Tag Archives: John Lennon

Beatles, Bob Dylan, Music et al, Music of the 60s

1964 Bob Dylan Introduced Beatles

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1964 Bob Dylan Introduced Beatles

The narrator above refers to August 30, but it was…

August 28, 1964

1964 Bob Dylan Introduced Beatles

1964 Bob Dylan Introduced Beatles

She Loves You

The Beatles initial successes were great pop songs that many youth fell in love with at the same time they themselves were looking to fall in love. She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Hand, Please Please Me, I Feel Fine, She’s a Woman, and We Can Work It Out are all loves songs. Some happier than others.

Someone once told me, if it’s a happy Beatle song, Paul wrote it; a sad one, John. While a generalization, it’s more often true than not.

1964 Bob Dylan Introduced Beatles

Maggie’s Farm

When I first heard Bob Dylan’s “I Ain’t Gonna’ Work on Maggie’s Farm No More” I was only a touch less confused about its lyrics than “Gates of Eden,” a song I had no idea what was happening other than Dylan was trying to harmonize with songs the lonesome sparrow sang.

Maggie’s Farm? Well there’s a guy obviously praying for rain, getting terribly underpaid, and whose boss is putting out his cigar on the guy’s face. I’d quit too.

Of course, that’s not what Dylan was saying. He was saying he wasn’t going to be the acoustic-folk-protest song-singer too many expected him to permanently be. Quitting. He was going  electric. And on July 25, 1965 he did just that at the Newport Folk Festival.

Many were displeased.

1964 Bob Dylan Introduced Beatles

August 28, 1964

The Beatles had begun their first full American tour on August 18 at the San Francisco Cow Palace. Ten days later they played for 16,000 fans at the Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, New York City. They would do the same the next night.

It was what happened in between that changed history.

1964 Bob Dylan Introduced Beatles

Al Aronowitz

Al Aronowitz was a writer who knew Bob Dylan and arranged for him to meet the Beatles at their hotel the night after that first concert.

Aronowitz later wrote: “The Beatles’ magic was in their sound,…Bob’s magic was in his words. After they met, the Beatles’ words got grittier, and Bob invented folk-rock.”

Cannabis may have been the source of all that musical cross pollination at that meeting. Beatles supposed unfamiliarity with the herb apparently surprised the already familiar Mr Dylan. [The four had tried it in Germany, but it did not impress them.]

Evidently, Ringo was unfamiliar with the not-Bogarting-that-joint protocol and kept things to himself. John, Paul, and George soon learned the etiquette.

1964 Bob Dylan Introduced Beatles

1965

  • March 27,  Dylan released Bringing It All Back Home on which “Maggie’s Farm” appears.
  • The Byrds’ covering of Dylan, particularly “Mr Tambourine Man” opened the door for folk-rock.
  • July 25, 1965 Dylan played Newport Folk Festival. Many in audience booed his performance for playing electric set with The Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
  • August 30, 1965,  Dylan released Highway 61 Revisited. More electric.
  • August 28, 1965 Dylan played at NYC’s Forest Hills Tennis Stadium. More boos during his electric set.
  • December 3, 1965 the Beatles released Rubber Soul. The course of pop music changed.
1964 Bob Dylan Introduced Beatles
1964 Bob Dylan Introduced Beatles
Beatles, Music et al, Music of the 60s

Paul McCartney Hey Jude

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Paul McCartney Hey Jude

Released August 26, 1968

Paul McCartney Hey Jude

The Smile Orchestra playing ukulele, melodika (pianica), piano and e-bass.
Paul McCartney Hey Jude

Iconic notes

Some song’s first notes are so embedded in our lives that hearing them immediately transport us to a place, a time, a person, an era.

For me, the Beatles “Hey Jude” is one of those songs. It is late August 1968, just before going away to college for the first time and leaving behind the tanned friendship-ringed beautiful girlfriend whose September letters will only made me make more homesick. “Don’t make it bad.”

Paul McCartney Hey Jude

John and Cynthia on the verge

Just a year before in August 1967 the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had enchanted the Beatles. On their group trip to see him, John had left behind Cynthia struggling with luggage to keep up at the station. She missed the train and  had to get a car ride to the site.

John Lennon had met Yoko Ono in November 1966 and they began a friendship that blossomed into a close relationship when the two recorded Two Virgins on May 19, 1968 while Cynthia was away on a vacation.

Cynthia Lennon had discovered the two of them together after coming home early from that vacation.  They separated that month and John sued for divorce accusing Cynthia of adultery, an accusation she denied.

On August 22, 1968, Cynthia counter-sued. Lennon did not contest the divorce. It became official on November 8, 1968.

Paul McCartney Hey Jude

Hey Jules

In June Paul McCartney  visited Cynthia and Julian Lennon. Though she was now separated, Paul and she had been friends since 1957 when Paul joined the Quarrymen and she was already John’s girlfriend.  Paul thought of Julian and in the car on his way out wrote the lines, “Hey Jules [Julian], don’t make it bad, take a sad song and make it better.”

Paul would later change the name to Jude.

A month later, on July 26, Paul played it for the first time to John. John loved it from the beginning.

Paul McCartney Hey Jude

Hey Jude

The Beatles recorded the song over four days: July 29 – 31 July and 1 August.

According to the Beatles Bible site the personnel were:

  • Paul McCartney: vocals, piano, bass
  • John Lennon: backing vocals, acoustic guitar
  • George Harrison: backing vocals, electric guitar
  • Ringo Starr: backing vocals, drums, tambourine
  • Uncredited: 10 violins, 3 violas, 3 cellos, 2 double basses, 2 flutes, 2 clarinets, 1 bass clarinet, 1 bassoon, 1 contrabassoon, 4 trumpets, 2 horns, 4 trombones, 1 percussion
Paul McCartney Hey Jude

August 26, 1968

Apple released “Hey Jude” August  26 in the US [Aug 20 in the UK].  “Revolution” was the B-side.

It reached number one on September 28 and stayed there for nine weeks, the longest time a Beatles single was at number one. It was also the longest-playing single to reach number one.

“Hey Jude” was the 16th number-one hit for Beatles in America, They would eventually have 20, the most of any group.

Paul McCartney Hey Jude

4 September 1968

The Beatles asked Michael Lindsay-Hogg to film a promotion for the song. He had done the same for “Paperback Writer” in 1966. The idea was to film it in front of a live audience, albeit, a selected one.

David Frost played the part of an MC and introduced the band as ““the greatest tea-room orchestra in the world”.” The audience is not seen at first and the two-tiered  orchestra, seen during the playful introductions during which the Beatles also briefly play Elvis’s “It’s Now or Never.”  Frost plays it straight and doesn’t crack a smile.

After the last chorus, the cameras pan back and suddenly the Beatles are surrounded by that unheard audience. Now, though, they clap along and sing the famous “Naa naa naa na na na naaa….”

They settled on the idea of filming with a live, albeit controlled audience. In the film, the Beatles are first seen by themselves, performing the initial chorus and verses, and then are joined by the audience who appear as the last chorus concludes and coda begins; the audience sings and claps along with the Beatles through the song’s conclusion. Hogg shot the film at Twickenham Film Studios on 4 September 1968,

Paul McCartney Hey Jude
Beatles, Music of the 60s, Today in history

John Lennon Opines Jesus

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John Lennon Opines Jesus

July 29, 1966

August 1966 interview about his March opinion 
John Lennon Opines Jesus

Looking for trouble

By 1966, it could seem that the whole world  knew who Beatles were and that most of the world liked their music and them, too. Of course there were many who did not like the Beatles’s music nor the Beatles themselves. Critics made wise cracks about them needing a haircut, looking like girls,  their looks in general.

Rock and Roll was just a teenager and there were plenty of people who were suspicious of the music and anyone associated with it. The Red Scare and McCarthyism of the 1950s still echoed in the early 60s, the Soviet Union was still our arch nemesis, and the re-invigorated civil rights movement threatened the status quo, however unjust that status quo was.

Parents warned their teenagers, “If you go looking for trouble, you’ll find it.” Teenagers knew, “If you want to find a reason to dislike my music, you’ll find a reason.”

John Lennon Opines Jesus

Maureen Cleave

Journalists knew that a Beatle interview was money in the bank.  Maureen Cleave, of the London Evening Standard, ran a series of interviews called “How does a Beatle Live?”

On  March 4, 1966, Maureen Cleave interviewed John Lennon for the series.

During the interview, Lennon, who had been reading about various religions said, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that. I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”

John Lennon Opines Jesus

The article appeared and that was that.   No outrage by the British.
John Lennon Opines Jesus

US reaction

Tony Barrow was the Beatles press officer. He offered the rights to all four interviews to US teen magazine, Datebook.

John Lennon Opines Jesus

On July 29, 1966 the article appeared with a headline featuring the Lennon Christianity quote, which was only a small part of the entire interview.

John Lennon Opines Jesus

It became national news on August 4. A NY Times article lead sentence read: “Dozens of radio stations throughout the United States are banning music by the Beatles because of a statement by one of the rock ‘n’ roll singers that his group is more popular than Jesus.”

The article’s last sentence read: “Several radio stations scheduled bonfires for the burning of Beatle records and pictures.”

John Lennon Opines Jesus

Some support

The US negative reaction was not universal. A Kentucky radio station declared that it would give the Beatles’ music airplay to show its “contempt for hypocrisy personified”, and the Jesuit magazine America wrote: “Lennon was simply stating what many a Christian educator would readily admit.”

John Lennon Opines Jesus

Aftermath

The Beatles toured that summer, but it was their last. While the Christianity comment alone did not cause that cessation, it was a part of it.

And in 2008, the Vatican issued the following statement: “The remark by John Lennon, which triggered deep indignation, mainly in the United States, after many years sounds only like a ‘boast’ by a young working-class Englishman faced with unexpected success, after growing up in the legend of Elvis and rock and roll. The fact remains that 38 years after breaking up, the songs of the Lennon-McCartney brand have shown an extraordinary resistance to the passage of time, becoming a source of inspiration for more than one generation of pop musicians.” [BBC article]

John Lennon Opines Jesus