From Wikipedia:

The Beatles recorded 25 takes of “Hey Jude” at Abbey Road Studios in two nights, 29 and 30 July 1968. These were mostly rehearsals, however, as they planned to record the master track at Trident Studios to utilize their eight-track recording machine (Abbey Road was still limited to four-tracks). One take from 29 July is available on the Anthology 3 CD. The master rhythm track was recorded on 31 July at Trident. Four takes were recorded; take one was selected. The song was completed on 1 August with additional overdubs including a 36-piece orchestra for the song’s long coda, scored by George Martin. The orchestra consisted of ten violins, three violas, three cellos, two flutes, one contra bassoon, one bassoon, two clarinets, one contra bass clarinet, four trumpets, four trombones, two horns, percussion, and two string basses. While adding backing vocals, the Beatles asked the orchestra members if they would clap their hands and sing along to the refrain in the song’s coda. Most complied (for a double fee), but one declined, reportedly saying, “I’m not going to clap my hands and sing Paul McCartney’s bloody song!”

Ringo Starr almost missed his drum cue. He left for a toilet break—unnoticed by the other Beatles—and the band started recording. In 1994, McCartney said, “Ringo walked out to go to the toilet and I hadn’t noticed. The toilet was only a few yards from his drum booth, but he’d gone past my back and I still thought he was in his drum booth. I started what was the actual take, and ‘Hey Jude’ goes on for hours before the drums come in and while I was doing it I suddenly felt Ringo tiptoeing past my back rather quickly, trying to get to his drums. And just as he got to his drums, boom boom boom, his timing was absolutely impeccable.”

I like the bit about two minutes in when George Harrison is rambling on and on about something and he finally asks George Martin “You know what I mean?” but it’s obvious that even though Martin nods his head in the affirmative, that he was no idea what Harrison meant.

Imagine if there was this sort of documentation of all of their recording sessions, eh?
 

 
The famous “Hey Jude” live promo film directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg as it aired on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
 

’Blood on the Tracks’ - Robert A. Zimmerman

Fast-paced 1958 thriller: a jilted train driver hi-jacks his New York subway train to exact revenge upon his love rival, only to threaten the life of his ex-lover. The last 30 pages are missing. Don’t know if she survives.

 
Christophe Gowans is a Graphic Designer and Art Director, who once designed for the music industry (with Peter Saville Associates, Assorted Images, amongst others) and has since produced some stunning work for Blitz, Esquire, Modern Painters, Stella and The Sunday Telegraph.

Christophe is also the talent of a series of fun, collectible and original art works that re-imagine classic albums as book covers.

These fabulous Record Books are on display at his site and are also available to buy at The Rockpot.
 

’Abbey Road’ - The Beatles

Classic paperback. The story of two catholic sisters growing up in a swiftly changing post-war Britain. Guess what? It doesn’t end well.

 

’The Dark Side of the Moon’ - Pink Floyd

Alternative scientific textbook from the 60s. Californian professor Floyd achieved enormous success with this study of the moon’s influence on the menstrual cycle. Indeed, he was able to found his own college, specialising in the study of women’s fertility. The college no longer exists. It was shut down in 1972, having been razed to the ground by a mob of angry husbands.

 
More of Christophe’s ‘Record Books’, after the jump…
 

 
Extended 1968 interview with John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The pair discuss touring (and why The Beatles stopped), their time in India, McCartney’s LSD media flap, and the then-new Apple Corps and what the group were trying to achieve with the company.

There’s a question referring to Enoch Powell’s then recent anti-immigrant “Rivers of Blood” speech (not mentioned by name here, but this is what he’s talking about) that sees the interviewer go on to ask them about racial politics in England and the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King in America.

I dig Paul’s coat.
 

 
What exactly glamor-modeling has to do with revolutionary consciousness isn’t explained - other than making it fashionably chic to the bourgeoisie. Which is ironic, for it was the perceived, pernicious influence of the bourgeoisie (and its revisionist view of capitalism) that led Chairman Mao to instigate his Cultural Revolution in May 1966. While the ad men, magazine stylists and Beatles co-opted Mao’s revolutionary sentiments, the reality for millions of Chinese was a brutal and murderous oppression.
 

A Beginner’s Guide to Mao Tse-tung

The little red book which contains hightlights from The thought of Mao Tse-tung is the most influential volume in the world today. It is also extremely dull and entirely unmemorable. To resolve this paradox, we, a handful of editors in authority who follow the capitalist road, thought useful to illustrate certain key passages in such a way that they are more likely to stick in the mind. The visual aid is Sharon Tate and, to give credit where credit, God knows, is due, she will soon be seen in the Twentieth Century-Fox motion picture, Valley of the Dolls.

‘6.
‘Whoever wants to know a thing has no way of doing so except coming into contact with it, that is, by living (practicing) in its environment

...If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear by eating it yourself.’
“On Practice” (July, 1937)

 
More retro revolutionary chic, after the jump…
 
Via WFMU
 

 
Although no longer an epidemic, Beatlemania, like TB, still exists; I should know, I’ve been struggling with a dose for a couple of weeks now. I’m not doing much screaming, but I am unable to listen to, read about, or even think on anything that isn’t somehow Beatle-related. (My missus has had it up to here with the goddamn Fab Four.)

The following seemingly homemade mini-documentary, on the development of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” is one of my favorite finds so far, nicely edited to give a real and rare sense of the genesis of a great work of art, from a tantalizing burst of John backstage fooling about on a melodium in 1964, through countless delicious demos and jams, to the orchestral version which, slowed down and cleverly sewn into the final mix, would help give the finished song its thrillingly queasy texture. It finishes with the famous Knole Park video. If you love the song, this is well worth twenty-six minutes of your life.

(And for the record, John, down here we’ve long since decided your tree was rather high.)

 
I know, I know, the clichéd mashup… However, this one is kinda fun.

Music and video by Soundhog.
 

 
Via Nerdcore

 
The first single I bought was “Snow Coach” by Russ Conway. It was at a school jumble sale, St. Cuthbert’s Primary, sometime in the late 1960s. I bought it because I loved winter, and Christmas, and the idea of traveling through some snow-covered landscape to the sound of jingling sleigh bells . I also knew my great Aunt liked Russ Conway, so if I didn’t like it….

I bought it together with a dog-eared copy of a Man from U.N.C.L.E. paperback (No. 3 “The Copenhagen Affair”). These were the very first things I had chosen and bought for myself, with a tanner (6d) and thrupenny bit (3d). I played the single from-time-to-time on my parents’ Dansette Record Player - its blue and white case and its BSR autochanger, which allowed you to play up to 7 singles one-after-another. My brother had a selection of The Beatles, The Stones, The Kinks, The Who, Elvis and The Move, which he played alternating one A-side with one B-side like some junior DJ. It meant I didn’t have to buy singles, as my brother bought most of the things I wanted to hear, so I could spend my pennies on books and comics and sherbert dib-dabs. It was a musical education, and though Conway was a start, the first 45rpm single I really went out and bought was John Barry’s The Theme from ‘The Persuaders’, which I played till it crackled like pan frying oil.

As this documentary shows 45rpm singles were an important part to growing up: everyone can recall buying their first single - what it looked like, its label, its cover, the signature on the inner groove - and the specific feelings these records aroused. With interviews from Norman Cook, Suzi Quatro, Holly Johnson, Noddy Holder, Richie Hawley, Paul Morley, Jimmy Webb, Jack White, Neil Sedaka, Trevor Horn, Miranda Sawyer, Brian Wilson, The Joy of the Single is a perfect piece of retro-vision, that captures the magic, pleasure and sheer bloody delight of growing-up to the sound of 45s.
 

 
In January 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono told Howard Smith, a Village Voice columnist and radio personality on WPLJ FM, what they thought about the Beatles break-up and if they would ever get back together again.
 

 
Via The World’s Best Ever

 
The joyful hedonism of the 1960s was in part a response to the trauma to the Second World War. The same way the twenties swung after the first great conflagration. And like that decade, it was primarily the white, upwardly mobile, metropolitan, middle class that enjoyed the sex, the drugs and the rock ‘n’ roll.

London may have been swinging in 1967, but for the rest of the country not a lot changed. It would take until the 1970s for most of the country to get a hint of what London experienced. The most important changes, apart from pop music and American TV shows, were the legalization abortion and de-criminalization of homosexual acts between consenting adults - both of which set the scene for bigger and more radical changes in the 1970s.

Yet, as so many of the media are Baby Boomers, the love of all things sixties ensures TV fills its schedules with documentaries on that legendary decade. 1967: The Summer of Love is better than most, as it covers the cultural, social, and political changes that the decade brought. With contributions form Germaine Greer, Donovan, Nigel Havers, Bill Wyman, John Birt and Mary Quant, together with some excellent color archive, this documentary is a cut-above the usual retro-vision.
 

 
A young Mick Jagger and Keith Richards relax playing “I’ve Just Seen A Face” and “Eight Days a Week,” as an unamused Charlie Watts looks on. From the upcoming expanded version of Charlie is my Darling, Peter Whitehead’s seldom-seen film documenting the Stones’ 1965 trek across Ireland:

ABKCO Films presents a meticulously restored and fully-realized version of this first-ever, legendary, but never released film. Shot during a quick tour of Ireland just weeks after (I Can t Get No) Satisfaction hit # 1 on the charts, The Rolling Stones Charlie is my Darling - Ireland 1965 is an intimate, behind-the-scenes diary of life on the road with the young Stones. It features the first professionally filmed concert performances of the band and documents the early frenzy of their fans and the riots the band s appearances inspired. The band is shown traveling through the Irish countryside by train; dashing from cabs to cramped, basement dressing rooms through screaming hordes of fans. Motel rooms host impromptu songwriting sessions and familiar classics are heard in their infancy as riff and lyric are united. Charlie is my Darling is the invaluable frame that captures the spark about to combust into The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World.

 
Thank you, you know who you are!

 
Pablo Fanque, today best known for being mentioned in The Beatles song “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” on the Sgt. Pepper’s album was the first black circus proprietor in Britain.  For over three decades, his circus, in which he himself was a featured performer, was the most popular n Victorian-era Britain. Circus historian George Speight wrote that Fanque’s big stunt was leaping on horseback over a coach “placed lengthways with a pair of horses in the shafts, and through a military drum at the same time.”

From the Smithsonian website:

While true Beatlemaniacs will know that Mr. Kite and his companions were real performers in a real troupe, however, few will realize that they were associates of what was probably the most successful, and almost certainly the most beloved, “fair” to tour Britain in the mid-Victorian period. And almost none will know that Pablo Fanque–the man who owned the circus—was more than simply an exceptional showman and perhaps the finest horsemen of his day. He was also a black man making his way in an almost uniformly white society, and doing it so successfully that he played to mostly capacity houses for the best part of 30 years.

The song that lent Fanque his posthumous fame had its origins in a promotional film shot for “Strawberry Fields Forever”—another Lennon track—at Sevenoaks in Kent in January 1967. During a break in the filming, the Beatle wandered into a nearby antique shop, where his attention was caught by a gaudy Victorian playbill advertising a performance of Pablo Fanque’s Circus Royal in the northern factory town of Rochdale in February 1843. One by one, in the gorgeously prolix style of the time, the poster ran through the wonders that would be on display, among them “Mr. Henderson, the celebrated somerset thrower, wire dancer, vaulter, rider &c.” and Zanthus, “well known to be one of the best Broke Horses in the world!!!”—not to mention Mr. Kite himself, pictured balancing on his head atop a pole while playing the trumpet.

Something about the poster caught Lennon’s fancy; knowing his dry sense of humor, it was probably the bill’s breathless assertion that this show of shows would be “positively the last night but three!” of the circus’s engagement in the town. Anyway, he bought it, took it home and (the musicologist Ian MacDonald notes) hung it in his music room, where “playing his piano, [he] sang phrases from it until he had a song.” The upshot was a track unlike any other in the Beatles’ canon—though it’s fair to say that the finished article owes just as much to the group’s producer, George Martin, who responded heroically to Lennon’s demand for “a ‘fairground’ production wherein one could smell the sawdust.” (Adds MacDonald, wryly: “While not in the narrowest sense a musical specification, [this] was, by Lennon’s standards, a clear and reasonable request. He once asked Martin to make one of his songs sound like an orange.”) The Abbey Road production team used a harmonium and wobbly tapes of vintage Victorian calliopes to create the song’s famously kaleidoscopic wash of sound.

Guaranteed to raise a smile, the 1843 letterpress-printed circus poster from 1843 that John Lennon owned has been recreated using antique wooden and metal type and wood engravings.

Each print is hand-pulled on a Victorian press and individually numbered in a limited edition of 1,967 via the artist behind the project, Peter Dean, who writes:

As a lifelong Beatles fan I found myself simply wanting to hang a copy of this poster on my wall. As a designer, however, I couldn’t accept the many poor imitations I found – all of which use jarringly incorrect fonts (like Futura and Helvetica) and low-quality copies-of-copies of the illustrations.

So I set about doing it properly. What I thought might be a few weeks of work became several months, where sometimes the prospect of one day owning this poster seemed far away. But we got there in the end and I’m truly delighted with the end result.

I can see why he’s so happy, this looks amazing.

It’s worth pointing out that “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” was one of three songs on the Sgt. Pepper’s album to be banned by BBC radio. The lyrics referring to “Henry the horse” were thought to be slang for heroin. Clearly this was not the case. Imagine writing and creating such an amazing piece of childlike music only to find some small minds ready to ban it.

Filmmakers Nick Esdaile and Joe Fellows made a great short film about how it all came together. You can win a copy of the limited edition “Mr. Kite” print yourself by signing up for the Kite newsletter.
 

 
Via Kottke

 
The inimitable Bernard Falk’s quirky tale of a lost Beatles’ tape, and the men who hoped to make some money from its discovery.

The tape was recorded by Beat musician Teddy Taylor in Hamburg, on Christmas Eve, 1962. Taylor was the lead singer with Kingsize Taylor and The Dominoes, one of the dozens of Merseyside bands formed in the late 1950s, that hoped to match The Beatles’ 60’s success. Kingsize sold one million records on the continent, but had lacked any success back home. This sadly led to the band splitting-up in 1964. Taylor went onto the ordinary life as a butcher in Southport, where Falk interviewed him about the mysterious discovery of a “lost Beatles’ tape”.

Falk died in 1990, and is sadly now remembered for his hosting the ill-conceived late-night, interview series, Sin on Saturday, which was famously pulled after only 3 episodes. Clips from Sin on Saturday regularly make top 10 worst program lists, mainly for the legendary appearance of a drunk Oliver Reed, which is a shame, as Falk was a talented journalist, who made quirky, intelligent, entertaining and memorable TV reports. A hint of Falk’s skill can be seen here, when he catches up with likely lads, Teddy Taylor and The Beatles first manager Allan Williams - who famously gave the band away to Brian Epstein. Both are memorable characters and the footage of seventies disco dancing is fabulous.

First broadcast on BBC’s Nationwide, September 17th, 1973.
 

 
With thanks to Nellym
 

 
British food sculptor Paul Baker has recreated The Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover using the main ingredients of an English breakfast with garnishes - beans, mushrooms, bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, toast and fruit.

Note that he used mushrooms to create Paul McCartney out of respect for McCartney’s vegetarianism.

Via The Daily Swarm

 
Multi-award-winning author and graphic artist, Hervé Bourhis has produced a beautiful illustrated history of the world’s most famous pop group, The Beatles Graphic.

The Beatles’ story maybe as well known as certain Biblical tales, but Bourhis’ approach has made the whole saga - from their births, through early years and successful careers, to the untimely deaths of Lennon and Harrison, and up to present day lives and careers of McCartney and Starr - fresh and compelling. Bourhis has written the text, reviewed all of the discs, and drawn the fabulous illustrations to this delightful, fascinating and heartfelt biography.

Already available in the UK, The Beatles Graphic will be released in the US on November 1st. It’s a must for Beatles’s fans and for anyone interested in the history of modern music.

The Beatles Graphic available form the Omnibus Press.
 

 

 
Bonus pix plus video of French language video of Hervé Bourhis, after the jump…
 

In 1964, future Crass drummer Penny Rimbaud, then known by his given name of Jeremy Rattner, appeared on the Ready Steady Go! music program to receive an award from Beatle John Lennon. He’d won a contest for producing artwork inspired by “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”

The prizes were copies of the LPs Mingus by Charlie Mingus and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto. This anecdote appears in Rimbaud’s autobiography, Shibboleth: My Revolting Life.
 

 
Thank you to Brad Laner for calling this delightfully weird pop culture connection to our attention.