Beatles thread

[cripes]

New to me--



I previously only had a 27 second snippet of the tape from the day that John met Paulie. Here is a bit of an upgrade:

Puttin' On The Style (1:44 minute clip!)

Baby Let's Play House


The original Lonnie Donnegan version of Puttin' On The Style

[Steve]

2 Members, 0 Guests, 1 Invisible User. Most users online was 13, Today at 8:55pm


13 people,how is that possible?

[manho]

The lost boys

Jon Savage threads together the extraordinary lives of Brian Epstein, Joe Orton and Joe Meek - three men persecuted for their homosexuality who died in 1967 - the year the stigma was supposed to be lifted
Jon Savage
Thursday August 30, 2007
Guardian

Just over 40 years ago the Sexual Offences bill received Royal Assent and became an act of law. In overturning the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 - the "blackmailer's charter" - the Sexual Offences Act substantially decriminalised homosexual acts and allowed gay men some freedom to live their lives openly and without fear. However, for three high-achieving and, in their own way, extraordinary, British gay men, 1967 marked the end, not a beginning.

The outline of their deaths is well documented. On February 3 1967, the independent record producer Joe Meek killed his landlady, Violet Shenton, before turning the shotgun on himself. On August 9, the hottest new British playwright of his generation, Joe Orton, was murdered by his companion, Kenneth Halliwell. On August 27, the body of the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein was found after an accidental overdose of a prescribed sleeping pill.

Within the still small, incestuous world of London's entertainment industry, the three had links that went beyond the year of their deaths. During 1966, Meek had meetings with Epstein about managing Liverpool's the Cryin' Shames, whose wracked ballad, Please Stay, was Meek's last top 30 hit. In early 1967, Joe Orton had been sounded out about writing the script for the Beatles' third United Artists movie - provisionally entitled Up Against It.

However, they shared more than professional interests. All three were born within five years of each other: Meek in 1929, Orton in 1933, Epstein in 1934. All turned 21 in the early to mid-50s, a time when homosexuality became the number one enemy within - associated not only with perversion, but, thanks to the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean, the dreaded spectre of communism.

The eventual passing of the SOA - in the teeth of some manic parliamentary opposition - marked well over a decade of campaigning that began out of this extreme prejudice. The process began with the September 1957 publication of the report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution. The Wolfenden Report, as it was better known, recommended a change in the law for both humanitarian and practical reasons, while observing that the authorities should not concern themselves with private acts.

To commemorate this 50-year anniversary, BBC4 is running a week of programmes that aim to shed light on the hidden lives that most gay men were forced to live before 1967. For, despite its liberalising provisions, the SOA didn't overturn decades of extreme prejudice overnight: there would be no magical rebirth for many gay men who had borne the brunt of tabloid hostility, draconian sentencing, and the tender ministrations of blackmailers and police provocateurs.

During the early 50s, there was a major crackdown on male homosexuality in Britain. Though there is no definitive evidence for an anti-communist witch-hunt, some of this could have come from the establishment wish to assert a restrictive normality after the social upheavals of the second world war, with the police casting themselves as the guardians of a traditional morality.

The highest profile case of that period was the joint trial of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Michael Pitt-Rivers and Peter Wildeblood in early 1954. Convicted of sexual offences with two young airmen, Montagu was jailed for a year, the other two for 18 months. Incensed by his treatment, Wildebood, a journalist, wrote a campaigning biography, Against the Law, which on its publication in 1955 helped to crystallise opinion against the harsh application of sexual offence laws.

Partly as a result of the publicity that the Montagu case received, the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution had already been set up in the summer of 1954. Refuting the standard slurs then used against homosexual men (paedophilia, the destruction of family life etc), the report caused a stir on its publication in September 1957: well ahead of public opinion, it marked a sea change in attitudes towards male homosexuality.

Three months earlier, Epstein had found himself in big trouble. Arrested in April 1957 for "persistent importuning" by a police provocateur in a Swiss Cottage toilet, he was devastated. As he wrote at the time, "the damage, the lying criminal methods of the police in importuning me and consequently capturing me leaves me cold, stunned and finished".

The handwritten, impassioned document for his defence makes for fascinating reading. In his turmoil, Epstein had "believed that my own will-power was the best thing with which to overcome my homosexuality." At the same time, it gave him a wider understanding of what it was to be an outcast: "I feel deeply because I have always felt deeply for the persecuted, the Jews, the coloured people, for the old and society's misfits."

It was this realisation of his marginality that led Epstein away from a conventional career path into pop management. In late 1961, he found an outlet for his visions in a scruffy group that nobody wanted. Divining the Beatles' world-beating quality, he spent much of early 1962 - while they were struggling to get a record contract - telling anyone who would listen that they would be bigger than Elvis. He was not taken seriously.

Epstein avoided prison, despite this and other dangerous encounters, but Joe Orton did not. In April 1962, while still struggling writers, both he and Halliwell received a six-month prison sentence for stealing and defacing library books (which they then returned: their inspired and witty collages could now be considered high-concept art). Orton was certain that the sentence was passed "because we were queers".

For Halliwell, prison was a crushing blow, but it honed Orton's prose: "Being in the nick brought detachment into my writing," he said in 1964. Within a year of his release, he received his first commission when The Boy Hairdresser was accepted by the BBC Third Programme. In September 1963, he began a new, full-length play designed as a full-blown attack on British society, that "old whore" which had lifted up her foul-smelling skirts.

While Orton was writing Entertaining Mr Sloane, Joe Meek found himself in deep trouble. On November 11 1963, he was caught in a public toilet just off the Holloway Road and charged with "persistently importuning". He was fined, but his real punishment did not occur until the next day, when he was named and shamed on the front page of the Evening News as The Man Who Wrote Telstar. He became the target of blackmailers.

The arrest happened at a critical time for Meek. In the early 60s, he had built himself up into Britain's foremost independent record producer with elemental melodramas like John Leyton's Johnny Remember Me and Wild Wind. In the last quarter of 1962, he hit paydirt with the Tornados' Telstar, No 1 in both the US and the UK, which gave a melody to the media age. However, the onset of the beat boom meant that he was becoming passe. The Beatles, not the Tornados, were at No 1 at the end of 1963.

Meek continued to fight the odds. His last big hit came in 1964 with the Honeycombs' stomping Have I the Right - an oblique comment on his own blocked sexual and emotional fulfilment. In August 1966, he went public with his homosexuality in Do You Come Here Often, a Tornados B-side. This extraordinary slice of 60s gay life was among his very last releases.

For all their unprecedented freedoms, however, the 60s could not wipe away the past. All three of these major cultural innovators were scarred by what they had gone through in the early 1950s, when to be homosexual meant that you were the lowest of the low. All three had suffered violence, prejudice, and the bullying attention of Laura Norder. Out of this adversity, however, came a ferocious drive.

This is the syndrome known as gay over-achievement, an incandescent thirst for revenge - right, if you think I'm a piece of dirt, I'm going to show you and the world that I'm not. In fact, I'm going to do more than show you that I'm not a piece of dirt, I'm going to ram the fact that I'm better than you right down your throat. In public. So you have to see the fact that I am richer, cleverer, prettier than you every day, in the newspapers, in the magazines, on the television. So you can choke on your dirty words.

All three enacted this drive with incredible force, as their experiences coloured their visionary sensibilities. Meek expanded the possibilities of recorded sound in a series of records that remain perfect distillations of teenage angst. Between 1964 and 1967, Joe Orton wrote five plays and three television screenplays and transformed British theatre with a new farcical language that combined camp's caustic cadences with stylised naturalism. In January 1967, Loot was awarded an award for the best play of the year.

In the five years before his death, Brian Epstein saw his visions come true. Under his sympathetic guidance, the no-hoper Beatles became the biggest pop stars in the world. Unlike Elvis, they did not settle into mediocrity but changed the possibilities of pop forever by growing artistically and spiritually. The release of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in June 1967 was the pinnacle of their extraordinary career: as Brian Epstein had foreseen, they remain the biggest showbusiness story of the 20th century.

Despite their achievements, all three found that success didn't eradicate the deep scars of exile. They had got to the top, and, for Meek and Epstein at least, it was a barren plateau. Drugs and sex - for Orton, lust was "an emotion indistinguishable from anger" - might have filled the hole, but they were never enough. If there was an underlying message to the 60s' careening momentum, it was that rage could turn inwards to self-destruction.

The shocking thing about Joe Meek's lethal self-hatred is how many gay men of his generation shared the impulse. In his diary for March 11 1967, Joe Orton wrote about a conversation he had with his friend Kenneth Williams, by then a national figure in the UK for his appearances in the Carry On series of films. Orton found Williams "a horrible mess" sexually: "He mentions 'guilt' a lot in conversation."

Though Orton rejected Williams's sexual guilt as the holdover from a bygone era, he couldn't escape his older partner, Kenneth Halliwell. The more that Orton flaunted his promiscuity in the diary entries and revelled in his success, the more depressed Halliwell became. On August 9 1967, his resentments exploded in a spasm of shocking violence.

In turn, Epstein's mental state had deteriorated since August 1966, after the Beatles' stopped touring: he hadn't been able to attend their last ever show at San Francisco's Candlestick Park because his then boyfriend, a hustler called Diz Gillespie, had robbed him of money and valuable documents. According to his attorney and close friend Nat Weiss, that accounted for "his first major depression, the start of his loss of confidence".

At the very moment that homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK, the No 1 record was the Beatles' All You Need Is Love - the recording of which had marked Brian Epstein's last ever public appearance with the group. Just when Britain began to savour the new freedoms that they had envisioned and help to bring about, Meek, Orton and Epstein succumbed to the actual or willed suicides that were one logical conclusion to the years that they had spent in the shadow. Stigmas can kill.

· Jon Savage is the writer of the Arena documentary The Brian Epstein Story, which is broadcast on September 6 as part of BBC4's Hidden Lives week. Savage's anthology of gay records from 1960 to 1978, Queer Noises: From the Closet to the Charts, is available on Trikont Records.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

[Some king]

I just put the first anthology on the ipod. Haven't listened to it in years, but man is it ever good.

[cripes]

Entertainment in general would be shit without blacks, Jews & homosexuals.

[dino]

The Beatles film 'Help!' is finally set for DVD release on October 29, Apple Corps announced today (September 4).

The 1965 feature film follows the Fab Four as they are chased round from London to the Austrian Alps to the Bahamas, after Ringo takes possession of a sacrificial ring.

The Richard Lester directed film features Beatles' hits 'Help! and 'Ticket To Ride' on it's soundtrack.

The double-disc DVD will feature Help! digitally restored, and with a newly created 5.1 enhanced soundtrack. The second disc will include exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of The Beatles on the film set, as well as a documentary about the restoration process of the 60s film.

[david]

Does anybody watch those documentaries that come as "special features" on dvds? I'd have to be really bored . . .

Help!, by the way, is a very underrated movie.

[dino]

never... i still have to listen to the last waltz or dont look back with the audio commentary on, go figure it...

[cripes]

Does anybody watch those documentaries that come as "special features" on dvds?

I do. Sometimes the extras are all I watch...it has to be a movie I really like. I recently watched the Tim Burton Ed Wood movie extras and commentary....I eat that shit up. A lot of times the commentary is super douchey (hello Pennebaker & Neuwirth!), but I usually enjoy it.

[dino]

on another great news, ringo is among the possible new ind. at the r'n'r hall of fame next year

[Some king]

The audio commentary on dont lok back is actually pretty good. I chalk it up to Neuwirth. The only other audio commentary I've ever listened to was on This is Spinal Tap, which is arguably better than the movie itself. Which is saying something.

[cripes]

The Don't Look Back commentary was actually ok. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the commentary on the new deluxe edition disc.

Neuwirth: So was that a mach 16 lens?
Pennebaker: Yes, it was.
Neuwirth: Great lens.

[Steve]

I have the Lord of The Rings expanded versions with all the trimmings. Never watched or listened to any of it.

[david]

I listen to the audio commentaries if they get the director to do it. But those "making of" documentaries which are really just long commercials . . . I'd rather spend the time watching a real movie.

The DLB deluxe edition commentary was worthless. The one on DLB was pretty good, though you have to watch for the bullshit. My fave bit is where Pennebaker goes into this long spiel about how his camera ran out of film during Hattie Carroll and now it turns out the whole performance was available . . .

[Some king]

So they had the same two guys do commentary for the same movie a second time? I did not know that. I just assumed it was the same from the version that was released 5 or 6 years ago.

[cripes]

'"Help!" will also be available in a boxed set with a reproduction of director Richard Lester's original script and a 60-page book with rare photos and production notes.'


(reaches for credit card) Goddammit!

Help!, by the way, is a very underrated movie.

I agree. It just looks so great on the screen. I think it stands up in a lot of ways that HDN doesn't.

[owen]

i usually get bored after a half an hour with commentaries...withnail and i was good tho.

"new help dvd"

dang, i only just went and forked out for a crusty old VHS version

[david]

>I agree. It just looks so great on the screen. I think it stands up in a lot of ways that HDN doesn't.

Well, I think HDN is a classic and holds up very well. It's just a brilliantly made film. This is a minority viewpoint, but there are people out there who agree without necessarily being Beatles fans. But Help! tends to get dismissed and I think it's because the surrealism of the humour just flew over the heads of the audiences and critics of its day. It's a very different type of film, but in its own way almost as good. Plus, the songs aren't too bad . . .

[cripes]

I wasn't poo pooing HDN really. I've seen the fucker so many times I'm kinda ruined. I'm looking forward to seeing Help (and Eleanor Bron--slurp slurp) again.

I never watched any of the James Bond movies growing up, but I saw one a while back and I saw so many bits that Help homaged (Is that a word?). I guess it was a dummy 'ah ha' moment for me.

[Some king]

I bought a bootleg copy of Help! when I was in San Fran a few years ago (Amoeba records strikes again.) I've definitely watched it more than AHDN. Not because it's any better, but it's just funny. I still think George Lucas stole the "not the one you're looking for" from the beginning of Help!

Leo McKern: Hello Bee-at-le!
Eleanor Bron: He is not the one you seek.
Paul: I'm not? (sighs sadly)
Eleanor Bron: No, unfortunately.

Replace Paul with Luke, Ahme with Obi Wan and Klang with whoever was chasing them in star wars and voila. The folk process at work.