Category: The Beatles

Influential pop group of the 1960s. You may have heard of them…

It Was Fifty Years Ago Today…

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1970s, 1980s, The Beatles

Abbey Road is 50 years old.

Despite such a confident opening statement I must confess that, until about three weeks ago when Radio 2 first started banging on about the anniversary, I’d never even realised that The Beatles had taken their studio name for the title of their last album.

In the interests of full disclosure: my ignorance runs a lot deeper than that. I went through the entire seventies almost entirely unaware of ‘the Fab Four’. I knew the name Paul McCartney, but only because of Wings’ Mull of Kintyre and his being arrested for possession of pot in an episode of John Craven’s Newsround. I didn’t know him as one of The Beatles; and I went nine and a half years without ever hearing the name John Lennon.

The first time I heard of him was, again, an edition of Newsround, in December 1980, and the story’s high placing in the bulletin clearly marked him out as being somebody pretty famous (even though I’d no idea who he was). A few weeks later, when Imagine topped the charts, I remember thinking how sad it was that he should have been killed just before his new record came out – clearly, I’d also gone the best part of a decade without coming across the notion of a mercenary/commemorative reissue in the wake of a celebrity death. (I can only assume I’d slept through Way on Down’s five weeks at number one during Jubilee year.)

As the 1980s rolled on, I filled at least a few gaps. Thanks to the efforts of my Art and Music teachers, who between them taught us When I’m 64 and Michelle, I became aware of The Beatles as an ensemble. And, through their ongoing solo careers, I became more aware of Paul McCartney (because of The Frog Chorus) and of George Harrison (because of Stuck On You) and of Ringo Starr (because of, erm, Thomas the Tank Engine).

So anyway, with my credentials established, and to recap in case you’ve come in late, the final album by The Beatles, which was called Abbey Road, was released 50 years ago. Radio 2 has made, I think it’s fair to say, quite a big thing of it, with a separate ‘pop-up’ station, a host of special programming, and various regular shows broadcasting for the occasion from Abbey Road itself. I’m not convinced anything was added to the breakfast show’s traffic reports by having them delivered from outside by the zebra crossing but that’s showbiz for you.

There is, for all my ignorance on the subject, something about The Beatles. In their most ‘famous’ stuff (by which I really mean their most successful singles, I’ve never listened to any of their albums) there is almost a poet’s or a journalist’s sense of commentary and observation, the detail of life, its minutiae. Yes, they did their fair share of perfectly acceptable ‘my baby loves me’ songs, but it’s little character sketches, insights like Lady Madonna, or Eleanor Rigby, or Penny Lane that seem especially unique and distinctive.

Mind you, nobody’s perfect. Hey Jude is a beautiful song, apparently simple but somehow deeply moving – but then when they run out of actual song it carries on for what feels like forever in a drunken sprawl of sound. I can’t help thinking a more judicious editor might just have smiled politely and then cut it off the master tape when the boys weren’t looking. (All You Need Is Love similarly runs out of song before it actually stops, although you’ve got to admire the cheek of putting a snatch of their own She Loves You into its long fadeout.)

Fifty years on from their last album (last recorded, but not last released so Wikipedia has just told me, but anyway…) and we’re still talking about The Beatles, still listening to their music. So I think we can tentatively begin describing it as timeless, and not just an exercise in nostalgia. Some of it is of its time, but some of it doesn’t sound like a particular era or even a particular genre, it just does its own thing.

It could have been recorded… Yesterday.

John, Paul, George & Donald

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1980s, Little Bit Of Politics, The Beatles, Trump

God knows I don’t want to stick up for Trump.

BUT.

In one area of ‘policy’ at least I must, reluctantly, admit that, in principle anyway, he may well be more right than wrong: that is to say, I would far rather our world leaders were on speaking terms than not. Even in spite of this week’s lack of progress, to have Trump and Kim Jong-Un sitting down together and agreeing, even if in the most vague and general terms, on anything – well, it’s infinitely preferable to the exchange of petulant insults and escalating tensions which formerly characterised their ‘relationship’.

A shakily half-remembered history lesson tells me that, in an earlier time, the Cuban Missile Crisis was ultimately defused at a personal level, by the ‘reaching out’ of Kruschev to Kennedy. Proving perhaps that, as Kennedy put it the following year, “we all cherish our children’s futures.”

Two decades later and Sting was singing, with apparently less certainty than JFK, “I hope the Russians love their children too.” I don’t really recall losing much sleep to the supposedly ubiquitous threat of mutually assured nuclear destruction in the mid-1980s, although it cropped up at school quite a lot. In an era of Greenham Common, and when the USSR was a largely-unknown quantity represented in the news by little more than images of a collection of stern old men on the balcony of the Kremlin overlooking zealously-militaristic parades; back then there were certainly (at the risk of painting with the broad brush of stereotype) a fair number of “leftie liberals” amongst our teaching staff, all corduroy jackets and homespun, tie-dyed clothing, adorned with CND badges and the cannabis symbol.

Despite the apparent strides towards liberty and equality since then, I’m not sure that today’s teachers have quite the same ‘freedom of expression’. Those mid-80s were a time before the wall came down, yes; but it was also a time before the National Curriculum, and OFSTED, and in fact even before Section 28 – and so it’s entirely possible that there was an ‘underground’ sort of freedom enjoyed by the teaching staff of the day whether they were siding with the Greenham Common women, showing us graphic videos on the horrors of seal-hunting, or even on one occasion putting a Biblical spin on the Chernobyl disaster. (Chernobyl being the Ukrainian word for ‘wormwood’, fact fans.)

Maybe it was inevitable that teachers who had been students during the 50s and 60s should have a preoccupation with the nuclear bogeyman, even more than those of us who were pupils in the 70s and 80s. And of course it wasn’t just a political slant. I can see now, looking back, that other passions and interests carried over: as a school choir we learnt a number of ‘sixties pop smashers’ which were selected possibly for their musical qualities but more likely because, frankly, the music teachers liked them.

There’s no other explanation for why I know all the lyrics to ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ by The Beatles; and also to their rarely-heard-nowadays, bilingual ditty ‘Michelle’. (The opening line goes “Michelle, Ma Belle” from which you may deduce that the song contains many mots qui go very well ensemble).

Going back, though, to God knowing I don’t want to stick up for Trump; and clearly there’s a man who’d actually like to go back to a time before the wall came down, if his efforts to get a wall put up are anything to go by. Nevertheless, at least as a general rule, I still think, in principle, he is right to be talking to (rather than tweeting at) Kim Jong-Un.

It’s a shame this week didn’t bring any formal agreement, although it’s noticeable that neither party has exactly stomped back home bitching about the other side, adamant they’re done talking. Quite the opposite in fact, and bizarre as it may seem both leaders seem keen to meet again.

Maybe all they need is love.