← Something About the Beatles
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- [00:02]
Robert Rodriguez
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- [01:03]
Dr. Richard Mills
This episode is brought to you by Paramount.
- [01:06]
Robert Rodriguez
Gladiator 2 is now streaming on Paramount. Rated R. Years after the death of Maximus, Lucius is forced into the Coliseum after his home is conquered by tyrannical twin Roman emperors. With the future of the empire at stake, he must find strength and honor.
- [01:22]
Dr. Richard Mills
To return the glory of Rome to its people.
- [01:25]
Robert Rodriguez
Gladiator 2 now streaming on paramountplus.com what.
- [01:40]
Dr. Richard Mills
I remember was these girls going crazy and the smell of piss. All these girls would faint instantly and they just piss. And all the dirt from your shoes would form tiny banks in the rivulets of pee. And that was the Beatles Experience.
- [02:09]
Robert Rodriguez
Hello and welcome to episode 296 of Something about the Beatles Podcast. First thing you might be wondering is why 296? Didn't we already hear 297 and 298 to close out 2024? Yes, you did. And this is 296, taped in November, and we made certain choices as to the order of things. But Anyway, it was Mark 296, 296. It shall stay. And yes, it's coming after 298, the first one of 2025, a year which promises to be full of good stuff from the Beatles and from this podcast and just events generally, one of which I will get to in a second. But first, my guest is Dr. Richard Mills, born in Ireland, grew up in England, an academic who has written extensively about the Beatles. The book he's got out currently, the Beatles and Fandom, is a terrific book, a Bloomsbury book if you can get your hands on it every once in a while. They have great discounts on these things. And he's got another one coming out in May 2025, the Beatles in Black Music, which we touch on in passing. But we'll have him back on the show for that when the time comes. Meanwhile, January 21 had been announced sort of informally as the publication date for my collaboration with Jerry Hammock called ribbons of Rust, Volume 1, the Beatles recording Career in context, that has been deferred to a date in February, a very portentous date in Beatle history. If you know, you know, if you follow my work, you know. But in any event, if you followed newsletter, which I would Recommend you do, satb2010 mail is how you sign up Subject Line Newsletter and join hundreds of people who already have done so and are very glad that they did, I think it's safe to say, because virtually everyone to a man and woman has requested copies of every single one. So make of that what you will. But anyway, Richard Mills, it was great discussion. His book is terrific. And fandom, one of those things, one of those overlooked subjects in plain sight that we have been getting more and more study of, whether through fan clubs, such as Sarah Schmidt's book that came out a year or so ago. We'll be talking about that in an upcoming show Fan Magazines. Alison Bumstead, you know her from this show and her book that came out recently, Teen Set, we did a book launch for that, but she'll be back discussing other aspects of fan magazine history and how it applies to the Beatles. So that is coming as well. Fandom itself. We've had different expressions of that on the show with the first generation fans I've interviewed, but this is a book that examines all kinds of aspects, including the Beatles Monthly Fan Magazine. He's a terrific guest. We have crossed paths a number of times without truly connecting till this show, so I am very happy for that. It will not be his last time on something about the Beatles, I can guarantee you that, and I hope you will enjoy that conversation. Speaking of past guests and this podcast, Jack Petrocelli, Walter Everett, Cameron Grider from the RPM School had them on the show a number of times independently, separately, collectively, I've been a guest at the RPM School when they have various semesters going on on specific album projects. And anyway, one of the things they've got going is coming this year, as I said, something to look forward to this year, June 24 through June 27. So the week before July 4, it is in upstate New York, not far from Bethel and Woodstock, and I think it's about two and a half hours from New York City. In any event, the Magical Mystery Camp, which is four days of immersion in symposiums, presentations, lots and lots of music and just a sort of informal gathering where you get absolute proximity to the guests, whether they're doing their thing or you just want to hang out. This is basically what it is. So plenty of people are into Beatles history and just want to learn more and hear it from people who know what's what. And then there are people that aspire to make music. Maybe some of them have taken the RPM school so far where Beatle music is deconstructed and broken down, and the class that signed on for the part where they actually walk you through how to perform and record this stuff. You know what I'm talking about. But Magical Mystery Camp is an in person, four day event in upstate New York. The guests this year, first of all, Jack, you know from his band the Fab Foe. They are of course Beatle tribute artists. Second to none, multi instrumentalists as well as in their stage presentation, often augmented with live brass, strings and harp player and whatever else is needed to replicate the Beatles studio recordings. So a terrific act. You've got that. But you've also got a number of musical guests as well. Steve Forbert, you may know him, remember him, late 70s, early 80s, his hit Romeo's Tune, as well as everything else he's done, which is considerable. He was a frequent guest on Richard Courtney's From Me to you radio show out of Nashville. Big Beetle guy. Joan Osborne, a frequent collaborator with Jack, who you know from her hit One of Us. And she's been on the road with all kinds of acts through the years, including the Grateful Dead and its various iterations. She's done the camp before actually. And Peter Asher, everybody knows as one half of Peter and Gordon, as well as being the producer of Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. He discovered James Taylor produced his first album at Apple, as well as being the head of A and R at Apple. Very tight with Paul through the years and he's the host on Beatles channel Sirius xm, as well as author of the book Beatles A to Z. Those are your headlining guests and you've got other luminaries there as well, including yours truly and Jerry Hammock, who will be presenting about our book. You have to go to the site magical mysterycamp.com something that'll bring you to registration, but magical mysterycamp.com for all the information on all the guests and the accommodations. So it's Catskills, right? So you have mountains, you got a lake. So there's swimming, you can hang out when you're not engaged in Beetle activities and you've got arrangements ranging from a place to set up a tent to shared rooms and cabins. Depending on how you define camping, you can arrange it to your satisfaction, to your comfort level. But there's also, if you go to the site, if you need a little help from your friends, they do have scholarships as well. Because this is a learning experience as well as a fun Beetle hangout as well, you can easily make it part of a road trip and then visit Bethel or Woodstock or New York City. So a beautiful location and the beautiful Beetle vibe going on, immersed in art and music and cool people. So definitely check out the site. And again, it is magical mystery camp.com this is the Week Tuesday June 24th through the 27th, the week before July 4th. So it's a great way to kick off the summer travel season, vacation season, what have you. Any event? I'll be there, we'll be talking about more and in fact I've got a video I made with Jack I'll be sharing shortly. But again, anybody wants to know, for example, why it's been one month since the last show, sign up to the satbi newsletter satb2010mail.com and you'll be informed on all kinds of stuff. I've not been doing a ton of social media lately just to announce the new shows. That's pretty much it. So. So anything else you really want to know connected with the show and Beetle world generally, that's the place to be. I send them out every Monday, so that's that. I was really looking forward to talking with Richard Mills and he did not disappoint. It was a fun conversation. We talked about everything from Midas man to Jane Asher to fans views of Paul and a bit about Beatles Monthly, but lots to digest there. His book is, like I said, it's terrific and I'm really looking forward to his next one. But apart from that, we got some great shows in the works. I promise will not be a month between shows going forward, barring any contingencies. And more on my own book with Jerry Hammock coming up. That will be. Well, you'll find out stuff through the newsletter, everything there is to know. I'm sure we'll be doing all kinds of press and interviews and things about that. So without wasting any further time, Richard Mills have you seen Midas Man?
- [11:12]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yes, what you think, right. I was really fed up with biopics for a long time and I didn't really Enjoy them especially, you know, the rise and fall, rise again cliches that you see with Johnny Cash and you see with Ray Charles and all of those. But some are good, you know, some are bad. I was a big fan of Todd Heads as one on Bob Dylan. You know, he does something very creative, you know, with the idea I'm not there, you know. Yeah, he gets five people and Clinton Kit wins it, but it was it. I'm very tired today. What's she called? Get Blanchett, you know, gets five different people to play Dylan. And that was very interesting, very unusual. And it's sort of. That artistic fragmented approach did service the subject very well because biopics are just so cliched. But I haven't said that as a pretty standard mainstream biopic goes. I thought Midas man really wasn't too bad. And they did quite a good job of showing it from Brian Epstein's point of view. And you really got. There's a lot of empathy with the Brian Epstein character. I thought the guy that played Brian Epstein was very good as well, as were the four Beatles. One of the curios of it. And I realized people really always want everything to be the fidelity to real, to be super real when you watch something and people always point out little problems I find with it, but they shouldn't. They shouldn't really do that because it's the warmth of it, it's the feeling of it, because it's obviously not reality. But the John Lennon character is the smallest.
- [12:42]
Robert Rodriguez
That's interesting.
- [12:43]
Dr. Richard Mills
All about five feet eleven and a half or something, aren't they? And then ring is five foot seven. It looks like John's five foot seven and it's. Right. A lot of people have noticed that. I don't. I don't know if it's that relevant because the guy that plays John Lennon's very good. But every now and then, you know, Ringo's torring above him and he goes. It's strange. I can have obviously done research into this, but there's all sorts of little YouTube channels about. About the heights of rock stars, believe it or not, honestly. And most tend to exaggerate slightly.
- [13:17]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, yeah, of course. And we know about the Beetle boots with the Cuban heels and all that stuff. They absolutely were about visual presentation. So, yeah, it's not important. But on the hand. Yeah. I do not take as gospel their stats as issue to fan magazines back in the 60s either.
- [13:34]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah. Have you seen Midas Man?
- [13:36]
Robert Rodriguez
Not yet. I don't think it's gotten any U.S. distribution.
- [13:39]
Dr. Richard Mills
No. I watched it. I'm trying to think what I watched. It wasn't Netflix, it was Prime. Oh. And again, being such a sort of super fan, I can watch most stuff. I actually genuinely thought it was a fairly good standard. It was pretty zippy. It moved pretty quickly. The guy playing George Martin was good. The Brian Epstein character was excellent and I rather enjoyed it. And I say this is someone who's quite resistant to, you know, very cliche midstream biopics. So I'll be very interested to hear what you think of it. I'm afraid I've asked you here to tell you some bad news. Oh. I've been talking to the others and we've made a decision, I'm afraid. We're looking for a new drummer. Funny guy, Brian. All right, boys, you can come out now. You're not serious.
- [14:37]
Robert Rodriguez
I.
- [14:38]
Dr. Richard Mills
This is a joke, right? It's nothing personal, Pete. We're just in a different phase now. And you heard what George Martin said. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Brian, what are you. What are you. What are you saying? I'm the beat in the Beatles. I mean, it's my sound. They're all doing it now. Ringo, Ringo. They enjoyed playing with him when you were unwell.
- [15:05]
Robert Rodriguez
I was sick, Brian.
- [15:07]
Dr. Richard Mills
I was sick, not dead.
- [15:09]
Robert Rodriguez
Well, what's interesting to me is getting your take on it as somebody that obviously you live in this world, you're steeped in this stuff, at what level of detachment? You must have to watch it and not just sit there and go, well, that's wrong, that's wrong.
- [15:23]
Dr. Richard Mills
I always find that very strange because I absolutely love Ian McDonald's revolution in the Head. And some serious Beatle nerds go, he got that wrong. Or he did this wrong. Even McCartney's criticized it. But Ian MacDonald was at Cambridge University studying English in 1969. He ended up editor for the Enemy. He's a music obsessive. He's more or less the same generation as the Beatles. And what his sort of new journalism approach to writing, you know, that very lyrical, doesn't matter if sometimes, if you stray from the truth slightly, it really captures the warmth and the spirit of the Beatles. And that's very important because, you know, you could. Even if you talk to people that were there, memories are fallible, this and that. So I. I don't know, when people go, look, they got something wrong in a film, you go, but it's not the be all and end all, is it?
- [16:11]
Robert Rodriguez
Well, that's an interesting thing that is absolutely ripe for discussion, because if you were to ask a historian, they would tell you, well, you can't just lay out there things that you have no proof of or that are hearsay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we had this discussion on the show with Aaron Weber. Maybe you heard what we're talking about, the Get Back film.
- [16:31]
Dr. Richard Mills
Oh, yes, I. Absolutely. I thought her book, was it the Beatles and the Astoria. Yes, that was cool. I thought that was a superb piece.
- [16:40]
Robert Rodriguez
Of scholarship, a game changer.
- [16:42]
Dr. Richard Mills
Absolutely. Also, I did like, in a very sort of weird, iconic, classic way. Phoebe's podcast, what's it called, was very good about taking a deconstructing Mark Lewis.
- [16:55]
Robert Rodriguez
And another kind of mind.
- [16:57]
Dr. Richard Mills
Another kind of mind, Yeah, I thought that was interesting as well, which fits a little bit with what Aaron Weber was saying. There's just so many gaps here and people just make mistakes.
- [17:08]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, there is that. But in the recent one we talked about get back where there are out and out, certainly there's manipulation, which every filmmaker does.
- [17:18]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah.
- [17:18]
Robert Rodriguez
But when you rewrite an event in history to present it a certain way, what do you make of that? Do you throw the whole baby out with the bathwater or do you try to pick apart. Well, this clearly did not happen as it's being depicted on the screen. We know this, yet there it is. And millions of Beatle fans are gonna watch this and think this actually happened, when in fact it did. So that's when things become problematic because inevitably you will see down the road books being published on the Beatles, Let it be, period. And then on January 10, after George walked out, John, Paul and Ringo got together in a group hug. So distraught, were they at this turn of events. No, that's not what happened. But there it is. It's in Peter Jackson's film. So I know that we're generally. There's no way of saying this without sounding like an ass, but we're generally a little bit more discerning in our approach to Beatle history, I think.
- [18:17]
Dr. Richard Mills
So that's a good way of putting it because I'm trying. No, no, no, because if you look at something like Bob Dylan's Don't Look Back, it's cinema pretty da. Pennebaker's got a light camera following him around. So you go, oh, this is really close to the truth. Then if you see the out takes, he goes, bob, I'm going to ask you now about what it's like walking up Denmark street and sing a really nice guitar in London. And he'll go. He'll go, yeah, okay, let's do that. And then there'll be action. So I don't know what happened with Michael Lindsay Hog. There must have been Retex. And then, of course, the way it was sexed up by Peter Jackson's Absolutely gorgeous. So there's a lot of. They're just so obvious. It's not. What happened is mediated through so many things. It's been mediated through Mike Lindsey Hogg, through Peter Jackson. We don't know exactly what went on in those rooms. So we're getting a. There's a kernel of truth there, but we're getting a version of truth.
- [19:12]
Robert Rodriguez
A version of truth, exactly right. And that's. I think what we were on about, me and Aaron in the talk, is that this is not the capital T, truth. This is a version of truth. It was a version of truth in 1969 when it went through Michael Lindsay Hogg's cameras, because you're seeing history through a camera keyhole. Don't mistake it for something more than that, because it is.
- [19:34]
Dr. Richard Mills
Absolutely. And of course, again, I. I've got a colleague who's a historian and knows all the. The fancy theory that historians know about revisionism and deconstructing history. And of all of those things, a lot. Sometimes those. Some people can be a bit resistant to those overly intellectual arguments, but there's a bit of truth to the fact that we have to deconstruct what we say, because there's a lot of revisionism going on. There's lots of, you know, we're seeing this history from a partial and biased point of view, I would contend. Yeah.
- [20:04]
Robert Rodriguez
What fits the description of genuine Beatles? Raw beetles. Unfiltered, unprocessed beetles.
- [20:12]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What a good point. Yeah.
- [20:15]
Robert Rodriguez
Is it the Maureen Cleave interviews done for public consumption and maybe.
- [20:20]
Dr. Richard Mills
Exactly.
- [20:20]
Robert Rodriguez
They're a little bit more unguarded there than they would be talking to the New York Times or something. Right.
- [20:26]
Dr. Richard Mills
But I don't think we. I don't think this is at all controversial. I don't think any of us have any idea what they were like just sitting around with their friends having a drink, because as soon as you go on stage, you're performing.
- [20:37]
Robert Rodriguez
Right, Exactly.
- [20:38]
Dr. Richard Mills
I mean, the people that get close to maybe your partner and a few of your friends, because they. You're sitting around having drinks, watching the telly, and you can sort of let your guard down a bit.
- [20:46]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah. But that will be a version of you different from, say, the version of George that Patty Boyd knew versus the version Tom Petty knew, the version that Bob Dylan knew.
- [20:56]
Dr. Richard Mills
You know, that's such a good point. Yeah. As Christine Feldman Barrett would probably say, the Patty Boyd version would be very, very interesting and would have a lot of truth to it, I think.
- [21:09]
Robert Rodriguez
I think so. I had her on luckily this year. Yeah.
- [21:14]
Dr. Richard Mills
What was she like?
- [21:15]
Robert Rodriguez
She was all the Patti Boyd you want her to be. She was great. She was fantastic. I dearly wanted to get her back again, but I was told by her handlers, because this was the run up to that auction that she had, which is fascinating. So there was a window there and she just turned 80. And I was told since, because it's like, hey, I want to talk about your book of pictures that just came out that I think just kind of slid out under the radar and nobody really gave it its due. And she's like, her position was, you know what, it's me time now. I've beetled and succeed enough now. I think I'm just going to take it easy. Thanks. I enjoyed the conversation, but I'm past that now. I don't want to do this anymore. That was the response I got. And fair enough, you've earned that. But boy, there's so much more I wanted to talk to her about.
- [22:03]
Dr. Richard Mills
You know, if you live in London or New York, you pump into celebs an awful lot. I bumped into Jen Asher about three months ago.
- [22:09]
Robert Rodriguez
Oh yeah? Did you know her?
- [22:11]
Dr. Richard Mills
No, I just bumped into her at the back. She was in a play and my partner and I were walking past the theater and she was there by herself.
- [22:19]
Robert Rodriguez
Oh my God. So how'd you react?
- [22:22]
Dr. Richard Mills
If you look at Instagram, you say it. Well, I went, I thought this was amazing. So I went up and I said, you know, I'm a big fan of your work and can I take a photograph with you? And she went, yeah. So we chatted a bit and for some reason I had no interest asking her about Paul McCartney and the Beatles. We ended up discussing the movie Deep End, directed by Jerzy Skolomoski, the Polish film director. And she went, do you like that one? And I went, yeah. And I say, he's got, he's got a new film. She was going, oh yeah, I must go and see it. So we had a lovely chat because I was. I genuinely like a lot of the films that she's been in.
- [22:53]
Robert Rodriguez
Uh huh.
- [22:54]
Dr. Richard Mills
And she was really, she's just really nice.
- [22:56]
Robert Rodriguez
That's amazing. That's great. And I just wonder at what point it would have frosted over if you started like humming I'm looking through you or something.
- [23:05]
Dr. Richard Mills
Oh my gosh, that Would be awful. Yeah, that would be awful. No, I was with my partner and I also were with a friend and we had a. Well, we were a friend called Elizabeth, who is married to quite a famous rock star. And another friend joined us and then Elizabeth went to the restroom and we told our friend that she was married to this rock star. So she googled the rock star and we forgot about it. When the friend came back, her phone came on and played the intro to one of his songs and you should have seen the look of his partner. Oh, my God. So it was a bit like humming I'm looking through you to. Fortunately, she saw the funny side of this.
- [23:46]
Robert Rodriguez
Oh, good. Yeah, yeah.
- [23:49]
Dr. Richard Mills
Oh, gosh.
- [23:50]
Robert Rodriguez
It is kind of funny between Jane Asher, who to her credit, she easily could have milked the 60s for what it was worth and maintained a dignified silence, which is great. While her brother is basically a professional Beatle fan, that is.
- [24:06]
Dr. Richard Mills
I like the way you put that. Peter Asher turns up at all the conventions. I interviewed him once, he was very nice, but yeah, he's great. But yeah, he is bread, but, you know, he's part of that. Just my personal theory is that Jen Asher, before she met Paul, had a nice little acting career just taking along and she never gave in to any sort of ideas of Liverpool chauvinism that he. Some vestiges of Liverpool chauvinism that might have existed in his mind in the early 60s. She did give in to that, she carried on acting and she's actually, if you. If you IMDb, she's got a very impressive CV of work and maybe that's it, you know, because, you know, if you're really busy and you're wrapped up in your vacation, you probably won't just think, the highlight of my life has been with Paul McCartney. You've got other interests. So then when you're doing that and you're involved in something, it would be very irritating if people just tried to ask you about an ex boyfriend. And everything we all read about her ex boyfriend was that he hadn't quite settled down, shall we say, when he was with Jan.
- [25:14]
Robert Rodriguez
Right, yeah. And I get that even for the Beatles, having it thrown in their face, the two living ones now being constantly compared or want people wanting to hear about the stuff you did while you were in your 20s, as if, yeah, the rest of the five eighths or your life doesn't matter or something. But it's a very interesting thing. I am very respectful that she has not told her story, but good God, if she put out her memoir tomorrow. Yeah, I'd certainly be in line to buy it.
- [25:45]
Dr. Richard Mills
I would. I would be so excited. I'd be. My sharp elbows would be slightly affront if you're in the queue. I mean, it would be really interesting, wouldn't it?
- [25:54]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, it would be. It would be because she always came off as dignified and smart and somebody whose insights would be valuable.
- [26:02]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah. And she's there for me. 63 to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
- [26:06]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah.
- [26:06]
Dr. Richard Mills
I'd love to take. I'd love to hear her take on the Maharishi.
- [26:09]
Robert Rodriguez
I would read a book that she wrote on her parents.
- [26:12]
Dr. Richard Mills
Oh, yeah. I mean it wasn't it. Her mother took George Martin at the Guild Music. Yeah. That's really interesting as well.
- [26:20]
Robert Rodriguez
And her father was that clinical. I want to say psychologist. He was the one that came up with Munchausen syndrome. He was a very accomplished guy.
- [26:31]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah.
- [26:32]
Robert Rodriguez
Who took his own life in 1969.
- [26:34]
Dr. Richard Mills
Oh, I'd forgotten what. That's right. Yeah. I think that just even bumping into her very briefly for a couple of minutes, I just got that feeling that she was. She's obviously from a very sophisticated family. She's a very sophisticated metropolitan and that all sort of. I think her behavior is because of that. In a way. She's just well educated, seems very nice. And obviously even when she met Paul, she must have liked him. Obviously he's super talented, super good looking and all that stuff. But she would just go, look, I don't think she would have been completely, you know, in awe because she would have been used to meeting very articulate, interesting people. One word about.
- [27:14]
Robert Rodriguez
Sure. People within the arts.
- [27:15]
Dr. Richard Mills
Absolutely.
- [27:16]
Robert Rodriguez
When she's doing quartermares, a quarter mass experiment back when she's five years old.
- [27:21]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah. And there's a great film she's in with. Oh, I've forgotten that there's one which is in the south of France, 1961. I forgot the name of the film, I think. And it's really, really good as well. And the follow is the father Usher. Is she in that?
- [27:37]
Robert Rodriguez
Oh, yeah, I think. Yeah. She's one of those PO things there.
- [27:39]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, those po things. I think it might be shortly before she's met Paul as well.
- [27:44]
Robert Rodriguez
Right, right. Mask of the Red Death or something. Yeah.
- [27:46]
Dr. Richard Mills
So she's hanging out with Vince. Yeah, it might be that way. That's the one. It is, I think. Okay. Was it Roger Corman?
- [27:51]
Robert Rodriguez
I think so, yeah.
- [27:52]
Dr. Richard Mills
She's had that Roger Corman and Vincent Price and all these people and God knows who Popped into the house of Wimpole street before she met Paul.
- [28:01]
Robert Rodriguez
Oh, God, yeah, absolutely. That would be a fascinating story, just because it would inform our understanding of. Because clearly what we know from a distance is the cultural education he got in the Asher house. Yeah, we know the people he's talked about. You know, that whole London Underground thing and Stockhausen and all this cultural immersion he was getting. It'd be fascinating to know exactly what was what and how it might have informed his artistry.
- [28:30]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, I think so. I do think he was also a very curious person anyway, and lots of very diverse interests.
- [28:37]
Robert Rodriguez
He vaguely resents anybody knowing something he doesn't know.
- [28:40]
Dr. Richard Mills
I think so. People tend to forget about the Beatles, especially John, Paul and George were being streamlined into the middle class because they passed their scholarship and got to very, very good schools. So they had this access to education. And Paul was certainly interested in a whole range of subjects, from bird watching to drawing especially. He was very capable artist as well.
- [29:05]
Robert Rodriguez
Well, he's an essayist. When he was young, he won that award for doing the thing about the Queen.
- [29:09]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I read that somewhere.
- [29:11]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah. Huh.
- [29:12]
Dr. Richard Mills
I don't know where I found it. It's actually not bad, is it? Easily about 10 or 11.
- [29:16]
Robert Rodriguez
It's interesting.
- [29:17]
Dr. Richard Mills
It's actually quite well written for whatever age he is. That's not bad at all.
- [29:21]
Robert Rodriguez
Right. You're right. Bursting with creativity.
- [29:24]
Dr. Richard Mills
Have you ever interviewed him or met him before?
- [29:26]
Robert Rodriguez
I've met him. I got within 10ft of him. It was an unsanctioned opportunity and his bodyguard drove me off. I was trying to give him a copy of my revolver book and, oh, yes, we locked eyes for a second, but he didn't know who the hell I was. I got a camera bag, which could easily have been something not so benign, and they got rid of me. So, yeah, that's the closest I've come.
- [29:51]
Dr. Richard Mills
I've been about this far from him.
- [29:54]
Robert Rodriguez
Oh, geez.
- [29:55]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, I was on the. But it was completely unintentional. I was at the south bank in London, if. If you know it. And there's the British Film Institute, which is just amazing. It's an archive keeping the history of British film and TV alive. It's absolutely wonderful. And they were showing Magical Mystery Tour and I had a ticket for the 9 o'clock showing and I was just waiting for a friend outside the south bank. And it was on the river where cars aren't allowed to go up the stretch of the river and suddenly this huge, big, massive America, some fancy chauffeur different car turned up and suddenly Paul McCartney got out. He was standing right beside me. And I realized they were showing the. They were showing the premiere two hours before they let the hoy ploy into the public. I wouldn't be starstruck, particularly by anybody, but I was by him. And I just went, paul, can I shake your hand? And he went, yes. But he turned around at this point and he turned around again and shook the hand of the guy standing beside me. Then I. I followed him with my hand. I was going, can I shake your hand? Shake your hand? By which time he walked into the party. Wow. But he seems pleasant, to be honest with you. I mean, it must be weird to be that famous.
- [31:08]
Robert Rodriguez
It seems that of the four of them, he was the one that was the most comfortable with the adulation, considering what they went through. That is beyond what most human beings must be capable of to have every aspect of your life so scrutinized and.
- [31:26]
Dr. Richard Mills
Must be awful.
- [31:27]
Robert Rodriguez
Not a moment's peace when you're in public.
- [31:28]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, it must be awful. He did seem very comfortable with it, I think. He's not surely gregarious. He's very extrovert. I mean, you know, all those stories about bringing his guitar in and singing at break time for all his friends at Liverpool, that's just what he's like. He's Mr. Showbiz in a way.
- [31:44]
Robert Rodriguez
Huh?
- [31:45]
Dr. Richard Mills
I mean, he's a consummate artist, but he's also got that. He likes the showbiz stuff.
- [31:48]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, he's an entertainer.
- [31:50]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah. I'm sitting on the 19th of December, actually. Oh, wow. I hope his voice is.
- [31:55]
Robert Rodriguez
It's funny. I just saw a clip of him, I think, from Mexico City, where St. Vincent and Jack White were with him for, like, the Abbey Road finale. They performed that with him on stage trading off the lead solos. And it. It was quite impressive. I wish I was in that room. It wasn't. I wasn't. Look, watching it, thinking, oh, God, Paul, that voice. No, it wasn't like that.
- [32:16]
Dr. Richard Mills
Well, I was nervous before Glastonbury, and it was. Whatever happened, that was fantastic.
- [32:20]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, yeah.
- [32:22]
Dr. Richard Mills
Well, I think on the 19th of December, the O2, and my partner has never seen Paul McCartney.
- [32:28]
Robert Rodriguez
Uhhuh.
- [32:28]
Dr. Richard Mills
So I hope he does a stormer just to get her freaked out, you know?
- [32:32]
Robert Rodriguez
Sure, absolutely. I think you can be pretty confident in that.
- [32:36]
Dr. Richard Mills
He will, he will. Are we recording this, by the way?
- [32:38]
Robert Rodriguez
Absolutely.
- [32:39]
Dr. Richard Mills
Oh, we are. Oh, I didn't realize that. I didn't know we'd start. Oh, this is fun.
- [32:43]
Robert Rodriguez
Gosh, I. Yeah, this is great.
- [32:44]
Dr. Richard Mills
All right. I didn't think it would start it. At least I haven't said anything too silly yet.
- [32:49]
Robert Rodriguez
Allison was spot on.
- [32:51]
Dr. Richard Mills
Oh, no, I'm. I'm quite. It's. I've certainly got a chatty gene.
- [32:57]
Robert Rodriguez
I don't.
- [32:58]
Dr. Richard Mills
It's. It's a very cultural thing. I'm from the north of Ireland, and we all sort of. We've all swallowed the Blarney stone, I think. The good way of putting it. Yeah.
- [33:07]
Robert Rodriguez
Well, didn't they identify as Irish? Pretty much, yes.
- [33:11]
Dr. Richard Mills
Robert, you'd be a fan of this as well. I really like that Nothing's Real podcast with Jason Carty and Stephen Cockcroft. They took a really deep dive into the people's Irishness. It's absolutely. It's there, it's real. It's an important field of research. I did a talk on it once at the Irish Cultural center in Hammersmith in London, and everybody loved it. I mean, absolutely. John Lennon's family come from county dawn in the north, obviously. Paul's father, Jim, was married to Mary Mohan, who was Irish. Very interesting. What they call in Ireland a mixed marriage. The McCartneys were a Protestant family, and the Mohans were a Catholic family, which is very interesting as well. George got Irish roots as well. You must have seen that photograph of George's mother, his elder brother. Think it's Peter and George walking over a Connell Bridge in Dublin in the late 50s.
- [34:06]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huh?
- [34:08]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah. Yeah. And George is sort of just this little George in his little school uniform, his little shorts, so. But the Irish connection is very, very strong with the. With the Beatles. I think it was John's great grandfather. Anyway, the. The Lenin washed up in Liverpool in the 1840s, fleeing the famine in Ireland. And then they went and lived in, obviously, a squalid part of Liverpool. And the McCartney weren't far behind, so. And they always joked that Liverpool was the capital of Ireland, which it really was, because I think 80 to 100,000 people washed up in fleeing Ireland in the 1840s in Liverpool. That was the first stop. A lot of the migrants who were fleeing poverty went to Liverpool and they went off to America. So Liverpool is. And was a very Irish city.
- [34:54]
Robert Rodriguez
It is interesting that this year when the Mind Game Set came out, I talked about this with Glenn Greenberg. That was the first time people had seen that telegram, evidently From February of 72 that John was sending to Paul about doing some kind of Irish benefit.
- [35:09]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yes.
- [35:10]
Robert Rodriguez
They'd both done their little Irish anthems, Give Ireland Back and Luck of The Irish and Sunday Bloody Sunday. So if there was a unifying thing to be had post Beatles, Ireland was it. That was a pretty fabulous thing, underscoring that point.
- [35:25]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, there. There was one of the. Somebody who was very close to John and Paul at the time said that they met up in 72 at one point, I think in the wake of how do you sleep? To try to have some sort of detent between the two. And one of the issues they had a lot in common on was discussing the island situation.
- [35:46]
Robert Rodriguez
Right, right. Which was heating up then. The Sunday Bloody Sunday was January of.
- [35:50]
Dr. Richard Mills
72, and I think it was 30-1-72. I'm. Yeah, I'm quite old. I can remember it as a little kid. And that was the moment where things couldn't. Well, I mean if pre Troubles in Northern Ireland in the mid-60s, there was a. A weird sort of idea at one point that things were getting better. I mean the IRA practically stopped existing in the late 50s, apart from a few people by 1972. Sunday Bloody Sunday, all of this stuff. Within six months of that there was tit for tat killings and the Provisional IRA had started their campaign again and the whole thing just suddenly accelerated. Whereas if you talk to the generation a bit older than that, there was a lot of idealism in the 60s that the six charities and this problem was something of the past. And I mean, as you know, something can tip those things off very, very quickly. And there was just a couple of. I mean there's no design in history, as you know, and a lot of that could have been avoided if there's just been a little bit of vision on both sides. And Leonard McCartney, I think were acutely aware of this.
- [36:53]
Robert Rodriguez
Sure. I'm reminded of that. That film a few years ago, the Kenneth Branoff film. Do you know which one I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [37:00]
Dr. Richard Mills
They left. The Branaghs left when they were. When Kenneth was nine. The first time I saw Kenneth Branagh in a play, it was a grim replay called the Billy Trilogy. And he was playing a Belfast guy and he was speaking in a Belfast accent. I didn't know who he was. The next time I saw him speak, he was in England. He was being heralded as the new Lawrence Olivier and he had a plummy Southern English accent. And I was going, that's a bit odd. Then I realized that he was born in Belfast, moved to England when he was 9. And at that age you would have been teased about your accent. So, huh. Very quickly lost it. I Moved to England later. So I never lost my accent, you know. You know, when you go somewhere when you're young, you go somewhere, you pick up the line, do you lose your accent? So Branagh could just at the drop of a hat, he can go straight back into a very good, believable Belfast accent.
- [37:53]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah. I just found it very curious, the speech pattern that Linda picked up once she married Paul.
- [38:01]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah.
- [38:01]
Robert Rodriguez
Being this New Yorker. And then she picked up this weird sort of. Not mid Atlantic, but some lilt to it that is not quite native English, not England type either. It's some weird sort of mishmash.
- [38:15]
Dr. Richard Mills
It's absolutely fascinating that, because Scottish and Irish people are very, very prone if they spend a lot of time in America, me included, I think at one point, because I spent a lot of time there, is that we can get a transatlantic. Transatlantic accent very easily. And I. I ain't no linguist, but Irish and Americans do sound a little bit similar. And it's not surprising because the largest immigrant group in America in the 19th century was the Irish. And, you know, quite often in London, I've been mistaken for American, and I've had North Americans who've been mistaken for being Irish. So it's fascinating that. And then if Linda's starting to pick up a slightly Republican accent.
- [38:56]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah.
- [38:57]
Dr. Richard Mills
You know, there's that traffic is very, very interesting. I was friends with a professor of linguistics, and I kept trying to pin her down on the similarities between Irish and American accents, but she would always obfuscate and change the subject. So I didn't think she knew why it was interesting. But there's something there. Absolutely there is.
- [39:15]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah.
- [39:15]
Dr. Richard Mills
I shouldn't really say this, but I've got a pet dog and he's called Maca. He just. He was just here a second ago, but he's been discreetly moved out of the room so you can get to meet him another time. I wonder where he got his name from. Robert.
- [39:30]
Robert Rodriguez
Does he have three legs?
- [39:33]
Dr. Richard Mills
Well, that is the strangest thing. You know what? When he goes down steps, he goes down in three legs.
- [39:38]
Robert Rodriguez
Okay. Well, he kind of named himself then, didn't he?
- [39:41]
Dr. Richard Mills
He must be. Maybe he's. He's one of. He's one of the. The Beatles entourage from the 60s reincarnated. That's what it is. I don't know.
- [39:48]
Robert Rodriguez
He could have been Martha.
- [39:50]
Dr. Richard Mills
We're not very serious so far, which really appeals to me greatly.
- [39:55]
Robert Rodriguez
Awesome. Well, in. In looking at your book, which is fantastic for the people who haven't seen it yet, the Beatles and fandom It's a Bloomsbury.
- [40:03]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, Bloomsbury. There you go.
- [40:04]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, there you go. This is something that I said this when I was at the RPM school the other day, and I've said this elsewhere because it absolutely is true. We are like in this golden age of Beatle scholarship. I can remember starting out as a fan. You could practically count on one hand the number of Beatle books you had access to. And, you know, some of them were rubbish. They were just quickie little fan things or picture books. But the serious stuff, we are simultaneously upping the bar in what we as fans are willing to accept. At the same time, more and more data is becoming available, so we've got actual evidence to work from rather than folktales and hearsay and all that nonsense. So it's a really good place to be. And with this book, certainly with the Christine Feldman Barrett book on women's history of the Beatles and certainly Aaron's game changing Beatles and historians, all the stuff just come out. The story is being fleshed out. Beyond the white man telling of the Beatles history that has existed largely heretofore. We're getting other perspectives. I noticed you've got an upcoming book on the Beatles in black music, which I'm very much looking forward to. Ooh, look at that.
- [41:16]
Dr. Richard Mills
It's a lovely cover, isn't it?
- [41:18]
Robert Rodriguez
It is. That's great. What a great picture.
- [41:20]
Dr. Richard Mills
I would say writing a book is such a difficult and painstaking and long process. It's worth it when you look at the COVID Mm. I've just finished the copy edits on the Beatles and Black music, so it's gonna be out in May 2025, so. Great. I'm very excited about that.
- [41:37]
Robert Rodriguez
Well, then that's another conversation to have. But in any event, the point being that the fandom of the Beatles is something that I think is a component that until fairly recently had been under discussed, under explored Here you've got a whole book dedicated to it, and there's aspects of it in Christine's book, certainly Allison's book on teen fan magazines. So all these great pieces of the puzzle are coming into focus, which is a really good thing as far as wanting to understand not just the Beatles, but the explosion, the cultural rock explosion of the 1960s and 70s. So there's room at the table for all these discussions to be had and it's really quite satisfying to get fresh perspectives on this stuff.
- [42:23]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, absolutely. I was lucky enough to see Alison speak at the PCA last April and her presentation on all the magazines from the 1960s. It was absolutely amazing because they're lovely little micro histories of the period. We all feel that when you watch. I'm absolutely obsessed with watching films from the 60s and 70s and any sort of cultural artifacts from that period. I fantasize that period completely and can. Just the clothes that people are wearing, the way they speak. I mean, you can intuit so much from a microtext in a way, just like, you know, Beatles Monthly or the fan magazines that Allison's looking at. There are wonderful little mini narratives and mini histories. They're a microcosm for so much else as well. I love all that stuff.
- [43:12]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah. Contextualization is huge.
- [43:14]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah.
- [43:15]
Robert Rodriguez
And the farther we're moved away from those times, I think the harder it is or the bigger the challenge. Getting people that are new to the discussion to understand the context within which this art was produced.
- [43:27]
Dr. Richard Mills
Oh, yeah.
- [43:27]
Robert Rodriguez
Unless you knew what they were absorbing at the time.
- [43:30]
Dr. Richard Mills
No, absolutely. I mean, any. Any text opens up a cultural window on the historical period that produced it. There's absolutely no doubt about that. I mean, I do remember what you say is absolutely true. My mind was colonized with beetles when I was about 2 or 3 because I was born in the 60s, but I don't really remember them. But my first memories are my elder brother walking around the house singing Ticket to Ride. So I was absolutely just almost predestined to love this stuff. And as you say, as a teenager in the late 70s, the really. All the books were sort of vaguely cut and paste. There was the Beatles in their own words, which was a bit shallow. And it was probably the one that I do remember, which has been criticized a lot now is maybe Philip Norman's shot about 1981 was the first really serious big Beatles book, Which, of course, it's been roundly criticized now because it was so Lenin centric and it was so. So subjective and biased towards John Lennon. But as you rightly say, there was really nothing. And now it is a golden period. It's almost like the Goldilocks zone for academic books been published on the Beatles because we're far enough away from the sun to have perspective on it. But we're close enough to the sun, son, to have the heat and warmth off it. So the Beatles phenomenon happened long enough ago to give it academic respectability, but it's close enough to have a little bit of sexiness, a little bit of liveliness. Because if I went and wrote a book on the Romantic poets, which would be great fun, and I looked at lyrical ballads and I looked at you Know Shelley and all of those people in Wordsworth and Baron and Coleridge. The point is, I can't access electronically interviews with them. I can't. There's nobody alive who remembers them. Whereas this Beatles, this Beatles phenomenon is just close enough to the sun to have life and it's just far enough to have academic respectability. So as the books that you mentioned, and you're kind enough to mention mine, I think it really is. It's just the perfect window of opportunity to write about this stuff. Because when I told people I was going to write a book called Beatles and Fandom, they went, well, you know, there's been so much ink expended on the Beatles, how could you possibly find something new? And I sort of went, au contraire. There's so much to be said about the Beatles. And every year there's more and more to be said. And also the Beatles, black music. Not many people really have dived into this. I mean, I did a public talk with the Beatles, black music recently, and lots of people came up to me afterwards and went, I did not know this. Even simple, even pretty straightforward information for all those Beatles nerds. The first Please, Please Me. And with the Beatles, the first two UK albums were absolutely full of COVID versions by the Cookies, the Shirelles, all of those African.
- [46:21]
Robert Rodriguez
Barrett Strong.
- [46:22]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, the.
- [46:23]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, Marvelettes.
- [46:25]
Dr. Richard Mills
Marvelettes, who I love, please, Mr. Postman and Barrett Strong, as you said, all of those people, of course, they. Smokey Robinson, Arthur Alexander. Yes, Arthur Alexander. They loved Larry Williams, which they've done in subsequent. So when you tell this to people, they're a little bit freaked out by that. And then if you go to Liverpool and you walk up Slater street, the Beatles were watching Lord Woodbine play calypso there in 1957.
- [46:51]
Robert Rodriguez
Right, right. Toxteth. Yeah, that neighborhood. They were literally learning some of their craft for the. The local musicians there.
- [47:00]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah. And of course, I mean, I don't really talk about too much the Beatles and black music, but it's so fascinating, again, if we look at sort of micro histories or personal histories, Paul McCartney's father played Dixieland jazz. It was in Jim Mack's jazz band.
- [47:14]
Robert Rodriguez
Yes.
- [47:15]
Dr. Richard Mills
Obviously his wonderful musical genes were transferred to his son and he grew up in that environment. I know nature and nature, genes are culture, but you've got both of that with Paul McCartney. But what I find really interesting about Britain's colonial history is that as well as imbibing Dixieland jazz, Paul McCartney's father was a cotton salesman. And when you look at the colonial history of Liverpool and one of Paul's uncles I think worked in a sugar refinery. Oh and it's absolutely fascinating that big history, those grand narratives of history collide with the personal lives of the Beatles and that makes it so for just to take a dive into that. And in 1861 I'm very, very painstaking to say that in the 1860s absolutely most Liverpudlian people, most Manchester people were anti the slave trade but the ship owners and the dock managers in Liverpool in 1861 were absolutely pro the slave trade. So already when I started researching this book I did a bit of pre Liverpool history because I wanted to look at the parents of the Beatles, I wanted to look at the colonial context and if you listen to something like Working in the park of eloise by Paul McCartney, which was his father's song and he plays that, you hear this pretty straightforward Dixieland jazz tune that came out in 1975, I think during the Venus Mars sessions But what you get there is that little three minute song is this beautiful, wonderful little tune that is a microtext, is a personal history that inherits all these grand narratives of history as well. It tells us about Colton Salesman, it tells us about about the slave trade, it tells us about sugar, it tells us about Dixieland jazz and it's just absolutely fascinating that again when you were talking to me in your introduction as well, it was absolutely fascinating. I again, I'm of the generation that got into the Beatles in the 1970s and I can remember studying history in school in the 1970s. When you did read a history book in the 1970s it was all about politicians, it was all about economics. There was very, very rarely any mentions of the films or popular culture or what the food people reading all of that and a history book now absolutely sprinkles fairy dust on it. The icing on the cake, the cherry on the cake is if you read a book about 1960s history, you're going to find out that for instance, see the British Prime Minister in the 1960s was Harold Wilson who was the head of the Labour Party. He always put across the fact that he was a man of the people. He had steak and kidney pudding which was a working class dish. He always emphasized his closeness to Liverpool. He watched a soap opera called Coronation street which was working class people in Manchester in the north of England. And very famously when the Beatles won their Variety Awards in February 1964, he'd give them the awards and bantered with the Beatles this is a non political occasion so I'll stay non Political unless I'm tempted. So to keep out of politics. I just repeat to you what the Times musical correspondent said, referring to this music as distinctly indigenous in character. The most imaginative and inventive examples. And I'm sure the Times music correspondent spoke for all of us when he said of our friends the Beatles that harmonically it is one of their most intriguing with its chains of Panda tonic clusters. Ladies and gentlemen, just like to say it's very nice indeed to get, especially to get one each because we usually have a bit of trouble cutting them in four. I'd just like to say thank you very much. It's a great honor.
- [51:12]
Robert Rodriguez
Same goes for me.
- [51:12]
Dr. Richard Mills
Thank you very much for giving us this silver heart. I still think you should, should have given one to good old Mr. Wilson. Anyone who knows us know I'm the one that never speaks. So I'd just like to say thanks a lot. I'd just like to say the same as the others. Thanks for the Purple Hearts. Silver, Silver. Oh yeah, sorry about that Arnold. Like to sincerely thank you all. And we've got to go now because the fellow on the film wants us and he says it's costing him a fortune. Thank you. And then in the 1964 general election the Labour Party squeaked in with five or six seats. So maybe talking to the people's help, but the absolute point is that I don't think you could put me in suits corner or say I'm being pretentious about this. Beatles music, Beatles songs, Beatles personal lives, they're wonderful little, wonderful little personal histories that tell us so much more about the culture. Again that was one of the reasons I wrote the Beatles and Fandom one. Nobody really looked at what the fans said about this cultural phenomenon and they absolutely moved the phenomenon into areas, into places that the Beatles and the Beatles machinery, their managers, the record company could never have imagined which areas these were going to go into. So fans appropriated the meanings of the Beatles phenomenon and weaved them into the web and weft of their own lives with absolutely amazing results. You know, mashing songs on YouTube, fan fiction, literary fiction, slash fiction, mashing their songs on YouTube. The Gray Album, where Danger Mouse mashes together the White Album and Jay Z's Black Album to create a new hybrid form of art. So just this, everybody I think is completely good over the fact that we can look at pop culture and it tells us so much historically about what has happened. Absolutely. And it is a 60s thing, the blur, high culture and low culture. The. The boundary between those two is completely broken down. Is completely blurred. I mean look at a Beatles song. It's got orchestration by George Martin, classically trained, an absolute genius. It's Tomorrow Never Knows. It's got experimental classical music, tape loops. Revolution number nine is really, actually is Stockhausen essentially. So everything that coalesces in it. Beatles text is so rich for study. Sorry, you got me a bit excited there, Robert. I mean I really got. I got you. You did. I, I felt like, I feel like an evangelist ranting on there. But preach as you say, no, as you say. Academia can be under threat sometimes and be seen as a little bit irrelevant, a bit pretentious, but it's not because so much media work on the Beatles and so much of those books that you talked about in the first publications of the Beatles, they were just very, very shallow cut and paste pieces of work and there's a place for that and I love that. But the Beatles are absolutely worthy of the deep study that's been afforded to them right at the moment.
- [54:36]
Robert Rodriguez
Yes. And there's an appetite for it. It's not just important, but people want to know, they want to know every granular minutia detail that can be uncovered because it gives them a greater understanding, greater pleasure out of immersing themselves in Beatles.
- [54:53]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah. I mean, didn't someone write there is a publication and its name escapes me at the moment. That someone wrote a book about it was either, I think it was their father selling John Lennon a cheese sandwich or something like that. So it can be a bit reasonable at times. But you're 100% correct about that. And again, this phenomenon is. It seems to be the, the further away you get from it, the bigger it gets for some reason because I mean, you like me, will have that strange feeling of meeting millennial Beatle fans, Gen Z Beatle fans. I mean I was in a room of 20, 21 year old young woman the other day talking about the Beatles. I don't know what we were talking about the Beatles, we're just chatting about something else. And I said, what music do you all like? And the first person put her hand up and said she was 21. My favorite song is something by the Beatles.
- [55:45]
Robert Rodriguez
Wow.
- [55:46]
Dr. Richard Mills
It's sort of odd because you'd think that. Well, again, one of the reasons for writing the Beatlin fandom, I wanted to look into why this phenomenon still is strong in a sense.
- [55:56]
Robert Rodriguez
Absolutely. Yeah, it absolutely is. And that it's so counterintuitive to what applies to other artists really. But it's funny, you describe coming into fandom in the 70s, that's when I came into my fandom. And I do remember it was a bit of a lonely place, because at that time there was nothing less cool than being a Beatles fan. When everything else was Zeppelin, Rush, Kiss, whatever the million sellers of the day were. And it was like, oh, Beatles, they're broken up. What the hell? You know why you went to that. Whatever pejorative they used.
- [56:32]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah. There was two waves of all the. All the bands you mentioned. That's when I was about 10, 11. Yeah, everybody. All the bands you mentioned because they're much cooler than the Beatles. And then in Britain and Ireland in the late 70s with the. The whole punk explosion, which I loved. I loved the Pistols and the Clash and all that stuff. So what would happen is I would hide all my Beatles vinyl behind my New Wave stuff. And it took me ages to admit that I actually liked them. Because you got really ridiculed for liking the Beatles after a year or two of this. I went, no, sorry, I love the Beatles. I can like the Beatles. And I can like all this new stuff as well.
- [57:10]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah. Like you. I could like both.
- [57:13]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah.
- [57:13]
Robert Rodriguez
And I still have my. My first four Sex Pistol singles and Metal Box and Clash and all stuff.
- [57:20]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, Those j. The covers have you got. If you've got those singles in pristine condition. The first one.
- [57:27]
Robert Rodriguez
I do, yeah.
- [57:27]
Dr. Richard Mills
Singles. They're gorgeous. They're gorgeous, aren't they? Y was a really big fan of Never Mind the Bollocks.
- [57:34]
Robert Rodriguez
Here's the Sex Pistols Boil Crisis.
- [57:36]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah. Yeah, they did. He said he was. John Lyon has said that he was in the King's. Paul and Linda can pass in the car and said, oh, it's Johnny Rotten. And they wanted to speak to him. And he got so panicked, he ran off, you know, because he was, like, freaked out that Paul and Linda McCartney had recognized him and wanted to talk to him.
- [57:53]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, it's so. It's such a weird little cultural dynamic thing. I'm sure you know the story of Steve Jones and Paul Cook running into Pete Townsend. Yeah, we love the who. You can't break up.
- [58:06]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, it's very true. But I mean, McCartney's got. He's a very interesting and sophisticated guy and he loves all sorts of music. I mean, he loved the thugs in the 60s, all that proto punk, you know.
- [58:18]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah.
- [58:20]
Dr. Richard Mills
I met Ed Saunders do. Up somewhere in New Jersey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was. Were you there? I was, yeah, yeah. Because I went up to Ed Saunders and said, McCartney loves you. And he went, I know.
- [58:34]
Robert Rodriguez
That was the coolest thing yeah, that was great.
- [58:37]
Dr. Richard Mills
We must have crossed paths then, Robert.
- [58:39]
Robert Rodriguez
We must have. Absolutely. Yeah.
- [58:40]
Dr. Richard Mills
That's.
- [58:41]
Robert Rodriguez
That's hilarious.
- [58:42]
Dr. Richard Mills
That was brilliant. That was the White Album conference.
- [58:44]
Robert Rodriguez
Yes, it was. That was fantastic. Loved it. Yeah, that was. I actually. I had a band put together. We. We got to play in one of the music rooms. Doing White albums. Yeah.
- [58:53]
Dr. Richard Mills
Oh, my gosh, this is embarrassing. I probably saw you.
- [58:56]
Robert Rodriguez
Probably.
- [58:59]
Dr. Richard Mills
Lewison was there.
- [59:00]
Robert Rodriguez
Of course Lewison was there. Well, that's where I met Allison. Yes.
- [59:05]
Dr. Richard Mills
I didn't meet us. I went to some hotel. I can't remember where it was. I went in a taxi with Alison Brand BC the Beatles podcast.
- [59:14]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [59:15]
Dr. Richard Mills
Oh, what's her name? She's a friend of mine. And I've just blanked Alison. She's gonna hit me if she listens to this.
- [59:21]
Robert Rodriguez
Oh, Erica White.
- [59:22]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, Erica, who was lovely. Erica. Alison and I went in a taxi with Mark to some hotel and sat up drinking, chatting very late, and Chris Thomas joined us.
- [59:31]
Robert Rodriguez
Oh, that was. That's one of the highlights of my life.
- [59:34]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah.
- [59:35]
Robert Rodriguez
I got to. I typed a show with him.
- [59:36]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, yeah. And I got. I was a bit beetled out by the stage, so I just talked because he very famously produced Nevermind the Bollocks. Here's the Sex Pistols.
- [59:45]
Robert Rodriguez
Oh, God. Where you start? Two Badfinger albums and Moxie Music and Back to the Egg and Proko Harem. Oh, my God.
- [59:53]
Dr. Richard Mills
Erica and Allison were chatting away to Lewis, and I was just talking to Chris Thomas about. Never mind the bollocks. I was fascinated. I mean, he was very good friends with John Lydon, actually.
- [60:03]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, we talked about it because I couldn't help it, because loving that album. It's like I got Chris Thomas cornered. I'm gonna ask him about it.
- [60:10]
Dr. Richard Mills
Oh, well, I mean, amazing, because it's one of those albums, if you put it on, you listen to it the whole way through.
- [60:15]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, absolutely.
- [60:16]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, yeah. I've got off on a tangent, but that's a good thing for a podcast, isn't it?
- [60:22]
Robert Rodriguez
We're all about tangents here. Yeah, yeah. So I wanted to ask you about Beatles book, because that's sort of a resource that's been out there in plain sight that I feel has been sort of underutilized. But yours is the first serious discussion I've read about it and the meaning that you can draw from it, which I thought was just fascinating because you talk about its origins and the way the female fandom embraced it, and then it gets the reboot in the late 70s, and suddenly it's the males that are the audience for it because we're all trained spotters and geeks about info and all that stuff. So it's a fascinating story. So why don't you give us some background on that.
- [61:07]
Dr. Richard Mills
Well, I love Beagles Monthly, and when I was a teenager in the late 70s, the magazine was rebooted and I got completely obsessed with it and started collecting them. Alas, I think I've lost that collection now. So when I started writing the Beatles and fandom, you know, when you write a book, it's not. I've never writer's block, but had editor's block and I've had starting blocks. So it's very difficult to start. So I thought I'll try to do a sort of vague chronology of Beatles fandom. So I thought the best place to start was Beatles Monthly in 1963, because it was always a very important forum for the fans. And so I went to the British Library and I ordered all, I find all the Beatles monthlies and I read through them all. And the first thing that became apparent was the extent to which Beatles fans had appropriated the meaning of the Beatles into their own lives. And especially I thought. I thought this was very apparent on the letters page because the letters page was mostly written by, I'd be fair to say a female demographic between the age of 10 and 16 years old. And these letters got very strident, very bossy and very opinionated. And these letters would say things like, especially when the Beatles turned a bit hippie. Oh, you're not as good looking with beards. George, George, will you shave your mustache off in the 63? 64. Paul goes on a holiday to Greece and they're going, paul, you look absolutely gorgeous with a suntan. It was all about the Beatles being relevant to the fans lives. And here's where it's really weird. And it wasn't just here's where I got the inspiration for this. There was absolutely a very erotic sexual subtext to these letters, very obviously, as there was Beatle mania. And a lot of them would be. And there would be so many double entendres and euphemisms about sex in these letter pages. I love John when he's puffing on his organ. And maybe I shouldn't have said that in the podcast. Again, if you got a linguist to look at these letters, which I did, to look at some of these letters, this is very, very strange because it's such an innocent, naive, very sanitized publication. Beats Monthly, as it should be, because the Beatles are Appealing to grandparents, parents and young fans. So that's absolutely. That was de rigueur for a, for a fancy of that nature. But the more you sort of, you scraped away at the letters you find this very weird sexual subtext. And then that links very strongly to the concerts.
- [63:43]
Robert Rodriguez
Sometimes a cigar is not a cigar.
- [63:44]
Dr. Richard Mills
Sometimes a cigar is not a cigar. And at the concerts the fans went completely crazy. And if you watch Shay Stadium very quickly your eye moves away from the Beatles to look at what the fans are doing. And again, this demographic of 10 to 16 year old girls were absolutely dominating the concert. So in a way it was very emancipating for them. In a way the concerts were about the girl fans as opposed to the Beatles. And another inspiration on the Beatles Monthly letters page and looking at those early concerts was a fabulous book written by Barbara Ehrenreich called Dancing in the Streets. And she absolutely wrote this feminist history of young girl Beatles fans. And she said that in 1950s American high schools especially the template of a handsome male was either an Elvis Presley, Tony Curtis, James Dean looks haircut or a macho buzz cut. And all the male sort of heartthrobs were very macho and complicated, a very macho image. But by the time you got to the 60s, you suddenly had this androgynous feet, European look with these guys with long hair and suits, you know, as if they'd arrived in a UFO from another planet. So that was a. That was crazily attractive. Also according to Aaron Reich, Barbara Ehrenreich girls In the late 1950s, they were so repressed. They were just really been prepared to graduate high school, maybe go to college, I don't know. We know. But get married and have kids, move and move into the suburbs. And even physical sports in school were prohibited for girls. They were usually cheerleaders. They weren't really physically getting involved in something. So put my sort of pretentious pseudo head on. And Ehrenreich said that the whole lid came off of Beatles fandom. These young women were emancipated, they could scream, they could do whatever they wanted. They absolutely drowned the Beatles out with their screams. So it's a really very interesting seminal moment in history to have these fans, the agency that these fans had, they dominated the concerts. And it's something that Barbara Ehrenreich has fleshed out in the Beatles. It's something that Christine Fen Barrett has discussed as well. I heard an interview with Bob Geldof who got into the Beatles dressing room in 1964. I think when they played in Dublin and even into the dressing room, him and his sister ended up talking to George and Paul. And their memories of the Dublin concerts in the early 1960s were. And this is most of the theaters that the shows happened in, there was urine right. All over the seats and all over the concert halls. And that's. People just got so excited. And I remember when I was a 14, 15 year old boy, I wanted to be in the Beatles. When I got to writing the Beatles and fandom, as a older person, I'd rather have been with the fans screaming myself. Quite honestly, it seems more fun than actually been in the Beatles. It sounds wonderful.
- [66:40]
Robert Rodriguez
Well, it's an interesting take because for years the screamers are written off as frivolous, silly, unimportant, not to be taken seriously.
- [66:49]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, yeah.
- [66:50]
Robert Rodriguez
But the girl fans apparently latched onto the concept of the Beatles giving them agency, giving them permission to get all this repression out of their systems in a socially appropriate setting.
- [67:02]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, it's interesting with the interviews of the Beatles there as well. I mean, they, they do, they seem very perceptive because John Lennon and Paul McCartney quite often in interviews, well, all four of the Beatles would say, look, this is just the, the female, I mean, it's very binary in those days, so excuse the language, this is just the female equivalent of when someone scores at a soccer match.
- [67:22]
Robert Rodriguez
Right.
- [67:23]
Dr. Richard Mills
Everybody screams and goes crazy. And I thought that was a very salient point because, you know, I noticed this and I'm friends with Mark Duffett who wrote a book called Understanding Fandom. If you write about music fandom, somehow you don't get literary prizes. Don't go to those people. People are slightly poo poo. You're slightly down the pecking order and hierarchy of cultural and philosophical and academic interests. And it's very, very strange writing about fandom, but if you wrote about sport, it's completely acceptable, right? I mean, it's acceptable for. You get all these guys in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, drinking beer, dressing up, dressing up in whatever their Manchester United shirts or their Chicago Bears shirts, sitting there totally neglecting their families, watching these matches, you know, collecting all the football shirts, all the pictures and having podcasts about sport, watching Sport, watching Sport24,7. But honestly, there's nothing wrong with it. I love it. I mean, everybody's a fan of something. You've got to be obsessed with something.
- [68:27]
Robert Rodriguez
But you know, the tribal, right?
- [68:28]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But being a sports fan is completely acceptable and it is dying away a bit, but there's still some vestiges if you're in to pop music or you're into music, you're somehow a little bit lesser. You still somehow haven't quite reached the level of maturity that those sports fans have. Have reached for some reason. So it is very interesting that, isn't it?
- [68:53]
Robert Rodriguez
Because, yeah, it sure is.
- [68:55]
Dr. Richard Mills
I mean, I think Poppy Christine brings this out as well. The. The really sort of perceptive people in the early 1960s about the Beatles were the fans that cottoned on to the Beatles and how these songs were good, how this image was great, how this cultural phenomenon did have legs and would resonate for an awful long time. They latched on before the intellectual state.
- [69:19]
Robert Rodriguez
Right.
- [69:19]
Dr. Richard Mills
And before the adults did, I think, didn't take the intellectuals and the adults long, but the. The initial impetus for loving the Beatles and taking them really seriously was the young demographic, I think.
- [69:32]
Robert Rodriguez
Do you see a difference in this explosion of fandom and the way it was received and the way the fans ran with it? Is there a precedent for this? Because we lived through the Elvis mania before that and Sinatra before that. You know, the Bobby soccer thing. What made this different? Or is it just an amplification of what came before?
- [69:51]
Dr. Richard Mills
That's an absolutely brilliant question, because it was one of the reasons that I wrote this book, because like everybody, you sort of, you know, the amateur sociologist. Because I wonder why this happened. And I like the way you use the word amplified, because that's exactly what it is now. I think the Beatles came bigger and were bigger for numerous reasons, and probably one of the main ones is technology, because the UK got on the national grid. I think it was in nineteen nineteen thirty three. There was a consumer boom in the nineteen fifties. So by the time the Beatles come along, there's gonna be something that's gonna be that big. There's the first satellite broadcast in 1967. So I think the Beatles cultural phenomenon is based on a couple of things, but one of the things it's predicated on is technology, which disseminates their music and their image everywhere, through television, through record players, through the consumer boom, where people can go buy records, they can buy record players. So the music is ubiquitous. It's everywhere by the early 1960s. That's why the Sinatra thing is wonderful. I'm a fan of Sinatra. The Elvis thing is wonderful. But there was something big was going to happen in the early 1960s because of all this, which we would not call cultural theory, that electricity was there. There was a consumer boom. There was a lot of big history again, coalescing with the Personal lives of the Beatles to make them famous. I mean the Beatles also acknowledge this themselves as well. If John Lennon had been born a couple of months earlier and all the Beatles, in fact they wouldn't have been playing the Ed Sullivan show on 9th February 1964, they would have been conscripted into the British Army.
- [71:40]
Robert Rodriguez
Right, right.
- [71:41]
Dr. Richard Mills
Which is interesting as well. Also, the Conservative Party in 1944 ushered in the Butler Education act which meant that if you were a bright young person, if you passed one little exam, you would get a scholarship to a very, very brilliant school that would give you access to classical education. And people tend to forget that John, Paul and George passed this exam and got access to this education. So Paul would have been studying the Romantic poets Job were studying the Romantic poets on their 16 year old O level syllabus as well. So there's all this big history came together to produce the Beatles. I mean and even it might sound a little bit tenuous, but the Clement Attlee Labour government just straight after the Second World War who were amazing and NY Bevan, this brilliant Welsh politician, they ushered in the national health service in 1948 which was codified in 1949. So the Beatles are living longer, they're healthier, they've got, they've got access to public libraries, they've got a bit of money in their pocket, they've got this whole cultural milieu that's going to sort of result in them being successful. So I mean this was again one of the reasons I get into the Beatles also it is fascinating as well that the Beatles absolutely was folk music. It was folk music, it was the people's music. And as you know, classical music was fantastic in the 50s and 60s, but it was becoming very experimental. And so what you got is that folk meaning people, a synonym for people, people just got, you know, your average person. We would just get a bit tired of the music. They couldn't really relate to experimental classical music. So these folk tunes came along and people absolutely loved them. So that's another reason for their success. So I would say that the Beatles music will resonate for hundreds of years and what adds a little bit of magic and a little bit of fairy dust to the Beatles music is that the fans keep nudging the Beatles phenomenon on every year. Whether it was the death of John Lennon and people started conventions because they loved John Lennon so much. Whether it was Britpulp in the early 1990s, whether it was the one album going to number one in 2000, whether it was through Electricity now and then being a number one UK single in 2023. All of these things, the fandom does nudge this phenomenon forward. And it's a fascinating field of inquiry, I think.
- [74:48]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, absolutely. What you just made me think of is, yes, the electronics, the ubiquity of media, satellite broadcasts around the world, live happenings, as our World did in 67, that was all great for making them this global phenomenon in the 60s. And then you've got the end of The Beatles, the 70s, a little bit of a fallow period while they're establishing their solo identities and their solo careers to up and down returns. But 80, as you say, John Lennon gets killed. You get this next wave going into the 80s of fandom and discovery. And then you've got the Beatles anthology in 1995, arriving virtually simultaneously with the Internet becoming a thing. And suddenly the Beatles aren't this historic thing. There's new product and you can summon them up by heading over to YouTube and you can access video and live presentation of them from a generation before. So, of course, kids that are living their lives on screens these days, of course they can access all that stuff as if they were contemporary artists. And so it snowballs further. And I have every confidence that there are New Beetle fans being born every single day.
- [76:03]
Dr. Richard Mills
Oh, that's such a. What you said. I forgot to mention Anthology. That's. That's so important. Maybe a 70s fan get into the Beatles because of the Red and. And Blue album. Right. Millennial. As was I. Yeah, as was I. And Ken Womack told me that was the reason he got into them as well. But you think about the Anthology that influenced so many people of that who were, I don't know, 10 years old, 12 years old in 1995, that was the first time they encountered the Beatles.
- [76:29]
Robert Rodriguez
It was an event.
- [76:30]
Dr. Richard Mills
They absolutely loved them. And what you said about technology is absolutely amazing. Now you can just summon up stuff for the click of a finger. And also another reason the Beatles, I think, so successful, is that they did enter the national mythology of England, the national mythology of the United Kingdom, so much so that, I mean, if you go to Liverpool, there's the National Trust, tours of John and Paul's houses, there's the museums, there's Matthew street, there's the shops, there's all of this stuff. And of course, Abbey Road in the Beatles and fandom, I went up to Abbey Road and handed out a questionnaire to people I met up there. And when I met, quite often I would meet tourists from, say, North America, and they would have gone three places. They would have gone to Buckingham Palace, Shakespeare's Globe and Abbey Road. And quite often I met a lot of people that got on a taxi from the airport and went straight to Abbey Road. And of course, what you're saying that is so perceptive about technology, what do people do when they're on Abbey Road? 1 Abbey Road is a physical place and we can physically anchor our fandom in that place. But of course, the first thing you do now in 2024, at least for the last 15 years, is that this, this physical space immediately becomes digitized. It gets uploaded to the everywhere to cyberspace. And people comment on it, People, people just engage with it. And already this physical space is just editing and morph, morphing into something really strange that is constantly, constantly changing. And it's just, this is going to go on and on and on. And again, I'm all for AI. I'm all for embracing this stuff because as you've hinted at Beatles fandom is, is just gonna go off in a myriad of directions that we can't even conceive off. I mean, if we had said to Brian Epstein, George, Mark, John, Paul, George and Ringo, the Beatles brands trust back in 1963 that there'd be this thing called YouTube about the Beatles, there'd be slash fiction about the Beatles, that there'd be statues of John Lennon in Cuba, if we mentioned all this stuff, they would have thought we were completely off our gourds, to use a sort of vaguely 60s. But it is true. I mean, honestly, you can tell I'm getting very animated and excited again. It's just, it's this huge, big on 10 base stalking cyberspace, isn't it?
- [78:59]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, it's bottomless. It is absolutely bottomless.
- [79:03]
Dr. Richard Mills
That's a better way to put it. Sorry.
- [79:05]
Robert Rodriguez
Wow.
- [79:06]
Dr. Richard Mills
I hope I didn't sound too excited and hope I wasn't too pretentious. I hope that was.
- [79:11]
Robert Rodriguez
No, no, no, because one of the things that anytime I, I see a Bloomsbury book that gives me pause, it's like, I'm so not an academic. I hope I'm gonna be able to grab.
- [79:20]
Dr. Richard Mills
Oh, no, but honestly, the thing is, I taught a module cultural theory on literary theory when I first came to the university. And a lot of it can be very pretentious, but at its best it actually gives you a vocabulary to talk about, a vocabulary discourse to talk about stuff that you don't know. But I've never met anybody in the arts that can't intuit what all these literary theorists are talking about. And I may have used a few big words in our discussion, but I think everything I said was dead normal and dead down to earth that everybody can understand and everybody.
- [79:52]
Robert Rodriguez
Exactly, exactly. And that's what I'm saying to you is that you effectively presented it to the listeners beautifully. Thank you.
- [80:00]
Dr. Richard Mills
That's so kind of you. Thank you.
- [80:02]
Robert Rodriguez
No, no, no, it's perfect. Because I know for a fact from the years of doing this show that if I get somebody with a PhD after their name on the show, there was a certain segment that they call this highfalutin, above me kind of thing. But no, I've been very, very lucky, first of all, to have access to so many PhD people. But second, that they seem to understand how to communicate when you talk to them like a normal person, you get normal person conversation. So that's great.
- [80:28]
Dr. Richard Mills
I hope so, because that's.
- [80:29]
Robert Rodriguez
I have to say, I've met the best friends through the Beatles and that is more Beetle magic all over the world. People that I would give my arm to because you get each other. You share this deepness of empathy and feeling. And that's your tribe.
- [80:46]
Dr. Richard Mills
Oh, yeah, it's certainly my tribe. Absolutely.
- [80:48]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah.
- [80:49]
Dr. Richard Mills
I mean, just talking to you now, you've really got my. My mind racing. I'm thinking about so much stuff. Yeah. I think I did bring that in the conventions chapter of my book that studies always show that we're much happier as part of community and we're always much happier with people. And it's, you know, as we get atomized and isolated, people get really depressed. When you're in a community, you feel so much better. There's someone, I can't remember, I went to some beagle fest in Chicago once.
- [81:16]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah.
- [81:17]
Dr. Richard Mills
You know that one. And I met one guy. Forgotten. That'll come back to me afterwards. Finish speaking. And he was just so lovely. And it was the last day of the conference and we were having breakfast and he went, I'm going to be depressed for a couple of days after this.
- [81:28]
Robert Rodriguez
Right.
- [81:29]
Dr. Richard Mills
We were all this big, massive, gorgeous hotel and everybody was a Beatles fan.
- [81:33]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, yeah.
- [81:34]
Dr. Richard Mills
There was no. And all the celebs in front of Colemans were. There. Were just as much into it as we were.
- [81:40]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's definitely one of those things that is like Christmas for so many fans, truly, because you're meeting the family you've got scattered all over the country or the world once a year in that lovely environment. It is a safe place. It is love and peace. It's all that sort of goodwill vibe that you wish the world had the other 364 days. But it's wonderful.
- [82:06]
Dr. Richard Mills
That's a very good. That's really interesting point that you made. There's an English journalist called David Hepworth who's very famous. He's published lots and lots of books. He's very unfashionable. But the thing about the Beatles was that their music made you feel good.
- [82:19]
Robert Rodriguez
It was inviting.
- [82:20]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah.
- [82:21]
Robert Rodriguez
Paul's especially. Come be part of sergeant Pepper's band.
- [82:25]
Dr. Richard Mills
You know that you said you haven't interviewed Paul. I live in London. We've got to get hold of McCartney again, at some point, if possible. Be lovely to speak. You'd be great with him. Paul's my favorite artist. He's second to none.
- [82:36]
Robert Rodriguez
This is a man who, his very existence has given so much joy to so many people for so long. It's like, how can you do any better than that? You don't have to. Like every song he did or every album he put out. It's just. He's so giving.
- [82:50]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah.
- [82:50]
Robert Rodriguez
He projects everything he'd want from somebody in his position.
- [82:54]
Dr. Richard Mills
Robert. As you know, the media is so shallow. So, you know, everybody just goes. They get this really fixed idea about people. Like Bowie's genius from 71 to 1983. Then it's pants, but. And maybe his last album has got lots of critical great reviews, but a lot of his 90s stuff and early naughty stuff is amazing. McCartney's doing songs like Mr. Bellamy. He's doing amazing pieces of work. I mean, McCartney 3 is fantastic.
- [83:20]
Robert Rodriguez
It's very interesting because I was watching the reaction to people when it came out, and maybe it's symptomatic of the world we're living in. I do daily posts and I did something about Driving Rain the other day, and it was so visceral. Back and forth about this is the greatest thing ever. So underrated versus this is why Paul McCartney should never be allowed to put out albums again. It's like, wow. We can't even find a safe meeting place about a guy that ostensibly we're fans of. And that's why we're on this page. It's like, sheesh. Exhausting.
- [83:54]
Dr. Richard Mills
Well, I mean, you know. Yeah. I mean, I could be quite good at promulgating the old cliche. And it's very true that a prophet doesn't have honor in his own country. And the way the. Let's say British instead of English, the way the British media have treated Paul McCartney's an absolute disgrace.
- [84:15]
Robert Rodriguez
Yeah. Philip Norman starting With him, unfortunately, Philip.
- [84:20]
Dr. Richard Mills
Norman writes very beautifully because, you know, he was a novelist first. He was in the Grant, the book of young British novelists and all that. So, yeah, he does take. He does take. Yeah, there's a lot of. It is fictional. Fictional. But Paul McCartney, I could be wrong and I know that, you know, 50 states, very heterogeneous and all that. I got the feeling North America was a little bit kinder to Paul than maybe Britain was.
- [84:43]
Robert Rodriguez
I think historically that's been the case just because the grass is always greener. It seems like a Brit gets more automatically. An American thinks when he hears a Brit speak. Oh, they're. They're clearly highly intelligent.
- [84:57]
Dr. Richard Mills
Yeah. But also, Robert, I think since. I think in the last five or six years he's just been so ballsy and kept going that I think he's just. Everybody really. Most people really, really respect him now. He's. He's not fashionable and loved everywhere almost and he's just stared that one down. He started out, but even 10 years ago, I used to go to my local pub and there was a really lovely woman there who worked behind the bar and she said, oh, I hit Paul McCartney. I really hit him. And then I'd go, I do like the odd Beatles. So I said, what Beatles songs? They're like, I hit Paul McCartney. What Beatles songs do you like? Oh, I think Penny Lynn's really good and I like Let It Be. And she had list about seven or eight Paul McCartney songs. That was Paul. They're all by Paul McCartney. Oh, yeah. Yes. But John sang that one. No. Oh.
- [85:52]
Robert Rodriguez
They'Ll get to you whether you want it or not. I understand you're 90 miles from home. Are the Beatles really worth all this trouble?
- [86:02]
Dr. Richard Mills
Go anywhere? To Sweden.
- [86:04]
Robert Rodriguez
How long have you been standing here?
- [86:07]
Dr. Richard Mills
Well, I don't know. We came down to Pittsburgh about 10, something like that, you know. But we got here, you know, in Pittsburgh yesterday afternoon about 4. We're just starting to come down here. But we were not, but we can anyhow.
- [86:20]
Robert Rodriguez
Don't your parents object to you spending your time this way?
- [86:25]
Dr. Richard Mills
Well, my parents don't exactly like the Beatles, but they know that. Well, we like them and we just have to go.
- [86:31]
Robert Rodriguez
How do you describe the feeling you.
- [86:33]
Dr. Richard Mills
Get when they sing? It dies. Drives you crazy and you don't know what to do.
- [86:38]
Robert Rodriguez
You all over. Did your parents have any objections to your coming here, perhaps because of maybe being hurt?
- [86:46]
Dr. Richard Mills
Well, she thought I might get hurt.
- [86:48]
Robert Rodriguez
But all she objected to is me.
- [86:50]
Dr. Richard Mills
Skipping school, you know, getting out of here. She didn't like that too well.
- [86:57]
Robert Rodriguez
Something about the Beatles, created and hosted by Robert Rodriguez, executive producer Rick Way, title song performed by the Corgis. Something about the Beatles is an evergreen podcast.
- [87:22]
Dr. Richard Mills
Well, it seems to me that after your show, your real problems really begin. What's it like with these fans outside, Paul?
- [87:28]
Robert Rodriguez
At first it's murder because, you know.
- [87:31]
Dr. Richard Mills
It looks as though they're going to tear you apart. Once you get the hang of it.
- [87:34]
Robert Rodriguez
You get used to to it and.
- [87:36]
Dr. Richard Mills
Things gets a bit easier. Have you ever been in physical danger from your hands? Well, occasionally, yes. Only when there's been a big mob, you know, a really big one. But usually they're quite nice if there's.
- [87:49]
Robert Rodriguez
Only a few at a time when.
- [87:51]
Dr. Richard Mills
You meet them, what is it? Do you deliberately try and create these sort of screaming reactions? No, we just, you know, arrive at the theater and they're always there waiting. And whenever we're doing a show, the police always come and say, don't look out the window, you know, because you excite them.
- [88:10]
Robert Rodriguez
Hi, I'm Christina Yurling Biro, host of the podcast Pop Culture Confidential.
- [88:16]
Dr. Richard Mills
Join me as I go way behind.
- [88:18]
Robert Rodriguez
The scenes with some of the most influential people in entertainment and media.
- [88:22]
Dr. Richard Mills
Hear actors such as Succession's Brian Cox.
- [88:25]
Robert Rodriguez
Talk about his favorite characters.
- [88:28]
Dr. Richard Mills
There always has to be a mystery. The audience have to be in a situation where they want to know what's going on.
- [88:35]
Robert Rodriguez
Meet studio execs like Pixar chief Pete.
- [88:37]
Dr. Richard Mills
Docter and learn his secret on how.
- [88:40]
Robert Rodriguez
He makes us cry.
- [88:41]
Dr. Richard Mills
Emotion is our first language. And so many others who are defining.
- [88:45]
Robert Rodriguez
Popular culture, from Obama speech writer David.
- [88:49]
Dr. Richard Mills
Litt to Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi.
- [88:51]
Robert Rodriguez
We don't often think about food politically, or we don't want to, but it really is.
- [88:58]
Dr. Richard Mills
Join me search for Pop Culture Confidential.
- [89:01]
Robert Rodriguez
Wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone, it's Chris Pandolfi inviting you to check out the new season of my podcast, Inside the Musician's Brain, with new episodes airing now. Hearing it in that room, these guys playing this thing and trying to figure out how to play this song was mind blowing. It's so inspiring to know there's so much more to it than you ever thought, and it just opened another door. But when people find faith, because they need to, in terms of just filling a void to feel better without actually.
- [89:33]
Dr. Richard Mills
Being better, that's when it becomes a crutch. Much like, you know, drugs and alcohol do.
- [89:38]
Robert Rodriguez
Man, I don't have all the time.
- [89:39]
Dr. Richard Mills
In the world here. If I want to be a professional bluegrass musician, I felt like I had.
- [89:43]
Robert Rodriguez
To take a very, like, strategic approach.
- [89:45]
Dr. Richard Mills
Just trying to get rid of the.
- [89:46]
Robert Rodriguez
Barriers and figure out what those barriers were.
- [89:49]
Dr. Richard Mills
The feelings still come, and I have to reckon with that. But I think I have better ways of moving forward and not being stuck, which I think was the killer for me.
- [89:58]
Robert Rodriguez
Catch all that and so much more on the new season of Inside the Musician's Brain.