George Harrison

[Meatus]

Coming first to Jonone's point. I wasn't getting at McCartney. I definitely see both points of the argument. Since very early in the bands career up until roughly the Help! album, Lennon was the driving force of the group, and 10 out of the 13 Lennon/McCartney collaborations on the album were written by him. Around about Rubber Soul & Revolver the partnership was still fairly equal, though still operating as seperate composers they were bringing in roughly the same amount of material as each other. But around this point McCartney started edging ahead of Lennon in terms of getting his songs on A-Sides of singles & from Sgt. Peppers.... onwards he was the driving force of the band. There is absolutely no doubt that the band would have split up after Revolver if it wasn't for Paul. And they definitely would have imploded after Pepper if it wasn't for Paul. But from the others point of view, particularly Harrison, then Lennon. They saw McCartney as a school master, and a stickler for getting songs "just so". They felt they had worked so hard and achieved all their fame to allow them more time to work on things and other projects. And for more relaxation in the studio. McCartney ever the perfectionist in the studio, would not or could not allow this to happen. But without him the group would have lost much of their focus. Let's not forget that a mere 3 days after finishing recording on Sgt Peppers which took the band almost 6 months to record he had the group back in the studio recording the title track to a film he had thought up called 'Magical Mystery Tour'. He wanted to crack on straight away so as not to give the others anytime to come up with anything else outside the group. The film was messy, his only idea was that the film would be about the band taking a Charabanc trip on a bus. He had no script & drew a big circle on a piece of paper and filled in sections of ideas he had (like a pie chart) of what they would film. McCartney ended up the de facto director, but anyone could fill in a section of the circle with an idea and it would be filmed (ie Lennon's idea of being a waiter & serving a fat lady spaghetti with a shovel). But both Lennon & particularly Harrison enjoyed filming the movie. And were as shocked as McCartney by the critical backlash the film received. Remember McCartney's ego was such that he insisted on Michaelangelo Antonioni visiting his home while he was filming 'Blow-up' and showing him his own 35mm films! But yes certainly, without McCartney, they wouldn't have made as much work and we would have definitely lost out on "The White Album", "Abbey Road" and "Let It Be".

McCartney announced that he was leaving The Beatles before Let It Be was released and he released his solo album "McCartney" a full month before Let It Be. This was to get his album out first & get it ahead on sales and to show that when Let It Be was released it was by a defunct band. Instead of giving interviews for the album, he sent out copies of the LP with cardboard Q&A's to the press of general questions they would want to know. Stating "he did not know whether the groups break-up would be temporary or permanent".

From the Beatles break-up till the 80's Paul & George did have nothing to do with one another. They never spoke or where in the same room together. Though publicly, there was a bigger fued with John and Paul. John was genuinely angry that Paul had ended the group as he had wanted to. Then John accused Paul of writing songs about him on "Ram", specifically the songs "Too Many People", "Dear Boy" and "3 Legs" and having a photo on the sleeve of 2 beetles having sex or as Lennon put it "1 beatle fucking another beatle in the ass". Which McCartney later confirmed were aimed at John. In reply to this John mocked a photo of himself in the "Ram" cover photo on an insert of his "Imagine" album, though instead of holding a Ram he was holding a Pig as he sais "Paul is nothing but a pig". And he recorded the scathing attack on McCartney "How Do You Sleep?" which included the lines "So Sgt. Peppers took you by surprise? You better see right through your mothers lies". "Those freaks was right when they said you was dead" (referring to the "Paul Is Dead" controversy). "The only thing you done was Yesterday/And since you've gone you're just Another Day" which is a reference to McCartney's song "Yesterday" and his 1st solo single "Another Day". As well as the line that McCartney claims upset him the most "The sound you make is Muzak to my ears" referring to Lennon's ascertation that McCartney composed "Elevator Music". The chorus was also originally "How Do You Sleep, How Do You Sleep you Cunt!" Before being changed to "How do you sleep, How do you sleep at night?" This is the sessions for the album "Imagine" which Harrison played on that you are referring to, he played on the tracks "Oh My Love", "Oh! Yoko", "I Don't Wanna Be A Soldier", "Crippled Inside", "It's So Hard", "How?", "Gimme Some Truth" and "How Do You Sleep". He plays a fantastic solo on "Gimme Some Truth" and possibly the greatest solo of his entire career on "How Do You Sleep". That is one of the things with that song, although its particularly scathing, its such a good song. Easily in Lennon's Top 5 solo recordings. Harrison also played on Lennon's "Instant Karma" single and wrote and played on Ringo's song "Photograph" himself, Lennon & McCartney all wrote songs for Ringo's album "Ringo" With Harrison writing 3 tracks, McCartney composing 1 and Lennon composing 1 track "I'm The Greatest" which Starr, Lennon & Harrison all played on together provoking furious Beatle reunion rumours. McCartney also played on his composition on the album "Six O' Clock" making this the 1st time all 4 Beatles had appeared on the same album since the split. After the release of the "Imagine" album and specifically "How Do You Sleep?" Paul wrote a reply on his Wings "Wildlife" album called "Dear Friend" which is such a beautiful song and questions how they had come to this point in their relationship, whilst attempting a reconciliation. This song shows that McCartney is not the emotional lightweight that many people think he is. Lennon's antipathy towards McCartney cooled, especially as you rightly pointed out that McCartney was right about Allen Klein. And during Lennon's "lost weekend" apart from Ono, McCartney and him recorded at the Record Plant in LA. May Pang who was Lennon's lover at this time reportedly has the results on tape! They were also friendly from 1975 till Lennon's death in 1980. They also spent the day together on April 24 1976 in New York and in Lennon's apartment in the Dakota just a month after Paul's dad died. They spent some time reminiscing and playing guitar and watched Saturday Night Live were Lorne Michaels parodied the Million dollar offers they were getting for Beatles reunions saying he would pay them $3000 to perform. Lennon and McCartney both confirmed they almost went to the studio as a gag, but decided not to. Lennon also says of their relationship post '75 "That was a period when Paul just kept turning up at our door with a guitar. I would let him in, but finally I said to him, 'Please call before you come over. It's not 1956 and turning up at the door isn't the same anymore. You know, just give me a ring.' He was upset by that, but I didn't mean it badly. I just meant that I was taking care of a baby all day and some guy turns up at the door". All through this time Harrison still wasn't talking to McCartney. Harrison and McCartney were reunited on Harrison's tribute song to Lennon after his death "All Those Years Ago" and again at Starr's wedding to Barbara Bach. Following which they were friendly again until 1986 when Harrison, Starr and Ono all sued McCartney. Only for the pair to be reunited again at the "Free As A Bird" session and subsequent "Anthology" project. Though some of the scenes on "Anthology" at Friar Park are rather frosty, with the 2 of them together. And they were supposed to record 3 new tracks for the "Anthology", "Free As A Bird" for Anthology 1, "Real Love" for Anthology 2 and an un-named 3rd track of Lennon's which Harrison vetoed as he didn't like the other two!

As for Allen Klein you are dead right, after Brian Epstein died the running of Apple was left to his assistant Alistair Taylor. But the Beatles had a majority say over everything and wasted money on Apple Films, The Apple Boutique, Apple Electronics and Zapple. The only thing that made money was Apple Records. Thats when they decided to get Allen Klein in, though Paul was against it preferring Lee Eastman, who was Linda's Father. The other Beatles vetoed that by saying he would be biased for you against us. With a 3 to 1 vote it should have meant Klein was giving the nod, so McCartney left Apple and signed with Eastman, the other 3 went with Klein. And Taylor was fired and replaced with Neil Aspinall. The other Beatles sacked Klein in the 70's and took him to court. McCartney now vindicated conveniently forgot that he proposed Allen Klein to take over as their manager in 1966 when he got the Rolling Stones a ?2 million advance from Decca. The "smelling like an Alley cat" line came from a song called "Steel & Glass" from Lennon's 1974 album "Walls & Bridges" which is about Klein and a sort of sequal of "How Do You Sleep" using the same string melody only this time played on horns.

The Stones still rue signing with Allen Klein and Klein's company ABKCO own all of the Stones material from 1964-1970 from "The Rolling Stones" up to "Get Your Ya-Ya's Out" and ABKCO and Rolling Stones records own shared copyright to the songs "Wild Horses" and "Brown Sugar". Because of this, i'm not sure if many of you know, but in the 60's albums released by bands in the UK were released with different track listings, less tracks, with singles added to them, so the labels could eek out extra albums in the States. When in the 80's CD became popular US Beatles albums like "Beatles Today!" "Beatles 65", "Beatles VI", "Yesterday...And Today" were discontinued and the UK versions became the Universal versions, ie the proper track configurations. Not so with The Stones, because Klein owns them, he released all the US versions and discontinued the UK versions. Thats why you can buy "The Rolling Stones Now!" and not "The Rolling Stones No.2" and you get "December's Children (And Everybody's)" and "Flowers" plus the US configurations of "Out Of Our Heads" and "After-Math" which are totally different from the original UK versions.

[steve56]

Thought he was a Krishna nut taken in with religion like Cliff Richard!

[max_tranmere]

Meatus, I'm impressed with how much you know about The Beatles. Did you know all the info previously or did you research it for what you typed there? Either way I am impressed.

I get the impression The Beatles viewed everything they did in their later years as "this is bound to be good because it is us doing it", and they became rather big-headed. The music was without a doubt superb and will always be viewed as such, but some other things were just awful.

The Magical Mystery Tour film is a heap of garbage, and I am glad it was panned by critics. I imagine the conversation probably went something like this:

Paul: "Let's make a film, it will be unscripted and we do whatever we like."

John: "I had a dream, I was shovelling spagetti onto a woman's plate with an industrial shovel. We can film that as a scene for the movie."

Paul: "Good idea. I have an idea where we can film it all, a decommissioned military base in Kent. It has runways. We can film a coach going round in circles on the slipways. Mr Richard Starkey can be the lead character, but we will all feaure - doing stupid things. We'll film the spagetti shovelling scene too. It sounds like fun!"

John: "Sounds good. Pass me that joint will you."


From Wikipedia:

STARTS
"Most of the band members have quoted that the initial idea was Paul McCartney?s, although he stated, ?I?m not sure whose idea Magical Mystery Tour was. It could have been mine, but I?m not sure whether I want to take the blame for it! We were all in on it ? but a lot of the material at that time could have been my idea.?
ENDS

From that, it sounds like even McCartney is acknowledging later that the film was rubbish, and his ego seems to have been put back in its box somewhat by the awful reviews it got.

More from Wikipedia:
STARTS
"Criticism. The British public's reaction to the film was scathing."
ENDS

Scathing criticism is what this heap of nonsense deserved!

[Jonone]

Max, it was experimental. I doubt it was intended to be coherent. No-one was marched to the cinema at gunpoint.

[max_tranmere]

Look at this nonsense:

[max_tranmere]

No, but an artist should put out the best work they can, not something that is intentionally stupid.

[Jonone]

That's like saying something like Picasso's Guernica is 'intentionally stupid'.

That's your view of The Magical Mystery Tour, savaged by Max Tranmere for it's disimilarity to Hard Day's Night & Help.

[Meatus]

Max all the information i wrote, i already know. I'm a huge Beatles fan, and not only a huge fan of the music, but i am well read on the group too. I think everything i've said can probably be found elsewhere only written better. Obviously i've read the main books on the subject ie The holy bible for Beatles fans - "Revolution in the Head" by Ian MacDonald. And "Shout" by Phillip Norman. Those 2 are seen as the essential purchases for anyone reading about the group. Actually there is 3, the 3rd one being the "Complete Sessions" by Mark Lewisohn but that is only of interest to anyone interested in knowing the specific recording dates, sessions etc. "Revolution in the Head" is about the songs, the band, the counterculture and the 60's. And "Shout" is a straight forward biography. Though anyone reading "Shout" should take note that its biased against McCartney, so its a good idea to balance this with "McCartney: Many Years From Now" by Barry Miles & "McCartney: The Definitive Biography" by Chris Salewicz. Also "The Beatles: The Authorised Biography" By Hunter Davies is a decent read if incomplete. For Lennon see "Lennon: The Definitive Biography" by Ray Coleman which is an essential read. If you want a totally biased and defamation character assassination of Lennon (and yes, i know he was no Saint) then read The Many Lives Of John Lennon, which is full of unsubstantiated stories & is slovenely written and researched. In fact the book is more of a character assassination of Ono as it is of Lennon.

Getting back to topic, i actually enjoy the "Magical Mystery Tour" - No its not as good as "A Hard Days Night" but its better than "Help!" ok it doesn't have a cohesive story and its based on absurdism. But taken in that context its actually rather enjoyable. No there was no script & there was hours and hours of unscripted footage that they had to rake through and turn into a 90 minute movie. The reason it was so panned is, the Beatles did a deal with the BBC to screen it on TV. The BBC showed it on Christmas Day, straight after the Queens speech & inexplicably screened it in Black & White. Can you just imagine stuffy Brits of 1967 getting the grandparents around and eating Christmas Dinner & drinking sherry whilst the Magical Mystery Tour was on? At least it caused a bit of debate. If rendered uncinematic with the decision to screen in Black & White. For me though it has Ivor Cutler, it has a great dance sequence for "Your Mother Should Know" the band performing "I Am The Walrus" and for me the best scene, the band going to the strip club and watching "The Bonzo Dog Doh Dah Band" sing "Death Cab For Cutie" which is brilliant. In America it was shown in the cinema in colour (or color) and was much more warmly received. Though it was around about this time that parents started detaching themselves from the group and talk amongst them of the group becoming "strange" whereas before they were loved by children & parents alike.

[Meatus]

I actually have this album, its incredible it caused such a furore!!

This has to do with what i said about the US releases of albums. From 1963-1966 The Beatles released 7 albums in the UK but in America they released 12 albums. This was because in the UK singles released by the group were invariably left off of the albums, so as not to be seen to "rip-off" or "short change" the fans. Also the standard number of tracks on the UK LP was 14 were Stateside it was 12. So removing 6 tracks off of an album and adding 2 singles and the 2 b-sides Capitol in America had an album, plus 6 songs left over & a few singles later and presto a Brand New Album. The Beatles hated this practice as it meant songs were being released out of sequence and often older material was on albums with newer material that was more advanced as the group had progressed. During this time their 7 UK albums were as follows:

Please Please Me (1963), With the Beatles (1963), A Hard Days Night (1964), Beatles For Sale (1964), Help! (1965), Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966) in America the 12 albums released during the same time span was:

Introducing The Beatles (1963), Meet The Beatles (1964), The Beatles Second Album (1964), Something New (1964), A Hard Days Night (1964), Beatles '65 (1964), The Early Beatles (1965), Beatles VI (1965), Help! (1965), Rubber Soul (1965), Yesterday....And Today (1966) and Revolver (1966) (The reason that The Beatles Second Album was titled thus but was their third US album, was because Introducing The Beatles was released on VEEJAY, Before Capitol released Meet The Beatles. So it was their 2nd Capitol album, but 3rd US album overall).

Because of this practice Capitol records managed to squeeze out an extra Beatles album, "Yesterday....And Today" 2 months before "Revolver" was released and featuring 3 tracks from the upcoming "Revolver" album. Which was much resented at the time by British fans and infuriated the group as a result of this "Revolver" was released in the US with only 11 tracks a mutilation by Capitol to the record for whom The Beatles more than anything they had recorded before was an integral set and was meant to be listened to as a whole. The 3 tracks that were removed were "I'm Only Sleeping", "And Your Bird Can Sing" and "Dr Robert" the Beatles felt that the album was "Butchered" hence "The Butcher Cover". Pristine copies of this album with "The Butcher" cover sell for a small fortune!

Also as an interesting aside, because of this practice, "Rubber Soul" was released in America with a different track listing and was marketed as "Folk Rock" heralding the big "Folk Rock" movement. And impressing Brian Wilson so much that he set out to record "Pet Sounds" to better it. Capitol gave the false impression that the Beatles set out to record a "Folk Rock" record, which was not true the US version was a composite. And the tracks are :

"I've Just Seen A Face", "Norwegian Wood", "You Won't See Me", "Think For Yourself", "The Word", "Michelle", "It's Only Love", "Girl", "I'm Looking Through You", "In My Life", "Wait" and "Run For Your Life"

[steve56]

Worth thousdands i believe but i wouldnt give a fiver .