Forever and what makes Eleanor Rigby so perfect.... everything that now needs to be in place to get a hit record. ... mass song-writing teams and how he can't operate with more than three people in the room. ... and what you can expect from his upcoming tour. Tickets for An Evening With Guy Chambers here …https://www.guychambers.co.uk/liveWe've been podcasting since 2006 and every bit of support we receive helps us keep the conversation going. Find out more about how you can support Word In Your Ear into the future here: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Paul McCartney death conspiracy, known as "Paul is dead," claims that Paul McCartney of The Beatles died in a car crash in 1966 and was secretly replaced by a look-alike named William Campbell. The theory gained popularity in 1969 when fans began finding supposed clues in The Beatles' music and album art. Key Elements: "Abbey Road" Album Cover: Funeral Procession: John Lennon in white (clergyman), Ringo Starr in black (undertaker), Paul McCartney barefoot and out of step (corpse), George Harrison in denim (gravedigger). License Plate: The Volkswagen Beetle's plate reads "28IF," suggesting Paul would be 28 "if" he had lived. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" Album Cover: Floral Arrangement: Spells "Paul?" with a bass guitar made of flowers. Hand Over Head: A hand raised above Paul's head, symbolizing death. Doll with Car: A doll wearing blood-red driving gloves, hinting at a car accident. Musical Clues: "Strawberry Fields Forever": John Lennon allegedly says "I buried Paul" (actually "cranberry sauce"). "Revolution 9": Played backward, some hear "Turn me on, dead man." "A Day in the Life": References a fatal car crash ("He blew his mind out in a car"). Despite consistent denials from The Beatles and McCartney, the theory persists, illustrating the enduring fascination with hidden messages and dark legends in popular culture.

Guy Chambers was a teenager in Liverpool and at John Lennon's old school - "same headmaster, Mister Pobjoy". He remembers the Beatles, Queen, Abba and Jesus Christ Superstar sparking his interest in the "perfect song package" and went on to work with Tina Turner, Rufus Wainwright, Kylie, Diana Ross and scores of others. He talks here about early shows he saw, records bought and his own tour in the autumn, "An Evening With Guy Chambers", stopping off at various points on the way, among them ...... how YOU can write a song with him. ... Bowie's reaction on discovering he was third on the bill below George Michael and Robbie Williams at Netaid. ... seeing XTC and Generation X at the teen shows at Eric's. ... Benny Hill's Ernie, the Scaffold's Lily the Pink and other singles bought at Probe Records.  ... "the great harmony bands" like the Eagles, Byrds and the Mamas & the Papas...."A Is For Banana", his song about dyslexia.  ... writing a string quartet aged 11 and the magic of hearing four people bring his sheet music to life. ... "the wastage": composers who write 50 songs and throw 40 away. .. the cinematic internal worlds of the Cocteau Twins and Lana Del Ray. ... the "subversive harmonies" on Strawberry Fields Forever and what makes Eleanor Rigby so perfect.... everything that now needs to be in place to get a hit record. ... mass song-writing teams and how he can't operate with more than three people in the room. ... and what you can expect from his upcoming tour. Tickets for An Evening With Guy Chambers here …https://www.guychambers.co.uk/liveWe've been podcasting since 2006 and every bit of support we receive helps us keep the conversation going. Find out more about how you can support Word In Your Ear into the future here: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Guy Chambers was a teenager in Liverpool and at John Lennon's old school - "same headmaster, Mister Pobjoy". He remembers the Beatles, Queen, Abba and Jesus Christ Superstar sparking his interest in the "perfect song package" and went on to work with Tina Turner, Rufus Wainwright, Kylie, Diana Ross and scores of others. He talks here about early shows he saw, records bought and his own tour in the autumn, "An Evening With Guy Chambers", stopping off at various points on the way, among them ...... how YOU can write a song with him. ... Bowie's reaction on discovering he was third on the bill below George Michael and Robbie Williams at Netaid. ... seeing XTC and Generation X at the teen shows at Eric's. ... Benny Hill's Ernie, the Scaffold's Lily the Pink and other singles bought at Probe Records.  ... "the great harmony bands" like the Eagles, Byrds and the Mamas & the Papas...."A Is For Banana", his song about dyslexia.  ... writing a string quartet aged 11 and the magic of hearing four people bring his sheet music to life. ... "the wastage": composers who write 50 songs and throw 40 away. .. the cinematic internal worlds of the Cocteau Twins and Lana Del Ray. ... the "subversive harmonies" on Strawberry Fields Forever and what makes Eleanor Rigby so perfect.... everything that now needs to be in place to get a hit record. ... mass song-writing teams and how he can't operate with more than three people in the room. ... and what you can expect from his upcoming tour. Tickets for An Evening With Guy Chambers here …https://www.guychambers.co.uk/liveWe've been podcasting since 2006 and every bit of support we receive helps us keep the conversation going. Find out more about how you can support Word In Your Ear into the future here: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rafa Panadero y el amigo secreto nos traen una de las canciones más recordadas de The Beatles. 'Strawberry Fields Forever' fue una de las pocas canciones del mítico grupo que no fue número 1 en Reino Unido.

Bonus blurb. 16 Songs of 1966: No.17: Pantomime Everywhere It's ChristmasIn 1966 there was a 17th song - the only thing heard from the Beatles between Revolver and Strawberry Fields Forever. For their annual Christmas fan club disc instead of the usual thank yous, they produced a collection of music and sketches. Like Revolver and Strawberry Fields, it showed where they'd been, and where they were going.  Live on tape from Dublin & Belfast, it's Nothing Is Real. Website: http://www.nothingisrealpod.comTwitter: @BeatlesPodFacebook Group: http://tiny.cc/NIRFBGYouTube: http://tiny.cc/NIRYT Support: http://tiny.cc/NIRsupportSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/nothing-is-real-a-beatles-podcast. Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/nothing-is-real-a-beatles-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

For this episode of Songs of Our Lives, I invite Andrew Pekler on the show. Andrew's new album as SG, For Lovers Only / Rain Suite is an absolute gem - an album I keep returning to this year. After chatting about the record for a bit, we get into the all-encompassing everything of Bo Diddley, the new Beatlemania, a magic combination of a relentless rhythm + sweet melody, discovering electronic music, Coltrane at his most romantic, the overwhelming appeal of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” Jon Hassell's influence, and so much more!Listen to all of Andrew's picks HERESG For Lovers Only / Rain SuiteAndrew Pekler's WebsiteAndrew Pekler on InstagramSongs of Our Lives is a podcast series hosted by Brad Rose of Foxy Digitalis that explores the music that's made us and left a certain mark. Whether it's a song we associate with our most important moments, something that makes us cry, the things we love that nobody else does, or our favorite lyrics, we all have our own personal soundtrack. Join Foxy Digitalis on Patreon for extra questions and conversation in each episode (+ a whole lot more!)Follow Foxy Digitalis:WebsitePatreonInstagramTwitterBlueskyMastodonThe Jewel GardenCarl Antonowicz

Helen and Gavin chat about Squid Game: The Challenge, Doctor Who, and Saltburn, and it's Week 99 from the list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs Ever, numbers 10 to 6; Hey Ya! by Outkast, Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, Get Ur Freak On by Missy Elliot, Strawberry Fields Forever by The Beatles, and What's Going On? by Marvin Gaye.

1991 - The Dodgers come into the season with the biggest splash of all - signing Daryl Strawberry. Would that be enough to push the team over the hump, after having come so close the year before...

Ever wonder how Thanksgiving has influenced the music industry? Well, you're about to find out! Scott McLean joined by Mark Smith and Luke Calicchio from the Music Relish Show podcast do some unearthing of the captivating intersections of tunes, turkey, and thankfulness. We discuss the evolution of Thanksgiving through the years, and how it's been marked by iconic musical moments - including a few unforgettable concerts. We even chat about Beaujolais Nouveau's release in France and its connection to the holiday season. Our exploration takes us on a journey through legendary events in music history, from John Lennon's recording of "Strawberry Fields Forever" to The Last Waltz, an iconic Thanksgiving Day concert. We delve into the nitty-gritty of Thanksgiving's influence on the music world, sharing our personal memories tied to classic rock during the holiday season. We also delve into food-themed songs, Thanksgiving movies, and even discuss a list of top Thanksgiving songs - providing a fresh take on this age-old holiday.As we wrap up, we take a nostalgic trip back to Thanksgiving week of 1981, reminiscing about the memorable albums that topped the charts back then. And because it's Thanksgiving, we also touch on its darker side, examining historical events associated with the holiday. As we raise a toast to our loyal listeners, we encourage you to join us for this fun, enlightening, and music-infused Thanksgiving special. Here's to a holiday filled with gratitude, great tunes, and even better company - cheers!

With only Adam and Blaine this week, the guys veer way out of the podcast's usual lane of TV to talk about The Beatles. Prompted by the new single "Now and Then," they talk discuss production, albums, and songs. The episode begins with the podcast's roots (1:20) before explaining why this week isn't a TV episode (2:23). There's a dash of football discussion (4:29) before the two hosts talk about The Beatles: the new single, previous work without John Lennon, favorite albums, favorite songs, and the man who played hundreds of copies of The White Album (5:44). The episode wraps with a mushroom-specific "Strawberry Fields Forever" tale (30:27) before Adam assigns some Beatles homework everyone will love (31:49). If you're a fan of video podcasts, the YouTube channel for The Alabama Take has extra footage different from the audio episode, found below, with takes on Daylight Saving Time, seasons, and author Caleb Johnson's recent fiction "The Camper."

In this episode of Fritanga, Antonio Tijerino kicks it with "El Padrino" of alternative Latino music, Felix Contreras. As the co-creator and co-host of Alt.Latino, the groundbreaking NPR radio show and podcast celebrating Latin music and culture, Felix's work with NPR has introduced some of the most unique, indie musicians to mainstream radio, while also showcasing chart-toppers like Kali Uchis and Becky G.Join us as we explore Felix's career, from being an early Latino journalist in Sacramento to a leading voice in today's dynamic music landscape. Diving headfirst into the industry's evolution, spanning from Ritchie Valens to Omar Apollo, and from boogaloo to reggaeton, Antonio and Felix revisit timeless classics and explore artists pushing musical boundaries today.SHOW RESOURCESListen and Subscribe to Alt.Latino Watch the Latest Video from NPR's "El Tiny" - the Latino takeover of Tiny Desk Concert. EPISODE OVERVIEWRepresentation and early careerHaving mentors or a fellow 'justice league'Music taste and Fresno growing upBiculturalism and the Early Bay Area sceneRock and Roll Hall of Fame controversyCuration: Pursuit of the New while honoring legendsFelix's early career: Carnaval team + Carving out a space for LatinosThe Latino Influence: Ellington and ClementeThe Viral Spread of Spanish language music todayThe curious curator: how that curious spirit leads him to discover talentActivism and journalism - using your platformCulture comfort moment 

Is Bagent the dude? Is it still Fields' team? We shall see! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A pioneering song by the band that reinvented the notion of pioneering, and a cover that changes all of the context, but keeps the magic. Strawberry Fields Forever, originally by The Beatles, covered by Cyndi Lauper.  Outro music is Nothing from Nothing by Billy Preston. 

What if we told you that the summer of 1967 could hold the secrets to some of the greatest music ever? With our old pals, Scott, Mark and Lou of the Music Relish Show, we rewind time to this iconic year, unearthing fascinating stories and dissecting pivotal moments in music history. From The Doors' groundbreaking debut album to the first Shafa music festival in Central Park, our conversation takes unexpected twists, even as we navigate technical glitches, sharing laughs, and profound insights along the way.Drum roll, please! We explore the importance of drumming in setting the tone of a song, using The Doors' debut album as a case study. Our banter veers from the arrest of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to the Beatles' promotional film for Strawberry Fields Forever. But it's not all music - we also dive into the movies, TV shows, and pop culture moments that defined 1967. Elvis Presley's Clambake, the anti-war movie You Only Live Twice, and TV classics like Hill Street Blues and Kojak are all up for discussion.Finally, our conversation circles back to the bands that shaped the sound of '67, featuring Credence Clearwater Revival, Fleetwood Mac, and Earth, Wind, and Fire, among others. We debate the controversy surrounding Bob Welch's exclusion from Fleetwood Mac and reflect on the Grammy Award win of Jethro Tull. It's a vibrant, exhaustive discussion that doesn't shy away from personal anecdotes and playful banter. So, sit back, relax, and let us take you on a sonic journey through 1967 - a year that forever changed the face of music and pop culture.

SUMMARY Phoebe and Daphne answer more listener mail! In Part 2 they tackle: the controversial production of Strawberry Fields Forever, an alternate theory on Paul and Jane's breakup, what Mick Jagger and Pattie Boyd know about India, Projecting Onto George, granny music, voodoo dolls and more! FULL LIST OF TOPICS Security Blanket Midas Man Pattie's Post What Does Pattie Mean? Maharishi Hit on a Beatle? Sympathy for Teenage Paul Estranged Fiance Theory Projecting Onto George SFF (John's dissatisfaction) Paul's Farm Maxwell Paul and Jane: Alternate Theory Infamous Postcard Voodoo Dolls Mistake Feedback Mozart Prodigy Discussion Granny Music Voodoo Dolls If I Fell Foreverly Brothers Morbid Question PLAYLIST What You're Doing THE BEATLES 1964 From Me to You THE BEATLES 1963

Maia o maya, es palabra que en el hinduismo define la ilusoria realidad.Pocos lugares en los que esto se materialice de forma tan literal como en España de un tiempo a esta parte. Déjame llevarte a un lugar donde “nada es real” como rezaba "Strawberry Fields Forever”, himno de la psicodelia de los 60. Un lugar donde la ficción política haya superado cualquier imaginable realidad, las palabras se hayan retorcido y vaciado de cualquier verdad elemental y la vuelta al medievo de desfasados fueros y cainitas batallas no se venda como “progresista". Una psicodelica BSO y la visita siempre iluminadora de Juan Carlos Usó sobre estados alterados de conciencia. Puedes hacerte socio del Club Babel y apoyar este podcast: mundobabel.com/club Si te gusta Mundo Babel puedes colaborar a que llegue a más oyentes compartiendo en tus redes sociales y dejar una valoración de 5 estrellas en Apple Podcast o un comentario en Ivoox. Para anunciarte en este podcast, ponte en contacto con: mundobabelpodcast@gmail.com.

Welcome to PTBN Pop's Video Jukebox Song of The Day! Every weekday will be featuring a live watch of a great and memorable music video. This week, since we are in the summertime and a lot of fruits are in-season, so all of the songs have the name of a fruit in the title. On today's episode, Keith Langston is watching “Strawberry Fields Forever” by The Beatles from 1967. The YouTube link for the video is below so you can watch along! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtUH9z_Oey8

Strawberries are in-season in Michigan and even though this year's climate has stifled the amount of berries produced this season, the berries we did have were “small, yet intensely flavored." Today, all things berries! Plus some suggestions from James Beard award-winning chef and owner of Warda Pâtisserie, Warda Bouguettaya.  GUESTS:  Kim Bayer, Slow Farm owner Warda Bouguettaya, Warda Pâtisserie owner ___ Looking for more conversations from Stateside? Right this way. If you like what you hear on the pod, consider supporting our work. Music from Blue Dot Sessions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As we're in the period between Christmas and New Year, the gap between episodes is going to be longer than normal, and the podcast proper is going to be back on January the ninth. So nobody has to wait around for another fortnight for a new episode, I thought I'd upload some old Patreon bonus episodes to fill the gap. Every year around Christmas the bonus episodes I do tend to be on Christmas songs and so this week I'm uploading three of those. These are older episodes, so don't have the same production values as more recent episodes, and are also shorter than more recent bonuses, but I hope they're still worth listening to. Hello, and welcome to this week's second Patreon bonus episode. I'm recording this on December the twenty-third, so whether you hear this before Christmas is largely down to how quickly we can get the main episode edited and uploaded. Hopefully, this is going up on Christmas Eve and you're all feeling appropriately festive. Normally for the Patreon bonuses in the last week of December I choose a particularly Christmassy record from the time period we're covering in the main podcast -- usually a perennial Christmas hit like something off the Phil Spector Christmas album or the Elvis Christmas album. However, this year we're in the mid sixties, a period when none of the big hits of US or UK Christmas music were released, because it's after the peak of US Christmas music and before the peak of UK Christmas music. There were Christmas albums by people like James Brown, but they weren't major parts of the discography. So today, we're going to have a brief run-through of the Beatles' Christmas records. These were flexi-discs -- which for those of you who are too young to remember them were records pressed on very, very, thin, cheap plastic, which used to be attached to things like kids' comics or cereal boxes as promotional gimmicks -- sent out to members of the group's fan club. In a way, these were the Beatles' very own Patreon bonuses, sent out to fans and supporters, and not essential works, but hopefully interesting and fun. They very rarely had anything like a full song, being mostly made up of sketches and recorded messages, and other than a limited-edition vinyl reissue a few years back they've never been put on general release -- though one song from the discs, "Christmas Time is Here Again", *was* released as a B-side of the CD single of "Free as A Bird" in 1995: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Christmas Time is Here Again"] Other than that, the Christmas records remain one of those parts of the Beatles catalogue which have never seen a proper widespread release. The first record was made on October the 17th 1963, at the same recording session as "I Want to Hold Your Hand", at the instigation of Tony Barrow, the group's publicist, who also came up with a script for the group to depart from: [Excerpt, the Beatles' first Christmas record] Barrow apparently edited the recording himself, using scissors and tape, and much of that was just taking out the swearing. Incidentally, I've seen some American sources talking about the word "Crimble" being a word that the Beatles made up themselves, but it's actually a fairly standard bit of Scouse slang. The second Christmas record was recorded at the end of the sessions for Beatles For Sale and was much the same kind of thing, though this time they incorporated sound effects: [Excerpt: The Beatles' Second Christmas Record] That was never sent to American fans. Instead, they got a cardboard copy of an edited version of the first record (it's possible to make records out of cardboard, but they can only be played a handful of times). They wouldn't get another Christmas record until 1968, though British fans kept receiving them. The third record sees the group parodying other people's hits, including a brief rendition of "It's the Same Old Song" interrupted by George Harrison saying they can't sing it because of copyright, and an attempt to sing Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" and "Auld Lang Syne" at the same time: [Excerpt: The Beatles' Third Christmas Record] The fourth record, from 1966, was recorded during the early sessions for "Strawberry Fields Forever", and titled "Pantomime: Everywhere It's Christmas". For those outside the UK and its sphere of cultural influence, pantomime is a British Xmas stage tradition which is very hard to explain if you've not experienced it, involving performances that are ostensibly of fairy stories like Cinderella or Snow White, but also usually involving drag performances -- the male lead is usually played by a young woman, while there's usually an old woman character played by a man in drag -- with audience participation, songs, and old jokes of the "I do declare, the Prince's balls get bigger every year!" type. As the title suggests, then, the 1966 Christmas record is an attempt at an actual narrative of sorts, though a surreal, incoherent one. It comes across very much like the Goon show -- though like one of the later episodes where Milligan has lost all sense of narrative coherence: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Pantomime: Everywhere It's Christmas"] it's probably the best of the group's Christmas efforts, and certainly the most fully realised to this point. The 1967 Christmas record, "Christmas Time is Here Again", is even more ambitious. It's another narrative, which sees the group playing a fictitious group called the Ravellers, auditioning for the BBC: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Christmas Time is Here Again"] It also features parodies of broadcasting formats, which I've seen a few people suggest were inspired by the Bonzo Dog Band's then-recent Craig Torso Show radio performances, but which seem to me more indicative just of a general shared sense of humour: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Christmas Time is Here Again"] But that record has become most famous for having one of the closest things on any of these records to a full song, the title track "Christmas Time is Here Again": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Christmas Time is Here Again"] As well as later being issued as the B-side of a CD single, that was also remade by Ringo as a solo record: [Excerpt: Ringo Starr, "Christmas Time is Here Again"] Although my favourite use of the song is actually as an interpolation, with slightly altered lyrics, in "Xmas Again" by Stew of the Negro Problem, one of my favourite current songwriters: [Excerpt: Stew, "Xmas Again"] "Christmas Time is Here Again" would be the last Christmas record the group would make together. For their final two Christmas releases, they recorded their parts separately and got their friend, the DJ Kenny Everett, who was known at this point for his tricks with tape editing, and who shared their sense of humour (he later went on to become a successful TV comedian) to collage them together into something listenable. The highlight of the 1968 record comes from George's contribution. George, a lover of the ukulele, got Tiny Tim to record his version of "Nowhere Man" for the record: [Excerpt: Tiny Tim, "Nowhere Man"] And for the seventh and final Christmas single, recorded after the group had split up but before the split was announced, Everett once again cobbled it together from separate recordings, this time a chat between John and Yoko, Ringo improvising a song and plugging his new film, and Paul singing an original Christmas song: [Excerpt: Paul McCartney, "Merry, Merry, Year"] George's contribution was a single sentence. In 1970, the fan club members got one final record -- an actual vinyl album, compiling all the previous Christmas records in one place. All the Beatles would in future record solo Christmas singles, some of which became perennial classics, but there would never be another Beatles Christmas record [Excerpt, the end of the third Beatles Christmas record]