Tag Archives: John Lennon

The Beatles or the Rolling Stones?

Posted on by Steve Higgins

The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were the two great English bands of the 1960s. Both went on to become supergroups and pop legends. This week I thought I’d take a quick look at the evolution of both bands.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were schoolmates until the Jagger family moved home from Dartford in Kent to nearby Wilmington in 1954. Jagger formed a band with his friend Dick Taylor and they played material sourced from performers like Chuck Berry and Little Richard.

In 1956 over in Liverpool, John Lennon formed a skiffle band called the Quarrymen. On the 6th July 1957 Lennon met Paul McCartney at the Woolton village fete and invited him to join the band. A year later in 1958 McCartney asked his school friend George Harrison to join but Lennon declined thinking the 15 year old George was too young. The two kept on at Lennon and he finally allowed George to join up after hearing him play guitar on the top deck of a bus.

By 1959, the three were playing together whenever they could find a drummer and they performed under the name Johnny and the Moondogs. John’s art school friend Stuart Sutcliffe joined the band in 1960 after buying a guitar. The group performed later as the Silver Beatles, later becoming The Beatles as a sort of tribute to Buddy Holly and the Crickets.

On the 17th July 1961, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards met up again on the platform at Dartford Railway Station. They later met up with other friends and formed a group called The Blues Boys. They read about the Ealing Jazz Club in a newspaper and sent some of their recordings to Alexis Korner who had a band called Blues Incorporated. They visited the Jazz Club and met members of Blues Incorporated including Brian Jones and drummer Charlie Watts.

In 1962 Brian Jones had left Blues Incorporated behind and advertised for musicians to make up a new band and Jagger, Richards and keyboard player Ian Stewart decided to join. While Brian Jones was on the phone to Jazz News he was asked the name of his new band. Apparently, he looked around, saw a record by Muddy Waters lying around and quickly snapped off the name of one of the tracks, naming the band The Rolling Stones.

The Beatles meanwhile had taken on Pete Best as their drummer and went off to Hamburg to perform at a former strip club in the Reeperbahn district. While they were there, they met Astrid Kirchherr who took the first semi professional pictures of the band. Later when Harrison was found to be under age the group was forced to return to Liverpool. In 1961 during their second Hamburg engagement Astrid cut Stuart’s hair in a distinctive hairstyle, later adopted by the other Beatles. Sutcliffe became close to Astrid and the two became engaged and he dropped out of the band to concentrate on his art work.

Back again in Liverpool the group were spotted by Brian Epstein and he became their manager in 1962.

The Rolling Stones via creative commons

On 12th July 1962 the Stones performed at their first ever gig as The Rollin’ Stones (later becoming The Rolling Stones) at the Marquee Club in London. The line up was Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Ian Stewart and Dick Taylor. Later that year Bill Wyman joined to replace Taylor. In 1963 Charlie Watts joined as the band’s regular drummer.

Brian Epstein was meanwhile trying to get a recording contract for the Beatles. In January 1962 they had a New Year’s Day audition with Decca who rejected the group with the famous comment “guitar groups are on the way out, Mr Epstein”. Even so, it was barely three months later when EMA signed the group to their Parlophone label.

On 6th June 1962 the Beatles had their first recording session with George Martin. He didn’t like Pete Best’s drumming and brought on board his own session drummer. The three other Beatles were already contemplating dumping Best and in August Ringo Starr left Rory Storm and the Hurricanes to join the band. Even so, George Martin still preferred to use a session drummer on their recordings.

In January 1963, Please Please Me became their first ever number one single.

Also in 1963 the Rolling Stones first single was a cover version of Chuck Berry’s Come On which rose to 21 in the UK singles chart. Their second single was a Lennon/McCartney song, I Wanna be Your Man.

In 1964 The Rolling Stones were the first band to play on the new TV show Top of the Pops and their first number one record that year was a self-titled EP. (To those younger readers EP stood for extended play, a single sized record which contained usually about 4 tracks).

1964 was the year the two bands began to conquer the world. It was also the point at which the music press started encouraging fans to pick a side. Were you a Beatles fan or did you prefer the Stones?

The contrast was easy to spot. The Beatles smiled for the cameras, cracked jokes during interviews and generally looked like the sort of young men your mother would happily invite round for Sunday lunch. The Stones, on the other hand, went for an entirely different image. They looked scruffier, a little more dangerous, and seemed to delight in annoying respectable adults. One newspaper famously asked, “Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?”

It is difficult to imagine anyone asking the same question about the Beatles. At that time their image was keenly cultivated by their management. Brian Epstein made the Beatles wear smart suits and it was Allen Klein, who took over as the Stones’ manager in 1965, who wanted something different for his group. In 1971 Bill Wyman claimed that the Rolling Stones were the first band to break away from a sort of ‘Cliff Richard’ mould, that of dressing smartly and doing little coordinated dances and steps.

Behind the scenes there was a good deal of mutual respect between the Stones and the Beatles. In fact, John Lennon and Paul McCartney had helped the Stones early in their career by giving them the song “I Wanna Be Your Man”.

As the decade progressed, both bands grew more ambitious. This is where comparisons become particularly interesting. The Beatles seemed determined to reinvent themselves every few months. Listening to their records from 1965 onwards is like watching a time-lapse film of musical evolution. One moment they were producing catchy pop songs, the next they were experimenting with new instruments, unusual recording techniques and increasingly sophisticated lyrics.

The Stones developed too, but in a different direction. While they certainly experimented during the psychedelic years, their real strength remained rooted in rhythm and blues. Where the Beatles often sounded as though they were trying to discover where music might go next, the Stones excelled at taking older musical traditions and making them feel exciting and contemporary.

Both bands experimented with drugs and both Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were arrested for drug use. Brian Jones though seemed to be the most affected by drugs. He decided to leave the band and sadly in July 1969 was found dead in his swimming pool in mysterious circumstances.

By the late 1960s the differences between the two groups had become even more pronounced. The Beatles’ music became increasingly varied and eclectic, while the Stones doubled down on a tougher, earthier sound. At this point they were no longer travelling along the same road. They were heading towards entirely different destinations.

On the 30th January 1969 the Beatles final live performance was filmed on the roof of the Apple Corporation Building in the centre of London and used as the finale of a cinema documentary project.

As a band, the Beatles had come to the end of the line. There were arguments about the cinema film, the final album mixes, whose songs were to be included on the final album and all sorts of business issues. Allen Klein became the Beatles’ new manager but Paul McCartney wanted John Eastman, his new father in law. He was overruled by the other Beatles and Klein became their business manager and Eastman their lawyer.

The legal disputes dragged on until 1974 when the dissolution of the band was finally formalised.

The Stones too had their legal issues. They parted company with Allen Klein and in 1971 formed their own record company, Rolling Stone Records. The first record they released was the album Sticky Fingers with a cover designed by Andy Warhol. They also made a documentary film; Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones about their 1972 North American Tour.

Despite changes in their line up, The Rolling Stones have continued to the present day. Their new album Foreign Tongues is due to be released in July this year, 2026.

John Lennon was murdered in New York in 1980 and George Harrison died of cancer in 2001. The final Beatles song to be released was Now and Then. An old demo tape of Lennon’s was remastered using AI technology and combined with musical input from the other Beatles, even from George Harrison.

There is no definitive answer to the question which is the better group? Perhaps it is a question that doesn’t even need to be asked. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones might have had some similarities back in 1963 but they were really two different musical groups. One specialised in innovation and constant reinvention. The other mastered attitude, live performance and longevity.

To a certain extent, neither band is my perfect cup of tea. I could only find one Stones CD in my collection although I do have many of their vinyl singles in my old record box. Many years ago, I decided to gradually buy all the Beatles albums on CD. I think I only bought three and then gave up. I’ve always thought the Beatles hit records to be outstanding but I find a lot of their album tracks are just not to my taste.

Still, if music fans are still talking about -and listening to- the Beatles and the Rolling Stones after all this time, both bands must have done something right.

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry collection.

Click here to visit Amazon and download Floating in Space to your Kindle or order the paperback version.

Click here to visit amazon and purchase Timeline, my new anthology.

4 Things That Happened in December

Posted on by Steve Higgins

John Lennon shot dead in New York December 8th 1980

One day in December 1980 I was working as a bus driver and I was driving one of our old half cab buses into Manchester. My conductor, Bob, was kept pretty busy as we took a bus load of passengers into Manchester city centre for their jobs in shops, offices and other places. At one point Bob poked his head through the little window into the cab and told me that he had heard from a passenger that John Lennon had been shot in New York. It was shocking news and when we arrived in Piccadilly, we both ran to the news stand to read the news in the morning papers. There was nothing about Lennon in any newspaper and we wondered if it had been just a mad rumour. Later when we went back to the canteen for our break, we heard the news either on the TV or the radio. Lennon had indeed been shot and was dead.

I can’t claim to be a great fan of John Lennon. I liked him and his music and had a copy of one of his albums, Walls and Bridges and a few years later I bought Double Fantasy, his last album and the last vinyl album I would ever buy but what did happen that day back in December, 1980?

It was a cold day in New York and a man called Mark Chapman took a .38 calibre revolver out of his pocket and calmly fired five shots at John Lennon who had just exited a limo outside his home in the Dakota building, just across from Central Park.

Chapman had a copy of The Catcher in the Rye, a novel by JD Salinger with him when he shot Lennon. In his copy Chapman had signed ‘from Holden Caulfield to Holden Caulfield (a reference to the main character in the story) This is my statement’. He had hung around the Dakota building in New York where Lennon lived with his wife Yoko Ono and son Sean and when Lennon left for the Record Plant recording studio, he had pushed forward his copy of Double Fantasy, Lennon’s latest album, for the singer to sign.

The last vinyl album I ever bought and the last one that John Lennon made. Double Fantasy. £2.99, what a bargain!

Lennon wrote ‘John Lennon 1980’ on the record and handed it back to Chapman asking ‘Is this all you want?’ Chapman took the album back and Lennon jumped into a limo and was gone. A photographer named Paul Goresh was there and snapped a photo of Lennon signing the album. Chapman was excited about it and asked for a copy before Goresh left. Goresh promised to return the next day with a print.

Later the Lennons returned to the Dakota and Chapman was still there waiting. Yoko entered the building and Lennon was following when Mark Chapman pulled out his .38 revolver and fired five times at the ex-Beatle. Lennon staggered into the Dakota entrance saying ‘I’m shot’. Chapman dropped his gun and began reading The Catcher in the Rye until the police came and arrested him. Another Police car arrived and seeing that Lennon was losing a lot of blood carried him to the police car and took him directly to Roosevelt Hospital. Staff there tried to revive Lennon but the wounds were too severe and he was pronounced dead at 11:15pm.

Mark Chapman is still alive today. He is still serving his life sentence in Wende Correctional Facility in New York and first became eligible for parole in 2000. All Chapman’s applications for parole have so far been denied.

King Edward 8th Abdicates December 11th 1936

The story of King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson remains one of the most dramatic turning points in modern British history. A collision of personal desire, constitutional duty and public expectation. Edward was charming, modern and hugely popular but it seemed to me that he wasn’t strong enough to carry the weight of the monarchy on his shoulders. His deep attachment to Wallis, an American divorcee, placed him on an unavoidable collision course with the Government and the Church of England. At a time when divorce was still not really socially acceptable, the idea of a king marrying a twice-divorced woman was more than a social scandal, it was seen as a direct threat to the stability of the Crown itself.

It was all terribly inconvenient for Edward, who seemed far more interested in cocktail parties and Wallis’s company than in matters of state.

His radio address to the nation was quiet and deliberate with a hint of regret. He emphasised that he could not carry on his duties ‘without the help and support of the woman I love.’ The episode left deep rifts within the royal family and cast a long shadow over the Windsors for decades, a reminder of the delicate balance between individual freedom and constitutional responsibility.

The former King, now the Duke of Windsor, left for France and prepared for his marriage to Wallis, while his shy younger brother suddenly found himself as George VI, the new King. Edward spent the rest of his life swirling around Europe in a haze of glamour, gossip and lingering tension with the royal family. When his mother, Queen Mary, died the Duke was not allowed to bring his wife to the funeral. The next time Wallis came to England was in 1972 for the funeral of the Duke himself. Honestly, it’s one of those moments in history that still feels like a cross between a constitutional crisis and a tabloid love story.

December 16th 1984 Gorbachev visits the UK

Image courtesy Wikipedia creative commons.

When Brezhnev the leader of the Soviet Union died, a succession of old men took over the leadership and within a few years, all of those had followed Brezhnev to the grave. Mrs Thatcher, the British Prime Minister, felt it was time to try and improve relations with the USSR and so she decided to attend the Moscow funeral of Yuri Andropov in February of 1984. To build on this she invited Mikhail Gorbachev to visit the UK. She guessed that Gorbachev might be a possible future leader and a break from the old elderly Soviet leaders of the past.

Gorbachev and his wife Raisa, arrived in the UK on December 16th 1984 and Mrs Thatcher announced famously after their meeting that ‘I like Mr Gorbachev, we can do business together.’ Gorbachev spent a week in the UK visiting places that Lenin and Karl Marx had frequented. Mrs Thatcher later flew to the USA to brief her ally President Reagan who later began his own talks with Gorbachev.

Gorbachev became the General Secretary and leader of the USSR when Konstantin Chernenko died in 1985 and he began a policy of openness (glasnost) and democratisation which ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet regime.

First episode of Coronation Street 9th December 1960

I thought I might finish with something a little lighter than Lennon and Gorbachev and King Edward 8th and so that brings me to Coronation Street. I can’t say I’m the greatest fan of TV soaps in general although I do watch Coronation Street. When you watch something like Corrie over a long period of time you do get quite attached to the characters. Soaps, I suppose, do have their place in the TV schedules.

Coronation Street was the idea of writer Tony Warren who wrote the first 13 episodes. He based the fictional suburb of Weatherfield on his home town of Salford, just over the river Irwell from Manchester. Coronation Street is a small cobbled street in Weatherfield and the stories of the various residents have entertained many of us over the years. Elsie Tanner, Annie Walker, Bette Lynch, Mavis Riley and the Jack and Vera Duckworth have long gone to be replaced gradually with new characters, some good and some not so good. I like Corrie because Manchester is my home time and it’s nice to hear the characters talk the way I talk although proper Mancunians on the show are sadly becoming fewer. These days Coronation Street is broadcast in three hourly chunks per week and as much as I enjoy it, I doubt we will ever see a moment as memorable as that one back in 1984 when Hilda Ogden returned home from hospital after the death of her husband Stan. She opened a small parcel containing Stan’s effects including his old spectacles and slowly began to cry her eyes out. Probably the saddest thing I have ever seen on television. (For some reason I couldn’t seem to add the video clip of that moment but click here to see it on YouTube.)

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry collection.

Click here to visit Amazon and download Floating in Space to your Kindle or order the paperback version.

Click here to visit amazon and purchase Timeline, my new anthology.

Things that Happened in October

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Here I am, raring to go. Laptop at the ready, focussed, ready to write this week’s blog. The thing is after 688 posts I’m not that sure what to write about. OK, so what about . .  things that happened in October? Let’s dive in.

One thing that happened in October was me! I was born on October the 3rd, quite a considerable time ago which is annoying on a number of levels. One, I’m getting a bit knackered. My back hurts, my knees ache. It’s hard to stand up straight but what is a real pain is when you get one of those things on the internet where you have to add your date of birth and I have to scroll back through the 90s, the 80s, the 70s, the 60s and finally to the 1950s.

Anthony Eden was the prime minister when I was born. He carried on until his resignation in 1957 due to ill health. At the top of the music charts or hit parade as they called it back then was Doris Day and Whatever Will be, Will be, Que Sera Sera.

My brother Colin was also an October child. He was born on the 10th of October but sadly wasn’t around to celebrate it this year. He would have been 65. My mother too was also born in October but more about her later.

John Lennon

Lennon was born on the 9th of October in 1940. His mother and father were Alfred ‘Freddie’ Lennon and his wife Julia. Alfred was a merchant seaman and was away at sea when John was born. He apparently went absent without leave but later turned up back in Liverpool. By then Julia was involved with another man, John Dykins and actually pregnant by him. Julia’s sister, Mimi decided to take John home and look after him in order to give Julia a chance of happiness with her new love John Dykins.

The last vinyl album I ever bought, and the last one that John lennon made. Double Fantasy. £2.99, what a bargain.

Mimi told Philip Norman, author of the book Shout, the True Story of the Beatles that ‘no man wants another man’s child’. Perhaps the fact that she had no children of her own played a part too. Julia continued to visit her son at Mimi’s house at 251 Menlove Avenue until 15th of July 1958.

John was staying with Julia and John Dykins for the weekend but Julia had called round to see her sister Mimi. When she left to catch her bus home she was hit by a car and killed. John Lennon’s world had been tragically changed.

Many moons ago when I worked for a cigarette vending company, I used to visit a small pub in Woolton in Liverpool and the owners of the pub were two retired ex shell tanker drivers. They were both friendly guys but one in particular was outgoing and talkative and if he was on duty at the bar we would always have a good chat while I sorted out the cigarette machine. One day we got onto the subject of the Beatles and I was surprised to hear that John Lennon’s house was just around the corner. Woolton is a very pleasant middle class suburb of Liverpool and I remember thinking what! This is where Lennon was brought up?  Lennon’s image as a sort of working class hero led me to assume he had a background in a rough and tumble area of Liverpool, like the Dingle where Ringo lived. The truth was different. Perhaps Lennon fermented the working class hero thing, perhaps the fault was mine, I just assumed something without knowing the facts.

Driving round the corner I found Lennon’s old house, 251 Menlove Avenue. He was living here when he started his first band, the Quarrymen and also when he met Paul McCartney. Lennon’s life was one heck of a journey taking him around the world with the Beatles and finally to New York with Yoko Ono where he was shot and killed in 1980.

Marie Antoinette executed 1793

Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette in the film version directed by Sofia Coppola

On October 16, 1793, Marie Antoinette, the deposed Queen of France, was executed by guillotine in Paris’ Place de la Révolution. After a swift and merciless trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal, she was found guilty of treason. Dressed in a simple white gown, her once-elaborate hair cut short, she was taken through the streets in an open cart, exposed to the jeers and insults of the crowd. Despite the humiliation she endured, she remained composed. When she accidentally stepped on her executioner’s foot while mounting the scaffold, she turned to him and said politely, “Pardon me, sir, I did not do it on purpose.” It was a final gesture of grace amid the chaos of the Revolution. Moments later, the blade fell, and with it ended the life of a woman who had once embodied the grandeur of Versailles and become the Revolution’s most reviled symbol. Her death marked both the destruction of the monarchy and the deepening ferocity of the revolutionary cause.

A famous phrase she is said to have spoken is ‘let them eat cake’ after being told that her subjects were starving and had no bread. Did she really say that? Probably not but in the original French, Marie referred to brioche, not cake. Brioche is a sort of sweet bread popular in France but either way, the phrase has been used as propaganda by the revolutionaries to show that the Queen had no time for the peasants.

Ghandi born October 2nd 1869

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a leader of India’s struggle for independence and a global symbol of nonviolent resistance. Born in 1869 in Porbandar, India, he trained as a lawyer in London before developing his philosophy of satyagraha—the power of truth and peaceful protest—during his years in South Africa. Many people think his name is Mahatma but this was in fact a title bestowed upon him in 1915 and means ‘Great soul’. Gandhi became the moral and political heart of the freedom movement, leading campaigns of civil disobedience, boycotts and marches that challenged British colonial rule without resorting to violence. Gandhi’s assassination in 1948 shocked the world, but his ideals of peace, equality, and nonviolence continue to influence movements for justice and human rights across the globe. Quite a few years ago I picked up Ghandi’s autobiography and lost it before finishing it. I know I still have it somewhere and one day I will find it and finally finish it.

A biographical film about Ghandi directed by Sir Richard Attenborough was released in 1982. Attenborough had been trying to make the film since 1962 and the final production marked the realisation of a dream for the director. Ben Kingsley starred as Ghandi and the film won 8 Oscars at the Academy awards although there was some criticism of the film. I was surprised to find that the opening sequence where Ghandi is thrown off a train in South Africa was entirely fictional.

1990 East and West Germany Reunited

When the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, it marked not just the collapse of a barrier but the beginning of a profound transformation. For nearly three decades since the end of the Second World War, Germany had been divided, East and West separated by ideology, politics and a concrete wall that sprang up in 1963. The fall of the Wall was followed by a wave of hope and uncertainty as both sides faced the challenge of becoming one nation again. On October 3, 1990, reunification was officially declared, and the Federal Republic of Germany absorbed the former East German state.

The process was far from simple. Economically, the East lagged behind after years of communist rule and integrating two very different systems tested the country’s resilience. Yet, despite the struggles, rising unemployment, cultural adjustments and political growing pains, the spirit of unity prevailed and Berlin once again stood as the capital of a single, democratic Germany. Today, the reunification remains one of the most remarkable examples of peaceful transformation in modern history.

24th October 1929 Wall Street Crash

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 was a catastrophic collapse of the U.S. stock market that marked the beginning of the Great Depression. Throughout the 1920s, the American economy had boomed, and millions of people invested heavily in the stock market, even buying shares on credit. This speculation drove prices far above the real value of companies, creating a dangerous bubble. In late October 1929, confidence began to crumble. On October 24, known as Black Thursday, panic selling set in and by October 29, or Black Tuesday, the market had completely collapsed. Billions of dollars in wealth vanished overnight, leaving investors ruined and banks in crisis. The crash didn’t cause the Great Depression by itself but it exposed deep economic weaknesses and triggered a decade of mass unemployment, poverty and hardship across the United States and much of the world.

One of those who escaped disaster was Joe Kennedy, father of President John F Kennedy who apparently had invested in property, real estate as they call it in the USA, rather than stocks and shares.

Finally, bringing this blog back to a personal element, in 1929 my grandfather and grandmother had gone to Cheltenham to find work and on the 24th of October, the very day of the crash in the USA, my mother was born. She died in 2023 aged 93.

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry collection.

Click here to visit Amazon and download Floating in Space to your Kindle or order the paperback version.

Click here to visit amazon and purchase Timeline, my new anthology.

Let Me Take You Down: New York 1980

Posted on by Steve Higgins

One day in December 1980 I was working as a bus driver and I was driving one of our old half cab buses into Manchester. My conductor, Bob, was kept pretty busy as we took a bus load of passengers into Manchester city centre for their jobs in shops, offices and other places. At one point Bob poked his head through the little window into the cab and told me that he had heard from a passenger that John Lennon had been shot in New York. It was shocking news and when we arrived in Piccadilly, we both ran to the news stand to read the news in the morning papers. There was nothing about Lennon in any newspaper and we wondered if it had been just a mad rumour. Later when we went back to the canteen for our break, we heard the news either on the TV or the radio. Lennon had indeed been shot and was dead.

I can’t claim to be a great fan of John Lennon. I liked him and his music and back then in 1980, I had a copy of one of his albums, Walls and Bridges and a few years later I bought Double Fantasy, his last album and also the last vinyl album I would ever buy but what did happen that day back in December, 1980?

It was a cold day in New York and a man called Mark Chapman took a .38 calibre revolver out of his pocket and calmly fired five shots at John Lennon who had just exited a limo outside his home in the Dakota building, just across from Central Park.

The last vinyl album I ever bought, and the last one that John Lennon made. Double Fantasy. £2.99, what a bargain.

Chapman was born on 10th May, 1955 in a place called Decatur, in Georgia, in the USA. Chapman’s home life was difficult; his father was abusive towards his mother and Chapman apparently lived in fear of him. In his early teens Chapman was involved with drugs and even once ran away from home. In 1971 he became a born again Christian and worked as a summer camp counsellor for the YMCA. He was very popular with the children at the summer camp and even won an award for his outstanding work. Later he worked with Vietnamese refugees at a resettlement camp and once again  impressed his colleagues and superiors.

After his work with the refugees finished, Mark went to college but there he began to feel depressed. He was no longer doing important work with the refugees and thought of himself as a failure. He dropped out of college to work as a security guard and then in 1977 he left home to travel to Hawaii where he intended to commit suicide. His attempt failed but he was able to gain support and help for his depression and even started to work as a volunteer at the hospital that had helped him.

Much has been written about Chapman’s love of Catcher in the Rye, a novel by JD Salinger and how the book somehow turned Chapman against Lennon and indeed inspired him to kill. I read the book many years ago and at the time I thought it rather dull and uninteresting and I remember being surprised that it could inspire anyone to do anything, let alone provoke someone to murder.

The main character, Holden Caulfield has learned he has failed all his classes at school and that he won’t be returning for the next term. He leaves and gets a train to New York where he basically wanders about feeling sorry for himself and moaning about ‘phonies’, presumably people who are false. In the December of 1980, Mark Chapman too was wandering about New York feeling sorry for himself and hating ‘phonies’. For him, the really big phoney was John Lennon.

Lennon was suffocated by the incredible fame of the Beatles, and had decided to relocate to New York in 1971. New Yorkers were not overwhelmed by his celebrity status and he found himself a large apartment in the impressive Dakota Building on the corner of Central Park West and 72nd Street. Lennon lived quietly with his wife Yoko Ono and son Sean and retired from public life during his son’s early years. His comeback album Double Fantasy was released in 1980.

Chapman had a copy of Catcher in The Rye with him when he shot Lennon on the 8th December, 1980. In his copy Chapman had signed ‘from Holden Caulfield to Holden Caulfield. This is my statement’. He had hung around the Dakota building in New York and when Lennon left for the Record Plant recording studio, he had pushed forward his copy of Double Fantasy, Lennon’s latest album, for the singer to sign.

Lennon signs Double Fantasy for his killer

Lennon wrote ‘John Lennon 1980’ on the record and handed it back to Chapman asking ‘Is this all you want?’ Chapman took the album back and Lennon jumped into a limo and was gone. A photographer named Paul Goresh was there and snapped a photo of Lennon signing the album. Chapman was excited about it and asked for a copy before Goresh left. Goresh promised to return the next day with a print.

Later the Lennons returned to the Dakota and Chapman was still there waiting. Yoko entered the building and Lennon was following when Mark Chapman pulled out his 38 revolver and fired five times at the ex-Beatle. Lennon staggered into the Dakota entrance saying ‘I’m shot’. Chapman dropped his gun and began reading the Catcher in the Rye until the police came and arrested him. Another Police car arrived and seeing that Lennon was losing a lot of blood carried him to the police car and took him directly to the Roosevelt Hospital. Staff there tried to revive Lennon but the wounds were too severe and he was pronounced dead at 11:15pm.

On a TV documentary for the ITV series First Tuesday which I found in my old VHS collection, one of Mark’s old girlfriends was interviewed. Judy Williams spoke about the Mark Chapman she knew as warm and gentle. ‘It just wasn’t Mark’ she said ‘He couldn’t have been in his right mind when he did it.’

So why did Chapman shoot John Lennon? Apparently, Chapman had been a fan of the Beatles and John Lennon’s solo music but felt that Lennon had become a fake, a ‘phoney’, someone who preached peace and love to the masses while his music made him a multi-millionaire. Chapman signed out of his security job as ‘John Lennon’ on his last day of work so it is even possible that he identified so much with Lennon that the other Lennon, the fake ‘Lennon’ had to die. Chapman also claimed at other times that he shot Lennon to promote Catcher in the Rye.

I’ve just finished reading Let Me Take You Down by Jack Jones and in the book the author prints pages and pages about Chapman and his disturbed ideas including the fantasy ‘little people’ who filled his imagination and tried to stop him going through with the killing. He had in fact visited New York on a different occasion to shoot Lennon but returned home without committing murder.

I can imagine Lennon in his room in the Dakota, looking down on New York and reflecting on how far he had come. Did he ever think of his home in Liverpool? I am sure he did. He corresponded regularly with his Aunt Mimi who brought him up at their home, Mendips, in Liverpool.

Years ago, when I used to work in Liverpool, I visited his childhood home. I had always imagined Lennon came from a rough council house background but his former home is in Woolton, a pleasant leafy suburb of Liverpool with semi-detached private houses and some rather nice pubs and shops. Not quite what I had expected.

Mendips, Woolton, Liverpool. Picture courtesy wikipedia

After reading Let Me Take You Down I dug out my old VHS documentary which uses numerous statements by Chapman, recorded secretly by the NYPD in the hours after his arrest. I listened to his various ideas about why he had to shoot John Lennon but I’m not sure we can ever understand the workings of a disturbed mind. ‘The Beatles changed the world’ Mark says at one point, ‘and I changed them.’

I like John Lennon of course and I was interested to read this book to see what really happened to him and to find out why Mark Chapman decided to shoot him. I had always thought that Chapman was just a madman and after reading this book I can see that basically, I was right. Chapman was mad. I suppose it was foolish of me to think that there was a definitive reason behind the shooting, some tangible reason, something that perhaps if Lennon or his people had been aware of, they could have taken some action to prevent the murder. At the end of the day, I don’t think there was or even that the actions of a disturbed person can be explained in simple terms. Chapman got it into his head that he had to kill John Lennon and he did.

Mark Chapman is still alive today. He is still serving his life sentence in Wende Correctional Facility in New York and first became eligible for parole in 2000. All Chapman’s applications for parole have so far been denied.

Today in 2021, Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, still lives in the Dakota building.

Sources:

The Man Who Shot John Lennon. First Tuesday UK TV documentary written and produced by Kevin Sim.

Let Me take You Down by Jack Jones.

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry anthology.

Click here to visit Amazon and download Floating in Space to your Kindle or order the paperback version.

 

A Matter of Perspective

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Quite a while back, probably over two years ago, I seemed to be having problems focussing my right eye. My right eye is actually my good eye, the other, the left one is what my optician has always called my lazy eye. Years ago as a schoolboy I had to watch TV for an hour a day with a patch over my good eye. This was supposed to make my left eye, the lazy one, pull its way a bit more. That was successful to a point but the right one has always been better.

I called the doctor and he recommended that I go to see my optician. I called Specsavers who could not fit me in at first but when I mentioned the eye problems they asked me to come in straight away. I had an eye test and the problem was resolved. I needed a new prescription, no health issues at all, so they said. I wasn’t happy so a more senior optometrist was called in and he concurred, all I needed was a new prescription.

I still wasn’t happy. At the time my right eye seemed to be all gummy and I felt that perhaps I had some sort of infection. I started rinsing that eye with a salt water solution and after a week it all seemed to clear up. I have to admit I was a little scared for a while, after all, it wasn’t as if it was my bad eye, my good eye was the problem one. What would have happened if it had gone worse, if I had lost the sight in that eye? I wouldn’t be able to drive, I wouldn’t be able to get to work. No more motorhoming holidays. It would have been difficult to even write with just my bad eye. Yes, looking back, that was actually a serious health scare, perhaps even the scariest health scare I’ve ever had.

I went back to pick up my new specs about ten days later and surprise surprise, I couldn’t see a thing through them. No wonder! I’d had an eye test when my right eye wasn’t working properly. I still think I had an eye infection that they hadn’t spotted in the opticians. Another eye test followed. It was with a new fangled gadget that I had to put my head in and the optician changed lenses with a touch of a button. I wasn’t comfortable but at least my eye seemed better and a few weeks later I had a brand new pair of specs. They weren’t perfect but at least I could see pretty well.

This year I had another eye test at a different opticians. This time I went to Boots. The optician seemed to be a little more precise than the previous ones and not only that, he gave me an eye test in the traditional way, you know with the frames in which he slips in different lenses and ask things like ‘is this better or worse, is this clearer or not?’

All seemed pretty good until I saw the prices of the glasses they were selling. Being a card carrying tightwad I declined to pay those high street prices and just then found various internet stores selling bargain priced specs. I sometimes find it a little creepy when you do a few searches on Google for something; specs, an electric saw, a digital camera or whatever and the next thing you know, every site that you visit that carries advertising, all you can see are ads for specs, electric saws and digital cameras. Just shows you what those little inoffensive things called cookies do when you let them into your personal cyber world.

Anyway, I bought a pair of specs from a company called Goggles4u. They are based in the USA and looked pretty cheap. Almost just as I was about to press the buy now button, a discount voucher pinged up on my screen and I was able to buy my first internet spectacles at a very low price indeed.

I waited a hell of a long time for them but in the current Covid wary world there wasn’t much else to do except watch TV, listen to music and look for more things to buy on eBay.

One day my new specs arrived. I tried them on and the result was amazing. I wasn’t struggling to see small things anymore, everything was pin sharp. Watching the new F1 season opener on TV I could actually see those little boxes they display on the broadcast showing the current standings and lap times and what tyres each driver was using. To those of you with 20 20 vision you might not understand but seeing perfectly and sharply is nothing short of wonderful. The great thing with my new specs is that I clicked the box for what I’ve always called Reactolite lenses, actually photochromic lenses that react to bright light and darken when it’s sunny. Believe me, I was going round taking in things as if I’d never seen them before.

Fashion is a pretty big part of spectacles. Lots of top designers produce trendy spectacle frames and the resulting product can have a fairly hefty price tag. When I was a school kid growing up on a council estate I always wore national health spectacles with national health frames. You know the ones I mean, the ones with black plastic frames. Sometimes I got called names like ‘speccy four eyes’. I never liked those frames but as I grew up I got the chance to actually have some trendier frames. I always liked those metal rimmed frames. I was probably still at school when I got my first pair. Only after moaning and begging and pleading to my mother. She probably bought those glasses just to shut me up.

One day when I had left school and could afford to pay for my frames I bought some aviator styles. I always loved that aviator shape you know, that sort of stylish aerodynamic looking frame. I even had a pair with smoked graduated lenses. That’s just an excuse to show you my favourite picture of myself. I was 21 and had the whole world at my feet. I was in Paris having just packed my job in and I was having the time of my life with one of my best friends, and I loved those glasses. A lot of years later when my optician recommended a pair of reading glasses I had those same aviator frames turned into reading glasses.

Now that I have turned to the internet I am the proud owner of quite a few new pairs of specs. My favourites are probably the rimless ones but they do have a bit of an annoying element. Almost but not quite outside my vision to the right and to the left are two hinges that connect to the spectacle arms. I can’t quite see them but they are there and they are annoying.

Of course you might be thinking why even bother with glasses? It’s the 21st century, I could get contact lenses or even have laser treatment. Laser treatment? Like when they fire laser beams into your eyes? I don’t think so. I’ve worn glasses from ever since I can remember so I think I’ll stick with them if you don’t mind. One of my earliest memories was as a very young schoolboy going for that regular meeting with the school nurse or ‘Nitty Nora’ as we referred to her. For us spectacle wearers the first thing Nitty used to ask was to take off our glasses and place them on the table. That was OK if you put them down face up but bad if you set them face down because that way the lens could get scratched or marked by the table top.

Elton John is probably the most famous spectacle wearer of all time. He even once wore a pair of specs with little windscreen wipers. John Lennon is another famous spectacle wearer. He wore those famous round glasses that you will see if you just type ‘Lennon glasses’ into Google.

The glasses he was wearing when he was shot dead in 1980 were used by Yoko Ono to protest against gun violence. She also used the picture on her solo album Season of Glass which I’ve always found hugely shocking but then shock was an emotion that she and Lennon used frequently in their work.

Superman wore glasses too. Clark Kent, Superman’s alter ego wore a set of black plastic specs as a disguise. How Lois Lane who worked with Clark at the Daily Planet newspaper never noticed that Clark was just Superman wearing a suit and a pair of glasses, I’ll never know. The funny thing is the glasses that I always hated, those black plastic ones that Clark and my younger self wore, are today pretty fashionable.

Which pair shall I wear today then?

What to do next: Here are a few options.

Listen to my podcast Click here.

Share this post on your favourite social media!

Hit the Subscribe button. Never miss another post!

Buy the book! Click here to purchase my new poetry anthology.

Click here to visit Amazon and download Floating in Space to your Kindle or order the paperback version.

Four Writers’ Homes

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Clouds Hill

TE Lawrence’s home was a small cottage called Clouds Hill. I read somewhere recently that the house had now been refurbished and open to the public. It is a small place and I remember seeing a TV documentary about Lawrence where someone who visited in the past advised that guests were generally left to their own devices, that food was eaten from tins left in the cupboard and that a lot of classical music was played.

Lawrence of course was more popularly known as Lawrence of Arabia, the man who organised the Arab revolt during the First World War. As the feature film by David Lean tells us, Lawrence was dismayed by having to lie to the Arab people, telling them that Great Britain would honour their claims for freedom at the end of the conflict when in fact the UK had every intention of holding on firmly to the Arab lands.

Churchill was impressed by Lawrence and invited him to attend the Paris peace talks.

Lawrence later wrote his classic book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom upon which the film Lawrence of Arabia was based.

A number of elements of the book have interested scholars ever since. The book is a work of history but also a great work of literature and readers have wondered ever since about whether the work was accurate, especially as in one infamous chapter, Lawrence relates how he was captured and beaten by a sadistic Turkish officer.

In that same TV documentary, Lawrence’s brother addresses the camera and sheepishly tells the viewer that not many people can understand how someone can enjoy pain. That was in response to a 1960’s newspaper report about a man who claimed Lawrence paid him to be beaten regularly. Clearly Lawrence was a complicated man. In later life he hid from the public by using the names John Ross and later T E Shaw. He was fatally injured in 1935 after a motorcycle accident.

After a little research I find that the property is now owned by the national trust and is open regularly for visitors. Find out more at https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/clouds-hill

Chartwell

Nothing that I can add to the mountains of books and articles written about Winston Churchill can make much of a difference, but anyway, here we go. Can there ever have been someone who was not only a great politician but also a great writer and also one of the giants of history? I have always felt a tiny spark of excitement when even now I read Churchill’s words on when he attained the premiership in the dark early days of World War II. ‘I felt,’ he wrote ‘as if I was walking with destiny.’

The amazing thing is that only a few years previously Churchill was a has been, a man written off as a former chancellor who had crossed the floor of the house once too often and now was distrusted by everyone.

As it happened, his dire warnings about Nazi Germany and the impending war made him the obvious choice to succeed Neville Chamberlain, whose policies of appeasement had perhaps led Britain towards the path of war.

Churchill’s home, Chartwell had been bought largely from the proceeds of his books. Indeed he was fond of commenting ‘all this, came from my pen.’

During the time of his so called wilderness years he spent a lot of time at Chartwell and even built some of the walls there with his own hands. He painted there and prior to World War II many informants came to him to reveal information with which he used to call attention to the tragic state of unreadiness of the UK for war.

This is also a national trust property. You can find more about visiting Chartwell here: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/chartwell

The Boathouse

It’s a long time since I visited Dylan Thomas’ house in Wales. The house is in the village of Laugharne and is not far from one of his famous watering holes, the Brown’s Hotel which I’m pretty sure was bought by one of the comedians from TV’s Men Behaving Badly.

The boathouse was bought by a trust some years ago which saved the property from collapsing into the sea. It’s a lovely place and on the day I visited, we had to leave early although I can’t remember why. I came back the next day and the staff remembered I had left early previously and let me in for free. I wandered about Dylan’s old house and sucked in the atmosphere before buying various books and pamphlets about Dylan and his works.

In another old TV documentary I tend to watch now and again, the presenter, a poet himself, thought he could imagine the conversations of Dylan and his wife, the chit chatting, the arguing and the making up later, or so he supposed.

I took a primitive digital camera with me and took a few shots of the house and Dylan’s famous writing shed. I read somewhere recently that the shed has now been removed and taken to a museum with a duplicate shed now occupying the site.

I enjoyed my visit and Dylan’s own poem always makes me think of it:

In the mustardseed sun,
By full tilt river and switchback sea
Where the cormorants scud,
In his house on stilts high among beaks
And palavers of birds . . .

Click the following link for more information on the boathouse: https://www.dylanthomasboathouse.com/

Mendips.

Lennon is a different kind of writer of course. He did publish a couple of books of his doodlings, one was called In his own Write if I remember correctly but mostly his creative urge went towards his music. Early on, he and fellow Beatle Paul McCartney agreed that all their songs would be known as Lennon and McCartney songs, even though some were written totally by Lennon and some totally by McCartney. Sometimes McCartney would finish off Lennon’s song, other times Lennon would sort out a problem song McCartney couldn’t finish. It was a great collaboration, perhaps the greatest in pop history.

Picture courtesy wikipedia

All the Beatles were from Liverpool of course. Lennon was brought up by his aunt Mimi in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton.

Many years ago I used to have a cigarette vending machine round and one of my sales areas was Woolton. One of the pubs I used to service there was a small modest place, owned by two former Shell tanker drivers. They had retired and pooled their retirement money to buy this small pub. They made little money they told me, in fact neither of them ran the pub, they employed a manager to do so.

One was a quiet chap, the other a pretty talkative fellow. The manageress never spoke to me much but the talkative owner was always in the bar and he usually made me a cup of tea and we would have a bit of a natter and then I would be off on my way to service some other pub.

One day we started talking about Lennon and my friend mentioned that Lennon had lived just around the corner from that very pub. Later I followed the directions given to me and found myself parked outside a typical 1950’s looking suburban semi-detached house. Surely Lennon came from a deprived background, a rough and tumble council estate? But no, there was a blue plaque on the wall denoting Lennon had indeed lived here. It was somehow not what I was expecting.

Since I last visited here I see that the house is now owned or at least managed by the national trust along with Paul McCartney’s former home. Click this link for more information: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/beatles-childhood-homes

Floating in Space is a novel by Steve Higgins. Click the links at the top of the page to buy or for more information.

Holiday Book Bag 2018

Posted on by Steve Higgins

There’s nothing I love more than a good book and as usual, here’s a quick round-up of the books I’ve taken on holiday to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. As I’m flying I’ve not brought any hardbacks, just four paperbacks. All my books are usually sourced from the Internet or second-hand book shops but the ones below, with one exception, were gifts.


Lennon, the Definitive  Biography by Ray Coleman.

This is a book first published in 1984 that has been revised and updated. It’s been subtitled the ‘definitive biography’ although that’s not a phrase I’d use to describe it. It’s a decent enough book don’t get me wrong but as for ‘definitive’, that’s another matter. The writer has known Lennon as a journalist since the heady days of the early sixties when the Beatles had their big breakthrough in the pop charts so has had the opportunity to talk with Lennon first hand regarding many events in his life.

The first part of the book appears to be the new revised section and details what has happened to Lennon’s work and image in the years since the book first appeared although really, this section would be better placed at the end of the book.

The writer has no time for music journalists who waxed less than lyrical about later Beatles’ records released in the last thirty odd years, things like The Beatles at the BBC released in 1994 or the Beatles Anthology. Reviewers who gave those records a poor reception get short shift indeed and the reader is quickly reminded of their chart topping sales. In their defence though pop music journalists tend to look forward to new music, not back to the old. More scorn is saved for Albert Goldman who wrote the book The Lives of John Lennon. Personally I thought that was rather a good book; it’s certainly more compelling than this one although it tends to focus on Lennon in a negative way whereas this book is very generous towards Lennon. It’s the book of a Lennon fan and focuses on the events in Lennon’s life in a very positive way.

Another annoying aspect of the book is that when Lennon and the Beatles achieve fame, the book drifts off into a lot of general observations about Lennon’s life and music and the narrative tends to lose the thread of his life story. A similar thing happens when discussing John’s son Julian when the narrative jumps forward to discuss things that have not yet happened in the story’s timeline. Sorry but I like my biographies to stick to a certain amount of chronological sequence.

Both John and Yoko emerge from this book as whiter than white although the truth of John Lennon is, I suspect, somewhere between Albert Goldman’s critical book and this work of praise.

After writing this review, here in Lanzarote, we went for a meal at the Casa Carlos restaurant. As I scanned through the menu I could hear something familiar playing in the background. I couldn’t recognise what it was at first. It was an instrumental version of something, then I realised what it was: Love me Do. I’m sure the sharp-tongued John Lennon would have some choice words for the restaurateur after hearing an easy listening version of his work as background music.

Being Elvis by Ray Connelly

Subtitled A Lonely Life, this is a biography of Elvis Presley by another music journalist, Ray Coleman. Elvis became the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll who inspired Lennon, McCartney and a whole host of others to become musicians and pop stars. I’ve read quite a few biographies of Elvis, all much thicker than this one but this is a great holiday read being both interesting and informative. The foreword to the book was particularly insightful regarding the impact Elvis had on other musicians. The author recounts two phone calls, one to Bob Dylan and one to John Lennon where he happened to mention that he had been to Elvis’ 1968 comeback concert. Both those highly regarded stars bombarded Coleman with a series of questions about Elvis showing that despite their own success and achievements, they were still at heart Elvis fans.

The book goes on to recount Elvis’ beginnings as a poor white boy in segregated Mississippi who became an incredible phenomenon; revolutionising pop music, earning hundreds of millions of dollars and yet at the end of his life was dependent on loans from his bank to keep going as he had made few investments with his money.

Time and time again, Elvis was disappointed at the poor standard of the songs that he was presented with, especially in his films, however the book reveals that his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, wanted music in which the writers were willing to use Elvis’ own music publishing company and who were willing to give up a percentage of their royalties for Elvis and the Colonel. Elvis just appears to have put up with this intrusion into his artistic life as he didn’t like confrontations with his manager. The result was that he went from the cutting edge of pop music to somewhere at the back. It was only after his comeback concert in 1968 that he decided ‘enough is enough’ and decided to sing whatever took his fancy, no matter who wrote or published it.

In his later years Elvis was fat, bloated and addicted to amphetamines, sleeping tablets and diet pills. He worried how his fans would react to a tell-all book written by former members of his entourage. A final confrontation appeared with Tom Parker. Elvis threatened to sack him but Parker demanded back payments of 2 million dollars. Free of Parker, Presley could have got himself a new manager who perhaps could have sorted out his personal issues and engaged a new record producer, more in tune with the times. Sadly, he decided to stay with the ‘Colonel’.

Elvis died in 1977 of a heart attack. At the autopsy some months later 14 different drugs were found in his body, some in toxic quantities. It seems clear that drug abuse was a significant factor in his death.

A pocket-sized introduction to Elvis but nevertheless, an interesting and fascinating read.

The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy.

This is the only novel I’ve brought with me on this holiday. I particularly chose it because I’ve read two of Ellroy’s non fiction books on previous book bags and I wanted to read some of his fiction. This is a detective story set in 1940’s Los Angeles and is a fast-moving story of cops and murderers and how to get on in the LAPD of the time. It’s written in the first person and is laced with LA jive talk and slang that really evokes the time and place. A good read but a little gruesome for me and I didn’t like the ending when you think the case is solved and then something else happens, and after that, something else.

A Daughter’s Tale by Mary Soames.

This is a memoir by Winston Churchill’s youngest daughter, Mary. I had it down on my reading list as I supposed it was a biography of her father, however, it’s not a biography at all but a personal memoir of her life as Churchill’s daughter. It starts off with her early years living with her family in Winston’s famous house Chartwell. It’s a record of life in a different time and the writer talks about her retinue of animals, her nanny, the servants and all the things you might imagine surround her in an upper class home in the 1930’s. One interesting observation is that in 1935, Churchill, strapped for cash after the Wall Street collapse of 1929, considers selling Chartwell and his daughter quotes a letter he has written to an estate agent saying that his family has mostly flown the nest and that his life is probably in ‘it’s closing decade’. How wrong he was! The portrait the author gives us is an oblique one, Churchill seen from a different angle.

The early part of the book is not so interesting and the author constantly quotes from school girl diaries giving us a sort of Enid Blyton world of lunch and dinner menus, dog walks and pony rides and debutantes balls and a time when ‘coming out’ meant something far removed from what it does today.

The later part when Hitler plunges the world into war was when the book finally began to interest me. On the back cover the Sunday Express is quoted saying the book is a ‘delightful memoir’. I don’t think I can sum the book up any better.

As usual, here’s the video version below. I shot a couple of versions, one was too dark and another had problems with wind noise. I should have gone for take 3 really but the lure of the swimming pool was too much . .

One final book, Floating in Space set in Manchester, 1977. You can buy the book by clicking the icon below to go straight to Amazon!

Floating in Space

Will the Real Fifth Beatle Please Stand Up?

Posted on by Steve Higgins

The story of the Beatles is a story that envelops anyone who is interested in music. A whole generation grew up with them and watched them morph from mop tops to hippies and beyond. That same generation was shattered when John Lennon was killed and saddened when George succumbed to cancer. The Beatles have always been there and have always been a part of our lives. It seems to me that there is always something in the media about the Beatles and one thing that comes up time after time is the mysterious fifth Beatle. The fifth Beatle is a sort of honary title bestowed either by the media or the Beatles themselves. We all know who the Beatles were; John, Paul, George and Ringo, so who was the fifth Beatle? Here are a few of the contenders.

beatlesStuart Sutcliffe.
Stuart was a great friend of John Lennon’s and John invited him to join the band despite his lack of musical talent. In fact he couldn’t even play the guitar properly which dismayed Paul McCartney no end. However, John was the creator of the band and the leader. John and Stuart met at Art College in Liverpool where Stuart had a reputation for being a talented artist. Stuart later went to Hamburg with the Beatles where they had a long term gig as the resident band at a club in the Reeperbahn district. There he met and became involved with a young photographer called Astrid Kirchherr and stayed with her when the rest of the Beatles returned to the UK. Sutcliffe enrolled in Hamburg art college to further his artwork. Astrid was a stylish influence on the Beatles and encouraged them to abandon Brylcream and try the now famous mop top haircut which was popular at the time with students in Hamburg. She was studying art and photography and took many famous photos of the group.
Sutcliffe began to experience severe headaches and after one such episode in 1962 he was rushed to hospital. He died on the way there, the cause of death later diagnosed as a cerebral haemorrhage.

Picture courtesy Wikipedia

Picture courtesy Wikipedia

Brian Epstein.
Brian Epstein was the manager of his family’s music store in Liverpool city centre, NEMS. Epstein worked hard to make the store a success and it became one of the biggest music stores in the North of England. The story goes that a local music fan came into the store and ordered a copy of ‘My Bonnie’ which the Beatles had recorded with Tony Sheridan in Germany. Epstein was curious and made enquiries about the group, later going to see them at the Cavern in Liverpool. Some have dismissed this story, as Epstein was bound to be aware of the Beatles through the local magazine Merseybeat which was on sale in NEMS and featured the Beatles in their second edition. Whatever the original facts are, Epstein liked the Beatles immediately, watched their performances several times at the Cavern and eventually approached them with an offer to be their manager. Brian Epstein went on to manage the Beatles until his death in 1967. His management of their business lives was not too successful as he was perhaps, like everyone, not prepared for the whirlwind global stardom into which the Beatles were catapulted. Marketing and licensing opportunities were lost and other artists that Epstein managed felt that they were overlooked as Brian concentrated on the Beatles.
Brian Epstein died in August 1967. The coroner recorded his death as an accidental overdose.

George Martin.
Brian Epstein made many attempts to get his band a recording contract with little success. One record producer famously told Epstein that ‘Guitar groups are on the way out!’ Epstein persevered and managed to get George Martin, a producer for the EMI label Parlophone to record the Beatles. Martin, who had previously worked on comedy records with stars like Peter Sellers, was reportedly not completely impressed with the Beatles’ music but more so with their wit and banter. Drummer Pete Best did not impress Martin either and he engaged a session drummer to work with the Beatles on their first recordings. That was to have important repercussions for Pete and the band later.

John Lennon and me . .

John Lennon and me . .

George Martin paired his formal musical expertise with the Beatles raw talent and in fact either wrote or performed many of the orchestral arrangements on their recordings. The violin quartet on ‘Yesterday’ was one of Martin’s ideas.
He died at the age of 90 in 2016.

Pete Best.
Pete Best joined the Beatles in 1960 on the eve of their departure for Hamburg. He became a popular member of the group, especially with the fans and was noted for his James Dean-like moody good looks.
His mother Mona, had bought a large house in Liverpool that was formerly the West Derby Conservative club and she modelled the basement into a coffee bar which opened in the early sixties as the ‘Casbah’ and Pete played there regularly with his group the ‘Black Jacks’. Paul McCartney spotted Pete there and convinced him to join the Beatles in Hamburg.
On New Year’s Day 1962 the Beatles, including Pete on the drums, recorded fifteen songs as part of an audition for Decca. Decca ultimately rejected the Beatles but Epstein bought the tapes and managed to get George Martin from Parlophone to listen to the tracks. He liked them, offered a possible recording contract to Epstein but wanted to record the Beatles himself first. In June of 1962 the group went to Abbey Road studios to play in the recording studio for George Martin. They played a number of songs but then Martin decided he wanted a session drummer to stand in for Best. Later, the Beatles learned that at the next recording session, planned for September of 62, the engineers still wanted a session drummer so they decided that it was time to replace Best. Their new drummer, Ringo Starr, was also replaced by a session drummer and George Martin has said he was surprised that the group wanted to get rid of Pete. Pete at the time, was the most popular Beatle with the fans. Whatever the ins and outs of the issue, whether it was Pete’s drumming, the fact that he was a bit of a loner and spent little time with the others, or just didn’t fit in well with them, we will never know for sure. The three other Beatles, Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison tasked Brian Epstein with giving Pete Best the sack. He was out and Ringo Starr was in.
Pete Best had missed out by a whisker on global fame and fortune on a massive scale.

beatles-alternate-album-cover-a-hard-days-night-mono-33.gifDerek Taylor.
Taylor was a journalist who worked for newspapers in the North West. He wrote a review of the Beatles in concert and gradually became a trusted insider and confidante of the group. Later, Brian Epstein asked him to become their press officer. He left the Beatles after their US concert tour in 1964 but returned in 1968 to become the press officer for the Beatles’ Apple Corps. In the late seventies Taylor collaborated with George Harrison on his memoir, ‘I, Me, Mine.’

Derek Taylor died in 1997 while still working for Apple on the Beatles’ Anthology book.

Neil Aspinall.
Neil Aspinall was the Beatles’ road manager and personal assistant and surprisingly, he was originally employed by Pete Best on behalf of the band. Neil drove the band up and down the UK to various gigs in a small Commer van for which he paid £80. Aspinall was a great friend of Pete Best and offered to resign from his work with the Beatles in sympathy with Best’s sacking but Best apparently felt Aspinall should carry on. Later, Aspinall became manager of the Apple Corps when Brian Epstein died. He was the executive producer for the Beatles’ Anthology.
He died in New York in 2008.

Murray the K.
Murray the K was a New York disc jockey in the early sixties. When the Beatles first went to the USA in 1964 Murray was an instant hit with the band. He accompanied them to various events in the US and even broadcast his radio show from the Beatles’ Plaza hotel suite. He claimed to have been named the fifth Beatle by either George Harrison or Ringo Starr and his radio station WINS built him up as the ‘Fifth Beatle’ in their publicity.

If you liked this post, why not try my book, Floating In Space? Click the links at the top of the page for more information or click here to go straight to my Amazon page.

Personal Heroes and bonne sante

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Picture courtesy wikipedia

Everyone has their heroes, writers perhaps more so than other people because it’s our personal heroes that inspire us or perhaps even make us want to write. I come from a working class area of Manchester called Wythenshawe and when I get a bit down and look at my pile of rejected screenplays, essays and novels that seems to get bigger monthly, I wonder if I will never make it to the big time as a writer. That’s when I think about four working class northern men who did make it big, who worked hard at their craft and had incredible success. They weren’t authors but musicians; the Beatles!

One hundred percent northern through and through, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr became the Beatles and didn’t just make it to the top of the hit parade they reinvented the pop music industry and their genius as both writers and performers will live on as long as music is listened to.

Many moons ago when I worked for a cigarette vending company I used to visit a small pub in Woolton and the owners of the pub were two retired ex shell tanker drivers. They were both friendly guys but one in particular was outgoing and talkative and if he was on duty at the bar we would always have a good chat while I sorted out the cigarette machine. One day we got onto the subject of the Beatles and Lennon’s working class background and I was surprised to hear that Lennon’s house was just around the corner. Woolton is a very pleasant middle class suburb of Liverpool and I remember thinking what? This is where Lennon was brought up? John Lennon always struck me as a typical working class guy and his image as a sort of working class hero led me to assume he had a background in a rough and tumble area of Liverpool, like the Dingle where Ringo was brought up. The truth was different. Perhaps Lennon fermented the working class hero thing, perhaps the fault was mine, I just assumed something without knowing the facts.

Driving round the corner I found Lennon’s old house, 251 Menlove Avenue. This was where Lennon lived with his aunt Mimi from the age of five. He was living here when he started his first band, the Quarrymen and also when he met Paul McCartney. Lennon’s life was one heck of a journey taking him around the world with the Beatles and finally to New York with Yoko Ono where he was shot and killed in 1980.

This blog is about personal heroes and I’ll introduce you to more of them in another blog but for now I’d like to finish by wandering off the subject and returning to that pub in Woolton.

I’m not totally sure but I think the pub was the Derby Arms and the owner, whose name I cannot remember told me a story about the death of his father. His father was an old chap, a veteran of the first world war and had picked up a habit in France of always having water with his meals and he would always raise his glass and toast ‘bonne sante’ to whoever he was with.

My friend went to visit him in hospital on his deathbed and asked the nurse how his was. ‘OK’ they replied ‘but a little dehydrated. Try and get him to drink a little water’
In the hospital ward the son passed a glass of water to his father’s lips and the father murmured ‘bonne sante’ before passing away.

So to all you who are reading, let me wish you ‘good health’ and if you enjoy my writing  why not take a look at my book. Click the links at the top of the page to buy or for more information.