Robert Rodriguez (0:02)

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Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliate potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations Don't Tell Me New Stuff about the Beatles I'm done learning new Beatles things. I've got all the stuff I know. That's enough stuff. I don't have to know more about the Beatles. It feels like we're in a weird Beatles industrial complex where, like, there's a new documentary like every two years. And like every day there'll be a tweet that'll be like, you know John Lennon actually thought of Doritos and you're like, that's not verifiable at all. Who cares? There's a finite amount of information about a thing. It's such an old band. The Beatles broke up when my parents were in kindergarten. That's too old of a band. There should be other bands we talk about. It's great. Stop telling me stuff. I don't care. We will never have another Beatles if we don't stop talking about the Beatles. We wouldn't have a Beatles if everyone had this attitude when the Beatles happened. Imagine in 1960, someone was like, hey, you should hear this song by this new band called the Beatles. Imagine if everyone was like, I only listened to music from 60 years ago. So yeah, some of my favorite songs from 1900. What's your favorite song from 1900? A Bird in the woods. Hello and welcome to episode 300 of Something about the Beatles podcast. It is a milestone, maybe not an accurate one, because I know that there was some funky things with the numbering of certain episodes along the way. So technically I'm quite sure there's well beyond. Oh God. There's probably at least 500 hours worth of content out there since this show started. But 300 is the number we settled on for the current numbering system, so that is what we shall go with. Anyone who knows me knows that the last thing I am about is self aggrandizement. And this is not about celebrating, Robert. It's about the work. It's always about the work. It's about the show. And to me, the thing that we're celebrating is the listenership, which is outstanding. I've got some of the smartest and most creative people comprising the audience that I could ever wish for and the guests, the people I've managed to somehow or another arm twist into coming onto the show with such amazing stories and insights and this deep felt love and appreciation for the Beatles and their story that they're willing to come on the show, suffer my presence as I pull whatever info I can out of them. And anyway, when I look back, which I don't do too often because it's like anything, it just. You find everything wrong that you did that you wish you could do over. But that said, people seem to be appreciating it. So I was happy to put in the effort once I floated this idea, which in fact came from a listener, of commemorating the show and turning it over to the audience as much as possible. So to that end, a number of you contributed audio bits, both the guests and listeners. And for that, each and every one of you, if I haven't thanked you all individually, thank you for that, just some wonderful stuff that you guys sent in. It's easy to take for granted what a great giving audience and guest roster we have, but when it's in your face like that, you're sorting through the files that came in, it's just amazing. I mean, jeez, I just, I once said about one of my books, if I'd known people were going to read it, I would have written a better book. And it's like if I'd known over a decade later I'd still be doing this podcast and people would actually be listening to it, I would have probably put in more effort along the way. And, well, here we are. So anyway, I really, really appreciate everything that you guys sent in and all the continued support, the listenership, the people who are subscribers to the newsletter, which comes out Weekly on Mondays, SatB2010 mail. If you want to get enlisted in that, there's that beginning of the opening here. You had a New Zealand born comedian Sam Wiles doing that little bit which I found perfect, setting the tone for the show with humor and just touching on the bottomless hunger we have for Beatle knowledge and insight and understanding. I thought it was just perfect. And his name is Sam Wiles, not to be confused with the podcaster out there of similar name. If you want to check it out on Instagram, which I don't do a whole lot of socials you may notice, but that's where he came to me, as pointed out by another listener, Sam Wiles with two S's at the end, S A M W I L E S S to get in his stream. But anyway, enough about comedy. So I really wanted to make this show sort of a sampler for people who haven't heard the show. We are on the verge of going out to Spotify, it should be a done deal very, very soon and there are going to be people hearing the show for the first time. So it seemed a good idea to have people who were actual long term listeners to the show to contribute their thoughts about it. Not only what their favorite episodes are, which I really appreciate, but also suggest some topics. That's always an open conversation. We can have get on the newsletter, get to satb2010mail, you can send me ideas for the show anytime you like. Just put that in the subject line topics. But mostly what that's going to be is a sort of sampler of the shows through the years. It's really hard for me when I think about it to realize how many guests we've had. So many great people. Everyone from Beatle witnesses, people that I describe as either having close personal connections to the Beatles, Everybody from Mike McCartney to Pattie Boyd to Chris O'Dell to Nancy Andrews to Ken Mansfield. So many people that knew them and worked with them personally. Chris Thomas, Lon Van Eaton just goes on and on. Tom Murray, the photographer, Ethan Russell. So many people there's that. Then there are the academics that have come on the show regularly. Authors, filmmakers, musicians. Loads of musicians. First gen fans. People among the 73 million that saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show back in 64 that had their lives changed. And there's plenty of people who had their lives changed that did not see that show, myself included, became fans later on. A lot of stories to tell, a lot of information and exploration to do here. Witness accounts of things, some of which we've never heard before. A lot of people here on the show have written books. Some of them are just absolutely amazing. But it was really useful for me to hear back from you guys about what shows you liked. And the name that kept coming up over and over again was Erin Weber, author of the Beatles and the Historians, who sadly, if you get the newsletter, you'll know why she's not part of the show and will be on the sidelines for the foreseeable. But the other name that kept coming up was Jeff Martin as well. And I second both your picks for popularity in terms of shows, in terms of great, great conversations. But there's plenty of other people, plenty of other people, great, great guests that I've had on a show and I want to say from the onset, anyone who's on the show, especially if you're on the show more than once and there's not a clip from you in this one. I have finite amount of space and it is not a slight to anybody if you're not featured at least in part in this show because I am lucky enough to have an abundance of choice. Grateful to everybody who contributed, both guests and listeners. So that's what we're gonna run with. But if you are new to Sappy, new to something about the Beatles, I hope that this will encourage you to check out@somethingaboutthebeatles.com there is a crawl at the top of the webpage that gives you the guests on the show so you'll be able to see for yourself the tons of people that have come and gone to Sappy we have lost along the way. There's been three or four people that were guests on this show, no longer with us. Sad to say. There's always been people I would have liked to have gotten on the show that have passed on that I know would have been full of great stories, but it just didn't work out for whatever reason. But I'm grateful for the people that have come to the show and I've gotten great conversations out of. Thank you all for that. Thanks too to everyone who has contributed this show in some way, starting with executive producer Rick Way and other folks that have contributed in their way off the air. Gary Wenstrup, a guest for the Olympiad series as well as other shows that he's done with me. He's been a big help to the show. Outside of what you hear on the show again, this show is always as good as the guests and I've been incredibly fortunate to have the people on the show that I have. We're 300 in more or less. I can easily see it going another 300. I have got a full roster of things I want to tackle this year. With a little luck, crossed fingers, it'll all pan out. Thank you, thank you, thank you to the listenership. I want to get out of the way. I hate doing these intros because I feel like I talk way too much and really this is a show about you and what you love. About 300 episodes we've done, or at least the ones from 123 onward. But before we begin, a word from our sponsor, Magical Mystery Camp. Coming this summer to Big Indian New York in the Catskills. This is the four day event which includes International Beatles Day June 25th beginning on June 24th, running through June 27th. That is a Tuesday through Friday, the week before the July 4th holiday. If you are taking a road trip or planning on going on vacation out east, I hope you do consider checking in at the Magical Mystery Tour Camp. It will be a four day extravaganza of presentations, lots of music, bonding, community, Beatle themed fun, you name it. Headlining as guests Peter Asher, Joan Osborne, Steve Forbert. Then you have an assortment of added extras such as myself and Jerry Hammock will be doing some presentation there. Also on hand, Scott Freeman of the Deconstructing the Beatles series. Plus the Fab Foe accommodations for virtually any kind of setup you like, from a tent on the ground to a private room. There will be swimming, outdoor activities, you name it. For full details on everything, visit www.magicalmysterycamp.com where you'll find everything you're looking for in the way of information and accommodations and everything else. This is Upstate New York, 2 1/2 hours from New York City. Also, if you are a musician at whatever level, be sure and bring your instrument. There are jam rooms and there is private coaching available. So that is one more aspect of the time spent there is you get the jam with different people. Check it out. It's going to be a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to it. It'll be a blast. It is your duty to change the world if you can not by violence peacefully, individually, not as a mob. Take the Beatles. They started a huge social revolution. The fashions they set in dress and hairstyles are worldwide now. Every new fashion is a form of rebellion. Hi Robert, this is Michael from Fort Worth, Texas and I want to congratulate something about the Beatles on reaching its incredible 300th episode. It's truly remarkable that we're able to live in an era where we have so many fantastic Beatles podcasts. They go beyond the surface and dig deeper into their History and offer perspectives that we could have never imagined. I think what sets Satby apart is how it combines deep knowledge, insight and passion with entertainment and accessibility. It's not just another fan driven show. It's an intelligent, thought provoking celebration of the band and their legacy. It's podcasts like this that make being a Beatles fan today so rewarding. So thank you for the hard work, the dedication, and the endless hours of joy you've given us. And here's to another 300 episodes. Have you seen Get Back the film, The Peter Jackson film? I saw the bit. Peter Jackson came to London and he showed. He created an hour and a half for us all to see. It's like, you know, like a premiere event, but I haven't seen the whole thing for hours. Okay. No, the bit I'm talking about was. Right. Did you like it? Yeah. I mean, to me as a fan, I can't get enough of it right. But it's funny. Everybody I've talked to that was there at the time found it a hard slog. Like, I lived this once, I can't watch it again. So for the fans, it's a great gift. For the people that were there, it's like, nah, we're fine with our memories. Well, I must say, the way Peter Jackson edited it for, you know, this one night, it was absolutely fantastic. And I had forgotten how hilarious John was. I mean, he's just. When I was watching, I was just laughing. He is so funny. Yeah. I think that was therapeutic for Julian to see as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, some of it I felt was a little difficult to watch because I could see that George was not happy all the time. Did you have a sense of that in real time when it was happening? Oh, yeah, of course. Okay. Because he'd bring it home. Sure. The bit that I was referring to that I don't know if was part of the cut you saw is after, apparently you and George had made up, you stop by Apple Studio and you come into the basement when they're working and give them a kiss and then leave. Do you remember that? Did you see that? I did see that bit. Yeah. Yeah, I did see that little bit. Yes. I think it was something that jumped out for the fans. I thought that was rather nice. It was my film. Entrance and exit. Yes. In a few seconds. Yeah. And you looked at the camera and said, prisoners. I didn't. I know. That would have been unbelievably stupid. That's so iconic. Greetings from Brisbane, Australia. This is Christine Feldman Barrett Author of A Women's History of the Beatles. Robert, I want to congratulate you on 300 episodes of something about the Beatles. Fantastic. It's such a great podcast, and for anyone who's looking to hear something intelligent and entertaining about the cultural history of the Beatles, well, I don't think they could find a better podcast than yours. I've been incredibly grateful for all the content over the years and also for being a guest on your show. Thank you for inviting me not just to talk about the book, but also the release of now and Then. That was really fun and quite moving, actually, to talk with you and others about the meaning of the song's release. I also want to commend you for having so many female guests on your show. Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was an environment that was both political and countercultural. And so the Beatles aligned themselves for two weeks with that environment, presenting those two videos, which presented a new iteration of them. Anyway, so then the following week, George drops by and basically tells the Smothers Brothers to keep up their fight with the network censors and keep trying to say what they want to say. I have a beetle. Yeah, but it's not the kind of beetle you would expect it to be. It's the kind of beetle that you, I think you hoped it would be. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. George Harrison. Hey, George. I don't know all of you, I think, saw the. Several weeks ago we had on your people did. Oh, hey Jude. Hey Jude and Revolution. Tommy and I both thought that hey Jude was the best presentation that we've ever seen of the Beatles, and we're glad it was. Yes. So we. So I think that fans watching this, young people watching this, who may not even have watched the Smothers Brothers until the two weeks before. So those videos kind of primed the pump. Oh, Smothers Brothers. Like, it made the Smothers Brothers cooler and it made the Beatles more political. So when they were really political agents by that point, and so when George comes by and chats with them in that way, he solidifies that. Right. They're siding with the subversives rather than the establishment. Ed Sullivan. Exactly. So young people watching this who maybe didn't fully understand all the politics or what is this war all about anyway, they certainly knew that there were some people they knew who were against it. Some people were for it. The kids that they listened to Beatle records with when they were younger, two, three years before suddenly that older brother was drafted. That family was pro war. You know, it was a very Very divisive time. So. And it touched the lives of Beatle fans. So when you see George out there sprinkling beetle dust on the Smothers Brothers, you know, in no uncertain terms that where the Beatles were. Right. And I think that it really. Well, I don't know, Maybe I'm only 15 years old or 14 years old, but I'm against the war. Somebody I quoted this in the book that all the cool people seem to be against the war. I mean, that was the perception that fans had. Sure. And I think that George's. And plus he looked so wonderful and so gender fluid. It was a very impactful moment. I think it's probably not surprising that I'm saying that given the focus of my own Beatles scholarship, but it's been wonderful to learn about so many more women's stories and their connections to the Beatles, the Beatles themselves, or as a cultural phenomenon or as a subject of study, depending who the guest was. But in any case, I just think you're doing a brilliant job and I'm looking forward to future episodes and generally what the future holds as far as your podcast goes. So keep up the great work. I will be looking forward to new episodes and yes, I just wish you all the best with this, your books and all your other Beatles related ventures. My dad liked music. My mother hated music. We didn't have much music in the house, so I guess we know who won that argument. And I'd loved music since I was a tiny kid and sang my little lungs out when I was a little kid. Unfortunately, my voice still sounds like it did when I was a little kid and it hasn't gotten much bigger or stronger. But I was on stage singing and tap dancing as a child. I guess my parents might have come to see me. I'm not sure. I was too small to have taken myself there, but I loved music. I lived for music. It was my savior. But the interesting thing about my dad is that he loved sad songs. And as I was a daddy's girl, I have brothers but no sisters. I guess I decided I liked sad songs too. Bad songs as well, but sad songs. And so I kind of in my memory that the song that he would sing as we were walking along or if I was falling asleep was St. Louis Blues, sung by Bessie Smith. Or he would sing, Buddy, can you spare a dime your depression era sad songs. And he didn't play an instrument. I think I'm the only one in my family that plays one. Yeah. Just trying to think, brothers, have you got instruments? No. So no, it wasn't anything about that. But music, you know, just some reason or another, was my obsession from the day that I came in out of the egg, you know, day I came into existence. And I remember when I was little, I guess my first Beatles experience, I'd heard them. I must have been on a transistor radio or something in London. And at that time, my brothers and I, we had. We didn't really have pocket money, but we were allowed to buy a comic every week, you know. And I had a girls comic that came out called Bunty and Little Adventures of Girls. And then I saw in the shop where you bought it a magazine called Fabulous 208, which was the name of a radio station, was in Luxembourg, in Europe, and you could hear it on the radio and it had a picture of the Beatles on the COVID So this became my comic. So as a kid, I. I did that and I went to see Hard Day's Night when it came out as a movie, and my big brother, I remember holding my hand, walking me down to the cinema. And that was it. It was Beatles Forever for me. And that. The first Beatles Forever and the first album I ever got. I don't know if I ever bought it or it was a birthday present, but it was Beatles. And I had a Beatles rug and inflatable Beatles plastic dolls. Thought, let's talk about blowing up the Beatles and Beatles Monthly. When I could afford to buy that, you know, I just. I just loved Beatles. Did you have a favorite Beatle? You had to back then it was really funny. It was like everybody was training to be male music journalists, which you have to kind of compare and contrast. Like, do you like the Beatles or the Stones? I actually loved them both. But you had to choose. It was the Beatles and you had to choose your Beatle. And so I chose John because to me, there seemed to be like a tear in his voice, or it was this sort of sad anger that even as a little kid I could relate to, you know, he was my Beatle. That's really interesting because as we know, studying this stuff later on, that probably of the Beatles, he was the most damaged psychologically. But I think that is an aspect that comes through in his singing voice that it's sort of universal. It touches a chord with people. Even when he's singing straight up rock and roll, like money or something like that, you can absolutely hear it. Absolutely. Were you buying the records as well? Were this sort of coming your way or were you mostly experiencing your fandom through the radio and tv? Well, I can remember when I was buying singles, you know, 45s because I wouldn't have the money then, I wasn't even a teenager, but I remember getting 45. So I've got all of those, I've still got them. And in most of them I wrote my name and did little drawings, you know, the little round bit in the center, the paper with the name of the label on, making sure that nobody could possibly steal my single of the Beatles and say it was their own. I'd personalize it. And yeah, later on I've got all of them. And I treated them as, you know, Moses coming down from the mountain with tablets. What am I going to learn? What are they teaching me? Right? And was it something that as they developed as artists, going from that sort of mop top period to the Psychedelia and then Pepper and Mystery Tour, were you keeping up or was that the kind of thing that it like kind confused you at the time, or were you able to maintain your pace and develop your own tastes along with them as they evolved? Well, no, I was absolutely growing up along with them. Obviously they were considerably older than me, as it seemed at that time. These days it would seem hardly a gap between ages at all, but when you're a kid, those things matter. I mean, I was developing. I mean, I was growing breasts, they were growing great ideas and meeting with Maharishi and the likes. No, I never felt at all confused or let down or disappointed by them. I would just listen to these things on my little portable record player that had one speaker, so it was mono. Even though at that time some of the copies of the albums were stereo and I would listen to them and learn every word and know exactly what song was going to come next. And you still do, you know, at least I do. We are part of history and we're seeing it now. I mean, for first generation fans, that was what I was feeling like, hey, it still works. You listen to this song, you see the video that goes along with it. At first I was really worried because I know that I wasn't a big fan of Free as a Bird and Love. I understand them, but they didn't get me for John's songs. And evidently the first time I tuned into the new one, I must have heard the untreated tape because I thought, oh my God, this is terrible. And then when you sent me this invitation, you sent me the link. It was like leaving a dark room and going out to the beautiful sunshine or something I could hear. And then I understood why they chose this song, why they didn't let it just remain in Yoko's archive, if you will. And the more I watch it, the more I like it. I think it is a class A production and it grows on you. It's not necessarily a really strong Lennon song if you compare to some of the. The songs that he has written in the past. He is tentative. The lyrics are repetitive, but there's John. And I think it's one moment where the song is better because of the visuals. And generally I just like my songs naked. You know, just let me hear the song. But I think it's so well done and it's got something for everybody. And it's very moving, I think, to understand and to feel again the great loss of George and John and of the Beatles in general. And I'm just happy that younger people, people that don't have the history that I and Carol and Deb have, to me, it's. It's like a. A revival of sorts. But the popularity of it and the way that other people are latching onto it, to me, that just proves what the first generation of the Beatles fans knew all along is that this is something absolutely special. This is something that will bring joy to you. Hello, Robert, this is Darrell Blood. I'm a huge fan of your podcast Sat B, and I've been listening for about four years now. A friend recommended it to me, and upon my first listen, I thought I knew everything there was to know about the Beatles and to find out there was so much more to learn. I've been pleasantly surprised by your podcast over the years and just enriched by how much you undig and dissect the Beatles. It's just music to my ears. I just love it. As far as past episodes, I've loved anything that was covered on the White Album. It's my favorite album by the Beatles. The first day of that, we were in number two studio in emi, and it's, you know, the control room's up in the air there, and you've got all these steps going down into this very large studio, and they just downed instruments and walking, walked up the steps one by one, and I thought, oh, no, what happens if I've just sort of. My head has just misinterpreted it. I've got it wrong, you know, and they came up and they sort of listened to the playback, heard the mistake, went back downstairs and carried on. So I don't know, sometime later. So we carried on recording sometime later. It went wrong somewhere, so I pressed the button and said, okay. Let's try it again. And so that's sort of how it started. And at the end of the night, about two in the morning, something like that, I think Paul was the last one out the door now. And I said to him, I said, what happens about tomorrow? He said, come down if you want, and walked out. And I thought he didn't say, fuck off. So that was the beginning. And then after that, oh, I don't know. It was strange because things just accelerated. There was a sort of energy. We ended up doing something like. I can't remember now, six, seven songs before George came back a few weeks later. He was shocked. He thought he'd probably come back and find a couple of songs or something like that. But he certainly didn't expect me to be involved. So I know that he was. He came, you know, he had a word in my ear and said that he was extremely proud of me and I was very happy. So as a result of that, and I signed with AIR for three years. So during that time, while he was gone, was this where you recorded your instrumental contributions to the works in progress? No, not always, no. In fact, hardly any. The only one I think I did then was Piggies. How did that happen, that end up with Harpsichord? Because I was wandering around sort of thinking, oh, what could we use as a. You know, I was always looking for things that might be interesting because there were things in the studio, like there are honky tonk pianos, harmoniums, different things. And I sort of wandered into number one, which is a huge orchestral studio, and there's a harpsichord set up. And I love different keyboard instruments. So I started sitting down playing the harpsichord. Oh, that's great. So I went. And I think we'd already. I'm not sure if we'd already decided to do Piggies or not, but I said, hey, there's a harpsichord in. In. I think we had probably decided to do Georgia. So I said, there's a harpsichord in the other room. Maybe, you know, let's bring it in and we can use. Do something on harpsichord. So I got the tape up to help me start pushing the harpsichord in number two. And Ken came flying down the stairs going, what are you doing? It's set up for a classical thing. And I mean, basically they could have been, I don't know, recording a sonata and about to do, like, the next movement the next morning, and everything's been moved. It went absolutely. Ken went absolutely nuts. So we put it back in and we all moved back in. We all moved out into number one. And recorded it there. We. We moved it back in there. So George had made the decision that, oh, here's the harpsichord. Why not use it on this song? No, I'd sort of. I'd suggested it. And so we were sitting there tinkling around there and it was going to be Piggies. So all of a sudden he sat there and he played this other song and it was something. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know the title or anything. You know, in fact, I. I could have said, what's that? And he said something. I was like, well, I know that. But he played this song and I went. I said, oh, man, come on, we've got to do that. That's so much. That's a fantastic song. He said, do you really think so? I said, yeah. He said, oh, if you think it's that good, I'll give it a Jackie Lomax for a single. I went, no, no, no, we got to do it. He said, no, no, we don't. Piggies. And then for some reason, he said, you can play. You play better than me. Which, that's debatable, but. So I played harpsichord on Piggies. But I wasn't any good when we were putting the backing track down because it sort of bonked bomb like that. I found it very difficult to keep time. So I overdubbed my part. Plus the fact that the solo. I had to actually write a solo, so, sure, it was easier to do that. So I did my part, my stuff as an overdub. I think that's the only thing I did during the stint I was there on my own. But after that, George Martin came back and then I found myself playing live in the studio with the Beatles, with the Beatles on Bungalow Bill with George Martin, producer. And I thought, this is really nuts now. I'm now in the Beatles. Wow. Now, how did that come about, that they had the idea of using the melotron on that track? No, I don't know. I can't remember. Again, maybe I was like, I really can't remember. But they said, play the melotron. I do remember saying, well, what do you want me to do to John? And he said, anything you like. Well, what sound? Anytime, Any sound you like. And there was one stop on it where you just press this particular button down the end when you. And it played that Spanish guitar intro, right? It just does the whole thing. So that's like a sample. And then I chose a kind of mandolin sound for the verses and a trombone thing for the. For the choruses. And then after that, then they put me on Long, Long, Long. Well, George did rather. George Harrison did. He put me on Long, Long, Long. And also on Savoy Truffle. And I even sang backing vocals with George and Paul on Savoy Truffle. She played piano on Sadway Truffle. I can't. You know, I can't remember now if I played the organ or the electric piano thing, you know, that intro. Okay. Yeah, there's organ on there. I've got a feeling that I played the intro because it sounds kind of awkward. So that would be me. Okay. I think. I'm pretty sure that, yeah, the piano really comes through on that beautiful transcendental bridge on Long, Long, Long. And now, especially with the remix, it is such a. I just can't come up with enough words to describe. I've always loved that song, but it is so haunting and beautiful and just everything it conveys. And that piano part, it's sort of in Walt's time. Well, they told me basically what the. What George said he wanted to be like the Moody Blues. Go now. Like, go now. Exactly. So that's why we put the diddle. Italy. Diddle. Yeah. What was it like recording that part? That was actually quite funny because very rarely did they take any kind of time off. But they all went upstairs. And I've got a feeling that that night there might have been some wine brought in. Well, you heard at the end of the song. And they put me on the speaker cabinet. Oh, no, no, that's. I. I'm not sure that that's. Well, it might have been connected. Maybe we did that after I did the piano bit. That's a good. That's an interesting point, because there was a wine bottle on the top of the Leslie. That's true. But anyway, they were all upstairs and I was downstairs playing this part. And every time I just kept pressing the button going, try it again, try it again, try it again. And I really don't know how many hours I was down there. I thought, this is untrue. You know, what is going on? Many years later, I thought. I think this was revenge for me interrupting them. It's like, you know, you can see what it's like now. Hi, Robert. This is my response to your call for the best of the 300. The two episodes I mentioned here may not be everyone's cup of Beatles. That's probably the reason, I think, that they are that good. Many of us can recite the popular Beatles lore ad nauseam, but what about those unexplored ideas? You've gone in that direction more than a few times. So my first nominee is sat B217. It's all in the Mind with Dr. Bob and Laura. As I get older, the more I've come to appreciate humanity and compassion. Dr. Bob and Laura seem to live and breathe that. And if the Beatles weren't about humanity and compassion, then what were they really about? On a subject like this, where there are people out there that. Well, Yellow Submarine animation is not my thing. I don't really care. That's kind of a period piece, isn't it? No, it's not. The fact that you can produce such a worthy, robust, content rich book that is a sequel to your earlier book and have it come out now, and you sort of underscore the meaning that can be drawn from this film that is every bit as relevant for today's world as it was in 1968. That speaks a ton to the power of the Beatles, whether intended or not. You speak of them as vessels or as channels for some higher purposes. Yeah, that they absolutely were. I'm sounding ridiculous saying this, probably to some people, but I think the proof of it is that we're still listening, we're still dissecting, we're still analyzing, talking about it. We've got another major motion picture coming out this year on the Beatles and all these books, all this study, all these podcasts, there's a reason for that. They weren't just another rock group that sang pretty and looked cute. You know, there was a profundity, even despite themselves, that they projected out and what they channeled and brought a focal point to. That's why we're here. Even if we're not even sure why we're here, why we're still absorbed by the Beatles, it's for a reason. And I think your book, it's all in the Mind Inside the Ellis Submarine, Volume two, goes a long way to sort of underscoring the implicit message in both the film and the Beatles music and art generally. So in certain sense, this is going to sound corny. We're quite blessed to have been born during this time period, really. And with this group, could have been somebody else. Yeah. But I mean, they stuck to it. I especially was so moved by McCartney and his first wife and what they were accomplishing, moving things, going against bio stuff. You have to have a lot of courage to do that kind of stuff, because as soon as you start talking about the environment and the people that are not necessarily taking care of things, you're not making friends. Friends with them. No, you're absolutely not promoting your career that way. But they had courage to do it and they did. It means that others can do it because they did it. Right. So I look at them as teachers. Absolutely. And it's not to put them on pedestals and have that kind of hero worship. But if you look at what they stood for, the TM is a known thing. Because of George Harrison's interest in putting it out into the world. You got Ringo promoting peace and love at every turn in his life. He's an 80 plus year old man now. Paul McCartney, vegetarian and animal activism. John, anti war activism. Every one of them put something out that wasn't necessarily popular, not necessarily a good career move, but they lived by it. You can poke at them for having flaws as human beings and being less than perfect. So what? So is every one of us. But they went out on a limp for any particular cause that they loved and resonated with them. And you got to give them props for that. Oh, yes, indeed. As you said, despite themselves, they managed to put out this work of art. Yeah, yeah. Well said. Thank you. And again, I cannot recommend enough this book. I was so captivated by it when I picked it up and I couldn't put it down because there's so much cool stuff in there. It's unbelievable. Starting with the interpretation of the film that we sort of scratched the surface of. There's more to it that people will pick up when I start reading it. And the chapters detailing Yellow Submarine in its time, the song as well as the film, how it sort of resonated throughout the world in terms of influencing peace activism and whatever else. And then the stories of all these people that as youngsters, relatively these creative, bright talents that were drafted into working on the film and now have their voices heard in these stories put out into the world credit, were long overdue. It's just all great stuff from start to finish. Then you end the book with all these profiles of these key figures in the Yellow Submarine story. Or people that weren't tied to Yellow Submarine but claimed to be like Peter Max. Yes. Oh, yeah. Well, all of those people that really did it have become, in a certain sense, students. I've said this before, the students of a higher consciousness, which I think. What? The Beatles is not going to go back and get their PhD. I would never want to go through something like that again. Well, I'm glad we got to talk about some of the animators and I don't think we've done enough of them justice because they didn't get any credit. A lot of them didn't even get their names on the credits. You see these long list of names after the DVD restoration, much longer than ever any of the original artists got. But we get the. We allow them to tell their stories. So, for example, this young animator, Norm Drew from Toronto, who was trudging through the slushy streets of London looking for work and found the Yellow Submarine and a tiny little bed sitter where he would heat up his food over his hot plate. And they were all given freedom. So when he had the assignment to reanimate, the Pepperlanders are coming back to life. He says, well, there's this lady on the tie here. How about I have her do a little hoochie coochie dance? And the director said, sure, throw it in there. So that's Norm Drew's contribution. And the cavalry that is jumping out, or the horses that are galloping out of the submarine in the Sea of Monsters and they're carrying the seven of Custer's last stands. So they become the cavalry. That was Cam Ford's idea because there was a film out at the time, the Custer of the West. So the fish doing the breaststroke through the same time, that was Tom Halley. He said, it's just supposed to be flickering fish. That was his direction. But he said, can I add the arms? He said, yeah, go ahead, throw it in. So that was Tom Halley's idea. And all of these wonderful people were just putting their best out there. And I'm glad that we finally get them to have their names mentioned and they have wonderful stories to tell. We all live in the Yellow Submarine. We are all in the same boat. It's easy to dismiss all that peace and love sentiment for the Blue Meanies. So thank you for letting your guests show exactly who they really are. Laura need not have worried about whether listeners were still interested. I was hanging on her every word. Thank you for that deepest of dives. I've met some truly great human beings because of my Beatles obsession. These two wonderful folks seem like our kind of people. They are real, with nothing to get hung about. Their philosophical and spiritual nature is genuine without being stuffy or preachy. Thanks for an excellent and inspirational listen. And that ties directly into episode 252, the Inner Light with Susan Chomsky. I have Susan's first book because knowing everything we can about the Beatles is important to understanding everything about the Beatles. I wanted more from her book, though, so when her second book came out, I paused. Now that I've Listened to her talk with you and so much more about the Beatles and India and the Maharishi. I'm off to get her second book. I'm impressed that she is a Beatles fan. Just like the rest of us. She has that same affliction that she relates to it in an under researched FaceTime of our obsession. And so eloquently is everything we seek in our never ending quest for the truth and for understanding. If everybody wants peace and this is a path to it, why do you think there is such resistance then what do you think is stopping more people from embracing it? Is it just ignorance? Yeah, it's just ignorance, yeah. I mean the thing is that you don't have to practice Transcendental Meditation to meditate. There's many different methods of meditation. Another thing, Maharishi, because he was a scientist, he wasn't a scientist, but he studied science when he was in college, he studied physics, he was a physics major. So because he was into science, he did a lot of scientific research on Transcendental Meditation. The first time scientific research had ever been done on meditation. So 500 studies on transcendental Meditation were published during Maharishi's lifetime. He really kind of proved the benefits of meditation. But I think the reason why more people haven't embraced that particular form of meditation is because of religion, religious connotations is because he's a Hindu and there's a Hindu ceremony that's done when you learn Transcendental Meditation. And the reality. Interesting. Yeah, you have to bring fruits and flowers and a handkerchief to learn Transcendental Meditation. And then they give you a mantra and a mantra is a Hindu sound. It's a Hindu word that's associated with a Hindu deity. So that's why more people don't do that. But they practice other forms of meditation. You know, meditation is not necessarily only religious. It could be completely non religious practice actually. Well, what's interesting is how much yoga has been embraced in the Western world. And maybe it's because it's sort of framed as well. This is exercise and you're going to lose weight and keep your body in shape or something like that. Exactly, yeah. So the emphasis on the external over the internal, that's the selling point. Unfortunately, unfortunately, unfortunately the west is still focused on external things and not internal things so much. But the Beatles really made a huge impact on culture that we now see yoga studios on every corner. We see people embracing meditation. It's because of the Beatles. And with Maharishi and the Beatles together, the magic combination that popularized Meditation and yoga in the Western world, before Maharishi ever hit the shores of the west, there was no mantra, there was no karma, there was no yoga. These terms didn't exist in the west and now they're mainstream. Now they're completely mainstream words. Mantra, the word mantra. That didn't. That was not in the dictionary back then or call karma for sure. The song Instant Karma, of course, being a great catchy jingle in effect for the. For the term if people don't use it. But you can't go on YouTube and Google Instant Karma without seeing a million things pop up that have nothing to do with the song. So it absolutely is something out there in the currency in a way that it wasn't 50 years ago for sure. And people don't necessarily know who Maharishi is unless they're elderly people, but that doesn't. But still they know all these Indian things. And that's because of the Beatles and Maharishi. Your previous talk with Dr. Bob and Laura really got me and in a most surprising way, I'm not at all a religious person, but they made me understand my own spirituality that much better. So Susan comes along and somehow has once again stoked that fire of curiosity in me. And it's really great stuff to be explored here. Robert. So thank you once again for digging into a great untold story. Luther, your Kaiser Keller story. Oh, gosh. Well, I wouldn't necessarily have one because I started so young listening to the Beatles. I think I told you earlier, to my mom's dismay, my father fed me all her capitals one by one to my scratchy little Mickey Mouse record player. So I still have a couple of those to attest to the day damage. But, you know, I started listening to the. Getting turned on, I think actually, strangely enough, my first. The Beatle album. I can remember the first is not really a Beatle album. It's Plastic Ono Band because apparently I used to go around. This is probably accounts for my mental stability. But I used to walk around singing. Before I could talk, I was walk around singing mother. So that. That can't be a. That. That's a strange start. But whether you had me, but I never had you see what you did. Yeah. Robert. 300 episodes. It's hard to imagine what else you have left to uncover, but I'm sure the well is still full. What comes to mind, Some of the ideas I would love to see you entertain going forward. How about interviewing? Good luck getting them. But Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, those would be great guys to hear. Guys like Matthew Sweet. Who, you know, were really inspired by the Beatles. That would be wonderful to hear some of their perspectives. Also, how about fans? You know, you have listeners of the podcast. Some of the best conversations I've ever had are with other Beatle fans in the lobbies of these fests. It'd be great to have some of them hop on the air. I can, sure you can vet them a little bit and bring them on and maybe do some sort of Olympiad or just some kind of discussion on their favorite albums. I'd be up for that. Count me in. But I just think some of the best perspectives comes from just, you know, everyday Beatle fans. Let's do it. Keep it up and thanks again. So go back to 1963 and my parents best friends were in England on a little vacation and they wanted to bring back a gift for me. They had no idea I had just turned 13. They had no idea what to get me. So they were walking, from what I could tell, through Piccadilly Circus area somewhere and saw a record shop and they thought, oh, we'll bring her back a record. So they went in and they asked what's your best selling record? And this was April 1963. And the person behind the desk said this and gave them a copy of the Please Please me album that had just come out and it was selling astronomically. So they brought it back, they gave it to me. And to reference what you said all that they're so cute. I looked at the COVID and I thought, oh, are these guys cute? Okay, that is the overwhelming thing that I always sort of, oh, they're so cute. They're so cute before I even heard the music and I put on the album and that's when I fell in love with them. And I tried to get my friends in school. I at that point was in eighth grade. I tried to get them to listen and they had no interest in the Beatles at all. As a matter of fact, we were in the local Grand Union supermarket, my mother and I shopping, and a mom of a friend came up and said, I want you to keep your daughter away from my daughter because she keeps showing them these awful people who look dirty and not clean anyway. So I stayed away from those two girls who were my friends. But no one seemed to have interest in the Beatles until December 1963. But that's where I first fell in love with the Beatles before hearing their music was just from the album cover. Wow. No words for keep your daughter away from mine. Boy, was she wrong. Scruffy blokes, they Called them the scruffy Blokes. You know, I saw both Women at my 50th high school reunion a couple years ago, and I still have a problem talking to them. It made such an impression on me that I just gave away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it was a criteria for deciding whether you like somebody or not. That's definitely true. Do you like the Beatles? It'd be, like, one of the first things you'd ask somebody. You'd say, do you like the Beatles? Remember saying that to people? Hey, do you like the Beatles? And then that would determine whether they were, like, like, okay or not. You know, a lot of guys would say, you know, girls, girls, music and stuff like that. So for Carol, what was your first encounter in memory hearing them? At first, like, there was some buzz around school and on the radio. I was definitely tuned into listening to the radio. And I think I knew to watch the Ed Sullivan Show. I mean, we all watched it as a family, but we knew to watch it specifically because of this band. And then I remember being in the house winter. Our house was very nice and toasty. And I just remember the family around and sitting there, and my brother and his friend Jamie had come by with the record the 45. And they were playing before the thing. And I remember my parents were like, turn that off. It's junk. And the 45 had a sleeve with their picture on it. Then when the. We were watching. And then when they came on, it was an immediate jolt. I just was like, there's no words. I just went to the set, but I had to act a bit normal because, you know, the family was going to. They were like, oh, look at this. I need to get haircuts. You know, everybody was complaining about the long hair. That was just so terrible at the time. And it wasn't. But think about that. That was considered shocking and that their hair was too long and they were scruffy. Scruffy blokes was the word. I was, like, smitten at the moment. It never left. I was so smitten. And so. And I had to hide it. And so I took that record sleeve that Jamie had brought, the 45. I saw the sleeve there. It had their image on the sleeve, the picture. And so I sat on it on the couch, and that's how I got my first picture of them. And Jamie tore the. Jamie and my brother Joe, they were looking everywhere because he had to go home. Where was this thing? The sleeve? I was sitting on it. I just acted like I didn't know what was going on. But I had to have their picture. I had to be gazing on their faces once that TV set went off, because mostly I was hearing them through the radio. You have that picture with you now? Yeah, I still have it. It's all folded up. I had. I had to fold it, stick it under my. And then I cut it out. I cut away the rest of it. So I just had their image images here. And this was like. I think I. I know I carried it to school because I had a certain way that I could fold it and keep it in my stuff and not be suspected. Because every now and then I'd have to. You know, I'd have to take it out. Hello, Robert. I want to first off say congratulations on 300 episodes. I've been a fan for probably about five, six years now at that point. When I discovered it back then, I went back and listened to all the previous episodes. And I've been consistently listening now pretty much weekly or whenever new episodes drop. One of my favorite moments from Sat B, it probably was the episode where you talked about, get back and trying to connect to the filmmakers, the creatives. And I was listening in real time. And suddenly it became clear that you were able to establish contact with Peter Jackson. On the subject of missing audio. It's well known to people who've studied the Nagras that you hear the audio of George walking out on January 10, leaving the group. When? Now. And it immediately cuts off. It seemed so deliberate, like somebody had their finger on the recorder. Uh oh, I better kill this right now. Were you able to find more of that particular day in that audio? Well, it's a little bit more than that. I think it might cut and then start up again from memory. It. And all that stuff's on camera too. You know, you heard the audio, but Michael was filming it too. I think it goes, I'm leaving the group. I'm leaving a group now or something. When? Now. And then it goes, I think there might be a cut then. And then it starts up again pretty quick. The cameraman stopped and then started again. Probably only missing a few seconds because you've got. Then you've got George talking to Mel and there's that bit about, put an ad in the NME and you'll get somebody to replace me, Mal. And it's filmed as well. You've got George and Mel talking and you've got John standing pretty staunch. He's just sort of eavesdropping. He's right in the conversation. He's hearing what they're saying. And he's looking like he's sort of not challenging George, but he's kind of there, you know, I'm not too impressed by this George. He's got that body language of somebody who's saying, are you really serious, mate? And then you hear Tony Richmond's voice, or maybe Pete Sutton, who's a sound recorder, saying, are you still rolling? Yeah. Okay, let's cut in the cuts. That's the end of the leaving both audio and picture. The next time they roll film and tape, it's when they've just arrived back from lunch, I think that you hear them saying, I don't know what we're going to do. I don't know why we've come back now. I think that's what the first bit of audio is. Along those lines. I don't know why what we're doing coming back here. I think that's the very first line that said. I think that's either. That's either John or. I know it's John. I think it's John rather than Paul. But, yeah, I think that's the first line you hear. And that's when they just returned back from lunch. And what ensues is just a very bizarre moment where you've got John talking with Michael, Lindsay Hogg about getting Clapton in, and Paul banging away on Martha, my dear in the background and Yoko wants a mic. Yeah, there's a version of that. You'll see that in the cut. We had a lot of fun cutting that the after lunch events. But I'll tell you what you see, and this is an interesting thing where, you know, I really kind of. I came to have a huge understanding, I guess, and you. And I think you guys too, will too, when you see this film of how important the pictures are. Because you think, you know, you've heard all the Nagras. We've forensically gone through the Nagras and you think you kind of know the story, kind of pretty much. But it came to realize once you see the pictures, a whole other aspect of it is partly why I keep banging on in interviews about how it's a lot happier and it's not what you think it is because it's the pictures. I mean, if I was just working on the same Niagara is what everyone's had for decades, I wouldn't probably be saying that it's the pictures that do it. But what I was going to say is in that afternoon thing, the Etna, Clapton, and we're going to split George's Instruments up and all this sort of stupid John Barrado stuff that happens that day ends and there's no. You wouldn't know this on the Nagras. It ends with them in a hug. The three of them are hugging each other. They've got their arms around each other and they're clearly in some form of distress at the end. All that macho northern scale sort of bravado. Clapton. Oh, yeah, sing this up. It wears off during the afternoon and you see John just sitting by himself in a state of total depression. Ringo sitting with Maureen, looking absolutely destroyed and devastated. Paul is next to George Martin, who there George Martin's talking to Neil and other Michael. But Paul's just sitting there looking kind of so depressed. And then their day sort of ends with them putting their arms around each other. So the pictures have a lot of. Have a whole different story to tell. It's really. I mean, it's a fascinating subject, fascinating topic of how sound is. One tells one story and picture has its own story and the two. But the two together obviously give you the most accurate, sensible. You know, it wouldn't be accurate with the pictures only because, of course, how would you do this out? This sounded vital, but it certainly completes the most accurate version of events you'll ever get, unless you were there. And the thing is, if you were there, as I've discovered today, you won't remember a thing because no one who was there seems to remember anything about it. So we should probably. If we were all there and we were talking today, we'd probably sit here thinking, I haven't got a clue. I can't remember that. I can't remember that. Yoko being there all the time is going to be John's decision. It's going to be a joint decision. John wanted her there and they had made a decision that their being together was the thing that mattered most to them. And so therefore they were going to be together. And so she was there. But that was difficult because it was weird, you know. Well, what comes across through the tapes is the frustrations that emerge expressed by Paul and by George. Less that she's present than the fact that she is doing the communicating on behalf of John, who is lapsing into this. Well, I'm only going to communicate mentally right now. That's where I'm at. That was his flavor of the day thing that he had going on, but there was also his heroin use. I don't know if you were cognizant of that in real time. There's the one bit of footage where actually has to stop. He's being interviewed by Canadian film crew. It's right after George quits. It's on the 14th, I believe, January, when he has to excuse himself to go throw up and he looks terrible. And it seems like that's kind of the bundle, his withdrawal from the group, withdrawal of any position of leadership, and then Yoko sort of stepping into that void on his behalf. But he's not giving the Beatles the energy that they're accustomed to. And that's stirring a resentment that maybe they're directing at Yoko more than rightfully directing at John. But on the other hand, as Paul expresses it, if he uses his position in the band as co leader, basically he's got clout that George and Ringo don't. With John to offer, either leave your old lady at home or start creating, start contributing to this band that you claim to be leading and being a part of. He expresses that if he asserted himself to John that way, that John would just leave. John would just quit the Beatles. And they're trying really hard to keep him engaged and keep him in the band and therefore bending over backwards to be accommodating in ways that would seem perverse at any other time in their career. They're going overboard about it, but John always does, you know, Rio probably always does. So that's their scene. You can't go saying, you know, don't go overboard about this thing. You know, be sensible about it and don't bring it to meetings. It is decision, none of our business. Like, interfere in that. Even when it comes into our business. Still can't really say much except, look, I don't like it, John, you know, then he can say, well, screw you, or I like it, or, well, I won't do it so much. Like, that's the only way, you know, is to tell John about that. You know, we really can't go to the. What, John, the union thinks that this musically is. You know, I agree it's difficult, but I really do think that's the. It's like John Tom's album cover. You know, all of us thought, well, why did he do it? But it ended up with the answer being, well, why not? Ethan, you better take trouble, isn't it? But there's still got to be that. The compromise. Yeah, well, that's. That's what I'm trying to do with the John Jonker thing, you know, not. Not sort of just. But it takes two to complement. Well, I think. I think, you see. Yeah. Okay, so we go on talking like this forever. But I think for them to be able to compromise, I have to be able to compromise first, then they'll be able to. Or else they have to be able to compromise first. Now. But it's silly. Neither of us compromising. Yeah, but if her being around so much has caused a lot of the trouble that you're compromising already and you've made a lot of your compromise, you know what I mean? What, by. Yeah, by. By the right omnipresence. I think it's because we thought that the only alternative would be for John just to say, okay, well, see you then. You know, and we've not wanted that to happen. It's. It's incredible. I mean, we hustle each other like mad, you know, we. We probably do need really sort of a central daddy figure to say, you know, 9:00. None of the girls. Leave your girls at home. Lads, I have to say, I hope you leave this in that you're so more roundly and fully educated than I am in all of this. And yet in theory I'm supposed to know something because I was there. But clearly the work you've done over the years has made you an authority beyond me. That said, I was aware, but only on the sort of remotest levels and not until film was actually over, that John might have been using heroin. A, I never saw it. B, while I had. Was something that was true in my family, my brothers had both had problems with it. It was not something I ever got close to and would have avoided regardless of where it came from. Right, right. And so. And my experience, not with anybody in the music business, but with my own family and especially with that drug, is if. If you're not in it with them, then you are cut out. Exactly. Right. It's not a social drug. It's not like pot. It's not a social drug. And it's like, you can't talk to me unless you know what I'm doing. And so it becomes. I mean, your points that you. All points you just made, which I hope you leave in the interview, because they're all apt. All the points you just made really create a kind of perspective on this entire thing, which is not what I saw even at the time. Right, but which makes sense because they ain't gonna let people know about it. Right, right. But I think it certainly led to the softening of my feelings towards Paul being basically in the John camp, as a rule, to see what he was left with. It was really. They were left in an untenable position because they had a fifth person, Brian, that they no longer had. And I don't see how Paul or any of them could have successfully taken that role. Hello, Robert, this is Duncan Driver sending you a little audio ramble all the way from Canberra in Australia, where it's baking 35 degrees Celsius. And I don't want to go outside because I know I'm going to get my skin audibly crackling within seconds. So while I'm sitting in my office and pondering things, I thought I'd just send you this little note to say. The Beatles were very prominent in my childhood and again in my teenage years, but especially during the teenage years, they were a very private passion. I sensed, particularly in adolescence, that it was an unusual passion and one that was perhaps deeply uncool in the, oh, so 1990s. And so I guarded that side of myself quite privately in my 20s. I made a conscious, if foolish, attempt to put away childish things. And that unfortunately included leaving my passion for the Beatles behind. It's shameful for me to admit this now, but I had this cockeyed idea that it wasn't grown up enough or serious enough or something like that. And I totally acknowledge that that is deeply misguided and I have satby to credit for reawakening my passion. I was an early listener of the first episodes and I continued listening, and I will continue listening as soon as. Sorry. For as long as you produce the episodes. And I want to thank you for helping me to realize that. That you don't outgrow the Beagles any more than you can outgrow nitrogen, to give you a better example. Joy. Anyway, do this. Do with this little audio ramble as you see fit. Congratulations on a milestone 300 shows. John, Paul, George and Ringo and the rest of the world owe you an unpayable debt. May your wit, wisdom, humor, bravery continue for another 300 shows at the very least. Let me say on behalf of all of the friends of the show that you've passed the audition. 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 of legs and would resonate for an awful long time. They latched on before the intellectuals did. Right. And before the adults did, I think. Didn't take the intellectuals and the adults long, but the initial impetus for loving the Beatles and taking them really seriously was the young demographic, I think. 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 Albus mania before that and Sinatra before that, you know, the Bobby Soxer thing. What made this different or is it just an amplification of what came before? 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 sociology. 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 became 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 1933. There was a consumer boom in the 1950s. So by the time the Beatles come along there's going to be something that's going to be that big. There's the first satellite broadcast in 1967. So I think, 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 now 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. Right, right. 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, 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, John 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 act after the Second World War, who were amazing and naiven 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, and 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 Leonard and people started conventions because they loved John Lennon so much, whether it was Britpop 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. Hi, Robert, this is Al O'Leary from New York City and I wanted to congratulate you on your 300 episodes. And I also wanted to thank you for all the hard work you've done over the years. I've been listening to the show for years and I've learned a lot. I particularly like and appreciate the way you separate fact from myth. The stories about Ed Sullivan and the stories about not coming to America until they had a number one hit were all myths, and you've explained the reality of it. I've also enjoyed most of the books you've talked about on the show and I'm looking forward to the one that you're writing. With Jerry Hammack. I have all five of his recording reference books, by the way. So, anyway, thank you for everything you've done. Keep up the good work. All the best. The Thursday that they decided to go up to the roof, as you say in your book, you had very little warning this was gonna happen. We kind of caught you off guard. So tell me what that was like when you got word that this was going to be happening. We knew they needed footage for the film. It was a long time before that that Mal had called and said they want to think about setting up in the middle of some desert. They asked Mal to look at the Sahara desert and they want to know if I would look at a desert in America where they could sit up and then announce it. And so every kid in the world could come for free and see him in concert. In the book, I list probably about 20 different crazy ideas they had, and this was one of them. We knew right away that we thought about it, that the porta potty thing would. You could never get that many porta potties out in the desert and most of the kids wouldn't come back alive anyway. Something like that. But all these things are being mulled around. Well, what was happening is we were running out of time. And so like a day or two before you could start hearing all this noise, construction. And I just thought maybe they're remodeling one of the offices or something. Didn't think too much about it, but the idea was to go up on the roof. But I didn't know about it. They didn't include me on that. And so all of a sudden. And they weren't sure they were going up, really. They didn't know for sure they were even going to walk out there and do this. You mean you still weren't expecting us to be on the chimney with a lot of people or something like that? Well, anyway, we won't worry about that. Is not a word we use anymore. Thinking about praying now. What about the roof tomorrow? Do you want to collectively? No, let's. Let's. Let's decide on that sort of a bit later. Let's. Let's us keep off that. We'll do the numbers, you know, we're the band, you know, I'm. You know, whatever. I'll do it if we've got to go on the roof, you know, I mean. But I. I don't want to go. I would like to go on the roof. You would like to? Yes, I'd like to go on the roof. Very diverse people. But Mal had come down to the office I was in and said, hey, we're going up on the roof in about 15 minutes. Like, what do you mean? He said, well, we're going up and doing the live concert, so. And so, of course, the Beatles are, to varying degrees, prepared for this weather. John at least has the fur coat, but George, as guitar players, their fingers are exposed. It becomes an issue after a while. John was complaining all the time about how cold he was and how cold his hands were and he couldn't make the chords. And George's, you know, the tips of his fingers were numb, so he couldn't feel his strings and stuff. So you helped him out? Yeah, I did. I wish there was footage on that. That's one thing I've never seen any footage on. For that moment, he had me license cigarettes and hold them between my fingers. And he just put the tips of his fingers close to the coals and just warmed up the tips of his fingers. It was cold. It was cold. And that chimney that Chris and I and Maureen and Yoko are sitting next to was not an active chimney. So that wasn't like a warm spot. It was more of a something just to break the wind, you know, because you look at us, we're just huddled there. I mean, we're all cold, and there's no question about that. So at some point when this was going on and the whole thing ran roughly 45 minutes, did it occur to anybody with something that was spoken of or anticipated that at some point the cops would come and shut them down? You know, I don't know if we even thought about that because. Well, I think we must have, because one of the first things they did was lock the downstairs door when this thing was getting ready to start. So obviously they anticipated that. In fact, now that I'm answering this, I'm Michael Lindsey Hogg. He actually had a camera set up down there. So he was anticipating something for the film that was going to happen with that. And when the cops, you know, they make a big deal about the cops coming in and busting this thing up. Mal met him down there, and Mal kind of smooth talked him and, hey, it's the Beatles. And he kind of got him to kind of go along with it because you can see somebody up there on the roof, one of the policemen standing next to Mal, and, like, he's waiting. They were cooperating with the whole thing. So it was never vicious or never like, oh, my gosh, you know, we're going to get handcuffed and thrown out of here? Yeah, all that kind of stuff. So that's been kind of a big deal made about that, that I didn't have any sense. I mean, I'm sitting right there and I didn't see these mad discussions going on or threats or anything like that. No, you get the sense that the cops themselves were kids and probably Beatle fans. The last thing they wanted to do was end this. What a crush job. That one guy. Oh, I forget his name. Anyway, the one guy I think that was standing next to Mallory, what a crisp job he had to sit there and be in charge of how long the Beatles played that day. Right, get back. Thanks, Mo. I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves. I hope we pass the audition. People say, well, what were your most exciting moments in the music business? Well, number one was being on the roof, and then number two is like way down before you get to number two, as you describe in the book, once it was all over and everybody came off the roof back to their offices and there was just. It was a silence, like you were very aware, each individual, that you'd witnessed something momentous that you just. You didn't quite know how to express that. Well, we didn't. And it's strange because it just kind of happened. And we're up there and again, we're back to this another day at the office type feeling. And something, I think while we were up there, we could tell something's happening here and nobody was expecting, wow, this is the last time they're going to perform together. The Beatles are going to break up after this. This has become a historical moment. None of those feelings. When we were up there, it was just cold. They were getting footage for the film. You know, it's just a day of work. But then during that time, something happened. And I've always felt. One of the things that I remember most of all at Apple is during that show, when Paul looked at John, or John looked at Paul, when they came up on that roof. There was a lot of ascension that day, but it's like they looked at each other. Yeah, this is us. This is who we are. We're a good band, we're mates, We've been together a long time, We've been through a lot. And this is who we are, right here, right now. This is who we are, regardless of everything that's coming down. And you could sense that. And they really did. They jammed up there. This is Tricia from Oregon, and I suspect if host Robert Rodriguez and I were to sit down for coffee. There'd probably be some Beatles topics and takes that we would butt heads over. But even with that, it's clear to me that Robert does impeccable research. He comes from a place of integrity, and the man does his homework. I'm sure I echo many other listeners when I say that my favorite Sat B guest is Beale's Historia, Aaron Torkelson Weber. But probably my favorite ever Sat B moment comes from one of the many little audio clips that Robert sprinkles in his episodes. I grew up in the Los Angeles area listening to radio station 93 KHJ and what do I hear on Satby one day but John Lennon on that station delivering the Vons Market Value Price of the week on sale at the store on Sepulveda Boulevard, pronounced by John as Sepulveda sounds like a disease. I shared that clip with several former Angelenos who adored it as much as I did. Well, I'm running off my time and people are telling me to stop. But I'd like to say that if the Beatles make you happy, if they bring you joy, and if you wonder what you could possibly be left to learn or uncover about their lives and music after all this time, then Sat B isn't optional. It's mandatory. And the newsletter is absolutely, absolutely great as well. Thank you. And now back to your local station for the Vons Value Price of the Week, now featured at all Vons markets. Tide detergent, a 49 ounce box value price for just $0.89 at Vons. There's a Vons store near you at National Sepulveda center in Los Angeles. Sounds like a disease. Ah, if you send us some info 10 days before your group's event takes place or give us a call, we'll let every so do it. And we'll give you super service at khj. The next cut you're gonna hear is a track from my new album, Walls and Bridges. It's the second cut Inside two and features Elton John mumbling underneath me. Surprise, surprise. Are we on? Oh, khj. That was Paul, wasn't it? Good one. That was one of his goodies. I wanted to play Monkberry moonlight, but it was too long. So why don't we start with how you selected the books that you examined for your book out of everything that's out there, which, as you mentioned, you know thousands and thousands of books, why these particular works? Well, I wrote the Beatles and the Historians as a college history textbook, so my intended audience wasn't actually a Beatles fan. It was a College history student taking historical methods or historiography, which you're required to take as a history major, and wanting to give them a textbook that gave them those standards, but applied them in text to a more interesting topic than history majors sometimes have to wade through. So one of the major reasons I would choose to look at a source was because it allowed me to demonstrate a very important historical methods point. And the other reason that I chose to select a book was because of its importance to Beatles historiography. So it had to hit both of those key issues to get a lot of extensive analysis. And so by extension of that thinking, you sort of steered clear of the memoirs. I steered clear of most of the memoirs, obviously, many years from now, got a considerable amount of attention. By the time I got to the memoirs, I didn't have that much space left. Lennon Remembers is something of a memoir. Well, it's an interview. Yeah, I know, but it serves as a memoir. It serves as a memoir up to that point. But I evaluated it much more just as an interview than as a memoir. Right. Well. And also the weight that it's carried through the years in what works have followed that were sort of taking their cues from it in terms of tone. And the message that he put out there completely uncritically, would you say? I'd say that Lenin Remembers is one of the most important primary sources ever written on the Beatles or provided by any of the Beatles. It established an entirely new narrative, and it helped destroy the remnants of the official narrative. And its impact was. Obviously, I wasn't around when it was published, but its impact was seismic at the time. But you can also see how pervasive it is. If you read Almost any post 1971 book on the Beatles, those that have bibliographies, there's facts or information or quotations from Lennon Remembers. So what would you say gives it its importance? Just that it's closeness to the actual breakup of the group and the fact that we're sort of changing the prevailing narrative of Beatles history to that point. I think there are a lot of issues that go into that. First off, it would be the timing. I think the timing is crucial for that particular interview because the official narrative had been crumbling since 1968, 1969. And when Paul releases the McCartney press release in April 1970, he is the one who officially destroys it. But he doesn't offer up a new narrative, a new version of events. He leaves a vacuum. Right. And when you don't have a narrative vacuum, you need to find something to fill It, But John fills it with Lenin Remembers and he does a masterful job because number one, he's filling that vacuum. Number two, because Lenin remembers very much has to be analyzed in the context, and particularly the political context of the time, the issue of the establishment versus the counterculture that was accompanying the criminal terminology of the Beatles breakup. You also have the reality that it's just an incredibly compelling interview. Yes, he speaks with a great deal of passion and that's actually one of the major problems with that interview is that a lot of authors mistake emotional honesty and there's a great deal of emotional honesty in that interview with accuracy and credibility. So what would you say is the, the takeaway value of Lenin Remembers given that we know that he was being interviewed by somebody who basically was a high level fan and not a journalist? In terms of its impact on Beatles historiography, I would stress seriously analyzing it. When you use it as a source, it has fairly significant fundamental issues. Just if you apply historical methods to it, number one, it's a public source. And a source that is intended for public use is always going to be a little more suspect than one that was intended for private use. That's just a basic fundamental rule. Right? It's meant to be published rather than a personal diary. Well, again, if you look at the books in Beatles historiography that use Lenin Remembers as a source, you don't start to get any questioning of what John says until I think the first source I stumbled across that says, yes, this is an absolutely essential document, but you need to take it with a grain of salt was Herzgard in 1995. So that's 25 years where almost everyone is accepting what John says. And you see that unquestioningly in some of the other major important works in Beatles historiography like Wenner or Coleman or certainly Norman in Shout. Don't get a major rebuttal of Lenin Remembers until many years from now. Want to give special props to super guest Jeff Martin. Probably the smartest person, funniest person, most successful person that you could have on the show. And for most of the time that he's talking with you, he's not going for the joke. And I think that that is what's revelatory in hearing the episodes that he's party to is just that, say, the keyboard editions of Truth and Beauty. He sounds like he could be a Juilliard professor. And maybe in some facets he essentially is. By way of example, what Jeff said about Monty Python or David Letterman or whatever it was the thing that everybody wanted, but they didn't realize that they wanted it. And then they got it and they loved it. Right. I mean, it's such a true and correct observation, but I don't think that anyone had ever articulated it before. Elvis must have felt absolutely inundated by these British guys. Right. Who had replaced him on the charts. Exactly. Yeah. And taking ownership in it. It's a different culture. It's something he must have felt he could never compete with. He was just so out of it. He was singing these songs by Sid Tepper and Ben Weissman and Sid Tepper. By the two of them together, Elvis recorded an even 100 songs by those two songwriters no one has ever heard of. The King of Rock and Roll spent the 1960s, you know, acting like Tab Hunter and singing those songs. And I'm curious, how much did he feel embarrassed? One account has it that Elvis and Tom Parker sort of passed it off, saying that the one time he tried to break out of it with the movie Wild in the country, that hadn't done well. Whereas his standard movie, Blue Hawaii, printed money. Right. And that set the pattern. And Colonel Tom said, see, I told you so. Yeah, just stick with this and don't try to break out of it. And yet he must have felt some sort of shame or at least awareness that what he was doing was schlocky, outdated junk in the face of the Beatles. Oh, he totally. He totally did. Even before the Beatles, when he was doing GI Blues, when he was recording Wooden Heart, he did not like it. He thought it was crap. He thought it was embarrassing. The Colonel told him, yeah, this is what's paying right now. Right. Just keep doing it. You know, Elvis didn't fight him. The Colonel may have been better at squeezing a nickel out of people, but, boy, in the long run, the Beatles legacy was so well protected by Brian Epstein. Yeah. Such a difference in approach. And that really underscores their luck in having him as their representation as the guy that presented them to the world, rather than a Parker who is as extreme as he is, was more the rule than not. Oh, yeah. And Colonel Tom was just following the rules. But the true big showbiz successes that we've been talking about almost always occur when people succeed on their own terms, when they deliver something new. And I see it constantly in the TV business that I'm in. Generally, when you pitch to executives, they're looking for something that resembles something currently popular. Right, exactly. Fighting yesterday's wars. Yes. Just. Just the way. Oh, people like Elvis. Well, you know, here's Ricky Nelson. And on until the Beatles came along. Here's the monkeys. Yes, exactly, exactly. And then simply invented a new paradigm that was quickly copied. It takes, you know, a lot of luck and fortunate circumstances. The Simpsons could never have happened, except the Fox network was new and fledgling, and the great Jim Brooks had the leverage to say, we will do a show for you if you let us do exactly what we want. You don't come to tapings, you don't give notes. We will present the episodes to you. We will slip them in the mail slot, basically. And that made it possible to give fans something that they hadn't seen before, which was a cartoon that was as funny or funnier than any other comedy on tv. And like with the Beatles, like with Elvis, you give them something new they didn't know they wanted, and, boy, they will. They will follow you anyway instead of reacting to something that's already happened before. A day late and a dollar short. Yeah. Hello, Robert, this is Michael from Santa Cruz, California, saying congratulations and thank you for 300 episodes. I can't believe it's been 300. I feel, I think it's been more. I've listened to some of them, many of them more than once. So that's probably, probably why yours is the only podcast I think is worthy of repeat listenings. So thank you for that. A couple of the ones that stand out to me over the years, and there's been many that I find great. One that jumps to mind is your interview with Elliot Easton from the Cars. Great guitarist, clearly influenced by the Beatles. And it was great to hear his perspective growing up as a Beatle fan and rolling that into his talent. As you know, they were announcing every progression. They're getting ready to land now they're on the Runway and it's 58 Beatle degrees WA Beatle C. It was so pervasive. It wasn't just simply like a music group from another country coming to visit with some new music. It's hard to describe to those that weren't first generation, but it was just a completely pervasive, all encompassing effect on our culture and society. I mean, I saw a picture the other day of Alfred Hitchcock wearing a beetle wig, and it struck me just how pervasive the thing was. It wasn't just like Elvis, a little fad where Milton Berle would come out with sideburns. It was just so big. I'm thinking to myself as a young kid, anything that hits you when you're young, that's of that scale like a tsunami. There's no way, I think for anybody today to envision and completely take in the scope of everything. You watch tv, you listen to radio, you pick up magazines and it's Beatles, Beatles, Beatles, Beatles. And then you get the sensory impact of hearing I want to hold your hand blasting through your speakers. It rocks your world from top to bottom. That's something that I don't know if people that didn't live, that can understand or grasp. But we try our best with words to describe that. And I get chills when I think about it. And you just said it. I've heard it from other first generation fans just what a life changing thing this was. Well, I'll tell you, everybody has their little story about the Sullivan Show. And so for me, it was much like the rest of the country sitting on the floor around a grainy TV set watching them. And I was so blown away. I remember certain funny things I was struck by. Like they were wearing black suits and John was playing his Rickenbacker. But against the black suit I couldn't see the horns of the body or anything. All I could see was the teardrop shaped gold pick guard on the Rickenbacker. So I thought the guitar was sort of like a lute shape, like Brian Jones later played. I thought it was like a teardrop shaped guitar. And then nobody had ever seen a bass guitar that looked like a bass fiddle before. And George was playing a gretch. I mean I was already like noticing guitars and like really into guitar. And we all wanted Mose writes like the Ventures and Fender jazz masters and Jaguars just before the Beatles because like it was that, you know, twangy surf instrumental stuff. It was so different, but it affected me so deeply that I couldn't go to sleep that night. I just tossed and turned the whole night. It was like I was galvanized. I just couldn't go to sleep. And I remember the next morning on the school bus and you know how school buses have like a pecking order, like bullies and people knock books out of your arm or won't let you sit in the seat next to you. That day the entire bus was singing I want to hold your hand together. And it was like everybody was on the same page for the only time ever that everybody was having a good time and getting along. So it just changed everything. I mean it just changed everything. Robert G'day this is Ben Billy Shears from down under on the Central coast, New South Wales. Mate, congratulations on 300 episodes. I've been listening for about 10 years now to 2015. That's when I discovered this wonderful, wonderful podcast. Keep up the great work. Here's to another 300, Robert. Amazing. Just a side note, a memory that stands out for me is a long time ago. I can't remember which episode, but you played Come Together. If Pete Best was their drummer and mate, it was a cracker that made me laugh. So onwards and upwards, mate. Keep up the excellent work and it's much appreciated. Thank you. You talked before about the atmosphere, being really friendly with this project. In particular, can you describe what it was like with Ringo and Klaus being part of this project that is so unbelievably, intensely personal and just them getting behind this trip and being supportive. It's clear that John picked people that he knew very, very well to be part of this that he could trust and. And feel safe with. Yeah, I mean, there wasn't any. As I say, I mean, I wasn't really in the studio or what they were, you know, when they were running through it. I don't know whether they rehearsed or whether they'd heard the songs before. I don't know. It's kept simple. And they just supported him, didn't they? They were just stuff, you know, Mal Evans was there, so was a kind of half a Beatles, wasn't it? Yeah. It's like sitting in the office when you're like visiting your shrink and friends sitting in the room. That's kind of the vibe I pick up. You're spilling your guts on your inner life, but having some of your closest friends sitting nearby. When you say about John pouring his guts out, I mean, most artists do that when they're singing or they're performing. And he'd written these songs before he came in, so he's not writing the songs as he goes along. He's from when he did spontaneous scream. It's Janoff primal scream thing, which was months before, probably. That's how those songs came out, I think. I'm just wondering how it was received. And you can't really speak to the rehearsals or any kind of like, here's the songs I'm gonna record. I want you guys to hear these first. I don't think there was any rehearsal, but John played the songs lots of times and they're not difficult to play. You know, they're pretty simple tunes. I mean, I learned to play piano by playing, remember, because it's the most easiest thing on the piano to play. You know, you only move one finger. Don't. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Now, Looky here, I got a little beat for you boys and girls here. I'd like to keep it something round in the. Well, now here's a story about you and me. It's really easy. I mean, all those Beatles things, you know, are really. They seem to find a really simple way and easy way of doing it and make it sound simple, which is. Well, that's the amazing thing about McCartney I've always liked is he has this. You have this perceived complexity about him. But when you go to learn, his songs are often like G, C, D. It's not like he has the. George had fancier chords in a way, you know, even it's Johnny's birthday, for God's sake. You know, I was shocked when I heard that that was on the record. Cause that was just a joke one time for John Lennon's birthday, you know, on. It's a song called Congratulations, you know. And we got it from the tape library. I can't remember how it happened, but I'm singing on it. And then everyone went out and sang It's Johnny's birthday, you know, everyone's there singing. I can hear my voice. Anyway, so we all sang it and then played with the vary speed as we're singing where someone's turning the vari speed, you know, psychedelic. It was, you know, it was great. And I was shocked that that got put on there. And you were there when they presented it to John during the Plastic ono band sessions. October 9th. His birthday was the day that they recorded Remember. And if you go on YouTube, there's like a 20 minute session reel of that when George comes in and John Greet said, oh yeah, I'd have to hear that. Yeah, I wasn't there when Remember was recorded. Oh, I was. No, sorry. I was. But I don't remember George coming. Okay, okay. Well, if one of us doesn't stop, I mean, somebody's got to set a pattern here. George. Is it tuned to open a. Oh, well, you know, I mean, because it was so strong. I really can't remember. I remember. No, I remember when John did remember because remember the 5th of November. And I knew he was gonna do it. Cause it's an English thing, you know, it's a British thing. The 5th of November. And you know, he was doing a few. I thought, remember, remember the 5th of November? And then suddenly he sang it, you know, So I thought this is. Is crazy. Yeah. Hey, Robert, congrats. 300 episodes. Milestone. It's Tony in Chicago. Yeah, I love the show. One of my favorite guests, you have on is Jeff Martin, former writer for Late Night with David Letterman, the Simpsons. He was flunky the Late Night viewer mail clown piece through Dramatization Players. The actor singer is dead. Been a big fan for a long time. I really enjoyed your comedy episode, so I'll pitch. This is an episode about Jeff's specific work on Late Night with David Letterman and the Simpsons and the World of the Beatles. Famously, there was that Simpsons episode with the B sharps. Congrats. Here's to 300 more. Chief Wiggum is the Pete Best of the episode. Yes. And just on and on. And they have a British manager. Yeah. Was he based on anybody in particular? Nigel? He. He was. Well, he was supposed to be based on Brian Epstein. And in all honesty, when I wrote it, the voice in my head was that was a sort of purring Brian Epstein British accent. And then Harry Shearer just did something different. Yeah, it's kind of dark, actually. Well, it's just sort of like, you know, hello, gentlemen, you know, fellows and all that. Was it cockney way, way in here, Richard? Yeah, I haven't seen it, so I don't know. Reading about your father in the book reminded me of Paul's father of that era and being the bandleader and all that. You actually got to know James McCartney a bit. Paul's dad was a really nice guy, Very nervous. When I first began being a journalist and the very first interview I did, or maybe the second, I think the second actually was with Mike McCartney, who at the time was in a little group, a satirical poetic group called the scaffold. Poet Roger McGuff and a guy called John Bulman and who's funny. And I went to the house to meet Mike and Mike was still in bed up late the night before. But Jim McCartney's dad was there and he had a. Paula bought a very nice house for them over the Mersey in a place called Heswall. And it's quite a posh area, really quite nice, and a nice big house. And Mr. McCartney was incredibly nice to me and I stammered extremely badly and he picked up on this and he was just incredibly patient and nice and we just got on and then I went upstairs and spent a couple of hours with Mike, but also Mr. McCartney would. And his second wife, they'd come and see us in London, we lived in Kensington, and they would come down and see us, or they'd be down staying with Paul, then they'd go out to do something and Paul at our house on the way back. And Mr. McCartney would always give half a crown, which is like about 20. I don't know what it is now. Anyway, it's not a lot. But then probably the same in America, where you give the children half a dollar or something, you know, and you would. And he always did. And he already searched it in his pockets before he went. He had to give some money to the children. And then the breakthrough came, really, when Magical Mystery Tour went out on television and it was criticized very heavily by the press. I didn't like it either, but I had to write a piece about it. I was on the Evening Standard, and I've been there about six months and I'm still very nervous. Phone Paul and ask him what he thinks. Which was a gratificant thing to have Paul's phone number. But I got it from a pr, so Paul didn't give it to me. So ran Paul and his dad answered. Hello, son, how are you? I said, yeah, look, Mr. McCartney is your calling. He's all right, he's still asleep. Son said, oh, well. He said, I'll tell you what, call back in a bit. So called back about half an hour. I was on an evening paper and you can't wait all day. So I phoned, I think, three times. On the third time, Mr. McCartney said, Son, God loves a trier. I'm going to wake him up for you. You. So he went upstairs and woke Paula and gave him the papers, which were not good, and said that talk to this Ray Connolly. And he did, and. Nice man, you see. Nice man. Yeah, I was. I've stayed in touch with his second wife. Yeah, it's a good example for young journalists to always be nice to people because they'll be nice back and nice people are nice back. That some people are real bastards. But he was a lovely man. Hello, Robert. Just want to say Merry Christmas from Texas. My name is David Renfro. I'm from San Angelo. And you and I have talked via messenger several times on various subjects. Everything from this book right here to all sorts of different subject matters. Anyway, in regards to your newsletter number six, where you talked about a quick message, I thought I'd try to do this. I'll keep it under a minute, so I'm halfway done. Three things that I really enjoy. The Olympiad series with Gary. I think those are awesome. I love to hear your ideas and, you know, how y'all feel about different things. I also like the way y'all break down songs with other artists, like you did with the White Album a while back. So at the beginning of the Song Elaine Madonna. Children at your feet Wonder how you make ends meet. Paul is just. Just playing that at the piano. I think the second time he does it wonders how you manage to feed. The rest is just Paul at the piano. And then the next time we get the heavy guitar playing the riff along with the piano. Listen to the music playing in your head. And then in the last verse, we get the piano and the guitar and the horns, all as the musical backdrop to wonder how you manage to make ends meet. So the excitement of. Of the song keeps increasing as we go along. The lyrics kind of a throwaway. And maybe I think at the time for me, I went to a Catholic grade school, so I'm trying to interpret. Oh, Madonna meant something else. And what's going on here? We get the creeping like a Nun and Heaven sent, except we've got a baby at the breast. So it's. Were you titillated? I don't know. Chris O'Dell. Nancy Andrews was probably one of my favorite episodes, just because I've met Chris at a fest and she's wonderful. Haven't had a chance to meet Nancy yet, but still, I love hearing those stories. And Chris's book is just amazing. I don't want to completely delve into gossip TMZ world, but is there anything you could speak to, knowing what you know, about what was going on in January of 69, around that time? Particularly with George and his personal situation, because we know he walked out of the sessions. And lately, as Beatle people, we're coming more to the understanding that it wasn't just what was going on among the other Beatles that was informing maybe his actions that month. Maybe there was other things going on too. Is there anything you could speak to about that? Well, this was before I went to live with them. I knew a lot more about them when I went to live with them. But, I mean, I knew George actually better than Patty at that time. I didn't really know Patty. And when George had me come to said, did I want to live at Friar Park? I assumed Patti knew I was coming. And I only found out sometime later that I walked in the door and she's like, oh, my God, he's brought another woman home. So I didn't know a lot of what was going on personally with them at that time. But it was very common up until Yoko came on the scene, for the women not to participate in much of what they did. So they didn't go to recording sessions. There was just a lot. And the way George phrased it to her was, it's a work thing and there's no audience. For the Rooftop? Yeah, for the Rooftop. So that's why she didn't go. But I didn't see her around that much at all during the time I was at Apple. I didn't know her that well. Maureen, she would come and go, but I still didn't even really see her. I didn't know her. I mean, both of them later became really good friends. But at that time I worked at Apple. Not necessarily. So how well did either of you get to know Yoko? I knew her through Apple mostly, You know, I didn't know her that well. No, to me, she wasn't that easy to know. But Nancy probably had more interaction with her because of when you were with Ringo, right? I didn't have a lot of social interaction with her. I did, I did. We were in New York, staying at the Plaza. Ringo was doing the album with Arif Marden. And we were invited over for drinks or lunch or something over to the Dakota. And that's when I first met Yoko. And she was incredibly nice and almost like a Japanese courtesan. She was like so sweet. And that's when Sean was like two years old and he was like climbing around the kitchen and John was making bread and it was all very family oriented and very wonderful. And then John said, well, we're going to walk outside and go to our favorite Chinese restaurant. But before we left, I noticed when I walked into their, everything was white. White carpet, white blue side chairs with white fur seats. And everything was like white, white, white, white, white. I remember walking into the foyer, into their apartment and there was this. Under plexiglass was this mummy, an Egyptian mummy. And I was struck by how much it looked like Yoko, the mummy. And I went, God, it looks like. So we went inside and I said to John, I said, john, that mummy looks so much like Yoko. And he said, believe me, don't tell her, but they know how to deal with her in Egypt. So what happened was, is that he said, honey, why don't you bring out some of your Egyptian jewelry and show Nancy, because I love jewelry. So she brought out these black velvet trays. And here was the most amazing Egyptian jewelry that was probably should never have been taken out of Egypt. Or maybe it was fake, I don't know. The most amazing Egyptian jewelry. And we were like, Richard and I both. Who, Chris, you know, he loved jewelry. We were going like, holy crap, look at this stuff. And then she said, oh, yes, I have people in Egypt who find stuff for me. And John looked over me, he goes. And I'm thinking, like, I guess he's going back to the mummy. They say, oh, yeah, put Lyoko's face on the mummy and we'll sell it to her for $100,000 or something. I don't. So I said, my God. So then we went around the corner a couple of blocks away, and we were walking. Some people followed us and took pictures. There's pictures somewhere. And we went to this Chinese restaurant, which was just like a Chinese place that was. You order from a thing on the wall. And the food was delicious. And that's the way they like to eat, you know. John was very low key, whereas Ringo was like, let's go to Mr. Chow's, let's go to Provence, let's go to here, you know. He wanted to do the best, where John was like the mattress on the floor and the best Chinese food out of a place with no tablecloths and I'm fine. So that night with Yoko, she was very, very, very lovely. And the next day we went over for lunch and I said, I hear you have offices here. And she said, oh, yes, come, I'll take you downstairs. And she took me downstairs to her office, which was probably like a one bedroom apartment in the Dakota. From floor to ceiling were filing cabinets. And I went, what is this? And she said, oh, I keep files on everybody. And I went, oh, okay, what does that mean? And she said, I have your astrological chart in one of these files. And I went, oh, okay. She was an amazing person, very low key. She appeared to be like a Kabuki girl, but at the end of it, she was like the head of the CIA. Getting back to that mummy. Was it looking for its hand in the snow by chance? What? Don't worry about you or somebody out there. My favorite, though, is Glenn Greenberg. The subject matters with the relationships. John and George and Paul and John and Paul and George. I mean, it's just the dynamic of that and trying to figure out why George doesn't like Paul when Paul's the one that would work with him. And yet he adores John. And John would give him the time of day once Yoko came along. I don't follow the Stones, I don't follow Dylan, you know. Yeah. And then the next page is like, he knows very much about Dylan's Christian period. And, you know, if that's the trip he needs to be on, then and let him be on it, blah, blah, blah. He praised Emotional rescue. He thought it was a beautiful and Then the Fred Seeman to do list surface where he's ordering him to go out and buy Back to the egg and McCarthy too. So obviously he's very disingenuous about the stuff he's saying and go jack off to Rolling Wings when he's doing it himself, right? Yeah, but it really speaks to. As he amps it up in the Playboy interview talking about Imein and his resentment against George. I wonder what is informing that, because two things come to mind if you look at him. The last vestige of him being wholeheartedly conciliatory toward George comes at the end of Dark Horse Tour, then into 75 when he's talking about the incident with George and how he recognized George was in pain and he let it go. So there he is being very sweet and that's the tail end of the Lost Weekend. And then he goes into this five year period that we get the narrative of what he says it was about and what he was doing and all that stuff. But then we get the interview from George where he talks about apparently having been at the Dakota with John during that period. You know what I'm talking about. I wish I had audio to this. I've just got the prints. This would have been like a couple of years before John died, Right? That's what he's describing, apparently. So this was published in 87, so it's during the round of interviews for Cloud 9, he's talking to Anthony DeCurtis. What was your relationship with John during that period when he was living in New York and not recording or playing? Were you in touch with him? George? I saw him a couple of times. I didn't often go to New York, but when I was in New York I'd go see him and he was nice, he was always enthusiastic. That period where he was cooking bread and stuff, I always got an overpowering feeling from him. Almost a feeling that he wanted to say much more than he could or than he did. You can see it in his eyes. But it was difficult. In what way? Well, you'd read all these stories and they'd keep coming all the time about how the Beatles weren't actually anything, that they didn't mean anything, that he was the only one who had a clue about anything. And the wife. There was a definite strained relationship right from the White Album. There was a lot of alienation between us and him. Well, there was alienation amongst all of us. It was particularly strained because having been in a band since being kids, then suddenly we're all grown up and We've all got these other wives that didn't exactly help. All the wives at that time really drove wedges between us. And then after the years when I saw John in New York, it was almost like he was crying out to tell me certain things or to renew things, relationships. But he wasn't able to because of the situation he was in. Yeah. It's like, wow. And the funny thing is, you've read Pete Shotton's memoir, right? Bits and pieces, bits and pieces. He says something very similar about having dinner with John. I felt he was trying to tell me something. Right. Yes, I did. It's like, what is it, Stockholm syndrome? It's like blinking SOS with his eyes. What was going on there? Yeah. So I wonder. We talked of Peter Doggett. He wrote and delivered a manuscript examining those years. Prisoner of Love. What the hell was in that book that got it spiked? Yeah. That book is a prisoner of something not quite resembling love. Yeah, I'd love to know. Yeah, exactly. And Linda kind of alludes to it a little bit Also in the 1984 Playboy interview, the joint interview that she and Paul did, where she basically says that John was really in a bad way during those years and that he and Paul could have really helped each other. They were playing all these games and that if they could just let the walls down and really connect again. But he just couldn't. Paul, we know, is willing. I mean, Paul invited him to go to New Orleans. Yeah. And that was right around the time that he got back with Yoko. Right. And then January 1980, that dynamite weed he had that he was offering and got blocked there, ends up taking to Japan. Yeah, exactly. So it makes me wonder if he's meeting with George during that period and wanting to say something. Yet his public pronouncements are pretty derisive toward George, certainly in 1980. But then I look back at the questionnaire in 1976. Somebody sends them these lists of topics and looking for one word answers. You know what I'm talking about. No, I don't. I know, but I'm very intrigued. Yeah. Okay. So it's all the usual suspects. And for George, his response is lost. Wow. This is 76. So how do we interpret that? Lost in that George is not the disciple anymore and is looking critically at John. Is it lost in his Krishna? Lost in his nonstop partying? And, you know, that was really true of 76 or 74. And it was 76. 76. He was in a much better place. But I don't know if the word got To John. So I've often wondered about that, what exactly he meant by that. Well, his marriage was busted up at that point. Well, he was with Olivia by 76, though. Was John aware? I mean, I guess John must have been aware. We must have met her because she was part of the Dark Horse entourage. Okay, okay. All right. So, okay, so he was divorced, but he was with Olivia by that point. That was the year of 33 and a third. So he's two singles off that Cracker Box palace. And this song, he's on snl, he's singing with Paul Simon. So it's like, what the hell is informing that assessment? That assessment? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Robert's conversations with May Peng are a delight as well as illuminating. I really want people to understand we did not. John and I did not move to la. You know, that was not something that happened. We went there for a holiday and ended up getting caught up in different projects. But we came home. We actually flew back to New York. You never heard about it because there was nothing happening. It only happened out in LA all the time. But everybody thinks we moved out there. We didn't. Right. It was an extended holiday rather than a lost weekend. Yes, exactly. And so you were always coming home. We were always coming home. You know, it was like we flew back and then we flew out again and, you know, just kept going in and out of the place and. No, and I'm going to say it on your show, Yoko did not send us out there. She didn't even know we were out in la. In fact, I had to tell. I said, john, I think we better tell her at one point, because nobody knew where we were. We went out with Harold. We went out with his lawyer. I was gonna say Harold was the impetus for this. Yeah, right, exactly. And so Eliot did not pick us up. I just have to put that in. Thank you for addressing the elephant in the room. Have you read it? No, though people have been sending me snippets of it and of course I have a lot of disagreements with what he's saying. I mean, it's ridiculous what he said because some of the things he has are not true. He put himself in places that he wasn't even there. So I'm just looking at it and going, okay, what else is new? There are demonstrably things in that that are not true. Right. That even things that have nothing to do with you that people have already fact checked. I get. It's his memoir. This is how he remembers it. But I do remember when it was announced well in advance of it coming out that he was doing a book at long last. I was struck by the timing of it was when you were riding high with your doc and your stuff and getting all this press. It's like, here it comes. Counter programming. You got it, you got it. Very smart. Thank you. Yeah, I knew the minute I heard that, I said, oh, well, who else is left to do this quote? That's from that time period. Him and Bob Gruen are about the only two. But Gruen wasn't even with us. All of a sudden I find him either he has John in there, but puts me out of it. I'm not in. It would just happen again. I'm never in certain places. And you know, like when they said, oh, the Statue of Liberty, I said I was there. He goes, oh, you were. You know, it's like everybody's shocked that I'm in these places because I'm not mentioned. I don't try to say I'm there for anybody, it's me. But if you're going to talk about it, yeah, I was there. Exactly. Yeah. The deliberate omission in certain situations. True all the time. What I wanted to circle back to, I started to ask you about that trip to San Francisco, the methadone treatment. Were you aware of that in real time, what was happening? I had heard about it, but because I was not with them at that point in the sense of on a day to day basis. I was working in the other office across town. I was happy because where they were living, they were living on bank street. And when they were living on Bank Street, Peter was there and another girl was there. And the place is like as big as this office. And it was like, I'm so happy not to be part of that little enclave there, you know, because it was just so crowded, you know, I probably would have wanted to quit because there was no room to breathe. Claustrophobic? Oh yeah, very claustrophobic. I mean, it was a beautiful brownstone. The back room, which was their bedroom, was big and beautiful. But you can't be in their back room. You'd only be in the front. And it was this like tiny little kitchenette with a little sitting room. Later I found out that they had rented it from Joe Butler. It was from Joe Butler, the Loving Spoonful. Oh, wow. It was his apartment. So that's where that was. So he lived there. And I remember talking to Joe about it. We were laughing and joking about it. But I think whoever bought it later, bought the building just recently, just had it Demolished or something. But yeah, so that was back then, and I was just glad. But I knew that Peter did the driving and went across America and they were going to see Dr. Hong. He was the acupuncturist that helped him get off of the methadone out there. But here's the funny part. Peter forgot to bring the meth on the road, so they actually went cold turkey on the road again. I wouldn't want to be in that car, right? No. Yeah. What happened was, again, Harold Sider is a major person in this thing because we were going through the Klein thing, too. That was when the lawsuits and everything was going on. He came to see them and he saw them in this apartment and he said, you cannot stay here. That was his thing. He goes, we need to move you out of here. And that's when they found the apartment in Dakota, and that's when things started to change. He was starting to, I guess, feel more open because he was in this. The apartment in Joe's apartment was like all wood dark, you know, and feeling, like you said, not knowing what it's like because I didn't really take drugs, but I can only imagine the feelings he was going through. And he's in that almost cocoon that he couldn't get out of. Right. Very dark. There's something we said about lightness. People who are susceptible to seasonal depression, for sure. Sunlight is a big, huge thing. And you're describing that. It didn't have that. It was very dark. That is another aspect of the environment that's not conducive to recovery. Right. And I didn't see them that often then. It was great because I was on the other side and I could avoid. I was just doing what I had to do from that other office on the other side. And we call it Joco Films because the film crew was upstairs and I was downstairs, and it was much better environment for me. It was bright, it was whatever. It was lively. He didn't have that. But whatever liveliness that was over there was too encroaching on his privacy. Like I said, it was small, it was dark. And you go, oh, I don't want these people here. What do I do? You know, he was. Sounded miserable. That's all I'm going to say. So I was just very happy not to be around there. Can I ask another question? I know this is probably. Oh, Gary, who cares? The count in. Do you like Paul? Paul's count in. Should we start cold with John's vocal or do you like the count In I Love Count. I like it. And isn't there something at the end too, A little. Some kind of gibberish at the very end. Good one. Or something like that. Ringo. Yeah, I'm okay with it. You know, again, it helps to reinforce this idea of them together, working together. We're creating together. So Paul's counting in the recording of the track. He's in the room with. With somebody else. Ringo. Or maybe that's from the old one, who knows? But. And then Ringo at the end saying, good one. Okay. I get a good, good take. It just gives me the feeling of. Yeah, that. That it's group involvement. Yeah, involvement. That it's something real. I like it. Yeah. And it's a reference to past Beatle tracks that we all love. Yeah. You could sort of think of it as another little bit of collage. Exactly. I saw her standing there. Let's take this little, little thing that. Yeah, take this little thing. Pepper Reprise. Oh, that's what I thought of actually first tax man is what flashed right away. Well, 1, 2, 3, 4. I thought, in fact there was some misinformation before this came out that Georgia did the counting. Yeah, I saw that. And it's like, Jesus, what's in your ears? Yeah, yeah. Perhaps with the counting, there's some full circle element here. The first song on the Beatles first album, as I saw standing there with the countdown, we've sort of gone full circle again. Yeah, it's very much the Beatles. When we are having a deep discussion about the count in, that's how you know it's the Beatles. Yeah. Are they not the most self referential band on earth? Right, right, definitely. Hello, Robert, it is your Beatles Olympiad pal, Gary Wenstrup. And I wanted to congratulate you on your 300th show. A remarkable achievement and testament to your dedication and hard work on all things Beatles. Not only am I proud to be your Olympiad partner, but I'm also an avid listener to the show. I have been since its inception. And I wanted to share with you my favorite Sappi episode. Naturally, like everyone else, I'm sure you're being indent. You're just hearing over and over again that everyone's favorite are those Olympiad shows. But I want to stretch, go beyond that and tell you in Olympiad fashion, my gold, silver and bronze sappy shows. So my bronze is the episode you did with Ramsey Lewis and Terry Hemmert. As I recall, it was about how jazz artists covered Beatles songs and took them to fresh and interesting places. How Beatles songs and jazz intersect. I'M not a jazz fan, so I went into that episode with low expectations and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I found it interesting and educational. So let's flip the script for a second. Now, as I said, listeners to this show might not be. They may or may not be big jazz fans, but let's assume that most of them aren't. We've been talking about the jazz people listening to the Beatles and took something from it. What would you say for people that are Beatle fans now? Ramsey, for years, you had a radio show, a jazz show, where you curated all this material from your peer artists and people all over the place within the genre that you put together playlists and played for people. Terry, you've done the same thing with Jazz Transfusion, and you're both super knowledgeable about the world of jazz. Is there any particular artist or any particular works? And I'm not talking about Beatle covers per se, but is there any direction you could point people in that might not be all that knowledgeable about jazz, but maybe want to dip their toe in the water? Is there a direction you would suggest for them? Oh, my God, I don't know. Good answer. That's a broad question. I mean, I really. Well, okay, let's put it another way. If you figure that a fan of the Beatles has got a pretty solid rock pop sensibility, is there any particular works or artists that you might suggest, including your own? Ramsey, that might be a good direction to go in? As an example, Terry mentioned a little bit ago John Coltrane's recording of My Favorite Things. Now, you have to figure that awful lot of people that bought that record would not call themselves jazz fans, but there was that big hit, and it was cut down to like three minutes or whatever for the single. I know it's quite a bit longer on the album. Is there something you could suggest that might be a path for people that are curious that. That aren't really jazz people per se, but might be their gateway to get into that world? So I guess what I'm looking for is something that's got that sort of crossover appeal. You could point out to people and say, hey, if you like the Beatles, maybe you'll like this, too. Yeah, I'm sure there are, but I'd really have to go to my ipod and look at. I'd leave somebody out. I would love to spend a couple hours with your ipod, Ramsey. That would be fascinating. I have the whole gamut from Bach, Beetle and Chopin to Muddy Waters to Earth, Wind and Fire, Oscar Peterson, Vladimir Horovitz, Sarah Vaughan, Diana Cross. I mean, if it's good music, why not? And it's all on my ipod. Including the Beatles? Including the Beatles, yes. Well, John Schofield, a great guitarist who's a jazz artist, but he's played classical music. He's played Beatle covers. I do a lecture series where I don't dumb down classical music, but I connect it to rock music and R and B and stuff. People know and kind of welcome them into this new experience and give them some reference points, you know, and then leave it to the musicians to work their magic. But John Schofield, I would recommend. I think he's a good one. Terry, you continue to be the greatest. I'm my mother's daughter. She was a music teacher, and she would do these vocal concerts and get everybody to sing. People that were professional musicians and people could barely read music. And she would do everything from classical music to jazz. We did a hootenanny one year when folk music was really popular in the 60s, and she did spirituals, we did all these. And the choir was racially mixed, all different ages. And that gave me this perspective about how music can bring people from all different parts of the world together. And they make something together and they bond, and it really changes people's hearts and minds. It's really powerful stuff. I think music goes beyond just listening and enjoying. It really teaches you a lot about life and music and the diversity of the human race. This is why when they take music out of the schools, I get hysterical. This isn't a luxury. This is important. This is what kind of culture we're going to have down the road. And I don't mean culture like going to the symphony. I mean a culture like, how do we treat each other? How do we see each other? Music has a profound effect on that. You're right, because I went to Wells High School in Chicago, and there were some guys that played great instruments, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, etc. But they weren't that particular about reading, writing, arithmetic. But they would come to school and go to class, and they were told, you got to maintain. I don't know if it was a C or a B or whatever in these other classes, or you can't be in the band. That just is. You can't play in the concert. And so they would come to school, and because they did two, three, four years of going to read, writing, arithmetic before they went to band, they turned out to be better citizens. Exactly. And as time went on and they took music out of the public schools, then there Are many citizens like those guys that came in off the corner that had no reason as far as they were concerned, to go, and they ended up doing other things. So in this country, America, not only the Beatles music, but just music in general plays such an important. Around the world music plays such an important part in overall growth. My silver medal goes to any episode you do with Erin Weber. She's one of the few Beatle experts that I think can go toe to toe with you. All the episodes are smart, they're well informed. Both of you have complete respect for the facts and truth telling and no conjecture. Thank you. A problem that we'll probably never know the extent of. And that's the issue of Borrowed Testimony. Right. You're talking about stuff they read elsewhere, then parrot back as their own firsthand experiences. Yes. Or maybe even, you know, you're at an Apple meeting in 1969, you're tired, you, you're high, you're hungover, what have you. You don't have the best memory of the meaning, but then you read someone else's account of the meaning and that fills in the gaps of your own memory. And maybe not even intentionally, you just pass along that information as if you remembered it. You do see that in interviews with Paul, at least, as, for instance, there's interviews in 64 where he is much more positive, complimentary about Stuart Sutcliffe's bass skills than he would be in interviews he does in 1995. Oh, yeah, he was so terrible. He played with his back to the audience. We know that's BS that came straight out of Alan Williams book. So that issue of Borrowed Testimony, again, I think it's almost impossible at this point to be able to figure out where it begins and where it ends, because everybody is reading everybody else's stuff. But that's the other thing. Like when we talked about with the show, it also shapes Beatles historiography because they're explicitly or implicitly countering or agreeing with other people's claims. And I think many years from now, as we were talking about, is an enormous example of that. We would have had a very different book from Paul, a very different memoir from Paul, except he was busy countering Lenin Remembers, and he was very busy countering the Playboy interview as well as secondary works like Shout, like Coleman's work and Goldman's work as well. Right. Or if John had not died, it would be a very different book. Oh, yes, well, we would have a very different historiography. Yeah, we sure would. But even the stuff, even Lenin remembers, you know, Existing in John's lifetime. And Shout, I guess, being more or less written by the time John was killed, that narrative there was already taking shape even before he was elevated to sainthood. Right. And that's why I think one of the things that in that interview Lewison did, again, I can't remember who the specific interviewer was. They're talking about when the sanctification of. Or the lionization sorry, of John began. And Lewison and the interviewer approach it from the timeline. The lionization of John begins after his death. But I think Shout again, the vast majority of which I think with the exception of the introduction, was all written prior to the death of John, is a pretty good argument against that. It is. Although that, I think, would have been seen as something exceptional. Because if you look at the press John was getting in his lifetime, I mean, yeah, when he goes underground, so to speak, during those five years, and you've got. I can't remember if it was Greel Marcus or somebody in Rolling Stone at some point during that, those five years, saying, johnny, come back, we need you. And Trouser Press did something similar. So there are people recognizing him, the face of the pop rock world. Boy, we could use a John Lennon right about now. But for the most part, he's still, at best, being characterized in the press as an eccentric, a crank, somebody who is kind of a dilettante in his affiliations with things. You know, skipping from one cause to another when he's not being reported on for punching a waitress or getting drunk in public. So an unserious clown was how he was viewed to a lot of the world up until the day he died. And even. Even after Double Fantasy came out, I think it was a lot of the UK reviews of the record were not all that positive. Then he got killed. And then people were describing it as his great final statement and all that stuff. Well, one of the interesting comments, particularly talking about the uk, that I thought was very interesting from, again, Brock and Davis in. It's either the Beatles Animated Bibliography or the Beatles Bibliography. I can't remember exactly what the full title is. And they talk about how there's a distinction between how John is written and. Or studied in England as opposed to how he is written about and studied in the United States. And that part of that is cultural. And again, we've talked a little bit about this before. Connolly talks about it, too, about one of the issues. Sort of lost in translation when you have John talking to Wenner, an American, is that John is being very tongue in Cheek. And Wenner is simply not picking up on it in parts of the Lenin remembers interview. But the claim that Brock and Davis make is that after John came to the United States that the American press, parts of the American press anyway, sort of adopted him as their own. And. And I think part of the argument is that the American press, or at least aspects of it, have a less critical evaluation of John than parts of the British press do. Yeah, certainly the rock press, I mean, with Rolling Stone leading the way, they're going to give them this elevated status they may or may not have earned by that time. But there is the whole British culture mindset of eating your own as well. And John seemed to have a genuine concern about that in his last interviews about how he was going to be received in England. And of course he'd stayed away from the day he got his green card. He never went back. And he'd been talking about doing it in 1981. But he seemed to have expressed a concern to some of his interviewers about, you know, what do they think of me there? Right. And Lewson also makes a comment. I think it's in the Beatles Live or I can't remember exactly which of his reference books it is. That was it. I think it's new musical expression that in the mid-1980s, the New Musical Express loathed Paul McCartney, a feeling which was entirely mutual. It might have been the Broad Street Press To Play era. I think it was about in that era. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm sure they had their reasons. That aspect of eating your own. And MacDonald talks about that too. He talks about how that level of non ironic devotion is just difficult for the British to swallow to a certain extent, whereas the Americans are very good at it. Yes, yes, we are. And that leads to my gold and my gold. Something about the Beatles episode is hey Jude deconstructed with James Campion and Jeff Martin. When I thought you were going to dedicate a whole show to this one song, I thought, oh boy, not sure about this one. And yet it was obviously one of my favorites. I love the fact that the Beatles have a finite period, the 60s, they become famous in the 60s they had done in the 60s, 1970, they're done. And when you look back at them as somebody, as a historian or an author or podcaster or whatever, you have this pocket of stuff they never got. I just finished reading Steven Haydn's brilliant book on Pearl Jam, which is called the Long Road, and it's very well done. He's a good friend and I hope Everybody checks that book out. But. But if you're a fan of Pearl Jam, certainly. But those guys have had four or five drummers. They've gone through these periods. You don't really get that maybe what you two. I mean, there are very few bands that actually still. The Beatles are the Beatles. And just like Robert just said, if you take any song off Ram, you take any song off. Imagine you take even songs off of All Things Must Pass. There's two or three or four or five of those that would have been excellent and could have been Beatles songs because they wrote them when they were with the Beatles. And. And you just get the feeling that they could have gone on, but the fact that they didn't, like I said before with my DiMaggio analogy, you never have to wonder. You saw DiMaggio at his best, and you never saw him stumbling around center field for the 73 Mets. You saw him at his peak. And that's the way the Beatles come across to me is like, they are infallible. This is one of the reasons why the Let It Be crowd. When I used to go to see the Midnight Movie, when I saw the Let it be in like 79, 80, 81, all my friends were appalled. They hated it. They were like, oh, my God, this is like seeing the wizard of Oz is some fat guy from Kansas. You know, I don't want to see this. But I was intrigued by it. I loved it because there were people and they were making songs and they were arguing and that was cool for me. But a lot of people, they wanted to see Beatlemania. They wanted to spell the magic that dispelled the magic. But the Beatles built that magic. And being a kid growing up in the 70s, I feel like I'm the second generation Beatle fan. I didn't know them when they were the Beatles. Right? Right. Paul McCartney and wings and the Beatles were kind of this, in my experience with that band on the Run and Let It Be were kind of in the same ballpark. That seems sacrilegious to someone who grew up in the 60s, but at least for that period, the Beatles are mystical. And anything that bursts that bubble, people get crazy about that. Crazy. That's an interesting phenomenon because even now you would think I am steeped to the gills and Beatles in everything, the official and unofficial and all that stuff. I've stayed away from get back in recent months, having saturated myself with it the first few months it came out. But I dipped my toe back in every once in a while. And I'm astonished At myself sitting there watching maybe just 20 minutes of it. How it can make me emotional just watching them interact. I got emotional watching that, too. Yeah. Why does it have that power? I think it is. Yeah. Well, I'm full of ideas like that. Some famous or literary Beatle, you know. Well, we had mentioned John's liking the movement you need. It's on your shoulder. The Beatles singing along behind Ringo. The high note at the end of Little Help, Little Help. And I thought, get back. Had another great moment when Ringo said, I want to go up on the roof. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah. Just. That was just very, you know, they. George was going, I don't want to do it, and all that sort of thing. And Ringo's being quiet as usual and just says, I want to go up on the roof. And you could tell that was. That's the tipping point towards it. Well, look, we've mentioned Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Joe DiMaggio, so I'm going to analogize something to Nolan Ryan. Well, we had gotten into Paul's singing. We got off on another tack before we hit the Better, Better, Better, better. Yes, yes. Wow. That. Higher affairs. Robert and I talked on an earlier podcast about McCartney's remarkable range. But being able to sing a high F is like being able to throw 100 miles an hour. It's just very few guys can do it. Yeah. Yeah. And I would have thought that's just how McCartney's ability, not just hit, but to actually sing those notes is a secret sauce throughout. Going back to. You really Got a Hold On Me and Day Tripper and Nowhere man and the word. Listen to these songs and you'll see that just to increase the excitement, build the timber. Late in the song, Paul will go up and hit a note around a high C just to change the texture. What can you say? It's one of the great instruments in rock. If you were to go back to classical music, especially in baroque or really anytime, you could have three different kinds of movement. Cameron, what were they? Oblique. Oh, yeah. Contrary, Parallel. Or oblique would be if one thing's moving and the other's staying the same. So I guess we're talking about oblique. It's two voices going like the top voice stayed the same and the bottom voice moved. Parallel would be they're both moving together and contrary, moving apart from each other like that. Again with teaching music, one of the things I love is just whenever you can just revert back to something like that, you see, again, this language, it's been there from the beginning, and it's still. Whether it's even rock and roll, we're still talking pretty much about the same thing. We're talking Beatles, Lennon just completely staying stationary in that. Why Paul moves underneath him. Fundamentally the same thing that's been going on. It's just in a simpler format. You think that's indicative of where each of the two, respectively picked up their musical education, sort of absorbing it before they were practitioners of it. Oh, yes. It's really apparent. Right? I mean, again, you talk about what I said earlier, about being of a certain age and soaking it up. You know, McCartney and his dad playing piano and those parties that happen at the house. He had no choice. He was there and he took it in. And what was Lennon doing at that time? You know, he was growing up and he didn't have that, but he had something else in more of that rock thing. That's why you get come together and then you get McCartney's second side of the album, or you get any melodic idea from him. But that's just how they complemented each other so well. Their use of contrasting majors and minors, is that something particularly a trick, or was that something that you think that was already well established by the time they came along? That is a trick. It's both. It's a trick that was already well established, and they use it in kind of unique ways. I think part of what was unique, you said very well at the beginning, they were always seeking to enrich their harmonic vocabulary. So from very early on, that was one of the tricks that they did. And I had a couple examples of that that I wanted to talk about. I think for people who don't understand on a technical level what major and minor is. Paul, as we were saying before, explains the major system really well in that Rick Rubin documentary where he says, okay, you can start with middle C on the piano, and then you skip that note. You take the third note, skip the fourth note, and you take the fifth. You have these three notes, and he does this kind of rock and roll riff. But he says if you play them at the same time, you have a chord. And then if you just take that shape, which is, you know, just this at 1, 3, 5, you're playing those three notes and you just move it up on the piano. You get another chord, and then you move it up and you get a third, and then you get a fourth. That's that four chord that Jack was talking about. And then the five. So the one, four and five. There, there, and then six says you have six chords now, he says that's enough, and it is enough. And he plays this kind of doo wop type sounding song with it. But what if you get sick of that major flavor? What if you want to add a special kind of resonance or emotional kind of color at a certain point in the song? Well, there's something called the minor scale. You can start on C, and instead of it going up like this, it goes up with slightly different notes. That note is different. Particularly the third note is different. And that will change the sound of your first chord from being a major chord to being a minor chord. Just that middle note being one key lower gives it what we hear as a dark color, maybe a sad or melancholy color. And all the other chords of that scale change, too. So if you go up the way he did with the major scale, but you do it with a minor scale, it's going to sound like this. So you can always borrow one of those chords. Now you have another six or seven chords to play with that. You can dip into the minor for a second to give this kind of dark color. So there's four, but I'm going to make four minor now and then back to I in major. So there's been a moment of darkness. And I'm going to talk particularly just about examples where they use the IV chord as being minor, which they did from very early on, like already. And she loves you. And you know that can't be bad. So they could have just played that as a major. So here's the. The one chord. This is six chord. Now here is. If they play the major, she loves you. So that just has a bright color to it. But the minor kind of gives a sense of wistfulness to it. Like you should be glad even if you aren't. Right? So they were always looking for those extra little colors. And that was a very common way of doing it with minor four. All I gotta do another example Whenever I want you around down yeah. All I got to do is call you on the phone and you come running home yeah, that's all I got to do. So here he approaches the minor 4 chord from the 2 chord. So the whole thing's an E. So this would be the one chord. That's the two chord, Right? Just like what Paul was doing when he went up the scale. There's three, and here's the normal four. If he went from two to four, just regular major four, it would sound like this. That's all I gotta do. Right? It doesn't have that kind of Heart string pulling sound. So instead it's that note that's the third note of the four chord that's lower than normal, and it just slides so nicely down back into the major I chord. So again, that contrast of colors. You don't have to go very far online just to Google Oz a day in the life to find many pitched battles. And I thought, you know what? I got some people here that know a thing or two about recording, that know how to listen to stems, that know what may be the chain of evidence when it comes to documentation of the breakdown of the tracks. So how about an informed opinion for a change? And who's doing the Oz to the extent that it's knowable? I'll take a run at that. So I never, in my books, really made a declarative statement about any of that. The day of the recording, for Paul's vocal, which he was replacing a take that was done earlier. The oh shit one. Yeah, the oh shit take that he was replacing. All the Beatles were in the studio. We know that mercifully, through the rock band Stems that came out post 2009, we have isolated. Well, isolated vocal tracks that are available to us. And that section in particular, what you hear in. In those vocal tracks is you hear three Beatles. You hear Paul, John and George around the microphone. John is the voice that does the. In the middle of it, after the woke up, got out of bed section. And as they move into the Oz, you hear very faintly, but they are present. You hear a falsetto vocal and you hear kind of a little bit of a. Just a goofy vocal going on in tandem with the more formal scale of the oz. My contention is both the tone of the voice and the intonation lead me to McCartney singing it. You hear a breath being taken right before going into it, which is from the primary vocal. So that tells me that the primary vocalist was gearing up to perform that part. And that's McCartney right after. Went into a dream. Yeah, went into a dream. You hear that? And the falsetto has Lennon's kind of a little bit of a comic nature to it as well. So those things together tell me that Lennon isn't singing it. Woke up fell out of bed Dragged a comb across my head Found my way downstairs and drank a cup Then looking up I noticed I was late Found my coat and grabbed my hat Made the bus in seconds flat Found my way upstairs and had a smoke and somebody spoke and I went into a dream what I believe has gone on to influence this discussion and this confusion or. And this Lack of ability to really nail it down was the choice by Martin to switch from a very dry vocal that McCartney was performing up to that point into that very dense repeat echo. Right. That happens during that section, the woke up, got out of bed section. It's really wonderful stylistically and symbolically, that that vocal is very muddy and mid rangy and dry. You wanted it groggy, I guess. Yeah. It's like the fog of waking up. Right. That, you know, there's no. There's no crispness to it. But it's a very dull kind of dry vocal that we return to. The vocal sound that starts the song with Lennon singing that, I think, to our brains is a clue that it's Lennon again. Even if it isn't Lennon again, we kind of tell ourselves it is because that was the voice that had all the repeat echo on it. So if we hear repeat echo again, it's got to be John. Right? Right. It's a switch in what had just been happening. It's a switcheroo. Yeah. So. But then, so conceptually is I went into a dream. And here's what it sounded like. Exactly. Exactly. Now, you know, if we look at it from the narrative point of view, it would have to be McCartney singing it, because McCartney is the guy who woke up and got out of bed and went into a dream. So there's that aspect of it. But I believe from the available audio that McCartney is the vocalist on it, of the primary ahs that are going on there. And again, our brains are a little bit tricked by the production choices that they made to go back to the repeat echo that we associate with Lennon. Right. Yeah. And there's ways that he reaches when he sings that is just so clearly McCartney that just John wouldn't do, like the intro to Lovely Rita. Kind of like that. Yeah, exactly. That's a great. That is a great analogy. That's what it reminds me exactly of. And, yeah, great analogy. It's. I'm pretty positive it's Paul. I mean, but. But I can see someone like George or John sort of bolstering it in some way, because then I can see them. Why wouldn't they do that? They're being creative and they're sitting around a mic and they're probably high and like, let's just do something weird behind his vocal. And I really love to panel discussions on Get Back and everything surrounding that. That was really exciting to see. Get Back after, you know, watching my really poor bootleg copy of Let It Be. I really hope that they will uncover as much footage as they can or released more footage that's just sitting there in Peter Jackson's vault. Before that, we have the bit where Peter Brown comes and says an inclined wants to see you. And John says oh God, and can we see him on Friday? And he says oh no, we've got something on Friday. And he says I'll tell him I'll see him on Monday or Tuesday or whatever it is, I forget what day it is. And they interpreted Brown says okay. And so you actually have the bit where the meeting is arranged and then it happens a few days later and you have the bit where he recounts it to George. George and Ringo are the only ones there. Paul's actually gone off for a meeting and so Paul says I've got to go to this meeting, da da da. And then they do some rehearsing without Paul and then the uninclined thing happens. Whether or not it's deliberately wanting to talk to George and Ringo without Paul in the room, you sort of get a little bit of that sense. But he, he says well, I didn't really want to talk about it without all of us being here, but however I'm going to talk about it without us all being here. So you wonder if he has been waiting for Paul to leave before he wants to raise it with these guys. Or maybe, maybe not, maybe that, maybe that's an unfair, unfair. Maybe it is just something that gets discussed. Because the other thing you see is the next night, the very next night afterwards, at the end of the day, Alan Klein shows up. You don't see any Klein, he's not on camera, but somebody comes in and says Alan Klein's here and they wrap up their instruments, put them away and all of them leave the room to go upstairs to meet with Klein. The meeting with Klein happens with all of the band at the end of the day at Apple. The day after, the very day after, John tells George about the meeting that he had at Silas because I guess Alan Klein's come to the uk, he's got to go back to New York, he's had the meeting with John and before he goes back to New York he wants the rest of the guys to actually meet with Klein. So that happens the very, very next day. We don't see the meeting, we don't see Clyde, we just hear he's arrived. I mean, he's 20ft away or whatever and they all pack up and it's at the end of the day at six or seven o'clock or something at the end of the day and they all pack up to go upstairs. And then the next day you have Lynn. John is talking to John about the meeting a little bit. So you sort of have this little kind of story that you follow through there. Yeah, it's not just that one moment, it's a little. It's a little narrative that you also have Glyn John saying at one point, he never comes out and says that Alan Klein's, you know, a bad person. But he says he's. He's weird. You know, he's. He's a weird guy. Yeah. I think the bit we've got, he says a couple of things about him and we put one of them in the film. Not because of any issues other than the fact they're both versions of the same thing, but we just picked one of them. I think we picked the one where he says. Oh, he kind of. If he doesn't like what you're saying, he'll just. He'll just change the subject in the middle of. The middle of your. What you're saying, he'll change the subject and govern the thing. He says, I find it pretty weird. And, you know, that's. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. There's an exchange with John and Glen Johns. He's not going to be around to finish up work when he wants to, and John says, don't worry, there's going to be more work. And then he sort of says, I'm glad you stuck with us. This was kind of a rough time for us. And if you want. If you want to work this weekend, if you fancy to work this weekend, I'm sure you don't, but, I mean, if you do, I'll stay for that. I'll stay and work. See, I can't see us lasting out on a straight session. Yeah. So even if we did half of it and laid off for a bit, you know, to cut off or something, four or five days, how. How long would you be there? Say six weeks, you said. Well, it'll be five weeks, but we'll say you do half. Yeah, well, I mean, I can't see us doing the whole four unless a miracle happens by by Saturday. Oh, that really would be a chip for me then. Yeah. No, but I mean, there's plenty more here. Yeah, there's plenty more. And you've come in on the most difficult album ever. Ton of people watching between us and you've got through all that with us. It hasn't been easy, this, you know. Right. I'm really. I hate leaving anything with no Worries it's a drag. Even if it's. I hate other people mixing stuff that I've done, too. No other engineer really can get into a track that someone else has done. Well, we always remix them. You know, we're always there for all the remixes. We never let anybody do any of them. Not for the last few years. I've never heard that. Yeah, but I don't know if that's in the Niagaras. It's going to piss me off if we haven't gotten it in the film. Is it. Is it on the Nagas? It. Yeah, it is. 29th, I think. Yeah. A bit annoyed. Four years. I've never heard that on. On the Nagas anywhere. I mean, I'm not just saying. I mean, it's obviously there. What. What we do have is we do have Glenn saying, I'm leaving. You know, he's talking about that. And John says, well. Well, when you get back, we'll carry on when you get back. So we have it being talked about, but it's probably at a different time. We probably. But I don't. I don't rec. I mean, I heard about that, but you've been talking about just. It could have even been on your show that I heard it, but I can't remember. I think I did find the clip and stick it in the show. Yeah. Because I seem to remember tracking it down. Well, we sort of have. We have something. We don't have it quite so personal about being a rough time. And if I had heard that, I would have put it in for sure. I would. But we have him sort of talking to Glenn about carrying on when Glenn gets back. But we don't have. I don't think it's the same conversation that you've described. I think it's a different conversation. I'm not sure. Did you guys both see they should not grow old? Yeah, I did okay. I loved it. It was just amazing. Me too. As I'm thinking about it and seeing if there's anything we might glean from his filmmaking there. It's a restoration job. It's an attempt to get the material he has to work with right in terms of the sound of this particular cannon, the color of this uniform, that sort of thing. So he's very diligent in his research, but it's not like he had some living witnesses from the 60s, I guess, people that were there filling in some of the narration. But it wasn't like he got into the causes of the war or the strategies and the battles and how it all unfolded. He basically fleshed out a little bit of what he had to work with and made this nice hour long, or however long it was, vignette of real human beings. And this was their experience. Yeah, it's almost like a gallery or museum approach to documentary filmmaking, where you try and get all of the exhibits as lifelike as possible. The actual lived experience of seeing Ringo's drum kits and all of the hairs on Paul's head instead of this kind of big black blob. A bioscopic experience. Yeah, that's right. And then, like you're walking into a gallery and seeing all of this stuff for real, you're then welcome to make up your own mind about what all of this actually means. That seems to be what the likely agenda is. We report, you decide. Yeah, well, what'd be interesting to me at least, is especially to the younger fans, especially to the more casual fans. Do they even know there's a Let It Be problem? Do they know Winter of Discontent? Do they know the serific or in the vaguest of understandings? No. The Beatles were a group, made all this great music. We've seen Hard Day's Night, We've seen Yellow Submarine. We see them as this happy little gang. If there's going to be any kind of setup to sort of contextualize the Beatles. George Harrison called us the Winter of Discontent. They hurled similar invective on the whole period about how terrible it was. But guess what, folks? They were all wrong. Because this is what I found. I wonder if there's going to be that kind of setup to it, to sort of contextualize from the onset, even if there's nothing further contextualizing the actual events and chronology. Just that the world looks at Let It Be as this great misery. I'm here to tell you it was. I do expect a degree of that. There almost has to be, if just to justify itself. To justify itself. Yeah. Otherwise. Well, wait a second. We already have this movie. Why are you doing it again? I mean, you could say it's a restored version, but that's not how they're selling it. They're selling it as this completely different and justifiably so. It is gonna be completely different by everything we hear. But why go through that if you don't think there's a need to. I think it's something I've always. Ever since I was collecting records, I always put Let It Be before Abbey Road chronologically, just because I'm sure a lot of people do. I wonder, to the more casual fan who sees Let It Be as their last album. I wonder how much of that kind of weighs, as far as creating biases. It's like, well, that was your last album. Then they broke up, even though that isn't the actual order. Sure, it came out last, but that wasn't how it was recorded. As soon as it came off the roof, they split up. Exactly. And I wonder how that kind of plays into everyone who hasn't seen Let It Be. I have the second generation VHS tape that I dubbed from captain video in 1984 or whatever it was. And there really can't be that many people nowadays who have seen maybe under a certain age group who have ever seen Let It Be. Maybe they've seen the clips. Maybe they've seen the sort of dour ish Let It Be and Long and Winding Road clips. And certainly the jubilant Rooftop. I think it's sort of baked in because those songs, the hit songs, are sad. Yeah. It's such a strange thing. I've said this so many times before. Lepy is so strange in this band's career. It's a compilation album that came out after they broke up with a movie that came out after they broke up, but it was all done a year early. It's just so strange when you really sit and think about it. And I'm trying to think what would have been a joyous song that, had it emerged from Let It Be, would have been helpful as a counterweight and everything. I think of late period, like, even Here Comes the Sun, they come off as some kind of lament in some way or another. You know, All Things Must Pass. Forget it. What could they have put out as a single from the Let It Be project? I mean, get back. That's roller coaster music or whatever. It's kind of innocuous, but there's nothing really, you know, hello, Goodbye. Nope, that's in the wrong message. Yeah. It's a real question when John asks, has anybody got a fast one right? Susie Parler. There you go. Yeah. Dan, it's interesting that you bring up the question of chronology and what counts as the last album. Because I've sometimes wanted to make the comparison to the films involved. And if you say, okay, all of this stuff was recorded in 1969, which means it predates Abbey Road. Does that mean that Peter Jackson's get back is a 1969 film? Because all of the footage is from that era. Good point. How much does the editing and tweaking drag it into the present tense? And if you say, well, it's really 2020 or a 2021 film, even though the footage comes from 50 years ago. Then maybe Let It Be is a 1970 album because of how much production and tweaking occurred long after Abbey Road took place. Congratulations on hitting the 300th plateau. You've built an amazing virtual clubhouse of listeners and guests who share this innocent un, yet deeply rooted zeal of talking about our favorite great little band from Liverpool. Every time I tune in, it's like I'm meeting a long lost friend, brothers and sisters from another mother, from another era, from another time and space, that you act as the conduit and connect us all together into a shared moment. I was told in, when I did the Beatles In May in 2012, I was told by someone very influential at the time that guitar groups are on the way out. The riding on the Beatles Beatles is going to fade. And I was like, I don't think so. I was like, I don't think so. And surely it has not. No way. There are Beatles texts coming out right and left, solid ones, too, good ones, and, and new ideas and fresh takes. And so I just think that there's a lot to say and if you find the right angle, there's a lot of fresh takes to make as well. So we're only just getting in the last year and a half, two years, whatever. It's been a woman's history of the Beatles. Why has it taken that long? Yeah, Christine, Yeah, I mean, look, I said that originally when I spoke with you, Robert, and I've mentioned it before. I was greatly surprised that no one had done that already. I'm grateful that I was the vehicle for that to happen. I'm really grateful that I had the time and space to do that. But it makes me really happy to think of all the new books that will be coming out and as Alison said, the fresh takes that are definitely still out there. The Beatles offer such rich content to all of us in terms of how do we want to think about them, how do we want to document their story, how do we want to revisit the music, the personalities, the Personas, anything we can think of to do with them. And I was thinking too about how much, when fans come to the Beatles, it is the music, obviously, first and foremost, but it is always quite visual. And I'm grateful that the Beatles arrived at a time in history where there was the technology of the mass media to document them in the 1960s in a way that we have all these amazing primary sources to pull from in A way that artists from the 18th and 19th century, you know, we don't have that kind of archive. We can praise and remember the music of Mozart and Beethoven and Lisdomania. Yeah, exactly, Lizomania. Oh, I'm writing about that right now, actually thinking about Byron and the Romantic poets. There's going to be a different way that the Beatles can be remembered and the way their legacy lives on because of those technologies having coincided with them appearing on the scene. So I think it's quite exciting to think about how the Beatles will be remembered in the future and what kind of content will come out. Yeah, I think I agree with Robert. We're only just starting to scratch the surface and particularly the work you're doing in academia and Paul Long is doing, creating a journal. This is just the start. I mean, just looking at what Aaron Torkelson Weber has brought to the way we look at the Beatles through a historiographical lens. Your work in the Beatles and the perspective of women, these are just two little entrees from two little discrete areas of academia. And there is so much more that can be brought to the table. We can look at them, obviously, from a musicological perspective, from a psychological perspective. I've been writing little bits and pieces that draw on the way we think about the Beatles lyrics in particular, and literary criticism and what that can bring to the way we should or shouldn't approach songs like now and Then in a biographical way. And this is just the start, you know, it should be called Then and Now, because now we're excited again. Yeah. And you know what is amazing is I was talking about sadness before, and when I did that book about being 13, get ready to see the Beatles. I did it after I'd lost my mother and my sister. So I was in a really sad time and they lifted me. I'm telling you this because I can't tell you how many people get in touch with me. Once a week, twice a week, somebody will send me an email. I just read Fab four Mania. You really. It's all about the excitement and the anticipation. It's so exciting. I felt like you made me feel that excitement. And I think that's the thing. They brought us back to that feeling then they made us excited. Now we're still excited. They're still bringing it for us. They delivered, they deliver. Beatles have always brought intangibles. They've led with intuition, with these things, these feelings that this is not like analytics. And when you go to judge, you're using a different part of your brain to say I'm going to sign this is not as good as sergeant Peppers and blah, blah, blah, that kind of talk. There are people that are going to do that, you know, and that's because that's where they're coming from. But the whole thing is. What they were saying is this was. We caught. Some of the four of us caught something. We got caught up in this thing that was between us. We made this magical. I don't know, they don't even know what it is. And it came through again and we get it because it's not something you can map. That's what I love about it and them is that they brought something that's art. That's what I'm saying, that's art. It transcends. It's from something other than the known. They go to places they don't know. John did not sit down and compose that song because he was balancing his checkbook. He was failing something deeply. And the fact that it's mysterious is exactly what it's all about anyway way it's all about that thing they have that we can't quite put our fingers on. But we know it moves us. The Beatles were like nothing else we've ever seen. Nothing to compare with them because as I said before, they are us and we. We just feel that they were friends. They were our friends. They were friends together and then they became our friends. And yeah, it was a quality they projected for sure. And just knowing what I know about the Americans that will watch the Ed Sullivan show performance, it was so immediately appealing that you looked at these four guys that clearly had a friendship. There's a moment on the Sullivan show where you see John and George exchanged glances and then smile at each other like, look where we're at. As soon as they start playing together, they know each other and they know what that they can do. That's the joy of it. I mean, that's the joy of get back. It's seeing people who are brilliant at what they do having a good time and actually doing it for the joy of it. It's nice to see. And particularly now we can look at them and think why aren't all bands like this? Well, of course all bands aren't as friendly or as close or as tight or as having to have the history that the Beatles had. But also it is to do with their personalities. I always see them as a family. Paul was like the mother, always working. I mean, he's still always working. I mean, he's 18, he never stops you know, John was his father. He could be difficult, but he was very talented. And then you've got George, a kind of trick of a teenager and Ringo, who just happened to go along with anything, you know, I mean, Annie made us all laugh and he did. So they were a family. That's what you see on the screen. It's almost like four brothers on the screen. And that's how it worked. And very few bands are like that. Usually the guy at the front becomes the star. Mick Jagger and the others did kind of fill in, but the Beatles, there were four equals. They weren't really. I mean, John and Paul were more than equals, but they didn't show on film so much. Your cast have covered a staggering range of topics that make me laugh, reflect, think and most importantly, feel. From scratching at the sensitive scar tissue of John and George's deaths as well as those in their inner circle, to the light hearted sibling rivalry banter of the record Olympiads with Gary I'm never unengaged and I never fail to learn something new. If we're going to talk about all you need is love I do want to talk about the lyrics, which is I my interpretation and I'd be curious what your interpretation is. The double negatives. I always have trouble with double negatives. No matter where you put them them, it's only rock and roll. So there's nothing you can do that can't be done. There's nothing you can sing that can't be sung. My interpretation, and I'm not saying I'm right, is that anything you attempt can be accomplished and maybe the kind of the background thought to that we don't necessarily create new things, we're just recycling things. So if you invent something new, you're just recycling an old idea and maybe adding a fresh twist to it. I may be stretching here. It's being done. I think they may have expressed that idea in other ways in interviews, mostly on the along the lines of there's nothing new in music. When they've had that sort of discussion of things, it's like everybody borrows from everybody. And both John and Paul, I can recall saying similar things. I never applied it to the lyrics of this song, but I'm not saying you're wrong and I wanted take it a step further. So therefore, if everything we're doing is recycled past and everything is possible, there's no reason to be competitive because everything is possible or. And. Or everything's already been done. All you need is love, you know, so you don't need the competitiveness. You don't need this achievement orientation. Because it's all been done. It's all going to be done. So just love one another faster one strip. Maybe we should light up a joint and start this conversation again. I would not tell you you're wrong. It's an interesting interpretation I never considered. And it's art, so everyone's gonna come up with their own meaning from it, which is great. My best take on the song because I consider it both as a recording and as a composition. So of slight. Yeah. Which is why I didn't find it metal worthy. I admire it as a piece of craftsmanship. I admire the fact that George Martin sort of tarted it up with production touches that weren't too pompous, as you say, but was also sort of kitchen sink. Not in the film sense, but in the. Let's throw in absolutely everything from the French national anthem to in the Mood and A touch of she loves you. All this stuff. Now maybe you want to take a step back and say it's all of a piece. All mass culture is all the same river. And that may be George Martin's tacit concept applied to this universal, appealing song. I like that interpretation of the river that you just. I like that a lot. When I heard it back in the day, my interpretation of all those George Martin sort of touches in the fade of out green sleeves. Yeah. And then we go into in the Mood. My interpretation is it's like the history of music. We get classical music with green sleeves. Then we go into big band within the mood. And then one of the Beatles yells out knee high. And I interpreted that at the time as they're recognizing country music. And then, you know, we get up to date with Beatles music with she loves you. So that was my interpretation. I heard the history of all music in the last 30 seconds of this song. This is the thing that I kind of regret in hindsight is that it would have been nice for somebody to interview George Martin just on his arrangements. What were you thinking? What were you going for? We have a few little sound bites here and there. Smell the sawdust. Okay. John, you know, that kind of thing. But it would be nice to get his thoughts on his own music musicality as applied to these records. What a missed opportunity to hear him talk about I Am the Walrus in Strawberry Fields and all you need is Love in the context of their career. Yeah, what a shame. What a shame. Yeah, it would have been amazing. He was obviously a very deeply knowledgeable musical guy. We're not going to really spend any time on it in this conversation, except to say, you can give me your take and I'll give you mine in two seconds. I have always loved the score on side two of Yellow Submarine, the George Martin film score. Always loved it. I can listen that stuff forever. It's very relaxing and just inventive and interesting. It has all the elements of Beatle music to it that we revere. And it wasn't until at some point, as I'm deepening my musical knowledge, that I recognized he'd borrowed that Bach piece, Air on a G String and one of the songs on side two, Sea of Holes, Sea of Time. I couldn't tell you which one it is. Sea of Monsters, whatever it is. So here's a guy walking around with that kind of classical knowledge in his head, and he's like, oh, here's an opportunity to present, to give a nod to that. When Camille Sansons did Carnival of the Animals and he did the Fossils, which is like a musical joke. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but I raised my kids on that. And it's like all these cliched pieces of music that if you were taking piano lessons, you would have to learn. And then he throws in there a nod to his own Danse Macabre. And it was like an inside joke. Like he's equating that with being a fossil, too. So he's being musically knowledgeable and throwing in sort of an in joke. And I wonder if George Martin's mind worked the same way when. Okay, I've got to come up with a sequence for this bit of the film. Oh, this Bach piece would work great here. It'll fit the visual. You know, something like that. I would have loved to have gotten his thoughts on that. Hello, Robert. Congratulations on your 300th episode of Something about the Beatles. What I really love about the show is not only have I been a guest, a proud guest, but you have such a great caliber and variety of guests who have really intricate and interesting knowledge or thoughts and relations to the Beatles and whatnot. Everyone you have on has a really unique approach or perspective, and that's really important because we should be asking questions and we should be challenging ourselves. And that's what your show does. It asks us to think outside the box and to challenge our beliefs of stuff, because as we know, and as I write myself, is that we're often told things that people have deemed as valuable. Well, what your show does is question that. Is everything we're told accurate Is everything we're told the most important thing we should know? And should we not consider and think of other theories and ideas? So I really appreciate that about your show. So Congratulations on your 300 episodes. I am delighted to be a guest from the late hundreds to still present. And I always feel really comfortable and excited. You have a great fan base. I want to shout out to your fans because they are extremely supportive and I have kept in touch with some since your show. Or they messaged me two years later after hearing an episode about something that they found interesting, which I love how interactive your fans are. So shout out to them as well. And being a guest has been really important and significant to me. I've really enjoyed having conversations with you as well as with others with Debbie Gendler, Carol Tyler, Sibio Sullivan and Christine Feldman Barrett and many others. So thank you so much for the opportunity and including me and including my voice because you were there at the beginning when you first met me at Monmouth, and I was basically heckled for my research. Have you come across a clearly delineated distinction between rock and rock and roll? The word usage, yes. Like rock and roll versus rock is a different. It definitely connotes different things, has a different connotation, I think. Okay. When people say when they call themselves the greatest rock and roll band, the Rolling Stones do, that's distinct from what were the Beatles a rock band or a pop band or, you know, whoever else you want to compare them to. What makes the Rolling Stones the world's greatest rock and roll band? Other than it's a nice, convenient little handle that might not mean anything at all. Well, see, I wouldn't call them the greatest rock and roll band. I love the Rolling Stones, but I was not by everybody. But you wanted me on your show. Right away you saw something. And. And since then, my research has definitely been of interest to others too. So you're onto something I did learn from your book. Is that surprising? What'd you learn? Stuff. Did you learn anything about the Beatles? I learned a ton about the value of teen magazines as literature. Not only as something that helped build the success of these bands, but also as a resource to draw upon further research, which is what I'm all about. So, to all the people out there who did let the title fool them about teen magazines generally, what would you want them to know? That they are important artifacts. They may have shaped your image of the Beatles more than you think or more than you'll ever admit. If you give them a chance. I think you'll find all kinds of things. Right. You'll find them of value in so many ways. And you might find them ephemeral in other ways. Right. If you're not in the 60s in the moment, it's not going to read to you in the same way. And that's understandable. But there are a lot of amazing things you want to read about the Stones early on. Here you go. That's where you got to go. Because you're not going to find it in Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone could not have had it. Right. That's what's really cool about teenset is they could not have shown a shift. Actually, I would argue that teenset does show a really cool changing cultural and musical landscape shift from 64 to 69. They show something that no one else can show. Right. By virtue of the time that they ran. That's when the shift occurred. And Rolling Stone was a bit too late to the party. Yeah. And it shows this incredible beginning in 65, where, like I said, a lot of these bands that we think of at the counterculture were in the teen magazines. Because that's where you would read about them. And then by 69, what we think of a record, what we think of when we talk about music, how we should be talking about music. You really start to see the shift. Because Judy Sims even goes on a rant in her magazine about how she's being told she's too heavy, but not heavy enough. And she's like, I just want to do my thing, man. That's what she says. And then she's like, why do I have to be Rolling Stone? Why can't I just appreciate music without having to act like I know everything? And I love that about her. And I think that was so refreshing. Judy just shifted with the times. And no other magazine can show. A quick question, if you dare. Do you see a fundamental difference? And I'm not saying this in any way to provoke. It just strikes me as my own observations. I have a definite answer. I want to know what your take is. Do you see a difference between the scholarship of the same sort of area, pop culture, rock stuff, the approach by men versus women? I think it's changing. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely feel women. We are being published more. And we are able to focus on what we're interested a little bit more. And I see a lot of focus on fandom, a lot of focus on experience, women's roles, women studies. In that case, I would say that there is that focus. However, there are plenty of women who are interested in all of the other Aspects like recording and whatnot. So I think it depends. Right. Right now, it does seem to be a trend. There's an interest in fandom. There's an interest in women's stories, but that's because they're not. They haven't been told. It's fresh territory. For sure. It's fresh territory. It's fresh territory. The last thing I need to do is go spend all my time writing a book about recording, because, one, I'm not in that field, but two, there's other people already doing it, and it's already been, you know, they're already working on it. Yeah, I'm maybe like you, Robert. That calls for a bell. Oh, I have one. Wait, no, I do. I have my. I used to. When I taught eighth grade, I used to have this big bell and ring in. I taught American history, so I was like, hear me, hear me. Be quiet. Oh, you doing all the cosplay stuff? Well, a little. But one time, I remember I heard this student go, oh, no, it's Ms. Bumpstead's bell run. Anyways, I appreciate that. Thanks for believing in me and thanks for believing in others and your fans. Congratulations, and have a great 300th show. Now. I expect to be 301. No, just kidding. But that's very possible. They're just showing by example the way humans can be. And I think I took that as a kid. I was like, okay, it can be like this. I'm so glad I got off on that foot as a person, knowing people could support each other like that. And that's what I get from Lennon McCartney. Just the fact that Lennon is there, and maybe Paul's bab, but he's leaning over short and say, hey, listen to what my mate has to fucking say. Yeah, yeah. You notice a beautiful thing. There's a few of those instances on side one where it's sort of this call and response thing. It can't get no worse. Or what do you see when you turn out the light where you've got two different speakers responding to each other? I love that. It's support. Yeah, yeah. It's real support. And that's the thing you get from the Beatles. There's the takeaway. It's just that camaraderie and cooperation. You feel like that's something you want to teach. It's something you want to carry with you. It's just something you want to kind of spread, you know, it's like just a beautiful thing. And I'm. It's that same. I'd love to Turn you on. That's where the sadness is in that line. Because you would love everyone to be turned on to that sense of camaraderie and that magic and stuff, you know. I would argue that they did at least as far back as the Sullivan show, when they projected what you can achieve through friendship. You're right. With your little gang. That egalitarian ness of. Look at the fun we're having. It's me and my friends. They inspired a million groups to start overnight. And whatever they did in England on the same scale before that, I think that is a huge thing. I mean, arguably, Lonnie Donegan in kicking off Skiffle there, you don't need talent, you don't need an instrument. Go get that found object in your house and start banging on it. Yeah, that's punk rock. That's punk. Very, very. That's the commonality there. So I think whatever sadness they're feeling about wanting to turn you on, which is probably, if it had any meaning at that moment of anything specific, was higher consciousness. I would love to turn you on. It might be impossible. It's too big a job for us. But luckily, here comes Sexy Sadie to spread the word. No, I think that's. And maybe that's George Harrison's contribution. We've learned, in retrospect, it was like a junior Lennon. I mean, there was a quality control there, too, when it comes to the spiritual side of things. And I think that's what's just so damn well rounded about those guys. That's what continues to fascinate us, is it all fits together like some beautiful, you know, some beautiful. These gears, you know, of a beautiful clock or something. Everything enhances everything else. It really does. It makes it stronger. Yeah. And all we're saying is a chance, man. Give Pepper a chance, man. Give Pep a chance. Certainly this period, I mean, their entire career, just them as artists and, you know, their whole lives. But when you look at this period, this like, 66, 67 period, and you just see what they achieved and what came out of that period. You just see these four young guys, these four young artists who. Power of reception and power of transmission were just so intensely powerful at that moment. You know, it's just magic. It's just magic. The fact that they were as open as they were to taking in influence and synthesizing it. Yes. Into something that was both deeply personal and obviously universal and lasting. Yeah. It's just nothing short of a miracle. Ringo was unsure about hitting that last high note. And apparently the other three gathered around behind him at the microphone to, like, cheer him on, to provide support. So I thought that's a candidate for the most heartwarming Beatle moment, perhaps. Yes. I get by a little help from my friends. With a little help from my friends. Absolutely. So, yeah. In that anthem of friendship. Yes, yes. Enacting what they were singing about. Absolutely. Once you get that introduction with the Gateway Drug, whether it's Anthology or whether it's this song, then you do get the element of one of the most appealing things about the Beatles. And one of the things that they've always sold as part of their story from their initial narrative, is that friendship and that joy that is part of their music, but is also part of that friendship. And so, for me, one of the interesting things about this song, but also about the video, is they're going back to the Fab Four narrative. And that was one of the messages of Anthology, of what good friends they were, how they kept each other sane in the midst of touring, but how that friendship was genuine. And this really, to me, talks about that. But it's also sort of like the final piece of Anthology, if you will, because this was a missing piece, because that's what it was intended for. Only now, certainly, if this is the gateway drug for younger generations, isn't friendship a message you would want to send to anyone? What it can do for you and how it can sustain you at any age? We could close with that, but I think we know what we're going to close with, don't we? I think we're going to come full circle. Here come old flat top he go grooving up slowly he got ju ju eyeball he want Holy Roller he got hair down to his knee Got to be a joker he just do what he. 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. Foreign Hi, I'm Christina Yerling Biro, host of the podcast Pop Culture Confidential. Join me as I go way behind the scenes with some of the most influential people in entertainment and media. Hear actors such as Succession's Brian Cox talk about his favorite characters. To play, there always has to be a mystery. The audience have to be in a situation where they want to know what's going on. Meet studio execs like Pixar chief Pete Docter and learn his secret on how he makes us cry. Emotion is our first language. And so many others who are defining popular culture, from Obama speechwriter David Litt to Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi. We don't often think about food politically, or we don't want to, but it really is. Join me Search for Pop Culture Confidential wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's up, you guys? This is Reid Mathis. I made a podcast called the Gifts of Improvising. The gifts of Improvising that's coming out on Osiris. We talked to all your favorite improvisers. Natalie Crestman, Marco Benevento, Tom Hamilton, Aaron Magner, Holly Bowling, Bill Kreutzman, and Jay. So you're doing a podcast? Yeah, doing a podcast. So don't fear if you hear a foreign sound to your ear. We need the gifts of improvising.