Welcome to this week’s edition of the BROW. It’s not quite your typical Beatles rock ‘n’ roll fare this time around, but you never know what you’re going to get into with these Beatle-people, do you? In early May of 1985, CBS began the filming of their account of the classic Alice In Wonderland. Playing the part of Mock Turtle was none other than Beatles drummer extraordinaire, Ringo Starr. The show aired on December 9th, 1985 and featured a clip of Ringo singing a song called Nonsense. A soundtrack was later released but this track was not included, nor has it been on any other of Ringo’s official releases, compilation or otherwise. There is a YouTube clip, if you’re interested in catching more of Ringo in his turtle suit here. By this time, Ringo had been in a respectable number of films, including Caveman a few years earlier with his soon to be Misses, Barbara Bach.

Ringo Starr, 1985 in CBS's Alice In Wonderland as Mock Turtle.

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Welcome to this week’s BROW. We are soon approaching the 40th anniversary of the release of one of The Beatles most successful albums. Abbey Road was the vehicle The Beatles used to end their squabbles long enough to go out on a high note. Most of the album was recorded between July 2 and August 1, 1969. This early version of Mean Mr. Mustard, finalized on Abbey Road, was recorded at Twickenham Studios, London on January 8, 1969. John had penned the song while in India the previous year and guides the other Beatles through it here as they have yet to get it down pat.

In the UK, Abbey Road became the most successful album of the 1960′s, the highest selling album of 1969 and was even the 8th best selling album of 1970. In the US it went platinum twelve times over and spent 11 weeks at number one on the Billboard album chart. That’s a “high note” worthy of going out on indeed in my book. It’s hard to believe it started out as such a simple collection of songs like this little ditty about a guy named Mustard.

The Beatles at the photo shoot for their Abbey Road Album, 1969.

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This week on BROW let’s have a listen to a ballad-like track recorded during the sessions for the last Wings album Back To The Egg, sometime between June 29 and July 27, 1978. Aside from Paul and Linda, the band line up at this time included Wings-original Denny Laine, lead guitarist Laurence Juber and former Elton John drummer Steve Holly. Did We Meet Somewhere Before? was not actually intended for inclusion on the Egg album though, but for use in the new film Heaven Can Wait (starring Warren Beatty). The final version of the film however, did not include the song. A few bits of it did surface a year later in the Ramone’s film Rock ‘N’ Roll High School but the song did not appear on the soundtrack. During the late 1980′s a project went underway to put together a compilation of predominately Wings-era out-takes called Hot Hits And Cold Cuts that was to include the song but even though some preliminary track lists were released to the press, the project was never finalized and various bootleg versions of Hot Hits And Cold Cuts began to surface around 1990. Recently, I have read a few rumors from various Internet blogs that an expanded 4-cd box set of Hot Hits And Cold Cuts is planned for 2010. I’ve even seen a projected track listing that includes many tracks that I have featured on the BROW in the past. We shall see if it sees the light of day this time.

Wings 1979, Left to right: Laurence Juber, Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney, Denny Laine, Steve Holly

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Welcome again to The Beatles Rarity Of The Week. This week’s BROW is a John Lennon track entitled Serve Yourself. I think it was one of his “private” songs never intended to be heard by the public. It was written as a comic response to the well-known Bob Dylan hit single Gotta Serve Somebody from his 1979 album Slow Train Coming. Recorded on piano in the fall of 1980 in his home at the Dakota building, it has a different feel than the acoustic guitar account of the song given on the John Lennon Anthology box set. It’s a very simple sentiment really: Bob says “you’re gonna have to serve somebody” and John says “you’ve got to serve yourself”. The rest of the words (on both songs) are just filler.

John Lennon, circa 1980

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This week’s BROW is no masterpiece. It’s just John and Ringo having a little bit of fun sometime in late 1967, and it just happened to get caught on tape. It’s kind of a comical improvisation that resembles some of the crazy antics heard on The Beatles Fan Club Christmas records issued from 1963-1969. Ringo sings a bit of Sailor Come Home To Me and John throws in his El Tango Terrible. After all, nobody should be sane all of the time. Enjoy…

John Lennon gets a little intimate with Ringo Starr at the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band photo session, May 1967

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Here we go again. It’s time for another BROW. This week’s Beatles Rarity Of The Week takes us back to a recording session from October 8, 1964. The Beatles were recording She’s A Woman which turned out to be a solid b-side for the upcoming hit I Feel Fine, recorded 10 days later and released on a single. She’s A Woman was mixed with an overabundance of reverb on Paul’s lead vocal on the US mix, so I thought it would be nice to hear a “clean” take of it. This is takes 7 (which is discontinued at the intro) and 8, which also features a tuning session and an extended jam at the end, where Paul does some screaming and makes other various noises. George’s guitar solo is yet to be added. It is believed that there were only 8 takes recorded and that the master is a combination of two or more of these. In the US, the master was released on the Beatles ’65 album while in the UK it was initially only issued as a singles track. Enjoy!

Picture sleeve for UK I Feel Fine/She's A Woman 45

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This week BROW looks back 42 years ago to a very special occasion. On June 25, 1967, the very first live international satellite television production was broadcast. The two and a half hour program called Our World featured performers from nineteen nations, and according to Wikipedia, an estimated 400 million people around the globe watched the broadcast. Performers were given segments on the show to represent their respective countries and among them were opera singer Maria Callas and artist Pablo Picasso. The master control of the program was set up at BBC London. The most famous segment came from the UK which featured The Beatles. Initially, Paul McCartney had written a song called Hello Goodbye for this event, but John Lennon topped him on this one. At the height of the Vietnam War, The Beatles decided to spread a message of peace and love to the world with another new song written by John Lennon called simply All You Need Is Love. To make the event as festive as possible, The Beatles invited many of their friends to join in on the song’s chorus including The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Marianne Faithful, Keith Moon and Graham Nash. Only one rehearsal was needed and then they went live with it before the world. What we are hearing here is the original live performance and lead vocal preceded by a taping of The Beatles performing some of the backing vocal track. It turns out that the very same instrumental track was used on the forthcoming single release of the song, although Lennon re-did his lead vocal for it. Needless to say, this record topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Beatles on June 25, 1967 at the Our World broadcast.

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This week BROW takes a look at the first Beatles 45 of 1968. John Lennon wanted it to be his new tune called Across The Universe but was eventually outvoted. Lady Madonna was recorded on February 3, 1968 just before The Beatles went to India to study transcendental meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The brass overdubs were then added on February 6th. There is an entire brass section of four saxophones on the recording with jazzman Ronnie Scott leading. The song was penned by Paul McCartney who mentioned that it was based largely on an old song called Bad Penny Blues; a minor hit for Humphrey Littleton in 1956 that was also produced by George Martin. The master heard on the official version was take 3 of 5 takes. This one is a rough mix from take 4 and has some voice-over added to the original recording in spots, including some laughter at the beginning by Paul. It was the last single by The Beatles in America to appear on the Capitol label. Their next single, Hey Jude, would later in the year appear on their new Apple label. The B-side of the Lady Madonna 45 was George Harrison’s Indian influenced track The Inner Light and this was the first time one of George’s appeared on a Beatles single. While the single topped the charts in the UK, it only reached number 2 on the Record World and Cash Box charts in America and number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. But, I ask, who cares about these charts anyway? Not me.

The American Lady Madonna 45 picture sleeve, 1968

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Welcome to The Beatles Rarity Of the Week. This live recording of I Want To Hold Your Hand is from The Beatle’s first live outdoor concert in America. On February 11, 1964, just a few days after their historic initial appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Beatles hit the nation’s capital. The group was to fly down to Washington from New York, but there was a snowstorm. They refused to fly down in blizzard conditions, remembering what happened to Buddy Holly a few years before. Arrangements were then made for them to travel by private coach from Pennsylvania Station in New York to Union Station in Washington DC. When they arrived there were 3,000 fans at the station, but they were prevented from approaching the band by the surrounding platform gates. They booked the entire seventh floor at the Shoreham Hotel to accommodate their entourage, but one family on the floor refused to move out of their room. The assistant manager cut off their light, heat and water and told them there had been a power failure on that floor to make them agree to take another room on the ninth floor. The Beatles took the stage at 8:31pm following Tommy Roe and The Chiffons. The crowd noise was so deafening the band could hardly hear themselves perform. Fans had heard earlier that George liked Jelly Babies, a British version of jelly beans but softer. Since jelly beans were the common equivalent in the US, the band was pelted by them onstage and later commented they felt like bullets. The show continued on though and was a tremendous success. After the performance Ringo commented, “They could have ripped me apart and I couldn’t have cared less. What an audience! I could have played for them all night.”

The Beatles in Washington, DC on February 11, 1964

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It’s been a long week and I think we all deserve a new Beatles (-related) Rarity of the Week. This week’s feature is a catchy little instrumental experiment by Paul McCartney recorded in the summer of 1979. Some of you McCartney fans out there may already be aware that the McCartney II album released in 1980 was originally intended to be a 2-record set. The single record version that was commercially released was Paul’s first totally solo album in a decade and like it’s 1970 predecessor McCartney, was very experimental, with Paul handling all the instruments with little or no technical help from anyone else. The two-record set was never officially released save for a few test pressings that surfaced, circa 1979. It contained a number of unreleased songs (some of which made their way to b-sides) and some different mixes of songs that did see their way to the final single LP version. This track, titled Front Parlour, is a sampling of the original version of the album. It was featured on the commercial McCartney II with a different mix and edited down to 3 and a half minutes. This original mix is over 5 minutes long and was the opener for the original double album, whereas the more well-known Coming Up opened up the final version.

Paul McCartney, circa 1980

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