Post by JoJo on Mar 21, 2004 13:56:31 GMT -5
I'll be looking around for articles of interest, (not necessarily related to investigation as it says) by doing online searches of newspapers at the library of a university near me. It's free, if you go online there. This is a review of disk 5 of Anthology:
Section: Life, pg. D01
George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney sit together on a picnic blanket beneath a shady tree, mugs of tea close at hand.
George strums a ukulele, Ringo claps his hands and Paul leads the three as they warble "Ain't She Sweet."
Is this how you imagined a Beatles reunion would be?
The scene was filmed in June 1994, in George's English garden.
It's the highlight of 81 minutes of "mostly unseen" footage on the bonus fifth disc included with the new DVD release of The Beatles Anthology, the band's made-for-TV 1995 magical memories tour.
It was inevitable that this project would be rolled out in digital format, a format that didn't even exist when The Anthology was first released. What's remarkable is how sad and ancient it all feels, less than a decade later, as if the three surviving members of the Fab Four (now down to two, with George's death in 2001) were acting out the old-codger sentiments of their Sgt. Pepper ditty "When I'm Sixty-Four."
If only John Lennon's ghost had been there, to boot them all upside the head.
Can anyone recall when the Beatles were considered brash and a threat to public morals? Certainly no one much under the age of 45 could claim first-hand memories of the mop-top hairdo (reputed to cause head lice), the suggestive song lyrics (did they really only wanna hold your hand?) and the impudence toward institutions ("We're more popular than Jesus now" ).
Not that it really matters. The Beatles Anthology remembers it all for the fans who were there and the fans who weren't, withmore than 11 hours worth of lovingly restored concert, news and interview footage.
It begins with the Beatle births in the early 1940s and stretching a half century to their tea-granny picnic on the grounds of George's Friar Park mansion.
It's all here: Liverpool, Hamburg, The Ed Sullivan Show, world tours, A Hard Day's Night, Help!, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Apple Records, Let It Be. Anyone even remotely interested in the band has heard and seen all of these stories many times over. Fans will argue for years about the many minor changes from the original TV series (they're already doing just that on the Internet) but few will grouse about the high-quality Dolby and DTS digital transfers.
The carrot for the DVD package is the inclusion of jam sessions by George, Ringo and Paul that were filmed during the making of Anthology. The remaining Fabs got together in 1994 and 1995, to sift through old tapes with producer George Martin (and his later stand-in Jeff Lynne), to reminisce for the camera and to record new Beatle music, using the song fragments "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love" that John Lennon had been working on before he was shot dead by a deranged fan in December 1980.
They would stop to sip tea - don't any of them smoke or drink anymore? - to trade lies and boasts and to occasionally play music together, both in the garden and in the studio. And here's where all the buffing of the Beatles legend really fascinates, in a perverse kind of way.
Despite the old-blokes chumminess of the setting, it's obvious the tensions that split the band in 1970 never really went away. George's commitment to the Anthology project is something less than whole-hearted, as can be seen when he stares off into the distance during comments by Paul and Ringo, or just noodles away on his ever-present ukulele.
George also requires some prodding to actually lift a guitar and join the jam session in earnest, as when Paul suggests a run through the bluegrass tune "Blue Moon Of Kentucky" and George shrugs and says, "Just the short version."
The other songs the three attempt in the garden or studio, none of them full versions, are "Baby What You Want Me To Do," "Raunchy," "Thinking Of Linking" and the above-mentioned "Ain't She Sweet." All are significant to Beatles lore - the historians will swoon - but none of the tunes would qualify as the kind of genuine Fab rave-up that fans had been hoping for when the long-discussed Anthology project finally happened. It seems no accident that they avoided the better-known Lennon-McCartney material, although rumours persist of other jamming that's not on the DVD.
The Beatles reminiscing is hit and miss. The Fab Three talk about how they got their famous hair ("I'm still trying to make it go back," George says), Beatle boots and first cars, and how Ringo had to sleep in Paul's room during the early tours because he was the new guy and Paul was the most obliging.
Then they get to talking about Elvis Presley, an early influence, and all of a sudden they don't seem like Beatles anymore. They're just three Elvis fans, comparing notes about their brush with greatness. George once again plays the contrition, describing an encounter with The King at Madison Square Garden in the early 1970s, where George was the "snotty, grubby" hippie and Elvis the Vegas god in a gilt-trimmed white jumpsuit.
"It was a bit sad, really ... I just wanted to say, 'Get your jeans on and get your guitar and just do 'That's All Right, Mama' and get rid of all those chick singers.'"
George's power of recall seems to abandon him when he and his band mates join George Martin in the Abbey Road studios, to listen to and comment on three well-chosen Beatles' tracks: "Golden Slumbers," "I'm Only Sleeping" and "Tomorrow Never Knows."
George astonishes his confreres by asking "Which album is this?" when Martin cues up the Abbey Road track "Golden Slumbers." He also can't remember if he filled in for McCartney on bass, but thinks he probably did, since Paul was playing piano and singing and Martin swears there are no overdubs.
Disc five also includes much discussion by Martin, Lynne and other Beatles collaborators about the making of Anthology and the recording of "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love".
But what the fans will remember is mostly unspoken, in the sometimes-awkward body language between George, Paul and Ringo, or merely hinted at in oblique comments.
Back in the garden, doing another half-hearted jam, Paul makes a passing reference to San Francisco's Candlestick Park, the stadium where on Aug. 29, 1966, the Beatles last performed live before a paying audience.
Harrison picks up on the reference, and uses it to emphasize that Anthology really means "let it be" for his Beatles career.
"This is Candlestick Park," he says, as the picnic and the memories draw to a close."I just wanted to say, 'Get your jeans on and get your guitar and just do 'That's All Right, Mama' and get rid of all those chick singers.'"
Copyright (c) 2003 Toronto Star, All Rights Reserved.
Source: Toronto Star (Canada), Apr 08, 2003
Item: 6FP1949888413
Section: Life, pg. D01
George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney sit together on a picnic blanket beneath a shady tree, mugs of tea close at hand.
George strums a ukulele, Ringo claps his hands and Paul leads the three as they warble "Ain't She Sweet."
Is this how you imagined a Beatles reunion would be?
The scene was filmed in June 1994, in George's English garden.
It's the highlight of 81 minutes of "mostly unseen" footage on the bonus fifth disc included with the new DVD release of The Beatles Anthology, the band's made-for-TV 1995 magical memories tour.
It was inevitable that this project would be rolled out in digital format, a format that didn't even exist when The Anthology was first released. What's remarkable is how sad and ancient it all feels, less than a decade later, as if the three surviving members of the Fab Four (now down to two, with George's death in 2001) were acting out the old-codger sentiments of their Sgt. Pepper ditty "When I'm Sixty-Four."
If only John Lennon's ghost had been there, to boot them all upside the head.
Can anyone recall when the Beatles were considered brash and a threat to public morals? Certainly no one much under the age of 45 could claim first-hand memories of the mop-top hairdo (reputed to cause head lice), the suggestive song lyrics (did they really only wanna hold your hand?) and the impudence toward institutions ("We're more popular than Jesus now" ).
Not that it really matters. The Beatles Anthology remembers it all for the fans who were there and the fans who weren't, withmore than 11 hours worth of lovingly restored concert, news and interview footage.
It begins with the Beatle births in the early 1940s and stretching a half century to their tea-granny picnic on the grounds of George's Friar Park mansion.
It's all here: Liverpool, Hamburg, The Ed Sullivan Show, world tours, A Hard Day's Night, Help!, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Apple Records, Let It Be. Anyone even remotely interested in the band has heard and seen all of these stories many times over. Fans will argue for years about the many minor changes from the original TV series (they're already doing just that on the Internet) but few will grouse about the high-quality Dolby and DTS digital transfers.
The carrot for the DVD package is the inclusion of jam sessions by George, Ringo and Paul that were filmed during the making of Anthology. The remaining Fabs got together in 1994 and 1995, to sift through old tapes with producer George Martin (and his later stand-in Jeff Lynne), to reminisce for the camera and to record new Beatle music, using the song fragments "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love" that John Lennon had been working on before he was shot dead by a deranged fan in December 1980.
They would stop to sip tea - don't any of them smoke or drink anymore? - to trade lies and boasts and to occasionally play music together, both in the garden and in the studio. And here's where all the buffing of the Beatles legend really fascinates, in a perverse kind of way.
Despite the old-blokes chumminess of the setting, it's obvious the tensions that split the band in 1970 never really went away. George's commitment to the Anthology project is something less than whole-hearted, as can be seen when he stares off into the distance during comments by Paul and Ringo, or just noodles away on his ever-present ukulele.
George also requires some prodding to actually lift a guitar and join the jam session in earnest, as when Paul suggests a run through the bluegrass tune "Blue Moon Of Kentucky" and George shrugs and says, "Just the short version."
The other songs the three attempt in the garden or studio, none of them full versions, are "Baby What You Want Me To Do," "Raunchy," "Thinking Of Linking" and the above-mentioned "Ain't She Sweet." All are significant to Beatles lore - the historians will swoon - but none of the tunes would qualify as the kind of genuine Fab rave-up that fans had been hoping for when the long-discussed Anthology project finally happened. It seems no accident that they avoided the better-known Lennon-McCartney material, although rumours persist of other jamming that's not on the DVD.
The Beatles reminiscing is hit and miss. The Fab Three talk about how they got their famous hair ("I'm still trying to make it go back," George says), Beatle boots and first cars, and how Ringo had to sleep in Paul's room during the early tours because he was the new guy and Paul was the most obliging.
Then they get to talking about Elvis Presley, an early influence, and all of a sudden they don't seem like Beatles anymore. They're just three Elvis fans, comparing notes about their brush with greatness. George once again plays the contrition, describing an encounter with The King at Madison Square Garden in the early 1970s, where George was the "snotty, grubby" hippie and Elvis the Vegas god in a gilt-trimmed white jumpsuit.
"It was a bit sad, really ... I just wanted to say, 'Get your jeans on and get your guitar and just do 'That's All Right, Mama' and get rid of all those chick singers.'"
George's power of recall seems to abandon him when he and his band mates join George Martin in the Abbey Road studios, to listen to and comment on three well-chosen Beatles' tracks: "Golden Slumbers," "I'm Only Sleeping" and "Tomorrow Never Knows."
George astonishes his confreres by asking "Which album is this?" when Martin cues up the Abbey Road track "Golden Slumbers." He also can't remember if he filled in for McCartney on bass, but thinks he probably did, since Paul was playing piano and singing and Martin swears there are no overdubs.
Disc five also includes much discussion by Martin, Lynne and other Beatles collaborators about the making of Anthology and the recording of "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love".
But what the fans will remember is mostly unspoken, in the sometimes-awkward body language between George, Paul and Ringo, or merely hinted at in oblique comments.
Back in the garden, doing another half-hearted jam, Paul makes a passing reference to San Francisco's Candlestick Park, the stadium where on Aug. 29, 1966, the Beatles last performed live before a paying audience.
Harrison picks up on the reference, and uses it to emphasize that Anthology really means "let it be" for his Beatles career.
"This is Candlestick Park," he says, as the picnic and the memories draw to a close."I just wanted to say, 'Get your jeans on and get your guitar and just do 'That's All Right, Mama' and get rid of all those chick singers.'"
Copyright (c) 2003 Toronto Star, All Rights Reserved.
Source: Toronto Star (Canada), Apr 08, 2003
Item: 6FP1949888413
