There's plenty of activity going on over at The Beatles Social Network. Basically, it's like Facebook but only for Beatles fans. Pretty simple, eh?
Set up by Liddypool author Dave Bedford, it's free to join and a splendid time is guaranteed for all... or something like that. Invite friends, post photos, comments, video clips and music; trade Beatles stories, read articles and generally immerse yourself in all things Beatles.
As ever with these things, it's what you make it.
See you over there!
A chronicle of the part a small resort town on the south coast of England played in the story of the greatest rock 'n' roll group the world has ever known
24 April 2012
19 April 2012
The Byrds and The Beatles
Of all the stories connecting The Beatles and Bournemouth,
one of the most intriguing is the enduring legend of The Byrds and the Beatles.
The story goes that the crowd screams heard on The Byrds’
1967 single, So You Want To Be A Rock ’n’
Roll Star were lifted from a TV camera crew’s ambient recording of a
Beatles audience at the Winter Gardens in Bournemouth on 16 November 1963.
Of course it’s known that the three American TV networks –
CBS, ABC and NBC – all had crews at the Winter Gardens show and that CBS
broadcast the first footage of The Beatles on US television in a CBS Morning News report on 22 November. CBS
owned Columbia Records – home to The Byrds – so the connection is clear.
But the waters are muddied by none other than The Beatles’
arch publicist Derek Taylor who flew the nest at the end of their first
American tour in 1964. Having started his own PR company in California, The
Byrds were among his first clients and he was instrumental in positioning the
group as the folk-flavoured American incarnation of The Beatles.
Never one to let the truth get in the way of an entertaining
tale, Taylor would doubtless appreciate the confusion that has arisen since
reliable sources such as David Fricke’s liner notes to the
1996 CD reissue of The Byrds’ Younger
Than Yesterday album and Johnny Rogan’s widely admired Byrds’ biography Timeless Flight Revisited both insist
the screaming crowd was recorded by Taylor at Roger McGuinn’s request at a
Byrds concert on 15 August 1965 at the Gaumont, Bournemouth.
In the
course of researching Yeah Yeah Yeah: The
Beatles & Bournemouth I spoke to two people who saw The Byrds at the
Gaumont that August and neither recalled any screaming at all, let alone the
wall of noise that can be heard on So
You Want To Be A Rock ’n’ Roll Star.
The other acts on the bill – Donovan,
Elkie Brooks, Them, Kenny Lynch, Johnny B Great & the Quotations and
Charles Dickens – were not known for eliciting ecstatic responses from their mid-60s audiences either.
And if further evidence were needed, session musician and
songwriter Graham Dee who wrote, recorded and toured with Elkie Brooks, Them
and the Quotations, as well as countless other acts including the Walker
Brothers, recalls the band as an, at best, unreliable proposition on stage.
“I remember one show with The Byrds, I can’t remember who I
was playing with, it might have been the Walkers, and the crowd was getting so
restless while The Byrds
tuned up on stage the management hauled them off and
sent us back on in case there was a riot,” he told me.
But whether or not So
You Want To Be A Rock ’n’ Roll Star includes the screams of young
Bournemouthians we’ll probably never know.
: Poster and programme from the Donovan/ Byrds show at the Finsbury Park Astoria the night before they played Bournemouth.
: Copies of Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth are available from www.beatlesandbournemouth.com as are art prints of several of the rare and previously unpublished photos from the book.
: The author's review of Roger McGuinn's show at Lighthouse Poole can be read here.
8 April 2012
Bournemouth in The Ballad of John & Yoko
The episode is covered in this extract from Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth...
On
12 March Paul McCartney married Linda Eastman in London and just two days
later, John (who had divorced Cynthia the previous
August) announced he was to marry Yoko Ono. On
a visit to Aunt Mimi at Sandbanks John sent his chauffeur, Les Anthony, to
Southampton to find out if he and Yoko could marry at sea. Having been told
that would not be possible they chartered a private jet to take them to Paris,
but were unable to arrange a wedding at short notice so opted to “get married
in Gibraltar near Spain”, as related in The Beatles’ final number one single, The Ballad Of John and Yoko.
The song also represented something like the spirit of The Beatles
of old. Although mainly written by John, it was finished by Lennon and
McCartney at Paul’s home on 14 April and recorded the same evening with the two
playing all the instruments as George was on holiday and Ringo was away filming
The Magic Christian.
Buoyed by this new spirit The Beatles
regrouped, went back to basics and made Abbey
Road. It was released on 26 September, returning the group to the top of
the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.
For a finely detailed account of the song's genesis, recording and release - as well as a raw version of the finished track without overdubs - take a look at the redoubtable Beatles Rarity website post.
Signed copies of Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth and limited edition prints of previously unpublished photos from the book can be ordered here.
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