Beatles as Visual Artifact

A student acquaintance of mine has designed a cover for a Beatles coffee-table book:



These images have become iconic. They evoke a time, a place, and a set of distinctive experiences. And--like everything else about the Beatles--they're tasteful, aesthetically pleasing, and compelling.

Close Call for Roberta Flack

Hard at work on a new album of Beatles covers, sultry-voiced Roberta Flack nearly lost a year's work:

One rainy day last month, Roberta Flack, the smooth voice of 1970s soul ballads, stepped out of her recording studio in Chelsea, hailed a yellow taxi and threw a suitcase of CDs into the back seat. Arriving at the Dakota, her longtime home, Ms. Flack got out and hurried past the wrought-iron entrance gate, seeking cover from the downpour.

Then: “Panic! Panic! Panic!” Ms. Flack recalled on the telephone the other day. “I left the suitcase in the cab!”

In an instant, Ms. Flack had joined the ranks of world-class musicians (most famously the cellist Yo-Yo Ma) forced to grapple with a quintessential nightmare of New York transit. More than a year’s worth of work, including much of a new compilation of Beatles covers — tentative title: “Let It Be Roberta” — had disappeared to points unknown.

“It was priceless,” Ms. Flack, 73, said a few weeks after the episode. (The trauma still sounded fresh.) “I’ve been working on this album for a while. I had packed all of the stuff that had been finished, stuff that had not been finished, things I was thinking of approaching, things I was not thinking of approaching ever.”

I can't believe she's 73! But I guess that makes sense, since she had her first hit in 1973:

Her duets with Donny Hathaway (who committed suicide in 1979) were magical. Here are Roberta and Donny singing "The Closer I Get to You" in 1978:

This song always gives me the chills. I'm sure John Lennon loved Roberta Flack's music; he and the other Beatles were huge fans of the 1950s and 1960s soul classics with which Roberta grew up. And she lives at the Dakota!

Catholic Church Blesses Beatles UPDATED

Father Guido Sarducci, former gossip columnist for L'Osservatore Romano

L'Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Vatican, announced this week that all is forgiven for the Beatles:

“Their beautiful melodies changed music and continue to give pleasure …what would pop music have been like without the Beatles?”

Lots of snarky comments have met this news, see here, here, and here. If the Vatican's new stance is all about damage control, though, remember that not everyone has forgiven the Beatles: they're still banned in Iran.

UPDATE: See this Catholic News Service story, claiming that the Vatican never cursed the Beatles, even in the throes of the "bigger than Jesus" scandal. The author of this story rightly observes that that comment was widely taken out of context, and, as John explained in 1966, the statement was an observation, not a boast.

Lady Gaga Inspired by the Beatles

Lady Gaga, looking like the offspring of John Lennon and Dusty Springfield

After trying to watch the video of "Bad Romance," I'm not sure I see the connection. But apparently the Beatles inspire everyone, even Lady Gaga:

Lady Gaga was inspired by the Beatles' hometown Liverpool during her U.K. tour - insisting she wrote the "greatest music" of her career while staying in the English city.

The Poker Face hitmaker took her Monster Ball trek to the U.K. in February, and played just one night in the northern city where the Fab Four kickstarted their groundbreaking music careers.
But the singer insists it was during her short stay in Liverpool that she wrote her best material to date.
She tells fans on her official website, "I've already written the first single for the new album and I promise you that this album is the greatest of my career.
"It is the anthem for our generation. I wrote it for you, because of you, when I was in Liverpool I wrote the greatest music I've ever written."

In a way, I guess, the Beatles inaugurated the synthesis of performance art and pop music when they donned their Sgt. Pepper's garb and invented new identities for themselves. Glam Rock soon followed, which in turn spawned the high-concept videos of Madonna, Lady Gaga's most important precursor. Lady Gaga's songs, though (at least what I've heard) aren't particularly musical--industrial syntho beat and vocals so processed they don't sound like they come from a human being. I'd like to hear her explain exactly how the Beatles and Liverpool influenced her. Maybe on the new album, her "greatest ever," she'll actually make music!

New Beatles Monument in Kazakhstan

In my book, The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles, I say that the Beatles were the first truly universal cultural touchstone, the avatars of celebrity in the modern world. Here's proof, a statue of the Fab Four in Kazakhstan:




I think there must be Beatles monuments on every continent (except Antarctica).

Butcher Cover Photo For Sale

An original proof of the banned "butcher cover" photo is up for sale, along with John Lennon's handwritten estimate of its value:

The most expensive piece of Beatles memorabilia ever put up for sale has appeared at an exhibit in the UK.

The highlight of "The $11m Dollar Picture Show" is a printer's proof of the famous Beatles banned "butcher cover" from John Lennon's personal collection.

The controversial photo features all four Beatles in butcher's jackets, surrounded by offal and plastic baby dolls.

It includes a handwritten note by Lennon, which reads: "Here's the famous banned butcher cover. You can sell it for $11m dollars."The article reports that 6 of the 10 most expensive items sold at auction are Beatles memorabilia:

#5, John Lennon's talisman necklace
The necklace was worn by Lennon on the cover of his 1968 album with Yoko One, Two Virgins. It was sold to a private collector in 2008 for $528,000.

#4, Gibson SG guitar played by George Harrison and John Lennon

The classic Gibson guitar was played by Harrison on the Beatles' Revolver album, and by Lennon on the White Album. It sold to an anonymous bidder at Christie's for $567,500.

#3, A hand painted Beatles Sgt. Pepper's drum skin

The drum is the centrepiece on the front cover of the band's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. It sold in 2008 for a staggering $1.1m.

#2, John Lennon's Steinway piano

Pop singer George Michael placed the winning bid for the piano on which Lennon wrote his song Imagine, in 2000, for $2.1m.

#1, John Lennon's hand painted Rolls Royce Phantom V

The car was sold by Sotheby's to Canadian businessman Jim Pattison in 1985 for $2.23m.

Apparently, the Rolls is now in British Columbia. No word on the whereabouts of the Gibson SG:

Bollywood Beatles

We all know how India influenced the Beatles (especially George). But who knew that the Beatles influenced India?



This is from a 1965 film titled Janwar. The guy in the white suit is Shammi Kapoor, a famous Hindi singer and actor of the 1950s and 60s. Check out his official website.

Happy Birthday, George!

Had he not succumbed to cancer in 2001, today would have been George Harrison's 67th birthday. Here's George on his 21st, just after returning from the triumphal series of appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show:



George's only child, Dhani, is 31, and looks hauntingly like his father:

Abbey Road Studios for Sale

The Beatles' original record company, EMI, has put its Abbey Road Studios up for sale:

The record label of Norah Jones and Coldplay has spoken to potential buyers during the past few months and talks have not led to a solid offer, said the person, who didn’t want to be identified because the talks are private. The studios are worth tens of millions of pounds and are not an essential asset for EMI, the person said.

EMI, owned by Guy Hands’s Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd., this month posted a 1.5 billion-pound ($2.35 billion) annual loss and said its liabilities exceeded assets by 408 million pounds as of March 31, 2009. Terra Firma may inject as much as 120 million pounds into EMI to prevent the London-based music company from breaching debt levels, two people familiar with the matter have said.

The Beatles recorded 90 percent of their songs at the studios, which are the world’s oldest, according to the Abbey Road Web site.

I've been to London almost every summer since 2000, and always make a pilgrimage to the famous zebra crossing, site of one of the most iconic and frequently parodied photos in world history:





Every time I've been to Abbey Road--night or day, rain or shine--there have been at least a dozen other Beatlemaniacs there, some trying to replicate the famous image (putting their lives and limbs at risk: it's a busy street).

Abbey Road Studios has set up a webcam on the other side of the zebra crossing. The photo was taken from a spot just to the right of the granite column in the upper left of the webcam image.

Just for fun. . .

And here they are. . .THE LEGO BEATLES!

My Fifteen Minutes of Fame (well, really, 2 1/2 minutes)

My employer made this video--shown on the local ABC affiliate--about me and my book, The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles:

February 9 in Context

A must-have for Beatlemaniacs is The Complete Historic Ed Sullivan Shows featuring the Beatles and other Artists. Everyone's seen the Beatles break into "All My Loving" after Sullivan's intro is drowned out by screams. But to appreciate how genuinely revolutionary the Beatles were, you need to see them in the show business context of their time. This DVD includes everything--even commercials for Lipton tea and Excedrin--but most important, it illustrates what show business was like in 1964, and how different the Beatles were. Here, for example, from the first show on February 9, is comedian and impressionist Frank Gorshin:



With his cheesy tuxedo and slicked-back hair, Gorshin's right out of the Borscht Belt (though he was only seven years older than Ringo and John).

Here's Georgia Brown and the cast of Oliver!--including the future Monkee Davy Jones--singing "I'll Do Anything":



Brown was also only seven years older than the oldest Beatles, but a world away in show business terms: she belonged to the tuxedoed, sequined, flowing headdress tradition of the music hall gently parodied by the Beatles at the beginning of this clip from A Hard Day's Night:



Forty-six years ago today, something genuinely new and breathtakingly modern emerged. The modern world exploded with the suddenness of a genie escaping from a bottle, never to be put back.