Yellow Submarine docks in Dorset

The lovely folks at Purbeck Film Festival have asked me along to introduce a special charity screening of Yellow Submarine at the Rex cinema in Wareham on October 12.

They've invited me because of the continued local interest in Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth, particularly in the light of this year's 50th anniversaries and copies of the book will be on sale on the night, but the invite is particularly special as it means much more to me than a simple sales event.

The first films I saw as a kid were in the Rex – 40 years or more ago. My dad used to take my brother and me to see Saturday matinees – Treasure Island, various Disney films, Bond, a packet of Paynes Poppets, maybe a vanilla tub, grown ups smoking, us kids stamping our feet when the feature started and seeing the shadow of mint imperial missiles cutting a trail through the smoke as the big kids threw them from the seats up the back. I loved it.

It was about that time I first saw Yellow Submarine – sadly not on the big screen, but on the telly. I’d seen cartoons before of course, but not like that. I’d seen films with songs in as well, but nothing like that. Yellow Submarine was crackers. It wasn’t a kids’ film, but it spoke our language, or so I thought. Mum and dad definitely didn’t get it and there weren’t any older brothers or cousins around to ask. So, if it wasn’t for Them, our parents, it must have been for Us, right? Yes, but who was Us?

So anyway, I knew The Beatles were the good guys because their voices were pretty calm – good guys in the westerns always had calm voices – but there were these shouty, over-anxious blue baddies with horrible yellow teeth and a vacuum cleaner beast that the Numberjacks ripped off 40 years later and a Flying Glove and a Dog with four heads long and flowers that turned to brambles. It’s a wonder I ever slept again!

The Yellow Submarine itself was skippered by Old Fred, who reminded me of my Uncle Johnny who was in the Navy – a man who sailed to sea – and he had a beard. But I remember identifying most strongly with Jeremy, the Nowhere Man – he was a bit chubby and very serious, thought a lot about things and brooded, but Ringo liked him and took him along for the ride until he got kidnapped in the Sea of Holes, which really troubled me – holes everywhere – enough to fill the Albert Hall. Then poor Jeremy’s really in trouble, bad things happen and even as the colour comes back to Pepperland, poor Jeremy gets it again. 

Luckily though The Beatles are on hand to save the day with their music and love – well, it was the sixties!

Hope to see some of you in the stalls. The 6pm screening is in memory of Dr Moira Walker and in aid of the charity she founded, Dorset Action on Abuse and Marie Curie Cancer Care.

More about the excellent Purbeck Film Festival here.

Copies of Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth can be ordered here at the special price of £14.95.

Marvel-ous interview!

By the power of email, author Nick Churchill was interviewed by the highly rated Comic Books and Movie Reviews website this week. The text is reproduced below by kind permission or you can read it in situ here.

Do you know what? I was always confused by the Beatles song 'Money Can't Buy Me Love'. Well, I just presumed that it was about a bad past experience that the band once had, with a disgruntled prostitute in Hamburg. How the hell was I suppose to figure out that it was about the eminent social reforms in Greece, complied with a subliminal message about smoked beetroot!!! True story - my mate, Nick Churchill, told it to me, just before he started to tell me about his Bournemouth and Beatles book, ‘Yeah, Yeah, Yeah’.

For more than over 25 years now, writer, Nick Churchill has been writing professionally about music and many other things in the public eye – most of them for the Daily Echo in Bournemouth. He is a passionate music fan with broadening tastes, as well as having a love for film, theatre, art, and literature. Presently, he is 45 years old and lives in a Dorset village with his partner, who, in conjunction with his 17-year-old son, Jack, has been kind enough to pull him back whenever he has gotten lost in Pepperland whilst writing his book.

What now follows is an interview I conducted with Nick about his book.

CBAMR: What book?

NC: Now ‘this book’ – entitled ‘Yeah, Yeah, Yeah’ – is the definitive account of the many and unexpected connections between a small town on the south coast of England and the greatest rock 'n' roll group the world has ever seen. It's a kind of biography of the relationship, plotting the story of both parties before they met and after the stopped seeing one another. The connection goes back to the very first time John, Paul, and George, played together as the Silver Beetles right up to the funeral of John's aunt Mimi in 1991 – which was attended by Cynthia, Julian, Yoko, and Sean. Also, the subsequent sale and eventual destruction in 1994, of the home John had bought for her at Sandbanks - back in 1965. John was a frequent visitor until he and Yoko left for New York in 1971, enjoying boat trips around Poole Harbour and up the River Frome to Wareham ('picture yourself on a boat on a river...'!) and called it 'one of the loveliest places I know'.

CBAMR: In your opinion, which Beatles song best represents 'Yeah, Yeah, Yeah', and why?

NC: Now there are a couple of contenders, but I would have to say it is ‘She Loves You’. The title of the book is taken from the song's refrain and was chosen because ‘She Loves You’ was released on the Friday of The Beatles' six day summer season of shows at the Bournemouth Gaumont from 19-24 August 1963. Although they were already big news and chart topping stars, those shows were among last they played before full scale Beatlemania broke out. All week they introduced ‘She Loves You’ as their new single and encouraged the audience to buy it. After it came out on Friday 23 August 1963, it went on to become their biggest selling UK single – and still is.

The sound of them singing 'yeah yeah yeah' became shorthand for Beatlemania as it headed for the number one spot. They played two shows a day for six days and while they were certainly lively, with some screaming, not all of them were sold out.

A recording of one of the shows captured the band on great form - their version of ‘Baby It's You’ is particularly impressive with its close harmonies and John's chilling lead vocal. The point being, you can actually hear them play and understand the banter with the audience. The term Beatlemania was coined by the Daily Mirror just two weeks before they came back to Bournemouth to play the much larger Winter Gardens venue on 16 November 1963. By then the screaming in the audience all but drowned out the band.

The Beatles went on the play more shows (16 in total) at the Bournemouth Gaumont than any other UK theatre outside London.

CBAMR: If Bournemouth was a Beatle, which one would this costal town be, and why?

NC: That's an interesting question. Much like The Beatles, Bournemouth has many different faces. It's quite a young town (it celebrated its bicentenary in 2010) and can't boast the thousand years of history of its neighbours Poole and Christchurch. Like John, it can be brash, a little wild and irreverent, not always getting things right but brim-full of the confidence to try. Like Paul, it is charming, sweet but fiercely ambitious and quite calculating in its methods. Like George, it has a quite confidence with a mysterious side that has seen literary figures like Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, Percy Florence Shelley and Paul Verlaine drawn to the town. Like Ringo, Bournemouth likes a good time, is generally cheerful and holds a rock solid beat. It could also be Brian – whose father, Harry, died in Bournemouth in 1967 – because it is naturally conservative, profitable and shrewd.

CBAMR: What was the main reason for you to write this book?

NC: I grew up about 15 miles from Bournemouth and have been sharing stories about The Beatles playing in Bournemouth since I was a kid. I sang along to their records on the radiogram as a child and a fascination with their music and story stayed with me all throughout my youth and into my professional life as a journalist. A few years ago, a contact of mine bought a set of rare and unseen photos of The Beatles taken in Bournemouth at auction. The photos were by Harry Taylor, a freelance press photographer who had worked for the Bournemouth Echo and the Bournemouth Times in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. He captured The Beatles in their dressing room, posing on a hotel balcony, at dinner, at a party, being interviewed etc. He had incredible access to the band and produced wonderful documentary-style photos. Coupled with the various significant connections between Bournemouth and The Beatles, the photos made a book the next obvious step. When I was made redundant by the Bournemouth Echo last Christmas, I suddenly found that I had the time to write the book as I established myself as a freelance writer.

CBAMR: Is there any exclusives in your book, that would make it any different to any of the other Beatles related publications?

NC: Many of the photos have never been seen before, or not seen since 1963 or 1964. Harry Taylor had incredible access to The Beatles and got some great photos that neither the Bournemouth Echo nor Bournemouth Times of the day made full use of. There are also the memories of photographer Tom Hanley and the day he spent with Mimi at her home – at John's request just before he left for New York – in 1971 photographing and generally making a fuss of her. The photos and story of David Stark's weekend at Mimi' house in 1981, a few months after John's death, have never been published before. There are various anecdotes about The Beatles, such as the fleet of ice cream vans used to distract fans as they were ferried from their hotel to the venue in August 1963, that have never been published before.

CBAMR: What is your favourite Beatles Album, and why?

NC: That's a tough question, it changes all the time. I've always loved ‘Revolver’ because it is their most complete record and a real triumph of creativity when you consider they were still touring when they wrote the songs and recorded the album. They had more time to spend on ‘Sgt Pepper’ and it shows, but on ‘Revolver’ they managed to meld so many musical ideas and produce great lyrics as well. They sound like they're enjoying their freedom as well. That said, ‘Rubber Soul’ comes close to it for exactly the same reasons - George's guitar playing is particularly effective. Lately I've given more time to earlier albums like ‘With the Beatles’ (the cover shot was taken at the Palace Court Hotel in Bournemouth) and ‘A Hard Day's Night’ which are more subtle than many people think – there's a lot of music going on there from country & western to show tunes as well as John's throat-ripping rock vocals. Abbey Road also has some splendid moments that makes me wonder what they cold have gone on to achieve had they stayed together.

It took me years to write, will you take a look?

Beatles fans Arthur Macfarlane (left) and Martin Bartlett, who appears in the book, with me at the Beatles Day launch event in Bournemouth in September. Photo by Richard Crease, Daily Echo

People keep asking me, so how did I come to write a book about The Beatles?  After all, it’s not like there’s any shortage of Beatles books, many of them written by people far more qualified to do so than me. But the thing with The Beatles, more than any band before or since, is their music belongs to all of us.

Nearly 50 years after they released their first single, The Beatles’ music is almost part of human DNA, something that connects young and old alike across national boundaries, a shared consciousness. Man.

Which is a roundabout way of explaining how The Beatles left their mark on my tender ears growing up in the late 1960s and 1970s in the village of Stoborough on the Isle of Purbeck in South Dorset, at least hundreds of miles away from anywhere to do with The Beatles. Or so I thought.

I don’t know why dad and mum had three Beatles' singles in the radiogram because they weren’t fans, but those records constitute my earliest musical memories. I used to tape a hairbrush to the Ewbank carpet cleaner and sang along to I Want To Hold Your Hand, I Feel Fine and Can’t Buy Me Love so many times I still know the words by heart.

All through the punk rock wars and into my immersion in the Mod revival, those songs stayed with me. They were there when I was dancing to Northern Soul all night and right at home next to later passions like The Stone Roses. By the time their mix of classic guitar pop and dance music’s sensibilities had morphed into Britpop I was less concerned with music of the moment and far happier in the broad church of sound to which The Beatles ministered.

(It’s worth noting that childhood exposure to The Beatles also instilled in me a healthy distrust of heavy metal and it’s bratty American cousin, grunge. I Hate Myself and Want To Die? Not round our way, Kurt!)

And so to Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth…

I first heard stories about Beatles’ concerts as a kid. They always seemed to be told by hairy hippy types with acoustic guitars and too many folk records who had ‘grown out of all that’, but when pressed would reveal they had such tremendous fun. By the time I heard the first Clash album I already knew about The Beatles playing in Bournemouth so when Clash fans rioted in the Winter Gardens in 1977 and the town’s burghers called for punk rock to be banned, I knew it couldn’t have been much worse than Beatles fans wetting the seats more than a decade earlier.

I was further tantalised a few years later when an old boy on Wareham Quay correctly spotted the Beatles reference in the Nelson cap I was sporting on top of my teenage Mod regalia and told me John Lennon had a drink in the Quay Inn one night. He couldn’t add to the story, didn’t talk to the Beatle, just noticed he’d come in the pub. A few months later I got up to go to school and dad told me John Lennon had been shot dead. That made me sad.

And ever since then I’ve never been far from a Beatles story with a Dorset connection. There’s the waterside home John Lennon bought his beloved aunt Mimi at Sandbanks, the instantly recognisable half-shadow cover shot for With The Beatles that was taken in the Palace Court Hotel in Bournemouth, George Harrison writing his first song in the same hotel, American newsreel footage of the Winter Gardens concert, people who met The Beatles and McCartney’s ex-Wings-man, sax player Howie Casey who was there the first time John, Paul and George played as the Silver Beetles. He said they were rubbish, but when they joined him in the fleshpots of Hamburg a few months later they were well on their way to becoming the greatest band the world has ever known.

The stories mounted up, my interest only grew, but was I alone? Who else could share this passion for the improbable links between The Beatles and Bournemouth? 

The die was finally cast when, after more than 20 years plying my trade in regional journalism, I was granted access to a cache of rare and previously unpublished photographs of The Beatles taken in Bournemouth. 

What else could I do but start writing?

- Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth is available now from www.beatlesandbournemouth.com

- An exhibition of rare and previously unseen photographs from the book can be seen at the Central Library in Bournemouth until 18 January. Copies of selected prints from the book can be bought here.