One lunchtime in 1961 a young telephone engineer called Mal Evans took a different route back to work after eating his sandwiches at Liverpool’s Pier Head. Choosing a short cut down a back alley he heard what sounded like Elvis Presley music coming from a fruit cellar. Paying a shilling, he went down some steps… Continue reading…
God Only Knows Where AI will lead us next? (Daily Express, May 13, 2023)
A Beatle was singing God Only Knows on my phone the other night. No, I thought. That can’t be right. The Beatles never recorded God Only Knows. That must be the Beach Boys. But having been listening to the voice of Paul McCartney for the best part of sixty years, I know Macca when… Continue reading…
Yoko Ono at 90 (Mail on Sunday January 1, 2023)
Half a century ago Yoko Ono was probably the most vilified woman in the world. Believed by many to have been responsible for the break-up of the Beatles, she had, it was thought, ruined everything. Who does she think she is, was a widespread attitude, and not only among Beatles fans. This strange, zany, Japanese,… Continue reading…
The Last Days Of The Beatles
Daily Mail – 2.2.19 When Paul McCartney announced in April 1970 that he had no plans for working with the Beatles the world fell in on him. ‘PAUL QUITS BEATLES,’ ran newspaper headlines around the world. And, overnight, the most popular of the four was demonised as the killer of the most loved entertainment attraction… Continue reading…
John Lennon, Yoko and Me
Sunday Times Magazine, December 9, 2018 One afternoon I was sitting with John Lennon in the kitchen at his Tittenhurst Park home in Berkshire when he asked me if I’d written his obituary yet. It was 1970, and amused, at the very idea of an obituary, when neither of us had yet reached thirty, I… Continue reading…
When the Lunatic Beatles Took Over The Asylum
November 9, 2018 When it comes to rock music, events of half a century ago are almost ancient history. So, we can imagine the thrill that Giles Martin, the son of record producer George Martin, must have got, when he received a parcel from Olivia Harrison, widow of George Harrison, and found inside a collection… Continue reading…
Macca at the Cavern
Daily Mail, July 2018 The place won’t have looked the same, that’s for sure. Not the way it did when Paul made his debut at the Cavern with the Beatles at lunchtime on February 21, 1961. It can’t, because it isn’t the same. It isn’t even in the same place – the original Cavern having… Continue reading…
Paul McCartney Gets Back to Liverpool
Daily Mail 23.6.18 When Paul McCartney was a teenage boy dreaming of greatness he would sit on the loo in his father’s council house on a Liverpool estate, play his guitar and sing. With that slight bathroom echo of lino and tiles, the room had the best acoustic in the house. From an early age… Continue reading…
The Beatles Go To India
Daily Mail 6.4.18 When the Beatles set off for India in February 1968, they left behind a degree of bemusement and even ridicule among many of their fans. Why on earth were the four most famous young men in the world going off to an ashram in the Himalayas to study something called ‘transcendental meditation’?… Continue reading…
Sgt. Pepper – Beatles Masterpiece or Sacred Cow?
Daily Mail 27.5.17 You can hardly fail to have noticed that a rather special anniversary is to be celebrated next Thursday. With a festival in Liverpool, a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, several new documentary films on television, and, on the radio, a blizzard of nationwide reverence, earnest discussion and music it will be… Continue reading…
