Tag Archive: George Harrison


How Beatle people conquered America

EIGHT DAYS A WEEK  directed by Ron Howard (USA, 2016)

beatlesAfter all that has been written, sung and spoken about The Beatles do we really need another feel good film looking at aspects of their meteoric rise and enduring appeal?

Of course we do!

As an official Apple Corps production you know in advance that this will be another adoring, at times superficial, look at how four young men from Liverpool conquered America and the world. Only the most cynical will complain about this.

I guess the time will come when someone will expose a darker side to this rags to riches story that surely exists. The backstabbing that came soon after the band split, notably in John Lennon’s spiteful ‘How Do You Sleep?’, illustrate that life with the Beatle people was not always so shiny and happy as it appeared. Continue reading

MERCURY REV live at The Bronson Club, Ravenna, Italy 14th November 2015

mercury revWhen the music’s over, life loses meaning.

In the immediate aftermath of the bloodshed in Paris, it was a relief that Mercury Rev decided to go ahead with this show in Ravenna, their only date in Italy.

“The music doesn’t stop. Maybe it’s the only thing we have now” says Jonathan Donahue at the beginning of a luminous concert which briefly makes the horrific events at Le Batacian seem like a fleeting nightmare.

It is a timely reminder that music has the power to excite, inspire and unite. When the news is dominated by death it gives us strength and hope. Continue reading

THE BEATLES’ MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR REVISITED  BBC Two.

Fabs MysteryOn this Arena special, it was good to get another chance to see the complete TV film of The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour. A  documentary, containing interviews and behind the scenes footage, was also illuminating in helping to put the film in a social and historical context.

The last time I saw the film in its entirety was when it was first broadcast (in black and white) on Boxing Day in 1967. I was just eight  years old at the time so had only a vague memory of it.

I was too young to pick up on all the LSD inspired images but old enough to realise that it had what one of the film’s extras describes as “disconnected shots of weird things”.

What I do vividly recall is the scene with a stripper while The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band are singing Death Cab For Cutie. The sight of bare breasts on a prime time TV slot at Christmas made a big impact on me.  My parents, who were also watching, were less impressed!

This is why I can endorse Ian Macdonald’s view, in his book Revolution In The Head, that: “Magical Mystery Tour marks the breakdown of the cross-generational consensus ………this is where parents began to part company with their sons and daughters over the group, rightly suspecting a drug-induced persuasion setting in” Continue reading

220px-runninhomepageAfter more than thirty years in the music business, I don’t begrudge Tom Petty the right to an epic documentary charting his career.

I would, however, challenge the implicit presumption that he is as important a figure as Bob Dylan or George Harrison, both of whom have been subject to similar films directed by Martin Scorsese.

Those movies, No Direction Home and Living In The Material World, lasted 208 minutes which Peter Bogdanovich trumps by thirty minutes.

As any reconstructed male will tell you, size isn’t everything and there is no good reason why Running Down A Dream should be so long. The story of the Heartbreakers’ roots as Mudcrutch and how the bond between musicians has remained so strong could have been told in half the time and would have made a much slicker and more interesting film portrait. Continue reading

GEORGE HARRISON: LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD – a film by Martin Scorsese (2011)

Martin Scorsese’s absorbing documentary made for HBO TV was co-produced by George Harrison’s widow, Olivia. I would suspect that she helped ensure that so much of the film is dedicated to her husband’s spiritual journey rather than getting sidetracked into his marital indiscretions.

Both she and Sir Paul McCartney are very protective/secretive about the sexual adventures of the ‘quiet Beatle’. They each refer to his relations with women in a very cryptic manner. McCartney says that he was a red-blooded male who liked what ‘normal’ men like, while she talks about overcoming “all those other things” that occasionally got in the way of their wedded bliss. She says that he had a special aura that women found irresistible and that when she is asked what the secret of staying married to someone like him is, she always replies “don’t get divorced”.

I wouldn’t want ,or expect, Martin Scorsese to hunt for dark secrets or dig around for some dirt, but in the course of a three hour movie I would have liked a slightly more rounded portrait. Continue reading