On September 4, 1968, television celebrity David Frost visited The Beatles in Twickenham studios where they were filming a promotional performance of Hey Jude. He aired it on his Frost on Sunday program four days later. Various clips of this film have shown up on American television too and it was shown in The Beatles Anthology film with much of the crowd noise magically mixed out. However, it is edited shorter there and also has voice-overs in four or more spots. Shown here is an unedited, unaltered account of the performance as it was originally broadcasted, complete with an assembly of folks to help out with the na-na-na’s. Take it away Paul…

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Happy Nat

Some people are fed their fish on Friday, but I have something better to give! While checking my web site stats just this past Friday, I realized something about Beatles fans: They really like Beatle videos. Go figure! In the aftermath of posting that Hollywood Bowl clip, I saw a healthy jump in the number of visits here! Well, I aim to please, so in the interest of making this site as entertaining as I can for Beatle-people, I now “vow” to post a regularly scheduled Beatles-related video each Friday. It won’t necessarily be anything that obscure, as that’s what the BROWs are for, but it will still be something to enjoy, (hopefully?!) and get you pumped for the following Monday’s rarity feature. I will dub this the VOW (for (Beatles) Video Of The Week) and you will notice a new link for the VOW posts in the nav-bar at the top of each page on the site. Go ahead, take a look now…it’s up there. Officially, the first VOW will be last Friday’s (no need to mark your calendars), and it’s the only one right now, but as the number grows it will be handy to have a link for them all, right? Those of you who have paid the subscription (ha! ha! that’s a joke) will also get an email notification for these each Friday too, unless you wimp opt out by going into your dashboard on the site and change your settings. Enjoy…and look forward to Friday (and you can still eat fish too if you want)!

All the best,
Happy Nat
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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Throughout his final week, Conan O’Brien broadcast several comedy bits that seemed designed to spend as much of NBC’s money as he could. O’Brien said on his farewell episode of The Tonight Show Friday that he had been joking about the high costs of these skits. But on that same episode, his band played the Beatles’ Lovely Rita, costing NBC $500,000.

Catch the rest of the story here.
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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This week’s BROW will take us back to 1968, when The Beatles were working on their infamous White Album. The recordings for this double album took place between May 30 and October 17, 1968 and it’s ironic that the song they worked on the longest during those five months of sessions was not even put on the record. George Harrison had introduced Not Guilty to the rest of the band in demo form around the third week of May. Later, when they decided to record it for the album, Beatles Anthology 3 liner notes indicate, it took three days (August 8, 9 & 12) and 101 takes to get the basic track down that they were satisfied enough with for George to add his vocal. The first proper vocal take (102) was mixed for a 1980′s Beatles compilation album called Sessions, but that project was aborted and the track was only officially released when the Beatles Anthology 3 CD set hit the shelves in 1996. The Anthology account of this take is a bit chopped up and is presented here sans all of the edits making it nearly a minute longer.

George had this to say about a couple of the lyrical references in the song:

Not guilty for getting in your way/While you’re trying to steal the day’ — which was me trying to get a space. ‘Not guilty/For looking like a freak/Making friends with every Sikh/For leading you astray/On the road to Mandalay’ — which is the Maharishi and going to the Himalayas and all that was said about that. I like the tune a lot; it would make a great tune for Peggy Lee or someone.

Another line in the song – I won’t upset the Apple cart/I only want what I can get – seems to be an insinuation as to George’s much smaller allotment of compositions per Beatles album (the apple cart, of course, being the new Apple Corps they had only just created). Along this line of thought, it’s interesting to consider that by leaving Not Guilty off the White Album, George ended up with his typical one song per album side.

Before any Beatles version of this song ever saw a proper release, George released his own solo version of the 11 year old song on his 1979 George Harrison album. This version is much mellower and contains acoustic guitar and electric piano while The Beatles’ original version is harsher, driven by distorted electric guitar and harpsichord. Just the edge we need to help get us through this Monday.

George Harrison recording Not Guilty, August 1968

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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An extra-treat from an extra-Happy Nat this week. To help tie everyone over until the upcoming BROW, here is some video footage of the first four numbers from The Beatles August 23rd, 1964 Hollywood Bowl show. The last 2 of these songs (All My Loving and She Loves You) ended up on The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl 1977 vinyl album. The first two (Twist And Shout, You Can’t Do That) have not been officially released. Enjoy!

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Welcome to this week’s BROW.

Last Tuesday Ringo Starr’s new CD Y Not was released and after a few listens, I have to say it does not disappoint. Many people have a tendency to judge Ringo by his mediocre releases from the late 1970′s or, dare I say, to be a bit age-prejudiced towards the guy. But my take on this is that his recent output has been good and this CD is probably the best thing he’s put out since, at least, Time Takes Time from way back in 1992. Paul McCartney plays bass on one track (Peace Dream) and duets with Ringo on a tune called Walk With You, which I’ve featured here. Aside from Paul, there is a healthy host of other musicians I’m sure you’ve heard of too, including Edgar Winter, Benmont Tench (of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers), Joe Walsh, Billy Squier, Dave Stewart (the Eurythmics guy), Gary Wright, Richard Marx and a few more. And for the first time ever, Ringo has had a hand in the production of the album. He co-produced it with his keyboardist Bruce Sugar.

One of the tracks on the CD is newly-recorded, but not new. Back in 1992, Ringo released a CD single in Germany that was not released in the UK or the US of the song Don’t Go Where The Road Don’t Go (lifted from his Time Takes Time album). There was a B-side on the single virtually unheard of outside of Germany called Everyone Wins. The song never saw release in the US or UK, and now the German release is also well out of print. A German friend of mine sent me a copy of the CD a few years back and the title is mistakenly listed there as Everybody Wins on the back cover. The new version of this b-side on Y Not features Benmont Tench, Gary Wright and Edgar Winter and is more keyboard-oriented, unlike the original version, which is more guitar-oriented and featured here on this week’s BROW. If you would like to compare with the newer version, pick up a copy of the new CD – Y Not?!

Don't Go Where The Road Don't Go German CD single released in August 1992

An aside: Benmont Tench may have also played on this original version of Everyone Wins too but that is not confirmed. It is known that he played on some of the other songs in the Time Takes Time sessions.

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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a little better, all the time….

Some new features:

I have recently added a few new things to the site that will hopefully enhance the user experience for at least some of the folks who are dropping in here from time to time. I thought I’d sum them up in a post in case you’re interested.

1) Related posts: At the end of each post you can see up to 4 related/semi-related posts. This is an automated feature that uses tags, keywords, categories, etc. to locate related entries. I think it will come in handy given the ever-growing number of posts on the site now. Also (and this isn’t a new feature) don’t forget the search box on the site that allows you to search on keywords, titles, etc. It’s handily sitting there for you on the right sidebar of every page on the site.

2) At the bottom of each post there is a new “Like” button. This is similar to the Like button on Facebook, or the Mog It Up button on Mog. So, if you like a post, but don’t want to take the time to comment, click the “Like” button (which looks like a thumbs up sign). There’s even one at the bottom of this post. :)

3) For those of you who like to access the web with your iPhone, Blackberry or other mobile device, TheBeatlesRarity.com is now optimized for this. Posts will be laid out in an easy-to-read single column with a readable font size and black-on-white type background so that you can read the site and comment more easily on your device. If you still prefer the original layout while using your mobile device, there is a switch at the bottom of the page (labeled Mobile Theme) that you can turn off and this will return you to the same layout you have on your Mac or PC. This will not affect the appearance of the site on non-mobile devices.

4) For those of you with Twitter accounts: On the right sidebar of any page on this site, there is now a Follow Me on Twitter! button which will send you to the BeatlesRarity Twitter page where you may choose to follow the Beatles Rarity Twitter posts (or sign up for Twitter if you don’t already have an account). The Beatles Rarity is now on Twitter as BeatlesRarity and any posts on this site will also be mirrored as Twitter Posts. Furthermore (and I think this is the slick part), if you share a link to a post on this site in a Twitter comment, it will also show up as a comment here in the originating post. This does not work for retweets (If you don’t know what retweets are and want to, consult Twitter.com.).

At the time of this writing, not all of these features have been tested, so let me know if you see anything wrong, and I’ll look into it.

All the best…

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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Welcome to this week’s BROW, which turns out to not only be a triple feature, but also a salute to a very significant man in Beatles history known as Chris Barber. Read on…

One of the main things that inspired John Lennon to form up his band The Quarry Men was the “skiffle-craze”. When UK musician Lonnie Donnegan’s fast-tempoed skiffle account of Lead Belly’s Rock Island Line came out in 1955, John was motivated to get in on the action. When his mother Julia bought him his first guitar in early 1957, he realized that all he still needed to form up his band were his friends, a washboard and tea chest bass.

Rock Island Line was not only a gold record in the U.K., but also a top 10 hit in the U.S. and Lonnie Donnegan (aka “the king of skiffle”) recorded it in 1954 while a member of the Chris Barber Jazz Band. At the time, Chris Barber was an already-established jazz trombonist who was recently responsible for launching Donnegan’s career. So if not for Chris Barber, there would have been no stardom for Lonnie Donnegan, no “skiffle craze” and therefore, no Quarry Men. It’s very arguable that The Beatles, in turn, may have never existed.

So thank you Chris!

Years later, in 1967, The Beatles in a relatively small way returned the favor by giving Chris one of Paul McCartney’s instrumental compositions he had first recorded way back in 1962 called Catswalk.

The audio featured here is a 1962 Beatles rehearsal of the track actually recorded at The Cavern Club in Liverpool. As intended, Chris made a spiced-up jazz arrangement of the song, renamed it Cat Call and released it as a single in the U.K. in October of 1967. It’s interesting to hear the life Chris breathed into this simple little demo, so I’ve included a recording of it here too. Cat Call was also released again in April 1979 on the compilation album The Songs Lennon & McCartney Gave Away.

The Beatles - Catswalk

The Chris Barber Jazz Band - Cat Call (excerpt)
This is part of the orginal 45 version also on the Battersea Rain Dance LP*.

The Chris Barber Jazz Band - Cat Call
This version is from The Songs Lennon & McCartney Gave Away.

* Many thanks to Andreas Wandfluh, Archive and Web Team Member of the Big Chris Barber Band / Chris Barber’s Jazz Band, who has provided this recording to me and allowing me to update this post with more information.

Chris Barber

1979 Compilation LP: The Songs Lennon & McCartney Gave Away, released April 1979, w/Chris Barber pictured in lower right corner

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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In case you’re interested, I thought I’d give you a little preview of the upcoming CD release from Ringo Starr. He’s produced it himself this time and this track called Walk With You features Paul McCartney with him on vocals. Paul also plays bass on another of the album’s tracks called Peace Dream. The CD is called Y Not and will hit the stores next week on January 12th.

Cover art for Ringo's new "Y Not" CD (released on Jan. 12)

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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I’m hoping everyone reading out there has had a splendid New Year’s holiday. Unfortunately for the most of us, it’s now time to get back to the grind. The first BROW of 2010 is due so I’m going to jump right in.

Let’s listen in to an overdub session The Beatles held on September 6, 1967. George Harrison’s musical transcendence during this year was never more evident than on Blue Jay Way. George developed an uncanny skill with studio effects such as flanging, backwards tapes, strings and swirling organs and uses them perfectly on this song to capture the feeling of being lost in the fog in a strange city. The end result: another psychedelic masterpiece.

The same vocal track is heard here that adorns the master heard on the Magical Mystery Tour film/EP/album. Some of the backing vocal overdubs heard in the master are missing here while other overdubs are apparent here that were removed from the master, including additional percussion, among other things.

Enjoy, and once again, all the best in the new year!

George Harrison, 1967

Want to make a suggestion for a future Beatles Rarity of the Week? Then let me hear from you. Read about more Beatles rarities and suggest one for me to post. You can begin by searching for different versions of specific tracks right here.

Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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