John Lennon wrote “#9 Dream” after being inspired by a dream he had in which he heard the repeated phrase “Ah! böwakawa poussé, poussé.” John never claimed to know what it meant, but used it as a repeated chorus line in the song. John had also recently worked with Harry Nilsson on his Pussy Cats album and liked a string arrangement he wrote for Harry’s cover of “Too Many Rivers To Cross” so much that he incorporated it into the song as well. The strings seemed to work perfectly with the dream-like feeling he wanted to develop for the sound and subsequently, this promo video. The voice calling to John in the song is that of his companion at the time, May Pang, who has revealed that the song went through two working titles before being officially named. The first was “So Long Ago” and secondly “Walls And Bridges” which, of course, ended up being his next album title with “#9 Dream” included as one of the tracks.

John recorded “#9 Dream” in the summer of 1974, along with the rest of the tracks on Walls And Bridges, and the album was released in September 1974. After the album’s lead single, “Whatever Gets You Thru The Night” made it’s highly successful commercial run, “#9 Dream” was released as the follow up single in December 1974, and appropriately peaked at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on February 22, 1975. In the U.K. it peaked at number 23 on the Melody Maker chart on March 8 & 15, 1975.

By the time the promo video was filmed John was no longer with May Pang and that is why Yoko Ono appears in the clip instead.

Click the image above to play the video.

Extra info: Why is the song title “#9 Dream” (why not #8, or some other number)? I have heard from various sources that both John Lennon and George Harrison were fascinated with the number 9. George had his Cloud 9 song and album and both John and his son Sean were born on the ninth day of the month. John wrote or co-wrote “Revolution 9″, “One After 909″ and “#9 Dream.” There are countless other theories and coincidences that you can Google on the Internet relating John’s past with the number. They include apartment numbers and various dates and times.

Here are some Amazon links to read more on, or purchase, some music related to this post:

1) Walls And Bridges – 2010 remaster of original 1974 LP, including “#9 Dream.”

2) Power To The People: The Hits – latest hits compilation (2010) using remastered versions of all the big ones from John’s solo years, including “#9 Dream.”

3) Lennon Legend – The Very Best of John Lennon – DVD compilation of John Lennon hits, including this promo video of “#9 Dream.”

4) More Amazon links for any of your favorite Beatles-related music: The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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This week’s video feature is a promo film for George Harrison’s third single from his incredulous comeback LP of 1987, Cloud Nine, following Got My Mind Set On You and When We Was Fab. Released as a single in May of 1988, it was only 5 months away from George’s stint with the Traveling Wilburys. Cloud Nine was the last of George’s studio solo albums released during his lifetime, although his concert footage CD with the Eric Clapton band Live In Japan was released in 1992.

Click the image above to play the video.

Click to read about or purchase these related items from Amazon.com:

1) Cloud Nine – featuring This Is Love

2) Let It Roll: Songs by George Harrison – 2009 hits compilation featuring This Is Love

3) Live in Japan – Live 2 CD set from 1992

4) Here’s more Amazon links for your favorite Beatles-related music: The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

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

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1987 was a terrific comeback year for George Harrison. With the release of his Cloud Nine album, which sported guest musicians Jeff Lynne, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Gary Wright and former Beatles bandmate Ringo Starr. The album was top 10 in the UK and the US, where it also went platinum. He also appeared at the Prince’s Trust concert that year along with Ringo, where they performed George’s Beatles classic While My Guitar Gently Weeps with Eric Clapton contributing on guitar, just as he did on the The Beatles White Album in 1968.

The first single off of Cloud Nine was the obscure Rudy Clark cover Got My Mind Set On You which George had wanted to record with The Beatles many years before. It quickly became a U.S. number 1 which is something George had not seen in 15 years. Here is a remastered account of the promo video looking just as “80′s” as when it aired on VH1 the first time.

Also, I have the site listed on BeatleLinks.net now so if you’d like to rate this site and maybe even give a review, the link is here. Thanks folks.
Visit www.thebeatlesrarity.com for a new Beatles rarity each week, plus lots more!

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I’m going to break some ice with this week’s BROW. This will be my first post to feature this amazing Beatles-related supergroup.

George Harrison wanted to come up with a unique B-side for his upcoming This Is Love single release of May 1988 and rounded up some of his friends to help him on the recording: Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan & Roy Orbison. George had left his guitar over at another friend’s house: Tom Petty. When George swung by to pick it up, he told Tom about the plans and Tom offered to come along and help out with the record too. When the resulting song, Handle With Care, was recorded, it was decided that it was just too good for a B-side filler track. George used the already recorded Cloud Nine track Breath Away From Heaven as his needed B-side and the five musicians decided to make a whole album together. Besides, they were having fun.

This, of course, is the story of how the Traveling Wilburys were born. The name stemmed from the slang term Wilbury coined by George and Jeff Lynne during the making of George’s Cloud Nine album to describe various pieces of equipment laying around the studio. In October 1988, their very successful debut LP Volume One was released which included Handle With Care along with another all-to-familiar big hit called End Of The Line. Unfortunately, Roy Orbison died of a massive heart attack in December 1988 just prior to a planned trip to London to make two music videos for the album.

The four surviving Wilbury’s reunited for the 1990 CD Volume Three. In case you’re wondering what happened to Volume Two, the name Volume Three was credited to “George being George”. On both albums the musicians used aliases with the surname Wilbury. On Volume One George was Nelson and on Volume Three he was Spike.

On November 5, 1990 a 12 inch single was released of the Volume Three hit, She’s My Baby. One of the B-sides is an instrumental version of New Blue Moon, which is featured with vocal on the album. The instrumental version is pretty catchy and never appeared anywhere else. The single, never released in the U.S. has been out of print since the early 1990′s. But now you can hear it any time you like, on the BROW.

The Traveling Wilburys, circa 1990

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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For this Memorial Day week’s Beatles Rarity Of The Week, I’m remembering an album by George Harrison that did not enjoy much commercial success but yet had a few really good gems on it. The album, released in October of 1982, was called Gone Troppo and one of these gems is a song called That’s The Way It Goes. The sales of this album was such a discouragement that George took a few years off after it’s release. He made his comeback like gangbusters however, with his 1987 CD release Cloud Nine. It was during this comeback that he released a single from the album of the well-known hit When We Was Fab which contained a remix of That’s The Way It Goes as a b-side. This remix version supports some varying instrumentation and is a little bassier. Since this single was only released in the UK (on CD and 12 inch vinyl) and is now long out of print, I considered it “rarity material” and am happy to feature it as this week’s BROW.

Also, for you George Harrison fans, be looking for the new compilation Let It Roll with newly remastered recordings of George’s best from his solo years.

CD single When We Was Fab, 1988 b/w That's The Way It Goes (remix)

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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Welcome to this week’s Beatles Rarity Of The Week. By 1987, George Harrison was due for a comeback. After 1982′s commercial flop LP Gone Troppo, the only time we had heard from him was a tune he recorded for the Porky’s Revenge soundtrack in 1985 written by Bob Dylan called I Don’t Wanna Do It. George appeared from the woodwork in October of 1987 with a single to promote his upcoming Cloud Nine release due out in November. The song was a cover written by Rudy Clark called Got My Mind Set On You originally recorded in 1962 by an artist named James Ray. The James Ray version is quite good but George’s version souped it up quite a bit. In the UK, not only was a 45 released, but a twelve-inch single with an extended version that was a minute and a half longer, that we missed out on in the US. Because it wasn’t released in America and also because it is long out of print anywhere else, I thought a lot of people that haven’t heard it before may want to do just that – so here it is. The regular single version of the song went on to reach number one on Billboard’s Hot 100 in the US, and the Cloud Nine album which also featured Ringo Starr and Jeff Lynne, made the top ten in the US. This became the last solo album to be released by George in his lifetime.

George Harrison on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, 1987.

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 1986, when George Harrison’s Handmade Films company produced the movie Shanghai Surprise starring Madonna and Sean Penn, George was right on board, not only with a cameo in the movie as a nightclub owner but also as the performer of four songs for the movie’s soundtrack album. Unfortunately, however, not all Beatles solo projects are success stories. The film was such a flop that the soundtrack was never released. The title song for the film remained unreleased until issued as a bonus track on the 2004 remastered CD of George’s Cloud Nine album. Another soundtrack song, the instrumental “Zig Zag”, ended up as the b-side to Georges “Got My Mind Set On You” single. The other two songs, “Breath Away From Heaven” and “Someplace Else” were both rerecorded in 1987 for inclusion on George’s Cloud Nine album. For this week I’m featuring the original unreleased soundtrack version of “Someplace Else”. Take it away, George…

Shanghai Surprise Promo Poster, 1986

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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The end of the work week is getting close for most of us and it’s time to post this week’s BROW. I also want to point out that this is the first week that I have featured a solo track by George Harrison. We are still in our Spot the Oddity series and believe me folks, this one is by far the easiest I have posted. Again for the newcomers, just figure out what is different about this version of When We Was Fab. It was released officially just as you hear it here. As a bonus, see if you can tell me what release this slightly different version was originally found on. Put your answer in a comment here. Of course, if your going to try this don’t read the comments until you do (that is, if there is any, this time). Good luck to all.

George Harrison photo used for Cloud Nine album art, 1987

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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