Allan Williams & Rod Murray With Friends At Flat 3, Hillary Mansions, Gambier Terrace In Liverpool, England

I was looking through editions of my local newspaper for mentions of The Beatles and I thought this piece in the Bristol Evening Post was so interesting that I typed the whole thing out. I'm such a sucker for these early-ish interviews when they're all still so chatty and relatively excited by the fame and money.

Source: The Bristol Evening Post, 10 November 1964 (they played a concert in the city that day).

Transcript below the cut...

A distant volley of screams penetrated the quiet upstairs foyer of the theatre.  

“Oops, here we go,” said a middle-aged reporter.  “They’re here.  Can somebody tell me which one is which?”

The television men switched on their lights, the photographers squinted through their viewfinders and the journalists juggled with notebooks and pencils.

“I know one of them’s called Ringo,” said the middle aged reporter.  “Could somebody point him out?”

There was a clatter of feet on the stairs, and the Beatles appeared in single file through a doorway, grinning all over their faces, and made straight for the bar.

Everybody instantly forgot all their pungent, searching questions they had been thinking up for weeks, and started firing away with fairly idiotic queries like: “How do you feel?” and “What are you doing these days?”

The television people grabbed John and Paul, who happened to be in the front, and I grabbed George, who started telling me about his new airgun.

“I spend my spare time shooting potatoes off trees in the garden,” said George. “I started with bits of cardboard on the clothesline, but cardboard doesn’t do anything very spectacular when you hit it.  So now I balance spuds on the trees and blast them to bits.”

A television man sneaked up behind me and shoved a microphone in between me and George. George clinked his glass on it and shouted “Cheers” down the mike.

“What are you going to do when the Beatles finish?” asked the television man.

“I’m going to be an engine driver,” said George.  “If they won’t let me have a train, I’ll drive a fire engine.”

Ringo, meanwhile, had retired to a corner for a quiet smoke.

The middle-aged journalist was busy interviewing Paul, whom he thought was Ringo. 

 “Press conferences can be quite a laugh,” said Ringo.  “Have a ciggie.”

We lit our ciggies and talked about Ringo’s New Image.

“Since the film, people seem to notice me a bit more,” said Ringo.  “They used to talk to the others and leave me out because I was supposed to be the quiet one.  Actually I can be quite noisy.  I used to feel rather out of it, but I feel like a proper Beatle now.  It’s amazing though how many people still can’t tell us apart.  Reporters still ask me, “How are you, John?”

The Beatles’ road manager, Neil Aspinall, came over and led Ringo off to have his picture taken.  The Aspinall rescued Paul from a bunch of reporters and the Beatles wandered off to inspect the stage in the A.B.C. theatre.

On stage, Paul was doodling on an electronic organ, and Ringo was doing a violent drum duet with the drummer of one of their supporting groups.

Neil Aspinall had promised me half an hour in the Beatles’ dressing room - the pop equivalent of a pass to the Kremlin.

“I can’t disturb the others for a minute,” he said, “but John’s upstairs.  You can start with him.”

John was chatting with two old school friends from Liverpool.  In the corner of the dressing room a TV set was showing a children’s programme with the sound turned off.

John jumped up, shook hands, and insisted on me taking his armchair. “You look as if you need it, Rog,” he said.

We talked about the allegations that the Beatles are slipping.

“Last year,” said John. “Beatlemania was news. Now No Beatlemania is news. The press have gone to town on the places where there have only been a couple of hundred kids outside of theatres instead of a couple of thousand.  They haven’t bothered to report things like Leeds, where there were 15 of the kids on the stage at one point.”

“Last year that would have been news.  It doesn’t bother us.  We’re sold out pretty well everywhere.  Can you think of another group that is filling halls at the moment? The Stones aren’t.  Maybe we should have done this tour earlier.  We all wanted to do England again before America this year. But Brian said no. And what Eppy says goes. He literally plans our careers.”

“I think we’re better organised now, anyway.  The police are marvellous.  They get us stowed away in the theatres before the kids come out of school, so obviously there aren’t so many riotous scenes.”

The idea of the Beatles breaking up still seems unthinkable. But I asked John if they ever considered adding any extra musicians.

“We’ve thought about it — yes,” said John. “We were once a five-strong group, before Stuart Sutcliffe died.  We’ve toyed with the idea of adding a piano or organ in the past. And for our last disc, we did think of bringing in an orchestra.  But we always rejected the idea in the end.  You see, for the kind of music we play, any more musicians would be superfluous.  I suppose we might have a couple of guest people on the odd occasion, but they wouldn’t be real Beatles.  I’d turn round at the end and say: “Ta very much to Arthur on the organ and Harry on the flute” and that would be that.  I just don’t think anyone else could fit in with us now. We’re a sort of closed shop, the four of us.  An outsider just wouldn’t be accepted, if you see what I mean.”

Before the Beatles’ Christmas show in London and the shooting of their next film — “which is going to be a bit madder than the last one” said John — they are taking a fortnight’s break.

“I’ll just stay home with the wife, Cynthia, and play records,” said John.

Home is his £20,000 Surrey country house, purchased in July as a retreat from the fans.

“Cyn and I are living on the second floor with the cooks and people,” said John. “The rest of the place is like a battlefield.  It’s swarming with electricians and plumbers and odd job men, all trying to get it straight for us before Christmas. I keep on bumping into these strange blokes on the stairs.  I haven’t a clue who they are, but Cyn seems to have them organised.  I’m not sticking my nose into that side of things, except to say vaguely how I want the house to look. Can’t even put a plug on myself.”

“The gardens? Well, there are an awful lot of them, I’ve seen a bloke sort of digging around the place. He smiles and waves, and I smile and wave back. I suppose he must be the gardener. His name is probably Fred.”

John said occasionally Beatle fans manage to find the house.

“They’re usually so exhausted by that time that they haven’t got the strength to actually battle their way in and pull my hair.  Though, the other morning when I was asleep, Cyn found some of them crawling up the stairs.”

Paul and George came in.  Paul sat on the windowsill and George read out an interview with P.J. Proby in a pop paper, in which Proby claimed to have been the first to introduce a certain sound to pop.

“He’s fantastic, isn’t he?” said Paul. “He really believes he’s the greatest. We must tell him some time.”

I asked Paul if he could think of anything which the Beatles hadn’t already been asked.

“There isn’t anything,” said Paul. “But we don’t mind answering the same questions all over again. We like talking to people.”

He enthused about his new Aston Martin. “I did 120 up the M1 and died of fright.”

And he talked about the Beatles futures.

“Whatever happens, I think John and I will carry on writing songs. And I think George, Ringo and I will all get married eventually. But not yet. We haven’t got time.”

Ringo came in with a musical paper carrying a feature article about Paul.

“Don’t like the picture,” said Paul. “They had a much better one of John last week.”

“It made me look like a fat idiot,” said John.

“Exactly,” said George.

A picture of the Beatles suddenly flashed on to the television screen.  

“Quick, turn up the sound, Rog,” said John.

“Don’t bother,” said George. “It’s only that ugly old Beatle lot. I thought they were all dead.”

THE BEATLES at a hotel in Weston Super Mare, Somerset, by Bruce Leak, an 11 year old boy who was on a family holiday with his parents and sister. 1963.

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Paul Mescal

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Bowery Ballroom

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New Paul album?!

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THE PAUL MCCARTNEY DRAG BALL! Listen HERE

Charley Foxx, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder at the Scotch of St James club, 1966.

“When on tour I have to write essays about the places I visit. In the essay I’ll be writing when I get back I’ll certainly include my meeting with Paul McCartney. I met him in the Scotch Of St James club. He’s a really swinging guy, the only Beatle I’ve met.”

15-year-old Stevie Wonder, NME, 18 February, 1966

“None of the Beatles was on hand for Stevie’s show at the Cavern, but Paul McCartney came to a show we did in London. After the final set, Stevie, Paul, Clarence [Paul, Stevie’s producer] and I sat around acting like a proverbial mutual admiration society - Paul going on and on about how the Beatles loved rhythm and blues and how they all admired Stevie’s music and the Motown sound; the rest of us quizzing him about the “Fab Four”. it was the only time in all my years of working alongside the greatest singers and musicians in the world that I ever asked for an autograph, which earned me major points with my sisters Joan and Diane.”

Ted Hull (Stevie’s tutor), The Wonder Years: my life and times with Stevie Wonder, 2000

Braille message for Stevie (“We love you baby”) on the cover of Wings’ 1973 album Red Rose Speedway.

On the first night of recording, who should turn up at the studio door but Paul and Linda. It was the first time since the Beatles had broken up that John and Paul had been in the same room…They play. With Paul on drums, in the absence of Ringo and Keith Moon that night, and John picking up his guitar, soon to be joined by Stevie Wonder, they went into a jam of ‘Midnight Special’.

Ray Connolly, Being John Lennon A Restless Life

“I’ve always been an admirer from the early days when we first heard him as ‘Little’ Stevie Wonder with ‘Fingertips’. Then I met him on and off [for a few years] and went to his shows. Eventually, I asked him if we could record together ‘Ebony and Ivory’. I spent some time with him in Montserrat to make that record... He’s such a musical monster. You sit down with him at the piano immediately he’s off. I know some of his old stories so I can joke with him and take the mickey. He was originally ‘Steveland Morris’ and he was in a little blind school in Detroit. He was just one of the blind kids who happened to be musically gifted. He went to Motown to make ‘Fingertips’ and then he was famous. He came back as ‘Little Stevie Wonder’. So he once told me all the blind kids in the school used to call him [adopts mocking tone] ‘Wundurr’. They didn’t like him and were jealous of him. So now when I see him and if we pass in the corridor I say ‘Wundurr’ and he immediately knows it’s Paul.”

Paul McCartney, GQ Magazine, November 2012

Stevie and Paul in Montserrat, working on Tug of War, 1981.

“But, you know, he’s such a fantastic person to work with that you just go along with it. He’s worth it! He may not always show up when he says he will. Maybe he has got to finish this other album he’s doing, whatever. You just have to make a lot of allowances. He’s such a great musician. It’s all fine, in the end. When he eventually got there and started working, it was perfect. I thought, ‘Oh God, everything he does is perfect.’ I’m talking about even handclaps here… you know, just handclaps. I remember being just a little bit out on the handclaps. We were round a mic clapping, and he just went, ‘Hey Paul, stop! Hey man, you’re not in the pocket!’ And I’m going, ‘Okay, alright, I’m not in the pocket! Let’s get it in the pocket.’ On the Beatles records we weren’t that precise with handclaps! ‘In the pocket’ means being exactly on the beat. So Stevie is saying, ‘You’re not in the pocket, man!’ and I’m going, ‘Oh shit! Okay, let’s get it right!’ So we just worked at it until we got it. He’s very much the perfectionist.”

Paul McCartney, Tug of War Archive Collection, 2015

“Stevie came along to the studio in LA and he listened to the track for about ten minutes and he totally got it. He just went to the mic and within 20 minutes had nailed this dynamite solo. When you listen you just think, ‘How do you come up with that?’ But it’s just because he is a genius, that’s why.”

Paul on recording Only Our Hearts with Stevie in 2011.

Paul and Stevie during mixing for Kisses on the Bottom, 15 November 2011 source

My latest Songs Tinhat theory is that Paul recorded "Kreen-Akrore" as a response to "Cold Turkey".

"If *YOU* can make weird sex noises on a record under cover of being about something else, then *I* can make weird sex noises on a record under cover of being about something else!"

The Beatles rehearse for the BBC radio show Teenager's Turn (Here We Go) in Manchester, England | 11 June 1962 © Mike McCartney

Social conditioning is so strong that many people here seem so honored that a white man cared enough to steal their ideas. Instead of, you know, wondering why they don't have the opportunity of publishing such material themselves.