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

Started by daf, June 12, 2019, 01:55:00 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

purlieu

I'm quite fond of the first Bee Gees album, even if it wears its influences on its sleeves so much that its sleeves are basically little more than influences, but by this point I find them so staggeringly boring. This song is a great example of that.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

They still released some good stuff after this, though. The Odessa album comes out in 1969.

DrGreggles

There was a Bee Gees Mk I thread on here not long ago and I was of the opinion that you could make a bloody good album from all their 60s stuff (maybe even a double), but it'd be miserable as fuck.

I heard Jive Talkin' the other day and it is absolute genius, taking a form from black and gay cultures and making it their own. I think only Elton John was more succesful in the Billboard charts than the Bee Gees in the 70s. I think they are third only to The Beatles and Beach Boys as white vocal harmony groups.

gilbertharding

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on September 04, 2020, 02:14:48 PM
He admitted himself that Half the World Away is blatantly influenced by This Guy's in Love with You. It is, however, the only song in Noel's oeuvre that sounds anything like Bacharach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tiqxn3iOmxY

Right you are. I think, in my own defence, I fucking hate Noel Gallagher.

daf

Nice vest mate! it's . . .

257b. (NME 252.)  Tom Jones - Help Yourself



From :  31 Aug - 12 Sep 1968
Weeks : 2
Flip side : Day By Day

The Story So Further : 1993 - 2006
Quote
In 1993, Jones signed with Interscope Records and released the album 'The Lead And How To Swing It'. The first single, "If I Only Knew" went to #11 in November 1994 in the UK. The collaboration with Tori Amos, "I Wanna Get Back With You tanked at #94 in April 1995.

 

In 1996, he appeared as himself in Tim Burton's ensemble science-fiction comedy film Mars Attacks!. A scene in the film features Jones performing on stage when aliens attack and he manages to escape with a gun.

In 1997, Jones contributed to the soundtrack for the UK comedy film The Full Monty, recording "You Can Leave Your Hat On".

In 1999, Jones released the album Reload, a collection of cover duets with contemporary pop stars, including Natalie Imbruglia, Portishead and Robbie Williams. The album went to #1 in the UK and sold over 4 million copies worldwide.

Five singles from the album charted in the UK top 40 : "Burning Down The House" with The Cardigans reached #7 in September 1999  /  "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with Cerys Matthews from Catatonia reached #17 in December 1999  /  "Mama Told Me Not To Come" with The Stereophonics -  #4 in March 2000  /  "Sex Bomb" with Mousse T - #3 in May 2000  / and "You Need Love Like I Do" with Heather Small reached #24 in November 2000.

 

Priapic US President Bill Clinton invited Jones to perform on New Year's Eve at the 2000 millennium celebrations in Washington, D.C. In 2000, Jones garnered a number of honours for his work, including a BRIT Award for Best British Male.

In 2002, Jones released the album 'Mr. Jones', which was produced - (one time) - by Haitian-American rapper Wyclef Jean. The album and the first single, "Tom Jones International", reached #31 in November 2002. Another single from the album, "Black Betty" ambled to the foothills of the hit parade, setting up base camp at #50 in March 2003.

In 2003, Jones received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music . The following year, he teamed up with boogie-woogie pianist Jools Holland and released 'Tom Jones & Jools Holland', a roots rock 'n' roll album, which peaked at #5 in the UK. A single from the album, "It'll Be Me" planted it's flag on the #84 position in October 2004.

 

On 28 May 2005, in celebration of his upcoming 65th birthday, Jones returned to his homeland to perform a concert in Ynysangharad Park, Pontypridd, before an audience of about 20,000. This was his first performance in Pontypridd since 1964. That same year, the BBC reported that Jones was Wales's wealthiest entertainer, having amassed a fortune of £175 million quid!!

Jones collaborated with Australian pop singer John Farnham in 2005 and released the live album 'Farnham & Tom Jones – Together in Concert'. The following year, Jones worked with Chicane and released the dance track "Stoned in Love", which went to #7 in the UK Singles Chart in April 2006.

Jones, who had been awarded an OBE in 1999, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2006 at Buckingham Palace for his services to music.

Sir Tom Jones : "When you first come into show business and get a hit record, it is the start of something. As time goes by it just gets better. This is the best thing I have had. It's a wonderful feeling, a heady feeling."


Quote"Help Yourself" was an English-language version of the Italian song "Gli Occhi Miei" ("My Eyes"), which was written by Carlo Donida with lyrics by Mogol and originally performed by both Dino (Eugenio Zambelli) and Wilma Goich at the 1968 Sanremo Music Festival. British author and songwriter Jack Fishman (a.k.a. Larry Khan) wrote the English lyrics, which bear no relation to the original Italian.



The song is one of Jones' best known songs and reached number five in the spoddy Record Retailer compiled chart, printed in the Record Mirror - later designated as the "official chart". It also topped the chart published by the widely read and hugely popular NME for two weeks in September 1968 - So up yours, Mike Read!

 

It topped the charts in both Ireland and Germany, and spent three weeks at the top spot in Australia. Less sucessful accross the pond, the single stalled at #35 on the US Billboard chart.

   

Other Versions include"Gli occhi miei" by Wilma Goich (1968)  /  "Gli occhi miei" by Dino (1968)   /  Nora Aunor (1968)  /  Tony Ferrino (1996)  /  Danny McEvoy (2011)
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Previously :
189.  Tom Jones - It's Not Unusual
227.  Tom Jones - Green Green Grass Of Home
247b. (MM 197.)  Tom Jones - Delilah
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The Culture Bunker

I hated those singles from the 'Reload' album so much at the time. Seeing that old honking fanny rat suddenly hip again fucked me off no end.

kalowski

Quote from: The Culture Bunker on September 11, 2020, 02:37:23 PM
I hated those singles from the 'Reload' album so much at the time. Seeing that old honking fanny rat suddenly hip again fucked me off no end.
I came to post the exact same thing.

purlieu

Yeah, those songs were fucking inescapable and all hideous. Bothered me even more that some of them were with artists I liked and respected.

This song is shit as well.

McChesney Duntz

Good god, I never knew that Reload thing existed. Ignorance = bliss, and all that. Going back a little ways, though, I am firmly of the opinion that his collab with the Art of Noise on "Kiss" summed up the eighties in a single song. And I am waiting for my commission to write a fuck-off-length essay proving it.

Captain Z

Quote from: McChesney Duntz on September 12, 2020, 09:18:05 PM
Good god, I never knew that Reload thing existed.

How? Unless you were born in the last 15 years I would have thought it was inescapable, particularly the collab with the chalkboard-voiced Stereophonics.

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: McChesney Duntz on September 12, 2020, 09:18:05 PM
Good god, I never knew that Reload thing existed. Ignorance = bliss, and all that.
The singles with the Cardigans, Stereophonics and Mousse T seemed to be everywhere. This would be when I would still hear what was on the radio or in the charts, being a student frequently propping up the union bar.

Mercifully, the Heather Small one passed me by. Can only imagine it sounding like two sea lions having a row.

McChesney Duntz

Quote from: Captain Z on September 12, 2020, 09:22:08 PM
How? Unless you were born in the last 15 years I would have thought it was inescapable, particularly the collab with the chalkboard-voiced Stereophonics.

Not for those of us in the States, apparently. There are certain advantages to being a fucking Yank, believe it or don't.

Johnboy

I don't mind Tom, don't own anything by him but he seems like a decent skin.

Egyptian Feast

Quote from: The Culture Bunker on September 11, 2020, 02:37:23 PM
I hated those singles from the 'Reload' album so much at the time. Seeing that old honking fanny rat suddenly hip again fucked me off no end.

A friend who worked with him at some appearance or other around that time confirmed he absolutely honked of piss.

kalowski

I hate him. I hate his plastic surgery face and especially his tiny eyes which look like this in my mind.

jamiefairlie

He really is the prototype of the pub singer isn't he? All volume over subtlety.

daf

Fuckin' 'Ell!, it's . . .

258.  The Beatles - Hey Jude



From : 8 – 21 September 1968
Weeks : 2
B-side : Revolution
Bonus 1 : Hey Jude Take 2
Bonus 2 : Hey Jude Take 9
Bonus 3 : Hey Jude Promo film
Bonus 4 : Backwards

The Story So Far : The Beatles Album Number Nine . . . Number Nine . . . Number Nine - Part 2
QuoteHaving earmarked the song for release as a single, the Beatles recorded "Hey Jude" during the sessions for their self-titled double album. The sessions were marked by an element of discord within the group for the first time, partly as a result of Yoko Ono's constant presence at Lennon's side.

The Beatles first taped 25 takes of the song at EMI Studios in London over two nights, starting on Monday 29 July 1968, with George Martin as their producer. These dates served as rehearsals, since they planned to record the master track at Trident Studios to utilise their eight-track recording machine. Paul McCartney sang and played piano, John Lennon was on acoustic guitar, George Harrison played electric guitar, and Ringo Starr was on drums. They recorded six takes, only three of which were complete, and each notably shorter than the final version.

The next evening The Beatles continued working on the track, recording takes 7-23. George Harrison played guitar on some early takes, but spent much of the session in the studio control room. The recording was filmed for a documentary by the National Music Council of Great Britain, who captured the group playing and chatting for a short colour film called Music!. During the rehearsals that day, Harrison and McCartney had a heated disagreement over the lead guitar part for the song.

Paul : "On 'Hey Jude', when we first sat down and I sang 'Hey Jude...', George went 'nanu nanu' on his guitar. I continued, 'Don't make it bad...' and he replied 'nanu nanu'. He was answering every line – and I said, 'Whoa! Wait a minute, now. I don't think we want that. Maybe you'd come in with answering lines later. For now I think I should start it simply first.' He was going, 'Oh yeah, OK, fine, fine.' But it was getting a bit like that. He wasn't into what I was saying. I did want to insist that there shouldn't be an answering guitar phrase in 'Hey Jude' – and that was important to me – but of course if you tell a guitarist that, and he's not as keen on the idea as you are, it looks as if you're knocking him out of the picture. I think George felt that: it was like, 'Since when are you going to tell me what to play? I'm in The Beatles too.' So I can see his point of view."



On Wednesday, 31 July 1968, The Beatles decamped to Trident, an independent studio on London's Wardour Street which had eight-track recording facilities. Trident were paid £25 per hour by EMI for the sessions. "Hey Jude" was the first Beatles song to be recorded on eight-track equipment. Barry Sheffield served as recording engineer for the session. The Beatles recorded four takes of "Hey Jude", the first of which was selected as the master.

Paul : "There is an amusing story about recording it. We were at Trident Studios in Soho, and Ringo walked out to go to the toilet and I hadn't noticed. The toilet was only a few yards from his drum booth, but he'd gone past my back and I still thought he was in his drum booth. I started what was the actual take, and 'Hey Jude' goes on for hours before the drums come in and while I was doing it I suddenly felt Ringo tiptoeing past my back rather quickly, trying to get to his drums. And just as he got to his drums, boom boom boom, his timing was absolutely impeccable. So I think when those things happen, you have a little laugh and a light bulb goes off in your head and you think, This is the take! And you put a little more into it. You think, oh, fuck! This has got to be the take, what just happened was so magic! So we did that and we made a pretty good record."

Ringo : "It felt good recording it. We put it down a couple of times – trying to get it right – and, like everything else, it just clicked. That's how it should be."

The song was completed the next day. McCartney added his bass and lead vocals, and the other Beatles contributed backing vocals. The 36-strong orchestra then added backing for the lengthy four-chord coda. The classical musicians were also offered a double fee for clapping and singing along to the 'nah nah nah' chant. Most of the musicians were happy to oblige, especially as it meant a doubled fee, but there was one dissenter who reportedly walked out, saying "I'm not going to clap my hands and sing Paul McCartney's bloody song!"

'Hey Jude' contains an unedited expletive, which is often played by radio stations to this day. In the final verse, John Lennon sang "Let her into" instead of "Let her under your skin". His cry of "Oh!", followed by "Fucking hell", remains in the final mix. A slightly different reason for the 'blue outburst' was given by Malcolm Toft, the mix engineer on the Trident recording, who recalled that Lennon was overdubbing his harmony vocal when, in reaction to the volume being too loud in his headphones, he first called out "Whoa!" then, two seconds later, swore as he pulled the headphones off.

[engineer] Ken Scott : "I was told about it at the time but could never hear it. But once I had it pointed out I can't miss it now. I have a sneaking suspicion they knew all along, as it was a track that should have been pulled out in the mix. I would imagine it was one of those things that happened – it was a mistake, they listened to it and thought, 'doesn't matter, it's fine'."

The transfer of the Trident master tape to acetate proved problematic due to the recording sounding murky when played back on EMI's equipment.

Ken Scott : "I went to Trident to see the Beatles doing Hey Jude and was completely blown away by it. It sounded incredible. A couple of days later, back at Abbey Road, I got in well before the group. Acetates were being cut and I went up to hear one. On different equipment, with different EQ levels and different monitor settings, it sounded awful, nothing like it had at Trident. Later on, I was sitting in number two control room and George Martin came in. I said 'George, you know that stuff you did at Trident?' 'Yes – how does it sound?' I said 'In all honesty, it sounds terrible!' 'What?' 'There's absolutely no high-end on it, no treble.' Just then Paul McCartney came in and George said to him 'Ken thinks Hey Jude' sounds awful'. The look that came from Paul towards me... if looks could kill, it was one of those situations. Anyway, they went down to the studio floor, clearly talking about it, and one by one all the other Beatles came in and joined them. I could see them talking and then look up at me, and then talk again, and then look at me. I thought, 'Oh God, I'm going to get thrown off the session'. Finally, they all came storming up and said 'OK, let's see if it's as bad as you say. Go get the tape and we'll have a listen'. Luckily, they agreed with me, it did sound bad. We spent the rest of the evening trying to EQ it and get some high-end on it. But for a while there I wanted to crawl under a stone and die."

 

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

"Not Guilty" was written by George Harrison. A demo was recorded in May 1968 at Kinfauns, his home in Esher, Surrey, where The Beatles convened to try out their bumper crop of songs written during or immediately after their trip to India.

George : "Actually, I wrote that in 1968. It was after we got back from Rishikesh in the Himalayas on the Maharishi trip, and it was for the White Album. We recorded it but we didn't get it down right or something. Then I forgot all about it until a year ago, when I found this old demo I'd made in the Sixties. The lyrics are a bit passé – all about upsetting 'Apple carts' and stuff – but it's a bit about what was happening at the time. 'Not guilty for getting in your way/While you're trying to steal the day' – which was me trying to get a space. 'Not guilty/For looking like a freak/Making friends with every Sikh/For leading your astray/On the road to Mandalay' – which is the Maharishi and going to the Himalayas and all that was said about that. I like the tune a lot; it would make a great tune for Peggy Lee or someone."

Lyrically, the song is largely in defence of the 1960s counterculture, although references to Harrison's frustration at his often marginal role within the group can be detected. At the time of its recording, relations within the group were becoming increasingly strained, with The Beatles often working alone and choosing not to help each other. For John Lennon and Paul McCartney this was less of an issue, but Harrison needed the rest of the group's support to have his songs considered. Part of the problem may have been the complexity of the song, with numerous time signature changes and half-bars which derailed many of The Beatles' attempts.

The Beatles began work on 'Not Guilty' on Wednesday 7 August 1968. They recorded 46 takes of the rhythm track, comprising guitar, bass, electric piano and drums. The first 18 of these were devoted to the introduction alone; beyond that, just five takes were complete. The next day the group recorded takes 47-101 of the rhythm track. For these John Lennon switched from electric piano to harpsichord. Take 99 was deemed the best of the day.

On 9 August a reduction mix was made to free up space on the tape. Take 99 became Take 102, and onto this a range of overdubs were added. In a session lasting more than six hours, extra lead guitar, bass and drum parts were recorded. The distinctive lead guitar riffs and solo were recorded by George Harrison in the studio control room, with his amplifier stack turned up high in the studio below.

[engineer] Brian Gibson : "George asked us to put his guitar amplifier at one end of the echo chambers, with a microphone at the other end to pick up the output. He sat playing the guitar in the studio control room with a line plugged through to the chamber."

Work on 'Not Guilty' finished on 12 August, with the recording of a second lead vocal by Harrison. As with the previous lead guitar overdub, he opted to tape his performance in the control room.

[engineer] Ken Scott : "George had this idea that he wanted to do it in the control room with the speakers blasting, so that he got more of an on-stage feel. So we had to monitor through headphones, setting the monitor speakers at a level where he felt comfortable and it wouldn't completely blast out his vocal."

A rough mono mix was made at the end of the session, but the song was later rejected for inclusion on the finished album.

 

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"Mother Nature's Son" was inspired by a lecture on nature given by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India, although the song was mostly completed in Liverpool.

Paul : "I seem to remember writing 'Mother Nature's Son' at my dad's house in Liverpool. I often used to do that if I'd gone up to see him. Visiting my family I'd feel in a good mood, so it was often a good occasion to write songs. So this was me doing my mother nature's son bit. I've always loved the song called 'Nature Boy': 'There was a boy, a very strange and gentle boy...' He loves nature, and 'Mother Nature's Son' was inspired by that song. I'd always loved nature, and when Linda and I got together we discovered we had this deep love of nature in common. There might have been a little help from John with some of the verses."

John : "That was from a lecture of Maharishi where he was talking about nature, and I had a piece called 'I'm Just A Child Of Nature', which turned into 'Jealous Guy' years later. Both inspired from the same lecture of Maharishi."

'Mother Nature's Son' was recorded during an often fractious period for The Beatles. Paul McCartney worked mostly alone on the song; no other Beatles appear on the recording. On Friday 9 August 1968 he recorded 25 takes of 'Mother Nature's Son'. He recorded his vocals and acoustic guitar simultaneously. Take 24 was judged to be the best attempt.

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On Saturday 10 August 1968, Paul McCartney gave an interview to Alan Smith of the New Musical Express, in which he candidly admitted: "The truth about me is that I'm pleasantly insincere."

The interview caused some controversy upon publication, mainly for McCartney's thoughts on India :

Paul : "Starvation in India doesn't worry me one bit, not one iota. It doesn't, man. And it doesn't worry you, if you're honest. You just pose. You've only seen the Oxfam ads. You can't pretend to me that an Oxfam ad can reach down into the depths of your soul and actually make you feel for those people – more, for instance, than you feel about getting a new car."

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"Yer Blues" was written in Rishikesh, India. Balanced deftly between parody and earnestness, the song anticipated the raw, revelatory and confessional spirit of Lennon's solo work.

John : "'Yer Blues' was written in India, too. The same thing up there trying to reach God and feeling suicidal."

A cause of his anguish may have been Yoko Ono. Although their relationship had yet to begin, Ono wrote regularly to Lennon from England, and it is likely that she is the 'girl' the song is addressed to.

John : "The funny thing about the camp was that although it was very beautiful and I was meditating about eight hours a day, I was writing the most miserable songs on earth. In 'Yer Blues', when I wrote, 'I'm so lonely I want to die,' I'm not kidding. That's how I felt."

 

The Beatles recorded 'Yer Blues' in a small annexe room next to EMI's studio two. They got the idea from a sarcastic comment made by engineer Ken Scott during the recording of George Harrison's 'Not Guilty'.

Ken Scott : "I remember that John Lennon came in at one point and I turned to him and said, 'Bloody hell, the way you lot are carrying on you'll be wanting to record everything in the room next door!' The room next door was tiny, where the four-track tape machines were once kept, and it had no proper studio walls or acoustic set-up of any kind. Lennon replied, 'That's a great idea, let's try it on the next number!' The next number was 'Yer Blues' and we literally had to set it all up – them and the instruments – in this minute room and they literally couldn't move. They had to find a position with their guitars and not move, or they would hit someone in the face or in the guitar. And that's where we cut the track. So input came in a lot of different ways, and they were always up to trying anything new."

The Beatles began recording 'Yer Blues' on Tuesday, 13 August 1968, with 14 takes of the rhythm track. They then made a number of 'reduction mixes', to free up more space on the four-track tapes. Takes 15 and 16 were reductions of take six, and take 17 was a reduction of part of take 14.

For the first time in a Beatles session, the actual four-track tape was then edited. The beginning of Take 17 was then spliced onto the end of Take 16. This brutal cut can clearly be heard at the 3'16" mark on the released version, with Lennon's guide vocals captured despite being sung off-mic. Because of the lack of sound proofing and isolation in the annexe, a number of sounds from instruments and vocals spilled over into other tracks. These included guide vocals, and a discarded guitar solo that can be heard during the instrumental break.

On Wednesday, 14 August, Lennon recorded a second lead vocal part. The 'Two, three' count-in, meanwhile, was recorded on 20 August, with Ringo Starr doing the honours.

Ringo : "'Yer Blues', on the White Album, you can't top it. It was the four of us. That is what I'm saying: it was really because the four of us were in a box, a room about eight by eight, with no separation. It was this group that was together; it was like grunge rock of the sixties, really – grunge blues."

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"What's The New Mary Jane" written by John Lennon was one of The Beatles' strangest recordings. The lyrical playfulness of the song suggests it was written in India or shortly afterwards. Based on the phrase "What a shame Mary Jane had a pain at the party", it was, along with 'Revolution 9', one of Lennon's first forays into the world of the avant garde.

John : "This was a thing I wrote half with our electronic genius Alex. It was called 'What A Shame Mary Jane Had A Pain At The Party', and it was meant for The Beatles album."

The Beatles recorded a demo of at George Harrison's Esher house prior to the commencement of the White Album sessions, performed on acoustic guitars with a cacophony of voices joining in on the free-form chorus. In the studio, the song began to take on a quite different shape. John Lennon and George Harrison were the only Beatles to appear on the recording. They taped four takes on Wednesday 14 August, with assistance from Yoko Ono and Mal Evans. While the first take was incomplete, the other three lasted 2'35", 3'45" and 6'12". Lennon sang and played piano, with Harrison on guitar, both double tracked. Other instruments on the recording included handbell and xylophone, with various effects added to give the impression of a particularly bad acid trip.

Initial mixing of the song took place on Monday 26 September 1968, and again on Monday 14 October. Although Lennon wanted the song to appear on the White Album, it sat uneasily with the other songs and was discarded in October 1968 during the final mixing sessions.

Lennon created three new stereo mixes on 11 September 1969, for a potential release by The Plastic Ono Band. He wanted the song to be issued as the b-side of 'You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)'. The Beatles or EMI may have objected to the move, and the project was shelved, although a press release from Apple did claim that the single would feature John and Yoko with "many of the greatest show business names of today" – a somewhat thinly-veiled reference to The Beatles.

 

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"Rocky Raccoon" was written by Paul McCartney on the roof of the ashram in Rishikesh, with John Lennon and Donovan Leitch also helping out.

John : "Paul. Couldn't you guess? Would I go to all that trouble about Gideon's Bible and all that stuff?"

Paul : "'Rocky Raccoon' is quirky, very me. I like talking blues so I started off like that, then I did my tongue-in-cheek parody of a western and threw in some amusing lines. I just tried to keep it amusing, really; it's me writing a play, a little one-act play giving them most of the dialogue. Rocky Raccoon is the main character, then there's the girl whose real name was Magill, who called herself Lil, but she was known as Nancy."

The song was originally titled 'Rocky Sassoon', but was changed by McCartney to make the main character sound "more like a cowboy".

Paul : "There are some names I use to amuse, Vera, Chuck and Dave or Nancy and Lil, and there are some I mean to be serious, like 'Eleanor Rigby', which are a little harder because they have to not be joke names. In this case Rocky Raccoon is some bloke in a raccoon hat, like Davy Crockett. The bit I liked about it was him finding Gideon's Bible and thinking, Some guy called Gideon must have left it for the next guy. I like the idea of Gideon being a character. You get the meaning and at the same time get in a poke at it. All in good fun. And then of course the doctor is drunk."

The Beatles taped 'Rocky Raccoon' during a single session on Tuesday, 15 August, 1968. They recorded nine takes of the basic rhythm track, with Paul McCartney on vocals and acoustic guitar, Ringo Starr on drums, and John Lennon on six-string bass guitar. Onto the master, take nine, The Beatles added another bass and drum track, including an extra snare drum hit to emphasise the gunshot. Lennon then overdubbed a harmonica part, George Martin played the honky-tonk piano solo, and Lennon, McCartney and George Harrison contributed backing vocals.

The opening of take eight were significantly different from the final version, and the lyrics underwent a number of changes throughout the session, including at various points : "roll up his sleeves on the sideboard" / "roll over, Rock... he said ooh, it's OK doc, it's just a scratch and I'll be OK when I get home"  /  "move over doc, let's have none of your cock"  /  and best of all, "This here is the story of a young boy living in Minnesota... fuck off!". As Paul himself later said, between takes, "I don't quite know the words to that verse yet!"

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On Saturday 17 August 1968, George Harrison and his wife Pattie flew to Greece for a brief holiday. They were accompanied on the trip by The Beatles' assistant Mal Evans. The trio returned to London on 21 August 1968.

   

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"Mother Nature's Son" was completed on Tuesday 20 August in studio two. Onto take 24 McCartney overdubbed timpani, another acoustic guitar part, and drums – which was recorded in the stairwell just outside the studio.

[technical engineer] Alan Brown : "Paul wanted an open effect on his drums and we ended up leaving the studio itself and putting the drums in the corridor, halfway down, with mikes at the far end. It wasn't carpeted then and it gave an interesting staccato effect."

McCartney worked with George Martin on the brass arrangement, also recorded on this day. While waiting for the session musicians to arrive, McCartney recorded a song titled 'Etcetera'. McCartney taped a single take of the song, listened to a playback, then the tape was taken away by George Martin's assistant Chris Thomas.

Alan Brown : "This was a very beautiful song. I recall it was a ballad and had the word 'etcetera' several times in the lyric. I only heard it twice: when he recorded it and when we played it back to him. The tape was taken away and I've never heard of it since."

Although McCartney later remembered it as a song written for Marianne Faithfull, Etcetera was in fact a version of Thingumybob. The tune had been recorded by the Black Dyke Mills Band on 30 June 1968 and was released as a single on Apple Records in August. McCartney's version from this day featured lyrics, in which the word 'etcetera' appeared several times. It also had an extra bridge and a softer introduction which was similar to that of 'Here, There And Everywhere'.

'Mother Nature's Son' featured two trumpets and two trombones. The instruments were overdubbed along with a brief guitar solo towards the song's end, after which recording was complete. It was mixed in mono in eight attempts towards the end of the session, although new mixes were made on 12 October.

John Lennon and Ringo Starr were working on 'Yer Blues' in another studio at the time; they did, however, briefly enter studio two . . .

Ken Scott : "Paul was downstairs going through the arrangement with George and the brass players. Everything was great, everyone was in great spirits. It felt really good. Suddenly, halfway through, John and Ringo walked in and you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. An instant change. It was like that for 10 minutes and then as soon as they left it felt great again. It was very bizarre."

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"Wild Honey Pie" was a singalong written in Rishikesh, India.

Paul : "It was just a fragment of an instrumental which we were not sure about, but Pattie Harrison liked it very much, so we decided to leave it on the album."

It was recorded on Tuesday, 20 August 1968, during the second and final session for 'Mother Nature's Son'.

Paul : "We were in an experimental mode, and so I said, 'Can I just make something up?' I started off with the guitar and did a multitracking experiment in the control room or maybe in the little room next door. It was very home-made; it wasn't a big production at all. I just made up this short piece and I multitracked a harmony to that, and a harmony to that, and a harmony to that, and built it up sculpturally with a lot of vibrato on the strings, really pulling the strings madly. Hence, 'Wild Honey Pie', which was a reference to the other song I had written called 'Honey Pie'. It was a little experimental piece."

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On Thursday 22 August 1968, John Lennon's estranged wife Cynthia countersued for divorce, citing his adultery with Yoko Ono. John Lennon had previously filed for divorce, alleging that Cynthia had herself been adulterous – a charge she denied.

Cynthia Lennon : "I had to survive this for Julian. I couldn't afford to crumble: I had to be strong, do what was best for him. I could fight the divorce, but that would get horribly messy and in the circumstances as clean a break as possible seemed best. By dawn I had made my decision. I would countersue for divorce, citing his adultery with Yoko."

Lennon did not contest the order, and the divorce was granted in November 1968.

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"Back In The USSR" was written by Paul McCartney and inspired by Chuck Berry's 'Back In The USA' and the Beach Boys' 'California Girls'.

Paul : "It's tongue in cheek. This is a travelling Russkie who has just flown in from Miami Beach; he's come the other way. He can't wait to get back to the Georgian mountains: 'Georgia's always on my mind'; there's all sorts of little jokes in it... I remember trying to sing it in my Jerry Lee Lewis voice, to get my mind set on a particular feeling. We added Beach Boys style harmonies."

The song was written in Rishikesh, India, while The Beatles were meditating with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Another member of the party was the Beach Boys' Mike Love.

Mike Love : "I was sitting at the breakfast table and McCartney came down with his acoustic guitar and he was playing 'Back In The USSR', and I told him that what you ought to do is talk about the girls all around Russia, the Ukraine and Georgia. He was plenty creative not to need any lyrical help from me but I gave him the idea for that little section... I think it was light-hearted and humorous of them to do a take on the Beach Boys."

The song caused an anti-Beatles conservative backlash in America, led by the John Birch Society which charged the group with encouraging communism. Unsurprisingly, 'Back In The USSR' became a favourite song of The Beatles' Russian fans, who heard it through tapes smuggled into the country.

Unusually, the drums on 'Back In The USSR' were recorded mainly by Paul McCartney, with contributions from John Lennon and George Harrison, after Ringo Starr had temporarily walked out of the group.

Tensions had been building within The Beatles for some time during the recording of the White Album, and on Thursday, 22 August 1968, matters came to a head, and Starr allegedly left when McCartney criticised him for messing up a tom-tom fill. With the atmosphere in the studio already often tense, the altercation was enough for the normally amenable Starr to reach his limit.

   

Ringo : "I left because I felt two things: I felt I wasn't playing great, and I also felt that the other three were really happy and I was an outsider. I went to see John, who had been living in my apartment in Montagu Square with Yoko since he moved out of Kenwood. I said, 'I'm leaving the group because I'm not playing well and I feel unloved and out of it, and you three are really close.' And John said, 'I thought it was you three!' So then I went over to Paul's and knocked on his door. I said the same thing: 'I'm leaving the band. I feel you three guys are really close and I'm out of it.' And Paul said, 'I thought it was you three!' I didn't even bother going to George then. I said, 'I'm going on holiday.' I took the kids and we went to Sardinia."

Ringo's departure, meanwhile, was kept from the press, with everyone who knew the troublesome events sworn to secrecy.

George Martin : "I think they were all feeling a little paranoid. When you have a rift between people – if you go to a party and the husband and wife have been having a row – there's a tension, an atmosphere. And you wonder whether you are making things worse by being there. I think that was the kind of situation we found with Ringo. He was probably feeling a little bit odd because of the mental strangeness with John and Yoko and Paul, and none of them having quite the buddiness they used to have. He might have said to himself, 'Am I the cause?'"

Starr flew to the Mediterranean where he spent two weeks on Peter Sellers' yacht.

Ringo : "I had a rest and the holiday was great. I knew we were all in a messed-up stage. It wasn't just me; the whole thing was going down. I had definitely left, I couldn't take it any more. There was no magic and the relationships were terrible. I'd come to a bad spot in life. It could have been paranoia, but I just didn't feel good – I felt like an outsider. But then I realised that we were all feeling like outsiders, and it just needed me to go around knocking to bring it to a head."

The recording of 'Back In The USSR' was completed in just two days. On the first takes, recorded on Thursday 22 August, McCartney played guitar and Harrison was on snare drum. On later takes McCartney switched to piano, and Lennon strummed chords on a bass guitar. They taped five tracks, the last of which was the best. The next day they added two more drum, bass and lead guitar tracks, a piano part, lead vocals from Paul McCartney and backing vocals from Lennon and Harrison. All three Beatles contributed handclaps.

Ken Scott : "I remember Ringo being uptight about something, I don't remember what, and the next thing I was told was that he'd quit the band. But work continued. They did Back In The USSR with what I seem to recall was a composite drum track of bits and pieces, possibly with all of the other three playing drums."

     

Back In The USSR was mixed in mono on Friday 23 August, during which they added the sound of a Viscount aeroplane taking off and landing. The effects had been recorded at London Airport, and came from the tape Volume 17: Jet and Piston Engine Aeroplane from Abbey Road's collection.

[tape operator] John Smith : "For the mono mix everything came out OK, but the stereo mix took a long, long time and I was holding the pencil to keep the effects tape taught. I guess I must have been leaning back on it and started to stretch it, because the mono has this clear, clean lovely jet sound while the stereo is an abomination of a jet sound."

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On Monday, 26 August 1968, The Beatles' latest single, 'Hey Jude', was issued in the US. It was one of four singles issued simultaneously to launch Apple Records – the others being Mary Hopkin's single 'Those Were The Days', produced by Paul McCartney. McCartney also wrote and produced the Black Dyke Mills Band's single 'Thingumybob', and Jackie Lomax's 'Sour Milk Sea' was written and produced by George Harrison.

     

In advance of the release Apple declared 11–18 August to be "National Apple Week" in the UK, and sent gift-wrapped boxes of the records, marked "Our First Four", to Queen Elizabeth II and other members of the royal family, and to Harold Wilson, the prime minister at the time.

     

The Single : Hey Jude
Quote"Hey Jude" was written by Paul McCartney. The single was the Beatles' first release on their Apple record label. The song's original title was "Hey Jules", and it was intended to comfort Julian Lennon from the stress of his parents' separation.



In May 1968, John Lennon and his wife Cynthia separated due to his affair with Yoko Ono. The following month, Paul McCartney drove out to visit the Lennons' five-year-old son Julian, at Kenwood, the family's home in Weybridge.

Paul : "I thought, as a friend of the family, I would motor out to Weybridge and tell them that everything was all right: to try and cheer them up, basically, and see how they were. I had about an hour's drive. I would always turn the radio off and try and make up songs, just in case... I started singing: 'Hey Jules – don't make it bad, take a sad song, and make it better...' It was optimistic, a hopeful message for Julian: 'Come on, man, your parents got divorced. I know you're not happy, but you'll be OK.' I eventually changed 'Jules' to 'Jude'. One of the characters in Oklahoma! is called Jud, and I like the name."

Cynthia Lennon : "I was touched by his obvious concern for our welfare ... On the journey down he composed 'Hey Jude' in the car. I will never forget Paul's gesture of care and concern in coming to see us."

McCartney recorded a piano demo of 'Hey Jude' upon his return to his home in Cavendish Avenue, London. On Friday, 26 July 1968, played the song to Lennon for the first time.

Paul : "I finished it all up in Cavendish and I was in the music room upstairs when John and Yoko came to visit and they were right behind me over my right shoulder, standing up, listening to it as I played it to them, and when I got to the line, 'The movement you need is on your shoulder,' I looked over my shoulder and I said, 'I'll change that, it's a bit crummy. I was just blocking it out,' and John said, 'You won't, you know. That's the best line in it!' That's collaboration. When someone's that firm about a line that you're going to junk, and he said, 'No, keep it in.' So of course you love that line twice as much because it's a little stray, it's a little mutt that you were about to put down and it was reprieved and so it's more beautiful than ever. I love those words now."

Although McCartney originally wrote "Hey Jude" for Julian, Lennon thought it had actually been written for him - the massive big'ead!

John : "He said it was written about Julian, my child. He knew I was splitting with Cyn and leaving Julian. He was driving over to say hi to Julian. He'd been like an uncle to him. You know, Paul was always good with kids. And so he came up with 'Hey Jude'. But I always heard it as a song to me. If you think about it... Yoko's just come into the picture. He's saying, 'Hey, Jude – hey, John.' I know I'm sounding like one of those fans who reads things into it, but you can hear it as a song to me. The words 'go out and get her' – subconsciously he was saying, Go ahead, leave me. On a conscious level, he didn't want me to go ahead. The angel in him was saying, 'Bless you.' The devil in him didn't like it at all because he didn't want to lose his partner."

It wasn't until 1987 that McCartney came to discuss 'Hey Jude' with Julian Lennon, after a chance encounter in a New York hotel.

Julian Lennon : "He told me that he'd been thinking about my circumstances all those years ago, about what I was going through. Paul and I used to hang out a bit – more than dad and I did. We had a great friendship going and there seem to be far more pictures of me and Paul playing together at that age than there are pictures of me and dad."

 

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The Beatles hired Michael Lindsay-Hogg to shoot promotional clips for "Hey Jude" and "Revolution", after he had previously directed the clips for "Paperback Writer" and "Rain" in 1966. For "Hey Jude", they settled on the idea of shooting with a live, albeit controlled, audience. In the clip, the Beatles are first seen by themselves, performing the initial chorus and verses, before the audience moves forward and joins them in singing the coda. The decision was made to hire an orchestra and for the vocals to be sung live, to circumvent the Musicians' Union's ban on miming on television, but otherwise the Beatles performed to a backing track.

Lindsay-Hogg shot the clip at Twickenham Film Studios on 4 September 1968. The event marked Ringo Starr's return to the group, after McCartney's criticism of his drumming had led to him walking out during a session for the White Album track "Back in the U.S.S.R."

The final edit was a combination of two different takes and included "introductions" to the song by David Frost and Cliff Richard, for their respective TV programmes. It first aired in the UK on Frost on Sunday on 8 September 1968. The "Hey Jude" clip was broadcast in the United States on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on 6 October 1968.

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A failed early promotional attempt for the single took place after the Beatles' all-night recording session on 7–8 August 1968. With the Apple Boutique having closed a week before, McCartney and Francie Schwartz scraped the words 'Hey Jude' and 'Revolution across its large, whitewashed shop windows. The words were mistaken for antisemitic graffiti leading to complaints from the local Jewish community.

Paul : "I went into the Apple shop just before 'Hey Jude' was being released. The windows were whited out, and I thought: 'Great opportunity. Baker Street, millions of buses going around...' So, before anyone knew what it meant, I scraped 'Hey Jude' out of the whitewash. A guy who had a delicatessen in Marylebone rang me up, and he was furious: 'I'm going to send one of my sons round to beat you up.' I said, 'Hang on, hang on – what's this about?' and he said: 'You've written "Jude" in the shop window.' I had no idea it meant 'Jew', but if you look at footage of Nazi Germany, 'Juden Raus' was written in whitewashed windows with a Star of David. I swear it never occurred to me."



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Released on 26 August 1968 in the United States, 'Hey Jude' swiftly rose to the number one spot, where it remained for the next nine weeks – the longest run achieved by any Beatles single. The single sold five million copies in six months, and a further million by the end of 1968. Altogether it spent 19 weeks in the charts.

John : "I wanted to put 'Revolution' out as a single, I had it all prepared, but they came by, and said it wasn't good enough. And we put out what? 'Hello, Goodbye' or some shit like that? No, we put out 'Hey Jude', which was worth it – I'm sorry – but we could have had both."

In the UK it was released on 30 August 1968. The single began its 16-week chart run on 7 September 1968, rising to the top spot a week later, spending two weeks at number one. At over seven minutes, 'Hey Jude' was the longest single ever to have topped the British charts. Its lengthy fade-out brought the song's length to over seven minutes.

George Martin : "It was a long song. In fact, after I timed it I actually said, 'You can't make a single that long.' I was shouted down by the boys – not for the first time in my life – and John asked: 'Why not?' I couldn't think of a good answer, really – except the pathetic one that disc jockeys wouldn't play it. He said, 'They will if it's us.' And, of course, he was absolutely right."

   

In his contemporary review of the single, Derek Johnson of the NME wrote: "The intriguing features of 'Hey Jude' are its extreme length and the 40-piece orchestral accompaniment – and personally I would have preferred it without either!". While he viewed the track overall as "a beautiful, compelling song", and the first three minutes as "absolutely sensational", Johnson rued the long coda's "vocal improvisations on the basically repetitive four-bar chorus".  Johnson nevertheless concluded that "Hey Jude" and "Revolution" "prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Beatles are still streets ahead of their rivals."

'Hey Jude' remains The Beatles' most commercially-successful single. It has sold an estimated eight million copies worldwide and has topped the charts in 11 countries.

Other Versions include :   Wilson Pickett (1968)  /  Stanley Turrentine (1968)  /  José Feliciano (1969)  /  The Temptations (1969)  /  Smokey Robinson & The Miracles (1969)  /  Diana Ross and The Supremes (1969)  /  Petula Clark (1969)  /  A Neater Harris (1969)  /  Ella Fitzgerald (1969)  /  King Curtis (1969)  /  Electronic Concept Orchestra (1969)  /  Chet Atkins (1969)  /  The Bar-Kays (1969)  /  Dionne Warwick (1969)  /  Count Basie and His Orchestra (1970)  /  Elvis Presley (1971)  /  The Brothers Johnson (1976)  /  Tiny Tim (1996)  /  Shirley Bassey (1997)  /  Toots and The Maytals (2002)  /  The Punkles (2003)  /  Danny McEvoy (2010)  /  Sammy Harris 8-Bit (2011)  /  Yuki Matsui (2013)  /  Amy Slattery (2016)  /  Kelly Valleau (2018)  /  a robot (2019)

On This Day  :
Quote8 September : France performs nuclear test at Mururoa atoll
8 September : Saundra Williams wins 1st Miss Black America pageant
8 September : US Open Men's Tennis, Forest Hills, NY: Arthur Ashe wins first Open era US title
8 September : Louise Minchin, BBC presenter, born Louise Mary Grayson in Hong Kong
10 September : Big Daddy Kane, American rapper, born Antonio Hardy in Brooklyn, New York
10 September : Guy Ritchie, British film director, born Guy Stuart Ritchie in Hartfield, Hertfordshire
14 September : Jimmy Ellis beats Floyd Patterson in 15 rounds to win heavyweight boxing title
14 September : Dmitri Shostakovich' 12th string quartet, premieres in Moscow
14 September : USSR's Zond 5 is launched on 1st circumlunar flight
21 September : Jon Brookes, drummer (The Charlatans), born in Burntwood, Staffordshire
21 September : Ricki Lake, actress & talk show host, born Ricki Pamela Lake in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York,

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! :
Quote           

daf

Shoo-Bee-Doo-Wap, it's . . .

258.  The Beatles - Revolution



From : 8 – 21 September 1968
Weeks : 2
A-side : Hey Jude
Bonus 1 : Revolution Rehearsal
Bonus 2 : Take 14 backing track
Bonus 3 : Revolution Isolated Tracks
Bonus 4 : Revolution Promo film
Bonus 5 : original mono single mix - not on youtube, the massive idiots!

The Story So Far :  The Beatles Album Number Nine . . . Number Nine . . . Number Nine - Part 3
QuoteOn Saturday, 24 August 1968, John Lennon and Yoko Ono made an appearance on the fourth edition of Frost On Saturday. The show was broadcast live from Studio One of Wembley Studios in London, from 6.45-7.30pm. Other guests were the singer Blossom Dearie and satirist Stan Freberg.

Lennon and Ono had nothing to promote, so used the opportunity to discuss their personal and artistic philosophies. It was their first joint television appearance, and the couple dressed in black wearing white badges from their art exhibition You Are Here.

The segment began with David Frost asking Ono to explain the concept for 'You Are Here'. She described the exhibition as unfinished, epitomised by a broken cup on a pedestal that gallery visitors are invited to mend. Studio hands then brought out a blackboard on which Lennon had written 'You Are Here' in chalk. He discussed people's reactions to the canvas equivalent in the gallery, which ranged from amusement to bemusement to enthusiasm. A two-minute extract from the 'Smile' film was then shown, which Lennon described as a moving portrait.

As they discussed the film, Ono suggests that guests take part in the "Hammer a nail" piece which she described as a way to channel aggression. Two audience members duly hammered nails into a block of wood, which they describe as "satisfying" and "unbelievable". David Frost then joined in, but admitted he felt like "a man hammering in a nail" – a comment which is greeted with applause from the audience. Lennon raises his arm like a boxer's, proclaiming him "The winner!"

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"Dear Prudence" was written by John Lennon in India about Mia Farrow's younger sister, who had become infatuated with meditation, locking herself away from the rest of the group and falling into deep states against the advice of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

John : "A song about Mia Farrow's sister, who seemed to go slightly barmy, meditating too long, and couldn't come out of the little hut that we were livin' in. They selected me and George to try and bring her out because she would trust us. If she'd been in the West, they would have put her away. We got her out of the house. She'd been locked in for three weeks and wouldn't come out, trying to reach God quicker than anybody else. That was the competition in Maharishi's camp: who was going to get cosmic first. What I didn't know was I was already cosmic."

Prudence Farrow : "Being on that course was more important to me than anything in the world. I was very focused on getting in as much meditation as possible, so that I could gain enough experience to teach it myself. I knew that i must have stuck out because I would always rush straight back to my room after lectures and meals so that I could meditate. John, George and Paul would all want to sit around jamming and having a good time and I'd be flying into my room. They were all serious about what they were doing but they just weren't as fanatical as me. At the end of the course, just as they were leaving, George mentioned that they had written a song about me but I didn't hear it until it came out on the album. I was flattered. It was a beautiful thing to have done."

The song's distinctive fingerpicked guitar style was taught to Lennon by Donovan, another guest at Rishikesh. The style was used on a number of other songs on the White Album, including 'Julia' and 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun'.

 

Like 'Back In The USSR', 'Dear Prudence' was recorded without Ringo Starr, who had temporarily left the group. The Beatles taped the song over three days in Trident Studios, an independent facility in London's Wardour Street. Unlike EMI Studios, Trident had eight-track facilities available, which The Beatles had previously used for the recording of 'Hey Jude'.

Work began on Wednesday 28 August 1968. Although the studio records note that The Beatles only recorded one take - the basic track featured John Lennon on fingerpicked guitar, George Harrison on lead guitar and Paul McCartney on drums. The next day McCartney recorded a bass part, Lennon manually double-tracked his lead vocals, and backing vocals and handclaps were performed by McCartney and Harrison. They were assisted with contributions from Mal Evans, recent Apple discovery Jackie Lomax, and McCartney's cousin John. The end of the song originally featured applause from those who contributed backing vocals and handclaps, though it was left out of the final mix.

The recording was concluded on Friday30 August, with a piano track and a very brief flugelhorn section. Both of these were performed by McCartney.

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On Tuesday 3 September 1968, Ringo Starr rejoined the group. At George Harrison's instigation, Mal Evans covered Ringo's drum kit with dozens of flowers.

Ken Scott : "Within a few days the differences had been sorted out and Ringo came back. Mal Evans completely decorated studio two with flowers, they were all over his drum kit, 'Welcome Back Ringo'."

Ringo : "I got a telegram saying, 'You're the best rock'n'roll drummer in the world. Come on home, we love you.' And so I came back. We all needed that little shake-up. When I got back to the studio I found George had had it decked out with flowers – there were flowers everywhere. I felt good about myself again, we'd got through that little crisis and it was great. And then the 'White' album really took off – we all left the studio and went to a little room so there was no separation and lots of group activity going down."

Although Ringo's return from Sardinia was much celebrated, there was little for him to do in this recording session - as George Harrison worked alone, recording a backwards guitar solo for 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps'. However, the following day, he was back behind the drunkit filming promotional clips for 'Hey Jude' and 'Revolution' at Twickenham Film Studios.

They arrived at the studios at 1.30pm and worked until evening. The set, at the studio's stage one, had been assembled over the previous three days. Only The Beatles' lead and backing vocals were recorded live, although instruments and amplifiers were set up. The Musicians' Union had placed a ban on miming, and the live vocals were an attempt to hide this.

Directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, at least three takes of 'Hey Jude' were filmed, and the most commonly-seen promo was an edit of takes one and three. In each of them McCartney sang along to the studio vocals, and ad-libbed live during the extended ending. A 36-piece orchestra was also assembled, the members wearing white tuxedos, and 300 extras were brought in for the finale. The latter had been recruited after 20 students handed out leaflets in the area, and The Beatles' assistant Mal Evans invited a number of fans from outside EMI Studios.

The 'Hey Jude' film had its world premiere on 8 September 1968 on Frost On Saturday. To make it seem as though The Beatles were on the programme, David Frost visited Twickenham on this day to record an introduction.

George : "We made a film in front of an audience. They had brought people in for 'Hey Jude'. it wasn't done just for David Frost, but it was shown on his show and he was actually there when we filmed it."



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"Glass Onion" was John Lennon's answer to those who looked for hidden meanings in The Beatles' music. It was a song deliberately filled with red herrings, obscure imagery and allusions to past works. Fully aware of the power of The Beatles' own mythology, and with a general dislike of those who over-interpreted his work, Lennon deliberately inserted references to 'I Am The Walrus', 'Strawberry Fields Forever', 'Lady Madonna', 'The Fool On The Hill', and 'Fixing A Hole'.

John : "That's me, just doing a throwaway song, à la 'Walrus', à la everything I've ever written. I threw the line in – 'the Walrus was Paul' – just to confuse everybody a bit more. And I thought Walrus has now become me, meaning 'I am the one.' Only it didn't mean that in this song. It could have been 'the fox terrier is Paul,' you know. I mean, it's just a bit of poetry. It was just thrown in like that."

Lennon later claimed the line was written because he was intending to leave The Beatles.

John : "Well, that was a joke. The line was put in partly because I was feeling guilty because I was with Yoko and I was leaving Paul. I was trying – I don't know. It's a very perverse way of saying to Paul, you know, 'Here, have this crumb, this illusion – this stroke, because I'm leaving'."

'Glass Onion' was a name suggested by Lennon for The Iveys, a Swansea group who signed to Apple in 1968 and later became Badfinger. Lennon retained a liking for the phrase 'glass onion', which had apt connotations of both transparency and multiple layers.

The Cast Iron Shore is a real place in Liverpool, sometimes known locally as the Cassie. A dovetail joint, meanwhile, is even less enigmatic, being a common feature of woodwork joinery. However, Lennon may have liked the use of the word 'joint', presumably expecting many to see it as a reference to a cannabis reefer. The bent backed tulips are believed to have been inspired by the table arrangement at Parkes, a then-fashionable restaurant on London's Beauchamp Place.

Derek Taylor : "You'd be in Parkes sitting around your table wondering what was going on with the flowers and then you'd realise that they were actually tulips with their petals bent all the way back, so that you could see the obverse side of the petals and also the stamen. This is what John meant about 'seeing how the other half lives'. He meant seeing how the other half of the flower lives but also, because it was an expensive restaurant, how the other half of society lived."

The Beatles began recording 'Glass Onion' on Wednesday, 11 September, 1968. They taped 34 attempts at the basic rhythm track, of which Take 33 was the best. The next day John Lennon recorded his lead vocals and Ringo Starr taped a tambourine part. On 13 September piano and another drum track were added, and three days later Paul McCartney recorded a brief recorder part.

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"I Will" was written by Paul McCartney while in Rishikesh, India. Although the music came together fairly easily, the words remained unfinished even as recording began back in London.

Paul : "I was doing a song, 'I Will', that I had as a melody for quite a long time but I didn't have any lyrics to it. I remember sitting around with Donovan, and maybe a couple of other people. We were just sitting around one evening after our day of meditation and I played him this one and he liked it and we were trying to write some words. We kicked around a few lyrics, something about the moon, but they weren't very satisfactory and I thought the melody was better than the words so I didn't use them. I kept searching for better words and I wrote my own set in the end; very simple words, straight love-song words really. I think they're quite effective. It's still one of my favourite melodies that I've written. You just occasionally get lucky with a melody and it becomes rather complete and I think this is one of them; quite a complete tune."

If the writing of 'I Will' took some time, recording it was possibly harder still. Although completed in just two days, it took The Beatles 67 takes to get right.

George Harrison did not take part in the recording. Beginning at 7pm on Monday 16 September 1968 and finishing at 3am the following morning, Paul, John, and Ringo recorded the song, plus a number of ad-libs as the session progressed. These included Take 19, which was an improvised song based around the line "Can you take me back where I came from?" which was eventually trimmed to just 28 seconds and used on the White Album between 'Cry Baby Cry' and 'Revolution 9'.

Other songs played during the session included 'Step Inside Love', 'Los Paranoias', 'Blue Moon', and 'The Way You Look Tonight'.

If the songs recorded were unusual, the instrumentation was no less so. McCartney was on familiar ground, playing acoustic guitar and singing. Lennon, however, kept time by beating wood blocks known as skulls, and Starr played other percussion instruments: bongos, maracas and cymbals.

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While the sessions for the White Album often found The Beatles labouring for days on individual songs, at other times they worked quickly. One example of this was written and recorded on this day.

On Wednesday 18 September 1968, Paul McCartney arrived earlier to the studio than the other Beatles, and began playing around with the song's guitar riff. As the rest of the group arrived they began jamming, and the song developed into 'Birthday'.

Paul : "We thought, 'Why not make something up?' So we got a riff going and arranged it around this riff. We said, 'We'll go to there for a few bars, then we'll do this for a few bars.' We added some lyrics, then we got the friends who were there to join in on the chorus. So that is 50-50 John and me, made up on the spot and recorded all on the same evening. I don't recall it being anybody's birthday in particular but it might have been, but the other reason for doing it is that, if you have a song that refers to Christmas or a birthday, it adds to the life of the song, if it's a good song, because people will pull it out on birthday shows, so I think there was a little bit of that at the back of our minds."

John : "'Birthday' was written in the studio. Just made up on the spot. I think Paul wanted to write a song like 'Happy Birthday Baby', the old Fifties hit. But it was sort of made up in the studio. It was a piece of garbage."

The Beatles recorded 20 takes of the song, after which they decamped to McCartney's house to watch the 1956 film The Girl Can't Help It shown on BBC 2 from 9.05-10.40pm.

Paul : "What happened was The Girl Can't Help It was on television. That's an old rock film with Little Richard and Fats Domino and Eddie Cochran and a few others. Gene Vincent. And we wanted to see it, so we started recording at five o'clock. And we said, 'We'll do something, just do a backing track. We'll make up a backing track.' So we kept it very simple, 12 bar blues kind of thing. And we stuck in a few bits here and there in it, with no idea what the song was or what was gonna go on top of it. We just said, 'OK, 12 bars in A, and we'll change to D, and I'm gonna do a few beats in C.' And we really just did it like that. Random thing. We didn't have time for anything else, and so we just recorded this backing."

Chris Thomas was standing in for George Martin, who was away at the time.

Chris Thomas : "I had mentioned to Paul a couple of days earlier about The Girl Can't Help It being on television during this evening. The idea was to start the session earlier than usual, about five o'clock in the afternoon, and then all nip around the corner to Paul's house in Cavendish Avenue, watch the film and go back to work. So on the day Paul was the first one in, and he was playing the 'Birthday' riff. Eventually the others arrived, by which time Paul had literally written the song, right there in the studio. We had the backing track down by about 8.30, popped around to watch the film as arranged and then came back and actually finished the whole song. It was all done in a day!"

Paul : "And we came back here to my house and watched The Girl Can't Help It. Then we went back to the studio again and made up some words to go with it all. So this song was just made up in an evening. Um, you know. We hadn't ever thought of it before then. And it's one of my favourites because of that. I think it works, you know, 'cause it's just, it's a good one to dance to. Like the big long drum break, just 'cause, instead of, well, normally we might have four bars of drums, but with this we just keep it going, you know. We all like to hear drums plodding on."

Take 19 of 'Birthday' was chosen as the best version, and the four-track tape was copied onto an eight-track machine – the copies were numbered takes 21 and 22. Meanwhile, McCartney and John Lennon wrote the lyrics, which they then overdubbed. Guests at the session were Yoko Ono and Pattie Harrison, who joined in with backing vocals and handclaps. The recording was completed with tambourine and piano, the latter fed through a Vox amplifier and treated with distortion. At around 4.30am 'Birthday' was mixed in mono. John Lennon used the studio control room microphone to announce: "This is Ken MacIntosh and the roving remixers. Take farty-one".

   

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George Harrison began writing 'Piggies' in 1966, the same year he composed the similarly ascerbic 'Taxman'. Although musically quite different, both songs contain social commentary about financial greed and class differences. 'Piggies' wasn't recorded by The Beatles until late 1968. The song underwent some revisions beforehand, with lyrical contributions from John Lennon and Harrison's mother Louise.

George : "'Piggies' is a social comment. I was stuck for one line in the middle until my mother came up with the lyric, 'What they need is a damn good whacking' which is a nice simple way of saying they need a good hiding. It needed to rhyme with 'backing,' 'lacking,' and had absolutely nothing to do with American policemen or Californian shagnasties!"

The Beatles began recording 'Piggies' on Thursday 19 September 1968. The group recorded 11 takes of the basic rhythm track of 'Piggies'. It featured Harrison playing acoustic guitar, Paul McCartney on bass guitar, Ringo Starr hitting a tambourine, and Chris Thomas on harpsichord,

[producer] Chris Thomas : "All four Beatles were there for the session and we were working in [studio] number two. I wandered into number one and found a harpsichord, not knowing that it had been set up overnight for a classical recording. So we discussed wheeling the thing into number two but Ken Scott said, 'No, we can't, it's there for another session!' So we moved our session into number one instead. George Harrison agreed that my harpsichord idea was a good one and suggested that I play it. This I did, but while George and I were tinkling away on this harpsichord he started playing another new song to me, which later turned out to be 'Something'. I said, 'That's great! Why don't we do that one instead?' and he replied, 'Do you like it, do you really think it's good?'"

The following day Harrison taped his lead vocals, which were artificially double tracked. Harrison was joined by John Lennon and Paul McCartney in the final verse. During the bridge, Harrison's vocals was heavily limited to make it sound as though he was pinching his nose.

[technical engineer] Ken Townsend : "We fed the microphone signal through a very sharp echo chamber filter, an RS106, so that it chopped off everything above and below the 3.5 kilohertz level, creating a very narrow hand of sound."

At the same time, John Lennon assembled a tape loop of pigs snorting, using effects tapes from the Abbey Road collection.

[engineer] Stuart Eltham : "There's a tape called Animals And Bees (volume 35) which includes pigs. It's from an old EMI 78 rpm record and The Beatles may have used a combination of that and their own voices. That always works well – the new voices hide the 78 rpm scratchiness, the original record hides the fact that some of the sounds are man made."

'Piggies' was finished on 10 October, with the addition of an eight-piece string section, arranged by George Martin, consisting of  Henry Datyner, Eric Bowie, Norman Lederman, Ronald Thomas (violins)  /  John Underwood & Keith Cummings (violas)  /  and Eldon Fox & Reginald Kilbey (cellos).

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'Happiness Is A Warm Gun' was made up of four distinct song fragments, and took its title from a gun magazine, The American Rifleman, which Lennon saw in the studio at Abbey Road.

John : "George Martin showed me the cover of a magazine that said, 'Happiness is a warm gun'. I thought it was a fantastic, insane thing to say. A warm gun means you've just shot something."

   

Paul : "It's a favourite of mine. The idea of the 'Happiness is a warm gun' thing is from an advert in an American paper. It said, Happiness is a warm gun, sort of thing, and it was 'Get ready for the long hot summer with a rifle,' you know, 'Come and buy them now!' And it was so sick, you know, the idea of 'Come and buy your killing weapons,' and 'Come and get it.' But it's just such a great line, 'Happiness is a warm gun' that John sort of took that and used that as a chorus. And the rest of the words, I think they're great words, you know. It's a poem."

The first section of the song was made up of phrases thought up by Lennon and Apple's publicist Derek Taylor during an acid trip the pair experienced along with Neil Aspinall and Lennon's childhood friend Pete Shotton. The opening line was a Liverpudlian expression of approval, and the 'velvet hand' line was inspired by a fetishist Taylor and his wife met on the Isle of Man.

Derek Taylor : "I told a story about a chap my wife Joan and I met in the Carrick Bay Hotel on the Isle of Man. It was late one night drinking in the bar and this local fellow who liked meeting holiday makers and rapping to them suddenly said to us, 'I like wearing moleskin gloves you know. It gives me a little bit of an unusual sensation when I'm out with my girlfriend.' He then said, 'I don't want to go into details.' So we didn't. But that provided the line, 'She's well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand'."

The lizard on the window pane was a recollection from Taylor's days living in Los Angeles. The man in the crowd, meanwhile, was from a newspaper report about a Manchester City football fan who had been arrested after inserting mirrors into his footwear in order to see up the skirts of women during matches.

Derek Taylor : "I don't know where the 'soap impression of his wife' came from but the eating of something and then donating it to the National Trust came from a conversation we'd had about the horrors of walking in public spaces on Merseyside, where you were always coming across the evidence of people having crapped behind bushes and in old air raid shelters. So to donate what you've eaten to the National Trust was what would now be known as 'defecation on common land owned by the National Trust.' When John put it all together, it created a series of layers of images. It was like a whole mess of colour."

The second part of the song ('I need a fix 'cause I'm going down') contains Lennon's clearest reference to heroin while in The Beatles, although he later denied the line was about drugs.

John : "'Happiness Is A Warm Gun' was another one which was banned on the radio – they said it was about shooting up drugs. But they were advertising guns and I thought it was so crazy that I made a song out of it. It wasn't about 'H' at all."

The 'Mother Superior jump the gun' section, meanwhile, was inspired by his infatuation with Yoko Ono.

John : "The initial inspiration was from the magazine cover. But that was the beginning of my relationship with Yoko and I was very sexually oriented then. When we weren't in the studio, we were in bed."

On Monday 23 September 1968 The Beatles began recording the song, with the working title 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun In Your Hand'. They taped the first 45 takes of the song, with John Lennon on lead guitar and guide vocals, Paul McCartney on bass guitar, George Harrison on fuzz lead guitar, and Ringo Starr playing drums.

The following day the group recorded takes 46-70. At the end of these it was decided that the first half of take 53 and the second half of take 65 were the best, and the two were edited together on the evening of 25 September. With the edit in place, the group began overdubbing later that night. Lennon's lead vocals were supported by backing vocals from Lennon, McCartney and Harrison. Other additions were an organ, piano, snare drum, tambourine and bass.

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On Monday 30 September 1968, 'The Beatles : The Authorised Biography', written by Hunter Davies, was published by William Heinemann Limited.

Davies was a prolific Scottish writer and broadcaster. His 1965 novel Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush was made into a film, and when he approached Paul McCartney to suggest writing the theme song, he also raised the possibility of writing a biography of the group.

McCartney liked the idea of a biography, and suggested that Davies contact The Beatles' then manager Brian Epstein. It was received favourably by Epstein, and Davies was granted access to observe the group at work and play, conducting a series of interviews and spending considerable time with The Beatles and their families.

 

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The Beatles began recording 'Honey Pie' on Tuesday 1 October 1968, at Trident Studios in London's Wardour Street. This authentic-sounding pastiche of the British music hall style was written by Paul McCartney.

Paul : "Both John and I had a great love for music hall, what the Americans call vaudeville... I very much liked that old crooner style, the strange fruity voice that they used, so 'Honey Pie' was me writing one of them to an imaginary woman, across the ocean, on the silver screen, who was called 'Honey Pie'. It's another of my fantasy songs."

Just one take was recorded on the first day, although it is likely that a number of rehearsal attempts had previously been recorded and wiped. Paul McCartney played piano, George Harrison was on a six-string Fender bass, John Lennon played an electric guitar, and Ringo Starr was on drums. The next day McCartney taped his lead vocals, and Lennon added a lead guitar part.

George : "John played a brilliant solo on 'Honey Pie' – sounded like Django Reinhardt or something. It was one of them where you just close your eyes and happen to hit all the right notes... sounded like a little jazz solo."

George Martin's woodwind arrangement – prepared from a rough mix made at the end of the first Trident session – was recorded on Friday 4 October 1968. Written in the 1920s jazz style, it featured five saxophones played by Dennis Walton, Ronald Chamberlain, Jim Chester, Rex Morris and Harry Klein; plus two clarinets played by Raymond Newman and David Smith.

At the end of the session, McCartney added a brief vocal overdub: "Now she's hit the big time". It was fed through an audio compressor to reduce the treble and bass. The sound of an old phonograph record was also superimposed to give added period authenticity.

Paul : "We put a sound on my voice to make it sound like a scratchy old record. So it's not a parody, it's a nod to the vaudeville tradition that I was raised on."

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Written by George Harrison, 'Savoy Truffle' was inspired by his friend Eric Clapton's gluttonous love of chocolate.

George : "'Savoy Truffle' on the White Album was written for Eric. He's got this real sweet tooth and he'd just had his mouth worked on. His dentist said he was through with candy. So as a tribute I wrote, 'You'll have to have them all pulled out after the Savoy Truffle'. The truffle was some kind of sweet, just like all the rest – cream tangerine, ginger sling – just candy, to tease Eric."

The song was inspired by a box of Mackintosh's Good News chocolates. Many of the lines came directly from the varieties of chocolate in the boxes, although Cherry Cream and Coconut Fudge were Harrison's own inventions.

   

With its reference to 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da', 'Savoy Truffle' was one of two White Album songs to refer to different Beatles tracks – the other being 'Glass Onion'. Further inspiration came from Apple's press officer Derek Taylor, who suggested to Harrison the name of a 1968 film, You Are What You Eat.

George : "'Savoy Truffle' is a funny one written whist hanging out with Eric Clapton in the '60s. At that time he had a lot of cavities in his teeth and needed dental work. He always had a toothache but he ate a lot of chocolates – he couldn't resist them, and once he saw a box he had to eat them all. He was over at my house, and I had a box of Good News chocolates on the table and wrote the song from the names inside the lid. I got stuck with the two bridges for a while and Derek Taylor wrote some of the words in the middle – 'You know that what you eat you are'."

The Beatles – minus John Lennon, who didn't play on the song – began recording 'Savoy Truffle' on Thursday 3 October 1968. In London's Trident Studios they recorded the basic track of lead guitar, bass and drums in one take, although it is likely a number of rehearsals had previously been recorded and wiped. Two days later, also in Trident, George Harrison taped his lead vocals, and on 11 October the saxophone overdub was recorded at EMI Studios. This was arranged and scored by George Martin's assistant Chris Thomas.

[engineer] Brian Gibson : "The session men were playing really well – there's nothing like a good brass section letting rip – and it sounded fantastic. But having got this really nice sound George turned to Ken Scott and said, 'Right, I want to distort it.' So I had to plug-up two high-gain amplifiers which overloaded and deliberately introduced a lot of distortion, completely tearing the sound to pieces and making it dirty.

The brass section consisted of : Art Ellefson, Danny Moss and Derek Collins (tenor saxophones)  /  Ronnie Ross, Harry Klein, and Bernard George (baritone saxophones)

Brian Gibson : "The musicians came up to the control room to listen to a playback and George said to them, 'Before you listen I've got to apologise for what I've done to your beautiful sound. Please forgive me – but it's the way I want it!' I don't think they particularly enjoyed hearing their magnificent sound screwed up quite so much but they realised that this was what George wanted, and that it was their job to provide it."

'Savoy Truffle' was completed on Monday 14 October. A second electric guitar, organ and tambourine were added. Ringo Starr wasn't present, however – he flew to Sardinia early that morning for a two-week holiday with his family.

The Single : Revolution
Quote'Revolution' was John Lennon's response to the popular calls for uprising in the US and Europe. It was a revision of a version already recorded for the White Album, and became the b-side of the 'Hey Jude' single . . . except in South Africa, where the sides were flipped.



Although taped after 'Revolution 1', this faster, louder version was the first to be released. The song was written in India while The Beatles were studying meditation in Rishikesh.

John : "I wanted to put out what I felt about revolution. I thought it was time we fucking spoke about it, the same as I thought it was about time we stopped not answering about the Vietnamese war when we were on tour with Brian Epstein and had to tell him, 'We're going to talk about the war this time, and we're not going to just waffle.' I wanted to say what I thought about revolution. I had been thinking about it up in the hills in India. I still had this 'God will save us' feeling about it, that it's going to be all right. That's why I did it: I wanted to talk, I wanted to say my piece about revolution. I wanted to tell you, or whoever listens, to communicate, to say 'What do you say? This is what I say.'"

While 'Revolution 1' found Lennon uncertain about whether to join the struggle, on the faster 'Revolution' he emphatically demanded to be excluded.

John : "Count me out if it's for violence. Don't expect me on the barricades unless it's with flowers."

The urgency of the new arrangement was a result of Paul McCartney's resistance to Lennon's hopes of 'Revolution 1' being The Beatles' next single after 'Lady Madonna'. With the backing of George Harrison, McCartney argued that the recording was too slow, inspiring Lennon to re-record it in an up-tempo, distorted and spontaneous outburst of anti-revolutionary fervour. After two years lost in an LSD haze, and newly energised in his love for Yoko Ono, Lennon gladly rose to the challenge he perceived.

John : "We recorded the song twice. The Beatles were getting real tense with each other. I did the slow version and I wanted it out as a single: as a statement of The Beatles' position on Vietnam and The Beatles' position on revolution. For years, on The Beatles' tours, Brian Epstein had stopped us from saying anything about Vietnam or the war. And he wouldn't allow questions about it. But on one of the last tours, I said, 'I am going to answer about the war. We can't ignore it.' I absolutely wanted The Beatles to say something about the war."

'Revolution' featured the most distortion on any Beatles recording, particularly in the twin fuzz-toned guitars plugged directly into the Abbey Road desk and deliberately played loud to overload the meters.

George Martin : "We got into distortion on that, which we had a lot of complaints from the technical people about. But that was the idea: it was John's song and the idea was to push it right to the limit. Well, we went to the limit and beyond."

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On Tuesday, 9 July 1968, following a remake of 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da', The Beatles began the remake of 'Revolution', rehearsing the song and trying out the new arrangement.

John : "The first take of 'Revolution' – well, George and Paul were resentful and said it wasn't fast enough. Now, if you go into the details of what a hit record is and isn't, maybe. But The Beatles could have afforded to put out the slow, understandable version of 'Revolution' as a single, whether it was a gold record or a wooden record. But because they were so upset over the Yoko thing and the fact that I was becoming as creative and dominating as I had been in the early days, after lying fallow for a couple of years, it upset the applecart. I was awake again and they weren't used to it."

On Wednesday 10 July, following a set of rehearsals on the previous evening, The Beatles began proper recording of 'Revolution'. Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of the recording was the two distorted lead guitars, a sound achieved by plugging the instruments directly into the recording console. These were recorded onto tracks one and two, while Ringo Starr's drums were recorded onto the third.

Ken Scott : "They were overdriving two of the mic preamps on an EMI REDD desk that was being used at the time. I was a mastering engineer at the beginning of the White Album recordings, and I happened to go to Studio 3, where they were recording that track. John, Paul and George were all in the control room and had their guitars plugged directly into the board, and Ringo was all on his own on the drums in the studio. Geoff Emerick came up with a very cool way to distort by going in one preamp to overload and into another preamp to distort it even more."

The drums were double-tracked onto the tape's fourth track, to add further weight to the song. Three reduction mixes were then made – takes 11-13 – which put the guitars onto track one and the drums onto two. John Lennon recorded his lead vocals onto track three. Another vocal part was overdubbed onto track four, for which he sang selected words to add emphasis, and screamed in the introduction. Handclaps and a drum crack by Starr in the third bar of the song were also recorded on this fourth track.

Thursday 11 July saw the addition of bass and electric piano, the latter played by ace session musician Nicky Hopkins. 'Revolution' was completed on the morning of Saturday 13 July, with another bass part and some more lead guitar, performed by McCartney and Lennon.

     

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Released on 26 August 1968, despite being a B-side, the song peaked at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US and topped singles charts in Australia and New Zealand.

The Beatles recorded a promotional film for  'Revolution' on 4 September 1968 under the direction of Michael Lindsay-Hogg, which introduced a new, leaner and more direct public image of Lennon. The Beatles sang the vocals live over the pre-recorded instrumental track from the single version. This version incorporated elements of 'Revolution 1', with McCartney and Harrison singing the "shoo-bee-doo-wap" backing vocals, and Lennon sang "count me out – in".

Michael Lindsay-Hogg : "Society was changing and music was in the vanguard. The appearance of the musicians, their clothes, hair, their way of talking was stirring the pot of social revolution. They had a very different attitude to most stars. They were authentic, they weren't characters in a fiction."

The "Revolution" clip was first broadcast on Top of the Pops on 19 September 1968. The first US screening of "Revolution" was on the 6 October broadcast of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which was frequently subjected to censorship by its network, CBS, for its anti-establishment views, political satire and commentary on the Vietnam War.



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In his contemporary review of the single for Melody Maker, Chris Welch  dismissed "Revolution" as "a fuzzy mess, and best forgotten" - the deaf twat!

More impressed, Derek Johnson of the NME described "Revolution" as "unashamed rock 'n' roll" but "a cut above the average rock disc, particularly in the thoughtful and highly topical lyric", and "a track that literally shimmers with excitement and awareness". Johnson concluded by stating that the two sides "prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Beatles are still streets ahead of their rivals".

Time magazine devoted an article to discussing "Revolution", the first time in the magazine's history that it had done so for a pop song. The writers said the song was "exhilarating hard rock" directed at "radical activists the world over", and that its message would "surprise some, disappoint others, and move many: cool it".

Other Versions includeSanto & Johnny (1968)  /   The Head Shop (1969)  /  Wild Thing (1969)  /  The Brothers Four (1969)  /  The Copper Plated Integrated Circuit (1969)  /  Nina Simone (1969)  /  Kings Road (1973)  /  Thompson Twins (1985)  /  Mike + The Mechanics (1989)  /  Feeling B (1990)  /  Billy Bragg (1991)  /  Texas (1993)  /  Dodgy (1995)   /  The Swingle Singers (1999)  /  Stone Temple Pilots (2001)  /  Grandaddy (2002)   /  "Revelation" by ApologetiX (2007)  /  Tantra (2008)  /  joehlers (2010)  /  Danny McEvoy (2010)  /  'Revolution 9' by Danny, Jazzy and Ellie (2010)  /  MonaLisa Twins (2013)  /  8 Bit Universe (2017)  /  a robot (2019)

Previously :
Quote- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
147b. Please Please Me
151.   From Me To You
157.   She Loves You
160.   I Want To Hold Your Hand / This Boy / Rattle Your Jewelry
166.   Can't Buy Me Love
174.   A Hard Day's Night
183.   I Feel Fine / part 2
193.   Ticket To Ride
200.   Help!
207.   Day Tripper  /  We Can Work It Out  /  Rubber Soul
217.   Paperback Writer  /  Rain & Revolver - Part 1
222.   Yellow Submarine  /  Revolver - Part 2  /  Eleanor Rigby
230b. Strawberry Fields Forever   /  Penny Lane  /  Sgt Pepper - part 1
235.   All You Need Is Love  /  Sgt Pepper - part 2  /  Sgt Pepper - part 3
241.   Hello, Goodbye  /  I Am The Walrus
241b. Magical Mystery Tour (Double EP)
247.   Lady Madonna  /  Mad Days Out  /  White Album - part 1
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QuotePaul : "On 'Hey Jude', when we first sat down and I sang 'Hey Jude...', George went 'nanu nanu' on his guitar. I continued, 'Don't make it bad...' and he replied 'nanu nanu'. He was answering every line – and I said, 'Whoa! Wait a minute, now. I don't think we want that. Maybe you'd come in with answering lines later. For now I think I should start it simply first.' He was going, 'Oh yeah, OK, fine, fine.' But it was getting a bit like that. He wasn't into what I was saying. I did want to insist that there shouldn't be an answering guitar phrase in 'Hey Jude' – and that was important to me – but of course if you tell a guitarist that, and he's not as keen on the idea as you are, it looks as if you're knocking him out of the picture. I think George felt that: it was like, 'Since when are you going to tell me what to play? I'm in The Beatles too.' So I can see his point of view."

This resurfaced in their argument during the 'Get Back' sessions on 10.1.69.

'Hey Jude' is a track that I can't really critique. It's perfect but I prefer songs with rougher edges. The Wilson Pickett cover is amazing. I need to check out the others.

daf

The Story So Far :  The Beatles Album Number Nine . . . Number Nine . . . Number Nine - Part 4
Quote'Martha My Dear' was written by Paul McCartney as a piano exercise.

Paul : "When I taught myself piano I liked to see how far I could go, and this started life almost as a piece you'd learn as a piano lesson. It's quite hard for me to play, it's a two-handed thing, like a little set piece. In fact I remember one or two people being surprised that I'd played it because it's slightly above my level or competence really, but I wrote it as that, something a bit more complex for me to play. Then while I was blocking out words – you just mouth out sounds and some things come – I found the words 'Martha my dear'."

McCartney had bought an Old English sheepdog puppy in 1965, soon after buying his house in Cavendish Avenue, London. He named the dog Martha, and she was his first pet.

Paul : "She was a dear pet of mine. I remember John being amazed to see me being so loving to an animal. He said, 'I've never seen you like that before.' I've since thought, you know, he wouldn't have. It's only when you're cuddling around with a dog that you're in that mode, and she was a very cuddly dog."



Many listeners have interpreted the song as a message of love to scrumptious gingernut Jane Asher, who McCartney intended to marry in 1968. However, in 1997 he revealed that it was his dog that had been the inspiration behind 'Martha My Dear'.

Paul : "It's a communication of some sort of affection but in a slightly abstract way – 'You silly girl, look what you've done,' all that sort of stuff. These songs grow. Whereas it would appear to anybody else to be a song to a girl called Martha, it's actually a dog, and our relationship was platonic, believe me."

Recorded over two days at Trident Studios, work began on Friday 4 October 1968. McCartney recorded vocals, piano and drums first, and between 9pm and midnight 14 session musicians added brass and string parts. George Martin had written the score to a demo previously taped by McCartney.



The session musicians were Bernard Miller, Dennis McConnell, Lou Sofier and Les Maddox (violins)  / Leo Birnbaum and Henry Myerscough (violas)  / Reginald Kilbey and Frederick Alexander (cellos)  /  Leon Calvert, Stanley Reynolds and Ronnie Hughes (trumpets)  /  Tony Tunstall (French horn)  /  Ted Barker (trombone)  /  and Alf Reece (tuba). Leon Calvert also added a flugelhorn part after the main overdub had been completed.

George Harrison was also present at the recording. His electric guitar can be heard most clearly during the "Take a good look around you" section. From midnight to 4.30am McCartney re-recorded his lead vocals, adding handclaps to the instrumental section at the same time. The next day he completed the song with the addition of bass and lead guitar parts.

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'Long, Long, Long' was written about George Harrison's joy at having found God. The music had been inspired by the final track on Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde album.

George : "The 'you' in 'Long, Long, Long' is God. I can't recall much about it except the chords, which I think were coming from 'Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands' – D to E minor, A, and D – those three chords and the way they moved."

Under the working title 'It's Been A Long Long Long Time', recording for the song began on Monday 7 October 1968. The Beatles, minus John Lennon, recorded a mammoth 67 takes of the rhythm track, with George Harrison on vocals and acoustic guitar, Paul McCartney playing a modified Hammond organ, and Ringo Starr on drums. The unusual ending was a fortuitous accident, as George Martin's assistant Chris Thomas later recalled.

Chris Thomas : "There's a sound near the end of the song which is a bottle of Blue Nun wine rattling away on the top of a Leslie speaker cabinet. It just happened. Paul hit a certain organ note and the bottle started vibrating. We thought it was so good that we set the mikes up and did it again. The Beatles always took advantage of accidents."

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'I'm So Tired' was written by John Lennon three weeks into his stay in India. Free from drink and drugs for the first time in years, he found his thoughts abnormally focused, even if this meant suffering from temporary insomnia. The song recounts Lennon's difficulty in sleeping after meditation had absorbed his thoughts throughout much of the day. It also recounts his burgeoning obsessions with Yoko Ono who remained in England while Lennon flew to India with his wife Cynthia.

John : "'I'm So Tired' was me, in India again. I couldn't sleep, I'm meditating all day and couldn't sleep at night. The story is that. One of my favorite tracks. I just like the sound of it, and I sing it well.

 

The closing words of the studio recording, muttered by Lennon, became part of the Paul Is Dead myth in 1969. Lennon says "Monsieur, monsieur, monsieur, how about another one?" It was, however, interpreted by some as "Paul is dead, man, miss him, miss him, miss him" when played backwards. Needless to say, this was not The Beatles' intention.

Paul : "'I'm So Tired' is very much John's comment to the world, and it had that very special line, 'And curse Sir Walter Raleigh, he was such a stupid get.' That's a classic line and it's so John that there's no doubt that he wrote it. I think it's 100 per cent John. Being tired was one of his themes; he wrote 'I'm Only Sleeping'. I think we were all pretty tired but he chose to write about it."

The Beatles began and completed 'I'm So Tired' on Tuesday 8 October 1968, during a lengthy session. The Beatles played the song live, with lead vocals from Lennon on every take. They later added a few overdubs, including extra vocals from John Lennon and Paul McCartney, more drums and guitar, electric piano and organ.

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Also recorded on 8 October was 'The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill', which was written by John Lennon in Rishikesh, India. It was inspired by an American visitor who departed for a tiger-killing spree before returning to the ashram to seek spiritual enlightenment.

John : "That was written about a guy in Maharishi's meditation camp who took a short break to go shoot a few poor tigers, and then came back to commune with God. There used to be a character called Jungle Jim and I combined him with Buffalo Bill. It's a sort of teenage social-comment song and a bit of a joke. Yoko's on that one, I believe, singing along."

A notable feature of the song is the appearance by Yoko Ono on the line "Not when he looked so fierce". It was the first – and only – time a female lead vocal appeared on a Beatles recording, and reflected Ono's increasing studio presence at the time.

The inspiration for the song was Richard Cooke III, known as Rik, whose mother Nancy was also on the meditation course in Rishikesh.

Mia Farrow : "Then a self-important, middle-aged American woman arrived, moving a mountain of luggage into the brand-new private bungalow next to Maharishi's along with her son, a bland young man named Bill. People fled this newcomer, and no one was sorry when she left the ashram after a short time to go tiger hunting, unaware that their presence had inspired a new Beatles song – 'Bungalow Bill'."

Both Rik and Nancy went on the tiger shoot. Upon their return Rik told Maharishi of his feelings of remorse, in a meeting at which Lennon and McCartney were both present.

Nancy Cooke : "Rik told me that he felt bad about it and said that he didn't think he'd ever kill an animal again. Maharishi said, 'You had the desire Rik and now you don't have the desire?' Then John asked, 'Don't you call that slightly life destructive?' I said, 'Well John, it was either the tiger or us. The tiger was right where we were'. That came up in the lyric as 'If looks could kill it would have been us instead of him'."



The recording was intentionally sloppy, and anyone who happened to be available in Abbey Road was rounded up to contribute backing vocals.

George Martin's assistant Chris Thomas also added Mellotron parts, using the instrument's mandolin sound in the verses and the trombone in the choruses. The Spanish guitar introduction was recorded separately and later edited onto the song. It was one of a number of seven-second instrument samples included on the Mellotron Mark II. The identity of the original guitarist is said to have been Australian session musician Eric Cook.

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The evening of John Lennon's 28th birthday, Wednesday 9 October 1968, was spent in EMI Studios, where The Beatles worked on four songs.

"Why Don't We Do It In The Road" was a spontaneous recording by Paul with assistance from Ringo. The song was recorded while John and George were working on other songs. Lennon later described McCartney's decision as hurtful.

John : "That's Paul. He even recorded it by himself in another room. That's how it was getting in those days. We came in and he'd made the whole record. Him drumming. Him playing the piano. Him singing. But he couldn't – he couldn't – maybe he couldn't make the break from The Beatles. I don't know what it was, you know. I enjoyed the track. Still, I can't speak for George, but I was always hurt when Paul would knock something off without involving us. But that's just the way it was then."

Paul : "It wasn't a deliberate thing. John and George were tied up finishing something and me and Ringo were free, just hanging around, so I said to Ringo, 'Let's go and do this'... Anyway, he did the same with 'Revolution 9'. He went off and made that without me. No one ever says that. John is the nice guy and I'm the bastard. It gets repeated all the time."

Ringo Starr later pointed out that 'The Ballad Of John And Yoko' was recorded without him and Harrison.

Ringo : "'Why Don't We Do It In The Road?' was just Paul and me, and it went out as a Beatle track too. We had no problems with that."

The song was inspired by an incident observed by McCartney in Rishikesh, India.

Paul : "I was up on the flat roof meditating and I'd seen a troupe of monkeys walking along in the jungle and a male just hopped on to the back of this female and gave her one, as they say in the vernacular. Within two or three seconds he hopped off again, and looked around as if to say, 'It wasn't me,' and she looked around as if there had been some mild disturbance but thought, Huh, I must have imagined it, and she wandered off. And I thought, bloody hell, that puts it all into a cocked hat, that's how simple the act of procreation is, this bloody monkey just hopping on and hopping off. There is an urge, they do it, and it's done with. And it's that simple. We have horrendous problems with it, and yet animals don't. So that was basically it. 'Why Don't We Do It In The Road?' could have applied to either fucking or shitting, to put it roughly. Why don't we do either of them in the road? Well, the answer is we're civilised and we don't. But the song was just to pose that question. 'Why Don't We Do It In The Road?' was a primitive statement to do with sex or to do with freedom really. I like it, it'd just so outrageous that I like it."

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Although he had bought Mornyork Ltd in September 1964, which became Harrisongs Ltd in December that year, on Thursday, 10 October 1968, George Harrison set up a second music publishing company, Singsong Ltd.

Harrison had been under contract to Northern Songs as a songwriter, but had a greatly reduced royalty rate compared to John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The Northern Songs contract expired in March 1968, giving Harrison and Ringo Starr the opportunity to make more money on the publication of their own compositions.

The reasons for the formation of Singsong are unclear. The company only published one song, 'Old Brown Shoe', before it and Harrisongs were combined.

   

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'Julia' was written by John Lennon for his mother, who died in a road accident in 1958. It is the only solo Lennon recording in The Beatles' canon. The song was written in India. Like 'Dear Prudence' and 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun', it contained the fingerpicking guitar style taught to Lennon by Donovan.

Donovan : "Some afternoons we would gather at one of our pads and play the acoustic guitars we had all brought with us. Paul Horn, the American flute wizard, was there. John was keen to learn the finger-style guitar I played and he was a good student. Paul already had a smattering of finger style. George preferred his Chet Atkins style. John wrote 'Julia' and 'Dear Prudence' based on the picking I taught him."

While inspired as a tribute to his mother, 'Julia' also showed the increasing influence of Yoko Ono upon Lennon's world. The line "Ocean child calls me" referred to Ono, whose name means 'child of the sea' in Japanese.

John : "Julia was my mother. But it was sort of a combination of Yoko and my mother blended into one. That was written in India. On the White Album. And all the stuff on the White Album was written in India while we were supposedly giving money to Maharishi, which we never did. We got our mantra, we sat in the mountains eating lousy vegetarian food and writing all those songs. We wrote tons of songs in India."

   

Sections of the song were adapted from the poem 'Sand And Foam' by the then-fashionable Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran. The opening words of 'Julia' were taken from Gibran's lines, "Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you." Lennon also adapted the lines "When I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind" from Gibran's "When life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind". Other imagery, including 'seashell eyes', was also taken from Gibran.

As an exorcism of years of hurt and regret at losing her, 'Julia' marked the point at which Lennon laid bare his soul after years of writing allusions to mother/lover figures. The song implies that he has, in Yoko Ono, finally found a love to equal his mother's, and was thereafter free to lay his soul bare to his new muse.

The final song recorded for the White Album, Lennon taped three takes of the song at EMI Studios on Sunday 13 October 1968, double tracking his vocals and acoustic guitar to the last of these. The rehearsals featured some dialogue between Lennon and Paul McCartney, who was observing the recording from the studio control room.

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On Monday 14 October 1968, while the final overdubs were recorded for Savoy Truffle, Ringo Starr and his family flew to Sardinia for a two-week holiday. He played no further part in the mixing and sequencing of the album.

Two days later, George Harrison flew to Los Angeles to produce songs for Jackie Lomax's album Is This What You Want?. While there he also gave an appearance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on 15 November, and returned to England later that month.

     

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The Beatles' only 24-hour recording session began at 5pm on the afternoon of Wednesday 16 October 1968, and concluded at 5pm the following day. The reason for the mammoth session was for mixing, edits and crossfades for the White Album. George Harrison and Ringo Starr were on holiday in Los Angeles and Sardinia respectively, leaving John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Martin and the EMI staff to complete the record.

On Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles had insisted there should be no three-second gaps between the songs. A similar policy was adopted for the White Album, and wherever possible the songs were joined via a crossfade or a straight edit. The day began with these crossfades and edits for the mono version, followed by a mono mix of 'Why Don't We Do It In The Road?', the last song to require a mix. The same process was then repeated for the stereo edition of the album.

Alan Brown : "I remember arriving at the studios on Thursday 17 October 1968, 9am, to find The Beatles still there. They had been there all night, finalising the master tapes for what we now call the White Album and banding it up. They were all over the place, room 41, the front listening room – anywhere – almost every room they could get. It was a frantic last minute job."

The mono pressing of the White Album was cut by EMI's legendary Harry Moss on 18 and 19 October, and the stereo version on 21 October. It was released in the UK on 22 November 1968, and three days later in the United States.

   

QuoteOn the morning of Friday 18 October 1968 John Lennon and Yoko Ono were arrested by the Drugs Squad. The couple were temporarily living at Ringo Starr's flat at 34 Montagu Square, London. Following a tip-off from a newspaper journalist friend, they had thoroughly cleaned the flat to make sure it was free of drugs. Lennon's friend Pete Shotton called round. Shotton, who had trained as a police officer, helped them check each room.

John : "That thing was set up. The Daily Express was there before the cops came. In fact, Don Short had told us, 'They're coming to get you,' three weeks before. So, believe me, I'd cleaned the house out, because Jimi Hendrix had lived there before in the apartment, and I'm not stupid. I went through the whole damn house."

The eight-strong police task force, led by the notorious anti-drugs zealot Sergeant Norman Pilcher, entered the premises at 11.30am. It comprised two plainclothes detective sergeants, two detective constables, a policewoman and two sniffer-dog handlers, initially without their dogs. Lennon had attempted to delay them by insisting on reading their warrant through a window.

John : "We were lying in bed, feeling very clean and drugless, because we'd heard three weeks before that they were coming to get us – and we'd have been silly to have had drugs in the house. All of a sudden a woman comes to the front door, and rings the bell and says, 'I've got a message for you.' We said, 'Who is it? You're not the postman.' And she said, 'No, it's very personal,' and suddenly this woman starts pushing the door. She [Yoko] thinks it's the press or some fans, and we ran back in and hid. Neither of us was dressed, really; we just had vests on and our lower parts were showing. We shut the door and I was saying, 'What is it? What is it?' I thought it was the Mafia or something. Then there was a big banging at the bedroom window, and a big super-policeman was there, growling and saying, 'Let me in, let me in!' And I said, 'You're not allowed in like this, are you?' I was so frightened. I said, 'Come round the front door. Just let me get dressed.' And he said, 'No, open the window, I'm going to fall off.'"

   

John : "There were some [police] at the front and some at the back. Yoko held the window while I got dressed – half-leaning out of the bathroom so they could see we weren't hiding anything. Then they started charging the door. I had a big dialogue with the policeman, saying, 'It's bad publicity if you come through the window.' And he was saying, 'Just open the window, you'll only make it worse for yourself.' I was saying, 'I want to see the warrant.' Another guy comes on the roof and they showed me this paper, and I pretended to read it – just to try and think what to do. Then I said, 'Call the lawyer, call the lawyer,' but [Yoko] called our office instead. And I was saying, 'No, not the office – the lawyer.' Then there was a heave on the door, so I ran and opened it, and said, 'OK. OK. I'm clean anyway,' thinking I was clean. And he says, 'Ah-ha, got you for obstruction!' And I said, 'Oh, yeah,' because I felt confident that I had no drugs. They all came in, lots of them and a woman. I said, 'Well, what happens now? Can I call the office? I've got an interview in two hours, can I tell them that I can't come?' And he said, 'No, you're not allowed to make a phone call... Can I use your phone?' Then our lawyer came. They [the police] brought some dogs. They couldn't find the dogs at first – and they kept ringing up, saying, 'Hello, Charlie, where are the dogs? We've been here half an hour.' And the dogs came."

The sniffer dogs, Yogi and Booboo, found the cannabis in various places, including the binoculars case, a film can and a cigarette roller. The following evidence was found :

    27.3 grains of hashish in an unsealed brown envelope in a blue trunk in the bedroom
    A cigarette case containing traces of hashish on the bedroom floor
    A cigarette rolling machine with traces of cannabis, on top of a mirror in the bedroom
    191.8 grains of hashish in a binocular case in the living room

John : "I'd had all my stuff moved into the flat from my house, and I'd never looked at it. It had just been there for years. I'd ordered cameras and clothes – but my driver brought binoculars, which I didn't need in my little flat. And inside the binoculars was some hash from last year. Somewhere else in an envelope was another piece of hash. So that was it."

Lennon and Ono were marched through the crowds of photographers outside and were taken by police car to Paddington Green. The couple were charged and ordered to appear in Marylebone Magistrates' Court, London, the following day, for a hearing of the charges against them.

The hearing lasted just five minutes. Sergeant Norman Pilcher read the charges against them, Lennon and Ono were remanded on bail, and their case was adjourned until 28 November 1968. Upon leaving the court, the couple found their car was not waiting. Amid the scrum of reporters and the public, the couple huddled together, with Lennon doing his best to protect his pregnant girlfriend before their transport arrived.

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With the White Album finally complete, The Beatles went their separate ways for much of late October and November 1968. On Sunday 20 October 1968 Paul McCartney travelled to New York, where he had a 10-day holiday with Linda Eastman. McCartney and Eastman returned to London on 30 October, having also stopped briefly in Jamaica.

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On Friday 1 November 1968, George Harrison's Wonderwall Music was released. The album was credited to George Harrison & Band/Indian Orchestra, and was written and produced by Harrison.

   

The tracks, recorded in England in December 1967 and in Bombay, India in January 1968, were virtually all instrumentals. Among the musicians taking part were Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton, although both used pseudonyms – Richie Snare, Eddie Clayton respectively. The album failed to chart in the UK, although it reached number 49 in the US in early 1969.

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on Thursday 7 November 1968, John Lennon drew a cartoon strip titled A Short Essay On Macrobiotics. The cartoons were drawn for the health magazine Harmony. Lennon created them while staying with Yoko Ono at London's Queen Charlotte's Hospital.

 

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On Friday 8 November 1968, Cynthia Lennon was granted a divorce, marking the formal end of her marriage to John Lennon. The given reason for the action was Lennon's adultery with Yoko Ono. Cynthia was also granted permission to retain custody of Julian, her son with John.

Cynthia Lennon : "Our decree nisi was granted on November 8, 1968. I was summoned to the divorce court and went alone, driven their by loyal Les Anthony who, although he was now working solely for John, was still a good friend to me. Walking into court beside my lawyer was terrifying. The place was packed with the press and I had to swear in front of them under oath that my marriage had broken down irretrievably, that my husband had publicly admitted adultery and that Yoko was pregnant by him."

   

During the case John Lennon submitted assets worth £750,000, although this was likely to have been an low estimate. From this he offered Cynthia £100,000, raised from an initial offer of £75,000. Of the £100,000, £25,000 was to be allocated to a house for Cynthia and Julian, and the remainder was to support the pair until Julian turned 21. A further £100,000 was put into a trust fund for Julian. Cynthia was permitted to make withdrawals from the fund for school fees, subject to approval from Lennon and Ono. It was also agreed that, should John have more children, the fund would be shared equally among them.

Cynthia Lennon : "Throughout this awful, surreal experience I felt humiliated and painfully aware that I was alone. Afterward I fled home and collapsed, sick with apprehension about the future. I had no idea how I would cope and still found it hard to believe that, after ten years together, I had been severed from John's life with a few brief words from a judge in a public court. I should have hated John for what he had put me through. I was certainly angry with him and bitterly hurt. But I couldn't hate him. Despite everything, I loved him still."

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While producing sessions for Jackie Lomax's debut album 'Is This What You Want' in Los Angeles, George Harrison was introduced to synthesizer player Bernie Krause. Harrison met Krause on Monday 11 November 1968. Krause had been hired to perform his Moog III on five of Lomax's songs at Sound Records Studio in Los Angeles.

Harrison was intrigued by the early synthesizer, and after the session ended asked him to demonstrated its range of sounds. Krause duly remained in the studio with Harrison into the early hours of 12 November. Krause's demonstration was recorded, and was later edited down to a 25-minute piece featuring two tracks of Moog sounds. The recording was subsequently released by Harrison as 'No Time Or Space' on his second solo album 'Electronic Sound'.



Krause later launched legal action against Harrison, claiming that the recording was made without his knowledge or consent, and was issued without due acknowledgement.

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On Thursday, 21 November 1968, George Harrison took part in a recording session for the British band Cream at Wally Heider Studios in Los Angeles.

George : "I helped Eric write Badge you know. Each of them had to come up with a song for that Goodbye Cream album and Eric didn't have his written. We were working across from each other and I was writing the lyrics down and we came to the middle part so I wrote Bridge. Eric read it upside down and cracked up laughing – 'What's BADGE?' he said. After that, Ringo walked in drunk and gave us that line about the swans living in the park."

Badge was produced by Felix Pappalardi, who had worked with Cream since their Disraeli Gears album. The song was credited to Clapton and Harrison on the UK single, but due to contractual reasons, Harrison was credited as L'Angelo Misterioso on the album. In turn, Clapton wasn't credited for his work on 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps', or on Harrison's debut solo album released in 1970.

George : "At that time we weren't 'allowed' by our record companies to acknowledge our presence on each other's albums so he hasn't had a credit for thirty years."

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On Friday, 25 October 1968, John Lennon and Yoko Ono announced that they were expecting a baby. The baby was due in February 1969, according to the announcement. This would date the conception to May 1968, the month that their relationship began.

However, the pregnancy never came to term. Ono suffered a miscarriage on 21 November 1968 at Queen Charlotte's Hospital, London. Lennon stayed at her side at Queen Charlotte's Hospital, London, sleeping overnight next to her. When his bed was needed for a patient he slept on the floor. Just before the miscarriage, the foetal heartbeat was recorded. It was included in Lennon and Ono's 1969 album Life With The Lions, followed by two minutes' silence.

The unborn child was named John Ono Lennon II, and was buried by the couple in a secret location.

The Album : "The Beatles"
QuoteOn Friday, 22 November 1968, The Beatles released their ninth original UK album - a double album, simply tiled 'The Beatles' it became commonly known as 'The White Album'.

It was issued on Apple, and was The Beatles' last to have a unique mono mix, with a number of variations between the two versions - including a speeded up 'Don't Pass Me By' with more fiddle, more of John's guitar solo on 'Honey Pie', and a shortened version of 'Helter Skelter' - chopping off Ringo's poor blistered fingers.

The album entered the UK charts at number one on 1 December 1968, and spent seven weeks there. It returned to the top spot for a final week from 1 February 1969, spent a further four weeks in the top 10, and a total of 24 weeks in the top 40. The album had advance orders of more than 250,000. It was The Beatles' third long-player to debut at number one in the UK, after Help! and Revolver. It was the first double album ever to reach number one in the UK, and sold so many copies that it also briefly made the UK singles chart, which at the time was based purely on sales regardless of the format.

The working title for the album was 'A Doll's House', after Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's 1879 play. The Beatles decided to change it, however, when warbly British prog group Family released their debut album 'Music In A Doll's House' in July 1968.

Having dazzled record-buyers with the Peter Blake-designed cover for Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles had to carefully consider their next move. They enlisted notable pop artist Richard Hamilton. Art dealer and gallery owner Robert Fraser arranged for Hamilton to meet Paul McCartney at the Apple offices in Savile Row. On the day, however, McCartney was so late arriving that the artist nearly walked out.

Paul : "I tried to get him interested in the whole thing. I laid out what it was we'd got. We'd got an album coming out, we hadn't really got a title for it. 'I'd like you to work on the cover. We've done Sgt Pepper. We've worked with a fine artist before and I just had a feeling you might be right.'"

In addition to suggesting the minimalist approach, Hamilton also had the idea of consecutive numbered sleeves, which was a feature of early copies.

Richard Hamilton : "Since Sgt Pepper was so over the top, I explained, 'I would be inclined to do a very prissy thing, almost like a limited edition.' He didn't discourage me so I went on to propose a plain white album; if that were too clean and empty, then maybe we could print a ring of brown stain to look as if a coffee cup had been left on it – but that was thought a bit too flippant. I also suggested that they might number each copy, to create the ironic situation of a numbered edition of something like five million copies. This was agreed, but then I began to feel a bit guilty at putting their double album under plain wrappers; even the lettering is casual, almost invisible, a blind stamping. I suggested it could be jazzed up with a large edition print, an insert that would be even more glamorous than a normal sleeve."

Later pressings did not feature the serial numbers, and the lower figures subsequently proved highly collectable. However, there were several pressing plants worldwide which each used the same numeric system, so a proportion of copies each bore the same numbers.

 

Paul : "Richard had the idea for the numbers. He said, 'Can we do it?' So I had to go and try and sell this to EMI. They said, 'Can't do it.' I said, 'Look, records must go through something to put the shrink wrap on or to staple them. Couldn't you just have a little thing at the end of that process that hits the paper and prints a number on it? Then everyone would have a numbered copy.' I think EMI only did this on a few thousand, then just immediately gave up. They have very very strict instructions that every single album that came out, even to this day, should still be numbered. That's the whole idea: 'I've got number 1,000,000!' What a great number to have! We got the first four. I don't know where mine is, of course. Everything got lost. It's all coming up in Sotheby's I imagine. John got 00001 because he shouted loudest. He said, 'Baggsy number one!' He knew the game, you've gotta baggsy it."

The white cover concept went through several revisions, one of which was to have the green stain of an apple.

Paul : "Richard had a friend from Iceland, the artist Dieter Roth, who used to send him letters smeared in chocolate, and Richard liked that a lot, so then the idea grew; he said, 'Well, maybe we could do something like that with an apple. We could bounce an apple on a bit of paper and get a smudge, a very light green smear with a little bit of pulp.' But we ended up thinking that might be hard to print, because inevitably if these things do well, there are huge printings in places like Brazil and India and anything too subtle like a little apple smear can be lost, can just look like they printed it crappy. So that idea went by the wayside. So now he was saying, 'Let's call it The Beatles and have it white, really white.' I was saying, 'Well, I dunno. It's a great concept, but we are releasing an album here. This is not a piece of art for a rather elite gallery, this is more than that. I see the point. It's a nice idea, but for what we were to people, and still are, it doesn't quite fit, we're not quite a blank space, a white wall, the Beatles. Somebody ought to piss on it or smudge an apple on it for it to become the Beatles, because a white wall's just too German and marvellous for us.' So the idea then emerged to do the embossing. 'Maybe if we emboss the word "Beatles" out of the white, that'll be good. We'll get a shadow from the embossing but it's white on white. It's still white. That'll be nice.' But I still wanted something on the white, an idea, like the apple smudging."

George : "The album was originally intended to have a clear see-through sleeve on a clear see-through record. When the record company said they couldn't do that, we decided to have a white record with a white sleeve but they wouldn't even do that. They'd had red see-throughs when we were in Hamburg in 1959 or 1960. Anyway, a couple of years and ten minutes later, everybody had psychedelic picture discs with this, that and the other."

Inside the gatefold cover were song titles and black-and-white portraits of the group. The sleeve opened at the top, and the vinyl was enclosed in a black paper inner bag. A fold-out poster and colour versions of The Beatles' portraits were also included.

     

The Beatles attempted to follow George Martin's formula of beginning each side with a strong song and ending with one hard to follow. They also kept the idea, first used on Sgt Pepper, of having no gaps between songs. Several of the heavier songs were grouped together on side three. George Harrison's four songs were spread over each side, and three of the songs with animals in the title – 'Blackbird', 'Piggies', and 'Rocky Raccoon' – were grouped together on side two.

George Martin later claimed he had wanted the group to omit the album's weaker songs and focused instead on producing a solid single-disc release.

George Martin : "I thought we should probably have made a very, very good single album rather than a double. But they insisted. I think it could have been made fantastically good if it had been compressed a bit and condensed. A lot of people I know think it's still the best album they made. I later learnt that by recording all those songs they were getting rid of their contract with EMI more quickly."

Ringo : "There was a lot of information on the double album, but I agree that we should have put it out as two separate albums: the 'White' and the 'Whiter' albums."

     

Despite its faults as a collection, Paul McCartney stood by the album, saying that the wide variety of songs was a major part of its appeal.

Paul : "I think it was a very good album. It stood up, but it wasn't a pleasant one to make. Then again, sometimes those things work for your art. The fact that it's got so much on it is one of the things that's cool about it. The songs are very varied. I think it's a fine album. I don't remember the reaction. Now I release records and I watch to see who likes it and how it does. But with The Beatles, I can't ever remember scouring the charts to see what number it had come in at. I assume we hoped that people would like it. We just put it out and got on with life. A lot of our friends liked it and that was mainly what we were concerned with. If your mates liked it, the boutiques played it and it was played wherever you went – that was a sign of success for us."

Three days after its UK release, the album was issued in the United States. Unlike in the United Kingdom, the US version of the White Album was issued only in stereo. It debuted at number 11 in the charts, climbed to number two, then finally reached number one in its third week of release. The delay may have been caused by the slightly higher price for a double album, which could have prevented many young fans from affording it. After just one month on sale the White Album had sold more than four million copies worldwide, and by the end of 1970 global sales were around 6.5 million. It spent 155 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart, and eventually became the group's best-selling album.



George : "When we started, I don't think we thought about whether the White Album would do as well as Sgt Pepper – I don't think we ever really concerned ourselves with the previous record and how many it had sold. In the early Sixties, whoever had a hit single would try to make the next record sound as close to it as possible – but we always tried to make things different. Things were always different, anyway – in just a matter of months we'd changed in so many ways there was no chance of a new record ever being like the previous one. After Sgt Pepper, the new album felt more like a band recording together. There were a lot of tracks where we just played live, and then there were a lot of tracks that we'd recorded and that would need finishing together. There was also a lot more individual stuff and, for the first time, people were accepting that it was individual."

In the New York Times, Richard Goldstein described the White Album as a "major success", but his enthusiasm was countered by Nik Cohn, who considered it to be "boring beyond belief" and full of "profound mediocrities".

Writing in the NME, Alan Smith described 'Revolution 9' as "pretentious" and an example of "idiotic immaturity", although he wrote enthusiastically about the rest of the album.

   

QuoteOn Thursday 28 November 1968, following his arrest the previous month for possession of cannabis, John Lennon appeared at Marylebone Magistrates' Court, London. Lennon pleaded guilty, taking sole responsibility in order to protect Yoko Ono, whom had recently suffered a miscarriage. He was additionally fearful that if they both fought the charges and lost, Ono may have been deported from the United Kingdom. During the hearing Lennon's solicitor, Martin Polden, told the court that Ono had recently lost their baby, which had been a terrible blow to the couple. Additionally, Polden declared that Lennon had renounced drugs after becoming a devotee of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi the previous year, and stressed that the Beatle had "given pleasure to millions" through his music.

The magistrate quashed the charge of obstruction to justice, and fined Lennon £150 plus court costs of 20 guineas. Lennon was also warned that if he was found guilty again of a similar offence he risked a custodial sentence.



John : "It was better when it happened. It's been building up for years – thinking something would happen. Now, the fear has gone a bit. Now you know what it's like, it's a bit different. And it's not too bad; a £150 fine."

Although the judge exercised some leniency, the repercussions of the case continued for Lennon for many years. The conviction was a key factor in the Nixon administration's efforts to deny Lennon a Green Card for residence in the US.

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On Friday, 29 November 1968, just over two weeks after its US release, 'Unfinished Music No 1: Two Virgins' by John Lennon and Yoko Ono was issued in the United Kingdom. The tracks had been recorded on 19 May 1968 at Kenwood, Lennon's former home in Weybridge.

The release of 'Two Virgins' had been delayed for some months due to anticipated controversy over the cover photograph, which featured a full-frontal nude photograph of Lennon and Ono with their bits and bobs out - a wanglin' and a danglin' for all to see!!

Yoko : "I was in the artistic community, where a painter did a thing about rolling a naked woman with blue paint on her body on a canvas; ... that was going on at the time. The only difference was that we were going to stand together, which I thought was very interesting ... it was just standing straight. I liked that concept."

 

The album was the second album released by Apple Records, after George Harrison's 'Wonderwall Music' was issued in the UK on 1 November.

John : "Actually, the first record that would have been out on Apple would been Two Virgins if they hadn't held it up. They stalled and they said this, that and the other. Being naive in lots of ways, I had no idea I was going to get slagging from the immediate family. I thought maybe somebody out there will say something, but I was making a statement. It was as good as a song, it was better, you couldn't say it better – pictures speak louder than words. There it was: beautiful statement."

Two Virgins was distributed by Track Records in the UK, after EMI refused to handle it with a barge-pole. They did, however, master and press the record, for which they charged their standard fee.

John : "Two Virgins was a big fight. It was held up for nine months. Joseph Lockwood was a nice, nice guy; but he sat down on a big table at the top of EMI with John and Yoko and told me he will do everything he can to help us, because we explained what it meant and why we were doing it. And he got me to sign him one – he's got a signed edition of the very first one. Then, when we tried to put it out, he sent a personal note to everybody saying: 'Don't print it. Don't put it out.' So we couldn't get the cover printed anywhere."

The cover provoked an outrage, prompting distributors to sell the album in a plain brown wrapper. Quotes from Genesis Chapter 2, chosen by Derek Taylor, were placed on the back of the brown bag. The album was regarded by some authorities as being obscene and copies were impounded in several jurisdictions, including 30,000 copies in New Jersey in January 1969.

     

Lennon commented that the uproar seemed to have less to do with the explicit nudity, and more to do with the fact that the pair were rather unattractive; he described it later as a picture of "two slightly overweight ex-junkies".

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On Wednesday, 4 December 1968, George Harrison circulated a memo at Apple to tell staff that he had invited a group of Hells Angels from California to stay at 3 Savile Row :

"Hells Angels will be in London within the next week, on the way to straighten out Czechoslovakia. There will be twelve in number complete with black leather jackets and motor cycles. They will undoubtedly arrive at Apple and I have heard they may try to make full use of Apple's facilities. They may look as though they are going to do you in but are very straight and do good things, so don't fear them or up-tight them. Try to assist them without neglecting your Apple business and without letting them take control of Savile Row."

Harrison had met the Hells Angels while in California in October and November. He had been staying in Los Angeles while producing tracks for Jackie Lomax's debut LP, Is This What You Want?. The Hells Angels did indeed stay, arriving later in December 1968. Luckily they managed to resist the temptation to piss on the carpet, or stab anyone in the windpipe during their stay at Apple HQ - well done lads!

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On Wednesday, 18 December 1968, as part of the Underground Christmas Party, a happening taking place at the Royal Albert Hall in London, John Lennon and Yoko Ono appeared onstage inside a large white bag. The event was held by the Arts Lab, which attempted to challenge audiences, to encourage them to become active participants rather than passive consumers.

The couple's 30-minute conceptual performance was titled Alchemical Wedding. The bag was, they explained, to ensure "total communication" with the audience. The following year the concept was reintroduced by the pair as Bagism, an attempt to satirize prejudice and stereotyping.

Lennon and Ono sat on the side of the stage as other poets and musicians performed at the event. When their time came, they entered the bag, remaining there while a man played a flute. Lennon and Ono initially sat cross-legged inside the bag. They moved only twice during the performance, to lie closer to the floor. During the performance a protestor ran to the stage, holding a banner about the British government's involvement in the Nigerian civil war. "Do you care, John Lennon? Do you care?" the protestor shouted at the couple.

 

daf

Let me hear your balalaika's ringing out, it's . . .

259.  Mary Hopkin - Those Were The Days



From : 22 September – 2 November 1968
Weeks : 6
Flip side : Turn Turn Turn
Bonus 1 : Liberace Show
Bonus 2 : Apple Promo Film

The Story So Far : 
QuoteLovely Mary Hopkin was born into a Welsh-speaking family in Pontardawe, Wales; her father worked as a housing officer. She took weekly singing lessons as a child and began her musical career as a folk singer with a local group called the Selby Set and Mary.

Mary Hopkin : "Joan Baez and Bert Jansch were the first guitar–playing folk singers I ever really listened to; I was introduced to them by a friend of my father's, who was a keen folk enthusiast. I learned to play guitar from Joan Baez records and things, but left to my own devices, I think, I'd have developed into a singer/songwriter. My development was rather halted halfway, when I was thrown tin at the deep end of the music business."

Her first release was the Welsh language EP 'Llais Swynol Mary Hopkin' released in May 1968 on Cambrian Records, Songs included Mae Bob Awr  /  Tami  /  Yn Y Bore   /  Gwrandewch Ar Y Moroedd

Mary Hopkin : "I did a few EPs in the Welsh language, and I think they were particularly enjoyed in the Welsh settlements in America and South America. There was a television program, basically Welsh folk music and contemporary music, and I did a few of those. It was a good experience. And I used to sing for pocket money with the band we'd formed, with three local boys."

In June 1968, she teamed up with Edward Morris Jones to release a second EP - 'Mary Ac Edward'. Songs included Rhywbeth Syml  /  Draw Dros Y Moroedd  /  Cariad Dan Fy Mron   /  Y Fori

 

She then took part in the ITV talent show Opportunity Knocks - which she ended up winning.

Mary Hopkin : "It was all terribly, terribly embarrassing at the time. It wasn't something I want to be a party to. But I was sort of talked into doing it by the agent who was finding us work while I was still at school. Without my knowledge, he put my name down for this show. I was mortified when I heard he had done it. You can't condemn that kind of show, because they can do a lot for people, and certainly it would've taken me a lot longer, if at all, to get into the music business, but the whole thing is terribly embarrassing. I did the audition, because my agent said it would be good experience to attend an audition."

The model Twiggy saw her on the show, and recommended her to Paul McCartney - who was on the look out for new acts to sign to the newly formed Apple Records.

Mary Hopkin : "I am grateful to Twiggy; she's lovely and she certainly gave me a momentous start in the music business. I did the show on the day after my 18th birthday; I was still supposed to be studying for my final exams at school, my university entrance exams. Twiggy saw the show, and I think the next day saw Paul McCartney. He was telling her all about the new Apple label. And she said she'd seen this girl on Opportunity Knocks, and he should check me out. So I received a telegram, two days after the show, which I ignored for a few days. It said, "Ring Peter Brown at Apple Records" and I had never heard of either of them. I was a great Beatles fan, and I'd heard of the Apple Boutique, but nothing else. We didn't know Apple Records was on the way."

 

Mary Hopkin : "I left it on the shelf for three days, and then my mother said it would be polite to ring back. So I did, and I was put on to whom I thought was Peter Brown. And this chap had a distinct Liverpool accent. I started wondering at that point, making the connection with Apple but he asked me if I'd come to London and sing for him. I said, well, that depends and he realized I was being very cautious, so he asked my mother to come to the phone. So my mother came to the phone, and he said, "Oh, this is Paul McCartney. Would you like to bring your daughter to London to sing for me?" That was it really. I was whisked off there the next day and sang for him; we demoed at the little Dick James Demo Studios. I sang a few songs for him; then I was called back about two or three weeks later, and he sang a little song for me, sort of hummed it, and said, "I've had this song lying around for years. It's called "Those Were The Days.'" And he said, "Let's go in and do it."

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"Those Were the Days", produced by McCartney, was released in the UK on 30 August 1968. Despite competition from well-established star Sandie Shaw, whose single was also released that year, Hopkin's version became a number 1 hit on the UK Singles Chart.

   

Mary Hopkin : "I felt very much on the outside of it all, being very unsophisticated and barely out of school, and being thrown in at the deep end. It was full of mad people - though mostly well-meaning - and I think I became a bit of an embarrassment to them. Certainly their approach to me was very odd, so different from the way they dealt with all their other artists. It was bad enough that I was straight from school, totally green, a little dolly bird, but then they proceeded to exaggerate all that. They took great pains over creating a ghastly sugary image for me. Sure, a lot of it was already there because of my age, but I would have grown out of it in time. But they seemed to latch onto that and then I became an embarrassment to them, because I wasn't hip. I still can't understand why they sugar-coated me. I remember going to bars, sitting there with a glass of wine, and if a photographer turned up it'd be whisked out of my hand and I'd be given a Pepsi instead. I was offered a part in "Hair" which would have been great to do, and Apple turned it down."

     

Mary Hopkin : "My father was very, very over-protective and, on reflection, he was probably responsible for much of this - I'll never find out how much. He wrote certain things into my contract: "Mary must never appear naked in a photograph"; "Mary must record a track in Welsh on every album"; that sort of thing! I suppose he could have been the cause of it all, scaring Apple into giving me this clean-cut, nauseating image. I think Apple should have stood up to him, because that image has done me a lot of harm, even to this day."

On 2 October 1968, Hopkin appeared at St Paul's Cathedral in London for The Pop Experience, where she sang "Morning of My Life", "Turn Turn Turn" and "Plaisir d'amour". In December that year, the NME reported that Hopkin was considering a lead acting role in Stanley Baker's forthcoming film, The Rape of the Fair Country. That project did not materialise but Hopkin did sing the title songs to two of Baker's films : 'Where's Jack?' and 'Kidnapped'.

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On 21 February 1969, Hopkin's debut album, Postcard, again produced by McCartney, was released.

Mary Hopkin : "Paul was always involved. He would go sit with George Martin and they would work it out. Sometimes it would come from George, and sometimes Paul would sing a little riff and say "this feel" or "that feel." I can't remember who did exactly what now. But Paul was very much involved."

 

It reached number 3 on the UK Albums Chart. In the United States, Postcard reached number 28 on the Billboard albums chart.

Mary Hopkin : "I felt as though it was an experiment to see what I was capable of, and that was not very much at that time. I didn't take it that seriously at that time, I thought, "This is all right." I didn't realize I'd spend the next 20 years trying to live it down. Paul and I talked things over. I didn't know what I was capable of anyway, and I thought, "He must know better than I do." I mean, I didn't really question it. Paul wanted me to try a few different things, songs which were his all-time favourites or numbers which his Dad liked, but I was far too young to know how to deal with half of those songs. It all sounds a little silly now, a little Welsh voice trying to sing "Someone To Watch Over Me"."

 

The album included covers of three songs from Donovan, who also played on the album, and one song each from George Martin and Harry Nilsson.

Mary Hopkin : "There were songs I was obviously much more comfortable with, like the Donovan songs. The three of us just sat there, it was all done live, and I sang direct from Donovan's lyric book, where he had just printed the words out. It was lovely, and that's the way I would've liked to work. I don't think there were any of their songs on Post Card, but as soon as I met Benny Gallagher and Graham Lyle, we clicked. We were obviously on the same wavelength."

 

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In March 1969 she released her second single on Apple - "Goodbye" (b/w "Sparrow") - which reached #2 in the charts in April 1969. The A-side written by Paul McCartney.

Mary Hopkin : "A year went by before he wrote "Goodbye." And that was after I'd said, "Look, how about another single?" But I understood. Obviously his priority was the Beatles, that's natural. He said he wrote "Goodbye" in about 10 minutes. I'm not sure how true that is! It probably is."

Hopkin said she interpreted "Goodbye" as McCartney pledging to stop "micromanaging" her career, since she was uncomfortable with his positioning of her as a pop chanteuse. She also expressed dissatisfaction with her manager at this time, Terry Doran.

Mary Hopkin : "Paul put a thigh–slap on there—on his own thigh, I might add! It's a good song for its kind, but whether it was suited to me, I don't know. It was easy for me to do those songs. They were fun little pop songs. So it was very easy for me to say, "Oh. Okay. Yes." But as soon as I realized what was happening, I started putting the reins on, and putting my foot down about what material I was going to do."

 

At McCartney's insistence, Hopkin had recorded a cover of "Que Sera, Sera" in August 1969. Hopkin had no wish to record the song and refused to have the single released in Britain. Initially issued in France in September 1969, backed by "Fields Of St. Etienne", it was released in North America in June 1970. The single peaked at number 77 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Mary Hopkin : "At the time, it was just one of Paul's fun ideas. It was one sunny afternoon, we were sitting in Paul's garden, and he said, "Do you like this song?" I said, "Well, I used to sing it when I was three!" And he said, "My dad likes it, let's go and do it." And so Ringo came along; it was all done in an afternoon. I was sort of swept along with Paul's enthusiasm, really. By the time I was halfway through the backing vocals, I said, "This is awful." I really thought it was dreadful and I didn't want it released."

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In 1969 Cambrian released the Welsh language single "Aderyn Llwyd" (b/w "Y Blodyn Gwyn"), and "Lontano Dagli Occhi" backed by "The Game" written by George Martin was released as a single in France.

 

Squeezing a bit more juice from her early recordings, Cambrian released one more Welsh language single in 1970, featuring "Pleserau Serch" backed with "Tyrd Yn Ol".

 

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Her next Apple release was "Temma Harbour", which reached #6 in January 1970. A re-arrangement of a Philamore Lincoln song, it was her first single not to be produced by McCartney.

   

Mary Hopkin : "Quite understandably, Paul was busy with Beatles projects and had less and less time for me. His interest was waning and Apple had to find somebody else to produce me. Unfortunately the came up with Mickie Most, and I went along with it because he'd produced Donovan. He came to visit me - I was doing some dreadful summer show on a pier somewhere - and he came to ask me what key I would like to sing in, then he'd record the whole thing without me and add my voice at the end. There was no way I would put up with that treatment, so he thought me extremely difficult, quite different to his other female singers who were more used to work that way. We did a couple of singles which I hated, "Temma Harbour" and "Think About Your Children"."

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Along with Donovan and Billy Preston, Hopkin was one of the chorus singers on the Radha Krishna Temple's 1970 Top 23 hit single "Govinda", produced by George Harrison for Apple Records.

 

Mary Hopkin : "I was aware that it was disorganized; I think everyone involved in Apple would agree on that. I think they were just finding their feet; it was early days for them, and a lot of them were new to it anyway. Derek Taylor mentioned in an interview over here that my management setup was pretty dreadful. I had no one to represent me at the time. Eventually, my brother–in–law took over as manager, but there was no one at Apple. Every time I did a television show, I always had an escort, a sort of acting manager. There were a couple of people, Terry Doran and Alistair Taylor. My sister didn't manage me, which you sometimes read in the press—she was sort of pushed into the position of chaperon–come–spokesman, because I had no one else to represent me."

 

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In March 1970, Hopkin represented the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest, achieving second place with "Knock, Knock Who's There?" Although she gave a confident performance, and despite being the pre-contest favourite, Hopkin lost to "All Kinds of Everything", performed by Irish singer Dana.

 

Mary Hopkin : "I hated it, it was like "Opportunity Knocks" again. I said, "No way, it's absolute rubbish, I won't do it. How am I ever going to progress, musically, and have any credibility if I do this?" Eventually, apart from a great deal of emotional blackmail, the only way they got me to do it was to promise to pick some quality songs - but they weren't. I got the usual rubbish. "Knock, Knock, Who's There" was one of the most appalling songs of all time. I apologise if I'm upsetting anyone, but really it was quite awful. I haven't watched a Eurovision Song Contest since."

Produced by Mickie Most, "Knock, Knock Who's There?", (b/w "I'm Going To Fall In Love Again"), was released as a single on 23 March 1970 and peaked at number 2 in the UK. It was a worldwide hit, selling over a million copies.

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Hopkin's final big hit was "Think About Your Children" (b/w "Heritage"), released in October 1970, which reached number 19 in the UK. Hopkin has expressed dissatisfaction with the material produced by Most, and after appearing in Eurovision, Hopkin wanted to return to her folk-music roots.

Mary Hopkin : "Hot Chocolate wrote that but I shouldn't have sung it. It wasn't Mickie's fault, it was mine. I didn't go into it with the right attitude. My confidence had taken a knock by the direction I was going in. After "Goodbye", I'd hit a slide. That was a nice song but it set a trend for me which I couldn't stand, you know - bubbly, sing-along pop tunes. So I'd lost faith in myself by the time of "Think About Your Children", and then the Eurovision thing crowned it all."

 

Two singles were released in 1971 - "Let My Name Be Sorrow" (b/w "Kew Gardens") - which reached #46 in July and "Water, Paper And Clay" (b/w "Jefferson") - which became her first flop in November 1971.

 

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Hopkin's second album, 'Earth Song / Ocean Song', was released by Apple on 1 October 1971. The album was produced by Tony Visconti and included cover versions of songs written by Cat Stevens, Gallagher and Lyle and Ralph McTell. Hopkin felt it was the album she had always wanted to make, so, coinciding with her marriage to Visconti and with little left to prove, she left the music scene.

 

Mary Hopkin : "That was definitely going in the right direction, but by the time I recorded that I was so demoralised, with the singles getting worse and worse, that I'd lost confidence and didn't know what to do next. I felt I had to stop  everything and get myself out of the rut. I was still being pushed into dreadful summer shows and pantomimes, yet I'd actually started out as a contemporary folk singer, doing songs by Joan Baez and Judy Collins. "Earth Song/Ocean Song" was a great album to make, with Ralph McTell, Danny Thompson and Dave Cousins - lovely people.  The album had a wonderful write-up in "Rolling Stone" which made it all worthwhile to me, but everything at Apple was fizzling out, my contract expired and we left it at that. Then, having left Apple and married Tony, I fell pregnant with our first child and left the business for a while, just quietly writing songs and raising our family for a few years." 

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Following her departure from Apple Records, the single "Summertime Summertime" (b/w "Sweet and Low") was released on Bell Records under the name of Hobby Horse. The A-side was a cover of a 1958 song by the Jamies. With Visconti's assistance, she released the Christmas single "Mary Had A Baby" (b/w "Cherry Tree Carol") was released in November 1972.

   

Hopkin starred in her own, one-off TV special for BBC 1 on 29 July 1972. Titled 'Sing Hi, Sing Lo', it was billed simply as "light entertainment starring Mary Hopkin".

While she didn't release any albums under her own name, she sang on numerous recordings that her husband produced, such as those featuring Tom Paxton, Ralph McTell, Dave Bowie, Bert Jansch, The Radiators from Space, Thin Lizzy, Carmen, Sarstedt Brothers, Osibisa, Sparks, Hazel O'Connor, and Elaine Paige. On all of these recordings she is credited as "Mary Visconti".

Mary Hopkin : "I did backing vocals on David Bowie's "Sound And Vision". I was out in France when they were recording "Low" and Brian Eno was there doing all the basic tracks for David to write songs around. Brian asked me to do some backing vocals with him, just a little riff. He promised me it'd be way back in the mix with tons of echo, but when David heard it he boosted it right up and it's very prominent, much to our embarrassment because it was such a corny little riff! I didn't do anything with T. Rex, but obviously we got to know Marc very well."

   

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In 1976, she returned to recording as Marty Hopkin with "If You Love Me (I Won't Care)", which reached Number 32 in the UK chart. The B-side, "Tell Me Now", was an original composition by Hopkin. Her next single, "Wrap Me in Your Arms", with the B-side, "Just A Dreamer", again written by Hopkin, was released in April 1977. These singles came out on Visconti's Good Earth Records label.

 

Hopkin's first project in the 1980s was a well-reviewed stint playing the Virgin Mary in Rock Nativity at the Hexagon Theatre in Reading, Berkshire. Hopkin and Visconti divorced in 1981, and the following year she provided vocals on "Rachel's Song" for the Vangelis soundtrack of Blade Runner.

Mike Hurst asked her to sing lead in a new group named Sundance. The single, "What's Love", proved very popular in South Africa - peaking at #10 in April 1982.

Mary Hopkin : "I didn't really do anything seriously until 1980 when I got together with Mike Hurst, from the Springfields, and Michael de Alberquerque from ELO. We did some good demos, in sort of Eagles vein, nice harmonies; but again we had a record company, Bronze this time, trying to manufacture an image. The name Sundance was chosen, which was when I could see the corn starting again, and then they wanted us to do support on a Shirley Bassey tour. I immediately turned that down and was sacked on the spot! No way was I going to go back to that sort of thing, or do summer seasons and cabaret. I'd been pushed into doing all that junk for years. We did do support on a Doctor Hook tour, though, which was great fun."   

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In April 1984 she teamed up with Peter Skellern, Julian Lloyd Webber, Bill Lovelady, Mitch Dalton, Tony McCarroll and Bonehead to form Oasis.

Mary Hopkin : "Peter Skellern's manager rang me sometime in 1983 and discussed a project Peter was doing with Julian Lloyd Webber. Would I be the female vocalist? I said yes because Peter writes lovely songs and because I thought Julian would be adding little classical touches here and there. We all agreed that we wanted to do a quality thing, and we signed to a five-year contract, then all the record company nonsense started and I thought, "Oh God, here we go again!"."

Their first and only album, 'Oasis', was released on WEA along with two singles - "Hold Me" (b/w "Oasis") in June 1984, and "I Wonder Why" (b/w "Who Knows") in July 1984. The album reached number 23 on the UK album chart, and remained there for 14 weeks. A tour of the UK was planned but was brought to an abrupt end because Hopkin became ill, and the group disbanded shortly afterwards.

Mary Hopkin : "We had an absolutely ghastly photo session, the guys wearing bow ties and me in an evening dress with my hair dolled up. My hair is green and my face is orange on that album cover. Still, I would have carried on and tried to sort out that sophisticated image nonsense, but for the fact that I became seriously ill and had to bow out of the tour we had planned. I still feel bad about letting everybody down like that but, on the bright side, it brought Oasis to an enforced end."

 

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During the 1980s, Hopkin appeared in several charity shows, including an appearance at the London Palladium with Ralph McTell. In 1988, she took part in George Martin's production of Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood. She played the character Rosie Probert and performed a piece called "Love Duet" with Freddie Jones as Captain Cat.

Hopkin recorded an album called Spirit in 1989. This was released on the Trax label and is a collection of light classical songs and featured the single "Ave Maria". The record was produced by Benny Gallagher, of Gallagher and Lyle, who had contributed songs to her during her days at Apple Records.

 

In October 2010, Hopkin and her son, Morgan Visconti, released 'You Look Familiar', a collaboration which brought together Hopkin's melodies, lyrics and vocals with her son's instrumentation and arrangements.

Mary Hopkin : "I'm writing songs now, working either on my own or with other writers, in various styles. The songs that are important to me are the ones I'm writing with my son, Morgan, who's living in New York. He's 21, and he's writing some amazing music. He sends me backing tracks and I write the melody and lyrics. And so far the response has been really good. We're really enjoying it. We're very much in tune. He writes what I hear, what I can't put down, because as a musician he's excellent. I'm fine with vocals, and basic guitar and piano, but I wouldn't be able to put down a whole backing track as well as he does."

The Single :
Quote"Those Were the Days" is a song credited to Gene Raskin, who put a new English lyric to the Russian romance song "Dorogoi dlinnoyu" ["By the long road"], composed by Boris Fomin with words by the poet Konstantin Podrevsky. It deals with reminiscence upon youth and romantic idealism. The song appears in the 1953 film 'Innocents in Paris', in which it was sung with its original Russian lyrics by Ludmila Lopato.

In the early 1960s Gene Raskin, with his wife Francesca, played folk music around Greenwich Village in New York, including White Horse Tavern. Raskin, who had grown up hearing the song, wrote with his wife,new English lyrics to the old Russian music and then copyrighted both music and lyrics in his own name. The Limeliters subsequently released a recording of the song on their 1962 LP Folk Matinee. The Raskins were international performers and had played London's "Blue Angel" every year, always closing their show with the song. Paul McCartney frequented the club and being quite taken with the song. After the formation of the Beatles' own Apple Records label, McCartney immediately recorded Mary Hopkin performing the song.

Paul : "I thought it was very catchy, it had something, it was a good treatment of nostalgia. She picked it up very easily, as if she'd known it for years."



Hopkin's recording was produced by Paul McCartney with an arrangement by Richard Hewson. The Russian origin of the melody was accentuated by an instrumentation that was unusual for a top-ten pop record, including balalaika, clarinet, hammered dulcimer or cimbalom, tenor banjo and children's chorus, giving a klezmer feel to the song. Mary Hopkin played acoustic guitar on the recording, and Paul McCartney also played acoustic guitar, percussion, and possibly the banjo. The cimbalom was played with aplomb by Gilbert Webster.

The song became a number-one hit on the UK Singles Chart. In the United States, Hopkin's recording reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 behind "Hey Jude" by The Beatles. In the Netherlands, it topped the charts for two consecutive weeks.

   

McCartney also recorded Hopkin singing "Those Were The Days" in other languages for release in their respective countries : "Qué tiempo tan feliz" (Spanish)  /  "An jenem Tag" (German) /  "Quelli erano giorni" (Italian)  and "Le temps des fleurs" (French)

Mary Hopkin : "I think everyone was taken by surprise by the success of "Those Were The Days." I don't think anyone expected that to happen so quickly, you know. It went straight to the top of the charts, and it was number one in 13 different countries at one time, so I was whisked around the world and spent the next year promoting it."

 

Other Versions include :   Tamara Tsereteli (1929)  /  Theodore Bikel & Geula Gill (1959)  /  Sandie Shaw (1968)  /  Johnny Mathis (1968)  /  "Le temps des fleurs" by Yvette Horner (1968)  /  Stanley Turrentine (1968)  /  The Exotic Guitars (1968)  /  Chet Atkins (1969)  /  Skitch Henderson (1969)  /  The 5th Dimension (1969)  /  Roger Whittaker (1969)  /  Anita Harris (1969)  /  The Ventures (1970)  /  Boots Randolph (1970)  /  Vera Lynn (1970)  /  Tiny Tim (1987)  /  Leningrad Cowboys (1992)  /  Cynthia Lennon (1995)  /  Melanie (2002)  /  Shaggy feat. Nasha (2007)  /  Kyösti Rautio (2010)  /  Danny McEvoy (2011)  /  a robot (2015)  /  International String Trio with Olli Soikkeli (2016)

On This Day  :
Quote22 September : Ceremony to mark relocation of ancient Egyptian Abu Simbel temples, honouring Ramesses II - rebuilt 200 meters inland away from the Aswan Dam
23 September : Yvette Fielding, TV presenter, born Yvette Paula Fielding in Stockport, Manchester
25 September : Will Smith, rapper and actor, born Willard Carroll Smith Jr. in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
26 September : Censorship of plays was abolished in the United Kingdom with the Theatres Act 1968
26 September : Film version of "Oliver!" starring Mark Lester and Ron Moody premieres in London
27 September : "Hair" opens at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London
27 September : France denies UK entry into common market
28 September : Naomi Watts, actress, born Naomi Ellen Watts in Shoreham, Kent
28 September : "Noël Coward's Sweet Potato" opens at Barrymore NYC for 17 performances
29 September : Luke Goss, actor and drummer (Bros), born Luke Damon Goss in Lewisham, London
29 September : Matt Goss, singer (Bros), born Matthew Weston Goss in Lewisham, London
29 September : Mika Häkkinen, Formula 1 car racer (World Champion 1998, 99), born Mika Pauli Häkkinen in Helsingin maalaiskunta (now Vantaa), Finland
2 October : Jana Novotná, tennis player, born in Brno, Czechoslovakia
2 October : Victoria Derbyshire, British radio presenter, born Victoria Antoinette Derbyshire in Ramsbottom, Lancashire
2 October : Marcel Duchamp, French painter and sculptor, dies at 81
3 October : Howard Sacklers "Great White Hope" premieres in NYC
3 October : The proposed civil rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland, is banned from the area of the city centre and the Waterside area
5 October : Civil rights march in Derry stopped by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Resulting clashes lead to two days of serious rioting - considered the start of 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland
7 October : Thom Yorke, (Radiohead), born Thomas Edward Yorke in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire
10 October : Chris Ofili, Turner prize winning painter, born Christopher Ofili in Manchester
11 October : Apollo 7 made 163 orbits in 260 hours
12 October : Hugh Jackman, actor, born Hugh Michael Jackman in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
14 October : Opening of the rebuilt Euston railway station in London
15 October : Release of Russ Meyer's Vixen!, the first American film to have an X rating under the new classification system of the MPAA
16 October : Tommie Smith and John Carlos give the Black Power salute on the 200m medal podium during the Mexico City Olympics to protest racism and injustice against African-Americans
17 October : Ziggy Marley, musician, born David Nesta Marley in Kingston, Jamaica
18 October : Police find 219 grains of cannabis resin in John Lennon and Yoko Ono's flat, they are fined £150
18 October : Rhod Gilbert, comedian, born Rhodri Paul Gilbert in Carmarthen, Wales
19 October : Sinitta, singer, born Sinitta Malone in Seattle, Washington
20 October : Jacqueline Kennedy marries Greek moneybags Aristotle Onassis on the island of Scorpios
20 October : "Her 1st Roman" opens at Lunt Fontanne Theater NYC for 17 performances
22 October : Shaggy, musician, born Orville Richard Burrell in Kingston, Jamaica
24 October : Mick Jagger & Marianne Faithful busted for pot, they are released on £50 bail
25 October : Yoko Ono announces she is having John Lennon's baby
26 October : First European satellite launched, Esro 1, at Cape Kennedy
26 October : Soviet Union launches spacecraft Soyuz 3

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! :
Quote                   

purlieu


daf

With a Little Help From Vance Arnold, it's . . .

260.  Joe Cocker - With a Little Help From My Friends



From : 3 – 9 November 1968
Weeks : 1
Flip side : Something's Coming On
Bonus 1 : Beat Club
Bonus 2 : Surprise Partie (French TV)
Bonus 3 : Mad Dogs & Englishmen

The Story So Far : 
QuoteJohn Robert Cocker was born on 20 May 1944 at 38 Tasker Road, Crookes, Sheffield. According to differing family stories, Cocker received his nickname of 'Joe' either from playing a childhood game called "Cowboy Joe", or from a local window cleaner named Joe.

Cocker's first experience singing in public was at age 12 when his elder brother Victor invited him on stage to sing during a gig of his skiffle group. His main musical influences growing up were Ray Charles and Lonnie Donegan, and in 1960, along with three friends, Cocker formed his first group, The Cavaliers. The Cavaliers eventually broke up after a year and Cocker left school to become an apprentice gasfitter working for the East Midlands Gas Board while simultaneously pursuing a career in music.

In 1961, under the stage name Vance Arnold, Cocker continued his career with a new group, Vance Arnold and the Avengers. The group mostly played in the pubs of Sheffield, performing covers of Chuck Berry and Ray Charles songs. In 1963, they booked their first significant gig when they supported the Rolling Stones at Sheffield City Hall.

Joe Cocker : "Everyone used to have names in Sheffield – like Johnny Tempest and the Cadillacs. We were called the Avengers, and the guys said: "You'd better come up with a name." I remember just sitting one day, and I thought of Eddy Arnold, the old country guy, and the Vance was from an Elvis film, I think. One of the best things that ever happened was when I was gas fitting. I went to someone's house and the woman said to her husband: "Oooh, come and look – Vance is putting our fire in!""

 

In 1964, Cocker signed a recording contract as a solo act with Decca and released his first single, a cover of the Beatles' "I'll Cry Instead" (b/w "Precious Words") with Big Jim Sullivan and Jimmy Page playing guitars. Despite extensive promotion, the record was a flop and his recording contract with Decca lapsed at the end of 1964.

After Cocker recorded the single, he dropped his stage name and formed a new group, Joe Cocker's Blues Band. A live recording from this line up was included on the 1967 EP Rag Goes Mad at the Mojo' - which was given out by Sheffield College during 'Rag Week'.

 

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After a year-long hiatus from music, Cocker teamed up with Chris Stainton, whom he had met several years before, to form the Grease Band. The Grease Band was named after Cocker read an interview with jazz keyboardist Jimmy Smith, where Smith positively described another musician as "having a lot of grease."

The Grease Band came to the attention of Denny Cordell, the producer of Procol Harum, the Moody Blues and Georgie Fame. Cocker recorded the single "Marjorine", without the Grease Band, for Cordell in a London studio. Released in released on Regal Zonophone, backed with "The New Age Of The Lily", it reached #48 in the UK in May 1968.

     

He then moved to London with Chris Stainton, and the Grease Band was dissolved. Cordell set Cocker up with a residency at the Marquee Club in London, and a "new" Grease Band was formed with Stainton and keyboardist Tommy Eyre.

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In 1968, Cocker found commercial success with a rearrangement of "With a Little Help from My Friends". The recording features lead guitar from Jimmy Page, drumming by B. J. Wilson, backing vocals from Sue and Sunny, and Tommy Eyre on organ.

 

The single remained in the top ten of the UK Singles Chart for thirteen weeks before eventually reaching number one, on 9 November 1968.

       

Joe Cocker : "I had a little flat with a girlfriend from Sheffield when we first moved to London. Little Help was No 1 and I went to Sloane Square to get a newspaper and there were a bunch of schoolgirls on a day out. There's me with my long hair and my tie-dyed T-shirt, and they saw me from across the road and came running. It was in my hash-smoking days. And I remember the horror in my heart as these teenyboppers came running towards me. We weren't into the old autograph thing."

The new touring line-up of Cocker's Grease Band featured Henry McCullough on lead guitar. After touring the UK with The Who in autumn 1968 and Gene Pitney and Marmalade in early winter 1969, the Grease Band embarked on their first tour of the US in spring 1969. Cocker's album 'With a Little Help from My Friends' was released soon after their arrival and made number 35 on the American charts, eventually going gold.

Joe Cocker : "I took my dad to Rock Around the Clock with Bill Haley and he was absolutely horrified. To him it was the start of something new, and he was dead right. I used to go out and dress in all the insane rock'n'roll clothes, and he never got it. Until I was on Top of the Pops. He was quite impressed with that – that I could come into his living room without him trying."

 

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During his US tour, Cocker played at several large festivals, including the Newport Rock Festival and the Denver Pop Festival. In August, Denny Cordell heard about the planned concert in Woodstock, New York and convinced organiser Artie Kornfeld to book Cocker and the Grease Band for the Woodstock Festival.

The group had to be flown into the festival by helicopter due to the large crowds. They performed several songs, including "Something's Comin' On", "Feelin' Alright?", "Let's Go Get Stoned", "I Shall Be Released" and "With a Little Help from My Friends". Cocker would later say that the experience was "like an eclipse ... it was a very special day."

Joe Cocker : "We were kind of lucky because we got on stage real early. It took about half the set just to get through to everybody, to that kind of consciousness. You're in a sea of humanity and people aren't necessarily looking to entertain you. We did Let's Go Get Stoned by Ray Charles, which kind of turned everybody around a bit, and we came off looking pretty good that day. A lot of other artists didn't enjoy themselves at all. I was furious because all the band had taken acid and they didn't tell me. I was the only one straight. I have been offered brown acid in my time, though. Even black acid – I took that. That was very weird. It was a very dark trip."

     

Directly after Woodstock, Cocker released his second album, 'Joe Cocker!'. Impressed by his cover of "With a Little Help from My Friends," Paul McCartney and George Harrison allowed Cocker to use their songs "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" and "Something" for the album. Recorded during a break in touring in the spring and summer, the album reached number 11 on the US charts and garnered a hit with the Leon Russell song, "Delta Lady" (b/w "She's So Good To Me") which reached #10 in the UK in September 1969 .

   

In August 1969, Cocker performed at the Isle of Wight Festival. Onstage, he exhibited an idiosyncratic physical intensity, flailing his arms and playing air guitar like a twat.

Joe Cocker : "You know you see all your old stuff on YouTube now – and I was horrified at myself, with my arms just flailing around. I guess that came with my frustration at never having played piano or guitar. If you see me nowadays I'm not quite so animated, but it's just a way of trying to get feeling out – I get excited and it all comes through my body."

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At the end of the year Cocker was unwilling to embark on another US tour, so he dissolved the Grease Band in a giant vat of acid. Despite Cocker's reluctance to venture out on the road again, an American tour had already been booked so he had to quickly form a new band in order to fulfill his contractual obligations. It proved to be a large group of more than 20 musicians, including three drummers! Denny Cordell christened the new band "Mad Dogs & Englishmen" after the Noël Coward song.

   

Cocker toured 48 cities, recorded a live album, and received very positive reviews from Time and Life for his performances. However, the pace of the tour was exhausting. Russell and Cocker had personal problems; Cocker became depressed and began drinking excessively as the tour wound down in May 1970. Meanwhile, he enjoyed several chart entries in the United States with cover versions of "Feelin' Alright" and "Cry Me A River" (b/w "Give Peace A Chance") in October 1970, which reached #11 in the US.

His cover of the Box Tops' hit "The Letter" (b/w "Space Captain"), became his first US Top Ten hit, and reached #39 in the UK in July 1970. After spending several months in Los Angeles, Cocker returned home to Sheffield where his family became increasingly concerned with his deteriorating physical and mental health.

Joe Cocker : "My manager told me it's good not to have a lot of money in your bank account because that way you don't get a lot of beggars and parasites trying to peck your neck off. Denny Cordell gave me a copy of Khalil Gibran's The Prophet, so we all got into the spiritual thing of saying we should give everything away. And people would take it. Ten grand here, 10 grand there. Anything businesslike I didn't want to know. So in many ways it was my own fault. But there were the men with big cigars and the sharks. We fell for them – not just me, but many artists."

In June 1971, A&M Records released the single "High Time We Went", (b/w "Black-Eyed Blues"), which reached #22 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. "Woman To Woman" (b/w "Midnight Rider") released on Cube in September 1972, did not chart in the UK, but the B-side reached #27 in the US, and "Pardon Me Sir" (b/w "She Don't Mind") released in January 1973 reached #51 in the US.

   

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At the end of 1973, Cocker returned to the studio to record a new album, I Can Stand a Little Rain. The album, released in August 1974, was number 11 on the US charts and spawned two singles - "Put Out The Light", (b/w "If I Love You"), which peaked at #46 in July 1974 . . .

     

. . . and a cover of Billy Preston's "You Are So Beautiful", (b/w "I Get Mad"), which reached the US Top 5 in March 1975.

 

Despite positive reviews for the album, Cocker struggled with live performances, largely due to his problems with the booze. One such instance was reported in a 1974 issue of Rolling Stone, which said that during two West Coast performances in October of that year he threw up onstage.

In January 1975, he released 'Jamaica Say You Will', that had been recorded at the same time as 'I Can Stand a Little Rain'. The single from the album, "It's All Over But The Shoutin'" (b/w "Sandpaper Cadillac"), was released in October 1975, but failed to chart.

     

In late 1975, he recorded a new studio album,'Stingray', in a Kingston, Jamaica. However, record sales were disappointing; the album reached only number 70 on the US charts. Two flop singles were extruded from the plastic waffle : "The Jealous Kind" (b/w "You Came Along"), released in July 1976, and "I Broke Down" released in October 1976.

   

At this point, Cocker was $800,000 in debt to A&M Records and struggling with alcoholism. He met producer Michael Lang, who agreed to manage him on the condition that he stay sober. With a new band, Cocker embarked on a tour of New Zealand, Australia and South America and recorded a new album, "Luxury You Can Afford". Released on for Asylum records, it received mixed reviews and sold around 300,000 copies.

The single "Fun Time" (b/w "I Can't Say No") released in October 1978, reached #43 in the US, but "Whiter Shade Of Pale" (b/w "Watching The River Flow"), released in January 1979, flopped everywhere except Australia where it peaked at #62.

In 1979, Cocker joined the "Woodstock in Europe" tour, which featured musicians like Arlo Guthrie and Richie Havens who had played at the 1969 Woodstock Festival. He also performed in New York's Central Park to an audience of 20,000 people. The concert was recorded and released as the live album, 'Live in New York'.

   

In 1982, Cocker recorded two songs with the jazz group The Crusaders on their album 'Standing Tall'. One song, "I'm So Glad I'm Standing Here Today" reached #61 in the UK - his first British chart entry since 1970. It was nominated for a Grammy Award and Cocker performed it with the Crusaders at the awards ceremony.

The follow up, "This Old World's Too Funky For Me", released in November 1981 flopped everywhere, as did "Sweet Little Woman" (b/w "Look What You've Done") in May 1982, and "Many Rivers To Cross" (b/w "Talking Back To The Night") in August 1982.

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In 1982 Cocker recorded the duet "Up Where We Belong" with Jennifer Warnes for the soundtrack of the film An Officer and a Gentleman. The song was an international hit, reaching #7 in the UK in January 1983, and number 1 in the US - winning a Grammy Award for 'Best Pop Performance by a Duo'.

Joe Cocker : "I absolutely hated Up Where We Belong when I first heard it. But I could tell as we were putting the track down that it was going to be a big record. It was the only No 1 I ever had in America."

   

In 1984 he released his ninth studio album, 'Civilized Man'. The title track backed with "A Girl Like You" was released on Capitol in June 1984, and reached #49 in the Netherlands. His next album 'Cocker' was dedicated to his mother, Madge, who died when he was recording in the studio with producer Terry Manning. A track from the album, "You Can Leave Your Hat On" was featured in the 1986 film 9½ Weeks.

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"Shelter Me" (b/w "One More Time") released in March 1986 reached #57 in Australia. A track originally released in 1986, "Don't You Love Me Anymore" (b/w "All Our Tomorrows"), reached #99 in the UK in June 1988.

After Barclay James Harvest and Bob Dylan, Cocker was the first to give rock concerts in the German Democratic Republic, in East Berlin and Dresden.  He also performed for US President George H. W. Bush at an inauguration concert in February 1989. His next single, "When The Night Comes", taken from the album 'One Night of Sin, reached #11 in the US, and #65 in the UK in December 1989. "What Are You Doing With A Fool Like Me" (b/w "Another Mind Gone") reached #23 in Switzerland in 1990.

His 1992 singles included : "(All I Know) Feels Like Forever" reached #25 in the UK in March, "Now That The Magic Has Gone" peaked at #28 in May, and a new version of "Unchain My Heart" (b/w "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me") reached #17 in July 1992.

Cocker performed the Saturday opening set at Woodstock '94 as one of the few acts who had played at the original Woodstock Festival in 1969 and was well received. His 1994 singles included : "The Simple Things" which reached #17 in the UK in August  /  "Take Me Home" with Bekka Bramlett - #41 in October  /  and "Let the Healing Begin", which was a Top 32 hit in December 1994.

 

Further singles included : "Have a Little Faith in Me"  - which reached #67 in the UK in September 1995  /  "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" - #53 in October 1996  /  "Could You Be Loved" - #86 in September 1997  /  "Different Roads" - #99 in October 1999  and "Never Tear Us Apart" - #86 in June 2002 

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Cocker was awarded an OBE in the Queen's 2007 Birthday Honours list for services to music. To celebrate receiving his award, he played two concerts in London and in his home town of Sheffield where he was awarded a bronze Sheffield Legends plaque outside Sheffield Town Hall.

Cocker kept recording and touring through his later years. 2012's 'Fire It Up', which would turn out to be his last studio album, was followed by an extensive tour, consisting of a US leg in 2012 and a European leg in 2013. The last concert on the tour, which was to be Cocker's final live performance, was at the Loreley Open Air Theatre in Sankt Goarshausen on 7 September 2013.

Thanks to years of heavy smoking, Cocker died from lung cancer on 22 December 2014 in Crawford, Colorado, at the age of 70.

The Single :
Quote"With A Little Help From My Friends" was written collaboratively by Lennon and McCartney. The song was initially recorded with the working title Bad Finger Boogie, after Lennon tried to play the melody on a piano having hurt his forefinger.

Ringo : "The song With A Little Help From My Friends was written specifically for me, but they had one line that I wouldn't sing. It was 'What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and throw tomatoes at me?' I said, 'There's not a chance in hell am I going to sing this line,' because we still had lots of really deep memories of the kids throwing jelly beans and toys on stage; and I thought that if we ever did get out there again, I was not going to be bombarded with tomatoes."



Joe Cocker's version of "With a Little Help from My Friends" was a radical re-arrangement of the original, using different chords in the middle eight, and a lengthy instrumental introduction. After recording the song, Cocker and record producer Denny Cordell brought it to Paul McCartney.

Paul McCartney : "I loved his singing. I was especially pleased when he decided to cover "With a Little Help from My Friends" and I remember him and Denny Cordell coming round to the studio in Savile Row and playing me what they'd recorded and it was just mind-blowing, totally turned the song into a soul anthem and I was forever grateful to him for doing that."

Cocker's version of the song reached number one on the UK Singles Chart on the week of 6–12 November 1968. In the US it peaked at the surprisingly low #68 position on the Billboard Hot 100.

     

Cocker performed the song at Woodstock in 1969 and that performance was included in the documentary film. This version gained even more fame when it was used as the opening theme song for the television series The Wonder Years.

Other Versions includeHerb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass (1967)  /  "La ayuda de la amistad" by Los Mustang (1967)  /  Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 (1968)  / Richie Havens (1969)  /  Ike & Tina Turner (1969)  /  Barbra Streisand (1969)  /  Bill Oddie (1970)  /  Sacha Distel (1971)  /  Barbara Dickson (1974)  /  Sham 69 (1979)  /  Wet Wet Wet (1988)  /  Thunder (1992)  /  Bon Jovi (1993)  /  The Punkles (2003)  /  Danny McEvoy  (2010)  /  8BitFanboy (2011)  /  Amy Slattery (2014)  /  a robot (2017)  /  Kelly Valleau (2019)  /  Stevie Riks (2020)  /  The Main Squeeze (2020)

On This Day  :
Quote3 November : Ex-Prime Minister of Greece Georgios Papandreou buried. 300,000 demonstrate against the fascist junta
4 November : Northern Ireland Prime Minister Terence O'Neill meets British Prime Minister Harold Wilson for talks on Northern Ireland
5 November : Republican candidate Richard Nixon is elected President of the United States, defeating Democrat candidate Hubert Humphrey and Independent candidate George Wallace
7 November : USSR performs nuclear test at Novaya Zemlya USSR
8 November : Bruce Reynolds, the leader of the Great Train Robbery, arrested after more than five years on the run.
9 November : Led Zeppelin lead singer Robert Plant marries Maureen Wilson

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! :
Quote                       

This gets a battering on the latest CM episode. It seems to be a totally OTT treatment of a lightweight song, but maybe that was the point?

kalowski

That's livin' alright!

(Alright, not Joe Cocker, but I always think it is)

daf

As mentioned in the Alternatative History thread, Bill Oddie's 1970 single, 'On Ilkla Moor Baht'At', features several members from Cocker's Grease Band who played on the original record.

The Dandelion label gives credit to Peel's missus, whom I believe is on backing vocals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMaB0cqwcvI&ab_channel=LabanTall

One of the musicians, Henry McCullough, was subsequently in Wings. Jim Capaldi is on drums.

The Culture Bunker

When I was younger, I think I preferred the bombast of Cocker's version, but these day I'd go with the original, almost because it's over with quicker.

gilbertharding

To me, he will always be Joe Cockup - pictured here with Jennifer Prawn.