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By Gordon R. Thompson

In the opening months of 1964, The Beatles turned the American popular music world on its head, racking up hits and opening the door for other British musicians. Lennon and McCartney demonstrated that—in the footsteps of Americans like Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry—British performers could be successful songwriters too. In the summer, “A Hard Day’s Night” would prove that their success had not been a winter fluke or a momentary bit of post assassination frenzy.

It wasn’t that the Brits had been absent from the very profitable American market: Joe Meek had had success with the Tornados’ “Telstar” at the end of 1962. But before The Beatles, few in America cared much at all about what the British recording industry released. Indeed, British irrelevancy lay behind Capitol’s decision not to release recordings by The Beatles until news coverage got ahead of them.

In the wake of the Beatles, some of the evolving diversity of British songwriting emerged and the first stage came from composers associated with the heart of London’s music publishing world: Denmark Street. Publishers and musical instrument stores still call that short stretch of pavement home, but in the early to mid-sixties, everyone from the Beatles to the Kinks had been there. You could record at Regent Sound Studios (as did The Rolling Stones and The Who), you could grab a coffee with session musicians at Julie’s Café, or buy an ad at either Melody Maker or The New Musical Express. Indeed, The Beatles had gotten a huge break through publisher Dick James whose offices were at the corner of Denmark Street and Charing Cross Road.

A promotional photo of British rock group The Kinks, taken in Stockholm, Sweden, ca. 2 September 1965. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

In 1963, Lennon and McCartney’s major competitor was Mitch Murray who had had a string of hits with Gerry and the Pacemakers (“How Do You Do It?”) and Freddie and the Dreamers (“I’m Telling You Now”). Murray’s forte was the simple, catchy lyric and tune, purchased and consumed in an instant, paid for by happy teens who eagerly waited for the next release. His songs had proved so successful in 1963 that John Lennon jokingly (perhaps) suggested that another challenge to the Lennon-McCartney catalogue could result in bruises for their competitor. Notably in this period, both the Liverpudlians and this Londoner published through Dick James Music.

However a particularly interesting composition emerged from the pen of another Denmark Street songwriter, this time associated with Southern Music. The twenty-nine-year-old Geoff Stephens was never much of a musician, but he had an ear for lyrics and tunes and “The Crying Game” had begun as a title and a premise. The title “seemed the perfect seed from which to grow a very good pop song,” he recalled. “We all know what it’s like to cry and have deep feelings.” Still, the song’s convoluted melody and irregular prosody made it an unlikely hit for 1964, but succeed it did.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A winning interpretation would come through Dave Berry whose breathy and exposed voice served as the perfect instrument for the melody, even if he initially thought the music inappropriate for him. (He saw himself as a rhythm-and-blues artist.) Decca producer Mike Smith (who had auditioned the Beatles back in 1962) brought in Reg Guest to serve as music director who, in turn, hired guitarist Big Jim Sullivan to complement Berry’s emotive interpretation. Employing a foot pedal meant for a steel guitar that controlled both tone and volume, Sullivan put the musical equivalent of crying into the recording. The result deeply impressed Beatle George Harrison who sought to find out how to recreate the sound (something he would accomplish the next year on songs like “I Need You” and “Yes It Is”).

Not all non-performer songwriters in this era had deep ties to Denmark Street. Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley had met at University College School as teens, sported proper academic degrees, had worked at the BBC, and were active participants in the intellectual world of late fifties and early sixties London. In 1964 they collaborated on the song “Have I the Right” and in a tavern found the Sheritons whom they believed were perfect to deliver their plea for love. The musical and lyrical materials are simple, but catchy, and demanded a distinctive sound and interpretation.

No one could better create a distinctive sound in London at the time than the enigmatic Joe Meek in his home studio on Holloway Road in North London. In order to create a sound around the band and the song, Meek turned to the four-on-the-floor musical grooves that had been popular that year (notably heard on recordings by another North London group, the Dave Clark Five). Meek recorded clipped microphones to the stairs outside his studio and had the band stomp in time with the music, perhaps in imitation of the Dave Clark Five’s “Bits and Pieces.” Next, he repeatedly overdubbed a guitar part and played with the tape speed to give it a wavering bell-like quality.

Howard and Blaikley would lease the recording to Louis Benjamin at Pye Records, who thought that the Sheritons needed a new name. Seeing the band’s female hairdresser-drummer Honey Lantree as its visual distinction and marketing hook, he renamed the band, The Honeycombs. The song topped British charts late in the summer and successfully climbed American charts that fall. The songwriters would become the band’s managers and continue to write music for them, although they never quite duplicated their success.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But where were British songwriters who also performed their own material? Jagger and Richards of The Rolling Stones had written “As Tears Go By,” but had decided to give it to Marianne Faithful. (They didn’t think it appropriate for themselves to release, at least as a single.) The band had also recorded a demo of another Jagger-Richards tune, “Tell Me,” at Regent Sound Studios in Denmark Street, only to discover that their manager Andrew Oldham had released it in America. Despite its modest success, Richards has since cited this recording as evidence of how little control they had over their career at this stage. They wouldn’t record their first real self-penned success early the next year with “The Last Time.”

More significantly during the summer of ‘64, one of the most important British artists of the era woke up every garage band on both continents, simultaneously frightening parents and the custodians of culture.

In July 1964 at IBC Studios in London, Shel Talmy prepared to give an unlikely group of musicians their last chance to have a hit. Talmy was a Los Angeles transplant, an outsider to the London recording scene who preferred to work as an independent artist-and-repertoire manager. Through hard work, good luck, and a bit of bluff, he had managed almost immediate success, much to the jealousy of the locals.

The group on whom he was gambling had the Davies Brothers as its leaders who had beaten the odds to get a recording contract, but who had struck out with their first two releases. The Kinks’ version of Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally” had the misfortune of comparison with The Beatles, who were now using the tune to close their shows and who would soon release their own version of it. Their next attempt was a composition by Ray Davies. “You Still Want Me” carries all the hallmarks of early sixties British pop and, consequently, had very little that would distinguish The Kinks from everyone else.

“You Really Got Me” would be the song that lifted them to success. They arrived to record it at IBC Studios in July 1964 after already taping a slower and more bluesy version. Davies and Talmy (although they might disagree about the process later) agreed that a faster version could be more successful and booked time at the studio late at night. To insure success, Talmy had engaged session drummer Bobby Graham, who was already known around professional circles as at least one of the drummers on the Dave Clark Five records. He also brought in the veteran bandleader Art Greenslade to play piano.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Graham and Greenslade had been at a previous recording session earlier that night where a contractor had asked them to do a second session. After a pint or two and a bite to eat, they showed up at IBC for a date with the Kinks. Their first reaction, according to Greenslade, was a one of slightly restrained horror at the sight of the band; but, after a short rehearsal, they settled into a good working relationship. The band’s drummer, Mick Avory, settled into playing the tambourine.

Knowing full well, that you get six sides to get a hit, Ray Davies remembered years later the tension that night. “When that record starts it’s like… doing the four-minute mile; there’s a lot of emotion.” He remembers shouting at Dave, “willing him to do it, saying it was the last chance we had.” Brother Dave apparently responded with an expletive and launched into what must be one of the original punk guitar solos played through a ripped speaker. Talmy, for his part, tried to capture the sound and to shape it in a distinctive way, employing the young Glyn Johns and Bob Auger as his engineers.

The recording of “You Really Got Me” would establish The Kinks as one of Britain’s most important bands and Ray Davies as a songwriter to be watched.

Gordon R. Thompson is Professor of Music and Chair of the Department of Music at Skidmore College. His book, Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out, offers an insider’s view of the British pop-music recording industry. Gordon Thompson will be speaking at a number of Capital District venues in February. His lecture, “She Loves You: The Beatles and New York, February 1964,” will contextualize that band’s historic relationship with the Empire State. Check out Gordon Thompson’s posts on The Beatles and other music.

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The post The British are coming: the Summer of 1964 (part two) appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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By Dorottya Fabian, Renee Timmers, and Emery Schubert

Picture the scene. You’re sitting in a box at the Royal Albert Hall, or the Vienna Musikverein. You have purchased tickets to hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony performed by an internationally-renowned orchestra, and they are playing it in a way that sounds wonderful. But what makes this such a powerful performance?

What is expressiveness? Let’s start by looking at these images …

Do you notice what they all have in common?  They are all displaying different kinds of expression.  Just as facial expressions communicate different information to us, musicians playing the same piece will still produce slight differences. You can’t hear the musicians in these pictures, but they may both be playing the same piece in a way that is not exactly the same as the other group of musicians.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

People say music is expressive. They usually say it is expressive of emotions and therein lays its power. But is this true of all music in all cultures and historical periods? Does it matter how it’s performed and how it’s experienced?

Philosophers, psychologists, and musicians have been pondering these questions for centuries. Over the last hundred years psychologists have contributed much to developing an empirically-based understanding of the mechanisms at play. The distinction between what may be “in the music” and what the performer “adds” became a fundamental assumption leading to various theories and definitions of “expressiveness in music performance.”

Ever since the pioneering work of Carl Seashore in the 1930s psychologists have been studying individual performers to find out “what it is that a performer brings to a piece of music.” So what is it that One Direction does when covering “All You Need Is Love” that makes their performance expressive? Are they more expressive than the Beatles are in this clip? Is it the song that is expressive or does it matter how it is performed?

For those educated in western classical music, Seashore’s working definition of what is expressiveness seems reasonable: You are listening to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and different orchestras and conductors make it sound more or less dramatic, uplifting, emotional, riveting. But if we pause for a moment and think of all those ever listening to this great icon of western musical culture, is it reasonable to believe that they know what is “the music”, i.e. Beethoven’s composition, and what the performers “bring to it”? What about an audience who have never experienced the piece before? How do they know what is “the music” and what is the contribution of the musician? This dilemma is even more obvious in other styles, like jazz, traditional, popular, or world music.

One, wordier definition of expressiveness in music performance is “the micro-deviations from the notated dictates of the score a performer executes while playing.” So, if the notes of a score are played literally, the piece will sound dull and inexpressive — like an old MIDI notation player, or a student playing precisely in time with a metronome. The result is a “neutral” performance, like the computer image of the face above.  But is this an acceptable definition?  What about musicians who do not use a music score – improvisers, people who play music by ear?

Recent empirical work has shown that listeners tend to be unable to say if the expressiveness they are hearing originates from the composition or the performance. Studying the experience of professional musicians highlights how differently they approach their performance. For them the score is never just notes on paper but already music imagined as sound. This imagination depends on their socio-cultural, historical position, personality, and education. They use metaphors and heuristics, short-cuts that package up accumulated knowledge and speeds up problem solving in preparation for and during performance. They rarely speak of specific emotions to be conveyed but conceive of music as “emotional,” “dramatic,” “uplifting,” or “turbulent,” for instance.

This is true of music and musicians of other artistic traditions, like classical Hindustani music. According to the dhrupad singer Uday Bhawalkar, “Music without emotion is not music at all, but we cannot name this emotion, these emotions, we cannot specify them.” The sentiments or emotions that we encounter in daily life become transformed into aesthetic experiences in theatre.

Empirical work in the area of jazz and popular music shows the importance of rhythm, vocal gestures, persona, and the role of technology to create meaning through sound effects. One fascinating finding regarding the culturally construed nature of what is “expressiveness in music performance” comes from a study of the Bedzan Pygmies. They live in very small communities with 40-60 kilometres distance between them and come together only for large festivities like weddings and funerals. When singing together in intricate polyphony, each singer varies his or her line at will while maintaining the overall identity of the song. For them “expressiveness” increased when they could detect more voices in the ensemble.

Expressiveness is an important part of music performance and perception, and although we have an intuitive understanding of what expressiveness in music means, as it turns out expressiveness in music performance seems too malleable and slippery to be defined in a singular way. So what is more important is to formulate the perspective of future research and discussion, to reorient our approach and reconstruct the object of investigation.

Dorottya Fabian, Renee Timmers, and Emery Schubert, are all researchers and lecturers in music psychology. Their book Expressiveness in Music Performance offers a variety of approaches to talk meaningfully about expressiveness and music within a cross-cultural context, providing disciplinary overviews, discussion papers and case studies to show that debates of importance across the humanities and social sciences can be conducted in a richly evidence-based manner.

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Image credits: (1) Guilty Face, by Barry Langdon-Lassagne, CC-BY-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Your Smiling Face, by Sibelle77, CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. (3) Изображение-Портреты-Михайлова Елена Владимировна, by участница Udacha, CC-BY-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. (4) Addys Mercedes Kult 02, by Schorle, CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. (5) Adam Romański 1, by Konrad Wawrzkiewicz (Shannon5), CC-BY-SA-2.5 via Wikimedia Commons. (6) One Direction Glasgow, by Fiona McKinlay, CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons. (7) The Beatles in America, by United Press International, photographer unknown, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Artist Tom Whalen has designed a set of four Beatles posters, using their likness and characters from the animated feature Yellow Submarine (1968). We’ve showcased Whalen’s Looney Tunes, Peanuts and Gigantor limited edition tributes before – I’m a big fan.

Dark Hall Mansion is releasing this officially licensed Beatles project, a 4-print interlocking Limited Edition set – John, Paul, George and Ringo – in both “standard” (above) and “psychedelia” (below, click thumbnails to enlarge). There will only be 200 of each edition produced, both editions go one sale precisely at 9:30 AM PST at Dark Hall Mansion’s online Store on February 12th, 2013.

More information can be found on these and other editions available at Dark Hall Mansion.

Complete Press Release below:

Dark Hall Mansion working closely with Live Nation Merchandise, The Beatles’ North American Licensing Agent, and Apple Corps Ltd will release their new Beatles limited edition screen print set of 4 by leading contemporary artist, Tom Whalen, on February 12, 2013. This exclusive 4-print set stunningly showcases The Beatles unmistakable personas amongst the abstracted milieu of ’60s Pop culture and the landmark film that is “Yellow Submarine.” The 4 prints measure 24″ x 30,” each, and were beautifully composed and designed to work individually or as an interlocked whole when displayed.

Tom Whalen’s 4 new Beatles prints make a striking impression, particularly when viewed as a single quadtych, one meant to artistically render and underscore the personalities of The Beatles themselves. Each print will be individually numbered, 24″ x 30″ in size, and exquisitely screen printed. With an extremely limited release of only 200 sets available worldwide for all Beatles fans, it’s an edition for even the most discerning Beatles collector.

There will also be a very select Psychedelia Edition, limited to just 50 sets worldwide with each print individually signed by artist Tom Whalen and printed with shimmering metallic inks that intensely set off the designs and nuances of his highly stylized artwork.

Both Editions go one sale precisely at 9:30 AM PST at Dark Hall Mansion’s online store on February 12, 2013.Pricing will be $200 for the entire 4-print Standard Edition and $300 for the entire 4-print Psychedelia Artist Signed Edition.

The 4-print Beatles sets are a limited edition series created by Dark Hall Mansion. ‘The Beatles’ is a registered trademark of Apple Corps Limited. Yellow Submarine is a trademark of Subafilms Ltd © 1968. Dark Hall Mansion is a labor of love. We are passionate about art, about the work of print and poster artists present and past,here and abroad, we are committed to bringing their skills to the forefront on projects both compelling and exciting, bridging their studios and creations directly with your walls and personal collections.

By Gordon R. Thompson

The Beatles were unlikely successes on London’s record charts in December 1962. Northerners with schoolboy haircuts who wrote and performed their own songs, their first record “Love Me Do” had risen slowly up British charts, despite lack of significant promotion by their publisher and record company, and without an appearance on national television. Moreover, while they should have been touring Britain to promote the disc, they instead played a pre-booked residence at the Star Club in Hamburg. The disc should have flopped.

Some have speculated that the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein arranged for the family business, North End Music Stores to purchase enough copies of the record to move it in the charts. “Fiddling” with the charts was hardly unknown both in Britain and in the US. The notorious British manager Don Arden (Sharon Osborne’s father) later bragged that he could move the rank of a disc with a discrete monetary investments.

The most widely read music papers of the day — the weeklies The New Musical Express and Melody Maker — contained interviews with artists, managers, producers, and songwriters, listed tour dates and contract changes, featured recently released discs in reviews, and ranked the week’s top recordings. By today’s standards, their methods were primitive, blending a few calls to big merchants with personal intuition. An informed manager or producer could move a release in the charts simply by purchasing the right number of discs in the right shops or by persuading the right people that particular artists were the next big thing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The curious chart history of “Love Me Do” sees the song appear first on Record Retailer’s charts shortly after its release and then two weeks later on Melody Maker’s charts. In Record Retailer, the disk would reach #17 in the 27 December 1962 issue, while in Melody Maker, it reached #21 the first week of January. The recording entered the charts of Disc weeks after the other papers and climbed no higher than #24 in December.

If these charts represent record sales, one wonders why they should differ. Record Retailer prided itself on having its finger on the pulse of record merchandising by polling its readership: Britain’s retail disc merchants. Earlier in 1962, when a flu swept through Decca’s manufacturing plant disrupting their ability to press records, both Melody Maker and the Daily Mail published charts showing Elvis Presley’s newest recording (“Rock-a-Hula Baby”) suddenly holding the #20 position, despite the absence of disks to sell. Melody Maker insisted that it had placed the disk in the charts because of comments from retailers combined with a previous announcement of its release. Melody Maker’s stated sources — and their data on record sales — suggest that the venerable music paper relied on selected stores and intuition. Another variable in these numbers recognizes that some figures may reflect the number of discs purchased by shop owners as distinct from the number of disks purchased by customers.

Two weeks after “Love Me Do” entered Record Retailer’s charts, NME apparently gave the recording a quick guess placement, before dispatching it to presumed history. An October 26 article by one of NME’s writers, Alan Smith, extols the group and the budding talent of its songwriters. “Newcomers to the Charts: Liverpool’s Beatles Wrote Their Own Hit” makes the connection between the Beatles and Billy Fury and promoted the potential of the recording. The NME’s editors apparently seized upon the convergence of sales reports in other papers and the press releases to write something they thought would sell a few papers.

Over at Record Retailer, however, the disk climbed slowly with little apparent promotion, peaking at the end of the year, setting the stage for the release of their second single, “Please Please Me,” which the Beatles had already recorded in November. Breaking into the charts represented a remarkable feat for a new group, let alone one from the provincial and industrial north. Perhaps Liverpudlian Billy Fury had paved the way for them with three significant hits in 1962: “Letter Full of Tears” (charts 15 March, UK #32), “Last Night Was Made for Love” (charts 3 May; UK #4), and “Once upon a Dream” (charts 19 July, UK #7).

Click here to view the embedded video.

That cold and dark December would see Ray Davies meet British bluesman Alexis Korner and work his way into Dave Hunt’s Rhythm and Blues Band and play at the Piccadilly Jazz Club. There, another new group, the Rolling Stones (who had just landed a bass player in the form of Bill Wyman) would impress him. Something musical was beginning to happen in London. Something raw and exciting.

Gordon Thompson is Professor of Music at Skidmore College. His book, Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out, offers an insider’s view of the British pop-music recording industry. Check out Gordon Thompson’s posts on The Beatles and other music here.

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The post Charting success: The Beatles, December 1962 appeared first on OUPblog.

By Gordon R. Thompson

As a regional businessman and a fledgling band manager, Brian Epstein presumed that the Beatles’ record company (EMI’s Parlophone) and Lennon and McCartney’s publisher (Ardmore and Beechwood) would support the record. This presumption would prove false, however, and Epstein would need to draw on all of the resources he could spare if he were to make the disc a success. He began with what he knew from the retail end of the industry and commenced rallying Liverpudlians to write letters to both Radio Luxembourg and the BBC asking them to play “Love Me Do.”

Just as the stations XERF (in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico) and CKLW (in Windsor, Ontario, Canada) were able to broadcast deep into the United States with transmitters many times more powerful than FCC-regulated American stations, a station in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg carpeted most of Western Europe.  Perhaps surprisingly, Radio Luxembourg (broadcast in the Medium Wave band) was British-owned and its English-language service became a primary outlet for UK businesses whose advertising the BBC declined. (The BBC refused to broadcast anything that suggested product promotion.) Radio Luxembourg suffered its sometimes-scratchy signal; but British listeners tuned in every night to embrace the pop music that Aunty Beeb would not play.

Expo 1958 Radio Luxembourg by Wouter Hagens. Creative Commons License.

British corporations like EMI and London music publishers like Essex Music directly controlled much of the station’s airtime by buying broadcast blocks during which they played pre-recorded programs. Indeed, on Monday 8 October 1962, the Beatles taped an interview at EMI’s headquarters in London, which Radio Luxembourg broadcast along with their recording of “Love Me Do” on Friday 12 October. (George Harrison later recalled the thrill of first hearing himself on that radio broadcast.) The Liverpool letters solicited by Epstein that arrived in Luxembourg eventually arrived at EMI in London where the manager hoped they would catch corporate attention and result in better domestic support for the Beatles and their releases.

Tony Barrow, whom Epstein had originally contacted at Decca Records in his quest to get the Beatles a recording contract, began work for NEMS (North End Music Stores) as the Beatles’ publicist. (He could hardly have imagined how his job description would evolve from soliciting the press’s attention to holding them at arm’s length.) As a reviewer and a liner-note writer, Barrow had often worked from press materials prepared by agents and managers. These releases could vary significantly in kind and quality, but among them, Barrow thought that the press kits from Leslie Perrin’s office (which had represented London’s infamous Raymond’s Revue Bar, among others) were particularly effective. Notably, a color-coded press kit walked readers through a client’s story, which made a reviewer’s tasks easier. Barrow appropriated this format in his preparations for promoting the Beatles.

The role of the press agent involved finding the right people to contact and, for that, Barrow needed names, addresses, and phone numbers. Coincidentally, he knew someone who had recently left Decca’s press office. The Beatles’ new agent presumed that the individual would have taken a copy of the company’s mailing list and, after a casual meal, they reached a mutually beneficial agreement. Brian Epstein’s new part-time press manager walked away with a cache of contacts.

Barrow began by introducing the Beatles to London’s music press, escorting the Liverpudlians from the Denmark Street offices of New Musical Express to Fleet Street’s Melody Maker. They were willing to go almost anywhere to meet anyone with access to print or broadcast media. For example, on 9 October 1962 (the day after taping the Radio Luxembourg program), they visited the offices of Record Mirror so that writers there could see how different they were from other entertainers and to hopefully experience some of the charm that had swayed George Martin.

The mixed results both encouraged the band and its manager, and disappointed them. Alan Smith, writing in the New Musical Express (26 October 1962), briefly introduced the band, highlighting how Lennon and McCartney had written their “hit.” However, if you were the Beatles searching the papers for even the briefest mention (which they did weekly), you found little.

Brian Epstein in a 1967 interview would justifiably take credit for some of the band’s early success, citing his diligence and perseverance. The slow climb of “Love Me Do” up the charts would be his vindication. By December 1962, despite setbacks, the single increased sales and nudged into the top twenty on the most respected (if selectively read) chart. They were poised for something and they were sure ‘twas for success.

Gordon Thompson is Professor of Music at Skidmore College. His book, Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out, offers an insider’s view of the British pop-music recording industry. Check out Gordon Thompson’s posts on The Beatles and other music here.

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The post Selling the Beatles, 1962 appeared first on OUPblog.

Artist Tom Whalen created these elaborate screenprints in a number of varying colour schemes to help celebrate the re-release of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. They go on sale tomorrow, Tuesday May 29th.

By Gordon Thompson

On a cold winter’s day in early 1962, Brian Epstein and the Beatles huddled together contemplating their failed bid for a Decca recording contract and the bitter aftertaste of rejection that left emptiness in their stomachs. But hunger can feed ambition. Disappointments would ensue, but almost immediately Epstein would be the proverbial right man in the right place at the right time and meet a string of people who were looking for something not-quite-exactly unlike the Beatles.

The first full week of February 1962 would prove to be one of the most remarkable in the Beatles story. On Monday, 5 February, the Beatles’ drummer Pete Best — whom they had still not informed of Decca’s decision — called in sick and his band mates recruited an old friend from a rival band. Ringo Starr appeared that night with Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison in Southport, a city just north of Liverpool where perhaps his dry humor helped ease the pain, just as his personality would help anchor the band two years later as America exploded around them.

Although Decca artist-and-repertoire managers Dick Rowe and Mike Smith had turned them down, Epstein returned to London to argue for reconsideration. Over lunch in London on Tuesday, 6 February, Epstein sat politely arguing with Rowe and Sidney Arthur Beecher-Stevens, Decca’s sales manager, in an attempt to change their corporate mind. Rowe notoriously and with great self-confidence recommended that the manager return to record retailing in Liverpool. They were the experts. They knew these things.

Epstein did win a small “concession” from them: Rowe offered to arrange for ex-Shadow drummer Tony Meehan to produce the Beatles at Decca if the manager agreed to cover the expenses of about £100. Epstein kept his options open and made an appointment for Wednesday, 7 February to meet with Meehan whose squeaky-clean reputation and pop credentials the manager would have found appealing. Still, little about the meeting satisfied the manager. Meehan arrived late (Epstein’s bête noire) and his condescending comments about the Beatles’ audition only added salt to the wound. An interesting moment of musical potential slipped into history; but, the planets were still moving and, on Thursday, the orbs began coming into alignment.

With the addresses of other record companies in London and a copy of the Decca audition tape, Epstein employed this magnetic artifact in his quest to win a contract for his “boys.” Nevertheless, a quickly arranged meeting at Pye Records, the third largest label in Britain, also ended in disappointment. Executives at EMI, the largest music corporation in Britain, had already declined Epstein’s request for an audition even before Decca had accepted. His options narrowed.

Exterior of HMV, 363 Oxford Street, London in the 1960s. Copyright HMV.

What transpires on Thursday, 8 February arguably shifts the course of musical history. Combining a social visit with the need to t

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By Gordon Thompson

Fifty years ago, one of the great stories in pop music began when the Beatles debuted in a dank arched subterranean Liverpool club dedicated to music.  Located in the narrow lane called Mathew Street, just of North John Street, the Cavern Club had opened as a jazz haven that enfolded blues and skiffle, which was how the Quarry Men, John Lennon’s precursor to the Beatles, had first descended the steps and climbed the tiny stage in August 1957.  Three-and-a-half years later, the Beatles had evolved into a much different beast than the Quarry Men and the Cavern Club had modified its business strategy to embrace a growing youth audience.  The band’s recent stint in Hamburg had initiated a transformation that was about to blossom inside the brick arched chambers built to warehouse vegetables.  For the Beatles, Stu Sutcliffe’s return from Hamburg in late January added his dissonant rumble to their sound; but they had entered a transitional phase with Paul McCartney gradually assuming the role of bassist.  As Sutcliffe returned to a career in art, the Beatles would tighten their sound and performances.

Other Liverpool bands played the Cavern too, including the Remo Four who had recently trumped the Shadows—the most famous band in the UK at the time.  The Beatles would find the club a competitive environment in which to sharpen their skills in the pursuit of fans.  Their first gig at the Cavern on 9 February 1961 would lack auspiciousness and earn them a mere £5 (split five ways) for their 12:00-2:00 PM performance.  This engagement initiated the club’s attempt to draw a midday audience and, with little advertising, the crowd would have been small.  Moreover, when owner Ray McFall saw the musicians, he took offense at their leather jackets and jeans, informing them that they had to dress better if they wanted to play the club again.  And to the band’s further discomfort, Sutcliffe’s playing would have, if anything, deteriorated even further during the month he had stayed in Hamburg.  But they were beginning to develop a reputation, commencing with a remarkable December performance at the Litherland Town Hall.  The Beatles tapped into a curious mix of hard rock, rockabilly, and pop, with each of the band members taking a turn at the microphone and applying a combination of enthusiasm and irreverence.

The Hamburg experience had taught them how to survive the long hours by sharing responsibilities, working as a team, and exploiting their existing repertoire of all its possibilities.  Their model may in part have derived from Britain’s postwar experience, when families shared and extended their meager resources.  The division of responsibilities in the band helped make it successful.  Lennon, the social director, knew how to deliver the emotionally charged performances.  McCartney, the self-appointed music director, had a screaming Little Richard imitation that he could counter with coy ballads.  And Harrison—the boy of the band—focused on his succinct guitar solos and a growing vocabulary of altered chords.  That left the stoic and impassive drummer Pete Best and bassist Sutcliffe sitting at the back, occasionally crooning a song for the benefit of their fans.

In the Cavern, the Beatles would build an audience by playing rock ‘n’ roll while smoking, eating, and joking on stage, including McCartney doing imitations of the Shadows’ by now infamous Cavern catastrophe.  (Their bass player had shown up drunk and fallen off the stage.)  Lennon recalled that half their stage show was ad lib comedy, which portended the public image

Yoko Ono, the widow of Beatles legend John Lennon, has given permission for 150 of Lennon’s personal letters to be published in a single volume.

According to The Guardian, Alan Samson from the Orion Publishing Group acquired world rights to the collection. Publication is set for October 2012–the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ hit release, Love Me Do. The video embedded above shows the band playing that song.

Here’s more from the article: “Orion saw off competition from all the big-hitting publishing houses who went to Davies’s home in Kentish Town, north London, to make their bids…Samson would not disclose how much Orion had paid for the right to publish the book, although it is thought to be in excess of £500,000 but less than £1m quoted in other media.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Last Friday, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards made an appearance at the New York Public Library to talk about his new memoir, Life.

People had stood in line since 8 a.m. for the event. Each ticket purchase included a signed copy of the book.

Richards revealed a lifelong love for libraries. He jokingly pointed out that it was one of the few places where even he obeyed the rules (i.e. silence).

He explained: “To me, it was a place you got a hint that may be there was a thing called civilization … It was a place I went to find out things I wanted to find out about.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This is a bit of a departure for me. I know it doesn't look like it, but it is.

Yes they are doodles. Yes it's drawn with a ballpoint. But, let me tell you, the urge to cross hatch the hell out of those doodles was eating me up inside. But, I resisted. Somehow, I resisted. Apart from a little LOVE.

I worked up another contribution to the Dueling Banjo Pigs blog. Check out all the fantastic pigs with banjo illustrations that are posted there! Thanks Stacy and Guy!

It wasn't difficult for me to decide to spend a week immersed in the Beatles, especially after the boys indicated they wanted to learn more about them. I've been an amateur Beatles historian since the age of 16, when I wrote about them for an AP US History assignment. It goes beyond the CD collection; I have biographies and the Beatles Anthology DVD set and--oh yes--Beatles Trivial Pursuit.

It's hard for me to describe exactly what the Beatles mean to me. I suspect every fan has their own story and their own reasons. My mom was a fan growing up so I was always aware of them, but I truly became a fan during my junior year of high school, after watching The Beatles Anthology when it first aired on TV. That was the 1995/96 school year. Which was, up until 2003 (the year my son was born), the best year of my life. It was the year I discovered running as an outlet for my anxious energy. It was the year I began to discover more about myself as a writer--both with the help and encouragement of teachers I had and on my own. I grew closer to a few friends who are still dear friends to this day. I met my husband. The Beatles were the constant soundtrack to all of that, and it touched me in a way that's hard to describe. Their music is alive to me. Even today, hearing these songs decades after they were recorded, I can almost feel the energy and love that was poured into their making. And isn't that the point of art? To make you feel something? These songs were also vitally important in helping me discover who I am as a writer and how I choose to express myself. I'm a bit of a pacifist and can be on the granola crunchy side (I do live in the Bay Area) and that, too, is in part due to the Beatles' influence.  So I want to share the Beatles with my kids. I want them to be as inspired as I've been inspired.

With that in mind, I chose an art project that would allow them to fuse the Beatles' words with their own inspiration. I had them do stream of consciousness drawings as we listened to Beatles music. I randomized all of the Beatles songs in my iTunes, although the boys did make a few requests. I told them to draw what they felt, so the results were not always exactly what one might expect. The songs served as a jumping off point to unlock their own creativity.

Part of our Beatles playlist:

Some of you may notice the title of this post also happens to be the beginning of the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever." What does this song have to do with this post? Everything.

For a bit of a change this week, I'm not presenting my recipe with a book. I'm presenting my recipe with Beatles songs. The Beatles as kidlit. Or kid poetry. Or something.

Before school ended I asked my kids what they wanted to learn about this summer. One of the things they both mentioned was the Beatles. I looked for a picture book with awesome illustrations that introduces the Beatles in a fun, engaging manner. Something along the lines of The Day-Glo Brothers, Racing Against the Odds or The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau (three biographies my kids have recently enjoyed). Such a thing does not seem to exist. (Perhaps this is my cue to write such a thing?) So, spending a week learning about the Beatles and their songs was the best I could do. Which is not really a problem because we happen to be big Beatles fans around here.

We'll start with a recipe though. There are a number of Beatles songs that mention food. We've got the songs "Glass Onion" and "Mean Mister Mustard." "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" has "marmalade skies" and "marshmallow pies." But for me, there is only one song that worked as inspiration for this week's recipe.

"Strawberry Fields Forever" is my all time favorite song. Strawberries are my all time favorite food. Of course we had to make strawberry shortcake to kick off our Beatles week.

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I’m not entirely convinced PAUL IS UNDEAD isn’t an elaborate ruse.

I have a theory.

What if Lewis Carroll, Salvador Dali, Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright and George Romero ran a Beatles History Fan Club and Hunter S. Thompson kept the minutes from each meeting? Would it be that hard for Alan Goldsher to steal those minutes and seamlessly piece them together?

Hmm…I wonder, because PAUL IS UNDEAD full of that kind of bawdy brilliance.

Mick Jagger, Zombie Hunter? Check.

Ringo Star, Ninja Lord? Check.

Dismembered Body Parts? Double Check. (I’m still giggling over each reference to ‘beans & franks’ or ‘plonkers’)

But fear not, PAUL IS UNDEAD is not mere frippery. The personalities, the events, they mythos of the Beatles are still here, meticulously catalogued. Goldsher has simply taken the authorized history of the Fab Four and coated it with a thick varnish of blood and brains.

The book chronicles the band’s rise to the Toppermost of the Poppermost all the way from the Liverpool days to the to the maniac massacre at Shea Stadium to the Battle Royale with Yoko in the Abbey Road Studios. The reader need not understand the intricacies of Beatles lore to enjoy the narrative, but knowing Beatles’ fans will wink at Goldsher’s insider jests. Indeed, there are plenty of honest moments, wrapped in jaw-dropping tomfoolery.

Yes, for the connoisseur of both the Beatles and fresh brains, PAUL IS UNDEAD is just the dish.

Hungry for More?

If three hundred pages of limb snapping gore hasn’t dampened your appetite, then try this recipe for pull-apart monkey bread.

Binge!

Be still my Beatle-maniac heart, I’m in love with a book.

The Lonely Hearts Club by Elizabeth Eulberg

Why is this super fab new release? Let me count the ways…

1. The BEATLE-rific references.

Hello, you know me, right? How could I not fall for lines like this:

There was only one thing I could do to ease the pain. I turned to the only four guys who’d never let me down. The only four guys who’d never broken my heart .

John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

Yep, you had me right there, Ms. Eulberg.

2. Contemporary Realism? Who, me?

Let’s face it. I usually prefer to throw realism out the window when it comes to YA novels. Give me a dash of magic and a smokin’ hot supernatural love interest any day of the week.

But Eulberg’s book sucked me into a 100% vampire/angel/werewolf/fae/zombie/prophecy free world. And I loved it. The characters could have easily been teens I know  facing real life obstacles.

3. Sweet premise, savory resolution.

When Penny Lane gets her heart broken one too many times, she decides to swear off guys for good. She and her friends start The Lonely Hearts Club to affirm the bonds of friendship and the vow of self-preservation. These gals grow into a force to be reckoned with–they come to redefine themselves sans boyfriends.

But…when a non-jerk works his way into Penny’s heart, is the club doomed?

The author resolves the plot without tying things up with a giant valentine bow. The ending is satisfying without becoming too sweet or too simple. It’s just right. And thanks to a pitch perfect protagonist voice, I found myself thinking about Penny long after I’d turned the last page.

I’m so excited about this book, I’m giving a copy away. In the comments area for this post, use at least one Beatles’ reference to convince me why I should send YOU a copy of THE LONELY HEARTS CLUB. I’ll pick a winner next week.

Hungry for more?

Try this recipe for Strawberry Fields Forever Shortcake

Binge!