Word In Your Ear

Author and broadcaster Samira Ahmed used to watch A Hard Day’s Night once a week and she’s just written an enthralling account of the shoot and its impact for the BFI’s Classic Films series. A movie, she points out, that celebrates Britishness and suburbia made largely by immigrants that broke every Hollywood rule, a film made to capture the essence of the Beatles before the bubble burst “which turned out to be the start of something not the end”. She talks to us here about …

… the film’s connections with the Goons, the Young Ones, Dr Strangelove, Star Wars, Billy Liar, It’s Trad Dad and the Nouvelle Vague

… and its influence - from the Dave Clark Five’s Catch Us If You Can and Paul Jones’ Privilege to Charlie XCX and the Moment

… how the train sequence for I Should Have Known Better invented pop video

… the play John and Paul wrote (Pilchard!) that was a homage to its scriptwriter Alun Owen

… Paul’s two-day solo shoot with Isla Blair and other (mercifully) deleted scenes

... Profumo, pirate radio, the changing Britain of 1964

… Pattie Boyd, Anna Quayle, Alison Seebohm and other stand-out female stars

… Wilfred Brambell’s gigantic fee and how badly his part has aged

… why George and Ringo emerged as the stars

… surely the greatest scene? – “She's a drag, a well-known drag. We turn the sound down on her and say rude things”

… “hair that moved!”: the film’s impact in the USA

… “beat-up and depraved in the nicest possible way”

… and how the dubbed-on dialogue about Ingmar Bergman made the German version “a film for cineastes”.

Order Samira’s book here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/hard-days-night-9781839029394/

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Bob Dylan and the Beatles watched each other closely. Jim Windolf is fascinated by the parallels in their stories, the obvious moments they influenced each other and the unconcealable tensions at the times they met, all mapped out in his book ‘Where The Music Had To Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other – and Changed the World’. He talks to us here from New York about what he discovered when writing it, which touches on …

… deep-end Dylan and Beatles fans: which can be “crankier”?

… the Chaplin-like comic timing of Dylan’s early shows and the humour of the Beatles’ early stage act

… the song Lennon and Dylan wrote, recorded and then lost – now possibly in the Dakota archive

… the theory that 4th Time Around refers to the four Beatles songs clearly derived from Dylan

… first impressions of each other - “Teenybop music!” “Folk crap!” – and how both acts were crowd-pleasers who could feign indifference

… when the two superpowers met at the Delmonico, Warwick and Savoy hotels

… Dylan in ’66: “girls still scream at me … but in a different way”

… the night Bob, Paul and Dana Gillespie saw John Lee Hooker at Blaises

… how Lennon’s I Want You was a direct response to Dylan’s song of the same title

… the 15 Dylan songs played in the Get Back sessions

… Bob’s touching low-key visit to Lennon’s childhood home

… and the failed attempts by Bob and McCartney to collaborate.

Order copies of ‘Where The Music Had To Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other – and Changed the World’ here:
https://www.waterstones.com/book/where-the-music-had-to-go/jim-windolf/9781399627849

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Mark Lewisohn began his Beatles’ trilogy in 2003, the first volume appearing ten years later. He’s hoping the second, Turn On, which covers 1963 to 1966 and every recording session, might be ready by 2031 and working “nine days a week to achieve it, assembling a framework and then sliding it together”. Further good news – his lecture about their life in 1962, Evolver62, is now available on film! “No matter how deep you dig, there’s gold there”. He talks to us here about …

… how you research such an infinite subject and know when to stop

… the one-in-a-million coincidence in the story of I Saw Her Standing There

… the attractive world of telegrams, postage and showbills from the days “when the Beatles were still like us”

... how AI has muddied the waters and misinformation (like “Woodbine’s Boys”) becomes established fact

… “people are reshaping the Beatles’ story as what they want to believe”

… those perilous moments when their career seemed in the balance

… the Beatles v Shakespeare and which has the greater agency

… the Lewisohn work schedule - “6am til bedtime, nine days a week”

… the “rank amateurs” Decca signed the year they turned down the Beatles

… James Brown’s invented spat with Beatles and the struggle to separate fact from fiction

… Paul’s private battle with Nik Cohn

… and the US merchandise disaster, “a book in itself”

https://www.marklewisohn.net/

Order Evolver:62 on these links:
UK
https://amzn.to/4bP7bGS
US and Canada
https://apple.co/46m6L7x
https://bit.ly/4qsUXHy
https://bit.ly/45SSvTu
https://amzn.to/4pXf4gL
DVD
https://bit.ly/3Zap37F

And copies of the Tune In book here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beatles-All-These-Years-Tune/dp/1408705753/ref=asc_df_1408705753?mcid=3bbe6ad2416f31d59786d0f169b18876&th=1&psc=1&tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=697210774528&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7934131385361801281&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9072502&hvtargid=pla-525100023999&psc=1&hvocijid=7934131385361801281-1408705753-&hvexpln=0&gad_source=1

Tune In (trade edition):
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beatles-All-These-Years-Tune/dp/1408705753/ref=sr_1_1?crid=Z5U3TCUCHL4Y&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.iARC_o0NanHFRSyWD51V1iwunMv6f4RVXwczxRVhEfk.HhdP2t3MG4xUMoVQHwdVFQUL7a9gWFWI-jjw6pvwhNw&dib_tag=se&keywords=lewisohn+tune+in&qid=1771317358&sprefix=lewisohn+tune+in%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-1&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.95fd378e-6299-4723-b1f1-3952ffba15af

Tune In (Extended special edition):
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beatles-These-Years-Extended-Special/dp/1408704781/ref=sr_1_2?crid=Z5U3TCUCHL4Y&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.iARC_o0NanHFRSyWD51V1iwunMv6f4RVXwczxRVhEfk.HhdP2t3MG4xUMoVQHwdVFQUL7a9gWFWI-jjw6pvwhNw&dib_tag=se&keywords=lewisohn+tune+in&qid=1771317358&sprefix=lewisohn+tune+in%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-2&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.0fa28f01-6fca-4422-af4e-d52d5ad71bfe

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Spinning sides at the conversational disco to see what fills the dancefloor, which this week includes …

… Jerry Garcia had seven fingers! Brian Jones had seven children! Morrissey worked for the Inland Revenue!

… the most terrifying villain in the history of cinema

... is pop music becoming inbred?

… when Neil Sedaka made records with 10cc (and Abba)

… Happy? Get Lucky? Crazy In Love? What was the last hit single the whole world seemed to be singing?

… Noddy Holder, Kim Wilde, Robert Wyatt, Gary Numan: what makes you a National Treasure?

… rock and roll puns and double-entendres

… “drawn from the national conversation”: the divine Englishness of the Pet Shop Boys

… the Gilded Palace of Sin, In The Court of the Crimson King and other records we bought because of the title

… and acts wiped out by the Beatles “like corn before the sickle”.

Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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Glenn Tilbrook wrote an album with Chris Difford about a futuristic nightclub when they were teenagers and, 52 years later, they’ve recorded it and are performing it on the upcoming tour. He looks back here at the partnership that once wrote 200 songs in three years, the first gigs he saw, his recent decision to take control of the group and what’s changed the way they sound. Among the highlights …

… what he learnt from watching Radiohead and Doechii

… when you walk into a teashop and Tír na nÓg are playing

… T. Rex and screaming girls at the Lewisham Odeon – “comfortable, confident, thrilling”

… Terry Reid, Traffic, Bowie and darker memories of Glastonbury 1971

… “that age when Pickettywitch are as engaging as the Rolling Stones”

… the song that came to him in a dream

… constructing “a knockout set that’ll slay any audience”

… winning a talent contest at Butlins in Clacton, aged 12 – “a week’s free holiday!”

… “the breadth and depth of what we can do now outstrips the way we were”.

Order the ‘Trixies’ album here: https://squeeze.lnk.to/trixies

And Squeeze tickets here: https://www.squeezeofficial.com/

Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
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