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A
This podcast is brought to you in part by Magical Mystery Camp. Coming to Big Indian New York, just two and a half hours from New York City the week of Paul McCartney's 84th birthday, June 16th through the 19th. Featuring a number of special guests including the Fab Foe, as well as singer, songwriter, musicians Martin Sexton, Gail ann Dorsey, Cindy Cash Dollar and more. For more information, check out magical mysterycamp.com something when you think about businesses that are selling through the roof, like Skims or Allbirds, sure you think about a great product, a cool brand and great marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business. Making, selling and for shoppers, buying. Simple. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify, it's home of shop pay, the number one checkout in the world. You can use it to boost conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going through. To checkout, upgrade your business and get the same checkout Allbirds uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com income all lowercase go to shopify.com income to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com income income last Thursday night the
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B
Beatles were in town and packed the our show out there with about over 14,000 children, a great majority being girls. Now these are the youngsters from the better homes because the underprivileged cannot afford $5 a seat. And the reservations were made last April. Some of the parents were there, most of them were not. The youngsters came there to see the Beatles. Now, this court is not a prude and we know that each teenage group wants to produce its own music, its own dancing, its own heroes, our own folks. We remember the days of the other heroes who were before us. But the question is, can you take 14,000 children and pack them in to one stadium and they know they're coming there to get hysterical. And the whole show was based upon producing hysteria, the preliminary acts as well as the Beatles. And then these girls went into a coma. They ranted, they fainted, their eyes were glassy, some pulled their hair out, some tore their dresses. They threw notes of a very undesirable nature on the stage. Some girls, after the performance kissed the stage and some went up and kissed the very seats in which the Beatles had sat. And with this one father brought a child who was epileptic, and the child had an epileptic fit. And some of the parents took their children home before the show was over because it was, as some people say, unbelievable.
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A
Hello and welcome to episode 325 of Something about the Beatles podcast. This one features returning guest Glenn Greenberg. Been on the show a number of times, most recently for the Comic Con episode with Steven DeStefano where we discussed the Beatles appearances in Comic World, but also a few times before that and the discussions of George and Paul and George and John, et cetera, et cetera. He currently has a new bookazine out, one of those newsstand special things that come out periodically that are just loaded with cool photos and solid content that he provides in this case and it's his fifth Beatle themed one, others being one on John Lennon, Paul McCartney, the White Album, a trivia one, and now this one which is on the North American tours 64, 65 and 66. So basically we're having a conversation that roughly ties to the tours but also the concept of touring generally. And actually we talk quite a bit about the Get Back project as well, which after was conceived as some sort of replacement for the touring they had left behind at that point as a means of being before the public. Anyway, that is all that and I will let you hear the conversation before that. Quickly, a word about the sponsorship of Something about the Beatles Magical Mystery Camp, which is coming up in June, so we're about a month out from that, as well as Distrokid, of which you can get 30% off your annual membership by going to distro, astrokid.com VIP, Satby, S A T B and Magical Mystery camp. Go to magicalmysterycamp.com for details of what's coming the week of June 16th this year. Just as one last thing. I haven't said this on the show in a while, but I'm gonna say it again for anybody who still hasn't. The SATB newsletter comes out every Monday morning filled with news of the week, history, stuff going on about the show, et cetera, et cetera. It's your pipel to talk with me directly as well as comment on the shows, and you are urged further to join the Something about the Beatles Discord, which is not strictly about this podcast, but really is an effort to build a smart Beatle scholar community. So guests who've been on the show, as well as people out there that are deeply interested in Beatle history and music and everything else you could think of, join the conversation there. Join Discord the SATB Discord, which you can do through the newsletter. It's in the signature of that every week, as well as the Something about the Beatles site somethingaboutthebeatles.com, which has been revamped recently. Just about done, but you could check it out there as well. The SATB Discord, the SATB newsletter. Check them out now. Shoot an email to satb2010 for access to both if you don't get it any other way. But in the meantime, here's my talk with Glenn. Your latest Beatles on Tour in America. Is that the title? What is it?
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C
Beatles in America. The Beatles in America. The Touring Years.
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A
The Touring years. So this is what, like the sixth in a series of Beatle themed bookazines you've done?
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C
This is number five.
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A
Five. Okay.
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C
Yeah.
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A
So, Lennon. Yep. McCartney quiz. White Album.
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C
This one. Yes.
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A
Okay.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Cool. All right. So I did keep track of them all. Okay.
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C
Exactly. I'm very impressed.
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A
Collect them all.
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C
It's my latest and hopefully not my last.
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A
There's always something more to write about.
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C
I think so.
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A
So it's interesting that this was what they landed on as a topic that they wanted you to write about, because it's like if eight Days a Week was in theaters now, it would make complete sense. The way you try to tie things to marketing. Having been in the book publishing business, I know exactly how that works. And it's just an interesting thing. It's not particularly an anniversary other than 60 years ago, they quit touring. So that's kind of interesting.
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C
I haven't spoken to my publisher or my editor about it. Why this topic and why now? My first thought was, oh, yeah, well, this is the 60th anniversary of when they stopped touring. But I don't know if they were necessarily cognizant of that, or it could just be serendipitous.
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A
How hardcore are they exactly?
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C
Well, you know what? My publisher is pretty hardcore. He's really well versed. Really well versed.
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A
So we shouldn't not give him credit.
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C
Exactly. I wouldn't put it past him that he was well aware that what this anniversary year was. So, yeah, okay.
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A
Yeah. So necessarily, the selling point of these things is they're richly illustrated. And I noticed when I was looking through it that I was seeing definitely some familiar things. But if you live in this world as a hardcore Beetle Guy, you're gonna be familiar with an awful lot. Yet at the same time, there were things I was not familiar with, which was kind of cool to see as well.
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C
Me too. When they sent me the PDF to proofread before it went to press, that was my first time seeing it. I have to stress to everybody who I talk to or who's listening here, I write these things. In my own little universe, I am completely blind to what they're doing on the design end. So I don't know what the images are going to be when I'm writing.
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A
Writing to support the visual images, because you have no idea.
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C
Exactly, exactly. So I usually don't see the images until like literally the day before it goes to press where they say, okay, here it is, give it a read, you know, last minute corrections kind of thing. And what I was blown away by this time was number one, the number of photos that I'd never seen before, and number two, where I would like make an obscure reference to something in the narrative. They found a photo to go with that reference, you know, that's cool. And in some cases, again, it was photos that I was not aware existed or I wasn't. I didn't think they would be able to get their hands on it kind of thing. And so I'm referring to this stuff and there's the photo that completely captures it. So I was really, I was like, this is really exciting for me. You know, this was, this, this is great. So, yeah, it was as much of a thrill for me as I hope it is for everybody.
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A
Yeah, that's the cool thing. Like I said, we're familiar because we live in this world, we're big fans, we've read everything. And to see stuff that's fresh to you is really, really cool. And I love the fact that you were writing blind. You as a knowledgeable Beatle fan, writing the story on the subject that you wanted to tell and to research, not beholden to. Well, we've got this archive we're going to be using. So can you write something about this? Can you write something about that? Yeah, they basically wanted you to cover the subject of The Beatles. Did three tours of North America, 64, 5 and 6. But you throw in some prehistory as well, just to set the table for all this. Like the first US visit, which to anybody who's a casual Beatle fan might not be aware, that came to, did a couple of shows, Carnegie hall and D.C. that was not a tour proper, that was just coming to America to do some dates and live tv and then went back to England, came back for a proper tour across the country in August.
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C
Exactly. And so what the parameters were, I was given a very brief rough outline and they provided the sidebars of each chapter, were the concert dates, the concert dates and the locations. And they basically just said, here's the premise or the theme that we have for the 1964, 1965, 66, take it from there. And so, for the most part, I tried to keep in mind the theme that they came up with. But what I did in terms of my research was I went through all my reference materials for each tour, jotted down notes and let the narrative emerge from the notes from the. From the facts and the figures and the stuff that I pulled out from various sources and try to keep in mind the themes that they had suggested and work that into the narrative, if possible. For the most part, I was able to, like. With the 65 tour was like the birth of arena rock, you know, with bigger venues, outdoor stadiums, rock concerts hadn't been done that way before. And so that's in there, but that's not what the whole chapter's about. I found other things that I thought would be very interesting and was just part of the narrative. And.
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A
And would you say that as a guy that is a big Beatles scholar? You've read an awful lot. You've been a fan forever. Was there things that now that you're going down this particular rabbit hole that you were learning that you didn't know before until you had to do research for it?
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C
To some extent, I probably knew this from years ago and just slipped my mind. It wasn't at the forefront of my mind. But when I was having, like, the editorial session with. With my editor, Bob Durr, and we were just talking about stuff that could be in there, stuff that should be in there, a lot of back and forth and throwing out ideas. And one of the things that he had suggested was, why don't you include the fact that George had visited America three or four months before they came? In February. 64, he came to visit his sister and he hung out with this local band and he played with them and he did this. And I forgot about that. And I said, okay, yeah, sure, I'll try to work that because it gives a nice perspective. George is the only one who knew what it was like to be in America and not be one of the most famous people in the world, you know. And how do you juxtapose that with just a few months later? And so I wrote it for the first chapter and it didn't fit because I had too much else to say. And I told Bob, I was like, well, I'll try to get into the second chapter. Same thing happened. I bumped it again, bumped it again, bumped it. I got to the last chapter, which is 1966, and I finally managed to find a way to make it fit so that I think a Lot of people are going to be interested in the fact that George was the first Beatle who came to America before fame, before Ed Sullivan. I wasn't aware when they were flying over in February 7th to do the Ed Sullivan show, that Paul was very unsure. He was feeling very insecure, you know, he was like, well, America has everything. What do they need us for? Like, what can we give America that America doesn't already have, music wise? And he's confessing this to, of all people, Phil Spector on the airplane, you know, So I made sure that was in there. The other thing was, I mean, if you watch the Beatles Anthology, you watch all of the official histories and all that kind of stuff. When they met Elvis and how it was a wonderful experience. It was the greatest night of their life. And the fact of the matter is, when they came back to England from that tour. John is quoted in the New Music Express as saying that meeting Elvis was rubbish. It was like meeting Engelbert Humperdinck.
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B
Wow.
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C
And so that was one of the things where I wanted to include that. It was in my original manuscript and we had to drop it because of space. It's a very tight word count. Even when I hit my mark, let's say the word count is 1500 words per chapter. And I turn it in at 1500, that still may be too much, you know, in terms of how the layout may work out. So something had to go. And I actually, like I said, I proofread this right before it goes to print. And I said to my editor, I was like, is there any way we could squeeze this in? And it was like. I took a good hard look at the rest of the chapters, like, what do you take out to make that fit? And I couldn't find anything else to take out. Everything else needed to be in there. So you're faced with need to know versus nice to know.
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A
Right, right, right. It's a good way.
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C
So what I. Yeah, so what I kept in was there was a quote where John said it was all right. He was just very inarticulate about Elvis. He said he called Elvis inarticulate.
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B
What do the people think of Elvis Crosby? We liked his early stuff, you know, we liked it a lot more than the stuff that he does now. He's wilder and he's kind of bit middle aged. You know, the image. You know what I mean? Yes.
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C
Oh, you know what? The other thing I made sure to put in there, and I felt this was more important to put in. I felt that people were really going to get a kick out of it was for the first few minutes that they were at Elvis's house, they were so starstruck, they just stared at him and nobody could say anything. And Elvis actually said, well, if you guys are just going to be staring at me, I'm going up to bed. And then that kind of broke the ice and things kind of warmed up after that. So I was like, that's probably a little bit more important than John comparing
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A
him to Engelbert, which is, we know is his go to pejorative when he was calling Paul Angelbert. Yeah, the critics were trying to beat me into being.
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C
Yeah, exactly. He would use that same pejorative against Paul just six years later. But, yeah, a lot of these choices that you have to make and sometimes it's very painful. That was probably the most painful one for me.
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A
I don't envy that. It's like being the guy who writes baseball cards. You've got a hard word count that you can't transcend. It's like, well, damn, you know, if you're a curious person who likes to absorb information, there's tons of things to know that are like you say need to know is nice to know. Like, for instance, what is the significance of overnight between August 15th and August 16th, 1966, in the life of Paul McCartney? Put that question out there. How many people are going to know that? That's between the D.C. stadium show and the Philadelphia John F. Kennedy Stadium show where before and after Paul no longer has the pick card on his Hoffner base. That's where he took it off. We don't know why, but that's a cool. It's like, wow. It's like he started the tour, he had it on at the end, the candlestick. He doesn't have it on. What happened? I would love to know that. You're not going to get a straight answer on him. No. You know, he'll attribute it to civil rights or something. Who knows? It'd be a cool, valueless piece of cool information. So, yeah, I don't envy you. But we've got a Go to Beetle Touring History in America for anybody interested. You've got a great, vividly illustrated one for people who just want the need to know stuff. If you want to go super deep, you've got Chuck Gunderson Some Fun Tonight two volume set. That's like everything you'd want to know. And then you got Ron Howard eight days a week, which is like the Hollywood take. And I remember again, this was a time when. When Was that movie out 2016 or something like that? Yeah, around then I hadn't yet really started getting as thoughtful as I'd like to think I am now about approaching these projects where it's really about calibrating your expectations in advance, whether it's man on the Run one to one, you know, the upcoming Sam Mendes films. Back then it's like I knew a bit about. There'd been this project of collating all the live footage of the Beatles performing. And then at some point it got co opted by a Hollywood studio and Ron Howard. It came a completely different animal and we got what we got. From this distance I could look at it and say, okay, so there's no way in hell a Hollywood producer or studio, especially with the pedigree of Ron Howard, and this is not in any way to denigrate him, but his brand is basically sort of feel good stories, isn't it? Yeah, something where you walk away feeling inspired or whatever. So it's gonna have that baked into it. And the beauty of that film. And I wouldn't tell anybody, don't watch it. I rem I and a lot of other Beatle hardcores feeling. Well, it's Anthology Lite, you know, it's like a reader's digest version of the Beatles touring history. There's a lot of stuff thrown in there that has nothing to do with the subject at hand and there's plenty of omission. So it's not made for people like us, I guess. But what it is made for is you've got all these great visuals. Let's build some thread around it to support what we've got to throw on the big screen. And oh, we've got access to Hollywood talking heads, we've got Sigourney Weaver and Whoopi Goldberg and Elvis Costello, whoever else we had access to. All well and good. But I think that if you're a hardcore Beatle fan, you want something more satisfying to cover the subject. Therefore, we are the most disappointed audience on earth over and over and over again.
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C
Yeah, and just as a, as a for instance, my initial thought was to also use Beatles 64 as a resource. And I was going back and I was just reading the reviews and a lot of like hardcore fans were like saying, you know, the old documentary the Beatles, the first US visit is so much better than Beatles 64. I saw Beatles 64. I don't know if you remember, but I was at the premiere, sitting like 10, 15ft behind me was Sean Lennon, Olivia Harrison and Paul McCartney. So that's always going to color my feelings about that film as I can't be objective about it. But reading the reviews, I don't know, I was thinking, you know, I should really get my hands on the old documentary, the first U.S. visit.
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A
Yeah.
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C
And I was like, wait a minute, hold on a second. And I went like scrounging through my old DVDs under my TV set in the cabinet and sure enough, I have it. I've had it since it first came out. I never cracked the seal on it. So I was like, well, this is a great excuse to sit down and watch this movie. And so I never bothered to watch Beatles 64 again. I watched the first US visit and I found it to be a much more substantial, much more useful tool because it really does place you there and you do get a sense of the people and you're not being force fed a story, you're just sort of like a fly in the water. At least that's how it came off to me.
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A
Yeah. And I understand it because I remember I had the director on, David Tedeschi and Margaret Foley were the producers. And I remember they sent me a screener of it and I watched it and it was the kind of thing where I knew in advance, okay, this is going to be on Disney. So that carries with it a certain pre expectation that we've already kind of covered that ground.
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C
Yeah.
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A
So I tried to be as detached as possible, knowing, okay, number one, this is not made for me. So let's see if watching this I can sort of divine who it is made for or what the purpose of it was. And I guess what I concluded to that is like, well, I don't know that because I didn't say this thought out loud. But if you want the immediacy of that first US visit and nothing more, you just want to focus on what it was like to be this new band that only just exploded in terms of being known in America. And here they're coming to the States, this golden land that they've been dreaming about their whole lives. That is a story. And I think the Maisel's brothers did a great job of capturing that. And I can't remember who was I had on the show talking about this that said, you know, that is the documentary. If you watch nothing but the Measles brothers footage, you're learning all you need to know. Maybe it was Jim Windolf when we were talking about the Dylan stuff, but I get you, that makes complete sense. But Beatle 64 was not that. That was. I Think a contextualization of why this first visit was a life changing thing for so many people that experienced it firsthand. From the First Gen fans to the other artists to the Smokey Robinson that oh my God, this is a tidal wave in popular music culture and they're covering our songs. Yeah, there's that Lewison factoid that the first Motown song played on BBC radio was the Beatles doing Please, Mr. Postman. Which is an amazing thing to think about. Notwithstanding Smokey's memory is about as good as Sir Paul's when it comes to describing seeing the Beatles at the Cavern before there were anybody. It's like, no, you didn't. You didn't go to England until 1965. I've seen your passport. So anyway, if you want to give filmmakers credit for not being complete dummies, they may have a particular point in mind. Even if it is completely unsatisfying to us now being us, the kind of people that we are. I think there's plenty of stories to tell about the Beatles life on the road. Even if you want to just focus on North America, there's stuff that doesn't get talked about or is alluded to in other works. It's like maybe a Lewison in volume two and volume three is going down the rabbit holes. But you know what? We don't need to rely on one guy. There's plenty of room here. The ocean's a big place. Let's somebody go down that rabbit hole. What did John mean about Satyricon on tour? Not that we're looking for salacious stuff necessarily, but that was part of the Beatles life experience on the road. There's plenty, the good and the bad that they experienced that. This was something I don't want to say foisted on them, but it was the price of being a successful act in music. You had to do live performances. And the only person to that point in the 60s that was able to sustain a career such as it was without performing live regularly was Elvis. But that was only because that stream of worthless Hollywood movies that at least there was a new experience for the fans every year or twice a year, whatever. So touring from this distance, I don't know how many people could appreciate how incredibly brutal it was. We've got stories of Beatles flying with one engine on fire in a plane as they're traversing the country that really happened. Ridiculous logistics. Like somebody made the point of they play Amsterdam, June 4, 1964. Four days later they're in Hong Kong. That was business as usual. Ridiculous. Wholly Inadequate sound enforcement to be going into these venues. You can't hear what the hell you're doing. You can't hear your fellow musicians that are standing four feet away from you and the crowd can't hear you. Did the Beatles think about why are we doing this in real time? Or did you just take the money? Because that was a huge part of their income stream. Because they were making that ridiculous penny split five ways on a side of a parlophone, single release or whatever. There's that thing that. Peter Brown, for what it's worth. I know a lot of people think that a lot of his book is fiction, but there's things in there that spare investigation, the paper bag money that they would skim cash money off every gig and have that. And Brian supposedly was opening bank accounts all around the world for when the Beatles came back. They would have money at hand should they need it. Manila, I know that's not North America, but that is a documentary into itself.
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B
We got to the airport and our road managers had a lot of trouble trying to get the equipment in because the escalators been turned off and things. So we got there and we got put into the transit lounge. And then we got pushed around from one corner of the lounge to another. You know, you treat like ordinary passenger. Ordinary passengers. There's an ordinary passenger, he doesn't get kicked, does he? And so they started knocking over our road managers and things and everyone was falling all over. They're starting worrying you when the road manager got knocked over? Yeah. And I swear there was 30 of them. What do you say there were? Well, I saw five in sort of outfits, you know, that were sort of doing it. The actual kicking and. And booing and shouting. Did you get kicked? No, I was very delicate and moved every time they touched me. I don't. I could have been kicked and not known, you know, I just know getting booed you have to be if you're going to have these battles. I just never go to any. Not houses again. Would you go to Manila again, George? No, I didn't even want to go that time, no. Because we'd heard that it was a terrible place anyway. And when we got there, it was. Was proved very sort of cowardly anyway of them because they were obviously, you know, trying to make it rough for us and knew we couldn't do anything back because all the papers had sort of turned against us. So, you know, if they'd have started something, it would have been all the Filipinos there against us. And we couldn't even say anything on the way to the plane or the press was saying, some of them that hadn't quite seen it with radios, you know, they've been waiting at the other end. Well, what was it like? There's a bit of booing going on with it, but never, you know, will you be back? And I was dying to say, what you need is an argument.
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A
So I think there's a lot to really get into that would inform our understanding of why the Beatles reached a dead end with that whole thing. Seemingly as they're on this tremendous arc of creativity. It's like, wouldn't you want to get out before the public? But it's two things, two values butting heads. We can't play this stuff live. We can't even reproduce the old stuff live adequately and hear ourselves. So the concerts have become. Yes, they're necessary to stay in a career. So was the conventional thinking at the time. But it's a pointless exercise. That is no fun for us. So we have gotten so good so fast, Exploding our artistry way beyond anybody's expectations. Just doesn't make sense anymore. And then there's all the bad experiences that you write about in 66.
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C
Yeah, I mean, it's part of the narrative. And they're all agreed it's part of the official narrative. Which means that some of it may actually be true. Was that one of the reasons why they stopped touring is because they wanted to spend more time in the studio and do, like, these lavish productions that continue on in that vein. But then they complained about that, too. Getting too produced, we're too overproduced and this, that. And we're spending all this time in the studio and I'm learning how to play chess. And George stopped bothering to show up because it was all about overdubs and he was bored out of his mind. And it's sort of like, well, so you weren't happy just playing straight rock and roll. You wanted to be more advanced, and now you're complaining about it being advanced. So it just seemed like we're never satisfied.
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A
And that's a really good point because it seems like something that at least Paul proactively tried to figure out, well, what is the balance? Because that's the Road to the Get Back project. We want to have some kind of audience interaction. Because they must have realized by 68, having done the White Album, and that's them spending six months in the studio on a double record. Fine. And they called it the Detention Album or something like that.
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C
I think that's what Paul Referred to it as.
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A
Yeah, yeah. And you hear a lot of that on the Niagara's, not that long after. They never call it the White Album. They call it the Beatles, which is kind of funny.
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C
Yep.
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A
So they do the Michael Lindsey Hogg directed hey Jude promo film with people there on audience that I think they had three or four audiences. They swapped out for the different shoots of hey Jude. So they got a buzz off that. Next thing you know. Okay, let's schedule three dates at the Roundhouse. This small venue that. They haven't played anything that small since 1963.
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C
Right, right, right.
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A
So five years, that's an eternity in terms of their career. But they want to go back because this is them figuring out, you know what. There was something of value in those intimate performances that we lost along the. The way.
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C
Well, certainly Paul felt that way, but
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A
I think they were all gung ho, at least of. I mean, they all turned up on January 2, right?
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C
So they all turned up. Yeah. Well, we all know about what kind of state John was in at that point. He came along. George's claim was that he showed up thinking that it was going to be a brand new day and that things were going to be different, the relationships were going to be better because he had just been spending all this time with the band in upstate New York. He came back thinking that all the attitudes were going to be different, especially towards him being the Junior Beatle and all that kind of stuff. Certainly they needed a ringleader. They needed a ringleader, an authority figure that they all respected, that they were all going to listen to, who was going to be able to whip them into shape. Whether that was going to be Brian, had he lived. Whether it should have been George Martin. But it seemed like the ideas were there, the interest was there, but they needed somebody. It couldn't have been Paul.
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B
I'm scared to be a bit of boss, and I have been for like
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C
a couple of years, to take those ideas, to take that energy and direct them. Because you know what? Maybe two or three days into the Let It Be sessions, somebody should have said to them, you know what? Stop prioritizing writing new music because you're putting extra pressure on yourself. You've got how many days to get these Roundhouse shows together. Play the fucking songs from the White Album. They're right there and they're still new. What are you thinking, you lunatics? You know, I'm so tired I haven't
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B
slept on wing I'm so tired Time my mind is on the blade I
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C
wonder should I Call you and get
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B
myself a drink no, no, no, no Lay off the booze, boy Cuz I'm so tired I don't know what to do don't know what to do I'm so tired so tired My mind is
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C
set on you
- [36:04]
B
I wonder should I be. Oh, no, no.
- [36:18]
C
Why are you putting this extra pressure on yourself? It doesn't seem like that ever came up. The original idea was to perform the White Album. Go back to that. Why did they decide to ride this horse, like, right off the cliff? And obviously they did come up with the songs. They did come up with new songs, and they're great. It all worked out. But boy, oh, boy, think of how much tension they could have saved themselves if they just said, let's take the songs off the White Album that are the easiest to perform live. And if we don't do it at the Roundhouse, we'll find someplace else. Or we'll just do it up on the roof. But let's make it easier on ourselves, because this is not working.
- [37:01]
A
That completely seems to speak to the lack of an authority figure that could lay down the law, put a realistic limit on this shotgunning of ideas out there that they are free to pursue because nobody's reining them back in. We see this in hindsight, right? It's time. It's apparent to none of them, except they know they resent Paul sort of pushing them, at least in real time at the time. Nowadays, Ringo's fond of saying, well, if it wasn't for Paul, we wouldn't have the last three albums. That's great. They seem to be intuiting that in abandoning live performance, which they had perfectly good reasons for in 1966, that something is missing. And yes, it opened the door to, well, the studio is our tool now. The studio is our sandbox. Look at Brian Wilson's doing. It was something that they seem to have gotten out of their system throughout 1967. Yeah. One album, Yeah. I wonder, if Brian hadn't died in 67, would he have been able to steer them towards something that would have made the studio path make more sense? Or they just run out of gas because nobody was pushing them. I don't know. It's hard to say. George Martin was no slouch when it came to wanting to bring the best out of them and have them aim high. You know, you can do better than that. But when Pepper came out, and I don't know if it was Time magazine or something in the autumn of 67, where they felt John and Paul Felt that George Martin was getting a bit too much praise for Pepper.
- [38:43]
C
Yeah.
- [38:44]
A
Like, wait a minute, hold up. And I think what was the. John's metaphor was like, that's like crediting the cameraman for a brilliant film being made or something like that. Where they made the conscious decision to sort of stiff arm him going forward. Which they did throughout 68.
- [39:02]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [39:04]
A
And the results speak for themselves. Especially we love the White Album. And whatever you think of Let It Be as an album, if George Martin had been allowed to produce, would it have been this listless thing that nobody wanted anything to do with until they went the Phil Spector route, which seemingly was not any more satisfactory. It was just releasable.
- [39:28]
C
Yeah.
- [39:28]
A
So it's all very interesting, but even Brian, when you read about how despondent he was when they told him we're not touring anymore, as if. Was it purely selfish reasons? I no longer have a job if you guys aren't going on the road. Because what am I going to organize now? Or did he legitimately think that that was an essential part of the maintaining their success in spite of all the reasons not to in 1966?
- [39:59]
C
Yeah. It's a mystery because it seems to me like, you know, in terms of what do I have to organize? It seemed like there was a company called Apple that he could have had a major part in overseeing. Why that wasn't apparent to him really is. It really is genuinely a mystery to me.
- [40:19]
A
It completely aligns with. He's the guy that certainly solo black, he looked at as his protege that he wanted to market and got her TV show before he died and he got her on her way. Mary Hopkins would have been a piece of cake for him and. And anybody else that. Especially in early 67 when he's in talks with Stigwood and bringing in Cream and whoever else that are not Beatles but they're sort of the future of rock. He's interested enough that he's got the perfect platform to make that sort of thing happen. That would be satisfying to him as a producer of something. So he had more reason than ever. And clearly in hindsight, as we know, the Beatles needed him badly.
- [41:10]
C
Yeah. And the thing is, the whole Apple thing being a place that finds other artists and bring other artists onto the label, that wasn't the original concept for Apple. That was a John and Paul thing. And it came as a complete shock to George. But what you're saying, it's quite possible that if Brian had lived and if Brian was overseeing Apple the way he probably would have that. It would have been exactly that. It would have been a place, a home for. For new and upcoming artists that Brian could have discovered and brought them into the apple fold. So, yeah, I don't get why he was so despondent. It seemed like there was definitely a place for him ongoing in the Beatles universe.
- [41:55]
A
And maybe it was symptomatic of his personal stuff that he was dealing with. His pill addiction is being blackmailed, preventing him from seeing the actual last concert. Cause he was dealing with Dick Gillespie. So he had his own demons, he had his own stuff to sort out for sure. But the thing, we've talked about this on the show before, that being Brian being the adult, being a bit more worldly than his clients. Here he is leasing the Savile Theater. You want to give the Beatles a residency, you could put that orchestra in the pit and have them do Pepper live or something like that. Have the world come to them. Makes complete sense that, okay, you don't want to walk away from Beatles doing live appearances. Well, maybe here's a way you can keep that going and satisfy them that they can do this much more inspired, advanced work and do it to their satisfaction. So many what ifs and.
- [42:56]
C
And a lot of that's assuming you can get George Harrison to sign on to this.
- [43:02]
A
Well, let's talk about that, because. Yeah, that's something. We had a little sidebar about that George, the grumpy one. So would that have been a way to keep him engaged, I wonder? Because maybe, as he did seven years down the road with the Dark Horse tour, giving this spotlight to Ravi Shankar and friends, maybe that could have been part of the package at the Seattle theater. Well, first we're gonna have a set from Ravi and his friends for the Beatles. Come out and do Bev for Life.
- [43:33]
C
Yeah, that's possible. Yeah.
- [43:35]
A
You could sit in with them and do within without you or.
- [43:38]
C
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Love you too. Absolutely. Yeah. That's a brilliant idea. It makes you, like, just, why didn't they think of that? Why didn't they think of that?
- [43:50]
A
Yeah, yeah. But there's so much stuff to talk about in terms of. If you're like us, you want to understand why certain things happen. Okay, so there's a lot about the 66 tour, you know, that by 65, John had described Shea, the opening show of the 1965 North America tour, this big stadium show being filmed for tv. You hear that line in there he talks about.
- [44:20]
B
We always get dead nervous before we go on stage. And nine times out of Ten. We suddenly feel tired. About half an hour before, when we got to get changed, we all suddenly. All of a sudden everybody's tired and changing into the suits and putting the shirts on. If you are nerd. And then as soon as you get on, it's all right.
- [44:37]
A
I think that's a common thing with performers. As I've listened to other interviews with people that they just. Yeah, but it got old fast, seemingly. And you listen to some of the board recordings from other shows on the 65 tour, where you've got crowd disrupting and stopping in the show.
- [44:58]
B
Yeah, people all the way in the back. All the way in the back. If you will kind of restrain yourself. If the people in front. If you keep your seats, they're going to keep their seats. It's as simple as that. So actually, the people right here, it's pretty important for you to kind of, you know, kind of get with it.
- [45:20]
A
You could tell in their demeanor versus you listen to the shows from 64. It's becoming a bit tiresome to them.
- [45:29]
C
Sure.
- [45:29]
A
Maybe you've gotten too big too fast. Some of the joy is coming out of it. Then you have 66 right on the onset before they set foot on the first stage. More popular than Jesus threats, bonfires, bands from airplay and, oh, by the way, we've just dropped this new album, but we're not gonna play a single song from it because we're essentially our own tribute act at this point. Mm.
- [45:57]
C
Yeah, they're still doing Babies in Black.
- [46:00]
A
Yeah, I feel fine.
- [46:02]
C
Yeah, this wasn't in North America, obviously, but I did use the Beatles Anthology for some of my reference, along with clips that I found on YouTube and so forth. And there's the performance in Japan, and it's completely lifeless. There's just no energy to it. And I never noticed it before, but now, obviously, I'm watching with a more critical eye. And it was like, they don't sound very good in Japan.
- [46:30]
A
You catch that moment in their performance of the one and only George Harrison original tune that the Beatles played live if I Needed someone. And the harmonies are just awful. Even though supposedly because of the crowd security, this is one place that the audience screaming is really tamped down compared to normal. And you see this grimace from Ringo as he's hearing what he's hearing of the bad singing on the bridge of the song. Oh, my God. The first time they're recorded under optimum conditions, live on the 66 tour. And it's too bad they're phoning it in.
- [47:08]
C
Yeah, it was quite Staggering to me. It was like, wow, I'm watching the Beatles live and I'm not particularly impressed.
- [47:16]
A
Right.
- [47:17]
C
I mean, there were other great moments on that tour. There's some great performances, but I was just really surprised watching that one. But, yeah, 66 got off to a horrible start. It gave them very little reason to want to continue. But George was asking, you know, how much more do we have to do with this? At the end of the 65 Tour, which by most accounts pretty easy on them. Fewer shows, more downtime, and they made more money off it. The fewer shows that they did, the more money they made, it seemed. But for George, it was already. George, supposedly was the first one to really start thinking, no more of this.
- [47:55]
A
Yeah.
- [47:55]
C
And that was before all the trials and tribulations of 66.
- [47:59]
A
64 was particularly grinding too, as far as tours go. Yeah, it was a lot of shows. Some twice a day.
- [48:07]
C
Yeah.
- [48:07]
A
And it was a lot of. What was it, like, 24 cities in 30 days or something like that?
- [48:12]
C
Something like that, yeah.
- [48:14]
A
Yeah, yeah. So they did ease up a little bit as time went on, but still with all the other ancillary things going on that made the physical stress getting from one place to the other. You talk about in the book, the rained out show in the 66 tour, and then they had to do like two shows in one day, like do an afternoon show and then fly to wherever they had to go to the next city. And what a grind this is. And the security measures of being bounced around on armored cars and being handled like an animal act. Basically, you recognize the esteem that you've earned at this point and this is how you're being treated.
- [48:55]
B
I hope that they never come back to town. I had no objection to the show. I did not see anything offensive in the acts. I do not say that they are talented, that their appearance gives me any moral lift, but I don't think that they can. Someone told me that they couldn't even even read musical notes. They did make a lot of noise, and I suppose they did the best that they could to entertain. But I think that this frenzy that developed there is something that we can. It's impossible for us to tell why those children became so frenzied and because they became so disorderly. It's something that it's impossible for us to tell. But frankly, I hope that the next group comparable to these fellows come to town and go away with a better feeling toward the police. And I certainly hope that their audiences behave themselves better.
- [50:03]
C
Also, the lack of security in the Case of that guy who jumped onto the stage and pulled the hat off of John's head and then jump back off the stage, back into the crowd. And the book actually has the photograph of that happening.
- [50:20]
A
I saw. That was cool. Yeah.
- [50:22]
C
Isn't it?
- [50:23]
A
Yeah.
- [50:23]
C
Yeah. You can imagine the look on my face when I saw that in there. Not knowing. Not knowing when I was writing about it that it was going to be
- [50:30]
A
in the book that was documented.
- [50:32]
C
Yeah. So what if the guy had a gun? What if the guy had a knife? What if the guy was crazy? What if he wanted more than John's hat?
- [50:40]
A
You ever see that in the Australian show that they've got, that they did a Beatles singing for Shell. There's the one film performance from Australia in 64 where like the very, I think, second to last or last song of the night, somebody again accosts John on stage, jumps up. Yeah. Why was he the magnet for this stuff?
- [51:01]
C
It's really knowing what we know to sort of like. This was like a tinderbox with regard to that. I mean, obviously, the same thing happened to Paul Simon in 81 when he was singing about John. I mean, right?
- [51:15]
A
So, yeah, late, great Johnny Ace.
- [51:17]
C
Yeah, that's right. Right, right. The conditions there was one time they were playing in the rain and the sound engineer basically said, look, if the equipment starts to spark, turn it off. You know, and it's like, wait a minute, we're the talent. We're not supposed to be worrying about this kind of thing. That's supposedly what broke the camel's back for Paul, where it's like, you know, what if we're at risk of being electrocuted at this point? I gotta fall in with the other guys and just say, look, no more of this.
- [51:48]
A
Yeah. And the people in charge of things are being so flippant about it.
- [51:52]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [51:54]
A
I wonder if in real time, yes, there's a million reasons why not to do these kind of tours as they've been doing it. But then, I don't know if it was a hindsight thing or if they recognized it at the time, but the close proximity of living in each other's pockets while they were on the road, it enforced the capability of collaboration between John and Paul, especially earlier on, that they would describe later as like, well, we weren't sharing hotel rooms anymore together for three, four weeks at a time, whatever it was. That is why the collaborative ongoing process kind of dropped off once you quit touring. I wonder if that was something they missed or if they recognized or by that time were they ready to assert themselves individually as songwriters and sort of minimize the need for each other as editors? Or was it something they recognized? Well, that was kind of cool when we had that around all the time. We were much more productive and efficient or whatever. I wonder about that. That's not something that's really been explored to my knowledge.
- [53:02]
C
Well, it seems to me John was ready for that. It doesn't seem like Paul ever was. Paul up until the end was regretting the loss of John as a full collaborator partner. He says it in the Get Back documentary. He talks about it's so hard to write with John when Yoko is around, you know, and so that says right there, Paul was interested in keeping it going.
- [53:29]
A
Yeah, very much so. Given by that time in the Beatles career, his one man band tendencies, which on the one hand absolutely became a thing with him where because of his musical vision he's able to, okay, I'm writing this song. I can hear what you should be playing Ringo. I can hear what you should be playing George, and what you should not be playing George.
- [53:52]
C
Right.
- [53:53]
A
So he's visualizing it and then dictating all the parts. But on the other hand, when he goes off with Ringo to do why don't we do it in the road, you feel Jon being personally hurt and slighted by, well, why didn't you involve us? I would have loved to have had a piece of that. So it's just funny, all these different dynamics going on all at once and you just wonder if they had a cooler adult head around that could have quelled this unrest.
- [54:22]
C
I get why they wanted to stop touring because it was insane. George says, and I have him quoted in the book, the world went insane. And they used us as the excuse. We were the only sane ones in the room. It felt like something along those lines. And I get that, and I get that's why they stopped. Why eliminate live performing altogether? Why not find ways to control more the situation so that you do have that kind of live element? I mean, because they talked about, at least Ringo and I think Paul talked about the fact that when they were huddled in that room performing your blues for the wide album, that they were a band again, you know?
- [55:10]
A
Yes.
- [55:10]
C
And it's like, okay, they still value that. Why not create the kind of environment where you're still playing live, you know, you don't have to go on tour, you don't have to do those grueling trips and all that kind of stuff. George didn't even want to go up on the roof, you know, And I've seen it. Suggested it was post Traumatic stress disorder, and it might be, but they did it. They were going to do the Roundhouse.
- [55:39]
A
Yeah. And you get the sense that they haven't, at the onset of the Get Back sessions, settled on a venue, an endgame. But it's gonna be something. Whether it's someplace out in the desert before 2000 torch flit Arabs or what, it's gotta be something. Michael Lindsey Hoggs then gained visuals, and that's to his credit. He's the director.
- [55:59]
C
Right, Right.
- [56:00]
A
But they get up on the rooftop, they see what it's like playing live. No overdubs, just relying on each other to make the musical magic. And they pull it off. Right. It's only five songs, but they pull it off. And then by late summer, you've got. Now Woodstock has come and gone, which they've been invited to. So they know now that large scale, half a million people, Woodstock. So 10 times, Shea Stadium. You've got a crowd gathered to watch a series of live acts. They're in the middle of making Abbey Road. They turn down the invite. But are they looking at this thinking this is the future of rock. And maybe they recoiling from it. God, that's way bigger than any crowd we ever played for. That'd just be a nightmare. And all the mud and the rain, all that stuff. But you got Paul pushing this call ourselves Ricky and the Red Streaks or whatever, show up at a Cavern type club. So he's intuiting playing as a live type band. Nobody else around, just us as a good little rock and roll band. We are playing easy to reproduce numbers which should have appealed to John.
- [57:08]
C
Right.
- [57:09]
A
And for whatever reason, he stiffs arms. And by the way, I'm divorcing the group. And this is right after he does the Varsity Stadium thing in Toronto. Which is a stadium show, Right. So he is doing that. And you've got George Slater. Yes. Delaney and Bonnie.
- [57:25]
C
Delaney and Bonnie. Right.
- [57:26]
A
And maybe the difference for him is, well, I'm not the front man. I could just slink into the back and play my guitar. I don't know. They were doing a theater tour in England. So it's not tiny crowds, it's a few thousand.
- [57:39]
C
But here's the thing. Would it have been. Let's just say, for argument's sake, let's say they went to Woodstock or they went along with Paul's idea of Ricky and the Red Streaks. And people found out it was the Beatles. Okay. At 1969, would it have been Beatle mania? I mean, Really, I mean, at that point their audience kind of had grown up. If anything, you would have had to wake them up because they were all stoned out of their mind, I would imagine. So it's sort of like they wouldn't have gone through the madness.
- [58:13]
A
Other bands got screamers too. You've got the end of 69, the stones are in North America. It's not before a screamer crowd. It's a grown up crowd. And you've got good sound enforcement so you can record yourselves and you can play with monitors on stage and all that stuff. So that would have been the optimum time to dip your toe in the waters if you wanted to do something as Beatles. But, you know, now we had Klein in the picture and all this bad blood. And maybe it was just a year too late.
- [58:43]
C
And John was actually confronted about it in one interview. I can't remember if it was the 1970 interview with Wenner or the 1980 interview with Chef, but when they were talking about the whole. Paul wanted to get back to doing it. And somebody said to John, well, you did it with the Plastic Ono Band. He goes, I didn't think it was crazy to perform live. I thought it was crazy to perform live with the Beatles. When he said that, Paul, I think you're daft. That's what he was referring to is what Jon said.
- [59:13]
A
I think he has a point that does make sense that, yes, Beatles is a different thing than Joe Blow out in a Club situation, or even Jon and Yoko, which very much changes the dynamic. Even with Eric Clapton on stage with you doing rock and roll oldies and then Alvin Garden, it's not Beatles. If he'd done an all Beatles set, maybe that would have been different. Maybe the crowd would have gone nuts and gotten hyped up. I don't know.
- [59:43]
C
Yeah, a lot of what ifs here there are. And I would have liked to have had the space to get into post 1966 vis a vis their decision not to tour anymore. There just wasn't any room. All the stuff that we're talking about here, I would have loved to have been able to like, explore and discuss and present what if scenarios and so forth. But alas, there was no room. So I had to end it with the end of 66 and the beginning of the studio years.
- [60:12]
A
And they were talking. You have the quote in there from those interviews they do on the steps of VMI December of 66, about, are you gonna play live again? And John's talking about film projects. You know, they're still trying to figure themselves out. But. But something that cannot be emphasized enough is that Pepper was a reaction to not touring anymore. It was crafted as this alter ego. The record goes out on the road instead of us going out on the road. How Paul put it. And it's not an accident that the conception, even if it's not a concept album, by strict definition, was. What does a band do when they're not playing live anymore? What do we do in place that will satisfy the fans? Well, we created sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Guild Band.
- [61:04]
C
Right. Complete with the band tuning up at the beginning of the first track and ending with an encore, so to speak. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I know that John didn't see it that way. John just. Sword is the next Beatles album.
- [61:20]
A
That's him pooh, poohing it to Wenner. Because it's a Paul led project. Right.
- [61:25]
C
And George did the same thing. George said he never really bought into the concept. For him, it was just, you know,
- [61:31]
A
another Beatles album to which Paul said, allow me to retort, you were never even here.
- [61:37]
C
He's certainly saying that a lot lately, isn't he?
- [61:40]
A
Yes.
- [61:40]
C
Yeah.
- [61:41]
A
I'd learned to play chess.
- [61:43]
C
Yeah.
- [61:43]
A
Well, I would love for some kind of approach be made to tell the story that we haven't really gotten to this point. There's all kinds of things you uncovered that there was no room for. There's things that we know have been sort of tossed out there. What impact did drugs have on their touring years? The first year, 64, late in the tour. I think it's very near the end of the tour, is when the whole weed thing happens with Dylan. Certainly there's whatever else they picked up along the way. Alice D in 65.
- [62:17]
C
Well, yeah, and I cover that in the book. By the time they came Back in 65, John and George had already done LSD. And then they were doing it with Peter Fonda when they were relaxing by the pool of the house that they were staying at during the 65 tour in California. That's the incident that inspired she Said, she Said. So they had acid with the Byrds and Peter Fonda. And they were on pot when they met. I think they were on pot when they met Elvis.
- [62:50]
A
Too bad they weren't tripping. Too bad for Elvis. They didn't take a trip with him. Wouldn't that have been something?
- [63:01]
C
Yeah, but he was like staunchly anti drugs, wasn't he?
- [63:05]
A
When he's cooked to the gills, when he meets Nixon.
- [63:08]
C
Yeah, but that was prescription drugs. Big difference.
- [63:12]
A
The Michael Jackson drugs.
- [63:13]
C
Exactly, exactly. That was the Elvis diet slippin dose,
- [63:19]
A
that John Riley dentist thing. Adam, here. Elvis, have some coffee.
- [63:22]
C
Exactly. Yeah.
- [63:24]
A
Changed his whole career.
- [63:25]
C
Exactly. Get rid of the kernel. You know, free your mind, man.
- [63:30]
A
I'm having fun with these alternate histories.
- [63:32]
C
I think there's a book in there, huh? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I have a story that I've been trying to crack, and I haven't quite been able to do it yet. But John gets inspired to write she Said, she Said as a result of this conversation with Peter Fonda, who none of them really liked, apparently, he did not come off very well to them.
- [63:54]
A
Yeah, they didn't know who the hel he was. Meanwhile, Cat Ballou, starring his sister, is being screened in the house. That George is like, I hate Lee Marvin. I don't know if he's tripping when he said that, but I know he said that. Yeah.
- [64:07]
C
And John was like, hey, man, I don't want to know what it's like to be dead. I don't want to hear this.
- [64:12]
A
Right.
- [64:12]
C
So you've got that, and then, yeah, you've got Elvis a few days later. So I'm able to get into that. So it wasn't all grueling.
- [64:21]
A
They got to meet Fats Domino in New Orleans in 64.
- [64:24]
C
That's right. That's right. That was cool. They got to hang out with Ronnie Spector.
- [64:29]
A
And I know that Bill Black from Elvis's trio. It was his combo that was the opening act, but he was ill and was not part of the tour. I wonder if that was disappointing to them because Paul ends up with his bass down the road.
- [64:44]
C
That's right.
- [64:45]
A
When Linda buys it for him. The one that he played in Heartbreak Hotel, apparently.
- [64:49]
B
So.
- [64:49]
C
Yes.
- [64:50]
A
Yeah.
- [64:51]
C
Yeah.
- [64:51]
A
That could have been a conversation point. Just, hey, we're with Bill Black's band in 64 to Elvis. But I don't know if that would have meant anything to him at that point.
- [65:02]
C
Right, right. And you just reminded me that it was in America on his first trip that George got one of his guitars that he played on some of the key Beatles tracks.
- [65:16]
A
Yeah, that Rickenbacker he bought that he had painted Black.
- [65:19]
C
Yeah, it was the Rickenbacker425. And he used that on I Want to hold you'd hand.
- [65:25]
A
There you go.
- [65:26]
C
He got that in America on his first trip in September of 63.
- [65:31]
A
And now that house is up for sale.
- [65:33]
C
It is up for sale. Exactly. Yeah. I wonder if it's going to survive, because at one point it was going to be torn down. Right.
- [65:40]
A
Yeah. Back in the 90s. And they saved it for the hard days. Night, bed and breakfast. But I wonder what happened to that. I think in 2010 is when that closed and that it was just a rooming house, I guess, in recent years, till the owner decided to sell it. But, yeah, it looks to be in. I know. What do I know? But pictures from the outside, it looks to be decent repair. It's not falling apart.
- [66:02]
C
Yeah, it looked to be in pretty solid shape. Except for the graffiti on the garbage can in the front. That was kind of a turn off.
- [66:11]
A
Right. What else is Benton, Illinois, gonna do? You know, there's only so much tourism in Illinois for the place. Last public Execution. Also the home of John Malkovich. So there's that.
- [66:25]
C
Okay.
- [66:26]
A
Maybe they could conflate them. You know, Malkovich House of Beatles or something.
- [66:30]
C
Yeah.
- [66:31]
A
With a little gallows in the backyard.
- [66:33]
C
I wonder if the VFW hall where George played with that local band is still there.
- [66:38]
A
The Five Vests.
- [66:40]
C
Yeah.
- [66:41]
A
Yeah, that would be something, I think. That is because they never tear down VFW halls, it seems.
- [66:46]
C
Okay. All right. Well, they keep going.
- [66:48]
A
Forever's 85 vest still alive.
- [66:51]
C
That's a really good question.
- [66:53]
A
I jammed with George.
- [66:54]
C
Exactly. Exactly.
- [66:56]
A
I played a Hank Williams song when he was playing with them. Yeah, I can't remember which one. You're Cheating Heart.
- [67:04]
C
You're Cheating Heart, Johnny B. Goode and Matchbox. I'm not sure that was all of the songs that he played with them, but those were three right there.
- [67:12]
A
Wow. That's cool.
- [67:13]
C
I do know that while George was there, his sister booked him on a high school radio show, the local high school radio show to promote the fact that he was in this band that hasn't come to America yet, but their records are starting to filter in. And they interviewed the girl who interviewed him. Wow. For Smithsonian Magazine. She wasn't all that impressed. He wasn't very. An exciting personality kind of thing, but, you know, he was nice.
- [67:44]
B
There's really nothing to say these days.
- [67:46]
A
Does the interview exist? Not with her, but with George?
- [67:51]
C
Probably not.
- [67:52]
A
Was it in the school newspaper or something?
- [67:54]
C
There was a radio show that he was on. I think he did do an interview for a school newspaper.
- [68:00]
A
That would be cool.
- [68:01]
C
You know what? I do think the newspaper article might exist. I'd have to do some digging.
- [68:07]
A
Yeah. That would be the claim to fame. Unless they interviewed John Malkovich later on.
- [68:11]
C
Exactly.
- [68:13]
A
Why'd you leave? Yeah.
- [68:15]
C
At the very least, I think the girl who did the radio interview is, A, still alive and B, was Interviewed for smithsonian magazine about it.
- [68:24]
B
Wow.
- [68:24]
A
I'll have to look for that. Presumably still in Illinois, maybe.
- [68:28]
C
I believe she was. Yeah.
- [68:30]
A
Okay, well, so where can people find this?
- [68:33]
C
They can find this at their local barnes and noble, or you can go directly to the publisher's website, which is magazineshop. And you go to the search bar and you type in beatles. And all of their beatle publications will pop up, including three of the ones that I wrote. You can get this new one, which is beatles in america, the touring years. You could also get the trivia book of the beatles. And you can get beatles the white album, which is all about the making of the white album. Those three are available. Alas, the john Lennon one and the paul mccartney one are out of print, but they also publish additional beatles bookazines as well. But that's probably the safest place to go to get it. If you don't have a barnes and noble near you, if you can't find it on the stands or you're in england or any other country that doesn't have a barnes and noble.
- [69:31]
A
Honestly, I'm just happy that they're publishing bookazines at all anymore. It just seems like. Yeah, I was just the other day waxing nostalgic about tower records in just the magazine stand and the book section they used to have. Oh, God.
- [69:47]
C
We had three in new york city at one time. Three tower records. And I used to frequent. Whenever I was in a particular part of town, the parts of town that I would frequent, there was a tower records. And I can go to the one uptown. I can go to the one over downtown. It was great. And it was a major, major blow when they all went out of business. It was just.
- [70:11]
A
Yeah, absolutely.
- [70:13]
C
Really sad. I got some of my favorite albums at tower records, including mccartney. I got ram tower records. Yeah.
- [70:22]
A
You ever say the doc about tower records?
- [70:25]
C
Yeah.
- [70:25]
A
All things must pass.
- [70:27]
C
All things must pass. It was heartbreaking because it's sort of like, don't make that decision. Make this decision, you know?
- [70:34]
A
Yes.
- [70:34]
C
Yeah.
- [70:35]
A
This whole conversation been about what ifs.
- [70:37]
B
Yeah.
- [70:40]
C
Hasn't it?
- [70:41]
A
As we speak, I am wearing a borders t shirt.
- [70:44]
C
Oh, my gosh.
- [70:45]
A
Yeah.
- [70:46]
C
Yeah.
- [70:47]
A
I love the other day. It's like, wow, this is in good shape. It's from the 90s, but what the hell.
- [70:52]
C
Yeah. Borders was great. Borders used to be right next to one of the main movie theaters in new york city that I go to. I still go to that theater. And what happens if you get there early and you didn't want to, like, just sit and wait and sit through waiting for the movie to begin. You could just go to Borders right next door and kill some time and get a refreshment or browse. It was great. It was heartbreak when that left too.
- [71:19]
A
Sure. My kids, they're sad along with me when I describe what used to be that they never experienced. Someday they're going to be sad about something they're enjoying now for their kids.
- [71:30]
C
Exactly. Exactly. The way we are with the. We don't have the Beatles.
- [71:35]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [71:36]
C
We're just reliving, you know.
- [71:38]
B
Can I just have a brief word with you? Yeah. If you never toured again, would it worry you? I don't know. No, I don't think so. Wouldn't worry. But. Because the only thing about that you see is that performance for us see, it's. It's gone downhill performance because we can't do develop when no one can hear us. You know what I mean? So for us to perform is. It's difficult. Gets difficult each time.
- [72:02]
C
You mean they don't hear you and
- [72:04]
B
therefore you don't want to do that? Oh, yeah, we want to do it. But if we're not listened to then, and we can't even hear ourselves, then we can't improve in that. We can't get any better.
- [72:17]
A
Something about the Beatles created and hosted by Robert Rodriguez, Executive producer, Producer Rick Way, title song performed by the Corgis. Something about the Beatles is an evergreen podcast.
- [72:40]
B
Are they getting together?
- [72:42]
C
Yes. Are they getting together?
- [72:44]
B
There's always a chance we were together because, you know, if we see each other, we tend to fall into that kind of mood. But I can't see us touring or anything like that. We've never discussed it. I could see us making records, you know, why not? But that touring bit, I don't quite fancy that myself.