Rock and Roll Circus (2005)

 

Rock and Roll Circus

By Chris Nickson

Discoveries 

February 2005

    For many years, until its official release on video in 1996, one of the most elusive and collectible Rolling Stones artifacts was the Rock and Roll Circus show filmed over two days at the end of 1968 that had never been shown, a few pieces had teased out, such as the Who's performance, which turned up in The Kids Are All Right. For the most part, it stayed hidden away for the best part of 30 years, the holy grail of Stones fans. 

    More recently, it has made a belated appearance on DVD, finally coming into the digital age. But the story of the Rock and Roll Circus, both of its making and its resurrection are the stuff of music lore. It was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who, despite his name, isn't English but Irish-American. He'd been in England for a few years, working in television and making some of the earliest promotional music films for The Beatles and The Stones. And he'd go on to direct Let It Be and the epic miniseries Brideshead Revisited, among other things.

     In Britain in 1968, there had been nothing like the idea of the Rock and Roll Circus, which was conceived as a television special. There were weekly shows such as Top of the Pops. The Beatles had unveiled the enigmatic Magical Mystery Tour. And there had been a program showing the Doors and Jefferson Airplane in concert at London's Roundhouse.

 "Ready Steady Go, which I directed, was the closest thing, because we were connected to the bands," Lindsay-Hogg recalls, "and because we were live, unlike Top of the Pops, it gave the bands more leeway to do the plug song and two or three others. It was a very good atmosphere. You could have people playing with each other. So it was a good feeling on that show. "

    He'd come to know the Stones and was approached when Mick first first mooted the idea of a television special The Circus. Lindsay-Hogg said, "Well, it's my concept. But Mick Jagger, then, as now, was very involved in everything. So any ideas I had, I would always run by him. It was a hard thing to come up with a concept that seemed to fit their image and also the image of the kind of show he wanted to put together.

     "I remember being very happy when I was doodling on a pad in their offices on Maddock Street. I doodled a circle, and I thought, 'A circle looks like a ring'. Then the title came to me before anything else, The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus. I thought there was something there. It was as unformed as that. I called Mick, but he was asleep. I eventually got him about three o'clock and told him. And he said, 'Yeah, that's as close as we've got so far. That's good.' He said to go on working on that. And asked, 'What kind of circus should it be?' I said, 'It shouldn't be a big, lavish Barnum and Bailey Circus. It should be a down-at-heel, tatty European circus with acts that are a little too old.' And he said, 'That's it!'

     "He's extremely bright, and he was very, very understanding, especially since Andrew Oldham wasn't there anymore, in broad strokes of what their image was and which way to go," said Lindsay- Hogg. "As soon as we talked about the title and the kind of circus, that's when it started, and it never changed. We'd had occasional meetings with the rest of the band and all of them were there, and we talked about it, they signed off on it. But the person you mostly dealt with in those days was Mick, because he was what you'd call 'the guv'nor'. Mick, Charlie and Keith were the runners of the band, but Mick was the one who wanted to shoulder the responsibilities. Brian had fallen apart, poor boy."

     The ideas came together in late October, and in December, they shot for two days, something unthinkably spontaneous by today's standards. But in that time and place, almost anything was possible, even if some ideas proved impossible. They had hoped to get the Isley Brothers and Johnny Cash, but approaches to both proved fruitless, so most of the acts were English.  "The organizing wasn't difficult, oddly enough, and it was sort of enjoyable. In those days in England, everything was centralized in London. I used to think it was like the Impressionist painters in France. They came from different parts, but they all turned up in Paris. These bands came from all over, but they were all in London. 

    "There used to be a nightclub called the Ad Lib. You go there on a Friday night, look around, and see the banquets around the wall, John Lennon, George Harrison, two Rolling Stones, an Animal, a Kink, a Yardbird, whatever. Managers like Kit Lambert and Andrew Oldham, they were all there. So the organizing of the show, once we decided to go ahead with the Circus, was done in that little community.

     "Early on, we decided on the Who, because they were great. Then, Keith Richards, like Taj Mahal, Maryann Faithful, was going out with Mick. Mick thought it would be great to have this supergroup.  Originally, that was going to be Steve Winwood. He said he'd do it and think of some musicians. Once we got the idea for the Circus, things happened very quickly. Steve got kind of unavailable, too much marijuana, or whatever was going on. He didn't get his band together. Then he called up two or three days before we were supposed to do it, and sweetly said something was bothering his voice and he didn't think he could sing. That left us with the hole. Mick thought he'd call Paul McCartney first, then decided that didn't seem right in this mix; he didn't know what band he'd get together, since Keith wanted to play. 

    Then he thought the best person who'd lead himself to a nutty project was John Lennon. So Mick called John, and we had this extraordinary group of musicians. So the lineup was set with the Stones headlining, the Who, Taj Mahal, Maryann Faithful, the Dirty Mac, who was Lennon, Richards, Eric Clapton, and Mitch Mitchell, along with newcomers Jethro Tull. The only ones I didn't know were Taj and Jethro Tull." Lindsay-Hogg noted, "We got a lot of demos from bands. I'd seen Tull on the late-night BBC show, and I thought Ian Anderson was a really interesting performer with this crazy, insane Doctor performance. It was between them and a guitar-driven band, which Mick didn't want, called Led Zeppelin. 

    "And so the show, the logistics of it, principally and particularly of it being in London,  got together seamlessly, compared to everything else, assembling the talent seemed easy. There was a studio to transform, circus acts to book, and they found some who were suitably down at heel, as well as the technical side, which didn't go as smoothly. "

    The technical side was a little nightmare. "We'd imported these cameras from France," Lindsey-Hogg said. "We wanted to put the thing on film rather than tape. We had a wonderful DP, Tony Richmond, who went on to do Let It Be, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and pictures with Nick Roeg. I'd done "Jumping Jack Flash", but I hadn't had enough control over what the cameras were doing. The French system had film magazines on top of the cameras, but also a monitoring device that went into the control room, and you could orchestrate the shots. This was the first time it had ever been used, and it kept breaking down. We'd been in the middle of a song, and would lose a camera and would finish with the other three cameras. The magazines would have to be reloaded and we would lose another camera, and someone would come out with a screwdriver, inevitably."

     With only two days really set aside for filming, they were asking for trouble. And the first piece of it came with American Taj Mahal, along with his band. He'd been refused the necessary work permit to perform in the show, coming into England instead as a tourist, where they were allowed to stay for 24 hours. The filming was done in strict secrecy the day before the other bands were coming to the set. And then there was the case of Tull. They were starting to enjoy the wave of success that had come with their debut. This was, but in the immediate wake of that, guitarist Mick Abrams had quit the band, and when they were called to appear on Rock and Roll Circus, they hadn't yet found a replacement. Salvation came in the form of a player named Tony Iommi with a Birmingham group called Earth, who, in less than two years, would be finding success under the name Black Sabbath. The only problem, as Tull frontman Anderson explained at the time, was "Our music wasn't really compatible with his playing." With no time to rehearse, Tull became one of two acts to use a pre-recorded backing track (the other was Faithful), with Iommi's guitar not even plugged in. 

    The day was carefully planned, but the technical hitches kept pushing stage times back and back. One highlight for the invited audience was the appearance of Dirty Mac with Lennon on guitar and vocals, Clapton on lead guitar, Richards on bass, and Mitchell from the Jimi Hendrix Experience on drums, representatives from the biggest bands in the UK at the time. After just a day's rehearsal, they produced a searing version of Lennon's "Yer Blues", then just released recently on the White Album. They veered into a 12-bar blues that was supposed to feature violinist Ivry Gitlis, but which was hijacked when Yoko Ono took the stage and began singing. 

    "I didn't even know Yoko was going to do that," said Lindsay-Hogg. Ivry, Gitlis, who was a violinist who had come over from Paris, thought he was going to play, and it would be good for him. He didn't know Yoko was going to do that, because only John and Yoko knew. He kept thinking, 'What is going on?'  She kept going; he got pissed off, then resigned."

     Because of all the delays, it was the wee small hours by the time the Stones finally took the stage. The crew and band were all tired, but there had been problems the night before with Brian Jones; he was barely there physically and hardly there mentally. Lindsay-Hogg recounted, "We lived near each other in Parliament Hill in Hampstead. We'd rehearsed the show and shot Taj Mahal one day, and we're going to do the whole thing the next day. About midnight, after I got in, I had something to eat, and Brian called me from up the road. He asked if he could come over. I asked what the problem was. He was very maudlin and said, 'I don't think I'm going to come tomorrow. They're being so mean to me.' I said he had to come. 'What would the Rolling Stones be without you?' I asked innocently, not knowing that two months later, that would happen. He declined emotionally and physically. Rather than fighting his depression and paranoia, he settled into it. Anyway, I persuaded him to come. He wanted someone to know he was suffering, but he was very hard to talk to. He devolved into his own world. He couldn't play much more. He broke his wrist, I think, when he was in North Africa recording Jajoukas Nomadic Moroccan Musicians.

     "Because of the state he was in, he never did the exercises needed to get it strong again. He really couldn't play anymore, and that was a symptom of where he was psychologically." He did remain for the whole thing, although he was related to a very much secondary role, with Richards taking all the solos and Jones contributing minimal rhythm guitar, a little slide, and some maracas, looking plainly uncomfortable and out of it. 

    Finally, though, the Stones began to play. "Everyone was there by noon, and we did the player's entrance. Mick and the Stones were acting as hosts until they got on stage at two in the morning. The Stones had done a full day's work at the time they got on stage. Well, with various takes, Mick wasn't satisfied, so we did five takes of "You Can't Always Get What You Want," or whatever. 

    "By the time we got to the song we'd been looking forward to, which was "Sympathy for the Devil", it was four in the morning. They hadn't only been drinking tea and taking aspirin, and were all not at their best. We did one or two takes, and it was all going downhill. We weren't together musically. The camera crew was exhausted. We had a meeting me, Mick, Jimmy Miller and Sandy Lieberson, who was the producer. We thought about going home and coming the next night around nine, but by then the overages would have cost as much as rental charges, as we'd already spent. We decided to do it one more time. The Mick did this extraordinary performance. He made them. One of his gifts is his willpower. He told the band they were going to do it, and they did."

     Eventually as December 8, 1968 had become 5am December 9, it was all done. Audiences and musicians went home to their beds and kept the show as a memory. But Lindsay-Hogg went to work on editing. "Even though there was no immediate BBC interest, I was an advocate for finishing it, editing it and putting it out," said Lindsay-Hogg, "but in January, I'd gone off to do Let it Be but we had a rough cut screening with Mick and Keith and Alan Klein and me. 

    "While they professed to like it in general, they weren't happy with themselves. I can't remember if they'd got rid of Brian by then, or about to, also, they did think the Who were very good, but they were very critical about themselves and very tough-minded about what they do. They just thought they could maybe do better. So the idea was to regroup in the spring with Mick Taylor and do the Stones somewhere. The idea was we'd go to Rome and shoot in the Coliseum and edit it onto the other footage. I was against it because it seemed like a very big stylistic goof. They just released "Honky Tonk Woman", and they wanted to put that in the show. Then, overnight, the permit to shoot in the Coliseum fell through. The papers had got wind of it and complained, and there was some worry about the amount of amplification making the Coliseum fall down. So then there was no Coliseum. Mick went off to do Ned Kelly.

     "Then a year went by, and they went off to do another tour. One of the things that happened was that there were lots of rock and roll projects in those days, and everyone had lots of ideas. So if a project lost momentum, it could end up in a drawer for a while.  It looked as if Let it Be would lose momentum because Allen [Klein] was using it to negotiate a better movie or record deal. So a year had gone by, and it was still in a very good rough cut stage. It was all in the cutting room. Then the Stones decided we should close the cutting room and bring all the cans of street footage to Maddox Street. My feeling was that not much was going to happen then. For tax reasons, the Stones went to France for a year. They didn't need these really nice offices, and they got a much smaller office. They couldn't fit the 35 cans of film in the new office, so Ian Stewart thought maybe someone might want it. And he took the cans of film to his house in the country and put them in his barn for safekeeping. He didn't tell anybody he'd done it. He was smart enough to know that one day someone would want everything to do with the Rolling Stones.

     "Over the years, because I did some videos with the Stones, I would say, 'What happened to the Circus?' And they would say, 'I don't know,' and life had moved. Then Stu died in the late 80s, when Cynthia, his widow, went around the property. She found the cans of film in the barn. She got in touch with someone. Eventually, Allen Klein heard about it. He had a contractual thing with the Stones that he owns, or co-owns, all the pre-1970 stuff. He thought it should be reconstructed, and he got all the footage, which was hard because a lot of it had gone missing. When Jeff Stein made The Kids Are All Right, he'd taken the Who's bit. So that wasn't there. It had ended up in a vault in Teddington. So it took a lot of sleuthing work by Allen and Robin Klein to even get it in a semblance of what it was. 

    "The reason it's out isn't that Allen thought it would be good, but because of their hard work. It was released at the New York Film Festival in 1996 and did very well; now it's out on DVD with commentary. I think it would have been great if it had come out at the time, but seeing it so much later, it has a real different kind of value, certainly because what's happened to some of the people, also with music having changed so much. Anyone of whatever generation who sees it gets a full jolt of how good the bands all were at their peak. It was the great lost work, and quite obviously still fresh.

     In Lindsay-Hogg's memory, even down to the regret, "I didn't have a documentary camera backstage. I remember when the cameras broke down, and I went back to the dressing room to tell them the delay would end. They're musicians, and they're sitting around the room all playing with kitchen utensils, guitars or singing Doo Wop songs. They were rivals, but they were all very close. Each one wanted to be the best, but they were very close to each other. They all had similar backgrounds. 

    I remember talking to Lennon, and the first song he liked was on radio Luxembourg called "Sha-Boom" by the Chords. None of the bands liked the music of their parents. I wish I had a camera in the dressing room."

     While it was never thought of at the time, it was about the only thing that was missing in one of those strange twists, the show that vanished again returned, even winning a prize at the New York Film Festival. It captures a more innocent time when the music meant more than chart positions and record sales. For Stones fans, it remains one of the prizes, even though it's widely available.

Venice Preserved! (1976)

 Venice Preserved!

By Rosie Horide

Beat Instrumental

December 1976

    What's the worst job you've ever had? That's the current catchphrase culled from the Derek and Clive live album. But if you asked any of the Showco team that worked for Paul McCartney at his recent gig in Venice, I'm sure they'd cite that gig as their worst job ever. 

    There's no reflection on McCartney or Wings, but the problems were considerable and somewhat unusual. But let's start at the beginning. Paul McCartney and Wings were invited by UNESCO to perform a live concert in the beautiful St. Mark's Square as part of their Save Venice campaign. 

    As everyone should know by now, the city is slowly sinking, and a great deal of money is needed to rescue this beautiful and historic place. So they had a week of artistic functions to raise money and wanted a pop group as the piece de resistance. 

    Mr. Leon Davisco, director of publicity for UNESCO said, "We believe that Paul McCartney's group would be just right for the occasion. Not only are they one of the top groups in the world, but they appeal to people of all ages and tastes. We thought their concert would be a fitting finale for our week."

     Paul himself said, "We were very honored to be asked, and after checking out that we could do it, we said we would be delighted."

     And so it all began. For a start, it was going to be an expensive business. There would obviously be no fee, and although UNESCO paid some of the cost, like setting up the special stage and the band's hotel bills, it would cost the McCartneys a lot too. So they did a few other European gigs on the way to defray some of the costs, which would have been incurred if it had all been done just for one gig. 

    The biggest problem to be surmounted was the fact that no merchandise transport had ever been allowed on the main island of Venice, where the square is. It's never felt so much as the weight of a car, and the band had three truckloads of gear! What's more, with all that water around, how do you get the equipment to the island in the first place? The answer was huge barges which were loaded up with trucks and then sailed to the nearest point to the square. Then the trucks were slowly unloaded, and there came an ominous cracking sound. Five of the square's 1000-year-old paving stones had cracked under the weight!  Of course, the various local dignitaries were horrified. But eventually, and very gradually, the trucks got to the side of the square. 

    The crew had arrived a week before the concert to get things ready, and they needed every minute of that time. First, they had to get a stage erected. It was specially built with a high canopy in case of rain and other safeguards against the elements and risk of electrocution. Then all the equipment for the 4000 watt custom built PA had to be assembled. And as if all the usual problems weren't enough, there was a language problem too. Someone from the Italian record company was on permanent call as an interpreter. 

    At the same time, 2000 seats had to be erected on the square. They were for the people who'd paid 15,000 lire for their tickets (roughly £10), the other members of the audience, 13,000 of them had paid 3000 lire for their tickets (£2).  But eventually, that was all done. The seven laser machines worth half a million dollars had been assembled and placed strategically in buildings around the square. In fact, people arriving on the night before the gig were treated to a run-through of the laser, which had been placed on top of the column in the center of the square, and a bright green shaft of light shone out across Venice. 

    Finally, after a week of hard work and aggravation, the concert took place. Musically, it was splendid. From the audience's point of view, it was chaos. Security, supposedly done by the Italian navy, didn't exist. No one was checking tickets, and the police estimated later that there were about 30,000 people there, not the 15,000 that was supposed to be the limit. In fact, most people would have said there were even more there than that. The audience was strangely subdued, too. Even the sensational laser show with the second encore, where the seven lasers were focused together to form the Wings butterfly logo, which twisted and turned like the real thing, didn't rouse them to much enthusiasm. 

    After the show, McCartney himself was a little subdued. "We really enjoyed doing the concert. Not only was it an honor, but what more beautiful place could there be to stage a rock concert? The audience were a bit quiet, though, weren't they?" He was also a little mystified to find that the garrulous European press, who fought to get into the press conference, were suddenly struck dumb when they saw him, and a lady from a TV show refused to do an interview because she couldn't be in the shot with him, too.

     But he did discuss with us plans to play behind the Iron Curtain. "Band on the Run's just been released in Russia, and we'd love to play there, if we were asked. And if possible. You know, you hear such strange things about the people, but I suspect they're just like us under the skin. It would be great to see them-- rocking commies."

     He admitted that the Venice show had cost him a lot, but said it was worth it. And we were told that the week had raised $50,000 for the fund, most of which had come from his gig. 

    As for future plans, Paul said, "We're currently working on the live album, which we hope to have released before Christmas. We're listening to the 90 hours of tape we've done on the World Tour and selecting the right tracks for a three-album set. Then we have Christmas off and start working on our next album. I write all the time, whether I'm on the road or at home, and there are already a few things ready for the next studio album."

     And what about concerts? "We love performing. So I guess we'll be back on the road again soon, but there'll never be another gig like Venice." A sentiment echoed by the crew who were at that moment racing to get all the equipment packed away before low tide left them stranded. 

Yesterday and Today (The 'maneuvering swine' interview - 1985)

 

Yesterday and Today

By Hunter Davies

Found in the Southern Illinoisian

(originally published in a British women's magazine "Woman." )

December 26, 1985 

The Editor's Note:  After the Beatles broke up, John Lennon was openly critical upon McCartney, but McCartney chose to remain silent. Later, McCartney opened up to writer Hunter Davies, who wrote The Beatles. What has appeared in recent news accounts is a quote by McCartney who said Lennon was a "maneuvering swine and has become Martin Luther Lennon." McCartney has since said his quote was taken out of context. What follows is the story behind the headlines. The feelings McCartney had for Lennon, whom he called "a jealous man who was paranoid about McCartney's songwriting abilities."

Written by Hunter Davies

     Not long after John's death, I had some strange conversations with Paul. He seemed so upset by so many things, not least of which was John's death. This was in May 1981, and I jotted down in a diary some of the things he told me. 

    John's death on December 8, 1980, had grown into a sort of cult, with instant books appearing, and the papers were still full of it. Many people in praising John were putting down Paul, or so it appeared.

     Paul rang me on May 3, 1981, and went on for over an hour, all about how hurt he was. He said he was fed up with all these people going on about him and John and getting it all wrong, only he knew the truth. It wasn't anything like the things being said. 

    Paul had a go at me for having gone on some TV news program after John's death. In my tribute to him, I had said that John was more the hard man with the cutting edge, while Paul was more soft and melodic. 

    But what had really got Paul upset that day was an interview with Yoko in which Yoko was quoted as saying that Paul had "hurt John more than any other person."  Paul thought they were amongst the cruelest words he had ever read. "No one ever goes on about the times John hurt me,"said Paul, "when he kept calling my music 'muzak'. People keep on saying I hurt him. But where's examples? When did I do it?

     "No one ever says. It's just always the same, blaming me. Could I have hurt John more than anyone in the world? More than the person who ran down Julia, John's mother, in a car?

     "We were always in competition. I wrote Penny Lane, so he wrote Strawberry Fields. That's how it was. But that was in competitions. 

    "I can't understand why Yoko was saying this. The last time I spoke to her, she was great. She told me she and John had just been playing one of my albums and had cried."

     What did he think then might have hurt John? "There's only one incident I can think of which John has publicly mentioned. It was when I went off with Ringo and did, "Why Don't We Do It In the Road?" 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.'

     "Nobody knows how much I helped John. Me and Linda went to California and talked him out of his so called Lost Weekend when he was full of drugs. We told him to go back to Yoko. And not long after he did. He never gave me an inch, but he took so many yards and feet.

     "He always suspected me. He accused me of scheming to buy over Northern Songs (the company owning rights to many Beatles songs) without telling him. I was thinking of something to invest in. And Peter Brown (the Beatles personal manager) said, 'What about Northern Songs? Invest in yourself.' So I bought a few shares, about 1000 I think.

     "John went mad, suspecting some plot. Then he bought some himself. He was always thinking I was cunning and devious. That's my reputation. Someone who's charming, but a clever lad.

     "I do stand back at times. Unlike John, I look ahead. I'm careful. John would go on for the free guitar and just accept it straight away in the mad rush. I would stand back and think, 'but what's this bloke really after? What will it mean?' I don't like being the careful one. I'd rather be immediate like John. He was all action. John was always the loudest in any crowd. He had the loudest voice. He was the cock who crowed the loudest. 

    "Me and George used to call him the cockeral in the studio. I was never out to screw him, never. He could have he could be a maneuvering swine, which no one ever realized. Now, since the death, he's become Martin Luther Lennon. But that really wasn't him either. He wasn't some sort of holy saint. He was still really a debunker.

     "We grew to be equals. I made him insecure. He always was really. He was insecure with women. You know, he told me, when he first met Yoko, not to play for her.

      "I saw somewhere that he says he helped on 'Eleanor Rigby', yeah, about half a line. He also forgot completely that I wrote the tune for 'In My Life', that was my tune. But perhaps he just made a mistake on that, forgot.

     "I didn't hate John. People said to me, when he said those things on his record about me, 'you must hate him.' But I didn't. I don't. We were once having a right slagging session. I remember how he took off his granny glasses. I can still see him. He put them down and said, 'It's only me, Paul.' And then he put them back on again, and we continued slagging. 

    "That phrase keeps coming back to me all the time. 'It's only me.' It's become a mantra in my mind.

     "Until I was about 30, I thought the world was an exact place. Now I know that life just sputters along. John knew that he was the great debunker. He'd be debunking all this death thing now."

Paul is Still Seeking (1968)

 Paul is Still Seeking, but George Has Found Great Faith

By Norrie Drummond

New Musical Express

1968

    As most people must have noticed, the Beatles have undergone a major change in the past year. The mop tops have gone and been replaced by four highly individual, creative personalities, the "yeah yeahs" and the "oohs" have given way to sitars and melotrons.

     The Beatle boots and round-collared jackets have been discarded and replaced by kaftans and beads. No longer is it news when they are seen at clubs or theaters. At last, the screams are fading away.

     To find out more about the great Beatles transformation, I visited Paul McCartney at his St John's Wood home recently. I told my taxi driver the address. "Oh, you mean where that Beatle lives?" he said. No more than half a dozen fans were waiting patiently at the massive iron gates of his house. 

    The gates were opened by his housekeeper, Mrs. Mills. ("She still hasn't given me a tune yet", says Paul), who led me into the lounge. 

    Paul's huge Old English sheepdog, Martha, bounded forward, leaped up, put both paws on my shoulder, and started chewing my tie. His three cats, Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, were crawling over each other underneath the television set.

     Paul, dressed in a green floral-pattern shirt and green slacks, sat cross-legged in a large, green velvet armchair. Mike McGear, Paul's brother, was just leaving with several kaftans over his arm. A large Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band poster was pinned to one wall. His book collection includes many works on yoga and meditation.

     At the moment, all four Beatles are on holiday, although they have been recording. "When I used to tell you we didn't know what our plans were, it was simply that we hadn't been told what we were going to be doing. Now we simply just don't know. "

    Mrs. Mills reappeared bearing cups of tea and a large cream sponge. "The only thing lined up for us is the TV show," said Paul, stirring his tea. "But we're still trying to work out the format. We've also been recording the past few nights, and our next album will probably come from the TV show."

     Anything that The Beatles now indulge in, they obviously do for love, not for money. "We can now sit back and pick and choose what we want to do. We're not going to turn out records or films just for the sake of it. We don't want to talk unless we've got something to say.

     "When you don't have to make a living, a job has a different meaning. Most people have to earn a wage to live. If you don't, you take a job to relieve the boredom, but you do something which gives you pleasure. We enjoy recording, but we want to go even farther. I would like to come up with a completely new form of music. Invent new sounds. I want to do something, but I don't really know what.

     "At the moment, I'm thinking things out. There seems to be a pause in my life right now, a time for reassessment."

    I ask Paul if he ever regarded himself as being rather like a retired man of 65, who was now only pottering around, dabbling in his favorite hobby. To a certain extent, he was inclined to agree. "I don't regard myself as having retired, but what do most people do when they retire? As you say, they become wrapped up in a hobby, either that or they find another job. I would like to do something else, but what that will be, I don't know."

     Despite the fact that three of the Beatles are married, and they are, all four of them, very different individuals, they still have that same bond of loyalty to each other that they have always had. They're still each other's best friends.

     If they are asked to do something as a group and any one of them doesn't want to take part, then the scheme is dropped. "If three of us wanted to make a film, for instance, and the fourth didn't think it was a good idea,  we'd forget about it, because the fourth person would have a very good reason for not wanting to do it."

     In the past year, Paul has become a much more introspective person. He is constantly striving to discover more about himself and about other people. What is Depression? Why do people become bored? What is the ultimate goal? These are questions to which Paul has tried to find the answers in books on meditation and lectures by men who know more about it than he does. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is playing a big part in developing the Beatles' minds. He is the man who gave them strength when they heard of Brian Epstein's tragic death.

     "I'm more tolerant now than I was, and I feel more at ease myself, but I am now less certain about many things," said Paul. "In some ways, I envy George, because he now has great faith. He seems to have found what he's been searching for. 

    "When we went to India, we were amazed. So many people living in terrible poverty-but everyone was so happy. They were always laughing and smiling, even though most of them were starving. For people in the Western world to understand why these people can be so happy is a very difficult thing.

     With John. George,and Ringo, Paul will be flying to India again shortly to study transcendental meditation with Maharishi. 

    To a certain extent, Paul's music is his greatest emotional outlet. "Ravi Shankar discovered himself through his music, and I suppose in many ways we are too."

     This is apparent in their latest albums, which feature many tracks based on personal experiences. But how far can one go with any new art form, be it music, film, or theater? Will the great general public accept it? 

    "We've never set out with the sole intention of trying to please people. It's been wonderful that so many have appreciated what we've done. We don't want to come to a point where we wave cheerio to anyone. We want to take them along with us. "

    Paul McCartney certainly is more at ease now and much more tolerant and understanding, but he's still searching for something. Whether or not he'll ever find it, I just don't know, but he is determined to somehow.

When a Beatle Had to be Carried From His Bed (1967)

 

When a Beatle Had to be Carried From His Bed

No author listed

New Musical Express

1967

    Dawn had not broken. A sleek but mud-splattered Rolls-Royce trundled from a deserted courtyard of a shuttered Spanish villa. Two figures stared silently through dark, smoked windows as the Rolls gathered speed along narrow, empty roads. They wore an odd assortment of Second World War army uniforms and listened to the unbroken Arabic wailing from radio Tangier on the car radio.

     A bizarre happening?  Not at all!

    It was just the beginning of another hectic day, shooting of the film How I Won the War for sleepy-eyed John Lennon and actor Michael Crawford. "I don't think John had ever been up that early before," joked Michael, recalling the three months they spent together in Spain filming the scenes for the film in which John goes solo.

     Grinning, Michael said, "We had to carry him from his bed to his Rolls. We had to be on the set by eight. It meant that we had to be up before six some days to be on location for eight. John didn't want any special treatment. He was just one of the boys, and he mucked in with any arrangements. But I think it was a bit of a strain for him getting up that early."

     John played Michael's army batman in Beatles filmmaker dick Lester's anti-war film. Michael believes John mentioned the film and the lyrics of  "A Day in the Life." Michael and John became good friends after meeting at the premiere of Dick Lester's award winning film, The Knack which starred Michael and Rita Tushingham. 

    Said Michael, "John and I never bothered to change out of the army uniforms at the end of the day's shooting. John's hair was very short for the part of Private Gripweed. He wore rimless glasses and a long army greatcoat. I wore knee-length khaki shorts and shirt. For my part."

     John's offbeat appearance shielded the famous Beatle from too much local publicity. "He had a fairly peaceful time," reported Michael, "but it's easy to understand how little privacy The Beatles have. When we were filming in Germany, we were mobbed all the time. I say 'we' because we were with John. We suffered the same as John. It's terrifying. John had to literally crouch down in the Rolls to avoid being seen. We never had a moment's peace when we were out. I remember we were alone by the side of a lake, like the ad for 'Players.'" laughed Michael. "We were sitting there silently when we saw some photographers skulking about in the bushes. When we were filming in Spain, the locals knew something was happening when they saw the Rolls, but we didn't have much trouble. At weekends when we were at the villa, locals sometimes sauntered through the main gates looking for John."

     John and Cynthia and Michael and his wife, Gabrielle, and young daughter Emma, shared a luxury villa owned by film tycoon Sam Spiegel on the outskirts of Almeria. Ringo, and Maureen stayed with them for six weeks. "It was a dreadful place," groaned Michael. "There was nothing to do in the evenings. John and I had a running joke about who would be the first to catch the night train to Madrid. We didn't do much in the evenings except play Monopoly and Risk. We were very tired after a day of filming, and we didn't go out much. Sometimes, Dick Lester and John had a jam session on the piano. John was always good company. He was never dull."

     Surprisingly, cricket became a favorite outdoor pastime for John and Michael, and the film team. Explains, Michael, "When there were breaks in the film, we found a hard stretch of sand and set up a wicket. John enjoyed the game and became a good bowler at the end of the filming." 

     John wrote "Strawberry Fields" and worked on another song. 

    Recalled Michael, "John shut himself in his bedroom and worked out melodies on a guitar. I heard him playing the same bar over and over again until he got the right sequence. It was marvelous listening to how a song was created. I think he was writing 'Strawberry Fields' while we were on the Spanish location. It was a very pretty tune without the technicalities of the actual record. I like the recording, but I must say I like the original treatment best."

     Michael is sure  that John used the sound of the night train to Madrid or something similar on "Strawberry Fields." Crawford smiled. "John was the first to catch the night train to Madrid. He was away two days before us."

     He paused: "But the end of the recording certainly reminded me of the last train to Madrid. John always said he was going to write a song about THAT train!"  

Starr Trek (1980)

Photo from this trip (Nancy Andrews collection)

 

Starr Trek

By Susin Shipiro

Sunday News Magazine

September 7, 1980

    Ringo Starr has finished a movie in Mexico called Caveman. He has been there before in Blindman, a spaghetti western. "In every scene, I went from hello to madness. I raped a girl, stabbed her father, shot people left and right," he says of Blindman. In Caveman, he grunts a lot. His cave lady turns out to be Barbara Bach, whom he is marrying.

     I can't say I'm overly thrilled about the match, since my introduction to him was via his former fiancée, an Alabamian named Nancy Andrews, alias my oldest friend. 

    Four months after I met Ringo, I rendezvoused with him and Nancy in Mexico, where he neither grunted nor killed anybody, but he did save my life---kind of. We were puttering around Cozumel when news of a solar eclipse came over the radio. Ringo decided to see the Mayan ruins that lay on the other side of the Yucatan, and four of us climbed into a rented Jeep with maracas and wonky drums with balls attached to strings that bonk against the hollow skins when you shake your wrists. Ringo was playing the things while driving. He is a better drummer than driver. He had already been banned in Monte Carlo for his "daring do" behind the wheel. 

    The paved road gave out 30 miles from the hotel. The Solar Eclipse was warming up. The sky was fuchsia as we chugged along the bumps. "A long way from Liverpool", said Ringo, with his usual firm grasp on the obvious. We passed two men setting up a tripod on the roadside to shoot the Eclipse. "Pardon me", said Ringo, "Are you the Mayan ruins?" The men stare into the Jeep, see this guy wearing racing shades and a lady's tank top on his head, secured with a button that reads, "Watch out for the booga rooga." some caveman.

     A few minutes later, we pass a cow and a bull by a sharp curve. "Are you the Mayan ruins?" Ringo asks which way to Itza. Then the Jeep stalls. After a little coddling, it starts up, then it rolls over and dies. 

    We inspect the beach and the solar descent. Ringo finds a cracked doll's head, a tin can, shells, and seaweed. The night is filled with strange noises far away, grunts. We start to walk back to the main road. The path is strewn with branches and unidentified objects. Bat circle, we hear the steady pound of cows' hoofs in the brush. "Let's sing," Ringo suggests, "or else, cry, whatever."

     After about four hours, we spy a flicker of light. It is the two men with their tripod! They have set up a candlelit plank across two tree stumps, swiping a fresh coconut off a nearby palm, hacked it open with a mini machete, and placed a bottle of tequila at our disposal. They joined us on the star trek, but it was Ringo on automatic pilot who got us through the underbrush and prickly overheads. Eventually, we find the main road. Ringo, doing a knock-me-down tango with inexhaustible energy, fetches a cab, which takes us back to the hotel gratis. 

    A famous face is a famous face. "I knew we'd make it," Ringo says the following afternoon. "I'm going to live till I'm 87." I heard a flash at that moment, a flash of lightning, a rumble of thunder, Mexico's first rain in three months. We pile into a new Jeep, pockets packed with pesos to celebrate our emergence from the jungle intact. There are survivors and survivors, but there is only one Ringo Starr and once upon a time in Mexico, he saved my life --kind of.

Wings Concerts 1972

 

Wings

McCartney Ltd. 

July/August 1972

    As mentioned before, Wings are currently touring Europe. The tour began on July 9 in southern France at Chateau Vallon. Almost all British music papers had articles about it. So here are some of the things that were said.

     John did it in Toronto, and on the streets of New York. George and Ringo chose Madison Square, but Paul picked a sleepy French village to get back to the people with his first publicized live debut since 1966.

     "Chantez a bit, if you know le mots", said Paul, but very few of the lucky French kids seem to know the words to "Maybe, I'm Amazed". Maybe the 2000 French fans who witnessed McCartney's return to the public platform were too amazed to sing. For it was quite amazing to see the man who did so much for British pop music once more on stage.

     Wings are Paul's substitute for Rikki and the Red Streaks, the fictitious group Paul wanted the Beatles to perform as when Beatlemania reached proportions and touring had to stop.

     It seems he never really wanted the fame that came with being a Beatle, but all he really wanted to do was to come on stage and play something to somebody, no matter what or where. The intricate recording techniques and musical innovations that The Beatles used in their latter-day phase are a million light-years away from Wings.

     On stage, Paul has changed little from the Beatles days. His hair is cropped short, but he still stands slightly kneed, his backside shaking and his face against the mic as if he were licking an ice cream cone. He shakes his hips, but the kids don't scream anymore. His voice is everything it always has been, whether screaming or singing, and his very presence commands respect, even in France; few others could hope to receive it, and at the same time, there's no doubt he is thoroughly enjoying himself on stage. 

    The second half they wore identical, black suits with glitter on the lapels, a hark back to the old Beatle days when Paul and Lennon disagreed over Beatles stage attire. 

    Paul seemed happy about the night. After the concert, he wasn't nervous, but Linda was. A small press Conference was held after the concert, and below are some of the questions with Paul's answers. 

Q: Would you ever do any old Beatles numbers? 

A: The Beatles thing at the moment is a bit close for me to do one, but we were on holiday recently, and we suddenly rediscovered "Yesterday", and I hadn't played that for years.

 Q: What Beatles project gives you the fondest memories? 

 A: It's difficult. I don't think you can really go into all that stuff. I enjoyed it all, and it was great while it lasted. But for me, I don't like the idea of once having won the World Cup to just sit around living on your laurels. I prefer the idea of being in a band, working, we've all got to move on. You know?

 Q: It was rumored, Paul, that you were asked to take part in the Bangladesh concert.

 A: Yeah, but I knew for certain that if I'd taken part, it would have been played up as the Beatles back together again. It may have been only for one night, but the whole thing would have been perpetuated when the truth is it's definitely finished. Like the man at the record company said, "Would you all play together again just once a year? Like a kind of memorial, like tribute." Now, I'm  not going to get into anything like that. I'm not dead. You know? You can get into that kind of thing when I'm dead, if you like, but it's not much good to me now.

Q: What do you feel is Wing's best number so far?

S: I don't know, maybe, "Maybe I'm Amazed" since it went down well. Also, we've got a new one. "Hi, Hi, Hi," which is a nice one we wrote on holiday in about five minutes. We're thinking about it for a single. 

    The following Sunday, Paul and Wings played two concerts in Paris. The following is from Record Mirror from July 29.

     A week after the opening in southern France, Wings played two concerts at the Olympia in Paris. Concerts, McCartney said, he was dreading. They went extremely well. They were sell outs. Paul said afterwards, "I thought we went down better than the Beatles did their last time."

     Three hours later, after the concert, Paul and Linda sat on the stage surrounded by the rest of the group while microphones were thrust at them. Paul, at 30, still looks boyish, Coy, and jaunty with an aggressive surface confidence that conceals a certain uneasiness. He talks nervously and probably can't escape the feeling of being on trial. The first tour by a Beatle since August 29, 1966. Paul also said, "I think as we play as a band, the Beatles thing will disappear anyway. I mean, people either like us or they won't like us. That's how it is with all bands, and that's how we're going to take it. That's fair enough for me, if they don't like us, it's too bad.

     Would you like to talk to the rest of the band?" asked McCartney. "I mean, it's not just me." Then he introduced them jauntily. "This is Denny and Danny and Henry and Yoko." Laughs all around, and Linda smiles. The subject is switched to Linda's importance in the group, and McCartney defends her with almost violent intensity.

     How many years do you plan on playing? "As long as I live", says Paul, "till I'm 100, I mean, it is my job." Despite the disadvantage of a Beatles background and the cat and mouse game with the darlings of the British press, despite the inner conflicts of Paul McCartney, I think Wings will make it. I think the next album will be far, far better than anything post Beatles he's done so far. And I think "My Love" shows distinct signs that McCartney is recapturing his compositional genius.

I'd Rather Be an Ex=Beatle than an Ex-Nazi (George Interview 1975)

 

I'd Rather Be an Ex-Beatle Than an Ex-Nazi

By Ray Coleman

Melody Maker

September 6, 1975

Copied from the Sept/Oct 1975 issue of the Harrison Alliance

    George Harrison went to see the celebrated play John Paul George Ringo...and Bert in London last week. He left the theater at the interval. He could not stand the pain of seeing himself in the Beatle years being recanted so uncannily, and he questioned the fundamental need for the show. 

    The first ex-Beatle to view the play had been persuaded to go by his close friend Derek Taylor. "George found it hard work to watch, and I found it hard work sitting with him," Taylor said. "It was a genuine form of suffering for him."

     It was hardly surprising that George didn't enjoy it. After all, he was hardly in love with the story while it was happening.

    "All things must pass," wrote George Harrison as his epitaph to end that era, but the statement was too naive by half. Maybe that's how George wanted it at the time, but the spectre of The Beatles, which is how he viewed it, just won't go away. Some things not only fall to pass, but will stand forever, monuments to an important landmark which shaped the future. 

    The Beatles were like that. Even now, 12 years after they changed the world, there's still something extra special to be studied by today's youth, as well as remembered by the 30-pluses. Primarily because they came through as a force which stood for something, as opposed to product, which has been dished up for too long by the music industry, desperate to maintain that impetus. And with the recent trends toward nostalgia and reevaluation of pop's past glories, their breakthrough and their history show little sign of being forgotten. 

    It wasn't too much exactly what they achieved which brought them fame, although God only knows that was enough. It was a period in which they came upon us which allowed them to make such an impact. Consider this: when the Beatles arrived, Tamla Motown was virtually unheard of by the public. The Animals were making quite a stir with the first four-minute single. Bob Dylan was struggling through Greenwich Village. Cliff Richard was Britain's top solo singer, playing clean, wholesome, sad, religious, and Helen Shapiro was the nearest we got to a homegrown singer with funk. 

    The Beatles changed all that. It was as much through the chemistry of their four personalities as their music. The records were excellent, certainly, but the collective personalities of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were especially electric. We'll wait forever for a parallel. And they have remained among the heaviest names in popular music since the Beatles split in 1966, with the final concert at San Francisco's Cow Palace.

     George was never an enthusiastic Beatle. He rated himself a musician first and a pop star last. He disliked the screaming of fans and resented their intrusion into his privacy. He was the first to get a house with electrically operated gates to keep out fans. He was always more concerned with stepping ahead in style and quality on the next album than he was with reaching number one in the charts with the new single.

     While handsome Paul had the unfailing commercial ear and whiplash John, the knife-edged wit and classic combination, which cinched the group's success -- brooding George was repeatedly grumbling that their music should be more adventurous, that they should spend more time in the studio, that fans, however young, shouldn't he made to follow their lead.

    Though he openly expressed disenchantment with autograph signing and all that was entailed by being a quarter of the biggest attraction in the world, he was regularly rumored to be on the verge of quitting the Beatles.

    Partly because of these rumors, partly because of the natural tension of such a massive set, but mainly because he trusts few people anyway, George became a recluse when the Beatles and Apple finally dissolved into separate components. John, Paul, and Ringo made their exorcising speeches, but George went into hibernation. His only contact with the world outside of his Henley-on-Thames mansion was among musicians. 

    He's been a mighty long time coming out of his shell, but now at last, George is ready to become more outward. Also. He works cynically. The Beatles split in 1966. In New York's Madison Square Garden in 1971, George was able to use his long established personal credibility as a musician, rather than as an ex-Beatle, to stage the magnificent Bangla Desh charity concert, wrenching a denim clad Bob Dylan out of hiding and assembling Eric Clapton, Ravi Shankar and many, many more. That was a remarkable act of faith in George by musicians and one of rock's finest events.

     Today, about five years on, and George is stepping out again, a new album, a nervous readiness to plan a tour, a general interest in things wider than his traditional favorite of Indian music and culture. Above all, a willingness to contemplate the past with the Beatles and since, and to place it in context. George Harrison is backed intact.

     This summer afternoon, he's sitting in a Chelsea room in his recording company headquarters, Dark Horse, mild-mannered and drinking one glass of beer. 

    "How's he looking now,?" People have asked me since the interview, as if I'd been to view something they'd ceased to believe existed. They're either expecting him to have faded away -- in itself, a commentary on his seclusion from any media during the past few years -- or to have become so obsessed about things Indian that Westerners no longer have any point of contact. Well, George Harrison, mid-75 version is slimmer than I've ever seen him, but then I've never seen a stout vegetarian. ( "I won't allow meat in my house, he says.) His complexion is sallow, he wears small earrings, a la early Keith Richards. He appears laconic, relaxed, and even poses for pictures -- something I've never seen him do in 12 years of Beatling.

     He'd not long returned from Los Angeles, where he's seen Bob Marley and the Wailers three times at the Roxy theater. "Best thing I've seen in 10 years. Marley reminds me so much of Dylan in the early days, playing guitar as if he's so new to it. And his rhythm, you know, it's just so simple, yet so beautiful. I could watch the Wailers all night."  In Los Angeles, George had also seen the Stones and Carlos Santana, and had been to shows with Ringo; earlier this year he'd seen plenty of John in the same city. He also had attended Paul McCartney's star-packed party aboard the Queen Mary. So relations between the four were fine he avowed.

     "After all we went through it all together, and we were all very young when the Beatles happened, but we still got plenty in common, even though we're different people -- naturally, we're about 10 years older!"

     George enjoyed American trips. "California unwinds me to the point where I can get things I'm thinking of into perspective, while New York, well, some of my best songs were written there. It's great in that it gives you 360-degree vision, New York, 

    The New Harrison album, Extra Texture (Read All About It) -- out next week-- is historic because it marks the end of Apple as a label. The album comes out under the banner Apple/ Capitol/ EMI, and Harrison feels a twinge of sentiment about the winding up of Apple as a recording force.

    "Our incidental and perhaps sentimental point for us is that it looks like it could be the last Apple record forever, unless somebody else forms a company called Apple," he said. "Paul's already done a deal for his future, which put him on Capitol for the world. Good luck, Paul. It doesn't look like Ringo or John will be doing another album this year. So I look like being the last one on Apple. Funny, the first Apple record was the music from Wonderwall, which I wrote -- quite a coincidence."

Regrets, he'd had a few:

     "Yeah, I feel a bit of sentiment about it, because Apple did a few good things. You know, we were always bugged by business, though, right from the start. And business, as opposed to the artistic side, is always a problem for everybody. 

    Me, I  was never really interested in Apple shops or anything else. During the whole Apple period, I was always mainly interested in working in the studio, recording. John, Paul, and Ringo would have some great ideas, but at that time, I couldn't be bothered to follow through. I suppose my attitude didn't help. 

    "The business became an incredible headache. Everything that could go wrong for us with Apple went wrong, and yet it was a great boon for some people -- the Badfingers and the Billy Prestons of the world. It was crazy in the end, Apple, but it did give some good people an outlet. That's why I'm here now with Dark Horse Records. Apple didn't shake my faith that much. Good musicians are worth encouraging."

     George, for all his denials of interest, has a fairly shrewd business brain and was by far the most money-conscious Beatle, often quizzing Brian Epstein about where the cash was going. 

     Will Dark Horse then learn from Apple's disaster areas and become a thriving, long, life company? "Oh, yeah, definitely. There's still areas of business I can't be bothered with, and there's no way I could get bothered with some aspects of running the company without losing sight of what I was originally supposed to be-- a musician. All four Beatles were diverted from being musicians for such a long time through all the business problems of Apple, but now what all four of us are doing independently has gained from those experiences. 

    "We all make mistakes. Apple was a very big one, perhaps, but that's what life's all about. You learn from your experiences."

     So what's the fundamental aim of Dark Horse -- to champion new talent as well as make money? "Yes", he says quickly. "That's what all record companies are about. New talent is the strength of any label." But he was quick to add that John and Paul's New York Press Conference in 1968, launching Apple and saying 'The door was open for all new worthwhile talent', had catastrophic results. He wanted to stress that while Dark Horse was looking for talent, its attitude wasn't so philanthropic as Apple had been. 

    "Remember, the basic thought behind Apple in those days was that we resented marvelous musicians or singers having to go to the very big established record companies and go down on their knees. That's what we, the Beatles, had to do with EMI, and so we said the first thing we'd do when we got a bit of money would be to try to beat this part of the system at least, So many really good musicians had told us they couldn't get a break making any records, and it got us furious.  But our open-door policy proved impossible to run. We were flooded with every person imaginable who could play an instrument or sing a note! We had to clamp down on that because Apple just became a lunatic asylum.

"So Dark Horse will be run pretty tightly.  I don't want to be a Kinney or an RCA or anything like that. I don't have 1000s of artists. In one way, it's similar to the ideas behind Apple in that most artists we've got at the moment have come into my life without me looking for them. That's the funny thing. The friendship thing comes in quite strongly for me, and it works both ways round. 

    "For instance, Jim Keltner didn't want to tell me about his band because he didn't like the idea of using his friendship to get his band a gig. So I got to sign Keltner's band from meaning the piano player, which is mighty crazy when you consider the friendship between Keltner and me, and the fact that all those albums ago, I was putting 'Jim Keltner Fan Club' on my album sleeve. He was hesitant about coming to see me for a gig!

     "There's a certain amount of talent that circulates around, and okay, it's commercial, some of it, but I'm not signing anything, just thought it's being commercial. Basically, those people who join Dark Horse are important to me. Maybe in some ways, a little more than music, because I wouldn't like to get involved with somebody who's just a fantastic singer or something, but I personally don't like. Some record companies have a bunch of artists whom they really don't like as people, then it creates all this bad feeling. But I must have decent and friendly relationship with the artist."

     Five acts are due to issue albums on Dark Horse in the next month. Splinter who have already scored some success have a new album produced by George's friend, the noted American leader, Tom Scott. Java, a California-based quartet whose album is produced by Stuart Levine, who worked with Minnie Riperton and the Crusaders; a new American band called Attitudes, featuring Jim Keltner on drums, guitar ace Danny Kootch, who has played regularly on James Taylor records and concerts. Paul Stallsworth, bass and vocals, and pianist David Foster. Henry McCullough, former cohort of Paul McCartney and Wings, who has now formed his own band, Stairsteps; a group of four black musicians from New York whose debut album is produced by Bob Margouleff, synthesizer programmer on Stevie Wonder records.

     Harrison is unlikely to veer towards today's fashion and music when seeking to add names to his roster. Unlike his contemporaries, who felt they had to make the scene with statements about the state of pop in the embryonic '60s, George was merely a staunch Tamela Motown supporter who later went Indian, and that was just about that. "I'm still basically in favor of the thing I liked in the old days, Smokey Robinson, Stevie, wonder, those sorts of things. No, I've never even been interested in Black Sabbath. Heavy metal? Oh, that's what they call it? Oh no. 

    In some ways, I feel I'm out of touch, particularly with what's going on in America. There's still a chance of picking up something fresh and interesting, possibly because the industry is much bigger, making it less likely for these groups to form cliques. England does tend to get very clicky as far as I can see. To tell you the truth, I still never heard the Bay City Rollers."

     He did add that he would like to hear them, just to form his own opinion. "But I must say, I'm not all that keen on the Slades and the Muds. I think out of the English people I've heard so far, the best one probably is not so commercial, though, is Peter Skellers. He reminds me of Harry Nilsson, full of potential. In fact, I just played one of his new tracks, "Make Love, Not War".

 Do you ever play Beatles albums, George? 

    "No, I haven't played one for years."

    How do you remember them when you look back?

     "The Beatles? Oh, I think the Beatles were, or are, (long pause), very good. One of the points everyone should remember about the Beatles is that we did work hard, you know, and we made a point of trying to broaden our own experiences on our own, to overcome as many limitations as we could. And there were quite a few restrictions in those days, like four-track recordings and all that sort of thing. And we used to play in those huge places with 30-watt amplifiers. I think the Beatles generally were very, very good. On reflection, the music was okay, and we kept improving. But then, you know, the days were different. The musicians around today have so much more to listen to. They're bound to end up sounding different because they're exposed to so much, not so much innocence around now. Probably trying to come through and make its mark. 

(60s musicians talk of groups. 70s musicians refer to bands.) 

Individually, though, how do John, Paul, George, and Ringo stand up to comparison with the Beatles?

     His answer was slow and deliberate. "I suppose to look at each one of us individually now. Even if we were rated as big solo artists, each one of us may not be as heavy as the Beatles were collectively, but at the same time, no less heavy than any heavies who are around. We probably didn't even realize ourselves how heavy we were. I mean, it's only now, when you study the documentaries, that you realize how big it all was. At the time, we were going through it, and we were cut out from so much."

     But he stressed that he liked what the Beatles stood for, today, even if at the time, he had reservations about the life they led, being buffeted from hotel room to concert hall to airplane. "The Beatles did put out great songs, good music, good innovative stuff, all the way. We knew our next album would sell a lot just because it said 'Beatles' on the front. But it didn't stop us trying. The albums went up in levels of improvement.  Musically,  even though I haven't much desire to relive it, it stands up pretty well. I should imagine. The Fab Four fan club -- Great!"

     Did he feel competitive towards the other three, and that each was trying to prove a solo point?

     "No, I don't think so. I'm always pleased when the other three do something good. We were always a little bit attached to each other. We all naturally watch what the others are up to --  and not very easy. now John's got himself locked into the States.

     Does the label of an ex-Beatle hanging around his neck for the rest of his life worry him, as he was the least enthusiastic Beatle and always sought stature apart from the fame?

     "I didn't like it, no. That was the point when we all split up, when we grew older and realized the restrictions from every point of view -- as people and as musicians. The only thing I have against being an ex anything is that it doesn't give me much thought to the present. That's all. I mean, I'd rather be an ex-Beatle than an ex Nazi! But more than anything, I'd rather just be here now, not so much as an ex.

     Was it, then, the teenagers' adulation, which finally drove the Beatles apart, for it was certainly George Harrison's pet hate.

     "It was nice at first, but the mania seemed to get out of proportion. That wasn't what I was looking for. Some people like that sort of thing. I like to be successful and popular. But then there comes a point when it's unhealthy that people think you're something you're not, and the next thing is that these fans get out on a trip and limit what you may be, in their eyes. You know, it's just a concept they create, a concept of what you are, and then they start the bit that says, 'Aw, they're not what they used to be.'

    "Well, I used to say this, and I say it again now, we might not have been what we used to be. What those fans mean is we're not what THEIR concept thought we were. People put you into a pigeon hole, and you've got to fight your way out of it for their good as well as your own. All I ever wanted from that scene was to remain an individual, and of course, being a Beatle placed a severe restriction on individuality in the eyes of those screaming fans."

     It came as some surprise then when George, last year, went on the road in America. His concert tour there brought him a very mixed reception, and it was as different from Beatlemania as he could have wanted. Not every show was a sellout. He lost his voice. George, being George, concentrated on songs from his new hard-to-take album, rather than the Beatles songs the crowd demanded. There were reports of sloppy stagecraft and a buck stopping firmly with Harrison, whose show it was.  America remains the world capital of Beatlemania to this day, and not even the national hobby of Lennon-baiting can extinguish the love of the All-American Beatles fan. They're the most devoted breed of all. And for George to fall foul on a tour there would be a serious blow to both him and those loyal millions. 

    What happened then, George? How come your vocals on your new album are so strong and positive, but your voice packed up on that crucial tour?

    " It's very simple. Right before the tour, I'd been working day and night, doing so many things, like organizing the Ravi Shankar Music Festival at the Albert Hall and trying to finish my last album. Then I flew straight from that to Los Angeles and started rehearsing for the tour. And really, during one period of time I'd never sang so much. I just wore my throat out. There simply wasn't enough time, and the schedule I'd given myself was too tight to allow for a rest. Between the album and the Ravi Shankar thing and the tour of the States, the only solution was to rest. You can gargle and not speak and all that. But rest was the only answer, and there was no way you can rest in the middle of a seven week tour.

     "At the same time, I quite liked it. You know, some nights are always easier than other nights, and I suffered on some of them more others. I might have been the odd one out, but I quite liked my voice. It sounded like Louis Armstrong a bit. But anyway, tiredness, that's what caused it. My voice got better toward the end of the tour. It was the start that was weak.

    " And anyway, my vocals were only just a small part of what was going on, which was so amazing. Great musicians! So the voice thing, okay, I was up front. I remember I had to make all the announcements as well and put the show together, which means a load of talking as well as singing. But everybody goes on about me and my voice that wasn't there. That was a minor problem. I was wiped out, tired, and it wasn't there. Never had a chance to sleep properly. So it took a long time to come back.

     "Also, in the old days, when I used to tour with The Beatles, I never used to sing that much. The whole show we did went for 30 minutes!" ( George was talking here of the package shows which placed the Beatles on the top of a bill comprising four or five acts. By the time The Beatles came on stage, the crowd's roar was so deafening that it mattered not whether they sang or played a note. It was this non-importance attached to music which displeased George),

    " 30 minutes in the old days, and if we were pushed, we could get that down to 18 minutes by going fast. So not one of us sang solidly at all. No chance of voices cracking up on a Beatles tour. It was the  fans who risked that.

     "But you know, on this tour of the States, I did two shows a night for three hours a time, doing lead vocals most of the time, apart from Billy Preston's few tunes and the Tom Scott tunes and the Indian section, then all the talking, I'll know better next time to to be fit."

     Next time will probably be next year. George firmly denied rumors that he would tour Britain in the foreseeable future. Still, he spoke of his plan to revisit Los Angeles when his Dark Horse label gets properly rolling there. He may tour with some of the artists in his company, particularly Attitudes and Stairsteps, to do an American Dark Horse tour. A British tour was not on the horizon. The environment was wrong, and the hassles would be mountainous. Interesting to reflect on the coming Wings tour of Britain: Paul McCartney always a crowd pleaser, aims straight at the core, while George's thinking has always been less immediate commercial, more concerned with the finer points of musicianship.

     The Dark Horse --was the song and label title, autobiographical? I'm a dark horse running on a dark race course...

     "Well, yeah, the song came to me just early one morning when I was sitting by the fire in Henley, and I thought 'I'd write a song', and I just thought of Dark Horse in relation to Liverpool, which was running through my mind at that moment. When I was a kid there, I always remember them saying, 'You'll never believe that Mrs. Jones, she's running around with Mr. Badger. You know, she's a dark horse.' I thought, 'Hmm, dark horse and your sing that line for a song, but you can't say that. It's silly'

    . The next day, I woke up and I wrote all the lyrics while having breakfast at tea time, which is always a good situation for writing a song, I find. I went straight from writing it to the studio and recorded it straight away, although I later re-recorded it over as a live version, which was the one on the album. But now the lyrics seem to make more sense; the best line of the song, which is the most important, is 'running on a dark race course'.

     "So while the first line is very English and might be taken as an admission to something, the second line means the whole situation is pretty shady. In America, I found out that a dark horse is one who, particularly in horse racing, they never thought stood a chance or never stood any notice of. Read what you like into songs. People make a hobby of it. 

    "Then, when I started to reassemble my business life, a business manager of mine asked me for a name for my publishing company. And I said, 'I can't think of anything. You do it.' And he said, 'How about one of your songs?' So I said, 'Okay, Dark Horse.' So then I got carried along with the whole thing. Started looking everywhere for horses for the logo. I found the logo on a tin of paint in India. The problem was that it was going the wrong way and was white. But basically, the horse itself was good. I bought the tin of paint back, cleaned it up, got an artist to redesign it so it would run around the record going this way. I made it dark. His belt buckle bears a dark horse insignia."

     It was George who fed the other three Beatles with propaganda about the famous Maharishi and transcendental meditation, a phase most trendy rock musicians went through in 1967.  Yes, Harrison still meditates occasionally. "In retrospect, that was probably one of the greatest experiences I've ever had. There was a program on TV the other night about meditation, and it's funny for me, having meditated a lot, and now watching them all see the meditators trying to prove scientifically that meditation is of value. They get involved in doing all these experiments and testing people. But I can tell you and them all that's a waste of time because it's only through experiencing it that you can realize what it does, and it is such value.

    On the other hand, Maharishi was always put down for propagating what was basically a spiritual thing, but there's so much being propagated, that's damaging to life, that I am glad there are good people around like him and others who try to give something which is a practical value to the individual."

     George said he prayed. But as for considering himself heavily religious, "maybe compared to the average pop star I am, but compared to what I should be, I am a heathen."

     There again, he wouldn't willingly be compared with an average pop star. "I just want to keep on improving as a musician, writing better and better songs, running a good little record label that encourages musicians, and Bob's your uncle. Beatles were an important point in all of our lives, but it was yesterday."

The year Marta Fernandez Muro met the Beatles

 

The year Marta Fernández Muro met the Beatles

By Boquerini.

https://www.elcorreo.com/

January 11, 2019

It wasn't a chance encounter, but a desired and sought-after one. Actress Marta Fernández Muro was 15 years old in the summer of 1965, when the Beatles performed in Madrid. And Marta, a true Beatlemaniac, was in row 2 of the Plaza de Las Ventas, where they played on July 2nd. Not only that, but she went to Barajas Airport, along with her sisters Teresa, Blanca, and María Jesús, to welcome them on the plane that brought them from Paris. However, there, the police (the "greys" in the terminology of the time) made things very difficult for them, as they prevented them from entering, and she could only see Ringo through the car's window, which was hurrying them out

of the airport.

When the four from Liverpool planned their 1965 European tour, no one expected them to play in Spain . Franco's regime prevented any sign of modernity. Although their albums sold well, their first film, 'A Hard Day's Night!', had done very well, and they were frequently played on the radio,

in general, their long hair was talked about more than their music.

Promoter Paco Bermúdez had to endure arduous negotiations with the then-Ministry of the Interior to obtain authorization for two concerts (shows, as they were then called), one in Madrid and one

in Barcelona. After a back-and-forth, the tour was allowed, on the condition that the hysteria and unruliness of the fans that had occurred in New York months earlier, which had caused so much talk, wouldn't happen.

A music magazine of the time, Fonorama, attempted to charter a bus to take 50 fans to Barajas to welcome the Beatles, but the authorities refused. At a time when there were no buses, and certainly no Metro, connecting Madrid with the airport, many Beatles fans walked the 6 kilometers to Barajas, dreaming of seeing their idols up close. And the wealthier ones, by taxi or private car.

And so, on July 1st, the day before the performance, Marta Fernández Muro, along with her sisters and a few hundred fans, were on the airport terrace, ready to greet Paul, John, George, and Ringo with shouts and applause. However, the police cleared the terrace and the passenger exit,

preventing anyone from occupying the area.

More police than attendees

The Beatles stayed in suites 111 and 112 of the Hotel Fénix in Madrid's Plaza de Colón. There,

they held their only press conference before a dozen authorized journalists, who asked them

questions like, "When are you going to get a haircut? and "Do you know who Manuel Benítez, "El Cordobés," is? " They also posed for photographers signing some barrels of sherry that had been hastily installed in the hotel—a marketing operation, given that at the time there was an

international dispute over the name Jerez, or Sherry, as the British called it, claiming they were

different things, which they ultimately lost in court. And nothing better than seeing the four from Liverpool, who had just been awarded as Members of the British Empire, signing the barrels

of sherry.

The following day, July 3rd, was the performance at Las Ventas, where there were more police than people trying to get in. Tickets ranged from 75 to 400 pesetas at the time , which was really

expensive for young people. To justify the price, there were a large number of opening acts, except for Los Pekenikes, a group of the time, who had nothing to do with young music. The presenter

of the gala was Torrebruno , and among the attendees, who filled just over half the venue, were

figures from the world of music and film such as Miguel Ríos, Micky, Massiel, Pilar Miró, and Rocío Dúrcal , as well as Marta Fernández Muro, who, with a friend, was able to watch them from row 2, on the chairs placed on the sand of the bullring. The background of the stage was a

curtain on which the Puerta de Alcalá was drawn. The performance, which began after the endless opening acts at 10:10 p.m., didn't go down in history, although the real spectacle, more than on

stage, was in the audience. Days later, Edgar Neville wrote: "There were so many police officers that one more could have taken Gibraltar." Marta Fernández Muro would recall years later that those who attended the concert "were a bit of an object of ridicule, like saying 'look at those girls, how stupid,' when on the contrary, it was us who were doing well, not the rest of

humanity. "

The press barely covered it: "Fortunately, Beatlemania failed," some media outlets headlined. Television completely ignored the event. El Nodo prepared a report on the visit for a supplement called 'Images' that supplemented the newscast 'available to all Spaniards' in some movie theaters. It was produced by filmmakers Pedro Costa and Francesc Bellmunt, but censorship prohibited its

release. Only a one-minute news report was allowed on El Nodo. ​​In the 1990s, some footage of The Beatles in Spain, which had been forgotten in El Nodo's archives, was recovered. Pedro Costa then made a magnificent one-hour documentary entitled 'The Beatles Are Coming!' which was broadcast on Spanish television and can be found on this page.