Just Another Boy Band!
A texter has just described the Beatles thus on Radio 5.
They obviously never saw them live as I did, or watched as they saved a city from self-destructing, as Liverpool most likely would have done, if they had never come along!
They also inspired me, as in my years at Liverpool University, enough of what they created rubbed off on me, so that I became a modest success. Would I have become the same man without Liverpool and the Beatles? I doubt it!
Back to Square One
I had thought that I’d found a house to move to in Canonbury in North London. But it failed the survey yesterday, and so I won’t be buying it.
But at least there would seem to be lots of suitable places for sale in the area to the east of Highbury and Islington.
So I’m going to start looking again.
I would really love to live in de Beauvoir Town, as C and I nearly moved there years ago, but instead we went to the flat in the Barbican.
I remember that we looked at a house owned by the writer, Alun Owen. Strangely, I’d met him before when he was a guest at dinner in the Liverpool University hall of residence, where I lived in my last year at University. Owen is probably best known for his screenplay for the first Beatles film, A Hard Day’s Night!
Nowhere Boy
I went to see the film, Nowhere Boy last night. It is all about John Lennon growing up and was well worth seeing.
Whether Sam Taylor-Wood intended it I don’t know, but I found it an almost claustrophobic film as it was mainly set inside. Only in a few cases were Liverpool’s magnificent buildings and parks shown. Having been in Liverpool just a few years after the period of the film and visited several times lately, there are still a lot of places that have hardly changed since Lennon was growing up. I would have used these settings more.
But it is only a matter of personal taste and the fact that I knew Liverpool at that time and Taylor-Wood did not, as she is too young.
I wasn’t too sure where Lennon was actually brought up, but after looking it up, I found it was within walking distance of our first marital home at Rosehill Court in Woolton. Quarry Bank High School which gave the name to the Quarrymen, the forerunners of the Beatles, where he was educated is now Calderstones School. That wasn’t too far away either. But in those days of 1969, you knew the Beatles were good, but didn’t want to doorstep where they had lived.
I often think I owe a lot to Lennon, the Beatles and Liverpool. I wonder what would have happened to me, if I had gone to say Nottingham, Exeter, Southampton or even Cambridge Universities. I may not have acquired my robust attitude and could have wandered into research, which may have suited me, but then I don’t suffer fools gladly and there are many of them serving time in Universities waiting for their pension. I certainly wouldn’t have acquired my wife, who put up with me for over forty years.
I hope though that I wouldn’t have ended up a nowhere boy. But I know that I could have! Luckily I was rescued by Liverpool and my late wife.
Perhaps, I am frightened of ending up sad and lonely for the rest of my life.
River Lea and the Beatles
The television except for QI tonight is/was total crap. I suspect that when people get home from work on Christmas Eve they are/or get so legless that they don’t notice. That’s why the good television starts at ten, as those that are sober then, probably need something to stimulate their brain with all their friends/families around them.
I’m alone tonight, so I really do notice when the television is crap.
Whilst preparing two fish pies; one for tonight with sprouts and the other for the freezer, I delved into the Sky Box to see what I had recorded. I started by watching Gryf Rhys-Jones on the River Lea and followed this with Help, the Beatles film.
Both brought back memories of adolescence. Many a day I fished in the Lea and I was lucky enough to see the Beatles live. Should that last bit be old enough?
These memories all date from before I met my late wife in early 1967. But it just seems a few years ago.
A couple of times recently, I’ve walked the Lea. It is one of London’s treasures and Gryf brought a lot out in his program; the New River, Abbey Mills and Crossness pumping stations, the Royal Gunpowder Mills and all the greenhouses in the Lea Valley.
Help is in some ways dated and very much in the sixties. But the music is still as fresh as ever.
Our World
Whilst writing the previous post about students, I looked up Cliff Michelmore. I’d quite forgotten that he was the presenter of Our World, the first global television link-up, which included segments from the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia.
I remember the program for the performance of the Beatles.
Today, it is most famous for the segment from the United Kingdom starring The Beatles. Performing at the height of the Vietnam War, the group wanted to spread a message of peace and love to the world. They gave a live performance, transmitted at 8:54 p.m. GMT, performing a new song written by John Lennon, “All You Need Is Love”, composed especially for the occasion. The Beatles invited many of their friends to the event to create a festive atmosphere and to join in on the song’s chorus. Among the friends were members of The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Moon and Graham Nash. The performance required only a single rehearsal.
It made a boring, but worthy program, absolutely memorable. But then no-one in the history of pop music comes anywhere near the Beatles.
Can I remember anything else?
Yes! I can remember tram cars coming out of a tram-shed somewhere. I thought it was Toronto, but it was in reality Melbourne in Australia.
Is It Art?
There was a discussion as to whether some of the high-profile art in the UK recently, like Anthony Gormley’s Fourth Plinth, is actually art. Perhaps, it is, but perhaps it is not.
In the 1960s, the Engineering Department at Liverpool University bought a set of modern prints. Some wag put a beautifully typed and framed note beside one, which said “We would have liked to buy a painting by this artist, but unfortunately we could afford it. So he was gracious enough to sell us the rag on which he wiped his brushes.”
Seriously though, I went to the University recently to see the Stuart Sutcliffe retrospective. I don’t like modern art generally, but when it is good like some Warhol, I relate to it. Now, the Sutcliffe paintings showed a certain talent. I wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t died at 22.
All the Lonely People
This is the statue of Eleanor Rigby in Liverpool with a friend.
Eleanor Rigby and Friend
Note the name of the sculptor; Tommy Steele. Yes! Britain’s first rock ‘n’ roll star!
The Anonymous Widower 