I like how completely baffled John Lennon is by the rules of American football here. It doesn’t make any sense to me either, and I’m American.

On December 9th, 1974, Lennon somehow found himself at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum watching the Los Angeles Rams play the Washington Redskins in front of something like 87,000 people. He hadn’t planned some grand promotional appearance, but Frank Gifford had bumped into him earlier that day at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, offered him tickets to the game and, much to Gifford’s surprise, Lennon actually showed up.

This being Monday Night Football in the 1970s, there were celebrities everywhere. California governor and future president Ronald Reagan was there too, and in one of those wonderfully strange combinations of famous people that could only have happened in the ’70s, Reagan apparently spent part of the evening explaining the rules of football to John Lennon.

I’d have paid good money to listen in on that conversation.

Eventually, Lennon was persuaded into the ABC commentary booth for a quick chat with Howard Cosell, whom he’d already met during a lengthy radio interview a couple of months earlier. Cosell asks him for his first impressions of the spectacle and Lennon seems genuinely blown away by the whole thing.

“It’s an amazing event and sight,” he tells him. “It makes rock concerts look like tea parties.”

The game itself? Not quite so straightforward.

Lennon admits he’s been trying to follow what’s happening but can’t understand “why half the team was off and half the team was on”, which seems a perfectly reasonable question to me. Cosell asks him to compare it with soccer and rugby, and Lennon decides rugby is probably the closest relative, although he’s disappointed by the lack of a proper scrum where, as he puts it, “both teams really punch each other”.

Source: dangerousminds.net/Richard Metzger

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Although Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s most famous collaboration was the 1982 transatlantic #1 hit “Ebony and Ivory,” the relationship between two of music’s greatest ever minds spans nearly the entirety the length of their careers.

In February 1966, a 15-year-old Wonder, transitioning from the child prodigy label of “Little Stevie Wonder” to one of Motown’s most exciting pop acts, told NME that meeting McCartney, then a 23-year-old bassist and co-lead vocalist and songwriter for The Beatles, two years into the Fab Four’s cultural dominance of American and global music, was one of the highlights of his young career.

“When on tour, I have to write essays about the places I visit,” the teenage Wonder told the publication (via Beatle Radio). “In the essay I’ll be writing when I get back I’ll certainly include my meeting with Paul McCartney. I met him in the Scotch Of St James club. He’s a really swinging guy, the only Beatle I’ve met.”

For McCartney, the feeling was very much reciprocated, with a History article writing that during his time as a Beatle, and likely prior, and all the way through his early post-breakup career as the frontman for his semi-solo project, Paul McCartney and Wings, McCartney “had been a fan of Stevie Wonder’s for many years before they first met.”

Source: mensjournal.com/Bethany Gemmell

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The Beatles have unveiled a previously unheard alternate take of “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)”.

Released today by UMG and Apple Corps Ltd., “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) (Second Version – Take 2)” features on the forthcoming expanded edition of the band’s 1965 album Rubber Soul, due on October 2.

The first version of what was then called ‘This Bird Has Flown’ was recorded during the first day of sessions for Rubber Soul and featured George Harrison’s new discovery, the sitar. The band were not happy with this version, so nine days later they taped three more performances.

On take two, track one featured John Lennon’s acoustic guitar, Paul McCartney’s bass, Ringo Starr on drums and George playing drone notes on sitar. George added more sitar on tracks two and three, with John and Paul’s vocals also recorded on track three. Rather than starting with an instrumental version of the verse melody, as the final version does, this arrangement opens with double-tracked sitar playing the tune of the bridge section.

The release follows the recent unveiling of “Michelle (Take 1)” and “Day Tripper (Songwriting Work Tape)”.

The collection will be available in a range of formats, including standard 1CD and 1LP editions, 2CD and 2LP deluxe editions, 4CD and 5LP Super Deluxe box sets and a Blu-ray edition featuring the new Dolby Atmos mix, high-resolution stereo audio and promotional films for “Day Tripper” and “We Can Work It Out”. Limited-edition orange vinyl and Zoetrope vinyl editions will also be available.V

Source: uncut.co.uk/Michael Bonner

The Beatles were professional music-makers, well-seasoned by the time they started making 1965's Rubber Soul, but they were also something simpler: boys who enjoyed being silly from time to time.

Especially at that time, when the Beatles were moving full steam ahead and continuing to work hard at their craft, it was fun to loosen up a little in the studio as they were recording the song "Girl."

"It was always amusing to see if we could get a naughty word on the record: 'fish and finger pie,' 'prick teaser,' 'tit tit tit tit,'" Paul McCartney recalled in Many Years From Now. "The Beach Boys had a song out where they'd done 'la la la la' and we loved the innocence of that and wanted to copy it, but not use the same phrase.

So we were looking around for another phrase, so it was 'dit dit dit dit,' which we decided to change in our waggishness to 'tit tit tit tit,' which is virtually indistinguishable from 'dit dit dit dit.' And it gave us a laugh. It was to get some light relief in the middle of this real big career that we were forging. If we could put in something that was a little bit subversive then we would. George Martin might say, 'Was that 'dit dit' or 'tit tit' you were singing?' 'Oh, 'dit dit,' George, but it does sound a bit like that, doesn't it?' Then we'd get in the car and break down laughing."

Source: ultimateclassicrock.com/Allison Rapp

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A seminal track from arguably the best rock band – if not the best band period – of all time included just one of the four Hall of Fame members.

The Beatles released “Yesterday” on this day 61 years ago, but it featured only Paul McCartney and a string quartet. The song was the first of its kind for the band as a solo performance, but sparked the “most covered” song of all time.

Eva Cassidy, Marvin Gaye, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra all covered the song, which the Guinness Book of World Records claims has been covered over 4,000 times.

McCartney revealed the Beatles were “a little embarrassed about” the song because of their rock roots. The track initially came to the Beatles star upon waking one morning and he hammered it out over the piano where he wondered where he’d heard the song before.

“It was like a jazz melody,” he said. “My dad used to know a lot of old jazz tunes. I thought maybe I’d just remembered it from the past.”

Yesterday’ Named One of the Greatest Songs of All Time

Rolling Stone named “Yesterday” as the No. 13 greatest song of all time, which was the second-highest song by the Beatles on the list behind only “Hey Jude” which came in at No. 8.

Source: mensjournal.com/Andrew McCarty

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Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles by Philip Norman

Phillip Norman captures the zeitgeist and provides a compelling portrait ... This illuminating work ... brings to life the turbulent and exciting times of the 1960s, when uncommonly inspired innovation seemed commonplace, and nothing felt totally outside the realm of possibility.

Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles is the brainchild of columnist Philip Norman, former rock music critic for The Times and noted biographer of numerous acclaimed musicians and other public figures. Lauded for his first book, Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation, published in 1981, his current book is a comprehensive biography of the man often referred to as “the fifth Beatle” for discovering the rock band then known as The Quarrymen.

Playing a lunchtime gig on November 9, 1961, at Liverpool’s Cavern Club, a small subterranean venue, the band had returned to Liverpool from working club gigs in Hamburg. Spruced up and renamed The Beatles, they signed a five-year management contract with Brian Epstein in October 1962. His determination, discipline and positive influence transmuted the regional favorite — four lads still living at home, playing covers and barely making beer and gas money — into the world’s most popular band whose renown has not diminished in more than 60 years.

Source: booktrib.com/Linda Hitchcock

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