POPULARITY
Categories
Welcome…I'm going to give you a trivia question that I'll bet you will not know the answer to. Who was the voice of John Lennon in the animated film “Yellow Submarine?” He is a man whose talent has graced the big screen. And he has written some thrilling novels. He had unforgettable roles in classics like “A Clockwork Orange” and “The Italian Job.” But he was also a bestselling author, a storyteller with a brilliant sense of humor, and an artist with a fascinating career. John Clive was a fantastic guest that will make you laugh, think, and be entertained.
Yellow Submarine (1968) is the last film to feature in our Quirky Animation month, and this one certainly fits the brief. Believe it or not, Sam hadn't watched this until Calum decided we were watching this for this podcast. This means she doesn't get to keep her passport. She'll be moving to Alaska. Hopefully, there is good Wi-Fi there. Join us next week as we watch Carry On Cabby (1963)
I apologize in advance for this episode being 2 hours long and having some audio issues. But it was a lot of fun to record with Di again, and this time we discuss the rise of Rockism, band goals vs public expectations, and how the Beatles made serious music like Yellow Submarine. Show Notes:Main Album:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjb5kMzP2zomAIziK9LerOzNnRik_QOYa&si=YGlsRu1bPT2PocOTAlbum for next month:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiw9eqvcU7xYJRIJ4lzFIO_AE7hcYACUE&si=WyhGt9I2vbhUAZWHAlong Comes Mary:https://youtu.be/0RaLEVmuM4o?si=6vnhHKhvhWmFNbOtRuthane Friedman:https://youtu.be/MJaPZxctg3k?si=e-nyXTnbSgh6DKTtThe Turtles:https://youtu.be/mRCe5L1imxg?si=RHgq-qamIwu8SwtWThe Mamas and The Papas:https://youtu.be/N-aK6JnyFmk?si=uB6mutyDwaCcL3N7Tiny Tim:https://youtu.be/zcSlcNfThUA?si=3krJeTdacP0dMLicHarpers Bizarre:https://youtu.be/VuRBynDwo60?si=ncvj2LGEGINUWgP4Belle and Sebastian:https://youtu.be/f0EKLA_GCQY?si=ZQ1XPsazw9bGLRlaMoody Blues:https://youtu.be/v3jJpGw_K2Y?si=FoZVnSeJYpksZpcD13nth Floor Elevators:https://youtu.be/fHLInOudgew?si=TnDU8YiclaA2Nmi7Disco Tex and the Sex O'lettes:https://youtu.be/FdkhViXqnSk?si=5W3-zbFRuBRlOE4uThe Bee Gee, featuring one of the best bass lines of all time:https://youtu.be/fNFzfwLM72c?si=fjcx2e9U7BPujAbQEarly Disco acts:https://youtu.be/gSP_Jqn5eUM?si=CIqlo9byXqP4btivhttps://youtu.be/BXIBEW5MLuU?si=aLnxb8YOfBojvpjphttps://youtu.be/qchPLaiKocI?si=Rw8n2qZCdtN2eG24https://youtu.be/LHTLIuNRB2Y?si=FlfMwfi9HZuxbN7f Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Matchday 32 was all about the importance of late winners for the two title protagonists in LaLiga. Join Ben Sully (@SullyBen) and Paco Polit (@pacopolitENG) as they recap all the latest action from the Spanish top flight.A Borja Iglesias hat-trick proved to be in vain, as Barcelona staged a dramatic fightback to overturn a 3-1 deficit in Saturday's LaLiga clash with Celta Vigo. Raphinha netted a brace, including a 98th-minute penalty, to seal a 4-3 victory to boost Barça's title aspirations. Real Madrid moved back to within three points of the leaders after Fede Valverde produced one of his trademark stunners to snatch all three points against Athletic Club. We also discuss a surprise victory for relegation-threatened Las Palmas in their home encounter against Atlético Madrid, ending any lingering hopes of a title bid for Diego Simeone's side. Meanwhile, there was plenty of controversy in Villarreal's draw against Real Sociedad, as the Yellow Submarine saw three potential winners disallowed. In part two, we focus on Ante Budimir's match-winning brace, a hard-fought point for Valencia and Sevilla's first game since García Pimienta's dismissal. There was also another successful outing for in-form Espanyol and a forgettable encounter at Son Moix.Join us over at lllonline.substack.com, where you can access all of our written content and our weekly bonus podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Paprika (2006) is up next in our quirky animations month. You'll have probably heard all about this month on social media because Sam has been really on top of posting about it. No one can remember why this film was chosen for us to watch, but it definitely fits the theme. Oh Japan.Join us next week as we watch Yellow Submarine (1968)
Matchday 32 was all about the importance of late winners for the two title protagonists in LaLiga. Join Ben Sully (@SullyBen) and Paco Polit (@pacopolitENG) as they recap all the latest action from the Spanish top flight.A Borja Iglesias hat-trick proved to be in vain, as Barcelona staged a dramatic fightback to overturn a 3-1 deficit in Saturday's LaLiga clash with Celta Vigo. Raphinha netted a brace, including a 98th-minute penalty, to seal a 4-3 victory to boost Barça's title aspirations. Real Madrid moved back to within three points of the leaders after Fede Valverde produced one of his trademark stunners to snatch all three points against Athletic Club. We also discuss a surprise victory for relegation-threatened Las Palmas in their home encounter against Atlético Madrid, ending any lingering hopes of a title bid for Diego Simeone's side. Meanwhile, there was plenty of controversy in Villarreal's draw against Real Sociedad, as the Yellow Submarine saw three potential winners disallowed. In part two, we focus on Ante Budimir's match-winning brace, a hard-fought point for Valencia and Sevilla's first game since García Pimienta's dismissal. There was also another successful outing for in-form Espanyol and a forgettable encounter at Son Moix.Join us over at lllonline.substack.com, where you can access all of our written content and our weekly bonus podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Send us a textIntro song: Don't Pass Me By95. It Won't Be Long94. All I've Got To Do93. Boys92. Hey Bulldog91. What You're DoingOutro song: Yellow Submarine
Quand on y pense, le succès de Haruki Murakami a quelque chose d'étonnant. Prenez son dernier livre, La cité aux murs incertains, par exemple. Un sacré pavé de 550 pages, une narration contemplative qui laisse la part belle à la description, une intrigue sans queue ni tête où on doit laisser tomber toutes nos certitudes, des thèmes déjà travaillés à foison dans le reste de l'oeuvre de l'auteur… Comment l'écrivain japonais a-t-il réussi à charmer un lectorat international avec une oeuvre tout de même pas des plus accessibles ? C'est la question à laquelle Léa et Juliette de Torchon tentent de répondre dans cet épisode. Nous avons eu deux lectures différentes : quand Juliette connaît bien l'oeuvre de Murakami et y revient avec beaucoup de plaisir, Léa découvre totalement son univers. Mais on en ressort (pour une fois !) avec une critique globalement positive. Peut-être que notre goût pour les univers parallèles et le réalisme magique nous perdra… En tout cas, si un jour un fantôme décide de nous contacter, nous sommes prêtes ! Oeuvres citées :1Q84, Haruki Murakami, 2009, 10-18La trilogie de Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake, 2006 - 2024, Phébus et Christian Bourgois EditeurQuartier lointain, Jirô Taniguchi, 1998, Casterman écritures Yellow Submarine, 1968, George DunningTwin Peaks, 1990, David Lynch Mon voisin Totoro, 1999, Hayao Miyazaki Habillage sonore : Saâne Torchon, c'est le podcast qui traite de l'actualité littéraire en lisant des livres pour que vous n'ayez pas à le faire. On est une bande de copain pas du tout critiques littéraires de profession, et pour chaque épisode on se retrouve en mode "club de lecture de l'extrême" et nous lisons un livre qui a fait l'actualité pour vous dire si c'est une bonne surprise ou bien un vrai torchon. Et restez jusqu'à la fin pour nos recommandations littéraires et culture ! Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Send us a textTim chats with film director and writer Grant McPhee about the Beatles song Yellow Submarine. They talk about the song's fun sound, its strange mix of ideas, and the way it has grown into a song for all ages. Find out more about Grant McPhee and his workBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/grantmcphee.bsky.socialX (Twitter): https://x.com/grantmcpheefilmFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/grantmcpheeFollow My Favourite Beatles SongBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/myfavebeatles.bsky.socialX (Twitter): https://twitter.com/myfavebeatlesFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyFavouriteBeatlesSongInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/myfavouritebeatlessongOriginal music by Joe KaneLogo design by Mark Cunningham
PJ talks to John Mount, who converted a horsebox into a great tidy chipper and went on the road to Bulgaria in it just to keep life interesting. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Some careers are legendary, and few have left their mark on pop culture like Bill Morrison. From his early days dreaming of being a comic book artist to working with The Simpsons, Futurama, Disney, and even Mad Magazine, Bill's journey is packed with fascinating stories. Whether it's co-founding Bongo Comics, illustrating some of the most iconic characters in entertainment, or reacting to a $15 million version of his own artwork, this conversation is a deep dive into an extraordinary career filled with humor, creativity, and a touch of unexpected controversy. Episode Highlights: From Detroit to Hollywood – How Bill's childhood passion for art turned into a career working with Disney, The Simpsons, and beyond. Bongo Comics & The Simpsons – The story behind co-founding a publishing empire with Matt Groening. Roswell & Futurama – How Bill's original comic Roswell, Little Green Man was interrupted by another massive project—Futurama. The Simpsons Bootlegs & Collectibles – Why Matt Groening secretly loved bootleg Simpsons merchandise, and how those knock-offs became collector's items. The Urban Legend Behind The Little Mermaid Cover – Did Bill really hide a scandalous Easter egg in The Little Mermaid VHS cover? He sets the record straight. The $15M Simpsons Painting – Bill reacts to an artist selling a modified version of his Simpsons Yellow Album cover for a staggering sum. Beatles & Mad Magazine – How he got the opportunity to create a Yellow Submarine graphic novel and what it was like leading Mad Magazine. You're going to love my conversation with Bill Morrison Instagram Facebook IMDB Bongo Comics Follow Jeff Dwoskin (host): Jeff Dwoskin on Twitter The Jeff Dwoskin Show podcast on Twitter Podcast website Podcast on Instagram Join my mailing list Subscribe to my Youtube channel (watch Crossing the Streams!) Yes, the show used to be called Live from Detroit: The Jeff Dwoskin Show Ways to support the show: Buy me a coffee (support the show) TeePublic Store: Classic Conversations merch and more! Love the books I talk about on the show? Here is my Amazon store to shop.
Album de la semaine: "Chaos and creation in the backyard" (Paul McCartney 2005) P.McCartney-Fine Line-Chaos and creation in the backyard (05)J.Lennon-You can't catch me-Rock'n'roll (75)G.Harrison-Can't stop thinking about you-Extra texture (read all about it) (75)R.Starr-Love is a many splendoured thing-Sentimental journey (70)Beatles-There's a place-Please please me (63)P.McCartney-Jenny Wren-Chaos and creation in the backyard (05)Beatles-Little child-With the Beatles (63)Beatles-Hold me tight-With the Beatles (63)Beatles-Yellow Submarine-B.O. Yellow Submarine (69)Traveling Wilburys-New blue moon-Traveling Wilburys, vol.3 (90)J.Lennon-I'm stepping out-Milk and honey (84)P.McCartney-English tea-Chaos and creation in the backyard (05)Traveling Wilburys-Last night-Traveling Wilburys, vol.1 (88)Beatles-Honey don't-For sale (64)Beatles-I don't want to spoil the party-For sale (64)J.Lennon-Cleanup time-Double fantasy (80)P.McCartney-Friends to go-Chaos and creation in the backyard (05)Joe Cocker-You've Got to hide your love away-Night calls (91)P.McCartney-Anyway-Chaos and creation in the backyard (05)G.Harrison-Crackerbox Palace-Thirty three & 1/3 (76)Beatles-Tell me why-A hard day's night (64)P.McCartney-Too much rain-Chaos and creation in the backyard (05)P.McCartney-Riding to Vanity Fair-Chaos and creation in the backyard (05)R.Starr-Sure to fall-Stop and smell the roses (81)P.McCartney-This never happened before-Chaos and creation in the backyard (05)Beatles-Got to get you into my life-Revolver (66)Beatles-Here comes the sun (2019 remix)-Abbey Road (Super Deluxe edition) (19-69)P.McCartney-This one-Flowers in the dirt (89)P.McCartney-She's so beautiful-Chaos and creation in the backyard (05)R.Starr-R U ready-Liverpool 8 (08)
Avec Francis Berthelot, Guillaume Chamanadjian, luvan, Joëlle WintrebertAnimation : Xavier Dollo Dans un article intitulé “Evasion diégétique” (Yellow Submarine, 2009), l'écrivain de fantasy Jean-Philippe Jaworski rapproche le roman du jeu de rôle : d'abord en tant que processus créatif, dans l'étape intermédiaire entre le projet de l'écrivain et sa réalisation, qui se donne comme une “aire de jeu” imaginaire ; de plus, en ce que le jeu de rôle comme la littérature fictionnelle, par leur dimension immersive, se rapprochent du régime de la croyance sans toutefois s'imposer comme une norme ou une vérité, forts en cela d'un potentiel de démystification. Cette table ronde propose d'explorer les parallèles entre la logique propre au jeu (dans sa dimension psychique et abstraite, des pratiques telles que le jeu de plateau, de rôle, de figurines, etc.) et les mécaniques de narration littéraire : la création d'un monde, l'interaction avec des personnages qui n'agissent pas toujours comme on l'attend, la mise en place (ou non) de contraintes formelles qui peuvent s'apparenter à un jeu littéraire. D'ailleurs, est-ce qu'il arrive qu'un jeu soit aux prémices de l'écriture littéraire… Et inversement ? Au vu des invité·e·s qui en composent le panel, on ne doute pas que cette discussion empruntera elle aussi des chemins inattendus ! Table ronde dans le cadre de la 12e édition du festival Les Intergalactiques "Du Pain et des Jeux" le samedi 20 avril 2024.
BBC politics coverage is in trouble: browbeaten by the Mail and Telegraph, still reeling from Tory intimidation, and addicted to ever-shorter, cheaper, surface coverage in an age that wants depth and complexity. Special guest Steve Richards of the Rock and Roll Politics podcast, himself an ex-BBC politics correspondent, joins us to work out what's wrong with BBC politics and how to fix it. Plus: Was it so bad that Kemi Badenoch chose ‘Yellow Submarine' as her favourite Beatles song? And if Keir Starmer loves football so much, why can't he take inspiration from great managers like Clough, Ferguson and Klopp? • Send us your But Your Emails questions via Patreon • See Ahir Shah on tour with his Edinburgh Award-winning show Ends. • See Steve Richards at the first live Rock and Roll Politics show of 2025 in London on Mon 3 Feb. • Support us on Patreon for ad-free listening and much, much more. Written and presented by Andrew Harrison with Zöe Grünewald and Ahir Shah. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. Theme music by Cornershop. Produced by Chris Jones. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison OH GOD, WHAT NOW? is a Podmasters production. www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Celebra un año de terapia y reflexiona sobre cómo este proceso le ayudó a recuperar su amor propio tras una relación complicada. También estrena la nueva sección "Escuchamos, pero no juzgamos", donde los oyentes llaman para confesar sus "pecados" más íntimos sin temor al juicio y participan en el sorteo de premios. Además, Jordi comenta sobre el inicio de la temporada del fútbol mexicano, destacando la audaz estrategia del América al alinear a jugadores juveniles. También se aborda el impacto de los incendios forestales en Los Ángeles, incluyendo historias personales, como la de su amiga Marta Higareda. Entre confesiones sorprendentes, como ver a los muertos al beber o tener intimidad con la pareja mientras los padres están en casa, y un momento nostálgico recordando el lanzamiento de la banda sonora de Yellow Submarine de los Beatles, este episodio es un viaje entre lo íntimo, lo divertido y lo reflexivo. ¡No te lo pierdas! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Vi starter året med en efterlysning, lad mig være din GPS i en dårlig taxa, et terrorangreb i New Orleans med ISIS-flag, biljagt i New York, Musken gider ikke det GDPR, en rigtig trafiknyt-podcast, pantsæt dit organ og kør en tur på Aman, ikke royalist men loyalist af Kongehuset, kryds Øresund med det lakerede skrivebord fra nytårstalen Pingo, et Yellow Submarine-cover på bagtapetet, det bliver et nej tak til jernmarker, kør nu bare din egen nytårstale, hvem var kongen af Djursland? en folkehøring med et spidst og snævert udvalg for immateriel kulturarv, pubberne lukker i England og der jamres til fagbladet fra medierne over Facebook.Få 30 dages gratis prøveperiode (kan kun benyttes af nye Podimo-abonnenter): https://go.podimo.com/dk/hgdg (79 kroner herefter)Eller få 3 mdr. med 50% rabat (kan bruges af tidligere Podimo-abonnenter): https://go.podimo.com/dk/hgdgtilbud (79 kroner herefter) Værter: Esben Bjerre & Peter Falktoft Redigering: PodAmokKlip: PodAmokMusik: Her Går Det GodtInstagram: @hergaardetgodt @Peterfalktoft @Esbenbjerre
We'll trade you a four-pound sledge and a twitchy STi for the time to get more episodes published... This one's full of traffic thinking, with a knobby-tired look at why good alignment matters (and dying end-links don't). There's an in-depth analysis of how it's essential to be in an offensive state of mind when commanding your place in the flow (and why bubbling yourself off from those selfsame traffic physics makes you the problem we've been waiting for). There's also a few thoughts about how "Broken Windows Policing" could do wonders for incompetent motoring. Don't fret: how about some Amon Tobin, Die Krupps, Deep Purple and Blue Oyster Cult (no "White Room" or "Yellow Submarine", however), plus killer Bronco audio, Mom's Camry, cars in garages and TVs in dashboards.
We'll trade you a four-pound sledge and a twitchy STi for the time to get more episodes published... This one's full of traffic thinking, with a knobby-tired look at why good alignment matters (and dying end-links don't). There's an in-depth analysis of how it's essential to be in an offensive state of mind when commanding your place in the flow (and why bubbling yourself off from those selfsame traffic physics makes you the problem we've been waiting for). There's also a few thoughts about how "Broken Windows Policing" could do wonders for incompetent motoring. Don't fret: how about some Amon Tobin, Die Krupps, Deep Purple and Blue Oyster Cult (no "White Room" or "Yellow Submarine", however), plus killer Bronco audio, Mom's Camry, cars in garages and TVs in dashboards.
Get on the bus for the Magical Mystery Tour with your couriers Andy, Brooke and Kitt. We talk a lot about drugs! Because it's really the only way to understand this BBC Boxing Day Special. But also, John is so happy! (Because of drugs?) PS- We're not covering Yellow Submarine and Andy explains why in a way sure to get him cancelled by Beatles completionists. Next up we're doing a spooky season franchise!
COver art by a fan! TY u know who u r! WE ALL LIVE IN A YELLOW SUBMARINE, YELLOW SUBMARINE, YELLOW SUBMARINE! WE ALL LIVE IN A YELLOW SUBMARINE, YELLOW SUBMARINE, YELLOW SUBMARINE! WE ALL LIVE IN A YELLOW SUBMARINE, YELLOW SUBMARINE, YELLOW SUBMARINE! WE ALL LIVE IN A YELLOW SUBMARINE, YELLOW SUBMARINE, YELLOW SUBMARINE! hope yo anjoy dis epi! yas i split dat and dis wong on popos(Hope you enjoy this episode! Yes I spelled that and this wrong on porpoise! (Purpose) )HUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJOHUMMANOOBAJO! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit spiritwingspodcast.substack.com
Get ready for an electrifying bonus episode of Not A Bomb! This time, the guys dive into an epic conversation with the multi-talented Rocket Stahr, who's not just a writer, director, editor, animator, and composer but also the creative genius behind the mind-blowing 13-year passion project, Death of a Rockstar. Imagine the psychedelic wonder of Yellow Submarine colliding with the campy charm of Rocky Horror Picture Show, mixed with the rock opera spectacle of Tommy and the grandiosity of Jesus Christ Superstar. This vibrant, audacious film is a thrilling love letter to classic rock 'n' roll and 20th-century American pop culture, and it's an experience you absolutely need to see to believe!Head on over to Death of a Rockstore to not only purchase a phyiscal copy of the film but also the soundtrack and other merch!Big thanks to Rocket Shahr for joining us and discussing his film making process.We value your feedback and suggestions. If you have a cinematic flop you'd like us to discuss, please reach out to us at NotABombPod@gmail.com or through our contact page. Your reviews and feedback are what keep us going. If you enjoy our content, consider leaving a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify.Cast: Brad, Troy, Rocket Stahr
On this edition of the Daily Bespoke Podcast, we discover which Beatle we want to be… and the results will surprise you!!!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Tom Halley was one of the brilliant animators on Yellow Submarine. The film is considered one of the most inventive animated films of all time. In this interview with the late animator, he tells us how he came to be involved, how they all managed to create this classic film in just 11 months. And much to our surprise, Tom tells us he was also an animator on the Beatles cartoon series. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Villarreal signed Willy Kambwala from Manchester United. Willy Kambwala Ndengushi is a professional footballer who plays as a centre-back for La Liga club Villarreal.
節目:漫半拍 主持:高人、Hugo、酒鬼 Hugo's Music IG:https://www.instagram.com/diexdie2003 Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/artist/4gvYquA5IC05Z3mpQWJrul?si=lAMQcGWuRT2SLhwBtYhIng
Yellow Submarine, the motion picture, came out this week. A Beatles movie, animated without.... what? Plus Police Drummer Stewart Copeland arrived in the world, yes he did break one of Sting's ribs. What else happened between July 15th and 19th in Music History?? Have a listen here.
Some call Revolver The Beatles at their peak, we know it at the very least as The Beatles at the beginning of their prime, when their music began to transcend all of pop culture, leaving the mop top era in the dust. 1966 was a banner year for music and of course the Fab Four were right there in the thick of it, innovating, expanding and creating some of the greatest music ever made. To celebrate this remarkable time, we thought it wise to put Revolver through the test track by track, and giving those songs the Classic Albums Worst To First treatment. We couldn't think of anyone we'd rather have joining us for this exercise than our good friends in the 'Nard aka Oxnard, CA - the delightful Marina V and Nick Baker, with an assist from the great Shannon Hurley. Feelings were hurt, toes were stepped on but it's all in good fun and it's our little way of celebrating this phenomenal piece of music. Picks 14-8 are featured in Part 1.Nick and Marina are always working on new material and there's exciting stuff happening these days. Find out more athttps://marinav.com/Shannon Hurley is the consummate and constant creator. Her work new and old can be heard and seen at:https://shannonhurley.com/All hail the beloved Patreon people! These upstanding citizens put their money where their mouth is and keep the show afloat by contributing $5 a month. In return they're rewarded with a monthly bonus episode using our patented Emergency Pod format, our improv game where we pull a playlist out of our butts in real time. Shannon Hurley was kind enough to join for July's new episode and we couldn't be more excited to share it with you. FInd out more at:https://www.patreon.com/alltimetoptenChat with us! On Facebook! Get more involved in the ATTT cinematic universe by chatting with us on the Facebook Music Chat Group. Start a conversation about music!https://www.facebook.com/groups/940749894391295
Passenger 34: Former Disney Imagineer & creative exec at Universal, Sony, SpectraFX & Contour involved in such classic projects as EPCOT Center, Catastrophe Canyon/Disney-MGM Studios, Blizzard Beach, Poseidon's Fury/UIOA, & The Beatles' Yellow Submarine simulator, Richard Vaughn. Richard Vaughn is an artist, a designer, and an articulate creative leader who has been involved in some of the most exciting immersive entertainment projects around the world. He has lead teams and overseen projects for big owner/operators like Disney, Universal, and Sony, as well as two start-ups, SpectraFX and Contour Entertainment. Richard has brought his clever and intellectual artistic abilities to EPCOT Center, the Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park, Universal's Islands of Adventure, Sony's Metreon and its German sister in Potsdamer-Platz, Berlin. He developed a longstanding relationship with Apple Corps that lead to a number of Beatles-themed projects. And he lead his father's band, The Billy Vaughn Orchestra, on multiple tours of Japan. Set your clocks now to travel back in time with one of our industry's most talented designers!
Vincent faces his fears in the depths of Entha.Please support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/STFNetworkSTF Networkhttps://www.thestfnetwork.comhttps://discord.gg/7KPfMCzhttps://twitter.com/STFNetworkhttps://www.instagram.com/STFNetworkStarfinder - Fly Free or Die AP from Paizo Publishing.Title Music:"Live and Let Fly" by Adam Kelly
A movie review show that asks the question: Is It Jaws? Or, in simpler terms, is it a classic, is it good, is it just watchable...or is it totally unwatchable? Host, Paul Spataro, is joined by a variety of cohosts to look at movies from all
A movie review show that asks the question: Is It Jaws? Or, in simpler terms, is it a classic, is it good, is it just watchable...or is it totally unwatchable? Host, Paul Spataro, is joined by a variety of cohosts to look at movies from all
This week on the Talk Without Rhythm Podcast I'm continuing my month of AniMayTion with a Patreon Pick from the OG-TWoRPer himself, The Cancer Man. Together we pit pop psychedelia against death metal as we discuss 1968's Yellow Submarine and 2013's Metalocalypse: The Doomstar Requiem - A Klok Opera. [00:00] INTRO [01:52] Trick or Treat Radio Promo [03:09] RANDOM CONVERSATION [20:14] Yellow Submarine (1968) [58:20] Metalocalypse: The Doomstar Requiem - A Klok Opera (2013) [01:31:01] FEEDBACK [01:35:15] ENDING MUSIC: Some Time Ago/The Duel/I Believe by Dethklok Buy Yellow Submarine (1968) Buy Metalocalypse: The Doomstar Requiem - A Klok Opera (2013) Support TWoRP Contact Us talkwithoutrhythm@gmail.com
Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 1190, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Languages Of India 1: Some dialects are characteristic of one of these Indian social divisions, like Ahirani, spoken by cattle herders. a caste. 2: Spoken by some 50 million, Gujarati was the first language of this "Father of Modern India". Mahatma Gandhi. 3: Works like the Bhagavad Gita were written in this ancient language. Sanskrit. 4: Marathi is the home language of this city, the financial and commercial center of India. Mumbai. 5: The written language of about 100 million people, it's basically Hindi, but with Arabic script. Urdu. Round 2. Category: Jeopardy! Acceptable Responses 1: While we eternally accept Holland, this is the more accurate name for the country. the Netherlands. 2: We've never even heard anyone say the name Goyathlay, but we'd accept it for this Apache leader. Geronimo. 3: He went by a shorter name, but William Claude Dukenfield is an acceptable answer when referring to this actor. W.C. Fields. 4: You don't have to be high society to know that Society of Friends is an acceptable alternative name for this group. the Quakers. 5: When asking for the name of this mid-20th century British author, we will of course accept his real name, Eric Blair. George Orwell. Round 3. Category: Historic Figures 1: Liu Pang, a man of humble birth, founded this country's Han Dynasty circa 202 B.C.. China. 2: Forced from Mainland China in 1949, he established a nationalist government on Taiwan. Chiang Kai-shek. 3: This English seaman was known to the Spaniards as "The Dragon". (Sir Francis) Drake. 4: Only the core of this 13th century conqueror's army consisted of Mongols. Genghis Khan. 5: Wayzaro Menen, a great-granddaughter of Emperor Menelik II, was the wife of this Ethiopian ruler. Haile Selassie. Round 4. Category: Presidential Pooches 1: Thomas Jefferson owned 2 briards that were a gift from this Frenchman. LaFayette. 2: In the early 1860's, his dog Fido became the first presidential dog to be photographed. Abraham Lincoln. 3: Garfield named his dog this to warn Congress not to send him any bills that he didn't want to sign into law. Veto. 4: A pup of liberty, this "golden" breed owned by Gerald Ford, became a guide dog for the blind. a golden retriever. 5: This chocolate lab was First Dog from 1997 to 2001. Buddy. Round 5. Category: Animated Movie Plots 1: In this 2008 film Jedi Knights try to restore peace as the droid army rampages. The Clone Wars. 2: 4 musicians help Lord Admiral save Pepperland from the Blue Meanies and their anti-music missiles in this classic. Yellow Submarine. 3: Mrs. Brisby gets help from some super-smart rats who've escaped from a lab in this Don Bluth film. The Secret of NIMH. 4: 50-foot-tall, metal-eating, talking robot befriends boy in this 1999 film. Iron Giant. 5: In this 2007 film things don't get better for young Marjane after the Shah is supplanted by the Islamic Revolution. Persepolis. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/ AI Voices used
Yellow Submarine, The Beatles y el cine lisérgico La película Yellow Submarine es probablemente la mejor incursión de The Beatles en el cine. Varias cintas y algunas propuestas audiovisuales intentaron registrar el espíritu de una de las bandas más populares y trascendentes del rock universal. Pero es posible que la única que lo haya conseguido sea este ejercicio narrativo que une distintos estilos de animación y que juega con las letras de las canciones del grupo. Dirigida por un fantasmal George Dunning la película es también una invitación a disfrutar de narrativas poco racionales en el cine y se convirtió en una influencia poderosa para muchas películas animadas posteriores y por supuesto, una celebración de los mundos lisérgicos y psicodélicos de la cultura pop. Hoy, a más de 55 años de su estreno, invitamos a Eduardo Limón a hablar de Yellow Submarine. Eduardo es cuentista, entrevistador, cronista, locutor y amante empedernido no sólo de The Beatles sino del Submarino Amarillo que desde hace décadas le da la vuelta al mundo a través del océano lisérgico desatado en la época hippie. Bienvenido Eduardo Limón para platicar con nosotros de Yellow Submarine.
We are joined by guest Tony Bevilacqua, guitarist for The Distillers, for BEATLE MOVIE MANIA PART TWO as we discuss HELP! (1965), directed by Richard Lester, the MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR television special (1967) written and directed by the Beatles themselves, and the animated YELLOW SUBMARINE (1968).
PJ talks to John Mount who just opened in Fermoy about how he bounced back even as many eateries close Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
It's time for one of those huge episodes. Well, it's a three parter anyways. 1968 was a ground breaking year for horror movies, well, as far as the big hitter films are concerned anyways. The highs are really high & the lows are few & far between. But, what do I think was the very greatest horror movie that came out during 1968? Well, here we have the top 10. The worst 10. A slew of also rans. Some awesome mates. Some special guests. Several pints of beer and over 3 hours of running time split over 4 episodes. This is 1968, A Year In Horror.0.00 - Sci-Fi Corner3.43 - Barbarella (w/ Kelly McNeely)37.58 - Planet of the Apes (w/ Lee Beamish)57.56 - 2001: A Space Odyssey (w/ Clay Tatum & Whitmer Thomas)
Picking up where we left off (259: Sgt. Pepper Olympiad ), lecturer/professor Gary Wenstrup and I resume the Olympiad series with a pair of releases featuring film score music, the 1967 Magical Mystery Tour EP/album and 1969's Yellow Submarine release. Owing to the unique issues, with the latter representing only four new Beatle songs and the former being a six-song … 276 Filmtrack Olympiad: Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine Read More »
Anne and Ryan discuss Yorgos Lanthimos's gothic comedy POOR THINGS starring Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe. Based on a novel by Alasdair Gray, POOR THINGS tells the fantastical tale of Bella Baxter (Stone), a Victorian era woman resurrected from the dead through a brain transplant. Escaping her constrictive environs with a rapidly maturing mind, Bella experiences an intellectual and sexual awakening traveling throughout London, Lisbon, Alexandria, and Paris. Released at the end of 2023, POOR THINGS received praise for the performances of Stone, Dafoe, Ruffalo, as well as its innovative production design, costumes and musical score. But what will MAMA NEEDS A MOVIE have to say about Lanthimos' twisted variation on Frankenstein? Observe our grisly dissection of POOR THINGS, along with divisions into The Curse, The Man with Two Brains, Yellow Submarine, NYAD, Frankenhooker, Good Time, Bunnicula, and much, much more! POOR THINGS is currently in theaters.
Matchday 21 in La Liga was full of goals, controversy, comebacks and a sacking. Hosts Ruairidh Barlow (@RuriBarlow) and Paco Polit (@pacopolitENG) are on hand to lament the underdog story that never was for Almería.Real Madrid managed what should have been a heroic comeback, against Almería of all sides, but three highly controversial VAR reviews even had some Madridistas feel raising their eyebrow. Paco explains how the circumstances were damaging to the La Liga product, but at the end of it all, Los Blancos are closer to the title.Girona ensured they would not sleep at the top of the table though, as Artem Dovbyk trampled Sevilla and put himself top of the Pichichi standings in the process. Barcelona are hanging on by their fingernails, as we discuss a potential sea change in the Catalan capital.In the second half of the show, we bid farewell to Sergio González in a sacking that even he saw coming. The picture still seems somewhat bleak for the Yellow Submarine though. Valencia halted Athletic Club's march in its tracks, and Osasuna's Jesús Areso impersonates Roberto Carlos. Paco looks ahead to the Copa del Rey quarter-finals too.We'll be back on Thursday at lllonline.substack.com for subscribers - join us there for exclusive content and our review of those quarter-finals! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We review the celebrity book "Grandude's Green Submarine" by Paul McCartney.Support the show
Mike and Steve discuss the UNCANNY VALLEY, Robert Zemeckis cancelled Yellow Submarine remake, and read a WHOLE BUNCH of YOUR History Roads on today's episode! Take a seat!Advertise on Dynamic Banter via gumball.fmJOIN the Patreon: patreon.com/dynamicbanterGET the MERCH: dynamicbanter.clothingSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Conocemos la figura de Alantansí y la historia de la imprenta de Híjar con algunos de los artífices del documental “Libros: el legado de Alantansí” que en pocos días se preestrena en la Biblioteca Nacional. Conocemos los detalles menos conocidos del disco “Yellow Submarine” en el 55 aniversario de su lanzamiento.
Olga Mecking is a writer, journalist, and translator based in the Netherlands, and she's the reporter who made Niksen (“doing nothing”) go viral. Her New York Times article on the subject was shared over 100,000 times. In this episode, Annmarie and Olga talk about the health and creativity benefits of doing nothing and why it is that pauses, rests, and breaks too often feel out of reach for our overworked selves. Episode Sponsors: The American Book Center – Booksellers with a personal touch. This family-owned bookstore, opened in 1972, has been quirky, friendly and knowledgeable from the start, and just counting our present staff, we represent more than 700 years of combined bookselling experience. Our Amsterdam location is often listed as one of the Ten Most beautiful Bookshops in the World, and our stores are highly rated for assortment and personal service. Drop by to touch and smell the books, or shop online at abc.nl. International Writers' Collective – The Collective offers fiction and poetry workshops online and in the Netherlands and a vibrant international community to support you in your writing goals. Many students view their program as a cheaper and more flexible alternative to an MFA. Learn more and find a class at internationalwriterscollective.com. Titles Discussed in This Episode: Niksen: The Dutch Art of Doing Nothing, by Olga Mecking One Chance in a Thousand: A Holocaust Memoir, by Jan Balicki and Olga Mecking Here's the trailer for FLASHDANCE. Here's the video for YELLOW SUBMARINE by the Beatles. Follow Olga Mecking: Instagram: @olgamecking Twitter: @OlgaMecking Facebook: @OlgaMeckingWriter 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
Discussion topics on this edition of Colchonero Chat include: Villarreal's managerial change — is Marcelino coming back? The Yellow Submarine's struggles this season — three wins from 12 in LaLiga Diego Simeone's contract renewal Antoine Griezmann's laughable 21st-place finish in Ballon d'Or voting Atlético Madrid's home winning streak Predictions for Sunday night's game at the Cívitas Metropolitano Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
UFC Picks, Customers of the week, Current Events, Live in die in LA, Yellow Submarine, Hammer and Nails. GNR, Nev Del Torro.
Is the original “Yellow Submarine” LP perfect with its' George Martin score, or is it simply all too much? Well, it's nice to have the time to take this opportunity…to continue deep dishing on the Beatles' most underrated core-catalog album this side of Pickwick's “The Beatles - 1st Live Recordings (Volume Two)”. This week, Tony & T.J. discuss George Martin's phenomenal orchestral selections, and also the exciting 1999 remix of the “songtrack” with extra songs used in the film; the first Beatles remix since the “Help” and “Rubber Soul” CD's. Along the journey through the sea of wholes, the boys ask:
The Titanic submersible vessel disaster. Chicken Leg Pride Month. Targeted ads on Instagram. Houston rap song of the week. More mascot madness. Patreon preview. Support our sponsors: CalderaLab.com/RBP for 20% OFF Manscaped.com (code "RBP" for 20% OFF + FREE shipping) NextEvo.com/RBP for 20% OFF your first order of $40 or more Subscribe on YouTube: YouTube.com/@TheRossBolenPodcast Exclusive ad-free episodes: Patreon.com/RossBolenPodcast Presented by Bolen Media: BolenMedia.com
What was it like to be in the greatest band in the world and still be the butt of the joke? Do you prefer "Octopus's Garden" or "Act Naturally"? "With A Little Help From My Friends" or "Yellow Submarine"? Double Elvis 'UK correspondent' Ben Burrell (Absolute Radio, Blood on the Tracks podcast) joins Jake to consider the surreal life and career of one Richard Starkey.Catch every After Party live at Twitch.tv/DisgracelandTalks and join the conversation on social @disgracelandpod on TikTok and InstagramSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.