1.
Speaker 1
Hello everyone and welcome to Abbey Road Studios for a Rest is History Beatles special. Now, I am afraid that Dominic isn't here because, as regular listeners will know, he disgraces himself by not liking John Lennon and also being fed up with talking about the Beatles. And we were recently, the pair of us, on Conan O'Brien's podcast and Conan asked us, were we Beatles or Stones?I, of course, said Beatles, Dominic said Stones and then said, I am never going to talk about the Beatles again. So when I got the opportunity to do a Beatles podcast here in Abbey Road, I thought, well, who can I get to replace Dominic? Who can be Denny Lane to my Paul McCartney?And so I thought, well, Conan O'Brien. And Conan, here you are in Abbey Road.
Speaker 2
I just flew 35,000 miles to be called Denny Lane to your Paul McCartney. And I accept it. It's a high honour.
Speaker 1
Thank you so much for joining us because when we met in LA, you were talking about how you two are massive Beatles fans. But more than that, you talked about how you've actually met George and Paul and Ringo.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah. I was lucky enough to meet three of the four Beatles.John died when I was in high school, but I was a Beatles fan in the 70s to the exclusion of music that was coming out at the time. I was stubbornly just listening to Beatles records throughout the 70s. But later on, once I had a TV show and became known, I was lucky to meet three of them, which was really special.I met George when I was a writer at Saturday Night Live. And he was meeting with Lorne Michaels, who's a producer. They had gone out for drinks.And then there's a writer's room at Saturday Night Live. And George came in. I'll never forget.He apologized initially because he had been drinking some quantity of liquor. So he said, I'm sorry, I'm pissed as a newt. And he was kind of bobbing from shoe to shoe.He asked why we were all staring at him. Me being a Beatles geek, I had in my office, same make model year country gentleman that George played in the 64 tour. And I thought about going and getting it and showing it to him.But I thought, no, he's not in a condition to appreciate that. So he'll probably hit me with it. And then George sat down at a piano and started to play, which was lovely.And what was he playing? He was just playing around chords. He wasn't playing a song.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
So not My Guitar Gently Weeps. No, it wasn't what you think. Hollywood would make a full rendition of While My Guitar Gently Weeps.It was not. So you were listening to a Beatle play the piano. I was listening to a Beatle play the piano.And I've also been lucky enough to be in a room where Paul was playing guitar. And it was just a guitar that was in the room. So he's left-handed.He was just playing it upside down and backwards. And I said, how do you do that? Where did you learn to do that?And he said to me, back in the day when we were starting out, I had to, because the only other way to play it would be to retune John's guitar. And he would have crippled me.
Speaker 1
I can't believe that you've had these experiences. Because the closest that I have come to meeting a Beatle was via my wife, Sadie, when she was three, was in a queue with her parents for a visa to America. And Paul was standing behind her and picked her up.I was in that queue as well.
Speaker 2
So I've got you beat at every turn. God.
Speaker 1
So you're a huge Beatles fan, as am I. But there are, of course, skeptics out there, Dominic being one of them. So I guess the question, we're a history podcast rather than a music podcast.And so we need to make the case that the Beatles are historically significant. Is that a case you think that can be made?
Speaker 2
Easily. The Beatles are a complete break with what happened before. They are singer-songwriters.They wrote their own music. There are so many ways that they depart. So many groups at the time.There's the lead, and then there's the rest of the group. It's Dion and the Belmonts. There was a lot of pressure for them to have a leader.I think briefly they were Johnny and the Moondogs, very briefly. But they always knew, no, we're a group. It's this kind of synergy of it.Yeah. And that was unusual at the time. So they're a break with pretty much everything that comes before them.And they're as relevant today as they were in 1964.
Speaker 1
Because obviously there have been acts that have been massive in their own time and then slightly started to fade. But I guess you could say that the Beatles have endured long enough and remain massive enough that you can say that people will probably be listening to them in decades times, maybe in centuries time.
Speaker 2
Yeah. There's a great clip. I think it's in the anthology where they're talking to a young guy, basically a teenager, a kid at Shea Stadium.And the interviewer was trying to run them down a little bit. And this kid says- I love them. Yeah.And he just says they're incredible musicians. And he more or less makes the case there in 1965 or six that we're going to be listening to their music forever.
Speaker 1
They are, I think, the best selling musical act of all time. I mean, every statistic that they generate is off the scale. I guess the case I would make and why I think they're historically significant is because in a way they are lightning rods for so much that makes the 60s a revolutionary decade.And I think that in all kinds of ways, in the 21st century, we're living in the aftermath of what happened in the 60s. Rather like people in the 16th century, we're living in the aftermath of what has happened in the 1520s. I think that the transformation, the cultural, the ethical transformation is on that scale.And the Beatles are both kind of symbols of it, but they're also vectors of it.
Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, the Beatles themselves knew that they weren't creating all this change. Sometimes they were just the avatar that could represent the change.And I think they were pretty sane. I mean, another group with that kind of fame would have said, we did all this. We changed humankind forever.They knew that, of course, that wasn't the case, but they were the perfect representation of what was happening. And they did drive and give credence to a lot of amazing changes that were happening.
Speaker 1
And I think also, I mean, just to begin, they do have their roots in kind of quite the decades before they were born, which would include the war years, but going back into the 30s and even back into the 20s. So John was a big fan of Just William. I don't know if that was a thing in America, probably not, but it's kind of stories of this kind of raggedy school boy, and he has a gang of outlaws and John was obsessed by it.And Paul's dad, he kind of played all kinds of old traditional English music. And the influence of that on the Beatles tracks is kind of really evident. And also, I think it's interesting that John and Paul meet at a church fate.Neither of them were in any way religious, but it's a reminder that the world of England in the 50s is still one where you want to be a skiffle band, you still have to go and do it at a church fate because there isn't really anywhere else to have that kind of fun.
Speaker 2
That's the only gig.
Speaker 1
That's the only gig in town really, yeah.
Speaker 2
So no, they come from, a friend of mine said once, Jimmy Vivino, my band leader said, the Beatles single-handedly brought us from black and white to color, which I thought was an interesting way to look at it, which is they come from this very old tradition and they're well-schooled in English music hall, big band there. Yeah, swing and all that. They have big ears, they're listening and hearing everything and soaking it all up.And later on, it all comes out in the music.
Speaker 1
But obviously, one of the things that they are listening to and are able to listen to, perhaps in a way that lots of people elsewhere in England can't, is the sounds of America.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Because Liverpool is a port that is open to the Atlantic and ships are still transport, records are being brought over in ships. And so they come to the port and the Beatles can access them.
Speaker 2
Yeah, they can get Elvis, Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly.
Speaker 1
And black music. Yeah. Which is, they love all that.Yes. So when John and Paul meet at this church fete. The Walton Fete.The Walton Fete. John is singing a D-WAP song, Come Go With Me. Yeah.And he doesn't know the lyrics and Paul doesn't know the lyrics either, but he knows the lyrics well enough to know that John can't remember them. Yeah. But the fact that they both know the song is like a kind of masonic handshake between them.It's a sign that they have access to a kind of secret information. They are familiar with American music. And so the kind of the potential, the excitement, the drama of what is happening in America.You know, you said that the Beatles introduced color, but I think for the future Beatles, 1950s England is a monochrome country. Yes. And America is vibrant technicolor.
Speaker 2
Well, also the war has been a very different experience. I don't need to tell you for people living in England. They've been bombed.They've seen their cities destroyed. They've paid a terrible price. They're still rationing.They're still war rationing. So they're growing up in a world where people are coming out of a daze. And there's been a lot of privation.There's been a lot of difficulty.
Speaker 1
I also got into the Beatles in the 70s. And when I look back at the 60s, the 60s seemed an impossible distance from the Second World War. But now you think, I mean, it's only 20 years.I mean, it's so close. And when the Beatles are growing up, they are in a city that is cratered with kind of bomb damage. And as you say, you know, the Beatles are born in the war years.John is born during the blitz. During the blitz. On Liverpool.So George joins John and Paul and they get joined by Steve Southerly.
Speaker 2
Paul's the one who knows George, introduces him and he plays raunchy on the top of a double-decker bus.
Speaker 1
Yeah, and that's enough. That's enough. You're in.Yeah. And then John's art school friend, Stu Sutcliffe, wins a prize for his art and spends it on a guitar.
Speaker 2
Well, John bullies him into, I don't know what he was, 80 pounds or 100 pounds or something. He bullies him into buying a bass, which Stu never really learns to play. But he's a cool looking guy.He is. And I think that's an early sign that, yes, the music's important, but the image is who we are, what we represent. And Stu is an artist.And Paul doesn't love this. He really doesn't like Stu coming in because he can't play. And I think he's very close to John, which may have been a problem for Paul.
Speaker 1
Yes. And also there's Pete Best. Yeah.A top hairdresser in later life. But at the time, the drummer. And so they all go off to Hamburg.And Hamburg equally, I mean, maybe even more than Liverpool, is obviously a city marked by the experience of the Second World War. The British had flattened it. And of course, there were people there who had lived through the Nazi period.And it's always struck me that one of the things that is interesting about Hamburg in the Nazi period is that it's kind of notorious among the Nazi leadership for the enthusiasm of the young people who live there for American and English jazz and swing. And it's a kind of rebellion against the ideals of the Hitler Youth and all of that. And they grow their hair and they listen to jazz.And they're particularly into black music. And this is a kind of, obviously, I mean, it's the anathema to everything that Nazism represents. And when the Beatles meet Astrid Kirscher and Klaus Vormann, who are kind of middle class intellectual Germans who are ashamed of the Nazi legacy and therefore are heirs to that tradition of seeing British and American music as something that is expressive of freedom and of opposition to Nazism.That's kind of one of the reasons why they all end up getting on so well.
Speaker 2
Well, they're also, they're bohemians. They're artists and outsiders looking in. And I think that's very attractive to John and Paul, especially, and George.They really like these people. They become good friends. And they're very much influenced by them.
Speaker 1
John calls them exes, doesn't he? Existentialists. And kind of France is the great influence.And in due course, it's Astrid Kirscher who will give the Beatles their kind of signature mop top cuts, which is influenced by these kind of European bohemian ideals. But just to reiterate, I mean, this is ultimately a kind of reaction against what the Nazis had represented and that kind of tradition. So there is a case for saying that the mop top is a kind of anti-Nazi haircut.Do you think that's maybe going too far?
Speaker 2
I think you've pushed it way too far. Now I'm listening to all the early Beatles hits as anti-Hitler anthems. I do agree with you that there is clearly, and John said this, Hamburg made them.You know, going to Hamburg made them because as Malcolm Gladwell pointed out, they had to do their- 100,000 hours into a billion hours.
Speaker 1
It always changes.
Speaker 2
I needed a billion hours myself, but it changes them. The volume of work they have to do is incredible. They also need to entertain those crowds and they get very good at that.They get very good at winning, getting people from peeking in the door to coming in to buying drinks. They do it all- Makschau. Yeah, Makschau.They do it with the strength of their personalities and with their music and they get honed into a diamond.
Speaker 1
And they're absolutely off their faces on amphetamines. Prellys. Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah. They're on these pills that enable them to play and play and play and play.
