Toppermost of the Poppermost - UK Number Ones : part 2 - The 1960s

[daf]

Gah! Just realised I missed out a load of Press cuttings from December 1967 - anyway, better late than never!

Baldry Extra! :

                 

[famethrowa]

Gah! Just realised I missed out a load of Press cuttings from December 1967 - anyway, better late than never!

Baldry Extra! :

Cliff just wants to be approached by a producer with a phenomenal part.

[daf]

Didn't we have a lovely time the day we went to Bangor, it's . . .

241.  The Beatles - Hello, Goodbye



From : 3 December 1967 – 20 January 1968
Weeks : 7
B-side : I Am the Walrus
Bonus1  : Promo 1
Bonus 2 : Backwards
Bonus 3 : 800% Slower

The Story So Far : Hello Maharishi, Goodbye Brian

On Tuesday 1 August 1967, George and Pattie Harrison, Alexis 'Magic Alex' Mardas and Neil Aspinall flew from London to Los Angeles.

George : "We went to America in August, a couple of months after the Monterey Pop Festival. My sister-in-law at the time, Jenny Boyd, had been living in San Francisco, and she'd decided she was going to come back to live in England. We all went for a day out to see her; Derek and Neil, the not-so-magic Alex, and myself and Pattie."

The Harrisons flew as Mr and Mrs Weiss, names taken from Nat Weiss, the New York director of Nemperor Artists, one of Brian Epstein's co-owned companies. They stayed in a rented house on Blue Jay Way in Beverly Hills which belonged to the manager of Peggy Lee. George Harrison called Derek Taylor, who was living in the US, giving him directions to the house. However, Taylor got lost in the fog and, while waiting, Harrison wrote the song Blue Jay Way.

George : "Derek Taylor got held up. He rang to say he'd be late. I told him on the phone that the house was in Blue Jay Way. And he said he could find it OK... he could always ask a cop. So I waited and waited. I felt really knackered with the flight, but I didn't want to go to sleep until he came. There was a fog and it got later and later. To keep myself awake, just as a joke to pass the time while I waited, I wrote a song about waiting for him in Blue Jay Way. There was a little Hammond organ in the corner of this house which I hadn't noticed until then... so I messed around on it and the song came."

On Monday 7 August 1967, After spending six days in Los Angeles, where they had met up with Ravi Shankar, George, Pattie, Neil Aspinall, Derek Taylor and 'Magic Alex', flew to San Francisco, where they walked around the hippy district of Haight-Ashbury. The visit to Haight-Ashbury wasn't the only purpose of their trip to San Francisco -

Pattie Boyd : "We also went to see my sister Jenny, who was living with a friend in San Francisco. We flew there in a private Lear jet with Derek Taylor and Neil Aspinall and were met by a limo, then picked up Jenny, and we all went to have lunch. Afterwards we thought it would be fun to go and have a look at Haight-Ashbury, the district that had been taken over by hippies. Musicians like Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin lived there, and it was the LSD capital of America. On the way, Derek produced a tab. Would we like some? Since we were going to Haight-Ashbury, it seemed silly not to."

George : "We went up to San Francisco in a Lear jet. Derek took us to visit a disc jockey, and we went straight from the airport to the radio station in a limo. The DJ gave us some concoction and then we went off to Haight-Ashbury."

Pattie : "The area is named after the intersection of two streets, Haight and Ashbury, and as we approached, the driver said he wouldn't drive down the street itself, he'd park among the side-streets. It seemed a little odd but we didn't argue. We got out of the car, the acid kicked in and everything was just whoah, psychedelic and very... I mean, it was just completely fine. We went into a shop and noticed that all these people were following us. They had recognised George as we walked past them in the street, then turned to follow us. One minute there were five, then ten, twenty, thirty and forty people behind us. I could hear them saying, 'The Beatles are here, the Beatles are in town!'"

George : "I went there expecting it to be a brilliant place, with groovy gypsy people making works of art and paintings and carvings in little workshops. But it was full of horrible spotty drop-out kids on drugs, and it turned me right off the whole scene. I could only describe it as being like the Bowery: a lot of bums and drop-outs; many of them very young kids who'd dropped acid and come from all over America to this mecca of LSD. We walked down the street, and I was being treated like the Messiah. The Beatles were pretty big, and for one of them to be there was a big event. "

Derek Taylor : "Photographs tell the story of this great visit by one of the Fab Pied Pipers; it is one of the best-known moments in The Great Novel. The crowds that gathered, well-meaning though they were, pressed upon the English visitors and made life difficult and a little dangerous. George didn't enjoy Haight-Ashbury, yet it was right and inevitable that one of Them should have been there in those times."



Pattie : "We were expecting Haight-Ashbury to be special, a creative and artistic place, filled with Beautiful People, but it was horrible – full of ghastly drop-outs, bums and spotty youths, all out of their brains. Everybody looked stoned – even mothers and babies – and they were so close behind us they were treading on the backs of our heels. It got to the point where we couldn't stop for fear of being trampled. Then somebody said, 'Let's go to Hippie Hill,' and we crossed the grass, our retinue facing us, as if we were on stage. They looked as us expectantly – as if George was some kind of Messiah. We were so high, and then the inevitable happened: a guitar emerged from the crowd and I could see it being passed to the front by outstretched arms. I thought, Oh, God, poor George, this is a nightmare. Finally the guitar was handed to him. I had the feeling that they'd listened to the Beatles' records, analysed them, learnt what they'd thought they should learn, and taken every drug they'd thought the Beatles were singing about. Now they wanted to know where to go next. And George was there, obviously, to give them the answer. Pressure.



Pattie : "George was so cool. He said, 'This is G, this is E, this is D,' and showed them a few chords, then handed back the guitar and said, 'Sorry, man, we've got to go now.' He didn't sing – he couldn't have: he was flying. We all were. I was surprised he could even do that. Anyway, we got up and walked back towards our limo, at which point I heard a little voice say, 'Hey, George, do you want some STP?' George turned around and said, 'No, thanks, I'm cool, man.' Then the bloke turned round and said to the others, 'George Harrison turned me down.' And they went, 'No!' And then the crowd became faintly hostile."

George : "I became really afraid, because the concoction that the DJ had given me was having an effect. I could see all the spotty youths, but I was seeing them from a twisted angle. It was like the manifestation of a scene from an Hieronymus Bosch painting, getting bigger and bigger, fish with heads, faces like vacuum cleaners coming out of shop doorways... They were handing me things – like a big Indian pipe with feathers on it, and books and incense – and trying to give me drugs. I remember saying to one guy: 'No thanks, I don't want it.' And then I heard his whining voice saying, 'Hey, man – you put me down.' It was terrible."

Pattie : "We sensed it because when you're that high you're very aware of vibes, and we were walking faster and faster, and they were following. When we saw the limo, we ran across the road and jumped in, and they ran after us and started to rock the car, and the windows were full of these faces, flattened against the glass, looking at us."

Although the group made it back to their limousine safely, the experience made a deep impression on them. For George, it marked the point where he moved on from taking LSD and decided to explore more spiritual matters.

George : "It certainly showed me what was really happening in the drug culture. It wasn't what I'd thought – spiritual awakenings and being artistic – it was like alcoholism, like any addiction. The kids at Haight-Ashbury had left school and dossed out there, and instead of drinking alcohol they were on all kinds of drugs. That was the turning-point for me – that's when I went right off the whole drug cult and stopped taking the dreaded lysergic acid. I had some in a little bottle. I put it under a microscope, and it looked like bits of old rope. I thought that I couldn't put that into my brain any more. People were making concoctions that were really wicked – ten times stronger than LSD. STP was one; it took its name from the fuel additive used in Indy-car racing. Mama Cass Elliot phoned us up and said, 'Watch out, there's this new one going round called STP.' I never took it. They concocted weird mixtures and the people in Haight-Ashbury got really fucked-up. It made me realise: 'This is not it.' And that's when I really went for the meditation."

The party was driven to the airport, from where they flew to Monterey in a Lear jet. Unfortunately, the flight was no less terrifying than Haight-Ashbury had been -

George : "I was sitting right behind the pilots; two big brown-brogue-shoed Frank Sinatras. As it took off, the plane went into a stall – we hadn't got very high before we went into a steep turn and the plane made a lurch and dropped. The whole dashboard lit up saying 'UNSAFE' right across it. I thought, 'Well, that's it.' Alex was chanting, 'Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna,' and I was saying, 'Om, Christ, Om...' Somehow it recovered itself, and we flew down to Monterey and stopped there. We went to the beach and became calm again."

In a Monterey café, the long hair and hippy-style clothes worn by the party meant they had trouble getting service.

Derek Taylor : "We went on to Monterey, and had difficulty getting coffee in a coffee-shop. When the waitress, pretending not to see us in this Lytham-St-Anne's-on-Pacific, was hailed by George ('We have got the money, you know,' he said finally, not quietly, waving a thousand dollars in bills) she recognised him and dropped every piece of crockery she was holding. Dozens of plates and saucers and cups shattered on the floor – she had collected them, too many of them, as she busied herself to avoid the cloud of denim in the corner. Things hadn't loosened up everywhere yet, it seemed."



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In early 1967, The Times printed an advert for Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Spiritual Regeneration Movement Foundation. The Harrisons had become interested in Eastern philosophy during a six-week holiday in Bombay towards the end of 1966, and Pattie Harrison made arrangements to attend an introductory lecture at Caxton Hall, London, where she was given a mantra.

 

Pattie: "George was away on tour yet again, and I was sitting with my friend Marie-Lise at the kitchen table in Kinfauns. It was February 1967 and we had the Sunday papers spread out in front of us. I had a yearning to take up chanting, meditation or something spiritual – I suppose after the experience of India – and she felt the same. Something was missing from our lives, we decided. So there we were, combing though the papers, when we came upon an advert for transcendental-meditation classes in London. Perfect. Off we went to Caxton Hall and enrolled in the Spiritual Regeneration Movement."

Encouraged by the event, Pattie persuaded George to accompany her to another lecture at the Hilton Hotel. All The Beatles attended on 24 August 1967, and afterwards met Maharishi for the first time.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On Saturday 19 August 1967, Ringo and Maureen Starkey's second son, Jason Starkey, was born on 19 August 1967. He was the third Beatles baby after Julian Lennon and Zak Starkey. Like his elder brother, Jason was born in Queen Charlotte's Hospital in Hammersmith, London. His name was chosen by his mother. Thanks Mo!

Jason : "Being Ringo Starr's son is the biggest drag of my life. It's a total pain."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On Thursday 24 August 1967, encouraged by Pattie Harrison, The Beatles and their partners – [minus Ringo and Maureen - who had just given birth to Jason] – attended a lecture by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane, London. Tickets for the lecture cost seven shillings and sixpence each.

Pattie : "Then, joy of joys, I discovered that Maharishi was coming to London in August to give a lecture at the Hilton Hotel. I was desperate to go, and George said he would come too. Paul had already heard of him and was interested, and in the end we all went – George, John, Paul, Ringo, Jane and I. Maharishi was every bit as impressive as I thought he would be, and we were spellbound."

Paul : "Maharishi came to a hall in London and we all got tickets and sat down near the front row. There were a lot of flowers on the stage and he came on and sat cross-legged. And he looked great and he talked very well and started to explain, and I still think his idea is fine."



Pattie : "At the end we went to speak to him and he said we must go to Wales where he was running a ten-day summer conference of the Spiritual Regeneration Movement. It started in two days' time. We leapt at it."

A press conference followed the lecture, after which a 90-minute private audience with Maharishi was held for Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and the rest of their party. The yogi's words left them keen to learn more, and they made arrangements to travel to Bangor, North Wales, the next day to attend a 10-day series of seminars.

George : "All of us except Ringo attended the lecture, given by Maharishi at the Hilton Hotel. I got the tickets. I was actually after a mantra. I had got to the point where I thought I would like to meditate. I'd read about it and I knew I needed a mantra – a password to get through into the other world. And, as we always seemed to do everything together, John and Paul came with me."

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On Friday 25 August 1967, following their initial meeting with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, The Beatles, along with Cynthia Lennon, Jane Asher, Pattie Harrison, her sister Jenny, Magic Alex, Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, travelled to Bangor to embark upon a 10-day conference on Transcendental Meditation.

John : "Cyn and I were thinking of going to Libya, until this came up. Libya or Bangor? Well, there was no choice, was there?"

The Beatles were to travel on the same train as Maharishi and his party.  However, the resulting press scrum meant that their departure was anything but smooth -

Cynthia Lennon : "It was a bright, sunny morning when we set off. I was ready early, but Pattie, George, and Ringo were coming in our car, and were late. By the time Anthony drew up at the station entrance we were cutting it fine and had five minutes to catch the train. John leapt out of the car with the others and ran for the platform – leaving me to follow with our bags. It was the result of years in which he'd taken it for granted that others would see to all the details. I followed him as fast as I could. The station was mayhem, with fans, reporters, police and passengers all milling around. I struggled to push my way through, but when I got to the platform my way was barred by a huge policeman who, unaware that I was with the Beatles party, said, 'Sorry, love, too late, the train's going,' and pushed me aside. I shouted for someone to help. John poked his head out of the train window, saw what was happening and yelled, 'Tell him you're with us! Tell him to let you on.' It was too late. The train was already pulling away from the platform and I was left standing with our bags, tears pouring down my cheeks."

   

Cynthia Lennon : "It was horribly embarrassing. Reporters were crowding around me, flashbulbs were popping and I felt a complete fool. Peter Brown, Brian's assistant, had come to see us off: he put his arm around me and said he'd take me to Bangor by car. 'We'll probably get there before the train,' he assured me, anxious to cheer me up. But what neither he nor anyone else knew was that my tears were not simply about the missed train. I was crying because the incident seemed symbolic of what was happening to my marriage. John was on the train, speeding into the future, and I was left behind."

Neil Aspinall drove Cynthia to Bangor, in a journey lasting around six hours, and she rejoined The Beatles' party. Aspinall went to see friends staying in a caravan in North Wales, and didn't attend any of Maharishi's lectures.

The Beatles, meanwhile, were in a first class compartment, travelling for the first time in many years without their manager Brian Epstein or their assistants Aspinall and Mal Evans. Maharishi was in another first class compartment, seated cross-legged on a white sheet laid out by his followers. As the train approached Bangor The Beatles discussed travelling onto the next station to avoid the waiting camera crews and reporters, and taking taxis to Bangor instead. Maharishi, however, told them they should stick close to him, which they duly did.

Ringo : "Maureen had had the baby and everything was really cool, so we all went to Wales to meet Maharishi. He didn't know who we were then, which was really fabulous. Only when we got off the train and he saw all the kids running, I think then he may have felt, 'Wow, things are looking up for me.' They ran right past him and were looking in our faces, and I think he realised that these boys could get his message across real fast."

The group were staying in dormitories at Bangor college, along with around 300 other followers of Maharishi. The rooms contained bunk beds and basic chests of drawers – a far cry from the comforts The Beatles were used to.



Paul : "It was a bit funny going to those camps because it was like going back to school. Just the nature of it meant staying in a classroom and we'd been used to our nice comfortable homes or hotels so to be staying in an old school on a camp bed was a little bit disconcerting. Then trying to learn to meditate. It's not that easy, you don't just pick it up like that, it's an effort and you've got to be involved, so it was like going back to school. And of course the food was all canteen food. But we were interested enough to learn the system, which we did."

That evening the group, plus Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, went to the Senior Chinese restaurant, the only such establishment open late in Bangor. At the end of the meal they realised they didn't have enough money between them to pay the bill.

Hunter Davies : "We went out to a Chinese restaurant in Bangor and ate on our own – just the Beatles, myself, maybe one or two others. When the bill came, we couldn't pay. The Chinese waiter amazingly didn't recognize them, and he was afraid we were going to do a runner. Suddenly, George put his bare foot on the table and opened the sole of his sandal, where he had hidden a £20 note. The Beatles were like the royal family. They didn't have money, didn't use money. But George had put this £20 note there just for this sort of situation."



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On Saturday 26 August 1967, the day after their arrival in Bangor, North Wales, The Beatles attended an introductory seminar given by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, after which they spoke to reporters. The seminar was held in the main hall of the Hugh Owen Buildings, now part of Bangor University. Around 300 people attended. Maharishi joined The Beatles for the press conference afterwards, during which they announced that they had given up taking drugs.

Paul : "There was a press conference. It was suggested that as we were going with the Maharishi, it might be a good idea to accommodate the press; it also saved them waiting around outside our windows. I don't remember that we specifically said that we'd given up drugs – but at the time I think we probably had, anyway."



George : "LSD isn't a real answer. It doesn't give you anything. It enables you to see a lot of possibilities that you may never noticed before, but it isn't the answer. You don't just take LSD and that's it forever, you're OK. To get really high, you have to do it straight. I want to get high, and you can't get high on LSD. You can take it and take it as many times as you like, but you get to a point that you can't get any further unless you stop taking it."

Paul : "You cannot keep on taking drugs forever. You get to the stage where you are taking fifteen aspirins a day, without having a headache. We were looking for something more natural. This is it. It was an experience we went through. Now it's over and we don't need it any more. We think we're finding other ways of getting there."

George : "It helps you find fulfilment in life, helps you live life to the full. Young people are searching for a bit of peace inside themselves."

John : "Don't believe that jazz about there's nothing you can do, and 'turn on and just drop out, man' – because you've got to turn on and drop in, or they're going to drop all over you."

George : "We don't know how this will come out in the music. Don't expect to hear Transcendental Meditation all the time. We don't want this thing to come out like Cliff and Billy Graham."




- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Late on the night of Sunday 27 August 1967, The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein was found dead at his home in Chapel Street, London. Epstein had invited his assistant Peter Brown and the chief executive of NEMS, Geoffrey Ellis, to spend the bank holiday weekend at Kingsley Hill, his house in Warbleton, East Sussex.

Epstein also asked another assistant, Joanne Newfield, to come, and to bring along a mutual friend, the Scottish singer Lulu. However, both women had prior engagements and declined Epstein's offer. Nonetheless, Epstein departed his London home in good spirits on the afternoon of Friday 25 August, and was joined later in Sussex by Brown and Ellis.

A young man with whom Epstein hoped to become better acquainted did not show up. Epstein was disappointed at the prospect of having to spend the long public holiday with two friends he saw frequently, and following dinner – during which he drank a considerable amount – Epstein chose to drive back to London in his Bentley convertible. Shortly after Epstein's exit, a London taxi arrived at Kingsley Hill containing four people Epstein had invited. Although surprised that the host had left, they stayed the night at the house, partying with Brown and Ellis. After lunch on Saturday 26 August, Brown spoke to Epstein on the telephone.

Peter Brown : "He called late in the afternoon and was speaking in a woozy voice. He apologized for not coming back and maybe letting us worry. I suspect that when he went back to London he did go out, cruised the West End for a bit and then went home. I urged him to come back to the country. But there was no way he could drive back because he sounded pretty awful, and I suggested him coming on the train. It was an unlikely thing for him to do but it was the only thing I could think of at the time."

Epstein's Spanish butler, Antonio, and his wife Maria, saw their employer when he returned late on the Friday, but heard nothing from him on the Saturday. By the following day they had become worried. They were unable to contact Brown and Ellis, but Antonio did speak to Joanne Newfield. She urged him not to worry, but did decide to go to Chapel Street to check in the early afternoon.

Joanne Newfield : "Since it was Sunday, there was no one around and it was a very quick trip across town. I got to Chapel Street, let myself in, found Antonio and went up to Brian's door and knocked on it. There were double doors leading into a dressing room and then there was a single door leading into a bedroom, so there was quite a bit of a distance between the hallway and Brian's room. I knocked on the door and I called out his name. I called, 'Answer the door. Are you there?' And then I went up to my room and I tried the intercom, and there was no reply..."



Joanne Newfield : "I knew I didn't want to be there on my own. Antonio and Maria couldn't speak very good English and they were a very shy couple. I needed someone nearer, that could be a support system. So I called Peter back and I told him that Dr Cowan wasn't there and Peter suggested I call his doctor, John Galway. He was there so I told him that I was concerned about Brian and asked if he could come over to the house. He would. And in the meantime I also called a few other people but I couldn't find them. Then I found Alistair and asked him to come to the house.

"Then John Galway arrived and we went up to Brian's room, up to the outside doors. Antonio and John Galway broke the doors down. I think in the meantime I'd called Peter back and left the line hanging. Then I went up as they broke the doors down. Antonio and John Galway were in and I followed them. Maria was staying behind. The curtains were drawn and John Galway was directly ahead of me. I could just see part of Brian in the bed and I was just totally stunned. I knew that something really bad had happened. Then I think John Galway told me, 'Just wait outside.' I stood in the doorway. A few minutes later John Galway came out. I've never seen a doctor so white. We were all white and we knew that Brian had died."

In the meantime, Brown was waiting on the telephone line. Galway informed him that Epstein had died, and Brown called David Jacobs, a lawyer and friend to Epstein who lived in Brighton. He and Ellis then left for London.

Epstein's personal assistant Alistair Taylor arrived at the house. Those who found Epstein's body were still in a state of shock, and went to the study to have a brandy. They delayed calling the police as they wanted to first make sure there were no illegal substances in the house.

Alistair Taylor : "Within literally very few minutes of the police being informed, there's a ring on the doorbell and it's a reporter I knew. He just looked at me and said, 'What are you doing here? I hear Brian's ill.' And I said, 'No, he's fine. He's gone out. He just called me over, actually. You know what he's like, you know, typical Brian. I've come over specially on a Sunday morning and he's gone out in the car.' Then I wondered if the garage door was closed because if the car's sitting there the reporter's going to say, 'Which car?' I was concerned that, before this news broke, somehow we had to get hold of [Epstein's mother] Queenie, and we couldn't find her."

Joanne Newfield was surprised at the reactions of Geoffrey Ellis and Peter Brown when they arrived at Chapel Street.

Joanne Newfield : "Peter and I were good friends, and I was really wanting him to get back. I remember the first thing I asked was why did Brian come back from Kingsley Hill? Neither of them answered. They just started to go up the stairs. And I remember thinking that they seemed weird and I knew there was something wrong. They appeared distant when I expected them to be grief-stricken. I expected that Peter would give me a hug, but he didn't. He was just cool and I'm not sure that it was shock. I've asked myself many times what happened in Kingsley Hill. It's just one of the question marks I have about Brian's death."

An inquest found the cause of death to be accidental, resulting from 'incautious self-overdoses' of Carbrital, a drug taken to assist sleep.

Paul : "I don't think there was anything sinister in his death. There were rumours of very sinister circumstances, but I personally think it was a drink-and-sleeping-pills overdose. I think what happened – and there's no evidence whatsoever except people I talk to – was that Brian was going down to his house in the country. It was a Friday night, and there were going to be friends there. Brian was gay and I think there were going to be young men at the house. Brian went down with one of his friends, but no one had showed up – so he thought: 'Ugh – it's Friday night! I've got time to get back to London if I rush. Then I can get back to the clubs.' It seems feasible to me, knowing Brian.

"Then he drove back up to London and went to the clubs, but they were all closing and there was not a lot of action. So he had a few bevvies, then to console himself had a sleeping pill or two before to bed Brian always did that, he was quite into the pills. And then I think he woke up in the middle of the night and thought: My God, I can't sleep. I haven't had a pill.' Then he had a few more pills, and I think that could have killed him. I went round a couple of days later and saw Brian's butler. He didn't seem to feel there was anything suspicious, nor that Brian was in any kind of black mood. My feeling was that it was an accident."

   

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The Beatles were in Bangor when word came through that their manager Brian Epstein had died. Plans were immediately made for a return to London. Earlier that day they had been fully inducted into Transcendental Meditation by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Paul : "The actual ceremony in Bangor when we got given the mantra was nice. You had to wait outside his room as he did people one by one, and then you got to go into the inner sanctum, just a room they'd put a lot of flowers in and a few drapes around, and lit a few joss sticks. You had to take some cut flowers to Maharishi as some sort of offering. It was all flowers with Maharishi, but flowers were the symbol of the period anyway so it was very easy. So you got your flowers, you took your shoes off and went into a darkened room where Maharishi was. It was quite exciting. It reminded me of Gypsy Rose Lee's tent in Blackpool."

Afterwards, The Beatles were in the college grounds in Bangor following a late Sunday lunch when the pay phone in their dormitory began to ring. Jane Asher went inside to answer it. Brian Epstein's assistant Peter Brown, who had been given the number by Pattie Harrison, asked to speak to McCartney immediately.

Ringo : "In Bangor we heard that Brian had died. That was a real downer because of the confusion and the disbelief: 'You're kidding me!' Your belief system gets suspended because you so badly don't want to hear it. You don't know what to do with it. If you look at our faces in the film shot at the time, it was all a bit like: 'What is it? What does it mean? Our friend has gone.' It was more 'our friend' than anything else. Brian was a friend of ours, and we were all left behind. After we arrived there with hope and flowers – now this. And then we all left – real slow."

Although the details surrounding Epstein's death were vague, the story had already reached the British press. Reporters began to gather around the college entrance, eager to speak to The Beatles.

Cynthia Lennon : "The press wouldn't leave until someone came out and gave a statement. The others came to our room to talk about who should speak on their behalf. John said he'd do it, and stumbled toward the mêlée of lenses. He was hit by a barrage of questions."

McCartney was already on his way back to London, but Lennon, Harrison and Starr spoke briefly to members of the press.

Lennon: "I don't know what to say. We've only just heard, and it's hard to think of things to say. But he was just... He was a warm fellow, you know, and it's terrible."



Press : What are your plans now?
Lennon : "We haven't made any, you know. I mean, we've only just heard."
Starr : "Yes, you know, it's as much news to us as it is to everybody else."

Press : I understand that this afternoon Maharishi conferred with you all. Could I ask you what advice he offered you?
Lennon: "He told us not to get overwhelmed by grief. And whatever thoughts we have of Brian to keep them happy, because any thoughts we have of him will travel to him wherever he is."

Press : Have you a tribute that you would like to pay to Mr Epstein?
Lennon : "Well, you know, we don't know what to say. We loved him and he was one of us."
Harrison : "You can't pay tribute in words."

Press : Did the Maharishi give you any words of comfort?
Lennon : "Meditation gives you confidence enough to withstand something like this, even the short amount we've had."
Harrison : "There's no real such thing as death anyway. I mean, it's death on a physical level, but life goes on everywhere... and you just keep going, really. The thing about the comfort is to know that he's OK."

   

The Single :

"Hello, Goodbye" was written by Paul McCartney, credited to Lennon–McCartney, and performed by The Beatles. Lennon pushed for his composition "I Am the Walrus" to be the A-side instead, but then ceded to McCartney and Martin's insistence that "Hello, Goodbye" was the more commercial of the two tracks.

John : "That's another McCartney. Smells a mile away, doesn't it? An attempt to write a single. It wasn't a great piece. 'Hello, Goodbye' beat out 'I Am the Walrus' ... Can you believe that? I began to submerge."



According to Alistair Taylor – Epstein's former personal assistant and later the general manager of Apple Corps – McCartney first got the idea for Hello, Goodbye at his home in Cavendish Avenue, London, after Taylor asked him how he wrote songs -

Alistair Taylor : "Paul marched me into the dining room, where he had a marvellous old hand-carved harmonium. 'Come and sit at the other end of the harmonium. You hit any note you like on the keyboard. Just hit it and I'll do the same. Now whenever I shout out a word, you shout the opposite and I'll make up a tune. You watch, it'll make music'... 'Black,' he started. 'White,' I replied. 'Yes.' 'No.' 'Good.' 'Bad.' Hello.' 'Goodbye.' I wonder whether Paul really made up that song as he went along or whether it was running through his head already."

Paul : "Hello, Goodbye was one of my songs. There are Geminian influences here I think: the twins. It's such a deep theme in the universe, duality – man woman, black white, ebony ivory, high low, right wrong, up down, hello goodbye – that it was a very easy song to write. It's just a song of duality, with me advocating the more positive. You say goodbye, I say hello. You say stop, I say go. I was advocating the more positive side of the duality, and I still do to this day."

   

In Britain, Parlophone issued "Hello, Goodbye", backed by "I Am the Walrus", on 24 November 1967. Within a day of its release, the record had sold over 300,000 copies. It went on to top the national chart compiled by Record Retailer for seven weeks, giving the Beatles their longest run at number 1 on that chart since "She Loves You" in 1963. It was the group's fourth Christmas number 1 single in five years, and for three weeks, the band held the top two positions in the UK, with the "Magical Mystery Tour" soundtrack EP at number 2.

The single was released on 27 November in the United States, peaking at number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks, and was the band's fifteenth American chart-topper. The single was successful in many other countries, topping charts in Australia, Canada, West Germany, Holland and Norway.

   

On Friday 10 November 1967 The Beatles assembled at the Saville Theatre in London, formerly owned by Brian Epstein, to make three promotional film for Hello, Goodbye.

Paul : "I said, 'Look, can we get a theatre anywhere? How about Brian's? Is it ever empty for a minute or two? An afternoon? Sure, great.' So we went down there, got some girls in Hawaiian skirts, got our Sgt Pepper outfits on, and I just ran out there: 'Get a shot of this! Do this for a bit now! Let's have a shot there! Get a close-up of him! Get the girls on their own! Go back there! Get a wide angle! We'll edit it, we'll make it work.' It was very thrown away. Nice to do stuff like that."

In the first film, The Beatles wore their Sgt Pepper costumes to perform in front of a psychedelic backdrop. A cutaway featured the group wearing their collarless suits from 1963, and some local dancers donned grass skirts for what was termed the 'Maori finale'.

The second film was also a performance, although The Beatles wore their everyday – though still elaborate – clothes. In this version Ringo Starr's bass drum carried the familiar Beatles 'drop-T' logo, whereas in the first one it had been absent.

The third clip was made up of outtakes from the first two, plus footage of John Lennon performing the Twist.

Paul : "I directed the promo film we made for Hello, Goodbye. Directing a film is something that everyone always wants to get into. It was something I'd always been interested in, until I actually tried it. Then I realised it was too much like hard work. Someone summed it up when they said: 'There's always someone arriving saying: "Do you want the gold pistols or the silver pistols?"' Then you think: 'Um, um...' There was so much of that going on – so many decisions to be made – that I ended up hating it. 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."

     

Version one was shown on The Ed Sullivan Show on 26 November, and again the following night on ABC's The Hollywood Palace. In Britain, however, the Beatles ran foul of the Musicians Union's ban on miming on television.

With the first clip scheduled to premier on the 23 November edition of Top of the Pops, George Martin mixed a version of the track without violas, since no musician was seen to be playing those instruments; the Beatles then allowed the BBC to film them at work editing Magical Mystery Tour on 21 November, in the hope that this new footage would replace any sections that contravened the ban.

Instead, Top of the Pops aired the song over scenes from the band's 1964 film A Hard Day's Night. For the 7 December edition of the same show, the BBC ran a clip comprising still photographs mixed with some of the editing-suite film – a combination that served as the promo for "Hello, Goodbye" throughout the remainder of its UK chart run. Wazzocks!

     

In his single review for Melody Maker, Nick Jones wrote : "Superficially it's a very 'ordinary' Beatles record without cascading sitars, and the involved, weaving hallucinogenic sounds that we've grown to love so much. However, all the Beatles soul and feeling is shining through ..."

Derek Johnson of the NME welcomed the simplicity of "Hello, Goodbye", describing it as : "Supremely commercial, and the answer to those who feel The Beatles are going too way out".

Cash Box's reviewer said that the song's closing section was "brilliant" and wrote: "Minimum of words, minimum of melody and practically no subject at all, yet the Beatles have a new side that packs a panchromatic rainbow of sound into the narrow limits that Lennon & McCartney have chosen to work with ..."

Other Versions include :   The Hollyridge Strings (1968)  /  Santo & Johnny (1968)  /  I Bit-Nik (1968)  /  Módulos (1970)  /  François Glorieux (1979)  /  Vitamin String Quartet (2007)  /  Nicotine (2009)  /  Yellow Magic Orchestra (2010)  /  Don Carlos (2010)  /  Danny McEvoy (2010)  /  ARTS (2010)  /  Ash (2011)  /  The Cure (2014)  /  Carol Saboya (2016)  /  Sophia Waernquist (2016)  /  a robot (2017)  /  Kelly Valleau (2018)  /  名古屋ギター女子部 (2019)

On This Day  :

3 December : 1st human heart transplant performed in South Africa by Dr Christiaan Barnard (on Louis Washkansky)
4 December : Bert Lahr, actor (Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz), dies at 72
7 December : The Beatles' "Apple Boutique" opens at 94 Baker Street, London
7 December : "How Now, Dow Jones" opens at Lunt Fontanne Theater NYC
7 December : Otis Redding records "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay"
8 December : The Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" Double-EP is released in UK
8 December : The Rolling Stones 'Their Satanic Majesties Request' LP is released in the UK
8 December : John Mills, Sr., (The Mills Brothers), dies aged 78.
9 December : Boorish rock oaf Jim Morrison arrested on stage for "disturbing the peace" in Connecticut [the old dirty bollocks!!]
10 December : The Bar-Kays (Carl Cunningham, Jimmy King, Phalin Jones, Ron Caldwell) die in plane crash
10 December : Otis Redding dies in a plane crash aged 26
11 December : Apple Music signs its 1st group - Grapefruit
11 December : People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine established
11 December : Supersonic airliner prototype "Concorde" 1st shown in France
13 December : US launches Pioneer 8 into solar orbit
13 December : Jamie Foxx, actor and musician, born Eric Marlon Bishop in Terrell, Texas
15 December : The Beatles release "Christmas Time is Here Again"
17 December : Harold Holt, Prime Minister of Australia, vanishes in mysterious circumstances while swimming near Melbourne.
22 December : Louis Washkansky dies 18 days after having first human heart transplant in South Africa.
22 December : Richey Edwards, (Manic Street Preachers), born Richard James Edwards in Blackwood, Monmouthshire, Wales
23 December : Carla Bruni, singer-songwriter & former 'First Lady of France', born Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi in Turin, Italy
25 December : Paul McCartney & the lovely Jane Asher get engaged
27 December : Leonard Cohen releases his debut album
29 December : Paul Whiteman "The King of Jazz", American Bandleader, dies aged 77
31 December : Evel Knievel breaks his pelvis, femur, wrist, hip and both ankles attempting to jump the Caesar's Palace Fountain, Las Vegas.
31 December : "Henry, Sweet Henry" closes at Palace Theater NYC after 80 performances

Extra! Extra!

                       

Read all about it! :

                     

[daf]

Let your Knickers Down!, it's . . .

241.  I Am the Walrus



From : 3 December 1967 – 20 January 1968
Weeks : 7
A-side : Hello, Goodbye
Bonus 1 : Drum 'n' Bass mix
Bonus 2 : Bootle Beatleg promo
Bonus 3 : Backwards
Bonus 4 : 800% Slower

The Story So Far : The Music

Recorded just four days after the completion of the Sgt Pepper album, Magical Mystery Tour was Paul McCartney's attempt to maintain momentum within The Beatles and to give them a new direction and sense of purpose.

Paul : "John and I remembered mystery tours, and we always thought this was a fascinating idea: getting on a bus and not knowing where you were going. Rather romantic and slightly surreal! All these old dears with the blue rinses going off to mysterious places. Generally there's a crate of ale in the boot of the coach and you sing lots of songs. It's a charabanc trip. So we took that idea and used it as a basis for a song and the film. I used to go to the fairgrounds as a kid, the waltzers and the dodgems, but what interested me was the freak shows: the boxing booths, the bearded lady and the sheep with five legs, which actually was a four-legged sheep with one leg sewn on its side. When I touched it, the fellow said, 'Hey, leave that alone!' these were the great things of your youth. So much of your writing comes from this period; your golden memories. If I'm stuck for an idea, I can always think of a great summer, think of a time when I went to the seaside. Okay, sand sun waves donkeys laughter. That's a pretty good scenario for a song."

Inspired by Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and their LSD-fuelled bus, McCartney decided The Beatles should try something similar. He devised a rough concept for the new project, which would involve the group travelling around the England in their own coach, filming whatever took place.

Paul : "Because those were psychedelic times it had to become a magical mystery tour, a little bit more surreal than the real ones to give us a licence to do it. But it employs all the circus and fairground barkers, 'Roll up! Roll up!', which was also a reference to rolling up a joint. We were always sticking those little things in that we knew our friends would get; veiled references to drugs and to trips. 'Magical Mystery Tour is waiting to take you away,' so that's a kind of drug, 'it's dying to take you away' so that's a Tibetan Book of the Dead reference. We put all these words in and if you were just an ordinary person, it's a nice bus that's waiting to take you away, but if you're tripping, it's dying, it's the real tour, the real magical mystery tour. We stuck all that stuff in for our 'in group' of friends really."

The title track was McCartney's initial idea, based on ideas written on an overnight flight from America on 11 April 1967, though what he took to the studio was little more than the title and three chords. He attempted to rouse the other Beatles into contributing lyrics, but their enthusiasm was low and later completed the lyrics alone.

Paul : "Magical Mystery Tour was co-written by John and I, very much in our fairground period. One of our great inspirations was always the barker. 'Roll up! Roll up!' The promise of something: the newspaper ad that says 'guaranteed not to crack', the 'high class' butcher, 'satisfaction guaranteed' from Sgt Pepper. 'Come inside,' 'Step inside, Love'; you'll find that pervades a lot of my songs. If you look at all the Lennon-McCartney things, it's a thing we do a lot."

The first Magical Mystery Tour session took place on Tuesday 25 April 1967. The Beatles spent much time rehearsing and improvising the song, with Paul at the piano suggesting ideas to the others in the group. Eventually they recorded three takes of the basic rhythm track: two guitars, piano and drums. Take three was the best. After this they raided the EMI studios sound effects collection, creating a tape loop of the sound of coaches to be added at the mixing stage.

On Wednesday, 26 April 1967, Paul recorded his bass part, and all The Beatles plus Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans played percussion instruments, including tambourine, maracas and cowbell. McCartney, Lennon and Harrison also taped extra vocals.

The following day still more vocals were added. Paul taped his lead, with backing from John and George. An overdub of four trumpets was added on 3 May. The session began by Paul humming notes to the brass players to let them know what he wanted, but he mostly failed to get his intentions across. In the end the players were sent away while McCartney and George Martin worked out the notation on the piano in Abbey Road's studio three. One of the trumpeters, Gary Howarth, reportedly became so impatient that he wrote a score himself. According to Philip Jones, a friend of the session musicians, that was the idea that The Beatles ended up using.

The recording of Magical Mystery Tour was completed on 7 November 1967. During the editing of the film, Lennon had added a spoken introduction: "Roll up, roll up for the Magical Mystery Tour! Step right this way! Hurry, hurry, hurry!" It was decided that this should be added to the record release too. Paul McCartney recreated Lennon's introduction, although he left out the "Hurry, hurry, hurry!" section. The tape loop of traffic noise, assembled back on 25 April, was also added, and the song was then mixed in mono and stereo.

Paul : "Magical Mystery Tour was the equivalent of a drug trip and we made the film based on that. 'That'll be good, a far-out mystery tour. Nobody quite knows where they're going. We can take 'em anywhere we want, man!' Which was the feeling of the period. 'They can go in the sky. It can take off!' In fact, in the early script, which was just a few fireside chats more than a script, the bus was going to actually take off and fly up the the magicians in the clouds, which was us all dressed in red magicians' costumes, and we'd mess around in a little laboratory being silly for a while."

 

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On Friday, 12 May 1967, The Beatles recorded "All Together Now". The childlike singalong written in the music hall tradition was written in the studio for the Yellow Submarine animated film. Paul McCartney came up with the idea for the song and wrote the verses and chorus, while Lennon contributed the 'Sail the ship, chop the tree' middle section.

John : "I put a few lines in it somewhere, probably."

Paul : "It's really a children's song. I had a few young relatives and I would sing songs for them. I used to do a song for kids called 'Jumping Round The Room', very similar to 'All Together Now', and then it would be 'lying on your backs', all the kids would have to lie down, then it would be 'skipping round the room', 'jumping in the air'. It's a play away command song for children. It would be in G, very very simple chords, only a couple of chords, so that's what this is. There's a little subcurrent to it but it's just a singalong really. A bit of a throwaway."

McCartney was delighted when the song became a popular terrace chant at football matches shortly after its release in early 1969.

Completed in a six-hour session, in the absence of George Martin, the song was essentially produced by Paul McCartney with assistance from engineer Geoff Emerick. It took the group nine takes to get right. They then added a number of overdubs, including ukulele and harmonica, both played by John Lennon.



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The next song to be recorded, "It's All Too Much", reflected George Harrison's experimentation with the hallucinogenic drug LSD. Recording began on Thursday, 25 May 1967, with the working title "Too Much", at De Lane Lea Studios in London.

George : "It's All Too Much was written in a childlike manner from realizations that appeared during and after some LSD experiences and which were later confirmed in meditation."

The Beatles recorded a number of rehearsal run-throughs before taping four takes of the rhythm track – Hammond organ, lead guitar, bass and drums. On Wednesday, 31 May 1967 - the day before the release of Sgt Pepper -  they returned to De Lane Lea, adding percussion, lead and backing vocals, and handclaps.

The finished song contained a couplet from The Merseys' 1966 hit single "Sorrow": "With your long blonde hair and your eyes of blue". The trumpeters, meanwhile, performed a motif from Jeremiah Clarke's Prince of Denmark's March.

George : "I just wanted to write a rock 'n' roll song about the whole psychedelic thing of the time. Because you'd trip out, you see, on all this stuff, and then whoops! you'd just be back having your evening cup of tea! 'Your long blond hair and your eyes of blue' – that was all just this big ending we had, going out. And as it was in those days, we had the horn players just play a bit of trumpet voluntarily, and so that's how that Prince of Denmark bit was played. And Paul and John just came up with and sang that lyric of 'your eyes of blue'."

Also destined for the Yellow Submarine film, the version used on the film soundtrack was 6'28" long. This was edited down from an eight-minute mix, that contained an unused verse : "Nice to have the time  /  To take this opportunity  /  Time for me to look at you  /  And you to look at me."

   

The song was completed on Friday, 2 June 1967, with the addition of four trumpets and a bass clarinet. The session took place between 8.30pm and 2am. One of the four trumpet players was David Mason, who also performed on 'Penny Lane', and Paul Harvey played the bass clarinet.

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Also recorded around this time were "Baby You're a Rich Man" - on Thursday 11 May /  "You Know My Name, Look Up the Number" - between 17 May and 9 June  /  and "All You Need is Love" between 14 - 26 June 1967. As previously covered on Toppermost #235 here and here

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The Beatles' first recording session since Monday, 26 June 1967, took place on Tuesday, 22 August 1967. "Your Mother Should Know" was begun in Chappell Recording Studios in Maddox Street, London, as EMI studios in Abbey Road was booked for other artists. They recorded eight takes of the backing track, with McCartney on piano and Ringo Starr on drums. McCartney then added two vocal overdubs onto the eighth take, and a rough mix was made.

The following day – their last session at Chappell – they recorded overdubs for the song. This was also Brian Epstein's last-ever visit to a Beatles recording session.

[Engineer] John Timperley : "He came in to hear the playbacks looking extremely down and in a bad mood. He just stood at the back of the room listening, not saying much."

'Your Mother Should Know' was written by Paul McCartney for the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack at his home in London. It took its title from the screenplay of A Taste Of Honey, and the music harked back to the golden age of British music hall.

Paul : "I wrote it in Cavendish Avenue on the harmonium I have in the dining room there. My Aunty Jin and Uncle Harry and a couple of relatives were staying and they were in the living room just across the hall, so I just went to the dining room and spent a few hours with the door open with them listening. And I suppose because of the family atmosphere Your Mother Should Know came in. It's a very music-hall kind of thing, probably influenced by the fact that my Aunty Jin was in the house."

It's likely that 'Your Mother Should Know' was briefly considered for the Our World satellite broadcast of 25 June 1967. The Beatles went instead with 'All You Need Is Love', a simpler message and one more readily understood by a worldwide audience. But the idea of a big old-fashioned singalong clearly stayed with McCartney when planning the Magical Mystery Tour film.

Paul : "The big prop was that great big staircase that we danced down, that was where all the money went: in that particular shot on that big staircase. I said, 'Sod it, you've got to have the Busby Berkeley ending,' and it is a good sequence. Just the fact of John dancing, which he did readily. You can see by the fun expression on his face that he wasn't forced into anything."



On Saturday, 16 September, they began a remake, recording 11 more takes. The arrangement was harmonium, piano, vocals and drums, with a military-style snare rhythm. The remake was eventually abandoned, and on Friday, 29 September, Lennon and McCartney completed the song by going back to the Chappell tapes and overdubbed organ and bass.

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On Tuesday 5 September 1967 The Beatles began work on one of the soundtrack's highlights, John Lennon's surrealist masterpiece 'I Am The Walrus'.

Sixteen takes of the rhythm track were recorded during this session, which began at 7pm and ended at 1am the following morning. Lennon played a pianet electric piano, McCartney played bass on the initial takes and later switched to tambourine, while George Harrison was on electric guitar and Ringo Starr played drums. Lennon also sang a guide vocal to help the band follow the song. At this stage there was an extra bar prior to the "Yellow matter custard" verse, which caused the group some problems when performing. The bar was eventually removed during the editing stage.

The following day, The Beatles continue work on 'I Am The Walrus' - a reduction mix was made, known as take 17, which combined all four parts on track one of the tape. McCartney and Starr then overdubbed bass guitar and snare drum onto track three, along with John Lennon's vocals, snarled with such ferocity that the studio levels often peaked and distorted. Radio DJ Kenny Everett, who was present at the session, explained why Lennon's vocals were so raw.

Kenny Everett : "George Martin, their producer, was working with John on the vocal track and he said: 'Look, you've been singing now for about seven hours, you're beginning to sound hoarse, why don't we do it tomorrow?' John wanted to get it done that day and that's why he sounds so raucous on that track."



'I Am The Walrus' then left until Wednesday, 27 September, when the orchestral and choral overdubs were recorded. George Martin conducted the 16-piece orchestra in an afternoon session in Abbey Road's Studio One, and in the evening the Mike Sammes Singers were brought in to Studio Two.

Paul : "John worked with George Martin on the orchestration and did some very exciting things with the Mike Sammes Singers... Most of the time they got asked to do Sing Something Simple and all the old songs, but John got them doing all sorts of swoops and phonetic noises. It was a fascinating session. That was John's baby, great one, a really good one."

The orchestral musicians were recorded simultaneously with a reduction mix, in EMI Studio Two. It took seven attempts, with take 20 being the best, featuring pianet, electric guitar, drums and tambourine on track one; brass and contrabass clarinet on track two violins on track three, and cellos on track four. A reduction mix was then made, numbered take 25, which combined all the orchestral instruments onto track four, and The Beatles' backing track on track one, with track two left empty. The Mike Sammes Singers then overdubbed their vocals onto track three. The singers, eight female, eight male, were seasoned session performers. George Martin's rather unorthodox score consisted of a series of whoops, "ho ho ho, he he he, ha ha ha", "Got one, got one, everybody's got one", and "Oompah, oompah, stick it up your jumper" - This phrase was most likely derived from memories of Leslie Sarony's 1936 song "Umpah Umpah".

George Martin : "The idea of using voices was a good one. We got in the Mike Sammes Singers, very commercial people and so alien to John that it wasn't true. But in the score I simply orchestrated the laughs and noises, the whooooooah kind of thing. John was delighted with it."

John : "I had this whole choir saying 'Everybody's got one, everybody's got one.' But when you get thirty people, male and female, on top of thirty cellos and on top of the Beatles' rock 'n' roll rhythm section, you can't hear what they're saying."

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On Friday, 29 September 1967, the final overdub took place, and it was a memorable one. The first part of the song came from mix 10, and lasted up until the end of the second chorus. From then it was joined to mix 22, which incorporated a live radio feed from the BBC Third Programme, the day before it became Radio 3.

That night a broadcast of Shakespeare's King Lear was broadcast, and Lennon's radio happened to settle on Act IV, Scene VI featuring Gloucester, Edgar and Oswald, played by Mark Dignam, Philip Guard and John Bryning respectively.



The first excerpt moves in and out of the text, containing fragments of lines only. It begins where the disguised Edgar talks to his estranged and maliciously blinded father the Earl of Gloucester:

    Gloucester: Now, good sir, wh—
    Edgar:  — poor man, made tame by fortune —  good pity —

In the play Edgar then kills Oswald, Goneril's steward. During the fade of the song the second main extract of text is heard :

    Oswald: Slave, thou hast slain me. Villain, take my purse.
                  If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body,
                  And give the letters which thou find'st about me
                  To Edmund, Earl of Gloucester; seek him out
                  Upon the British party. O, untimely Death!
    Edgar: I know thee well: a serviceable villain;
                As duteous to the vices of thy mistress
                As badness would desire.
    Gloucester: What, is he dead?
    Edgar: Sit you down father, rest you.

John : "We did about half a dozen mixes and I just used whatever was coming through at that time. I never knew it was King Lear until, years later, somebody told me – because I could hardly make out what he was saying. It was interesting to mix the whole thing with a live radio coming through it. So that's the secret of that one."

As the King Lear radio feed had been incorporated directly into the mono mix rather than the multitrack tape, when mixing the stereo version, the second half of the song switched to a 'fake stereo' version of mono mix 22 - by slashing the treble from one channel and the bass from another. [This was removed for the 2009 re-issues, replacing the 'fake stereo' section with the original mono mix.]

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On Wednesday, 29 March 1967, biographer Hunter Davies observed the creation of a new song as Lennon and McCartney worked on 'With A Little Help From My Friends', at McCartney's house in London.

Hunter Davies : "At 2 o'clock in the afternoon John arrived at Paul's house in St. John's Wood. They both went up to Paul's workroom at the top of the house. It is a narrow, rectangular room, full of stereophonic equipment and amplifiers. ... John started playing his guitar and Paul started banging on his piano. For a couple of hours they both banged away. Each seemed to be in a trance until the other came up with something good, then he would pluck it out of a mass of noises and try it himself.

"Paul then went back to his guitar and started to sing and play a very slow, beautiful song about a foolish man sitting on the hill. John listened to it quietly, staring blankly out of the window, almost as if he wasn't listening. Paul sang it many times, la la-ing words he hadn't thought of yet. When at last he finished, John said he'd better write the words down or he'd forget them. Paul said it was OK. He wouldn't forget them. It was the first time Paul had played it for John. There was no discussion."

Six months later, on Wednesday, 6 September 1967, McCartney taped a solo demo "The Fool on the Hill".

Paul : "'The Fool On The Hill' was mine and I think I was writing about someone like Maharishi. His detractors called him a fool. Because of his giggle he wasn't taken too seriously. It was this idea of a fool on the hill, a guru in a cave, I was attracted to."

John : "Now that's Paul. Another good lyric. Shows he's capable of writing complete songs."

Sessions for "The Fool on The Hill", with the full group, began on Monday 25 September 1967, with three takes of the rhythm track, and a range of overdubs onto the third take. Also present at the session were two Japanese journalists: reporter Rumiko Hoshika and photographer Koh Hasebe from the magazine Music Life. A number of photographs of The Beatles at work were subsequently published, and rehearsals of the song and interviews were also recorded. This is also believed to be the first Beatles recording session attended by Yoko Ono.

 

The next day, Tuesday, 26 September, The Beatles began recording the song afresh. The remake had Paul's piano on one track, Ringo's drums and cymbals on another, and acoustic guitar and maracas on a third. Track four featured overdubs of celeste, more piano and a recorder. Following a reduction mix, to allow for more overdubbing, McCartney added double-tracked lead vocals and a recorder solo, while Lennon and Harrison added bass harmonicas. A tape loop featuring a flourish of slowed-down guitars was also added to the fourth track.

The finishing touches to 'The Fool On The Hill' were recorded on Friday, 20 October 1967. Three flautists – Jack Ellory and brothers Christopher and Richard Taylor – added their contribution, scored by George Martin to the suggestions of McCartney.

McCartney decided to go to France to film the 'Magical Mystery Tour' sequence, taking with him Mal Evans and cameraman Aubrey Dewar. Despite having no money or passport with him, he managed to talk his way through customs. The sequence was filmed in the mountains near Nice, shortly after sunrise.

Filmed at dawn on Tuesday, 31 October, the location was in the mountains inland from the city. McCartney mimed to the song as Dewar filmed the sunrise. The clip was the only musical segment filmed at an exterior location and using professional photography, and the shoot took place when the rest of the Magical Mystery Tour footage was well into the editing stage.

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'Blue Jay Way', George Harrison's contribution to the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack, was written while he was waiting for The Beatles' publicist Derek Taylor, who was lost in fog in the Los Angeles canyons.

The rhythm track of 'Blue Jay Way', including the distinctive swirling organ part, was recorded in one take on Wednesday, 6 September 1967. Crucial to the recording was ADT – artificial double tracking, a technique invented by EMI engineer Ken Townsend in 1966 – which gave the woozy phasing effect. The vocals – [which were played backwards only in the final stereo mix] – were recorded the following evening. The final overdubs – cello and tambourine parts – were added on Friday, 6 October 1967.

The cello part was played by Peter Willison. He was booked at short notice by Sidney Sax, who helped enlist a number of session musicians for Beatles recordings. Willison recorded the part and was paid in cash – the at standard rate of £27.

Peter Willison : "I was playing at the Albert Hall beforehand and arrived at the studio after 10. As I was in tails Ringo said I didn't have to dress for them. There were no other musicians there, no music stand and no music. George Martin asked me to listen to the track and just play along. We experimented a bit and finally at 4 am we were finished."

In the Magical Mystery Tour film, 'Blue Jay Way' was one of the movie's most psychedelic sequences, Harrison's appearance is subjected to prism refractions to create multiple images.

It was shot mainly at RAF West Malling, an air force base near Maidstone in Kent, during the week beginning on 19 September. It features Harrison sitting on a pavement and playing a keyboard chalked onto the ground. Dressed in a red suit, he is shown busking on a roadside; next to his keyboard are a white plastic cup and a message written in chalk, reading: "2 wives and kid to support".



In its preview of Magical Mystery Tour in 1967, the NME highlighted the segment as one of the film's "extremely clever" musical sequences, saying: "For 'Blue Jay Way' George is seen sitting cross-legged in a sweating mist which materialises into a variety of shapes and patterns. It's a pity that most TV viewers will be able to see it only in black and white."

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On Friday, 8 September 1967, The Beatles recorded six takes of 'Flying'.

Originally titled 'Aerial Tour Instrumental', it was a mostly instrumental recording with wordless vocals from all four Beatles, it was recorded as incidental music for the Magical Mystery Tour film. It was the first Beatles recording to have a songwriting credit featuring all four members, and the only Beatles instrumental released by EMI.

Paul : "'Flying' was an instrumental that we needed for Magical Mystery Tour so in the studio one night I suggested to the guys that we made something up. I said, 'We can keep it very very simple, we can make it a twelve-bar blues. We need a little bit of a theme and a little bit of a backing.' I wrote the melody. The only thing to warrant it as a song is basically the melody, otherwise it's just a nice twelve-bar backing thing. It's played on the Mellotron, on a trombone setting. It's credited to all four, which is how you would credit a non-song."

The instrumental underwent various changes during the session, and a saxophone jazz solo was used during the lengthy coda, sampled from an unidentified modern jazz recording. Take six featured drums, organ and guitar. Three organs, recorded then played backwards over the basic rhythm track, were then added, and John Lennon recorded the main melody on a Mellotron. Following this, all four Beatles taped their chanted vocals.

'Flying' was completed on Thursday, 28 September, with the addition of more Mellotron from Lennon at the end of the track, guitar by Harrison and various percussion instruments played by Starr. The end of the recording originally included a fast-paced traditional New Orleans jazz-influenced coda, but this was removed and replaced with an ending featuring tape loops created by John Lennon and Ringo Starr.

At this point the tune was 9:36 long, so it was edited down to the more manageable form in which it appeared on the Magical Mystery Tour EP.

In the Magical Mystery Tour film, 'Flying' was used to accompany landscape scenes of Iceland taken from an aeroplane. These sequences were unused outtakes from Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr Strangelove.

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On Friday, 29 September 1967, John Lennon and George Harrison took part in an interview with David Frost for The Frost Programme on this evening. It was recorded before a studio audience between 6pm and 7pm at Studio One at Wembley Studios in London.

It included such gems as "Buddha was a groove, Jesus was all right." from Lennon, and "I believe in reincarnation. Life and death are still only relative to thought. I believe in rebirth. You keep coming back until you have got it straight. The ultimate thing is to manifest divinity, and become one with The Creator." from Harrison.

Shown on ITV from 10.30pm, the programme also featured an interview with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, which had been recorded earlier in the day at London Airport.

 

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Hello, Goodbye was written too late to feature in the Magical Mystery Tour film, although it did appear over the end credits. The song's simplicity, much like previous single 'All You Need Is Love', was tailored to be understood by an international audience.

Paul : "The answer to everything is simple. It's a song about everything and nothing ... If you have black you have to have white. That's the amazing thing about life."

Under the working title "Hello Hello", the Beatles taped the basic track for the song on 2 October, with George Martin producing the session and Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott as engineers. The recording was unusually straightforward, relative to the experimentalism that had characterised much of the Beatles' studio work since completing Sgt. Pepper. The line-up on the take selected for overdubs, take 14, was McCartney on piano, Lennon on Hammond organ, George Harrison on maracas, and Ringo Starr on drums. The band members then added tambourine, conga drum and bongos over the coda. This last section of the song came about while the group were working in the studio.

John : "The best bit was the end, which we all ad-libbed in the studio, where I played the piano. Like one of my favourite bits on 'Ticket to Ride', where we just threw something in at the end."

Paul : "From the recording aspect I remember the end bit where there's the pause and it goes 'Heba, heba hello'. We had those words and we had this whole thing recorded but it didn't sound quite right, and I remember asking Geoff Emerick if we could really whack up the echo on the tom-toms. And we put this echo full up on the tom-toms and it just came alive. We Phil Spector'd it. And I noticed that this morning and I said to Linda, 'Wait! Full echo on the toms, here we go!' And they came in quite deep, like a precursor to Adam and the Ants."

The Beatles returned to the song on Thursday, 19 October, two days after attending a memorial service for Brian Epstein at the New London Synagogue on Abbey Road. At this session, Harrison added his lead guitar parts (treated with Leslie effect), McCartney recorded the lead vocal, and Lennon, McCartney and Harrison supplied backing vocals; handclaps were also overdubbed.

Two violas were added on Friday, 20 October. These string parts were played by classical musicians Kenneth Essex and Leo Brinbaum, and scored by George Martin based on a melody by McCartney.

Leo Birnbaum : "Paul McCartney was doodling at the piano and George Martin was sitting next to him writing down what Paul was playing."

Kenneth Essex : "All of The Beatles were there. One of them was sitting on the floor in what looked like a pyjama suit, drawing with crayons on a piece of paper."

The 1967 Christmas Fan Club Single :

The Beatles' fifth fan club Christmas record was recorded and mixed on Tuesday 28 November 1967, between 6pm and 2.45am. This was the group's final recording session in 1967.

The song, credited to Lennon-McCartney-Harrison-Starkey, was titled 'Christmas Time (Is Here Again)'. It featured all four Beatles on vocals, as well as producer George Martin and actor Victor Spinetti.

 

The theme song was taped in a single take, with Paul McCartney on piano, George Harrison playing an acoustic guitar, Ringo Starr on drums and John Lennon joining in on a bass drum. The Beatles then added two sets of lead vocals, singing the title phrase repeatedly, and Starr singing "O-U-T spells 'out'". The song had 10 verses, the last of which was instrumental. The group then recorded 10 takes of speech and sketches, overlaid with sound effects.

Possibly inspired by the broadly similar "Craig Torso" specials produced for BBC Radio 1 that same year by the Beatles' friends and collaborators the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, it included parodies of radio and television broadcasts, a tap dancing duet by Starr and Spinetti, a brief rendition of Plenty Of Jam Jars by "The Ravellers", and a spoof advert for the miraculous product Wonderlust, and ends with "When Christmas Time Is Over" - a nonsense poem narrated by a Scottish John Lennon, backed by Auld Lang Syne on a wheezing harmonium.

 

Once recording was complete, the song was mixed in mono. Four mixes were made, of take 1 (music), and takes 2, 6 and 10 (speech). The parts were edited together on the following day, The uncut version lasted 6'37", but was later edited to remove swearing and excessive laughter. The completed version was then sent to Lyntone Records, who pressed the fan club flexi-disc.



While UK fans received a flexi-disc in an elaborate sleeve, North American fans only received a postcard - Bah, Bumhug!

The Single :

"I Am the Walrus" was written by John Lennon, credited to Lennon–McCartney, and performed by The Beatles.



The song was written in August 1967, at the peak of the Summer of Love and shortly after the release of Sgt Pepper. Lennon later claimed to have written the opening lines under the influence of LSD.

John : "The first line was written on one acid trip one weekend, the second line on another acid trip the next weekend, and it was filled in after I met Yoko."

I Am The Walrus was a composite of three song fragments. The first part was inspired by a two-note police siren Lennon heard while at home in Weybridge. This became "Mr city policeman sitting pretty...". Hunter Davies recounted the beginnings of the second part in his 1968 biography of The Beatles -

Hunter Davies : "He'd written down another few words that day, just daft words, to put to another bit of rhythm. 'Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the man to come.' I thought he said 'van to come', which he hadn't, but he liked it better and said he'd use it instead."

The third part started from the phrase "sitting in an English country garden" which Lennon was fond of doing for hours at a time, the lazy sod. Lennon repeated the phrase to himself until a melody came.

John : "I don't know how it will all end up. Perhaps they'll turn out to be different parts of the same song – sitting in an English garden, waiting for the van to come. I don't know."

The song's title came from Lewis Carroll's poem The Walrus And The Carpenter, from the book Through The Looking Glass. Lennon later realised with dismay that he'd identified with the villain of the piece.

John : "It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll was commenting on the capitalist system. I never went into that bit about what he really meant, like people are doing with the Beatles' work. Later, I went back and looked at it and realised that the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh, shit, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, 'I am the carpenter.' But that wouldn't have been the same, would it?"

     

John : "'Walrus' is just saying a dream – the words don't mean a lot. People draw so many conclusions and it's ridiculous... What does it really mean, 'I am the eggman'? It could have been the pudding basin for all I care. It's not that serious."

The eggman of the chorus, while possibly a reference to Carroll's Humpty Dumpty, has been attributed to The Animals' lead singer Eric Burdon following a particularly notable incident recounted to Lennon at a London party.

Eric Burdon : "It may have been one of my more dubious distinctions, but I was the Eggman – or, as some of my pals called me, 'Eggs'. The nickname stuck after a wild experience I'd had at the time with a Jamaican girlfriend called Sylvia. I was up early one morning cooking breakfast, naked except for my socks, and she slid up beside me and slipped an amyl nitrate capsule under my nose. As the fumes set my brain alight and I slid to the kitchen floor, she reached to the counter and grabbed an egg, which she cracked into the pit of my belly. The white and yellow of the egg ran down my naked front and Sylvia slipped my egg-bathed cock into her mouth and began to show me one Jamaican trick after another."

Bluuurgh - you dirty, dirty bastard!

Eric Burdon : I shared the story with John at a party at a Mayfair flat one night with a handful of blondes and a little Asian girl. 'Go on, go get it, Eggman,' Lennon laughed over the little round glasses perched on the end of his hook-like nose as we tried the all-too-willing girls on for size."

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The lyrics contained surreal imagery and several nonsense words coined by Lennon. As such, it owed more to his books In His Own Write and A Spaniard In The Works than anything The Beatles had previously recorded.

John : "You know, you just stick a few images together, thread them together, and you call it poetry. Well, maybe it is poetry. But I was just using the mind that wrote In His Own Write to write that song. There was even some live BBC radio on one track, y'know. They were reciting Shakespeare or something and I just fed whatever lines were on the radio into the song."

According to Lennon's childhood friend Pete Shotton, he was further inspired to turn the song into a nonsense tour-de-force after receiving a letter from Stephen Bayley, a pupil at his old primary school Quarry Bank. The letter revealed that a teacher was having his class analyse Beatles lyrics. Lennon asked Shotton to remind him of a playground rhyme they'd known from childhood :

Yellow matter custard, green slop pie,
all mixed together with a dead dog's eye.
Slap it on a butty, ten foot thick.
Then wash it all down with a cup of cold sick.

This became "Yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog's eye", followed by a stream of mostly meaningless nonsense. "Let the fuckers work that one out," was his response to Shotton when he'd finished. 'Semolina pilchard', according to Marianne Faithfull, was a reference to Detective Sergeant Norman Pilcher, the notoriously anti-drug zealot who made it his mission to bust people from the music world for possession of illegal substances. Elsewhere, the beat poet Allen Ginsberg made an oblique appearance:

John : "I'd seen Allen Ginsberg and some other people who liked Dylan and Jesus go on about Hare Krishna. It was Ginsberg, in particular, I was referring to. The words 'Elementary penguin' meant that it's naive to just go around chanting Hare Krishna or putting all your faith in one idol. In those days I was writing obscurely, à la Dylan. "

   

The BBC banned the song for the lines "pornographic priestess" and "let your knickers down". As Hunter Davies recorded, the lines were particularly admired by George Harrison.

George : "Why can't you have people fucking as well? It's going on everywhere in the world, all the time. So why can't you mention it? It's just a word, made up by people... It doesn't mean a thing, so why can't we use it in a song? We will eventually. We haven't started yet."

Critical reception at the time of the track's release was largely positive:

Derek Johnson : "John growls the nonsense (and sometimes suggestive) lyric, backed by a complex scoring incorporating violins and cellos. You need to hear it a few times before you can absorb it"

Nick Logan : "Into the world of Alice in Wonderland now and you can almost visualise John crouching on a deserted shore singing 'I am the walrus' to some beautiful strings from far away on the horizon and a whole bagful of Beatle sounds, like a ringing doorbell and someone sawing a plank of wood. A fantastic track which you will need to live with for a while to fully appreciate"

However, Rex Reed of HiFi/Stereo Review said that : "I Am the Walrus defies any kind of description known to civilized man. Not only is it ugly to hear, lacking any cohesion of style or technique, but it is utterly silly and pointless. The song begins with an intro sounding suspiciously like one of John Barry's James Bond film scores. The whole thing fades out to what sounds like people being fried on electric fences and pigs rooting in a bucket of swill."

 

Seen in the Magical Mystery Tour film singing the song, Lennon, apparently, is the walrus; on the track-list of the accompanying soundtrack album, however, underneath "I Am the Walrus" are printed the words " 'No you're not!' said Little Nicola".

Since the "Hello, Goodbye" single and the "Magical Mystery Tour" EP both reached the top two slots on the British singles chart in December, "I Am the Walrus" holds the distinction of reaching numbers one and two simultaneously.

Other Versions include :   The Hollyridge Strings (1968)  /  Lord Sitar (1968)  /  Bud Shank (1968)  /  Freddie McCoy (1968)  /  John Andrews Tartaglia (1969)  /  Spooky Tooth (1970)  /  Lol Coxhill (1971)  /  Simon Park  (1974)  / Leo Sayer (1976)  /  Crack the Sky (1978)  /  "Ich bin das Walroß" by Klaus Lage (1980)  /  Greymatter (1984)  /  John Otway (1991)  /  Men Without Hats (1991)  /  Oasis (1994)  /  Die Toten Hosen (1996)  /  Foetus (1996)  /  Colin's Hermits (1996)  /  Jim Carrey (1998)  /  The Swingle Singers (1999)  /  Brian Melvin Trio (2000)  /  Styx (2006)  /  Frank Sidebottom (2008)  /  Flaming Lips (2011)  /  Laurence Juber (2012)  /  The Beatles' Magical Orchestra (2012)  /  Stevie Riks (2015)  /  Danny McEvoy (2019) /  Mike Fowler (2019)

On This Day  :

2 January : Cuba Gooding Jr, actor, born Cuba Mark Gooding, Jr. in The Bronx, New York
2 January : Christiaan Barnard performs 2nd heart transplant (on Philip Blaiberg)
2 January : Cecil Day-Lewis is appointed British Poet Laureate
5 January : Dr Benjamin Spock indicted for conspiring to violate draft law - Live long and prosper!
8 January : Otis Redding's single "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" released, less than a month after the plane crash that claimed his life.
9 January : Surveyor 7 space probe soft lands on Moon
11 January : Explorer 36 (GEOS-B) launched into earth orbit (1080/1570 km)
13 January : Johnny Cash performed his historic concert at the Folsom State Prison in California
13 January : "Hallelujah, Baby!" closes at Martin Beck Theater NYC after 293 performances
13 January : "Illya Darling" closes at Mark Hellinger Theater NYC after 320 performances
14 January : LL Cool J [Ladies Love Cool James], rapper, born James Todd Smith in Bay Shore, New York
18 January : "Happy Time" opens at Broadway Theater NYC
20 January : Actress Sharon Tate marries director Roman Polanski in Chelsea, London

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! :

                             

[famethrowa]

Am I right in remembering one of the Bee Gees having a bit of a strop about the "knickers" as well?

[daf]

Thanks for reminding me - I've got the 'letters page' response somewhere in my bulging files, I'm just going to see if I can hunt down the original article . . .

. . . Found it! - Disc and Music Echo 17 February 1968 - bit hard to read, so I've typed out the relevant bit.

Barry Gibb : "It's the same with the pop scene. The public want melody and emotion. That's why Engelbert sells so much. That, I imagine, is why our singles succeed. People are tired of sound effects and songs like 'I Am The Walrus' in which the Beatles use obscene lyrics for the first time. We also deplore the way some of these other groups dress on stage. They are taking the prestige out of pop. You should dress smartly for the public. An artist must shine for his audience."

[The readers letters in response are from 2 March 1968 - and handily print their full name and address so Bazza can nip round and pop some catshit through their letterbox!]

[kalowski]

One man's civilization is another man's jungle, yeah.
They say revolution's in the air,
I'm dancing in my underwear
'cause I don't care.

[daf]

Turn On, Tune In, and Roll Up, it's . . .

241b. (MM 192.)  The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour (Double EP)



From :  13 – 20 January 1968
Weeks : 1
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side A : Magical Mystery Tour / Your Mother Should Know
side B : I Am the Walrus
side C : The Fool on the Hill / Flying
side D : Blue Jay Way
- - - - - - - - - -
Bonus 1 : Trailer
Bonus 2 : Outtakes
Bonus 3 : Documentary
Bonus 4 : Aerial Tour Instrumental

The Story So Far : The Film

On Friday 1 September 1967, following the death of Brian Epstein, The Beatles convened at Paul McCartney's house in St John's Wood, London, to discuss their future.

McCartney asked The Beatles' publicist Tony Barrow to arrive an hour before the rest of the group. He wanted to stop The Beatles from losing momentum, and although there was talk of a trip to India to study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, McCartney wanted them to press on with the Magical Mystery Tour project.

Tony Barrow : "Paul produced his now-legendary drawing of a Magical Mystery Tour cake sliced up into segments to represent eight essential sequences for inclusion in the film. He had written key words that would prompt him when describing the proposed production to others: Commercial, Introduce Tour, Get On Coach, Courier Introduces, Recruiting, Marathon, Laboratory Sequence, Stripper & Band, End Song? ...

"Paul made it clear to me that his aim was to make a feature-length film for full-scale theatrical release and he felt that a successful screen 'tour' would go a long way towards plugging the gaping hole left by the axing of the Fab Four's concert trips. Indeed, if Paul had managed to produce one successful theatrically released feature film with The Beatles each year, a far bigger potential audience would have seen the group than did in the touring years, and the profit margin for the boys would have been enormous."

 

Tony Barrow : "When the rest arrived he delegated different Beatles to take care of each segment, encouraging them to come up with their own musical and/or comedy content for specific sequences that would last 10 or 15 minutes. He said his concept was based on the old idea of seaside coach trips, mystery tours, 'but this one will have an additional touch of fantasy because four magicians will be at work to make wonderful things happen'. Paul insisted that filming must begin the following week, by which time we'd need to have a big yellow bus organised and decorated, a supporting cast of professional actors and variety artists, the necessary cameramen and technical crew and a route for the bus to take us down to Cornwall, our West Country destination."

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The filming of The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour was mostly done in two week-long periods. The first began on Monday 11 September 1967.

It was traditional for pop package tours, involving several bands, to begin at London's Allsop Place, near to Baker Street underground station. Paul McCartney decided that the mystery trip should start at the same location at 10.45am.

The coach, however, was still being decorated with the Magical Mystery Tour lettering and colours. The passengers – included family, friends, fan club staff, actors and other selected travellers – were made to wait two hours for its arrival. While waiting, McCartney went to the London Transport café above Baker Street station, where he bought a cup of tea and signed autographs. He then went to Soho with Mal Evans to purchase appropriate uniforms for the driver and courier.

 

As the coach left London on the A30, Neil Aspinall gave each person a £5 note to cover their meals for the week. There were 43 people on the coach, including the group and the film technicians. John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were picked up in Virginia Water, Surrey, close to their homes.

Filming began soon after, with scenes improvised on the coach and during a lunch break at the Pied Piper restaurant in Basingstoke, Hampshire. Late in the evening the coach arrived at its first destination, the Royal Hotel at The Den, Teignmouth, Devon, where the entire party spent the night.

The Beatles arrived at the hotel in a car, having swapped vehicles just outside the town in a bid to remain incognito. Nevertheless, they were greeted by 400 local teenagers, who had discovered their supposedly secret plans and waited in the rain to catch a glimpse of the stars. At the hotel McCartney gave an impromptu press conference, where he gave an outline of The Beatles' plans for the film. He and Neil Aspinall then sorted out room arrangements for the coach party, before discussing the next day's shooting with Lennon and technical director Peter Theobalds.

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Tuesday 12 September 1967 was the first full day of filming. The coach had arrived in Teignmouth in Devon on the previous night, and the party stayed at the Royal Hotel. Following breakfast on this day, the coach set off once again and headed for the Dartmoor village of Widecombe.

The annual village fair was being held in Widecombe, and it was decided that filming should take place there. However, the driver Alf Manders took a shortcut in order to beat traffic queues, and the coach became stuck on a narrow bridge. The coach had to be reversed for half a mile, and tempers frayed on board. Footage was made of on-board arguments, though none was used. In the end The Beatles decided to abandon the trip to the fair, disappointing some local fans who had heard about their impending arrival.

 

The mystery trip continued instead to Plymouth on the A38. The party had lunch in the Grand Hotel, situated on the famous Plymouth Hoe, where The Beatles posed for photographers from national newspapers, and John Lennon and Paul McCartney were also interviewed by BBC TV reporter Hugh Scully.

 

The party then boarded the coach once more, and continued along the A38. Stops were made at Liskeard and Bodmin – where filming took place outside West End Dairy in Higher Bore Street and on Paull Road. For the latter scene, the courier Jolly Jimmy Johnson, played by Derek Royle, boarded the coach and welcomed everybody. The sequence was used at the beginning of the film.

The final destination for the day was the Atlantic Hotel on Dane Road, Newquay. The Beatles had intended to stay for just one night, but eventually decided to use it as a base for three nights. They slept in four holiday flats.

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On Wednesday 13 September 1967, filming began in Watergate Bay in Newquay in the south west of England.

In the late morning The Beatles and some of the hired actors were taken to the bay. There, the group were filmed looking through a telescope, although the scene failed to make the final cut. Aunt Jessie was also filmed with Buster Bloodvessel (Ivor Cutler) on Tregurrian Beach, although the BBC cut it too, having decided it was unsuitable for viewers.

 

Following lunch at Newquay's Atlantic Hotel, afternoon filming took place in two separate groups. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr took the coach and most of the passengers to Porth near Watergate Bay. During the journey Starr and Aunt Jessie ad libbed an argument for the cameras. In the late afternoon, on the beach at Porth, McCartney was filmed walking and cycling on a tandem with Little George the Photographer, played by George Claydon.

Back in the Newquay hotel, John Lennon directed a sequence in which Happy Nat the Rubber Man, played by Nat Jackley, chased bikini-clad women around the swimming pool. The shoot continued on the cliffs at nearby Holywell, although it was left out of the final edit.

George Harrison was the only Beatle not to take part in afternoon filming. Instead, he gave a lengthy radio interview to the BBC's Miranda Ward for the first edition of Radio 1's Scene And Heard on 30 September 1967.

 

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On Thursday 14 September 1967, filming began with a scene in a field near Newquay. In the morning the coach party set off to look for a secluded field. Upon setting up the camera and lighting equipment, however, crowds of onlookers meant police had to deal with a traffic jam. Two scenes were filmed in the field, only one of which – the passengers crowding into a small tent – was used. The other was of George Harrison meditating in the field while wearing an oversized blue jacket. The coach returned to the Atlantic Hotel in Newquay for a late lunch at 4pm, with music in the dining room provided by a resident band. Although the lunch was filmed, it was left out of the final cut.

In the evening, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Neil Aspinall and others, including BBC radio reporter Miranda Ward, visited a pub in Perranporth where they were joined by musician Spencer Davis, who was holidaying in the area with his family. The evening ended with a lock-in until after 2am, during which McCartney led a singalong around the pub piano. According to Miranda Ward, he sang "every pub standard bar 'Yellow Submarine', which he refused to play".

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Friday 15 September 1967, following breakfast on this morning, a brief scene was filmed in front of the coach and hotel in which the entire party cheered and waved to the cameras.

The coach then left for London, stopping for several scenes en route. The first of these was unused in the final edit, but involved people crowding into a tiny chip shop, Smedley's at 108 Roman Road in Taunton, Somerset. The Beatles were filmed firstly from behind the counter ordering food, and then in the main part of the shop eating their lunch. The shop's proprietors, James and Amy Smedley, were said to be the grandparents of Little Nicola , and Mrs Smedley's niece was employed to recruit extras for Magical Mystery Tour.

 

More filming took place in a country pub, a hall, a hostel and on board the coach. During the latter, accordionist Shirley Evans led the coach party with a number of singalong songs. The coach dropped John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr off in Virginia Water, Surrey. Paul McCartney remained on board until its final destination, Allsop Place in London.

 

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On Monday 18 September 1967, the second week of filming for the Magical Mystery Tour television special began with a visit to the Raymond Revuebar strip club in London's famous brown hole of sin, Soho. The Beatles and other passengers from the coach trip were filmed watching Jan Carson's topless strip, accompanied by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band performing Death Cab For Cutie.

In the final edit, a 'Censored' sign was superimposed to obscure Carson's unfettered knockers. The Beatles knew that, had they failed to do so, the BBC and other broadcasting companies would have cut the entire scene. Spoilsports!

 

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On Tuesday 19 September 1967, The Beatles decamped to West Malling Air Station in Maidstone, Kent for most of this week. The group had been unable to hire Shepperton, Twickenham or any other London film studios at short notice, so NEMS Enterprises hired the army base for the week. Interior and exterior shots were filmed here throughout the week.

Also on this day, Steve Winwood's group Traffic was approached by Paul McCartney, to see if they would perform their song 'Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush' in the film. Although the scene was filmed, it was unused in the final edit of Magical Mystery Tour.

 

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Thursday 21 September 1967 was the third day of filming at West Malling Air Station. The army base saw the filming of many of the interior and exterior shots for the television special. Among them was a scene in a hut outside the main hangar, in which Paul McCartney dressed up in army uniform as Major McCartney. Victor Spinetti appeared as a recruiting sergeant, and shouted instructions at Ringo Starr, Aunt Jessie and other passengers on the mystery trip.



On Friday 22 September 1967, Ringo Starr was filmed entering a shop and buying tickets for the tour from Lennon. The shop in question was the Town Newsagency at 90 High Street in West Malling, Kent. George Harrison was not present on the shoot, as he was bed-ridden and suffering from influenza.

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Saturday 23 September 1967 was the fifth day of filming at West Malling Air Station in Maidstone, Kent. Among the exterior shots filmed during the week at the army base were the marathon scene, which took place on the main runway and perimeter road; another in which a group of people including Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall had their picture taken by Little George the photographer; and a tug of war involving 12 children and blindfolded vicars.

The most memorable of the exterior shots, however, was for 'I Am The Walrus'. The Beatles mimed to the song at two locations at the airfield, including use of high anti-blast concrete walls atop which the group and four actors dressed as policemen stood.

 

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Sunday 24 September 1967 was the final day of filming for Magical Mystery Tour at West Malling Air Station.

A ballroom set was constructed in the huge aircraft hanger area, for the film's finale. Following lengthy rehearsals, The Beatles were filmed alongside 160 members of Peggy Spencer's formation dance team, miming and dancing to 'Your Mother Should Know'. The Beatles all wore white suits and carnations. Also in the scene were the rest of the cast, and 24 cadets from the West Malling branch of the Women's Royal Air Force.

 

Also on this day, a sequence was filmed in which the coach party, minus The Beatles, cheered and waved for the cameras, another in which the entire cast walked past the camera, and a scene in which Ivor Cutler performed his song "I'm Going in a Field" at a white organ, with contributions from The Beatles and the coach passengers. This scene was also cut from the final edit.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On Monday 25 September 1967 The Beatles began editing the Magical Mystery Tour television film. They had thought it would be completed in a week, but it took a total of 11 weeks. The editing was done by Roy Benson, who had worked as an editor on A Hard Day's Night, at Norman's Film Productions on Old Compton Street in Soho.

Paul : "He and I got our heads together and I said, 'Well, look, we've shot all this, and we've got clapper boards on some of it.' He said, 'Not on everything?' I said, 'No, no. No, some of it we just shot, but I'm sure it synchs.'"

These edit sessions typically lasted from 10am to 6pm each day, after which The Beatles often went to EMI studios at Abbey Road for a recording or mixing session. Approximately 10 hours of film was cut down to just 52 minutes, resulting in a large amount of unused footage.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On Sunday 29 October 1967, another scene was filmed for the Magical Mystery Tour television special in Battersea in south London. Ringo and Aunt Jessie were filmed arguing while walking up Acanthus Road and turning into Lavender Hill, where they were greeted by Jolly Jimmy Johnson the courier and Miss Wendy Winters the hostess before boarding the coach.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Although the studio recording of 'The Fool On The Hill' was complete, there was no suitable film footage available for the song. On Monday 30 October 1967 Paul, Mal Evans and cameraman Aubrey Dewar flew to France to shoot a daydream sequence in various locations in Nice. McCartney forgot his passport and money, but managed nonetheless to get through customs.

Paul : "I told them, 'You know who I am so why do you need to see a photograph of me in a passport?'"

No filming was done on this day. Instead, the party checked into a hotel, and the following day, Tuesday 31 October 1967, Paul, Mal, and Aubrey were woken at 3.30am by a taxi driver, who had been hired to take them to locations in Nice where they could film a sequence for 'The Fool On The Hill'.

Paul : "We just asked the local taxi driver, 'Where is a good place to see the sunrise from?' Nice was fairly easily accessible. It had good mountain scenery and I figured we might get a good clear sunrise down there. It was the right time of the year. We all piled in the taxi and drove up into the mountains behind Nice. It took us about an hour and sunrise was in about half an hour. We unpacked the stuff from the boot, loaded up his camera, set up the tripod where we knew the sun would rise, and waited in the freezing cold. I had a big long black coat on and we just waited until the the sun arose. And I just danced around and he filmed it.

"I just ad-libbed the whole thing. I went, 'Right, get over there: Let me dance. Let me jump from this rock to this rock. Get a lot of the sun rising. Get a perfect shot and let me stand in front of it.' I just had a little Philips cassette to mime to and roughly get the feeling of the song. There was no clapper because there was no sound. Just my cassette. I said, 'We'll lay in the sound of "Fool on the Hill" afterwards.' I'm miming sometimes, but of course it should be in synch, that's what clappers are for. I didn't know these small technicalities, and also I wasn't that interested in being that precise."

 

Paul : "We stayed until the sun went down. As the day went on, the light got worse. It got to be harsh daylight, so we got less material in the daytime. We basically used all the dawn stuff. And that was it. It was very spontaneous, as was the whole of Magical Mystery Tour. Later, when we came to try to edit it all, it was very difficult because I hadn't sung it to synch. We shouldn't have really had just one cameraman, it was anti-union. That was another reason to go to France. The unions wouldn't have allowed it in Britain, nor probably in France, but they didn't know we were doing it. It was just the four of us; there was none of this grips, best boy, gaffer, none of that. In fact, our biggest danger was that the film didn't conform with one union rule."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On Friday 3 November 1967, the filming of the Magical Mystery Tour special was completed with sequences for George Harrison's song 'Blue Jay Way' shot at Sunny Heights, Ringo Starr's house in Weybridge.

The Beatles were filmed in Starr's back garden, with each band member pretending to play a white cello. When prior scenes for the song were filmed in West Malling in September 1967, a cello had not been recorded for the song, hence the need for additional footage now. Harrison was also filmed running down some steps in the garden, children played nearby, and the cello was shown with lit fireworks behind it. Inside the house, Mal Evans stood bare-chested as the West Malling sequence was projected onto him, and The Beatles were filmed watching the footage on a screen.

   

The Story So Further

On Monday 9 October 1967, John Lennon celebrated his 27th birthday. Since 27 September 1967 he had been receiving daily postcards from the artists Yoko Ono, after subscribing to her postal art event 13 Days Do It Yourself Dance Festival. Each morning participants received a short instructional message. This day's message, the final in the series, said: "Color yourself. Wait for the spring to come. Let us know when it comes."

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Thursday, 12 October 1967, was the first recording session for which John Lennon was officially listed as a producer. It saw work on two songs, George Harrison's 'Blue Jay Way', and some incidental music for the Magical Mystery Tour film .

'Shirley's Wild Accordion' was a Lennon-McCartney composition, although it wasn't officially a Beatles recording. It featured Shirley Evans on accordion, accompanied by her musical partner and then husband Reg Wale on percussion. Paul McCartney also played maracas and yelled "Go on, Shirl!", while Ringo Starr played drums.

 

The track was recorded under the working title of 'Accordion (Wild)', and was cut from the final edit of the film - where it was used as the music to the "Nat's Dream" sequence. It was recorded in eight basic takes, with Evans playing from a score written by Mike Leander from ideas by Lennon and McCartney. Three mono mixes Shirley's Wild Accordion were made, in addition to 'Wild', the second was subtitled 'Waltz', and the third was known as 'Freaky Rock'.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Although The Beatles didn't attend Brian Epstein's funeral in Liverpool on 29 August, they did attend a memorial service on Tuesday 17 October 1967. The service was held at the New London Synagogue at 33 Abbey Road, London, close to EMI Studios. It began at 6pm.

   

Other NEMS artists, including Cilla Black, Gerry Marsden, The Fourmost and Billy J Kramer also attended. The service was officiated by Rabbi Louis Jacobs, who praised Epstein for "encouraging young people to sing of love and peace rather than war and hatred." This was in sharp contrast to the rabbi at Epstein's funeral in Liverpool, who described him as "a symbol of the malaise of our generation", the sanctimonious prick!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On Wednesday 18 October 1967 All four Beatles, along with their wives and girlfriends, attended the première of Richard Lester's film 'How I Won The War' at the London Pavilion. The film, which had been shot in Spain in 1966, featured John Lennon as Private Gripweed. For the premiere Lennon wore a psychedelic outfit, Harrison sported an orange jacket and black velvet trousers, while Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr dressed more conservatively in evening suits.

 

Other guests at the event were Jimi Hendrix, David Hemmings, his wife Gayle Hunnicut, and singers Cilla Black, Anita Harris and Cass Elliot. A party was held afterwards at Cilla Black's apartment at 9b Portland Place.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On Monday 27 November 1967, two weeks ahead of the UK EP release, Capitol Records released the Magical Mystery Tour LP.  In the UK The Beatles chose to issue the six songs from the film as a double gatefold EP with a 28-page booklet, however, because EPs were not popular in the US at the time, Capitol added the tracks from that year's non-album singles.

The first side contained all the UK film soundtrack songs, although in a different order from the EP - closing with "I Am the Walrus", rather than "Blue Jay Way". Side two contained both sides of the band's two singles released up to this point in 1967 : "Strawberry Field Forever"  /  "Penny Lane"  /  "All You Need is Love"  / "Baby You're a Rich Man",  along with "Hello, Goodbye".

The Beatles were displeased about this reconfiguration, since they believed that tracks released on a single should not then appear on a new album.

John : "It's not an album, you see. It turned into an album over here, but it was just meant to be the music from the film."

On Capitol's stereo version of the LP, "Penny Lane", "Baby, You're a Rich Man" and "All You Need Is Love" – were presented in duophonic stereo sound , while "Strawberry Fields Forever" featured the original stereo mix prepared on 29 December 1966, where the trumpets and cellos pan abruptly from left to right at the point where takes 7 and 26 are joined. Later versions - [including the 1987 and 2009 CDs] - all use a 1971 stereo remix, originally prepared for the West German issue of the album, that omits the panning effect at the join point, but adds a right-to-left panning to the swarmandal.

 

When preparing the US release, Capitol enlarged the photos and illustrations to LP size inside a gatefold album sleeve. The cover design was done by John Van Hamersveld, the head of Capitol's art department, working from the artwork sent from EMI in London. He recalled that Capitol's vice-president of distribution was concerned about how to market a record where the Beatles' faces were hidden behind their costumes, since cover portraits had been key to the success of the group's US LPs. Van Hamersveld therefore augmented the "underground graphic" cover image with a design concept that highlighted the songs.

The artwork was later cited by proponents of the crackpot 'Paul is dead' theory as evidence of McCartney's alleged demise in November 1966. "Clues" included the appearance of a black walrus (Lennon in costume) on the front cover, which was thought to signify death in some areas of Scandinavia; McCartney wearing a black carnation in an image from the "Your Mother Should Know" film sequence; and, on another page from the booklet, McCartney seated behind a sign reading "I WaS". And final proof, reading clockwise, the stars on the cover join together to spell out "E burres stigano" which is very bad spanish for "Have you a water buffalo?"



Among reviews of the American LP, Saturday Review hailed Magical Mystery Tour as the Beatles' best work yet, superior to Sgt. Pepper in emotion and depth, and "distinguished by its description of the Beatles' acquired Hindu philosophy and its subsequent application to everyday life".

Hit Parader said that "the beautiful Beatles do it again, widening the gap between them and 80 scillion other groups." Remarking on how the Beatles and their producer "present a supreme example of team work"

Richard Goldstein of The New York Times concluded: "Does it sound like heresy to say that the Beatles write material which is literate, courageous, genuine, but spotty? It shouldn't. They are inspired posers, but we must keep our heads on their music, not their incarnations."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On Tuesday 5 December 1967, Two days ahead of the opening of The Beatles' Apple Boutique at 94 Baker Street, London, a launch party and fashion show was held in the building. Invitations to the party read 'Come at 7.46. Fashion Show at 8.16.' The times had been chosen by John Lennon.

Lennon and George Harrison were the only Beatles to attend the launch; Paul McCartney was on holiday in Scotland, and Ringo Starr was filming Candy in Italy. As there was no alcohol licence at the boutique, the only drink available was apple juice. Various celebrities were in attendance, and Lennon, Harrison and Cilla Black were interviewed by radio reporter Brian Cullingford for the BBC. It was broadcast at 10pm on Late Night Extra.

The concept of the boutique was that absolutely everything was for sale. It was described by Paul McCartney as 'a beautiful place where beautiful people can buy beautiful things'.

John : "Clive Epstein or some other such business freak came up to us and said, 'You got to spend so much money or the tax'll take it. We're thinking of opening a chain of retail clothes,' or some barmy thing like that. And we were all muttering about, 'Well, if we're going to have to open a shop, let's open something we're interested in.' We went through all these different ideas about this, that and the other. Paul had a nice idea about opening up white houses where it would sell white china and things like that, everything white because you can never get anything white, which is pretty groovy. It didn't end up with that, it ended up with Apple, with all this junk and The Fool and all the stupid clothes and all that."

   

The Fool, who had designed the red psychedelic 'inner bag' for Sgt Pepper, were given £100,000 to design and stock the boutique with their garments and accessories, and to decorate the building.

One of The Fool's designers, Barry Finch, employed several dozen art students to paint a psychedelic mural across the building's front between 10 and 12 November 1967. Westminster Council had refused them permission but The Fool decided to press on regardless. Within two weeks of the boutique opening, however, complaints from local traders resulted in the council issuing Apple with an order to repaint the building in its original colour. Idiots!

The boutique was managed by John Lennon's schoolfriend Pete Shotton, along with Pattie Harrison's sister Jenny Boyd. It was, however, a commercial failure and closed within eight months. Shoplifting was the main problem, with customers and staff alike proving unwilling to pay for The Fool's designs. The boutique lost £200,000 with a large proportion of the stock stolen by both customers and staff. The Beatles ended up giving away the shop's remaining stock when the Apple Boutique closed on 31 July 1968.

   

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

After four years together, on Monday 25 December 1967 Paul McCartney and Jane Asher announced their engagement to be married.

McCartney and Asher had been together for five years, since meeting at the Royal Albert Hall in 1963. However, McCartney had continued to sleep with other women throughout their relationship, mainly while The Beatles were touring, considering it permissible as they weren't married. In addition to his infidelities, Asher had found McCartney changed since his experiences with LSD, and her commitment to her career meant they were often heading in different directions.

In 1968 he began an affair with an American woman, Francie Schwartz. Asher arrived unexpectedly at McCartney's home in Cavendish Avenue, London, where she reportedly found him in bed with Schwartz. She walked out and sent her mother to collect her belongings, and on 20 July 1968 announced to the BBC that the relationship was over.

Jane Asher : "I haven't broken it off, but it is broken off, finished. I know it sounds corny, but we still see each other and love each other, but it hasn't worked out. Perhaps we'll be childhood sweethearts and meet again and get married when we're about 70."

Paul : "I always feel very wary including Jane in The Beatles' history. She's never gone into print about our relationship, whilst everyone on earth has sold their story. So I'd feel weird being the one to kiss and tell. We had a good relationship. Even with touring there were enough occasions to keep a reasonable relationship going. To tell the truth, the women at that time got sidelined. Now it would be seen as very chauvinist of us. Then it was like: 'We are four miners who go down the pit. You don't need women down the pit, do you? We won't have women down the pit.' A lot of what we, The Beatles, did was very much in an enclosed scene. Other people found it difficult – even John's wife, Cynthia, found it very difficult – to penetrate the screen that we had around us. As a kind of safety barrier we had a lot of 'in' jokes, little signs, references to music; we had a common bond in that and it was very difficult for any 'outsider' to penetrate. That possibly wasn't good for relationships back then."



Paul : "I think inevitably when I moved to Cavendish Avenue, I realised that she and I weren't really going to be the thing we'd always thought we might be. Once or twice we talked about getting married, and plans were afoot but I don't know, something really made me nervous about the whole thing. It just never settled with me, and as that's very important for me, things must feel comfortable for me, I think it's a pretty good gauge if you're lucky enough. You're not always lucky enough, but if they can feel comfortable then there's something very special about that feeling. I hadn't quite managed to be able to get it with Jane."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On Tuesday 26 December 1967, having been edited to 55 minutes from nearly 10 hours of footage, The Beatles' television film Magical Mystery Tour had its world première on BBC 1 at 8.35pm.

Paul : "It was shown on BBC1 on Boxing Day, which is traditionally music hall and Bruce Forsyth and Jimmy Tarbuck time. Now we had this very stoned show on, just when everyone's getting over Christmas. I think a few people were surprised. The critics certainly had a field day and said, 'Oh, disaster, disaster!'"

Although filmed in colour, Magical Mystery Tour was shown in black and white. Viewers were left baffled by many of the sequences, and television critics savaged the production.

Ringo : "Being British, we thought we'd give it to the BBC, which in those days was the biggest channel, who showed it in black and white. We were stupid and they were stupid. It was hated. They all had their chance to say, 'They've gone too far. Who do they think they are? What does it mean?' It was like the rock-opera situation: 'They're not Beethoven.' They were still looking for things that made sense, and this was pretty abstract."

The press coverage the following day was almost wholly hostile -

Daily Express : "The bigger they are, the harder they fall. And what a fall it was... The whole boring saga confirmed a long held suspicion of mine that The Beatles are four rather pleasant young men who have made so much money that they can apparently afford to be contemptuous of the public."

The Daily Sketch : "Whoever authorised the showing of the film on BBC 1 should be condemned to a year squatting at the feet of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi."

The Sun : "The BBC switchboard was overwhelmed last night by people complaining about The Beatles' film Magical Mystery Tour. Some people protested that the BBC 1 programme was incomprehensible."

Evening News : "It's a long day's night since any TV show took the hammering that this Beatles fantasy received by telephone and in print. Take your pick from the words, 'Rubbish, piffle, chaotic, flop, tasteless, non-sense, emptiness and appalling!' I watched it. There was precious little magic and the only mystery was how the BBC came to buy it."



Paul : "If this morning, we'd awoke to find fantastic reviews then we would have all said, 'It's a success.' But it doesn't matter all that much, 'cause people said about two of our records, like Strawberry Fields and 'I Am The Walrus' to name but two. They said, 'Those are terrible,' you know, 'You can't talk about let your knickers down on telly. You can't do it.' But you can, you know. I've just done it! And it's alright, you know. Because, in about a year or two, these things that didn't look like successes will look a bit more like successes... you know, as people get into that kind of thing."



A proportion of the criticism was directed at the BBC itself, which paid £10,000 for the rights to show Magical Mystery Tour. The film attracted an estimated 20 million viewers, making it the most-watched programme during the Christmas period.

Paul : "The advice really, if we had taken it, after today's Trib would've been, 'You get a good choreographer, lads. A good director, producer. And get a lot of money behind ya, and we'll have 5,000 dancing girls, and we'll have you hanging from a Christmas tree. And it'll be great because it'll be...' and it's true, it would have been safe and set and everything. But we thought 'We'll try it our way, and if it doesn't work...' It doesn't matter too much that it wasn't the success that we'd hoped, you know, for that reason. Because still, at least we were able to be ourselves. And do what we thought was right."



Ringo : "It was a crowd of people having a lot of fun with whatever came into mind. It was really slated but, of course, when people started seeing it in colour they realised that it was a lot of fun. In a weird way, I certainly feel it stood the test of time, but I can see that somebody watching it in black and white would lose so much of it – it would make no sense (especially the aerial ballet shot). We sent a guy out filming all over Iceland, and then it was shown in black and white – I mean, what is this? Painted silly clowns and magicians. What does it mean?"

The EP :

Released on 8 December 1967, the soundtrack to Magical Mystery Tour included six tracks, a number that posed a challenge for the Beatles and their UK record company, EMI, as there were too few for an LP album but too many for an EP. One idea considered was to issue an EP that played at 33⅓ rpm, but this would have caused a loss of audio fidelity that was deemed unacceptable. The solution chosen was to issue the music in the innovative format of a Double EP.

 

As part of the unusual format, the Beatles decided to package the two EPs in a gatefold sleeve with a 24-page booklet. The record's cover featured a photo of the Beatles in animal costumes, taken during the shoot for "I Am the Walrus", and marked the first time that the band members' faces were not visible on one of their EP or LP releases. The booklet contained song lyrics, photographer John Kelly's colour stills from the filming, and colour story illustrations in the comic strip style by Beatles Book cartoonist Bob Gibson. It was compiled by Tony Barrow, with input from McCartney.



In line with the band's wishes, the packaging reinforced the idea that the release was a film soundtrack rather than a follow-up to Sgt. Pepper, which was still receiving critical plaudits and enjoying commercial success in late 1967.

In advance of the EP's release, Lennon promoted the soundtrack in an interview on the BBC Radio 1 show Where It's At. Lennon discussed the studio effects used on the new songs, including "I Am the Walrus", which received its only contemporary airing on BBC radio when disc jockey Kenny Everett played it as part of the interview broadcast on 25 November 1967. Due to the lyrics' inclusion of the incredibly rude word "knickers" it was banned from BBC radio.

Magical Mystery Tour was issued in the UK on 8 December, the day after the opening of their Apple Boutique in central London, and just over two weeks before the film was broadcast by BBC-TV. It retailed at the price of 19s 6d (97p in decimal money, the equivalent of £18 today). It was their thirteenth British EP and only their second, after 1964's 'Long Tall Sally', to consist of entirely new recordings.

   

In Britain, the film was screened on Boxing Day on BBC 1 [which at that time only broadcast in Black and White] to an audience estimated at 15 million. It was savaged by reviewers, giving the Beatles their first public and critical failure. As a result, the American broadcaster withdrew its bid for the local rights, and the film was not shown there at the time.

In Britain, EPs were included in the singles chart, and while it peaked at number 2 on the "official" Record Retailer chart, in the UK singles listings compiled by Melody Maker, it replaced "Hello, Goodbye" at number 1 for a week in January 1968.

Reviewing the EP a month before the film's screening, Nick Logan of the NME enthused that the Beatles were : "at it again, stretching pop music to its limits. The four musician-magicians take us by the hand and lead us happily tripping through the clouds, past Lucy in the sky with diamonds and the fool on the hill, into the sun-speckled glades along Blue Jay Way and into the world of Alice in Wonderland ... This is The Beatles out there in front and the rest of us in their wake."

Bob Dawbarn of Melody Maker described the EP as : "six tracks which no other pop group in the world could begin to approach for originality combined with the popular touch."

In Record Mirror, Norman Jopling wrote that : "whereas on Sgt. Pepper the effects were chiefly sound and only the album cover was visual, on Magical Mystery Tour the visual side has dominated the music, such that everything from fantasy, children's comics, acid psychedelic humour is included on the record and in the booklet."

   

Other Versions include :
Magical Mystery Tour |  Backwards  /  The Hollyridge Strings (1968)  /  Camel (1969)  /  Ambrosia (1976)  /  Cheap Trick (1991)  /  Hans Annéllsson (2002)  /  The Punkles (2003)  /  The Orgels (2008)  /  Danny McEvoy (with Jazzy and Chloe) (2010)  /  8-bit (2012)  /  a robot (2019)  /  Tony Rowden (2019)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Your Mother Should Know |  Backwards  /  800% Slower /  The Hollyridge Strings (1968)  /   Bud Shank (1968)  /  "La même chanson" by Les Baronets (1968)  /  "Ta mère ne sait pa" by Les Mersey's (1968)  /  "Din mamma hon minns" by Doris (1969)  /  Lana Cantrell (1969)  /  Kenny Ball & His Jazzmags (1972)  /  Danny McEvoy (2010)  /  Michel Morissette (2015)  /  a robot (2016)  /  Amy Slattery (2019)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Fool on the Hill |  800% Slower  /  Eddie Fisher (1968)  /  Bobbie Gentry (1968)  /  Lana Cantrell (1968)  /  Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 (1968)  /  Santo & Johnny (1968)  /  Stanley Turrentine (1968)  /  Four Tops (1969)  /  Vera Lynn (1969) /  Petula Clark (1969)  /  Shirley Bassey (1970)  /  Stone the Crows (1970)  /  Count Basie (1970)  /  Ramsey Lewis (1970)  /  The Anita Kerr Singers (1973)  /  Swingle II (1975)  /  Helen Reddy (1976)  /  François Glorieux (1976)  /  Sarah Vaughan (1981)  /  Sky (1984)  /  The Swingle Singers (2006)  /  Danny McEvoy (2010)  /  Marty Gold (2011)  /  a robot (2017)  /  alexsteb 8-bit (2017)  /  jorgenolla (2019)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Flying | Backwards /  800% Slower  /  Bud Shank (1968)  /  Rogério Duprat (1968)  /  Sounds Nice (1970)  /  Herbie Mann (1970)  /  The Residents (1970)  /  Shockabilly (1984)  /  Frank Sidebottom (1991)  /  Danny McEvoy and Jazzy (2010)  /  Hans Müller (2019)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Blue Jay Way  |  Backwards  /  800% Slower /  Bud Shank (1968)  /  Lord Sitar (1968)  /  Scenario (2002)  /  Beatlejazz (2002)  /  Danny McEvoy ft. Jasmine Thorpe (2010)

 

The Comic Strip

             

[purlieu]

Long John Baldry - Let The Heartaches Begin: There's a man whose voice doesn't suit his face. Fucking naff song, though. That's quite a career for someone I've never actually heard of.

All that Beatles stuff: I Am the Walrus was my favourite Beatles song as a kid (alongside Revolution 9). Hello Goodbye is a lot of fun too. The whole Magical Mystery Tour package is really rather good. I'm looking forward to the super-deluxe box in eight years' time.

[Satchmo Distel]

Interview with Aunt Jessie:

http://wogew.blogspot.com/2019/04/an-interview-with-aunt-jessie-robins.html

[The Culture Bunker]

Re 'Hello Goodbye', I always hear the lyrics as the version sung by Man United fans at the 1968 European Cup final: "Eusébio, but I say Kiddo..."

I remember being really impressed by "I Am The Walrus" when I first heard it 25 or so years ago, but it's not a Beatles track I'm inclined to revisit much now. I think the last two or three years of their time, I'm more inclined towards McCartney's output.

[Durance Vile]

My parents bought the Magical Mystery Tour EP - it must have been as my first Christmas present, because they didn't have any other pop records - and I absolutely loved it when I got old enough to play it. I must have spent hours and hours lying in front of the radiogram reading the booklet over and over again and admiring the weird artwork. When I finally saw the film years later, it was a bit of a let-down compared to the comic.

I Am The Walrus was always my favourite. Looking back, that EP was probably what got me interested in music in the first place.

[daf]

When I finally saw the film years later, it was a bit of a let-down compared to the comic.

Watched it for the first time a few nights ago - I'd been saving the blu-ray for over a year till I reached this point so I could watch it in context (also did this with both Hard Days Night and Help! #OCDnutcase)

Shame they cut out both Nat Jackley's bit and Ivor Cutler's song - as those were much better than some of the slightly toe-curling "sketches" they left in.

Ironically, both those unrestored scenes are in much better quality on the blu-ray than the actual film - as they went a bit overboard slapping on the film-grain reduction filter - making everything look disturbingly waxy . . .  and it was in 60fps - so it looked like it was shot on cheap video - Grrr!

[daf]

Sounding nice and warm, blowing up a storm, it's . . .

242.  Georgie Fame - The Ballad Of Bonnie & Clyde



From : 21 – 27 January 1968
Weeks : 1
Flip side : Beware Of The Dog
Bonus : Beat Club

The Story So Far : 

Following the minor hit "Try My World", which scraped into the Top 37 in September 1967, he took part in the International Song Festival held in Brazil with the song "Celebration", penned by Puppet on a String writers Bill Martin and Phil Coulter. He failed to win, but came back with a lovely suntan!

 

He soon bounced back with the chart topping "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde" in January 1968, selling over one million copies, and bagging a gold disc in the process.

 


Now nothing could possibly go wrong . . .

Georgie : "And then show business came in when we got to CBS because my manager wanted to get rid of the band, which I thought had generated the whole thing in the first place. The way the band played was what created the whole thing. Rick [Gunnell] got big ideas as a manager and he negotiated a deal with CBS for a very big advance, of which he pocketed quite a lot, and wanted to turn me into a solo singer. From then on, I had a very unhappy time."

 

For the next six years, it was to prove a constant battle to even pick any of the tunes he was covering.

Georgie : "They can't resist meddling - the non-players, the advisers, the so-called managers that don't actually play and don't sweat and their adrenaline doesn't flow when you're actually creating this stuff. They can't resist meddling to justify their existence and their percentage. The way the band played was what created the whole thing. I was very unhappy about it but I had to call the musicians in and give them the bad news."

His next single, "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" (b/w "For Your Pleasure") missed the charts in May 1968. But he was back in the Top 16 with the brilliant "Peaceful" (b/w "Hideaway") in September 1969, and "Seventh Son" (b/w "Fully Booked") was a #25 hit in December 1969. Although happy with the groovy upbeat numbers, it was hard for him to be told to cover soupy rubbish like "A House Is Not A Home from the 1969 album 'Georgie Does His Thing With Strings'.

 

Georgie : "Mike Smith was a very good in-house producer at CBS but it wasn't where I was coming from. I was thrown into an alien regime. I did a strings album that wasn't bad. At least it gave me the chance to sing some ballads but then again Mike Smith chose 70% of the repertoire and a lot of those tunes were tunes I would never consider singing. I managed to get in Everything Happens To Me and a couple of other nice tunes but most of it was selected for me. We used to have these discussions that verged on arguments – 'What do you want me to sing that for?' 'Well, this is what the company wants you to do blah, blah.'"

Two chart-dodgers followed in 1970 - "Somebody Stole My Thunder" saw him shaking a non-stop shoe in May, and a cover of James Taylor's "Fire And Rain" (b/w "Someday Man") in August 1970.

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

He had some success teaming up with 'House of the Rising Sun' copyright-thief Alan Price, scoring a Top 11 hit with "Rosetta" (b/w "John And Mary") in April 1971. But it was shortlived, as the follow up, "Follow Me" (b/w "Sergeant Jobsworth") sunk without trace in November 1971.

 

They soon found themselves on primetime Saturday Night telly, and, while they both enjoyed being in the company of comedians like Morecambe and Wise, Tommy Cooper and The Two Ronnies, doing frothy little two minute spots saw them struggling to make sense of it all.

Georgie : "We put ourselves together because we were good solid friends and still are. We loved the blues, rock & roll. He was doing in Newcastle what I was doing in Lancashire. So, the partnership never realised the artistic potential that was there because of that light entertainment element that dominated for two or three years and that's why we split in the end. We just said, 'This isn't going anywhere'."

Georgie cut a solo album for Reprise - 'All Me Own Work', and released the single "Hey Baby (I'm Getting Ready)" (b/w "City Hicker") in July 1972. The following year, Alan Price joined him on the label, and they released the single "Don't Hit Me When I'm Down" (b/w "Street Lights") in February 1973.

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In 1974 Chris Blackwell asked him to record an album for Island. The resulting platter, 'Georgie Fame', featured the single,"Everlovin' Woman", (b/w "That Ol' Rock And Roll"), released in September 1974.

The follow up, inspired by the "Rumble in the Jungle" boxing bout, was the single "Ali Shuffle" (b/w "Round Two"), which failed to be a "knock-out" with the public, and ended up crashing face-down on to the chart canvass in December 1974. In 1976 he released "Yes Honestly" (b/w "Lily") in March, and "Sweet Perfection" (b/w "Thanking Heaven") in June 1976.

At Blackwell's suggestion, Georgie reformed the Blue Flames. With an album, and the single "Daylight" (b/w "Three Legged Mule"), released in March 1977, the foundations seemed laid for a real comeback. But two things conspired against what might've been . . .

Firstly, the music press weren't really that interested - according to the NME : "Blue Flames Mk II made minimal impact, and Fame is probably better known today for his appearances in TV coffee commercials."  - The other thing that went wrong was the sheer size, and composition, of the new band.

Georgie : "The Blue Flames was really just 5 or 6 pieces but when a lot of musicians started hearing that this band was being formed, they all wanted to be in it and I foolishly allowed them in – people like Elton Dean and Marc Charig and Stan Sulzmann. So, we ended up with far too many – a band of lunatics it was and far too many of them (laughing). After that I thought, 'No, I just want a little unit that I can control and play the music I want to play.'"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In 1979, and now on the delicious Pye Label, he released the inevitable Disco single : "A Different Dream" (b/w "Ollie's Party") in March, and "Maybe Tomorrow" (b/w "Cats Eyes") in September 1979.

While still touring with the Blue Flames, he ventured into some new musical territories. In 1980 he teamed up with the Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra for the album 'Closing the Gap'. With Fame on vocal duties, Producer/arranger Lloyd Charmers contributed the lion's share of songs, including the singles "Give A Little More" in August 1980, and "I Love Jamaica" (b/w "Everything I Own"), released in Germany in 1983.

 

The tribute to songwriter Hoagy Carmichael, 'In Hoagland 1981', with singer Annie Ross, spawned two singles : "Drip-Drop" (b/w "One Morning In May") in July 1981, and "Hong Kong Blues" (b/w "The Old Music Master") in February 1982.

His next tribute was "The Hurricane" released in August 1982, and dedicated to snooker playing booze-hound Alex Higgins following his world snooker title victory in 1982.

 

He also co-wrote a musical – Singer - with composer Steve Gray based on the life of friend, singer Madeleine Bell, that was performed and broadcast on Dutch radio with the Metropole Orchestra.

Georgie : "In the autumn of 1984 composer and arranger Steve Gray and myself were involved in a concert for Dutch radio with the renowned Metropole Orchestra, with whom we had both worked individually in the past. Another member of that production was the well known Dutch entertainer Edwin Rutten. The three of us went to supper after the concert and Edwin suggested that Steve and I might compose an original work which could be performed with the Metropole Orchestra.

"In January 1985 I was on one of my regular tours of Australia when Steve called me in Sydney to say that he'd heard from Holland and the project was on!  Steve had prepared a handful of melodies and it was decided that the work should be about a female singer's life story – in a nut shell. We both agreed that the subject of the story should be played/sung by one of our great friends and favourite artists, Madeline Bell. I was to be the narrator and we had barely three weeks to complete the project. I had never been put under such pressure to meet a deadline but I am eternally grateful to Steve Gray for dragging me out of the lyricist's closet."



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From 1989 to 1997 Georgie worked and toured extensively with 'Ringworm' hit-maker Van Morrison. Despite their shared origins in 1960s pop, r&b and jazz, the two musicians were only passing acquaintances.

Georgie : "I got this message from Tristan, my son, who was at that time an engineer at Abbey Road. He said, 'Can you ring this number?' So, I did. At that time, we lived in Somerset and Van had a studio there. He said, he was doing this album and did I fancy playing a bit of organ. I walked in - the Hammond organ was down in the studio and he's up in the control room. I put the headphones on and I said, 'Okay, run it down and I'll just check it out.' It was a fairly straightforward blues and I was just feeling my way through this thing and it got to the end and I said, 'Right put it on and I'll do it.' He said, 'That's it. We've done it.' That's the way he works."



Georgie : "Those gigs were good for me because I started my career as a sideman and I've always enjoyed that aspect. As a sideman you don't have the responsibility of organising the whole thing. You turn up as a member of the team and you don't have to get involved in the logistic sides of things. That's why the old adage about the band leader being the worst musician in the band is probably true. Because we don't have time to practice. We're too busy organising. I'm the worst musician in my band!"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In 1989, he recorded another tribute album - "A Portrait Of Chet" - dedicated to Jazz Trumpeter Chet Baker, and including "You're Driving Me Crazy" and "The More I See You". He also recorded the stone cold classic "Vinyl" for the album 'Three Line Whip' album released in 1993.

 

Almost immediately as Georgie finally quit playing with Van Morrison, he got a call from "Je Suis Un Rockstar" hit-maker Bill Wyman, and ended up joining The Rhythm Kings.

Georgie : "So, I went right from one horse to another. We're all friends from way, way back. Like Albert Lee was playing with Chris Farlowe down the Flamingo at the same time as the Blue Flames. We're all part of the same mould. There's no egos and we have fun together. We play a lot of tunes from our school days. Bill loves Mose Allison, so I get a chance to sing a couple of Mose Allison tunes and Ray Charles things. Gary Brooker and me were both founder members on keyboards. You know it's Gary as soon as you hear him. I never realised because I always used to associate him with Procol Harum and this kind of slightly highbrow rock n'roll but he's like one of the great traditional rock n' rollers of all time. When he kicks of a Little Richard tune it sounds better than Little Richard."

Ever on the road, Georgie Fame continues to perform his unique blend of jazz/rhythm and blues for live audiences at clubs and music festivals throughout Europe.

The Single :

"The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde" was written by Mitch Murray and Peter Callander, and recorded by the British rhythm and blues singer Georgie Fame.



Written by Murray and Callander after seeing the then controversial gangster film Bonnie and Clyde, starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker and as Clyde Barrow, the song, in the style of the 1920s and 1930s, features the sounds of gun battles, car chases, and police sirens, including the climactic gun battle that takes place when both Bonnie and Clyde meet their end.

Mitch Murray : "I was amused to read the comment from the clever dick who said 'the song spoiled the entire movie for me 'The song was not even in the movie, and I should know; I co-wrote it."

     

The song is geographically inaccurate in that in the first verse they meet in Savannah, Georgia. In reality, both were from East Texas and there is no evidence the couple ever ventured that far east.

 

Released as a single, the song reached number one in the UK Singles Chart on 24 January 1968, remaining for one week. The song reached number seven in the United States later the same year.

Other Versions include :   Augusto Alguero y su orquesta (1968)  /  John Mogensen (1968)  /  Johnny Hallyday (1968)  /  Bruno Lomas (1968)  /  Los Mustang (1968)  /  Bárbara y Dick (1968)  /  Brian Dee (1974)  /  Danny McEvoy (2011)  /  Peter Doherty (2014)  /  Steve x (2015)  /  Steve Franks (2018)

On This Day  :

21 January : US B-52 bomber with nuclear bomb on board crashes in Greenland
22 January : "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" premieres on NBC
22 January : Unmanned Apollo Lunar Module is launched to Moon
27 January : Tricky, rapper, born Adrian Nicholas Matthews Thaws in Bristol
27 January : Mike Patton, (Faith No More), born Michael Allan Patton in Eureka, California
27 January : "Darling of the Day" opens at George Abbott Theater NYC for 31 performances

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! :

                   

[famethrowa]

Much appreciate the unexpected Ringworm shout-out there.

Bonnie & Clyde tho? Corny joke of a song. It's like renaming McCartney's Honey Pie "Pulp Fiction" and putting it out in 1995 with a bunch of gunshots all over it.

[daf]

Much appreciate the unexpected Ringworm shout-out there.

Any excuse! ;p

It's like renaming McCartney's Honey Pie "Pulp Fiction" and putting it out in 1995 with a bunch of gunshots all over it.

Coming straight after "Your Mother Should Know" too (via the MMT EP) - so this rinky-dink stuff was certainly in the air.

[daf]

 

[Retinend]

This thread is absolutely fantastic ("fab", in fact). I've had to print it out to read it because it's so rich. Are you drawing on some sort of digital archive for many of these textual sources, or just your own collection?

[daf]

This thread is absolutely fantastic ("fab", in fact). I've had to print it out to read it because it's so rich.

Aw, thanks mate!

Are you drawing on some sort of digital archive for many of these textual sources, or just your own collection?

It's all out there on the net - I just gather and sub-edit it together :

• All the press cuttings are from an amazing website : 1960smusicmagazines.com - who have scanned all the pages of 1960s pop magazines.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
•  The words are a combination of Wikipedia, Press interviews, and Fan websites - which are usually good for direct quotes from the musicians, which I like to use if I can.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
•  Most of the Beatles stuff is from The Beatles Bible for the history and song info, with anything extra from wikipedia.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
•  The singles release timeline and B-side info is from 45cat.com, albums from Discogs, and the chart positions are from Official Charts.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
•  'Other versions' are from SecondHandSongs  + Youtube search  /  'On this day' is a combination of wikipedia and OnThisDay
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[Johnboy]

have you seen this resource, daf

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/

check out the UK Music Magazines section

[daf]

Cheers!

Had a quick look & should come in handy!

[daf]

Neverlasting Line-ups, it's . . .

243.  Love Affair - Everlasting Love



From : 28 January – 10 February 1968
Weeks : 2
Flip side : Gone Are The Songs Of Yesterday
Bonus 1 : Promo
Bonus 2 : Steve Ellis on Everlasting Love

The Story So Far : 

The Love Affair started out as The Soul Survivors in early 1966, featuring Steve Ellis (vocals), Maurice 'Mo' Bacon (drums), Stephen Morgan Fisher (keyboards), Ian Miller (guitar), and Warwick Rose (bass).

They were managed by Maurice's father, Sidney Bacon. The Bacons were from Southgate; the rest of the band were recruited from nearby Finchley, where Maurice's father Sidney was the proprietor of a successful handbag factory.

Maurice Bacon : "I come from a family of drummers. Uncle Max was a famous drummer in the Ambrose Orchestra in the 30s. My father was a semi-pro drummer, and a cousin, Victor Feldman, was a famous session player. He played on Steely Dan's records. So after I started playing drums, my father formed a band for me by placing adverts in the paper."

Steve Ellis : "Around '63 I started a band with two brothers, I played drums on biscuit tins. We called ourselves Clifton Bystanders and we rehearsed in their front room. As we were only 13 the novelty wore off, but I had a taste for it. Two years later a friend of mine, who played the guitar, saw an add in the Melody Maker for a singer for a young band. As I was in a gang of about twelve blokes, I couldn't lose face so as a dare, I went for this audition. And that was the Soul Survivors: Maurice, myself, Morgan Fisher on keyboards."



Prior to joining, Morgan Fisher played with two high school bands, The Private Eyes and The Beat Circuit. The vocalist with both was Chris Ross - who went on to sing for the Glyndebourne Opera Company - There's posh!

Maurice Bacon : "My father was fairly wealthy. He invested a lot in the band, bought all the equipment and had a warehouse in Walthamstow in which we'd rehearse. And we had vans to go to gigs in."

Steve Ellis : "I knew Morgan already, we used to spend evenings together listening to soul music - Ian Miller on guitar and Warwick Rose on bass. This is early 1966. The first number I ever learnt to sing with the band was 'Keep On Running'."

Morgan Fisher : "The Soul Survivors were a good soul band. We were really hip and into the Stax label, and jazz - Jimmy Smith and stuff, and that's the kind of music we played, really. We had all these obscure records - the Sue label was another fantastic one, Billy Preston and stuff like that and we used to do really good soul music".

Soul music was very popular in England in 1966/67, and the Soul Survivors were in at the beginning, even getting a residency at the Marquee Club in London.

Steve Ellis : "We were a bit of a novelty as we were only kids, but we got better and better from playing that circuit and landed a residency at The Marquee, which we were pretty pleased about. We did The Flamingo which was predominantly a blues club, with the likes of Georgie Fame playing regularly so it was a tough audience to front, and the crowd were predominantly black and were into singers, but we got out alive with more than just a little self respect in tact."

In the summer of 1966 the band saw the first of many personnel changes: Georgie Michael and Mick Jackson replaced Ian Miller and Warwick Rose, respectively.



Mick Jackson : "I met Ollie Halsall and Mike Patto (of Timebox-fame) at Butlin's Summer Camp in Filey. They invited me to stay with them in London. I didn't stay long - I spotted an advertisement in the Melody Maker. A London based band were looking for a bassist, so I auditioned and got the job. This was the Love Affair - they were still called the Soul Survivors then."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In August 1966 the band signed a record contract with Decca Records, who came to rehearsals and said they loved the band. Sid Bacon hooked up with Decca's marketing director, John Cokell and the label's in-house photographer David Wedgbury, who eventually became co-managers. Around this time the band changed their name to The Love Affair.

Morgan Fisher : "We were doing great - but our manager said 'let us have a hit', he wanted us to become more pop. We changed our name to The Love Affair because there was already an American band called The Soul Survivors. They had a big hit record with "Expressway To Your Heart. Love Affair came from the name of a TV series at the time."

Steve Ellis : "I was happy with the Soul Survivors. There was talk of calling us Thin Red Line, the idea being to have a painted line down the middle of our heads that went down into the suit and trousers! Honestly! This was quite radical, almost like Clockwork Orange, but we went, no way, we're not 'avin' that!"

The Love Affair went into EMI studios in Abbey Road Studios for their first recording for Decca in November 1966.

Maurice Bacon : "We'd done demos in little studios in Denmark Street but the first time we went in a proper recording studio was with Kenny Lynch. He wrote the Small Faces' hit, 'Sha La La La Lee' - he was this credible songwriter and the Small Faces were our idols. He came up with 'Woman Woman', which we recorded in Abbey Road in November 1966."

Next, the Love Affair hooked up with the now legendary producer Mike Vernon, who was working in-house at Decca at the time. In February 1967, they released a cover of the Rolling Stones' "She Smiled Sweetly", backed by "Satisfaction Guaranteed" - the b-side being a particular favourite of Geno Washington.

Steve Ellis : "Geno was a bit of a hero of the Soul Survivors, we thought he was great – an excellent show man. He was a fit bloke and was an ex-soldier, so he had it off pretty good as a front man he knew how to work an audience too."

 

When "Satisfaction Guaranteed" failed to chart, Cokell and Wedgbury, now acting in a management capacity, submitted many songs to the band, one of which was a track by Davy Jones (a.k.a. Dave Bowie) called "Cobbled Streets and Baggy Trousers".

Steve Ellis : "I knew 'Satisfaction Guaranteed' wouldn't be a hit. I wasn't into the Stones, anyway, so it was a bad decision. But we were kids. Then our management came in with 'A Whiter Shade Of Pale' by Procol Harum, touting it about, but there was no way we could better that. It was fabulous. So we passed on that one. It wasn't really us - it was too hippie."

By this time, despite their youth, the band had made their presence felt in clubland.

Maurice Bacon : "At that point, we were fairly cool. We played at the Speakeasy, the Bag O'Nails. We'd play residencies - every Saturday at the Marquee for a month. We played three/four nights a week around the country to make a living - even though, initially, we were still at school. We had left school and gone professional for nearly a year, gigging, before we started having hits."

Steve Ellis : "We'd rehearse and rehearse, play and play. We did all the London soul clubs - the Marquee, Tiles, the Flamingo, the Kilt and the Ricky Tic. We were mad on Stax, Motown, Chess, a bit of Beach Boys. My favourite singers were Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett, Ray Charles, the Impressions, most definitely Otis Redding. I love David Ruffin's voice - beautiful - and James Brown's."

But their chief role model was undoubtedly the Small Faces.

Steve Ellis : "they were kindred spirits - them and the Who. The Marriott/Lane partnership was superb. Those two bands were four/five years older than us. The Move were something else, too. On a good night at the Marquee, they were phenomenal - they were more West Coast pop, Byrds covers. We'd see Georgie Fame, brilliant, a major talent; Zoot Money, Graham Bond, Geno Washington, Cliff Bennett, Eric Burdon."

Decca eventually dropped the band when "She Smiled Sweetly" didn't chart. In the spring of 1967 the Love Affair visited R.G. Jones' studios in Morden, South London to cut some demos. By then Rex Brayley had replaced Georgie Michael on guitar. Rex had previously been in a Hounslow, London based band called 'The Dae-b-Four' with his brother Brian.

Maurice Bacon : "We did a lot with R.G. Jones. He was great. I've still got an acetate on Oak from May 1967, 'Do You Dream', written by Steve and Morgan."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In the summer of 1967 Morgan Fisher left the band to go to college, he was still only 17! Morgan was initially replaced by Peter Bardens, who only stayed for a few months - eventually going on to join Camel, and then with Lynton Guest who joined on keyboards.

Lynton Guest : "I answered an advert for a keyboard player in the coolest music mag of the day, Melody Maker. I was 16 and decided to go to London from my home in Leicester for the audition. That was it for me, there was no way I was going back home even if I didn't get the job. As it happened, despite the fact that there were about 50 keyboard players at the audition, I got the job."



Island Records A&R Muff Winwood, took a liking in the band and booked them studio time. With Muff producing, the Love Affair recorded the Spencer Davis Group's "Back Into My Life Again" at Island. Acetates were cut, but despite the song's obvious commercial potential, the track was abandoned. Meanwhile, the lads stumbled across another potential cover version.

Maurice Bacon : "because John Cokell was at Decca, he heard Robert Knight's 'Everlasting Love', which was on their subsidiary label, Monument."

Steve Ellis : "The management put it on and we all loved it immediately. Muff wanted us to record it on our own - no orchestra, no nothing. Somewhere, there's a version just by the Love Affair."

There was just one problem with the Muff Winwood-produced version . . . Maurice Bacon : "no-one thought it was that good!"

By this time, the Love Affair had joined the books of the prestigious Starlight Agency for live bookings, alongside CBS artists like the Tremeloes, Anita Harris, and the Marmalade. That led them in turn to CBS's in-house producer Mike Smith, famous - alongside 'musical director' Keith Mansfield - for a polished, orchestrated, hard-hitting pop sound.

Maurice Bacon : "It was probably John Cokell's idea to do 'Everlasting Love' with an orchestra. None of us could read music and all these singles were made within three-hour sessions."

It was decided that Steve should sing but the backing - orchestra and all - would be played by session musicians.

Steve Ellis : "Mike Smith was brilliant, so talented. They had a 40-piece orchestra and you'd be in the back door at CBS Studios - bosh and you're on, three takes and that was that. I put the vocal on and the number was a bit special so everything just clicked. Obviously I felt odd without the band being in the studio but it was for the good of all involved. Two takes - done. The band were not too concerned about this approach to things, and it was hardly unheard of at the time for session men to replace a band on record, although we were probably too honest for our own good when we owned up to it."



Issued in December 1967, "Everlasting Love" was a barnstormer of a single. The following week, it climbed to #15, then #3 and #2 before topping the charts on 3rd February 1968.

Maurice Bacon : "From starting the band to recording 'Everlasting Love' was less than two years. I was 16 the week it went to no. 1. We did Top Of The Pops five weeks in a row - three as it was going up the charts and then it was no. 1 for two."

 

The practice of using session musicians on a pop record was commonplace but rarely acknowledged - that is, until the Love Affair appeared live on prime time TV.

Maurice Bacon : "We were on Jonathan King's show, Good Evening. He likes notoriety so he says to our bass player on live TV on a Saturday night, 'You didn't play on your record'. We looked at each other: 'No, we didn't'. He said 'But you did sing on it, didn't you?' 'Yeah.' The next thing, it's all over the papers: 'Band admit...'. So we got blacklisted from Top Of The Pops. One of the executives used to say, if you want to be on the programme, you have to buy my wife a washing machine as a token gesture of goodwill. We said, bollocks, no! We're in the charts, anyway. We refused so we got banned. There was loads of fuss but we were cocky and 17/18 so we didn't care - as long as we were playing to a good crowd."

     

Steve Ellis : "We were totally surprised by the instant success of it, but it is a good song. We were teenagers and we were enjoying every minute of it! We toured and played almost every night, sometimes twice a night, so it was hard work. It could be a burden because we could not go out as normal people, but who was complaining?"

Finding themselves at the top of the charts, the band went on a bender to celebrate -

Steve Ellis : "We were arrested for climbing to the top of Eros Piccadilly! This was a mad publicity stunt that appeared to have back fired at the time. We all had to appear in court, were charged and found guilty of breach of the peace, which I think was due to all the traffic having to come to a halt in rush hour. I wouldn't recommend it now!"

   

Sticking with the hit formula, the management had the band cover another Robert Knight song also written by Cason/Gayden. The gambit paid off and "Rainbow Valley", (b/w "Someone Like Me"), reached #5 in April 1968.

   

Meanwhile, a keen business eye led to a sponsorship deal with a famous cosmetics company.

Maurice Bacon : "We were one of the first bands to do a sponsored tour - with Yardley make-up. We did all the big Top Rank clubs and Yardley put their 'Pretty Goods' range in the foyers. I've got a ten-minute video that Yardley did of us. On the back of the cover of 'Rainbow Valley', girls could send off for a Yardley pack. We got paid a fortune, about £400 a show. I think the only act earning more money was Geno Washington & the Ram Jam Band."

 

Maurice Bacon : "We didn't play on any of the singles. We'd only have three hours so the easiest, most efficient way was for Keith Mansfield to score the whole thing, bring in session guys like Clem Cattini on drums and Herbie Flowers on bass and do it in two takes. Mansfield was only involved with the singles, when we used orchestras. Otherwise, it was John Goodison."

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Lacking confidence as composers, the band advertised for budding songwriters, which led them to Phillip Goodhand-Tait -

Steve Ellis : "Phillip Goodhand-Tait was the singer/keyboard player in The Stormsville Shakers, an early '60s soul band. He was class. Anyway, we got chatting after a gig he did in London and he started shooting songs at us. After a few tapes, we thought, this is good - so he wrote our next four singles, 'A Day Without Love', 'One Road', 'Bringing On Back The Good Times' and 'Baby I Know', plus album tracks. He was a good singer and keyboard player, kinda like a sixth member - though he didn't tour. It wasn't just like a conveyer belt."

 

Morgan Fisher rejoined the group in the summer having having finished the Sixth Form exams. His replacemnt, Lynton Guest, left and went on to form English Rose, who appeared in the pop culture exploitation movie, Groupie Girl.

Morgan Fisher : "I joined the band when I was still at school, and then various people convinced me I ought to stay at school to finish my 'A' Levels. So I left them for about six months, during which time they had a number one hit. I had no plan to come back, but after they had a number one hit I asked to come back and they were quite happy to have me back!"

 

The third single "A Day Without Love", (b/w "I'm Happy"), was released in September 1968. It reached #6 in the UK, no doubt helped by the bands frantic touring and many TV appearances, including Top Of The Pops and Beat Club in Germany.




Steve Ellis : "We played with Status Quo - good lads - and Terry Reid, who was brilliant and a nice fella, too. We became pals on a package tour - Gene Pitney, the Paper Dolls and the Ronnie Scott Band. We were touring constantly, flat out. It'd be, like, where the hell are we? We did a fantastic tour with Geno Washington and Amen Corner."

Morgan Fisher : "We did a big show in Paisley with them. As we were going on, they were still shouting, 'Geno, Geno!' We did gigs with the Marmalade, the Tremeloes, Chicken Shack. We did a Scott Walker package tour - with Gun and Terry Reid - and another with Herman's Hermits. We also headlined a tour, supported by Dave Berry. We even went to Germany and did that Beat Club programme in Bremen."

 

Their debut album 'Everlasting Love Affair' was released in December 1968 to cash in on the success of "A Day Without Love", but it wasn't promoted and failed to chart.

 

Maurice Bacon : "We were allowed to play on the B-sides and the album and write some of the tracks for the LP. We did the LP in bits and pieces at CBS's studio just behind Oxford Street. You had a day to record two numbers - on eight-track, everything was done pretty much live."

The album included the the first three CBS singles plus accomplished and memorable versions of "Hush"  /  "The First Cut Is The Deepest"  /  "Tobacco Road"  / "Handbags And Gladrags", and ended with a Small Faces-styled cockney knees-up, "Tale Of Two Bitters".



Steve Ellis : "I truly don't know what happened. There was no big album campaign, and just hardcore supporters bought it. Shame, as in retrospect the live studio tracks like 'Hush' captured what we were about without the orchestra. Love Affair were a kicking band, but we were labelled 'teenybop idols', and it just stopped people taking us a bit more seriously. Very disheartening for me and the band at the time."




Steve Ellis : "In an attempt to break the mould we recorded a song far removed from the anthemic-like previous hits."

With a more mature sound, the fourth CBS single - "One Road", (b/w "Let Me Know"), reached #16 in March 1969.

   

"Bringing On Back The Good Times" (b/w "Another Day") gave the band their final hit - reaching #9 in July 1969.

 

Despite the Top 10 hit, by the Summer of 1969, the cracks were beginning to show -

Maurice Bacon : "We were very obnoxious (laughs). The excesses affected different people in different ways. I've never taken drugs because my father was into health foods and yoga. But drink and drugs did come into the equation, which affected some more than others. Basically, the whole thing went pear-shaped."



Steve Ellis : "People thought we were manufactured, like the Monkees. That's bullshit. We were a gigging, functioning, up-and-running band. We got a lot of unfair flack. Morgan was a really good keyboard player and we were a tight little unit. But when it kicked into teenybop, you couldn't hear anything - ask Andy out of Amen Corner, the Small Faces, the Herd. It didn't matter what you played. It was just noise, complete chaos. You'd have to back a car up to get in the venue - and straight out. It was dangerous. Kids used to pull chunks off your hair."

 

In October, their next single "Baby I Know" (b/w "Accept Me For What I Am"), flopped, and in December 1969, Steve Ellis announced his departure.

Maurice Bacon : "We had a big meeting in my father's warehouse one day. Steve said, I'm going, I'm fed up with all this. And none of us were really upset. We breathed a sigh of relief, although we knew it was pretty disastrous. So Steve left, with our manager John Cokell. And we were still only on £35 a week - when the average wage was about £25."

Steve Ellis : "I was doing most of the recording and interviews. The stage show was mad. It was so physically demanding, like James Brown - double dynamite. I really went for it. At the Tottenham Royal, I'd swing on the curtains, across the chandeliers - anything went to make a good show. As you get older, you wise up. Towards the end, I thought, we're getting totally roasted here. It doesn't feel right. They said stay on, we'll give you X amount. No, I said, you're robbing us, I don't want to work with you. I always had an affinity with Morgan but I wanted to get into singing more. During gigs, you couldn't hear what you were singing. You weren't getting any musical payback. It was like Beatlemania. So I thought, I've got to walk."

 

Maurice Bacon : "Afterwards, CBS offered Steve a big deal to stay on the label as a solo artist - I think they gave him ten grand. That's why he stayed on CBS. Steve was getting fidgety. It was always him and us - well, Steve was a bit out there and some of the excesses were setting in. It was weird. We were all getting fed up with it and there was a bit of bad blood. The problem was, we started as a credible band and then became this sort of joke - with the stigma of not playing on the singles. Steve did as well. Singers always get affected more. I can hide behind a drum kit but the vocalist is, like, naked out front and takes everything personally - good or bad - because they're the front person."

Steve Ellis : "We were all growing up and growing apart. I had so much pressure on me as a front man that I needed a break and time to clarify what I was going to do musically. We never really made it big anywhere but Britain and I think that if we had started to happen in America, I wouldn't have left"

His first solo single, "Loot" (b/w "More More More") was released in May 1970, with the follow up, "Evie" (b/w"Fat Crow") released in September 1970

 

He opened his account for 1971 with "Take Your Love" (b/w "Jingle Jangle Jasmine") in March, followed by "Have You Seen My Baby" (b/w "Goody Goody Dancing Shoes") in August 1971.

In 1972, Having been dropped by CBS, he signed with Epic, and relaunched as "Ellis" - singles included "Good To Be Alive" (b/w "Morning Paper") in August, and "El Doomo" (b/w "Your Game") in November 1972.

His 1973 singles included "Open Road" (b/w "Leaving In The Morning") in June , and "Loud And Lazy Love Songs" (b/w "Goodbye Boredom") in October 1973.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When Steve Ellis left, the other band members had wanted to replace him with Phillip Goodhand-Tait. Not only was he a friend of the band and an excellent songwriter, Goodhand-Tait was also a seasoned performer. Unfortunately, Goodhand-Tait was considered too old by the bands management, so they asked August "Gus" Eadon from The Elastic Band to join instead.

Maurice Bacon : "We got Gus Eadon in from the Elastic Band, a really good frontman. My father carried on co-managing with Ken Street, ex-guitarist with Emile Ford & the Checkmates. John Cokell had left to look after Steve Ellis' affairs."

The new look Love Affair made their recording debut in February 1970, with the single "Lincoln County" (b/w "Sea Of Tranquility"). This was the final Goodhand-Tait composition to be recorded by the original band, and the last to feature Keith Mansfield's polished orchestrations.

   

It was another flop, so the band decided to finally drop the teenybopper image in favour of an underground approach

August Eadon : "We couldn't become underground overnight, it had to be a gradual change. We began changing the image when I joined the group earlier this year. And now we have reached the point when we don't feature any of our old hits on stage."

In keeping with the new policy, the Love Affair shortened their name to the more psychedelic sounding L.A.

Maurice Bacon : "Things were changing. We played with the Episode Six, a pop harmony band like the Beach Boys, and suddenly they were Deep Purple! We wanted the same credibility."

L.A. appeared on Top Of The Pops in support of their single, "Speak Of Peace, Sing Of Joy" (b/w "Brings My Whole World Tumbling Down") in May 1970.

 

Released in September 1970, their second album, 'New Day' album was produced by Mike Smith and the Zombies drummer Hugh Grundy and featured only group compositions. Sadly the album and single didn't sell - it was apparent that the pop fans didn't like their new, progressive sound and the rock fans wouldn't even give them a chance.

Maurice Bacon : "The name change didn't work, so we reverted back to Love Affair again!"

Love Affair signed with EMI in 1971 and a single was released on Parlophone in February 1971 - "Wake Me I Am Dreaming", (a cover of "Mi ritorni in mente" originally by Lucio Battisti). Backed by "That's My Home", it was credited to "The Love Affair featuring August Eadon".

The single turned out to be Rex Brayley and Mick Jackson's final recording with the band. Rex went on to play drums in his new band, Muscles, that included guitarist Huw Lloyd Langton of Hawkwind fame, but he quit the music business after Muscles broke up around 1973.

Mick formed the band Calvary who recorded some tracks for EMI that was never released, and eventually left the music business.

Mick Jackson : "When I split from LA I formed another band called "Calvary" with myself on bass and vocals, a guy called Howard on drums and Steve Robinson on vocal and lead guitar. Steve Robinson was the co-soloist guitar player in "Igginbottom" in which Allan Holdsworth was the other guitar soloist. Steve and I wrote all the material. We produced a number of recordings (unreleased) for EMI records. EMI records wanted to sign "Calvary" but a condition was that we change the bands name to Love Affair with myself as "the face". We declined. The EMI recordings by "Calvary" which were written by myself with again myself doing the vocals were called "A Better Way", "High Time" and "Deidre". Maybe something will be done with them someday?

"Two years later Peter Frampton asked me to join him in America to set up [Peter Frampton's] Camel, we were friends from the late sixties. I decided to pursue my career in business instead. I don't know what has happened to Steve or Howard but as mentioned previously Allan Holdsworth has gone onto become a world class virtuoso and has put out several jazz rock albums. My own particular favourite is one entitled "Metal Fatigue".

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Love Affair's new bass player was Bob Sapsed. His band Springfield Park had signed with Love Affair managers Sid Bacon and John Cokell in 1968 and released a single for CBS, "Never An Everyday Thing" which was produced by Keith Mansfield.

Rex Brayley was replaced first by Eunan Brady, who was sacked after a few weeks, then by Bernie Holland. In April 1971 John Watchman joined the Love Affair on guitar - he played his first gig with the band at Stoke University.

With him on-board, the Love Affair recorded a second and final Parlophone single, "Help (Get Me Some Help)" (b/w "Long Way Home") in September 1971. It was produced by Norman Smith, and arranged by future Womble composer Mike Batt. A friend of Batt's, Chris Spedding was brought in to play guitar.

John Watchman : "Yes Chris Spedding did play guitar on the single infact the only band member on the song was Gus, we did do some hand claps and harmony vocals, but the song featured all session men as did most of Love Affair singles."

Morgan Fisher, Maurice Bacon and Bob Sapsed decided to leave the band in the summer of 1971 to form the band Morgan with vocalist Tim Staffel from the pre-Queen combo Smile. This led New Musical Express to assume that Gus Eadon was being replaced by Tim Staffell in Love Affair:

NME [12 June 1971] : "Eadon quitting Love Affair? The NME understands that Auguste "Gus" Eadon has either left, or is on the point of leaving. Love Affair is believed to be busy rehearsing in the country at the moment with new lead singer Tim Staffell. No information could be gained regarding Eadon's future plans, and indeed Love affair's co-manager Ken Street refused to confirm that Gus was leaving the group, saying that he had "no comment". Staffell is understood to have answered an anonymous advertisement for a lead singer which had been inserted in a trade paper.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
NME [19 June 1971] : "Love Affair split denial! A denial that Love Affair lead singer Auguste Eadon is leaving the group was issued this week by the group's manager Sid Bacon. He told NME: "This has been a misunderstanding. We have auditioned singer Tim Staffell, but not to replace Auguste. We are working on a new band."

Morgan released two albums before disbanding in 1973. Morgan Fisher subsequently joined Mott The Hoople. He currently resides in Japan, is still making music and is more busy than ever.

Maurice Bacon took over his father's management company in 1974, and still runs it. He has also been involved with many independent record companies, most notably Empire Records, Strike Back, Ultimate Records and Planet Dog Records.

Bob Sapsed was in a band called Red Rinse with Phil Little in 1978. In 1983 he joined guitarist Andy Gee (from Springfield Park), Chris Spencer (vocals) and Reg Isadore (drums) in the band Scandal. Sadly Bob Sapsed died in a motorcycle accident in London in the mid-80s.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

After several months Gus Eadon and John Watchman also decided to put a band together, and got Sean Jenkins on drums and Paul Martinez on bass. The new band would be named COLT. However, the record company gave it the old skunk-eye, and COLT quickly reverted back to the LOVE AFFAIR. Utter shambles!

 

Disc [9 October 1971] : "New Love! After the departure of Steve Ellis from Love Affair, Gus Eadon joined. The group tried out new ideas, but all seemed to fail. Now Rex, Mo and Mick have gone their separate ways. But there's a new Love Affair, a new line-up of members, a new sound, which in all make a new and even better group. So forget the past and give Gus, Sean, Robin and John a chance to prove to you all what a great group they are."

John Watchman : "Paul was soon replaced on bass by Robin Lodge and in turn he was replaced by Ray Auld and we toured Sweden, Ireland and various other places until we decided to call it a day in September 1972."

The "Help (Get Me Some Help)" single was recorded by the old line-up back in April 1971 but it was held back for release until September 1971, when the new Love Affair line-up was in place to support it, touring Sweden and Ireland among other places. It eventually got to number 5 in the Swedish charts and it also charted in Ireland, but did nothing in England. Despite the minor success, the Love Affair were dropped by their label and they eventually broke up in the summer of 1972.

John Watchman : "I was offered a chance of a job with Roxy Music in Feb 72 after working in a previous band with Paul Thompson but decided to go to Sweden with Love Affair. After being refused work permits to go back to Sweden in the summer of 72 things got financially strained, and after disbanding the Love Affair gigs were fullfilled by another Barry Collins band called Pebbles going out under the Love Affair name. I started working in Sunderland Locarno in the house band from spring 73 to late 75 when the band transfered to Tiffany's Wimbledon then on again to Tiffanys Newcastle until sept 77. I then recorded two albums with Tommy Morrison on Real Records, the first being co-produced by Paul Rodgers. The second (never released at the time) was produced by Ed Stasium. I then recorded with Paul Rodgers but the material was all demo."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From December 1972 to April 1973 the line-up of Love Affair included : John Cook (keyboards)  /  Bill Gibbard (bass)  /  Dave Potts (drums)  /  Dick Scarfe (guitar)  /  and Bob England (vocals)

John Cook : "I did play with Bob England in the band you are referring to the Mk 4.3 line up of Love Affair. I am in touch with two other members of that line up. They are Bill Gibbard and Dick Scarfe. Having spoken with Bill we think he joined August / September 1972 and I joined approximately 2 months later Oct / Nov 1972. I believe Dave Potts was already in the band at that time, as the other four members of that line-up remained the same while I was in the band. I was offered a job with Mungo Jerry in the spring 1973, Bill and I left coincidentally on the same day around that time."

 

In 1974, Sid Bacon passed away, and Maurice Bacon took over his management company. He approched promoter Barry Collings for a ready made band to do the outstanding Love Affair gigs - the last incarnation of the band having split some months earlier. They went to see a British band called Jo Jo Gunne. The line up consisted of : Mick Wheeler (vocals)  /  George Williams (guitar)  /  Bill Ball (bass)  /  Barry Barney (keyboards)  /  and Phil Chesterton (drums). They were given a new Transit and £40.00 a week each.

This line up lasted 15 months as the Love Affair, with Mo Bacon as manager, doing tours of England with the Swinging Blue Jeans, plus dates in Sweden, Hungary, Holland, The Channel Islands and France. The end of this band came when they were contracted to support the Bay City Rollers in Ireland! They all went their different ways, Bill Ball bought a Country Inn in Mid Devon England, and is still there today with his wife Ria and three grown up children. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Further singles from the various random and confusing iterations of the band included : "Let Me Dance" (b/w "Love's Looking Out At You") in February 1973, and  "Private Lives" (b/w "Let A Little Love Come In") in October 1977.

 

In 1977, Steve Ellis had signed to Ariola, released the album "The Last Angry Man", and a couple of singles - "Rag And Bone" (b/w "Save All The Encores") in January 1978, and "Soothe Me" (b/w "The Wind And The Lady") in September 1978.

The group has since been revived, often without any original members, for cabaret dates; and Ellis has also performed live with a reconstituted 'Steve Ellis's Love Affair'.

The Single :

"Everlasting Love" was written by Buzz Cason and Mac Gayden, and originally a 1967 hit for Robert Knight. The version recorded by The Love Affair debuted on the UK charts at the start of January 1968, and rose to No. 1 for a two-week stay in February 1968.



Steve Ellis : "We had two managers, David Wedgebury and John Cokell, who both worked at Decca and had access to all the imports on the Monument label. We rehearsed in a factory in Walthamstow and one night they turned up with 'Everlasting Love' by Robert Knight. I loved it and so we set about putting it down on tape."

Muff Winwood produced the original Love Affair version of "Everlasting Love" which was recorded at Island Studios and featured the group's actual members: Island Records passed on releasing the track but CBS in-house producer Mike Smith - after failing to interest his regular clients Marmalade - cut a new Love Affair version of "Everlasting Love".

The second Love Affair recording of "Everlasting Love" in fact featured only one member of the group: lead vocalist Steve Ellis who fronted a session ensemble comprising arranger/conductor Keith Mansfield's 40-piece orchestra plus a rhythm section.

Steve Ellis : "It was trying to be like Phil Spector, that massive, orchestrated wall of sound. When I heard it, it completely knocked me back. I'd never heard anything like it".

The session musicians included : Peter Ahern (triangle percussion), Clem Cattini (drums), Alan Parker (guitar), Russ Stableford (bass), and a chorale comprising Madeline Bell, Kiki Dee, Lesley Duncan, and Kay Garner.

Mike Smith : "there just wasn't time for the group to learn the arrangement in time, so we used session musicians."

   

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The original version of "Everlasting Love" was recorded by Robert Knight in Nashville, with Buzz Cason and Mac Gayden aiming to produce it in a Motown style.

Mac Gayden : "The story of "Everlasting Love" began when I was playing with a band at the Phi Delta fraternity house at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. During a break in our set, we came outside and heard this fantastic voice singing down the street. So we ran down to the Kappa Sigma house to see who it was, and the singer, who was Robert Knight of course, was just going on his break. I told him 'I need to take you into the studio' and of course he just looked at me like 'What the hell? Get out of my face!' But it turned out there was a connection between my family and his, so eventually I did take him into a studio. And I introduced him to Buzz Cason, and Buzz and I wrote "Everlasting Love" especially for Robert's voice. It's something very special when you custom-write a song for an artist, it's a phenomenal thing. I think that's one reason the song's proved so popular over the years."

When released as a single, the song reached #13 on the US chart in 1967.

Mac Gayden : "But the story actually starts a long time before that, when I was just five years old. I used to play on my grandmother's piano and I came up with this simple little melody, almost like a lullaby, and that's the melody that the horns and the Farfisa organ play on "Everlasting Love". I'd always known I'd use that melody somewhere along the line! To this day I make a point of recording all my musical ideas. I have hundreds and hundreds of tapes all over the house, I keep everything – it's like having a giant catalogue of melodies to draw on. I think the other reason the song has been so successful, is that it was definitely written to be catchy and singable – when we came to write the chorus, I had in mind for it be almost like a chant. It was one of the first songs to have one of those repetitious R&B-style chants."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

   

When the Love Affair appeared on the ITV programme 'Good Evening', host Jonathan King asked group bassist Mick Jackson if the band had actually played on their hit recording of "Everlasting Love" and Jackson admitted the track had featured Ellis backed by session musicians. Steve Ellis has stated that Jonathan King was aware of the background of the Love Affair hit and ambushed Mick Jackson to invoke controversy - the meddlesome twat!

Mick Jackson : "We announced it ourselves because there were rumours about it in the business and we heard a Sunday newspaper was going to blow the story. At first we didn't worry that much when the story about us not playing came out... Then the thing escalated and people all over the place started slagging us. We got to regard it as a terrible nuisance, every time we opened a paper there was someone having a go at the Love Affair."

 

Other Versions include :  "Viel zuviel Gefühl" by Carlo Lind (1967)  /  "L'ultimo amore" by Ricchi e Poveri (1968)  /  "Un eterno amor" by Bruno Lomas (1968)  /  "L'amour me pardonne" by Nicoletta (1968)  /  "Plus je te vois, plus je te veux" by Joe Dassin (1968)  /  The Ravers (1968)  /  David Ruffin (1969)  /  The Senate (1969)  /  Carl Carlton (1974)  /  Patricia Paay (1977)  /  Louise Mandrell (1978)  /  Narvel Felts (1979)  /  Soirée (1979)  /  Rex Smith and Rachel Sweet (1981)  /  Wild Horses (1981)  /  Vicki Sue Robinson (1983)  /  The Truth (1984)  /  Sandra (1987)  /  U2 (1989)  /   David Essex (1993)  /  Gloria Estefan (1994)  /  Robson Green (2002)  /  Jamie "Frigging" Cullum (2004)  /  Scooter (2005)  /  Michael Ball (2005)  /  Danny McEvoy (2011)  /  Richard Fuhrmann (2017)  /  Alex B (2019)

On This Day  :

28 January : DJ Muggs, (Cypress Hill), born Lawrence Muggerud in Queens, New York
28 January : Sarah McLachlan, singer, born Sarah Ann McLachlan in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
28 January : Rakim, rapper, born William Michael Griffin Jr. in Long Island, New York
30 January : North Vietnamese launch the Tet offensive against US forces
1 February : Richard Nixon announces candidacy for president
1 February : Lisa Marie Presley, born in Memphis, Tennessee
4 February : "Golden Rainbow" opens at Shubert Theater NYC
4 February : Around 100 Indians and Pakistanis from Kenya arrive in Britain, escaping discrimination
6 February : X Winter Olympic Games opens in Grenoble, France
6 February : The Beatles, Mike Love, Mia Farrow, Donovan and others traveled to India to visit Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at Rishikesh in India
8 February : "Planet of the Apes" premieres in New York City
8 February : Gary Coleman, actor, born Gary Wayne Coleman in Zion, llinois

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! :

                     

[The Culture Bunker]

I can remember when I was a kid this came on the radio, must have been "Sounds of the 60s" or something, and my dad scoffing about the whole "didn't play on their own songs" angle.

Very good pop song, though, so credit to Steve and assorted session people.

[purlieu]

Bonnie & Clyde - fucks sake it's 1968 piss off.
Everlasting Love - great song. Fascinating story, too.

[daf]

Living in the back of the Greta Garbo home for wayward boys and girls, it's . . .

244.  Manfred Mann - Mighty Quinn



From : February 11 – 24 1968
Weeks : 2
Flip side : By Request - Edwin Garvey
Bonus 1 : Promo film
Bonus 2 : Top of The Pops
Bonus 3 : Beat Club
Bonus 4 : TopPop

The Story So Far : 

In December 1967, 16 months after taking over from Paul Jones as Manfred Mann's lead singer, Mike D'Abo was reported to have quit the group. This was swiftly denied, but having recently found success as a songwriter - penning the number 1 hit Handbags and Gladrags for Chris Farlowe, it was surely only a matter of time . . .

 

In January 1968 Manfred Mann struck gold with a cover of an unreleased Bob Dylan song "Mighty Quinn" - which became their third UK No. 1, and also peaking at #3 in Canada and #10 in the US.




In February the Mann–Hugg soundtrack to the film Up the Junction was released.

 

Optimistically billed as the new hit single, "Theme – Up The Junction", backed by "Sleepy Hollow", failed to chart.




In June 1968, they released the album Mighty Garvey!, which featured the recent hits "Ha! Ha! Said the Clown" and Mighty Quinn, as well as Mike Hugg's "Harry the One Man Band" and "Every Day Another Hair Turns Grey" plus Mike d'Abo's "Happy Families", and the Leadbelly song Black Betty, re-titled "Big Betty"

   

Also released in June, the non-album single, "My Name is Jack", was recalled when the US company Mercury Records complained about the phrase "Super Spade" in the lyrics, which referred to a Haight-Ashbury drug dealer. The release was delayed by a week until the offending name was re-recorded as "Superman"; however, the UK version retained the original lyric. Backed by "There Is A Man", it reached #8 in the UK charts in June 1968.

   

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

As well as the Cinema, they wrote for music for Television plays, including "The Gorge" by Peter Nichols, broadcast on BBC1 in September 1968.

The family set off for a picnic in the country with all the paraphernalia - the cine camera, the frozen barbecued chicken - all of which is looked on, with sixth-form cynicism and disgust, by the family's son. Nor does he think he's going to enjoy the trip round the Cheddar Gorge...

   

Their December 1968 release, "Fox on the Run", (b/w "Too Many People") , reached #5 in the UK, and "Ragamuffin Man", (b/w "A 'B' Side"), claimed the "lucky" #8 position in May 1969.




Frustrated with the limitations and image of being seen purely as a hit singles band, and with their last two albums failing to chart, the group split in 1969.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

At the time of the group's demise, Mann and Hugg were already writing advertising jingles together - releasing the instant coffee-based concept flexi-single "The Maxwell House Shake" in February 1970, and the Yoghurt promo "Ski "Full-Of-Fitness" Theme" (b/w "Sweet Baby Jane") in January 1971.

 

Mann and Hugg continued to work together as The Manly Hugg Band 'Manfred Mann Chapter Three', an experimental jazz rock band described by Mann as an over-reaction to the hit factory of the Manfred Mann group.

 

Manfred Mann Chapter Three released "Happy Being Me" (b/w "Devil Woman") in August 1970, but the new group was short-lived and by 1971 after a second album (and an unreleased possibly incomplete third) they disbanded and Mann formed yet another new group.

The original line-up of this new group consisted of Mick Rogers (guitar and vocals), Manfred Mann (organ, synthesizer and vocals), Colin Pattenden (bass guitar) and Chris Slade (drums and vocals). In its very earliest stages, the band was simply billed as Manfred Mann and the Manfred Mann Band (feat. Manfred Mann) 'Manfred Mann' and thus a continuation of the 1960s group. The quartet (as 'Manfred Mann') released the single "Living Without You" (b/w "Tribute") in June 1971, and "Mrs. Henry" (b/w "Prayer") in September 1971.

 

A further name change to Earth Band followed, and then, after Manfed realised nobody would know he was in the band, to Manfred Mann's Earth Band - worra big'ead!

They released "Meat" (b/w "Glorified Magnified") in November 1972, and "Get Your Rocks Off" (b/w "Sadjoy") in April 1973 - which was included on the album "Messin'".

   

They finally got back in the charts with "Joybringer" - reaching #9 in September 1973 - the song was based on Jupiter by 'The Planets' hit-maker Gustav Holst.

 

They released a cover of Bob Dylan's "Father Of Day, Father Of Night" (b/w "Solar Fire Two') in February 1974, followed by "Be Not Too Hard" (b/w "Earth Hymn Part 2A") in October 1974, taken from the album "The Good Earth".

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Bruce Springsteen cover "Spirits In The Night" (b/w "As Above So Below Part 2") released as a single in July 1975, was featured on the album 'Nightingales & Bombers' -

Manfred Mann : "The title of this album was inspired by a recording made in Surrey, England during the Second World War, by an ornithologist intending to record nightingales. The bombers flew over at the same time and were recorded by accident. The recording has been incorporated in 'As Above, So Below'"



After this album, Mick Rogers (guitar & Vocals) and Colin Pattenden (bass) left the band, and were replaced by Chris Thompson (lead vocals, guitar), Dave Flett (lead guitar, backing vocals) and Pat King (bass).

   

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

After a few years of chart-dodging concept flops, another Springsteen cover, "Blinded By The Light", (b/w "Starbird No. 2"), finally revved up like a deuce, and crashed the calliope to the ground at #6 in the UK in August 1976. The second single from the 'The Roaring Silence' album, "Questions" (b/w "Waiter, There's A Yawn In My Ear No. 2") failed follow it into the charts in November 1976.

 

Taking advantage of the publicity of their hit song, the band re-released a re-cut version of Springsteen's "Spirits In The Night", (b/w "The Road To Babylon"), in June 1977 with Chris Thompson taking a new lead vocal in place of Mick Rogers who sang on the original 1975 version. They followed this up with "California" (b/w "Chicago") in November 1977.

 

A live version of  "Mighty Quinn" (b/w "Tiny") was released in March 1978, followed by their final big hit - "Davy's On The Road Again" (b/w "Bouillabaisse"), which pulled over into the #6 lay-by for a kip in May 1978.

 

Another Bob Dylan song, "You Angel You", (b/w "Out In The Distance"), was released as a single, reaching #54 in March 1979, followed by "Don't Kill It Carol", which marked their final chart entry - reaching number 45 in the UK in July 1979.

Two singles were extracted from their 1980 album 'Chance' - "Lies (Through The 80's)" (b/w "You're Not My") in August 1980, and "For You" (b/w "A Fool I Am") in January 1981.

   

Ploughing on regardless, "I (Who Have Nothing)" (b/w "Man In Jam") flopped in November 1981.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

By this time, Mann had become personally active in the international anti-apartheid movement and was banned from entering his home country of South Africa. Undeterred, members of the band made journeys to South Africa to record African musicians for the album 'Somewhere in Afrika' - their last studio album recorded for their long-time record label Bronze Records.

Four singles were optimistically released from the album :  "Eyes Of Nostradamus" (b/w "Holiday's End") in March 1982  /  "Redemption Song" (b/w "Wardream") in July 1982  /  "Tribal Statistics" (b/w "Where Do They Send Them") in November 1982  /  and "Demolition Man" (b/w "It's Still The Same") in January 1983.

 

Their final single on Bronze - "Runner" (b/w "No Transkei"), released in March 1984, was a cover of the song by Ian Thomas, which had been written in response to cancer sufferer Terry Fox and his run across Canada for cancer awareness. Fox had succumbed to the cancer before finishing.

 

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In 1986, founding guitarist/vocalist Mick Rogers returned to the band for their first album for 10 Records. Billed as Manfred Mann's Earth Band with Chris Thompson, two singles were extruded from the plastic waffle : covers of "Do Anything You Wanna Do" (b/w "Crossfire") in March 1986, and "Going Underground" (b/w "I Shall Be Rescued") in June 1986.

 

"Geronimo's Cadillac" (b/w "Two Friends (From Mars And Saturn)") released in October 1987, plucked from their Thirteenth album, 'Masque', seems to have been their final single. Needless to say, the resulting chart action was negligible.

In 1991, having retired his Earth Band in the late 80s, he emerged with a new project : Manfred Mann's Plain Music.

Manfred Mann : "This album is called Plains Music, as it consists mainly of the melodies of the North American Plains Indians. We do not pretend that it is in any sense representative of the original ethnic music which was its source material. I tried to make a simple album of plain music, using as few notes as possible and keeping the tracks short and to the point."

In 2004, as the enigmatically billed Manfred Mann with Manfred Mann's Earth Band, he released the album '2006'. Despite the Earth Band's inclusion in the name, it was essentially a solo album. Some of the tracks - 'Mars'  /   'Two Friends'  /  'Frog' and 'Get Me Out of This' - were recorded in a more unrehearsed and experimental way than the others. Because of this, Mann preferred to present this outside the normal Earth Band context, as representative only of his personal tastes and not those of his Earth Band colleagues.

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In the 1990s, most of the original 1960s line-up reformed as The Manfreds, minus Manfred Mann himself, playing most of the old 1960s hits and a few jazz instrumentals, sometimes with both Jones and D'Abo fronting the line-up.

They continue to perform live, fitting it in between their other individual commitments, with Paul Jones, Tom McGuinness, and Rob Townsend also members of The Blues Band, Jones also continuing his solo career and acting, radio and television work, Mike Hugg and Marcus Cliffe performing as part of a jazz trio, and Mike D'Abo presenting radio shows and performing with The New Amen Corner.

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The various and confusing Line-up changes of Manfred Mann (1962-1968)

 

& Manfred Mann's Earth Band (1972-2020)

The Single :

"Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" was written by Bob Dylan and first recorded during The Basement Tapes sessions in 1967. The song was recorded in December 1967 and first released in January 1968 by Manfred Mann - reaching Number 1 in the UK in February 1968.



A later incarnation of Manfred Mann, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, included a dramatically different live version of the song on their 1978 album Watch. The single edit omitted the prog middle part (previously released as a standalone instrumental under the title "As Above So Below" on 1975's Nightingales & Bombers album) and included a few new guitar solos. The Manfred Mann version is noted for Klaus Voormann's use of a distinctive flute part. This was replaced in the Earth Band version with Manfred playing it on an organ.

 

Bob Dylan is widely believed to have derived the title character from actor Anthony Quinn's role as an Eskimo in the 1960 movie The Savage Innocents.

Bob Dylan : "On the way back to the house I passed the local movie theater on Prytania Street, where The Mighty Quinn was showing. Years earlier, I had written a song called 'The Mighty Quinn' which was a hit in England, and I wondered what the movie was about. Eventually, I'd sneak off and go there to see it. It was a mystery, suspense, Jamaican thriller with Denzel Washington as the Mighty Xavier Quinn a detective who solves crimes. Funny, that's just the way I imagined him when I wrote the song 'The Mighty Quinn,' Denzel Washington."

 

A demo of 14 of the 1967 Basement Tapes recordings, including the first of two takes of "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)", was produced in 1968, but was not intended for release. Recordings taken from the demos began appearing on bootlegs, starting with Great White Wonder, a double-album bootleg that came out in July 1969. The first official release of the song was in 1970 on Dylan's Self Portrait album, a live recording from 1969's Isle of Wight Festival.

   

Other Versions include :  "Jo Jo le clown" by Patrick Zabé (1967)  /  The 1910 Fruitgum Company (1968)  /  Claude & Gino  (1968) /  The Lovers (1968)  /  Ian & Sylvia (1968)  /  Gary Puckett & The Union Gap (1968)  /  The Ravers (1968)  /  The Ventures (1968)  /  Ramsey Lewis (1968)  /  "L'esquimese" I Dik Dik (1968)  /  Bob Dylan (1969)  /  The Hollies (1969)  /  Julie London (1969)  /  Lulu (1969)  /  The Four Kents (1969)  /  Hugo Montenegro (1970)  /  The Chicks (1970)  / Grateful Dead (1985)  /  The Manfreds (1990)  /  Bruce Hornsby (1990)  /  T. Parker (1996)  /  The Reggae Rockers (2002)  /  Amy Winehouse, Same Moore & Paul Weller (2006)  /  Cornershop (2009)  /  cjhoylemusic (2010)  /  The Starbugs (2011)  /  Danny McEvoy (2011)  /  EyeStation EarWacks-EyeWorks (2011)  /  Kris Kristofferson (2012)  /  Joan Osborne (2017)  /  Reina del Cid (2019)

On This Day  :

12 February : Chynna Phillips, (Wilson Philips), born Chynna Gilliam Phillips in Los Angeles, California
15 February : Little Walter (Marion Walter Jacobs), 38, American blues musician, died of coronary thrombosis aged 38
16 February : George Harrison, John Lennon and their wives fly to India for transcendental meditation study with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
17 February : Donald Wolfit, British actor, dies aged 65
18 February : Molly Ringwald, actress, born Molly Kathleen Ringwald in Roseville California
18 February : Thousands of people in West Berlin demonstrate against US involvement in the Vietnam War
18 February : The 1968 Winter Olympic Games closes in Grenoble, France
20 February : Anthony Asquith, British film director, dies aged 65
20 February : John Cleese (At Last the 1948 Show) marries actress Connie Booth
22 February : Jeri Ryan, actress (Star Trek), born Jeri Lynn Zimmermann in Munich, Germany
22 February : Genesis release their first record "Silent Sun"
22 February : The "Prague Spring" begins in Czechoslovakia when Communist Party First Secretary Alexander Dubček announces that steps would be taken to create "the widest possible democratization of the entire socio-political system."
24 February : Mitch Hedberg, stand-up comedian, born Mitchell Lee Hedberg in Saint Paul, Minnesota
24 February : Discovery of 1st pulsar announced (CP 1919) by Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish
24 February : Fleetwood Mac released their debut album, 'Fleetwood Mac'.
24 February : "Darling of the Day" closes at George Abbott NYC after 31 performances

Extra! Extra!

       

Read all about it! :

                     

[famethrowa]

I learn something new from every one of these posts, and today's lesson was that the Earth Band's main drummer was Chris Slade, who played on Blinded By The Light and then left to eventually join AC/DC. Did not know that.

Klaus Voorman really is a bit of a Zelig/Forrest Gump of the scene, innee?

[daf]

Just couldn't find a link for the original 1967 Bob Dylan & The Band version - has it actually been released?

[Egyptian Feast]

Edit: Misread the question.

[daf]

Aha! Just tracked it down - it was released on the 1985 box set 'Biograph'

"Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" (The Basement Tapes track, recorded 7/67) - previously unreleased   

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edit : also to be found on the 2CD 'The Essential Bob Dylan', and the 'Sidetracks' Bonus disc from his 'Complete Album Collection Volume 1' box.
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Spotify link : https://open.spotify.com/track/6OMxQgWFX3rnt5lvNp05oq

[Gulftastic]

As a child, I thought this song was inspired by the wrestler, rather than the other way round.