Make Up Check

 

Wearing the famed Shea jackets

 ...only no one was calling them the "Shea jackets" when they appeared at the NME Awards concert in 1965.  

Looking down

 

Sleepy Travelers

 

On their way from New York City to Miami, Florida 

Hey Bulldog

 

Interview with Long John Wade (1965)

 Interview with Long John Wade

Beatles Unlimited (Local Beatles Fan newsletter)

February 1965 - Volume 1 No 1

    Hey Beatles fans! Here's an interview with the only radio personality to make the entire American tour with the Beatles, Long John Wade of WDRC Hartford, Connecticut.

 Q: Which Beatles struck you as being the most quiet? 

A: The quietest?  George.

 Q: Will you please describe the Beatles in your own words?

 A:  John's loud. Ringo's more or less quiet --usually sits in the background, except when he opens his mouth; it's usually something funny. George is quiet. Period. He doesn't laugh as much as the rest. Paul is the friendliest. He seems to be the most amiable. You know, not necessarily that the others are not friendly. He just outwardly acts like that. 

Q:  Did you attend all the press conferences?

 A:  Yes.

 Q: Could you tell us offhand which was the most interesting one? 

A: Well, there was an interesting one in Canada because in Vancouver, they televised the whole thing live. They had TV cameras all set up there, so that was interesting. The first ones were the most interesting because they asked all the questions. Then they got boring after a while because the same questions were asked over and over. The New York press conferences were exciting because there were more people there, and it was a bigger room and a bigger hotel. And of course, they all had the TV cameras set up there, but still the same questions.

 Q: How many others besides yourself were with the official Beatles troupe?

 A: Mainly entertainers, which included the Righteous Brothers, the Exciters, and one of the Exciters' mothers, who acted as a chaperone because one of the Exciters is under 18, and Jackie DeShannon. I think the plane averaged 38. This included the hostesses, the representative from the airline, Kappy Ditson, who arranged all our accommodations-- our travel arrangements, limousines, and whatnot. As far as radio or press people, there were five from England, all from newspapers, of course. One of them was a photographer, and then there were two freelance photographers who joined us in Las Vegas. One of them was Ron Joy, who I became very friendly with.

Q: Did you take any pictures yourself? Did you bring a camera?

 A:  I took some, but I had tape recorders and everything else with me. That was a mistake because I took them to too many places. That was bad because the Beatles don't like to see a microphone around. They're very wary of that sort of thing.

 Q:  Did having two Johns confuse matters any? That is John Lennon and yourself?

 A: Well, there were little funny things like I'd say "Hi, John", and he'd say "Hi, John." I'd say "How are you John?" and he'd say "Fine John." It'd go back and forth like that, and so on. 

Q:  What did they call you, Long John or John Wade? 

A. The Whisperer mainly. 

Q:  Oh, why was that?

 A:  Well, because I was always whispering in people's ears, you know, the interviews were going on and the microphones were on, and I didn't want to be heard, so I'd whisper, and somebody -- Ringo, usually--- would go, "Pssssssst, psssssst, pssssst.  Here's Whisperer Wade. Psssssst Pssssst!" And then near the end of the trip in Kansas City, when Paul autographed that picture of me he drew, he signed it "John Fixer Wade."

 Q: Why was that?

 A:  Well, for other reasons that I won't explain. 

Q:  Did you see the Beatles in between the shows backstage? 

A:  Yeah. Did you hear my tape of Paul doing opera in the shower? That was just fooling around between shows.

 Q:  How did they dress usually? When they weren't in the public eye that is. 

A:  Well, not sloppily, but casual. Ringo wore these big 16th-century puffed-sleeve shirts, very billowy and loose. And John would wear a turtleneck, usually black, sometimes a light color, with a sports jacket over it. He bought a red-and-white striped shirt one time. It was pretty loud.

 Q: Do they like American styles, or would they rather wear English clothes? 

A:  Well, they're not too conservative.

 Q. How did they compare in height to you? (Long John is well over six feet.)

 A:  Oh, short, a lot shorter than you'd imagine, except John.

 Q. Really?

 A: Oh yeah, they're about five foot seven or five foot eight. Really very short. Ringo is shorter than you are.

 Q. He is?

 A:  Stand up........... Well, he's about your height.

 Q. I thought John was about five foot 11 or six foot. They seem so tall.

 A:  That's with their boots on. They're really very short. You'd be surprised.

 Q:  Have you read John's book In His Own Write? 

A:  Yeah, parts of it, but you've got to stick with it and really think about it. It's better, of course, if you know, in the past, what he's reflecting upon. 

Q. Do they quote from it at all? 

A. No.

Rocking in Spain

 

The Music of Lennon-McCartney

 

On the set

 

Walking with Harrison

 

Between takes

 

John read the news today (oh boy)

 

Sun Rise (1965)

 Sun Rise

By Burnett Rigg

Fabulous Magazine

1965

    "Help!" shouted Victor Spinetti. "Someone ransacked my pad!" And he wasn't just plugging the Beatles' new movie. For a fortune and souvenirs of the locations of the second film Vic had made with John, George, Paul, and Ringo had flown actor Victor. 

    He was the stuck up TV producer in A Hard Day's Night, and is the zany professor in Help!  He told me about the robbery the morning after it happened in his London flat. With Help! now running in the West End, Fab wanted to look back on the making of it. This was why I had called on Victor. 

    We were sitting in his lounge, which has a window with a panoramic view of London. "Ringo and  Maureen live just up the road, "said Vic. "I was over at their flat a couple of nights ago. John, Cynthia, George, Pattie Boyd, Paul, and Jane Asher were there too. We were going to a party, but we didn't move. Instead, Maureen made tea, and we just sat chatting and watching television."

     He got up and fixed a couple of drinks, handed me one, sat down, and said, " You asked me about the film. I love working on it even more than A Hard Day's Night, and that's saying something.! 

    "We had fabulous fun in the Bahamas and in the Alps. We got up at dawn nearly every morning in both places and began shooting straight away. In the Bahamas, it was very hot, and we swam every morning before work.

     "George celebrated his 22nd birthday there. We had a rave-up party that night. In fact, the birthday Beatle gave me the candles from his cake to distribute among the members of my fan club."

     Vic's success in the States through A Hard Day's Night and on Broadway with the show, Oh, What a Lovely War, has gained him four fan clubs, three stateside, and one here in Britain, which keeps him busy answering fan mail, not that Vic minds. He went on happily talking about Help! 

    "One time, our director, Dick Lester had called a coffee break on the set," he said. "John Lennon and I were sipping coffee in a corner, and suddenly he turned to me and said, 'Hey, Victor, there's something I've been meaning to ask you. You know when the director shouts 'action' and all the others, Eleanor, Braun, Leo, McKern, and Roy Kinnear jumped into their characters? Why do you just stay the same? Does that make your acting as bad as ours?"

     And Vic spoke to me about George. "The first time I saw George was at London Airport en route to Nassau and  he said, 'Victor, I just want you to know that my mom's Glad you're in the picture with us. I thought this was great. Actually, one night, George and I went on a crazy spin around Nassau in his open sports car. (The Beatles each had an open sports car to run around in. ) Suddenly, George began singing at the top of his voice. He belted out numbers like 'Leaning on a Lamp Post'  and went on singign "Cleaning Windows" and a host of other old-time hits made famous by the late George Formby. I asked him how he managed to memorize all the words of old numbers. 'I really dug old George Formby,' was George's reply. Then it began raining, and we ended up tearing along singing 'When You Walk Through a Storm.' It was crazy, but fun."

     He talked about Ringo and Paul. "Ringo and Paul couldn't get together to supply a cabaret for all of us on the Film Unit often enough, as far as we were concerned, they do an improvised act, which is hysterical. I'm not joking when I say we were on the floor, helpless. What fabulous ad lib talent these boys have.

     Finally Victor Spoke about Victor. "There was the night our plane touched down in New York, and a load of members of my fan club had turned up to meet me. They cheered as I left the plane. They didn't know the Beatles were on board. Then the boys followed behind me, but I had stolen the scene. John, George, Paul, and Ringo still send me up about it."

     I could have listened for hours to Victor Beatle talk, but it was noon, and Vic had a lunch appointment. I rose to leave, but not without a picture of Vic dressed as a guardsman and George saluting him. That was one souvenir the burglar did not pinch from Vic's pad. I.

In the weeds

 

The coolest band in town

 

Tape to Type (1965)

John is being interviewed by Fred Robbins

 Tape to Type

Interview with John Lennon Part 2

Photoplay Magazine

1965

Fred:   What about this musical that you and Paul McCartney are planning to write together? Have you started it yet?

 John:   It's just a matter of getting enough time. We'd like to do it properly-- write a story and the music. So I think we won't do it for another year or two when things are quieter. 

Fred: How do you go about writing your songs? 

John:  I think it's partly something natural and partly something that Paul and I spark off in each other. Individually, we probably wouldn't have written so many of them, and they might not have been of such good quality as the ones we've written together. It's just luck. 

Fred: You'd say then that Northern Songs Ltd, which is now on the London Stock Exchange, has a pretty good future?

 John:  I think it has a great future, although I don't know much about the financial side of it. Some people say it's speculative stock because no one knows how long Paul and I will stay together, but we intend to stick together. And if you can write songs, you can write them all your life. Even if the public's taste should change, it shouldn't make too much difference. People forget that our songs are songs in their own right, not just rock and roll songs. They can easily be sung in any style you like.

 Fred: I've heard you sing many songs that aren't your own, like "Button up Your Overcoat " and "Nothing Can Be Finer Than to Be in Carolina." Why don't you make an album of someone else's songs for a change?

 John: It's not very profitable.  But we do have an interest in songs and music of all kinds. We probably know a million songs, but we very rarely sing our own songs when we're just entertaining ourselves or our friends.

 Fred: What about your writing? Will you write more books? 

John:  I've been writing since before I started playing the guitar. I can always turn it out, but I don't know if the standard will remain the same, and a lot depends on whether people will want to read it.

 Fred:  I heard that you were going to stop doing concerts. 

John: That's not true. It's just because we haven't done any while working on the film, but we have concerts planned for Europe, America, and Britain, too. Now, does that sound like we are planning to give up tours and concerts?

 Fred: A lot of people have been very busy analyzing the effect the Beatles have had on teenagers, particularly psychologists and sociologists. What do you think about all this? 

John: You can analyze anything--- what someone thinks of a bottle of milk, if you like. If you believe in that stuff. You can go on and on, analyzing, creating theories, and philosophizing about them. But in the end, it doesn't really mean anything, and it doesn't matter anyway.

 Fred:  The Beatles will probably go down in history as being one of the biggest things in show business, at least of this generation. Don't you think so?

 John: If you read the history books, you find very little in them about show business people, and I think we'll probably be forgotten like the rest of them.

 Fred: If you didn't have protection from the big crowds of fans, do you think it would be really dangerous for you? Do you really think that you might be seriously injured if they got out of hand?

 John:  I think we'd probably get killed. The fans wouldn't mean to harm us, but we have nearly been caught once or twice, and it was really frightening. When five people want to touch you, it's all right, but when it's 500, you forget that they're fans and you want to run for your life.

 Fred: What's the next worst thing about fame? What bothers you personally? 

John: The next worst thing for me is the social life that goes with it. You know, meetings, lords, governors, and so on. I just don't like it. It has nothing to do with me. I'm writing and singing, and I don't like having to go to dinners. People are always trying to draw me into polite conversation and boring me with stuff. This kind of thing doesn't interest me at all, and it never will. 

Fred: Have you given any thought to what will happen as you get older? Will the fans forget you in time?

 John: Of course they will. And it could happen any day, but we're not worried about it. We'll be sorry when it's over, but obviously, we're not going to be jumping around at 40. 

Fred: Success hasn't spoiled you guys, has it? It doesn't seem to have changed you at all. 

John: No, I'm glad you say that. Some people think it has, but they don't realize that we were just as lousy before we were successful. 

Ringo photographs Zak

 

With the press in Madrid

 

McCartney-Lennon Special

 

George Harrison Talks about the Indian Sound (1966)

 

George Harrison Talks about the Indian Sound (1966)

By Sean O'Mahony

Beat Instrumental

March 1966

    Just before George Harrison took off for Barbados with Pattie for their delayed honeymoon, he talked to me about the Beatles. Thinking of future trends in the pop music sphere, his use of a sitar on the backing track of "Norwegian Wood" and his newfound interest in Indian music have received a lot of comment recently.

     The Beatles, of course, are not the only ones to mention the music of the subcontinent in pop terms; many devotees like Decca's Tony Hall and Donovan are reputedly knocked out by the playing of gentlemen like Ravi Shankar. 

    When I talked to George, he was sitting on the wooden block floor of his music room in his home in Esher, nursing his sitar. All the room contains is a wall hung with guitars and a small jukebox. There aren't many Beatles titles on the list of records either. As George explained, he had to sit cross-legged on the floor because it was impossible to play the sitar any other way. Its long neck and heavy bowl make it almost impossible to play standing up, unless you rest the bowl on a table or something to support it. The equivalent of frets on this instrument are brass ring-like pieces which are fixed onto the neck, but compared with an ordinary guitar as we know it, they seem to be much scarcer, with the result that you have to play the instrument rather like a cross between a violin and a guitar to find the intermediate notes between the frets. 

    I couldn't resist asking George whether he thought this type of music would catch on. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if one day, when we are a lot older, our kids walk into the room and put some records on, which will be based on this type of music," he replied. "Maybe we will turn around and say, 'What the hell is that noise?'"

     "Isn't the Indian music scale different from ours? "I asked him. "Yes, it is different," George agreed. "In actual fact, it is far more complicated than the one we use. We think that Indian music has a lot of weird sounds in it. It doesn't sound right to our ears because we aren't used to it. In fact, to my mind, it's much more advanced than our scale. 

    "It does sound a bit distorted, but you have got to remember that a lot of the most interesting noises on top discs today are based on distortion. Jeff Beck, for example, gets some fabulous sounds by moving his guitar in front of his amp to create feedback." George returned to his sitar, but somehow I don't think we will see the Beatles sitting cross-legged on stage playing Indian instruments.