It’s October 12th! The second week of October is full of activity throughout the Beatles’ lifetime, and– pretty much like every week for them –a windowtheir dramatically changing music and circumstances.It’s around this time in 1966thatRingo and Maureen Starr fly to Spain to visit John Lennon and watch him filming hisnon-Beatles movierole in How I WonTheWar. It’s while staying in Spain that Lennonstarts work on“Strawberry Fields Forever”.There’s a bit of that on YouTube that you should probably hear.
A year later,October 18th1967,John and his wife Cynthiaspendthe day at the Motor Show in Earls Court before heading along, with the other Beatles, to theHow I WonTheWarpremiere.And afterwards? To Cillia Black’s London apartment for drinks.This time in 1968,John willless glamorouslybesleeping on the floornext to Yoko’s bed, following her miscarriage, an image captured on the cover of their second album together Unfinished Music no2 LifeWithThe Lions.
A mere four years earlier,on October 14th1964The Beatles firstUSlabel, Vee Jay, repackages IntroducingTheBeatles as Songs PicturesAndStoriesOfTheFabulous Beatles, with a gatefold sleeve. Thiscontainsfan trivia.George Harrison? Helikes lamb chops. John Lennon? He,though near-sighted, is “a natural leader”.
It’s all in aid of cashing in on a very new phenomenon…
“I’ll Get You”
Last week, The Beatles wereon the radioplaying “I’ll Get You” on Saturday Club for Brian Matthew. This week– October 13th1963–the band are on the telly, playing it onthe biggest show in the country: Sunday NightAtTheLondon Palladium, alongside their recent hit “From MeToYou” andtheir new one,“She Loves You”.
Technically of course, “I’ll Get You” is theb-sideto “She Loves You” – but it would be foolish to say that it was “just” ab-side. Beginning with an innovative handclap rhythm, this is just the kind of thing to get a theatre and TV audience involved with the music. And it’s a classic tune, Lennon’s opening line “Imagine I’m in love with you…” inviting an audience in muchthe same wayas Paul’s use of the words “me” and “you” hadput the fan and the group in a dialogueintheirearlier releases.
Andlistenhow far that kind of thing has got them.One year after their TV debut,Bruce Forsyth is counting them downon the TV event of the week:“5…4…3…2…1…”andthe audience goes off like a rocket. Helpfully, there’s now a word for this kind of thing. In his TV column in theObserver this morning, Maurice Richardson has reviewed Don Haworth’s Mersey Beat documentaryfrom last week, and he identifies the phenomenon.
He calls it “Beatlemania”.
“Some Other Guy”
October 17th, 1962– almost exactly one year earlier, The Beatleshave a customarily busy day. They play a lunchtime session,and alsonight-time showat the Cavern. In thesmall gap between the two engagements, The Beatles travel to Manchester, where they make theirTV debut on Granada TV’s PeopleAndPlaces.
Essentiallythey’re there to promote theirdebutsingle “Love Me Do”.What may be the key to their presence on the show, however, is their stormingcover of Richie Barrett’s “Some Other Guy”, a roaring R&B single on Atlantic which the band have been taken with since it was released in April.When rumours of something stirring in a Liverpool cellar reached local TV stations inAugust, it was “Some Other Guy” that was recorded (and then shelved) fora regional bulletin calledKnowTheNorth.
It’s stillhard to find any audio of thePeopleAndPlaces performance– but if it’s anything like theversionthey playedat the BBCfor Easy Beat inJune 1963thenit’s a song which demonstrates how the Beatles hadpersonality tomakea cover versionsound like a Lennon/McCartney original. Anyone inclined to think ofGeorge Harrisonas“the quiet one”, meanwhile,probablyalsoneeds to hear how he cuts ahole in the song with his guitar solo, before letting the others put itallback together.That’s right, studio audience, you should scream.
“I Feel Fine”
We’re aware of the idea thatone of the reasonsthe Beatles stopped playing livewas because of all thatscreaming –and alsobecause they would find it hard to play their newadventurous studiomusic out in the world. In 1964,however,they were still trying.If you head over toOn Air: LiveAtThe BBC, you can hear a version of “I Feel Fine”from26thNovember 1964 in which the BBC engineers and the Beatles are both trying to perfect their performance. The engineers are attemptingto “make it good”. From the studio, John Lennon can be heard to say, “OK. We’ll try and make it good too.”
On October 18th1964, wejoinThe Beatles in EMI Studios at the start of that process.If we would like an indication of how briskly and brilliantly the group were working at this time, it might be worth noting thaton a Sunday session from 2.30pm until 11:30pm, recordingthis supremely joyful Lennon composition(complete with itsgame-changing feedbackintroandsuper-fiddly riff)wasn’t even the only thing they didthat day.Before it they finished off “Eight Days A Week”. They thenrecorded covers of “Kansas City” and “Mr Moonlight”.Then after it,they recorded Paul’s unfailingly lovely “I’ll FollowTheSun”.Apretty decentday’s work.
“Norwegian Wood”
You’ve probably heard quite a bitabout when The Beatles met Bob Dylan.Maybe asomeof it from Paul McCartneyhimself, whomakes it sound brilliant: the wired andenigmatic spokesman for ageneration pinballsinto theirNew York hotelsuite, accompanied by journalist Al Aronowitz,at some point after their gig at Forest Lawns, New York.It’s so much fun that Paul makes notes, although they don’t seem to make as much sense nowas they did the previous night.As he tells a later TV audience,his notesenigmaticallystate“There are seven levels…”
As you may have gathered, this is the night that Bob Dylan introduces the Beatles to cannabis resin.The full package of Dylan’s influence on John Lennon, however, doesn’t become fully clear untilOctober 12th1965, when The Beatles begin recording “Norwegian Wood”. Introspective andelusive,it’s abreakthrough song– which in its turn inspired Dylan’s own “Fourth Time Around”,although thatisn’t nearly so good.
Butif you think Dylan wasa biginfluence at this point, then you need to hearanother take of“Norwegian Wood”on the newRubber Soulbox set– the sitar may be an even biggerone. Doinggggg!Initcomes. And there it stays, maybe a bit too overbearinga fashionfor this song – but setting upa heavy drone which one imagines stayed in Lennon’s mind until “Tomorrow Never Knows”.
“Day Tripper”
Something about this time of year was clearly inspiring forLennon and McCartney. In the throes of the sessions for what would become Rubber Soul, thepair were able to come up with “We Can Work It Out” and “Day Tripper”.
“Day Tripper”plays a little bit sexist these days,with its references to teasing and so on,but it’s an irresistible songchieflythanks to themanic propulsion of theriff, which – much like “I Feel Fine”– draws inspiration fromBobby Parker’s “Watch Your Step”.Interesting tolisten, then, the “songwritingwork tape”extractof the songwhich appears on the new Rubber Soul box set.It’s thetop-levelLennon and McCartney woodshedding you’dexpect,theharmonies in place,the songverynearlyallthere. But the riff? Nowhere to be seen.Well, obviously.