Hello all;
We’re saying goodbye to September 2025 this week and, for the northern hemisphere dwellers, hello to autumn - traditionally my least favorite season (though I think winter is eclipsing it now). Also traditionally, October - November - December have been the heaviest months for Beatles and Beatle-themed releases, so there’s that for the acquisitive among us. Not a heavy week in Beatle-related news or passings, happy to note. So let’s hope this is a trend.
NEWS
As mentioned in #46, Paul kicked off the 2025 Got Back tour with a warm-up show in Santa Barbara, California on Friday, September 26. The 4,500-seater, for anyone keeping score, was the site (in 1979) of Joni Mitchell’s show that was recorded and filmed for the Shadows and Light release.
In just under two hours, Paul and band ran through 26 songs, including encores. Of note was his opener, “Help!,” continuing his trend of performing Beatle-era songs associated with his late co-writer. Ringo, meanwhile, was engaged in his residency in Las Vegas at The Venetian with his All Starrs.
Theoretically - and I am certain that this is more than a theory, because someone surely did it - one could’ve seen one ex-Beatle live on Friday night and another on Saturday night, with only a 75 minute flight in between. It’s 2025, folks - might 1966 have been the last year one could’ve seen Paul and Ringo onstage on consecutive nights? I’m sure someone will tell us if not (I don’t particularly feel like looking it up).
The Lennon boys were (separately) in the news. First, Julian released a video from his upcoming EP, apparently titled “because…” (not to be confused with his same-more-or-less-same-titled DC5 cover from years ago). The four other titles are
“I Hope”
“Keep On Searching”
“I Won’t Give Up”
All the material (as he notes here) is from the archive: leftovers that did not fit on the albums they were recorded for. October 24 is the designated release day.
Sean has given a couple of interviews to promote the much more imminent release of the Power To The People box set of live recordings, archival bells and whistles, and a lot of SomeTime In New York City: one for the BBC’s Chris Hawkins (available here for the next three weeks) and on the Rockonteurs podcast, co-hosted by that guy from Spandau Ballet, Gary Kemp. Can you guess whether or not in these talks a certain omission was discussed and explained? I’ll spare you the trouble.
One other bit of Lennon news: the much-discussed Smothers Brothers show at The Troubadour in March 1974 again rears its head. The pair of glasses John began that evening wearing ended up separated from his face during the ensuing melee; they were recovered the night of by Tommy Smothers’ wife, Rochelle Robley. They have been auctioned several times through the years, and are currently up for sale again.
Meanwhile, Ethan Hawk.
SATB
As you are reading this, 311 is newly posted in the usual places. Sara Schmidt is my guest, discussing her fabulous pictures-and-stories blog, as well as her newest book, Dear Beatle People: The Story of The Beatles North American Fan Club. This unique history is loaded with tons of pictures of memorabilia as well as heretofore untold stories by the fans who were there, capturing a time certain never to be repeated. Co-pilot is Allison Bumsted, who specializes in likewise capturing stories and history of teens and their culture of the day. It was a fun and illuminating discussion and I’m certain there will be more.
313 and 314 are expected to tape this week: one featuring a Beatle witness and recording artist in his own right, the other an insightful heir to another artist associated with a lot of what we are familiar with as fans of 1960s rock generally, and of George Harrison in particular.
A new episode of the Classic Rock Album Olympics series also dropped this week. A couple of other podcasts I guested on recently should be releasing those episodes sometime soon, but I’ll let you know when I do.
HISTORY
Since we’re light on releases, news and obits this week, we’ll discuss a couple of Beatle historic items.
First, September 25 marks the 60th anniversary of The Beatles cartoon series debuting in the US.
1000 words, right?
Al Brodax was the head of King Features’ film and TV development department. His brief was to produce content, implicitly (if not explicitly) on the cheap to fulfill programmer’s demands for kid entertainment. Properties he oversaw included Popeye, Krazy Kat and Casper the Friendly Ghost. As one of 73 million other Americans, he watched The Beatles’ Ed Sullivan Show debut in February 1964; unlike others, he didn’t grow his hair or start a band the next day. Instead, he saw potential in animating them and presenting them to the audience he served, who wouldn’t quibble over the lack of sophistication but would appreciate the generous serving of music. It was the first time that an animated TV series for children was built around living personas, but was not the last: The Jackson 5 (stylized as “5ive”) and The Osmonds also would enjoy the cartoon treatment. But given its tremendous success (plus spawning a feature film), it was certainly the most impactful.
Brodax sought and got a meeting with Brian Epstein to put the deal together. While offering lukewarm support, Epstein did agree that the door would be open to a feature length film if the series proved to be a success (we all know how that turned out). The Beatles themselves were initially dismayed by the low-rent production values and wanted nothing to do with it, or the subsequent feature film (that is, until they saw what Heinz Edelman and company had been up to; wowed by their groundbreaking work, they agreed to make a brief appearance at the end of Yellow Submarine).
Veteran voice actor Paul Frees was cast to supply the voices of John and George. He can actually be heard dubbing for Tony Curtis’ female voice (“Daphne”) in 1959’s Some Like It Hot and as the oracle “talking rings” in 1960’s The Time Machine, but in the cartoon world, he’s best known for voicing Boris Badenov in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show (as well as Inspector Fenwick in Dudley Do-Right). Lance Percival - a Brit - did the honors for Paul and Ringo (such as they were). He was an actor, comedian and recording artist; he in fact had worked with George Martin and issued this single on Parlophone near-simultaneously with the series’ debut.
The Beatles (this was in fact the name of the series) ran for three seasons but carried on in reruns for years afterward in the US, all the while not screened in the UK until the 1980s. Thirty-nine episodes were produced in all, and the “plots,” such as they were, tended to be derived from ideas gleaned from the songs themselves. The producers of the show took full advantage of the group’s generous recording habits, and didn’t discriminate between hits and album tracks for fodder. Season one utilized “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Can’t Buy Me Love” as music for the credit sequences, while season two shifted to “Help!” Given that there wasn’t a third UA film in 1966, there was no suitable title song; nonetheless, King Features pulled “And Your Bird Can Sing” from the “Yesterday”...and Today album for season three. One might expect that given the group’s substantial physical and artistic makeover by 1967 that the cartoon could no longer carry on with the brainless silliness that sustained it to that point, but one would be wrong: the show gamely animated both sides of their 1967 single, “Strawberry Fields Forever”/”Penny Lane,” as well as much of Revolver (including “Love You To” and “She Said She Said”) and even presented “Tomorrow Never Knows” (substituting a Maya-like culture for the Tibetan Book of the Dead and a fall down a well for an acid trip).
The show left the ABC programming schedule in 1969, just as the real-life inspiration was getting ready to take their leave as a collective. While indefensible as art, other than the “so bad it’s good” kind, as George once summed it up, it remains a fond memory to those who caught it at the time (and largely inexplicable to anyone who came along later).
September 28: On this day in 1974, John guested on WNEW radio with Dennis Elsas.
Here’s the nearly 2 hours of it beginning with the end of Chicago’s “Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon" suite (from Chicago II), as heard by listeners on that rainy Saturday afternoon as the studio readied John for going live.
He’d been invited to come sit in during Dennis’s show anytime, with little expectation that he actually would. What Dennis may not have known was that John was in fact using radio as a major promotional tool for Walls and Bridges - an ideal forum for the loquacious ex-Beatle in lieu of an actual tour. Two days before this, he’d staged a “take over” of Los Angeles’ KHJ-AM; before he was through, he’d do similar appearances in a number of US cities, including Milwaukee, Detroit, and Cleveland, among others (plus Toronto) but these were all phoners.
As New York was his town, showing up in person completely enhanced the experience. In embracing the DJ role, he brought along a handful of favorite oldies records, including Derek Martin’s “Daddy Rolling Stone” and Bobby Parker’s “Watch Your Step.”
There is no shortage of John Lennon interviews caught on tape, during the Beatles and after, but THIS particular conversation, coming during the Lost Weekend™, stands head and shoulders above most. It captured the John that long-time fans missed: relaxed, funny, and bereft of a number of characteristics heard in pretty much every other conversation had before and after his separation: the chronic irritability, defensiveness, bluster and promotion of pretentious concepts that the earlier John would’ve mocked or deflated the pomposity of. He was fully in his element, talking up music old and new, and most captivatingly of all, at complete peace with discussing the Beatles: their collective history as well as the current and future status.
If you weren’t lucky (and local) enough to hear it live in real time, WNEW - recognizing that they’d captured something amazing - rebroadcast excerpts from time to time. And by decades’ end, enterprising bootleggers beautifully presented excerpts from the conversation by pressing it into the hot (at the time) format of the picture disc (or “picture record,” as the vinyl describes itself).
For anyone wanting the real story of where John was at the time of this conversation - still separated from Yoko but living with May Pang; seeing his ex-bandmates regularly as circumstance allowed, and about to achieve something he never had before - a number one single AND album - this is required listening, before hindsight descriptions of the “semi-sick” craftsman became the new narrative. The John of this period - rather than the psychological cripple he would have fans in 1980 believe he was - was out and engaged with the world, his fellow artists, and mastering his craft as an artist and as a producer - this is huge. He was at last in the place where he began to entertain the notion out loud about working with Paul (at least) again. It was the very moment that the public had been dreaming about since 1969, but just as it began to manifest, the door would be slammed shut again just as quickly.
Here’s the interview as posted on Lennon’s official site, transcribed and with remembrances from Dennis.
All best,
RR
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