41 years ago today we lost John Lennon ... he's now been gone longer than he was here.
Since everybody is still talking about the new "Get Back" film running on Disney+, we'll run some of your Beatles-related comments today and tomorrow ... and invite you to chime in as well if you've got some strong feelings about the new Peter Jackson film.
The first review of OUR review that we received
kinda shocked us …
Kent:
Please remove me from your mailing list. Your
review of the "Get Back" documentary is SO petty and disrespectful -
"boring" and "disappointing" ? I'm fuming. And I'm
done.
--Garry Berman
I immediately wrote back to Garry, who I have
known for YEARS and featured several times on the website, particularly in
helping to promote his book “We’re Going To See The Beatles,” which I loved, by
the way …
Wow!
Would love to present your opposing views
...
That's kinda what we're all about ...
Tear me to shreds if you like ... point by
point if you want to ... and I'll run it!
kk
My review … ANY review, really, is supposed to
reflect how the review topic affected the reviewer. I am an absolute, bonafide Beatles fanatic
and have been looking forward to this film for the past four years … ever since
the day it was first announced that the material was being turned over to Peter
Jackson and the complete vaults would be opened for the first time in 52
years. I devoured every promo clip they
released and was TOTALLY sucked in … this stuff was AMAZING … it looked
amazing, it sounded amazing, and the clips were fun and exciting … it only
built up my anticipation even higher than it already was, which I considered to
already be at its peak, with each new clip released … this film couldn’t get here fast enough for me!!!
And then when it did, I was disappointed by
the final result. And I was not alone …
We heard from dozens of readers who
essentially felt the same way, all recounting how they stuck with the film
because the material meant so much to them … but all also admitting that they
lost interest several times along the way because of the amount of time it was
taking to get anywhere. I saw the reaction
first hand of my own family, who wanted to be there to watch it with me because
they knew how important all of this was to me and how much I had been looking forward to
seeing it … they wanted to share in the experience and observe my enjoyment ... and then, as the film moved on (and on!), I watched them drift away and become more and more
disinterested as the band broke into “I’ve Got A Feeling” for the ninth
time. (I couldn’t help but laugh when
George Harrison himself asked Paul, “Is this one called ‘I’ve Got A
Feeling’?” lol)
Garry obviously enjoyed the film more than I
did … but can he really deny that anything I described was not the case? I can only assume that his tolerance for
repetition is much greater than mine … but that doesn’t make EITHER of our opinions
right or wrong … it’s what each of us took away from the experience … and
that’s all.
So Garry, slam me back and defend your points
as to what makes you think this was a great film … and, as promised, I’ll run
them. (But seriously … quitting the list
because of MY opinion?!?! Isn’t that a bit
extreme?)
Forgotten Hits has ALWAYS been about sharing our views as a group … as music fans, showing every side of the argument as it were (in this case anyway!), and offering up the means to view things from perhaps a different perspective once you've heard some insight from other fans.
In fact, we encourage
other readers to do the same. Bring it
on … defend the film if that's your want … and we will run your opposing views for all the world to
see. (kk)
And just to show that I’m a still good sport … and
have always appreciated your friendship and support of Forgotten Hits ... here are
a couple more plugs for Garry’s excellent book …
FORGOTTEN
HITS: We're Going To See The Beatles! (forgottenhits60s.blogspot.com)
FORGOTTEN
HITS: Introducing Garry Berman (forgottenhits60s.blogspot.com)
I want to compliment you on the Beatles review. It seemed I felt the same way about the overkill of stuff. I would have preferred a restored original Let It Be movie with a couple of hours of bonus material.
And, speaking of the Rooftop Concert ...
Did you see this Lego?
Clark Besch
16 of The Top 40 came back as decidedly Paul tunes … but it
was John who captured the #1 and the #2 spots.
George is represented three times (in order: “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” #14, “Here
Comes The Sun,” #18 and “Something,” #19.)
You can view the complete list here: The Boom
Beatles Chart! - Boom Radio (boomradiouk.com)
This is a really cool five minute piece that ran on the Australian version of 60 Minutes on a segment called “Let it Be Stories.” Great stuff.
Get READY for
the fun this week! The Get Back show on Disney+.
Clark Besch
With all The Beatles fuss going on right now, I thought it
might be appropriate to run this 1998 interview that Harvey Kubernik did with
the incredible songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller regarding the
songs that they wrote that The Beatles eventually recorded …
Harvey
Kubernik (HK) : You two guys had three songs on the “Beatles Live At The BBC”
set, “Kansas City,” “Youngblood” and “Some Other Guy.” On The Beatles’ Decca
audition, they performed and recorded “Three Cool Cats.” “Some Other Guy”
was heard on the very early film clip of The Beatles performing at The Cavern,
a song Richard Barrett originally did. It seems to always be in every
documentary on the Beatles.
Mike
Stoller (MS) : I heard years ago a tiny bit of “Some Other Guy” at The Cavern,
and it had been in a documentary. I could barely hear it.
HK:
“Some Other Guy” was a song that you wrote with Richard Barrett, who you worked
with at Red Bird records. He was a musician and producer.
MS: We
were recording Richard. He was involved with The Chantels. He produced them, and
I guess he wrote a lot of their songs, I don’t remember. He was a very capable
producer and writer on his own. He wanted to do a session as an artist. We
produced that, and we were going to put it out on our own label, I can’t
exactly remember what year it was, but we ended up, I think, leasing it to
Atlantic. Two sides, that’s all we did with him. “Some Other Guy” and a thing
called “Tricky Dickey,” and I guess it found its way to Liverpool. It was not a
hit.
HK: What
does it feel like to pen something 40, 45 years ago and hear artists like The
Beatles do your work?
Jerry Leiber
(JL) : I’ll tell you what it’s like. I have no sense of the passage of time and
it’s like they cut it last night, and someone said, ‘You want to hear a Beatles
cut?’ ‘Yeah, great.’ I don’t have this long sense of distance and time and
history and baggage. I don’t have it. I think we both experience time and
history differently.
HK: And
when you wrote “Kansas City / Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!”
JL: When
we did that with Little Willie Littlefield, it was all right. Later, Wilbert
Harrison’s version came out; it sounded right.
MS:
Between The Beatles’ records and Paul McCartney’s recordings, there is a vast
array of versions, but the first version was taken from Little Richard’s version,
which came out in the US right after Wilbert Harrison’s record came out. It
just said “Kansas City.” Little Richard did the four ‘hey hey’s’. I liked Paul McCartney as a vocalist, and
especially loved him in those melodic things he wrote. Between him and John
Lennon, that was the 1960’s as far as I’m concerned. And I loved the way he
sang our songs. Beautiful.
Hi Kent:
I know the first Beatles Radio Play is a topic you have used for a long time. I found these articles about WLS and Please Please Me. I didn’t know if you had these or not so I thought I would forward them to you. They do seem to bear out your own findings.
Ken Freck
Yes, some of the facts and details presented may be up for contention but essentially the findings are, in fact, the same. (Let’s also consider that even by this point, people were testing their 40-year-old memories of what was essentially a non-event at the time. That’s why so many have jumped on The Beatles Bandwagon ever since, trying to claim at least some small part of the pie that made it all happen.)
The one thing that is GROSSLY overstated here was there being ANY
excitement attached to the first airing of this track … it simply didn’t
happen.
Truth is, it was a total dud … America wouldn’t catch on for
another ten months and then Beatlemania EXPLODED on our shores, allowing The
Beatles to hit The National Chart 34 TIMES in 1964 alone … a number previously
unheard of (you know, until much bigger stars like Drake and The Cast of Glee
came along!!! Certainly, you all
remember running out and buying Drake and Cory Monteith wigs and bubble gum cards, right?!?!)
Virtually NO attention was paid to “Please Please Me” at all when
WLS charted it for a couple of weeks in March of 1963. (It might have sold a total of 700 copies here in Chicago … if that.)
Also missing from these articles is the fact that Bruce Spizer AND
Jerry Osborne both credited our research as being the definitive source of
proof of Biondi’s moment in the history books … and he didn’t go to LA telling his
new radio station, “You’ve got to jump on this new ‘From Me To You’ record
because it’s going to be a monster … these guys are going to be bigger than
Elvis Presley’ either … that simply didn’t happen. In fact, MOST of the United States were
playing what amounted to being the Del Shannon “cover” version … after all, Del
was the established star … and to indicate otherwise is simply an attempt to
rewrite history. (Shannon’s version went
to #67 nationally … The Beatles’ original version only reached #116 in Billboard
and #149 in Cash Box … barely a blip on the radar. Even when it was reissued six months later as
the B-Side of “Please Please Me,” it only went to #41 in both of these
publications.)
The important thing is that Biondi’s legacy will live on … through
any and all means necessary. (kk)
THE BEATLES: GET BACK:
MAKE
SURE TO GIVE THE ORIGINAL DIRECTOR SOME CREDIT
BY
HARVEY KUBERNIK COPYRIGHT © 2021
“Honor the Incarnation” – Ram
Dass
As we prepare this late November,
2021, to view the long-anticipated Beatles’ Get Back movie
from director Peter Jackson, a truly deep-dive filmic endeavor based on Let It
Be, and greatly expanded from the initial theatrical release
by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, we should all collectively acknowledge the
root work foundation captured by Lindsay-Hogg while simultaneously rooting for
Jackson’s celluloid victory lap.
I was delighted that Jackson was
particularly affectionate detailing the connection between Lindsay-Hogg’s
1969 Let It Be and his own 2021 Get Back on
an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2021/11/19/pete-jackson-acfc-footage-sot-beatles-documentary-vpx.cnn
The Beatles’ Let It Be has
just been released in various configurations by Apple/Ume before the debut
broadcast of Get Back.
Michael Lindsay-Hogg, is the
pioneering music video director who guided the landmark Ready,
Steady, Go! music and dance television series during 1963-1966, filmed
the Rolling Stones and their guests in Britain at a big top venue in
Wembley.
The shoot happened in 1968 on
the 11th and 12th of December. Envisioned as a BBC special, the
project was shelved, but in the intervening 28 years it was regarded as “The
Holy Grail” of rock films until the film finally saw the light of release in
1996 through ABKCO Films.
Before capturing The Rock
and Roll Circus on celluloid, director Michael Lindsay-Hogg had helmed
many of The Rolling Stones’ promotional video clips: “She’s a Rainbow,” “2000
Light Years From Home,” “Child of the Moon,” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” as well
as The Beatles’ “Paperback Writer,” “Rain,” “Hey Jude” and “Revolution.”
Besides directing the
Beatles’ Let It Be feature film and many of The Rolling
Stones’ seminal video clips, during the course of his career, Michael has
directed specials for Simon and Garfunkel, Neil Young, Paul Simon and the Who.
Michael Lindsay-Hogg is the
author of the well received 2011 autobiography Luck and
Circumstance: A Coming of Age in Hollywood, New York and Points Beyond.
Lindsay-Hogg is the son of the
acclaimed actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, who starred as Marilyn Birchfield in
the drama The Pawnbroker directed by Sidney Lumet.
Like visionary director/producer
Jack Good before him, both studied at Oxford, Michael Lindsay-Hogg viewed and
lensed rock ‘n’ roll as a dramatic subject. Michael’s first job, at age 16, was
serving as an apprentice for John Houseman’s repertory theatre company in
Stratford, Connecticut.
“I started out as a child actor
and fell in love with the theater,” Michael told me in a 2019 interview for my
2020 book, Docs That Rock, Music That Matters.
“The first jobs I had were in
Shakespeare on stage. And that’s how it started and I tried very much to bring
some of those elements to Ready, Steady Go!”
This landmark British music
programme was broadcast every Friday night debuting August 9, 1963 and a final
taping December 23, 1966.
RSG! was
conceived by Elkan Allan, then head of Rediffusion TV. Vicki Wickham assembled
the talent and dancers and served as one of the producers. After 1964 the live
show was aired nationally on network. The program was recorded at the RSG! studio
in Rediffusion’s headquarters in Kingsway, London.
RSG! gave
a platform to some of the most successful recording artists of the sixties: the
Who, Otis Redding, the Animals, Gene Pitney, the Zombies, Sandie Shaw, the
Beatles, Burt Bacharach, the Stones, the Temptations, Donovan, the Kinks, James
Brown, the Fortunes and the Walker Brothers.
Initially, the musical guests
on RSG! mimed to their pre-recorded tracks, by late 1964 some
artists performed live and eventually all acts to all-live performances in
April 1965. The hosts/presenters were Keith Fordyce and Cathy McGowan. Early shows
were introduced by singer Dusty Springfield. Allan hired Frances Hitching as
producer. Bill Turner directed the first shows, and a line of directors
followed including Robert Fleming, Rollo Gamble, Daphne Shadwell, Michael
Lindsay-Hogg, and Peter Croft.
“It was a black and white
program,” explained Lindsay-Hogg. “A lot of the great comedies and dramas from
the forties and fifties were in black and white. In England we had no color. I
had no worries from the people above me. Elkan Allen was the creator and always
encouraged me to go further. Very helpful. And I think people were
stunned by the comparative substance of the rock ‘n’ roll that was on
television,” Lindsay-Hogg volunteered.
“1963 was a revolution. It was
the kids who had been children in World War 2. The world was opening up for
them,” he reinforced. “They could have long hair if they wanted too. And it was
the discovery of the pill for pregnancy. And so a whole nation was open for
young people and freedom. There was long hair, the pill and music. The paper
was ready to be lit and the match came,” ventured Lindsay-Hogg, who along with
John Lennon, Andrew Loog Oldham, Vicki Wickham, Mick Jagger and other bold
Brits embodied the confidence of a new London.
“There were new managers in rock
‘n’ roll and around Ready, Steady Go! Don
Arden, Andrew Loog Oldham, and Kit Lambert and
Chris Stamp, had been assistant stage managers or involved in acting.
“In 1963 I was working. RSG! represented
the time when we were in the business we wanted to be in and RSG! on
a Friday night the Green Room was the meeting place of all those similarly
blessed,” Andrew Loog Oldham recalled to me in my 2004 book, Hollywood
Shack Job: Rock Music In Film and on Your Screen.
“Vicki Wickham booked the show
from late 1963 to December 1967. Michael Lindsay-Hogg directed it, and tried
new techniques like stop action and freeze frame while the band was on camera.
“Save to say I still communicate
with both of them so that tells you the lot. You were dealing with nice people.
None of the people had an agenda. On the show, the visuals propelled the
music.”
“On RSG! Andrew
had some ideas about lighting and shots,” offered Lindsay-Hogg. “One evening at
the Ad Lib club I met up with Andrew and we agreed to debut a couple of new
songs he was hyped about, including ‘Satisfaction.’”
“When The Stones did ‘Paint, It
Black,’ we put camera effects on Mick’s face and made it darker and darker,”
emphasized Lindsay-Hogg. “We were broadcasting live. It felt dangerous and
primitive.
“The cameraman, Bruce Gowers,
later did the great video of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ which was a very
calculated video.
“With RSG! it
was about as much about the technique as the performer. In the early RSG! stages
I was always thinking about the performer and somehow marrying the technique to
them. If the performer was Mick Jagger and John Lennon you don’t want to get in
the way too much.
“In 1966 I had done earlier
videos of the Beatles’ ‘Rain,’ and ‘Paperback Rider.” And Mick knew that. And
it always was between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones,” admitted
Lindsay-Hogg.
“The music video had been
around. There were earlier attempts. Scopitone. [A jukebox 16 mm film]. The first
Scopitone ones were made in French. Lip-sync to a pre-recorded track. Used to
be seen in bars or in diners with French acts [Serge Gainsbourg, Johnny
Hallyday] miming to rock ‘n’ roll videos.
“There was Dick
Clark‘s American Bandstand. I used to watch it in the
fifties, Jack Good, the wonderful producer and director of Shindig! and Hullabaloo.
“And so did we know what was
gonna happen to rock ‘n’ roll in the sense that we know that it was ultimately
going to blast through the roof? We thought it would. And he thought ‘let’s see
what can happen with visual presentation of rock and roll.’ Which as you know
ended up on MTV and generation 2.”
I suspect in the first quarter
of 2022 there will be Jackson’s director’s cut of Get Back for
DVD format with commentary and bonus footage.
I asked Michael about the DVD
format, the inclusion of bonus tracks and/or implementation of director
commentary added to the initial retail configurations and products we coveted
and collected the last half century.
Did he ever feel an audio
dialogue track dilutes and lessens the mystique of his innovative work?
“That’s a real good question. As
for DVD, bonus tracks, and interview sessions as long the questions are
intelligent. And if the person has one a little research. I do it mainly
because it was at the beginning when certain ideas and techniques which
completely taken hold of the culture where it was a formative kind of birth
period. There really hadn’t been done before except for Scopitone and some
studios in America, but not very well done.
“When I worked with the Beatles
and the Rolling Stones they were really the first videos which tried to take
the form a little further. Like the Beatles playing out in the fields.
Following me was a long line of very interesting visual attempts with music.”
Peter Jackson has done it
with Get Back.
--Harvey Kubernik
Peter Jackson told “Variety” that he was nervous about
convincing Paul and Ringo that the new documentary should be over six hours
long.
“We had to own up to Disney and to the Beatles, to Apple Corps, that we thought the film should be six hours long, not two and a half. That was the most nervous time I’ve had on this whole project, waiting for their verdict … The Beatles were the ones that we were waiting for them to look at it – Ringo (Starr) and Paul (McCartney) and Olivia (Harrison) and Sean (Lennon) — and the verdict came back from them saying: ‘Six hour — great. We understand why it’s six hours. We’re happy with a six-hour version.’”
More tomorrow when Clark Besch offers up HIS take on the "Get Back" film!
(Join us for breakfast, won't you???) kk
