Beatle Myths and Legends 1 – Sid Bernstein Addendum

EXCEPT:

Sid Bernstein

I, personally remember standing in the shower of a house we lived in for only a few months in winter of 1963 and wondering how this British fad my then husband told me about spelled and/or pronounced their odd name: “Beatles” or “Beetles”. I heard about Fluxis from him as well and I assumed at the time he’d learned of both from some publication available at the Peabody College Art Department.

So, does anyone have a clue what Sid Bernstein and John Kavich read in Feburary, 1963 that mentioned The Beatles?

Beatle Myths and Legends 1 – Sid Bernstein

Most of us know the story about Bernstein taking a class in the winter of 1963 that required him to read an English newspaper once a week. From these papers he learned about the rise of Beatlemania in Britain and he decided to promote a concert for them in the US. In February of 63 he got in touch with Brian Epstein and they informally contracted for two concerts at Carnegie Hall for Feb. 12, 1964.

It’s a lovely story but it’s unlikely to the point of impossibility. In Feb. of 63 the Beatles issued their second single, Please Please Me which went to the top of most of the British charts. Later that month they recorded 10 songs in less then 10 hours for their first album. Certainly the music press did carry notices of the song reaching the charts and no doubt the Liverpool Echo carried some sort of story about ‘home town boys make good,’ as well as Tony Barrow’s Disker column. Was Bernstein reading the British music press? (Were these specialist newspapers available on New York newsstands?) Could he have read a copy of the Liverpool Echo or the Manchester Guardian which probably carried some sort of story about girls mobbing the Beatles after they recorded a TV appearance there? Was he reading Mersey Beat? :(sarcasm alert)

Certainly he did NOT read any newspaper about “Beatlemania” as he claims because the word wasn’t invented until the first stories appeared in the “National press,” in effect the London dailies, until October 14, 1963 reporting on the crowd of fans outside the London Palladium the night before when the Beatles appeared on the British equivalent of the Ed Sullivan show.

The bottom line is that no matter what newspapers Sid read in Feb. 1963, he did NOT read about Beatlemania until the middle of October. I consider it rather unlikely that he read newspapers from a variety of English cities and towns in January and February of that year and if he had, there really wasn’t much written about the Beatles until a good bit later in the year. He may have kept up with the British pop charts in which case there wasn’t much to notice about the Beatles at least until their first album and third single came out later in the spring and rather quickly made an indisputable #1.

Because of London’s prejudice against the North of England and the “odd” fact that until the Palladium show somehow the Beatles didn’t play any real London venues on their tours, the national press didn’t know them and didn’t want to know them. It took months for Dezo Hoffman to talk his paper into sending him to Liverpool to take pictures of them as it did Maureen Cleve to get an assignment to write about the group. Certainly Tony Barrow had been trying, with virtually no success, to get stories in both the London papers and the national music press. It took a gathering of young people numbering something between 8 and 800 depending on who is talking to get the press’ attention – and a slow, Sunday news night.

The question is just what newspapers was Sid reading in January and February of 1963 that convinced him that the Beatles were making a big splash in England and that it would be a major coup to be the first to bring them to America. The answer is that there is no paper he could have been reading that would tell him anything much at all about the Beatles at that time. This is only one of the widely accepted Beatle stories that a look at a calendar will call into serious question.

Concert in Atlanta

I attended Paul’s concert in Piedmont Park, Atlanta, GA last night via the cell phone of a friend who had volunteered to help in setting up the park for the concert. The volunteers were given special passes to the show and I asked him to let me “attend” the concert briefly through his phone. My thought when word of the concert first came out that it would be cool to just be somewhere around the edge of the park to overhear it — but Atlanta is a couple hundred miles away and doing that sort of thing in a wheel chair means a lot of effort particularly for whoever is pushing the chair.

My friend was pleased at the idea. I mentioned it on one of the McCartney mail lists and Steve Marinucci read it and asked if I would let him publish my report in his Examiner column. So if you want to read about my concert experience as I “live blogged” it, visit his column at http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-2082-Beatles-Examiner~y2009m8d15-Paul-McCartney-Atlanta-report-1–concert-report–by-phone

I had a wonderful time and still have a contact high from it.

Paul in Atlanta

Reviews — Again

I just finished reading The Beatles; Off the Record by Keith Badman and I recommend it heartily to serious Beatle students. There’s quite a lot there that I haven’t found elsewhere. One thing I like is that he gives the questions and answers before and after bits that have been quoted by everybody and frequently it puts a different spin on it then it had when presented as a stand-alone. It’s a ‘heavy’ read in both length and information content and also has some very nice photos that you don’t see everywhere.

I thoroughly enjoyed a page-plus on the Mad Day Out photo session. They were/are interesting photos and the commentary from one of the photographers involved was interesting. There’s simply too much in the book to light on specifics and each of us will find diffferent things to be delighted with in any case.

I also recently got the DVD Composing the Beatles Songbook http://www.blastmagazine.net/dvd%27s/dvd%20reviews/composingthebeatlessongbook.html

They picked a dozen people, mostly musical folks and discussed John and Paul as composers. I have really fallen in love with it. I’ve played it twice, paying very close attention each time and I expect to watch it several times more. One thing that really turned me on is that one of the participants, Chris Ingham (musicologist, author, Beatles Academic) chose to really look at For No One, a Paul song that I had some time ago identified as an extremely insightful and serious song that has been completely overlooked.

You may not agree with everything on it, I certainly don’t but it does really add to an understanding of the music.

I apologize yet again. It’s obvious that I’m not going to be able to post regularly. This time it was health, family concerns and computer complications. The computer problems seem to be completely solved — at least as much as such are ever solved — and hopefully that will help keep the other things from having such a negative effect on my work.

A few quick book reviews.

The Beatles Literary Anthology; Mike Evans, Ed. I enjoyed this collection ofserious and not so serious writings about the Beatles; balanced, occasionally insightful and occasionally amusing. Worth bothering with by serious Beatles students.

Band on the Run: A History of Paul McCartney and Wings; Garry McGee. I give this a VERY low score on accuracy. More then a sentence here without acknowledgement are taken verbatim from either Solewicz or Flippo (neither of whom are more then occasionally accurate as well as being more hostile to Paul then not. It does have a few nice Photos. The chart statistics gathered in the back are interesting as his analysis of them. Very light weight and a good 20 years out of date.

Paul McCartney; 20 Years on His Own; Edward Gross. Except for a few nice quotes I havn’t seen elsewhere, copy the above review.

In My Life, Encounters with The Beatles; Edited by Robert  Cording, Shelli Jankowski-Smith and EJ Miller Laino. Another collection that in no way stands equal in interest to the above Anthology nor Read the Beatles. The ONLY book about the Beatles that plunged me into immediate and rather deep depression! A true loser in my opinion. Worn to transparency, they are the lost surviving examples of late-blooming pseudo intellectualists with sad, blurred pretensions of cool.

Paul McCartney; Behind the Myth; Ross Benson; The accurate subtitle would be “How Paul Destroyed the Beatles and Was A Failure Alone.” Possibly the ugliest of all the carefully chosen photos of Paul on the cover. The author is obsessed with the idea that Jim McCartney was what was wrong with Paul — a theory that gets old fast. his antipathy for Paul hints at a personal grudge. Among other problems, like ‘edited’ material offered between quotation marks and some untruths that appear to be the author’s own, it’s an inept hatchet job considered against similar books.

McCartney, Christopher Sandford.  It would be far easier to mark the true statements rather then the errors. Unflattering photographs abound He combines the prose of a WWII war correspondent for Hustler with the hysterical hatred as intense as the Pope’s toward Martin Luther. All in all, I wonder what the name of his failed garage band was.

Meet the Beatles, A Cultural History of the Band That Shook Youth, Gender, and the World; Steven D. Stark.  I strongly disagree with some of his sociological theories and many of the quotations  are grossly time-shifted — without acknowledgement of that fact. He attributes most jointly composed songs to John alone. Included are several weird “what ifs” that are completely pointless. He greatly overrates the “sexless” image of the early Beatles — which is NOT the way he came over to most young females! Not a bad read and he does have some interesting theories. Of the lot I reviewed this morning, only this and the Literary Anthology seem to me to be worth reading.

The Beatles Comedy

”Rabbi Winkler wrote: The Zohar says “There is no wisdom as wholesome as that wisdom that comes out of silliness. Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.”

What they did best was nuttyness, a distinction without a difference perhaps. I have seen Yellow Submarine (in the theater at the time of its release so I don’t remember all that much!). I remember an early “music video” in which The Beatles are playing leapfrog over a well-dressed gentleman leaning over something on the sidewalk. It has no particular meaning but it’s amusing as is their capering on an anonymous beach in striped vintage bathing dress. These had nothing whatsoever to do with the songs. But you watch it and you enjoy their enjoyment of what they are doing.

I have to suppose that outside of The Beatles’ natural style of wisecracking, the style of physical comedy demonstrated in the clips and movies may have been more the idea of Sir George Martin then anyone else. Martin was the head of the Parlophone record label who offered The Beatles a recording contract after they had been turned down by just about everyone else. Although he was a trained musician (piano, oboe), he went to work for EMI record company, where he recorded such comedians as Peter Sellers and Spike Mulligan. Sellers as well as a very broad assortment of music from light pop to symphonic. I know he did a good bit of intellectual comedy but also indulged in what I call “romps”; a special way of handling mostly physical comedy without much attention to plot, continuity or, indeed, story at all.

The Beatles at that time were barely older then schoolboys and you can see in A Hard Days Night comedy recalling a kid grabbing someone’s hat and playing keep-away. Adolescent boy fun is funny, so long as it’s not your cap! Added in was as lovely a Keystone Cops sequence as anyone’s ever seen and Ringo’s threnody on the canal is way beyond criticism. Was Ringo consciously playing the Little Tramp? He says he was so hung over that morning that merely walking took all his time so I can suppose it was simply one of those miracles

]Not that The Beatles film depends on either physical comedy or on adolescent boy fun, the writing in some places in A Hard Days Night is delicious. John’s conversation with the plump lady in the hall wherein the “him” John does or doesn’t look like is left undefined is surely a triumph of underwriting – so terribly hard to do! However, it took the eye of an artist (or a really good cameraman) to see the possibilities of 4 skinny young men in black clothes romping in a mowed field. Is it funny? Not exactly; but it makes you feel good and feel good about the actors.

It’s very amusing to read the slightly offended surprise of the movie critics reviews. (Both in the original release and the more recent re-release to theaters.) While some of the sources say that the script was carefully written to be easy for inexperienced non-actors, Ringo’s “hiding behind a smokescreen of bourgeois clichés” isn’t my idea of an easy line! I have seen the I Am the Walrus cut in Magic Mystery Tour and it lacks the spontaneity and fun which are not entirely absent from the rest of the piece. It seems to me that there was too much self-consciousness and an attempt to get some sort of message across. I do find the lyrics of Walrus over studied and artificial. I feel sure that Ringo is right in that by broadcasting it in black and white the BBC ensured it’s critical disaster. On the other hand, the particular magic that made The Beatles is beginning to fail because the group is beginning to fail to be a group. Even in Sgt. Pepper you can see that there’s a bit of a hitch in their interpersonal harmony. It comes back here and there but many of the clips show three bored session musicians trying to get the ‘great one’ through one last take.

The Beatles comedy at its best a combination of innocent fun and sophisticated badinage that transport the viewer to the world of everyone’s dreams, one which never existed. I find reviews that name it as archtypical of its time and yet it survives to this time and people without my memories enjoy it now.

Defining Rock

Tim Ripley, Ask Me Why, said Rock is typified by “more adult themes: isolation, despair, alienation, loss and the positive correlations of peace, communication, self-worth, vision and hope.” Note that the “positives” contain only unemotional hope type while the first mentioned qualities, the important ones, are all emotion. Nowhere is happiness, content, love triumphant, friendship mentioned. Misery is the only legitimate truth. Rock & Roll is adequately defined by the “jury” of Juke Box Jury in Britain and Dick Clarks American Bandstand in the US: “it’s got a beat and you can dance to it.” I looked all over the web, Wikkipedia to Rolling Stone Magazine and nowhere did I find anything approaching a definitive definition. Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head, opines that Rock concentrates of feel and beat rather then on music. That Rock is laid-back while “pop” tries to catch a moment, story, or feeling. Later (p. 206) he says the difference between pop at its best and Rock is well-crafted music.” Take that, Hoagie Carmichael, Bert Bacrack!! Most of the books aggressively name John Lennon as a master of Rock, primarily because of his tendency to wallow in misery and this in many ways probably set the preoccupation of Rock with the negative emotions. Rock critics celebrate John’s emotionality even when they imagine most of it and somehow find something to love in George3’s insecurity, status as lead guitar or soloist. Paul’s skill and competence playing and singing however is seen as insecurity and unfair to John and Georges perceived insecurities. Riley claims that Paul’s universality is a sin in Rock as Rock people aren’t like everybody else. Rock is said to be marked by something they call “texture” although I can’t imagine any music that lacked it. I have read that Rock specifically sets “listening pleasure” out of consideration in favor of commiting to the idea that if you enjoy it as music it’s not Rock. I do understand that everyone who writes professionally about the Beatles or abut Rock needs a to stay in with the Rock press but that knowledge doesn’t quite make me forgive MacDonald, Riles and all the others for crumbling before those prejudices. John would no doubt have been discarded from the Rock mainstream for Double Fantasy had he not been killed before they got into print. If any singer/composer sinned against the Rock rules, Double Fantasy is the album in evidence. If you have suggestions for refining a definition of “Rock” I’d be grateful if you’d share it with me. [Sorry for the delay, I haven’t been well and only got my computer problems lessoned a couple days ago.]

Comments on/ from books

To me the most shocking thing about the first person books about the Beatles is that almost all (except George Martin and Geoff Emerick) ignore the music completely. Peter Brown, Tony Bramwell, Tony Barrow, Allan Williams, Bill Harry, Mike McCartney, Alistair Taylor, etc. and even Pete Best hardly mention it and if they do, it only the first 3 or 4 hits. Not one of them seem to have cared at all what the Beatles wrote or recorded so long as it hit the top of the charts. It appears to me that virtually everyone whose salaries the Beatles paid (all of NEMS as well as all of Apple) neither enjoyed nor understood the music.

They were all hooked on the mania and their soft jobs. Few of them ever saw the Beatles as persons nor were actively concerned for them. From Liverpool or the far ends of the earth, they all were concentrated on milking their cash cow with little thought of what the cow wanted or needed. No wonder Klein looked good and no wonder Paul stuck to an in-law to manage his career and money.

“…confused with its naïvely anarchistic bourgeois cousin, rock journalism.”  From Clayson, I think. My own thoughts are somewhat less printable.

Odd question: With all the fuss about a not-red rose/carnation and bare feet why have I read no speculation about why George rides a dark horse (giggle) in the Penny Lane video when the others ride white ones? “they rode their white horses out through an archway in a ruined wall,” From Lewisohn’s Chronicles – and he’s usually more careful!

Will the Real Penny Lane Please Stand Up?

I have been reading and interesting Beatles website: http://beatlesite.blogspot.com

When I got to the review of Paul’s Penny Lane the reviewer comments that he finds it too sweet. He goes on to say that if Paul had written in a little darkness it might have thrown all the sunlight into sharp relief and given the song a little more punch.  May I remind him and you that Paul has mentioned that the song is surreal.  One of the main keys to understanding surrealism is to remember that what you see (or to hear) is not all that is there. A trout can look like a monk and an apple becomes part of a simple gambling game.

We must assume that Penny Lane contains more than a charming suburban street. While John’s lyrics can containe implied meanings and portamento words requiring you to think through what he is saying, many of Paul’s best lyrics are very dense.  We can see Eleanor Rigby and Father McKensey; we know what they look like and how they live.  In Penny Lane the pictures are even clearer.  In fact that clarity I suspect is what makes it difficult to penetrate the shiny surface and see Paul’s surrealistic picture beneath it.

That first character introduced is the banker who refuses to wear a raincoat thus causing children to laugh at him.  I’m not sure what is so funny about not wearing a raincoat but in the late ’60s raincoats became associated with a passtime known as “Streaking”.  In other words our dignified banker discards his raincoat and goes flying down Penny Lane stark naked–surely enough to make the children laugh particularly as we suspect .. well nevermind.

The barber is quite easy.  One sees him as slightly camp and gesturing with his shiny steel scissors while in the window one see heads without bodies–severed and impaled.

The chorus of course is lovely but when pray tell me did Liverpool present present its citizens with blue skies?

It’s easy to see that the firemen is just a trifle strange with his picture of the Queen and obsession with “A clean machine. ” The nurse for me as rather Delta Dawn figure dressed perhaps in a World War one uniform humming to herself waiting for her young man with a mustache to return.

Not quite thin blue suburban sky anymore because just as in real life beneath the sunny surface lie human beings in all their strange variety.

Esteemed readers:

I do apologize for neglecting this blog for so long. I have health problems although I’m not quite as old at 69 as the real Miss Jane Marple. My neglect began when the heat of summer deprived me of all ambition. About the time that things began to cool off I got my stimulus payment and invested in a newer, more powerful computer. Unfortunately it came with a proprietary version of Windows which negatively affected its ability to perform at at the level I needed it to. I expect partially solve this problem in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile I’m using my old computer running ViaVoice, rather than my first choice of the Dragon Naturally Speaking. It doesn’t work well but it is working.

I will do my best to provide at least three posts a week even during the summer. I have a great deal of material; the problem is that it’s all in handwritten manuscript. The dictation applications are intended to allow me to get all my analysis into digital form without having to sit up; as sitting up tends to make my digestive weaknesses even more uncomfortable.

To fill in the those terrible blank days when I don’t post, I unreservedly recommended that you read the writings of Saki, many of which you can find at the following web sites. No I do not always agree with her but she is a fine writer and historian and always very interesting.

http://sakionline.net/list.html
http://www.recmusicbeatles.com/public/files/saki/saki.html

More of the archives of the Usenet newsgroup called rec.music.beatles can be found at http://sakionline.net/beatles/index1987.html I suggest using Internet Explorer at this site as navigation requires using the arrow keys that FireFox usurps for changing tabs in their browser. I suspect these archives can keep one entertained with Beatles information and opinion for quite some time–possibly years.

I do appreciate each one of my readers and I will really try to make my posts both regular and interesting.