Beatles
Kieron Tyler
“What's the New Mary Jane” is a nursery rhyme-like song, one of John Lennon’s most peculiar offerings. It was recorded for late 1968’s double album The Beatles (i.e. the White Album) but, literally, did not make the cut. Nonetheless, John Lennon would not let it go.A year on, he moved ahead with getting “What's the New Mary Jane” onto a single. That too did not happen. The first official release came with 1996’s Beatles’ archive set Anthology 3. Now, the thoughtful and well-packaged What's The New, Mary Jane album is dedicated to multiple versions of “What's the New Mary Jane.” Nothing else. Read more ...
John Carvill
Andrew Sarris, doyen of auteurist film critics, dubbed A Hard Day’s Night “the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals”. Wild over-praise, or sly, back-handed compliment?"Jukebox musical" connotes the sort of "exploitation film" Elvis churned out. Corporate suits with Dollar sign eyes may have wanted to exploit The Beatles, but the band were too savvy. Despite the fact that pop phenomena tended to fizzle out fast, meaning their time in the spotlight might be limited, The Beatles had refused several film offers before A Hard Day’s Night, holding out for something real, something, in John Lennon’s Read more ...
John Carvill
Do we need any more Beatles books? The answer is: that’s the wrong question. What we need is more Beatles books that are worth reading. As the musician and music historian Bob Stanley pointed out, in his 2007 review of Jonathan Gould’s Can’t Buy Me Love, probably the best biography of The Beatles to date, “the subject is pretty much inexhaustible if the writer is good enough.”Gould is more than good enough, and he spent nearly two decades writing his book; whereas Ian Leslie has worked his up from a Covid-era blog post paean to Paul McCartney that went, as they say, viral. Leslie attests to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The blurb on the front of the double-CD set The Hamburg Repertoire says it collects “The original recordings of songs performed by The Beatles on stage in Hamburg.” Disc One opens with Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally.” Disc Two ends with Chet Atkins’ version of the “Theme From ‘The Third Man’.”In between, 86 recordings of varying familiarity: from Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” and The Shirelles’ “Will You Love me Tomorrow” to lesser-known fare such as Duane Eddy’s “3.30 Blues” and Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps’ “Wedding Bells (Are Breaking up That Old Gang of Mine).”Hamburg and The Read more ...
Liz Thomson
When first I clicked on the stream for this album, I really wasn’t sure about it. In fact, I thought I wasn’t going to like it, much as I had wanted to. But I’ve had it playing almost continuously while I’ve been dealing with mindless stuff – and I’ve come to like it.Not without reservations of course – there are always reservations – but it’s got under my skin and I’m now properly in the groove, appreciating what Lucinda Williams is doing, delving into this most hallowed of song catalogues and bravely tackling numbers that are rarely, if ever, covered. As is her way.Take “Yer Blues”, and “I’ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“We hope if you like it, you'll buy it,” says Paul McCartney. It’s 4 April 1963 and The Beatles are on stage and about to perform their third single “From Me to You.” It’s out in a week.To his left, John Lennon instantly responds to the entreaty. “And if you don't like it,” he retorts. “Don't buy it.”This atypical approach to promotion was witnessed by the audience gathered in the Roxburgh Hall of Stowe School, a Buckinghamshire all-boys institution hosting a late afternoon concert nominated as “probably The Beatles most unusual live gig” by the foremost Beatles scholar Mark Lewisohn Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Welcome to one of Peter Culshaw’s occasional global radio shows, hosted by Music Box. Today’s guest is the celebrated essayist, novelist, music composer and singer Amit Chaudhuri.TO HEAR THE SHOW CLICK THIS LINKChaudhuri became known for some strange juxtapositions of western pop or jazz classics and Indian ragas – a version of "Layla " or a Doors number can collide with Indian music to spectacular and usually charming effect. His first album had the intriguing title This Is Not Fusion while his new album is called Across the Universe, the title track a warped and beautiful version of Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Lisa Cortés’s fast-paced documentary Little Richard: I Am Everything opens with a TV interview made in 1971, 16 years after the rock 'n' roll pioneer became an overnight success with groundbreaking hits like "Tutti Frutti" and "Good Golly Miss Molly".Wearing a baby pink onesie and a crown-shaped tiara, Little Richard smiles coyly to camera, bats his beautifully made-up eyes, and says, “A lot of people say I’m shy, but I let it all hang out – the love, the tenderness, the kindness. You ain’t supposed to hide them; if you’ve got ’em, God damn it, show ’em to the world.”And show them Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A strange new single went on sale in Britain’s record shops in April 1962. Credited to Ray Cathode, “Time Beat” combined a metronomic rhythm with peculiar, otherworldly sounds. It was not a standard pop record. The flipside, “Waltz In Orbit”, was also about its tempo and was just as weird. Not many copies were sold.The Ray Cathode single was issued seven months before The Tornados’s equally unearthly “Telstar” and was, in time, recognised as a ground-breaking combination of studio-created sounds and pop music. The Ray Cathode handle masked a collaboration between the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Beatles loomed over everything else. It wasn’t inevitable, but the arrival of the revealing Revolver box set and Peter Jackson’s compelling Get Back film confirmed that there is more to say about what’s known, and also that there are new things to say about popular music’s most inspirational phenomenon of the 20th century.Just as it was when The Beatles were operational, the Revolver box and Get Back gave other things out there standards to aspire to. This pair of archive releases became a wholly unexpected yardstick for 2022. Obviously though, brows at labels aren’t furrowing about Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
John Lennon does not appear on “Love You Too” and “For No One”. With “Taxman”, “Eleanor Rigby”, “Here, There and Everywhere”, “Good Day Sunshine” and “I Want to Tell You”, his contributions are limited to backing vocals and, on odd occasions, some percussion too. He appears semi-detached from seven of Revolver’s 14 tracks.This realisation comes after reading the handsome book accompanying the Revolver box set. The pages with the track-by-track commentary have headings above each section of text, listing dates of recording, the studios used, the personnel and who played what. Leaf through, and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“At all times, the film-makers have attempted to present an accurate portrait of the events depicted and the people involved.” The on-screen statement beginning each of Get Back's three parts acknowledges that definitions of accuracy can depend on points of view.And the point of view with director Peter Jackson’s interpretation of the 60-plus hours of film and over 150 hours of audio from The Beatles’s January 1969 attempts to make a film or television special and an album is his – and those who signed-off the 468 minutes first seen via streaming and now available on Blu-ray or DVD. None Read more ...