2012; I am planning a number of blog posts this year, with two key ones. The Ballad of John about Lennon’s contribution to the Beatles will complete the quartet on Ringo’s Skins, Paul’s Bass and George’s Weeps. The second key post will be about The Beatles in Hamburg. I visited Hamburg recently and gathered a lot of information about their experiences there from visiting the Reeperbahn, the Grosse Freiheit and The Beatles Museum; fascinating stuff. As the Beatles Live 1957-63 is the single most popular post on this blog (now with over 10,000 reads) I am hoping I can add to and deepen the discussion of the Beatles formative time in Germany between 1960-62. I will also continue the review of Beatles album with a discussion of Love, having seen the show in Vegas.

2011 Surprised by how marvellous the Martin Scorsese film Living In the Material World was on The Beatles I completed 3 posts about George Harrison’s role in The Beatles in 2011. In line with my view that The Beatles display a “Group Genius“, that is they exist best as John, Paul, George and Ringo, my view was that George had a very clear, and crucial, role in expanding their musical palette. George was critical in making the White Album happen in the deep and complex form in which it finally emerged. He brought Paul’s rambling and misconceived Get Back project to a conclusion as Let It Be by drafting in Billy Preston on organ. George’s own Beatles contributions peaked on Abbey Road with Something and Here Comes The Sun whilst he stockpiled rejected songs on which The Beatles passed; Not Guilty. I think I captured George’s contribution best in the Beatle George post - Not Guilty; 

Apple 2011; Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the Lennon and McCartney of home computers, and who named their company, in part, in tribute to the Beatles, finally realised their ambitions of getting The Beatles on iTunes and they have continued to promote their favourite bands’ music; stay tuned, and thanks for reading.

Back in the U.S.A; WordPress kindly provides me with an annual review of this blog in 2011. It is a nice statistically summary which lets me know, as you can also see from the blog Clustr Map, that the majority of my readers come from the USA. As a Brit based in London, but who used to live in Boulder, Colorado, I find it immensely satisfying that my readership is from another country; especially one that appreciates The Beatles, their music and their impact on popular culture more than my own. Thank You! And keep reading / listening.

Martin Scorsese’s marvellous 2-part documentary on George Harrison, Living In The Material World, aired on the BBC in the Arena Arts documentary series. Part One, up until 1969, was on Saturday November 12th at 9.45 on BBC2. If you like The Beatles this is as good a documentary on their career as any film made so far, even Anthology, lasts for 95 minutes, and George is still a Beatle at the end of it.  

Living in the Material World Pt2; Showed on Sunday November 13th at 9.00pm because it is 2 hours and 5 minutes long and covers all of George’s solo career. I saw the show at FACT in Liverpool and was really impressed by Scorsese’s work in presenting old material afresh, getting original interviews and finding out-takes that had been missed or ignored. I reviewed it positively here, and there is a really thoughtful review by Scouse blogger That’s How The Light Gets In gives a slightly dyspetic but honest local review of the film. Both reviews are worth reading but if you missed the films on TV you should get the DVD, well worth the money. If you want my  full analysis of George’s time with the Beatles then you should like Beatle George where I discuss his role as the hidden musical director of the Beatles.

Top of the Pops was the premiere pop music show on British television during the sixties and seventies. It wasn’t as cool as Ready Steady Go, it wasn’t as prescient as Oh Boy, or as early as 6.5 Special. What gave it the premiere position was that it was on BBC TV at 7pm on a Thursday evening. If you were a fun-seeking popster, or teen, or adolescent, you no longer had to catch bands on odd programmes, like Crackerjack. Suddenly pop music was all bundle up in one place just as we started buying televisions as a nation. Most importantly of all it created passionate conversations in the school playground on a Friday morning and drove us to buy records right away!

Jimmy Saville, who has just passed away,  and is lying in state in a gold coffin, was a nutter from Leeds & the the first DJ on the first BBC Top of The Pops on January 1st 1964.  It was broadcast from a converted church in Manchester (Rusholme) and, planned to last for 6 shows, ran for 40 years. Jimmy Saville was the King of Bling in the early sixties, arguably the first Brit DJ and just the shock jock to make Top of the Pops, based on his Teen & Twenty Disc Show on Radio Luxembourg a hit.  The BBC werent very committed to it, as Jimmy put it; “The BBC had a studio in Manchester [on Dickenson Road] which was a disused church and, anything they didn’t want to do in London, they slung up into this old church.” Even so the irrepressible Saville introduced the opening track to us ‘guys and gals’ and created a broadcasting phenomenon. Written by The Beatles, but played by Stones, ironically this is the first ever song I Wanna Be Your Man; 

The Beatles and Top of the Pops; It was The Beatles unprecedented, and unequalled, success in 1963 that lead to the BBC launching Top of The Pops. The timely release of their second album With The Beatles in November 1963, the  taster EP All My Loving, along with the epochal I Wanna Hold Your Hand meant that, instead of being a brief flash in the pan as predicted (“guitar groups are on the way out”), The Beatles established new norms in popular music. They had shaken up the Royal Variety Performance, had a good relationship with Granada TV and the BBC were missing out on a national phenomenon. When Top of the Pops started The Beatles had 5 records in the Top 20; 1 album With The Beatles at number 19, 2 singles in the Top 10 I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You and 2 EP’s Twist & Shout and Beatles Hits with Thank You Girl; 

Beatles EPs; Twist and Shout EP is the biggest selling EP ever and the highest placed in the charts. In 1963 it was the 4th largest selling record of any kind with 800,000 sales, and it was taken from an LP that had already been Number 1 for 10 weeks. One reason for its success is that LPs were very expensive in the early sixties, which accounts for the explosive sales of singles at that time. People, like me, who couldn’t afford the album settled for the EP. My mum bought it for me as a Christmas present which helped it reach Number 2 in the singles chart and kept it in the EP charts for 64 weeks. The Beatles legendary performance of Twist and Shout itself on the Royal Variety Performance meant it was, for a time, the most notorious song in the UK. However the EP also had mellow tracks on it like There’s A Place; 

The Beatles and Jimmy Saville; both made their name in the North of England, Liverpool and Leeds respectively, and met halfway in Manchester where Saville was a DJ (at the Oasis) and where The Beatles got their first TV exposure on Granada TV. Saville had become a DJ in 1947 buying two turntables and a microphone and inventing the ‘Wheels of Steel’ concept. Fast-talking, cigar-smoking and brash he invented “bling”, was larger than life and well capable of matching the Beatles wit. So much so that in the early sixties Brian Epstein employed him as the DJ on the Beatles Christmas Show; 

Meet With The Beatles; Released on November 22nd 1963 this became the biggest selling album of 1963 in just 6 weeks as it was a perfect Christmas present, for reasons of cost, celebrity and topicality. Consequently it reached number 11 on the singles charts and was mentioned on the very first Top of the Pops by Jimmy Saville and Samantha Juste as it was in that very first Top 20. All My Loving;

They Want to Hold Our Hands; Fortunately for the Beeb the opening show, was a mssive hit. People were fascinated by the mad Savile, delighted by his ‘dolly-bird’ assistant Samantha Juste and stimulated by seeing the teenagers in the audience. We all thought I could be there too, standing next to the Beatles (or the Stones or Dave Clark Five, or Who came next). The show always ended with the number 1 single in the UK, and so ended its first show, despite Savllle’s joyous attempts to upstage everybody, with the Beatles current number one single I Want to Hold Your Hand; 

So farewell then Jimmy Saville now you are 84 no more; and here are some tributes to him. ’How about that then, Guys and Gals?’ 

Martin Scorsese’s film about George Harrison, Living in the Material World, is a beautifully crafted confection of refreshingly unused archive footage alongside material that you know so well you’ve forgotten how to look at it. Scorsese grabs the material by the scruff of its visual neck and makes you marvel at it again; retelling afresh that wondrous tale about scouse upstarts from the provinces changing the world. It showed on HBO in the USA on October 5th & 6th, on BBC 2 Arena in the Autumn and has just been released on DVD and you should see it.

Just like No Direction Home(!) featuring Bob Dylan, Scorsese presents an old story using old material with intelligence and movie smarts, fired by his own passion for the music and personal affection for the protagonists. Allied with his long-established ability to create memorable musical documentaries, well he was a cameraman at Woodstock, he choreographs George’s own Last Waltz with skilful edits, unexpected links and new interviews. Scorsese has found unseen outtakes and previously rejected photographic stills, and links them to well-known clips of the Beatles where he often zooms in so tightly on them playing live that he creates a kind of grainy simulation of 3D, adding an unexpected immediacy to old stock. With both Harrison’s and the Beatles music digitally re-mastered he makes sure that the sound is fresh and loud, allowing him to present George Harrison to us anew, both visually and aurally, opening out fresh interpretations of the ‘quiet Beatle; quiet blunt apparently. 

Revealing interviews from Astrid Kirchherr, Klaus Voorman, Patti Boyd and especially Eric Clapton (“of course I wanted to be a Beatle” – he laughs) enables Scorsese to extract fresh insights; often about the interviewees themselves. Ringo is inimitable “I thought it was you three”, Paul has one eye on future history and half an eye on the past, curating his own anecdotes, Patti is guardedly open, Yoko gracious and Eric is at peace with his blues. Astrid and Klaus let us see how critical the early input of art-school creativity was into the developing Beatles project in Hamburg. Mind you Paul pulls out the best metaphor, how the Beatles were a perfect square and you needed all four of them for it to work; group genius. And what of “cocky” George Harrison, “raunchy” Beatles guitarist, conflicted spiritualist, died-in-the-wool scouser (or labskauser as they say in Hamburg) ultimately left with No Direction Home, peacefully adrift in the collapsing folly of Friar Park?

He made his own world and lived in it materially, spiritually and sexually; thank Krishna.

I watched Living in the Material World with Kevin Donovan in Liverpool at the FACT Cinema off Bold Street, following its premiere in London on Sunday. The cinema, a magnificent indie art house with fantastic sound – as Kevin said, great to *hear* the film in a real cinema – was full, and there was a lot of love and laughter in the audience. The film starts with a pre-amble of 3 short interviews, including one with Terry Gilliam making a deathly funny ‘Taxman’ joke, and then shifts to the WW2 blitz on Liverpool when George was born. Kevin, from Liverpool and of the Beatles generation, found the opening sequences deeply moving and they help contextualise George’s story and set up the film as being a story about recovering from war and changing the world in order that you could live in it with vitality, purpose and creativity. Gerry from Liverpool looks thoughtfully at George’s origins with greater depth than the film.

The film is in two parts and George is, as expected perhaps, still in the Beatles at the end of the first part; as Ringo says “I’ll probably die a Beatle.” This blog is about the Beatles extraordinary collective creativity so that is fine by me, but Scorsese cleverly builds up that story and allows George, whose greatest successes with the Beatles were at their end and as a solo artist at the beginning, roughly 1966-73, to emerge from the Beatles becoming his own man during this time.  And just to show how much he enjoyed it there is this marvellous sequence of George singing along in 1976 to an out-take of This Boy with a twinkling and far from gnomic countenance; here is This Boy; 

In Beatle George I make the case that George was both a key musical contributor throughout and, in many ways, The Beatles musical director from the White Album to their dissolution. Scorsese though positions George between Paul and John, initially Paul’s friend, later John’s confidante, through the quality of his lead guitar playing, exceeding that of both John and Paul; and always, according to Astrid, sensitive to them both. The Beatles first recorded composition was actually the Harrison and Lennon tribute to the English group The Shadows Cry For A Shadow 

In Living in the Material World Scorsese quite magnificently edits together the case that George was a singular man who dealt with whatever the world threw at him materially whilst being on a spiritual quest that helped him prepare for death, but that didnt stop him wanting to get his revenge on the Taxman in his time of dying. Nineteen for us then; Taxman 

Clapton One of the aspects that emerges is George’s close friendship with musical “god” Clapton and their shared Krishna consciousness. Some of George’s best songs have a Clapton input, Here Comes The Sun written in Clapton’s garden and the Weeping of the Gentle Guitar benefitting from Eric coming into the recording studio in order to kickstart The Beatles own disinterested playing on Guitar Gently Weeps; 

Hyper-kinetic Wonderwall he may be and so Scorsese keeps the story interesting throughout, the material fresh and the narrative open and evolving. If you like or love the Beatles this is essential viewing, if you are the least bit interested in George then it is fascinating. It is a great 4 hours of social and musical history, especially about the 60s & 70s, with Scorsese’s own interest in how boy gangs grow up and then move into broader social contexts, present throughout. And it is better than any of the fairly hackneyed reviews I’ve seen so far. Give the critics a miss and enjoy yourself I would say.

If you enjoyed this review, or if you like George, then you might like my take on his Beatle career, Beatle George.

The Group Genius known as TheBeatles means John, Paul, George & Ringo acting together in harmony to create and record great music. They became recording artists of distinction when, with the support of George Martin, they got their group songwriting, arranging and recording right with Please, Please Me; with the help of their friends. George Martin was moved to say, “gentlemen you have just recorded your first number 1.’ Curiously they had most of these elements in place, including three part harmonies, five years earlier when George Harrison passed the audition with Lennon on a bus back in 1957 by playing Raunchy. I first heard him in 1963 when a friend played me the Beatles first album Please Please Me and George sang Do You Want to Know a Secret?  

Back then we knew George as the lead guitarist in the breakthrough MerseyBeat group the Beatles; so we looked to what he was interested in as a guitarist. But George was unusual as a lead guitarist, he didnt play lead guitar lines, like Hank Marvin in the Shadows or, his later best friend, Eric Clapton in Cream. He played lead guitar in songs and helped amplify the quality of Lennon and McCartney compositions. And, just like John and Paul, he spent the fifties in love with Rock and Roll and, like them, helped overturn the classics. There is a playlist of this post on YouTube and this video has great pix of George; based on a live recording at the BBC with an interview by Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman. George can Roll Over Beethoven;  

George was thought to be the quiet one working out masterful guitar lines behind Beatle songs, but on the Beatles second album With The Beatles (Meet The Beatles in the USA) he gained his first songwriting credit (he had already written with Lennon and recorded the instrumental Cry For A Shadow  in 1960), perhaps hinting at being unhappy with the demands of fame, for Don’t Bother Me; 

Ironically the first time most of us saw he was a good singer was when we saw the film Hard Days Night when George got to sing a Lennon song in a typically inventive ‘video’ created by the the director Richard Lester. On the Hard Days Night album George was experimenting with the ‘jangly’ sound of the Rickenbacker guitar which was to inspire The Byrds. Written for George to sing as he still wasn’t confident in his abilities (who would be against John & Paul at their most prolific and who wrote all of this album?) this is both a great performance and video; I’m Happy Just to Dance With You;

George met Patti Boyd whilst filming Hard Days Night, and she was at his 21st birthday party in February 1964. George seems to have been sufficiently inspired by her to write some of his early, gentle love songs, as well as some his later more sophisticated songs. By the time of filming HELP! the follow up to Hard Days Night, he had a couple of love songs in his locker. The official video from HELP! has been taken down by Allen Klein, but here is a more appropriate video for this blog with pix of Patti and George on his rather plaintive and yearning song from the movie; I Need You; 

George had two songs on HELP! which, along with Beatles for Sale, represent for me the period when the Beatles were experimenting with what it meant to be recording musicians, trying out different instruments such as electric pianos and acoustic guitars, as well as various sound effects. This was George’s first song that ended up on a Beatles album even though it  hadn’t been featured in a film. Great images of George on this video for You Like Me Too Much; 

George was always quoted as saying that he found Rubber Soul and Revolver as a connected pair of albums both of which he really enjoyed making. Personally I think the Beatles changed massively between the two, but then George was a Beatle, so what do I know! Certainly his own work takes a big step forward on Rubber Soul so I think he means that it was on these two albums that he felt equal to Lennon and McCartney. Certainly he’s got a word or two for us, go where you are going to and dont follow leaders and Think For Yourself; 

Rubber Soul was positioned by Capitol as a folk-rock album to cash in on that music boom which, ironically, had been inspired by a combination of the Beatles Ed Sullivan performance and the Rickenbacker jangly sound George had brought to Hard Day’s Night. David Crosby, the musicological ‘Brian Jones’ of the Rickenbacker-driven Byrds, had introduced George to Ravi Shankar’s sitar music after George had discovered the instrument during the Indian restaurant scene in HELP!  On Rubber Soul he is perhaps more famous for his sitar work on Norwegian Wood but George was writing good folk-rock, featuring his distinctively clean guitar lines too, here is  If I Needed Someone; 

Now the breakthrough, Revolver. George writes the song that opens the Beatles greatest album, so great that Pitchfork magazine wont even hold a poll on the greatest album of the 60s as Revolver will win it hands down. Right from the ambiently cocky threat of the opening count-in this is a supremely confident rock band. So confident that Paul plays lead on George’s composition, Lennon’s just on back up vocal and Ringo’s drives four to the floor. Geoff Emerick mikes the bass with loudspeakers and really bottoms out the sound; whump! No messing with the cool guys in granny glasses; Taxman; 

Enter the Sitar; George was perhaps the most interested in music per se out of the Beatles and following his friendships with Dylan, Crosby and Clapton was now seeking out new musics and musical forms to play with and write about. You dont get time to hang your sign on me, pure semiotics! George wanted us to “make love singing songs’ anticipating the pure Summer of Love in 1967 with Love You To ;

George quit The Beatles after the traumatic summer world tour of 1966 when they were waiting to be either shot on stage in the USA, or arrested in the Phillipines. Being a Beatle was so mad so they coped by becoming Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band instead, giving them alt.identities to explore and play with. George went full on with his Indian links and rehearsed with the sitar for months before producing the musical lynch pin of the album, coming at the start of Side 2 after the giddy Mr Kite,  Within You Without You; 

George’s independence of mind and interest in Indian culture meant he spent time as Ravi Shankar’s pupil and through that interest in Indian culture he also became interested in a Guru, Maharaj Ji. When Epstein died the Beatles were with the Guru in Bangor and, to compensate, rushed of to make the film Magical Mystery Tour in just 24 days. Hated in the UK, where it was shown in black & white (!), but loved in the USA, here is George floating colourfully between the friends who have lost their way (Epstein and Sexy Sadie?) on Blue Jay Way;  

In the summer of 1968 as the Beatles worked on the 40 songs which would produced the 30 track White Album, Yellow Submarine the movie was released with four new Beatles tracks. At the time it was George’s track which impressed me the most, here is my story about seeing the film and hearing the song which my brother also loved sent us rushing out of the cinema in Harrogate with as big a buzz as Hard Days Night had done four years earlier. But as George says, Show me that I am everywhere and get me home for tea, which is pure Syd Barrett English rural psychedelia. This video is a fascinating aural remix of the mono and stereo versions (film version here) with info about the track starts 1′ 20″ in but it sounds great on headphones; Turn it up to 11 with It’s All Too Much; 

In May 68 all the Beatles went round to George’s house, Kinfauns and spent two days recording what I call The Beatles Unplugged (or From Kinfauns to Chaos as the video has it), 27 tracks sung and recorded acoustically as demos for “The Beatles”. George had taken them to Rishikesh, the exact opposite context to their 1966 Goldfish Bowl world tour, and they had become prolific in the Himalyan foothills of India, India, then he brought them home to his house and they prepped the album with acoustic guitars inspired by Donovan. This is George’s video diary of India with a soundtrack of one of the many unreleased Beatles tracks of the time,  Dehradun;  

George was now almost leading the Beatles musically whilst John and Paul set up Apple as Western Communism. He was the one finding ways of making the Beatles work when they were beset with the everyday management problems of losing Epstein whilst being at their musically most creative. He could even view life as a chocolate box and see mate Clapton as spoilt by his sweet tooth. Brilliant… Pass the chocolate box and take the piss George!  Savoy Truffle; 

When we first heard the White Album in November 1968 there was a split on what was the best track. At the time we always tried to find the Beatles album track which was good enough to be a single, and my choice was While My Guitar Gently Weeps. There are various version of this but, as Lennon would show in the Rolling Stones Rock n Roll Circus, bring in another musician and The Beatles would raise their game. So on guitar it’s both George and Eric on While My Guitar Gently Weeps;  

But George wasnt just rocking out with Eric, he was starting to write a great series of still under-rated songs, Not Guilty wasnt even on the album, nor Sour Milk Sea;  Long, Long, Long was but buried away. When the Remasters came out this was one of the 10 songs I reckoned most benefitted from being presented afresh. Gladly many George fans feel the same and here is a sadly resonant video tribute of so many tears to the late George Harrison by  beatlesholic as it really is now so Long, Long, Long;

George’s massive influence on the magisterial White Album wasnt the end of his Beatles work, he was off to India recording the soundtrack to the film Wonderwall, and releasing the solo album on Zapple that inspired the Oasis. George was prolific in a number of fields beyond the Beatles and ended with a stack of unreleased and unrecorded tracks that would form the basis of Everything Must Pass in 1970. He brought Jackie Lomax to Apple and recorded the brilliant Sour Milk Sea before dashing off For You Blue for the doomed Get Back. Some great film shots flesh out this light and breezy blues, Lennon on slide guitar, Go Georgie Go! For You Blue;  

Some Beatles tracks were overlooked at the time, I didnt release how brilliant I’ve Got A Feeling is until Let It Be…Naked came out, but Old Brown Shoe still isnt recognised. This is a ferocious rock performance, probably better than Gently Weeps, possibly the best late period Beatles performance, featuring guitar worthy of Cream. In fact Eric Clapton liked it so much he brought George in on Cream’s final album Goodbye to play like this on Badge. So Beatles Rock Band, great organ, great guitar, play it forward and earn an encore, Old Brown Shoe;  

Abbey Road; and after leading off Revolver, co-ordinating the White Album, and ‘saving’ the Get Back project by bringing Billy Preston in, George got the ultimate accolade by having the next Beatles single being his solo composition; the greatest love song of the 20th Century according to Frank Sinatra. Abbey Road both had George at his peak and saw him ready to be master of his own destiny, perhaps no longer needing to “see you round the clubs” as he had said during Let It Be. The official video focusses on the Beatles relationships but suddenly, in the way he moves, there was Something;  

And then George got so pissed off with the recording studio acrimony on Abbey Road that he popped over to Eric Clapton’s house and on a nice sunny day sat down in Eric’s garden and wrote Here Comes The Sun, both a celebration of light and freedom, and a signal that he was off, and ready to record his own Magnum Opus, All Things Must Pass, now that the gnomes were in a state of collapse. George would later sing about this with affection on When We Was Fab. He also went on to create the form we now know as the celebrity Concert fundraiser with the Concert for Bangladesh, but by 1969 he’s all grown up and ready to go. It’s All Right now for George as Here Comes The Sun;   

If you liked this post you might like Happy Birthday Ringo or Paul’s Bass.

The one single thing that most impressed me about the Remasters was Paul’s bass playing; it really was phenomenal stuff. Every song sounds richer than I remember even though I’d heard every Beatles song when they came out since Please Please Me. Fifty years ago this week The Beatles began their informal residency at the Cavern Club on Mathew Street in Liverpool. Whilst their breakthrough gig was at the Litherland Hall in December 1960 what characterised their early live sound was Pete Best’s bass drum booming out across the Cavern with Paul’s Bass. Here is their booming bass sound at the Star Club Hamburg with I Saw Her Standing There;

However I hadn’t really noticed the bass at all because of the poor sound equipment available in the sixties; tinny transistor radios and mono Dansettes. In fact the first time I became aware of Paul’s bass playing (videos on YouTube Playlist) was when Barry Gibb picked Paperback Writer as his favourite Beatles song because of the bass; Paperback Writer;

In researching this article I found a great discussion of the evolution of Paul’s Bass playing by Denis Alstrand. He picks up on Paul’s bass playing on their first recording Cry For A Shadow, the Beatles only Harrison/Lennon composition. This is a tribute to the legendary British group The Shadows and he comments on how Paul is influenced by Jet Harris’s bass playing; Cry For A Shadow;  

Hofner Days

When the Beatles as we know them came to make their first album George Martin wanted the album to sound like their Cavern performance, even though Ringo had replaced Pete Best who was key to their Cavern sound. However Ringo drummed the song and he and Paul were probably the two most accomplished musicians on the album. Listen to how they synch, led off by Paul’s Bass on Ringo’s feature; Boys

Paul’s Hofner 500/1 was famous visually from the off, violin shaped and held left-handed it help create the distinctive on-stage look of the Beatles with their three lead singers needing to face the audience. On With The Beatles Paul develops two innovations with the Bass. All I Want to Do is the first to use chords, but Paul also used a walking jazz bass, featured on the EP hit (Number One in Australia) All My Loving;  

Paul’s playing continued to develop on Hard Day’s Night, working on the ‘song expression’ shifting in and out of tempos, time signatures, and moods with stealth and ease. Being very happy when on holiday with Jane Asher at this time, he captured this, putting in a great performance that mixed 3/4 and 4/4, on his tribute to his happiness with her; Things We Said Today;

Replaced by Act Naturally, which worked better with the film HELP! anyway, this next track is actually unfinished! However it features a great early example of doubling up on the bass, playing an octave lower than the guitar, giving The Beatles a Stones sound somewhat like Satisfaction. Dennis Alstrand thinks this would have been a classic if they had finished it. “Oh rock on! Anybody!” says Ringo. If You’ve Got Trouble;

The Supple Rickenbacker

Rubber Soul was the first album where McCartney had a Rickenbacker 401S bass guitar, and his brand new supple machine helped drive the folk-rock sound the Beatles developed.  One of the classic tracks of the album it features an absolutely calm yet driving bass from Paul and a great ensemble performance both as a group and singers. They thought they were, but they weren’t; the classic Nowhere Man;  

Engineer Norman Smith, who went on to be Pink Floyd’s first producer, thought that Paul had become the arranger of the groups material, and didn’t really need George Martin, except for notation. Martin felt he became a collaborator after Yesterday. But The Beatles were artists of the song and one of Paul’s great song arrangements for the group was his questioning lament for the state of his relationship with Jane Asher, now We Can Work It Out;

And then it was 1966 and The Beatles had real competition to respond to like the Beach Boys, and they had started playing a range of instruments with George, and even John, playing bass on later tracks. But as the opening track of Revolver Paul’s bass was recorded through a Marshall loudspeaker and, on George’s song to Georges praise, he plays an Indian style guitar solo. Nineteen for us then on Taxman;

Four Track Recording

And then Paul realised they didn’t have to play it safe and after the magisterial Penny Lane /Strawberry Fields came Pepper and Paul was granted his own track on their four-track recordings and he often dubbed the bass at the end of recording rather than using to root the song and so became more ‘creative and melodic’ Featuring a dominant walking bass one of the best examples of his dubbing work (in 3D – you’ll need glasses!) is Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds; 

Despite being crucial to EMI’s success they wouldn’t give the Beatles eight track recording and for the next year, exacerbated by the management problems at Abbey Road, they tried other studios. Recorded at Olympic Studios, a sly tribute to Swinging London and also Brian Epstein just before his death, was the Summer of Love (1967) track that ‘brought the sonic boom to bass playing‘ Beloved of Aaron Sorkin and now the punchline to the 2010 movie The Social Network Here’s Baby You’re A Rich Man;

Musical Director
Then Epstein died and Paul assumed direction of the band and was waiting to take us away, but who knew where. Whatever the merits and demerits of Paul’s role this is indeed magical, great bass playing, and one of the 10 most innovative Beatles tracks according to soundscapes.nl An overture to a new future based on the charabanc trips of their childhood, Paul is all over Magical Mystery Tour;

The Foundations of Rock Bass

More than Led Zeppelin II and more than my favourite Jack Bruce, Denis Alstrand sees McCartney’s playing on the White Album as the foundation of rock bass playing EVER SINCE! Ken Scott (later to work with Bowie) came in for Geoff Emerick who was messed about by The Beatles as well as EMI management (Don’t worry Paul hired him for Apple later) and they started him with McCartney’s answer to The Who. Up for a Grammy in 2011 and edited down from a 10 minute jam here is Helter Skelter; 

But even crazier in the final album version was Lennon’s big studio jam song, on which Paul goes mad with his bass right at the end, after yet another false ending. Sounding like the boys were getting back to their Art School days (like much of the White Album) this is a full on jam  Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Cept for me & my monkey

The last track the Beatles recorded live with all four of them in the studio was Yer Blues, their response to the British Blues boom, but Paul’s best playing on the White Album, very full and distinctively complementary, was overdubbed onto George’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps;

Multi-Instrumentalist

Let It Be was famously fractured, often in response to Paul, but I think this was the Beatles taking note of ideas for what became Abbey Road.  Two of Us, about Paul and Linda, is a great song, but in bass terms how about Ringo and Paul back as a rhythm section live, Paul back on his light Hofner, but Ringo with a new natural Ludwig drum kit, I Dig A Pony; 

Abbey Road is their eight-track masterpiece, Studio 2 finally up to date in technology terms. Paul kicks off the album locked on with his rhythm partner Ringo on Come Together. Paul plays a lot of piano on Abbey Road, as he did throughout 1969, and with Martin arranged the masterful suite which ends with Paul on guitar and bass, rounded off by his own Shakespearean couplet, And In The End;

Bonus Track; I’ve always been a big fan of the Run Devil Run project, coz Paul recreated the Beatles early style of recording with a pick up band of Dave Gilmour (Pink Floyd) Ian Paice (Deep Purple) and the wonderful Mick Green (Johnny Kidd and the Pirates). And it was better recorded. I love The Vipers No Other Baby and Paul is in amazing voice with Gilmour, er, stratospheric on guitar, but the best YouTube example is probably Chuck’s Brown-eyed Handsome Man; 

The Beatles for ELT; Nice idea! Here is the playlist on YouTube. Well The Beatles were just a bunch of layabouts with only one A level between them. Paul got English and was going to train as a teacher, but then went to Hamburg instead of staying in Liverpool. This is his chance to make up to us for being so selfish and becoming a musician instead of a teacher. Here is his song about where he lived in Liverpool featuring the Number 46 bus. Pictures and Map of Penny Lane;  

John Lennon’s son Julian, aged about four, came home from school one day with a drawing (you can see it here). As you can see it is a very pretty drawing for a young boy. When his father asked Julian what the drawing was about was he said it is “Lucy in The Sky with Diamonds” and inspired John Lennon to write the song of the same name. Here it is in the version from the film Yellow Submarine, Lucy in The Sky with Diamond;

In the Beatles Ringo Starr usually sang the sing-a-long songs, some of which became favourites of children and were sung in school playgrounds. John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote a song specifically for Ringo to sing on Sgt Pepper and they recorded it on 29th March 1967. They came up with perhaps the best sing-a-long song Ringo ever sang, the very popular With A Little Help From My Friends;

Another classic track on Sgt Pepper featured a real collaboration between Lennon & McCartney. As an Art Student at the Liverpool Institute Lennon had learnt to use ‘found objects‘ in his work and often picked stories out of newspapers for inspiration. McCartney was ‘turned on’ by the opening line ‘I read the news today, oh boy’ and they quickly wrote this song together over Christmas 1966. A Day in the Life;  

Paul McCartney had worked with record producer Sir George Martin to make Yesterday, after which Martin said he felt like a musical collaborator with the Beatles. Like Yesterday this is a song on which The Beatles didnt play as a band and it was based on the true story of Melanie Coe who really did run away from home. Curiously she had won a prize to meet The Beatles in 1964 before they wrote a song about her in 1967 after being saddened by reading in a newspaper that she had run away from home. They didn’t not realise that they had actually met her three years earlier! Recorded in a day using Mike Leander’s string arrangement because Paul couldn’t wait for George Martin to be free from recording Shirley Bassey, here is She’s Leaving Home; 

The Beatles were Pop musicians, but they all fell in love with the work of Bob Dylan who told them off about the poor quality of their early lyrics when they met at Delmonico’s Hotel New York in 1964. The Beatles then had a ‘folk-rock‘ period which resulted in their Rubber Soul album, on the cover of which they look like The Byrds. Lennon was particularly keen to be more personal in his lyrics and, whilst famous for George Harrison playing sitar, this is a sort of true story Norwegian Wood; 

Perhaps the most personal song that John Lennon wrote after being inspired by Bob Dylan was his first ‘nostalgic‘ song reflecting back on his life, and friends in Liverpool such as Stuart Sutcliffe, before he became famous. He regarded this song as one of the two most satisfying songs that he wrote with The Beatles. In My Life; 

Paul McCartney meanwhile took time out from being a Beatle in 1966 and composed and recorded the soundtrack for an English film, The Family Way. Refeshed and inspired by this he continued developing his orchestral skills with George Martin, who wrote a double string quartet score for one of Pauls’ best songs, Eleanor Rigby;  

Released as single in the USA this is their second most covered song by other artists, including Diana Krall, Roberto Carlos and Smokey Robinson. Probably written about Paul’s girlfriend the actress Jane Asher this is The Beatles first song recorded entirely with acoustic instruments.  This tribute video is full of movie stars from Hollywood’s Glamour period, appropriately for the song And I Love Her;  

This is the first song on their second album and it was recorded in a classic ‘call and response‘ style to re-assure their fans that they were exactly the same as they had been at the start. This has a great video of The Beatles having fun on holiday and the song is It Wont Be Long;  

The Beatles started as the Quarrymen in 1957 playing a simple form of acoustic music called Skiffle. You can read about how they became the Beatles here. This is the most skiffle sounding song they recorded as the Beatles. I’ve Just Seen A Face;  

In 1968 Paul McCartney met Linda Eastman and she encouraged him to escape from the pressure of his fame by driving in the countryside without having a route, or a map or even knowing where he was going. He wrote this song to celebrate the two of them getting lost and having fun. This is a delightful video to match the lovely words of  Two of Us, ; 

This is a personal favourite of mine which is featured in the film Yellow Submarine as it was written and recorded live in their favourite studio 2 at Abbey Road in one day. The Beatles were filming the video for their hit single Lady Madonna (See how similar it is) but found it so boring they made this song up whilst they were waiting for the film director to do his job. Look at how John Lennon is reading the lyrics which he had just written. And he is barking like a dog too, Hey Bulldog; 

Another live recording in the studio, this time with Billy Preston, was undertaken by The Beatles as part of the Get Back Sessions on January 31st 1969. They had completed their last live performance on the roof of the studio the day before the police stopped them, and then recorded 4 songs that day in the studio to finish the album of Let It Be; 

Paul wrote this a fun song for The Beatles White Album on 18 September 1968. This is another song they made up in the studio and recorded in a day, but everyone can relate to it. Perhaps the video is a bit long but it is a funny animation. Birthday

And the inimitable Beatles Lego I Saw Her Standing There; 

In 1968 The Beatles peaked again recording their longest, most diverse and biggest selling White Album, and their longest and most successful single Hey Jude. The Beatles created great work when they had time to prepare, had a break and worked closely with collaborative Fifth Beatles. Starting the Get Back Sessions 6 busy weeks later as ‘lets make an album without prep because we are such geniuses’, was as pre-destined to fail as the Magical Mystery Tour. Both were saved as albums because The Beatles knew how to write and record songs and meet a deadline. Thanks to Rishikesh and Kinfauns the White Album had been their best prepared album, so missing recording to deal with Apple Business didn’t affect that plan. However as Ringo said in 1969 ‘now it is all he, where it used to be all we.” McCartney had visited the Harlem Apollo whilst living in Greenwich Village with Linda & Heather, George had recorded Indian music & jammed with The Band, Ringo was an actor and Lennon wanted to be with Yoko. Arriving at a film studio cold and early on January 2nd 1969 to create spontaneously doesn’t work for musical historians and cultural editors.

Of all the writing on Let It Be only Kenneth Womack picks up on the inordinate amount of fifties songs The Beatles played whilst ‘creating’ on the Twickenham Studios Sound Stage, and identifies it with some of the regression they displayed on the White Album, such as McCartney turning into his Dad on Honey Pie. The Beatles had completed their cycle of learning about musical creativity, applied what they knew to Apple but failed to re-imagine themselves as a musical collective. To move on they wanted to get back to where they once belonged. Some of the tension, creativity and jamming on the fifties is captured in this 14 minute outtake from the film Let It Be;  

Womack suggests that the Beatles were re-creating their ‘insouciant and fun-loving’ early days (which also resulted in Billy Preston, whom they had met in Hamburg, playing on the Get Back sessions) in light of the ‘modernism’ they had developed as recording artists. As well as letting them run away from their over-whelming and vicious business dealings, they were playing their old repertoire to see what they could fillet and re-present. What we see on Let It Be are the rough sketches they would make before starting an album presented as a fully finished artefact. Geoff Emerick points out that classical expert Alan Stagge was put in charge of EMI studios in 1968, causing many problems during the White Album and The Beatles wanted away to their own studio to control their own output after EMI had failed them badly. This sessions outtake captures this old subject / new expression tension they played with really well, Teddy Boy;  

Twickenham seemed an acceptable compromise at first because trusted film maker Michael Lindsay-Hogg (who filmed the live version of Hey Jude and the Stones Rock n Roll Circus) could work there, EMI had let them down and their own studio at Apple wasn’t ready; big mistake! With the benefit of hindsight we know The Beatles crafted and recorded best in a supportive environment surrounded by several Fifth Beatles, including George Martin (absent from Get Back), enabling their work. Banishing them to Twickenham was like filming the Kinfauns session without the material they had prepared in Rishikesh. What The Beatles were working on was a Big Pink back-to-basics combination of editing their history (what Womack calls ‘redacting’) and re-living it to refresh their creativity. The combination of the Day in The Life-like I’ve Got A Feeling followed by One After 909, one of their oldest songs, played live on the Apple Rooftop nicely captures the mix of approaches The Beatles took during the Get Back Sessions; I’ve Got A Feeling – One after 909 Live; 

Ironically the chaotically ragged rooftop concert was full of the fun of rock’n roll and shows that The Beatles might have pulled off the conceit they started with; starting with nothing, recording an album’s worth of songs and premiering it in a live concert. However they stopped initial filming on January 10 as Harrison left the group, then resumed again on 21st at Apple this time with Billy Preston. They recorded the core songs of the album in four days and re-assembled for the rooftop concert on January 30th. The next day they went back to the studio and recorded Two of Us, Let It Be and Long and Winding Road, arguably their most productive studio session. So in two days a collection of songs that would become the Let It Be album had been completed to meet a deadline, but perhaps Billy Preston enjoyed the Get Back sessions most. He integrated John, Paul, George and Ringo into a live group and drove the band sound; Get Back

As I mentioned in Beatles Creativity (5) Lennon started 1968 with the optimism of Across The Universe and ended it with the bleak Everybody had a Hard Year. McCartney was to reach a similar low when the business dealings related to Allen Klein resulted in him bashing out crude drums on ‘My Dark Hour’ with the Steve Miller Band, pre-figuring his Fly Like An Eagle AOR success. But at the time his frustrations with the labyrinthine complexity of the moving target of Beatles business dealings, best detailed by Peter Doggett in You Never Give Me Your Money, emerged in this redemptive song, appealing to his own mother Mary, after which the final sketches of the Get Back project would be named, Let It Be; 

Ironically the Abbey Road album starts with the track that magnificently pulls together the strands of what they were looking for by revisiting their past during the Get Back Sessions in Come Together. Ringo had a brand-new naturally made (maple and calf) Ludwig Hollywood drum kit and was excited by the tom-toms, which he uses to magnificent effect. During the note-taking for the project also known as Abbey Road Lennon became inspired lyrically by Chuck Berry (old flat top) and came up with a campaign tune for Timothy Leary in California, before realising it was good enough for The Beatles, even if they didn’t actually Come Together;

The Get Back Sessions are to Abbey Road as Rishikesh was to the White Album; sketches and rehearsals. The Beatles revisited their fifties heritage with a creative knowing, looking for fresh inspirations. Allied to the studio craft and collaborations they had perfected at Abbey Road Studios they were ready to produce classic songs. By July 1969 they had taken holidays, John and Paul had jointly recorded the 50s sounding Ballad of John and Yoko and used Get Back as prep for Abbey Road. Personally I think Paul got his own Get Back project right with Run, Devil, Run, but for that he used half-remembered existing material and only allowed his pick-up band three takes at recording them. On Abbey Road McCartney found a similar 50s inspiration to Come Together with Oh! Darling then spent a week singing it to rough up his voice back to mono. Oh! Darling;

But Abbey Road, as well as featuring Ringo’s drums, finally sees him writing a great children’s song in Octopus’s Garden (one of the highlights of the Las Vegas ‘Love’ Show). However George Harrison emerges as the most complete songwriter at this time with his first Beatles A-side Something and, for me and Sandie Shaw, the incomparably happy Here Comes The Sun. I first heard it by itself in a car in 1969 and like many people at the time picked up on it as the missing single from the album. In fact it was a pre-cursor to George’s massive All Things Must Pass, and another song he wrote round at Eric Claptons’ house, Here Comes The Sun;  

Recently voted best album of 1969, Side 2 is as good as anything they had recorded, Abbey Road is a solid-state eight-track classic. It became possible because they had a template, a 50s album refracted and redacted through everything they had since learnt as recording artistes. The reason for actually recording it however may have been that they were broke. EMI froze paying any money they had earned whilst it was unclear who were the legal owners of ‘The Beatles’. So starting the legendary Abbey Road Medley with You Never Give Me Your Money was as much a statement of fact as an observation about the contractual ‘funny papers’ Allen Klein kept producing. The great cash cow of the sixties were being milked out of existence but they were still ready to experiment in Abbey Road’s Studio 2 and, pre-figuring Love, George Martin and McCartney edited many song fragments into a remarkable closing Medley;  

The Medley closes with Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight and becomes more evocative over time due to its elegaic and wistful rendition of The Beatles as Myth, which Abbey Road also contributes to. The fact that the working title of the album was Everest gives the sense of it being their ultimate achievement (here you are then, you gave us the fifties, well this is the sixties; go and play with it for the next decade). Why did The Beatles cross the road? Because they couldn’t be arsed to fly to the Himalayas, and so created the iconic myth of their album cover. McCartney obviously loved this song and here is a version recorded with George Martin in 1997, needing Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton to help finish it off. Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight;

Still enamoured of his wonderful new drums Ringo flew like an eagle into the The End making it sound like the beginning of 70s AOR FM rock. As many commentators have observed The End could even be seen as a template for 70s rock, three guitar solos, Ringo’s one drum solo, but as ever Beatles recordings were allied to a tune, a performance and some smart recording tricks. And In The End McCartney wanted to end The Beatles with a couplet of Shakespearean gravity (as he told Barry Miles) and we will let them take the love they made at The End;  

So in The End the social, political and cultural movements of the 60s coalesced in The Beatles, and their unique mix of Art School creativity, melody, and musicianship in service of the song, around the stereo rock album as artefact, reshaping the music industry and helping define the 70s culturally. That is until DIY Music, recording and production started taking over in 1977; brilliantly and best captured in Simon Reynolds Rip It Up and Start Again.

This is part six of six posts on The Beatles Creativity. It is preceded by 1) Beatles Live 1957-63 2) Beatles Singles 1962-64 3) Beatles Albums 1964-65 4) Beatles Psychedelia 1966/67 5) Beatles Apple 1968

I was living in the States on December 8th 1980 and came out of a brilliant Pat Metheny concert, featuring the magisterial Charlie Haden on bass, at 10pm and strolled across from the Concert Hall at CU Boulder to the Pizza Hut so I could share my joy with my friends. We walked in as the news opened with the devastating line ‘John Lennon has been shot in New York.’ I just froze and looked at the screen filling the end of the room. Lennon shook up my life with the Beatles (see the rest of this blog), first with Please Please Me on the radio, then when he told the Queen Mother to ‘rattle her jewellery’ live on national TV, both in 1963, before agreeing with us that ‘we all want to change the world‘ in Revolution and that he and Paul wanted to create ‘Western Communism‘ with Apple in May 68. His death was announced about 20 minutes later whilst we watched the TV gulping our pitcher of beer, then another, to numb down the negative feelings; instant drag is gonna get you.

It is a well-known fact in Colorado that the last but one Beatles concert was held at Red Rocks in Denver and for the next week or so in Boulder, Colorado, anyone using the name John only referred to one person. I was asked, as the only Brit in the Village, what I thought of John’s death, I replied ‘well that’ll teach him to release an album about how happy he is!’ I got to the Dakota building in New York a week later to find some residues of blood and the sticker ‘Nancy killed John’ on a lamp post nearby referring to Nancy Reagan’s statement that she always kept a hand gun under her pillow. In my opinion The Beatles died at the right time in September 1969, closing out the sixties, but Lennon’s death was premature, emblematic of the hysterical celebrity-obsessed culture we’ve since been bequeathed and chosen to embrace; Nobody Told Me there’d be days like these; 

1968 is The Beatles’ most fascinating year, they had transformed music in terms of singles and albums but in 1968 they were aiming to transform the music industry by making their company Apple into a musical collective. Singles were no longer formulaic, melodic sing-a-longs designed to make to make money for the songwriters, producers, managers and record companies rather than the artists. Albums were no longer the accidental re-packaging of singles or merely fan souvenirs of live shows, as they had been when The Beatles started and remained throughout the sixties. In terms of this analysis of their creativity they had completed the three main stages of development; being guided, working collaboratively and breaking the rules by 1967. So what came next? 1968.  The magisterial Walter Everett said “the year of 1968 was a time of simultaneous rejuvenation and the dissolution of The Beatles.”

In We Are The Beatles I described the Beatles’ style as evolving from the musical creativity of their psychedelic period 1966-67 to a loose Atelier style, unconsciously aping the studio organisational form of Renaissance artists. By this I mean that they had learnt their craft and now, forced to run their own business, decided to try to create with Apple Corps the company they would liked to have signed for, and so began working with many other artists. Paul completed Step Inside Love with Cilla, George recorded the Inner Light with local musicians in India whilst recording his ‘Wonderwall‘ soundtrack John woke up one morning with the words of his ‘most perfect lyric’ flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup. It’s Across The Universe;  

Following the sad death of Brian Epstein and the critical savaging of the BBC TV showing of the black and white version of their psychedelic home movie Magical Mystery Tour The Beatles were on their own, this time running their own business. In fact they had all been involved in various solo projects for some years and John, Paul, George and Ringo now re-assembled as The Beatles as required; having mastered their craft of pop music. Ringo’s legendary pad at 34 Montagu Square also served as a meeting place and secret hideaway in times of trouble for Cynthia, John and Yoko as well as Jimi Hendrix. So having picked Lady Madonna as their first release in 1968 they re-assembled to film the video and in one of engineer Geoff Emerick’s favourite sessions wrote, improvised and recorded as a foursome Hey Bulldog; 

The Beatles were no longer a Lennon-McCartney duopoly, who were now jointly announcing the ‘Western Communism’ of Apple on the day that the Renault factory was occupied in Paris and French Universities went into occupation (May 15). George Harrison stepped up to the plate and, right in the middle of May 68, on May 20 the Beatles met up at George’s house Kinfauns and played and recorded The White Album Unplugged; 27 tracks played acoustically and recorded on 4-track tape. When they gave it to George Martin on May 30th, he immediately suggested they should record just half the tracks as a single album. Paul suggested that it might be a single, a double or even a triple as the competition, Dylan and Cream especially, had released double albums. I think that Rubber Soul and Revolver were particularly good albums because The Beatles had time to prepare; here’s how they did it for the White Album on May 20 1968. From Kinfauns to Chaos;

Then on May 30 1968 les soixante huitards began the White Album with Revolution Number 1, loving it if they could see the plan, but mostly it was a week of tape loops and maddening bits of King Lear. This lazy soft-rock version of Revolution, that Lennon wanted as a single, captures the post-Kinfauns mellow yellow mood they were in. This is an early studio take with Lennon prepping his later Cold Turkey gutterals. Whizz-kid engineer Geoff Emerick (the red-head at the console) gets his only Beatle recording moment with his ‘Take 2′ intro at the beginning. Alright, you say you want this take of Revolution; 

The real tension on the album lay in the acoustic inspiration of the songs, Lennon’s desire to create 10 tracks of whack, McCartney’s perfectionism and Harrison’s new-found song-writing confidence and quality; and trying to escape the Apple office in Saville Row. Friends with Clapton, Cream’s Wheels of Fire studio album is particularly inventive yet remained raw and raucous live, Lennon wanted that from The Beatles on his songs. And Yoko wanted the songs to be played faster. They had new instruments to play with and distort, especially the precise Fender Jazz Bass, and John and George had sanded down their Epiphone Casinos getting a clearer tone. This is a live studio version that captures early on the dirty sound the Beatles were searching for at speed and which EMI, and Emerick, hated. Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Xcept for Me & My Monkey; 

George had prepped 8 songs for The White Album and I love Long, Long, Long and Dehra Dun, but especially While My Guitar Gently Weeps which sounds great as a demo but on which George’s mate Eric Clapton was invited to contribute guitar. Walter Everett claims Clapton’s guitar made the track magnificent, once they added Beatley flanging with the ADT machine, turning it into a 1968 British Blues Beatles/Cream extravanganza which, to many at the time, sounded like the best track on the album on first hearing. Ay Up! While My Guitar Gently Weeps; 

For me the track on the White Album which most perfectly captures the acoustic qualities that the Rishikesh and Kinfauns sessions inspired is Paul’s Mother Nature’s Son. He and Lennon (with Child of Nature which became Jealous Guy) were both inspired by the Maharishi’s lecture on nature and Paul went outside in Rishikesh and wrote this beautiful song reflecting what he had been inspired to think about and the context in which he was experiencing it. St Johns Wood townie and Mother Nature’s Son; 

Ringo got his first solo writing credit with Don’t Pass Me By, unusually the second (rather than last) track The Beatles started recording after Revolution 1 & 9 which they spent a week on. However in the middle of this Summer of Chaos the film of Yellow Submarine was released which, thanks to the brilliant work of the cartoonists finally was a Magical Mystery Tour that re-presented the Beatles as Summer of Love hippies, just as that vibe reached the British provinces where they remained popular and this served to heighten their popular appeal. Really, It’s All Too Much;

The sudden events of May and June, Cynthia walked in on John and Yoko in May and three weeks later in June Jane Asher walked in on Paul and Francie Schwartz, allowing Linda Eastman to become his new girlfriend, meant that the individual Beatles were in  emotional chaos; followed by all the swings and roundabouts at Ringo’s pad. We Brits also racially abused Yoko, John kept her with him in Abbey Road, and Yank Linda Eastman wasn’t too popular either. In the midst of this emotional turmoil McCartney wrote a song to cheer up Julian Lennon after his parents had separated, but which John thought was about him and Yoko; it may have been about Paul and Jane. Into the heady mix of 1968 enters the Beatles most enduringly popular single ever, even as an Apple download, Hey Jude; 

Believing they were no longer loved by the British public The Beatles were amazed that the studio audience at the David Frost show loved their live performances and they returned to Abbey Road, finally fitted with 8-track recorders, to continue recording the White Album. Ringo described it as a ‘band’ album when they ‘shake out the jams’ Lennon wanted it to be the ‘anti-Pepper’ when he decided that Rock n Roll was ‘real’ and wanted the fast and dirty recording he later perfected on Instant Karma. They pulled that off with ‘blisters on me fingers’ on McCartney’s answer to Townsend’s I Can See For Miles, Helter Skelter; 

My personal favourite of the hard rock tracks The Beatles laid down in 1968 is Yer Blues which I always read as Lennon’s reposte to the British Blues Boom of the late 1960 (lead by the various ex John Mayall alumni like Clapton & Green) suggesting it’s easy, but written when he was well depressed.  Not least because Lennon went off and played it live on the Stones Rock N Roll Circus with a pick up band he found of out-of-work musos, Clapton, Richards and Mitchell (who fluffs a change) Two, Three! O0ps that b*****d Allen Klein has taken it down!! Here’s the Beatles then Yer Blues; 

But Rishikesh, and the reflective time they spent there, learning acoustic picking from Donovan and writing songs at their Himalayan Butlins Holiday Camp meant the White Album has many acoustic tracks reflecting their skiffle roots, when they all played acoustic guitars. This is Paul’s best, which Geoff Emerick says was finally recorded outdoors with some bird sounds added from the archive. Paul accompanied by fingers on Guitar and feet on Ringo here singing his May 68 paean to the US Civil Rights movement and Angela Davis, Blackbird; 

As well as blisteringly loud tracks The White Album also included some madly creative tracks where The Beatles shotgunned together fragments, styles and signatures in their best Psychedelic style. Prompted by George Martin, a pun on the 60s slogan Happiness Is A Warm Puppy, another tribute to Yoko, and The Beatles creative Heutagogy here is Happiness is A Warm Gun;

John also was in reflective mood and wrote a real and heartfelt tribute to his mother, Julia, where, as with Across The Universe, the lyric drives the music, and his hands responded beautifully. This was the last track recorded for the White Album and seems to point forward to his Plastic Ono Band album rather than the next Beatles project, here it is then, Julia; 

John and Paul got together with George Martin on October 16 and mixed all the tracks for the first time inn stereo, prepared the track-listing and sequenced everything in 24 hours. The album was officially released on November 22nd 1968 with individually numbered collectable White Album covers; Ringo got album number 0000001. Not being present Harrison lost Not Guilty and the brilliant sequencing and editing of Side One kicked off with Paul on drums on Назад в СССР. A Rishikesh song which had been improvised with Mike Love of the Beach Boys this Chuck Berry pastiche is brilliant and is still banned in parts of the USA (its OK guys you won), It’s Back In The USSR;  

The White Album was an unprecedented success, not just for the fecundity of its 92 minutes length, it became the Beatles’ best selling album & the worlds best-selling double album until Saturday Night Fever in 1977. But it marked the process by which John, Paul, George and Ringo, who had become the Group Genius also known as The Beatles, became John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. 1968 was over and the eternal verities of the 60s had been smashed. By the end of the year, particularly in the 41 days after finishing recording the White Album when Lennon was arrested, divorced and Yoko miscarried their child, Lennon was down. Instead of reflecting on the twin triumphs that Apple and the White Album seemed at the time, Lennon’s last song of 1968 was Everyone Had A Hard Year; 

This is part five of six posts on The Beatles Creativity 1) Beatles Live 1957-63 2) Beatles Singles 1962-64 3) Beatles Albums 1964-65 4) Beatles Psychedelia 1966/67. It is followed by Beatles Let It Be 1969 There is a YouTube Playlist of this post here.

You can also read my story Yer Blues about hearing the White Album for the first time on November 23rd 1968.

Bonus! Happy Birthday George; November 29th 2010 would have been George Harrison’s 67th birthday. His contribution to the White Album was a major one, not quite as musically significant as on Abbey Road, but cumulatively important. The gestation of the album occurred at Rishikesh and Kinfauns, both down to George, and he brought eight songs, Dehra Dun was unfinished along as well as his musicianship. And he brought along Eric Clapton. Here is a great tribute video of Long, Long, Long;