RAY CONNOLLY has written several novels, including SUNDAY MORNING and SHADOWS ON A WALL, the movies THAT'LL BE THE DAY and STARDUST, the television series LYTTON'S DIARY and PERFECT SCOUNDRELS and a biography of JOHN LENNON. He also worked with record producer SIR GEORGE MARTIN on the television series THE RHYTHM OF LIFE, and has written TV plays, films and documentaries, radio plays, short stories and much journalism. He is married and lives in London.
That'll Be The Day and Stardust
There's a very interesting article by Guardian writer John Harris in this month's Mojo on the writing and making of the movies That'll Be The Day and Stardust.
Paul McCartney and his mother Mary (Daily Mail, February, 2013)
We've all said things we've immediately and eternally regretted, and a sudden, thoughtless, inexplicable quip made when 14 year Paul McCartney was...
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On January 30th, 1969 John Lennon ended the Beatles' filmed concert on the roof of their Apple headquarters in London by joking: "Thank you very much. We hope we passed the audition". It was the last time the four would be seen playing together.
But what would have happened if six and a half years earlier, in June 1962, the Beatles hadn’t impressed at their all important last chance to sign a record deal at Parlophone?
What would the future have held for John, Paul, George and Ringo if producer George Martin had said "No"?
Half a century later, the short story, 'Sorry, Boys, You Failed The Audition' is the Sixties road the Beatles might have taken.
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On a fishing trip in the remote hills of Slovakia a small boy discovers a limousine lying at the bottom of a river. Inside are the bodies of two Hollywood film stars, a young movie director and a famous rock musician. Meanwhile, across the border in Poland, production on a new movie about Napoleon is tens of millions of dollar over-budget and the producer is missing.
'Without doubt the best movie story I have ever read. A brilliant mixture of irony, comedy and pathos.' Publishing News.
'Shadows On A Wall…never falters. This bitter-sweet comedy about the making of a movie epic kept me engaged through every scene, laughing here, worrying there, fascinated always by the absurdity and the reality of it all. Epic and massively entertaining.' National Public Radio.
'Darkly funny.' Seattle Times
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'Most books about the Beatles are by writers who never met them. I was a journalist and knew all of them, using my little Sony cassette machine to record interview after interview with them. This book contains many of those interviews.
'As a journalist I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time, John Lennon confiding in me that he'd left the band months before it became public knowledge, and Paul McCartney later asking me to interview him so that he could explain his side of the break up.
'Before that I'd been to Beatles' recording sessions, was a frequent Apple visitor, followed the Magical Mystery Tour around England and later was in the front row of George Harrison's concert for Bangla Desh in New York - while Ringo appeared in a movie I wrote called That'll Be The Day.'