Category Archives: Music
Philip Norman: George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle
Was George Harrison really the “Economy Beatle”? Philip Norman wrote Shout!, the first grown-up biography of The Beatles, shortly before John Lennon was murdered. People told him he was crazy, that The Fabs were yesterday’s news, that everybody already knew everything there was to know about the band. He wasn’t crazy. Fifty-three years after they broke up The Beatles are still an industry, or as Philip puts it, practically a religion. Even today there is passionate disagreement about George Harrison. There are those who point to the triumphant first solo album, All Things Must Pass, as proof that he was always Lennon and McCartney’s equal and was unfairly sidelined in … Continue reading
Neil Jordan – The Well Of Saint Nobody
Have you never forgotten someone you’ve slept with? Neil Jordan is best known as an internationally famous film director, of course – The Crying Game, Mona Lisa, Interview With The Vampire and many others. But he is also an accomplished novelist. The Well Of St Nobody is a story of legend, of music and eroticism, of consequences and of identity. “The girl who had walked her mother through those dry stone walls decorated with crutches was not the girl who had lost her virginity on the living-room floor of Tonglee Road; was not the girl who rattled out her Bach fugues in front of the Rachmaninov virtuoso…” The virtuoso is … Continue reading
Cathi Unsworth – Season Of The Witch: The Book Of Goth
Margaret Thatcher and Goth Culture It was the Age of Thatcher, and beyond the playgrounds of the red-braces wide boys and the Sloane Square privileged, it was grim. Unemployment was a weapon in the class war. The Yorkshire Ripper ran riot. Bitter industrial disputes divided communities, while the police was brutally remade into a national instrument to break the miners. And maybe you remember the pop music of the time: Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Madonna, Michael Jackson. Wham! But there was a more intense musical response to the wretchedness of the times, more intense and more appropriate. Punk had come to a sticky end, but it inspired a new generation … Continue reading
David Hepworth – Abbey Road: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Famous Recording Studio
David Hepworth – Bantam Press – £25 The world has many holy places – Mecca, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the Wetherspoons on King St in Hammersmith – but for some of us these are all trumped by Number 3 Abbey Rd in St John’s Wood. EMI’s Abbey Road recording studios. Even today musicians and bands – good bands – are sometimes intimidated by the sheer history of the place. To stand where the Beatles stood and sing where the Beatles sang is to feel the shadow of genius. And you might also rate Elgar, Noel Coward and Jacqueline du Pre. Not to mention Bernard … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural History, History, Music
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Philip Norman – Wild Thing: The short, spellbinding life of Jimi Hendrix
Philip Norman – Weidenfeld and Nicolson – £20 It is generally accepted that Jimi Hendrix is the most important guitarist in the history of rock music. In just four years he revolutionised everybody’s idea of what an electric guitar was capable of, set new standards for showmanship, and left a dazzling catalogue of recordings. Poster boy for the 27 Club (rock musicians who died at that age), Hendrix died in London fifty years ago. That anniversary prompted Philip Norman to add to his wonderful series of biographies of the greats. We joined Philip in his garden to talk about what Jimi Hendrix still means to us. http://media.blubrry.com/timhaighreadsbooks/bookspodcast.com/MP3s/green-shoot_philipnorman-jimihendrix_20200925.mp3Podcast: Play in new … Continue reading
Posted in Biography, Cultural History, Music
Tagged Guitar, Hero, Jimi Hendrix, Megastar
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Stephen Tow – London, Reign Over Me: How England’s Capital Built Classic Rock
Stephen Tow – Rowman and Littlefield £15.99 To have been young in London in the 1960’s must have been very heaven. At least if you had a yen to see live music in clubs and pubs and a dilapidated hotel on an island in the River Thames. The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, The Yardbirds, Cream, Pink Floyd… (stop me when it gets dizzying). The city was a musical crucible, taking American jazz and blues, English folk and whimsy, and a host of European influences, and transmuting them into the spun gold of classic rock, with a little help from art colleges and a couple of fellows named Marshall. … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural History, History, Music
Tagged Beatles, Cream, Eel Pie Island, London, Me, Over, Pink Floyd, Rign, Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Who, The Yardbirds
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Ray Connolly – Sorry, Boys, You Failed The Audition
Ray Connolly – Malignon £7.95 “I’d like to say Thank You on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we’ve passed the audition.” John Lennon on the roof of the Apple Building on January 30th 1969 at the end of the last public Beatles performance. It had been the Greatest Show on Earth, but what if it hadn’t happened? What if the Beatles had not passed the vital 1962 audition with George Martin at Parlophone which got them their recording deal? As well as being a friend of the Beatles, Ray Connolly is exactly contemporary with them, and comes from the same part of the world. He has … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural History, Fiction, Humour, Music
Tagged Beatles, George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ray Connolly, Ringo Star
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Ray Connolly – Being John Lennon
“Many people ask what are Beatles? Why Beatles? We will tell you. It came in a vision – a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them ‘From this day on you are Beatles with an ‘A’. Thank you, mister man, they said, thanking him.” So wrote John Lennon, shortly before he became the most famous man on the planet. And that’s all the background you’re getting. Tim is a self-confessed Beatles anorak. Many people have Chekhov’s Revolver on their mantelpiece, but only Tim has Stanislavski’s Sgt Pepper and Dostoevsky’s Rubber Soul as well. And he is only too delighted to delve into the minutiae of John Lennon’s … Continue reading
Posted in Biography, Cultural History, Music
Tagged John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ray Connolly, The Beatles, Yoko Ono
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Tom Kirkham – Pop Life
2016 was a bad year. Globally, it was the year of Brexit and was rounded off with a Trump! It was bad for pop music too: David Bowie had died in January. And then it seemed the heroes were rushing for the exit. Bowie was closely followed by Merle Haggard and Glen Frey (of the Eagles), and later in the year, Lemmy, Sir George Martin, Leonard Cohen, George Michael and a dozen others. And then on April 21st, Prince, died. On the personal level Tom Kirkham was already having a bad year. He was feeling his mental health wobbling. And Tom Idolised Prince. He was devastated. He felt the urgent need to … Continue reading
Posted in Biography, Cultural History, Humour, Music
Tagged bipolar, David Bowie, depression, George Martin, gig, gigs, Lemmy, Leonard Cohen, Mental health, music
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Philip Norman – Paul McCartney: The Biography
When Philip Norman published “Shout” in 1980, it quickly became and long remained the standard Beatles biography. It was noted at the time that there was a marked preference for Lennon over McCartney in that book and Philip was pretty much tagged anti-McCartney. In the years since then, he has reassessed his attitude and came to the conclusion that he had been unfair. McCartney, he now acknowledges, is colossally talented, nobody’s lightweight and is a better and more interesting man than he had been given credit for. As it happens, Tim didn’t pick up on the bias in “Shout!” because he shared it and, like Philip, has followed a parallel … Continue reading
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Alwyn W turner – The Last Post
No Man’s Land is already littered with books on the Great War, and there will be many more hurled into the fray, but not many of them will be as original as this thoughtful and engaging treatment by the historian Alwyn W Turner. Ostensibly a history of the bugle call that came to symbolise the honour of a military death, it ranges very much more widely, taking in all the main symbols of remembrance (all associated with the First War rather than the Second) and serves also as a history of the development of social attitudes towards the soldier, and of public opinion in locating the significance of war. http://media.blubrry.com/timhaighreadsbooks/www.bookspodcast.com/MP3s/green-shoot_thebookspodcast_alwynturner-thelastpost.mp3Podcast: … Continue reading
Philip Norman – Mick Jagger
Fifty years a star. Gracefulness incarnate. Irresistable to women. Vain and arrogant, perhaps, but with so much to boast of. But enough about Tim. Mick Jagger is by contrast an accountant. You think you know him. The drugs. Marianne Faithfull and the mars bar. The murder at Altamont. The parsimony. The priapism. The seven children with four different women. The ruthless wresting of control of the Rolling Stones from first Andrew Oldham, then Brian Jones, then Keith Richards. Jagger has lived his life in the public glare, and yet he remains an enigma. He never much liked doing drugs. He was a wonderful friend to both Brian and Keith. He … Continue reading
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