The Beatles: Non-Album Songs Part Three 1968-96

The Alan's Album Archives Guide To The Music Of The Beatles Is Available By Clicking Here 

A

Non-Album Recordings Part #11: 1968 (EMI)

A) 1968 was the year when the world went back from multi-coloured splendour rot black-and-white. Riots, assassinations, the escalation of troops in Vietnam: suddenly 'earthy' sounds were in and existential musings were out. The Beatles' first release of the year (coming out in March) caught the band at the direct halfway stage of where they've been and where they're going. A-side [252] 'Lady Madonna' is the Beatles' simplest recording for years, an entirely McCartney written song based around a funky piano riff and a bluesy chord progression that's almost a solo project (John only appears on backing vocals and George only takes the briefest of brief guitar solos). In a way that's fitting because this in many ways Paul's first song for future wife Linda and a tribute to how well the singer thought she was coping with all the problems and multi-tasking of being a single parent in the late 60s (she's divorced her geologist husband Joseph Melville See in 1965 and had been looking after a by noe five year old daughter Heather alone for three years - typically Paul, unlike John, got on rather well with his wife's ex-husband). 'Lady Madonna' is an impressively advanced song for its era of chauvinism, celebrating tough earthy women who get masses done without fuss (Paul, by now established as Heather's favourite babysitter, was particularly impressed at how Linda managed to fill his fridge with all the right foods without him actually saying anything to her). The use of the name 'Madonna' also has biblical connotations, hinting at women being the strong, silent partners throughout history, since biblical times (although, like 'Let It Be', the song is vague enough for non-believers to understand as well). Unfortunately after making his point in the first verse Paul doesn't know where to run with it and a good song simply runs out of steam a bit too quickly, filled in with some nursery rhyme-styled nonsense (based around the tale of 'Monday's child works hard for a living' etc) that detracts from the great first verse and a curious 'see how they run' passage 'borrowed' from another nursery rhyme, 'Three Blind Mice'. Did this song start as a rhyming game Paul was making up for Heather, before thoughts turned to her mother and well and easily she did this sort of thing all the time? Either way, Yoko must have been cross that her future husband's partner beat him to saying all the things she wanted him to say and actually this is a very Lennon-ish song, harsh and unmelodic by Paul's usual standards, although all the disaparate sections of the song typically tie up by the end. First released as a single on March 15th 1968. Find it on: 'Past Masters Volume Two (1988, Re-issued 2009)

B) George's first ever B-side is more in keeping with 1967 (it was in fact recorded, along with most of his first solo project the under-rated 'Wonderwall Music', on January 6th 1968 so dates from only a week into the new year). [253] 'The Inner Light' is the 'last' great song to come out of the band's psychedelic years and is the best evidence yet of just how deeply George has taken to the Eastern way of life. The lyrics are a direct steal from Lao-Tse Taoist's book 'The Tao Te Ching' (or in English 'The Way'), a kind of cross between a book of sonnets and an instruction manual. The book was sent to Harrison by Juan Mascaro, a scholar and Beatles fan who thought he might find it 'useful' - he sent it to the right person: perhaps the most open-minded member of an open-minded group George understood the text straight away and knowing him was probably halfway through the song by the time by the time he'd finished it. Unlike Lennon's 'steal' from a circus poster on 'Mr Kite', you sense that George believes every word (indeed the lines - which come practically unchanged from the original - are very close to what he'd already written for 'Within You, Without You'. The theme of the song is knowledge - that to understand this world and our role within it we should be spending our time thinking about the next one, not rushing around glancing at everything without really 'seeing' it. Combined with a beautiful backing track that bounces between the serene vision George has just discovered and the bouncy, sarod-led riff that would have leant itself well to a Rickenbacker guitar (both parts held together by an unmoving organ note, the musical equivalent of the soul still being tied by a single 'string' to the body) Harrison finds his forte, with a song that's notably unlike John's or Paul's work for the first time but every bit as good. Worried by the song and certain that it didn't 'fit' the rest of his 'Wonderwall' soundtrack album he wasn't sure what to do with it (I've often wondered if that soundtrack's distinctly Beatles instrumental 'Party Seacombe' was intended in this song's place as his contribution to their next album, perhaps with some lyrics that hadn't been written yet). However Lennon and McCartney loved this song and badgered George into adding first a vocal and then agreeing to its release as a B-side (it helped that they didn't have anything else ready!) They also add a grand total of one line of harmonies right at the end of the song, just saving 'The Inner Light' from being the first song since 'Yesterday' to feature only one Beatle. A real triumph for its creator, the sad part is that the world moved away from such mystical Indian sounds (although note that there's not a single sitar on this recording, George keen to show how many other great sounds there are in the Indian music scene) just when Harrison had finally found his 'voice'. Personally I prefer it to 'Lady Madonna', a song that tries a little too hard in comparison to 'Light's clever lyrics, which prove that the best way forward is not to try at all and let wisdom come to you. First released as the B-side of 'Lady Madonna' on March 15th 1968. Find it on: 'Past Masters Volume Two (1988, Re-issued 2009)

C) Recorded in July (at the heart of the sessions for the 'White Album') and released in August (three months before) [254] 'Hey Jude' reveals none of the frictions and difficulties of the band's parent project. Instead 'Hey Jude' is one of the band's best known and most loved singalongs, a song that manages to make the most of McCartney's buoyant optimism without descending into anything trite or shallow and features one of the best Beatle group performances of the second half of their career. The song started as words of comfort to Julian Lennon, then aged five, whom Paul was particularly close to (Cynthia's surprisingly snarling pair of autobiographies have bad words to say about most people in The Beartles' orbit but she still clearly adores McCartney, who still kept in contact long after John had taken up with Yoko). After trying to be happy and optimistic about her chances of getting back together with John, the bassist was deeply  moved when he went to leave and saw a flicker of sadness on Julian's face as he went to leave. Reportedly 'Hey Jude' was written on that very ride home back to London (Cynthia was still in the family's Surrey house) as 'Hey Jules', a song of hope and to 'not give up', with the name somehow metamorphosising into the stronger-syllabled (and more satisfying to sing) 'Jude'. Strangely enough and unknowing all of this, Lennon latched onto the song the second Paul played it to him, assuming it meant quite the opposite and was effectively 'blessing' his union with Yoko (by the time it was finished 'Hey Jude' does indeed sound like its being sung to an 'old friend' rather than a small boy, especially the line 'you were made to go out and get her'). To his dying day, when Lennon was still a little bit anti-Paul, he still claimed to love this song which features the best of all McCartney's traits: it's happy without being facile, hopeful without being trite and repetitive but in a way that builds up to a towering climax. The lyrics are comforting without actually explaining the situation, basically a big brother putting around the listener's shoulder and telling them that everything is going to be alright ('it's just you - well, you'll do' Paul screams, as if ready to take on the school bullies on your behalf). The extended ending which kicks in at the 3:10 mark is extraordinary, all that tension and uncertainty being turned into a positive nonsense singalong of 'na na na na' that make 'Jude' feel like the most loved person in the world (and extending the song - as the band must have known it would be - to a record-breaking-for-a-number-one-single at 7:09 - allegedly mixed to run a second longer than current nominee 'MacArthur Park'). The result has been dimmed by the amount of times we've heard it, the fact that McCartney seems obliged to end every concert or TV appearance with it and the way that anytime The Beatles are represented on some general TV programme about music it's always this song they play. In other words, 'Hey Jude' made a lot more sense in 1968 when it was new and fresh than it does now it's sentiment has grown old and stale. But this is still a clever and satisfying work, filled with just enough love to make up for the lines that have clearly just been 'blocked in' (Paul remembers telling John the line 'the movement you need is on the shoulder' was a 'filler' lyric till something better came along - John loved it and told him it was the best part of the song) and enough emotional power to go with the clever construction. Oh and for something a little extra that few fans ever notice or comment on, Paul messes up his piano line and exclaims '!#in' hell' deep in the mix at around 3:10 . This is the third time you can hear a Beatle swear on record!) First released as a single on August 26th 1968. Find it on: 'Past Masters Volume Two (1988, Re-issued 2009)

D) If 'Hey Jude' was designed to bring people together, then the single mix of B-side [245b] 'Revolution' is  Lennon song designed to divide and conquer. Although released first this is actually the second version of the song to be recorded (about six weeks after the 'White Album' version) and it's spiky, hard-hitting brash guitar strums reflect the mood of a year that had got further and further out of control since Lennon wrote the song. It would be nice to think that Lennon cared enough about his art to keep recording till he got things right, but it seems more likely that he was so taken with his own song (which, like many of his early Yoko songs, finds him making a 'statement' and giving an 'opinion' to the world rather than talking about himself or people he didn't know) that he effectively demanded it be released as the next Beatles single. Sure that the record would be banned (and break their run of hits) the other three weren't so sure; as a cop-out they told Lennon that his 'first' version was too laidback and not commercial enough. Undeterred Lennon got the band back in the studio and made his rallying cry one of his more accessible songs of the period, fairly bursting with energy and featuring a notably aggressive drum track from Ringo. However Paul's last minute coup with 'Hey Jude' (recorded about three weeks later) meant John had 'lost' the argument: unusually adamant about not leaving things in the archive, Lennon agreed to have the song come out as a flipside. The solution to keeping both halves happy, surely, is obvious: release the record as another 'double 'A' side (like they did after a similar impasse over 'Day Tripper' and 'We Can Work It Out') but measure it by point-of-sales (which almost certainly would have had 'Hey Jude' first). Hard-hitting as this version is and as good as many of the arrangement touches are (Lennon singing triple-tracked with himself but coming in at different times, as if to keep us on our toes) the more laidback 'White Album' version is a better fit for the song. Lyrically the two versions are identical, apart from Lennon now being confident about being 'counted out' of the revolution when it comes (he hedges his best with 'out...in!' on the album version).Even so both versions are strong and it's this single version that will set the tone for Lennon's solo career more than perhaps any other Beatles song. This second version first released as a the B-side of 'Hey Jude' on August 26th 1968. Find it on: 'Past Masters Volume Two (1988, Re-issued 2009)

E) [255] 'Across The Universe' is a funny little song. I've known fans who adore it and fans who hate it - in truth it's not much of a song to get worked up about either way. Written  around a mantra given to Lennon by the Maharishi (although, unusually, the song seems to have written once the band had got home and most likely came to Lennon after the venomous 'Sexy Sadie') 'jai guru dev' (basically 'I am at one with the world - and the world is at one with me'), this song of beauty and awe seems out of place in Lennon's canon, especially his new Yoko-enhanced caustic self of 1968. Could it be that, impressed by George's 'The Inner Light', Lennon wanted to write a song in his partner's genre? If so then he woefully misses what makes Harrison's piece so special: awe. Lennon's narrator is adamant that 'nothing's going to change my world' and gets hung up on some 'Lucy In the Sky' style surreal imagery that's a poor substitute for the very real emotions going on in George's heart. Lennon was always best when he wrote instinctively about what was on his mind, but he really struggled writing songs about subjects he thought he 'ought' to be writing about. Unsure quite what to do with it, this song was recorded many times - the first, more psychedelic version played on a zither and harpsichord released on 'Anthology Two' being about the best and was pencilled in for several Beatles projects: for 'Yellow Submarine' (back when it was an EP - the animators would have fun doing this one, actually!) and for The White Album. Eventually the song was given away to an early various artists charity album raising money for the World Wildlife Fund - while not about the environment per se the lyrics fitted nicely. Even so the 'WWF' version (collected for the world to hear on 'Past Masters Volume Two' - the original never sold that well) rather misses the point with its added on sound effects, female choir (actually two 'groupies' camped outside Abbey Road invited in on a whim) and varispeeded vocal (which makes Lennon sound 'high' rather than moved) and The Beatles are badly upstaged by labelmates The Hollies (whose contribution to the same album, 'Wings' is one of their  very best songs). A third and final version (basically a remix of the WWF version) was included on 'Let It Be' by producer Phil Spector to bulk up the LP and (probably) to butter Lennon up a bit more for getting the job. The song really doesn't fit there either, being an overhang from a more innocent time and losing out as part of an album where The Beatles were never less at one with the world (and the world less at one with them). The Beach Boys, fellow acolytes of the Maharishi, also used the phrase 'jai guru dev' in their 1972 song 'All This Is That' (from the 'Carl and the Passions - So Tough' album), a lovely song about peace and tranquillity that sounds more like what Lennon was aiming for here. Find it on: The various artists compilation 'Nothing's Gonna Change Our World' (December 12th 1969), 'Let It Be' (1970) and 'Anthology Two' (1996)

F) Unsure quite how to begin a particular side of 'The White Album' in its original rough running order, some bright spark asked George Martin' to come up with an instrumental passage that would loop into Ringo's first song 'Don't Pass Me By'. Martin either hadn't heard the song or misunderstood the brief: what he came up with was [256]  'The Beginning', a 40 second orchestral instrumental full of layers of longing and emotion (it would have made a fine film score) that sounds nothing like 'Don't Pass Me By'. The only way you can tell the two parts were meant to go together is that they end in the same key (C Major, if you're wondering - Ringo couldn't play any black notes!) The idea didn't really work and was quickly removed, with the track listing shiggled round to prevent the problem. Sadly the refusal by one of the remaining Beatles to release a third Lennon-demo-with-overdubs single in the 1990s (George most likely - but what was the song? We'll have fun guessing later on in this book!) means that 'Anthology Three' now starts with this piece instead - you can almost here the outcry from confused fans wanting The Beatles from here! Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

G) Yet again Anthology put a recording that only fans could love second on their key albums! Lennon's demo of [228b] 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun' is fascinating stuff if you love the song - there are sections that don't make the record but should have done (John playing with his new girlfriend's name on 'Yoko Oh No Oh Yes' is terrific!), sections missing (none of the 'lizard on the windowpane' surreal-ness of the finale) and the sense that Lennon is forcing the song out from his self-consciousness right then and there. Unfortunately all non-fans can hear is a man stumbling around a song he hasn't got chords for yet (I' starting to lose count but I think this is the third and final time you can hear a Beatle swearing on record!) and the two less interesting parts of the song ('I need a fix' and 'mother superior jumped the gun') heard over and over. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

H) The Anthology version of  [243b] 'Helter Skelter' could really have been something. Inspired by Lennon's twenty minute (!) version of 'Revolution' on the first day of the album sessions McCartney drove the Beatles through a sleepy 25 (!) minute version of 'Helter Skelter' (these two songs would have filled up a single album between them!) Alas some idiot pulling the strings at Apple decided that only four minute were good enough to go out so what we have here is a slowed down ramshackle version of the song we already know and love without the more interesting-sounding Grateful Dead/Jefferson Airplane style jam sections either side of it. What we have here sound suspiciously like the 'release' section to me, without all the tight energy built up from whatever grooves the band had been playing up to this point (sadly until this song leaks on bootleg I'll probably never know for certain!) So is this version better than the release one? Not based on what's here - but we don't get anywhere close to experiencing this song in full (incidentally the Beatles could have added this entire version to 'Anthology Three' with the loss of just one three-minute song - I nominate 'Rocky Raccoon' - so leaving it out for 'space reasons' seems daft to me). One wonders what crimes Charlie Manson might have committed had he heard this rambling creepy version in full... Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

I) [257b] 'Mean Mr Mustard' sounds in ruder health as a White Album demo than he ever did as part of the Abbey Road medley. Lennon's 'Esher' demo (recorded like many of this next run of songs in George's house shortly before he moved to Friar Park) is much better than the final product: his guitar riff 'waddle' makes Mr Mustard charming rather than sinister, his double-tracked vocal (complete with 'whoops'es and mistakes) charismatic and the repeats to the song make it sound more substantial (especially the chorus 'He's such a dirty dirty...mean Mr Mustard', as if Lennon is too angry to sing the right words). Listen out for the fact that Mr Mustard's sister taking him to 'look at the queen' (where he shouts out something obscene) in this version is Shirley - Lennon will change her name to 'Pam' when he realised that the Abbey Road melody sequence would go quite well with the track 'Polythene Pam'. One of the few Anthology recordings to trounce the original. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

J) Talking of which, [258b] 'Polythene Pam' doesn't quite work when heard in similar demo form, although it's fun when Lennon garbles his words. Lennon has already pout his scouse accent on but somehow this early take never really catches fire: Pam is too 'polite' in this version somehow. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

K) [223b] 'Glass Onion' is another song that had a surprising amount of time spent on it seeing that Lennon at best wrote it as a 'filler'. Lennon's 110 second demo is less wise-cracking than the version that made the record and more of an actual 'song' than a mere list of in-jokes (recorded in mid September, it beat the 'White Album' version by about a month). Lennon's decision to slow the song down is quite effective, making the song sound briefly thoughtful - as befits a song about how the mysteries of life unravel the closer to the middle you get. With a few more lyrics (Lennon only has the first verse into the chorus so far) this demo arrangement could have been an even better song. Some 14 songs later 'Anthology' also features the first arrangement of the song: one that comes with all the power of the finished version but the band are clearly less sure that it's going to work and end up sticking in all sorts of unnecessary 'gimmicks' along the way. This version features - for no apparent reason - the sound of breaking glass, a ringing phone and a football commentator shouting 'it's a goal!' Lennon clearly wanted to leave his listeners a few extra 'red herring' clues here, although the effect doesn't really work. What's interesting is how much of the arrangement was held over: even the 'Fool On The Hill' mimicking flutes are there in this early version although you still miss George Martin's eerie strings. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

L)[259]  'Junk' is a lovely McCartney song that will appear 18 months later on first album 'McCartney'. This Esher demo is if anything slightly more arranged than the simple finished version featuring a double-tracked vocal at times, although Paul hasn't quite up with the lyrics yet. A eulogy for forgotten objects gathering dust somewhere that used to mean so much, this song cleverly leaves most of the story up to the listener (why is there so much in a junk shop? Has there been a death, a divorce or a move recently?) Amazing to think that a song this good was abandoned despite the Beatles needing material to fill 'The White Album' and later 'The Abbey Road Medley'. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

M)'Junk' would have made a better song than [232b] 'Piggies', for instance, which sounds almost as unlikeable in demo form. At least here George sings the song properly, though, without any distracting production trickery and a nice guitar part (and whistling!) that reveals how much debt this song owes to folk protest songs (something rather hidden on the harpsichord-led finished product). There's just one lyrical change this time: instead of using knives forks to 'eat their bacon' the piggies are using cutlery to 'eat their pork chops'. Snort! Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

N) Paul's brief demo of [247b] 'Honey Pie' might not be quite as polished as the 'White Album' version but it's a lot less po-faced and a lot more fun. Various assorted Pauls seem to be having a roaring twenties party by the sound of things and while the one who keeps singing 'ooh yeah' is really irritating the lead vocal Paul sings is actually better then the finished version. There's no middle instrumental section here yet (thank goodness!)  and no 'final verse/middle eight' (depending what we call it) about the 'wind blowing her boat across the sea'. All in all this Honey Pie is rather sweet and much more of a good-time gal than the stuck up one that made the album. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

O) Ringo's [234b] 'Don't Pass Me By' is next (wouldn't it have been better coming after 'The Beginning' like it was meant to?) and is seemingly here just so Ringo - as sole composer - gets a bigger piece of the Anthology pie. The differences between this early takes and the finished version is minimal: a few different drum thwacks and no violin solo. The only lyrical difference is a rather fun 'drunken' monologue from Ringo over the fade ('Don't pass me by, now, honey!') This version of the song sound very unfinished, but then again the version on the 'White Album' didn't sound that finished either - strange to think that it was actually quite a big improvement from what's here! Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

P) McCartney's [224b]  'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da' is another song that went through several permutations before the band were satisfied with it. Lennpon already sounds mighty sick of it though, hence his rather edgy opening yell inviting us to hear 'take one by the united jumbo band!' in his best Jamaican accent! This version is more muted than the single version and the biggest difference is the loss of John's opening crashing piano chords. If anything, though, this early version is better suited to a song about being laidback and the ska-originals of the song comes through much clearer here. Perhaps Paul should have left well alone instead of nearly breaking up The Beatles recording another one? However out of the two the 'White Album' does in by a nose, being more 'fun' sounding whatever the issues in the studio! Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

Q) I'm also rather fond of the 'Anthology' take of Lennon's lullaby [251b]  'Good Night', even though it's not a proper take. A rare example of one of The Beatles teaching a song to the others, Ringo is clearly singing off a sheet while the others look on (and Lennon proves once again what a fine piano player he is for someone who had never been professionally taught). Yes you miss George Martin's strings, but this song for Julian sounds even sweeter with just 'Uncle Ringo' and a piano, closer to how mums and dads across the world would be singing anyway (it helps that Ringo has a voice that everyone thinks they can improve on!) There's also a different beginning, Ringo singing the chorus ('Dream sweet dreams for me') which works rather well as an opening (As Lennon says it 'sounds quite nice now' - it's a shame they didn't keep it). What a shame too that 'Good Night' had to be altered quite so much from the simple likeable song it is here to the rather over-lush and overly senti,ental version that made the album. Oh and it's an even bigger shame that The Beatles had to go and 'Anthologise' the recording, segueing into the final version instead of just letting the song come to a natural conclusion. Did they really think that many people would buy these outtakes sets without having heard 'The White Album' first?! Still, how lucky that this rare example of The Beatles rehearsing and getting to know a song rather than going for a proper 'take' managed to survive all these years (un-bootlegged too as far as I can tell). Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

R) [249b] 'Cry Baby Cry' is pretty similar all round compared to the final version: all its missing are the accordion overdubs while the bass and drums clatter in slightly later. Without quite so much distortion and echo on Lennon's voice he sounds sad rather than scary which gives a quite different 'feel' to a song that, depending how you read it, is either a sigh for lost childhoods that will never come again or a tirade at how much of a commercially-driven sham childhood really was (something that makes 'Cry Baby Cry' more relevant to each passing generation). Note how the chords Lennon plats the beginning sound like the ones he plays at the start of 'A Day In The Life', something that isn't quite so obvious on the finished take. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

S) The earlier 'Anthology' version of [231b]  'Blackbird' is also near enough the finished version - with only a guitar part and a vocal there isn't much room to alter anything, although that didn't stop Paul from attempting take after take. You can hear differences when you know the song well though: Macca uses a slightly different accent on this version (faux-American), his vocal lines rise and fall in slightly different ways and there are a couple of pauses here and there that suggest that this is an early take. Oh and there's no sound effect of a blackbird singing along! Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

T) After a run of comparatively duff or at least familiar sounding re-takes, 'Anthology Three' suddenly pulls of a masterstroke with a very young sounding [242b] 'Sexy Sadie'. Slightly slower (and as a result slightly sadder), Sadie doesn't yet have the wondrous backing vocals of the final version and the main instruments here are Lennon's creaky organ and Ringo's rather loud drumming (both of which are there on the final record but in the background, not face front like this). To be honest if the band had left the song like this I'd have been taking them to task for playing so poorly, but Lennon for one is having great fun and turns in a vocal simply dripping with uncorked venom and mischief. Woe betide anyone who upsets Lennon - what have you done? Frustratingly, the song fades out even though it sounds as if it still has a fair way to go (did the take breakdown? And if so why can't we hear it? It's not as if we'll ignore 50 years of popular culture and start laughing at the Beatles because of a single mistake now is it? That's what The Spice Girls are for!) Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

U) Another candidate for best 'Anthology' discovery is George's simple acoustic demo of [227b] 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps'. A world away from the whirl of fury and Eric Clapton superstar solos of the finished version, this version is stark and sad, a morose reflection on  how so many things are out of our control. There's even the bonus of an extra verse, cut from the final version that adds a chilling conclusion to the song: 'I look from the wings at the play you are staging while my guitar gently weeps, as I'm sitting here doing nothing but aging, while my guitar gently weeps'. The 'Love' album later doctored this version with some truly ugly George Martin strings - in truth this songs doesn't need anything more doing to it - the wonder is that George didn't simply release it as it stood. Of all four Beatles George was the one served best by the Anthology project and never did his light shine brighter than here. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

V) By contrast, the shortened 'Anthology' version of '[254b] Hey Jude' isn't all that different: the band clearly don't know the song inside out yet (this is only take 2 - the finished one is take 26!) but they're pretty darn close. John introduces Paul as 'from the heart of the Black Country' (ie the Midlands) before  Paul starts off busking a new song  - or at least if it's an 'old' one I can't find any references to it anywhere... ('When I was a robber in Boston place you gathered round me with your fond embrace...') Then starts that familiar refrain (sadly faded short at the 4 minute mark after just 45 seconds of 'na na nas') which sounds audibly rough at times but features a great soulful McCartney vocal. Not sure I learnt anything new about the song but nice to hear a  slightly different version of a song that's probably suffered from too much exposure down the years. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

W) [260] 'Not Guilty' is a rare example of a completely unreleased Beatles original. It's a Harrisong, familiar from a slowed down, rather calmer version on his self-titled 1979 album. This song is far too good to have remained stuck in a vault for all these years, with a turbulent guitar riff that sounds like George banging his head against a wall repeatedly and which gets more and more desperate with each verse, ending with one of the candidates for George's greatest solos by the time the fadeout rumbles along. A song forever about to trip up and fall down, 'Not Guilty'  sounds halfway between a comedy pratfall and a sinister seedy black and white B movie, leaving the listener unsure whether to laugh or cry. The reason The Beatles never did release it are two-fold. One is that they were simply sick of it: this song is so complex that the band ran through 106 takes (!) of this song before giving up (this is take 99, one of the very few to get all the way to the end!), perhaps because this track is so complex, jumping from 4/4 to 3/4 time and back again (something that would have kept the rhythmically wayward Lennon especially on his toes). Was George trying for the similar sound of his colleague's 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun' here by any chance? The other reason is that this is another one of George's songs designed to ruffle feathers. A kind of 'Apple' version of 'Only Northern Song' The guitarist makes fun of the band's business empire and squabbles, distancing himself from them with a mixture of back-stabbing and wry grins ('I won't upset the apple-cart - I only want what I can get!) Along the way George gets in a few digs at his simplistic public image ('Not guilty for looking like a freak, making friends with every Sikh!') and his role in the Maharishi debacle ('Not guilty for leading you astray on the road to Mandalay') Perhaps George was simply guilty of airing too much dirty laundry in public? All that said, though, John and Paul were hardly immune to talking about the band and this song would have worked well if treated with the lightness of touch of Lennon's similar 'Glass Onion' rather than the oppressive atmosphere the song is given here. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

X) The Anthology version of [240b] 'Mother Nature's Son' is rather less essential and, as with 'Blackbird', there's nowhere else really Paul can go with just his voice and a guitar. It's nice to hear the song bereft of horn parts though and the studio chat surrounding the song is as usual almost as good as the song itself (perhaps too used to Lennon's mocking huour on his songs, Paul announces afterwards in a posh voice that he'd 'like to do Londonderry Air' - defensive humour was a useful tool for all The Beatles when they got too big-headed). Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

Y) [233b] 'Rocky Raccoon', meanwhile, is even more pointless on 'Anthology' than it was on 'The White Album'. The finished product wasn't exactly exciting or polished but this early version is chaotic - among the roughest recordings of The Beatles officially available. Paul is trying to teach the song to the rest of the band who clearly don't know it, with Lennon struggling to keep up on harmonica. Paul adds a clever spoken word introduction to the song though that should have been kept (perhaps he couldn't remember it for later takes?)Making the song even more obvious as a spoof of bad cowboy films, it runs 'Rock Raccoon was a fool unto himself and he would not swallow his foolish pride...mind you, coming from a small town in Minnesota it was not the kind of thing that a young man did when a feller went and stole his chick away from him'. There's even a fuller ender: where at the end of Paul's scat singing he adds '...and that's the story of Rocky Raccoon', like the end credits of some bad TV drama. The band plough on regardless despite some toe-curling mistakes (most audibly Paul getting the line wrong that the 'doctor is sminking of gin...sminking?!') but if anything there's even less joy in the room on this version than the finished product. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

Z) Here's the good news: [261] 'What's The New Mary Jane?' is a completely unreleased Lennon song which finally secured an official release after decades of Beatle fanlore discussing how terrific it must be. The bad news is you should be careful what you wish for: 'What's The New Mary Jane', for years described as John at his most psychedelically outrageous, is no 'Revolution #9' never mind 'I Am The Walrus'. In truth its John and Yoko seeing how much they can get away with recording while high while having studio timed paid for ('Mary Jane' being a slang term for marijuana - if you're wondering why the title is so ungrammatical marijuana tends to confuse people's idea of tenses whilst under it's spell). What's a shame is that this track could have really been something: no other Lennon song tries quite so hard to turn his 'In His Own Write' style prose into a song, a clever idea for composition which - to insiders who know the slang - is all about having your realities changed by drugs ('He grooving with cooking spaghetti'). The song has a haunting piano riff too and some of the sonic trickery (Yoko singing 'John' while varispeeded, filled with echo and sounding like it's sung underwater is more effective than similar attempts on the pair's 'Wedding Album' the following year) is very clever - it's just that at 6 minutes and with a good two of those being Yoko screaming loudly while John rattles a tambourine you've forgotten all about the song's promise long before the end. While the Ono-Lennons only recorded the song once there are multiple mixes on bootleg, all made by Lennon and I wondered which one the Anthology project would use. Typically, they use a hybrid version that starts off with the song at its most 'normal' (until about the two minute mark) and then at its most 'weird' (with all hell breaking loose on the sound effects). Someone, somewhere, really did hear this track for the first time while stoned and is probably still having nightmares about the places it took them to this day.  'Let's hear it before we get taken away' Lennon jokes at the end - at least we think he's joking; even by Lennon standards this 'song' is on the limits of sanity and while very nearly the first official release by the Plastic Ono Band (as the B-side of 'You Know My Name') you sense that Lennon never ever intended to release a song quite as crazy and gloriously wretched as this one. Like many things he did with Yoko this is for them to listen back and giggle at - John would probably have been horrified that we ever got to hear it! Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

AA) The 'real' great lost Beatles song of 1968 was [262] 'Step Inside Love', a delightful McCartney pop song that was written especially for Cilla Black after she asked Paul for a theme tune for a TV series The BBC had just commissioned. Cute without being twee, it somehow manages to tick all the boxes without sounding as if that's all it's doing - accessible but easy to warm to, it's the kind of song Paul could write in seconds - something that annoyed the hell out of John. That might explain why the Paul-sung 'Anthology' version of this song turns out the way it does. The Beatles (or at least John and Paul) are actually meant to be recording 'I Will', suggesting this recording comes from the first day (Paul recorded the finished version that made the album alone later in the sessions). Taking a break for a few minutes, the guitar plucking of his new song clearly reminds Paul of 'Step Inside Love' so he busks it for a  couple of minutes. Lennon then gets in his dig that the song is by 'Los Paranoias' (a typical Lennon pun on 'Los Paraguyos', an acoustic minstrel outfit who used to appear on all sorts of mainstream TV and a double dig because they're exactly the people who'd appear on Cilla's show (although they never actually did). Paul's response? he twists the knife again, busking a song right there on the spot that shows off just how easily songs come to him and that - for these few minutes at least - he doesn't mind one bit being an 'all round entertainer'. Lennon must have been really narked by that and the fact that this fun but throwaway recording turned up on 'Anthology' all those years later suggests that he's still rather proud of his quick comeback... Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

BB) The Anthology take of [230b] 'I'm So Tired' sounds, rather suitably given the circumstances, as if The Beatles have been up all night making it. John sounds grumpy and everyone else sounds tired (especially Ringo whose drumming is especially slapdash). This version doesn't really have the 'zing' of the finished version but has a few interesting differences including a smoother George Harrison guitar part, no organ overdub and a chance to hear John's vocal without double-tracking. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

CC) Strangle out of order on 'Anthology', here is an alternate version of what The Beatles should have been recording instead of 'Los Paranoias'. [236b]  'I Will' took one hell of a long time to get right by Beatles standards - 67 takes for the finished album version in fact but this is the song right back at the beginning on take one. After all that work there aren't really any differences: no harmonies, a little more Ringo percussion and a slightly slower tempo. I'm not sure that's enough reason to include this version on 'Anthology' really, but at least it gives one of the most obscure Beatles originals a chance for another hearing. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

DD) The same goes double for Anthology's 'Why Don't We Do It In The Road?' [235b] Obscure, unloved and a song that went through dozens of takes taken right back to the beginning where the differences are minimal. The biggest one is that Paul sings solo without Ringo to back him and that instead of singing the one and only verse through twice he sings it four times in a variety of voices: like Stevie Wonder, all falsetto harmonies and Motown soul, in the 'shouty' voice that made the record, a folk-bluesy version in a much quieter voice and finally a 'Cream' style psychedelic blues before pulling out of another louder vocal a line into a fifth verse. The repetitions make more sense of this simple song and should have been kept like this, but it's hardly a candidate for the most thrilling Beatles outtake ever. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

EE)Finally,  'Julia' [237b] - the last song taped for 'The White Album' - isn't that different either, but is highly revealing all the same. John turns in half a recording that, note for note, is very close to the finished product: the only difference is that John sings just a guide vocal over the top of his playing and even gives that up midway through the first verse. John messes up at the start of the second verse and gets the giggles. Paul comes on the talkback microphone to offer his sympathies and tells his partner 'you're doing great!' apart from 'one or two discrepancies!' Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

Non-Album Recordings Part #12: 1969 (EMI)

A) A quirk of the dying days of the Beatles' discography is that the band recorded about the best finale to a career as you can get: the back-to-basics 'Let It Be' followed by the polished encore only a few were expecting 'Abbey Road'. However confusion as to what to do with the mountain of tapes for the former (everything was taped, in the hope making a film of first a concert, then a documentary on making an album, and then shots of The Beatles falling out and breaking up before our eyes) meant that the Beatles' perfect ending somehow got switched round, ending not with the 'proper' goodbye of the 'Abbey Road Medley' but with the funk of [281a] 'Get Back'. Released as a single a full 13 months before the later version appeared on the album, it fooled many people in 1969 into thinking that a retro Beatles album might be funner than it was. A hard-driving McCartney rocker written to a sped-up typical blues sequence, it's about the tightest recording The Beatles made during the sessions and an obvious choice for a single: the cry 'get back to where you once belonged!' is very 1969 (a year of returning to your roots and making country and 1950s-style rock records) and the perfect summary of what The Beatles intended on 'Let It Be' (even if a lot of that idea got changed in hiatus). However by Paul's high standards the lyrics are, quite honestly, nonsense: a cast of characters searching for something they never quite find. This is, by the way, the same take as the 'album' versions but it all sounds very different. That's in part thanks to a slightly superior mix that forsakes the period's 'no trickery' rule for a terrific use of reverb on everything (which makes the Beatles sound like they're playing down a wind tunnel) and a slightly different ending where, instead of cutting to an edit of speech from the 'Rooftop' concert, the song doesn't stop at the 'false ending' but kicks back in again, shuffling its way to a faded close around 30 seconds later. The Rooftop speech I get - Lennon's hope that the band 'passed the audition' is a typically ego-deflating  Beatles way to end - but why not use this section again first? First released as a single on April 11th 1969. Find it on: 'Past Masters Volume Two' (1988, Re-issued 2009)

B) [282] ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ was another key part of the 'Let It Be' sessions , which might explain why it was this pair of songs that were chosen to promote the record. Fair enough, The Beatles had a ‘no singles on album policy’ in those days, but an alternate version of ‘Get Back’ made the album and there’s no reason why, say, the excellent Anthology Three version of this song didn’t make the record too (it might have spared us ‘Across The Universe’ and ‘For You, Blue’ too as an added bonus). Another of Lennon’s pained cry from the hearts for Yoko, this is Lennon’s most nakedly honest song up to his ‘Plastic Ono Band’ primal scream record, setting out all his doubts on the line because he’s been let down so many times he can’t bear it to happen again. Just as the huge riff at the heart if ‘I Want You’ makes the relationship between the two sound like a huge, cavernous unapproachable void, so this song sounds like a real stab in the heart, with each cry of the chorus sung staccato, punched by Ringo’s drums on his best playing on the album (as ever, its Lennon’s most revealing songs that bring out the most in the drummer – see ‘Strawberry Fields’ ‘Rain’ ‘A Day In The Life’ and especially ‘She Said She Said’). The middle eight also sounds like an early Beatles song, the hope and naivety of songs like ‘Ask Me Why’ sung by a man much more experienced and less sure of himself when he sings ‘I’m in love for the first time...don’t you know its going to last’. Note, too, how Lennon sounds more Liverpudlian than he had for years in this song, possibly inspired to be ‘himself’ under Yoko’s ‘tutelage’. Macca’s harmony vocals is the right side of gritty too and his bass playing thrilling indeed, summing up the bubbling hope and humour that Lennon’s po-faced vocal is too afraid to accept, meaning that this is another of the band’s best performances in the period. Lennon’s most inspired song of the period, its interesting how different this sounds to Macca’s songs of love for Linda – this is a far less flippant song from a man who spent most of 1969 making wisecracks, compared to the seriousness of McCartney in this year whose laughter only came when he got home. ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ truly deserves its place on 'Let It Be', the yin to ‘Two Of Us’ yang, about how deep and fulfilling relationships can be, even the ones that bring you love and happiness.  Frankly it's too good to be a mere B-side, even one on the back of a single that The Beatles knew would be bought in droves. Thankfully 'Let It Be...Naked' re-instated it to its proper place where its pained pleas for truth and support make a lot more sense. First released as the B-side of 'Get Back' on April 11th 1969. Find it on: 'Past Masters Volume 2' (1988, Re-issued 2009) and 'Let It Be...Naked' (2003)

C)[283]  'The Ballad Of John and Yoko' is a curious little song that makes you wonder what Lennon meant by it. Written as an angry slap to all the people who'd spent the past year being rude to Yoko, it tries hard to make the pair out to be media victims, 'crucified' in the name of peace in the same way as Jesus. Lennon must have known he was going to get a lot of trouble when he recorded it just three years after his 'Beatles bigger than Jesus' misquote gave the Christian centres of the globe kittens. But if so why did he insist quite so hard on this being a 'Beatles' single rather than a 'Plastic Ono Band' release (where the point might have been better made?) Why, too, did he decide to stick his bitter lyrics to such a jolly, ear-catching blend of 50s style retro rock and contemporary harder-edged sounds. The end result is like a busker trying to catch your ear and then slapping you around the face for daring to buy his product. Famously this isn't a 'Beatles' recording at all. Taped at the very start of what will become 'Abbey Road' on April 16th 1969 this was the first time any of the Beatles had met up after the week of the 'Rooftop' concert. Lennon called the session at the last minute, while his song was still fresh in his mind (it must have been too - they only married in Gibraltar on March 20th, events that are key to the lyrics in this song) but without realising that George and Ringo were out of the country. Paul was around, though, and between them recorded everything on this song. Reduced to two rather than four and with the two old school friends together, alone, for the first time in many a long year the atmosphere was jovial - something that comes over in the recording and softens Lennon's snide anger (the original basic track of John on guitar and Paul on drums has them calling each other 'George' and 'Ringo' throughout the takes!) That says much for McCartney's continued support for his colleague as on the one hand the 'Allen Klien' court case had just gone through (with Paul basically suing John) and  'The Ballad Of John and Yoko' is so unlike one of his own songs and a step away from even John's past work it must have sounded highly alien to him: it's built on a riff, not a melody, and is very much about the 'self' rather than the half-imaginary, half-experienced people Paul knew.  He's really on form for this song, though turning in a great fat bass line, some terrific sturdy drumming and some cute backing harmonies that answer Lennon parrot fashion. By contrast John is having a tough day and his nasal vocal reveals just how quickly this song was recorded. Bizarrely, despite a 'warning' over the use of the exclamation 'Christ!', this song wasn't actually banned anywhere and got nowhere near the fuss Lennon must have been expecting. Even odder is the fact that in Britain this became the best-selling Beatles single since 'Hello, Goodbye' (yes it even outsold 'Hey Jude!') and is in fact the band's fourth biggest seller of all in their homeland ('She Loves You' and 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' being the other two). While better than many critics say it is (Lennon's imagery is clever and highly visual: 'eating chocolate cake in the bath' is a great line) and based around the best Chuck Berry riff neither he nor Keith Richards wrote, 'Ballad' isn't that good - a 'B' side rather than an 'A' side and one of the weaker Beatle 45s. First released as a single on May 30th 1969. Find it on: 'Past Masters Volume Two' (1988, Re-issued 2009)

D) George's B-side [284a] 'Old Brown Shoe' is a neat mirror: a funky rocker with a retro feel that's deeply personal (it starts off as a list of the narrator's sexual turn-ons), it features prominent parts for George and Ringo but no John and barely any Paul (whose bass and harmony vocals are both buried deep in the mix). Deliberately mixed to sound 'funny', with lots of bass noises and Ringo's drums uncomfortably loud, 'Old Brown Shoe' does it's best to put off the listener but eventually draws them in by sounding quite unlike anything else The Beatles ever recorded. A strangely lustful song ('If you or me should get together...') that keeps looking for release at the end of every verse on a long held note ('you should comfort me') but is instantly trampled underfoot, as if by some giant shoe. The title, by the way, makes no sense ('I'm stepping out of this old brown shoe' is the full line) and Beatle scholars have debated for decades now on what the Beatles are singing over the fade (is it gibberish or, as I reckon, 'Too late! Too late now!') On the other hand the opening line is one of George's best, instantly setting the scene (or not, given how weird the rest of the lyrics are: 'I want a love that's right and love is only half of what's wrong'), topped off by another classic solo - this one very much in friend Eric Clapton's style. First released as the B-side of 'The Ballad Of John and Yoko' on May 30th 1969. Find it on: 'Past Masters Volume Two' (1988, Re-issued 2009)

E) The single mix of [285a] 'Let It Be' - the last ever release of new Beatles product until the 'Hollywood Bowl' shows in 1977 - is not all that different to the album version. In fact, once again it's the exact same take but a different mix (one that includes a rather overpowering Harrison lead guitar solo, recorded in April 1969 when the band were still hopeful of getting the album remixed and out in the shops but ultimately replaced on the album by a second, superior go on January 4th 1970). It must have been strange for the band to hear the world going mad for this song which was recorded in the main a 14 months before and most likely written six months before that, during the trying 'White Album' sessions. A fitting end to a wonderful singles discography (although not intended as a final 'goodbye', it was written by Paul under Beatle-induced stress, with his mother Mary appearing in a dream and telling him to stop letting the band arguments get to him). 'Let It Be' manages to be both uplifting and sad at the same time, a comforting hymn about letting the thing you love go when it starts to cause you harm, it's also a pretty neat statement on why The Beatles just had to end when they did. This mix first released as a single on March 6th 1970. Find it on: 'Past Masters Volume Two' (1988, Re-issued 2009)

F) George first recorded a demo of his future classic [267b] 'Something' on his 27th birthday on February 23rd 1969 before the sessions for 'The White Album' even started. Those present (this was an Abbey Road demo, earlier than the Rishikesh 'Esher' ones) were struck even then at how good it was, but George decided to sit on it for two and half albums before finally recording it for 'Abbey Road'. As well as the middle eight we know and love ('You're asking me will my love grow?') there's a second, rather less convincing one that was probably right to be dropped ('You know I love that woman of mine and I need her all of the time, you know I'm telling you now woman don't make me blue!') Even by Anthology standards it's odd hearing this song put back to its bare essentials without all the extra polish that goes with it but already 'Something' really sounds like 'something' (in both senses of the word!) Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

G) The 'Anthology' take of [296b] 'I've Got A Feeling' is the one originally marked for release by engineer (and future Who producer) Glyn Johns and - like most of his ideas, rejected by The Beatles for being a little too 'rough' - is spot on. Slightly quicker than the finished version and not quite as gung-ho The Beatles actually sound as if they're having a 'good time' here. George gets to play some extra guitar frills, Lennon's in much better voice on his 'Everybody Had A Hard Year' section and only a mistake that causes a breakdown into the grand finale (the bit where John and Paul sing together, something that could easily have been edited in from another take) prevents this from being 'the one'. This early take comes not from Twickenham (where the 'Let It Be' film was recorded) but from earlier sessions at Apple's recording studio ('designed' by Magic Alex and 'repaired' by Abbey Road engineers at some expense and only used by The Beatles this once). The song is already tight and together, which makes you wonder why the band struggles so much with just a few weeks later (did the film cameras put them off?) Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

H) [276b] 'She Came In Through The Bathroom Window' is merely a 'rehearsal' of a song so new even its author isn't quite sure what to do with it yet (and appearing here a good nine months before appearing on 'Abbey Road'), but if you take away Ringo's rather in-the-way drumming this version is actually better. The slow stately pace suits this sleepy, hazy song of robbery and betrayal and George's wah-wah guitar is delicious. Paul's vocal, here in his 'normal' rather than his 'shouting' voice, is also vastly superior, full of so much character that even Lennon's gifted backing vocals can't throw him off the scent. There's a neat false ending too before the band go back round the chorus for a final time. Oh and there's no 'oh yeah' at the end of each chorus here either. Always the perfectionist, Paul already has some new ideas by the time the band have finished playing, which are sadly cut off short before we get the rest of the band's reply (Lennon probably said something rude!) Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

I) [292b] 'Dig A Pony' is my favourite of the 'Let It Be' recordings and while not quite as playful as the 'Rooftop' version that made the album, this 'Anthology' recording finally undoes all the worst meddling that producer Phil Spector did to this poor song. There's now an opening of 'All I want is...' from Paul and George back at the start of this song which is really effective, the take is slower and bluesier and it ends with not one go round the song's exaggerated angular riff but three or four before finally ending where we started on another 'All I want is...' John is right on the money vocally and sounds hurt when George Martin sounds surprised at how tight they are ('You're not talking to Ricci and the Red Streaks you know!'; a favourite pseudonym of Lennon's, Paul will borrow it when he needs a good name in a hurry for Linda's song 'Seaside Woman', credited originally to 'Suzi and the Red Stripes'). Another rare case of an Anthology version improving on the finished version. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

J) There are some terrific versions of [291b] 'Two Of Us' in The Beatles' vaults. The song's close harmonies between John and Paul (reminding them of their acoustic days as the duo 'The Nerk Twins') resulted in lots of jokes including a great version where the pair try out every accent under the sun (before settling on a rather broad Scots!) Alas the Anthology take isn't one of them and the only real variation is the lack of whistling and more Ringo, neither of which are necessarily a good thing. Once more this song is very together considering how early in the album sessions we are (we've gone back in time, in true Anthology style, this time to the second day at Apple headquarters) and you wonder why the band had so many problems with such a simple song later on. Paul jokingly tells Lennon to 'take it Phil!' after the middle eight - a reference to The Everly Brothers, whose work this song closely matches. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

K) The Anthology style version of [298b] 'For You, Blue' is, amazingly, even rougher than the take that made the 'Let It Be' album. George sounds as if he has a cold (it's all those early mornings in drafty Twickenham in January!), while the whole song gets slower and slower towards the end (perhaps to enable John to cope better with the slide guitar part he's still learning!) There's a much bigger part for Paul's piano accompaniment though and a nice opening soft-shoe drum shuffle from Ringo that really sets the tone, so the end result is probably a draw. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

L) [286] 'Teddy Boy' is the second song from 'McCartney' that could have made a Beatles album. As Macca put it in his 'questionnaire' handed out with the record 'something happened' and it never came out. Anthology reveals what that something was: Lennon in a wicked mood. Picking up on the 'square dance' rhythms of Paul's new and rather repetitive song, John is merciless, parroting lines (as Teddy Boy's mother) in a falsetto voice and ending with a series of call signs. Paul does his best to keep the enthusiasm up but you can almost hear the cogs whirring in his head thinking 'hmm, maybe not'. In truth it's not the strongest McCartney song of all time but it's better than a lot of 'Let It Be' and if my theory composed for our review of the 'McCartney' album is correct (that it was written about John and his relationship with his mother - perhaps 'Julia' had set Paul thinking? The fact that the Beatles had recently attended a premiere of Yellow Submarine with a fancy dress party where Lennon dressed up as a 'teddy boy rocker', effectively re-creating his teenage look, may have set Paul down this path of thinking). Perhaps the song touched a raw nerve? Or perhaps Lennon simply didn't think it was very good?! Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

M) There are many many jams on old rock and roll classics sitting in the Beatles' vaults from the 'Let It Be' sessions. Some (like 'Suzy Parker' 'Save The Last Dance For Me' and even The Beatles' own 'One After 909') are rather good; some, however, were simply rolled out so that the band can have a rest and can delay getting back to work for a few more precious minutes (The Beatles were great procrastinators when they wanted to be - just listen to the way Lennon cuts in with the last third of this trilogy after everyone has shrugged their shoulders and tried to get back to work). The Anthology medley [287] of Little Richard's 'Rip It Up' Bill Haley's 'Shake Rattle and Roll' and Carl Perkins' 'Blue Suede Shoes' is unfortunately in the latter category. Unlike their equally hurried and rough BBC sessions The Beatles are no longer on the same wavelength and John and Paul keep crashing each other's lines while George and Ringo seem to be jamming to different songs entirely. 'Blue Suede Shoes' works best, George getting one last chance to ape his favourite ever guitarist and John and Paul seem to know all the words to this one (the former adding a typically Lennonish lyrics change to reflect the 'brown suede boots' he's wearing!) Billy Preston, though sounds unusually out of his comfort zone despite the fact that, as a key member of Little Richard's touring band for years, he must have known at least the first song off by heart.  However most of this jam is torture and even this section isn't good - why did this make Anthology compared to other, superior jams? (like the made-up-on-the-spot 'Watching Rainbows' and 'Zero Is Just Another Number' ). Lennon will return to 'Rip It Up' on his 1975 'Rock 'n' Roll' album, to even less success to be honest. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

N) When 'Anthology' was first announced and fans were speculating about track selection there were a few songs that seemed inevitable: 'My Bonnie' 'Ain't She Sweet?' some of the Royal Variety and Ed Sullivan shows and this: the basic take of [297b] 'The Long and Winding Road' that Paul intended to go out in a version recorded the last day of the Let It Be sessions. When the tapes sat for months and Lennon gave Phil Spector permission to do what he liked with it, Paul was horrified by this track in particular: the lush and over-orchestrated strings are so un-Beatles and the antithesis of everything the 'Let It Be' project stood for. Many say it's the moment when McCartney realised The Beatles were over - which is unfortunately rather apt for a song that's all about missed opportunities and broken paths on the road of our lives. However Paul fooled us all: he saved the 'Let It Be' take sans horns for 'Let It Be...Naked' in 2003 - this is an earlier, only subtly different recording that features more Ringo and less John, who makes a rather better stab at filling in on bass on this version than he does on the record. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

O) It's a puzzle why Paul's [269b] 'Oh! Darling', recorded first for 'Let It Be' but abandoned till 'Abbey Road', didn't make the record because it's clearly at one with the other retro rockers on that project. Considering that most of the tracks on the record were done to death, this one doesn't seem to have had much of a look in and though rougher than the final product fared no worse than other songs from the record on their first rehearsals. While the performance is rough and Paul hasn't quite reached his 'screaming' level yet, the arrangement of this version is actually better: there's a fine Billy Preston keyboard part that moves this track closer to soul, Ringo adds more 'Ringo'-style drumming than what made the album (where Paul might possibly have played instead?) and best of all  Lennon's sly harmony vocal is a delight (he later claimed to have been upset that he didn't get to sing on this one which he felt was more compatible with his style than many of his colleagues' recent songs).There's also a key moment of historical importance at the end of the track, Lennon celebrating the fact that Yoko's divorce from second husband Tony Cox had just gone through. 'I'm free at last!' he sings, perhaps already plotting for the pair's sudden marriage two months later, and kick-starts a new version of the song probably aimed in Yoko's direction: 'I'll never do you no harm'. Quite what the Twickenham camera crew made of all this is another matter!  Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

P) Another future classic tried out at the 'Let It Be' sessions is George's gorgeous [288] 'All Things Must Pass', soon to be the title track of his first 'proper' solo album in 1970. This version of 'Pass' is as stripped-down and basic as all the other 'Let It Be' era recordings and clearly doesn't suit the song as well as Phil Spector's whoops, whistles and strings, but it's already a terrific song about how everything - good and bad -  has a best before date. This demo was taped on George's 27th birthday, the same day he taped demos for 'Old Brown Shoe' and 'Something' scattered across the Anthology set (why couldn't they have been put together?) Sadly Anthology uses the 'wrong' version - this one features George alone with someone else (John? George overdubbed?) randomly picking guitar lines alongside him. Bootlegs reveal that for a time this was a real contender for the album and featured full John and Paul harmonies and a clattering Ringo drum part softened for the final version (on which Ringo also plays). It would have been perfect (well, better than 'For You, Blue' and 'I Me Mine' anyway), given added poignancy by the fact that The Beatles story is drawing to a close ('I must be on my way to face another day...') and these four men will rarely be in the same room at the same time again (with much of 'Abbey Road' made through overdubs). Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

Q) [289] 'Mailman Bring Me No More Blues' is another unwanted jamming session from 'Let It Be'. A Buddy Holly song taken surprisingly seriously compared to other period songs it features some rough and ready harmonies between John, Paul and George and a real country-western influence. Slower and sadder than the original version, it's as if the record is playing at the wrong speed at times - something which actually suits the song really well. You can tell the band's hearts aren't really in this, though and that the song will be forgotten once they return to 'Get Back' (the song they were meant to be rehearsing that day!) Interestingly the song makes for a neat contrast with 'Please Mr Postman', perhaps the biggest Beatles peak of excitement and energy: this time the news the narrator is expecting is potentially devastating and the band sound depressed; how far we've come in just five years. The fact that the song fades both in and out - and quickly at that - suggests that this version may have 'presented itself' from a random jamming session and turned into another one pretty quickly after Lennon stopped singing. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

R) Predictably, 'Anthology' played safe and didn't released the most controversial Beatle outtake - the 'comedy' first take of [281c] 'Get Back' when it was still known as 'Don't dig no Pakistanis taking all the people's jobs' (a spoof of Enoch Powell that they soon realised people might take seriously and so got changed). However the Anthology version is still about the best alternative to the one we know and love from the 50-odd taped during the sessions - it's the version taped at the very end of the 'Rooftop' mini-concert  as seen in the film (this was the most rehearsed song of the 'Let It Be' period), played slightly softer but slightly faster even compared to the version they'd played at the beginning of the show just 40 minutes earlier. Everyone sounds as if they're having fun, Billy Preston adds another soulful touch to the song and Paul is on terrific form, yelping his way through the recording and adding the marvellous quip 'You've been playing on the roofs again, mama doesn't like that - she's gonna have you arrested!' as a bunch of burly policeman wander around behind them looking confused. It's a marvellous moment from a marvellous band having temporally not that marvellous a time of things. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

S) The piano demo of [284b] 'Old Brown Shoe' is the third taped on George's 27th birthday. While the weakest of the three songs laid down that day there's real magic in the demo, which is more thought out and less tentative than 'Something' or 'Pass'. As well as thumping a piano, George overdubs guitar and 'Shoe' sounds rather less 'heavy' here and actually a little bit better (the finished version is a bass heavy platform on whereas this 'Shoe' is a sandal!) You can even hear the words on this version which is an added bonus! One of Anthology Three's real highlights. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

T) [270b] 'Octopuses' Garden' is, once again, here more to give Ringo a share of the Anthology royalties than because it's all that different or all that interesting. Understandably rougher and with George playing a rather more frenetic guitar part (especially on the solo which he hasn't quite worked out yet and bails out from before the end), this take is interesting like all early takes of something we know backwards but on its own standards is pretty dreadful: Ringo struggles to sing or play drums and you really miss the production sound effects and Beatles harmonies. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

U) [268b] 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' is another less than adored Beatle song and again seems here merely to make up the numbers than because it offers any real revelations. The overdubs aren't in place yet and Paul is merely giving a rough guide vocal rather than singing properly. He even sings some 'vocal noises' where the electric guitar parts should go (which are nothing like the parts George played on the record by the way) and sings gibberish in the third verse which he might not have yet (the line should run 'PC 31 says 'we've caught a dirty one', Maxwell stands alone, painting testimonial pictures, oh-oh-oh', while the final version has 'Rose' and 'Valerie' 'screaming from the gallery' - only the second name is in place for this version). I never thought I could hear a worse version of this terrible song but somehow 'Anthology' managed to find one that made the 'Abbey Road' one look good. Thanks, I think. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

V) An early version (take one!) of [266b] 'Come Together' is a little more interesting , sounding much tougher and angrier in this early version. Shorn of the later overdubs and production gloss and held together by Lennon pushing his voice to its limits, it's as if we're hearing an alternate universe version of the song from the 'Let It Be' sessions. Interestingly while everything else here is only sketched in (Paul, George and Ringo are all very tentative in their parts, as if Lennon hasn't given them to his colleagues yet!) the nonsense lyrics are already nearly word-perfect, with the addition of Lennon singing the opening verse once more over the solo.  The one line that is changed is the one that cracks Lennon up laughing: 'Got to get some hobo he's just ho-ha please!' turning into the much superior line 'Got to be good looking - 'cause he's so hard to see!' Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

W) Paul's demo of [269] 'Come and Get It' for Badfinger is often hailed as the highlight of 'Anthology Three' and treated as a long-lost McCartney original. It certainly shows off just how quickly and completely Paul could work, dashing this whole demo (played completely solo) off within a single hour when Apple signings Badfinger politely asked him if he had any songs spare. However for me this song is an example of just how empty Paul's music can be when he's not made to stretch himself: the song says little and goes nowhere, with no variety from the verse-chorus-instrumental cycle it's locked into. The lyrics, too, are the nastiest Paul ever wrote, more like something George would write (this song would have fitted in well on the latter's 'Living In The Material World' album) and in the context of Apple's business problems seem to be sneering at the world: Ok so I'm rich, but do you all have to want a piece of me? The company's financial problems may have inspired the line 'you better hurry 'cause it's going fast' too, although Paul has always denied any 'hidden meaning' - this was just a song that rolled around his subconscious and came out when he needed a song in a hurry. Had Badfinger been the sort of group to pull this off it would have been no problem: but if anything Badfinger (still called 'The Iveys' when they first recorded this song) have a gentler sound than The Beatles (only the first album contains any hard rock and then it palpably doesn't suit them, suggesting they took their cue from  this, the biggest in their lifetime). Paul, for the first time in his songwriting life, has mis-understood the brief he was assigned. You could be charitable and say he wrote this song after seeing the rushes for the 'Magic Christian Film' although Beatle scholars reckon its just 'coincidence' it fitted so well and wasn't actually written about anything (starring Ringo and Peter Sellers, about a millionaire who gives away money to people in return for doing the daftest and sometimes nastiest things). But if it was then Paul unusually got that wrong too: Badfinger don't belong in this uncharitable universe and the actually pretty funny (if only sporadically) film needs a 'theme song' with a lighter touch than this. Of course it shows off just how brilliant a multi-instrumentalist and clever, quick composer Paul is but we knew that anyway; at best 'Come and Get It' is a song not good enough for The Beatles - at its worst it's a loaded comment intended for someone somewhere (John was present at the session but stayed in the control room throughout barely saying a word) that Paul - uniquely - wasn't brave enough to say to their face. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

X) We come full circle with [7b] 'Ain't She Sweet?' What once was a towering performance by a band nobody knew demanding for attention and knocked off during an idle moment at the end of the Tony Sheridan sessions has become a slow, lazy blues jam tossed off by a bunch of bored millionaires who no longer have much left to say. Lennon comes up with a few amusing words so he can 'bluff' his way through the gaps in his memory ('I ask you very...hydrofolicky!') but the difference in just eight years shows what a long, hard journey The Beatles story had been. What the band would have once done better than anyone else is now just too much like hard work. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

Y) For some reason I don't quite understand, 'Anthology' go back in time for a [285c] 'Let It Be' outtake from, erm, 'Let It Be'. The bad atmosphere of that album's sessions compared to 'Abbey Road' is immediately obvious from Lennon's nasty opening remark 'Are we meant to giggle during the solo?'  John hated this song, perhaps because it's such a Paul song and beyond his ability to write; Hopeful, uplifting and saying a lot without saying much at all its anathema to Lennon's work until his 'break through' in Paul's style on 'Imagine' (which is like this song but not half as good). The sentiment too is very un-Lennon: always one for changing things for the sake of change, he never really 'let things be' (did he see this as a comment on his split from Cynthia?) It was also John who mischievously added the vocal clip of him announcing 'we'd like to 'Hark The Herald Angels Come!' before this track on the album - a dig at the 'gospel' feel of the song. You can't really go far wrong with a song that just features Paul's vocal and piano for most of the song but the band try anyway, with George fluffing a solo he worked on hard across the space of several months but still never quite got right and Ringo playing some heavy-handed drums. Lennon apparently doesn't play anything and was probably glaring from the control box, adding the sarcastic comment 'I think that was rather grand!' followed by his pithy comment on the current 'no overdubs' policy: 'Let's track it - you bounder! You cheat!' For once the others aren't laughing with him. It's his loss: one of Paul's prettier songs perhaps he should have learned to 'let things be'. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

Non-Album Recordings Part #13: 1970 (EMI)

A) And finally - and we really do mean finally whatever the entries still to come in this book - the last ever official Beatles session till the 1990s takes place on January 3rd 1970. Looking back at the rushes of the first edit of the 'Let It Be' film, director Michael Lindsey-Hogg sent off a panicked memo to the band when he realised that he'd included a clip of George bringing a 'new' song called[293b]  'I Me Mine' into the sessions and didn't have a complete song to go with it. Paul, George and Ringo duly turned up but John - recently hurt in a car crash on a day out in Scotland with Yoko, Julian and Yoko's daughter Kyoko - cried off, meaning that the last official Beatles session doesn't even feature all four members. That's the reason behind George's dry opening discussion that 'Dave Dee is no longer with us - but Beaky, Titch and I would like to carry on the good work that's always gone down at number two studios', quoting the mid-60s pop band named after their nicknames as he does so (check them out if you like mid-period Beatles, three of their songs are great - the others less so, but then that's still three more than The Dave Clark Five or Herman's Hermits). A typical Harrisong about problems of the ego, this version is the song in its original form: dashed off quickly so the band can fulfil their obligations and go home. The song lasts a mere 90 seconds with George's opening chat removed - Phil Spector lengthened the song by another minute thanks to some careful editing and made the track sound 'bigger' thanks to epic string overdubs (which worked better on this song, a warning against excesses, than it ever did on 'The Long and Winding Road'). The song sounds slighter here but is still played well with one last rallying cry of harmonies in the chorus ('I I Me Me Mine!'), the band perhaps getting out their frustrations over Apple via this song's wild staccato jabs. It's an unusual end, but a good one even if Spector was probably right to meddle with this recording as he did, the Beatles' career ending via a muted single organ note that suddenly swells up and disappears down a black hole. Find it on: 'Anthology Three' (1996)

Non-Album Recordings Part #14: 1982 (EMI)

A) With 'hit medleys' all the rage in the early 1980s, someone at EMI hit upon a novel way of plugging their latest pointless Beatles compilation 'Reel Music' with a combination of that album's songs. [299] 'The Beatles Movie Medley' features nothing new and had no Beatle input but is worth mentioning for being the first time someone went back to the original Beatle tapes to create something 'new'. Like most of the later 'Love' remixes album, it's a rather pointless affair that sits on the borders of Beatles canon: they didn't hate it enough to denounce it but nor did they help plan it either. Still, unlike 'Love', this single promoted a few lesser known gems from The Beatles catalogue rather than the ones everybody knows backwards (literally, now, in the case of some of the 'Love' mixes!) For the record the songs edited together are 'Magical Mystery Tour' 'All You Need Is Love' 'Got To Hide Your Love Away' 'I Should Have Known Better' 'A Hard Day's Night' 'Ticket To Ride' and 'Get Back'. Well, it's better than the 'Stars on 45' monstrosity that inspired it anyway, with a session musician who sounded vaguely Scouse if your ears squinted a bit doing a fairly poor impression of Lennon as several Beatle songs are strung together to the same insistent drum beat and which wasn't given official sponsorship by The Beatles or EMI. Fans are actually keener on the original B-side, a snatched conversation on the set of 'A Hard Day's Night' which was swiftly removed for unknown reasons (probably legal ones) and replaced with the song 'I'm Happy Just To dance With You'. Someone must have liked it because this second version of the single made #12 in the US and #10 in the UK, better than the band had done for a while! To date the single has never been re-issued or appeared on CD. 

Non-Album Recordings Part #15: 1990s (EMI)

A) Here we are, twenty years on from the Beatles reunion we thought we'd never see and we're still not quite sure what to make of the band's two 'new' releases, nicknamed 'The Threetles' by fans wanting to distinguish them from the 'proper' canon. The project dates back to the Lennon's entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, when Yoko passed on a number of John's unfinished demos to special guest Paul from his house-husband days in the late 1970s. Speculation was rife as to what classics might be turned up: the much-bootlegged archive radio series 'The Lost Lennon Tapes' (which ran for two years and 218 episodes in America and could have run another two Lennon recorded so much material) featured several classic songs that either turned up later (on the 'Lennon Anthology' of 1999) or still have yet to be heard; goodness knows there are enough to choose from: great tracks like the skiffley medicine-cabinet rummaging 'Pill', the jaunty 'A Case Of The Blues', the sweet McCartney-ish ballad 'When A Boy Meets A Girl', the frenetic 'Don't Be Crazy', Buddy Holly-ish 'Gone From This Place', the reflective 'JJ' and the funky gay-scene solidarity song 'She Is A Friend Of Dorothy's (Lennon at his most David Bowie-ish).

Out of all of these Yoko chose three songs. The first that Paul, George and Ringo worked on (and liked the most) was [300]  'Free As a Bird', a rather turgid Lennon piano ballad which - like a lot of his early work - says one thing lyrically (Freedom! At last!) and another thing entirely musically (much of the song is stuck to the same plodding chords). A strange choice for a song to release in such a blitz of publicity, 'Free As A Bird' was always going to fall short of the Beatles' legacy and was probably chosen not because of Lennon's great ideas but because his sketchy demo left enough room for Paul and George to contribute their own parts and turn this into a 'collaboration' (a quick middle eight, written by Paul, and a blistering Harrison guitar solo - by far the highlight of the track, offering the release the narrator can only dream of). Despite all the talk in the press of picking up where the band left off during 'Abbey Road' the result is curiously un-Beatles: Lennon's plodding time signature, the simple metaphors - light years away from the nuances of 'Blackbird' - the lack of any sense of joy; this is more where The Beatles ended up with 'Let It Be'. Jeff Lynne's heavy-handed production embellishes the little that existed on Lennon's demo but without adding any of the interesting additions George Martin would have come up with (struggling with his hearing, he was asked first but turned the gig down - that might explain how the Martin-sponsored 'Love' turned out as badly as it did). The ending, played by George on a ukele, is a typically Beatles 'fake goodbye' ending though, capped off by a recording of John announcing 'I'm John Lennon' from a 'Pop Go The Beatles' radio broadcast. This being a Beatles message enterprising fans turned it round to look for clues and discovered Lennon also saying '...turned out nice again', a George Formby catchphrase that would have tickled George and probably inspired his ukulele backing. The fact that we're talking about hidden messages rather than the song, though, shows what a depressingly ordinary piece 'Free As A Bird' is, its composer safely locked away in a bedroom trying to escape a boring day by trying to remember what his day job used to be. The fact that Lennon himself used virtually nothing of his mammoth collection of demos pre-1979 on his 1980 comeback says much about his opinion of them - a shame The Beatles didn't follow suit, as this is a song and performance not worthy of their great name. First released as a single on December 4th 1995. Also appears on 'Anthology One' (1995)

B) [301] 'Real Love' is much better, not because it's a great song (it isn't, being an even simpler re-write of 'All You Need Is Love') but because it sounds like The Beatles. Released to less publicity and largely treated with indifference by the world on release, I'm surprised that this single didn't do better - while true fans recognise Lennon on auto-pilot when they hear it, casual fans would have heard a pretty uplifting tune, classy harmonies (which fit better here than on 'Bird') and lyrics about love - exactly the sort of thing people would have picked up from their parents and by now possibly grandparents' generation. 'Real Love' was already one of Lennon's better regarded 'lost' songs after appearing on the 'Lost Lennon Tapes' and - bizarrely - as the one rare track on the 'Imagine' documentary soundtrack of 1988 (which sounds better than the 'basic take' used here, branching out to incorporate the lyrics from an early draft when the song was known as 'Real Life', Lennon hedging his bets between the two).  Speeded up slightly to make Lennon sound more 'vibrant' and his piano treated with echo to sound more 'Lennony', the result is a pretty neat pastiche of the Beatles' sound, played by men who can't quite remember how they used to go about things. In short, it's a rather good ELO recording (with lots of Jeff Lynne's characteristic touches) but still only a minor Beatles one, whatever the promise in the song. The sessions were apparently rushed and they sound it (the harmonies need at last another take to gel and Ringo, never a drummer who liked being rushed, is strangely non-committal throughout). Had Paul, George and Ringo been given more time, though, 'Real Love' could have been a minor gem in the Beatles' catalogue instead of a sorry postscript to it. First released as a single on March 4th 1996. Also appears on 'Anthology Two' (1996).

C) You may have noticed that there are three Anthology sets and each of the first two begins with a 'Threetles' recording. Fans were expecting a third single to prop up the final part of the trilogy and that seems to be the original plan, with Yoko handing over three tapes to Paul in 1994. We don't know what the third tape - and potentially the last ever new Beatles recording - might have been. Most books quote this as 'Grow Old Along With Me', which seems odd given that a demo recording of this had already been included on 'Milk and Honey' and was a song very close and personal to Yoko's heart, unlikely to be handed over to her husband's 'old' band (it was written in reponse to a dream she had that she and John were re-incarnations of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and a 'reply' based on Robert's poem of the same name directly in reply to her song based on Elizabeth's poem 'Let Me Count The Ways', also included on 'Milk and Honey'). Other candidates are two mysterious songs reported in the press as 'Miss You' and 'Now and Then' (possibly mistakes, possibly mis-hearings of real unreleased songs mentioned above). I'd like to think that Yoko chose the highly suitable demo 'Memories', an early version of 'Grow Old Along With Me' (featuring roughly the same tune but with very different lyrics that wouldn't have had the same connotations). This mighr explain why 'Old' is sometimes quoted because the two songs share distant DNA. But how can this gorgeous 'missing' song have been passed by for the occasion? The narrator, nostalgic against his will, barks 'Memory oh memory release me from your spell, you haunt me when I thought I'd let you go, I hear your voices whispering...' - a highly fitting end to a project based on nostalgia and being unable to let the past go. Of course this is only speculation, as if the reason the 'third song' was turned down. Most sources, though, point to George who only got involved in 'Anthology' against his better judgement when his Handmade Films company ran into financial problems and supposedly hated all three of Lennons' songs and being pushed into working with Paul and Ringo (which might be why McCartney backs down and gives his guitar such a prominent role on both recordings; that might be why George's good friend Jeff Lynne was hired too). If true, a sad second end to the Beatles story which left George Martin's 1968 string arrangement 'The Beginning' to start the last outtakes set in less than fitting style. Released...probably never!

A now complete list of Beatles links available at this website:

'Please Please Me' (1963) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/news-views-and-music-issue-92-beatles.html

'With The Beatles' (1963) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-1-beatles-with-beatles-1963.html

'A Hard Day's Night' (1964) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-2-beatles-hard-days-night-1964.html

'Beatles For Sale' (1964) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/beatles-beatles-for-sale-1964-news.html

'Help!' (1965) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-3-beatles-help-1965.html

'Rubber Soul' (1965) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-beatles-rubber-soul-1965-album.html

'Revolver' (1966) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-6-beatles-revolver-1966.html

'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-beatles-sgt-peppers-lonely-hearts.html

'Magical Mystery Tour' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/news-views-and-music-issue-45-beatles.html

'The Beatles' aka 'The White Album' (1968) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-25-beatles-beatles-aka-white.html

'Yellow Submarine' (1969) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-beatles-yellow-submarine-1969.html

‘Abbey Road’ (1969)  http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/the-beatles-abbey-road-1969.html

'Let It Be'  (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/news-views-and-music-issue-130-beatles.html 

'Live At The BBC' (1994) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/news-views-and-music-issue-24-beatles.html

'Christmas Fanclub Flexi-Discs' (1963-69) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/news-views-and-music-issue-85-beatles.html

The Best Unreleased Beatles Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/what-we-want-to-see-on-beatles.html

A Complete AAA Guide To The Beatles Cartoons http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/an-aaa-guide-to-beatles-cartoons.html

The Beatles: Surviving TV Appearances http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-beatles-surviving-tv-appearances.html

A 'Bite' Of Beatles Label 'Apple' http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/a-bite-of-apple.html

The Beatles: Non-Album Songs Part One: 1958-63 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/the-beatles-non-album-songs-part-one.html

 The Beatles: Non-Album Songs Part Two: 1964-67 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/the-beatles-non-album-songs-part-2-1964.html

The Beatles: Non-Album Songs Part Three: 1968-96 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/the-beatles-non-album-songs-part-three.html

The Beatles: Compilations/Live Albums/Rarities Sets Part One: 1962-74 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/the-beatles-compilations-live-sets-and.html

The Beatles: Compilations/Live Albums/Rarities Sets Part Two: 1976-2013 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/the-beatles-compilations-live-albums.html

Beatles Bonuses: The Songs John and Paul Gave Away To The World/To Ringo! http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/beatle-bonuses-songs-given-awayringos.html

Essay: The Ways In Which The Beatles Changed The World For The Better https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/the-beatles-essay-ways-fab-four-changed.html

Five Landmark Concerts and Three Key Cover Versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/the-beatles-five-landmark-concerts-and.html

Alan Hull "The Squire" (1975)

You can buy 'Passing Ghosts - The Alan's Album Archives Guide To The Music Of Lindisfarne' in e-book form by clicking here!

Alan Hull "The Squire"

The Squire/Dan The Plan/Picture A Little Girl/Nothin' Shakin'/One More Bottle Of Wine//Golden Oldies/I'm Sorry Squire/Waiting/Bad Side Of Town/Mr In Between/The End

"They called me squire 'Max The Singing', because that's what I was, A high flying flyer, a  well respected dog, But the one who knocks upon my door ain't smiling, he don't care that I should be retiring, He said 'call me the new squire and take off your hat', I wasn't having that - my new landlord was a cat!"

Alan Hull's second album from 1975 is the last of the great original run of Lindisfarne runs that stretches back all the way to 'Nicely Out Of Tune' in 1970. Apart from drummer Ray Laidlaw in Jack The Lad (who keep going till the next year) all of Lindisfarne have broken up and dispersed from their respective bands and will make no more music till getting back together in 1978: Lindisfarne Mark II have been forced to break up and Si Cowe and Rod Clements are no longer with Jack The Lad. It's the end of an era, the old early 70s sound making way for the new. Hull, the creative powerhouse behind the band, clearly knows it too: 'Squire' is a bittersweet goodbye, a fond farewell of an album that knows it might be the last album for a while (maybe forever the way the record business seemed to work back then). An angrier, less pretty album than its predecessor, 'Squire' is a fascinating mix of the inspired and the tired. Hull had a right to feel a little aggrieved and less on top of things than usual: Charisma basically refused to put out any more Lindisfarne Mark II albums but still wanted to keep Alan on as a solo artist (his first record 'Pipedream' had outsold the two 'Mark II' records, perhaps because fans realised how much more of a 'Lindisfarne' sounding album it actually was). However their terms for this second record came at a price: Lindisfarne Mark II hadn't recouped their advance so this record had to be made to a lower budget than normal and to a quicker deadline than 'Pipedream'. For a creative spirit like Hull that must have been crushing: Lindisfarne had been the biggest band in Britain in 1971 and here we are, only four years on, back to roughly where he'd started: a solo singer looking to break into the big time trying to build up an audience.

In essence, this is the third 'Mark II' Lindisfarne album minus everyone else's songs. Jacka and Kenny Craddock both makes several appearances across the record, with Paul Nichols replaced by Terry Popple (a regular of Hull's next album 'Radiator') and Thomas Duffy replaced by Colin Gibson (ditto). However there's a very different 'feel' to this record which makes it very much the sequel to 'Pipedream': recently Hull has been using Lindisfarne as a platform for either everything that's wrong in the music business, using the band as an alternative to the psychiatrist couch after the original Lindisfarne split, or as an excuse to indulge in comedy laddish behaviour. Only 'River' sounds anything like the meticulous crafter of deeply expressed thoughts fans would have known from the first three Lindisfarne records where empathy for beggars, those in slums, citizens under the heel of town planners and the Irish spilled over from an overflowing cup. To some extent 'Squire' revives that spirit, offering a helping hand to everyone in trouble from more people under the cosh of an uncaring society to the very squires and country gentlemen Hull used to laugh at. Chances are a man like Hull (who'd been working cleaning windows and trying to do odd jobs to feed a young family when Lindisfarne came along) felt embarrassed by his success and felt he was losing touch with 'his' people. Now, though, he's seen the world with new eyes, knows that bad luck can happen rich or poor and excitedly takes his place back in the public, not quite sure whether he'll ever get the chance to talk to 'us' again. Being told to wrap up your legacy inside a short space of time must have been a difficult commission even by Lindisfarne standards - considering all that 'Squire' hangs together pretty well.

Like 'Roll On Ruby' - the record Lindisfarne Mark II made after the split - and the first Jack The Lad record, this is a loose concept album about old powers being toppled so that the next lot of bands can come along and Lindisfarne being toppled heavier than most. 'I've seen it all, from the dole queue to the top' Hull bitterly reflects in the title track. Class was always one of Hull's favourite targets and it's all over this album, from the wonderful album cover (Alan, with pipe in mouth and posh hat, standing in front of a castle - the back sleeve has a rather different view!) to many of the album songs. However this time around a lot of the 'class' songs are actually aimed at himself: the title song 'Squire' has Hull as the previous owner of a local estate who falls behind on his payments and is evicted during the course of the song, having to take his place in the 'real' world (Max's note: huh, at least he wasn't evicted by a cat...). A reflective instrumental, 'I'm Sorry Squire', sounds like its following the old Squire as he sinks lower and lower in society, what with all those sad recorders and tin whistles. Alan had been here before though: 'The Bad Side Of Town' is one of his most winningly autobiographical songs, debating how his childhood was 'deprived' in the eyes of others who weren't there, but he and his playmates know that there's only a bad side of town when you see the bad side of people. Finally 'Dan The Plan' returns to the scene of 'Peter Brophy Does Not Care' and 'City Songs' from 'Fog On The Tyne': a city planner trying to decide how people should live when he has no idea of what they are like or any interest in how awful the conditions are (he'll never have to meet them, after all!) The theme that runs throughout a lot of Hull's work but particularly this album is not to take it on trust how you should behave round people, just because they have more (or less) money than you. The point a lot of the album seems to be making is that respect should be earned, not be a privilege: the 'Squire' will always be the 'Squire' to his local farmers because he was a good man - they don't care about his financial situation. Equally Hull knows that the 'bad' part of town had nothing to fear for him: it was the area that was bad, not the people. Financial situations can change in the blink of an eye (no wonder he's confused enough to call himself 'Mr In-between' in the album's comedy finale) and you need to be kind and empathetic to the people on the way up as well as the way down: a world full of Peter Brophys and Dan The Plans may try to keep us in our place but it's only people like them who tell us how to live - by 1975 Hull has met everyone big and small and knows something the 'rich' don't know: that the poor are like them in every way except having money. By the late 1970s (and Thatcher) Hull tries hard to go into politics, trying to become a Newcastle MP first for Labour and then as an independent before realising he can do 'more good' with his songwriting. At times 'Squire' feels like a party political broadcast on behalf of the Alan Hull party (he'd certainly have my vote!) Interestingly the album seems to have been roughly divided so that the first four songs are about the abuse of powers by the rich and most of the last six (we'll discount 30-second 'The End' for now) about the poor (with just instrumental 'I'm Sorry Squire' getting in the way). Co-incidence or intention? With Hull you're never quite sure whether he's been clever or lucky but it does give this album a nice consistency of theme.

Like all good politicians, Hull also seems to have a guilty conscience at times: he begins and ends the album by protesting 'I swear I mean no harm to you or anyone'. Closing song 'Mr Inbetween' is, in fact, an attempt to become a person whose views are no longer so extreme that they upset everyone all the time: which is quite some going given the mad family the narrator seems to have! (He still gets arrested for 'drunken-ness' though!) Even instrumental 'I'm Sorry Squire' is written as an apology. But an apology to who? The band? (Lindisfarne Mark II didn't have the happiest of time together, but it was hardly Hull's fault). His family? (Period spin-off single 'Crazy Woman' suggests that Hull had never been more in love, whatever the song's title). My guess is its 'us': 'Golden Oldies' is an affectionate grumble over how 'they just don't make them like that any more'. Hull knows well the importance of having pop stars taking a stand: it was 'Johnny' Lennon in 1964 who 'opened every door' and 'Bobby' Dylan who shaped his idea of what a songwriter ought to be doing: reflecting the times and trying to put things right. 'Even in the morning they did not desert you' Hull sings, before reflecting that a decade later 'it's all been and gone - sure was a whole lot of fun!' Hull knows he's about to join them into obscurity and seems to be asking for our forgiveness before the event; determined not to simply walk out of our lies the way Lennon and Dylan had done. 'Golden Oldies' is really a farewell from singer to fans, wrapped up in a song where Hull is the fan and his two heroes are the singers.

One thing that's always struck me about this album is how much of a nostalgia-fest it is. While 'Pipedream' was very much an album set in the present (with songs for Alan's wife, children, band and, erm, windmill) 'Squire' is always looking back over its shoulder with rose-tinted glasses. 'Waiting' is a fairly 'old' song actually recorded in 1973 during 'Pipedream' and so touches back to that period in Hull's past in between the two Lindisfarnes (it even includes the line 'could this be another sad song coming to an end?', a nod of the head to 'Justanothersadsong', a track which did make it onto 'Pipedream'). 'Picture A Little Girl' dates back even further, being one of the songs Hull had demoed in 1969 in his days as a solo act. The energetic cover of 'Nothin' Shakin' sounds like a band trying to remember their dim and distant youth from the 1950s. Elsewhere the mood is distinctly elegiac: Hull pays tributes to Dylan and Lennon in 'Golden Oldies', two other men who seemed to have disappeared for good (Dylan was taking a break between albums - Lennon had just announced his 'retirement' to become a househusband), perhaps not feeling so bad about his own enforced absence. 'Bad Side Of Town', as we've seen, is about Hull's childhood, perhaps inspired by the better life he's managed to make for his children compared to his own (and perhaps his worry about maintaining it without a band or record contract).  'Dan The Plan' is very much intended as a sequel to 'City Songs', one of Hull's most moving songs. Finally, 'One More Bottle Of Wine' is the tale of an old drunk preparing to go home but with one last song to sing, a name-dropping song with several fan-pleasing references to The Tyne and the promise that 'the moment is not done - no way!' A combination of the speed of making the record and the fact that this might be a 'final' farewell seem to have inspired Hull to look inside himself and his memories like never before: even compared to 'Pipedream'.

For an album made under such trying circumstances you could forgive 'Squire' for being less than excellent and there's no getting away from the fact that it is both weaker and lighter than 'Pipedream' and all three 'original' Lindisfarne records. But the good news is that, for the last time until the 1980s, Hull sounds truly inspired, writing songs that no one else could have thought up. In truth he'd taken a bit of a nap through the two Lindisfarne Mark II albums (while 'Happy Daze' in particular is a strong record, most of Alan's songs are comedy ones about boozing or unreleased songs dating back to the 1960s). With the weight suddenly on him to deliver he seems to come out of himself, writing almost a 'greatest hits' record full of all the things that fans have come to expect: angry rants at lazy institutions, comedy songs about class that have as much fun at the rich's expense as they seem to have at the poor's; a drinking song; an instrumental using then-new synthesiser sounds; a fan-pleasing mention of 'signing on the dole' and a love song about a pretty mysterious stranger who could easily be Lady Eleanor's great-great-grandaughter. Some of the album shows the strain everyone was under its true: instrumentals are a dodgy idea at the best of times and 'I'm Sorry Squire' isn't one of the best, while the knees-up attack on Eddie Fontaine's 'Nothin' Shakin' But The Leaves On The Tress' is a nice idea performed by a band who don't know how to rock. For the most part, though, what's impressive is just how consistent this second album is - and how many different places with different textures this record goes to: comedy, tragedy, drama, nostalgia - sometimes all four within one song. 

The sound is impressive too. You could have forgiven Hull for taking a few short-cuts in the making of 'Squire', but the 'Nothin' Shakin' cover aside everything here sounds very polished and carefully arranged. Jean Roussel - who'd only just left Cat Stevens' band after a string of albums dating back to 1970 - is a key part of this album's sound, playing all the keyboards that Hull doesn't and adding the orchestra touches that are here and there throughout this album (the dramatic part added to 'The Bad Side Of Town' is particularly impressive). The synthesiser on 'I'm Sorry Squire' sounds nicely progressive for the era: Hull never gets the credit he deserves as a pioneer of the instrument which sounds much more palatable in his hands than most instruments. 'Picture A Little Girl' also features a lovely cascading serenade of flutes and tin whistles which give a lovely folk flavour to the song. 'Squire', too, sounds like prog rock should always have sounded: with both track and album starting mid-note, as if simply the latest chapter in Hull's complicated life, it features a wonderfully clear combination of an awful lot of instruments with pianos, guitars, mellotrons, bass, drums and a specially treated 'megaphone' style double-tracked vocal from Hull passing through the song. 'Squire' actually sounds like more time was spent on it than 'Pipedream' and while it misses the 'telepathy' of the Lindisfarne records (even the 'Mark II' ones) Hull is surrounded by a strong group of people.

You can tell this album is rushed, however. Heard back to back to 'Pipedream' this record has a tendency to take things slow, to eke out each song for as long as it will go, rather than packing everything into two tight minutes and move onto the next track because there's so much to say. At times Hull already seems to be coasting into involuntary retirement with a lot more ballads than normal (discounting 30 second 'goodbye' 'The End' there are ten songs on this album - seven of them are ballads) and a sleepy countenance to this album that sits in quite a contrast to everything Hull has done before. For the moment that's fine: it's nice to have the change in fact, but in time this writing style will become less palatable when it becomes Hull's default setting for everything (most of the Lindisfarne reunion records, still dominated by Hull even with more members writing, tend to go down this route too, while third solo Hull album, 1979's 'Phantoms', rarely moves away from 'snoozy'). The sad fact too is that while 'Pipedream' was a bumpier and less consistent ride it contained several classic songs adored by many fans including me: 'Breakfast' 'United States Of Mind' 'Numbers' 'Country Gentleman's Life' 'For The Bairns' 'Song For A Windmill'...By contrast only the title track of 'Squire' and 'Dan The Plan' are truly in that first-class league. There's still much to enjoy though: only 'Nothin' Shakin' gets things that wrong, with all the other songs having some reason to shine. It's also a major improvement for Hull supporters on both 'Mark II' records. In truth, though, this needs another couple of first-class songs to make it as essential a purchase as 'Pipedream' and the three 'proper' Lindisfarne records: an album that's impressively consistent and consistently good album considering the circumstances rather than the greatest single thing Alan Hull ever made. Not bad, though, Squire - especially given the circumstances - not bad at all.

'The Squire' is easily the best song on the album. Like The Kinks' 'Sunny Afternoon', this is a millionaire who ends up with nothing, evicted from a house he can't afford to keep up anymore. No matter how many times the narrator insists on being called' The Squire', his old fashioned sense of entitlement means nothing against the local man filling bureaucracy and red tape. Hull expands this song to include his own sense of unfairness on both sides: he's 'hopped along the road from the dole queue to the top' and knows a thing or two about life and life seems to be unfair on both sides: the squire may have done nothing to deserve his estate in the first place but he shouldn't have to lose what he's turned into a home. The melody is perfectly fitting for a song about enforced full stops and stutterings, coming to a pause after every chorus before thinking and carrying on. The backing is at its best here too with washes of synthesiser and a cracking finale featuring a mellotron and a backwards guitar part fighting each other to be heard. The sounds of yesteryear - 1967 to be precise - are unusual for Hull and seem to be making a point: that tradition, even relatively recent tradition and values are under threat. The result is a song The Kinks would have been proud to make  and a song that manages to say something deeper than simply 'I'm being evicted!'

'Dan The Plan' is a second strong song at the start of the album. Returning to the madness of development planners last hear don 'Fog On The Tyne', Hull goes further even than 'City Songs' and 'Peter Brophy Does Not Care'. Dan The Plan (in real life, Newcastle City Council leader Dan T Smith, in charge during the first half of the 1960s) doesn't care either: Hull depicts him as a greedy cowboy, 'one hand on the stirrup and another in the stew', drawing up plans for another ugly apartment block in Newcastle despite the fact that it suits absolutely nobody but the town planners doing things on the cheap. Hull ironically refers to Newcastle as 'The Brazilia of the North' before getting personal: his beloved 'fog on the tyne' is now 'all smoke and rain' and the narrator's own father died 'after you turned his house into a caravan'. Newcastle - and much of the North of England - are being destroyed in the name of commerce and cheapness, with housing estates well looked after and cared for demolished to make way for unliveable houses that don't even have the warmth of a happy memory; no wonder Hull is in such an acerbic mood, this is his childhood he's fighting for here. While a largely popular figure in his day, opponents called Smith the 'mouth of the Tyne', the foghorn, perhaps, to Lindisfarne's fog and Hull may have been reminded of his impact on his home city after Smith was imprisoned in 1974 on charges of bribery and corruption (basically giving architect John Paulsen a free go at renovating the city instead of leaving it open to competition). Hull's vocal is one of his sarcastic best with this song clearly personal, taunting and pillorying the hapless designer who'll never have to live in one of his monstrosities. History has proved Hull right of course: while the 1960s and 70s were the height of taste musically (or so we at the AAA say anyway) most people generally agree that it was an ugly time for designers, with the period's solution to a growing population, usually poor to lock them away like battery hens generally accepted as a bad idea (most of these concrete monstrosities have been knocked down now). 'Am I wrong to complain?!?' the chorus runs - nope, as ever Alan was spot-on with the direction of his rage. Hull is joined in his crusade by another of the best performances on the album including classic harmonica puffing from Jacka and some gritty Kenny Craddock guitar-work. 

'Picture A Little Girl' is an older song pre-dating Lindisfarne that would have made a fine addition to the 'Nicely Out Of Tune' album, a slow and stately song about a quiet and stately girl. Hull thinks his quiet partner 'has the wisdom of a child' and would love to know her secrets - but by the end he's imploring her to keep them to herself. Hull often wrote about quiet stately graceful ladies (Lady Eleanor for instance) but they're usually older and maturer than this: Alan seems obsessed with how young she appears. Hull's 1969 demo has come to light (you can hear it as a bonus track on the 'Happy Daze' CD) and makes for fascinating listening: singing to just his guitar accompaniment Hull sounds nicely folky and is already having fun with 'Dingly Dell' style guitar fills (another song which dates back to this early period). This re-recording is dressed up in much shinier finery, a lovely series of flutes, recorders and tin whistles that make a very good musical 'double' for the girl with the far-away look in her eyes and which fly over a very Rod Clements-style 'busy' bass that seems like the narrator babbling away outside her exterior. The biggest change is that an entire middle section has been dropped: the original comes with a much more aggressive form of questioning that tries to 'break' her solitude down: 'Where are you going? I'd really like to know, can I come with you? I've got no place to go', Hull's narrator trying to follow the girl to the land of 'dreams' he can see in her eyes but which she won't speak about. It's interesting that this section should have been dropped as the final version is very ethereal and other-worldly throughout, another land that's alien to the narrator no matter how hard he tries to join her there.

The noisy cover of 'Nothin' Shakin' is enough to drive any imaginary world from your mind, as Hull tries to sound like a punk a full year early. This differs from the usual covers of this song in being slightly slower and sturdier than most versions bordering on the hysterical (The Beatles' BBC session cover for instance), while there's a bigger part for the pianist to play than usual. Hull has fun on the vocals where he screams himself hoarse trying to get some action in a backward town and his little aides are the best thing about the cover: 'Nothing's shaking - not even my hands!' he quips at one point, while another has Hull offering up a groan. The problem is that with many mid-1970s rock and roll covers (Lennon's 'Rock and Roll' album from this same year comes to mind): this arrangement is too bloated to truly rock properly. Almost all 1950s rock and roll records are recorded purely and simply; adding a whole bunch of superfluous musicians puts this recording and others like it into rocking by committee, by common consent of everyone. Rock should be about raw power - there's nothing shaking listening to this recording except my head. Oh dear.

'One More Bottle Of Wine' is one of the better examples of a Hull drinking song that enables Hull to come up with the world wisdom that all drunks seem to possess. While 'Dealer's Choice' and 'Gin and Tonix All Round' were self-deprecating songs about not being able to cope with life, this is a song about not wanting to go home. At times this is a song about a doomed marriage ('We don't see eye to eye always, we only can but try in small ways' is one of Hull's cleverest, fullest couplets). At other times, though, Hull seems to be raising a toast to us and saying his farewells: he knows he's on the brink of a 'bad break' and sees the 'sun is slipping through the Tyne' as the sun sets on his career. He doesn't want to go though ('The moment isn't done - no way!'), not with such 'fine and friendly folk I know' to go on his journey with him and with so many songs to 'drink to the future of mankind' still to go. The result is an intense song that seems to be a deal more substantial than the recent block of Hull drinking songs. A naggingly persistent melody line just about gets to straddle the line between clever and annoying (like many a drunk) enhanced by a wonderful Jean Roussel orchestral arrangement (erm, not like many drunks!) Trust Hull to use the metaphor of drinking in one of his most personal statements!

'Golden Oldies' is a song that all of you interested enough to read this website and/or book should identify with: Hull's personal song about what music means to him. Dylan opened the door, Lennon stepped through it, melodies were 'clean' and 'true' and could still be easily remembered. Now, though, there are no pioneers or troublemakers left and those like Dylan and Lennon whose candles once burned so bright are left either repeating themselves or in semi-retirement. An early song asking 'what the hell happened to music?!' (a question most of us have been asking ever since 1980), Hull uses the name of a Beatles compilation LP ('A Collection Of Oldies But Goldies')  to wave goodbye to ten years of thrilling change and may well be thinking about his own disappearance from that list (Jacka plays his only mandolin part on the album, instantly turning this into the most 'Lindisfarny' song on the record). The song ends happily, though, deciding that 'the world is still waiting for another song' and that even if what came before is all there will be 'it sure was a whole load of fun!' The result is a catchy affectionate look at Hull's heroes and a changing time in music, although a few extra verses or a middle eight would have been nice - with just three short verses and a chorus this song doesn't have much time to talk about a subject that's clearly close to its narrator's heart.

Remember 'STD 0632', the rather oddball synthesiser-heavy instrumental from 'Pipedream'? 'I'm Sorry Squire' is that song's great nephew, a pretty song that's really enhanced by Hull's use of synthesisers on what sounds like a 'woodwind' setting. Even without that title this track would instantly conjure up images of guilt and remorse, a sad and lost little song that seems to be haunted by something more than just the curious strings-with-choir 'ahhh' sound the synthesiser appears to make. The result is pretty, but like the previous song you wonder why Hull left it as an instrumental: this is a song crying out for words as expressive as the tune. It also sounds a little unfinished and has precious little to do with Hull: the stars here are the ever reliable Kenny Craddock and Jean Roussel, both masters of the keyboard. I'm sorry, 'I'm Sorry Squire' - it's just that compared to the time and energy spent crafting the other songs on this album this pretty but pretty inconsequential piece just isn't in the same league.

'Waiting' is one of the album's lesser moments too, an outtake from 'Pipedream' sensibly left off that album (and therefore produced by Mickey Sweeney rather than Hull himself, like the rest of the album). You can understand why it's here: Hull needed material in a hurry and it's too good to be simply thrown away. However this track is just too purely 'Pipedreamy' : it features Hull sat alone at the piano, making noises where the trumpets should go and debating why he keeps writing so many sad songs. 'Could it be another story going wrong?' Hull sighs, before the chirpier elements of the song kick in again and he tried to find a rather uneasy compromise between his natural charm and his current despondency. The one link with 'Squire' is the line 'is this another sad song coming to an end?', something which could easily have been the 'starting point' for the whole record if Hull knew he'd be building an album around it. This track shares quite a few of Hull's worst characteristics that he tended to rely on when uninspired however: a stop-starty melody, a cheeky bordering-on-gormless riff and a horribly over-sung vocal that in the good ol' days we'd have been complaining wasn't handed over to Jacka to do. 'Waiting' isn't all bad though: Hull has such a natural gift that even his most basic songs have something in them to recommend them and the aptly titled 'Waiting' would have been greeted with open arms had this song been released on a 'rarities' set of unreleased recordings or as a CD bonus track on 'Pipedream'.

So far the 'downstairs' side of 'Squire' hasn't been up the standards of the 'upstairs', but in comes a breezy 'The Bad Side Of Town' to brighten up the record with another winner. If Hull had been around today no doubt somebody would have encouraged him to write a 'misery memoir' about his severely impoverished upbringing and an early adult life that saw him picking up dozens of horrendous odd jobs between long stints on the dole. However Hull wasn't a 'misery memoir' kind of a person' - as with 'Dan The Plan' this is a defensive song about how there aren't such things as 'bad areas', only bad people. In spite of everything, Hull's memories are happy ones playing with friends and none of them thought they were deprived - the only people who considered his patch 'the bad side of town' were 'nameless men' who were 'nameless faces, never friends' and who'd never been there for any length of time. A clever lyric is enhanced by a breezy melody that does its best simply to get on with things, flowing naturally across the course of the song as if its part of destiny that will always be overcome. A middle eight with a key change on the line 'the tide is on the turn' tries to unsettle the song for a while, but this track is built of sturdier stuff than that and simply overturns the minor key back into a major one the first chance it gets. Roussel's dramatic orchestral arrangement is the best dressing this song could hope for too: its full of bleak colliery trumpets and kitchen sink drama strings, but done with such a light touch that it sounds as if the song is laughing at itself: Hull won't do what everyone else with his background does and slag it off because he was too fond of it. The result is one of its composers most under-rated songs, one that like 'Fog On The Tyne' knows its scrapping for a fight merely to survive but is determined to find something good to enjoy all the same. Of all the songs Hully wrote, this is also the one that most represents 'him' and his irrepressible spirit the best!

Hull ends the album with a comedy, a 'Fog On The Tyne' for the mid-1970s that is occasionally funny but tries a little too hard with the surreal comedy. 'My mother she was an armchair, my sister was a rug, my father he was a spider and my brother was a bug' is the first verse, Hull flippantly filing away the most important people to his early years as literally 'part of the furniture'! The second verse then paints a wickedly hilarious spoof picture of the autobiography everybody seems to want to hear: the narrator's father makes counterfeit money, his mother illicit gin, his sister 'sells kisses to sailors': this is a den of inequity too OTT to ever be true. The third verse is closer to the truth: Hull gets accused by a magistrate of being a communist, a policeman ads a charge that he's a 'bum'; without any real charges they can make they both arrest him for 'drunkeness' ('though I swear I mean no harm to anyone!') This loose re-telling of the 'We Can Swing Together' story takes Hull neatly full circle to where he began, writing protest songs about being arrested merely for having a good time. Throughout it all the silly chorus 'I am Mr Inbetween' tried to define the narrator in terms that people can easily understand. Only human beings don't work like that - Hull's attempt to turn himself into an identikit 'Mr Men' character merely results in him deciding that 'my heel is on my hat - and I don't know where I'm at!' A fun novelty which was the one song on the album to become a semi-regular in Lindisfarne's set list, this track is perhaps a little too quirky for it's own good, a poor man's 'Fog On The Tyne' (even though technically this character is rich and Tyne's is penniless - but you know what I mean!)

That is kind of 'The End' except for 'The End', a 38 second finale that seems like it's going somewhere as Hull wishes us goodnight before suddenly ending on a twinkling piano riff. This is a very mid-70s trick - probably learnt from Gilbert O'Sullivan who uses 30-second introductions and conclusions to most of his 1970s output - but seems too much of a gimmick for the usual straight-as-a-dye Hull. It sounds to me as if this is more of a 'Lennon' style goodbye, Hull spoofing John's spoken goodbye at the end of his last album pre-retirement 'Rock and Roll' ('This is Dr Winston O'Boogie saying goodnight from the Record Plant East...everyone here says 'hi!', goodbye!) as he too endured an enforced period of absence. Caught between making this a touching farewell and a joke, Hull isn't quite sure how to handle it and so goes for self-deprecating humour: 'I've sung my songs, I've tried to get along, I hope you enjoyed the show'. I'm not sure I enjoyed this track (which with its lovely flowing piano chords badly needs to be a 'full' song) but the show - that was superb.

In the end, then, 'Squire' is a mixed album. There are several strong songs, some near misses and a couple of track that will have you scratching your head. Overall, though, that's not bad odds for an album made in so much of a hurry and with Hull for once not in full control of his destiny. It's a shame of course that he didn't have longer to do what he needed to do: 'Squire' could then have been a 100% classic instead of a 66% one or so. But even if this record is a come-down from Hulls' last records both solo ('Pipedream') and with the band ('Happy Daze'), it's still a deeply under-rated record well worth digging out for anyone who loves their politics with a dash of humour, their rants with a bit of charm and their songs warm, funny and wise. Fare thee well my golden oldie.

Now it's the end, till we meet again, I've reviewed these songs, tried not to go on too long, I hope you enjoyed the show...and so I guess that is that, until I evict the fatcat!"

A NOW COMPLETE LIST OF LINDISFARNE ARTICLES TO READ AT ALAN’S ALBUM ARCHIVES:

'Nicely Out Of Tune' (L) (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-37-lindisfarne-nicely-out-of.html

'Fog On The Tyne' (L) (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/news-views-and-music-issue-88.html

'Dingly Dell' (L) (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/news-views-and-music-issue-146.html

'Roll ON Ruby' (L) (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/lindisfarne-roll-on-ruby-1973.html

'It's Jack The Lad' (JTL) (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-61-jack-lad-its-jack-lad-1973.html

'Happy Daze' (L) (1974) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/news-views-and-music-issue-50.html

'Pipedream'  (AH) (1974) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/news-views-and-music-issue-63-alan-hull.html

'The Squire' (AH) (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/alan-hull-squire-1975.html

'The Old Straight Track' (JTL) (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/news-views-and-music-issue-109-jack-lad.html

'Rough Diamonds' (JTL) (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/jack-lad-rough-diamonds-1975.html

‘Jackpot’ (JTL) (1976) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/jack-lad-jackpot-1976.html

'Magic In The Air' (L) (1978) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/news-views-and-music-issue-15.html

'Back and Fourth' (L) (1978) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/lindisfarne-back-and-fourth-1978.html

‘The News’(L) (1979) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/lindisfarne-news-1979.html

'Sleepless Nights' (L) (1982) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-83-lindisfarne-sleepless-nights.html

'Dance Your Life Away' (L) (1986) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2017/01/lindisfarne-dance-your-life-away-1986.html

‘Amigos’ (1989) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/lindisfarne-amigos-1989.html

'Elvis Lives On The Moon' (L) (1993) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/lindisfarne-elvis-lives-on-moon-1993.html

'Here Comes The Neighbourhood' (1998) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/lindisfarne-here-comes-neighbourhood.html

'Promenade' (2002) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/lindisfarne-promenade-2002.html

Si Cowe Obituary and Tribute (2015) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/simon-si-cowe-lindisfarne-guitarist.html

Surviving TV Clips http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/surviving-lindisfarne-tv-clips-1971-1996.html

Live/Solo/Compilation Albums Part One 1970-1987 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/lindisfarne-sololiveraritiescompilation.html

Live/Solo/Compilation Albums Part Two 1988-2015 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/lindisfarne-sololiveraritiescompilation_29.html

Essay: Keepin’ The Rage On Behalf Of The Working Classes https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/lindisfarne-essay-keepin-rage-on-behalf.html

Key Concerts and Cover Versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/05/lindisfarne-five-landmark-concerts-and.html