(Beatles) Anthology 2025: The Highs and the Highs (and the One Low)

My wife and I watched the renewed and expanded Beatles' Anthology on Disney+ the past three nights. I'd seen and heard bits and pieces of various lengths of the original eight episodes -- on YouTube, The Beatles Channel on Sirius XM, and everything in between -- which originally aired on ABC-TV in 1995, but we somehow had managed not to have seen that original on the unsmart TV in our family room.  It was more than wonderful to see and hear what 2025 director Oliver Murray did with the 1995 eight episodes -- uncovering/discovering new footage as well as calling upon Peter Jackson and his elves to bring to current vibrant life what was done in 1995 (just as Jackson had done so miraculously with The Beatles: Get Back in 2021) -- but the real treat for me (treat is too weak a word) was seeing the new ninth episode.

I'll go over some of highlights of the first eight episodes, and then delve into the wonders of ninth episode, and the one problem I had with it.

About the first eight episodes:

• It was great to see Murray the K get his due (just as he had in Martin Scorsese's Beatles '64 last year).  I worked with Murray the K when he was at WNBC Radio in New York City in 1970s.  He hired me after he read my article "Murray the K in Nostalgia's Noose" in The Village Voice in 1972 (my second-ever published work -- my first was "A Vote for McCartney" a year earlier, my response to dyspeptic critic Robert Christgau's attack on Paul and his early post-Beatles work).  Murray never got the credit he deserved back then in ushering in The Beatles, and before then on WINS with Alan Freed, and after when he was on WOR-FM helping to invent the FM radio format. I had such a good time working with him on NBC, I even wrote and recorded a song about him -- "Murray the K's Back in Town" -- which he played on the air.  (The late Pete Fornatale -- protagonist of my It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles -- played that song on his Mixed Bag on WFUV Radio in the early 2010s.)
• Great shots that I hadn't seen before of The Beatles in their 1964 Washington, DC concert!
• There was a spectre, a foreshading, of what would happen to John at the end of 1980. George worries throughout about the exposure of The Beatles in a country in which John F. Kennedy had just been assassinated.  (The sick devotion to guns in this country is still claiming lives.)  John himself notes after the DC concert that "some bloody animal cut Ringo's hair".
• I was reminded again what a uniquely almost  extraterrestrial person Ed Sullivan was.  I mean, no one here on Earth had his accent or his delivery.  Even in Japan, the Beatles are introduced in Japanese (of course), and the host concludes in English with "Ladies and Gentlemen, The Beatles!" -- delivered in a pretty good mimic of Ed.
• I find it hard to believe that "Pennylane" didn't go to #1 in the UK. Beaten out by Engelbert Humperdinck's "Release Me"? Maybe if it was "Les Bicyclettes de Belsize" ...
• John -- after The Beatles had broken up and at odds with Paul -- objects to Sgt Pepper being called a "concept" album, saying "Mr. Kite" and all the songs on the album other than the Peppers could easily have been on any other Beatles' LP.   (George also critiques Sgt Pepper.)  As far as I'm concerned, I think Sgt Pepper is indeed a concept album and what John says is also true.  There's really no contradiction here, both are true.  And I'll also say how happy I was to find the following poster in an antique shop my wife and I were in, must've been, the late 1970s.  It's hanging on a wall outside our bedroom.  Every time I walk by it, I smile.  It reminds me of Sgt Pepper.

Now, about the new ninth episode:

It was not only heartwarming (to see the three surviving Beatles still making such superb music) and heartbreaking (because now George is gone), it was chock full of fascinating and important information.  My favorite example: I had always heard, regarding the genesis of "Free As A Bird", "Real Love", and "Now and Then", that the transformation projects began when Yoko Ono gave Paul a tape with some of John's demo recordings from the 1970s.  But in episode 9 of Anthology, George tells us about a crucial preface: When Roy Orbison died, The Traveling Wilburys were thinking of taking some of Elvis's demos and bringing them to life with the inimitable Wilbury voices.  But they decided not to go in that direction, because (in George's words), it was "too gimmicky".  (George didn't say, but rumor has it that the Wilburys were thinking of inducting Del Shannon into the group, but he took his life in 1990.)

But if I had to pick my favorite moment in the ninth episode, and therefore all nine episodes of this beautifully burnished Anthology, it would be Paul and George completing their incomparable three-part Beatles harmony with John's voice in the chorus of "Real Love".  It's been one of my favorite Beatles songs since I first heard it in the mid-1990s.  The song inspired me to write It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles (the video of Anne Reburn's cover of the song follows below -- she performed this in the radio play broadcast on Killerwatt Radio, adapted from the first chapter of my novel; "Real Life", by the way, was John's title for the song before he changed it to "Real Love").  Paul and George's voices being in such synch with John's recording, the harmony snapping into place, snapping into life, is a deeply acoustic proof to me that this uniquely satisfying sound will never die.  At that instant, the former Beatles became The Beatles again, and gave evidence that The Beatles will always be with us.

Powers that be often miss the immortality of what is all around them.  After Marshall McLuhan died in December 1980 (same year and month as John: their lives were intertwined: they both hit America big in 1964), I proposed a book about him to an editor at St. Martin's Press.  He laughed and told me no one cared about McLuhan any more. That book became my Digital McLuhan, which Routledge published in 1999.  I still receive royalties checks for sales of that book every year.   In the 1970s, I told my doctoral thesis advisor Neil Postman that I thought The Beatles, like Shakespeare, would be known and enjoyed for as long as there were human beings.  He laughed too.

Which brings me to the one criticism I have about episode 9.  Paul and Ringo are still alive.  Yes,The Beatles music including their harmonies will live forever.  But not the mortals who made it.  Wouldn't it have been wonderful to have another hour, or even just a few minutes, to have Paul and Ringo look back at 1995 from their vantage point right now?  Oliver Murray of course interviewed Paul and Ringo in the short film he made, Now and Then: The Last Beatles Song, that accompanied release of the single in 2023.  I guess that could be considered a coda to Anthology 2025, but wouldn't a few additional or more words from Paul and Ringo looking back at what they accomplished in 1994 (when "Free As A Bird" was made) and 1995 (when "Real Love" was made) have been just the perfect cup of sencha tea after the marvel we just took in?

Chris Willman asks Oliver Murray in an excellent interview in Variety why there are no contemporary 2025 voices in Episode 9.   Murray replies: "I didn’t really like the idea of Ringo [and Paul] in 2025 talking about an interview that he gave in 1995 about something that happened in 1965. It was all too nebulous to do that." I'm not sure I know what "too nebulous" means, in this context. "That is, I think I disagree".

in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover

Added February 10, 2026: Check out this new episode of Rock Talk Studio

Dylan Debuts His Cover of Ricky Nelson's "Garden Party"

 

I just saw Bob Dylan singing Ricky Nelson's "Garden Party" in San Diego (on May 15, 2025) a few hours ago on YouTube.  I posted a link to it on all my social media.  But I had to say more.  In no order of importance (because I think all of these points are important):

• Dylan's voice is outstanding.  I mean, his voice was already sounding better in his 2020 Rough and Ready LP (with a standout performance in his "Murder Most Foul" lament about the assassination of JFK), but his vocal in "Garden Party" has a real depth and subtlety, hitting some notes with a fluency almost approaching that of "Lay Lady Lay".
• This cover shows, again, how Dylan is a mentch.  He must have greatly appreciated (1) when Ricky Nelson did a fine cover of Dylan's "She Belongs to Me" and (2) probably even more so when Dylan heard his name in "Garden Party" ("Mr. Hughes hid in Dylan's shoes").   This was, after all, certainly more appealing than what John Lennon said about Dylan explicitly in "God", and a whole lot better than Lennon's put down of Dylan (without mentioning his name) in The Beatles' "I Dig A Pony" (it was no doubt no consolation that Lennon also put down The Rolling Stones in that great song as well).
• There's something very, I don't know, comforting, in reciprocal covers.  It shows, at least to me, that there's something fair and good about this cultural universe we all inhabit.  That's an important discovery, because the universe as we all know deals out all sorts of disappointments and betrayals (especially in show business, but more recently even more obvious in politics and its tentacles).

Dylan, when he broke through in the 1960s, was an absolute master of lyrics, at the zenith of that craft.  Cole Porter previously held that position, and Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison were often close seconds, but I've always thought that Dylan held and still holds that position alone.  It's good and gratifying to now see him make his mark in the increasingly important micro-genre of covers.

See also: Dylan's "Murder Most Foul": From Then to Now and Dylan's "Rough and Rowdy Ways": Well Worth the Wait and "A Complete Unknown": A Nearly Completely Superb Biopic, Slightly Alternate History

And here are Ricky Nelson's twin sons talking about Dylan's cover of their father's song (begins about 3 mins into the video):

See also It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles (chapter 8), where Ricky Nelson dies in 1996. ...

Beatles '64: The Real Thing

Just saw Martin Scorsese's Beatles '64, up today on Disney+.  It's everything you would expect from a master like Scorsese and his masterful 1978 The Last Waltz, but much more, given what the Beatles were and are to so many millions of people on this planet.  As I began saying in the 1970s, that impact will last for thousands of years, right up there with Socrates and Shakespeare, even though at one point in the documentary, a young Paul scoffs at The Beatles having anything to do with "culture," preferring instead to say that what The Beatles are about are "laughs".

Here are some of the highlights of Beatles '64, made possible by some of the footage the late Albert and David Maysles brothers took of The Beatles first trip to America -- for their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, concert in Washington DC, and concert back in New York in Carnegie Hall -- that had special resonance with me.  I present them in more or less chronological order in the movie:

• A girl fan in New York City tells about the gifts she brought for each Beatle.  For Ringo, it's two "science fiction books".  She doesn't say which ones, but even so, it's good to hear.
• Another girl says Elvis "is old anyway".  I think Elvis was great, but I get what she means.
• Yet another girl, who goes to Julliard, explains that "we don't usually like rock 'n' roll ... [but] The Beatles are the greatest".  See below about Leonard Bernstein and his CBS special and his daughter Jamie for more on this point.
• Ronnie Spector, interviewed probably ten or so years ago, says "Murray the K was downstairs [saying] you gotta get me upstairs to meet The Beatles." My second published article was about Murray the K (in The Village Voice in 1972 -- my first was about Paul McCartney in the same weekly newspaper a year earlier in 1971), and I even wrote a song about Murray the K that he played on his WNBC-AM radio show.  Beatles '64 had a lot more to say about Murray, which I'll discuss below.
• I loved seeing the Ronettes hold the Phil Spector Christmas Album, which has two recordings by the Ronettes -- "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" and "Frosty the Snowman" -- that I still play on YouTube all time.
• A nasty NYPD cop tells two girls to get off the floor The Beatles were on, in their hotel, to walk down the stairs "before I throw you down the stairs".  An unfortunate parallel to the London bobbies who go up to the roof to break up The Beatles last concert that we see in Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back, also on Disney+, and now a perfect pair with Beatles '64.
• Black teenage girls love The Beatles; black teenage boys do not, one of them saying, "I think they're [The Beatles are] disgusting."  (But see Smokey Robinson, whom I'll discuss below.)
• Murray the K appears throughout the movie.  The Beatles tend to think he's too "loud," John mocks him in the movie, and George Harrison remarks in an interview probably conducted in the mid-1980s that Murray, in effect, just glommed on to The Beatles and their first visit to New York. I actually worked with Murray in the early 1970s -- he invited me to come work with him after he read my 1972 article about him -- and I didn't find him too loud at all.  He likely had mellowed by then.
• Smokey Robinson does an endearing performance of McCartney's "Yesterday" in the 1960s, and in a very recent interview explains that The Beatles had a tender, feminine way of expressing their emotions, which Smokey found very admirable.  Jamie Bernstein (Leonard's daughter) and Betty Friedan echo and elaborate on this perceptive view.  Clips from Leonard Bernstein's pathbreaking 1967 CBS show on The Beatles and the "rock revolution" appear throughout Scorsese's film (here's my review of Maestro which, amazingly, said nothing about that TV show).
• Back to Murray the K: he gets George in 1964 to introduce James Ray's "Got My Mind Set on You".  Unsaid in the movie is that of course George would have a big hit singing the song in 1987.  Hey, Murray at least deserves credit for helping keep the song in George's head (he had first heard the song in an earlier trip to the U.S.).
• Marshall McLuhan appears a lot in the second half of the movie, saying things like "JFK was the first TV President" and interviewing John and Yoko in Toronto at the end of 1969.  I worked with McLuhan at the end of the following decade -- he was also the real thing, the most perceptive scholar I've ever had the chance and pleasure to work with (more on McLuhan in my just updated McLuhan in an Age of Social Media). Beatles '64 sets up The Beatles coming to America as the immediate sequence and desperately needed healing musical salve to the crushing depression caused by JFK's assassination, which indeed it was.  McLuhan's breakthrough book, Understanding Media, arrived at same time.  The Beatles helped heal America, McLuhan helped us understand what was happening.
• Harry Benson, a now 94-year-old photographer, tells us that Lennon "used to speak, of all things, about Lee Harvey Oswald ... he was worried about violence" directed against him and The Beatles in America.  That brought me to tears.  (I say more about Lennon's assassination, and how it brought me to write It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles, in this interview conducted just last week.)
• But on a lighter note, speaking of tears, I had to laugh when I heard that "George Harrison was near tears" when he and The Beatles were dissed at a reception for them at the British Embassy after their Washington DC concert. McCartney had a much better response.
• Also on a lighter note, and putting on my media theorist hat, I was pleased to hear the word "cassette," long before there were little tape recordings, back in 1964, used to describe a place that cans of soda inhabited, when someone said, "draw it [the soda can] out of the cassette".
• But the documentary returns to the assassination of JFK, which, along with the assassination of John Lennon, were the worst public events in my life.  At the end of the movie, satirist and critic Joe Queenan, who appears throughout the film, tells us that his "father never recovered from Kennedy's assassination but we did".  And that of course was because we had The Beatles.  The "we" is my generation, and what Queenan says is all the more trenchant, since he earlier tells us that his father beat him, and also decreed that Queenan couldn't watch The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, which Queenan said was worse. But he managed to watch at his uncle's place.

I could say more about this documentary, but you get the picture, and if you loved or love The Beatles, and feel the same about Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back, see this movie, Beatles '64, at least once.

in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover

in Kindle and paperback

More books about McLuhan the media at Connected Editions

Christine Feldman-Barrett interviewed by Paul Levinson about A Women's History of the Beatles

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 262, in which I interview Dr. Christine Feldman-Barrett about her book, A Women's History of the Beatles.

• Buy the book here
• Watch video of this interview
• My reviews of Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back
• "It's Real Life" -- free, alternate history short story about The Beatles
• my very first published article (in 1971): "A Vote for McCartney"

Check out this episode!

The Beatles: Get Back, Part 3: Up On the Roof

If I had to pick the single best moments in the nearly nine hours of the superb, one-of-a-kind documentary that is Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back, it would be Paul McCartney saying "whew!" smiling, doing a dance, and continuing the concert, after turning and taking note of the robotic cops  (or whatever they call them in London) intruding into the Beatles' rooftop performance.  The same cops on the ground floor had been threatening arrests and claiming they weren't making threats before they demanded to go up to the roof.  Good thing they don't carry guns like the police do here in America.

Widening the focus a bit, the whole rooftop concert was a splendid, high-octane tour-de-force, finally shown in Jackson's movie in its full extent, making the original film of the concert that we've been watching all these years seem two-dimensional in comparison.  That original movie has flashes of the energy of that rooftop performance, which takes full and gorgeous expression in Jackson's documentary. 

It may have been the Beatles' finest moment.  "I've Got a Feeling," which I always really liked, is now in my top handful of all-time favorite Beatle songs -- the energy in McCartney's voice, the oh-yeahs, the nos, Lennon's bit, the instrumentation, is all just extraordinary. 

It certainly was their final moment in a public performance.  Some of the earlier part of Part 3 tells us why:

• Paul says to George Martin -- with Paul not sure that going on the roof the next day was the best thing, John saying it was, and George Martin saying they had to respect deadlines -- "that's why I'm talking to John not you".
• A little later, Paul's still not sure about the roof, George Harrison says he'd rather not do it, and Ringo declares they should do the roof concert.  Ringo's opinion carries the day.  But Paul is quietly a little dismayed with Ringo's opinion, or maybe that he has to put up with it.
• George tells John he wants to do an album of just his own songs, to see "what they all sound like together".  George winds up doing none of his songs on that roof.

But there are many beautiful moments to be treasured in the footage before the concert:

• George Harrison comes over to Ringo to help him write his song "Octopus's Garden".  It's a wonderful, redeeming moment.
• And then George Martin gets interested in the song.  Soon we see John on drums on the song.  In previous parts, we saw Paul and George on Ringo's drums.  In an interview conducted much more recently, Ringo lamented that every time he stepped out for a cup of tea, he'd return to find someone else in The Beatles on his drums.  But it's all endearing,
• Great jamming with Linda's daughter Heather in the studio, and it's great to see how each of The Beatles relate to her.
• Paul really groovin' and enjoying working on one of George's songs.
• George Harrison telling John he took John's advice, given some ten years earlier, that when you start writing a song, you should stay up and finish it.

So there was lots of love and good energy between the Beatles, even with all the problems, and the rooftop concert was magnificent.  So why didn't they stay together?  There's clearly even more to the story than Peter Jackson showed us in his documentary.  But watching it changed my perspective on The Beatles forever, largely for the better, and I'll be forever grateful Peter Jackson made it.

And here's "It's Real Life" -- free alternate history short story about The Beatles, made into a radio play and audiobook and winner of The Mary Shelley Award 2023

See also The Beatles: Get Back, Part 1: Soul Touching Anecdotes and  The Beatles: Get Back, Part 2: Back from the Threshold and my review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles and A Vote for McCartney (my very first published article, in The Village Voice, 1971)

The Beatles: Get Back, Part 2: Back from the Threshold

A very different kind of feeling and (true) story in Part 2 of Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back documentary.  Up from the doldrums, George Harrison is back, Billy Preston joins them, and the sound and the ambience is often heady and exhilarating.

It's almost as if Twickenham, where the first part of the month of January 1969, and therefore the first part of Jackson's movie, took place, was infected by some kind of mold that put everyone on edge and made them depressed.  In the new Apple Studios, the Beatles are transformed.

Billy Preston, who joins them, is justly given at least some of the credit by the Beatles themselves.  But the four were also getting along together much better, and beginning to gel, even before Preston arrived.  Lennon blossoms with  "I Dig a Pony" and in fact every song written by him or McCartney or Harrison that he sings and plays.   Preston does add his inimitable smile and just-right keyboard.  Harrison takes an active role in arranging McCartney's "Get Back".  The performances are punctuated not by complaining but joking, mostly Lennon's, with McCartney more than willing to jump in, and Harrison appreciatively laughing.  Ringo is always in a good mood, except when he's sleeping.

All of this feels for all the world like this just happened, that what we're seeing on the screen took place just last week.  This has to be a testament to Peter Jackson and all the people and the magic he and they brought to this documentary.  It felt like a time portal, to a place where all the Beatles were alive and young.

But all's not completely well.  The disagreements that nearly tore the group apart at Twickenham are not gone, merely receded.  Early in the episode, back at Twickenham, Paul and John have an on-camera conversation.  Paul wants more planning, more organization, in their work.  John responds with lines from Beatles songs, clever in themselves, sarcastic in this context.  (To some extent, I've always thought that bands are bound to fall apart, because they violate the very egos that make the band members join the band in the first place.) Near the end of this episode, we find McCartney once again discontented.  It's not about how George isn't getting it right.  It's McCartney's wish to end this now productive time for the Beatles not with just another album, but some kind of memorable event .

The people working for and supporting and often thinking for the Beatles come up with a solution: a rooftop performance on top of their Apple Studios.   But this brings us to the door of Part 3, which I'll watch and review right here tomorrow.

And here's "It's Real Life" -- free alternate history short story about The Beatles, made into a radio play and audiobook and winner of The Mary Shelley Award 2023

See also The Beatles, Part 1: Soul Touching Anecdotes and The Beatles: Get Back, Part 3: Up on the Roof ...  my review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles and A Vote for McCartney (my very first published article, in The Village Voice, 1971)

The Beatles: Get Back, Part 1: Soul Touching Anecdotes

I started watching Get Back with the absolute knowledge that The Beatles were and are one of the best things in my life, and easily THE best thing musically.   For the past few years, I've listened to them about as much as to MSNBC on Sirius XM radio, which is to say, any and all the time I'm in the car driving by myself (see The Omnipotent Ear).  Their arrival in the United States in 1964 coincided with my first serious girlfriend, Barbara (we met when she came to hear my doo-wop group sing at a Y on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx).  By January 1969, the time we see the Beatles in the studio in Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back, I was with Tina, who became my wife.  We're still happily married, with wonderful children and grandchildren.

So The Beatles in general, and Peter Jackson's documentary, are that central and important to my life.  Masterpiece is not quite the right word for it, because experiencing the first part of this movie was more than that, deeply personal.  But I will say that this documentary -- or, at this point, Part 1-- is brilliantly made.  The rapid history of how The Beatles got to 1969, with words on the screen in an almost silent movie kind of style, worked perfectly.  The two hours thirty something minutes flew by.  Here are some moments that especially impressed, even touched my soul:

• George compliments Paul on his beard.  This happens at the beginning of the movie -- that is, early on in the first seven days which are the timeline of Part 1.  That's about the happiest interaction between Paul and George in this part of the movie, which is surprising, given that the movie has been billed as spotlighting the joy which was cut of out everything we saw and heard back in 1969 about The Beatles. But Paul is quietly relentless in his disparagement of George, ranging from his well-known plea to George to keep it "simple," to complaining that he can't hear himself sing with George playing, to just the expressions on Paul's face.  None of George's songs at this point in the movie are taken very seriously, with the partial exception of  "All Things Must Pass," which didn't make it into The Beatles' new album, anyway. In a word, though I'll always be a champion of Paul and his extraordinary talent, Jackson's movie makes me think that George had every right to be angry.
• John suggests changing "wind" to "mind" in George's "All Things Must Pass" ("a mind can blow the clouds away").   By 1969, Lennon's leadership of the band had clearly given way to Paul's.  But his incisive, sparkling mind was as sharp as ever.  It looks in the movie like he's looking at the lyric sheet, when he says something along the lines of "mind" being almost the same word as "wind".  Marshall McLuhan would've loved the visual/acoustic written/verbal interplay.
• "Get Back" (the song) semi-seriously considered to be and developed into a protest song.  There was a wave of fascistic anti-immigration fervor in England in 1968-1969 -- something we know all too well via Trump here in the United States in the past few years -- and Paul and John toy with pitching the song as a satire critique of what the right wing was calling on the Pakistanis who came to England to do.
• Ringo, watching and hearing Paul play the piano, says he could listen to that all day.  One of sweetest, most heartwarming moments of the movie.
• Yoko and Linda talking and laughing.  Shatters some of myths of Yoko and The Beatles, and also heartwarming.
• The joy on Mal Evan's face every time he plays the hammer in "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" -- he's just thrilled to actually play even this smart part in a Beatles' performance. I can understand how he feels, completely.
• The sheer abundance of Paul's contribution is just incandescent magnificent:  In addition to "Silver Hammer" and "Get Back," we get clips of "Let It Be," "Long and Winding Road," "Two of Us," even "Another Day" (which, like George's "All Things Must Pass," never made it to The Beatles album we see under preparation).

Back to George:  As I said, I don't blame him for being hurt and angry.  I can't quite say the same about his leaving The Beatles, which closes out Part 1 of this life-changing documentary. But, all right -- I'm going to post this, then do a podcast about it, then watch Part 2 of this movie, and I'll be back again.

And here's the podcast:

And here's "It's Real Life" -- free alternate history short story about The Beatles, made into a radio play and audiobook and winner of The Mary Shelley Award 2023 ... and expanded into a novel

See also The Beatles: Get Back, Part 2: Back from the Threshold and The Beatles: Get Back, Part 3: Up On the Roof and  my review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles and A Vote for McCartney (my very first published article, in The Village Voice, 1971)

here is one of the songs I sang with my doo-wop group, The Transits, in early 1964

If This Doesn't Put You in a Good Mood, I Don't Know What Will (Sneak Peak at Peter Jackson's Get Back)

 
the best part starts around 2min39sec...

Jeff Lynne's ELO at the Prudential Center

There are few groups who are almost as good as The Beatles (none are as good as them).  Jeff Lynne's ELO (Electric Light Orchestra) is one of those few. (I'm reminded of what John Lennon said about ELO in his 1974 interview by Dennis Elsas: "Son of Beatles"). Their string of hits through the 1970s into 1981 - "Can't Get It Out of My Head," "Evil Woman," "Strange Magic," "Livin' Thing," "Telephone Line," "Turn to Stone," "Sweet Talkin' Woman," "Don't Bring Me Down," and "Hold On Tight" are my favorites - are every bit as a good as part of the Beatles output (e.g., "Golden Slumbers," "You Never Give Your Money," etc), and this puts ELO in the rarefied company of the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones.

But Lynne after he left ELO also went on to do some extraordinary work.  He was a member of the Traveling Willburys supergroup with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty.  He produced and co-wrote (along with Petty) Orbison's "You Got It" (last record before his death).  He did the same for Petty's huge hits "I Won't Back Down" and "Free Falling".  And just to top it off, he produced Lennon's posthumous beauties with the Beatles, "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" (hey, here's the beginning of a reading I did at Readercon just this past Sunday of a new story I wrote about that song that's an alternate history Beatles tale).

Indeed, there was always something science fictional about ELO, with their other-worldly sounds, which is another reason I love their music.   Add to that Lynne's integration of media-theory themes into his lyrics - in "Telephone Line" and "Sweet Talkin' Woman" ("insufficient data coming through") - and how could I not be crazy their music?  It connects to my three greatest interests in popular culture - the Beatles, science fiction, and the impact of media.

I was really looking forward to Lynne's ELO concert last night, and my wife and I were not disappointed.  They played everyone of my favorite songs except "Strange Magic" and "Hold On Tight," and that's a pretty good hit list.  Lynne's still in fine voice - indeed, better than ever in "Can't Get It Out of My Head" and "Sweet Talkin' Woman" - and the performances and arrangements were top-notch.  "Sweet Talkin' Woman" (yeah, I've always especially loved that song) was replete with a cool electronically modulated "sweet talkin' woman" interspersed throughout the song, and Dhani Harrison (who did a good nine song opening set) singing his father's lead part in "Handle With Care," and Ian Hornal doing a fine rendition of the Orbison part.  (I did miss Rosie Vela, though, who was good in those year 2000 concerts.)

Few of the greats of the 60s, 70s, and even the 80s can put on a show like this any more.  Paul McCartney is a remarkable and unsurprising exception.  I would say that Jeff Lynne, in terms of the great songs he wrote, produced, and still performs in fine voice, is a very close second.  Right up where he belongs.   Catch him if you can.

Review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles 24 of 24: The Last Two

The title of this, my concluding review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles - concluding, at least, for now - refers not to the surviving members of the Beatles, or "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love," but to the last chapters in Sheffield's book.  I began reviewing this book here literally a year ago - May 23, 2017 - and have been taking my time enjoying this book, as I would with any masterpiece.

So let me begin this conclusion by saying, again, that Sheffield is one hell of a writer.  His very last line in the book is "The field is forever" - a play on Harrison's "Sorry we hurt your field, Mister" line in A Hard Day's Night, through to the Beatles leaving the field of their last in-person performance, all tied together, of course, with "Strawberry Fields Forever".  If you want a literary journey in which nearly every other line is packed with such intelligence, depth, and poetry, Dreaming the Beatles is for you.

As I usually but not always say - like most pain-in-the-ass reviewers (by which I mean that reviewers are intrinsically pains in the ass to writers, and I say this as someone who works or walks on both sides of that street) - but as I usually say in my reviews, I don't agree with everything Sheffield says.  "Yes It Is" in one of my all-time favorite songs - all-time favorite Beatles songs, all-time repeating few-minute segments of  my life.  It's had such a powerful effect on me that I gave it a key and crucial role at the end of my triple-nominated Loose Ends time-travel novella ("Real Love" figures later on in The Loose Ends Saga).   For me, "Yes It Is" is about Lennon telling this girl not to wear red, because a girl that Lennon deeply loved, who left Lennon, and shattered his heart, wore that same shade.   I suppose the girl could be literally dead, and that's why she's no longer part of Lennon's life, but I don't see why Sheffield presents that as the de facto interpretation.

But small potatoes, as far as objections from me about this wonderful book are concerned, because it also has throwaway lines like "I would not have wasted any sympathy on Kevin Kline if I knew he'd marry Phoebe Cates" all over the place.   And the main thesis of these last two chapters - that the Beatles truly came into their own not in the 1960s but in the 1990s, or three decades after the group disbanded, was not only true a year ago, when I began reading and reviewing this book, but is even more true today, with music playing on The Beatles Channel on Sirius XM Radio every minute of every day (I've refrained from saying eight days a week - though I guess by mentioning that refrain, I actually didn't refrain).

I've mentioned how hearing the Beatles every day, in every way, has lifted my existence - which was pretty high already - this past year, and how that experience was enhanced by shows like Peter Asher's and Dennis Elsas's on The Beatles Channel, as well reading Sheffield's book.  My one big regret in finishing this book is that I won't have it any more - at least, not for the first time - to read along with listening to the Beatles on Sirius XM.  ("For the first time" ... reminds me of an especially memorable passage in Dreaming the Beatles, earlier in the book, where Sheffield remarks how Cynthia must have felt when she heard John singing he was "in love for the first time" about Yoko in "Don't Let Me Down," which I heard just the other day on The Beatles Channel.)

But I will be able to dip into relevant portions of this book - on just about every page - whenever I like.  And I was delighted to see on Sheffield's Facebook page just yesterday that he's becoming a paperback writer for the book (see, punning on the Beatles the way Sheffield does is catching) - meaning, a new paperback edition, with some new material, will be published next month, in June!

So I'll no doubt be back here with a review of that, sometime in late June.  Also - I'll be putting together a single text with all 24 of my reviews, and posting it on my Academia page, and also a podcast in which you can hear me read these reviews out loud (no doubt with some embellishments, including me singing a line or two from who knows how many Beatles songs).   I'll post links to all that here.

Until then - thanks again Rob Sheffield, for creating an essential and marvelous component in the clearly continuing story of the Beatles.

See also Review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles 1 of X: The Love Affair ... 2 of X: The Heroine with a Thousand Faces ... 3 of X: Dear Beatles ... 4 of X: Paradox George ... 5 of X: The Power of Yeah ... 6 of X: The Case for Ringo ... 7 of X: Anatomy of a Ride ... 8 of X: Rubber Soul on July 4 ... 9 of X: Covers ... 10 of X: I. A. Richards ... 11 of X: Underrated Revolver ... 12 of X: Sgt. Pepper ... 13 of X: Beatles vs. Stones ... 14 of X: Unending 60s ... 15 of x: Voting for McCartney, Again ... 16 of x: "I'm in Love, with Marsha Cup" ... 17 of X: The Split ... 18 of X: "Absolute Elsewhere" ... 19 of X: (Unnecessary but Brilliant) Defense of McCartney ... 20 of X: "All Things Must Pass" ... 21 of X: Resistance ... 22: The 70s Till the End ... 23: Near the Science Fiction Shop

And here's "It's Real Life" -- free alternate history short story about The Beatles, made into a radio play and audiobook and winner of The Mary Shelley Award 2023

Review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles 20 of X: "All Things Must Pass"

What better way to conclude the year than with a review of the next section of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles, which has accompanied me for more than half a year now, as I read the book bit by bit, with still more to follow, I'm glad to say, in 2018.  This is the case - what better way - even though we're knocking on the door of the saddest part of the story, and indeed are already there.

Sheffield presents a grimmer than usual portrait of George Harrison in 1970s, after the Beatles disbanded.  He's dissolute, unable to hit his notes or remember his lyrics, verbally happy about the breakup but ravaged by cocaine and booze.  I knew none of this in the 70s.  I was beginning to pull away from music by the middle of the decade, and wouldn't regain my daily proximity until, well ... this very year, and the coming of the Beatles Channel on Sirius XM Radio (not just the music but priceless I-was-there commentary by Peter Asher on his "From Me To You" and his commentary of the listener-voted Top 100 show, where I learned, for example, that the "cool bendy guitar" work on "Ticket to Ride" was by Paul not George) all stoked by Sheffield's book.

I'd heard "All Things Must Pass" in the 1970s, but didn't recognize it for what it was until 2008, when I was finishing up the first edition of New New Media, and chose "All Things Must Pass" as, ironically, a perfect example of the immortality of music on YouTube, or of some great things never passing.

Sheffield cites someone who says "All Things Must Pass" is the "wisest" song the Beatles never included on an album (they decided not include it on Let It Be).  He agrees, and judges it one of the very best of the Beatles songs released to the world after the group broke up.  I'd agree, and would go a little further.

First, along with "Taxman" and "My Guitar Gently Weeps," I think "All Things Must Pass" is among the best Beatle songs ever written by members of the group during and after they were together.  The lyric is in a class by itself, and couldn't have been written by Lennon or McCartney, or by Lennon and McCartney, either.  If Harrison was significantly responsible for the Beatles, in his way as much as Lennon or McCartney, "All Things Must Pass," with its wisdom, sensitivity, and cutting edge, tells us why.  It is at least as extraordinary as the closest Lennon and McCartney songs in theme, which I guess would be "Across the Universe," "Long and Winding Road," and "Two of Us".

Ironically but indicatively, the best performance of "All Things Must Pass" now on video is at the George 2002 memorial concert, and is sung just perfectly by Paul. (And, of course, I can't now find this video on YouTube - here it is on Vimeo.) (If your soul doesn't get choked up watching this video, you're not fully human.) The song indeed passed, but unto another Beatle, and therein the future at large, and humanity both here and now on Planet Earth and in the future in the stars.

Happy New Year everyone - I'll see you here next year, very soon, with more reviews of this superb book.

See also Review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles 1 of X: The Love Affair ... 2 of X: The Heroine with a Thousand Faces ... 3 of X: Dear Beatles ... 4 of X: Paradox George ... 5 of X: The Power of Yeah ... 6 of X: The Case for Ringo ... 7 of X: Anatomy of a Ride ... 8 of X: Rubber Soul on July 4 ... 9 of X: Covers ... 10 of X: I. A. Richards ... 11 of X: Underrated Revolver ... 12 of X: Sgt. Pepper ... 13 of X: Beatles vs. Stones ... 14 of X: Unending 60s ... 15 of x: Voting for McCartney, Again ... 16 of x: "I'm in Love, with Marsha Cup" ... 17 of X: The Split ... 18 of X: "Absolute Elsewhere" ... 19 of X: (Unnecessary but Brilliant) Defense of McCartney ... 21 of X: Resistance ... 22: The 70s Till the End ... 23: Near the Science Fiction Shop ... 24 of 24: The Last Two

And here's "It's Real Life" -- free alternate history short story about The Beatles, made into a radio play and audiobook and winner of The Mary Shelley Award 2023

 
lots of Beatles in this time travel

Eight Days a Week: A Crucial Piece of the Story

Having listened to the Beatles Channel on Sirius XM Radio every day since the glorious day it debuted back in May, having read a chapter or two of Rob Sheffield's wonderful Dreaming the Beatles on some of those days, too, I'm surprised it took me so long to see Ron Howard's documentary Eight Days a Week on Hulu, where it's been playing since September.

I'd heard of it, but I'm doing so many things, I forgot to check when it would be screenable.  And, actually, it was hearing Dennis Elsas talk about it on his Fab Fourum this past week - which I listen to on the Beatles Channel, along with Peter Asher's From Me to You, just about every week - that made me realize, hey, this movie has been on Hulu for a good few months now.

It's an impressive work, which provides crucial insight, an almost visceral explanation, of what the Beatles got out of touring in the first place - the incredible energy and ratification they got back from their audiences, a reflection of what they were giving out - and why they decided to end it, in favor of devoting all their energies to recording, with Sgt. Pepper being the result.  I never attended any of those fabled concerts in the 1960s, but my wife and I had great seats at Paul McCartney's concert in the Nassau Coliseum in September, and got a great dose of that energy, still astonishing and inspiring, in 2017.

The personalities of the four Beatles, which we already knew, also come through in the movie, and expand what we know of them.  The humor of George Harrison, the discomfort of Paul and John at John's statement that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, the dynamo of Ringo's drumming, are all things I didn't quite realize before I saw the movie.  The consummate musicianship of the four, who play tight as a drum, with perfect harmony, in concerts at stadiums with thousands of people cheering so the Beatles could hardly hear one another, comes through beautifully in every song.

The documentary also has some nice minor touches, like Larry Kane, who toured with the Beatles in the 1960s, and my wife and I got to watch as an Eyewitness News anchor in New York City in the late 1970s.  I would've liked to see at least a little more of the Beatles' wives and girlfriends, but, hey, that could be another documentary in itself.

All in all, Eight Days a Week provides another piece of our understanding of a musical group not only the most extraordinary in our lifetime, but, as the movie implies, in the history of humanity.

Review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming The Beatles 9 of X: Covers

Rob Sheffield sticks in an "Instrumental Break" of a chapter about a third-way through his exceptional Dreaming The Beatles, about covers of Beatles songs and other recordings that for one reason or another bear strong influences of Beatles music.

Confession: I don't like covers.  I can't think of even a single example in which I liked a cover of a recording better than an original that I loved or even liked a lot.  (Ok, I guess one example - Carl Carlton's 1974 version of "Everlasting Love" was better than Robert Knight's 1967 original, but that's just one lone example.) This is what I've called the "first love syndrome" at work - when there is more than one version of a creative work afoot, we like best what we came to love first.

If you think this is too obvious to call a syndrome, consider this: I once ran into someone at a science fiction convention who told me his favorite Star Trek narrative on screen was the first Star Trek movie, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, so generally disliked that it's been called Star Trek: The Motion Sickness.  We had this conversation well after Star Trek: The Original Series and The Next Generation had made their impact.  I asked this guy if he had seen them.  He said yes, but he didn't think that either measured up to the movie.  He then offered that his first Star Trek experience had been that first motion picture.  Q.E.D the first love syndrome.

So, though I guess it would be instructive to speak to someone who heard a cover of a Beatles recording prior to the Beatles recording, for me the question is always how much did the cover ruin an original that I loved.   Whether it's Tony Bennett or a garage band, I'd always rather hear the Beatles.   When Sirius XM's Beatles channel plays another artist's interpretation of the Beatles, I always take that time to catch up with some Trump atrocity on MSNBC.

But Beatles influences on other artists are a lot different than covers, and Sheffield's mention of Dylan's "I Want You" and "Just Like A Woman" as influenced by Rubber Soul is one of the delights of this chapter and the book as a whole.  I also watch Prince's beyond breathtaking guitar work on "As My Guitar Gently Weeps" in the Hall of Fame George tribute concert at least once a month on YouTube - it's far and away the best guitar solo I've ever seen and heard -- and I was glad to see Sheffield discuss that, too.

Actual collaboration is another facet of this chapter, and I always found Lennon's work with David Bowie so noteworthy that I actually wrote a whole novelette in which that figures  - Ian, Isaac, and John.

And I'll be back with more pretty soon.

See also Review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles 1 of X: The Love Affair ... 2 of X: The Heroine with a Thousand Faces ... 3 of X: Dear Beatles ... 4 of X: Paradox George ... 5 of X: The Power of Yeah ... 6 of X: The Case for Ringo ... 7 of X: Anatomy of a Ride ... 8 of X: Rubber Soul on July 4 ... 10 of X: I. A. Richards ... 11 of X: Underrated Revolver ... 12 of X: Sgt. Pepper ... 13 of X: Beatles vs. Stones ... 14 of X: Unending 60s ... 15 of X: Voting for McCartney ... 16 of X: "I'm A Loser" ... 17 of X: The Split ... 18 of X: "Absolute Elsewhere" ... 19 of X: (Unnecessary but Brilliant) Defense of McCartney ... 20 of X: "All Things Must Pass" ... 21 of X: Resistance ... 22: The 70s Till the End ... 23: Near the Science Fiction Shop ... 24 of 24: The Last Two

And here's "It's Real Life" -- free alternate history short story about The Beatles, made into a radio play and audiobook and winner of The Mary Shelley Award 2023