Back to index of Beatles pages by Donald Sauter.

Here are some comments on various Beatle books. These aren't book reports or reviews so much as things that caught my attention - call it discussion material that I would subject Beatle fan friends to if I had the chance.

The Beatles Forever, by Nicholas Schaffner, 1977.
Beatles '64 - A Hard Day's Night in America, by A.J.S. Rayl, 1989.
Yellow Submarine - Post Production Script, published by Script City, 198_?
(template) , by author , year.

How come somebody would write a book report in 2003 on a Beatle book published in 1977 - and a well-known and highly regarded book, at that? Well, I noticed that my copy had no highlighting or notes in the margins, so it must have been a long time ago that I read it! And I thought it would be interesting to revisit an important, early (relatively speaking) Beatle book armed with everything I've learned from later studies and readings, to a large extent meaning the revelatory books by Mark Lewisohn.

I found passages that I had no recollection of, and other passages for which I could have easily filled in the blanks. Without further ado...

Page 9. "The pundits' explanation for America's sudden Beatlemania had the country's youth reaching en masse for a hero figure to fill the void left by the assassination of President Kennedy."

Schaffner views that as an exaggeration. I wonder if it isn't revisionist history, even. I'm not sure I've come across explanations of Beatlemania from 1964 that tie it to Kennedy's assassination. It would seem strange that 12-year-old girls felt that strongly about the president. I remember hearing adults griping 3 days after the assassination that it was time to put the regular shows back on tv.

The earliest Beatle/Kennedy tie-in I can think of - and I have no doubt earlier ones can be found - was the 1969 short story, "The Girl Who Sang With The Beatles", in which the girl (in her early 20s?) became almost non-functional after Kennedy's assassination, and was helped out of her haze by the arrival of Beatle music. The story won the O. Henry Award for best short story in 1970 - which would seem odd if all the author did was scribble down what the "experts" had all been writing in 1964.

Page 14. "Two days later [after the Ed Sullivan appearance], the Beatles switched cities to play their American premier from a revolving stage at the Washington Coliseum."

Other chroniclers have stumbled on this one, too. In The Beatles Conquer America, Dezo Hoffmann supplies this caption for the picture on page 90: "The group played on the boxing ring itself, and Ringo's drum-kit was on a special revolving platform, though it eventually had to be stopped to keep Ringo from feeling sick." In With The Beatles - The historic photographs of Dezo Hoffmann, Dezo writes (page 97), "Ringo was on a revolving platform, so all the audience had a chance to see him. It took half an hour for him to recover from his dizziness."

Of course, the man himself, Ringo Starr, should be able to remember such an experience accurately. Hold your horses; here's his bumbled memory shared with the listeners of his radio series, "Ringo's Yellow Submarine".

Ringo: What was funny, the first time in America, when we were doing the Sullivan shows we had one concert in Washington, and we went by train, which was good fun, and we had all the press with us. And we got to Washington, they decided to put it in this arena where the stage would turn 'round, you know, a turning rostrum, so that everyone could see, cuz it was like a boxing ring where they were seated on all sides of us, so we couldn't just play one way because half the audience would see the sides, and the back of us. So we're on there and everything's going well and the drum rostrum decides it's not gonna turn, I don't know why. So I'm - as we're playing I'm trying to move the drums 'round with the band so that everyone's seen it. So I'm playing and moving drums and it just got so crazy in the end I just have to give up [chuckles] and just face whichever way I could.

In fact, the Washington Colliseum film shows that the stage did not revolve at all - you wouldn't expect boxing rings to - and Ringo's platform stayed put while he was playing - it would look mighty funny if it didn't. What we see is Ringo jumping down to help turn his drum platform to its next position when the whole group rotates itself 90 degrees to face the next quadrant of the audience.

A quickie editorial: What I am not saying here is, "Hey, if Nicholas and Dezo and Ringo can't get something this simple right, why should we believe anything they have to say?" I've heard that logic a million times in my life, and I can't imagine anything stupider. For one thing, making a single statement that is completely true, no matter how you attack it, is a very difficult thing to do. For another, we'd simply have to reject every statement everybody has ever made in the history of the world. Riiiight...

Page 14. "After the performance [at the Washington Coliseum] the Beatles appeared as honored guests at a British Embassy charity ball sponsored by Ambassador and lady David Ormsby-Gore. The cream of capital society gawked at and mauled the Beatles, in some cases going at them with scissors, intent at snipping off locks of that famous hair, and John stormed out in a huff."

As well-known as this story is, there are many variations on it. There are discrepancies as to whether the attacker was a man or woman, whether or not he or she was successful, and which Beatles expressed their anger and in what manner. I've put together a web page of all the first-hand accounts I could find of the story of Ringo's hair at the British Embassy.

Page 17. "Thanks largely to the Beatles, rock stardom eclipsed running for President as the ultimate glamorous ambition of much of American youth. It was no mere coincidence that nearly twice as many guitars were sold in 1965 as in 1963."

This seems pretty obvious in retrospect, but I'll admit that others made the connection for me. My main hobby has been classical guitar since about 1970. The Fall 1987 edition of the Guitar Foundation of America Soundboard magazine (page 184) gives some thoughts from guitar maker Tom Humphrey regarding the plethora of classical guitarists between the ages of 30 and 40. "If you work backwards, today's successful performers in that age group must have started the guitar in the early 60s, when they were between the ages of, say, 7 and 12, seeing as that is the age at which future professionals start. Now, what was the most important musical influence at that time? Not Segovia, but the Beatles, and they played guitars. They are the ones who have contributed to the rise in guitar activity." Seems like a straightforward connection to me. I wonder if the Beatles ever considered this impact they had on the classical music world? (By the way, my buddy Brian doesn't get it. He asks, "You mean some kid walks into a music store to buy an electric guitar and buys a classical guitar by mistake?")

Page 19. Regarding the Bambi Kino fire, and George being discovered to be underage in Hamburg, Schaffner says, "The pair [McCartney and Harrison] were placed on a homeward-bound plane the next morning."

Why this is worth correcting is because George tells the story so humorously how he began to realize he was underage for work at the night club, got found out, and was put on a boat home. Unknown to George in his state of dejection, Paul McCartney and Pete Best got deported for their little fire prank - but they were flown back in style. By the time George staggered back into Liverpool, Paul and Pete were already home!

Page 20. Schaffner says that, after Pete Best's dismissal, "irate Best fans succeeded in giving George Harrison a black eye."

This is interesting because George's black eye is quite prominent in photos dating from their first recording sessions. Also because, as good a story as it is, it's not true. Paul sets the record straight in his interview with Mark Lewisohn in The Beatles Recording Sessions (page 6): "George always hated those [photographs] because he had a black eye. He'd been bopped in the Cavern by some guy who was jealous over his girlfriend!" I like the myth a lot better. I mean, girls, schmirls... there's history being made here.

Page 21. "With From Me To You, which they knocked off in the back of the van on the way to work, John and Paul for the most part played it a bit safe, returning to the innocuous sing-along style of Love Me Do."

I know there's a John Lennon interview where he says that the chord changes to From Me To You were so complicated and unusual that he was afraid of losing fans. The best I can come up with right now is his quote in The Beatles In Their Own Words, compiled by Miles (page 79):

"Paul and I wrote this when we were on tour [with Helen Shapiro]. We nearly didn't record it because we thought it was too bluesy at first, but when we'd finished it and George Martin had scored it with harmonica it was all right."

Paul had this to say (Beatles Recording Sessions, page 10):

"We wrote From Me To You on the bus too, it was great, that middle eight was a very big departure for us. Say you're in C and then go to A minor, fairly ordinary, C, change it to G. And then F, pretty ordinary, but then it goes [sings] 'I got arms' and that's a G Minor. Going to a G Minor and a C takes you to a whole new world. It was exciting."

I go to so much effort to respond to this off-hand charge that From Me To You was "safe" and "innocuous" and "sing-along" because it never fails to bug me when I hear Beatle music called "simple." Man, I've got interviews with George Martin talking about Beatle music where he works that word into every sentence. You hear back-handed compliments from later pop stars about how Beatle music was so great because "it was so simple." I hear snide accusations from musician friends of Beatle songs being "3-chord songs." For one thing, as noted in this example, Beatle music was rarely so darn simple. Chord counters take note: only a tiny handful of Beatle songs can be played with 3 chords. And, in the cases of these 3-, 2- and 1-chord songs, it's always obvious they were going for a particular effect - such as straight-ahead rocking, or a kid's song, or something chant-like. Second of all, who cares about the number of chords??? Who needs or wants "complicated"? Does anybody go around counting up the chords in Mozart and Bach to determine if their stuff is any good? Is there any correlation between the complexity of music and greatness? I'll give you a clue. Any one of you, even those who have never written a note of music in your life, could compose the most complex piece of music ever written. Make every succeeding note of the melody come as a complete surprise to the listener, and the same for every change of harmony, and for every rhythm value, and every dynamic. Stamp out everything that has any hint of familiarity or predictability. And you might very well have written the greatest piece of music ever. But nobody's gonna listen to it. That's not what music is about, and least of all, pop music.

Page 27. "On the occasion of Shakespeare's 400th birthday [in 1564], John Lennon was feted at the prestigious Foyle's literary lunch [for having written In His Own Write]. But the assembled literati found the guest of honor's speech - in its entirety: 'thank you very much, you have a lucky face' - disappointingly brief."

The reality was even briefer - and even more disappointing. We've now heard the tape of the speech with John saying, "Ah, thank you all very much. God bless you."

It would be 5 days later, on April 28 1964, at the filming of the show Around the Beatles, when John would haul out the "lucky face" quote.

It would be some decades later when I would be very surprised to learn that "you've got a lucky face" is not a Lennonism at all. You can hear it between the tracks Watching The Wheels and I'm Your Angel on the Double Fantasy album. A lot of the recording studio dialog from those sessions was aired on the Lost Lennon Tapes radio series. When they were working on that connecting bit of street sounds, with coins dropping into a bum's cup, someone asked John, "You gonna say, thank you, thank you, God bless?" John explained, "The one in England, they say, God bless ya, sir, thank ya very much, you gawt a lucky face."

Page 29. The caption says, "George and Paul miming their music in A Hard Day's Night - note the absence of guitar cords." I see 'em quite well, behind the bridge, at least. Anyhow, George is tuning up, not playing.

Page 32. Take a look at this photo: Ringo's cymbal looks just like a Chinaman's hat on George's head, hee hee. And what's with Ringo's fly?

Page 34. A page of 1964 Beatles products. Compare "The Fabulous Beatles Jewelry Brooch" with a similar one shown in the book Memorabilia of Elvis Presley and the Beatles. The backing card has the same design but uses the British spelling of "Jewellery". The American editors felt it necessary to slap a "[sic!]" on it, but I say if the English wanna spell words wrong, let 'em. (Just joking; I think "jewellery" is cool.)

Page 38. Photo with caption, "Beatlemaniacs storm Buckingham Palace."

I can't make sense of the picture. The coppers are holding back the crowd with all their might - but against the palace gate, not away from it. There are too many smiles in the picture to give any impression of a serious struggle between the fans and the coppers. The only fans that appear to be exerting any energy seem to be helping the coppers hold everybody back. And what's the story on the loose hat that's so important that one copper (not missing his own hat) needs to chase after it? And the fans who are not restrained by the coppers, are they supposed to bust through the police line so they can get up to the gate, too? ("Copper" is British for "police", innit?)

Page 39. "... and Kansas City, which the Beatles welded together with Little Richard's Hey Hey Hey..."

Not the Beatles' brainstorm. Little Richard himself had already medleyized Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey, which the Beatles covered, and which also explains why the Beatles' Kansas City doesn't sound much at all like the real song. I was confused by that for decades.

Page 51. A chart of the Beatles Hits of 1965 shows that The Early Beatles only reached No. 43. I know chart positions weren't based on anything concrete back then, and probably still aren't, but is No. 43 plausible? I wonder what the other 42 albums from that time were that exist in greater quantities than a mainstream, Capitol-issued Beatle album.

Page 61. Picture of George playing Monopoly. If you compare it to the slightly earlier picture of him and Jackie DeShannon playing Monopoly on page 56 of Beatles '64 (reported on below), you'll see that George has picked up four more properties.

Page 63. Referring to Beatle songs from 1966 onward, Schaffner points out that, with the exception of songs written for Ringo, "you could from now on always tell who wrote a Lennon-McCartney song by which of the two sing it."

Wasn't that a pretty darn good clue before? Reminds me of a conversation I overheard once in a used record store where the owner revealed the secret that you could tell who wrote which songs by listening to how complicated Paul's bass line is. See, Paul could get fancier when he wasn't singing, so those were John's songs. Hmmm, sounds a bit circuitous to me...

Page 67. "George continues, however, to top the "miscellaneous" category of polls [of best musicians] for his work on an instrument [the sitar] he hasn't played since around 1969."

I'm with Shaffner all the way, here. You can observe this absurd phenomenon firsthand in my "Beatles in Yobyalp" web page. It started driving me nuts. I mean, I doubt that George was the world's greatest sitar player even when he was playing a riff or two on it.

Schaffner mentions a bunch of pop songs that used the sitar after George got the ball rolling. I'm not familiar with most of them.

Winds Of Change, by the Animals
All Is One, by the Animals
Maker, by the Hollies
Progress Suite, by Chad and Jeremy
Whole string of wincers from the Moody Blues
Most songs on Sunshine Superman, by Donovan
Paint It Black, by the Rolling Stones
Paper Sun, by Traffic
The Iron Stone, by the Incredible String Band

Presumably, these are the most significant ones and should give pop historians an idea of the magnitude of this trend. Only Sunshine Superman and Paint It Black were Top 40 hits. On the other hand, there were some big hits, such as Cry Like A Baby by the Boxtops, and Hooked On A Feeling by B.J. Thomas, which should count even though the distinctive sound came from a bogus sitar instrument tuned like a guitar.

Page 68. "When they weren't letting George indulge in quasi-Indian overkill in his lyrics and arrangements, Harrison would at most strum a couple of subservient notes on his sitar in the background, as in Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds."

I don't hear a sitar on Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, and Mark Lewisohn didn't note one in Recording Sessions. Is Schaffner referring to the drone sounds of the tamboura?

Page 68. There's an alternative Yesterday And Today trunk photo that surprised me as something I don't recall ever seeing. It's on a French E.P. sleeve. It has a completely different pose and a colorful backdrop (glorious b&w here.) A little web research indicates that this photo is, in fact, the only known alternate trunk pose. You should be able to find it easily by doing a search on the whole string, "french trunk cover ep".

Page 69. A chart of "Beatle hits, March 1966 - May 1967" shows that Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever only reached No. 2 in Britain.

Why do George Martin and Beatle book writers always go around saying this when the record spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Melody Maker charts?

Page 79. Who's Who in the Sgt. Pepper's Band. This was taken from 16 Magazine and its inclusion in this book was probably my first look at the rundown. It holds up very well to more recent lists, such as in the Sgt. Pepper cd booklet. The discrepancies are in the identification of the three faces to the right of George's hat, numbered 49, 50 and 51 in the cd booklet. The cd booklet identifies them very plausibly as

49. H.C. Westermann (sculptor)
50. Albert Stubbins (soccer player - do the British cd booklets call him a fooballer?)
51. Sri Lahiri Mahasaya (guru)

16 Magazine identified them as

49. Albert Stubbins (Liverpool footballer)
50. guru
51. Einstein

16 Magazine also called the unidentifiable mess above John's right shoulder "guru", which is really most of Einstein's head without his face. It was as if they had information that Einstein was in there somewhere, and took their best shot. Don't ask me what made them think Albert Stubbins was a guru - he looks more like an ad for Pepsodent toothpaste. While we're talking Sgt. Pepper cover, my remaining doubts are 34 and 36, both identified as "wax hairdressers' dummies." Must've been very ashamed of their work, as both dummies sport hats which hide all the hair. I suppose we can lay to rest the identifications in Bill Harry's oversized Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Souvenir Photo Book that No. 11 (Vargas girl) is Binnie Barnes, and that No. 34 (hairdressers' dummy) is Clara Bow? Actually, Bill Harry's book is quite useful for the thumbnail bios of the people on the cover.

Page 84. "Some of these newcomers, like Pink Floyd with Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, and the Incredible String Band with 5000 Spirits, Or Layers Of The Onion, convincingly emulated Sgt. Pepper's eclecticism, mysticism and escapism."

I have a friend who is eternally proud of the fact that Piper beat Sgt. Pepper to the shops. I, myself, was never sure if record release dates have any more basis in reality than chart positions. Have also wondered how much eavedropping the Floyds did on the Beatles in London EMI studios.

Page 86. "All You Need Is Love, which kicks off to the strains of the French National Anthem and ends with a sardonic reprise of She Loves You..."

My record is unspoiled: I've never totally understood any sentence with the word "sardonic" in it. On the previous page, Shaffner calls the Rolling Stones' We Love You a "sardonic ditty" and refers to the "sardonic jingles" on The Who Sell Out.

Page 90. Picture of George eating fish and chips.

George stuffed a Daily Express newspaper inside his jacket as a bib, I guess. What good's it do 'im there?

Page 91. "John plays leads [on Flying] on his Mellotron (a new keyboard wonder that could be programmed to sound like almost any instrument, and which would soon become popular with producers too cheap to hire real strings.)"

I've always been intrigued by the Mellotron. I had written a bunch of sardonic (hey, I did it!) comments about how you always read about the Mellotron in Beatle histories, but you never see one, you never hear of great Mellotronists, you never find old Mellotron records, and you don't remember ever gabbing with pop music friends about the great Mellotron part in this or that hit. Well, I had to eat all those words because there is an impressive web site spelling out all the artists who used Mellotrons, and what albums and songs they're used on. Do a search on "mellotron" and "andy thompson".

The Mellotron is obviously much more than a '60's quirk - it seems to have gained in popularity since then. I gather that current models are much evolved from the early machines that produced sounds from a bank of magnetic tapes, each key of the keyboard activating the tape with the desired note of a certain instrument, such as a flute, or violin, or four violins, etc.

By the way, there's an article on Thompson's site that clears up (maybe) something I've always been very curious and confused about - what's the story on the flamenco-like guitar run at the beginning of The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill? Mark Lewisohn didn't identify the player with the liquid fingers. According to the article "The Beatles and the Mellotron", "the Spanish guitar run [is] from the left-hand manual" of the Mellotron.

I wasn't clear whether that meant the notes were played individually (which is hard to imagine since the notes have an over-ringing quality that sounds like a strummed guitar), or was the whole riff prepackaged on one key on the Mellotron (which seems just plain goofy)? Andy personally wrote to clear up my confusion:

Re: 'that' classical guitar run on 'Bungalow Bill'

The entire phrase is contained on one strip of tape in the Mark II Mellotron. They're a bugger to play, and you could never play one that fast, even if they had a classical guitar 'patch'.

Of course, this throws up appalling copyright issues. Although the sound most cetainly doesn't 'belong' to the Beatles, I wouldn't personally like to use the same Mellotron key and incur the wrath of Apple Corps... I keep hoping someone will, just to see what happens!

Thanks for coming to our rescue, Andy!

Page 91. "Although few would file it under the Beatles' Great Works, Flying has received more radio exposure than all but a handful of their songs. For countless disk jockeys soon discovered in this ethereal, infectious theme an ideal way to fill up those awkward odd moments before the hourly news: because there were no words, it didn't seem rude to chatter at the same time, or to phase it out mid-song."

I can't say I remember that. I do seem to remember hearing a Philadelphia tv station sign off with Flying late at night. I also seem to remember hearing it used in a local Baltimore tv commercial.

Page 91. "The melody and arrangement [of The Fool On The Hill] are kept appropriately simple, although Paul takes the liberty of adding flute and recorder to the long list of instruments he can be heard playing on Beatle records."

Schaffner was duped by Mal Evans' account in Beatles Book Monthly. So was I, in my Beatle Q&A game. Paul didn't play the flutes; real flute players named Christopher Taylor, Richard Taylor (brothers) and Jack Ellory did. (And there's that "simple" again, grrr...)

Page 99. "Only A Northern Song (also by George) was actually written and recorded within the hour after King Features demanded a new number."

A great story, which I also believed for oh so many years. Mark Lewisohn presents the truth in Recording Sessions: the song was recorded fairly early in the Sgt. Pepper sessions, on February 13 and 14, 1967, not in the spring of 1968.

Page 103. "As if every struggling would-be superstar on the planet hadn't already heard the word [about the Apple company], the Beatles placed ads in the British music papers that coupled a photograph of a young musician with the legend: THIS MAN HAS TALENT..."

My how far Beatle-ology has progressed since 1977; who on earth doesn't know by now that the "young musician" was Beatles aide and Apple general manager Alistair Taylor? (Don't answer that.)

Page 113. "Harrison later revealed that Back In The U.S.S.R. actually started out as a patriotic song called I'm Backing The U.K."

Don't recall hearing that before. Was George having us on? What interview was this?

Page 114. "Lennon also deploys a few banana peels for avid Beatleologists to trip on. In Glass Onion he sardonically unveils 'hidden meanings' to five of the Beatles' more unfathomable songs."

There we go with "sardonic" again...

Page 114. "Like much of McCartney's work, all [of his white album contributions] are remarkably accomplished and tuneful - and tell us absolutely zilch about about the writer's own feelings."

Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but I presume there's an implied, "as opposed to Lennon's songs" tacked on. I think it's worth pointing out that John was not always the clearest communicator in song.

Take, for example, his song Working Class Hero. It's on his "primal" album, the Plastic Ono Band, which was John exposing his inner self to the whole world, without poetry or imagery. Even then he ranted (I can't put my fingers on the interview) that nobody understood what he was trying to say in the song. So who's fault is that? Another example that comes to mind is I Am The Walrus, in which John found out much later to his dismay that "the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh, bleep, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, I am the carpenter." (The Playboy Interviews book, page 156.) Hmmm... makes it kind of rough on the listener who is trying to grasp the meaning. There's also John taking great pains to explain his line "and no religion, too" in Imagine: "If you can imagine a world at peace, with no denominations of religion - not without religion but without this my-God-is-bigger-than-your-God thing - then it can be true." (The Playboy Interviews book, page 179.)

John even admitted how hard it was for him to express himself in song: "I think the really, really delicate personal stuff - I still don't know how to express it. People think that Plastic Ono is very personal, but there are some subtleties of emotion which I cannot seem to express in pop music." (The Playboy Interviews book page 178.)

Having reread the above, I suppose somebody could say, well, at least John tries to express inner emotions in his songs. Ok, no argument there.

I had intended to stop there, but I came upon an interview where John talks about Paul, himself and others expressing themselves in songs. In a 1973 interview, Elliott Mintz asks John about How Do You Sleep, his song that takes a bunch of shots at Paul.

Yeh, ok, so I said it, right? So what's it mean? It means that that is the bible and when I'm 80 that's what I mean?

How Do You Sleep was my reaction to Paul's first album [actually, his second, Ram] and the song that particularly offended not only me, but the others too - and maybe we were super-paranoid at the time, but that's irrelevant; it's there in [pauses to avoid "black and white" cliche] green and white - was Too Many People and some various other remarks. Now whether he's exp... He was expressing himself, because whether we plan it, to express our innermost feelings, or sort of surreal it like Dylan, or Paul, you could say his lyrics are very sort of non-specific. If one knows a person, one knows what is coming down. You know you can read what's been [Yoko interjects, "between the lines"] said between the lines because people's expressions and feelings come out in their work whether they want it to or not. So I always express myself directly, or language of the streets, and other people don't. And that was what it was all about. And I don't go around thinking [mocking tone] "How do you sleep?" the same as I don't go around thinking "Imagine there's no heaven!" because it's 1973 now and it's a different world. And as you've probably heard, or people have read, Paul and I have communicated, Linder and Yoko have communicated [...] The arguments were between the two males, the machos, and that's how it was. As far as I'm concerned, it's all over and I hope not to go through that kind of trip with anybody for whatever reason. It's just a waste of time, and there you go. And we're fine, and if we could meet things probably'd be finer, but the governments are making it inconvenient.

Just goes to show what can be hidden in pop songs. I could have heard Too Many People a million times without detecting any swipe at John. Paul takes more pokes in Dear Boy and Backseat of My Car on the same album. Paul admits to this, so it seems all the ruckus over How Do You Sleep is monumentally unfair to John. You can't blame it on Schaffner; he did his part to inform the world of the true causality on page 145.

Page 115. "The Beatles... were finding it difficult to muster any interest in each other's work. John... couldn't even be bothered to participate on George Harrison's compositions [on the white album.]"

I thought this was worth checking into. Mark Lewisohn corroborates that John was not involved in recording Long Long Long or Savoy Truffle. However, he played organ on While My Guitar Gently Weeps, and made a tape of pigs snorting for Piggies. There's a fascinating glimpse of the Beatles at work in the recording studio, provided by Allan Hall in the London Sun, Aug 7 1968, and reprinted in Belmo's Beatleg News, Vol. 4, No. 1. The article is titled, "Once more, says John, and George sings for the 28 millionth time." It describes George's attempts to nail the vocal track of Not Guilty during the white album sessions. See if these excerpts support Schaffner's above contention.

[John] is sitting at a formidable console, manipulating a button which enables him to speak to George Harrison, in a box on the studio floor, having sung for the 27 millionth time a song of his own composition...

The Beatles did the instrumental backing in the previous two days. The tape of it is being played over and over again and George is singing his words on top of it.

Four times I have heard him sing the song. "It's getting better all the time," says George Martin, the recording manager.

Mr. Martin appears to be paying little attention - even reading the paper - but evidently is missing nothing.

He is deliberately detached. He once said to me that he is now redundant - the Beatles have learned so much about the art and technique of a record... He appears to leave everything to them, but his role psychologically is essential, I would think.

George, in the box on the studio f1oor, has finished the song once again and shows no sign of impatience. It is taken for granted that he is going to have to sing it a hundred times more and he still sounds appallingly keen.

He is, however, getting slightly lost in the repetition: "Just a minute, did I sing the same verse twice there?" He did.

Up at the console, John is encouraging.

"It's great," he says, as Liverpool as George. "Like singing through a deaf aid." But he really means it - "It's coming," he says, "It's coming." ...

Somehow John and Paul have drifted down there and are going through fragments of the song in their own idiosyncratic ways.

"One more time," says John with a great big swinging American voice. He means three thousand more times and the insistent beating background is played back again for George to sing.

John and Paul, both of whom have a much more facile falsetto, are now heard contributing a fragmentary obbligato. It sounds good and the next time and the next time after that they are coming in more and more.

Martin is now at the console in the control room and says: "When you're singing together you're all coming through loud and clear, equidistant. Is that the way you want it, not George in front?"

"Yeah," says John. And he faintly mocks Martin with the repeat of Martin's word: "Yeah, equidistant." George Martin smiles.

George fluffs the next one and says sorry. John, waiting for the new start sings quietly: "Sorry, I said I'm sorry" to the tune of Colonel Bogey. Paul jumps to the piano to accompany him.

They may be perfectionists to the point of insanity but they seem to be enjoying it...

For the record, Mark Lewisohn only mentions 101 takes of Not Guilty.

Page 117. "[The Beatles'] nonchalant impersonations of all the competition on the British charts - the latest hits of the Stones, Kinks, et al., often rendered while the Fab Four were waiting to plug their own latest offerings on such tv shows as Ready, Steady, Go! and Top Of The Pops - were specially legendary."

I always remembered that passage, and I always liked believing it even though it seemed odd that we never read it in other sources, never mind first-hand ones. Having heard hours of Get Back bootleg material since then, I have to say I think Schaffner may have exaggerated a wee bit.

Page 124. "John's [Come Together] sounds more like Chuck Berry than any Beatle recording since Roll Over Beethoven and Rock 'N' Roll Music. So distinct was the likeness that the composer found himself on the receiving end of a lawsuit... The first two lines of lyric and most of the melody were virtually identical to passages of the greasy car classic You Can't Catch Me."

Cut me a break. A few of the words, maybe, but "most of the melody"??? Here's John (The Playboy Interviews book, page 169):

Come Together is me - writing obscurely around an old Chuck Berry thing. I left in the line "Here come old flat-top." It is nothing like the Chuck Berry song, but they took me to court because I admitted the influence once years ago. I could have changed it to "Here comes old iron face," but the song remains independent of Chuck Berry or anybody else on earth.

Page 129. I can't ever remember not thinking that the "Paul is dead" thing was just plain stupid. The biggest problem is that some of the clues involve Paul ("the walrus was Paul"), and some of the clues involve death ("turn me on, dead man"), but none of the clues tie the two together. The only exception to that that I know of is the HE DIE clue on the Sgt. Pepper cover with the diamond between the words pointing to Paul. Anyhow, Schaffner describes a talk by Joel Glazier on the subject. Glazier made me curious about the "large skull on page eight of the Magical Mystery Tour booklet. (If you turn the picture 90 degrees to the right and stare from a distance of about 10 feet, the beret of the diner nearest the camera is liable to turn into an eye socket. Joel claims this was planted, as it is the only photograph not taken from the actual film.)"

Try it - it's great! (Still, I don't see what it has to do with Paul.)

Page 133. A chart of the "Beatles' hits - September 1968 through April 1970."

What caught my attention was how flip-flopped American and British musical tastes seem to be. Americans sent the soft, sweet songs somewhat higher in the charts relative to the British; the British sent the rougher, harsher, harder-rocking songs a lot higher in the charts relative to the Americans.

                                 Highest position
                                   USA      UK
                                 ----------------
Something                           1        4
Let It Be                           1        2

The Ballad Of John And Yoko         8        1
Give Peace A Chance                14        2
Cold Turkey                        30       14

Page 135. "The sensational news stories [about the breakup] were all derived from a self-interview Paul had released to coincide with his McCartney L.P... In the interview... Paul announced a 'break with the Beatles' due to 'personal differences, musical differences, business differences, but most of all because I have a better time with my family.'"

First of all, a nitpick: the newspaper articles published around the world on April 10 1970 were not based directly on Paul's self-interview. For instance, the Associated Press article that appeared in the Baltimore Sun picked up on an earlier (April 9, I assume) article in the Daily Mirror, in which Don Short wrote about a McCartney statement "locked in a safe at Apple headquarters." The article makes it sound as if even Short had not seen the statement.

I didn't pay any of these reports any mind at the time. Take the Baltimore Sun article, for example. There is absolutely nothing authoritative about it - nothing that sets it apart from all those rumors that have been "cropping up for months" that it refers to. There is no statement from McCartney himself; there are official denials from an Apple spokesman. Short's own statements come across as totally speculative: "Short said McCartney's decision 'must mean the end of Britain's most famous pop group.' He also predicted it would finish the McCartney-Lennon songwriting partnership." (Emphasis mine.) If Short had actually spoken with McCartney, why wouldn't that come out in the article?

I've brought the subject up with other first-generation Beatle fans, and it seems that I must be truly alone in having completely discounted those stories of a break-up. At the time, I just couldn't imagine anyone taking them seriously. First of all, the rumors had been cropping up for years, not months, going back to the end of 1966 after the Beatles had given up touring and were about to start on Sgt. Pepper. Second of all, as I noted above, in spite of all the reports of a break-up, the only official statements we got were denials. Third of all, it came hard on the heels of the idiotic "Paul is dead" rumor - not something to make you sit up and take Beatle rumors seriously. Fourth of all, Beatle product was coming out at a more ferocious rate than ever before. Within a matter of months we got Abbey Road, The Beatles Again and Let It Be. Sure, now I'm a much smarter little Beatle scholar, and I know that Let It Be was from a project more than a year old, and that The Beatles Again was just an odds-and-ends album, but back then I didn't worry about such details - they were new, mainstream, official Beatle albums, yippee!

So... I got the surprise of my life when I opened up the newspaper on December 31 1970 and read about Paul McCartney filing a lawsuit in the London High Court seeking to dissolve the partnership The Beatles & Co. Whooops... now that sounds official!

If I had been better connected to Beatle news back then, I would have found out even earlier. The letter from Paul McCartney to Melody Maker magazine in August 1970 would have done it, I guess. Paul wrote:

Dear Mailbag,

In order to put out of its misery the limping dog of a news story which has been dragging itself across your pages for the past year, my answer to the question, "will the Beatles get together again?" . . .

is no.

Paul McCartney

[doodle of a grin full of teeth never looking so nasty]

See Lennon, Ray Coleman, page 381. Note that Paul exaggerates a few months into a year. This August 29 1970 letter was surely provoked by an article two weeks earlier called "Beatles - the facts" (Melody Maker, August 15 1970, page 27.) The September 12 1970 edition printed three reader letters blasting Paul for his conceit.

Still, many years later, when the "Beatles' breakup" got pegged to April 10 1970, it always rubbed me the wrong way. Yes, the Beatles didn't record any tracks on April 10 or any day thereafter. But the same thing could be said of any date after the last recording session on January 4 1970.

I think the first shock came from the April 1985 Beatlefan magazine. A commemorative article began, "Has it really been 15 years since Black Friday - April 10 1970 - the day Paul McCartney's statement that he had left the Beatles was released?" I just couldn't believe that there were Beatle fans who swallowed the speculation as fact, without any statements from the Beatles themselves, and memorized the precise date as a turning point in history. Beatlefan put an Atlanta newspaper clipping on the cover - and it was every bit as unconvincing as the one discussed above. Right off the bat, the headline is "McCartney on Own Dooms Beatles?" - a question, not a statement! "'It is now highly unlikely they will ever even record together again,' one well-informed source said." So who are you, Mr. W.I. Source? And "highly unlikely" is the strongest statement you can make? Do you have a machine that picks up brain-waves from Paul and John, or are you simply telepathic? Are you aware that there were quite a few projects by solo Beatles during the group years that didn't destroy the group? (And why should they?)

On an episode of The Lost Lennon Tapes radio series, Elliot Mintz was talking about You Know My Name, Look Up My Number: "It was the flip side of Let It Be, the No. 1 single in the USA as of April 11 1970 - the day after we all found out the Fabs had folded." Except me.

Mark Lewisohn's book, The Beatles - 25 years in the life (1987) gives a day-by-day chronology of Beatle history. The entry for April 10 1970 reads, "Newspapers around the world carry Paul's statement that the Beatles will never work together again." Which statement was that???

In a 1993 interview in Beatlefan magazine, Lewisohn is asked, "What went into the decision to cut off the [Beatles Chronology book] at April 10 1970?" He answers, in part, "And I thought, well, perhaps the best date to end it would be the date that Paul McCartney in effect, although he didn't actually use those very words, announced that the Beatles had broken up by saying that he would never again work with them and had no desire to work with the others." (Emphasis mine.) At least Mark is aware of what Paul didn't say, but I still take issue with what Mark says Paul did say.

I think it was well into the 1980s when I finally came across a copy of the complete McCartney self-interview. At the risk of being accused of having the momma of all mental blocks, I still don't see anything in there about a Beatles breakup. Here are the hardest hitting questions and answers.

Q. Did you miss the other Beatles and George Martin? Was there a moment when you thought: Wish Ringo was here for this break?

A. No.

Sounds hard and cold, but why should Paul want the others to crash his solo project? And we know Paul always liked to drum.

Q. Are you planning a new album or single with the Beatles?

A. No.

Big deal, neither were the other Beatles. Probably half the time the Beatles were active they weren't "planning" a new single or album.

Q. Is this album a rest away from the Beatles or the start of a solo career?

A. Time will tell. Being a solo album means it's the "start of a solo career" and not being done with the Beatles means it's a rest. So it's both.

Who on earth can read "I quit the Beatles!" into that???

Q. Is your break from the Beatles temporary or permanent, due to personal differences or musical ones?

A. Personal differences, business differences, musical differences, but most of all because I have a better time with my family. Temporary or permanent? I don't know.

Do you hear that, people? - "I don't know".

Q. Do you foresee a time when Lennon-McCartney becomes an active songwriting partnership again?

A. No.

Big whoop - hadn't been active for years, anyway.

Ok, so maybe Paul didn't express his intentions clearly to the public; surely he was more straightforward with John Lennon? Here are some excerpts from an interview with John Lennon published in the book John Lennon: For The Record by McCabe and Schonfeld. The interview took place in the summer of 1971.

Q. So did all this [tension caused by Yoko always being around] contribute to the split, to Paul leaving the group?

John: Well, Paul rang me up. He didn't actually tell me he'd split, he said he was putting out an album [McCartney]...

No, not even with John Lennon.

Int.: ... we gather that Klein was still hoping that Paul would return to the group.

John: Oh, he'd love it if Paul would come back... I mean, I want him to come out of it too, you know. He will one day. I give him five years, I've said that. In five years he'll wake up.

Int.: And yet Paul did pretty well from a number of deals Klein negotiated before Paul filed suit to dissolve the group partnership... What else was Klein doing to try and lure Paul back?

John: [laughs] One of the reasons for trying to get Paul back was that Paul would have forfeited his right to split by joining again. We tried to con him into recording with us too. Allen came up with this plan. He said, "Just ring Paul and say, 'We're recording next Friday, are you coming?'" So it nearly happened. It got around that the Beatles were getting together again, because EMI had heard that the Beatles had booked recording time again. But Paul would never do it, for anything, and now I would never do it...

And again, I say to all the people who know that the Beatles split up on April 10 1970, yeah, you were right. But, think about it: recording studio time was actually reserved for the "broken-up" Beatles many months later.

I feel like I've heard an interview with Mark Lewisohn where he backpedals a little on April 10 1970, and even accepts some of the blame for fixing it in the public's mind as the exact moment the Beatles split. Can't put my fingers on it right now. Maybe I dreamed it.

Page 144. "He was, after all, married to the Maria Callas of the torture rack..."

Referring to John, of course. Tickles my operatic funny bone. (Has Maria Callas tortured any fewer people than Yoko? I'm sort of a fan of both.)

Page 146. "The second most popular song on [Imagine] was Jealous Guy... to a melody almost identical to the verse of A Day In The Life..."

I had never noticed that before. I wouldn't say "almost identical", but I can see a similarity in contour.

Page 158. "Paul enlisted a little help from an old friend on [Live And Let Die]; for the first and only time since the breakup George Martin was invited to produce one of his former clients' projects. It was he who devised the record's explosive orchestration."

This "explosive orchestration" sounds a whole lot to me like a little section of British composer William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast. It's about 3:45 into the work, after the line "Sing us one of the songs of Zion." I think Belshazzar's Feast is known to anyone in England with a bit of interest in serious music. There's a funny little anecdote in George Martin's autobiography All You Need Is Ears (page 191) which may or may not be relevant. He tells about composing the signature tune for the BBC's new Radio One. His requirements were laid out: "very English, very contemporary, with classical overtones, and strikingly unusual." When the head of the BBC Record Library heard the finished product, she exclaimed, "Good God, it sounds like William Walton gone mad!"

Page 158. "The photographs used on the back and front of the [1962-1966 and 1967-1970] album jackets showed the Beatles grouped in identical positions upon a housing project balcony."

I think a lot of fans for a long time had no idea where the Beatles were posing. Now we know they were leaning over the first floor railing in EMI House in Manchester Square in London. We also know that the same photographer, Angus McBean, was used at both sessions. He even gives us his detailed memories in The Beatles London, by Mark Lewisohn, page 22. Still, there's a curious statement John made in his 1980 interview with Andy Peebles (The Lennon Tapes, page 71.) John spoke of his involvement with these compilations, also known as the "Red" and "Blue" albums.

John: I made sure that George Martin was there and I made sure they put that picture which I got Linda to take of the same pose as their very first album over the Abbey Road . . . No what is it that . . . EMI office in some other place, some square?

Peebles: Manchester Square.

John: Manchester Square. So I was involved in that respect, in that package making sure that the cover was what I wanted and that the sound was done by George Martin. So I didn't mind that one [repackaging of Beatles material.]

What could John have been thinking of? It's not that he just got the photographer wrong, which in this case would be hard enough to believe - who would mix up Angus McBean and Linda McCartney? - but he remembers asking Linda to do the photography. He sounds very certain on a matter that's obviously quite important to him. I ask again, what was he thinking of?

Page 166. "[Paul McCartney] revealed that a key phrase of the song Band On The Run - 'if we ever get out of here' - was a remark George Harrison had made during one of those interminable Apple board meetings."

I claim the story is much more interesting than that. I could be wrong, but I believe John Lennon sings along with Paul on that line attributed to George. The evidence is, firstly, it sounds like John's voice. Secondly, a letter to Beatlefan magazine, December 1981:

I have a friend who met John Lennon in Central Park in 1974. He claims Lennon told him at that time that he had contributed vocals to McCartney's 1973 album Band On The Run. He claims Lennon told him he sang harmony on one line of the title track, just before the "link" where it says "If we ever get out of here." I was skeptical at first but upon playing that particular line from Band On The Run, I am convinced that the voice contributing the low harmony is that of Lennon. If not, it is a remarkable resemblance. I would be interested to learn if any of your readers have heard of this before or if anyone has any information to confirm or deny Lennon's presence on the song.

Neal Powell
Charleston, SC

There was no follow-up discussion of this letter. Upon rereading it, it does seem strange that Neal feels such a strong need for corroboration of his friend's claim - wouldn't he know whether his friend is a liar or not? Anyhow, it's fun to believe that Paul and John sang a line by George in an era when the common belief is that they hated each other's guts. They didn't, of course. John and Paul were mad for about a nine-month period which had long since expired. Schaffner even reports (page 160) that "John found cordial words to say about Red Rose Speedway and dubbed Paul 'a real pro,' and McCartney in turn began intimating that he wouldn't mind playing with his old pals again, should the stars be right." (Also, revisit John's 1973 remarks about his relationship with Paul under "Page 114" above.)

Page 173. "After John Lennon moved to Los Angeles, he embarked on a six-month spree of partying and dissipation. Though he wrote only one song in that whole period, he inspired a great deal of sensational copy with his drunken escapades."

Don't leave me in suspense - what was the song? I see a note in the margin, "Mucho Mungo?", but I wouldn't stake my life to that guess.

Page 174. "On [John Lennon's Bless You], however, the music is most un-Beatle-like, featuring the sort of jazzy diminished-seventh chord progressions Paul had recently dallied with on Bluebird."

I'm ashamed of my musical ear, but I don't hear diminished-seventh chords on Bluebird. My buddy Norm has a good musical ear, and together, we still couldn't hear 'em. A string of diminished-seventh chords sounds like somebody laughing.

Page 180. "In Sally G Paul perfectly captures the musical ambience of [Nashville, where it was recorded]. The song was so convincing it even managed to crack the country-and-western charts, something no long-haired rock artist had ever before accomplished."

Regarding Sally G, I have to ask, does the slide guitar solo in the middle of the song sound to anyone else like George Harrison's slide guitar work? (I'm not referring to the pedal steel guitar you hear throughout.) I see that Castleman and Podrazik credit Chet Atkins with "electric guitar" on the song. I've always viewed George's slide guitar sound as his own invention. Did Chet intentionally try to imitate it? Did Paul ask him to?

Page 188. "Though [The Best Of George Harrison] U.S. jacket depicts George's gaunt features superimposed over a cosmic display of novae and galaxies..."

Schaffner probably meant "nebulae" - "novae" are exploding stars.

Well, Nick, it was quite a chore whipping up this little book report. I've got quite a mess of Beatle books lying about needing to get back where they belong. Still, it was a mere crumb compared to the job you did - thanks. Sorry we never crossed paths.

Finally read this in February 2003 after having owned it for years. I remember the reason for not reading it when I got it was because I objected to Beatle writers cranking out new verbiage when all I want is the original newspaper articles, etc. I still feel that way, but this book is a great job nonetheless. It's amazing how it stays fresh from beginning to end when you'd expect the story of the Beatles in one city to be identical to the story of the Beatles in any other city. Not the case at all.

I pulled it out because I was looking for a picture of the Beatles with Shirley Temple that I knew was in my library somewhere. It's on page 9 of this book, but the best telling of the story is in Derek Taylor's Fifty Years Adrift, page 195. George didn't want anything to do with posing with Shirley Temple Black, but was coaxed into coming out. There followed a lot of intrigue involving the film itself, but it made it's way back to the photographer, Mr. Black, and it's included in this book courtesy of him. That should give an idea of how thorough the authors were in tracking down people who were involved with, or touched on, the Beatles' 1964 American tour.

Then I got the idea, wouldn't it be interesting to reread Derek's reminiscences of the 1964 tour along with reading Beatles '64, flipping between the two books city by city. That turned out to be fun - I'd recommend it to anyone who has access to both books. In some cases, it's clear that Beatles '64 borrows from Derek's, but there are also passages where Derek contributes material he didn't put down in his own book.

Here, then, are some thoughts and comments, for whatever they are worth.

In the first tour city, San Francisco, "an evangelical group arrived in direct response to the recent Saturday Evening Post article," where Derek Taylor described the Beatles as being "so anti-Christ they shock me." Rayl writes with a touch of sarcasm (page 74): "They feared for the future of America." Hmmm... considering the way things have gone in the intervening decades, maybe the doomsayers weren't so crazy after all?

I caught the author dead-to-rights on page 91. She writes of the Beatles' press conferences: "The same questions were asked over and over again and the one subject the Beatles were eager to talk about - their music - was the one topic that was forever being overlooked." But here's an excerpt from the Jacksonville press conference (page 184):

"Have y'all composed any new numbers over here?"

"Two."

"What are they?"

"We can't tell you that," said Paul.

There's a picture of George with a garden hose in Key West on page 133. Hold everything, that looks familiar. This has gotta be from the same shoot as a picture in George's own autobiography, I Me Mine, where George strikes a naughty boy pose with the same hose. That caption claims: "Watering Paradise Island, Bahamas, during Help!, 1965." Nope, George, it was Key West, September 1964. There's no reason to doubt the photo attributions in Beatles '64, since they're almost all by Curt Gunther who is co-credited with the book. In case there's any doubt, we are shown other pictures of George in Key West wearing the same clothes.

Speaking of Curt Gunther, another way in which the two books complement each other is the story of the special picture Curt wanted of the Beatles and waited so long to get. Derek tells the story so well about how Curt finally got it very near the end of the tour, in Alton, Missouri, in an old doorway on Reed Pigman's ranch. Now we can see the photo in Beatles '64. The editors don't make a great fuss over it, but all the other photos in the book quietly lead up to it. Being the last one is appropriate from the standpoint of chronology and importance to its photographer. Nice.

Reed Pigman - Beatles '64 gives the reader warm feelings toward the man who owned American Flyers and piloted the Beatles chartered Electra II safely from one crazy airport scene to another, and offered them a peaceful get-away on his ranch in the Ozarks right near the end of the tour. Derek's Fifty Years Adrift supplies a tragic footnote (page 233): "Sad to say, the American Flyers plane... crashed a year or two later with the loss of everyone on board - more than 100 people, mostly US servicemen. The pilot was Reed Pigman, who had entertained us on his ranch after the Dallas concert."

Other favorite pictures are on pages 34 and 37. They were taken from inside the Beatles' limo on a highway in Denver, showing fans on a motorcycle and in a passing car gaping at the Beatles through the pouring rain. Page 39 shows a picture of a crowd of fans in Denver being held back by police - and one poor kid looks like he's being strangled! What's going on there??? Is there a decades-old, unsettled police brutality case on the dockets in Denver in want of a piece of smoking-gun evidence? Some neat, off-the-beaten-track photos (pages 188-189) show partial fan faces, very excited and very horizontal, peaking through the 3-inch gap along the bottom of a wall divider in Dallas.

There's been some hoopla recently (writing in March 2003) about a poster of the Abbey Road cover with Paul's cigarette removed. Well, there's a similar story involving Pat Boone (pages 61 and 86). He marketed a line of Beatle pictures, one of which had Paul's cigarette painted out. "What's all this?" Paul asked. "Well, Pat, you know if we smoke, we smoke." This crossing of paths is also kinda neat considering that Pat Boone was the guy who recorded the white-bread versions of hits by Little Richard - Paul's idol.

I always knew that the Beatles had to fly to Key West rather than directly to Jacksonville because of Hurricane Dora, but I never knew how wild the weather still was when they played Jacksonville a couple of days later in the Gator Bowl. "For once, jellybeans were not a real problem. Winds, however, blasted the stage as the Beatles performed, whipping through their hair, rocking the microphones and the cymbals, at times threatening the instruments. Ringo's drums had been nailed down, but at one point Bob Bonis jumped onto the stage, crouched down, and held the drummer, convinced he was going to blow off." (Part of that account in Beatles '64 was taken from George's comments in Fifty Years Adrift, page 224.) Man, how come the book doesn't have any pictures of the Jacksonville show!

The Beatles' performance in Jacksonville was held up by the presence of film-photographers. Derek gives a funny account (page 214) of his ongoing chase of a film-man from Wolper films of L.A. "I signally failed to prevent the recording of miles of impeccable concert footage." Well, where is it??? Might that have added a little pizzazz to the Anthology documentary? Do I get to see any of it before I die? I sure hope someone is getting fantastically wealthy by keeping it under a bushel basket somewhere.

I'm not inclined to do it right now, but it would be interesting for someone to go through the book and extract all of the death threats, predictions of death, seriously dangerous encounters with fans, bombardments on stage, and dicy airplane flights the Beatles endured on this tour. It makes you wonder how they put up with it all till 1966, even.

The book didn't provide a table of contents or an index. The photos were presented evenly and chronogically throughout the book, but this meant that the the photos from a given city were not on the same pages as the writeup for that city. To help rectify that, and to help cross reference Beatles '64 with Fifty Years Adrift, here's a table of contents you might find handy. Parentheses indicate stops where there was no concert.

                       Beatles '64    Derek's memories in 
1964    city           text  pics     Fifty Years Adrift
----    ----           ----  ----     ------------------
Aug 19  San Francisco  73    9        193
Aug 20  Las Vegas      82    13       198
Aug 21  Seattle        88    16       199 (passing mention)
Aug 22  Vancouver      94    none     199 (passing mention)
Aug 23  Los Angeles    96    25       199
Aug 26  Denver         112   34       205
Aug 27  Cincinatti     118   40       206 (passing mention)
Aug 28  New York City  123   42       206
Aug 30  Atlantic City  138   55       212
Sep 2   Philadelphia   142   none     
Sep 3   Indianapolis   146   59       216
Sep 4   Milwaukee      155   93       217
Sep 5   Chicago        164   none     217
Sep 6   Detroit        167   97       218
Sep 7   Toronto        169   105      218
Sep 8   Montreal       176   116      218
Sep 9   (Key West)     181   130      220
Sep 11  Jacksonville   183   none :(  223
Sep 12  Boston         186   none     224
Sep 13  Baltimore      192   140      225
Sep 14  Pittsburgh     196   156      225
Sep 15  Cleveland      199   158      225
Sep 16  New Orleans    207   160      228
Sep 17  Kansas City    211   164      228
Sep 18  Dallas         214   180      228
Sep 19  (Alton, Mo.)   220   198      229
Sep 20  New York City  224   none     230

I poked through some old microfilms for newspaper articles on the Beatles' visit to Baltimore. (I grew up in Baltimore County.) I was curious to see if the author missed anything good. Here are some finds in chronological order. Quoted material is indented.

This article deals with an accusation that two members of the Civic Center Commission "had obtained a large number of choice tickets." However, a surprise audit satisfied the city comptroller that enough of the seats were distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Of interest to me is the identity of one of the men involved: Louis J. Grasmick.

Mr. Grasmick has since acknowledged that he personally handled the sale of about 1,500 tickets for the Beatles' shows, but he denied that the persons for whom he obtained tickets would sit in any better seats than if they had gone to the box office themselves.

The way he explained why so many people, including two Municipal Court judges, would go to him instead of regular ticket agencies was to say, "I guess it is a lot easier to get some one else to do your work."

Now, if this isn't the same Louis J. Grasmick with the Baltimore lumberyard and the wife who's been in charge of screwing up Maryland schoolchildren since 1994, I'll eat my hat. (See my web page on Maryland's criminally insane MSPAP test.) Man, that family must hate kids.

How about that? - a Beatle mention in the sports pages. The National Tennis Championships were forced to proceed on the outside courts while the "famed center court... stood idle - a temporary victim of overzealous Beatles fans." The explanation is given after a rundown of the most recent matches:

The center court, where feature matches are played, was bombed with jelly beans and broken glass when howling Beatles fans attended a show of the English beat singers last weekend.

The courts were covered with boards but the jelly beans slipped through the holes and embedded themselves in the precious turf where the championship will be decided Sunday week.

18 Men Work 3 Days

An industrial vacuum cleaner failed to remove them all and eighteen men had to work three days to pick up the debris.

Wow, that's one, big hummer of a tennis court!

... in which we learn the power structure within the Beatles - at least, according to some Milwaukee fans.

Ringo Starr was nominated for President today, becoming the choice of Milwaukee's teen-agers even before the Beatles arrived in town...

Starr was made the Presidential choice at a hotel convention that drew 28 delegates - 27 girls and one boy. The lone male refused to identify himself, saying, "My parents would kill me if they knew I was here."

Others Nominated

There were places on the ballot for the other Beatles. George Harrison was nominated for Vice President and Jack Lennon for Mayor of Ringoland. The platform adopted calls for Starr to appoint the fourth Beatle, Paul McCartney, as Secretary of Music.

The only rough spot in the convention came when Carol Kowalski, 16, nominated Lennon for mayor.

"I got so excited I forgot my lines," she said.

I remembered seeing this letter in a coworker's Beatle scrapbook. Glad I found it again. By the way, the Baltimore Evening Sun is a totally distinct paper from the Baltimore Sun, I want y'all to know.

A young writer, B.B., appeals to Baltimore Beatle fans to control themselves. She argues that a quiet audience would impress the Beatles so much that they would play even longer! She wants Baltimore to outdo the Indianapolis crowd, who the Beatles had supposedly rated the best yet. (Beatles' 64 supports this on page 149: "Nonetheless, there were actually some moments [in Indianapolis] when the screaming died down and the Beatles could almost hear themselves sing.") B.B. wraps up her letter with:

So if someone starts to scream beside you, ask them to be quiet, please. Bring something to bite on, so when you feel like screaming, just bite! If we are well behaved they will remember us and want to come back. Thank you. B.B.

Mrs. Nash agreed with B.B., adding,

Screaming during their singing is no compliment to them. It's almost an insult - indicating that their singing isn't worth listening to... Why not leave the squealing to the pigs?... Why not show the Beatles that Baltimore is a city of well bred teenagers?

I believe this letter actually had an effect. I remember an elementary school friend, Jack Dean, saying there were spells when you could hear the Beatles perfectly. That would make the Baltimore concert (both of them?) very unusual. I also think I read an account somewhere in which the writer attributed the relative quietness of Baltimore fans to a lack of enthusiasm. I haven't been able to track that down, but, in any case, let the record show that it was B.B.'s impassioned plea that did the trick.

Rona talked with the Beatles in Las Vegas. Here are some extracts:

Rumor had it he [John Lennon] was quitting the group...

John, the Brilliant One, as he's referred to by the boys, said, "Nonsense! Absolutely a lie. Aye haf no intenshun wotsoayver of kwittin'. Rumor stahted in Orstraylaya. Bloody bore. Aye like what Ahm doin'. Why should I kwit?"

Holy smokes, never knew I had such a Liverpool accent, myself - that's just how Aye pronounce intenshun and kwit!

[To Ringo] "And Maureen Cox? Will you be marrying her?"

"No. I'm not getting married... Maureen's going to become my personal secretary and that's about it." ...

Everyone's question about Paul is: Will he marry Jane Asher, a young English actress?

"Not yet," said Paul. "I speak with her on the telly and I miss her but I'm not for settling down yet."

Hmmm... the Beatles were always so disgusted with the rumors, but here we have Ringo lying about Maureen, and Paul leading us on that he will eventually marry Jane!

I asked the boys what they thought of America so far.

To which Ringo said: "I don't know about anyone else. But I'm getting spotty looking at the desert."

Hey Rings, weren't you the budding young cowboy who at one time even tried to immigrate to Texas?

Here was an interesting discovery: almost the whole of the Beatles '64 account of the Baltimore visit was extracted from three articles in the Baltimore Sun on the day following the concerts. (Rayl didn't use anything from Marcia's "bid to meet Ringo.") Everything is accounted for except the glimpse at John strumming and singing, "I'm a loo-ser"; the account of the all-night private party; and the story of Tony Saks getting his guitar autographed the morning after the shows (which comes from Fifty Years Adrift.) Everything else is here, including the story of George giving a reporter a kick and the press conference. Where the Sun reported a police lieutenant ruefully saying, "I can't even hear the ---- ---- music," Rayl helpfully filled in the blanks and had him shouting.

For whatever reasons, Rayl did not use articles from the Evening Sun. The paper's music critic, Lou Cedrone argued the Beatles' press interview was better entertainment than what you saw on stage. "Lennon is the sharpest, followed by Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and George Harrison." But I've always claimed that George came up with the best press conference zingers, and he followed suit in this one:

Press to George: "Are you going to take Joey Heatherton (movie starlet) to a ball in New York?

George: "I don't even know him, whoever he is."

Press to Harrison: "What's this about an annual illness?

Harrison: "Well, I get cancer every year."

Sometimes, the Baltimore Sun/Beatles '64 and the Evening Sun reported different responses for the same or similar questions. From the Baltimore Sun/Beatles '64:

"What do you think of American television?"

"It's great - you get eighteen stations, but you can't get a good picture on any of them," said Ringo.

From the Evening Sun:

"What are your favorite programs on American television?"

Lennon: "It's rubbish."

McCartney: "'News in Espanol' in Miami. 'Pop-eye,' 'Bullwinkle.' All that cultural stuff."

In response to, "How does it feel to put the whole world on?", the Evening Sun gave just Lennon's response:

Lennon: "How does it feel to be put on?"

while the Baltimore Sun/Beatles '64 skipped Lennon's snappy answer and quoted the other three:

"We enjoy it," said Ringo.

Added Paul: "We're not really putting you on."

"Well, just a bit," corrected George.

One last little piece of research related to the Beatles visit to Cincinnati. The Beatles Book Monthly, No. 15, October 1964 (page 31) reported, "In Cincinnati, the Beatles sang 'Hello Dolly' to a crowd at the airport." This was not mentioned in Beatles '64, so I thought it would be fun to track down confirmation in a Cincinnati newspaper. A successful hit would support my claim that the source material is where it's at, (baby). I did find a Cincinnati Enquirer article giving a blow-by-blow account of the Beatles' arrival at the airport - but no mention of them singing "Hello Dolly", or anything else. So, what to believe?

For the record, just because I think it's fun to pretend that newspaper articles contain the "honest truth," I'm fully aware that they generally fall somewhere between "inaccurate" and "pack-o-lies." Still, I say gimme the original, raw, unedited clips (excellent jobs like this book by Rayl notwithstanding.)

Sorry if all the above minutiae has killed anyone; for me, it's great fun. It still breaks my heart that even with the miracle of the internet, there's no hope of Beatle fans pulling together in an effort to gather up all the primary material together in one big database. I guess the reason is the same one John gave at the first New York press conference explaining why the Beatles don't sing at press conferences (and airports?): "We need money first", huh?

Somewhere back in the 1980s I was excited to find Yellow Submarine in a catalog of movie scripts published by a company called Script City. I was always frustrated at how much dialog I missed in this movie so I ordered a copy. Remember that back in those days, Beatle fans usually only saw poor quality copies of the movie.

Much to my disappointment, the script I received gave no indication of being connected with United Artists or having been used in the production of the film. It was immediately obvious that it was whipped up by some poor lackey sitting there at a typewriter, trying her best to keep up with some 8mm print of the movie - ergo, "post production". There were errors galore. Not only did the transcriber have ears almost as bad as mine, but she quite evidently had never heard Beatle songs. "Lucy in the sky I could die for," indeed.

Now we have DVDs with ultra-high fidelity, not to mention subtitles, and I played Yellow Submarine with the Script City script in hand, noting all the discrepancies. My original inspiration for putting my findings up on the web was to have a good laugh. Well, that's petty enough - I doubt too many people could have done a much better job - but maybe there's a more important point to be wrung out here. Movie producers, it seems to me, should be very concerned about a movie-goer understanding the dialog. See, that's kind of important for understanding the movie. Characters whisper and mumble; they talk at warp speed with take-no-prisoner accents and oddball voices - and this almost always over (or under) background noises that mostly seem to exist because movie-makers are too lazy to get rid of them, not because they're necessary.

(While we're on the subject, I've always felt the same way about live theater - too many lost words. Here's an idea anybody can have for free: "Totally Understood Shakespeare (really Edward de Vere)" where the dialog is delivered so that it can be digested by an intelligent person on the first hearing. For Shakespeare (really Edward de Vere) we would also need to swap out obsolete words. Shouldn't harm the old boy's reputation any, eh?)

Anyhow, Yellow Submarine people, this is what a professional script transcriber could make of your soundtrack. There were loads of discrepancies, but I've just presented the most interesting ones below. In some cases a little joke was missed, in others, the transcriber actually came away with the opposite sense to what was intended. Note that Script City never once gets Jeremy Hillary Boob's last name right. It's not surprising they had a rough time with his jabber - for much of it, they just wrote, "Ad-lib."

The Yellow Submarine dialog as shown in the Script City script (scs) is presented first, and the actual dialog, taken from the DVD subtitle (dvd), is printed below it. Beatle people, you might have fun mentally replaying the Yellow Submarine movie as you read through the dialog below.

scs  Narrator: Once upon a time, or maybe twice, there was an  earthly  paradise called Pepperland.
dvd  Narrator: Once upon a time, or maybe twice, there was an unearthly paradise called Pepperland.

scs  Narrator: Eighteen thousand leagues beneath the sea it lay...
dvd  Narrator:  Eighty  thousand leagues beneath the sea it lay...

scs  Narrator:  for why,  I'm not too sure.  
dvd  Narrator:  or "lie." I'm not too sure.  

scs  Chief Blue Meanie: Today Pepperland goes  blue.  Fire!
dvd  Chief Blue Meanie: Today Pepperland goes blooey.  Fire!

scs  Chief Blue Meanie: Go Glove, point.  And having pointed, bounce down. 
dvd  Chief Blue Meanie: Go Glove, point.  And having pointed, pounce!  Go!

scs  Chief Blue Meanie: I haven't laughed so much since Bombay.
dvd  Chief Blue Meanie: I haven't laughed so much since Pompeii.  

scs  Fred: I can't even make meself float.
dvd  Fred: I can't even make meself float.
[You're both wrong!  It's "me soap", not "meself".  Was somebody cribbing?]

scs scene description: Pumpkins drop from top of pic. centre onto Leader 
                       who freezes and is gradually buried by them.  
dvd shows big green apples, not pumpkins, of course.  

scs  Ringo: Who is me.
dvd  Ringo: Woe is me.

[Fred calls for help, letter by letter.]
scs  Fred: L is for lovely.
dvd  Fred: L is for love me.

[Fred and Ringo see a roomful of familiar heroes, such as Batman.]
scs  Ringo: No. They'd hardly work,  any   rate.  
dvd  Ringo: No, Fred,  I only work with me mates.  

scs  John: What day is it?  Ringo: Saturday.   John: Then George'll be here. 
dvd  John: What day is it?  Ringo: Sitar-day.  John: Then George'll be here. 

[The clock hands are slowing down.] 
     Ringo: Do you ever get the feeling that things aren't as rosy as they appear to be...
scs  under the circumstances?
dvd  under the surface?
[Script City misses play on "on the surface".]

[Ringo grows younger and younger.]
scs  Paul: Hey, Ringo, you're not half the man you used to be.
dvd  Paul: Hey, Ringo, you're not half the lad you used to be.

scs  Fred: Very soon we'll all disappear up our own suspense.  
dvd  Fred: Very soon we'll all disappear up our own existence.

scs  Paul: Move the hands forward and see what happens.  Fred:  Turn away.
dvd  Paul: Move the hands forward and see what happens.  Fred: Clever lad.

scs  Paul: Funny, a submarine remarkably like our own.  John:  Uncanny.  
dvd  Paul: Funny, a submarine remarkably like our own.  John: Uncannily.  

film caption:  Sixty-four years is 33,661,440 minutes and one minute is a long time.
[For the curious, that figure is correct, and it does include the 16 leap years.]

     Fred: You've got to steer clear.  
     Ringo: Steer clear?  
     Fred: Yes, steer. Clear?
scs  Ringo:   Steer.
dvd  Ringo: Yes, dear.

[The submarine is threatened by a monster.]
scs  George: Find the boxing gloves.  Paul:   Where'd he get   boxing gloves?  
dvd  George: Find the boxing button.  Paul: Whoever heard of a boxing button?  
[The yellow submarine has buttons for everything!]

[Now Ringo calls for help, letter by letter.]
scs  Ringo:  Here, fella.
dvd  Ringo: E is for Ergent.

scs  Fred: Thunder in the vaults. 
dvd  Fred: Put her in  reverse.

scs  Ringo: The indians have got me!
dvd  Ringo: P    is   for   Please!

[Trying to escape the vacuum cleaner monster.]
scs  John: We  want to pack it in.  Fred: By all the sea in beds, we're losing power.
dvd  John: The motor's packin' in.  Fred: By all the sea nymphs,  we're losing power.

scs  Jeremy: Ad-lib.
dvd  Jeremy: Medic, pedic, zed oblique; orphic, morphic, dorfic, Greek.  

scs  John: And who the bloody shears are you?  
dvd  John: And who the Billy  Shears are you?  

[The Beatles read Jeremy's card.] 
scs  John: Jeremy!  Paul: Hillary??  George: Oog??   Ringo: Phd.
dvd  John: Jeremy!  Paul: Hillary??  George: Boob??  Ringo: What?
[Ringo says "fud" for "Phd." The dvd blew this one.]

scs  Jeremy: This motorised spring has a broken down thing.
dvd  Jeremy: This motor, I  see,   has a broken down thing.

scs  Jeremy: I love to  hit  my bust, do models,  finish my blueprints...
dvd  Jeremy: I must complete my bust, two novels, finish my blueprints...

scs  George: A fool for all seasons.
dvd  George: A boob for all seasons.

scs  Ringo: Hey, Mr. Boo,  you can come with us if you like.
dvd  Ringo: Hey, Mr. Boob, you can come with us if you like.

scs  Ringo: Ok, Groovey, down the hatch.
dvd  Ringo: Ok, Boobie,  down the hatch.

[Jeremy analyzes the motor problem.]
scs  Jeremy: If they mix it, ha ha, just turn the screw.
dvd  Jeremy:  Ipse  Dixit,   ha ha, just turn the screw.

[In the Sea of Holes, almost to Pepperland.]
scs  Jeremy: I'll tell you forever, and quite imprecise, this is a condiment - that's right.
dvd  Jeremy:   A  chemical  error,  and quite imprecise, this is a condiment -   a  spice.

scs  Jeremy: Faces and fingertips.. Ad-lib
dvd  Jeremy: Thesis, antithesis, synthesis, causes of causal causation.

scs  Ringo: The booby's making more and more sense.  
dvd  Ringo: The Boob is making more and more sense.  

scs  George: Well he's not here now.  Paul: Well he must have jumped  us  then.
dvd  George:      He's not here now.  Paul:      He must have jumped ship then.
[Script City correctly supplies the well's, hey's, er's, um's, etc.]

scs  Ringo: Booby, Jeremy,  Booby,  where are you?
dvd  Ringo: Booby, Jeremy, Hillary, where are you?
["sea of green, sea of green, sea of green"]

[Referring to their adventures on the way to Pepperland.]
scs  John: Reminiscent in many ways of the great Mr. Ulysses.
dvd  John: Reminiscent in many ways of the  late Mr. Ulysses.

scs  Lord Mayor:  Oh, pizzicato, young Fred.
dvd  Lord Mayor: Holy pizzicato, young Fred.
[Script City turned a Batman joke into something slightly rude sounding.]

scs  Paul: They're quite cute really.
dvd  Paul:  We're  quite cute really.
[Not as bad as it looks on paper; the subject was the Beatles' faces.]

scs  Lord Mayor: You could impersonate them and rally the band to rebellion.
dvd  Lord Mayor: You could impersonate them and rally the land to rebellion.

[The Blue Meanies shrink from the music.]
scs  John: Ok you guys, it's drinking  time in Pepperland.
dvd  John: Ok you guys, it's shrinking time in Pepperland.

scs  Paul: The coast is clear.  George: Mills or thrills.  Ringo:   Well  off  we   go.
dvd  Paul: The coast is clear.  George: Now's our chance.  Ringo: But how will we get over?

scs  Ringo: What did you say?  George: Sshhh.  Ringo: Good man.
dvd  Ringo: What did you say?  George: Sshhh.  Ringo: Good plan. 

[Spying a tree with large apples (not pumpkins.)] 
scs  Paul: Look, breakfast.  Ringo: They're on time for a bit of brekky.
dvd  Paul: Look, breakfast.  Ringo:   I'm  dying   for a bit of "brekky".

scs  Chief Blue Meanie: Let us not forget that heaven is blue.  All  over the world.
dvd  Chief Blue Meanie: Let us not forget that heaven is blue.  Tomorrow, the world!

scs  Chief Blue Meanie: Bring me my bluebird.
dvd  Chief Blue Meanie: Bring in my bloopers.

[Referring to John's theory about the band in the glass sphere. Is Paul spoofing a known song?]
scs  Paul: Any old   iron,   any old   iron.
dvd  Paul: Any old Einstein, any old Einstein.

[Referring to the blue glass sphere.]
scs  Paul: A drum beat might shatter it.
dvd  Paul: A drum break might shatter it.

[Watching the glass sphere melt away.]
scs  Ringo: Like coloured jelly.
dvd  Ringo: Like coloured telly.

[Just before causing flowers to bloom all over the Chief Blue Meanie.]
scs  Jeremy: Peace, peace, supplant the doom, and the bloom.
dvd  Jeremy: Peace, peace, supplant the doom, and the gloom.

[After the Blue Meanies have been defeated.]
scs  Max: Yes, sir.. I mean your blueness.
dvd  Max: Yes, sir.. I mean your Newness.

scs  Jeremy:             The world is a glorious thing.
dvd  Jeremy: Ah, "yes" is a word with a glorious ring.

Now it's time to play "Name That Tune". This is how the Script City transcriber heard Beatle lyrics in the soundtrack songs. You can't blame the movie people for these!

1. How to get all the lonely people
How to get all the lonely people

2. Green, brown, yellow orange and blue, I love you.

3. It doesn't really matter what chords I play,
The words I say or time of day it is
'Cause it's only a lonely song.

If you think the harmony isn't equal
You could be right, there's nobody there.

4. Thinking of his nowhere plans for nobody.

The world that you love is at your domain.

You're a man, the world as your domain.

5. Lemonade flowers of yellow and green, flowering rose in her hair.

Then we walk down to the bridge by a fountain,
The rocking horse people the most mellow kind

It smells so enchantedly fine.
You'll see the taxi appear on the shore waiting to take you away
Jump in the back with your head in the clouds and you're gone.
Lucy in the sky, I could die for
Lucy in the sky, I could die for

6. Nowhere you can see that isn't where you're meant to be.

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