Tag Archives: Twickenham

October 7, 2026 · 9:09 am

Jan. 14: Two Junkies

John Lennon and Yoko Ono gave a lot of interviews in 1969, the year of Bagism and Bed-Ins. The 30 minutes they spent with a Canadian TV network on January 14, 1969 — what has long been known as the “Two Junkies” interview — was otherwise completely unremarkable save three things.

First, the interview was conducted in the midst of the Get Back sessions and on set at Twickenham Film Studios. Hugh Curry, who conducted the interview for a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) television program, probably wasn’t aware George Harrison had quit the group and certainly couldn’t have anticipated it was the last real day of the sessions at Twickenham.

Second, and maybe less of a surprise, John was coming down from a heroin high. “I just was up late, you know,” he said later that day as recorded on the Nagra tapes. “I was sort of stoned and high and watching films.”

His condition alone may not have been remarkable, but halfway through the interview John fled to throw up.

Finally, and we’ll get to this at the end, the provenance of how the full interview survived is an incredible story unto itself, rich with Beatles-adjacent characters in a massive pile-on of coincidences.

In the context of the Nagra tapes and Get Back docuseries, the Two Junkies interview lives in negative space. It’s not on the dozens of hours of tapes, and the interview isn’t seen in Get Back (Peter Jackson told me during our 2021 appearance on Something About the Beatles that he decided not to pursue the rights to the clip to include in Get Back after some consideration). Like so many things Beatle-related do – or did for a long time – it survives as a bootleg.

Curry finalized the timing of the interview (after 10 a.m. this Tuesday) just a few days earlier, on January 10, after George walked out on the sessions. It was originally pitched as a discussion primarily with Yoko.

“If there’s a moment while she’s doing it, I’ll wander into it,” John generously replied to the suggestion he could participate in the interview. “You just set a time to do her, and if I’m not doing anything, I’ll come in on it.”

Speaking decades later in an interview that surfaced on YouTube in 2015 but could date earlier, Curry said he was able to hook up the interview because his cameraman, Phil Pendry, was friends with Yoko’s then-estranged husband Tony Cox. Curry considered any appearance by John to be a bonus.

“We got there, and John and Yoko showed up, and we all had a couple of cups of tea and woke up, because it was fairly early in the morning, and did the interview,” Curry said. “And it went quite well, and John was really good and very kind to do it … it worked out very well, and that was the end of the story.”

(It wasn’t even close to the end of the story.)

John, Yoko and CBC’s Hugh Curry as captured by Michael’s cameras and revealed in Get Back.

Curry already had a history with the group – he interviewed three Beatles for Canadian radio during promotion for the White Album. At the time of this interview at Twickenham, Curry was in London embarking on a six-week assignment collecting interviews for a forthcoming youth-focused TV show, “Through the Eyes of Tomorrow.”

Let’s dig into the interview itself and the scene around it. Remember the last post: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Michael Lindsay-Hogg and others were playfully sketching out movie ideas aware John and Yoko were actively being filmed.

“There’s a camera crew here from CBC who John fixed [up], and they want to do Yoko and possibly John. They want to set up in the other part of the studio. They can easily go to another studio. Do you mind?” Michael asked.

It was OK with everyone, and Paul joked “We’ll just shoot the CBC crew shooting John shooting Yoko. But John and Yoko should be shooting Ringo and I.”

We could hear roadie Mal Evans as part of the conversation on the Nagras, but at the same time, he was keeping an eye on the nearby CBC interview. Photographer Richard Keith Wolff was there too, too, part of Curry’s traveling party. At one point Ringo sneaks by in the background, prompting some laughter. 

Located on the familiar Twickenham set (the Blüthner and the rest of the Beatles’ rehearsal stage serves as the backdrop), John sat to Yoko’s right — both were in director’s chairs, with Curry sitting at an angle, in front of the couple and to their right. Occasionally you can see Curry’s leg in the shot, and his questions are audible on the recording. John enjoyed the usual Get Back session combo meal: a cigarette with a side of tea. Yoko worked on a muffin or cake or toast of some kind and was often seen picking at her nails and fingers. Their legs were crossed throughout. John appeared pale, at least at the beginning, as seen in poor quality video and better quality photographs. His speech was uncharacteristically slow and only got slower.

The interview began with Curry asking John for the couple’s origin story, which was familiar in the press by now, leading into how they have since been artistic influences on each other. Yoko was gracious and reflective in her reply.

(Both John and Yoko said “you know” a lot during the interview – for the sake of easy reading, I edited several – but not all — of those out when I quoted them below, like I would if someone said “um.” This sort of thing happens all the time. I went to journalism school, it’s all good!)

“John actually really changed the whole world in a way,” Yoko said. “You know, he influenced the whole world, I think. In that sense, I was sort of influenced.

“I think my work lacked a kind of relaxed type of sense of humor. I mean, there was sort of a cynicism in it, but there wasn’t a real sense of humor and also sort of constructive thinking. And that’s the thing that I sort of got from John, I think.”

Much of the interview centered around John and Yoko’s LP Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins, recorded in May 1968 and released that November, only a few weeks before this interview. Curry called the duo’s nearly 30-minute platter of sounds “not a one-time listening experience.”

“If I did anything vaguely like that before, I’d just do it for sort of fun and maybe play it to Ringo,” John said.

John didn’t coin the name “Two Junkies” but came close in the late ’70s, writing that he and Yoko on the cover of Two Virgins were “two slightly overweight ex-junkies.” That description appeared in an autobiographical section of his posthumously released book Skywriting by Word of Mouth, in 1986. Click on for the NSFW version of the cover, but make sure to ask mom and dad first!

When it came to the controversial cover of the LP, John said he originally envisioned it as Yoko alone posing naked. John first pitched the idea to her in a letter he sent from India in February 1968, which included a drawing of her naked sitting on a “huge glass ball.”

John: The natural thing that I got from her and her book Grapefruit … was the simplicity and childlike [nature] and innocence.  …

And then I thought the best cover [would be] for her to be naked and sort of say, this is me, you know, no arty cover or no design to it, just a plain straight photo of her naked as her work is. …

Just naturally when we got together and made the LP together [I thought that] that we should both be naked on the cover. You know, I didn’t think anything until I started getting reaction from people. …

Even when I first got it back, I got the surprise of seeing myself actually naked. But I thought, well, why not, you know? We’re all naked. And so it was just when I started showing it to people and people reacted very strongly, I thought maybe there’s some trouble here.

Freshly established as a Beatles B-side and album track, “Revolution” was another justifiable talking point that Curry jumped on. John’s reaction time answering had noticeably slowed by this point, 10 minutes into the interview. 

Curry: How do you think [the revolution is] going?

John: I’ve no idea really. … I just know there’s something in the air. That’s all I know.  And I don’t know what form it takes. I don’t know whether, you know, five million people in Trafalgar Square or [the] Two Virgins cover is doing it, or are both of them doing it, and to what extent they’re having the effect. …

We’re for the revolution, whatever it is, you know, but as I sort of said in that song, I’m not pro-violence. … I’m not saying, well, get off the streets and start marching and waving and distracting people. But I can’t give a yes to “let’s destroy it all,”  you know, I don’t think that’s the answer. …

I really think, if it gets to destruction, you can count me out. But I’m not sure, you know, I’m human and I’m liable to change or, depending on the situation, I prefer non-violence.

It was shortly after this part of the conversation John, in fact, counted himself out.

“Excuse me, I feel a bit sick,” he said a little after the 16-minute mark of the recording, following a short stretch in which John was hiccupping, audibly holding something down, and clearly sick to his stomach.

This is when the Two Virgins canonically became the Two Junkies.

According to Wolff, who shared this account in Ken Womack’s book Living the Beatles Legend, Mal quickly arrived on the scene to help John, who threw up off-camera.  

It’s Mal Evans to the rescue, as photographed by Richard Keith Wolff on January 14, 1969.

John recalled this moment later in the day, as heard on the Nagras and seen in Get Back — although for the docuseries, the reveal was edited for dramatic effect. The entirety of John’s admission came after actor Peter Sellers’ visit to the set, which was also in Get Back. It came on the heels of a mention of Ringo feeling sick (a hangover, probably).

“See, you missed me this morning. I did it for CBS [sic],” John said. “Just leapt off in the middle of the interview. No reason at all, except that I mistreated my body.”

A few minutes later, John returned to the subject:

John: I’m just recovering from the day.

Yoko: From the night.

John (feigning shock): Oh, don’t say that! You’re always revealing us. From the night indeed. Next thing you’ll be telling them about our black sheets.

Unlike other days recorded, here John and Yoko bluntly discussed drug use on tape. As Sellers left the stage, John joked the actor shouldn’t “leave the needles lying around. We’ve got a bad reputation now with John getting busted.”

The basement of 34 Montagu Square, where John and Yoko were busted for drugs as well as posed for the Two Virgins LP cover. Photographed on my trip to London in June 2024.

“I know what it’s like for showbiz people,” John continued. “They’re under a great strain and they need a little relaxation. … It’s a choice between that and exercise, you know. And drugs win, hand [sic] down.”

“Well, shooting is exercise,” Yoko added.

(For the record, John maintained they only snorted heroin. “I never injected it or anything,” he said in the 1970 Lennon Remembers interview for Rolling Stone. “We sniffed a little when we were in real pain.”)

In Get Back, the edit shows a concerned Paul suggesting John should avoid discussing drug use in front of the cameras.

“Is there any need to do this in public, Mr. Lennon?” we hear Paul ask.

But this response from Paul was spliced in from a completely different part of the conversation more than 20 minutes later and explicitly in the context of the Two Virgins nude LP cover. It wasn’t even a criticism – it was Paul role-playing as an aggressive interviewer as they joked their way through the afternoon.

Let’s listen in to be sure. First, here’s the context around Paul’s line “Is there any need to do this in public, Mr. Lennon?” as heard on the Nagra tapes.

Now, here’s John’s description of getting sick. 

OK, so John vomited halfway through his CBC interview. Now what?

Consummate professional and self-promotion addict he was, John got right back in front of the camera to complete the interview after the brief absence. John wasn’t running quite at 100 percent, but he enjoyed a little bit more pep in the second half of the interview.

Two Virgins resumed as the focus of Curry’s line of questioning at John’s return. The LP, in John’s opinion, should be analyzed no differently than a Beatles record.

John: All the versions that people have of it, all their interpretations are true for them. If you believe it, it’s true. And it you don’t believe it, it isn’t true for you. It doesn’t exist. If I don’t believe you, in you, you don’t exist.

Yoko: It [was actually titled] Unfinished Music, which means that we were very conscious of that, meaning that you can add anything to it. You own sounds, if you want to, or just in your mind.

John, who said in the interview “it’s a job, writing a song,” put some effort linking his work with the Beatles to what he was creating with Yoko. It’s a thoughtful response that sheds a little light on his thinking — or what he wanted to telegraph publicly  — halfway through the Get Back sessions and while George was estranged from the group.

Although we’ve [the Beatles] been married 10 years, it’s still as new as it ever was in the relation. You can’t just sort of bulldoze through because we’ve been together so long. We’ve got to feel our way and try and communicate or reach a certain level together to put it across, otherwise it doesn’t work.

Asked about a potential return to the stage, John derided their final tours in 1966 as “a sort of freak show.”

“The Beatles were the show, and the music had nothing to do with it,” he said. “And as we were musicians, we felt there was no enjoyment. … The only reason to be a Beatle is to make music, and not just to sort of be in a circus.”

John on January 14, 1969, as photographed by Richard Keith Wolff.

Curry pushed back, suggesting the live scene in 1969 wasn’t what it was even a couple years earlier, saying progressive venues like the Fillmore East and West and the Avalon Ballroom were more controlled environments with attentive audiences.

John: But we’ve done that gig. … We haven’t got a strong enough compulsion. …

That’s partly the reason for doing this show, doing a live sort of album with an audience.

With a return to the stage to cap the TV show they were recording still the Beatles’ imminent plan in some form — though at the moment an increasingly quixotic concept given the situation at this low ebb of the Get Back sessions — John was still offering a public face that the plan was still on.

An examination of John’s work ethic concluded the interview.

“I’ve always never enjoyed not having anything to do … but now there’s something to do all the time [with projects with Yoko]”

If he wasn’t making a record but was “in the garden, making eight mil[limeter] films,” John didn’t view that as work until Yoko convinced him otherwise. 

John: Just having vague ideas and things, which I didn’t consider work. But when I met Yoko, I realized that was work. You know, that’s another kind of work. And so one way or the other, I work all the time now. I think I always did, but I felt as though I wasn’t working before.

Curry: You’re having to work at not working type of thing.

John: Yeah, but I can’t stand not working, you know.

At the conclusion of the interview, we can hear on the Nagras John and Yoko returning to the others as they’re climbing the chains on set, just killing time. 

The Two Junkies interview survived in its entirety, although only a small portion was originally broadcast on Canadian television in 1969. Taken in sum, this wasn’t a groundbreaking or revelatory interview. It was pretty boilerplate, but an accurate, adequate fit for the couple’s public statements at the time. Unlike the other celebrity interviews Curry conducted in this period and apropos of the importance of the subjects, this one was shot in color.  

Watched side-by-side with the Get Back documentary — or Let It Be, or any point in his public life, really — the Two Junkies interview is wild contrast for the John Lennon we’re used to. One of the most charismatic cultural figures in modern history, John is a monotone bore for most (all?) of the interview. 

John on January 14, 1969, as photographed by Richard Keith Wolff.

Two Junkies is an outlier, existing apart from the Nagras, Get Back or Let it Be. If we want to know what it’s about and what happened, we need to pursue it as a separate entity, part of John’s solo career, in some part. So much of the Get Back sessions witness the Beatles revealing themselves organically. But here, in that same moment and space, there’s an outsider asking the questions in a deliberate manner. 

With the interview in the can, Curry struck two prints of the film, one of which he kept, and the other handed off to the CBC. What happened next pushes this story into the late 1980s and in a wildly unexpected direction. 

The Toronto Star, January 28, 1969.

The John-Yoko segment for “Through the Eyes of Tomorrow” was promoted as “coming soon” in TV listings only two weeks after the interview was conducted, in advance of the show’s debut the following month (which featured a January 7 chat with Jimi Hendrix).

A short clip from the John-Yoko interview ultimately premiered in May 1969, packaged in an episode that also included conversations with Eric Clapton, Spencer Davis and Fat Mattress.  (Curry’s relationship with Lennon ultimately extended later into 1969, when he helped organize the Toronto Rock & Roll Festival.)

A newspaper listing (The Regina Leader Post) promotes “Through the Eyes of Tomorrow” on May 10, 1969. Fat Mattress was a band fronted by Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist Noel Redding, and he was quite slender!

For the wider, global public, a 20-second clip included in the 1988 documentary Imagine: John Lennon  – in which John discusses “Revolution,” as quoted above – marked the first broad exposure to the interview. But that clip wasn’t supplied by the CBC, it came from the print Curry made for himself. Thing is, Curry didn’t give it to the Imagine producers, either.

“I’d been hanging out [in the late 1960s] with a guy called Tony Secunda, who was a real character, a real legend in the British music scene at that time,” Curry recalled in the YouTube clip posted in 2015. In his career, Secunda managed the likes of the Procul Harum, the Move, T-Rex and the Moody Blues, among many others. He was a legend! In her 2007 memoir “Memories, Dreams and Reflections,” Marianne Faithful wrote, without elaborating, that Secunda was the inspiration for “Sailor Sam” in Paul’s 1973 hit “Helen Wheels.” (Yes, I know Sailor Sam was in “Band on the Run,” too, but Secunda produced bands from Birmingham, which was name-checked in “Helen Wheels.”)

Certainly, Paul would have known Secunda through Denny Laine, Wings guitarist and one-time Moody Blues guitarist. Curry knew Denny too, via Secunda. “We hung out a lot together and partied together, and probably too hard,” Curry remembered. 

Stick with me, I’m about to tie all of this together to the Two Junkies. To do that, though, let’s reintroduce two marijuana junkies: Paul and Linda McCartney. Paul’s drug bust in advance of Wings’ 1980 tour of Japan set off a chain reaction that led us – like, literally you and me – to be able to watch the Two Junkies interview on YouTube today.

Artifacts of the aborted Wings 1980 Japan tour (plus a sweet Rockestra scarf) on display at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this past summer.

Here’s how it played out, and remember, there are no coincidences in Beatles history, only connections we’d never predict:

  • The cancellation of the Wings tour in Japan ultimately led to the dissolution of the band – they split in 1981 without recording or touring again.
  • Dealing with the perfect storm of the end of Wings, a divorce and poor accounting advice, Denny filed for bankruptcy in 1986.
  • In searching though Denny’s assets as part of the bankruptcy proceedings, a film can was discovered at a flat he and Secunda had shared.

“I had totally forgotten [it] even existed,” Curry said of his own copy of the Two Junkies interview, which first found its way into Segunda’s during the pair’s hard-partying days, then via Secunda into Denny’s garage or basement or wherever it happened to be uncovered. Secunda suggested to Curry they “do something” with the reel, but the latter demurred, concerned with rights issues. At the same time, per Curry’s account, Secunda sent him a copy on VHS, which at some point Curry dubbed himself and shared with a friend who was a “very big Beatles fan.”

Meanwhile, in that same 1986 and across the ocean in New York, Yoko commissioned a documentary to be told in John’s words, what would become Imagine: John Lennon, released in 1988. A long lost interview clip — like, say, a joint interview with Yoko from 1969 — would be an attractive addition to the documentary. Secunda thought so too, sending his own copy of the interview to Yoko (he was ultimately credited as a researcher for the film). After the documentary hit theaters, that aforementioned very big Beatles fan suggested Curry give Imagine a watch because one scene was very familiar …

As Curry remembered:

The questions were being asked by this bloke with an English accent. And I said, gee, that voice sounds familiar. … I was thinking, well, maybe John did another interview that day or something. But then I looked down [at] the corner of the frame and I could see my boot that I’d been wearing that day to do the interview. So I knew it was in fact the interview that I’d done with John. I recognized the questions and the answers as well, but certainly I recognized the boot. …

[Secunda] clipped out my voice asking John the questions and put his own voice in. … Maybe he thought that would cover him legally where I was concerned or whatever. Or it would change the content of it and therefore change the copyright. But with Tony you never knew because he really was a lovable rogue, but a rogue nonetheless.

It doesn’t take much of a leap to assume some combination of Secunda, Curry’s friend and/or the production team for Imagine shared the full Two Junkies interview into the wild, where the bootleg market did its thing. 

Recalling this from 2026, it’s incredible to consider Paul and Linda’s own drug-related indiscretions indirectly led to the widespread distribution and heightened status of what would otherwise be an obscure Canadian interview with John and Yoko, an interview that’s treated as a prime example of how drug use affected the Beatles. 

And very much in the spirit of the Get Back sessions, it’s a bootleg that lets us know this moment exists at all. 

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March 29, 2024 · 11:16 am

Jan. 14: Morning, Paul! Morning, Rich!

This time, Paul McCartney’s line was delivered with a smile: “And then there was one.”

It was up to the viewers of the 2021 Get Back docuseries more than 50 years later to make out the invisible wink and deliberate nod to Paul’s tearful “and then there were two” from a day before — though in 21st century TV time, it was only 12 minutes earlier.

While there was just one Beatle at Twickenham Film Studios in the early going on January 14, 1969, Paul wasn’t alone for too long, not even 20 minutes on the Nagra reels capturing the sessions’ audio largely in real time.

 

Then there were two once again as a sleep-deprived Ringo Starr bounded in, and the Beatles’ rhythm section exchanged exaggerated greetings.

Ringo: “Morning, Paul!”
Paul: “Morning, Rich!”
Ringo: “How are you this morning?
Paul: “OK!”

After a full-arm stretch and crack of the knuckles, Paul – who had been sitting at the piano — struck the keys, and Ringo immediately joined in.

Maybe I’m not giving January 1969 Ringo enough credit as a piano player, but I’ll leave it as an open question if this was a pure improvisation or something specific Paul and Ringo had worked on before.

This is not to say Ringo was a finished product as a piano player. You can see him bracing one hand with another as he slapped out high notes — maybe it was just a gag —  playing the high notes while Paul pounded out the chords.

Paul casually delivered a lyric to their song. A jumpy slice of New Orleans improvisational piano jazz, it lasted all of 70 seconds.

Well, I bought a piano the other day
I didn’t know music to play
You had to play the goddamn thing
Oh, baby!
(Or something close to that)

It’s an amusing callback to Ringo’s own “Picasso” from early in the sessions, from the “I bought a Picasso” line down to the closing “oh baby,” which was a signature Ringo closing lyric at this point. Paul and Ringo clearly had a great time playing together, something that was obvious to viewers in 1970 as much as it is to us today.

This little slice of life coexists in Let It Be and Get Back in nearly identical presentations. Let It Be’s version lasts all of 5 seconds longer – both are slightly edited down from the original performance.  The differences between the two visuals are purely cosmetic and seem like change for change’s sake, showing the duo’s hands at the piano when the other shows a view from their left, for instance.

But then there were two (more important differences).

The first is the timeline. In Let It Be, the sequence is preceded by a January 9 version of “One After 909,” appearing about 13 ½ minutes into the film. After the piano jam, Let It Be sends the viewer into a January 6 rehearsal of “Two of Us” that eventually leads to the “I’ll play if you want me to play” argument (Director Michael Lindsay-Hogg uses Paul’s running his hands through his hair at the end of the performance to lead directly to the next scene of ensuing frustration.)

The transition as it appears in Let It Be.

Get Back roughly follows the progression in real time on the morning of January 14. It doesn’t come immediately after clapper loader Paul Bond said he wanted himself to buy a piano as it does in Get Back, but you can certainly see why that narrative device was used, and it was close enough in real time to work.

There’s another very notable divergence between the two films. When it came to the credits in 2021, then there were three (songwriters). Based on that clear first lyric and presumption it was a newly published original, the song was credited on screen as “I Bought a Piano The Other Day,” a Lennon/McCartney/Starkey composition.

Even with John clearly not yet on site, the Lennon/McCartney credit structure was used (as it was elsewhere with similar absent credits – but not future solo songs), with Rich Starkey an obvious contributor.  (Just look at “Piano Piece [Bonding].” That shouldn’t be a Lennon/McCartney song, since it’s probably already a Jesse Fuller original. More on that in the previous post.)

To paraphrase an earlier lyric credited to the Lennon/McCartney/Starkey songwriting trio, they didn’t even think of it as something with a name — or something long-forgotten that already had a name for the last 50 years. After all, it already had a title, and it wasn’t “I Bought a Piano The Other Day.”

Nobody has never spun an official version of “Jazz Piano Song” on a turntable or streamed it on Spotify. But that recording, originally released as part of the Let It Be film but not on the soundtrack LP, is the real thing. “Jazz Piano Song” – admittedly not the most dynamic title — was copyrighted in the U.S. on  July 8, 1970, by Northern Songs and Startling Music, credited to McCartney/Starkey. It’s a matter of semantics if it was really released, but it certainly came out.

From the July-December 1970 volume of the Library of Congress’ Catalog of Copyright Entries of Music.

Today in 2024, then, there are two (copyrighted versions of the same song): “Jazz Piano Song” and “I Bought A Piano” are one in the same. I can only guess the decision to separately copyright the latter was an oversight, a generic disregard and abandonment of “Jazz Piano Song,” Let It Be and its era. Kudos to the Lennon Estate for sneaking away a few extra dollars and pounds for a song he had absolutely nothing to do with and was already accounted for, credit-wise.

It took more than 25 years for the McCartney/Starkey duo to team up on a follow-up composition. The liner notes to Paul’s 1997 LP Flaming Pie might obliquely reference “Jazz Piano Song,” saying in the description of “Really Love You” that it was “[c]redited to McCartney/Starkey – a first-ever credit for a released tune.” That note could also be referring to “Angel in Disguise,” an early ‘90s Paul demo with an added verse by Ringo, and thus another McCartney/Starkey unreleased track. Or it could just be covering behinds on the assumption there must have been other unrecorded and unreleased McCartney/Starkey tracks from 1962-1997.

From the 1997 liner notes to Flaming Pie.

It’s at this point on January 14, 1969, the focus shifted from an obscure McCartney/Starkey song credited twice into a modest hit song written by Paul McCartney alone that wasn’t credited to him at all. (Some of this sequence appeared in Get Back, albeit compressed and a little out of order, too, although not in any way that misrepresented the moment.)

“Did you write ‘Woman’ by Peter and Gordon?”  Michael asked. “I loved that song.”

Paul said he did too.

“Woman” was a 1966 single for the since broken-up duo. It was also a deliberate experiment conducted by Paul.

“Bernard Webb, an English law student in Paris, sent this song to the Beatles, who having plenty of their own, passed it on to their old mates,” wrote one representative review of the song, outlining the origin story fed to the press.

Like Paul Ramon before, and Apollo C. Vermouth and Percy Thrillington to come, Bernard Webb was one James Paul McCartney, this time taking a pseudonym – “a very inconspicuous name,” per Paul in the May 1966 Beatles Book magazine — in a ploy to see how well his song would chart as an anonymous author and not half of the world’s most famous pop songwriting team. The answer was modestly well, with the big production number landing in the top 30 in the U.K. and inside the top 15 in the U.S., although some of the movement up the charts did come after the secret was let out that Paul was behind the curtain.

The “mammoth Peter and Gordon treatment,” as Paul described it, gnawed at the songwriter years later. (Meanwhile, as we learn by watching Get Back, Ringo spent part of this performance mugging for the cameras.)

“We did a much better one very first time we ever did it,” Paul said on January 14, after singing the first verse a capella. “It was very dry. Just little. With like about eight violins. …  We were very fussy at the time, didn’t like it, so it got turned into a mammoth ballad.”

Modestly, he concluded, “It’s a great song” before delivering a straightforward performance at the piano, repeating the first verse several times. He later played it again imitating the “great big Gordon bit” to laughter.

I wonder if Peter’s still got the original thing of that, cause we did a great version first time we did it. Only Gordon couldn’t get the high notes. … But it was all right though, it was OK. It’s just we were so fussy we thought “this is the song, this is the one.” And they’re so fussy about it, that we chucked it, jacked it in and just let them go and do it again. But they did it the next time as mammoth Peter and Gordon treatment. It’s too sort of big. The first time we did, it was little, it was great.

An acetate of the “original thing” – purportedly featuring Paul on drums — went to auction in 2013, and quickly founds its way online.

A mammoth treatment isn’t necessarily a disqualifier for Paul, though, who resumed playing the piano after a brief conversation celebrating Johnny Cash (look for that in a future post!). In Get Back, Paul introduces the song saying, “I had one this morning.” In fact, he said that earlier, when playing “The Day I Went Back to School.”  On the Nagras, Paul gave no indication the song was an original or anything beyond something he was improvising.

Paul scatted a few indecipherable lines, although a few are identifiable, sung in an exaggerated fashion: “We’re just busy riding, driving in the back seat of my car.”

Two years before it concluded RAM (and eight years before Thrillington’s “cover”), “The Back Seat of My Car” was new enough Glyn asked if Paul was playing a Beach Boys song.

“It’s just like a skit on them,” Paul replied.

Indeed it played out like a comedy– thankfully, this sequence made Get Back, too – as Paul openly played to his audience, embellishing high and low harmonies and vocalizing brass and percussion as he shared draft lyrics of teenage romance. “Gee, it’s getting late!” drew big laughs, for instance. Mexico City hadn’t been introduced as a destination, and the subjects didn’t yet believe that they can’t be wrong.

Conceived in summer 1968, “The Back Seat of My Car” — which was ultimately credited to Paul alone — wasn’t finished in January 1969, but Paul clearly had scoped out the grand scale of the song, more than two years before he’d ultimately employ an orchestra to perform George Martin’s score for the song.

Having completed his enjoyable reveal of “The Back Seat of My Car,” Paul left the stage to take a call, and the Nagra microphones shifted to a conversation between Ringo and Michael, following a brief appearance by Mal Evans. The roadie himself had just taken a call from John, who for a consecutive day was late to the session.

“What did Mal say? … What’s going to happen this morning?” Michael asked Ringo.

“Nothing,” he replied. But …

“This afternoon, watch out!”

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January 14, 2024 · 12:09 am

Jan. 14: The day I went back to school

Dave Grohl told a funny story about Paul McCartney on “The Graham Norton Show” during the promotional tour for his 2021 memoir, The Storyteller, expanding on a brief passage from the book itself. The episode played out in 2014, when Paul and wife Nancy Shevell visited Grohl to meet his newborn baby and indulge in an evening of pizza and wine.

There’s a piano in the corner of the room and [Paul] just can’t help himself. … He starts playing “Lady Madonna” in my fucking house. And my mind is blown. I can’t believe this is happening. …

[Grohl’s 5-year-old daughter Harper] had never taken a lesson to play any instrument at that point. And she sat down and she watched his hands. They sat together, and he was showing her what to play. And they wrote a song together.  …

The next morning, I woke up and I went to the kitchen. I was making breakfast, and I heard her playing the song that they had written the night before. And I came around the corner, and she looked at me as she was playing the piano. She realized I was watching, and she never played the piano again.

And then she’s like, “I want to be a drummer.” I’m like, “Are you out of your mind?”

The anecdote is relevant not because – in an outstanding coincidence – Grohl was born on this January 14, 1969. Instead, the story underlines Macca’s actions to start his own day, thousands of miles away, on the same January 14, 1969.

“The great thing about the piano is, like, there it all is, there’s all the music ever,” Paul told 22-year-old clapper loader Paul Bond. “That’s it. All the music that’s ever been written is all there, you know.”

(Going forward from this point, when I call someone just “Paul,” it’s McCartney.)

In the midst of a discussion of various music styles, Paul followed with chaotic cacophony on Twickenham’s Blüthner as a demonstration of “the latest things in music,” conceding “that’s music too.”

This sequence is short, but we can glean quite a bit from these five minutes of the two Pauls interacting in real time as recorded on the Nagra tapes (it’s only two minutes in Get Back).  An incident like this opens up the space to tell the Beatles’ life and career biography, something that happens often during these sessions.

To his credit, Bond questioned if there was any origin story to Macca and the instrument. “What did you do, you just started tinkering about on piano?” he asked.  McCartney blew him off with a “yeah, sure.” But there was more to it.

“To us kids, [my father] was a pretty good player, he could play a lot of tunes on the piano,” Macca recalled in Barry Miles’ 1997 biography Many Years From Now. “I used to ask him to teach me but he said, ‘No, you must take lessons,’ like all parents do. I ended up teaching myself like he did, by ear.”

Decades later, Paul told a similar story in his own book, 2021’s The Lyrics.

Dad wouldn’t teach me the piano, though; he wanted me to take lessons. He didn’t think he was good enough and, because my parents had aspirations for us, he wanted me to learn the ‘real stuff.’ I took a few lessons from time to time but ended up being pretty much self-taught, just like him. I found lessons to be too restricting and boring. It was much more interesting to make up songs than to practise scales.

Paul indeed received professional lessons, briefly. Here’s his old teacher, Leonard Milne, remembering Paul McCartney the piano student from a 2010 interview in Mark Lewishon’s Tune In:

I gave Paul one lesson a week, at a grand piano I had in the lounge at my parents’ house, 237 Mather Avenue. He started on The Adult Beginner’s Guide To Musical Notation but this didn’t last long because he said he wanted to learn by ‘chord symbols,’ letters printed under the notes — like ‘C7,’ say. It’s a musical shorthand he would have known as a guitar player. He didn’t want to learn the real technique, he wanted to rush ahead — he was clearly a boy with talent who didn’t want to be held back. I also didn’t set homework because Paul made it clear he wanted to press on, not fiddle around with paper.

Fiddle around he did, teaching himself on the piano at home in his teenage years. (Paul had another aborted attempt at formal piano training in the mid-1960s, when he was already established in the Beatles, a brief story he shared in his 2023 A Life In Lyrics podcast.)

Naturally, Paul pressed on in these early moments of the January 14 sessions, playing brief, catchy progressions on the piano. He was the only Beatle there anyway; he had the time to mess around.

“Unless you stop yourself, there’s no stopping yourself,” Macca told Bond – who was visibly beaming throughout the scene in Get Back, in awe and truly engaged at the piano lesson.  “Unless you feel like stopping. there’s really nothing to stop you, ‘cause that’s it then. There it all is.”

Paul then launched into “Martha My Dear” – just an 8-week-old album track at this point in time – and added the comment, “See, but then you get to sort of wonder how people do all those contrapuntal things.”

“A lot of old tunes have just a set sort of chord pattern. Because that’s the great thing, once you stop trying to find out chord patterns, you really suss what people are doing and what musicians are doing.”

The decision to play “Martha My Dear” was clearly deliberate on Paul’s part. It wasn’t merely a piano song near the front of his mind. Here’s Paul, decades later, as quoted in Many Years From Now, discussing how he considered the song’s piano part when he wrote it:

When I taught myself piano I liked to see how far I could go, and this started as a piece you’d learn as a piano lesson. It’s quite hard to play, it’s a two-handed thing, like a little set piece. In fact I remember one or two people being surprised that I’d played it because its slightly above my level of competence, really, but I wrote it as that, something a bit more complex for me to play.

In real time, on the Nagras, Paul plays what sounds like a few seconds of “San Francisco Bay Blues” – a song he covered throughout his solo career, including on his 1991 Unplugged appearance. John Lennon fooled around with it, too, during the Imagine sessions in 1971.

In Get Back (which edits it out of order, placing it prior to “Martha”), this 10-second piece is credited to them both as a Lennon/McCartney original retroactively titled “Bonding (Piano Piece).” I’m with the A/B Road bootlegs and others when it comes to credit – this doesn’t sound like Paul conjuring an original improvisation. Especially in the context of his follow-up statement.

“Old tunes, you know, they are just a certain way of going,” Paul told Bond. “And they hardly ever vary from it. I don’t really know it, you know, my dad knows that better than I do.”

The brief and highly unorthodox lesson was over, with Bond going back to work after admitting, “I must get myself a piano.”

We’re not going to pretend that Paul only started becoming adept at piano in 1968 – he was playing it on stage in the Hamburg days. Still, he considered himself a relative neophyte, whether we all believe that or not.

Only a few days earlier, prior to debuting “Another Day” on the Nagras, Paul said, “I better go and put in some piano practice.” True, he may have been trying to get out of a conversation with Michael Lindsay-Hogg, but he said it nonetheless.

For a man who didn’t know how to read music and thought of himself as a novice, teaching the instrument came comfortably. Perhaps it came from his own potential desire to be a teacher, if he wasn’t in a band.

Engaged with literature, a young Paul McCartney “didn’t know if I would actually get to university or get somewhere,” he said in Many Years From Now. “What was my next thing gonna be? Teachers’ training college?”

A brief edit of the conversation appeared in the original Get Back book published with the Let It Be LP in 1970.

Paul said as much to American audiences at the dawn of Beatlemania, too, in a February 11, 1964, interview with WWDC-AM’s Carroll James, one of the DJs credited with being the first to play a Beatles song on American radio.

“At that time, I thought of being a teacher, actually,” Paul said when he was asked what his plans were if he wasn’t a Beatle. “But luckily, I got into this business, because I would have been a very bad teacher.”

Only a few months before the Get Back sessions, Paul told Tonight Show guest host Joe Garagiola and American audiences, “I was nearly going to be a teacher, but that fell through, luckily.”

Still, here he is, January 14, 1969, embracing and excelling as musical instructor. School was on his mind, even if it was in the subconscious. He continued at the piano, this time playing a new song.

“I had one this morning,” Paul said about five minutes after Bond’s lesson ended. “But it was just like, ‘The Day I Went Back to School’ or something.” The estranged George Harrison presented his “last-night songs” earlier at Twickenham, and so did Paul.

There was only a single verse, repeated several times.

The day I went back to school, the day I went back to school, the day I went back to school
The teacher said, would you like to come back tonight?
I said, no thanks. I’m doing all right without you.

Paul was a long way from 1977’s “Girls School,” and resisting the kind of potentially illegal temptation mentioned in that song’s lyrics isn’t particularly rock and roll of him. But things were weird at this point in Beatles history, so I guess anything goes.

We’d never hear the song we all call “The Day I Went Back to School” again, not during the Get Back sessions nor anytime since.

But the point remains: Teaching and learning was something on the forefront and in the subliminal corners of Paul’s mind on January 14, 1969. Whether it was in private, like at the Grohls’ in 2014, or in the 2021 documentary series “McCartney 3,2,1,” when Paul was demonstrative to host Rick Rubin.

Like Grohl said, Paul can’t stop himself.

Paul Bond’s entire career was ahead of him when he worked on the Get Back sessions, and over the subsequent 40 years, his cinematographer and cameraman credits included “Downton Abbey,” “London’s Burning,” “Inspector Lewis” and all kinds of other things British audiences would know.

Bond also worked on “The South Bank Show,” and that’s where his path crossed with Macca again, in 1984, as part of the small crew working behind the camera.

Bond has also enjoyed a separate act in an a completely unrelated field.

Since at least the mid-1970s, Bond has been a beekeeper. No mere apiarist, Bond is a world champion at the art, earning international recognition in 1979.

From the May 29, 1992, issue of the Evening Standard under the headline “The buzz round town”

Modest in his mastery, Bond credited the bees and the process for his sweet success. Maybe that’s something Paul McCartney taught him when he pointed to the piano for having all the music inside it instead of his own remarkable skill in unlocking that power.

I’ve been waiting all post to write this: Let it Bee.

As Bond said in Idle Beekeeper: The Low-Effort, Natural Way to Raise Bees, published in 2019, when he was asked to share his secret of success: “Oh, I just rinsed out the jars.”

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January 13, 2024 · 12:00 am

TMBP Extra: Jan. 13, 1969 recap

The Beatles’ January 13, 1969, happened in history and it was portrayed in the 2021 docuseries Get Back, and the two aren’t necessarily the same.The canteen discussion stands at the core of the day’s drama, but Beatles still made music and did their best to sort out their issues best they could. Dig in here for a better understanding how the day played out:

  • And then there were two: The Beatles’ great divide isn’t centered around the departed George Harrison, but instead John Lennon and Yoko Ono. This is the full story around the docuseries’ gut-wrenching core — and how it’s not quite how it’s presented.
  • Picasso’s last words: Old masters and friendly competitors inspire disagreement in the broken Beatles’ search for pace and purpose. Paul speaks to John! Linda Eastman spars with Michael Lindsay-Hogg! There’s pottery! There are camels! We get into obscure TV! The body language is tangible! It’s all here.
  • The Lunchroom Tape (Pt. 1): Get Back cleaned up the sound but muddied the facts in its portrayal of the Beatles’ secretly recorded canteen conversation. Dig into who was really there, what was really said and why it matters.
  • The Lunchroom Tape (Pt. 2): Ego, leadership and how the Beatles can reach their full potential dominate a spirited, complex conversation.
  • The Lunchroom Tape (Pt. 3): Eavesdrop on the Beatles for a half hour and what do we learn? This conclusion to the canteen trilogy reveals the wounded working relationship between John and Paul, its spillover effect on George and beyond.
  • Looking for the greener grass: With George in self-imposed exile, Paul, John and Ringo Starr needed just 30 minutes to investigate the who, what, where and why of the developing song “Get Back” at the end of an exhausting, cathartic day.
  • Et cetera: What was Ringo singing at the start of Get Back Episode 2 and how can we tie it to the 1980s? Why was everyone talking about Wings’ guitarist years before they existed? Explore these and more leftover storylines from Twickenham.

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October 19, 2023 · 6:09 am

Jan. 13: Et cetera

For all the storylines and spectacle of the Beatles’ January 13, 1969, there’s even more detail that just didn’t fit into the 20,000 words I’ve already written about this single day. For context, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis checks in around 21,000 words, most about a bug yet not a single one about a Beatle.  Here are some of the delicious leftovers from our Fab Four’s day:

***

It’s the opening theme to the second episode of Get Back:

“You’re my world, you’re my only love,” croons Ringo Starr as the credits roll.

This audio is displaced. In its original context served on the Nagra tapes, the moment comes a good hour after the documentary implies, happening when Ringo is exiting, not entering, the Twickenham Film Studios main stage on January 13, 1969, just before the drummer joins Paul McCartney in meeting John Lennon at the Twickenham canteen.

It’s not obvious what song Ringo’s singing. The vocal could be a misquote from Liverpool pal Cilla Black’s 1964 smash “You’re My World,” a four-week UK chart-topper that was ultimately knocked out of the top spot by Lefty Wilbury.

Years earlier, Ricky Nelson had a hit with “You’re My One and Only Love,” but that doesn’t seem like the inspiration, either.

It could just have been spontaneous on Ringo’s part.

There is another song he could be quoting more directly, though the source is a mystery. A clue could be in a hit song not by Ricky Nelson but Lefty’s brother Nelson Wilbury  — Ringo’s bandmate George Harrison.

George’s “When We Was Fab” paid homage to life as a Beatle, but one line that fit unassumingly in 1987 stands out a little bit more as we revisit January 1969.

“You are my world, you are my only love”

Remember when around the same time, George pulled a largely unknown, decades-old B-side and album track from his memory and record collection and stuck it on his new album?

It sure seems there’s a missing link for “you’re my world, you’re my only love” — maybe it’s something the Beatles’ drunk uncles would sing at the pub in the Dingle or Speke in 1947 — a composition since lost to time that inspired callouts from both Ringo on January 13, 1969, and George, nearly 20 years later.

***

The near(er) future — more like 1974 — was tangible on January 13, 1969, too. Just ask Paul.

With two future members of Wings in the room at Twickenham Film Studios, a third was an occasional topic of conversation throughout the course of the day. Linda Eastman wasn’t a keyboardist yet, but Jimmy McCulloch, all of 15 years old and more than five years away from joining Wings, already earned status as a sharpshooter guitarist.

In flight: Jimmy McCulloch, Paul and Linda McCartney of Wings

McCulloch’s new band, formed by The Who mastermind Pete Townshend only a few weeks earlier, had barely started recording. Still, word certainly got around in the right circles in early 1969.

“[The Who’s manager] Chris Stamp told me that they’ve got a new group now … the guy (Andy Newman) that works in the GPO (General Post Office),” director Michael Lindsay-Hogg said. “What’s he called? Clapperbell or something. And they’ve got a guitar player who’s 14 [sic], who looks like he’s 6.”

“Plays like he’s 80,” Ringo retorted.

It wasn’t called Clapperbell, instead it was …

“Thunderclap Newman,” Paul said, hours later and out of the blue — perhaps he caught a glimpse of them on the front cover of the most recent issue (January 11) of DISC and Music Echo —  in the closing moments of the day’s Nagra tapes.

“That’s the guitar player they’re telling me about who looks 6, who’s going to be 14,” Michael replied, excitedly.

They may have been formed by the Who’s leader, but Thunderclap Newman’s early biography tied closely to the Beatles, too. The group’s smash debut single “Something in the Air” – originally titled “Revolution” but renamed for obvious reasons – has the distinction of knocking “The Ballad of John and Yoko” from the toppermost of the poppermost in July 1969. The song later appeared on the soundtrack to The Magic Christian which, of course, starred Ringo and was co-headlined by Badfinger’s version of “Come and Get It,” as penned by Paul.

“Something in the Air” was recorded at Townshend’s home studio in Twickenham – precisely one mile from where the Beatles were presently gathered.

***

If it wasn’t enough to dream of future bands, the January 13 Nagras revealed pre-Beatles adventures, too.

On the heels of Linda’s relating a story of a horse stepping on her toes, Ringo described a more catastrophic injury suffered by his previous bandleader, Rory Storm.

“[He was] diving off New Brighton diving stage, going down and down, and he thought, where’s the water? And just as he decided to look up for the water, he slipped, and he broke his nose. So with a broken nose, blood everywhere, he ran right back up and dived off again.”

“He would, yeah, that’s Rory’s thing,” Paul chimed in before saying he recently ran into Rory “in the drive, washing his car.”

“He’s a swimming instructor when I saw him, and DJing, and trying to put a new group together. He’s great though, Rory, I like him. He’s a hustler.”

***

You’ll remember the sequence as comic relief in an otherwise sobering segment in Get Back.

A man delivering flowers to George seemed to be the last man standing who couldn’t recognize the absent Beatle. Doubled over laughing, Michael pulled himself together in time to ask Ringo if he liked the Hare Krishnas, who sent the gift.

“No, not really,” the drummer replied in perfect deadpan.

***

“Have you seen [that of] the top nine records in America, five are Motown?” Michael asked early in the day.

Music was always on everyone’s lips, even as the Beatles’ own production stalled.

“Penny Lane, I think, is one of the greatest songs I’ve heard in my whole life. You like it?” Michael asked later.

“Yes, but I don’t think it’s the greatest song I’ve ever listened to in my whole life,” Ringo replied in earshot of the song’s author.

Conceding how much Penny Lane “moved” him, Paul asked Michael if he was “from suburbia.”

MLH: No, it had to do with nostalgia for me.

Ringo: His father’s a fireman.

MLH: No, nor [worked at a] barbershop. But it’s about nostalgia, which always makes me break up and cry. That’s why Otis Blue is a very big [album] in my life.

We also learned a little trivia about the first records ever bought by some of our protagonists.

For Michael, it was “Quarter to Three” by Gary U.S. Bonds, while Glyn Johns’ first single was Lonnie Donegan’s “Rock Island Line.”

 ***

I mentioned this quote from Ringo in an earlier post somewhat in passing, but I thought it was interesting enough to call out again with greater surrounding detail.

With the time-limited Get Back sessions ongoing as filming for The Magic Christian loomed on the horizon, he was asked by Michael what he enjoyed more, drumming or acting. The answer revealed Ringo’s strong professional motivation. Someone give this guy a raise — and a little more vacation time.

“Well, it’s hard to say, doing so little movies and such a lot of the drums,” Ringo answered. “‘Help!’ and ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ was all right because its the four of us and we played, and did it. The only trouble with those [was] when I didn’t know what I was doing. … So I did ‘Candy‘, which was only two weeks — which was great because I have to do something.” (emphasis mine). 

It wasn’t enough to be a father of two young children and drummer of the biggest band on earth and galaxies beyond. Ringo just had to work and eliminate extended down time. No wonder he got along so well with Paul.

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