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. 

Funny Face I love you

 

Hotel Interview

 

Ringo paints the town

 

Bigfoot sighting? No -- just George

 

Ringo, Paul and Brian

 

How a Beatle Looks at Life (1965)

 

How a Beatle Looks at Life

By Ray Coleman

Disc Weekly

October 2, 1965

    As Britain prepares for yet another bout of Beatlemania, when the group takes off on a new concert tour, one nagging question is rearing from a new wave of knockers. "How much longer can they keep it up?"  The same question was asked three years ago when the Beatles shattered record after record, while their own top hits paraded around the world.  They asked that when the Beatles conquered America, and now, with each Beatles an MBE and part of the pop establishment, people are throwing up a well-worn blast. "It's all over now. They're on the way down. There's nothing left for them to achieve."

     Age comes into it, too. John and Ringo are both 25, Paul is 23, and George is 22. It was this explosive topic that Lennon tackled this week between a guitar practice at his house in Weybridge, Surrey. The hard man of the Beatles was in searing form as he tackled the hottest subject of all: the Beatles and old age.

     "I only think about age when somebody reminds me," John began. "I don't like thinking about it much. I ought to start by saying that we felt old when we started, that is, when Brian Epstein found us. We thought we'd had it, and we left it too late to make it.

     "But I reckon this: years don't affect your mind, really. They can give your face wrinkles, but it's your attitude and outlook that counts. 

    "According to the rules of the pop world, we're too old, but we don't look any older than the Stones, do we? And we don't act any older either. We only look older than, say, The Who, and I've seen them, look about 30 some nights!

    "The most important thing about all this is that I've met people of 30 who aren't 30 in mentality. The law says they've lived 30 years. But although age can give you experience, some people aren't capable of using the experience. I'm 26 next year, the rules say I'm a fully grown man, settled down, and all that. But I'm not. I've still got a young outlook, I hope. Age can give you a lot if you want to use what it offers. That's what I want to do with my age and experience, use it .

    "30 years doesn't necessarily mean intelligence. You know, I met some right old nits of 40!"

      As the Beatles grew older, were they still out to get new fans? Have they started aiming for an older audience? "You can never satisfy them all," John answered. There was a time when we seemed to be doing everything at once, getting older people interested in what we were doing, as well as younger people. 

    "But to try to satisfy everybody is hopeless. This tour we're doing, for example, we can't cover the whole country with it unless we do a very long tour. So, because I don't feel like dropping dead from overwork just yet, not even if I am 25, there's bound to be people writing in from Umbo on Sea saying, 'Why aren't the Beatles coming here?' It's the whole attitude to fans that we've got to think about. I think we've got it all sorted out in our own minds, but it's hard to try to make people understand.

     "The 'Help' single sold much better than the two before it, 'I Feel Fine' and 'Ticket to Ride', but there were still a lot of fans who didn't like 'Help'. They said, 'Ah, the Beatles are dropping us. This isn't as good as A Hard Day's Night'. So you can't win. 

    Trying to please everybody is impossible. If you did that, you'd end up in the middle with nobody liking you. You've just got to make the decision about what you think is your best and do it."

     John was in a reflective mood now. He discarded his guitar, turned off the amplifier, and took up a deep thinking position, gazing out of the window of the rehearsal room in his multi room mansion.

     "People think of us as machines. They pay 6s 8d for a record, and we have to do what they say, like a Jack-in-the-Box. I don't like that side of it much. Some people have got it all wrong. We produce something, say, a record, and if they like it, they get it. 

    "The onus isn't on us to produce something great every time; the onus is on the public to decide whether they like it or not. It's annoying when people turn around and say, 'but we made you, you ungrateful swines'. I know they did in a way,  but there's a limit to what we're bound to live up to, as if it's a duty. 

    "When I had my black windows put in my Rolls-Royce, somebody said 'Lennon's turning his back and running away from the people who made him--- hide.' Rubbish! 

     "If I go to a shop down the road and buy a bunch of roses, I don't expect the bloke to be so grateful that he spends his life bowing and scraping. I like the roses, so I buy them, and that's that. 

    "I don't want to sound as if we don't like being liked. We appreciate it, but we can't spend our lives being dictated to. Think about Kellogg's cornflakes. If you buy cornflakes, do you expect Mr. Kellogg to spend his life being told how to do everything and how to behave? No. And if you buy a loaf of bread and it's lousy, you just don't buy it again. 

    "It's not all that much different with us. We make a record, and if you like it, you buy it. If you don't, you don't buy it. It's up to the public to decide."

     John went on to talk about the controversial Help! film and admitted it was a mistake. "We went wrong with the picture somehow. I think we went just slightly the wrong way with it. Help!, as a film was like "Eight Days a Week" as a record for us. A lot of people like the film, and a lot of people like that record, but neither was what we really wanted. We knew they weren't really us. We weren't ashamed of the film, but close friends know that the picture and "Eight Days" as a record weren't our best. They were both a bit manufactured.

     "The film won't harm us, but we weren't in full control. We're not sure what comes next in the way of a film. It isn't definite that the next thing will be Talent For Loving, nothing is certain about us. We just want to make sure we do better than Help! 

    John drank more tea and pondered. He talked for another hour about how he worries when he sees moms and dads and Beatles audiences, about Beatles fan mail and its size, about the state of the pop music scene. These and other important Beatles subjects will be covered in part two of the John Lennon interview next week.