Fans van Paul McCartney bij een eerder concert in GuadalajaraAFP

Toegevoegd: woensdag 9 mei 2012, 02:34

by Jasper Rees 

One day soon Beatles scholars and Professors of Fabology will emerge from their caverns and their ashrams to inform us that it was 50 years ago today. On 5 October 1962 “Love Me Do” was released and, to recycle a phrase often appended to lesser earthquakes, the world would never be the same again. There will be celebrations, doubtless, across the universe. Tribute bands will perform bootleg gigs in the likes of, probably, Indonesia and the Baltic, all booted and suited and moptopped up and harmonising like the Everlys etc etc. American Fab Fourists will, in the slightly imperialistic way that the people from the land of The Ed Sullivan Showadopt re the Beatles, gently weep as they plant fields of strawberries in Penny Lanes up and down the landmass. It is expected that large parts of Japan will come to some sort of catatonic standstill.

And what about the UK? Well, there is something happening, at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London as it happens, where back in the day John Lennon at the Royal Variety Performance once encouraged those not in the cheap seats to rattle their jewellery. A show called Let It Be will embark on a West End residency. It will feature four musicians playing an array of tunes from The Holy Songbook, while on a backdrop added bits of archive film and what have you will trowel on the Sixties atmos. From the Cavern Club to the roof of Abbey Road, the story of the Beatles and their comet-like flight across a decade will be played out in song, very very accurately.

Let It Be will be the British incarnation of a show called Rain that has been performed in various incarnations in America for years. Rain recently made it to the heart of the American theatreland with a run on Broadway. The renamed Let It Be is the first instance in 40 years that the so-called grand rights have been given to a British production to perform Beatles songs in a theatrical context.

The Ringo doesn’t need to be the best drummer in the Beatles

The thing is they need people to play the Beatles. The trawl for talent has already happened in Liverpool, but open auditions are also taking place this Tuesday in London. The producers are primarily hunting for people who can sound like the Beatles. Looking like them is secondary. Applicants need only turn up, it would seem, if they can knock out decent facsimiles of, say, “Norwegian Wood” or “Blackbird” or “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except For Me and My Monkey”. (OK maybe the last one’s not on the track list.)

So the question of whether you lean towards John or Paul becomes more than just a litmus test of edginess vs cuddliness. McCartney wannabes will need to be able to play acoustic guitar, bass guitar – preferably though not necessarily left-handed – and a bit of “Lady Madonna” or Hey Jude” on keys. Aspiring Lennonswill at some point have to bone up on their harmonica skills. The performer playing George Harrison needs to know his way round the guitar solos, even the one played by Eric Clapton on the record. And the Ringo doesn’t have to be the best drummer in the Beatles, but he does need to be able to do the fills in “Come Together” and sing in tune without a little help from his friends. Only once these things have been found will things like doe eyes, small round glasses, left-handedness and size of proboscis come into play.

The producers are in fact looking for a Fab Eight, as the show will be performed eight days a week, deemed too heavy a workload for four musicians in terms of quality control. So, are you a John or a Paul? Or actually a George or even a Ringo?

As I spoke over the telephone toLouise Harrison at her home in Florida, I found myself closing my eyes and doing what I do with everyone I interview – trying to imagine what it’s like being them.

Although she’s been in this country for almost 50 years, I could hear vestiges of a still strong British accent from her youth. Her voice was warm and friendly, her age (80, she told me) belied by her use of the word “gig.”

Harrison was scheduled to be in Northampton this week with a band she put together to raise money for music education. Music, she insisted, stimulates various parts of the brain and improves proficiency in math and other subjects. Plus, it’s fun.

In Liverpool, where she grew up, Louise and her three brothers all got some music training in school, although George, her baby brother, had to pick up the guitar on his own. George died in 2001, and Louise undertook her cross-country mission largely because he was also a big proponent of music education. Half a century ago, George was in a rock-and-roll band. They would practice sometimes in one of the bedrooms at his mum’s house. Although the working class was struggling mightily in those post-World War II years, the Harrisons didn’t hound George to get a “real” job.

“They were great in encouraging us kids to do whatever we wanted to do in life,” Louise said.

George’s band ended up doing quite well. They had some hits in England and were looking to make inroads in the larger American market. By that time, Louise, 11 years George’s elder, had married and moved to the U.S. Her mum sent her some singles by the band and, like a good sister, she made the rounds of the local radio stations. The DJs weren’t very receptive.

“It was very difficult to get you stuff played on a radio station,” Louise said.

Louise wrote letters to the band’s manager, Brian Epstein, and its producer, George Martin, trying to avail them of what she had learned about the U.S. and its culture.

“I told Brian to get on something with clout,” she said, “something like ‘The Ed Sullivan Show.’”

Fortunately, they got that exact gig. When George and his mates, who called themselves the Beatles, flew to America, Louise went to New York to meet them and stayed in their hotel. She found her little brother a bit under the weather.

“George had a bad fever,” she said. “They roped me into looking after him.”

Louise nursed her brother until he was well enough to play with the band for Ed Sullivan. Just about every American with a pulse, including my 11-year-old self, watched that show. The rest of the story, quite literally, is history.

For a decade, the Beatles were arguably the most famous people in the world. Their celebrity was so overwhelming that the rest of us can’t really comprehend it. The four lads from Liverpool weren’t merely pretty faces; they were in people’s heads.

Strangers dreamed about them, made them characters in their own imaginary scenarios. The closest I can come to figuring out what it must have been like for them is having to constantly stare at the sun.

“Initially, they were jolly, happy-go-lucky lads,” Louise said. “The intensity became hard to cope with as individuals.”

Against all odds, the four of them made a go at having “normal” lives – relationships, families. Privacy was almost too much to hope for, however.

George got married and had a son, but had to surround his house in England with a security system after some nut job shot and killed his band mate, John Lennon, essentially because John was in his head. Nonetheless, in 1999, a deranged man managed to break into George’s house and stab him several times in the chest. Unlike John, he survived.

I asked Louise how she navigated the celebrity, how she kept her brother real amid all the hype and hoopla. Although she was often asked what George was like as a child, she said, she would never talk about it. If his adult life was in the public domain, she figured, at least his childhood would remain his own.

Recently, however, she’s decided to write a book about the early years, if only to dispel the crazy myths about the Beatles.

The Harrisons, like some of the other Beatles families, worked hard behind the scenes for the band, answering fan letters and trying to give back the love that was showered on the four lads from Liverpool.

“It’s a role we have to play in life,” said Louise. “We’re ambassadors for the Beatles.”

I didn’t ask about the “real” George, but Louise did offer this one bit about him being “the quiet Beatle.”

“I can tell you this,” she said with a laugh, “he wasn’t quiet.”

In 2001, George died after a bout with lung cancer. One of his last acts was to summon his big sister Louise to his side. It’s difficult enough losing a brother, I suggested, without having the whole world peeking through the window. George’s acceptance of death, Louise said, made it easy.

“George had gotten to the point in his spiritual quest where he was ready to be done with all the nonsense that goes on in this planet,” she said.

When George Harrison died, Bob Dylan said he had the strength of a hundred men.

“He was like the sun, the flowers and the moon,” Dylan said, “and we will miss him enormously.”

Louise Harrison misses him, of course. He was her baby brother.

 

Posh: Victoria Hamilton as Sandra in Love Love Love by Mike Bartlett at the Royal Court theatre

 

Class act: Ben Miles as the lazy and intellectual Kenneth

(openPR) – The Quarrymen, the band from which the Beatles evolved, have released their “Grey Album”. It can be purchased (as mp3) from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk (England), Amazon.de (Germany), Amazon.jp (Japan) and iTunes.
On the Grey Album the original Quarrymen (Len Garry, Rod Davis, Colin Hanton, John Lowe) are playing, singing and talking. As a special addition it includes Beatles-related quests like May Pang (“Lost Weekend”). Pang was, of course, featured on John Lennon´s song, “No. 9 Dream.” He also wrote “Surprise, Surprise” about her.
“Which question should never be answered?” says Rod Davis as the track “No. 6 / Chachi-Chachi”) opens. “Number 6,” May Pang answers. 

The song was first played on the air by Chachi Loprete on his “Breakfast With the Beatles” show on WZLX in Boston.
Another song of the album is “Bring out the magic”, featuring Charles Glenn, bass-guitarist of Little Richard´s band. 
The Quarrymen, originally a group of British teens who played both skiffle and rock n’ roll, had John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison among its members. The group, with Hanton, Lowe, Lennon, McCartney and Harrison, made its first recording, “That’ll Be the Day”/”In Spite of All the Danger,” in 1958.

The GARRELT DANKER MEDIENPRODUKTION was founded in 1996 from a previous company called Rotraud Danker Schallplattenverlag along with which the record label called Generate Records also belongs to the company (both established in 1987). Garrelt Danker is the owner and managin director. Soltau / Germany is the company base.

The Garrelt Danker Medienproduktion do business in music and film production (entertainment and advertising), management, publishing and distribution.

Garrelt Danker
Managin Director
Garrelt Danker Medienproduktion
Gewerbegebiet Almhöhe
Am Kahlberg 1
29614 Soltau

Along with the multi-touch book, the DVD of the documentary also comes out on Tuesday.

Scorsese’s three-and-a-half hour film on Harrison shows his spiritual side, from his early days with the Beatles to his exploration of Eastern music and religion, and also includes his death in 2001. In a telephone interview from London, Olivia Harrison, who served as one of the film’s producers, said she loved the message of the film, but felt it didn’t cover her husband’s other “sides.”