I’m still working on the manuscript, but I just got the proof for the cover for my upcoming book about Southern music, and I’m very pleased with how it turned out.
The book, “LARGE TIME: On the Southern Music Beat, 1976-1986,” includes stories about Elvis, the Allman Brothers, James Brown, R.E.M., Dolly Parton, Isaac Hayes, Atlanta Rhythm Section, the Commodores, Jimmy Buffett, Willie Nelson, Joe South, Roy Orbison, the Brains, Chet Atkins, Charlie Daniels, the B-52’s, Jerry Lee Lewis, Lionel Richie, Chet Atkins, Kenny Rogers, Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts, Tammy Wynette, Johnny Cash, the Dregs, Tanya Tucker, B.B. King, the Oak Ridge Boys, Amy Grant, Barbara Mandrell, Kris Kristofferson and many others!
And, of course, The Beatles make quite a few cameos in the book, with performers ranging from Carl Perkins to the Commodores talking about them.
If you’re interested in receiving word when the book is available for order, just send an email to goodypress@mindspring.com. Put “BOOK” in the subject line.
As many of you know, I spent a good portion of my career covering entertainment, and during that time I was fortunate enough to interview many talented performers, including three Beatles (George, Paul and Ringo), a bunch of movie and TV stars and just about a generation’s worth of the top performers in various popular music genres.
I have told many of the Beatles-related stories in Beatlefan magazine through the years.
But I have a lot of other tales from my years on the entertainment beat. Some of the stories about Southern music stars I interviewed (ranging from rock and new wave to r&b, country, gospel, and some who defy categorization) will show up in a book I’m writing that should be out later this year.
The subjects will include such names as Elvis, the Allman Brothers, Charlie Daniels, R.E.M., the B-52’s, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Jimmy Buffett, Kenny Rogers, Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts, the Commodores, James Brown, Isaac Hayes, Lionel Richie, Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, Willie Nelson, Tanya Tucker, the Oak Ridge Boys, Amy Grant and many more.
The Beatles even make a few cameo appearances in it, too!
Anyone interested in receiving word when it’s ready and available for order can email me at goodypress@mindspring.com. Put “BOOK” in the subject line.
Sixty years ago today, Capitol Records issued the “Meet The Beatles!” album, which was the American version of the “With The Beatles” LP that had been issued the previous November in the U.K.
I actually didn’t get to listen to “Meet The Beatles!” until I received it as a gift from my parents that Easter, which was on March 29 that year. (Yes, my brothers and I actually got Easter presents from our parents!)
I was impressed right away with the cover, which was a moody, magnificent masterpiece, with that unforgettable portrait of the Fab Four printed in a bluish black ink.
I remember my brothers and I standing in front of my mother’s portable suitcase stereo. We spent hours engaged in what later would become known as “air guitar,” silently miming the words, because we didn’t want to interfere with the music.
In those early days of our Beatlemania, my parents were our source of records. In fact, my father bought my very first Beatles recording — the single of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” b/w “I Saw Her Standing There” — without ever being asked to do so!
And, just about every time Mom went downtown in 1964, she returned with yet another Beatles single on what at the time was a bewildering assortment of labels (Capitol, Vee-Jay, Tollie, Swan).
When you look at the track listing of “Meet The Beatles!,” it would have been hard to compile a better way of first experiencing a Beatles album. Side 1 opened with the double-sided smash “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There,” followed by “This Boy,” “It Won’t Be Long,” “All I’ve Got to Do” and “All My Loving.
Then, on Side 2 you had George Harrison’s “Don’t Bother Me,” “Little Child,” Paul McCartney doing one for the parents with “Till There Was You,” Ringo Starr getting his lead spot with “I Wanna Be Your Man” and John Lennon’s “Not a Second Time,” which had prompted a critic for the London Times to go on about its use of Aeolian cadences (of which Lennon knew absolutely nothing).
Years later, when I was in college and bought a copy of the British “With The Beatles” album, it was a weird listening experience for me, as it was for many U.S. fans. It was like someone took the terrific “Meet The Beatles!” album, shaved off three of its strongest tracks (“I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “I Saw Her Standing There” and “This Boy”) and stuck in a bunch of cover versions. It’s a fine album, but let’s face it, the Capitol configuration beats it hands-down.
A review of Philip Norman’s “George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle” by Senior Editor Brad Hundt appears in Beatlefan #265. Hundt found the book to be “eminently readable,” but also a “by-the-numbers biography” and concluded: “Everyone who already is familiar with Harrison safely can take a pass on it.” Below is a mixed — but somewhat more enthusiastic — appraisal of Norman’s book. …
How swell at last to have a major biography of that most aloof of all rock stars, George Harrison, by respected pop music historian Philip Norman, and how sobering to learn that the reclusive rocker’s feet were all too completely made of clay.
Though this book is quite detailed and very well written, what is still a worthy biography could have been splendid if not for several shortcomings.
Perhaps the book’s top theme is George Harrison’s remarkable cornucopia of contradictions, something he alluded to in the “Pisces Fish” song on his superb last album, 2002’s “Brainwashed” — “Sometimes, my life it seems like fiction / Some of the days it’s really quite serene / I’m a living proof of all life’s contradictions / One half’s going where the other half’s just been.”
A Linda McCartney shot of Harrison from the latter days of The Beatles.
Massive contrasts define Harrison’s story. With bomb craters from World War II still decorating his neighborhood, he grew up in a crowded little Liverpool apartment with no bathroom, whose only heat came from a “small coal fire,” and where the weekly bath was in a backyard bucket. But massive musical success would earn him enormous wealth.
Harrison was the Beatle most in the background, whose growing songwriting abilities largely were ignored by the group’s leaders, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. But after the Fab Four’s 1970 breakup, the lead guitarist stunned everyone with his astonishing “All Things Must Pass” triple album, becoming the most critically and commercially successful Beatle of the early 1970s.
It is comforting to learn how Harrison usually was kind, caring and giving. Not only did he co-write “It Don’t Come Easy” and “Back Off Boogaloo,” two of Ringo Starr’s biggest solo hits, but he also did not ask for a (quite lucrative) songwriting credit for either.
George Harrison in his later years.
Even when sick in bed, dying of cancer, he offered to visit the drummer’s ailing daughter.
But Harrison was a stubborn loner who often was moody and brutally blunt. As Ringo put it, “There was the love and bag-of-beads personality and the bag of anger. He was very black and white.”
Indeed, when Lennon queried his bandmates on what they thought of his girlfriend and future wife, Cynthia Powell, Harrison remarked she had “teeth like a horse.” While the second Mrs. Lennon, Yoko Ono, conceded “George was very nice,” she still complained how “very hurtful” his caustic comments could be, to which John would shrug, “That’s just George.”
And on a long flight, when a stewardess asked the softly chanting Hindu convert if she could get him anything, Harrison snarled, “F— off, can’t you see I’m meditating?”
The supposedly most spiritual Beatle, who publicly sang warnings about “Living in the Material World,” privately luxuriated in a 25-bedroom gothic mansion. And the Beatle purportedly most at peace as a devout Hindu nevertheless smoked lots of marijuana, drank loads of liquor, snorted copious quantities of cocaine and chain-smoked French cigarettes.
He also was an inveterate adulterer, who cheated in his own house (when his first wife Pattie was home) with Ringo’s wife Maureen. This was a conquest too far even for John, who denounced it as “virtual incest,” and the affair led to the Starrs divorcing the next year.
“That’s just George.”
Surprisingly, the composer of so many beautiful love songs, including the classic “Something,” did not appear to be all that romantic. He betrayed both of his spouses, and he did not seem to mind losing his first wife to Eric Clapton — who remained his best buddy.
While Harrrison enjoyed most of his time in the world’s biggest band, and all the easy camaraderie, by the latter 1960s he firmly rejected any more concert tours and had grown deeply bitter that more of his compositions were not allowed on Beatles albums. Later calling himself “the economy-class Beatle,” he felt liberated when the group finally broke up, and he never sought a reunion.
Asked to help Sir Paul perform “Let It Be” at London’s 1985 Live Aid Concert, George’s typically tactless retort was that McCartney “didn’t want me to sing on it 10 years ago, so why does he want me now?”
Despite his enduring shyness — during his Beatle days, Norman notes, “no more private person can ever have trodden a stage more mercilessly public” — George organized the massive Concert for Bangladesh at New York City’s Madison Square Garden in 1971, spurred by his friend, sitar player Ravi Shankar. Although he was so nervous backstage that he suffered bouts of diarrhea and vomiting, Harrison’s pair of concerts were rock music’s first and possibly best benefits, and the album featured Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Badfinger, Billy Preston, Leon Russell, George, Ringo and many more. Harrison also worked hard to make sure the proceeds actually went to hungry Bangladeshis.
He would continue to be very charitable, ultimately providing $45 million to UNICEF projects in Bangladesh and elsewhere, as well as giving substantial financial support to Romanian orphans.
Likewise, George was generous with family and friends, buying houses for his mother-in-law and a Beatles staffer. He made major contributions to Hindu charities, and even risked losing his beloved Friar Park estate by putting it up as collateral to finance his Monty Python buddies’ controversial 1979 big-screen comedy “Monty Python’s Life of Brian.”
A man of contradictions.
Yet he was embarrassingly cheap with his own loyal staff, and the megamillionaire dissolved his first marriage by paying his most important muse a paltry £120,000.
He was the “Quiet Beatle” in public, but wouldn’t stop talking in private settings, where he was much more comfortable. Still, while he could be pleasantly social and even play host at a party, Harrison much preferred gardening to people, since, as he explained in his frank fashion, “the flowers don’t answer back.”
Norman’s book is unusually well-written, especially for a rock star biography, and it is likely not a coincidence that the author also is a novelist and playwright. Harrison’s life is told chronologically in extraordinary detail, especially concerning his growing up and his time with The Beatles. It was a revelation to realize just how materially deprived George’s childhood was, but how comforting to learn what a close, loving family he had. This makes his moody cynicism all the more mysterious.
Norman’s narrative reveals a magnificent musician who, despite often being tone-deaf to others’ feelings, did not just mean well, but (usually) did well by his friends and so many strangers through his considerable philanthropy.
The author appears especially partial to Harrison’s dry and even gallows humor. It is remarkable to read of his being carried out of his house on a stretcher in late 1999, having almost been killed by 40 stab wounds from an insane intruder, and him asking a pair of new housekeepers, “What do you think of the job so far?”
Likewise, he named his last album “Brainwashed,” because of his terminal brain cancer, and published its songs under the name of R.I.P. Music Ltd.
From his charity concert in aid of the people of Bangladesh.
But Norman’s apparent fondness for his subject does not inhibit him from pointing out painful facts. Likewise, the biographer is balanced and fair covering all the major players in Harrison’s orbit.
Having written an earlier book about The Beatles, as well as biographies of Lennon, McCartney, Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Sir Elton John, the author has an encyclopedic knowledge of many of pop music’s major players from the 1960s and 1970s.
Indeed, the Harrison biography sings best when telling of George’s time with the famous Fabs. He was in what would become the world’s biggest band from when he was not quite age 15 until he was 27; these were the most dramatic and important years of his life and critical to his development as a person, musician and composer.
The book brims with compelling descriptions of each of The Beatles and their relationships with one another, as well as the staff within the group’s growing empire. Norman also provides plenty of memorable observations about the larger London pop scene, conveying the cultural context on which the band fed and, to a considerable extent, led.
In light of how strained the foursome’s internal dynamics would become by the late 1960s, it truly is touching to learn what extremely close friends they were for most of the dozen years they were a team. It also is reassuring to read how well they ultimately overcame their differences, as their Beatles past became an ever more distant blur in the rearview mirror.
But what could have been an outstanding biography is not one, due to several needless drawbacks. One of the most tiresome is when the book occasionally burrows way too deeply into utterly irrelevant minutiae about not just Harrison’s Beatles days, but trivial players from that time, about whom only the most fanatical fans care. Who buys a George Harrison biography for mundane details about long obscure local Liverpool bands from 1960?
George with first wife Pattie.
And although the author bemoans how Lennon and McCartney ignored Harrison too much, he spends an excessive amount of time on The Beatles’ dynamic duo. Having written biographies of each, he might have found their pronounced personalities more interesting than that of the self-effacing Harrison.
As captivating as this biography generally is when recounting George’s formative and Beatles years, just 153 of the book’s 440 pages address the period after The Beatles — the majority of his life — and his last two full decades are crammed into a mere 55 pages.
So, Norman fails to devote remotely enough attention to the 31 years of Harrison’s life when he finally enjoyed the freedom to be completely who he wanted to be.
This is all the more regrettable because George made a remarkable number of excellent albums of his own during this period, as well as with the Traveling Wilburys, the supergroup he formed with Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and the Electric Light Orchestra’s Jeff Lynne. Indeed, Harrison appears to have enjoyed being a Wilbury more than being a Beatle, since his second band was genuinely democratic and egalitarian.
George also did much as a film producer and philanthropist. In fairness, Norman does touch on all of this, but not enough for the reader to develop a full understanding of any of it. Instead, when covering Harrison’s later years, the book reads like it is just hitting the big news events, with little analysis.
That brings us to the biggest flaw of the biography: After reading it, I now know far more about Harrison, but I doubt I really understand what shaped his character and drove him.
The Traveling Wilburys.
Though Norman’s book is full of intriguing, fun and sometimes unsettling anecdotes, I still cannot say I truly appreciate why Harrison acted as he did. And the book ends without even attempting to draw any conclusions about its protagonist.
This is a shame, particularly considering Norman’s considerable research and writing talents.
A final quibble concerns the embarrassing number of missing words, typographical errors and misspellings in the text. It is stunning how big publishers now are comfortable putting out works riddled with basic writing errors.
Nevertheless, “George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle” is, overall, a very well-researched and well-written biography that boasts loads of fascinating facts. Most importantly, it brings attention to an extraordinarily talented artist who never has gotten the respect he deserves, due to being overshadowed by the greatest songwriting partnership of the 20th century.
Norman has made a significant contribution to elevating Harrison’s place in the pop music pantheon, which is a very welcome development.
Douglas Young
Douglas Young’s essays, poems and short stories have appeared in a variety of publications. His first novel, “Deep in the Forest,” was published in 2021 and the second, “Due South,” came out in 2022. His next book, “This Little Opinion Plus $1.50 Will Buy You a Coke: A Collection of Essays,” is about to be published.
Beatlefan first was published just before Christmas in 1978, so we’re marking its 45th anniversary. Through various landmark anniversaries in the past, Executive Editor Al Sussman, our original New York correspondent, has interviewed Bill and Leslie King about how the publication came to be and their adventures through the years. Here’s a new conversation to mark the magazine’s 45th birthday. …
The first issue of Beatlefan had an interview with former Wings drummer Joe English. Did the interviews in those very early days come about through your “day job” covering music at The Atlanta Constitution, or through other sources?
Initially, most of them came via my job at the paper. That certainly was the case with the Joe English interview, which was set up before Beatlefan even came into being.
As I explain in the first part of my Beatlefan Annotated series in Issue #265, prior to being tapped to drum in McCartney’s band, New York native English had been living around Macon, Ga., then a music hotbed thanks to Capricorn Records and the Allman Brothers Band. He’d played in a pickup band with Butch Trucks of the ABB.
I’d first met English while he still officially was a member of Wings when he attended the annual Capricorn Records Barbecue outside Macon in August 1977. At that time, he was very enthusiastic about the sessions for what turned out to be “London Town.” “It’s going to be another ‘Band on the Run’,” he told me.
When Jimmy McCulloch left Wings a month or so later, I talked with Joe’s wife, who indicated he would continue with the McCartney band.
Joe English from his time with Wings.
But, then, a couple of months later, the Wings Club Sandwich newsletter announced that English had decided to “return full time to his family in America.”
A few months after that, in the spring of 1978, I got word that English was in Atlanta doing some work at a local recording studio with Tall Dogs (the jazz-rock group he’d started earlier with Butch Trucks), and that he was willing to chat about his career.
So, I spent some time with him at the studio and he talked at length about his time in Wings. I wrote the story up for the Constitution and then, later that year when Leslie and I decided to start Beatlefan, it seemed like a natural cover story.
During the early years, many of the interviews we did continued to come to me through the newspaper, including my chats with the surviving members of Badfinger and Tony Sheridan, but as Beatlefan became better known, the process sometimes was reversed, with me getting interviews for our magazine that I later repurposed for the paper. Walter Shenson, producer of “A Hard Day’s Night,” was one of those instances.
This might sound completely primitive to younger folks, but describe how a typical issue of Beatlefan was created in those early days.
It was a very different process from nowadays. These were the days before desktop computer publishing. Back then, the articles written for us came via the mail in manuscript form produced on typewriters — or, sometimes, even handwritten! (Our contact with contributors was either via long-distance phone call, mail or mailgrams, which were delivered like a telegram.)
I compiled the news from clippings sent to us — and various music trade publications we subscribed to — and wrote everything on a typewriter — first an old-fashioned one my Dad had bought me in college, and then an electric model like we used at the paper in those days.
I would edit the articles with a pen or marker, and then Leslie would typeset them on Compugraphic equipment owned by a college pal, Gene Christie, which necessitated evening trips after work to the little room he rented in town about a half hour away from us by Interstate highway.
The first issue of Beatlefan featured Joe English on the cover.
The Compugraphic would spit out long (I’m talking several feet long, in some cases) columns of type that then had to be trimmed, waxed and pasted up in page form. Those forms then would be copied by the neighborhood Kwik Kopy shop that printed our early issues on uncoated white paper stock.
We didn’t get an office until early in 1979, so I pasted up that first issue on the kitchen table of our apartment, with only a borrowed X-acto knife and wooden rolling pin as my tools. No wonder some of it’s a bit crooked! After we got the office, my artsy-and-craftsy mother built me a light table like graphic artists used, which made the paste-up process much easier.
In later years, after Gene moved to Washington, DC, we’d send him the copy, he’d typeset it and then he’d overnight the galleys (as those long strips of type were called) to us for me to paste up. After the first several years of publication, we moved to a format that featured a glossy cover and newsprint pages inside, and the magazine was printed by a weekly newspaper about an hour away from us.
A selection of Beatlefan covers through the years.
Eventually, in 1991, we bought the first in a long series of Apple Macintosh computers (the old LC model), and so there was no more outside typesetting. I would print out the stories from the Mac, but I still pasted them up on the light table. The photos were “screened” (so that they consisted of tiny dots) at a local print shop, and they were pasted down on the pages just like the type.
We switched to another printing company in the early 2000s, where my brother Jonathan worked as an account rep, and eventually we followed him to the company that has printed Beatlefan since 2008. These days, the production is all digital — the magazine pages and photos are provided in PDF and JPEG form to the printer. And, of course, we run full-color covers.
I also should mention that my brother Tim helped us out with many a mailing of Beatlefan in the early years, in addition to attending quite a few McCartney concerts with me.
One of the perks of that “day job” was that you got to attend a number of press conferences and more informal Q&A sessions with Paul, Ringo and George. Any memories from those sessions?
I’ve participated in quite a few press conferences with Paul and Ringo through the years, but my first one-on-one interview with a Beatle was George, in 1976 at a press gathering in Washington, DC, after he signed with Warner Bros. He chatted casually with reporters at a reception and then, as a seated dinner wound down, I went over and knelt by him with my tape recorder and interviewed him. It was quite a thrill.
McCartney did several group interviews to promote “Give My Regards to Broad Street.”
Also quite thrilling was the hour that I got to spend with Paul (and about five other reporters from Eastern papers) in a small conference room at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, when he was doing advance publicity for the “Give My Regards to Broad Street” film. As I’ve written in Beatlefan in the past, I got there early, correctly guessed where Paul would sit and positioned myself to his immediate left. I got to ask lots of questions and also snapped pictures while he talked. It was an unforgettable experience!
Beginning with that first issue, there have been Beatlefan interviews with virtually every major Beatles figure alive during the magazine’s first 45 years. Any special ones come to mind?
Well, Walter Shenson, whom I mentioned earlier, was pretty special. That happened at Beatlefest, as it was known then, and was arranged by Mark Lapidos. (As I explain in the blog post I did a couple of months ago about how Beatlefan came to be, Mark always has been considered the honorary “godfather” of our magazine.) I later spent time with Walter at other Beatlefests, and even got recruited to go out onstage with him in the ballroom once to interview him. And, in later years, he and I chatted on the phone a couple of times.
Legendary Beatles and Apple Corps publicity director Derek Taylor was another special case. I first interviewed him in Liverpool, when Leslie and I were attending a fan convention there at the Adelphi Hotel. He was, as you might imagine, a marvelous interview subject. — extremely loquacious, debonair and charming.
Derek Taylor talked to Beatlefan several times.
A few years later, he had a book coming out for one of the “Sgt. Pepper” anniversaries, and the publisher’s publicist set up a phone interview. Derek not only remembered our previous encounter, but he recalled that I had a beard, and he quoted something I’d said in our earlier interview.
Then, years after that, when “The Beatles Anthology” was about to premiere, ABC set me up with another phone interview with Derek, who modestly told the publicist handing him the phone that there was nothing he could tell me about The Beatles that I didn’t already know.
Through the years, I have interviewed many other Beatles relatives, friends and associates, including Cynthia Lennon, May Pang, Mike McCartney, Alistair Taylor, Vic Spinetti, Leo McKern, Pete Shotton, Jürgen Vollmer, Sid Bernstein, Phil Ramone, Jack Douglas, Elliot Mintz and quite a few members of McCartney’s various bands. And, of course, we’ve had numerous interviews with other Beatles-related figures that were conducted by various Beatlefan contributors.
Other than the obvious (John, Brian, Mal), are there any interviews that were near-misses, either for you or any of the contributors?
Well, we never had a near-miss with him, but the Great White Whale would have been Neil Aspinall. But there never was a chance of that happening, for us or any other publication (though we did run a chat with him during “Anthology” times that was provided by EMI). I also would have loved to chat with Maureen, Ringo’s first wife, but she wasn’t available, either. And, of course, Jane Asher would have been a terrific interview, but she never has talked publicly about her time with Paul and The Beatles. But, generally, through our vast network of contributors and correspondents, we’ve gotten interviews with just about everyone involved with The Beatles who has a story worth telling.
Bill and Leslie in the late 1980s.
Leslie, tell us the story of seeing a copy of Beatlefan on the episode of CBS’ “48 Hours” devoted to Paul’s 1989-90 tour and calling Bill, in those pre-cell phone days, at a hotel in London during the U.K. leg of the tour.
Leslie: CBS devoted the second anniversary edition of “48 Hours” to Paul on tour. I saw it on TV, and the Chicago Beatles fans being interviewed kept positioning a copy of the latest Beatlefan to catch the camera. I got very excited and called Bill at the hotel in Marylebone to tell him about that unexpected experience.
Bill: I was in London with my friends Mark Gunter and John Sosebee to see a couple of Paul’s shows at Wembley Arena and do some Beatling. We all got a big kick out of Leslie’s call about the show, and when we got back to Georgia, we watched the video. The fan CBS was following was Joy Waugh-O`Donnell, who was a subscriber to Beatlefan.
Beatlefan stalwart Al Sussman (left) with Olivia and Bill King.
Bill, tell us about the story of the unnamed source who saw a copy of Beatlefan at, if memory serves, Paul’s Cavendish Avenue home?
Actually, it was at Paul’s studio. Someone we’re in contact with was waiting to talk with Paul and was browsing his bookshelf and came across a copy of Beatlefan. Ironically, I believe it was an issue that had John Lennon on the cover!
Paul and Ringo’s return to touring in 1989 ushered in a new era for Beatlefan. Tell us about how the tour reports began and developed, and your and Leslie’s adventures during the early tours.
Those early tours were monsters to deal with, coverage wise, as we still were in the days where people were sending in clippings and snapshots, and we really were inundated.
In those days, we did a detailed, city-by-city report on all the shows, since the tours weren’t of the never-ending variety, like they are now.
As for adventures, one time Ken Sharp and I were interviewing some of the members of Macca’s band before a show at Madison Square Garden and then, in trying to find our way out, we found ourselves on the floor of the arena, with Paul and the band onstage waiting to do a sound check! He obviously was waiting for us to leave, so we did.
Another time, Ken got me and Allan Kozinn seats right in front of Ringo — literally just a few feet away from him — for a show with the Roundheads at the Bottom Line club in New York City.
Bill and John Sosebee attended many concerts together over the years.
And then there was the time that my brother Tim and John Sosebee and I accidentally ended up on an MPL van that took us into the backstage area before a show at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. I’ve told that story beforein a SOMETHING NEW blog paying tribute to John, whom we lost last year.
Through the years, I traveled extensively following Paul and Ringo tours, hitting such places as New York, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, Dallas, St. Louis, Memphis, Orlando and London. Leslie and our kids also have seen shows in such places as DC, Houston, New York, Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Nashville, and multiple shows in South Carolina and North Carolina.
These days, though, I generally only hit one show per tour. Not only am I a lot older, but the cost of concert tickets has skyrocketed. Back in 1993 when Paul toured, some friends and I hit shows in New Orleans, Memphis and St. Louis, before returning to Atlanta for Paul’s concert there, and then following him to Columbia, SC (with my son Bill in tow), and then on to Orlando. Later in that same tour, we hit shows in New Jersey and Charlotte. Nowadays, even if I wanted to want to hit the road like that, the cost of seeing that many shows would be prohibitive.
As for our coverage, while we still report on the tours in Beatlefan, we don’t really do the city-by-city thing anymore, since there rarely is much difference from one venue to the next. Instead, we report the highlights of the tour and then zero-in on one or two cities, with firsthand coverage from contributors who were there. Last year, I did one of our major tour reports after Leslie and I and our kids saw Paul at the Wake Forest University stadium in North Carolina.
How did Beatlefan’s 1994 Threetles scoop come about, and how did it get international coverage? And what was the literal “kick” to the story?
I had taken some vacation time, because we were expecting our second child at any time. I got a phone call from one of our contributing editors that afternoon. He had just gotten off the phone with the manager of one of Ringo Starr’s closest friends. He said that Ringo, George Harrison and Paul McCartney were in the studio recording a John Lennon song, “Free As a Bird.”
This was big news. We’d already reported that the three Beatles were planning on recording together, but until that point no one knew what song.
The Threetles sessions produced Beatlefan’s biggest international scoop.
Leslie and I immediately decided to put out an issue of our Beatlefan/EXTRA! supplementary newsletter with the scoop that evening, and also to print enough additional copies to insert them into every copy of the magazine that had already gone to press as a free bonus. The Beatlefan/EXTRA! fax subscribers received the news that evening (remember when people had fax machines?) and the newsletter mailing went out later that night. Thanks to Allan Kozinn, The New York Times picked up the story and attributed it to Beatlefan, which got us mentioned widely (and even led to a couple of calls to us from London papers).
Sometime in the early hours of the morning, Leslie woke me up and told me that she was in labor. We took our son Bill over to the next-door neighbor’s house and then we set off in the car for the hospital.
Along the way, we ran into one roadblock and, as I was racing down one of Atlanta’s major thoroughfares at about 85 mph, an Atlanta police car suddenly pulled up beside us. I rolled down the window and hollered, “Woman in labor!”
The officer nodded and escorted us to the hospital, leading the way with blue lights flashing, and our daughter Olivia was born a few hours later.
As I’ve always told her, a lot of kids hear interesting stories from their parents about the circumstances of their birth, but how many of those stories involve The Beatles and a high-speed police escort?
Unlike the out-of-the-blue shock of John Lennon’s murder, Beatlefan had time to prepare for George’s passing. You and I talked tentatively about it as early as July of 2001. What sort of plans were you able to make, and how did the magazine’s coverage actually turn out?
I touched base with you and several other contributors in advance and discussed what we’d do if George passed. That meant we didn’t really have to scramble, like we did in December 1980, when we tore up our second anniversary issue, which was almost complete, and decided to turn it into a Lennon commemorative. For George, we fully planned commemorative coverage, and I was very pleased with it. I think it had some of our best-written pieces ever.
An interesting side story was that I had been the copy desk chief for The Atlanta Journal, our afternoon paper, after leaving the entertainment beat in 1986, but a few weeks before George died, the Journal had been merged into the morning Atlanta Constitution and I had been moved back to the Features Department, where I’d worked many years before as the rock critic. I helped edit the daily living and arts section.
Bill’s George Harrison obituary ran on the front page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
But, for a few months, the combined papers continued to do an early afternoon edition. I worked the early morning shift in Features and was at the paper and saw on the wires that George had died. A few minutes later, one of the assistant managing editors came by my desk and asked if I would be willing to write an obituary on George (my Beatles sideline was well-known at the paper).
I was honored to be asked, and immediately agreed to do it. My story on George ran on the front page of the Journal-Constitution and also was distributed nationally over the New York Times news service. It ran in papers around the country.
Another thing I recall was that, unlike John’s death, which came out of the blue and left me virtually no time to really react, because I was so busy covering it, George’s passing was something we were dreading but expecting. And, perhaps because of that, it hit me quicker, emotionally. Whereas I did several TV and radio appearances talking about John right after he was killed, I begged off when asked to do the same after George died. I just didn’t want to talk about it.
A newspaper feature about Beatlefan that future contributor Brad Hundt wrote circa 1989.
We talked 10 years ago about Beatlefan’s journalistic stance from the start. Do you still get any complaints from readers don’t like the tone of a review or article?
Rarely. While some folks in the very early years of Beatlefan were surprised to see a fanzine that wasn’t afraid to say an album released by a Beatle was subpar, I think fandom has moved past that point. If anything, I hear from people who hate this or that album (“McCartney III,” for example) and can’t understand why we didn’t hate it as well. Fan opinions vary much more widely these days than they did back when we first got started.
Speaking of journalism, one thing that I’ve always been pleased by is the way professional journalists have embraced Beatlefan. We’ve had quite a few of them as regular contributors through the years, including Brad Hundt, Allan Kozinn and Rip Rense.
As we’ve discussed before, Beatlefan is a print publication. How do you answer queries about why there isn’t a digital edition?
I tell people honestly that we’re creatures of the print world, and we just don’t have the time or inclination to deal with a digital edition as well. We looked into that possibility briefly a few years ago, but the logistics involved were a lot more complicated than we wanted to take on. Maybe if we ever stop printing an ink-on-paper magazine, we’ll think about going digital.
A latterday shot of Bill and Leslie.
Finally, where do you see Beatlefan and the Beatles world in general in five years — 50 years after the magazine’s inception?
Well, Paul and Ringo are older now than Leslie and I will be then, and they’re still recording and touring. We’ll just have to see.
Denny Laine with Paul and Linda McCartney in Wings.
“Wings Over the World.”
That was the proclamation I quite thoughtfully had inscribed beneath my high school graduation yearbook photo. Because “Wings Over America” seemed a bit understated for how I truly felt about that band during those musically formative years.
“Wings Over America,” the classic live album from Wings’ 1976 tour, was released midway through my freshman year of high school, and when I graduated in June 1980, it was “Coming Up” — specifically the “Live at Glasgow” version — that sat atop the chart.
And, yes, I know that, however sincere Paul McCartney was about presenting Wings as a true democracy, that never would — and never could — come to pass.
A Linda McCartney shot of Paul and Denny Laine. (MPL)
Indeed, much has been written in the pages of Beatlefan about whether Wings should be considered for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in addition to Paul having been honored on his own for his solo — or, to be more accurate, “post-Beatles” — work.
Valid arguments can be made both for and against such a nod. And, I’ve got to confess, I think inducting Wings would be akin to inducting the Plastic Ono Band. Because membership in the group featured quite a revolving door during its tenure, except for Paul and Linda.
And Denny, of course.
Denny Laine was there from Wings’ 1971 debut, the much maligned “Wild Life” album, and was a mainstay of the group through the very important stepping-stone “Red Rose Speedway” album and the triumphant “Band on the Run.”
Denny in 1974.
(I found it quite poignant that Denny passed away on the exact 50th anniversary of that album’s release in America.)
It’s worth noting that, for that landmark album, Wings had been reduced to a trio, as two other members of the earliest touring lineup (guitarist Henry McCullough and drummer Denny Seiwell) had flown the coop shortly before the recording sessions began.
So “Band on the Run” was just Paul, Linda and Denny.
There followed a brief (but relatively successful) stint with drummer Geoff Britton joining the band, along with whiz-kid guitarist Jimmy McCulloch. That version of Wings recorded the single “Junior’s Farm” and a few tracks for the album “Venus and Mars.”
Onstage with Wings.
Then Britton left and drummer Joe English was brought in to join the McCartneys, Laine and McCulloch in what many consider the quintessential Wings lineup.
Performing a set list anchored by tracks from the two most recent albums and the brand-new “Wings at the Speed of Sound” LP, this is the ensemble that set the standard for mid-’70s arena rock.
The resulting triple-disc live album from the tour topped the Billboard charts, and gave birth to a live single of Paul’s early solo classic “Maybe I’m Amazed.”
The follow-up album, “London Town,” found Wings in transition once again, with McCulloch and English taking wing, a point emphasized by the cover photo, which showed only Paul, Linda and Denny.
Just Paul, Linda and Denny on the cover of “London Town.”
Guitarist Laurence Juber and drummer Steve Holley were recruited for what would be Wings’ final album, 1979’s “Back to the Egg.”
With 1980 bookended by a McCartney stint in a Japanese prison in January and the unspeakable event that would follow that December, the end was nigh for Wings.
But it was Denny Laine who was there for the band’s entire run, and he even appeared on McCartney’s first post-Wings release, the classic “Tug of War.”
Beyond the albums cited above — and the 1972-73, 1975-76 and 1979 tours — the run of singles during this period is mindblowing: “My Love,” “Live and Let Die,” “Helen Wheels,” “Jet,” “Band on the Run,” “Junior’s Farm,” “Listen to What the Man Said,” “Silly Love Songs,” “Let ’Em In,” “With a Little Luck,” “Goodnight Tonight,” “Coming Up” …
A Henry Diltz shot of Denny released after his death. (MPL)
Oh, and a little Scottish waltz, released smack in the middle of the punk and disco eras, called “Mull of Kintyre,” which went on to become the biggest-selling single ever in the U.K. at that time, besting one of McCartney’s efforts with his previous band.
Denny co-wrote “Mull,” too.
Along the way, Denny also was on the 1974 “McGear” album released by McCartney’s brother Michael, and Laine’s own “Holly Days,” the latter featuring only three musicians …. Denny, Paul and Linda. (Both of the latter two releases are well worth seeking out.)
It was an honor and privilege to meet Denny at many concerts and Beatles fests through the years. Beyond his formidable vocal and instrumental talents, he remained gracious when meeting fans to talk about his career before, during and after his tenure with Wings.
Denny Laine performing in Maine in 2015. (Al Conti)
It was quite gratifying that, even without Wings, Laine finally was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018 as an original member of the Moody Blues.
One of my favorite musical memories of Denny can be seen in the Wings concert movie “Rockshow,” filmed during the 1976 American tour. It’s when Denny revisits his days with the Moodies, taking the lead on “Go Now,” a song that had topped the U.K. charts in 1965.
The 1976 outing was where McCartney himself finally embraced the idea of doing Beatles songs in concert, so it was cool that the tour featured Denny out front doing his earliest hit, with Paul and Linda handling the background vocals, McCulloch playing a brilliant solo, and the horn section in top form.
It’s as good a document of Wings — as a true band — as one can find.
Paul was right. Wings was “a shit-hot rock ’n’ roll band.”
Thanks, Denny.
Tom Frangione
You can find more about Denny Laine in Beatlefan #265.
We asked some of our Beatlefan staff members and regular contributors to share their thoughts on The Beatles’ “Now and Then.”
In 1996, nearly a year after the rollout of “The Beatles Anthology” project, which included the release of the three “Anthology” CD sets and the VHS expanded version of the original “Anthology” documentary, I wrote a piece for Beatlefan in which I noted how enjoyable the whole process, covering nearly a year, had been.
I especially enjoyed the communal feeling of the broadcast of the first installment of the documentary and, at the episode’s end, the countdown to the debut of the first electronic Beatles “reunion” song, “Free As a Bird.”
And, 28 years later, we had a similar shared moment at the beginning of November, with the debuts of a 12-minute documentary on the making of what was being billed as “the final Beatles song,” then the new recording itself, “Now and Then,” followed by the Peter Jackson-directed music video.
However, those three days turned out to be not nearly as universally enjoyed as Thanksgiving week of 1995, and at least part of the problem can be attributed to 21st century social media.
Oh, sure, there was social media in 1995-96. There were AOL chat rooms and message boards and discussion forums. But Facebook and Google and Twitter still were a decade or more away, with Instagram and the dreaded TikTok even farther away. And the vast majority of the Beatle world was not yet involved with the early social media, so we could enjoy each segment of the project without feeling obligated to express an opinion on it, save for those of us in the print-dominated Beatles media.
Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney finished off “Now and Then” for release.
Today, it’s a whole new world, as a 1990s catch phrase put it — one in which peer pressure dictates that everyone immediately weigh in on any big event, even if one isn’t all that knowledgeable about said event.
So, within moments of the Nov. 2 debut of “Now and Then,” there was a torrent of instant reactions. That’s all well and good, but soon came the reactions from those who only knew this as the supposed “A.I. Beatles song” (thanks for putting that out there, Paul!), as well as musical know-it-alls providing oft overdone analysis.
This also was the first time for most millennials and all of Gen Z to experience the debut of a new Beatles record and, of course, they had to chime in with their reactions. Many of them were not pleased that “Now and Then” wasn’t an upbeat slice of Beatles pop, that it wasn’t an “Eight Days a Week” for the 21st century.
It seemed that the only group truly moved by “Now and Then” was Beatles fandom’s first generation, some 60 years on from our first listen to a record by the group.
I think a bit of perspective is in order. As everyone reading this presumably knows by now, “Now and Then” started out as a John Lennon demo from his late ’70s househusband days at the Dakota. It was not one of his better ones, not nearly as good as “Free As a Bird” or “Real Love,” or most of the demos and unreleased recordings heard in the late ’80s on “The Lost Lennon Tapes.”
The back cover of the “Now and Then” single.
But it was one of the three songs on a cassette said to have been labeled “For Paul” (exactly who labeled it as such has been a subject of much speculation), and which Yoko Ono gave to Paul McCartney after he inducted Lennon into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
Those demo recordings became the foundation of the 1994-95 Threetles sessions involving McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. But the “Now and Then” demo, with the TV playing in the background, was of lousy sound quality and after some brief time spent working on it, Harrison reportedly concluded they should abandon the number. (Whether that was just because of the poor sound quality, or also because he didn’t think much of the song, has been another subject of debate.)
So, the song was put aside and became the stuff of fan obsession, much like the ’60s unreleased track “Carnival of Light,” with people making their own recordings of what they thought a Beatles version of “Now and Then” would sound like.
Then came the 2020s and Jackson’s revelatory work with his MAL technology (which is a machine-learning filtering process, not what most people mean by “A.I.”) on the “Get Back” docu-series.
The Threetles at work on the track in 1995.
With this new tool available, McCartney’s continuing interest in doing something with “Now and Then” came to the fore. And, with Giles Martin brought into the project, they were able to, um, take a sad song and make it better.
Going in, I was very apprehensive about this being “the final Beatles song,” because, basically, the number really is not up to The Beatles’ group standards.
But the work done somehow gave the final recording the majesty shared by so much of the group’s canon and Jeff Lynne’s production work on “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love.”
To me, this recording does indeed have the feel of a final bow.
Back in the ’70s, a lot of us held out hope that The Beatles would get together for at least one big reunion show.
My own fantasy had the group doing one blowout concert, climaxed by a performance of the entire “Abbey Road” medley, from “You Never Give Me Your Money” through “The End.” The Beatles then would take the traditional Brian Epstein-suggested bow and that would be the climax for the group.
Now, in an updating of my alternate-universe fantasy, The Beatles would return to the stage after the medley, perform “Now and Then,” take another final bow, and walk off together into history. …
Al Sussman
The “Now and Then” CD single.
Waking up to a day highlighted by a new recording featuring a never-before-released Beatles song was something nobody imagined might happen again. And, from what the surviving members of the band tell us, now that it has happened, it never will again.
We’d been anticipating “Now and Then” for months, ever since Paul McCartney mentioned in a BCC Radio interview that The Beatles’ camp had used “artificial intelligence” to create a “new” tune using John Lennon’s voice.
What Paul meant was that new technology — created and used by film director Peter Jackson’s team to isolate obscured audio in “The Beatles: Get Back” documentary and then also used by producer Giles Martin in the remixing of last year’s “Revolver” package — had been deployed to isolate and clean up Lennon’s vocal on an old demo.
While many in the media and on social media went crazy misinforming anyone within clicking range of a hyperlink that “A.I.” had been used to create a “fake” Lennon vocal, most fans knew what Paul meant. And we also knew that he was talking about “Now and Then,” a Lennon track that he, George Harrison and Ringo Starr all had worked on during their “Anthology” sessions in the mid-1990s, but gave up on because the sound quality of Lennon’s cassette was so bad.
Likely, many people who hear the new track wrongly will believe that the Lennon voice they hear is computer-generated, but we shouldn’t let that distract or prevent us from enjoying this new Beatles song, because it is enjoyable, as well as moving, tender, surprising, melodic and vital, and also because it is a Beatles song.
All four members of the band are heard on the tune: John’s vocal, George’s acoustic rhythm guitar, Ringo’s drums, and Paul on harmony vocals and a number of instruments, including, of course, bass, keyboards and a slide guitar solo that pays tribute to Harrison.
The tune opens with a count-in a la “I Saw Her Standing There” and a few other songs from The Beatles’ catalog. That’s followed by a stately, minor-key piano melody and Lennon’s voice, clear as day.
Hearing Lennon here is haunting, yet welcome, like the voice of a dear friend you thought you’d never hear from again, speaking to you anew. Everything else on the track, the new instrumental parts, backing vocals and strings (arranged by Martin) supports and pays tribute to that voice, as if to say, “We hear you, John. We’re listening to you. And we are here for you.” As such, the song arrives as a comforting message of support to the listener, telling us that The Beatles’ music is still present and here for us, offering solace, wisdom, peace and respite from all of the madness at hand.
The band did this throughout their career, providing us with positive, affirmative messages that made us feel better about things, including ourselves, from “She Loves You,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “The Word” on through “Here Comes the Sun” and “The End” on “Abbey Road,” which repeats “Love you, Love you” before landing on the prayer-like sentiment, “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” Lennon’s song acknowledges the obstacles to love and the need to overcome them and preserve what’s important and sacred, which is friendship and commitment to a relationship. It’s a message that we need to take to heart, now more than ever. Only the most dark-hearted cynic would see this as a money grab or a last bid for more attention. It’s a gift, and one I receive with deep appreciation and gratitude. The world today is a sad song and The Beatles (yes, The Beatles) now have made it a little bit better.
John Firehammer
Ringo showing off the “Now and Then” disc in an online video.
The release of “Now and Then” was another one of those moments in Beatles history when the Fab Four’s music created a global listening party.
Like the release of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in June 1967, the satellite broadcast of “All You Need Is Love” a few weeks later (reaching an estimated 400 million viewers in 25 countries), the much-anticipated debut of “Free as a Bird” in 1995, and 2021’s “Get Back” documentary series, the “last Beatles song” gave fans a shared experience.
Released in a world connected virtually, “Now and Then” allowed us to listen, react and shed tears together in real time. Coupled with the release of director Peter Jackson’s music video, the song carries an emotional impact worthy of The Beatles’ legacy.
For first-generation fans, the song and video unleashed a flood of memories. For Gen-X, millennials, Gen Z and beyond, “Now and Then” brought the thrill of witnessing the release of a new Beatles song.
It has given all of us the chance to hear John Lennon again, his voice lifted pure and clear from a tape made more than four decades ago, joined by his three bandmates in a collaboration that evokes love, regret and remembrance.
It is a fitting coda to the best-loved music catalog of our time, and a moving tribute to four friends who shook the world.
Kathy Urbanic
Look for much more on “Now and Then” in Beatlefan #265 in December.
My introduction to Disney came via Davy Crockett when I was 3 years old.
I’ve been Disney fan since I donned a Davy Crockett buckskin jacket and coonskin cap when I was 3 years old, and I’ve been a fan of The Beatles since February, 1964.
It’s amazing to me, though, the number of times those two interests have crossed paths, starting out with those three nights when the Fabs first appeared on CBS’ “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Those also were the same nights that “The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh,” starring Patrick McGoohan, aired on “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” on NBC.
It took an awful lot of channel-switching, but I managed to catch most of the “Scarecrow” (which ultimately became one of my favorite Disney productions ever), while not missing any of The Beatles’ performances for Sullivan.
The Beatles with Ed Sullivan.
The Beatles also figure into a nice bit of Disney trivia. When they were preparing the 1967 animated feature of “The Jungle Book,” Disney tried to get the Fabs to voice the film’s four vultures. When that gambit failed, the studio gave them Liverpudlian accents anyway.
Through the years, there were other occasions when my interests in Disney and The Beatles came together again. After we’d subscribed to the Disney Channel (back when it was a premium offering) so that our son could see some of the classic productions from the House of Mouse, I was thrilled to find the channel using The Beatles in its effort to program for boomers at night.
That included a 1992 documentary on the making of The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper” album and even a “Going Home” special featuring Ringo Starr taking one of his sons on a tour of his old haunts in Liverpool.
“The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh” aired opposite The Beatles on Sullivan.
And, more recently, after our daughter signed us up for the Disney+ streaming service, that’s where we were able to view Sir Peter Jackson’s “The Beatles Get Back,” the long-awaited documentary assembled from the many hours of footage shot during the recording of the band’s “Let It Be” album.
And, since then, Disney+ has presented “If These Walls Could Sing,” an excellent documentary about Abbey Road Studios directed by Mary McCartney (daughter of Sir Paul), and it was on that same streaming service that I recently watched “Now and Then — The Last Beatles Song,” a documentary short about the making of the Fabs’ current hit single.
Sir Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary debuted on Disney+.
Watching my favorite band, about whom I’ve published Beatlefan magazine for 45 years, on a channel carrying the name of the movie studio I’ve followed since I was 3-years-old somehow seems just … perfect.
If you’d like to read more about my lifelong Disney fandom — and how a love of the studio’s creations now is taking hold of a third generation of my family — check out my “Growing Up Disney” piece by clicking here.
I just finished watching “Now And Then — The Last Beatles Song” documentary film, written and directed by Oliver Murray and produced by Jonathan Clyde of Apple Corps. I then then immediately watched it again. (It’s only 12 minutes long.)
The film features the voices of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr telling the story from 2023, along with comments from George Harrison back in 1995 and new commentary from John Lennon’s son Sean.
Using a mixture of vintage Beatles footage and footage shot of Paul, Ringo and George together during the Threetles sessions in the mid-1990s, it tells the story of how Paul, George and ringo attempted to do something with John’s piano demo of “Now and Then,” recorded on cassette, back then for “The Beatles Anthology.”
Unfortunately, they couldn’t overcome the problem of the sound of the piano obscuring parts of Lennon’s vocal on the low-fi cassewtte and so, Paul says, “I think we kind of ran out of steam a bit … and time.”
After George died in 2001, Paul adds, “it took the wind out of our sails.”
Then, after Sir Peter Jackson’s team came up technology to separate different elements of a recording into separate tracks during the making of the “Get Back” film, they decided to put that technology to use on “Now and Then,” which Macca said had “languished in a cupboard” all these years.
Jackson is heard in the film, explaining the machine-learning process. Says Sean: “My dad would have loved that, because he was never shy to experiment with recording technology. … I think it’s beautiful.”
When a portion of John’s unencumbered vocal lifted out of the noisy cassette is played in the film, it gave me goosebumps. (As Ringo says, it’s like John is there.)
Then, we see footage of Paul adding a new bass line, Ringo adding drums and Paul says that Giles Martin, son of original Beatles producer Sir George Martin, wrote a string accompaniment “like his dad would have done in the old days.”
We see McCartney at the session at Capitol Records in Hollywood where strings were added to the track. He says they had to give the musicians the music to play, but they didn’t tell them it was for a Beatles song. “We pretended it was just something of mine.”
Paul then explains that they used some of the guitar George played during the 1995 sessions for track and says he decided to record a new slide guitar solo “played in George’s style” as a tribute to Harrison.
A portion of the finished “Now and Then” (which will have its premiere at 10 a.m. Nov. 2) then is played, and Sean notes: “It was incredibly powerful to hear them all working together after all the years that my dad has been gone.”
You can watch the mini-documentary on The Beatles’ YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/thebeatles), or on Disney+, where I watched it.
Me and Leslie about 10 years after we started Beatlefan.
Our magazine, Beatlefan, was born on a walk through my parents’ neighborhood on the night of Oct. 21, 1978.
Actually, the gestation period for the magazine had begun about five and a half years earlier, when I did a handful of mockups of a Beatles newsletter that I photocopied and sent to a friend. I’d done another one in 1976, during the Wings Over America tour.
My wife Leslie and I both were working journalists, and we’d talked about someday having a publication of our own, but we weren’t sure what it would be.
We were in my hometown of Athens, Ga., where we had attended a football game earlier that day in which my beloved Georgia Bulldogs had beaten Vanderbilt 31-10.
As we took a walk that fall evening 45 years ago, I shared with Leslie the idea that had crystalized in my mind as I’d made plans for dinner a few nights earlier at an Atlanta restaurant with Mark and Carol Lapidos. They were in town preparing to put on one of their Beatlefest conventions at the Peachtree Plaza, which at the time was the world’s tallest hotel.
I hit it off right away with Mark and Carol. (Photo courtesy Mark Lapidos)
I had hit it off right away with Mark and Carol when we’d had dinner. I liked that they combined devotion to The Beatles, ambition and a strong work ethic.
The impending Atlanta Beatlefest — combined with my disappointment at how irregular and unprofessional fanzines tended to be in those days — had revived my interest in doing some sort of Beatles publication. I envisioned it as professionally typeset and printed (as opposed to most fanzines, which were done on typewriters in those days) and full of current, reliable news.
(I was covering the popular music beat for The Atlanta Constitution, and constantly accumulated a lot of news that I thought Beatles fans would find interesting and useful.)
I shared my idea with Mark and Carol, and they were incredibly supportive.
Mark told me recently that he remembers “being impressed that you worked for the big Atlanta newspaper … and it was very obvious to me that you are a true fan. Sounded like a great combination of interests and work that would be just right for a fanzine.
“I clearly remember saying that I want to be the first subscriber.”
My coverage of the Atlanta Beatlefest in The Atlanta Constitution.
Mark also told me that he’d be happy to let us put flyers for the new magazine on his table at the Atlanta fest — and for that I’ve always credited him as the “godfather” of Beatlefan.
Mark said he’s honored to hold that distinction. “What you have done with your magazine in these past 45 years is simply groundbreaking and astonishing. You turned it into a family affair, just as we have done with our Fests.”
When I pitched the idea to Leslie on our walk a couple of nights after that dinner, she also immediately was on board. We saw this as a way we could scratch our entrepreneurial itch without having to leave our jobs and have our livelihood depend on our publication (as would have been the case with our original goal of owning a weekly newspaper).
Believing a magazine name immediately should indicate who its intended reader is — and inspired, no doubt, by Beatlefest — we dubbed the new magazine Beatlefan.
The flyer we put on Mark and Carol’s table at the Atlanta convention one week later declared it was “the fanzine Beatles fans have been waiting for!”
Judging by the incredibly kind notes we continue to receive from readers four and a half decades later, it appears it still is.
A poster for the 1978 Beatlefests.
We picked up some subscribers at that fest that we still have, and we also enlisted some early contributors, including the late Nicholas Schaffner, author of “The Beatles Forever” (one of my all-time favorite books about the band), and Wally Podrazik of “All Together Now” fame, who still writes for us.
For Leslie and me — as well as my brothers Jon and Tim, who joined us at the convention — that weekend at the Peachtree Plaza was like a kickoff rally for what was to come. While we only had flyers on Mark’s table in Atlanta, we’d end up having a table of our own to sell subscriptions at many Beatlefests through the years, starting with the first New York area fest of 1979, and I got to serve as a guest panelist at a few of the conventions, too. Mark even made me a special guest at the Chicago fest in 1998 to talk about Beatlefan’s 20th anniversary.
But, Atlanta was my first Beatlefest, which made it special. Also in attendance that weekend were some folks who in future years would become among my dearest friends, though I didn’t know them at the time.
As I mentioned earlier, I’d been passing along Beatles news of interest to readers of my column in the weekend combined edition of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ever since I’d started covering music two years earlier, and a week before the Atlanta Beatlefest, I provided several Beatles news updates.
Me at the original Beatlefan office that we occupied 1979-1985.
Among them: In mid-November, Capitol Records was planning to release a deluxe collection of 14 of the Fabs’ U.K. albums — up to then available in the U.S. only as imports — packaged in a royal blue box with gold foil trim. The set was limited to 3,000 numbered boxes. Also, George Harrison had put together a book called “I Me Mine,” featuring original manuscripts of many of his songs. Selling for $300, it also was a collector’s item. Those were the seeds of the Beatlenews Roundup in the very first issue of Beatlefan, which came out about two months later.
In addition to picking up valuable support (and advice) from the likes of Mark and Carol and Nick and Wally, the Atlanta Beatlefest also allowed us to get a feel for the state of mind of Beatles fandom, which helped us sharpen our editorial concept for Beatlefan.
And, we got to know some of the 35 or so dealers who were manning nearly 60 tables in the large room on the 7th floor of the hotel that served as the Beatles flea market. Quite a few of them became future advertisers in Beatlefan.
After reading a digital clipping of my original Atlanta Constitution coverage of the fest from 1978, Mark noted with amazement that “Butcher” covers sold for between $85 and $245 each that weekend! “Every fan there would have bought every copy in the marketplace had we known what their value would be today,” he said.
A program page from one of the 1980s Beatlefests at which I was a panelist.
Books, T-shirts, LPs, and all manner of Beatles-bedecked merchandise could be seen in the arms of those attending the fest, though some fans simply weren’t willing to pay the steep prices commanded by the rarer mementos.
A poster autographed by John Lennon went for $84 in an auction, but bids generally were lower in Atlanta than in other cities in which Beatlefests had been held, auctioneer Roger Berkley told me at the time. “It was a typical first-time-in-a-city crowd,” he said. “They didn’t really know what some of the things were, much less how much they were worth.”
One person in attendance who was surprised by the value of a Beatles collectible was a record store owner from Athens, who was shocked to see copies of the old Beatles Monthly magazines selling for three times what he had charged me for a nearly complete collection a few months earlier. When he groused at me about what a “bargain” I’d gotten, I just smiled.
While Mark and Carol had planned for a crowd of 2,000 at the Atlanta fest, it turned out to be quite a bit less than that. (Tickets were $7.50 for one day or $14 for both days.)
Remembered Mark: “We advertised quite a bit and got support from Atlanta radio stations, but I guess Atlanta wasn’t ready for us in 1978.”
(The city had had a few smallish comic book and sci-fi conventions at that point, but this was long before Dragon Con became a fan behemoth, and there really had been no local gatherings for music fans, so I’m not sure a lot of folks knew what to expect from Beatlefest.)
The first issue of Beatlefan came out just before Christmas, 1978.
Atlanta wasn’t the lowest-attended of his conventions, Mark said, with the 1985 Seattle convention drawing fewer people. Still, the Atlanta fest ranks among the “two lightest” in attendance in the nearly 50 years he and Carol have been staging conventions. (Their conventions now are known as The Fest for Beatles Fans.)
He pegged the Atlanta attendance at “more than a few hundred, but definitely less than 1,000.” However, he remembered, “the fans who did attend, had a great time.”
Indeed, what the Atlanta Beatlefest lacked in attendance, it more than made up for in enthusiasm.
You could see the sheer joy on the faces of both original fans and their younger counterparts as they watched 12 hours of Beatles films, roamed the Beatles flea market, listened to taped interviews, entered sound-alike and look-alike contests, participated in panel discussions with the guest authors, joined in sing-alongs of Beatles songs, viewed a museum room with an extensive scrapbook collection and gallery of Beatles art, and tested their knowledge of Beatles trivia.
They also enjoyed the music of The Beatles played live onstage in the 8th-floor ballroom by a band of four New Jersey brothers known as Abbey Rhode. The audience danced and cheered, and there even were a few 1964-style screams. Said one fan about the Beatles cover band: “They’re fantastic. If I close my eyes, I can’t tell the difference.”
It was a diverse crowd, with original fans and those too young to remember the British Invasion. “The split is usually about 50/50 older fans and younger fans,” Mark said that weekend, “though here in Atlanta it looks as if there might be slightly more of the younger fans.”
Me and Leslie at a party we threw in 2013 for Beatlefan’s 35th birthday.
One of those younger attendees was Martha Evans, a 16-year-old from Atlanta who had become a fan three years earlier after hearing her older sister’s Beatles recordings. She told me that she got interested in the group “because I liked the way they looked and sounded and … I can’t really explain it.”
I’ve attended various other fan conventions of different stripes through the years, including other Beatles gatherings and those for sci-fi and fantasy fans, and one thing I’ve noticed they have in common is the liberating effect of finding yourself in the middle of a large bunch of like-minded folks.
As one young man told me during that 1978 weekend in Atlanta, “Sometimes, you get strange looks from people when they find out you’re still a Beatlemaniac. But here, we all have the same illness. And we don’t give a damn who sees us dancing during ‘A Hard Day’s Night.’”
I think one of the original fans at the Atlanta fest, 27-year-old Debbie Long of Douglasville, summed it up nicely when she said she had come to the convention “because I just love them. I mean, awhole day of The Beatles — it’s great.”
I think maybe that also explains why people still want to read Beatlefan 45 years later.
We appreciate everyone’s support through the years, and a special 45th anniversary thank you goes out to Mark and Carol.
Bill King
Read Al Sussman’s interview with Bill and Leslie King about Beatlefan from the 35th anniversary, 10 years ago …
SOMETHING NEW 