4.

Speaker 1:Hello, welcome back to The Rest is History. I am with Conan O'Brien and we are talking Beatles and this is part two. It's the blue album to the red album of part one.

We left you on an absolute cliffhanger. John Lennon has made unwise comments about Jesus and provoked outrage in the Bible belt in the United States. And the problem for him is that the Beatles are due to go on a tour to the United States.

So Conan O'Brien, who has replaced Dominic on this show because Dominic refuses to talk about the Beatles, because Conan, what we didn't perhaps go into in great detail in the first episode was the actual music. And before the Beatles go on the tour that will bring them to America and all the Jesus kerfuffle, they have recorded an album that many now see as their greatest album, Revolver. Are you a particular fan of Revolver?

Speaker 2:Huge fan of Revolver. Revolver is very interesting because the Beatles are now recording music that would be very difficult to perform live. And live performance is a huge part of the Beatles engine.

Eleanor Rigby, Tomorrow Never Knows, which is kind of playing things backwards. These are all very difficult, if not impossible. Now it could be done with modern technology, but they become real recording geniuses and artists and it's taking them in this other direction.

So they finished Revolver and enough time has gone by because I think people used to say, well, Sergeant Pepper or Abbey Road is their greatest. And those are obviously fantastic. But Revolver, I think if you asked one of the Beatles, they might have the greatest fondness for Revolver.

Speaker 1:And that there's a kind of tension between now what they can do in a studio, but not reproduce on a stage. And the fact that they are starting to get a bit fed up with touring, because it's not only that they can't reproduce the musical effects that they've got on Revolver on stage, it's also the fact that they can't barely hear themselves play. And they know that most people in their audience, because they're all screaming, they can't really hear them either. So that's frustrating.

Speaker 2:We just became like lip syncing, you know, miming. And we didn't, we almost, sometimes things would break down and nobody would know. And so it wasn't doing the music any good.

And then after they finished Revolver, they go on a world tour and they go to Japan and then they go to the Philippines and they have a kind of awful run in with Imelda Marcos.

Speaker 1:Yes. Famous for—

Speaker 2:Yes, I was just there. I was just in the Philippines and I went to the Manila hotel, which is where the Beatles stayed.

Speaker 1:But you didn't turn down an invitation to tea with the head of the Philippines.

Speaker 2:I did. I did. And I was bullied at the airport.

Speaker 1:Like the Beatles were.

Speaker 2:Like the Beatles were.

Speaker 1:No, that was totally not the Beatles fault. The Marcos's announced that the Beatles will be appearing at the palace and having tea and then greeting a bunch of children. But no one asked the Beatles. And they're, as you guys would say, knackered.

Speaker 2:And they were knackered.

Speaker 1:They were knackered. Yeah. They just wanted to use the loo and then take a lift. I'll never be invited again.

But they, they were tired. They didn't want to do that. They said, no, we're not going to do that. And then of course the Marcos family said, this is a terrible snub. And they were in their hotel room watching this all unfold. And then they were hated throughout the Philippines. And there was a kind of real physical threat of, of, of danger. And they kind of, you know, they made it out to their flight and it was all really traumatic.

And they left the Philippines, said we're never going back. And I don't think they ever did actually, but kind of in a sense worse was to come because we now come to the way that John Lennon's comments on Christianity was playing out in America. And there's kind of escalating outrage in the Bible belt. DJs there are inviting people to their records and their Beatles wigs and to kind of burn them.

Speaker 2:[Don't forget to take your Beatle records and your Beatle paraphernalia to any one of our 14 pickup points in Birmingham, Alabama.]

Speaker 1:And lots of people kind of carrying around placards saying, you know, Jesus died for your sins, John Lennon and the Ku Klux Klan are getting in on the act and it's a pretty menacing environment, isn't it? And when the Beatles land in America and they are asked about this, you can see when John is speaking at the press conference. I mean, he looks traumatized.

Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, apparently he's a tough guy and he speaks his mind and he's not afraid to back down, but this was traumatic for him. And he realizes that he's put the whole thing in jeopardy. And at one point he cries, apparently breaks down crying just with the group and Brian and says, I'll do what I have to do to fix this. He does. He does. He gives an apology. It's a, it's a bit of a non-apology apology.

[I'm not saying that we're better or greater or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing or whatever it is, you know, I would just said what I said and it was wrong or was taken wrong and now it's all this.]

But he clarifies his remarks. And of course, people that don't like the Beatles won't be satisfied, but it feels like it's enough for them to get to move on.

Speaker 1:And so they decide after this, that they have had enough of touring. And so from this point on, they essentially are going to be meeting in the studio and developing albums of increasing complexity, technological and musical.

But there is also a sense, isn't there? I think that what that embroilio in America in 1966 had kind of revealed was the scale of the cultural rupture that is going on in the sixties between an increasingly kind of counter-cultural take on religion and the Vietnam war and kind of host of issues and a kind of a conservatism that is still very much there. And there is a real kind of cultural divide starting to widen.

And as you go from 1966 into 1967, this will become very apparent because 1967 will be famous for the summer of love. And it is the Beatles who provide in a sense, the soundtrack for that with two massive, massive kind of musical monuments. The first double A side, Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane.

[The little children love him behind his back.][And the banker never wears a mat in the pouring rain, very strange.][Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes.]

And then their album, Sergeant Pepper.

Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, it's important to remember that 66, we're just two years away from Nixon being elected president. And what Nixon reveals and his campaign is that there is a huge part of the United States that isn't down with the kids and wants no part of it. And through the Beatles, we're starting to see this showing up and we're going to see it very clearly in two years.

But it's one of the reasons they stopped touring. They can't hear themselves. The technology for touring on the Beatles scale was terrible. They're still using these relatively small Vox amps. When they play giant stadiums, they're piping it through the public announce address system. So they can't hear themselves. People can't hear them.

And I think, I mean, John Lennon always said they were a terrific live band and they got something from that. But now there's no communicating with an audience that size. There's no give and take. So they've got to move on.

They take a break after they stop touring. John goes off and makes How I Won the War. That's where he starts wearing his round glasses. It was a government issue, granny glasses. And then Paul does the score for The Family Way, I think. Everyone takes a little bit of a breather and then they get back together. Paul has an idea and they start working on Sergeant Pepper.

But you mentioned that they have this incredible single they put out, an A-side and a B-side, which is Strawberry Fields Forever and then Penny Lane. They were meant to be part of the new album, but because of this demand that there always be new singles, two of the greatest songs the Beatles would ever make are put on an A and a B-side and put out and now can't be on the album, which today people would say, well, that's silly. Put it on the album too. But they were very strict about that.

Speaker 1:You mentioned how Nixon in America is lurking in the wings and it would be remiss of me at this point not to ventriloquize Dominic, whose great point is that Sergeant Pepper will be outsold by The Sound of Music in 1967.

Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields, which lots of critics have said is the kind of cultural pinnacle of post-war British achievement. I think without a doubt, the greatest single the Beatles ever released. It's their first one for eons not to become number one and it's kept off the top spot by Engelbert Humperdinck. So they're not having it all their way, but it is a transcendent achievement, isn't it? And it takes them back to Liverpool. So both Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields are locations in Liverpool.

Speaker 2:I think Strawberry Fields Forever might be my favorite Beatles song. Penny Lane for me with the trumpet. They're both so incredible. They also show you both sides of this incredible songwriting team and their perfection.

And so this is how good the Beatles have become. You take these two songs and you don't even put them on the Watershed album, Sergeant Pepper. You take them off and issue them as a single. That would be unheard of today.

Speaker 1:I mean, the only track I think that transcends it is A Day in the Life, which is the last song on Sergeant Pepper and perfectly fuses the best of John and Paul and is designed to be a kind of overwhelming symphonic experience.

Here we are in Abbey Road. They invited a vast orchestra to come in and play all kinds of mad tunes and it crashes out and you're left with this incredible silence, which continues on the album. And it's all very groovy and it's all very counter-cultural. And you do get the sense with Sergeant Pepper that the Beatles are starting to, as the Queen put it, go a bit odd.

Speaker 2:So it's not just that the music is more radical and edgy and kind of exploring new ways of developing, but the facial hair is starting to develop and the hair is getting even longer.

Speaker 1:Yes.

Speaker 2:I know that you and Dominic have beard obsessions and the beards start to show up, the mustaches and soon beards, but it's a concept album. It really isn't. Paul had this idea that it would be a whole album done by a fictional band called Sergeant Peppers, but they stick with that idea for maybe one or two songs and then they give up, but it doesn't matter. It's really about that amazing cover. It's called the first concept album. It doesn't go anywhere. Mr. Kite, all my contributions have absolutely nothing to do with this idea of Sergeant Pepper and his band, but it works because we said it worked and that's how it appeared.