Taking a detour from some of the heavier SATB topics of late for end-of-summer light entertainment, Gary Wenstrup and I return to the series of gold, silver and bronze rankings of Beatle cuts through their catalog. We’re at the halfway point now as The Beatles turned the page from a touring to a studio band, but not before a final blast of nostalgia by years’ end.
Returning guest Terry Zobeck (234: Paul McCartney Lyrics ) spent his career studying drug addiction and its effects.
In the time since publishing his memoir, The Redhead on the Roof and first appearing on SATB (160), Beatles equipment manager Kevin Harrington has now become known to millions of fans by his ubiquitous presence captured on film and presented in the eight hours of Peter Jackson’s Get Back. It therefore was time to bring him back to get his reaction to the film and drill down deeper on his experiences working with The Beatles.
As part of the Fab4ConJam online fan event, I convened these two Beatles insiders to take questions and reminisce.
He’s known to millions, in the words of Arthur C. Clarke, as “The most famous unknown actor in the world.
One of the things that’s kept Beatles fans captivated was their refusal to stay still and how each album felt like a progression into new territory.
In the latest effort in a line of works presenting his side of his own history (which include Many Years From Now, Wingspan, the McCartney 3 2 1 docuseries as well as Anthology), Paul McCartney published The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present in 2021. It was in collaboration with Irish poet Paul Muldoon, an as-told-to project where he got deep into his recollections about a selection of his works, pre, during and post-Beatles. But the book is deeper than that: his observations detailing his entire life from boyhood in Liverpool onward were sparked by the 25 hours of conversations he and Muldoon had. My guest is Terry Zobeck: a first-generation Beatles fan and collector who reviewed the book for Doug Sulpy’s 910 newsletter. The most recent issues also feature the first two parts of his three-part critique of The Beatles Get Back docuseries. All of Doug’s writings, including the indispensable Drugs, Divorce and a Slipping Image (revised edition) can be found at www.dougsulpy.com
After shows post-Get Back with guests representing American musicians, multi-generation female fans, and the film’s maker (Peter Jackson),
Long on the list of my coveted guests has been singer-songwriter Sam Brown. The daughter of Joe Brown – an early UK rock legend – and Vicki Brown – an astonishingly gifted singer herself – Sam’s career as an artist kicked off in 1988 with Stop!, the first of seven albums. (The first letter of the titles spell out her name – the 8th installment, titled Number 8 is due out this year.) Sam is also known for singing with Pink Floyd and David Gilmour, as well as on television and on tour with Jools Holland. It was with Jools that Sam took center stage at the 2002 Concert for George, stealing the show with her reading of George’s last recorded composition, “Horse To The Water.” She has remained active as a performer and a recording artist, despite tragically losing her ability to sing in 2007, following surgery. The mysterious condition forced a re-think of her career and led to her establishing a decade-long running group of clubs empowering folks to take up ukulele. In this conversation, we discuss her career and the struggles of being an artist – her friendship with the Harrisons and working with George – the concert – and how she’s managed the challenging events that followed. Sam is a resourceful and resilient artist whose rich catalog is worth exploring. You can check out her work here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DZ06evO1Tns40 Vicki Brown’s farewell to fans: https://youtu.be/b0SCoEu_9oM Joe Brown sharing a 1964 stage with The Beatles: https://youtu.be/GjNB-2Bq6ag Sam at Concert for George: https://tinyurl.com/34un27f6 “Stop!” live: https://youtu.be/WROOE-0IfjE “Valentine Moon” – fixed: https://tinyurl.com/548b7ssb Terri Hemmert’s Breakfast with The Beatles on Sunday at 8am CDT: https://www.audacy.com/wxrt/beatles
The conclusion of the discussion Gary Wenstrup and I had in rating individual tracks on the albums named here, as well as the 1966 Capitol release, “Yesterday”…and Today. I think, is so overlooked, both message-wise and musical construction-wise. It’s one of those songs, first of all, musically, based on piano. Not a lot of guitar, except those little stabbing, which was a 1965 sound in other people’s records that year. Nice block harmonies. Then John breaking out his own for the verses, starting this implicitly spiritual song, the first words out of his mouth of the verse in the beginning. Nice touch. That’s beautiful. It’s this precursor to certainly, All You Need is Love and Give Peace A Chance. It’s him. It’s messianic John for the first time, really wanting to use his platform to promote something good. They’d said that they’re all potheads at this point. I mean, they’d taken acid a couple of times at this point, but not the full immersion by the time of Revolver. That has to be what’s informing his wanting to evangelize on behalf of love at this point. It’s interesting that they didn’t use this one for Yellow Submarine, because that whole love thing at the end in pepper land, in the face of the mayonnaise, it seems like it would be enmeshed right in there. I guess, they had All You Need Is Love. That was what they went with. I think, it’s a great message, a great performance, nice arrangement. I love that organ. Then there’s that whole musical, we’re going to build a song around one note and it’s got that drone throughout it, so you’ve got that musical experimentation going on at the same time. Not a song that got a lot of airplay. I don’t know if anybody ever covered it. One, they never seemed to look back at it, but it’s an early clue to the new direction. It’s just this forerunner of lots of things that would come and they just pull it off. They don’t sound like you’re being preached to. It works as a pop ditty, but also, it’s like, wow, it’s got a really good message to it, that’s bigger than boy-girl relationships.
