Hello all;
As one could detect from the # above, we are now officially one year into this thought exercise. I’ve only lost a handful of you along the way, but I would remind anyone reading this that your input (for the newsletter or the show) is important, so don’t hold back. It’s for you the listener/reader that these things are crafted, so don’t be shy about offering what you want. I’m not so locked into a format to believe there’s only one way to do things - I prefer to be flexible in the belief that there’s always a better way to do things and remain open to suggestion. That will be your part to provide. (It wasn’t the Beatles who sang “you can’t always get what you want” - around here, you just might.)
For once I’m glad it’s a slow news week (and no one I need to talk about died), because with the travel to NJ for Kenfest and the unexpected (well, maybe they were…) delays involved in the return trip, I have less time than usual to pull this together. But hopefully a shorter newsletter once in a while isn’t a bad thing.
I can go on and on all the livelong day about the three days I was there, but know this: while the downside of such events is that there is, at any given moment, far more going on than any one person can take in, I savored and thoroughly enjoyed every moment among my people. I am most grateful to Ken and Nicole for taking on such a huge undertaking, and creating a vibe of joy (through those gathered who love The Beatles) that sustained itself inside and outside the walls of the event. I am also grateful for the folks I met that I may have known of before but never met; friends I’ve known for years that I don’t get to see much; people I never met before that I can now consider to be friends, and the people that support the work as listeners and readers who I spoke with. Approaching me to say Hi or to sign books was truly gratifying and gives oxygen to all I do.
I’m not one of those people that, in the old days, would force their vacation photos down the throats of hapless acquaintances, but here’s a sampling that gives you the flavor of things.
NEWS
Paul has been getting a round of press for Man on the Run book, covering his Wings years, this time (unlike Wingspan) with the benefit of perspectives outside the Maccas. This article is fairly typical. For anyone who has gone to see him on the current tour, or didn’t and wants to but can’t/didn’t or did and wants to relive it, this.
On Saturday November 8, pianist extraordinaire Nicky Hopkins was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - you can read the details here (and see a clip from the Session Man documentary now streaming). To the extent that the institution has any meaning or relevance to you, I’m confident that we can all agree that if such a place must exist, he belongs there. To recap some Beatle-related recordings he blessed with his talent, there’s
“Revolution”
“Jealous Guy”
“Oh My Love”
“Crippled Inside”
“Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth”
“You’re Sixteen”
And many more.
Others that come to mind: tons by The Stones (from “She’s A Rainbow” to “Angie” and beyond), The Who (from “Anyway Anyhow Anywhere” to “The Song Is Over” and beyond), The Kinks (“Session Man” was in his honor, plus tons more) and Badfinger (“Name of the Game”). Here are more of his credits.
Back in #29 I’d mentioned the passing of Indiana Colts owner Jim Irsay, who was a world class collector of stuff: all of it historical, some of it musical, and a lot of it, Beatles. The family has apparently taken down his website that described the holdings (which included super rare historic American documents as well as things like the beige suit worn by detective Jim Leavelle, handcuffed to Lee Oswald as he was led to slaughter). His Beatle holdings were well-chronicled, including instrumental representation for each of them (including Ringo’s Ed Sullivan Show kit).
No surprise: the heirs have no intention of keeping the collection together. Instead, they will cash out, leaving it to be scattered to the winds via auction next year. You can read about it all here. (I had to confirm that detail about “John Lennon’s Gretsch 6120 Country Gentleman” - the CG is associated with George but in fact, John did have one too.)
SATB
As noted last week, the Anthology 4 show with Doug Sulpy and Chip Madinger is next on the agenda. There are other conversations that will be coming as bonus material in the feed and on YouTube, as quickly as I can process them.
The long-discussed show on The Beatles Illustrated Record will commence its multi-part taping soon. I had hoped/expected to get it produced by years’ end, but this is looking more like wishful thinking at this point. I would have to get every break and that doesn’t tend to happen, but stay tuned anyway.
Also as noted last week, my conversation with artist Stephen DeStefano has gone live. Here’s the series description:
DYING IS EASY, COMICS ARE HARD: CONVERSATIONS ON GRAPHIC STORYTELLING is a series of recorded conversations about comics, cartoons, and creativity.
Stephen DeStefano (that’s me) is a 40+ year veteran cartoonist, has won two Emmys and drawn dozens of comic books—and has some truly amazing friends. Over the years he and his amazing friends have had amazing conversations, and it dawned on Stephen (me) that someone ought to start recording these conversations. Hopefully full of insight, possibly full of advice, questionably full of humor but definitely full of beans, I (Stephen) will be speaking with some of the best known comics artists, animators, illustrators and creatively gifted people out there. These conversations are raw, unedited, totally punk rock (man!), and rambling, but anything but dull.
Stephen is a great guy and I was truly honored to be asked to join such esteemed company (and to make the cut of “amazing friend.”) It was a blast and if you are so inclined, check it out as a departure from SATB.
HISTORY
November 10: OTD in 1967, The Beatles filmed promos for "Hello Goodbye."
A mashup here.
The shoot took place at the Saville Theatre in London. First leased by Brian Epstein in 1965, the venue was used to stage plays and rock concerts for the duration of his life; ten weeks after his death and with NEMS still holding the lease, The Beatles trod those boards for the first and only time, albeit without an audience - strictly for the cameras. Neck deep in filmmaking with Magical Mystery Tour, they took on the chores of producing a promo film themselves for the first time, with Paul officially titled as director. (Tony Bramwell was also on hand.) Said Paul: "I didn’t really direct the film – all we needed was a couple of cameras, some good cameramen, a bit of sound and some dancing girls. I thought, ‘We’ll just hire a theatre and show up there one afternoon.’ And that was what we did: we took our Sgt. Pepper suits along and filmed at the Saville Theatre in the West End.”
An advance on what he’d scripted for the MMT - the pie chart with wedges designating specific scenes - Paul did produce a shooting script of sorts, detailing the shots he envisioned. There were two “performances” shot: one with the Sgt. Pepper cover costumes, one with what can be described as their 1967 street clothes. There were also cutaways filmed with the foursome donning the 1963 collarless suits for the last time as a group.
Additional visual elements included alternating backdrops, a group of Hawaiian hula girls, and - for Ringo - alternating drum kits: his 1964 Ludwig oyster black pearl super classic kit, plus an undersized Japanese set (a Star Micro Bop) and an oversized 1967 Ludwig silver sparkle kit. This latter one, in a perfect state of preservation, was auctioned off in 2015 for $115,200.
Elsewhere, Paul is seen with his Rickenbacker 4001S; George sticks to his still-unstripped 1965 Epiphone Casino (played onstage during their final tour) and John, his Martin D-28 (although on-set photographs show him with Vox prototype he owned before gifting it to Magic Alex; it was eventually auctioned off in recent years).
Three cuts were produced for worldwide distribution: one each of the differing attire, and a third intercutting unused footage from the first two. As the world learned in 2023 through Peter Jackson’s “Now and Then” promo, there was plenty of leftover footage.
For all the labor involved, there was no screening in the UK, due to their running afoul of the musicians union ban on miming. In the US, a clip ran on The Ed Sullivan Show on November 26.
Bonus - whatever this is: https://vimeo.com/240869734
November 9: OTD in 1970, two albums were released.
It is a striking thing when two entirely different but classic albums arrive in the world on the very same day; no less so when these two works feature entirely separate acts with one thing in common: musicians that all spent a good deal of time that same year working alongside each other in support of a third artist: George Harrison.
Badfinger’s roots, as you know, extended to The Iveys - a very different sounding pop act that had morphed into Badfinger at the beginning of the year, with Joey Molland on board. Their album released this day, No Dice, is in effect their debut, as that year’s earlier Magic Christian Music collection (featuring “Come and Get It”) was essentially an Iveys sampler. As for Derek and The Dominos, the ensemble fronted by ex-Cream guitarist Eric Clapton had first assembled under the Delaney and Bonnie and Friends banner - an iteration that included George himself on live dates near the end of the previous year. But the “...and friends” were recruited for George’s debut project, alongside the Beatle proteges, and the staggering results of their labors would be unveiled over the course of three discs by month’s end. What we discuss here are another three discs…
Badfinger, of course were "an Apple band" - much esteemed by George, of course, as well as Paul. They possessed a pop sensibility that would've appealed to the latter, while their guitarist and songwriter Pete Ham connected personally with the former: the two would duet on "Here Comes The Sun" at the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971 and that same year, George produced Badfinger's "Day After Day," doubling the slide motif with Pete.
No Dice features the newest member fully integrated: Joey contributed material, harmonies and superlative guitar work. His solo was featured on the breakout hit single, "No Matter What," penned by Pete. Though Badfinger fans typically regard their next album, Straight Up (in part produced by George) or the final album by the "classic" line-up, Wish You Were Here (1974) as the band's finest work, No Dice had one thing no other Badfinger album had: a genuine money-spinner, "Without You." It was the result of two separate musical ideas - verses from Pete and a chorus by bassist/vocalist Tommy Evans - seamlessly fused together. They never issued their take as a single, but Harry Nilsson heard it at a party - loved it - recorded it - and made the album track a worldwide smash and pop evergreen for artists that followed.
Commonly regarded nowadays as one of Eric Clapton's finest hours as a recording artist, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs was lost in the shuffle in 1970: it did not chart in Britain and while peaking at 16 in the Billboard album charts, it took another two years and an unedited re-release of the seven-minute title track to become the rock classic it now is. (As a single, "Layla" originally was cut down substantially in length and fell well short of the Top 40. Reissued in 1972 to promote Atco's The History of Eric Clapton compilation, fans were apparently ready for it and it peaked at 10.)
The band was comprised of Delaney and Bonnie’s support band, who’d been augmented for the late 1969 tour with the star power of two guitarists drawn in after the collapse of their respective bands, Blind Faith and The Beatles. Drummer Jim Gordon, bassist Carl Radle and keyboardist Bobby Whitlock then toured with Joe Cocker as part of the Mad Dogs and Englishmen road show before being drafted into George's post-Beatles project, All Things Must Pass. Following their work, Clapton brought them to Miami to record with producer Tom Dowd. It was there that Clapton connected with guitarist Duane Allman - the two got on like long lost brothers and Duane ended up playing on 11 of the album's 14 tracks.
It was Duane who composed the guitar riff to the title track: Eric's expression of unrequited love to his best friend's wife. But such was the musical alignment between he and Duane (and, it must be said, the late Bobby Whitlock as well - the project's dominant second vocalist) that Clapton's emotional anguish was translated into powerful music with their support.
For all that and the album's other fine material - "Bell Bottom Blues" - a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing" - "I Looked Away" - "Why Does Love Have To Be So Sad" - the use of a pseudonym effectively masked Clapton's involvement and the album took years to gain traction and critical acclaim. (Reviews at the time skewed negative, with words like "pointless," "boring" and "garbage" tossed around.)
ONE LAST THING
Those of you who have stuck around here with the SATB newsletter from the start or came onboard within the first seven months or so may recall the Seedermann Simple Chronology share: a massive (5+ hours apiece) series of video compilations culling Beatle and associated acts material chronologically (of course) that was circulated online some years back; the series itself begins in 1962 and stops at 2017. I shared the first seven installments here, which ran through the end of 1980, dispersing each volume monthly. But come the time for number 8, I discovered that the downloaded zip files I had archived for the rest of the series would not open and I therefore had to stop. The good news is: they are back in circulation so I am happy to present the 8th chapter here. It runs from January 1981 (“Woman”) through June 1988 (“This Is Love”) and covers Ringo’s wedding to Barbara Bach, Tug of War, Julian Lennon’s releases, Yoko, Broad Street, the Prince’s Trust shows, Shanghai Surprise, and Beatle material covered by everyone from Roxy Music to The Feelies, and loads more.
For those who missed the first seven, I’ll link them next week….
All best,
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