BBC Radio 4 has this interview with Hunter Davies, who wrote the only authorized telling of the story of the Beatles, other than their own Anthology, and he did it while they were still together as the Beatles.
[audio:http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/openbook/openbook_20120101-1750a.mp3|titles=BBC Radio 4 podcast: Hunter Davies]Category: Beatles
Another day that lives in infamy
Pop and circumstance
A few minutes ago I made an edit to this page on Wikipedia, about the Buckinghams. It had said, “The group opposed the producer’s treatment of the song “Susan” by adding a psychedelic section that sounded very similar to the Beatles’ song “A Day in the Life”, with an orchestral crescendo.”
http://youtu.be/aIacsdOfKAQ
I edited the article to note that the orchestral crescendo included a bit of Charles Ives’ Central Park in the Dark. Composed in 1906, it was, to say the least, ahead of its time and wasn’t performed publicly until 1946.
http://youtu.be/1qPZbHNuZzI
I love the song Susan, its production, the recording and, yes, the Charles Ives break too. In my opinion, the single coming after A Day in the Life is beside the point, because I think it’s far more significant that Susan came before Revolution 9.
http://youtu.be/LVf5Cr4M-F8
LIFE misses the Beat
LIFE Magazine, or what’s left of it, has an online George Harrison tribute. There’s also a print edition of the LIFE tribute to George, but it has an error that kept me from buying the issue. It’s a particularly annoying error, that was probably repeated from Bob Spitz’s useless, mistake-filled book, The Beatles: The Biography. The error is that Pattie Boyd appeared in A Hard Day’s Night with her sister Jenny. This is incorrect. Jenny “Jennifer Juniper” Boyd was not in AHDN. The girl with Pattie was, of course, my friend Prudence Bury. The paragraph below was scanned from Hunter Davies’ book The Beatles, in which Pattie mentions her two sisters (Jenny and Paula), as well as Prue.
A couple of years ago I said that Prue’s hair stylist was her friend Vidal Sassoon. Here is a picture of Prue sporting a Sassoon cut. Vidal is on the right, and the man in the middle is Alexander Plunkett-Green, husband of fashion designer Mary Quant.
Back in the former USSR
Unbelievable. The once-mighty Electronics & Musical Industries — EMI — is being bought by a rich Russian, who apparently now lives in NYC.
In other Beatle-related doings, there is still no official DVD release date for the Let It Be film, but director Michael Lindsay-Hogg says work is progressing on the project. He was interviewed on WNYC radio, and the podcast is on the audio player.
[audio:http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/soundcheck/soundcheck101711apod.mp3|titles=WNYC: Michael Lindsay-Hogg interview]Running off a Cliff with the Beatles
Last week, TCM showed the movie Summer Holiday, with Cliff Richard. Directed by Peter (“Bullitt”) Yates, released in early ’63 and shot on location in widescreen and color, Summer Holiday is cute and silly fun. It has inspired bits of comedy, solid songs with Cliff and the always excellent Shadows, and great production numbers, but it can’t be called a Rock and Roll movie by any stretch.
Each [Cliff Richard] film inevitably also employs the ideological underpinning of the Hollywood musical. A genre such as the musical is not just a film type; it brings with it certain spectator expectations, certain structures, codes and conventions which combine in the musical to indicate its function as, in Richard Dyer’s phrase, a ‘gospel of happiness’. A Hard Day’s Night: The British Film Guide, by Stephen Glynn, Turner Classic Movies, 2005, p.7
http://youtu.be/Gbajf_rHzys
With four healthy, fun-loving boys driving a red London double-decker bus across Europe, and picking up four pretty, spirited girls along the way, I spit up my Trader Joe’s three buck chuck wine when one of the girls suggested, “Gosh, the boys have been so good to us, we should think of a way to show them our thanks.” But Summer Holiday isn’t that sort of movie, so off to dinner they all go, where everybody dances to choreography by Herbert Ross, who later directed Petula Clark in the remake of Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
Summer Holiday has a devoted following, and I enjoyed it a lot, but what interests me the most is that the movie premiered in London in February ’63, the same month that the Beatles’ second single, Please Please Me, was released in the UK.
‘The Young Ones’ and ‘Summer Holiday’ both proved the second top box-office earner at British cinemas for 1962 and 1963 respectively, and garnered much critical praise. By the time ‘Wonderful Life’ was premiered at the Empire Theatre, Leicester Square, on 2 July 1964, however, the spontaneity and freshness was judged to have gone. Ibid.
A Hard Day’s Night premiered at the Pavilion Theatre in London only four days after Wonderful Life, to universally rapturous critical praise and financial success.
What precipitated the sudden fall from grace? In truth, Cliff’s time had passed; there were new kids on the block and the boy from Lucknow, India, together with his traditional pop musicals, were about to be drowned out by the twist and shout emanating from Mersyside. Ibid.
I’m a Cliff Richard fan, and as I said before I really enjoyed Summer Holiday. The older I get the more I am able to appreciate things for what they are, rather than pay attention to what they are not, like that $3 Charles Shaw wine from Trader Joe’s. 😉 I feel the same way about another movie that provides a good contrast to the Beatles. In fact, it’s a Beatles movie itself, except it’s really a Bee Gees movie with Peter Frampton — Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. The movie is as much an artifact of its year, 1978, as Summer Holiday is representative of 1963.
http://youtu.be/bFRt5TQdQCI
Thanks to a nudge from tastewar, I watched Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band on DVD, and if nothing else I’m not surprised the songs were produced by George Martin and engineered by Geoff Emerick, because the sound is really excellent. The story is ridiculous, but the songs are worth the visit. The Bee Gees and Frampton were huge stars when they agreed to make this movie. I don’t know if Robert Stigwood had a contract that forced them to do it, or if they simply wanted to be proxy Beatles, but the Bee Gees really nail a lot of the songs, although Frampton’s singing is a bit weak in spots.
When watching this movie it must be remembered that it was made only a few years after the wild and crazy Tommy, and there’s also no avoiding a comparison with Across the Universe, Julie Taymor’s generally well-received 2007 film. This clip is I Want You (She’s So Heavy).
[flv:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Video/2011/Oct/AcrosstheUniverse.flv 563 240]
Is that version better than, or even as good as, the same song as presented in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band?
[flv:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Video/2011/Oct/BeeGeesFrampton.flv 563 240]