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50s Rock, 60s Style
More YouTube treasures. Like most teenagers in the 1950s, the future Beatles were crazy for Rock 'n Roll, especially Elvis, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Carl Perkins and Chuck Berry; unlike most teenagers, they not only later had the chance to play and record cover versions of the songs they'd loved but to meet their idols and in some cases befriend them. (This worked out better in some cases than others.) Despite the sometimes quite different directions their own music took, they also never stopped, the surviving ones to this day, playing those 50s hits.
I'll started with George the neglected this time. Here he is with Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven":
The song given to Ringo on their first album was the Shirelles' "Boys". (Written by Luther Dixon and Wes Farrell, originally performed by The Shirelles; asked by Rolling Stone in 2005 whether they weren't worried about gay subtext when giving their drummer a "girls" song, Paul McCartney replied: "It's just a great song. I think that's one of the things about youth — you just don't give a shit. I love the innocence of those days."
One of the most famous covers the Beatles did was Twist and Shout, originally written by Phil Medley and Bert Russell and played by The Tops, which concludes the Please Please Me album and which they played on stage both before and after getting that record contract as a John vehicle. Here he's singing it as part of the Royal Variety Performance, preceding it with subsequently very famous quip to the audience:
If John had exclusive claim to "Twist and Shout", Paul had to any song performend (and in some cases written) by Little Richard (one of the very few American rock stars whom they'd actually seen on stage before becoming famous themselves; Little Richard did appear in Liverpool), notably "Long Tall Sally" and "Kansas City". Here's a concert rendition of Long Tall Sally:
Carl Perkins wasn't exclusive to anyone; all members of the group loved and performed his songs, and rather fittingly, later befriended and sang with the man himself. (Who even wrote a thank you song for one of them .)
George with "Everybody's Tryin To Be My Baby":
The one 1950s singer and composer who arguably had the biggest influence at least on John and Paul, if not the other two, was Buddy Holly. For starters because he wrote his own material, when the norm at least for white singers was still to have someone else write it. Secondly, he didn't look glamorous and even had glasses. For the always extremely short sighted John Lennon, who was deeply embarassed about having to wear glasses as a teenager, this was a revelation. (He still didn't wear glasses in public until 1967, but he wrote them around friends and during recordings.) Moreover, they assumed the name of his group - "Crickets" - was a clever pun ("cricket" as in the insect and the English game), which was inspiring (and didn't find out their error - that the English game wasn't referenced - until the 60s). The earliest recording we have of them as The Quarrymen includes a Buddy Holly song. As the Beatles, they only covered him once on record, in Beatles for Sale, Words of Love, but for my biased mind, it's one of the greatest Buddy Holly covers:
More Perkins and Holly to come later. First, though, two songs rather crucial to musical history, on July 6th 1957, aka the day John met Paul. The two times this particular encounter was recreated in biopics, In His Life: The John Lennon Story and Nowhere Boy , they had the respective actors sing just a few lines of the song Paul used to show off and impress John, Eddie Cochran's Twenty Flight Rock, but what impressed the otherwise disdainful of younger teenagers John L. was that this kid knew the entire song by heart (and could play actual guitar chords, which was more than the Quarrmen could, since John had learned banjo chords from his mother and the rest were just mates he'd cajoled into forming a group), and a long song it was, too. Here's Paul McCartney singing it in 2005:
Another song played that day by both of them in mutual showing off to impress each other was Be Bop A Lula, which they recorded much later, as solo artists. Some talented vidder did a mash up of their versions:
And thus we have arrived in the solo eras. Their devotion to Buddy Holly remained unbroken. (Also profitable for one of them. Paul owns the song catalogue these days.)
Here's John singing "Peggy Sue", "Not fade away", "Mailman, bring me no more blues", "Heartbeat / Peggy Sue got married" and and "Maybe baby"
Same era, mid-70s, Paul with Peggy Sue:
And in 1985 with Words of Love:
On a somewhat more out of there note, John serenading Yoko with "Rock Island Line" (by Kelly Pace) and a little Buddy Holly Medley of "Maybe Baby" and "Peggy Sue":
On to Carl Perkins, and it's time for George again, who got to play Blue Suede Shoes with the man himself:
While John (sporting his Abbey Road cover look) got to play it with Eric Clapton:
And Paul sang it in 1999 when finaly making it into the Rock'n Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist. Also with Eric Clapton, which unfortunately means he himself had no guitar in hand, which looks somewhat awkward (you can tell he's not used to singing without an instrument at hand, be it guitar or piano):
Speaking of a bit awkard. The Mike Douglas Show in 1972 had John and Yoko sing "Memphis" together with Chuck Berry. The result is, err, interesting.
Whereas the BBC comissioned a cover version of B.E. King's Stand By Me from John during his "Lost Weekend" (i.e. the 18 months temporary break up with Yoko), delivered chocolate as recompense, and got this as a result, complete with random greeting to his older son ("hello, Julian" mid-song):
Now let's go back to the start again. Elvis was of course their idol and the one who originally inspired the rock'n roll love in them, and they never quite lost their awe, even if their one and only encounter with him while they were still the Beatles, in the 1960s, was sort of awkward. Here George, in 1994, describes another encounter with Elvis to Paul and Ringo:
On that note, here's the Elvis song Lawdy Miss Clawdy sung by Paul in 1987:
The George, Paul and Ringo conversation is from Beatles Anthology, which is fully of gems. Here's the origin story yet again, this time with interviews and performances spliced together:
And near the very end, we get Paul and George perform the Milton Ager and Jack Yellen 1927 song Ain't she sweet. George plays ukulele.
I'll started with George the neglected this time. Here he is with Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven":
The song given to Ringo on their first album was the Shirelles' "Boys". (Written by Luther Dixon and Wes Farrell, originally performed by The Shirelles; asked by Rolling Stone in 2005 whether they weren't worried about gay subtext when giving their drummer a "girls" song, Paul McCartney replied: "It's just a great song. I think that's one of the things about youth — you just don't give a shit. I love the innocence of those days."
One of the most famous covers the Beatles did was Twist and Shout, originally written by Phil Medley and Bert Russell and played by The Tops, which concludes the Please Please Me album and which they played on stage both before and after getting that record contract as a John vehicle. Here he's singing it as part of the Royal Variety Performance, preceding it with subsequently very famous quip to the audience:
If John had exclusive claim to "Twist and Shout", Paul had to any song performend (and in some cases written) by Little Richard (one of the very few American rock stars whom they'd actually seen on stage before becoming famous themselves; Little Richard did appear in Liverpool), notably "Long Tall Sally" and "Kansas City". Here's a concert rendition of Long Tall Sally:
Carl Perkins wasn't exclusive to anyone; all members of the group loved and performed his songs, and rather fittingly, later befriended and sang with the man himself. (Who even wrote a thank you song for one of them .)
George with "Everybody's Tryin To Be My Baby":
The one 1950s singer and composer who arguably had the biggest influence at least on John and Paul, if not the other two, was Buddy Holly. For starters because he wrote his own material, when the norm at least for white singers was still to have someone else write it. Secondly, he didn't look glamorous and even had glasses. For the always extremely short sighted John Lennon, who was deeply embarassed about having to wear glasses as a teenager, this was a revelation. (He still didn't wear glasses in public until 1967, but he wrote them around friends and during recordings.) Moreover, they assumed the name of his group - "Crickets" - was a clever pun ("cricket" as in the insect and the English game), which was inspiring (and didn't find out their error - that the English game wasn't referenced - until the 60s). The earliest recording we have of them as The Quarrymen includes a Buddy Holly song. As the Beatles, they only covered him once on record, in Beatles for Sale, Words of Love, but for my biased mind, it's one of the greatest Buddy Holly covers:
More Perkins and Holly to come later. First, though, two songs rather crucial to musical history, on July 6th 1957, aka the day John met Paul. The two times this particular encounter was recreated in biopics, In His Life: The John Lennon Story and Nowhere Boy , they had the respective actors sing just a few lines of the song Paul used to show off and impress John, Eddie Cochran's Twenty Flight Rock, but what impressed the otherwise disdainful of younger teenagers John L. was that this kid knew the entire song by heart (and could play actual guitar chords, which was more than the Quarrmen could, since John had learned banjo chords from his mother and the rest were just mates he'd cajoled into forming a group), and a long song it was, too. Here's Paul McCartney singing it in 2005:
Another song played that day by both of them in mutual showing off to impress each other was Be Bop A Lula, which they recorded much later, as solo artists. Some talented vidder did a mash up of their versions:
And thus we have arrived in the solo eras. Their devotion to Buddy Holly remained unbroken. (Also profitable for one of them. Paul owns the song catalogue these days.)
Here's John singing "Peggy Sue", "Not fade away", "Mailman, bring me no more blues", "Heartbeat / Peggy Sue got married" and and "Maybe baby"
Same era, mid-70s, Paul with Peggy Sue:
And in 1985 with Words of Love:
On a somewhat more out of there note, John serenading Yoko with "Rock Island Line" (by Kelly Pace) and a little Buddy Holly Medley of "Maybe Baby" and "Peggy Sue":
On to Carl Perkins, and it's time for George again, who got to play Blue Suede Shoes with the man himself:
While John (sporting his Abbey Road cover look) got to play it with Eric Clapton:
And Paul sang it in 1999 when finaly making it into the Rock'n Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist. Also with Eric Clapton, which unfortunately means he himself had no guitar in hand, which looks somewhat awkward (you can tell he's not used to singing without an instrument at hand, be it guitar or piano):
Speaking of a bit awkard. The Mike Douglas Show in 1972 had John and Yoko sing "Memphis" together with Chuck Berry. The result is, err, interesting.
Whereas the BBC comissioned a cover version of B.E. King's Stand By Me from John during his "Lost Weekend" (i.e. the 18 months temporary break up with Yoko), delivered chocolate as recompense, and got this as a result, complete with random greeting to his older son ("hello, Julian" mid-song):
Now let's go back to the start again. Elvis was of course their idol and the one who originally inspired the rock'n roll love in them, and they never quite lost their awe, even if their one and only encounter with him while they were still the Beatles, in the 1960s, was sort of awkward. Here George, in 1994, describes another encounter with Elvis to Paul and Ringo:
On that note, here's the Elvis song Lawdy Miss Clawdy sung by Paul in 1987:
The George, Paul and Ringo conversation is from Beatles Anthology, which is fully of gems. Here's the origin story yet again, this time with interviews and performances spliced together:
And near the very end, we get Paul and George perform the Milton Ager and Jack Yellen 1927 song Ain't she sweet. George plays ukulele.