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This is the VIC 4 VETS, Honored Veteran, during Veterans Month in America. SUBMITTED BY: Listener Michele Lee Scarlet-Ridenour, Rural mail carrier ______________________________________________________________ Corporal Michael Lee Scarlet aka (TWIGGY) served with honor in the U.S. Marine Corp. during the Vietnam War from 9/13/1967 til 9/12/1970. Mr. Scarlet’s duty was as a {Lineman}. On 2/1/1970 he was promoted to the rank of Corporal and was assigned to the S&H Company 3rd Battalion 1st Marine Division. CPL Scarlet earned and was awarded the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal w/1 Bronze Star, the Vietnam Campaign Medal, the R.V.N. Cross of Gallantry w/Palm, a Combat Action Ribbon, the U.S.M.C. Good Conduct Medal, and a Rifle Marksmanship Badge This was my father and he not only served 1 tour in Vietnam he served 2 so that his younger brother John who was also in service in the Army and was stationed in Germany did not have to fight in combat in Vietnam!! My fathers letters to my grandparents are quite touching as he was just a young 17 year old at the beginning of his time in the Marines. Believe me he was a remarkable man. One that you would want on your side. I will forever be so proud that this beloved man was my dad and he's so very missed, what a true hero. Dad passed in October 2020 due to Agent Orange that had caused Small cell lung cancer which spread to his brain. Semper Fi Daddy Always your girl________________________________________________________________ This is today’s VIC 4 VETS, Honored Veteran, during Veterans Month in America on NewsTalkSTL. With support from our friends at: DG FIREARMS - PATRIOT HEATING AND COOLING - BEST BUY FLOORINGSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
He Tifa Ola discusses everyday health issues for families, and raises the awareness of Health Services in the region for Pacific families. The programme is presented by Nive, Twiggy, and Joe, and is spoken in both Tokelauan and English.
This is the VIC 4 VETS, Honored Veteran, during Veterans Month in America. SUBMITTED BY: Listener Michele Lee Scarlet-Ridenour, Rural mail carrier ______________________________________________________________ Corporal Michael Lee Scarlet aka (TWIGGY) served with honor in the U.S. Marine Corp. during the Vietnam War from 9/13/1967 til 9/12/1970. Mr. Scarlet’s duty was as a {Lineman}. On 2/1/1970 he was promoted to the rank of Corporal and was assigned to the S&H Company 3rd Battalion 1st Marine Division. CPL Scarlet earned and was awarded the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal w/1 Bronze Star, the Vietnam Campaign Medal, the R.V.N. Cross of Gallantry w/Palm, a Combat Action Ribbon, the U.S.M.C. Good Conduct Medal, and a Rifle Marksmanship Badge This was my father and he not only served 1 tour in Vietnam he served 2 so that his younger brother John who was also in service in the Army and was stationed in Germany did not have to fight in combat in Vietnam!! My fathers letters to my grandparents are quite touching as he was just a young 17 year old at the beginning of his time in the Marines. Believe me he was a remarkable man. One that you would want on your side. I will forever be so proud that this beloved man was my dad and he's so very missed, what a true hero. Dad passed in October 2020 due to Agent Orange that had caused Small cell lung cancer which spread to his brain. Semper Fi Daddy Always your girl________________________________________________________________ This is today’s VIC 4 VETS, Honored Veteran, during Veterans Month in America on NewsTalkSTL. With support from our friends at: DG FIREARMS - PATRIOT HEATING AND COOLING - BEST BUY FLOORINGSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
So many music fans want to be in the time capsule, jump back and be present when the music not only started, but to be a fly on the wall and absorb the scents, the colors, the sounds, the discussions, the drugs, the sex, debauchery, the arguments, heartbreaks and everything just to separate the myth from the history. Miss Barbara Bacon was the 17 year old on the scene, taking it all in and living to tell all about it. The Stooges, Ted Nugent, Mark Farner, Mc5, Bob Seger, The Who at the Holiday Inn Flint, Alice Cooper, Pete Andrews, Craig Frost, Twiggy, SRC, Michael Bruce...just a smear of the stories she has from backstage, homesteads, and hotels, to long trips, joint-sharing, bi-sexual reality, and the front row ticket to every event. Barbara has submitted Stooges and other artwork to the Michigan Rock Legends Hall of Fame and now has decided to do the ULTIMATE name drop and recall all her unreal stories. However, don't call her a groupie, she sat shotgun, witnessed and made wise decisions not to partake in the private world, while her older sister Carolyn and friends reaped fringe benefits. Barbara is a walking encyclopedia of Detroit, Pontiac, Ann Arbor and the world of rock and roll, via mid to late '60s and beyond. From Mitch Ryder to Mt. Holly--these are her stories. Part two of two here adds festival stories, Jackie Wilson, Jeep Holland and more. Barbara draws out stories from Dr. J and Sir Fred as well. Tune in for the big finale--now!
6pm: I Stand Corrected - Ask, Tell, Correct, or Yell at John about anything // Guest - Alan in Redmond on being unemployed and needing medicaid // Today in History // 2013 - The Skagit Valley Bridge Collapse // Twiggy Went Sailing!
He Tifa Ola discusses everyday health issues for families, and raises the awareness of Health Services in the region for Pacific families. The programme is presented by Nive, Twiggy, and Joe, and is spoken in both Tokelauan and English.
Can Australia's huge success in iron ore continue, especially if China commits to green steel? Twiggy Forrest isn't so sure...See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Shakespeare famously wrote, what's in a name? But let's say it out loud. Jack Lemmon. It says it all right there in the name. Jack. Ordinary, the guy across from you on the subway. Lemon. The one that got the broken car. The bitter taste, yet the surprising brightly colored yellow sun inside of the bad luck. Jack Lemmon, arguably the greatest comic and dramatic actor to ever grace the screen, who is unrivaled as the everyman who trips, stumbles, triumphs and gets the girl. Or in the case of Some like it Hot, the guy. Starting this week at one of my very favorite movie theaters, the Film Forum on Houston Street, Jack Lemmon turns 100. Can you believe it? And the Film Forum is opening its two week tribute on Friday, May 16th with the iconic story of opposites, the Odd Couple. But I'm not here to talk about Mr. Lemon's legendary roles in Days of Wine and Roses, Glengarry Glen Ross having a revival on Broadway now with Bob Odenkirk reprising Lemon's unforgettable Shelley Levine, The Front Page, Mr. Roberts, Bell, Book and A Candle. A personal favorite of mine, Some like it Hot, which I watched on VHS until the tape broke…I am here to talk about one of the greatest comedies, if you can call a film about a mid level office drone working at an insurance company who lets his superiors bully him into letting them have his apartment for their affairs in hopes of him getting promoted and the suicidal elevator girl who whom he falls in love with. A comedy The Apartment. Legendary director Billy Wilder, coming off the wild success of Some like it Hot with Marilyn Monroe, wanted to keep his collaboration with Lemon going. So in 1960, Wilder and I.A.L diamond (Come on, is that the coolest name?) who wrote Some Like It Hot with Wilder were inspired by an infamous Hollywood murder story about agent Jennings Lange who was having an affair with actress Joan Bennett in an underlings apartment. So her husband, producer Walter Wanger, shot and killed Lange. Check out Karina Longworth's excellent podcast Love Is A Crime from You Must Remember This for the full retelling to you and I. This might not seem like source material for one of our greatest comedies, but in Wilder, Lemon and the adorable Shirley MacLaine's Hands, it was a box office smash, winning five Oscars out of ten nominations. Now I could go on and on about Billy Wilder's meticulous directorial precision, Lemon's unreal comic timing and turn on a dime pathos why Ving Rhames spontaneously gave him his very own Golden Globe in 1998. But I'm actually here to talk about a hat, a haircut, and a mirror. Let's rewind to 1960 - President Kennedy just took office, Roy Orbison's ‘Only The Lonely' was on the radio, and the kids were doing Chubby Checker's ‘The Twist'. The very seriously subversive theme and subject of The Apartment can not be over stated in this climate. The film, shot in gorgeous black & white by Joseph LaShelle of Laura and Marty fame, puts us smack-dab in what I'd call ‘Mad Men' central - a heady swirl of cigarette smoke and ‘Tom & Jerry' cocktail mix, office Christmas parties, wives holding on line 2 while executive husbands scheduled accepted trysts before dinner and kissing the kids goodnight. Lemmon plays ‘C.C. Baxter', a hard-working, well-meaning drone who somehow gets himself turned into a sort of brothel landlord. His neighbors wonder how he can withstand being such a Lothario - the sounds coming through the walls everynight don't match C.C. Baxter's unassuming Brooks Brothers suit with a rumpled white shirt with rounded collars and tie-bar to boot.But Baxter is caught in a hilarious cycle of paying his dues to climb the corporate ladder. This is what you must do. You must get out of bed at midnight to allow your boss to wine and bed his mistress in your Upper Westside apartment even if it involves you sleeping on a park bench in Central Park and catching your death (which Lemmon really did on that particular night shoot on location in the chilly fall of NYC). Lemmon's aspiration is to be ‘the youngest junior executive at Consolidated Insurance' so he MUST climb that corporate ladder to get the accoutrements - the windowed office, the carte blanche phone calls to pass on favors, and the bowler hat!He proudly shows it off to Shirley MacLaine's elevator operator, Fran Kubelik, who regards it as the ultimate symbol of the last ‘nice guy' crossing over the river Styx to the underworld of betrayal. She is happy for Baxter, but her eyes register a cultural sadness - this white male corporate culture is a disease and its got it claws in Baxter, and Baxter is completely oblivious to what he is about to sign on the dotted line for. Fran isn't. Despite her absolutely adorable ‘pixie' hair-cut, she has been groped by the best of them, and seems unreachable by the hordes of executives. Fran is the Snow Leopard, the last big game that hasn't been conquered. You can grab her butt, and she firmly pushes you on your way. There is something modern, forward-leaning in her attitude and appearance, punctuated by that hair-cut representing women's liberation, strength, and independence. ‘I don't need long flowing hair to make you like me, pal.' The pixie cut was popularized by Audrey Hepburn in the late 1950's, followed by the model Twiggy, and reaching its apotheosis with Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby in the mid-1960s. But Shirley MacLaine, in my humble opinion, does it best as ‘Fran', the hard-working elevator operator girl who won't fall prey. Fran says in one of the film's most famous lines of dialogue, “When you're alone with a married man, you shouldn't wear mascara.” Shirley MacLaine's tender and deep performance as ‘Fran', lets us - and eventually Baxter - know that all is not well in the corporate system and the culture at large. One of the most ingenious uses of the Hollywood film adage ‘show don't tell' in filmmaking is the use of a simple compact make-up mirror to tell a major plot turn in The Apartment. Baxter's boss, Jeff D. Sheldrake played with brave impunity by silver screen star Fred MacMurray, who was so hated after this performance he would be aaccosted in the street by ladies chasting him for playing such a ‘dirty man'. Sheldrake calls Baxter into his office early in the film for what Baxter thinks is his promotion. Sheldrake says he's heard about Baxter's ‘key' - meaning his revolving brothel. Sheldrake wants in. Baxter obliges as Sheldrake is THE biggest fish. Later, in another summoning to the head honcho's office, Baxter gives him a floral compact he discovered in his couch, assuming it belongs to Sheldrake's mistress. The mirror inside the compact is cracked jagged down the middle splitting the image of whoever opens it in two. Baxter thinks nothing of it until he is modeling his bowler hat - the Junior Executive - for Fran. What do you think? he askes her. “After all, this is a conservative firm. I don't want people to think I'm an entertainer…”. In the midst of this, Fran helpful as ever, opens her compact to show Baxter how the bowler hat looks. To Baxter's deep inner shock, he puts ‘two and two together' and realizes Fran is in fact Sheldrake's mistress. The horror. The one that was ungettable gotten by the biggest fish with a wife and two kids. The shot of Lemmon reacting in the cracked compact is on the of most effective story and visual devices I can think of in cinema. Baxter sees himself split apart - two worlds: the happy go lucky Baxter, and the Baxter that is now privy to some vile stuff involving the one girl he actually likes.Fran sees his reaction and asks ‘what is it? Baxter takes a beat. “The mirror…it's broken.” Then Fran utters one of my favorite lines, “I know. I like it this way…makes me look the way I feel.” WOW. What a subversive revilation! What a profound utterance. Talk about Chekhov. ‘Makes me look the way I feel'. We begin to realize all is not right with Fran. Sheldrake is leading her on. She sets a boundary at the local Chinese restaurant where he apparently takes all his conquests - the back booth. But Sheldrake works her over, and convinces her he WILL leave his wife. After a tryst back at Baxter's apartment on Christmas Eve, Sheldrake must catch his evening train to make dinner with the family. Obviously having forgotten to get Fran anything of real signifigance for Christmas, he opens his wallet and hands her a hudred dollar bill. Even in today's anything goes era, it's a shockingly seedy gesture that is all too real. MacLaine's Fran takes it in stride - just like Baxter leaving his key under the rug for his bosses - and stands to take off her coat and gets ready to disrobe. Fran says something like, ‘well, you already paid for it.' Ugh. My heart broke! For Fran, for Baxter, for the sad inevitablity of it all. Trigger Warning. The last portion of this episode deals with suicide. Listen with care. Fran asks to be left alone. In the bathroom, she finds the hundred dollar bill in her purse, and realizing she will never be able to break this cycle, she sees Baxter's sleeping pills - Seconal - and takes them all. Meanwhile, Baxter is out drowning his sorrows with a hilarious companion, played by actress Hope Holiday. They get drunk and dance, looking for a place to get even closer, they head back to Baxter's apartment - “Might as well go to me. Everybody else does.” Once back at his place, he discovers Fran and races to his jocular doctor neighbor, played by Jack Kruschen (also Oscar nominated for his hilarious supporting role as Dr. Dreyfuss), and Fran narrowly misses checking out. While recovering at Baxter's playing gin rummy (which MacLaine was playing alot of as a peripheral member of the Rat Pack), Fran and him bond, more than bond. They fall into bliss and don't even know it. It's a beautiful chemistry, one that apparently as it evolved dictated the script. Sources say upon commencement of filming, the screenplay was a mere 40 pages, and Wilder liked to work that way and let things evolve. He was also famous for re-shooting after viewing dallies. MacLaine calls him 'sciencentific, brittle and caustic with women but made you better for it'. She tells a story about once such instance during a climactic scene with Fred MacMurray's ‘Sheldrake' where she couldn't get the emotion necessary for their break-up in the Chinese restaurant they frequent. MacLaine's native Canadian accent was coming out literally on the word ‘out.' After viewing the ‘rushes', he concluded they need to re-shoot, even calling MacLaine out in the screening room. MacLaine, much like Fran, didn't buckle under pressure, and they re-shot. On the day, Wilder called ‘Action' and excused himself to give her the privacy to do the scene. She hit it out of the park, uttering the lines from that take that made the final cut, “So you sit there and make yourself a cup of instant coffee while he rushes out to catch the train.”Well, long story short, Baxter and Fran end up together - thank Heavens. I could explain the plot twists to get them there, but I want to leave you with one final remberance of MacLaine's. When asked what it was like to work with Jack Lemmon, she said, “He would say, ‘Magic time!', every time the camera rolled. And then we knew we'd better make some magic.”Check out The Apartment on the big screen at The Film Forum in all its glory this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And all of Jack Lemmon's ‘Magic time' over the next two weeks. You won't be sorry.More about the series here:JACK LEMMON 100Watch The Apartment here:Look Behind The Look is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Look Behind The Look at lookbehindthelook.substack.com/subscribe
So many music fans want to be in the time capsule, jump back and be present when the music not only started, but to be a fly on the wall and absorb the scents, the colors, the sounds, the discussions, the drugs, the sex, debochery, the arguments, heartbreaks and everything just to separate the myth from the history. Miss Barbara Bacon was the 17 year old on the scene, taking it all in and living to tell all about it. The Stooges, Ted Nugent, Mark Farner, Mc5, Bob Seger, The Who at the Holiday Inn Flint, Alice Cooper, Pete Andrews, Craig Frost, Twiggy, SRC, Michael Bruce...just a smear of the stories she has from backstage, homesteads, and hotels, to long trips, joint-sharing, bi-sexual reality, and the front row ticket to every event. Barbara has submitted Stooges and other artwork to the Michigan Rock Legends Hall of Fame and now has decided to do the ULTIMATE name drop and recall all her unreal stories. However, don't call her a groupie, she sat shotgun, witnessed and made wise decisions not to partake in the private world, while her older sister and friends reaped fringe benefits. Barbara is a walking encyclopedia of Detroit, Pontiac, Ann Arbor and the world of rock and roll, via mid to late '60s and beyond. From Mitch Ryder to Mt. Holly--these are her stories. Part one of two, coming in HOT.....now!
John Galliano, Twiggy, Thom Browne och Vogue på 90-talet. Modedokumentärerna är många just nu. Varför är trenden så stark? Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radio Play. Förra året kom flera stora dokumentärer som handlade om modehus, modebransch och modeskapare. I år fortsätter trenden med flera nya satsningar. I veckans Samtal med Stil diskuterar Susanne Ljung och Samanda Ekman vad som ligger bakom det stora intresset för modedokumentärer – och om det verkligen går att kalla filmerna för dokumentär när det är modehusen själva som producerar dem?
Elisha Newell and Claire Tyrrell discuss gender diversity in ASX boardrooms. Plus Dutton's unveils two new investment funds; Fremantle approves Wool Stores redevelopment; and Twiggy highlights threats facing the Pilbara.
*Dutton's dramas. *Twiggy v Facebook. *Blondie drummer dies.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
*Dutton's dramas. *Twiggy v Facebook. *Blondie drummer dies.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
*Dutton's dramas. *Twiggy v Facebook. *Blondie drummer dies.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Send us a textAmanda Prowse and Penny Dommett nattering around the kitchen table, chatting about all things random. Are we sitting comfortably... here we go! Join us for a lovely chit chat! We start off with a giggle and talk being chilly! Brrrr... We talk Penny's sultry tones and Mandy's squeak! We are decidedly giddy today and can't stop laughing - shocking horror! We are excited to see Twiggy's docu/film - a high recommend for an insight into this fabulous icon. Mandy admits to behaving like the character she is watching on whatever she is binge watching on Netflix - and having watched all of Grey's Anatomy went full emergency room hyper! It explains why she loves the Durrells. We talk about Penny's doppelganger from car share! Penny gives us an insight into her green-fingered life - always wonderful - she is currently seedlinging, (this is now a word). Are we drawn to books that have won awards or are we not swayed by them? Penny is reading Orbital... Chelsea this year are having a garden of farewell flowers - how lovely is that? Joel is on tour! Go see him - his show is fantastic! We learn about Penny's early brush with the world of publishing - who knew? We talk about some of our rubbish early jobs - so much fun and form your character - Penny worked for Benetton and is a champion jumper folder. So, if you fancy it, pull up a chair and join us for a delightfully irreverent chit chat about life and all its random tangents - bring a cuppa. Cake optional...
Media Watch 2025 Episode 08: Plant Closure Questions; Twiggy's Meta Fight; Seven's Robot Fashionistas
Un altre any més ens passat peL Moritz Feed Dog, el festival de cinema de moda de Barcelona per veure pel·lícules sobre la gent més important d'aquest món com la Twiggy, que ha inaugurat el certamen amb un docu sobre la seva obra. D'altres icones que s'han passat per les pantalles festival són en Paco Rabanne, en Coperni o Schiaparelli, així com tumbé hem tingut ocasión per veure un film sobre la gran Liza Minnelli. De tot això i más ens en parla la Lorena Iglesias, la nostra enviada especial al festival.
Today, we're joined by Kobi Omenaka — he worked as a chemical engineer before a big reset into digital marketing , podcasting and more.. He's now an award winning podcater and producer (including Flixwatcher ) who has created and crafted a great life for him and his family. He's got a super interesting story and this is well worth a listen, as he shares his surprising resets and how he navigated them. Also, a great reminder of the importance of fun and how things can work out in magical ways. You can learn more about Kobi at https://kobestarr.io The host and creator of this podcast is Simon Hedley. Building on his strong background in banking, business & strategy he's passionate about learning, sharing, and making the difference to people and projects. As “The Strategic Alchemist™” he's been the secret weapon of many well-known leaders, founders and thought leaders for over two decades. If you want to grow and scale your business connect with Simon and especially www.TheFiveConnections.com You can learn more about Simon at www.SimonHedley.com , connect and follow him on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/mrsimonhedley , or www.Instagram.com/thesimonhedley, and you can book a consulting call with him at book.simonhedley.com Remember at www.PauseStopReset.com you can find out more about Pause Stop Reset, how to access The Podcast Portal and get more resources to help you on your journey including the Journal and Book. Simon is the author of www.TheFiveConnections.com and www.ChaosToClarity.com Pause Stop Reset is published by www.TheSimpleIdea.com and for any queries, questions, opportunities or suggestions get in with the team via help@thesimpleidea.com. If you'd like to explore Simon helping you grow and scale your business explore www.StrategicAlchemyGroup.com
Twiggy turned the modelling world upside down with her androgynous style, big round eyes, bold eyelashes, and pixie haircut, becoming a defining figure and fashion icon of the swinging 60s. Considered the world's first supermodel, she went on to have a successful career in acting and singing, earning two Golden Globes and a Tony nomination, designed fashion ranges, appeared as a judge on America's Next Top Model, and was awarded a damehood for services to the fashion, arts and charity. A new documentary, Twiggy, directed by Sadie Frost, is out in cinemas now. Twiggy joined Krupa Padhy to talk about her long career.Kyle Clifford was found guilty of raping his ex-girlfriend in an attack in which he murdered her, her mother and her sister. Louise, Hannah and Carol Hunt were murdered two weeks after Louise ended her relationship with him. It has been revealed that prosecutors said "violent misogyny" promoted by social media influencer Andrew Tate "fuelled" his attacks. However, the defence argued this material had too vague a link and was far too prejudicial to be heard by the jury. As we hear this news, concerns rise again about the influence of people like self-described misogynist Andrew Tate, and there are calls for his content to be taken down. Anita was joined by Michael Conroy, founder of Men at Work, which works with teachers and boys in schools to challenge sexist and misogynistic content online and Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism project who campaigns for gender equality to discuss how we can protect our children from, especially boys, from this.Journalist and disability activist Lucy Edwards has just published her debut fiction book, Ella Jones vs the Sun Stealer, a mystery aimed at younger readers. It tells the story of 12-year-old Ella Jones who has been blind for two years and is navigating her new world with the help of her guide dog Maisie, her sister Poppy and her best friend Finn. She joined Krupa to talk about the book and her experiences sharing her own story online.We discuss the extraordinary story of how and why an autistic woman was locked up in a mental health hospital for 45 years. For 25 of those she was in long term segregation. Nuala McGovern talked to reporter Carolyn Atkinson about how the woman was eventually freed and to campaigner Alexis Quinn who is autistic and spent three years in a mental health hospital including time in segregation before she escaped. She now campaigns for the Restraint Reduction Network charity about the more than 2,000 other autistic people and or those with learning disabilities who are still in mental health hospitals, many of whom shouldn't be. In May 2015, 20 year-old Mhairi Black was the youngest person for more than a century to become a Member of Parliament – and she then remained a Westminster MP until standing down at the 2024 election. A new BBC documentary follows her last six months in that role and looks at what her future could hold in a new career as a stand-up comedian. Now 30, she joined Anita Rani to reflect on her years in Parliament and what she'd like to see change about the way it functions.Nieve Ella is currently on tour, playing to packed venues and solidifying her place as a rising star in indie music. With a distinctive online presence and an ever-growing fanbase, she's proving that Gen Z artists are reshaping the industry on their own terms. Nieve performed the track Sweet Nothings with Finn Marlow. Presenter: Anita Rani
Vanguardistas have more fun—so if you don't already subscribe to the podcast, join the Vanguard today via Apple Podcasts or extratakes.com for non-fruit-related devices. In return you'll get a whole extra Take 2 alongside Take 1 every week, with bonus reviews, more viewing recommendations from the Good Doctors and whole bonus episodes just for you. And if you're already a Vanguardista, we salute you. In this week's Take we're travelling back into the past and looking to the future with VR. Yes, we made Simon put on a VR headset thingy—and yes, we did laugh at him whilst he wandered blindly around the room thinking he was in 19th century Germany. That's because he was experiencing ‘Trailblazer', a VR experience telling the forgotten story of Bertha Benz, the woman behind the wheel of the world's first automobile in the first road trip ever taken. Simon chats to the voice of Trailblazer, Star-Wars star Daisy Ridely and creator Eloise Singer. They talk about history's forgotten women, Daisy's forgotten BAFTA (surprise!), and whether we'll all be swapping cinema tickets for VR goggles in the future... Plus reviews this week of ‘Twiggy', Sadie Frost's doc about the titular teenage model sensation and 60s icon; ‘One Of Them Days'—a comedy caper starring Keke Palmer and SZA as two broke best friends trying to raise a month's rent after losing it to a deadbeat boyfriend—and Bong Joon Ho's big follow-up to ‘Parasite', ‘Mickey 17'. Starring Robert Pattinson as an ‘expendable' worker in a barren ice colony, Director Bong's latest sci-fi flick sees protagonist Mickey ‘reprinted' over and over again each time he dies—until a duplicate begins to cause trouble. Find out if Mark thinks you should be heading to the cinema on the double! Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): Twiggy Review: 10:24 Daisy Ridley & Eloise Singer Interview: 25:19 One of Them Days Review: 43:28 Laughter Lift: 47:31 Mickey 17 Review: 52:37 You can contact the show by emailing correspondence@kermodeandmayo.com or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/take Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! A Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts To advertise on this show contact: podcastadsales@sonymusic.com And to find out more about Sony's new show Origins with Cush Jumbo, click here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Joining me this episode to discuss their travel and holiday stories is the iconic model, actress and singer - Twiggy. Dame Lesley Lawson, widely known by the nickname Twiggy, is an English model, actress, and singer. She was a British cultural icon and a prominent teenage model during the swinging '60s in London Please subscribe and review. Thanks, Alan. xx ‘Life's A Beach' everyone's favourite travel podcast is here to give you all the vitamin D you need. More celebrity passengers unpack their travel suitcases dishing the dirt on their holiday high-jinks. Buckle up, sit back and enjoy the inflight entertainment!! A 'Keep It Light Media' Production Sales, advertising, and general enquiries: hello@keepitlightmedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Last night was the biggest night in film - the Oscars! The independent film Anora, made for just $5 million, cleaned up winning five awards including best picture and best actress for Mikey Madison - a 25-year-old relative unknown - who was on our programme last month. To give us all the news and highlights, film journalist Karen Krizanovich is in the Woman's Hour studio with Krupa Padhy.The UK data watchdog has launched what it calls a major investigation into TikTok's use of children's personal information. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) will inspect the way in which the social media platform uses the data of 13 to 17 year olds to recommend further content to them. Zoe Kleinman, the BBC's technology editor and Dr Kaitlyn Regehr, Associate Professor Director of Digital Humanities at University College London, discuss.Trauma can be a major barrier to seeking medical care. That's according to a new survey from Healthwatch England, which found that women experience trauma more than men and nearly a fifth of respondents who have experienced trauma say they often or fairly often avoid health services. They are calling on the NHS to adopt pocket sized trauma cards for patients to show during appointments, following a successful pilot in Essex. Louise Ansari, Chief Executive of Healthwatch England, the patients champion, and Laura (not her real name), a survivor of sexual trauma and a sessional counsellor for Centre for Action on Rape and Abuse, join Krupa.What could you do before the internet if you thought you might be a lesbian and needed advice? Did you know there were a number of telephone lines around the country that you could call for advice or just for a friendly listening ear? Writer Elizabeth Lovatt discovered the logbooks of calls made to one of these lines and imagines the calls and tells the history of these help lines in her new book, Thank You For Calling The Lesbian Line. Elizabeth and Lisa Power, sexual health and LGBT campaigner and long-time volunteer at one of these lines, join Krupa to discuss.Twiggy turned the modelling world upside down with her androgynous style, big round eyes, bold eyelashes, and pixie haircut, becoming a defining figure and fashion icon of the swinging 60s. Considered the world's first supermodel, she went on to have a successful career in acting and singing, earning two Golden Globes and a Tony nomination, designed fashion ranges, appeared as a judge on America's Next Top Model, and was awarded a damehood for services to the fashion, arts and charity. Now a new documentary, Twiggy, directed by Sadie Frost, is out in cinemas from Friday. Twiggy joins Krupa.Presenter: Krupa Padhy Producer: Kirsty Starkey
The original supermodel and fashion icon Twiggy chatted to Oliver about her rise to fame and the film that has been done on her life. The film will be showing at the Dublin International Film Festival next Monday. For more info go to www.diff.ie
Former model, actress & singer Twiggy chats to Oliver Callan, Maura Faye reports on The Mormon church in Ireland & movie reviews for the weekend on Arena
February 3, 2025 ~ Twiggy The Water Skiing Squirrel and Her Trainer Chuck Best join Paul at the Detroit Boat Show.
Our 13 girls arrive at their Beverly Hills Mansion and scream from the top of their lungs while witnessing all the 'beauty' of the house. People, who is the designer of these ANTM-houses, they are styled so ugly! Kim doesn't know how to put on make-up, but with how to put out she's very known. Sarah makes sure she's number one, but there's eleven more models to go. At judging we see some new faces and we are here for it: Twiggy and our queen Miss J, welcome on board.Get in contact with us: send us a Message.► More Pod, But Make It Fashion on podbutmakeitfashion.buzzsprout.com► Follow @podbutmakeitfashion on Instagram
Lots of soulful sounds this week as DJ John Mullaney joins Matt in the studio.There's music from Bunny Sigler, Barbara Dane and Roy Ayres, plus a few curve balls from The Clash, The Jam, Blur, Twiggy and Primal Scream.For more info and tracklisting, visit: https://thefaceradio.com/blow-up/Tune into new broadcasts of Blow-Up! Sundays from 8 - 10 AM EST / 1 PM - 3 PM GMT, in association with Brisbane's 4ZZZ.//Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Every time I go in Trader Joe's, the checkout person asks me a question of some sort. I used to think everyone there was just happy and friendly, but then I heard reports that it was more of a rule or strong encouragement that employees talk to customers. I read conflicting reports about this online and wanted to talk to someone who'd worked at Trader Joe's, to see if she could shed some light on this. I talk to Twiggy, who has a YouTube channel (youtube.com/@TwiggysDollHospital) and who makes custom dolls (twiggysdollhospital.com). Learn more and sign up for a premium subscription at PeopleWhoReadPeople.com.
ExxonMobil files against Twiggy; ATSB heads to Rottnest crash; Minerva suddenly shuts Tammin Abattoir; Celsius amends $160 million apartment plan; and Regis posts record cash and bullion balance. The regular interview portion of the podcast will resume from January 20.
At the end a question from Alex MacDonald. Recommendations: Eamonn Me and Mon Ami - YouTube Adventures On The French Riviera In a Citroën Ami. We may not have driving licences but that won't stop us. Join us as we go up mountain and down dale in this sunny place for shady people. Along with our chihuahua Twiggy we'll take you to amazing villages, fantastic local restaurants, and off the beaten track beauty spots in our tiny sans permis electric car. History, culture, property and a healthy dose of Northern humour. So why not subscribe and join us on our ever so slightly crazy journey? Angela Say Nothing - Disney+ FX's series “Say Nothing” is a gripping story of murder and memory in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. The 9-episode series is based on the book by Patrick Radden Keefe. Spanning four decades, the series opens with the shocking disappearance of Jean McConville, a single mother of ten who was abducted from her home in 1972 and never seen alive again. Telling the story of various Irish Republican Army (IRA) members, Say Nothing explores the extremes some people will go to in the name of their beliefs, the way a deeply divided society can suddenly tip over into armed conflict, the long shadow of radical violence for all affected, and the emotional and psychological costs of a code of silence. Paddy Hot Ones - YouTube The show with hot questions and even hotter wings. Watch Sean interview celebrities such as Gordon Ramsay, Tommy Chong, and DJ Khaled as they burn their tastebuds.
What does $300 worth of beer look like in 1980? Did Dan Akroyd ever go back for Twiggy? How did Matt Murphy just walk out on Aretha Franklin like that?!?! All that and more on the first installment of Chivember, presented by GDL.
Today's guest is Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest, the chairman of Fortescue Metals Group. Twiggy took over the company that would become Fortescue in 2003 and developed it into one of the world's four major iron ore miners in a little over a decade (and became Australia's second wealthiest person in the process). Today, Twiggy also invests privately through Tattarang and is one of Australia's leading philanthropists through Minderoo Foundation and is a leading voice on ending the use of fossil fuels and creating green energy solutions. In today's episode we discuss:Where the nickname Twiggy comes from How he is spending his time today What are his biggest problems with 'net zero'Why Fortescue has committed to 'real zero' instead Whether a complete phase out of fossil fuels is truly possibleAdvice for young Australians starting their careers —------Want to get involved in the podcast? Record a voice note or send us a message on our website and we'll play it on the podcast.—------Sign up to our daily news email to get the news moving markets delivered to your inbox at 6am every weekday morning. Short, sharp, to the point, it'll get you up to speed in less than 5 minutes.—------Have an investing question?Ask via our website and we'll answer it on the podcast.Join the conversation in the Facebook Discussion GroupOr get put in touch with a professional financial advisor by filling out this formWant more Equity Mates?Sign up to our email to keep up with business news Listen to our basics-of-investing podcast: Get Started Investing (Apple | Spotify)Watch Equity Mates on YouTube—------In the spirit of reconciliation, Equity Mates Media and the hosts of Equity Mates Investing acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respects to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people today. —------Equity Mates Investing is a product of Equity Mates Media. This podcast is intended for education and entertainment purposes. Any advice is general advice only, and has not taken into account your personal financial circumstances, needs or objectives. Before acting on general advice, you should consider if it is relevant to your needs and read the relevant Product Disclosure Statement. And if you are unsure, please speak to a financial professional. Equity Mates Media operates under Australian Financial Services Licence 540697. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This episode is the first half of an MK3D show recorded live at the BFI Southbank on 7 October 2024.To celebrate the beginning of the London Film Festival, Mark welcomes some incredible guests whose films will be premiering at the event. First up, Mark welcomes Sadie Frost to discuss her documentary, Twiggy, giving us a glimpse into the life and legacy of one of Britain's iconic models and her experiences on the big screen.Later, Mark is joined by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard to talk about their upcoming film, The Extraordinary Miss Flower.They delve into the creative process behind crafting a non-genre-abiding film and discuss their previous works, such as 20,000 Days on Earth.---------------The opening title sequence of Kermode on Film uses quotes from:- Mary Poppins, directed by Robert Stevenson and distributed by Walt Disney Motion Pictures – quote featuring Julie Andrews.-Nope, written, directed and produced by Jordan Peele, and distributed by Universal Studios – quote featuring Keke Palmer.-Withnail & I, written and directed by Bruce Robinson, and distributed by HandMade Films – quote featuring Richard E Grant.-The Exorcist, written by William Peter Blatty and directed by William Friedkin, distributed by Warner Brothers – quote featuring Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair.We love these films. We urge you to seek them out, and watch them, again and again. They are masterpieces!Kermode on Film is an HLA Agency production.This episode was edited by Alex Archbold Jones.© HLA AgencyHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.#markkermode #kermodeonfilm #MK3D #BFI #sadiefrost #twiggy #catchingfire:thestoryofanitapallenberg #iainforsyth #janepollard #theextraordinarymissflower #oluckyman #20000daysonearth Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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With the BFI London Film Festival about to shut up shop for another year after a cracking 2024 offering, it's the perfect time to bring you our annual LFF podcast, in which Chris Hewitt chats to some of the British filmmakers who have films (and a TV show) at this year's festival. They are: Nick Murphy, director of A Thousand Blows; Sasha Nathwani, director of Last Swim; and Sadie Frost, director of new documentary, Twiggy. And they are fun, frank, and fascinating chats about the directors' projects, their LFF experiences, and the state of the film industry. Enjoy!
In this festival special, Anna Smith island hops across some of the most unique film festivals of the season, taking listeners from Sea Change festival in Scotland's Tiree to the London Film Festival before ending in Mallorca to hear about the upcoming Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival 2024. First, Anna reports from this year's Sea Change Film Festival in the Inner Hebrides. She speaks with filmmaker Jeanie Finlay (Your Fat Friend, Seahorse) and festival-goers like Reclaim The Frame's Melanie Iredale about their time at Scotland's only annual festival dedicated to powering women in film. Next, she heads to the BFI London Film Festival to meet actor Deba Hekmat and writer Helen Simmons, whose film Last Swim has its premiere at this year's festival. This coming of age drama tells the story of Ziba, a young woman who celebrates her A-Level results with friends while grappling with a personal secret. With Anna, Deba discusses the authenticity of the film's dialogue, how it captured Gen Z sensibilities almost perfectly, and how she resonated with the character of Ziba. Helen reflects on working with a translator to capture an authentic Farsi that is spoken by Ziba and her mother in Last Swim, as well as speaking about the lack of representation of driven and intelligent young women in film. Anna also catches up with some friends of the podcast when she is out and about at LFF. Finally, it's off to Spain for a preview of the Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival. Anna sits down with festival director Sandra Lipski to discuss some of her feminist festival highlights. Sandra gives us an insight into the 2024 lineup, including the festival's plan to welcome five time Academy Award-nominee Annette Bening to Mallorca's sunny shores. Films Mentioned: Last Swim (2024) Black Box Diaries (2024) Anora (2024) Conclave (2024) All We Imagine As Light (2024) Twiggy (2024) The Extraordinary Miss Flower (2024) Las chicas de la estación (2024) The Grifters (1990) The Outrun (2024) Endurance (2024) Emilia Perez (2024) Your Fat Friend (2023) Widow Clicquot (2024) Hoard (2024) Principal Partners: Vanessa Smith and Peter Brewer Our partners for this episode: Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival You can buy tickets for Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival from the 17th October 2024 via this link: https://www.evolutionfilmfestival.com/tickets Sign up to the Girls On Film newsletter below: http://eepurl.com/iEKaM-/ or email girlsonfilmsocial@gmail.com to be signed up. Become a patron of Girls On Film on Patreon here: www.patreon.com/girlsonfilmpodcast Follow us on socials: www.instagram.com/girlsonfilm_podcast/ www.facebook.com/girlsonfilmpodcast www.x.com/GirlsOnFilm_Pod www.x/annasmithjourno Watch Girls On Film on the BFI's YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX…L89QKZsN5Tgr3vn7z Girls On Film is an HLA production. Host: Anna Smith Executive Producer: Hedda Lornie Archbold Producer: Charlotte Matheson Intern: Anna Swartz Audio editor: Benjamin Cook House band: MX Tyrants © HLA Agency
Former creative director of Barney's, Making It judge, and proud High-Low Bitch Simon Doonan stops by to talk about his new book The Camp 100: Glorious Flamboyance from Louis XIV to Lil Nas X. Also: Lord Byron as superfreak, Pete Burns' memoir Freak Unique, the pop of color Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton brought to the ‘60s, the optimism inherent in glamour, a The Wizard of Oz porta-potty, the legacy of Russ Meyer, Camp vs. campy, a future husband showing up to a first date covered in clay and on rollerblades, and a piece of music-video trivia that will blow your damn mind.
Elena Skye is playing Janis in the West End production of Mean Girls.Having premiered on Broadway in 2018, Mean Girls opened in London earlier this year. Tina Fey adapted the show from her 2004 film, collaborating with Jeff Richmond who composed the music and Nell Benjamin who wrote the lyrics. The show is directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw. Elena made her professional debut as Lauren in the West End production of Kinky Boots (Adelphi Theatre) and went on to play Éponine in the West End production of Les Misérables (Queen's Theatre).Elena starred as Scaramouche in We Will Rock You, initially on tour before transferring with the show into the West End for a run at the London Coliseum. Last year Elena originated the role of Twiggy in Close Up: The Twiggy Musical at the Menier Chocolate Factory. In this episode, Elena discusses all things Mean Girls, including auditioning for the show, why she wanted to play Janis and how she got to grips with her song "I'd Rather Be Me". Elena also discusses her path into theatre, the hardest role she has played and what she's learnt along the way.Mean Girls is booking at the Savoy Theatre until 6th April 2025. Visit www.london.meangirlsmusical.com for info and tickets. Hosted by Andrew Tomlins @AndrewTomlins32 Thanks for listening! Email: andrew@westendframe.co.uk Visit westendframe.co.uk for more info about our podcasts.
– Do I pay tax to rollover my Super? – The benefit of investing the baby bonus – Berkshire post Buffett? Fortescue post Twiggy? – What would the economy look like without COVID-19? – What's missing in NTA and NAV? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
It wasn't so long ago that renewables pundits glowingly described hydrogen as the “Swiss Army knife” of renewable technologies, able to be turned to almost any purpose. But more recently, the gas has become an expensive and painful point of political debate, with many experts tempering their praise. Now, one of hydrogen's biggest backers, mining magnate Andrew Forrest, has announced he is scaling back his green hydrogen projects. Today, national correspondent for The Saturday Paper Mike Seccombe on how the green hydrogen dream evaporated. Socials: Stay in touch with us on Twitter and Instagram Guest: National correspondent for The Saturday Paper, Mike Seccombe.
Thủ tướng đã bênh vực kế hoạch giảm khí thải của Đảng Lao động, sau khi một tỷ phú khai thác mỏ từ bỏ mục tiêu hydro xanh đầy tham vọng. 700 việc làm sẽ được thực hiện, trong tiến trình tái cơ cấu Tập đoàn Fortescue Metal của Andrew Forrest, với một số chuyên gia năng lượng đang đặt nghi vấn về ích lợi kinh tế, đằng sau nỗ lực thúc đẩy sản xuất hydro.
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Trailblazing movie director Susan Seidelman shares a funny and insightful first-person story of her life from her Twiggy obsessed girlhood to the Madonna mania of the 80s and beyond, in her memoir “Desperately Seeking Something: A Memoir about Movies, Mothers, and Material Girls." Susan Seidelman will be in Conversation with Jessica Hecht at Images Cinema in Williamstown, Massachusetts on Wednesday July 17 at 7 p.m.
Clare Belford (comedian) returns to the show on the last of our pre-tapes before Dan gets back from Japan, and it's a fun one, as Clare blocks any "sexy chat" spam DM she gets invited into but notices one commonality...a fellow comedian showing up in these chats, and subsequently following some of these women. We don't reveal who it is, but you can maybe guess! No guessing about this episode being fun though, as Clare tells us about her new dog (who snores adorably throughout), and we discuss The Leftovers, Clare's dad's dog obedience tips, falling asleep at comedy shows, and our friend DBJ trapped themself in a box. Plus, Clare gets a confusing tax slip, a man gets caught in a court proceeding, and Twiggy owns an interviewer. If you want something to do that's a lot less confusing than your taxes, head on over to patreon.com/blockedparty, where a simple $5 donation gets you access to our entire back catalogue and THREE brand-new bonus episodes a month. Last week, Sequoia Holmes returned to the show for a Canadian Education episode, as we watched the MuchMusic staple "intimate & interactive" with Canadian legends Our Lady Peace. We also have ad-free episodes, an exclusive Discord, and more, so check it out! Clare Belford is a comedian who will be at Edmonton's Grindstone Comedy Festival in a couple of weeks from July 3-7. You can follow her for all her other dates on Instagram at @clarble. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Here's a question for you: can you place a value on lost cultural heritage, on separation from land and on families divided? It's not only a moral quandary.The Federal Court is currently trying to calculate how much compensation is owed to Traditional Owners in Western Australia's Pilbara region. Yindjibarndi Traditional Owners have been locked in a long-running legal battle with Andrew Forrest's Fortescue Metals Group and the WA government over what the Federal Court ruled was illegal mining on their land. Today, contributor to The Saturday Paper Ben Abbatangelo, on the billion-dollar battle and the very personal toll it's taken on those fighting it. Socials: Stay in touch with us on Twitter and Instagram Guest: Contributor to The Saturday Paper, Ben Abbatangelo
In this Dailycast episode of Wrestling Coast to Coast, Justin McClelland and Christopher Maitland head over the border to the Great White North for C4 Wrestling's Rush Hour, main evented by the titular Lio Rush facing Kevin Blackwood and C4 champion Junior Benito, plus long time show faves Violence is Forever team with Joshua Bishop to face the Dark Order and the emergent Myung-Jae Lee, Twiggy (not the British model) takes over, a ton of interference, bad refereeing (both storyline and actual), and much more. For VIP Listeners, highlights of the awesome Defy Here and Now show, available for free on YouTube, notably champion Kenta being challenged by Bryan Keith and Sanity facing Midnight Heat.
Lisa D'Amato, from America's Next Top Model, steps Behind The Rope. Holding nothing back, Lisa is here to tell it all. Did someone say Bethenny Frankel and Reality Reckoning? Looking back at this blast from the past chat, Lisa recalls every single thing Bethenny is now talking about loudly. Lisa chats about what living in the model house was really like, the competitiveness of her fellow model contestants and the pressure she felt from producers while filming. She chats about ANTM judges Miss J, Nigel Barker, Twiggy and last, but certainly not least, Janice Dickinson as well as about Creative Director Jay Manuel. Lisa confirms and debunks many of the vicious rumors heard over the years about the tension on the set and the “my way or the highway” rumored attitude of Tyra Banks. Leaving no detailed spared, Lisa explains how she felt she was treated by Tyra and Producers, the good, the bad, the other. There was a lot of bad and a lot of other. We discuss! Of course there was also her product pitch on Shark Tank, where she got a deal with the one and only Miss Barbara Corcoran. She takes us behind the scenes of Shark Tank and all the shenanigans taking place behind the scenes off camera. Part II starts now! @lisa_damato @behindvelvetrope @davidyontef BONUS & AD FREE EPISODES Available at - www.patreon.com/behindthevelvetrope BROUGHT TO YOU BY: LOLAVIE - https://www.lolavie.com/VELVET (Use Code VELVET for 15% Off Jennifer Aniston's Award Winning Hair Care Line) VIIA - viiahemp.com (Use Code Velvet For 15% Off + One Free Sample Of Their Sleepy Dreams Gummies. 21+) INDEED - indeed.com/velvet (Seventy Five Dollar $75 Sponsored Job Credit To Get Your Jobs More Visibility) AQUATRU - aquatrue.com (Use Code VELVET For 20% Off Plus a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee on The Best Water Purifier Around) RAKUTEN - rakuten.com (Members Earn Cash Back On Everything They Buy Through Rakuten or The Rakuten App) WONDERY: ACADEMY - (Binge All Episodes of “Academy” Early & Ad Free Right Now By Joining Wondery Plus) LIFEMD - lifemd.com/VELVET (Visit lifemd.com/VELVET To Start Your Weight Loss Journey Today) WOOGA (Download June's Journey Now on your iOS or Android Device) JONES NATURAL CHEWS (Best Natural Treats For Your Dog - Available At a Pet Store Near You) SONY MUSIC: UNDERWATER (UNDERWATER Is a Sexy, Neo-Noir Thriller & a First-of-its Kind Narrative Album. Brand New, Original Music From Jason Derulo) ADVERTISING INQUIRIES - Please contact David@advertising-execs.com MERCH Available at - https://www.teepublic.com/stores/behind-the-velvet-rope?ref_id=13198 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Lisa D'Amato, from America's Next Top Model, steps Behind The Rope. Holding nothing back, Lisa is here to tell it all. Did someone say Bethenny Frankel and Reality Reckoning? Looking back at this blast from the past chat, Lisa recalls every single thing Bethenny is now talking about loudly. Lisa chats about what living in the model house was really like, the competitiveness of her fellow model contestants and the pressure she felt from producers while filming. She chats about ANTM judges Miss J, Nigel Barker, Twiggy and last, but certainly not least, Janice Dickinson as well as about Creative Director Jay Manuel. Lisa confirms and debunks many of the vicious rumors heard over the years about the tension on the set and the “my way or the highway” rumored attitude of Tyra Banks. Leaving no detailed spared, Lisa explains how she felt she was treated by Tyra and Producers, the good, the bad, the other. There was a lot of bad and a lot of other. We discuss! Of course there was also her product pitch on Shark Tank, where she got a deal with the one and only Miss Barbara Corcoran. She takes us behind the scenes of Shark Tank and all the shenanigans taking place behind the scenes off camera. @lisa_damato @behindvelvetrope @davidyontef BROUGHT TO YOU BY: GOHENRY - gohenry.com/VELVET (Set Your Kids Up For Success w/ The Best Debit Card & Financial App For Kids 6 to 18) HELLOFRESH - HelloFresh.com/velvetropefree (Use Code velvetropefree For Free Breakfast For Life on America's #1 Meal Kit) QUINCE - quince.com/velvetrope (Get Free Shipping and 365 Day Returns on Elevated Luxury Without Paying Luxury Prices) INDEED - indeed.com/velvet (Seventy Five Dollar $75 Sponsored Job Credit To Get Your Jobs More Visibility) LIFEMD - lifemd.com/VELVET (Visit lifemd.com/VELVET To Start Your Weight Loss Journey Today) JONES NATURAL CHEWS (Best Natural Treats For Your Dog - Available At a Pet Store Near You) ADVERTISING INQUIRIES - Please contact David@advertising-execs.com MERCH Available at - https://www.teepublic.com/stores/behind-the-velvet-rope?ref_id=13198 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Episode 171 looks at "Hey Jude", the White Album, and the career of the Beatles from August 1967 through November 1968. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifty-seven-minute bonus episode available, on "I Love You" by People!. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata Not really an error, but at one point I refer to Ornette Coleman as a saxophonist. While he was, he plays trumpet on the track that is excerpted after that. Resources No Mixcloud this week due to the number of songs by the Beatles. I have read literally dozens of books on the Beatles, and used bits of information from many of them. All my Beatles episodes refer to: The Complete Beatles Chronicle by Mark Lewisohn, All The Songs: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Release by Jean-Michel Guesdon, And The Band Begins To Play: The Definitive Guide To The Songs of The Beatles by Steve Lambley, The Beatles By Ear by Kevin Moore, Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald, and The Beatles Anthology. For this episode, I also referred to Last Interview by David Sheff, a longform interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono from shortly before Lennon's death; Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, an authorised biography of Paul McCartney; and Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey. This time I also used Steve Turner's The Beatles: The Stories Behind the Songs 1967-1970. I referred to Philip Norman's biographies of John Lennon, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney, to Graeme Thomson's biography of George Harrison, Take a Sad Song by James Campion, Yoko Ono: An Artful Life by Donald Brackett, Those Were the Days 2.0 by Stephan Granados, and Sound Pictures by Kenneth Womack. Sadly the only way to get the single mix of “Hey Jude” is on this ludicrously-expensive out-of-print box set, but a remixed stereo mix is easily available on the new reissue of the 1967-70 compilation. The original mixes of the White Album are also, shockingly, out of print, but this 2018 remix is available for the moment. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, a quick note -- this episode deals, among other topics, with child abandonment, spousal neglect, suicide attempts, miscarriage, rape accusations, and heroin addiction. If any of those topics are likely to upset you, you might want to check the transcript rather than listening to this episode. It also, for once, contains a short excerpt of an expletive, but given that that expletive in that context has been regularly played on daytime radio without complaint for over fifty years, I suspect it can be excused. The use of mantra meditation is something that exists across religions, and which appears to have been independently invented multiple times, in multiple cultures. In the Western culture to which most of my listeners belong, it is now best known as an aspect of what is known as "mindfulness", a secularised version of Buddhism which aims to provide adherents with the benefits of the teachings of the Buddha but without the cosmology to which they are attached. But it turns up in almost every religious tradition I know of in one form or another. The idea of mantra meditation is a very simple one, and one that even has some basis in science. There is a mathematical principle in neurology and information science called the free energy principle which says our brains are wired to try to minimise how surprised we are -- our brain is constantly making predictions about the world, and then looking at the results from our senses to see if they match. If they do, that's great, and the brain will happily move on to its next prediction. If they don't, the brain has to update its model of the world to match the new information, make new predictions, and see if those new predictions are a better match. Every person has a different mental model of the world, and none of them match reality, but every brain tries to get as close as possible. This updating of the model to match the new information is called "thinking", and it uses up energy, and our bodies and brains have evolved to conserve energy as much as possible. This means that for many people, most of the time, thinking is unpleasant, and indeed much of the time that people have spent thinking, they've been thinking about how to stop themselves having to do it at all, and when they have managed to stop thinking, however briefly, they've experienced great bliss. Many more or less effective technologies have been created to bring about a more minimal-energy state, including alcohol, heroin, and barbituates, but many of these have unwanted side-effects, such as death, which people also tend to want to avoid, and so people have often turned to another technology. It turns out that for many people, they can avoid thinking by simply thinking about something that is utterly predictable. If they minimise the amount of sensory input, and concentrate on something that they can predict exactly, eventually they can turn off their mind, relax, and float downstream, without dying. One easy way to do this is to close your eyes, so you can't see anything, make your breath as regular as possible, and then concentrate on a sound that repeats over and over. If you repeat a single phrase or word a few hundred times, that regular repetition eventually causes your mind to stop having to keep track of the world, and experience a peace that is, by all accounts, unlike any other experience. What word or phrase that is can depend very much on the tradition. In Transcendental Meditation, each person has their own individual phrase. In the Catholicism in which George Harrison and Paul McCartney were raised, popular phrases for this are "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner" or "Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen." In some branches of Buddhism, a popular mantra is "_NAMU MYŌHŌ RENGE KYŌ_". In the Hinduism to which George Harrison later converted, you can use "Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare", "Om Namo Bhagavate Vāsudevāya" or "Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha". Those last two start with the syllable "Om", and indeed some people prefer to just use that syllable, repeating a single syllable over and over again until they reach a state of transcendence. [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Jude" ("na na na na na na na")] We don't know much about how the Beatles first discovered Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, except that it was thanks to Pattie Boyd, George Harrison's then-wife. Unfortunately, her memory of how she first became involved in the Maharishi's Spiritual Regeneration Movement, as described in her autobiography, doesn't fully line up with other known facts. She talks about reading about the Maharishi in the paper with her friend Marie-Lise while George was away on tour, but she also places the date that this happened in February 1967, several months after the Beatles had stopped touring forever. We'll be seeing a lot more of these timing discrepancies as this story progresses, and people's memories increasingly don't match the events that happened to them. Either way, it's clear that Pattie became involved in the Spiritual Regeneration Movement a good length of time before her husband did. She got him to go along with her to one of the Maharishi's lectures, after she had already been converted to the practice of Transcendental Meditation, and they brought along John, Paul, and their partners (Ringo's wife Maureen had just given birth, so they didn't come). As we heard back in episode one hundred and fifty, that lecture was impressive enough that the group, plus their wives and girlfriends (with the exception of Maureen Starkey) and Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, all went on a meditation retreat with the Maharishi at a holiday camp in Bangor, and it was there that they learned that Brian Epstein had been found dead. The death of the man who had guided the group's career could not have come at a worse time for the band's stability. The group had only recorded one song in the preceding two months -- Paul's "Your Mother Should Know" -- and had basically been running on fumes since completing recording of Sgt Pepper many months earlier. John's drug intake had increased to the point that he was barely functional -- although with the enthusiasm of the newly converted he had decided to swear off LSD at the Maharishi's urging -- and his marriage was falling apart. Similarly, Paul McCartney's relationship with Jane Asher was in a bad state, though both men were trying to repair their damaged relationships, while both George and Ringo were having doubts about the band that had made them famous. In George's case, he was feeling marginalised by John and Paul, his songs ignored or paid cursory attention, and there was less for him to do on the records as the group moved away from making guitar-based rock and roll music into the stranger areas of psychedelia. And Ringo, whose main memory of the recording of Sgt Pepper was of learning to play chess while the others went through the extensive overdubs that characterised that album, was starting to feel like his playing was deteriorating, and that as the only non-writer in the band he was on the outside to an extent. On top of that, the group were in the middle of a major plan to restructure their business. As part of their contract renegotiations with EMI at the beginning of 1967, it had been agreed that they would receive two million pounds -- roughly fifteen million pounds in today's money -- in unpaid royalties as a lump sum. If that had been paid to them as individuals, or through the company they owned, the Beatles Ltd, they would have had to pay the full top rate of tax on it, which as George had complained the previous year was over ninety-five percent. (In fact, he'd been slightly exaggerating the generosity of the UK tax system to the rich, as at that point the top rate of income tax was somewhere around ninety-seven and a half percent). But happily for them, a couple of years earlier the UK had restructured its tax laws and introduced a corporation tax, which meant that the profits of corporations were no longer taxed at the same high rate as income. So a new company had been set up, The Beatles & Co, and all the group's non-songwriting income was paid into the company. Each Beatle owned five percent of the company, and the other eighty percent was owned by a new partnership, a corporation that was soon renamed Apple Corps -- a name inspired by a painting that McCartney had liked by the artist Rene Magritte. In the early stages of Apple, it was very entangled with Nems, the company that was owned by Brian and Clive Epstein, and which was in the process of being sold to Robert Stigwood, though that sale fell through after Brian's death. The first part of Apple, Apple Publishing, had been set up in the summer of 1967, and was run by Terry Doran, a friend of Epstein's who ran a motor dealership -- most of the Apple divisions would be run by friends of the group rather than by people with experience in the industries in question. As Apple was set up during the point that Stigwood was getting involved with NEMS, Apple Publishing's initial offices were in the same building with, and shared staff with, two publishing companies that Stigwood owned, Dratleaf Music, who published Cream's songs, and Abigail Music, the Bee Gees' publishers. And indeed the first two songs published by Apple were copyrights that were gifted to the company by Stigwood -- "Listen to the Sky", a B-side by an obscure band called Sands: [Excerpt: Sands, "Listen to the Sky"] And "Outside Woman Blues", an arrangement by Eric Clapton of an old blues song by Blind Joe Reynolds, which Cream had copyrighted separately and released on Disraeli Gears: [Excerpt: Cream, "Outside Woman Blues"] But Apple soon started signing outside songwriters -- once Mike Berry, a member of Apple Publishing's staff, had sat McCartney down and explained to him what music publishing actually was, something he had never actually understood even though he'd been a songwriter for five years. Those songwriters, given that this was 1967, were often also performers, and as Apple Records had not yet been set up, Apple would try to arrange recording contracts for them with other labels. They started with a group called Focal Point, who got signed by badgering Paul McCartney to listen to their songs until he gave them Doran's phone number to shut them up: [Excerpt: Focal Point, "Sycamore Sid"] But the big early hope for Apple Publishing was a songwriter called George Alexander. Alexander's birth name had been Alexander Young, and he was the brother of George Young, who was a member of the Australian beat group The Easybeats, who'd had a hit with "Friday on My Mind": [Excerpt: The Easybeats, "Friday on My Mind"] His younger brothers Malcolm and Angus would go on to have a few hits themselves, but AC/DC wouldn't be formed for another five years. Terry Doran thought that Alexander should be a member of a band, because bands were more popular than solo artists at the time, and so he was placed with three former members of Tony Rivers and the Castaways, a Beach Boys soundalike group that had had some minor success. John Lennon suggested that the group be named Grapefruit, after a book he was reading by a conceptual artist of his acquaintance named Yoko Ono, and as Doran was making arrangements with Terry Melcher for a reciprocal publishing deal by which Melcher's American company would publish Apple songs in the US while Apple published songs from Melcher's company in the UK, it made sense for Melcher to also produce Grapefruit's first single, "Dear Delilah": [Excerpt: Grapefruit, "Dear Delilah"] That made number twenty-one in the UK when it came out in early 1968, on the back of publicity about Grapefruit's connection with the Beatles, but future singles by the band were much less successful, and like several other acts involved with Apple, they found that they were more hampered by the Beatles connection than helped. A few other people were signed to Apple Publishing early on, of whom the most notable was Jackie Lomax. Lomax had been a member of a minor Merseybeat group, the Undertakers, and after they had split up, he'd been signed by Brian Epstein with a new group, the Lomax Alliance, who had released one single, "Try as You May": [Excerpt: The Lomax Alliance, "Try As You May"] After Epstein's death, Lomax had plans to join another band, being formed by another Merseybeat musician, Chris Curtis, the former drummer of the Searchers. But after going to the Beatles to talk with them about them helping the new group financially, Lomax was persuaded by John Lennon to go solo instead. He may later have regretted that decision, as by early 1968 the people that Curtis had recruited for his new band had ditched him and were making a name for themselves as Deep Purple. Lomax recorded one solo single with funding from Stigwood, a cover version of a song by an obscure singer-songwriter, Jake Holmes, "Genuine Imitation Life": [Excerpt: Jackie Lomax, "Genuine Imitation Life"] But he was also signed to Apple Publishing as a songwriter. The Beatles had only just started laying out plans for Apple when Epstein died, and other than the publishing company one of the few things they'd agreed on was that they were going to have a film company, which was to be run by Denis O'Dell, who had been an associate producer on A Hard Day's Night and on How I Won The War, the Richard Lester film Lennon had recently starred in. A few days after Epstein's death, they had a meeting, in which they agreed that the band needed to move forward quickly if they were going to recover from Epstein's death. They had originally been planning on going to India with the Maharishi to study meditation, but they decided to put that off until the new year, and to press forward with a film project Paul had been talking about, to be titled Magical Mystery Tour. And so, on the fifth of September 1967, they went back into the recording studio and started work on a song of John's that was earmarked for the film, "I am the Walrus": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] Magical Mystery Tour, the film, has a mixed reputation which we will talk about shortly, but one defence that Paul McCartney has always made of it is that it's the only place where you can see the Beatles performing "I am the Walrus". While the song was eventually relegated to a B-side, it's possibly the finest B-side of the Beatles' career, and one of the best tracks the group ever made. As with many of Lennon's songs from this period, the song was a collage of many different elements pulled from his environment and surroundings, and turned into something that was rather more than the sum of its parts. For its musical inspiration, Lennon pulled from, of all things, a police siren going past his house. (For those who are unfamiliar with what old British police sirens sounded like, as opposed to the ones in use for most of my lifetime or in other countries, here's a recording of one): [Excerpt: British police siren ca 1968] That inspired Lennon to write a snatch of lyric to go with the sound of the siren, starting "Mister city policeman sitting pretty". He had two other song fragments, one about sitting in the garden, and one about sitting on a cornflake, and he told Hunter Davies, who was doing interviews for his authorised biography of the group, “I don't know how it will all end up. Perhaps they'll turn out to be different parts of the same song.” But the final element that made these three disparate sections into a song was a letter that came from Stephen Bayley, a pupil at Lennon's old school Quarry Bank, who told him that the teachers at the school -- who Lennon always thought of as having suppressed his creativity -- were now analysing Beatles lyrics in their lessons. Lennon decided to come up with some nonsense that they couldn't analyse -- though as nonsensical as the finished song is, there's an underlying anger to a lot of it that possibly comes from Lennon thinking of his school experiences. And so Lennon asked his old schoolfriend Pete Shotton to remind him of a disgusting playground chant that kids used to sing in schools in the North West of England (and which they still sang with very minor variations at my own school decades later -- childhood folklore has a remarkably long life). That rhyme went: Yellow matter custard, green snot pie All mixed up with a dead dog's eye Slap it on a butty, nice and thick, And drink it down with a cup of cold sick Lennon combined some parts of this with half-remembered fragments of Lewis Carrol's The Walrus and the Carpenter, and with some punning references to things that were going on in his own life and those of his friends -- though it's difficult to know exactly which of the stories attached to some of the more incomprehensible bits of the lyrics are accurate. The story that the line "I am the eggman" is about a sexual proclivity of Eric Burdon of the Animals seems plausible, while the contention by some that the phrase "semolina pilchard" is a reference to Sgt Pilcher, the corrupt policeman who had arrested three of the Rolling Stones, and would later arrest Lennon, on drugs charges, seems less likely. The track is a masterpiece of production, but the release of the basic take on Anthology 2 in 1996 showed that the underlying performance, before George Martin worked his magic with the overdubs, is still a remarkable piece of work: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus (Anthology 2 version)"] But Martin's arrangement and production turned the track from a merely very good track into a masterpiece. The string arrangement, very much in the same mould as that for "Strawberry Fields Forever" but giving a very different effect with its harsh cello glissandi, is the kind of thing one expects from Martin, but there's also the chanting of the Mike Sammes Singers, who were more normally booked for sessions like Englebert Humperdinck's "The Last Waltz": [Excerpt: Engelbert Humperdinck, "The Last Waltz"] But here were instead asked to imitate the sound of the strings, make grunting noises, and generally go very far out of their normal comfort zone: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] But the most fascinating piece of production in the entire track is an idea that seems to have been inspired by people like John Cage -- a live feed of a radio being tuned was played into the mono mix from about the halfway point, and whatever was on the radio at the time was captured: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] This is also why for many decades it was impossible to have a true stereo mix of the track -- the radio part was mixed directly into the mono mix, and it wasn't until the 1990s that someone thought to track down a copy of the original radio broadcasts and recreate the process. In one of those bits of synchronicity that happen more often than you would think when you're creating aleatory art, and which are why that kind of process can be so appealing, one bit of dialogue from the broadcast of King Lear that was on the radio as the mixing was happening was *perfectly* timed: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] After completing work on the basic track for "I am the Walrus", the group worked on two more songs for the film, George's "Blue Jay Way" and a group-composed twelve-bar blues instrumental called "Flying", before starting production. Magical Mystery Tour, as an idea, was inspired in equal parts by Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, the collective of people we talked about in the episode on the Grateful Dead who travelled across the US extolling the virtues of psychedelic drugs, and by mystery tours, a British working-class tradition that has rather fallen out of fashion in the intervening decades. A mystery tour would generally be put on by a coach-hire company, and would be a day trip to an unannounced location -- though the location would in fact be very predictable, and would be a seaside town within a couple of hours' drive of its starting point. In the case of the ones the Beatles remembered from their own childhoods, this would be to a coastal town in Lancashire or Wales, like Blackpool, Rhyl, or Prestatyn. A coachload of people would pay to be driven to this random location, get very drunk and have a singsong on the bus, and spend a day wherever they were taken. McCartney's plan was simple -- they would gather a group of passengers and replicate this experience over the course of several days, and film whatever went on, but intersperse that with more planned out sketches and musical numbers. For this reason, along with the Beatles and their associates, the cast included some actors found through Spotlight and some of the group's favourite performers, like the comedian Nat Jackley (whose comedy sequence directed by John was cut from the final film) and the surrealist poet/singer/comedian Ivor Cutler: [Excerpt: Ivor Cutler, "I'm Going in a Field"] The film also featured an appearance by a new band who would go on to have great success over the next year, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. They had recorded their first single in Abbey Road at the same time as the Beatles were recording Revolver, but rather than being progressive psychedelic rock, it had been a remake of a 1920s novelty song: [Excerpt: The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, "My Brother Makes the Noises For the Talkies"] Their performance in Magical Mystery Tour was very different though -- they played a fifties rock pastiche written by band leaders Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes while a stripper took off her clothes. While several other musical sequences were recorded for the film, including one by the band Traffic and one by Cutler, other than the Beatles tracks only the Bonzos' song made it into the finished film: [Excerpt: The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, "Death Cab for Cutie"] That song, thirty years later, would give its name to a prominent American alternative rock band. Incidentally the same night that Magical Mystery Tour was first broadcast was also the night that the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band first appeared on a TV show, Do Not Adjust Your Set, which featured three future members of the Monty Python troupe -- Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones. Over the years the careers of the Bonzos, the Pythons, and the Beatles would become increasingly intertwined, with George Harrison in particular striking up strong friendships and working relationships with Bonzos Neil Innes and "Legs" Larry Smith. The filming of Magical Mystery Tour went about as well as one might expect from a film made by four directors, none of whom had any previous filmmaking experience, and none of whom had any business knowledge. The Beatles were used to just turning up and having things magically done for them by other people, and had no real idea of the infrastructure challenges that making a film, even a low-budget one, actually presents, and ended up causing a great deal of stress to almost everyone involved. The completed film was shown on TV on Boxing Day 1967 to general confusion and bemusement. It didn't help that it was originally broadcast in black and white, and so for example the scene showing shifting landscapes (outtake footage from Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, tinted various psychedelic colours) over the "Flying" music, just looked like grey fuzz. But also, it just wasn't what people were expecting from a Beatles film. This was a ramshackle, plotless, thing more inspired by Andy Warhol's underground films than by the kind of thing the group had previously appeared in, and it was being presented as Christmas entertainment for all the family. And to be honest, it's not even a particularly good example of underground filmmaking -- though it looks like a masterpiece when placed next to something like the Bee Gees' similar effort, Cucumber Castle. But there are enough interesting sequences in there for the project not to be a complete failure -- and the deleted scenes on the DVD release, including the performances by Cutler and Traffic, and the fact that the film was edited down from ten hours to fifty-two minutes, makes one wonder if there's a better film that could be constructed from the original footage. Either way, the reaction to the film was so bad that McCartney actually appeared on David Frost's TV show the next day to defend it and, essentially, apologise. While they were editing the film, the group were also continuing to work in the studio, including on two new McCartney songs, "The Fool on the Hill", which was included in Magical Mystery Tour, and "Hello Goodbye", which wasn't included on the film's soundtrack but was released as the next single, with "I Am the Walrus" as the B-side: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hello Goodbye"] Incidentally, in the UK the soundtrack to Magical Mystery Tour was released as a double-EP rather than as an album (in the US, the group's recent singles and B-sides were added to turn it into a full-length album, which is how it's now generally available). "I Am the Walrus" was on the double-EP as well as being on the single's B-side, and the double-EP got to number two on the singles charts, meaning "I am the Walrus" was on the records at number one and number two at the same time. Before it became obvious that the film, if not the soundtrack, was a disaster, the group held a launch party on the twenty-first of December, 1967. The band members went along in fancy dress, as did many of the cast and crew -- the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band performed at the party. Mike Love and Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys also turned up at the party, and apparently at one point jammed with the Bonzos, and according to some, but not all, reports, a couple of the Beatles joined in as well. Love and Johnston had both just met the Maharishi for the first time a couple of days earlier, and Love had been as impressed as the Beatles were, and it may have been at this party that the group mentioned to Love that they would soon be going on a retreat in India with the guru -- a retreat that was normally meant for training TM instructors, but this time seemed to be more about getting celebrities involved. Love would also end up going with them. That party was also the first time that Cynthia Lennon had an inkling that John might not be as faithful to her as she previously supposed. John had always "joked" about being attracted to George Harrison's wife, Patti, but this time he got a little more blatant about his attraction than he ever had previously, to the point that he made Cynthia cry, and Cynthia's friend, the pop star Lulu, decided to give Lennon a very public dressing-down for his cruelty to his wife, a dressing-down that must have been a sight to behold, as Lennon was dressed as a Teddy boy while Lulu was in a Shirley Temple costume. It's a sign of how bad the Lennons' marriage was at this point that this was the second time in a two-month period where Cynthia had ended up crying because of John at a film launch party and been comforted by a female pop star. In October, Cilla Black had held a party to celebrate the belated release of John's film How I Won the War, and during the party Georgie Fame had come up to Black and said, confused, "Cynthia Lennon is hiding in your wardrobe". Black went and had a look, and Cynthia explained to her “I'm waiting to see how long it is before John misses me and comes looking for me.” Black's response had been “You'd better face it, kid—he's never gonna come.” Also at the Magical Mystery Tour party was Lennon's father, now known as Freddie Lennon, and his new nineteen-year-old fiancee. While Hunter Davis had been researching the Beatles' biography, he'd come across some evidence that the version of Freddie's attitude towards John that his mother's side of the family had always told him -- that Freddie had been a cruel and uncaring husband who had not actually wanted to be around his son -- might not be the whole of the truth, and that the mother who he had thought of as saintly might also have had some part to play in their marriage breaking down and Freddie not seeing his son for twenty years. The two had made some tentative attempts at reconciliation, and indeed Freddie would even come and live with John for a while, though within a couple of years the younger Lennon's heart would fully harden against his father again. Of course, the things that John always resented his father for were pretty much exactly the kind of things that Lennon himself was about to do. It was around this time as well that Derek Taylor gave the Beatles copies of the debut album by a young singer/songwriter named Harry Nilsson. Nilsson will be getting his own episode down the line, but not for a couple of years at my current rates, so it's worth bringing that up here, because that album became a favourite of all the Beatles, and would have a huge influence on their songwriting for the next couple of years, and because one song on the album, "1941", must have resonated particularly deeply with Lennon right at this moment -- an autobiographical song by Nilsson about how his father had left him and his mother when he was a small boy, and about his own fear that, as his first marriage broke down, he was repeating the pattern with his stepson Scott: [Excerpt: Nilsson, "1941"] The other major event of December 1967, rather overshadowed by the Magical Mystery Tour disaster the next day, was that on Christmas Day Paul McCartney and Jane Asher announced their engagement. A few days later, George Harrison flew to India. After John and Paul had had their outside film projects -- John starring in How I Won The War and Paul doing the soundtrack for The Family Way -- the other two Beatles more or less simultaneously did their own side project films, and again one acted while the other did a soundtrack. Both of these projects were in the rather odd subgenre of psychedelic shambolic comedy film that sprang up in the mid sixties, a subgenre that produced a lot of fascinating films, though rather fewer good ones. Indeed, both of them were in the subsubgenre of shambolic psychedelic *sex* comedies. In Ringo's case, he had a small role in the film Candy, which was based on the novel we mentioned in the last episode, co-written by Terry Southern, which was in itself a loose modern rewriting of Voltaire's Candide. Unfortunately, like such other classics of this subgenre as Anthony Newley's Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, Candy has dated *extremely* badly, and unless you find repeated scenes of sexual assault and rape, ethnic stereotypes, and jokes about deformity and disfigurement to be an absolute laugh riot, it's not a film that's worth seeking out, and Starr's part in it is not a major one. Harrison's film was of the same basic genre -- a film called Wonderwall about a mad scientist who discovers a way to see through the walls of his apartment, and gets to see a photographer taking sexy photographs of a young woman named Penny Lane, played by Jane Birkin: [Excerpt: Some Wonderwall film dialogue ripped from the Blu-Ray] Wonderwall would, of course, later inspire the title of a song by Oasis, and that's what the film is now best known for, but it's a less-unwatchable film than Candy, and while still problematic it's less so. Which is something. Harrison had been the Beatle with least involvement in Magical Mystery Tour -- McCartney had been the de facto director, Starr had been the lead character and the only one with much in the way of any acting to do, and Lennon had written the film's standout scene and its best song, and had done a little voiceover narration. Harrison, by contrast, barely has anything to do in the film apart from the one song he contributed, "Blue Jay Way", and he said of the project “I had no idea what was happening and maybe I didn't pay enough attention because my problem, basically, was that I was in another world, I didn't really belong; I was just an appendage.” He'd expressed his discomfort to his friend Joe Massot, who was about to make his first feature film. Massot had got to know Harrison during the making of his previous film, Reflections on Love, a mostly-silent short which had starred Harrison's sister-in-law Jenny Boyd, and which had been photographed by Robert Freeman, who had been the photographer for the Beatles' album covers from With the Beatles through Rubber Soul, and who had taken most of the photos that Klaus Voorman incorporated into the cover of Revolver (and whose professional association with the Beatles seemed to come to an end around the same time he discovered that Lennon had been having an affair with his wife). Massot asked Harrison to write the music for the film, and told Harrison he would have complete free rein to make whatever music he wanted, so long as it fit the timing of the film, and so Harrison decided to create a mixture of Western rock music and the Indian music he loved. Harrison started recording the music at the tail end of 1967, with sessions with several London-based Indian musicians and John Barham, an orchestrator who had worked with Ravi Shankar on Shankar's collaborations with Western musicians, including the Alice in Wonderland soundtrack we talked about in the "All You Need is Love" episode. For the Western music, he used the Remo Four, a Merseybeat group who had been on the scene even before the Beatles, and which contained a couple of classmates of Paul McCartney, but who had mostly acted as backing musicians for other artists. They'd backed Johnny Sandon, the former singer with the Searchers, on a couple of singles, before becoming the backing band for Tommy Quickly, a NEMS artist who was unsuccessful despite starting his career with a Lennon/McCartney song, "Tip of My Tongue": [Excerpt: Tommy Quickly, "Tip of My Tongue"] The Remo Four would later, after a lineup change, become Ashton, Gardner and Dyke, who would become one-hit wonders in the seventies, and during the Wonderwall sessions they recorded a song that went unreleased at the time, and which would later go on to be rerecorded by Ashton, Gardner, and Dyke. "In the First Place" also features Harrison on backing vocals and possibly guitar, and was not submitted for the film because Harrison didn't believe that Massot wanted any vocal tracks, but the recording was later discovered and used in a revised director's cut of the film in the nineties: [Excerpt: The Remo Four, "In the First Place"] But for the most part the Remo Four were performing instrumentals written by Harrison. They weren't the only Western musicians performing on the sessions though -- Peter Tork of the Monkees dropped by these sessions and recorded several short banjo solos, which were used in the film soundtrack but not in the soundtrack album (presumably because Tork was contracted to another label): [Excerpt: Peter Tork, "Wonderwall banjo solo"] Another musician who was under contract to another label was Eric Clapton, who at the time was playing with The Cream, and who vaguely knew Harrison and so joined in for the track "Ski-ing", playing lead guitar under the cunning, impenetrable, pseudonym "Eddie Clayton", with Harrison on sitar, Starr on drums, and session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan on bass: [Excerpt: George Harrison, "Ski-ing"] But the bulk of the album was recorded in EMI's studios in the city that is now known as Mumbai but at the time was called Bombay. The studio facilities in India had up to that point only had a mono tape recorder, and Bhaskar Menon, one of the top executives at EMI's Indian division and later the head of EMI music worldwide, personally brought the first stereo tape recorder to the studio to aid in Harrison's recording. The music was all composed by Harrison and performed by the Indian musicians, and while Harrison was composing in an Indian mode, the musicians were apparently fascinated by how Western it sounded to them: [Excerpt: George Harrison, "Microbes"] While he was there, Harrison also got the instrumentalists to record another instrumental track, which wasn't to be used for the film: [Excerpt: George Harrison, "The Inner Light (instrumental)"] That track would, instead, become part of what was to be Harrison's first composition to make a side of a Beatles single. After John and George had appeared on the David Frost show talking about the Maharishi, in September 1967, George had met a lecturer in Sanskrit named Juan Mascaró, who wrote to Harrison enclosing a book he'd compiled of translations of religious texts, telling him he'd admired "Within You Without You" and thought it would be interesting if Harrison set something from the Tao Te Ching to music. He suggested a text that, in his translation, read: "Without going out of my door I can know all things on Earth Without looking out of my window I can know the ways of heaven For the farther one travels, the less one knows The sage, therefore Arrives without travelling Sees all without looking Does all without doing" Harrison took that text almost verbatim, though he created a second verse by repeating the first few lines with "you" replacing "I" -- concerned that listeners might think he was just talking about himself, and wouldn't realise it was a more general statement -- and he removed the "the sage, therefore" and turned the last few lines into imperative commands rather than declarative statements: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "The Inner Light"] The song has come in for some criticism over the years as being a little Orientalist, because in critics' eyes it combines Chinese philosophy with Indian music, as if all these things are equally "Eastern" and so all the same really. On the other hand there's a good argument that an English songwriter taking a piece of writing written in Chinese and translated into English by a Spanish man and setting it to music inspired by Indian musical modes is a wonderful example of cultural cross-pollination. As someone who's neither Chinese nor Indian I wouldn't want to take a stance on it, but clearly the other Beatles were impressed by it -- they put it out as the B-side to their next single, even though the only Beatles on it are Harrison and McCartney, with the latter adding a small amount of harmony vocal: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "The Inner Light"] And it wasn't because the group were out of material. They were planning on going to Rishikesh to study with the Maharishi, and wanted to get a single out for release while they were away, and so in one week they completed the vocal overdubs on "The Inner Light" and recorded three other songs, two by John and one by Paul. All three of the group's songwriters brought in songs that were among their best. John's first contribution was a song whose lyrics he later described as possibly the best he ever wrote, "Across the Universe". He said the lyrics were “purely inspirational and were given to me as boom! I don't own it, you know; it came through like that … Such an extraordinary meter and I can never repeat it! It's not a matter of craftsmanship, it wrote itself. It drove me out of bed. I didn't want to write it … It's like being possessed, like a psychic or a medium.” But while Lennon liked the song, he was never happy with the recording of it. They tried all sorts of things to get the sound he heard in his head, including bringing in some fans who were hanging around outside to sing backing vocals. He said of the track "I was singing out of tune and instead of getting a decent choir, we got fans from outside, Apple Scruffs or whatever you call them. They came in and were singing all off-key. Nobody was interested in doing the tune originally.” [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Across the Universe"] The "jai guru deva" chorus there is the first reference to the teachings of the Maharishi in one of the Beatles' records -- Guru Dev was the Maharishi's teacher, and the phrase "Jai guru dev" is a Sanskrit one which I've seen variously translated as "victory to the great teacher", and "hail to the greatness within you". Lennon would say shortly before his death “The Beatles didn't make a good record out of it. I think subconsciously sometimes we – I say ‘we' though I think Paul did it more than the rest of us – Paul would sort of subconsciously try and destroy a great song … Usually we'd spend hours doing little detailed cleaning-ups of Paul's songs, when it came to mine, especially if it was a great song like ‘Strawberry Fields' or ‘Across The Universe', somehow this atmosphere of looseness and casualness and experimentation would creep in … It was a _lousy_ track of a great song and I was so disappointed by it …The guitars are out of tune and I'm singing out of tune because I'm psychologically destroyed and nobody's supporting me or helping me with it, and the song was never done properly.” Of course, this is only Lennon's perception, and it's one that the other participants would disagree with. George Martin, in particular, was always rather hurt by the implication that Lennon's songs had less attention paid to them, and he would always say that the problem was that Lennon in the studio would always say "yes, that's great", and only later complain that it hadn't been what he wanted. No doubt McCartney did put in more effort on his own songs than on Lennon's -- everyone has a bias towards their own work, and McCartney's only human -- but personally I suspect that a lot of the problem comes down to the two men having very different personalities. McCartney had very strong ideas about his own work and would drive the others insane with his nitpicky attention to detail. Lennon had similarly strong ideas, but didn't have the attention span to put the time and effort in to force his vision on others, and didn't have the technical knowledge to express his ideas in words they'd understand. He expected Martin and the other Beatles to work miracles, and they did -- but not the miracles he would have worked. That track was, rather than being chosen for the next single, given to Spike Milligan, who happened to be visiting the studio and was putting together an album for the environmental charity the World Wildlife Fund. The album was titled "No One's Gonna Change Our World": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Across the Universe"] That track is historic in another way -- it would be the last time that George Harrison would play sitar on a Beatles record, and it effectively marks the end of the period of psychedelia and Indian influence that had started with "Norwegian Wood" three years earlier, and which many fans consider their most creative period. Indeed, shortly after the recording, Harrison would give up the sitar altogether and stop playing it. He loved sitar music as much as he ever had, and he still thought that Indian classical music spoke to him in ways he couldn't express, and he continued to be friends with Ravi Shankar for the rest of his life, and would only become more interested in Indian religious thought. But as he spent time with Shankar he realised he would never be as good on the sitar as he hoped. He said later "I thought, 'Well, maybe I'm better off being a pop singer-guitar-player-songwriter – whatever-I'm-supposed-to-be' because I've seen a thousand sitar-players in India who are twice as better as I'll ever be. And only one of them Ravi thought was going to be a good player." We don't have a precise date for when it happened -- I suspect it was in June 1968, so a few months after the "Across the Universe" recording -- but Shankar told Harrison that rather than try to become a master of a music that he hadn't encountered until his twenties, perhaps he should be making the music that was his own background. And as Harrison put it "I realised that was riding my bike down a street in Liverpool and hearing 'Heartbreak Hotel' coming out of someone's house.": [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Heartbreak Hotel"] In early 1968 a lot of people seemed to be thinking along the same lines, as if Christmas 1967 had been the flick of a switch and instead of whimsy and ornamentation, the thing to do was to make music that was influenced by early rock and roll. In the US the Band and Bob Dylan were making music that was consciously shorn of all studio experimentation, while in the UK there was a revival of fifties rock and roll. In April 1968 both "Peggy Sue" and "Rock Around the Clock" reentered the top forty in the UK, and the Who were regularly including "Summertime Blues" in their sets. Fifties nostalgia, which would make occasional comebacks for at least the next forty years, was in its first height, and so it's not surprising that Paul McCartney's song, "Lady Madonna", which became the A-side of the next single, has more than a little of the fifties about it. Of course, the track isn't *completely* fifties in its origins -- one of the inspirations for the track seems to have been the Rolling Stones' then-recent hit "Let's Spend The Night Together": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Let's Spend the Night Together"] But the main source for the song's music -- and for the sound of the finished record -- seems to have been Johnny Parker's piano part on Humphrey Lyttleton's "Bad Penny Blues", a hit single engineered by Joe Meek in the fifties: [Excerpt: Humphrey Lyttleton, "Bad Penny Blues"] That song seems to have been on the group's mind for a while, as a working title for "With a Little Help From My Friends" had at one point been "Bad Finger Blues" -- a title that would later give the name to a band on Apple. McCartney took Parker's piano part as his inspiration, and as he later put it “‘Lady Madonna' was me sitting down at the piano trying to write a bluesy boogie-woogie thing. I got my left hand doing an arpeggio thing with the chord, an ascending boogie-woogie left hand, then a descending right hand. I always liked that, the juxtaposition of a line going down meeting a line going up." [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Lady Madonna"] That idea, incidentally, is an interesting reversal of what McCartney had done on "Hello, Goodbye", where the bass line goes down while the guitar moves up -- the two lines moving away from each other: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hello Goodbye"] Though that isn't to say there's no descending bass in "Lady Madonna" -- the bridge has a wonderful sequence where the bass just *keeps* *descending*: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Lady Madonna"] Lyrically, McCartney was inspired by a photo in National Geographic of a woman in Malaysia, captioned “Mountain Madonna: with one child at her breast and another laughing into her face, sees her quality of life threatened.” But as he put it “The people I was brought up amongst were often Catholic; there are lots of Catholics in Liverpool because of the Irish connection and they are often religious. When they have a baby I think they see a big connection between themselves and the Virgin Mary with her baby. So the original concept was the Virgin Mary but it quickly became symbolic of every woman; the Madonna image but as applied to ordinary working class woman. It's really a tribute to the mother figure, it's a tribute to women.” Musically though, the song was more a tribute to the fifties -- while the inspiration had been a skiffle hit by Humphrey Lyttleton, as soon as McCartney started playing it he'd thought of Fats Domino, and the lyric reflects that to an extent -- just as Domino's "Blue Monday" details the days of the week for a weary working man who only gets to enjoy himself on Saturday night, "Lady Madonna"'s lyrics similarly look at the work a mother has to do every day -- though as McCartney later noted "I was writing the words out to learn it for an American TV show and I realised I missed out Saturday ... So I figured it must have been a real night out." The vocal was very much McCartney doing a Domino impression -- something that wasn't lost on Fats, who cut his own version of the track later that year: [Excerpt: Fats Domino, "Lady Madonna"] The group were so productive at this point, right before the journey to India, that they actually cut another song *while they were making a video for "Lady Madonna"*. They were booked into Abbey Road to film themselves performing the song so it could be played on Top of the Pops while they were away, but instead they decided to use the time to cut a new song -- John had a partially-written song, "Hey Bullfrog", which was roughly the same tempo as "Lady Madonna", so they could finish that up and then re-edit the footage to match the record. The song was quickly finished and became "Hey Bulldog": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Bulldog"] One of Lennon's best songs from this period, "Hey Bulldog" was oddly chosen only to go on the soundtrack of Yellow Submarine. Either the band didn't think much of it because it had come so easily, or it was just assigned to the film because they were planning on being away for several months and didn't have any other projects they were working on. The extent of the group's contribution to the film was minimal – they were not very hands-on, and the film, which was mostly done as an attempt to provide a third feature film for their United Artists contract without them having to do any work, was made by the team that had done the Beatles cartoon on American TV. There's some evidence that they had a small amount of input in the early story stages, but in general they saw the cartoon as an irrelevance to them -- the only things they contributed were the four songs "All Together Now", "It's All Too Much", "Hey Bulldog" and "Only a Northern Song", and a brief filmed appearance for the very end of the film, recorded in January: [Excerpt: Yellow Submarine film end] McCartney also took part in yet another session in early February 1968, one produced by Peter Asher, his fiancee's brother, and former singer with Peter and Gordon. Asher had given up on being a pop star and was trying to get into the business side of music, and he was starting out as a producer, producing a single by Paul Jones, the former lead singer of Manfred Mann. The A-side of the single, "And the Sun Will Shine", was written by the Bee Gees, the band that Robert Stigwood was managing: [Excerpt: Paul Jones, "And the Sun Will Shine"] While the B-side was an original by Jones, "The Dog Presides": [Excerpt: Paul Jones, "The Dog Presides"] Those tracks featured two former members of the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck and Paul Samwell-Smith, on guitar and bass, and Nicky Hopkins on piano. Asher asked McCartney to play drums on both sides of the single, saying later "I always thought he was a great, underrated drummer." McCartney was impressed by Asher's production, and asked him to get involved with the new Apple Records label that would be set up when the group returned from India. Asher eventually became head of A&R for the label. And even before "Lady Madonna" was mixed, the Beatles were off to India. Mal Evans, their roadie, went ahead with all their luggage on the fourteenth of February, so he could sort out transport for them on the other end, and then John and George followed on the fifteenth, with their wives Pattie and Cynthia and Pattie's sister Jenny (John and Cynthia's son Julian had been left with his grandmother while they went -- normally Cynthia wouldn't abandon Julian for an extended period of time, but she saw the trip as a way to repair their strained marriage). Paul and Ringo followed four days later, with Ringo's wife Maureen and Paul's fiancee Jane Asher. The retreat in Rishikesh was to become something of a celebrity affair. Along with the Beatles came their friend the singer-songwriter Donovan, and Donovan's friend and songwriting partner, whose name I'm not going to say here because it's a slur for Romani people, but will be known to any Donovan fans. Donovan at this point was also going through changes. Like the Beatles, he was largely turning away from drug use and towards meditation, and had recently written his hit single "There is a Mountain" based around a saying from Zen Buddhism: [Excerpt: Donovan, "There is a Mountain"] That was from his double-album A Gift From a Flower to a Garden, which had come out in December 1967. But also like John and Paul he was in the middle of the breakdown of a long-term relationship, and while he would remain with his then-partner until 1970, and even have another child with her, he was secretly in love with another woman. In fact he was secretly in love with two other women. One of them, Brian Jones' ex-girlfriend Linda, had moved to LA, become the partner of the singer Gram Parsons, and had appeared in the documentary You Are What You Eat with the Band and Tiny Tim. She had fallen out of touch with Donovan, though she would later become his wife. Incidentally, she had a son to Brian Jones who had been abandoned by his rock-star father -- the son's name is Julian. The other woman with whom Donovan was in love was Jenny Boyd, the sister of George Harrison's wife Pattie. Jenny at the time was in a relationship with Alexis Mardas, a TV repairman and huckster who presented himself as an electronics genius to the Beatles, who nicknamed him Magic Alex, and so she was unavailable, but Donovan had written a song about her, released as a single just before they all went to Rishikesh: [Excerpt: Donovan, "Jennifer Juniper"] Donovan considered himself and George Harrison to be on similar spiritual paths and called Harrison his "spirit-brother", though Donovan was more interested in Buddhism, which Harrison considered a corruption of the more ancient Hinduism, and Harrison encouraged Donovan to read Autobiography of a Yogi. It's perhaps worth noting that Donovan's father had a different take on the subject though, saying "You're not going to study meditation in India, son, you're following that wee lassie Jenny" Donovan and his friend weren't the only other celebrities to come to Rishikesh. The actor Mia Farrow, who had just been through a painful divorce from Frank Sinatra, and had just made Rosemary's Baby, a horror film directed by Roman Polanski with exteriors shot at the Dakota building in New York, arrived with her sister Prudence. Also on the trip was Paul Horn, a jazz saxophonist who had played with many of the greats of jazz, not least of them Duke Ellington, whose Sweet Thursday Horn had played alto sax on: [Excerpt: Duke Ellington, "Zweet Zursday"] Horn was another musician who had been inspired to investigate Indian spirituality and music simultaneously, and the previous year he had recorded an album, "In India," of adaptations of ragas, with Ravi Shankar and Alauddin Khan: [Excerpt: Paul Horn, "Raga Vibhas"] Horn would go on to become one of the pioneers of what would later be termed "New Age" music, combining jazz with music from various non-Western traditions. Horn had also worked as a session musician, and one of the tracks he'd played on was "I Know There's an Answer" from the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "I Know There's an Answer"] Mike Love, who co-wrote that track and is one of the lead singers on it, was also in Rishikesh. While as we'll see not all of the celebrities on the trip would remain practitioners of Transcendental Meditation, Love would be profoundly affected by the trip, and remains a vocal proponent of TM to this day. Indeed, his whole band at the time were heavily into TM. While Love was in India, the other Beach Boys were working on the Friends album without him -- Love only appears on four tracks on that album -- and one of the tracks they recorded in his absence was titled "Transcendental Meditation": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Transcendental Meditation"] But the trip would affect Love's songwriting, as it would affect all of the musicians there. One of the few songs on the Friends album on which Love appears is "Anna Lee, the Healer", a song which is lyrically inspired by the trip in the most literal sense, as it's about a masseuse Love met in Rishikesh: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Anna Lee, the Healer"] The musicians in the group all influenced and inspired each other as is likely to happen in such circumstances. Sometimes, it would be a matter of trivial joking, as when the Beatles decided to perform an off-the-cuff song about Guru Dev, and did it in the Beach Boys style: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Spiritual Regeneration"] And that turned partway through into a celebration of Love for his birthday: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Spiritual Regeneration"] Decades later, Love would return the favour, writing a song about Harrison and their time together in Rishikesh. Like Donovan, Love seems to have considered Harrison his "spiritual brother", and he titled the song "Pisces Brothers": [Excerpt: Mike Love, "Pisces Brothers"] The musicians on the trip were also often making suggestions to each other about songs that would become famous for them. The musicians had all brought acoustic guitars, apart obviously from Ringo, who got a set of tabla drums when George ordered some Indian instruments to be delivered. George got a sitar, as at this point he hadn't quite given up on the instrument, and he gave Donovan a tamboura. Donovan started playing a melody on the tamboura, which is normally a drone instrument, inspired by the Scottish folk music he had grown up with, and that became his "Hurdy-Gurdy Man": [Excerpt: Donovan, "Hurdy Gurdy Man"] Harrison actually helped him with the song, writing a final verse inspired by the Maharishi's teachings, but in the studio Donovan's producer Mickie Most told him to cut the verse because the song was overlong, which apparently annoyed Harrison. Donovan includes that verse in his live performances of the song though -- usually while doing a fairly terrible impersonation of Harrison: [Excerpt: Donovan, "Hurdy Gurdy Man (live)"] And similarly, while McCartney was working on a song pastiching Chuck Berry and the Beach Boys, but singing about the USSR rather than the USA, Love suggested to him that for a middle-eight he might want to sing about the girls in the various Soviet regions: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Back in the USSR"] As all the guitarists on the retreat only had acoustic instruments, they were very keen to improve their acoustic playing, and they turned to Donovan, who unlike the rest of them was primarily an acoustic player, and one from a folk background. Donovan taught them the rudiments of Travis picking, the guitar style we talked about way back in the episodes on the Everly Brothers, as well as some of the tunings that had been introduced to British folk music by Davey Graham, giving them a basic grounding in the principles of English folk-baroque guitar, a style that had developed over the previous few years. Donovan has said in his autobiography that Lennon picked the technique up quickly (and that Harrison had already learned Travis picking from Chet Atkins records) but that McCartney didn't have the application to learn the style, though he picked up bits. That seems very unlike anything else I've read anywhere about Lennon and McCartney -- no-one has ever accused Lennon of having a surfeit of application -- and reading Donovan's book he seems to dislike McCartney and like Lennon and Harrison, so possibly that enters into it. But also, it may just be that Lennon was more receptive to Donovan's style at the time. According to McCartney, even before going to Rishikesh Lennon had been in a vaguely folk-music and country mode, and the small number of tapes he'd brought with him to Rishikesh included Buddy Holly, Dylan, and the progressive folk band The Incredible String Band, whose music would be a big influence on both Lennon and McCartney for the next year: [Excerpt: The Incredible String Band, "First Girl I Loved"] According to McCartney Lennon also brought "a tape the singer Jake Thackray had done for him... He was one of the people we bumped into at Abbey Road. John liked his stuff, which he'd heard on television. Lots of wordplay and very suggestive, so very much up John's alley. I was fascinated by his unusual guitar style. John did ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun' as a Jake Thackray thing at one point, as I recall.” Thackray was a British chansonnier, who sang sweetly poignant but also often filthy songs about Yorkshire life, and his humour in particular will have appealed to Lennon. There's a story of Lennon meeting Thackray in Abbey Road and singing the whole of Thackray's song "The Statues", about two drunk men fighting a male statue to defend the honour of a female statue, to him: [Excerpt: Jake Thackray, "The Statues"] Given this was the music that Lennon was listening to, it's unsurprising that he was more receptive to Donovan's lessons, and the new guitar style he learned allowed him to expand his songwriting, at precisely the same time he was largely clean of drugs for the first time in several years, and he started writing some of the best songs he would ever write, often using these new styles: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Julia"] That song is about Lennon's dead mother -- the first time he ever addressed her directly in a song, though it would be far from the last -- but it's also about someone else. That phrase "Ocean child" is a direct translation of the Japanese name "Yoko". We've talked about Yoko Ono a bit in recent episodes, and even briefly in a previous Beatles episode, but it's here that she really enters the story of the Beatles. Unfortunately, exactly *how* her relationship with John Lennon, which was to become one of the great legendary love stories in rock and roll history, actually started is the subject of some debate. Both of them were married when they first got together, and there have also been suggestions that Ono was more interested in McCartney than in Lennon at first -- suggestions which everyone involved has denied, and those denials have the ring of truth about them, but if that was the case it would also explain some of Lennon's more perplexing behaviour over the next year. By all accounts there was a certain amount of finessing of the story th
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