Podcast appearances and mentions of Tony Sheridan

My guest for this episode is Robert Rodriguez who joins me to discuss the book he co- wrote with Jerry Hammack, 'Ribbons of Rust - The Beatles' Recording History in Context: Volume 1 - July 1954 - January 1963. Robert and Jerry's book tells The Beatles thrilling early story in context, describing the sights and sounds of that time creating an effect that feels like you are you are in the room with The Beatles, from the first Liverpool recording at the Percy Phillips facility to Forthlin Road, their Hamburg sessions with Tony Sheridan, Decca and Parlophone. 

Hoy os dejamos en la Gran Travesía un programa especial dedicado a lo mejor del año 1962,, donde podréis escuchar a Arthur Alexander, John Lee Hooker, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sam Cooke, Ketty Lester, Howlin´ Wolf, Tony Sheridan with The Beatles, The Contours, Little Eva, The Isley Brothers, Elvis Presley...y muchos más. También recordaros que ya podéis comprar La gran travesía del rock, un libro interactivo que además contará con 15 programas de radio complementarios, a modo de ficción sonora... con muchas sorpresas y voces conocidas... https://www.ivoox.com/gran-travesia-del-rock-capitulos-del-libro_bk_list_10998115_1.html Jimi y Janis, dos periodistas musicales, vienen de 2027, un mundo distópico y delirante donde el reguetón tiene (casi) todo el poder... pero ellos dos, deciden alistarse al GLP para viajar en el tiempo, salvar el rock, rescatar sus archivos ocultos y combatir la dictadura troyana del FPR. ✨ El libro ya está en diversas webs, en todostuslibros.com Amazon, Fnac y también en La Montaña Mágica, por ejemplo https://www.amazon.es/GRAN-TRAVES%C3%8DA-DEL-ROCK-autoestopista/dp/8419924938 ▶️ Y ya sabéis, si os gusta el programa y os apetece, podéis apoyarnos y colaborar con nosotros por el simple precio de una cerveza al mes, desde el botón azul de iVoox, y así, además podéis acceder a todo el archivo histórico exclusivo. Muchas gracias también a todos los mecenas y patrocinadores por vuestro apoyo: Poncho C, Don T, Francisco Quintana, Gastón Nicora, Con, Piri, Dotakon, Tete García, Jose Angel Tremiño, Marco Landeta Vacas, Oscar García Muñoz, Raquel Parrondo, Javier Gonzar, Eva Arenas, Poncho C, Nacho, Javito, Alberto, Pilar Escudero, Blas, Moy, Dani Pérez, Santi Oliva, Vicente DC,, Leticia, JBSabe, Flor, Melomanic, Arturo Soriano, Gemma Codina, Raquel Jiménez, Pedro, SGD, Raul Andres, Tomás Pérez, Pablo Pineda, Quim Goday, Enfermerator, María Arán, Joaquín, Horns Up, Victor Bravo, Fonune, Eulogiko, Francisco González, Marcos Paris, Vlado 74, Daniel A, Redneckman, Elliott SF, Guillermo Gutierrez, Sementalex, Miguel Angel Torres, Suibne, Javifer, Matías Ruiz Molina, Noyatan, Estefanía, Iván Menéndez, Niksisley y a los mecenas anónimos.

Welcome to Friday's OTB Breakfast Bite - your FREE bitesize taster of this morning's full Off The Ball Breakfast. On this morning's show, we previewed the evening's League of Ireland action in the company of Owen Heary and Barry Murphy. The news of Peter O'Mahony, Cian Healy and Conor Murray's retirements was covered by the BBC's Chris Jones. We looked ahead to Limerick and Clare's meeting in the Allianz Hurling League with Banner legend Jamesie O'Connor, who also reacted to the news of Shane O'Donnell's season-ending surgery. But this morning's Bite sees Shane, Colm and Arthur reflect on Evan Ferguson's brief cameo for West Ham last night; and we discussed some great League of Ireland mavericks with Owen and Barry. Catch Off The Ball Breakfast LIVE weekday mornings from 7:30am or just search for Off The Ball Breakfast and get the podcast on the Off The Ball app. SUBSCRIBE at OffTheBall.com/join

Welcome to Friday's OTB Breakfast Bite - your FREE bitesize taster of this morning's full Off The Ball Breakfast. On this morning's show, we previewed the evening's League of Ireland action in the company of Owen Heary and Barry Murphy. The news of Peter O'Mahony, Cian Healy and Conor Murray's retirements was covered by the BBC's Chris Jones. We looked ahead to Limerick and Clare's meeting in the Allianz Hurling League with Banner legend Jamesie O'Connor, who also reacted to the news of Shane O'Donnell's season-ending surgery. But this morning's Bite sees Shane, Colm and Arthur reflect on Evan Ferguson's brief cameo for West Ham last night; and we discussed some great League of Ireland mavericks with Owen and Barry. Catch Off The Ball Breakfast LIVE weekday mornings from 7:30am or just search for Off The Ball Breakfast and get the podcast on the Off The Ball app. SUBSCRIBE at OffTheBall.com/join

Send us a textTim welcomes multi-award-winning documentary director and filmmaker Chris Purcell to talk about the band's 1965 single, Ticket to Ride. They chat about Chris's Liverpool roots, his early memories of the Beatles, and how he once ended up playing drums on stage with Tony Sheridan. They explore the heavy sound of Ticket to Ride, the use of the 12-string Rickenbacker, and how the track paved the way for new studio techniques. They also celebrate John's powerful vocal, Paul's guitar flourishes, and Ringo's unique drumming.Right Angle Films: https://www.rightanglefilms.co.ukLiverpool West's library: https://liverpoolwestproductions.com/libraryWhy Don't We Do It in the Road?: http://vimeo.com/46488387Reflected Glory: https://vimeo.com/29437388Evolver 62 promo: https://vimeo.com/1023543808Follow My Favourite Beatles SongBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/myfavebeatles.bsky.socialX (Twitter): https://twitter.com/myfavebeatlesFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyFavouriteBeatlesSongInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/myfavouritebeatlessongOriginal music by Joe KaneLogo design by Mark Cunningham

Jenny welcomes Tony Sheridan, a social media storytelling expert currently working at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. Tony shares his inspiring career journey from Ireland to Saudi Arabia, emphasizing the transformative power of authentic storytelling in social media. The conversation dives deep into strategies for lifting underrepresented voices and making a meaningful impact through thoughtful and inclusive content creation.Key TakeawaysAuthentic Storytelling Wins: Storytelling isn't just about information—it's about creating narratives that resonate emotionally and authentically.Diversity Drives Engagement: Inclusive content that authentically reflects diverse voices performs better and avoids common pitfalls.Leadership Without Authority: Even without formal power, you can lead initiatives by aligning with core values and presenting actionable strategies.Strategy Is Everything: Simple frameworks, like “strategy pillars,” can clarify goals and ensure content aligns with organizational values.Cultural Adaptation Matters: Recognizing and respecting cultural differences enhances storytelling impact without losing universal human connection.Episode SummaryHow Did Tony Sheridan Transition from Ireland to Saudi Arabia?Tony's journey began unexpectedly with a LinkedIn notification during the summer of 2020. With a decade and a half of experience at the University of Limerick, Tony had established himself as a pioneer in social media, leading award-winning campaigns on platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok. Encouraged by a supportive manager to "spread his wings," Tony took a leap of faith to join KAUST. His decision wasn't without hesitation, but the opportunity to expand his storytelling expertise on an international stage proved transformative.How Does Culture Influence Social Media Strategies at KAUST?KAUST, as a mixed-gender, international university in Saudi Arabia, presented unique opportunities and challenges. Tony noted that while Saudi culture and Islam influenced societal norms, the evolving openness of the country under Vision 2030 allowed for unprecedented storytelling opportunities. For example, highlighting female graduates and staff became a priority, reflecting KAUST's diverse and inclusive ethos. His approach emphasized leveraging these cultural shifts to showcase untold stories, ensuring that representation was at the forefront of every campaign.What Strategies Help Amplify Marginalized Voices?Tony adopted a systematic approach to ensure inclusivity in campaigns:Establish Strategy Pillars: By creating a clear list of campaign values—like diversity, inclusivity, and authenticity—he gained buy-in from leadership and ensured alignment across teams.Shift to Narrative Storytelling: Rather than simply stating facts, Tony focused on “intention and obstacle” as storytelling elements, drawing inspiration from screenwriting principles.Lead with Influence: Even without formal authority, Tony championed meaningful change by presenting well-structured plans and aligning them with organizational goals.Which Platforms Are Best for Representation?Tony believes the platform matters less than the authenticity of the story. At KAUST, alumni-focused campaigns like "Changemakers" and student-led initiatives thrived across platforms, including Instagram and LinkedIn. The key wasn't high production value but meaningful narratives that resonated with audiences. Tony encouraged using platforms strategically, tailoring content to each channel's strengths.What Advice Does Tony Have for Aspiring Social Media Storytellers?Start with Simplicity: Ask, “Is this good storytelling?” Strip away distractions and focus on the core narrative.Write It Down: Document your values and use them as a guide for decision-making.Tell Stories Internally: Use the power of storytelling to communicate and advocate within your organization, not just on social channels.Practice Leadership: Take initiative to push boundaries and advocate for change, even if you lack formal authority.Guest Name: Tony Sheridan, Marketing and communications manager for the King Abdullah University of Science and TechnologyGuest Social: LinkedInGuest Bio: Tony Sheridan is the Marketing and Communications Manager at KAUST, one of the top-ranked research universities in the world, on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia. After leading Social Media and Digital Content at University of Limerick to award-winning success for many years, he left his native Ireland and joined KAUST in April 2021. Since then he has worked with the team to bring their marketing and communications campaigns to new heights, working with high-profile, truly global brand partners such as McLaren Formula 1 racing team, Times Higher Education, AAAS/Science, National Geographic, and more.In the last 3 years at KAUST he has taken home more than a dozen awards from around the world including ‘Champion for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion' at the ContentEd awards in the UK for spearheading KAUST's diverse and inclusive storytelling campaigns. He is a storyteller, as a sought after conference Keynote, traveling globally to share his strategies and stories with the global Higher Ed community. Tony has recently Co-Chaired the CASE Middle East Advancement Conference 2024 in Abu Dhabi and Content Ed 2024 in Liverpool. - - - -Connect With Our Host:Jenny Li Fowlerhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jennylifowler/https://twitter.com/TheJennyLiAbout The Enrollify Podcast Network:Confessions of a Higher Ed Social Media Manager is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you'll like other Enrollify shows too! Some of our favorites include Higher Ed Pulse and Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO.Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — the next-generation AI student engagement platform helping institutions create meaningful and personalized interactions with students. Learn more at element451.com.Attend the 2025 Engage Summit! The Engage Summit is the premier conference for forward-thinking leaders and practitioners dedicated to exploring the transformative power of AI in education. Explore the strategies and tools to step into the next generation of student engagement, supercharged by AI. You'll leave ready to deliver the most personalized digital engagement experience every step of the way.Register now to secure your spot in Charlotte, NC, on June 24-25, 2025! Early bird registration ends February 1st -- https://engage.element451.com/register

Robbie Williams a dévoilé "Forbidden Road", un nouveau single qui apparaitra dans son prochain biopic ‘'A Better Man'', dans lequel il incarnera un singe. Pour marquer le 20e anniversaire de l'album ‘'How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb'', U2 a sorti un album parallèle intitulé ‘'How To Re-Assemble An Atomic Bomb'' qui contient de nouvelles chansons inédites dont "Luckiest Man In The World". Un nouveau documentaire sort ce 29 novembre à propos du Yacht Rock, mélange de rock, de jazz et de rhythm and blues (type de musique destiné à être apprécié "en sirotant un verre sur un bateau de luxe"). Sade Adu a dévoilé le nouveau clip vidéo de "Young Lion", son single récemment sorti, disponible depuis vendredi sur la compilation ‘'TRAИƧA''. Sean Ono Lennon se souvient qu'il a commencé à faire de la musique pour "combler le vide" laissé par la mort de son père, John Lennon. Une guitare Resonet Futurama, utilisée par George Harrison au début de l'aventure des Beatles, est partie à 1,27 million de dollars lors d'une vente aux enchères à Nashville. Mots-Clés : Intitulé, titre, film, vie, artiste, enfance, aventure, boys band, Take That, succès, solo, vidéo, fans, images inédites, mélodie, acoustique, épurée, paroles, parcours, découverte, archives, sessions d'enregistrement, original, Country Mile, Happiness, réédition, terme, populaire, radio, 1970, 1980, réalisé, Garret Price, essor, soft-rock, décennie, artiste, Michael McDonald, Steely Dan, Kenny Loggins, Toto, Christopher Cross, exemple précis, Sailing, quintessence du genre, hommage, Izaak, fils, transgenre, clip, image, jeune, actuel, ensemble, abattu, Mark David Chapman, nouvelle, interview, People, conséquence, tragédie, échappatoire, offert, combler, vide, apprendre, guitare, surmonter, connecter, parent, motive, impression, connaître, prix exorbitant, Beatles, 1959, magasin de musique, Liverpool, utilisé, concert, groupe, Polydor Records, son particulier, My Bonnie, single, Tony Sheridan, 1961, Paul McCartney, Cry for a Shadow, enregistré. --- Classic 21 vous informe des dernières actualités du rock, en Belgique et partout ailleurs. Le Journal du Rock, en direct chaque jour à 7h30 et 18h30 sur votre radio rock'n'pop. Merci pour votre écoute Plus de contenus de Classic 21 sur www.rtbf.be/classic21 Ecoutez-nous en live ici: https://www.rtbf.be/radio/liveradio/classic21 ou sur l'app Radioplayer BelgiqueRetrouvez l'ensemble des contenus de la RTBF sur notre plateforme Auvio.be Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement. Découvrez nos autres podcasts : Le journal du Rock : https://audmns.com/VCRYfsPComic Street (BD) https://audmns.com/oIcpwibLa chronique économique : https://audmns.com/NXWNCrAHey Teacher : https://audmns.com/CIeSInQHistoires sombres du rock : https://audmns.com/ebcGgvkCollection 21 : https://audmns.com/AUdgDqHMystères et Rock'n Roll : https://audmns.com/pCrZihuLa mauvaise oreille de Freddy Tougaux : https://audmns.com/PlXQOEJRock&Sciences : https://audmns.com/lQLdKWRCook as You Are: https://audmns.com/MrmqALPNobody Knows : https://audmns.com/pnuJUlDPlein Ecran : https://audmns.com/gEmXiKzRadio Caroline : https://audmns.com/WccemSkAinsi que nos séries :Rock Icons : https://audmns.com/pcmKXZHRock'n Roll Heroes: https://audmns.com/bXtHJucFever (Erotique) : https://audmns.com/MEWEOLpEt découvrez nos animateurs dans cette série Close to You : https://audmns.com/QfFankx

Wie konnte aus einer mittelmäßigen Rock and Roll-Tanzkapelle aus Liverpool die wichtigste Band der Welt werden - The Beatles? Ohne Hamburg – keine Beatles, da sind sich die Fachleute sicher. Zwischen August 1960 und Silvester 1962 sind die Beatles fünf Mal für längere Zeit in Hamburg gewesen. Sie haben auf den Bühnen der Musikclubs im Rotlichtviertel gespielt: Rock and Roll zur Unterhaltung, nächtelang, monatelang. Im NDR Kultur Podcast „Becoming The Beatles - Die Hamburger Jahre” zeichnet Ocke Bandixen, NDR Kulturredakteur und Host von „Urban Pop“, die Geschichte in sechs Teilen nach: die schwierigen Anfänge im „Indra“, die langen Nächte im „Kaiserkeller“, dann die strenge Lehrzeit neben Tony Sheridan im „Top Ten“ und schließlich die letzten gefeierten Auftritte im „Star Club“, den Peter Urban selbst noch von Besuchen Ende der 60er kennt. Bei "Urban Pop: Making of “Becoming The Beatles”" erzählt Ocke Bandixen im Gespräch mit Peter Urban, wie er für den Podcast vorgegangen ist, wie er Zeitzeugen und unbekanntes Archivmaterial gefunden hat. Die Beraterin des Podcasts, die Hamburger Beatles-Expertin Stefanie Hempel, ist außerdem zu Gast in dieser besonderen Ausgabe von „Urban Pop“. Musikliste: The early Tapes of the Beatles with Tony Sheridan, 1993 Live at the BBC – The Beatles, 1994 Anthology 1 – The Beatles, 1995 Please please me (remastered), 2009 On Air – Live at the BBC Volume 2 – The Beatles, 2013 The Many Faces of the Beatles – The Beatles, 2016 Unsere Podcast-Tipps in dieser Folge: Fuck you very very much / https://1.ard.de/FYVVM https://www.ardaudiothek.de/episode/urban-pop-musiktalk-mit-peter-urban/urban-pop-beatles-63-please-please-me/ndr-kultur/13468723/ https://www.ardaudiothek.de/episode/urban-pop-musiktalk-mit-peter-urban/urban-pop-beatles-63-with-the-beatles/ndr-kultur/13495423/

Send us a textAll bands need a name, but the process of getting that name is different for each band. This episode, we look at how a bunch of well-known bands got their names.  Some are amusing, some are horrifying, some are dark or seedy – be ready for surprises! Our “album you must listen to before you die” is Arc of a Diver, by Stevie Winwood (1980).  This was a formative album during our youth, and with this million-selling album and its hit single “While You See a Chance”, Winwood was a major influence on other people we love, such as Marianne Faithfull.   In Rock News, the major story is that the Gallagher brothers have agreed to reunite as Oasis for a UK tour in 2025. We don't like the odds of the brothers completing the tour without fighting and would like ringside seats! In other news, we look at Nick Cave's new album, Wild God, Bruce Springsteen back on tour, and Neil Young releasing Archives Vol. III, a 17-CD box set featuring 198 tracks.  Wow! References: Oasis, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, INXS, Guns n Roses, Bee Gees, Bachman Turner Overdrive, Fleetwood Mac, Joy Division, Nazi camps, 10CC, The Lovin' Spoonful, Steely Dan, The Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa, The Doobie Brothers, Rammstein, Ramstein air show tragedy, Husker Du, The Velvet Underground, Depeche Mode, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler, Boris Karloff, The Foo Fighters, The Angels, The Beatles, The Quarrymen, The Silver Beetles, Tony Sheridan & the Beat Brothers, Buddy Holly & The Crickets, Pink Floyd, Pink Anderson & Floyd Council, “Oh by the way, which one's Pink?”, Cheap Trick, Slade, ZZ Top, The Rolling Stones, Radiohead, Talking Heads, Shakespeare's Sister, The Bay City Rollers, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Tim Staffell, “Smile”, Freddie Mercury, The Band, The Hawks, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Barenaked Ladies, Jethro Tull, U2, The Hype, Beach Boys, The Pendeltons, "Surfin'", Blue Öyster Cult, “On Your Feet or on Your Knees”  Playlist – Band names 

Baritone Roderick Williams and bassoonist Amy Harman kick off with a famous four-letter acronym as they add the next five tracks to the playlist with Anna Phoebe and Jeffrey Boakye as they go on their latest international musical journey.From the cop, the cowboy and the construction worker in Greenwich Village, the show drops in on Brahms, visits the Canary Islands, and ends up at an unorthodox Ella Fitzgerald version of a traditional Scottish folk song.Producer: Jerome Weatherald Presented with musical direction by Jeffrey Boakye and Anna PhoebeThe five tracks in this week's playlist:YMCA by The Village People Scherzo in C Minor from the F-A-E Sonata by Johannes Brahms Canarios by John Williams ‘Pourquoi me réveiller?' by Alfredo Kraus My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean by Ella FitzgeraldOther music in this episode:Linger by The Cranberries Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood by Nina Simone Macho Man by The Village People In the Navy by The Village People America from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim Gypsy Woman by Crystal Waters Riverdance by Bill Whelan My Bonnie by Tony Sheridan and The Beat Brothers My Bonnie by Ray Charles

Title: The Body Of ChristSpeaker: Pastor Tony SheridanDate: 19th May 2024Location: Adelaide, Australia Listen to the entire Podcast Revival library by visiting https://podcastrevival.com The Revival Fellowship is a Bible-directed, Spirit-filled Church and we welcome visitors to our meetings at any of our locations worldwide. To find your nearest venue visit https://therevivalfellowship.com © 2024 The Revival Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Die Welt schien auf diese vier Liverpooler gewartet zu haben: The Beatles. Mit Energie, Charisma und Talent zu originellen, eigenen Liedern schafften es die Beatles im Jahr 1963, in Großbritannien und später in der ganzen Welt bekannt zu werden. Viele ihrer Fähigkeiten trainierten sie in hunderten Stunden auf den Bühnen der Kiezkneipen in Hamburg St. Pauli, wo sie ab 1960 als Rock ‘n‘ Roll-Tanzkapelle aufgetreten waren. Woher kamen die Vier? Was trieb sie an, was waren ihre musikalischen Einflüsse? Was machte letztlich ihre magische Wirkung Anfang der 60er Jahre aus? In dieser ersten Folge erzählen Peter Urban und Ocke Bandixen davon, besprechen die Anfänge der jungen Beatles in Hamburg und Liverpool und analysieren das erste Album der Band aus dem Frühjahr 1963, „Please Please Me“. Musikliste: The Beatles - Please Please Me, 1963 The Beatles – Anthology I, 1995 The Beatles First – with Tony Sheridan, 1964 Unser Podcast-Tipp in dieser Folge: Philipps Playlist https://1.ard.de/philipps-playlist-podcast-cp

Nueva entrega del coleccionable dedicado a recordar las canciones que alcanzaron su máximo puesto en las listas del Billboard Hot 100 de este mes hace 60 años. En marzo de 1964 The Beatles se convierten ya en una fuerza arrolladora y sus numerosos singles copan toda la zona alta de las listas de ventas. Aquel mes el surf da sus últimos coletazos, los “veteranos” del rock’n’roll intentan aguantar el envite y el soul o el sonido Motown resisten fuertes al invasor.Playlist;(sintonía) THE PYRAMIDS “Penetration” (top 18)THE BEATLES “She loves you” (top 1)THE BEATLES “Please please me” (top 3)THE BEATLES “I saw her standing there” (top 14)THE BEATLES with TONY SHERIDAN “My Bonnie” (top 26)DUSTY SPRINGFIELD “I only want to be with you” (top 12)ELVIS PRESLEY and THE JORDANAIRES “Kissin’ cousins” (top 12)FREDDY CANNON “Abigail Beecher” (top 16)THE BEACH BOYS “Fun fun fun” (top 5)THE TRASHMEN “Bird dance beat” (top 30)JAMES BROWN and THE FAMOUS FLAMES “Oh baby don’t you weep” (top 23)SAM COOKE “Good news” (top 11)RAY CHARLES and HIS ORCHESTRA “Baby don’t you cry (The new swingova rhythm)” (top 39)TOMMY TUCKER “Hi heel sneakers” (top 11)RUFUS THOMAS “Can your monkey do the dog” (top 48)MARTHA and THE VANDELLAS “Live wire” (top 42)NINO TEMPO and APRIL STEVENS “Stardust” (top 32)THE SAPPHIRES “Who do you love” (top 25)DALE and GRACE “Stop and think it over” (top 8)Escuchar audio

¡Bienvenidos a la temporada 2024! Hay sección noticias con todo lo que nos dejó el verano: - Band On The Run: Underdubbed - Los lanzamientos del Record Store Day 2024 - Recordamos a Duff Lowe - El anuncio de las Biopics - Todo sobre el bajo de Paul que apareció después de 50 años. Y esa noticia nos sirve de puntapié para contar todo sobre el segundo viaje de The Beatles a Hamburgo. Tony Sheridan, drogas, sexo, prostitutas, grabaciones, mafia y el momento en el que Paul compra el Hofner 500/1 que lo llevaría a la inmortalidad. Tooooodo esto y mucho más en el primer episodio de Glass Onion. *ruido de mate*

This episode was recorded at the Bedford Inn, Balham in the Wandsworth Arts Fringe on 22nd June 2023. The panellists were Alex Kitson, John Rands and Arthur Smith, and the host was Richard Pulsford. On This Day topics covered included:- - The Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway opened (22/06/1907) - The Holy Office in Rome forced Galileo Galilei to recant (22/06/1633) - Beatles make first record as backing for Tony Sheridan (22/06/1961) - The Hand of God goal (22/06/1986) - Pétain became Prime Minister of Vichy France (22/06/1940) - George Carlin died (22/06/2008) - Balham: Gateway to the South - Miss Marple and Du Cane Court - John Sullivan, born in Balham - Captain Sensible, born in Balham - Pedestrian crossings    

Title: The Sign of the Ark of the CovenantSpeaker: Pastor Tony SheridanDate: 9th July 2017Location: Adelaide, Australia Listen to the entire Podcast Revival library by visiting https://podcastrevival.com The Revival Fellowship is a Bible-directed, Spirit-filled Church and we welcome visitors to our meetings at any of our locations worldwide. To find your nearest venue visit https://therevivalfellowship.com © 2023 The Revival Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Before They Were Beatles Episode 21: Suits and Star Club The Beatles make their radio debut, change leather for suits, and make a return to Hamburg. The music heard in this episode includes: The Beatles - Money (Intro from Decca auditions) The Beatles - Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream) Royal Waterford Showband - Hucklebuck Emile Ford & The Checkmates - What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For? Roy Young - Hey Little Girl Gene Vincent - Be Bop Lula ‘62 Tony Sheridan  & The Beat Brothers - Sweet Georgia Brown  Tony Sheridan - Swanee River  Tony Sheridan  - Skinnie Minny You can find full versions of the music heard in this episode in the dedicated Before They Were Beatles Podcast YouTube channel at:  https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP0CDQdLe-G141LlqyBu8rC8ap6voBhZe If you would like to make a comment or ask a question you can follow the podcast Twitter account at @BeforeBeatles, or email me at alan@beforetheywerebeatles.com You can also find copies of the original Before They Were Beatles book on Amazon in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle editions #BeforeTheyWereBeatles Let us know what you think! Email the show at contact@longboxcrusade.com This podcast is a member of the LONGBOX CRUSADE NETWORK: LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/longboxcrusade Visit the WEBSITE: http://www.longboxcrusade.com/ Follow on TWITTER:  https://twitter.com/BeforeBeatles https://twitter.com/LongboxCrusade Follow on INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/longboxcrusade Like the FACEBOOK page: https://www.facebook.com/LongboxCrusade Subscribe to the YouTube Channel: https://goo.gl/4Lkhov Subscribe to the main LBC network podcast feed on Apple Podcasts at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-longboxcrusade/id1118783510?mt=2 Or the single podcast feed for Before They Were Beatles at: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/before-they-were-beatles/id1561234606 Thank you for listening and we hope you have enjoyed this episode of Before They Were Beatles. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/longbox-crusade/message

The Beatles make their radio debut, change leather for suits, and make a return to Hamburg. .********* This is the story of how one of the thousands of amateur British schoolboy skiffle bands in the mid-1950s evolved into the beginnings of the greatest band in popular history. It's a story of hope, creativity, and exploring musical boundaries. It's also a story of tragedy, coincidence, and at times just sheer luck. It is a story of beginnings, the story of John, Paul, George, and Ringo - Before They Were Beatles. The music heard in this episode included: The Beatles - Money (Intro from Decca auditions) The Beatles - Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream) Royal Waterford Showband - Hucklebuck Emile Ford & The Checkmates - What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For? Roy Young - Hey Little Girl Gene Vincent - Be Bop Lula ‘62 Tony Sheridan & The Beat Brothers - Sweet Georgia Brown Tony Sheridan - Swanee River Tony Sheridan - Skinnie Minny You can find full versions of the music heard in this episode in the dedicated Before They Were Beatles Podcast YouTube channel - If you would like to make a comment or ask a question you can follow the podcast Twitter account at @BeforeBeatles You can also find copies of the original Before They Were Beatles book on Amazon in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle editions The Before They Were Beatles Podcast is a production of Megrin Entertainment, a division of 4Js Group LLC.

Presented by Shane Dawson. Alan Cawley is in studio for football chat and is joined by legends of the game in Tony Sheridan and Gareth McGlynn; Simon Easterby talks ahead of Ireland v Fiji, and Jane Mangan previews the weekend's racing! Game On.

Revista Beatles, en su programa N° 424 se complace en presentar a Mike Oldfield en su épico disco de 1973, "Tubular Bells", una joya de 25 minutos de duración. Además, Paul Anka y Roy Orbison; Beatles con Tony Sheridan en las épocas de Hamburgo en los Bonus Tracks de "Anthology 1". Y en Tema libre, "Mercedes canta Latinoamérica". Las grandes versiones de Mercedes Sosa de los clásicos latinoamericanos. Revista Beatles. Este sábado a las 16.00 por FM Galena 94.5. www.radiogalena.com.ar. App https://bit.ly/2GBP0ST.

As a new year begins, tensions are rising between the US, led by newly elected President John F Kennedy, and Cuba, two years after the revolution that installed Fidel Castro as it's leader. On the other side of the world, pressure is also building as communism spreads in south-east Asia. The United States is keeping it's finger in that pie as well. Musically, while I didn't expect there to be the flick of a switch to turn off the rock 'n' roll of the 50s and turn on what we think of as the “sound of the 60s”, I did expect a gradual fade of one into the other. But what I hadn't thought through was a musical revolution occurring between the two. R&B artists such as Etta James, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Roy Orbison and The Shirelles were recording hit records that certainly stand-up better today than the awful “bubblegum rock” that it was competing with. That continues into 1961 but, while Johnny Kidd & The Pirates were already, in my opinion, way ahead of their time, there's a single by Tony Sheridan in 1961 that went almost unheralded in the UK but that is of incredible significance in predicting what is to come. If you know your musical history, you already know what I'm talking about. But, if not, listen out for the pieces falling into place and I'll reveal all at the end of this show.

Hoy en La Gran Travesía os dejamos un nuevo programa donde podréis escuchar un momento histórico, el de los Beatles en Hamburgo, año 1961, junto a Toni Sheridan, un año antes de publicar oficialmente su primer single. También podréis escuchar a Rage Against The Machine, Nirvana, The (International) Noise Conspiracy... 🎸 Por otro lado, recordaros la Fiesta que tenemos preparada en Murcia en el Plan 9, para el próximo sábado 3 de diciembre y con motivo del 1.000.000 de descargas/escuchas que está a punto de alcanzar La Gran Travesía en iVoox gracias a tod@s vosotr@s. Muchas gracias a todos los mecenas y patrocinadores por vuestro apoyo. 💙 We Love You 💙

Title: Beautiful PeopleSpeaker: Pastor Tony SheridanDate: 31st July 2022Location: Adelaide, Australia Listen to the entire Podcast Revival library by visiting https://podcastrevival.com The Revival Fellowship is a Bible-directed, Spirit-filled Church and we welcome visitors to our meetings at any of our locations worldwide. To find your nearest venue visit https://therevivalfellowship.com © 2022 The Revival Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

153. Truly an epic show for the ages! Not only can you hear fabulous NEW rockin' selections from hot modern artists like Seatbelt, The Hi-Views, Legacaster, Jake Calypso, Boney & The Shakers, Toto & The Raw Deals,  Ezra Lee, The Hi-Fi Lowdowns, The Nite Howlers, Abby Girl, The Mellows & Geoffrey Miller BUT we've also got classic tracks in this episode from legendary stars Hank Penny, Joe Poovey, Curtis Gordon, Rusty & Doug Kershaw, Gene Dunn, Lattie Moore, Mimi Roman, Charlie Feathers, Webb Pierce, Buddy Holly & Tony Sheridan & The Beat Brothers! PLUS, we finally get out chance to talk LIVE with The Jerrell's singer/guitarist Jeremy Slemenda! Enjoy our exclusive chat with this Texas rockin' cat and thrill to the hot, boppin' sounds of their debut platter, "Wanted Man" available now on El Toro Records (LP&CD!). Help us wish Little Rachel a Happy Birthday and dig some real gone hot rod rockin' toons in honor of the 4th Annual Pied Pipers Car Show (Sat. July 23rd, Warren, MI).  Over FOUR HOURS in this action-packed episode, so consume carefully and slowly...! DJ Del's "Go Kat, GO! The Rock-A-Billy Show!" is good to the last bop!™

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

In March of 1957, John Winston Lennon formed a "skiffle" group called The Quarrymen. What is "skiffle," you may be asking? It's a kind of folk music with a blues or jazz flavor that was popular in the 1950s, played by a small group and often incorporating improvised instruments such as washboards. On July 6, '57, Lennon met a guy named James. James Paul McCartney, while playing at the Woolton Parish church fete. In Britain, fêtes are traditional public festivals held outdoors and organized to raise funds for a charity. On February 6, 1958, the young up-and-coming guitarist George Harrison was invited to watch the group perform at Wilson Hall, Garston, Liverpool. He was soon brought in as a regular player. During this period, members continually joined and left the lineup. Finally, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Stuart Sutcliffe (a classmate of Lennon at Liverpool Art College) emerged as the only constant members. One day, the members showed up to a gig wearing different colored shirts, so they decided to call themselves 'The Rainbows.' In a talent show they did in 1959, they called themselves 'Johnny and the Moondogs.' Once again, changing their name to "The Silver Beatles," they eventually decided, on August 17, 1960, on the moniker "The Beatles." Why did they choose the Beatles, Logan? They were huge fans of Buddy Holly and The Crickets – as a way of emulating their heroes, they called themselves after an insect. Right?   Well, According to John Lennon, "It came in a vision – a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them, 'from this day forward you are the Beatles with an 'A'! Thank you, mister man, they said, thanking him," he said.   Most of the accounts claim that Lennon's love of wordplay led them to adopt the 'a' eventually. Lennon would explain in a 1964 interview: "It was beat and beetles, and when you said it, people thought of crawly things, and when you read it, it was beat music."   After Lennon died in 1980, George Harrison claimed that the name came about differently in the Beatles' Anthology documentary (as is usually the case).   Harrison claimed that the name, 'The Beatles', came from the 1953 Marlon Brando film, The Wild One. In the film, Brando played a character called 'Johnny' and was in a gang called 'The Beetles.'   This answer would add up considering that the group also flirted with the name of 'Johnny and the Beetles', as well as 'Long John and the Silver Beetles.' Their unofficial manager, Allan Williams, arranged for them to perform in clubs on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, Germany. On August 16, 1960, McCartney invited a guy named Pete Best to become the group's permanent drummer after watching Best playing with The Blackjacks in the Casbah Club. The Casbah Club was a cellar club operated by Best's mother Mona in West Derby, Liverpool, where The Beatles had played and often visited. They started in Hamburg by playing in the Indra and Kaiserkeller bars and the Top Ten club. George, who was only seventeen years old, had lied about his age, and when this little fact was discovered, he was deported by the German authorities. Paul and Pete thought it was good to start a small fire by lighting an unused condom in their living quarters while leaving it for more luxurious rooms. Arrested and charged for arson, they too were both deported. Lennon and Sutcliffe followed suit and returned to Liverpool in December. While in Germany, they stayed in a small room with bunkbeds. George Harrison admitted in The Beatles Anthology that this made things especially awkward when he crawled under the sheets with a woman for the first time — Lennon, McCartney, and then-drummer Pete Best actually applauded for him after the deed was done. Harrison joked, "At least they kept quiet while I was doing it."   They went back a second time and played the Top Ten Club for three months (April-June 1961). Stuart Sutcliffe decided to remain in Germany to concentrate on painting and left the group during this time. Sutcliffe's departure led McCartney to switch from playing rhythm guitar to bass guitar. While they were playing at the Top Ten, they were recruited by singer Tony Sheridan to act as his "backing band" on a series of recordings for the German Polydor Records label, produced by famed bandleader Bert Kaempfert ("Strangers in the Night", "Danke Schoen"). Kaempfert signed the group to its own Polydor contract at the first session on June 22, 1961. On October 31, Polydor released the recording, My Bonnie (Mein Herz ist bei dir nur), which made it into the German charts under Tony Sheridan and The Beat Brothers. Around 1962, My Bonnie was mentioned in Cashbox as the debut of a "new rock and roll team, Tony Sheridan and the Beatles," and a few copies were also pressed for U.S. disc jockeys. Cashbox, also known as Cash Box, was a music industry trade magazine published initially weekly from July 1942 to November 1996. Ten years after its dissolution, it was revived and continues as Cashbox Magazine, an online magazine with weekly charts and occasional special print issues. The band's third stay in Hamburg was from April 13–May 31, 1962, when they opened The Star Club. However, that stay was dampened when Astrid Kirchherr informed them upon their arrival of Sutcliffe's death from a brain hemorrhage. Astrid, a German photographer, and friend of the Beatles, revealed that her fiancé (and former Beatles bass player) Stuart Sutcliffe had died. No one was more shocked than John Lennon, who reportedly broke out in a fit of hysterical laughter at the idea of losing his art school buddy.   Upon their return from Hamburg, the group was enthusiastically promoted by local promoter Sam Leach, who presented them for the next year and a half on various stages in Liverpool forty-nine times. Brian Epstein (no relation to a particular disgusting human being), took over as the group's manager in 1962 and led The Beatles' quest for a British recording contract. In one now-famous exchange, a senior Decca Records A&R executive named Dick Rowe turned Epstein down flat and informed him that "The Decca audition for guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein." Remember Decca? They were Buddy Holly's first record label that thought "rock n roll was a fad." Strike two, Decca. Strike two. Epstein eventually met with producer George Martin of EMI's Parlophone label. Martin expressed an interest in hearing the band in the studio. So he invited the band to London's Abbey Road studios to audition on June 6. Martin wasn't particularly impressed by the band's demo recordings but instantly liked them when they met. He concluded that they had raw musical talent but said (in later interviews) that what made the difference for him that fateful day was their wit and humor in the studio.   Martin privately suggested to Brian Epstein that the band use another drummer in the studio. Yikes. Pete Best had some popularity and was considered attractive by many fans. Still, the three founding members had become increasingly unhappy with his popularity and personality, and Epstein had become exasperated with his refusal to adopt the distinctive hairstyle as part of their unified look. So Epstein sacked Best on August 16, 1962. Lennon and McCartney immediately asked their friend Richard Starkey, the drummer for one of the top Merseybeat groups, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, to join the band. Unfortunately, Rory Storm didn't want to release Starkey but let Starkey out of his contract. Oh... Richard Starkey would eventually be known as "Ringo Starr." He chose Ringo because of the rings he wore, and it also had a cowboy feel to it. His drum solos were referred to as Starr Time.   The Beatles' first EMI session on June 6 did not yield any releasable recordings, but the September sessions produced the minor U.K. hit, "Love Me Do," which peaked on the charts at number 17. The single reached the top of the United States singles chart more than 18 months later in May 1964. This single was swiftly followed by their second single, "Please Please Me." They recorded their first album (also titled Please Please Me) three months later. George Martin capitalized on the wild, live energy the boys perfected in Hamburg and recorded the entire Please Please Me LP in less than 13 hours — saving "Twist and Shout" for last so the taxing vocals wouldn't ruin Lennon's voice before the other songs were done. That's fourteen songs. Luckily, the longest song on the album was only 2 minutes and 54 seconds long. The shortest was a minute and 47 seconds.   The band's first televised performance was on a program called People and Places, transmitted live from Manchester by Granada Television on October 17, 1962. The band experienced massive popularity on the record charts in the U.K. from early 1963. However, Parlophone's American counterpart, Capitol Records (owned by EMI), refused to issue their singles "Love Me Do," "Please Please Me," and "From Me to You" in the United States. Mainly because no British act had ever had a sustained commercial impact on American audiences.   Vee-Jay Records, a small Chicago label, is said by some to have been pressured into issuing these initial singles. Allegedly it was part of a deal for the rights to another performer's masters. Art Roberts, music director of Chicago powerhouse radio station WLS, placed "Please Please Me" into radio rotation in late February 1963, making it possibly the first time the American people heard a Beatles record on American radio. In August 1963, the Philadelphia-based Swan Records tried again with The Beatles' "She Loves You," which failed to receive airplay.   After The Beatles' massive success in 1964, Vee-Jay Records and Swan Records took advantage of their previously secured rights to The Beatles' early recordings and reissued the songs they had rights to, which all reached the top ten of the charts the second time around. Then, in a shifty move, Vee-Jay Records issued some weird L.P. repackaging of the Beatles' material they had and released "Introducing… The Beatles," which was basically The Beatles' debut British album with some minor alterations. Andi Lothian, a former Scottish music promoter, laid claim to the term in that he coined 'Beatlemania" while speaking to a reporter on October 7, 1963 at the Caird Hall in Dundee at a Beatles concert that took place during The Beatles' 1963 Mini-Tour of Scotland. Beatlemania was taking over the world.   In early November 1963, Brian Epstein persuaded Ed Sullivan to commit to presenting The Beatles on three editions of his show in February. He turned this guaranteed exposure into a record deal with Capitol Records. Capitol agreed to a mid-January 1964 release for "I Want to Hold Your Hand." Still, unexpected circumstances triggered premature airplay of an imported copy of the single on a Washington D.C. radio station in mid-December. Capitol brought forward the release of the record on December 26, 1963.   Bob Dylan introduced The Beatles to the cannabis drug in 1964 in a New York hotel room. He offered the "Fab Four" marijuana as a consequence of his misconception that the lyrics in their hit song "I Want to Hold Your Hand" from Meet the Beatles! were "I get high" instead of "I can't hide." This initial partaking in drugs grew into heavier experimentation with LSD and other substances whose psychedelic effects were commonly thought to have manifested themselves in the band's music. The Beatles, in turn, would influence Dylan's move into an electrified rock sound in his music.   Several New York City radio stations—first WMCA, then WINS, and finally, WABC began playing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on its release day. The Beatlemania that had started in Washington was duplicated in New York and quickly spread to other markets. The record sold one million copies in just ten days. By January 16, Cashbox Magazine had certified The Beatle's record as number one in the edition published with the cover-date January 23, 1964.   This widespread phenomenon contributed to the near-hysterical fan reaction on February 7, 1964 at John F. Kennedy International Airport (which had been renamed in December 1963 from Idlewild Airport). A record-breaking seventy-three million viewers, approximately 40 percent of the U.S. population at the time, tuned in to the first Ed Sullivan Show appearance two days later on February 9. During the week of April 4, The Beatles held the top five places on the Billboard Hot 100, a feat that has never been repeated. They had an additional seven songs at lower positions. That's twelve songs on the Billboard charts at once. Of all the music acts on the charts, 12 percent of the entries consisted of Beatles songs. They were so unaware of their popularity in America that, on their arrival, they initially thought the crowds were there to greet someone else.   Oh, and their Concerts Often Smelled Like Urine Apparently, the masses of young girls who turned up for their concerts, movie premieres, or to wave hello as the Beatles walked off the plane in a new city were apparently too distracted by their love for the band to care about whether or not their bladders were full. DSo, they'd pee themselves.  In 1964, the band undertook their first appearances outside of Europe and North America, touring Australia and New Zealand, notably without Ringo Starr, who was ill and was temporarily replaced by session drummer Jimmy Nicol. When they arrived in Adelaide, The Beatles were greeted by what is reputed to be the largest crowd of their touring career, when over 300,000 people turned out to see them at the Adelaide Town Hall. Yeah, Adelaide's population was only right around 200,000. In September of that year, baseball owner Charles O. Finley paid the band the unheard-of sum of $150,000 to play in Kansas City, Missouri. That's $1,398,914.52 today and utterly unheard of at that time.   In 1965, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom bestowed the band the Member of the Order of the British Empire or MBE, a civil honor nominated by Prime Minister Harold Wilson.   On August 15, that year, The Beatles performed in the first stadium rock concert in the history of Rock n roll, playing at Shea Stadium in New York to a crowd of 55,600. The stadium's capacity is 57,333. The band later admitted that they had mainly been unable to hear themselves play or sing due to the volume of screaming and cheering. This concert is generally considered when they started disliking playing live shows.   In 1965, recently interested in Indian music, George Harrison purchased a sitar. He played it in the song Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown), the first instance of such an instrument being used on a rock record. He later took sitar lessons from maestro Ravi Shankar, and implemented additional elements of Eastern music and spirituality into his songs, notably Love You To and Within You Without You. These musical decisions significantly increased the influence of Indian music on popular culture in the late 1960s.   In July 1966, when The Beatles toured the Philippines, they unintentionally snubbed the nation's first lady, Imelda Marcos, who had expected the group to attend a breakfast reception at the Presidential Palace. Manager Brian Epstein was forced to give back all the money that the band had earned while there before being allowed to leave the country.   Upon returning from the Philippines, an earlier comment by John Lennon back in March of that year launched a backlash against The Beatles. In an interview with British reporter Maureen Cleave, Lennon had offered his opinion that Christianity was dying and that The Beatles were "more popular than Jesus now." Oops!   There was an immediate response, starting with an announcement by two radio stations in Alabama and Texas that they had banned Beatles' music from their playlists. WAQY DJ, Tommy Charles said: "We just felt it was so absurd and sacrilegious that something ought to be done to show them that they can't get away with this sort of thing." Around two dozen other stations followed suit with similar announcements. Some stations in the South (shocker) went further, organizing demonstrations with bonfires, drawing hordes of teenagers to burn their Beatles' records and other memorabilia publicly. Many people affiliated with churches in the American South took the suggestion seriously.   The Memphis, TN city council, aware that a Beatles' concert was scheduled at the Mid-South Coliseum during the group's upcoming U.S. tour, voted to cancel it. Rather than have "municipal facilities be used as a forum to ridicule anyone's religion" and said, "The Beatles are not welcome in Memphis." On August 13, The Ku Klux Klan nailed a Beatles' album to a wooden cross and subsequently burned it, vowing "vengeance," with conservative groups staging further public burnings of Beatles' records.   Young people across the United States and South Africa burned Beatles records in protest. Then, under tremendous pressure from the American media, John Lennon apologized for his remarks at a press conference in Chicago on August 11, the eve of the first performance of what turned out to be their final tour.   The Beatles performed their last concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on August 29, 1966. From that point forward, they focused on recording music. They ended up pioneering more advanced, multi-layered arrangements in popular and pop music. After three months away from each other, they returned to Abbey Road Studios on November 24, 1966, to begin a 129-day recording period in making their eighth album: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, was released on June 1, 1967.   Along with studio tricks such as sound effects, unconventional microphone placements, automatic double-tracking, and vari-speed recording, The Beatles began to augment their recordings with unconventional instruments for rock music at the time. These instruments included string and brass ensembles, Indian instruments such as the sitar and the "swarmandel," tape loops, and early electronic devices, including the "Mellotron," which was used with flute voices on the intro to "Strawberry Fields Forever." McCartney once asked Martin what a guitar would sound like if played underwater and was serious about trying it. Lennon also wondered what his vocals would sound like if he was hanging upside down from the ceiling. Unfortunately, their ideas were ahead of the available technology at the time.   Beginning with the use of a string quartet (arranged by George Martin) on Yesterday in 1965, The Beatles pioneered a modern form of art-rock and art song, exemplified by the double-quartet string arrangement on "Eleanor Rigby" (1966), "Here, There and Everywhere" (1966), and "She's Leaving Home" (1967). In addition, Lennon and McCartney's interest in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach led them to use a piccolo trumpet on the arrangement of "Penny Lane" and a Mellotron at the start of "Strawberry Fields Forever."   On June 25, 1967, the Beatles became the first band globally transmitted on television, in front of an estimated 400 million people worldwide, in a segment within the first-ever worldwide T.V. satellite hook-up, a show entitled Our World. The Beatles were transmitted live from Abbey Road Studios, and their new song "All You Need Is Love" was recorded live during the show.   Following the triumphs of the Sgt. Pepper album and the global broadcast, The Beatles' situation seemingly got worse. First, their manager Brian Epstein died of an overdose of sleeping pills on August 27, 1967, at 32, and the band's business affairs began to unravel. Next, at the end of 1967, they received their first major negative press criticism in the U.K., with disparaging reviews of their surrealistic T.V. film Magical Mystery Tour. The public wasn't a fan, either.   The group spent the early part of 1968 in Rishikesh, Uttar Pradesh, India, studying transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Upon their return, Lennon and McCartney formed Apple Corps, initially a philanthropic business venture they described as an attempt at "western communism." The middle part of 1968 saw the guys busy recording the double album, The Beatles, popularly known as "The White Album" due to its stark white cover. These sessions saw deep divisions beginning within the band, including John Lennon's new girlfriend, Yoko Ono, being at his side through much of the sessions and the feeling that Paul McCartney was becoming too dominating. Paul McCartney gradually took more control of the group. Internal divisions within the band had been a small but growing problem during their earlier career. Most notably, this was reflected in the difficulty that George Harrison experienced in getting his songs onto Beatles' albums, and in the growing artistic and personal differences between John and Paul.   On the business side, Paul wanted Lee Eastman, the father of his wife, Linda Eastman, to manage The Beatles, but the other guys wanted New York manager Allen Klein to represent them. All of the band's decisions in the past were unanimous, but this time the four could not agree on a manager. Lennon, Harrison, and Starr felt the Eastmans would look after McCartney's well-being before the group's. Paul was quoted years later during the Anthology interviews, saying, "Looking back, I can understand why they would feel that was biased against them." Afterward, the band kicked themselves in the ass for the Klein decision, as Klein embezzled millions from their earnings.   Their final live performance was on the rooftop of the Apple building in Savile Row, London, on January 30, 1969, the next-to-last day of the problematic Get Back sessions. Mainly due to Paul McCartney's efforts, they recorded their final album, Abbey Road, in the summer of 1969.   John Lennon announced his departure to the rest of the group on September 20, 1969. The rest of the band talked him out of saying anything publicly. In March 1970, the band gave the "Get Back" session tapes to American producer Phil Spector, whose "Wall of Sound" production was in direct opposition to the record's original intent to appear as a stripped-down live studio performance. McCartney announced the breakup on April 10, 1970, a week before releasing his first solo album, McCartney. On May 8, 1970, the Spector-produced version of Get Back was released as the album Let It Be, followed by the documentary film of the same name. The Beatles' partnership was legally dissolved after McCartney filed a lawsuit on December 31, 1970. Following the group's dissolution, the BBC marketed an extensive collection of Beatles recordings, mainly of original studio sessions from 1963 to 1968. Much of this material formed the basis for a 1988 radio documentary series, The Beeb's Lost Beatles Tapes. Later, in 1994, the best of these sessions were given an official EMI, released on Live at the BBC.   On the evening of December 8 1980, John Lennon was shot and fatally wounded in the archway of the Dakota, his home in New York City. His killer was Mark David Chapman, an American Beatles fan incensed by Lennon's lavish lifestyle and his 1966 comment that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus." Chapman said he was inspired by the fictional character Holden Caulfield from J. D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye, a "phony-killer" who despised hypocrisy. Chapman planned the killing over several months and waited for John at the Dakota on the morning of December 8. Early in the evening, Chapman met Lennon, who signed his copy of the album Double Fantasy and subsequently left for a recording session. Later that night, Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, returned to the Dakota. As Lennon and Ono approached the building's entrance, Chapman fired five hollow-point bullets from a .38 special revolver, four of which hit John in the back. Chapman remained at the scene reading The Catcher in the Rye until the police arrested him. John Lennon was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital in a police car, where he was pronounced dead on arrival at around 11:15 p.m.   In February 1994, the then-three surviving Beatles reunited to produce and record additional music for a few of John Lennon's old unfinished demos, almost as if reuniting the Beatles. "Free As A Bird" premiered as part of The Beatles Anthology, a series of television documentaries, and was released as a single in December 1995, with "Real Love" following in March 1996. These songs were also included in the three Anthology collections of C.D.s released in 1995 and 1996, each consisting of two C.D.s of never-before-released Beatles material.   On November 29 2001, George Harrison died at a property belonging to Paul McCartney, on Heather Road in Beverly Hills, California. He was 58 years old. As relayed in a statement by his wife Olivia and son Dhani, his final message to the world was: "Everything else can wait, but the search for God cannot wait, and love one another." The Beatles were the best-selling popular musical act of the twentieth century. EMI estimated that by 1985, the band had sold over one billion discs or tapes worldwide. In addition, the Recording Industry Association of America has certified The Beatles as the top-selling artists of all time in the United States based on U.S. sales of singles and albums.   The Beatles have spent 132 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart – by far the most of any artist. Garth Brooks occupied the top spot for 52 weeks, the second most.   The Beatles are one of only two musical acts to have eight consecutive albums on the Billboard 200 all hit No. 1.  – the other being Eminem –   Anthology 1 sold 450,000 copies on its first day of release, reaching the highest volume of single-day sales ever for an album. In 2000, a compilation album named one was released, containing almost every number-one single released by the band from 1962 to 1970. The collection sold 3.6 million copies in its first week and more than 12 million in three weeks worldwide, becoming the fastest-selling album of all time and the biggest-selling album of 2000. The collection also reached number one in the United States and 33 other countries. In 1988, every Beatles member (including Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe) was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. www.iconsandoutlaws.com www.accidentaldads.com  

Una breve reseña historica de dos figuras que influyeron mucho en la interpretacion musical de los Beatles y de quien lograria que sobresalieran de entre todos los demas.

En esta edición de Helter Skelter estaremos junto a los Beatles y la grabaciòn con Tony Sheridan. Ademàs Brian Epstein descubre a los muchachos. Seguinos por https://espectador.com/ todos los sàbados In this edition we will be together with the Beatles and the recording with Tony Sheridan. Also Brian Epstein discovers the boys.

January of 1962 was the beginning of Brian Epstein managing The Beatles. He got to work right away. He started by convincing Deutsche Grammophon's Polydor Records division to release 'My Bonnie,' the song that they had recorded in Hamburg in June of 1961 backing Tony Sheridan, as a single in the UK. That would happen on January 5, 1962. Added bonus, instead of crediting the group as Tony Sheridan and The Beat Brothers, Epstein convinced them to call them Tony Sheridan and The Beatles. It's success was minimal to non-existent. But Epstein wasn't done. He also needed to formalize a management contract with The Beatles. He looked at sample of such contracts and found them lacking, specifically in their treatment of the musical artists. What he wanted was a fair contract, one that would treat The Beatles with the respect they deserved as well as one that the group could get out of if necessary. This episode of the Beatles60 podcast looks into what was going on in The Mind of Brian. NOTE! We give you a nice long list of links for each episode. The links are almost as interesting as the podcast! See: https://beatles60.group/blog --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/beatles60/message

2022 is the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese Zodiac, as was 1962. And that year was a huge one for The Beatles. It started with an audition with Decca Records, on New Year's Day. Four days later they would technically have their first UK single release, when Germany's Polydor Records released the version of “My Bonnie” that they had recorded in June of 1961. It would go out under the name Tony Sheridan and The Beatles. Neither of those two events ended up amounting to much, but at least things were getting started. Starting with EMI and Decca, the rejections from London-based record labels started coming in. Something would have to change. Brian Epstein put The Beatles in suits and the inevitable line-up change would happen in August. A lot has been made about how and why Pete Best was replaced by Ringo Starr, sometimes revolving around the idea that George Martin wasn't going to let Pete play on their recordings. But it was actually a completely commonplace practice for studio drummers to play on recordings regardless of the live line-up of any group. There must be more to the story… Guest appearances by Eric Howell and Tim Sommer. Also a secret VIP (known to everyone) contributes his famous voice, briefly. (We signed a "no-promo agreement" with the third guest. It's a low-key but almost unbelievable contribution. Just listen for him. You'll know.) NOTE! We give you a nice long list of links for each episode. The links are almost as interesting as the podcast! See: https://beatles60.group/blog --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/beatles60/message

1961 le chanteur des Beatles s'appelle Tony Sheridan, et les Fab Four vont enregistrer leur premier 45 tours avec un hommage aux Shadows et en particulier à Hank Marvin pour le son produit par sa Fender STRATOCASTER branchée sur le fameux Ampli à lampes FENDER TWIN REVERB. CRY FOR THE SHADOWS est le seul morceau instrumental jamais enregistré par les Beatles

Title: The names of the Lord Speaker: Pastor Tony Sheridan Date: 8th May 2016 Location: Adelaide, Australia Listen to the entire Podcast Revival library by visiting https://podcastrevival.com The Revival Fellowship is a Bible directed, Spirit-filled Church and we welcome visitors to our meetings at any of our locations all over the world. To find your nearest venue visit https://therevivalfellowship.com © 2021 The Revival Fellowship. All Rights Reserved. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"My Bonnie", with "The Saints" as the single's B-side, was first released in October 1961 in West Germany, credited to Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers. The German import became popular in Liverpool and Epstein secured a British release on 5 January 1962, this time credited to Tony Sheridan and the Beatles.

"My Bonnie", with "The Saints" as the single's B-side, was first released in October 1961 in West Germany, credited to Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers. The German import became popular in Liverpool and Epstein secured a British release on 5 January 1962, this time credited to Tony Sheridan and the Beatles.

"My Bonnie", with "The Saints" as the single's B-side, was first released in October 1961 in West Germany, credited to Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers. The German import became popular in Liverpool and Epstein secured a British release on 5 January 1962, this time credited to Tony Sheridan and the Beatles.

"My Bonnie", with "The Saints" as the single's B-side, was first released in October 1961 in West Germany, credited to Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers. The German import became popular in Liverpool and Epstein secured a British release on 5 January 1962, this time credited to Tony Sheridan and the Beatles.

Joining Glenn Watkin and Mark Smith tonight was former Coventry City midfielder Tony Sheridan. He talked about his time with the Sky Blues in the early 90's covering his memories of Highfield Road & playing in the Premier League in its first season with Zimbabwean international Peter Ndlovu, fans favourite Mick Quinn & winger John Williams. He also talked about his return to Irish Football at Shelbourne FC after leaving Coventry City & his thoughts on the future of Irish Football at international level. 

Ronnie Whelan is of the opinion that England should drop striker Harry Kane for their match against the Czech Republic. We hear from Vinny Perth, who has returned to Dundalk as manager the panel give their thoughts. On the Save Tolka Park campaign, both Pat Fenlon and Tony Sheridan share their memories of playing in Tolka Park.

Clube Big Beatles lança “Clube Big Beatles e Seus Sócios” [DELUXE] com convidados nacionais, além do ex-baterista dos Beatles, Pete Best, e Tony Sheridan, que fez as primeiras gravações com a banda inglesa. Foram quase 10 anos de envolvimento no projeto do disco que reúne o Clube Big Beatles com representativos nomes da música brasileira, artistas diretamente ligados à história dos Beatles e fãs do quarteto de Liverpool. O quarto disco da banda capixaba Clube Big Beatles chega a sua versão DELUXE e já está disponível em todas as plataformas de streaming. O projeto "Clube Big Beatles e Seus Sócios" tem participações de nomes consagrados do meio musical como Edgard Scandurra (Ira!), Bruno Gouveia (Biquini Cavadão), Andreas Kisser (Sepultura), Dado Villa-Lobos (Legião Urbana), Armandinho Macêdo (A Cor do Som), Ivan Lins, Evandro Mesquita (Blitz), João Barone (Paralamas do Sucesso), Flávio Venturini, Zé Renato (Boca Livre), Leo Gandelman e Jerry Adriani, este em seu último registro. São treze versões gravadas em estúdio, em faixas que abrangem a produção da banda inglesa desde o seu surgimento, tocando covers como Money (That's What I Want), passando por canções de Lennon/MacCartney e de George Harrison em álbuns emblemáticos como Help, Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, White Album, Abbey Road e Let It Be. A versão DELUXE também incluirá mais três faixas bônus, gravadas ao vivo em apresentações em Vitória (ES), trazendo Tony Sheridan (o responsável por lançar os Beatles no mundo do disco) Pete Best (o primeiro baterista dos Beatles) e a Banda da Polícia Militar do Espírito Santo. O projeto demorou quase dez anos para ser considerado pronto pelo produtor Edu Henning, que é um dos integrantes da banda capixaba. O novo disco do Clube Big Beatles, que reúne consagrados cantores e instrumentistas brasileiros, além de convidados ligados diretamente à história dos Beatles, acaba refletindo os caminhos musicais dessa banda do Espírito Santo. De maneira orgânica e confortável, cada convidado do projeto trouxe a sua influência e personalidade para dentro do universo dos Beatles. As guitarras de Edgard Scandurra, Andreas Kisser e Armandinho Macedo mostram bem os caminhos distintos destes exímios músicos para cada canção beatle. Da mesma forma, cada uma das vozes, do rock à MPB, oferece uma nova experiência ao ouvinte, ao longo de seus 45 minutos. Algo que torna “Clube Big Beatles e Seus Sócios” um trabalho único, muito mais representativo do que apenas um disco de uma banda brasileira regravando canções consagradas. O Clube Big Beatles é de Vitória-ES e tem 30 anos de atividade dedicados à obra dos Beatles, fazendo um forte e significativo trabalho que é reconhecido no Brasil e no exterior. Há 26 anos consecutivos, o grupo se apresenta no "International Beatle Week" o Festival dos Beatles de Liverpool, onde estão no Hall da Fama do evento desde 2008. Os capixabas são um dos grupos que representam o Brasil no mais importante evento mundial em torno dos Beatles, e além disso, nenhuma outra banda de fora da Inglaterra já participou tantas vezes do Festival. O Clube Big Beatles não pode ser chamada apenas de uma banda cover dos Beatles. Eles apresentam as músicas com arranjos e interpretações com personalidade, sem preocupação e nem interesse de reproduzir os clássicos dos Beatles da forma em que foram originalmente gravados. Não por menos, este disco traz tantos artistas de renome como convidados em suas faixas.

Title: The afflicted soul Speaker: Pastor Tony Sheridan Date: 9th April 2017 Location: Adelaide, Australia Listen to the entire Podcast Revival library by visiting http://podcastrevival.com/ The Revival Fellowship is a Bible directed, Spirit-filled Church and we welcome visitors to our meetings at any of our locations all over the world. To find your nearest venue visit http://therevivalfellowship.com/ © 2021 The Revival Fellowship. All Rights Reserved. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chi è stato davvero il quinto Beatle? Si sono spese centinaia di righe per rispondere a questa domanda. Ci sono più quinti Beatles di quanta gente compaia sulla copertina di Sgt Pepper.George Martin, Yoko Ono, Brian Epstein, Derek Taylor, Mal Evans, Neil Aspinall, Freda Kelly, Stu Sutcliffe, Pete Best, Tony Sheridan, Billy Preston, Cynthia Lennon, Jane Asher, Pattie Boyd.Nessuno si è mai spinto nell'attribuire questa qualifica a qualcuno che non fosse un essere umano.Per ascoltare la playlist di Spotify della puntata di oggi clicca qui! https://rbe.it/?p=66330

Have you ever let your fingers do the walking (through the bins, on eBay, or at a local record show) and wonder what exactly you are looking at?    This week the WTWF talk through the "non-canonical" Beatles releases.      Hamburg, Sheridan, exploitation discs (ripoffs), and the latest addition to the bunch - the Public Domain CDs.

I just heard the sad news that Gerry Marsden, of Gerry and the Pacemakers, has died today aged seventy-eight. As the latest episode of the podcast is late due to personal issues, I thought I'd make this available to the general public – this is a ten-minute Patreon bonus episode I did back in October, on Gerry and the Pacemakers, so it's here as a little tribute. He'll be missed. ----more---- Transcript Today we're going to look at a group that were for a very short while arguably the most successful band to come out of Liverpool, one that set a record that wouldn't be broken for twenty-one years, and who deserved rather better than the reputation they've ended up with. We're going to look at Gerry and the Pacemakers, and at "How Do You Do It?": [Excerpt: Gerry and the Pacemakers, "How Do You Do It?"] Gerry and the Pacemakers were, in the very early sixties, one of the bands that was most strongly competing for the title of Liverpool's best band. They were so good that before he joined the Beatles, for a while Richy Starkey was considering quitting the Hurricanes and joining them, even though it would mean switching instruments -- Gerry's brother Freddy Marsden was the Pacemakers' drummer, but they didn't have a bass player, and everyone was sure that Richy could pick it up no problem.  The Pacemakers had been around before the Beatles, and they shared similar musical tastes, and even a similar repertoire -- the Beatles dropped "What'd I Say" from their sets because the Pacemakers were also doing it, and when Paul started to sing "Over the Rainbow" in the Beatles' sets, the Pacemakers responded by adding the old Rogers and Hammerstein song "You'll Never Walk Alone" to match it. Both bands played Hamburg backing Tony Sheridan, and both were playing songs by Arthur Alexander, Larry Williams, Richie Barrett and Carl Perkins. The main difference between the two was that the Pacemakers would have a slightly harder-edged sound -- the Pacemakers only had one real singer, Gerry, and so they couldn't do the kind of girl-group harmonies that the Beatles would do, and so they couldn't move off into the songs by the Shirelles or the Cookies that the Beatles performed, and instead had to fill out their set with bluesy songs like Little Walter's "My Babe": [Excerpt: Gerry and the Pacemakers, "My Babe (live)"] There was a friendly but real rivalry between the Beatles and the Pacemakers, so much so that when Mersey Beat had a popularity poll among its readers, the Beatles bought up as many copies of the magazine as they could and filled out the poll under fake names with themselves at the top and the Pacemakers at the bottom, to make sure they won and the Pacemakers only came second (Rory Storm and the Hurricanes tried filling out the poll with themselves at the top too, but Bill Harry disqualified forty ballots written in green ink in the same handwriting, posted from the same letter box, so they came in fourth). It even looked for a while like the Pacemakers would be the very first Liverpool band to release a record -- a local promoter called Sam Leach was planning to set up his own label and record them, before they realised he was better at coming up with plans than coming up with money. The Pacemakers also had their own PA system rather than just relying on the club ones, at a time when no other band did. Indeed, when Brian Epstein took the Decca A&R man Mike Smith to see the Beatles at the Cavern, when it looked like they would be signed to Decca, he seems to have taken Smith out for dinner before the show because the Pacemakers were the support act, and Paul McCartney was worried that if Smith saw the Pacemakers' set he might choose to sign them rather than the Beatles. So it made sense that when Epstein was looking to sign up some more artists to a management contract, he signed the Pacemakers. And it made sense that once the Beatles had had some success, George Martin trusted Epstein enough to sign Gerry and the Pacemakers. And as there was no awkward publishing company contract to deal with like there had been with the Beatles, he could give them "How Do You Do It?", the song that he'd tried to foist on the Beatles: [Excerpt: Gerry and the Pacemakers, "How Do You Do It?"]qqqq Martin's ear for a hit was proved right, and the song went to number one -- and it was the first record from a Liverpool group to do so on what is now considered the "official" chart, though it was then just one of several. Unsurprisingly, the second single released was another Mitch Murray song -- one that was almost identical to "How Do You Do It?": [Excerpt: Gerry and the Pacemakers, "I Like It"]  That also went to number one, as did their third single, "You'll Never Walk Alone": [Excerpt: Gerry and the Pacemakers, "You'll Never Walk Alone"] That last became almost the unofficial anthem of Liverpool after the Pacemakers' release, and is to this day still sung by fans of Liverpool Football Club at every match. It also made them the first act ever to have their first three singles go to number one in the British charts, something that wouldn't be repeated until another Liverpool act, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, twenty-one years later. After that, the group started recording songs Gerry wrote himself, and he proved to be quite good. Their first original single, "I'm the One", went to number two, just behind "Needles and Pins" by the Searchers, and was very much in the same style as their first two hits, but he also started writing a few more interesting and meditative songs, most notably "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying", which became their first and biggest hit in the US: [Excerpt: Gerry and the Pacemakers, "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying"] But the Pacemakers came along, sadly, at *just* the wrong time. As the first of the Liverpool bands other than the Beatles to get signed, they were initially pushed into the same all-round entertainer role that groups like Cliff Richard and the Shadows were in, and their early singles were light pop even as their first album was full of covers of Arthur Alexander songs like "A Shot of Rhythm and Blues". By mid-1964 the light pop style of their early singles was considered hopelessly passe when compared to groups like the Animals, the Rolling Stones, and the Yardbirds -- all of whom were playing the same kind of material that the Pacemakers' pre-fame club sets and first album had been made up of. On the evidence of the small number of live recordings of the Pacemakers, had they been signed even a year later, they would have fit easily into that millieu, and while Gerry Marsden's friendly singing voice and persona would never have allowed him to become a menacing, rebellious figure like Mick Jagger, the group could easily have had a much longer period of success and respect than they did: [Excerpt: Gerry and the Pacemakers, “What'd I Say (Live)”] The Pacemakers split up in 1966, but Gerry later revived the name for tours on the nostalgia circuit. He's now retired due to health problems, but I saw him on what was his last tour a couple of years ago, and he was still good enough that you could understand why, for at least a few weeks, he had once been bigger than the Beatles.

I just heard the sad news that Gerry Marsden, of Gerry and the Pacemakers, has died today aged seventy-eight. As the latest episode of the podcast is late due to personal issues, I thought I’d make this available to the general public – this is a ten-minute Patreon bonus episode I did back in October, on Gerry and the Pacemakers, so it’s here as a little tribute. He’ll be missed. —-more—- Transcript Today we’re going to look at a group that were for a very short while arguably the most successful band to come out of Liverpool, one that set a record that wouldn’t be broken for twenty-one years, and who deserved rather better than the reputation they’ve ended up with. We’re going to look at Gerry and the Pacemakers, and at “How Do You Do It?”: [Excerpt: Gerry and the Pacemakers, “How Do You Do It?”] Gerry and the Pacemakers were, in the very early sixties, one of the bands that was most strongly competing for the title of Liverpool’s best band. They were so good that before he joined the Beatles, for a while Richy Starkey was considering quitting the Hurricanes and joining them, even though it would mean switching instruments — Gerry’s brother Freddy Marsden was the Pacemakers’ drummer, but they didn’t have a bass player, and everyone was sure that Richy could pick it up no problem.  The Pacemakers had been around before the Beatles, and they shared similar musical tastes, and even a similar repertoire — the Beatles dropped “What’d I Say” from their sets because the Pacemakers were also doing it, and when Paul started to sing “Over the Rainbow” in the Beatles’ sets, the Pacemakers responded by adding the old Rogers and Hammerstein song “You’ll Never Walk Alone” to match it. Both bands played Hamburg backing Tony Sheridan, and both were playing songs by Arthur Alexander, Larry Williams, Richie Barrett and Carl Perkins. The main difference between the two was that the Pacemakers would have a slightly harder-edged sound — the Pacemakers only had one real singer, Gerry, and so they couldn’t do the kind of girl-group harmonies that the Beatles would do, and so they couldn’t move off into the songs by the Shirelles or the Cookies that the Beatles performed, and instead had to fill out their set with bluesy songs like Little Walter’s “My Babe”: [Excerpt: Gerry and the Pacemakers, “My Babe (live)”] There was a friendly but real rivalry between the Beatles and the Pacemakers, so much so that when Mersey Beat had a popularity poll among its readers, the Beatles bought up as many copies of the magazine as they could and filled out the poll under fake names with themselves at the top and the Pacemakers at the bottom, to make sure they won and the Pacemakers only came second (Rory Storm and the Hurricanes tried filling out the poll with themselves at the top too, but Bill Harry disqualified forty ballots written in green ink in the same handwriting, posted from the same letter box, so they came in fourth). It even looked for a while like the Pacemakers would be the very first Liverpool band to release a record — a local promoter called Sam Leach was planning to set up his own label and record them, before they realised he was better at coming up with plans than coming up with money. The Pacemakers also had their own PA system rather than just relying on the club ones, at a time when no other band did. Indeed, when Brian Epstein took the Decca A&R man Mike Smith to see the Beatles at the Cavern, when it looked like they would be signed to Decca, he seems to have taken Smith out for dinner before the show because the Pacemakers were the support act, and Paul McCartney was worried that if Smith saw the Pacemakers’ set he might choose to sign them rather than the Beatles. So it made sense that when Epstein was looking to sign up some more artists to a management contract, he signed the Pacemakers. And it made sense that once the Beatles had had some success, George Martin trusted Epstein enough to sign Gerry and the Pacemakers. And as there was no awkward publishing company contract to deal with like there had been with the Beatles, he could give them “How Do You Do It?”, the song that he’d tried to foist on the Beatles: [Excerpt: Gerry and the Pacemakers, “How Do You Do It?”]qqqq Martin’s ear for a hit was proved right, and the song went to number one — and it was the first record from a Liverpool group to do so on what is now considered the “official” chart, though it was then just one of several. Unsurprisingly, the second single released was another Mitch Murray song — one that was almost identical to “How Do You Do It?”: [Excerpt: Gerry and the Pacemakers, “I Like It”]  That also went to number one, as did their third single, “You’ll Never Walk Alone”: [Excerpt: Gerry and the Pacemakers, “You’ll Never Walk Alone”] That last became almost the unofficial anthem of Liverpool after the Pacemakers’ release, and is to this day still sung by fans of Liverpool Football Club at every match. It also made them the first act ever to have their first three singles go to number one in the British charts, something that wouldn’t be repeated until another Liverpool act, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, twenty-one years later. After that, the group started recording songs Gerry wrote himself, and he proved to be quite good. Their first original single, “I’m the One”, went to number two, just behind “Needles and Pins” by the Searchers, and was very much in the same style as their first two hits, but he also started writing a few more interesting and meditative songs, most notably “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying”, which became their first and biggest hit in the US: [Excerpt: Gerry and the Pacemakers, “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying”] But the Pacemakers came along, sadly, at *just* the wrong time. As the first of the Liverpool bands other than the Beatles to get signed, they were initially pushed into the same all-round entertainer role that groups like Cliff Richard and the Shadows were in, and their early singles were light pop even as their first album was full of covers of Arthur Alexander songs like “A Shot of Rhythm and Blues”. By mid-1964 the light pop style of their early singles was considered hopelessly passe when compared to groups like the Animals, the Rolling Stones, and the Yardbirds — all of whom were playing the same kind of material that the Pacemakers’ pre-fame club sets and first album had been made up of. On the evidence of the small number of live recordings of the Pacemakers, had they been signed even a year later, they would have fit easily into that millieu, and while Gerry Marsden’s friendly singing voice and persona would never have allowed him to become a menacing, rebellious figure like Mick Jagger, the group could easily have had a much longer period of success and respect than they did: [Excerpt: Gerry and the Pacemakers, “What’d I Say (Live)”] The Pacemakers split up in 1966, but Gerry later revived the name for tours on the nostalgia circuit. He’s now retired due to health problems, but I saw him on what was his last tour a couple of years ago, and he was still good enough that you could understand why, for at least a few weeks, he had once been bigger than the Beatles.

Title: Comparisons Speaker: Pastor Tony Sheridan Date: 5th March 2019 Location: Adelaide, Australia Visit http://podcastrevival.com/239 for more information. If you enjoy this podcast we would love for you to share it with others. The Revival Fellowship is a Bible directed, Spirit-filled Church and we welcome visitors to our meetings at any of our locations all over the world. To find your nearest venue visit http://therevivalfellowship.com © 2020 The Revival Fellowship. All Rights Reserved. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week there are two episodes of the podcast going up, both of them longer than normal. This one, episode one hundred, is the hundredth-episode special and is an hour and a half long. It looks at the early career of the Beatles, and at the three recordings of “Love Me Do”. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Misirlou” by Dick Dale and the Deltones. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

This week there are two episodes of the podcast going up, both of them longer than normal. This one, episode one hundred, is the hundredth-episode special and is an hour and a half long. It looks at the early career of the Beatles, and at the three recordings of “Love Me Do”. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Misirlou” by Dick Dale and the Deltones. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

This week there are two episiodes of the podcast going up, both of them longer than normal. This one, episode one hundred, is the hundredth-episode special and is an hour and a half long. It looks at the early career of the Beatles, and at the three recordings of "Love Me Do". Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.   Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Misirlou" by Dick Dale and the Deltones. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ ----more---- Resources No Mixclouds this week, as both episodes have far too many songs by one artist. The mixclouds will be back with episode 101. While there are many books on the Beatles, and I have read dozens of them, only one needs to be mentioned as a reference for this episode (others will be used for others). All These Years Vol 1: Tune In by Mark Lewisohn is simply the *only* book worth reading on the Beatles' career up to the end of 1962. It is the most detailed, most accurate, biography imaginable, and the gold standard by which all other biographies of musicians should be measured. I only wish volumes two and three were available already so I could not expect my future episodes on the Beatles to be obsolete when they do come out. There are two versions of the book -- a nine-hundred page mass-market version and a 1700-page expanded edition. I recommend the latter. The information in this podcast is almost all from Lewisohn's book, but I must emphasise that the opinions are mine, and so are any errors -- Lewisohn's book only has one error that I'm aware of (a joke attributed to the comedian Jasper Carrott in a footnote that has since been traced to an earlier radio show). I am only mortal, and so have doubtless misunderstood or oversimplified things and introduced errors where he had none.   The single version of "Love Me Do" can be found on Past Masters, a 2-CD compilation of the Beatles' non-album tracks that includes the majority of their singles and B-sides. The version with Andy White playing on can be found on Please Please Me. The version with Pete Best, and many of the other early tracks used here, is on Anthology 1.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Errata I pronounce the name of Lewisohn's book as "All Those Years" instead of "All These Years". I say " The Jets hadn't liked playing at Williams' club" at one point. I meant "at Koschmider's club"   Transcript   The Beatles came closer than most people realise to never making a record. Until the publication of Mark Lewisohn's seminal biography All These Years vol 1: Tune In, in 2013 everyone thought they knew the true story -- John met Paul at Woolton Village Fete in 1957, and Paul joined the Quarrymen, who later became the Beatles. They played Hamburg and made a demo, and after the Beatles' demo was turned down by Decca, their manager Brian Epstein shopped it around every record label without success, until finally George Martin heard the potential in it and signed them to Parlophone, a label which was otherwise known for comedy records. Martin was, luckily, the one producer in the whole of the UK who could appreciate the Beatles' music, and he signed them up, and the rest was history. The problem is, as Lewisohn showed, that's not what happened. Today I'm going to tell, as best I can the story of how the Beatles actually became the band that they became, and how they got signed to EMI records. I'm going to tell you the story of "Love Me Do": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love Me Do (single version)"] As I mentioned at the beginning, this episode owes a *huge* debt to Mark Lewisohn's book. I like to acknowledge my sources, anyway, but I've actually had difficulty with this episode because Lewisohn's book is *so* detailed, *so* full, and written *so* well that much of the effort in writing this episode came from paring down the information, rather than finding more, and from reworking things so I was not just paraphrasing bits of his writing. Normally I rely on many sources, and integrate the material myself, but Lewisohn has done all that work far better than any other biographer of any other musician. Were the Beatles not such an important part of music history, I would just skip this episode because there is nothing for me to add. As it is, I *obviously* have to cover this, but I almost feel like I'm cheating in doing so. If you find this episode interesting at all, please do yourself a favour and buy that book.  This episode is going to be a long one -- much longer than normal. I won't know the precise length until after I've recorded and edited it, of course, but I'm guessing it's going to be about ninety minutes. This is the hundredth episode, the end of the second year of the podcast, the end of the second book based on the podcast, and the introduction of the single most important band in the whole story, so I'm going to stretch out a bit. I should also mention that there are a couple of discussions of sudden, traumatic, deaths in this episode. With all that said, settle in, this is going to take a while. Every British act we've looked at so far -- and many of those we're going to look at in the next year or two -- was based in London. Either they grew up there, or they moved there before their musical career really took off. The Beatles, during the time we're covering in this episode, were based in Liverpool. While they did eventually move to London, it wasn't until after they'd started having hits. And what listeners from outside the UK might not realise is what that means in terms of attitudes and perceptions. Liverpool is a large city -- it currently has a population of around half a million, and the wider Liverpool metropolitan area is closer to two million -- but like all British cities other than London, it was regarded largely as a joke in the British media, and so in return the people of Liverpool had a healthy contempt for London. To give Americans some idea of how London dominates in Britain, and thus how it's thought of outside London, imagine that New York, Washington DC, and Los Angeles were all the same city -- that the financial, media, and political centres of the country were all the same place. Now further imagine that Silicon Valley and all the Ivy League universities were half an hour's drive from that city. Now, imagine how much worse the attitudes that that city would have about so-called "flyover states" would be, and imagine in return how people in large Midwestern cities like Detroit or Chicago would think about that big city.  In this analogy, Liverpool is Detroit, and like Detroit, it was very poor and had produced a few famous musicians, most notably Billy Fury, who was from an impoverished area of Liverpool called the Dingle: [Excerpt: Billy Fury, "Halfway to Paradise"] But Fury had, of course, moved to London to have his career. That's what you did. But in general, Liverpool, if people in London thought of it at all, was thought of as a provincial backwater full of poor people, many of them Irish, and all of them talking with a ridiculous accent. Liverpool was ignored by London, and that meant that things could develop there out of sight. The story of the Beatles starts in the 1950s, with two young men in their mid-teens. John Winston Lennon was born in 1940, and had had a rather troubled childhood. His father had been a merchant seaman who had been away in the war, and his parents' relationship had deteriorated for that and other reasons. As a result, Lennon had barely known his father, and when his mother met another man, Lennon's aunt, Mary Smith, who he always called Mimi, had taken him in, believing that his mother "living in sin" would be a bad influence on the young boy. The Smith family were the kind of lower middle class family that seemed extremely rich to the impoverished families in Liverpool, but were not well off by any absolute standard. Mimi, in particular, was torn between two very different urges. On one hand, she had strongly bohemian, artistic, urges -- as did all of her sisters. She was a voracious reader, and a lover of art history, and encouraged these tendencies in John. But at the same time, she was of that class which has a little status, but not much security, and so she was extremely wary of the need to appear respectable. This tension between respectability and rebellion was something that would appear in many of the people who Lennon later worked with, such as Brian Epstein and George Martin, and it was something that Lennon would always respond to -- those people would be the only ones who Lennon would ever view as authority figures he could respect, though he would also resent them at times. And it might be that combination of rebellion and respectability that Lennon saw in Paul McCartney. McCartney was from a family who, in the Byzantine world of the British class system of the time, were a notch or so lower than the Smith family who raised Lennon, but he was academically bright, and his family had big plans for him -- they thought that it might even be possible that he might become a teacher if he worked very hard at school. McCartney was a far less openly rebellious person than Lennon was, but he was still just as caught up in the music and fashions of the mid-fifties that his father associated with street gangs and hooliganism. Lennon, like many teenagers in Britain at the time, had had his life changed when he first heard Elvis Presley, and he had soon become a rock and roll obsessive -- Elvis was always his absolute favourite, but he also loved Little Richard, who he thought was almost as good, and he admired Buddy Holly, who had a special place in Lennon's heart as Holly wore glasses on stage, something that Lennon, who was extremely short-sighted, could never bring himself to do, but which at least showed him that it was a possibility. Lennon was, by his mid-teens, recreating a relationship with his mother, and one of the things they bonded over was music -- she taught him how to play the banjo, and together they worked out the chords to "That'll Be the Day", and Lennon later switched to the guitar, playing banjo chords on five of the six strings.  Like many, many, teenagers of the time, Lennon also formed a skiffle group, which he called the Quarrymen, after a line in his school song. The group tended to have a rotating lineup, but Lennon was the unquestioned leader. The group had a repertoire consisting of the same Lonnie Donegan songs that every other skiffle group was playing, plus any Elvis and Buddy Holly songs that could sound reasonable with a lineup of guitars, teachest bass, and washboard. The moment that changed the history of the music, though, came on July the sixth, 1957, when Ivan Vaughan, a friend of Lennon's, invited his friend Paul McCartney to go and see the Quarry Men perform at Woolton Village Fete. That day has gone down in history as "the day John met Paul", although Mark Lewisohn has since discovered that Lennon and McCartney had briefly met once before. It is, though, the day on which Lennon and McCartney first impressed each other musically. McCartney talks about being particularly impressed that the Quarry Men's lead singer was changing the lyrics to the songs he was performing, making up new words when he forgot the originals -- he says in particular that he remembers Lennon singing "Come Go With Me" by the Del-Vikings: [Excerpt: The Del-Vikings, "Come Go With Me"] McCartney remembers Lennon as changing the lyrics to "come go with me, right down to the penitentiary", and thinking that was clever. Astonishingly, some audio recording actually exists of the Quarry Men's second performance that day -- they did two sets, and this second one comes just after Lennon met McCartney rather than just before. The recording only seems to exist in a very fragmentary form, which has snatches of Lennon singing "Baby Let's Play House" and Lonnie Donegan's hit "Puttin' on the Style", which was number one on the charts at the time, but that even those fragments have survived, given how historic a day this was, is almost miraculous: [Excerpt: The Quarrymen, "Puttin' on the Style"] After the first set, Lennon met McCartney, who was nearly two years younger, but a more accomplished musician -- for a start, he knew how to tune the guitar with all six strings, and to proper guitar tuning, rather than tuning five strings like a banjo. Lennon and his friends were a little nonplussed by McCartney holding his guitar upside-down at first -- McCartney is left-handed -- but despite having an upside-down guitar with the wrong tuning, McCartney managed to bash out a version of Eddie Cochran's "Twenty-Flight Rock", a song he would often perform in later decades when reminding people of this story: [Excerpt: Paul McCartney, "Twenty-Flight Rock"] This was impressive to Lennon for three reasons. The first was that McCartney was already a strong, confident performer -- he perhaps seemed a little more confident than he really was, showing off in front of the bigger boys like this. The second was that "Twenty-Flight Rock" was a moderately obscure song -- it hadn't charted, but it *had* appeared in The Girl Can't Help It, a film which every rock and roll lover in Britain had watched at the cinema over and over. Choosing that song rather than, say, "Be-Bop-A-Lula", was a way of announcing a kind of group affiliation -- "I am one of you, I am a real rock and roll fan, not just a casual listener to what's in the charts". I stress that second point because it's something that's very important in the history of the Beatles generally -- they were *music fans*, and often fans of relatively obscure records. That's something that bound Lennon and McCartney, and later the other members, together from the start, and something they always noted about other musicians. They weren't the kind of systematic scholars who track down rare pressings and memorise every session musician's name, but they were constantly drawn to find the best new music, and to seek it out wherever they could. But the most impressive thing for Lennon -- and one that seems a little calculated on McCartney's part, though he's never said that he thought about this that I'm aware of -- was that this was an extremely wordy song, and McCartney *knew all the words*. Remember that McCartney had noticed Lennon forgetting the words to a song with lyrics as simple as "come, come, come, come, come into my heart/Tell me darling we will never part", and here's McCartney singing this fast-paced, almost patter song, and getting the words right.  From the beginning, McCartney was showing how he could complement Lennon -- if Lennon could impress McCartney by improvising new lyrics when he forgot the old ones, then McCartney could impress Lennon by remembering the lyrics that Lennon couldn't -- and by writing them down for Lennon, sharing his knowledge freely. McCartney went on to show off more, and in particular impressed Lennon by going to a piano and showing off his Little Richard imitation. Little Richard was the only serious rival to Elvis in Lennon's affections, and McCartney could do a very decent imitation of him. This was someone special, clearly. But this put Lennon in a quandary. McCartney was clearly far, far, better than any of the Quarry Men -- at least Lennon's equal, and light years ahead of the rest of them. Lennon had a choice -- invite this young freak of nature into his band, and improve the band dramatically, but no longer be the unquestioned centre of the group, or remain in absolute control but not have someone in the group who *knew the words* and *knew how to tune a guitar*, and other such magical abilities that no mere mortals had. Those who only know of Lennon from his later reputation as a massive egoist would be surprised, but he decided fairly quickly that he had to make the group better at his own expense. He invited McCartney to join the group, and McCartney said yes. Over the next few months the membership of the Quarry Men changed. They'd been formed while they were all at Quarry Bank Grammar School, but that summer Lennon moved on to art school. I'm going to have to talk about the art school system, and the British education system of the fifties and early sixties a lot over the next few months, but here's an extremely abbreviated and inaccurate version that's good enough for now. Between the ages of eleven and sixteen, people in Britain -- at least those without extremely rich parents, who had a different system -- went to two kinds of school depending on the result of an exam they took aged eleven, which was based on some since-discredited eugenic research about children's potential. If you passed the exam, you were considered academically apt, and went to a grammar school, which was designed to filter you through to university and the professions. If you failed the exam, you went to a secondary modern, which was designed to give you the skills to get a trade and make a living working with your hands. And for the most part, people followed the pipeline that was set up for them. You go to grammar school, go to university, become a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher. You go to secondary modern, leave school at fourteen, become a plumber or a builder or a factory worker. But there are always those people who don't properly fit into the neat categories that the world tries to put them in. And for people in their late teens and early twenties, people who'd been through the school system but not been shaped properly by it, there was another option at this time. If you were bright and creative, but weren't suited for university because you'd failed your exams, you could go to art school. The supposed purpose of the art schools was to teach people to do commercial art, and they would learn skills like lettering and basic draughtsmanship. But what the art schools really did was give creative people space to explore ideas, to find out about areas of art and culture that would otherwise have been closed to them. Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Ian Dury, Ray Davies, Bryan Ferry, Syd Barrett, and many more people we'll be seeing over the course of this story went to art school, and as David Bowie would put it later, the joke at the time was that you went to art school to learn to play blues guitar. With Lennon and his friends all moving on from the school that had drawn them together, the group stabilised for a time on a lineup of Lennon, McCartney, Colin Hanton, Len Garry, and Eric Griffiths. But the first time this version of the group played live, while McCartney sang well, he totally fluffed his lead guitar lines on stage. While there were three guitarists in the band at this point, they needed someone who could play lead fluently and confidently on stage. Enter George Harrison, who had suddenly become a close friend of McCartney. Harrison went to the same school as McCartney -- a grammar school called the Liverpool Institute, but was in the year below McCartney, and so the two had always been a bit distant. However, at the same time as Lennon was moving on to art school after failing his exams, McCartney was being kept back a year for failing Latin -- which his father always thought was deliberate, so he wouldn't have to go to university. Now he was in the same year at school as Harrison, and they started hanging out together. The two bonded strongly over music, and would do things like take a bus journey to another part of town, where someone lived who they heard owned a copy of "Searchin'" by the Coasters: [Excerpt: The Coasters, "Searchin'"] The two knocked on this stranger's door, asked if he'd play them this prized record, and he agreed -- and then they stole it from him as they left his house. Another time they took the bus to another part of town again, because they'd heard that someone in that part of town knew how to play a B7 chord on his guitar, and sat there as he showed them. So now the Quarrymen needed a lead guitarist, McCartney volunteered his young mate. There are a couple of stories about how Harrison came to join the band -- apparently he auditioned for Lennon at least twice, because Lennon was very unsure about having such a young kid in his band -- but the story I like best is that Harrison took his guitar to a Quarry Men gig at Wilson Hall -- he'd apparently often take his guitar to gigs and just see if he could sit in with the bands. On the bill with the Quarry Men was another group, the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, who were generally regarded as the best skiffle band in Liverpool. Lennon told Harrison that he could join the band if he could play as well as Clayton, and Harrison took out his guitar and played "Raunchy": [Excerpt: Bill Justis, "Raunchy"] I like this story rather than the other story that the members would tell later -- that Harrison played "Raunchy" on a bus for Lennon -- for one reason. The drummer in the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group was one Richy Starkey, and if it happened that way, the day that George joined the Quarry Men was also the day that John, Paul, George, and Ringo were all in the same place for the first time. George looked up to John and essentially idolised him, though Lennon thought of him as a little annoying at times -- he'd follow John everywhere, and not take a hint when he wasn't wanted sometimes, just eager to be with his big cool new mate. But despite this tiny bit of tension, John, Paul, and George quickly became a solid unit -- helped by the fact that the school that Paul and George went to was part of the same complex of buildings as Lennon's art college, so they'd all get the bus there and back together.  George was not only younger, he was a notch or two further down the social class ladder than John or Paul, and he spoke more slowly, which made him seem less intelligent. He came from Speke, which was a rougher area, and he would dress even more like a juvenile delinquent than the others. Meanwhile, Len Garry and Eric Griffiths left the group -- Len Garry because he became ill and had to spend time in hospital, and anyway they didn't really need a teachest bass. What they did need was an electric bass, and since they had four guitars now they tried to persuade Eric to get one, but he didn't want to pay that much money, and he was always a little on the outside of the main three members, as he didn't share their sense of humour. So the group got Nigel Walley, who was acting as the group's manager, to fire him. The group was now John, Paul, and George all on guitars, and Colin Hanton on drums. Sometimes, if they played a venue that had a piano, they'd also bring along a schoolfriend of Paul's, John "Duff" Lowe, to play piano. Meanwhile, the group were growing in other ways. Both John and Paul had started writing songs, together and apart. McCartney seems to have been the first, writing a song called "I Lost My Little Girl" which he would eventually record more than thirty years later: [Excerpt: Paul McCartney, "I Lost My Little Girl"] Lennon's first song likewise sang about a little girl, this time being "Hello, Little Girl". By the middle of 1958, this five-piece group was ready to cut their first record -- at a local studio that would cut a single copy of a disc for you. They went into this studio at some time around July 1958, and recorded two songs. The first was their version of "That'll Be the Day": [Excerpt: The Quarry Men, "That'll be the Day"] The B-side was a song that McCartney had written, with a guitar solo that George had come up with, so the label credit read "McCartney/Harrison". "In Spite of All the Danger" seems to have been inspired by Elvis' "Trying to Get to You": [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Trying to Get to You"] It's a rough song, but a good attempt for a teenager who had only just started writing songs: [Excerpt: The Quarry Men, "In Spite of All the Danger"] Apparently Lowe and Hanton hadn't heard the song before they started playing, but they make a decent enough fist of it in the circumstances. Lennon took the lead even though it was McCartney's song -- he said later "I was such a bully in those days I didn’t even let Paul sing his own song." That was about the last time that this lineup of Quarry Men played together. In July, the month that seems likely for the recording, Lowe finished at the Liverpool Institute, and so he drifted away from McCartney and Harrison. Meanwhile Hanton had a huge row with the others after a show, and they fell out and never spoke again. The Quarry Men were reduced to a trio of Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison. But -- possibly the very day after that recording if an unreliable plaque at the studio where they recorded it is to be believed -- something happened which was to have far more impact on the group than the drummer leaving. John Lennon's mother, with whom he'd slowly been repairing his relationship, had called round to visit Mimi. She left the house, and bumped into Nigel Walley, who was calling round to see John. She told him he wasn't there, and that he could walk with her to the bus stop. They walked a little while, then went off in different directions. Walley heard a thump and turned round -- Julia Lennon had been hit by a car and killed instantly. As you can imagine, John's mother dying caused him a huge amount of distress, but it also gave him a bond with McCartney, whose own mother had died of cancer shortly before they met. Neither really spoke about it to each other, and to the extent they did it was with ultra-cynical humour -- but the two now shared something deeper than just the music, even though the music itself was deep enough. Lennon became a much harder, nastier, person after this, at least for a time, his natural wit taking on a dark edge, and he would often drink too much and get aggressive. But life still went on, and John, Paul, and George kept trying to perform -- though the gigs dried up, and they didn't have a drummer any more. They'd just say "the rhythm's in the guitars" when asked why they didn't have one. They were also no longer the Quarry Men -- they didn't have a name. At one point late in the year, they also only had two guitars between the three of them -- Lennon seems to have smashed his in a fit of fury after his mother's death. But he stole one backstage at a talent contest, and soon they were back to having three. That talent show was one run by Carroll Levis, who we talked about before in the episode on "Shakin' All Over". The three boys went on Levis' show, this time performing as Johnny & The Moondogs --  in Manchester, at the Hippodrome in Ancoats, singing Buddy Holly's "Think it Over": [Excerpt: The Crickets, "Think it Over"] Lennon sang lead with his arms draped over the shoulders of Paul and George, who sang backing vocals and played guitar. They apparently did quite well, but had to leave before the show finished to get the last train back to Liverpool, and so never found out whether the audience would have made them the winner, with the possibility of a TV appearance. They did well enough, though, to impress a couple of other young lads on the bill, two Manchester singers named Allan Clarke and Graham Nash. But in general, the Japage Three, a portmanteau of their names that they settled on as their most usual group name at this point, played very little in 1959 -- indeed, George spent much of the early part of the year moonlighting in the Les Stewart Quartet, another group, though he still thought of Lennon and McCartney as his musical soulmates; the Les Stewart Quartet were just a gig.  The three of them would spend much of their time at the Jacaranda, a coffee bar opened by a Liverpool entrepreneur, Allan Williams, in imitation of the 2is, which was owned by a friend of his. Lennon was also spending a lot of time with an older student at his art school, Stuart Sutcliffe, one of the few people in the world that Lennon himself looked up to. The Les Stewart Quartet would end up indirectly being key to the Beatles' development, because after one of their shows at a local youth club they were approached by a woman named Mona Best. Mona's son Pete liked to go to the youth club, but she was fairly protective of him, and also wanted him to have more friends -- he was a quiet boy who didn't make friends easily. So she'd hit upon a plan -- she'd open her own club in her cellar, since the Best family were rich enough to have a big house. If there was a club *in Pete's house* he'd definitely make lots of friends. They needed a band, and she asked the Les Stewart Quartet if they'd like to be the resident band at this new club, the Casbah, and also if they'd like to help decorate it.  They said yes, but then Paul and George went on a hitch-hiking holiday around Wales for a few days, and George didn't get back in time to play a gig the quartet had booked. Ken Brown, the other guitarist, didn't turn up either, and Les Stewart got into a rage and split the group. Suddenly, the Casbah had no group -- George and Ken were willing to play, but neither was a lead singer -- and no decorators either. So George roped in John and Paul, who helped decorate the place, and with the addition of Ken Brown, the group returned to the Quarry Men name for their regular Saturday night gig at the Casbah. The group had no bass player or drummer, and they all kept pestering everyone they knew to get a bass or a drum kit, but nobody would bite. But then Stuart Sutcliffe got half a painting in an exhibition put on by John Moores, the millionaire owner of Littlewoods, who was a big patron of the arts in Liverpool. I say he got half a painting in the exhibition, because the painting was done on two large boards -- Stuart and his friends took the first half of the painting down to the gallery, went back to get the other half, and got distracted by the pub and never brought it. But Moores was impressed enough with the abstract painting that he bought it at the end of the exhibition's run, for ninety pounds -- about two thousand pounds in today's money. And so Stuart's friends gave him a choice -- he could either buy a bass or a drum kit, either would be fine. He chose the bass. But the same week that Stuart joined, Ken Brown was out, and they lost their gig at the Casbah. John, Paul, George and Ken had turned up one Saturday, and Ken hadn't felt well, so instead of performing he just worked on the door. At the end of the show, Mona Best insisted on giving Ken an equal share of the money, as agreed. John, Paul, and George wouldn't stand for that, and so Ken was out of the group, and they were no longer playing for Mona Best. Stuart joining the group caused tensions -- George was fine with him, thinking that a bass player who didn't yet know how to play was better than no bass player at all, but Paul was much less keen. Partly this was because he thought the group needed to get better, which would be hard with someone who couldn't play, but also he was getting jealous of Sutcliffe's closeness to Lennon, especially when the two became flatmates. But John wanted him in the group, and what John wanted, he got. There are recordings of the group around this time that circulate -- only one has been released officially, a McCartney instrumental called "Cayenne", but the others are out there if you look: [Excerpt: The Quarry Men, "Cayenne"] The gigs had dried up again, but they did have one new advantage -- they now had a name they actually liked. John and Stuart had come up with it, inspired by Buddy Holly's Crickets. They were going to be Beatles, with an a. Shortly after the Beatles' first appearance under that name, at the art school student union, came the Liverpool gig which was to have had Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent headlining, before Cochran died. A lot of Liverpool groups were booked to play on the bill there, but not the Beatles -- though Richy Starkey was going to play the gig, with his latest group Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. Allan Williams, the local promoter, added extra groups to fill out the bill, including Gerry and the Pacemakers, and suddenly everyone who loved rock and roll in Liverpool realised that there were others out there like them. Overnight, a scene had been born. And where there's a scene, there's money to be made. Larry Parnes, who had been the national promoter of the tour, was at the show and realised that there were a lot of quite proficient musicians in Liverpool. And it so happened that he needed backing bands for three of his artists who were going on tour, separately -- two minor stars, Duffy Power and Johnny Gentle, and one big star, Billy Fury. And both Gentle and Fury were from Liverpool themselves. So Parnes asked Allan Williams to set up auditions with some of the local groups. Williams invited several groups, and one he asked along was the Beatles, largely because Lennon and Sutcliffe begged him. He also found them a drummer, Tommy Moore, who was a decade older than the rest of them -- though Moore didn't turn up to the audition because he had to work, and so Johnny "Hutch" Hutchinson of Cass and the Cassanovas sat in with them, much to Hutch's disgust -- he hated the Beatles, and especially Lennon.  Cass of the Cassanovas also insisted that "the Beatles" was a stupid name, and that the group needed to be Something and the Somethings, and he suggested Long John and the Silver Beatles, and that stuck for a couple of shows before they reverted to their proper name. The Beatles weren't chosen for any of the main tours that were being booked, but then Parnes phoned Williams up -- there were some extra dates on the Johnny Gentle tour that he hadn't yet booked a group for. Could Williams find him a band who could be in Scotland that Friday night for a nine-day tour? Williams tried Cass and the Cassanovas, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, and Gerry and the Pacemakers, but none of them could go on tour at such short notice. They all had gigs booked, or day jobs they had to book time off with. The Beatles had no gigs booked, and only George had a day job, and he didn't mind just quitting that. They were off to Scotland. They were so inspired by being on tour with a Larry Parnes artist that most of them took on new names just like those big stars -- George became Carl Harrison, after Carl Perkins, Stuart became Stuart de Staël, after his favourite painter, and Paul became Paul Ramon, which he thought sounded mysterious and French. There's some question about whether John took on a new name -- some sources have him becoming "Long John", while others say he was "Johnny" Lennon rather than John. Tommy Moore, meanwhile, was just Thomas Moore. It was on this tour, of course, that Lennon helped Johnny Gentle write "I've Just Fallen For Someone", which we talked about last week: [Excerpt: Darren Young, "I've Just Fallen For Someone"] The tour was apparently fairly miserable, with horrible accommodation, poor musicianship from the group, and everyone getting on everyone's nerves -- George and Stuart got into fistfights, John bullied Stuart a bit because of his poor playing, and John particularly didn't get on well with Moore -- a man who was a decade older, didn't share their taste in music, and worked in a factory rather than having the intellectual aspirations of the group. The two hated each other by the end of the tour. But the tour did also give the group the experience of signing autographs, and of feeling like stars in at least a minor way. When they got back to Liverpool, George moved in with John and Stuart, to get away from his mum telling him to get a proper job, and they got a few more bookings thanks to Williams, but they soon became drummerless -- they turned up to a gig one time to find that Tommy Moore wasn't there. They went round to his house, and his wife shouted from an upstairs window, "Yez can piss off, he's had enough of yez and gone back to work at the bottle factory". The now four-piece group carried on, however, and recordings exist of them in this period, sounding much more professional than only a few months before, including performances of some of their own songs. The most entertaining of these is probably "You'll Be Mine", an Ink Spots parody with some absurd wordplay from Lennon: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "You'll Be Mine"] Soon enough the group found another drummer, Norm Chapman, and carried on as before, getting regular bookings thanks to Williams. There was soon a temporary guest at the flat John, Stuart, and George shared with several other people -- Royston Ellis, the Beat poet and friend of the Shadows, had turned up in Liverpool and latched on to the group, partly because he fancied George. He performed with them a couple of times, crashed at the flat, and provided them with two formative experiences -- he gave them their first national press, talking in Record and Show Mirror about how he wanted them to be his full-time group, and he gave them their first drug experience, showing them how to get amphetamines out of inhalers. While the group's first national press was positive, there was soon some very negative press indeed associated with them. A tabloid newspaper wanted to do a smear story about the dangerous Beatnik menace. The article talked about how "they revel in filth", and how beatniks were "a dangerous menace to our young people… a corrupting influence of drug addicts and peddlers, degenerates who specialise in obscene orgies". And for some reason -- it's never been made clear exactly how -- the beatnik "pad" they chose to photograph for this story was the one that John, Stuart, and George lived in, though they weren't there at the time -- several of their friends and associates are in the pictures though. They were all kicked out of their flat, and moved back in with their families, and around this time they lost Chapman from the group too -- he was called up to do his National Service, one of the last people to be conscripted before conscription ended for good. They were back to a four-piece again, and for a while Paul was drumming. But then, as seems to have happened so often with this group, a bizarre coincidence happened. A while earlier, Allan Williams had travelled to Hamburg, with the idea of trying to get Liverpool groups booked there. He'd met up with Bruno Koschmider, the owner of a club called the Kaiserkeller. Koschmider had liked the idea, but nothing had come of it, partly because neither could speak the other's language well. A little while later, Koschmider had remembered the idea and come over to the UK to find musicians. He didn't remember where Williams was from, so of course he went to London, to the 2is, and there he found a group of musicians including Tony Sheridan, who we talked about back in the episode on "Brand New Cadillac", the man who'd been Vince Taylor's lead guitarist and had a minor solo career: [Excerpt: Tony Sheridan, "Why?"] Sheridan was one of the most impressive musicians in Britain, but he also wanted to skip the country -- he'd just bought a guitar on credit in someone else's name, and he also had a wife and six-month-old baby he wanted rid of. He eagerly went off with Koschmider, and a scratch group called the Jets soon took up residence at the Kaiserkeller. Meanwhile, in Liverpool, Derry and the Seniors were annoyed. Larry Parnes had booked them for a tour, but then he'd got annoyed at the unprofessionalism of the Liverpool bands he was booking and cancelled the booking, severing his relationship with Williams. The Seniors wanted to know what Williams was going to do about it.  There was no way to get them enough gigs in Liverpool, so Williams, being a thoroughly decent man who had a sense of obligation, offered to drive the group down to London to see if they could get work there. He took them to the 2is, and they were allowed to get up and play there, since Williams was a friend of the owner. And Bruno Koschmider was there. The Jets hadn't liked playing at Williams' club, and they'd scarpered to another one with better working conditions, which they helped get off the ground and renamed the Top Ten, after Vince Taylor's club in London. So Bruno had come back to find another group, and there in the same club at the same time was the man who'd given him the idea in the first place, with a group. Koschmider immediately signed up Derry and the Seniors to play at the Kaiserkeller.  Meanwhile, the best gig the Beatles could get, also through Williams, was backing a stripper, where they played whatever instrumentals they knew, no matter how inappropriate, things like the theme from The Third Man: [Excerpt: Anton Karas, "Theme from The Third Man"] A tune guaranteed to get the audience into a sexy mood, I'm sure you'll agree. But then Allan Williams got a call from Koschmider. Derry and the Seniors were doing great business, and he'd decided to convert another of his clubs to be a rock and roll club. Could Williams have a group for him by next Friday? Oh, and it needed to be five people. Williams tried Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. They were busy. He tried Cass and the Cassanovas. They were busy. He tried Gerry and the Pacemakers. They were busy. Finally, he tried the Beatles. They weren't busy, and said yes they could go to Hamburg that week. There were a few minor issues, like there not being five of them, none of them having passports, and them not having a drummer. The passports could be sorted quickly -- there's a passport office in Liverpool -- but the lack of a fifth Beatle was more of a problem. In desperation, they turned eventually to Pete Best, Mrs. Best's son, because they knew he had a drum kit. He agreed.  Allan Williams drove the group to Hamburg, and they started playing six-hour sets every night at the Indra, not finishing til three in the morning, at which point they'd make their way to their lodgings -- the back of a filthy cinema.  By this time, the Beatles had already got good -- Howie Casey, of Derry and the Seniors, who'd remembered the Beatles as being awful at the Johnny Gentle audition, came over to see them and make fun of them, but found that they were far better than they had been. But playing six hours a night got them *very* good *very* quickly -- especially as they decided that they weren't going to play the same song twice in a night, meaning they soon built up a vast repertoire. But right from the start, there was a disconnect between Pete Best and the other four -- they socialised together, and he went off on his own. He was also a weak player -- he was only just starting to learn -- and so the rest of the group would stamp their feet to keep him in time. That, though, also gave them a bit more of a stage act than they might otherwise have had. There are lots of legendary stories about the group's time in Hamburg, and it's impossible to sort fact from fiction, and the bits we can sort out would get this podcast categorised as adult content, but they were teenagers, away from home for a long period for the first time, living in a squalid back room in the red light district of a city with a reputation for vice. I'm sure whatever you imagine is probably about right. After a relatively short time, they were moved from the Indra, which had to stop putting on rock and roll shows, to the Kaiserkeller, where they shared the bill with Rory Storm & the Hurricanes, up to that point considered Liverpool's best band. There's a live recording of the Hurricanes from 1960, which shows that they were certainly powerful: [Excerpt: Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, "Brand New Cadillac"] That recording doesn't have the Hurricanes' normal drummer on, who was sick for that show. But compared to what the Beatles had become -- a stomping powerhouse with John Lennon, whose sense of humour was both cruel and pointed, doing everything he could to get a rise out of the audience -- they were left in the dust. A letter home that George Harrison wrote sums it up -- "Rory Storm & the Hurricanes came out here the other week, and they are crumby. He does a bit of dancing around but it still doesn’t make up for his phoney group. The only person who is any good in the group is the drummer." That drummer was Richy Starkey from the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, now performing as Ringo Starr. They struck up a friendship, and even performed together at least once -- John, Paul, George, and Ringo acting as the backing group for Lu Walters of the Hurricanes on a demo, which is frustratingly missing and hasn't been heard since. They were making other friends, too. There was Tony Sheridan, who they'd seen on TV, but who would now sometimes jam with them as equals. And there was a trio of arty bohemian types who had stumbled across the club, where they were very out of place -- Astrid Kirscherr, Klaus Voormann, and Jurgen Vollmer. They all latched on to the Beatles, and especially to Stuart, who soon started dating Astrid, despite her speaking no English and him speaking no German. But relations between Koschmider and the Beatles had worsened, and he reported to the police that George, at only seventeen, was under-age. George got deported. The rest of the group decided to move over to the Top Ten Club, and as a parting gift, Paul and Pete nailed some condoms to their bedroom wall and set fire to them. Koschmider decided to report this to the police as attempted arson, and those two were deported as well. John followed a week later, while Stuart stayed in Hamburg for a while, to spend more time with Astrid, who he planned to marry. The other four regrouped, getting in a friend, Chas Newby, as a temporary bass player while Stuart was away. And on the twenty-seventh of December, 1960, when they played Litherland Town Hall, they changed the Liverpool music scene. They were like nothing anyone had ever seen, and the audience didn't dance -- they just rushed to the stage, to be as close to the performance as possible. The Beatles had become the best band in Liverpool. Mark Lewisohn goes further, and suggests that the three months of long nights playing different songs in Hamburg had turned them into the single most experienced rock band *in the world* -- which seems vanishingly unlikely to me, but Lewisohn is not a man given to exaggeration. By this time, Mona Best had largely taken over the group's bookings, and there were a lot of them, as well as a regular spot at the Casbah. Neil Aspinall, a friend of Pete's, started driving them to gigs, while they also had a regular MC, Bob Wooler, who ran many local gigs, and who gave the Beatles their own theme music -- he'd introduce them with the fanfare from Rossini's William Tell Overture: [Excerpt: Rossini, "William Tell Overture"] Stuart came over from Hamburg in early January, and once again the Beatles were a five-piece -- and by now, he could play quite well, well enough, at any rate, that it didn't destroy the momentum the group had gathered. The group were getting more and more bookings, including the venue that would become synonymous with them, the Cavern, a tiny little warehouse cellar that had started as a jazz club, and that the Quarry Men had played once a couple of years earlier, but had been banned from for playing too much rock and roll. Now, the Beatles were getting bookings at the Cavern's lunchtime sessions, and that meant more than it seemed. Most of the gigs they played otherwise were on the outskirts of the city, but the Cavern was in the city centre. And that meant that for the lunchtime sessions, commuters from outside the city were coming to see them -- which meant that the group got fans from anywhere within commuting distance, fans who wanted them to play in their towns. Meanwhile, the group were branching out musically -- they were particularly becoming fascinated by the new R&B, soul, and girl-group records that were coming out in the US. After already having loved "Money" by Barrett Strong, John was also obsessed with the Miracles, and would soon become a fervent fan of anything Motown, and the group were all big fans of the Shirelles. As they weren't playing original material live, and as every group would soon learn every other group's best songs, there was an arms race on to find the most exciting songs to cover. As well as Elvis and Buddy and Eddie, they were now covering the Shirelles and Ray Charles and Gary US Bonds. The group returned to Hamburg in April, Paul and Pete's immigration status having been resolved and George now having turned eighteen, and started playing at the Top Ten club, where they played even longer sets, and more of them, than they had at the Kaiserkeller and the Indra. Tony Sheridan started regularly joining them on stage at this time, and Paul switched to piano while Sheridan added the third guitar. This was also when they started using Preludin, a stimulant related to amphetamines which was prescribed as a diet drug -- Paul would take one pill a night, George a couple, and John would gobble them down. But Pete didn't take them -- one more way in which he was different from the others -- and he started having occasional micro-sleeps in the middle of songs as the long nights got to him, much to the annoyance of the rest of the group. But despite Pete's less than stellar playing they were good enough that Sheridan -- the single most experienced musician in the British rock and roll scene -- described them as the best R&B band he'd ever heard. Once they were there, they severed their relationship with Allan Williams, refusing to pay him his share of the money, and just cutting him out of their careers.  Meanwhile, Stuart was starting to get ill. He was having headaches all the time, and had to miss shows on occasion. He was also the only Beatle with a passion for anything else, and he managed to get a scholarship to study art with the famous sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, who was now working in Hamburg. Paul subbed for Stuart on bass, and eventually Stuart left the group, though on good terms with everyone other than Paul. So it was John, Paul, George and Pete who ended up making the Beatles' first records. Bert Kaempfert, the most important man in the German music industry, had been to see them all at the Top Ten and liked what he saw. Outside Germany, Kaempfert was probably best known for co-writing Elvis' "Wooden Heart", which the Beatles had in their sets at this time: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Wooden Heart"] Kaempfert had signed Tony Sheridan to a contract, and he wanted the Beatles to back him in the studio -- and he was also interested in recording a couple of tracks with them on their own. The group eagerly agreed, and their first session started at eight in the morning on the twenty-second of June 1961, after they had finished playing all night at the club, and all of them but Pete were on Preludin for the session. Stuart came along for moral support, but didn't play. Pete was a problem, though. He wasn't keeping time properly, and Kaempfert eventually insisted on removing his bass drum and toms, leaving only a snare, hi-hat, and ride cymbal for Pete to play. They recorded seven songs at that session in total. Two of them were just by the Beatles. One was a version of "Ain't She Sweet", an old standard which Gene Vincent had recorded fairly recently, but the other was the only track ever credited to Lennon and Harrison as cowriters. On their first trip to Hamburg, they'd wanted to learn "Man of Mystery" by the Shadows: [Excerpt: The Shadows, "Man of Mystery"] But there was a slight problem in that they didn't have a copy of the record, and had never heard it -- it came out in the UK while they were in Germany. So they asked Rory Storm to hum it for them. He hummed a few notes, and Lennon and Harrison wrote a parody of what Storm had sung, which they named "Beatle Bop" but by this point they'd renamed "Cry For a Shadow": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Cry For a Shadow"] The other five songs at the session were given over to Tony Sheridan, with the Beatles backing him, and the song that Kaempfert was most interested in recording was one the group had been performing on stage -- a rocked-up version of the old folk song "My Bonnie": [Excerpt: Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, "My Bonnie"] That was the record chosen as the single, but it was released not as by Tony Sheridan and the Beatles, but by Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers -- "Beatles", to German ears, sounded a little like "piedels", a childish slang term for penises. The Beatles had made their first record, but it wasn't one they thought much of. They knew they could do better. The next week, the now four-piece Beatles returned to Liverpool, with much crying at Stuart staying behind -- even Paul, now Stuart was no longer a threat for John's attention, was contrite and tried to make amends to him.  On their return to Liverpool, they picked up where they had left off, playing almost every night, and spending the days trying to find new records -- often listening to the latest releases at NEMS, a department store with an extensive record selection. Brian Epstein, the shop's manager, prided himself on being able to get any record a customer wanted, and whenever anyone requested anything he'd buy a second copy for the shelves. As a result, you could find records there that you wouldn't get anywhere else in Liverpool, and the Beatles were soon adding more songs by the Shirelles and Gary US Bonds to their sets, as well as more songs by the Coasters and Ben E. King's "Stand By Me". They were playing gigs further afield, and Neil Aspinall was now driving them everywhere. Aspinall was Pete Best's closest friend -- and was having an affair with Pete's mother -- but unlike Pete himself he also became close to the other Beatles, and would remain so for the rest of his life.  By this point, the group were so obviously the best band on the Liverpool scene that they were starting to get bored -- there was no competition. And by this point it really was a proper scene -- John's old art school friend Bill Harry had started up a magazine, Mersey Beat, which may be the first magazine anywhere in the world to focus on one area's local music scene. Brian Epstein from NEMS had a column, as did Bob Wooler, and often John's humorous writing would appear as well. The Beatles were featured in most issues -- although Paul McCartney's name was misspelled almost every time it appeared -- and not just because Lennon and Harry were friends. By this point there were the Beatles, and there were all the other groups in the area. For several months this continued -- they learned new songs, they played almost every day, and they continued to be the best. They started to find it boring. The one big change that came at this point was when John and Paul went on holiday to Paris, saw Vince Taylor, bumped into their friend Jurgen from Hamburg, and got Jurgen to do their hair like his -- the story we told in the episode on "Brand New Cadillac". They now had the Beatles haircut, though they were still wearing leather. When they got back, George copied their new style straight away, but Pete decided to leave his hair in a quiff. There was nowhere else to go without a manager to look after them. They needed management -- and they found it because of "My Bonnie": [Excerpt: Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, "My Bonnie"] "My Bonnie" was far from a great record, but it was what led to everything that followed. The Beatles had mentioned from the stage at the Cavern that they had a record out, and a young man named Raymond Jones walked into NEMS and asked for a copy of it. Brian Epstein couldn't find it in the record company catalogues, and asked Jones for more information -- Jones explained that they were a Liverpool group, but the record had come out in Germany. A couple of days later, two young girls came into the shop asking for the same record, and now Epstein was properly intrigued -- in his view, if *two* people asked for a record, that probably meant a lot more than just two people wanted it. He decided to check these Beatles out for himself. Epstein was instantly struck by the group, and this has led to a lot of speculation over the years, because his tastes ran more to Sibelius than to Little Richard. As Epstein was also gay, many people have assumed that the attraction was purely physical. And it might well have been, at least in part, but the suggestion that everything that followed was just because of that seems unlikely -- Epstein was also someone who had a long interest in the arts, and had trained as an actor at RADA, the most prestigious actors' college in the UK, before taking up his job at the family store. Given that the Beatles were soon to become the most popular musicians in the history of the world, and were already the most popular musicians in the Liverpool area, the most reasonable assumption must be that Epstein was impressed by the same things that impressed roughly a billion other people over the next sixty years. Epstein started going to the Cavern regularly, to watch the Beatles and to make plans -- the immaculately dressed, public-school-educated, older rich man stood out among the crowd, and the Beatles already knew his face from his record shop, and so they knew something was going on. By late November, Brian had managed to obtain a box of twenty-five copies of "My Bonnie", and they'd sold out within hours. He set up a meeting with the Beatles, and even before he got them signed to a management contract he was using his contacts with the record industry in London to push the Beatles at record companies. Those companies listened to Brian, because NEMS was one of their biggest customers. December 1961, the month they signed with Brian Epstein, was also the month that they finally started including Lennon/McCartney songs in their sets.  And within a couple of weeks of becoming their manager, even before he'd signed them to a contract, Brian had managed to persuade Mike Smith, an A&R man from Decca, to come to the Cavern to see the group in person. He was impressed, and booked them in for a studio session. December 61 was also the first time that John, Paul, George, and Ringo played together in that lineup, without any other musicians, when on the twenty-seventh of December Pete called in sick for a show, and the others got in their friend to cover for him. It wouldn't be the last time they would play together. On New Year's Day 1962, the Beatles made the trek down to London to record fifteen songs at the Decca studios. The session was intended for two purposes -- to see if they sounded as good on tape as they did in the Cavern, and if they did to produce their first single. Those recordings included the core of their Cavern repertoire, songs like "Money": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Money (Decca version)"] They also recorded three Lennon/McCartney songs, two by Paul -- "Love of the Loved" and "Like Dreamers Do": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Like Dreamers Do"] And one by Lennon -- "Hello Little Girl": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hello Little Girl"] And they were Lennon/McCartney songs, even though they were written separately -- the two agreed that they were going to split the credit on anything either of them wrote. The session didn't go well -- the group's equipment wasn't up to standard and they had to use studio amps, and they're all audibly nervous -- but Mike Smith was still fairly confident that they'd be releasing something through Decca -- he just had to work out the details with his boss, Dick Rowe. Meanwhile, the group were making other changes. Brian suggested that they could get more money if they wore suits, and so they agreed -- though they didn't want just any suits, they wanted stylish mohair suits, like the black American groups they loved so much.  The Beatles were now a proper professional group -- but unfortunately, Decca turned them down. Dick Rowe, Mike Smith's boss, didn't think that electric guitars were going to become a big thing -- he was very tuned in to the American trends, and nothing with guitars was charting at the time. Smith was considering two groups -- the Beatles, and Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, and wanted to sign both. Rowe told him that he could sign one, but only one, of them. The Tremeloes had been better in the studio, and they lived round the corner from Smith and were friendly with him. There was no contest -- much as Smith wanted to sign both groups, the Tremeloes were the better prospect. Rowe did make an offer to Epstein: if Epstein would pay a hundred pounds (a *lot* of money in those days), Tony Meehan, formerly of the Shadows, would produce the group in another session, and Decca would release that. Brian wasn't interested -- if the Beatles were going to make a record, they were going to make it with people who they weren't having to pay for the privilege. John, Paul, and George were devastated, but for their own reasons they didn't bother to tell Pete they'd been turned down. But they did have a tape of themselves, at least -- a professional-quality recording that they could use to attract other labels. And their career was going forward in other ways. The same day Brian had his second meeting with Decca, they had an audition with the BBC in Manchester, where they were accepted to perform on Teenager's Turn, a radio programme hosted by the Northern Dance Orchestra. A few weeks later, on the seventh of March, they went to Manchester to record four songs in front of an audience, of which three would be broadcast: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Please Mr. Postman (Teenager's Turn)"] That recording of John singing "Please Mr. Postman" is historic for another reason, which shows just how on the cutting edge of musical taste the Beatles actually were -- it was the first time ever that a Motown song was played on the BBC. Now we get to the part of the story that, before Mark Lewisohn's work in his book a few years back, had always been shrouded in mystery. What Lewisohn shows is that George Martin was in fact forced to sign the Beatles, against his will, and that this may have been as a punishment. The Beatles had already been turned down by Parlophone once, based on "My Bonnie", when Brian Epstein walked into the HMV store on Oxford Street in London in mid-February. HMV is now mostly known as a retail chain, Britain's biggest chain of physical media stores, but at the time it was owned by EMI, and was associated with their label of the same name -- HMV stood for "His Master's Voice", and its logo was the same one as America's RCA, with whom it had a mutual distribution deal for many years. As a record retailer, Epstein naturally had a professional interest in other record shops, and he had a friend at HMV, who suggested to him that they could use a disc-cutting machine that the shop had to turn his copy of the Decca tapes into acetate discs, which would be much more convenient for taking round and playing to record labels. That disc-cutter was actually in a studio that musicians used for making records for themselves, much as the Quarry Men had years earlier -- it was in fact the studio where Cliff Richard had cut *his* first private demo, the one he'd used to get signed to EMI.  Jim Foy, the man who worked the lathe cutter, liked what he heard, and he talked with Brian about the group. Brian mentioned that some of the songs were originals, and Foy told him that EMI also owned a publishing company, Ardmore & Beechwood, and the office was upstairs -- would Brian like to meet with them to discuss publishing? Brian said he would like that. Ardmore & Beechwood wanted the original songs on the demo. They were convinced that Lennon and McCartney had potential as songwriters, and that songs like "Like Dreamers Do" could become hits in the right hands. And Brian Epstein agreed with them -- but he also knew that the Beatles had no interest in becoming professional songwriters. They wanted to make records, not write songs for other people to record.  Brian took his new discs round to George Martin at EMI -- who wasn't very impressed, and basically said "Don't call us, we'll call you". Brian went back to Liverpool, and got on with the rest of the group's career, including setting up another Hamburg residency for them, this time at a new club called the Star Club. That Star Club residency, in April, would be devastating for the group -- on Tuesday the tenth of April, the same day John, Paul, and Pete got to Hamburg (George was ill and flew over the next day), Stuart Sutcliffe, who'd been having headaches and feeling ill for months, collapsed and died, aged only twenty-one. The group found out the next day -- they got to the airport to meet George, and bumped into Klaus and Astrid, who were there to meet Stuart's mother from the same flight. They asked where Stuart was, and heard the news from Astrid.  John basically went

This week there are two episiodes of the podcast going up, both of them longer than normal. This one, episode one hundred, is the hundredth-episode special and is an hour and a half long. It looks at the early career of the Beatles, and at the three recordings of “Love Me Do”. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.   Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Misirlou” by Dick Dale and the Deltones. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- Resources No Mixclouds this week, as both episodes have far too many songs by one artist. The mixclouds will be back with episode 101. While there are many books on the Beatles, and I have read dozens of them, only one needs to be mentioned as a reference for this episode (others will be used for others). All These Years Vol 1: Tune In by Mark Lewisohn is simply the *only* book worth reading on the Beatles’ career up to the end of 1962. It is the most detailed, most accurate, biography imaginable, and the gold standard by which all other biographies of musicians should be measured. I only wish volumes two and three were available already so I could not expect my future episodes on the Beatles to be obsolete when they do come out. There are two versions of the book — a nine-hundred page mass-market version and a 1700-page expanded edition. I recommend the latter. The information in this podcast is almost all from Lewisohn’s book, but I must emphasise that the opinions are mine, and so are any errors — Lewisohn’s book only has one error that I’m aware of (a joke attributed to the comedian Jasper Carrott in a footnote that has since been traced to an earlier radio show). I am only mortal, and so have doubtless misunderstood or oversimplified things and introduced errors where he had none.   The single version of “Love Me Do” can be found on Past Masters, a 2-CD compilation of the Beatles’ non-album tracks that includes the majority of their singles and B-sides. The version with Andy White playing on can be found on Please Please Me. The version with Pete Best, and many of the other early tracks used here, is on Anthology 1.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Errata I pronounce the name of Lewisohn’s book as “All Those Years” instead of “All These Years”. I say ” The Jets hadn’t liked playing at Williams’ club” at one point. I meant “at Koschmider’s club”   Transcript   The Beatles came closer than most people realise to never making a record. Until the publication of Mark Lewisohn’s seminal biography All These Years vol 1: Tune In, in 2013 everyone thought they knew the true story — John met Paul at Woolton Village Fete in 1957, and Paul joined the Quarrymen, who later became the Beatles. They played Hamburg and made a demo, and after the Beatles’ demo was turned down by Decca, their manager Brian Epstein shopped it around every record label without success, until finally George Martin heard the potential in it and signed them to Parlophone, a label which was otherwise known for comedy records. Martin was, luckily, the one producer in the whole of the UK who could appreciate the Beatles’ music, and he signed them up, and the rest was history. The problem is, as Lewisohn showed, that’s not what happened. Today I’m going to tell, as best I can the story of how the Beatles actually became the band that they became, and how they got signed to EMI records. I’m going to tell you the story of “Love Me Do”: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “Love Me Do (single version)”] As I mentioned at the beginning, this episode owes a *huge* debt to Mark Lewisohn’s book. I like to acknowledge my sources, anyway, but I’ve actually had difficulty with this episode because Lewisohn’s book is *so* detailed, *so* full, and written *so* well that much of the effort in writing this episode came from paring down the information, rather than finding more, and from reworking things so I was not just paraphrasing bits of his writing. Normally I rely on many sources, and integrate the material myself, but Lewisohn has done all that work far better than any other biographer of any other musician. Were the Beatles not such an important part of music history, I would just skip this episode because there is nothing for me to add. As it is, I *obviously* have to cover this, but I almost feel like I’m cheating in doing so. If you find this episode interesting at all, please do yourself a favour and buy that book.  This episode is going to be a long one — much longer than normal. I won’t know the precise length until after I’ve recorded and edited it, of course, but I’m guessing it’s going to be about ninety minutes. This is the hundredth episode, the end of the second year of the podcast, the end of the second book based on the podcast, and the introduction of the single most important band in the whole story, so I’m going to stretch out a bit. I should also mention that there are a couple of discussions of sudden, traumatic, deaths in this episode. With all that said, settle in, this is going to take a while. Every British act we’ve looked at so far — and many of those we’re going to look at in the next year or two — was based in London. Either they grew up there, or they moved there before their musical career really took off. The Beatles, during the time we’re covering in this episode, were based in Liverpool. While they did eventually move to London, it wasn’t until after they’d started having hits. And what listeners from outside the UK might not realise is what that means in terms of attitudes and perceptions. Liverpool is a large city — it currently has a population of around half a million, and the wider Liverpool metropolitan area is closer to two million — but like all British cities other than London, it was regarded largely as a joke in the British media, and so in return the people of Liverpool had a healthy contempt for London. To give Americans some idea of how London dominates in Britain, and thus how it’s thought of outside London, imagine that New York, Washington DC, and Los Angeles were all the same city — that the financial, media, and political centres of the country were all the same place. Now further imagine that Silicon Valley and all the Ivy League universities were half an hour’s drive from that city. Now, imagine how much worse the attitudes that that city would have about so-called “flyover states” would be, and imagine in return how people in large Midwestern cities like Detroit or Chicago would think about that big city.  In this analogy, Liverpool is Detroit, and like Detroit, it was very poor and had produced a few famous musicians, most notably Billy Fury, who was from an impoverished area of Liverpool called the Dingle: [Excerpt: Billy Fury, “Halfway to Paradise”] But Fury had, of course, moved to London to have his career. That’s what you did. But in general, Liverpool, if people in London thought of it at all, was thought of as a provincial backwater full of poor people, many of them Irish, and all of them talking with a ridiculous accent. Liverpool was ignored by London, and that meant that things could develop there out of sight. The story of the Beatles starts in the 1950s, with two young men in their mid-teens. John Winston Lennon was born in 1940, and had had a rather troubled childhood. His father had been a merchant seaman who had been away in the war, and his parents’ relationship had deteriorated for that and other reasons. As a result, Lennon had barely known his father, and when his mother met another man, Lennon’s aunt, Mary Smith, who he always called Mimi, had taken him in, believing that his mother “living in sin” would be a bad influence on the young boy. The Smith family were the kind of lower middle class family that seemed extremely rich to the impoverished families in Liverpool, but were not well off by any absolute standard. Mimi, in particular, was torn between two very different urges. On one hand, she had strongly bohemian, artistic, urges — as did all of her sisters. She was a voracious reader, and a lover of art history, and encouraged these tendencies in John. But at the same time, she was of that class which has a little status, but not much security, and so she was extremely wary of the need to appear respectable. This tension between respectability and rebellion was something that would appear in many of the people who Lennon later worked with, such as Brian Epstein and George Martin, and it was something that Lennon would always respond to — those people would be the only ones who Lennon would ever view as authority figures he could respect, though he would also resent them at times. And it might be that combination of rebellion and respectability that Lennon saw in Paul McCartney. McCartney was from a family who, in the Byzantine world of the British class system of the time, were a notch or so lower than the Smith family who raised Lennon, but he was academically bright, and his family had big plans for him — they thought that it might even be possible that he might become a teacher if he worked very hard at school. McCartney was a far less openly rebellious person than Lennon was, but he was still just as caught up in the music and fashions of the mid-fifties that his father associated with street gangs and hooliganism. Lennon, like many teenagers in Britain at the time, had had his life changed when he first heard Elvis Presley, and he had soon become a rock and roll obsessive — Elvis was always his absolute favourite, but he also loved Little Richard, who he thought was almost as good, and he admired Buddy Holly, who had a special place in Lennon’s heart as Holly wore glasses on stage, something that Lennon, who was extremely short-sighted, could never bring himself to do, but which at least showed him that it was a possibility. Lennon was, by his mid-teens, recreating a relationship with his mother, and one of the things they bonded over was music — she taught him how to play the banjo, and together they worked out the chords to “That’ll Be the Day”, and Lennon later switched to the guitar, playing banjo chords on five of the six strings.  Like many, many, teenagers of the time, Lennon also formed a skiffle group, which he called the Quarrymen, after a line in his school song. The group tended to have a rotating lineup, but Lennon was the unquestioned leader. The group had a repertoire consisting of the same Lonnie Donegan songs that every other skiffle group was playing, plus any Elvis and Buddy Holly songs that could sound reasonable with a lineup of guitars, teachest bass, and washboard. The moment that changed the history of the music, though, came on July the sixth, 1957, when Ivan Vaughan, a friend of Lennon’s, invited his friend Paul McCartney to go and see the Quarry Men perform at Woolton Village Fete. That day has gone down in history as “the day John met Paul”, although Mark Lewisohn has since discovered that Lennon and McCartney had briefly met once before. It is, though, the day on which Lennon and McCartney first impressed each other musically. McCartney talks about being particularly impressed that the Quarry Men’s lead singer was changing the lyrics to the songs he was performing, making up new words when he forgot the originals — he says in particular that he remembers Lennon singing “Come Go With Me” by the Del-Vikings: [Excerpt: The Del-Vikings, “Come Go With Me”] McCartney remembers Lennon as changing the lyrics to “come go with me, right down to the penitentiary”, and thinking that was clever. Astonishingly, some audio recording actually exists of the Quarry Men’s second performance that day — they did two sets, and this second one comes just after Lennon met McCartney rather than just before. The recording only seems to exist in a very fragmentary form, which has snatches of Lennon singing “Baby Let’s Play House” and Lonnie Donegan’s hit “Puttin’ on the Style”, which was number one on the charts at the time, but that even those fragments have survived, given how historic a day this was, is almost miraculous: [Excerpt: The Quarrymen, “Puttin’ on the Style”] After the first set, Lennon met McCartney, who was nearly two years younger, but a more accomplished musician — for a start, he knew how to tune the guitar with all six strings, and to proper guitar tuning, rather than tuning five strings like a banjo. Lennon and his friends were a little nonplussed by McCartney holding his guitar upside-down at first — McCartney is left-handed — but despite having an upside-down guitar with the wrong tuning, McCartney managed to bash out a version of Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty-Flight Rock”, a song he would often perform in later decades when reminding people of this story: [Excerpt: Paul McCartney, “Twenty-Flight Rock”] This was impressive to Lennon for three reasons. The first was that McCartney was already a strong, confident performer — he perhaps seemed a little more confident than he really was, showing off in front of the bigger boys like this. The second was that “Twenty-Flight Rock” was a moderately obscure song — it hadn’t charted, but it *had* appeared in The Girl Can’t Help It, a film which every rock and roll lover in Britain had watched at the cinema over and over. Choosing that song rather than, say, “Be-Bop-A-Lula”, was a way of announcing a kind of group affiliation — “I am one of you, I am a real rock and roll fan, not just a casual listener to what’s in the charts”. I stress that second point because it’s something that’s very important in the history of the Beatles generally — they were *music fans*, and often fans of relatively obscure records. That’s something that bound Lennon and McCartney, and later the other members, together from the start, and something they always noted about other musicians. They weren’t the kind of systematic scholars who track down rare pressings and memorise every session musician’s name, but they were constantly drawn to find the best new music, and to seek it out wherever they could. But the most impressive thing for Lennon — and one that seems a little calculated on McCartney’s part, though he’s never said that he thought about this that I’m aware of — was that this was an extremely wordy song, and McCartney *knew all the words*. Remember that McCartney had noticed Lennon forgetting the words to a song with lyrics as simple as “come, come, come, come, come into my heart/Tell me darling we will never part”, and here’s McCartney singing this fast-paced, almost patter song, and getting the words right.  From the beginning, McCartney was showing how he could complement Lennon — if Lennon could impress McCartney by improvising new lyrics when he forgot the old ones, then McCartney could impress Lennon by remembering the lyrics that Lennon couldn’t — and by writing them down for Lennon, sharing his knowledge freely. McCartney went on to show off more, and in particular impressed Lennon by going to a piano and showing off his Little Richard imitation. Little Richard was the only serious rival to Elvis in Lennon’s affections, and McCartney could do a very decent imitation of him. This was someone special, clearly. But this put Lennon in a quandary. McCartney was clearly far, far, better than any of the Quarry Men — at least Lennon’s equal, and light years ahead of the rest of them. Lennon had a choice — invite this young freak of nature into his band, and improve the band dramatically, but no longer be the unquestioned centre of the group, or remain in absolute control but not have someone in the group who *knew the words* and *knew how to tune a guitar*, and other such magical abilities that no mere mortals had. Those who only know of Lennon from his later reputation as a massive egoist would be surprised, but he decided fairly quickly that he had to make the group better at his own expense. He invited McCartney to join the group, and McCartney said yes. Over the next few months the membership of the Quarry Men changed. They’d been formed while they were all at Quarry Bank Grammar School, but that summer Lennon moved on to art school. I’m going to have to talk about the art school system, and the British education system of the fifties and early sixties a lot over the next few months, but here’s an extremely abbreviated and inaccurate version that’s good enough for now. Between the ages of eleven and sixteen, people in Britain — at least those without extremely rich parents, who had a different system — went to two kinds of school depending on the result of an exam they took aged eleven, which was based on some since-discredited eugenic research about children’s potential. If you passed the exam, you were considered academically apt, and went to a grammar school, which was designed to filter you through to university and the professions. If you failed the exam, you went to a secondary modern, which was designed to give you the skills to get a trade and make a living working with your hands. And for the most part, people followed the pipeline that was set up for them. You go to grammar school, go to university, become a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher. You go to secondary modern, leave school at fourteen, become a plumber or a builder or a factory worker. But there are always those people who don’t properly fit into the neat categories that the world tries to put them in. And for people in their late teens and early twenties, people who’d been through the school system but not been shaped properly by it, there was another option at this time. If you were bright and creative, but weren’t suited for university because you’d failed your exams, you could go to art school. The supposed purpose of the art schools was to teach people to do commercial art, and they would learn skills like lettering and basic draughtsmanship. But what the art schools really did was give creative people space to explore ideas, to find out about areas of art and culture that would otherwise have been closed to them. Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Ian Dury, Ray Davies, Bryan Ferry, Syd Barrett, and many more people we’ll be seeing over the course of this story went to art school, and as David Bowie would put it later, the joke at the time was that you went to art school to learn to play blues guitar. With Lennon and his friends all moving on from the school that had drawn them together, the group stabilised for a time on a lineup of Lennon, McCartney, Colin Hanton, Len Garry, and Eric Griffiths. But the first time this version of the group played live, while McCartney sang well, he totally fluffed his lead guitar lines on stage. While there were three guitarists in the band at this point, they needed someone who could play lead fluently and confidently on stage. Enter George Harrison, who had suddenly become a close friend of McCartney. Harrison went to the same school as McCartney — a grammar school called the Liverpool Institute, but was in the year below McCartney, and so the two had always been a bit distant. However, at the same time as Lennon was moving on to art school after failing his exams, McCartney was being kept back a year for failing Latin — which his father always thought was deliberate, so he wouldn’t have to go to university. Now he was in the same year at school as Harrison, and they started hanging out together. The two bonded strongly over music, and would do things like take a bus journey to another part of town, where someone lived who they heard owned a copy of “Searchin'” by the Coasters: [Excerpt: The Coasters, “Searchin'”] The two knocked on this stranger’s door, asked if he’d play them this prized record, and he agreed — and then they stole it from him as they left his house. Another time they took the bus to another part of town again, because they’d heard that someone in that part of town knew how to play a B7 chord on his guitar, and sat there as he showed them. So now the Quarrymen needed a lead guitarist, McCartney volunteered his young mate. There are a couple of stories about how Harrison came to join the band — apparently he auditioned for Lennon at least twice, because Lennon was very unsure about having such a young kid in his band — but the story I like best is that Harrison took his guitar to a Quarry Men gig at Wilson Hall — he’d apparently often take his guitar to gigs and just see if he could sit in with the bands. On the bill with the Quarry Men was another group, the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, who were generally regarded as the best skiffle band in Liverpool. Lennon told Harrison that he could join the band if he could play as well as Clayton, and Harrison took out his guitar and played “Raunchy”: [Excerpt: Bill Justis, “Raunchy”] I like this story rather than the other story that the members would tell later — that Harrison played “Raunchy” on a bus for Lennon — for one reason. The drummer in the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group was one Richy Starkey, and if it happened that way, the day that George joined the Quarry Men was also the day that John, Paul, George, and Ringo were all in the same place for the first time. George looked up to John and essentially idolised him, though Lennon thought of him as a little annoying at times — he’d follow John everywhere, and not take a hint when he wasn’t wanted sometimes, just eager to be with his big cool new mate. But despite this tiny bit of tension, John, Paul, and George quickly became a solid unit — helped by the fact that the school that Paul and George went to was part of the same complex of buildings as Lennon’s art college, so they’d all get the bus there and back together.  George was not only younger, he was a notch or two further down the social class ladder than John or Paul, and he spoke more slowly, which made him seem less intelligent. He came from Speke, which was a rougher area, and he would dress even more like a juvenile delinquent than the others. Meanwhile, Len Garry and Eric Griffiths left the group — Len Garry because he became ill and had to spend time in hospital, and anyway they didn’t really need a teachest bass. What they did need was an electric bass, and since they had four guitars now they tried to persuade Eric to get one, but he didn’t want to pay that much money, and he was always a little on the outside of the main three members, as he didn’t share their sense of humour. So the group got Nigel Walley, who was acting as the group’s manager, to fire him. The group was now John, Paul, and George all on guitars, and Colin Hanton on drums. Sometimes, if they played a venue that had a piano, they’d also bring along a schoolfriend of Paul’s, John “Duff” Lowe, to play piano. Meanwhile, the group were growing in other ways. Both John and Paul had started writing songs, together and apart. McCartney seems to have been the first, writing a song called “I Lost My Little Girl” which he would eventually record more than thirty years later: [Excerpt: Paul McCartney, “I Lost My Little Girl”] Lennon’s first song likewise sang about a little girl, this time being “Hello, Little Girl”. By the middle of 1958, this five-piece group was ready to cut their first record — at a local studio that would cut a single copy of a disc for you. They went into this studio at some time around July 1958, and recorded two songs. The first was their version of “That’ll Be the Day”: [Excerpt: The Quarry Men, “That’ll be the Day”] The B-side was a song that McCartney had written, with a guitar solo that George had come up with, so the label credit read “McCartney/Harrison”. “In Spite of All the Danger” seems to have been inspired by Elvis’ “Trying to Get to You”: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Trying to Get to You”] It’s a rough song, but a good attempt for a teenager who had only just started writing songs: [Excerpt: The Quarry Men, “In Spite of All the Danger”] Apparently Lowe and Hanton hadn’t heard the song before they started playing, but they make a decent enough fist of it in the circumstances. Lennon took the lead even though it was McCartney’s song — he said later “I was such a bully in those days I didn’t even let Paul sing his own song.” That was about the last time that this lineup of Quarry Men played together. In July, the month that seems likely for the recording, Lowe finished at the Liverpool Institute, and so he drifted away from McCartney and Harrison. Meanwhile Hanton had a huge row with the others after a show, and they fell out and never spoke again. The Quarry Men were reduced to a trio of Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison. But — possibly the very day after that recording if an unreliable plaque at the studio where they recorded it is to be believed — something happened which was to have far more impact on the group than the drummer leaving. John Lennon’s mother, with whom he’d slowly been repairing his relationship, had called round to visit Mimi. She left the house, and bumped into Nigel Walley, who was calling round to see John. She told him he wasn’t there, and that he could walk with her to the bus stop. They walked a little while, then went off in different directions. Walley heard a thump and turned round — Julia Lennon had been hit by a car and killed instantly. As you can imagine, John’s mother dying caused him a huge amount of distress, but it also gave him a bond with McCartney, whose own mother had died of cancer shortly before they met. Neither really spoke about it to each other, and to the extent they did it was with ultra-cynical humour — but the two now shared something deeper than just the music, even though the music itself was deep enough. Lennon became a much harder, nastier, person after this, at least for a time, his natural wit taking on a dark edge, and he would often drink too much and get aggressive. But life still went on, and John, Paul, and George kept trying to perform — though the gigs dried up, and they didn’t have a drummer any more. They’d just say “the rhythm’s in the guitars” when asked why they didn’t have one. They were also no longer the Quarry Men — they didn’t have a name. At one point late in the year, they also only had two guitars between the three of them — Lennon seems to have smashed his in a fit of fury after his mother’s death. But he stole one backstage at a talent contest, and soon they were back to having three. That talent show was one run by Carroll Levis, who we talked about before in the episode on “Shakin’ All Over”. The three boys went on Levis’ show, this time performing as Johnny & The Moondogs —  in Manchester, at the Hippodrome in Ancoats, singing Buddy Holly’s “Think it Over”: [Excerpt: The Crickets, “Think it Over”] Lennon sang lead with his arms draped over the shoulders of Paul and George, who sang backing vocals and played guitar. They apparently did quite well, but had to leave before the show finished to get the last train back to Liverpool, and so never found out whether the audience would have made them the winner, with the possibility of a TV appearance. They did well enough, though, to impress a couple of other young lads on the bill, two Manchester singers named Allan Clarke and Graham Nash. But in general, the Japage Three, a portmanteau of their names that they settled on as their most usual group name at this point, played very little in 1959 — indeed, George spent much of the early part of the year moonlighting in the Les Stewart Quartet, another group, though he still thought of Lennon and McCartney as his musical soulmates; the Les Stewart Quartet were just a gig.  The three of them would spend much of their time at the Jacaranda, a coffee bar opened by a Liverpool entrepreneur, Allan Williams, in imitation of the 2is, which was owned by a friend of his. Lennon was also spending a lot of time with an older student at his art school, Stuart Sutcliffe, one of the few people in the world that Lennon himself looked up to. The Les Stewart Quartet would end up indirectly being key to the Beatles’ development, because after one of their shows at a local youth club they were approached by a woman named Mona Best. Mona’s son Pete liked to go to the youth club, but she was fairly protective of him, and also wanted him to have more friends — he was a quiet boy who didn’t make friends easily. So she’d hit upon a plan — she’d open her own club in her cellar, since the Best family were rich enough to have a big house. If there was a club *in Pete’s house* he’d definitely make lots of friends. They needed a band, and she asked the Les Stewart Quartet if they’d like to be the resident band at this new club, the Casbah, and also if they’d like to help decorate it.  They said yes, but then Paul and George went on a hitch-hiking holiday around Wales for a few days, and George didn’t get back in time to play a gig the quartet had booked. Ken Brown, the other guitarist, didn’t turn up either, and Les Stewart got into a rage and split the group. Suddenly, the Casbah had no group — George and Ken were willing to play, but neither was a lead singer — and no decorators either. So George roped in John and Paul, who helped decorate the place, and with the addition of Ken Brown, the group returned to the Quarry Men name for their regular Saturday night gig at the Casbah. The group had no bass player or drummer, and they all kept pestering everyone they knew to get a bass or a drum kit, but nobody would bite. But then Stuart Sutcliffe got half a painting in an exhibition put on by John Moores, the millionaire owner of Littlewoods, who was a big patron of the arts in Liverpool. I say he got half a painting in the exhibition, because the painting was done on two large boards — Stuart and his friends took the first half of the painting down to the gallery, went back to get the other half, and got distracted by the pub and never brought it. But Moores was impressed enough with the abstract painting that he bought it at the end of the exhibition’s run, for ninety pounds — about two thousand pounds in today’s money. And so Stuart’s friends gave him a choice — he could either buy a bass or a drum kit, either would be fine. He chose the bass. But the same week that Stuart joined, Ken Brown was out, and they lost their gig at the Casbah. John, Paul, George and Ken had turned up one Saturday, and Ken hadn’t felt well, so instead of performing he just worked on the door. At the end of the show, Mona Best insisted on giving Ken an equal share of the money, as agreed. John, Paul, and George wouldn’t stand for that, and so Ken was out of the group, and they were no longer playing for Mona Best. Stuart joining the group caused tensions — George was fine with him, thinking that a bass player who didn’t yet know how to play was better than no bass player at all, but Paul was much less keen. Partly this was because he thought the group needed to get better, which would be hard with someone who couldn’t play, but also he was getting jealous of Sutcliffe’s closeness to Lennon, especially when the two became flatmates. But John wanted him in the group, and what John wanted, he got. There are recordings of the group around this time that circulate — only one has been released officially, a McCartney instrumental called “Cayenne”, but the others are out there if you look: [Excerpt: The Quarry Men, “Cayenne”] The gigs had dried up again, but they did have one new advantage — they now had a name they actually liked. John and Stuart had come up with it, inspired by Buddy Holly’s Crickets. They were going to be Beatles, with an a. Shortly after the Beatles’ first appearance under that name, at the art school student union, came the Liverpool gig which was to have had Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent headlining, before Cochran died. A lot of Liverpool groups were booked to play on the bill there, but not the Beatles — though Richy Starkey was going to play the gig, with his latest group Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. Allan Williams, the local promoter, added extra groups to fill out the bill, including Gerry and the Pacemakers, and suddenly everyone who loved rock and roll in Liverpool realised that there were others out there like them. Overnight, a scene had been born. And where there’s a scene, there’s money to be made. Larry Parnes, who had been the national promoter of the tour, was at the show and realised that there were a lot of quite proficient musicians in Liverpool. And it so happened that he needed backing bands for three of his artists who were going on tour, separately — two minor stars, Duffy Power and Johnny Gentle, and one big star, Billy Fury. And both Gentle and Fury were from Liverpool themselves. So Parnes asked Allan Williams to set up auditions with some of the local groups. Williams invited several groups, and one he asked along was the Beatles, largely because Lennon and Sutcliffe begged him. He also found them a drummer, Tommy Moore, who was a decade older than the rest of them — though Moore didn’t turn up to the audition because he had to work, and so Johnny “Hutch” Hutchinson of Cass and the Cassanovas sat in with them, much to Hutch’s disgust — he hated the Beatles, and especially Lennon.  Cass of the Cassanovas also insisted that “the Beatles” was a stupid name, and that the group needed to be Something and the Somethings, and he suggested Long John and the Silver Beatles, and that stuck for a couple of shows before they reverted to their proper name. The Beatles weren’t chosen for any of the main tours that were being booked, but then Parnes phoned Williams up — there were some extra dates on the Johnny Gentle tour that he hadn’t yet booked a group for. Could Williams find him a band who could be in Scotland that Friday night for a nine-day tour? Williams tried Cass and the Cassanovas, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, and Gerry and the Pacemakers, but none of them could go on tour at such short notice. They all had gigs booked, or day jobs they had to book time off with. The Beatles had no gigs booked, and only George had a day job, and he didn’t mind just quitting that. They were off to Scotland. They were so inspired by being on tour with a Larry Parnes artist that most of them took on new names just like those big stars — George became Carl Harrison, after Carl Perkins, Stuart became Stuart de Staël, after his favourite painter, and Paul became Paul Ramon, which he thought sounded mysterious and French. There’s some question about whether John took on a new name — some sources have him becoming “Long John”, while others say he was “Johnny” Lennon rather than John. Tommy Moore, meanwhile, was just Thomas Moore. It was on this tour, of course, that Lennon helped Johnny Gentle write “I’ve Just Fallen For Someone”, which we talked about last week: [Excerpt: Darren Young, “I’ve Just Fallen For Someone”] The tour was apparently fairly miserable, with horrible accommodation, poor musicianship from the group, and everyone getting on everyone’s nerves — George and Stuart got into fistfights, John bullied Stuart a bit because of his poor playing, and John particularly didn’t get on well with Moore — a man who was a decade older, didn’t share their taste in music, and worked in a factory rather than having the intellectual aspirations of the group. The two hated each other by the end of the tour. But the tour did also give the group the experience of signing autographs, and of feeling like stars in at least a minor way. When they got back to Liverpool, George moved in with John and Stuart, to get away from his mum telling him to get a proper job, and they got a few more bookings thanks to Williams, but they soon became drummerless — they turned up to a gig one time to find that Tommy Moore wasn’t there. They went round to his house, and his wife shouted from an upstairs window, “Yez can piss off, he’s had enough of yez and gone back to work at the bottle factory”. The now four-piece group carried on, however, and recordings exist of them in this period, sounding much more professional than only a few months before, including performances of some of their own songs. The most entertaining of these is probably “You’ll Be Mine”, an Ink Spots parody with some absurd wordplay from Lennon: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “You’ll Be Mine”] Soon enough the group found another drummer, Norm Chapman, and carried on as before, getting regular bookings thanks to Williams. There was soon a temporary guest at the flat John, Stuart, and George shared with several other people — Royston Ellis, the Beat poet and friend of the Shadows, had turned up in Liverpool and latched on to the group, partly because he fancied George. He performed with them a couple of times, crashed at the flat, and provided them with two formative experiences — he gave them their first national press, talking in Record and Show Mirror about how he wanted them to be his full-time group, and he gave them their first drug experience, showing them how to get amphetamines out of inhalers. While the group’s first national press was positive, there was soon some very negative press indeed associated with them. A tabloid newspaper wanted to do a smear story about the dangerous Beatnik menace. The article talked about how “they revel in filth”, and how beatniks were “a dangerous menace to our young people… a corrupting influence of drug addicts and peddlers, degenerates who specialise in obscene orgies”. And for some reason — it’s never been made clear exactly how — the beatnik “pad” they chose to photograph for this story was the one that John, Stuart, and George lived in, though they weren’t there at the time — several of their friends and associates are in the pictures though. They were all kicked out of their flat, and moved back in with their families, and around this time they lost Chapman from the group too — he was called up to do his National Service, one of the last people to be conscripted before conscription ended for good. They were back to a four-piece again, and for a while Paul was drumming. But then, as seems to have happened so often with this group, a bizarre coincidence happened. A while earlier, Allan Williams had travelled to Hamburg, with the idea of trying to get Liverpool groups booked there. He’d met up with Bruno Koschmider, the owner of a club called the Kaiserkeller. Koschmider had liked the idea, but nothing had come of it, partly because neither could speak the other’s language well. A little while later, Koschmider had remembered the idea and come over to the UK to find musicians. He didn’t remember where Williams was from, so of course he went to London, to the 2is, and there he found a group of musicians including Tony Sheridan, who we talked about back in the episode on “Brand New Cadillac”, the man who’d been Vince Taylor’s lead guitarist and had a minor solo career: [Excerpt: Tony Sheridan, “Why?”] Sheridan was one of the most impressive musicians in Britain, but he also wanted to skip the country — he’d just bought a guitar on credit in someone else’s name, and he also had a wife and six-month-old baby he wanted rid of. He eagerly went off with Koschmider, and a scratch group called the Jets soon took up residence at the Kaiserkeller. Meanwhile, in Liverpool, Derry and the Seniors were annoyed. Larry Parnes had booked them for a tour, but then he’d got annoyed at the unprofessionalism of the Liverpool bands he was booking and cancelled the booking, severing his relationship with Williams. The Seniors wanted to know what Williams was going to do about it.  There was no way to get them enough gigs in Liverpool, so Williams, being a thoroughly decent man who had a sense of obligation, offered to drive the group down to London to see if they could get work there. He took them to the 2is, and they were allowed to get up and play there, since Williams was a friend of the owner. And Bruno Koschmider was there. The Jets hadn’t liked playing at Williams’ club, and they’d scarpered to another one with better working conditions, which they helped get off the ground and renamed the Top Ten, after Vince Taylor’s club in London. So Bruno had come back to find another group, and there in the same club at the same time was the man who’d given him the idea in the first place, with a group. Koschmider immediately signed up Derry and the Seniors to play at the Kaiserkeller.  Meanwhile, the best gig the Beatles could get, also through Williams, was backing a stripper, where they played whatever instrumentals they knew, no matter how inappropriate, things like the theme from The Third Man: [Excerpt: Anton Karas, “Theme from The Third Man”] A tune guaranteed to get the audience into a sexy mood, I’m sure you’ll agree. But then Allan Williams got a call from Koschmider. Derry and the Seniors were doing great business, and he’d decided to convert another of his clubs to be a rock and roll club. Could Williams have a group for him by next Friday? Oh, and it needed to be five people. Williams tried Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. They were busy. He tried Cass and the Cassanovas. They were busy. He tried Gerry and the Pacemakers. They were busy. Finally, he tried the Beatles. They weren’t busy, and said yes they could go to Hamburg that week. There were a few minor issues, like there not being five of them, none of them having passports, and them not having a drummer. The passports could be sorted quickly — there’s a passport office in Liverpool — but the lack of a fifth Beatle was more of a problem. In desperation, they turned eventually to Pete Best, Mrs. Best’s son, because they knew he had a drum kit. He agreed.  Allan Williams drove the group to Hamburg, and they started playing six-hour sets every night at the Indra, not finishing til three in the morning, at which point they’d make their way to their lodgings — the back of a filthy cinema.  By this time, the Beatles had already got good — Howie Casey, of Derry and the Seniors, who’d remembered the Beatles as being awful at the Johnny Gentle audition, came over to see them and make fun of them, but found that they were far better than they had been. But playing six hours a night got them *very* good *very* quickly — especially as they decided that they weren’t going to play the same song twice in a night, meaning they soon built up a vast repertoire. But right from the start, there was a disconnect between Pete Best and the other four — they socialised together, and he went off on his own. He was also a weak player — he was only just starting to learn — and so the rest of the group would stamp their feet to keep him in time. That, though, also gave them a bit more of a stage act than they might otherwise have had. There are lots of legendary stories about the group’s time in Hamburg, and it’s impossible to sort fact from fiction, and the bits we can sort out would get this podcast categorised as adult content, but they were teenagers, away from home for a long period for the first time, living in a squalid back room in the red light district of a city with a reputation for vice. I’m sure whatever you imagine is probably about right. After a relatively short time, they were moved from the Indra, which had to stop putting on rock and roll shows, to the Kaiserkeller, where they shared the bill with Rory Storm & the Hurricanes, up to that point considered Liverpool’s best band. There’s a live recording of the Hurricanes from 1960, which shows that they were certainly powerful: [Excerpt: Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, “Brand New Cadillac”] That recording doesn’t have the Hurricanes’ normal drummer on, who was sick for that show. But compared to what the Beatles had become — a stomping powerhouse with John Lennon, whose sense of humour was both cruel and pointed, doing everything he could to get a rise out of the audience — they were left in the dust. A letter home that George Harrison wrote sums it up — “Rory Storm & the Hurricanes came out here the other week, and they are crumby. He does a bit of dancing around but it still doesn’t make up for his phoney group. The only person who is any good in the group is the drummer.” That drummer was Richy Starkey from the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, now performing as Ringo Starr. They struck up a friendship, and even performed together at least once — John, Paul, George, and Ringo acting as the backing group for Lu Walters of the Hurricanes on a demo, which is frustratingly missing and hasn’t been heard since. They were making other friends, too. There was Tony Sheridan, who they’d seen on TV, but who would now sometimes jam with them as equals. And there was a trio of arty bohemian types who had stumbled across the club, where they were very out of place — Astrid Kirscherr, Klaus Voormann, and Jurgen Vollmer. They all latched on to the Beatles, and especially to Stuart, who soon started dating Astrid, despite her speaking no English and him speaking no German. But relations between Koschmider and the Beatles had worsened, and he reported to the police that George, at only seventeen, was under-age. George got deported. The rest of the group decided to move over to the Top Ten Club, and as a parting gift, Paul and Pete nailed some condoms to their bedroom wall and set fire to them. Koschmider decided to report this to the police as attempted arson, and those two were deported as well. John followed a week later, while Stuart stayed in Hamburg for a while, to spend more time with Astrid, who he planned to marry. The other four regrouped, getting in a friend, Chas Newby, as a temporary bass player while Stuart was away. And on the twenty-seventh of December, 1960, when they played Litherland Town Hall, they changed the Liverpool music scene. They were like nothing anyone had ever seen, and the audience didn’t dance — they just rushed to the stage, to be as close to the performance as possible. The Beatles had become the best band in Liverpool. Mark Lewisohn goes further, and suggests that the three months of long nights playing different songs in Hamburg had turned them into the single most experienced rock band *in the world* — which seems vanishingly unlikely to me, but Lewisohn is not a man given to exaggeration. By this time, Mona Best had largely taken over the group’s bookings, and there were a lot of them, as well as a regular spot at the Casbah. Neil Aspinall, a friend of Pete’s, started driving them to gigs, while they also had a regular MC, Bob Wooler, who ran many local gigs, and who gave the Beatles their own theme music — he’d introduce them with the fanfare from Rossini’s William Tell Overture: [Excerpt: Rossini, “William Tell Overture”] Stuart came over from Hamburg in early January, and once again the Beatles were a five-piece — and by now, he could play quite well, well enough, at any rate, that it didn’t destroy the momentum the group had gathered. The group were getting more and more bookings, including the venue that would become synonymous with them, the Cavern, a tiny little warehouse cellar that had started as a jazz club, and that the Quarry Men had played once a couple of years earlier, but had been banned from for playing too much rock and roll. Now, the Beatles were getting bookings at the Cavern’s lunchtime sessions, and that meant more than it seemed. Most of the gigs they played otherwise were on the outskirts of the city, but the Cavern was in the city centre. And that meant that for the lunchtime sessions, commuters from outside the city were coming to see them — which meant that the group got fans from anywhere within commuting distance, fans who wanted them to play in their towns. Meanwhile, the group were branching out musically — they were particularly becoming fascinated by the new R&B, soul, and girl-group records that were coming out in the US. After already having loved “Money” by Barrett Strong, John was also obsessed with the Miracles, and would soon become a fervent fan of anything Motown, and the group were all big fans of the Shirelles. As they weren’t playing original material live, and as every group would soon learn every other group’s best songs, there was an arms race on to find the most exciting songs to cover. As well as Elvis and Buddy and Eddie, they were now covering the Shirelles and Ray Charles and Gary US Bonds. The group returned to Hamburg in April, Paul and Pete’s immigration status having been resolved and George now having turned eighteen, and started playing at the Top Ten club, where they played even longer sets, and more of them, than they had at the Kaiserkeller and the Indra. Tony Sheridan started regularly joining them on stage at this time, and Paul switched to piano while Sheridan added the third guitar. This was also when they started using Preludin, a stimulant related to amphetamines which was prescribed as a diet drug — Paul would take one pill a night, George a couple, and John would gobble them down. But Pete didn’t take them — one more way in which he was different from the others — and he started having occasional micro-sleeps in the middle of songs as the long nights got to him, much to the annoyance of the rest of the group. But despite Pete’s less than stellar playing they were good enough that Sheridan — the single most experienced musician in the British rock and roll scene — described them as the best R&B band he’d ever heard. Once they were there, they severed their relationship with Allan Williams, refusing to pay him his share of the money, and just cutting him out of their careers.  Meanwhile, Stuart was starting to get ill. He was having headaches all the time, and had to miss shows on occasion. He was also the only Beatle with a passion for anything else, and he managed to get a scholarship to study art with the famous sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, who was now working in Hamburg. Paul subbed for Stuart on bass, and eventually Stuart left the group, though on good terms with everyone other than Paul. So it was John, Paul, George and Pete who ended up making the Beatles’ first records. Bert Kaempfert, the most important man in the German music industry, had been to see them all at the Top Ten and liked what he saw. Outside Germany, Kaempfert was probably best known for co-writing Elvis’ “Wooden Heart”, which the Beatles had in their sets at this time: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Wooden Heart”] Kaempfert had signed Tony Sheridan to a contract, and he wanted the Beatles to back him in the studio — and he was also interested in recording a couple of tracks with them on their own. The group eagerly agreed, and their first session started at eight in the morning on the twenty-second of June 1961, after they had finished playing all night at the club, and all of them but Pete were on Preludin for the session. Stuart came along for moral support, but didn’t play. Pete was a problem, though. He wasn’t keeping time properly, and Kaempfert eventually insisted on removing his bass drum and toms, leaving only a snare, hi-hat, and ride cymbal for Pete to play. They recorded seven songs at that session in total. Two of them were just by the Beatles. One was a version of “Ain’t She Sweet”, an old standard which Gene Vincent had recorded fairly recently, but the other was the only track ever credited to Lennon and Harrison as cowriters. On their first trip to Hamburg, they’d wanted to learn “Man of Mystery” by the Shadows: [Excerpt: The Shadows, “Man of Mystery”] But there was a slight problem in that they didn’t have a copy of the record, and had never heard it — it came out in the UK while they were in Germany. So they asked Rory Storm to hum it for them. He hummed a few notes, and Lennon and Harrison wrote a parody of what Storm had sung, which they named “Beatle Bop” but by this point they’d renamed “Cry For a Shadow”: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “Cry For a Shadow”] The other five songs at the session were given over to Tony Sheridan, with the Beatles backing him, and the song that Kaempfert was most interested in recording was one the group had been performing on stage — a rocked-up version of the old folk song “My Bonnie”: [Excerpt: Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, “My Bonnie”] That was the record chosen as the single, but it was released not as by Tony Sheridan and the Beatles, but by Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers — “Beatles”, to German ears, sounded a little like “piedels”, a childish slang term for penises. The Beatles had made their first record, but it wasn’t one they thought much of. They knew they could do better. The next week, the now four-piece Beatles returned to Liverpool, with much crying at Stuart staying behind — even Paul, now Stuart was no longer a threat for John’s attention, was contrite and tried to make amends to him.  On their return to Liverpool, they picked up where they had left off, playing almost every night, and spending the days trying to find new records — often listening to the latest releases at NEMS, a department store with an extensive record selection. Brian Epstein, the shop’s manager, prided himself on being able to get any record a customer wanted, and whenever anyone requested anything he’d buy a second copy for the shelves. As a result, you could find records there that you wouldn’t get anywhere else in Liverpool, and the Beatles were soon adding more songs by the Shirelles and Gary US Bonds to their sets, as well as more songs by the Coasters and Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me”. They were playing gigs further afield, and Neil Aspinall was now driving them everywhere. Aspinall was Pete Best’s closest friend — and was having an affair with Pete’s mother — but unlike Pete himself he also became close to the other Beatles, and would remain so for the rest of his life.  By this point, the group were so obviously the best band on the Liverpool scene that they were starting to get bored — there was no competition. And by this point it really was a proper scene — John’s old art school friend Bill Harry had started up a magazine, Mersey Beat, which may be the first magazine anywhere in the world to focus on one area’s local music scene. Brian Epstein from NEMS had a column, as did Bob Wooler, and often John’s humorous writing would appear as well. The Beatles were featured in most issues — although Paul McCartney’s name was misspelled almost every time it appeared — and not just because Lennon and Harry were friends. By this point there were the Beatles, and there were all the other groups in the area. For several months this continued — they learned new songs, they played almost every day, and they continued to be the best. They started to find it boring. The one big change that came at this point was when John and Paul went on holiday to Paris, saw Vince Taylor, bumped into their friend Jurgen from Hamburg, and got Jurgen to do their hair like his — the story we told in the episode on “Brand New Cadillac”. They now had the Beatles haircut, though they were still wearing leather. When they got back, George copied their new style straight away, but Pete decided to leave his hair in a quiff. There was nowhere else to go without a manager to look after them. They needed management — and they found it because of “My Bonnie”: [Excerpt: Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, “My Bonnie”] “My Bonnie” was far from a great record, but it was what led to everything that followed. The Beatles had mentioned from the stage at the Cavern that they had a record out, and a young man named Raymond Jones walked into NEMS and asked for a copy of it. Brian Epstein couldn’t find it in the record company catalogues, and asked Jones for more information — Jones explained that they were a Liverpool group, but the record had come out in Germany. A couple of days later, two young girls came into the shop asking for the same record, and now Epstein was properly intrigued — in his view, if *two* people asked for a record, that probably meant a lot more than just two people wanted it. He decided to check these Beatles out for himself. Epstein was instantly struck by the group, and this has led to a lot of speculation over the years, because his tastes ran more to Sibelius than to Little Richard. As Epstein was also gay, many people have assumed that the attraction was purely physical. And it might well have been, at least in part, but the suggestion that everything that followed was just because of that seems unlikely — Epstein was also someone who had a long interest in the arts, and had trained as an actor at RADA, the most prestigious actors’ college in the UK, before taking up his job at the family store. Given that the Beatles were soon to become the most popular musicians in the history of the world, and were already the most popular musicians in the Liverpool area, the most reasonable assumption must be that Epstein was impressed by the same things that impressed roughly a billion other people over the next sixty years. Epstein started going to the Cavern regularly, to watch the Beatles and to make plans — the immaculately dressed, public-school-educated, older rich man stood out among the crowd, and the Beatles already knew his face from his record shop, and so they knew something was going on. By late November, Brian had managed to obtain a box of twenty-five copies of “My Bonnie”, and they’d sold out within hours. He set up a meeting with the Beatles, and even before he got them signed to a management contract he was using his contacts with the record industry in London to push the Beatles at record companies. Those companies listened to Brian, because NEMS was one of their biggest customers. December 1961, the month they signed with Brian Epstein, was also the month that they finally started including Lennon/McCartney songs in their sets.  And within a couple of weeks of becoming their manager, even before he’d signed them to a contract, Brian had managed to persuade Mike Smith, an A&R man from Decca, to come to the Cavern to see the group in person. He was impressed, and booked them in for a studio session. December 61 was also the first time that John, Paul, George, and Ringo played together in that lineup, without any other musicians, when on the twenty-seventh of December Pete called in sick for a show, and the others got in their friend to cover for him. It wouldn’t be the last time they would play together. On New Year’s Day 1962, the Beatles made the trek down to London to record fifteen songs at the Decca studios. The session was intended for two purposes — to see if they sounded as good on tape as they did in the Cavern, and if they did to produce their first single. Those recordings included the core of their Cavern repertoire, songs like “Money”: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “Money (Decca version)”] They also recorded three Lennon/McCartney songs, two by Paul — “Love of the Loved” and “Like Dreamers Do”: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “Like Dreamers Do”] And one by Lennon — “Hello Little Girl”: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “Hello Little Girl”] And they were Lennon/McCartney songs, even though they were written separately — the two agreed that they were going to split the credit on anything either of them wrote. The session didn’t go well — the group’s equipment wasn’t up to standard and they had to use studio amps, and they’re all audibly nervous — but Mike Smith was still fairly confident that they’d be releasing something through Decca — he just had to work out the details with his boss, Dick Rowe. Meanwhile, the group were making other changes. Brian suggested that they could get more money if they wore suits, and so they agreed — though they didn’t want just any suits, they wanted stylish mohair suits, like the black American groups they loved so much.  The Beatles were now a proper professional group — but unfortunately, Decca turned them down. Dick Rowe, Mike Smith’s boss, didn’t think that electric guitars were going to become a big thing — he was very tuned in to the American trends, and nothing with guitars was charting at the time. Smith was considering two groups — the Beatles, and Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, and wanted to sign both. Rowe told him that he could sign one, but only one, of them. The Tremeloes had been better in the studio, and they lived round the corner from Smith and were friendly with him. There was no contest — much as Smith wanted to sign both groups, the Tremeloes were the better prospect. Rowe did make an offer to Epstein: if Epstein would pay a hundred pounds (a *lot* of money in those days), Tony Meehan, formerly of the Shadows, would produce the group in another session, and Decca would release that. Brian wasn’t interested — if the Beatles were going to make a record, they were going to make it with people who they weren’t having to pay for the privilege. John, Paul, and George were devastated, but for their own reasons they didn’t bother to tell Pete they’d been turned down. But they did have a tape of themselves, at least — a professional-quality recording that they could use to attract other labels. And their career was going forward in other ways. The same day Brian had his second meeting with Decca, they had an audition with the BBC in Manchester, where they were accepted to perform on Teenager’s Turn, a radio programme hosted by the Northern Dance Orchestra. A few weeks later, on the seventh of March, they went to Manchester to record four songs in front of an audience, of which three would be broadcast: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “Please Mr. Postman (Teenager’s Turn)”] That recording of John singing “Please Mr. Postman” is historic for another reason, which shows just how on the cutting edge of musical taste the Beatles actually were — it was the first time ever that a Motown song was played on the BBC. Now we get to the part of the story that, before Mark Lewisohn’s work in his book a few years back, had always been shrouded in mystery. What Lewisohn shows is that George Ma

We look at the St Pat's stalemate and interview League of Ireland legend Tony Sheridan ahead of the Rovers v Shelbourne game on Friday.

Hear how the new Irish Covid 19 app is working out and why secure messaging is taking off. Also, as Fujitsu tells employees to go home, Tony Sheridan from Fidelity Investments shares how to stay creative during this crisis where so many of us are working from home. Remember Fidelity Investments are hiring for tech roles in Ireland. Discover more about virtually joining this global leader in fintech innovation at fidelityinvestments.ie

Title: The Sabbath Speaker: Pastor Tony Sheridan Date: 8th October 2017 Location: Adelaide, Australia Visit http://podcastrevival.com/210 for more information. If you enjoy this podcast we would love for you to share it with others. The Revival Fellowship is a Bible directed, Spirit-filled Church and we welcome visitors to our meetings at any of our locations all over the world. To find your nearest venue visit http://therevivalfellowship.com © 2020 The Revival Fellowship. All Rights Reserved. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode eighty-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Three Steps to Heaven” by Eddie Cochran, and at the British tour which changed music and ended his life. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode, on “Quarter to Three” by Gary US Bonds. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/  —-more—- Resources   As usual, I have put together a Mixcloud mix with every song excerpted in this podcast. Much of the information here comes from Spencer Leigh’s book Things Do Go Wrong, which looks specifically at the 1960 tour. I also used Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran: Rock and Roll Revolutionaries by John Collis.  While there are dozens of compilations of Cochran’s music available, many of them are flawed in one way or another (including the Real Gone Music four-CD set, which is what I would normally recommend). This one is probably the best you can get for Cochran novices. This CD contains the Saturday Club recordings by Vincent and Cochran, which are well worth listening to.   Pete Frame’s The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Be warned, though — his jokey and irreverent style can, when dealing with people like Larry Parnes (who was gay and Jewish) very occasionally tip over into reinforcing homophobic and anti-semitic stereotypes for an easy laugh. And a fair chunk of the background information here also comes from the extended edition of Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In, which is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the Beatles, British post-war culture, and British post-war music.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript There’s been a sad running theme in the episodes in recent months of rock stars dying in accidents. Sadly, in the 1950s and sixties, travelling long distances was even more dangerous than it is today, and rock musicians, who had to travel a lot more than most people, and did much of that travelling at night, were more likely to be in accidents than most. Today, we’re going to look at yet another of these tragic deaths, of someone who is thought of in the US as being something of a one-hit wonder, but who had a much bigger effect on British music. We’re going to look at what would be Eddie Cochran’s final tour, and at his UK number one single “Three Steps to Heaven”: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Three Steps to Heaven”] When we left Eddie Cochran, he had just appeared in the film “The Girl Can’t Help It”, singing “Twenty Flight Rock”, and he had also had a hit with “Sittin’ in the Balcony”. But he hadn’t yet managed to establish himself as the star he knew he could be — he was the whole package, singer, songwriter, and especially guitarist, and he hadn’t yet made a record that showed him to his best advantage as an artist. “Twenty Flight Rock” had come close, but it wasn’t a song he’d written himself, and the record hadn’t yet been released in the US. Meanwhile, Liberty Records seemed to not understand what they had in him — they were trying to push him to be another Pat Boone, and become a bland pop singer with no rock and roll in his sound. His first album, Singin’ to My Baby, had little to do with the music that he was interested in playing. So Cochran needed to find something that would really put him on the map — a song that would mean he wasn’t just one of dozens of Fabians and Frankie Avalons and interchangeable Bobbies who were starting to take over shows like American Bandstand. “Twenty Flight Rock” hadn’t ended up being a hit at all, despite its placement in a popular film — they’d left it too long between the film coming out and releasing the record, and he’d lost that momentum. At the end of 1957 he’d gone on the Australian tour with Little Richard and Gene Vincent which had led to Richard retiring from rock and roll, and he’d become much closer with Vincent, with whom he’d already struck up a friendship when making The Girl Can’t Help It. The two men bonded, particularly, over their love of guns, although they expressed that love in very different ways. Cochran had grown up in rural Minnesota, and had the same love of hunting and fishing that most men of his background did at that time (and that many still do). He was, by all accounts, an affable person, and basically well adjusted. Vincent, on the other hand, was a polite and friendly person when not drinking. Unfortunately, he was in constant pain from his leg wounds, and that meant he was drinking a lot, and when he was drunk he was an incredibly unpleasant, aggressive, person. His love of guns was mostly for threatening people with, and he seems to have latched on to Cochran as someone who could look after him when he got himself into awkward situations — Cochran was so personally charming that he could defuse the situation when Vincent had behaved appallingly towards someone. At the time, Vincent seemed like a has-been and Cochran a never-would-be. This was late 1957, and it seemed like rock and roll records with guitars on were a fad that had already passed their sell-by date. The only white guitarist/vocalist other than Elvis who’d been having hits on a regular basis was Buddy Holly, and his records were doing worse and worse with each release. Vincent hadn’t had a real hit since his first single, “Be Bop A Lula”, while Cochran had made the top twenty with “Sittin’ in the Balcony”, but the highest he’d got after that was number eighty-two. He’d recently recorded a song co-written by George Mottola, who’d written “Goodnight My Love”, but “Jeannie, Jeannie, Jeannie” stalled at number ninety-four when it was released in early 1958: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Jeannie, Jeannie, Jeannie”] So neither man was in a good place at the start of 1958, but they had very different attitudes — Vincent was depressed and angry, but Cochran knew that something would come along. He was only nineteen, he was astonishingly good looking, he was a great guitarist — if rock and roll didn’t work out, something would. In early 1958, Cochran was still hunting for that elusive big hit, as he joined the Blue Caps in the studio, to provide bass, arrangements, and backing vocals on several tracks for Vincent’s latest album. It’s Cochran singing the bass vocals at the start of “Git It”, one of Vincent’s greatest tracks: [Excerpt: Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, “Git It”] But shortly after that recording, a major turn in Cochran’s fortunes came from an unexpected place. Liberty Records had been in financial difficulties, and part of the reason that Cochran’s records were unsuccessful was that they just didn’t have the money to promote them as much as they’d like. But then at the beginning of April a man called Ross Bagdasarian, under the name David Seville, released a novelty song called “The Witch Doctor”, featuring some mildly racist comedy and a sped-up voice. That record became a massive hit, selling over a million copies, going to number one, and becoming the fourth most successful record of 1958. Suddenly, Liberty Records was saved from bankruptcy. That made all the difference to the success of a track that Cochran had recorded on March the 28th, the same week he recorded those Gene Vincent sessions, and which came out at the tail-end of summer. Cochran had come up with a guitar riff that he liked, but he didn’t have any lyrics for it, and his friend and co-writer Jerry Capehart said “there’s never been a blues about the summer”. The two of them came up with some comedy lyrics in the style of the Coasters, who had just started to have big hits, and the result became Cochran’s only top ten hit in the US, reaching number eight, and becoming one of the best-remembered tracks of the fifties: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Summertime Blues”] That track was recorded with a minimal number of musicians — Cochran played all the guitars and sang both vocal parts, his bass player Guybo Smith played the bass part, and the great session drummer Earl Palmer played drums. There was also a fourth person on the record — Sharon Sheeley, who added handclaps, and who had written the B-side. Sheeley was a talented songwriter who also had a propensity for dating musicians. She’d dated one of the Everly Brothers for a while — different reports name different brothers, but the consensus seems to be that it was Don — and then when they’d split up, she’d written a song called “Poor Little Fool”. She’d then faked having her car break down outside Ricky Nelson’s house, and collared him when he came out to help. That sort of thing seemed to happen to Nelson a lot with songwriters — Johnny and Dorsey Burnette had sold Nelson songs by sitting on his doorstep and refusing to move until he listened to them — but it seemed to work out very well for him. The Burnettes wrote several hits for him, while Sheeley’s “Poor Little Fool” became Nelson’s first number one, as well as being the first number one ever on Billboard’s newly-renamed Hot One Hundred, and the first number one single on any chart to be written by a woman without a male cowriter: [Excerpt: Ricky Nelson, “Poor Little Fool”] Sheeley gets unfairly pigeonholed as a groupie (not that there’s anything wrong with being a groupie) because she had relationships with musicians, and at this point she was starting a relationship with Cochran. But it’s important to remember that when they got together, even though he was eighteen months older than her, she was the one who had written a number one single, and he was the one whose last record had gone to number ninety-four — and that after her relationship with Cochran, she went on to form a writing partnership with Jackie DeShannon that produced a long string of hits for people like Brenda Lee and the Fleetwoods, as well as songs that weren’t hits but probably deserved to be, like Ral Donner’s “Don’t Put Your Heart in His Hands”: [Excerpt: Ral Donner, “Don’t Put Your Heart in His Hands”] Sheeley was more invested in her relationship with Cochran than he was, but this has led rock writers to completely dismiss her as “just Eddie Cochran’s girlfriend”, when in terms of their relative statuses in the music industry, it would be more fair to define Cochran as “just Sharon Sheeley’s boyfriend”. I have to emphasise this point, because in the limited number of books about Cochran, you will see a lot of descriptions of her as “a groupie”, “a fantasist”, and worse, and very few mentions of the fact that she had a life outside her partner. “Summertime Blues” looked like it was going to be the start of Eddie Cochran’s career as a rock and roll star, but in fact it was the peak of it, at least in the US. While the song was a big hit, the follow-up, “C’mon Everybody”, which was written by Cochran and Capehart to much the same formula, but without the humour that characterised “Summertime Blues”, didn’t do so well: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “C’mon Everybody”] That made only number thirty-five on the US charts, and would be Cochran’s last top forty record there — but in the UK, it was a bigger hit than “Summertime Blues”, reaching number six. “C’mon Everybody” was, though, big enough for Cochran to make some TV appearances. He’d agreed to go on tour with his friends Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens on a tour called the Winter Dance Party tour, but had bowed out when he got some offers of TV work. He definitely appeared on a show called Town Hall Party broadcast from California on February the second 1959, and according to Sheeley he was booked to appear in New York on the Ed Sullivan Show, which was the reason he’d decided not to do the tour, a few days later. As it turned out, Cochran never made that Ed Sullivan Show appearance, as in the early hours of February the third, his friends died in a plane crash. He refused to get on the plane to New York for the show, and instead drove out to the desert in his station wagon to grieve, and from that point on he developed a fear of flying. The follow-up to “C’mon Everybody”, “Teenage Heaven”, only went to number ninety-nine on the charts, and his next two singles didn’t do much better. “Somethin’ Else”, a song that Sheeley had written for him, made number fifty-eight, while his cover version of Ray Charles’ “Hallelujah I Love Her So” didn’t chart at all. 1959 was a depressing year for Cochran personally and professionally. But while “Somethin’ Else” and “Hallelujah I Love Her So” were flops in the US, they both made the top thirty in the UK. In the US, guitar-based white rock and roll was now firmly out of fashion, with the audience split between black vocal groups singing R&B and white male solo singers called Bobby singing mid-tempo pop. But in the UK, the image of rock and roll in people’s minds was still that of the rockabillies from a couple of years earlier — while British musical trends would start to move faster than the US by the sixties, in the fifties they lagged a long way behind. And in particular, Cochran’s friend Gene Vincent was doing much better in Britain than in the US. Very few US performers had toured the UK, and with the exception of Buddy Holly, most of those who had were not particularly impressive. Because of an agreement between the two countries’ musicians’ unions, it was difficult for musicians to perform in one country if they were from the other. It wasn’t quite so difficult for solo performers, who could be backed by local musicians and were covered under a different agreement, but Lew and Leslie Grade, who had a virtual monopoly on the UK entertainment business, had had a very bad experience with Jerry Lee Lewis when his marriage to his teenage cousin had caused his UK tour to be cancelled, and anyway, Britain was an unimportant market a long way away from America, so why would Americans come all that way? For most of 1959, the closest thing to American rock and roll stars touring the UK were Connie Francis and Paul Anka, neither of whom screamed rock and roll rebellion. American rockers just didn’t come to the UK. Unless they had nowhere else to go, that is — and Gene Vincent had nowhere else to go. In the US, he was a washed-up has been who’d burned every single bridge, but in the UK he was an American Rock Star. In late 1959 he released a not-great single, “Wildcat”: [Excerpt: Gene Vincent, “Wildcat”] That single wasn’t doing particularly well, but then Larry Parnes and Jack Good hatched a plan. Good had a new TV show, “Boy Meets Girls”, based around one of Parnes’ artists, Marty Wilde, and also had a column in Disc magazine. They’d get an American rock star over to the UK, Parnes would stick him on a bill with a bunch of Parnes’ acts, Good would put him on the TV show and promote him in Disc magazine, and the tour and TV show would split the costs. Wilde was, at the time, about to go into a career slump. He’d just got married, and he and his wife were trying for their first kid — they’d decided that if it was a girl, they were going to call her Kim. It seemed likely they were going to lose his audience of teenage girls, as he was no longer available, and so Larry Parnes was trying to move him from rock and roll into musical styles that would be more suitable for adults, so his latest single was a ballad, “Bad Boy”: [Excerpt: Marty Wilde, “Bad Boy”] That meant that Wilde’s band, the Wildcats, made up at this point of Tony Belcher, Big Jim Sullivan, Licorice Locking and Brian Bennett, were no longer going to be suitable to back Wilde, as they were all rock and rollers, so they’d be fine for whichever rock star they could persuade over to the UK. Vincent was the only rock star available, and his latest single was even called “Wildcat”. That made him perfect for Parnes’ purposes, though Vincent was slightly nervous about using British musicians — he simply didn’t think that British musicians would be any good. As it turned out, Vincent had nothing to worry about on that score at least. When he got to the studios in Didsbury, in Manchester, where Boy Meets Girls was filmed, he met some of the best session musicians Britain had to offer. The house band for the show, the Flying Squad, was a smaller version of the bands that had appeared on Good’s earlier shows, a nine-piece group that included organist Cherry Wainer and session drummer Andy White, and was led by Joe Brown. Brown was a Larry Parnes artist, who at this point had released one rather uninspired single, the country-flavoured “People Gotta Talk”: [Excerpt: Joe Brown, “People Gotta Talk”] But Brown had an independent streak, which could be seen just from his name — Larry Parnes had tried to change it, as he did with all his acts, but Brown had flat-out refused to be called Elmer Twitch, the name Parnes had chosen for him. He insisted on keeping his own name, and it was under that name that he became one of Britain’s most respected guitarists. Vincent, amazingly, found these British musicians to be every bit as good as any musicians he’d worked with in the USA. But that was about all that he liked about the UK — you couldn’t get a hamburger or a pizza anywhere in the whole country, and the TV was only in black and white, and it finished at 11PM. For someone like Vincent, who liked to stay up all night watching old monster movies on TV, that was completely unacceptable. Luckily for him, at least he had his gun and knife to keep him occupied — he’d strapped them both to the leg iron he used for his damaged leg, so they wouldn’t set off the metal detectors coming into the country. But whatever his thoughts about the country as a whole, he couldn’t help loving the audience reaction. Jack Good knew how to present a rock and roll star to an audience, and he’d moved Vincent out of the slacks and sweater vests and blue caps into the kind of leather that he’d already had Vince Taylor wear. He got Vincent to emphasise his limp, and to look pained at all times. He was imagining Vincent as something along the lines of Richard III, and wanted him to appear as dangerous as possible. He used all the tricks of stagecraft that he’d used on Taylor, but with the added advantage that Vincent had a remarkable voice, unlike Taylor. Sadly, as is the case with almost all of the British TV of the period, the videotapes of the performances have long since been wiped, but we have poor-quality audio that demonstrates both how good Vincent was sounding and how well the British musicians were able to adapt to backing him: [Excerpt: Gene Vincent, “Summertime”, live on Boy Meets Girls] After making three appearances on Boy Meets Girls, Vincent was put on tour backed by the Wildcats, on a bill with acts like Wee Willie Harris and the Bachelors (the ones who recorded for Parlophone, not the later act of the same name), and “Wildcat” started going up the charts. Even though Gene Vincent hadn’t had a hit in three years, he was a massive success with the British audiences, and as a result Parnes and Good decided that it might be an idea if they got another American star over here, and the obvious choice was Eddie Cochran. Cochran had the same agent as Vincent, and so there was a working relationship there; they both knew each other and so Vincent could help persuade Cochran over; and Cochran had had a string of top thirty hits in the UK, but was commercially dead in the US. It was tempting for Cochran, too — as well as the obvious advantage of playing to people who were actually buying his record, the geography of Britain appealed. He’d been terrified of flying since Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens had died, but the British tour would only involve the transatlantic flight — all the travel once he was in the UK would be by road or rail. Before he came over, he had to record his next single, to be released while he was over in the UK. So on January the 8th, 1960, Eddie Cochran went into Gold Star Studios with his normal bass player, Guybo, and with his friends Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison, the guitarist and drummer of the Crickets, and they cut what turned out to be his last single, “Three Steps to Heaven”: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Three Steps to Heaven”] Two days later, he was in Britain, for the start of what was the biggest rock and roll tour in British history to that point — a hundred and eight live appearances, plus several TV and radio appearances, in a little over three months, playing two shows a night most nights. Parnes felt he had to work them hard to justify their fees — Vincent was getting $2500 a week, and Cochran $1000, while for example Billy Fury, at that point the biggest of Parnes’ acts, was on a salary of twenty pounds a week. While Vincent had made a great impression largely despite himself, Cochran was a different matter. Everyone seemed to love him. Unlike Vincent, he was a musician’s musician, and he formed close friendships with the players on the tour. Joe Brown, for example, remembers Cochran explaining to him that if you swap the G string on your guitar for a second B string, tuned down to G, you could bend a note a full tone — Brown used that trick to make himself one of the most sought-after session players in the UK before his own pop career started to take off. It was also apparent that while Jack Good had had to create a stage act for Gene Vincent, he didn’t have to do anything to make Cochran look good in front of the cameras. Marty Wilde said of him “The first thing I noticed about Eddie was his complexion. We British lads had acne and all the usual problems, and Eddie walked in with the most beautiful hair and the most beautiful skin – his skin was a light brown, beautiful colour, all that California sunshine, and I thought ‘you lucky devil’. We had Manchester white all over us. And he had the most beautiful face — the photographs never did the guy justice”. From the moment Cochran started his set in Ipswich, by saying “It’s great to be here in Hipswich” and wiggling his hips, he was utterly in command of the British audiences. Thankfully, because they did so many TV and radio sessions while they were over here, we have some idea of what these shows sounded like — and from the recordings, even when they were in the antiseptic environment of a BBC recording studio, without an audience, they still sounded fantastic. On some shows, Cochran would start with his back to the audience, the band would start playing “Somethin’ Else”, the song that Sharon Sheeley had written for him that had been a minor hit, and he’d whirl round and face the audience on the opening line, “Well look-a there!” [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, “Somethin’ Else [Eddie Cochran vocals]”, Saturday Club version] The shows all had a number of acts on, all of them other than the stars Larry Parnes acts, and because there were so many shows, acts would get rotated in and out as the tour went on. But some of those who played on many dates were Vince Eager, who had named himself after Gene Vincent but quickly grew more attached to Eddie Cochran, who he started to regard as his best friend as the tour went on, Tony Sheridan, who was building a solo career after leaving the Oh Boy! band, Georgie Fame, who was already more interested in being a jazz and R&B pianist in the mould of Mose Allison than he was in being a pop star, Johnny Gentle, a Liverpudlian performer who never rose to massive success, and Billy Fury, by far the most talented of Parnes’ acts. Fury was another Liverpudlian, who looked enough like Cochran that they could be brothers, and who had a top ten hit at the time with “Collette”, one of many hits he wrote for himself: [Excerpt: Billy Fury, “Collette”]  Fury was something of a sex symbol, aided by the fact that he would stuff his pants with the cardboard tube from a toilet roll before going on stage. This would lead the girls to scream at him — but would also lead their violent boyfriends to try to bottle him off stage, which meant he had more reason than most to have stagefright. Cochran would joke with Fury, and try to put him at ease — one story has him telling a nervous Fury, about to go on stage, to just say to himself “I am the greatest performer in the world”. Fury repeated back “I am the greatest performer in the world”, and Cochran replied, “No you’re not — I am!” This kind of joking led to Cochran becoming immensely popular among all the musicians on the tour, and to him once again falling into his old role of protecting Gene Vincent from the consequences of his own actions, when Vincent would do things like cut up a suit belonging to one of the road managers, while the road manager was inside it. While Vincent was the headliner, Cochran was clearly the one who impressed the British audiences the most. We have some stories from people who saw the tour, and they all focus on Eddie. Particularly notable is the tour’s residency in Liverpool, during which time Cochran was opening his set with his version of “What’d I Say”: [Excerpt: Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran, “What’d I Say [Eddie Cochran vocals]”, Saturday Club version] We have this report of Cochran’s performance in Liverpool: “Eddie blew me away. He had his unwound 3rd string, looked good and sang good and he was really getting to be a good guitarist… One moment will always represent Eddie to me. He finished a tune, the crowd stopped screaming and clapping, and he stepped up to the mike and before he said something he put both his hands back, pushed his hair back, and some girl, a single voice in the audience, she went ‘Eddie!’ and he said ‘Hi honey!’… I thought, ‘Yes! That’s it – rock ’n’ roll!’” That’s a quote from George Harrison in the early 1990s. He’d gone to see the show with a friend, John Lennon — it was Lennon’s first ever rock and roll gig as an audience member, and one of a very small number he ever attended. Lennon never particularly enjoyed seeing live shows — he preferred records — but even he couldn’t resist seeing Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent on the same bill. The Liverpool shows were massive successes, despite both American rockers being increasingly bored and turning more and more to drink as a result. Apparently the two would drink a bottle of bourbon between them before going on stage, and at one Liverpool show Cochran had to hold on to a mic stand to keep himself upright for the first two songs, before he sobered up enough to let go. The shows were successful enough that a local promoter, Allan Williams, asked if he could book Cochran and Vincent for another show, and Larry Parnes said yes — after Liverpool, they had to play Newcastle, Manchester, London, and Bristol, taking up another month, and then Eddie Cochran was going to be going back to the US for a couple of weeks, but he could pencil them in for six weeks’ time, when Cochran was going to come back. It’s quite surprising that Cochran agreed to come back, because he was getting thoroughly sick of the UK. He’d asked Sharon Sheeley to fly over and join him, but other than her and Vincent he had nothing of home with him, and he liked sunshine, fast food, cold beer, and all-night TV, and hated everything about the British winter, which was far darker and wetter than anything he’d experienced. But on the other hand, he was enjoying making music with these British people. There’s a great recording of Cochran, Vincent, Billy Fury, and Joe Brown jamming on the Willie Dixon blues song “My Babe” on “Boy Meets Girls”: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Billy Fury, Joe Brown, “My Babe”] But by the time the tour ended in Bristol, Eddie was very keen to get back. He was going to be bringing Vince Eager over to America to record, and arranged to meet him in London in the early hours of Easter Sunday. They were going to be taking the lunchtime plane from what was then London Airport but is now Heathrow. But there was a problem with getting there on time. There were very few trains between Bristol and London, and they’d have to get a car from the train station to the airport. But that Easter Sunday was the day of the annual Aldermaston March against nuclear weapons. These were massive marches which were big enough that they spawned compilation albums of songs to sing on the march, like Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger’s “Brother Won’t You Join the Line”: [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, “Brother Won’t You Join the Line?”] But the main effect the march was having on Cochran and Vincent was that it meant that to be sure of catching their plane, they would have to travel overnight by car. At first, they asked one of the other artists on the tour, Johnny Gentle, if they could go in his car, but he already had a carful, so they ended up getting a local driver, named George Martin (not the one at Parlophone Records) to drive them overnight. They got into the back seat of the car — Cochran sitting between Vincent and Sheeley, as Sheeley couldn’t stand Vincent. Vincent took a sleeping pill and went to sleep almost immediately, but Sheeley and Cochran were in a good mood, singing “California Here We Come” together, when Martin took a turn too fast and hit a lamppost. Vincent and Sheeley suffered major injuries and had to spend time in hospital. Cochran died. A short while later, Johnny Gentle’s car made its way onward towards London, and ran out of fuel. As all-night garages weren’t a thing in Britain then, they flagged down a policeman who told them there’d been a crash, and they could see if the breakdown vehicle would let them siphon petrol from the wrecked car. They did, and it was only the next day they realised which car it was they’d taken the fuel from. One of the police at the scene – maybe even that one – was a cadet who would later change his name to Dave Dee, and become the lead singer in Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch. As soon as the news got out about Cochran’s death, “Three Steps to Heaven”, which had come out in the US, but not yet in the UK, was rush-released: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Three Steps to Heaven”] It went to number one, and became Cochran’s biggest hit. Larry Parnes didn’t see why Cochran’s death should put a crimp in his plans, and so he immediately started promoting the shows for which Vincent and Cochran had been booked, calling them Eddie Cochran Tribute Shows, and talking to the press about how ironic it was that Cochran’s last song was “Three Steps to Heaven”. Vince Eager was so disgusted with Parnes that he never worked with him again. But those shows turned out to have a much bigger impact than anyone could have imagined. Allan Williams was worried that without Cochran, the show he’d got booked in Liverpool wouldn’t get enough of a crowd, so he booked in a number of local bands — Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Cass and the Cassanovas, Nero and the Gladiators, and Gerry and the Pacemakers — to fill out the bill. This led to all the bands and musicians in Liverpool realising, for the first time, how much talent there was in the city and how many bands there were. That one show changed Liverpool from a town where there were a few bands to a town with a music scene, and May the third 1960 can be pointed to as the day that Merseybeat started. Parnes was impressed enough by the local groups that he decided that Liverpool might be a good place to look for musicians to back his singers on the road. And we’ll pick up on what happened then in a few months. Sharon Sheeley, once she’d recovered from her injuries, went on to write hits for Brenda Lee, Jackie DeShannon, the Fleetwoods, and Irma Thomas, and when Jack Good moved back to the US, she renewed her acquaintance with him, and together with Sheeley’s husband they created Shindig, the most important American music show of the sixties. But by the time she died in 2002, all her obituaries talked about was that she’d been Eddie Cochran’s girlfriend. And as for Gene Vincent, he was already in chronic pain, suffering mood swings, and drinking too much before the accident hospitalised him. After that, all those things intensified. He became increasingly unreliable, and the hits dried up even in Britain by mid-1961. He made some good music in the sixties, but almost nobody was listening any more, and an attempted comeback was cut short when he died, aged thirty-six, in 1971, from illnesses caused by his alcoholism. Despite their tragic deaths, Vincent and Cochran, on that 1960 UK tour, almost accidentally catalysed a revolution in British music, and the changes from that will reverberate throughout the rest of this story.