Two Of Us On The Long and Winding Road To Liverpool

Our beloved son in law helped me fulfil a sweet dream by driving the hard day's long and winding road up to Liverpool where we enjoyed the fabulous Beatles sites and endured Liverpool's abysmal 1-4 home defeat against PSV Eindhoven. On the way up, we played then first six Beatles albums and the other six on the way back, the first time even I have managed this feat. After the game in Molly Malone's we drowned our sorrows and toasted our joys and heard "Fairytale of New York" (which, serendipitously, Maz and I are preparing for Christmas performances at present) and the next morning we went Up The Mersey. It was a fabulous time in a down to earth fairytale city. What all of the Beatles never forgot, even at the height of their later 'suffering artist' stage was that you have to give your hard-working Hamburg and Liverpool cavern-dwellers listeners some joy to hold onto, a song to lift the heart through the eight day week ahead. The non-diegetic sound is the Peacocks' 'escape the factory' cover of A Hard Day's Night and our Beatles medley All You Need Is The Love You Make from our It Was Sixty Years Ago Today EP. https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/al... This is what I said there about our A Hard Day's Night The naked truth. The howl. There are some Beatles hits (eg Help- and most of the 'Hard Day's Night' LP, which was mostly written by John) lifted so high into heaven by the Fab Force that the original Lennon howl gets lost- and when he's not making everybody cry with laughter or nailing you with his charismatic ideas, he is howling with pain an awful lot of the time. This is one of those times. This is a working man from Liverpool beaten down by his eight day week, the labouring masses whose only opiate is that sexual partner at home to 'give him everything' (and tenderly) : the extremely tough background they actually came from (Ringo hammering his steelworker drums into high art, those dark F chorded phrases about 'working like a dog') ; which they escaped by being Grammar School bright, fabulously gifted and (lest we forget) grindingly hard working throughout their youth and for a very long time afterwards. What's sublime about the Beatles is that they touch that story with their magic and set the very factories it's about singing it. And take its Cinderellas (voiced here by Maz, both his and all those dreaming factory girls' wish fulfilment ) to the Beatle ball. And about All You Need Is The one You Make: The Fabs 'at the height of their comeback' and peak of their art. "All You Need Is Love" was a Lennon song, and said to be the last magnificent high tide mark of his big hit Beatle writing career too. It tended to be rock masterpiece B sides and album tracks for him after this; the unique Beatle knack of being both kooky and mainstream at once largely passing to Paul ('Hello Goodbye''Hey Jude'; 'Get Back' and 'Lady Madonna' to John's 'The Walrus' and 'Revolution' and 'Don't Let Me Down' George's 'The Inner Light. The late Beatle John 'B sides' are surely as good if not better songs ('The Walrus') than the hit A side ('Hello Goodbye'!) but the point is that 'All You Need Is Love' was also the huge and obvious hit. However competitive Paul was ("They weren't collaborators" said George Martin "but competitors") he was generous enough to recognise that John had written the better zeitgeist for the BBC satellite broadcast of England's choice for the One World project than 'Your Mother Should Know' his own typically charming but much slighter effort . George also paid homage to this ultimate hippy hit 'All You Need Is Love'. Indeed, he spent most of his subsequent solo career writing and singing his own versions of its message, including an open homage to it on 'All Those Years Ago" and a genuine contender to match it with 'All Things Must Pass'. If Paul followed his usual mutual practice of competing with John, he certainly didn't manage to match 'All You Need Is Love's' singalong mix of heavy gravity, anthemic cogency and sheer uplift with that Winged wonder 'Silly Love Songs' but he may have done with the Beatle album track 'The End' - not a hit single but a worthy and self-conscious valediction to the Beatle career and, as the climax of 'Abbey Road,' a different kind of hit probably played as much as most Sixties singles.'The End' is a beautifully constructed epitaph - or devout eulogy - to the same steadfast Beatle hippy faith. MY NEW NOVEL, SERGEANT SPECTRE'S LONELY RUBBER SOUL, IT WAS S IXTY YEARSAGO TODAY, SET IN THE BEATLES SIXTIES, WHICH TELLS THE WHOLE RAGS TO RICHES REAL-LIFE FAIRYTALE (COMPLETE WITH SHE'S LEAVING HOME GENERATION GAP AND SPIRITUAL REAWAKENING) IS PUBLISHED ONLINE HERE https://www.blogger.com/blog/page/edi... ON DECEMBER 4 2025, THE SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE RELEASE OF RUBBER SOUL AND "DAY TRIPPER. WE CAN WORK IT OUT" (THE THIRD CHRISTMAS NUMBER ONE BEATLES SINGLE IN A ROW)

It Was 60 Years Ago Today ( Beatles celebration)

To mark the 60th anniversary of the Fabs making their landmark debut LP in 24 hours (Feb 11 1963) Peacock’s Tale old married woke folk indie duo have made a 14 track EP of Beatles stories, covers and pastiches charting that real life rags to riches fairy story 1960-1970 and its impact on Factory girl Cindy. “It Was 60 Years Ago Today.” https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/it-was-60-years-ago-today-ep 

Essentially it's a 60s kitchen sink magical-realist rags to riches real life fairytale in which Factory Girl (expelled from Grammar School at 14) Cindy gets to the Beatle Ball (a ticket to ride, leaving home, getting the word Love, going to India etc). 

 The gay colours; the sumptuous costumes; the irreverent majesty. The moment Cinders got to the ball and became Lucy. In the Sky. With Diamonds. The moment khaki became satin; Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali; Van became the Man; frogs became princes; pumpkins turned to bubble cars; guitars became wands; school became art school; Satan became Santa; guns became flowers; the artisan became the artist; George Eastham became George Best; the Black GI wielding his Master’s axe became Jimi Hendrix; the Stone Age came in colours; Brian Epstein came as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; the Hollies became King Midas (on their way to becoming Crosby, Stills, Nash and Jung); the Wurzels became Jeff Beck; the council estate got through the generation gap in the barbed wire and up up and into the Milky Way, heading like that “they think it’s all over, it is now” Geoff Hurst counter-attack over the Gates and into Heeeeeevennnnn!. 

 ...until the 60s midnight knell tolls (At the end of Abbey Road was a crossroads. John turned left; Paul turned right; Ringo turned back and George...kept going.) A bucket of cold water over her Sixties bed. Paul’s lyrics stop meaning anything. John cuts off a decade of Beatle growth, gets a short, back and B sides, and stops being funny. England lose the World Cup. Wales never have it. Pan’s People become Legs and Co. The Stones emigrate. Legs disappear. The Mersey Sound and the Internationale become Standard English and National Service. Jesus Christ Superstar becomes Andrew Lloyd Weber. 

Johnny went West. And Cindy went East. And maybe she is still there. Will her baby brother James, armed with her old copy of 'Pepper' clutched like a Cinderella slipper, be able to find her again?

 This YouTube of one of the tracks (She’s Leaving Home) is proving popular. https://youtu.be/Z9p9tpucPnc

News story https://townandaround.net/previous-issue/February-2023/mobile/index.html  (page 10)

a prayer for john lennon (d. dec 8 1980)

https://bardonthewire.bandcamp.com/track/a-prayer-for-john-lennon-d-dec-8-1980

i am not

sure that god

speaks

more in the silence

or the age's

talentless violence

but in earshot

of atlantic fury

you fell

silent,

new york exploding

unholy smoke

in your heart

and for a bad moment

dear john

i am lost again.

dec 8 1980