Category: Music

Lost and Found Rock and Roll

I’ve been very busy and distracted lately, so a tip of the ol’ Dograt toupee to Samjay, for spotting this item about an upcoming special event at movie theaters. It’s the complete video of the Beatles’ first live concert after their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The concert was at a rather shabby venue, the Coliseum in Washington, D.C. on February 11, 1964. It was taped by CBS and shown in movie theaters over closed circuit TV the following weekend.

As I wrote in late 2010, iTunes had the complete concert video available for viewing, and this new presentation is a return to the original intended format. Regarding the concert video having been lost, there is more background at this link. I don’t know if this alleged master tape was the source used for this latest presentation, but it seems possible.

http://youtu.be/t-pBqLGhMU0

A Hard Day’s Write

Richard Lester, who directed the two truly great Beatle films, A Hard Day’s Night and HELP!, has received a Fellowship from the British Film Institute. With the recent death of Davy Jones, I’ve been hearing the old assertion that the Monkees TV show was based on AHDN, but I just don’t see it. HELP! was clearly the model for the series, with producers Raphelson and Schneider drawing inspiration from the fantasy of the boys living together in a quirky, colorful pad, full of groovy stuff.

I have high praise and thanks for author Ray Morton, and his book about the making of A Hard Day’s Night. Besides being a solid and thorough telling of the background and production of the movie, in A Hard Days Night: Music on Film Series, Morton did something no other writer on the subject has done — he gets the facts right about Prue Bury, and for that I am sincerely grateful. Ray Morton can be heard on Reject Radio talking about the movie and his book at this link. He comes in at 40:30 into the podcast.

Back in 2002, Rolling Stone had a piece about the Miramax DVD release of A Hard Day’s Night, and it has one of the classic promotional photos of the Beatles with (l-r) Pattie Boyd, Tina Williams, Prue Bury, and Sue Whitman.

By coincidence, and to my great amusement, that issue also had this item:

So the first time that Doug Pratt had a connection to Prue Bury, it was a different Doug Pratt!

From Barnes’ Back Pages

Today on Barnes Newberry’s online radio show, My Back Pages, he played the band Love doing AndMoreAgain, a song I hadn’t heard in, I think, 40 years…

… and he played a song I couldn’t recall ever hearing before — Fleetwood Mac with its founder, Peter Green, shortly before he left the band, doing The Green Manalishi (With The Two Prong Crown). What a great track! To me it sort of sounds like Alice Cooper with Elvis Costello style vocals.

Back on a train of thought

It’s always a treat seeing pictures of Prue Bury for the first time. This one came from The Gilly on Tumblr. Prue was waiting for hairdresser Betty Glasow to take the pins out of her hair, and John pretended to cut it himself.

It’s interesting that John did that, in light of these comments by Prue:

John threw me by saying, “I hear you don’t like our singing!” Oops, what do I say to that? It is true that in one of the newspaper interviews I had said that I was impressed by their sharp repartee more than their singing! On reflection, a dumb thing to say. I plead nerves! Naturally I denied it and said the obvious, that one could never believe what one read in the press and wiggled out of it.

The boys were great fun on the train and kept Pattie and I laughing with their jokes. They were easy to get on with and natural in their behaviour, although John was the most reserved, and so when we were not shooting we sat and joked and smoked a lot… just cigarettes!! !! Ringo was mad about taking photos and snapped everything in sight, including me.

So even though John was the most reserved Beatle on that occasion, he was comfortable enough with Prue to play with her hair. But he didn’t get as silly as George did, wearing one of the hats the girls had — I assume it was Pattie’s. This picture is from the Yahoo group, Pattie Boyd’s Sixties Style.

All of these pictures were taken by Astrid Kirchherr, who signed this gallery print.

And here’s one of the snapshots that was taken by Ringo. I used it on Prue’s birthday last year. Lynn at Pattie Boyd’s Sixties Style did a great job of image editing to hide the page seam.