For the love of Linda

 April 10, 1999 

Breath Away From Heaven

 

I knew that George and Olivia enjoyed visiting Fiji in the late 1990s/early 2000s (see photo), but I never heard this story about George's last public performance before.   While I do think most of this story is true, I have a really difficult time believing that the songs George played were "In Spite of All of the Danger" and "Cry for a Shadow."  It sounds like someone got a copy of Anthology 1 and just named the first two songs credited to 'Harrison'  off Disc 1.   I don't know ---  What do you think?

Breath Away From Heaven (Was George's Last Public Performance Near To Heaven?)

By Patti Murawski

The Harrison Alliance Issue #105

March-April 2002

Ex-patriate Collin McKenny lives and works in Lomalagi, a resort she owns on Vanua Levu in Figi. A refugee from corporate America, Collin acted on a dream in 1996, and after finding just the right site in Fiji, built a beautiful resort which so aptly reflects its name which means "heaven" in Fijian. Just a few short years after the resort opened, her life crossed with George's and Olivia's in a way she couldn't have imagined. 

For quite some time, the Harrison had been visiting Fiji as a stopping point between their homes in Maui and Australia. The local media was bursting with stories that the Harrisons were visiting various spots on this island nation, talking to developers, and looking to buy property in Fiji. 

Collin shared her experiences with me [The Harrison Alliance], a story of George's generosity and, remarkably, a story about a gathering in a small village that just may have been George's last public performance.

George and Olivia went for a stay in Fiji at Lomalagi (lo-muh-LONG-ee), a small resort situated on a working coconut plantation overlooking Natewa Bay on Vanua Levu. Lomalagi has spectacular views and is quite secluded, the latter being a quality that wasn't wasted on the Harrisons. 

"It was April or May 1999, for five nights. They visited Fiji at least once a year and were considering buying property here, " said Collin. But up until that point, the Harrisons hadn't invested in land. "They had been disappointed a couple of times, feeling that the settings weren't tropical and green enough. This was their first trip to Vanua Levu, which is much more lush than most other parts of Fiji.

"George and Olivia were looking at real estate in Fiji because they liked the idea of having property halfway between their homes in Hawaii and Australia. 

"They found us through our website! Goerge's secretary made the booking through a travel agent," she recalled. 

"I got a call at 6:30AM on the morning they were due in on the domestic airline they were scheduled on. They had decided to charter a plane from them because they didn't want to wait around for the scheduled flight at 8:00AM. By the time they scurried around fueling the plane and locating a pilot, they got to Savusavu airport about 20 minutes before they would have arrived on the scheduled flight. 

"Everybody in Savusavu knew they were going to be at Lomalagi," she said. "But privacy is very much respected here. Celebrities who come here are never bothered in any way."

Collin said the Harrisons were the only visitors to the resort for part of their stay, and although they were enjoying their quiet time, they often joined her for lunch and dinner.  "For several meals, it was just the three of us. We had many nice conversations at lunch and dinner."

"They took a lot of walks on the beach. All beaches in Fiji are public, and at low tide, you can walk for miles. Our beach is a mix of coral sand, shale, and lava, fun for beachcombing."

The Harrisons had friends staying in Fiji at the same time they were there. Actor Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, as well as Gavin DeBecker, were in the area.

"Hanks was in Fiji filming the first part of Cast Away.  George and Olivia made plans to have lunch with Tom and his wife on their last day here. I tried to subtly suggest that they all have lunch here at Lomalagi, but there was a guy here from LA, Gavin DeBecker, who does security work for celebrities, so they had lunch at his house instead. George and Tom were good friends. I don't know how far the friendship goes back, but I do know it was a strong one."

Collis also recalls Dhani phoning and asking to speak to his parents. "Their son was at college at the time, somewhere on the east coast. One afternoon, he called for them (the villas don't have phones), but they weren't close by, so his message was, "Just tell my mom and dad that I called and that I love them very much." I thought that was so special. "

After a few days at Lomalagi, George and Olivia asked if they could visit the local village of Nasinu, about 3 km from the resort by beach and 15 km by car. "The chief asked if he could tell the people in the village who he was. Everybody knows the Beatles, even in a remote Fijian village! George graciously said yes, but asked that there be no photos taken. 

"When we arrived, they had a big area set up, with mats and cushions for all of us. Tea was served. The Fijian men performed a meke, a beautiful choreographed Fijian war dance, complete with warrior costumes and war paint. They looked very fierce! The meke lasted for about 30 minutes. 

"George didn't stick around for tea! As soon as the Lomalagi Band Boys (a group of local musicians that regularly entertain at the resort) sat down with their guitars and ukelele, Geroge immediately jumped up from where we were sitting and joined the boys on the mat-covered ground. 

"The first thing he did was to take the ukulele and start playing a Beatles song! The villagers went crazy! He then played chords with them while they played and sang Fijian songs. A bit later, he borrowed one of the guitars and again played some Beatles music. George played with the boys for more than an hour.

"The rugby coach went running off and when he came back, he was waving a Beatles cassette. Apparently, he had seen the Beatles perform in New Zealand many years ago. 

"The musicians' guitars and ukelele were very old and pretty beat up. About six weeks after George's visit, a huge box arrived containing three guitars, a ukelele, small percussion instruments for the band and for the school children, and lots of extra guitar and ukelele strings. 

"Later, two more packages arrived a couple of weeks after the guitars and ukelele. In one of them were a dozen Beatles cassettes for me; that was a fun surprise! George also sent a package of cassettes to the rugby coach!"

I asked Collin if she recalled any of the songs that George did at the village. She couldn't remember but asked the Lomalagi Band Boys if they did.  "Two songs they remember are 'Cry For a Shadow' and 'In Spite of All the Danger.'"  I told her those were pretty unique choices and probably were never performed publicly before. "Our lead guy found the two song names on some of the cassettes Geroge sent me! George sang some other songs as well, but those two, for sure, are remembered by Leraki!"

During our discussion, it occurred to me that this impromptu concert was probably George's last known live public performance. Later, I researched it carefully and discovered that with the exception of some private parties for the birthdays of a couple of friends, I had been correct in my assessment. Collin was stunned. "Wow, that gives me the goose bumps! Last public performance. What a legacy we'd have here."

Collin ran into George again at the airport in Savusavu about six months later. In the fall of 1999, the Harrisons were still looking to invest in property in Fiji. Accompanying George was Gavin DeBecker. 

"I was at the airport waiting for a flight, and he came in on a helicopter. He'd been looking at an island that was for sale," she recalled. They had made an offer on a 25-acre island between here and Savusavu town just before George was attacked in his home in England. After that, they withdrew the offer.

"He spotted me, walked over, and gave me a hug and a kiss! He was a lovely man."

Collin had one last story to relate about George. 

"Right after George died, the Lomalagi Band Boys had performed for our guests and were sitting on a platform down below the dining room. They frequently do this -- play and sing while we are at dinner. The ukulele George sent was on the deck, in front of one of the boys. All of a sudden, a coconut dropped from a tree high above and crunched down on the ukulele. We now have it hanging on the wall in the dinning room."

https://www.lomalagi.com/

Paul in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame!

 March 15, 1999 -

Oh what an exciting time this was!  Sir Paul McCartney was inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. Stella's shirt said it all!  

The Billboard Interview with George Harrison

 

This is an interview that I have had in my files since I printed it off the internet on June 18, 1999. Billboard magazine interviewed George Harrison that year and asked him questions about the updated Yellow Submarine and Songtrack that was soon to be released. 

The Billboard Interview with George Harrison

By Timothy White

B: Let's start by clearing up current misconceptions of what the upcoming new "Yellow Submarine" release is about and what it will actually encompass. 

GH: The main thing you need to get over to all the people is that it's not a soundtrack, but that it's actually the "songtrack." This will be a total of all the Beatles songs that were used in the film. 

The whole "Submarine" thing was written or done around the time of "Sgt. Pepper," around that period (but) "Yellow Submarine" only ended up wtih just those six new songs that were in the flim. and then they put all that George Martin orchestrated material on there. But now it will be every song that was in the movie - because the film also had "All You Need Is Love" and "Sgt. Pepper" too -- all together for the first time. And they've all been remixed!

B: The film also had even older songs, like "Eleanor Rigby," that are now on the new "Yellow Submarine:  A Songtrack." 

GH: Exactly, and they're in all their new mixes in that "wraparound sound." So the video and the DVD versions are the new CDs will also have the same new stereo mixes that will match the wraparound sound and will come out around the 14th of September. 

But I haven't even seen the finished film yet! We're going to a private screening of the new version in a week or two.

We may have a couple of cinema "events" showing it in theaters, and I think that gonna turn into a big night out, but the film is not going to be out in a general theatrical release. 

We've got all sorts of other things coming in time for November, including an announcement about a Beatles Web site. Neil Aspinall at Apple he's organizing all these details, and he's got all kinds of things that are going to reach fruition, like some special merchandising. Having lasted 40 years with the Beatles, Neil is the only person who's ever really been able to keep in contact with the four of us at the same time through all the various conflicts and whatever. And I met him when I was like 13 years old, smoking behind the air-raid shelters at the Liverpool Institute high school (big laugh). 

B:  There's supposedly a "Yellow Submarine" EP in the vaults that EMI had thought of putting out about a year after the "Yellow Submarine" album was finally released in January 1969.  The EP had the six songs put on the soundtrack album, plus an early version of "Across the Universe." Of course, it never came out. 

GH: I remember that the early version of "Across The Universe" was the best one. But we finally put that one out on a World Wildlife Fund charity album. And it also later went ont he Anthology [2] album. But, you know, there are certain things where somebody might have said like, "Oh, at this point in time, we had some songs in the can," but there's nothing that I can remember that was ever a solid discussion about an EP of any sort like that, other than the [two discs] "Magical Mystery tour" EP; in America, they didn't have extended plays so that had to be made into an album. 

B: What about "Hey Bulldog," which was cut at the same February 1968 sessions that included the early "Across the Universe," you "The Inner Light," "Lady Madonna" and other material? Do you remember how the group came up with John's piano riff and your guitar riff for "Bulldog?"

GH: Well, it was John's song, and it was a great tune. Funny thing is, in the version for America of the "Yellow Submarine" film they edited "Bulldog" out, so we had to make sure this time that it would be in, because of that whole bit in the movie of the dog with all the heads!

And we do now have an unreleased video of "Hey Bulldog," as you know. What it was is that when we were in the studio recording [10 takes of] "Bulldog," apparently it was at a time when they needed some footage for something else, some other record, and a film crew came along and filmed us. Then, they cut up the footage and used some of the shots for something else. But it was Neil Aspinall who found out that when you watched and listened to what the original thing was, we were recording "Bulldog!" This was apparently the only time we were actually filmed recording something, so what Neil did was, he put [the unused footage] all back together again and put the "Bulldog" soundtrack onto it, and there it was!

B: An unreleased live Beatles video!

GH: [Chuckling] Yeah! And everything has a different mix on it now! Because when they set up to this new, wraparound five-speaker mix for the film, they were working away doing that for months and months at Abbey Road. You see, another thing is that a lot of time the Beatles were only working on 4-track tape, so we'd get to the fourth track, and then what we'd do is mix the four tracks onto one track of another 4-track machine, and then we'd do another three tracks. 

So what they've gone doing in these new mixes - which we did a little bit of on the "Anthologies" - was to connect all the four tracks together and have the first four tracks all separated, and then the three overdubbed tracks separated, in order to create a new mix. Normally, the mixes heard since the '60s up till now from Beatles records have all been on these finished 4-tracks with the pre-mix of the other three tracks stuck onto it. 

B: In other words, the individual tracks on the basic tapes were rediscovered, allowing you to separate each of the original, incremental tracks 

GH: So for the first time you've actually got a much bigger, cleaner mix, because you've got the original bass and drum and guitar tracks unmixed together, you know?  And also, with all the old equipment and all the compressors and the stuff that we used in those days, you'd spend ages trying to improve the final 4-track mix you figured you were stuck with. This engineer, a fellow named Peter Mew, did a lot of the work with a guy called Allan Rouse, who's kind of in charge of all the Beatles catalog. So we went in and listened to all these new, fully remixed tracks, and they really are good, with the sound coming all around you, you know!

B: A few more questions about the classic songs originally on the "Yellow Submarine" album, like "It's All Too Much." Is that you playing the organ on that track?

GH: That's right! I probably wrote it on the organ, I think.

B: At the end of "Too Much," there are snippets of Jeremiah Clarke's "Prince of Denmark's March" and the Merseys' '66 hit "Sorrow."

GH: You mean on the fade-out? Yeah, with "Your long blond hair/And your eyes of blue." That was all just this big ending we had, going out. And as it was in those days, we had the horn players just play a bit of trumpet voluntarily, and so that's how that "Prince of Denmark" bit was played. 

And Paul and John just came up with and sang that lyric of "your eyes of blue." But just a couple of years ago somebody suddenly tried to sue us for that!

B: For them singing a little snatch of lyric to give exposure to an obscure song?

GH: Oh yeah. I just ignored it. I think that's one of my songs that's actually published now by ATV and Michael Jackson's Northern Songs, so I just thought, "Well, they can deal with it." I just thought it's so ridiculous, you know. 

Incidentally, that riff that's played on "It's All Too Much," I seem to have heard at least 50 songs that used that lick since then. [He hums the melody on the chorus]. You know the one I mean: Dah ding ding ding, dah ding ding ding. I mean, that's become like a stock thing. The difference is some people admit where their influences come from, like the Byrds [did] with the Rickenbacker 12-string thing after they all went to see "A Hard Day's Night."

But then I've had people writing to me and telling me about a group called Texas with a song called "Black Eyed Boy", and everybody's  saying, "Hey they've ripped off your song!" But I don't know, because somebody sent me a cassette and I put it on, and I couldn't hear a thing!

We've never really been into suing people for things like that. I've heard a bunch of records in the past that took things from things like "What is Life" or "Living in the Material World," or "Here Comes the Sun."  What's the point? But I suppose the point would be like Bright Tunes (the publishing company that started the protracted plagiarism suit aginst Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" in wich George ultimately prevailed]- you could just try and make some money out of people.

B: The guitar feedback on the intro to "It's All Too Much" was done in May of '67, so it was pre-Hendrix, before he started to go wild with that stuff, since his "Are You Experienced?" album hadn't come out yet. 

GH: But, now, I don't think I was playing the guitar feedback; as I say, I was playing the organ, so I think that was probably Paul that did that. But it was, like, manufactured, meaning that it wasn't like an accident or anything; it was part of the arrangement. 

I just wanted to write a rock'n'roll song about the whole psychedelic thing of the time: "Sail me on a silver sun/Where I know that I am free/Show me that I'm everywhere/And get me home for tea." [Laughs.] Because you'd trip out, you see, on all this stuff, and when whoops! you'd just be back having your evening cup of tea!

But we also had that feedback on "I Feel Fine" [in 1964], and John always claimed it came about from playing an acoustic  Gibson with a pickup in it, and it had a big round sound hole, and it just used to feedback very easily if you faced it toward the amplifier.

But then I've heard other people say that wasn't the first feedback either, "1897, we had feedback on such and such!" [more laughter]

B: We've talked about "Only A Northern Song" before, which was intended as a little commentary of yours. 

GH: It was at the pint that I realized Dick James had conned me out of the copyrights for my own songs by offering to become my publisher. As an 18 or 19 year old kid, I thought, "Great, somebody's gonna publish my songs!" But he never said, "And incidentally, when you sign this document here, you're assigning me the ownership of the songs [Harrison had written as a Beatle]," which is what it is. It was just a blatant theft. By the time I realized what had happened when they were going public and making all this money out of this catalog, I wrote "Only a Northern Song" as what we call a "piss-take," just to have a joke about it. 

B: "All Together Now." by Paul and John, do you have any thoughts about that?

GH: It was a nursery rhyme kind of thing.  Again, if you look at it from one point of view, it's embarrassing. But we seem to have been the all-around entertainers, weren't we? Somehow we got away with stuff liket hat, either with Ringo singing "Yellow Submarine" or us doing a song like "All Together Now." 

B: Thinking of things suited for children from the Beatles, Al Brodax, who produced the "Yellow Submarine" movie, also had done the series of Beatles cartoons that were shown on Saturday and Sunday mornings in America. Whatever happened to those cartoons?

GH: Oh, we bought them all a few years ago, just so we had control over them for the future. I always kind of liked them -- they were so bad or silly they were good if you know what I mean [grinning]. And I think the passage of time might make them more fun now, in terms of being more watchable than they really were back then. But we don't have any plans for them at the moment. 

B: By the way, the song "Yellow Submarine" never really did have anything to do with a narcotic pill by that nickname, did it?

GH: I never heard of that pill. Paul came up with the concept of "Yellow Submarine."  All I know is just that every time we'd all get around the piano with guitars and start listening to it and arranging it into a record, we'd all fool about. As I said, John's doing the voice that sounds like someone talking down a tube or ship's funnel as they do in the merchant marine. [Laughs] And on the final track, there's actually that very small party happening! As I seem to remember, there's a few screams and what sounds like small crowd noises in the background. 

B: Fans still wonder if that voice shouting into the submarine's funnel is John, same as they still ask who coughed at the start of "Taxman" on the "Revolver" album. 

GH: My son Dhani reckons it was me. He says, "I'd recognize that cough anywhere!" [Laughs] But I don't remember. 

B: Unlike the cartoon series, which had your voices, your own "Sgt. Pepper" -ish film characters in the "Yellow Submarine" movie were dubbed by actors, so the Beatles only actual appearance in the film is at the end of the picture.

GH: Well the deal was we hadn't really been that involved in the making of what was supposed to be out third movie. I must say, at the point I had no idea of how it was going to fit into the film or where it was going.  We had our lines and just kind of did it, but it all turned out quite well with the animation, didn't it?

B: It was excellent, and the film was very influential, particularly the work of principal animation designer Heinz Edelmann.

GH: Right, and then Peter Max built his whole career on the fact that everybody thought he'd done it! I loved a lot of those characters [Edelmann] came up with. And the Blue Meanie named Max., I always wondered if the later idea of the "Mad Max" movie character came from him. 

B: It's a spectacular, Dante's "Inferno"-type tale of good vs. evil. And that "flying glove" character is scary!

GH: [Laughs] It is, it is! And all those Apple Bonkers! The fact is, with the way the culture and the government are now, it's all still happening now as it was in "Yellow Submarine." Except the Blue Meanies have got a bigger stranglehold on the planet right now than they even had back in '67! And it looks like there's no musical group coming along to break the bubble of grayness because even the music industry has turned gray and is dominated by Blue Meanies.

B: Do you think popular music has had an impact on shaping minds and that, across history, it's helped influence people's thinking?

GH: Music definitely influences you, whether it just makes you feel happy or sad. And likewise I'm sure all that horrible music these days is making people change -- there's just worse crime, more cynicism. I wouldn't necessarily directly blame the music for all of that, but there is this kind of chemistry that's created through endless television or music programming or advertising that drones away on these things- with crap music, with murder movies, and that whole thing with Robert De Niro pointing a big gun at everyone on the big posters [for the film Ronin] that you see everywhere now in London. And so it's like my son Dhani was saying, that "Who gives a shit about bombing Bosnia!" becomes the attitude on a campus, because they're all so desensitized. 

B: It's like the music and entertainment business has gotten into the arm business

GH: Yeah! And it was both pathetic and very funny at the time, but a couple of years ago, I was in Los Angeles, and I had the television on, and for the local weather we went to some guy at the beach. And in the shot of him live with the beach in the background, you could just see the pollution was just dreadful, and he just goes, "Yes, well, it's another beautiful day down here at Santa Monica!" And I thought, "What are you talking about? It stinks!"

But that's how it is; that's the desensitizing. Maybe in another few hundred years people will be living in sewers with rats crawling all over them, and they'll be thinking, "This is great, life is good." Mahatma Gandhi said, "Create and preserve the image of your choice," and the image we seem to have chosen is one of greed and butchery.

A Day at the Races

March 7, 1999 
 

Free Tibet

 March 10, 1999

Ringo Peace in California

 March 5, 1999

Double peace from Ringo

 

February 16, 1999 

Heather's pottery and artwork

 January 7, 1999 -  This is the last time I remember seeing Heather McCartney out in public.  I remember watching a clip of this art show for Heather's pottery on Entertainment Tonight.  I respect her privacy and understand she doesn't want to be out in the public eye anymore, but it sure would have been nice to have seen her at the Get Back premiere a few years ago because she almost steals the show. 

1999 Q& A with Paul, George and Ringo about Yellow Submarine

 

Yellow Submarine Q&A with Paul, George and Ringo (1999)

 

Q:  The three of you had a private viewing of the newly renovated Yellow Submarine movie.  What did you think of the film and its remixed sounds now?

Paul:  I think the Surroundsound sounds great.  When we first made Yellow Submarine you didn’t have things like Surroundsound, so it was kind of flat.  But now they’ve taken advantage of modern techniques and it works.  When you see something like Eleanor Rigby in the movie now, it sounds like you’re actually in the string quartet, it sounds like you’re there.

George:  We went to Abbey Road studios and listened to all the remixes with the Surroundsound and it makes a lot of difference to you watching the film.

Ringo:  I loved the sound.  Paul and I went over to Abbey Road to hear the mix and it was exciting; it was like hearing it all over for the first time again, it’s so clear now.  Yeah, I love the remix.  It works.   You hear sounds that were buried before.

 

Q:  How do you think the movie looks?

Paul:  When you see the opening title it looks kind of vintage, it’s initially got  sort of old-fashioned look, but as you get into it I think it stands up very well – to me it kind of seemed surprisingly modern.  It’s quite trippy, it’s a bit of a “head” film really.  I don’t’ think it’s a kid’s movie too much, although apparently a lot of kids do like it.  As I say, it’s quite “heady”- and some of the puns are dreadful.  They are so dreadful that you instantly forget them.  It is a period piece, but it holds up, some of the ideas in the film are very clever…it made me laugh in one or two places, which was surprising after all this time.  And the colours are very crisp and clean and vibrant now, that particularly struck me, but the sound is brilliant, the music sounds very fresh with these new mixes.  I think the only reason to mess with the original mixes would be to get this into the cinema as it now is.  But it works.

Ringo:  Trippy?  Well, it was at the time, it’s what they did at the time.  AS to whether the colour is more vivid…well, I can’t remember the yellow of 1967 to compare it to the yellow of 1999.  IT just looked yellow and blue and red.  But it looked very cleaned up.

George:  I guess you’d really need to see an old print of it to realise how improved it is.  Trippy?  I think it’s trippy for five-year-olds.  In its time, when the film was first made, it was a fantastic thing.  We forget that now, 30 years later, because there is so much computerized stuff around.  But in some ways the technology gets so far ahead that it’s actually not as good as the non-computerized stuff – but because everybody is conned into thinking that the newest is the best you forget that.  In its time Yellow Submarine was very innovative.  And I think the movie does deserve to be released again; it’s not as if it’s been out and about a lot.  And it’s good.  It’s good when you look at it in comparison with everything that’s on TV.  There’s a lot of rubbishy old movies and even more rubbishy new movies.  So, it really doesn’t take much to stand up in this world; let’s face it, most of Hollywood is rubbish.  So, anything half decent will stand up.

For some people of my age, it may be a classic; maybe they’re going to look at it and think “I remember that,” maybe they’re just going to enjoy hearing the music again.  Whether young kids will like it I don’t know.  But it’s usually been a film for kids, they’ve enjoyed it usually from four or five years old.  And I think each generation of kids enjoys it, just like they sit and watch Mickey Mouse or something.  I think Yellow Submarine is just one of those cartoons that is now there forever.

 

Q:  What do you think of your characters in the film?

George:  The thing I liked the most about the movie was that we didn’t really have anything to do with it.  They just took our music, we met with them and they talked basically about what they were going to do and then Heinz Edelmann – who was fantastic – went off and created all these characters, showed them to us and that was basically it.

But it’s just a cartoon.  Yellow Submarine always was a little cheesy and it probably looks a bit more cheesy to me because it’s from 30 years ago.  But, at the same time, it’s pretty cute – and let’s face it, The Lion King and all that stuff isn’t exactly not cheesy.  So, it’s the nature of cartoon characters to be cartoon and I suppose it’s the voices that make it really funny because it’s not our voices.  So there’ s a lot of Liverpool dialogue added on and we would really not talk like that.  But I think it’s fun for the cartoon characters to talk like that.  So, when you see my character coming in on top of a mountain haze of transcendental, Indian music, that’s good.  It’s kind of me, isn’t it?  That’s how I was, that’s how I am.  In my heart, I am still on a mountain in India somewhere – and that suits me.

Paul:  You have to remember it wasn’t our film anyway.  The producers asked us if we wanted to do the voices, but we didn’t really want to.  The idea of the movie was based on a Beatle TV cartoon they’d done and we hadn’t done the voices for that.  Plus it’s a lot of hard work and we were working on our music at the time and so we didn’t want to become actors, it wasn’t our thing.  So they got Liverpool actors to do our voices.  That’s OK, we knew we had to sort of live with that – but it did spawn this idea that Liverpool people speak in this daft way.  But it’s only a cartoon.

My character in the movie?  Terrific (sarcastically), you know…really lacking in character.  It’s being the straight guy in the group.  I suddenly get landed with that.  There’s George looking very sort of marvelous up on a hill, that’s good.  I think Ringo’s is always a good character, film-makings love Ringo because he’s always been a great character and he’s got a funny way about him, that works.  And I think my cartoon character’s a bit bland.  But then the animators didn’t know me, the Pepper side of me.  So you become the young executive singing ballads; you get type cast, it’s just like being in a soap.  They’ve made their minds up on who you are and you just have to live with it.  But never mind, it’s only a cartoon.

Ringo:  The characters are what they are, animated characters.  I did think they could have spent a bit more money on the voices (laughs) everybody seems to be talking as if they’re on Valium.  The best story I liked about Yellow Submarine was that when it came out all these kids would ask me “why did you push the button?” – that’s the bit when my character pushes a button and get shot out of the sub.

 

Q:  What do you think of other characters in the movie?

George:  I like the Blue Meanies a lot – as opposed to in real life where blue meanies are actually pretty grim, but in Yellow Submarine I think they’re really cute.  I like their outfits.  I like the big boots.  And I like the vacuum cleaning bloke – and the Bonkers, because they never say anything, they just go along bonking people.  (laughs) That’s quite a good idea really.  I think the more bonking the better.

Ringo:  The Flying Glove is great now.  Because the sound is now zooming here and zooming there, the glove is great.  The sound effects are so much better, the remixed sound does help the film.  The bit I really love is the Sea of Holes; I loved that whole scene when we first saw it.  I thought it was the most adventurous scene in the whole movie and I still think that now.

Paul:  I like the man Blue Meanie; he’s got a great voice.  In fact, I’ve been doing him at home.  His character comes in handy for many situations.

Q:  Does Yellow Submarine capture the feeling of its time?

George:  Well, that music was of the time and the animation was tailored to the music and to the feelings that were about then.  But if someone sees it in 100 years’ time, whether it will give them a feeling that it’s captured the times, I don’t’ know.

Paul:  When the guys who made the film first came to London saying they wanted to do this feature film because at the time I lived in town and the others didn’t, they came around to see me to talk about it.  I was actually sort of imagining a kind of Disneyesque animation – Dumbo, Snow White, Lady, and the Tramp.  I think those are really great classics.  So, I was kind of steering it a bit in that direction.

Unfortunately, it was in the middle of the Sixties and it was in the middle of this wild thing happening in London.  We just made Sgt. Pepper and they felt they had to pick up on that; quite rightly, I think.  So, my main point was that we could make a great kids’ cartoon and they kept saying no, we’ve got to pick up the spirit of the times.  I think they were right and that’s exactly what they did.  The film’s very much got a Sixties feel in the colours, the jokes, and the whole idea.  And I think it’s quite a good metaphor for life – The Blue Meanies on one side and then the All You Need is Love people.  I think that still stands up and it probably always will.

All You Need is Love is basically the message of the movie, which still holds true.  It seems to be a very simple message and sometimes it can seem a very bland message, but it’s a good song.  John sings it great and it’s affected a lot of people.  And I still think the message is really true, I think that it is still what people need.  The people have got the message but the warring factions haven’t.  But when they get it, the will of the people will be done.

Ringo:  Maybe the next time they have a war, the side that hugs the most wins.

 

Q:  The sound has been remastered and remixed and the released of the home video is accompanied by a new Yellow Submarine album, so is the music the real hero of the movie?

Ringo:  Every time The Beatles are represented, it doesn’t matter what goes on around them but the music.  That’s how it’s represented, it’s always the must.

George:  Music can be a hero.   Music can be beneficial in the world and has been and yet still can be in the future.  But likewise, it can have a negative effect too, there’s a lot of really bad stuff around that’s negative, whether it’s in the lyrics or in the noise it produces, head-banging stuff that’s bad for the nervous system.

Music can be a really powerful force; not just Beatle tunes but all kinds of music which definitely ‘puts you in the place.’ People are always saying where you were when this happened?  Well, you can always remember where you were when you first heard a particular record.  Music had that effect and so for people who were into the Beatles, this music is from a happy time in their lives and they can play that again. 

The music that is now on the record and which is in the movie is representative of us from a period.  The songs originally weren’t all on the same album, those songs were taken from a period of maybe two years.  But it represents us at that period and the music is the main thing that is representative of us. 

Paul:  When people bought the Yellow Submarine soundtrack the first time around, they might have been surprised, and our fans probably a little disappointed, that all the orchestral soundtrack music was on there, because people tended to buy our records for our sounds.

So without doing the George Martin soundtrack an injustice, I think it’s great that finally, you can buy all the songs that were in the movie on this one new songtrack album.  I think it’s a good idea to call it a “songtrack” as opposed to a “soundtrack,” because it lets you know you’re getting the songs.

And it also gives you a reason to re-release it, because one thing with the Beatles is that we always try to never cheat people.  When we became The Beatles, we’d recently been record-buyers so we knew what it meant to spend those hard-earned pennies on a record.  So we always try to give people good value for money good A sides and good B sides and pack the albums with good stuff so you don’t feel cheated.  And that’s what’s happening this time around what the songtrack, now you don’t get any of the incidental music, you just get The Beatles’ music.

Q:  The new, renovated version of the movie now included the Hey Bulldog segment that was cut out in the Sixties.  Also, there’s now talk of a video of new Hey Bulldog footage of The Beatles that has never been seen before?

Ringo:  The video is film footage that none of us remembered had been taken.  But we found it and that’s the blessing.

Paul:   I think Hey Bulldog is really cool.  One of the things I liked about John’s songwriting style is its quirkiness.  It’s quite surreal, some of his lyrics.  And I think Hey Bulldog is very surreal. What happened was that we were in the studio and we’d just done Lady Madonna and some film people were coming along to the studio to do a video for that.  So, we did that and just as they were packing up, they asked if we’d mind if they shot a little bit of general stuff.   We said we had to get on working on doing this other song.  They said that was OK if we didn’t mind them being there.  So, they were just laying on the floor filming.  Anyway, we were recording Hey Bulldog and they got a lot of this live footage of us recording that.  But we all forgot about it and it has only recently turned up.

I think it makes a really cool video.   It’s very of the time and it’s this whole live take of us doing that song, Hey Bulldog.  I like it.  I like the bit when I’m harmonizing with John and he says something about a dog and I just started barking and being a dog.  Then John sort of says ‘have I got anymore of that’ and then I’m off, I‘m howling!  And the spirit of that session is brought back by the recording.  It’s a very free and open spirit that I like a lot and it’s very artistic.  And it’s a very cool riff.  I still remember us making up that riff.  So, I think the lyrics are great, John sings it good and I think my dog impression is terrific.

Ringo:  When the news broke in Britain about Hey Bulldog everybody said we’d found a new track; but it’s not a new track, it’s new footage.  It’s always nice to be surprised but, Oh my God, we had footage, actual film footage.  I love that track. It’s a fine track.

Q:  It’s debatably whether Yellow Submarine the move is a children’s film or not, but what about the song, was that initially aimed at children?

Paul:  I was in bed one night in that little limbo moment just before you drift off to sleep.  Because I’m a songwriter, one of the things I find myself doing in those limbo moments is thinking of ideas for songs.  Somehow, in that moment, I thought it might be good to do a children’s song, for Ringo.  Ringo was always very good with kids and John and I were always looking to write a Ringo song for each album.  So, I was thinking that, and this idea of a yellow submarine, like a kid’s book or something, came into my mind.  So, the next day I started writing it and we finished it up.  Ringo sang it very well; I think he sings it to this day.  In fact, he tells me that when he’s in concert he gets the audience to do the chorus; Ringo shouts “where do we live?” and they all go “in a Yellow Submarine” Oh, (laughing) I love that, the idea of Ringo going “where do we live?”

Ringo:  That song’s given me a career (laughing).  Everybody can sing that song.  When I’m on tour it’s all “this is one you all know and if you don’t, you’re in the wrong place.”  Even fetuses know that song.

George:  The year that song came out I think it was voted the most popular and the most hated song in Britain, it’s one of those songs.  It’s the kids all love it, their grannies all love it, the people who just like The Beatles all love it, and the people who don’t like it, hate it.  It’s not just that they don’t like it.  They hate it.  It’s one of those extremes.  It’s one of those songs you can’t get out of your head once you hear it.  It’s a pretty cute song, but it was a children’s song basically.

Ringo:  The interesting thing about that song and the bit in the middle of it was that we did all of our own sound effects.  Like the sound of the engine in the water was done by blowing through a straw.  I was at one end of the studio shouting and John was in another corner shouting and we all just made it up on the spot.  That’s how it was.  Some people think we took months to do that, but it was all done off the cuff right away.

 

 

Q:  What do you think now of the style of the movie?

Paul:  I think the way they married the music to the animation was very good.  I think some of the sequences are particularly stunning.  I like the Lucy scene.  I think that is really good.  They had some very clever ideas and certain sequences were prize-winning.  In the Sixties people we retrying things and people didn’t mind if ideas were different.  You could put them together somehow, in the clothing, in the music.  I liked the way they varied the animation styles in the film – doing things like using live action underneath the horses in Lucy and then painting over that.  It’s quite a common technique now, but it was not very common then.  Things like using the real photography in Eleanor Rigby was very stylish.  I think it all held together and because the main characters were walking through all this stuff it’s made it a kind of psychedelic movie.  I think the first time I saw it I was expecting something a bit more Disney.  This time I knew that wasn’t to be, so I actually enjoyed it for what it was and I think it came off really quite well.

Q:  How does this new release of Yellow Submarine as a home video and as this new Beatles’ songtrack add to the great Beatles legend?

George:  I don’t think it will add anymore.  It just keeps what is already there going.  It just keeps it ticking over.  But all of that really had nothing to do with us, you know.  It was like we were just put there as playthings for the rest of the world.

Paul:  The funny thing about being in The Beatles is that we didn’t want to become legends.  We just wanted to get good at our music.  It’s difficult for me to talk about what makes The Beatles great because you’ve got to try to bring some modesty in at some point.  But the fact that there is this body of work and that the career of The Beatles is finished does allow you to talk about it.  And, putting modesty aside, I think the songs are really good – that’s the backbone of it all.  I think in the music and in the songwriting and in the performance, we did something right that still shows.  And it is Tomorrow Never Knows drum sound and copying it religiously, which is nothing but a tribute.  They could be copying anyone, but they’re not.  They seem to think that we hit a nerve which is still worth hitting now.

Ringo:  This is just a re-release, I don’t think the world will stop turning.  But because of the record, it will give people the opportunity to take a listen.

The interesting thing for me with the record, and I always go back to the record, is that I’ve played it a lot to young people and they’ve all mentioned the music could have been made today.  It’s what the bands today are trying to sound like still.  So that’s why, for me, the music is the legacy and in this case, it’s surrounded by the film.

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                              

Paul at the park

 

A smiling couple

Olivia and George June 2, 1999
 

Thank you for these flowers

Paul and Heather

I found this photo stuck to the bottom of a box in my basement last week.  It is a little banged up, but I really love Heather's southwest art along with her Dad's support.    I remember seeing footage of this on Entertainment Tonight when it originally aired in 1999 and it was one of the first times we got to see Paul looking happy after Linda's death. 

OK Paul

Swinging England

June 15, 1999 in Liverpool

The IMAX Experience

November 23, 1999 -- Yes, I am going to go there.   It was 20 years ago that Paul McCartney was first photographed together with Heather Mills, who would be his 2nd wife a few years later. 

Working Classical

All I got is a photograph

A little Harrison on the keyboards

I don't know much about this photo.   Just that in 1999 George did an impromtu performance on keyboard and uke.    Any George fans out there know more about this?