Greetings!
Not a super busy week in Beatles news (or obituaries), but I do hope everyone interested has had a chance to listen to SATB 312 Contentious Credits 2. Beyond the chatter in the usual places, I did see that it’s been a conversation starter on Reddit (with the usual online contradiction by people who, in their zeal to flex, apparently didn’t listen that carefully…).
Yes, it can be said: I will be attending the Everything Fab Four Fest in Asbury Park, NJ, coming up on November 6 through November 8. Everything to know about EFFF can be gleaned here.
NEWS
In a year that started out astonishingly strong with all the Ringo hoopla surrounding Look Up and his Nashville activities, it looks that the press isn’t letting up. There was this recent newsstand special published by Uncut, but now a so-far highly-regarded Ringo bio is out, authored by Tom Doyle. As you may recall, Doyle, who’s written for Mojo and Q, published Man on the Run: Paul McCartney in the 1970s in 2014 and a similar tome on Elton John, plus a more recent one on Kate Bush. I’m looking forward to reading the new one and maybe even getting the author himself on the show. (I’m especially looking forward to seeing how his reporting of the “...much to my dismay…” incident now compares to how he described it in 2014.)
This was a pretty interesting reveal: Geoff Emerick’s notes on the Anthology project (the CDs, not the doc) that were sold at auction and made public. Roger Stormo’s blog revealed the details of the contents, showing the process that went into getting what we got. Not surprisingly, Star Club recordings were part of the mix initially (until nixed - George seemed to have a particular animus against them), but maybe 2025 says that’s okay, because now we can make them better than they would’ve been 30 years ago. We just need the will to put them out - if Peter Jackson has any kind of pull at all…
RELEASES
I’d mentioned a colored vinyl edition of Beaucoups of Blues in a previous newsletter. Turns out the first four Ringo solo releases are getting the CV treatment. Here’s a nice write-up by past and future SATB guest, Eoghan Lyng.
The big news this past week release-wise is the latest Anthology 4 track to go public, take 3 of Help’s “I’ve Just Seen A Face.” This is exactly the kind of thing we were on about in the most recent episode of SATB: an outtake of a song that sheds light with the peripheral chatter on it, in this case showing that all three Beatles guitarists were around for the tracking, and further leading to more questions regarding who is doing what exactly (which I have forwarded to our two Australian friends).
Just as an aside, John’s comment - “Lonnie’s gonna regret not singing on this one” - gives us a nice window on their thoughts on their own work in real time. Presumably he’s speaking of the guy who set things in motion for them, Lonnie Donegan, and if there was a skiffle undercurrent to this song that escaped listeners to this point (hidden behind the obvious country/bluegrass influence), it’s been underscored now. The take was captured on June 14, 1965: the same day that “I’m Down” was nailed and “Yesterday” was likewise tracked. More of this please!
Another week, another new Julian Lennon video.
SATB
Back in July I posted my conversation with Alan G. Parker, director of Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade. It will be coming to the states in December, but if you are in the NYC area, you can meet Alan and catch a screening at AMC Lincoln Square 13. On December 8 (😔).
I’d mentioned that my talk with Ron Griffiths of The Iveys was coming up next. There will be a bonus side conversation, for anyone interested, with Mark Strothmann, who is part of the team overseeing the great outpouring of Badfinger/Iveys releases that continue to come. There’s a new one that we didn’t even get to talk about, Anthology 5 by The Iveys, coming in November. It’s the latest in the series of demos being issued; the first two volumes featured live recordings of the band from 1966 and 1968 respectively. And speaking of live recordings, there’s a new Badfinger one from March 31, 1974 that’s just been issued. It features liner notes by Jacob Marcus, who I spoke with a few months back.
And speaking of Badfinger…
HISTORY
Released in the US October 27, 1981: "Wrack My Brain" and Stop and Smell the Roses.
Sessions for Ringo's first album in two years began in 1980, following a time-out where he took stock of his recording career, having been dropped by his record labels (Polydor in the UK and first Atlantic, then Portrait in the US) after a string of underperforming releases that seemed to demonstrate that his hit-making days were behind him. Music mogul Neil Bogart offered him a lifeline with his new label start-up, Boardwalk Records, rescuing work started before Portrait backed out. (Bogart ran Cameo-Parkway in the 1960s before its sale to Allan Klein, then jumped ship to Buddah. In 1973, he started up Casablanca, achieving massive successes with KISS and Donna Summer before being bought up by Polygram, who thereafter pushed Bogart out.)
Though Ringo was still in the throes of serious alcoholism (without having reached bottom yet), he was feeling energized, just off the heels of shooting Caveman and with his new romance with actress Barbara Bach in full swing. It's possible that he felt his approach for the last two albums, Ringo the 4th and Bad Boy just didn't work: using a single producer and a core band in place of the big name guest formula perfected by Richard Perry for his earlier pair of albums on Apple. Clearly, the results were not paying off, so for this release, he returned to the comfort zone of relying on good friends for material and support, but with the added attraction of allowing his friends to produce the tracks they contributed. Predictably, the results varied, leading to an overall uneven quality for the album.
Paul came on board immediately, followed quickly by George; John, after meeting up with Ringo in late 1980, similarly committed to working on the project and submitted a pair of songs on cassette to that end. The release was originally conceived as Can't Fight Lightning - Ringo's expression for taking up with Barbara. John's "Life Begins at 40," a country-flavored composition, was to be a key track on the album, as well as "Nobody Told Me" - both tracks were set aside after the tragedy of December 1980, as would be the provisional title. But material contributed by Ringo's ex-bandmates was judged commercial enough to be issued as single material, over songs written and produced by friends like Ron Wood, Stephen Stills and Harry Nilsson. Paul's "Private Property" would be issued as the collection's second single release, following this catchy but bitter offering from George.
Autumn 1980 saw the first draft of George's Somewhere in England handed back to him for revision by execs at Warner Brothers who felt there was no obvious radio hit on it. He responded with four new songs, one of which - "Blood From A Clone" - called out his resentment at corporate interference with his art. "Wrack My Brain" was cut from the same cloth, and expressed a sentiment about creative frustration Ringo could probably identify with. (George also penned "Cockamamie Business" around this time, again venting his disdain toward the industry.)
Like "All Those Years Ago" - a song originally conceived for this project before Ringo took a pass and its subsequent lyrical re-write post December 8 - the upbeat music masked a far darker theme. But with a suitably comic music video and goodwill toward the ex-Beatle who'd been on a media blitz that year, with his wedding, Caveman and numerous interviews, the single did well enough to give Ringo his last US Top 40 hit, peaking at 38.
Had Bogart not taken ill (he succumbed to cancer and died at 39 in 1982), it's possible that the label might have sustained interest in promoting the project and Ringo's follow-up release; as it was, a short film collated from several promo films produced for SASTR was screened at Cannes as The Cooler (not to be confused with this). But they did not and by the following year, Ringo was again without a record deal.
There's every reason to think that a demo by George exists of "Wrack My Brain" but it has not yet surfaced.
Is this any way to sell an album in 1981?
The last word: #50 went out to some subscribers with the wrong link attached to Diane Keaton, which completely defeated the purpose. Here’s the correct one.
All best,
RR
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