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Beatles, Music et al, Music of the 60s

John Paul Nerk Twins

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John Paul Nerk Twins

April 23 & 24, 1960 
John Paul Nerk Twins
From a Daily Mail article. “Rookie rockers: Paul McCartney and John Lennon in 1960, soon after their not-so-successful gig at the Fox and Hounds”

Les Paul and Mary Ford, “The World Is Waiting For The Sunrise”

John Paul Nerk Twins

Names

The Beatles went through several name and personnel changes before they became that group with that name that arrived on our US shores in 1964.

According to the “I Am the Beatles” site, here is the sequence of names:

  • The Black Jacks
  • The Quarry Men
  • Johnny and the Moondogs
  • The Nerk Twins
  • The Beatals
  • The Silver Beetles
  • The Silver Beats
  • The Beatles
  • The Silver Beatles
  • The Beatles
John Paul Nerk Twins

Any gig will do

Today  I’ll briefly explore those two nights in April 1960 that John and Paul were the Nerk Twins.

It is always good to keep in mind that the boys were simply young struggling musicians who found gigs however they could.

Fox and Hounds 

Betty Robbins was Paul’s cousin. Betty’s husband, Mike, and she ran the Fox and Hounds in Caversham on the outskirts of Reading, Berkshire.

John and Paul hitchhiked from Liverpool to the tavern and worked behind the bar  for a week. Mike Robbins, aware that they were musicians recommended that they play on Saturday and Sunday nights.

John Paul Nerk Twins

A Nerk

They made posters and the Nerk Twins were born. According to Bill Heckle, owner of The Cavern Club in Liverpool, “In Liverpool, a nerk is a derogatory term for somebody completely without street cred.” Knowing John’s sense of humor, perhaps it was his self-deprecating idea.

Professional advice

Mike Robbins had been an entertainments manager hosting talent contests and asked them what song they’d start with? Paul said “Be Bop A Lula.” Mike asked them if they could do anything more upbeat. Upbeat was the best way to start a show. According to Paul, they took that advice to heart and used it for arranging future shows.

So they decided to play a cover of Les Paul and Mary Ford’s “The World Is Waiting For The Sunrise.” It’s the Les Paul and Mary Ford version from 1953 that you hear at the top of today’s entry.

No relics

No one recorded the Nerk Twins. And the few patrons who heard them those April nights cared. According to Mike Robbins, one of the locals said, “They were a load of bloody rubbish but they brought a bit of life into the pub.”

What about those handmade posters? No one has ever found one and I suspect that if someone does it’ll be worth a few bob.

John Paul Nerk Twins
Beatles, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Peace Love Art and Activism, Today in history

John Paul Record Ballad

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John Paul Record Ballad

John and Cynthia

John Lennon met Cynthia Powell when they were students at Liverpool Art College in 1957. In 1962, she became pregnant. John apparently said “There’s only one thing for it Cyn – we’ll have to get married” and on  August 23 that’s exactly what they did.  

On the verge of succeeding as a band particularly with many female teenagers, manager Brian Epstein kept the marriage low key.

On April 8, 1963 Julian Lennon was born.

John Paul Record Ballad

John meets Yoko

On November 7, 1966, John  visited the Indica Gallery in London. He met Yoko Ono displaying her art.

Ballad of John and Yoko
poster for Yoko’s exhibition

Of that meeting, John later reflected, “The old gang of mine was over the moment I met her. I didn’t consciously know it at the time, but that’s what was going on. As soon as I met her, that was the end of the boys, but it so happened that the boys were well known and weren’t just the local guys at the bar.” (from All We Are Saying, by David Sheff)

On November 8, 1968 Cynthia Lennon and John divorced.  Cynthia had filed for divorce in August 1968 no longer able to ignore John and Yoko’s relationship.

Miscarriage/Marriage

On November 21, 1968,  Yoko suffered a miscarriage.

On March 20, 1969 John and Yoko married in Gibraltar.

John Paul Record Ballad

Ballad of John and Yoko

On April 14, 1969, John Lennon and Paul McCartney recorded “The Ballad of John and Yoko.” John had written the song in the days following his and Yoko’s marriage. Work on the Let It Be album had often been contentious among the then less-than-Fab Four.

A break-up was imminent, but Paul McCartney later reflected, “John was in an impatient mood so I was happy to help. It’s quite a good song; it has always surprised me how with just the two of us on it, it ended up sounding like The Beatles.” (from Many Years From Now by Barry Miles)

They recorded the song at Abbey Road’s Studio Three in a session beginning at 2:30 pm and ending at 9 pm.

It was then mixed for stereo, and was finished and ready for release by 11 pm. According to George Martin, Yoko Ono was present in the studio, although she appears to have played no part in the recording.

John Paul Record Ballad

George Martin

George Martin later said in Anthology, “I enjoyed working with John and Yoko on The Ballad Of John And Yoko. It was just the two of them with Paul. When you think about it, in a funny kind of way it was the beginning of their own label, and their own way of recording. It was hardly a Beatle track. It was a kind of thin end of the wedge, as far as they were concerned. John had already mentally left the group anyway, and I think that was just the beginning of it all.” 

In 1966, John comments regarding the Beatles and Christianity had gotten no reaction in the UK but blew up in the American press. Some radio stations refused to play Beatle music.

Aware that the Ballad line “Christ you know it ain’t easy” could re-ignite that controversy, the song was kept “secret” until its release.

Apple released it on May 30 in the UK and on June 4 in the US. True to expectations, some top-40 US stations refused to play it and some played a version with the word “Christ” reversed in an attempt to avoid criticism.

Ironically, the Spanish government had no issue with the word Christ, but did have a problem with the line “you can get married in Gibraltar near Spain” as Spain considered Gibraltar part of Spain not the UK.

Ballad of John and Yoko
cover of John and Yoko’s wedding album

 

The lyrics tell the story:

Standing in the dock at Southampton
Trying to get to Holland or France
The man in the mac said
You’ve got to go back
You know they didn’t even give us a chance(chorus) Christ you know it ain’t easy
You know how hard it can be
The way things are going
They’re going to crucify me Finally made the plane into Paris
Honeymooning down by the Seine
Peter Brown call to say
You can make it O.K.
You can get married in Gibraltar near Spain(chorus)Drove from Paris to the Amsterdam Hilton
Talking in our beds for a week
The newspapers said Say what’re you doing in bed
I said we’re only trying to get us some peace(chorus)Saving up your money for a rainy day		 Giving all your clothes to charity
Last night the wife said
Oh boy when you’re dead
You don’t take nothing with you but your soul, thinkMade a lightning trip to Vienna
Eating chocolate cake in a bag
The newspapers said
She’s gone to his head
They look just like two gurus in drag(chorus)Caught the early plane back to London
Fifty acorns tied in a sack
The men from the press
Said we wish you success
It’s good to have the both of you back (chorus)

John Paul Record Ballad
Anniversary, Beatles, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Today in history

John Paul George Ringo Breakup

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John Paul George Ringo Breakup

April 10, 1970

John Paul George Ringo Breakup

It was 1970. We American Boomers had watched them on Ed Sullivan  six years earlier.  Six years during which we witnessed  assassinations, wars, a cultural revolution,  fear, and loathing,

Or as John Lennon had playfully sang in 1969: Everybody’s talking about, Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism, This-ism, That-ism…

Many of us had literally grown up with the Beatles. We went from  innocent early teenage years to the brink of adulthood and its disruptive realities.

The Beatles had stopped touring in 1966. Getting to see them live was always too difficult anyway, so the fact that they weren’t appearing live wasn’t that  big a deal. We would always have their newest vinyl.

John Paul George Ringo Breakup

We’d had…

…Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour in 1967.

The Beatles–in 1968–but we were such good friends by then we all simply call it their “White” album. 

Yellow Submarine and Abby Road in 1969, though there were rumors of another album already recorded.

John Paul George Ringo Breakup

We also had rumblings…

Ringo had briefly quit the Beatles in August 1968 and George had done the same in January 1969.

They gave us some solo stuff like George Harrison’s Wonderwall (1968) but that wasn’t real Beatles stuff. Was it even real George Harrison stuff?

John and Yoko’s Two Virgins the same year definitely wasn’t Beatles.

On January 30, 1969 they played on the roof of their Apple Building in London as part of their movie Get Back. Not knowing it, the impromptu live performance was their last.

John Paul George Ringo Breakup

Marriages and divorces

John got divorced. Paul got married.  Yoko got married.

On August 22, 1969, photographer Ethan Russell shot the final photos of the the four together.

photo by Ethan Russell…The thrill looks gone.

John

On September 20, 1969, John Lennon told the others that he was leaving the band, but agreed to keep it quiet until albums were released and the time was right.

Then…

Daily Mirror headline
John Paul George Ringo Breakup

Paul spills the beans

April 10, 1970, Paul McCartney made the Beatles’ secret breakup public by issuing a press release to announce that he had left the group, done in the form of a fake interview:

“Q: Is your break with the Beatles temporary or permanent, due to personal differences or musical ones?

PAUL: Personal differences, business differences, musical differences, but most of all because I have a better time with my family. Temporary or permanent? I don’t really know.”

John Lennon was furious, especially since Paul announced the breakup, already agreed upon by the group, just one week prior to the British release of McCartney’s first solo album. When a reporter tracked down Lennon for his thoughts, he replied, “Paul hasn’t left. I sacked him.“

While the lives of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison occasionally crossed after 1970, the crossings were sometimes cordial, sometimes not.

Life without a Beatles album went on punctuated regularly by many solo offerings.

A piece of the sixties ended on April 10, 1970

Whatever happened to the life that we once knew
Can we really live without each other?
Where did we lose the touch
That seemed to mean so much
It’s always made me feel so

 

Not Yoko

You will notice that I haven’t said that “Yoko broke up the Beatles” –the oft sung sad shibboleth. That is because she did not break up the Beatles, but that’s another story for another time.

And the final final legal legal breakup was still nearly five years away.

John Paul George Ringo Breakup