JOHN LENNON RECORDING SESSIONS 1971

I still love John Lennon and the Beatles. Call me an unrepentant hippie, call me a geezer and a baby boomer (though I'm on the young side of that bulge), call me a damn peace freak and a lefty liberal (and proud of it) call me anything you want, but I'm still a fan of the Fab Four. Not that you asked, but my favorite Beatle was always John. When I discovered this film of him recording the "Imagine" album I flipped.

"Imagine" was the first--and only--number one pop song to ask people to imagine a world without religion and countries and possessions. "Nothing to kill or die for, above us only sky." In spite of the beautiful melody, Lennon remained the rabble rouser. No wonder Richard Nixon and his coven of Republican warmongers tried to have him deported. (Check out the documentary, The U.S. vs. John Lennon). If some deranged nut hadn't killed him, I'm sure John would still be fighting for peace and justice, and not like some dull peacenik but with all the wise-cracking wit and talent at his command--and he'd still be making great music. Imagine a world without hand guns. It's easy if you try.


"Gimme Some Truth" by John Lennon

I'm sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

I've had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of Tricky Dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
Money for dope
Money for rope

I'm sick to death of seeing things
From tight-lipped, condescending, mama's little chauvinists
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth now

Lennon didn't pull any punches. He didn't candy-coat his message. From the moment he first stepped into the Ed Sullivan studio, through the touring Beatle years and the studio Beatle years, through the solo albums, and the times he was hounded by the FBI for being an anti-war protester, to the moment he was killed outside the Dakota Hotel, John Lennon represented truth. Raw, un-processed, un-auto-tuned truth. People might want to strip him of his crankiness, his lefty politics, his fierce honesty, and make him into a simple hitmaker, but that's missing the point.



"Isolation" by John Lennon

BEATLEMANIA STRIKES AGAIN!

With a brand new musical game, Beatles: Rock Band, and their entire catalog remastered, the Beatles strike again. All you need is love, and all it takes is money--and a good stereo--to experience these old recordings cleaned up like never before.




It's a brand new Beatles blitz with the release of the Beatles: Rock Band (a musical game) and the upcoming remixes (I'm already in line for seconds) but as time passes and the historical context recedes are we losing an important part of the story? Sure, the music is the thing, and I'm sick of maudlin boomer nostalgia, but the Fabs were more than just purveyors of brilliant pop. They shook the culture up.

The Beatles catalog, digitally remastered for the first time since the original CD releases, arrives in stores Sept. 9.

"Audiophiles have long lamented the thin, shrill results of the music's 1987 transfer to CD, flaws magnified by advances in digital technology that enriched the recordings of peers with repeated remastering rounds," says USA Today.

The LA Times says, "In general, the music sounds like an aural scrim has been lifted. Everything has become cleaner, fuller, the dynamic range -- the difference between the loudest and softest sounds -- has been expanded, vocals sound more immediate."

NEW BEATLES SONG

Call me an old geezer, but something new from the Beatles is a cause for celebration, innit? The new song, Now and Then, will delight Beatle people, but mystery shrouds the project like potsmoke on St. Mark's Place. Some call it a hoax.

Not so, says Paul McCartney, and he is anxious to release it.


According to MOG, "It was rumored that when Yoko gave Paul the demos of "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love" that were polished up later by Paul, George and Ringo for The Beatles Anthology sets in the mid-90's, she also gave Paul a third demo."

That demo was a Lennon composition called "Now and Then." After some work by the remaining bandmembers, here is the polished result.

What do you think? Is it real, or something to get hung about? Have a spot of tea and give it a listen:



Paul also wanted to release the unheard ‘Carnival of Light’, a 14-minute composition, but Harrison was against the plans.

I MET THE WALRUS

In 1969, 14-year-old Beatles fanatic Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced him to do an interview. 38 years later, Levitan, director Josh Raskin and illustrator James Braithwaite created an animated film using the original recording as the soundtrack. "I Met the Walrus" was nominated for the 2008 Academy Award for Animated Short.

THE BEATLES REUNION & REMASTERS

The closest we'll ever get to a Beatles reunion happened last Saturday night, when Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr rocked the house at David Lynch's "Change Begins Within" concert at Radio City Music Hall. These clips from a fan's video camera capture some of the magic. Sorry we missed that show!


On top of this "Beatles reunion," there is good news about the original recordings. Apple Corps and EMI announced they will be reissuing the Beatles' albums with improved sound. Fans have always complained that the original 1987 CD releases could be vastly improved. While waiting for an official re-release, pirate producers such as "Dr. Ebbetts" and "Purple Chick" released remarkable jobs of their own. We only hope the remasters are as good as these outlaw versions circulating among collectors.


The New York Times reports:

"After watching the Beatles’ company, Apple Corps, devote the last few years to developing a site-specific show in Las Vegas, a video game and a line of pricey memorabilia, Beatles fans are finally getting something they’ve been demanding for at least the last decade: sonically upgraded reissues of the group’s original British albums, in stereo and mono. Apple Corps and EMI announced on Tuesday that the much-postponed remasters would be released on individual stereo CDs and in two boxed sets — one stereo, the other mono — on Sept. 9, the same day the Beatles edition of Rock Band, the music video game, is scheduled for release."



From Rolling Stone:

"On September 9, 2009, after a nearly 22-year wait, digitally remastered versions of all of the Beatles studio albums will be released, a press release has confirmed. Each album will feature the track listings and artwork as it was originally released in the U.K. and come with expanded booklets including original and newly written liner notes and rare photos. For a limited time, each of the Fab Four’s 12 proper albums will be “embedded” with a brief documentary about its making. The re-releases will include the Beatles’ 12 studio albums and Magical Mystery Tour as well as Past Masters Vol. I and II, which will be packaged as one collection. All 14 discs will be available with DVDs of the documentaries in a stereo box set, and a set titled The Beatles in Mono featuring 10 discs will also be released."


And now...Part 2 of Paul and Ringo's show last Saturday night...



Read the rest of the NYT story here.

LET IT BE

I read the news today, oh boy. Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have stopped the release of the Beatles film 'Let It Be'.

The 1970 documentary reveals tensions between the Fab Four - Paul, Ringo and the late John Lennon and George Harrison - shortly before their break-up, and insiders at the band's record company, Apple, claim the two surviving members do not want it re-released.

(Sorry...the "Let it Be" film has been removed) For educational purposes only, we present the film in it's entirety. As unrepentant Beatles fans who bought every album and movie, and happily forked out dough for the "Love" show in Las Vegas, we think you should see this--with all due respect to Paul and Ringo, it's part of the story. They should release the film.

SOMETHING SPECIAL

SHEA STADIUM, 1965. The Beatles flew into New York City on August 13th, 1965 to begin a tour of the United States. On August 14th they rehearsed and recorded a live tape at CBS studios to be shown on the Ed Sullivan Show later that evening. Throughout the city, the excitement was palpable. The Beatles were in town! The following day, August 15th, they officially opened the US tour with a concert at Shea Stadium, home of the New York Mets.

This was an amazing show. The boys were in top form. The fans screamed and fainted and were carried away by New York's Finest. This was the first time in the history of pop music that a stadium was used for a rock concert! 55,600 adoring fans witnessed rock history. The take at the box office was a record $304,000 -- of which the Beatles took a whopping $160, 000!


Happy Birthday, Bekki!

DRINK UP, HONEY!

Remember these guys? A while back, we did a story about a scientific study of Beatles memories (to reread it, click here). Here is a chance to participate in the study, to add your own Beatle memories -- and read the memories of others. It's kind of cool.
http://www.magicalmemorytour.com/

BEATLES FIXER STAYS MUM

Neil Aspinall, who was everything from road manager to Mr. Fix-it to the Beatles (and is shown here with McCartney and Lennon) died yesterday at 66. These past forty years, when it seems everyone connected to the Beatles has written a bestselling tell-all autobiography, Neil, who had been a childhood friend of Paul and George, and was with the Fab Four from the early days to the end of Apple Corps, kept mum. As always, Neil remains the perfect gentlemen.

Read the article in the Guardian here.

RUTLEMANIA

A Rutles reunion? Amazing but true! It's hard to convey the thrill of the first Rutles performance on the Ed Sullivan Show back in 1964. They tore the roof off the place. If you were a kid in that era, you know what I mean. Now, it's very possible these four lovable moptops are getting back together again. You heard it here first.


Click here for an interview with Eric Idle.
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20184381,00.html

BEATLES MAGICAL MEMORY TOUR

Scientists at Leeds University are asking people to recall their Beatles memories as part of a study to better understand how musical memories help shape a person's identity. If you're like me, you've got plenty of Beatles memories, and memories linked to Beatles music. They're part of the soundtrack of growing up in the 1960s and 70s for all of us, but if you were a fan, they were even more important. I can remember getting the albums as they were released, one by one, and learning them by heart, while my uncles said they looked like girls with those crazy haircuts, and they just made noise. "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" This was well before Sinatra covered "Something," and won over the so-called Greatest Generation with a Beatles tune.



For those of you who missed it, either being born too early or too late, it's hard to convey the doors these Liverpudlians opened for us kids to jump through. There were other groups, of course, some really great, but these guys set the standard. Hell, they created the standard as far as pop combos are concerned. The rock and roll of the fifties had died out, and there were hordes of phony teen idols, Fabians and the like, filling the void after Elvis went into the Army and emerged reconditioned like McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. No hope there. Television was full of squares and blandos like Pat Boone in his white bucks, snoozers like Andy Williams, old crooners from Vegas, and the champagne music of Lawrence Welk, which was piped into living rooms and filling retirement home dancefloors with processed cheese. In that cultural gridlock, the Beatles sprang from nowhere (England?) loud and exciting and obviously having a good time doing it! They were clever lads who wrote and played great music, and the kids got it immediately.

Watching this clip from August of 1965, of the Beatles playing Shea Stadium, will undoubtedly bring back memories for some of you. For more about the Leeds University study of the music memory, click here.

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of its first space mission -- the launch of the Explorer 1 satellite -- NASA will be using its system of huge antennas normally used for listening to the cosmos to send a signal into space: the John Lennon song, "Across the Universe." The song was recorded forty years ago by the Beatles, on February 4, 1968.

Dr. Seth Shostak of the SETI Institure which has been monitoring space for signs of life beyond earth since 1984, says “Proof of our existence is already out there,” Dr. Shostak noted, “that’s simply a fact.” Scientists have found evidence of 270 planets of other stars, and though most are unlikely to support life there is a very real possibility something is out there somewhere. Hopefully, it will enjoy the Beatles. Who knows? This may kick off a cosmic wave of Beatlemania. Deep Space Number 9? Number 9?


According to the New York Times (2-2-08), "Reception will be best in the general direction of Polaris, 431 lightyears away, which is where NASA is aiming the signal. (That would be the North Star to us laymen.)" So if you happen to be out in deep space on Monday, February 4th, tune in around 4PM PST. This also happens to be the birthday of my girlfriend Wendy, a Beatle fan and my favorite alien. I dedicate this post to her.

Jai guru deva om.

click button for "Across the Universe."

JOHN LENNON (1940-1980)

27 years ago, on December 8th, 1980, John Lennon was shot and killed. Maybe you remember hearing the news. I was painting a big blue canvas when a cousin called, telling me that Howard Cosell had interrupted the football game to say John Lennon was shot. Shot and killed? Yeah. I called friends. I called the local rock radio station for confirmation. I spoke with a distraught rock deejay. "Play the Beatles' Christmas messages," I told him. "That would be a great way to remember John." Every year, the Beatles sent out a flexy disc of holiday greetings and horseplay to their fan club, and I happened to have a copy. The deejay did not.


My sister Bekki and I raced to the radio station in Southeast Portland, and the deejay dubbed the Beatle messages on a big reel-to-reel tape recorder. We sat quietly in the sound-proof room and listened to the joyous voices of the Beatles going out over the airwaves.
On the way home, we stumbled upon a candlelight vigil in the city park blocks. Broadsided with the terrible news, people had come out to light candles, play guitars, and sing Beatle songs. If you were a fan, in real time, you understand their great sense of loss. If not, you probably wonder what the fuss was all about. After all, people die everyday, right?

To help explain, here's a good article from the huffington post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-lewis/salute-to-john-lennon_b_75923.html

To hear an actual Beatles Christmas message from 1967, please click the red button.

MISSING PHOTOGRAPH OF NIGEL WALLEY

Stolen from a school desk and missing for fifty years, a picture of 17-year old Nigel Walley was recently discovered. In the photo, a smiling Walley wears a heavy camel hair coat while walking down Lime Street in Liverpool, in 1958, with his friend John Lennon, also 17.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article2581301.ece